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It was when Eva raised both eyebrows while speaking of non-eyebrow-raising things that Theron confirmed his suspicion was that something was amiss.  He’d already had his gut bother him, due to some… inexplicable noises.  But they were in the cantina, in their booth, and they were not talking about business (a rare occasion, but sometimes, Eva did outlaw work talk).

He rubbed the side of his face, a finger creeping up to brush the lower edge of his implants.  Theron could get security here in a minute.

Smoothly, Eva slid her hand along her side of the table, across her body, fingertips brushing over the metal table until they came to rest on her gin glass.  No, no need.  She grabbed the glass by the rim and tapped with her pinkie finger –

In a way that reminded Theron of a list she always rattled off.  Aha. 

Now his eyebrows arched upward as well.  Indeed.

“Do you want to talk about…some interesting attempts at banking transactions?” Theron posed the question.  He knew of at least 347 tries on Eva’s credit account…

“Darling, I thought I told you no business,” Eva replied airily.  “Darling” only confirmed she knew what he knew what she knew. 

Spy games were fun, when the fate of the galaxy wasn’t hanging on them.  At least, not today. 

“So you propose no active intervention?” he asked.

Eva shook her head.  “I think things will fall out all on their own.”

Then with her precise sense of timing (never more than a minute early, never ever late), Eva stood up and stepped to the side of their booth.  Theron was smart enough to follow her lead.

And rightfully so, as Guss Tuno finally lost his grip on the rafters of the cantina and plummeted right down onto their table, sending up a burst of cobwebs, dust, and spluttering Mon Cal oaths that Theron’s translator declined to translate. 

“Of all the times for the Force not to work. I’ve gotten good at being floaty!”  Guss groused, though he did look up at the ceiling with some happy thought still bouncing in his head.

Eva provided the explanation.  “Dr. O managed to turn our transceivers to just the right angle and we managed to pick up subspace transmission of Shiv Starrunner reruns.”

Oh, that explained everything.  Theron extended a hand to Guss.  “That… that was a good effort at spying.  Til the end bit.”

“Guss Tuno: Intergalactic Jedi of Mystery.  Has a ring to it, doesn’t it?”

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Effortlessly, his hands rolled right up the piano’s keys.  They stopped at the perfect place and struck, and the song continued on.

Theron Shan, in his cover as a casino piano player, was technically perfect.  Just as he was with dancing, singing, juggling, dealing cards, braiding hair, women’s fashion styling, magic tricks, speaking Huttese and Gamorrean, and whistling. 

Eva Corolastor, in her far less sneaky cover of a pazaak player known to the universe as EC, watched him from her seat at the bar.  She was in between tournament rounds.  The Nikto pitboss watched her, carefully, as did the other security team members with each of their charges; this was an organized drink break, to limit the potential of external comms, signals, or other advantageous contact to the players.  Every casino had its quirks.  Katalla had been different.  The casinos that dotted Nar Shaddaa varied, depending on which Hutt was the proprietor. 

What mattered was a good, entertaining game for both spectators and participants. (And Eva and Theron doing an intel collection and drop to save the galaxy.)  Eva was drinking for free, and she got to see Theron and one of his innumerable secret talents. 

“Secret,” mostly because SIS taught him and paid for it. 

Eva took a sip of her drink and let the ice rattle as she set it down.  “Secret,” because Theron didn’t value the talent enough to take pride in it.  To him, it was a tool, like a slice kit.  He never would get up on the Odessen stage and play the piano she’d hauled in one week, after winning it in a pazaak game on Ord Mantell (that, and three grazers who now lived happily on the Odessen back forty).   It got the job done.  Eva wondered if it was the professionalism or the Jedi training that refused to have an ego about it.

It was something other people couldn’t do, and Theron just… hid it away.  Only brought it out on special, necessary occasions.  He never did it for himself.  …maybe his brain classified it as ‘work,’ not ‘rec.’

A chime sounded in the casino.  Back to the tables.

~~

“You plan on staying here for the night?”  The pitboss peered down at her, with no small amount of concern.  Eva had won the first-place purse, and he had security concerns.

“Yeah, always make a habit of it,” Eva reassured him.  “I know the Hutts don’t take kindly to their winners ending up dead.”

“Puts a chill on business,” he confirmed.

Eva lifted her chin in the direction of the piano player, who was still playing as the remaining players filed out.  “How long has he been playing at this tourney?  Haven’t been here in … years,” she admitted.  That was the truth, as complicated as it was.

The Nikto gave Theron a glance.  “Him?  Five, maybe six years?”

Interesting.  Eva had wondered how he’d made arrangements so quickly for this particular drop; normally that took weeks, if not months of prep. 

The Nikto misinterpreted her expression.  “He’s a pro.  None of the lady players have had luck with him.  Granted, they normally approach him during the game, which is suspicious, from our perspective.” 

“But after I’ve already won – that’s a me problem, not a you problem?”

Wordlessly, the Nikto held up his hands and backed away from the situation –whatever that was going to be.

Eva had a pretty good idea.  She sauntered over to the increasingly lonely stage, in black shimmersilk. 

Theron played on, aware, but indifferent to her, even as she sat on the empty edge of the bench, her back to the piano.  “Come here often?” he asked, pretending to care about the answer.

“You do.  Every year for the last six.” 

That made him sit up straight, and Eva saw the vacant, bored expression of the piano player flee away. 

Eva slid down the bench, balancing on the edge so that her back went right up against his.  She knew he wouldn’t answer if she could see him.  “Why?” 

The piano kept playing for a few more lines, right through the bridge to final refrain.   “Might have been hoping … that some lady gambler would show up.  By some miracle.”

“Even with … information otherwise?”

“Especially in despite of that.” 

“And you didn’t think she’d come to you?”

“I thought the game would give us adequate cover, regardless of the circumstances.”

If he hadn’t left SIS, if she had not gotten iced, if she had escaped, if she had been in hiding, if he was loose, if there was no Alliance –

Maybe he was right that he was more likely to find her at a card table than trying to sneak into SIS.  Or the apartment he never willingly spent time in. 

“Besides, music makes things more… intriguing.” 

“Secret,” because he still wanted to surprise her and lure her right here to this bench.

Eva arched her back in way that made the silk rise up to the nape of his neck, just for a split second.  “You know, using your talents for good doesn’t mean you can only use them on the job.  You could… use them to your own benefit.  For your own enjoyment.”

Because Eva knew Theron still didn’t have a favorite song.  He didn’t dance unless asked to –

And then he abruptly shifted to the side, and she almost fell backward onto the keys, only saved by his right arm around her back.  “I’d rather show off the things that are just me, not the guise.”  No more piano player.

Just Theron and the way his eyes burned bright for her.

She grasped at his shoulder, stabilizing herself just long enough to whisper.  “Ok, then, hot shot.  Your place or mine?”

In other news, the intel drop was successful.

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“You know, when men ask me to dance, it’s typically leading to the horizontal mambo, not the Alderaanian waltz.”

Lenn Teraan’s eyebrows shot up toward his hairline.  “You are unceasingly bold.”

“You are surprisingly resilient,” Eva Corolastor retorted as he directed her to spin to her right while he followed along, turning to his left.  “What gives?  I thought we were having fun.”

“We are,” he insisted, a quick eye darting to the band that played on.  Dinner was due to be served any minute now, and he just had to wait out Eva a few more minutes. 

Because he really, really liked her, and telling her the truth was going to make her not like him. 

“I thought we were, but then you got very …formal.”  Eva made a vague gesture with both hands in the broad direction of the band, the massive dance floor, the huge dining table, and the other accoutrements of luxury lent to House Teraan by House Organa.  They were mutually in debt to this bright young thing, so no fuss was made about the expenditure.

“Dinner will be served in a few moments – let’s…”  Lenn trailed off as Eva gave him a look that indicated he wasn’t going to shake her.  Stars, she was like a walking, talking, adrenaline rush.  “…I can’t.”

Eva quietly tilted her head in askance, not satisfied…but not angry.  Not yet, anyway.

Lenn sighed and crossed his arms in front of him, choosing to look at the smooth, perfected fitted tiles.  “I can’t… dance with you.  Bloodlines and all that.”

She didn’t make a sound.

Well, at least she wasn’t crying, which was significantly better than the last time he he’d had this conversation.  Lenn dared to look up at her. 

“Are you aware of the modern miracle of birth control implants?” Eva asked him, as if he were stupid.  Which he was, a bit.

The audacity on her --  Lenn shook his head, “No.  Yes,” he hastily corrected himself.  “It’s more…about appearances.”  With a quick hand signal, he had the band (which was mercifully out of earshot of their conversation) take it from the top, and he gestured for Eva to come back to him. 

Eva still hadn’t quite given up on her quarry – he could tell, with that determined look her eye. 

They started with the basics.  She stepped on his foot, almost immediately.  Lenn held back a sigh.  Such a beginner.  But she didn’t look down.

She was going to go so far in this galaxy. 

Lenn tried to explain it, the best he could.  “You may have noticed that appearances matter on Alderaan – hence our machinations here.”  This time, when she misstepped and hit his toe again, he couldn’t hold back the sigh.  “The pool of women I might marry is very small and isolated to this planet.  I…cannot look anything less than an ideal bridegroom, especially since I don’t have a fortune to splash about.”

Eva didn’t look away, but her face shifted from defiance to something more …considerate.  Considering.  “…must be pretty awful to have to choose from the people that stole from you.”

Lenn had heard she was quite the markswoman, but he’d clearly underestimated that gossip.  “Oh, it would finally provide me with the standard to which I’ve been kept, to this point,” he replied, the words hollow.  “But yes.  Beware of gilded cages, Eva.”

He was the Warden of the Eternal Flame.  He was the Scion of House Teraan, not Cedonia. 

They started again, with the music looping back around.  Eva didn’t step on his feet this time.  She was … much improved, after his dancing lesson.

At dinner, during which she managed to keep her elbows off the table, she did raise a glass to him.  “To the closest of friends?” she offered.

“The closest…?”

“The closest you can get that credits can’t buy.”  Then she smiled at him.  “But dancing lessons can.”

She was one of the truest friends Lenn ever had.

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For someone who liked rain a lot, some of Eva’s best memories centered around fires.  Not the ones that were on the ship.  The ones that were in gatherings and celebrations. 

The one on Ord Mantell where they burned her bed after getting her ship (and Torchy) back from Skavak and freeing Bowie, and capturing the Crown of Dubrillion for Risha.

The one on Makeb, when they’d figured out the game and put a bet on Imperial greed and had a great party with the Ash Angel’s crew and two rival engineering corps. 

The ones on Yavin 4, during the Galactic New Year Party and the last party – not as unregulated or as reckless as the others, but there were good memories as fireworks went off over the heads of Eva and Theron, drinks poured down gullets, and the buzz resulted in wonderfully sloppy kisses and bare affection.

The one on Odessen, when the war itself was over and Eva was free and yet not. They were alive and alone and the warmth of the fire was only matched by Theron’s body heat.

The one again on Odessen when the gilded cage was shattered and Eva flew free of the hated title ‘Commander’ and ‘Voidhound,’ burning every vestige of those personages (but not the red silk robe Theron had given her).

…how could teaching two kids to roast marshmallows over a fire without killing themselves compare?

But it did. 

“Now, you just leave that right alone til it gets nice and melty – little black is fine, but you’re aimin’ for an even cook.” Corso, along with shooting lessons, was a fine instructor in the art.  Solemnly, Argo nodded and carefully rotated the stitck.

“Carmelization of the sugar,” Bowdaar clarified, as one clawed hand reached out to adjust the littlest Little Girl’s angle, so it wasn’t dipping down so far into the blue-hot core of the fire.  “I think it’s done –”

And without warning, Dyo swung the incandescently hot ball of sugar right at Guss. 

Fortunately, Guss had prepared for this.   Sure, Risha had made a snide remark at the potholders, welding mask, and weaponsmithing apron he’d borrowed from Akaavi.  She’d been shut up by the comment, “Oh, so you’re volunteering to help the feisty one put the marshmallow on the cracker?”  

Guss clapped the sandwich, with a few chunks of chocolate, together, then extended the finished treat to Bowdaar, who delicately held it between two claws, high over his head.

That didn’t stop Dyo from trying to climb Bowie to get at it, but it certainly slowed her down from burning her mouth off.

Argo, as usual, was a little more placid than his sister.  He carefully turned his stick toward Akaavi, who was brave enough to make his s’more for him.  She easily put it on the flat side of a canteen to cool off. 

Eva felt Theron’s arms tighten around her as they sat and watched in the cold autumn night on Odessen.  All Souls was approaching, and Eva would have to make her rounds for her parents…

And it had been fifteen years since Eva’s release from carbonite.  Tonight was cold, but Eva’s world – her life was so wonderfully warm.  Not least because of the living radiator that was Theron Shan – not just the body heat but his heart and his love that kept it all going.

And the crew and their love, which also transcended five years lost. 

Just then, Risha nudged Eva’s free side with a thermos.  “Hot apple cider, grown-up version.”  Translation: shot of vanilla vodka included.

She crouched down between Argo and Dyo and carefully measured out equal little cupfuls in the metal camping cups.  “Kid edition: just warm enough not to burn your mouth on this.”

“Thank you, Aunt Risha,” piped up Dyo, and Eva could see Risha visibly melt at the sound of that little voice.  Especially when Dyo leaned into her auntie.

“Got more firewood.”  Koth and Lana emerged from the general direction of the base’s woodpile.  Camping grounds had long been delineated for rec time, almost immediately upon arrival of the camping supplies ten years before as well.

Theron used his free arm to check his chrono.  “That wasn’t long – pretty efficient, Koth.”

That had been long for just collecting firewood but given that Lana was around –

“Hey.”  That was all Koth said to Theron in front of the kids, and Lana wore an appropriate shade of pink on her cheeks, not just from the cold.

Eva loved fires.  Outside of her ship.

Chapter Text

~~

“Didn’t know they made bikinis in size ‘skeleton’.”  Risha didn’t even flip her sunglasses up as Eva finally arrived at her reserved deck chair.

“I can always leave –”

“Don’t you dare.”  Risha put aside her magazine to prop herself up on her elbows.  “You’ve been gone for six months… and we’ve only had you back for a year and a half.  Sit down.”  Now Risha tipped her glasses down her nose to look at the thinner-than-ever pale frame.  “And I will bully you back to good health.”

Eva let out a humorless “heh,” a noise Risha had grown to miss in the years lost, and she did settle down on her deck chair.

They’d finally made it to Spira, like they’d planned after Ziost.  It took until after Nathema, after the crisis had passed, after the Voidhound had left…but they had made it.  And now there was the question as to whether Eva would go back to being just a smuggler, just Captain…just herself now it was all over.

'It' being the command of the Eternal Fleet.  The Alliance, possibly.

Now it was question of recovery for Eva, how wasted she had become by the stress, the despair, the …  the final war with the Voidhound, Risha supposed.  They didn’t know the creature they’d made while playing dress up right before the King’s Ransom job would go so far, so fast. 

But Eva was here, right now, more than she had been in months. 

There was a silence that was not fraught with tension or fear, as the Voidhound silent was a dangerous thing.  No, it was just them, two friends, sunning themselves (wearing the appropriate UV protection) in the luxury resort and having carefree lives – at least for a little while – again. 

Risha kept an ear out for Eva, even as she started to doze in the sun. 

The voice finally came.  “Akaavi once said, ‘Your taste for spies is not for the weak.’  Sort of been haunting me.”

“Sort of?” Risha stirred to full wakefulness at that statement. 

“Ehh.”

Risha rolled to her stomach, and Eva followed her lead.  Risha had timed her tanning sessions to perfection, and Eva trusted her judgment.  “They gather intel, they can lie, and they don’t always let you in on it.”

“But they aren’t the same –” came the protest.

“Are they?” Risha asked.  She wanted to hear her say it.

…because Risha wanted her to be happy.  And Theron Shan was it, or nothing would ever be.

Their agent bought him time and space, but Eva had to come the rest of the way.

Eva finally replied, “He did all it for me.  Then he asked me to marry him.”  The shoulders rose and fell slightly.  “I don’t know if … I don’t know if I am that person.  Still am… or ever was.”

Then Eva propped her face up on her hands.  “I’ve been the Captain since I was 16, and I don’t even know if I’m still listed as Baby Girl Corolastor on my chaincode.” 

Risha turned her head to look at Eva.  Her face was gaunt, though with a little more color in it than had been in months.  “Who the hell am I anyway?  After running an identity con since birth, thanks to Ma?” 

…Risha had always known things cut deeper with Eva; she wasn’t some vapid spacer.  How deep –

“…we could go back into business.  See what you’re actually made of.  Because you can do it all – we know that now.”  Risha pillowed her head on her bicep as she rotated a little more to lie on her side – she’d roll back to her belly so the tan wouldn’t be weird later, in a minute.  “But it's a question of what you like doing.  If that’s you or…someone you became a long time ago.”  A few beats.  “But you should be aware that you’re not getting rid of me so easily, whoever the hell you are, Eva.  Baby.  Whatever.”

The girls’ laughter caused Bowdaar to look up from his holonovel across the pool from them.  He considered it for a few moments, then picked up the ship’s holocam to snap a still. 

As mad as he was with Spike, he did deserve proof of life once in a while.

And Eva was more alive than she had been, in a while. 

Chapter Text

There was the polite smile, the one that came on during meetings and when he wanted to exit conversations. 

There was the smile that came when good things happened in public or at least in front of others.

Both of them stopped somewhere before they reached his eyes, and he never showed his teeth.

Eva noticed that about Theron from very early on.  When he was analyzed by her ship’s medical computer, one night in Rishi, she found out that none of his teeth were original.  All of his teeth were replacements, implanted into a partially reconstructed jaw.

Eva had, to that point, wondered how his teeth stayed white despite all the caf he drank.  Turned out it was the stain-resistant veneers; if SIS was going to have him lose all his teeth for them in the line of duty, the least they’d do would be to give him a replacement that would likely endure after he died (in the line of duty, of course). 

He explained it away.  “I did mean it when I said being beaten up is a lot easier to cope with than the feelings that come with these sorts of ops,” he told her in a powder room in a Hutt casino, one time, when they were working together…and not together.

Not yet, for real.

Based on the few scraps that snuck out over the years, after the statutes of limitations were over, Eva heard more about how Theron lost his teeth, most of them through fights and torture.  He didn’t mind the loss; he wasn’t vain.  Most of the smiles people saw from Theron Shan were still closed-lipped. 

The first time Eva ever saw true joy on Theron’s face, she’d just walked past him with a cup of caf and interrupted his meditation (which he’d decided to do in the middle of her lounge, 0600 Coruscant time).   Then his eyes lit up, and he showed off those technically perfect teeth.

She hoped that maybe the affection for the drink and then, when she saw that grin again while she was working against the Empire:  maybe some affection would spill onto her.

The smile had been packed away, but now she could compare it and contrast it with the other smiles he regularly gave.  It was different. 

It was real.  Maybe the teeth were not real.  But the feelings he couldn’t hide were very real, when that smile appeared. 

It disappeared, regularly.  She would go weeks without seeing it.  But then it would return.

The first time it was directed at her, with no attempt to hide it, Eva Corolastor felt as if the universe had stopped, just for her.  In the quiet of a hotel room the night after a messy mission, she’d said, “I like you.”  Not the cover they’d played.  She’d provoked it again when she said, “You were a great husband, while the marriage lasted.”

Theron looked as if he’d been struck by the best sort of lightning, both times, the surprise coming to the fore only to be replaced by real happiness (?).  It was honest, whatever it was.

The smile came more easily the longer they were together.    Eva lost count of the number of real smiles, with all of those technically perfect teeth that he didn’t show to just anyone, on Rishi and Yavin.  And those smiles were for her.  Because of her.  The Voidhound’s fortune could hang; this felt like treasure.  …Especially when she realized the smiles in the holos from his childhood were that real smile, all the time as he and his father traveled the galaxy.

Then the smile was gone with a planet: Haashimut.

Eva knew someone else had made him smile again afterwards, and she silently thanked them – all of them.  Because if they hadn’t, she probably couldn’t have, not even with all her charms. 

Then, fifteen years later, it was gone again: Ziost. 

Eva… was pretty sure those real smiles didn’t happen often while she was gone.  Maybe Gary from Analytics’s kid Rivia got one or two of them, because she was a bright spot in his life during the five years .  (Theron admitted that to Eva; she represented hope and the future, something everyone around her had lost before she was born.  “That’s a lot to put on a baby.”  “It manifested in a lot toys and contact naps.”)

When Eva returned, there were more lines in Theron’s face.  Not from smiling.  Same went for the grey hair creeping at his temples.  Not from happy events.  For about… twelve hours, Eva wondered if she’d ever see that expression on his face again, caused by anyone or anything.  It didn’t have to be her, even though she wanted it to be.  She just didn’t want him to be her dour, workaholic ops manager with no joy in his life other than his duty.

…but Eva only had to wait twelve hours for him to smile at her, under the moonlight, right before they went home together. 

The smile lived in Virtue’s Thief.  It still wasn’t available for public consumption, generally, but Eva could still draw it out of him when incredible success happened.  As their cadre on Odessen became closer knit, others noticed the difference in Theron’s smiles as well.

And after the Eternal Fleet was gone entirely. 

After the galaxy ended again for both him and her… 

Toothy grins with all the creases in his face showing – new lines, this time from smiling far too much.  The two of them were finally free of a little conspiracy on Korriban, and while the Empire and Republic snapped at each other, the Alliance had peace.  They had peace. Never quiet – always something rattling in the galaxy that attracted their attention.  But not being in constant mortal peril – that was peace for people like them.

Both of their children wore their father’s grin, never dimmed by for second.  Sure, both also had a certain setting for devilry and chaos from Eva, but the utterly innocent feral joy children had manifested in their father’s smile.

Eva lived for that smile and for every face that wore it.  And it was a hell of a good life. 

Chapter Text

All the lights went out in Virtue’s Thief.  Everything went dead silent for a second, including, much to Eva’s panic, the life support system.  Then the backups kicked on.  She sat, terrified, in the pilot’s seat, with the orange glow of the emergency lights.

She’d taken her first nightshift on the Thief, and she broke the ship.  Somehow. Ma was going to kill her.  Absolutely.

And indeed, Eva heard the second her mom’s boots hit the floor.  Shit, she’s up.

Dad wasn’t going to be.  He was probably going to sleep through the whole thing, as he did these days.  Getting out of bed was a two-man operation, and her mother was already on the way to the cockpit. 

Eva turned to Huck, who was riding shotgun in the co-pilot’s seat.  “Remember, you’re not allowed to kill me, no matter what she says.  I’m only 15.  It’s your primary function to ensure I survive –”

“Interruption: to the date of your majority on your chaincode card.  Correction:  the chaincode card supplied to me by your mother.  That is already 21.65 years old.  Conclusion: my primary mission of ensuring your survival to the Republic age of majority has already been a success.”

Eva gave him a filthy look that only a foiled teenager could.  “You can be a real massive bag of robo-dicks, Huck.”

“Objection!  – ”

Just then, the door hissed open.  Athene Corolastor’s red hair was braided tightly to keep the curls under control, and she’d thrown on a thermal top over her sleepwear and put on the socks with the little grips on the bottom that she and Eva squabbled over.  “What happened?”

“I don’t know, I swear to the Three Moons.”  Eva leaned back the captain’s chair, away from the dashboard.  “We were going along fine – and then it all shutdown.”

Athene frowned.  “No contacts on the sensors?”

“Not even space junk or an asteroid.”  Eva tapped at the nav computer.  “We were on the course you plotted before going to bed.  Didn’t touch nothing.  Just made sure all the green lights stayed green.”

Athene nodded, distractedly.  “I think…” she trailed off.  She consulted the trajectories she’d charted and the current state of the ship.  “We might have nicked the edge of a geomagnetic storm.” 

Eva made a face.  “How’s that happen?” 

“Local sun might be throwing solar winds and agitating the planetary magnetospheres – mostly self-contained, but if things line up, they can get cranky enough to mess with planets that are in the system – or are passing through hyperspace at the time.”  Athene rattled off the explanation as if it were nothing.  It was needed to know for the business of galactic smuggling; the rest of her education (and Eva’s) was nowhere near as impressive.  Athene motioned for Huck to get out of his chair.  He immediately acquiesced and disappeared down the hallway.

Eva nodded, as if she understood any of that.  “So not my fault?”

“Nope, not at all,” Athene replied, eyes still watching the lights on the dashboard slowly go green again.  “You just hope it doesn’t happen in hot pursuit or take you out in a less than friendly territory.”

Eva slumped into the chair in relief.  “I thought I broke the ship.”

“Happens to all captains, at some point.”  Satisfied that the ship was recalibrating and resetting appropriately, Athene let herself sit down in the co-pilot’s chair.  “Just part of learning the ropes.  What you can predict… and what you can’t.” 

Eva let out a sigh.  “Feels like I’m always going to be learning – never a master –”

“Honey, don’t think you’re going to be one of those skypirates from those books,” Athene cut her off before she could whing.  “We’re small-time.  You’re clocking 1500 hours as if you were some real important pilot that would fly ships that took people places; this is all pretty demanding, for what we are…”  Athene shifted in her seat.  “But I want you to learn it right.  I want you to be ready for anything.”

“Magnetic storms,” Eva gestured out the front viewport.

Athene nodded.  “Fires.  Hyperdrive failures.  Fuel issues… All the things that are going to be yours one day.”

Mother and daughter exchanged smiles. Virtue’s Thief was destined to be Eva’s, hopefully far, far in the future.

The door chimed and slid open, and in skittered Hylo the cat, unable to bear being separated from Eva a second later.

And then his paw hit something on he way up the dashboard and the ship was plunged into darkness –

“..but I never had a cat on here before.  That can be your new problem with the Thief.”

“…can you at least help figure out what he did?”

“…yeah.”

Chapter Text

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“It’s getting late.”  Eva leaned on the crew quarters door frame.

“Just let me read to the end of the questgiving,” Theron replied, three sets of pleading, olive-gold eyes peering up at Eva.

Somehow, Theron, Argo, and Dyo were all crammed into the one armchair in the crew quarters.  Bedtime was near, but apparently, they had just gotten to “the good part.”  As they always did at this time of the night.

Ev had never thought she’d been the one policing bedtime, but that had been the case ever since Theron had started reading his swords-and-wyrms book series to the kids…mostly because skypirates had too much adult content that Hadrian probably shouldn’t have let Eva read as a ten-year-old.  So Theron’s lute-playing potion guzzlers won out for bedtime reading for two kids. 

“‘And so the fellowship was formed.  The individual failings would be conquered by their collective strength, united by one mission: to save Kaelestria from encroaching darkness,’” Theron finished.  He paused for dramatic effect, as his son and daughter hung on his last words.  “And now you really need to get to bed, or else your mom will have you doing 0300 maintenance for her.”

The two little figures scattered to their beds on opposite sides of the room, giggling as they bounced into bed; 0300 maintenance was the rough equivalent of ‘monster under the bed’ on this ship. 

“Good night,” Theron and Eva told them in unison as the lights were dimmed down very low (but not entirely out).  The door slid shut behind them. 

They padded quietly down the hallway back toward the lounge.  “Argo mentioned to me at bath time that he might want his own room soon,” Theron murmured.

“We’ll put in the divider Corso made when he realized he and Risha would be sharing crew quarters.  ‘Man needs a place to scratch with an audience,’” Eva delivered as a rough, twangy impersonation of Corso.

Theron laughed, a little.  “They’re growing up,” he said, a little sadly.

“That’s the point,” Eva reassured him.  Her childhood had been comparatively normal, up until the sixteen-year-old Captain part. She knew how growing up went.

Theron’s childhood had been anything but, and as a result, he tended to get a bit blue when the children exited a phase (getting rid of the tiny baby socks had been torture.)….and Eva let him.  She let him be attached and subsequently mourn the loss of each stage of childhood.  After fighting for so long not to be attached to anyone or anything, this…

This was a good thing for Theron. 

All of this, as the lovers snuggled into the lounge booth together, a drink on the table for each of them, to linger until their bedtime rolled around.

Chapter Text

It took a lot of discipline to keep his true feelings in check on a number of issues.  However, there had to be some give and take.  Principles held, others permitted to fall away. 

To make a new government, a new order, a new solution to the problem of corruption, there had to be some compromise. 

Flying took discipline and focus, a skill to be honed and yet still never fully trusted.  It was something to always be practiced and perfected, never let to rest for too long. 

Thus, it was a disciplined choice to choose to defect to the newborn Empire, leaving behind the dysfunctional Republic. 

Discipline meant shelving selfish desires and focusing on the end goal, no matter the personal cost.  Discipline and duty went hand in hand, often, for him.  He was systematic.  He was fair.  He was consistent.  That’s all his men needed for him to marked “exceptional.”

That disquieted him, even as he rose through the ranks.

Existing in the new Sith Empire meant understanding that everything was potential collateral: the more one had, the more one could lose.  It was like playing planetary poker, in the sense one knew what one had but then had to figure out what everyone else and the dealer had…and what they were willing to lose or discard to get what they wanted.

So once the pilot made it to the upper ranks, he jettisoned his personal life.  He had the discipline to tamp down what he’d wanted, as a younger, less wise man.  Those dreams were casualties of a revolution. 

Wants were dismissed.  Needs were addressed as they arose. 

There was one failing in his discipline.  Or maybe it was the safety valve, the sane and safe way to release pressure with no consequences.

It started …not right after he surrendered domesticity and true love.  Years after that point. 

…it started at a dive bar on one of the moons of Hutta.  He didn’t think it was Nar Shaddaa, because Nar Shaddaa then wasn’t as it is now. 

It meant nothing.

Then they kept finding each other.

It wasn’t love.

Discipline was knowing there would be no happily ever after and never making promises… not even in moments of euphoria or utter peace in each other’s company.

It helped a lot that she was of poor birth, with a last name she’d chosen herself, in a ship she’d earned herself.

(Who, by the great Holy Star, would name their child “Dyominia” voluntarily?)

…he’d earned his ship too, though the name was a hand-me-down.  The Sith Empire liked keeping clutter, such as names, objects, titles, bloodlines.  He conformed.

Smugglers did not live long, so he shrugged it off when she stopped appearing in the same old places for months at a time.  A year.  He had the discipline to keep his temporary grief to himself.  Just as no one knew of her existence, nobody knew of her loss.

Until she wasn’t lost.

She deliberately tried to break through a sector under his supervision.  She always did know how to get his attention.  He knew the name of her ship, and he told an underling to try his hand at handling it.  “Non-citizens have limited rights in Imperial space.  That said, smugglers – and their cargo – can be of use.  Investigate.  Interrogate without the conveniences of a cell.”

“You’ll observe?”

“Yes.”

Discipline was hearing her voice and not breaking the stoic façade as he listened to round after round of questioning.  She had changed.  Aged, in a way.  She kept casting nervous backward glances, as if listening and waiting for something…

Something…

Something finally pierced the air.

A cry.

Discipline was only letting the surprise, not the rage, the jealousy, then the calculations of time march through his head show on his face.

The underling lost his cool, entirely.  “Is that a baby?” he asked in astonishment.

“Well, it’s not my pet parrot,” she replied, annoyed that the questioning had gone on as long as it did. 

(She didn’t have a pet parrot, did she?  He didn’t know.  It never was supposed to matter…)

He went right back to business. “Is it yours, or is it merchandise?”

A parade of emotions went right across her face as she heard his voice – the one she’d been looking for.  The surprise, the relief, then the fear –

Why was she afraid now?  She never had been, even as his rank and power grew and she remained as she was.

The answer came, in his head, from the rules of planetary poker: people do foolish things when they have something to lose. 

“Yes,” she answered, honestly.  “She’s mine.”

A beat.

The underling looked in askance at him.  “I don’t know what –”

“Show me the child.  Then we’ll consider letting you go on your way.”

Discipline was waiting for her to come back, uncaringly, looking over a duty report while the smuggler disappeared into the back of her ship.

Discipline was not immediately looking up when he heard her re-enter the cockpit.

Discipline was not reacting to seeing his own red hair on another person for the first time in many, many years.

And how that small person squalled and fought at her mother, as if resenting being put on show for some strange audience. 

(He felt the same way, at every parade, at every training exercise he was told to lead, at every medal ceremony.)

Discipline was realizing she would be better off free with her mother than becoming his collateral – something so precious to lose in the Empire’s clawing and squabbling to the top.

Discipline was peering with feigned disinterest.  “Does it have a name?”

Her brave mother replied, “Athene.  Not like her mother.”

A goddess of wisdom and virginity – no, nothing like her mother at all.

(He always appreciated how very self-aware she was – she knew her role in the galaxy and in their liaison.  Until now.  Now she was as caught as off-guard as he was now, but she could not hide it: no discipline in her.)

He turned to his underling.  “Take the ship into the tractor beam.  We will take it in tow to the other end of the sector to ensure she leaves Imperial space without further delay.”

Discipline was surviving to the end of his shift and making it to his quarters before he had a meltdown of an entire emotional spectrum. 

Discipline was waiting another few months before he dared show himself at the same old places to find her.  He found her right away.

She had changed.  Her body had changed.  The child was cared for and far from here, she reassured him.

…Discipline was knowing it was the last time. Discipline was handing over all the clutter the Sith Empire had kept around.  For her. 

Discipline was waiting to laugh in his quarters at the very idea of “House Corolastor,” should she grow into his choices for his life – not her mother’s. (The red hair would go a long way in substantiating any claim. So would the coffer and the maps.)

The Grand Admiral died at the Second Battle of the Seswenna Sector with Athene Corolastor on his mind, never more than a baby in safe hands that were not his, though he supposed she was now 12 years old.

Discipline meant shelving selfish desires and focusing on the end goal (freedom for her), no matter the personal cost.

Chapter Text

“…it sort of got away from me.  Bit of a splurge.  First, it was a welcome back gift…then it was a happy birthday gift, but the order was too complicated to be done by then.  Then it was too late for a dating anniversary present…”  Eva gave an uncharacteristically nervous laugh. 

Theron stared at what was now parked in Odessen’s speeder pool, with an obnoxiously huge bow on it. 

…it was his first Life Day after Nathema.  After he came back.  After his 38^th birthday.  After they marked 4 years since they were officially together (and she was out of carbonite).  After her 30th birthday.

Eva had gotten him a top-of-the-line swoop bike.  Every bell and whistle imaginable.  It was the sort that only people with sponsors with huge pockets could afford.  …honest to the stars, it made the dream bike in Theron’s head pale in comparison.

He’d been in work mode when the Captain had summoned him.  Now… he’d be lucky if he could add and subtract properly. 

It was probably the most elaborate gift anyone had ever gotten him. 

He didn’t know what to do with it. 

Yes, there was the obvious “Ride the bike” idea, but … he didn’t want it.

They’d had conversations before – how she had so much money she could buy anything she wanted and how he never wanted anything, because desires fulfilled and unfulfilled were discouraged.  Eva had been a profound exception. 

Theron didn’t know what to do with the bike or his feelings about it. 

Because he didn’t like it.

He didn’t want it.

But how was he going to explain that to her, who was so anxiously waiting for him to tell her she did it right?  Waiting for him to tell her she knew him best?

They both made those desperate reaches for affection after Nathema.  The legal marriage was the most permanent, and they’d dove into it headlong, together.  What they said during sex was the most fleeting, but the highs got higher with the right words. 

This… was probably the most expensive and the least well received.

And she’d figured it out.  “You don’t like it.”

Theron forced himself to look at her utterly crestfallen expression and told her the truth.  “No.  About as much as you would like my design of a personal shuttle for you to use instead of the Thief.”

Despite the hypothetical, Theron saw that temper flare up – how dare he even say that –and then it fizzled out when it registered. “You…you build them yourself.”

Theron nodded.

 “…but you sold your last swoop – the one you had on Nar Shaddaa,” Eva stated, the question baked in.

Theron shrugged.  “Had to.  Needed the money during the Revanite crisis.  It was for the mission.  Can’t get attached to some old bike if it means saving the galaxy.”

“…but you built it,” Eva repeated.  “How can you –”  She cut herself off with a shake of her head.  “Your attachments thing still doesn’t make sense to me.  The fact that you still can’t –”

“One notable exception.”  He had to correct her on that count.  “And maybe a few others, depending on how much they’ve annoyed me during the week.”  That provoked a smile from the both of them. 

He was better, she had to admit that. 

Eva looked at the swoop bike.  Then she sheepishly offered, “If I had Corso and Guss disassemble it for us and we put it back together –”

She didn’t finish that sentence before Theron laughed.   “We might not see the parts again, Eva,” he managed. 

“And then I really wouldn’t be able to return it.”  Eva gave the bike a bemused look.

Theron’s chuckling tampered off.  “…you’d do that?”

She shrugged.  “What’s the point of a bike you don’t ride or a ship you don’t like?”  A tiny little snarl erupted on her face.  “Even in the abstract.”

The amusement returned to Theron’s face at her absolute caginess about the Thief.  “I promise to never take up a drafting pencil on that concept.”

“Good,” she said, sharply.  Then her own smirk floated up to her face.  “How about I send you off to Taris or Telos or something with Blizz and go have a scrounge for parts?”  She put her hands on her hips. “I bet I could even find you an intel mission to do at the same time.”

Theron swaggered toward her for the first time during this whole exchange.  “Again, I’d never see the parts again if you sent Blizz.”  He paused.  “You got some spare time?”

She closed the rest of the distance between them.  “I can make time.”

Chapter Text

Sometime during the Carbonite Years

Akaavi had to move fast to hide it.  She had been so focused on counting and minding the sensations under her fingertips that she had not heard Mako approach. 

….she wasn’t sure why she hid this talent.  She had never done so on Virtue’s Thief, and it was there that she should have been most cagey and conscientious of her image as a warrior.  As a Mandalorian.  She didn’t want to be lumped in with the rest of those miscreants.

Yet, they had become clan by another name, their captain demanding the loyalty of someone far superior than her…and deserving every ounce of it. 

The Captain was far away now.  The pain had not left with her kote kyr'am.  Yes, Akaavi had sullied that tradition with her … but Eva had been defeated, at last, by the odds she had bested for years.  Her life had changed the galaxy.  Her death had been in the hopes of saving it.

If that did not deserve a ceremony of honor, then Akaavi did not understand honor or being a Mandalorian…

But was she really that anyway?  After all the years away?  After the disillusionment, after –

“Akaavi?” Mako called out to her. 

She was on her feet.  “Cyar’ika.”

Yes, the universe was strange.  The liaison on Yavin wasn’t the end after all. 

It was a job.  Mako couldn’t finish it.  Akaavi did.

The galaxy had ended as they knew it.  So what the hell, make the same mistake twice.

But …

They settled into what a Mando’ade might describe as ‘domesticity.’  It was a different sort from most other sentients playing house, certainly.

... and Akaavi was not yet done with her craft yet.  It had to remain a secret, for now.

~~

Mako sat so very still, once she realized what it was.  Akaavi had left it, with a hasty note.  Probably because she didn’t do feelings as well as she wanted to; that had been conveyed one quiet night.  Mandalorians – or at least Akaavi Spar – felt everything, intensely.  She expressed anger and passion openly, but softer things were smothered out or hidden away. 

Akaavi had knit her a sweater.  In Mako’s own size.  Not a hand-me down.  Not a reject

Mako had known Akaavi knit for her old crew.  Even that Mon Cal, Guss, got that from her – in fact, he got the most of her knitting because he needed the most.  Mandalorians took care of their clan, even the ones they didn’t like.  The clan is strong, not always the individuals in it.

Akaavi was always strong for Mako, in a way that Gronn hadn’t been.  Even Braden after a certain point … wasn’t. 

Akaavi hadn’t knit since she left Eva’s crew.

She’d just crafted Mako her very own sweater.

…this was serious, wasn’t it. 

Mako ran her fingers over the bumps and smooth parts of it.  The yarn selected wasn’t itchy; Mako guessed that had been gleaned from Akaavi’s harsh demand for ‘any and all allergies’ when they first set up both the bounty hunting business … and later the domestic situation. 

(She’d mentioned she’d broken out in a rash after wrestling a ‘sheep-like’ farm animal during one of Gronn’s dumber schemes on Alderaan.)

Mako gripped the sweater as she considered whether she was ready or would she ever be ready for a long attachment to Akaavi Spar.  She was nothing like Torian or Gronn or Braden (who wasn’t even a Mando at all).

And yet, this association seemed more… equal.  Grown-up. 

Akaavi was much older than she was; she knew who she was and had been for years.  Mako felt as if a bubble had been popped by Gronn’s death; any vestiges of the old life were now gone, especially after the old crew had broken up.  Torian had to heed the call of Mandalore…and they’d long broken up at that point. 

…and yeah, Akaavi had been a symptom of that, on Yavin.  Not the most auspicious or ‘good’ beginning. 

Mako always tried to be a good person.  Maybe because the other clones like her had turned out so bad – anything good had gone into her test tube or something.  However that worked. 

Life with Akaavi had been good so far.  The partnership was good – nobody was a leader or a follower or someone learning the ropes.  They knew the business.  They knew the dance.  There weren’t any confused feelings. 

Akaavi was strong, but Mako had the business to handle; Akaavi was not one for paperwork or permits.  Different strengths, complementary strengths, mutual respect….

…

…

…

Mako put on her new sweater, to make sure Akaavi saw her in it when she came home from whatever errand she’d set herself upon.

Chapter Text

Lana Beniko cursed the day she had met Theron Shan and Eva Corolastor.

She should have drowned both of them at Manaan.  Taken their intel and proceeded apace to stop the Revanite conspiracy –

…and as always, her internal rant stopped there, because Lana remembered how green she was at spy games and all the skills she lacked before she went on the run.  She had learned all the things she could live without.  She also learned about the things that could and did kill her. 

As Theron later indicated, it was always important for a spy to know their weaknesses and know when they could not be compensated for in a mission. 

The Empire was expert at limiting free will and spontaneity; everything was orderly and planned.  The Republic apparently tolerated a certain amount of improvisation, which explained not only Theron’s own high-flying achievements but also a good number of his injuries.  Nothing truly needed to be said about the constant state of chaos that existed among smugglers; Eva traveled along the ebbs and flows of business and adventure in the galaxy, fluctuating and ever-changing.

Lana did not tolerate spontaneity well, as it gave her ulcers.  Eva was the absolute top source for them.  Her rescue and insistence upon saving every wayward Zakuulan had depleted the bismuth supply Lana kept with her in her medkit.  Eva’s improv skills prevented Lana from accompanying her to the Star Fortresses.  Praise the stars for Bowdaar’s return; the Alliance wouldn’t have gotten its kick-start into active operations without Eva having a partner that wasn’t currently guiding her remotely (Theron), an easily disabled droid (HK-55), incapable of doing stealth (Koth), or cramming antacids down her throat in fistfuls (Lana). 

The antacids supply in medbay dwindled when Eva went on walk-about; she’d disappear from the base, only to reappear when she felt like it… or when Lana couldn’t take the absence anymore and sent Theron to retrieve her. 

This was also why Lana could never own a cat; the requirement to let it do as it pleased at any given moment was overly indulgent, in Lana’s opinion.

The current cause of Lana’s churning stomach acid was Eva’s impromptu decision to say that, as an exercise in counter espionage, the entire base was required to play the Assassins Game.  Everyone had a packet of purple dye, and they were to squirt it on their target, assigned to them by the Master Assassin.  Those who survived the first round proceeded to the second, until someone was declared the best assassin on base and was rewarded with their choice of liquor from Virtue’s Thief and a three-day leave pass.

That wasn’t the problem. 

No, it wasn’t even that Theron Shan was the Master Assassin who had helped Eva arrange the game and the target assignments.

The problem was that Lana Beniko accompanied the liquor with the winner on their three-day leave pass. 

This idea apparently had been born overnight, in the short 7 hours Lana had taken to sleep. 

She stormed into the war room only to find those two jokers sitting at the war table.  “YOU.”

The pair had the audacity to smile at her.  Theron’s expression was more akin to a smirk, while Eva smiled with all of her teeth, a bit feral.  “In our defense,” Eva began, “it was the only way to exempt you from the Assassins Game.”

Theron indicated Eva.  “She can’t play, because she’s the commander of the base – unlimited access anywhere at any time.  I can’t play because … well, first, I’d win, and second, I had to make the assignments; I know who has which target.” 

Lana could feel the heat just radiating from her eyes.  “And you couldn’t come up for anything for me?” 

“We did!” Theron and Eva said in unison.

“I’m the prize,” Lana said with dismay.  “Along with a bottle of liquor and a shuttle pass.”

Eva waved a finger back and forth.  “No, no.  You have the most important job of all, Lana.”    She exchanged a knowing look with Theron and gave him the floor.

Theron squared up, datapad in hand.  “The winner of the competition… has already been contacted.”

Lana tilted her head to the side, wondering if she hadn’t heard correctly.  “What?”

Theron launched into his briefing.  “You will be accompanying a young Quarren pilot to his planet of choice, which will be Kamino, an ocean world.” 

The planet flickered to life on the war table, with a few finger taps from Eva.  “And just to remind you, much like Mon Cal, Quarren are biologically incompatible with humans!”

Lana growled at her as Theron continued, unfazed.  “Your mission there is to investigate some … disturbances among the local wildlife…”  Theron gestured to Eva.

Eva ran her fingers along the edge of the table, summoning up an image of… a Jedi?  “So, around 300 years ago, the planet Ossus got trashed by a supernova, caused by our old buddy from Yavin 4, Exar Kun.  On the way out, a Jedi master from the Swimmer race called ‘Qalsneek the Bull’ smuggled artifacts off Ossus before the whole place was irradiated.  He supposedly hid the loot on Kamino.”

The light went on in Lana’s head.  Aha!

Eva cocked an eyebrow at Lana.  “I have my suspicions about how ‘Jedi’ this guy was, with a name like that and a bolthole on Kamino readily available to store this stuff.”

Lana nodded.  “The entire Exar Kun affair… was highly disruptive to the Jedi Order and the galaxy at large.  The histories may not be complete…”  She stared at the planet then turned to Theron.  “What’s caused the artifacts to activate and cause the disruption, thus attracting our attention?”

Theron gave her a smile, appreciating how she’d knit everything together promptly.  “That’s what we need you to find out.  And if it’s safe, retrieving the artifacts would be helpful for our little enclave… though we might be able to use them strategically to generate goodwill with the Jedi Order at a later date.”

“Oooor the Sith Order – whoever is the highest bidder in terms of credits or war materiel,” Eva piped up. 

Theron gave her a look.  “We’ll talk about that later.”

Eva hopped off the edge of the war table.  “You’re the only one that’s Force Sensitive among us three, so you’ve got to go…plus you’re the least believable to have cooked up the Assassins Game –”

“I’ll remind you I made you a cannibal on Rishi,” Lana retorted. 

She could be spontaneous!   …if she planned it well enough…

“So you’ll take your hot date and your nice booze in stride and … put up a good show for the base, one way or another?” Eva dangled out there.

Lana sighed and blew a puff of hair up at her bangs.  “I will be appropriately devastated by my doomed romance with a biologically incompatible Quarren.  But I will enjoy the liquor.” 

“Thanks, Lana,” Theron said, already burying himself in the next round of Assassin assignments.

“Can’t do it without you!” Eva added.  “So, wanna go up to the observation deck and watch our idiots chase each other all over Odessen and squirt each other with grape juice?”

“Absolutely!”

Chapter Text

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” 

She looked up at the familiar voice, pressed into an unfamiliar form.  Eva had learned that the correct response, whilst wearing evening gloves, was to extend her hand toward the voice and either get a firm hearty handshake or to have lips graze the top of the satin fabric. 

Her ability to think was always severely compromised whenever she saw Theron in another guise, as another man, as if they were in different universes, over and over again meeting each other for the first time. 

Time stopped for Eva, each time, each first time.  Maybe it was leftover brain disarray from the carbonite, when she dissociated regularly and didn’t know “when” she was.  It was different from when she first saw him in disguise at the casino on Katalla, and they had to pretend to be strangers.  The hitch wasn’t there.  

Or maybe these episodes were flashes into another universe when it was their first time meeting.  Eva had idly considered it before, in other spaces, in other times.

What if Eva had been caught after Corellia or there had been more hand-wringing before the Pub employed her for Ilum…would she have been sitting at an interrogation table, alone with the files and accusations against her and her broken heart as Theron walked in to question her….?  And when he had sussed out the truth and did what he did best – a victim debrief – what would they be then?

What if they had crossed paths on Nar Shaddaa, and Eva hadn’t been so tipsy with Risha and eating burgers that she’d noticed Theron pick a fight with a Houk and disappear around a corner…Would they have become fast friends over busting up Morbo the Hutt’s trafficking ring, with Bowdaar approving almost immediately upon completion of the rescue?

What if Theron had been deployed on one of those top secret missions that he was still reticent to talk to her about?  Was part of the hesitation knowing now that she’d been nearby?  That his presence would affect how she thought of him now?  Would it matter that he was disguised as an Imperial on King’s Ransom or even the Voidwolf’s flagship?  That he had lurked around Port Nowhere as Eva and Darmas had carried on, publicly, in the cantina?... or even if he had seen them at the tables on Canto Bight?

How different would things have been if Master Oteg had decided Eva and Risha had needed a supervisor on their trip to Maelstrom Prison…one with insight on the man they were meant to rescue?

Or…

Or what if they had never met before she came to Odessen?  Eva didn’t know if she’d be the Outlander if she hadn’t worked with Theron before (and she never would wonder that out loud to him, ever), but… even as the Voidhound (five years later, five years darker, five years harder…) would she catch his eye?  Or would she batter his professional because he caught her attention, some fire still inside of her after five years with the worst part of herself taking the lead, continuing her cartel work, in defiance of the Eternal Empire?

There was never a question that Eva would never bend the knee to the Eternal Empire, and there was never a question that Theron would join the organization would save the galaxy.   

It was just a question that if their paths crossed later…would they?  Could they?  She would be worse (she was sure of it), but would Theron…have someone else?  Gotten better about his attachment issues?  Or would he just be in that devotional state to a cause, his personal life an empty quarters on Odessen, decked out with the basics, his clothes and shave kit, and nothing more?

If their paths crossed earlier?

Or was it only in that moment, that one second when they decided they were both going to the cantina after Darok’s debrief that was the space that ‘they’ could start to exist? 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” 

She looked up at the familiar voice, pressed into an unfamiliar form.  Eva had learned that the correct response, whilst wearing evening gloves, was to extend her hand toward the voice and either get a firm hearty handshake or to have lips graze the top of the satin fabric. 

Now it was here, as he bowed low to grasp her red satin hand and kiss the knuckles, just off to the side of a ring (which had to be real, because their audience could spot a fake a parsec off).  His hair curled, as he never let it in daily life.  The suit was expensive, and he’d probably rented it or borrowed it from someone on base with a more active social life who actually did take leave. 

Eva rose to her feet as he straightened up, still grasping her hand. 

“I’m sure it’s always a pleasure to meet you,” Eva replied, the people around them chuckling at the joke or the audacity. 

Theron’s eyes lit up, not an act, and he took her signal to escort her out to the dancefloor.

There was a mission.  There was an objective. 

And then there was them, spinning around, always coming together, somehow. 

Chapter Text

Her breath caught as he finished describing what he wanted.  “Are…. Are you sure?”  Eva finally managed to stutter out.

Theron hadn’t asked for …anything like this before.  He wasn’t… into this sort of thing.  Hell, she’d had to convince him it was fine and acceptable and even preferred when he wanted something in the bedroom. 

Now he had laid out a rather detailed plan for the evening.

Her face must have given away the concern behind her questions; Theron reached for the tumbler of whiskey she’d found him with and finished it off in a single, long sip.  That wasn’t his first one of the night, she guessed.  “Yeah.”  He stared at the empty glass for more than a few moments before putting it back on the table.  “…I…”  His lips pulled downward as he struggled – still struggled – to be fully open with her. 

They’d been together for years now, and there was always one more door to unlock with him. 

But Eva was the one who could hack through his defenses and pry him open. 

The olive-gold eyes gleamed up at her in the dimness.  “I don’t – I don’t want to think of SIS anymore.  Of my old life.  Before you.  How I was.”  The frown deepened momentarily before he reached for her hand, just to hold it.  He stared at her bare, pale skin, just visible in the scant light, before following her arm up to her face.  Then Theron’s face was open, vulnerable, and eager.  “When I ache, I only want to think of you.”

Her heart fluttered slightly as she squeezed his hand.  “To bed, then?”

**

So careful. So very careful.

Enough to bruise, he’d instructed.  

The moonlight on Odessen came down through the viewports of her bedroom in narrow beams.  They danced in and out of the clouds that night, occasionally revealing her handiwork on his bare skin.  The light sometimes caught her nude form, teasing him.

They had started with his back.  Then he had laid open to her on their bed, hiding nothing from her and her mouth.  He’d propped himself up with a few spare pillows to watch her.

The tension built with each slide, each taste, each moment he would gasp just a little louder, every time his pulse jumped under the press of her body.   He grew harder, thicker as the shadows played.

She’d checked in a few times when she heard him hiss air through his teeth.  He’d waved her off, told her to keep going. 

Other times, he’d moaned and told her ‘yes.’

She was aroused by how he was splayed, showing all of his tender spots to her and trusting her not to hurt him.  For once, he was passive, letting her touch what she wanted, when she wanted – but only on the way to delivering what he had asked for.

The inside of his knee, then his thigh.  He cried out, a combination of pain and desire.  An unexpected bolt of arousal caused her to impulsively do it again --- a great gasp---

“Oh, God, I  – ”

“It’s fine—”

“--- I think I broke the skin  –”

“Don’t care – finish it.”  Theron’s large calloused hand out to cradle Eva’s face, his eyes becoming molten gold as he commanded?  Begged? 

The lines of power had been smudged and smeared, just like the blood that dripped from his thigh to the bed, the sheets shifting over it. 

He pulled her up to his mouth, the kiss disrupted by his hitching breath as she brushed by so many painful spots.  He was still so powerful, and she thought she would drown in him before he pulled himself back.  Heavy breathing, sweat forming from the intensity.  “Finish me off.”

Blindly, she went by touch and long-shared intimacy.  She tasted his salt, his brief bitterness, and then the head of his thick cock was in her mouth.  The hand on his shaft gently twisted, and he growled.  Out of the periphery of her vision, she could sense he had grabbed at the headboard, fighting the impulse to grip the back of her head.

That was for other nights, not this one.

Her tongue teased at his tip as she pumped him, and then her other hand snaked between his legs to press against the sensitive skin of his perineum.  He cursed and let out a long raunchy moan as her mouth slid down and up with her hand. 

As his abdomen tensed and jumped with each stroke and slide, she felt him grow as hard as beskar, and the tender area where her fingers roamed felt engorged as his orgasm approached.  He was never shy about his pleasure, but now every breath was a  gasped word of praise, her name, a groan.  He was at her mercy ---

And she was a merciful goddess, as he keened her name one last time.  She felt his prostate jolt against her fingers, his balls tighten, and he came in her mouth with a great burst and a shout: “Oh, love!”  She felt his body almost vibrate against hers as he was carried away by the wave of pleasure. 

Eva went still as his release pumped into her mouth, the rest of him sinking back into the bed.  Theron panted, and when she looked up at him, his eyes were unfocused, dazed.  He trembled slightly as she slid him back out of her mouth, then he reached for her.

**

Eva woke in darkness.  Her hand swept across the sheets and found empty space, though she could still feel his warmth. She opened her eyes and realized he was still in their room.  He had turned on the small lamp on her desk, bathing a small section of the room in gentle light.

Theron had the body of a defaced god.  One could see the art in his form, how carefully honed it was and how beautiful it was by its nature.  He was muscle.  He was power.  But time and enemies had worn on him, chipping away at his physical perfection. A slash here.  A gouge there.  Divots.  Physical graffiti had been cruelly applied to Theron.  Eva had always seen his scars; she wouldn’t recognize him without them.

Now he inspected her handiwork in the mirror.  Over every single one of his scars – even the one from swoop racing on his wrist – was a love bite, a bruise that had already purpled.  There were some parts of him that she couldn’t see the natural color of his flesh, and that made her heart twist.  Eva managed to say from their bed, “You must be so sore.”

Theron hummed softly in response, twisted his back toward the mirror, and craned his head over his shoulder to see how thorough she had been.   “I much rather think of tonight than whenever I got these.”  His hand skimmed down over his pectoral muscle and then just below it and down his ribcage, feeling the entry wound as he stared at the exit wound behind him, both obscured by bruises.

She could not argue with that.  “Come back to bed?”

Theron tore his eyes away from the mirror to focus on her.  “Not to sleep.”

Then his warm, strong body overwhelmed her, and she was lost to the night.

Chapter Text

They said she came from the stars.

They said she came and went.  Nobody knew when she was really there.

Better behave then.  Didn’t want to be caught being bad. 

At least, that was the fear of the grown-ups.  Because they did the things that made her angry, like leaving the little ones to starve to get more blasters.  Like turning bigger ones into soldiers.  Like making it impossible for everyone to stay together, because there was too much poor land and too little food. 

One time, a Selonian den came through.  They kept to themselves.  They sought a place safer than Corellia or her twin sister worlds.  The small ones, with their sleek fur and their excited chattering, hadn’t quite learned the art of excluding non-Selonians – and perhaps these never would.

Yes, they’d heard of her.  They’d seen her, moving as a shadow across the face of Corellia and merging into their tunnels.  She had freed several adults from each of their septs. 

And she had not let a single hair be harmed on their heads – which was quite numerous, given they were Selonian.  One told of how a friend from another den had nearly been killed by a Houk, only to be saved by her, so small and lithe. 

They’d heard of her, even before the Selonians came through and even before she had first come here, now years ago.  She was bad to the governments. Some of the traders that came and went talked about her.  The Cartel hated her too.  They all called her a criminal.  Some, with a little more respect, called her the greatest criminal. They hunted her down.  Never caught her.  She defied their authority, and just like parents, governments didn’t like people who talked back and disobeyed… even if she was right and they knew it. 

But it never seemed that children had anything to fear from her. 

When she had walked in their streets, at night, the great coat she wore fluttered around her, so wide and soft that if someone was bold or too young to fear, they could walk beneath it, protected from the elements.  Her shadow was shelter and safety.

Her people – all shapes and sizes, their faces ever changing – had supplies that went to them, directly.  Children were trustworthy.  Grown-ups were not. 

Some on this small planet wondered if she would come, soon.  Corruption always grew.  It always needed to be fought.  The war inside the government – with her --  was not always large and violent.  She was a precise instrument that culled what was needed to go…and no more.  She could not remain.  No, she always returned to the stars, because they had to fix things.  Not her.

…but she gave them a chance to grow up.

Chapter Text

“Hey, Spike.”  Eva’s voice crackled over the comm.  She suspected the shadow had been him, but she had to confirm it. 

Using the “Spy Guy” nickname from the Holochat would have been a bit obvious; using Bowie’s alternative was a better plan.

 “What’s new, darling?”

So was using a far, far less obvious nom de guerre than “EC” (which strangely still worked in a remarkable number of places). 

At the word “darling,” Eva let the corner of her lip pull up slightly but no more.  They were on a job, and Theron had just confirmed it was him, far up and away.  She refocused her attention on the safe that the old omnitool was cracking, one binary digit at a time.  “Doing a little bit of shopping.  Waiting for a store to open up.  Think the owner is on a caf break.”

“At this time of the night, you would think.”  A shift of high-tech stealth fabric, the filaments scraping on concrete.  “I was just going for a run.  Never have time anymore, what with work being as it is.”

“Don’t tell me I’m not getting your heart-rate up enough for that high-intensity thing you do…” Eva taunted him.

“You aren’t around all the time –”

“I could be if you –”

Just then the omnitool sang its note of completion and unlatched itself from the safe door. 

“Should I take it that you’re buying something nice and expensive?”

Eva opened the safe door, carefully, and used one of Theron’s gadgets to scan for surveillance, weight sensors, and laser deployments within the lead-lined safe. “We’ll see in a minute,” she muttered under her breath.  “Gotta do some viewport shopping.”

Theron cut the comm, giving her the silence she needed to do the checks properly.

Anyone who sliced their comms or intercepted their signal would assume they were just romantic partners.

Not partners in crime.

Part the business of Very Awful Things (VAT), LLC, included corporate espionage and theft of various data and prototypes.  Theron was looking for Akaavi and Risha, the other proprietors…but since they had been good smugglers who disappeared, the LLC name had been disused since the last job they’d done (a little moonlighting thing while running something for Marr, after Ziost, before Eternal Fleet).  No tax filings, no indication of the disposition of the owners.

Maybe when Eva filed taxes this year, that would perk Risha’s attention. 

Until then, Eva was going to use VAT as a contractor for Odessen’s less than benevolent business.  Although Theron had indicated he was less enthusiastic about the very not nice things VAT did, corporations weren’t people, and the acquisition of tech for the Alliance would be for the great good of the galaxy.

When Eva had asked him about payment as a subcontractor for VAT, LLC, he’d just grunted.  She was sure she’d be able to compensate him for his time. 

The checks finished, all green.  Eva carefully extended her left hand ---

And nothing happened. 

She carefully grasped the device, shaped like a dodecahedron (“a 20-point word!” crowed Corso, in her mind).  She lifted its base off the floor of the safe and paused.  Waited.  Nothing.

She withdrew her hand, not too slow.  Not too fast.

Eva’s ears rang in the silence, a sign of too many high-octane adventures.  Her eyes dropped to look at what she had retrieved.  It matched the schematics and the surveillance holos that Theron had acquired.  She gave it a slight lift.  Weight was right – the same as Dr. O’s flimsi-weight. 

Even through the tinnitus, Eva could hear something click or move outside of the room.  Could have been the building settling.  Could have been the heat turning on.  Didn’t matter.  She had to go.

Eva shoveled the device into the specially designed interior pocket of her catsuit, off to the side, right where a shoulder holster would rest if she was carrying that day.  It slotted in neatly, and then Eva was out the window. 

She planted her left hand on the outside of the transparisteel window and, using the activated webbing, swung herself around the window sill.  The second that she felt her feet secure to the side of the building (right hand unknown), Eva pushed off and the window slid shut.  With a gesture, the locks reactivated, as if she’d never been there. 

“Ready to go home?”

Eva’s head titled up toward the voice. 

As planned, Theron waited for her exit, perched just below the window ledge, the webbing on his stealth suit activated as well.  He’d covered her with his sniper rifle from the building across the street, and as extract grew near, he’d migrated to their departure point.

“Thanks for picking me up.  We going to my place?” she asked as she raised her right hand toward him. 

Theron reached beyond the hand to grab at her elbow and hauled her up the side of the building.  “It’s the place with the food.” 

With ease, Theron quickly climbed up and over the ledge, turning to grasp Eva’s left forearm and bring her up the rest of the way, her feet touching down on the roof neatly into front of his own.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Anyone listening in could guess how they greeted each other. 

Chapter Text

It took Dr. Juvard Illip Oggurobb a moment to realize what he was looking at.  Intel holos. More accurately, holos taken of …something that had only been theoretical to this point.

“Captain,” he said, in a hushed tone.

Eva Corolastor put on that guise, that casual and carefree smuggler façade.  “Always wondered what Lippi thought was so great about Tiisheraan.  Decided to make some real estate investments – on your advice, indirectly.”

His laughter caused his entire body to rise up and down, the skin rolling with the laugh.  “But…  but how did you --?”  For once, only once! in his life, he was speechless.

“Your full-scale, fully rendered walk-through of your dream laboratory is taking up ten terabytes of data on Odessen’s mainframe,” Theron Shan informed him.  “It’s not causing any problems, but its presence is… noticeable and significant.”

“Plus we use it to make wargame sims.  The tiki bar on the roof is a great hide,” added Aric Jorgan, who was very much into his cups with the party punch, strong enough to set a Hutt back on his haunches.

“We keep the sim, you get your well-deserved reward.  Happy retirement, Dr. O!” Eva’s words triggered another round of toasts.

Again, Oggurobb laughed and stared in disbelief at his retirement present from the Alliance…more accurately, from its primary investor and owner of the planet: the Voidhound.  Eva.  Captain, by any other name. 

~~

It was in the silence after the party was over and most of the debris cleaned up (there were still a few stubborn streamers and pieces of confetti on the floor) that Dr. Oggurobb received an unexpected visitor.

Oggurobb certainly didn’t expect him to approach or reproach him.  “What’s this I hear about retirement?”  Bowdaar demanded.

Oggurobb’s eyebrow ridges elevated.  “You prepared the festivities – you are well-aware –”

“How old are you anyway?  Less than 300?”  Bowdaar crossed his arms, disapproving.  “You are in your prime, much like myself.”  He thumped his chest once.  “225 and counting.”

Oggurobb decided to put aside his data transfer operations to address Bowdaar.  “I deserve peace.  I am not warrior as yourself.  I have achieved much in my life.  I have helped save the galaxy.  I have saved the population of planets.    I have won the Bao Dur Science Prize seven times –”

“Including two here,” Bowdaar reminded him.  “And one of them was from an article about her little ones surviving.”  He harumphed.  “Thank you.”

Oggurobb shook his head.  “No, that incredible defiance of the odds was all the Captain.  With extensive assistance from our operations manager.  It is inconclusive whether my assistance was of any significant impact in that regard.”

“And so you think you are done?” Bowdaar challenged him.  “Don’t you doctors write follow-ups and sequels?”

“Yes.  But I am done with being in the line of fire.  I am finished with miracle-making or having the galaxy hang on my every experiment or theory.”  Oggurob looked at the slowly rotating graphic of Tiisheraan.  “A quiet life –”

“Isn’t for you.  You’re not like one of those Hutts on those barges, getting fat and lazy as the years crawl on,” Bowdaar argued.

“…no.  It never has been for me.”  Oggurobb frowned into the holo.  “…there was always talk of my sister.  That she was the reason I was restless.  The reason I never felt complete.  That there was something more to do, for she had not… in anything.”  There was some motion, a sigh or a shudder or something else Bowdaar could not translate from Hutt body language. 

Bowdaar had heard of the little Hutt girl who’d called this now prestigious doctor “Lippi,” a name only used by Eva now, on occasion, when the mood struck her (and Dr. O was in dire need of morale support). 

For all that Juvard Illip Oggurobb was, his sister – no kajidic name permitted to her – was not.  They were supposed to both be Illip, but only he was allowed to grow to be. 

“So what would she say to do with your reward?” Bowdaar asked. 

Oggurobb tilted himself up toward the ceiling, in thought.  “Oh, she’d never let me retire from this place.  Too interesting, too many people – how could I ever go to some overgrown garden and waste away with my droids, ever-growing mold?” Then he shook his head.  “The symphony of Odessen and its lifeforms will continue without me, acting as its occasional conductor.”

“But it is better with you in it.”  Bowdaar rolled a shoulder.    “And the Hutt section is empty without you.”

“Yes, the Captain’s adventures have assured that would be the case.”  Amused, Oggurobb slithered across the floor.  “I do wish to visit Tiisheraan.  Establish my laboratory there. Work there.  For it is beautiful, and the best innovations are developed in such places.” 

Then Dr. Oggurobb looked around the lab here that had been built to his specifications, in secret, and where so many glorious advancements had been marshalled, for the betterment of –

“Did she send you?” the good doctor asked the Killer of Kashyyyk. 

There was no clear antecedent.  There was no reply.

There was an alteration to Dr. O’s flight plans to make it a round trip, rather than one way. 

Chapter Text

“Are you sure?”

Theron looked over at Eva.  “Yes.  It was meant to be used, after all.”  He looked down at the item in his hand.  “I just don’t know why it was kept.  I mean, I wasn’t supposed to have children anyway, as a Jedi.”

“Well, Jedi do the sentimental value thing, once in awhile, right?” Eva offered.  “For little things that won’t affect the fate of the galaxy, of course.”

Theron let out a small, short laugh.  “Well, the person it should have had sentimental value for left it behind, when the Jedi at Haashimut went to the caves…”  Theron’s voice trailed off as he considered the fabric in his hands with a critical eye.

Eva held her breath.

Theron had happy memories of his childhood…as long as he didn’t think of the end.

He was thinking about the end.

And abruptly he wasn’t.  “Time to put it to the test.  Pass me that flour.”

Eva exhaled and raised an eyebrow as Theron started rigging up the baby wrap – his baby wrap.

 The one Master Zho had used to carry Theron around the galaxy when he was an infant, then a toddler.   

It… it was one of those things he kept in his former quarters, now his office… things he didn’t bring onto Virtue’s Thief to “clutter” their life together.  Sort of like his old SIS dress uniform – only broken out when necessary.

Eva hadn’t even known the wrap even existed until about fifteen minutes ago, right after the latest development scans with Dr. O had gone well; the good doctor was utterly thrilled about the progress of his journal article on the matter. 

Eva slid the five-pound bag across the counter to him.  “Dr. O said that’s just what the kid weighs now.  He’s probably going to be a few pounds heavier.”  At the movement, Eva felt the still-to-be-named baby boy roll over.  Quarters were getting tight in these last six weeks. 

Theron finished arranging the yards of fabric, probably according to a cross-comparison of at least fifteen different schematics he’d look up on the Holonet. 

“Well, we’ll find out whether this can even handle five pounds, let alone a bay---”

RIIIIIIIIIIIP

A massive POOF rose up from the floor, coating Theron, Eva, and the galley with a mist of flour. 

“Bee.”  Theron looked down at the floor, a large swath of torn fabric pinned under the weight of the bag.   His expression was unreadable.

“…well, it was a lot to expect for a forty-something year-old baby sling.”  Eva wiped the flour off her face. 

Still nothing from Theron.

And then… “…and isn’t it a good thing we tested it before we put a real baby in there?”  A small smile was working its way onto Theron’s face, but the eyes were already sparking in good humor. 

A giggle escaped Eva.  “A worthy sacrifice to the safety gods?” she ventured.

Theron nodded.  “It did its job in keeping me safe.  New baby, new sling.”   

All tension in the galley escaped… especially when Theron ran a hand back through his hair, but none of the flour budged: his pomade acted as adhesive.  “Sneak preview of ten years from now,” he joked, pointing at his now whiter hair.

“More like five, at the rate you’re going!” 

Chapter Text

“Oh, no.”

At some course in between the main and dessert (Eva forgot how much cheese and more wine had pass through her hands and/or paid an extended visit), Theron said something that sounded more sad than snarky, for once.

“What?” she purred over the rim of her wine glass.

“Jace.”

“Are you still –”

“No.  Not that.” 

Eva finally looked over at Theron and then followed his gaze to –

Jace.

And Satele.  She’d shown up.  She’d actually shown up, and in her old Jedi robes – not the recent ones.  The ones with the gold trim, her hair neatly braided.  She actually looked like she was here to politely celebrate and mingle, as if she hadn’t disappeared.

…

Eva realized she hadn’t said anything to Theron, again. 

But based on his expression, Theron wasn’t think of that right now.  “…I worked security at one of these things, years ago.  Before I knew who he was.”  Theron shifted in his seat and took a big swallow of his glass of wine before continuing.  “It was really, really sad then.  When I found out everything… it hit me like a sack of rocks later.”

Eva shifted closer in her seat toward him, so he could keep his voice low.

“He asked her to dance.  One more time, for old time’s sake.”

Almost in pantomime, Eva saw the same thing playing out again.

“She refused him.  He told her he understood, that he wasn’t going to try to start something or win an argument.  He just wanted to celebrate with someone ….”

Theron’s hesitance won Eva’s attention again.  There was some dull and dead outrage there, some sort of frustration.  But mostly, Theron just looked sad.  “Someone who survived the war like he did.  Someone, who saw it all, like he did.  He wanted to dance with his friend.”

Theron carefully, deliberately met her gaze, as if concerned his emotions would spill all over the table and interrupt dinner.  His hand found hers. 

And there was Jace, reaching one more time, and having nothing in his hands.  Not even his old friend.

Satele had already turned and found a convenient floor-to-ceiling window, disappearing behind the curtain.  Eva knew she was a good enough slicer to escape out the window.   So did Theron.  They didn’t move to stop her.

Time to dance, Eva decided, with one last glug of wine.

~~

“Colonel Malcom.”

His heart in some strange place between his boots and his throat, he turned, already correcting the speaker, “That’s Supreme Commander –”

Jace stopped himself.  Eva.  Theron’s wife.  The Commander of the Alliance.

He felt himself come off the high wire that Satele always put him on.  If she wasn’t a Jedi, he’d wonder if it was on purpose.  He knew it wasn’t, but that didn’t stop him from feeling that way, all the ways, he did about her.    “I haven’t been Colonel since Alderaan.”

“And you’d have to be what, twenty-seven years younger now in order to take me out to dinner?” came the fast-as-a-whip answer.

And suddenly, he was back in that room with Brom and that absolutely audacious smuggler –

Jace’s brain stalled as he realized --

“I knew I’d met you before,” Jace managed say, staring at her.  “It…it just wasn’t at Keylander.”

Eva smiled, mischievous and high-spirited, looking more like she did at 23(ish?) than she did now at 30 (Jace had sent a Jawagram, like he did for Theron). 

And then, a moment of absolute, abject panic.  “Does Theron know that you --?”

“We’ve been joking about that dinner offer for ten years.  On and off,” she replied, waggling her hand in reference to the years lost in carbonite.  As if it was joke, and it didn’t mean so much to them –

Eva rolled on, as ever, ebullient and the absolute life of the party.  “So, obviously, I’m going home with Theron tonight, and I’ve already had dinner.  What say we have a dance?” 

Jace felt his mouth drop open, slightly, but only for a second.  “I – it’s not necessary.”

…as smart as he knew he could be, it was only now that Jace realized she had seen Satele and –

Probably, so had Theron.  Jace cast a look over at the table where Eva and Theron had been sitting. 

…there wasn’t an empty seat beside Eva’s.  Theron was still there, talking to the woman who had sat at Eva’s left, Lana Beniko.

…he hadn’t chased after her.  He hadn’t left Eva behind.

….good for him.  Good for them.

“Oh, come on, Colonel.  One dance between old friends.”  Then Eva let a pause come between them, just long enough to make him look at her and that really pretty dress.  “Your feet will thank you for my friendship with Lenn of House Teraan.”

That name clicked, in a bad way, for Jace.  “He… you know he didn’t survive the Eternal Fleet barrage on Alderaan.”

Undeterred, Eva straightened up, and suddenly, she was every bit … not the Voidhound, not a queen or empress, but someone who certainly demanded that sort of reverence: the Captain.   “We’ll toast to absent friends later.  The living can dance.”

As if by magic (or on cue, knowing her), the band struck up some ubiquitous waltz that everyone had danced to before, and Jace picked up the first step, and off they spun.

Jace supposed, twelve years after he’d turned her down for dinner and six months after she’d married his son, they were old friends.

And after a few wars, that was hard to find. 

Chapter Text

The mission report for Elom had been filed, dutifully, in the most neat and well-practiced penmanship Theron had ever seen; although regulations demanded reports be typed out and electronically submitted, he still had to admire the skill that went into this project in ink and flimsi.

The problem was that its author had not come home.  Arcann was missing.  Sana-Rae had arrived to provide support, and one of small taskforce Eva had assigned to help him (and monitor him) handed off the report.  Arcann had disappeared.

Theron…really, really did not want to deal with this.  Malgus had been captured, and there was  a missing padawan and a missing holocron with probably something powerful and nasty inside.  The last thing Theron needed was a missing ex-emperor. 

…And then the whole situation went weird.  Theron thought maybe the universe hated him.  That, or Eva and her entire crew were pulling some elaborate joke on him.

Supposedly, Arcann, former emperor, had been sighted flipping burgers at some fast food joint on Dromund Kaas. It was like one of those wild claims that had popped up in the months after Senya had had the Voss heal him. 

But then Talos Drellik and Koth Vortena came forward to … confirm the possibility.

Because one of the girls with tats and piercings and pink hair had said something nice about him.  Years ago.

Theron wanted to bang his head against the wall.  The problem with Eva and her Alliance – and Voidfleet more broadly – is that it did attract misfits.  Misfits with quirks.  He knew he fell into that category himself, but stars, couldn’t someone be utterly boring and come home from the mission?

So here he was, trying to be inconspicuous as he strolled through the streets of Kaas, making sure he had the right dive.  Now all he had to do was wait out in the rain for the back door to open and him to get a visual confirmation that Arcann was here.

…Theron’s luck was even better than that.  Arcann came out of the backdoor…

To take out the trash.

The Eternal Emperor.  Garbage duty.  There was a cosmic-scale joke here.   

He wore the dirty, grease-stained uniform of the chain.  He even had the stupid billed cap on.  The door swung shut behind him –

And Theron grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the wall.  “We’re going to make this look like some petty street dispute,” he muttered to the startled Arcann.

There was a momentary flailing, but Arcann quickly recognized him and lowered his hands.  “Hello, Theron –”

“Why didn’t you check back in?” The operations manager of the Alliance – and their lead on black ops – really wasn’t in the mood for niceties.  Not on Kaas. 

Arcann reached up to detach Theron’s hand from his throat, which Theron allowed.  “I found myself… vestigial to Sana-Rae’s work.  I wrote my report, as required – “

“And then you disappeared,” Theron snapped.  “You of all people can’t do that.”

Theron saw a brief flicker of temper.  “Perhaps I should.”

“Excuse me?” Theron demanded. 

Arcann straightened up against the rough wall of the building, trying to exude that imperial authority….while wearing a fast food uniform.  “I have wondered, since the Captain’s victory over the Eternal Empire, what would become of me.  I have…a liminal existence on Odessen.  I am free to travel.  With supervision.  I continue to reside there for lack of any secure option – I’ll either be assassinated or turned into a cult figure, depending on the partisans in the area.”  He motioned up at his face.  “If I’m ever to be anything else other than Emperor Arcann, I must plunge myself into a completely and utterly different life.”

Theron absorbed all this.  “…so the pink-haired girl flirted with you years ago, and you thought this was a great career move?”

“’Successfully committed multiple genocides in less than five years’ on the resume doesn’t really attract many employers,” Arcann returned, readily.  “So…I took the first opportunity presented to me to not always be under your watchful eye.  Or that of my mother.”

Theron wouldn’t apologize for that.  Ever.

“I left Elom.  I lied at my job interview – which took place in this very alley.  I explained that my scars were from a deep fryer accident – I read about such things on Holonet forums.” 

Arcann tilted his head slightly, frowned, and then said, in absolute seriousness to Theron, “Workers rights and unions are absent on Imperial planets.  This concerns me greatly.”

Theron directed his gaze skyward, wondering what gods were laughing at him today.  “They didn’t have those sorts of things on Zakuul either when you were running the show.”

“I was different then!”  Arcann insisted, and Theron saw some flash of indignance.  “I know these things should exist.  I now know why they should exist.”

…Arcann was now learning things Theron had learned under Master Zho’s tutelage.  About compassion without judgment, about how not everyone was safe in the galaxy, and not every state was benevolent to its people.  He was over thirty now.  The cure, for an adult… must have been difficult

Jedi believed in fresh starts. Otherwise, no one would ever be able to be allowed to join after escaping the Sith. 

Theron wasn’t a Jedi.  But…

“You’ve got to come back to Odessen.  This … is not tenable.”  Theron made an abstract motion to this entire, ridiculous situation.

“Not on these wages.  They are not livable.”

Theron rolled his eyes, but Arcann was already untying his apron.  “I have learned much…and I do want to live away from Odessen.  Maybe not under my own name.”

Theron was already shaking his head.  “That is a conversation for a completely different time.  You need to come back.  Now.”

“I will.”

Theron cleared his throat. “…I did mean it when we’d talk about this. Because you are right, you can’t live forever in limbo like this.”

Arcann nodded.

The two men understood each other.

…That was progress. Progress was good.

There was an awkward pause. 

“…So what are you going to tell that girl?” Theron ventured.

Arcann responded with a rueful smile.  “Turnover in the fast food industry is very high, which is understandable given the conditions and lack of pay. She is no longer employed here.”   Then he squared up to Theron.  “Hit me.”

…

…

…

Yes, this day was absolutely off-the-wall strange.  “What?”

Arcann cast a look back at the eatery.  “The manager will be out here to wonder where I’ve gone.  He doesn’t want trouble, so if he sees me engaged in fisticuffs, he’ll be inclined to fire me – I won’t be wanted back and nobody will look for me.” 

That would make everything neat and clean…

And Theron had been waiting for this for a long, long time.

So he squared up…then he paused.  “Do you even know how to take a punch?” 

Arcann nodded.  “I did have a twin brother…we were very competitive…”  Then he shifted uncomfortably.  “…The Captain also decked me.  Once.”

Oh yeah. Theron remembered now. “Bowdaar didn’t stop talking about it for two weeks,” Theron confirmed.  Theron decided if he was only going to get one permitted hit on the guy who had stolen his wife (well, now she was his wife) from him for five years, it better be a nice big one. 

The wind up….

“You do know I’m never going to apologize for this, right?”

Now Arcann smirked.  “The only apology you’ll have to give is to the Captain – that she didn’t get to see this or directly participate.”

Chapter Text

Good morning kisses were an interesting concept, for Theron.

Master Zho referred to him as his son and hugged him, regularly.  Good morning kisses were not part of that dynamic.

When he was a child at Coronet City Military Academy, his caretakers did not give that sort of affection to him.  It was not appropriate. 

When he lived on Coruscant, on his own, Theron typically didn’t let his partner stay overnight.  He had too many contacts that would call at odd hours and too much high-security technology in his apartment… he didn’t want someone stumbling across it or having a high-priority emergency that a civilian should not see.

Theron typically left their place before morning came.  He had to get back to his apartment and make sure he did not miss anything.  He’d leave a note or order them caf and breakfast that would be delivered to their place whenever they woke up.  He wouldn’t be there.

There were exceptions, but good morning kisses were few and far between for him.  He didn’t think he was into them anyway.  Attachments, and all that.

Life on Odessen was a real change.

Theron learned he was wrong about himself, in a few areas.

Because Theron did sleep over regularly – almost constantly – on Virtue’s Thief.  And Eva was running on her own automated chrono.  She’d wake up, kiss him (awake or not), set the caf to percolate, then crawl back into bed with him.  When he finally did stir awake, she’d beg, borrow, and steal kisses off him at every opportunity. 

And he really, really liked that.

Even when he really did just sleep over.  Even when sex wasn’t the purpose or motivator or the excuse for spending the night.

The casual affection – freely given, when in private.

The small weight of touches.

Of cups of tea or caf served in silence.

The way their limbs brushed against each other in bed as they settled in for the night. 

And then the buss in the morning, drifted over a cheekbone lazily on a slow day…

… or hastily left at the corner of the mouth because someone had overslept and needed to get to the opposite side of the base, a.s.a.p., so they wouldn’t look suspicious, coming from the same direction.

Initially, Theron always tried to wake before dawn and sneak back to his room.  That wasn’t about leaving Eva; that was avoiding the rest of the base sorting out they were a couple. 

He failed.  A lot.  He didn’t know what was wrong with him.  He was used to less than five hours of sleep a night; the implants made him hyperaware, and if he ate enough calories, he could power through.  That’s the way it always had been. 

…until he had to leave someone he didn’t want to, in order to get back to work.  Until he had to leave someone he didn’t need to, because she understood his job.  Always had, more so now that they were working together. 

And Eva caught him.  A lot.  So many years living on starship meant that every noise out of the ordinary on Virute’s Thief was a cause to stir and wake up.  That included his feet touching down on the floor and his belt rattling.  …and when she did catch him, she was very, very persuasive. 

It wasn’t always sex.  Sometimes, she just asked him not to leave her. 

…then he couldn’t do it. 

A convenient fiction was created:  the Captain met Theron Shan, operations manager, for caf every morning.  Bright and early.  It was partially for Theron’s sudden ineptitude at leaving his lover before good morning kisses… but it was also for Eva’s own slowness in the morning.  The carbonite and the lingering neuropathy slowed her down.

…but even after that resolved, Theron and Eva maintained the schedule.  They didn’t need to.  They wanted to.

And Theron, for his part, wanted his fair share of good morning kisses.  He apparently was owed a backlog, according to Eva.  She had done the math, on some boring day that Theron had put himself on mission.  He’d arrived home to Odessen, then snuck aboard her ship only to find elaborate charts with ratios indicating all the things he had missed out on for five years…

And a schedule to rectify the insufficiencies. 

On the milder end of her regiment was the good morning kisses quota. 

Theron absolutely loved that. 

Theron loved Eva.  Eva loved Theron.  It was mutual.  So were the good morning kisses, given and received.

Chapter Text

“Uh… Theron?”

Theron pulled himself out of the mainframe deep dive he’d been doing on the data collected from Asylum.  It was well outside of ‘business hours’ for most planets, but Odessen, as the home base of a revolution, didn’t play by rules very much. 

That, and its ops manager was a complete workaholic, who was only kept in check by the Captain.  Her methods of doing that…

…brought a smile to Theron’s face.  He couldn’t think much further on the subject in front of others. 

Koth was giving a hard look at the security holos that monitored the exterior of Odessen.  “Virtue’s Thief’s pad cam just activated.  Motion.”

“It’s supposed to rain,” he replied, turning back to his work.

“It’s her,” Koth insisted.

Theron cast a look up at the ceiling.  “She’s been threatening to fly off and give the Thief a test drive – can’t go far in her present condition, but it might settle her ---”

“Doesn’t look like she plans on going anywhere.” 

There was a note of …something that made Theron turn to Koth.  “And?  She goes out to check the ship at night.  Sometimes.”  Yes, he was defensive of her. 

Koth made a face, concerned and distinctly uncomfortable, and he continued to look at the security holos.   “She’s wearing her pajamas.”  A beat.  “She might be having one of her… things.”  Koth made a wobbly hand motion, as if to convey ‘off-balance’.

Theron’s temper flared for a split second, but then he recalled Koth had seen her at her absolute worst. 

Koth rushed onward.  “Listen, last thing we need is her down with pneumonia or a cold or even just some of the enlisted trying to get a peep show through her viewports and end up seeing her… not all there.” 

“She’s got a privacy filter up on the ports,” Theron reassured him as he gathered his things to go.

“But Lana doesn’t need to know.”  Both men said that in unison, and Theron departed the war room.

Lana carried enough guilt about Eva’s condition, as it was.  Each sequela ate at her.  She never complained, but Koth and Theron – for different reasons – knew it.

~~

Please let her be here.  Please let her be here.

Theron didn’t know what sort of memories they’d stumble across if she wasn’t.  As worried as he was, as she came into view, his footsteps faltered in the moonlight that peered between the clouds.  It was the night-time equivalent of a sun shower

Eva was standing there, perfectly still, looking up.  Occasionally, the eyes would close in slow, deliberate blinks.  Involuntary shivers went through her; it was barely warm during the day, and night was heading toward frost.  The moonlight and shadows played across her face.  She seemed utterly at peace.

“Eva?”

She looked at him.

The peace did not leave.  The eyes were bright and –

Ok, she was here.  Right here.

“…you do know it’s raining, right?”

Eva nodded vigorously. Then she returned her gaze upward just as the moon wrestled itself out from behind a cloud, and its light gave her an unearthly glow.  “First time since Yavin.”

Theron startled and shook his head.  “Eva, it –”

“Spacer,” she interrupted him, her focus not compromised in the least.  “It might have rained on Coruscant and a whole bunch of other places, but I haven’t been on planet for a rainstorm since –”

“Yavin.”  He said the word softly.

Prior to landing here, on Odesssen, and finally – finally! – falling in together, it had been the last place they’d been together and happy.  It was the last place Eva felt rain.

“And now that you’re here…” Eva bandied the idea about, prompting his memory about what they had done, often, in the rain on Yavin.

Well, might as well make it two for two. 

~~

Koth kept an eye on the security holo.  He saw the brief conversation.  He saw Theron step in, and –

Well, if he was kissing her like that, there was some sort of sane explanation.

Koth turned off the security holo and purged the last half hour of footage.  Let it never be said Koth Vortena was not a good wingman.

Chapter Text

A rapping at the doorframe to his makeshift laboratory tent. 

Dr. Oggurobb looked up.  He hadn’t expected any visitors, especially after he’d sent that ambitious little leech away.  He had to lower the focus of his vision another few centimeters to perceive his visitor. 

“Ah.  Captain.”

She had been right; that Addar boy did seem to be jockeying for a position in the galactic Senate.  And based upon how she’d methodically sacked his old laboratory, she was remarkably perceptive…

He held back “for a smuggler.”   She had yet to make a similar comment about him.  Friendly “for a Hutt.”  Book-smart “for a Hutt.”  Unmaterialistic –

Well, that one wasn’t true at all; it simply manifested differently than raw wealth, war materiel, luxury barges with dancers, and credits.  It took the form of exquisite lab equipment, highest quality optical lasers and lenses, and particularly rare and delightful tea. 

…even his own people considered him strange.  An alien.  An aberration. 

“Dr. Oggurobb.  Do you have time to give me a more detailed brief on your defenses at Tonborro’s palace?”  Captain Corolastor broke through his internal agonizing as she pulled a datapad out of her field jacket.  “I’m heading in there with a Mandalorian and a sticky-fingered Mon Calamari, and I’d like to get …” She made a motion with her hand as she booted up her device.  “…more insight on whatever creative furies seized you on a given day….so I can destroy them more efficiently.”

Then the Captain paused, stared at her datapad, and then looked up at him.  “…they explode like little bunches of colored fireworks.  That deliberate?”

Dr. Oggurobb couldn’t stop the swell of pride.  “Yes, it is by design!  Color! Vibrancy!  Impact!  Destruction should never be dull.”

“So tell me about the design process,” the Captain deftly cut in.  “And tell me anything your particularly remember about the programming.”  She reached again into her field jacket.  “It’s old, but I know it can slice anything.”

Oggurobb peered through his magnifying ocular piece, so he did not have to try to bend.  “That omnitool is of the age to be in the museum, though not the condition.  It has received considerable abuse.”

The second the words had left his mouth, he regretted them.  Most sentients had things that were of sentimental value; he had very few of such things.  He was much more concerned about the latest and the greatest technology.  He may have – no, he probably did offend her –

“Still used and useful, so why put it under transparisteel?  Same goes for the rest of my ship, if you plan on commenting on that as well,” she replied airily. 

With no further ado, she deposited herself in the single standard sentient-sized chair in the room and waited for him.  No grudge. 

She desired information more than she did an argument. 

“…very well.” 

Oggurobb moved to pick up his own datapad stack that he’d personally carried from the laboratory.  As he turned back around, he noticed her craning her neck toward a cup that he had left out.  “Apologies.  I had not anticipated visitors.  I could prepare – ”

“If it’s the bagged stuff from Shalim’s office – pass.”   Corolastor tilted the cup toward her, inspecting the bottom of the vessel.  She made a disapproving face and set it back on its flat.  “I can get my Hollis – with a modified speech board – down here with some of the ship’s stash of looseleaf.” 

Oggurobb raised an eye ridge.  “You observed the empty storage vessels when you tore apart the laboratory.”

Corolastor nodded.

“Indeed, I had been imprisoned for quite some time and under considerable duress.  My supply has been depleted.”  A pause.  “Modified speech board?”

“Won’t speak until spoken to.”

“Summon him and your tea immediately then!  It is a rare privilege to have a willing audience to explain my madness and my method, my melody and my masterwork!”

~~

The noise came far too early for Corolastor’s Hollis droid to have shuffled from her ship to his laboratory. 

Her eyes had flickered as she recognized the shift in the soundscape, the subtle change in the ambiance. 

The voices caused both their heads to turn. 

Then the blaster fire ---

Corolastor was fast on her feet, pulling her own piece.  “I got this.  You’re probably more a lover than a fighter.”

“Apologies, but neither descriptor suits me!”  Dr. Oggurobb replied as he maneuvered himself behind his desk, as futile as he knew it was.  He was far too large to conceal himself successfully. 

By the time he’d managed to cram himself into a corner, the Captain was out the door, and the distinct patter of her blaster came to his auditory receptors, enhanced by his own technological innovations. 

She barked orders – set a perimeter, clear out the hides, scan for observational droids – why hadn’t this place been sussed out before? 

Dr. Oggurobb supposed he was useful.  He supposed that perhaps he was an unofficial hostage, here because he had information of value.  Once he had outlived his usefulness, he’d be thrown back to the Cartel, viewed as either as a traitor or inept at his job in keeping Tonborro safe and secure. 

…the accusation of ineptitude would probably be worse, in his own mind, so Oggurobb hoped for the status of traitor instead. 

Then the Captain returned, smelling of ozone and smoke and the fresh night.  “No crossfire in here?” she asked, looking around the tent to check for holes, he supposed.

“None.” 

…and then, there was a shift of the head, a slide into something else –

“Given that you’re under my protection, it wouldn’t suit to have you shot up.”

Dr. Oggurobb knew he wasn’t in danger…and yet – “You work for –”

“Myself,” answered the Voidhound. 

…in later days, Oggurobb always did admire that dramatic turn, whenever she pulled it out on other people. 

Chapter Text

All was quiet in the hangar.  His breath sent up smoke in the frigid air.  This had been one hell of a year.  He’d started as a CorSec man, finished as a Republic officer, with accolades for restoring his planet to membership in the Republic.  He’d earned his bloodstripes.  He wasn’t the only one. 

Not bad for a hoodlum with an attitude problem.

Cole Cantarus sat in his personal fighter.  He had one, because he’d been captain of the guard for the Corellian Council before they turned traitor.  He’d stripped off the “guard” aspect of the decal, leaving behind symbols of Corellia and his rank: Captain.  Then the Republic had requested his assistance – no joke, they had asked him to help out at Ilum.  If Cantarus had done so well at Coronet City, why not an ice ball?

His canopy was up, indicating that he was in there.  No secret to anybody. 

...but he was relishing the time alone.  It was the first time he could enjoy the silence, here on this frigid planet.  Everything had been loud since the Corellian crisis had started, and it hadn’t died down since he helped blow up the Foundry – some ancient Sithy workshop that Malgus had found.

Most of the credit for the last item went to someone else.  And her Wookiee. 

Eva Corolastor had earned her first-class Corellian bloodstripes too, twice over: she’d liberated the planet and personally had killed a member of the Dark Council.  Sphere of Technology, supposedly. 

As if the very thought of her was magic, Cole heard her footfalls in the hangar.  She permitted him to hear her; he knew how quiet and stealthy she could be.  Cole grabbed the lever on his pilot’s seat and ratcheted it so he was sitting up, rather than lying down (mostly). 

“Hey, Captain.”

“Hey, Captain,” she returned, bright and easy.  “Did you have the same idea I had?”  She unhesitatingly grabbed the bottom of the ladder that led up to his cockpit.

“What’s that?” Cole asked her.

“Leaning back in that pilot’s seat –”

“Uh huh –”

“And fogging up that canopy with someone?”  Eva Corolastor popped her head over the edge of the cockpit and flashed him a winning grin. 

Cole perched his hands on top of his head and guffawed.  “Stars, you aren’t shy.”

“And I’ve managed to avoid frostbite to this point, and I like pressing my luck.”  Eva was very used to getting what she wanted, when it came to men.

He tried to smile back, but even that came reluctantly. 

…he couldn’t give it to her.  Wouldn’t.  Shouldn’t.

And now he’d smiled awkwardly for too long.  “What, been too long since I did a good deed?” Eva asked. 

Now he smiled.  “Naww…”

She teased him, “If you don’t think I haven’t heard about your juvie hall record, you really underestimate me.”  A pause.  “And we did a hell of a thing on the job together… what about off the clock?”

Cole must have shaken his head, slightly, and the lack of words – Eva filled them in herself.

Suddenly, that haunted look he’d seen back on Corellia filled her face.  “Right.  Damaged goods.  Sorry for bothering y--”

And then she disappeared from view, and Cole leaned over the side of his fighter.  She’d slid down the ladder in near record time and was already making tracks back out of the hangar, out toward wherever her ship was parked – he knew the name, he just forgot it so she could escape and he wouldn’t have to lie to cover for her.

God.  Dammit.

“Eva!”

Cole swung himself down onto the ladder, slid down without hesitation (he’d done it every day for weeks now), and ran after her.

His legs were longer than hers, and he managed to catch up and even beat her to the entryway.  “Listen –”  He physically planted himself in front of her, bracing his arm against the doorframe. 

“I get it, Cantarus.”  She looked up at him, just to show him she could do it, and then she looked out into the darkness and the white that was spiral out there. 

“It’s not what… you said.”  Cole didn’t want to get into everything she must have been going through.  He reached out and grasped both of her arms.  “Eva, you are incredible.  But I know you are at the top of the galaxy and at the absolute bottom of it right now, at the same time.”

Cole had heard about the lynch mob.  How Pollaran had slutshamed her, only to have her turn that on its head and have him caught out as a sentient trafficker…and then ---

She was the most powerful criminal in the galaxy, slumming with guys like him.

She was barely 23, and he did know better.

She was wounded, and he wasn’t going to be able to fix it. 

Eva peered up at him with those flat eyes that she pulled out when dealing with officers and hoity toity traitors.  Somehow, she knew what he was thinking.  “I don’t need you to make it feel better.  I just need you as a distraction –”

“I don’t think that’s honest.  For you or me.”

Eva lifted her chin slightly. “Nobody has to know what happens in a hangar with the security holos pulled.”

“I’d know.” 

She stared at him.  Eva did, not the flat-eyed creature.  He felt good about scaring it off. 

“You are such a noble bonehead.” 

Cole looked at her in disbelief.  “Was that supposed to hurt?  No wonder you can’t get rid of Corso Riggs, if that’s all you got.”

He hoped it was enough, just enough –

Then she guffawed and looked more like herself.  “Don’t want to get rid of old Corso anyway.”

“And it hasn’t been that way with him?”  Cole decided that he wasn’t going to be coward about this, and he was pretty sure he could take a punch from her.  She’d probably drop him, but he’d live.

She shook her head, immediately, no hesitation.

Wordlessly, Cole motioned at himself.  “Go for a drink?  As friends with … minimal benefits.”

Eva raised one of her dark brows.

“You pay.”

Chapter Text

C2-N2 was most gratified by the Captain’s latest adjustments to his boards.  They were most appropriate to his current task.  They would also be utilized in other similar operations during the year (leading the task force in cleaning Odessen seasonally, and yes, he was the head of that task force.  It was the greatest honor a Hollis could have imagined.)

She had given him the ability to hum.

Yes, the notes were regimented and perfectly on pitch, with little variation beyond his synthesized voicebox.  Yes, the songs were limited to ten (10), and she’d have to find a memory card expansion to store more without infringing on other vital operations. 

That all said, C2 could now hum.  He did not care for whistling; other droids could whistle, mostly as an error notification or a “look at me!” demand.   Master Corso Riggs whistled, regularly, but it suited him.  C2-N2 didn’t think whistling suited him; it suited astromechs or perhaps a gonk droid.  Not him.

And so C2 hummed as he began the spring cleaning of Virtue’s Thief.  All was quiet, and soon, the ship would be in top condition, at least in terms of the interior.  He had already opened all of the viewports to permit the fresh, cool air of Odessen to filter in.  The ship was empty, for now. 

…unfortunately, he had not anticipated the chaos of the day to begin so early. 

The pounding of feet across the catwalk was his first signal that his task would not be completed today. 

The Captain knew she’d fouled up his plans the second her boots crossed the threshold, and she smelled the lemon-scented cleaner he always used.  “C2!  Ah, hell, I’m sorry, but the Thief’s gotta fly.” 

And then everyone burst past her as the entire crew: Corso, Risha, Bowdaar, Akaavi, and Guss, plus Lord Beniko and Agent Shan, piled onto the ship for the next adventure

“Watch your step --!!”

“AIIIIEEE!”

“I need all of these viewports shut for launch!”

“He put my toolkit up out of the way – Bowdaar, get it for me!”

“…I need to change.  I hit the bucket.” 

“If I dragged your ass around the ship, we’d be able to mop the floor for him.”

“Have you ever considered using lavender and vanilla?  Might add a calming effect to this place.”

“That would be false advertising, Master Tuno.”

“Ehhh, we’ve done worse things.” 

“Can you tell him it should be a fast hop?  One pick-up, minimal shooting if any, then right back home.”

“I can’t believe they demanded such a fast turnaround on the decision and the execution.”

“Welcome to Alliance, Lana, where we do things that the Republic won’t and the Empire can’t.”

“…bloody hell, I’ll make tea.  It’s 1600 somewhere.” 

“I’m still flashing red lights on the viewports.  I need them shut or this is gonna be a real fast trip into the void.”

…

…

C2-N2 hummed as he did his best to tidy up one small piece of the ship’s interior at a time.  Today, it would be the lounge, the one vacant part of the ship at the moment.  The Thief would eventually be fresh this spring… but there were always delays, every year.

And C2 did not mind.