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Hecate had never been more grateful to be allied with a Jedi Knight than she was now. Pippa's experience in flying starfighters during the Clone Wars was easily transferrable to flying their newly acquired ship — an old Kom'rk-class starfighter left there at some point during the war that they had borrowed indefinitely — away from the lone, heavily modified Imperial TIE fighter that had arrived at Stewjon in the last hour.
Hecate made sure their deflector shields were sound and steadfastedly ignored the chirp of the comm. She knew who was in that other ship. She had no desire to hear anything she had to say and neither did Pippa, for once. Inquisitor 98 was too far gone to be saved.
"It's that same kriffing Inquisitor from before!" Mildred yelled from the guns.
Hecate did not bother with a reprimand for foul language. She had thought the same herself.
"Copy that. Well done!" Pippa yelled back, not one to stifle their pupil's successful attempts at identifying Force presences. "Hold on, everyone!"
Hecate's helmeted head slammed back into her seat as Pippa gave the Kom'rk some speed. M0RG-4N4 yowled as she fell out of her charging port near Hecate's boots. Hecate caught her with said boots, then with great effort, leaned forward to check the proximity indicator. The Inquisitor was still tailing them. Hecate began programming the nav-computer with the coordinates for their next jump into hyperspace anyway.
"You either need to lose her, or we let Mildred shoot her down for good," she told Pippa, punching in the last digit.
She placed M0RG-4N4 into the compartment near her knee.
Mildred had been holding back. Hecate knew so. She had trained her, after all, back when the academy had still stood. It had been the one thing she wasn't awful at when she really tried.
Pippa's face twisted, conflicted. Inquisitor 98 might have shared blood with Hecate, but she had grown, fought, and trained alongside Pippa for decades. Pippa still held onto that despite her Jedi Code. Hecate, who had only ever been compared to her, had only ever heard stories of her, thought it foolish. She also thought it might get them killed one day soon.
It had gotten Ada killed when she'd let Agatha into the academy for the last time.
"Ashla's Light," Pippa swore softly, and abruptly pulled up to begin their exit into space.
Inquisitor 98 followed just out of the way of their jetstream, TIE Fighter swift but only slightly slower.
Hecate did not allow herself to mourn what could have been. She would, perhaps, do that later when they were not in danger. If she could look past the sheer rage she felt for her murderous elder sister.
"Mildred!" she called, twisting in her seat to face the teen.
"Yeah, HB?" Mildred answered, a little delayed, red and pink helmet swivelling toward her.
The comm still hadn't stopped chirping, meaning Inquisitor 98 still had not ceased in her attempts to hail them. She had not fired on them once, either. She had only shot wide of them to shepherd them toward where she wanted them.
Still, that didn't mean anything. It could all be a trick.
"Shoot to kill," she ordered.
"Hecate," Pippa whined through gritted teeth.
Flames licked at the edges of the viewport as they shot through the atmosphere.
"HB, I don't know about that," Mildred answered uneasily. "She said she's not here to kill us this time. She just wants to talk. It feels like she's telling the truth."
If it weren't for the g-force they were under, Hecate would have been at the guns herself.
"She had time to talk the last time she found us and she spent it trying to kill us," Hecate reminded her harshly. "Shoot to kill. She has not ever given us the same mercy."
"Hecate, I really think-"
"HB, she said she'll take out our engines if you don't answer her call!" Mildred called frantically.
"She'll burn," Hecate yelled back.
There was a moment of tense silence where she assumed Mildred was relaying her words to Inquisitor 98 through the psychic link they seemed to have established.
"HB, she says she doesn't give two shakes of a Mythosaur's tail."
Hecate checked their proximity again, watched the TIE drop directly behind them.
"She's not bluffing. I can sense her weapons charging," Pippa said worriedly. "Answer, please."
Kriff's sake, she thought, lurching forward to slam her finger down on the answer button just as they cleared atmo.
"What?" she barked.
"I have an offer!" the Inquisitor answered in kind.
Pippa eased off the speed and let the ship drift.
~<>~
To Hecate's horror — when they had finally set down on a planet way out in the Outer Rim, almost at the edge of Wild Space — Inquisitor 98 wore beskar'gam in their clan colours of midnight blue, gold, and silver. Hecate had her blasters in hand the second she'd seen the helmet — freshly painted — pop up from the circular exit on top of the TIE fighter. The Inquisitor stopped immediately, faceplate turned toward her, waiting.
"Constance!" Pippa yelled, a hand touching to Hecate's back firmly enough for her to feel the pressure through her undersuit and armour.
It was a silent plea to stand down.
Hecate's grip on her blasters, nor her aim, did not waver. Not even as Pippa slipped away from her side and strode right up to the TIE Fighter…to the Inquisitor now half way out of its cramped interior.
"HB, she really does just want to talk," Mildred said quietly to her right, helmet off and under her arm.
Hecate pursed her lips beneath her helmet.
"I hope, Mildred Hubble, that this does not end with our bodies in cauterised pieces on the ground," she answered.
"It won't," Mildred said with certainty that made Hecate's chest ache to hear.
It would eventually, she reminded herself grimly.
She did not lower her blasters. Mildred sighed and went to stand with Pippa. The Inquisitor, however, had finished her conversation with Pippa and was on her way toward Hecate. She passed Mildred, nodded to her, then turned her faceplate back to Hecate. Hecate grit her teeth, fingers itching to pull the triggers on her blasters. At this range, they wouldn't do much. She wondered, as the Inquisitor approached with purpose and without a single weapon upon her, if she also knew that and just didn't care.
The Inquisitor pressed her faceplate to the ends of Hecate's blasters with a clink of metal on metal. She did not say a word. Hecate did not place her fingers on the triggers; found herself unable to not because the Force had been used, but for some other reason she dreaded to examine beyond a fleeting glance at its surface.
"Bold," she remarked softly, adjusting her grip, still nowhere close to the trigger.
Her hands were sweating in their gloves. The Inquisitor chuckled.
"I am no threat to you," she answered, voice modulated by her helmet, but not in the heavy, mechanical way it had been by the helmet she'd worn as part of her Inquisitor uniform. "You trust your knight and your own instinct enough to know that. Put the blasters down, please."
"Where are your weapons, aruetii?" Hecate demanded caustically.
The Inquisitor sighed heavily.
"Knight Pentangle holds them."
They both knew she didn't need them, but a quick glance Pippa's way confirmed that her weapons were indeed with Pippa. Reluctantly, warily, Hecate lowered her blasters.
"This does not mean that I have magically begun to trust you," she hissed. "You have not done anything to earn it."
"Obviously," Inquisitor 98 scoffed, arms folded across her chestplate. "I doubt there would be much I could do to earn it for the next six months."
Hecate tilted her head, lip curling in a silent snarl.
"Watch your tone," she warned, then finally holstered her blasters.
Behind the Inquisitor, inside of the TIE fighter, Mildred let out an excited woop.
"She'll have found the rations," Inquisitor 98 said tiredly. "I packed an obscene amount of hot chocolate."
Hecate didn't want to know.
"Don't come near me. Don't talk to me. You break those simple rules and I'll put blaster bolts through your helmet," she said.
Inquisitor 98 nodded soundlessly without hesitation. Hecate, pleased with herself, stepped around her and went to check the TIE for trackers or beacons.
"Hecate," Pippa called as she passed.
"Pippa," she answered stiffly, stopping and lifting her right hand to the side of her helmet to scan the solar panelling on one of the TIE's wings.
"I really do think she's changed." she put Inquisitor 98's weapons down on the ground.
Hecate huffed. The wing was clear. She moved to the other side of it.
"When I determine that her ship is safe to take back to base and that her rations have not been poisoned so as to poison us, I will believe you."
Pippa sighed.
"Fine. Whatever gives you confidence. It's not like you have two Jedi with you."
Hecate stopped her scan, an ugly feeling settling in her gut as she processed the bait. She didn't like fighting with Pippa like this. Not anymore. Nevertheless, she would not take risks, and if she had to stoop low to get Pippa to see that, then she would.
"The Jedi," she began slowly, keeping her voice even, "can be deceived."
The weight of that sentence and everything it referred to settled between them like a wall. Hecate did not have to see Pippa's face — nor could she, given the TIE wing between them — to know that her jaw was clenched and her eyes were stinging.
"Where do you want me to start?" Pippa asked, resigned.
Hecate had not expected that answer.
"Inside looks clear!" Mildred yelled, popping back up out of the cockpit. "I'm gonna have a look around with Constance. Maybe get something from the woods for dinner," she said with a grunt, heaving herself out and perching on the edge of the entrance.
"No," Hecate and Pippa said in unison.
"Huh?" Mildred said, drawing the syllable out.
"We'll go together," Pippa said.
"But Constance is so chill," Mildred countered, sounding a little whiny.
"That's what the majority of the Republic thought of Palpatine," Hecate said, reining in her irritation.
"Oh," Mildred said as if realising that for the first time.
She probably was, knowing her. Always had her head in the stars, always saw the best in everyone.
"I'll check the cockpit again," Mildred said into the silence that had fallen.
"Run those rations through an analyser first, please," Pippa instructed. "There should be one somewhere in the ship. You find anything odd, you let us know, okay?"
"Gotcha," Mildred chirped.
Hecate sighed and got back to work, nerves soothed.
For now.
~<>~
Their thorough search had revealed their new ally to be entirely truthful. Hecate, very reluctantly, allowed Mildred to collect firewood with Inquisitor 98 on the condition that she take M0RG-4N4 with her and call either herself or Pippa if anything should go wrong. That settled, she began to clean the Kom'rk, hoping that the menial task would allow her to concentrate on one thing at a time. Pippa, who seemed far more cautious of Inquisitor 98 than earlier, decided to follow them at a distance.
Fine with her. She needed space to think. There was no immediate danger, either, so they should be safe for a few nights at least.
~<>~
"We should name the ship," Mildred said around a mouthful of mushrooms that had done their fair share of time in the analyser.
Mildred and Inquisitor 98's hunt had been highly successful. They had returned with a range of edible plants and fungi that Hecate had allowed Pippa to eventually add to her carefully brewed Bantha beef stew. It made the dehydrated-then-rehydrated meat taste far better, she would admit.
"What did you have in mind, Mildred?" Pippa asked.
While Mildred thought about it, Hecate turned her helmet to Inquisitor 98, watching as she stared into the flames of the fire she had built, helmet off and resting in the grass beside her and her empty bowl. Sensing that Hecate was watching her, she blinked and looked up.
Hecate inhaled as she saw her eyes — hazel, not sickly gold.
"Hecate, darling, what do you think?" Pippa asked, breaking her out of her shock.
"Pardon?" she asked.
"The Lizard," Mildred clarified, a cheeky grin on her face. "It's the name that Pippa and I have chosen for the ship."
Hecate frowned. In her limited peripheral vision, so did Inquisitor 98.
"The Lizard?" she repeated.
"For a Kom'rk?" Inquisitor 98 added, bewildered.
"Yup," Mildred said, popping the 'p.'
Hecate turned her helmet to look at Pippa, who only winked — entirely mischievous — and gave an innocent shrug.
"Not my ship, not my problem," Inquisitor 98 said after a moment. "Who wants hot chocolate? It can be an early Life Day treat."
"Yes, please!" Mildred and Pippa said excitedly.
Hecate said nothing. Just rose from her cross-legged position, grabbed Pippa's empty bowl, filled it with more stew, stole Pippa's spoon, then headed to the other side of the ship with M0RG-4N4 skittering behind her.
It was best that she ate something before she started an unnecessary fight.
After all, tomorrow was Life Day.
~<>~
Hecate had bathed herself and her beskar'gam as best she could before settling down on the floor at the head of the bunk that Pippa had chosen, then fallen asleep in about an hour ago. Inquisitor 98 had remained outside on watch; her first opportunity, Hecate had informed her, to gain her trust if she wished. Mildred slept in another bunk in another section, M0RG-4N4 keeping vigil by her side, much like Hecate did now for Pippa.
"You know," Pippa said, sounding like she hadn't been asleep at all, "you don't have to sleep down there in your armour, darling."
Before she knew what she was doing, Hecate had removed her helmet, the seal releasing with a pneumatic hiss. She hadn't even set it down and Pippa's hands were in her hair, gently pulling pins, dismantling her crown braid. It felt good — maybe that was why she'd done it without question.
Hecate pushed herself to her feet when her hair was free, then lay back in the space that Pippa had made for her.
"Are you alright?" Pippa asked quietly, beginning her nightly routine of tracing the planes of Hecate's face with her fingertips in the dark.
Pippa was yet to see her face. Despite the Creed, Hecate tentatively wanted her to.
"I don't know," she admitted, always surprised to hear her own voice without her helmet's modulator.
Pippa's index finger rested on her bottom lip.
"That's okay," she whispered, finger stroking her lip.
It was chapped. Hecate knew what she'd say next.
"Do you want some chapstick?
Hecate huffed a quiet laugh.
"What flavour?"
Pippa hummed thoughtfully, then leaned over and kissed her.
Peppermint.
Hecate smiled.
"Happy Life Day, cyar'ika," Pippa murmured.