A lively interaction was an interesting way to sum up everything Quinn had walked in on. Aerik was too stunned in the moment to appreciate the irony of the phrase. Of all the things the Echani could have encountered when she knocked on his door, it had been this. His quarters bore the marks of it clearly. Furniture displaced. Scorching along the walls where fire had kissed stone and refused to fully let go. The floor had already repaired itself under his control, settling back into place as if it had never been broken, but the fire damage was harder to ignore. It lingered, blackened and unmistakable.
What unsettled him most was how unfazed Quinn seemed by any of it.
She moved through the space as though walking into a half destroyed apartment occupied by three tense Force users was only mildly inconvenient. The calm of it threw him more than the destruction ever could. Aerik found himself strangely relieved when she asked them not to be so formal. The rigidity of titles had worn thin since he arrived on Dromund Kaas, replaced by something looser and more human. Whatever distance had existed between them at the academy was gone now. Familiarity had taken its place.
They would never have danced together back then. Not openly. Not the way they had. That night had lingered in his thoughts longer than he admitted, even as he began to understand that he may not have been the reason for it at all. He had been a means rather than the focus, a way to draw another’s attention. Aerik had not realized that yet, but the question of why nothing followed still lingered quietly at the edges of his thoughts.
When Quinn mentioned the staff, his attention nearly fractured. He wanted to ask how they were doing, especially the short older woman who used to sneak him raw meat from the kitchens when no one was watching. It was a small kindness, one he had guarded carefully so no one would question his nature too closely. Of everyone present, Irina was the only one who had truly seen him. Quinn knew something, enough to recognize that he was different. Skadi knew nothing at all.
His eyes flicked back to Skadi without thinking. The realization landed heavily that he was keeping something from someone he was meant to trust. Sith did not give themselves fully, and that truth had always been easy to accept in theory. Feeling it press against him now was something else entirely. It was unfair. It was also reality. His gaze did not linger, though he became acutely aware of how his shirt fit her as he registered her presence more fully than he had earlier. He turned away just as Quinn accused him of everything being his fault.
For once, it was not.
That did not stop him from instinctively preparing to shoulder the blame anyway.
Irina spoke before he could.
Her confession felt like a soldier falling on their sword, and for a moment Aerik thought that might be the end of it. Then she continued, and the weight of it settled in his chest with painful clarity. His eyes closed as she finally gave voice to the thing they had all been circling. He almost cringed because Quinn was still there. He did flinch at the way Irina addressed the Echani, knowing exactly how it might sound to someone without context. Quinn would draw conclusions that were not true, and there would be no easy way to correct them.
What mattered more was that Irina was not wrong.
Everything she said struck something in him, even if his experience of it was far less certain. Her feelings had direction. His life did not. Her path had been shaped the moment his father took her away. His was only beginning, and it had begun beneath the banner of the very Order his father wanted destroyed.
Where did that leave them.
Aerik nodded once.
“I know.”
The sigh that followed felt heavier than it should have. It seemed they were going to do this with witnesses.
“You said it yourself once… we just have to make the most of the moments when we get to see each other. No pressure. The academy was lonely after you left, without Quinn I would not have survived. They kept me apart from my brother and sister. Skadi has made this palace less… cold.”
His eyes moved to the Valkri at that, and the irony was not lost on him.
“I’m sorry for what this looks like. I am a pack animal… you know this better than anyone here. You’re part of that pack, even though there is distance.”
He scanned the room slowly, taking all of them in.
“What you will have to accept is that Quinn and Skadi are part of that pack now too, but Rin… you will always have something they never will… you were there when I changed. You found my father. I survived that change because of you. You will always be part of my story, whatever that looks like going forward neither of us can say, but because of what you did, you will always be the reason there is still a story to tell.”
His gaze returned to Skadi. This was not how he intended for her to learn any of this. He still did not name what he was, and for all he knew she would assume he was simply a wolf like his father. It was a reasonable assumption. For now, he let it stand.
“Quinn… I’m sorry you had to see this… I swear they were fighting when I got here… and I promise… I didn’t do anything here…”
Whether that explanation helped or not was out of his hands.
