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Most anyone who can call themselves a trader or a smuggler has been to Ord Mantell a bunch of times. But how many of them ever venture outside the casino districts? There's not much else to see, and besides, you hear that the locals don't always take so kindly to offworlders dropping in.
So Trin had no idea before today that the other places were so, well… rustic. Is that even the word she's looking for? She'd been ready to book a room in Fort Garnik's dingy little cantina, but Viidu's first instinct was to offer her his hospitality. "Stay here tonight, at least," he'd told her, "sit back, have a drink. There's a whole apartment in the back of the office."
It's also got a balcony, with a long, uninterrupted view over scarred grey land to some jagged mountain ranges, the bones of some enormous crashed starship off in the distance, and the arc of one of Ord Mantell's dusty old moons filling up the sky. Trin stands there now with a glass of something hot and strongly alcoholic in her hand and lets her eyes drift over the terrain while she daydreams about what, exactly, will be the most satisfying way to punish Skavak. A blaster bolt to the knees, maybe. That'd be just for starters. Just to keep his attention on her, to make sure he's cooperative. And then when he's unable to move she'll —
There's the sound of someone clearing his throat, and Trin looks around to see that young mercenary from before, Corso Riggs, holding a glass of something of his own, standing at the doorway leading back into Viidu's office.
"Hey," she says.
"Mind if I join you?"
She shrugs. "May as well."
And he does exactly that, leaning companionably on the balcony railing beside her. "How are you feeling?"
She snorts. "Homicidal."
"Good answer." He looks out into the pink, smoky sunset. "That blaster… I've had Torchy for years."
"She must mean a lot to you."
"Yeah," he says wistfully, and then glances back over to her, a look of apology crossing his face. "Uh… not that she really compares to a starship, ma'am, I mean—"
"Nah, I hear ya," she says. She gets it. Though she's never really had such an intense attachment to weapons, no one and nothing comes between her and that ship. And her speeders. Okay, and this jacket her dad gave her years ago. She remembers that it's aboard the ship and curses Skavak's name yet again for what's gotta be the hundredth time today.
"Anyway, I'm no one's ma'am. Just call me Trin."
"Trin," he repeats. It sounds different on him, somehow, like he draws the syllable out for an extra split second. He puts his free hand out to her to shake. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Corso Riggs."
"I remember. But it's nice to be properly introduced." They shake hands, and then Trin raises her glass to him, and he does it back, a silent toast — to each other, or to making it out alive, or something. He winces when he swallows from his drink; he still has a cut across his bottom lip from his fight, earlier, with a spectacular bruise forming around it. Trin gestures at it with her glass. "That looks like it must have been a hell of a punch."
He touches it with the back of his hand. "This? It's nothing."
"It doesn't look like nothing." She steps a little closer to check it out. It's actually pretty deep, and anything around the mouth there is just about the worst place to have an open wound heal cleanly, what with getting pulled open again every time you eat or speak. "Nah, that's gonna scar right up. Viidu's got a medkit, right? I can take a look, if you want."
"I don't want to be any trouble…"
"It's no trouble. C'mon."
She follows him back into the apartment. Corso seems to know his way around it, or at least to where a medkit's stored, stashed away in a tiny, sparse kitchen. Trin washes her hands carefully in the sink and takes out one of the single-use medpacs while she gets a better look at Corso's face in the light. He has kind, dark eyes, a nose that looks like he might have broken it a couple times, a scattering of little scars trailing across one of his high cheekbones. Shrapnel wounds, she guesses. He seems pretty young, but he definitely bears the marks of a guy who's seen some stuff.
And he's, you know… kind of cute.
For a human, anyway.
She takes the medpac's antiseptic spray in one hand and cups his chin with the other to hold it still. "You ready? It'll sting a little, then you're gonna feel great."
"Do your worst." Corso squares his shoulders and looks her right in the eye, a real trooper, but he still flinches a little when the antiseptic hits the cut.
"You okay?"
"Mmm," he says, completely unconvincingly.
"You're doing fine."
Next, she uses the kolto injector to flood the wound with a stream of cool blue kolto infusion, then a couple of adhesive strips to hold the skin together while it heals. Then a thin coat of spraybandage, and finally some kind of all-purpose ointment from the medkit, applied with quick, light strokes of her fingers over his bottom lip.
"There," she says, eventually. "That should feel better real soon."
"That's it?" he asks, touching it with careful fingertips. His gaze has been steady on her the whole time, and she is suddenly conscious of how close he is, how she's still standing almost toe-to-toe with him.
"You bet. Keep it clean, leave those bands on overnight, and you won't even have a mark in a couple of days."
"Huh." He touches it again like he can't quite believe it. "Maybe I can repay the favour someday, ma'am. Uh… Captain. Trin. Sorry," he says, awkwardly. "So, thanks."
He's sweet, and for just a couple of minutes he's taken her mind off beating the piss out of Skavak, and damn, did she need to forget about it for a minute.
"I might hold you to that one day, Riggs," she says.