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Lodestone: A Wynston/Ruth Alternate Universe


bright_ephemera

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Hello, and welcome to an alternate Warrior/Agent drama-romance! The AU thread has been a great source of ideas. Then, a recent storyline I concocted in the Short Fic (main universe) thread showed me a great jumping-off point where Wynston, the agent of the Ruth Means Compassion storyline, might have changed things a lot.

 

Skip down here if you already know the SFC and AU thread leadup.

 

The Lodestone AU is predicated on the idea that, after his class storyline, Wynston, rather than playing cautious with a newly traumatized Wrath, just goes to her. After his class line and disastrous falling-out with Kaliyo, but before his slouch into alcoholism; after her disastrous about-face over Corellia but before she finishes her class line, he goes to look for her. The much later material of the Ruth-less thread never happens; things unwind in a different way…

 

There's already a lot of material published in the short fic threads. I'll repost it here. All this is best understood by having read RMC. Spoilers for the Warrior, Agent, and Jedi Knight plotlines, particularly endgame, are pervasive.

 

As a formatting convention, sections that are identical to canon Ruth Means Compassion passages or previously unpublished RMC canon segments are published in blue. Links to passages that closely parallel and provide a contrast to RMC stories are provided as appropriate.

Edited by bright_ephemera
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Wynston has minimal material in the class-line section of the RMC timeline. He appears briefly as a love interest on Dromund Kaas and Nar Shaddaa, and an ally on Alderaan, Quesh, and Voss. The rest of the time, well, he has his own problems and those were not treated in text. Thus he's kind of getting dropped in here with little to no recent history.

 

L-3, part 1

 

 

In the melee Wynston wrenched a bulky blaster rifle from one of the anarchist thugs. When the last anarchist went down, he turned his weapon on the woman who had brought him here.

 

Kaliyo Djannis grinned at him from where she stood on the other side of her fallen contact Wheezer and his dead friends. "Finally got yourself a real firearm, huh?"

 

"You bring every weapon you can," he said.

 

"Yes, I do." Kaliyo grinned approval. "You worked out nicely. Anyway. I really thought the Wheezer wanted to meet you to talk, not pull something. Guess it worked out." She lowered her rifle.

 

Wynston didn't.

 

She frowned at him. "What?"

 

"You've been selling information to these anarchists."

 

"Well, yeah."

 

Again he had to ask himself, what had made Intelligence insist on hiring her? He had never figured it out. Firepower, but they could have gotten that anywhere else. An enjoyable mistress in every possible sense, but his employers weren't known for assigning priority to that. So why? What justified letting her using his agency – sometimes going over his head to do so – for the destruction she did? Stay calm, he reminded himself. Cool. Professional. "How long?"

 

"Since I signed on with you," she said breezily. "I sold him some stuff on Dromund Kaas and it just became a regular thing. He pays better than you do, and it's not like it got you in trouble. You guys keep all kinds of goodies at your fingertips, they were going to waste." When he failed to return her smile she huffed impatiently. "Come on. I never talked about the missions, I'm not stupid. This guy was into bombing spaceports and raiding transports, not high espionage."

 

"You of all people should have known not to sell out the Empire on my watch." He had been her meal ticket for a long time. He had offered good pay, good sex, challenge, entertainment, pathetically devoted backup. He had done everything in his power to keep her satisfied and he had loved every minute of it…but then, in the choice between grasping for more and offering whatever nonrecreational use she was supposed to be good for, what had he really expected out of her? "I knew you were made for backstabbing, but you were supposed to betray me. You'd find some way to sell me out, I'd get out of it, I'd take down anyone who was foolish and crooked enough to take whatever bargain you'd offered. We'd fight. We'd have fun. You could've made it something forgivable. But instead you did this, helped your terrorist friends kill my people. Innocents, Kaliyo."

 

"Credits, Wynston," she said impatiently. "You should know by now that I am never going to care about the Empire and its capital-P People. Not like you do, not at all."

 

"This went too far." It didn't matter what purpose she was supposed to serve. The only correct course of action now was a trigger squeeze. Wynston had catalogued a thousand projected situations in which he might have to kill Kaliyo Djannis: when it came to this one, he realized, he couldn't do it.

 

"I'll be returning to the ship," he said instead. "You won't. Get moving."

 

"Oh, yeah? And just how am I supposed to get off this rock?"

 

"Credits?" he suggested coldly. He didn't trust his composure to hold at cool anymore.

 

"Huh." She nodded slowly, her eyes flicking between his rifle and his face. "You really mean it, don't you. You're just gonna cut me loose."

 

"Yes. Settle your accounts with Intelligence on your own time." Let them sort out her purpose. Or let them admit she had played them all. "Don't come after me. I promise I'll leave you be so long as you walk away now."

 

Anger hardened her voice. "You can't ditch me that easy. You don't get to make that call."

 

"I just did. You started this. I'm telling you where it stops."

 

Her lips pulled back from her teeth. "I can wreck you, Wynston. I can tear down everything you ever built."

 

True. That was why he had to stop it. That was why he was cursing himself for being unable to end it. "I'm aware."

 

"'Aware' but you'll still turn your back on me? You owe me better than that, you slime."

 

Calm, he reminded himself. Cold. Professional. "You want my respect, you have it. You're the most dangerous woman I ever met and that was before you learned enough to shred me and everything I've worked for. I know all that. Still, it's you." All right, maybe not a hundred percent professional. "I can't let you keep using my resources, but I will let you go."

 

Now her voice was rough-edged, her sneer pronounced. "So what, am I supposed to be grateful that you've deemed me worthy to keep breathing? You're never gonna stop being that self-righteous karking pr*ck, are you? Newsflash, blue-freak, I don't need your blessing to exist."

 

Calm. Cold. Professional. He nodded down at his blaster rather than taking his aim off her to gesture with it. "You really do. Prior to today I never considered revoking it."

 

"Come off it," she spat. "Like you haven't been paid to do worse yourself. You're as dirty as I am." She rolled her eyes in exaggerated disgust. "So fine. Let's call it even, we go back to the ship, you can still save the Empire – it's not like my side deals were gonna bring the whole thing crashing down, and I'll stop doing it anyway. Just skip the bull**** about punishing me over your stupid schoolboy principles."

 

The abuse didn't bother him; verbal punching bag was just one of the many services he had offered her, and with every fresh temper tantrum she took full advantage. It didn't matter anymore. He edged backward toward the courtyard gate. "I won't punish you. Just don't follow me."

 

She took a step towards him anyway. When he failed to fire, she raised her hairless brows. Her aura of rage settled into a calmer arrogance. "You haven't shot me yet. You're not going to. I don't think you can do it, agent." She even managed a dark smile. "Those big professional balls aren't up to it this time, are they?"

 

"I'm giving you a chance, Kaliyo. Take it." He had to break down for one of the words they never said to each other. "Please."

 

"Aww," she drawled. "Is that where this is going? We talk about our feelings together?"

 

That stung. It was he who had first thrown those words at her the one time she had tried to talk about something that was neither work nor play. She got what she wanted out of him, and uneven though it was, he got what he wanted out of her; he had refused to let that dynamic change. The refusal was supposed to keep things under control, keep them clean. It hadn't worked.

 

"Go," he said.

 

"No," she replied, and started her play. She wasn't stupid enough to bring the rifle up to aim; instead she let it fall to hang by its shoulder strap as she approached him with a lazy sway-hipped gait. "Look, Wyn, I know you're mad. I was a bad girl. But I'll make it up to you, promise. This ride is too good for you to give up now and we both know it. Plus, I will make the very short remainder of your life hell if you leave me on this rock. So let's just go, yeah?" She edged in to touch him, ignoring his own rifle.

 

He let the weapon drop. Kaliyo's rages could pass as quickly as they came. She knew he knew that. Hell, she knew he liked it, the crash from reckless abuse to reckless other things, the game of provoking or preventing either or both. This close she smelled of plasma, sweat, scorched armor, with the sharp edge of blood. Around anyone else that meant unpleasant cleanup; around her it meant foreplay. He settled one hand against the perfect warm curve of her waist.

 

"I can be good," she purred. Of course she would think that he would be suckered into an embrace right after an exchange like that. Wynston would very much have liked to be suckered into it. Instead he leaned into her, swept a dart out of his pocket, and planted it in her side. It was the only trick he had that wouldn't kill her. He knew she carried no corresponding mercy. She never had.

 

Her eyes widened. "That was my move."

 

"Got there first," he said softly, pushing aside the black-nailed hand that had been both caressing his back and slipping a knife from its sleeve sheath. The sedative would take another few moments for full effect, but he already had the physical advantage.

 

She bared her teeth again. "You always fell for that before."

 

"I always wanted to fall for it before." He caught her when she swayed. "But you can't play me for everything." With practiced care he eased her to the ground.

 

She grasped at his jacket and stared up at him, her streaked ivory face warping with fury. "I'll kill you," she said hoarsely. "You think you've beaten me? I'll hunt you down and I will kill you."

 

"Don't try." He considered a last kiss, decided it was too late for that. "It's been fun, love. Goodbye."

 

Kaliyo's silver-tipped eyelashes fluttered a few more times before she lost consciousness completely.

 

Wynston got up, walked briskly over to his former partner's dead anarchist friends, and started searching them for items of interest, anything he could bring home to report on. Calm, he reminded himself. Cold. Professional. He went through the motions of gathering evidence for this meaningless side task and then started back toward the ship, leaving his uncorrected mistake behind.

 

 

 

L-3, part 2

 

 

Wynston took the ship's ramp at a fast walk. He found Temple and Vector in the holo room playing pazaak at a little table set up right next to the medbay. Doctor Lokin, as expected, was busy within.

 

"Kaliyo won't be returning," Wynston announced evenly. "Temple, take us to Vaiken Spacedock, it's time to get back to work." He ignored the speculative look behind the thin amiable veil Doctor Lokin kept up. If the old blackguard turned out to have known even more about Kaliyo's friends than he had let on, Wynston might find it in himself to stab a crewmate after all; but that was a matter for later. "If Kaliyo does show her face, don't let her get close. She'll be out for blood. I'll be in my quarters, I have some matters to arrange."

 

Then he retreated. It was time to…to sort something out. He was off balance and he didn't like it.

 

He considered calling Vector in to talk. Then again, talking to someone that close might be unwise; Wynston needed time to sort out what to say and what to hide, both in the facts, which he might end up being honest about, and the feelings, which he certainly wasn't ready to lay out before his own crew.

 

Still, he wanted to talk to someone. The mere superficial fact of exchanging words might calm him somewhat.

 

He briefly considered going out to pay for someone to look after him for a change. But no, he wasn't in the mood. Anger didn't do it for him, and he was, in spite of his efforts to keep a fence around the feeling, furious with himself. As for just finding someone to talk to, his address book was extensive, but when it came to contacts that could both offer good company and understand when to stop asking questions the list was short.

 

Ruth was an obvious candidate. It wasn't often a woman stayed on speaking terms with him after marrying someone else, but Ruth was still warm. Friendly, genuine, trustworthy. Unavailable, but that didn't matter so much. She still brought out the best in him. She was everything Kaliyo wasn't. And maybe a hands-off kind of girl would do him some good.

 

He called and she answered quickly, coming up in an imposing set of black armor. That was a switch. She used to favor a modified Imperial uniform that gave her a charmingly ordinary aspect.

 

"Wynston," she said. She didn't smile.

 

"Ruth," he said cordially. "I've finally had time to come up for air. I thought I'd call in, see how things are going with you."

 

"Busy," she said.

 

"Busy where, exactly?" he asked. Something felt off.

 

"Corellia." There was a defiant sound to it. "You can tell your masters if you like."

 

That would be a reference to the chunk of Imperial Intelligence that had been handed to her former master Darth Baras. Surprising that she thought he would accept Baras's leadership. Very surprising that she thought he would inform on her. "I wasn't planning on it. You know, I was on Corellia not long ago." He tried a smile. "It seems we just missed each other."

 

"Yes. Interesting timing, you calling now. What do you want?"

 

Giving the usual glib line about simply wanting to see her would be either well received or…disastrously not, given the brittle sound of her. He had never seen her like this. He liked to follow a woman's moods, map out what she wanted, provide what he could, at least until the job called him elsewhere. It was fun, even with the crazy ones. It was rewarding. It was…hard, when someone gave him a turnaround like this. He decided to give her the truth. "I'd like to catch up. I'm between jobs. Things have been eventful, things I can talk about for once."

 

"Oh?" she said warily.

 

"Crew shakeups, mostly. You may be glad to know that Kaliyo's gone."

 

Somewhere in there, Ruth flinched. "Crew shakeups," she repeated quietly. "Um, Kaliyo. I'm sorry. I know you were fond of her."

 

He shrugged. "I wouldn't worry too much. We all knew it was coming sometime." He pushed away the thoughts of every kind of trouble she could wreak due to his having been unprepared when the time did come.

 

"Yes," said Ruth. "Yes, at least you saw it coming." For a second her mouth just hung open; then her jaw clenched convulsively and, after a quick breath, she moved on. "I'm afraid there's not much I can do about it."

 

"I wouldn't ask you to. But I would like to see you, if you have the time."

 

"I don't," she said coldly. "Sorry."

 

Upset wasn't a good look for her. "Ruth…what's happening? What did happen?"

 

"I told you, I'm busy. For once it's me who can't give you details, I'm sure you understand."

 

"No, I don't. Is there anything I can do?"

 

"No." Her lip curled in a decidedly unnatural way. "It's nice that you're newly single and so very anxious to help. You can just keep fighting the good fight wherever you are."

 

"Something's obviously gone wrong where you are, and I'm not calling to pursue you like that. I'd like to do whatever I can, just tell me plainly what the matter is."

 

"Plainly?" She lifted her chin in that way she had when she was reminding herself to be commanding. And she was commanding, regal in a chilling way. A familiar way, but familiar from others, never from the pretty idealist of Dromund Kaas. "I don't want you anywhere near me, agent."

 

The Sith Lord cut the signal.

 

Of all possible reactions to his call, Wynston hadn't even imagined that one. He held the immediate sting of her rejection at arm's length for the moment; dwelling on that would be beyond counterproductive. Even if he couldn't get her alone for a tête-a-tête, he had hoped for some work or some favor-working to take his mind off things just then, something constructive, something good. But evidently his favorite partner for these things, his only regular one outside his own crew, was busy.

 

Worse than that. What had worked that change? He wanted to know, wanted a problem he could work on. Had Baras picked up too great a victory? Crew shakeups. Had the lieutenant or the Talz finally run too far out of line? Had Vette or Jaesa run afoul of a Sith even Ruth couldn't handle? Not likely, that. Had Captain Fullofhimself managed to run through her infinite goodwill? That also seemed unlikely, but if anyone could succeed in souring a love that extravagant it would be that walking irritation machine.

 

As if Wynston were in a position to criticize people for their taste in lovers.

 

A soft beep indicated a call coming in on the main holo. Wynston headed out to answer and was relieved to see the person he still thought of as Watcher Two. Just what he needed: something to take his mind off actual women.

 

He remembered the correct title when he spoke. "Keeper, I could kiss you right now."

 

"You really couldn't, Cipher," she said with her familiar refrigerated disdain.

 

At least someone was reacting as expected today. "Well then, what can I do for you?"

 

"Something's come up and I think we should have that talk about what you can do for Imperial Intelligence in your new capacity sooner rather than later."

 

"Certainly. By the way, you should cut Kaliyo Djannis's accounts as soon as possible."

 

"What?" She started forward, then shook her head and consciously relaxed. "Finally. She beat all projections we set on her in terms of useful life. I suppose we had you to thank for that, if 'thank' is the word." Her brows knit together. "I don't suppose you can remove her once and for all?"

 

"She got away."

 

"Understood. That's quite unfortunate...and, something of a surprise. I wouldn't have bet on her against you."

 

"You don't have to finish that analysis." By raw capability, Keeper was right; Wynston should never have lost. It was the motivation that had failed. The last thing he needed now was his former boss lecturing him on the weakness he had cultivated.

 

She did her superior eyebrow raise. "The analysis from your new information is already done. But it seems a little late to berate you over it."

 

"That's very kind of you. As for a meeting, just give me a time and place and I'll be there."

 

"Will you be ready to work?"

 

"Absolutely. And just think, this time you'll have my full attention."

 

Her voice was exasperated but her half-smile was tolerant. "You'll never change, will you, Cipher?"

 

"Not if I can help it." So long as he had one or two familiar stars left, however distant, he could steer things back to course. He hadn't been alone in quite some time, but he was pretty sure he remembered how it worked.

 

 

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L - 2

 

 

When Wynston entered the conference room on the vessel Tenebrous, the Minister of Intelligence was already there, pacing with his hands behind his back, examining the walls as if determined to find a security problem in this ship he hadn't personally designed. Watcher Two – no, Keeper – was at the table console; she looked up and smiled when Wynston came in.

 

It was the Minister who spoke first, turning to face Wynston in a rigid pose. "Agent," he said coolly with the barest of nods. This was the distant mentor Wynston knew. Knew, and admired for his determination and skill.

 

"Please, call me Cipher. For old times' sake." Admiration notwithstanding, Wynston had stopped the formalities with his commander long ago; flippancy was just so tempting.

 

"Hm," said the Minister.

 

"We're glad you came," said Keeper. "There is a great deal to do, and the two of us have considerable demands on our time from the Sith and the military as they attempt to reconstitute some kind of Intelligence puppet."

 

"I'm sorry." He meant it, too. Keeper could deal with anything, but it was still a bad situation, and the Minister had worked too hard for too long to be reduced to this kind of squabbling. They deserved better.

 

"It is what it is," the Minister said sharply. "The fact is, the Dark Council is rapidly destabilizing and it is making an effort to bring Intelligence and half the military with it. The loose ends left by the Star Cabal are almost too many to name and we must seize as many as we can before they go to waste or are detected and taken by the Republic or the cartels. We have transferred what resources we can to these efforts without drawing the attention of our masters, but we can't do everything at once."

 

"That's what I'm here for." It was good to be needed somewhere.

 

The Minister nodded. "I expect much of your time in the immediate future may be occupied by administrative work here, but your attention should also be on Corellia. Much of the Dark Council has made the planet its battlefield; two nights ago Darth Thanaton was killed by a minor lord and as we speak Darth Baras is actively hunting what it pains me to call the relatively moderate Darth Vowrawn."

 

"Do we want Baras to win?" Painful though the question was, it was a legitimate one; Baras was shrewd and his vision for the Empire was solid. The only question was whether his brand of Sith crazy was something Intelligence could compensate for.

 

"No. He is too unstable; he'll tear resources down as quickly as he raises them, as you well know. He must go, and he must go before he cannibalizes the remainder of our war machine. Now, his other target on Corellia is the so-called Emperor's Wrath. That status could be tremendously useful."

 

"Yes, it could be."

 

"This is no time to play coy, agent," snapped the Minister. "She is your friend. I want Baras removed, I want her talking to Vowrawn if you think she can influence his views, and I want her on our side while we work to stabilize the rest of the situation."

 

"I have reason to believe that may be complicated, but I'll do what I can."

 

"This is no time to start hiding behind 'complications.'"

 

A long time ago Wynston would have been intimidated by the Minister's impatience, shamed by the mere fact of it. Now he was old and self-supporting enough to simply answer. "I spoke with her just yesterday on a personal matter. The situation may be complicated. Nevertheless, I'll try to calm her down. I'm certain she's closing on the Baras issue, if nothing else." And as soon as he found a way to help, he would.

 

"The longer game is just as important. Having the Emperor's Wrath in any capacity will be as great a boon as any Star Cabal position we've been able to identify."

 

"Agreed. I believe she'll come around." The accusations she hadn't quite thrown at him indicated problems with Baras and with her friends, not with her overall pro-Empire goals. He hoped. He dearly hoped.

 

"Good," said the Minister.

 

Keeper spoke up. "While we're busy on Dromund Kaas, we'd like you to take command of the Tenebrous. Keep her out of sight while you build up the resources you'll need for independent operations."

 

"Certainly," said Wynston. "I've put some thought into it." They had laid out their requirements; time to lay out his. "I'll receive full records on any staff you send my way. There are a handful of specific agents I know I can use if you can spare them; keep me informed. I and I alone have discretion over the use of the Black Codex. You will keep me apprised of the research and development surrounding the Old Man's disguise technology as well as anything we scrounged from Belsavis and anywhere else for that matter. I'll do what I can to render the operation self-sufficient; the last thing I want is to hamper your work. Give me this much and a little time and I'll build you the finest intelligence apparatus this galaxy has ever seen." He set his hands wide on the table and leaned forward. "We'll see that the Empire stays where she needs to be, in spite of every effort her leadership throws at her."

 

"I knew we could count on you," Keeper said warmly.

 

"Of course." Mischievous habit prompted him to keep going. "I don't suppose there's any place on this hulk to drink to the new resolution?"

 

Her smile widened a tiny bit. She had made it clear long ago that she found him, Chiss that he was, personally repulsive, but they got along well at work, insincere chatter and all. "No," she said, "but I'm somewhat resigned to the fact that you'll remedy that by the next time we visit."

 

"Count on it."

 

The Minister of Intelligence cleared his throat. "Thank you, Keeper, you're dismissed." He looked at the floor in a direction that let him track her from the corner of his eye until she left. Then he turned to Wynston. "There remains the matter of Kaliyo Djannis; Keeper reports that you and she had a falling-out and she has since fled Nal Hutta. Furthermore I am given to understand that you will not be disposing of her." He scowled. "Rest assured, the matter will be handled."

 

Something unfamiliar tightened in Wynston's insides. Then again, someone had to do it. "Acknowledged and understood," he said quietly.

 

"The experience is never comfortable," said the Minister. "But it is necessary."

 

The experience of sitting still while somebody else handled the job he hadn't had the nerve for? Or the experience of losing a lover who had managed to mean something by the end? "I know." It led to an interesting thought, anyway. "Minister?"

 

"Yes?"

 

"As I stand here contemplating the fact that you're going out of your way to tell me about a kill that we both already knew you've arranged, it occurs to me that I may sometimes be more motivated after some discomfort, not to say pain. More focused. Perhaps more effective, it's difficult for me to tell."

 

"You are. Your record amply demonstrates that, if you know what to look for."

 

Wynston reminded himself who he was talking to. He thought along the useful lines, not the sentimental ones. "You could've chosen a less rampantly destructive irritant than Kaliyo."

 

"Could we have?" The Minister cocked an eyebrow. "Would you have tolerated any other irritant for so long? She appealed to your vice enough for you to stay with her and your virtue enough for you to keep trying to make up for her. She was a calculated risk; it turned out to be one of the more productive partnerships I've ever arranged."

 

For all that he had spent his whole association with Kaliyo thinking of ways to use her, this particular application and the fact that he hadn't been informed of it galled. "She's still out there. Did you calculate that?"

 

The older man's mouth thinned further for a second. "It wasn't the eventuality we would have chosen," he said. "But all may not be lost. She hasn't started trying to sell what she knows yet."

 

"I'll make a note to take comfort in that."

 

"All things considered, she was worth what we paid for her."

 

"The money, I can agree." This was the job. "But if you were orchestrating matters to that degree you must have had some say over the information she gleaned for her side jobs, selling secrets to her terrorist friends. You could have controlled what she found to sell. She was worth the money. Was she worth the blood?"

 

"Do you really need to ask that question? Just look at the workmanlike but frankly ordinary career you led before she was assigned to you. Compare it with everything you accomplished once you had her alternately supporting and driving you. Finding and taking down the Star Cabal? I would pay a few dozen lives on Brentaal for that."

 

"Next time you want me to work miracles, try just asking nicely."

 

"If I thought that would work, I would have done it."

 

"You know, the organization I build here may try the least twisted approach first on some matters, just for novelty's sake. Minister, I have the utmost respect for you, but I am glad I won't be working for you anymore."

 

"Not coincidentally, Cipher, I'm glad I am no longer formally responsible for your behavior." His frown cleared a little, and something like a sad acknowledgment gathered in his grey eyes. "You're about to take the weight of the Empire on your shoulders. I no longer have to pressure you."

 

They watched each other for a long moment.

 

"So. The mission?" prompted the Minister.

 

The part that mattered, in the end. The thing that had first brought Wynston under the Minister's tutelage and the thing that would likely bind them together as long as they both lived. "Ordinarily I would insist on kissing and making up before work continues, but I'll let it slide this once." Wynston grinned at the Minister's expression. "The mission goes on. I'll see what I can do about the Wrath. And I'll get you your start here."

 

"Good."

 

So certain. "Out of curiosity, what if I couldn't handle all this? Or if I had lost to Kaliyo much earlier. I would die young and you would just look for someone more durable, is that right?"

 

"That's correct."

 

"Your theory of management is undeniably effective, but I'm really coming to appreciate why you don't print it in the recruitment pamphlets."

 

After a flicker of irritation the…not kindness, not quite sympathy, but the clear knowledge…came back to the Minister's eyes. "This isn't glamorous work. I told you that."

 

"I remember." Wynston considered, then nodded. "Thank you. You've been a great help, and I intend to make sure the new organization lives up the vision you once held. The Empire you once hoped for. Just one more question. You've referred to your wife once or twice, always in situations where you might just have been making banal conversation as cover noise. Did you ever actually have one?"

 

The human expression in the Minister of Intelligence's aspect vanished. He walked away without answering.

 

Wynston lingered alone in the dark conference room. In the end it didn't matter what had brought the Minister here; this place was Wynston's. Soon he would build it up into every good thing Intelligence had been – he hoped – and everything it should be. He would take his place as an equal to the professionals who had taught him what protection meant and what it was likely to cost, and he would manage that cost better. He would get back to helping people. A moment's gratitude was easier and safer than anything else he could hope to earn from others. Might as well earn as many of them as possible.

 

This was something that would never stop needing him. It was opportunity. And, whatever else was happening, whatever else was going to happen, it felt good.

 

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~ L ~

Faith, Hope, and .

 

 

It took a couple of days' hunting. Vette, the only crew member Wynston had a personal holofrequency for, cut him off with a regretful but hard-eyed finality. Instead he hit the ground on Corellia and, with the certainty of a Cipher agent, followed the trail of the Intelligence employees that Sith bosses had tracking her.

 

At some point he wondered, why was he doing this?

 

He couldn't bring himself to kill Kaliyo when she finally sold him out and left. She was out there. He couldn't quite wrap his head around that disastrous moment of weakness. When he'd called Ruth for a friendly face she had answered in some dark hard mood and almost immediately cut him off. There was no companionship to be found there.

 

He had tried to sleep that night, and he had failed.

 

So he went looking. Ruth had seemed distressed. She could take care of herself, and always had, he knew that. He wasn't even wanted. But he wanted to talk to her. It wasn't that she knew him, not really. No one did; no one should. But, more than anyone, she accepted what he gave. If for once he was off balance, it might be that she could accept that, too.

 

He would never have caught her passing in Coronet Spaceport if she hadn't been walking with Lieutenant Pierce. Pierce was in that distinctive armor of his; Ruth was in, not only the black Sith-style armor he had seen via holo, but a tight blank mask. Ever since he had met her, the assurance of her carriage had been tempered by a friendly look, a terribly un-Sith tendency for her rosebud mouth to curl up at the corners. That was hidden now, bound up in something dark and unreadable.

 

She stopped in place when she noticed Wynston. He held up his empty hands and held what he hoped was eye contact.

 

Pierce leveled his blaster rifle and watched.

 

"My lord," said Wynston.

 

"Determined," said Ruth in a voice about to freeze over. "Aren't you."

 

He disregarded Pierce entirely; this was to be made or broken on Ruth's will. "You looked like you could use a friend. I'm unarmed. No tricks. I tracked you down by finding and talking with your enemies, but for what it's worth none of the ones I spoke to are left alive. If there's anything I can do. Tell me what happened."

 

She hesitated, and Wynston wished he had been able to prepare better. He wished he knew what he was supposed to prepare for. He wished he knew what had made him believe that she wouldn't hurt him. "If you insist," she said at last. "Walk."

 

She gestured on ahead and walked behind him, Pierce at her side. No chance to observe or talk. Ruth just called turns to the right or left to guide him through the crowd into her Fury's hangar.

 

Once on board Pierce searched Wynston; the big man stayed silent apart from a mild surprised grunt when he came up with nothing. Wynston had dressed with the suspicion that bringing a weapon near Ruth in the mood she had demonstrated over holo would be fatal. Ruth dismissed Pierce with a word and brought Wynston into a fairly large bedroom. There were strange blank spaces in it, some shelves cluttered, some bare. Several weapons stored in plain sight.

 

She faced him then and took off her mask, staring at him with blue eyes frozen and ready to shatter. She was pale, rigid, but she swept her fear out of sight in a breath and what was left was only anger visibly debating which way to go.

 

"My lord," he started.

 

"Don't call me that," she snapped.

 

"I'm sorry. I…Ruth?"

 

"Wrath will do."

 

"Of course, Wrath." Bad sign. "Can we talk? I'd like to help you if I can." He meant it. Right now he powerfully wanted something he could get right. "I'm between jobs. I don't know the details here but if you tell me what's going on I'm yours to try to solve it."

 

She sneered and looked him over. He wasn't out of danger yet.

 

And then she seized his sides, pulled him close, and kissed him, a hard hungering kiss that wasn't a request and wasn't their old game. Her armored body was cold and hard to the touch, her grip painful.

 

He pushed the stranger away. "Ruth, wait. I didn't mean–"

 

She pressed against his warding hands. "You can do what you came for, Wynston, I promise I won't put up a fight, not with you. But this first." Her anger slipped. "No questions."

 

No questions. The thing that cemented their trust in the past, on Quesh when he couldn't say what his problem was, only that he needed help.

 

No questions. The raw plea in her eyes made something in him ache. This wasn't what he had come for. She had told him long ago she wasn't interested, had meant it, and he had let her fade from thought, one among many opportunities that were simply past their time. He wanted to talk now, to find out what was wrong, to tell her what had driven him here. He wanted to sort things out. He wanted to understand.

 

Habit answered her need anyway. He kissed her; the rest could wait. There was nothing of softness left to her, nothing of gentleness, but she moved with him. The rest could wait.

 

When she took off her black gloves he found that she didn't have her wedding ring. Little by little he uncovered her marks and scars, so many more than he remembered from eighteen months ago: signs of the hard road that had brought her here, signs that even as he traced them felt like the least part of her pain.

 

Her returning touch was rough, and kept on being rough. He could take bruises but he didn't want them from her. "You're hurting me," he said quietly.

 

She opened her eyes. Something of the girl he knew offered a silent apology. She was gentler after that. And he matched her, gave her what he could, took what she offered.

 

She didn't push him away after. She rested her head on his chest instead, keeping her arms tucked close to his sides. It was good to feel her relax into him. It wasn't what he had come for, but this kind of thing had substituted for closeness with enough people on enough occasions in the past. It wasn't bad.

 

She didn't look at him, and her voice when she spoke was hard. "Who sent you?"

 

He kept one hand on her back, the other resting on his own chest where it could toy with her short sweat-stiff hair. "I did. My former colleagues in Intelligence will be interested in discussing matters, but they're on your side at the moment and, more importantly, neither they nor anyone is in any position to tell me to harm you."

 

"Former colleagues."

 

"Yes."

 

"That's convenient." She traced a nonsense pattern on his side. "You came to me right after Darth Baras made me his apprentice. You were sweet, helpful, inviting. So inviting. You didn't…you didn't hand me off until I was hooked on the other. You checked in now and then, just in case. Now you're here again. His opposite number, his…his backup. Right on schedule."

 

Quinn. It had to be. The details weren't there but the name surely was. "Tell me what happened."

 

She shook her head violently. "I don't think you really need to hear it. If Vette and Jaesa couldn't be corrupted, you're the closest one left." She seemed to collapse a little. "If you came all this way for me I'm not going to fight you, too. I'm too tired." She whuffed a weak dry laugh. "Still, thanks for the sex. I've been missing that."

 

"I'm not here to fight you, darling." The endearment was more habit after these motions than anything, but it sounded pleasing so he kept it. "I can't prove anything but I hope you know that I'm not the kind of fool who would take Darth Baras's orders and I'm not the kind of sadist who would string you along first for fun."

 

"I don't know anything about you," she said.

 

Part of him had hoped she would never apply that lesson to him. "If I were here to hurt you I would make it quick, if only for efficiency's sake. But I'm not." Against that paranoia he thought about trying honesty. "I came here because I needed you."

 

"You needed me." She tested the words on her tongue. She didn't kick him out, though, or laugh, or fight. "I wouldn't have expected you to come to me."

 

"Sorry." He risked a smile. "Am I ruining my mystique?"

 

She looked up and smiled back. It was the warmest thing he had ever seen. "It's still you." She dove to hide her face against his neck. "But everything else is wrong." A few silent breaths. "My father is dead."

 

Darth Baras's pattern, cutting down the support network. Wynston wondered what her father had been like. "I'm sorry. He was your only family, wasn't he?"

 

"Yes," she said. "He's gone now. Him, and then…"

 

He stroked her gently, rhythmically, but she didn't continue. "Now will you tell me what happened?" he prompted.

 

"Not yet."

 

"I see."

 

"But you called for a reason. You said things happened. Kaliyo. Is it something you want to talk about?"

 

"If you want to listen."

 

She raised her head and pushed up to settle where she could see his face, resting her head on her hand, her elbow on the pillow. "Yes. Tell me."

 

So he laced his fingers in hers and he told her.

 

"I had her in my sights," he said when he was nearly done. "And I couldn't kill her. I didn't even find another way to minimize the damage. I always find another way if the job isn't acceptable, but I didn't this time. I didn't even try. I couldn't harm her."

 

He had settled on staring at the ceiling somewhere on the way, but then he heard a tear hit the pillow beside him.

 

"Ruth?"

 

"I'm so sorry, Wynston." She leaned into him, tightening her arms around him. "I understand, and I'm sorry."

 

He touched her hair, ran his fingertips along her jaw, gently guided her head up to face him. There were too many details that led back to Quinn and his absence. "Where is he?"

 

"He's alive," she whispered. "On the ship, locked up."

 

He kept stroking her hair, her shoulders. He waited.

 

"He was Baras's all along. He got me alone into a trap. He fired at me himself. The look on his face when he was shooting…" She trailed off.

 

He should never have read his own respect into the fixation the man had had on her; that was a novice's mistake and a stupid one at that. "If I'd known I would have come sooner."

 

"I didn't want you to know."

 

Of course. He held her for a little while. A few ideas drifted to mind, none of them useful. Finally he said "I'm moving outside the old Intelligence chain of command. I have resources that will let me operate independently."

 

She sniffled and took a deep breath. "That sounds promising."

 

"In spite of the current upheaval we have a few still focusing on stabilizing the Empire in a good way. That includes cutting your old master out of the picture."

 

"I would be useful to you in that effort." She said it like it tasted bad. He was sure it did.

 

"You would be useful to me," he agreed. "It's not the sole reason I came today, but it's the reason I would have come sooner or later." He nuzzled her hair. "That's the cold transaction. Does it help to know?"

 

"It does."

 

They were quiet for a while longer. He wanted her to be sure of him but he couldn't force it. Softly he asked "Do you remember our first night together?"

 

"Yes."

 

"It was a considerable risk on my part. I kept wondering whether you were the type to kill some no-name alien scum once you were done with him. And then you would smile again and I thought, at least I'd die happy." He wanted her to be sure of him, but his words always came back to the old memorized formulas.

 

"Careful," she murmured, and he heard a smile in it. "Your shamelessness is showing."

 

She still liked it. "Just calling it like I see it," he said, just as he had said then. He squeezed her. "There's no one left in this galaxy who can order me to hurt you. Until I get an assignment that makes sense elsewhere, I'll help you any way I can." She was a good partner. One who didn't make everything a contest of wills or a game of lies. Not thrilling, but then, look where thrilling had gotten him. "If you want him gone, you don't have to be present."

 

"No." She shook her head violently. "He stays."

 

"Ruth, he betrayed you. I know you care for him but love shouldn't be staying our hands, not if it didn't stay theirs. Why let him live?"

 

To his surprise – and with a small hurtful inrush of cool air between them – she pushed away from him. She curled one arm protectively across herself and looked away. "Because," she said.

 

He didn't like that implication. "Tell me."

 

She bowed her head toward the pillow and her hand settled flat on her abdomen. When she opened her mouth only a sob came out.

 

He reached out to touch her belly near her hand. He looked up at her, questioning, and she nodded.

 

He didn't say anything. Instead he closed the distance between them again, took her in his arms, let her hide her face against his shoulder. He felt a tear or tears running hot onto his skin.

 

"I'm such an idiot," she sobbed.

 

"No." He moved his cheek a little against the top of her head while he kept his arms tight and still around her.

 

"You were right about him," she said.

 

"I really wasn't. I thought he was disagreeable but I didn't think he would turn on you." He should have known better. He shouldn't have been blinded by his native dislike of the man and his assumption that anyone close to her would end up under her warm careless impossible charm. "I'm sorry."

 

She squeezed him tighter for a few moments, then fell limp.

 

After a while she spoke again. "I'm sorry," she said. "About her."

 

"Thank you." He wasn't sure he wanted to know what thoughts had brought her back around to that. "You can lecture me if you like, I've earned it. But it was good to talk about it."

 

"No lecture," she said. Then, a while later, "You did everything you could."

 

"I rather conspicuously didn't. She's still out there."

 

"No. I mean you did everything you could for her. Made things fun. Tried to keep her and all her grabby selfishness amused. You weren't obvious about it but I could tell you tried to make her happy."

 

"I don't think amusing her improved anything in the end."

 

"You channeled all that destructive power into something good for a while. Think about it. You managed to get Kaliyo Djannis to accomplish constructive things for the Empire." She reached up to brush his hair away from his forehead. "Her deciding to throw away everything you gave her, in the worst way she could, that was her failure. Not yours."

 

"I know that," he said automatically.

 

She gave him a gentle look that didn't quite call him a liar. "And realizing, when the time came, that you couldn't deal as harshly with her as she could with you. That wasn't your failure, either."

 

"It is, though. People will die because I let her back out there. That's not something a positive affirmation can change."

 

"People will die because she's dangerous, cunning, and determined to hurt. She rigged that battlefield. It was her decision and her fault."

 

The other person's determination was never an excuse, but he accepted the comfort she meant. He tilted his head. "So what if I say the same back to you?"

 

She smiled a small sad smile. "I'll say you're wrong. I'll say his determination is no excuse, I was a fool for letting it happen."

 

"You did everything you could." He kissed her.

 

"Don't blame yourself." She kissed him.

 

"Can I tell you something, Ruth?"

 

"You still feel terrible?"

 

"Huh. Good guess."

 

She half smiled. "I do, too."

 

"But you're talking to me."

 

"I'm talking to you," she agreed. "If you're lying you're being very nice about it." She blinked hard. "I do believe that if you were here to kill me you would've gotten it over with by now."

 

He kissed her. And again, slowly, tenderly, until she pulled away with a smile that was close to steady. Without saying anything she curled to settle her head on his chest again. He lay back and rested.

 

They were still for a while. The timed lights dimmed. He let his hands rest on her sides. Her body was warm, unarmored. Scarred. She was too young to be carrying those scars.

 

"Are you asleep?" she asked a long time later.

 

"No," he said quietly. "Are you?"

 

"Hm." It was almost a laugh. "No." She nuzzled his chest a little, then spoke in a thoughtful tone. "I don't…I don't love you."

 

"I would be a little worried if you did," he said. "That was never us."

 

"Will it be easier this way?"

 

He hesitated. The honesty policy was rapidly getting him lost. "What do you want to hear, darling?"

 

She tensed. "Somebody already told me what I wanted to hear," she said harshly. "Tell me the truth if you have one."

 

"Ah." He sighed. "Truthfully? I'm not the best person to ask. You know what I am. Love's a word for me, a tool, a game at best. I know it means something to people but I've never felt what they're supposed to feel and I've never felt the worse for its absence." Until recently. "I have a few years on you, but I think you've been more in love than me."

 

"For all the good it did me."

 

He guided her chin up so he could look into her eyes. "I wanted better for you. When I saw the way you were with him I thought that if anyone in this galaxy could make that word real, could make it more than a story, it would be you. You deserved that much."

 

He truly had hoped for Ruth's sake that her pretty otherworldly vision would make it. Her chosen partner seemed to be from a more straightforward walk of life than Wynston's; he might suit, even if he was a little thick in matters of emotion in general and love in particular. But no. Her vision and passion couldn't work. Love was a word, a tool. In the end, it turned out that Malavai Quinn understood love perfectly.

 

That cutthroat son of a b*tch.

 

He suppressed the thought and kissed her. All he could do was be here. "I'm sorry."

 

"Would it be…" she whispered. "I know it takes time. But would it be different with us?"

 

No. That was too much for one night. He couldn't even summon up the polite evasion; he was past lying to her, even by indirection. "Ruth, I can't answer that except to say that the myth doesn't happen. Isn't that what brought us here? Falling in love by definition would be either you playing me or me playing you and I don't like either of those options. Love gets used. It gets in the way of what has to be done." Honesty sounded pretty bitter. He was still angry at himself. And at Kaliyo, and at Quinn, but himself most of all. He stroked Ruth's cheek. "But for what it's worth, I would rather have this than what I've seen of the real thing."

 

She didn't get mad. Instead she nodded thoughtfully. "I think I would, too."

 

"Thank you," he said at last. "For hearing me out, and for sharing the rest. I'm afraid I've definitely ruined my mystique, but I…I needed this."

 

"Hmm," she said with an odd variation on smugness. "My Sith power, political clout, terrifying combat skills and all-around utilitarian value are truly irresistible."

 

He smiled but shook his head. "Minor details." He kissed her and studied her eyes, which somehow cast her endless blue back at him even when the only light source was his red. These later things weren't what he had come here for, either, but he thought it might be better. "It'll be all right, darling."

 

She took a deep breath and nodded. "I believe you."

 

 

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L + 0

 

The recurring dream is imported from RMC's canon line: http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=5205100&postcount=1626

 

 

 

Ruth was standing, somewhere, nowhere, she couldn't tell. It didn't matter because Quinn was there with her, kissing her, his arms securely around her, his mouth warm and tender as it was the day he had first held her. It was impossible to hurt when he was here like this, and so without thinking too hard about why, she poured herself into it. She ran a hand through his hair, down around his neck and arm, thrilling to his touch. When his hand slid up her back she felt the snub-nosed blaster moving up to nestle against her neck.

 

She kept running her hands around his shoulders and back, kissing his lips, his cheek. "Walk away now," she whispered, not for the first time, "and I'll spare you."

 

His free arm stayed firmly, comfortingly around her waist. He kissed her nose. He repeated the familiar words. "I cannot do that, my lord."

 

"Malavai. Walk away." She should have said better words, smarter words, more persuasive words, but she didn't have any.

 

"There is only one way this can go," he reminded her.

 

"No. That wasn't true." She kissed him and left the script behind. "It isn't true, you don't have to do it. Don't talk. Don't shoot. Don't anything, just be with me."

 

The blaster brushed the back of her neck, its touch steady and cold.

 

"No." She pulled him tighter. "Don't. You haven't done it yet. We can still be together, I can still love you, at least until I wake. Let me have tonight. Please."

 

Quinn, hard-eyed, opened his mouth

 

"Wake up, sweet." It was a different voice, gentle and insistent. "Look at me."

 

When Wynston's finger brushed Ruth's cheek she seized his wrist, heart pounding, and grabbed at the – nothing in his hand. She frowned at the absence of a weapon for a moment, then looked up at the Chiss.

 

"You're safe," he said, then leaned down to kiss her nose. "Are you all right?"

 

She didn't answer that.

 

"What is it, darling?"

 

"Nothing," she said, purposely calming her breathing, and sat up. "Go back to sleep. I'll be back."

 

"All right," he said. It was a question, but she was already busy. Moving with certainty in the dark room, she grabbed a fresh slip and a robe, then headed out to the shower. Might as well wash him off of her while she figured out what to do with him.

 

She knew what to do with him. She should kill him.

 

Pleasant though it was to have that friendly solicitous presence, someone experienced and sympathetic to offer an illusion of safety and affection, this was nauseatingly obvious. She hated that she was such an easy target. One big bundle of needs, that was her, and they had had Quinn's entire time with her to record what was likely to work.

 

After cold weeks on Corellia she truly had been craving just a little more of the pleasant lie. But that was all she could afford. In the shock of first seeing Wynston's face, after a long day in the field, after more hunting and blood long after she had lost what she loved, then it was easy to say she would suspend disbelief, take his offer and not care about the cost. Now that she felt rested, more alive, refreshed from avoiding the agonizing end of that recurring nightmare for the first time, she found that she did care about surviving.

 

He showed up offering exactly what she wanted. Of course she was supposed to tumble into his arms. Was this really what he thought of her? Show up, make a speech, lead her around by the nose thereafter?

 

Practical: kill him.

 

That would leave left her with the team she had been struggling to keep it together for. Vette and Jaesa, whom she trusted, mostly. It was difficult that they knew little of the logistical and political challenges she was working so hard to navigate. Pierce, who was probably hers so long as she could keep him amused and look better than the canny opportunist's other options. She was playing the "I require a loyal soldier as a direct contrast to Quinn" as hard she could and thus far he was staying in line. Finally she had Broonmark, who would stay in all his bloody facelessness no matter what. A weapon, not a friend.

 

It wasn't enough. It wasn't enough, but there was no place she could find more.

 

What about Wynston's claims? Kaliyo, lost? He had given Ruth his sob story before he had heard hers, but surely he had known enough at the start to guess that 'lover went wrong, how saddening and difficult this is' would be a sound angle of attack.

 

His employers. Intelligence meant Baras; no matter how much she wanted to think otherwise, every Intelligence employee she had identified on Corellia was Baras's. Wynston had consistently expressed distaste for tyrannical Sith since the day she'd met him, but a man could express distaste for a lot of things he had no problem serving. And Wynston favored a strong Empire, too. Practicality, victory. Baras's song.

 

He was so much the same as the last one. Even the differences were calculated. She briefly, bitterly wondered if Wynston had come cheaper than Quinn because he was just an alien. A second attack at a discount must've been an easy decision for Baras. She herself had tried buying people with kindness, but that currency had failed; better to just stop him. Stop them all.

 

She layered her robe over her slip and returned to her quarters, taking one of the lightsabers from the shelf nearest the door as she did so. Wynston had spent enough of his life taunting Sith one way or another; she thought he would be satisfied to die at a Sith's hand. Either that or very surprised. Coming to her this directly really did mark him as the soul of arrogance. Well, it would be nice to surprise the other person for a change.

 

She stood in silence, letting her eyes adapt to the darkness. Wynston was curled up on the warm patch of the bed where she had been lying. Just sleeping.

 

He doesn't even think you're a threat.

 

His hair was tousled beyond all reason, which was her doing. She could just barely make out the shape of his lips, relaxed for once with neither the stiffness of his business demeanor nor the smile he gave so easily to her.

 

His smiles mean nothing. His kindnesses mean nothing. Everything he has ever said to you, it means nothing, except for this: He said 'You know what I am.'

 

She could crush him right now and he couldn't stop her. But then, she had always been taught that having power over people gave her the responsibility not to abuse it. She had the prerogative and the ability to break this man; that didn't make it right to do so.

 

You know what happened to the person who gave you those lessons? He was murdered. This is self-defense. This is what your life as Sith is to be.

 

She had never spilled blood in her own home before, and never someone she felt like this about.

 

What you feel when you look at him, it means nothing. It isn't worth dying for. The terms have changed, girl; learn that, and let Baras know you've learned it. Send his latest gift back to him in pieces. That's the game.

 

That was disgusting. Both sick and wrong.

 

Do you truly believe these people wouldn't do the same to you?

 

She didn't want to believe it.

 

Stop hoping.

 

"Ruth," Wynston said in a low level voice. He didn't move. "Will you be coming to bed?"

 

Her heart sank. "How long have you been awake?"

 

He sat up and swung his legs off the bed. "I haven't slept yet tonight."

 

"I see."

 

"You don't have to do it. I'm hoping you don't want to."

 

"Yes, I'm sure you are."

 

"I brought neither an argument nor a weapon for this particular situation, though believe me when I say I've been looking for ways to improvise both since you brought me here. I had no idea it had gotten this bad for you."

 

"Well then, you learned something useful."

 

"You were talking before I woke you up. You said…someone…didn't have to do it. Don't shoot. Just be with you." He looked up at her, red eyes glowing in the darkness. "That's all I'd planned on doing."

 

"You'll talk to Jaesa tomorrow," she warned. "I'll see what she and her insight make of you."

 

"That's fair. I can't worry about talking to her, she seems like a good person."

 

"Her nature isn't in question."

 

"Will you come to bed, Ruth? Or should I leave?"

 

She hesitated.

 

"I would mention option three but I really don't like it. If you're still worried…I can only say I haven't done it yet. And I won't."

 

He had listened, and the dream hadn't ended with a blaster shot this time. Something might come of it. She wanted something painless to come of it. "Let me have tonight?" she forced past a catch in her throat.

 

"It's ours."

 

She crawled into bed beside him, took him in her arms. Maybe. Maybe he meant something, even if she wasn't sure what. "Now I feel a little bad for threatening your life," she said.

 

He laughed wryly. "Hm. It's nothing new for me, darling."

 

"No, I guess it isn't." She ran her fingers through his hair and squeezed him tighter. "I won't be like that. You can sleep this time," she said softly.

 

He kissed her collarbone. "You know? I believe I will."

 

 

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Plot note: In RMC, Ruth's father Colran was killed by Draahg 2.0 at the end of Ruth's Voss/the beginning of her Corellia.

 

L + 1, part 1

 

 

(a+b)+c

 

Wynston stayed still when he woke. He took a moment to mentally inventory himself – unclothed, not fully rested, sore bruises on his wrists and elsewhere, nothing that would slow him down – his surroundings – comfortable sheets, smell of Ruth, Ruth herself sitting up beside him – and the local sounds. Just her.

 

He sat up and stretched, watching as she cast him a small smile and went to pull out clothes for the day. He just watched while she selected an outfit and took off her slip.

 

She set the slip aside, then stopped and made a face at him. "Having fun?" she said.

 

"You're very pleasant to look at."

 

She frowned, but she didn't bother hiding the messy latticework of scars that stretched across her torso. "You've got an interesting idea of beauty."

 

"Not every square centimeter has to be standardized beautiful."

 

"Oh? What's the minimum prettiness before I get unpleasant to look at?"

 

"Smile."

 

"What?"

 

"This is a critical part of my answer, darling. Smile."

 

She obligingly smiled.

 

He held up his hands in imaginary framing of the resulting look. "There. That surface area would do the trick. Scar up the rest all you like, just don't ever lose that."

 

She actually blushed. "I bet you say that to all the girls," she said quietly.

 

"I don't wish extensive scarring on most of the women I meet, actually. You're special."

 

"I read that more as permission than active wishing…and you're definitely just trying to delay my getting dressed."

 

He smiled. "Maybe."

 

"There's work to do," she said, and got back to dressing. "I'll explain to the crew while you're cleaning up. They may not all be happy, but we'll manage."

 

"Yes. I suppose that, our Voss encounter notwithstanding, I look like a rank newcomer."

 

"Vette at least remembers you from Nar Shaddaa and Alderaan."

 

"She remembers me getting you into the fight that gave you your finest scars there. I'm not sure that'll count in my favor."

 

"She'll listen. They all will." She paused and gave him a more genuine smile. "I was getting into trouble with you before I met any of them. Well, except Vette."

 

"I don't have a problem with them considering me the outsider, but it'll be something to be aware of when you're making assignments."

 

"We'll manage," Ruth repeated. "Go on. Meet me in the holo room when you're done."

 

 

a+(b+c)

 

Ruth and the crew were assembled in the holo room when a freshly washed and combed Wynston emerged from the refresher. Vette was shuffling in just ahead of him.

 

The Twi'lek turned and blinked at him. "Wow," she said. "I really don't know where to start. Nice to see you, probably?"

 

"Good to see you, too, Vette. Still avoiding early mornings?"

 

"Hey. Someone's gotta work the sleeping-in shift."

 

Wynston nodded to Broonmark. "Broonmark." Then Pierce. "Lieutenant."

 

Lieutenant Pierce crossed his arms and eyed him.

 

"Master Wynston," said Jaesa. Her sweet winsome smile hadn't changed since Voss. Which made her unique in this crowd. "Welcome."

 

"Hello, Miss Jaesa. – Lord Jaesa? You're not Lorded yet, are you?"

 

"Not lorded," she smiled.

 

"Well then, Miss Jaesa. I'm to submit to an inspection of some sort. Do I need to do anything?"

 

"Already done," she said.

 

He hadn't felt a thing. That worried him. "All right. Did I pass?"

 

"Both nature and intentions are bright, master. Not just focused. Good."

 

Ruth nodded. She wasn't looking at him; she seemed more interested in appeasing the crew. Fair enough.

 

"That's reassuring," added Wynston. "I would be rather distressed if I turned up evil."

 

"More'n distressed, I promise you," rumbled Pierce.

 

"Anyway," Vette said loudly. "Wynston. Breakfast?"

 

"Sure. After that I'll need to pick up my kit from my ship, Ruth. – My lord." Around her crew he wasn't sure which way to go.

 

"Ruth," she said.

 

"Ruth, then. I was entirely serious when I said I hadn't brought any gear to see you."

 

"We've got blasters to loan," Vette said cheerfully.

 

"Yes? How about pants?"

 

"Okay, maybe you should go to your ship."

 

"I can provide an escort, milord," said Pierce. "Keep things on the up-and-up."

 

"All right," said Ruth. "Do."

 

"Ruth," Wynston said, "can I beg a statement on record that you disapprove of my mysteriously dying on my way through the spaceport?"

 

"Now why would you think that'd happen?" said Pierce.

 

"My highly cultivated spy sense," Wynston said dryly.

 

"Pierce won't start anything," said Ruth. "You're with us now. Pierce…if anything does happen to him, I will require evidence of a reason."

 

"Sure," said Pierce. "All right, Blue. Eat up and then we go."

 

 

 

L + 1, part 2

 

 

 

 

Pierce stayed beside and half a step behind Wynston as they proceeded through the spaceport. Fair enough.

 

Of all Ruth's people, this one was the most dangerous. Broonmark liked shedding blood more, but would obey Ruth's commands to the letter; Jaesa and Vette probably freestyled around the rules more, but had no desire to hurt Wynston; Pierce had no problem enforcing the greater concern at the expense of the lesser rules.

 

"So," said the big man. "What's your game?"

 

"She's the best bet against Baras. And Baras has angered more than one person around here."

 

Pierce snorted. "Try again, Blue."

 

Wynston was quite familiar with that delivery of the nickname, the tone that turned it into a slur. It changed precisely nothing about the situation except to say something about Pierce. "I don't believe I will," Wynston said levelly. "The man has been trying to control Intelligence, to the detriment of our people and our effectiveness, for years, and he's finally succeeded in tearing out a bloody chunk of it; I'll be damned if I let him keep it."

 

"And the Wrath?"

 

"That's between her and me."

 

"Not sure you entirely understand your position here."

 

"I'm not trespassing, am I?" Wynston said mildly.

 

"Ha! No." Pierce quickly cleared the amusement from his face and voice. "But you're not a trusted ally by all our lights. A little fieldwork on Voss proves exactly nothing. A good lay proves the same."

 

"Your oracle seemed satisfied with my intentions."

 

Pierce shrugged. "I'm sure Jaesa thinks she saw something. Seems to me she didn't call the last one that well. So. You're here to help in a personal way, goody for you. 'f you try to tell me it's because you're in love with the Wrath I might just wring your neck."

 

"I'm not in love with her. I'm an operative, not a puppy."

 

"No part of that reduced the chances of me wringing your neck."

 

"I'm an operative who prefers sane employers. At this political level that makes her very nearly the only game in town. I want her to be well and happy, yes, but she understands I have practical reasons. I'm not in this for true love."

 

"This one of those 'she understands because the subject didn't come up so I didn't have to lie about it'?"

 

"Oh, no, I told her outright."

 

"Really. Was that before or after you bedded her?"

 

"After, in fact. She took it pretty well; actually, she said it first."

 

"…Wait, really?"

 

"In so many words."

 

"And that worked?"

 

"Seemed to come easily enough to her. She's been in an odd mood lately, I don't know if you've noticed."

 

"So what would you do if she weren't so happy to see you?"

 

"Sleep in the guest quarters, I imagine. Or get beheaded, depending how not-so-happy we're talking about."

 

"Hm." Pierce let him walk in silence for a few moments. Then: "Don't suppose you brought any of your Intelligence friends in on this?"

 

"Dangerous times. I have one I trust implicitly and I'll call him as soon as I get Ruth's approval. There are others who have a high-level view of the situation and will be very glad to have a high-ranking Sith's sympathy. Knowledge, I can call in easily. Materials and personnel may be more trouble."

 

"In short the officials don't even know you're here."

 

Wynston craned his neck to look Pierce in the eye. "The ones who need to know where I am and what I'm doing know."

 

"So the officials don't even know you're here."

 

"Perceptive of you. So long as I get the results we need, it won't matter. I'll report to them when it's appropriate."

 

"You've got some nerve, Blue."

 

"I'm aware. The Wrath needs people with nerve. You're impressive so far, but there's only one of you."

 

They had reached his hangar; Wynston paused at the ramp. "I'll have to ask you to wait outside."

 

Pierce snorted. "Not likely."

 

"Well, it was worth a try. Let's assume you signed the promise-not-to-look-at-classified-things form?"

 

"Not likely," he repeated imperturbably.

 

"As you like." Wynston wasn't in a position to argue. "Come in."

 

He proceeded straight to his quarters. It wasn't like the more sensitive equipment was lying in plain sight, anyway. He grabbed his blaster pistol, med kit, a couple of changes of clothes, a small case of more specialized tech. Pierce didn't bother asking. Wynston enjoyed not explaining.

 

After a second's thought, he took his disused but carefully maintained blaster rifle. Just in case.

 

He settled his bag strap over his shoulder and faced Pierce. "Just a question. Isn't there anything we can do about him?"

 

"Nah. She told me and Broonmark to lay off breaking things."

 

"Sod breaking things. Did she explicitly forbid killing?"

 

Pierce crossed his arms. "Yes. How thick do you think I am?"

 

"Just checking." Wynston passed Pierce to head out of the ship. "You seem bright enough thus far, but I'm not taking anything for granted."

 

"Nice," Pierce said dryly. "Appreciate the flattery in general, but if this is the win-me-over session, you're not getting off that easy."

 

Fine. If he wanted to keep things unfriendly for now, Wynston could work with that. So long as the man was solid he didn't have to be cozy. "Lieutenant, apart from a very short acquaintance on Voss I don't know you. I only know you came to her after Baras started in on her, you're very good at your job, you've played nice so far, you're one of the coolest killers she knows, you've considered how to neutralize everyone on that ship, I'm quite sure you'll do it if you think it's necessary, and even though she trusts you, sometimes she trusts things that aren't good for her. Need I go on?"

 

Pierce was quiet for a moment. Then he growled "I wouldn't turn against her."

 

"Nor would I. She's special. If you know that, there's hope for you. I want to work with you, Pierce, because I really am inclined to believe you're one of hers and we need every reliable hand we can get. If you want to keep an eye on me while we're at it, do so. It should put us just about even."

 

Pierce paused in the doorway that led back into the concourse. "Fine. Wynston. Are we finished here?"

 

"Yes. Let's go."

 

 

 

 

L + 1, part 3

 

This contrasts, albeit not much, with the events of canon RMC.

 

 

 

 

There were seven Jedi in the room along with a scattering of Republic guards. Everyone turned when Ruth entered. She took off her mask and signaled for Jaesa, Pierce, and Wynston to stay by the doorway while she walked a little ways in and permitted the Jedi to surround her.

 

"What is this?" asked one of the Jedi, his clothes and bearing suggesting leadership of some degree. "Sith, stop where you are. You're badly outnumbered."

 

She spoke to the room in general. "Darth Baras's spy – identify yourself so you don't die with these Jedi."

 

"Are you suggesting that one of us is Sith?" said the Jedi leader.

 

"A pathetic trick," said another Jedi. "She's in over her head, and so she makes a desperate play to destabilize us."

 

Ruth had intelligence that one of Baras's deep cover agents was such a Jedi and was leading this party into a trap designed to pit the Jedi against some of Baras's Imperial enemies. The agent's entire purpose seemed to be tipping off and leading the Jedi like that: practically Baras's personal strike force against his own rivals. That had to go as part of Ruth's bid to cut his support before striking at him. "Last chance, my fellow Sith. Speak now or die with your pretend brethren."

 

"Hold. I must speak." A middle-aged brunette stepped forward and bowed slightly to Ruth. "You're becoming a legend among us, my friend. I am thankful you've given me a chance to save myself."

 

The Jedi leader struggled for words. "Master Injaye…?"

 

Injaye smiled. "All these years, right under your nose. I was to lead you to your deaths today. Instead I'll watch my new friend destroy you."

 

Ruth's voice transformed, suddenly thick with something Wynston didn't recognize. "You really won't, traitor. Did you think I was here to save you?" Ruth drew her saber; a murmur ran around the room, but the Jedi did not move to intercept. "You chose the wrong master. I'll be sure to let him know you failed."

 

Too late Inyaje went for her weapon. Ruth struck her down before she could raise a defense.

 

Wynston prepped his rifle but held steady while the Jedi leader spoke. "She was leading us into a suicide mission, then. We'd be walking to our deaths if not for you."

 

"Spare me your gratitude," she said. "It sickens me you couldn't see her for what she was. Have you Jedi ever gotten anything right?"

 

"I think it would be best for us to part in peace. Now," said the leader.

 

"We should arrest her," said another. "Whether she saved us or not, she's a Sith Lord, and no friend of ours."

 

One Jedi raised his saber. Ruth instantly charged.

 

"Master, no!" shouted Jaesa, starting forward.

 

Pierce barred her path with one arm. "Let her go," he said quietly.

 

Some Jedi were standing back, Force throwing things in Ruth's direction. Wynston aimed. He fired.

 

Jaesa still talked. "But they aren't–"

 

"She finally figured out we're at war," said Pierce. "And she needs to fight. Let her go."

 

Wynston aimed. He fired. Ruth's frenzy tugged at his attention. He had no problem with her killing Jedi, but it wasn't like her to do so without any kind of negotiation. Without finesse, or precision, or mercy. Darkness visibly curled around her as she battered down the defenses of her opponents and dealt savagely powerful killing blows. The ugly pained fury he knew from lesser Sith's expressions looked utterly out of place on her face.

 

She could have negotiated. They could have been useful against common enemies. She didn't have to make it slaughter.

 

The situation being what it was, Wynston aimed. He fired.

 

"Go on in, Jaesa," said Pierce, taking a shot himself. "Wynston and I will clean up the edges, then go watch the perimeter. You let her do what she needs after."

 

Jaesa nodded and pushed into a rapid sprint toward the battle. Wynston glared at Pierce. "Are you out of your mind? Ruth's in pain, I'm not leaving her like this."

 

Pierce shrugged, then took aim and picked off one of the Jedi. "She gets the job done. And unless you've got some way to halt lightsaber hits, you're not going in there 'til she's calmed down. Come out with me. We'll watch the entrance. Jaesa will mind things here. Standard."

 

Wynston aimed and took the next opportune target to separate itself from the melee. Large in Wynston's sights, a snarling Ruth beheaded one of her opponents.

 

A few moments and a few shots later, Pierce grunted. "That's all we'll get clean shots at. Come on."

 

Wynston reluctantly followed Pierce out to the lobby. The big man took up watch behind the counter, eyeing the doors and stairways. Wynston stood beside him.

 

Pierce threw him a bored look. "She's been like this, if you're wondering," he said. "Ever since. Maybe a little wilder each day, hard to tell."

 

"That can't continue."

 

"Is what it is. She's stronger than ever. Finest Sith I ever saw."

 

"I didn't come here for a Sith! I–" He got a hold of himself and shut up. He had come here for a Sith. That was the whole of his defensible reasons.

 

Pierce gave him a long hard look, then grinned darkly. "Don't know what you're after, but you won't find it here any more. You want your ally against Darth Baras, you've got her, and when she gets close enough to strike it'll splatter for parsecs. Just enjoy the show."

 

A show. He thought this was going to be a show. "I've seen her be reasonable. More reasonable than that. It's safer for all of us if she chooses to be."

 

"Sure. Good luck with that."

 

He had only had one night to try so far. Surely a little time, a little more safety, would bring her back out of hiding. Out of that darkness. Actual, physical darkness. Around her. She was supposed to be hope for the Sith and the Empire and herself. Not this.

 

It took several minutes more for Ruth and Jaesa to emerge from the building. Jaesa looked miserable. Ruth looked red-eyed and weary.

 

She added shame and something like dread to that expression when she looked at him. "This is how it is now," she said quietly. "No questions."

 

"There are questions this time," he said.

 

Her shoulders slumped. She didn't otherwise answer.

 

"Tell me what I can do."

 

"What you can do? Don't ask. Failing that, just come with me." She slid her mask back on. "We can talk tonight." She moved on past him.

 

Jaesa reached out to squeeze Wynston's hand on the way by. She smiled in an anxious way that was probably meant to be encouraging. He couldn't summon anything in return.

 

 

 

L + 1, part 4

 

 

 

After work Ruth went straight to her quarters. She felt more than heard Wynston behind her. Damn him. He tried to hide it, but with the heightened sensitivity of her barely-harnessed turmoil she could feel the disgust in him. She walked well into her room and didn't turn around. "She had it coming," she said. "From a practical standpoint, they all did."

 

"Practical?" he said. His voice was very calm. "Look at me. Please." He didn't say anything else, and so, heavy with dread, she turned around. "That was butchery, Ruth."

 

You don't understand. The Jedi were fools, all fools, they never saw the traitor in their midst and they deserve to die for that failure. "It's how I fight now," she said. "I derive quite a lot of power from anger. More than anything I've ever felt. It works."

 

"I remember you being quite effective the other way."

 

You remember a child. "You don't know what I'm up against now."

 

"If you take this strength, there's a cost. Maybe no one else cares. I do think some of your friends do. But say that no one else cares. You're still hurting yourself."

 

I still don't know what to do with you. Is this the game? Try to break my will to fight with a kindness I didn't expect? Credit where credit's due, I would never have thought of that. "That doesn't matter for the Wrath. That's all I've got time for."

 

"Does it matter for the people close to you? I realize this anger helps you stop thinking. Perhaps that's a comfort." He pushed up his sleeves to show a set of dark purple bruises on his wrists. "I should count myself lucky this is all you did when you were trying not to think last night."

 

Guilt lanced through all the conflicting things she felt toward him. "Stars. Wynston, you should've put kolto on those."

 

"I'm finding the warning more useful."

 

No. Don't use that against me. "You don't have to warn yourself against me."

 

"If these weren't here I might agree."

 

"I wouldn't do more than that to you!" Not unless I had to.

 

"I don't know what you would and wouldn't do anymore, darling." He was still so terribly calm. "I'm yours either way, at least until the job's done, but if today is any indication you've become more dangerous than I think you know."

 

"Don't do this. I can't take it, not from you."

 

"Don't do what?" When he approached her, the desire to keep him near won out over the defensive impulses. He put his arms around her, and the scent and warmth of his closeness was both comforting and painful. She turned her head to avoid looking at him; he just whispered in her ear instead. "Don't care for you? Don't want you to be happy and whole? There are some orders I can't follow."

 

She sobbed in spite of herself. "Part of me still doesn't believe a word you say."

 

"Well." He stroked her back and whispered slowly. "Some truths stand on their own. Your hair is brown. Your skin is pale. You're in pain. And you can heal."

 

Her resolve was breaking whether she wanted it to or not. "No. You don't understand. My father was the healer. Quinn, in his way, was a healer. One is dead and the other's a traitor. I'm not the one who fixes things. I never was."

 

"You survive. You protect. If you want to, at least." He stroked the fine hair at the nape of her neck. "If you don't, darling, then I'm yours until the job is done, and after that I won't watch you do this." He kissed her hair. "But you have friends either way. You're not alone, I promise you."

 

She didn't resist when he led her to the bed and settled behind her, his body molding to her, his arms securely around her waist. "Can I ask you something?" he said.

 

She wiped her eyes, a pointless gesture against the flow of tears. "If you must."

 

"I don't know what you focused on before. What it was that made you move the way you did, let you close combat with that precision. Without crying. Is it still there somewhere?"

 

"After what happened? I don't know."

 

"All right."

 

"Is it really something you expect me to pick up again?" If you are here to wreck my morale, recommending a second viable combat technique the moment you ruin my taste for the other one is…kind of stupid.

 

"It'd be good."

 

She lay there, trying to not cry, until her stomach growled. Loudly. Wynston immediately squeezed her and let her go. "I'll get you something," he said, jumped out of bed, tucked her in, and was gone.

 

Hm. I'm going to bet he was hungry. It was such an ordinary thought. She found herself smiling.

 

He came back a few minutes later with a tray of food. "Jaesa and Vette say hello," he reported. "The lieutenant says harrumph, but I think it was in a good way."

 

She found that she actually did have an appetite, and so she cleared the tray while he settled behind her again and provided quiet warmth. Then she rested in silence again.

 

Eventually she was moved to speak. "You're being very nice," she said suspiciously.

 

"I am."

 

"You seem to have put a lot of thought into the details of being very nice." You're manipulating me and I sort of like it and I hate that. After the last one, I hate that.

 

"I do have some experience with helping strong, competent people through rough spots." He sounded a little amused. "It may not be obvious from our shared history, but my skill set extends well beyond killing and lovemaking. The most important thing I can do for you is to make sure you're in a position to handle matters yourself."

 

"Mm." Well, maybe I don't hate it that much. She settled her hands on his wrists and squeezed affectionately. To her horror, he gasped. She jerked her hands away from the bruised finger marks. "Please," she said. "Let me get something for that."

 

He tightened his arms around her. "No, darling. Everything you do matters. I'm not wiping this one out."

 

"What happened to being supportive?"

 

"I don't hate you for it. But everything you do matters." He kissed her neck. "Even when you're having a hard time."

 

She turned to press her forehead to the pillow. After this kindness she really did hate having hurt him. "So why are you here if I'm so disgusting?"

 

"Well, one, I've repeatedly mentioned that there's a job to do. Two, I don't find other people's wounds inherently disgusting. And three, I do believe in you. I've seen malice, Ruth. And cruelty, and brutality, and what for lack of a better term I'm forced to call evil. Your anger isn't that. And if you're willing to try, you'll never be that." He let a few moments pass. "Rest now."

 

But she stayed awake for a long time.

 

 

 

 

L + 1, part 5

 

 

 

 

Wynston made a mental note to wake up four hours into the night, and so he did so. That was a handy little skill for the times when he didn't want an alarm disturbing his partner.

 

Hold still, breathe deep, run through the inventory. Fully clothed, a few dull bruises, nothing that would slow him down. Surroundings: Comfortable bed, smell of Ruth with an overlay of the sweat and grime of their rough day. Sounds: distant engine hum. Ruth's breathing a little ways away. When he moved he saw she had curled up with her back to him at the far edge of the bed.

 

Though a continuous vigil over her sounded cute, he had things on his mind.

 

He picked up his wrist console and headed to the refresher. The ship was silent but for the low hum of the engines. He slid the tiny earbud out of his console's edge and tapped it into place. Then he checked his correspondence.

 

He had a catch-all for the things sent to his aliases over time; that was mostly kept for archival purposes, something to set analysts on if he needed information about old temp bosses, importunate suppliers, enemies, assorted former social contacts. He skimmed the headings and names from recent entries, but nothing looked interesting, so he moved on.

 

Kaliyo had left three messages in the last forty-eight hours. Her first contact since their split five days ago. Wynston concentrated on keeping his breathing even and his face neutral, even if there was no one to see.

 

The first message consisted entirely of drunken invective. Death threats, multilingual insults, pretty much what he was used to when she was in a bad mood, only this time he had no way of appeasing her. He watched and listened for details: street clothes on the captivatingly form-fitting side of coreward Hutt space fashion, veiled references to friends who would come after him but no specific information. He considered warning Ruth's people – he had no doubt Kaliyo would follow through sooner or later – but really, Ruth's people were already on sufficient guard against strange fighters. The only other hard data from the holo was that Kaliyo was drunk and angry.

 

Message two was more drunken invective. She was sitting down this time. So, late in her evening. Not infrequently, when she was around, there came a point at which he would put her to bed, or at least try; she would usually argue, he would insist, she would bite him, and they would often end up in an altercation that he would attempt to drag in the direction of the door. Sometimes he won and hauled her to her own quarters. Sometimes he couldn't get the woman's teeth off him and he had to offer to bribe her with a combination of favors of her choice. If she was impaired enough she would forget that specifying said favors required giving up her death clamp on his flesh; she would open her mouth to issue demands, he would get free, and eventually he would put her to bed with a minimum of property damage. It was fun. Very bad for his skin, but it was fun. It was Kaliyo.

 

He shook his head and replayed the message to check for details.

 

Message three was timestamped mere minutes later and consisted of Kaliyo denying all interest in even bothering with revenge because, stupid karking worm that he was, he wasn't worth the effort. She proceeded to malign his appearance, career choice, intelligence, and manhood in dismissive terms before concluding that she had already completely forgotten about him and she hoped he rotted in one of those jungly parts of Dromund Kaas, you know, the parts that scared the piss out of him, so much for the bad*ss agent, he was pathetic. She offered one last eloquent string of curses, and then the message ended.

 

It felt very much like being with her. He shouldn't have listened. Time was running, someone would wake up and notice how long he was occupied in the refresher, and honestly, he had already known there wouldn't be anything actionable in her messages. He set his feelings aside and moved on.

 

There was a missive from Doctor Lokin, some short innocuous-sounding query of unknown true significance. Wynston shot back a text-only meaningless reply phrased as blandly as possible and sent the reply only after stripping sender information and obscuring the details of message routing. Withholding information from most people was just good business; while dealing with the inquisitive Lokin, Wynston raised it to a form of aggression.

 

Next up, an update from Keeper, and not a good one. No word of Watcher Three. Wynston had hoped to bring him into his new offshoot of Intelligence. The youth had all the right traits: smart, skilled, genuinely good-spirited, manageable. Wynston truly regretted the occasions he had had to pull the wool over his eyes. But Watcher Three had disappeared during the first wave of Sith plundering when Intelligence was broken into pieces. Keeper reported that another lead had turned up nothing. Damn it all. He was one of the good ones.

 

It isn't over until we have a body, he wrote back. Tell me what it takes – manpower, credits, clearances. I'll acquire it.

 

He had to try. He would offer something like that. Keeper would sternly remind him to stay focused. He would point out any of the dozen interesting side tidbits he had turned to advantage and/or sent her way while getting the latest mission done. She would change the subject in her most exasperated voice, moving on to issue the demands made by the hard numbers. He would negotiate with reality, as creatively as necessary, until reality gave them more acceptable numbers. They would get the job done. It had taken quite some time for this process to reach civil terms, starting as it had when she only knew him as a cheeky and intellectually inferior alien. Now she knew him as a cheeky, intellectually inferior, but effective alien. It helped.

 

It occurred to him that his association with Keeper now qualified as his oldest extant relationship with a woman. Not exactly his first pick for that distinction. But despite her oft-expressed distaste for him, she did work with him, and her awe-inspiring brilliance was matched only by her dedication. That made her a gem among sentients. He made a note to tell her so in person sometime; it would be good for one of her terribly charming twinges of discomfort.

 

Made contact with the Wrath, he added to his report. All efforts are on Baras. The situation is delicate. Will update as necessary. He sent it off, then he powered down the console and went back to bed.

 

Ruth had stretched out to claim most of the real estate there. She looked worried even in sleep. Still beautiful, though. Still kinder in defensive hysteria than half the people he knew were in casual conversation. Hurt and suspicious though she was, she was still instinctively sorry for doing harm. He needed that instinct, needed it to keep bringing out the warmth of her. It would be nice if she could do more than just fight with or tolerate him, too.

 

He leaned over her and, moving slowly so as not to startle her, touched her hair. "Would you mind terribly if I kissed you?" he asked.

 

She snapped shut, curling up and retreating to the far edge of the bed. "Don't," she mumbled.

 

Ah. Of course. It had been his bright idea to throw a harsh reproof at her the previous evening. He had thought the shock might help, but it did carry a cost.

 

He stretched out on his edge of the bed and told himself that nothing really needed thinking about just now.

 

"Wait," she said softly, and reached over to take his hand. She drew it to her and kissed his wrist very lightly. Then she released him. "Sleep well," she whispered, and turned away.

 

Better. He would call. She would answer. Sometimes the other way around, the script here was less defined. They would win the day.

 

There would have to be a lot of detail work in between, but first, sleep.

 

 

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L + 2, part 1 (Ruth gets ready for the day, leaves Wynston behind)

 

 

 

Ruth woke up feeling stiff. Upon moving, she figured out that this was due to the full clothing and body armor she was still wearing.

 

Ugh. She had lost control yesterday. Those Jedi. Those poor, stupid Jedi. Those poor, hapless…no. No, stop it. They were enemies of the Empire anyway. Nothing worth thinking about.

 

But perhaps she should have saved her anger for Baras and his agents. His other victims, no matter how infuriatingly stupid, were too numerous to sustain rage against; save it for Baras and his agents.

 

She groaned when she felt Wynston stir beside her. She also made a mental note to tell 2V to prepare Quinn's old quarters for habitation. She should've done that the second Wynston came aboard. She shouldn't have let him aboard. This was hard enough without him taking her to task for what she already knew were her failures. Seeing him both disappointed and hurt because of her was too much.

 

It shouldn't be too much. She shouldn't even care, not about the convenient newcomer. He should only matter to her as a security consideration.

 

He mattered to her.

 

She wanted to go back to bed.

 

"Good morning," Wynston said quietly.

 

She forced herself to turn and face him. He had his patient-neutral face on, the one with just a touch of inoffensive concern. "Hi," she said.

 

"How are you feeling?"

 

Several possible answers flickered to mind, but she couldn't think of a full sentence to complete any of them. "I'm not even going to answer that." He was already fully aware of how bad the previous day had been.

 

He sat up and reached for her hand. "Anything I can do?"

 

She snatched her hand away. Her sore muscles objected; she really shouldn't have left the armor on overnight, but it was a little late to undo that. "Stop asking that, for one thing. Go get ready. Eat. I'll refocus here and then we'll figure out the plan for the day."

 

"All right." He didn't move yet, though. "Anything off-limits in the mess? I was safely supervised yesterday, I don't want to go in alone now and accidentally eat something the lieutenant was saving. It'd be a very unglamorous way to die."

 

"What are you going on about?" She stared for a couple of seconds before softening enough to decide to answer his question. The man had a point, whether he fully knew it or not. "Vette can explain the property markings, it's a little complicated. Go on. I'll be out later."

 

He smiled. For a moment there wasn't even a speck of caution in it, just affectionate cheer. "Later, then."

 

She sprang out of bed as soon as he was gone. She stripped off the stiffer components of her outfit, stretched, and then knelt on the floor, sinking into a very unpleasant physical awareness of herself and her surroundings.

 

She had been charging through each day for weeks, locating, killing, trying not to think. Trying to think of everything, because that was what was needed to stay alive. Trying not to think.

 

And yes, she had lost control.

 

She got up to seal the door. Maybe she was among friends, but she had something to do before she felt right about facing them. She sealed the door, then knelt again and settled into a focus exercise her father had taught her long ago.

 

The meditation didn't last very long. Even if she ducked aside from her anger and let it flow past, there remained an urgency pressing her to get going. Well, a little calming was better than none. She sighed, stood, stretched, and went for a quick shower; dressed, then proceeded to the mess.

 

Wynston, Jaesa, and Vette were gathered around the table there. They smiled cheerfully at Ruth when she entered. In fact, the atmosphere was warmer there than it had been in quite some time.

 

Wynston spoke up right away. "Jaesa and I were just discussing some of the nicer parts of Alderaan. She insists anything the Oroboro nest occupies doesn't qualify as nice, but we have some human-city places in common."

 

"I see," said Ruth. That was very sweet and natural and Ruth was certain it wasn't what they had been talking about.

 

"We finished gossiping about you a good ten minutes ago," volunteered Vette.

 

Ah. There it was. "Anything juicy?" Ruth asked stiffly.

 

Wynston was glaring at Vette. It was Jaesa who spoke up. "They say you're going to be okay, master."

 

"The rumormonger was light on details," added Wynston.

 

"Oh, but I did check for safety's sake," said Vette, "and he doesn't have any plans involving Killiks this time."

 

"Ah," said Wynston with a theatrical touch of nervousness, "that's actually an interesting point."

 

Vette blinked. "It is?"

 

"Yes, in fact." He looked to Ruth. "If you're willing, I'd like to call in Vector Hyllus to support your bid against Baras."

 

"Nope," said Vette.

 

"His skills may be useful as you maneuver into place politically."

 

"Nope. Last Killik you invited ripped Ruth's guts out." (*)

 

"Master Hyllus isn't going to rip her guts out," said Jaesa.

 

"Yeah, only because somebody else got there first this time."

 

There was a moment of silence. Ruth didn't look at anybody until Jaesa took in a small audible breath. "I think he would really sympathize with us on this one," the apprentice said softly.

 

"No," said Ruth. She didn't want a bigger audience of uncertain motive. Vector was kind, but she didn't know him well, and he had a history with too many masters. "I want to minimize staff changes right now."

 

"I trust him implicitly," said Wynston, as if everyone didn't already know that. "But I'll defer to you."

 

"Yes, you will, Wynston. You'll be staying with the ship today. Jaesa, you too. Look after things."

 

Jaesa and Vette exchanged looks. Ruth knew they knew that when she dismissed them, she was about to do something particularly violent. Never mind that; she would try to get it right today, but Jaesa still had to stay behind. Someone needed to watch Wynston, and Wynston needed to not be watching Ruth. If she slipped up she wouldn't have him sitting in judgment on her for it. She couldn't take that.

 

"I won't be much use to you here," Wynston said, frowning.

 

"I'll get you Holonet access; I can meet with Darth Vowrawn and you can pull any information you can access about him for my review tonight. If anything happens, call me."

 

"Likewise," Wynston said emphatically.

 

She left the mess before remembering that she needed to eat. Before she could turn back, Wynston followed her out and stopped her in place.

 

"Ruth," he said, "if this is about last night, I didn't mean that I would try to slow you down when work has to be–"

 

"Just stay here. If you're on my side, do as I say. I need your data access more than anything else anyway." She sighed and tried to push aside the generalized frustration that was rising. "I'll remember. I promise."

 

"Watch your back out there."

 

That statement seemed to rank somewhere between absurd and cruel given recent weeks. "You mean that?"

 

"Yes. Losing you, too, would be hard even for me."

 

"You're not…" She stopped. She hadn't fully thought through the selfish motivations for him, the ones apart from physical safety, in their earlier discussion. Of course she wouldn't deny him this. "You're not losing me."

 

All the same, before she left she instructed 2V to prepare a bedroom that wasn't hers.

 

 

 

L + 2, part 2 (Wynston talks to Quinn)

 

 

 

Wynston, having no reason to demonstrate his wrist console's full capabilities in front of Jaesa, accepted the console she gave him access to in the holo room. He got to work mapping and gathering certain files on the allies Ruth had today and may not have tomorrow.

 

Jaesa passed back and forth a few times. Finally she stopped and called Wynston's name.

 

He looked up. "Yes?"

 

"I'm going to bring Captain Quinn through in just a moment. I have to ask you not to start anything."

 

"Very well."

 

She disappeared in the direction of the cargo hold and came back only moments later with Quinn in tow.

 

He looked thinner than Wynston remembered. In fact, between the civilian clothes, the hollow cheeks, and the haunted eyes, he was only confirmably Quinn by process of elimination. The rigid poise hadn't changed, and he was still immaculately groomed. But there was a slave collar on that stiff neck. It was an enjoyable sight.

 

He didn't look Wynston's way as Jaesa escorted him across the holo room toward the refresher. On his return trip, though, he slowed and faced Wynston with eyes that spoke of desperation shaped into something fine and brilliant and deadly. "Agent Wynston," he said calmly.

 

Jaesa stopped. "Captain, you shouldn't talk to him."

 

"She's right," said Wynston. "I have nothing to say to you."

 

"Come on." Jaesa gestured back down towards the cargo hold and its improvised brig.

 

"I have something to say to you," Quinn continued, "and it would be to your benefit to hear. I assure you, I have no intention of starting trouble."

 

"What makes you think I won't?" said Wynston.

 

"The Wrath's goodwill is too precious a currency to spend on harming me. Come." He tilted his head as if inviting Wynston to a place that he owned instead of a prison cell he happened to live in.

 

Unfortunately he was right about the inadvisability of harming him. Curiosity prompted Wynston to follow. "Miss Jaesa, I give you my word I'll behave. You realize, Quinn, I'll be reporting anything you have to say."

 

"I expect no less." His gaze flicked to Jaesa. "Some privacy, if you would, Jaesa."

 

Jaesa accompanied them both to the cargo hold partition that served as brig anyway. She gave Wynston a startlingly hard look. "I know you mean well, just…remember, if anything happens to him, it won't be good for her."

 

"'Anything' won't happen," Wynston assured her. "Thank you."

 

She closed the door, leaving the two men alone.

 

Wynston crossed his arms and faced Quinn across the cramped space. "Talk."

 

He settled into a professional stance and spoke quickly, crisply. "I don't know what the Wrath has told you about my actions and I have no interest in hearing your impression. I betrayed her. At my former master Darth Baras's command I prepared an ambush, lured her into it, and attempted to kill her. I failed. Now I am held here, and she as before is occupied with her struggle against him."

 

How dutiful a recitation. "I really don't know where to start commenting on that. What's your point?"

 

"My point is that I still possess knowledge of value regarding Baras's methods and resources. The Wrath is not disposed toward listening; neither is her crew. It's far from my preference to deal with you, but you are in theory a professional and as such should be pragmatic enough to recognize that a tainted source is sometimes better than none."

 

"Hm. No, not really, I have trouble imagining how you could be better than none of anything." Wynston gestured to forestall Quinn's defense. "You say you know things? Fine. Tell me something I can use against Baras."

 

"I have no explicit lists of resources, names, locations. I didn't need to know those things. My familiarity is with his methods; give me what data you have and I'll give you a better prediction and recommended counterstrike than anything her staff could produce."

 

"I'm sorry, I thought you were talking to me because I would recognize a good idea when I heard one. You're not getting one word about what we're doing now."

 

"You would force the Wrath into the greatest battle of her life blind?"

 

"I was never the one blinding her."

 

"I don't have time to elaborate on how false that statement is, though I will ask you to recall how long it took you to tell her your real name. The fact is, the Wrath still stands at a disadvantage in her struggle against Darth Baras. I think even you have enough familiarity with the situation to know that she will need every available resource to win the battle ahead. I know you don't have enough familiarity with the situation to be all the resource she needs."

 

"So long as we're discussing resources, you seem to be talking right around the fact that you dramatically threw in your lot with the other side. It's somewhat undercutting your credibility here."

 

Quinn tightened his jaw. "I no longer serve him."

 

"Easily said. Easily gone back on once you're free. I'm not giving you a second chance to carry out your orders."

 

"That's not your decision," snapped Quinn. "As the first wasn't mine. I served what I believed best for the Empire. That meant Baras, in all his power, experience, and projected influence. Circumstances have since changed. The only correct thing to do going forward is to support the Wrath."

 

"Support her? You think anything you could possibly do, apart from dropping dead, could influence her for the better now? Your wife won't forget your effort to tear her to pieces as quickly as you seem to. Do you have any idea what you did to her?"

 

The officer's expression stayed frozen. "More than you could know."

 

"Than I could know?" Quinn wasn't the one who had seen her fighting like blood and darkness. Quinn wasn't the one who heard her begging in her sleep for a mercy Quinn's confrontation would never give. Quinn had never once asked her to dance any place that wasn't a battlefield. He had never tried to know the girl and he wasn't caught watching the fury. Wynston struggled to keep his voice level. "My understanding of the matter isn't in question."

 

"Quite right; it's no use questioning what isn't there. Your priorities render it singularly difficult to present an argument that will sway you."

 

"I'll take my priorities over yours any day."

 

"Of that I have no doubt. Tell me, agent, what was the first thing you did when you came here? Defeated her enemies, perhaps? Offered some intelligence of value? Presented her with some critical resource?"

 

"Picked off several of your master's trackers, actually." Quinn was assuming some kind of sexual pursuit; Quinn was, from a certain point of view, accurate in his guess; Quinn was going to get an alternate subset of the truth rather than having his assumption validated. "Do you think I'm less at what I do just because I don't pointlessly backstab on command?"

 

"I think you're less for a number of reasons, none of which are relevant to the matter at hand except to say that you categorically lack the expertise to counter Baras's agents. The rest of the crew wouldn't know where to start, Darth Vowrawn has his own agenda, the Emperor's Hand has no credibility beyond what the Wrath has earned for them…" Quinn stopped, studying Wynston's face, and developed a worrisome hybrid of smile and sneer. "…oh. You were unaware of the Emperor's Hand?"

 

Damn. Wynston had tried not to react. "I'm still coming up to speed. I haven't been here long."

 

"How can you expect to win a battle when you don't even know who's fighting it? The situation with the Hand, with Corellia, and with Baras, will not be resolved by your approval or disapproval alone, and every moment of hers you waste – which is to say every moment since you came on board – brings it all closer to disaster. Recognize your limits, for her sake. You must convince her to allow me to serve."

 

Wynston shoved aside his initial reactions to the weighty-sounding term Ruth hadn't mentioned. This wasn't the time to back down or get sidetracked. "I won't. She wouldn't listen even if I asked. She's too wounded to hear. In case you've forgotten why you're not allowed to serve, I'll remind you that you tried to murder her. You were good for two things in your life and those were service to the Empire and support to her. You willfully failed at both."

 

"I did what I had to."

 

"What you had to? For whom? The Empire you keep claiming to work for? What better champion does it have than her? There's no authority with legitimate cause to remove her and even grasping scum like you should have recognized that! Or, to use a line of reasoning you may find exotic but I'll try it anyway, she was your wife. She trusted you. She loved you. She saved your life time after time and – to return to your world – she granted you a greater career advantage than anyone you've ever known, for no reason more than that she thought you were worth something." He leaned in. "That was her mistake. You take advantage of your enemies' mistakes, not those of your friends, agent."

 

"Captain," snapped Quinn.

 

"'Captain' isn't the job that put you in here."

 

"I wasn't free to dictate friend and enemy. I obeyed my commander, which is what responsible people do. The Empire works because that authority is clear."

 

"And who checks authority's responsibility? You're called to kill a woman like Ruth and you just do it? You don't look for another way to accomplish the objective? Death is never a goal in itself, not for any sane mind. It's only used to further some other cause. What goal would Ruth's death have served? What lives would it save? What secrets would it safeguard? Did you even ask?"

 

"I grow tired of your talk. If you walk out of here too full of self-righteousness to present my case and she is defeated because of something my knowledge could have prevented, you'll be the one who voluntarily finished the job I unwillingly started."

 

"You're not understanding this. You are no longer relevant, Quinn. You chose your side. You did your damage. You're out. There is no way you can possibly help."

 

"The campaign isn't finished yet. Even if she holds to her determination that my part in it has, tell me, has 'my damage' strengthened her?"

 

"That doesn't help! If she uses the pain of your betrayal to finish the fight, the Wrath that wins won't be the woman you supposedly loved."

 

"My feelings for the Wrath are less conditional than you seem to think, agent. So long as she is victorious I shall count myself satisfied."

 

"Do you think that justifies what you did?"

 

"No. But it's something to salvage from what I was forced to do." He paused, examining Wynston's face. "You've heard my offer. If you truly desire her victory, you'll take it."

 

Take his knowledge? Wynston recalled that had failed his interrogation examination during field agent training. More than once. The program's solution was to continue assigning him subjects with less and less visible cause and more and more personal similarity to himself, pressing him to properly 'break' a subject. Once he realized he couldn't just fail his way out of the lessons, he steeled himself and pulled the next subject to textbook-perfect figurative pieces, extracting exactly what his supervisors wanted to hear, and then got out of there. It was one of the matters he wasn't going to replicate when he put his own agency together.

 

That was over a decade ago. He wasn't proud of it. He didn't like thinking about it. He certainly didn't like repeating the techniques; the payoff had to be tremendous for him to consider it. Nevertheless, he had logged more training hours in torture than most agents of Imperial Intelligence ever did.

 

If Wynston were in the habit of offering specific personal anecdotes he would have offered that one. Instead he just said "If I thought you knew anything of value I would already have taken it from you, and not by asking nicely. Ruth tries to protect you, but she's too good a person to even imagine all the things she would have to forbid before I ran out of ways to hurt you."

 

"You were never the one who could hurt me." Quinn's mouth sneered, but his eyes were empty. "I do hope she succeeds. I hope that when your operation ends and you have no further use for her, your disappearance from her side will cause her less distress than mine did." An indefinable something cast a shadow over his face. "I have not forgotten that the closest she ever came to defeat was in one of your operations based on your faulty intelligence. If you are all the servant she is to have, you had better start living up to your own opinion of yourself. Do not fail her again."

 

"I never failed her. On the occasion you mention, I was fighting on her side." Wynston stepped back to the doorway. "I'll mention our talk and make my recommendation. And she'll earn her victory, regardless of what happens to you or me. Good day, agent."

 

 

 

Note: Re: Quinn's jab about Wynston lying about his name, Wynston gave Ruth his real name after the end of his Act 1. Prior to that it was all pseudonyms.

 

L + 2, part 3 (Wynston talks to Jaesa)

 

 

 

Jaesa stood up hurriedly when Wynston returned from Quinn's cell. "What happened?" she asked.

 

"We talked," Wynston said shortly. "He wanted the chance to make himself useful again. Useful to whom remains unclear. I'll talk it over with Ruth when she gets back."

 

"I see."

 

Wynston settled back at the console he had been allowed access to; Jaesa seated herself opposite him. "One thing did become clear," he said, "and that's that I don't have the information I need to effectively support Ruth here. So long as I have you today I'm hoping you can help provide the background that'll allow me to focus my efforts appropriately. "

 

She pressed her lips together for a moment. "I'd like to, Wynston, but Ruth's said that she's told you what she wants you to know."

 

"Jaesa, she gave me about twelve words' briefing before going in to fight yesterday and next to nothing before or since."

 

"Then that's what she wants you to know," she said apologetically. "I'm not going behind her back."

 

"I can't very well use my resources to contribute intelligence if I don't even know what intelligence base I'm contributing to." That was entirely false but it sounded plausible, so she might go for it.

 

Jaesa tilted her head. "Question for you first."

 

"All right," he said cautiously.

 

"How did you meet Ruth?"

 

Of all the…he reminded himself to be patient. "Has she never told you this?" he said with an air of mild surprise. "We worked together on Dromund Kaas."

 

She raised her eyebrows. "That's it?"

 

"I'm not eager to 'go behind her back' to discuss personal matters that are as much hers as mine," he said gently.

 

"I'm trying to understand you," she said steadily. "Vette says you and Ruth were involved."

 

"Yes, for a time. It ended amicably." He didn't have time to keep this up. "Question for you. What is the Emperor's Hand?"

 

"I can't. Please, just track what she asks you to."

 

"I understand your caution. But this is one matter where I need you to trust me. If I were here for harm I would already have been briefed on this background, but I'm not and I haven't."

 

She shook her head. "You don't understand. I believe you, but going against her orders right now is dangerous."

 

"Not knowing how to resolve the situation because I don't know what the situation is is dangerous."

 

"It's already touch and go. She won't let Vette and me in half the time. If she finds out we ignored her orders…"

 

"I'll handle it."

 

"You didn't see what she did to Quinn."

 

"What she…what does it matter?" Wynston very much wished he had seen it, but that was beside the point. "He earned it. She's hardly going to copy that on you." Jaesa stayed quiet. He felt a sudden chill. "She hasn't hurt the rest of you. Has she?"

 

"We haven't given her the excuse." She shifted uneasily. "Question for you. If she got mad at you for stepping out of line, do you really think you could stop her?"

 

"I have to try. I've risked life and limb for less worthy ends before. Question for you. Please. Tell me about the others who are claiming to be our friends."

 

She talked. Finally. What she said was of a piece with the strange Voice of the Emperor matter he had helped Ruth with on Voss; this stuff about the Hand added a lot while illuminating little. He didn't like the Voice then and he didn't like the Hand now. Ruth had trusted their direction even before the disaster, but high-level Sith were high-level Sith, and hidden ones were guaranteed trouble.

 

"They're evil outright," Jaesa finished, shuddering. She leaned forward to cradle her head in her hands. "Even when I see it I can't stop her from getting involved with it. What good is my power if I can't use it to change anything?"

 

"Jaesa." This distress wasn't just about the Hand. "You've been there for her. That's more than any Force power or anything else you could contribute."

 

"I'm supposed to contribute more than just being here."

 

He got to the point. "It wasn't your fault."

 

"Isn't it? My power should have detected something wrong months ago. I was the only one who could do that and I failed."

 

Wynston was half inclined to agree, but it was too late now. A morale boost for her would be of far more use than recriminations. "Quinn never gave any of you any reason to distrust him."

 

"I looked. Once, early. He was never light, but he was pure in what he was. Ruth said it was enough. She said with her directing him it'd come out good in the end. I shouldn't have taken her word for it. Maybe, maybe my power didn't work. Maybe he was shielded somehow. Or maybe I just didn't read it right and that's how I let it happen."

 

"It's not your fault. That was a plan laid out before you ever came here, driven by a malice that nothing in the world you came from could have prepared you for." He leaned forward and waited for her to look up at him. "All we can do now is press on. End the threat. And let her know that trust is still worth it, and she is still loved." He tried a small smile. "She relies on you, even now."

 

"I try." She returned the smile, weakly. "You know, I'm glad you're here to help. But I'm a little surprised, you've been a lot less…intense…most times I've talked to you."

 

"Most times you've talked to me I wasn't depending on you to help me do something this important."

 

Just then the main holo beeped. Jaesa threw Wynston a troubled look, then flitted over to open a receive-only line.

 

It was a masked Sith standing over two bound, kneeling prisoners, one in an Imperial trooper's uniform, the other in street clothes.

 

"The Voice sends his regards," rasped the Sith, "and requests an update on how your mission of protection is going."

 

He drew his saber, struck twice, and the prisoners fell.

 

The holo cut out.

 

"She's been getting those," Jaesa said quietly. "They'll just call in, execute random people, and leave. He's only doing it to hurt her."

 

"I see."

 

"She's had us recording them. She insists on watching them all, even when it drives her crazy."

 

"Erase this one."

 

Jaesa shook her head. "There's been at least one a day since we came here. She'll know what you're doing if somehow mysteriously none came in."

 

Wynston nodded reluctantly. "Save it, then. But nothing else comes through." He looked back down at his console. "I should get to work now."

 

Jaesa peered alternately at him and his console screen. "More files?" she asked.

 

He shook his head. "Earlier this morning I gathered all the information I can access on Darth Vowrawn and his people. I'll step Ruth through it tonight. Right now I'm hoping to set up monitoring on certain comm channels, issue some inquiries in certain specialized circles. I want to know who's watching the Wrath and what they intend to do about it."

 

"I see." She edged around to get a better look. "You do this a lot?"

 

"Honestly? No. There are individuals in the agency who are specifically selected, trained, and in some cases bred to analyze data streams like this. But I can't demand their time right now."

 

"Did Intelligence send you here?"

 

Did this surprise her? "I requested the assignment," he said; it was pretty close to true. "When I heard she was in trouble I had to come. And they recognize the importance of the Wrath, so they approved it."

 

He wished he could go out. Social engineering, not slicing, was his specialty. But he had orders to stay here, so he did what he could. A throwaway identifile got him into some basic military comms. Some clearances he had arranged while tracking Ruth down via Baras's Intelligence resources were activated once more to take chatter there. One of the dataspikes Kaliyo had left behind was directed toward cracking the outer circle of a CorSec info feed. Little by little he opened up datafeeds and attempted to set basic monitors to flag items of interest. He wished he did have a Watcher on hand; this was really the sort of thing they were good at.

 

Alternately, someone else. "I wish Ruth were here," he told Jaesa. "She'd be better than I am at writing something to ID worthwhile pieces of chatter. She used to do some slicing in her spare time, I don't know whether she keeps that up."

 

"She does, at least until recently. We haven't really had spare time."

 

He nodded. "And, there. First-pass monitoring in place."

 

"What happens now?"

 

"I'm staying right here; the automatic system won't be enough. Now I watch and listen."

 

"Can I help?"

 

Sweet young woman. Exactly the kind he wanted to make sure Ruth could call upon. He moved aside a little and gestured for her to settle next to him. "Let's get to work."

 

 

 

L + 2, part 4 (Ruth works, Wynston notes he isn't in it for the long term)

 

 

 

The route to the rendezvous point with Vowrawn's people was as tense as Ruth had come to expect from Corellia: patrols of Imperial and questionably loyal CorSec forces, more than a few Sith with their own retinues. Some recognized Ruth and deferred to her. Some haughtily ignored the whole party.

 

Enemies, many or all of them, one way or another. She didn't pick fights, though. It would only be a waste.

 

The next mission: Locating an ancient Entity of vague description. Darth Vowrawn said Baras had trapped her some time ago and used her Dark Side power and visions for his own ends. Her exact location was still a mystery. That meant going back into the chaos for field work.

 

It was getting late, and no leads from friend or foe, when the Republic unit waylaid them in a broad valley of rubble where a road had once been. In the opening bedlam of blasters she had little thought but to close to the nearest target and get going; once things were under way she realized she was up against a sizeable team.

 

Her people had gotten accustomed to fighting as a five-person squad: herself, Vette, Jaesa, Pierce, Broonmark. The Republic commandos were focusing fire on Ruth, but as they noticed Jaesa's capability they started splitting efforts.

 

Ruth worked as best she could, fighting with careful focus. Vette staggered to cover and didn't come back up; Ruth recognized her own swell of rage but let it pass, struggling instead to keep a controlled flow as the battle roared on. The engagement was sizeable, yes, but they were making progress. This could work.

 

A commando positioned someplace where none of Ruth's people were pointing suddenly dropped. Moments later a second yelped in pain, one arm dropping limp. Seconds after that he went down, too.

 

The battle burned to an end far faster than Ruth had first expected; all but the helpful sniper were accounted for. Ruth glided towards cover from the direction the shots had most likely come from, and she watched.

 

Wynston emerged from a shadowed arch and trotted down the nearest scrap-metal slope. He carried a sniper rifle with a Republic logo stenciled on the side in one hand. He tossed it at Pierce. "For your collection," he said. "Prime condition."

 

"Not bad," said Pierce, eyeing the rifle.

 

"Should be two more up around there and there if you like, owners dead courtesy of the piece you're carrying." Wynston pointed quickly to a couple of vantage points above the scene, then looked around on the ground. "Vette. Where is she?"

 

The Twi'lek in question was making an effort to stand up or crawl out from behind a large metal scrap. "Leg kind of awkward," she reported. "Doesn't look bad as deep plasma burns go. And I'll have you know that I never knew that before I started working for you, Wrath-lady."

 

Ruth felt like she was supposed to return what passed for humor there. "All part of a well-rounded education," she said uneasily, "which wasn't supposed to come with much personal bodily harm." She watched anxiously as Wynston took over tending to Vette's wound. He looked focused but not distressed; he always looked like that during the mechanical parts of operations. She wondered what he got like when he lost a patient.

 

Pierce was turning the sniper rifle over in his hands; he shot Wynston a look when the Chiss stood up again. "This is special issue," he said.

 

Wynston nodded. "SIS provides for their people. Unfortunately for them, their operational methods and certain tracking signatures aren't quite as sophisticated as their rifles." He looked around. "Anyone else hurt?" Pierce, Broonmark, and Ruth all made negative noises. "Good."

 

She smiled cautiously. "I didn't expect to see you." Her instincts were glad he was there, but it was exactly what she had told him not to do.

 

"I worked as promised," he said. "I've pulled some files on Vowrawn for your review, we can go over them at your leisure. After that, I caught some chatter on certain channels. SIS and spec ops team flew in especially to meet the Emperor's Wrath. I tried to call you but you weren't picking up. Local jamming, it actually gave me a beacon to home in on should I choose to give chase." He grinned sheepishly. "So then I left the ship. Sorry."

 

*

 

She had looked all right fighting. Not exactly contented, but not berserk, either. Wynston was a little disappointed to find that she hadn't made any solid progress in her investigation, but there was something to be said for just getting through the day.

 

He spoke idly with the crew on the way back to the ship. He even coaxed a small preoccupied smile out of Ruth, eventually. She used to balance work and play so well. She used to a lot of things, he supposed. She'd been doing so well, bringing something not only reasonable but lovely into circles of power that didn't have nearly enough of either. And in return Quinn and the rest of them had battered her to the point where she feared her own friends and some of them feared her.

 

There were ways to fix this. There had to be. It wouldn't be instantaneous, and it wouldn't even be one of the nice situations where a careful setup and quick hit would put the whole system back into sustainable balance; it would require care, and there were so very many factors actively working to break it. Working to pointlessly, wastefully, willfully, savagely break it.

 

He grinned idly and tossed a joke into the conversation and wished the rocket tram would go faster.

 

*

 

The moment they got back to the ship Wynston turned to Ruth and said, very casually, "I hate to be an inconvenience, but can we talk?"

 

The round of knowing looks around her was over almost before it had begun. Never mind that. She wanted to know exactly what had led up to him deserting his post.

 

She saw him into her quarters and shut the door. "What's wrong?" she asked. Or, actually, more like "What's wro-nf," because he closed quick and hard and kissed her. For a few moments his hands seemed to be everywhere at once; then they settled with one cradling her face and the other fitted to her waist. He smelled of sweat and plasma and tasted of something sharp and chemical, something left over from the battle or its preparations, something that said he wasn't prepared and polished this time.

 

When he broke away he held her face close. "You've got a bloody lot of people determined to hurt you, you know," he said.

 

"I know."

 

"I won't have it." He touched her brow, her hair. "If it were me I'd wipe name, change style, disappear, but I like your identity and you're doing very well with it and – they will not break you." He pressed his face to her neck and squeezed her so tight it hurt even through her armor. When she hugged him back she felt almost close enough to him.

 

He let her loose, a tiny bit, and flashed a hard grin. "I suppose you hardly need me to tell you that," he said, and kissed her again.

 

She pulled back moments later. He was hardly even trying to hide his own bright sharp deep and terribly surprising feelings. "You're angry," she said.

 

"Not at you," he answered. "Not at you, I promise."

 

Either he was winding up to do something bad or he was hurting, or possibly both, and she found that either prospect was powerfully upsetting. If there were something she could fight she'd do it. If she had the words she would talk things through, but nothing very intelligent was coming to mind. She stared into his eyes and instinctively matched her breathing to his. He was upset. That wouldn't stand. And so, unable to help any other way, she found herself saying "How do you want this?"

 

"With you. We can sort out the rest as we go."

 

*

 

Two nights ago she had been near silent. This was the first night she ever called his real name. It was good to hear it in her voice. It was right. It was devastating.

 

*

 

He seemed content not to move after. She rested a while and tried not to let the cold thoughts start up again while her hands stroked his hair, brushing it clear of his face. She noticed that his eyes were open, staring at the wall. "Wynston?"

 

"Yes, darling?"

 

"Preoccupied silence worries me."

 

He focused back on her with a lazy smile. "It's nothing very verbal, sweet."

 

Her chest tightened. "You're lying."

 

The smile dropped. "No. It's nothing like that."

 

"You have never been nonverbal for more than two minutes at a time. Tell me what's going on."

 

"Happiness?" he offered, in what was probably meant to be a disarming tone. "Warmth?" She didn't return his grin. "I was just thinking you have a ruinous effect on me," he said softly.

 

It didn't have the playful tone of his usual flattery. "Is that a problem?"

 

He stared at the ceiling for a second with an expression she couldn't read. Then he shrugged. "Not in any way that puts you to blame. Are you sure I can't just kiss you and return to afterglow-y silence?"

 

She looked at him.

 

"Darling…" he said softly. "I just came here from getting too attached. Please understand, this isn't your problem and is in fact less important than any of the things you have to deal with. It was just on my mind, that's all."

 

"I wasn't going to attach." As if she were dumb enough to become solely dependent on someone again so soon or cruel enough to do it to someone she liked so much. "You're here now. That's what matters."

 

He backed off a little bit while his gaze trailed down to the sheets and fixed there. "I am here now. When I leave, you'll have advance warning, and for goodness' sake I'll see that you're better off than you were."

 

When he left. How matter-of-fact. She tried to give it no more emphasis than he did. "I'm already better off," she said gratefully.

 

"There's room for improvement."

 

Which suggested he would stay a while. She liked the idea. "So if I keep my life in shambles will you have to stick around?"

 

"Probably not, darling. I could conspire with your loved ones to improve your life beyond the telling of it whether you like it or not."

 

Him and his claims. "No you couldn't."

 

"I really could."

 

"Not if I didn't want you to."

 

He reached for her, and the smallest sliding touch at the right spot on her neck drew a gasp from her before she could remember to be contrary. He smiled mischievously. "I can." Then suddenly he fell away, rolled off the bed and cast about for his pants. "But first I'm getting something to eat."

 

Ruth felt a surge of annoyance. And, upon realizing the absurdity of that reaction, a welling-up of giggles she had to stifle. "That's not improving my life at all!"

 

"Long-term investment, darling. I'll make it worth your while."

 

On an impulse she dropped the joke. "You don't owe me that."

 

The way he slowed, something in the parting of his lips, told her that that was exactly the right thing to say. "Ruinous," he said, as if reminding himself not to do something.

 

"Go on." She waved and then relaxed back into the warm bed. She didn't think he would make any trouble out there, and it would be a couple of minutes before she'd be steady on her legs anyway.

 

*

 

Wynston, having rounded out the evening with some food and crew conversation and cleanup and so on, now lay back and let Ruth use his chest as pillow.

 

Busy day. Quinn had been every kind of unpleasant and should remain silenced and out of sight for the time being. Wynston's talk with Jaesa had been tremendously encouraging; everything he saw of her confirmed his early impressions that she was a good sort. He wondered whether more pretty young sane Sith could be arranged in general. It could only be a good thing for everyone involved.

 

As for the rest of the day, charging in after Ruth probably hadn't been necessary, but he had been restless after hours of monitoring; the exercise had been good. And after that there was simply her.

 

He wasn't pleased at having had to be so blunt with her. He wished she weren't so insistent on having everything explained openly and part of him wished she didn't undo him to the point where he went along with it. Some women genuinely preferred direct admission of relationship terms, even the unglamorous end conditions. Ruth? Probably not one of those women. But lying to her would've been beyond disastrous and truthfully promising to stick around was something he couldn't do. So he'd told her.

 

Oddly, she hadn't been angry.

 

Riding this chemical glow was something he was used to, something he liked. Arranging, enjoying, managing, disentangling as gracefully as possible. Women were wonderful like that. He wouldn't say it was fake just because it was short-lived. This, though, this feeling was too much. He'd known Ruth for too long. The consequences of falling out would be too severe. The consequences of not only wanting to stay, but staying, were…hard to predict, given the total absence of comparable history, but would definitely be bad.

 

There were ways to fix this. There had to be. He couldn't afford to spook right now. For all the reasons he had listed, and for reasons outside him and Ruth, too. He would just have to manage this.

 

At least she hadn't rejected his casual mention of her loved ones. Good. If he could clear the hint of fear in her eyes when she looked at her own friends, that would be a triumph. It'd be enough to sustain her when he left.

 

He held still in the darkness, absorbing her slow strong heartbeat and savoring the way she had said his name. Until the job was done, he would hold her as close as she would let him.

 

*

 

Ruth was standing, somewhere, nowhere, she couldn't tell. It didn't matter because Quinn was there with her, kissing her, his arms securely around her, his mouth warm and tender as it was the day he had first held her. It was impossible to hurt when he was here like this, and so without thinking too hard about why, she poured herself into it. She ran a hand through his hair, down around his neck and arm, thrilling to his touch. When his hand slid up her back she felt the snub-nosed blaster moving up to nestle against her neck.

 

She kept running her hands around his shoulders and back, kissing his lips, his cheek. "Walk away now," she whispered, not for the first time, "and I'll spare you."

 

"Darling? Wake up." Wynston's breath was warm on her ear. "It's all right."

 

And, as the nightmare fell away, it was. If she weren't so completely comfortable there in place she would have twisted around to kiss her lover. Instead she found his hand, laced her fingers with his, and went back to sleep.

 

 

 

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L + 3, part 1

 

 

 

Wake up. Inventory: normal sleeping clothes, mild aches here and there from the close-range engagement with the SIS sniper the previous day. Nothing that would slow him down. Surroundings, warmth behind him, lovely lean-muscled arms around him. Sounds, her breathing, and someone moving past in the hallway. Crew was already up.

 

He rested for a little while anyway. Work could wait a little while.

 

In time, though, he turned around. Without leaving the warm circle of her hold, of course. Her eyes opened as if she had been waiting for him all along. For a little while they just looked at each other. She ran a hand around to stroke his cheek and jaw. He leaned into it while trying not to break eye contact. He very much didn't want to break eye contact just then.

 

"I like waking up in your arms," he informed her.

 

She smiled drowsily. "I like it, too."

 

Alas, time to move. He pushed up to get closer to her. "Ready for the day?"

 

She looked thoughtfully at him. "Yes," she said after a few seconds.

 

He leaned into a slow kiss. "I'll be with you."

 

It was with some reluctance that he got moving; he followed Ruth out to join the crew at breakfast. Jaesa pulled her aside when that was done. Wynston settled at his console to skim Holonet and comms chatter until such time as he was called to work.

 

A long time later, he looked up and around. The ship was dead quiet; nobody had passed through in quite some time.

 

He found Pierce settled in the armory, checking weapons over. The big man grunted greeting.

 

"Are we moving today?" asked Wynston.

 

"Once the Wrath's ready," said Pierce. "She's in the conference room. Goin' in there would be hazardous to your health."

 

He cocked an eyebrow. "Why?"

 

"Don't know. I only know the degrees of worried Jaesa gives off. Max power and humming when she stepped out of there."

 

"I see. Thank you." That sounded bad, and so naturally Wynston made straight for the conference room.

 

He found Ruth was sitting at the head of the conference table. She had been crying. She was staring intently at a small holoprojection of a recording of Wynston himself facing Quinn.

 

Quinn's image spoke. "My feelings for the Wrath are less conditional than you seem to think, agent."

 

She tapped the console. The recording skipped.

 

"Do you have any idea what you did to her?"

 

"More than you could know."

 

Skip.

 

"You must convince her to allow me to serve."

 

Skip.

 

"Jaesa recorded it," Wynston said quietly. "Prudent."

 

"Yes," she said distantly, not looking at him. "She thinks ahead."

 

"I do hope she succeeds," said Quinn's image. "I hope that when your operation ends and you have no further use for her, your disappearance from her side will cause her less distress than mine did. I have not forgotten that the closest she ever came to defeat was in one of your operations based on your faulty intelligence. If you are all the servant she is to have, you had better start living up to your own opinion of yourself. Do not fail her again."

 

Skip.

 

"It isn't what he says about you," she said leadenly. "Just the way he says it. He was that passionate all the time. He sounds so much like he cares."

 

"If you've only ever learned one act, you get to be good at it."

 

"I wanted him."

 

"I know."

 

She wiped her eyes. "This is why you were angry last night."

 

"Yes." He took a step closer. "Ruth, I told him I would talk to you, and here I am to say that no good can come of his survival. He'll only repeat the one lie he's got, and it'll only keep tearing you up."

 

She stiffened. "Should I feel better if he's dead?"

 

"It will hurt. I know that. But you've got to remove the blade before the wound can heal."

 

"You're less interested in that than in revenge."

 

As she would be if she were hard enough to really understand the concept, and for once he thought she could use that level of hardness. "Revenge by itself is a waste, but with some people you'll find it becomes a very satisfying thing to layer onto threat elimination."

 

"I'm not eliminating him." Her eyes finally moved up to him while the rest of her stayed still. "This isn't open for discussion. He will not die by my hand or yours."

 

"He doesn't deserve that mercy."

 

Her lip curled. "I thought you people wanted me to stay merciful."

 

"Not with him! He'll only come after you again sooner or later. We both know he doesn't give up at anything once he's sunk his claws in."

 

"You don't know anything. You haven't understood a thing he was doing or saying since day one." She lifted her chin and took on that air of command she used on other people. "This isn't something you talk me into, by argument or by charm, so don't try."

 

Her insistence was too cold to be childish, too childish to be cold, and too much of both to be anything he thought she would've called love for Quinn. Love, as had amply been demonstrated of late, was simply that which made a mark act against its own best interests; Wynston never thought it would look this harsh from her.

 

With an effort he got a hold of himself. "I didn't mean to presume, darling. I'm sorry. If you could see the hurt on your own face right now you would understand. We all hate seeing it. And he's the one who did it to you."

 

"Then he's mine to deal with. Isn't he."

 

He shouldn't keep talking. She was only getting more defensive. "He's a monster and still a threat," he said.

 

Her whole face twisted. "I know what he is! Better than you ever did, better than you ever will, no matter how hard you're trying to be a point-for-point replacement!"

 

"I'm not a replacement," Wynston said, with more calm than he felt. "For one thing, I'm here–"

 

"To do a job, you've said repeatedly. I'm on good terms with your masters so far. Shall we just hope that continues?"

 

"I told you they're not my masters anymore. Neither they nor anyone can make me hurt you."

 

"And I'll believe you just because you're good to me? Because I want to? You think I'm that stupid?"

 

He didn't have proof of his goodwill. There was none he could have and they both knew it. "You're not stupid, Ruth. Believe me because what we've given each other is real. When I'm with you–"

 

"You enjoy it, I'm sure." Her lip twitched again. "So do I. I can't think straight when you get close, you know that. But you're not controlling me, Wynston, not in anything. Especially something you understand as little as this."

 

How could she be that willfully wrong? "I understand he tried to kill you. How can anything else matter?"

 

"You don't get to ask that question! I won't take his offer if that's what you're worried about. But you don't get to harm him." Her gaze flicked back to the frozen holorecording. She activated it again.

 

"My understanding of the matter isn't in question," said Wynston's image.

 

"Quite right," said Quinn. "It's no use questioning what isn't there."

 

She stopped playback. "You sounded like you care, too," she said.

 

"Yes. I do."

 

"I want to believe you." Her blue eyes sparked when she looked up at him. "But that's attachment, isn't it? You're good at this. The comfort's been nice. Perhaps I needed it. Now it's time for you to get out."

 

His stomach turned inside out. "No," he heard himself say. "Don't ask me to leave you." He started towards her, struggling to marshal an argument centered on her. "Don't try to do this alone."

 

The force on his throat ended his progress and shoved him backwards. "Stop trying to manipulate me," she spat. "Get out and don't come back."

 

The only manipulation he was trying was for the good. He wanted to argue he wasn't trying to manipulate at all. He was trying to…he stopped. Save? Patronizing. Love? Irrevocable. Help? Not enough. Not nearly enough.

 

"You take direction so well when it's something you want," she said in a low hard voice. The next Force shove slammed into his heart and propelled him almost to the door, leaving him to stagger the last couple of steps. "You're so kind when I do what you say. So sweet as long as I act like the harmless child you enjoyed."

 

"Ruth, I care for you any way at all."

 

"I care enough to repeat, get out. That's the last chance you get."

 

It took everything he had to step backwards and let the door fall shut between them.

 

He stood still for a few moments. He felt dizzy for no good reason. There was almost nothing he could do. But he had to do something. Perhaps a quick walk over, around the corner, and he could end the source of the seeping poison. It would destroy all hope of going back, but in the end it would be better for her.

 

Except that her hate would remain for Intelligence and the new organization, too. The Wrath might come around to stability, but she would never be their ally. It'd be a failure of one mission and total prevention of many more. And it was the mission that mattered. Yes. The mission.

 

Fool. If he was going to pretend this was about the mission he should've sent Vector. Or any other Cipher Keeper could direct his way. Or anybody at all, because if Ruth was going to lash so hard at anyone who came, it would've been better for the person who came to not care.

 

He went back to Ruth's quarters and picked up his bag. He was always packed to move.

 

He ran into Vette on his way back out. "Uh, hi," said the Twi'lek, eyeing his luggage. "You going somewhere?"

 

"Yes." He kept his voice cool and steady. "I'm glad I caught you first, I'll need your holofrequency."

 

"Oh, no. You're not leaving now. There's still more crazy than me and Jaesa can beat."

 

"I'm not being given a choice. Give me your holofrequency, I'll be in touch." He spoke quickly to discourage the hurt she was doing a good job of not showing anywhere but in her eyes. "I'm not giving up, Vette."

 

"Yeah," she said in her flat unconvinced tone. "Well, look on the bright side. You're better off than the last guy she dumped." She took out her holo and tapped it. "Call any time you want, as long as it's soon."

 

He hurried out of the suddenly stifling ship into the hangar bay. His mind raced along safe colorless practical lines. He'd better get back to his own ship. Pick up any extra gear he needed. Continue the situational monitoring he had started. The Wrath still had a job to do and he had to help. It wasn't in his nature to do anything else.

 

 

 

 

L + 3, part 2

 

 

 

She just let the recording loop for a while. Jaesa had told her she should see this conversation. What Jaesa hadn't said was that this was Wynston going behind Ruth's back at the first opportunity. How excited the Chiss was. And how terribly, terribly determined Quinn was.

 

He always had been. The passion, the focus, the arrogant way he stepped in because there was simply no one who could do it better. She hated that. Near the end it hadn't been so arrogant at all, just…right. She hated that, too.

 

Damn Wynston. Damn him for being here, for being determined, for being almost perfect only to turn around and start making demands. He didn't have any right to meddle in Ruth's affairs, with the father of her child least of all. Quinn was a traitor, a liar, a threat and a thief, but even so, even knowing she had to cut him out of her life the moment his master was eliminated, she couldn't lose him to such a final thing as death. And it didn't matter how much Wynston offered her if he was just going to turn it to whatever murky combination of his precious job and his patent grudges he was angling for.

 

She pulled herself together before anyone else could barge in. Time to go, before someone else decided an intervention was a good idea.

 

She barged out to the refresher and scrubbed her face raw. In time she gave up on waiting for the tears to stop. It would all go under a mask anyway.

 

What she had been delaying all morning was the search for the Sith Entity. Once it was cut away from Baras, Vowrawn had – not said, but heavily implied – that she could turn her attention to Baras himself. Damn heavy implications, too. She wanted straight answers.

 

She headed out to the hallway; Vette was loitering near the ship's exit.

 

"Oh," said the Twi'lek, looking almost suspiciously neutral. "Hi."

 

"We're going," said Ruth.

 

"No Chiss-boy?"

 

"He's out," she growled.

 

"Huh. I kinda thought so. You know that you're kind of an idiot?"

 

"Door's right there if you want to join him."

 

"Looks to me like we're all going out that way. It's the same fight waiting."

 

"No, it isn't. It never was."

 

"You do know he really really likes you?"

 

Jaesa and Pierce finally showed up, drawn by the sounds of conversation. Broonmark ghosted behind them. Ruth steeled herself for the next round.

 

"It's time to go," she said, turning for the door.

 

"Where's Wynston?" asked Jaesa.

 

"He won't be returning. Come on."

 

Jaesa paled. And, to Ruth's chagrin, took a step toward the conference door as if expecting to find him in there.

 

"What's wrong with you?" snapped Ruth. "He's fine, he just left. We're going."

 

"What happened?"

 

"I saw what you wanted me to see, Jaesa, and I talked it over with him. We had some differences regarding how the captain is to be disposed of. At my suggestion Wynston left."

 

"I just wanted you to know what was going on while you were out. I wanted you to see how he was sticking up for you."

 

"I did."

 

"Then she got an attack of the stupid," said Vette, "and kicked him out."

 

"Why are you on his side?" demanded Ruth.

 

"Beeecause he's on your side?" said Vette. "And I'm on your side. It's a big side. Good for a whole crowd when you're not kicking people off it."

 

"Silence." Vette had always taken Wynston's part anyway. She probably liked the company of fellow judgmental whiners. "Lieutenant, we've got more tracking to do today. Any word from Vowrawn's people?"

 

Pierce nodded, ready as ever for business to start. "Couple of messages came in this morning, milord. We have a starting point for looking. Still quite a few Republic blocks between us and anything that might help."

 

"We know what to do with those." She shot Vette and Jaesa dark looks before slipping her close black mask on. "Follow my lead. Let's play it quick and as clean as we can. We're after answers today, not fights." Because she could do that to get this over with. Get the Entity over with, get all of it over with, just get it done, finished, Baras and Quinn and all the rest. She didn't even want blood right now, she just wanted an end.

 

And she could play it clean. She didn't need Wynston around to get things right. She could be something that was neither as pliable as the ingénue he was hallucinating nor as ugly as the butcher he was mad at. And she could do it without the string-laced help he offered.

 

*

 

Ruth made little progress that day. She kept herself under control, even if she wasn't cordial about it. When she returned to the ship that evening she found her room as she had left it, minus one bag: clean and bare but for her own possessions in the half of the room she had kept for herself the whole time. She should have kept more.

 

It was a relief to sense no one else nearby when she lay down. It was simpler this way. Cold, difficult, but simpler. No surprises.

 

 

 

 

L + 3, part 3

 

 

 

 

Wynston kept a stiff upper lip on his way through the spaceport concourse. There was work to do and he couldn't afford to sabotage it further through another lapse in self-control.

 

He shouldn't have pushed. He shouldn't have challenged her, not on anything that wasn't absolutely critical, not while things were so delicate. It was just that he thought they were working well together. She was so reasonable about everything else, just not Quinn.

 

Then again, hadn't that always been the way?

 

Enough. He should check his correspondence. Call Vector, see that the Tenebrous was prepared for when Wynston…finished? Gave up? For when his business on Corellia was concluded. See that Ensign Temple was staying out of trouble; he still hadn't decided what to do with that sometimes alarmingly by-the-book creature now that he was going off the books entirely. Check in with Keeper.

 

Find someplace to dance and drink.

 

Stupid idea, that. Too much to do. He had a lot to catch up on and then he had to negotiate a re-approach. Ruth knew she could trust him, and he knew she knew it. It was just a matter of…of something. Getting over the defenses again. Finding the right leverage. It wasn't enough to just be himself, cute though that idea seemed. It never had been enough, never would be, and he was old enough to know that.

 

There was a way to fix this. There had to be.

 

Don't draw rash conclusions from what had happened back there. Think clearly, dammit, if he had to think on the subject at all. Rejection was nothing new. This one hadn't even involved knives, projectiles, or legal action; it should be easy. So much for the girl, move on. The only matter left to resolve was the job. If support was required for any practical end, there were ways. He considered. Extravagant repentance involving gifts and flowers, not likely to work. Torrid forceful approach, definitely ineffective. Crawling servility she wouldn't accept. Straightforward professionalism with a brief apology for trying to make it personal, she wouldn't go for it even if he could stomach saying it. She didn't think she needed professionals.

 

None of the scripts were likely to work, and going off script had made her suddenly decide he was being manipulative. He was out of tricks. Time to send in a contrasting agent to take over the op? He didn't have a whole lot to draw from. And nobody else knew her, her strengths and weaknesses, the things he couldn't just put into a briefing and the things he wouldn't. Nobody else would be there for her sake such that they could come close to the transparency that would keep her from shutting them out.

 

Right. Because his honesty had been so bloody effective.

 

What the hell was it about Quinn that had set her off like that? Even she had to know that Quinn's continued existence was a bad thing. Wynston couldn't just pretend otherwise. If he had registered the opinion and then just stopped pushing…that would've been the smart thing to do. Don't let anything, even something that significant, get in the way of the op.

 

"Op" didn't feel like the right word, but he wasn't ready to deal with that yet. Instead, as he reached his own hangar, he turned his attention to the perimeter and ship-exterior check: nothing new or unusual. A little wear showing on the ship's underside; he made a note to have that looked at. For that matter it had been a while since the auxiliary power system had gotten a once-over; he should look up whatever Fixer Keeper could recommend as non-Sith-owned and have them take a look. Yes. And, on the topic of keeping the ship in order, he made a note to restore Imperial ration type D bars to the droid's regular supply shopping list. Kaliyo had hated the stuff, hated even the smell of it, to the point where she'd made a policy of throwing any such ration bar she could find directly at Wynston's head until he gave up trying to stock it. Well, she was gone and he could have them back now.

 

He wished his own base didn't have these associations. It left very few safe topics to think about.

 

He made a round of the ship's interior, not really doing anything, just checking that everything was as he expected. Then he headed to the holo to make a call.

 

"Keeper," he drawled as soon as she came up, "you're a sight for sore eyes."

 

"Cipher," she said crisply. "How are you liking Corellia?"

 

"About as much as I did the first time around," he said. Pyromaniac bosses and torture interrogations had been bad for his physical health, but at least they hadn't been personal.

 

"I'm sorry to hear that." As well she might be, given whose idea the interrogation plant had been. "Any progress securing an alliance with the Wrath?"

 

Steady, he reminded himself. "It's touch and go. Her attention is fully occupied in the Sith infighting game, tearing down Darth Baras's people." Then, the number one takeaway he had to hand Intelligence so it wouldn't actively line up contingency plans for an uncontrolled power as big as the Wrath: "I'll have something by the time he's down. She is understandably gunshy, it may take time."

 

"Time isn't on our side. Matters with the Dark Council are moving quickly. There's a short list of targets I'd like to point her at if we get the chance. But of course Baras comes first."

 

"Absolutely." After that it was Ruth's call. He wasn't going to tell Keeper that right away. "In the absence of any better way to prove our goodwill, I'm working on resolving the Baras situation as fast as possible. Keep me informed as to what resources you can scramble on Corellia without bothering your own neighborhood Sith."

 

She sighed. "That may as well be nothing, but I'll do what I can."

 

He cracked a smile. "I know you will. I can tease what I need out of my own neighborhood Sith, so don't let my priority weight interfere with holding the rest of your duties together." It wasn't like anything she could arrange for him could change the part that mattered to him anyway.

 

"You know, when you move on I'm going to miss having an agent as low-maintenance as you," she said.

 

"You can call anytime. Not many people get to do that, you know. At least, not many I'd pick up for."

 

That finally got a returning smile, albeit an anxious one. "I'll call if I have to. Otherwise I expect your attention is needed more in the field."

 

The conversation wandered to lesser logistical details for a little while; then, eventually, he bid Keeper farewell and ended the transmission. There. That was one person who thought he had it together. The knowledge that someone was falling for it made him feel better.

 

Now for Vector. The Joiner couldn't see his aura over holo, and if Wynston was careful he was pretty sure his aura was the only thing that betrayed disquietude.

 

Vector picked up the holocall in short order. "Wynston," he said warmly, or as warmly as he ever said anything. "We hope the situation has improved on Corellia since your last visit."

 

"The Empire appears to be slightly worse off than it was," Wynston said levelly. That applied to the larger strategic situation, too. "I'm working on it."

 

"We would be glad to join you. Our vacation, while pleasant, has done very little to improve matters for others."

 

"No. If you're going back to work I need you on the Tenebrous getting things in order for when my assignment here is finished."

 

"Ah. And how is the Wrath? She seemed nearly as popular with rival forces as we were on Voss."

 

Of course Vector would think to ask. He, being both decent and sane, genuinely liked her. Which made evasions feel a little wrong. "She's getting by." Not so wrong that Wynston wouldn't give them. "Darth Baras isn't pulling his punches, but he can't keep this up forever, not at the rate we're hitting his power base." Never mind the absence of apparent progress over the past three days. "She's cautious about newcomers right now, which is why I think you're better off elsewhere. I can say hello for you, though."

 

"Please do. We look forward to seeing her in less stressful times."

 

"Don't we all." Wynston steered the conversation away then, to Vector's off time, to plans for the Tenebrous, to the changes in operation that would happen when Wynston was fully set up with an out-of-the-way base of operations and a disguise generator that would let him remove the last trace of himself from his dealings. Good material, all of it. Promising. Disappearing sounded really good.

 

When he was satisfied with all that, he cut the line. That made two people he could still work normally with. Now it was time to get to his own task, identifying and removing major elements of Baras's support. He wanted to be near Ruth for it. That, he reminded himself sternly, was impossible. The only thing he could do was help with the job.

 

*

 

The following morning: wake up. Inventory: normal sleeping clothes. Pain: heavy, choking. Spiking now that he was paying attention to it. Nothing physical. Nothing that would slow…nothing that would…nothing that would slow him down, idiot, he was perfectly capable of finishing that sentence, he lied for a living. Move on. Surroundings, his own room, cool, clean. Sounds, nothing at all.

 

Ruth, his brain added unhelpfully, missing. In pain, hiding all her brilliance and warmth, and definitely, emphatically not wanting him. Himself, torn. He had opened up to her for a few short moments, more than he had to anyone since he was half this age and a thousand times this stupid. And she had tugged it all out, demanded more, taken a hard look, and decided she didn't want it. Necessity had driven him to perform a dazzling variety of chemical and surgical operations on himself in the past, but he didn't know how to stitch himself back up this time.

 

Stop it. Irrelevant to the status report, to side support activities, and to leisure prospects. Not actionable. Move on.

 

He moved.

 

 

 

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L + 4 and some, part 1

 

 

 

There was little Ruth could do. She avoided Vette's accusations and Jaesa's efforts to talk. Darth Vowrawn's people were actively investigating the next target; her own skills weren't in intelligence gathering. She spent days building alliances with middling level Sith Lords and with Vowrawn himself, doing favors by virtue of the firepower that few others could match. Monsters and Imperial loyalists alike, she made connections, laid preparations for the future. These alliances would be important as she took her place in the upper echelons of Sith society.

 

It felt cold. She held it together, for her friends' sake, for the sake of the self that her father had always encouraged her to preserve in clarity. It was all…necessary, she supposed. If nothing else, she had to arrange for her child to be born in safety. No one else was going to care about it as much as she did.

 

She shouldn't talk to Quinn. She had already interrogated him on the history of his use of her. The reasons for betraying her, despite her vocation, the one they were supposed to have shared. There was nothing more to say. As soon as his master Baras was dead and he had no further orders to harm her she would return him to military service. He was a great soldier. He always had been. The Empire could use him. He just had to be away from her.

 

She was curious on one point.

 

He shot to his feet and bowed when she came to his cell in the cargo hold. "My lord."

 

"Sit down, captain. My answer to your request is no." She would have none of his support in the planning and execution of the coming days. Or ever.

 

"Ah." He sat gingerly on the sole bunk. "I must confess I'm surprised the question reached you."

 

"Jaesa made sure of it. Did you know you had an audience?"

 

"I expected I might."

 

"Why did you insist on picking that fight? You already knew I have no further use for you." Bastard. But an oddly insistent one.

 

"I wish to assist. You've forbidden me to give the reason, my lord." That was as close to a claim of love as it was physically safe for him to make and they both knew it. Maybe part of her still wanted the assurance. "I have said it is your strength that will shape the battles to come. I do not wish for your cause to be lost now."

 

Well. As she had expected. Time to give him the treatment he had earned. "Your wishes mean nothing."

 

"Of that I am aware." He looked at her in that way she loved, intense, questioning, the way that threatened to overwhelm her senses every time. "I can still aid your cause."

 

"It's too late for that," she told her world, and turned away.

 

"Don't trust him." He almost choked on the words as she reached the door. "A man who serves that many masters is of no use to any of them."

 

"You would know. That threshold starts at two, captain."

 

"I'll tolerate that comparison if it forces you to see him for what he is."

 

"You'll tolerate anything I dictate," she snapped, "or had you forgotten your position?"

 

"No, my lord," he said, subdued. "I have not forgotten."

 

She left, and felt her head clearing even as she stepped out the door.

 

That hadn't been very helpful. Nor very smart.

 

Funny, that even after everything that had happened Quinn still both hid himself and evaluated others in terms of master and servant. While Wynston was unrelenting in his pursuit of the mission, it always seemed he answered to no authority beyond his idea of right. What was more certain, between him and Ruth there had never been a master, nor any pretense of one.

 

Odd, that. The Empire bowed to Sith. She received deference by default from Force-blinds. Coming as she did from a very informal household, she liked encouraging ordinary citizens to treat her as an equal, but only a few close friends really tried that. Vette. Jaesa. Sometimes Pierce.

 

Wynston.

 

Hell, the reason she had gotten to know him was that his reaction, upon finishing some day labor outside Kaas City, was to ask the strange Sith out to dinner. She had often wondered whether it was just that he wanted the notch on his bedpost. It hadn't felt like that. It never felt like that with him.

 

It must have been terribly easy to play on her feelings.

 

She liked him as he had been between lectures the last few days. Cool and expert in support, warm and…almost tentative…when they were alone. Tentative wasn't quite the word. He really seemed to be trying to express something he hadn't shown her before. He gave her answers, like Quinn hadn't, like every Sith she'd ever met hadn't. He gave her what she craved and truly seemed to like it.

 

He knew just how to get to her. And she wanted the illusion he offered, wanted it so much it hurt. If only he could keep it perfect, not let the real parts of his agenda show through.

 

As the days passed she had to admit that she would throw everything away if he would only keep that illusion whole.

 

But self-preservation had held, and he was gone. There was little more she could do. She avoided Vette's accusations and Jaesa's efforts to talk. Darth Vowrawn's people were actively investigating the next target; her own skills weren't in intelligence gathering. She spent days building alliances with middling level Sith Lords and with Vowrawn himself, doing favors by virtue of the firepower that few others could match. Monsters and Imperial loyalists alike, she made connections, laid preparations for the future. These alliances would be important as she took her place in the upper echelons of Sith society.

 

It felt cold. She held it together, for her friends' sake, for the sake of the self that her dead father had always encouraged her to preserve in clarity. It was all…necessary, she supposed.

 

 

 

L + 4 and some, part 2

 

Thinking through this stuff depresses me (is method writing a thing? like method acting?), so I want to offer some more cheerful material courtesy of the inimitable kabeone. Inspired by a picture of a very happy turtle, we have a reminder that Wynston has tackled wonderful impossible things before and will very likely do so, and prevail, again:

 

 

http://i.chzbgr.com/completestore/2012/2/8/14e2819a-27c8-43a6-b01a-3b640aafba2d.jpghttp://24.media.tumblr.com/ed052f39cb6af0ec8ceb34ba8b344f45/tumblr_mexouzZQd71rc6qsko1_400.png

 

 

 

Now, the story!

 

 

 

He moved. In the confused hierarchies of Sith forces and regular military suddenly burdened with hundreds of haphazardly placed Intelligence émigrés, it was possible for a fast talker with a high clearance to get more information than he gave and then get out without having to actually take on assignments from anyone. Nobody was happy to see him – most assumed he was a taskmaster sent by new military or Sith authority to inspect the new operations and deal out punishment – but they really didn't have to be happy to see him. That wasn't the point.

 

Queries out. Rumors in. Small favors given. Small blackmail scraps gathered. The little transactions Corellia could so richly provide. Nothing was direct here, nothing certain. He could play those difficulties. What he wanted was information on closed spaces, stable in ownership for at least a couple of decades, that Baras or his proxies consistently defended or showed interest in. He let slip, by means not likely to be traced back to his face, that some powerful treasure of Baras's was on planet, ripe for the taking; a few middling-level Sith Lords were seeded with the word. Let them help in the search; either they would weaken Baras's forces in finding it or they would die in getting close to it, and some degree of location fix could be acquired either way.

 

He sought out the most crowded of cantinas in which to take his meals, but he ate alone. Socializing with strangers was too much right now. He knew his limits, if only by the sound they made on the too-frequent occasions he went sailing past them.

 

Time, space. Perspective. These would make matters easier. Wynston had gotten too invested in the job, or else picked up a job where he was too invested to wisely start, and either way, giving himself some distance while maintaining acceptable work throughput was the thing to do. He had told Ruth he would help; they hadn't exactly signed promises but at a minimum it seemed prudent to help her clear Baras out. That seemed like a solid basis for future work with Intelligence and the new organization.

 

He would transition Vector onto the job. She would understand. No ambiguity that way; she wasn't likely to accuse Vector of having dark personal motives. The man invited trust. Far more than a member of a potentially competing civilization's hive mind ought to. That was in no way a bitter observation; it was just one of the amazing things about Vector. Furthermore he was the one for long-term arrangements such as Intelligence wanted with the Wrath. Vector wasn't one to show up, strike, and vanish; he kept one name, one persona, and used it to build truly lasting relationships and alliances.

 

Wynston wasn't the one for trust, not in the long run.

 

So there was a plan in place. Short-term delivery. Transition to an appropriate contact. Long-term cooperation via the liaison she wouldn't blow up at. She would be fine. She would be fine.

 

This hadn't started as a job. Somehow it had turned into one. That had seemed right, it was what she expected, what got her to let him in. It was the thing he could do. It was what worked. Now he doubted there was anything he could say to change it back.

 

Well, he could guess at what to say. It was just that he was pretty sure she would say no.

 

The more he tried to push the thought of her away the more the scent of her haunted him, a whisper of leather and lilies, slamming his thoughts for fractions of a second any time he turned his head. The bright-eyed thoughtful and not at all derisive way she looked at him when he laid out what he was thinking. The way she moved with him, subtle and natural whenever they were in the same room, like a dance partner who'd been practicing with him every day since the first time he'd coaxed her onto the floor.

 

The look on her face when she snarled that he was trying to control her.

 

If he kept it a job he could fix it. He would get a usable lead for Ruth's crew, and then he would call Vector in and move on. Women had stayed on his mind before; it would fade. Once he got started the small unique beauties of other people would crowd it out, remove it to the considerable hall of things past their time and past their power to hurt.

 

Days. Queries out. Rumors in. Small favors given. Small blackmail scraps gathered. Rivals manipulated into doing his scouting for him. Time, space. Perspective. Walking wounded was half the fun. It kept things interesting. He still wasn't used to falling asleep alone.

 

 

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L + 10, part 1

 

 

 

Another special shuttle. They seemed to have more shuttles off the books than on these days, and there were enough on the books to carry out on full-scale war. The rest constituted the most turbulent, noisy, comedically high-profile shadow war Wynston had ever observed, and he'd been on Nar Shaddaa during Hutt flare-ups.

 

See? Right there. Perspective. Also she was doing fine. Someone would've called if she weren't.

 

The shuttle's chosen landing spot confirmed the area of interest that had come up amidst the grasping Sith Lords' investigations. Wynston still wasn't entirely sure what was arriving. So, as it came in for a landing, he went to find out.

 

He made his way up the huge block of a Corellian skyscraper to the rooftop where the shuttle was set to land. There were guards on every level; Wynston kept his stealth generator up and his movements quiet.

 

The shuttle that touched down was blatantly emblazoned with Sith emblems: no specific office, but the thing was made to look Distinguished. The ramp hissed and lowered, revealing a tall, broad-shouldered man. Bald. Robed. Cyborg, more by way of repair than of choice judging by the scarring. Very slightly stiff carriage, but he carried a lightsaber; combat capability should not be discounted.

 

Wynston had minimal chance to evaluate that. As the guards came forward to challenge the newcomer, said newcomer waved one hand and swept them like so many leaves off the edge of the roof, multiple meters away.

 

Hm. One of those types.

 

Wynston trailed at a distance as the Sith stalked downstairs, wordlessly flattening anyone who got in his way, ignoring the rest. Once on the street he made straight for one particular building within Wynston's marked area of interest: a broad one, low by Corellian standards, and currently guarded by some of the regular troops earmarked by Baras.

 

Noted.

 

Wynston headed to an out-of-the-way corner, released stealth, and called Vette. The Twi'lek answered oddly quickly.

 

But when she spoke, of course, her voice was bored. "You. Up to anything fun lately? If so, please share, the Wrath's been kind of a drag."

 

"I witnessed an interesting landing. Individual agent, cyborg. Big. Sith. Powerful in the Force. I have every reason to believe he's Baras's and he's heading for a location that I have reason to believe houses your Sith Entity."

 

Vette's look turned appraising. "Out of curiosity. Do you actually have hobbies?"

 

"Helping my friends remove murderous neighbors is a perfectly valid pastime."

 

"Uh-huh. Well, send me the coords, I'll let her know. We'll see you there, right?"

 

"I was going to scout in the area, keep things clear for you, and stay out of the way." he said. "Wynston out."

 

He didn't want to show his face around Ruth; nor did she want to see it. He could still help. Store up at least a little goodwill to hand off to Vector or someone she could stand to talk to. He couldn't get on site to rig the battlefield, not with the cyborg there, but he could keep the perimeter clear. And if things got bad, he could step in to bring some attacks to bear on the big guy. The Sith had been pretty heavily modified, enough that anti-droid equipment might be appropriate. Necessary, even; Wynston needed every advantage he could get against Force users.

 

He turned his steps toward the spaceport. Time to grab the appropriate gear and get to work. Everything was clearer now that the objective was in sight.

 

 

 

 

L + 10, part 2

 

 

 

"And you got this information where?" Ruth said sharply.

 

Vette stuck out her chin. "Anonymous tip."

 

Ruth scowled and gestured. "Is 'Anonymous' about yea tall, dark blue hair, in the employ of a highly questionable organization?"

 

"Might be a trap," said Pierce, "but not likely. Any tip's better than none at the rate we've been going, milord."

 

"It's Wynston. It's not a trap," said Jaesa.

 

Ruth hadn't exactly left him good reason to want to work with her. Then again, the job was the one thing he never gave up on.

 

What job, though?

 

No. She already knew she was going to investigate this possible Entity location. She called Darth Vowrawn, arranged the rendezvous, and hit the road.

 

With Vowrawn and her crew she entered a broad, relatively squat building in Corellia's government district. She descended with them into a sub-basement, where they found an enormous hall, lavishly draped yet bare of furniture.

 

In a column of red light hovered a woman's figure, an image that absorbed the light and released nothing but a velvety heat of Dark Side energy.

 

"Is she not beautiful?" Vowrawn said happily.

 

"I've never sensed anything like it," Ruth admitted.

 

The answering voice seemed to rasp from multiple directions at once. "Come closer. You are here to aid. Baras knows. I cannot resist." Her captor sensed that so soon? "I am bound. Every extraction pains. If you fail, he will punish me. For welcoming you."

Ruth wouldn't let that happen. Not to another.

 

"Don't fear, Entity," said Vowrawn. "The trial is over. I know the incantation. Now it is a simple matter."

 

"No. You do not understand. We are not alone."

 

Ruth and Vowrawn turned in unison toward the newcomer they sensed. A big man, seemingly more cybernetics than flesh, but something of his ruined face was familiar.

 

He extended a hand and Vowrawn simply crumpled under a cloud of red painful even to Force sense.

 

"At last," said the cyborg, and the voice was that of Baras's old apprentice Lord Draahg. "I've caught up to you again. I told you, I cannot be killed."

 

She didn't know how he was back. She had killed him on Hoth, after he had announced Baras's displeasure with her. She couldn't let fear cloud her senses now. Sheer returning arrogance seemed to be the way to go. "Are you not tired of failing yet?"

 

"Pain sustains me," he said thickly. "I ate of suffering as you watched me burn. I drank of anguish as Baras rebuilt me. My eyes are no longer flesh. I see in a new way now. And the sight of you sickens and delights me."

 

"Hm. I can return half of that."

 

"In minutes the great Darth Vowrawn and his hard-won knowledge will disintegrate. Then the Entity will forever be in Baras's control."

 

"Truth," grated the Entity. "The death field is powered by the machinery of Draahg's."

 

"But I'm forgetting myself," added Draahg. His face twisted and puckered around the dark cybernetics when she smiled. "Your father sends his regards. I must say, he didn't put up a very impressive fight."

 

Her heart seized up. By arrogance alone the statement might just have been a taunting lie, but she felt truth in it, the truth that had robbed her of her father the day before she had come to this forsaken planet.

 

Combat preparation was not a breath, not a focus. It was red.

 

Draahg laughed when she raced in to meet him. She deflected his first push of raw Force energy without thinking and was dimly aware of something collapsing some ways to one side as a result. She swung into battle at Force-enhanced speed, observing a couple of very slight stiff elements in the big cyborg's motions.

 

She found out quickly enough that his raw power more than made up for that weakness.

 

Everything blurred. He struck at her. He struck at her friends. He struck because she hadn't stopped him the first time. And although she fought back, he was bigger than she, and he hated as much.

 

Somewhere after she knocked him away from Pierce and closed to lock him down, he suddenly reached in and grappled with her, seizing her mask. She tried to back away; he gripped and pulled, tearing the mask away, and when he saw the look on her face he laughed aloud.

 

A blaster yelped from the doorway. She maneuvered quickly to find – Wynston interfering again. He was actually walking toward the melee combatants. If he was planning something stupid she could neither help nor hinder him, not right now. She had her hands full with Draahg.

 

She made sure his hands were full with her. She threw everything she had into twin saber strikes, bludgeoning Force blows. He was still laughing, but at least, at least she had him in one place.

 

Suddenly he yelled and arched backward, nearly toppling. Sparks arced from some device planted on the exposed circuitry of his back. It was enough to get her an opening. Not even the savagery of the Force pushback that flattened her friends could stop her when she went in for the kill. She swept, struck, knocked him to his knees, kicked him to the ground, struck again. She felt it with her whole being when Lord Draahg died.

 

Ruth stood over him and let her hatred boil. None of this could make up for losing her father. But at least she had torn away another of Baras's tools.

 

Just in case, and she kept a shield of fury up because she knew she would break and get sick if she left its protection, she started dismembering the fallen foe. Good luck coming back from being cut limb from limb. She cut, nudged aside, cut, nudged aside, keeping herself not numb but angry. As a last stroke she severed Draahg's metal-shelled head. Then she kicked it away and looked up. People were waiting.

 

As, for example, Wynston, who met her eyes when she turned to him.

 

He was some ways away, holding a blaster pistol at his side. When she faced him he took a few steps towards her, stopped. If there was an expression on his face it was sorrow. Stars. He was going to yell at her again. She did what she had to, the only thing that made sense, and he was going to hate her for it all over again. That shouldn't hurt, but it did. A lot.

 

Before she could turn away he held forth one hand, just as if inviting her to take it.

 

She stared. The battle was over. With the last of the slashing done she already felt some of her rage draining away. He was here, and he wasn't shying away or getting angry from having seen her. Instead he was waiting.

 

Maybe things would be all right.

 

"Oh, Wrath," called Vowrawn, "don't cool down just yet. That connection will be necessary; I'll require your assistance to complete the ritual."

 

Of course. The Dark Side and its continued demands were waiting. Neither Wynston nor the crew would understand it, but it was necessary. She surged with something that felt like shame. She turned away from Wynston and stalked over to contribute whatever it was Vowrawn needed to release the Entity and push the mission onward.

 

 

 

 

L + 10, part 3

 

 

 

Ruth turned away.

 

Wynston clamped down on his gut reaction before it could overwhelm him. The reaction to losing her. Enough. She was alive and she had the day's objective; he would contact the crew for further instructions later. For now he was useless. This was a Sith matter, and he was useless.

 

He turned away from that skin-crawling dark tableau and headed toward the exit. His holo beeped before he had exited the great hall.

 

Vette, who he knew was standing not more than twenty meters behind him, wrapped one arm across herself while holding her holo with the other hand. "I will kick your *** if you take another step," she said.

 

"My task here is done," he said flatly.

 

"I'm a good enough shot to take out both your legs at this range," she informed him.

 

"Are you really going to force the stress of my presence on her at a time like this?"

 

"You're really bad at basic instructions. Do I have to start a countdown here?"

 

"If she says go, I go. That's not negotiable."

 

The Twi'lek just made a face and hung up. So he turned around and started grimly toward her and the rest of the crew.

 

*

 

Vette pocketed her holo and watched the Chiss approach. "If she says go I'll kick her ***, too," she announced.

 

*

 

When Wynston got close he noted something off in Pierce's stance. "You intact?" he inquired.

 

"Mostly," said Pierce. "One leg's hit, was going to patch it up when we got back to the ship."

 

"Let me take a look."

 

It was a bad saber wound, the product of one of Draahg's spinning strikes. "One moment." He started unpacking his medkit, his movements swift and sure and familiar and therefore soothing. Well, as soothing as looking at lightsaber-slashed flesh could be.

 

Vowrawn, Ruth, and the strange dark figure had some interaction Wynston couldn't make much sense of. At length the figure…dissipated; Vowrawn took his leave; and Ruth came to face the crew. She avoided eye contact with them.

 

"Let's go," she said, and walked past.

 

Wynston stayed a step behind her. She was still radiating something disturbing. "Are you all right, my lord?" he said carefully.

 

"Yes, thank you," she said distantly.

 

"With your permission I'll see the lieutenant back to your medbay, make sure he's taken care of."

 

"That would be most helpful." She scowled at the doorway ahead. "Any further commentary?"

 

"No. No, that's not what I'm here for."

 

"Good." She sped up.

 

Wynston hung back with the crew. Vette kept giving him looks that seemed to indicate any flight attempt would be met with deadly or at least seriously inconvenient force. Jaesa made a couple of quiet attempts to engage Ruth in conversation, but Ruth was having none of it. Pierce stayed silent and alert. Broonmark stayed, at least, silent.

 

On the ship Wynston took advantage of Ruth's medbay supplies…once he figured out how the hell they were organized…to finish patching Pierce up. The big man grunted thanks and headed back to his quarters.

 

Ruth was loitering in the holo room when Wynston came in. She tilted her head after Pierce and said, with admirable cool, "Thank you."

 

"You're welcome. Unfortunately Pierce may be slow in action for a day or two." His mind was either racing too fast to follow or stopped in place, he wasn't sure which. "It's a bad time to be down a fighter. This mission, Baras, it's still to everyone's advantage to see it resolved in your favor."

 

"Are you offering to help?"

 

"I'd like to. If there's room on the ship. Quarters. It's a question of professionalism."

 

"Naturally. I think that's for the best."

 

"So do I."

 

This was fake. Their earlier talks hadn't been fake, but this definitely was. How was the wrongness of it not driving her crazy right now?

 

She had her own problems, he reminded himself.

 

She left the room; he stayed behind, settling at the console he already had credentials set up on. He could get some work in before bed. Work made sense. It was something he could do.

 

Jaesa showed up not long afterwards to sit opposite him.

 

"Good evening," he said. He had a bad feeling about this.

 

She gave him one of her lovely doe-eyed looks. And said "You're a coward, Wynston."

 

He smiled blandly. "I've been called worse." It didn't change what was necessary. Nor did it change the limits in place.

 

"Thank you for helping with Lord Draahg. That was very nice. It's also practically a footnote in the list of what's wrong right now."

 

"I'm not sure I agree. It was challenging for a footnote," he said, looking significantly over toward the medbay. He didn't know whether Jaesa could read Chiss eye directions – it didn't come naturally to most humans – but he guessed she would figure it out.

 

"Combat power isn't the point right now. She can get that anywhere."

 

Not so; reliable staff wasn't that easy to come by. "Disingenuous doesn't suit you, Miss Jaesa," he said coolly.

 

"You're scared to do the important part."

 

"I'm not qualified to do the important part. Ruth does need a friend. She trusts you. She hasn't attacked you. You've been here the whole time and I know your intentions are true. More to the point, she knows it. If anyone should be with her right now, it's you."

 

"I've tried."

 

"So have I," he said, allowing sharpness into his voice.

 

"She's changed the last few days, you know. It's hard, but until this evening she hasn't…lapsed. If there were a Force signature for stubbornness she'd have it, and it wasn't there before you showed up. You did something."

 

"I'm glad for that, but I don't think I can do more in any personal capacity. Do you really think she needs more things to be conflicted over right now?"

 

"She's conflicted over literally everything. Only a few of those things spend any time making her happy."

 

"Jaesa. In my professional evaluation the probability of improving anything by trying to get closer to her again is low enough that any action beyond field support would be inadvisable."

 

"And your personal evaluation, Wynston? Or are you going to tell me you don't have one?"

 

He was tempted to tell the young woman just that, but she was glaring at him in a way that suggested she would inflict some Jedi mind trick if he didn't cooperate. "In my personal evaluation any action beyond field support is the worst idea imaginable." No matter what good it might do, or how much some kind of reassurance might help, or how much he wanted to see her turn back to him, or how much he wanted her to want to, or…he turned his attention back to the console and waited for Jaesa to go away.

 

 

 

 

 

L + 10, part 4

 

 

 

Wynston finished up with his work on the console, grabbed something to eat, and then went to the spare quarters Vette helpfully indicated. Bare: a bunk with a thin mattress, a faint smell of cleaning chemicals. He sat for a while. He thought. He couldn't start with convincing Ruth of his own intentions until he had helped her through what had clearly been the raw ordeal of the day. But she wouldn't let him talk about the ordeal until she trusted his own intentions. If he tried to start on the day's events it would turn into work again. If he tried to start on himself…well, there was nowhere to start. No way to win.

 

Ruth, in spite of her efforts to meditate, kept coming back to the way Wynston had reached out to her, quiet, steady. Pained but not angry. The one good thing in that damned chamber. It seemed he was ready all over again to help her, whatever his reasons, and the thought that the requirements of her path might have cut off the last real chance – how cold he had been after she had finished the Entity's Dark Side ritual! – was far from the relief that her suspicions said it should be.

 

Wynston moved fast in an effort to stay ahead of his own doubts. He darted out into the hallway and around the corner, where he very nearly ran facefirst into Ruth.

 

Her hand bumped into his and she shied back, intensely aware that he had frozen in place. "Oh," she said, her voice too loud in her own ears. Frozen, cold, not safe, pointless, she shouldn't have come. "I was just…looking for you. I just wanted to say that, once the Baras matter is resolved, we should talk about future arrangements. With Intelligence, like you mentioned, because I do owe you." The job. The job was safe to talk about.

 

"I just wanted to say that I want this to go differently," blurted Wynston. Ruth looked startled. But she wasn't stopping him, so he raced to get it over with. "This isn't about work and it isn't even just about wanting you and as soon as I figure out what it is about I'll tell you. I want it to go differently."

 

She did, too. It was just strange to hear it this way from him of all people. With an effort of will she held her head high and maintained eye contact. "How would we make that happen?" she asked quietly.

 

We. She hadn't even hesitated in saying it. He pushed a hand across his hair, fiddling with the part. "Is there someplace private we can talk? That doesn't have a bed?" A new statement coming from him, but that easy natural thing would be a bad sidetrack. A useless script, albeit a tempting one. Being out of an actual bedroom context would force half a second's thought before falling into anything and he needed that.

 

That was a new statement coming from him. She wasn't sure what it meant, but it was Wynston asking, so she didn't hesitate to answer. "We can go to the bridge."

 

He followed her there. They sat on chairs a couple of meters apart, turned to face each other. Wynston leaned forward a little, resting his forearms on his knees and clasping his hands tightly to keep them from shaking. She looked pale and anxious and…intent. At least she was paying attention.

 

She watched him just sitting there. Being alone with him made her feel terrible all over again. "I'm sorry," she blurted, bringing a hand to her throat, where she had Force shoved him away days before.

 

"It's all right," he said reflexively.

 

"No. It's not." Everything about the tension in him now confirmed that. "You've only been looking out for me. It was a poor way to repay you."

 

Continuing to dismiss it was the practical low-maintenance thing to do, the thing that made people comfortable, that let him keep operating. "Please don't do it again," he said instead.

 

"I won't." Unless I have to, her mind added, but that was a reflexive echo she didn't feel like listening to right now. She didn't think she would have to do it again. She didn't want to.

 

Wynston silently ran through a number of increasingly nonsensical possible starting points in his head. Ruth was watching him. Finally he muttered "Sod it" and cleared his throat. "I don't know where to start," he said. "Just stop me if I've convinced you I've gone completely insane because I don't want to waste your time. I've asked you for something quite selfish on my part twice before. At times and places where you had the power to do me serious harm. Do you remember?"

 

Of course she did. "You said coming to me just recently was something you needed."

 

She'd been paying attention. He was a little surprised, given how understandably preoccupied she had been with her own problems. "That's right, and that's one."

 

Odd way to look at it, she thought. "It wasn't all that selfish, Wynston. I got something out of it, too."

 

"I'm glad. It meant a great deal to me. All of it, your listening especially." Not the work. And not just the sex. Listening, like she always did. Well, he was about to find out just how much needy rambling she could tolerate. "Do you remember the other time?"

 

"Quesh," she said immediately, and saw his red eyes dimming in confirmation before he said a word.

 

"Yes," he said, carefully suppressing specifics of the recollection. "Quesh."

 

Ruth remembered that he had bid her stand watch while he did something with some kind of chemicals in an out-of-the-way lab. He had asked her not to ask questions. She had done it, of course, because she had been trusting like that. And he, looking wearier than she had ever seen him, had finished his errand, thanked her, and walked away. "You never told me what was going on there."

 

"No. I never did. I'm not at liberty…" He cut the usual line short. "That's not true. I don't want to talk about it, darling. Maybe someday, but not yet." One tremendous humiliating and potentially painful rough edge at a time. "Suffice to say that your being there was what convinced me you were more than just a happy accident. You helped me, with no hesitation, at no benefit to yourself, at a time when…I didn't think that could happen. Now I'm asking you, a third time, for something very selfish, that would make a very great difference to me." He took a deep breath. "I want you to believe that what I'm about to tell you, however nonsensical, is as real as I know how to make it."

 

Ah. A lot of people wanted that. "Belief is hard to come by nowadays," she said.

 

Wynston hated that her smile didn't touch her eyes. Eyes like those were too pretty for pain. "I know. I can back off. I'll do the job if you can use me and shut up about the rest."

 

"No," she said hurriedly. He was on to something. She didn't know what yet, but she wanted to know, wanted to know why he was afraid. "Talk."

 

"Very well. I want you to understand this. It's very important that you do." He passed his hand over his hair again. "You said I've been manipulating you, trying to control you. It's the nature of our world for things to work like that, but it's different with you, and has been for a long time. Listen. Yes, I've thought about how to affect you. I've done it in what I hope are benign ways in the past. I've thought through how to make you smile. I know, as I observe with most people, what authorities to invoke over you, what guilt to invoke behind you, what dreams to invoke before you, to nudge you toward doing what I want. I know a dozen ways to hurt you before I've started moving and several more after. I know how to make you laugh, how to turn you on. I know what to apply to get any result I desire, except…you."

 

She stared. That whole oration was consistent with every comforting calculated move he'd made since he had come on board, but she couldn't see why he was telling her now.

 

Wynston blinked hard and took another deep breath. This, well past the point of no return, was where he realized for sure that he had no way of redeeming it, not to her. It was just a practical way of seeing things, but it couldn't possibly do her any good to know about it. "I forget where I was going with this. But…I know all these things and they're tools. They're things I've used on people to get results. It doesn't mean I'm insincere every time but I am always at some level aware. If that alone damns me in your eyes, there's nothing I can do. No matter how I feel about you, the ways I have to say it can all look like that. Because they can all be that. Maybe that makes them multipurpose. Maybe to you it just makes them inadequate."

 

Ruth thought about it. The whole description reminded her of other things, other applications. "That makes sense," she said slowly.

 

That was the last thing Wynston had expected to hear. "It does?"

 

"When you say it that way. My father taught me you have to know how to use anything and everything as a weapon. A tool, like you said. That's survival. What's worthwhile is knowing that things have two natures, and while you should never forget the weapon one you should never stop looking for the constructive one." She drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them there. "It's just strange to make it so personal. I never thought I'd be applying it to things like 'making someone laugh.'"

 

Her expression said she didn't like it. She wasn't mad, but it wasn't comfortable for her. "Anywhere there's cause and effect there are tools to alter it," he said gently. "Exercising those tools isn't inherently bad."

 

That was an agent talking. "That's a very cynical thing to say."

 

"I know, darling. But it's all I have to offer." He caught himself. "May I still call you darling?"

 

She liked it better than most things people called her these days. In fact there were few things she would rather hear more. "I like it when you say it."

 

"I'm glad." Her. Stars. Sometimes the raw simplicity of the way she accepted him was…probably not going to last, he reminded himself. This wasn't what she wanted. Even if he tried being what she wanted he wouldn't have the expertise to make the experience right. Better to retreat. "So you know now. It doesn't have to change anything. I've always been on your side; I can still be your dashing secret agent. I'll make it as enjoyable as you want, you know I'd be happy to–"

 

"Don't be an idiot," she said. The old way wouldn't work anymore. It couldn't, not after the last few weeks. She wanted the charade but she knew she couldn't really keep it.

 

His heart sank. "I don't know how to be what you're looking for," he said softly. "The way I've been with you lately, just saying things, answering you as you come to me, it's probable I'll do something wrong. That's bad for business. You may get hurt. I may get hurt." He paused, examined his hands. "More than I care to think about." Then he looked back up at her. "If I stay tonight, if I try, I'm asking you to not make me regret it. It'll be in your power to do so."

 

Ah. Right. Humble begging was a technique. It was a good one. He'd never used it on her before, but he was clearly adapting to new times. Ruth swatted the thought down. If this was the story he wanted to tell, she would listen. For him she would listen. "Very well," she said with a small smile. "Permission to not be sure what you're doing, granted."

 

He blinked. "I didn't phrase it–"

 

The corners of her lips curled upward. Phrasing was adjustable. "Permission to have no idea at all what you're doing, granted."

 

The woman was actually teasing him. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Stop that! It isn't that simple!"

 

She felt a little jolt of guilt for setting him on the defensive. "You're not done letting down your guard, Wynston," she said gently. "I don't know enough about this to know what button to press. But I want you to be with me–" an understatement too vast for words– "and I won't punish you for it." She tilted her head. "So what do I use to make you stop worrying?"

 

The question slightly alarmed Wynston. She wasn't supposed to embrace the alternative worldview quite that enthusiastically. "That isn't something I traditionally let other people do."

 

Of course not. In most matters he probably never worried in the first place. "There must be something. If you know all these ways of doing things to me you've got to know what to do about you."

 

He shifted. "Hm. Get me out of the room with the crazy woman in it?" he muttered. He was joking. Mostly.

 

Her heart skipped a beat. He was joking. Right? "Not going to happen," she ordered. Just in case.

 

He looked at her, and stood up and extended a hand again.

 

She was free to take it this time. He was still waiting for her and so she came to him, and in the second they touched it felt like for once nothing at all stood between them.

 

"I'm sorry to be doing this to you now," Wynston said soberly. "You have enough to worry about."

 

No. Whatever this was, she cared too much to push it aside. Besides, it was something that didn't drain her like the battle did. "Compared with everything else, it's…it's sort of a nice change of pace."

 

"Watching a glorified con man's psychological meltdown is your idea of a 'nice' change of pace?" She really was crazy.

 

"That's what this is?" she asked him, feeling a little smile coming up. Maybe this degree of control qualified by his lights. "A meltdown?"

 

He thought that one was self-evident. "I really don't have any other word for it."

 

She looked him over. "You look fine to me."

 

He grinned a tiny bit. "Well, it's a very handsome meltdown. That can't be helped."

 

She smiled and hugged him. He hugged her back, tightly, while she pressed one hand to his chest and the other to his back. "Hm," she told his neck. "Not to be crude, but your heartbeat's been more relaxed than this during intercourse." By a dramatic margin.

 

"Not to be crude, but I knew what I was doing during intercourse." The sound of her answering laugh was comfortably cheerful. Which, under the circumstances, almost reduced him to tears on the spot.

 

Ruth held him close for a few moments, enjoying the closeness of him, then backed away. "It's getting late," she said. She kept her hand loosely in his and drew him down toward the door to her own quarters. She paused outside and gave him a questioning look.

 

No. No, no, that would still be a mistake. "I don't…it would confuse things again, Ruth."

 

Maybe it would. She didn't think so, but she could understand worrying. "We don't have to do anything. But I like having you there."

 

As did he. Always. Even when it was a terrible idea. "You're sure?"

 

She opened the door and led him in.

 

Wynston didn't look at Ruth, much, while she changed. He stripped off his own shirt and boots, then climbed into bed and wrapped his arms around her. Anything more would be a sidetrack, again, short-term sweetness that might very quickly turn into ruinous instability.

 

She settled snugly against him. His lean wiry body was always far more comfortable than it looked. It was something about the way he moved with her. "You do want me," she murmured.

 

"Well, yes. You do that to me." No use denying that one. Furthermore if he was going to go transparent it was no use stopping now; he had a feeling she liked it. "I want you pretty much regardless of the circumstances, up to and including, I suspect, my being physically on fire. That's just you."

 

She smiled. "So here's your flattery. And the other thing, offering to stay away, that was you establishing trust by foregoing the obvious exchange."

 

It seemed sad coming from her, but she delivered it so lightly. "That is certainly one way to look at it," he said.

 

She wondered. "Is it how you see it?"

 

"I see a lot of things, darling, though I don't put equal credence in all views. I see that this could be building trust. It could just be saving us some exertion at the end of a trying day. It could be some kind of test where I'm secretly trying to determine how much you want me and being disappointed that you haven't jumped me already." He smiled crookedly. "It could be that it really is enough that you're here, because you are everything I want, at a time when I'm desperate for it, and while that raises a great many questions I cannot find a single angle from which it makes sense to leave your side right now."

 

She blinked rapidly for a few seconds while attempting to get her brain back out of puddle form. "What I want to hear, very nicely crafted to make me putty in your hands," she said, faux sternly.

 

"Crafted from the truth." Choosing the wording didn't automatically corrupt the idea. He needed her to believe that. He had been choosing wording all his life. "Is the result mutually beneficial?"

 

When he said these things? "Mm. Yes."

 

"Then is it wrong?"

 

The convenient words, the advantageous result…it did make her suspicious. It sounded too nice. Then again, she wasn't sure what the real thing would sound like, if not this. She was quiet for quite some time. "No," she whispered at last.

 

They fell silent. Wynston consciously relaxed as much as he could. She didn't believe him yet. Not entirely. The knowledge was a small stabbing pain with every breath. But it was a pain that might yet be removed without major damage. Maybe.

 

Ruth didn't believe him yet. Not entirely. This was still just another thing she wanted to hear. Because being informed of the many and various half-truths a man like Wynston employed had somehow been deemed something she wanted to hear? It had felt right, oddly. Hmph. So it was something she hadn't known she wanted to hear. It felt like progress – at least he was playing on some of her new understanding instead of the old material – but it couldn't be as simple, as terribly direct as he made it sound. It couldn't be that simple, but he made it tempting.

 

This entire exercise was both terrifying and stupid, but he couldn't stop himself. No. Not true. He was choosing it. Not even because it felt good, because right now it didn't, except in the way she felt in his arms. He was choosing this because…because it was the only way to get her to let him in? And that was important in its own right. But there were too many unknowns and too few of them were protecting him. This was a mistake. He was dying to know what would come of it.

 

Wynston's heart rate wasn't slowing any. Ruth wondered why. She didn't think he was afraid of much. Was this whole session preparation for another dramatically reluctant betrayal, one that he genuinely felt bad about? Or was there some other risk going on? Was this latest batch of words, tools for a man like him, something she could do real damage with? Every possibility but one made her want to pull him closer and assure him that, absolutely, he was safe and wanted with her. But she couldn't just make the one possibility go away. Instead she held still and drifted toward sleep.

 

He told himself that her hesitation stemmed from her own situation, not anything about him. And he wished she could know that, absolutely, she was safe and wanted with him. But there was nothing more he could do to make her believe it. Instead he held still and drifted toward sleep.

 

 

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L + 11, part 1

 

 

 

Wynston woke up the second Ruth moved. Hold still. Status: half dressed, physically fine. Surroundings, perfect. Less certain than they had ever been, but she had stayed in his arms. Perfect. Her lips brushed his forehead before he admitted to being awake.

 

As he opened his eyes she smiled dreamily. "That was a very strange conversation we had," she said.

 

"We can forget about it," he drawled, keeping his manner casual. "I thought it might be nice to take your mind off other things temporarily, that's all."

 

"That's not all. You were serious. You jerk me around all the time, and you think feelings are all cause and effect, and you tease all this sympathy out of me at the same time you're admitting that you see it all as something useful." She traced the hollow of his throat with a fingertip. "Also you say you don't know how to be sincere. But then you're there when you're needed. For things you believe in. For me. You do so much good and that's the one thing you haven't admitted to yet."

 

He didn't trust his voice for speaking. He squeezed her tighter instead.

 

She considered his face. "What you said. It was hard for you. If changing to be what I'm supposed to want is too great a risk, you don't have to do it."

 

He suddenly felt very awkward. "That…honestly never occurred to me." He was too used to morphing into what was desired for the scene, too used to seeking the satisfaction of a pleased partner. He was entirely too used to responding to her.

 

"The effort is nice. You're giving me answers like nobody else ever has. I need those."

 

He kissed her. She was sweet, and soft in ways that that lean-muscled scar-laced body couldn't account for.

 

She backed off a tiny bit. "When did you stop lying to me?" she asked in a tone of nothing harder than curiosity.

 

"About a week ago," he admitted. Whether she would buy that, he didn't know. "I didn't tell any active lies on Voss but even there I left out a lot of significant context."

 

"I guess we didn't exactly have a lot of heart-to-hearts there, either."

 

"True. Your heart was rather decisively elsewhere. Which you had every reason for."

 

Her lip twitched in a momentary, bitter sneer. "It was stupid."

 

"It was amazing to see. I've been from one side of this galaxy to the other and I can tell you that almost every individual I've ever met will live and die without ever knowing something like that." He ran his fingers through her hair, studied her eyes. Once again marveled that anyone who knew her could try to break her. "I've been from one side of this galaxy to the other and never met anyone who'd be stupid enough to throw that away once they found it."

 

"I met one," she said quietly. "What I had was nice, but I'm not sure I could do it again."

 

"Not to worry. Nobody's asking you to."

 

"Oh?" She started to say something else, then stopped and smiled a little instead, not quite meeting his eyes. "Well. At least tell me, does it ever feel real again after the innocence goes away?"

 

"I've told you I'm not the person to ask. If anyone could do it it'd be you, but that will take time. And the right partner."

 

"I see," she said. It sounded like she knew he wasn't referring to himself.

 

He looked away. He shouldn't have let the conversation turn this way. Whatever this was, he still knew that love implied not leaving. He couldn't make that expectation. He wanted her to have it with someone someday; she was made for loving. He wasn't. He knew his limits.

 

"This, now, is good," she added tentatively.

 

"I agree wholeheartedly." Steer away. He ran his fingertips down her forearm to clasp her hand. "Did you sleep well?"

 

"I did."

 

"Good. I was worried about you. Not quite worried enough to skip dropping all my problems on you at once, but I worried."

 

"It's better with you here. And you're better with you telling me what's going on." She squeezed his hand. "It was a hard day before that. I'm hoping I can work my way around any future…similar requirements."

 

"Me too." He kissed her forehead. "If there's anything I can do…"

 

"You're doing a lot already," she said. "In theory at some point I should start being nice in return."

 

"Tolerating the mess that was last night counts for a lot."

 

"You letting me see it came out in my favor."

 

"I'm not sure I understand how that was in any way good for you."

 

"I thought we established that." She gave him an arch look. "It further cemented trust. Established vulnerability so I would have the comfort of not feeling alone. Presented an interesting thought puzzle that might keep me occupied. It was in every way ideal for making me feel included, and important, while challenging me enough to keep me from rejecting it as too perfect."

 

He reminded himself to keep breathing. She was going to string him up with the rope he had handed her. And this was why one should never ever talk without having one's cover story in place.

 

She looked more thoughtful as she went on. "I think you were giving me something you don't give out lightly. You were right, that it wasn't about work and wasn't just about wanting. It was something you could do to tell me that you're trusting me, and that's…it's an honor to know." She was so very still. "This is a lot of readings to think about at once."

 

"It is," he said hoarsely.

 

"Not all of them were necessarily your intent."

 

"Not all of them."

 

"It's unwise to pick out just the ones that come naturally. That feel right."

 

It was unwise to push conspicuously self-interested interference into this delicate line of thought. "Do it anyway. Here at least." He pulled her a little closer.

 

She focused anew on his face. "I want you here no matter what." She dipped in to touch her nose to his. "I'm glad we talked. I'm glad you told me. And I'm glad you're with me now. That said, when you look at things like this, how does the bad possibility not drive you insane?"

 

Hedge against it. Learn to ignore the weakest odds. Plan against the others. Never stop looking over your shoulder. Learn to cut your losses. Give up on feeling bad about it. "You get used to seeing both sides," he said lightly.

 

"And it stops tasting bitter?"

 

He hesitated. That question depended wholly on the person. For the people in his line of work who were sensitive to start with, it didn't stop until they burned out and gave up caring about much of anything. Effective colleagues, but he had to watch them. "Ruth…it took me years, and I never want you learning your way around it the way I had to. There are more comfortable ways of looking at life, comfortable ways that still work. You don't have to see it this way."

 

"Worried I'll catch up with you?"

 

More than she knew. "You were made for better things."

 

She smiled bleakly. "Remaking is happening these days, or hadn't you noticed?"

 

He stroked her cheek to make sure the tiny instinctive beginning of a real smile was still there when he touched her. "Then you'll remake yourself for better things, darling. What we talked about last night, that's just what I am." He was a particularly high-functioning sanitation worker, not a philosopher; he could let her see the machinery he lived with but he couldn't grant her the perspective necessary to live with it herself. "It's not what you have to be, not if it hurts you."

 

"This is a better start than I have on anything else," she said. "It's something to keep in mind, at least. Besides. You think that way, and I still think you're amazing. You do a lot of good."

 

"Just think how much more you'll be doing in the days to come," he said warmly. "Can I double-check something for my own peace of mind? You heard all this rambling. And you know that everything I say and do could very reasonably be construed to be hiding a horrible motivation. And…you're letting me near you anyway."

 

"Yes," she said firmly.

 

Even as she acknowledged the other thing. It was as close to trust as he was going to get. He only hoped the strain on her didn't hurt. "I'm grateful. Deeply grateful. But out of fairness I should point out, if it's too great a risk you don't have to do it."

 

"That…honestly had occurred to me," she said with a small smile, "but I think we're both better off this way."

 

Yes. Yes, they were. He took a minute to just enjoy the look and feel and everything of her. "No matter what happens today," he murmured, "you'll have me." He very nearly swore it as a promise outright. "Also I'm dying to kiss you right now."

 

"Mm. That's acceptable."

 

He was better at expressing himself this way, and the lessons were far, far better for her spirit. Or, from an alternate perspective, she simply felt good.

 

 

 

 

L + 11, part 2

 

 

 

Ruth kissed Wynston a last time – well, not last at all, not if she had any say in it – and the two of them headed out to breakfast. The crew turned in unison to look at her as she entered.

 

"Are you all right?" said Jaesa.

 

"Yes," she said. "Thanks. It's good that Draahg's gone. I hope it'll send Baras a message."

 

"We can deliver that one in person," rumbled Pierce. "Least I hope so; these hoops we've been jumping for prep aren't getting any more exciting."

 

"We'll check in with Vowrawn," said Ruth. She wanted it over with, too. She had better things to be thinking about.

 

"If he tells us we have to get his groceries before we're ready for the showdown, I can't be held responsible for my actions," said Vette.

 

"Groceries wouldn't be entirely amiss," Wynston said mildly, scanning the shelves. "For us, at least. Am I reading this right? Is this entire shelf earmarked for the lieutenant?"

 

"Don't you forget it," Pierce said happily.

 

"Let him eat," Ruth told Pierce. "We need him."

 

Wynston grinned and waved one dismissive hand. "No, there's enough non-Pierce property." He grabbed a small tray and headed for the microheater. "So how do you people contact Vowrawn?"

 

"We call him directly," said Ruth. "He's good about picking up."

 

"Either he really likes her or he really doesn't trust his secretary," said Vette. "Either way, hey, direct line to the Dark Council. The part that isn't trying to kill her, even."

 

"But we're checking in with the Hand first," said Jaesa. "Right?"

 

"Right," said Ruth. She was hoping they wouldn't hold her back. Or push her in the wrong direction.

 

"I see," he said impassively, and moved on to other things. He kept on with easygoing conversation, catching up now that the crew was together in something approaching a relaxed way. She found herself more than once almost fuzzing out to the sound of his voice. She liked the way he acted here. Confident, not arrogant, contributing at least as much as he absorbed. Slightly sweet, sometimes almost teasing toward Vette and Jaesa. Cagey with Pierce, but not quite in a hostile way. Furthermore he seemed to understand Broonmark's occasional blipping without difficulty.

 

They finished breakfast. Wynston passed close to her on the way out the door. She reminded herself that she wasn't going to kiss him in front of the crew. He gave her a knowing smile, one that told her he liked her anyway. A lot. Then he moved on through.

 

They gathered around the holo, all but Wynston, who hung back out of cam sight. He suddenly had his business face on. She nodded at him and placed the call.

 

The two Sith Servants appeared. Servant One, as ever, took the lead, looking down at her with that air of calm command. It wasn't the command of someone at the top of the ladder, but it was certainly his idea of authority over her. "Wrath. Baras's leverage is gone. Vowrawn preserved. Baras's bid to be named Voice of the Emperor will be crippled. What remains of Darth Baras is yours. He has gone to Korriban. Do as you must."

 

Korriban. It seemed fitting. She nodded. "He doesn't have long to live."

 

"Darth Vowrawn returns to Korriban as well. Baras dares not strike at him within sight of the Dark Council."

 

"The hinges are gone from the door," croaked the hooded Servant Two.

 

"Vowrawn will authorize your clearance to land. From there, the battle is yours."

 

"Unleash the Emperor's Wrath," said Servant Two, in a voice that sent a creeping cold up Ruth's spine.

 

They ended the transmission.

 

"Clear enough," Ruth told her crew. "Lay in a course, Pierce. It's time to finish this."

 

Pierce grinned and headed out to the bridge. Wynston moved to join Ruth.

 

"Tell me that second one isn't calling the shots," he said.

 

"No. Orders come from higher than that."

 

"I see." His smile was a little strained. "Well, I'm yours to command."

 

"You're going to be conducting an independent review of my employers the second this job's done, aren't you." That was so very him.

 

The grin took on a little mischief. "Someone's got to do it, darling. This is going to be very, very important going forward."

 

Her stomach twisted up. "When you draw conclusions, let me know. Before you decide to do anything dramatic."

 

"Oh." He sobered. "Ruth, yes. Absolutely. I wouldn't…I can reason with you. I know if the cause is right you'll listen. Targeting you would be both a waste and a crime." He stepped forward to take her hands in his. "You are not the enemy. Nothing's going to convince me otherwise."

 

She reminded herself she wasn't going to cry in front of the crew.

 

The ship's engines rumbled and whined in the transition to hyperspace. Wynston squeezed Ruth's hands. "Where do you want me?" he asked.

 

On her side. "It's time for a gear check," she told him. "We're about to go to work again."

 

 

 

 

 

L + 11, part 3

 

 

 

It came down to single combat under the eyes of the Dark Council. Upon seeing Ruth's old master again, hearing his dismissive words, and knowing how much he had taken from her – for no reason, in spite of her loyalty, in spite of everything – she joined battle swiftly and brutally.

 

He met her in kind.

 

Her rage rushed in from all sides, feeding off everything Baras had done to herd her here. Every cut, every lie, all of it. She raged, and he met her with a dark implacable hate that made her fresh fury seem like the weakest wave of irritation.

 

Something to learn, she told herself, fighting. Something to break and take for herself, because that's the way it's done. But she found that her frenzied attacks weren't breaking through Baras's defenses. He held, and struck, and held and struck. It was with an almost bored gesture that he swatted her saber aside with his own and flung a searing purple lightning that slammed through her energy defenses to char armor and flesh.

 

She twisted free, intercepted the stream with her saber, but her neck and chest were screaming pain and the raw power of his attack hadn't lessened any. When she staggered back a step, the old Sith laughed. "Had enough, child?" he bellowed. "Can you feel your grip on life slipping?"

 

No. It won't end like this.

 

"Why persist in this futile gesture of vengeance?" he continued. She could barely hear him over the crackling of pain. "Let go. Embrace your death."

 

Vengeance? That wasn't all she had going for her. She flicked her gaze to the crowd of her crew. Her friends. Their Force signature was bright in Ruth's awareness; Jaesa pulsed with small intentional warmth when Ruth met her eyes.

 

Something rose up beyond the anger.

 

Ruth returned her gaze to Baras. She had many more years' training in focus than in rage. In control than in aggression. And in protection than in revenge.

 

It was much more than just her that pushed him backward, steadied her on her feet, drove him back in a shower of sparks and light-warping Force waves. But hers was the will and the direction. What was lost, her hate could not recover; but there was love yet to work for.

 

She felt the small stab of Baras's fear when she flung his lightning back at him. He was a master in the hatred he had fed her, but he wasn't ready for anything else.

 

She fought. She prevailed. And before the eyes of the Council and the Empire, she gave Darth Baras his execution.

 

She stood straight, not bothering to watch as Baras slumped and fell. Instead she turned slowly to meet the eyes of the Council. This was her vindication.

 

"At last, the end of Baras." Darth Vowrawn's easy conversational tone made less sense than ever, but at least there was respect running under it. "The air clears, and my lungs breathe deeply again. You have proven that you are truly touched by the Emperor. The Dark Council knows that the Emperor's Wrath has free rein."

 

Darth Marr's words were dim in her roaring ears. "You are acknowledged, Wrath. Your actions will not be challenged as long as they do not contradict our own."

 

Vowrawn beamed. "You are answerable only to our ultimate master."

 

She wished her father were here to see it. She had meant to climb to get to where she could do more good. This was it.

 

No one could stop her.

 

She owed the Council some acknowledgement. "I look forward to working with the Dark Council for the Empire's benefit," she announced. And working in spite of it if she had to. She would deal with that as it came.

 

She held her head high and let her friends fall in behind her as she left the strongest masters in the Empire. Her peers.

 

She headed straight to Darth Baras's offices. She remembered starting here. It would make a statement to take it again.

 

She did a quick check around the room, sharply dismissed a cringing acolyte who had been doing something in the hall – cringing didn't mean harmless – and shut the door once her friends were in.

 

Wynston was at her elbow in an instant. "Your burns. How do I take the mask off?"

 

She helped him start on removing her mask. The flex panel that sheathed her neck came next, and that's when she was harshly, vividly reminded of the pain pulsing down her neck and shoulder. Wynston's movements were quick and precise as he picked away the rest of the armor necessary to reach her Force-burned skin. His hands were warm, the kolto jarringly cool against her flesh while he worked.

 

He met her eyes. "You did it, Ruth," he said, slowing one pass of kolto application into something like a caress.

 

"And a sight it was," opined Pierce.

 

Jaesa just smiled at her.

 

"You're not completely roasted, are you?" said Vette.

 

"I'm still breathing," said Ruth. She laughed a tiny bit. And sobbed. Both motions were painful.

 

Wynston put a free hand on her back. "Steady, darling," he whispered.

 

After her effort to maintain rigid pride before her rivals his manner seemed overly familiar. Ha. Sith thinking, that. She leaned into him a little and let her adrenaline rush slowly wear off. He was quick in getting her patched up, alternating between frowning at the damage and flashing gentle smiles at her. When he finished and backed off a little, Ruth straightened and looked around; she saw Vette was examining the furnishings of Baras's office.

 

The Twi'lek examined a vase. "So can we sell this stuff?"

 

"Sure," said Ruth. "I don't want it."

 

"Have I mentioned you're the best Sith I ever worked for?"

 

Ruth's laugh was less edgy this time. "I'm glad someone approves. I've just officially earned an Empire full of people who will eat me alive if they get the chance."

 

Pierce snorted. "Think they'll find chances are tougher than expected."

 

Wynston gestured back toward the Dark Council chamber. "Anyone who underestimates the Wrath in the near future is rather badly slow on the uptake."

 

"That…would describe some Sith I've met," said Vette. "See a chance to kill? Why let a little thing like self-preservation get in the way?"

 

Ruth took a deep breath and clipped her armor back into place so as to look impressive for the walk back to her ship. "Come on," she said. "We're going home."

 

 

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L + 12, part 1

 

I'm kinda fuzzy on precise hour-to-hour timeline – how long does it take to get from Korriban to Dromund Kaas, anyway? – but that doesn't have to be the point. 2100 words.

 

 

 

The Niral estate lay west of Kaas City, settled in the jungle at a distance from civilization that really shouldn't be possible on a capital planet. Even at midafternoon the whole landscape seemed dark. The estate was an old place, some stone architecture mixed with the durasteel. Built to last, from the outermost wall to the low rain-streaked house within.

 

The transformation Wynston witnessed from the jungle's gloom to the house's interior was stunning. The indoors was brightly lit, touched but not cluttered with an eclectic mix of elements gathered from more areas of space than Ruth by herself could possibly have had time to visit.

 

Vette barreled past him, clearly on her way somewhere. "Uh," said Ruth, looking over from where she had been greeting a guard by name. "Vette?"

 

"I'm starving and you've got the most normally stocked kitchen on the planet," said Vette, making a beeline for the named room.

 

"I should've known that," said Ruth. She met Wynston's questioning look with a wry smile. "My father spent three years on Nar Shaddaa, and he ate like it," she explained. "This is apparently the only thing Vette noticed when she last visited, and she apparently appreciates it more than the subtleties of eating sleen."

 

"Yuck," yelled Vette from out of sight.

 

Ruth led the rest of the crew into a spacious room arranged to focus on a huge archaic fireplace. "Sit," she said, gesturing. "We'll – "

 

She cut off, looking at a far doorway. A rangy man in grey and green, Wynston's age or a little older, stood staring at Ruth, his whole presence heavy with emotion.

 

He gathered himself and bowed deeply. "My lord. Welcome home."

 

"Briggs." She walked swiftly to meet him, clasping his hands. The formality broken, the servant relaxed a few degrees and gave Ruth a smile that spoke of long friendship. She turned back to the room and said "This is Young Briggs. He and Deshla, wherever she went off to, will look after your needs. – I need to catch up with you first, Briggs. There's…I'm sure there's a great deal to set in order."

 

The servant's face clouded. "I've done what I can. But it's good you're here. This house needs a Niral."

 

"It doesn't have nearly enough of them," she said sadly. In response Young Briggs just reached to squeeze her hand again.

 

*

 

Ruth vanished somewhere with her servant. Wynston talked shop with the crew and accepted food and drink from a matronly-looking Twi'lek. It was some time before Ruth reappeared, and when she did it was to slip along one wall to get from one doorway to another without getting near the conversation. The crew exchanged glances but let her be. Wynston, however, felt drawn to check on her. After a couple of minutes' effort to stay still and stay busy, he gave up, got up, and went after her.

 

The hallway he found himself in ran parallel to an outdoor verandah. He spotted her standing outside a window well down the way; he found his way outdoors, acutely aware of the chill of the misting evening, and made a slow approach.

 

She was looking out into a thick-grown garden. A couple of cobbled paths were visible from here, winding down toward a pond unquiet with rain. There was an eerie beauty to it in the gathering gloom. Nothing he would seek out on his own, but it was a sort of beauty.

 

Ruth cast a low-lidded look in his direction and turned very slightly to invite him closer. Her face was streaked with tears, but she had a little smile for him.

 

Instinctively he put his arm around her and looked out across the garden, side by side in silence. After a little while she slid an arm around his waist. Still she said nothing.

 

It didn't seem like the time to talk business. Nor even matters between them. Instead, after a while, he casually said "I have to ask. Young Briggs?"

 

"Oh, he's well older than I am. But Briggs was there first. We had to call his son something."

 

"I see. Hereditary job?"

 

"Sort of. He is freeborn, we don't keep slaves. He grew up here; he went to the military as required of all citizens, but it didn't suit him, so Father pulled rank to bring him home."

 

That sounded like a very Niral thing to do, at least if Ruth was a representative Niral. "Your father. He was Sith, too?" So much background Wynston didn't have yet. And some he did, but he should let her tell him rather than remind her he had a dossier on her.

 

"Yes. From a long line of Sith." She shivered. "The house is wrong without him."

 

"I'm so sorry." He pressed his nose to her hair, let a little time pass. "I would have liked to meet him."

 

"Mm. He would've loved you. Anyone dedicated to the best parts of the Empire…." It took her a moment to go on. "He taught me everything I know. I wanted him there today."

 

He bit back the culturally-tailored platitude about a happy afterlife or, better for Sith, presence and will and pride and power after death. If there were ever a time to tell her comforting things he didn't believe it would be now; instead he turned a little, wrapped his other arm around her, and said "He left a legacy to be proud of."

 

It took a long time for her hug to loosen. She pulled back a little, raised one hand to stroke his hair, smiled weakly. Then she took his hand and turned away to face the garden. "Hm. What do you think of our rain?"

 

It probably wasn't very politic to give his real opinion. But, she had asked. "Given the chance I'd engineer the mess out of existence. It may be necessary but I don't have to like it."

 

She laughed softly. "I see. I won't ask you out into it, then."

 

"No, if you want to walk, I'm with you. Rain hasn't actually been known to kill me yet."

 

She started out onto one of the garden paths, stopping to check a drizzle-spotted lily. "My father loved this place," she said. "He took good care of them. He said they were what my mother liked best about this whole estate."

 

"They're lovely," he said. Less for rain-soaked vegetation and more for what it meant to her.

 

She continued, stopping frequently at one blossom or another. Like she was checking up on old friends. Their scent was heavy on the air, rich and sweet with something he had always associated with her. Ruth paused, touching a recently pruned stem. "It's been weeks since…he left home. Young Briggs must've made sure to look after these." She straightened, frowning. "He's…a good man."

 

He waited. She seemed to be thinking.

 

She shivered. "At least he hasn't done anything yet."

 

"I'm getting the impression that your family's people have every reason to love you."

 

"That doesn't mean anything," she said.

 

"No." That was just Quinn. "No, it means a great deal. Ruth, judging everyone by the standard of the worst you've met is a quick way to drive yourself out of your mind."

 

"It's hard not to look at it that way."

 

"I know. But don't make it the only possibility you consider."

 

Her mouth worked for a second. Then she shook her head. "Never mind. Let's not do this."

 

"Not–?"

 

She kissed him, her lips startlingly cold in the rain, her hands damn near frigid. He hadn't kissed her halfway back to warmth before she pulled back. She didn't look tired or scared. Just determined. "There's more going on out there than I could sort out in a lifetime, Wynston, and I have to clamp it under control by next week or so. Here, now, it's just us. No policy statements. All right?"

 

"As you wish," he said softly, and let her lead him onward.

 

She didn't seem inclined to talk after that. She just kept checking the gardens, working her way around the unendingly rain-fretted pond. She moved on to a patch of lower plants with some kind of red flowers that seemed to glow in the dim weather's light.

 

They were pretty, actually. For plants. "Do you ever pick these?" he asked.

 

"Sometimes," she said. "You're free to, I can show you where we keep the vases when we get back in."

 

"That wasn't exactly what I had in mind." He leaned past her to go for a crimson blossom that seemed like it might have enough stem to be usable.

 

"Wait–" said Ruth.

 

He was already moving too quickly. And grasping a very large thorn. He jerked back and made the thousandth mental note of his lifetime to stay away from nature.

 

"Sorry, I thought you would be going for the other ones," she said. "Are you all right?"

 

"Yes," he said, allowing her to take his hand and wipe away the blood. "I'll have you know I was being romantic."

 

"You were." Instead of laughing she let his hand fall and turned to claim the flower he had tried to pick. She snapped it off somewhere upward of the offending thorn and presented it to him. "Better?"

 

"Hmm." He brushed her hair back and tucked the blossom behind her ear. "Brilliant. The flower's not bad, either."

 

She smiled self-consciously and looked at the ground. "I don't usually get these directed my way."

 

"Don't tell me a man's never gotten you flowers."

 

"Years and years ago, boys. There weren't any flowers to get when I went to Korriban, at least none that wouldn't kill you once you found where they were hiding. And since then, no."

 

"That's criminal." What lives these Sith led. Maybe not all of the game was real, but Wynston knew that these little attentions, the affirmations of individual charms – and, stars, every woman had something about her worth admiring – these things made life a lot more pleasant. "I'll have to find you some that I didn't just steal from your own yard."

 

"The jungle's right that way," she said, with wide innocent eyes and a small wicked curl of a smile, pointing out over the pond.

 

Wynston suppressed his instinctive reaction to that horrible suggestion and smiled. "I'll check Kaas City," he said lightly. "The florists there take the thorns off."

 

She smiled. Then blinked hard and let the smile fall away. "Right. Check the city."

 

"What is it?"

 

She stroked his hand for a while without looking at him. In time she said "Wynston?"

 

"Yes, Ruth?"

 

"What happens tomorrow?"

 

He lined up a number of possible answers to that, but most of those answers would be intentionally missing the point. "Tomorrow I should go retrieve my ship from Corellia. I'll need to be able to move as we push things into place for you. After that I can get to work checking out Baras's resources, clearing the way for you. Get you reports on what's where; we can talk about what use it can be to you and whether there's anything you'd be willing to spare for Intelligence. I can do a little quiet work here and there to smooth out any difficulties with potential rivals." All solid work. "That's what I would recommend professionally." And the only thing he should be recommending. "Or…I can stay with you. For a little while. Obviously I'd help to–"

 

"Stay," she said.

 

He kissed her to cover the urge to say more than he should. When he was feeling steadier he turned to kiss her cheek instead. "For a little while," he reminded himself out loud.

 

She nodded. "I know." Then she half smiled, turning her face into the hand he had rested on her other cheek. "I'm afraid my bed here only sleeps one," she murmured. "I'll arrange something tomorrow. In the mean time I'll set you up–"

 

"I've slept in some very limited spaces," he said. "If you don't mind. Otherwise, certainly, I'll settle elsewhere for the night."

 

"Stay," she repeated.

 

He smiled, rested his forehead against hers. "As you wish," he whispered. Another gathering of tiny raindrops on her face got together the mass to start rolling down. He was just about sick of the rain doing that. He held her close, traced the curve of her spine with his fingertips. "Let's go warm up then, shall we?"

 

That was, after all, the one good thing about getting caught in the rain.

 

 

 

 

L + 12, part 2

 

 

 

Lots to do tomorrow. Take charge of Baras's Dromund Kaas offices; that seemed like a well-placed base of operations for the days to come. Home was too long a shuttle ride away from the action. Lots to do. Say hello to more than a few military officers over whom Baras had had power. Take Baras's Intelligence assets for a test drive before deciding whether to repatriate them to Wynston's people. Make a show of power for the Sith who had served him. In short, take charge of the power base whose master she had destroyed.

 

Find an obstetrician. There was a strange thought.

 

Wynston's breathing had slowed behind her, but she was never really sure if he was asleep. She thought back to the half-breath of hesitation he had let show before saying he could stay at her side for a while longer. Heartbreakingly tempting. She had seen hesitation like that before.

 

Wynston was different. Still, she wondered. The big goal, Baras, the one who had required a powerful coalition of interests to take down…he was dead. Now that that was accomplished, did Wynston's interests still coincide with hers?

 

Did he have any further use for her?

 

She suddenly wished she were better covered. There was always one obvious answer there; not enough to change his real plan, but enough to turn her into a commodity in the plan as it stood. It was the same thing that had been aching in the back of her mind for weeks. Everything, everything with Quinn felt cheap and dirty in hindsight. The easy takings he got on the job. The bonus thrown in on a transaction that had been kept hidden from her. At least with the boys on Korriban she had known the nature of the arrangement. She hated that she had wanted Quinn in a different way, hated that it had been, for blind months, better than she knew how to describe.

 

Hated that she wanted it again and she didn't know what her lover had over her.

 

Stop it, she thought. Wynston and I both asked for this. He never put fake decorations on that point; we saw, we wanted, we took, and there's nothing wrong in it.

 

There's nothing wrong in it.

 

She sat up fast and shook off his hands to go find something to put on.

 

"Ruth?" he murmured.

 

She kept her back to him while she rifled through her old wardrobe in the dark. "Hush." She found a nightshirt and tugged it out.

 

He was stirring now. "If you're cold, darling, the covers are…" He started shuffling the blankets, which in fact had already all been covering her to some extent; as she pulled the shirt on and turned around she found him flip-folding one to double cover her side at his own expense.

 

"Yes," she said, relenting. "I'm a little cold."

 

"Come here." He moved to gather her in his arms but she shook her head and made him turn instead, then climbed in to hold him from behind. It was a little safer this way.

 

He seemed to sense something wrong in her insistence. "What can I do?" he pleaded.

 

"Keep your promises," she said quietly. "Now sleep."

 

As ever with him, the moment her thinking brain let go she felt unreservedly happy. Desire always met desire, but when he was with her it felt like more than that. She met him.

 

 

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L + 13

 

 

 

Wynston did leave in the morning. He really did need his ship either way. "I know some hyperspace lanes that'll bring me back to you faster than anything else can," he told Ruth. "Until then, darling, watch your back."

 

Vette offered to fly him out to Corellia. Quoth she, "The sheer amount of Sith Business that's gonna be going on in Kaas City pretty much obligates me to be anywhere but here."

 

He left Vette in the Coronet City spaceport and headed to his rented hangar. His heart lifted to see his vessel there. The ship looked fine from the outside, untouched within. Good. He felt sharper already. Here was home. Here was one of the few constants in the galaxy he really loved, the source he returned to when the assignment ended and normal matters picked up again.

 

He would go back to the assignment this time. He wanted to go back this time; this place was familiar, but the sharpness of his professional clarity cut both ways. The strings it was ready to cut this time might hurt.

 

There was already a distance between him and what he missed, he reminded himself, no matter what he did. A very small distance but one that already imposed the pang of separation, no matter how close or far he was physically. Enough of that. He left the chaos of Corellia behind and parked in orbit to set up a secure holo line to Vector.

 

"Wynston," said the Joiner. "You're looking well."

 

An unusual opening. Wynston had no reason to think he looked any different. "The Dromund Kaas climate. What can I say?"

 

"How goes the mission?"

 

"Under thirty-six hours ago one Darth Baras, while appearing before the Dark Council to receive recognition of his status as the Voice of the Emperor, was interrupted mid-speech by the Emperor's Wrath. An altercation ensued." Wynston smiled slyly. "Baras did not survive."

 

"And the Wrath?"

 

Given what he had seen of the fight and the control she had finally asserted? "Better than ever. We'll be consolidating matters over the coming weeks, I want you or Keeper in touch. This is our chance to recover resources, and if our claim to them isn't convincing Ruth's will be. Things are still a little delicate but I think she's inclined to help."

 

"We are glad to hear it. Do you know when you will be returning to headquarters?"

 

Wynston stopped. He considered. He stayed very calm. "I'll see how matters develop, but let's set a target withdrawal date." An anchor, as much for himself as for Vector, to remind him of when real life would go on.

 

He picked a figure. He gave it. The conversation moved on.

 

"As we pick up staff," Wynston said a little while later, "of course some may have to know I'm on assignment and some of those will know I'm dealing with the Wrath. None of them are to know the nature of that relationship." No point introducing extra risks.

 

"You can count on our discretion."

 

"Good."

 

He finished up business, along with inquiring after those of his crew who had already returned to the Tenebrous. Then he bid Vector farewell and prepared for the jump to hyperspace. He hurried back to where he couldn't keep quite secure and he couldn't think quite straight. He hurried back to what hadn't healed, to the distance he would do anything to close. He hurried back because every minute with her was perfect, and there could only be so many of them.

 

 

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L + 15, part 1

A few changes...not many, but a few...from the canon play of this scene. The major one is visitation rights for Ruth's child.

 

 

 

Wynston gave Ruth a warning look before she departed for the Citadel. She would have none of it. "Don't start," she ordered. She wasn't going to let him comment on this again.

 

He turned back to his console to get to work.

 

Ruth went to Baras's old offices in the Citadel, set up in the conference room there. It was an adequate place to conduct cleanup business before her work as Wrath took her back out on the move.

 

Just some cleanup business.

 

Right on time, somebody opened the door and escorted Malavai Quinn in. Ruth didn't even process who the somebody was; she only knew that the door closed and left her alone with Quinn. He was uncollared now. Between the two of them they knew where ownership lay; the shock collar was redundant. She could afford him the dignity of leaving it behind.

 

They faced each other in silence across the length of the conference table. She shouldn't get closer. Even now, hating him as she did, she shouldn't get closer. When she was sure she could keep her breath steady, she started.

 

"Your master is dead, and I am sick of revenge." Her thoughts shattered at the look on his face. She fixed her eyes on the wall and found herself still talking. "It's meaningless to talk of forgiveness between us. If I set you free you will come for me, soon or late. You will watch for weakness. Call me a liability to the Empire. Exact your revenge. This is your nature. Nevertheless I must free you. The war effort needs you alive, Quinn. The Empire needs you. The enemy is out there and I will not destroy a man so well qualified to fight it. So you shall live. I've unfrozen your accounts. I shall write a recommendation for an appropriate post." She gathered the will to look at him. "You will not contact me, and you will never know the child."

 

He was calm. Steady. "Will you be resuming your campaign against the Republic, my lord?"

 

"Yes." He knew that, or should. Ending the war was paramount.

 

"And if I asked to serve you? Knowing how well we work together. Knowing what a difference you and I could make. Knowing I would submit to your command without reservation."

 

"If you asked again, I would spit in your eye." He flinched. "Any other stupid questions?"

 

"No, my lord."

 

"Good. Coordinate with Jaesa for your passage offworld and any other resources you require."

 

She conducted him to the door. "One final thing," she said, pausing in the doorway, struggling once more to hold up under his brilliant blue stare. "I love you. I'll go to my grave loving you. And for that above all, I will never forgive you." An ugly truth, and something she didn't care to carry alone. "Dismissed."

 

 

 

 

L + 15, part 2

 

 

 

"Hey, Secret-Agent-Man."

 

Wynston looked up from his console and, from habit of security, turned off the display. "Vette. How are things? – Did you get your lekku done? You're looking very vivid."

 

Vette made a face. "You are so full of it."

 

He grinned. "I only do it because you call me on it." That kind of girl was always fun.

 

"You do it because you're hoping I'll get a head injury bad enough for me to start falling for it."

 

Pierce, seated not far away at his own research, snorted.

 

"Funny," said Wynston, "it looks to me like it didn't take a head injury to bring you here just now." A tiny bit of malice in his grin. He loved that she didn't take him even slightly seriously. After a moment he turned to amiable innocence. "What can I do for you?"

 

"Well, I was going to thank you for helping Miss Wrath but I'm starting to think I shouldn't bother."

 

"Thank me when she's really established. We're not in the clear just yet."

 

"Missing the point. We were not exactly having a great time trying to pull her head out of her angst after Captain Turncoat did his thing. I'm glad you showed up." She fidgeted a little. "Woulda been nice to make this happen way back on Alderaan, spare us all a whole lot of 'What the Captain says goes,' but better late than never, I guess."

 

"It might have been nice, but I do have a policy of leaving women alone when they tell me to." Off the job, anyway.

 

Vette glared at him. "Liar."

 

Wynston set his bland expression at odds with his tone of voice. "You haven't told me. Just say the word, you'll find I can be very, very well-behaved."

 

Over the sound of Pierce's laughter, Vette half yelled "You are so full of it."

 

Wynston grinned and let Pierce's laughter run its course before speaking again; this time his delivery was friendly-serious. "Vette, I am glad to be here. The two of you deserve considerably more credit for having been there the whole time, but I'm glad to do my part. And I'm very glad she seems to be doing better."

 

She looked down at the console he had turned off. "So what're you doing after this, anyway?"

 

"Working," Wynston said levelly. He didn't consider walking around spilling long-term plans to be good policy. "The situation's complicated. I expect I'll be in touch."

 

"Wow. We've got Mister Commitment here."

 

"I am committed. To the same cause you are. I just won't necessarily be working in this neighborhood."

 

"Right." She gave him a sharp look. "That means I get to handle background checks on her next boyfriend myself."

 

"Not necessarily. Direct any names my way and I can get you any dirt on him that's ever touched the HoloNet or certain more specialized networks."

 

She examined his face. "And that doesn't bother you at all. Does it."

 

"No, it doesn't." He wasn't qualified for the long run, not like that; no point blocking the way for someone who was. "Did you have any other questions?"

 

"Yeah. Like exactly where do you expect me to find normal guys around here?"

 

"'Around here,' 'normal' high-ranking Sith are everywhere; you can't stab a wall hanging without hitting one."

 

"Not what I meant."

 

"I know." He smiled thinly. "I really ought to get back to work. Right this minute, this is the sanity restoration I can do."

 

 

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L + 20

 

 

 

There was a huge amount of terrorizing to do in the Citadel, not to mention assorted other government buildings in Kaas City. Ruth, having been told by the Servants to concentrate on her own affairs, was keeping busy.

 

It wasn't terrorizing by any real Sith standard. It was more showing up, flexing theatrically, and then offering constructive working relationships under terms better than Baras would've offered. It worked in her favor that everyone knew the ultimate end of the terms Baras would've offered.

 

Her people mostly played guardsmen; Wynston and Vette semi-frequently peeled off to observe movements in the city and, at times, check security on meeting locations that kept mysteriously sprouting explosive charges and the like. Everybody was formal when they reported back to Ruth in public. The chin-up command style she had been trained to was going to be a full-time affectation in her capacity as Wrath. She really enjoyed getting home in the evenings, tossing aside the mask, and settling in for a little thinking time by herself on the verandah, or else talking with some subset of her people over hot chocolate inside. A little thinking or talking, then returning to a console to run over a slowly growing stream of reports from Baras's old people and brainstorming strategy.

 

It kept her moving. Over the next few days she slept through the night, every night, and what nightmares there were were mundane and forgettable. Wynston was affectionate, attentive. Endlessly practical counsel and sweet, open company. He was good at what he did. Really good. It helped.

 

Business in the Citadel ran late one evening; Ruth was tired enough to be a little annoyed when Wynston stopped her on the party's way out to their speeders.

 

"If we have a few minutes to spare," he said, "the two of us might stop by the Nexus Room. While we're in town."

 

Ruth cast a look at her companions. Vette was rolling her eyes as loudly as she could. "That's a little…abrupt," Ruth said self-consciously.

 

"It's almost certainly not what you're thinking." He smiled. "Just an hour or so. Or we can just go home if you prefer."

 

"No." She did have a little time, and she was curious in an acutely alert way. "Let's go."

 

Ruth's crew went on ahead. Ruth herself headed to the cantina and parked her speeder beside Wynston's. He kept a little distance leading her in. Enough to satisfy propriety.

 

Which only doubled her consternation when he spoke to someone at the desk, handed over a cred stick, and beckoned Ruth to a lift that led up to one of the private suites.

 

The lift delivered them upstairs, and she followed him off to the nearest doorway. "This is not what I was thinking?" she said skeptically.

 

"Well, I don't read minds as such. I could've guessed you wrong." From the antechamber they could still hear the dining room's music. Suddenly he looped an arm around her waist and whirled into what she was considerably surprised to find was a dance hold.

"There," he said, grinning. "Guess that one?"

 

No, but it was good for a very pleasant rush. "I'm not convinced this is your whole plan."

 

The Chiss studied her face. "I'd have stayed downstairs but we probably want to minimize the publicity of your less formal associations. We'll have been observed no matter what, but I'd rather…" He settled into a slow rhythm with the music floating up to them. "I'd rather save this for us."

 

The last time they had danced here it had been out on the public floor downstairs, as two nobodies. Just a chance encounter, that first night together. "It's been a while," she said. Only a year and a half, she thought. Only a year and a half.

 

"A long while," he agreed. "At no time did I expect that I would ever be back here with you."

 

She enjoyed being here with him. As breaks from the job went, this was…nice. "I never expected to see you at all," she admitted. "After every time we ran into each other, we'd split up and I'd think, that's it. That's the last I'll see of him."

 

"I hoped it wouldn't be. Every time." His hands tightened in small caresses at her waist and hand. "My work doesn't encourage connections, but that didn't stop me hoping."

 

They were quiet for a while. His eyes were warm, his expression gentle, his arms steady, his lead as sure and natural as it had been their first time. When she smiled he slowly matched it with his own, and that was every bit as dizzying as it had been the first time. She had been so much younger then. He was, when he looked at her like this, just the same. Only closer than ever.

 

"This was a good idea," she whispered.

 

"You keep saying that when I throw ideas at you. It's very flattering."

 

"Mm, it's true. The first time was a good idea, too."

 

"I had no idea how much. Just imagine, if we had finished that one odd job and then you'd turned me down for dinner. We'd have gone our separate ways, into our separate trials, and never known what we were missing."

 

Just the thought of it made her ache. "I wouldn't have turned you down. I liked you. You were good company." Easygoing, not at all intimidated by her. Did that just mean he had been sent, he already knew her face and social profile, and he had gone the route likeliest to pique her interest, namely, nervy novelty? She had wondered of late. But she didn't think it was like that. "Did it matter to you even slightly that I'm Sith?" she asked. "Does it now?"

 

"That's a complex question. When we're alone? No. You don't make me put it front and center at all times." His eyes were brilliant. "You never made me do that, even though you could."

 

She grinned. "Somehow I doubt you'd listen."

 

"I do. I have. I've survived as long as I have in part by behaving for Sith, sometimes even when I couldn't undo their will behind their backs. That's part of why I so very much appreciate what I'm allowed to be with you."

 

"What you're…? Wynston, I boss you around all the time." Perhaps more than she should sometimes.

 

"It is true you make me back you up in doing the right thing in the field. And you do keep ordering me to tell the truth, support you, give you…give you myself instead of the plan." He squeezed her hand. "All that is still allowing me to be a better man than most authorities like to permit."

 

The connection between them sang with the ongoing music, and she felt his happiness as surely as she knew he must feel hers. "You being anything else would be a loss for both of us."

 

He laughed softly. "Darling, you may be the only person who ever meant that."

 

"I do mean it," she said. "You're the only person who ever bothered trying to teach me to dance."

 

 

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L + 25

 

 

 

Wynston woke when Ruth sat up. "Hm?" he said.

 

"I was just thinking," she said in a gravelly voice. She still sounded sleepy. "You're the one setting your schedule. Have you decided how long we have?"

 

"A little while."

 

"How long is a little while?"

 

Wynston ran a quick check of his mental calendar. "Two weeks," he forced himself to say. "I'll have to leave in another two weeks."

 

"Two weeks," she repeated. "That's…" She lay back down, not touching him, staring at the ceiling. "All right. After that, your job's going to need you elsewhere."

 

"That's right. You've been doing brilliantly; with the battle won here, you won't need me as much as other matters will."

 

"That's true," she said distantly.

 

"Obviously the new organization has every reason to stay in touch with the Emperor's Wrath in coordinating Imperial operations. I would be your primary contact. When your schedule permits we could meet to talk. Frequently."

 

"Certainly. At the same time, it would be dangerous to let that interfere with our own tasks."

 

"Definitely. While we're working…"

 

"Working apart does make sense."

 

"Yes. You're accustomed to command, I'm accustomed to nearly complete autonomy in operations – sooner or later those habits would start clashing."

 

"I know, Wynston. Shut up."

 

"Only if you do."

 

To his considerable surprise, she took his hand and held it in the silent dark.

 

"You know something?" she said after a while.

 

"What?"

 

"I'm happy here. Even with everything. Happy with you." She suddenly shuffled down to bring her face in close to his. "Is that weird, under the circumstances?"

 

"I've never been one to reject happiness due to improper circumstances. I'm happy with you, with everything. I think if we knew the galaxy was going to burn out tomorrow I'd still be happy because you're near." He wished he could see her expression better. "You mean it?"

 

"Yes. I know I can be difficult, but…what you're doing. I do believe you care. I believe you're with me for the right reasons and…I'm happy for it."

 

That seemed to undo something in his chest, a tension he had briefly forgotten was there. He slipped his arms around her and took a moment to force his lips to stop trembling. "Then believe also that these have been some of the happiest days of my life."

 

"Even with everything."

 

"Even with everything."

 

Crafty woman, getting the practical cooperative words out of the way before bringing around the devastating counterargument. She liked him. She liked him and she could still do the job for the right reasons. She didn't want to, but she would. She was strong enough. And he would be back, if she would have him. And just now everything was as perfect as the galaxy ever was. He kissed her, drowsily, lazily, over and over, and fell asleep that way, her breath warm on his lips, and his on hers.

 

 

 

Notes:

 

Galaxy blowing up? Not foreshadowing at all.

 

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L + 32

 

 

 

"So's your kid have a name yet?" inquired Vette.

 

"It doesn't have a gender yet, Vette, of course I don't have a name ready."

 

"Come on. You must've at least been thinking about it."

 

Ruth's look at the Twi'lek sharpened. "I did. Some. I talked…we talked. A little bit about names, just in theory, before I knew." She touched her belly. "Before I found out. I can't do those names now."

 

"Oh. Right." It only took Vette a moment to perk up again. "I can deal with not naming 'em after Quinn or anything he stood for."

 

"And unfortunately there aren't many other people that are worth naming it after."

 

"Vette?" Vette looked innocent.

 

"I'm not sure 'Vette' is an ideal Sith name."

 

"It's a great name."

 

"Yes, but then when I was yelling at her for misbehaving I would have to scream at Vette. All day, every day."

 

"And this is different from normal how?"

 

"I don't scream at you!"

 

"Check yourself, hon."

 

Ruth scowled.

 

"So. What do we have. Evilspawn? After his or her dad, of course. Wynnie?"

 

"What?"

 

"Just try it, I wanna see the look on his face."

 

"I'm not naming my baby Wynnie. I could just do variations on my parents. You know. Lara, for a girl. I suppose a boy would just be Colrand."

 

"That's not very exciting."

 

"Thanks for the opinion, Vette."

 

 

 

Contrast this with her bitter, bitter, bitter name idea in prime canon: http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=5017128&postcount=956

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L + 39

 

 

 

Wynston set an alarm for early. Separation tended to go quick and clean when it had to be at the spaceport by an hour after sunrise.

 

He kissed the woman who had shared his bed for the last month. It was a continuous want when he was with her, a craving for contact, its own reward.

 

He snapped out of it and picked up his bag. "Thank you, Ruth. For everything."

 

"You, too," she said, staying still as he stepped away. Her voice was low but admirably steady. "This would have been a lot worse without you."

 

"I'm always glad to help you."

 

She smiled. "I'm always glad to have you."

 

He nodded. "I'll be in touch."

 

She frowned a little. "You'll be…in touch."

 

"Yes." It didn't seem nearly adequate. "Ruth, there are roughly five people I have sincerely said that to in my life, and you're the only one of them who wasn't handling my paychecks. If it's not enough, forgive me. There are very few promises I'm free to make."

 

"You're self-employed now." She sounded like she was trying desperately not to beg, and not quite making it.

 

He hurt for her. "The mission I serve hasn't changed. You know that this, us, wasn't just a job. Don't ever think that's all it was. But I told you, I go where I'm needed, and right now other battles need me more." He reached out to take and kiss her hands, stepped away, let them drop. "I'll be in touch."

 

"Wynston," she said, before he escaped.

 

Against his better judgment he paused in the doorway.

 

"I do want you."

 

He turned to look. Her expression was a little plea and a lot of trying to keep her chin up. He smiled once more. "Likewise, darling."

 

Then he got moving.

 

He packed up his concern for her as neatly as he could in its mental compartment. She would be fine. The crisis had been resolved, her social situation stabilized, her professional situation put on an upward slope. She would be willing to work with him and with Intelligence again. Everything had run right and, on a personally comforting level, he knew she was ready to take care of herself.

 

He reached his ship, took it up into orbit and from there sent it leaping into hyperspace. He leaned forward over the bridge console, allowing the hidden lines of the world made visible to rush at and over him. He could breathe here. Cold, scentless breaths, and they ached a little. He reminded himself that that was just the feeling of having gotten out in time.

 

 

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Hey here's finally some new content!

 

L + 5 months

 

 

 

The Emperor's Hand remained silent, and so Ruth continued her work in the losing battle for Corellia. It was only with reluctant recognition of the sheer numbers that she finally withdrew and focused her efforts elsewhere. This war had to end.

 

It took Vette and Jaesa's insistence to get her to slow down for her advancing pregnancy. Instead she managed intelligence from home, and tended the lilies, and counted the days.

 

She spent some time working through her father's files. He had extensive records on his work on Dromund Kaas as a mid-level Sith administrator. He had correspondence, too. Volumes of it.

 

Then one day, out of nowhere, Wynston called.

 

He was in the street clothes she knew he liked best, vaguely Huttese-human fashion. He looked well. "Hello there," she told his holo image.

 

"Wrath," he said with a bow. "Can we talk?"

 

"Yes, Wynston, we can, and don't call me that again." She made sure her disapproving look wasn't too mean. His caution was understandable; a public conversation was a formal one, and he didn't know where she was.

 

He broke into a smile. "As you like, Ruth. How are you?"

 

"Good. Very slightly bored." She put a hand on her belly, which really was filling out enough to inconvenience her at this point. "That should change soon enough."

 

"I suspect it will. Sources tell me you've retired from the field. I thought we might talk about security in the coming months."

 

"I…that's my problem, Wynston. You don't have to do anything."

 

"I'd like to. My people have every reason to want you in one piece. I can stop by for a few days to help plan what resources I can contribute. If you like."

 

Her heart leaped. "I like," she said.

 

"Good. Just tell me when and where–"

 

"My place, right now or as close to it as you can get?"

 

His smile was wider this time and it warmed her through and through. "As you wish. I'm on my way."

 

 

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L + 5 months

 

 

 

Ruth met Wynston at the gate; her hair was plastered to her head and her loose dress to her body. She never did do anything to gear against the rain. She looked radiant anyway. Wynston abandoned his speeder in the road to rush back to her arms.

 

"You look incredible," he informed her when he finally took a break from kissing her.

 

"I look soaked," she corrected sternly.

 

"You look incredibly soaked. Let's get indoors."

 

She led him straight to the living room where the fireplace was going. He wondered whether it ever went out; it hadn't during his previous stay at the estate. "I'll get some dry clothes," she said. "Be right back." She headed out with a gait that seemed to have adapted well to her new balance.

 

Wynston immediately headed to the kitchen to sort out warm drinks. He was experienced in scavenging desired resources on short notice; he had something brewing by the time she came back out.

 

She accepted a mug and sat on the floor before the fire, gesturing for him to join her. Her whole body was cold in his arms. "So," she said happily. "By the way, hello. It's good to see you."

 

"Wonderful to see you." He kissed her ear, letting his lips linger to warm her.

 

"How have you been?"

 

"Busy," he reported. "I get to be an invisible agent these days. Nudging things here and there, both to help the Empire against the Republic and help it against some of its own leadership. I've told you about that."

 

"Yes," she said. She always sounded genuinely disturbed when he brought up Darth Jadus and the other taskmasters he had described to her. "It's going well?"

 

"Stars, yes. I've never been so pleased with a job in my life. I was excited to hear about you pulling things together on Corellia. I know the outside threat won, but you shut down a lot of the infighting first. We all feel it when those fires get put out."

 

"I'm glad it helps." She leaned in to kiss him again. She was warming up nicely. She had a ways to go, though.

 

"Tell me you weren't waiting out there all day," he said suspiciously.

 

"No, I actually spent the morning indoors. Reading."

 

"Anything good?"

 

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

 

"Now I'm intrigued."

 

She stiffened. "It's really not that interesting."

 

Her discomfort piqued his interest. And he was used to hearing everything on her mind. So he listened and waited.

 

The playful smile on her face gave way to real distress. "This isn't me making the broadest hint in history, I promise. I was just reading my father's old correspondence. He used to write letters to my mother all the time."

 

Nothing wrong with that. "You mentioned her once a long time ago. You said you thought she had worked in Intelligence?"

 

"She did. She was a Cipher agent. She corresponded with Father for years and years, since before they got together until just before she died."

 

"What does a Cipher agent find to correspond about? Without getting fired?"

 

"Home, with minimal incriminating details. The future. Me, once I came along. Each other. Some weeks it was just reminding each other they loved each other."

 

"That's…unusual. Given the demands on a Cipher, much less a Sith trying to keep a Force-blind out of his politics." He ran a hand up and down her arm, briefly forgetting to suppress a frown. "And this lasted?"

 

"For eight years."

 

"A Sith and a Cipher agent," he murmured. "That's promising. Sort of. That little contact and that much danger isn't exactly what I would expect for a happy relationship." Security was what people wanted. Time together. Not what that combination could offer.

 

"They loved each other. Madly. It shows through in every letter, and those letters were only written because they were apart, and this is getting to the point where I should probably stop talking."

 

He smiled and stroked her hair. "I've seen so many definitions of love the word has very nearly lost its meaning, but I'm glad it worked for them. And it's nice to think that a Sith and a field agent can keep a good arrangement." He considered further. That wasn't what he wanted for her. It wasn't what he knew was possible with warmer men than himself. "Still. In the long run, does that really count?"

 

"Some people might not see the appeal, but–"

 

"You're the only–" he stopped himself. "Do you think it counts?"

 

"Definitely. If you'd met them you wouldn't even have to ask." She paused. "It isn't how much you have," she said gently. "It's who you have something with." She smiled, once, and then looked away. "Sorry. This wasn't supposed to be some kind of guilt trip."

 

"No offense taken, darling. Let's…well. Let's talk about what my people can do for you while you're physically out of it. I can only stay here a few days, but I'll send everything I can."

 

She nodded. "Let's do that."

 

That didn't quite seem to cover it. He almost felt like an apology was in order. "Have I mentioned you look amazing?" he said.

 

"You did. I doubt I'm at the height of my attractiveness right now–" she touched her belly again – "but I'm flattered anyway."

 

"You're attractive. Trust me." On paper, pregnant didn't sound too appealing. But it was different with her. "Now. Let's – " he squeezed her waist – "get – " a finger's width lower before he stopped – "down to business." There was work to do, and perhaps other things to be done after. Everything he could do.

 

 

 

L + 6 months

 

 

 

It was a few days after Wynston left again that Ruth received a message, text only.

 

Thinking of you, it said. Stay safe. – W

 

 

Edited by bright_ephemera
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L + 8 months, part 1

 

 

 

What third-party security Ruth had been provided stayed well out of her way when the time came for her to deliver her child. Her servant Deshla was there as midwife, with Jaesa standing by and Vette hovering at not quite line of sight.

 

Labor was long, and labor was painful, and yet there was an end to it; she just wished that the end weren't discovering that Colrand Niral looked just like his father.

 

She got to pretend that her crying was due to continued physical pain, and her attendants granted her that. She held her son and loved him. She loved him instantly, completely. His face broke her heart all over again.

 

 

 

 

L + 8 months, part 2

This story, while previously unpublished, is identical between Ruth's prime universe and this AU.

 

 

Wynston spent a lot of time on the Tenebrous studying the glut of information surrounding the breakout of the war. Learning, analyzing. He wasn't just a Cipher agent now; he had greater decision-making responsibilities and he needed the background for them.

 

"Another failure at home," his guest Keeper said frustratedly, referring to the nearly year-old incident they were studying. "The Hero of Tython's campaign was, bar none, the greatest failure of Imperial security of our lifetime."

 

"Her final strike was the doing of one renegade Sith. That kind of internal threat is scarcely a surprise. I'm more interested in the activities leading up to the event. The Emperor's forces on Belsavis, Voss. Those were highly specialized task forces and we knew nothing of them. What does that mean? And how did the Jedi find out about them? Once she did, was she attacking on general principle? Or did she know specifics of an initiative we never uncovered?"

 

"It's a little late to ask," said Keeper. "The Hero of Tython is extremely high-profile right now, and also deep in Republic space. Unless we sent someone in as a wh*re or a spice dealer we wouldn't be able to get an interview at all, and good luck getting her to talk business with that kind."

 

"What about the Sith? Lord Scourge?"

 

"He seems to be following the Jedi for the time being. We have no idea what their relationship is. Capture would be impractical; as the former Emperor's Wrath he remains one of the most powerful Sith in the galaxy."

 

"We have a Wrath, too."

 

"Would you stake her against her predecessor when the battlefield is Coruscant?"

 

"No," Wynston said. "I wouldn't." Though she would be brave enough to try. He briefly wondered whether her son had been born yet, and how she was doing.

 

"With the Emperor's incarnation dead, assuming your source is correct about that...arrangement, there's little we can do. I'm not authorized to put resources towards 'chasing more conspiracies,' but perhaps your people can monitor for any future unusual Imperial Guard activity."

 

"I'll do that. I don't think I like this mystery. But I think we have nothing to go on right now." Wynston straightened up and smiled. "Thank you for your time. Good luck dealing with the Council's latest initiatives; if you need a minor intervention from outside the system, either to help their plans succeed or see that they fail, you know where to find me."

 

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L + 13 months, part 1

 

 

 

Ruth kept in touch with Wynston, less than she would like but more than she could really expect from someone she knew was giving his all elsewhere. There was the occasional holocall. More often there were short notes, almost comically bare of anything that might compromise operational security; she answered in brief affectionate kind rather than risking scaring him away with longer missives.

 

Would he really scare? She didn't want to test the point.

 

Otherwise she worked, alternating between strategic objectives and some more protective missions on Imperial border worlds. The less important ones that needed a strong hand against the Republic's incursions.

 

And she saw to Colrand. He had plenty of doting admirers in the Niral household, but she never felt quite right unless she was with him, feeding him herself, rediscovering the fact that dark blue eyes were entirely enchanting. He was a sweet baby, Force sensitive at a level she could already feel. Endlessly happy to be handed around. Endlessly happy to be with her.

 

So she was less than enthusiastic when the Emperor's Hand finally called again.

 

The two Sith stared down at her from the holo in her home. She clutched Colrand a little closer and met them stare for defiant stare.

 

"Wrath," said Servant One. "The time has come, and the Emperor's new vessel is prepared."

 

"The will has a Voice once more," said Servant Two.

 

Colrand started crying.

 

"You are to meet with him in person," Servant One said steadily. "There he will prepare you for the next step in your service."

 

"Send me the coordinates," said Ruth. "I'll go there immediately."

 

Servant One just stared at her until his image dissipated.

 

Ruth stroked Colrand's hair, fine and soft and deepest black, and rocked him until he hiccupped and calmed. She set him to rest, buckled armor over her still-adjusting torso, and strode out to the shuttle that would take her out into the Wrath's galaxy.

 

*

 

Ruth's directions took her to a small star well outside the galaxy’s outer arm. It was a long, cold ride. When she left hyperspace she found a fortress made of something so black she could only pick it out by contrasting it against the light of the galaxy beyond.

 

A hangar opened silently for her when she approached. No one showed up when she stepped out; she found her way into a hallway that was all black metal and white light that managed to hurt the eyes without illuminating anything.

 

It was dark here in spite of the harsh lighting. Her spirits sank with every step, and the Dark Side crept thick in every breath. Instinctively she formed a little tight focus within herself, a tiny knot of clearer energy to light her way.

 

The hallways and open doors led her in one direction, winding in toward the center of the fortress. Her path finally opened into a huge black room, lit only by one orb fixed at the top of a massive black throne. A broad-shouldered humanoid figure sat there, hooded and swathed in black robes.

 

He raised his head a little, enough to reveal blood-red eyes and a pale-lipped smile. "Wrath," he said.

 

She would have knelt with or without the sense of compulsion she felt. This was a power too overwhelming to think about displeasing. This was the heart and source of this whole place's darkness.

 

"Master," she said, and wished it weren't true.

 

Something thrust into her awareness, shattering what focus she had. It was a heavy oily presence, vile as it pushed over and through her thoughts. It was cold as it spread, seeming to push into every memory at once and render disdainful judgment. It went on, and on, and Ruth realized at some point that the only reason she wasn't retching was that she was too busy sobbing.

 

Too long afterward the presence withdrew, leaving her empty and stained. She fell to hands and knees and waited for her head to stop spinning.

 

"Welcome," the Voice of the Emperor said mockingly. "You have come to serve, Wrath. And I know you will serve well."

 

She forced herself back to her knees, then her feet. "What do you wish of me?" she said, as steadily as she could.

 

"You will carry out my will. As you have done on Corellia and on Voss. You will strike, and my enemies will fall."

 

"It will be as you say." Anything to get her out of here.

 

"In many works my Hand will direct you. In some, you will come to me, and I will make you my instrument." He leaned forward. "As you will be today, Wrath."

 

He gave her a name she had never heard, a place she had, even though she'd never been there. He sent her away with a mirthless smile. It was all she could do not to run.

 

She left that horrible place and made straight for the location she had been given. The mission drove her, the only living thing in her mind; this was the job. She found her target, scattered his security like so many leaves, struck him down. Another enemy defeated, as it was meant to be.

 

Everything felt brighter when she got home. Colrand cried inconsolably in her arms, for hours, but Ruth was happy to be with him.

 

 

 

 

L + 13 months, part 2

 

 

 

"I'd like to talk," Ruth told Wynston.

 

"Certainly," he said. He had a delicate operation to do, but it would be wonderful to see her. "Is there any way this can possibly be delayed another seventy-two hours?"

 

"Yes, of course," she said firmly. "Do what you have to do."

 

Too firmly. He contemplated her face. She sounded…she sounded as she hadn't since he was alone with her after Quinn's betrayal. She sounded scared. "I'll make it twenty-four, darling." He could bring the op to a close or bring someone else to finish it by then. He only wished he could do better. "Take care of yourself."

 

This time when he arrived she wasn't waiting for him by the gate. Young Briggs greeted him instead, and escorted him in to where Ruth was sitting by the fire, holding a sweater tightly around her.

 

She bounded to meet Wynston when he arrived. "Hello there," she said, hugging him without taking her eyes off his face.

 

"Hello. I must say it's nice to see you found someplace dry to wait for me this time."

 

"Hm. I don't usually mind being outside. But I've been cold."

 

There was something about the way she said that. He cupped her chin and lightly ran his thumb across her lips. "What happened, darling?"

 

She blinked. "Hold on, he's crying."

 

It took Wynston a moment's concentration to pick out the faint wailing from another room. Ruth hurried on ahead, disappearing into one room or another and coming back jiggling a chubby and newly quiet baby in her arms.

 

"This is Colrand," Wynston said calmly.

 

She nodded and flashed him a smile. "Yes. Cole."

 

Wynston had no idea what to say. The baby looked like Quinn. No way to work around that; he should risk facing it. "He's already looking better than the last model," he drawled.

 

She laughed a strained little laugh. "He costs me less on food, too."

 

What mattered was that the little one was Ruth's child. Wynston strode up and offered his arms. "May I?"

 

She carefully transferred little Colrand to Wynston's steady hold. The baby immediately kicked his way a little bit upwards, seized Wynston's jacket, and punched him in the chin.

 

Well, points for spunk. Wynston grinned and asked bemusedly, "Is that good?"

 

"Um." Ruth was suppressing a giggle. "I don't think he's done that before."

 

"I see. I'm already earning special treatment." He laughed at the look on her face. "Don't worry about it. A warrior's got to practice somehow."

 

Wynston liked babies, so long as they were other people's. Babies were too young to know how to hate yet, too young to lie about being driven by selfishness, and forever appreciative of kindnesses. Also they were terribly, terribly cute. Sure, sometimes they punched you in the face, but they were cute.

 

Colrand, having paused to reevaluate his situation, spent a minute staring up at Wynston's red eyes. Wynston stared right back down. "He's never seen a Chiss before, has he?"

 

"No. You're the first."

 

"Well, he isn't screaming. That's a good start."

 

"Just count yourself lucky you don't have lekku. I'm surprised Vette and Deshla haven't snapped and left me forever, given his fascination with the things."

 

"Now, Cole," said Wynston, "there's a time and a place for grabbing, but it it's rarely the optimal opening move when a woman–"

 

"Wynston!"

 

"What? I'm giving him important advice."

 

"Run these lessons by me first?"

 

Colrand burst in with an earsplitting exclamation of total nonsense. He looked ridiculously cheerful about it. Wynston grinned down at him. "If I had any reason to believe that was intentional Huttese I would have to wash your mouth out." He looked back up at Ruth. "I can do Huttese lessons, too. Are those bad?"

 

"Almost certainly," she said, fake-glaring.

 

"Look, Cole, I'm trying to help, but your mother is–"

 

Colrand followed this up with another swing at Wynston's face. Ruth gave up and collapsed into giggles. Wynston bounced the little hellion, just a little bit, while Ruth gathered herself and came in to reclaim the child. "Deshla," she called toward the other room, "he's calmed down a bit, at least if your name isn't Wynston. Can you watch him for now?"

 

The Twi'lek servant emerged from the other room and, with friendly nods toward Ruth and Wynston, took charge of the baby and headed out.

 

Wynston rubbed his jaw, more for show than anything. "That boy will be a great Sith, mark my words. He already knows exactly what to do with his operatives."

 

"You okay?" asked Ruth, her smile dimming slightly.

 

He grinned. "Yes. Come on, what would you like your evening to be?"

 

He followed her back out to the living room and let her curl up against him on the couch nearest the fireplace. He waited while she got comfortable. And waited some more for something he didn't have the information to name.

 

"Ruth?" he said at length.

 

She had her head tucked against his neck, and she was staring at the fire. "I'm glad you met Cole," she said quietly, "but that wasn't why I asked for you on such short notice."

 

"I guessed as much." He stroked her hair and waited.

 

"I met the boss yesterday," she said throatily.

 

His heart sank. "The Emperor?"

 

"His Voice. That's the one. He's…stronger than he was. I think Voss had made him soft."

 

"I see." There was an unpleasant thought. The entity that he had helped Ruth free on Voss a year and a half previously had been far from benevolent.

 

She stared at a spot on his shoulder and was quiet for a few moments. "I think," she said slowly, "his commands are in the Empire's interests. Of course. But it is dark, and he…he was crawling around my mind, Wynston. Laughing at what he found. I don't think I could hide anything from him."

 

One implication jumped out at him. "Anything such as the arguable treason that I commit to deal with Sith authorities who get destructive ideas."

 

"Anything such as that," she agreed.

 

"That may make things interesting. We can hope he sees the greater good over the individual Sith I'm forced to sabotage." He felt her shiver and he set aside the practical line of thought for the time being. "This was hard for you."

 

"Yes."

 

"What can I do?"

 

She led him over to sit before the fire and tugged his arms firmly around her. "Tell me something good," she said.

 

"You're here with me," he murmured impulsively. "Your son is healthy and rather entertainingly self-assured. Uh, also yesterday I turned a certain corporate board meeting inside out such that future weapons deals in certain critical systems are all very suddenly going to start favoring Imperial allies. The whole region has been a death trap; this adjustment should straighten it out in our favor. And save a lot of lives."

 

"Good," she said. "I like that you do that. Most of my life-saving is in the form of stomping on the biggest threat in the room, casting dirty looks around, and repeating until the survivors promise to be nice."

 

"It works," he said, smiling, "among Sith."

 

She quieted and watched the fire. He held her, savoring the smell of her hair, the firelight's play on her small pale hands.

 

She shuddered again. "I can't describe what it felt like, having him in my head. Like I couldn't…nothing was…" she curled tighter. "I didn't feel like me, and I couldn't stop it."

 

He settled his arm more securely around her shoulders. He breathed deep, silently asking her to go along, to relax her body language with his. He remembered things. In time, he spoke. "Can I tell you something?"

 

"Of course."

 

"This isn't to trivialize what happened yesterday. I can't imagine the violation that must have been." He laced his fingers in hers and stared at the fire. "I never told you what was happening when you saw me on Quesh."

 

She stiffened. "You never explained, but I remember, when you injected that…whatever it was. You were talking to empty air, you said you wanted your mind back."

 

"And I did. I very much did."

 

Slowly, haltingly, in terms less clinical than the report he had filed when kicking off the private initiative to locate and free the other victims of that Intelligence program, he described the ordeal of the IX serum and the Castellan restraints. The brainwashing applied as a 'safety measure' after the Dark Council heard of his defiance of Darth Jadus. His failure in understanding, his treason in servitude. He laid it out, after a year and a half of silence and evasively worded professional notes, and she listened, because Ruth always listened.

 

"Is anyone who was involved in doing that to you still alive?" she said in a hard clear voice when he was done.

 

The physical perpetrators, Imperial Intelligence, he had forgiven; they did what they had to do to assure the mission and save both Wynston and themselves from the ire of the Dark Council. The SIS agents who had used the keyword over and over and over, though…"No. I saw to that."

 

"Good."

 

"They couldn't read me. They didn't have that…presence…that such a Sith as the Emperor must have. But if they commanded I obeyed, and that…it was vile."

 

She lifted his hand and spread his fingers, gently tracing his outline in the glimmering firelight. "You've been doing the right thing at the expense of what any higher-up says since the day I met you. I hate that anyone…" she kissed his hand and was quiet.

 

"I got the better of it in the end."

 

"I'm not sure I have that option against my own boss."

 

"He hasn't compelled anything. Right? Just looking, outrage though that was?"

 

"Just looking," she agreed. "I hope that's all."

 

"I hope not even that happens again."

 

"I can take care of myself, but if for whatever reason he doesn't like what he sees about you in my head. If a conflict comes up…"

 

"If a conflict comes up, I'll run for it." He forced humor into the statement.

 

"We'll work something out, Wynston. I won't let him hurt you."

 

"And I won't allow certain confrontations. I told you you're not the enemy, darling. You never will be."

 

*

 

Ruth had the kitchen droids serve them dinner at their couch, and afterward she seemed to revive a little. She and Wynston talked work. They talked about the progress they were making in the Empire's interest. She talked about Colrand. He drank in her voice, stored it up for the days to come.

 

He wondered, briefly, whether her taking him to bed was a matter of habit at this point, something she did because he expected it. That doubt lasted exactly as long as it took her lips to reach his again.

 

Afterward she kept chattering, increasingly drowsily as the night went on, seemingly reluctant to let the evening end. Eventually, though, she did drift off, and he let her warm steady breathing lull him to sleep.

 

She awoke at some point in the dark. He ran inventory: undressed, pleasantly fatigued, in Ruth's familiar room, her nearby – and sat up as she stole toward the door. "Ruth?"

 

"Baby's crying," she said, belting a robe around herself. "He isn't used to sleeping without me. I'll be back in a little while."

 

"You can bring him back here." He would rather have her close. "I really shouldn't be muscling him out."

 

"He's squirmy. Good luck sleeping if you're not used to it."

 

He could do with a night of bad sleep with her. "I like the two of you. Bring him in."

 

So she glided out, and came back before long with Colrand clinging to her breast. With admirable coordination she got into bed on her side, keeping him in place, and relaxed.

 

Wynston edged close enough to take her hand. "Settled in?"

 

She yawned. "Settled in."

 

"Good."

 

"I could die happy right now," she murmured.

 

"Please don't."

 

"All right. I won't." Ruth shifted her other hand on Colrand's back. "I think he would be badly put out if I did."

 

"I would be, too, darling. Not to sound jealous of your attention or anything."

 

"Hm." It was close to a laugh. "You, jealous."

 

"Your time's precious, sweet. But I can share."

 

"There's always time for you." She closed her eyes. "Mmm. After sleep."

 

Just another situation he never expected to enjoy. If this isn't love, he thought, I don't know what is.

 

Caution kicked in. That's the point, man. You've never known what love is.

 

She's happy. With me.

 

That just means she's got a hook. A pleasant one, but a hook. You've seen how that ends.

 

Fine. Drop the word. The fact remains, she's happy here. And so am I.

 

At some point in the night, Colrand rolled over and punched him in the face again.

 

He found Ruth's hand and slept in an unexpected kind of contentment.

 

 

Edited by bright_ephemera
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L + 24 months

 

 

 

The regular jobs weren't bad. Ruth kept Colrand out of earshot of the Servants, which kept him happy. On her work days she spread the fear of the Empire far and wide; increasingly, as time went on, her mere threat was enough to force talks to resolve the situation. She kept the secure focus she had trained in since childhood. It felt pretty good to use that kind of aura to startle or disgust the stubborn Dark Side Sith who insisted on combat.

 

The Emperor had only summoned her once since that first horrible time. Another sick crawling sensation in her mind, another job that she got out of the way as fast as she could so she could come home.

 

Home. Her friends were in and out – Pierce and Broonmark with a cadre of guards for her that Pierce liked to train via improbable spec ops missions, Vette in a part-time treasure-hunting arrangement that saw her in and out of town all the time, Wynston every few months as his missions permitted, Jaesa with frequent exchanges from the home she had bought in Kaas City.

 

Ruth spent every minute she could spare with Colrand. He was the sweetest baby ever. Except with Wynston, whose very presence seemed to transform Cole into a small mischievous wrecking ball. The Chiss never seemed to mind the baby's boisterousness, and it was a source of endless amusement to Vette and Pierce on the occasions they all got together.

 

By tacit agreement no one ever mentioned or discussed the father, no matter how strong the resemblances surfacing in his son were.

 

It was a good life. It felt…safe was a stupid assumption, but it felt right.

 

 

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L + 2 years 8 months

 

 

 

Wynston double-checked his holo disguise in the speeder's mirror. He looked very slightly off to himself, which was ridiculous because he'd had his face modeled in all possible detail for this replica. Well, it would have to do.

 

Ruth was out at her estate's gate, again, heedless of the rain, again. "One of these days I'm showing up an hour early and intercepting you before you go out in this," he informed her.

 

"One hour more for me. I'll accept this plan." She beamed at him, appearing wholly unashamed of her weather cluelessness, and led him inside.

 

They got to the living room, got comfortable, caught up. Spent a little time in the playroom with Colrand, who decided that Wynston's blaster was the most tempting toy ever. After stowing that out of sight and letting the child play around more safely for a while, Wynston returned with Ruth to the couch. And that in turn pleasantly progressed into making out.

 

Ruth stopped when she put a hand on his face. She frowned. She tapped a couple of fingertips across his cheekbones. "Wynston?"

 

Damn. "I knew it was off." He grinned and deactivated the holo disguise via his wrist console. He saw the flash cross his own vision as the image dissolved. Now, instead of him, he knew she was seeing him with an ugly star-shaped chemical burn near his ear.

 

Her voice got a lot less friendly. "What the hell is that and why the hell wasn't it showing?"

 

He decided to cover the interesting and possibly distracting part first. "I've told you about the disguise generators we use. This is one in action. I guess it didn't sync perfectly with my motions, even though the static look was correct. We're working on fixing up forcefields to give convincing tactile feedback along with the illusion, but we're not quite there yet."

 

She pulled back and glared with newly icy eyes. "Do not ever use that with me again."

 

"All right." He was honest with her in everything that mattered. This, here, was just keeping the status quo to keep her from worrying. She looked miserable now. "I'm sorry."

 

She raised her hand to the point on her cheek corresponding to his scar. "Now what's this?"

 

"A souvenir," he said. "I ended up with a confrontation in a lab that had some very exciting caustic substances. It wouldn't have been an issue if the bloody technician hadn't gone right for my face. The stuff that did this – " he pointed at the mark, a textured darker blue against his skin – "is supposedly worth millions of credits on the potency of its formulation."

 

"A confrontation. Everyone got out all right?"

 

"The good guys, certainly."

 

"And you got this looked at right away. Right?"

 

"I treated on site as best I could. Instantaneous kolto filler injections might've helped, but that seems to have been one of the things their lab didn't stock." He shrugged. "So the damage was done by the time I reached a real facility."

 

She crept closer to him and brushed his hair away from his forehead. "I should have been there."

 

"Darling, I'm perfectly capable of handling one small bioweapons lab by myself."

 

She cast an accusing look at the mark on his face. "You shouldn't have to."

 

"You have your job, sweet. I have mine." He turned so she wouldn't have to see the damaged side of his face. "This was nothing important. It happens. If you don't want to look at it I'll look into options for reconstructive surgery; they're not going to get it perfect but – "

 

"Stop." She shifted her weight, leaned in to take his face in her hands. He didn't look at her. This was pretty much exactly what he didn't want to get hung up on, and what he didn't want her to see when she looked at him. "You're gorgeous, you know."

 

His heart temporarily forgot how pulses worked.

 

"I may not ever have listed out everything I like about your eyes, and your hair and your jaw and your very very distracting mouth and everything, but Wynston, you are drop-dead gorgeous and a scar doesn't change that for me."

 

"That's because you're being nice," he said, smiling at her reality-defying tact even as he kept looking away.

 

She stroked both sides of his face with her thumbs and kissed his nose. Then leaned around to –

 

"No," he snapped, jerking away before she could kiss the mark. "Don't do that."

 

"I'm sorry." She backed off. "I just don't want you to think that you are in any way less wonderful than you always have been." She pressed her lips together for a second. "And I don't want you ever to think you should hide things like this from me."

 

"I won't," he said reluctantly. "All right?"

 

"Thank you. I mean it." She took his hands. "You have to be a lot of things to a lot of people, Wynston. Here, I want you to be you."

 

"I want me to be intact," he said dryly.

 

She shook her head, visibly distressed. "I want you just as you are."

 

He gathered his nerve and faced her directly. "So here I am. Happy?"

 

She met his gaze and smiled. "Yes. With you, always yes."

 

 

 

 

Notes:

This is the first time Wynston gets a disfiguring scar. In prime universe, at least, it's nowhere near the last. Reckless living, kids…it'll kill ya.

 

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