#honekitteh

"What, you didn't want to spend another night cuddling away hypothermia?" Xaja asked with a grin, desperately hoping she was hiding how much she had enjoyed being in such close proximity to the cutest guy at school.

"You do make a good cuddle buddy," Theron smirked, although Xaja thought he was blushing for a moment. Maybe it was just the cold that lent a red tinge to his cheeks. "But I think any time spent there increases the odds of bedbugs."

"Ewww. Yeah, nothing is worth that risk." Xaja shuddered and adjusted her scarf in preparation for braving the January weather outside the car. "Still though, I think I'm in love with you after that," she added, her voice a quick mumble behind her scarf before she quite realized what she was saying.

Theron paused in the middle of opening his door. "Sorry, what was that?" he asked, quirking a brow.

"Uhh… I was just saying thank you for that," Xaja quickly said. "For the carpooling, and the hypothermia cuddles, and everything." She was grateful that the scarf hid how she was blushing as red as her hair.

"Oh! Yeah, don't mention it." Theron winked. "Happy to do anything for a good friend like you." He opened his door wide enough to step out, and promptly cussed as he set foot in an ankle-deep snowdrift. "Fuck blizzards!"

He just thinks of me as a friend, even after spooning me all night in that motel. And he didn't try to kiss me or anything… That shouldn't have hurt so badly, but it did. Xaja sighed and blinked back a tear of frustration, then opened her own door to exit the car. "Agreed," she grumbled. "And fuck Lana for taking the best parking spot by the door!"

Theron growled his agreement as he started hauling his suitcase out of the trunk of his car, followed by Xaja's bag. "Because of course she would. I got your bag, if you want to get the door."

"Thank you!" Hiking her backpack up over her shoulder, Xaja hurried to the dormitory door, swiped her access card, and held the door open long enough for Theron to wrangle both suitcases inside. "You got those okay?"

"Yep. What'd you pack in here, weights?" Theron grunted as he pushed both suitcases into the hallway leading to their separate rooms.

"Only the essentials – flat iron, hair dryer, backup shoes, a few books…" Xaja giggled at Theron's expression. "What?"

"All that for two weeks at home over Christmas? Yikes." Shaking his head, Theron let Xaja take her own suitcase back, then followed her down the hall. "I'm gonna call my dad, let him know we made it back okay. See you at dinnertime?"

"You bet." Xaja hesitated in front of her door, then impulsively stretched up to kiss Theron's cheek. "Thank you again for everything with this trip, Theron."

Theron seemed to completely short-circuit, blinking as he lightly touched his cheek where Xaja had pecked him. "I, uh… yeah, no problem. You're welcome in my car anytime." He gave Xaja a smile, then quickly let himself into his and Jonas' dorm room, leaving only snowy footprints in his wake.

Nicely done. You just completely fucked that up. Sighing, Xaja let herself into her own room. Kira wasn't back yet; it gave Xaja the chance to kick off her boots, flop across her mattress, and silently berate herself for being way too forward and pushy with a guy who only considered her to be a friend. If Theron liked her as more than a friend, he would have said something months ago, right? Or he would have made a move on her during their roadtrip. You completely just ruined things with a good friend, you idiot!

She didn't see Theron lean back against his own door once it had safely closed and touch his cheek again, then elatedly fist-pump in the privacy of his roommate-free room, fighting the urge to triumphantly yell that the girl of his dreams did like him.

Unless that was just something that girls did with their close friends of any gender… That thought made Theron pause and frown. Maybe Xaja did only view him as a good friend. If she liked him, wouldn't she have said something in the motel after their night of snuggling? He supposed he should just be grateful she'd let him spoon her all night.

Denzer Si wasn’t the first genius to come up with the plan of kidnapping and ransoming Theron off — actually this was the third attempt this month. This sort of thing was starting to crop up with annoying regularity. First had been at Port Nowhere checking with an old Exchange contact that had quickly gone south. Then he’d gotten stuck between some enterprising rival gangsters on Coruscant both looking for a payout. He’d managed to slip out after a fight had broken out, helpfully started by him playing up to their egos. And now it seemed Nar Shaddaa hoodlums wanted to get in on the action.

He hadn’t exactly been thinking about the long-term future consequences when he’d decided to infiltrate Vinn Atrius’s secret cabal of apocalyptic conspirators. Hadn’t really considered what it meant for his face to be plastered across the galaxy on wanted posters and terrorist warnings, effectively taking Theron Shan out of the shadows and making him a household name. He had definitely not expected that his girlfriend would declare her undying love for him in front of the entire galactic sphere — or show that she was willing to offer up anything for his safe return to her side. Which at the time had been a very romantic and touching gesture, and apparently the unsavory types across the galaxy had agreed.

“You know, Denzer,” he said, splaying his hands out on the table in an exaggerated show of surrender, “I usually admire your entrepreneurial spirit.”

“It’s my best quality,” the Duros sneered.

“I’m just… not really in the kidnapping mood today. You know?” Theron’s palms hovered a few inches off the table. “Sorry to disappoint. Toxicity six.”

Denzer snarled, seeming to realize that Theron was up to something. Before he could pull the trigger, Theron squeezed his hand into a tight fist and activated the hidden compartment in his bracers. A tranquilizer dart flew out from the thin, inconspicuous barrel and sunk deep into the exposed fleshy area of Denzer’s neck. The sedative was lined with a quick-acting paralytic agent, and the Duros slumped back into his chair, trigger finger unfurling as unconsciousness began to creep over him.

The rest of the darkened, seedy cantina didn’t even notice as Theron removed the offending blaster from the table. A casual onlooker would probably have just assumed he was saying farewell to his very inebriated friend as he gave Denzer a rough pat on the shoulder.

“As I said,” Theron’s fingers curled in tightly around the other being’s shoulder, “I have to run. That pretty Jedi you mentioned, she’s expecting me home soon — and I don’t want to keep her waiting.”

A strangled noise escaped from the incapacitated gangster, but he wasn’t able to form actual words.

“She’s a bit overprotective, you see. If I’m late, she might get worried and come looking for me and you do not want that.” Theron leaned in further, dropping his voice into a low, dangerous whisper, that could only be heard by the Duros clinging to the edge of consciousness. “Trust me, it wouldn’t end well for you.”

The next noise that came from the would-be kidnapper was a soft, distressed noise, although whether it was a plea or threat, Theron couldn’t be sure. And he didn’t particularly care.

“I’m feeling generous today, so I used the sedative on you instead of an actual toxin. So, maybe you return the favor to me and just pass along the sentiment to all your little pals. Just in case they get the same idea as you. We wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Denzer gave out one last gasp of protest before unconsciousness claimed him. Theron straightened up, fixed his jacket, and without any further fanfare, walked out of the seedy cantina into the garish neon lights of the Red Light Sector. His pace was casual but still fast enough to where he quickly left the Duros gangster and any potential ambushes behind. By the time he reached the taxi pad crowded with tourists, he was fairly certain that he wasn’t being followed.

A soft buzzing of the cybernetic implant in Theron’s right ear signaled an incoming transmission on his private frequency. It used to be reserved for communications between Theron and his old boss, Marcus Trant, the director of the SIS. That had been practically a lifetime ago now, and he hadn’t talked to Marcus in a long time. No, he’d long since repurposed the frequency so he could talk with just one individual in particular. One far prettier to look at, and who also tended to yell in his ear a lot less.

“Accept incoming call.” 

His words were lost in the hum of the crowd around him even as a genuine smile spread across his face. 

“Funny,” he said, warmth filling his voice, “I was just thinking about you.”

“Good things I hope?” The amused sound of his wife’s voice filled his ears, and the dark cloud that had been following him since he’d left the cantina lifted a little.

“Always,” he said, climbing into a vacant taxi. “Although I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. Back from Ossus already?”

“Almost. On a refuel stop — this shuttle does not get the same mileage as the Defender. I suppose I should have waited to call, but… I just wanted to hear your voice again.”

“Hmm,” in the relative privacy of the taxi he could let his voice lower an octave and still be picked up by his communication implants, “me too. Fancy that.”

The lights of the cityscape washed over him, painting him in neon hues as the melodic quality of his wife’s voice played its soft song in that little place inside of him. Hopefully Denzer would carry on the message to the rest of the underworld and the spotlight would finally move off of him as some potentially valuable bargaining chip to be auctioned off to the highest bidder — but Theron wasn’t counting on it. If the long term consequences of his choice to go undercover with the Order of Zildrog was that he’d never quite be able to skulk along the edges of the shadows like he’d grown accustomed to… then so be it.

Her violet eyes widened in recognition and, in a brief instant, too many emotions flickered across her features for him to read before her Jedi mask slammed into place. Was he imagining things or had she recoiled from the saber?

“Where did you get that?” Her voice was hard and flat. “How did you get that?”

Theron’s mind drifted back, through a handful of lonely years, and he set the saber on the cushion between them. “It was...” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “It was years ago, after the Republic’s treaty with the Eternal Empire, but before I found out that you weren’t really— that you were still alive.”

He paused, concerned over the wariness in her eyes, but continued. “SIS tasked me and another agent to retrieve data and any holocrons we could find from the old Jedi Temple on Coruscant and —”

“How dare you!” Vassanna hissed, her features twisting with anger and something else he couldn’t place. “That place is a burial ground and you just went traipsing through it like it was some— They all died there and you just dug through it like it was nothing?”

(Yeah. This was going way worse than he’d thought.)

Theron could barely breathe, frozen in shock over her outburst, blinking as he tried to figure out how to soothe her ire — and how exactly he’d provoked it. “No. Not at all,” he said, hands extended in a peaceful, calming gesture. “We were careful not to disturb anything as best we could.”

(He probably shouldn't mention how they got in.)

“Look, I know what happened there, Sanna,” he said, unable to stop the irritation that slipped into his words.

Her lips pursed and jaw clenched as though she was forcing herself to keep quiet and let him explain, so he did. He told her how he and his partner had crept through the eerily quiet rubble, stepping softly, respectfully. How they’d found just about everything they’d gone in for and how they were nearly crushed on the way out — part of what was originally a wall had lurched sideways, careening toward the door they were trying to use. The huge piece of duracrete had stopped barely half a meter from him and the saber slid out from underneath, skittering to a halt at Theron’s feet.

“Linné — my partner — is a Kiffar.” He wondered idly if his former colleague was still alive all these years later; he hoped so. “She's got psychometry and when she picked up the saber, her eyes went all glassy, like she was watching something far away. After a moment or two, she blinked and handed it to me. ‘This belongs to the Jedi Battlemaster,’ she said. ‘Be sure to return it when you see her next.’” Theron huffed and shook his head. “I tried to argue with her that the current Battlemaster was a male Togruta, but then she described... you. Perfectly. And I've had it ever since.”

Sanna met his gaze briefly before looking away with a sigh. “I’m sorry for snapping at you,” she whispered, and he brushed off her apology — it wasn’t necessary. “How old were you,” she said, a thoughtful look on her face, “during the Sacking?”

“Thirteen.”

She nodded, then gave a small gasp, looking at him in horror. “Where were you? Were you on Coruscant when—”

“No, no,” Theron answered, reassuring her. “I was still on Haashimut, though Master Zho and I had just... parted ways.” His heart squeezed in his chest as her eyes narrowed briefly, knowing the way she felt about how they’d parted ways. But then she sighed and melted in relief, an “oh, good” falling from her lips. The puzzle pieces started falling into place and his stomach sank.

“Sanna, where were you?” he asked. His Jedi wouldn’t look at him and a chill ran down his spine.

“The Archives.” Her soft answer, barely a whisper, punched him in the gut and he let out an impressive string of curses. Gods above and below, she had been there.

“How old were you? You couldn’t have been more than ten.”

“Nine.” Vassanna closed her eyes, visions of red blades and fire dancing in her memory. He deserved the full story, to know why that saberstaff was in the ruins of the Temple, so she took a deep breath and began her story.

“It was my fault.” Her voice broke and she cleared her throat, starting again. “It was my fault — we were supposed to have been en route to the Outer Rim for a treaty negotiation.” Oh, stars, she couldn't bear to look at Theron, to see the damnation or pity in his eyes — she didn’t know which would be worse. “I was at the Archives with my first Master, my Uncle Brennick, doing research on local histories and treatises. I helped at first, but he knew I was bored, so he shooed me away, told me to find something else to research.”

She spoke in detail about the book she'd found — a real paper book — on crystals, formations, and their use in lightsabers and other ceremonial items. The problem she'd run into was this: the book couldn't leave the Archives, but she hadn't finished it before it was time for the pair to leave.

“I begged him to let me come back first thing in the morning so I could finish reading.” Vassanna couldn't help the small smile that crept onto her lips. “He was never one to dissuade me from learning, so he rearranged our schedule to give me extra time.” She took a huge shuddering breath and continued, irritation spiking at how small her voice sounded. “I only had a handful of pages left when Malgus walked through the door.”

She described the hush that fell over the whole Temple, then the crash that shook the building to its core. Master Brennick had rushed into the Archives and instructed her to leave — there was a back exit into the Works and she should take any younglings she came across with her.

He’d given her a hug and a kiss on the top of her head and asked her to give his love to the family. Now go, Vassanna, he’d said. Go and do not look back. Then, he pressed his comm into her hands and shoved her toward the exit, waiting to turn until she was on the steps.

“That was the last time I ever saw him.”

Her finger absently rubbed the scarred skin on the bridge of her nose. “There was a Mandalorian in the hallway, and she stood between me and the exit. The room I’d just passed was used for training, so I went back and grabbed a vibrosword. She laughed and said that while she admired my fighting spirit, she didn’t have time to swat at flies. Instead, she shot... something at the marble pillar next to me and flew off. The stone exploded everywhere — I’m lucky none of it caught my eyes.”

Stars, she hadn’t talked about this in years. Sanna sat silently, torn over whether she wanted Theron to say something or not. The silence between them grew, gaping and empty, until she couldn’t take it.

“That’s not really my saber,” she whispered. “Though I suppose I’ve inherited it now. I don’t want to touch it; I’m afraid I’ll see... I already felt it and —”

“Sweetheart,” he murmured as he wrapped strong arms around her, crushing her to his chest and stroking her hair. “Oh, babe. I’m so sorry.”