#campaignverse

partners in murder cover-up ✨

while asleep/cuddling, lekku will wrap around close partners’/bunkmates’ limbs (most often arms) or, if partners/bunkmates also have lekku, they’ll intertwine around each other

if lonely or stressed, someone’s lekku might curl around their own arms while they sleep

massive faux pas to touch lekku without explicit permission, as this is seen as an extraordinarily intimate gesture - some parts of the lekku are more Off Limits than others, i.e. the underside and close to the base of the skull

especially those two - underside and close to skull - are erogenous zones. no touching without explicit permission, and even then move with care - they are VERY sensitive

...which can also be used for fun :)

massaging lekku is one of the most intimate things one can do for a partner with lekku

on the other end of the spectrum: grabbing and yanking someone’s lekku can cause temporary swelling, hearing loss, and - if pulled very hard/for a prolonged period of time - can lead to permanent brain issues

lekku ‘socks’ (or lekku-warmers) for keeping lekku warm and/or cuddling/napping with a person with whom they don’t feel close enough to literally bare their lekku. good for cuddlepuddles, arguably the entire reason they exist in the first place

the fattier and longer the lekku, the more attractive they are to other twi’leks/togrutas - it’s a status symbol

there are cosmetic procedures to modify both of these

the oldest and most powerful clans have lekku-jewelry version of their clan’s kalikori - elaborate and intricately carved pieces of thinly hammered metal linked together with delicate chains and decorated with precious jewels

some of these are now too long to be worn without dragging onto the floor, and are valuable pieces of twi’lekki history that are stored in safe places across the galaxy in order to keep them safe

some of these kalikori headdresses and lekku jewelry can be seen depicted in ancient art on ryloth, and their physical counterparts still exist!

lekku can be used to stim! swaying, twisting, wrapping together, etc

a person might pull their lekku in front of their shoulders to stroke them for comfort

It was, of course, impossible to tell when they first got stuck in the loop.

“What’s happening?”

“Hyperspace lane collapsed!” 

“Pilots! Ease us out before we cycle!”

“Readings indicate celestial bodies outside the lane, it’s a risk-”

“What’s happening?”

“Hyperspace lane collapsed!”

“Pilots! Ease us out before we cycle!”

Commander Chyth’s voice was almost completely gone now, so often had he repeated those words until they were just noises, just meaningless sounds in the suffocating pressure of a loop. Ama’s fingers, hands, arms were numb from her unrelenting grip on the command console, her fingertips bleeding after minutes - hours? days? perhaps only mere milliseconds - of anchoring herself there in fear. She’d automatically reached for it in fear, and now she couldn’t let go. It hurt, the skin of her fingertips scraped raw from the violent vibrations of the metal as the Mercurial shuddered around them, but she couldn’t pull away, no more than Chyth could stop himself from asking those questions, no more than the troopers at the consoles could force themselves to input something, anything, that would make it stop.

“What’s happening?”

She wanted to scream but she couldn’t, time didn’t work like that - she hadn’t been screaming when they fell in, so the scream could only build in her lungs, the back of her throat, as the loop suffocated her, suffocated the command deck, all of the troopers, suffocated the entire ship without even a moment to take a breath. Moments didn’t exist anymore - only this one, the one where they fell in and couldn’t claw their way back out. Time condensed and stretched, pulled her apart piece by piece and slammed her back together again half a million times in what could easily have been either a second or a century. She had been looking at Misi when the lane collapsed, when time became a whirlpool instead of a safe, familiar progression. 

“Hyperspace lane collapsed!”

“Pilots! Ease us out before we cycle!”

She was looking at Misi, feeling as though her muscles were being unwound strand by strand. His shadow was shifting like ripples in dark water. It did not match his current form anymore.

“Readings indicate celestial bodies outside the lane, it’s a risk-”

She was looking at Misi, and he was changing. 

His familiar expression of light-hearted ease gone in favor of furrowed concentration, she could feel how time and gravity shifted towards him, around him, she wanted to look away. His skin began to crack as he fought against the restraints of time, breaking like porcelain. It hurt her eyes. She wanted to look away. She couldn’t look away.

“What’s happening?”

She was looking at Misi, even when the intense golden light scattered through his skin until his corporeal form shattered and shifted into something as malleable and fluid as water, a being made of impossible planes and angles, as bright as a new star, and then Misi stood tall and leapt into the air, swimming against the current of time that had trapped them there. And then he was gone.

“Hyperspace lane collapsed!”

She didn’t know where he went - she could only stare at the spot where he had been, staring at an afterimage of him burnt onto her eyeballs, but she felt the deck of the ship shift under her exhausted legs. The Mercurial shrieked around them, the loop desperate to hold on even as Misi forced the ship, forced the entire ship, out of its grasp - and then Ama’s muscles gave out and she collapsed to the floor with an exhausted cry, troopers hitting the deck all around her, their armor a cacophony of brilliant, blessed change. Time slipped back into linearity and began to march on. 

“We’re out!”

She wanted to cry, almost did, as Chyth took a shaky breath and called out, his voice hoarse, for status checks, for someone to check the time, to get the status of the rest of the troopers.

A disbelieving voice confirmed that they’d been stuck in a loop for three minutes and forty-six seconds. They didn’t ask how every single one of those seconds had actually felt like hours; everyone understood. Every second felt like an hour felt like a grain of sand threaded into every shaken nerve.

Her muscles shook and trembled like water as she lay against the cold floor, trying to catch her breath. She could hear the others panting and groaning and cursing to themselves all around her. Someone - maybe more than a few someones - vomited, cursed loudly, and then vomited again. 

And now her eyes could finally well with tears, trying to clear away the afterimage of an angel in brilliant transformation from her burned pupils. Her eyes closed and after a minute, she heard the familiar flutter of wings.

“I’m sorry, Ama,” came a voice, suddenly near her head. A warm Human-shaped hand on her shoulder. She couldn’t even find the energy to turn her face towards him. He sounded as exhausted as she felt. “You were looking right at me, but I had to push us out of there.”

“S’okay.” Her voice sounded as if it were many years out of practice. Now she could feel the beat of her heart in the raw scrapes on her fingertips, felt the tiny droplets of warm blood drip out like the steady ticking of a clock. “Better than being stuck like that.”

“The afterimage should clear away on its own, eventually” he murmured apologetically. “If it doesn’t, I give Knockout full permission to hunt me for sport as retribution.”

Someone gave a snort of derisive laughter close by. Ama tried to open her eyes and, underneath the burned angel scorching her retinas, saw the face of her very tired, very concerned friend. All she could say was simply: “It was cool to see.”

The nightmares were very loud tonight. He was in her head, whispering and smiling his horrible dangerous smile, and Amaranth pressed her forehead onto her folded arms, willing him to get out of her head. Curled into a ball, tight as she could fold her body, pressed into the corner of the bunk, but he still slunk through the gaps in her mind until she wanted to vomit - maybe that would get him out of her head, maybe that would make everything quiet again.

She had known that, eventually, this would happen. Sooner or later. She’d told Chyth, Gavri’el, Virus, and Rang what had happened, she’d told them what she’d done. She’d told them why she’d done it. It made sense, she supposed, that giving voice to her secret would make him ooze out of the mental place she’d locked it away in.

She just wanted to sleep until she could get it back under control. If only Azlin were here… but she’d been called away on some mission.

Amaranth felt terribly, dreadfully alone.

There was a quiet knock on her door.

She froze. The barracks were under this room, she knew; had she woken some of the troopers up? She tried to keep her tears quiet - maybe it hadn’t been enough-

“Ama, it’s me.”

All the tension in her body fled at once and she slowly sat up, wiping her eyes. “Misi?” Her voice was hoarse, cracked. “H-hold on.”

She managed to get out of bed, noticing the time as she did - a little after one in the morning. She’d slipped to her room early that night, immediately after dinner, because she’d felt this panic bubbling up from her guts. She hadn’t wanted to bother anyone. When she opened the door, Misi stood in front of her, a blanket thrown over his shoulder and a pillow tucked under his arm. She stared at him, confused.

He gave her a warm, concerned smile that almost made her cry all over again. “Hi. I figured you didn’t want to be alone right now. Is it okay if I sleep here tonight?”

She stared at him and then asked in that quiet voice, “Was it… you sensed… uhm. T-the Force?”

He nodded, and she stepped to the side to let him in. He made his way straight towards the other bed and set up there, and Ama perched on the edge of hers, watching. He was already quieter, in her mind. Like Misi’s appearance had scared him back towards the locked place in her mind - not all the way, not yet. She was glad Misi was here, but it wasn’t... enough.

“Misi? Can I…” she shifted, and then pointed to his bed, before pulling one lek over her shoulder and holding it against her chest. He patiently waited while she found the words. “Can we. Can we share? Sorry, I just don’t… I don’t want to be alone. Not tonight.”

He smiled so gently at her that she had to look away, digging through her clothes to find a pair of lekku-warmers. “Of course. That’s how the troopers sleep, too, most of the time. It feels more secure like that.”

That’s exactly what she needed right now. He let her get in first, so she was against the wall, let her get settled and comfortable. As he turned off the lights, he said quietly, “If it gets bad again, wake me up. We’ll work through it, okay?”

She nodded and curled in close to his chest as he settled in the bed next to her. It was dark, but she wasn’t alone anymore. She fell asleep listening to his quiet breaths, secure and safe next to him, safer than she’d felt in a long time.