post·mor·tem // excerpts from senior commander cohbo'rik'ardok’s private journal of cataloged memories

Some nights she catches her reflection in the viewport, red eyes staring back at herself like glowing embers and wonders why she’s never met another sky-walker outside the program, if it would be easier if she’d walk away from it all, fade into obscurity.
But then, in the end, what she always arrives back at is this – she doesn't know what else to do with herself, then to keep traveling the Chaos, then to keep looking, to keep hoping to find the parts she lost between the stars, to make it give her back what it took in its wake.
---
Thrawn learns about the life his sister lead without him.

Notes:

you don't necessarily have to have read the rest of postmortem to read this, and you don't need to read this to read postmortem, but also, they are free and it will hit harder if u do so might as well?
CW - there is nothing too graphic in here but it does deal with borika's life and her experiences as a sky-walker which i very much understand can be an uncomfortable topic, so pls take care of yourself while reading <3

(See the end of the work for more notes and other works inspired by this one.)

Work Text:

>> personnel request, send via expansionary defense fleet administration portal, subsection A-214 reserved for [command officers]:

from: senior captain mitth'raw'nuruodo
to: UAG supply & personnel [admin]

request: full personnel file of senior commander cohbo’rik’ardok (former irizi’rik’ardok) for immediate review pertaining assessment of future mission readiness

–

from: UAG supply & personnel [admin]
To: senior captain mitth'raw'nuruodo

request: access denied [via commodore mak’ro]

>> retrieved text exchange, recovered from chc springhawk intranet || decrypted, private exchange between: commodore mak’ro [sam] ; senior captain mitth’raw’nuruodo [sc_thrawn]

>> sam
just talk to her
like a normal person

>>sc_thrawn
I do not wish to intrude on her privacy.

>> sam
so you’re requesting her personnel files behind her back?
she is literally two rooms down
talk to her

>> sc_thrawn
I will consider it.

>> sc_thrawn
What if our conversation surfaces unpleasant memories for her?

>> sam
she’s an adult
and one of the scariest warriors i’ve ever known
she can decide for herself what she wants to tell you

>> sc_thrawn
Even so.
I do not wish to make her uncomfortable.

>> sam
we are literally in the middle of a civil war
i do not have time to manage more of your estranged relationships
talk to her
that’s an order

>> sc_thrawn
Very well.

>> sc_thrawn
Ah, apologies.
Very well, Sir.

>> sam
oh go frost yourself
you insubordinate prick

>> break

>> excerpts from senior commander cohbo'rik'ardok’s private journal of cataloged memories || retrieved, first reviewed, summarized and archived by senior captain mitth’raw’nuruodo // decrypted from private numerical code 111812520-1916920, colloquial designation ‘ krayt-spit ’

I. KIVU'RIK'ARDOK

>> [ data not found ]

II. RIK’ARDOK

>> [data not found ¿]

> data –

a sky-walker never shows weakness. she’s always ready to continue on, cheerfully and efficiently, making one more journey, and one more after that, until her captain allows her to rest.

>> break

Rik'ardok is fourteen and a half when her sight starts to fade. She's fifteen when they finally declare her unfit to navigate a ship.

"It's going to be alright," the doctor tells her at her final examination. There's a smile on his lips, a real one. "You get to rest now. Isn't that nice?"

No , it isn’t, she wants to say. And I won't. But the words don't come. Apathetic, the doctor's notes say. Patient seems to be in a state of dissociation. They are typed in that script you're not supposed to be able to read upside down. And they are wrong.

Because there is something that sits logged far at the back of her mind, hot and searing, pulling at her thoughts like a ship's engine, something that she always knew had nothing to do with her third-sight and everything to do with the place she came from, the one she can't remember.

It's that thing that makes her certain which way their ship is pointing even when she can't see the stars, the one that let's her know the doctor is ambidextrous just from the way he parts his hair, the one that makes adults look at her as if they have to remind themselves she's just a child. The one that lets her read unreadable scripts upside down.

That feeling that started spreading into her bones from the very first second she laid eyes on the stars, that makes her feel untethered, always. That tells her to keep running.

“Any last things you might want to tell me?” the doctor tries to coax, eyes tracking down his questis, her future just another item on his checklist. “Any more questions?

Why can’t I remember? she wants to ask. Why do I know what tava blossoms smell like even when I know for a fact I’ve never seen any? Why do I wake up some nights to the sound of a baby crying? Why do none of the others seem to care? Why–

She shakes her head, watches as he types one final note into his questis – dissociation and apathy might need to be revisited at a later date, could point to cognitive decline.

"It’s going to be alright,” he tells her again as he helps her off the examination table. His touch is gentle, reassuring. "I've seen many sky-walkers just like you. You'll get adopted into one of the ruling families and then–" he smiles at her, squeezes her hand. "You won't have to worry about anything ever again."

She looks at him, lets the words wash over her as that thing at the back of her mind threatens to burn her insides to ash. Somehow she doubts he's right.

>> break

III. IRIZI’RIK’ARDOK

>> iii.i.

>> career progression // 01

She gets offered merit-adoptee by the Irizi, Mitth, Clarr and a handful of the forty, whose representatives all look less than convinced of their chances to beat out one of the ruling nine.

She chooses the Irizi in the end – mostly based on their known association with the defense force and the simple fact that she doesn’t know what else to do with herself than stay close to the faint possibility to walk the Chaos again. And then maybe, just a little bit, because the sphere specialist who used to sneak her candy on her final assignment was Irizi and no matter what her medical file says, she is, after all, still just a child.

They put her through the rest of her schooling, teach her about the honor of family, about what it means to be loyal, to put others first. She sits still and listens, watches the artificial clouds drag by the window of the Irizi homestead as she wonders if they see the irony in teaching her what it means to give your life to the Ascendancy. But they keep her fed, and warm and healthy and so, in turn, she keeps her mouth shut.

At night she lies awake, counts the flicker of stars reflecting onto her bedroom floor, and tries not to think about how if she were to look out of her window and up at the sky they would look nothing like the starscape she remembers.

>> break

>> ar'alani // first cataloged meeting // csilla [ irizi homestead ]

She’s sixteen the first time she meets Ziara.

She recognizes her instantly, if not from the thick ceremonial robe she’s wrapped in – which very clearly belongs in some grand hall of the homestead instead of half splayed out across an icy cliff past the walls of said homestead – then from the fact that everyone here would have recognized Irizi'ar'alani, family blood and golden child.

Still, this is Zirika’s spot – her little refuge, the place she sneaks out to when the artificial stars feel too close and the ones in her memory too far away – and their difference in rank aside, she does not appreciate it being occupied. She’s about to say so–

Ziara turns and the words die on her lips, leaving nothing behind than the puffy cloud of her own breath against Csilla’s night time air. Irizi'ar'alani, Zirika amends quietly in her head as she catalogs the tears stuck to Ziara’s lashes, family blood, golden child, in need of a little refuge, just like her.

Ziara reaches up to wipe the tears from her eyes, the gesture nearly casual. “Sorry,” she says and her voice is remarkably steady. “Is this your spot?”

“It is,” Zirika confirms, balancing along the slippery rock to the edge so she can sink down beside Ziara. “But I won’t say anything if you don’t.” They’re both aware it’s an empty threat – her word would never hold up against that of blood.

But Ziara scoots to the side, unfurls some of the robe to spread it out beside her before Zirika reaches the ground. The material is thick, pre-warmed, keeping the cold at bay. Zirika is hard pressed to decide if the lack of frostbite adds or subtracts from the experience of sneaking out at night.

“Deal,” Ziara says and there’s just the hint of a smile on her lips now. “Still, apologies for disturbing your solitude. I’m assuming you’re also here to– well, get away from it all.”

Zirika looks at her, catalogs how not only the robe is formal but also Ziara’s uniform beneath it, cut in sharp military angles as if she’s just come from a ceremony, some kind of inauguration. Her eyes catch on Ziara’s right sleeve, on how the fabric is rumpled up as if someone had grabbed her as she was making her escape.

“We don’t have to talk,” Zirika points out. “You don’t have to be polite. I don’t mind.”

Ziara blinks at her for a second, maybe debating if she should be insulted, maybe debating if it was a mistake to indulge someone this far below her rank. Then she huffs out a laugh. “What’s your name?”

“Irizi’rik’ardok.”

“Irizi'ar'alani,” she says and reaches out her hand.

“I know,” Zirika says. She takes it regardless. Ziara’s skin is warm against hers, her palms callused in that way only the hands of the warriors that used to escort Zirika to her quarters ever were. The hands of people who’ve been trained to fight, to kill. “What are you trying to get away from, then?” she finds herself asking, despite her best intentions.

“I thought we didn’t have to talk?” Ziara shoots back but the words are laced with humor, the smile still hanging onto her lips. There’s a moment of hesitation, a moment of silence as they both stare up at the stars, then Ziara lets out a long sigh, some of the tension bleeding away. “Today was my last day at the homestead. I’m shipping out to Taharim tomorrow.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

Ziara raises an eyebrow at her. “No,” she concedes. “I’ve worked for that my whole life. It’s an honor to walk in my ancestors footsteps. It’s just–”

“You don’t know what to expect, leaving your home?” Zirika offers.

“Yeah,” Ziara sighs. She wrapps her arms around her knees for warmth, contemplates a moment longer. “Have you ever been out there? On a ship? Traveling the Chaos?”

All my life, Zirika wants to say. As long as I can remember. She holds her tongue. Civilians aren’t supposed to know she used to be a sky-walker, they’ve been very clearly instructed on that. It doesn’t matter that Ziara won’t be one for much longer.

“I flew on a ship when they brought me here,” she says instead. Not technically a lie. “Does that count?”

Ziara shrugs. “Probably. It’s not like I have a lot more experience. Some private travel to different homesteads, holidays, the few times my grandfather showed me around the ships of the family fleet.”

“That sounds like plenty of experience.”

“But is it?” Ziara shoots her a look, her eyes nearly pleading. “What if it’s not enough? What if I arrive at the academy and I’m not–” She breaks off, lets her forehead fall against her knees.

“Enough?” Zirika fills in.

Ziara peeks up at her. “Yeah.”

Zirika looks back out at the stars. “All of us feel uncertainty as we travel through life,” she says, and the words feel odd against her tongue, like she’s repeating them rather than coming up with them on her own. “And uncertainty can be the most frightening of mental states.”

“That’s not very reassuring,” Ziara points out with a small huff, face still halfway buried in her arms.

“Well,” Zirika shrugs, “Maybe not. But I think–” She pauses, tries to get a hold of her own thoughts, of something at the very back of her mind, faded and buried. Tries to push past that nausea she feels every time she can’t seem to get a hold of her own mind, everytime she can’t be sure any of her thoughts are really hers to keep. “While all of us face a variety of paths,” she says at last, “We all have the power to choose among them, you know? And whatever your ancestors might have done before you, you need to remember you have that power as well. The power to choose which of those paths is the right one for you.”

Ziara just looks at her for a long moment, contemplating, then something in her face sets with newfound determination. “Right,” she says and sits up straight again. “Choose my own path. I like that.” She grins, warm and confident. “Thank you, Zirika. I won’t forget it.”

“You are welcome.” Zirika inclines her head, tries to push down the odd feeling her own words left on her tongue. “And please do forget it. We had a deal, remember?”

“Of course,” Ziara says, mock-serious, barely hiding her grin. She leans over to bump her shoulder against Zirika, the touch casual in a way that sends a shiver down Zirika’s spine like not even Csilla’s cold ever does. “Why did you come out here then?” Ziara asks. “What are you getting away from?”

Zirika looks up at the stars, thinks of how even here out in the cold they look nothing like the ones in her memory, nothing like the only constant she’s ever known in her life. She thinks about what it must feel like to be afraid of leaving your home and about how sometimes when she wakes up in the morning she feels dizzy when her feet touch the ground and she realizes she can’t feel the floor vibrate with the hum of a hyperdrive.

And so she opens her lips to speak, watches her breath escape like puffs of smoke and realizes there is no way for her to express that feeling of looking up at the stars and knowing, hoping – so desperately it feels like your bones are being pulled out of your body and into the sky – that there’s somewhere out there you’re supposed to be. To always feel untethered.

“Nothing,” she says. “I just couldn’t sleep.”

>> break

>> career progression // 02

She’s eighteen when she starts basic training at the Irizi family fleet – they all do, every single Irizi merit-adoptee, a prerequisite for being welcomed into a family tied so closely to the defense force, a family whose own fleet is rumored to rival all of the other ruling ones combined.

Half of her group drops out in the first month, the drills, cold and lack of sleep pushing them to their limits, forcing even those to their knees that had loudly proclaimed their resilience on their very first night at base camp. Some she knows do it on purpose, none of them keen on making it through basic training just to be placed on patrol duty over some backwater world, or worse, on being scouted out by the defense force and sent out into the Chaos to die at the Ascendancy's borders.

Zirika holds on, pushes through snow and dirt and cardboard flavored ration bars and realizes that it's much easier to fire a charric, to pull a trigger, if the scale of destruction you are used to is the image of whole ships disintegrating into supernovas and black holes.

She holds on and learns that that thing that sits lodged right at the back of her mind burns just a little less bright when her knuckles are bloody, that the pull in her bones finally ebbs when she can taste copper on her tongue. Learns that she never has to doubt her own mind if she sees her target right in front of her, that as long as she hits it, it doesn’t matter if she’ll remember any of it when she wakes up the next day.

She holds on and learns to chase the adrenalin, learns that if she’s too exhausted to stand on her own two feet at the end of the day she’ll sleep through the night. She holds on and she keeps pushing, pushing, until she’s at the top of her group, the top of her unit, the top of the past decade of cadets that came before her.

Still, in the end, they don’t recruit her into the family fleet. They don’t scout her into the defense force, either. Instead she wakes up on her nineteenth starday to find a man sitting on the bunk beside hers, wrapped in the thick pompous robes of a patriarch yet wearing an expression of utter nonchalance.

“Good morning Zirika,” the man says just as she realizes that the rest of the barracks lie eerily deserted around them. “I’m patriarch Stybla'mi'ovodo. Tell me, how much do you know about the Universal Analysis Group?”

>> break

>> iii.ii.

>> career progression // 03

She spends most of her early twenties alternating between traversing the Chaos and what she quickly learns are the often equally elusive hallways of the UAG’s headquarters at Sposia.

A couple of months mingling with the pathfinder’s guild on Concourse 447 – disguised as a bartender under heavy makeup, listening to the woes of weary souls traveling through the Chaos by the will of what they call the Great Presence – then back to Sposia to analyze her findings, back to cross referencing nonsensical tales with decade old information in meticulously kept archives.

A few weeks blending in amongst the merchants on Primea, then back to the lab in vault seven, watching as techs pour over every little ounce of different substances and metals she managed to smuggle out in the hidden pockets sewn within her coat.

A two day trip tucked away in the engine room of a not-yet enemy’s ship – listening, cataloging, taking note of every little flicker of the hyperdrive – then hours upon hours relaying every single detail in Lamiov’s office.

She goes out, goes through disguises, accents, rations, goes until she’s tired enough to fall into a dreamless sleep, until she doesn’t have to wonder anymore if it will be all gone in the morning. She hunts, analyzes, repeats. Family doesn’t matter here, they tell her. Being part of the UAG means to be loyal, to put others first.

It’s only sometimes – when she’s drifting out in the Chaos, nothing around her but the stars, the only home she’s ever known – that she thinks back to that night she met Ziara and wonders, just a little, if the things she told her about having the power to choose your own path actually hold true.

>> break

>> cohbo’mar’mo // first cataloged meeting // schesa [ defense platform ]

She’s twenty-five when she first meets her future husband.

She’s dangling her feet idly from where she’s sitting on a beat up examination table, dragging the tips of her boots against the floor, trying very hard not to count the seconds till she can make her way back to Sposia.

There are dried spots of blood crusted in the corners of the room, packets of gauze ripped open and forgotten on the counter, medical equipment barely held together by bits of tape and spite, like seemingly everything aboard this particular defense platform orbtiting Schesa. It’s a wonder it’s still standing in the first place, especially after the latest assault of pirate attacks ravaging the system. It’s a wonder she’s still standing too, given that she’s been aboard one of said pirate’s ships when it rammed into one of the platform's docking bays.

“Irizi’rik’ardok?” the doctor asks as he comes through the door in quick strides, eyes fixed firmly on his questis. He reminds her oddly of a tube car running behind schedule – rushing forward to make up time, yet lodged securely in its lane, calm and steady.

“I am she.”

“Great.” He taps something on screen, frowns for a second. “I’m doctor Ufsa’mar’mo. Sorry for the wait. We’re horribly understaffed at the moment with the founding of the EDF and all that pirate business. Really didn’t expect to see an UAG analyst anywhere on our list, frankly the nurses thought it was a jok–”

He breaks off the second he looks up from his questis to see that she’s covered head to toe in blood.

“Oh,” he says and then, a lot calmer than she knows many of the pompous warriors and senior officers she’s met would be at the sight, “That’s not all yours, is it?”

She studies him for a long moment. There is nothing extraordinary about him at first glance, just another doctor, wearing an EDF uniform but no family plague – standard for medical personnel, their mission statement putting them above family politics and in service of the Ascendancy as a whole, just as it would sky-walkers and officers of flag rank. Everything about the uniform looks legit too, no indications he’s an imposter, no indications he poses a threat.

Yet– her eyes catch on the unruly curl of his hair that says he hasn’t had time to do anything more than run his hands through it in what must be days, the water stain on the seam of his tunic where he seemingly tried and failed to wash out whatever fluid got flung his way, the back of his hands, his knuckles cracked open from all the times the disinfectant burned his skin. His eyes, sharp and alert, stark against the dark circles beneath them. The way the set of his jaw is still relaxed somehow, how there is not an ounce of tension in his shoulders even when she knows he must have walked past the same body bags stacked up in the hallways as she did.

“No," she says. “It’s not all mine.”

“Good, great.” He gives her a small smile and pulls up a squeaky rolling chair so he can sit down in front of her. “So where does it hurt?”

She pulls back the torn fabric of her pants from her right leg to show him the cut down her inner thigh. She's pretty certain she's seen some bone peaking through before, but it's hard to tell now with all the blood.

"Oh, a scraped knee," he jokes with another smile. "Not that different from my usual patients then." She watches as he leans back to fish for some surgical gloves, tries to keep her mind from wandering back to wondering about the fastest route back to Sposia, how long it will take to convince Lamiov to let her back out into the Chaos again–

"Can I touch you?"

Zirika blinks back to herself to find Samarmo looking up at her, hands hovering over her leg. She frowns. "Don't you have to touch me to treat me?"

"Correct,” he concedes. “But if you're uncomfortable with me touching you I can see that we get someone your comfortable with, maybe a doctor you already know–"

"It's fine,” she cuts in, maybe a bit too harsh. There is something suddenly sharp about the question, about the way she can’t seem to remember if anyone has ever asked for consent to touch her before. “You're fine."

“Okay,” he gives her a small nod, lowers his hands to her leg comically slow. “This might hurt a bit. Tell me when you need me to stop, yeah?”

I won’t, she wants to say. She doesn’t. She watches him prod at her skin instead, hands moving with careful precision. Part of her is aware of the pain – it always is, just another thing to catalog – but most of her mind is distracted now, latching onto something else, something she’s missing, something he said–

"I need to stitch that," he declares, rolling back slightly to get a better look at her face. He rests his elbows on his knees, hands steepled together between his legs, blood and all. "I can do local anesthetic or put you under fully, which one would you prefer?"

Zirika frowns. Again with the choices for something he’s the expert for, asking for her consent– "Why would I go under full anesthetic for stitches?"

He huffs out a small laugh and starts rolling back, zig-zagging through the room to gather supplies. "Apologies. Some of my patients are squeamish with blood, better to ask before I’ll have you fainting."

She raises an eyebrow at him, looks herself up and down pointedly.

"Yeah," he laughs, "Point taken. Didn't really think you'd let me put you under anyway."

"Why?"

"Because,” he says, motioning her into the right position while setting up supplies and equipment on the table beside her. “And I mean that in the most flattering way possible – you do not seem like the type of person who likes to give over control like that."

She blinks at him for a second, tilts her head. “Hm,” she says.

“Hm,” he shrugs and gets to work.

It finally comes to her when he’s halfway through his stitches, the clues clicking together as she watches him work, steady hands sowing her back together. Not that different from my usual patients, he said. The deliberate calm, the lack of tension, a vital skill when working with anyone easily spooked, anyone who can see your every move before you even as much as think about it yourself. Her eyes catch on the bright red joba lollies tucked away in the belt of his tunic. Obvious. She should have figured it out sooner.

“You don’t usually work with adults, do you?”

“I don’t?” he asks, eyes still firmly fixed on her leg. His hands slow just a fraction, so subtle she nearly misses it, but then his eyes flicker to the questis at his side, to her medical file still open on the screen. It’s nearly casual, but they linger a second too long, as if he was looking for something specific– ah. Her rank.

"It's fine," she says quietly. "I used to be one of your patients."

His eyes snap up to her with a frown, hands stopping completely, his face stuck somewhere between caught off guard and confusion. "I am–" he looks back at her file, "Barely three years older than you. I highly doubt you've ever been one of my patients– oh." He huffs out another laugh, confusion clearing from his face. "Yeah. Okay. What gave it away?"

She opens her mouth to explain– the way you hold yourself, how your eyes are alert but everything about you screams safe, how– she closes it again. Shrugs. "Just a hunch," she says. She nods towards his belt. “Mostly the candy.”

He follows her gaze, lets out a small huff. "Yeah, alright.” He shakes his head slightly but there’s nothing malicious about it, no frustration anywhere in his features, or his voice. “I'll make sure to be more careful with that in the future then. Not used to being around anyone who’s not supposed to know. But well–"

“Desperate times, desperate measures,” she fills in. He gives her a nod, mock-serious, a smirk pulling at his lips as he goes back to work. She feels herself mirror it, despite the fact that he’s already looking away.

"I don't think you're supposed to tell me, by the way,” he says when he’s placed the last stitch, hands smoothing out the adhesive of the bandage. “That you used to be a sky-walker, I mean."

She watches him strip off his gloves to toss them into the bin below the table. She shrugs. "It's our secret then."

He looks up at her again, elbows back to resting on his knees, his fingers still so close to her leg she’s sure she can feel the heat radiating off his skin. His eyes are sharp and alert, everything about him safe in a way only the stars ever are to her.

"I'll guard it with my life," he says and hands her a lollipop.

Somehow she believes him.

>> break

>> stybla’mi’novodo; ar'alani // naporar [ edf headquaters ]

It takes her a week to get back to Sposia, sleeping between supply crates on wayward freighters, dressed in I'll fighting clothes the nurses swore up and down they didn't take off a dead body. It takes her nearly another week to convince Lamiov she's ready to go back out into the Chaos, a victory she pays for by agreeing to be his plus one to the pompous Irizi gathering she's very deliberately tried to avoid.

It's a military thing on Naporar she barely paid attention to, something about reminding the other families about their military prowess, poorly disguised as an evening of honoring the members of the newly minted EDF. Her clothes are fancier now, but not any more comfortable.

She’s caught in a conversation with Lamiov and some officer – who, very clearly unaware they’re not just clueless donors, is lying through his teeth about his involvement in the whole mess over Schesa – when she spots Ziara across the room.

It’s not the first time they’ve crossed paths since Ziara joint the EDF – there’ve been curt nods exchanged as they passed each other in hallways, a quick hello at family gatherings at the homestead, even quicker goodbyes, always hurried, always aware of their difference in rank. It’s the first time she’s seen her with someone at her side though, someone who’s not a subordinate taking her orders or a family member parading her around.

He wears the same EDF uniform as Ziara but there is something about him – beyond the fact that he seems to be younger than them, younger maybe than any of the people in attendance, and beyond the fact that the Mitth crest on his tunic is drawing scornful looks from all the other Irizi in attendance – that makes him stand out. He seems nearly lost among his peers, eyes roaming over the crowd, catching on the artworks on the walls but never on people, not even when they’re having a conversation right at him.

She watches him turn towards Ziara, lean in to hear her over the chatter, watches as she whispers something into his ear that makes him smile, just a little. The gesture looks nearly alien on his lips, a stark contrast to the way his left hand taps out restless rhythms at his side, and how he plants his feet against the ground as if he’s expecting a fight.

There is something familiar about him, she realizes with an odd sense of unease. Familiar in the way clouds are familiar sometimes, how you know for a fact you can't have seen this particular formation before yet feel so intimately that it already passed you by.

“Bit of an odd doklet, isn’t he?”

Zirika blinks back to herself to find only Lamiov left beside her, offering her a fresh glass of whatever red liquor they’ve been serving all evening. She takes it, looks back up at Ziara to see that her companion's glass is untouched, the ice melted to fill it nearly to the brim.

“Who is he?”

“Junior Commander Mitth’raw’nuru–” Lamiov breaks off, huffs out a laugh, as if he just thought of some private joke. “Apologies. Senior Commander, now. He played quite a vital role in pushing back those damned pirates you mingled with above Schesa.”

“Senior Commander?” She frowns. “He jumped two ranks?”

She’s read the reports, of course, remembers the surprise at seeing Ziara’s name listed as the one who took the final ship down over Kinoss. She remembers the confusion on the pirates' faces as they realized their companions had gone up in smoke, from where she saw it first hand, tucked away in their hangar bay on a ship all the way across the Ascendancy at Schesa. She remembers their hyperdrive shortening out in their haste to get away, remembers them spinning and crashing into Schesa’s defense platform.

She doesn’t remember ever reading the name Mitth’raw’nuru.

“The council thought it was warranted,” Lamiov shrugs. “He figured out the pirates' connection to the Lioaoin just by the design of their ships. Something about the curves and structures of Lioaoinan art. None of our analysts could do it.” He gives her a small smile. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Zirika says and feels her jaw tense, something like irritation prickling up her neck.

Because she remembers too, every single word of her mission brief, how that was her connection to figure out, her prize to bring home. How all she got for it was shrapnell digging into her tight as she scrambled to get out of a burning wreck, as she felt her shirt get soaked in the blood of strangers, as her ears rang with their screams.

“Impressive, isn’t he?” Lamiov says.

And dangerous, she thinks. She keeps her mouth shut.

She focus back on Ziara and Thrawn instead, tries to chase that faint feeling of familiarity down the lanes of her mind, tries to push past the nausea to pick out where she could have seen him before. The homestead maybe, if he’s close with Ziara, some EDF ship possibly, passed by in some hangar bay–

He turns, head snapping towards her as if he heard her, his eyes narrowing as he catches her staring. There is a long moment where she could swear, illogically, that time grinds to a halt, in that way it only ever did in the seconds she adjusted ships on their course to pull them from disaster, the sort of weightlessness only ever present when the Chaos has to shift and resettle.

Then she watches a sort of skewed expression of wonder bloom on his face, like someone who’s seen the stars for the first time just to find out they’re a million lightyears away, unreachable.

“Alright,” Lamiov says beside her, his voice cutting through her mind like a breacher missile, acid eroding her thoughts. “I think that’s enough posturing for tonight, don’t you?”

She turns to him, blinks. “Sir?”

“I’m saying you did well pretending you didn’t hate every second of being here,” he smiles. “So go get out of here, get some sleep. You can report for assignment tomorrow, 0700 sharp.”

“Thank you, sir, but I–” But there was something, a feeling she tried to chase down– something– She looks back to find Thrawn gone, a frown on Ziara’s face the only thing left in his wake.

“But you what?” Lamiov huffs. “Don’t tell me you’ve gotten a sudden taste for these dreadful things.”

“No, of course not,” she says. “Good Evening, sir.”

Lamiov gives her another smile, pats her shoulder in that slightly too patronizing way of his. Then he peels back off into the crowd, leaving her stranded amongst strangers.

She passes Ziara and Thrawn on her way out, tucked away on a balcony far away from the crowds. Thrawn is leaned halfway over the balustrade in a way that makes her wonder if any of the appetizers were bad, knuckles nearly white where he’s gripping the railing. His face is angled too far away for her to see his expression.

But she can see the look on Ziara’s face, the uncertainty in her eyes so unbefitting for an officer of her rank, can hear how her voice doesn’t come out right when she puts her hand on Thrawn’s back and asks, “Hey, what happened? Tell me what’s wrong?”

For a moment Zirika’s gaze flickers up towards the stars, then back down to how their light plays over Thrawn’s neck, his knuckles, the deep black of his uniform. How for the fraction of a second she can’t seem to differentiate their familiarity from the way she felt looking at Thrawn’s face.

“Do you need me to call Thrass?” Ziara asks, barely audible. Thrawn shakes his head, leans into her touch, just a little.

Zirika averts her eyes, keeps walking.

It’s none of her business. They are strangers after all.

>> break

>> iii.iii.

>> career progression // 04

Lamiov gives her a new ship the next day, lets her back out into the Chaos.

She inflirates a forming terrorist cell on Cam’co, shares meals and quaters with them for weeks before she has enough evidence to wrap it all up and slip out the back as the Defense Force sweeps in to take them apart.

She spends a month hopping between diplomat ships playing aide to their Syndics every whims, then just as long tucked away in a cubicle at the UAG trying to make sense of all the hidden meanings they placed into their words, all those unseen slippery connections that may one day bring the Ascendancy to its knees.

She chases a defector across the Chaos, finally catches up to him at Shihon, wades through knee deep swamps and screeching birds, just to, in the end, hold his hand as she watches the life bleed from his eyes after he slips and splits his head open on the cliffs.

At night she wakes up to the image of the face of a man she's never even spoken to, his eyes wide like he's just seen the stars, and tries to fall back asleep with her hands wrapped around the wrapper of a joba lolly, its contents long since crumbled to nothing but red powder from how it's been knocked about in her pockets.

Some nights she catches her reflection in the viewport, red eyes staring back at herself like glowing embers, and wonders why she’s never met another sky-walker outside the program, if it would be easier if she’d walk away from it all, fade into obscurity.

But then, in the end, what she always arrives back at is this – she doesn't know what else to do with herself, then to keep traveling the Chaos, then to keep looking, then to keep hoping to find the parts she lost between the stars, to make it give her back what it took in its wake.

Apathetic, the doctor's notes had said.

She looks past herself, out at the stars, feels the fire lapping at her mind and her bones being pulled towards the void and wonders if it would be better if she was.

>> break

>> cohbo’mar’mo // sposia [ uag headquarters ]

She can’t seem to get rid of the doctor.

He’s there to put ice on her ankle after an unfortunate fall down a well on Sarvchi, he wraps her left hand up in antiseptic bandages after she nearly burns her skin off surviving an engine fire on a light cruiser above Noris, makes her swear she will take painkillers against the sting of the venom of the urba-needles he pulls out of her back after a mission gone wrong on Yashuvu.

Mostly she just keeps running into him the way she used to run into Ziara – hallways, ships, the UAG’s break rooms. But he doesn’t nod and keep walking, doesn’t seem to honor the silent understanding of people married to their jobs, people in the service of the Ascendancy as a whole – he smiles at her instead, asks her how she’s doing, seeks her out just to share a cup of caccoleaf. She’s yet to find a way to get him to stop doing that.

“What a stupid desicion,” he says now, popping a fruit square into his mouth from where he's siting across from her, tucked away in one of the UAG’s cubicles that really isn’t big enough for two people. “Why would they take his command away for something like that?”

“The cruise ship’s captain was Ufsa,” she points out, reaching over to steal one of his squares. He pushes the plate closer to her, tries and fails to hide the smile pulling at his lips. She’s long known he’s been trying to manipulate her into eating more by exploiting the fact that she’s more likely to steal food than prepare it for herself. She takes another square regardless. “You guys don’t exactly have a history of liking the Mitth, remember?”

“So what?” Samarmo huffs. “Family politics are not supposed to play a role in the military,” he points out. “Senior Commander Thrawn saved a bunch of lives, isn’t that what matters?”

Zirika looks down at the report open on her questis, thinks back to the time Lamiov made her analyze some alleged communication between Thrawn and an alien government that stood in violation to the pre-emptive strike agreement. How when she proved his guilt Lamiov had made her delete her report in front of his eyes. She thinks back to the first and only time she’s seen Thrawn, how the word that came to mind was dangerous, how now his expression seems edged into her mind the way only the image of ships disintegrating into the stars are.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to have an opinion on this,” she says and gets up in a vain attempt to try and leave him behind again.

>> break

>> career progression [?] // 05
>>> glastis three

When all is said and done, it's his voice she'll remember most.

Not the anger bubbling up as she feels her mind and body slowly fighting themselves out of unconsciousness to realize she messed up, that she didn't see the hijackers coming fast enough; not the frustration breaking through when she tries and fails to divert their attention from whatever special cargo Lamiov send her to guard; not the hint of desperation she feels scratching at her skin as she tries to convince them to at least place the freighter on a vector above Glastis Three that will make it easier to recover them by a rescue crew; not the pain as they twist her shoulder out of its socket to shut her up; not even the satisfaction she can’t keep out of her voice at the terror on their faces when she reminds them of the penalty that will await them if Clarr blood commits manslaughter against a member of another family.

No, it's his voice, coming clear and calm over the speakers the very second she finally manages to convert their ship's electromagnetic sensor into a communications receiver.

“Stybla cargo ship V-484,” he says and she suddenly thinks of watching artificial clouds pass by the window of the Irizi homestead, impossible to grasp yet familiar somehow, the static crackling of the speakers oddly making her wish she could hear the real thing, like she used to wish she could touch the stars above Csilla. “This is Stybla patrol ship Jandalin, under the command of Patriarch Senior Aide Lappincyk. We’re looking for you, but there’s a great deal of space to cover. If you can hear me, vent your aft oxygen reserves and aft thrusters fuel tanks and ignite the mixture. The resulting plume should help reveal your position.”

Clever, that one, she thinks, and then curses herself not an hour later when she watches – tucked away at the very back, hidden behind crew and machinery – as Lappincyk boards the V-484 with both Mid Commander Thrawn and another Mitth in tow. Two connections missed in one day. Two things that slipped her mind, things she’ll never be sure she might have caught if her thoughts were really hers to keep.

She tries to make up for it, catches Lappincyk just before he goes in to interrogate the captain to tell him the hijackers are headed to Pleknok, that it’s the only viable option, that she can get them there in time. He barely stops to listen, eyes fixed on the way her arm is still bent out of its socket, how she can’t hide the pain as he reaches out to her. “Report back to Sposia,” he tells her quietly. “You’ve done enough.” And that’s that.

She makes it back just in time to catch the tail end of a ceremony so elusive part of her thought it was a myth, watches from the shadows of the homestead's great hall as Thrawn receives an honor for the mission she failed. She listens to him stumble his way through a language she’s fluent in, grinds her teeth against that fire lapping at her mind and pulling at her bones, and reminds herself that none of this matters, that her life belongs to the Ascendancy as a whole.

>> break

>> cohbo’mar’mo // sposia [ uag headquarters ]

It takes her nearly an hour to find Samarmo after, whatever temporary office they’ve assigned him for his current residents tucked away in the very depths of the UAG. The building lies still around them, her footsteps echoing loudly over the quiet hum of the night shift. He nearly drops his questis when he spots her walking through the door.

“What in the chaos happened to you?” he asks as he jumps up to rush towards her, nearly knocking over his chair in the process.

She shrugs, winces. “Bad day,” she says. She turns her dislocated shoulder towards him. “Can you fix it?”

He opens his mouth, closes it again. She watches his eyebrows twitch as if he was about to pull them into a frown, but then his face smoothes back out into a smile, his usual calm clicking back into place like a magazine into a rifle. “Yeah, of course,” he says as he gently guides her to take a seat at the edge of his desk, hands close but never touching, and isn’t that strange, she realizes only then, that she’s never seen him lose his composure like that before.

“Can I touch you?”

She blinks back to herself. It’s such a familiar question by now. And never any less startling. Or confusing. She tilts her head at him, gives a curt nod.

Her eyes flicker to his hands as he slowly pulls back her shirt to get a better look. He’s not wearing gloves, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. There are splotches of colorful grav-marker stains left on the back of his hand, a child-sized bite mark between his wrist and his left thumb she’s sure wasn’t there last week. So familiar, yet–

“Why do you still ask?”

He halts, hands resting cool against her bare skin, looks at her as if this was important. “Because sometimes it’s good to be reminded that you always have a choice,” he says.

She feels something sharp pull at her chest, feels the weight of the crushed up joba lolly burn a hole in her back pocket. She looks away. He doesn’t push.

“This is gonna hurt, I’m afraid,” he warns instead as he steps closer to get a hold of her arm. “So just focus on me, yeah?” She nods again. He gives her a small smile, starts counting, “Three, two–” and then her shoulder pops back into its socket with a deafening crack.

She doesn’t remember the pain after, but she remembers the way he holds her through it, his hand circled around her wrist, how he leans towards her as she slumps against him, how he stays stock still and lets her rest her head against his shoulder to just breathe.

When she looks up again the smile is still on his lips, and in his eyes and in the way his fingers slip down to wrap around her’s. Someone walks past the office, blocks out the light of the hallway for just a second, drowns them in darkness, their eyes bright like stars.

The moment passes.

Samarmo drops her hand, steps away. Her eyes catch on the chrono over the door. Nearly midnight. “Aren’t you off duty?”

“Yes,” Samarmo hums, barely a whisper. Still so close.

“Why are you here then?”

“Lappincyk told me you were on your way back,” he shrugs and there is something off about his expression, nearly sheepish. “I thought I’d wait for you.”

“Why?”

Something passes over his face, something she can’t seem to read, all tangled up in her own exhaustion and the way she can still feel the warmth of his hand left against her palm. “I’m your doctor, aren’t I?”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Are you allowed to have favorites?”

He laughs, steps away for good. “Probably not,” he says. “But that can be another one of our secrets, alright?”

>> break

>> iii.iv.

>> career progression // 06

She still has her arm in a sling when Lamiov tells her he’s grounding her, that she’s to lend her expertise to the Seeker program for the foreseeable future.

She sits still, listens to his explanation, tries to let the information wash over her, to sort it, categorize it. She tries not to pay attention to the way Lappincyk seems to watch her like a hawk from Lamiov’s side, as if he expects her to pull her charric at them at any moment. She tries to ignore the fire lapping at her mind, pulling at her bones, reminds herself that none of this matters, that her life belongs to the Ascendancy–

“Is this because I failed to protect your cargo?”

Lamiov’s mouth snaps shut, his face drained of any color. “Excuse me?”

She sits straighter, tilts her head. “You heard me.”

She watches Lappincyk’s hands twitch where he has them clasped behind his back. Lamiov holds her gaze. “What makes you think that?”

“I’m your best agent,” she reminds him and quietly curses the hint of uncertainty in her own voice at the statement. “And you're benching me. What else could it be about than me failing that mission.”

Is it because I slipped?, she wants to ask. Because you can’t trust it won’t happen again? Because there’ll always be something missing, because there’s always a chance I won’t remember, I won’t see–

A small smile spreads on Lamiov’s lips. She watches as his shoulders relax, feels that old familiar nausea at a realization half-formed, hard to grasp. “It’s not about that,” he assures her. “We are not benching you. We are temporarily reassigning you to a division that will uniqley benefit from your service record. So you can heal. This is where you will serve the Ascendancy best.”

“What about the situation over Pleknok,” she pushes. “The involvement of the Paataatus suggests–”

“That has been resolved by Mid Commander Thrawn,” Lamiov cuts in, a sudden tension back in his voice, the words spoken with finality. “There is nothing left for you to do. You are to accept your new assignment and stand down, do you understand?”

“You get to rest now,” Lappincyk says. “Isn’t that nice?”

She looks at them, lets the words wash over her as that thing at the back of her mind threatens to burn her insides to ash. Somehow she doubts they're right.

>> break

>> cohbo’mar’mo // sposia [ uag headquarters ]

She learns about fading three months in.

There is a very rational part of her mind that is aware she should be furious, that she should rage and scream and cry and tear them down like they did her. That she should mourn for all the nights spend lying awake as a child, too terrified to sleep, afraid to wake up empty, all the afternoons spend pacing up and down hallways during basic training, reciting the same oath over and over again worried she’ll forget, all the mornings spend going through mission briefings once, twice, three times, just to make sure it hasn’t changed since the last time she looked at it, all the days and days and days spend wondering about the smell of tava blossoms when all she’s ever known are ice and nyix hulls.

But as she sits there and listens to the briefing – the only former sky-walker in the room, the only one who looks at the data and knows what any of it actually means – all she feels is relief.

>> break

She seeks out Samarmo after, like she always does when there’s something wrong with her body she doesn’t know how to fix. She finds him with a patient, watches from the shadows of the doorway as he walks the girl through the various steps she can take to alleviate the strain of sensory overload.

“You are good with them,” she observes after the girl slips past her, joba lolly in hand. It’s not the first time that thought has crossed her mind, not the first time she watched even the most wide-eyed sky-walkers relax when seeing his smile. It feels different now, somehow. Important. Personal.

“I’d hope so,” he says mildly as he types out the last lines of his report on his questis. The smile hasn’t fully left his lips yet. It never seems to, lately, whenever they’re in the same room. “I work with them a lot, if you haven’t noticed.”

It’s said as a joke, humor clear in his voice and the way he raises one eyebrow at her. She thinks back to all the times she’s seen him put colleagues into their place for the way they handled their patients, all the times she’s seen him take apart officers twice his age with such cold fury she couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been better suited carrying a charric at his hip.

“That’s not what I meant,” she says, quieter, and watches the smile slip from his face.

“I know,” he says.

He stays still for a long while after that, just looks at her, holds her gaze with something that feels important, personal. “You learned about fading today, didn’t you?” he asks at last, something impossibly heavy in his voice.

She leans back against the examination table, mirrors the way he’s crossed his arms in front of his chest where he’s leaned against his desk. “I did.”

“I’m sorry,” he says and something about that feels sharp, about how you can only ever really apologize for something by acknowledging the hurt it’s caused, by how that sentiment feels stark against what she’s just been briefed on as standard operating procedure.

“I don’t think that’s what you’re supposed to say,” she points out.

“No, probably not,” he concedes. He takes a deep breath, looks at the ceiling for a long moment. “But you know– the reason I’m good with them is–” he breaks off, fixes his eyes firmly on hers. Important. Personal. “It’s because I used to be one.”

She frowns. “A child?”

He huffs out a laugh. “A sky-walker.”

She blinks at him, mind lagging behind for a split second– and then it all clicks into place with such violent force she has to hold on to the examination table against the vertigo swiping at her feet.

The deliberate calm that always seemed too natural to be a mask, that unphased quiet only ever forged by years of staring headfirst at disaster. The way he moves around ships as if they were his home, how he checks the keycard in his pocket three times every time they leave the building, worried he might forget. The simple fact that he’s younger than any of his colleagues, how under any other circumstances he would have needed to be in service with the defense force for half a decade before they'd even consider him qualified.

It’s all right there, all the clues, all the things she couldn't see, hidden behind his smile and the red joba lollies tucked away in his belt. Everything but–

“How in the Chaos did you convince them to let you work for the program again?” she asks, still frowning, and watches him stifle another laugh.

“I was very persistent,” he says, then shrugs with a nonchalance that feels oddly comforting. “Truthfully I think the only reason they let me back in is because the information on my old service records doesn’t really match up with my current ones. Don't much look like I used to back then either. Less risk of anyone realizing I've been part of the program. Including my patients.”

She frowns at him for a second, skipping over rows of data in her mind, all the files that have marked every sky-walkers born in the past six decades as girls– something else pushes itself to the front of her thoughts instead, something about the way he said I’m sorry, not two minutes ago. “Why did you stay?”

She watches some of the easy humor bleed from his face, layers stripped back to reveal the things buried underneath, the only ones she knows he’s consciously trying to forget. Just like her. “Even after all they did to us?” he asks, dragging them out into the open with sharp clarity. “Even after I found out about fading?”

“Yes.”

He holds her gaze for a long second. "Because I couldn't just leave them,” he says, that same sharp clarity underscoring his words. “They are not going to stop. I hate that that's the case but as long as the Ascendancy's safety depends on it they just won't. So I have to do what I can. If there is just one sky-walker I can make feel safe, one sky-walker I can give even just a little comfort I–" his voice cracks, eyes glowing brighter with determination. "I have to try."

Something lurches in her chest, an odd sensation like losing her balance and being caught again. Memories tumble through her mind, of his fingers cold against her shoulder and her own hands curling around the crushed up remains of joba lolly.

She tilts her head at him, holds his gaze until his face smoothes out into something softer again. “Hm,” she says.

“Hm,” he smiles.

"I don't think you're supposed to tell me, by the way,” she points out when they leave the building that night. “That you used to be a sky-walker, I mean."

“Is that so?”

She nods, checks her keycard for the third time. “But that’s alright,” she says. "It can be our secret."

>> break

>> career progression // 07

The relief fades after barely six months of hopping from one research center to the other.

She’s not sure what she’s left with in its stead, isn’t sure what she’s supposed to make of the fact that the fire scorching her mind never ceased, that the pull in her bones refuses to ebb away even when she keeps telling herself that this is where she’s supposed to be, that sitting behind a desk shifting through data and reports is how she’ll serve the Ascendancy best.

What she is sure of is that whatever happened over Glastis Three still leaves a bitter aftertaste in her mouth. That beyond the frustration of her own failure it’s Lamiov’s relief at that same frustration that makes her lie awake at night wondering what it is she missed.

She makes it another two months before she starts looking, before she starts digging through archives and vaults and lists and people – any information she can get her hands on. She makes it another week after that before she finds herself in the cockpit of a shuttle, staring out at the stars.

She finds what she’s looking for in the end, digs up the truth and pays for it first with the burden of its knowledge and later – when she hunts down the Paataatus forces Thrawn let escape over Pleknok to makes sure that this secret will never leave the Ascendancy – nearly with her life.

She drags herself to Samarmo’s quarters after, goes to seek out the one person she always does when there’s something wrong she doesn’t know how to fix. She leaves bloody fingerprints on his door frame as she collapses into his arms, remembers nothing later except the way he said her name, how he said “Rika,” as if they knew each other, as if she meant something to him.

She wakes up on Naporar, bared up on a hospital bed with tubes sticking out of her chest, his hand wrapped tightly around hers. There is blood still crusted on his scrubs and stuck on his elbow, as if he hadn’t once left her side, not even to clean up. “I’m sorry,” he says when she wiggles her fingers in his. “I know I should have asked to touch you first but– well– You reached out to me. So I took your hand.”

She looks back up at the ceiling, holds him tighter.

"You weren't really an analyst when we met, were you?" he asks later, after a whole cohort of nurses bullied him into taking a shower.

"No," she says.

"Alright,” he reaches out again, waits until she reaches back before taking her hand. “It can be our secret then."

>> break

>> mitth’ras’safis // first cataloged meeting // naporar [ medical treatment facility, room 405 ]

A week before she gets officially discharged she walks into her room to a stranger flipping idly through the book Samarmo left on her bedside table.

It takes her a moment to make him out as a Syndic – a Mitth Syndic judging by the red of his robes and the rising sun emblem stitched onto his lapel – her whole body still exhausted from physical therapy, her mind just barely keeping up.

“Are you Irizi’rik’ardok?” he asks as he notices her standing in the door, a small smile on his lips.

He has kind eyes, looks unassuming really, but there is something buried beneath, something clever, maybe even sly. She's seen him once before she realizes suddenly, somewhere just passing her by– Glasstis Three. On the rescued freighter. Beside Thrawn.

She stands a bit straighter despite the pain shooting through her spine, something like alarm bells ringing at the back of her mind. “I am she.”

His smile widens. “A pleasure to meet you. I am Syndic Mitth’ras’safis.”

She feels her eyes narrow, her mind fighting its way back to attention as she tries to pick out a valid reason why he could have found her, what this could possibly be about. There is no possibility he could have known she was at Glasstis Three, no records of her existence available anywhere other than her work as a low-level analyst.

“If this is about the Seeker program, I am the wrong person to talk to,” she settles on in the end, the only logical conclusion. “I am just an analyst temporarily assigned to the program and the initiative itself is a cumulative decentralized effort between military branches and the UAG, so I–”

“Yes, yes I am aware.” Thrass holds up a hand to halt her, his expression more amused than annoyed. “Trust me, it took quite some time to even get the name ‘Seeker Program’ out of anyone. Time and clearance.” His expression softens, a sudden odd intimacy in the way he looks at her. “But I’m not here to talk to you about the program. I just– wanted to meet you.”

She frowns. There is something she’s missing, something she feels should be obvious, something hidden below layers of memories, like clouds drifting by too fast. “Are you sure you have the right person?”

He smiles, the type of smile that feels like he’s just thought of a private joke. “Yes, quite sure.”

He continues to ask her questions regardless, some about the program, her work as an analyst in general, but most about trivial things – her favorite places visited around the Chaos, what foods in the UAG’s mess she hates the least, what it’s like to grow up at the Irizi homestead two kilometers below the ice.

She knows she should be more careful about the information she gives out, that she should wrap herself in omissions and half-truths like she has all her life. She knows that he must have some ulterior motive for seeking her out. But there is something about him – about the way he nods at her monosyllabic answers with sincere interest and the way his face crinkles in amusement at even her more harrowing stories – that makes her feel safe, a nearly dream-like calmess, as if time passes differently in his presence.

“You remind me of my brother,” he tells her at last, when she looks up to realize they’ve been talking for over an hour. There is something buried beneath the way he says that word, brother, something that makes an old memory fight itself back up through the clouds of her mind – stars dancing across Thrawn’s neck, his knuckles, the deep black of his uniform, Ziara leaning over him asking him if he needed her to call someone named Thrass.

“Mitth’raw’nuruodo.”

Thrass blinks at her in surprise. “How did you–”

And she remembers now too, how Thrawn kept looking at Thrass over Glasstis Three, how his eyes flickered to him whenever he seemed unsure what to do next. How there was something akin to sadness in his eyes whenever he studied Thrass in the moments he was sure Thrass couldn't see him.

“Just a hunch,” she says.

He huffs out a laugh, that same smile on his face as before, like a private joke. “Right, of course,” he says, and there it is again too, something buried beneath, impossible to grasp. “I’d better go, I’ve taken too much of your time already. You need to recover.”

He gets up, reaches out to take her hand. She lets him. “I know we are essentially strangers,” he says, his hands soft and firm around her calloused palms. “But if you ever need anything, or if you’d just like to talk, I’d be delighted to see you again.”

She finds she believes him.

“Who was that?” Smarmo asks as he comes to find her at the end of his shift, walking into the room barely a minute after Thrass left.

She looks at the door, imagines them passing each other in the hallway, imagines the small nod and smile Thrass must have given him in anonymous greeting, wonders if it looked similar to the way he smiled at her.

“Just a stranger,” she says.

>> break

>> career progression // 08
>>> demotion

Lamiov has her in his office the very next day.

“What in the Chaos were you thinking?” She opens her mouth to answer, closes it again as he holds up a finger to shut her up. “You were told to stand down,” he snaps. “What wasn’t clear about that?”

She keeps her mouth shut this time, focuses on keeping her hands from balling into fists. She watches as he paces up and down the length of his office once, then finally collapse into his chair with a shake of his head. “Ungimbaled lasers, both of you,” he mutters under his breath.

Something flickers through her mind, impossible to grasp like clouds high up in the sky. “Sir?”

His eyes snap up to her, narrow slightly. “Nothing,” he says with another shake of his head. “Just a figure of speech.” He lets out a long sigh, and picks up his questis. “Two broken ribs, lacerations to the lower back, abdominal area and right calf. Trauma to the vertebra, possible concussion,” he reads from her medical report, “Any one of those would make you unfit for continued service.”

“I’ve had worse,” she points out and feels her mouth go dry at the lie. A memory fights itself back up through the sudden tendrils of panic rising in her chest, hazy images of reaching out to Samarmo on the way to the hospital, how he held onto her hand, wide eyed and covered head to toe in her blood.

Lamiov raises his eyebrows at her, pushes his questis across the table. ”That doesn’t matter now, either way,” he says. “You’ve been reassigned.”

Her fingers freeze mid-air. “Reassigned? But I– Sir. With all due respect, I understand that I overstepped but–” She sits up straighter, wills her voice back under control. “There are things left to do here, things only I can do–”

“It’s not punishment,” Lamiov says, holding up a hand. “It’s mercy. And it’s not a suggestion.”

“Mercy?” she spits and nearly recoils at the venom in her own voice. She takes a deep breath, tries to remind herself of what they told her, of what they repeated to her over and over and over again, of loyalty and putting others first and the greater good of the Ascendancy as a whole, of–

“Mercy,” Lamiov repeats. “You’ve disobeyed direct orders and nearly lost your life in the process. Both things that would get lesser officers discharged. I had to fight to get you reassigned, to make sure your talents wouldn’t be lost. So yes, mercy.”

He gives the questis another nudge towards her. When she reaches out to take it he doesn’t let go. “What you learned about our lost cargo can not leave this room,” he reminds her before he releases his grip, voice grave. “You can never tell anyone. Not even Samarmo.”

She blinks at him, caught off guard. “Samarmo,” she frowns. “Why would I–”

There’s a knock at the door. When she turns she finds it opening to–

“I’m sorry I’m late, sir,” Samarmo says, just slightly out of breath, rushing in without waiting for a reply. “One of my patients thought it would be very funny to play hide and seek with my keycard.”

She looks down at Lamiov’s questis, feels her budding panic covered and snuffed out by something else, something heavy and final. “Immediate reassignment of Senior Commander Irzi’rika’dok as analyst and principal protective detail to the Seeker’s Shadehouse on Ool,” the brief reads, “Civilian identity provided – Cohbo’rika’dok, former nurse, wife to Cohbo’mar’mo [formerly Lieutenant Commander Ufsa’mar’mo], co-owners of Ardok ranch.”

>> break

>> ar’alani // naporar [ nighthunter bar ]

She spends her last night on Naporar getting a drink at one of the popular military bars. She doesn’t quite know how she ends up there, just that she can’t stay in her hotel a second longer, with all her bags packed and fate sealed, just waiting for her proverbial exile.

She spots Ar’alani at the bar the second she walks in, everything about her unmistakable even in civilian clothing.

“You are the last person I thought I’d ever see here,” Ar’alani greets her as she slides onto the stool beside her. There’s a half-empty glass of some red liquor in her hands, a soft purple sheen on her cheeks. “Didn’t you once fake a medical emergency just to get out of mandatory officer team building?”

Zirika raises an eyebrow at her as she flags down the bartender. “Don’t know what you're talking about,” she lies. Ar’alani snorts out a laugh and knocks back the rest of her drink. Zirika doubles her order.

She tries to recall the last time and place they’ve run into each other, gives up when all their busy hallway encounters seem to swim together with the thruming of the music behind them. It must have been years, not since Ar’alani made Commodore, definitely not since– Zirika’s eyes catch on the small gold emblem Ar’alani is absentmindedly rubbing between her fingers, a symbol usually attached to the honor chains of–

“You made Admiral,” she realizes out loud.

Ar’alani huffs out a laugh. It holds no humor. “I did,” she says. “A week ago. I ship out tomorrow morning.” There is something heavy in her voice, emotions amplified by the liquor Zirika can still see shining on her lips.

“Congratulations?”

Ar’alani shoots her a look, takes another swig of her drink. “I didn’t understand back then, you know,” she says after a long moment of silence. “That first night we met. I asked you for advice on leaving home. You. A merit-adoptee. I was an idiot. And cruel. I’m sorry.”

Zirka thinks back to that night, the memory still fresh like the snow beneath their boots. How she looked out at the stars wishing she could go home to them, how now over a decade later she still wishes she could. How nothing really changed much at all, except the number of scars against their skin and the calluses of her own hands.

“It’s alright,” she says, watching as the ice slowly melts in her drink. “We were kids. We didn’t know better.”

“Didn’t we?” Ar’alani shoots her another look, this one softer, a smile pulling at her lips. Zirika finds herself mirroring it, looks away to take a sip of her drink.

"I thought it would hit me when I made Commodore, you know?” Ar’alani continues with a long sigh. “But no. I was anxious then, sure. But I was surrounded by family, all the people who’ve dreamed of seeing me in white. It felt right, in the end. This time–” She shakes her head. “Not even Thrawn was there this time, do you– frost, do you know they sent him out on some fools errand chasing down imaginary pirates? Just because the whole of the Syndicature is shaking in their little boots when they as much as hear his name, I swear those pompous–” She cuts herself off, slaps her hand flat against the bar, then knocks back what's left of her drink.

Zirika tries and fails to hide her smile in her own drink. Maybe some things did change since they were kids, after all. Ar’alani composes herself again, smoothes out the lapel of her jacket for good measure.

“So anyway,” she says as she motions for a refill. "What brings you here tonight?"

Zirika looks down at her half-finished drink, thinks about her bags, all packed, waiting at her in her empty hotel room. "I'm getting married tomorrow," she says and knocks the liquor back too.

Ar’alani narrows her eyes. "Congratulations?"

Zirika huffs out a small laugh, despite herself. "It's not like that. It's–"

"For a mission?"

"In a way."

Ar’alani is silent for a moment, eyes far away. "So we're both not Iriz anymore then I guess, are we."

"Suppose not," Zirika shrugs.

The bartender puts down their next round. Ar’alani reaches out and snatches the whole bottle from him. Zirkia watches him open his mouth to protest and then immediately think better of it as she sits up straighter, brushing back her jacket to reveal the charric concealed beneath.

"I think we have the same problem, you know?" Ar’alani says as she tops up their glasses.

"Oh?"

“We both ship out tomorrow,” she points out, her eyes dropping to Zirika’s lips and the way the condensation of her glass clings to her hands. "And neither of us wants to be alone tonight."

Zirika leans forward, watches as Ar’alani licks her lips, and then, because there have really never been that many decisions that were theirs to begin with, because there is really nothing waiting for her, for them, beyond what’s best for the Ascendancy, she says, "I think I have a solution for that."

>> break

>> cohbo’mar’mo // naporar [ spaceport ]

Samarmo – Bomarmo now – waits for her at the shuttle the next day, wrapped up in a sweater that seems to swallow him whole, the same dark circles under his eyes she knows are under hers. She’s hard pressed to think of what he would have lost sleep about last night.

Zirika – Borika now – pulls her scarf closer around her, tries to ignore that short flicker of confusion on Bomarmo’s face at how it very distinctly does not smell like her. Take it, Ar’alani had said as she draped it around her neck not an hour ago when they were scrambling to get dressed. Wherever it is you're going, you’ll need it more than me.

Bomarmo reaches out to take her luggage, a smile on his face that for once doesn’t seem to sit right. She feels something tug at her stomach, something that feels oddly like guilt.

“We're going to be alright,” he tells her as the shuttle leaves Naporar behind, his smile firmer now, steady and calm. “What's one more secret, anyway.”

>> break

IV. COHBO’RIK’ARDOK

>> iv.i.

>> cohbo’mar’mo // ool [ ardok ranch ]

She is twenty-nine when she’s declared married to her husband.

It's a quiet affair, just two signatures signed on documents inconspicuously backdated two years, then an oath exchanged, both to uphold their marriage and their mission.

Bomarmo gets them a cake on the way home, tells her he feels they deserve as much.

"We should exchange some more facts about each other," he says that night when they’re both sitting on the couch of what is now their living room. The words are muffled around the piece of cake in his mouth, his legs stretched out in front of him, toes nearly touching her thigh. "You know, to keep the cover up, make it seem real."

She folds her legs under herself, tries to find a comfortable position. "Like what?"

"Anything, really. Favorite food, favorite color, favorite place, the likes."

She raises an eyebrow at him. "We know all of those things about each other. It’s all in the briefing."

He huffs out a laugh. "Point taken," he concedes. "Then something no one else knows. Something that wasn't in any briefing."

"Such as?"

“Well–” He hesitates, actually falters a little. She watches him take another bite of cake, fingers drumming against his plate, uncharacteristically nervous. She debates asking him what’s wrong–

"I have a brother," he blurts out and Borika nearly drops her plate.

There is a long moment where she just stares at him, mind wiped completely clean for what frankly feels like an embarrassing amount of time, then a million questions slam into her so fast all she gets out in the end is a simple, “How?”

Bomarmo tries and fails to hide his smile. "Well you see, when two people really really like each other they–"

"Bo," she admonishes and watches him smile wider at her use of his pre-approved nickname.

"I didn’t just remember him,” he soothes. “Still don’t. He was the one who found me, not the other way around."

“How did he do that?” She shakes her head. “Those records are sealed better than anything in the UAG’s vaults.”

“Dumb luck, really,” Bo shrugs. “He’s EDF, high enough to know about the seeker program. He knew how old I was when I was taken into the program and how old sky-walkers usually are when they age out of it again. So instead of trying to get access to sealed records he went through the public adoption records of the years I most likely left the program in hopes of finding my name among them.”

“That’s–” she frowns. “That’s really clever actually. Where is the dumb luck part?”

“Well, there are nine ruling families, multiple years I could have aged out – that whole exercise could have taken him a long time,” Bo points out. “Except, turns out we were both adopted into the same family. Which is where he started his search.”

“He’s Ufsa,” Borika realizes and feels something nearly giddy pull at her chest, faint childlike excitement long buried and faded.

“Correct,” Bo grins. “Senior Commander Ufsa’mak’ro.”

“Hold on– Mar’mo and Mak’ro,” she laughs. “That feels nearly too on the nose.”

“Doesn’t it?” Bo shakes his head, grin still stuck to his lips, then she watches him falter again slightly, a nearly sheepish expression on his face now. “Actually I– The name we were assigned? Cohbo? It’s uhm– It’s my birth family’s name.”

“You are from Ool?”

He shrugs. “Apparently.”

Something clicks. She lets out a long breath, somewhere between resignation and frustration. “This assignment– Lamiov picked you because that’s what makes our cover believable.”

Something passes over his face she can’t seem to read, something that reminds her of exhaustion and dislocated shoulders and the warmth of his palm against her. “He did,” he concedes. “But I also–” He looks away, drums his fingers against his plate again. “I requested to go with you.”

She frowns. There is something about that statement that makes her heart beat unusually sharp in her chest. “Why?”

He looks at her for a long time, that type of wonder in his eyes of someone who’s seen the stars for the first time just to be told they’re forever out of reach. “I’m your doctor, aren’t I?” he says at last.

“Hm,” she frowns.

He lets out a small huff of laughter. “Hm,” he says.

“So what is something no briefing knows about you?” he asks hours later when they’re both lying awake in a bed that feels too soft, too civilian.

She looks past him out the window, watches how the light of the stars plays faintly over their bedroom floor. She thinks about waking up to the wide eyed look on the face of a man she doesn’t really know, about the scarf that doesn’t smell like her, about the secrets she’s been sworn to take to her grave. She thinks of drifting alone out in the Chaos with her hand wrapped around the crushed remains of a bright red joba lolly.

“Sometimes,” she says, “I’m worried I won’t ever belong anywhere except among the stars.”

>> break

>>> cont.

She learns a lot of things over the next year or so.

She learns that it’s really hard to fall asleep at first, when you’ve never had to fall asleep beside someone, and that on the days she caves and sleeps on the floor instead she always wakes up with an extra blanket draped over her.

She learns that food tastes better when it doesn’t come from a mess or in the form of a ration bar, that she actually looks forward to Bo calling her for dinner each night, and that she feels stupidly greatful when Bo goes through the effort of installing a new doorbell after she offhandedly mentions how much she hates the sound of their current one.

She learns that Bo’s parents live barely an hour from the ranch, that his mother gives crushing hugs, and that all the awkwardness of learning how to navigate the intimate relationship of family you’ve never known is nearly worth it when she gets to see the way Bo’s face lights up nearly the same way his fathers does whenever they stop by, right down to the dimples on his cheeks.

She learns that it's much harder to resent her assignment when she watches the way even the most timid, wide-eyed sky-walkers find their laugh whenever Bo picks them up to twirl them through the sky, and that she can’t help but wonder if this is exactly where she’s supposed be when she wakes up to a gaggle of them in their bed on the nights when storms rage outside.

She learns that it’s surprisingly easy to play husband and wife, that she doesn't much mind holding Bo’s hand on the weekends they walk through the market in town, that her smile comes naturally when she introduces him as her better half to strangers on the street.

She learns that it’s easier to not question her own mind as much when there is someone around to help her check items from the lists and whiteboards scattered all over the house, that she never worries as much about having forgotten parts of herself as long as the first thing she sees every morning is Bo.

Most of all she learns that she doesn’t long to be among the stars as much when she comes into the bedroom at night to find it full of them, that she doesn’t feel as homesick when she finds Bo looking up at her from where he sits on their bed, star-projector in hand, a sheepish smile on his face as he tells her, “I know you miss the stars, so I brought them to you.”

>> break

>>> cont.

She is thirty the first time she kisses her husband. It is, for lack of a better word, an absolutely unspectacular affair.

"I'll go check on the packbulls before I'm heading over to Shadehouse," Bo says as he comes out of the kitchen, a cup of caccoleaf balanced in one hand as he double checks his keycard with the other. They have people to do that for them, farmhands actually trained in looking after livestock. He still insists on checking on them every morning. "Can you feed the growzer before you go out?"

She looks up from her questis just long enough to watch him knock back his last sip of caccoleaf. "Will do," she says, already back to reading. It's routine by now, just another morning, eerily domestic.

"Thank you," Bo says on the way to the door and she doesn't know what makes her turn her head towards him this very particular morning, what makes her break that routine – maybe it's the smile in his voice, maybe it's just pure and stupid chance – but she does, just as he passes her, just long enough for him to press a kiss to her lips before he's out the door.

It happens so quickly, with such a boring casualness, it’s only when she realizes that she can’t seem to process anything written on her questis that what just happened catches up with her brain. Before she can form an opinion or even a coherent thought about it Bo storms back through the door.

"I'm sorry!" he shouts eyes wide and breath coming in short gasps as if he just sprinted up the driveway, which she realizes he probably did. "I'm so sorry I don't know why I did that– I mean I know but I– I should not have done that without asking you first, especially not when we're alone, not ever really and I–"

The rest is lost somewhere between Borika's lips on his and the way the air is knocked out of him as she pushes him up against the door.

She can't really recall when she got up, when she made the decision that the only logical solution to the problem at hand was to respond in turn, but she's hard pressed to give a frost about it now because Bo parts his lips beneath hers and grabs her around the hips as if she's the only thing that keeps him from downing.

Still, maybe she should at least– "Do you want me to ask?" she says breaking apart just enough to get the words out.

"What?" Bo blinks up at her, breath even more ragged than when he burst through the door.

"Do you want me to ask if it's okay to kiss you?"

"No."

Borika feels her brows crease, falters slightly. "No, you don't want me to kiss you?"

"No, Rika–" Bo says and there is a grin on his lips now, soft and open and comfortable in a way that stirs something deep inside her, something that feels like home. "No, as in, you don't have to ask. It's yes. If it's you it's always yes–"

And then her lips are back on his and really, all that's important from then on out, is that their second kiss is a lot more spectacular than their first.

>> break

>>> cont.

The whole relationship part of it all doesn't come as easy as the kissing part, in a way neither of them really see coming. There is something about settling in around someone when you're already married, when you already share a life and a house and a purpose and a bed.

There is something about the dichotomy of nothing changing and everything shifting all at once, about brushing her teeth beside Bo at night and realizing she is suddenly not sure anymore if she could uphold the mission she swore an oath on, if when push comes to shove she could sacrifice this man for the greater good of the Ascendancy.

It’s something about being unsure if any of the choices she’s ever made were her own, if the way her heart beats faster when she holds his hand is nothing but the product of someone else's design. It’s waking up in the morning to arms wrapped tightly around her and wondering what will happen when she’s no longer needed, when they decide there is somewhere else she’d serve best. It’s that nagging sensation that maybe her happiness is just part of the mission, too.

"Why me?" she asks one night when they’re both combing through the week's EDF reports in their kitchen, ankles intertwined with each other below the table. "Why did you ask Lamiov to be assigned here with me, of all people?"

Bo looks up at her, frowns a little. "Because I liked being around you," he says, the way he used to say I’m your doctor, aren’t I?, as if it was the most logical thing in all of the Chaos.

She frowns. "It's as simple as that?"

He huffs out a small laugh. "Would you like it to be more complicated?"

She thinks for a while, about all they've been through, and all the secrets they share, and how having something simple in their lives, in the end, is really quite extraordinary. "No," she says. "I wouldn't."

He smiles and reaches across the table to take her hand. "Then it's as simple as that."

>> break

>>> cont.

She's nearly thirty-one when she finds the tava blossom field hidden deep in the woods behind their house.

It’s not a field, really – just a small patch of white flowers bathed in what little sunlight managed to fight itself through the thick canopy of trees – but there is something nearly overwhelmingly big about it still, about how it managed to sprout here, amongst the dirt.

It’s overwhelming in how it smells as familiar to her as the weight of a charric in her palm, and the feeling of Bo’s lips against her collarbone, how the way the petals reflect light against the trees nearly looks like falling stars. It makes her think of watching the sky-walkers cry and wail when they arrive here, at Shadehouse, and how quiet and calm they are after the fading, how sometimes she looks at them at night, that fire burning inside her, pulling at her bones, and how she hopes, deep down, that the process worked better for them than it did for her.

She crouches down, stretches her hand out into the light to let her fingers run over the petals as she tries to chase their smell down the lanes of her mind, hoping she’ll–

"I remember them."

Her head snaps up to find Bo standing across from her, just at the other side of the clearing. “I remember that smell,” he says again and as he steps forward to crouch down beside her she can see the tears that well up in his eyes and stick first to his lashes, then to his cheeks, like morning dew.

And she thinks about how she saw him cry that same way the first night they came back home after visiting his parents, how he held onto her and whispered I’m so sorry, over and over and over again, just because she once told him without thinking that she wasn’t sure how she could ever know where she belonged if she didn’t know where she came from first.

She looks at the tears spilling over his cheeks, at how he cries for both of them when she can't even begin to sort out any of her own emotions, and realizes, in that very moment that she loves this man – from the unruly curls at the top of his head that refuse to stay in place, over the smile she sees on his lips whenever she walks through the door, to the scars on his chest that are only ever visible in the morning light that streams through their bedroom window, all the way down to how his feet always seem to be ice cold whenever he tucks them beneath hers on the couch.

She loves every part of him, this man that she wasn't supposed to love, every gentle ridiculous inch, and even when she still pretends to be debating it with herself while she brushes her teeth beside him at night, she knows, for a fact, that she'd abandon the mission without a second thought if it would mean staying with him.

That loving him was her decision, maybe the only one she ever took in her life.

She reaches over the field of tava blossoms and takes one of Bo’s hands into hers. "I think I'm in love with you," she says, the words both clear and foreign on her tongue.

His eyes snap to hers, blinking away the tears in surprise. "Oh," he says as he reaches up with his free hand to wipe at his eyes. "Good. Uhm– that's good.” And then she watches as a smile blooms on his face, bright and safe in a way only the stars ever are to her. “Me too,” he grins. “I love you too."

He puts his hand over hers, holds her steady. Something stirs inside her, that thing that feels like home, and she knows then too – as she looks up to the sky and thinks about the stars in their bedroom – that she really doesn't need to know where she came from to know that this is where she belongs.

That it wouldn't matter where she was, as long as she was with him.

>> break

>> iv.ii.

>> cohbo’mar’mo; ufsa’ma’kro; ~~mitth’raw’nuruodo; mitth’ras’safis~~ // ool [ardok ranch; cohbo family home]

It all starts to unravel, piece by piece, shortly before she turns thirty-three.

She’s cleaning out soot from the firepit in the great room when it hits her, that thing that’s been mostly lying dormant at the back of her mind for months now suddenly spitting out flames as if someone has poured gasoline over it, engulfing her whole. She feels something dig into her chest like shrapnel, the sensation so sharp it forces her to her knees, gasping for air, one hand frantically checking for injuries as the other scrambles to find hold on the stones around the firepit.

“Rika!” She hears Bo’s voice come from somewhere behind her, far away and distorted as if underwater. She tries to hold onto it until his hands are finally on her back, pulling her out. “Are you okay?” he asks as he kneels down in front of her, hands roaming over her face, checking her pulse. “What happened? You suddenly went down, you–” He breaks off brows creasing in something akin to shock.

She follows his gaze down to her hand still holding onto the firepit, the stone beneath her palm now cracked and broken. She remembers trying to rearrange those same stones two days ago to make more space around the fire, how it took both of them to lift a single one, how it barely jiggled when they accidentally dropped it to the ground.

“How did you do that?” Bo asks carefully, his hands never leaving her as if he was afraid she’d run away if he’d let go.

“I– I don’t know,” she manages to wring out of herself and then her arms are around Bo’s shoulders, holding on to him for dear life, like an anchor, suddenly untethered.

They don’t really talk about it after – not for lack of Bo trying to coax it out of her, but for lack of her being able to put it into words, this feeling that settled into her chest that night, how it fanned the flames of her mind and janked at her bones, that knowledge that something shifted in the Chaos, that eerie sensation of impending disaster breathing down her neck.

They don’t talk about it when she drops her cup of caccoleaf onto the kitchen floor a week later as the report of Senior Captain Thrawn’s nearly fatal encounter with the Vegaari finally reaches them, or when Bo finds her hurling up her breakfast behind the barn two weeks after that, with the screen of her questis still open to Syndic Thrass’ obituary.

They don’t talk about it because she doesn’t understand what any of it means, why she wakes up again at night to Thrawn’s face staring back at her, wide eyed and scared, like she did a decade ago when she was drifting alone out in the Chaos, and why the loss of a stranger feels like it’s her own.

She keeps going instead, joins Bo for dinner at his parents a month after and tries to ignore the shrapnel knocking around in her chest as she watches both of them fawn over Samakro’s promotion. Senior Captain and commander of the Springhawk, a prestigious ship, an honor.

“We’re so proud of you Sammy,” his mother says as Samakro struggles to hide both his pride and embarrassment. Borika catches the pain that lies beneath the two, visible in his eyes for just a split second. She remembers reading the report of the mission that made him Junior Captain all those years ago, how he watched nearly half of his officers die because some Syndic poked his nose into places he shouldn’t have.

She watches as Bo tries and fails to hide his amusement at his brother’s embarrassment, and how Samakro huffs and kicks him below the table, and wonders about that time Thrass found her on Naporar. Wonders if the reason she feels like this now is because they had meant something to each other in a previous life.

She forces a smile on her face, raises a glass in Samakro’s honor and pushes it all down, that feeling of secondhand grief, and impending doom and the irrational urge to check the medical progress of a stranger recovering from death on Naporar.

She pushes it down, tries not to think about it as she holds Bo in her arms at night like an anchor, staring at the reflection of the stars on their bedroom floor. She decides to move on.

Yet– sometimes, on the nights when the fire inside her burns too bright, when the pull in her bones is too strong to fall asleep, she finds herself staring out at the fields, at the vastness of the planet and the sky, unable to shake the feeling that they're staring back at her.

>> break

>> mitth’ali’astov // first cataloged meeting // ool [ ardok ranch ]

The disaster that finds her barely three years later is a young woman by the name of Mitth’ali’astov.

Borika makes it through pleas and explanations and questions, makes it through the whiplash of reading her name beside Thrawn’s on age old and forgotten family records, holds it together even when she hears Samakro’s voice, her brother-in-law’s voice , come over Thalia's comm speaker, holds it together all the way until they’re in the air speeding towards the spaceport and Thalia’s says, all wide-eyed innocence, “Too bad you can’t come along.”

“Why would I want to do that?” Borika asks even as she feels that pull in her bones grow so overwhelmingly vast she has to grip the steering wheel until her knuckles are white, in fear she won’t stay tethered to her seat.

“To meet him,” Thalias says, the confusion in her voice sharp against Borika’s raging thoughts.

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” Thalias says, frowning at her. “Because he’s your brother?”

You remind me of my brother, Thrass had told her all those years ago and Borika can’t help the memories fighting themselves back up now, of that first time she saw Thrawn across that ballroom on Naporar, how he looked at her wide-eyed and scared, and how that image is etched into her mind so vividly, how some part of her must have known, even then.

And it all slams into her then, all the times their paths crossed over the years, how they were so close, yet as distant and unreachable as those same stars she longs for.

She thinks of how she remembers the sound of Thrawn’s voice over the speaker at Glastis Three, how she knows the exact way he pronounced his odo rites, and wonders what his voice must have sounded like when they were kids, if he screamed her name the day they took her away. She thinks of how she can remember every single action report she’s ever read about him, yet doesn’t remember what he looked like as a child.

She shakes her head, tries to keep the memories at bay– “There’s no point,” she says and tries to push past the feeling of something breaking, something she wasn’t even aware was ever whole. Tries not to think about how he recognized her back then, a decade ago, and how even if they’d met now, they’d still be strangers, in the end.

“Don’t you understand?” she says as she feels tears sting in her eyes, collect in her lashes and drop like morning dew, as she cries for what might as well be the first time in her life. “There’s no point. I don’t remember him.”

>> break

>> stybla’mi’novodo; ba’kif // naporar [ edf headquarters ]

It's all a blur after, from coming back home to find Bo waiting for her on the porch with concern in his eyes, over trying to cram all of her emotions back into whatever place they need to go to let her move on, to finally watching Thrawn get exiled on a grainy live-stream with Bo’s arms wrapped around her in a vice grip.

She barely makes it to Naporar in time to watch from the shadows as they escort him onto the Parala, stripped of his uniform and rank and family, yet surrounded by what looks like a whole battalion of people. They’re all there – Samakro, Ar’alani, Thalias, Ziinda, Roscu, Wutroow, all the officers he served with on the Springhawk, all lined up to pay their respects.

It should be sad, she knows, maybe pitiful even, to watch someone walk to their doom like that, left with nothing to show for their efforts, but as she watches him smile at his officers with his head held high, as she sees him exchange one last nod with Samakro, and one last silent promise with Ar’alani waiting for him at the end of the line, all she feels is rage.

And she realizes then – as she storms into Lamiov's office after to find him and Ba’kif hunched over a glass of liquor, their faces fallen and liquids untouched – that when you grow up knowing your life isn’t really your own, that when all you’ve ever know is to be loyal, to put others first, there isn't really ever any space for you to learn to process your emotions any other way than to let them burn you to ash.

"You knew, didn't you?" she bites out and feels the rage burn brighter than the fire in her head, brighter than the pull in her bones. She remembers that first time she saw Thrawn on Naporar, how casually Lamiov said his name. "You knew he was my brother–"

"Zirika–" Lamiov starts to soothe, something tired in his voice, something broken. Ba’kif raises from his chair, takes a step towards her–

"That's not my name," she snaps. "It's Cohbo'rik'ardok. And I don’t give a frost about your excuses. You knew .” She takes a step towards them, feels the pieces click into place with violent clarity. “That's how you found him, isn't it? Through me?"

She watches them exchange a long glance, then Ba’kif sinks back down into his chair. "That is correct, yes," he concedes. "Your performance in secondary education and basic training made us look into your family tree. It was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up."

“An opportunity–” She grinds her teeth in an effort not to hiss. "And what about Thrass?"

Another glance between them. She tilts her head, watches Lamiov’s hand twitch towards his holster as if on instinct. "He was a contingency,” he finally says. “Given some of your earlier missions we– let's say we anticipated Thrawn might need someone to guide him a little bit, to keep him grounded, like you did."

"Like I–” She feels something in her thoughts lurch to a halt, nearly a physician sensation like the floor of a ship shifting beneath her feet as it fires its thrusters. “Bo,” she realizes. “You– You arranged for us to meet. You put him in my path. You– Was any of it real? Was any of my life my own? Was any of Thrawn’s?"

Lamiov opens his mouth, closes it again. Stays silent.

And as she watches these two great men avert their eyes from her, she feels the rage burn in her chest, threatening to bubble over, to spill from her mouth and her eyes and her hands, like the vastness of the planet and the sky staring back at her– “Answer me,” she snarls and watches the glass in Lamiov’s hand shatter into a million pieces.

They don’t, in the end. All they do is stare at her in fear and wonder, those great great men who hold her life in their hands.

"I hope that you live a long life," she tells them as she turns to leave. "So that when the Ascendancy finally falls to ruin because of your actions, you'll still be around to see it."

>> break

>> mitth’ali’astov // ool [ ardok ranch ]

By the time Thalias brings Che’ri to Ardok ranch the cracked tile in the fireplace is fixed, glued back together and painted over, ready to reign in the flames once more.

Borika helps them get settled in a guest room at the ranch rather than the shared quarters at Shadehouse, away from all the business. There are some mild protests from the onside researchers, some snide comments from the other caregivers, but the second she sees the way Che’ri holds onto Thalias’ hand, and the way Thalias holds her right back, as if she was her own, Borika knows there’s no way she could separate them again, that she’d do everything in her power to keep them together.

Thalias seeks her out a couple of weeks in, long after everyone’s been put to bed.

“May I join you?” she asks where she finds Borika out on the porch, staring up at the stars. Her voice is quiet and careful, the two steaming mugs of caccoleaf she’s carrying stretched out in front of her like a peace offering.

Borika gives a small nod, takes the offered cup. “You may,” she says, just as quietly, as Thalias settles in beside her, both of them leaned against the balustrade now, staring up at the sky.

It’s not that they haven’t gotten along the past weeks – they’ve been nothing but courteous in fact, tirelessly working on test after test, sharing data and stories and polite smiles to keep Che’ri from freaking out at the seriousness of it all – but there’s always been an underlying tension, something akin to guilt, that awkwardness that comes as the byproduct of life altering secrets shared between strangers.

"Why did you chase him?" Borika asks after a long while of silence. Thalias blinks at her in clear surprise, nearly drops her mug. Borika holds her ground, just tilts her head at her, one eyebrow raised. Sometimes, she knows, the best way around is straight through.

"Well I think–” Thalias starts and falters, her hands drawing tighter around her mug. She takes a deep breath, tries again. “I was so lost when I met him” she says, a faraway look in her eyes, a jumble of old and fresh pain. “I had just lost my sight. I felt like my life was over. He gave me hope. Told me that we all have the power to choose our own paths.” A small smile touches her lips. “I was still terrified of course. But chasing after him, trying to find him again, it gave me something to hold on to, something to do when I didn't know where to go and something to think about instead of wondering who I was.” She looks back at Borika, a sudden intensity in her gaze. “I thought it was ridiculous, definitely childish but then– well, I met you. And Bomarmo. And Che'ri. And I kinda realized we all have that thing."

Borika feels something tuck at her mind, familiar flames. "That thing?"

"Yeah,” Thalias says, that same wide-eyed innocence in her voice as the first time they met, the one Borika’s learning is anything but. “The one thing we hold on to. The one thing that drives us, that anchors us." Borkia frowns but Thalias continues before she can ask, a small smile on her lips, nearly smug. "For me it was chasing Thrawn, Bomarmo has his mission as a doctor, Che'ri has her love of flying, and you have–"

"The stars," Borika realizes out loud, the reverence in her voice audible even to her own ears.

That thing that kept her going, that got her through the nights at the Irizi homestead, and through her days at the UAG, the one that made her beg Lamiov to let her out into the Chaos over and over and over again. That desire to see the stars as she remembered them. That thing that even now, when she feels at home and content in Bo's arms, makes her stand on the porch some nights, looking up at the sky.

That thing that, at least in her mind, belongs only to her.

Thalias huffs out a laugh. "Yeah, you always look toward the stars,” she says. “Even in the middle of the day."

Borika shakes her head slightly, matching Thalias’ smile. “That I do,” she concedes.

And so she looks back up at them now and feels something settle inside her as she thinks of all she’s gained and lost traveling among them, all her tangled emotions morphing into something more than rage, past grief and sorrow, until they unfold into the fleeting hope that, no matter what stars Thrawn is looking at now, he doesn’t have to do it alone.

>> break

>> iv.iii.
>>> civil war lead up [condensed]

Samakro, predictably, is the first of them to show up at Ardok ranch.

He claims to be checking up on Bo, and then proceeds to completely ignore him in favor of arguing with Thalias about everything from military procedure to the appropriate shape fruit squares are supposed to be cut in.

She watches them dance around each other on and off for the better part of two years, clashing into each other in the rare moments Samakro is able to leave the Springhawk behind, then quietly moping all the months in between when they’re forced to be apart.

She starts making bets with Bo about a year in, laughs at him when he puts his money on the two year mark and reminds him that it took the two of them five to share their first kiss.

She knows she’s lost one and half years in when she finds both Samakro and Thalias at her kitchen table to needle her with questions about the Seeker program, both of them determined to find a way to make it more sustainable, less cruel.

She walks in on Samakro carrying Che’ri around the great room that very same night – watches him try to soothe her back to sleep after a nightmare, holding her tightly tucked against his chest as if she was his own – and finds she doesn’t mind losing much at all.

>> break

She finds Lamiov at her door not three years in, the ernest terror in his eyes as he walks her throught the reports of the unexplained disappearance of two sky-walkers nearly enough to make her forget the resentment she still feels for him.

She argues with him after, goes back and forth on their possibilities, nearly begs him to let her back out into the Chaos to find them herself. She stays in the end, lets him convince her that there are others better suited to look for them. She knows deep down that he’s right, that her place is here now, protecting all those who don’t yet know of the horrors that await them among the stars.

She stays and opts to introduce self defense into their curriculum instead, helps out Bo as he starts teaching them how to administer first aid, and what to do if they find themselves in an overload spell far away from home.

At night she listens in as Che’ri tells stories to a gaggle of frightened children crowded around the firepit, of a great warrior named Thrawn protecting the Ascendancy, and them, from afar.

>> break

She starts dreaming about a strange alien man just after she turns forty-four.

It’s not about him at first – it’s about water lapping at someone's feet, rising to their knees, ice cold, about a dam breaking and swallowing them whole. It’s about dying, alone and far from home.

It’s not about him until suddenly it is, until he pulls her from the dark with a hand wrapped around hers, the pressure against her palm so clear yet distinctly not meant for her, strange and distorted in that way only dreams ever are, as he smiles at her, freckles dotting his cheeks like stars, and says, “Keep your eyes on me.”

>> break

“Senior Aide Thivik passed away,” Thalias tells her over a cup of caccoleaf, not much later.

It’s been a while since they’ve seen each other, a while since Che’ri – now Ufsa’che’ri – left Ardok ranch to learn how to fly ships at Taharim. A while since Thalias grew restless on her own and decided to chase after her to Naporar to continue her work there.

“My condolences,” Borika offers and means it. She’s heard enough stories over the years, both of Patriarch Thrufians plots and Thivik’s attempts to rein them in. “Who did they appoint in his stead?”

Thalias’ shoulders slump, her eyes far away. “Me,” she says.

Borika frowns at her. “Is that– possible?”

“No,” Thalias huffs. “It’s not. It’s against at least twenty protocols. But he named me on his deathbed. And in his last will. And apparently to everyone in his vicinity for the past six months.” She sighs, hangs her head between her shoulders. “Everyone knew. Everyone but me.”

“Ah,” Borika says, just a little lost. “You’re turning it down?”

“I should, shouldn’t I?” Thalias says, but there is something new in her face now, something nearly determined. “I mean I can not even stand being in Thurfian’s vicinity, being his aide would just be– it would be a nightmare!”

“Well, you know what they say,” Borika starts and watches Thalias’ eyebrows shoot up, undoubtedly aware of what comes next. “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

Thalias just stares at her for a long moment, jaw working as she grinds her teeth. “It was Thivik who gave me that charric to threaten Thurfian with,” she concedes finally.

“You’d have your own as his senior aide.”

“Compelling.”

Borika huffs out a laugh. “That’s settled then?”

“I suppose it is,” Thalias sighs. “I assume you can teach me how to shoot?”

“I’ll make sure you’ll never miss.”

>> break

When the Syndicature overturns the law on the expansion and private militarization of family fleets, Samakro brings a woman named Ziinda with him on his and Thalias next visit to the ranch.

The verdict doesn’t come as a surprise – the strain the Grysk orchestrated infiltration left on the Ascendancy never really faded, even after their defeat at Thrawn’s final stand. The mistrust between families stayed, tensions at an alltime high, especially between those who’d been present at Hoxim, building and building until they threatened to boil over as the first reports of missing sky-walkers started to reach Csilla.

Yet– It’s startling all the same.

“I know granting the individual families the power to ramp up their own defenses was the only way they could keep them from going at each other's throat right then and there,” Ziinda complains, her hands wrapped so tightly around her mug of spiked cacoaleaf that Borika considers taking it away from her lest she snap it in half. “But they’re making decisions based on their own petty squabbles without actually assessing the threat at hand.”

“The threat being the Grysk hell bent on destroying us from within?” Thalias suggests, her whole demeanor just as somber. She’s been in the room as the decision was made, Borika knows. She had to witness what might as well be the first step to all of their demise.

“None of them know what actually happened at Hoxim,” Samakro points out. “They have no idea the Grysk threat goes far beyond some scary looking warships.”

“Then maybe it’s time to tell them,” Ziinda says, her frustration cracking through the usually measured cadence of her voice.

“And risk the situation escalating further when they all have to face their shame and embarrassment?” Samakro throws back, his frustration much less well hidden. “They’ll tear each other apart trying to save face.”

“What we need is proof,” Borika says, and does her best not to reel back as all eyes snap to her. She’s been quiet so far, tentative on joining what she is very aware are the very first tendrils of a resistance forming at her kitchen table. But there is something about growing up surrounded by disaster that makes it impossible not to run head first into it, something about giving your life for the Ascendancy as a whole that makes her unable to turn her back.

“We suspect that the Grysk are behind the sky-walker disappearances,” she continues to solem nods around the table. “That while we all fight and blame each other they slip in unnoticed to take them away. So let's prove that.”

Samakro raises an eyebrow at her. “You have a plan?”

“Not yet,” she concedes. “But the EDF’s best and brightest are sitting at my kitchen table, are they not? I have faith they’ll be able to come up with one.”

“Not all of them,” Thalias mutters under her breath, the brief flicker of pain that crosses over her face mirrored in her companion's eyes.

Borika takes a deep breath, catches Bo’s eyes from across the room from where he’s been prepping dinner, pretending to not listen. He gives her a small smile, a curt nod. They’ll keep each other's secrets, she knows.

She straightens up. “That’s right,” she says, a new found determination in her eyes. “That’s why we’ll need Admiral Ar’alani on our side.”

>> break
>>

She dreams about hands against someone’s forehead, their chest, the touch soft, firm, familiar– “It’s okay. Sleep,” the strange alien man says as fire rages around her, threatening to swallow her whole, dying again, so far from home– “You’re safe. I’m here,” he says in her dream. “I’m not going anywhere.”

>> break

Ardok ranch becomes a sort of refuge after that, a place to analyze and plot, to discuss their future, sometimes heatedly. A place where none of them have to pretend or safe face, where no one has to dance around the reality of their impending doom.

Ar’alani brings Wutroow, then Apros, then slowly some of the more junior officers that gained their trust over the years, many of which, like them, have stood at Thrawn’s side over Sunrise.

It’s overwhelming at first, watching all these people gather in her kitchen, all these people who worked with her brother, to have them look at her as if she had all the answers and wonder if that’s the same way they looked at him. It’s overwhelming to look at them in turn and wonder if she can see him in them, if she would know what it was like to know him like they did, where she to put all their pieces together to make a whole.

But she catches Bo’s eyes across the room, and wraps her arms around him at night as he smiles and quietly reminds her that maybe there is a reason all these people found her, that like her they lost something they don’t know how to replace. That like them she can find solace in their shared love for a man they’ve come to view synonymous with hope. That maybe, just maybe, this is where they belong too.

There is only so long even senior officers, even all those dedicated to the Ascendancy as a whole, can carry the pain of the past alone, after all.

>> break

There is no celebration when Samakro gets promoted to Commodore, no reason for pride when he’s scrambling to staff his ship in the wake of fleet-wide desertion, of all the officers leaving to flock back to their family fleets.

“It feels wrong, leaving the Springhawk behind,” he tells her when she finds him out alone behind the house, staring up at the stars. “I never liked him, but as long as I was in command of his ship it was easier to pretend he wasn’t–” He breaks off suddenly, rubs his hands over his face, jaw tense.

“I never even liked him,” he says again, unshed tears straining his voice, and Borika reaches out to wrap her arms around his shoulders in a vain attempt to keep him from falling appart.

>> break

Roscu joins their little group last. She brings news from the Defense Fleet, how more and more of their officers can’t be trusted to uphold the law of impartiality, how even some of the flag officers seem to fall to the corruption of family honor.

They manage to tward two attempts at triggering an all out civil war over the next couple months, manage to talk some of the family ships down from the edge just to be forced to sit by with their hands tied later, as the varying Synfics rip into each other looking for anyone to blame.

They pull Bak’if and Lamiov into the group when the Chaf lose their seat as one of the nine, after plans for an asassination attempt on the Ufsa Patriarch leaks to the public. They spend hours and hours mapping out what remains of the EDF and who they can trust, set up a million possible contingencies for the end.

Ar’alani takes her aside that night, tucks her away and out under the stars, where it’s just the two of them away from it all, like the first time they met.

“Thrawn wasn’t really exiled,” she says before Borika can ask what they’re doing out here when they should be back inside, making contingencies like everyone else.

Borika blinks at her in surprise, listen with held breath as Ar’alani lays out a long forgotten plan and how it failed. “You’re going to try and find him,” she realizes in the end. “That’s why you agreed to that insane mission out to the edges of the Chaos. You’re trying to bring him back.”

Ar’alani holds her gaze. There is determination there, but also something buried underneath, something that nearly looks like a plea. “You told me once that we all have the power to choose our own paths,” she says. “My hope is that whatever happened to him out there, it's not yet too late for him to choose his.”

“Why are you telling me now? It’s been over a decade.”

Ar’alani smiles, steps closer and reaches out to adjust the scarf around Borika’s neck. It’s been a very long time since it smelled like her. “Because I didn’t want there to be any secrets left between us,” she says. “Not when we don’t know how any of this ends.”

Borika finds Bo out on their makeshift firing range that very same night – the one she set up for Thalias years ago – practicing with one of her rifles. She pulls the scarf tighter around herself, steps up to help him adjust his stance and straighten out his aim.

“I won’t let anyone hurt the girls,” he tells her when they’re both curled up around each other in their bed, staring out at the stars reflecting on their bedroom floor.

“I know.”

“We should probably update our grab bags, some of the meds might have gone bad.”

“We should.”

“And make some for the girls as well.”

“Yes. I’ll get on it tomorrow morning.”

“Great. Good.”

She pulls him closer, just listens to his heartbeat for a long time, tries to commit every single thump thump thump to memory. “I slept with Ar’alani,” she says then.

He raises an eyebrow at her. “You had time for that today?”

She huffs out a laugh, despite herself. “The night before we got married, I mean.”

“Oh, that.” He shrugs, jostling them both. “I knew that already.”

Borika raises her head slightly to frown at him. “How?”

“We stayed at the same hotel, remember?” he points out, nothing but gentle amusement in his voice. “I came to look for you that night. Thought you might not want to be alone.”

“You saw us in the lobby.”

“I did.” He takes her hand, raises it to his lips to kiss her knuckles with a smile. “Why tell me now?”

She lets her head sink back against his chest, listens to that thump thump thump of his heart. “Because I didn’t want there to be any secrets we don't share,” she says.

She feels his chest expand as he draws in a long breath of air. “We’ll be alright,” he says, his lips pressed against the top of her head.

She pulls the blanket closer, wraps them up tight. “We will,” she promises.

>> break

She’s two days away from fifty-one the night she wakes up in cold sweat, wringing for air as she can’t seem to shake the feeling of many arms surrounding her in a cold embrace, her mind torn across the Chaos in a way she hasn’t felt like she’s been a child.

Ar’alani finds her not two months after. Grand Admiral Mitth’raw’nuruodo of the Imperial Navy, the short intercepted message on Ar’alani’s questis reads, MIA over Lothal; cause: purrgil.

It’s been translated to Cheunh by– “Lieutenant Commander Eli’van’to?” Borika frowns, the name easier to focus on than the possibility of losing her brother for a third time. “Isn’t that the analyst you had me compile all that sky-walker data for? Ivant?”

“He is,” Ar’alani confirms, her voice oddly heavy. They’ve talked about him before, albeit briefly. Just a name mentioned as someone who Ar’alani thought might be helpful in their efforts to find patterns that would help them protect their sky-walker corps against the Grysk, and the Ascendancy as a whole.

“What kind of name is that?” Borika asks, a realization forming, just out of grasp. “I’ve never heard of the Eli family.”

“That’s because he isn’t Chiss.”

Borika just stares at her for a long moment. “Excuse me?”

Ar’alani lets out a sigh, visibly steeling herself. “He’s human. From lesser space. Thrawn sent him to me for safekeeping a year ago, when I came looking for him.”

“For safekeeping?” Borika raises an eyebrow. “He must be very special.”

“He is,” Ar’alani concedes, a sort of heavy resignation in her voice. “I truly believe he will be indispensable in whatever hell we’re about to face, but–”

“But what?” Borika fixes her with a stare. “No more secrets, remember?”

Ar’alani holds her gaze for a moment, then lets her shoulders drop with another sigh. “He was his aide. They served together for fifteen years.” Borika watches as something achingly close to pain passes over Ar’alani’s features, nearly too fast for her to grasp. "They shared quarters for pretty much that same amount of time,” she says. “He denied that it meant anything by human standards but– the way he looked at him, frost, the way he moved around him, all of it was just–"

"Obvious?"

"Painfully so." Aralani doesn’t roll her eyes but it’s close. "He left him his journal for frost's sake, vexed poetically about military strategy and friendship. Did not know he had that in him."

“Where is Ivant now?”

“With Mak’ro.” Ar’alani taps the screen of her questis, pulls up his personnel file. “It’s not safe with me anymore, not with every family breathing down my neck, trying to win my favor. If any of them find out who sent him or what he’s working on–” She shakes her head. “He’s safer far out in the Chaos.”

“Agreed,” Borika says and takes the questis offered to her, her eyes scanning the file– “Oh,” she breathes, a sudden feeling of vertigo pulling at her limbs as she stares at a picture of an alien man with freckles dotted across his cheeks like stars. “I’ve seen him in my dreams."

>> break

>> iv.iv.

>>> civil war trigger

It finally comes crashing down six months after, when her knees suddenly give out while she’s brushing her teeth in the morning, cold sweat prickling at her neck, her whole body filled with the despair of a million voices as they cry out in terror, suddenly silenced. Forever.

She stumbles out into the bedroom to find Bo holding on to their bed, wide–eyed and wringing for breath, then rushes over to Shadehouse with him to spend the rest of the day trying to sooth the wails of their already frightened sky-walkers.

She gets a frantic call from Thalias that same night, listens as she tells her about how Sacher blacked out at the helm of her gunboat, nearly crashing it into an asteroid. Then the reports start trickling in, one after the other, of sky-walkers screaming as they were violently pulled out of third-sight in the middle of their jumps, of all the ships lucky enough to merely lose their way, and all those who were not.

And she knows, with every fiber of her soul, with the fire burning in her mind and the Chaos pulling at her bones, that this is the beginning of the end.

>> break

Mak’ro shows up at their door two weeks later. With him he has a young sky-walker by the name of Un’hee, and an alien man who holds the girl tightly against his chest despite the fact that he carries his right arm in a sling. There are stars dotted across his cheek, barely visible under the dark purple bruises blooming on his face.

“They’ve declared a state of emergency. It’s every family for themselves now,” Mak’ro tells her when Bo checks over Un’hee. They’re just out of earshot, Ivant still holding the girl in his arms. “They’re going to come for the sky-walkers next.”

They all gather at the ranch that week, for what they know will be the last time. They drink and laugh and swear their oaths – to the Ascendancy as a whole, and to each other.

She finds Ivant out at the lake behind the ranch on their last night, feet dangling off the edge of the small wooden pier as he stares out at the stars. There is something about the way he stays stock still as she steps up to sit beside him, something that feels like loss and love and cold water rising to her knees.

She remembers what Mak’ro told her, in private, how neither he nor Ar’alani ever saw him grief, how he just kept pushing forward, dedicated and determined, giving his life for people he’s barely known for more than a year.

“I grew up near a lake just like this,” he says, his eyes fixed firmly on the stars. “I took Thrawn there, once. A long time ago. I spent so much time swimming in those waters growing up, but it never felt the same after that.” He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath that comes out remarkably steady. “I didn’t even know I never really belonged anywhere. Not until I met him.”

Borika feels something pull at her chest, like shrapnel knocked loose. She stays silent, just lets the minutes pass them by, the only sound around them the wind rustling through the fields. The quiet before the storm. This is not about her, no matter how much it is.

“You remind me of him,” Ivant says after a long while, voice nearly too quiet for her to hear. She is very sure no one ever told him of her connection to Thrawn. “It’s the way you smile,” he says. “Like you had to try hard not to forget how.”

He turns to her at last, the lines of his face tight like the electrostatic barrier of a ship just before it's about to snap and give way. The bruises on his face have barely faded in the past couple of days, still shining bright in the infrared.

“We were supposed to look for him, you know?” he tells her and her eyes catch on the way the fingers of his good hand twitch where they rest against the wood. “Mak’ro and I. I analyzed the purrgil’s migrations patterns, made a map–” He huffs out a laugh. There is no humor behind it. “But well–”

His eyes go distant again, somewhere far away. Borika feels something fighting itself up her chest, distant and familiar like clouds, things she’s never allowed herself to feel.

She thinks back to how tightly Ivant held Un’hee to his chest when he arrived, and how he sits watch leaned against her door frame every night, scrolling through rows and rows of data searching for ways to keep her and her sisters safe. She thinks about the way he moves around Ma’kro as if they’ve known each other for years, and about how he looks at Ar’alani with that sort of admiration that says he thinks he has something to prove.

She thinks about the way they all looked at him a week ago when they tried to catch him up on everything that happened in the past two decades – all the battles, adversaries, tactics and intrigues that took them blood and sweat and tears to make sense off – only to find he had already deduced most of it from records and numbers written in a language he didn’t speak a year ago.

“Everyone in there,” she says and thinks about all the ways he reminds her of the brother she’s never known. “Everyone you’ve met this week– they’ve all served with him. Every single person who’s left on our side is here because of him.” She takes a deep breath, makes sure to hold his gaze. “Mak’ro, Thalias, Ar’alani– even myself – all these years we nearly lost our minds wondering where he was. If he was safe. But then we met you. And knowing he had you–”

She reaches out to pull him closer, to hold him tight, as she watches the first tears well up in his eyes and spill over his cheeks like morning dew. “I'm so glad he had you,” she says as he falls apart in her arms. “I'm so glad he wasn't alone."

>> break

The first family fleet barges into their front yard three weeks later. The second isn’t ten minutes behind.

She grabs their bags from the hidden compartment beneath the stove as Bo barricades the door, barely looks over her shoulder as they run out the back door, all of their contingencies well practiced.

They manage to gather all the girls and usher them on the path through the woods out back, and then all their contingencies still fall like dominos as one of their own Caregivers pulls a charric on them.

Borika can see it all play out in front of her, knows exactly what will happen from the way the woman’s hands shake on the handle, and the minute twitch of Bo’s shoulder as he turns to block her path.

And she can’t seem to recall what happened after, can’t seem to grasp anything beyond the rage she feels burning in her chest, bubbling over to spill from her mouth and her eyes and her hands, like the vastness of the planet and the sky staring back at her– — -She feels her mind stretch out, torn across the Chaos until it slams into something with sudden finality, the taste of meilooruns on her tongue, a city torn by war, the laughter of family found in the rubble, a ship gliding through hyperspace like a ghost, and then, just for a moment, her brother’s face, wide-eyed and– -

>> Bridger? Bridger, what happe–

“Rika,” Bo shakes her awake, grabs her shoulders to pull her out and anchor her in space. She blinks back to herself, opens her eyes to a clearing in the forest where there didn’t used to be one, to trees splintered and broken, all that’s left a single patch of tava blossoms and gaggle of sky-walkers cowering safe and sound behind her.

>> break

>> iv.v.

>>> civil war

Mak’ro greets them in the hanger when they finally make it back to a recommissioned Springhawk – their new base of operation, a beacon of hope. “Welcome to the Resistance,” he says as he pulls Bo into a half hug, just the barest hint of humor in his voice at the insanity of it all.

Borika looks past them, scans the hangar until she finally spots Ivant at the back. The bruises on his face are barely visible now, the hand he used to carry in a sling wrapped securely around the hilt of a rifle. She catches his gaze to find that thing in his eyes again, the one that speaks of love and loss, but there is something determined there now too, the same sort of conviction she saw in her brother's eyes, years and years ago.

It's only then that it hits her, that all her steps, every single one – from dragging her feet when they took her at five, and walking out of that doctors office at fifteen to walk into Bomarmo’s at twenty four, all the way to opening her door to people she couldn’t fathom she’d end up caring for as much as she does – they all lead her here, right here in front of this alien man, wearing the same uniform as her brother, this man reaching out his hand towards her as she rushes towards him.

And it's at that moment too, as she takes Ivan’s hand in hers and holds on in a vice grip, with Bomarmo standing firm behind her and her future laid bare right in front, that for the first time she knows she's exactly where she's supposed to be.

“I’ve seen him,” she says, the words tumbling over her lips like a lifeline cast out at sea. “He’s alive.”

“Oh, I know,” Ivant says, eyes bright like a lighthouse in the dark.

“How?”

“Because he promised he’d come back to me.”

>>> break >>

> bookmark ?

>> yes

> bookmark saved

Notes:

thank u for reading :) pls come scream to me about borika on twt, my handle is @furiosophie there too!!
Next up - postmortem pt3, this time for real

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[Podfic] post·mor·tem // excerpts from senior commander cohbo'rik'ardok’s private journal of cataloged memories by hyperspacegirlie

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