[004]
Two strings cross. One notices.
‘Their eyes met across a crowded room’ had never been so horrid a reality as it was now.
Briefly, the half-Mirialan felt rooted to the spot by the pure-red gaze, and the orbital station dropped away to leave him cold and exposed. His carelessness was forgotten to the pulse of the Force, rising like a tide scooping up sand and shells about his knees, connecting them in its omnipotent embrace.
A small, cool shiver rolled over the back of Feyda’s neck. He hadn’t felt it so strong, so urgent for his attention, not outside the visions that had brought him here. A slow swallow wrung the ropey muscles of his throat. He wanted to tear his eyes away from the stoic, unreadable chiss, his fierce gaze and darkly curiosity, but the tide held him fast… as though it were important he take notice.
“Sir? Is there anything else, sir?” The dreamy voice of the still-enthralled officer floated along the surface and finally crashed into him. Feyda gave a start, blinking furiously, gasping for air. The moment cracked, bringing with it the stark reality - he’d used the Force, and a bored Sith had noticed.
Shit.“Feyda what’s--”
“I got us through, we gotta move.” He reached down and grabbed two of their equipment bags, slinging one over his shoulder. The blood pounded in his ears, and goosebumps still rushed to the surface of his skin up along the back of his neck. He felt the Sith’s eyes still on him, and the strands of reaction surrounding his gaze.
Amusement. Boredom flourishing to Curiosity. ‘What part do you play?’ He’d been so stupid, so utterly careless to do that sort of thing on an Imperial station. Of course someone was going to kriffing notice. Of course--
Garne’s clawed hand thunked against his shoulder, snapping his cycle of panic on two. It was a rough gesture, but everything the Trandoshan did was rough, even his concern. “Smells like fear,” He croaked in Dosh.
“Yeah well,” Feyda snapped, “you smell too but y’never hear me complain aboot it.”
It was more than that. He paid as little attention to the Force as possible, unless the need for some extra help was great, and contrary to general belief that kind of training was like a muscle as well. The less practised, the harder those feats were to perform. Feyda’s senses had always been sharp, along with the empathetic vibrations he stifled with practised ignorance and at times, copious amounts of alcohol… but something about this feeling was different. Intense. Specifically reaching out to him like a knotted string, tied between he and the Chiss.
He tentatively snuck a look back across the lobby floor. Blue eyes met deep, blood red, and Feyda felt the Force once again take special notice.
He didn’t know what it meant - and he didn’t care.
Please kriffing bantha-turd-on-a-stick let him be too busy to go people-shopping.“Go now,” Feyda breathed, spinning around and pushing both Jekk and Tiry ahead of him to their loud dismay, the former trying to twist around and find what exactly they were rushing away from and grumbling things to the chorus of ‘I’m the captain you know’.
“Listen to small green one,” Garne barked much to his relief, snatching up their remaining gear and keeping up the back of the group. He at least had the sense not to look back, scaly head bowed. “Sith watching us.”
‘SITH?’ Jekk mouthed exaggeratedly to Feyda, his face and doinky goatee pulled into almost comical aggro.
“I’ll explain later,” Feyda breathed, “just move.”
~
“So wait,” Jekk’s voice had been steadily rising with every accusatory question he slung forth, “you’re tellin’ me you’re a Jedi, and you’re here to find your sister?”
“M’not a Jedi,” Feyda shot back, bristling from the fifth time having to say it. “I never was, I din’ pass.”
They’d left the Imperial Minimum Security Landing Zone, and not stopped until half-way across the first map on their chit. By then it was dusk, and after a little fuss and some more hesitant-but-necessary Force-thick words Feyda had secured them a square of sleeping space within the towering walls of an empty prison block retrofitted as a Republic outpost. Now that they were planet-side, they didn’t have to worry as much about one faction or the other; as long as they ‘stayed out of trouble’, the trooper said, they could shack up in here for the night.
It was safer this way - Imps probably wouldn’t offer the same protection, but if they did, there was always a risk that Sith would pass through...
“Whatever,” Jekk shot back, not sounding keen or caring for details. His dark hair was scooped about his face awkwardly from the amount of times the frazzled human had run his hands through it. “You still lied to us, then tricked us into coming to butt-kriff nowhere for these Jedi artifact things that are ‘gonna make us rich’ if we don’t get murdered by Sith, Jedi or escaped prisoners, and on top of that you don’t even know they’re still there, because your real quest is saving the princess from the castle. All based on
a dream you had.”
It all sounded terrible placed out on the table like that, even if Jekk was real good at spinning words his way. The young half-Mirialan sighed roughly, ruffling a hand vigorously back and forth through his own hair. When he was stressed he found it harder not to absorb the emotions of others, and the quirks that came with them. The motion was almost identical to Jekk’s. “Aroundaboots that.”
“Yeeaah,” Jekk drew the blaster from his holster, “I’m gonna shoot you.”
Everybody reared up, voices raised, and a couple of Republic troops looked their way warningly. “WAIT,” Tiry jumped in between the two of them, hands up and waving both off, “Jekk c’mon! I don’t blame Feyda for never tellin’ us about the Jedi thing, that’s not fair. Y’know how those sticklers are about controlling all the Forceys in the Republic.” She frowned hard at him. “And so yeah he lied, but this is about
family. Blood, water, that stuff. So just… how about we all take a breath, put the blasters away and
chill the kriff out?”
Jekk rolled his shoulders, in that overtly-manly way he did sometimes as though expecting it to command authority. He glared daggers between the two of them, then looked to Garne. Garne, a statue against the light of their bin-fire, arms crossed, just shrugged.
Jekk sighed roughly, and the blaster went away as he thunked back down on an upturned crate. It wasn’t the first time he’d threatened to shoot Feyda, sure, but it was most definitely the least playful.
“I’m still mad,” he warned, gesturing between the half-Mirialan and Twi’lek, “you two lied - don’t try to hide it Tiry, I know how sweet you are on him an’ your kriffing isn’t as quiet as y’think.”
“Aboot as subtle as when ye fap to it,” Feyda shot back.
“I can still shoot you, beanshoot,”
“Okay, we get it! Both your dicks are very big,” Tiry tossed a lekku over her shoulder with an annoyed flick, and Garne bared his teeth with that throaty sneer sound that they’d all come to learn was a snigger, “So what’s the plan from here?”
Jekk sighed heavily, leaning over his knees. He stared into the fire a while before speaking again. “Are we gonna get anymore trouble from that Sith-type?”
“I dunno,” Feyda admitted, gnawing on his lip, “S’a big planet, and if he was interested in snatchin’ me up he woulda done somethin’ on the station. Made a bit show of it.”
“Unless Sith want thrill of The Hunt,” Garne mused.
A stone sank in Feyda’s stomach. “Yeah… or maybe that I guess.” He felt Tiry brush up against his arm, and the vibrations of concern she emitted like a beacon, the warm desire to comfort him.
“Do you even know where your sis
is?” Jekk had gotten his blaster out again, but this time with safety on to nurse it on one knee, and worked at the barrel with an oiled cloth. Feyda knew it was to avoid baring his anger more than he already had, even if he could still feel it. “Which tomb we should be headin’ to?”
“It’s one o’ the ol’ Rakata ones te the north-west still bein’ excavated. I did me research. Jedi go there all the time te recover things from the digs. Once we got close I’ll be able te sense her out.”
And she’ll feel me too He thought, a little tentatively. If she hadn’t already. Feyda knew she was on the planet the moment he’d set foot on the soil. She was stronger than him, sure, but he just wasn’t sure if she cared enough to notice.
“She hot?” Jekk almost tried to disguise the question as a clearing of one’s throat.
The half-Mirialan was hardly surprised. “We’re twins, so if ye wanna kriff a female me, go for it.”
“I could be into that,” Tiry mused, shooting him a side-long grin.
Please feel better he felt rolling off from all over her.
“And what if the Jedi don’t like us being there? Or that blue Sith guy turns up again? You can do some Forcey shit to get us outta trouble yeah?”
“
Some Forcey Shit,” Feyda repeated incredulously.
“Well I dunno how that stuff works!”
“Jekk, it’s like I said, m’not a bloody Jedi. I was just an initiate fer a few years, I dunno the big stuff.” He sighed, staring off out of the south entrance to the compound and into the dark. Prisons were lit dimly by grounds lighting like ghosts pocketed in the distance. “The rest you know.”
“Can handle Jedi
and Sith,” Garne punched his palm, and tossed his head towards their bedrolls, “Rest now. Victory for Scorekeeper needs good rest.”
A little while later the floodlights out over the grounds around the outpost brightened, the ones facing inwards dimming at the shift changeover. Event after Tiry crawled into Feyda’s sleeping bag with him and laid her head against his beating heart, he couldn’t relax, or sleep. Her apprehension bled into his own, and he couldn’t bring himself to remove her, not when she was just trying to help.
He stared at the starts for a time - though the lights from the facility his a fair few of them. As tiredness slowly crept up on him his defenses slid away, his senses overridden with the grumbling of a soldier; a security officer worried for someone out there in the dark; the primal caution and bloodthirst of a predator’s mind as it scampered up along the yawning branch of an upturned tree.
Feyda shut his eyes and breathed deeply. The familiar, warm glow of the ties that bound him to his twin, out there somewhere. The dark energy crackling at the brim of his senses of the chiss Sith, as he slunk through the night. They silently took notice of each other in the dark, in the Force. Feyda shivered.
