Star Wars: Vode An (closed for Apollo Wilde and BewareTheDream)

It was hard to decide which was better: The orgasm the rocked Raeth to his very core, or seeing Saudaji happy with him.

The climax he had just experienced was better than he thought possible. It made him want to scream, joyously, but the only sound that came out was a dreamy sigh. But Saudaji's smile, the flush of her cheeks, and how she opened to him in more than one way - those were precious, too. All these things combined into something so good, something he never knew he wanted nor needed until she showed him way.

Raeth's body was jolted by the long, hot streaks of cum that burst out of him. Her insides were painted in white. Much of his mind was lost to the bliss, yet there was just enough of him there to notice that her pussy clamped down on him differently, somehow. It felt possessive. It was so tight it became painful in all the right ways. It was like Saudaji was using her body to tell him she would never let him go.

It may have been his bliss-addled imagination. But he didn't care if he was wrong. His heart leapt at the thought of her being as obsessed with him as he was with her, so he took it. He took it all in at the same time that he emptied so much of himself into her.

The Twi'lek huntress got what she wanted - she milked him of every last drop. Despite the fact that his balls had been emptied, his body still shuddered as though he was still cumming. What they just shared was felt so powerful that even the aftershocks each felt like little orgasms; and he received an aftershock from even the tiniest movements.

The whole thing was so good, it made him black out for a moment. Saudaji had her face nuzzled against his neck, so she didn't see the goofy and utterly satisfied smile on his face. She did, however, notice him fall backwards onto the bed. How could she not? With his arms wound about her, he dragged her down with him.

He didn't realize he had blacked out. One moment he was seated on the bed, happily squeezed between her thighs and dizzy in the heat that enveloped him - her heat. The next moment, he was on his back, and Saudaji was sprawled atop him. The smell of her sweat made him alert. The feel of her melted against him brought a smile to his face. He luxuriated in her. He even luxuriated in the aches that flared at key parts around his body.

Although flaccid and thoroughly depleted, he didn't even think of removing himself from her depths. He lay there, resting, with one hand planted, possessively, on the back of one of her thighs. The other hand caressed her spine, lightly, languidly. On the upward stroke, his fingertip was on her flesh. On the downward stroke, it was his knuckles.

Saudaji had her face buried against the side of his neck. She was welcome to cuddle with him like this whenever she wanted. At that moment, she whispered something to him. Because her mouth was right up against his flesh, some of the words were muffled. He heard enough, though, to recognize she was speaking Mando'a. Abruptly, he was reminded of something that happened two nights ago:

*****

Those talented fingers of his were used to working with metal and electronics. But woodworking? Not so much.

Raeth knew that the Mandalorian carvings he was working on wouldn't come close to matching the quality of the originals, which decorated the doorways inside of the Splendid Place. It was true that he was exceptionally good with his hands. But talent alone couldn't get him on the same level as the Mandalorian craftsmen who worked with wood, bone, and stone their entire lives. Not overnight.

But as he evaluated the carvings atop his workbench - a handful of pieces he had completed over the past couple of sleepless nights - he thought to himself that they weren't bad at all, especially for a non-Mandalorian. Besides, he expected Saudaji would appreciate the thought and the effort more than the quality. As long as the carvings correctly represented her adopted family lineage, she would be pleased.
He hoped she would be pleased.

Raeth worked mostly from memory. During the tour of her ship, Saudaji made it clear how important the carvings were to her. The way she touched them reminded him of how museum curators handled holy artifacts during the the assembly of a new exhibit. Thus, when she showed them to him, he studied them, closely, and took mental images of each and every one. He based his current work off of those mental pictures.

Technology helped, too. His datapad was propped up next to the carvings; he used it to read up on the basics of Mandalorian woodcraft and the significance of their symbolism. During his research, he happened upon instructional videos that taught beginner's Mando'a.

"Hmph. Why not?" Raeth thought outloud. He played the language videos, and practiced along with the recorded, Human instructor. She would say a common word or phrase in Mando'a, translate it into Basic, repeat it in Mando'a, and then she would give the listener a chance to repeat. Raeth listened and repeated what he heard while he carefully shaped the piece of wood in his hand into something that represented Saudaji's great-grandmother.

"Aay'han," the woman on the video said. "A moment of bittersweet joy. Aay'han."

"Aay'han," Raeth repeated, his eyes transfixed on the piece of wood and the knife that cut into it.

"Ade. Children; sons; daughters. Ade."

"Ade."

"Beroya. Bounty hunter. Beroya."

"Beroya." Many minutes had passed, and Raeth was really focused on the carving. He was repeating the words mechanically. Nevertheless, the lessons were remembered.

"Cyare. Beloved; precious one. Cyare."

"Cyare." Raeth did not realize this, but 'cyare' was a term that most Mandalorians used when referring to offspring. The video did not explain that it wasn't generally said between lovers.

" Kar'taylir darasuum. Love. Kar'taylir darasuum."

" Kar'taylir darasuum. Heh," Raeth chuckled to himself. "That's a lot of syllables for 'love.'"

The rest of the night was spent carving and listening to a long-dead Human woman introducing him to Mando'a.


*****

"Kar'taylir darasuum," Raeth thought he heard Saudaji say those words, among other things, just then. He wasn't entirely sure, because he was still drunk from her loving, plus she whispered it against his neck.

A thousand thoughts raced through his head in a matter of seconds. Was she in love with him? What did 'love' even mean, anyway? Was this a good thing, or a bad thing? How did they go from almost killing each other a few weeks ago to this? How would this compllicate their mission? What was this?

He lay still and silent for several seconds, feeling her, thinking. Was this love? He didn't know. Love was not something he knew, at all.

His train of thought rushed to things that he did know. There was always comfort in knowledge. He knew that he couldn't stop thinking about her. He knew that - as obsessive as was - he had never obsessed over anyone or anything like he did with her.

He knew how exhilirated he felt whenever Saudaji expressed her pleasure in him. He knew how light-headed he felt whenever she smiled. He knew that, lately, whenever his mind raced uncomfortably, the things he would think about to calm his thoughts were how she looked when she slept, how her skin smelled, or her voice when she sang as Dian'La.

He knew how awful he felt for the past week. Being separated from her made him feel physically ill at times, which was one of the main reasons why he spent his days remodeling her room and bathroom, and his nights carving her family symbols. Those projects helped him through a real shit week.

What he knew was that when he was with her, he felt thrilled and confused at the same time. Those were two emotions he rarely ever felt. Yet they were emotions she could make him feel just by being with him.

If all those things weren't love, what else could they be?

Conveniently, the subject of his thoughts stirred at the same time he made his decision. She drizzled kisses all over his face, which made him smile. The smile that she saw was peaceful, despite the fact that his heart and his thoughts were both racing.

Saudaji's face was directly above his. He reached up to cup the sides of her head. Eyes on hers, he whispered this confession to her in her family's language:

"Gar ner cyare, Saudaji."

You are my beloved.

Now, because the instructional video he found on the holonet was a poor substitude to a formal linguistic education, the phrase wasn't quite appropriate.

Hopefully Saudaji would look into the normally dead eyes of the man she had bared herself to - the man who had opened up to her in a way he had never done before - and realize what it was he meant to say.

So she said she thought she was in love with him.

If she was going to be truly honest, there was no “thought” about it - she was in love with him.

The last of her doubts had been washed away by their orgasms, the evidence running slowly between her thighs. As they shuddered together, her mind was awash in a blissful calm, a calm she’d never felt before. Like she’d been purified. In the moments that they bonelessly held each other, all of those love songs she’d grown up hearing made sense. She was now in that inner circle - and she could hardly believe it.

Easily falling to the bed with him, her grip tightened around him, a creeper vine wrapped round a trellis. Normally Saudaji wasn’t prone to possessive acts - it was hard to be possessive in a nomadic culture, when things slipped through your fingers like water - she’d always been the “protector.” However, it was proving to be quite the night of firsts for her. Her grasp around him was gossamer soft, but with an unmistakeable current of steel under it. Mine, it said. There would be no turning back now. Raeth, in such a short amount of time, had transcended the bonds of friendship, of family. He was now nestled firmly in her heart.

She hadn’t truly loved Mahoroba - not like this. Nothing even close to this. Mahoroba had been a kinship, a companion, who understood (or so she had thought) the ways of their people. And perhaps, had nothing ever happened, she would still be there now, fighting, raising children. Always…wondering. Always…curious. Even as faint as her memories were of her life before the Mandalorians had captured her, it was enough to carve a notch into her spirit of wanting to explore. To search. Not so much as a quest to “find herself”, but more of wanting to see what, or who, out there in the galaxy awaited her.

And now, thank all of the gods, or whoever had crafted the stars and planets, she had found him. And in the most unlikely of places, starting in the most unlikely of ways. If she had little else to be thankful in the world (family not withstanding), it was this. It was him. It was enough to make her believe in a higher power.

She was loathe to move - and so she didn’t. She sighed, moving her face away from his neck so she could breathe easier, with contentment. And she would have lain there, him still buried to the hilt within her until the world stopped, but he moved. He stilled her face over his, and spoke.

Her world blossomed.

At first, she wasn’t sure that she’d heard him correctly. The words were stilted - and she couldn’t recall ever hearing a non-native Mandalorian speak Mando’a. It wasn’t exactly a popular or useful language throughout the system. Come to think of it…the only time she’d ever heard a non-native speak it was whenever Raeth….Raeth. He’d tried, so hard. How had she not seen it? How had it not become clear, until this precise moment, that he had been doing all that he could to show his affection? Where had her head, her heart been, that it hadn’t registered sooner? So caught up in her ego that she thought he’d been mocking her - when it was all too apparent that he was as clumsy, as new to this, as she was. So caught up in not wanting to be hurt, in not wanting to show how she was feeling….

Then incredulity. No way. Could he have felt the same way? He did. Realization sparkled on her face, as pure as raindrops on leaves. She hadn’t misheard him. As her gaze never left his, tears welled in her eyes, and she ducked her head for a moment. She trembled atop him, before she brought her face back to his. Kissed his forehead. His cheeks. His nose. And, right before she kissed his lips, she whispered:

“Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum.”

I love you.

Three very simple words, but three of the most difficult to admit to, in any language.

When she kissed him again, the sweetness of it was slowly bolstered by a growing passion. Quiet, at first, but growing all the more deafening as she continued to kiss him.

And, if he let her do as she would, she would take her time with him. Re-learning his body, again and again, with each stroke of her tongue. Recreating him with her lips. Memorizing the most sensitive parts of him with her fingertips. If allowed, she would bring him to orgasm again, again, and again, until he was entirely too sensitive to the touch, when the heated breath from her lips caused him to recoil from her, until she had swallowed mouthful after mouthful of him, until it spilled from the corners of her lips, her cunt, her ass. Until she was filled thoroughly by him, leaked him. Until they both smelled like the passions of the other.

_________

Raeth was sleeping next to her, his face impossibly boyish. She was beside him, laying on her side, studying his face. Sweet now, there was no sign of the murderer there, just a man at peace with the world around him.

It was a face she’d only seen recently, and realized, in the moments that she had, that she would give anything to keep it there. Do anything to keep him at peace with the world around him. And, once more, she felt the swelling, the call, the need to protect. But this time it was different. It felt different.

Leaning over, she brushed a strand of hair away from his forehead. Smiled at him, and gently kissed his forehead. “Ni Kelir kar'taylir darasuum gar bal cabuor gar,” she whispered against him. I will love you and protect you.

It was not a typical Mando’a oath. It was not one reaffirming brotherhood. And as much as she cared for him, she knew it was all too soon for her to share wedding vows. Not like Mandalorian wedding vows, or even marriage, was complicated or a big affair. A couple would exchange three lines, and that was it. The thought of it alone was enough to dry her throat. No. Not yet. Maybe not ever. And that was okay. Okay with her, at least. Her life was already bound with his, whether he knew it or not. If he didn’t, that was fine with her as well. It could be a truth that only she needed to know.

Watching him a bit longer, she slowly settled in next to him again, pulling him close. And then sleep found her as well.

___________

When he awoke, it would be to an empty bed.

There would be no immediate cause for concern, however. If he was quiet, he could hear her voice, in quiet song, from the kitchen area. If he got out of bed, and ambled down to the kitchen, he’d be greeted by the sight of her, in his discarded shirt from the night before. She was kneading dough, patting it into small rounds before placing it on a hot plate. Sebastian, looking as put out as a droid could, hung about in one corner, watching the Twi’lek as she moved from one spot in the kitchen to the other, singing quietly to herself.

A part of her was self-conscious; how disgustingly domestic could she be? Well, she mentally chided herself, she wasn’t doing it because of last night. She was doing it because she knew Raeth hadn’t eaten that well since she was gone. And it’d been too long since she’d really gotten to cook anything. Despite her eagerness to want to cook for him, the sad truth of the matter was that she wasn’t a gourmet by any means. Her cooking was typically Mando’a - spare of seasoning (that was a luxury), and largely boiled. Or grilled. Or anything that could be cooked over an open flame. Since they were in a ship and not actually landed somewhere, she couldn’t make one of her favorites - nuna cooked in an underground pit over coals for hours. Still, what she was making could be considered edible, if not all that savory.

She’d been up for a few hours, shopped, then came back. Nuna, she’d grabbed (because even she knew that was damn near impossible to ruin), some greens. Rice. Staples that she was familiar with. The nuna, she’d cleaned herself, rubbed down with salt and pepper, and had it in a skillet, searing on one side. As if an alarm went off, she dashed from one side of the stove to the other, turning the chicken and deftly flipping the flatbread at the same time. Everything was almost done - and she could barely suppress a small smile. It was a little silly - a little too domestic for her tastes. But, to be fair, he had cooked for her. Might as well return the favor.

Raeth didn't understand crying. Try as he might, he couldn't remember the last time he cried. Perhaps the last time was when he was a babe, which was why he couldn't remember.

He had seen Saudaji weep before; it was an unsettling sight. That was weeks ago, in the cargo bay at the top of the ramp. It was funny how, earlier today, they met at the top of the ramp, just like before. Only this time the reunion went far, far better.

Now, he saw tears in the Twi'lek's eyes once more. It wasn't unsettling this time; it made him glad. Not only did he not cry, he also wasn't prone to moving others to tears. He liked seeing her cry happy tears; he liked it very much. And to think he elicited this reaction from her simply by telling her how he felt.

Smiling, he hugged her. For once, he wasn't eager to keep loving her body until one or both of them collapsed from exhaustion. He would have been perfectly content just holding her and basking in these new, exciting feelings.
But Saudaji had other plans.

The kiss that covered his lips, sweetly, did not surprise him. The hunger that crept into that dalliance of their lips did surprise him, though. And the all-consuming passion that took complete control of her actions right after came as a total shock. Raeth had never seen Saudaji this wild, had never felt him crave him so much. One of the many things that intrigued him about her was how full of life she was. He was drawn to her life, her warmth, her light, because whether he acknowledged it or not, it was something he lacked.

But this was something more. And he loved it. Unlike the past times they fucked, Raeth often insisted on being in charge. This time, however, he was too stunned to do anything but lay back and enjoy the ride. Shuddering anew, he didn't dare move while Saudaji explored his body. Muscles flexed underneath her lips. Skin shivered under her tongue. Flesh warmed beneath her fingers. He arched and squirmed on the bed, making wanton, pleasured sounds.

His brain was already fried by sexual overload by the time she got between his legs to suck him off. Her loving attention to his body had gotten him as hard and as huge as he was when they first made love. When they truly made love. Thus, it did not take much of her exquisite, oral expertise to get him to pour his cream down her throat. That orgasm turned him into a shuddering puddle on the bed, which was already wet and sticky from their loving.

Yet Saudaji kept going. She wouldn't give him a break, she wouldn't leave him be. Normally it was he who kept wanting her, kept needing her until she pushed him off to get a rest. This time, it was she who was insatiable. It was a reversal of roles he did not expect but wholly welcomed.

She sucked him off again. Raeth thought she had emptied him out completely, but between her heavenly lips he found the strength to cum again. And again. And again. After she robbed him of her mouth, she replaced it with her cunt before he could even think to protest. She rode him, hard, and like before Raeth was rendered practically paralyzed by a combination of shock and awe. His scream of release filled the cooridors of the Pylat, just as a new batch of cream filled her womb.

She rode him, facing forward, and facing backward. She pulled him on top of her, but somehow maintained control while they fucked. They 69'ed. Raeth got her onto the floor and spent many, many minutes eating her out, not just because he loved the taste of her, but because he needed some time to recover. But Saudaji used her powerful thighs to basically fling him onto his back so she could go at him again. He didn't want to stop her; he would've been crazy to even think about stopping this bliss.

Once, Raeth successfully regained control. He bent her over the side of her new bed, and fucked her. After he filled her with both cock and cream, he removed his quivering mass from her cunt, then eased it into her ass. He went slowly at first, but then went fast and hard until he came once more. Although he was utterly exhausted by that point, he mustered the strength and the will to keep fucking her...no, to keep loving her.

That afternoon, Saudaji was the one with the greater stamina. The fervor of his love for her, his desire for her was undying. But unlike these new emotions she was teaching him how to feel, his body had reached its limit.

After cumming inside of her asshole at least twice, Raeth - feeling like a man made of sponge - crawled into bed for some rest and cuddling with his cyare. But when his cyare followed him onto the mattress, she immediately took back sexual control and made it clear that it wasn't over until she said it over.

Raeth didn't protest. Though by the end, he was barely helping. The only things he could do was pant, moan, writhe, and throb within her. She fucked and loved him until he became a happy sack of meat embedded into mattress. His eyes were glazed over. There was a tired, dreamy, silly smile on his face. His limbs were sprawled in all directions, in awkward angles. His entire body was covered by a sheen of sweat that kept renewing itself. His brown hair was sticky and plastered against his forehead.

By the end, his head hung off the edge of the bed, but he didn't care. Much of his body ached, but he didn't care. His throat was sore because he had screamed so much, and he didn't care about that either. All he cared about was how good Saudaji made him feel, and how good it felt to know that the reason she was now insatiable was because she loved him.

If she killed him like this - draining him of all his bodily fluids until all that was left was a spent husk - he would've died as a happy husk.

*****

Between the erotic marathon and a week of very poor sleep, it was no wonder that Raeth slept through the entire night. He slept through the vow she spoke to him. But even in his slumber, there were times he grabbed for her. He pulled at her, greedy for her nearness. As long as she was pressed against him, he would sleep better than he had in years.

Raeth awoke to an empty bed and a world of aching muscles. His dick hurt. His joints hurt. His muscles felt so tight that he imagined they would snap if he straightened an arm or bent a leg the wrong way. Wincing, he fought through the pain to get out of bed, finding Saudaji being his motivation to do so.

Before he searched for her, though, he went to his room. He left his discarded clothes in her quarters; he'd get them later. Naked, he padded to his quarters to freshen up a little. He put on underwear and slippders. He got a cold compress and stuffed it into his briefs, right up against his crotch.

"Hachee ma!" He spouted gibberish while getting acclimated to the cold. Shivering, he put on a robe, tied it loosely, and duck-waddled out into the cooridor. Once he was out of his room, he heard Saudaji's song.

Like a siren from Corellian myth, the Twi'lek's singing drew him to her. Duck-waddling the whole way, he found her in the kitchen, her back to the door. She was cooking in his shirt. Seeing her wearing his clothes brought a soft smile to his face. His gaze drifted down. She wasn't wearing pants underneath his shirt. What luck! He admired her ass, which poked out from underneath the tail of the garment. Licking his lips, he let his eyes follow the lengths of her legs. They looked so firm, and her jade skin looked so yummy. He made a mental note to insist she wear this outfit, often.

The sight of her entranced him, immediately. He leaned against the entryway to watch her cook in silence.

Sebastian noticed its master appear almost immediately. For several minutes, it stared at him silently, analyzing, while he stared at Saudaji, analyzing her in an entirely different way. The droid found the behavior of the two humanoids questionable and annoying. When it ran out of patience waiting for its masters to say something, it spoke up instead.

"Are you going to stand there staring at her all morning, Master? Common etiquette states that staring is rude."

"Way to ruin the moment, Scrapyard," Raeth's dreamy smile was replaced by an annoyed scowl. But once Saudaji turned around to face him, the smile would reappear, brighter than before. He went to her, doing his best not to duck waddle.

The cold compress was doing its job well enough; he was all numb down there.
If Saudaji kept on cooking, then Raeth would slide up behind her, wrap his arms around her tummy, and nuzzle his lips against the side of her neck. He would also press his cheek against the side of one of her lekku.

If, instead, she turned around to greet him, he would touch his forehead to hers. His hands would go to either side of her neck, and he'd just stay like that for a little while.

"I missed you," he said to her regardless of what position they took. "I didn't like waking up without you there."

While he was a mass of sore and stiff muscles, she was as spry as a vro-cat, a fact only confirmed by her cheerful tune. Her lekku, in a moment of clarity, she had bound lightly together behind her, much as one would pull back their hair in a ponytail. They were held with a loosely wrapped band of bright red fabric, striking against the cream jade of her skin. They still hung down to her waist, trailing tantalizingly around the top of her ass, which was partly hidden by his shirt. She’d worn pants when she stepped out earlier, but upon her return, and wanting to get comfortable, she’d stripped them off again. If the slight points of her nipples under his shirt wasn’t enough indication that she was bare beneath it, the occasional flash of the curve of her bare ass, the tops of her thighs, would have sent the message home.

Before Sebastian could say anything, she knew Raeth had entered. You didn’t live as long as she had in the business without having such acute senses. She also knew, though, that he wasn’t intending on startling her. If anything, it warmed her heart all the more to know that he was content watching her.

Sebastian spoke, and she smiled, feeling the expression go a little goofy around the edges. Oh, she had it bad. And all the moreso for finally being able to be honest with this part of herself. It made the day seem all the more brighter. Her singing slipped into humming, and she stopped all together as his arms wrapped around her, his lips soft on the side of her lekku. Twisting herself in his grasp, she touched her forehead to his, a modification of the greeting she’d given him not that long ago.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice little above a whisper, as if speaking too loudly would scare him, what they recently discovered, away. “I thought that you could use a good meal. I’m not much of a cook, though.” She closed the gap, pressed her lips to his. Drank him in through the gentle touch, though, certainly to his relief, there was no heat in the kiss, no push for anything more. Though, if she was honest, she could probably go again, she’d been perceptive enough to notice that he was walking a bit painfully. She did her best not to let any of the rush of smug pride she suddenly felt show on her face.

“I made seared nuna, to give you some protein, rice, flat bread. Nothing as fancy as I assume you’re used to,” and there was that shy, slight self-deprecating smile. Something she hadn’t shown him before, but an expression that was instantly memorable and endearing. Human. More to her than just the prideful, efficient warrior. “But you’re going to have to let me go so I can finish.”

If he acquiesced, she’d slowly slip from his arms, as reluctant to be let go as he was to let go, but reward him with another gentle kiss. If he didn’t, she’d playfully fight with him, nipping and kissing, until she slipped free of him. Either way, the result was the same - she was free of his grasp with numerous kisses exchanged.

Gesturing for him to sit at the table, she brought all of the plates over in a deft move that suggested that she just might have had a stellar career as a waitress. Scooting a chair close to him so that she was sitting at his side (so close, in fact, that her thigh was pressed against his), she leaned over, and showed him how the food was “traditionally” eaten. Really, there wasn’t much to it - you either used the flat bread to scoop up the rice and nuna, or wrapped the rice and nuna in the flat bread and ate it that way.

Really, she just wanted the excuse to be closer to him.

Eating went pretty quietly, and without the prior tension when the two of them were quiet together. She, for one, couldn’t think of anything to say, and was luxuriating in all that was new. She knew, in the back of her head, that it would be all too soon to wake up from the dream. There was a job to do.

However…

It was harder, she thought, now that she had someone that had added color to her life. The rage behind the loss of Mahoroba no longer stung as harshly as it had before - and that rage was what fueled her into killing the Jedi. Besides the deeply personal wrong of recruiting Mahoroba, she honestly knew that she didn’t think enough of them to be bothered to wipe them out. They were the same as anyone else in her life - if they got in her way, she’d kill them. But Raeth….this was his life. This was what he wanted. As much as she tried to wrench her thoughts away, back to the sunniness of being with him, she knew that it would only be a matter of time before it came to a head. Before they would have to talk about it.

No, that was her being silly.

One of the things that had worried her about admitting how she felt. She hadn’t wanted it to change the dynamic between them - not the working dynamic, at least. Raeth was efficient and cold - and, through the veil of her ego, she had to admit that it was a joy to watch him work. That’s what she needed. She needed to soak him all in, indulge. And then get back to work, only to increase the connection between them. With that resolve firmly set in her mind, she snuggled ever closer to him, almost to the point where he couldn’t eat without running the risk of running into her.

Their first morning kiss woke him up, completely. Amidst the sound of searing nuna, the two lovers energized each other with their lips and their closeness. Raeth's hands were on her side at first. While he moaned through her lips, adored the taste of her tongue, he abruptly remembered that she was naked underneath his shirt.

Stupid hands! He thought. Go down to her ass right now! His talented hands obeyed, immediately. Her round, jade ass was thus fondled, fondly. The tops of her thighs - thighs he had felt squeezing the breath out of him, threatening to snap him like a twig - were caressed, reverently. The tips of his middle fingers were used to trace, to tickle the part of her where her ass curved into back of her thighs.

Raeth did not notice that as sweet as Saudaji's morning greeting was, there wasn't any of that heat she showed him all last afternoon and into last night. No, all he noticed was that her lips was caressing his, and her tongue was inside of his mouth. That's all that mattered, that's all it took for his dick to scream at him in mute frustration for being forced to wake up from its slumber. All it wanted to do was bask in the cold of the compress nestled in his briefs, and just be numb for a while. But Raeth and his incessant need for Saudaji weren't giving it a break.

The Twi'lek was the one who decided to extend his body's reprieve. She pulled away from him and told him that she had to finish cooking.

"Let it burn." Raeth whispered to her wish a grin before going in for another delicious kiss. Saudaji had to playfully fight him off. She would succeed in getting away from him and his lips long enough to turn back around, but Raeth didn't leave her alone completely. His hands went right back to the back of her legs. Fingers and palms climbed up and down, from her thighs to her ass then back, while he pressed himself against her. He rested his jaw on one of her shoulders, and sometimes he turned his head to nibble on her neck. For the most part, though, he was content in feeling up her naked legs, and pressing his warm cheek against the side of one of her bound headtails.

Despite Raeth being a loving nuissance, he didn't get in the way of her cooking too much. Minutes later, they were seated together at the dining table, and Saudaji was showing him how to eat seared nuna, traditionally. Raeth already knew how, but he didn't say anything. If it was anyone else explaining something he already knew, he would've said something sarcasting, perhaps biting. With her, however, he actively kept his tongue in check.

More than that, he was practically mute with her that morning. Like yesterday, being with her under these unfamiliar yet thrilling conditions awed him into silence. At that moment, it was the mere fact that she was sitting BESIDE him that made him stare at her. During one of the last times they shared a meal, she sat across from him; he felt he had to drag her to the table then. Worse than that, she slapped him. They ended up screaming at each other, and Raeth's droids were a single order away from doing something that would've haunted him forever.

But now? Saudaji was the one who lead Raeth to the breakfast table. She was the one who cooked for him. She was sitting NEXT to him, so close that their thighs touched. He could feel the warmth of her green flesh through the thin material of his pajama pants. His cold-engulfed phallus stirred, and this time it didn't mind doing so.

Regardless of how bad or good or mediocre Saudaji's cooking skills may have been in reality, to Raeth that breakfast was the best meal he had ever eaten.

The two, broken love birds sat together in near silence. The only sounds in the dining room were those of chewing, the gulping of juice, and the metallic sounds that Sebastian made whenever it moved. The battle-ready butler droid cleaned the kitchen while its master and his partner practically sat in each other's laps. Sebastian didn't understand what was happening; all it knew was that it was confusing, a little annoying, and none of its business.

During the meal, Raeth would occasionally meet her eyes. They'd exchange smiles. Abruptly, he was reminded of how he was now soaring through uncharted space. For as long as he could remember, he had practiced hiding things. He hid physical objects as a youngling, then later he hid things like his identity from unsuspecting marks.

But now? Whenever he looked into Saudaji's eyes, he tried to will his eyes into telling her what he felt. He wondered if she got the message. He wondered if she knew that, at that moment, he felt he'd be perfectly fine just sitting beside her for the rest of his life, with the touch of her thigh and her arm against his, and the smell of her cooking on both his breath and hers. Paradise wasn't in the city of Zeltros - it was right here in this kitchen, with her.

The harshest, most self-critical voice inside of his head chimed in. If there's something you want to say to her, just say it, you bumbling bantha! Girls like it when you say sweet things to them. Like that thing you just thought about Paradise. Say it to her.

Raeth finished the mouthful he was chewing on, then cleared his throat. Okay, here comes the magic.

"This is nice."

What the fark is wrong with you! You already had a line, locked and loaded! It's gold, too! Stop acting like a retard and try again!

"You smell nice."

Maybe you are a retard! Stop saying 'nice!'

He licked his lips, which were uncomfortably dry all of a sudden. "Did you use your new bath yet? Probably not, huh. You smell this ni.....I mean, you smell good all on your own." His mouth was dry. His mouth was never dry. Why was his fouling this up so badly?

"Can I watch you bathe?"

The meanest voice inside of Raeth's head was having a conniption. If this had happened to someone else, Raeth would've thought it was funny. There was nothing amusing about this, though.

When he first spoke, Saudaji was startled out of her own similarly dreamy revelry.

The tenderness between them reminded her much of her adoptive parents. Mandalorians were notorious warriors, true, but they were also extremely oriented - sometimes downright domestic. While the meals at home were never anything to be called “luxurious,” there had always been enough food for her, Saboten, and any of their playmates that may have wanted to come over. Food was simple, hardy, and if you had the audacity to be fussy, well, then you went hungry. At the first bite of the food, all of those memories swept over her, and she realized, with a mild pang, how often she’d assumed that she would end up doing the same. Taken it for granted. Thought she had it with Mahoroba, only to find it so empty compared to what she’d seen, been a part of, growing up.

“…It is,” she said, at length, not knowing what else to say. It was nice. But, like him, she wasn’t quite sure of what to say. Of how to articulate everything that was still new and fresh and churning inside of her. Truth be told, she felt like singing, dancing, skipping like an ade. She awkwardly coughed, covered it up by reaching for a glass of juice. Juice was somewhat of a luxury - pretty much the only thing available growing up was either milk, water, or ne'tra gal. Now that she felt more comfortable around him, she helped herself to it, time and time again.

At his next compliment, she looked at him, with an eyebrow raised. In her zeal to surprise / take care of him (and to come back before he woke up), she hadn’t showered. The smell of sex and spent fluids was so strong on her that it was nearly palpable. Not that long ago, her response would have been one of annoyed sarcasm, spurred by the desire to put him in his place. To end any additional familiarity, besides that of fucking when the tension became too much between them. As if finally seeing him, she recognized it for what it was - nerves. And she recognized the same nervous energy within herself.

She finished the mouthful of food she had, hoping that she wouldn’t blurt out something that would hurt his feelings. Then, he offered her an out.

“Tell you what…why don’t you try it out with me? The bath, I mean.” Only marginally smoother than him, she coughed, cleared her throat.

The thought of making love, gentle and sweet, in a tub full of warm, scented water caused the blood to rush to her cheeks. Thinking about how silly she was being over the whole thing (after all, it wasn’t the first time she’d been intimate in a bath tub), she rapidly, seemingly out of nowhere, slapped her cheeks with an audible pop. Wincing a bit from the pain (because just that quickly she’d forgotten about her black eye. Such injuries were so common place for her that it was about the same level as a paper cut), she stood up so quickly that she nearly knocked the table over. In the midst of all of the bluster, she’d somehow found the bravery to grasp his hand. Her fingers threaded through his had such a tight grip on his hand that his circulation was beginning to slow.

She not so gently tugged him towards the bathroom. Not that she was intending to hurt him or to be particularly cruel - her embarrassment caused her control to slip. Saudaji was what her family called “heavy handed” - unaware of the brute strength that she naturally possessed. It wasn’t of a level that would be called “monstrous”, but as a child, it wasn’t uncommon for anything that could be broken to be absolutely destroyed by her. Unintentionally, of course. It’d taken a fair amount of training and focus for her to learn to control it - to learn when to unleash it. How to hone it. And poor Raeth was now getting caught up in it.

Thankfully, he wouldn’t be tested for too long. Once they approached her new bath, she’d mercifully let go, eagerly going to fill the tub. As the water rushed in, steaming, she ran her hands along the rim. This was hers. The tub that Raeth had installed was far bigger than the one she had on Splendid Place - a real work of art. Though Saudaji wasn’t a craftsman by any means (that would be Saboten), she knew expertise when she saw it. It must have taken him quite some time to find a tub this well made. He could have gone for the most expensive, the most elegant - but he knew her well enough (without her saying a word) to have gone for something handcrafted.

She bit her lip to keep the tears from coming to her eyes again.

Short of Saboten, she couldn’t think of anyone in her life that had shown her such care - and she still was grappling with how to deal with it. Affection was shown in her family at home, but always in a rough and tumble manner - the occasional punch, tackle, and her favorite: the unexpected headlock. As she looked at Raeth through the steam, something told her that he wouldn’t take too kindly to such shows of affection. He had seemed surprised by her black eye. But, to be fair, she hadn’t really told him about the spirited game that had preceded it, or how she kept playing after the errant elbow had made contact with her face. Such was the game.

To distract herself from his face (and his eyes, his lips, the way his hair fell across his forehead), she began to go through the oils. Though she was past the point of squealing in delight like an ade, only a blind man could miss the absolute glee on her face. Raeth had done well. Incredibly well. And, if she was going to be truly honest with herself (again), the fact that he’d watched her so was…stimulating. More than she thought it would be.

With careful deliberation, she selected an oil, and, unscrewing the gap, drizzled it into the running water. The fragrance blossomed up, woodsy as a camp fire, with a hint of absolute sugar sweetness beneath it. It would seem an odd combination at first, but as the water continued to run, it took on an intoxicating air, soothing and seductive at the same time. She let the water run for a bit longer before shutting it off. Turning to face him, she gave him a sly smile.

And, inch by agonizing inch, peeled his shirt off of her body, baring herself to him yet again. The gravity of the previous afternoon and afternoon had vanished, leaving a fun, loving note behind. Even as salaciously as she looked at him, it was bolstered by the love in her eyes. She was absolutely confident in her feelings for him, and was all the more excited to see what new facets it would bring to their already passionate relationships.

Sitting on the edge of the tub, facing him, she braced herself upright with her arms, splayed by her side. And, the very definition of brazen, languidly spread her legs wide for him, exposing the deep pink of her folds, of her already dampening cunt.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Rae’ika,” her voice was a purr, full of fire, “why do you like watching so much? What do you like to see? This?” Shifting her weight to one hand, she let the other trail down her stomach, down the dip of her mons, to plant fingers firmly on either side of her labia, and spread herself wider for him. If he made a move, she’d give him a look that he was to stay where he was.

After all, he did say that he wanted to watch her bathe.

Try out the bath with her? Raeth went from self-scolding to excited in an instant. "There's nothing I want more!" He said that a little too eagerly, he realized, a little too much like a little kid getting asked if he wanted to ride a rollercoaster. Fark it - what's done is done. Besides, he was gonna get some tub time with Saudaji, so that's all that mattered.

He began to eat his food more quickly rather than taking his time and savoring it, as he was wont to do. The entire breakfast had been savored up until that point: not just the meal, but the company, and how she snuggled to him while they ate. Now, he was in a rush to finish, though he wasn't in so much of a rush that he didn't realize just how hungry he was.

A half-eaten piece of flatbread was in his hand, about to be finished off, when Saudaji grabbed his other hand and yanked him from his chair. "Hey!?" The flatbread slipped from his grasp and flopped to the floor. Raeth's hip bumped against the side of the table, which caused plates to rattle, glasses to shake, and some juice to spill onto the tabletop.

Sebastian, who had been washing the skillet at the time, turned when it heard the commotion. It watched the two humanoids hurry out of the kitchen as though there was some sort of emerency. Then it saw the mess they left for it to clean.
The droid sighed, the sound like a hum coming from speakers. For some reason Raeth programmed Sebastian with the capacity to feel annoyance, as well as the ability to sigh to express that annoyance. Resigned to the knowledge that it would have to wash the dishes, and clean the kitchen, and clean whatever mess those two were going to make next, Sebastian turned its attention back to the skillet soaking in soapy water.

In the cooridor, Raeth had to walk at double-time to keep up with Saudaji. Bare feet made little slapping sounds on the cold, metallic floor. In the rush to get him out of the kitchen, one of his slippers was left underneath the dining table. Since there was no sense in walking with just one slipper, Raeth discarded the other one a few steps ago.

Raeth did not know what Saudaji had in mind; all he knew was it was going to be great. Because of that, his heart and his mind were sent racing.
"Please, be gentle." His words were half a joke, and half a genuine plea. His dick was still screaming at him to give it at least another hour under a cold compress before it was called back into action.

Things slowed down once they got into her bathroom. Saudaji let go of his hand, which Raeth instinctively flexed a few times to get the blood running through it again. His eyes were transfixed on her. He knew she was about to take off his shirt to show him all the beauty underneath. Before that, though, she was going to inspect the tub and review the collection of bottles he had gathered. He wanted to see how much it pleased it. He wanted to see her smile.

Saudaji gave him a look that expressed her glee. It made his head swim. His legs, which hadn't yet recovered from all the lascivious exercise from yesterday, buckled a bit. Fainting would've probably ruined the mood, so Raeth reached for a small, wooden storage chest that was between the toilet and the sink, dragged it until it was right in front of the tub, and then he took a seat on it.

That chest was the last addition to the bathroom, and it was there to serve two purposes. The obvious purpose was to store towels and such. The second, to serve as a seat whenever he watched her bathe. Being there to witness the jade siren engaged in one of her favorite activities - with his own eyes, not through the eyes of one of his drones - had been a fantasy of his ever since he first spied on her. And now it was happening! The towel chest would be his first-row, VIP seat.

She stripped for him. Although he knew it was coming, it still riveted him. His lips formed a perfect 'O' through which he sighed out a reverent, "Ooooo..." Saudaji's healthy, green skin; the jiggling of her heavy breasts; the tightness of her muscles; the tone of her arms and legs; the sight of her pubic hair looking a little sticky from everything they shared yesterday; the way her long, thick eyelashed fluttered after pulled his shirt off of her face...all of it was so beautiful, it blanked his usually restless mind. It gave him a shiver.

Saudaji was perfect in his eyes. Even her black eye, or the thin scar that ran from underneath her left eye to her lips, or the starburst scar between her breasts, added to her glory, rather than detraced from it. He sat still as a statue, eagerly awaiting her next move. In preparation, he reached into his briefs, removed the cold compress, and tossed it into aside.

Little did Raeth know that Saudaji was going to take his fantasy to the next level.

She asked him why he liked to watch her. The question made him cum in his underwear a little. It wasn't just because she purred the question so seductively. It was because that simple question and her attitude each proved that she understood that part of him. And when she posed erotically on the wide edge of the tub, legs splayed and fingers spreading her labia wide, she proved that she was into that part of him.

A moment ago, Raeth thought that there was no way Saudaji could be any more perfect. She proved him wrong, effortlessly.

She didn't have to worry about Raeth moving in on her when she gave him a tantalizing view of her pink. He couldn't move. He could only sit there, staring at her cunt, staring at her thighs, staring at her body, staring at her face while steam filled the room. His mind went from blank to overloaded. He trembled, uncontrollably. It took him a while to regain the ability to move, to speak, to do anything more than stare.

"Yesss," he hissed, a delayed response to her last question. His voice could barely be heard over the sound of water gushing from the faucet. "That's what I want to see. Show me everything. Please..."

Hypnotized by her, Raeth spread open his robe. His bare chest heaved because of his unsteady breathing. He reached into his briefs, then pulled out his member. It had become so big thanks to what she was doing for him. Like the rest of his body, it trembled, and the top half was already coated by cum. It glistened.

All the residual aches and pains of his body had been forgotten. What reluctance his dick may have shown minutes ago was completely gone. He was all hers, a victim of the spell she weaved so well whether she realized it or not.

Raeth's long, precise fingers coiled around his thickening shaft. Oh so slowly, he began to jerk himself off. His fingers and his palm worked in an easy, corkscrew motion, spreading the cream that was already on his cockhead over the rest of his length.

He watched her, beyond eager to see what she would do for him next.

He sounded strained.

Perfect.

Her smile turned decidedly wicked. “I don’t know why you want to see it,” she demurred, slowly, agonizingly slow, pulling her fingers away from her labia but keeping her legs open. Her hand went up to squeeze her left breast, trailing fingers across the hard nub of her deep green nipple. Back and forth, spiraling around it in small circles, her pointer finger trailed over the swell of her breast, before she stuck in her mouth; sucked thoughtfully on it, her eyes never leaving his.


The broad display of pink cunt dwindled down to the slightest hint of it. As she spoke next, she restlessly teased him by closing her legs, then opening them again, as lazy as a butterfly on a flower. “Your face is there so often. You have it memorized, don’t you?” The finger that had been in her mouth was trailing lower now, between her breasts, resting on her navel.

A long, slow spread again. “Look at that face. I think you do. You do have it memorized.” Dark teasing in her voice, rich as chocolate. “I think…” she trailed off, mock thoughtfully. She tapped a slender finger against her hole, then ran it along her labia minora, unhurried. Only the smallest shiver gave away the hint of pleasure she felt. A breathy sigh, and, returning her finger to her lips, she ran her tongue along it, licking the sides before slipping the digit into her mouth, pulling it free with a soft smack.

The wet finger trailed between her breasts again, skirting round her navel, wound its way through the deep emerald of her pubic hair. Rested at the top of her slit, before inching lower, to caress her still hooded clit. She caught her breath now, running her finger lightly across the nub, waking it bit by bit. Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she braced herself against the tub with her free hand, engaged in rubbing her clit. But she wouldn’t be too quiet for long.

A cheshire cat grin spread across her face, and she moaned, low, panting: “Oh, Rae’ika…,” leaving no doubt as to what, and who, she was thinking about as she was waking her body up back to pleasure. Her eyes, long since slipped closed, reopened, heavily hooded as she looked at him. As much as her body seemed to be welcoming, open to him, those eyes - they kept him in place. Told him not to move. It must have been difficult - what, with the way her breasts rose and fell so invitingly, practically begging for his lips, his tongue, his fingers, the quiver in her stomach as she touched her clit, causing small shudders to subtly ripple through her, and her cunt, that was the dead give away. Already slightly damp from the night before, it fairly glistened now, long trails of arousal clinging to her labia.

Tossing her head back carelessly, the finger around her clit moved faster, wrapping in tighter and tighter circles, before arching back out to trace quick lines around her clitoral hood. She shifted, sitting up more now. She had to - she needed both of her hands, as she was about to show him. The finger on her clit didn’t stop, and her other hand slipped below it, running round her damp hole. Bit by steady bit, she slipped her pointer finger inside of her, with a groan that trailed up into a cry as she pushed her finger all the way in, the fingers of her other hand trembling. A second finger joined the first, and she hunched over, folding over herself before straightening herself back up. Her brows were furrowed now, bottom lip caught between her teeth before they parted, a deep moan escaping her.

“Is this what you wanted to see, Rae’ika? Me, fucking myself, thinking about you? Is that it?” She looked at him through lust clouded eyes, her fingers still moving. She’d never done anything like this before - despite her travels, and her occasional sex buffets with Saboten- she was a private person. Didn’t like to know that someone had eyes on her.

With Raeth, though…It was beyond scintillating. She didn’t have the words to explain how or why - as battle-intelligent as she was, she wasn’t the most articulate being when it came to complex emotions. Love, hate, joy, sadness - all of those she knew. This was joy and lust and desire and scores of other things braided together, undulating and changing the more she got to know him. The more her fingers probed herself, and the more she could just feel how hot his gaze was on her, she hotter she became. Her body was hot, hotter than the steam around them, her heartbeat throbbing in her ears. But she wouldn’t allow herself to cum, not just yet. She wanted to hear him say what he liked. To hear his adoration in why he liked to watch her. To tell her what he wanted to do to her.

Saudaji was Raeth's fantasy-come-to-life. He was enthralled by her. Thus, whenever she asked him to explain why he loved to watch her or what he wanted to see, he did so without hesitation.

She said, toyingly, that she didn't know why he liked seeing it. "You are perfect," he answered, sounding as though he was under the influence of a truth serum. "Your breasts are perfect. Your skin is perfect. Your lips are perfect. And between your legs...ohhh!" The hand on his phallus sped up its circular stroking for a second or two, then stopped suddenly, fingers squeezing tight. He almost came right then and there; he had to squeeze off the flood. It would take several seconds of shaky recovery for him to calm down enough to resume masturbating.

Eyes shut for a moment when he steadied himself. He pried them open as soon as he could, because missing a mere second of Saudaji's show was unforgivable. By then, she had slipped her hand away from her vagina, and was teasing her tit. In a trance, Raeth watched her play with her left breast, stroke her pointy, green nub, then suck on her finger. Through it all, the milking motion on his cock continued, much more slowly this time.

From her beautiful face to her thighs, which opened and closed, opened and closed to taunt him, his gaze traveled where ever it could. Saudaji was a visual feast, and his eye did not know what to savor next. She decided for him by talking about her pussy and how often his head was between her legs.

"Yess..." he moaned. "I have you memorized. I have every centimeter of your memorized. I can't stop thinking about you, Saudaji...Cyare." He swallowed, the dip of his adam's apple slow and pronounced. He lifted his eyes up to hers and held her gaze for several, meaningful moments, before dropping them back down to her cunt. He was wide-eyed while watching her thighs flex whenever they spread. He was wide-eyed while he saw her labia glisten. He saw her moisture, and immediately he thought about how she tasted, how she smelled. He could smell her sweet, feminine fragrance, but wasn't sure if that was his memory, his imagination, or if it was the real thing.

"I missed you so much last week," he confessed, falling deeper and deeper into her hypnotic spell. "I thought I was losing my mind without you. I watched our recordings. I watched us in the shower, in my bed, in the hall, in the cockpit. I watched you sleep."

Some voice, somewhere in the back of his mind, tried to warn him that he shouldn't share too much. This shit is creepy! There's such a thing as 'too much info,' you know!

Another voice from somewhere else gave a different warning. Don't admit so much, you goob stain. You're giving her too much leverage.

But those voices were ignored, perhaps completely unheard. Raeth wanted her to know how badly he had it for her. He wanted Saudaji to know that he was at her mercy. Sure, she could have destroyed him with this knowledge, but he was confident that she wouldn't.

Even if she did, it would be a small price to pay for how she made him feel.

Saudaji began to masturbate. Thus, the two of them pleasured themselves, for each other's enjoyment, at the same time. He memorized the way she touched herself: How she used her index finger to wake up her clit. How her fingertip made tight circles around her clit before stimulating the hood. Wide-eyed and fascinated, he learned at what moment she liked to add her other hand to the party, to stroke her insides while simultaneously tickling her clit. He committed all of this - the technique, the timing, the pace - to memory.

Mouth agape, chest heaving, with his dick pulsating in his grasp, Raeth moaned. Leaning back on the one arm braced against the chest he was sitting on, he quickened the pace by which he rubbed his member.

"Yess! Hunngh! Yes!" Saudaji had asked him if she was doing what he wanted; there was her answer. "Keep going! Please! Keep fucking yourself! Hnngh!" His throat tightened as his hand moved faster and faster. His meaty phallus strained against his fingers, its tip already wet with precum and more. It took a great deal of willpower to keep his eyes open, to keep them on her so that he wouldn't miss another second of what she was doing to herself. What she was doing to herself, for him.

Raeth didn't exercise the self-control that Saudaji did. Not then. What he was seeing was too good, what he was feeling was too much for restraint. He jerked himself off to completion.

"Aaangh!" Hips rising off the towel chest, he came with so much force that ropes of white arced across the few feet that separated them. Saudaji's belly, her thighs, the back of the hands that were pampering her pussy - perhaps her pussy, too - were creamed at a distance. Raeth kept pumping it until the lengthy streams eased into erratic spurts, then to thick dribblings from the thick, reddened head of his cock.

Huffing, puffing, and suddenly exhausted, Raeth slid off his seat. His bare ass touched the tiled floor, and his back rested, heavily, against the wooden chest. He was spent, and yet his phallus wasn't softening. It twitched and maintained its size, its rigidity. His eyelids drooped, but he didn't close them. He kept staring at her. Clearly, he was hungry for more, and he was waiting for her to give him permission to devour her.

While he waited for her to give him the signal, he fought for enough breath to tell her what he wanted to do to her, next.

"Saudaji...I want to touch you how you just showed me." His eyes were either right on her face, or if she was still masturbating, he'd watch her finish. He loved watching her in the throes of ecstasy.

"I'm going to start by sticking my finger inside of your mouth, so you can get it nice and wet." The thought of that got his cock twitching more. "Then I'm going to use that finger on your clit. I'll touch you slowly, gently. When I see your brows knit, feel your skin blush, feel your body arch into my hand - or see anything else that tells me you like what I'm doing - I'll touch you a little faster.

"I'll use my other hand to feel you from the inside. One finger, at first. Then two. You showed me how you like to be finger fucked...I won't ever, forget."

Raeth's cock swelled and stood at attention as though he was still stroking himself. But both of his hands were at his side.

"Does that sound pleasant to you, Saudaji? What do you think about my hands on you like that, with the two of us in the tub, together? You'd be lying on top of me - back to front. Both of us will be cozy, soaking in all that hot water, scented just the way you like it. Maybe you'd see what my hands were doing to you, under all the soap suds. Maybe not. But you'd feel it. You'd feel all of it.

"And you know how delicious you are to me. My mouth's watering just thinking about the taste of your skin. So while I was busy touching you down there with both hands, I would have to have my mouth on you. I'd have it on your neck. I'd have it on your shoulder. Better yet, we could make out while I touched you. I love the taste of your lips.

"Do you want that, too, Saudaji?" He whispered. "Do you want to get clean with me?"

Her pale jade skin was splattered with long, curved lines of his cum. Across the swell of her breasts, drizzling down the deep emerald nipples. Lazily slipping down her stomach, an errant burst here and there on her inner thighs. She let out a low moan of pleasure, her head tilting back, luxuriating as he painted her body in white.

She didn’t stop fucking herself with her fingers. The hand that had been playing with her clit trailed up her body, and smeared his cum across her breasts, and she shivered in bliss. Massaging him into her skin, when most of his cum had been rubbed across her, adding a dull shine to her body, she then trailed those fingers to her lips, and sucked them clean. As fastidious as a vro-cat, she pulled one finger after another from her mouth, the pink tip of her tongue darting between the digits, cleaning herself.

Despite her obvious pleasure, her pacing didn’t change. Her fingers slowly slid in and out of her, glistening with her arousal. When he spoke, she lowered her head to face him, lust clouding her vision so that she was nearly unrecognizable. The smile that followed at his words was drunk; drunk on his want, his need.

Slipping her fingers from herself, she gestured for him to join her in the tub.

__________

It was much later that the two of them actually emerged from the bathroom, cleaner, but more exhausted than they had been when they went in. Saudaji’s legs had a bit of a tremble to them. After they’d made love multiple times (she was quite surprised that he’d kept up - what, with the ice pack and all), she’d stayed behind to clean the new bathroom. Not that there was much to do - right the bottles that had scattered across the floor, mop up the water that’d spilled out of the tub, pick up towels.

Really, the only thing that remained consistent over the next few days was that they made love whenever they could. She’d catch him looking at her, not in a salacious way, but just so, with this sparkle in his eyes and she melted. Or they’d be sparring together and, while he still wasn’t quite as good as her in hand to hand combat (to further shield his ego, she held back quite a bit with him), he was improving - and his inventiveness was another turn on. A tackle from her would lead to her taking (and on a few occasions, literally ripping) his clothes off, and they’d be at it again. It seemed that she’d never get enough of him.

Not that all they did was make love. Or fuck. Or have rough, incredible, mind-blowing sex.

Far from it.

Barriers down, she almost became a different woman. “Almost,” simply because this side of her personality had always been there; it’d just been something that she kept under wraps with him. Or had tried to. Pain spoke to pain, and so, for the longest time, that’s all she felt comfortable with sharing with him. Now that what was between them had a name, she shared joy with him as well. She tutored him in sparring - complimenting each proper move with a kiss. She watched, attentively, as he cooked. In moments fueled by a little too much alcohol, she staged impromptu karaoke sessions, and guided him through the fluid hand motions she’d utilized as Dian’La. And, bit by bit, she talked about herself. How she did have a life before Mandalore - not one that she spoke of often, but what allowed her to be as seductive as she could be. What she remembered of her biological mother, which was far more than one would have imagined, considering how young she was when she was taken. Her childhood, her family. Conspicuously absent was her time with Mahoroba - how they met, the nature of their relationship.

Not that it mattered now. Even with the Lichtenberg figure scar carved into her chest, that constant reminder. It was something she lived with - like everyone did with their past.

“I think the word you’ve been looking for is cyar’ika,” she said, one night as they were in bed together. She didn’t spend much time in her own “bedroom.” She had, initially, wanted to keep her own space. Growing up, her brothers and sisters had all crammed into a single bedroom, until the differences between the sexes became enough to warrant a separate room. Even then, she was still sharing a room with any number of her sisters. So, space to herself had been a luxury that she’d only discovered late in life. And, as she’d confessed to Raeth, it’d taken her some time to get used to sleeping alone.

“Cyar’ika is like…” She paused, drumming her fingers against the mattress, “ ‘darling,’ I think, is the closest in Basic. Adding ‘ika’ to someone’s name implies familiarity. A nickname.” She smiled now, wondering if he’d put two and two together and realize how rude she’d been to him prior by calling him “Rae’ika” when she was annoyed. “But cyare'se has grown on me.”


“So,” she said, with a contented sigh. “When is the next mission? I’m sure the Sith aren’t paying us to be lovey-dovey and fuck endlessly. Although…” her smile turned wicked, “Do you think they watch?”

For as long as he could remember, Raeth had been a shower guy. The only times he took baths were when he splurged on spas - a little treat to himself following successful missions. But with a single, extended, intimate encounter, Saudaji convinced him that baths were splendid.

Thus, over the next several days, Raeth used Saudaji's new bathtub regularly - usually when she was in it, too.

Their time together as fledgling loves was the most content, the most peaceful that Raeth had ever known. Even when the Twi'lek kicked his ass in the gym, he enjoyed it. He welcomed all the new bruises that appeared on different parts of his body, because they served as reminders of her tough love.

Besides, he was getting better at hand-to-hand combat, which in their line of work could prove vital.

Since going to the gym with her usually resulted in humbling beatdowns, the kitchen became one of the places where he could show off to her. Unlike before, when cooking duties were split between him and Sebastian, he started doing all the cooking. The battle butler was limited to going out for groceries, which was fine by it. Sebastian never said so, but it was annoyed by how cozy the two humanoids had become, so any excuse to get away from them for a few hours was appreciated.
Raeth made a game out of guessing what meals were new to her. Each day, he surprised her with something different. One day, he treated her to a lunch of wamba steak sliders served with a side of sweet potato fries. For the fries, he whipped up a sweet-and-tangy sauce, the recipe for which he playfully refused to share.

"This is a secret I will take to my grave," he proclaimed, with a smile, while feeding a sauce-dipped fry to her.

The following day, Raeth made her a dinner of pan-fried spinefish served with spinefish egg caviar. The accompanied beverage was a fine wine that he bought from an intergalactic trader whose vessel was parked five spots over from the Pylat. For that meal, he dimmed the lights, lit a couple of candles on the table, and piped a collection of Errrkitt's most mellow tunes over the ship's speakers. He remembered watching Saudaji - as Dian'La - go ga-ga when she met Errrkitt in person on Thyferra. Since that night, he listened to the Togorian songstress and tried to guess which of her tunes Saudaji liked most. The resulting collection was what played during their dinner.

The next morning - following yet another night filled with sweet, exhausting loving - Raeth made her "dessert for breakfast": Caridan ice cream balls. This was a new recipe he had learned by watching a holonet video. The ice cream balls were made by taking small scoops of ice cream and encapsulating them in balls of specially-prepared gelatin. Once a ball was popped into someone's mouth, the gelatin would dissolve immediately upon contact with saliva, and then the ice cream would douse the taste buds.

"I made the ice cream with fruit, so that our breakfast has at least SOME nutritional value," he said to her with a smile as he placed a bowl-like glass filled with ice cream balls in front of her.

If Saudaji hadn't already figured it out, she would quickly learn that Raeth wanted each meal to be an experience. Now that they were together, he wanted each meal to be an experience she wouldn't soon forget.

In addition to having fun with her during meal time, Raeth enjoyed the private, musical performances that Saudaji would put on whenever they got a little tipsy together. He wasn't shy, of course, so he joined in on the singing, proving that while he was far from being a professional singer, at least he knew enough to carry a tune. Raeth was a tenor, and because he was untrained his vocal range was rather limited. His voice would inevitably crack whenever he tried to sing along to Dian'La's higher notes, and if she laughed at him he'd feign his displeasure with a scowl before smiling and resuming his sing-along.

The Dian'La hand motions she showed him were easily learned. Raeth excelled at anything that involved his hands, a fact that Saudaji was already quite familiar with.

Thus, the Human and the Twi'lek enjoyed their little slice of heaven aboard the Patient Pylat. But both of them knew they couldn't stay docked in this spaceport living a dream, forever. Eventually, a beeping light on a console signaled the arrival of a message. Before he opened it, he already knew what it was: a message from their employer asking for an update.

Raeth, frowning, typed up a quick excuse that he had prepared for this very occasion. The coded response basically identified which target they would go after next, and explained that because the target was presently in a maximum-security environment, they would wait until he moved to someplace more vulnerable.

The agent sent the message off to the Dark Councillor, or to whichever lackey was responsible for managing encoded message. Then he leaned back in his chair to think, his thoughts grim for the first time since he and Saudaji opened up to each other.

"Fark," he muttered to himself. "I suppose the vacation's over." He stood up and went to find her. They could at least enjoy one more day together, in peace, before they returned to their bloody business. Truth be told, more than a small part of him DID want to get back to it. It's just that most of him wanted to stay here, with her, indefinitely.

-----

That night, Raeth and Saudaji lay together in bed. He was most pleased that despite all the effort to make her room a home-away-from-home, she chose to spend most nights with him in his own, undecorated quarters. They were sweaty from their latest sexual sparring session, and Raeth's mind and body were both humming with the blissful after-effects of Saudaji's loving. They recuperated by cuddling. If they fell asleep without making love again that night, he wouldn't have minded, at all.

She corrected him on his use of Mando'a in regards to the word, "beloved". His first reaction was a frown. Nobody likes being wrong, after all, and he hated being corrected. But an instant later, he recognized how gentle her correction was, so his frown turned into a small smile.

"Cyar'ika," he gave a word a test on his tongue while looking her in the eye. "Does 'cyare' please you? If so, I'll stick with that." He kissed her softly. Maybe she would tell him through her kiss if 'cyare' was the right word for her.

After a few moments of contended, quiet cuddling, she brought up the subject of their next mission. The frown returned to his face, and again he quickly hid it, this time behind a mask of professional indifference.

"Funny you should mention it. Our boss checked in this afternoon. I bought us a little extra time, but we should leave Zeltros tomorrow."

He laughed when she asked if he thought the Sith watched them. "Hah! Noooo..." He paused to admire her wicked smile. "Trust me, nobody has access to my personal collection - or any other data on my ship - other than me. Speaking of which, if you ever want to watch any of the footage, all you have to do is ask. We can watch it together." He thrust himself against the side of her hip, softly but suggestively.

"Or are you asking if they use any of their mumbo jumbo to watch us? Maybe one of them has visions of me plowing you in the ass?" He began cracking up at the thought.

"All that overwhelming power, and that's what they used it for!? Ha!" For several moments, he was unable to speak because he laughed too hard. She and the bed were both shaken by his laughter.

"Heh heh heh...noooo," he let out a long breath in an attempt to calm down. "No. None of their powers work on me. Not the physical stuff, not the mental stuff, and none of the soothsayer bullshit, either. During my training, they tried everything on me; none of it stuck.

"If you want to be safe from the influence of a Force-user, all you need is me inside of you." More of his boyish cackling followed.

It took him a solid minute or two to compose himself and return to talk of their mission.

"I suggest we start off a few hyperspace jumps to nearby planets to ensure the Baron has everything under control with the Splendid Place. Once you're satisfied, we'll go after the next mark."

Raeth stretched an arm towards the nearest night stand to grab a datapad, which he then handed to her. On it, Saudaji could scroll through a summary of their next handful of targets, along with a tentative schedule of which ones die, when.

Highlighted words were scattered throughout the briefing; it was mostly names and locations that were highlighted. If she tapped on those words, a new window would appear with additional information, including target biographies, maps of their intended kill zones, etc.

Raeth really did enjoy detailed 'paperwork'. Saudaji could feel confident that out of all the things that could potentially go wrong in a mission, lack of intel and muddled briefings were not among them.

"Anything there that jumps out at you?" He asked as he settled into a spooning position. Resting his jaw upon her upper well-defined upper arm, he read over her shoulder. "Our first mark is on Vurdon Ka. I'm thinking we can dispense with the fancy stuff on this one; we can make it quick and dirty. What do you think?"

For the rest of the night, the two of them cuddled while engaging in some really dark pillow talk.

Good food was somewhat alien to her.

She barely recalled the fineries that her mother had shared with her - once she was on Mandalore, luxury foods were replaced with what could be grown and traded for. There was hardly room for experimenting, what, with not knowing if the next raid or battle would completely destroy farmlands, or, more likely, those who knew how to tend them. There would be “feasts” at the end of minor wars, when something bigger than a nuna was slaughtered, and then, nearly all that wasn’t eaten was salted down and stored underground for the inevitable famine that would follow at some point.

It was only when she visited Saboten that she got a taste of the finer things - and the first few times, her stomach had revolted. Violently. As Raeth presented her with table after table of rich food, she would do her best to hide her apprehension. The last thing she wanted was for him to think that she had a disliking for his food (which was far, far, far from the truth - the first time she had those Caridan ice cream balls, she thought her mouth had orgasmed, and it had taken her long moments after the first burst of flavor to come back down to the world), so, as a precaution, whenever she could, she snuck away to take a few antacids. Soon, though, (after a few hours of discomfort - though she wasn’t sure if it was from the nature of the food or simply stuffing herself as she had), she was relieved to notice that she was growing used to the food. Though, every once in a while, she made a mental note to work out that much harder in the gym. Living like this would plump her up in no time - and that wasn’t something she could afford.

Although, there were times that she was downright embarrassed that her palate wasn’t sophisticated enough to appreciate what Raeth made. The fine wine that went with the spine fish? Guzzled down like it was water, accompanied with a slight wince. Despite her uncouth manners, she had enough sense of self to rapidly explain any completely garish behavior with a slight shrug, shy grin, and a repetition of her nomadic upbringing.

Part of the joys of learning new relationships.

_________

“C’yare is fine,” she reassured him, her returning kiss gentle and warm, reiterating that she’d taken no offense to the diminutive.

She’d caught his frown at the mention of work, and shifted onto her side. With a leisurely stretch, she stifled a yawn. The fact that she hadn’t been more attentive herself to a timeline of events rankled her, and she made it a point to be more cognizant of what was happening. She’d mention it to Raeth, the next opportunity she could.

She was startled by his sudden outburst of laughter. In the brief time she’d known him, she’d never seen him actually laugh. She was skeptical, at first - watching, waiting. Well - apparently the thought had never occurred to him that the Sith might be watching. She huffed, mildly insulted. “Men are men and women are women. No amount of training is going to scrub out natural urges,” she huffed, with an air of expertise. After all, she’d proven that as Dian’La. “Besides, you can’t say you don’t like the idea, just a little.” Teasingly, she pushed her rear into his crotch.

She nodded, slightly, as he explained the next moves. “If the Baron messes up Splendid Place,” I expect to be well compensated,” she murmured, already going through the data pad. “Nothing really screams out, ‘Murder me first,’” she sighed. “I’m not sure if they have a particular ranking in who needs to be killed. From what it seems like, they just give you a list and let you decide who to go to first. Is that about right? And yes, Vurdon Ka and Destrek sound fine to me. Next time I’m picking, though.”

Shifting so she could get a better look at his face, she let the hand holding the datapad dangle off of the side of the bed. “You know, now that we have all of this misplaced aggression out,” and it was said with a self-depreciating smile, “We probably really should talk about the missions and get these things laid out. If we play our cards right, there should be time to work and play. Also…when does this ever end? I’m not sure about you, but hunting bounties means that after you take a job and perform it, you’re free to take others. Doesn’t seem like there’s ever an end to this for you. What would you do, if you were released from this contract?”

Saudaji was right: Raeth did kinda like the idea of Sith watching them fuck. He especially liked how she pushed her firm, round ass against his crotch. The way he grabbed her muscular thigh, the way he shivered, and the swelling of arousal that she felt against her rear were all proof of this.

"Mrrrm..." He nuzzled his face against the side of her neck. Initially, Raeth wanted to kiss her lekku, but past experience taught him that she didn't really enjoy having her head tails touched, intimately. At the very least, he hadn't yet figured out how to touch them right. Thus, his lips avoided her lekku for now to instead rain their affection on her neck. The most that her lekku felt was the tickle of his warm breath.

"Okay. I do like the idea. Maybe I'll leak some of our footage to Azamin's spy monkeys. What do you think? Do you want to be a porn star on Dromund Kaas?" A wicked grin spread across his face.

Before long, their talk of exhibitionism segued back to work. Raeth's grin disappeared, but he didn't fight the new direction their conversation had taken. Again, Saudaji was right - they had to start planning. When she rolled onto her back, Raeth shifted so he could rest the side of his head against her tummy. He dealt a sweet kiss to her belly, and another to the underside of her breasts.

"Since we now have our next mark selected, we can start planning. But let's do it tomorrow morning, yeah? Can we have one more nice, relaxing night before getting back to work mode?" He tried to compel her with more strategically-placed kisses to various parts of her light jade body.

Saudaji then asked him what he would do if this contracted ended. That question made him pause. His cheek returned to her tummy so he could bask in the warmth and smoothness of her flesh while he pondered an answer.

"I haven't given that possibility much thought. The only way my contract - if you can call it that - would end is if every Jedi was dead. Or if our employers wanted us dead. One event is something that I don't see happening anytime soon, because both the Jedi and the Sith have a habit of surviving through even the toughest of times. They're like cockroaches in that regard.

"The other event is something you and I actively avoid."

As he considered her question further, Raeth pressed a kiss to her belly button. He flicked the tip of his tongue around it before blowing on it, gently.

"Even if all the Jedi were dead, and the Sith took over all Republic territory, there would always be some mark, somewhere. There'd be some remnant of the senate trying to hide in the Outer Rim, or some wanna-be rebel leader trying to muster her forces on a remote ice planet, or some such.

"If you're asking me if I think we'll ever run out of work, then my answer is 'no.'" Raeth slid up the bed until they were face-to-face again. He wrapped an arm around her, underneath her breasts, and drew her in for more cuddling.

"If, instead, you're asking me what I could see myself doing other than this, then I'll tell you: I wouldn't mind being an explorer." He couldn't stop himself from giving her a brief, adoring kiss to her lips. He needed to taste her, if even for a moment. Licking her taste from his own lips, he continued speaking.

"I'd load up the Pylat with months worth of provisions and fly past the Outer Rim, into uncharted space. With you. You and I could discover new planets together. Maybe encounter new alien races. Maybe we'd chart out a new hyperspace lane. I'd call it 'Saudaji's Lekku', and we'd make a fortune off of it."

His playful smile returned. "What do you say? Would you like to be couped up with me for months on end, without any guarantee that we'd ever land on a developed planet ever again? Come to think of it, it wouldn't be too much different than how we're living now. There'd just be less dead Jedi."

Raeth and Saudaji continued to talk about lighter things late into the night. Eventually, though, they fell asleep in each other's arms.

-----

They departed Zeltros the following morning. Raeth piloted the Patient Pylat, of course, while Saudaji maintained regular communication with the Baron, the new pilot of Splendid Place. He made it clear to her that as far as the Baron was concerned, she was its new master. It would do whatever she asked; all she had to do was issue the order over the radio.

To alleviate any concerns she might have had about the Baron's capabilities, they made a handful of test jumps before embarking on their next mission. Each time, the Pylat and the Place arrived at their destination mere seconds apart from each other. The last jump took them close to an asteroid field, where Saudaji got the opportunity to see how well the Baron could handle her ship and its weapon against a multitude of moving targets. She would find that while the Baron did not have the finesse of a flesh-and-bone ace pilot, it was far from a slouch. At the very least, it could fly between asteroids and aim her ship's blasters, competently.

After she put the Baron through its paces, Raeth and Saudaji discussed their next mission in depth. Like their mission prep for Thyferra, they used the hologram-equipped briefing table in the Pylat's cockpit to go over the essentials. And like before, Raeth supplied her with an overabundance of information for her datapad. He again couldn't help but show off his skills at data collection. Thankfully, he organized each briefing to have the must-have info right on the first 1-3 pages. She probably could have done without everything else.

Of course, Raeth remembered what they did on the briefing table the last time they prepped for a mission. He also remembered what they did on the pilot chair. For this reason, among others, he stood close to her during the briefing, and got touchy-feely on more than one occasion. Saudaji would have to be the disciplined one here if they were going to finish the briefing without extended distractions.

Feeling Raeth’s cock go from flaccid to rigid against her body was rapidly becoming one of Saudaji’s favorite things. She would never tell him - out of the fear that it’d increase his ego and he’d never stop teasing her about it. So, instead, she pressed back firmer against him, enjoying the way his cock fit so neatly in the cleft of her ass.

“You know, instead of leaking it to him, you should just make him a ‘Greatest Hits’ compilation. Wrap it in a massive box with a bow and just hand it to him. Never know. Might be just what the doctor ordered.” On her back now, her eyes glittered with mischief. “What if, so turned on, he pounces his student? And then they end up fucking like mad? And then, it turns them to the Light Side? Can you imagine?” Now it was her turn to be racked by hysterics, laughing so hard that her stomach trembled and tears came to her eyes. “They’d have 6 ades, all running about the front yard with no shoes on and he's chasing after them trying to get their diapers on and she just tuts him from the door because she’s got the 7th one in her belly!”

Her laughter coming to its natural end, she sighed, wiping tears from her eyes and letting her fingers settle in his hair. As he spoke, she ran her fingers through his hair in gentle caresses, feather light across the tips of his ears. The only time she really moved was when he blew against her stomach, and she flailed against him. It was clear that she had readily controlled her movement - otherwise, he would have gotten a knee to the face. She gave him a warning look not to do it again, and returned her fingers to his hair.

Face to face now, she touched her nose to his. “I suppose I wasn’t thinking straight when I took this deal, then. I simply assumed I’d be filling in - only for a job, maybe two. But, you know, Sith are always so forthcoming,” and he didn’t have to look at her to hear the eye roll implicit in her voice. She was quiet for a moment, carefully choosing her words. “I never really thought that much about what my future would be. What else I could be. After the war, Mandalore was pretty devastated - my family only wanted to keep our ways strong. If there weren't so many of us, I think Ma would have never let me leave. First Saboten, then me. She took it pretty hard.” She lapsed into silence again, unspoken sadness hanging over her. However, she changed the subject back to him.

Musing over his explorer idea, she laughed. “I’d prefer not to have anything named after me, thank you. I suppose, then, if I hadn’t done this, I’d either be a big name courtesan like my birth mother, eventually, if things went well, marrying a very rich man who would take care of my every desire, or, if I was staying on Mandalore-” She stopped so abruptly, it would have seemed that she was burned. She wasn’t going to revisit that. She knew what life on Mandalore would have meant. “I think being a courtesan might have been nice. For a little while,” she said, looking down at her hands. Her nails were kept short, and idly, she picked at them. “Honestly, Rae’ika, I have no idea what else I may have been doing. So I guess it’s a good thing that I’m here now with you,” and now it was her turn to return his sweet kiss.

“If you could lose any of your senses,” she said suddenly, “Which one would it be? I think I’d prefer to lose my hearing. There are so many decent implants now that it wouldn’t make a difference.” It was out of the blue - but quickly proved to be the gateway to those “lighter things.”

“Plus, it’d be nice to not have to hear your mouth,” she added, giving him a long kiss to prove that she was only teasing.

_____________

The next morning (after a very minor kitchen fire - she’d gotten up before him again, thought to try a recipe from one of the holovids -that looked simple enough-, but she had misjudged the amount of oil to use. Thankfully, Sebastian was there on hand to help, but it had certainly gotten everything to a rousing start), the two started the debriefing process.

She was glad for the distraction (both in the planning and in his hands, which she did occasionally swat away) - it made leaving Zeltros and Saboten behind slightly easier. Occasionally, though, she let his hands get further - and allowed for a distraction. But, ultimately, she kept the two of them on task. It really was incredible how much more relaxed she was around him - and though she had shown him the sharpness of her mind in the prior mission, now that she was comfortable, she spoke easier, and showed that she was just as quick as he to pick up new things and details. The two of them really were showing the promise of becoming quite the lethal pair.

Over the course of the next several months, Raeth and Saudaji successfully eliminated four more high priority targets.

On the planet of Vurdon Ka, they killed Destrek, an inquisitive Jedi who the Republic Senate often tasked with investigating challenging, sensitive cases. Saudaji used a high-powered rifle to snipe him from over a kilometer away.

Training with the weapon had been…enjoyable, to say the least. She nearly squealed like a youngling when he presented it to her. In her zeal to show how much she liked it, Saudaji managed to burn out the blaster's heat sink, which Raeth was happy to replaced. Between the two of them, additional modifications were made, so that it maintained accuracy at all but the most extreme ranges, and also fired as softly as a whisper.

Because Destrek was in the middle of an investigation involving a Hutt crime syndicate, it wasn't too difficult to leave a trail of evidence that suggested the Hutts were behind the assassination.

They celebrated that kill with a two week long trail of hedonistic “destruction” through one of the nearest planet’s Pleasure Quarters. Much booze was imbibed. Many strange foods were eaten, including things that neither of them could identify on sight. Raeth convinced Saudaji to try zero gravity love making at one point, which proved to be almost mess-free if done right. It was only when they started to have memory problems that she even hinted at maybe getting back to work.

They killed their third target - a Master named Pol - by sabotaging her ship's hyperdrive and then intercepting her when she was stranded in space. Pol's lightly-armed craft had little chance of withstanding a sneak attack from the Patient Pylat, whose turrets blasted away the transparisteel dome that covered the cockpit. The poor Master was flash-frozen. Using a tractor beam, they pulled Master Pol's ship to a nearby asteroid field, where it was devoured by an exogorth.

"Nothing makes a body disappear quite like a space slug," Raeth joked as he and Saudaji watched their victim - whose corpse was still strapped to the single seat of her spacecraft - disappear down the throat of a colossal, asteroid-dwelling beast.

“Must you?” was her only comment, said as she shook her head, her lekku swaying behind her. She was still squeamish when it came to gory details, which was a characteristic that Raeth found to be confusing and endearing at the same time.

Master Pol's disappearance would be a mystery that neither the Jedi nor the Republic would ever solve.

Their fourth mission involved their first non-Jedi target: Trell Jasparen, the aging director of Republic Military Intelligence. They killed Jasparen while he was attending a friend's wedding. For this one, Saudaji had to crawl around a hotel's ventillation system to direct a deadly gas into their target's room. The gas made it look like Jasparen died peacefully in his sleep, a victim of natural causes rather than foul play.

Weeks after his funeral, a far less gifted intelligence officer replaced him as director. What the replacement lacked in talent he more than made up for in political allies, hence the promotion.

Following the relative ease of the Jasparen mission, Saudaji chided Raeth in not letting her take a more hands on approach. While she could appreciate his proficiency in striking from a distance, she reminded him that she was hired for her particular skill set, “And not just in fucking you,” she added, with a sly look. After all, knowing he’d done his research, she knew he’d be familiar with her reputation as a bounty hunter - cold, ruthless, and, surprisingly enough, patient. Couldn’t be negotiated with. “And so on and so on,” she said, with a grin, recounting her past kills. She had to have a little pride in her work, after all.

In response, Raeth reminded her of their mission parameters. "Sweetness, you know that we were paid the big creds to make it look like the old man died on his own. That would've been difficult to do if you beat him to death. Sure, you could have smothered him with a pillow, but I doubt you would've found that any more satisfying."

Eventually, there had to come a bump in the road. The fifth mission was a bit messier than the others. For that one, they targeted a renowned Republic general named Reebesha Mag Tee, the Hero of Iziz. General Mag Tee was on the planet Mirial helping a mining colony defend against a pirate raider seige.

The two assassins stole a pirate fighter craft, then equipped it with sensor scramblers, high-yield smart missiles, and other nasty surprises the pirates could not have acquired on their own. Saudaji was pleased to show off that she was just as proficient as he was in hot-wiring craft. Raeth admired her talent, and couldn't help but imagine her as a young punk stealing speeders off the streets of Coruscant.

When Mag Tee and the miners were in the middle of a battle, Raeth and Saudaji used their pilfered craft to speed through the colony's anti-aircraft defenses and bombard the general's position, which killed her and destroyed some of the miners' defenses in the process. Pirates poured through the new opening in the town's perimeter, not knowing that they were being used to cover up the true reasons behind a Republic general's death.

The getaway was where things got a little ugly. The pirates recognized the stolen craft, and sent a few fighters after them. Apparently this group of pirates was a bit more organized than ones that either Raeth or Saudaji had run into in the past. It took some fancy flying by Raeth and some precision shooting from Saudaji in the turret, but they managed to escape Mirial with their skins intact and another success added to their scorecard.

Once in space, the tension held - before breaking down into exhilarated laughter and whoops. Another mission aced with barely a scratch between them. Before long, their exuberance dissolved into a frenzy of lovemaking that started on the stolen pirate craft and continued on the Patient Pylat. They went at each other so passionately, so roughly, that it sounded like they were going to war. When they were finally sated, their bodies sported more bruises than any of their recent missions could leave.

Their luck would not hold for much longer, however.

-----

Mission six took Raeth and Saudaji to Tzan, a jungle planet in the the Marzoon System. There, they tracked their next target: Hoplitz-Morgan Brunda, a member of the Galactic Senate who was on Tzan to meet with the planet's representatives to try and convince them to finally join the Republic.

The two assassins did not intend to murder Senator Brunda on Tzan. This was still the intel-gathering phase of the mission. For the time being, their only goal was to tail her, monitor her movements, and identify any weaknesses in her security or opportunities to kill her in a way that looked like an accident.

To aid in the tracking of their prey, they used a newly-modified RV. Raeth had spent the last few weeks outfitting the speeder van with the latest in stealth and sensor technology.

"When the sensor cloaking is active, it would take top-of-the-line, capital ship scanners to find us," he bragged to her before they landed on Tzan and flew the RV out of the Patient Pylat's cargo hold. "And with the improvements I've made to the RV's scanners, we can track our targets' movements from up to 50 clicks away. We'll play it safe and stay within 10 clicks of them at all times, though."

Raeth sounded giddy when he told her about the new toys he had installed. In addition to the sensor cloaking, he installed a system of retractable mirrors and holoemitters to the airspeeder's body, which when activated made it blend in with its surroundings. The resulting camouflage was far from perfect up close, but it did make the RV difficult to see when it was flying up in the sky, a good distance away from the viewer. He had installed a similar camouflage system on the Pylat years ago.

With all his toys, Raeth felt confident that their intel-gathering would go without a hitch. For two straight days, they flew around in the RV, chasing after the unsuspecting senator and her retinue of guards. Between the two of them, they took turns flying and napping so that no minute went by without the senator being watched. Using the speeder's scanners and Raeth's collection of camera drones, they monitored and recorded her activities across the jungle planet. Saudaji may have found the exercise boring, but she knew that Raeth was in his element when he was surrounded by his technology and watching people from afar.

Everything turned to poodoo on their third day of monitoring.

Senator Brunda had just finished a meeting with one group of Tzani politicans, so her airspeeder and her two escort fighters took off from one city to fly to another. Raeth and Saudaji followed, closely, in the RV.

They flew above a seemingly endless expanse of jungle. All systems were green, like the canopy that sped by beneath them. Brunda's aircraft was on their scanners, and a duo of spy drones were magnetically attached to the hull of her speeder, waiting to be activated once she landed. Raeth, in the driver's seat, snacked on some jerky. Smiling, he offered a fresh piece of jerky to Saudaji, who was in the passenger seat. Everything seemed fine.

Suddenly, all of the instruments in the RV went dead at once. Monitors and read-outs went blank. The digital representation of the senator's speeder blinked off on their scanner. Through the windshield, they could see that the speeder's holographic camouflage was flickering off. No doubt their scanner cloaking had deactivated, too. They could still hear the engine and the thrusters, plus they were still in the air, so at least some parts of the RV were operational.

In an instant, Raeth dropped the bag of jerky, sat up straight, and put both hands on the wheel. "What the pfaask is this?!" He tried some of the switches and buttons on the console; no response. "No no no no no...."

Knowing he wouldn't be able to do squat with the electronic systems while they were still in the air, and priority #1 had abruptly become to get them safely landed before their engines went dead, too. "Can you see a clearing?" He asked her, his voice thick with tension, while he began a slow, controlled descent.

At that moment, there was an explosion from somewhere behind them, and the RV was rocked for one, maybe two horrible moments. So much for a slow, controlled descent. If their instruments were still operational, there would have warning buzzers blaring and multiple, flashing read-outs telling them exactly what was wrong. But because everything was now dead, the interior of the speeder van was eeriely quiet, and they could hear the sound of rushing air just outside the windshield.

"Fark...fark...fark...fark...fark...fark...fark..." Through gritted teeth, Raeth spoke a litany of curses that almost sounded like a meditative mantra. The wheel was shaking in his hands, the RV was shaking all around them, and the jungle below was coming closer and closer at a frightening pace.

Raeth spared one moment to look at Saudaji. If she looked back, she would have caught a brief glimpse of terror in his eyes. An instant later, he steeled his resolve, looked back to the windshield, resumed his cursing, and focused on getting the RV to crash-land in a way that didn't end up with both of them dead.

"Hopefully we'll be lucky and just end up as cripples," one of his more smart-assed voices said within his head while their speeder plummetted towards the trees.

Somewhere in the distance, someone with top-of-the-line monitoring equipment of his own watched the now-visible RV fall.

“What is it with you and this hunk of junk,” she’d sighed, the minute Raeth told her they’d be in the RV again.

As he went on about all of the modifications he’d made (some of which she’d helped with - not so much as designing them, but actually implementing them. She still had this nagging desire to ‘prove’ herself useful to him in something beyond a sexual capacity. Blame it on her roots.), she sighed.

“Rae’ika, all of this stuff is great, but I really hope that you’re as fast on your feet without tech.”

Of course, those words would come back to haunt her.

Now, as Raeth struggled to get them on a smooth descent, her eyes darted through the greenery, looking for a clear spot. “About 15 kilometers ahead of us.” Her tone of voice was completely calm - emotionless. As if she wasn’t potentially hurtling to her death. “There’s a minor gap in the trees.”

There was enough time for her to strap herself in, as best she could, and then, to wait.

_________

Impact.

There was always a unnatural slowness to time right before the impact. Vision became sharper. Sounds were muted. There was the echo of her breath in her ears, an exhale that lasted an eternity before time caught up again. She had closed her eyes, slowed her breathing, and willed her body to be as relaxed as possible. Quite difficult and counterintuitive - but something she’d trained for years to be able to do. Not every landing was a smooth one. If she had been raised without ever having to take a punch or survive a crash, she would have been dead thousands of times over.

Still, no moments of brief meditation were enough to dull the pain once the crash actually happened.

It was the sound of something, what, she didn’t know, dripping that brought her back to consciousness. She jerked awake then with a gasp. The act of breathing was painful. Painful, but not agonizing. Painful, that, she could do. The acrid smell of burned wire was thick in her nostrils, and through the smoke that filled the cabin, faint light shone through. With no way to properly gauge how long she’d been out, dread clenched her stomach. She had to move. Had to get out.

She moved her head - left, then right. She felt dizzy, but not nauseous. Also good. She probably wasn’t concussed. It was the realization that her body felt heavier than usual that gave her pause. She looked up - and realized that she was partially looking at the floor of the RV. The explosion had knocked them off balance - by her best (muddled) estimation, they had landed on the side of the RV. Twisting against the restraints, she twisted her body as much as she could to her right - and instantly recoiled. The movement sent fresh fingers of bright, stabbing pain into her chest, her sides. Her legs. She quelled the instant, sick rise of panic in her stomach, and forced herself to focus. She wiggled her fingers - they were completely wet - with what, she couldn’t tell for sure, but she had a fairly good idea. But they moved - stiffly, with twinges of pain, but they moved. Then her toes. They weren’t broken. Good. If she had her hands, their chances of survival were decidedly much more in their favor.

Some caution would be needed to get herself loose. She still wasn’t sure how hurt she was. She peered through the smoke to focus on light that filtered through the windows. It was murky - it was impossible to tell what time of day it was, or how far they’d landed within the undergrowth of the jungle. Past a certain level, the trees nearly blocked the light completely. Pausing for a moment, she strained her ears, listening. She could hear nothing over the sounds of nature - good luck within bad. If their attackers were lazy, they’d assume that the crash alone killed them, and wouldn’t bother to search for bodies. If their attackers weren’t (which she figured they wouldn’t be, not to have such a skilled attack on them), then they’d be coming.

I don’t have time for this flashed in her mind. She needed to get free, she needed to get him free, and they needed to move. Now.

Unbuckling herself, she wormed her way out of her seat, her body screaming in protest. Breathing was easy, but she could feel a hot trail of something easing down the side of her face and down her neck. Her lekku were incredibly sore - also felt covered in something wet. To the right of her, where she had looked before, was the door. It was an “uphill” climb, but doable.

Her first thing, though, was to go to Raeth. Slipping next to him, she gently grasped his wrist. He had a steady pulse. And, despite her focus, she felt a huge weight lifted from her shoulders. Shifting through the debris in the cabin, she was able to quickly find the survival packs that Raeth and her had put together as a part of the mission. With the RV on its side, they were still securely tucked away under each seat. With a muffled groan, she slung both of them over a shoulder. Turning her back to Raeth, she focused back on the door above her. Climbing over the seats, she pressed against the door. Much to her delight, the door swung open with very little coaxing from her. Opened, swung on its hinges, and then fell to the ground with a muffled boom. Worming through the door, she took her first look at their situation. Smoke billowed in a thick black cloud from the back end of the RV, heavy with the smell of melting wire and fuel. The sun was dipping low in the sky - the last flickers of light fought their way through the dense underbrush. Okay. So they had made it to the jungle floor - and that ultimately meant that the drop would just be from the RV itself.


She needed to get the packs out first. Slinging them from over her shoulder, she dropped them, as gently as she could, out the open door. With the packs on the ground, she gingerly climbed back to Raeth. He was unconscious - that, she suspected, with him having been behind the controls. Unbuckling him as delicately as she could, she tentatively wrapped her arms under his shoulders, looping them under his armpits. Gave him a light pull - to gauge his weight. He was dense - but nothing that she couldn’t handle. Slowly, she pulled him from his seat, over her seat, and to the door. Now, she took the opportunity to shift him over her shoulder in a dead lift.

Getting out of the RV with another person was difficult - slower because the added weight brought attention to a plethora of injuries she wasn’t aware of-, but possible. Long, long minutes later, covered in sweat, she’d made it down to the bottom of the jungle floor and out of the RV with Raeth. Though she longed to do nothing more than to set him down, catch her breath, and figure out how badly she was hurt, she didn’t have the time. As soon as she had him on the ground, she did a quick check of his body. He’d have dual black eyes, and there was a horrific gash on his forehead, but aside from that, he seemed to be okay.

Time would tell if he had an internal injury.

Going over to one of the packs, she fished around until she found smelling salts - archaic, but practical. Waving it under his nose, she waited for him to come around.

The smelling salts worked, but not that well. They got Raeth's eyes to fluttered open. He looked towards the sky, then at her. Saudaji would see that his eyes were unfocused.

"Krrsh? Krrrsht? Ssuhdj...werr weh?" He tried to whisper something, but his speech was slurred, incomprehensible. He passed out again shortly after. If Saudaji tried the smelling salts again, the result would be another false-start - he'd regain consciousness for maybe a minute, but then pass out again.

He appeared to be breathing okay; that was something. Chances are he suffered a concussion in addition to a variety of relatively minor, external injuries, like the cut on his forehead. A slow, steady stream of blood flowed from the head gash down into his ear. The ease with which he breathed indicated he was okay, internally. She wouldn't know for sure until she had access to a medical scanner like the one in the Patient Pylat's infirmary.

There was a small medical scanner that Raeth recently installed on the RV, but considering what state the air speeder was in now, it was a safe bet that none of its electronics were functional.

Saudaji would need more than smelling salts to get Raeth up and about. Thankfully, in the medkit from her pack, she would find a few must-haves for the galaxy-traveling assassin - things like bacta bandages.

The bacta bandages, when applied to a wound, would gradually release their healing fluid contained within. If she applied it to the gash on Raeth's head, it would stop bleeding well within 1 hour, and seal up completely within 24. He probably wouldn't even have a scar. Applying the bandage to his head might also ease the symptoms of his concussion; hopefully it would help him wake up soon, too.

In addition to the bacta bandages and other, more common medkit items, she found a quartet of bacta shots. Bacta shots were finger-length syringes filled with a cocktail of bacta, pain suppressants, adrenaline, and other wonder chemicals. They wouldn't do much in terms of permanent healing, but they would quickly stop bleeding, numb all but the very worst pain, give the subject a sharp boost in energy and focus, and generally keep someone up and moving long enough to get to a medical facility.

The bacta shots were meant for emergencies, only. If the bacta bandages and a little bit of time didn't wake Raeth up, then she could use a shot as a desperate measure.

With the agent unconscious and his head wrapped in the medicinal bandage, Saudaji was left alone, for now, in the Tzanian jungle. Despite their predicament, it was oddly peaceful here. It was not quiet; far from it. She was surrounded by the jungle's incessant chatter - from the call of alien birds from high above, to the softer but no less constant noises made by insects hidden all around the crash site. All that noise somehow created a sense of calm, although Saudaji knew better than to think that the enviroment wasn't dangerous.

In preparation for the mission, Raeth and Saudaji went over key data about the Tzani wilderness. She now knew that as far as flora was concerned, there wasn't too much that could be life-threatening. Don't eat anything with bright, because they're likely poisonous. All the edible food in this region had dull coloration. And unlike some other jungle planets, Tzan did not have giant man-eating plants that would use their whip-like tentacles to pull you into their huge, acid-filled maws.
Thank goodness for small favors.

No, the flora on Tzan wasn't much of a threat. The fauna were a different matter, entirely. Multiple sources confirmed that the planet was home to a variety of predators. There were large predators that could easily carry a full-grown man up a tree. There were also tiny predators that hunted in packs and immobilized larger prey with poisonous quills shot from their tails. So in addition to being attacked by whoever it was that took down the RV, Saudaji and Raeth would have to worry about the animal life.

Thankfully, one of the things included in their Tzan survival packs were "smell bombs": basically, they were vials filled with a chemical that replicated the scent of urine from the planet's apex predator - the trompa. By sprinkling the chemical around the perimeter of a campsite, they would scare away most of the jungle's flesh-eaters.

If, however, a trompa found them, the piss deterrent wouldn't work. But a blaster bolt right between the eyes would.

Saudaji had this and plenty of other things to consider while Raeth remained unconscious. Meanwhile, the one responsible for their crash observed them from a safe distance away.


-----


Raeth awoke in the afternoon. Before he attempted to get up, he called for her.

"Saudaji? Saudaji!?" When she appeared, he sighed in relief. "You're okay?"

The bacta bandage appeared to be doing the trick, because Raeth's mind was finally sharp again. He wasted little time in asking the important questions: How long had he been unconscious? Has anyone come after them yet? How about animals, any threat there? Does anything work on the RV?

He did not have to ask about the survival packs, because the bandage on his head was proof that she already made use of the essentials.

Although Raeth was mentally functional again, he was certainly not at 100%. He complained about dizziness and a splitting headache when he first tried to sit up. And within minutes of getting back to his feet for the first time since the crash, a sudden wave of vertigo made him throw up onto the grass.

"I'm fine!" he snapped when Saudaji checked on him. Wiping a bit of spittle and puke from his lip, he calmed himself down and softened his tone. "Or I'll be fine once I get some drexapline. There's some in the medkit. Can you get it for me, please?"

Saudaji would know that drexapline was motion sickness medicine often used by people not used to zero- or low-gravity environments or the other rigors of space travel. A couple drexapline capsules would almost assuredly help with his dizziness.

Once he was able to walk around without puking, Raeth searched through their weapons until he found a thermal detonator. Then he proceeded to climb back into the RV.

"I've got to get the van's hard drive," he said, whether or not Saudaji asked him what he was doing climbing into the wreck. "I need to know what caused all its systems to shut down; there might be something on the drive that could give me a hint." Groaning with obvious effort - which wasn't a good sign considering climbing into the flipped RV shouldn't have been that difficult - Raeth disappeared inside.

Saudaji probably did not need to ask about the thermal detonator he brought with him. After he salvaged what he could from the RV, he was going to blow it up. Nothing of value, nothing that could tie the crash back to them, could be left behind.

She never thought she’d be so happy to see his eyes.

His pupils were large, his gaze unfocused. In the brief moment that his eyes were open, she knew it’d be a lost cause to move him just yet. And rather than try the smelling salts again, she, against her better judgement, decided to let him be. Even as bleak as the situation seemed, she had a bit of a wry smirk. If he’d been one of her Mandolorian brothers, she would have slapped him repeatedly until he woke up and then hauled him to his feet.

It was the last non-business oriented thought she allowed herself for some time. With him unconscious and “safe,” it left her free to further inventory their goods, and survey the landscape. On the jungle floor, there were no paths, no clear cut trails. If anyone was foolish enough to hack and slash their way through, it would be a calling card clear as day. From what she could tell, it was still early enough in the morning to give them time to attempt to get themselves together.

After decompressing as much as she could of their survival gear, she sat down heavily. And realized, as if waking from a dream, that she was bleeding. Heavily - her hands were covered in it. Though Raeth had insisted that she wear something “sexy,” as surveillance that didn’t require certain “appearances,” she’d demurred. Rather, she wore a full body jump suit, similar to the one that she wore when they first met - sans the “boob window.” She was glad of it - it was thin, flexible material that could repel a fair bit of shrapnel. However, “some shrapnel” was not the same as crashing a ship, and the suit could only do so much. Her left forearm bore a deep gash that still bled fresh. Her hands and fingers were covered in cuts. Pulling a small wedge of window from her hand, she winced. Felt tenderly along her jaw, her throat. Her ribs - those were bruised, probably from slamming forward. Her legs were banged up - felt like she’d taken a caning to them. Tentatively, she pressed hands to her mouth. It was swollen, extremely tender to the touch, and she could taste blood. Running her tongue slowly along her teeth, she winced. A back molar was loose. That could be a problem if she didn’t get it taken care of.

With a deep sigh, followed rapidly by a quick inhale, she reached in her mouth and yanked it out. Spat blood. Pocketed the tooth, and went to feel her lekku. The lost tooth, well, that was nothing new. Come to think of it, it may have been a replacement for one of the ones she’d lost growing up sparring - ah, ow. A tender spot on her lekku caused her to stop her hands entirely, and fish for a bacta bandage. To non Twi’leks, it may have seemed a vain move - to preserve the “beauty” of her lekku. That was far from it. Though her brain didn’t extend into them, a Twi’lek’s lekku were densely packed with nerves that were intricately connected to her brain. If there was a grievous injury to one, she bore the very realistic chance of having her cognitive abilities be irreparably damaged.

With the bothersome tooth out and her lekku bandaged, she was hurt, but more functional. Strapping her knife to her side, she sighed again, trying to channel whatever fear she felt into calm action. Fear wasn’t a problem. It was normal. It was giving into it, or not recognizing it that got warriors into trouble. Feeling the flat side of the blade against her leg in its holster calmed her. She knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that with just that, she could survive. She’d done it before. She’d do it again.

________

When he spoke, she was a good distance away from him, surprisingly enough. She’d started scouting for their best way out - the best way to make it seem “natural” whenever they got to the next city that they were in the jungle. Racking her mind for excuses, lies, that seemed plausible.

“ ‘Okay’ is relative,” she said, with a wry smile. Her lips were split, stained with blood. She also had quite the black eye to match his, and her lekku were covered with dried blood. Though her tone was light, there was an undercurrent of steel beneath it that she’d never used with him before. There never had been a need to. It wasn’t hostile towards him - it was a captain speaking to her troops. An innate leadership that came with years of rough living. She answered all of his questions in the same tone, adding where she could. The outline of where they were was rough - based on what she remembered from the maps. If they headed due south, she said, she thought that they could at least get fresh water - they’d need it. And they wouldn’t have the luxury of staying near it, either. She assumed that whoever was after them was the very best, would know all of the tricks of staying alive in situations like this. Where they’d be most likely to make camp.

“We’re going to need to travel at night. Sleep at a minimum,” she said, right after he’d stood up. Though she’d gone to check on him when he vomited, her mind was working a parsec a minute. He could walk. Disoriented, yes, but he could move. He’d have to be able to run. Aim a blaster. And she watched his fumbling attempts to get into the RV - weighing carefully if there was a fair amount of pride driving his actions as well as necessity. Watching him groan a second time was one more time too much for her. She was better equipped for this; more used to moving in pain and injured. Surprisingly deft for her injuries, she joined him in the RV, with little more than a purposefully audible huff as she landed, as not to startle him.

“You need to get out of here. Now.” Softer, she added, “Show me where the hard drive is.” She wasn’t going to argue with him about its necessity. To her, if he blew the RV, that’d take care of the hard drive as well. It was out of her love for him that she wasn’t as sharp as she would have been to a Mandolorian brother in arms - and the thought made her grimace. She shouldn’t soften herself for him. It’d be liable to get them both killed.

“Raeth, I need you to get out of this RV. Right now.” Her tone was firmer now. “I will get the hard drive. I don’t know if you’re concussed, and you will be of absolutely no help to me whatsoever if you can’t move. I do not have the strength to get us both out of here, do you understand that?” Was she so cold as to be essentially telling him that she was going to leave him to die? Perhaps. Realistically - if he looked, really looked into those dark eyes of hers, he could see the absolute fear, terror, of the thought of having to leave him. To lose him. And she was going to do whatever it took for that not to be an option.

Raeth was startled when Saudaji jumped down into the RV with him. He was absolutely shocked when she ordered him to leave, as well as told him to consider their predicament. He had never seen this side of her until now.

For long moments, he stared at her in the near-dark of the speeder's interior. The only light was the bit of sunlight coming in through the RV's cracked windows. It wasn't much, but it was enough to show him the hard look in the Twi'lek's eyes. She was every bit the huntress he had become obsessed with all those months ago, and fell in love with not long after. Only now, she was fighting for her life and his.

Seeing her like this excited him. Her words, however, kinda pissed him off. She wouldn't actually leave me here, would she? Naah, she's just saying that to get her point across, he reassured himself.

He was about to say something, but a new wave of dizziness hit him. The headache he was trying to ignore intensified, too. Combined, they forced him to take a seat on the wall of the sideways-lying RV.

"Fine. I'll take it easy," he said once the dizziness passed. He rested his head back against the roof with a thunk. The hard look on his face caused him to smile.

"Something tells me it wouldn't be a good idea to argue with you when you're like this. But before I go, please permit me to take a breather, won't you?"

Raeth pointed towards the driver's seat. "You'll find the drive under the console, in between the driver and passenger's side." He gave her additional instructions on how to find it, as well as how to disconnect it. What she would eventually find was a vaguely cylindrical, silver hard drive that fit comfortably in the palm of her hand. When she handed it to Raeth, he gave it a quick inspection before tucking it away into one of his pants' many pockets.

"Thank you." Now they could leave. Instead of climbing back out the way they came, Raeth did a crouching waddle towards the back of the RV. On his way out, he retrieved what looked like a multi-pocketed, black vest from a storage compartment, and put it on.

Together with Saudaji, they were able to force the rear doors open. They slid out rather than climbed out that time. Once outside, Raeth took the thermal detonator out from a pocket, glanced through the open rear doors of the RV, then looked at her. His two black eyes were really starting to get dark, now.

"Did you get the weapons out already?" He didn't ask about rations and water, because those were kept along with other essentials in their two backpacks. Now that the RV was dead, the only thing of value to salvage were the weapons and the gadgets stored in the vest he put on minutes before.

For the next few minutes, Raeth and Saudaji did a quick inventory of their weapons and ammo. Raeth armed himself with a heavy blaster pistol strapped to his right thigh, as well as a hold-out blaster tucked into one of his long sleeves. He also took a blaster rifle for himself, then handed Saudaji the sniper rifle she had used to assassinate the Jedi named Destrek. As for less technological killing implements, he armed himself with a variety of blades - an all-purpose knife sheathed to his left hip, a nasty-looking vibroblade strapped to his calf, and a few much smaller blades hidden in his vest or sleeves.

Finally, Raeth tucked a trio of thermal detonators into the pockets of his vest. He also offered her a few of the explosives. If Saudaji gave him a quizzical look, he would just smile, shrug, and say, "You never know when you need to blow shit up."

The rest of the weapons - of which there were plenty - had to be left in the RV. Raeth had a rocket launcher in there, for some reason, and they surely wouldn't be lugging that thing around the jungle.

As they prepped their gear, they also discussed their plan of action.

"Here's what I suggest," Raeth eyed Saudaji, warily, expecting her to order him around again at any moment. "We get a safe distance away, destroy the RV, and then find some high ground so I can call Sebastian for a pick-up. I haven't been able to get through to him on the comm. Which, in addition to being irksome, doesn't make sense, because there's nothing in Tzan's atmosphere or in the jungle that should be interfering with communications."

What Raeth did not say out loud was that he suspected whoever caused them to crash was also somehow blocking their signal. Whoever was good enough to take down his computer systems would surely be able to set up a simple jamming device.

"Do you remember those rock formations we flew over right before we crashed? They're west of us. If we walk towards them, we'll eventually find high ground, and hopefully I'll be able to get through to Sebastian."

In the time that it took to arm themselves, check their survival gear, and discuss their plans, the bandaged Raeth seemed to be doing better. At least he wasn't throwing up anymore, and he stopped complaining about headaches and dizziness. However, Saudaji could see him wince now and then, and she saw him try to hide a little grimace when he hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders. She could also see that he was sweating through his head bandage. Sweat was better than blood, at least.

Raeth took out the thermal detonator he had saved specifically for the RV's fiery funeral. He looked a little sad as he set the timer. "Did we miss anything?" He already knew that they didn't. He was just making an excuse to postpone the destruction of the speeder he had spent so much effort and care into improving.
With the detonator set to 5 minutes, he tossed it through the RV's rear doors.

Then, Raeth and Saudaji began to walk away from the crash site, and hopefully towards a way off this humid pit of a planet.

For a while, the only sound in the RV was of their breathing. She was looking at him - he was looking at her. Her shoulders were tense. She hoped he would stand down. She needed him to stand down.

When he did, she had to stop herself from sighing in relief. “Thank you,” she said, her tone softer. Relief was clear in it, though her “commanding” side hadn’t quite dissipated. “What do you mean, ‘like this’?” There was no annoyance there - only mildly amused curiosity. “Trying to keep us alive? Trying to keep you from hurting yourself worse? Yes, I must be absolutely horrible to deal with.” She gave him a gentle eye roll, and commenced to finding the hard drive. Looking at her, it was impossible to tell that she’d been injured. At some time while he was unconscious, she had lightly bound her lekku together behind her, the thin line of a bacta patch visible through the binding. When they got into the inevitable firefight, the last thing she needed were her lekku flopping about as targets.

As much as he may not have wanted her to help him get around, she stood beside him, watching, as he waddled out of the RV. It may have even seemed cruel - her seemingly distant, watching him with a flat expression on her face. Only her eyes would give her away; she was making sure he was able to move. Noticing any changes in the flow of his body. Assessing. And once they were back outside of the RV, her full lips pressed into a thin line. The darkness of his eyes suggested a concussion to her.

“Yes - I got the weapons out,” she sounded distant - she’d been lost in keeping an eye on him. There was no annoyance, irritation at him asking such an obvious question. “Whatever that we could easily carry. Enough to keep us alive.” Compared to him, she had close to nothing on her as far as weapons went - and it was with much convincing from him that she took the rifle with her. There were some things that were worth arguing for, and this wasn’t one of them. If he felt more comfortable with her carrying it, she’d do so, as long as it didn’t get in the way.

“No. Absolutely not. No explosions.” From the sound of her voice, she was doing all that she could to not yell at him. Of all of the sheer, harebrained things he could say! Yes, she understood the need to destroy evidence, but an explosion?! Might as well just wave a flag saying, “Yes, we’re here!” Taking a deep breath, she continued, “If we were going to blow anything up, the time to have done it is long past. We need to assume that we are being watched, right now, and anything out of the ordinary is going to attract attention. An explosion right after a crash? No problem. Hours after? That’s a problem.”

She paused, listened to him. “No. We need to head towards the nearest city, village, whatever. No high ground. We need to be able to blend in. And you need medical assistance. Sooner rather than later. We get to the village, you can call for Sebastian without it being odd. We don’t have time for ‘hopefully’ and ‘eventuallys’.” She took a deep breath. Before she could speak again, he was already prepping the thermal detonator to destroy the RV. And her eyes went wide with anger. With extreme self-control, she grabbed his hand and dragged him from the site, the packs bumping against their backs with each step. Realistically, they may not have needed to run, but now, she needed to put as much distance between them and the explosion that they were physically capable of. It was a long conditioned response with her - you ran from explosions.

Once they were a safe distance away, she whirled on him with a barely restrained anger. Her voice was a sharp whisper. “Do you just have a filter in your brain that weeds out my voice unless I’m begging for your cock?! I said NOT to blow anything up!”

She took in another deep breath; looked at the situation. At least the explosion was clean - a flash, no lingering flames or smoke. But they needed to keep moving. “Look; there’s a town about a day’s hike away from here. We head there. We have enough water to get us there.” She took a few steps in front of him, pointing south. Turned, and looked at him, her brows raised, waiting for him to follow.

"Right, no explosions," Raeth chuckled as he repeated what she said. "Unless you've got several gallons of acid stowed away somewhere, I don't see how we're going clean the scene without using one of these bad boys," he tossed the thermal detonator up into the air, then caught it, playing with it as though it was a toy.

Raeth did listen to her objections, but only half-heartedly. She mentioned that an explosion this long after the crash would be a problem, inferring that it wouldn't make sense.

"That's not true. Things blow up hours after they crash, all the time," he stated matter-of-factly, as though he was an expert on explosions and crashes. He *was* an explosives expert, though.

"Four years ago, on Helona 32nd, a research vessel called Kaliostro crashed into a planetoid in the Outer Rim. Six hours after the crash, its reactor exploded. I know all of this, because I watched it crash and I watched it blow up hours later." What Raeth didn't mention was that he was the one who caused the Kaliostro to crash in he first place, because killing its crew was one of his earlier missions.

"As for attracting unwanted attention: that ship has already lifted off. I would bet you a backrub and a blowjob that whoever is responsible for taking us down is watching us right...this...minute." He snatched the thermal detonator out of the air one last time, and used it to jab at the air when he said, 'right', 'this', and 'minute'. "All of the RV's systems went down at the same time. One or two systems going down suddenly can happen; it's highly unlikely, because these are my systems we're talking about. But it can happen.

"But all the electronics going out at once? It was as though we were hit by an ion cannon, and that obviously didn't happen. Which means that somebody got into my systems. Nobody could do that without some extremely careful planning. Someone that clever and patient is almost assuredly keeping tabs on us now. So one more little fireworks display won't change anything."

Once he said that, he activated the thermal detonator and tossed it through the RV's back door. Immediately after, Saudaji grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him off as though he was a child throwing a tantrum in public. Being manhandled like that shocked him into silence long enough for her to drag him away, turn on him, and yell at him.

Her yelling helped him find his voice again. "Since when do YOU tell ME where to go and what to blow up?" The absurdity of his statement, coupled with a flare-up of his headache, gave Raeth pause. He closed his eyes, tried to will away the pain, took a few breathes through his nostrils, then looked at her again.

Even though the Twi'lek was bleeding, bruised, and bandaged - just like him - she looked threatening as hell and ready to eat his face off. And the last thing he wanted was to piss her off more. He remembered how torturous it was when she gave him the cold shoulder leading up to their first successful mission together; he would do anything not to have her treat him like that ever again.

"Saudaji, look..." Raeth showed her both of his palms in a 'cease fire' gesture. He thought carefully about what he said next. If he had been talking to anybody else, he would have tried to belittle the person into silence. But this was Saudaji - an angry Saudaji, at that - which immediately made him reassess his social modus operandi.

"You don't know our employers as well as I do, can we agree on that? Ever since we've started working together, we've only known success, yes? You've only seen how they behave when we're on their good side.

"I've known them my entire adult life. I've seen what they do to failures. Believe me, it isn't pretty."

Raeth jerked a thumb over his shoulder, back towards the RV. As if on cue, the speeder exploded at that moment. "The RV had to be destroyed. Even though I now have the hard drive, there's was still some evidence about us that could've ended up in the hands of the Republic. If it did, and it somehow clued them in on what our employers are up to, you and I wouldn't just be fired." He didn't finish that thought, since the Sith's reputation spoke for itself.

Raeth implored her with his eyes not to be mad at him. With the bandage, the dual black eyes, the sweat covering his face and soaking his hair, and now that look that begged her to stop yelling at him, he really looked vulnerable at that moment.

"I'm sorry, okay? It had to be done. For us. If that explosion does attract any attention, we can deal with it, because it would be nothing compared to what would happen if we left the RV as it was."

As though his words were a curse come true, the two of them heard something shortly after: the distinct sounds of flying craft headed towards them. Seconds after they first heard them, two spacecraft hovered directly over the site where the remains of the RV smoked and sizzled. Even though the jungle canopy was dense, throught he leaves and through the branches they could catch a few glimpses of the craft - they were the two fighters that were escorting the shuttle of Senator Brunda Hoplitz-Morgan, their target.

"Well, fark," Raeth whispered as he ducked into a shrub.

Her first reaction when he yelled at her was to slap some sense into him. Indeed, she found herself unconsciously raising her hand to do just that, but something told her to hold off. She couldn’t treat him as if he was another brother in arms; she’d told herself that time and time again. The usual methods wouldn’t work here. She forced herself to swallow her anger - and almost instantly felt ashamed when the fatigue became all too apparent on his face.

What she did do, though, was suddenly pull him close, grasped him as delicately as she could by the ears. She pressed her forehead to his, gingerly, then her nose to his. It was a familiar, calming, loving gesture, even in the middle of a mission that had clearly gone to seed. She held the gesture for as long as she could, willing herself to calm down, willing herself to enjoy this closeness. For it to remind her that she had to do whatever she needed to to get the both of them out of this situation alive. Not to be so hasty to jump to her old ways and instantly discount whatever he said. He was right - he did know their employers much better than she did. And, in some cases, she had to defer to his wisdom. This was meant to be a partnership.

When she finally let him go, the first sight that greeted her was him looking vulnerable. Gently pulling him back in, she kissed his forehead, then let go. Her timing was excellent - she’d parted with him right before the drones passed overhead. Slinking into the shrubs next to him, she spoke again, her voice no louder than a whisper.

“I’m going to need you to trust me, Raeth.” And she needed to let go of her stubborn pride and be honest with him. About everything. “And we need to come up with a plan. I still think we need to head due South.” The next part pained her, but it needed to be said. “The fact that you’re dizzy and both your eyes are black usually means a pretty nasty head injury. Bacta bandages only do so much.” She crouched lower, her dark eyes scanning the sky above them through the leaves. Her mind was going a parsec a minute, trying to suss out the best way to handle the situation. “They could be looking for us, they could be investigating the crash and explosion. Best thing is for us to keep moving. When night falls, we’ll need to keep moving, but we can do it in shifts. If we stop now, we’re caught. Night gives us a little more cover. You said that you wanted to call for Sebastian? Can you do it from the floor?” She didn’t bother to ask about their “secret” pursuer. “I’m thinking that if we are lucky, whatever was used on the RV was just on the RV. Not on anything else, so there is no range to get out of.”

Her voice was disturbingly calm, as if she was describing the weather. An element of her “no nonsense” tone crept back in, but it was much softened. A part of her had hoped that he understood that her approach now was nothing personal; the “distance” there was to keep herself calm and from giving into the absolute mad panic she felt at seeing him injured; at the very real thought of potentially losing him. Her life? Didn’t matter so much. She knew that her death would pain Saboten, but it was a very real consequence of the life she lead, had chosen to live. But Raeth? No. She couldn’t humor it.

Nor was she about to openly tell him how tight of a hold he had on her heart.

Yes, they had confessed, but she’d said nothing about how deep her emotions ran for him - largely out of fear. Fear of chasing him away, of him having leverage over her. Losing him would destroy her. She’d sensed it, but knew it for a certainty when they finally confessed. In truth, she would express it the only way she was sure how to: to protect him.

She strained her ears again. The sound of the drones faded into the distance, but she still held him back under the cover of the shrub. “I’m going to take point. You stay hidden.” Now her true “face” was on. Her mouth set solidly, she crept out silently - not even so much of a whisper of the leaves gave her away. Her knife in her hand, her back was towards him as she surveyed their surroundings. The jungle was teeming with life; creatures called and answered. Sounds she wanted to hear. As long as the natural world around them continued on, it was a good sign. Still, cautious as a fawn, she crept through. Despite the black of her suit and the milky jade of her skin, the way she moved in and out of the shadows camouflaged her excellently. Times when she pressed against the bark of a tree and held entirely still, it would be difficult for skilled assassins to notice her - let alone a civilian. It was as if she simply melted into her surroundings.

Minutes crept by, each one feeling like an hour.

Finally, she seemed to be satisfied with their surroundings, and she gestured for him to join her. When he approached her, she whispered again. “We’ll rely on hand signals from here. Talk only when it is absolutely necessary. I need you to promise me something, Rae’ika,” and she whirled to take his shoulders in her hands. It was an odd gesture, considering that he was taller than her. “If you start to feel ill, you let me know. We will stop. We will have to stop.” Before he could offer a rebuttal, she cut him off. “You need to be functioning. I can’t carry the both of us. And we both know who’s of more value to the Sith,” and she gave him a wry, understanding smile. “After this, though, I think you should use that silver tongue of yours to buy us some time for some R and R.”

_________

Traveling through the jungle, was tedious work. Saudaji, true to her word, was point - and she smoothed a path for Raeth to travel after her. She traveled so once they’d passed, the jungle wasn’t disturbed. Indeed, if Raeth turned to look behind him at any point, their passage was completely swallowed up again by the jungle. She was so careful that on more than one occasion, she stopped, her foot still lifted, to let some slimy thing or the other to go on about its way. Afternoon slipped into the vibrant reds of the sunset, then into the deep black of night. Day creatures gave way to those of the night in a symphony of peeps and creaks, the occasional muted roar of some large predator in the distance.

It was only when they’d traveled for two more hours under the cover of night that Saudaji seemed satisfied, and signaled that now was a good time for them to stop. Clearing a space for him to sit, she pulled a small torch from her pack, about the length of her finger. Its light was bright enough to read by, if it was held close to the material, but not bright enough to be as noticeable as a fire - and could be explained away as a bioluminescent creature - which the planet was full of. Using the torch seemed to attract them, and in scant moments of them sitting, the air was alive with the gently bobbing lights of them. In any other circumstance, the event would be quite romantic.

She allowed herself the luxury of sitting and taking a long drink of water from a canteen before she gestured to him again, signaling that she would keep watch. By now, she had been awake for 24 standard hours straight. If she was getting tired, it didn’t show. Her movements were as precise and cautious as ever.

Her gaze drifted up to the canopy above them. Narrowed. In the next moment, she was gone. There was a faint rustling in the canopy above him, and, a night bird took flight, with a mournful squawk. The sound of water pattering against leaves. Looking up, the sky was clear - and Saudaji was still nowhere to be seen.

The audible snap of a twig to his right, then the rustling of leaves. Saudaji had reappeared - her hand clasped firmly over the mouth of a Republic soldier, her blade wedged deep into his back. He convulsed against her, once, twice, then went limp. She laid him down on the ground, quietly. Groaning from the canopy above, and the body of another Republic soldier came crashing down, a gaping wound in his chest.

So it hadn’t been rain after all.

“We need to go. Now.” Her knife was crimson down to the hilt, and her hands were red, glistening. “There was only the two - sent ahead to look for us. The fact that they’re about to not check in is going to bring the rest of them down on us. Should be expecting 12 - 15 more. Maybe even 20. If this one wasn’t lying,” and she nudged the body of the soldier that had fallen from the trees. “How much time do you need to get us situated? You’re going to have to do this on the move.” She was already shifting things over, condensing into one pack. He’d have to carry it - in her own fatalism, she made sure he was taken care of. She knew she could survive with what she had on her; what she could scavenge from the other soldiers. It was imperative that he got moving.

It felt as though there were fingers on Raeth's brain, squeezing it, painfully, at irregular intervals. His dizziness was mostly gone, thanks to the drexapline, but if he turned his head too quick it sometimes came back. On top of that, he felt sweaty and sticky.

But when Saudaji held him close, he felt better. Her kiss to his forehead dispelled his worries for an instant. And he was reminded that as long as he was with her, things couldn't get all that bad.

That's when they heard the Republic fighter craft approach and took cover in the foliage. Now wasn't the time to get all dreamy about her, he reminded himself.
Raeth did not argue with any of Saudaji's orders. Not at that moment, anyway. She told him to stay put, so he stayed put. His senses were not as keen as hers, especially not out here in the damned wilderness, but he was exceptional at staying still when his life depended on it. He lay flat on his belly, pressed his chin to the dirt, and remained as still as a rock until Saudaji indicated it was time to move.

During those long, silent, motionless minutes, he had plenty of things with which to preoccupy himself: He tried to listen to any sounds that did not belong in a jungle, but he didn't hear anything. He ran through some mental exercises he used to ignore the pain in his head. And perhaps most importantly of all, he tried to figure out who could have sabotaged them.

Someone MUST have gotten to the RV in order to break it. When was it vulnerable? He was certain there was no way anyone could have gotten to it while it was secured aboard The Patient Pylat. Ever since they arrived on Tzan, there were no more than a handful of instances when both he and Saudaji left the vehicle alone, and each of those instances was brief. To think that somebody could have circumvented HIS security measures and disabled HIS programming in only a few minutes was preposterous, but at the moment he couldn't think of any other explanation as to how the RV ended up as smoldering scrap, and the two of them ended up stuck in a jungle.

Saudaji reappeared nearby. He had to resist the urge to yelp in surprise. Cripes, she's as quiet as a vro-cat, he thought to himself with more than a little admiration.

She asked him if he could call Sebastian from the ground, to which he responded, "That's what I've been trying. No go, yet. I think we're being jammed. Our best bet is to either get above the jamming signal, or get out of its range."

Saudaji then talked about R and R. Raeth laughed despite their predicament. "If we get out of this alive, and they don't kill us for failing our mission, then I'm sure they'll be more than happy to give us a few weeks of paid vacation. Maybe we can come back here to Tzan. I hear the southern continent is beautiful this time of year."

Then they were off.

I would have preferred to go towards the mountains, Raeth thought to himself as they hiked in the direction of the closest village. But he didn't voice his complaint.


-----


Hours passed, and night descended. Following the path set by Saudaji, Raeth suffered in silence. This was the longest that he had gone without saying a single word to her since the two of them became lovers. His headache had gotten worse, so he popped a couple of pain killers. He sweated through his shirt, completely, and the lining of his black utility vest began to get soaked, too. If not for the bandage wrapped around his head, sweat from his forehead would have constantly dripped into his eyes. He looked miserable. By the time Saudaji indicated it was time to rest, his labored breathing made him sound miserable, too.

At least he kept busy during the trek. As he followed the Twi'lek, he removed items from the pockets of his vest and placed them on different parts of his body. There was a compact datapad that he mounted onto his wrist. There was a pair of nightvision glasses that he put on after first offering them to Saudaji. She was the one on point, so it would've made more sense for her to have them; but she declined, preferring to rely on her natural senses. Raeth shrugged and kept the NV glasses for himself. There was also an earpiece connected to his commlink that he tucked into an ear canal.

For hours, he tried in vain to send a signal to The Pylat. His inability to get through to Sebastian over their secure channel was both confusing and frustrating. There was no way someone could have jammed their radio the entire time they were traveling. When Saudaji indicated it was time for them to stop, and she lit a glowstick, Raeth removed his nightvision glasses then vented his frustration.

"I haven't gotten through to Sebastian or the Baron this whole time," he whispered. Groaning a little, he carefully removed his backpack off of his shoulders and set it on the ground. Then he dropped to the jungle floor, heavily, to rest against a tree.

"It doesn't make sense. Unless there's a starship in low orbit blocking all communication in the region, or someone with a portable jammer has been following us since the crash, I should have been able to get through by now."

Raeth took out one of the two canteens from the survival pack and handed it to her. He also offered her a field ration. The rations were disgusting but crucial little things - they looked like candy bars, but they weren't at all delectable. A single ration was packed with enough nutrients to keep a regular-sized humanoid going for an entire day. Because they had close to 20 of those things, there was no threat of them going hungry anytime soon.

Whether or not Saudaji took an energy bar, Raeth would eat one. That was dinner, as well as tomorrow's breakfast and lunch. While munching on something he thought tasted like styrofoam, it dawned on him why he wasn't able to get through to Sebastian.

"Of course!" He whispered, suddenly. "Our mystery friend must have set up a jammer near both of our ships. Which means we've been shadowed ever since we landed on Tzan; probably longer. Oh, this is worrisome...worrisome indeed. They better not have done anything to my ship..." He began to talk to himself, quietly. All that time being silent must have gotten to him.

Raeth resumed attempts to connect with either Sebastian or the Baron. He also fiddled with the datapad on his wrist. He was so focused on his commlink and datapad that it took him a few seconds to notice Saudaji had disappeared.

"...Daji?" Carefully, quietly, he brandished his blaster pistol and got to his feet. He put his nightvision glasses back on before scanning his surroundings, trying to find her. He looked up, he looked around, but he did not see her until she returned with a dying Republic scout.

There was noise from above, so Raeth looked up. Through his hi-tech shades he saw the glowing body of a 2nd scout falling moments before he slammed onto the ground several meters away from him. Raeth had his blaster pointed at the corpse the entire time in case it proved to be dangerous.

He looked at her. His NV shades and the near darkness shrouded his expression of awe. He was about to compliment her, but she spoke first, so he listened.
Potentially 20 soldiers stalking them? It could be worse. There could've been a Jedi among them.

"Shaz," he cursed under his breath. "How the hell are they tracking us this well? We just got here, and it's already raining scouts. Literally."

Saudaji asked him how much time he needed. "Give me two minutes." Raeth went to the body of scout that fell from the trees and flipped him from his belly onto his back.

First, Raeth check the scout's commlink to see what channel it was set to. He set his own commlink to that channel, and whispered for Saudaji to do the same on hers. There was no chatter on the channel at that moment, but when the Republic soldiers said something, they'd hear it.

Second, Raeth took the scout's canteen. Judging by its weight, it was nearly full. He claimed it as his own.

Finally, the agent removed one of his thermal detonators from a vest pocket and used it to boobytrap the body. He flipped the scout back onto his belly, and very carefully set the bomb underneath his chest. If the body was moved, then whoever moved it would be in for a nasty surprise. It was a very old trick, but an effective one.

"Okay, now I'm ready," he said as he yanked the survival pack off the ground and stuck his arms through the straps. His shoulders screamed at him for ending their break so soon, but there wasn't anything he could do for them at the moment. No rest for the wicked, and all that.

Once again, they were off. And once again, they quickly put distance between them and a thermal detonator.


-----


Several minutes later, a squad of soldiers in camouflaged armor found the two scouts that Saudaji had slain. One of the soldiers checked on the scout that was stabbed in the back while the others formed a tight defensive perimeter.
"It's Gree. Damnit!" The soldier said after confirming his comrade was dead. "He just got married, too.

"Olef, check on Tompco. He might still be alive." Another soldier jogged to the body that was face-down while the first soldier got on his comm to report to their commander.

"Captain, Beta Squad here. We found Gree and Tompco. Gree is dead. We're checking on..."

Their communication was cut off, abruptly, and the jungle was rocked by an explosion for the 2nd time in less than 24 hours.

Some distance away, Raeth - who had been listening in on the Republic comm channel - chuckled to himself. Sometimes there's just no beating the classics.

As soon as he said he was ready, she was leading them again through the jungle. Now that she knew for a fact that they were being tailed, there was no point in not speaking.

“We need to keep heading south. I know it’s not where you want to go, but medical attention needs to be priority one.” She hadn’t forgotten how wiped out he looked the moment they stopped; how strained he looked to keep going. Though he’d eaten, without rest and proper medical care, he wouldn’t be able to go on. “The guys that came after us before came from behind. The one in the trees was stealth. Or their version of it, either way. Point guys. My bet is that whoever comes after us is going to come from behind us until they figure out where we’re going.”

Their pace through the jungle was unhurried, still as careful as she was before, leading point. To her, they didn’t need to run. Not after the last explosion - if they ran, it’d make them tired. Irrational. Sloppy.

She had barely taken a breath to speak again when a blaster bolt whined past them. She shoved Raeth forward, drawing her own blaster and returning the shot in a smooth motion. The groan and subsequent thud let her know that she’d aimed true. Barely a second later, and the area was illuminated by red blaster bolts. Well. They’d pissed someone off so bad that live capture apparently wasn’t an option. “Get down,” she hissed, and she followed suite, dropping to her heels in a squat.

Taking a deep breath, she focused on the sounds around her. All shots came from behind - directly behind. So no one had been clever enough to flank them on the sides or potentially move in front of them. It would be clear from a visual assessment (because the soldiers more than likely had night vision) that she and Raeth were injured. Perhaps they assumed that it meant that it would be easy pickings.

She was about to show them that the assumption would be a mistake. There was a lull in the fire fight, and she signaled for Raeth to stay down - to move to the opposite side of the “path.” Not moving from her low squat, she mimicked the walk of a spider, creeping low to stay within the cover of the denser, squat shrubs that grew on the floor. Controlling her breathing, she slowed it so that her chest barely moved; that there was no sound that issued from her. And, as she suspected, the soldiers walked right past her, headed towards the last spot she shot from.

The soldiers following were angry - maybe young, she mused, as she watched them. Lack of discipline, for sure. They crept forward, hands on their blasters. Even in the spotted darkness, she was able to make out that there were four of them. Child’s play, really, she thought, with a sadistic smirk.

There was no dramatic “surprise!” moment; no drastic leaping from the bushes to dispatch the soldiers in a hail of blaster fire. She took careful aim, shot one, and before the other could react, she was on him. He had enough time to get off one more blaster shot (neatly avoided) before she returned the shot, hitting him clean through the throat. One whirled to shoot at her, missed by a hair. She was gone - melted into the forest, only to have two rapid fire blaster shots take the remaining two soldiers down.

With the four soldiers dead in front of her, she gestured for Raeth to keep moving. It wasn’t long before more blaster fire was scattered around them, still from behind, and she was shooting again, pushing him forward while keeping an eye on the action behind them. Now, there was no warning if she wanted him to duck or move; she would simply either shove him out of the way or down.

From the original four, the numbers multiplied - two more. Then another four. Then five. Then six. It was becoming difficult to keep track of all of the fire going back and forth. But somehow she not only managed that, but kept her and Raeth moving without getting hit, and taking out one soldier after another with one shot. It was disturbing how good she was at this. As if it was a mere target practice, not an actual situation. Even with her constant pushing, pulling, and tugging at Raeth, she wasn’t breathing hard, and her focus was sharp. It could almost be called luck - if it wasn’t for the fact that a blaster bolt meant to hit her neck was blocked by her own blaster - and destroyed it in a hail of sparks and ozone. Tossing it, she swore. At least the thing hadn’t blown up in her hand - not that her hand had emerged unscathed. She knew that she was going to have severe burns on it - could feel the coldness of destroyed flesh on the palm of her hand, starting across her fingers. No time to dwell on it. She painfully flexed her fingers - she still had all five. That was good. But her range was going to be limited sooner than later: that she knew. And she didn’t have time to stop and unpack the rifle. In these close quarters, it wouldn’t do her much good.

She turned to Raeth, whom she had shoved in front of her. In the distance, she could hear more men. Did a quick mental check - that was ten down. Potentially ten more to go. If she got her hands on one of the fallen soldier’s blasters, it wouldn’t be impossible. A little more difficult than she would have liked, but not impossible. Quick as a wink, she dashed forward, snatched a blaster from the hands of a dead soldier, and fired off a few shots to give them cover.

“Raeth, you need to go ahead,” she hissed, above the high whine of the blaster fire around them. “I’ll cover you. Get you some time. If the soldier wasn’t lying, there’s about ten more guys after us. I can take care of that.”

Wincing, she held her newly procured blaster close to her; checked its power cell. Swore. Of course it was only at a third charged. With the way the soldiers had been firing, it was clear that they weren’t concerned about a long fire fight - that they assumed they’d just barrel in and kill her and Raeth and call it a day. Still, running through the figures in her head, if she didn’t miss - IF-, there would be enough to take out at least six men. Six men. That was doable.

“Why are you still here?!” she snapped, turning to face him. “Get going! I will catch up with you - just keep heading due south.”

"Stop pushing me! I know how to farking take cover!" Raeth may not have been as talented as Saudaji when it came to combat, but he also wasn't a novice. Being treated like one rattled his nerves far more than the barrage of blaster fire that lit up the dark jungle, giving the area a strobe effect that was both somewhat hypnotic and scary.

"Worry about yourself, for shit's sake," Raeth blurted out as he took cover behind a tree. "Or better yet, focus more on killing commandos and less on treating me like a pack animal!"

His pack and his physical condition were making him slow, so he couldn't dodge nearly as well as the spry Twi'lek. Hiding behind a thick tree trunk and popping out to fire off the occasional burst of blaster fire - that, he could do.

Using his night vision glasses, he was able to see the glowing figures of Republic soldiers appearing and disappearing behind trees and shrubs. He kept count of how many he saw, and the sheer number of them wasn't pleasing. With his blaster rifle set to burst fire, he shot at any of the helmeted figures he saw. He even hit one or two of them.

On his best days, Raeth was a good marksman. Unlike their close-quarters sparring sessions, during which Saudaji had to hold back, considerably, in order to give Raeth a fighting chance, she didn't have to hold back much during target practice. She still beat him more often than not, especially when their targets were small, floating droids that whipped through the air. But there were times when Raeth gave her a run for her money.

This wasn't one of Raeth's best days, however. And unlike in training, the targets weren't silly little balls that shot mildly painful stun beams at them. These were living, breathing soldiers coming to kill them. And the red bolts that flew through the darkness - like the bolt that just singed the leaves mere centimeters away from his face - wouldn't merely stun.

Raeth saw Saudaji signal him to move forward. He fired off another burst, then struggled back to his feet to hoof it, southward. As he moved, he weaved between the trees, doing his best to put as much cover between him and the enemy as he could.

The agent did not turn to see Saudaji make quick work of an entire squad by herself, but he could hear her effectiveness. He could vaguely hear the sound of men yelping out in surprise and pain. More noticeably, there was a lull in the blaster fire coming his way, which must've meant she had killed the closest group. A minute or two later, Saudaji reappeared beside him, shoving him again and confirming that she bought them a short reprieve before the next group caught up to them.

"Quit the shoving, damnit! Believe me, all this pushing isn't motivating me to run any better than the death squad on our tails!"

A new flurry of bolts pierced the dark and the quiet. Raeth was in the process of ducking behind cover when Saudaji pushed him again. He landed, awkwardly, in the dirt, face-down and cursing. He continued to curse as he got to a kneeling shooting position and returned fire.

Shortly thereafter, Saudaji ordered Raeth to go ahead. He didn't move. "Separate? You must be joking." He shouted in between bursts from his rifle. He stayed put and kept on firing at any glowing figures he saw thanks to his NV glasses. He didn't seem to be hitting anyone, but at least he was keeping them behind cover and limiting their ability to fire back.

Saudaji yelled at him to go without her. "No!" He said flat-out. "Now stop trying to convince me to abandon you, and go back to killing!" He saw her check the magazine of the weapon she took from a dead soldier. Knowing his rifle was in better condition, he shouted to her, "Here!" Then he tossed the rifle at her. He also took two magazines from his vest and threw those at her feet. He knew she would make better use of the rifle than he could.

Unholstering his heavy blaster pistol, Raeth took cover behind an especially thick tree and was just about to make a new, desperate attempt to contact Sebastian V2 over the comm, when the droid beat him to the punch.

"Master Raeth, come in. Master Raeth, come in."

Raeth couldn't help but smile when he heard the droid's synthesized voice in his earpiece. But what he felt at that moment was a combination of elation, annoyance, and stress. "V2, you magnificent heap, where are you!? We're in quite a bind!"

"I figured as much," the droid stated, matter-of-factly. "When you failed to check in, I decided to fly the Pylat towards your last known position to look for you. I've just flown over the Cisserul Mountain Range."

"Standby for cooridinates!" Raeth blurted out more loudly in order to be heard over the sounds of blaster fire. On the other side of the tree, Saudaji kept the Republic soldiers at bay by herself. He knew that as impressive as she was, she wouldn't be able to do this forever, so he scrambled to use his forearm-mounted datapad to find their exact location and transmit it to the new receptive Sebastian.

"Coordinates received," Sebastian confirmed, adjusting the Patient Pylat heading and cranking its thrusters to the maximum atmospheric setting. "ETA, 5 minutes."

"Get here in under 5 minutes, or else we'll be dead," Raeth said before popping off a few shots with his pistol. "The landing zone is hot. We have engaged 20 soldiers - I repeat, we have engaged 20 SOLDIERS. And there might be 2 fighter craft in the area as well. Prepare to fly in, guns blazing."

As though it had been summoned by Raeth's assessment, one of the Republic fighter craft flew overhead. It bathed the area in a search light so bright that it forced him to tear off his NV glasses. Worse yet, it hovered south of their position. From high in the sky, the craft's two side doors opened, and from it another squad of soldiers leapt out. These soldiers were more heavily armored, and they were equipped with jump packs, which they used to slow their descent as they crashed through the thick leaves and braches between them and the ground. As best as Raeth could figure, another 6 soldiers just dropped in. They were surrounded. Their only saving grace was how the jungle's canopy and their close proximity to the soldiers north of them must have prevented the fighter from firing on them. Beyond that, they were fucked.

They had to survive for five more minutes. It was funny how five minutes felt like nothing when you were having fun, but felt like an eternity when a small army was trying to kill you.

"Extraction is on the way!" Raeth yelled at Saudaji as he palmed a thermal detonator. "Buy us five!" With a press of his thumb, he activated the bomb in his hand, then hurled it towards the troopers that dropped in from the south.