Chapter Text
Rheez set the bag down with an unceremonious thud, startling Marelle from his slumber in the hammock across the room. His head snapped up, hair plastered this way and that from the way he’d been sleeping. Rheez watched his surprise melt into annoyance once he recognized her, the hand hidden underneath his head slipping back to his side and away from the blaster she had given to him.
“Was that really necessary?” he grumbled as his head dropped back down to the pillow.
She couldn’t help a small smile slipping onto her face as she took off her cloak, tossing it over one of the tables along the edges of the room. Each was stacked with tech and junk and any other miscellaneous item the Blobfish had felt belonged in his homestead rather than in the hands of his workers.
Crossing the room, Rheez crouched and fiddled with the collection of radio and transmission systems stacked atop one another on the ground. “Anything while I was out?”
“Nothing yet,” Marelle reported, groaning as he sat up and scratched idly at the facial hair growing along his jaw. “But we still have other channels we can try.”
“I know.” Rheez stood back up, looking at Marelle. He was stretching his arms, head turned away from her. Intentionally, was her guess. When he finished, he turned and swung his legs out of the hammock, using his hands to assist the damaged one. His eyes met hers and Rheez could spot it all so easily. The frustration as sharp as her own. Shame he couldn’t hide despite the smile he gave her.
“The scavengers came today. Some of the parts they brought might work,” Rheez said before going to pick up the bag, giving Marelle a moment of space. She had considered comforting him, giving him gentle words. But that wasn’t what he wanted to hear right now. He needed something more.
Dragging the bag over, Rheez took a seat on the stool next to Marelle’s hammock and got settled. She laid out her small set of tools that she kept on hand, something she had quickly learned to do at the beginning of her and Marelle’s partnership. Then she dug through the bag, beginning to pull out pieces.
She had sorted through them the first time, but she studied each one like a fine comb. Three piles quickly formed as she went over each item, placing it into the rejects, the maybes, and the definites. The rejects began to pile atop one another, and soon enough she had gone through the whole bag.
Rheez tossed the empty piece of fabric on top of the rejects and swiveled around to focus back on Marelle’s leg. Her hands held on, looking over the damage with a mix of touch and sight. She knew that her examination of the damage wouldn’t hurt Marelle, but she kept her movements gentle all the same.
Marelle was quiet, though he always did so whenever she had to look over his cybernetics. She looked up at his face to find him watching her, or maybe he had been at first but he wasn’t present.
She flicked his leg, the metallic ring causing him to blink and focus on Rheez as she stared up at him.
“You stay in your own head for too long you might get stuck up in there,” Rheez warned. She took one of his hands in her own and gave it a quick squeeze before letting him go to reach back for her tools.
“I am stuck, Rheez. I’m stuck in a hammock in the middle of the desert.”
“Hammock, sand, that’s basically two-thirds of a good vacation,” Rheez offered as she picked at the melted bits of metal that had been stuck to his legs with a pair of tweezers. Finding a particular stuck piece, she pressed the small button under her thumb. A signal went to the tips and they heated, turning the ends bright and red. Prodding around the base of the stuck piece, the metal sizzled before dropping into the sand with a faint hiss.
Marelle groaned, head flopping back into the hammock, causing it to rock. Rheez pulled back, glaring. Setting the tweezers down, and remembering to turn the flare off, she grabbed the hammock to steady it. “You want me to fix you up or not?”
The hammock shook again as Marelle brought himself back up to a seated position. “I want to get off this planet, Rheez. No ship’s passed through yet and we’re stuck having to deal with scavengers.”
“At least they don’t question a change in leadership. And something will come. A ship or a signal. This is just a setback. Hey,” Rheez snapped once she noticed that Marelle had begun to frown again. “We get the job done. Always.”
Finally, he nodded. “You’re right. What would I do without you, Rheez?”
Rheez returned to the leg, picking up the set of tweezers. “Die faster, probably.”
Marelle hummed in agreement, and he closed his eyes as Rheez told him about the odd behaviors and mannerisms of some of the scavengers who had brought their pieces to her. She talked of gestures and threats, eyes dancing between her work and the peaceful shape of his face, like he had laid on the beaches.
In the back of her mind she continued to listen to the static, listen for a change or a sign, but all she could hear was the prickling of formless noise through the speakers. The longer Marelle was stuck in here the more the noise would drive him mad. The consistent tune of static had already started to worm its way into Rheez’s sleep, grating against a silence she longed for.
Finishing her work on Marelle’s leg, she turned the tweezers off and slipped them into her pocket.
Ripples of hot air slapped against the canvassed entrance to their temporary base of operations. Marelle sat up while Rheez stood to her full height, both of their hands already reaching for their respective blasters.
“You said there was nothing on the comms,” Rheez said.
“There wasn’t,” Marelle snapped in a hushed tone.
Yet the familiar sounds of a ship’s landing gear, the hum of its engines settling down, and the gears of a cargo door opening rang out from the shipyard outside. Rheez glanced at Marelle before heading over to the makeshift door. Taking a defensive position behind a table near the entrance that they had overturned, Rheez used the barrel of her blaster to shift the canvas aside and peak through the small window.
Rheez’s breath caught in her throat when the initial glare off the ship settled, the arrow-shaped structure gleaming in the midday sun.
“Kriffin hell,” Rheez muttered. It was like she was seven all over again back on Kaddak, looking up to the sky and seeing the Carrion Spike above for the first time. “It’s the Lord-General.”
“No,” Marelle said. “No way.” A glance over Rheez’s shoulder was enough to see that Marelle was lost in his own memories.
The crunching of sand underneath boot was enough to draw Rheez’s attention back towards the ship, until she realized too late that the pair of boots she heard was right in front of her. Looking up, Rheez felt even smaller as she met Lord-General Terex’s bemused gaze.
“Do you plan on shooting out my shins, Rheez?”
“No, sir,” Rheez said, biting her tongue as the automatic response was too quick for her to stop. She steeled her shocked expression when she noticed the bemusement flash in his eyes. With a flourish, Terex pushed the canvas aside and entered their quarters. Rheez stood up, trailing him by a few steps with her hand still on the blaster. She tried to check on Marelle but his own confusion had shifted into a bitter annoyance that he shared with an open expression.
“It’s a lovely place you have here,” Terex said as he stopped at the middle of the room, looking around at the collected piles of junk. “Though not quite the step up I imagined for you children after you left Kaddak.”
“What are you doing here?” Marelle suddenly asked. Rheez saw the way his finger angrily tapped against the grip of his blaster in his lap.
“And here I was about to ask you the same question. Quick as ever, Marelle,” Terex looked over Marelle’s bed-headed hair and his exposed cybernetics. “Though maybe not quick enough this time.”
“You don’t get to come in here out of nowhere—”
“Someone hired you to complete the bounty Commander Poe Dameron of the Resistance,” Terex interrupted. “And by the looks of your current state of affairs I’d say you failed miserably at the effort.”
“We’re still on the job,” Marelle said. “This is just a setback.”
“This is more than a setback, Marelle, this is failure.” Rheez watched as Marelle seethed. By the time they were adults Marelle had begun to hate Terex’s lectures.
“There’s no shame in it though,” Terex said. “Dameron often has a way in bringing out the worst in us sometimes. Now tell me, why did you take the job?”
“We were in the middle of an assignment when the bounty for Dameron was sent out,” Rheez answered. She ignored Marelle’s glare directed towards her. They needed to find out why Terex was here, not have a fist fight after she’d put all that work into Marelle’s legs.
“And the chance to take down my enemy was too tempting for you.”
“This wasn’t about you!” Marelle snapped. Rheez saw the way Terex’s eyes lit up at the flare of emotion, knowing it would only infuriate Marelle further. “It was a job. Simple as that.”
“Oh please,” Terex waved him off. “You went after him of your own volition, thinking that if you had the chance to take down the one bounty that slipped from my fingers you’d finally feel that you wouldn’t need me anymore.” Terex’s scolding was glazed over by a mix of disappointment and pity. “Don’t hide behind the silhouette of a purpose higher than your own; it’s just sad.”
Marelle jumped out of the hammock, making it only a couple feet away from Terex before a component in his legs sparked and he dropped to his knees, Rheez barely catching him. Terex was unmoved, looking down at the pair before shaking his head and taking a seat in the chair beside the comms.
He idly fidgeted with some of the comms systems, flicking them off and adjusting their sensors while Rheez guided Marelle to the seat beside his hammock. She kept her hand on his back, trying to calm him and ground him. Crouching beside him, Rheez tried to pull his attention away from Terex. His face was red, eyes still caught in a swirl of frustrations. Rheez’s heart ached, as if they were back on Kaddak and nothing had changed. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
The sound of a heavy sigh drew both of their focus back to their unexpected visitor. Taking off his gloves, Terex began to look over his fingernails with a passive interest. “The First Order has taken out the entire Hosnian system and with it the New Republic.”
“The whole system?” Rheez asked. She’d never heard of a weapon capable of such destruction.
Terex nodded. “By a weapon called Starkiller.”
“So the First Order won,” Marelle said.
“I’m sure that was what they thought until the Resistance managed to blow up the little planet killer.”
“So?” Rheez asked, knowing Terex was leading them to his point.
“So,” Terex said, “the war actually begins, Rheez. Wars require information, spies, people willing to get their hands dirty, and we’re in the mud enough as it is. Well,” Terex kicked the earth with the toe of his boot, “sand, for some.”
Terex finished picking at his nail and looked over at the pair, sharp eyes narrowed with severity. “I’m not here to give you hope or purpose, even reconciliation if you don’t feel that way. I came to both of you because, despite this little relapse with Dameron, I know that you are efficient and good at your jobs. I trained you to be that way. You’ve had your fun on your own, you’ve gotten your whiff of independence. But it’s time for the real work to begin.” Standing up from his seat, Terex walked over to the pair and crouched down to their level, looking between Rheez’s guarded expression and Marelle’s irritated gaze as he spoke carefully. “Now, what I can give you is resources, support, and opportunity, and enough of it that’ll leave you standing after both sides are finished killing each other. Even a chance to get back at Dameron, if the stars align.”
Rheez and Marelle glanced at one another.
“Or,” Terex added. “You could always continue to grow your quaint little empire here. Jakku certainly has its charms.”
“You would know,” Marelle muttered, his anger settling with an irritated huff as he leaned his head against his hand. Rheez studied Marelle’s face. He was annoyed, but his initial anger had finally burned out, leaving only an irritated resolve. He’d decided, as much as it drove him crazy.
“So,” Terex said, breaking the moment of silence. “We’re agreed then, children?”
Rheez nodded, Marelle following a moment later. Terex clapped each of them on the shoulders, Marelle shaking his head slightly as Terex stood back up.
“Wonderful,” Terex said. His grin was sharper than the knife Rheez had in her boot as he looked down at the pair, his prodigal lieutenants. “I believe this is the start of something truly wicked and marvelous.”