#kaleeshweek2025

85 standard years – how the fuck did that happen?  He knew no alien would believe it – Kaleesh didn’t age the same way that humans or most other species did – but neither did they usually make it this far.  How had the old clones put it?  “Beware the old man in a profession where men die young”?

There were so many times he should have died.  Countless times fighting the Huk, as warriors had fallen around him, Qymaen’s orders shouted from his sniper’s position at the back, while he and Ronderu had made it rain chitin on the front lines …

Tovarskl, when he had foolishly charged that Jedi and found himself Force-thrown backwards into his own warriors.  Cheating bastards …

The Martyr’s crash, clawing his way out of the Jenuwaa Sea, the sand beneath his claws as he spat up half an ocean’s worth of salt water and blood.  The other Izvoshra … Grievous … his siblings-in-arms, just gone …

Oben, as Imperial hellfire rained down on Ifrit, the city he had built, on the world he had ripped from the Huk, where he had fought off the Empire for over a decade as he bought his people and planet time to recover from generations of war. Suddenly the bombardment stopped, the star destroyer just hanging overhead like a rokk ready to swoop – or a kutkh about to pick over the scraps…

Shiva, everything going to hell at once, his carefully laid plans ruined by that kriffing rebel brat that the Emperor would not allow him just kill.  The hand on his arm, Thrawn’s agent’s warning – don’t go in that shuttle – let them think you died here.  The strange feeling that this time, over any other, he had cheated the Death Goddess out of his corpse …

Countless times he should have fallen, against Huk and stormtroopers, rebels and Vong.  His friends – drowned in the sea, blasted to pieces, and left to burn on an alien world.  Yet he still lived. 

At one time, he would have asked why.  Now, however …

He placed protective hands over the Trandoshan curled up on his chest.

While nobody had been stupid enough to say it to his face, he had seen the raised eyebrows, heard the whispered gossip.  The Army General of the Empire of the Hand with some space lizard a quarter of his age, hatched a year after the Death Star had become scrap metal orbiting Yavin.

They didn’t know Yuna like he did. 

She was just as much of a warrior as him, even if her struggles had been less obvious.  To break shell not into a loving home, surrounded by family, but instead to a cold, dark alley, alone except for the Wookiee, a mere child herself, who took pity on her.  Her childhood spent scavenging for food and dodging slavers – were the streets of the ringworld really that much different than the wilds of Kalee had been?

She clawed her way out of poverty, and when she zeroed in on opportunity, she sunk in her teeth with all the savagery of a true huntress.   

Sk’ar pulled his sleeping lover tighter against him, eliciting a subconscious growl – practically a purr – from deep in her throat.  She snuggled closer against his chest, and he was sure it was not just for the warmth.

The elder warrior lifted his head, glancing with a smile at the nest set up beside their bed, the beautiful, mottled egg, its shell swirled with pale colours, carefully surrounded by heated blankets.   The hover pram that Lieutenant-Commander Yuna, Quartermaster of the SSD Renaissance and its Battle Group, used while on duty, parked off to the side. 

Anyone who didn’t show his chosen mate the respect she was due in his presence would meet his blades. 

Sk’ar chuckled to himself.  

If the Death Goddess came for him now, she’d have a fight on her hands, one he knew his old friend would have appreciated in life.

"But what about their fighting skills?" Both do martial arts and Ronderu trained Qymaen at the beginning (it went how you expected)

"He isn't Slavic so why does he have a Slavic accent?" He was born in Iran, moved the Prague at age 8, lived there for a while, then went to the US for the same reason Ron did

I see Ron as a tank top girlie and Qy as a baggy shirt/sweater kind of guy (boy is drowning in the clothes because he's too skinny)