Private Shades of Indigo

[Yula Perl]

​

// Zeltros | Indigo District | Belfry of Tund ​

She went home to visit ma.

After the loss of Zaavik, Yula withdrew to whatever she found comfort in. She tried to make that people. Dagon, of course. He knew the pain of loss, saw the guilt etched into her face as they had a somber moment of comfort at Coruscant General. Mom was another one too, her past more obscured than Yula had initially thought. Retired from the life of a Jedi Master, Joza had returned to Zeltros to funnel her effort into raising a family and managing her company. Ma grew up poor, and probably overcompensated by earning as much as she could.

But Yula’s arrival was unannounced, and Joza apologetically informed her eldest daughter that she was offworld for a business trip. She’d cut it short though, she assured—you don’t have to, Yula countered. This got her nowhere, even if Joza begrudgingly agreed, she knew that her mother would catch the next flight home.

Until then, Yula was left on a world where sex, alcohol, and spice flowed freely. Some of it was technically illegal, but it wasn’t hard to find illicit goods on her homeworld. The track marks on her arms itched, and the urge to suppress her growing shame with a needle was tempting. She hit up one of the seedier bars, which reminded her of her home on Denon, and ended up following an interesting conversation.

The Razorbacks—a gang that had nearly sent a deadly, tampered product into the drug circuit of Denon—were on Zeltros. Made sense, considering that their leader, Sable, was a native to the pleasure planet as well.

Yula, for one, had a score to settle with the schutta.

A quick slice with her glove was all it took to strip the information from the braggart at the bar. And when she arrived at the warehouse her tip had given her, everyone there was dead.

 

[Belfry of Tund]

Yula Perl

It was highly coincidental that Archibald Sult had found himself on Zeltros on the day that Yula decided to visit.

Usually his haunts were something a bit seedier and less joyful.

Like Nar Shaddaa.

The Underworld of Coruscant.

But, part of him had always been drawn to Zeltros. The part locked away in his brain and screaming. Though... these days not so much screaming, since Elliot had come to terms with this arrangement. It was for the best really. There was nothing much to live for and dying was hard. Well, no, dying was really easy and the corpses stacked all around them were proof of that.

But somehow even though Arch hurt all around all the time... death did not want to come.

That's how Yula would find him.

Sitting in a chair at a table still singing from blasterfire. He seemed to be eating. A steak, while having sips from a flask near the plate. For a moment it seemed that Yula had the drop on him. Then his head tilted, before stark hazel eyes trailed towards her direction.

"Dun' remember inviting a plus one to this party, lass." Sult drawled lazily, while reclining in his appropriated chair. "You lost?"

Inside of his skull something was slowly waking up.

But it would be a while longer until it got real complicated. In the meantime... Archibald still steered this mighty broken ship. It was luck he still had enough to drink for both, or sharing would have been real annoying.

 

[Yula Perl]

She’d missed him at first—the only living soul on the warehouse floor, sitting neatly at a table in the corner. Among the maze of boxes and bodies, he was the only flicker of life in this grim setting.

Yula had her blaster trained on him out of instinct before she even realized it. He didn’t flinch, of course. She didn’t expect him to. And when she finally had a good look at his face, the weapon nearly fumbled from her grasp.

Flashbacks weren’t something she typically experienced. Memories, of course—but this hit her hard and fast with absolutely no preamble. That moment on Skor II when she was getting her face beaten in, she saw a flash of her assailant’s eyes through the crack of his visor. They made her pause even then. Somehow, this man was disturbingly familiar.

“Looks like a pretty chit party to me.” Her own drawl—which sounded oddly similar to the strange man’s—held a wary lit behind her natural humor. Something was not right, but things rarely were right in a place like this.

Keeping her distance and her gun raised, she craned her neck to see what he was eating.

“Is that…did you bring your own meal?”

Yula wasn’t picky, but she might hesitate to consume anything the Razorbacks had produced.

Belfry of Tund

 

[Belfry of Tund]

His gaze cast over her and noticed her eyes.

...and his own widened a fraction.

Just a split moment of weakness, before it was neatly packaged away in a haze of blown out cigarette smoke. There was no room here for weakness... even if that cold ice heart melted ever so slightly at the sight of her. Oh, Archibald was not Elliot and never would be. But he always had a little soft spot for the Perls.

If there was one woman who intimidated him it was Joza.

If there was one girl that he lo- no, not that. Appreciated. Yula Perl seemed strong. Knew how to hold a gun. Confident in her step and not shying away from the corpses around her.

Her father might weep, but he approved.

"Depends on yar perspective, I figure." Archibald drawled, before the seat opposite of him wrenched backwards as he kicked it. The food was pretty damn good and still fresh, so Arch shrugged. "Well, yeah, I might be an animal, but I ain't gonna feed myself with the garbage they got lying around in here."

Except the chemicals.

That was different.

"Why dontcha have a seat, Yula. Been a while..." And then Archibald made that grin of his. Ripped straight from the mouth of one Elliot Locke.

 

[Yula Perl]

Her muscles were tense, instinctively so. Not coiled so tightly that she was ready to snap, but enough to serve her wariness. Here before her was a predator, nonchalantly having a meal in a warehouse surrounded by crates of spice and corpses he’d made.

Yula began to cast doubt on her own memories until he’d pulled at the right thread. That grin. Something about it was very real, like a memory from another life ghosting across her mind. A breath release in a sharp exhale through her nose.

“Ah chit, it is you.”

She sounded disappointed, annoyed, and relieved all at once—if that were possible. Still, Yula kept a healthy amount of space between them, blaster still leveled on the unsettlingly familiar man as he offered her a chair.

“Yeah, I’m good. Y’know, sitting aint healthy for you.” Looking at him, it seemed he’d done a lot worse for himself than sitting around.

“You the one from Skor, right? The guy who smashed my face in. I know you from somewhere else though.”

Hopefully, he’d finish the thought she couldn’t.

And they said Zeltrons looked familiar to everyone.

Belfry of Tund

 

[Belfry of Tund]

Yula Perl

"It's me!"

Half a mind to do a little kickaboo motion with his hands at the same time, but even for Sult that would have taken things too far into the domain of Fething Weird.

It was already weird enough as is.

"Sitting... ain't... healthy. Really?" He yawned and shifted in his seat. All in all comfort and relaxation. As if Yula wasn't aiming a blaster at him. Not cus he thought she wouldn't pull the trigger, if she believed she had to. Archibald would have been disappointed if she hesitated. No, just... either she'd shoot or she wouldn't.

His state of relaxation wouldn't factor into her decision making.

"Well, you know, I wouldn't strictly say that was me." Archibald shrugged. "I am a karked up kind of guy, but not even I would cave my little girl's face in."

A pause. A beat.

"Unless she was asking for it, I guess."

That grin took another level of ugliness there as he bathed his face in the light of a lit-up cigarette.

"This face belonged to your daddy, but he ain't home, so if I were you I'd mosey on outta here." His finger digits paraphrased the gesture of a stick finger walking out of the room. "Nothing here for you no'mo, already butchered the gang and they won't be hauling any more drugs from this place... once I smoke it up anyway."

"That's why yar here, right? Goody two shoes jus' like your ol' man."

He snickered as he took another bite from his dinner, but without taking his eyes off of her.

 

[Yula Perl]

“What the f-“

This guy was weird.

Weird enough that Yula couldn’t bring herself to walk away from him. But he was doing the work for her, connecting the scattered dots of their relationship with chickenscratch.

“I knew there was something off about you.” Her voice darkened to a grumble, as if she were displeased with the revelation. Yula wasn’t really sure how she felt.

Now would be the time where she’d caress the trigger of her blaster if this had been a holodrama. It wasn’t, so she kept the weapon trained on him.

Suddenly she was very conscious of each breath she took. Each inhale, exhale lasted far too long for her addled mind. There wasn’t much action going on from the outside—Yula still and rigid with him casually returning to his dinner. But his eyes were still on her, meaning that she was something of a threat. More accurately, a loose cannon. The stubbornness of Elliot Locke and the wrath of Joza Perl rolled into one.

The gears were spinning so fast in Yula’s brain that they were liable to burn out.

“I’ve seen a lot of weird chit, but this aint clicking.”

Her free hand moved, scratching at her head for a furious second as if that could unscramble his words and her thoughts. “So you’re my father, right? But you’re also not? God, I wish one thing in this family would make sense!”

Kyra was lucky. She had the cool Jedi dad. The man Yula had idolized in her ‘rim days, and was slightly betrayed when it turned out that he’d fathered Kyra and not her.

“The hell are you? Some kind of Sithspawn?” A rising note of anger quivered in her tone. None of this made sense, and yet somehow, it was fitting.

Belfry of Tund

 

[Belfry of Tund]

Yula Perl

"Family like ours it can't ever be anything but complicated, darling, jus' the way it gotta be." Sult drawled over a forked piece of meat, before digging it in and starting to chew casually. Yet, as Yula had already noticed, his eyes didn't leave hers. All intent and focused, because she was right. He did consider her a ... well, maybe threat was a bit too much.

But definitely something to approach with care and concern.

Noticeably Archibald didn't say yes to her running question on her parental status. Because that was complicated too. Archibald certainly didn't consider himself her father.

Maybe a karked up uncle that crashed on the couch during an all-night bender and left the fridge empty afterwards.

"Sithspawn?" Bemused tone there as he paused mid-bite. "Yula, babe, you been hanging with yar Jedi pallies too long. Why dontcha join me in the real world, down under, where the streets are grime and not every lil' problem has to do with The Eternal Crusade of Light versus Dark." In one sentence dismissing basically the entire philosophical struggle that has been key to so many wars in the Galaxy. And with such open disdain you could practically taste it yourself.

He put the fork down and sighed, tapping his stomach contently as he peered at her.

"I ain't ya daddy, Yula." A shrug there and then tapped his temple again. "But yar daddy is in there somewhere. He was a SIS agent once upon a time. Had to do some real real bad things for The Good Cause." A nasty smirk there, which told her all she needed to know what Archibald thought about the 'Good Cause'.

"His mind couldn't handle it. Too long on the job, too deep in the business. It snapped like a fragile lil' potato chip and out came..."

And there he jumped up, possibly risking her shooting him, but hey Sult wasn't all there if they were all being honest.

"ME!" A wild grin there (if he wasn't bleeding from a hole in his chest anyway) and spread his arms in a presenting flourish. "Someone who could take the wheel, when poor daddy-o couldn't handle the dirty biz."

Wild grin turned an edge nostalgic there.

"He did try, y'know. Build something there with yar mother. But." Stroked his hair out of his eyes and slicked them back. "Some men are too broken to be worth the effort. Ya should run along now, girl. Nothing in this room but pain. And its shattering his heart to see you. For all the chit I give him, I exist to protect him... even if he dun' agree with my methods."

 

[Yula Perl]

And there he jumped up, possibly risking her shooting him, but hey Sult wasn't all there if they were all being honest.

"ME!"

"Ew, don't call me babe."

A shot whizzed past his head, missing by a few wide inches. Maybe he’d startled her and she was just a bad shot, maybe it was a warning (to what?), maybe she was just irritated and expressed it through gunfire.

“Split personality.” She muttered. “Is my real dad as much of a condescending feth as you are?”

Way, way back, just before Yula had started forming permanent memories, her father existed in snippets. His hand holding her own as they ventured, tentatively on her part, past the froth of the shoreline and into the waves of the ocean near their home. His crooked smile had been reassuring then, now it just made her nauseous.

“Poor guy; you’ll have to protect him for a little longer.”

If she looked at him too hard and for too long, she’d start seeing glimpses of her father, imagined or not. Yula knew how easy it was for her to try and force a situation to fit her own needs.

“If you’re not wholly him, who exactly are you?”

Belfry of Tund