Trust

[Tydeus of Tion]

The cockpit closed with a hiss, sealing them in. The continued even breathing of Ryan Korr as a woman settled into his lap was only due to extensive training in breath control and the distraction of flying.

Flying to him was not a chore to get from point A to point B as it was with some people. No, to him it was a release, an escape from the constant confines and structures of Temple life. In the cockpit he was at the controls of his life. The Jedi Temple was all rigorousness and structure. He felt trapped, not just by all the rules but by the future itself, by visions of Jedi Masters foretelling some shadowy fate. The uncertainty of death, always so much closer in a star fighter, brought him to life.

"Here we go," Ryan whispered, heart pounding faster as the X-wing lifted off the ground. He felt in control, the power of the engines beneath his hand as they rushed into the sky.

The light blues of Fresia's tropical climes faded to the dark blue of the upper atmosphere before finally spitting them into the inky blackness of space.

How could the sight bring the thrill of adventure and the calm of familiarity at the same time? It never ceased to amaze him.

As Ryan breathed in the familiar scents of the cockpit, the smell of leather and fuel, he realized that they were blending with his newest favorite smell. Crushed grass and sea breeze. Suddenly it was all thrills.

Korr found himself studiously working on breath control again like some reticent padawan.

"Where to, oh captain?"

[member="Quinn Vos"]

He looked down at the back of her brown haired head and allowed himself a smile. Maybe this trip wouldn't be so awkward after all. With a shift in position, he felt her dagger sheathes suddenly dig into his thighs. The smile disappeared.

 

[Quinn Vos]

[member="Ryan Korr"]

An inch of stubborn, self-determination, and pride separated her back from hitting against Ryan's chest. With the boost from ground to atmosphere to space, that inch was chiseled down to less than half. She could feel snippets of his joy and exhilaration as they took off, especially when the skin of his arm inadvertently brushed against her mocha-skin.

There it was again. His pull on her fate. So different from Odium's but growing in strength. Odium's was a fire: bright, intense, and all consuming. Korr's tug was different: a steady flow, like a waterfall or river with just as much potential for life or death with the ability to round out the edges of even the sharpest rocks.

Fiery eyes finally pried open at his question. The chill of space brought a slight tremble through her body. "You enjoy this," she said suddenly. "Space travel?"

It always amazed her that people did.

A slight shift on Korr's lap with less than a quarter inch of separation between her back and his chest. "Isolda will be in her temple or waging war. Coruscant would be good place to start. "

Basic was vastly improved but it wasn't all there yet.

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

He pursed his lips as he began punching in the coordinates for Coruscant, a task made considerably more difficult as he had to reach around Quinn to input the data. He tried not to think about the way her hair tickled his cheek when he leaned forward.

"I don't think enjoyment really conveys the way it makes me feel," he began slowly, glancing briefly away from the dashboard to stare at the stars. "You know the feeling you get when you run through a field of grass, in the middle of nowhere? Like you could go anywhere? That's how I feel when I fly. Out here I'm alone, no Jedi Masters staring over my shoulder. I feel free, Quinn."

The X-wing drifted in the inky grasp of vacuum, the beauty of the stars their only guiding light.

"There's a poem I memorized as a padawan.

I have climbed into the emptiness of eternal night​

And slipped the bonds of gravity's cruel kiss.​

In the laughter of silver stars, my only guiding light,​

I have raced comets and meteors through the abyss,​

Danced with dragons and done a hundred things​

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung..."*​

​

Ryan paused, lips drawn into a smile, a look of longing in grey eyes as he stared out of the cockpit and into the vastness of space.

"That's part of it, anyway."

His attention shifted back to [member="Quinn Vos"], the fearless woman so afraid of flight. "Would you like to try?"

He pointed at the joystick. "Here, give me your hand."




*based on High Flight by John Gillespie Magee Jr.

 

[Quinn Vos]

[member="Ryan Korr"]

That quarter-inch of separation was gone as he leaned forward. Heat from his chest radiated against her back. Her shoulder-blades shifted just slightly against him. She stiffened at the contact as she listened to Ryan.

"I like it. The words describe movement...adventure. But," hands stiffened, "I prefer the earth between my toes," she wiggled them in the small space she shared with Ryan. Face paled at the jedi's question.

She caught the reflection of his grey eyes in the canopy.

"I don't," she began but scowled at herself for showing weakness. "I will try." She spoke firmly. "But remember Ryan Korr, I am no child." It was clear her pride was already taking a hit in vulnerability. She outstretched her calloused-digits cautiously, like the joystick was fire and she was about to touch it. Her hand would be surprisingly cold against Ryan's. Space travel always chilled her.

She frowned, remembering something Ryan said. "But Korr, why do jedi make you feel that way? Staring over shoulder?"

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

"Jedi are not infallible," Ryan said softly, slipping his hand gently over hers as he guided it onto the joystick. "Nor is the Order a bastion free from cancer. There is corruption there. It just takes other forms."

He started at the touch of her skin, jolting him out of his thoughts. "You're cold."

The young Jedi Knight released his hold on the joystick, leaving her hand to guide the ship. "Here, you're the pilot now."

Reaching over to the side of the seat, he drew out his brown Jedi cloak and wrapped it over her bare shoulders with the sort of gingerness one would show when trying to hug a Corellian Sandpanther. The earth-toned fabric was coarse, but warm. The garment was meant to provide Jedi with protection against the weather and prying eyes, but it doubled as a reminder that theirs was not a life of comforts. It would keep out the chills of space.

"I could never think of you as a child, Quinn." His breath was hot against her ear.


[member="Quinn Vos"]

 

[Quinn Vos]

[member="Ryan Korr"]

"I am fi-," she began in a gruff protest, a rising panic in her chest as he released his grip from around her hand. Fingers clamped down on the joystick in a white-knuckled grip. But she made no move to shrug off the cloak.

The rough material was comforting. Anything soft would've been foreign.

Foreign like the warm breath at her ear of the voice that was becoming less and less so. "You are different from other jedi. Why?" The blanket and her back was flush against his chest. His smell permeated her senses. With a jolt of realization she found her once stiff shoulders were relaxed. She would never be comfortable in a starship but she was as close to it as she would ever get. With this realization, her hand snapped the controls sharply to the right and she jerked back against Ryan at the sudden lurch.

"Did I break it?" A strangled whisper.

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

A chuckle after a mini-heart attack.

"No, it's not that easy to break."

Silence engulfed him as he let her pilot the craft for several more seconds. He had hoped that giving her a go at the controls would bring familiarity and with that familiarity some comfortability. Well, he supposed he shouldn't expect results on her first try. Piloting an elite star fighter wasn't exactly like learning to walk.

Ryan finally relieved her of the controls and punched the hyperdrive. Moments later, the stars stretched wide and the bright whorl of hyperspace swallowed them.

With the fighter essentially on autopilot now, Ryan leaned back into the seat and sighed. The distraction of flight was gone and he found himself focusing on the way Quinn's back felt against his chest. Muscles in his jaw writhed. Something inside his chest ached, the result of a duel betwixt honor and longing.

"I'm not sure what you mean." He replied, not wholly sure of his answer. "I make mistakes. Lots of them. I've made decisions, decisions I wish I could forget. Sometimes I think I'm no better than the ones I call corrupted."

There was an undertone to his words. A search for meaning. One he'd been on for a long time now. What did she see in him?

"How am I different?"

[member="Quinn Vos"]

 

[Quinn Vos]

[member="Ryan Korr"]

A soft sigh of relief left her lips when Ryan took the controls. For a second, she hesitated with where to put her hand before it finally settled back onto her lap. She saw a flash of his red hair in the reflection of the canopy, mixed with the white-streaks of stars outside.

"There. That is why different." She tilted her head to the side and if she craned her neck for a moment she could just make eye contact with him from the corners of her fiery-ellipses. She shifted in his lap so the side of her shoulder and arm rested against a corner of his chest, her back now pressing into one side of the cockpit, the tips of her knees into the other. "You admit all of you. You are not blinded by pride." Said Miss Queen of Pride herself. She scowled, trying to think of the right words. "You listen. With our psychometry in the tunnels, beneath the beach...I feel you. I know you. You are different."

There. She felt the tug again. Something tipping the scales.

"Do you understand me, Ryan?"

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

Her sun-browned form squirmed in his lap until they were face to face. Their eyes locked. Ryan held his breath. Was this all just hormones? Surely they couldn't stop his heart like this.

"I..."

Ryan began, then abruptly lost the power of speech.

Everyone wanted to be told they were special, or different, not one of the nameless faces in a crowd. Everyone wanted to be heard. Few actually were. And now she came along, like a brazen robber in the middle of the day, scooping up his thoughts and running away with them. Telling him he was different.

An ache. A pain. A thrust to the heart.

Gentle fingers touched her cheek, thumb tracing a tattoo.

"I don't know if I'll ever understand you," he whispered.

Those vibrant eyes wouldn't let him go. He had wandered too far into their sunlit jungles. He couldn't find his way back. He wasn't sure he even wanted to.

[member="Quinn Vos"]

 

[Quinn Vos]

[member="Ryan Korr"]

She held his gaze. Just a temporary shift in her focus as his fingerpads made contact with her skin. Her instinct was to flinch away but she didn't move. She remained still as a statue.

The familiar, red-tinged black eyes were not there. Instead, ones of cloudy skies captured her attention. Her palm rose and she rested it flat against Ryan's chest - just above his heart. To push him away or pull him closer, she was caught in the middle. Torn. Frozen.

She felt a rush of connection through his touch, his emotions stirring up the bond she already had with him - the same bond that warred with Odium's blood.

A puzzled expression tugged at her muddy-brown brows. "Understand? What do you mean Ryan Korr?" Voice was gruff, her breath cascading inches from Ryan's face.

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

Their faces so close, noses nearly touching. Her breath was hot on his face in the chill of space. The stone of his face evaporated in that heat. He trembled.

He didn't know how the psychometry worked. Did she feel what he felt? Did she see herself the way he did? Firm fingers pressed against the hard muscles of his chest. Was she pushing him away? No. The hand stayed. His heart pounded furiously against a prison of bones and flesh, trying to break free and leap into that hand. Didn't it realize?...

"You stole my heart," a pause, "And now I don't know what you're going to do with it."

[member="Quinn Vos"]

 

[Quinn Vos]

[member="Ryan Korr"]

The pulse of his heart echoed against her palm. How could she be so warm surrounded by the cold, emptiness of space?

"You are tearing my heart in two." The proud warrior gasped, the ache she felt from Ryan radiated the one she already felt in her own chest. The physical pain was real and one that wasn't so easily resolved. Tanned-fingers curled around the fabric of his shirt, just over his chest.

Fiery eyes searched every inch of Ryan's face as if she wanted to memorize every detail.

"I did not plan for this."

He had to know that Quinn only operated at one speed - all in. Whatever she did: hunting, tracking, battle, she did so passionately. If he started something in this small cockpit he would have to find the discipline to stop it because she certainly wouldn't.

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

The stiff fabric of his tunic pulled tight across his chest as she curled it around her fingers, drawing him closer by a mere centimeter. He wrapped his left arm around her back almost unconsciously, hand coming to rest on her side. The earth-toned cloak was all that separated their skin, but he could feel the heat radiating from her body.

Her little gasp sent a flood of emotion that swept aside reason.

"Does anyone?" A haunted whisper.

The smell of ocean breeze and jungle moss scaled the walls of duty, while those burning embers of emerald melted the gates of honor.

The fighter was cramped, but it didn't matter. Nothing did, except those eyes, that face, that voice.

Ryan crumbled along with his defenses, sweeping her up toward him with the kind of desperateness only new lovers know. And then there was no distance between them at all, just his lips on hers with an intensity that set fire to his mind.

[member="Quinn Vos"]

 

[Quinn Vos]

[member="Ryan Korr"]

His lips lit the fuse and she was quickly lost in the fire of the explosion. The rough fabric of his cloak slipped off one mocha-shoulder. She pressed in closer. Fingers traced the outline of his chest, his shoulders. Her lips pressed hungrily against his.

Her kisses were not gentle.

Knee banged against the side of the ship and she scowled.

Fingers tugged on Ryan's shoulders, urgently pulling him in, closer still, if that was possible. She tasted a hint of cinnamon on his lips and caught the smell of iron and scrolls within his scarlet hair.

Space wasn't cold anymore.

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

He wanted more. Hard hands helped the cloak fall away and began roving the warm, toned skin beneath, slipping over the curve of her shoulder and down, tracing along her spine. Her urging hands drew him closer and the veil of her mud-brown hair tingled against his cheek. Their lips met violently. She tasted like salt and sweat. So did her cheek. And her jaw. And her neck.

He shifted in the confines of the cockpit, anger at its inadequacy flaring along with the consuming passion, longing for more of her violence - unhindered by walls and glass.

The sounds of rapid, heavy breaths and gasps flooded the cockpit.

The light of hyperspace looked on, their only witness. Soon it too was left blind as the canopy fogged over, a lover's shroud.

[member="Quinn Vos"]

 

[Quinn Vos]

[member="Ryan Korr"]

It proved that the confines of the cockpit happened to be the best chaperon. A few bruised knees and frustrated gasps later, the Kiffar warrior finally lost the battle of how to peel off Ryan's restrictive jedi clothes. With deep, raspy breaths that added to the heat of the cockpit she fell against Ryan's chest in a state of rare rest.

Fingertips traced his iron-like chest between where she managed to get beneath his robe (just a few rips of cloth). Her sticky forehead pressed against his sand-papery jawline. A light blinked on the ship's readout. Her fiery-eyes lazily tracked its flashing but her mind was elsewhere.

"Isolda may kill us both. If we fail, you or Odium cannot protect me."

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

Frustrated, not nearly satisfied, but still basking in somewhat painful bliss, Korr leaned back in his seat and stared at the blinking light. The cockpit now thoroughly smelled of two perspiration soaked bodies. Quinn's was not the only sticky forehead. He could feel her damp strands of hair against his cheek, her head a comfortable weight on his jaw.

Ryan blinked away a bead of sweat.

An arm hugged her close, warm against her firm muscles, smooth and hard like polished stone.

"I know."

Thoughts of death loomed like a specter outside his present rapture, like the vacuum of space enfolding their tiny cockpit of euphoria.

"I'm not here to protect you."

Images of spectacular brutality and savage bloodlust flashed in his mind's eye. Quinn, muscles taught, loosing arrow after arrow. She knew war. She knew violence. He could not protect her any better than she could protect herself. Different images whispered through him. Portends of what might be, stringing his heart and emotions on like shells on a wire. Emerald eyes smoldering with love, not hate.

The fact that he could imagine her other than what she was, ruthless and wild, surprised him. Wildness was ingrained in her being. He did not wish her to change her nature. But a fire can do more than burn and destroy. She, like a flame, could be light and warmth and energy, vibrant and defiant of the shadow's cold grasp.

"I'm not here to change you either."

He spoke slowly, afraid he would offend her. Afraid she would stop listening. He needed her to hear. He needed to understand what he saw.

"I feel anger. I feel hate. They are a storm inside me. Sometimes I want to lose myself to the storm. I could be powerful. Dangerous. I know those same emotions fuel you. But there's another fuel. And I feel it around you."

He drew away to look at her, index finger tracing her lips as he met that verdant gaze.

"Burning. Even now. I think it's stronger than the hate. Do you feel it?"

[member="Quinn Vos"]

 

[Quinn Vos]

[member="Ryan Korr"]

Tattooed-face tilted up to him. "You say you do not want to change me." Her fingertips, rough, calloused, gently traced the outline of his jaw, his beard-line up to his ear. "But when I am around you I am different."

She frowned and went to pull her hand away as the embers of the darkside bubbled within her depths. She felt trapped - caught in a constant flux of pull and push. Her blood remained poisoned with the darkside from the nautolan even if it was nothing but a quiet whisper in this cockpit.

"Do you feel my struggle? Do not let it become your own."

A warning.

A beeping chimed in with the flashing light. She tilted her head, a hint of alarm flickering within fiery-orbs. "What is that?"

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

So close to her, the touch of their skin as much an intoxicant as her lips, Ryan could feel him boiling inside her. Odium. Have you ever stood above a volcano? I mean really stood next to it. The lava below is a vibrant bubbling red-orange that you can't help but look at. You're tempted to reach out a hand, though you know it would sear you to the bone. This close to the pit you can feel the gusts of heat singing your face, like a devil's breath. And all around you is the charred black of volcanic rock. It is beautiful. And it is a calamity waiting to happen, biding its time while the village folk below while away their lives, never knowing the true power of the monster that sleeps beside them at night. A monster that will not sleep forever.

In that moment, Ryan realized just what sort of monster lay within Quinn. It was not his constant struggle between duty and vengeance. Hers was the tear between the warrior whom he knew, ruthless and proud, but also capable of love... and something else, full of a dark and terrible abandon. Utter slaughter lay within that other, a jungle serpent who did not know mercy and whose cold, disinterested gaze had none of her fire. This was the darkness he thought he saw in her. This was the poison Odium had let into her veins. A woman who would become so consumed with the need to kill that no amount of blood would satisfy her cup of vengeance.

Some would recoil.

Ryan hugged her tighter, as if to wrench her back from the abyss.

I will not let her fall. I will not let her fall. He repeated the words over and over in his head, as if saying them would somehow deny the truth. She'd already fallen. All he could do was try to catch her.

What had seemed like an age of staring into the well she teetered over had actually only been a few seconds. He snapped out of his reverie, eyes fixed on the blinking light.

"That," he began, "Means we're out of fuel."

Hyperspace disbanded around them, its departure in tandem with the condensation on the canopy. Utter blackness seized them again, spotted with the light of the stars. And just before them lay a refueling station, lonely in the vast emptiness of space.

He kissed her on the forehead, then piloted the X-wing forward and docked with the small station. There was a quiet, pressurized hiss as they landed. The canopy swung open.

"Care to stretch your legs?"

[member="Quinn Vos"]

 

[Quinn Vos]

[member="Ryan Korr"]

Alarm quickly dissolved from her face between the words out of fuel and the sound of the canopy hissing open. She gingerly slipped off Ryan and moved faster than someone with stiff muscles should. "Ryan, when it comes to space travel I will always care to stretch my legs."

Fiery eyes gave him a once over before she nimbly slipped off the wing and landed in a quiet crouch in the deserted space station. She cocked her head and went to draw her bow, hearing an odd sound coming through the outside speakers. Fingers slipped away as she remembered they were within the belly of the starfighter.

She scowled at the song. "What is this cacophony?" Eyes darted around the station, taking in attack points, weak points, and escape routes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazHNpt6OTo