These Aren't the Slaves You're Looking For [Aver]

[Aver Brand]

Well, that was it for the main event. It had gone down much like she’d expected – some yelling, some chest beating, classic Qosta. Aver’s smile retreated back to its normal smirk as she settled against the counter, one lazy arm hanging over the back of the chair.

“Mm. Not like Nadir gives you second chances,” she snorted, a good-natured curl to her mouth. You got it right the first time, or you got a blaster hole between the eyes. Pretty simple equations around here.

“He got any broad that’d get pissy if someone… borrowed him?”

 

[Emryc]

"Karked if I know," Pa took a deep drink, "he works, he goes home. Maybe he has a dame, maybe he has three. Maybe he has a stag. You wanna ride his prick you'll have to take that business up with him. Just don't distract him from his work for too long, eh?"

Clan Qosta had quotas to keep up.

"Speaking of business, I'm fixing to hold an event here on Nadir. A ... coming together for company heads of like minds, black tie to bring in the money," the man hunkered forward on the table, meaty shoulders rolling in as he gave Aver a very sordid look over, "think you can squeeze that armored ass of yours into a dress and pick a fancy name to use?"

 

[Aver Brand]

“Ugh. You’re fethin’ useless sometimes, you know that?” She finished off her glass and belched without a trace of shame. That’s crime lords for you. “Fine. I’ll take pretty boy off your hands for a night… or five. No promises he’ll be in shape to work though.”

Her eyebrow arched positively queenly as Pa went on. “Right. Teddy, you lecherous old fether, I like you, but get those fantasies outta yer head ‘fore I beat them out of you.” She grinned, leaned forward. “Now, seeing you stuffed into a tux with a starched collar and a stick up yer ass… heheh. I’ll come just for that.”

“Mm. All seriousness though… who were you thinking of inviting?”

 

[Emryc]

"Oh ho ho," Qosta straightened himself in his chair and adjusted the non-existent tie at his open collar, "just you wait Sweetheart, this old bear cleans up real nice," the man ground his teeth, eyeing her in something akin to disheveled charm, "you won't be able to resist."

"Brandy, Boss," Archon returned with a board bearing several shotglasses filled with liquid amber, "just cracked open the Firewall Vintage."

"Oohhmm, spoiling Miss Brand are we?" Qosta rubbed his hands together and smirked at the Merc.

"She picked testing day to show up."

Ding. Tall, dark, and silent stepped from the lift rubbing at his jaw, leather soled shoes tapping across marble floor.

"Emryc, get over here and clean our your face with some brandy, what're you rubbing at it for. Did she hit yeh?" Qosta threw a hairy brow at the man as he strode over, "She hit yeh, didn't she? Mehehehe...take a glass Brand."

Unamused at the assumption, Emryc said nothing to correct him and leaned to accept a proffered shot.

"All or nothin'," said Archon.
"Cheers," said Qosta.
Clink went Emryc's glass against the others.

Down the hatch. Mostly.

Amber bled through the gauze on his cheek, pulling a brilliant shade of red through and dribbling down his jaw. He winced, bracing against the burn.

Archon broke out laughing.

 

[Aver Brand]

Aver spluttered, then burst out laughing. “Fffft. Shet, Qosta, I wouldn’t feth you if you were the last man alive. Too much, mm,” she gestured at that same open collar, “bear.”

“I’m all about timing, Teddy,” the merc grinned as she clasped her hands around the glass. It even smelled expensive. Aver closed her eyes as she brought it closer to her nose, relishing the complex aroma.

They toasted and downed the hundred-credit glass like nothing. Indulgences of the material sort seemed to run into one, really, once you could afford them. Not that the merc didn’t appreciate the quality, but at the end of the day… she’d take a game leg roasted over open fire over a three-star restaurant.

As Emryc fought to maintain his stoic façade, Aver watched him with unveiled intent. Icy blues hooded as she licked the last amber bead from her lips, deliberate and slow.

Loray was away on business.

Matsu was wreaking havoc on the innocents of Maena.

Qui was hunting, or traveling. Or both.

The crime lord leaned back in her chair, keeping her gaze on her newfound prey. “Qosta. Purpose of the party? Contracts, mingling, flaunting wealth?”

 

[Emryc]

"Clean yourself up, Em," Archon threw a napkin at the man, snickering as he left to rejoin the boys in the back. Emryc picked it off his broad chest and wiped at his neck, grey eyes glimpsing the salacious intent on display by Aver. For a split second he looked at her as though she'd just pulled a gun on him and turned to pace away from her undressing eyes to assess his bandage in a nearby decorative mirror.

"All of the above," Qosta replied, watching Aver as she watched Emryc, "and then some. You've put enough time and money into growing the economy, we've invested plenty in expanding our horizon, next step is marketing and branching out."

 

[Aver Brand]

“My favorite,” she drawled, swirling the dregs of her drink along the glass. “Well, Nadir is a big place. I’m sure we’ve got some marketing folks we can hire.” Brow furrowed, Aver straightened in her seat.

“The Arcade would probably work best. Give them food and a bloody fight, and you’ve got most of them sold. We pick off the stragglers with a good deal, and that’s done. Homerun.” She scowled, already making plans in her head. The quicker it was over, the quicker she could get out of the suit and back into the armor.

Aver licked her lips, leaning all conspirator-like over to Qosta. “The frak’s his problem?”

 

[Emryc]

Qosta returned to his beer, casually leaning on the table, "You're scaring him," he smirked, "he's been trained to avoid you and your ilk. Maybe if you stop throwing daggers at him with your eyes and sweet talk him a little he'll come 'round."

He raked the scruff of his jaw, watching the man at the mirror before rising from his seat, "Em, keep Miss Brand's glass full while I check on the other barrels."

Slowly peeling the bacta patch from the side of his face, eyes tight as the raw flesh of his cheek hit cool open air, Emryc swiveled a steely gaze their way.

Pa stepped around the table and brushed past the woman's chair, clamping a hand on her pauldron to give it a squeeze, "Good to see you, Aver, don't be a stranger," A pat to her shoulder and he skulked off towards the back to join Archon and the others, beer in his other hand.

Gauze tossed into a nearby trashcan Emryc made his way back over and leaned to pick up Aver's empty glass, asking with a gesture if she wanted more.

 

[Aver Brand]

Her scowl deepened. Aver was… capable of seduction, yes, when she wanted something. But in her view of the world, Emryc wasn’t someone she had to want – through the extension of Qosta, he was already hers to have.

“Please. If I’d show up any more often, you’d get sick of me,” she huffed, but tipped her head in goodbye all the same. Glacier settled on the approaching figure of Emryc once again, and she made the effort to dampen the cut of her gaze.

“Pour one for yourself,” she spoke, quiet. “Tell me what you do for Qosta. What you enjoy.”

 

[Emryc]

A pause, he left her glass where it was and stretched to retrieve his own still more than half full, pulling it across the table to the seat Qosta just vacated. Emryc wasn't used to entertaining for Qosta - that usually went to Archon. The Beta was far more social and a much better conversationalist. Qosta didn't call on Emryc for conversation, he called on him for information. There was a very big difference between the two, one that the Spykeeper was all too keen to maintain.

He settled into the chair, straight-backed, angled so that when he lifted his gaze it wasn't looking quite at Aver but just over her shoulder.

"I keep his men, contacts and sources in line," Emryc replied in a voice that was far deeper than the boy that had shown Aver Brand around Qosta territory years ago, "and get him the information he needs," A brief glance, churning grey storm met unyielding ice.

What did he enjoy?

Now there's a question he hadn't answered in a long time. The man's lips drew thin and his throat dry, he lifted his glass for another drink, blinking to look away.

He enjoyed silence. Stillness. The sigh of death; a sound that meant his job was done and that he could go home and leave the torturous noise and quaking of his heart behind for the quiet tinkering of lifeless, inanimate objects.

He enjoyed the feeling of a suit stained with blood and blaster soot peeling away from his body like shedding a soiled layer of skin. The sensation of scalding water rinsing away the terror of his day. Cleaning the blood out from beneath his nails. Ironing his shirt. How the smell of hot linen flooded away the odor of singed flesh.

"I collect guns," a simple reply. Maybe too simple. "Repair, clean and refurbish broken and antiques models." That was better.

 

[Aver Brand]

Though she’d holstered the figurative daggers, Aver watched him no less intently. There was more than met the inattentive eye to this man, and as she observed him… well, that’s odd. Her brow furrowed as he talked, as he fell quiet in rumination.

There was something… maybe in the dip of his gaze, how his eyes narrowed when… shet. How peculiar. Aver choked back a chuckle, washing it back down with a drink. It was a stupid thought, is what it was.

“You’re a torturer,” she summed up his roundabout answer. Never was one for beating around the bush, really. “And the method keeps you sane.”

Aver tipped her head to the side, no mockery in her tone. She’d walked that road – only once – and steered right off, right quick. Killing was one thing. Sadism was… something best left to her. It wasn’t the guts for it that the merc lacked.

Just the enjoyment.

“Well, someone’s gotta do it. Best be the guy that doesn’t throw up on the floor after, yeah?” Aver downed her drink and disposed of the glass in the sink. “Come. You still smoke, right?”

Those eyes were a memory, after all. Storm-bearing skies, alright. Set in a much nicer face, now, and that head was stuck to a much nicer body, but those eyes… still a rat scuttling in a sewer.

Coathanger.

She stepped out on the bulletproof balcony and lit her cigarra.

 

[Emryc]

The man didn't look up at the answer. Gave her no indication that she was right, nor any reason to believe she was wrong. His unwavering stare at some poor, unsuspecting speck in the marble floor was his only admission to anything. Emryc Qosta did as he was told because he was told to do it. Enjoyment had nothing to do with any of it. A pressing desire to stay alive, however ...


You don't go for the pain that knocks them out, you go for the pain that gets them talking. You ain't gatta be a killer boy, what you gatta be is an information extractor. They gatta be breathing to talk, ya hear? Get the info, pack 'em up. If putting them out of their misery at the end of it makes you sleep better at night ain't nobody frownin' at you but yourself.

Archon had been particularly candid about the training. He remembered his first subject with hideous clarity, as well as the many others that came after. The memories made it difficult to sleep at night.


"Come, you still smoke right?"

The question drew his gaze finally, looking up as the woman disappeared onto the veranda. The faint furrowing of his brow was barely perceptible.

Emryc joined her moments later; exceptionally quiet for his size naught but the gentle scuffing of leather against tile announced him. He had a ciggarra in his hand and a question on his tongue. For a moment he considered asking but decided against it in the end. The answer didn't matter. He chewed on the taste of smoke instead, plenty content to let her do the talking.

 

[Aver Brand]

A Hand, not a Voice – there’d been a reason for it. Still was, sometimes, but with the departure of Rev’s sanity, Aver had taken over the more loquacious parts of the job. Loray rarely displayed the patience for it anymore, and she was content to adapt.

Stagnation was death, after all.

Quiet didn’t bother her. There’d be times when the Equalizers would go about their business in dead silence, hours on end. It took a… particular sort to stay mute through the blood and violence that was their day-to-day.

So she enjoyed her cigarra, and said little else for a long while. Her eyes roamed the broken red horizon, the roiling clouds of fumes and ash, the tense muscles of his face. Emryc was taut as a string and just as ready to snap.

“Are you afraid of me?” Aver asked, lazy blue smoke billowing out between her lips.

 

[Emryc]

A breath passed - slow and steady, the practiced and controlled ease that kept him under the radar. It took a stillness to fake the confidence he didn't have while doing what he did. He'd learned early that you didn't show fear, no matter what, even if it ran through your veins like boiling water.

Violently racing heart,

furious internal screaming,

deathly steady hands.

Couldn't stop an enemy from taking over your position if you couldn't aim your gun right between his eyes.

He could hide it from most. Qosta knew and maybe just humored him, or maybe he really was a sick and twisted man not to care. Aver, it seemed, wasn't so easily fooled, but it was as much a part of his daily life as breathing and blinking. He doubt it would change any time soon.

"Isn't everyone?" words spilled out with smoke with a short glance in her direction. Wasn't that how the game went?

 

[Aver Brand]

You couldn’t rule through fear if most people didn’t know you. Terror, for many, was paralyzing – and what was a station of paralyzed criminals, if not wasted potential? She much rather kept to the shadows and saw Nadir bloom, unbridled save for a gentle guidance in the right direction.

To survive in this business of hers, she’d long become familiar with her special brand of apathy. When something managed to punch through? Violent, poignant, frustrating enough to tear apart her walls?

It was invigorating. A wild grip of something new and thrilling to spice up the daily grind of meat and bone.

“No,” she replied at length.

“But you… you stink of it, Emryc, and it’s going to kill you.” A beat, a knife-like smile.

“More sure than I could.”

 

[Emryc]

Inclement gray stared piercing through the smoke between them, unspoken words lost to the internal gale. All manner of years surviving at the tip of a blade, the blunt edge of a fist, the gaping mouth of a blaster - and yet he was still here. Facing it all years later for the whim of old men and their strategy game.


~~~~
"Em, if you could walk away from all this ... would you?"

He remembered the way brown eyes stared at him from behind heavy lines of black. Senra's lips were a shade of purple - she always looked so nice in purple. She was watching him from the bed, sheets loosely wrapped around her skin, while he worked at the bench in his room on cleaning an old pistol. Senra never much minded the amount of time he spent on his hobby, never felt as though he were ignoring her despite being paid for her time there. Never minded how quiet he was or that he never answered that particular question. She just kept on talking in a low honeyed voice, telling him about the different places in the galaxy she'd go if she could afford to buy her way off Nadir.

Emryc never much minded listening to her talk. He'd always found her voice soothing. It was a gentle voice. Kind, even.

Such a shame.

They'd found her in her purple dress, battered like an animal and spoiled for the rats in a back alley the likes of which she had no business being in. It had been one of the few times he'd killed out of anger, vengeance, and not out of need.

One of the few times his heart had raced for something other than fear.

She always looked so nice in purple.
~~~~

"Emryc!" Archon was there, walking up to the balcony with an ornately carved wooden box in his hand. Having found himself staring, Em blinked the roiling storm away to glance back at the man.

"Heard you're finally taking paid leave, ya wretch. Got one last stop for you before you're off - Madame Thiir. Don't worry too much about how familiar she looks, bweheheh...see ya round, Brand."

The faint line in his brow was the only indication that Emryc wasn't keen on something the man had just said. He took the proffered box with his free hand and watched Archon leave. The man released a long, slow breath and flicked his cigarra to the ground, "Maybe," a reply, finally, to Aver as he stamped the butt out with his toe, "but it hasn't yet."

A hand lifted to indicate to Aver that she could either take the lead in their departure or he'd be on his way to do what must be done.

 

[Aver Brand]

“Mm. Don’t count on it, Archie,” she called to his retreating back and snuffed out her own cigarra.

“Actually, Emryc…”

Her planned Taungsday – steak, sleep, and sex – croaked and died the the second she’d seen footage of Dahl beating up people with a human arm. With relaxation already off the table, she might as well get a taste of the ole boots on the ground.

“I’ll join you.”

 

[Emryc]

The Nest
Southside

It wasn't quite the slummiest part of the Nest, but certainly there were nicer areas. East side, for instance, where Aver lived. Northside was the blue collar. Westside was where you went to get mugged, stabbed, and likely tossed into an alley like Senra did - no questions asked. Southside ... well, it wasn't the worst but you didn't come here if you weren't packing major heat. Just in case.

He left Aver in his speeder. Just a short bit of business. In and out. No reason to cause the woman a fuss. He left the speeder running.

"Yes?" the woman that answered the door immediately silvered upon spying the man who had knocked. She would have been quite lovely if it weren't for her disheveled appearance. Dark hair, bit of a red chrome to it, faded and tired blue eyes, pronounced cheekbones, rounded lips, a distinctly more dignified look about her than what you'd expect to find. She seemed almost out of place.

"If you're here about him I don't know where he is-" she tried to shut the door but his foot was already in the jamb. From Aver's perspective there was no point of hesitation as Emryc calmly forced the door open and let himself inside, closing it behind him. In his mind, however, he'd stood there staring at the woman for an eternity.

Don't worry too much about how familiar she looks...

Precisely five minutes later the man exited the house, small carved wooden box in hand. There had been no sounds of struggle. No hint of a fight or flight. Not even the sound of a silenced gunshot. Emryc rounded the speeder and sank into the driver's seat looking like someone had just force-fed him a bucket of molten steel. It had grown cold and bitter behind his eyes. There was a stain of blood spatter on his jaw and collar but either he didn't know or didn't care. He shifted the speeder into drive and steered off into traffic to get the kark out of Southside, silver knuckles on the steering wheel.

"Where to."

 

[Aver Brand]

She eyed the box out of the corner of her eye when he returned. Her gaze slipped from the combination lock (closed, now. it hadn’t been before) up to the blood on his clothes. In the end, she didn’t say anything, just flicked the butt of her cigarra out the window.

“Westside.”

Aver grinned as they dropped back into the hellish traffic, itching to grab the wheel herself. A little restraint went a long way, though – besides, the whole point of this exercise was to see if Qosta’s investment in this man was sound. The merc meddled so rarely in the internal affairs of the Great Clans that you could barely even call her a gray eminence. But when she did… she did it proper.

The artificial evening was spilling over the harsh metal spires on the horizon. Neon lights and winking signs and the throbbing thrum of the bass – Nadir was waking from slumber, here. One particular line of letters stood out from the rest, though, burning an angry red against the dull black of smoked metal.

THE CRUELEST CUT​

“Alister,” she greeted the houk bouncer. The man – more resembling of a wardrobe than a person – moved aside with a jovial hum.

“I’ll let thaim ken you’re 'ere.”

“Thanks, Al. Come on, Qosta. You’re on fethin’ vacation, ain’t ya? Act like it.”

And off to the Cage Fight Night they went.

 

[Emryc]

A short pitstop on the way outside a bar he'd taken Aver to years before as a grunt and the little wooden box was no longer a distraction for either of them. Pulling to park for the Cut cast a faint gloom on the man's steely gaze, but he fixed the keys in his coat pocket and strode in without so much as an out of place blink.

He'd been here plenty before. Knew the place, knew the sorts of people that congregated here.

Feth, this was where Senra found him. Down on her credits and punch-drunk-in-love with an immovable man, nails the color of noble violet. He spied the exact seat at the inner bar where the young Zeltron halfling had bumped into him - now occupied by a brute of a person he recognized immediately as one of Meron's old croonies.

Dodged a few swings from that one, he had, back when he was a coathanger. Wouldn't recognize him now, luckily.

"Come on, Qosta. You’re on fethin’ vacation, ain’t ya? Act like it.”

To the cage fights, apparently, to act like he was on vacation. Somehow she managed to get spots front and center, though it was less a mystery and more a quaint inkling of humor. Funny how these sorts of things just happened for her. Emryc produced a cigarette from his inner coat pocket and offered one to Aver, lighting up.

"The last time I had a vacation was right before the Broker Riots," he said over the din of raucous fight spectators around them, looking at the woman briefly, pointedly. That had been several years ago and he'd gotten caught right up in the fething middle of it all. Frankly he'd rather be at work than on vacation.