Private A Broken Relic

[Phalsi Drynchen]

Giving her thanks, she let herself be wheeled around for the time being. Letting her curiosity float across her mind unguarded as Acaadi pushed her along.

---

She waited patiently for him to open the door, the sight something to behold as she pursed her lips a little at the collection of models. The childish part of her mind wanted to touch them. Wanted to take them in her hand and turn them over to examine the details.

The rational part of her mind taming the other half as she pushed on her wheels and sat before the collection.

"You really like models, huh?" There was admiration in her tone, and in the thoughts she let freely float. The care he had taken with each noted as her eyes slowly combed over each one.

Much like her with tech, she wasn't about to make fun of someone's passion.

"Which is your favorite?"

 

[Acaadi]

"Yeah, I warned you it was bad," he said with a sheepish grin.

"Wow it's...it's a long time since I set out for the academy," he reflected as he looked across his shelves. He had spent half his childhood there. A strange disconnect between the now and the then that this room represented.

Acaadi reached up to pull down a B-Wing, assembled and painted in rebel alliance colours, from the lowest shelf.

"This was tricky."

He slowly opened he s-foils and the cockpit rotated with them to maintain alignment.

"Didn't even finish this Headhunter," he added, looking down at the pieces still on the sprue on his desk.

 

[Phalsi Drynchen]

"I didn't say it was bad babe." She stopped looking at the assortment of model ships, turning her head to him specifically with a touch of irritation. "I have to admire the skill of it really."

She couldn't help but notice the B-wing he was messing with, chuckling a little at it.

"It's weird seeing one that small after sitting in the pilots seat." She laughed, turning her attention back to him. "If you don't mind, I'd actually like to see you working on it sometime."

 

[Acaadi]

Acaadi grinned. He knew that is was silly to be embarrassed by one of his old hobbies. Now they took real ships apart to put them back together again.

"I should find the time to finish some of these," he said. Acaadi opened a draw and pulled out a small plastic bottle. It was rock solid.

"Need a new glue though," he said with a tilt of his head.

"What hobbies did you used to have?" he asked. He didn't really think about the question much before asking it.

 

[Phalsi Drynchen]

"You should." A whimsical tone to her as she went back to admiring the other models he had on display. The mention of needing new glue had her leaning and looking at the bottle in his hand. "Oh jeez. At least it didn't leak before it got old."

The question lobbed her way made her pause.

"Well. Trouble. Mostly just...hung out. Got into more trouble." She shrugged in her seat, turning to look at him. "I always liked tech though. I usually was at our little hideout after we went to the recycling center to mess with stuff."

 

[Acaadi]

"I...did not get into much trouble," Acaadi laughed. He admitted this as if it was an embarrassing fact about his past. The room around them didn't quite speak of someone who had built the room as a fortress against overwhelming parents before venturing out to cause trouble.

"Weird thinking back to how quickly it all happened. Being picked out as Force sensitive and leaving this place, I mean. I remember thinking it was going to be grand adventures from day one, not meditation practise."

He looked around the small room, feeling quite nostalgic for a past that had changed so suddenly. Friends who he could reach out to had probably moved away for university.

"We need to do your physio on your leg," he reminded Phalsi. He had been helping with her exercises to keep the leg mobile and sitting down for so long to travel in one place probably hadn't helped. "Need to get you back to causing trouble and putting real ships back together."

 

[Phalsi Drynchen]

She chuckled at his mention to a lack of trouble in his past. Something at least one of them had the privelige of stating. While it wasn't something she should have been inherently proud of, it was something that had shaped her today.

And perhaps what usually led her to siding against those that had taught her the path of a jedi so often.

Seemed she still had some troubles with authority even into her more light aligned life.

His mention of meditations instead of grand adventures had her cackling at the thought of him off on some grand escapade of some variety, recalling in some minor detail about someone with green skin having been near OPA territory at some point during a rescue mission.

"I figure the grand adventures are the only things that make the holo-novellas worth reading. I don't think anybody wants to willingly read about grandmaster Dakus and the thrilling divergence into the third eye for a past time without some good herbs to go with it." She made up the details as she went, spinning a whole load of bantha chit to go with it as she spun around to look at him with a sarcastic grin.

The mention of her physcial therapy steps had her sagging in the chair.

"Ugh. Yeah. But I get to crowd your side of the bed. And we get to put an astro-socket in your ship for our next project." She huffed, mentally preparing herself for the coming pain. She backed the chair closer to the wall before locking the wheels. Hands lingering over the locks before locking her arms and carefully pushing herself up.

The regrowth process was at the mildest description a horrifying thought. Bacta was a truly frightening miracle working thing, but the process could have used some streamilining in her opnion.

The muscles in her leg had reconnected, but aside from being frail and practically useless without work, did little more than hold themselves together. A ponderous thought have been given to going mechanical with how much she had lost.

But the image of a certain Corellian woman popped into her head at the thought of mechanical pieces being manipulated with the force. She steadied herself, waiting to feel him get closer before attempting to walk a little on the weak leg.

 

[Acaadi]

He stood close, but not too close, and held out his hands. If she braced herself ready to fall against him then she place her weight evenly enough to work the leg. At the same time, Acaadi was very conscious of the models that would break very easily under a fall in either direction.

Acaadi had been surprised to find out how quickly they had even developed 'sides' after he moved into the apartment. These were little things that he had welcomed, but hadn't expected. His side was much smaller now that Phalsi needed more room and for him not to out any weight on the leg by accident.

"Well if you'd agreed to try and squeeze into the back of the twintail it would be here to work on..." he laughed. He hadn't suggested the rediculous notion, but he had found out how extortionately expensive it was to have a courier fly your own craft for you.

"Speaking of adventure, I wonder if we'll ever pick up the threads of what happened. A man thought dead for a decade turns up on our doorstep..."

It was about all he could say here in his home. It hadn't felt like an adventure. It had felt like a mystery, but one that had quickly drawn him in over his head. He was used to enemies he could see.

 

[Phalsi Drynchen]

There was a sharp snort of laughter at the mention of the twintail. That had been a trip and a half about either of their own ships, and it was either the cramped space of the twintail or the extensive docking fees for the Messenger. Neither of which had won out in her mind.

"We'd have to rent a lift or something to get me close enough to work on it. Either that or find a magnet strong enough to glue to my butt." She chuckled, putting some weight on the bad leg and tensing.

She didn't reach for him just yet, slowly wobbling before making a path towards the bed behind him rather than threaten the models around her.

Halfway there he mentioned the investigation and got a side eye.

"One side let that go too easy in my mind. The others didn't say anything outright, but I feel like something was missing in all this." She limped forward slowly, only stopping to add more when she had safely made it to the bed.

"Think we need to make a rest stop before too long." She spoke with emphasis on the word as a sort of lazy code speak, knowing full well something still felt off about the whole thing.

 

[Acaadi]

A C A A D I​

Acaadi laughed at the idea of Phalsi glued by the backside to an assembly crane, being lowered over access ports to work on the ship. He stepped around her and then faced her.

The slow physio work was tedious and he had taken his part in this to offer encouragement along the way. It was going to be a slow path back. He had never suffered an injury as serious as hers. Even when he had been at the mercy of sith for days they had done superficial damage to hurt him.

"The only reason I'm not looking over my shoulder all day long is because its too late to keep us quiet now," he said. It was also the only reason he had risked coming home. By now he had decided that such drastic measures could only have been taken to stop them finding out where the missing jedi had come from. He could only hope that information was useful enough to someone to make this all worth it.

Acaadi wasn't very good at knowing his own limits. Even those hard lessons that had taken the edge off, even this lesson he was still learning would not keep him from trying to find out what had happened and why. Here and now he didn't want to explain the idea rattling around the back of his head, the idea of going to that planet themselves to try and pick up the thread.

 

[Phalsi Drynchen]

She shook her head a little at his laugh but couldn't help the small chuckle at the mental image of herself being hauled up. He moved around her as she walked, her gaze never settling on him for longer than a moment to make sure she didn't flail and smack him in case of a fall.

His words matched her own idea of the situation, granted there was a hint of something else in his tone. Or maybe it was his emotions. It was slowly becoming more difficult to separate the two with him.

"Could also just grab the loth cat by the tail and chase it down ourselves, without reaching out to the jedi. But that's for us both to decide." She muttered before turning around to face him.

"After some food." Came the final words on the matter as she began the not-so-long journey back to the chair.

 

[Acaadi]

"Food first," he agreed. He watched her make another trip across the room before helping her downstairs.

His parents were both in the kitchen and his dad was happy to put together some food as they talked. It seemed they had both decided to take an active interest, but questions about them were still polite and dancing around the fringes. Acaadi knew it wouldn't be long before his mum decided to stick her nose in directly.

Acaadi didn't know spycraft, but after they had eaten he had the sense to leave any of his electronics inside the house as he wheeled Phalsi out into the garden. He headed down to the end where they couldn't be heard by his family.

"You think the trail will be anything but cold when we can actually try and grab this Loth cat?" he asked. There was a cool breeze, the trees at the end of the garden hissing quietly as it rippled through their branches.

 

[Phalsi Drynchen]

They moved to the kitchen after an agreement upon food, the slow process of handling the stairs a trip in and of itself.

Phalsi managed polite conversation, keeping to the agreed upon story from earlier while avoiding any direct answers about her parentage or upbringing. The sly side-eye to Acaadi during these times was enough to keep her typical sarcastic answers at bay. She kept the most basic things she could manage inside the house, shutting off the internal augmentations as they made it to the far end of the garden.

The topic of interest quickly coming forward as she leaned back into the chair as she pondered.

"I hope. More things to find." She offered quietly, gazing at the surroundings before looking at him.

"If it isn't cold, the issue becomes who else is on it. And the why." She shrugged. "I figure that the sisters will be eager to get us on it again, but we can definitely ask they stand back and let us work. Less hands in the process and all."

"Anything from our last trip you want to comment on?"

 

[Acaadi]

"No one got in our way until we tracked down where he had come from. Someone didn't want us to find that out. They didn't want him talking," Acaadi said. He was still incorrectly assuming that the sith had both blown up the freighter and killed Faal.

"I was spent a week on a sith ship," Acaadi said quietly. "It's not easy to - I can't - try and imagine that stretched out to over six years. I can't think of why they would want him dead before he could talk. What could he have seen except..."

Acaadi paused. He had been trying to seperate his thinking of the situation from his own memories but it wasn't easy.

"...the inside of a cell?"

 

[Phalsi Drynchen]

She thought on his words. The timing and consequences of their chase. Her fingers tapping just enough to please the nervous habit as she pondered.

"They didn't stop him from reaching the embassy. Or couldn't. Didn't do anything until he was in custody. And seeing might have been one thing...but experiences perhaps? Used or witness for rituals?" Her back settled into the chair, hand waving to accentuate her words to whatever the sith did in their free time while not on a vicious crusade.

"As for his death. A show of reach? Awfully sith like to make sure others know what you'll do and where you can reach."

The words no sooner left her mouth than the thought twisted in her mind. What if it hadn't been a sith though? An insider? Someone they hadn't noticed?

Her features tightened as she delved into the thought. Fingers tapping sharply on the arm of the chair in a steady rhythm.

A compromised Mistryl? Or had the lack of force detection been the undoing of their one lead?

 

[Acaadi]

"He didn't seem in a great condition to be escaping," Acaadi replied, "but perhaps that was the condition the escape left him in. Maybe they were tracking him down and arrived at the space port not long before we did?"

Acaadi frowned. It was the same chain of events he had played out in his own mind, but something didn't feel right about it. Faal hadn't shown any recent wounds. How could the sith have been so negligent as to let him free, but retained the ability to reach out and murder him inside a mistryl facility.

 

[Phalsi Drynchen]

The fingers kept tapping, thoughts swirling as she listened to him without focusing. He hadn't fought. Hadn't bled. Hadn't left a trail. Wasn't in any condition to-

The tapping stopped.

The tight knit of her brow released as her eyes slowly drifted to his. Mouth hanging open as though caught between breaths.

"What was it he died from? A heart attack?" Her hand tightened against the arm of the chair. Turning, almost pulling herself out to look at him completely as she tried to capture the words before they left her.

"And he was covered in scars yeah? What if-?" A finger rose into the air, wagging sharply before breaking their gaze to pass the idea once more through her mind before sharing. "What if they'd messed with his internals? Changed stuff. Put in and took out? They flip a switch and he just-."

An exaggerated motion was made with her hands, imitating someone falling over before she shrugged.

"I mean. Other than using the force to hide yourself, and-and wait for no one to see you pass through closed doors I can't think of anything."

 

[Acaadi]

"Even without a timer he could have shown up poisoned with something that just needed time to work..."

It was a good idea. His assumption had always been that the heart attack was to cover someone reaching Faal to murder him. Or at least to add an element of deniability.

Acaadi would never have guessed that the silver shadows had as much of a motivation to cover up the events of six years ago as the sith.

It was why they had put him forward to assist on the mission. Acaadi dropped down to one knee before Phalsi. Eye to eye.

"Why would the sith send a message to Emberlene?"

 

[Phalsi Drynchen]

"That too. Time released." She mulled on it as he spoke, unsure which direction following the rabbit hole would take them. His taking a knee made her jump to attention, pulled from her thoughts abruptly.

The question made her frown.

"To quit looking? Quit work-" an audible hitch in her words as she cocked her head sideways while looking at him. Her next words were slow. "A warning about working with the jedi? But that doesn't make sense? Emberlene still-"

The strings weren't connecting still in her head.

"You were sent to help. But a master. I figured the order would send a whole team. But they didn't even seem concerned. No offense to you but, it's like they didn't want to be bothered. Maybe sending a message through us then?"

 

[Acaadi]

"That, erm, yeah that occurred to me," Acaadi admitted.

He didn't take it personally. He knew where his skills were and they were not in subterfuge. Acaadi had been a passenger and observer as Phalsi followed up on what leads they had.

"There are lots of dangers the silver jedi need to deal with..." he said, almost reflexively defending them.

"...but why wouldn't they want to dig into this? Maybe something diplomatically sensitive? Maybe there was an offer to exchange prisoners they turned down?"

It was diplomatically sensitive. A series of events that led to the shadows unilaterally placing Faal into sith hands. They hadn't meant to get his much younger padawan killed at the same time.

That the Silver Jedi had sacrificed him had been revealed to him as his very last torture in a dank, freezing cell. The last blow to shatter his fragile mind.