#mazey

Mazey: Oh, sorry, did I read it wrong??

Fabian: NO! I mean, not really, I - you're in danger! They wanna KILL YOU.

Mazey:

@elthadriel gave me brainworms (a couple lines of dialogue taken from the novel Order 66 by Karen Traviss)

The Null— the Mandalorian clone leaves the room. Maze tries to slot this new knowledge into his understanding of the situation. What Zey said a Sith was, and what Ordo had corroborated, does not paint a reassuring picture. These had been men he’d relied on the whole war. Now suddenly everything is changing, but some things must remain the same, certainly?

He does not want to follow these orders. Perhaps there’s room to maneuver within them.

“If you surrendered, came quietly,” he tries.

“No, I’m dead already,” Zey says bleakly. “Please, do it. I know you have no malice in you, Captain. End it for me. I know what’ll happen if he gets me.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Maze says. “But if that’s an order…” Only, if Zey was a traitor, Maze doesn’t have to follow his orders anymore. Maze desperately wants someone in authority to rescind the command.

“Do as you will, Captain Maze,” Zey says, very very quietly, all resistance gone out of him. He closes his eyes, there beside his lapiz-inlaid desk, and waits.

This is more the sort of order Maze can countenance. But what did he will? General Zey had obviously done what he thought was morally right rather than what was lawful. Does Maze dare afford himself such luxury?

Maze considers his former commanding officer carefully. Years, it’d been, the two of them together, working in tandem and living for the work, always in each other’s orbit. Even a Jedi did not have enough momentum to escape such forces. The pull of gravity between two bodies inevitably settled into something stable. Theirs had been a slowly decaying orbit of attraction; it would have taken a lifetime or more for the distance between them to collapse. They’d both adjusted for it, adhering to proper, professional conduct in all their interactions.

Maze had made himself content to work alongside Zey, to share space and time, intel and insight, nothing more intimate. They were a good team. More was not in the stars for them; they were neither of them men susceptible to flights of fancy.

But everything is changing. He leans in and kisses him.

Against his lips, Zey gasps, eyes flying open— oh, that Null is probably still in the hall, listening. That class never could resist the urge to gather intelligence. He won’t be learning how Zey opens his mouth to the kiss; Maze squeezes the trigger to cover the sounds of their kissing with a blast of plasma. Likely the blastershot will cause Ordo Skirata to believe he’d executed the Jedi. It is what Maze had been ordered here to do, after all. It makes sense, much more logical than this other unplanned foray beyond their established boundaries.

A question trembles behind Zey’s teeth, but Maze is not heartless enough to make him to try to word it diplomatically. The time for professionalism is past.

“We’ve got to get ourselves out of reach quickly if we want to live, Zey,” Maze murmurs, brushing his nose up the taller man’s cheek.