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He calls to her; detached and with the stain of another woman across his thoughts. She tries to deny it, but her force empathy won't allow her to do so. It's months before he can drop the honorific of jedi - despite her protests. She thinks back to their last meeting. Her name is clipped when is leaves his lips. After all this time her voice is lost to her. They stand still as statues; posed against the backwash of moonlight. She shouldn't be there. He should have called the guards. Yet, neither of them move - It's small, but it's a start.
Lux can only stare at the woman before him. She's no great beauty by any means, but she's dark and feral. Awe inspiring in the way a storm is before it tears the earth to shreds. She's grown older, taller, more experienced, and travelled….but then again, so has he. She doesn't speak, till she knows it's him. The glow of a light saber illuminates his face as she holds him in place. She asks if he's afraid. He answers with a blaster to her neck.
"Tano." He calls again, and she bristles. With a smirk she replies.
"Who else did you expect?" Looking down she's surprised by the familiar object. That isn't his blaster, but she knew who it belonged to. A fellow rebel. A long lost martyr.
Steela
She briefly wonders if he ever kept anything of hers before quelling the thought with her better judgment. She had hoped this job would be simple like the rest, but Lux Bontari had never been simple to her. He would never make it that easy.
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A week passes and she can't find it in herself to leave. In a moment of what he could only have deemed as poor judgment he hired her. He tells himself it's because she's the best, and she knows the others who would come for him - she knows how they work. Part of him wonders if she would have actually killed him that night, but when he asks she never answers. One day, he thinks he hears her answer in the form of a mumble.
"If I hadn't taken the job, someone else would."
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Ahsoka and Steela. Too alike for his own good. As he pulls at the strings of his memory he can't help but think of one without the other. So similar, yet so different. Like oil and water. So close, yet, unmixable. Both determined and headstrong beyond all reason, but where Steela was rock Ahsoka was fire. Steela was a mountain, but Ahsoka was a storm. One immovable, the other unstoppable. Steela had been a present solution. Ahsoka was the untouchable illusion. He had made the practical choice; a politicians choice. What did the the rebel, the jedi, and the politician have in common?
They would have all chosen duty over love.
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She wanders through his estate like a stray feline moving from room to room silent as the grave. She might as well be a ghost sent to haunt him. Despite her hovering presence, she never questions him or his moods. She doesn't have to. She feels it with him. All the stains of the past. He's dripping with pain and regret and all she can do is watch him suffer. She sees him for what he is, a victim of the war, whose lost more than he ever bargained for.
In return, he never brings up the order, why she left, or why she stays. He never questions why she agrees to work for him despite their apparent mutual irritation. He just lets it happen but gives her an alternate option by leaving a purse full of credits and the keys to the speeder on her dresser - just in case. She never touches either.
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Rumors start to fly, and word spreads. They call him crazy. Grief ridden. Overworked. They say the stress of politics has mangled his young inexperienced mind, and that keeping a bounty hunter as a bodyguard is a death wish. They're right of course; most likely, but he'll never admit it.
They wonder what her hold on him is. Is he being black mailed? Threatened? Talk of affairs begins to brew, and this is where he draws the line. He calls her to his office only to send her on a week-long errand. As she leaves he overhears the gossip of two guards, loud and crude form outside his office.
"That the girl?"
"Yea."
"Bit small for a bounty hunter."
"She's his whore. Replacement for his dead lover."
Ahsoka never breathes a word of gossip. Never acknowledges it to his face. He can't help but wonder if she knows. Of course she does. He wonders if she cares. Of course she does. He briefly considers bringing it up. Apologizing for their crude remarks and sending her on her way. He thinks about it while she's gone, but her absence would only serve as a confirmation and he wouldn't do either of them the disservice.
After a week she returns.
He fires the guard.
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He only calls her Tano, never Ahsoka or any other dreaded nickname. She can't understand why till the night she wanders past his room and sees him holding her rifle. Despite her better judgment, she knocked. In that moment it was as if a dam had broken. Wave upon wave of anger, pain, regret, sadness, and loss washed upon her. It was then she realized...
He blamed her.
All these years he had blamed her, but he had hid it well. Once again she's frozen in his gaze. She can't speak. Can't breathe. She apologizes and he turns away. She moves forward causing the marble to echo underneath the click of her steps. He cocks the rifle, and spits her name as if it were the ammo for the weapon itself. For one of the only moments in her life, she retreats.
She keeps apologizing from the other side of the door. Something wet and salty streaks down her cheeks, but she can't be bothered to care. She can't be bothered to move. She repeats it over and over.
If she could have saved her, she would. If it could have been her instead, even better.
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He owed both of them his life. He had trusted both of them with his life. When one walked out, the other seemed to walk in. It left him with some small amount of comfort. Fire and steel, fire and steel; he never thought the cycle would end, but like with most things in life - it did.
Was he doomed to lose all the important women in his life? First his mother and now Steela. Somehow fate had thrown Ahsoka at his door again, and he couldn't help but wonder if she was next.
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Another week passes and Ahsoka makes herself scarce. She wonders why she stays, she wonders why he lets her. It's a large estate, but she has jobs and a makeshift bunker in the underground. She can leave and go virtually anywhere.
She finally makes up her mind. He's safe now. No one is coming for him. Maybe they have given up. Maybe they know she's protecting him. Either way, her reputation serves her well. She's stubborn and hurt so she leaves without warning and bypasses the goodbyes.
Her feet tap at the marble stairs when his voice echoes past her ears. She feels a shiver. There it is again, her name, so foreign for lack of use on its own. He seems calmer, surprised, but the stain is still there.
"Tano…." He's trying to distance himself, but it's not working.
"Bontari." She replies as his long strides catch up to her. He's silent for a moment longer, but that's all the time it takes for her to cross the threshold of the door. His words fall on deaf ears.
"Stay."
She's already gone.
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Months pass before she returns.
She appears unannounced in his office, the stains of their last encounter still in her memory.
"I have to kill you again." She offers a small smile and surprisingly, one which he returns.
"Seems like I need a bodyguard then."
"So it seems."
There's a light in his eyes that wasn't there last. Time has healed what it should, and finally, he looks whole.
"I'm not her." She speaks. Throwing it out there like a grenade.
"I know." He moves forward.
"I can't be her." She's breathless once again.
"I know."
"I won't be her." He persists.
"I know." She steps back.
"I won't be a replacement." He crosses the distance and his hand finds rest at the back of her neck, heat radiating from where their foreheads are touching. She can feel his breath across her cheeks and her mind dizzies as their eyes meet. This time, he doesn't miss his cue and responds before she can protest.
"You never were, Ahsoka. You never were."
And in that moment she can breathe again.