Work Text:
Out of reach, out of touch,
How you've learned to hate so much?
UFO — Belladonna
“Leave it like that, Jel.”
The Commander’s hand freezes over the shutter controls for only a few seconds. The Odessen moon shines bright, painting broad lines across the floor but blinding the eyes. Lana likes it, and in a detail this small, Jelvett is willing to yield. Not out of tenderness—she’s simply too exhausted to argue about something so trivial.
Jelvett returns to the bed. She casually ignores the white figure that has appeared in the chair. Unlike her obedient spirits, this one refuses to follow commands or trouble himself with thoughts of privacy. Valkorion “lives his own life,” even if he shares her mind.
He doesn’t resemble a ghost at all, not as far as the Commander’s familiar with them. Jelvett hears his footsteps, sees him not as a knot of the Force but almost solid—only sometimes flickering with a faint ripple, like an unstable projection.
And she can never make him be quiet.
“Your friend is beautiful,” the Emperor remarks flatly, watching Lana rest her head on Jelvett’s shoulder. “But she doesn’t understand you. She’s even afraid, which is why she tries to control you. To keep you from becoming someone she doesn’t want. Her vision is limited.”
“As if you want anything different,” the Commander snaps back telepathically.
Valkorion says nothing new. Only what Jelvett has long sensed but, in her human stubbornness, keeps trying to ignore. Behind the hope the Alliance turns toward her hides a fragile fear. Behind loyalty—an undertow of desperation. Her Sith see a traitor who abandoned the Empire in its hour of need, yet they obey a strong leader as they should. Her Jedi seek peace but never stop studying weaknesses so they can strike later.
Jelvett knows that once the threat of Zakuul is gone, all of this will turn against her.
“I never tried to change you,” Valkorion reminds her softly. “To confine you. You don’t need the leash she’s trying to put on you.”
That inhumanly perceptive gaze pricks like needles, and even Lana flinches at the invisible pressure of it.
“I’m not your enemy,” he says for the thousandth time. But Jelvett still doesn’t believe him.
The moonlight outlines the Emperor’s proud profile as though Valkorion were truly in the room and not in her mind. The Commander hides a small smile, wondering if it would be sacrilege in the Empire to consider the Emperor handsome. She keeps looking, because his serenity gives her at least the illusion of balance.
And Lana. Her platinum hair spills across her shoulder, her breathing shallow and alert even in sleep, her right hand resting on her thigh in a way that lets her summon her lightsaber from the stand in seconds. That posture is so… so ready to defend that Jelvett feels sick, her throat clenching with anger. Then comes the urge to wake her “friend” and drive her away.
She may as well not be here at all.
Jelvett carefully eases her arm free, turns away, and draws her knees up, as if curling inside a protective shell. She tries to sleep, but her thoughts sting like a swarm of enraged insects trapped in her skull.
She can’t even remember the last time she slept properly. A day? Two? As though anyone cares. As though anyone remembers that the damned Commander of the Alliance is mortal too. These thoughts leave her breathless, and a hollow, useless fury crawls through her body in spasms.
And the truth is—Jelvett has always known why Lana is here, even without Valkorion’s explanations. To watch her. To react to any sign of the Emperor’s will. To stop her if the danger becomes too great. Maybe once there was passion between them, but now Miss Beniko plays whatever still remains of it, Sith to the core in how she pursues her objective.
She got too close.
No. Jelvett let her come too close.
“Jel,” Lana murmurs sleepily, disturbed by the trembling hatred in the air. “Did something happen?”
Something happened a long time ago.
“Leave,” comes the dry order. “I want to sleep alone.”
“I don’t understand. What—”
“Get out!” Jelvett growls, her voice thick with power.
The Force tears through the room like a storm. Furniture and décor explode as if made of paper; shards of dishes left from dinner sing in high, ringing notes above the crash. The concern in Lana’s eyes sharpens into fear and immediately—into indignation.
Her gaze flicks between Jelvett and the lightsaber.
“It’s his power, I know. What did he tell you this time?”
“If you don’t leave now, I’ll regret it later,” the Commander hisses through her teeth.
Beniko doesn’t argue. She slips out in silence, stepping carefully, eyes locked on Jelvett the entire time. And all Jelvett can think is what a two-faced little wretch she is. Even now, she’s ready for an attack—moving from one stable, defensive position to another.
“You won’t,” the Emperor adds coolly, “regret.”
Jelvett is left alone in her ruined quarters, hatred still pounding in her chest in heavy, unsteady waves that refuse to fade. She does the only thing that can calm her even a little: she makes tea. She spent years serving in Countess Serenno’s tea house, and she never gets a recipe wrong. The proportions, the taste, the temperature, the color—always perfect.
Jelvett likes this work. She likes having at least one damn thing she never fails at.
And she knows Valkorion is standing behind her, watching with a hint of interest. Like a Sith Lord measures out crimson leaves with patient precision, how her warrior’s hand—crossed with pale scars—hovers over the kettle. Her fingers still tremble, and Jelvett awkwardly spills a handful of violet blossoms onto the table from the pouch.
Then freezes, holding her breath. For a heartbeat it feels like she’s about to detonate and turn half of Odessen into dust.
A faint, foreign force sweeps away the fragile petals, making the cups jitter against one another.
For the second time that night, Jelvett hides a grim smile and continues, much calmer.
Maybe Valkorion thinks she doesn’t notice how long he’s been watching her. Now, for example—he’s observing how her bare feet sink into the soft carpet, how her calloused hands move a carelessly discarded datapad aside to set down a cup. Jelvett shakes her head in rhythm with her own caustic thoughts.
That the Sith Emperor—the mortal enemy she fought for so long—is the only one who consistently sees her tired, angry, and alone. A person, essentially, and not the public mask of the galaxy’s savior. Even Lana only ever sees the unshakable, doubtless Darth Nox she’s always known. There’s something both amusing and bitter in that.
Despite the impromptu ritual, Jelvett still can’t sleep. A faint tremor keeps twitching through her, leftover shards of that fury. Darkness folds over her in a thick wave, and Jelvett feels like a reed bowing under a flood. It takes far more to break her—but living under that weight all the time is sometimes unbearable. A grain of weakness slips in, carrying with it a destructive impulse to end the pressure altogether.
“Don’t go,” Jelvett rasps, forcing each word out as she watches the white hem of his robes in her peripheral vision. She tries to make it sound like an order, but it comes out hollow.
“Have I ever abandoned you?” His condescending gaze evokes something like shame. “Have I ever lied to your face? You don’t have to trust my words, but at least look honestly at the actions. Not just mine—of those around you.”
Jelvett blinks, and the Emperor’s amber eyes are suddenly right in front of her.
“Tell me—have I ever betrayed you?”
She drops her gaze to her hands. She can’t withstand the blaze of that amber right now. She sees how an intangible palm lifts her fingers slightly above the blanket. And then releases them at once, as though the Emperor realized he had crossed a forbidden line.
Jelvett smirks bitterly. A line, from a ghost who never stops preaching about the absence of lines.
“That’s not what you need,” he says, as if reading her thoughts.
“And you?” the Commander asks, bold and provocative.
A wave of the Force drags the chair out of the wreckage. The white figure glides across the room, skirting the broken table, and settles back into his favored place. He ignores the question. Valkorion never answers unless he deems it important.
“Why did you let her go?” Jelvett leans her head against the bedframe, savoring the chill of the metal. “Senya. You could have found a thousand ways to make her stay.”
“Is that love—binding someone? Changing them, warping them to your own design? Would that person still be the one you loved? Would they love you, knowing you hold them by fear, duty, or deceit?”
“So you accepted her leaving because you loved her?”
“I simply never limited her choice. Senya mistook that for indifference. You know, some people are happy only in chains. They chase them fervently, strive to shackle others, because they don’t understand what to do with their own—or another’s—freedom. We understand. You and I.” His folded hands touch his chin. “That’s why there was no point keeping her. That path had no continuation.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes, each keeping their own thoughts unspoken.
“Sleep, Commander,” Jelvett catches a strange note in his tone—something almost like care. Pretended, of course, but necessary in its own way. “Your days will not grow easier or shorter.”
“Try sleeping in here,” she mutters darkly.
The Emperor turns his head. Slow and deliberate, like one of his droids.
“Have you heard the legend of Ghillam?” The Odessen moon still outlines his profile. Valkorion frowns, as if a Force ghost needs to rummage through memories. “The mechanical knight. The faceless guardian of Zakuul.”
“Oh, a bedtime story!” Jelvett exclaims with genuine, surprised delight. The tension in her nerves eases a fraction at the absurdity of the suggestion, her laugh thin but real. “Will there be dragons?”
“Zildrog. The great serpent that breathes fire.”
He takes the question completely seriously, for some reason. He leans back, ash-colored hair brushing the chair’s crest. His fingers curl around the carved armrest, tapping silently against the wood, setting a rhythm.
This is going to be a long story—but perhaps that’s exactly what Jelvett needs.