Private Once More, With Feeling

[Caulder Dune]

Hazel Scheler

One of the few Nanogene Troopers still capable of standing looked worryingly to Adekos for guidance. A chair. Ivy wanted a chair. Far be it for him or anyone else to get in the way of her quest for furniture. He snorted and rolled his eyes, "Just give it to her."​

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The chair rolled over quickly, and Hazel set about shoving Dagmer into it and chaining his foot to the trunk. Adekos folded his arms and watched. Poor, pitiful Dagmer had turned into a bewildered and slovenly thing. Spittle dribbled from one corner of his mouth, and he glanced around as if searching for another question he could truthfully answer.​

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Darth Adekos made a mental note to start carrying truth serums with him.​

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Dagmer shifted in his chair to better look at Hazel, eyes focusing on her now when she asked him. "I'm Dagmer Ren and I'm from Bescane."​

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He smiled like an idiot.​

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That was when Adekos cut in, quite rudely. "And where is my shipment?"​

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Dagmer's eyes darted to the far-off Umbaran, and he licked his lips. Questions. He lived for this now. Or he would until the serum got out of his system.​

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"The last time I saw it was on Fhost. Sold it to Master Shaper Queg Zar."​

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Adekos inhaled sharply. "To who?"​

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Well there was a method to truth-serum interrogation but it seemed Adekos hadn't the time or patience for it. Thankfully the interruption didn't throw things off. The Merc held up a hand to the Sith, "A-bup-bup, direct questions, one at a time, nicely, if you please."

She patted Dagmer on the knee gently, as if a mother might comfort a bewildered child, "Dagmer, do you know where Director Kellik Harn is?"

"Kell ... Kellik Harn?" Dagmer's gaze oozed back her way and did a graceful swoop on the spot as it took in the shine of her metal armor and helmet.

"Yes, he also went by the name Verus."

"VERUS!" Dagmer blurted, "he's in an underground holding cell on Byss."

"Is he alive?"

"I ... I don't know."

"That's fine," Hazel patted his knee again, "Do you know anyone who would?"

Dagmer's eyes went glassy quite suddenly, "Saleth Ren, she's my superior. I just want to impress her."

"I'm sure you're doing your best. It really shows..." Hazel looked back over at Adekos, "anything else?"

 

[Caulder Dune]

Hazel Scheler

As Hazel questioned the stupefied disciple of Ren, Darth Adekos did what he did best. Which was to say he stood there with his arms folded, glowering, scowling. The invisible miasma of indignation pooled out from him. Yuuzhan-Vong. Of course it had to be Vong. He still had his disruptor lens, but owning a gas mask didn't exactly imply a desire to seek out noxious fumes, did it?​

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"I'm quite finished, thank you," Adekos replied.​

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The elevator doors opened behind him, and another fireteam of Nanogene Troopers filed in. They went for the wounded and the dazed, and began applying the necessary first aid.​

 

[Hazel Scheler]

She felt like she knew that look. Or at the very least, it was familiar enough to say she knew she'd seen it before. Literal and figurative gears churning beneath that pale visage and glinting red eye. The merc gave him a wane, easy smile for the thank you.

The Polite Sith.

"Grand," Hazel gave Dagmer's knee a solid slap, causing the man to jolt where he sat, and leaned to unshackle his ankle from the chair.

"C-can I go home now? I'm late. She hates it when we're late," he simpered.

"You betcha," standing, Hazel moved around the man and gripped him by the shoulder with one hand, "I'll take you straight home."

SSSST.

A second mini-stim to the neck found the man growing instantaneously drowsy.

"I just need a little ... nap -" Dagmer plunged forward, and for the second (third?) time that day his face parley'd with the floor.

She left him there to approach Adekos where he stood fuming in silence. All manner of dumb pick-up lines ran through her head, but something told her in his current state of inner-boil they probably wouldn't go over well. There was a time for humor and a time for directness, though it was a challenge to completely forgo the former.

"After you get back your ... shipment," she had no reason to believe that he wouldn't, now that he knew where to look for it, "let's get dinner."

 

[Caulder Dune]

Hazel Scheler

She came over to him, and Darth Adekos narrowed his eyes. A number of responses came to mind, including the long and complicated Umbarese insult he had employed earlier. Etiquette won out, as it often did.​

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"I'll have to consult my schedule," he said. "Don't call me. I'll call you."​

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In a corner of the control room, someone groaned painfully.​

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"Ouch," the armored merc replied, "don't think I deserved that. You got what you came for." She left off the you're welcome, by the way.

But let bygones be bygones, or something of that nature. She turned from him, scooped up the Velokron sitting on the ground and reclipped it to her belt. Now to get what she came for. Hazel leaned and scooped Dagmer off the floor, hoisting him over her shoulders in a fireman carry, and made for the lift.

Barring no further altercation from the Sith or his cohorts, into the lift she went and Ding! left him standing there seething behind the closing of metal doors.

 

[Caulder Dune]

Hazel Scheler

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Deserve what? Adekos scoffed with tenuous indifference, but otherwise offered nothing. He did not watch her leave - not at first anyway - instead surveying the room. The bleak and dented consoles, pock marks from an earlier firefight, clones tending clones...​

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There was a pounding in his head he only just now noticed was present.​

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Tyrin sucked in air - an exasperated gasp of self-disgust and rapidly dissolving discipline. He pivoted on a heel and marched right back towards the elevator. The last sliver was about to shut, only to peel back open slowly and unnaturally. The whole lift shuddered, trying to resume its descent, only now restrained by an invisible force.​

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"I paid you," Tyrin snapped, "So, so much money - so you could afford to stop doing," he paused, hissing with effort, gesturing broadly, "This. But you're still... Working!"​

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The elevator jerked in place.​

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"Why?"​

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This was a genuine frustration.​

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Caulder Dune

Within her helmet the mercenary blinked at the sudden intrusion of the lift doors and the subsequent guttural, mechanical groaning shudder it gave in response to Tyrin. She had no inkling of the man's fastastic Force powers, but she did know he was like her; very much no longer natural in makeup.

About to reach with her free arm around for another Velokron -- just in case -- she stopped as the words hit his teeth and careened at her through the air.

It was her turn to scoff. And scowl ... but he couldn't see that. Helmet.

"I was supposed to just ... stop doing anything? Retire to some fething humdrum planet and live out the rest of my old age alone? I like working, Tyrin, it keeps me sane." Though it might not always keep her healthy, so she left that part out.

She gestured with her free hand to all of him, "If you have so much money why do you keep doing this? Hm?"

 

[Caulder Dune]

Hazel Scheler

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"Yes," he snapped, as if it were the most obvious, most best option presented. Alone or not, it would have been far more preferable than continuing to traipse through this brutal, useless, senseless galaxy.​

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He'd even tried it himself. Probably better to not mention that. The fact that he was presently here instead of not here would only throw the prescription into further doubt.​

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Tyrin's taw tightened visibly. He was, for the briefest of moments, tempted to let the lift door shut rather than give that an honest answer. He elected for something more evasive instead.​

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"Just because I elect to make myself miserable doing," he gestured, again, now with both hands, "This, doesn't mean everyone should."​

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[Hazel Scheler]

"That is a shitty cop out answer and you know it," a metallic, armored hand pointed at him accusingly, "because you love the bullshit churn more than you claimed to love me. That's why we're here and not retired on that fething humdrum planet together, Tyrin."

She gave a grunt and adjusted the unconscious man on her shoulder.

"That, I might have agreed to. But here we are ... how long has it been?"

Caulder Dune

 

[Caulder Dune]

Hazel Scheler

Someone had to do it. Someone had to, as she put it, churn the bullshit. If not him, then someone else. So why not him? What if it were someone worse? Tyrin had the vague notion that these were untruths he was offering for himself, but Umbarans could be as skilled at self-deception as regular deception.​

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He, obviously, did not want to address anything in any part of that. A pair of words slipped past gritted teeth.​

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"Thirteen years."​

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The majority of which were fitfully spent in a stasis tube, in his pointless and unspoken defense.​

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Damn.

Hearing the time declared really struck home just how long it had actually been. Thirteen years since she'd given the only person in this lifetime the name no one else was allowed to use. Since some semblance of happiness had been allowed to settle into her soul. The hand pointing at him rolled into a fist, then dropped to her side in defeat from reality.

"Yeah," Hazel felt her brow furrow under the weight of many different thoughts spinning through her mind. She'd never been one to let emotion rule her life or make her decisions for her, but she had never made a point to lie about them either.

"I really missed you." Legitimately thought he was dead, coped with the renewed feelings of abandonment by filling her hours with work. Had never dreamed it would bring her here. Thought she'd pushed past all that, but apparently not.

 

[Caulder Dune]

Hazel Scheler

There was a twinge of something in Tyrin. Something apologetic, perhaps even regretful. It was unmistakably human, and for that reason it enjoyed only a fleeting existence before being crushed. These notions and attachments were of no benefit to anyone, least of all him.​

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They were better off excised. Destroyed. The work was all that mattered. These quaint sentiments was not the way of the true Sith - especially towards the uninitiated. It was a mistake to become involved to the degree that he had. He had seen this truth while ruminating on the galaxy's edge and saw it now as well.​

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Hazel would not understand. But she would live with it all the same.​

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"Well," Adekos said, finally and venomously, "That was your mistake."​

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Darth Adekos had endured enough of this. The door slammed shut, and the lift resumed its descent with uncanny vigor, now goaded on by the same unseen hand that restrained it.​

 

[Hazel Scheler]

She almost fell over.

Not from the words, but from the sudden jerk of motion beneath her feet. Hazel was too old to be floored by a broken heart. In truth she wasn't even sure that was a proper description of what she presently felt. She'd devoted her previous life to one man who had been taken away from her by the Sith. In waking to this life she'd promised herself never to trust force users again, and even in the throes of lust and emotions with the one who had just so non-challantly discarded her like yesterday's news, that feeling of mistrust had never really left her.

It had been over 10 years of believing him dead. One little momentary hiccup of learning otherwise wouldn't change things now.

For all intents and purposes, he was dead and would remain dead just like her husband and the rest of the countless many she had come to care for in her life. That man wasn't Tyrin, it was just another Sith. Perhaps he had always been just another Sith the entire time.

The merc let her gaze fall, felt the stuttering clench of her heart loosen, and sighed.

The lift settled on her destination floor, the doors groaned open, she adjusted her posture, flexed her shoulders, stepped out and left her renewed grievances and regrets behind in the confines of the liftgate.


As well as several armed explosives.

FIN​