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[Darth Daiara]

Aradia stopped short, feeling something akin to a flair of frustration and a flash of darkness. She looked to the boy that had stopped her path, her usual energy that heavier today. It had taken every ounce of power she had to get them here-- alive and free. The cost of it was growing tangible.

Or perhaps it was just her time of the month.

She nearly force-knocked him upside the head. She glared at him instead, the small space between them rippling with her dark frustrations. A thousand comebacks boiled down to one, lame, struggling retort. "What... do... you... care?"

He wouldn't even deal with his wound in front of her.

She had thought he was dead. A dead jedi locked in her bathroom.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Good question.

Zaavik swallowed, scratching the back of his head. Being put on the spot like this was rarely easy. Something caught on its way off his vocal folds. A sputter danced as he reorganized the thought in his head.

"You saved my life back there, and I know you didn't do it for nothing. I'm pretty sure I saved yours too." There was no doubt that he wouldn't have made it to the ship without her help. Likewise, Zaavik was likely the only thing between that Storm Commando and her untimely end.

"No one can look out for us out here. Not Kaalia, not Allyson, no one. Not while we're doing this."

Eye contact broke to make the next part easier. "We only have each other out here. We're a team, so I'm trying to look out for you."

He limped to the side to sit onto the couch's armrest. Entirely out of her way now, further showing that he wouldn't force anyone to do anything. "Look- I'm not going to make you, but I really think you should rest. Recover. We'll be fine for a little bit."

 

[Darth Daiara]

He was babying her. He acted like a loner while overthinking every scrape and bump. She didn't ask for his help back there. She didn't need a babysitter. Teamwork? Please. If he could lock himself away, she could go tend to their path.

She absolutely loathed the hypocrisy in their dynamic, and to be rendered unable to fight back on it? It was unnerving. She hadn't realized how much her voice had given her her freedom.

Everything boiled unexpressed, coming to head in the snobbish desire to take the stun gun and shoot him unconscious. That would be looking out for him!

Can't lock himself to die in any bathrooms that way.

Her nostrils flared, the girl turning instead to disregard him entirely. She didn't need him looking out for her. Not like that. She stormed out for her nav room.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

"Yeah, saw that coming," he uttered to himself.

He slumped backward, sliding off the arm and onto the cushion. Can't say he didn't try. Deep down, he knew he was being a hypocrite. It was likely what caused the fiction, but he wouldn't accept it so easily. It was different when he was the one hurt. Was it? He didn't acknowledge his own self-critical conscience.

The artificial nerves in his hand conveyed an odd sensation. He pulled it from his chest and looked down to see the off-red sheen. It was then that he noticed his shirt being wet on his left side. The blood didn't show well with the black fabric. Thankfully, perhaps.

He scooted painfully to gather what medical supplies were still on the table, peeking over his shoulder once toward the cockpit before standing. He moved to tend himself elsewhere.

 

[Darth Daiara]

The days were kind on them.

Time gave bacta the chance to do as it did, but it did not allow Aradia to forget. She would never forget. She had heeded Zaavik's plea for her to lay low. Not for her sake, but for his. She never said it, but his injury frightened her. The sound of his gurgles stilled her fingers whenever she moved towards the plans stored on the holodrive.

The absence of her voice was a constant reminder of her weakness and their failure.

But she meant what she said. They would take this lesson and they would apply it to their future attempts. That day came a week later, when she woke up to find her vocal cords moved with very little strain.

"Hello," she tested into her own bathroom mirror, as she surveyed her face. The swelling was gone. The discoloration had been eaten away by the creams and ointments she applied from his lesson. The nose sat straight. Her eyes had cleared. Even the massive gash along her temple had faded out to a red, puckered line that grew softer by the day.

The only damage that remained came from the silence she had been forced to maintain. But today, her words found life. They were raspy and full of air, but still. They were spoken. Her chapped lips split into a grin.

She sauntered out into the common room, a few pounds lighter and starving for it. "Morning," she rasped, moving for a left over bag of cold soup noodles.

Nom.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

There were a few more offers to help, doctor, and the like, but there hadn't been any change from her initial denial. Thankfully, at the very least, she'd heeded his advice for not flying headfirst into another confrontation. A week really gave the bacta time to do its job. Mobility was high, the pain was low, though not altogether quashed. It was enough of a recovery that the risk of a sudden movement causing him to bleed out internally was long since out the window. There was still the problem of deep breaths feeling like he was being stabbed all over again, but that wouldn't last much longer.

That is, assuming they didn't use every bactahypo in the ship already.

Zaavik's holophone was linked into a private network to keep anyone from catching wind. Propped up by a retractable stand, the device projected a color holofeed of a Limmie game. Zeltros against Kashyyk. He'd tuned in only to be greeted with a feed of his home team getting utterly annihilated. He cursed, protested, and shouted non-athlete hindsight to the projection, all in the tongue that he and his home team would understand. If only they could hear him.

When he heard, or rather felt Aradia rounding the corner he quickly pulled his booted feet off the table. Wouldn't want a repeat of before. He did, however, continue to lean in the seat, teetering slightly on the back legs. Whatever he had eaten before had been reduced to off-brown crumbs and a damp sheen on a metallic plate. A furtive glance her way lingered only long enough to ensure she hadn't come with something to settle before his attention fell back on the holofeed.

"Morning,"

About time. "Hey," he shot back. When she sat presumably across the table and projection was when he'd finally peel his eyes off the sports game for a good. A brow raised inquisitively as he inquired, "How's your throat?" Obviously better, but asking was worth something. Even if it was a dumb question.

 

[Darth Daiara]

"How's your face?" She shot back. More words than she could manage yesterday. More volume too. She took the seat across from him, her movements always quiet and unassuming. The life of a slave required one to exist without drawing attention. She could pull back chairs without causing a single scrape.

She tilted the bag back, letting the room temp broth broth slide down her throat in a careful trickle. After a successful ginger swallow or two, she squished the bag and knocked it back in under a minute.

Hungry.

She smushed the empty plastic to the side and rubbed at her mouth.

"We're outta nearly everything."

 

[Zaavik Perl]

"How's your face?"

Zaavik rolled his eyes, eyelids twitching over raised pupils. Scratch that last part, he would go back to the game. Guess that answered his question, at least. "Pretty," he rebuked in a knowing tone as he crossed his arms, not glancing back down from the lost cause of a sports event.

"We're outta nearly everything."

"I noticed." The last thing he ate had been whatever he could manage to throw together. To actually call it a meal would be a joke. Even worse was that he'd had to dig through several empty bacta applicators for his last dose. Far from ideal, but they could have been dead or caught, so all in all, hard to complain.

"You wouldn't happen to have cred'?"

 

[Darth Daiara]

She nodded, more out of habit than anything now.

She reached out and snatched his holopad, killing the game in favor of a map. She'd pull it further away if he struggled for it. Would even erect of a casual wall of flames if she had to.

"I threw us in deeper. To imp space." The map narrowed in, putting them as a small dot of light inside a pocket of empty space deep in the center of enemy territory.

"Figured they'd expect a retreat. They don't know we're here." She hoped. She didn't think they'd make it a weak sitting pretty if they did. It had been a gamble, but it had paid off.

Thank the force.

She slid the map back his way, gaze burning with intensity. "We need a safe pit stop."

 

[Zaavik Perl]

"Hey-!" he snatched forward for the holophone, but felt himself stop against a twinge of pain from his chest. He sighed, cursed, resigned from trying to retrieve the device. It wasn't like Zeltros was gonna win anyway.

As she spoke, he regarded with a half-vexed deadpan. His head followed the projection as she slid it back his way. "You-" Idiot. Eyes clenched shut and he took a deep breath before he could say something pointed and unproductive. "You want a safe pitstop in gray space?" He shook his head, shrugged with exasperation. "And what? You think I know one?"

Maybe she was still stuck on her 'friend of the Imperials' nonsense with him. One hand rubbed over his face and muffled a groan. "I don't think I do, but..." Might as well try. Hand motions scrolled the projection around, taking stock of their vicinity. After a few moments, a pointed finger made a circled gesture around a blip. The aurebesh label read ORD MANTELL.

"This place is a rustball with no one on it besides spacers and spicers. I think they only use it for logistics, so we might be able to get in and negotiate some supplies off of whoever's stopped there. Most New-Imperial stores are state-owned, thus risky, so this is probably the safest bet."

 

[Darth Daiara]

"Good enough."

She whistled over her pilot droid, a small, unassuming thing with a quirky personality. "Get us there undetected. Take the long way if you have to," she rasped, ignoring its whistling response as it rolled out. It helped not to speak droid, though she was learning.

The room grew quiet without the sound of eating or sports playing. She crinkled up the plastic again, glancing up to him as the moment stretched on. News lingered on the tip of her tongue, held there by hesitation. She started slowly.

"I need to visit a... friend. You destroyed my saber, and she will have holos that will help us next time," she finished quickly, her core coiling in anticipation for his resistance.

A sith. She wanted to take them to a sith.

And not her mother, either.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Oh, right. His warning shot a week ago had left her without a force user's signature tool. That still wasn't worth the risk. Immediately, his head shook in protest. "No. We can't risk leaving too much of a trail, and I can't risk meddling around Sith space."

Resistance came in a measured, almost neutral tone rather than the assertive rebuke that had become the usual. The wringer they'd been through had taken more out of him than he probably realized, leaving the fight in him on a base-level as he recovered.

"Just- How about I look at it for you instead? The saber." He posed an alternative, at the very least making an attempt to be compromising. "I've fixed mine a bunch of times," he added, tone nearly boasting.

 

[Darth Daiara]

Her expression pinched in poorly contained contemp.

She didn't say anything. She didn't deign to give him the exertion. Instead she pulled the smoldered saber from the depths of her pockets, the metal clunking and sliding across the table. Something clinked from within. The saber crystal was longer suspended between the exposed prongs.

He had managed to hit it head on and shatter it. Every weapon had its weak spots. She glowered as she left him to discover hers. Master of saber fixing, ha! Good luck fixing that.

"How do you even manage that?" She snuffed.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Zaavik grabbed the saber, rolled it around in his hand. Eyebrows raised with surprise and pity at the state of it. Whoops.

"How do you even manage that?"

"You don't know...?" His words trailed off as he reached for his own. Once it was freed from the belt coupling, he set it on the table. The dualsaber hilt was starkly asymmetrical, with different parts adorning either side up to the emitter. Several weld-areas clearly were clearly visible, inflecting previous repairs and modifications.

"I made it, so why wouldn't I know how to fix it?" he asked rhetorically as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. It may have been from his perspective, but perhaps he was being presumptuous. Her saber began to float as he took his hand from it. Slowly, pieces started to separate, unscrew, pop out, and the like. They all floated between his outstretched hands like a diagram. A spectacle perhaps, but one that every padawan learned.

"You build this?" he asked without giving a diagnostic.

 

[Darth Daiara]

"I made it, so why wouldn't I know how to fix it?"

"Not fix it, break it. Sabers aren't suppose to crumble to blaster bolts, what the hell were you do-" her words drifted off, her features smoothing out into shock as the saber pulled apart mid air.

She had never seen its insides before. Kaalia had promised her she would get her own saber the day she stopped losing others. And then... and then the the war kicked up and the woman stepped down.

Aradia was only an apprentice. Not a Knight, not some experienced veteran. She was a seventeen year old wanna be, learning as she went. It hadn't come up yet. Maybe it would be clearer then why she made moves that could only be described as rookie.

"You build this?"

She shook her head. She plucked a broken crystal shard from the table and held it up with the rest, desperation catching in her eyes. "Well go on then. Fix it."

Kaalia was going to have so much to say about this.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

So Kaailia gave it to her? That's what he got from that, but he didn't press.

Floating pieces began to separate between undamaged or salvageable and totally fried into piles on the table. It may not have seemed like much by comparison of the initial display, but it required an eyes-closed strained focus to get it done. Feeling for the state of every piece individually with Mechu Deru along with the usual telekinetic manipulations was almost enough to overwhelm the senses.

Breathe out. He ignored her rushing, taking stock of what he'd separated. Worse than he'd thought initially, a lost cause- Eyes drifted down to his own saber, back to Aradia's, and then repeated the slow double take. -or maybe not? A pause for consideration broke when he looked up toward an impatient Aradia.

"I can fix all but that." He pointed at the crystal. "You're uh- We'll need to find a new one..."


"My bad."

 

[Darth Daiara]

Aradia made a noise of frustration. "Fine. So we'll buy one that pit stop and you'll make it right." She snatched up the other crystal shards, their ragged edged melted and seared from the shot that had severed it. She frowned down at the pile, its force signature all wrong now.

How was she going to distract Kaalia from that?

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Buy one? So he was being presumptuous earlier. Sith did work, think, and teach differently. Perhaps he shouldn't have assumed she shared the same idea of 'common knowledge'.

"Uh- No, actually. You can't just buy Kyber Crystals. Well, you can, I guess, but it doesn't work like you think it does." Not like either of them would have the cred to cover the black market value of one, assuming that they'd even be able to find a seller in the first place. Even Sith synthetics weren't a commodity that was easily bought and sold.

"They're grown, not made, you know? I think a synthetic, even, would be out of reach. We'd have to find one... somehow."

 

[Darth Daiara]

Her expression dropped in an instant. She had never made a saber on her own before, but she knew about kyber crystals. She what they were, where they came from ... And she knew they didn't just grow on trees. If they couldn't find one to buy out here in imperial space, then...

"You want to go hunt for one?" She knew how limited the places were that you could find one. That's why got you synthetic ones. Kaalia had always handed a new hilt to her. She had never known, never fathomed, that the price might be that severe. She sat there in cold shock for another moment.

"So wait-- you fucked this up bad. All to stop me from helping you?"

The severity of the damage seemed to reach her then. He might be glad she didn't have a real attachment to the crystal he had shattered.

"You destroyed it and all you say is 'my bad'?"

 

[Zaavik Perl]

"I didn't mean to!" he protested. It hadn't been what he was aiming for. Nor was anything besides the door, really. Blood loss didn't beget accuracy. "I'm sorry, okay!? Chit. -But I can fix it!"

Paranoid that she might somehow return the favor, he snatched his own saber from the table and hooked it back onto the coupling. Chair legs squealed against the floor of the common room as he scooted out and stood abruptly. With what pieces of her saber were still good, he constructed a pitiful shell of a non-functioning weapon before gathering up the shot pieces.

"We'll do whatever we gotta on Ord Mantell, and then we'll figure out how to get you a replacement, yeah?" he proposed as walking elsewhere. Clandestinely discarding the inert components. "I'll even show you how to put it together," he offered, returning now. "It'll be good as new. Promise."