eat lightsaber, jerk!

(She’s hoarser than she’d thought, or perhaps she can hear better as the echo of the flashbang fades from her ears. 

She’s had worse.)

Lana crouches down beside her, easing her down to lie flat on the debris-studded ground. “And you finished it, I see. I’m surprised he’s still breathing. Do we know who he is?”

“Best guess? Trying to call in the death mark. And of course he’s still breathing- he can’t answer questions if he’s dead. Now stop fussing over me and get those restraints on him. I don’t know-” she clears her throat, hissing as Lokin shifts position and something sharp pricks the side of her neck- “I don’t know how long the sedatives will hold him. If he gets loose again he’ll go straight for the target and he clearly doesn’t care about collateral damage. He could-”

SCORPIO drops the duffel bag and draws out a set of stun cuffs. “You may wish to see to this, Doctor, or he may not survive long enough to question.” The droid prods at the wound in the man’s thigh even as she snaps one cuff closed around his wrist, pulls his other arm roughly behind his back and fastens the other cuff; he groans, head lolling to one side. “That would be a shame. I do so enjoy interrogations.”

Lana wrinkles her nose when she thinks no one is looking, quickly shifting back into neutrality when Nine glances in her direction. “With all of this, you don’t think you were his target?”

“SCORPIO didn’t brief you?” 

“Too many ears in the corridor,” the droid murmurs, “including Agent Shan. Brevity was required.” 

She tries and fails to sit upright, one of Lokin’s hands on her forehead holding her down against the floor. “I told you to keep him occupied. If there’s a second agent-”

SCORPIO’s eyes flicker briefly; if she didn’t know better she’d swear that was an approximation of an eyeroll. “He is with Doctor Oggurobb now-” another flicker, this time almost certainly hooking into the surveillance mainframe. She’s lost track of the number of times she’s told her not to do that but it does have its uses- “discussing requisitions requests. He is well-guarded.” 

“Theron clearly wasn’t the only target.” Lana frowns, tracing the curve of her neck with one careful fingertip. “Any other wounds we should know about?” 

“Not for lack of trying. He’s armored-”

“I meant on you, you- Nine.” Lana catches herself just in time. “Or is all that blood from him?”

Bacta gel now, cool and viscous and sharp-smelling as Lokin clicks his tongue and readies another injector. “Nearly all hers, I think. Quite unlike you to end up on the wrong side of a knife, Commander.”

“He got the drop on me,” she murmurs, closing her eyes, “and it was a garotte. ‘s different.” 

Only silence for a moment, punctuated by another, sharper groan from her assailant- she smiles a bit at that despite herself; she’s never had any particular illusion that SCORPIO saw her as anything other than an ally of convenience, but that might be the closest the droid will ever come to sentiment- before Lana clears her throat. “Yes. Of course.” Another pause, and then- “Where are we going to put him? We aren’t equipped to maintain prisoners.”

“I don’t plan on keeping him here long-term. As soon as he’s fit to talk, he talks and we get rid of him.”

“In a technical sense, or a literal sense?”

She shrugs. “That depends on him. And his employer. SCORPIO, search him and get access to any communications devices he has. If he’s anywhere near as sloppy as his counterpart I may not need him to talk at all.”

“I’ll allow the use of my laboratory, in the short term,” Lokin murmurs. “He does require some degree of medical care, and the room itself is quite secure. And well soundproofed.” For a moment she thinks of Alderaan and she can feel the memory of his growl in her bones, imagines the sharp tips of claws like so many needles in her wire-bitten skin. “Not precisely the eventuality it was planned for, but it would serve as a temporary prison.”

“Fine.” Lana’s hand rests against her forehead. “We can move the Commander to-”

“I can move myself, thank you very much. My legs are perfectly functional-” she wiggles her feet by way of proof- “no assistance required. Just point me toward a ‘fresher to rinse this mess off and I’ll meet you in the lab.”

Lokin chuckles as he starts to shift away from her. “I think not. Run program six on your shipboard tank for two hours and I’ll be by to check on you. That should be sufficient to-”

Oh, she is so tired of that Force-damned tank. 

“Absolutely not.” Forcing herself to sit up (the room spins as her eyes open, but only for a moment; she can work with that for now), she shakes her head irritably. “There’s already far too much to do before we leave for Voss without this idiot added to the mix. I don’t have two hours to spare.”

This time the claws are decidedly unimaginary, a clenched hand holding her still. “That wasn’t a suggestion, Commander. You requested my skills-” for him, she protests half-heartedly until he grips hard enough to pierce flesh- “and that is my assessment. More to the point, you’re going to have some significant explaining to do unless you plan to conduct the remainder of your meetings today from stealth.”

All right. Perhaps he has a point.

She scowls. “One hour.”

“Ninety minutes.” He relaxes his hold. “Lord Beniko, please see that she reaches her ship without incident. I will need SCORPIO to transport our guest.” 

Lana nods. 

A thud, next, followed by a very loud grunt, a second thud and the sound of a zipper being fastened: when she turns to look SCORPIO’s already standing with an overladen and faintly snoring duffel bag held over one shoulder. “Cargo secured. After you.”

When they are alone Lana sits down heavily beside her, legs bent and elbows resting on knees and head in hands. “You could have waited for me, you know. No one’s asking you to do everything on your own, and if he’d managed to-”

“No,” she sighs. “I couldn’t. Any longer and he’d have assumed Theron wasn’t taking the bait and either gone to ground or done something particularly reckless-” her shirt’s going sticky now, clinging and uncomfortable and too warm and she pulls at the collar of her armor peevishly- “and it very likely would have been the latter. And now it’s handled.”

“Why are you so certain he wasn’t after you? You’re still alive, but not for apparent lack of trying on his part. Or did Valk-”

The words come out unbidden, hissed through gritted teeth. “Don’t say it, he’ll hear you.” Lana winces and covers her mouth as Nine braces herself, waits for him to push his way forward again but it’s quiet; if Valkorion heard his name spoken, for once he doesn’t seem to care. “No, nothing like that this time. SCORPIO was ignoring orders and intercepted a message in mid-transmission that-”

“I thought we’d agreed she isn’t supposed to have that level of network access.”

“She isn’t, but you know she does as she pleases. I’ll see to it. In any case,” she continues, “it was good luck that she did. It was exactly the sort of thing that would have had Theron running right down here to investigate, and I don’t know if-” she swallows. She doesn’t want to think about that and-

(-and there it is, image after image after image like flashbulbs going off inside her head of Theron on the floor of the storeroom, still and silent, throat laid open and the bright spark gone from his eyes. 

She knows how it would have gone. She knows. But there is knowing and there is seeing it.)

When she comes back to herself Lana’s a little nearer, one hand just next to hers on a clean patch on the floor and the angle of her head a silent question. 

She nods, and shudders. “I don’t know if he’d have walked back out. Trant trains his people well.”

“Not well enough.” Lana’s lips pull back from her teeth. “You’re certain he’s Republic?”

“It’s not as though they wear insignias. So no, I can’t be absolutely certain. But he called me Cipher, and he- frankly, I can’t think of anyone else Theron would have pissed off badly enough to risk infiltrating our base to kill him, can you?”

“He made enemies on Zakuul, but no more than any of the rest of us did, and I’ve yet to see Arcann send a Force-blind assassin. He relies almost entirely on his skytroopers and his Knights, and they’ve all the subtlety of a boulder to the face.” With a sigh, she shifts her weight to one hip. “Come on, Nine. Let’s get you into kolto and I’ll fetch you a change of clothes.”

She briefly considers, as Lana rises once more and extends a hand to help her to her feet, simply refusing to move. She’s probably too heavy for her to carry unless she- 

“You aren’t,” Lana murmurs. “Ask Koth. Now turn your generator on.”

***

When she opens her eyes and spits out a mouthful of kolto the medbay’s empty. 

That isn’t a surprise. The folded pile of clothing on the examination table means Lana’s gone and returned and probably gone again to take over the meeting that she’s missing- not one that included Theron, thank fuck, there’d have been no way to talk around that. The one after’s meant for all of them, though, and she’ll need to be on time.

Or better early- she can intercept him that way. If their intel failed this badly once it very well might have failed a second time: they might have another mole and-

Her mind races as she exits the tank, gathers up the clothes and makes her way to the ‘fresher. Even beneath the kolto she can still smell blood on her skin and when she looks down at her chest it’s smeared dark red along one collarbone and the strap line from her undershirt. Out of the corner of her eye she catches a sliver of her reflection in the cabinet mirror, skin chalk-white and hair tangled, face smeared with the remnants of makeup and ribs bruised and neck and chest like an abattoir floor.

Stars, what a fucking mess. 

Deliberately she lets the water heat up until the mirror’s completely fogged over and, cleaning-cloth in hand, steps into the shower cubicle. Better not to look too closely now. Better to get clean first. It only looks worse than it is, doesn’t it, with all the blood? 

(And what was it you said about vanity, my dear?

She sticks her head under the water until the roar drowns out his voice.)

The blood smears are gone and her skin’s scrubbed pink by the time he’s stopped his prattling and when she calls out to the ship for a time check another ten minutes have passed and- oh, damn it all, her commpad’s chiming from where she left it in the infirmary. Grabbing garments from the pile in both hands, she pulls on underclothes and trousers (definitely hers, from the drawer in the captain’s quarters) and a high-necked sweater (definitely not hers and snug in the bust- probably one of Lana’s own if she had to hazard a guess). It was a good thought on Lana’s part but she doubts she needs it, really; an hour and a half in kolto should have been more than enough to fade the wire line around her neck. She pulls at the fabric, exposing her throat as she turns to the cabinet, checking her reflection more carefully in its mirrored door. 

That-

That’s definitely a problem. 

There’s a tube of bacta gel in here, or ought to be; her hand closes around it, behind her hairbrush and pushed to the back of the middle shelf, and she slathers a generous coat onto the faint but still clearly-visible gouge before she tugs the neck of the sweater up beneath her chin. A few more hours in kolto would fade it into nothing but she doesn’t have a few more hours to waste, not with a mission to finish planning and an erstwhile assassin to break and bag (metaphorically speaking. Probably. She makes a mental note to see if Renzi and Xessa are still hanging around the Core. They were always good for deliveries on ‘special cargo.’) She’ll have to hope the bacta works more quickly and figure out a way to keep Theron distracted until it’s properly gone. If she wears her jacket too, maybe he won’t notice- but then she needs to clean it now and still have to find a way to sneak into the tank while they’re in transit. Her wrist is a viable excuse, of course, but-

The brush catches on a knot in her hair. She pulls harder, peevish, until it tears free and a dozen strands of hair pull away with it and she almost misses the soft chime of the external door alert beneath a half-stifled hiss of pain. But no, there it is again. 

“Lana?” She calls out softly as her fingers brush over the panel behind the sink, searching for the edge and prying it loose with one fingernail. “Lana, is that you?”

It oughtn’t be Lana. Lana ought to be in a meeting now, and no one else but Eckard and SCORPIO should know to find her here. The panel comes open; her hand closes around the little knife in the hidden compartment. 

“Hello?” She steps out of the ‘fresher, blade raised at throat height, edge out. Not a mistake she’ll make twice. Not a mistake she’d survive twice.

Her quarters are empty, the door between room and corridor still closed. With back to the wall and knife hand leading she moves toward the corridor, a pause after each step but the only sound the soft brush of her own bare footfalls on the cool durasteel floor. Closer to the opening- closer- closer- the door slides open and she looks right-left-up-down and then left again, a flicker at the furthest edge of her peripheral vision but it’s only the little cleaning droid sweeping a few fragments of leaves near the conference room door.

Ah. Another messy one, then. Tsk, tsk.

The war terminal was locked down properly when she’d left it last. That might not hold for too long against an SIS slicer, though, and the last thing she needs with the timeline on Voss already tight is a compromised agenda or worse, more of Trant’s hounds on their scent. 

(They used to joke, back in the days where it was easy to joke about the people that would likely as not be the ones who’d kill you someday when the alternative was actually considering your own mortality, and call them puppies : half-blind, toothless, barely trained little things that couldn’t hunt worth a damn, held back by their master by the scruff of their necks until given a scent to follow-

But this last pup had fangs.)

Nine crosses the common room swiftly, muting the noise of her movement in the whirr of the droid’s spinning brush. Most likely the intruder’s still at the terminal, back to the door and at an angle that should hide her behind the table if she comes in low. Should. If she’s wrong, she’ll have perhaps a second to land a hit or two. 

Long enough. 

Crouched at the door, she touches the panel and the moment the door’s open to shoulder width she’s in, a diving roll putting her behind the long table as she readies her knife for one good punch to the kidney, maybe, or if he turns- he, yes, a man’s boots and frame in her peripheral vision, not at the terminal but at the near side of the table- fuck, wrong way wrong way wrong WAY and the only option’s to launch herself up and over the top of the table, blade out and-

She pulls her strike short by a finger’s breadth as Theron blinks and tips his head, convor-like, to one side. 

“I know I said I needed some combat practice,” he says slowly, leaning backward from the blade ever-so-slightly with a faintly amused smile, “but if I don’t make this call before we leave I’m pretty sure Hylo’s going to confiscate our entire next shipment of caf and whiskey so, um-” 

All her coiled-spring tension releases in a single breath and she falls out of stance, sitting down heavy on the tabletop with what feels like a datapad under her right thigh. “You-” turning the little knife in her hand, she tucks it away behind her back- “Theron, what are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be-”

“The secure holo in the War Room’s down for repairs, so I thought I’d-” he starts to reach for the datapad and then his head tilts, ever so slowly, in the opposite direction. “I know you don’t like anyone poking around the ‘shrike, but you gave me the external security codes last week, remember?”

“That’s not what I meant. SCORPIO promised you’d be safe in-” Fuck. Too much. 

“I didn’t realize she cared.” 

He looks at her then, really properly looks at her, at her too-pale scrubbed-clean face and still-damp hair and borrowed sweater and the smell of bacta heavy in the air; she doesn’t move, doesn’t blink but she sees it in his face at the exact moment he figures it halfway out, eyes narrowed and smile gone and the subtle shift of his jaw as his back teeth clench.

“Zakuul?”

“No.” A noise at the door- just the cleaning droid again, but- “Theron, did you reset the locks behind you when you came in?” 

He shakes his head. “I wasn’t planning to stay more than a few minutes, so I didn’t-”

She misses the last part of the sentence, off the table and out the door again and back down the corridor to the security panel. It only takes a few seconds to lock the ship down again and oh, she could strangle Theron except that’d be counterproductive- he’d promised to follow protocol when she gave him the codes but they’ve all become a little sloppy on Odessen, the one place where they thought they were safe. She ought to have known better than that, of course. They were never truly safe anywhere, not with the Republic and Empire still with their teeth in each other’s throats and Arcann always hunting, a step closer each day, and now this-

Her commpad chimes again.

“That isn’t me,” he says from somewhere behind her. “Should I grab it for you, or-” oh, no- “oh, for fuck’s sake, Nine, what-”

(Oh, Cipher. Valkorion clicks his tongue and for a moment his voice, malice wrapped in mirth, sounds just like Hunter’s and she sees herself back in the safehouse on Nar Shaddaa, black and blue and bleeding and down on hands and knees, scrub brush scraping the floor. You really must learn to clean up your messes.)

Theron had probably meant to follow her. But now when she comes back around the corner he’s standing halfway inside the medbay and she follows his sightline: the kolto tank due for cycling, her knife- Lana must have found it in the storeroom during cleanup- next to her belt on the exam table, her armor in a bloody pile on the floor.   

“Tell me that’s someone else’s blood.” 

She inhales, considering her next words cautiously, but he doesn’t bother to wait for her to lie. Instead he reaches out quicker than she dodges and hooks two fingers into the high collar of her sweater, pulling it down abruptly before she can twist away out of reach.  

There’s no point in moving now. She keeps still instead as his fingertips trace the wire’s path from one side to the other and for a moment she can’t tell if the subtle tremor in the movement is his hand shaking or her pulse gone haywire or maybe it’s both, she thinks- 

“Tell me,” he says again, quieter, “that’s someone else’s blood, Nine. Tell me whose.”

“Some of it, yes. But I don’t know-“ at that he opens his mouth in disbelief as she makes a face to silence him- “I don’t know his name , I mean. He didn’t exactly introduce himself. He-“

Better to just say it.

“I got in his way. I put myself in his way deliberately and yes, I know I should have been more careful and yes, I fully admit I fucked it up. I don’t know who he is. But I think,” she swallows hard, her voice turned hoarse again, “that maybe you might.”

That’s definitely his hand shaking now. His fingers curl into a fist, tight enough she hears his knuckles crack, and he turns away from her abruptly to walk further into the medbay. Opening one of the upper cabinets, he pulls out a bottle of sanitizing spray and a packet of cleaning-cloths and before she can stop him he bends down, lifting her jacket by its collar onto the examination table and tearing open the packet.

“Don’t worry about that now. I’ll clean it later,” she says, crossing the room toward him even as he starts to scrub and the first cloth turns pink. “It needs to-“

He pulls out a second cloth. 

“Theron, stop.” She reaches out, locks her fingers around his wrist to hold him still.

“No.” 

He twists his hand abruptly and pulls away, breaking her grip as she staggers off-balance. She reaches out for him with her other hand, then, trying to brace herself and rein him back all at once. “Yes.”

“No,” he says again. “No. I asked you- I told you not to do this, Nine. I told you not to go and fight my battles for me and then literally the next thing you do-“ he’s facing her again now and oh, Void, he’s furious, his mouth a pale thin line - “is almost get yourself killed?” He drops the cleaning-cloth and grabs her by both shoulders. “What if you’d died?”

“But I didn’t. I’m fine.”

He glances down at the armor again, at the smears on the floor where it had lain, at the pink-stained kolto in the tank. “You’re not fine, and you’re avoiding the question. What if you’d died?”

She squirms a little in his grip; he’s holding her tighter than she thinks he means to. “I didn’t-“

“Would you just listen to me?“ Theron’s voice wavers and then breaks, his breath ragged. “If he’d killed you, I don’t know what I- I asked you not to do this.” Another break, the word caught in his throat. “And you did it anyway.”

Nine lifts her chin, baring a strip of skin above the top edge of her collar. “I told you I’d do what I had to, Theron, and I meant it. I sprang a trap meant for you and got this-“ another half-centimeter higher, for emphasis- “for my trouble. If I had died, which I didn’t, he’d have come after you next. Most likely we’d both be dead.”

“That’s not what I-“ he sighs. “And I can handle myself! Do you really think I couldn’t have-“

“Don’t be absurd. I know perfectly well what you’re capable of, and I’m telling you that this time-“

His teeth sink into his lip as he cuts her off, hand pressed over her mouth (how dare he, she’s got a half a mind to bite him)- “Do you? I don’t even know what happened - were you even going to tell me? Or were you just going to scrub this place clean, throw the body in a canyon somewhere and pretend everything’s fine?”

That-

-is a good question. 

“I don’t know,” she mutters against his fingers after a moment. “I hadn’t quite gotten that far, to be honest. And there isn’t a body.”

Theron closes his eyes and lowers his hand. “But you’re sure I was the target. And he got away. Force-”

“He didn’t get away. You know me better than that.”

“Then where-”

Her commpad sounds a third time, its message still unread, and she reaches across the table for it. “Unconscious in a sack, last I saw him, but-” what do you mean, in a sack, Theron says as she scans the screen- “oh. Good. That solves that problem.”

“I’m not following.” 

“SCORPIO sliced his holo- everything but the retinal scan. Between Eckard, Lana and I we’d probably have gotten him talking eventually, but all I need now is his eyeball and-”

He blanches. “You’re not seriously suggesting we just-” two fingers moving in the air, open and shut, open and shut. “I know he tried to kill you- us- but that’s- I feel like that’s crossing a line.”

Nine sighs. “You have entirely too many scruples. But no, for Void’s sake, I'm not going to cut his eye out. I’m not a sadist.” She shoves the commpad into her pocket. “What I am going to do is find out whether this idiot ignored the call to stand down or if Marcus Trant’s a fucking liar.” Her voice gives out on the last word and she snarls and even that is silent, nearly slamming her fists down on the tabletop before she thinks better of it and pulls back short; the last thing she needs is to hurt that wrist again. Instead she exhales and lets her spine curl, lets her head fall forward until her cheek rests against its surface. 

“Or maybe I’ve just got more enemies than we thought? It’s been a long few wars.” He means it as a joke, she thinks, but there’s no humor in his voice. “Here. Sit down before you fall over, okay?” His hands rest on her hips, guiding her back toward the chair that’s suddenly behind her. 

“I need to deal with this first.” She pushes the chair away with her foot. “And quickly. If we’re late getting to Voss, the whole damned plan falls apart.”

The seat edge hits the back of her knee as Theron slides it back again. “So what if it does? The last Exarch almost killed you-” ( a broken wrist, she mutters as he lifts her off her feet entirely and sets her in the chair, and a little concussion, hardly almost killed)- “ and you weren’t running on half your blood volume then. You need to rest, Nine. You can’t keep doing this. We’ll get another chance at it.”

“No, we won’t. The Gormak’s visions-”

“What a coincidence,” Theron snaps, “that they suddenly need you right away when the news about Nar Shaddaa hits the ‘net. Maybe Lana and I can handle an Exarch or two on our own, but Arcann? Vaylin? How do they think this war ever ends if you die?”

( An interesting question. Valkorion smiles over steepled fingers. Rhetorically speaking.)

“You say that as if I stand a chance against Arcann.”

He blinks. “Of course you-”

“Do I?” She grabs the edge of the table once more, pulling herself upright. “All of you got me out of carbonite and made me commander in a war I have no hope of winning without far more allies than we currently have, against a maniac who’d have killed me at least twice already except for the delightful coincidence of having his immortal father burrowed into my brain like some sort of metaphysical fucking tapeworm. But if I die- assuming I can die- he will burn everyone and everything I’ve ever touched to the ground from here to the Core and back.” Chin up. Shoulders back. Don’t let them see you bleed. “So I fight. What other choice do I have?”

“So you just- what? Push through it and try not to die? Nine, please. I’m serious.”

She shrugs, twisting her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck, jamming a stray pen through to hold it in place. “It worked for you on Rishi, didn’t it?” 

“No. You saved me on Rishi, but you know that.” Theron adjusts her collar, very carefully not touching the marks beneath. Out of sight, out of mind. “And here, again, but you know that too.”

“Only halfway.” Belt on next and then- damn it, where are her boots? She can’t walk across the base with bare feet, and they aren’t- ah, there, next to the kolto tank. Slipping out of his grasp again even as he huffs in frustration, trying and failing to keep her still, she retrieves them and stoops to pull them on. “Stay here until I can send someone for you. He might not have been the only one after you, and-”

“Absolutely not. If you’re going anywhere,” he says sharply, “I’m going with you.”

She closes the top buckle of her boot shut so hard it nearly snaps in two. “No. You’re staying here where it’s safe. That’s an order.”

“Noted.” Theron closes the gap between them in two swift steps, unclips her backup stealth generator and hooks it next to his holster before she can swat his hand away. “Write me up for insubordination when we’re done, then, Commander -” a dare if she ever heard one because of course he knows she never would, damn him to all the hells and back- “because I think I deserve to hear what happens next with my own ears. I deserve to know if I can ever breathe again without worrying where the next shot’s coming from. Don’t I?”

She sighs.

He isn’t wrong. 

One finger over the generator’s switch, he waits. 

“I will only ask this once, Theron Shan.” She has to look up to meet his eyes; he tilts his head a fraction of a degree. Whatever he expected her to say, it clearly wasn’t that. “If Trant truly is behind this, you are not going to like what I am about to do. Are you going to try to stop me?”

(On Manaan he would have said yes, she thinks. On Rishi and on Yavin IV and probably even a month ago he would have said yes because she saw the way he looked at his father at that last meeting on Coruscant, a lost little boy so desperate for approval he would have done anything- no, almost anything, anything but that- for the smallest scraps of praise- 

-and Marcus Trant might have been more of a father to him than Jace ever was. 

But that was before, and there are few things that cut deeper than watching your heroes fall.)

“No,” he says. 

“Do you promise?”

“Yes.”