Private Woe to the Witless

[Grisha Fletch]

"No, some kid pinched my credstick before I came into your joint. Haven't eaten, probably won't eat." Grisha could hear one of the temple masters lecturing him about drawing sustenance from the force, but the lesson had sounded as absurd then as it did now. "You think the Twi'leiki barters? Maybe I can trade them a saber for some soup." Grisha was only half kidding, but he'd figure something out.

When she offered to cover it for him, he felt a flush of embarrassment rise in his cheeks. At least she was apologetic, he'd had a whole speech planned about how it had been a dirty shot, that she should've warned him. Now that he had to let that go, he wasn't quite sure what to say next. "I mean, I broke your nose. You sure you owe me?"

Grisha flashed his first smile in the past twenty-four hours, and immediately winced as his side throbbed once again. Perhaps this wasn't the time to be stubborn.

"I like the sound of 'Iayn's honor', lead the way. Food first, then strategy." Grisha inclined his head to her, waiting for her to lead so that he might follow.

Iayn Dystraay

 

[Iayn Dystraay]

At his question, she pursed her lips and shrugged coyly.

She turned to lead the way through alleyways made of shipping crates shaded in muted colors and weathered graffiti. The silence became awkward again for a minute before she spoke up. Now seemed as good a time as any to get explaining one specific thing that she knew was bothering him out of the way.

“You might not, but don’t feel bad about it if you do,” she began, returning to the topic of her nose. “Even if it gets infected and has to be amputated, what’s another appendage off my head?” She pinched the strands of her necklace hanging over her collarbone between her fingers and raised the chain into the air a few inches. The small horn burrs clattered together hollowly. “At least I gave you permission to feth me up.”

After another few quiet moments, she snuck a look over at his profile, trying to glean if he thought her lying, or had even caught her meaning. She held the rounds of keratin out to him. “You can feel if you want.” He could compare them against the scars that they had left too, hidden under her thick black hair, but she didn't offer that option. Even she had limits when it came to the grotesque. That and she didn't let anyone touch her hair without consequences. “But be warned, these things echo like no one’s business. I’ve gotten numb to their memories because otherwise I couldn’t... wear them.” In large part, that was because they felt impersonal. When she felt the Force echoes, she didn’t feel like the memory was hers but rather a series of nightmarish moments that she was living through a cosmic mistake.

She hesitated when she realized how unhinged that sounded out loud when she wasn’t speaking to a sociopath. She placed the pendants back over her heart. “They’re part of me, Grisha, even if they’re not attached anymore. I need to keep them close. There’s eight more to find, each being kept as a trophy sold to who-knows-who-anymore by the feth-face who pried them out of my skull.

“Anyway.” Her redirect barely allowed him a breath. She handled the necklace again, slipping it under her blouse, suddenly self-conscious about it. “It's not your problem and I'm not looking for empty pity from anyone. I just need you to know that I'd never do anything like that to someone.” She decided as she spoke not to specify say dehorn. It went beyond that. If one was particularly imaginative, they could think up throngs of torture techniques that weren't limited to zabraks. She sure could and refused to engage in any of that, even with men and women worse than her. “If a pit master ordered it, I'd fall on my sword instead.”

Or, like, something equally fatal if she didn't have a sword but he didn't need that visual too.

Grisha Fletch

 

[Grisha Fletch]

Grisha's face tightened at the thought of a lost nose; true, such a simple appendage could be replaced in theory, but so seriously, maiming someone by mistake would've been the last thing he wished for. She seemed like she was only teasing, though, until she lifted up the necklace. They were hers? The Jedi's eyes lingered on the remnants of the horns, and back to Iayn, trying to place where they must've once sat atop her head amidst the sea of black hair. He'd taken her for a human, or maybe an Epicanthix like himself, but he'd been at least half-wrong.

For a moment, he hesitated, one brow lifting up as she held out the carved away pieces of herself, as if to ask if she were sure. It seemed like deeply personal thing to share, and they'd only just exchanged names. But she wanted him to trust her, she was taking a chance and all his instincts told him to trust her in kind. Gently he lifted his hand to the burrs, fingers softly running over the burrs.

He'd never been terribly attuned to echoes in the force, but he felt pain, betrayal, anger and other dark emotions penetrate his mind, the suffering embedded in these lost pieces of her becoming his own for the briefest instant. It was as though they had been his, and their loss had hurt him as it had her. The strange sensation receded, and his hand pulled away.

"I-," He tried to think of the right words, and settled for sincere simplicity. "I'm sorry that happened to you, Iayn. "

He had no tragedies to speak of, he supposed his mother hadn't wanted him, but he didn't even remember her name. Things had always come easily to him, especially those he wanted the most. There were no betrayals or heartbreaks woven into the fabric of his life. Yet, he reminded himself. Grisha had been lucky for too long, and it was starting to catch up with him. He shook away the thoughts, and turned to a lingering question left by all she'd told him.

"Why follow a pit master at all though?" Grisha asked, brow raised. "If you know that what they ask you to do is wrong, why do it? Forget falling on your sword, make them fall on it instead. Is someone making you do this? Surely you aspire to more than bloodsport."

Perhaps he could persuade her, maybe she'd never kill for blood money again.

Iayn Dystraay

 

[Iayn Dystraay]

A rickety food cart nestled into the crook of two shipping containers permanently fixed in an L at the side of a dimly-lit road came into view as the emerged from the durasteel jungle. Iayn shook her head. "Food first," she repeated his words of before as she put her hands in her pockets. "Get whatever you want."

She got a bowl of rycrit stew and two pieces of a munch-fungus loaf, paid for it plus his meal, and found them seat at the bar. "Someone made me once upon a time," she mused once they were on their way again. "After my..." she indicated her head, "a lady brought me, nursed me back to health, and set me free. I lived with her for three years, and then..." she sighed, "...the nightmares caught up to me."

The gladiatrix shook her head again. "Yeah, I've gone and made it worse for myself, but I..." For once, she didn't finish her though, instead visibly running the tip of her tongue along the ends of her top teeth and, only then, speaking again. "Blood sport will be blood sport whether I participate or not. Most police here are crooked and those who aren't are quickly put in their place or put six feet under. Jedi don't normally come here because they know their law and order is better exacted in a place it'll stick. Any other good people who end up here lose their gumption one way or another." That assessment included her. She could feel it happening.

"But if I fight, there's a chance—a small chance, but a chance—that someone'll get out like I did." Minus the maiming ideally, of course.

She had been making eye contact but now adverted her eyes to focus on arranging her food and utensils on the placemat before her. "Not that... I have anything like that to show for all the blood on my hands. Yet." It was hard to set up safehouses for an underground railroad; how had Malcoma done it?

"All I'm trying to say is that you'll need to get your robes a whole lot more stained if you want to do anything about this, and even then you'll only have something to show for it for a day or two. A week, if you're lucky." She shrugged again, her voice growing smaller as if lowering one's volume was all it took to skirt a Jedi's ire. "And, well, you're here, so I'm thinking that you're not."

Not lucky, that was.

Grisha Fletch

 

[Grisha Fletch]

Grisha ate greedily, life in the temple had never been short on food, and his first time in the field alone decidedly had been. He quickly ordered a bowl of something dense, protein rich, and savory. Grisha didn't even know what it was called, he'd just pointed to it when the previous customer walked away with their own bowl.

The flavors were hot, the sent prickles of intense spice up his tongue, but aside from flushed cheeks and the eager downing of water, he said nothing. He listened, trying to rationalize the things she said with those that he believed. It wasn't easy. She lived in a world of grays, he in one of black and white.

"If these good people you speak of fall, then they owe to those who rely on them to pick themselves back up again. That's the cost of doing right, isn't it?" He didn't know; Grisha spoke from a place of ignorance and privilege but also one of genuine belief that good lived in the hearts of most creatures. Darkness could be overcome; corruption could be rooted out, and good could triumph against evil and indifference if one only had the willpower to see it through. "Sure, there's a chance someone else makes it out how you did, but you said it yourself, you found your way back anyway. There's another way, a better way, there has to be."

Grisha was rigid in his belief, largely uncompromising, but ever hopeful.

"Even if it's only a day, that's one day that someone innocent isn't dragged into an arena and made to either kill or die for the entertainment of those who forced them into it. Wouldn't you have wanted that to happen for you all that time you were fighting? Someone got you eventually, sure, but wouldn't it have been better to do it sooner? You don't have to make things worse, Iayn; you've got the strength to make it better." He sighed, lifting the wooden bowl he'd been given, and slurping down the last dregs of the soup, the spice bringing heat to his face once more.

"The inevitability of evil isn't an excuse to not do good, that's what I think." He sighed, setting down the bowl and turning in his seat towards Iayn, pointing a finger at her. "And you and I can do a lot of good this very night."

He flashed his most charming smile.

"I don't think I'm unlucky actually, I thought maybe I was, but then I met you. Suddenly I've got an ally in this fight, a bowl of good food, and a target to go after. All it cost me was a shot to the rib, I think that's quite the deal. Don't you?"

Iayn Dystraay

 

[Iayn Dystraay]

Iayn took the chance as he spoke to rip off pieces of bread, dip them into her stew, and chew thoughtfully on them. Eating was staving away her urges to roll her eyes at his heroics for the time being.

Once he had said his whole piece, she said calmly, “Now, you hold on." She took a turn to point at him with a morsel of food. "I said not tonight or tomorrow or next month.

“What do you think I'm doing here, exactly? Getting high on making sleemos happy because I have nothing better to do with my life? No, man, I don't want to be here!" She made the exclamation without quite shouting. "You're right, I don't aspire to this, not really. I aspire to being a painter, but you're right about us owing it to those who rely on us too. That's why I'm not on some pretty beach somewhere in a cozy little studio. Even though you may not want to believe it..."

She stopped to make herself eat another piece of soaking bread. She was beginning to lose the cool she had somehow been able to keep in the bar. Maybe the heat and spice exploding in her mouth would help her regain control.

"Look, I agree with you that there's got to be a better way," she assented, voice evening out. "But I disagree with the idea that it's accessible to either of us." She put up her good hand. "Wait. Don't say anything yet. Think." A finger leaned over onto her temple. "On Coruscant, when a slave ring is busted, what happens to those slaves? If you don't know, guess."

Grisha Fletch

 

[Grisha Fletch]

“And I said it can’t wait that long. How many people die between then and now?” Grisha shot back. “Not tonight is a big ask, not tomorrow bigger still, but months? Come on Iayn, more harm will be done than good in that time period no matter what your plan is. We could go there, right now, and take this Hysio guy down.”

“I don’t know what you’re doing here! You haven’t told me! If you have some plan to take down this fight ring, spell it out for me. Explain to me why you playing their sick games for so long is gonna be worth it in the end?” His own frustrations were rising now, though Grisha kept his voice low enough as to not draw unwelcome attention from the patrons or passers by.

“I didn’t want to be here either, I wanted to be guarding the temple, it’s what I’m good at. But they sent me out here to make a difference and prove my worth so that’s what I’m doing. I’ve known you half a day and I can already tell you I’d like you as a painter more than a pit fighter.” It was his turn to calm down, though it took a few long moments for him to finally draw in a deep enough breath to quench the growing frustration.

“If they’re found they’re released, obviously.” A hint of indignation crept into his voice. “If they aren’t…I don’t know, some different scumbag takes them? What does that matter? If not us, who? You said yourself this planet is rotten to the core, no one here will ever do anything about it.”

He sighed, and took another swig of his drink. Grisha was tired, and this wasn’t going as well as he’d hoped. He couldn’t just do nothing, it wasn’t the Jedi way.

Iayn Dystraay

 

[Iayn Dystraay]

Iayn pushed her bowl away to place her elbows in its stead, arms crossing. "Released," she agreed once more, "into a shiny Core world with way too few institutional supports for survivors of humanoid trafficking."

Ah, it all came back to politics, didn't it?

"It's even worse for nonhumanoid victims, so it really doesn't matter who gets saved and who doesn't. There're always exceptions, sure, but, more often that not, once an Underworlder, always an Underworlder. You get shuffled back in somehow. That applies about ten times over here on 'Shaddaa.

"I can't speak for all slaves, but let's say I can. We don't not appreciate the efforts of Jedi and the good cops; you're just barking up just tree when there's two. How high and mighty is it to free someone without having any sort of plan in place to ensure that freedom stays intact? You don't have to buy into my moral conundrum. You can go and raze Hysio's club to the ground right now if you want—he and some of his goons are there planning the next week of fights—but...

"I don't want you to."

She said it especially softly and sincerely, as if the reason was more than ideological difference but personal concern.

"If we do this tonight, you'll leave when we're done. Your care will go with you and then it'll just be me, and then they'll figure out that I helped and I'll be gone too and then wh...?" Uncrossing her arms suddenly, she sat back and looked off into the night.

Grisha Fletch

 

[Grisha Fletch]

Her words hung like the stars in the smoggy night sky for what felt like an eternity. Maybe she was right, maybe all he was doing would be undone in an afternoon, but he had to try didn’t he? That was the whole point, the reason he’d been born with the gifts he had been - it was so that he would not stand by and watch. He couldn’t do it, that was why he’d wanted the guard. Grisha had convinced himself that by being there, protecting their order from the sack of the temple they were overdue for, he was doing the most good.

But maybe, just maybe, he’d been wrong. Maybe he needed to be out in the world, rather than shaping those who would be. Grisha wasn’t sure, he certainly wasn’t convinced, but the bravado of a young Jedi Knight was a hard thing to contend with.

“What if I didn’t leave?” A bold proposal that he could hardly believe he was making, but the words left his mouth all the same. “Sure I might have to answer a call to save the galaxy, but plenty of Jedi operate out of safe houses rather than temples. They sent me out here to figure out my place in things, what I’m supposed to be doing.”

He looked at her, a bold grin on his freshly cut face.

“So what if I stay? Then do we go for Hysio tonight?”

Iayn Dystraay

 

[Iayn Dystraay]

She slowly looked back to him and, finally, nodded.

“But he can't see me. If I'm going to stay in, he can't know that I'm working with you. Unless… you're planning on killing him, which, for the record, I'm not suggesting.” She would do it, but she didn't want to put that on him. She knew the Jedi were hesitant to kill, even for the greater good, and it had suddenly become important for her not to make him completely upend his dream. This hard life had already ruined on of theirs.

"He doesn't have any slaves in the bar as far as I know, but I've been hearing suggestions that he has a file on his datapad that has their live locations. If we get that... we might need to lay low after the hit for a night or two, but then? We can go get 'em." Iayn was beaming now too and adjusted herself in her seat equally as excitedly. "My safehouses aren't set up yet but I could coordinate with a contact I have on Coruscant. She'd know how to get them out of here to somewhere they can start over free."

Grisha Fletch

 

[Grisha Fletch]

Grisha shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He’d just committed to stay on a planet he despised to aid a woman he did not know to fight a crime whose depths he hardly understood, but killing was what made him pause. Hysio was a slaver, a benefactor of bloodsport, the sort of man that he was supposed to be willing to kill without hesitating. Yet he did. There was no better person to be the first life he snuffed out though.

“Sounds like we need to get that datapad then.” He didn’t say anything about Hysio, killing him or otherwise. The mention of her network of safehouses brought the confidence back to Grisha though. They’d actually be saving people, and not just for them to be taken back into bandage, but truly freed and given a chance to live a real life again. For some it might even be the first taste of liberty they’d ever had.

“So, we go back, we find Hysio, we get his pad, then we lay low for a few nights?” Grisha asked the question largely just to run the plan back by himself. “How close can you get me without compromising yourself?”

He didn’t have the mind for cloak and dagger business, but Iayn seemed to think staying under their noses was important, and he’d decided to trust her on that. It was strange how easily that came to him with her.

Iayn Dystraay

 

[Iayn Dystraay]

She nodded when he said that they needed that datapad.

"I should be able to go in with you," she replied. "I'll need to project a glamour, but I'm not good enough to hold it for very long. I'll need you to cover me periodically so that I can cast a likeness again. How would you feel about having a twin?"

After all, she had experience in that herself.

Grisha Fletch

 

[Grisha Fletch]

“I would feel like I was doing the galaxy a great disservice by allowing it to suffer two of me.” Grisha answered dryly, shaking off the lingering nerves to the best of his ability. “But I think I’m starting to see where you’re going with this.” The Jedi flashed his sly smile and shook his head.

“You think they’ll fall for it long enough for me to find Hysio?”

Iayn Dystraay

 

[Iayn Dystraay]

A mischievous smile stretched across her face. "I'll be a good fake brother, don't worry," she teased.

Then she lost the smile and nodded again. "They should. They don't know I'm a witch, but even if they did, they're... uh, not that smart." A hand went to scratch her nose nervously by she put it back on the table before it could make contact, at the last second. She knit her brow instead. "It's actually really sad. Aw man, the damage left over from chronic concussions is something nasty."

She looked dazed for a few moment before her shook her head and, with it, any misplaced sympathy out of her mind. The world of greys she had made her home in long before she even came back to Nar Shaddaa made it easier to see the tragedy to each and every scenario, the flip side to each and every person. Most of the bad guys were victims too one way or another. Still, they had made their beds; in was only a matter of time until people like Grisha and Iayn came along to make them go to sleep in it.

"Right, sorry. Let's go."

---

Iayn led him down another path, this one through city blocks that probably began to look familiar partway through the journey. They stopped alongside a boarded-up storefront. Around the corner, the bar could be seen. No bouncers stood outside of the door.

She pressed her back up against the decrepit wall, face upturned to the sky but eyes closed as she began to move her lips, silently forming Dathomiri words. In a two blinks of Grisha's eyes, a green shimmer rippled up her body from her feet—in one, it had started; by the next, it was gone—and then it was like the air in front of him had turned into a mirror.

When she opened her eyes, she simply turned the corner and began rushing towards the bar. Looking at him when she knew that she looked the same? Even though she was actually a twin herself, that would be too much.

Grisha Fletch

 

[Grisha Fletch]

It was an incredibly strange thing to see one’s reflection materialize outside a mirror. In truth he hadn’t minded looking at Iayn, but when she donned his own face, Grisha’s eyes averted themselves out of discomfort. It was just strange, and not at all how he was used to seeing the force implemented. It certainly was beyond his abilities.

For a moment, when she rushed in wearing his face, Grisha froze, still half-stunned, but he blinked hard and snapped himself out of it. The Jedi rushed in after the Gladiator in a full sprint, bursting into the bar once again. His side throbbed, but he buried the pain, reached out a hand, and tore the finest liquors from behind the bar and hurtled them across the room to amplify whatever chaos Iayn had already begun to sow.

::Where’s Hysio’s office?::

The communicated thought went out into the force, but Grisha, unaware of how such a technique was employed, had to simply pray that she’d left the connection open. If she hadn’t, he’d have to hear the answer in his own voice, or stranger still, hers, but from his own lips.

This was not how he’d intended for the day to go, but it wasn’t half as bad as it could’ve been.

Iayn Dystraay

 

[Iayn Dystraay]

Once inside, she had immediately run a guard into the bar and called onto the Force to help flip him head over heels over it. She could only hope that swiftness would distract from the discrepancy for the build she looked to have and the one she actually did have.

She hadn't left the connection open of her own volition, as she was always passively listening in the empyrean as she was in the physical realm, so when she heard Grisha telepath, she paid attention. When she mind spoke back, the pangs in his head were in her voice. :: Right hall, all the way down on the left. Go. I'll keep 'em away. ::

She rushed down another hall, this one leading into the fighting room, forgetting about the limitation of her magic and desire to stick close together because of it. A rectangular depression made up most of the room, with a ring of high ground outlining it and a series of steps connecting the two areas. "Hey!" she called in Grisha's voice to the goons cleaning up after the night's rowdy crowd: one down in the ring near the weapon's rack and the other on her level across the way. She neared the stairs, preparing to descend, when a bola lashed out at one of her legs. It wasn't intertwined but the strike sent her tripping over herself into the ring.

Grisha Fletch

 

[Grisha Fletch]

Right hall, all the way down, on the left.

Grisha didn't press for more, his mind awash with stimuli as a dozen faces scrambled to react to their intrusion. He cleared his mind, pushed aside the fog, and moved. The first to step in his way was a Weequay, lanky, scowling, flashing a wickedly curved knife. Grisha stepped forward, one hand deftly catching the Weequay by the wrist as it lunged forward, twisting as Grisha's other open palm came down with tremendous force on its elbow.

The arm snapped inward, and the alien screamed.

He threw the man back with the force, sending the guard hurtling back into a nearby wall with enough force to knock him unconscious. The Jedi moved, rushing down the hallway and calling the saber pike into his hand. His gaze fixated on the final door as he closed in on it, adrenaline pounding away in his veins, flooding his every pore as he threw up a hand and threw the entry open with the all-surrounding energy.

As Grisha crossed into the office, his thumb came down on the ignition, and a single golden blade sprung from one end of the pike, humming with righteous purpose. He wondered if he was ready to kill.

Iayn Dystraay

 

[Iayn Dystraay]

Iayn flipped forward as she fell, rolling out onto her back. She sprang to her feet, jumping just as the twi'lek man whipped the bola again. She twisted her torso to pull a weapon—any weapon—out of the nearby stand. Her hand found the handle of a baton but it refused to come out of its holder, rattling against the wood as she pulled on it. Locked down for the night. Chit.

She let go and pushed herself backwards as the man attacked once more, falling to the floor and somersaulting back over herself again.

The flexibility of an entertainment fighter looked very awkward tied up in the white and gold robe of a Jedi guardsman. As she got up, she almost tripped over the fraying energetic threads of her spell. They were of course not physical but caused a healthy amount of disorientation nonetheless.

In the office, Hysio turned around to face Grisha from where the pit master had been trying to open the window onto the street. Like most pit fighters, Hysio was a coward who barely knew how to throw a good hook. He did his best to smile smugly, putting his hands out in a wide wingspan. "Ahh, Iayn's friend returns."

He could not imagine that they were as close to friends as they were.

Grisha Fletch

 

[Grisha Fletch]

“Iayn, is that the one you have in that tight getup who nearly cost me a liver?” Grisha asked sharply, trying his best to sound like he hadn’t the slightest idea who the man meant by the name. His hands shot out, and he yanked Hysio away from the window hard throwing him into the wall bedside Grisha. The man was a slaver, a profiteer of suffering, the very sight of him filled Grisha with an anger he did t recognize.

The saberpoint hummed as Grisha lifted it to Hysio’s face, contempt dancing in the brown of his eyes. “Your datapad, now.” He demanded, keeping the blade mere inches from the face of the pit master.

“And you’re gonna tell me everything I need to know to look at every bit of information on it. Passwords, encryption keys, all of it.” Grisha knew the underworld worked fast, that if Hysio walked away from this whatever rescues he hoped to make would become impossible in a matter of hours. Grisha was going to have to kill him, but he hadn’t yet convinced himself of that.

His mind went to Iayn, the things she’d told him, and the chaos she’d thrown herself into. He had to do this quickly and get back to her before something went wrong. There wasn’t going to be time to hesitate when the moment came.

Iayn Dystraay

 

[Iayn Dystraay]

Hysio gave a sick smile when Grisha mentioned Iayn's fighter costume. "Hmm, that getup made an impression, Jedi?" He shut up just as soon as he was roughed up though. If the circumstances had been vastly different, his sudden change of tune might have been funny. "Yes, yes, anything you want..."

And he gave Grisha everything.

Iayn actually tripped in the next moment as her preoccupation had allowed the twi'lek to lasso her legs. The human from the above half-level jumped into the pit near her. She barely shrimped away right before he stomped down on where her head had been and, as she did, she caught her feet with her hands. The bola was easy enough to loosen with a strong tug to a diameter that she could wiggle her feet out of.

She rolled out of the way of two more kicks from both men, first one way and then the other, after which she managed to stand unsteadily, with the bola strung between her palms. Glancing from man to man quickly, deciding something, she rushed at the twi'lek and shouldered past him. Once behind his back, she wrapped the bola around his neck and pulled back on it in what was almost one motion. She ducked behind him as he fell back towards her, struggling though she wasn't pulling too hard, and repeated the words that she had muttered at the storefront.

A shimmer of green emitted from behind the twi'lek. At once, Iayn let go of the bola and sent him careening into the other man with a swift kick into the middle of his back.

Grisha Fletch