Everything had a price.

 

She wasn't sure when she first realized this. When the bitter thought had slipped itself into the back of her head as a carefully guided needle to helpless little balloon. It may have been when she was old enough to wobble unsteadily on her own bare feet. Back then, her and her mother had been on some remote planet—she couldn't even remember why or the name of it—only that her mother worked hard. Worked honestly. There were other twi'leks with them and she played often in warm sun and the fresh tilled earth worked by her mother and many others. There was planting. There was singing. There was laughter. Half-formed memories of childhood they were; things that during her darkest hours she would reach out with her minds eye and cradle them to her for comfort.

 

In the beginning, her mother smiled and laughed too. She could almost remember the way her mothers eyes would crinkle when she did. She remembered her mothers stories of her home planet—Ryloth her mother would say with a sigh and a sad smile that bespoke of missing pieces. For hours she would toil in planting, hands dirty and smelling of new growing things: she'd weave stories about the Bright Lands and about the crystals that grew where no light touched. But one day a man came. He darkened the doorstep to their simple home, a long, lean shadow across the floor that looked more like a clawed hand reaching to devour than anything else. Something about that idea....or vision stuck with her more than the warm laughter of that forgotten planet. Something about that devouring hand haunted her nightmares more than anything. And the man who belonged to that hand, Javoran Davis, haunted longer still.

 

He'd been a tall man back then with thick, long, prestigous lekku marked sharply with pride. His skin was a beautiful rust-orange and his eyes were almost exotically tilted. They were the deepest unsettling ruby color--and they skipped over Jahnya as if she did not exist and settled on her mother. He'd smiled back then. Lips that were too plump on his face at ease stretched into a grin that never met his eyes and always looked as if two hooks had forced it upward. Something she could not explain back then—an instinct as strong as a hand in her belly—instilled immediate distrust and fear. Wordlessly, she'd cried out and her mother's head turned to her child. She then saw the man—

 

It was difficult to explain these feelings as a youngling. When the world was big and unending and the only words you had were sacred things like mother, love and home.

 

When Javoran came, the stories stopped.

When Javoran came, everything changed.

 

Her mother stopped smiling. It was not immediate at first, but as the days passed and the man spent more time in their home—Jahnya's mother began to change. Her eyes turned from her daughter and the fields, from the hard work and the soil. Her eyes turned glassy sometimes when Javoran would stay. And sometimes they would turn hard and cold and to the stars above as the man filled her head with talk of the universe; riches untold and the fame that just waited for Jahnya's mother out there. Like a quivering lover holding its breath.

 

Like a lie wrapped in sweetest promise.

Everyone had their price.

 

For Jahnya's mother, it was love. But the price would someday become too steep.

Edited December 20, 2011 by Jahnya

 

Her mother had been beautiful once. Before the drugs had taken her to a place where sense nor sanity no longer lived. Before Javoran snake-bellied into her life to flicker-whisper lies and use the back of his knuckles to speak—pinpr*cks of his fingers blushed darker cerulean in her mother's skin often. Jahnya often thought that the color of her mother's bruised skin is what the sky might look like if it was cruelly crushed. Part of her mother's beauty, she had always thought, was the traditional head piece that she'd worn before Javoran bought her something new. Something gaudy and studded with fake stones, something flashy and as fake as the life he'd given Jahnya's mother.

 

The head piece had a thick band of ancient brown hide. Edged in metal that Jahnya imagined the hands of many women of her clan had once touched—staining it bronze-gold with their fingerprints--a simplistic, elegant center piece of metal rested on the brow. A circle in the middle with two columns rising; as a little girl she remembered touching it often. Nights where she couldn't sleep from this or that and she'd left a pink fingertip draw imaginary history on it. The name of her mother drawn in invisible ink, her friends, her happiness as her mother used to hum lullabies.

 

The lullabies went away--some place far away and dead and gone. But the headpiece remained. Her mother had shoved it into the trash one evening, sobbing quietly with new crushed-sky spots on her arms and cheeks. The outline of Javoran's palm a dark shadow in skin. I will never be like that, she would mouth to herself over and over again when no one could see her because the children stopped coming over to play. Their parents would not allow them near in the village they would turn their eyes and show their backs as she passed, scrounging and begging for food. I will never treat anyone like that. I will never raise my hand out of anger. I will never hurt someone without just cause. I will never crush delicate, small things...Her daughter waited patiently until the two of them collapsed or the two of them argued over whether to stay or whether to go back to Nar Shaddaa because you'll be a star, baby, you're beautiful Javoran whould hiss—to dig it out of the trash and silently place it under her bed.

 

Because even children know the importance of memories lost.

 

Someday when the little rag-tag pink twi'lek with hollowed cheek bones and shadowed purple eyes grew up--she would wear that headpiece proudly. For now, she only dared touch it in the dead of night, when the only sound was the far off cry of some beast. She pretended it mourned for the nameless children like her. For the ones the universe forgot.

Awwwwh.....

 

 

 

That was beautiful.

 

Hope you keep writing, since finding out I couldn't play a Twi'lek it made me interested in why not, I read more about them and then got annoyed! http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=71964 - I'd love to see more stuff, it seems like there's a lot of rich stuff to work with there. They're talking about ideas for Twi'lek names here that would be useful for writing: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=76913

 

*hugs* Hope maybe the christmas thread will lighten your mood: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=74625&page=11

 

Seriously - just wonderful.

Edited December 24, 2011 by SelinaK

Awwwwh.....

 

 

 

That was beautiful.

 

Hope you keep writing, since finding out I couldn't play a Twi'lek it made me interested in why not, I read more about them and then got annoyed! http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=71964 - I'd love to see more stuff, it seems like there's a lot of rich stuff to work with there. They're talking about ideas for Twi'lek names here that would be useful for writing: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=76913

 

*hugs* Hope maybe the christmas thread will lighten your mood: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=74625&page=11

 

Seriously - just wonderful.

 

Thank you very much. I had several parts (nearing the ending) posted on the beta forums, but with the wipe, I've been cautiously re-posting them (don't want to spam anyone elses story down the forum list too fast!)

 

With the passing of my own mother this December, I simply haven't wanted to write anything at all. It's my hope that I can find my voice again. I know it's what my mother would have wanted.

 

Thank you so much for the links, the comment and compliments. Merry belated Christmas, and happy new year to you!

 

 

There’s a moment in between my trigger finger and the reflex of muscle that becomes infinite in my mind. It always happens a split second before I pull—I see everything I’ve ever done, every job, every face, and every droplet. It’s all there in a jumble like someone put it all on a holoprojector and sped it up to flicker faster than Nar Shaddaa’s lights. This moment is no different. It’s a kid who got himself into the wrong business. Selling information had its prices; being an information fence wasn’t a safe job and when you messed with the Empire you took on a whole level of price most weren’t able to handle as beginners. This kid had no idea what he’d gotten into, but he only knew now that he was on his knees squeezing out tears, snot running down his nose and close to wetting himself. His eyes, watery blue and pin*****s for iris’ kept rolling as nervous as a just-born-dewback to the end of my blaster jammed into his brow.

 

I almost feel sorry for the things I've done in this moment. I almost feel alive. I love this moment: the control over who lives and who dies. Even if it's only my illusion.

 

“Please!” His girl cried from his side. I’d seen this too. Heard it a million times. Some days it’s a mother, some days a sister, some days an aunt, a lover, a cousin—the other days there’s no one there at all. No one to beg for their sorry lives. I wonder if the kid knows how lucky he is to even have anyone care enough to beg for his life.

 

“Please—don’t do this! He didn’t sell them out, Harro wouldn’t ever do that that’s not the man I know. Please, we’ll give you anything you want. Credits. We’ll find them, we’ll pay you more—“

 

I’ve heard that too. I have my good days and my bad days, the good days are when I let them roll through the speeches. The offers or the pleas and I let them form a glimmer of hope in their eyes for a split second. I let them think I’m listening and going to change my mind. I let them hope. When they’re done, I remind them about the most important lesson I’ve learned in my life: there’s no such thing as hope. There’s the strong, the weak and the credits: the haves and have-nots of the universe. You either had what it took to survive this sithspit covered galaxy or you ended up some poor dirt covered barve in the gutter somewhere, snorting spice.

 

So I answer, “Darlin’, the Empire is as vast as the universe is long. You really think your stinking dance-wages are gonna cover what they’re payin’ me to get rid of this worthless koochu?”

 

She was twi’lek. Bright purple. Always had a soft spot for a pretty little twi’lek female, couldn’t help it really. There were women and then there were twi’leks, so the saying went. This one was a little too skinny for my taste with too much face paint. But she reminded me of someone anyway, someone I’d rather—

 

“Please,” she sobbed. Her turn for the waterworks and now I had two sniveling idiots. I resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose and pulled the gun from the kids head and put it to hers.

 

“You love him so much, and then I’ll shoot you instead. What do you think about that, kid? You can help me drag the body somewhere and I’ll just bring them back one of your fingers. That way if they come back to check on my work there’ll be this sweet stain on the carpet.” The twi’lek abruptly stopped blubbering and squeaked.

 

“No, no—shoot him; he’s the one you’re after—“ She blurted. At the same time, Harro said: "Yes! Shoot her!"

"What? Harro you--"

“WHAT? Dena’laan, you bi—“

“I lied! I hate you Harrow! I hate you! You stink and...and...You’re tiny. You hear me, Harro? TINY.”

“I’ll Kill y—“

 

I swung my arm back, shoved the barrel into the kids eye and pulled the trigger. I’d seen and learned all I wanted to know and I’d proved a point to the kid and the girl. Once again, this piece of Bantha Poodoo planet had lived up to its name. I was pretty prepared for what happens next, but the little purple twi’lek…Don’t think she’d ever seen someone die before. She collapsed and crumpled to the floor and sobbed. Great big fat, heaping sobs that made the bird-cage of her ribs rise and collapse.

 

“What am I gonna do?” She moaned. “What am I gonna do? Oh Harro, Harro I didn’t mean it. I didn’t. I’m sorry. Oh please don’t shoot me either, I swear I didn’t know what he was mixed up in.”

 

She wasn’t part of the contract. They wanted Harro. Maybe the kid hadn’t done anything wrong, I’ve watched the Empire and the Sith set someone else to fall when it suited them, but honestly, I didn’t care anymore. I needed the credits and I had a job to do.

 

“Don’t give a frag, Princess,” I told her. I bent down to take a souvenir and proof I’d fulfilled my contract, straightened and walked out. The night was young and that job had been easy, but killing always made me thirsty. And the twi’lek girl had reminded me of another…

 

Time to hit up The Painted Lady.

Condolences for your lose. I read through this before the forum wipe and was definitely enjoying it. Glad to see you're back and still working on it.

 

 

 

 

 

She knew his name was Kurakk Khdor. Jahnya would never forget the name.

 

Years ago when she'd first came to Nar Shadda, thinking things are gonna change, and moms' going to leave him and we'll be free--because she was too young to understand what the lights meant. She was too young to understand that for most, this planet was a Venus-fly trap. The holo glitter was laced and once you breathed it in, you never really got away—that’s when he gave her his name and the only time he’d ever spoken to her directly.

 

Jahnya's relationship with her mother began to take its last drowning gasps the moment they stepped out of the shuttle. Javoran would have her mother set up in his personal apartment above his own cantina, The Painted Lady, and Jahnya's future held in store disgusting slop, vomit and blood and blaster fire burn-marks cleaner.

 

She remembered the first time she saw the Painted Lady Cantina, the long winding path deeper and deeper below to get to it.

 

At first there were the lights. Red, yellow, blue, white—more colors than she could count. Huge billboards and signs for Cantinas and music, bands, gambling dens and houses, restaurants and girls, girls girls. It was such a new experience—she’d never seen anything like this before. It was as if her stars were replaced by neon ones; a little hazier from the smog and pollution too, but still lights in the dark. But each step deeper brought troubling signs. Darker the streets became, more crowded. Garbage and bits of old speeders, dilapidated fruit stands or hollow-eyed women on street corners with hard-faced thugs soon replaced the brighter expressions found above. The further Jahnya walked the further her feelings of apprehension grew—until the Painted Lady and all of her seedy glory stood before the young twi’lek.

 

Four great holograms of busty twi’leks wearing barely-there-scraps beckoned and winked at lackluster, grimy faces that passed by in dirty street before it. They flickered and hummed with static giving away how cheap and how old they were. Sometimes the holos fitzed out completely before fading back in flashing leg and smoky-eyed looks. The sign above the narrow door was a sickly yellow light that hummed and wined like the older, cheaper models did, proclaiming Welcome to the Painted Lady, blinking in and out endlessly.

 

The humans and aliens that listlessly roamed in and out, leaned against the outside of it watched Jahnya’s mother with full on open leers or with the flat eyes of a Wraid that had just filled its belly on a meal of children. As she stepped across the threshold and into The Painted Lady, Jahnya knew—even at her young age, instincts perhaps or something more—that her freedom was now forfeit. Once inside she belonged, like her mother, to Javoran and there was little she could do. Plunging into the dark of a simple Cantina back then had never felt so draining. Like clouds forever passing over the sun but never clearing. The distance between Jahnya and her mother became solidified in the simple act of crossing that door.

 

And in the miserable existence she led from that point in she could have never in a million cycles have guessed that her one point of light—the one singular thing that would keep her going—would be a silent, cold-eyed empire-employed bounty hunter by the name of Kurakk Khdor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Very sorry for taking so long in reposting. Had some issues with the forum logging me out anytime I tried to reply to any thread or edit them o.0 Seem to be fixed for now!)

 

 

 

It’s an excuse. I know that I’m really not thirsty. I wouldn’t touch the sithspit drinks the bartender with grubby hands makes in dented, permanently stained cups. But every time I shadow The Painted Lady’s doors I sidle up to the bar keeping an eye on who is in tonight and gauging the feel of the room and I order a watered down Forvish ale. Which, by the way? Smelled like p**s and I couldn’t tell you if that’s what it tasted like, but I can tell you I’d never put it to my lips in this place.

 

So, yeah—it’s an excuse. I take my drink and I meander through the tables like I do every night I come here. The music is horrible and lewd, far too much bass rumbles in. The lights are dim and mostly red and purples flooded over the nearly naked bodies of the girls dancing. Usual night. I know who’s here and who isn’t without much more of a glance. It’s been ten years off and on coming here and you get to realize that in fly-ridden heaps like this, it’s mostly the same people or same types of people wearing different faces, night after night. There’s always the one bantha-brain milling around the tables either begging for just one more credit to get a drink, or licking the cups left by passed out drunks with trembling hands for the barest hint of alcohol.

 

Then there were the spice-heads that twitch themselves through the door, a bevy of Javoran’s plasteel smiling collared girls escorting them to the back and up to Javoran’s private suite…While everyone pretends not to know what was going on because they didn’t give a blast so long as they got whatever they wanted and nobody got in their way.

 

Then there were the guys and girls hooked on other things. They showed up with desperate eyes, hopeless or empty and cold eyes and fawned over the dancing girls. The dancing girls trained to bat their eyes and show a little more hip for every credit chip thrown at their feet.

 

I always have a hard time not snorting at the irony of them dancing in cages, the gaudy, over-the-top collars Javoran has them in are poor disguises for the typical empire produced shock collars fitted for their slaves. They can be with whom they please you see—so long as Javoran got the credits and they came home in the morning with that ominous or else hanging in the air and in the slimy man’s smile.

 

There were times that I came here and I wondered what the frag I was doing here. I didn’t have any interest in the drinks that’s for sure, and the things Javoran bought and used to pretend to sell ‘food’ from the kitchen here shouldn’t be touched by anyone. Not even the animals that scurried around out front and ate the trash would touch it. But the truth was—I knew why.

 

I’m just as much trash as half the scum that practically live here. My hands are as dirty as the next spiced-out cantina rat to walk through that front door. And as I settle into my favored table, a nice dark corner with the browning walls at my back—I know all it takes is one wrong move and I could become one of them truly. Or worse…catch a case of not breathing.

 

And then there’s the other reason. The other other reason...the real one.

 

Her.

 

Fraggin’ twi’leks.

 

I’m just about ready to ditch this place, thinking I was an idiot to keep coming here and what’s the point? When she walks out of the kitchen with a tray full of the sludge Javoran makes her cook and that’s it. I’ve got nothing. Not a single thought in my head—just memories and images. It’s just like when I’ve got my finger on the trigger and I’m alive. I don’t dare to say or breath a single word of this to anyone because the last damned thing I need is to admit I’m losing it as I’m getting older and I don’t need to find her in some alleyway somewhere, eyes rolled up in her head and mouth half open in scream—I don’t need that. I don’t want any of my memories of her like that. You know? I just—

 

When she was a girl I didn’t think about it. She stuck in the back of my head ever since what she did years ago—but I never started forgetting to breathe until she got a little older. A little wiser. A lot taller and… a lot. She’s a lot all over.

 

See, seven years ago I just got off this long arsed job off world. Difficult as hell, bugger kept giving me the slip and I was running out of creds in the chase. Didn’t think I was going to make it either when I finally found the son of a dungkeeper and he jumped me with ten of his men. One of the toughest fights yet, walked away with a hole in my side nearly clipping one of my hearts—but by frag I got the sucker and it turned out to be my best paying bounty yet.

 

Anyway, so there I was full of myself and I thought I’d drop by the Painted. Finally reward myself with a little company and a pretty face, you get me? It’s early in the morning and everyone knew The Painted Lady never slept. She was a wh!re for money and closing down just meant Javoran lost credits. So I was about to saunter in when I hear Javoran screaming like a woman at the top of his lungs. No lie.

 

The guy had fraggin’ lost it. He was shrieking and as I—for whatever stupid reason—decided I was going to continue on moseying right in to see what the fuss was about.

 

The bar was mostly empty. The music turned off and the lights were flashing on empty cages. Coupla drunks passed out in the booths too far gone to be bothered by Javoran and most of the girls were either up in his private office or too doped out of their head-tails to do anything but blankly stare as Javoran stood in the middle of the room screaming obscenities with spittle flying from his lips. He got like that sometimes. See, Javoran and I worked for the same person. A mysterious benefactor I’d long ago realized was a Sith with hands deep in any dirty illegal trade he could get his hands into. Javoran was just a means for the Sith to get what he wanted and too stupid to realize I’d figured it out and we’d make a better team than enemies. But Javoran chose to make it a competition and I wasn’t even competing. Right, so-- I’d poked at him pretty hard one night—maybe too far with a pistol or two—and he sort of went unhinged like that. Seen him do it to his girls too when he caught them doing whatever it was set him off and there he’d go, screaming and frothing at the mouth and hitting whatever was in front of him whether they deserved it or not.

 

There was a dopey-eyed blue twi’ hanging off his arm woodenly begging him to stop which he ignored and this small heap of pink at his feet getting the brunt end of his boot. Seemed a little too small to be getting that much transparisteel enforced boot to the guts. Now, I’m not a nice guy. I’m really not. I’ve been on jobs where it was in the contract to kill the mother and kill the kids—get me? And I don’t hesitate. Hesitating gets you killed, gets them a split second to run for it and then I gotta shoot in a hurry and put in more effort into it. I don’t like being nice and I sure as hell don’t like effort either. The smoother it is the better I feel about it. And something in me moved a little to the right of all the things I had carefully organized in the left when the little pink thing cracked a purpling and swelling eye at me and looked dully right through me as I stood there.

 

Sometimes at night when it’s really quiet and I can’t sleep and I’m waiting for the next job…When the bunk is cold and I’ve got nothing but the lights at the console to keep me company…I know what it was that moved inside me. I know what I saw in that scrawny little girl’s eye. Saw myself at that age. Nothing left to lose, nowhere to go, stuck. Giving up and given up. In an instant I thought I was looking in on myself and it did something. Something I don’t like to think about except in the darkest of nights when I can’t see…

 

So Javoran’s screaming still…something about a spilled cup or a drink or ruined…I don’t care. I remember the gleam of regulation empire slave collar on her neck, not even a fancy one like the other girls and thinking why didn’t he just shock her when I finished moseying over like it was toodle-doo naboo afternoon tea and tapped Javoran on the shoulder. He whirled around and was about to start yodeling at me when it died in his throat and came out nothing more than insane gurgling.

 

“What the frag—“ he began hoarsely, “do you want? This better be good.” Did I mention I @#&!ing hate Javoran yet? Yeah. I do.

 

“Kinda doesn’t say much about a guy who only beats up on women and kids,” I drawled lazily. The irony in that statment given what I do in my life wasn't lost at me at the time. Didn't have time to think about it. Inside my head was a warzone: my younger self was jabbering at the back of my mind asking me what the hell do you think you are doing? This is crazy. You know what your employer said—don’t screw with his other toys and all will be well. And the other part of me? Didn’t care, cackled manically in the back of my head and I felt good, real good. Like I might put my finger on the trigger and frankly, that’s pretty much all I looked forward to in my life.

 

Javorans response was clear. He told me to go do something everybody knows ain’t really physically possible. Unless you’re real bendy likes.

 

So I punched him in the face.

 

 

 

Second to pulling the trigger, I think that was the single best feeling I’d ever had in a long time and when he started screaming at me, blood pouring from his squashed nose and the gap made by his lost tooth, I was downright considering doing it again. The blue twi’lek on his arm, fragged out of her head on spice was now trying to comfort Javoran who moments before had been busy beating the kid at his feet mercilessly. Useless. I didn’t step in when Javoran grabbed hold of her and shoved her hard enough she went end-over-tea-kettle over a chair and sprawled on the floor. But he went to lay a hand on me and I hitched my fingers in my belt.

 

“Wouldn’t do that, Chief,” warned him. He’s lucky we worked for the same fella and I liked my butt alive. “Don’t think our mutual boss would like to hear how you’ve been playing with the merchandise, mm?” Hiking my head to the sprawled out dancer I was pretty sure was his newest toy. The new ones he kept for himself to break in didn’t let anyone sleep with them until he was done and bored with them. And then it was onto the dance floors with ‘em and to whomever would pay the highest price.

It worked, because he’d been going to take his blaster out of its holster which would have been the exactly worst thing he could have done and then stopped. He stared at me with beady little red eyes with as much hate as he could muster.

 

“You wouldn’t,” he said.

I turned my head and spat at his feet. “Try me.”

 

We had a good long few moments of staring each other down, where the girls all crawled away thinking things were gonna go down and they were all experts at runnin’ like cowards from trouble. After what seemed like half a year, he turned his head and spat out blood. Didn’t say anything else as he turned away like I knew the spineless grub would. Marched over to the blue twi’lek he’d sent sprawling and gripped her rough by the arm, hauling her up and scrambling back to his private office. Didn’t look good for the girls the way he started up shaking the blue one and screaming n’ yelling again at the others, but for me, the danger had passed and I didn’t care.

 

It wasn’t until I heard the barest scrape at my feet that I remembered the kid, totally forgot about her while I was sorely tempted to put a bolt through that idiot’s head.

 

I look down and she’s a mess. Nothing that would scar her permanently on the outside but…Yeah. Well. Her guts were gonna kill her tomorrow. I hunker down a second though just to check she’s still with me and make sure she ain’t bleedin’ out. She’s the scrawniest twi’lek I’ve ever seen, kid or no. Her limbs were all long like her body hadn’t figured out yet how to catch up to her growin’. Both her eyes swollen up pretty good. She was there but she wasn’t, you know? There’s a place we all go when life hurts too much and I think she was there and was fast becoming expert in going there by now. So I reached down and hiked the filthy scrap Javoran probably gave her for a shirt and took a look at her belly—it wasn’t what she probably thought it was as her eyes flickered open (as much as she could anyway with them puffin’ up like that) I was checking for signs of internal bleeding. I didn’t know what the hell I’d do if I saw any, but it seemed like the right thing to do. In the business of killin’ I wasn’t very good at treating the living, but I thought this seemed like something I should check.

 

She looked fine and the way she was staring at me began to creep along my spine something I didn’t recognize. Something that made me want to put my coat around her and tell her everything was going to be all right which went against pretty much everything I was and taught myself to be. You don’t know how much that frightened me to the very core at that split second and everything in my gut was telling me to go, run, leave now.

 

Let go of her shirt like it burned me through my gloves and put my hands on my knees to push myself up. The silence was getting to be awkward and I ain’t a man knowin’ how to make good words.

 

And that’s when she reached out to stop me. She’d come back to the here and now sometime between the fear of me maybe touching her and through the pain of a pretty good beating and she touched me. Her little fingers found the gap between my gloves and my jacket and braved whatever consequence there’d be to grab hold of my wrist and make me stay.

 

Her eyes aren't like mine anymore, I remember thinking. Because she was looking at me like I’d never seen anybody look at me before. She was grateful and she was trying to smile despite the splits in her lips.

 

She was looking at me with hope.

 

“Thank you,” she quietly said and then began to cry. Well hells. Ain’t nothing worse that a girl crying. And I mean, not the snotty-nosed hiccup sobbing kind either. No sir, kid had learned that sometimes crying got you beat harder so she didn’t make a damned sound. Just these big fat tears rolling down her face while her shoulders crumpled inward and she kept smiling at me and what the hell’m was I supposed to do?

 

I …I didn’t think. Reached down and picked her up. Didn’t weigh more than a data pad in an ion storm anyway. So I did, and she told me quietly all the while crying to put her in the kitchen ‘cause that’s where she sleeps so I did what she said like I’d been doing it all my life.

 

The kitchen was as banged up as the front room and the only time I’d ever been in it. Had a stove, a food keeper, and an old military grade issue cot near the far corner neatly made. It was clean though. Cleanest place in the Painted Lady and later on when I had my head on straight I’d understand the irony in that more.

 

She told me to put her down on the cot and I did. But my brain was catching up finally to what I was doing and it was jabbering pretty clearly: dangerous, it whispered, costly I agreed. So I put her down and I backed away.

 

She tried to thank me again and I stopped her with a look. I said, like a fool, like an idiot, like a blaster-brained flot—“ Kurakk Khdor.”

 

Sithspitting, Gravel maggot, bantha-poodo headed—! I cursed myself. I’d given her my name. Not my code name or my number or the hundreds of aliases or something I made up off the top of my damned head. No, no of course not. That was my name. The one I’d been born with and the one down on file somewhere in a cold, empire run part of the data-net. If I could have strangled myself at that moment I probably would have. I went from this odd sensation that some little girl no bigger than a baby tuskat would be brave enough to do something someone hasn’t willingly done in two decades to spitting mad at myself.

I wasn’t going to stay just to have her thank me again. So I left.

 

But it didn’t matter that I actually physically left, because whatever that girl did made sure I kept coming back.

 

Something I can’t explain.

 

She grew up good and she grew up very good, if you get my meaning. And I’ve made damn sure to stay out of her way. I don’t know what to say anyhow. Don’t know what to do and don’t want to jeopardize myself any more than I already am.

 

But it’s been seven years and she’s walking out of the kitchen and she turns to look at me with those big purple eyes and she might as well have shot me dead. She gives me a little smile that tells me she’s never forgotten and I get to thinkin’ what it would sound like from her mouth if she said my name. And that’s not the sort of thing any man in my business wants to think about too long.

 

So I tell myself I’m only here for the watered down ale but I know the truth.

 

And the truth is…I think I’m already gone.

 

In the beginning there was the Painted Lady. For Jahnya, it was day in and day out mindless work that she did without question. Someone bleed out at table seven? Jahnya cleaned it. Someone throw up near the bar? Jahnya cleaned it. Someone mistake the wall for a urinal? Jahnya cleaned it. Javoran had droids to do his work for him when he need to get things done, quick, to impress or simply because it was busy and she couldn’t keep up with it fast enough to keep it barely passing whatever health code he could bribe to pass. But he didn't want the droids doing the work simply because droids can't be humiliated, people can.

 

In the beginning, there was keeping her head down and the adjustment period to the chaffing of the collar on her neck—both on her skin and in her heart. For the longest time when she was a child she was beyond hope.

 

The girls….The girls were surprisingly nicer than her mother most often than not. When they weren’t eyeballs up in Spice, twitching from stims, or wavering unsteadily and fighting drunkenly with one another or having cat fights over who got to go home with which big spender. When she first arrived they cooed and tittered about her pink skin, complimented her on her eyes fit enough to make her blush further and laughed uproariously when she did. When they remembered she was there, sometimes they brought back table scraps from the rooms and places they’d been: taken on the arm of a different male or female each night, human or chiss or rodian or other twi’leks—didn’t matter so long as Javoran got paid.

 

There was a strange complacency that grew in her once she decided that this was simply going to be her lot in life. A kitchen slave cooking slop and cleaning slop and as long as she kept her head down and her mouth shut, she could continue.

 

Eventually after that, there was an odd fondness for The Painted Lady’s patrons that grew—despite the fact she barely opened her mouth at them. On occasion, they’d try to talk to her and she would simply put on her best blank-face with a small smile. Most of them left her alone after not getting any response, a few severely drunk or simply uncaring mistook her for one of the girls—despite the fact her collar wasn’t the same and her clothing was little more than second-hand scraps held together by more scraps. Those she danced quickly out of reaching hands and sometimes, if Warrell, an older, fat Aqualish was paying attention—would thump them a good one and they’d leave her alone.

 

Warrell used to be a pirate before an injury took him out of the run. He used to run with Javoran, and it wasn’t hard to find that out. Warell, when he wasn’t berating the customers and smashing the skulls of those trying to pay with fake cred-chips together would talk non-stop about his good old days. Stories that Jahnya would listen too when they didn’t involve too much of Javoran and went on sweepingly about the endless expanse of stars and humorous anecdotes about why he didn’t drink that much anymore while drinking half as much as his own patrons he served all night. He always ended up flat on his back out cold behind the bar. Sometimes she felt she had an odd companion in Warrell because when he told his stories occasionally she could recall the distant image of what the stars might have looked like when she was a child, staring up at them. Sometimes she imagined when he told his tales she was on a ship, looking out and watching them dance by—leaving this planet behind her.

 

Tick, as she called him, was a small Rodian that had taken to calling her Pinkie. He worked gathering information for Javoran and then always ended up spending all of this money on the girls, the drinks, the gambling and occasionally drugs. Unstable when he was using, Jahnya avoided him—something had happened to him when he was younger which made him carry a small tick when sober. When drugged, the Rodian was someone else and she didn’t think about it. Just avoided it—everyone needed to get away from here somehow, some just had to do it in unconventional forms. Every other time he always waved and asked how his Pinkie was doing. She never gave him anything but a genuine smile in return.

 

She learned many names for the next few years working in that bar. She saw her mother get up on stage or writhe about in a cage every night, but past a few awkward glances from time to time when her mother was actually there enough to realize what day it was and where she was, it’s all she ever got from her mother. The resentment was difficult to avoid. On good days, she could pretend she didn’t know the Blue twi’lek that hung off Javoran’s arm like nothing more than a bracelet. On bad days, she did her best not to cry too loudly on her cot.

 

As the days passed, the weeping grew less and less until it stopped. But she couldn’t make herself throw away her mother’s headpiece she’d been hiding in her pillow all this time. Every time she thought about it, some noise startled her into shoving it back under there or she simply told herself: tomorrow.

 

Usually the Painted Lady was a cesspool. Fists and bruises and blood and limps and screaming and blaster fire, knives or worse. Down here, nobody cared. Javoran got away with anything he wanted—the despicable of the planet trod through that Cantina day in and day out. If it was illegal, it was being moved there. Or it was being discussed there. Or meetings were being held in the dingy backrooms or right out on the floor. Sometimes those deals went sour, fast and there was nothing she could do but wait to see who lived and who died. In those times she discovered she learned a lot from Warrell about how to patch up a human, how to tell if they were too far gone to help, how to tell if a patch-job wasn’t enough and they’d have to get the medical droid. And, she discovered that in those times when the smoke cleared and she could help someone—even someone who cursed and railed at her for trying to help, or for not helping enough—she liked it. Out of all the horrible things she had learned here, she found it intoxicating to learn about life...about saving someone's life, at least, the ideal of preserving it instead of ending it.

 

She learned a little about bacta, what you could shove cheap in a med-kit and get away with it, and more about stims. She learned a little bit about alien biology and where a blaster bolt could kill, or just seem messy but was merely a glancing blow.

She learned that Zabraks had two hearts and she immediately thought of Kurakk Khdor, then put him out of her mind. He came and went as he pleased but ever since that one night when he had possibly saved her from being beaten to death? Hadn’t spoken a word to her since. He came frequently when he could, always ordered a drink, sat at the same table near the kitchen door. But never drank. Never said a word. The girls wouldn’t go near him anymore because he just ignored him and no one wanted to pick a fight with someone whose reputation was as large as the man’s presence. Thanks to Warrell’s habit of talking, she also learned that he was a bounty hunter. She wasn’t…she wasn’t sure what to think. She thought perhaps she had done something wrong that night as a child. Maybe she shouldn’t have touched him—he had looked so startled. Maybe she shouldn’t have spoken..but—

 

He kept coming back, usually.

 

She thinks if she remembers her birth date right, that it was around the fifth or sixth year after Javoran beat her that he left for an exceptionally long time. Usually it might be a few weeks, at longest months by her guess. It wasn’t as if she could check the galactic calendar—but she was pretty sure. When he finished a job, he’d show up beginning of the week, middle and end when it was the busiest. But that one year he didn’t.

 

And the longer the time went when he didn’t show and set himself down in his favorite table, the more she felt Javoran’s eyes on the back of her head again. Some sort of instinct that, over the years and living in this hellhole had honed—something that always warned her right before a fight broke out. Told her when to duck before a pistol was even drawn and showed her how to swing out of the way of a fist flying too close. That same instinct tingled up her spine cold as ice whenever Javoran’s eyes flicked her way. She would stop, stand up and crane her neck around and sure enough his beady little eyes were unreadable as well as watching. Every single time she caught him looking at her she felt the curl of fear tightening in her belly and remembered the first time he darkened her door. Thought of the long shadow he made the way it seemed to stretch black and forever over her into a greedy claw.

 

She thought of this and felt her gorge rise in the back of her throat.

 

Javoran was up to something, she was so sure of it with an intensity that surprised even her. That –whatever it was—that told her to duck when a fist was coming had started screaming at her to lay low.

 

Every night the feeling grew worse.

 

Every night he was gone she would stare at Kurakk Khdor’s table on her way past and ferverently hope.

 

 

 

There are ideas and then there are ideas. The sort of ideas that creep into your head one night after too many hours spent drinking trying to sucker punch your brain into silence. It crept up on me one night when I was far, far away from that cesspool of a planet where I didn’t think of little kitchen twi’s and filthy pimps with red eyes. I had one arm around this one dame I’d now idea where she came from, and another near the deck of cards. I was winning, and I hadn’t any idea how. I turned a card over and for a minute I swore the lady on the card was Jahnya; her face painted with the same gaudy slave collar around her neck that Javoran puts on all his girls.

 

It turned my stomach and my mood. I guess I upended the table because the next thing I remember the dame was screaming at me not to come back behind two of the biggest thugs I’d ever seen—that and I was standing outside.

 

Took me a while to find my way back to the ‘port and my ship. Roads and sidewalks tipped back and forth as I was too busy trying to think of anything else but what I’d seen. By the time I’d gotten to the ‘port and my ship then fell on the bed I thought that’d be the last of it. Go to sleep, wake up with the usual awful taste in my mouth, check my comm and get to work. But I couldn’t. Couldn’t sleep and couldn’t stop thinking about her in one of those collars. About what Javoran would do to her. About the fact that he’d beat the life from those eyes, either physically or mentally and pretty soon she’d be no different than the other girls on his stage, sucked into an endless cycle of self-loathing, despair and addiction. That’s the last thing I wanted to happen to her.

 

In fact, the more I thought about it tossing and turning in my bunk the worse it got. It crept up on me like the smallest of shadows that give away there’s someone at your back but you don’t realize it too late…I didn’t just not want that to happen to her, I wanted to make sure it never happened. Ever.

 

I rolled over to my back and stared at the grubby ceiling above me. It took a long while in that silence to admit to myself what I wanted.

 

When I did, I rolled to my hip and sat up, swinging my leg over the side and sitting up, cursing and spitting at myself fit to roast the hair of a bantha.

 

I knew what I was going to do. I knew how I’d get her out of there and keep Javoran away from her. It was the craziest damn thing I had ever thought of and if it didn’t get me killed it was going to get me limping away from it.

 

Despite that, I felt my face pull into an expression I hadn’t felt it form in a long, long time.

 

There I was, sitting in the dark with nothing but the glow of a few read outs grinning like a mad man.

 

 

 

The small mirror that had hung in the kitchen, on the wall across the door—she’d assumed hung there by the last poor soul that had to work here so as to watch anyone coming toward it—had shattered on the floor. She stood frozen for so long after it happened, not knowing how to react and not knowing how to breathe. When you were faced with that-which-you-feared-the-most, instinct was such a hard thing to overcome. It told Jahnya to run and never look back. The collar on her neck would kick in about a foot from the front door to shock her hard enough to leave her flailing and twitching on the street if she tried. The logical song of her brain told her there was nothing she could do. She should just learn to live with it. The animal part of her brain however, like a long fingered hand slithering over her skin where it was not wanted wormed its way into her head and began to clutch onto the logic and crush it in panic.

 

Javoran.

Javoran.

 

He’d waited until early morning, her favorite time. Javoran had usually been up all night with this girl or that or her mother, doing whatever it was he did—she didn’t care so long as it meant it kept him up all night and he’d retire to his ‘office’ for most of the morning and afternoon. It was the best time, really, the only time she felt like she could relax and get things done. She was left alone as the snoring of the barkeep and passed out patrons were usually the only sounds besides her scrubbing.

 

She was almost happy in the morning; as happy as she was when Warrell let her treat the few cuts, bruises and scraps of the usual bar fights happy, anyway. That’s when he’d cornered her.

 

He’d marched into the kitchen without warning; she hadn’t even been looking at the mirror. She’d just finished trying to clean her little corner in this place when Javoran slid through the door like oil, eating up the small space in the kitchen enough to make her back away immediately. But the only place to go was the short metal counter top that dug into the small of her back as he continued stepping forward and she back.

 

“I’ve been watching you,” he purred. As if that were something to be considered a compliment, not something that has become a subject of nightmares to her.

 

She said nothing. She had nothing to say. She would not encourage him and did not want to keep him here any longer than possible by giving him something to respond to. She just wanted him out, gone, away, not here. She looked at anything but him in the small room—a pot, a pan, a broken tile or the busted cook droid she’d been trying to repair on her off time—I should have left the knife on the counter came the thought soon followed by what would you have done with it? Could you really handle a weapon?

 

She was his property, a thing. He had no reason to respect her space so he did not. He slithered further forward until she could smell the spice riddled air from his too-wet mouth; see the drug-dullness in red eyes and the changes age was slowly bringing him. **Aging had never been kind to twi’lek males; it seemed soon Javoran would be showing those changes.

 

He pressed forward, she stepped to the side the counter sliding painfully against her back. There wasn’t anywhere to go however—

 

“You’ve grown quite a bit, haven’t you?” He laid a hand on her hip. Without thinking she smacked it away immediately. That was her first mistake and she knew it—and despite it she couldn’t rouse enough emotion to care about the flash of fire behind his deep, red eyes, or the way his lekku straightened and quivered momentarily with barely suppressed rage.

 

Javoran’s response was what she’d expected. A quick and stinging, undignified slap. “Now darlin’,” he mused. “That ain’t any way to treat the man who owns you, body and soul, I can tell you that. Don’t you forget, little girl,” he reached around to grab her by the waist. Repulsed, Jahnya jerked her head back as far as it could go. She bumped her head on the wall behind the counter, knocking the little mirror off the wall to go tumbling down to the floor and shattering loudly at their feet.

 

“Now I’m only gonna offer this one—you listening?—you’re turning heads girl. Starting to fill out nice and sweet,” his hand squeezed her and she felt like she was going to sick up, scream and faint at the same time. Every inch of her skin did not know which way to go, the sensation of bugs crawling on it grew. “Coupla years you’re gonna turn way more heads, too. I’ll teach you everything you need to know to keep doin’ that and earn credits like you’ve never seen before.

 

“I’ll let you out of this kitchen, mm?” He breathe on her face churned her middle, Jahnya turned her head to gag. “Let you out and buy you the prettiest clothes, no more kitchens and slop cooking for you. All you gotta do is say yes. Hmm?

 

“Whatchoo say, girl? I’ll make you a star.”

 

I’ll make you a star.

You’ll be a star.

Gonna be a star.

 

In her head it was as if someone hit a bell jarring echoes of memory: all the times Javoran promised her mother to make her a star. A star? A star—a dying ball of light that could-have-been, hooked on whatever he did and said just to get another hit, another bit of spice to retreat into the world in her head and forget herself. Her own child. A star in a disgusting Cantina that was more than likely to sell the dancers to the higher bidder just to have their dreams choked out with their life; considered nothing more than property and not human. A star, he’d said.

 

Did he honestly think that would work on her? Did he really believe that offering her one cage for the other would make her agree? She would rather be dead. It was preferable than turning into her mother.

 

Tipping her head back around at him with eyes as wild as animals, Jahnya drew back her lips from her mouth baring her teeth. The long, reptilian like hiss was answer enough. She topped it up by decorating his smug, disgusting face with spittle.

 

Javoran shouted. The grip around her middle became claws, his fingers digging in harsh enough to make ten points of searing hurt along her back. He took her and threw her to the ground as easy as if she were a piece of zeyd-cloth. Clattering to the ground legs and arms akimbo was far more suitable to her than being anywhere near him. She felt filthy. As stained as the walls. But he was beyond angry now—Javoran was murderous. He stormed across the short expanse and leaned down to grab one of her lekku.

 

There were no words or thoughts at that instant only pain. Stars behind her eyes in bright colors, excruciating horrible pain that rendered all of her own anger to fade away to abject horror—fear. Her lekku! The end of it jittered and flailed attempting to get away from the painful grip in his hand while Jahnya felt the world begin to waver and fade. She would pass out if he didn’t let go.

 

“I gave you a chance,” he rasped. Half-shouting, half screaming, fully mad. He squeezed the lekku a bit harder.

 

By then she could only muster little sounds—small animals dying in the forest cold and alone.

 

“And now you’ve screwed yourself. I’ll see you dancing or I’ll see you sold you worthless frag.”

 

He let go and left. That was it. A violent arrival and a quiet ending. Jahnya feared the ending more than she feared the violence: she feared everything at that moment. When she could think straight once more—when she could stop trembling she reached out and gathered the bruised lekku and cradled it, rolling to a hip to sit up.

 

It took her a bit longer to gather enough strength to stand but she did.

 

Found she was staring at the pieces of the broken mirror scattered along the counter, the floor. A thousand shards that reflected a pretty face with blank violet eyes and bruised tchin. She stood there for so long, frozen, unable to do anything out of fear, churning in her belly, anger clouding her mind that reached for anything—a way out of this—unsteadily, Jahnya reached down and plucked the largest sliver of the mirror. A jagged edge that she saw herself in, but not as she was that moment: images of herself in a cage, in a collar, dull-eyed and without hope…images of her being pawed at and panhandled from one man or woman to the other. Images of her with Javoran….Never! Her mind revolted.

 

Never. I will never be like my mother. I will not.

 

The first cut was the deepest.

 

 

 

Tolsen Cass felt a bit as if he were a young padawan once again; on some sort of trail to test his patience. Nar Shadda was a planet that he hadn’t truly meant to even go remotely near, let alone land upon. But his ship had decided for him that there were critical repairs that need be done whether he liked it or not. Parts were needed, his droid informed him, and so parts were what he was attempting to wrangle from a far-too-happy-looking Zabrak. The fellow was tall and skinny, with pale tattoos that were mostly fine lines than what Tolsen was used to seeing. The nautolan listened carefully as the Zabrak attempted to wheedle him out of an extra thousand credits.

 

“And you are sure?” He asked.

The zabrak grinned. “Very sure! Why would Zarka lie to great Jedi, ehn? Zaraka no lie. This part worth many many more cred. I give to you cheap-cheap. You—“

 

He didn’t have time. The council had him on an errand that he must not delay any further with. Sometimes, he wished he were younger and not so responsible. Tolsen waved a hand to stop the Zabrak from his tirade.

 

“It’s fine, it’s fine. I’ll take i—“

 

A wave of emotion rolled over Tolsen as steep as an ocean, frozen with fear. Revulsion, hate, panic, fear, desperation…All of it invaded his senses keenly. It was only a split second before the boil of emotions were cut off sharp as the edge of a vibro knife…But he had felt it. He felt it almost too strongly, actually, and that got his attention more than anything.

 

It had been sent along the force in wedge-like crudeness. A painful, uncontrolled spike. There’s an untrained force sensitive on this planet? He wondered. One in distress too.

 

“Jedi?” The Zabrak asked. “You pay—“

“Not now, Zarka. I’ll be back.” Tolsen strode from the counter, a string of Zarka’s unhappy expletives following him out.

 

 

********

 

 

“Master, I am telling you—I know what I felt,” Tolsen pleaded with his old Master ferverently. “There’s an untrained force user in great pain. I have to—“

 

His master’s wizened face showed more wrinkles in her deepening frown. “I see that your impulsiveness remains,” Bezu’al replied dryly. “Tolsen, you have been given a task by the council itself. It is imperative—“

 

“We cannot simply leave her,” he interjected.

“Her?” His master’s holo projection quirked a brow.

 

“Yes,” he returned, resolute. A thousand light years away and even Bezu’al could see her once-padawan’s stubborn jut of jaw. After a long moment of static-filled silence, Tolsen’s master’s holo image fitzing in and out, she turned her head to stare at him out of the corner of one eye. A habit that her Padawans would quietly mimic behind giggling hands as children.

 

“How do you know it is not a ruse, Tolsen?” The question was the same he was thinking and it hit him quietly.

 

“I just…I have faith in the Force, Master. I believe now it led me here for a reason. And that reason is her.”

 

He is still so young, Bezu’al thought. So full of himself and eager. Did I make a mistake in letting the council raise him? She finally sighed, a long, drawn out elder-sound.

 

Tolsen watched as his Master’s frown eased away and her brows smoothed into their usual calm expression. He couldn’t help but smile.

 

“Very well,” she said. “But—“ she said sharply in the face of her once-padawans growing grin. “I will give you three days—“

“But Master—“

“Three days, Tolsen. The council will not be happy with me as it is when I explain what is taking you so long. Find out who it is and help them if you can. If you cannot…”

 

Tolsen bowed his head. “I understand.”

 

Bezu’al allowed herself a small smile at Tolsen. “Be careful, Tolsen, and May the Force be with you.”

 

With those words, Tolsen flicked the holo comm off, tucked it away into one of his many robes pockets and began the search in earnest.

Honestly, this is beautifully written and detailed, I can literally feel (though not to a great extent.) some of the emotions going through the girl's head, you detailed her in a way that leave no questions to ask or answer, and I can literally imagine every corner of the areas you detail, this is very beautifully written and I'm glad that someone like you is posting this great fanfic on the forum.

Honestly, this is beautifully written and detailed, I can literally feel (though not to a great extent.) some of the emotions going through the girl's head, you detailed her in a way that leave no questions to ask or answer, and I can literally imagine every corner of the areas you detail, this is very beautifully written and I'm glad that someone like you is posting this great fanfic on the forum.

 

Thank you so much. There's really no means to express how much it means to me when I know people are reading and enjoying it, more so when they are feeling it, seeing it, and getting it too. Thank you again, Kuronan. Your reply made my day

 

And belated thank you to ldMerlin, too. Some how I had missed your earlier reply weeks ago

 

I know that there are probably several inconsistencies with SWTOR lore as well as spelling or grammar mistakes. Please do not hesitate to point these out to help me present a stronger, more flowing story for the forums to read. I appreciate every set of eyes here.

 

Thank you!

 

 

 

“This is the fifth one, Fanar. The fifth.”

 

Fanar was a wrinkled and hunched over old man with wretched skin long ago corrupted by the darkness of his soul. Fanar bobbed his head along with his Lord’s savagely snarled numbering.

 

Darth Rend was so put out that he had come all the way to this wretched, useless planet to find a potential apprentice only to have them literally explode and die. The Sith’s leather gloves creaked as he made fists, feeding and drinking in his fury.

 

“Yes My Lord, yes, you are quite correct. They do not make them like they used to, do they?” Mumbling to himself as the old man bent to the task of picking up melted pieces of his master’s last apprentice. Darth Rend had no luck these past few decades in finding an force sensitive worthy enough to survive his master’s teaching in the dark arts of healing. Most of them snapped early on as he tore their minds open as he impatiently tried to imprint his knowledge upon them. Some of them, like this poor fellow, electrocuted themselves, unable to control the force lightening they called to their fingertips. Others were so incredibly stupid he took great enjoyment and liberty of ending their insipid line then and there, hopefully extinguishing a prospective line of idiotic force wielders to come.

 

Of course, if they eventually did survive all of that without turning into drooling sacks of flesh, Rend’s enemies were wont to send their apprentices after Rend’s newly weakened apprentice. Some of the most horrific ‘accidents’ tended to befall them.

 

Not that the sith cared, really. It was simply ridiculous inconvenient to have to start the process over and over again. So disgustingly tedious. If Darth Rend was anything it was not nor would it ever be patient.

 

Golden eyes the color of Korriban sunsets flatly watched Fanar work diligently. Pulling apart fleshy parts of fried apprentice from the office wall with slick, wet, sucking sounds—some of the skin had fused to the metal, you see. Always a chore. Fanar had followed Rend young; both of them young. From the Academy onward. Fanar’s ability with the force had been so minute that it should have gotten him extinguished—but he had made a deal with Rend earlier on, I do not ask anything from you, he had said, but to serve. If killing me now serves you, then do it. If not, I pledge my life in your service, all that I know of the other students—their weakness and their fears I will tell you as your humble slave.

 

Rend of course understood Fanar had been a coward and seeking protection from his fellow students who smelled his weakness on him as beasts smell the first drawn blood at the kill. Fanar had known Rend would go far. And even Rend knew the value of a loyal slave. It was not the first time as he found himself watching his slave that he wished Fanar had been stronger in the force as he would have made the most loyal—the most lethal of apprentices with his fanatical and unquestionable faith in his master.

 

Alas, it was not meant to be. Even Fanar’s pithy traces of the force could no longer hold back his inevitable end: the dying of his body. A pity that. It would inconvenience him for a long time in attempting to replace Fanar when he died.

 

Tipping his head to the side, the Sith pure blood absently trailed eyes along the charred creatures exposed rib cage. It seemed to him as if it grinned, mocking him for the ability to find a pure blooded Sith. All he needed was one. One strong enough in the force to compliment his abilities; one that he could hone and shape, manipulate like had Fanar….One to stave off the flickering scenes of fate a vision from the force had brought him one night…

 

“They do not. The blood is weak, old man. I do not know if—“

 

Rend felt himself caught up in a wave of delicious, sweet despair. A whirling mass of blackness that he had not felt in such a long, long time. The emotions washed over him and drenched him in such pervasive fear that he felt his mouth begin to water in hunger for it. It was so beautiful…so deep and so vast for that split second he felt he might laugh at the sheer exquisiteness of it.

 

Even Fanar stopped in the midst of pulling the charred, blackened mess from the floor to stare vacantly ahead of himself and then tip his ruined eyes upward to his master; skin flushed a deeper, bloody red with open desire.

 

“My Lord? Was that—“

“That,” Rend replied hoarsely, straightening himself up and smoothing a gloved hand over elaborate robes, petting himself akin to pleasured cat. “That, I believe, is who we are truly here for.”

 

And Rend smiled.

 

Fanar remembered that smile. It was the same one he had given him when he’d begged Rend to let him live as his slave. The same one he used when he broke minds for the joy of it, tortured the weak and crushed the necks of those who dared oppose him. It was the same unhinged grin that haunted Fanar’s nightmares every single night—and it would be the death of Fanar.

 

And when that happened he would open his arms and laugh; all of the twisted things his master allowed him to witness and be part of. Was that not worth all of it? It was. Fanar knew his death would be glorious.

 

“I shall ready a vehicle for you, My Lord. Does My Lord wish this one to accompany him?”

 

“No, Fanar, The Painted Lady will give me little in the way of trouble. Besides, what could you possibly do old man?” Rend sneered at him, ancient and used up. The Sith twisted a hand dismissively at his slave and stepped forward. Voluminous robes in intrinsic and detailed designs whispered like madness around the Sith lords ankles in red and black, reminding Fanar of bloodied smoke.

 

“I have a hankering to see how our little venture is doing. I think our little slave Javoran has found something interesting, don’t you?” He was positively purring.

“Yes My Lord,” Fanar bowed deeply and began to back out.

“And Fanar?”

“Yes, My Lord?”

“Have this mess cleaned by the time I return.”

 

And he was gone. Fanar did not need to hear a spoken or else. He returned to scrubbing the pieces of burnt bits of skin and bone with purpose.

 

 

 

 

“Who did it? Who did this to you?!” Warrell asked. He’d found Jahnya tremble-handed-fumbling behind the bar looking for his first aid supplies kept behind the bar in a dented, rusted old container. Her hands had been too slippery to grab at anything properly. Light headed and unable to fight him off, the overweight Aqualish had plucked her from the floor and set her on the bar top easily as a child moves a toy. He took the first aid-kit and kicked the seen-better-days medical droid at the same time, and then refused to take no for an answer as he attended the damage.

 

Half of the wound was down to the bone and Warrell as he worked to clean it and close it, demanded who did it, when they did it, and why so he could make them pay. She just kept shaking her head at him shortly, which got a round of reminders from him to stop moving, damn it, and then another round of questioning.

 

Jahnya simply felt…nothing. Hollowed out. Scooped empty. Tired. Pain. Her entire face burned and throbbed, made worse by the nerve endings mending together as Warrell cleaned the wound best he could and packed it with kolto.

 

“I’ll kill ‘im,” Warrell uttered over and over. “I will, swear it Pinkie. Gonna rip them to pieces n’ p*ss on the parts.”

It wasn’t hard to figure out who Warrell was blaming. Sluggishly as she felt exhaustion creep, she put her hand on the bar keeps massive wrist.

 

“No one did this,” softly. There was a strange twist to her words given how deep the cuts were, how her face was already swelling from healing and the cut across her lip. It made the giant of a bumbling keep stop and tipped his head down to stare at her blankly for a long time. Long enough that the medical droid that finally booted itself up to be useful had edged in between Warrell and her and was double checking everything, sealing the edges of her skin together and pressing bandages along them.

 

Long enough that the droid finished Warrell’s job, settled itself back to the place it had been kicked awake, and de-activated itself before Jahnya saw the realization flicker to life.

 

“But…why?”

“No one wants to own an ugly slave dancer,” flatly.

 

From the quiet darkness both of them turned their heads—Javoran’s burning red eyes were slit with amusement as the sound of his palms brought together in mocking applause seemed louder than thunderclaps.

 

“Well, well, well—what do we have here?” He put his hands behind his back and came closer to lean forward and inspect the wounds Jahnya’s face. The girl recoiled, Warrell shut his mouth. For all the talk about killing anyway, Warrell knew where his money was coming from. She didn’t expect anything less or better of him. Warrell looked away. Javoran smiled his ugly smile.

 

“You’re a farking idiot,” he hissed sharply, reaching forward for her chin and turning her face upward to the light. His thumb pressed along the bandages on her chin, the edge of the largest self-inflicted cut. A new bloom of blood flowered on the sterile bandage.

 

“You think anyone cares about your face?” He s*****red a childish little laugh and let go of her as Jahnya struggled to see through the stars that had burst in her eyes with renewed pain. “At any rate, you’ve not thought your clever plan through very well. Do you think I don’t know anyone who could fix that?” He looked off, and took a stretch and a yawn, the complete polar opposite of what he was the night before.

 

“I think I’ll get you a new face,” he said, putting his hands on his hips and staring at the mess of empties left from the night before. She’d not picked them up yet. “I’m tired of staring at your old one. And—“

 

He turned. His teeth were too-white in his mouth. “—You’ll be paying me back to correct that mess you made.” The smile dropped, fake as plastics. “Now get off your useless *** and clean this place up. We’re going to have a visitor.” He tucked his hands in his pocket and began to meander back to his back office. He paused long enough to turn about and look back.

 

“Oh, and when you’re done, come upstairs and get ready.”

“Ready for what?” She found herself blurting without thinking.

 

“You’re going to be dancing for our guest along with the other girls. Think I’ll put you on a pole with mommy dearest. “ Javoran laughed high-pitched as he left her with the echo of his last words.

 

She slid from the bartop numbly and mechanically did what she was told.

 

If there was any hope that lay in Jahnya’s breast—it finally died. A bird in the hands of a cruel man, wings broken and ribs crushed.

 

 

 

Earlier that morning.

 

 

"I want to see them all," the voice crackled from the other end of the holocomm.

"My--my lord?" Javoran whined.

"Do not act as if you did not hear me," whip-cracked the master's voice on the other end. Javoran felt an invisible hand around his neck, squeezing. "I am aware of your habits of squirreling one or two away for yourself, despite the fact you were expressly told not to."

 

The twi'lek male gargled helplessly, apologizing to his master and the true owner of The Painted Lady. Well, best he could, choking to death as it were.

 

"Have them all out and dressed. I wish to inspect them." The holo call ended and so too did the crushing around his throat. Javoran didn't spend too much time gasping for air. He rolled to his feet and began rousing the girls upstairs.

 

And then, he made his way down stairs. His lord had said all of them. That meant Jahnya, too.

 

 

____________________________________________________

 

 

 

Hours later

 

The upstairs of the Painted Lady was an entirely different world to her. It was much cleaner, first of all. There were rooms to let here for the girl's customers if said customers didn't have anywhere else to go with them. They weren't blaster blackened or stained with various bits of unwary patrons. There were lights and mirrors and dresses, silks and swashes of colors. Every girl had their own room with a bed and a dresser and a stand and their things. A home away from home. When Javoran brought her up by the grip on her arm and tossed her into the multicolored fray of twi'leks barely dressed, they cooed and pet her. Tried to soothe her.

 

When he left, they gave her sad looks. Like little puppies, trying to apologize for accidents on carpets. They knew the life that was in store for her. They understood what was to happen from now on. They took her with gentle hands and guided her to an empty room of her own and filled the bare walls with their giggling and their whispered advice. The first time is always the worst, one whispered. We'll find you a nice one, one that's gentle, another one--a twi'lek in purple, whispered. It's not so bad, another twi'lek girl giggled, sfter a while, you'll learn to like it. All the while they brought in costumes and clothing. Bits and baubles they said they didn't need anymore but might look fantastic on Jahnya. They hung swatches of pink fabric on her bare walls. Jahnya watched them from a place far, far away.

 

She sat on the edge of the bed and felt like she were in a kolto tank. She heard what they said. She saw what they did. She felt their fingers remove the rags of clothing and wash her skin. But she couldn't feel anything. Nothing, at any rate, but the strange thrumming at the back of her head. Some sort of pressure that kept pressing, squeezing, humming. She didn't know how to describe it--as if something were trying to force its way into her skull all the while draining the despair and hopelessness from her...leaving her empty.

 

She was aware of all of it.

 

And didn't care. Couldn't care? She tried to care but--

 

The last twi'lek that came to her was her own mother. By then, most of the other girls had giggled out in a cloud of perfume and make up to get ready. The master's coming! One of the squealed. Oh I don't like him! Another replied. I don't care, a round green one said. He's powerful and rich. Imagine if we could catch his eye?

 

Her mother she barely recognized. Once in Jahnya's life, her mother had been a plush sanctuary. A healthy woman who had hummed beautiful songs and wiped away tears. Now, she looked drained. The metal bikini contraption Javoran insisted she parade herself about in hung from her instead of clinging to curves. Her eyes were sunken into the blue of her skin. Deep lines of make up were drawn around them in an attempt to hide how tired and strung-out she was. And her eyes...Glossy and gone. Jahnya knew that if she looked at herself in the mirror then--if she saw herself in the make up and clothing the girls had put on her, her eyes would look the same.

 

Her mother reached out once to try and touch the bandages on her cheek. Jahnya felt something twist inside of her and her head jerked away.

 

Her mother dropped her hands and pressed something small into her palm instead. "It will numb the..." her mother mumbled. "Numb...everything. Take it."

 

And that was it. Her mother arose and left. Years apart with no words between them and all she had to say was this.

 

Jahnya looked down at what her mother had pressed into her palm. A small vial of golden dust, glittering akin to the ridiculous outfit they had slipped her into.

 

She stared at it for a long while. The odd thrumming and pulsing at the back of her head, eating at her will, pushed and pulled at her. The thrumming...if she spent enough time trying to focus on it, almost sounded like whispering.

 

She opened the vial.

 

 

____________________________________________________

 

 

 

"My lord," Kurakk said, trying to stand at attention without letting go of the sheet around his middle, squinting into the bright light of the holo projection of the Sith and salute smartly at the same time without ramming his horns into the bunk above him. Farkling ship. One of these days, he was gonna get himself a real bed.

 

"I will be inspecting my investments shortly," the Sith said. "You will accompany me." Before Kurakk could say a snappy Yes my Lord, the image of the Sith and his robes winked out.

 

Kurakk felt both of his hearts skip a beat: Jahnya.

 

He didn't know why, but he thought of her. He thought of her and he felt honest to goodness fear. Something else he hadn't felt in years either--damn that twi'lek--but he didn't stop to think. Just act. He tossed the blanket and went scrambling for his armor.

 

 

 

____________________________________________________

 

 

 

Tolsen Cass had opened himself to the force as much as he could allow himself. He felt it move through him and fill him with purpose. He let it guide him and his travels were soon forced lower and lower down in Nar Shaddaa. Past the clean streets lit with neon lights to the streets filled with empty eyes and hollow cheeks--to where men stared at him, hard, and didn't care what color his robes were.

 

He moved further in, sensing something else--sensing an urgency along the tendrils of power that churned within him. Something was happening. Something he needed to stop now, before it was too late. The sense of something dark and unpleasant lurked beyond it all.

 

Sith.

 

It's what it had to be. Nothing could taint the force as much as a full-blooded Sith; the dark side filling his senses like rotten meat. There was a Sith somewhere on this planet and the force was leading Tolsen right to it.

 

So be it, he thought. If the Sith was here, it was probably after the same thing Tolsen was. Whomever released that blast of emotions earlier. The force sensitive.

 

Tolsen had to get to her before the Sith did. The sense of urgency collided to make what felt like a burst of stars in his chest--that was it. That's what he was meant to do here.

 

He hurried even more and hoped against all hope that he would be able to save her before the Sith got to her.

Edited March 5, 2012 by Jahnya

Q_Q... Nfffm.