Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I need to find my cousin and you need to sleep.”

The metal chair groaned softly as Vel stood and reached for the rainslicker that hadn’t yet dried. Kleya did not say goodbye, did not watch her leave; she comprehended Vel’s words slowly, their meaning only catching up to her when Vel was already disappearing down the steps. She glanced over, then, as uneasy as she had been in the infirmary–to be here, on Yavin, in this unfamiliar tent in an unfamiliar forest. Alone. Thunder rumbled overhead, a long timpani.

In the quiet after, she could hear her pulse in her ears, each beat accompanied by a thrum of pain in her head. She was so still and the beats so forceful that she could feel the rhythm jostling her shoulders forward, featherlight prodding from an invisible hand. Move.

“I can’t,” she muttered. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know what you’d do.

It was Vel’s voice she heard, but somehow his, too: “You need to sleep.”

A cot was pressed against the wall behind her, beneath a line of small windows. With effort, she left the chair and let her shins hit the bunk. She looked up. Beyond a gap in the tree canopy, lightning ripped through storm clouds, followed by a peal of thunder so loud it rattled Vel’s tins and glassware like a barrage of bombs. Kleya's breath caught in her throat, and for but a moment she was in another time, in a child’s body.

She eased herself onto the field mattress, counting the exits around her. One triangular opening to another room; Vel’s bunk, where she’d retrieved this blanket and the camp mugs for tea. One circular entrance, framed by open curtains and a disused fly screen. She couldn’t remember the path to get here. She didn’t know where she would go if she did. 

Earlier, that was the point. 

She pulled the damp yellow blanket from her shoulders and tugged it over herself. She stared at the ceiling. It was framed by arches of young tree trunks supporting spans of scrap metal and canvas. Its apex was a reinforced circle, perhaps an industrial gear or a wheel well. It spun and blurred at the edges, becoming a chronometer, beeping the seconds left until her transmission window closed, the seconds left until she’d be burned, the seconds left until she ended her life in Coruscant.

With Cassian and Kleya’s curious information now vetted–at least in the only manner that really mattered to Mon–Vel trekked a third journey through the downpour. She was tired, wet, and tired of being wet. It was late, now well after midnight, and she hoped her new guest had fallen asleep in the meantime. She had her doubts. She hadn't told Mon that particular piece of curious information, because she knew Mon would feel obligated to uphold base security and the three of them just needed to go to bed. Clearances could wait until morning.

She tried to minimize the squishing of her boots and the creaking of the stairs to her hut, but it was no use. These quarters weren’t constructed with stealth in mind, especially when waterlogged. Thank the stars it didn’t wake Kleya. To Vel’s surprise and relief, she was fast asleep on the extra bunk, curled on her right side. She was breathing steadily, though her brow was working, furrowed. Bad dreams, Vel figured. She knew the feeling well. 

Kleya had tucked herself in the still-damp yellow blanket she had given her earlier. As much as Vel wanted to collapse in her own bed, she couldn’t leave it alone. It would be drafty after this humidity broke. She squatted and unlatched the nearby trunk to procure another clean linen sheet, pleased that she’d finally washed and line-dried a pile of surplus bedding before this storm front came through. She inhaled the fresh scent the jungle flowers left on the cloth. She’d always found it soothing and hoped it would be some small comfort for Kleya. This was no Chandrilan summer spa, but some hospitality couldn't hurt.

She latched the trunk, forgetting how the broken tumbler made a loud metallic clunk, and cringed. 

Hands were on her throat in an instant, shoving her backwards. Her back slammed into the wall. Pots rattled and tools clattered to the floor, but Kleya moved silently and with unexpected strength, her teeth bared like a feral animal.

She was seeing right through her.

“Get off me!” Vel’s voice was strangled. “Kleya!” She pushed hard against Kleya’s chest and face. She didn’t want to hurt her, but Kleya’s chokehold was not a warning. She gasped for air but nothing got through. Her lungs spasmed. Her vision tunneled. She tucked her chin into Kleya’s grip, grabbed Kleya’s wrists, thrust the heel of her palm into her broken ribs, then her nose. It gave Vel the split second she needed to duck out of Kleya’s grasp and slip behind her. She looped her arms under Kleya’s, flattening her palms against her shoulder blades, and pulled the woman tightly to her own chest. As she caught her own breath, she could feel Kleya’s, ragged and erratic against her palms, and a low vibration like a moaned cry in the middle of sleep.

“Hey, hey, hey, you're okay,” Vel soothed as Kleya made distraught sounds in a throaty language Vel had never heard, struggling with a frenzied strength that grew weaker and weaker as the seconds passed. “You’re alright.” Vel wriggled with the effort it took to restrain her, yet cradled her carefully as she lowered them both to the floor. “You’re okay.”

All at once, the fighting stopped. Kleya stilled. She turned her head, trying to see who was behind her. Her face in profile, Kleya’s mouth parted with little gasps, and her visible eye locked on Vel’s. Recognition. Relief. Her shoulders sagged. Vel’s followed.

“Are you back?” Vel asked. She released one arm and then another, wary of a swing, but none came. She helped Kleya sit up and scooted back, one hand still raised as a shield between them.  

Kleya said nothing but her eyes were wide, confused. She opened her mouth to say something, then shook her head. She tried again. “I… I’m sorry.” Her eyes glanced over Vel’s throat and she grimaced. Vel touched where Kleya had grabbed her; the skin stung. She’d likely left some claw marks. 

“We’re even,” Vel assured her, gesturing at Kleya’s face. Her nose was bleeding; Kleya touched the rivulet above her lip and looked at the red on her fingers. 

“I thought you were…” Kleya left the explanation unfinished, as if the pieces of the waking nightmare were slipping from her grasp. She rubbed the blood between her fingers and shook her head again.

“It’s okay,” Vel lied and rose to her feet. She offered her hand. “Come on. I’ll get you a rag.” 

Kleya didn’t take her hand right away, eyeing Vel curiously. It was a vulnerable expression Vel couldn’t parse, unfamiliar as it was on Kleya’s face. For a moment, they were silent, regarding each other as enemies, as strangers. Vel remembered all the other times they’d watched each other through this mutual force field, measuring, judging. Back then, Kleya looked down on her with eyes like pitless wells of disdain, her dark-stained mouth set hard on a flat, unyielding mask, not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle on her Empire-chic business attire. This is what revolution looks like, Vel. But sometimes it looked like this: a black eye, a head wound, tears streaking through a nose bleed. A ruthless spy regressed to a lost child, dwarfed by the scale of grief.

Kleya swiped at her tears too late. She tried to look away, probably grasping for any bit of that old mask, but Vel knew that mask took energy Kleya did not have. “Come on, then,” Vel offered again, firmer, louder–an order. It worked. Kleya focused and took her hand. She stood, but Vel didn’t let go, nor did Kleya pull away. She led her to her room and used her free hand to switch on the glowrod and spin the valve on the wall tank. The sound of the water trickling into the ceramic wash bowl helped mask Kleya’s sniff, but Vel heard it. She pretended she hadn’t. 

A cracked mirror the size of a dinner tray leaned against the wall behind the wash bowl. It reflected her and Kleya, shoulder to shoulder. Kleya’s expression was again inscrutable. Vel squeezed Kleya’s hand once and tried to let go, but for the briefest moment, Kleya held fast. They locked eyes in the mirror. Then she looked away and quickly dropped Vel’s hand, as if remembering to whom it was attached.

Vel did not comment as she took a clean cloth from the adjacent shelf. She soaked the cloth with water, wrung it, and passed it over. Kleya wiped the blood from her chin and nose and held the rag there. Moments passed in silence. With something to hide behind, she seemed more willing to look at Vel again, but only through the mirror. 

“Thank you,” she said flatly, muffled behind the cloth. It sounded as if she'd never said the words before–or, at least, Vel had never heard them from her. “I'm being a terrible guest.”

“I've had worse,” Vel replied, taking a second rag to dab at the raw spots on her throat. She hissed and Kleya frowned. Vel headed it off. “I mean it. This hut had chitterwebs for weeks when I moved in.”

Kleya didn't respond, still watching Vel tend to her throat.

“They bite,” Vel added. She jutted her chin at the adhesives on Kleya's head. “Bit of a botch job there. They might’ve spared more bacta.”

Kleya made a noncommittal sound then moved closer to the mirror to inspect her face. She pressed around the wound and her right eye, wincing. “I hadn’t seen it.”

“I could go back with you in the morning, throw my weight around,” Vel offered. She looked at Kleya’s wounds, at the blood still crusted in her eyebrow. “I can’t believe they let you out like this.” She was testing her; she knew they hadn’t. Base protocol was one full day observation for blast injuries and Kleya wasn’t even granted clearance. Why they hadn’t stopped her, why no one had stopped her, was a question she’d be asking multiple units tomorrow. 

Kleya said nothing. Her stare in the mirror had become vacant, suddenly light years away. Her hand with the bloody cloth drifted lower and lower until it rested on the countertop. Her face greyed. She swallowed mechanically.

Vel knew that look, had seen it far too often lately on new recruits after their first (and second and third) morning rucks with Melshi, and had her waste bin in front of Kleya probably before she even knew she needed it. She clutched it to her chest and promptly vomited while Vel tucked the loose strands from her bun out of the way. Vel smirked softly, sadly. This was hardly something she’d have ever imagined herself doing for Luthen’s second years ago. It was hardly something she could’ve imagined hours ago.

But the woman she’d found in the rain was someone she’d never met. A grieving drifter seeking the void. It was a familiar headspace. The least she could do was offer her a leaky roof and keep the sick off her hair.

Kleya coughed and spat into the bin, moving it down and away from Vel as if Vel hadn’t been inches from it the whole time. “Sorry,” she said, voice scratchy. “The room is spinning.” 

“I don’t doubt it,” Vel said. “Cassian said the stunner threw you into a duracrete wall and you caught yourself with your face.”

Kleya let out a soft exhale that might have been a chuckle in another context. She found the clean edge of the damp cloth and wiped the sweat from her forehead. “Maybe. I don’t remember.”

That was concerning. She turned to look at Kleya head on, scanning her carefully. “You should go back to the infirmary. It’s a bit of a walk at night–”

“No,” Kleya said.

“I can have them send a hoverstretch–”

“No,” she said again, trying to school her face, but her eyebrows knitted up and gave away her desperation. “Vel, please.”

Vel didn’t understand her insistence, but her distress, her panic stayed her hand. “I… okay. Okay.” 

Kleya looked away just to catch Vel’s eyes in the mirror again. Vel watched her open her mouth and close it twice. For a moment, there was only the sound of steady rain on the canvas roof and Kleya’s quick breathing. Then, finally, quietly: “The monitors. The… beeping.”

Vel figured it was meant to be an explanation. However cryptic, it was the first hint of conversation Kleya had initiated so she did not interrupt, coaxing trust from a stray hound.

“They brought a soldier in after me.” Kleya blinked, looked at her hands, rubbed at the drying blood there. Blinked again. “Cardiac arrest.”

Vel rapped her glass of revnog on Cassian’s table. “Tell me what she said.”

Cassian nodded but hesitated. “She wouldn’t lie about it,” he insisted again. “The Empire is building a superweapon. They’re using kyber from Jedha and fuel from Ghorman. An ISB mole died for it. Luthen died for it.”

“How?”

“He got burned. He killed himself but it… didn’t take. ISB took him to Lina Soh. Kleya got in and let him go before they could get anything out of him.”

“Let him go?”

Let him go. 

She understood. She nodded.

Tears rolled down Kleya’s cheeks and she made no move to stop them. The angular light from the glowlamp cast harsh shadows on her face, exaggerating the deep, dark circles under her eyes, indistinguishable from purple bruising. “I’m tired,” she admitted in a small voice, as if the woman of a thousand secrets had just revealed her worst one.

Vel resisted an instinct to embrace her. Instead, she nudged her shoulder into Kleya’s. “Go back to bed. I have medshots in my field kit. I’ll clean this up and bring them over.” 

“Vel,” Kleya protested, “I can clean–”

“It’s just tea,” Vel said. “Go.”

Kleya nodded once and left Vel’s room, unsteady on her feet. Vel watched her make it to the bed, then took a deep breath and let it out through tight lips. She tidied up, passing Kleya to dump the waste water in the aquifer purifier out front. She was sitting on the edge of the bunk, watching as Vel left. Watching as she returned. Even as Vel set about rummaging through her field kit, she felt Kleya’s eyes on her back. 

“I’d think after trying to kill me,” Vel said drily, “I should be the one surveilling you, not the other way around.” She meant it lightly, but she knew it didn’t land, not when the marks on her neck were so fresh and Kleya so disoriented. She lined the colored vials on the tabletop with three gentle clacks. When she glanced up, Kleya looked like she had in the woods earlier, like she didn’t recognize Vel, or like she’d seen a ghost. Then she looked away. 

“I’ve got an antiemetic, a painkiller, and a sedative. It’s not the good stuff you’d get in the infirmary but it’ll help you through the rest of the night.” Vel unpacked the injector and unwrapped a sterile needle, screwing it onto the device. She popped in a vial and walked over, placing the other two next to Kleya’s thigh. “Shall I do the honors?”

Kleya shook her head and took the injector. She tugged the loose collar of her shirt over and down her shoulder–more freckles there than Vel expected, and a peculiar scar–and uncapped the needle with her teeth, as if by muscle memory. With a pneumatic hiss, the first vial was depleted. She popped it out and loaded the second, taking it as quickly as the first. Then she hesitated, hands landing loosely on her lap, eyes on Vel’s.  

She had that look again. Disbelief? Confusion? This time, Vel stared back hard, challenging. “What?”

Kleya blinked. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

She hadn’t anticipated that. “Did you hope to?”

“No,” Kleya replied, busying herself with the final medshot. “I just never thought I would.” 

A strange answer. Vel wasn’t sure what else she was expecting, but was somehow disappointed all the same. “That one burns a bit going in,” she warned, an about-face for her own sake. “Works fast.”

Kleya toasted halfheartedly with the injector before administering it. “To a dreamless sleep.”  She winced and cursed, then gathered the empty vials and moved to stand.

“No. Stay,” Vel said, pushing her back down. “You’ll be on your arse shortly.” She tossed the damp yellow blanket over a chair, passed Kleya the green linen that smelled of Yavin 4’s nebula orchids, and continued pulling blankets, a field mattress, and another thin pillow from the trunk. “I’ll be here to stop you if you wander off or choke on your own vomit.”

“I hope that won’t be necessary,” Kleya said, leaning back with a wince. 

“You and me both,” Vel said as she rolled out the mat, fluffing the poor excuse for a pillow and tossing it onto her nest of blankets. She pressed two switches on the main control panel and with a beep the hut went dark, but for the glowing embers of the hot tank just behind Kleya’s bunk. They cast a faint orange glow, illuminating Kleya just enough that Vel could see her pull the sheet to her chin, just over her mouth. She inhaled its scent, closing her eyes, and it softened something in Vel to witness. “Goodnight, Kleya.”

Kleya didn’t respond. Vel stretched out on the floor, then cocooned herself, clutching the extra blanket to her chest. She yawned. Several minutes passed. The rain outside had become a drizzle and the nocturnal insects were emerging, chittering softly. She’d begun to doze when Kleya’s voice, much groggier now, roused her.

“I hadn’t had that nightmare in… a long time.”

Perhaps the sedative had loosened her lips. Vel didn’t know if she should respond, but she also couldn't help but wonder–“Who was I?” Who were you trying to kill?

Kleya didn’t answer. Vel figured she never would. She drifted off once more until Kleya muttered again, slurring, the name like tar in her mouth.

“Luthen.”

Chapter Text

“One final thing,” Kleya said, handing Andor a fresh code crystal for the pulse radio. “Memorize this.” She slid a small square of flimsi with a series of ink dots across the worktable. “Abbreviated chain, too short to be decoded. Should you receive it, we’ve burned all other lines. Assume the network has fallen and report to 27 West for final debrief.”

One, one, two. One, two. Two. One, one, one. One, one, two. One, two. One.

Superweapon, Erso, Jedha, Kyber. ISB Krennic. 

They’ll never know what they’re up against.

Jedha, Kyber, Galen Erso. ISB. Yesterday morning.

He died for nothing.

Weapon. Superweapon. Fuel from Ghorman. Kyber from… kyber from…

And you’ll die for nothing.

Kleya shook the pistol in her hand, finger hooked loosely on the trigger, fidgeting, careless. It could go off at any moment, and she hoped it would. And she hoped it wouldn’t. She heard him scolding her–“Careful, Kleya!”–and the old military axiom: “Never point a blaster at anything you don’t intend to shoot. Ever!” 

All day, she had been a child again. Intrusive memories of home and memories of him had been ripping out of her, inopportune and without permission, and now she was eleven years old and tired of training and tired of hiding and tired of Luthen.

“Shut up! I don’t want to do this anymore!”

She slid down the cabinet by the sink, head hung. The blaster stilled, barrel aimed at her feet. The discordant whirr of her chronometer was now a constant ringing in her ears. It rendered the alarm pointless, so she counted the seconds to the transmission windows compulsively, each tick a word–Kyber. Erso. ISB Krennic. Jedha. Superweapon. 

Seconds later, she startled at a sound outside and leapt to the window. Nothing. She paced to the counter and beat out the rhythm of the pulse code with a fist, hard enough to fracture her hand. With a pained keening, she brought her face so close to the countertop that her nose pressed its cold, dusty surface. 

“You want to break the Empire? You need to be unbreakable.” 

“Like you?” she spits, face twisted in disgust. He’s a murderer with a fake name who cries himself to sleep at night. He calls this training, he calls this discipline, and he says it’s all part of some plan she doesn’t yet understand. But she does understand. She understands he's a sad, pathetic coward and he’s stalling while people's worlds are burning.

He points at the graffitied sheet metal littered with burn holes leaning against the far wall. “Again.”

She throws the blaster. It clatters along the duracrete floor of the abandoned storehouse, tinking against the torso of a disemboweled protocol droid. Growling, she runs at him. She reaches up and claws his eyes, trying to blind him. He's three times her size but she’s backed him against the wall. He's holding back, giving ground, and it makes her angrier. She punches his chest and scrabbles with little, bruised hands for purchase on his thick, stubbled throat, wailing her grief in a language she hadn't spoken since the day he found her.

“I hate you!”

She spoke it again, the language sloppy on her tongue and muffled by the countertop. She wished she meant it. 

Not lifting her face, she flipped the safety on the gun and put it down, sliding it just out of reach. Not yet. But soon. She would hold until the very last second for anyone who would hear her intel, but no longer. No loose ends. When glossy plastoid soldiers blasted through that door, she’d be gone. She only wished she could take them with her. Again she thought of the boy before the firing squad at the castle ruins, of the defiance burning in his eyes that persisted even as his corpse crumpled to the ground. She hoped her death mask looked much the same. 

“When do we start fighting back?” she’d asked that day.

“We fight to win,” he’d said. “That means we lose. And lose and lose and lose and lose and lose and lose and lose and lose…” 

“Until we’re ready? Is that right, Luthen?” she asked the room. Her cold bark of laughter echoed in the sterility. “Now we're too late.”

The chronometer whirred. Her focus shifted. Her fingers tapped. One, one, two. One two…

Superweapon, Jedha, Kyber, Erso. 

“And she’s in your quarters right now? Alone?” Mon spoke slowly. She placed her fork to the side of her breakfast bowl and folded her hands. Shoulder to shoulder at the busy mess table, it was easy enough to keep the conversation quiet, but Vel was beginning to wish for someone, anyone, to interrupt them. 

“Sleeping, yes,” Vel said around a mouth of mealgrain.

“And when she wakes she’ll be returning to the medbay.” It was not a question.

Vel anticipated Mon’s pushback but found it irritating all the same. She swallowed the flavorless mash, chased it with a sip of caf from her tin mug, then spun the cup two, three times. She aligned its handle in its proper position, ninety degrees away from guests, a vestige of obscure class etiquette turned nervous tic. She didn’t answer right away. 

When she awoke at dawn, confused to find herself sprawled on the floor, Kleya was deeply asleep in exactly the same position she’d assumed five hours prior. Her face was blank. So sedated, she did not rouse to any of the sounds of Vel’s morning routine. Just before leaving for breakfast, she tried to nudge Kleya awake. “I’m heading to mess,” she’d said loudly. “There’s fruit on the table.” Kleya’s swollen eyes parted like they’d adhered together and she’d uttered a little affirmative sound. “Do you know where you are?” Vel had asked. Kleya hadn’t answered, immediately falling asleep again with a languorous exhale. Before she could stop herself, Vel had chuckled and patted Kleya’s arm. 

“Vel.”

“If she needs to, I suppose,” she replied at last, dragging her spoon in circles.  

“She’s not permitted elsewhere.” She could feel Mon searching her. “And I can't think of a bunkmate you'd want less.” 

Vel scoffed. “Yeah, well, it was bring her in or find her at the bottom of the lake out north.”

“Poor girl,” Mon said, the implications settling darkly, but Vel found that irritating, too.

“She’ll get it together. There’s work to do and I’m sure she can’t wait to tell us all the things we’re doing wrong.”

“Her contributions would be invaluable, I’m sure. But High Command will need… significant convincing.” Mon looked around and lowered her voice further, sharpening her consonants in that senatorial way Vel associated with secrets she’d be sworn to keep.  “They don’t trust her.”

“No one should,” Vel said too quickly.

Mon looked as confused as Vel felt. You’re here with friends, she’d told Kleya, before she could consider what that might mean. Here with the rebellion, yes, but among proper friends? 

“Don’t mistake my hospitality for trust,” Vel defended snappishly. “I’ll have to be sure Kleya doesn’t do the same.”

Mon opened her mouth to say something but, to Vel's relief, closed it again, instead reaching for her caf. She sipped it thoughtfully. “I’d like to see her. I don’t know who she had in her life, other than Luthen. I never knew much about her at all.”

As always, the mention of Luthen’s name drummed up resentments that burned Vel as poisonously as the day they’d begun to fester. She pursed her lips, hand returning to her mug, one index finger spinning it by the handle.  “Well, you know where to find her.”

“The last time I saw her was at that wretched safehouse in Coruscant. It was the first time I realized this quiet shop girl might have played a bigger role in his plots than I’d assumed. It seems Luthen trusted her as much as he could trust anyone, and for a man like him…” She paused, as if battling something. “Perhaps there was more to them both. Something more complicated than we’d like to admit.”   

Vel couldn’t contain the frustrated sigh. This was beginning to feel like a test. She turned to her cousin properly, expecting to see a twinkle of something–probing, instigation–but saw only open authenticity. Sadness, even. It stirred a petulant desire to grab them all by their shoulders–Mon, Cassian, Wilmon–and remind them just who Luthen was and what he did and how he did it. “Did it matter what he did to us?” Cassian had asked. “Did it matter how it twisted him along the way?” Yes! Had they all gone mad? Had they forgotten so soon? Did Ghorman mean nothing now? 

She wrangled her thoughts from spiraling further, grief creeping too close to the surface, the memory of Cinta’s face too crisp.

Mon continued as if she could read her cousin’s mind. She usually could. “I wonder if we wouldn’t all benefit from a quiet evening together. You, me, Kleya, Cassian, Wilmon.” 

“What, in memorial to him? Are you serious?”  

“Not a memorial. A talk. A means to process.”

Vel shook her head. “A reunion for Luthen’s marionettes and his deputy puppeteer. There isn’t enough revnog in the galaxy.”

Mon leaned into Vel’s shoulder and touched her head to Vel’s, a gesture both comforting and admonishing and one only acceptable from Mon. It disarmed her every time. “At best, we can air some grievances and try to move forward. At worst, it could give us a better idea of Kleya’s intentions moving forward, which–if they align with ours–would help me convince the council of her value. I fear they’d prefer imprisonment. But if this superweapon is real, and I’m inclined to believe it is…” Vel felt Mon shake her head on top of hers. “I do agree with Cassian–it is frustrating to hear their reckless accusations after all they sacrificed to get us that intel.” 

Vel breathed out. She thought of Kleya, lost and bewildered in the pouring rain. If nothing else, she couldn’t deny what it cost her. “What are they saying?”

Swaddled in the foggy liminality of medicated sedation, her body wrung out and stuffed with dead leaves, Kleya awoke to rustling underbrush and faraway voices.

“Sixteen raids this year. Sixteen! There’s nothing left.” 

“Imp bastards. Watch that branch, Joko.”

“Thanks, man.”

Her eyes blinked open. Sweat, wood, vines, rust. Yavin. The bright interior of the hut sent daggers through her skull, but she fought it and pushed up onto her elbows, listening. She counted three or four voices, maybe more. Some she could make out, some were lost under squawking and chirping and the shuffle of combat boots on dirt and detritus. 

“...registered as soon as I got the missive. Tired of not doing anything.”

“Stars, I’ve waited long enough. Time to fight back.”

Kleya padded over, barefoot and silent, to the circular opening of the hut. Men and women, young and old, humans and aliens were hiking up the sun-dappled path, bags hung on poles, backpacks heavy on their shoulders. Some had guns. Some carried crates. All had tired, determined faces. 

“You ready?” a woman in mismatched fatigues asked a helmeted man with a rifle. 

“Doesn’t matter if I am,” he responded. “The war’s now.”

The helmeted man caught Kleya's eye and nodded, his face friendly, open.

Quietly, gravity shifted.

She stepped out onto the porch and watched them go until the few jogging stragglers disappeared into the trees. Slowly at first, and then all at once, a vibrating energy ran down to her fingertips.

Her clothing was hung over the rope railing, dirty but dry; she shook it out and tugged the navy tunic over her head, teeth gritted through the pain, a plan formulating. She’d spent most of her life shapeshifting. She’d find wherever Yavin’s new bloods were processed, go through all the proper inductions, and don the uniform. It wasn’t hard to play a soldier; if Sartha could, she could. And she'd worn the mask before, recruiting Taramyn after months of gatherings of anonymous guilt-stricken troopers at a dive bar in Lower Coruscant. She knew how to carry herself, knew what to say and how to say it. She just had to blend in long enough to get where she needed to go.

“It’s a lot for them to take in,” Cassian had said.

Too bad.

She’d exploit whatever channels she needed to and leave them no choice. 

Returning into the hut, she ran her hands through her hair to tease apart what tangles she could, then entered Vel’s bunk and rummaged through her toiletries. Her comb, of course, was sellonian marble beset with three ur-diamonds from Alderaan. Kleya appraised it at two months of hot meals and lodging, minimum, and had to fight the old instinct to pocket it. Satisfactorily groomed, she rooted through a foot locker and a pile of dirty laundry, and found some sort of dressing robe, cream-coloured with dark blue stitching. She pulled the sash free and tied it around her forehead, letting the long tails hang down with her loose hair. She didn’t need them disqualifying her for a head injury on sight. She glanced back at the mirror behind the washing bowl, dismissing blurry memories of clinging to Vel’s hand last night like a lost child. Her black eye had darkened since then but she had no time for cosmetics; to whom it may concern, she earned it in a bar brawl. They cheated at hintaro. She lost the fight but won the game.  

She shoved her feet into still-damp boots and sprinted down the steps to the jungle floor. A huge winged insect and second thoughts about her impulsivity hounded her until the Great Temple emerged from the canopy. Short of breath and refusing to stop, she climbed a set of crumbling stone stairs and over tangles of power umbilicals, passing crates and droids and personnel who paid her no mind at all. She spotted the recruit that had passed Vel's hut earlier among the crowd gathered behind a spread of weapons and munitions. 

Before she could slip into the herd, she was flagged down by a rodian with a datapad. She approached him with a militant nod.

“Name and homeworld,” he asked. He didn’t look up.

Kleya grasped for an identity from her collection of disguises, but as soon as she remembered one, it slipped from the tip of her tongue. The rodian glanced up boredly at the pause. “Vitani Talu,” she offered in a rush. A satisfactory cover: very old, never burnt. Used only for enrollment in academy classes in their early days on Coruscant. “Christophsis.” 

“Combat experience?”

“Five years. Recon.”

“Good. You’d be the first all day,” he grumbled, plucking at his datapad with his long, acetabulum-tipped finger. “Any ordnance on your person?”

“No, sir.”

“Straight beyond that x-wing to the second console on your right.”

Luthen was right to be paranoid; they didn’t even ask for a secret handshake, let alone a standard identichip. 

At the designated console inside the temple vestibule, a human girl with a fresh buzz cut and sloppy eyeliner who looked barely into her teens was pulling tactical backpacks from a supply crate and stacking them on a workbench. Kleya approached and she handed her the bag she’d just grabbed. “Standard issue jumpsuit, gloves, boots, wrist comm,” she rattled, apathetic. “Open that up and tell me the asset tag of the comm so I can log it.” Kleya unbuckled the bag and tugged out a pair of enormous, scuffed boots to retrieve the square box underneath.

She pursed her lips at the familiar unit. She and Luthen had procured four thousand of them through a black market manufacturer in the Mid Rim and dead-dropped the care package for their Yavin asset–Wilmon–almost a year ago. She couldn’t even list all the ways they’d been supporting the Massassi cell since its inception. Their fingerprints were all over this place. 

She didn’t care about recognition. She didn't even care about respect. But she certainly wouldn’t stand by and have Luthen defamed by the very–

“Tag?” the girl asked impatiently. 

Snapping to, Kleya lifted the comm and squinted, the digits swimming in her vision. “LRC-1995.” She tried to peek at the inventory spreadsheet as the girl tapped away at her terminal, but that was blurry, too. She bit her lip, thinking, then clunked the combat boots on the table. “Got a smaller size? I’m human, not gargantelle.”  

“Ugh, hold on.” The girl ducked under the bench and, while she searched the supplies, Kleya sidled closer to the console screen. The file pathway was centered at the bottom of the display and as generic as they came. Despite the infuriating fog, Kleya memorized it easily. Wherever these units were warehoused before distribution, she imagined their charging cabinets–they’d supplied six–would be nearby. If she could access the cabinets, she could flash the basic I/O systems. And if she used her comm unit to broadcast to Yavin’s open frequency…

The girl’s head popped up over the edge and she deposited a smaller pair of boots on the table. “These suit?” 

“They’ll do,” Kleya said, scooping them up and shouldering the pack. 

“Sarge’s running aptitude placements today.” The girl pointed at a hallway beyond a tactical readout with glowing green concentric circles. “He’s the tall iktotchi down that corridor. Can't miss him.”

“Understood.” Kleya turned but stopped short. She glanced back over her shoulder, regarding the girl curiously. “How old are you?” 

The girl startled, then lifted her chin. “Fifteen,” she answered with too much bite.

Kleya gave her a soft smile. “Thank you for your help,” she said, and meant it. “The rebellion is lucky to have you.” 

The girl looked skeptical, but after a moment a crooked smile lifted her cheek. “Down with the Empire.”

Kleya echoed the sentiment and continued on. She joined the recruits queued in a corridor crawling with ivy and dripping with condensation. As the others chatted quietly, their murmurs echoing off the old brownstone, she flattened her back to the cool wall and breathed out, arms folded across her chest. Fifteen. She was crafting explosives and conning art traders at fifteen. And, sure, working some legitimate odd jobs to establish a clean line of credits so they could rent a storefront one day. But she’d killed a dozen Imperials by fifteen. At least this girl was safe, relatively speaking, and maybe she didn’t yet have blood on her hands, just boots and backpacks and too much eyeliner.

But she almost certainly would soon, if they were going to win this. It would take nothing less.

Her thoughts shifted to what console in this bay would be the easiest to access undetected, or if a datapad might suffice–she just needed an inventory spreadsheet, after all–and the line of recruits crawled forward. Soon a new voice, too loud for the enclosed hallway, had her grimacing. “Listen up!” an older human shouted, brandishing a medisensor over his head. “Sarge stepped out for lunch, so to not waste any more of your time, we’ll be running medical scans now instead. Let’s get this wrapped by the time he gets back.”

Dread dropped her stomach to the floor. The doubts she’d dismissed earlier came rushing back–all the concerns she’d normally have heeded, the care she’d otherwise have taken–I don’t like it, she’d told Luthen; You don’t like anything, he’d replied–and now she heard him again, his voice indistinguishable from her own: too hasty. Too impulsive. A foolish plan. Of course they would be doing medical scans. If she had been thinking clearly at all, she’d have anticipated this. She was in too deep to abandon induction now. She could only hope that whatever medical care they performed last night, most of which she couldn't remember, was off the record. Had they asked her name? Did she give it? Leaving the line would draw attention, and it looked like they were taking three, four at a time–

“Come on through.”

Mouth dry, she was waved into another side hall that opened out into a storage space turned exam room. “Name and homeworld?” 

The medisensor whirred and a slice of hololight tomographed what even the best cover couldn’t hide.

Vel pushed a pile of shipment manifests across her makeshift desktop and frowned. “Unless we can source another pallet of pulse grenades yesterday, this'll never work. We’re not deploying them undergeared. Find another way.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As today’s duty officer–a job description that leaned heavily on the catch-all qualifier ‘other duties as assigned’–Vel was dousing fire after fire. None so far were so urgent as to be disastrous, but the persistent tempo of questions and requests was wearing her down. She pressed her temples as new footsteps heralded yet another minor crisis. The resident medical officer approached. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant Chakwa?” 

“Screening recruits and I’ve got an anomaly.” He lifted his medisensor and accompanying datapad. “I can push her through manually, but I need a second officer to come cosign.”

Finally, something easy. “I can use the walk,” Vel said, stretching out of her chair. “Lead the way.”

“It’s a new service record. Plyto out front created the file not even an hour ago,” he explained as they took the stairs to the ground floor. “But the biomarkers are already in our system. They don’t have a name or ID chain, though. Some kind of glitch?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Those medisensors are secondhand.” Chakwa led her past gear distribution down a corridor lined with new faces. She was heartened by the number of recruits queuing and milling about this afternoon. It easily doubled the last cohort.

She greeted them with nods and welcomes, but as they rounded a corner and entered the screening stall, a friendly greeting died in her throat. 

Kleya.

Perched on a stool in the corner of the room with her hands loosely clasped, she watched Vel and Chakwa cooly. She stood as they approached.

“Name’s Vitani Talu,” said Chakwa, handing Vel the datapad. “The existing data is from medical standby and flagged for a disqualifying injury.”

“I’ll take it from here,” Vel said, dismissing the medic. He shrugged, happy enough to pass it off.

Vel looked Kleya up and down. “Vitani, is it? Let’s sort this, shall we?” She walked out of the room without turning around and heard Kleya fall in step behind her.

She proceeded through the side halls to a secluded ramp that led out to the edge of the secondary landing zone. She stopped abruptly, catching Kleya short. Vel looked at her, then down at the datapad, and back again. Kleya wouldn't look her in the eye. Instead she gazed over her head, unblinking. If Vel didn’t know any better, she’d say Kleya was playing a grunt bracing for a dress down splendidly. 

“What are you doing? This morning I had to check if you were even breathing and now you’re trying to get on the front lines?” She then noticed Kleya’s headband, the sash to her favourite robe, a gift from Mon and one of her few keepsakes from Chandrila. “Is this mine?” 

Kleya’s head jostled as Vel stripped the belt from her, but she didn’t flinch, brows furrowed tightly. The jumping muscle at her jaw was Vel’s only hint that she was even listening.

“Impersonation can get you the brig here, Kleya.” She tucked the fabric into her back pocket and stepped closer. “Mon knows who you are. Cassian. Wilmon. Dreena. Me. What exactly was the goal here?”

But Kleya remained silent, scowling. It tested what little patience Vel had left. “Look at me.” Kleya did, then, and the intensity of her glare made Vel’s hackles rise. “If you ask High Command, you’re already on trial as it is.”

That drew a sardonic cough of laughter. “What a surprise,” Kleya said at last. “Tell me, this instance and our personal associations aside, how might one even verify impersonation on this base? I walked right in. No indentichip, no papers, no code.”

“So you’re assessing our security, is that it?”

“Call it reconnaissance. Call it whatever you’d like.” She tilted her head and her lips lifted in that characteristic, condescending smile that never reached her eyes. “An Imperial spy could already be in your war room, Officer Sartha. You and your superiors should appreciate being made aware.”

So last night was a fluke after all, Vel realized with a wave of relief. This woman in front of her was all too familiar, which made things much less complicated. “Is that what you are? An Imperial mole?”

“If I were, I'd have made exceptional progress with minimal effort.”

“Careful even suggesting it,” Vel said, the old repartee galvanizing her. “Most of this base would already consider Luthen’s closest associate a terrorist, if they’re being generous–a traitor if they’re not.”

Caught up in the volley and confident it was reciprocal, Vel missed the small shift in Kleya’s composure. She seized the pause and the upper hand as she pressed further.

“High Command is even less charitable. Senator Pamlo thinks you put the ISB on Luthen's tail. That you wanted him dead.” 

She’d hardly finished her sentence before Kleya balled her fist into Vel’s collar. “Don't,” she said, venomous. Unlike last night, Kleya was not looking through her. No, this was real. But this close, Vel could see how swollen her eyes were, the sweaty sheen on her face. It was a weak threat behind a weaker grip and Kleya immediately let her go.

A rebel guard patrolling nearby looked over as he passed, no doubt having heard their raised voices. He prompted Vel with a lifted chin, watching Kleya warily. Vel waved him off. “She's okay. Isn’t she?”

“Never better,” Kleya said tersely. 

Suspicious but dismissed, he nodded and turned. 

When he was out of sight, Vel ushered Kleya up the incline to the landing zone and overrode the control panel at the threshold. The access door hissed shut and sealed, leaving them outside and alone in a forgotten corner of the temple grounds. The dead leaves and debris trapped in the alcove rustled at their feet and in the harsh light of the afternoon sun, Vel could see Kleya was deteriorating. She wiped her forehead on her sleeve, looking out vacantly over the starfighters like she wanted to run off into the jungle again and never return. Not a fluke, then. She’d briefly convinced Vel otherwise, but must not have had the energy to keep it going. 

“I know you haven't eaten,” Vel said, softening even as she begrudged the loss of their uncomplicated animosity. She reached into her jacket pocket for a meal bar. “It’s blumfruit. Best kind.” She held it out between them. Kleya didn’t take it.

Vel stepped closer until they were nearly side by side, facing opposite directions, and placed her open hand on Kleya's shoulder. She flinched but didn't recoil. “I went too far,” Vel admitted. “I’m sorry.” 

Kleya finally did pull away but not with the force Vel was expecting. A U-wing’s engines powered up on the other side of the temple. Only when they became a dull roar in the distant atmosphere did she speak. “They hate Luthen so much they’d risk who knows how many lives to spite his memory. I can’t let that happen.”

“What's the plan, then?” Vel said, playing along. “I know you have one. Just… be honest, for once. Maybe I can help.”

Vel could tell by her blistering side-eye that Kleya wasn’t fooled. Still, as if calculating all possible outcomes and determining the truth could work in her favor, she at last chose honesty. “I’m going to broadcast the intel to every LRC unit on this base.”

Vel smirked, shaking her head. “You’d cause a riot.”

“It would force their hand.” 

“You’re joking.”

Kleya actually looked taken aback by her incredulity, as if she didn’t expect such a blunt dismissal. “This is active intelligence about a superweapon, Vel. It can’t wait!”

“And we can’t cause mass panic in the very forces we expect to fight it! Think clearly.”

“I am thinking clearly!” Kleya snapped. 

Vel started to say that she very much doubted that, and for reasons beyond Kleya’s control, clarity might not even be physiologically possible right now, and be it the very recent head injury or grief or stress, she wasn’t scheming with her usual finesse–but she closed her mouth, figuring she’d already done enough damage in the last few minutes.

It didn’t matter. Kleya must’ve picked up on what the silence implied–that, or she read pity on Vel’s face–and she turned away, scoffing. “Right. Of course.” She made it a few meters away before Vel called out.

“Kleya, you can’t leave. I’ll be forced to turn you in. I don’t want to do that.”

Kleya stopped and threw her head back, looking up into the sky and the hazy, red belly of Yavin Prime. She rubbed the fingertips of her left hand together as it hung by her side. “So what, then? What am I even doing here?” she said, gesturing around her.

She’d never looked more frustrated. Vel could understand that. She knew what it felt like to be grounded when even sitting still felt like a death sentence. 

But she was an officer and, for all of its faults and vulnerabilities, this was an army.

“You’re going back to the infirmary,” Vel said. “They’ll give you a duty waiver. Then when your recovery protocol is up, we can get you inducted properly. Get better, do it by the book, and we can pretend this never happened.” 

***

The med bay was unusually empty for the early evening as a refurbished 2-1B medical droid ran Kleya through an extensive battery of neurological tests. Deep tendon reflexes, visuomotor reaction time, verbal problem solving, memory recall. Number sequencing. They even had her stand on alternating feet with her eyes closed, which Vel found particularly gratuitous, but the droid insisted it was necessary to track her ‘vestibular system disruption’– such droidspeak for balance issues. Vel had snorted, Kleya had not. Kleya was patient and cooperative for everything, but completely silent unless the exams required otherwise. 

Every result came back mildly to significantly impaired. 

Sat on a medical cot with her face curtained by long, wavy hair and her boots not touching the floor, Kleya looked small and defeated. Vel wasn’t sure what to say, if anything at all. Being privy to all of this felt invasive. Last night had been odd enough. Were the roles reversed, she wasn’t sure she’d be okay with Kleya witnessing the same vulnerability. Not her. Not with who they were to each other. It was like overhearing a drunk stranger’s secrets in the toilet at a bar, or hacking into someone’s private journal. It felt wrong.

“Everything should return to baseline with rest, but I do recommend completing a bacta infusion,” the shift nurse explained, “and not pulling it out this time.”

The nurse moved out of the curtained exam space toward a nearby supplies cart. Vel followed her. “So you were on shift last night?” she asked, cornering her.

“No, but I heard the report.” She gathered fresh tubing and disinfectant, sliding and closing drawers rapidly. “One minute she was hooked up, stable, sleeping, the next she was gone. They didn’t even have her name to report it. Just called her the ghost.”

“I’ll need last night’s staffing roster. Leaving our injured unsupervised in the middle of the night is unacceptable. If I hadn't found her, she'd be dead right now.”

From her periphery and beyond the edge of the divider, Vel saw Kleya look up at her, then look away just as quickly, her hair hiding her expression once more. 

The nurse began to argue but stopped herself. “Yes, ma’am,” she muttered. She returned to Kleya and set up the infusion, tutting at the blow vein where Kleya had ripped out the catheters, and rolled up the sleeve on her other arm. “Any nausea or vomiting?”

“Not since last night.”

“New anxiety or irritability?" 

“The irritability isn’t new,” Vel said with a smirk. The nurse humphed politely as she flipped the ampule into the infusion pump, but the ribbing didn’t land with Kleya. She just nodded.

“We’ll send you off with the Yavin 4 special, then.” The nurse nodded over at a blueleaf plant thriving in a steel pot. “Some like it in tea, some burn it. Up to you. One of the few things from this moon that doesn’t kill you.” She adhered the catheter housing to Kleya’s forearm. “Let me fix up those head sutures, too, then I’ll leave you be until this kicks.”

The bacta infusion took a full hour. Vel and Kleya spent most of it in silence. It was fine by Vel; she had plenty of messages to clear from her inbox and had no idea what casual conversation with Kleya would entail, if it were even possible. Soon, though, Kleya became restless. Her foot bounced. She scanned the whole room, corner to corner, as if cataloging everything in her field of vision.

“Are you okay?” Vel asked, not looking up from her datapad.

Kleya startled as if she’d forgotten Vel was there. “Yeah. Fine.” She paused. “You can go.”

“Actually, I can't. Not until you get that waiver.”

Another few minutes passed in silence. Kleya broke it this time. “What good is a waiver against suspected treason?”

Vel looked up. The truth was the duty waiver was little more than a loophole to keep Kleya off their radar for as long as possible. It made her traceable and vetted in the eyes of High Command while keeping her out of secured areas. “You're essentially a protected civilian for the next two weeks.”

“Who signs off on that?”

“The duty officer. Today, that's me.”

“A very secure system.”

“Just keep your head down and you won’t draw their attention. That is your specialty, is it not?”

Kleya was not convinced but, thank the galaxy, the infusion pump chimed. The nurse returned to disconnect Kleya and handed Vel a datapad. “Reevaluation in two weeks. If there are no major concerns, she’ll be cleared to enlist.” Vel, first ensuring Kleya’s identification information was in fact hers this time, entered her ID number to sign off. The nurse regarded her hesitantly, then took the datapad and tapped a few buttons. She sighed. “I’ve just sent last night’s roster to your device. Please go easy on them. We don’t have enough staff as it is.”

Vel made no promises but nodded. “Appreciate it.”

Kleya was already halfway out of the tent.

Vel caught up with her just outside. She was still unusually fidgety, adjusting the straps on her new tactical pack, fixing her sleeves. “You look better,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine, but what does that matter?” Kleya muttered. “I’m to sit about convalescing while the Empire has a superweapon and we’re doing nothing about it.” To her credit, she was careful to say it quietly. Vel had no doubt she still wished to shout it to the entire moon. 

“Cassian believes you. Mon believes you.” Kleya watched her intensely, like she was waiting for something. “I believe you,” she added. The difference was subtle, but her response seemed to settle something in Kleya and Vel wasn’t sure why. She didn’t dwell on it. “I know it’s hard for you to hear but it’s out of your hands now.” 

Kleya closed her eyes, drawing her bottom lip with her teeth. She opened them, now focused, as if she’d made peace with something, or–Vel realized with trepidation–had come up with another plan. Whether it was about the intel or about how far she’d need to wander into the jungle to disappear forever, she wasn’t sure.

“So I'm free to move about the base?” Kleya asked. 

“Anywhere but the temple itself.” 

“I’ll… see you around, then.”

Vel gave her a long, searching look. “Kleya…”

“I'll come back.”

She was, as far as Vel could tell, being earnest–or doing a very good job faking it. Still, Vel hesitated.

“I will,” Kleya insisted. “I promise.”

A promise from Kleya seemed contentious at best. “You know the way back to my quarters?”

“Is that an open invitation?”  

Vel was about to protest when she noticed the briefest flash of humor in Kleya’s eyes, a barely-there crinkle at the corner of her lips. It was the first bit of levity from Kleya since she’d landed here. Vel was unsure but not affronted. She very suddenly remembered Leida’s wedding, an offhanded comment about surveying prospects, and for the first time wondered if it hadn't been a barb but a proposition. She dismissed the thought immediately.

“A ceasefire,” Vel said at last. “And sound logistics. You’re a wildcard; I know your secrets.”

Kleya made a sound that was very nearly a snort. “Hardly,” she said, and turned to walk away. 

“Wait.” Vel pulled out the meal bar again and unclipped her water canteen from her belt. Kleya didn't argue, pocketing the bar and clipping the canteen to her bag. “Don’t do anything stupid.” 

Kleya gave her a mocking salute.

Useless.

She was useless here.

Kleya wandered the outer limits of the base for what felt like hours, committing its layout to memory. A pointless endeavor, really, given the eventuality awaiting them all: death at the hands of the Empire’s superweapon. Even if Yavin's paltry forces had mobilized immediately, what chance did they have? This was a slipshod base of misfits and misplaced hope masquerading as an army. They’d be a pack of scrap rats nipping at the ankles of a rancor. 

She’d been fighting the Empire for almost her entire life. She didn’t know what it was like to give up, and she did not want to, but her options were considerably limited here. She couldn't work undercover or move anywhere at all without scrutiny. Leadership would never trust her, let alone tolerate anything beyond quiet obedience. And, to top it off, her medical exams suggested she couldn't even trust her own cognition right now. 

But she'd promised Vel she wouldn't do anything stupid. 

Somehow, it felt more like a promise to Luthen.

She came back around to the mess tent for the third time. The dinner rush had cleared out. She had eaten Vel’s blumfruit bar earlier but between the bacta infusion making her feel less like a corpse and the hours of walking, she was starving. Now that it was deserted, she approached the picked-over food spread and grabbed a bowl of nuna and polystarch. She sat at the cornermost table and ate, watching and listening. 

Behind an open tent flap to the adjoining kitchen area, a weequay woman was degreasing a COO-series cook droid’s spatula attachments. Kleya could hear her humming. It sounded like a pirate shanty, dark and brooding. 

As a teenager, Kleya had worked fourteen standard lunar cycles as waitstaff in an all-night cafe at a fueling station on the Corellian Trade Spine. She had absolutely hated every second of that job, but Luthen was right for orchestrating it: her wages were their clean line of credit for the unit on Coruscant and her customers had been a goldmine of rumors and intel for their nascent network. She’d also ample time to practice and perfect the customer service persona that she’d end up using for years to come at the shop. She hadn’t known the significance of the job at the time, coming home smelling of frying grease and her own sweat, asking every week when they were moving to their next safehouse and when she’d get to do something that actually mattered. 

But Luthen had insisted on it. “It matters, Kleya. We’re building a revolution. There’s no job too small.”

Her plate empty, she got up and walked over to the kitchen space. She lifted the flap. Dirty dishes–plates, cups, utensils, pots, cookwear–were piled up next to water troughs, untouched, waiting. The weequay watched her curiously, then resumed her degreasing.

Nothing needed to be said between them.

The sloshing of soapy water, clinking and clanging, and night insects chirping locked Kleya into a trancelike focus. In short order, she had everything spotless, dried, and precisely stacked, ready for the next meal. The woman came up behind her and cleared her throat. “Aliszka.”

“Kleya,” she responded, drying her hands on a towel as she turned. “What time tomorrow?” 

“0430. Bring a glowlamp and good attitude.”

“I can do the lamp.”

Chapter Text

After last night’s storm, Yavin’s evening air was cool and crisp and smelled of campfire. It should have been invigorating, but with every step, Kleya's whole body hurt in new and unusual ways and she kept slipping in and out of feeling real. She had every intention of slinking into Vel's hut and collapsing into a dead sleep, avoiding Vel and the bizarre new reality of being her temporary roommate, but then she spotted a cluster of orange-cast trunks nestled just past the treeline to the right. She squinted, her tired eyes struggling to adjust between the dark woods and the firelight. She made out two figures standing and drinking. A peal of half-hearted laughter. A clink of metal cups.

“Kleya?”

Her name came from the opposite direction. More cups in one hand and a kettle in the other, Senator Mothma floated down the uneven wooden steps of Vel’s hut. She looked coarser, harder, but still graceful. Always graceful. “Welcome to Yavin, though I wish it were under better circumstances,” she said softly as she approached. “I had intended to come see you at the infirmary, but I’ve since learned you’ve been rather hard to pin down.”

“Haven’t gone far,” Kleya replied, unable to look away. She was, in fact, openly staring. As with Vel, seeing Mon again felt like a dream, like haunting a timeline she wasn't supposed to experience. She felt a confusing softness come over her. When they’d secured Mothma from the Senate and sent her off to Yavin, Kleya thought she’d accepted the conclusion of whatever coalition they had formed. What she hadn’t expected, and something she hadn’t voiced until it came spilling out of her at the safehouse with Cassian, was how much it had… well. Her own words from two days ago–you left us anyway, you left us behind!–roiled in her memory, juvenile and raw. She tried to will them away, tried desperately to deny the comfort in Mothma’s familiarity, to reject the relief she was feeling in her steady presence. She swallowed the unwelcome knot in her throat.

If Mon noticed something off in Kleya's silence, she didn’t let on. “Come and join us,” she said. “We’ve started a fire.”

Kleya looked beyond her to the dappled firelight, over to the hut, then back to Mon again. “I–appreciate the invitation, but it's been a long day–”

“Kleya!”

Another familiar voice called for her. Wilmon emerged from the woods, waving, smiling sweetly. She froze as he closed the gap.

“Stars, are you alright?” he said, grasping her upper arm in greeting. It was gentle but firm, like him. Mercifully, he let go quickly and did not try to hug her. He read people well. His intuition, as she and Luthen had come to learn, belied his age. “You look like you’ve been through it.”

“Should've seen her before the bacta infusion.” Vel was on Wilmon’s heels. Her footsteps were too intentional. She sounded and moved like she’d a headstart on the revnog. “Ghoulish, really.”

“Vel,” Mon admonished.

“Oh, hell, I don't mean it,” Vel said. She held a near-empty cup and a brimming second. She offered it to Kleya, making pointed eye contact. “She couldn't look bad if she tried.”

What? Blindsided, Kleya’s hand hovered before the cup. Vel pushed the drink forward again and Kleya grasped it hesitantly, as if the mechanics of closing her hand took every ounce of her focus. 

“Might need to speak slowly, though,” Vel added, enunciating dramatically. “She's still rebooting.”

“That’s… unnecessary,” Kleya said, fixing her gaze lower than anyone else's. If she was processing things slowly, it was only because she'd been caught so off-guard. One moment she was dragging her sorry, soapy carcass through the woods, harassed only by her own delirium, and now she was cornered by three former assets who would no doubt express sentiments and ask questions she hadn’t the energy to entertain. She regretted not leaving the mess hall sooner and avoiding this whole misfortune.

“Cass told me about Luthen,” Wilmon said. She was sure his face held sympathy, but she wasn’t about to look up and see. “I’m sorry.”

“And Cassian is sorry he couldn’t make it,” Mon said. 

Kleya nodded at her feet, but as Wilmon helped Mon carry the cups and the kettle over to the fire, Mon’s words caught up to her. Andor. Mothma. Sartha. Paak. That this particular crowd would gather together in respite was unsurprising, but the absence of anyone unfamiliar…

Vel touched her arm and stepped closely. She smelled of liquor and something herbal and clean. She cupped Kleya’s elbow and whispered next to her cheek. Her warm breath derailed Kleya’s thoughts immediately. “I’m not supposed to know this so don't react, but Mon said Cassian is off-world verifying your intel. A sanctioned order from Draven.”

Kleya pulled back, searching Vel. “Really.” It was less a question than a statement. Vel's closed-lip half-smile held no deceit. An order from Yavin’s general. Something official. Somewhere in that forsaken temple, someone wanted to believe her. Believe Luthen. Believe Lonni. She had to pull her eyes from Vel's mouth and she didn't know why. 

Vel noticed, and–unlike Mon–did let on. Smirking, she ducked her head into Kleya's eyeline. “You alright?”

Kleya snapped her eyes to her drink. “You said don't react,” she muttered into it. She took a more generous sip than she’d intended and her tongue and throat buzzed as if she’d swallowed electricity. She peered into the cup at a steaming indigo liquid. Vel was laughing. “What is this?”

“Blueleaf tea. You ran out of the med tent before you got your parting gift. You'll feel it soon.”

“Hm.” She took another sip. Astringent but floral. 

“It should help you focus. Or get you high as a Drovian. It’s a bit of a coin toss.”

Kleya realized she would have to accept this evening was no longer going to go how she wished. Better chemically altered than not, she figured, and downed the rest of the tea. Vel's wide-eyed expression was her first hint that that might have been a mistake. The second was the sudden sensation of Vel's free hand ghosting the small of her back, herding her across the terrain as they walked over to the fire.

“What are you doing?” Kleya asked.

“You really did crack your skull, didn’t you? ‘Coin toss’ should have implied ‘take it easy,’ not toss it back like a sot.”

“But where's the fun in that?” Kleya said, swatting Vel's hand away. 

Vel held up one palm and her drink in surrender. “You’re cleaning your own puke this time.”

As Vel and Kleya joined Mon and Wil at the fire, Mon, mid-sentence, watched them approach with a curious look on her face. Vel sat next to her cousin on one of two log benches bracketing the pit while Kleya dropped her pack at the roots of a nearby tree. She slid her back against its smooth bark and popped one foot behind her, immediately realized she hadn’t the proper balance to do so, and instead sat cross-legged on the ground. She invested herself in the tin cup in her hands and scratched its hammered surface with the tips of her nails. Wilmon and Mon had been conversing when they’d approached, but now they’d stopped, nothing but the crackling of the fire and chirping insects filling the silence. She looked up. All three of them were staring at her again.

“What?” she bit.

Wilmon cleared his throat, his dark, kind eyes reflecting the fire. “I, uh, I said that I'm really glad you made it out, Kleya.”

She thought of the last time she saw him, covered in sweat and blood and the ashes of Ghorman, his leg mangled but not his spirit. Thank you for saving my life, she could respond. Or, something Wilmon would no doubt treasure, saccharine but not untrue: I’m proud of you. So was Luthen. 

“You kept the radio charged,” she said.

He chuckled once, softly. “Of course I did.”

It wasn't thanks, not really. She knew that. But the understanding way he held her gaze made her think it didn't matter. She appreciated that about him; she never had to excuse herself because she never had to excuse Luthen. Not to Wilmon.

 “Regarding the radio,” Mon broached, leaning to adjust the tea kettle on its tripod over the flames, “I trust it’s been confiscated?”

Vel snorted and sipped her drink. Wilmon simply stared at Mon, unblinking, face utterly still and neutral. As the stare-off held, Kleya glanced back and forth between them and couldn’t help the quirk of her lips. 

“You’ve just been let off confinement, Wilmon,” Mon said warningly. “Please tell me it's been destroyed.”

This got Kleya's attention. “Please tell me it hasn’t.”

Wilmon sent Kleya a quick, conspiratorial look. “I was assured that tonight was strictly friendly, Senator,” Wilmon said, grabbing a stick near the stone edges of the firepit and stirring up a few embers, “and therefore off the record?”

Mon looked caught. Her mouth formed around several rebuttals before she relented with a sigh. “I–yes.” 

“The radio’s intact. I’ll deal with Draven. No way I’m ditching an unregistered pulse code radio when we need all the advantages we can get.”

“Excellent,” Kleya said, genuinely relieved. “Those parts were probably the last of their kind.” The subject matter or the medicinal tea had loosened something in her and she felt compelled to elaborate. “And they cost a fortune. I tried to emulate them over the years but no one makes semiconductor transistors without proprietary gain locks anymore. Not under the Empire.”

“Hold on, you made those radios?” Vel asked. “Made them, as in…” She mimed building and twisting with her hands.

“Seven of them.”

Vel looked impressed. So did Mon, who leapt too enthusiastically at the opportunity to engage her. “I didn’t know you were a communications technician, Kleya. Where did you learn?”

“Self-taught, mostly,” she said, once again feigning interest in the cup in her hands. No one had really asked her that before, nor had anyone called her a technician. She'd never been credentialed. She learned to do it because it needed to be done. She perfected it because it needed to be perfect. Enjoying it was of no consequence, but she supposed she enjoyed it, too.

“And here we thought you were just the mysterious assistant and the gallery’s pretty face,” Vel said, her consonants languid. 

Kleya stared at her. Two compliments in as many minutes. “How drunk are you?”

“Not nearly drunk enough for this,” Vel said, gesturing loosely around the campfire.

This.

The very specific company. ‘Off the record.’ Mon’s blatant eagerness to probe. Vel’s now readily apparent desire to be anywhere else but here. “And what, exactly, is this?” 

“Here we go,” Vel muttered, scraping at the dirt with her boot. 

Mon glanced at Vel reprovingly. Wilmon looked uncomfortable and busied himself throwing another log into the fire. It crackled as it caught flame, fresh heat and a few floating firebrands gusting in Kleya’s direction.

“Cassian told us about what happened in Coruscant,” Mon started, speaking too precisely. “I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for you.”

Here we go, indeed. Kleya was shaking her head back and forth before she could stop herself. It felt as if there were a full second’s delay on her every movement, like her head was moving but her vision dragged to catch up. She convinced herself it was the tea.

“His sacrifice, and yours, will never be forgotten,” Mon continued. The words themselves, Kleya knew, were benign. Harmlessly appropriate, hollow things. But in her unwillingness to hear them, the platitudes landed like daggers. 

“None of this would be here without him,” Wilmon said. 

Kleya ignored them both and looked at Vel, who wouldn’t catch her eyes, staring somewhere beyond the fire, beyond the trees, intentionally disengaged.

“‘It grows or it dies,’ he’d told me,” Mon was saying. “In the end, he’d never leave Coruscant, but propagating the network was always his larger plan. And here we are.”

“Luthen made things happen,” Wilmon said.

Kleya furrowed her brows and closed her eyes, rocking as she bounced her knee until their voices became muted and meaningless, like scanning through frequencies of adverts and daytime holotrash. She didn’t care to hear their versions of Luthen. None of them would be right. And none of them would be wrong. He was, after all, only whoever he had to be. 

That’s all they were to each other. Whatever they had to be, when it was useful. 

“–and after I got away from Saw, I guess he figured I had what it took. That’s when Kleya gave me the radio.”

Hearing Wilmon say her name jostled her back to attention. Had they been talking for just moments, minutes? She hadn’t any idea. 

“And how did you come to work for Luthen, Kleya?”

Mon’s question rang in her ears, too intrusive, too friendly. 

 “The way one comes to work for anyone,” she answered sharply, giving the lie teeth–a warning.

“Complicated, yeah?” Wilmon said. He was offering her an out, but his distillation to that one simple word had her tucking her nails into her palms.

Mon stepped over and took Kleya’s empty cup, touching Kleya’s hand longer than she would’ve liked, then topped her off with hot tea. She raised a toast. To a complicated man, she said, somewhere far away. It made Kleya furious. There was nothing complicated about Luthen. There was only the cause. There was not a single person she understood more in the whole galaxy.   

Mon and Wilmon tapped cups. Vel didn’t even raise hers, nor did Kleya. She glared into the fire, anger warring with ache while her dwindling rationality screamed for a ceasefire. Mon didn’t know. None of them did. Not in any way that mattered. And she'd never tell them. 

“You and Luthen were close,” Mon said too casually. “Inseparable, even.”

Ache won out, exploding behind Kleya’s ribcage.

You’re guessing. And you’re slipping! Let’s keep making avoidable mistakes. Let’s keep overreacting! You agreed to it! I let you talk me into it! You’re becoming insufferable. Are you done? You’re just being sad.

Luthen–

Please don’t argue. Just be there.

Just be there.

Her eyes burned as the echoes of their arguments shifted to soft, forbidden memories she’d sworn never to think on again. His barks of laughter as he taught her a partner dance for their first Imperial gala. She’d mocked every new movement in a crude Coruscanti upper-crust accent until his irritation became amusement. Her bitten-off cries as he cauterized vibroknife wounds on her chest and shoulder–how distressing to see tears in his eyes, too–you weren’t ready–Luthen!–stay still–I am ready, I was just careless–

A gangly child hanging on a big man's back, hungry and weak, her dirty face stuck to his sweaty neck. He’d carried her through the night, even though he was hungry, too. 

Lear?

Nearly there. Go back to sleep.

These stories were not for them. 

When she spoke, it was with long-practiced iciness. “We worked the network together, yes.”

“It took me far too long to realize your influence,” Mon said. “You were exceptionally low-profile.”

“By design.” She swirled the hot tea around the cup. Then she stopped and looked up, regarding each of them in turn, but zeroing on Mon. “We’re not here to toast Luthen. Ask what you need to ask.”

“This isn’t a trial, Kleya.”

“And it’s clearly not a sitabout.”

Vel scoffed and drew a mouthful of revnog.

Mon looked like she might push, but chose against it. Good. While Kleya could respect Mon’s political maneuvering where it belonged, she had little patience for it directed at her. She intended to get ahead of it. “I know your friends in the temple have their rumors and accusations.”

“They do. And we can discuss them. But right now, I’m more concerned for your well-being.”

The derisive sound that left Kleya’s mouth was somewhere between a grunt and a laugh.

 It only made Mon frown. “Does it surprise you that there might be people here who care how you’re feeling? People around this very fire, perhaps?”

“I would afford that a moment of consideration if it were at all relevant,” Kleya said. “But it’s not. I know what you're doing. You're assessing the risk I pose to this operation, mistakenly believing that forging some personal connection might give you some sense of security in vouching for the closest associate of Luthen Rael.” She tried to steady herself with an exhale but only became angrier, punctuating her next words with clangs of her cup on the ground. She barely felt the hot tea sloshing onto her fingers. “What I can't figure out is what, exactly, you are hoping to hear. That I'll do anything to hurt the Empire? You already know that. So perhaps you’re hoping to hear that I won't. That there are lines I will not cross. Is that it?”

“With all understanding that this is war, we do have certain expectations of decorum.”

“Yes, because the Empire is the paragon of decorum,” Kleya spat the word. “Certainly if we kill them decorously they will decommission their superweapon.”

“I hear your frustration, but I suspect you understand my meaning.”

“No, I don’t think I do.”

Vel lost her patience then, turning abruptly to straddle the log to better face her cousin and Kleya. “Can they trust you? Can they trust you to not be like Luthen?” 

There it was.

“Vel, please–”

“She said to ask what you need to ask, Mon, and that's what you want to know. That's what High Command wants to know.” 

Though the question shot through her like a blaster bolt, Kleya did not betray herself. She stilled, straightened her back and lifted her chin, and held Mon’s eyes with a passive, placid expression. “And what does that mean, ‘not like Luthen?’”

She watched the wheels turn in Mon’s head, knowing she’d caught her on the back foot. But she wouldn’t let a declaration like that go unjustified. Not here. Not about him. Whatever Mon could say would only reveal hypocrisy and cowardice and she needed her to face that.

But she also needed to know what it meant.

“Kleya,” Mon said, her exasperation beginning to make itself evident as she put down her cup and pressed her temples.

“Go on then, let’s have it,” Kleya insisted. “As Wilmon said, none of you would be here without him.”

Wilmon, who had been observing silently, nodded at Kleya. He did not involve himself further, but she found his quiet support reassuring. But Kleya hated the softness in Mon’s eyes, the softness she still directed toward her, even in the midst of this confrontation. And yet, she didn’t hate it at all, and didn’t know what she would do if Mothma ever looked at her with disdain.

“May I ask you something?” 

Mon’s voice was gentle. Too gentle. Now she was the one disarmed. She swallowed, feeling her face contort, and tried to school it again. She nodded very slightly, little more than a subtle chin tuck.

“Do you believe you’re expendable?”

She felt three pairs of eyes on her, waiting for her answer. She had to look away. She didn’t respond, though the answer had come to her immediately.

“I don’t believe Luthen’s ruthlessness was born of heartlessness,” Mon continued with the same gnawing gentleness. “I don’t believe he’d ever ask anything of anyone that he wasn’t willing to do himself. I’m sure the same is true of you.”

Kleya stared unblinkingly at the fire until her eyes stung. Then, just when the silence was on the cusp of becoming unbearable, Mon spoke again.

“You’re not expendable, Kleya. No one is.”

“That’s not true.” The pressured words spilled out before she could stop them, with more yet to come. “That’s not true at all. No one person matters more than the cause. We can’t.” Her heart was picking up speed, thrumming uncomfortably in her throat, in her head. She felt as if she were a few meters away from her body, unable to stop this child wearing her face from talking. “Anything less and the Empire’s already won.”

“With all due respect, I sincerely hope you’re wrong,” Mon said, unflappably patient.

“With all due respect, anything to the contrary is delusional!”

“Be that as it may, we mustn’t become the very evil we’re fighting. So, at your request, I’ll be as clear as I can: you are resourceful, intelligent, and have an assortment of skills that could be major assets here. But you are known by present company to be deceptive, secretive, and to have no qualms dispatching loose ends or double-crossing allies, should you deem it necessary to the rebellion.” Mon paused and appeared to be measuring Kleya’s reaction. Kleya did not have one. Mon resumed. “I ask, without caveat, can we trust you?”

She didn’t hesitate. “No.” 

“Scobbing hell, Kleya.” Vel stood, then, apparently at her limit. “Mon is trying to salvage your reputation and you’re giving her nothing!”

“My reputation?” Kleya growled, incredulous. “To what end? I didn’t ask to come here. I don’t need to be here.”

Mon folded her hands smoothly, as if making a bid at an investiture party. “I’m afraid it's not that simple.”

“So I am a prisoner.”

“No, but there's something you should know, if you don’t already.”

Kleya became suddenly uneasy with the preamble and Mon’s tight frown. Even Vel looked concerned–perhaps the first thing tonight she hadn’t been privy to. 

“General Draven has brought it to our attention that the ISB has a warrant out for you.”

Kleya almost laughed. “I terrorized a hospital. How is this news?”

“It’s a civilian-level warrant with a substantial reward. They blasted a high-definition dimensional hologram of your face on intergalactic channels claiming you escaped Lina Soh with an infectious disease. It’s been two rotations and reportedly all of Coruscant is abuzz with the search for patient zero. Even the academies and resorts are on high alert.”

The implications settled quickly and with profound finality. 

“You're burned,” Vel said. 

The crater beneath Kleya's sternum yawned open again, having only barely closed since last night. Something must’ve given her away, as Wil moved to her side quickly, sitting next to her. “But you're safe here,” he insisted, looking at Vel and Mon for reinforcement. “We can keep you safe here and you can keep doing what you do best.”

Burned as far and as wide as the Empire could broadcast. 

Whatever they said next never registered. Wilmon was saying something comforting. Mon and Vel were talking to each other in hushed tones. At some point, Mon covered Vel's cup when she tried to fill it again and Vel relented. Soon the fire began to dim and Vel added more firewood.

She felt Wilmon’s hand on her arm again and dragged her eyes to him.

“Hey, Dreena and I have dawn shift so I can’t stay. I’m glad I got to see you. Our tent’s out by mess, behind the scaffold treehouses. You should come by, alright?”

Kleya nodded once, and the next moment, he'd been long gone, lost through the trees. Vel was standing in front of her, looking down at her. 

“Nothing to say now, huh?”

She tried to look up, but it strained and stung the sutures in her head, so she gazed out past Vel's knees.

“I don’t know what Mon expected. You are who you are.”

And who’s that? Kleya wanted to ask. She suspected it was meant to insult her, but it only confused her. She watched Vel walk all the way back to her hut and disappear through the front flaps. Then she looked at Mon, who was in turn watching her, eyes narrowed, trying so very hard to read her.

“She’s had a bit too much tonight. I wouldn't take it to heart,” Mon said.

“I don't.”

An ember popped in the fire. Somewhere in the woods, an animal screeched and a distant one answered.

“Vel has not had an… easy time here,” Mon said softly. “Her journey isn’t mine to share, but you coming here unforeseen… I believe it’s brought up feelings and memories she’d hoped she’d sealed away forever. Her time with Luthen. Her last mission.”

“Cinta,” Kleya said flatly.

“Yes. It’s easier to hate. It’s easier to have somebody to blame.” The look Mon gave Kleya then was too close to pity for comfort. “But then she said she found you wandering in the rain, looking so–” She cut herself short. “Vel’s always been a protector.”

“I don’t need protection.”

“I’m not sure that was true last night. I’m not even sure it’s true right now.”

Kleya bristled. “Don’t. Whatever you’re doing, please, stop,” she said, attempting to get to her feet. She didn’t know where she’d go, but she wouldn’t be having the rest of this conversation. Not with Mon Mothma. Unfortunately, her body was not cooperating and in her haste, she tweaked a broken rib and yelped. Mon was by her side in an instant, offering her a hand. 

“Easy,” she said. “Let me help you.”

Kleya pinned her with a stare, then tentatively took her hand, much like she’d taken her cousin’s last night. It was not any easier to accept this time, but she wasn’t going to get out of here stuck on the ground.

Mon, however, did not let go of her hand. She froze, looking up at Mon under furrowed brows, and Mon held her hand ever more firmly.

“You want me to be direct, so I will be. Yes, I have a duty as a leader to ensure this operation remains secure. But I also want you to be well. I don’t know much about you, Kleya, but am I incorrect in saying we might be all you have right now?”

“No.”

“Do you want to be part of this?”

“I want to win.”

“Do you think you can do that alone?”

‘No one can do this alone,’ Cassian had said. ‘He knew that.’

“I don't know,” she answered. “I’ve never had to.”

Mon pulled her in and wrapped her in a hug. Kleya did not move, arms held stiff against her sides. She didn’t even breathe. Over Mon’s shoulder, the trees rustled in a light breeze. She focused on a single dead branch and wondered how many more light breezes it would take for it to snap and fall.

“I lost my father just before I became a junior senator,” Mon said quietly. Kleya felt her voice resonating on the top of her head. “He was a complicated man and we had a complicated relationship.”

“Luthen wasn’t my father,” she said before she could stop herself.

Mon didn’t respond. She didn’t need to. Those words, loaded with eighteen years of denial, were oft-repeated but never in the past tense. Not until now. A choked-off sob escaped Kleya and she knew Mon felt it because she wrapped her tighter, almost instinctively rocking her, before stopping herself and letting Kleya go. She at least afforded Kleya the favor of looking away as she composed herself.

“You can choose to leave,” she said, looking up, off past Yavin Prime. “It will be difficult to hide and survive, of course, but you can choose to do this alone. I hope you don't.”

“What will you tell them?” Kleya said into her wrist, swiping an errant tear with the heel of her palm.

“That you need time. That trust goes both ways.” Kleya didn’t look but heard Mon gathering her belongings from the side of the fire. “Right now, they only know you were Luthen’s assistant. I will have to disclose the rest. Perhaps they will rightfully consider the value of a seasoned rebel spy, if you choose to join us. That is up to you.” 

I need to know you're making a choice. I lived most of my life without ever realizing that that was a possibility.

“You have a future here, Kleya. I think Luthen knew that. He might have believed everyone expendable, himself included. But I am certain you were the exception.”

Vel chugged a cup of water, filled it, and drained it again. Revnog had done nothing to soften her dread, nothing to make the evening more bearable. It’d only made her slower and angrier. She’d half a mind to throw the rest of the bottle at the wall. She knew she ought to turn in and sleep it off, but she was stuck rehearsing all sorts of arguments with Kleya in her mind, some even tumbling half-formed out of her mouth. So she sat at the table, waiting for Kleya to come inside, waiting to confront her without Mon there to play peacekeeper. If Kleya was going to be on this base for the foreseeable future, Vel was going to get it all aired out. She needed answers. She needed… something.

But Kleya never came.

Restless, Vel walked to the hut’s opening and peered out across the dark clearing. The fire was still lit. She could just make out Kleya, alone, hunched over her knees, staring silently into the flames.

Vel was back at the firepit before she knew her feet were moving.

“What a tableau,” she said loudly. “I never took you for a wallower.”

Kleya didn’t acknowledge her arrival. 

“You spent a while scouting the base today. Satisfied with your reconnaissance?” Vel circled around to the opposite side of the pit so Kleya would be forced to look at her. “You know, I didn't actually tell Mon about your little temple infiltration earlier. Maybe if I had, she wouldn't have wasted so much energy trying to tempt you toward redemption.”

Kleya still didn’t speak, pulling her knees tighter to her chest. For such an intimidating woman, she looked very small as she folded in on herself. 

“I get why she was compelled, though. You're out of your element here. It's hard to even look at your face without seeing a lost dugar fawn. Easy to think something had changed. Thank you for reminding us both it was foolish to think anyone so close to Luthen might be human.”

Kleya blinked, the fire flickering in her sad, brown eyes. Even as Vel derided the instinct, she felt her heart tug again. She willfully ignored it.

“Come on, then. Say something,” she growled.

“There’s nothing to say, Vel.”

Oh, come on. “How about an apology for taking our frankly too hospitable welcome and throwing it back in our faces?”

“I didn't mean to,” Kleya replied with little energy behind it. “I do appreciate your kindness.”

Of course she was saying all the appropriate things. Of course she was making it difficult to argue. Knowing Kleya, it was probably intentional. Another tactic to get under Vel’s skin by doing exactly the opposite of what she’d expected.

“I’m just feeling…” Kleya shrugged. “Lost, I think.”

Something honest and vulnerable, too? What a masterful performance. “I’m sure. You made it quite clear you don’t want to belong here and you're burned everywhere else.”

“I don’t think what I want is a factor. It would seem minds are made.”

“All you had to do was get Mon to believe you can be something other than a terrorist’s apprentice.”

“You know he was more than that.” Finally, Kleya looked her in the eye. There was a nakedness to her that Vel didn’t recognize, as if that force field between them had shuttered offline entirely. It didn’t occur to her to brace for what was coming. “If you need to hate me, hate me. If you need to blame me for Cinta, blame me for Cinta. I don’t care. But don’t pretend you weren’t one of us.”

Vel felt the ground shift beneath her. Hearing Cinta’s name from Kleya’s mouth, spoken so plainly and with so little tenderness, had her trembling with resentment–because that’s what this was really about, wasn’t it? Of course it was. But to have had neither choice nor warning of when and where and how this would be broached felt cruel. She tried desperately to claw back control before Kleya ran away with it and when she spoke, it was through gritted teeth. “I regret every moment of it.”

“No, you don’t,” Kleya said. “You chose a side. You wanted to fight back against the dark and you did.”

Vel swallowed hard, stunned silent a second time. Those were her exact words from her first meeting with Luthen. Kleya hadn’t even been there, yet remembered them precisely, as if Luthen had filled her in on the new recruit and Kleya had tucked those words away, saved forever to her Vel Sartha dossier. If that were true, then perhaps every time she regarded Vel from the day they’d met, it was with those words in mind. It would challenge everything she’d assumed, like everything else in the last rotation.

But now was not the time for rewriting their history.

“We crossed lines we never should’ve crossed. We can’t take that back.”

“Why would we?”

“You ordered me to kill Cassian.”

“And you didn’t have to.”

“Imagine I had. Imagine all this without him. How many times did we pull the trigger on the worst possible options, thinking we were right? There were other ways.”

At last, Kleya appeared to be growing frustrated. “There weren’t. There’s not.” Her voice, though fatigued, became edged with that errant panic from earlier, when Mon dared to insist Kleya wasn’t expendable. “Don’t you think I wish there were?”

“I don’t know, Kleya. Do you? I’ve never known you to care about the costs above the cause. After Aldhani, you told me every loss is the same to you.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“And Ghorman? Cassian told me all about what Luthen thought of Ghorman, but I’m sure you knew better than anyone. He didn't care if the Ghor weren’t ready, because it would look so good to have a planet of status join the rebellion. He’d happily take the bloodshed if it meant martyrdom. Did you know he never told me Cassian turned him down first? Cass knew they’d be slaughtered.”

“Ready or not, no one was going to stop them, nor should they have,” Kleya rebutted. “And you were with us, Vel. It was your mission, one you never hesitated to lead. It was only when an unforeseen variable got Cinta killed–” 

“An unforeseen variable?” Vel interrupted, shouting. “Is that all it was to you?”

“Yes! It was an impetuous child with an expressly forbidden blaster. What else would it be?” 

“You sound just like Luthen!”

Kleya scoffed bitterly. “What is the point of this?”

Vel didn’t know. She had no idea what she wanted to hear, and even if she did, she doubted Kleya would ever say it. But she was angry and she was stubborn and she was still drunk, and if she couldn’t keep Luthen and Kleya and everything they represented in a neat little lockbox, then all the other containers would explode open, too. She couldn’t let herself go back there again. She wouldn’t. 

And she refused to spend tonight as the only one with salted wounds.

“Why did you want to kill Luthen?” she asked, abrupt and without overture. 

Kleya looked confused and, oddly, somewhat frightened. “Excuse me?”

“Last night. Your nightmare. You said you thought I was Luthen.”

Kleya was silent. Her shoulders jostled as a tremor ran through her and Vel hoped it was just the nighttime breeze, but she knew it wasn’t, because there were tears on her cheeks that hadn’t been there before. Vel knew she was clawing blindly and drawing blood in ways she’d regret in the morning. Worse, and most confounding, Vel found that despite her cruelest intentions, she couldn’t feel any sort of true animosity toward Kleya. Not anymore.

“I can't do this,” Vel said, boots scraping the dirt as she stood and left as quickly as she’d arrived, not sparing a glance behind her.

***

After a fitful hour of failing to sleep, Vel realized Kleya had yet again never come back inside. She walked out to the porch. Searching the darkness, she spotted Kleya curled up on her side next to the low fire, hugging her tactical pack to her cheek like a pillow. Vel couldn’t imagine how uncomfortable and cold she must’ve been. She stepped back inside and pulled the blanket from the guest bunk. Kleya’s bunk. She proceeded to walk down the steps but came to a hard stop on the second to last, turned around, and marched back to her own bed. 

She balled up the blanket and screamed into it until she cried and cried until she fell asleep, her face nestled into linen that smelled faintly of Yavin jungle flowers and Kleya.