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She hadn't been expecting the question.
"We've been speaking to friends in the diplomatic service, putting Doctor Lokin's lessons in persuasion to good use. It took some brokering to find a gift for you. An ulikuo gemstone once owned by the tapani noble houses."
The gemstone that Vector handed her was warm from his skin, the flaws in the gem somehow serving to make it more beautiful as it absorbed and refracted the light, picking up the hue of her skin and combining it with its internal striations. It was... beautiful.
She strove to sound nonchalant. "Are you just feeling generous or is there an occasion?"
"Traditionally, tapani nobles present the stone as part of a marriage proposal. Which is what this is."
Technically, it was not a question, but the query was there, implicit, nonetheless. A marriage proposal. Which involved the two of them. Cipher Nine was many things, but dim was not one of them. Wordlessly, she stared at Vector, her lips slightly parted, surprised in a way she had never been by ambushes or weapons fire.
Vector looked down at the gemstone her fingers had compulsively tightened around. "We know you can never join us, never share our thoughts. But if you can't live in our world, we can live in yours. Forever."
"I, I..."
She was trained to be suave, smooth in word and deed, and something this simple shouldn't have thrown her. The appropriate course of action would be to laugh it off, remind him of how silly such a question was, that it wasn't even an option for a woman in her position, not unless it was a part of some cover operation.
She remembered lurking in the back of a wedding ceremony on Csilla, during one of her earliest assignments as part of the secret police, remembered looking at the bride and thinking 'she looks so happy' before being forced to sneak through the crowd to keep an eye on her assigned target. She wanted that. She really did.
She hated herself even as she said the words. "I need some time to think about it."
Vector's expression did not, as it rarely did, flicker. His expression was almost unnaturally smooth as he bowed slightly. "We assumed you would wish to take time to consider our proposal. Please feel free to do so. We will be waiting here, whatever the response may be."
Accepting though he might be, that didn't stop Cipher Nine feeling very guilty as she nodded tightly and practically fled the cargo hold. It wasn't until she reached her quarters that she realised that she was still gripping the tapani stone tightly, fingers locked around it. She stared into its depths, at the way it seemed to draw in light and twist it into some unfamiliar and strange thing, and wondered what the hell she was supposed to do.
~*~
"So," she said to Kaliyo, as her Rattataki subordinate rifled through the pockets and pouches of the gang of mercenaries who had been hired to protect a cache of smuggled weapons that the Empire would rather see destroyed. It was probably just their bad luck that a Cipher Agent had been passing through and didn't mind taking on the trivial task of wiping them out single-handedly.
Kaliyo paused in her rummaging and glanced up at Cipher Nine. "So?" she echoed.
"So," Cipher Nine repeated, fingers resting lightly on her sniper rifle. "Men."
Kaliyo rolled her eyes. "Oh. Men. Got an itch that needs scratching, Agent?"
Apparently the precautions that she and Vector had been taking to be discrete had been effective. "Have you ever had things get... serious?"
Kaliyo yanked a handful of credits and a couple of adrenals out of the belt pouches of a man that had died from a single rifle bolt to the head. If you ignored the fact that part of the skull was missing, he looked remarkably unhurt. There was no scorching on his body, or any of the other three that Cipher Nine had taken out before they'd even realised they were under attack. "How serious are we talking? 'I want to get a tattoo of your name in an intimate place' serious? Or 'I want an entry in a legal registry somewhere' serious?"
Cipher Nine scowled, scrunching up her nose as she figured out the best way to respond. Apparently, her lack of speech for a few seconds was the worst response she could have given. Kaliyo laughed. "Oh," she said, "that serious, huh? Who is it? That tasty Aristocra on Hoth? Don't think I didn't notice you sneaking off every time we hit the Chiss base."
Cipher Nine wondered if it would be for the best if that was what Kaliyo thought was going on. Saganu was protected by his position in the Chiss Ascendancy, untouchable by her enemies or the Empire. Word would have circulated that he had made an Intelligence Agent merit-adoptive to Miurani. Conclusions would have been drawn. She had no doubt that her superiors knew very well what had gone on between them. Probably the only reason they hadn't acted on their knowledge was the awareness that she hadn't been back to Hoth since the conclusion of her mission.
"My relationship with Aristocra Saganu is purely professional," she said, with just the right amount of sniffiness to make Kaliyo think that she was protesting for the sake of it, to make her think that she was lying, instead of being utterly truthful.
Kaliyo snorted and straightened, wiping a bit of gore that she'd gotten on her gloves off onto the shirt of the dead merc. "Getting serious with men is always a bad idea, Agent," Kaliyo told her, "Especially for girls like us. Use 'em, lose 'em, and if they don't get the idea, shoot them in the kneecaps and make a line for the nearest spaceport."
Shooting Vector in the kneecaps would seriously hamper his combat effectiveness, though it would be a definitive answer to the whole 'marriage' question. "You've honestly never gotten that close to a man?"
"Men have thought they'd gotten that close to me," Kaliyo said, with a shrug, "Set them straight quickly enough. C'mon. Are we going to blow these caches or not?"
Cipher Nine sighed and stowed her rifle. "Thanks, Kaliyo," she said, dryly, as she pulled out the bomb the local listening post had given her, "You've been a big help."
"Yeah, whatever," Kaliyo said, obviously eager not to linger on the subject of her own romantic history. "Men are good for one thing only. And it's generally over and done with pretty quickly. I wouldn't get yourself in knots over it. It's just a bad idea."
~*~
"Ensign Temple's father was a Cipher Agent," Cipher Nine said.
Cipher Nine was flat on her back, and Doctor Lokin was bent over her, unfastening her jacket. Alas, it wasn't a pleasant experience, as a lucky blaster round had caught Cipher Nine in the side as she'd been taking out a group of security droids one by one, and a Republic scout had gotten close enough to fire before her team had taken them out. Now Temple and Kaliyo were off scouting the local area whilst Lokin patched her up.
Vector had been needed elsewhere, dealing with a diplomatic issue related to the Killik treaty. Cipher Nine might have called this a good thing for the respite it gave her from thinking about his question, and the gemstone in her cabin, but the truth was that he preyed upon her mind even more often.
"So I'm given to understand," Lokin said, as he prised the damaged armour away from the burn on her side and started pulling out kolto and whatever other sundry items he needed to be able to get her mobile again. She couldn't see what he was doing, instead staring up at a cloudy sky and digging her fingers in the ground beneath her so that she wasn't tempted to shove her medic away from her. "You shouldn't talk."
There was the sound of something liquid being poured, and then a cooling sensation against her side.
"In your experience, do Cipher Agents often develop such long term attachments?" she strove to keep her voice neutral, as if discussing an abstract theoretical concept.
"I meant it when I said you shouldn't talk."
"I rarely do what I should. I was just curious, Doctor. So much of our training emphasises emotional distance, especially from subjects that it is necessary to seduce. I couldn't help but wonder if her father was... an aberration." She closed her eyes, and heard Lokin sigh thoughtfully.
"Actually," Doctor Lokin said, "Ciphers are as normal, emotional beings as anyone else in the galaxy. Anyone who's not a Jedi or a Sith, of course, and there was a rumour at the medical academy that suggested that the emotional health of Force users is not entirely, shall we say, well rounded." He injected something into her side. Antibiotics perhaps. "And if Cipher Agents develop attachments, it's usually to other intelligence operatives. After all, who else is going to understand the secrecy, the double lives? Those attachments tend to be fierce, if frequently short lived."
Cipher Nine smiled faintly. "I imagine the breakups are messy in more ways than one."
"You'd be right, but not always. I once read a study on it. Top secret, of course, the result of many dozens of hours of determined headshrinking by lots of people with many impressive sounding letters after their names. Often partings are amicable, but occasionally deeper relationships do develop."
Lokin was silent for a long moment, and Cipher Nine knew that he was taunting her, that he must guess she had an ulterior motive behind asking, even if he didn't know for sure who she might be referring to. He wanted her to ask.
She held out for a few seconds longer. "Is that so?"
Terrible. She'd lasted longer under torture.
Lokin's mouth turned up in a faintly satisfied expression. "Yes, and those relationships tended to be forged as partners in conflict, where absolute trust is required between both partners. They were much stronger than dalliances between fixers and ciphers, or watchers and ciphers. It doesn't happen very often, of course. Ciphers are rarely paired together, and personalities tend to be selected that are able to work well alone."
Cipher Nine nodded slowly, and watched as Lokin finished smoothing down the edges of the kolto patch so that it wouldn't shift as they moved, or interfere with her ability to shoot her rifle. He helped her refasten her jacket and assisted her into a sitting position.
"I'm rather of the opinion that one should find happiness where one can," Lokin said, after a moment, then smiled wryly, "But only where one's superiors cannot see."
~*~
Vector had described the planet upon which they had landed as having 'air the colour of the ocean' which Cipher Nine had taken as a purely poetic and typically Kilik turn of phrase until she stepped out of the ship onto the surface and realised that beyond a certain distance, everything seemed to disappear into a soft blue haze, not unlike the view if she had been underwater. Even the sky seemed muted, the sun of the planet as it set hazy beyond the thick air.
It wasn't toxic, and she could see perfectly well, and it seemed that in the absence of a great deal of direct light, the planet's flora had developed a natural luminescence that the locals used to great artistic effect, weaving vines and flowers along the sides of pathways and around buildings, decoratively patterning the city with light.
It was a neutral planet, unaffiliated with either Republic or Empire, too far away from either of those two powers to be considered important enough to fight over. Neither did it have any unique resources that were worth exploiting, unless one counted the interesting plant life. So few visitors arrived that the customs agent didn't seem to know what to do with them. He had she and Vector sign onto the planet and then just waved them through.
"Why were you here before?" Cipher Nine asked, as they walked away from the spaceport, and into the city proper—though in size it was more like a town.
"Investigating on the behalf of the diplomatic service, to see if there was any need to send envoys to bring the planet into the Empire. We concluded that it lacked any use and was too far away to be strategically important. We had not thought of it much until we first met you."
She looked at him questioningly.
"Your eyes," he said.
She reflexively blinked, and then realised the natural glow of her eyes would no doubt resemble a fair few of the plants. Cipher Nine was so used to seeing it in the mirror that she didn't even notice the glow. Not since she'd been a child and been utterly fascinated by the phenomenon for an entire fortnight.
"This settlement is not very large," Vector said, and gestured to where the artificial lighting ended. "There is a valley in that direction. Would you care to walk with us and see the view?"
"I..." She hesitated, and then pressed her lips together. "Actually, do you mind going ahead? I'll meet up with you shortly. I forgot something on the ship."
"Of course, Agent. We will wait for you there." If Vector found her statement at all puzzling, it was only evident in a slightly querulous note in his voice, and he didn't argue at all before bowing slightly and heading towards the path that led out of town.
Cipher Nine took a deep breath and hurried back to the ship.
~*~
She was nervous. As long as she could remember, she had never been nervous, not since she was a child learning how to assemble her first assault rifle under military training. Even then she had not been frightened, or anxious. It seemed that after the worse happened, that day on Ariss, her ability to fear the unknown future had vanished.
She had bought the dress on a whim, an almost frivolous one, during a lull between missions on Dromund Kaas. Sleeveless, white, with a delicately embroidered lace overshift that gave a texture that was almost indiscernible to the naked eye. She had easily been able to afford it, an Intelligence officer's salary being more than enough to afford frivolities like expensive and impractical attire. She had justified it to herself at the time as never knowing when one might need to infiltrate some society ball, but the truth was that it had taken her fancy unexpectedly, even if the effuse gushing of the salesgirl, keen to show that she wasn't prejudiced against non-Humans, who kept talking about how well it contrasted with her skin, started to grate and make her wish she hadn't left her rifle in the armoury.
She'd never worn it for any of the times that she had been required to infiltrate some high class affair. She'd picked up some expensive couture number that let her fit right in, but the white dress stayed in her wardrobe, unworn.
Of course, she didn't have any appropriately delicate shoes, but the dress was long enough to hide the fact that all she had on her feet was combat boots. It felt very wrong, but there was no way that she was going to climb a hill in stilettos or slippers. She fussed with her hair, running her fingers through it, trying to lift one section or flatten it again when it dissatisfied her, but eventually she realised that she was procrastinating, and if she wasn't careful, Vector was going to think she was trying to flee the planet.
"You're a scary, one-woman army of death and destruction," she told her reflection, sternly, "There's no way you're intimidated by this man."
Her reflection didn't seem very impressed. She sighed and turned to the set of drawers she kept securely locked and unsealed it, taking out the stone that she had stowed there carefully, and not taken out since she'd received it. She clutched it to her chest for a moment, then took a deep breath and slipped it into the small drawstring bag that came with the dress. And, because she was determined to leave Cipher Nine on the ship, she didn't slip in the small vibroblade that she normally used the bag to conceal.
The customs attendant gave a whistle as he saw her. She ignored him, walking the main path through the town and aiming for the cluster of blue-green plants that were all the brighter now night was truly falling. She made her way up the hill, following the obvious signs that someone had walked before her. Vector had made no attempt to hide his trail, but then he had no reason to. He wanted her to be able to find him.
He had moved right up to the top of the hill, and around to the side that faced away from the town, a cliff that gave an uninterrupted view of the wilderness. It was isolated there, the only thing in sight the coloured, glowing fauna that spread out until it faded into the thick air. Vector was standing in a small pool of light provided by a tangle of vines that tumbled over the edge of the cliff. Maybe someone had cultivated the vines, to show where the edge of the cliff was in the dark. She didn't care.
At the sound of her footsteps, he turned, and she halted, feeling that unfamiliar and simultaneously unpleasant and exciting sensation of anxiety. His eyes danced over her figure, and he smiled. Instead of going away, that anxiety only heightened, and she felt her breath come shorter, making her feel lightheaded.
"Agent," Vector said, and held out his hands towards her. "Your aura shines, and you are... very beautiful."
So perhaps he had noticed the dress. She held out her hands, grateful at least that they didn't shame her by trembling, and took his. He drew her closer and she looked up at him seriously. "Not Agent," she said, "Not here, now, between us."
He opened his mouth to speak, but she didn't let him get a word in.
"My name is Siras'horaa'linnan," she said, "But a lot of people prefer to use 'Shoraal'."
"Siras'horaa'linnan," he repeated, the pronunciation surprisingly flawless. "Which do you prefer?"
"Well, Shoraal is a great deal easier to call out in a fit of passion," she said, trying to diffuse the tension she felt with a joke. When Vector's head dipped slightly, and he smiled slyly, she knew it hadn't worked.
"We will keep that in mind."
She drew her hands away from his and opened up the bag that dangled from her wrist. The ulikuo stone that he had given her spilled into her hands. She held it cupped there. "You asked me a question," she said, keeping her eyes fixed on the gem, uncertain that she could keep her composure if she looked at him, "Or you were about to, I think. I sort of panicked."
"Yes," Vector said, simply. "But if you would prefer the question not to be asked-"
She shook her head sharply, cutting him off. "You said I could never join you, share your thoughts." She finally chanced a look up, met his depthless eyes. "What if I could? I could become a Joiner too."
When the question had occurred to her, she had thought to test him, to see if his final goal was to bring her into the hive, to add her knowledge and experiences to the Kilik. But as the words spilled from her, she realised that she meant the question sincerely. She had spent time with the Joiners of other nests, with Vector, and the one thing she'd realised lately was that she was lonely. She'd been a sniper for a long time, a solo job that necessitated the ability to work without support, without contact, for weeks on end. She'd been required to infiltrate, to pretend to be someone other than who she was. But then she'd discovered that her mind wasn't her own, and the isolation had made her want to walk out of the airlock.
She wanted her freedom now more than anything in the Universe, but what if she could be happy as part of a greater whole? Wouldn't that be just as wonderful?
Vector was already shaking his head. His hands wrapped around hers, the hands that still clutched the gemstone. "It would mean giving up everything that you are, everything you wish to become. We have no desire to see you do that. We love you."
"Ask me," she whispered.
Vector's hands tightened. "Will you marry us?"
The answer was easy. She didn't want to lose Vector. She wanted to be able to turn around and see him there whenever she wanted. She wanted to know that she wasn't alone. And she didn't have to be a Joiner to have that. "I will marry you, Vector. I love you too."
"Then we have an agreement," he said, in his 'we are a diplomat' voice, that quickly broke into something more serious. "We don't have a ceremony planned, and for the sake of your cover, perhaps it can't be officially sanctioned. But it is real. We are one."
For a moment, Shoraal hated her chosen role in life with a passion. "My life has never seemed to be my own. First, I was a member of the secret police on Csilla. Then, I was offered the position with Imperial Intelligence, and I saw it as the best way to protect my people. I was encouraged to accept. My life has always been at the whims of others. My life was a proud but lonely one. But not in this. This is my choice, and even if we are not Joined, we are together. We are one."
She leaned forward. They were of equal height—Kaliyo in her kinder moments had called Shoraal 'stuatuesque'. Shoraal was much taller than most women in the Empire, and it was no effort to bring their lips together.
She drew back after a long moment that seemed to stretch into infinity. "I think that feels like a ceremony to me. Now tell me something only a Joiner would say."
His thumbs stroked across her skin as he visibly collected his words. "There are patterns in your electric aura that are yours alone. They taste like frost and spices. We will remember them always."
"I can only agree to marry you once," she told him, and felt laughter bubbling up, "You don't have to make me melt every time you speak."
"You'd enjoy it, we are sure. In fact," he took the stone from her hands, slipped it back into the bag, dropped it on the mossy ground, where it lay still on the mossy ground. "We'd like to start practicing immediately."
"If you ruin this dress, you are paying for the cleaning," she said, and he seemed to take that as permission.
His fingers found the hidden seams of her dress, and she helped him peel away the delicate lacy outer layers, gently settling them aside. Then all delicacy seemed to be pushed away, his arms went tightly about her waist, his foot hooked behind her ankle and upset her balance, and with a startled yelp from her, they tumbled to the ground.
He was pushing up the long skirt of her underlayers, but paused, and looked at her in askance. "Combat boots?" he asked, with arched eyebrows.
"Shut up," she said, and put her hands over her face in embarrassment.
She heard the smirk in his voice. "As you desire," he said, and indeed didn't say anything after that.
~ The End ~