Private Veneer Of Business

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

"Don't tell me what is or isn't a friendship," she barked back.

But when Lily suggested that she could just get the information out of Mercy anyway - whatever information that was - Arris wanted to say something else. There was a clear sense of discomfort in the way she shifted, both physically and in the Force. Only to concede to silence when Lily insisted that she would be getting personal with Arris, whether or not she liked it.

Us against them.

"Yeah..." It wasn't exactly enthusiasm.

Her default reaction was to reach for another cigarette, but when she pulled out the pack, it was empty.

In a fit, Arris tossed it aside and ran a hand through her hair.

She needed something. A distraction. A vice. A fixation. Anything but her thoughts. Anything but the discomfort of being seen so clearly by her apprentice. She was starting to get all fidgety.

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun​

Lily watched it all quietly, felt the discomfort coming off her in the force and her smile faded. Arris really wasn’t good at this at all, the way she was itching to be anywhere so feel anything but the discomfort.

She watched the cigarette packet fly from her hand, breeze catching it and pulling it further into the valley they were overlooking. Lily let out a sigh, settling on the idea that she wasn’t going to get anything out of Arris right now. Not like this.

“I used the stims.” she said finally, throwing Arris a bone, something to latch onto that wasn’t personal. “Whole fucking thing in one go. Didn’t have a chance to check the dose. Saved my life though.” She gave a shrug.

“I think it’s probably better if I build a wearable injector or soemthing, have it manage the dose. Just for the fighting.”

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

"Did that feel alright?"

It was a combant stimulant, so using it all at once like that carried a great deal of risk. For one, it could do nasty things to your heart if you weren't careful, let alone used to it. Two, it was very addictive in high doses.

"Noticing any withdrawal symptoms? Light sensitivity... nausea... irritability... impulsive behavior... thoughts that don't feel like they belong to you?" The list went on. Aches and pains. Brain fog. Temporary amnesia and time loss in very rare cases.

She did like the idea of Lily building her own auto-injector, however.

"Yeah?" That changed her tune a little. Her full attention was now on Lily. "What did you have in mind? I didn't know you built stuff..."

Arris tinkered a lot. Modified tech. Sometimes built new tech from parts. She was even working on a starship, which Lily saw when she came to Windrun's penthouse to study shockboxing.

"Oh..." But she had a subject change of her own.

"Is that why you were about to tackle Quinn?"

Made sense for the side effects.

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun

Lily shrugged.

“Everything was amplified. My strength, my anger, all of it. Between that and the network I had a hard time knowing where I began and everything else ended, so no, it did not feel alright.”

Her brow creased in thought as Arris listed off withdrawal symptoms finally shaking her head. “I don't think so, I felt like shit after Humbarine for a few days so I'm expecting to feel like shit for a few more days after this, but if anything out of the ordinary comes up I'll let you know.”

A smile pulled at her lips at the way Arris brightened at the mention of building something.

“A little. I built my batons, I keep my ship flying. I'm not an expert but I'm learning. I was thinking maybe some kind of arm band, or gauntlet. Leaning more towards the latter, easier to adjust settings and dose on the fly if I need to.”

And then came the subject change and something in Lily shifted, her smile vanished, her expression darkened.

The Echani.

“Quinn.” She repeated, her voice quiet. She hadn't known her name until now. Feth, she knew nothing about Quinn Varanin aside from the fact that she was lonely.

And that she was responsible for her nightmares.

“No. That's not why I went for Quinn.” She turned away then, looking back at the sunset, but she couldn't see it. All she could see was smoke and ash, tiny bodies crushed beneath rubble.

There wasn't grief this time, just anger bubbling beneath the surface and something far darker flickered behind her eyes.

Maybe Arris would recognise the hate.

“I don't need stims to be angry enough to kill her.”

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

"Kill her?"

Arris paused a second.

There was a deep reaction inside. Arris felt threatened. As if Lily was going to take something away from her.

"Lily - you're not going to kill her."

She saw the way the anger rose in Lily. It reminded Arris of her own. Was it? There was a shift in the Force, too. Not violent, per se, but a coldness that emanated from Arris.

The cyborg extended her hand, waving Lily with her fingers, nudging her closer with the Force. Not forcibly, just a way to say: "Hey, focus on me.'

"Are you going to tell me why? Or did you just expect to open with: 'Hey Arris, I want to kill that woman you were with back there?"

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun​

The nudge in the force made her head snap round, eyes flashing with something dangerous before it receded, like she remembered where she was and who she was talking to.

“I was on Coruscant. When the Covenant came for the Galactic Empire I was there, where I grew up trying to get some kids out when she…”

The words caught in her throat and she swallowed, trying to find the words to explain without reliving it, but she could already taste the dust, she could smell the smoke and blood. Her voice shook.

“The phobis device stripped me of everything…I could have gotten them out, Arris. They could have lived. But her fucking storm…”

Screams echoed in her mind, hundreds of voices tumbling over one another as Lily brought her hands up to cover her ears, squeezing her eyes shut as the force around her began to vibrate as the darkness rose.

“No.” she whispered, but it was already too late, she was already there, already drowning in the same nightmare that came every night.

Am I gonna die?

I’m cold.​

Mommy?​

Help!

I’m scared.​

I don’t want to die.​

It's dark here.

It hurts!​

Make it stop!​

Please!

Lily folded in on herself, desperately trying to reach for something else, to reach for the quiet but all she found was the angry hum of the firewall guarding Arris’s mind. She latched onto it, pulled herself towards it in the hopes it would drown it all out, but all she did was drag them with her.

Echoes of children dying, but beyond that there was more, there was Coruscant’s endless scream as the purge swept through, as parents tried to protect their children, as fear turned neighbours against each other, casting friends into the line of fire to save themselves.

Lily heard all of it. She felt all of it.

It was a nightmare that she couldn’t escape.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

The explanation dredged up Windrun's own memories of Coruscant. Mercy had led them to the world, seeking a violent conclusion to her Kaggath with the Galactic Emperor. But it was Arris who handled the rest, who had to decide how to break the Empire itself. She remembered it - the terrorism. The deception. The gutpunch.

She remembered impersonating the Emperor, using their own cult-like control of the Empire to dismantle it with a purge order.

Those were the thoughts on her mind as Lily explained her own pain, the thoughts on her mind when Lily reached out, seeking numbness from the co-processor's noise. What she'd find beyond, instead, was guilt for the trillions that Arris Windrun subjected to suffering with her plan. How Mercy congratulated her, because the result meant fewer losses for the Sith Covenant. Every fleet, every Moff, every stormtrooper legion that inflicted murder and terror in the Core - that was Arris Windrun.

But at the center of the storm was another memory altogether, the most vulnerable, the most visible that Lily could touch if she reached out. To see it from Arris's own perspective: what happened with Rox.

Roxana Bel Numen was a prisoner. The daughter of Syndicate nobility, exchanged in a faustian deal between her gang boss and Roxana's powerful father. In the end, she would become expendable, a sacrifice made to wipe the competition off the map. The kind of ugly, bloody move a crime lord made to send a message: 'There is nothing you can use against me.' And love slipped through the young Arris's grasp.

The worst part? She ran. She was within running distance of the compound when the bombs went off. Maybe she could've reached it in time, climbed up and smashed the window, rescued Rox before the flames took her. They could've escaped off-world, perhaps, made a life for themselves. At least, that is what Arris wondered. That was the fear which kept her up at night for so many years afterwards.

Arris could feel their connection. Realized it in the moment, right before she spoke.

"Don't blame her, she didn't bring the war to the Core," Arris muttered.

Her breath would be shaky if such a thing were possible.

"I told myself for a while that it was worth it... We took them off the map. Broke their regime in a single campaign. I should've been proud, right? I'm not. But I can no longer regret it either, Lily. If you want to hate me, then I understand it. If you want to kill me, then aim for the head."

She reached for Lily's lightsaber, putting it in her hand, and guiding it to rest against the right of the cyborg's temple.

"All you have to do is think, and end me."

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun

Lily didn’t know when she’d stepped closer to Arris, only that she felt the guilt emanating from behind the coprocessor. Mental fingers reached for it, something else to focus on, something that wasn’t her, something she could use to quiet her own noise.

She wished she hadn’t.

The memories came in pieces, fractured noise she couldn’t make sense of at first, deaths of trillions, congratulations. Her own memories shifted, pieces of the puzzle connecting.

"They're just killing people." she said, her voice quiet.

"It's a purge order." He said quietly without elaboration, trusting she understood his words.

Hatred and fury rose like a storm till the force around them seemed to crack but for all she felt Lily didn’t move, because through the storm of guilt a face surfaced in Arris’s memories. Lily had known it to be Arris’ face when they first met, but the truth of that had already been unveiled.

Rox.

The girlfriend she left to die.

One choice that changed the entire course of her life. What if she’d gone back, what if she’d saved Rox? Would Arris be the person she was now? Would trillions of people still be alive? Suddenly she could see it, a web of possibilities spilling out from Arris Windrun.

Arris’s voice dragged her from it, pulled her from the web, from the memories. The screaming had subsided. There was just the sound of Arris’ voice, and the constant hum of her processor behind. Lily’s face was tear stained again as they fell thick and fast and she made no move to wipe them away.

She didn’t resist when Arris placed the lightsaber in her hand, when she pressed it against her temple. Her thumb twitched. It would have been so easy, so easy to end her, so easy to stop the path of destruction she was carving. How many thousands could she save? The trillions she could avenge.

But beneath all of it, beneath the murder and the hate and the rage, she was just Arris. Somewhere, beneath all of the changes she’d made to herself as she’d tried to carve away her humanity, there was the girl who ran.

The storm of fury and hatred dissipated, the force settled around them. Lily's greatest weakness had nothing to do with her strength or ability in the force, and everything to do with how easily she cared.

The lightsaber slipped from her fingers, cracking against the rock between them as she closed the gap and pulled Arris into a hug.

“I forgive you.” she whispered.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

How easily Arris fell into that hug...

It took her more than a moment to register what had happened. Part of her had entirely anticipated, accepted the end of her life right then and there. Lily should have done it. That was the first impulse she felt.

But instead, the apprentice wrapped her in her arms and pulled her into a hug.

Had Arris Windrun been hugged? Had she experienced this kind of intimacy since Rox died? She couldn't even pull a memory of the last time she was hugged. Her parents hadn't hugged her. They treated her like a coinhabitant, a tolerated detail until she was old enough for them to say, 'Hey kid, time for you to figure it out on your own.'

She shrunk inside, drawing her entire soul, all her grief, into a ball so dense it might as well have been a black hole.

Her arms weakly wrapped around Lily, too.

Arris had told herself it wasn't about forgiveness. That she couldn't possibly expect people to forgive her. That moving on was about accepting the guilt but giving up the regret. That the past couldn't be changed, and that true redemption wasn't about proving yourself to others, but simply finding a way to live with yourself.

She wanted to live with herself.

But she couldn't.

The only thing that drove her was them. The people in the Sith Covenant who were broken like her, who were liable to suffer and probably die without her. She couldn't make up for anything, but she could at least be useful.

Was she useful?

Had she been of use to Lily?

She wanted to be used. She needed to be used.

Expended like a resource.

A gun. A shoulder. A tool. A body.

Arris didn't know what to say, let alone what to do next. She just surrendered to Lily; held in her arms.

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun
Quinn Varanin ​

Lily could almost feel Arris shrinking in one herself, even as arms reluctantly hugged her back. Had her emotions not been a blend of Arris’s guilt and her own grief she might have laughed, maybe made a comment about how she was clearly not a hugger. Instead she stepped back, releasing the cyborg and wiping her face.

Her hands slid into her pockets as she turned back towards the sun, already sat just above the horizon, chasing the chill of the night away with it. Her mind was a swirl of emotions, some hers and some Arris’s and she closed her eyes, carefully disconnecting the two, peeling herself away from the cyborg till there was nothing but her own misery to contend with.

Quinn.

She could see her face clearly now, she could recall the memories and loneliness that she had flooded the network on Humbarine with. It should have been enough to trigger pity but everytime she tried, all she could see was a small hand jutting out from beneath rubble and her anger drowned it.

Arris was probably right, she wasn’t going to kill her, Lily didn’t have it in her and they both knew it. But hurting her? That was another thing entirely.

Fennesa had suddenly lost all its charm, the quiet was no longer enough to settle anything in her mind. She turned after the silence had stretched too long.

“Can we go and get drunk now?”

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

She was reluctant to let Lily pull away, but her arms relented at the resistance.

Arris slowly straightened up. Her eyes found the scenic horizon again, too, but she couldn't enjoy the warmth against her skin as Lily might. She returned to her thoughts, the ones that were just hers, without the flood of Lily's own feelings touching her mind, but an infection was left in her heart. The cyborg glanced at Lily with a sort of consideration in her eye, as if she was trying to figure the girl out.

Then, she snickered dryly at Lily's question.

Drunk.

Arris didn't want to drink.

So, she turned the question into a different one.

"Have you ever tried spice?"

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun

Lily blinked, her head turning slowly to stare at Arris.

She already knew the answer was no. Lily had made it perfectly clear on Coruscant that Lily hadn’t really tried anything. She hadn’t shared her reasons, but then Arris hadn’t asked. For a long minute she didn’t answer, carefully weighing up the pros and cons of stepping into a world she really didn’t understand before it slapped her in the face.

The little Coruscanti thief was already knee deep in a world she didn’t understand. She was apprenticed to Triumvir of a Sith nation. She’d just helped commit one genocide and forgiven another and her girlfriend was possibly missing.

What the fuck was a little spice among all of that?

She let out a resigned sigh. “No, but I get the feeling I’m about to.”

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

"If you want to," Arris said as she walked back onto the ship.

The feelings weighed heavily on her the whole trip back... Back? Well, not to Abregado-rae, that's for sure. But to Sith space. Where Arris knew she could get spice. She took them to the worst place they should both be after what they just shared. The starship exited with Coruscant on the horizon, and descended into the atmosphere, landing in that empty place Arris Windrun called home.

She'd set them up on her balcony, which overlooked the great canyon-like passage that cut through the towering buildings. There was hardly a breeze, and it was quiet. Maybe disturbingly so for Coruscant. The Empy could've housed millions, a veritable metropolis, but it was a ghost town saved for them two.

Arris had asked Lily to wait for her outside while she cut her a carefully dosed hit.

"Here," Arris offered, spice wrapped in edible, dissolving paper. "You just tuck it into your cheek, or under the tongue."

She demonstrated by tucking it under her own tongue. Which was frankly one of the few organic parts Arris still had left, as Quinn had come to discover when she blood-trailed it.

Arris squeezed her tongue to the bottom of her mouth a few times.

"So - any other blood feuds... surprises... worries... pressing questions? I'm a little tired of not knowing what's on people's minds these days."

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun

Arris seemed repeatedly insistent on dragging her back here despite her wish to be anywhere but on Coruscant. She leaned on the balcony, the silence that stretched through the Empty seemed heavier than before now that she knew the truth of it. Had Arris not given that order, would the Empty be the Empty?

Lily rubbed her face. She didn’t want to think about it. She wanted to be on Commenor with Vess Sadragen , locked in their little bubble of bliss where nothing beyond the cottage could reach them. Where she could pretend that none of this was real and the only thing that existed was her smile. Anxiety tightened in her chest, where was she?

Arris’ reappearance pulled her from her thoughts and she straightened, accepting the little parcel wordlessly, watching the cyborg pop her own beneath her tongue before letting her gaze drift out to the Empty again. She popped the parcel inside her cheek.

Her question drew a derisive snort. “Ignorance must be bliss.” She shook her head. “No, no blood feuds. Just relatives I’ve been avoiding.”

Lily ran her tongue over where the paper had dissolved, the spice leaving her gums feeling oddly numb. Worries and questions? Probably hundreds, but right now, she didn’t want to think about any of it.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

"Heh, naw. Ignorance just gets someone killed."

Arris couldn't relate to avoiding relatives, though. Theoretically, both of her parents were still alive somewhere on Talus. She wouldn't be shocked to find them in the same place as always. But she never bothered to seek them out, even when she ran with the Shens.

It was easy to fall into memories when she was high, though. The boundaries between 'here' and 'there' melted away, pulling Arris - a ghost - into her body back then. She closed her eyes, allowing the sensations of the Qaestar slums to flood her: the smell of speeder fuel and drifting smog; chatter and labor blending into a single sound; the duracrete dust beneath her ankle boots; the pounding of her heart, the shortness of breath as she climbed buildings and leapt across roofs.

She recalled scaling the walls of the Sneaky Shens hideout and slicing the shutters that led into Rox's room.

"Arris!"

Roxana was so happy to see her. Until her eyes fell to the lapel on Arris's jacket.

Arris caught it - grinning. "Yeah, I'm a full member." She was so proud.

"But..."

She remembered the way Rox paled. She was sad.

"But that means..."

Arris opened her eyes and looked at Lily. But was it really her she saw? Not with that look. Her hand started drifting towards Lily's until the psychosis wavered, as if the world she saw was torn away like wrapping paper, revealing the bitter reality of who she was now. Her hand suddenly stopped its trajectory, metal fingers digging into the balcony floor. Her expression faded, too.

She was sad.

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun​

The edges of Lily’s world blurred, the memory laying over her own eyes, smells that she didn’t recognise, shutter that were familiar but not. It took her a second to realise that the memory wasn’t her own, it was Arris’.

The spice was breaking the boundaries between their minds, boundaries that Lily kept in place for a reason, not because it was healthy or wise, but because she hated the noise. She sucked in a sharp breath, trying to pull away from it.

“Fuck.”

Arris’ hand moved towards her, Lily pretended not to notice. Pretended not to feel the ache of sadness that spread across her chest. Her heart was racing, the realisation dawning on her of what the spice would do, of the things Arris could see. She had to keep the focus on Arris, stay out of her own head and drift through the cyborgs.

“I’m not her, Arris.” she said quietly.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

Her hand recoiled; Arris slid an inch or two away.

She felt the entire situation spoil in her gut. 'Fucking hell,' she thought to herself. What's worse is that only Lily's realization bothered her. Nothing else about it. Nothing mattered, but how she was seen. Given that she was worming around inside the Sith Lord's thoughts and emotions, Lily would undoubtedly pick up on that, too.

Arris, for her part, hadn't fully processed the intrusion. All that mentalist banthashit was beyond her - an alien concept. Yeah, it would've made sense if she stopped to think about it. How did she know that's what I thought? But panic had a funny way of clouding one's judgment.

The memory of that day was fresh enough to pull her back in.

To be a full Shen, you had to prove your utmost loyalty to the gang, and to do that, you had to sacrifice something you could never get back: your innocence, your soul. You had to kill someone.

"Don't worry!" Arris tried to reassure Rox. "He was just a scumbag - pushing cuts." Diluted medicine.

The act itself didn't bother Arris. The lead-up made her nervous, mostly at the thought of messing up, but she had come up to her room to brag. To prove to Rox that she was serious, that she mattered. She had a whole fantasy played out in her head, back then. That if she made it big enough in the Shens, then she could take Rox and leave, that she'd be well-connected and tough enough that they'd build a life together... somewhere else.

So quickly then did her memory jump, because the past was never linear. She didn't want to think about a time that Rox was upset with her. But she also was starting to get the sense that someone was watching, and so she pushed those personal memories away and clawed for anything else. Something so detached from who she was that she wouldn't feel seen.

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun

Arris recoiled and Lily wondered if she had thought about the consequences of giving a fething telepath like Lily spice. Did she ever think about the consequences of anything? Or was hindsight just her best friend? The memory resurfaced.

Just a scumbag- pushing cuts. A girl desperate to rise through the ranks to prove she was worth something, that she could save her and Rox. The pathetic parallels made her stomach twist. Then the memory was shoved aside and she felt Arris reaching, mental calws seeking something that wasn’t hers.

Fuck.

The underbelly of Coruscant was no different from any other ecumenopolis undercity, dark damp and narrow, a maze of maintenance tunnels and narrow alleys that rested beneath towering structures. Nobodies lived and died in the shadows.

The smell of bacta stung her nose as she looked up, Acier Moonbound had lifted his shirt to reveal a nasty wound beneath, spraying the bacta that was definitely past its use by date on it. Lily had no idea that Arris had been the one to shoot him, only that he was helping her and she had no idea why. She watched him from the corner or her eye as she tended her own wounds.

No, not that.

She shoved Acier from her mind. There had to be something else, something safer.

The book rested on her knees, her eyes scanning the pages of The Deep Black Sea as something loud rumbled somewhere behind and above her. She looked around with a grin, the large from of Velok Brokentusk sprawled along the wing of her ship, snoring loudly. Lily shook her head, adjusted her position on the landing ramp and continued to read before the snoring stopped.

"You spooked some of the locals with your snoring, they thought I was harbouring a monster."

"You are harbouring a monster. Best for everyone to keep that in mind."

Lily rolled her eyes. "You might be a big grumpy lump of fur, but you're not a monster, Velok."

Something akin to homesickness spread through Lily.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Lily Rhodes
​

Arris flinched when she found herself thinking about Acier of all people. For a second, it passed as her own, until she realized she had no memory of this interaction. 'Wait,' the dots clicked. Was this Lily's mind? Something stirred within the cyborg, a different presence. It was Arris... and yet, it was not her.

Flashes of memory drifted from her many conversations with Ace to her encounter with Velok Brokentusk on Wielu. Arris had shot at him, and instead, she accidentally hit Quinn in the process. That moment still irked her. Her co-processor practically made it impossible to miss a shot, but somehow, she had hit the Echani anyway, and for a long time, that woman wouldn't let it go.

"Unlike me, right?" Arris asked.

Had Lily even noticed that her Master had turned to face her again, that she inched closer, their heads so close?

Her whole demeanor shifted, too. She was somehow more aware of things, more present, especially in the Force, but still high out of her mind. And Lily's telepathy was why.

"I'm a monster, aren't I? The only way you can ever feel the real me is by reaching inside my skull and digging around with your fingers."

Arris snickered dryly and grinned.

Her eyes - cybernetic and typically lifeless looking - were full of energy, but oddly soft.

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Arris Windrun​

Memories blurred, the lines between the two of them becoming increasingly difficult to see. The gun that shot Quinn was in her hand, an odd sense of glee rippling through her at the sight, conversation with Ace as he took her hand and something moving between them…was that her or Arris?

Was it both of them?

The balcony was present through it all, like the images were shifting layers over the two of them and Lily found herself feeling oddly light. Like the weight of everything that came before didn’t matter. They were just pictures on a wall.

Fucked up, messy pictures.

Her hand moved without thought, settling against the cool synthskin of Arris’s face.

“Yes,” she replied, her head tilting. “You are a fucking monster.”

Her words were soft, her thumb caressing Arris’s cheek as her face blurred, shifting into Vess’s. Not the Vess with the confident smirk, but the one with the soft smile and pink dusted cheeks. Her Vess. Lily closed her eyes, reminding herself of who was in front of her, of whose face she was holding.

She opened her eyes.

“But you’re the monster I need.”