jedi and cylons and klingons, oh my!

The Sweetness of Forgotten Fruit (Karrde/Shada)

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 23:10:42 GMT

If I owned it, I wouldn't be below the federal poverty level. I'd be off on a ranch somewhere playing World of Warcraft, rather than taking a break from grading papers.

This little snippet is set about a year and a half after the Hand of Thrawn duology.

The Sweetness of a Forgotten Fruit

Shada wasn’t entirely sure what woke her up, but as she rolled over, she could hear the soft noises coming down the corridor from the Wild Karrde’s galley. Opening her eyes, she looked towards the window, the blue whorls of hyperspace peeking through the curtains. She thought about closing her eyes again, but now that she’d heard someone in the upper galley, her stomach rumbled in complaint, reminding her that she’d skipped dinner earlier and there was food in the galley, and possibly caf and conversation, maybe even a sabaac game, and Aves still owed her money.

Her brain was now wide awake, even if her body was protesting. Shada stretched her arms over her head and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She reached for the soft tunic and pants she’d had on earlier in the day. She pulled on a pair of socks to protect her feet from the cold durasteel plating of the deck in the corridor outside, and yanking her dark hair up out of her face into a loose bun, she opened her door.

The hallway was dim, the lights lowered to accommodate ship’s night, though the Wild Karrde rarely operated on any set schedule. Still, most of the crew had settled down for the night, other than the night shift on the bridge, and Shada didn’t see anyone else as she moved down the corridor past a few other closed doors.

She paused in the doorway to the galley. The lights were still low, saving the scene before her from the bright florescence of the day lights. Set out on one of the galley counters were a variety of items, and Karrde stood, simply clad, his coat and vest draped over one of the stools, sleeves rolled up, his hands in a bowl mixing ingredients. Something was simmering on the stovetop, and as Shada took one additional step, she was struck by the perfumed scent of some of the tahsani fruit they’d picked up earlier in the day.

She stood there for a moment, simply watching him work the material in the bowl together. She’d have had to have been blind not to notice how attractive Karrde was, his dark hair that was graying at the temples in a distinguished way, his square shoulders, and the deep gravel in his voice. Shada, after having spent most of her time among the Mistryl warrior women, had found she had developed an appreciation for the male form that she’d never truly considered before, and this male form more than others.

He finally lifted his head, dusted his hands and looked directly at her, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “Were you planning on standing there the rest of the evening, or were you going to come in and sit down?”

The quirk of a smile was contagious, and Shada felt her cheeks warm as she detached herself from the wall and walked over to the counter, pulling a stool over and perching upon it. “I didn’t know you cooked,” she said. “I thought you were more of the food prep unit type person.”

Karrde raised an eyebrow, but the smile that had been ghosting across the corner of his mouth had spread across his entire face in a relaxed expression that she wasn’t sure she’d ever truly seen. “I’ve never cooked much,” he said. “But after we picked up that tahsani fruit this morning, it was on my mind.” He reached for the butter that had been sitting out on the counter, cutting it into pieces. “My mother used to make a pie out of tahsani fruit, and I thought I’d see if I could recreate it.”

Shada raised an eyebrow. “You have a mother? Most of the crew figured you sprang fully formed from a smuggling crate.”

His smile didn’t disappear, and she leaned forward, propping her chin on her fists, watching his face relax even more in reminiscence. “I don’t suppose I ever told you about my mother.”

Shada shook her head, watching him finish cutting the butter into pieces, his hands dusty with flour. Karrde’s eyes raised to the ceiling, as if he would find his mother’s face inscribed on the ceiling tiles. “She raised me alone. We lived out on a nerf ranch, and my mother did the cooking for the rancher and his hands. Real cooking, too. She refused to have a food prep unit in the house. My father had left not long after I was born, but I never suffered for one, not with all the uncles I had on the ranch. So she cooked, and I went to school and worked on the ranch until she died when I was about fifteen. After that, I ran off to find my own way and fell in with Car’das.”

“And she made pie out of tahsani fruit?” Shada asked quietly.

“That was about all she made pie from. We had a little orchard for tahsani fruit on the farm, and we had tahsani everything.” Karrde started putting the little pieces of butter into the bowl. “Force, I hated the stuff by the time she died, but when we picked up this shipment, I remembered it.”

“So what are you doing?” Shada asked, standing up on one of the rungs of the stool to peer into the bowl. She’d never been able to cook anything unless she was roasting it over a fire—those situations usually had found her in some kind of trouble. She’d always used the Mistryl self-contained meal packs or the food prep unit wherever she happened to be.

“Making the crust,” Karrde said. “Come over here and I’ll show you.”

Shada did as he asked, standing there watching him finish dropping the butter into the bowl. “It’s just flour and sugar and a little salt. But the butter has to be really cold for this to work.” He stuck his fingers back into the bowl, working the little pieces of butter into the flour. “If we have a mixer on this ship, I can’t find it,” he said. “But this has to go back in the refrigeration unit when it’s mixed anyway.”

Her fingers were itching to try, and Karrde stepped to the side. “Go ahead.”

“Are you sure?” Shada said, her hands hovering over the bowl as he dusted off his hands. “I don’t want to mess up your pie.”

He let out a laugh, one of those laughs that she waited and hoped for, coming from deep in his throat, rumbling out through his chest. “You’re just mixing it together, Shada. It’s hard to mess that up. Go ahead. I’ve got to stir the tahsani fruit.”

She dipped her hands into the bowl, letting the silkiness of the flour run over her fingers, pinching the pieces of butter into the mix. She couldn’t see him, but she could sense his presence behind her as he stirred the pot that was sitting on the stove’s heating element. Proprioception, they called it, but extending outward to include him in the space, extra-sensory perception including him in her awareness of the space around her. She could feel when he turned around to look over her shoulder at her progress. The mixture was coming together, tiny bits of flour and sugar and butter and salt forming beads in the bowl. “Good job,” he said, his breath ghosting across her ear and the side of her face as she continued. “Keep going until it makes a solid ball. Then we’ll roll it out.”

His hands, still dusty, made their way to her hips. Shada barely noticed—it was often a gesture he made when they were at negotiations, an outward expression of his dominance over everything around him, and a reminder that he employed beautiful, deadly women who were answerable only to him. But his arms had never continued on to wind themselves around her waist like they did now, his chin never came to rest on her shoulder, he never stood behind her and breathed her in and caused her to relax back into him the way that he was doing now.

“Talon,” she whispered, barely turning her head towards him, her heart beginning to jump uncomfortably in her chest, her breath struggling to inhale and exhale as she formed the mixture in the bowl into a formal ball. “What next?”

She felt him take a deep breath, his arms loosening from around her as he picked up the bowl, moving across the kitchen to put it in the freezer. “A few minutes in there, and it’ll be ready to roll out,” he said without looking at her. He stood there, facing the fridge for a moment, regathering his composure before facing her again. The relaxation in his stance had disappeared, and though Karrde had not reverted to the persona he usually assumed, he was no longer the man she’d seen only moments before. Now he was tense, uncomfortable in her presence, and she wondered if that brief moment had ruined this peaceful moment for him, remembering what she felt were few simple moments in his past. She wiped her hands on a towel, her fingers no longer floury but greasy with the residue of the butter from the crust. She should go, but something kept her standing there. “How long does it stay in the freezer?”

“Just a few minutes,” he said, and she noted with a little satisfaction that the tension drained a bit from his shoulders. “We have to stir the tahsani,” he continued, gesturing towards the stove.

Shada turned to look over the stove, the orange-colored fruit darkening in the saucepot, simmering, losing the tartness of a raw tahsani, bringing out the sweetness. “What all is in here?”

“Water and some sugar,” Karrde said. She felt his eyes on her as she gently pushed the spoon around in the mixture, nearly approaching a gelatinous state, making sure that she scraped the bottom of the pan. She glanced up at him with lidded eyes, and it was enough encouragement that Karrde’s uncharacteristic uncomfortableness started to disappear. He moved behind her again, reaching around her and covering her hand with her his own, simply helping her stir the fruit, which perfumed the air around them with a tropical scent the longer it sat on the stove. He nuzzled his face into her hair, whispering her name. “Shada.”

She lifted her hand, cupping the back of his head, holding him to her, closing her eyes and gently threading her fingers in his thick hair. She’d been so involved in protecting herself for so long that she couldn’t help, now, in a position where she could trust someone, to let down her guard, to hold on to something even stronger than she was.

Pressure on her hips caused her to turn to face him, and she opened her eyes to study his face. He was searching for something in her face—permission? “Are you just going to stand there?” she asked in a whisper, “or are you going to kiss me, Talon?”

His breath hitched in his chest. “Tell me you want this, Shada,” he said in low urgent tones. “If you don’t, I’ll walk away and never—“

She cut him off, leaning forward, pressing her lips to his, and his grip on her tightened, pulling her flush against him. He tasted like the tahsani fruit he’d sampled as he cooked, and her head spun, insistent on not letting him go, ever, because surely she needed him like she needed air. Shada finally broke away, her hands resting on his upper arms, and she felt herself smile. “I want this,” she said.

He whispered something like a prayer before his mouth descended on hers again.

***

“Seriously,” Aves said, facing down the bridge crew as the Wild Karrde left hyperspace. “I don’t know who was trying to cook in the galley last night, but this—“ he gestured with a pot that might have once held some kind of fruit concoction “—is what was left when I went in there this morning.” He gritted his teeth. “Just because it’s my turn to do the dishes in the galley doesn’t mean that you all get a right to go kriff around in the kitchen and leave this kind of mess.” He set the pan down with a clang on the console. “I have three words for you all. Food. Prep. Unit.”

He picked up the pot and left the bridge, running into Karrde and Shada. “Boss. Shada.” Aves continued his stomp out back towards the galley.

Shada turned a questioning eye to Karrde. “Was that the pot with tahsani fruit?”

Karrde shrugged. “We’ve got more. We can finish it later.”

The smile spread across her face before she remembered that they were in public, and she brushed past him to her station with a flush on her face, knowing his eyes were following her until he moved towards his seat. “Dankin, set us down. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

On the First Day of Christmas...

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 20:39:16 GMT

Kid-friendly, mother approved...

If it belonged to me, I'd be writing it myself, because there is too much opportunity for comedy.

“Daniel?” The tone of Vala’s voice indicated trouble, and Daniel rubbed his forehead with one hand. Two days before Christmas, and the Ori threat meant that SG-1 was still on base through the holidays, which made everything seem just a little more dreary to the man, and the last thing he wanted was to know what Vala was up to now.

“What did you do?” he stated flatly. The translation he was puzzling over was almost the headache Vala was.

She looked mildly offended. “I didn’t do anything. Why did you assume I did something?”

“Because you only say my name in that tone of voice when there’s a problem,” he said, looking at her over the top of his glasses. “Therefore, I repeat my question. What did you do?”

“There is a problem,” she said, bouncing over to a chair next to him. She lowered her voice. “But I didn’t cause it.”

Daniel raised his eyebrows skeptically. “What is it?”

“Everyone on base is talking about someone,” she said conspiratorially. “Someone I’ve never heard of or read about in the mission reports. It’s this Santa Claus. Now, Daniel, I know that you Earthlings are stupid, but really, Mitchell says that this Santa comes into your homes and leaves gifts. Surely the Tau’ri know enough not to allow an Ancient to come into their home and leave a gift without expecting something in return.”

Her expression was deadly serious. Daniel opened his mouth to speak, thought better of what he was about to say and amended it. “Mitchell told you all this?” Vala nodded. “Even the part about Santa being an Ancient?”

“Yes, and Daniel, you know as well as I do that the Ancients—well, no one—gives anything for free.”

“Okay,” Daniel said. “Vala, Mitchell was having you on. Santa is not an Ancient. He’s just a story we tell to children.”

Vala gave him a withering look. “Really, Daniel, you don’t have to get defensive because you didn’t think of it first, but you have to admit that it makes sense. After all, didn’t Arthur and his court used to be just a story you told children?”

Daniel opened his mouth to say something again, and shut it again. Vala readjusted her position. “So, the most important thing I want to know is Santa going to bring me something?”

He was going to kill Mitchell for this.

***

Daniel found Mitchell in the officer’s mess enjoying a bowl of Jello with something resembling melted whipped cream on top. The colonel was poking at the whipped cream despondently while Teal’c and Sam looked on with amusement. “You. I am going to kill you.”

Mitchell looked up from his Jello. “What did I do?”

“You told Vala that Santa Claus was an Ancient!”

Sam nearly choked on her coffee. “You told Vala what?”

Mitchell looked from Teal’c to Sam to Daniel then back to Teal’c in hopes of help. Teal’c merely raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, I guess I did.” “Did you explain that Santa is just a story?” Sam asked.

“I tried,” Daniel said, sitting down and snagging himself a cup of coffee. “I tried explaining the history of Santa Claus to her, everything. She keeps countering with the fact that humans have a tendency to turn stories about Ancients into folktalkes.”

“This is true,” Teal’c rumbled. “The Tau’ri have made the stories about Arthur and his knights a great part of their mythology, have they not?”

“I never understood how St. Nicholas got turned into Santa Claus,” Mitchell said, completely off topic. “That never made any sense to me.”

“In German, it turns into something more closely approximating Sinterklaus,” Sam explained. “That’s how we got Santa Claus in English. It probably became common usage during the time of Alfred the Great and evolved from Old English into the modern—“ she trailed off.

“Oh dear God,” Daniel said, realizing where she was going.

“Wait a second,” Mitchell said, gesturing with his spoon. “I’ve missed something.”

“Old English—“ Daniel said. “It’s one of the languages that evolved from Ancient.”

Teal’c raised his eyebrows as Sam and Daniel both rose from the table. Mitchell sat there with his mouth open for a minute before shouting after them, “Wait, I meant it as a joke! I can’t have guessed that Santa Claus was really an Ancient!”

***

“According to the Ancient database, St. Nicolas was a person,” Sam said, shaking her head in wonder. “He wandered around, giving gifts to those he found worthy. Often times, he was accompanied by another person who punished the wicked he found on his travels.”

“Does it say who that other person was?” Mitchell asked, leaning against the table in Daniel’s office.

Daniel shook his head. “Not here. We could probably extrapolate from the Old English.” Mitchell waved a hand indicating that it wasn’t necessary. “The database says that St. Nicholas ascended after blessing another to continue along his mission. That must be the St. Nicholas who is buried in Italy.”

“I can’t believe you guessed this, Cam,” Sam said, shaking her head. “Of all the things for you to have joked about with Vala, you picked this, and it’s true!”

“Did I hear my name?” Vala said, poking her head into the room. “What’s going on?”

Daniel looked at the others. “It turns out that it’s true, Vala. Santa Claus was an Ancient.’

She didn’t look surprised. “Of course he was, Daniel. I still think it’s silly that you let him go into your house at night, though, but when in London—“

Daniel winced. “When in Rome, Vala.”

Her eyes lit up. “I wonder what he’s going to bring me!” She bounced once and disappeared.

“Should one of us not tell her that this Santa Claus does not actually bring presents?” Teal’c asked.

“We can’t tell her that,” Mitchell said. “That’d be like telling a kid that there’s no—“ he paused.

“That there’s no Santa Claus?” Sam finished for him.

“Something like that,” he muttered.

“Well, then someone is going to have to be Santa Claus for her,” Sam said.

Mitchell and Daniel looked at one another, then at Teal’c. The Jaffa folded his arms across his chest and stared at them.

“Oh, no,” Mitchell started, but Daniel cut him off.

“You’re the one that got us into this mess to begin with,” Daniel said. “So you’re going to be Santa.”

“Not only that,” Sam said, “but you’re going to be the one who has goes to General Landry and gets him to let me off base long enough to buy something for Vala from Santa and find you a Santa outfit.”

“We don’t have anything here that would do?” Mitchell said miserably.

“As well stocked as this base may be, I do not think we have a Santa Claus outfit,” Teal’c said.

“Yes, it does!” Daniel said. “The marines upstairs at NORAD do Toys for Tots. They’ve got one. All we need is something to give Vala from Santa. What did you all get her for Christmas?”

“A new shirt,” Sam said promptly.

“I give gifts at the Jaffa holiday of Shan’mar,” Teal’c said. “This you know well, Daniel Jackson.”

“I was supposed to get Vala something for Christmas?” Mitchell said. He stopped. “What? I didn’t get you all anything either.”

“I suppose we could give Vala what we got for Cam,” Sam said.

“I don’t think she’d appreciate a subscription to Guns and Ammo,” Daniel said. “Does anyone have an idea on what she wants?”

“What did you get her, Daniel?” Sam asked.

“She wanted a coffee mug with her name on it,” Daniel said. “Do you know how hard it is to get someone to put ‘Vala’ on a mug that’s dishwasher and microwave safe?”

“Perfect!” Sam said. “We’ll give her that, and I’ve got some old sparkly hair barrettes somewhere.”

“But then I don’t have anything to give her for Christmas!” Daniel protested.

“Make something up,” Mitchell suggested. “Tell her it hasn’t come in yet. That’s what I was going to do if you all got me something for Christmas and I hadn’t got you anything. Tell you that it was backordered.”

“You are an evil human being,” Sam said, staring at him. She smacked his hand as he tried to sneak one of the Jolly Ranchers from the drawer. “Someone has to have a bag of candy that we can trade a favor for, too.” She looked at the men standing around. “Go on, shoo. Anything sparkly or sweet that you can trade for, go get it.”

“You realize that I outrank you, right?” Mitchell said.

“You realize that if General Landry finds out about this, I’m going to tell him that you suggested he wear the Santa suit,” Sam said.

He scooted out the doorway faster than anyone else.

***

Daniel didn’t think that Vala Mal Doran could get more excited, but she could. Walter had rigged up a CD player in the mess and Christmas music was playing, and even he, the self-appointed Christmas Scrooge of the base, was beginning to get into the spirit as Vala tried to string popcorn. “This is a lot of run, Daniel. You Earthlings have much more fun at your holidays than anyone else I’ve ever seen.”

“Well, you’re not going to be able to keep stringing popcorn if you keep eating it,” he said, squinting at the string he was attempting to put together. “It’s meant to go on the tree, not in your mouth.”

“I don’t really understand why you bring a tree indoors,” she said pensively, “or why it would be miniature or artificial, or why you decorate it, but it is fun. I like that tinsel stuff.”

“You still have some in your hair,” he observed.

She ignored him and held up her string. “There, see! Finished. Now I get to eat the rest.”

“You know, Santa only comes if you’ve been good,” he said.

Vala craned her neck to glance at him from her position near the three foot tree that someone had set up on the middle table in the mess. “I’ve been good.” She paused to think for a minute. “Well, I’ve mostly been good.” A moment later, she turned back around. “Just how good do you have to be for Santa to come?”

Daniel chuckled. “I’m sure you’ll make it.”

“When does he come?” she said, bounding back over to the table and grabbing a handful of popcorn.

“He comes when you’re asleep,” Daniel said, finishing his string of popcorn. “And he knows when you’re sleeping, Vala.”

“Of course he does,” Vala said, “He’s an Ancient.” Her eyes gleamed. “The sooner I go to sleep, the sooner it will be, won’t it?”

“That was—is—generally my philosophy,” Daniel said.

“Do you know what?” Vala said.

“Do I even want to ask?”

“I think that Santa doesn’t come to you because you don’t believe in him anymore, Daniel Jackson,” she said, crossing her arms. “The Ori require worship to make them powerful. Well, Santa doesn’t require worship for power, but maybe in return for the gifts, he requires belief.”

Daniel, one of the few beings on the Earth to have lived life as an Ascended being, thought about saying something, and as he had so often over the last day and a half, again said nothing.

***

Mitchell very quietly opened the door to Vala’s quarters. The basket he had in his hands was filled with goodies that he’d spent most of his day trading people for. He owed a marine two bottles of vodka, and he was completely out of cash, but the basket was full as he snuck into the room. Outside in the hallway, Sam, Daniel and Teal’c were watching his progress.

He felt ridiculous in the Santa suit. He’d tried to make the argument that he was colonel in the Air Force and he could sneak into Vala’s quarters and leave the gift there without her waking up.

They’d made him wear it anyway. He supposed it was part of his punishment.

He was almost back to the door when he heard a voice speak out of the darkness like Cindy Lou Who. “Santa?”

Mitchell froze. “Ho ho ho!” he said, in as deep a voice as he could manage. “Go back to sleep, Vala, and Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas, Santa,” he heard her say sleepily. He slipped back out into the hallway and quietly closed the door. He took four quiet steps away from the door and ran.

General Landry was nearly bowled over by a Santa Claus bolting down the hallway, followed closely behind by Carter, Jackson and Teal’c. He shook his head and didn’t bother asking.

***

Daniel was sound asleep when something pounced on him. “Daniel, wake up, it’s Christmas!”

“Oof,” was all he could manage. “What time is it?”

“0500,” Vala said. “Daniel, wake up, Santa came!”

He opened one eye to look at the clock. “Vala, it is four-thirty in the morning. Even if it is Christmas morning.”

“But Santa came,” she said urgently, yanking the blanket off the bed. “Look!”

Giving up on sleep, Daniel finally opened both eyes to see the basket Mitchell had left in Vala’s room sitting on the pillow beside him. “Very nice. Is that a mug with your name on it?”

“Yes!” she said. “Just like I wanted!”

“I bet it’s even dishwasher and microwave safe,” he said, yawning.

“And look, I have new sparkly barrettes!” she said, turning her head to show them in her hair. “And a ton of candy!”

The candy got his notice. He reached for a peppermint to get the morning taste out of his mouth. “Delicious.”

She stood up on his bed and looked around. “Oh, Daniel, you didn’t get anything.”

“S’ok,” he mumbled. “I’ll live.”

“I’ll share,” she said, popping a chocolate into her mouth. “What did you get me?”

“It hasn’t come in yet,” he said, too sleepy to think of something better. “It’s on backorder.”

She seemed to accept that explanation. “That’s okay. It makes Christmas last longer!”

“Glad you approve,” he said. “Why don’t you go back to bed and sleep a little longer?”

“I’ve already had coffee,” she announced. “I’ve been up since three. I was waiting to get you up.”

Daniel took another look at the clock. “Why don’t you go show Mitchell what you got?”

Vala made a face. “He sleeps with a gun under his pillow.”

“I don’t even want to know how you know that,” Daniel said. He sighed. “Fine, I’ll get up.”

Vala leaped off the bed. “Oh, Daniel?”

“Yes?” he said, reaching for his glasses.

“There’s something else in here. It’s a toy, but it says some assembly required.”

He was going to kill Mitchell.

SGA fic: Degrees of Control

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 03:38:56 GMT

Author: CarrKicksDoor
Title: Degrees of Control

Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Spoilers: Through 3X09 and one teeny bit from “The Return” but not plot wise and you’d never know unless you’d seen it.

Pairings: Sparky

Summary: From Hell’s Gate, I spit at thee.

Rating: No one under 18 or over 75, por favor, for the nekkidness and the sex.

Word Count: 5708

Disclaimer: If Stargate belonged to me, I’d be writing it and making money, instead of this.

Notes: For sparky_sparks September. Yes, it’s horribly late, but most things with me are. Apologies. I had the first time prompt and a dark fic with John being controlling of Elizabeth. I believe I interpreted first time somewhat broadly (as in first time with each other) and as for the second, you will have to judge. There’s controlling, but as for the dark? Maybe not so much. (This is carrole's fanfic journal.) Part 2 is here.

He wasn’t going to be able to keep up this pace much longer, he knew, grimly tightening his grip on his P-90 as he marched Elizabeth through the wooded undergrowth. Night was falling on the god-forsaken planet, but John Sheppard wasn’t about to stop moving. Elizabeth had wanted to come on this damn mission, and he was going to make sure that she got the most—well-rounded—experience out of it.

That assumed, of course, that they escaped the Genii chasing after them.

Elizabeth was breathing hard behind him. “Shouldn’t we stop somewhere for the night, Colonel?” she said, only slightly out of breath, and he felt the slightest bit of remorse for keeping up a pace that was probably unnecessary. “Surely we’ve outrun the Genii by now, and we’re just moving further away from the Stargate.”

John shook his head. “I want to put as much distance between us and them as we can,” he said. “As for moving away from the Stargate, what do you think a rescue team is for?”

She ignored his flippant comment. Her muscles were burning from the hurried pace he was setting, and while Elizabeth Weir was by no means out of shape—she wasn’t a member of the United States Armed Forces either. “Colonel, I really think we should stop for the night,” she said. “If our rescue is at hand, we don’t want to put them in more danger than necessary—“

“The Genii are guarding the gate,” he bit off. “They’re going to be in danger regardless, unless the Daedalus brings them. So unless you an argument that’s more convincing, Elizabeth—“ he trailed off.

She wasn’t about to admit that she was exhausted from being dragged through the woods and tried to at least feign a smile. “Lead the way, Colonel.”

By the time they stopped, about an hour later, the woods were pitch black. John hadn’t quit moving until Elizabeth had finally protested she couldn’t keep up with him unless she had hold of his uniform. He’d settled them alee of a rocky type of a hill—Elizabeth couldn’t tell in the dim light of the very small fire he’d built—and she pulled her jacket closer around herself. He’d tossed her a power bar and left his P-90 sitting next to her before he announced he was going to reconnoiter a moment.

Elizabeth sighed to herself as she broke off half the power bar and absently munched on it. When they’d been attacked by the Genii, she’d lost her pack, and they hadn’t had the opportunity to grab Rodney’s discarded one as they ran from their attackers. The last she’d seen of John’s team was Ronon and Teyla dragging Rodney’s limp form through the gate as John yelled for to keep going. It had taken a powerful shove from Teyla for Ronon to go through the gate, and Elizabeth couldn’t help but worry about Rodney.

In any case, it wouldn’t do to scarf down the remainder of the power bar. She wrapped it back up with the crinkle of cellophane and put it in the pocket of her jacket. She might share with John when he got back, assuming his mood had improved.

The crack of a stick startled her, and she started. Her hand reached out toward John’s P-90, hoping she wouldn’t have to pick it up, but John appeared himself from the trees. “You planning on shooting me, Elizabeth?” he said, gesturing toward her hand, still outstretched for the P-90. He holstered his pistol, sitting across from her.

“Hardly,” she said. “I still need you to get me out of here, Colonel.”

Her attempt at levity had little affect. “We won’t be able to stay here tomorrow,” he said. “That attack was specific—they wanted you, Elizabeth.”

That was a new theory. “What makes you think that?”

The set of his jaw gave her an uncomfortable feeling, as if John was staring down into her very core. “I recognized some of the men. They’re Kolya’s. They were trying to kill me, Elizabeth, but they were being a lot more careful about shooting around you.” He picked up a stick and gave the fire a particularly vicious poke. “I should have killed that bastard when I had the chance.”

“Believe it or not, I can’t say I disagree,” she said, folding her arms to warm her hands against her body. She’d seen what Kolya had done, and she’d seen what parts of John the man brought out. Elizabeth Weir had always been a pacifist, and she had always been against the need for a military. Through her time working with John Sheppard, she’d somewhat revised that opinion, but with Kolya was mentioned, she saw that there was something within John that was dangerous, and only heightened by his training. He didn’t feel this way about the Wraith. The Wraith, to some extent, were doing what evolution demanded. They were a large enemy, and nothing about the Wraith was personal.

Kolya was extraordinarily, immensely personal. And if there was one thing that Elizabeth had learned about John Sheppard, it was that when he took things personally, he took them extremely personally. He may have buried them deeply inside, but it grew there and festered until he nearly exploded. The day John met Kolya and had a reason was going to be a bad day to be Kolya.

“The great Dr. Weir condoning murder?” John said, thrusting his stick into the fire again. “Say it isn’t so.”

“Are you going to continue to be moody and pissed off the entire time we’re here?” she demanded.

He grinned at her. It wasn’t the usual, slightly sarcastic smile, or even the one of true happiness she saw on occasion. It was pure nastiness. “Maybe.”

“This is because I asked to come on this mission, isn’t it?” she said, folding her arms and fixing him with the stare she used for squabbling diplomats. “That’s why you’re so angry.”

He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “No, Elizabeth. I’m angry because I told you not to come on this mission and instead of listening to me, again, you came anyway, and now we’re on the run from an enemy that wants you captured. A particularly nasty enemy, if you haven’t forgotten from the last time he had you.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” she said coldly.

“Good,” he said. “Then that should be sufficient reason for you to listen to me to keep it from happening again.” He threw the stick into the fire. “Go to sleep, Elizabeth. I’ll keep watch.”

She didn’t bother protesting, but as she lay down and put her head on her hands, she couldn’t help but remember that there was another reason for her to listen—the absolute cold John had become during the storm.

She’d do whatever this controlling, angry John said if it meant keeping him from a decline into that coldness again.

“Elizabeth!” John hissed towards the sleeping form. It was nearly dawn, and his breath blew out in a cloud of steam in the cool morning. “Elizabeth, wake up!”

He’d already kicked dirt over the remaining coals of the fire, and Elizabeth sat up. He put a finger to her lips and silently handed her his pistol. She took it, reluctance showing in her face, but she didn’t argue with him.

He knew they shouldn’t have stopped. He’d underestimated Kolya’s determination to catch Elizabeth—and possibly himself—and the Genii had nearly caught up to them. Stripping off his flak jacket, he wrapped it around her. Everything had said this would be a peaceful planet, and she hadn’t had one, and although she shook her head, he refused to take it back. Gesturing with his head, he began to head through the woods, Elizabeth close behind him.

The voices were getting closer, and John stopped dead in his tracks, ducking down. Elizabeth did the same, and he pulled her down further. On the rare and unlikely chance he ever let her off world again, she was not allowed to wear red. Period.

Shouts greeted their ears. “They’ve found where we camped last night,” he whispered in her ear. “Got no choice now. Let’s go.”

Choosing speed over stealth now, they moved faster, hoping that the Genii were too involved in their discovery of the camp and making too much noise themselves to hear them moving away. Heart racing, John pulled Elizabeth along, running through the bush like Wraith were behind them instead of the Genii.

How appropriate, then, that the blast that hit him in the back was from a captured Wraith stunner. “Go—“ he managed, before darkness claimed him.

He couldn’t have said he was really surprised to see Elizabeth in the cell with him when he woke. “Good morning,” she said, looking down at him.

“You’re upside down,” he answered. From where he was lying with his head in her lap, it was true.

“You’re upside down,” she countered, helping him to sit up. “How’s your head?”

“I feel like I’ve sat through one of Rodney’s lectures,” he said, putting the heel of his hand against his temple, before looking at her. “What are you doing here? I told you to run.”

She didn’t answer him, which told him all he needed to know. Rather than run, she’d surrendered, probably in an effort to keep him safe. “Dammit, Elizabeth! Why didn’t you run?”

“Even if I had run, I couldn’t have outrun them,” she said patiently. “Surrender seemed the most sensible option, and since I was awake the entire time, I know that we’re still on the same planet we started out on. Kolya has been using this planet as a base of operations.”

The murderous rage that had been threatening to overwhelm him rose up in his chest again, and with some effort he tamped it down. “Elizabeth, he will kill you to get what he wants. I—damn it, I do not work this hard to protect you for you to go and put yourself in this kind of danger, Elizabeth!”

“Calm down, Colonel,” she said, the very picture of grace under fire. “Perhaps we can negotiate for our release, and as you stated, there is undoubtedly a rescue operation underway.”

“You think Caldwell is going to approve an operation of that kind?” John exploded.

“Do you think Ronon would let Caldwell stop him?” she countered.

“We don’t negotiate with kidnappers, Elizabeth,” John said between gritted teeth. “And I sure as hell don’t negotiate with your kidnappers.”

“If you’re referring to me, Colonel Sheppard, you can address me directly,” a voice said from the shadows.

John turned around, and Elizabeth knew she’d lost him. The very tone of Kolya’s voice had caused him to slide from the red hot violent temper to the ice of pure rage. “Kolya, you son of a bitch. Let us out of here, or I swear to God, I will tear you apart.”

“You are in no position to make demands of any kind, Colonel Sheppard,” Kolya said, stepping into the light. He had aged more since the last time they had seen him.

“You’ve gotten uglier. I didn’t think that was possible,” John said.

“Your puerile insults are amusing, Colonel Sheppard,” Kolya said, “but they will not provoke me.” He took a step closer to the cell, still out of John’s reach. “Certainly not the way I intend to provoke you.”

“Gentlemen,” Elizabeth said. “Let’s not fight. Surely there’s a way we can resolve this.”

“Ah, the ever peace-making Dr. Weir,” Kolya said. “Do you realize, Colonel Sheppard, that it took me quite some time to determine your weakness? I had to consider the problem quite thoroughly. Put myself in your shoes, as it were. I had to think about your character. What would make you hurt, Colonel Sheppard? What would make you hurt to the point you would willingly beg for your own death?”

Kolya smiled. “Ah, you already carry guilt for something in your past, Colonel Sheppard. It has made you strong. This I realize. I have felt this guilt. But that is guilt out of failing your duty. Out of failing your fellow man.” His gaze fixed on Elizabeth. “But then I remembered what happened when you thought Dr. Weir was dead. And I have to wonder what would happen if you felt guilt out of failing your woman.” He took a step closer to the bars. “Out of failing your love.”

John struck with such speed that Elizabeth barely saw him move. His hand shot out through the bars to grasp Kolya by the collar and bodily pulled him into the bars, bloodying the man’s face before the guards could pull Kolya away and shove in the torture devices she’d already felt to make John back off. “You son of a bitch,” John spat. “You’re so bent on revenge you can’t think about anything else.”

“I will allow you to spend some time with Dr. Weir,” Kolya said. “It should not be said that I am not a generous man.” He gestured toward the guards who followed him from the room.

Elizabeth immediately knelt by John’s side, but he pushed her away. “Stop, Elizabeth.” He grabbed one of the bars and levered himself upright without her assistance. “Stay away from me.”

“Pardon?” she said, crossing her arms. “You’ve just been injured, Colonel. The least you can do is let me look at it.”

The snarl he turned on her took her by surprise. “Good God, woman, what are you not understanding? He thinks we’re together. The more you act like it, the more he’s going to torture us.”

“First of all, don’t call me ‘woman,’” she said. “And second, if he discovers we’re not, then you’re right. This is going to be over very quickly.”

His voice was low as he spoke. “Do you understand what they might do to you, Elizabeth? Didn’t the Victorians call it a fate worse than death? I will not be responsible for inflicting that or any other kind of torture on you, Elizabeth. I won’t.”

“If you’re going to quote annoying phrases, then I will,” she said. “While there’s life, there’s hope. Our goal is to stay alive.” She took another step towards him. “So let me look, please.”

He sighed, and lifted his shirt. A few welts were forming, but it didn’t look serious. Gently running her fingers over the abused skin, she felt his quick intake of breath and looked up. “John?”

He pushed her hands away, more gently this time, and adjusted his shirt. “I can’t let you do this.”

“You don’t get to control everything,” she said quietly. “You try, but you don’t.”

“I can’t let him hurt you,” he said, his voice more urgent. “Elizabeth, he’s given you enough pain in the past, and I’m not going to let him do that again.”

She put her hand to his lips. “John, you have to realize that you can’t always protect me. Things happen.” She raised an eyebrow. “Did I ever tell you about the time I was in Sudan and our entire delegation got captured by one of the local warlords?”

He shook his head and she continued. “Five of us survived—only those of us who were the actual diplomats.” She wrapped her arms around herself as the memory surrounded her. “They killed my assistant. She was twenty-four, fresh out of graduate school. I’d taught her at Georgetown and asked her to come along. In the blink of an eye, she was gone.” Elizabeth looked down at her boots and stared at them. “You weren’t there, John, and even if you had been, you couldn’t have done anything. The ambush was so well planned, our protection was overwhelmed in less than a minute.” She looked back up. “Things are going to happen. Sometimes it’s random senseless violence. Sometimes it’s an accident. I could be killed back home in a car accident, or I could be killed tomorrow by tripping down the stairs. But unless you’re going to put me into a padded room, there’s no way to protect me from all these things. So we have to go on the best we can.”

“Maybe I can’t protect you from those things,” he said softly. “But I can do my damnedest to keep bastards like Kolya away from you.” He put his finger to her lips to keep her from speaking. “But I can make sure your tires are inflated and your oil is changed. And I can be at the bottom of the stairs to catch you.”

“He’s doing this to hurt you,” she said as his hand dropped away from her mouth. “You have to not care, John.”

“I can’t not care, Elizabeth. You know that,” he said. “And unfortunately, so does Kolya. I don’t know how, but somehow he’s gotten inside my head and figured me out. He’s figured out what makes me tick, and that’s more than a little scary, because I know that he’s right.” His face hardened. “And I can get inside his mind, because I know what’s driving him, and that makes me a little scared because that means he and I are more alike than I thought.”

“You are not alike,” she said firmly. “And if he’s figured you out, it’s because you are a good man and you wear your emotions on your sleeve, John. Half the time I can tell what you’re thinking because it’s written all over your face.”

“And what’s written all over my face now?” he asked.

SGA fic: Degrees of Control Pt 2 (NC-17)

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 03:35:31 GMT

“And what’s written all over my face now?” he asked.

Elizabeth studied his countenance for a moment. “Pain,” she finally said. “Anger. You’re hurting, John. And you want something.”

“What do I want?” he said, his voice dropping into that low register again.

“I can’t tell,” she whispered, knowing that she was lying. She knew that he knew she was lying too, and waited for him to call her on it.

“I want out of here,” he said. “I want to kill Kolya. I want to know how he got into my head and found out my weakness.”

His eyes met hers and Elizabeth froze. “I want my weakness,” he finished. “Now can you tell?”

“Women?” she said, trying to force a flippant answer, but there was no more being flippant. John Sheppard had a one-track personality. When he decided on something, there was no getting him to deviate from it. She had, somewhere along the way, won the argument they’d been having earlier, and now she was wondering if she might regret it.

He reached out and pulled her flush against him, and she knew that she was definitely going to regret this. “Just one, Elizabeth.”

John’s mouth descended upon hers and she lost all thought of regrets or anything else as he demanded entrance to her. She complied immediately, opening to him, and his tongue invaded her mouth as his hands dipped below her waist, pulling her closer to him. She tangled her fingers in his hair, and clung to him, and it wasn’t until they needed to breathe that they broke away from each other. John didn’t stop to look at her, continuing his ministrations along her neck, biting gently at where her neck met her shoulder, at her earlobe, whispering to her in broken tones that hinted at much more than a simple physical need, “Dear God, Elizabeth, I need you.”

With a deft hand, she ran her hand down the front of his light jacket, unsnapping every fastener in quick succession before she pushed it off his shoulders. Underneath, he was wearing his customary black t-shirt, and his mouth returned to hers before she could divest him of it as well. Her own jacket fell to the floor, and she returned her hands to his face, desperate to touch him. She had denied herself this for so long, telling herself that she needed to be professional, and knew that she could never be professional with John ever again, not after the way his hands were working their way up the back of her shirt and expertly undoing the clasp to her bra. Every meeting after this would be colored with the memory of this, of his hands pulling her shirt over her head and stripping her bra from her, of the way he was devouring her with his eyes.

He sank to his knees in front of her as if in worship of his goddess before attacking the button of her pants. She struggled to kick her boots off as he yanked her pants down to her knees, then off. His hands spanned her slender hips, and he gently leaned his head against her body, the hair at the top of his head tickling the underside of her breasts. She held him there for a moment as he breathed in the scent of her, reveled in the feel of her smooth skin.

She waited until he looked up at her, and she could see the fear in his eyes. The anger had disappeared, but the cold was still there, far behind the fear that he was making a mistake, that he thought she didn’t really want this. Elizabeth pulled him up until he was standing. “You are wearing too many clothes,” she said, her voice steady, and then she tilted his head down and whispered something obscene in his ear that made his eyes light up.

“Elizabeth Weir,” he said, trying to arrange some of the discarded clothing on the floor with the toe of his boot, “I never knew you could be so dirty.”

She pulled the shirt over his head and dropped it into the floor. “Stop talking.”

Elizabeth loved sculpture art. The ancient art that had captured the human form in its perfection had always fascinated her, partially because of her inability to reproduce something that should have seemed so simple. The classic forms of the male body had always struck her as exquisite, but as John stripped down in front of her, she thought that none of the masters could have captured the form before her.

John took a heavy breath, waiting to see if he met with her approval. Her fingers gently brushed over his skin, over new scars he’d gotten since he’d come to Atlantis, over old scars he’d obtained fighting in conflicts on Earth, over even older scars he’d had since childhood, and then her fingers tangled in his hair again as she pulled him towards her, holding him close, feeling skin next to skin. Elizabeth barely felt him lay her down on the makeshift bed, and as his hands began to do incredible things to her, she lost all rational thought.

He screamed when they took her from him. He hurled invective in languages he didn’t know he knew at Kolya and his men as they dragged Elizabeth, kicking and struggling from the cell, and it was only through the efforts of three men that John didn’t get out of the cell to kill them right there.

They’d gotten dressed and she’d managed a few good kicks—one to Kolya himself that would leave the man smarting for days. John reminded himself, putting one hand to his side as the bitter laughter spilled out of his throat, to congratulate her about that if they ever got out of this alive.

The blood on his hand confirmed his former inexpert diagnosis—he’d been stabbed, and none too gently. It wasn’t deep enough to be serious or to hit anything vital, just deep enough to hurt like hell. Just deep enough to make him weak. Just deep enough to piss him off.

They threw her back into the cell some time later like she was a limp doll. Coughing, he crawled over to her. “Elizabeth,” he wheezed. Maybe that stab wound had been worse than he thought. “Come on, Elizabeth, wake up.”

Her head turned toward the sound of his voice. “John,” she whispered.

“Hey,” he said, smiling at her, even though she’d kept her eyes closed. “How you doing?”

She coughed. “I think I’ll just lie here with my eyes shut and pretend I’m dead.”

“Maybe I didn’t put the right spin on that question,” he said. He tried again, performing a spot-on impression of Joey Tribbiani. “How you doing?”

Her eyes flew open and she laughed in spite of herself, wincing as she did so. “You are a pop culture junkie. Batman—“

“Classic.”

“Friends—“

“Classic.

“The Princess Bride—“

“Sacred.”

She raised an eyebrow at that, and he held out a hand in a flourish. “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. Greatest sword fight in history, Elizabeth.”

“Not Robin Hood?” she asked.

“Kevin Costner would have his ass whipped by Mandy Patinkin,” John declared.

“I mean Errol Flynn,” she said.

He shrugged. “He was okay. There wasn’t the emotion behind it, though.” John mimicked Inigo’s accent again. “’Offer me money. Power too, promise me that! Offer me anything that I ask for.’” He raised his voice into a falsetto for the six-fingered man. “’Anything you want.’“ John’s fierce grin appeared. “’I want my father back, you son of a bitch.’ I’m telling you, Elizabeth, greatest sword fight ever. Even Episode III can’t compare.” He paused. “Just don’t say that in front of Rodney. He and Zelenka will go on for hours. Rodney loved Episode III and Radek hated it.”

The door opened and John tensed, ready to fight again, moving in front of Elizabeth. “That’s because Zelenka is an idiot and can’t appreciate CG properly,” Rodney announced. “Just because Darth Maul didn’t need CG does not make the Episode III fight less spectacular.” He looked over his shoulder at Ronon. “Told you I could get it open.”

Ronon picked Elizabeth up and carried her out to the puddlejumper where Carson was waiting. Lorne was keeping guard outside, and John waited until Elizabeth was safely inside with Carson and Rodney before speaking. “Teyla, stay here and guard Elizabeth and Rodney,” he said.

Teyla looked at him suspiciously. “John, what are you going to do?”

“Something you’re not going to like,” he said grimly. “Stay here, Teyla, I mean it. Ronon, Lorne, you’re with me.”

“Where we going, sir?” Lorne asked, even though he already knew the answer.

Ronon deliberately set his weapon to kill. “Where do you think? After that bastard Kolya.”

“You’re bleeding,” Ronon said, weapon held out in front of him.

“Yeah,” John said, ignoring the pain everytime he took a step. “Kolya! Why don’t you come crawling out of your hole, you mini-Hussein!” If Lorne was stifling a laugh, John ignored him. “Come face me, you coward!”

“You really think he’s going to come out?” Ronon asked.

“Remind me to bring The Wrath of Khan from home next time,” John said.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to quote Shakespeare at him,” Lorne said.

“That was The Undiscovered Country, nimrod,” John said. “Khan was quoting Melville.”

“You only know because you asked Elizabeth,” Ronon rumbled, stepping forward.

John just glared at him and yelled again. “Kolya!”

The Genii outcast stepped out of the shadows. “Colonel Sheppard.”

John raised his weapon. “You have messed with us for the last time, Kolya.”

“Oh, I think I shall continue causing trouble for you and your friends,” Kolya said, holding up what looked ominously like a trigger. “I press this button, Colonel, and the Stargate blows. And not only does your Stargate blow, but the remote detonator I conveniently placed in Dr. Weir’s body explodes. So, we find ourselves at an impasse.”

John ground his teeth so hard it was audible to the other men in the room. “What do you suggest?”

“I suggest I escape through the Stargate. I’m afraid this is a fairly simple radio transmitter. Once I’m through the other side of the gate, you will have no difficulty getting Dr. Weir out of here safely.” Kolya raised an eyebrow. “Neither of us wins, but neither of us loses.”

“We walk you to the gate,” John said flatly. “You give us the transmitter before you go through.”

“And leave me with no guarantee you would allow me to pass through the gate unharmed?”

“I’ll give you my word on it,” John said, a hint of sarcasm coloring his voice. “Or I can take my chances and let Ronon shoot you down now.”

“I don’t think you would, Colonel,” Kolya said, shaking his head as he stepped forward, not quite into Ronon’s reach. “You see, I don’t believe that you are willing to take that chance with Dr. Weir’s life.” His grin became truly infuriating. “It’s amazing how it can take your worst enemy to point out your worst weakness, isn’t it, Colonel? I presume you won’t allow Dr. Weir away from you again.” His eyes narrowed. “If you do, I promise you that it will be much more unpleasant a stay than this was.”

If his intent was to anger John, he had succeeded, but not in any visible form. “Ronon? Don’t take your gun off him. Lorne, you do the same. We’re walking to the gate right now, Kolya, and if you make so much as one wrong move, your life is mine.”

“After you, Colonel,” Kolya said, with an expansive gesture.

“Like hell. You’re going first.”

Suppressing his sardonic smile, Kolya led them out of the building. The open light nearly blinded John as he came out, but he marched on, following the Genii to the gate. Lorne didn’t need verbal instructions—he only had to see the exchange of looks on Ronon and John’s faces to take point long enough to distract Kolya.

Halfway to the gate, John raised Ronon’s weapon and shot Kolya in the back.

They dragged the body to Beckett to make sure that he was good and dead and that he would stay dead—for one could never make sure in this damn galaxy, after all, how many times had Daniel Jackson come back to life—and Beckett said nothing to the men who unceremoniously dumped Kolya’s body on the floor of the jumper. With a few terse words to Rodney, John explained the detonator, and Beckett ceased his examination of the dead man long enough to find the thing in Elizabeth’s neck and take it out. Rodney awkwardly piloted the jumper through the gate, and the last thing John saw before he passed out from blood loss was the welcome lights of the Atlantis gate room.

He learned later that Beckett had to take his spleen out, and he had to endure no small amount of cursing about trying to be a hero and other exasperating attempts to make him more careful in the future, but they mostly ceased after a minor explosion of his temper a day before Beckett released him from the infirmary.

It was three days after that before he finally had the courage to come up to Elizabeth. The sound of her voice gently calling “Come in,” nearly caused him to run away from her door, but steeling himself, John waved his hand across the door and walked in. “Elizabeth.”

She hadn’t risen from her spot on the bed where she was comfortably ensconced in a makeshift throne of pillows and reports. “John,” she said, her voice sounding somewhat surprised. “Come in. Please, sit down.”

It was too stilted, he thought, too clinical for him as he pulled a chair over next to her bed and straddled it backwards, putting his arms on the back. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better, thank you,” she said. “Carson is letting me go back to work in the morning.” She gestured towards the detritus of the paperwork surrounding her. “I’ve just been trying to catch up.”

“Listen, about that,” he said, his voice becoming gruff. “I hope that you’ve reconsidered what I said before this whole—thing—started.”

“Which part of what you said?” she asked, and he tried not to glare at her for being intentionally perverse. She was going to make him work for it.

“Elizabeth, as leader of this expedition, you have no business being off-world.” He took a breath. “From now on, unless there is an absolute dire need for your negotiation skills that cannot be resolved from Atlantis or the alpha site, you stay here. Period.”

“You cannot expect me to—“

He rose from his chair and covered her mouth with his hand. “Elizabeth. That bastard would have killed you for no other reason than he wanted to get at me. We face enough danger just being here on Atlantis. Content yourself with that and don’t make me go to the rest of the team for back up on this. I can guarantee you that the only person that might even see things your way would be Teyla, and even the two of you can’t outlast me, Rodney, Ronon, Lorne and if I have to, Caldwell.”

John gently took his hand away from her mouth, and waited for a response. Elizabeth gave him a look of resignation. “All right. You win.”

“Thank you,” he said, sitting down onto the edge of the bed. He suddenly looked very tired. “Sorry you had to get beaten up and almost blown up.”

Elizabeth adjusted herself, neatly piling her paperwork and pushing it away. “I’m sorry you had to lose an organ.”

He shrugged. “What’s a spleen between friends? It’s not like they do anything, really, is it?”

She leaned forward, resting her forehead on his shoulder. “What about us?”

That was his Elizabeth—sometimes so careful it frustrated him to the point of near insanity and then other times rushing in where angels feared to tread. “I was going to leave that one up to you,” John admitted softly. “Besides, I figured you’d be kind of pissed at me for a while.”

“Oh, I am,” Elizabeth said, picking up her paperwork and setting it in the floor. She put her arms around him and leaned back, resting his head against her chest. She turned out the lamp on the night table, and the lights of Atlantis shone through the window, creating points of light on the floor. “But for now, come to bed and res

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 04:03:08 GMT

Author: CarrKicksDoor
Title: The Watchers
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Spoilers: Through “The Real World.”
Pairings: Sparky
Summary: “Have you ever had a dream so real that when you woke up, you weren’t sure it didn’t happen?”
Rating: Kid friendly, mother approved.
Word Count:1989
Disclaimer: If Stargate belonged to me, I’d be writing it and making money, instead of this.
Notes: For eleigh.

Elizabeth stood out on the balcony overlooking the Atlantean ocean. The wind ruffled her hair, still slightly damp from the long shower she’d taken. She’d stood in the shower for a long time, staring at the tiles, waiting for one of them to morph into the wrong shape. She’d finally closed her eyes and let the water beat against the sore muscles of her back and sighed.

She still wasn’t ready to sleep, and when Kate came by, she told her she didn’t have to yet. So she’d come back out here into the open air, holding her father’s watch in her hands again, listening to the soft ticking as the waves gently lapped against the city.

“Hey,” she heard a voice say behind her. John appeared beside her. He’d lost his jacket and his hands had almost disappeared inside the pockets of his pants. “Didn’t Carson tell you to get some rest?”

She gave him a small smile. “This is restful.”

He leaned his back against the rail so he could look at her. “Well, I don’t think Carson would agree, but if you don’t tell, I won’t.”

She gave him the same quirk of a smile, and ran her thumb over the glass facing of the watch. His head tilted in concern. “You sure you’re okay?”

She hesitated before speaking. “Have you ever had a dream so real that when you woke up, you weren’t sure that it didn’t happen?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Especially when I was a kid. I would dream I’d gone to the store and bought something, and then I’d wake up the next day and tear up jack looking for it before I realized it was a dream.”

She shook her head. “That’s what it was like. Like one of those real dreams with occasional flashes of life in Atlantis. I saw Atlantis’ dialing code in my playing cards. I saw the gate in my closet.” She squinted out at the ocean. “And I saw you. Sometimes it was very indistinct, but at the end, you were there telling me to fight it.” She blinked. “I think that was when you’d come into the iso ward. That was a stupid thing to do, by the way.”

John shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I couldn’t let you die. I mean, then I’d have to listen to Rodney and actually pay attention to what he says.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m trying to say thank you. I don’t think I’d have made it if it weren’t for you.”

If possible, he looked even more uncomfortable. “Well, I mean—the city can’t make it without you, Elizabeth,” he finished lamely.

“The proper thing to say is ‘You’re welcome, Elizabeth,’” she said.

“You’re welcome, Elizabeth,” he repeated.

“I’ll never do such a thing again.”

He grinned. “No such promise.”

She didn’t return his smile. “I mean it, John. We couldn’t do this without you.”

He didn’t answer her, opting instead to change the subject. “That your dad’s watch?”

She nodded, fingering the chain. “My mother gave it to me before I left. She gave it to me in my—my dream too.”

“My grandfather used to have a watch like kinda like that,” he said. “It was gold, and a little smaller, and it had a cover—okay, so maybe it wasn’t that much like it. It was a pocket watch, though, and it had to be wound up ever morning.”

He turned around, bracing his elbows on the rail. “My dad was stationed in Germany, and they sent me to live with my grandparents one summer when I was fifteen. They had a farm in Kentucky.”

Elizabeth looked sideways at him. “Are you trying to distract me?”

He looked like a kid who’d had his hand caught in the cookie jar. “Is it working?”

She smiled in appreciation for what he was trying to do. “Did your grandparents raise horses?”

John laughed, shaking his head. “No, tobacco. I helped Granddad bring it in that summer. It’s hard, back-breaking work, and Granddad was almost seventy and still out there in the fields. He was up at five every morning, but he’d let me and Grandma sleep until six. We’d have breakfast, and then Granddad would put down his silverware and wind his watch.”

He smiled. “One day we were walking out to the fields and I asked him why he waited till breakfast to wind it. And he stopped and looked at me and said—“ his voice dropped into a lower register, “’—Johnny boy, you’ll understand this one day. But my day doesn’t start until your grandma smiles at me.’”

Elizabeth smiled in genuine delight. “He sounds like he’s one of those true gentlemen.”

John looked out over the ocean, a wistful expression coming over his face. “He sure was. I wish he was still around.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said.

John looked at her. “A tornado came through town the year I turned twenty-four. Granddad was at the feed store when the storm hit. He got home and the house was just gone. After that, he just kind of lost the will to live. Dad says he died of a broken heart.”

“He must have really loved your grandma,” Elizabeth said softly. “What happened to his watch?”

“I got leave before he died,” John said. “I went to see him. He was sitting in his chair, and he was so proud of my in my uniform, his face was just beaming. I stood next to his chair, and he gave me his watch. It was stopped. He’d quit winding it when Grandma died, but he made me promise that when I found the one, I’d start winding it again.”

“Have you?” she asked. It was amazing how little she knew about John. She knew what was in his file, of course, and she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt what kind of man he was. But when it came to his life—it was mystery.

“Yeah,” he said, staring down at the ocean. “Every morning.”

Elizabeth felt like someone had popped her balloon. “She’s a lucky woman,” she said, looking out to the horizon. He turned his head and she could feel his gaze on her.

“She doesn’t know,” he said.

She didn’t dare meet his eyes as he took a hesitant step towards her. “Elizabeth—“ he said, his voice hoarse. She couldn’t move, and he leaned his forehead into her temple. “Don’t ever do that to me again. Please.” His tone was still low, and she could hear a desperation and pain in his voice. “If you—if you don’t feel—we don’t ever have to talk about this again.”

She closed her eyes, and images flashed through her mind—John bringing her birthday gifts and tokens from other worlds, John getting into pissing matches with Caldwell on her behalf, coming down like an avenging angel on the Genii, coming through the gate when she thought he was dead, barreling into Liam to save her, standing at the end of the hallway at the SGC, beckoning her to home and safety. “I don’t know if this is real.”

He gently turned her around, and she saw fear and awkwardness on his face. “It’s real, Elizabeth. Atlantis is real. I’m real. I promise you.”

“I thought my mother was real,” she said. “She touched my face—“ he instinctively brought his hand up to cup her cheek. “Time went by. Two years in Atlantis was three days—three weeks on Earth was five hours. How do I know this isn’t a dream?

He cupped her face in both hands. “Elizabeth. I swear to you that this isn’t a dream.” His eyes searched hers. “I’ve never lied to you before. I’m not going to start now.”

“You told me you killed twelve Wraith on Sateda,” she said lightly, afraid to let this get too intimate. “Teyla says six.”

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, I’ve never lied to you about anything important.” The look was back in his eyes, and she couldn’t back away. “And I won’t.”

“If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up,” she said.

“Me either,” he said, claiming her mouth with his own.

She didn’t know how long they stood there. His hand fisted in her hair, drawing her closer, and her arms wound themselves around his neck. He pulled out his earpiece and dropped it to the floor, ensuring no interruptions because this was too important to pull away. She fit him perfectly, and he briefly broke their kiss to bury his face in her hair, wrapping his arms around her, trying to desperately hold on.

She ran her hand through his messy hair. “When did you start winding your grandfather’s watch?”

His arms folder her into him a little more tightly. “The day after the storm.” He touched his forehead to hers. “I thought you were dead, and when I found out that you weren’t, I knew I’d do anything to keep that from happening again.”

In his eyes, she could see the pain there, still hurting him after all this time. “John,” she whispered, finally understanding why he’d broken through the iso ward. His desperation to keep her alive—and maybe a wish that if she was going to do, he would too.

She pulled him down to her, trying to reassure him that she wouldn’t do it again, to tell him that she’d felt the same desperation when she’d thought he was a figment of her imagination and wasn’t real. He had been her most guarded secret—the one thing about Atlantis she would have never told Fletcher—this glorious man who was standing there with arms around her and his tongue in her mouth and his hands traveling up—

“Oh my God!” a shriek interrupted them. Elizabeth broke away, but John’s hold on her was too tight for her to completely pull away from him. Rodney stood at the door to the city interior, going spastic. “No wonder you broke into the iso unit, you moron!” he said, his voice becoming even louder and more shrill. “You could have told the rest of us before you gave us a heart attack! You’ve been standing her kissing Elizabeth instead of answering my calls and—Hey!” Sudden awareness appeared on his face. “That means I win the pool! Cadman owes me a bottle of tequila!”

“Rodney!” John said, his voice irritated. “What you have just seen is none of your business.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault you two were making out where anyone could see,” Rodney exclaimed.

“I have an entire untouched bottle of vodka if you promise not to say anything,” Elizabeth said. “Please, Rodney.”

“Make it two,” he said.

She sighed patiently. “I only have the one. I was saving it.”

“I’ll pitch in my rum,” John said. “And my last Hershey bar.”

“You said you didn’t have anymore chocolate!” Rodney squawked.

“Rodney!”

"All right, deal. Anyway, I cam up here to tell you we’ve found a problem with—“

“Rodney,” John interrupted. “I swear to God, if you don’t leave this minute, I will shoot you.”

“But—“ Rodney protested.

“It can wait!” John said, his tone broking no more argument.

“Right,” Rodney said. “Tomorrow. Well, then—“

“Goodnight, Rodney,” John said.

Rodney shut his mouth and disappeared.

John’s glare softened as he turned back to Elizabeth, who yawned. “Getting sleepy?”

“Well, between getting infested by Replicators and being kissed by my military commander, it’s been a big day,” she said.

“I’ll let you get on to bed, then,” he said. “Maybe I’ll go chew Rodney out for ruining the mood.”

She smiled as he reluctantly released her, then looked down at her feet. “John?”

“Elizabeth?”

“I don’t want to dream.”

He brushed her hair behind her ear. “I’ll keep the nightmares away.”

She took his hand. “Really?”

John smiled. “Always.”

My Lee/Kara playlist

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 03:11:22 GMT

This is partially because I have the crazy-ass collection of music, but as I was looking through this, I was somewhat stunned at the music that I write L/K to.

So, here's my playlist, in a mostly artistic alphabetical order, since that's the way iTunes has it organized Also, since I'm procrastinating. This is also not a full list, since I don't have all my music on my computer at the moment.

1. (Maria) Shut up and kiss me - Willie Nelson, Rob Thomas and Bill Evans
2. Lady Marmalade - Christina Aguilera, Mya, Lil' Kim and Pink
3. Clocks - Coldplay
4. Walk into the Sun - Dirty Vegas
5. All the Girls Love Alice - Elton John
6. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John
7. Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress - the Hollies
8. Need You Tonight - INXS
9. I'll Have To Say I Love You In A Song - Jim Croce
10. I Walk the Line - Johnny Cash
11. Hurt - Johnny Cash
12. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry - Johnny Cash
13. Ring of Fire - Johnny Cash
14. There'll be Peace in the Valley For Me - Johnny Cash
15. Blinded By the Light - Manfred Mann's Earth Band
16. Fever - Michael Buble
17. Sway - Michael Buble
18. Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
19. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
20. Still Crazy After All These Years - Simon and Garfunkel
21. Slip Slidin' Away - Simon and Garfunkel
22. Sound of Silence - Simon and Garfunkel
23. Burning Down the House - Tom Jones
24. Vertigo - U2
25. Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys - Willie Nelson and Matchbox Twenty
26. El Tango de Roxanne - Ewan McGregor, Jose Feliciano and Jacek Koman
27. I'll Fly Away - Alison Krauss and Gillian Welsh

Love is Kind

Sun, 05 Mar 2006 15:07:19 GMT

Author: CarrKicksDoor
Title: Love is Kind
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Timeframe: Lay Down Your Burdens Part 1
Keywords: L/K
Summary: Neither of them were lying, but neither of them were telling the truth either.
Word Count: 277
Status: Complete
Notes: A stream of consciousness.

He worried. It was in his nature, and he couldn’t help it, and one more time again since becoming commander of the Pegasus, he wondered if he ought not put his foot down and put a stop to this, but even if he tried, it wouldn’t work, and he wouldn’t really mean it.

She stood there, and he told her that he hoped that she found him, and she told him that she hoped that she found him too, and neither of them were lying, but neither of them were completely telling the truth either. Because if he was dead, things would disappear, things would clear up, and they would mourn, but they would go on, and he might finally get a chance to have her and have a spark of happiness in this dreariness that was this life.

But this was her chance at happiness too. And that was what mattered to him more than anything else, that this was her chance at happiness. He didn’t want to see her take such a risk for it, but if it had been him, he might have done the same, although deep inside, he knew that he hadn’t. He wondered though, if he might now. Now that he knows.

Her happiness is what is most important to him, and if he has to watch her find her happiness elsewhere, then he’ll watch her find it elsewhere. He’s found happiness of a sort of his own that he’s clinging to with desperateness he’s seen in her own eyes.

So he hopes that she finds him, because he wants her to be happy. And that will be enough for him.

Doppelganger: Conclusion

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 01:39:55 GMT

[Sometime before the Battle of Endor]

[Sullust]

The fleet was coming together, and he had one thing on his mind as he escaped the clamor of the squadron headquarters and the briefings. He would be able to find her now, for the first time since she’d requested the transfer before Hoth, and he had every intention of finding out why she’d run from him.

The ship was huge, but he found his way down into the belly to the crew quarters and rang the annunciator to the door, waiting for someone to answer. The door slid open before him, and there she stood, surprise etched across her features. It quickly faded and gave way to resignation. “I should have known you’d have come.”

“I don’t give up that easily,” he said. “The only reason it took me this long was because there were other things to consider. Like Imperials breathing down our necks.”

“I suppose I should be flattered that the great Hobbie Klivian chased after me,” she said bitterly. “I’ve heard tale of your exploits with women lately.”

“Over-exaggerated,” he said, although not saying if they were outright false. “You can attribute that to Wes Janson.”

She turned around, allowing him entry into the room. A yank of her dresser drawer later, and she had a blue box in her hand. “Here. I suppose you want this back.”

He blinked at her in astonishment for a moment. “Is that what you think I came here for?”

Her eyes were hard. “Take the ring back, Derek.”

“I didn’t come back here for the ring,” he said. “I came back here for you.” He stepped closer, his eyes blazing. “Damn it, woman, you are going to tell me why you walked out on me like you did, because I at least deserve an explanation.”

“Yes,” she said. “you deserve one, but I’m not going to give you one. Because I don’t have to.”

“Why not?” he said.

She turned and put the box back in her dresser with somewhat reverent care. “Because you love me enough not to make me.”

***

Hobbie stood there, watching his best friend beam as he declared his undying love for the woman standing in front of him. Inyri’s face was rosy and her voice was soft as she did the same, and somewhere deep inside, Hobbie knew that he was truly happy for them. It was just going to take a while to dig it all out.

Gavin Darklighter slapped a hand on his shoulder at the reception. “It was no true bachelor party without you there, Hobbs. Sorry you couldn’t make it.”

Hobbie shrugged, attempting not to spill the mug of lomin ale he had in his hand as he did so. “Things happen, you know.” His typical long face, which he had so hated when he was a teen, was finally coming in handy, because most of his squadron mates, even though they could tell something was up, were contributing it to the fact that he’d just served as best man at his best friend’s wedding.

He set the lomin ale down in front of Wes, only to find that his own mug had already disappeared—or had done a rather astonishing maneuver right in front of Wes’ place setting. Making an annoyed face, he sat the lomin ale he’d meant to retrieve for the groom in front of himself instead. Inyri was excitedly chatting to Rhysati, something about the sleek wedding dress she was wearing.

Wes was grinning from ear to ear, and Hobbie leaned over. “Married life suits you.”

His friend turned to him, running his hand through his hair and mussing it up. Inyri almost automatically smoothed it back down without ceasing her conversation with Rhysati. “I’m liking it so far. I’m going to like it better once we get out of this reception.” His grin grew that much more wicked.

Hobbie gave him a lop-sided smile. “Listen, I’m going to get out of here. I’ve fulfilled my duties as best man, including the toast.”

Wes stood as Hobbie did, taking his hand and shaking it enthusiastically before enfolding his friend in a hug. “Thanks for being here. It means a lot.”

“Hey, and here,” Hobbie said, pushing a blue box into his friend’s hand. “Give this to your wife from yourself some day.”

Wes opened it up to find the ring that Hobbie had once meant for Jeni once. He looked at it for a moment, and closed the box and handed it back to Hobbie, closing his friend’s hand around it. “Save it. You may need it someday.”

Hobbie looked down at the box in his hand and nodded. “Okay.”

Wes patted him on the shoulder, and Hobbie left the rest of his friends behind to celebrate their wedding while he went to finish his mourning.

***

Fin.

Doppelganger: Part 5

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 05:18:03 GMT

[Sometime before the Battle of Yavin]

Rand Ecliptic

“Why not?” he asked, throwing up his hands in frustration.

“This is my job, Derek,” she shot back. “I’m not going to up and leave it.”

“Who was asking you to?” he demanded.

“It just sounded like you were!”

“I’m not!” he said, putting both hands on top of his head and trying to keep from pulling his hair out in frustration. He lowered his voice. “Once we get out of here, we’re not going to have to worry about leaving our positions or anything like that.”

“You don’t know that,” she hissed. “You honestly can’t tell me that the Rebellion works that way, because you don’t know, Derek. No one really does. Besides, you think the Rebellion can afford to keep us together? They’re going to do whatever they have to do to win, Derek, and they can’t afford to consider personal relationships.”

“As opposed to here?” he demanded. “Where it hangs over our head every day, because some paper pusher could just simply decide that one or the other of us needs moved—mostly likely you, moving you down into a more denigrating position. Do you really want that to happen, Jeni? At least the Rebellion will take you seriously.”

“What I want is something certain,” Jeni said, sagging down onto the bunk. “Derek, the Ecliptic is getting ready to ship out any day now, and for all we know, I could be ordered to stay here at the shipyards. I want something sure, Derek. Maybe I’m asking for too much, but I want to know that one thing in my life is going to remain constant, and if there’s one thing in my life that I want to remain constant, it’s you.”

He watched her for a moment sitting there on the edge of Biggs’ bunk, her fall of glossy hair over her shoulder, fingers steepled together in stress. Without a word, he walked over to the wall and depressed the button that opened one of the drawers that belonged to him. The small blue box fit in his hand, and he took a breath before turning around and handing it to her.

Her gaze met his in surprise. “Derek—“

“Open it,” he said softly.

Her fingers were trembling, he thought, as she opened the box to reveal the ring, embellished with the patterns that were traditional for Ralltiir. It was an exact replica of the one his grandmother had worn years ago, the one she had sold during the Clone Wars to feed her family. The pattern and the story of her surviving through adversity had always entranced him, and he’d had it specially made down on Bestine. “Derek,” she said, her voice choked, “are you asking me to marry you?”

He glanced down at his boots. “Yes. I am.”

***

He laid on the uncomfortable hotel bed as night fell on Semsara. Snow was continuing to fall softly outside, and he couldn’t do anything but stare at the ceiling. Wes thought he was still asleep, because he’d flopped down here and passed out when he’d been dragged here by his friend, and he could hear Wes’ voice in a soft tone speaking to Inyri over the comm.

“I’m worried,” he heard Wes say. “I’ve never seen him like this, Inyri. I’m afraid he could be suicidal.”

He couldn’t hear Inyri’s response, just the higher-pitched voice, made slightly computerized by the comm. Wes’ rejoinder was too low for him to hear, and then his tone switched to an intimate one intended most certainly for Inyri’s ears alone.

It nearly made him sick, hearing Wes’ tone. He rolled over on the bed, turning his back to his friend, trying to block it out of his head, but he couldn’t, and his stomach turned until he bolted up from the bed and into the refresher.

Wes’ voice hurriedly cut off the conversation, and his friend’s shadow suddenly blocked the light streaming into the refresher. “Hobbie?”

“Something I ate,” he choked out.

“Not likely,” Wes said, his voice just a shade shy of being stern. “You haven’t had anything to eat.”

Hobbie wiped his mouth off with a towel and faced his friend. “I can’t eat.”

Wes slapped the lights in the refresher on. “Take a good look at yourself in the mirror. In the last twenty-four hours, you’ve suddenly taken on the look of a madman, Hobbie. I know you want to catch whoever did this, but you are destroying yourself from the inside.”

Hobbie glanced at himself. His skin was deathly pale, and his red-rimmed eyes stood out with the contrast only those with haunted souls had. “I can’t, Wes. I have to—damn it all. Damn it all!”

Hobbie found himself slammed up against the wall by his friend, the edge of the door coming into painful contact with his spine. “I’m not going to let you tear yourself apart over this, Hobbie! That’s not what friends do! You’ve kept me alive in times when I wanted to die, so for Force’s sake, let me do the same for you! But I can’t do that if you won’t tell me what the hell happened, and why you are so hell bent on doing this!”

“Wouldn’t you do the same if it were Inyri?” Hobbie yelled back at him. “That’s what she was to me, Wes! But she ran from me!” The words spilled out, reopening the wound that had slowly been being forced open by every minute they’d spend on Semsara. “When it came down to it, she ran. Because for some Sith-forsaken reason, she decided that being married to me would be too hard for her, and she ran from me, Wes! But I never stopped loving her, and she’s run from me again! She’s gone, and I can’t follow her this time.”

He bent over double, the pain in his chest nearly driving him to his knees. “Oh, stars,” he whispered to himself. He ran through every curse word he knew and some he didn’t in a hushed tone of voice, hoping to relieve the horrible feeling. The iron band around his chest didn’t ease, and he stumbled out of the refresher back into the room.

“You need to go back to Coruscant,” Wes said quietly from the doorway. “Finding the person who killed Jeni isn’t going to do any good for you, Hobbie, because this is killing you.”

Hobbie closed his eyes, unable to cope with that thought at the moment. “I have to do this for her, Wes. I have to know why. I never knew why. She never would tell me, but this—I have to know why.”

Wes spoke slowly. “Hobbie, maybe she wasn’t murdered.”

He shot up off the bed, glaring at Wes. “What do you mean?”

Wes stared at him unflinchingly. “I’ve been looking over the files we got from Duggan. Hobbie, everything she had was in order. All her banking, all her bills, everything was paid up. She even handed in her resignation at her job the day she died. Her pets were fed, and even her refrigeration unit was cleaned out of leftovers. All she didn’t leave was a note to explain why.”

“She never explained why,” Hobbie whispered. “She said she didn’t feel like it, so she didn’t have to.”

“I took a look at the security in the apartment building,” Wes said. “It’s not something a normal person could get past. And the autopsy reports match up, and so does every other detail except the marks on her wrist that you noticed. And those could have come from anywhere, Hobbie. Anywhere.” Hobbie watched Wes’ face grow stony. “You’re becoming delusional, Hobbie.”

Without a word, Hobbie laid down and turned his back to his friend, escaping reality into the darkness of unconscious sleep.

***

He woke up the next morning, his eyes looking out the window to see the snow resting on the ground outside. The pristine landscape of Semsara was almost unworldly, and the empty feeling in his chest wasn’t quite so painful, but just empty.

He got up out of the bed, and found Wes sitting there, looking sleepy as he drank a long swig of caf. His friend didn’t say anything, just looked at him, and Hobbie took a moment to get enough moisture back in his mouth to speak. “Go home, Wes,” he said softly.

“Not going to leave you here,” Wes returned.

“I’m not going to keep on,” Hobbie said. “But you’ve got someone waiting for you back at Coruscant, and I—I’ve got to take care of things here.”

“What kind of things?”

Hobbie closed his eyes. “I need to take all that stuff back to Duggan. Make the funeral arrangements. Those types of things.”

Silence reigned for a moment. “I’m sorry,” Wes said, finally. “I really am. I’ll stay here and help you get things wrapped up—“

“You’ve got to go get married,” Hobbie stated. He looked at his friend. “I’ll be back in time for the wedding, but I think I’m going to miss your bachelor party.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “I can do this on my own, Wes. I’ve got to.”

Wes nodded, and Hobbie knew that his friend was just that relieved anyway. Wes had too many other things on his mind at the moment to deal with him—Hobbie had no illusions about that and knew that Inyri had long since replaced him as Wes’ best friend. “Go home, Wes,” Hobbie said again. “And I’ll be along.”

</span>

Doppelganger: Part 4

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 05:25:43 GMT

***

[Sometime before the Battle of Yavin]

Bestine

”So this is your place?” she said, her eyes looking around appreciatively. “It’s nice. I like it.”

He glanced around his tiny apartment. “It’s not much, but it’s home. And it’s someplace to come back to when I can’t get to Ralltiir.” He pointed across the room. “That’s a picture of my folks right there.”

She moved over to the makeshift shelf he’d put up with a few crates that were serving to hold books, and picked up the holo. “You take after your father, Derek.”

He looked over her shoulder. “Yeah. It’s the long face,” he said, stroking his chin and smiling. “Where do you live when you’re off-ship?”

“Oh, no place near this nice,” she said, stretching her arms over her head. “Can’t afford it on a mechanic’s salary. I live with three other gals in a flat about half this size in Trinsron.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Trinsron. That’s not exactly a safe place to be living, Jeni.”

“Can’t afford anything better,” she said. “Besides, we’re careful. We carry stunners between here and home, and one of the girls works in Trinsron. She’s used to it. We know who to stay away from, and which streets are the worst. Besides, I stay on the ship as much as possible.”

“You’re always welcome to stay here,” he said hesitantly. “I can give you a keycode. I keep it clean in here, I promise. And there’s an empty drawer in my dresser that you could keep stuff in—“

“Derek Klivian,” she said, her voice sultry as she pushed him back onto the ancient sofa. “Are you offering me a drawer?”

“Um—yeah,” he said. “I mean, it’s not much. It’s just a drawer.”

“It’s a drawer, Derek,” she said. “But it’s so much more. It’s a bit into your life. A symbolic bit, because once we leave, we aren’t ever going to be able to come back here, but it’s a symbol.”

“Of what?” he asked, somewhat amused as she climbed into his lap and settled herself there to look at him.

“Of a little piece of yourself that you just gave to me,” she said. “It’s very sweet.”

“Oh,” he said. “Am I going to get anything in return?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Other than smelly girl stuff in your underwear drawer?”

“Other than that, yes.”

“Someday, I will share a drawer with you."

[Semsara. Now.]

They were hardly in the nice section of town. It wasn’t nearly as bad as some places that Jeni had lived in the past, Hobbie knew—for that matter, it wasn’t nearly as bad as some places he had lived. The apartment he and Biggs had shared when they were finishing their tour at the Academy, for example, had been in a neighborhood of Coruscant that few dared to travel in those days. The two of them had been the only humans living in the building, and the fact that they were going to be future Imperials didn’t necessarily endear them to the inhabitants. They’d soon learned not to keep any valuables around, and Biggs had commented that it was designed to enforce the anti-alien sentiment in Imperial officers.

Janson rang the bell with no small enthusiasm to the small apartment complex, and they waited in the cold air for the door to open. The sky was beginning to spit snow, and the wind blew it directly into their faces.

The ancient door opened, and the face of an old woman appeared. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hobbie said. “I’m Major Klivian from New Republic Intelligence. This is Major Janson. We’re here about Jeni Rutard.”

“Oh!” The old woman said. “Come in, boys, come in! Just wipe your feet on the mat there, and come in.”

They did as they were told, wiping their boots off on a mat that had probably existed since the Clone Wars, and the old woman led them into a parlor off the foyer. “Do come in. This complex belongs to me, you see, and this bottom section is mine. I don’t get up stairs real well anymore, so the top five floors are all apartments. Do sit down and let me get you some caf. Now, who are you boys from again? The police have already been here.”

Hobbie and Janson sat on an ancient hoversofa upholstered in a revolting shade of pink that looked like it would fall to the ground given the slightest provocation, somewhat intimidated by the presence of the grandmotherly figure. “We’re members of Rogue Squadron, ma’am,” Janson said. “But we’re working with New Republic Intelligence on this case.”

“Well, good,” the woman said. “I’m Dori Sage, by the way. I’m glad that someone came back. I don’t believe that Jeni killed herself, not in a million years.” She shook her head, setting the caf down in front of them. “I don’t like to think that someone got in here, or that someone living here did that to her, but the fact remains that they did. But there’s no way that Jeni did it. Didn’t they find a silencer on that blaster? And on one side of her, there’s no one living there, and on the other side, isn’t there a deaf Ithorian?”

Hobbie exchanged a glance with Janson. Obviously, this woman had more information than anyone had bothered to check up on. “Ma’am, did Jeni have any enemies? Did she not get along with anyone?”

“No, not that I know of,” Dori said. “Jeni was always a real good girl. She would go upstairs and fix the heater for me, and she wouldn’t charge me a single credit for it. She would fix things all around the apartments for me, and for the residents, and never charge anyone. She just did it, and after working at the shop all day too. I’d think she’d get tired of being up to her elbows in wires and mechanical parts, but she seemed to like it.”

“Was she seeing anyone?” Hobbie asked, his voice entirely even as Janson took a sip from his caf. Hobbie had already abandoned it himself, the caf little more than water.

“She was seeing some fancy pants from uptown,” Dori said. “He’s off planet at the moment. He hasn’t come back yet, that—“ she calmed herself down. “Well, I shouldn’t say such things in front of gentlemen.”

“Well, he may not know,” Hobbie said carefully. “Part of the reason I’ve taken on this case, ma’am is because I was Jeni’s emergency contact. She and I have been friends for a long time, since we were both in the Rebellion.”

“Oh!” Dori clapped her hands together. “Jeni would talk about that sometimes. She never did very often.” Her face broke out into a smile and dimples appeared in her rosy cheeks. “Are you the young man she used to talk about sometimes? Are you—oh, now who was it? David? Drake? Derek?”

“Derek,” Hobbie said. “Yes, that’s me. Derek Klivian.”

“And you’re in Rogue Squadron.” Dori tsked. “Oh, you poor dear.” She reached forward to pat his knee. “She told me the whole story.”

“Yes, it’s a long and sordid tale,” Hobbie said, setting the mug of caf he’d held on to down onto a coaster. The small smile on his face was an ugly, self-deprecating one, and he glanced down at the carpeting, just a shade off matching the pink on the hoversofa. “Could we see her apartment, ma’am?”

“Of course you can. She lives on the third floor, the second apartment from the staircase. I’ll get you the code for it. It’s been changed ever since it happened, you know, just in case someone did know how to get in. They didn’t want anyone messing with evidence," Dori said, scooping up the caf mugs. “Hold on just a second, dearies.” She looked back over her shoulder before she headed into the kitchen. “Derek!”

Hobbie closed his eyes as the twittering old woman disappeared, and Janson turned to look at him. “A long and sordid tale, huh?”

“We didn’t have the time to tell stories like this back then,” Hobbie said. “And I didn’t want to tell it anyway.”

“How long and how sordid did it get?” Janson asked quietly.

“Not quite as long and sordid as you and Inyri, but almost,” Hobbie said. He turned his head. “I almost married this girl.”

Janson rubbed his eyes with his hands. “I need to call Inyri. When we pass a comm center, let’s stop so I can run in and send her a message.”

“You didn’t when I called Cracken?” Hobbie asked.

“No,” Janson said. “I was too busy making sure you didn’t do something too terribly stupid. Like get the two of us transferred to Intelligence permanently right before my wedding.”

“Wedding?” Dori perked up, coming out of the kitchen, handing the code to Hobbie. “Oh, are you getting married?”

“I am,” Janson spoke up. He took a moment to explain as Hobbie looked up the stairs. The dark wood was almost shining in the lights, and Hobbie took a few steps upstairs, looking at the walls while Janson tried to extricate himself from Dori’s grasp, finally placating her with a brief look at a holo of Inyri before running up the stairs. Blowing out his breath in relief, he glanced at Hobbie. “Come on.”

Stifling a chuckle, despite the reason they were there, Hobbie continued up the stairs until he reached the door. The security mechanism on the door was a simple one, and if the code wasn’t all that complex, it didn’t hurt that Janson said he’d caught sight of a blaster rifle sitting over the refrigeration unit in the kitchen that he guessed belonged to Dori.

The apartment smelled like stale air and engine oil and a scent Hobbie recognized as the perfume Jeni had worn as long as he’d known her. Marked out on the floor was an outline of a body, and he pulled his eyes from it to look around.

It was decorated much the same as the rest of the complex, transparisteel foundations covered with the wood paneling. Touches of personal effects were scattered around. Jeni’s toolbox was dropped by the door with a pair of scuffed boots, and a coat and scarf were hanging on hooks by the door.

Hobbie stepped in, his footstep falling eerily silent as he walked in. The tightening pressure in his chest made him want to turn around and run back outside, all the way back outside, back to the Public Safety office where he could shake Duggan into doing this properly, and then climb back into his X-wing and head for Coruscant for the warm fluorescent lights of squadron headquarters.

Shaking his head, Hobbie walked into the tiny apartment further. Janson stood at the door in quiet reverence waiting, taking in the scene.

His heart in his throat, Hobbie walked to Jeni’s dresser. The top was covered with items, a brush, lotion, other feminine knick-knacks interspersed with a few tools that had just been laid there in her haphazard fashion. Taking a finger, he hooked it under the pull of the drawer and opened it.

Mostly, the top drawer held a collection of sensible looking underthings, with a lacey one or two set to the side. A few boxes to the side sat by them, and a dark blue one he pulled out and opened.

The sag in his shoulders was apparent from across the room. “Hobbie?” Janson said softly.

“Wes?” Hobbie’s voice caught in his throat, as he snapped the box closed. “I—I don’t—I can’t—“ The box dropped back into the dresser drawer from nerveless fingers. “Oh, stars.”

Janson’s arms suddenly supported him as the overwhelming grief slammed down on his shoulders with the weight of a Super Star Destroyer. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”

***

Cum Tacent Clamant (003: Endings)

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 01:37:01 GMT

Title: Cum Tacent Clamant
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters: Galactica
Prompt: 003. Endings
Word Count: 583
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: My series focuses on one character without an actor: the Galactica. Slight Lee/Kara, spoilers and speculation through 2.11.

Back here, in the noisy room next to the Galactica’s engines, condensation formed on the walls and dripped down in fat droplets, trickling down the wall to bounce against the floor and twirl down towards the drain where it would eventually be recycled and put back into the water supply. This water had the job of cooling the interior of the engines, but ever since the Galactica had escaped from the Cylons and the Colonies, the condensation kept forming worse and worse.

The maintenance tech who tried to stem the flow of the water and control the condensation levels couldn’t figure out where the water was coming from. He’d worked on the Galactica longer than almost anyone else, but the water kept coming. He’d told Tigh that the Galactica was simply getting old, and without a proper drydock, it was simply going to stay wet back there, and people were going to have to get used to it.

He didn’t mention his own theory—that the day the Galactica left Caprica, she had begun to weep for the lost along with all the people onboard, and she was still weeping all the unshed tears for those who had been lost, for her sisters who had been destroyed, and for the people she kept losing.

***

Starbuck landed her Viper in the launch bay, feeling the comforting lights begin to surround her. She pulled her helmet off as the canopy opened and Tyrol’s voice could be heard shouting at someone.

She climbed out of the Viper, her chest tightening, counting the ships that began to return. And correct to her mental count from outside, they were missing one.

Apollo joined her watching the other Vipers taxi in. “Yellow’s gone.”

“Yeah,” she said, biting off the word. The pilot who had joined the crew with the rest of the Pegasus Viper squadrons after the Pegasus had gone on her suicide run was indeed gone. Slagged by Cylon cannons, and now floating somewhere out in space far away from where the Galactica was now. She didn’t know why he always had to state the obvious.

She turned away, heading for the bunkroom to strip out of her flight suit and get in the shower to clean off the dirt and grime that the time in the cockpit inevitably caused. The water streamed from the showerhead down over her head, down over her shoulders. She faced the wall, not feeling particularly exhibitionist after her time out there in space.

The slap of bare feet behind her alerted her to another presence in the shower, and she recognized the cadence of the steps as Apollo’s. The water in the next stall started up, and she could hear it rain down upon his head.

She sighed and leaned her head against the tiles in her stall.

“Kara,” she heard a voice say quietly, barely audible over the water.

“Yeah?” she answered.

“You okay?”

She turned her head, looking towards the bland tiles separating them. “No. You?”

“No.”

She took a breath, watching the water flow down the walls, until she heard his voice again. “Want to be not okay together?”

The water in her stall shut off, and she wrapped her towel around herself. Apollo did the same, and they left, hoping to find someplace to sit and forget about everything that had happened.

The droplets of water kept trickling down the walls of the shower, because the Galactica carried their pain and wept what they could not cry.

Doppelganger: Part 3

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 04:26:21 GMT

[Sometime before the Battle of Yavin]

Rand Ecliptic

He climbed out of the TIE fighter, and pulled his helmet off, running a hand through his hair. Setting his helmet down next to the wing panel, he looked around for the crew chief. “Chief!” he hollered. “Chief!”

Jeni appeared out of the engines of another fighter. “What?”

He walked over to the other fighter, stripping his gloves off his hands. “My starboard engine is acting up.”

“What’s wrong with it?” she asked, wiping her hands on a rag as she stood.

He jerked his head and she followed him over to the fighter, moving behind it to look at the engines. The warmth barely bleeding off from his short flight through the atmosphere of the landing bay affronted them as they moved out of sight of the rest of the deck crew behind one of the solar panels.

With one swift movement, he had her pinned up against the solar panel, one hand on each side of her head, his mouth covering hers. She breathlessly pushed him away. “Nothing wrong with your engine, is there, Derek?”

“Not a thing,” he said with a grin. “If anyone asks, there might have been a rattle, but I think you solved it.”

“So what caused this sudden spontaneous outburst of affection?” she asked.

He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet a bit. “Damn near clipped a shuttle that was coming out of space dock. Still up on the adrenaline. Needed a way to come down easily.”

“So you thought having your wicked way with me in the landing bay would do it?” she said, crossing her arms across her chest.

His grin grew even wider. “It’s public.”

“Only to someone flying in from outside,” she said, pointing out towards the open space doors that showed the ship-building station outside. “Which would be Biggs, whenever he feels like coming in.”

“He won’t tell,” he said, leaning forward for another kiss.

The sound of footsteps barely gave Jeni enough time to shove him away before the executive officer came marching around the corner, his steps precisely measured. He was every inch the proper Imperial, and Derek and Jeni both stood at attention. “Sir.”

“Lieutenant Klivian. You have not reported in yet,” the other man said.

“Yes, sir,” Derek answered. “I was explaining to the chief here that I believe there’s a rattle in my starboard engine.”

“Perhaps that explains the complaint we just received from the civilian ship heading out of the system,” the officer said. “Please finish and report to my office. Lieutenant.” He looked down his nose at Jeni. “Chief.”

He was out of sight and out of earshot before they spoke again. “Kriffing piece of sithspit,” Jeni muttered. “Now I’ll actually have to take the engine apart.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Derek said helpfully. “It can’t take long.”

She glared at him. “No, but in taking it apart, you risk something getting inside that shouldn’t be there. Thanks a lot, hot shot. You and your sneaking around have created more work for me.”

“Actually, you created more work for yourself,” he countered.

She put a hand on her hip and fixed him with one of the stares her deck crew hated to find themselves on the receiving end of. “Oh, yes? And just exactly how did that happen?”

“You,” he said, backing her up against the fighter once more, “were in my head when I was flying, which caused me to nearly clip that shuttle, which just made things go downhill from there.” He leaned in for another kiss.

She put her hand against his lips, and instead of her mouth, he found engine oil, and a look that clued him into the fact that she was through messing around with him. “Derek. Enough sneaking around. Get off my deck.”

***

It wasn’t enough that Janson was opposed to the entire idea, but when Hobbie managed to get the Coruscant military operator to finally put him through to Cracken’s home, Pash too, tried to discourage him.

“Hobbs,” his friend said, “I don’t know what it is you need from my father, but if I can get it for you, let me help. Please. I know what it’s like to be in debt to my father, and that’s no place to be.”

“Pash,” Hobbie said for the third time, “I understand that you want to help, but you can’t. I need to talk to your father.”

Pash’s lips tightened into a grim line. “I hope that whatever you need is worth it.”

“It is,” Hobbie said. “But I’m short on time, Pash.”

Two minutes later, Airen Cracken was sitting before the comm unit. “Major Klivian. Pash tells me you have a matter to discuss with me of some urgency. Since you’re calling my home at this hour, I’d assume this is so.”

“I need you to provide me with NRI jurisdiction for myself and Major Janson for Semsara and the surrounding system,” Hobbie said without preamble.

The skin around Cracken’s eyes barely even twitched. “I’ll need to know what for before I start dealing out Intelligence passes and powers, Major.”

“I’m investigating a murder, General,” Hobbie answered. “The local law enforcement aren’t doing a stellar job, nor are they being forthcoming with information. I’m not satisfied.”

“You can hardly take on every homicide case that’s been mishandled in the sector, Major,” Cracken said, leaning forward towards the screen, his chin resting in his hand as he thought. The fingers covering his mouth kept Hobbie from hearing a word Cracken mumbled to himself.

“I can take on this one, General,” Hobbie said. “It’s personal.”

“It always is,” Cracken said, leaning back.

“She was a member of the New Republic military,” Hobbie said. “She was in the Rebellion and she was in the military. I thought we didn’t leave people behind.”

“If I give you this, Klivian,” Cracken said, “you understand that you will be in my debt. You and Janson both.”

“Not Janson,” Hobbie said angrily. “Janson came along to help me out, and he’s not asking for this. I don’t care what I end up having to do for you, but he’s getting ready to get married, and I’m not about to put him in the middle of your games.”

”And it’s still personal indeed,” Cracken mused quietly. “Very well. I’ll send along your approvals right away. They should be there by the time you return to the public safety office. And Major, don’t make me regret this decision.”

“You won’t,” Hobbie said. “Thank you, General.”

“Believe me, Major, you’ll be paying for it one day. Go solve your murder,” Cracken said. The screen turned black.

Hobbie turned around. “I appreciate you not putting me in Cracken’s debt,” Janson said slowly, “but are you sure you couldn’t have accomplished this with a call to Iella, or gotten someone else to handle this for you? We’ve known Han Solo for a long time. He’s got to have some pull still left.”

“It would take too much time for Han to wring it out of anyone,” Hobbie said, pulling his jacket back on, “and Iella doesn’t have the power to give us what we need. I’m willing to make the trade-off. I just didn’t want you to have to do it too.”

Janson shook his head as he followed his friend from the comm center. “I’m glad I didn’t have to.”

They arrived back at the public safety office and Hobbie swiped his military id at the reader at the door without speaking to the receptionist.

The message popped up immediately. Recognized: Major Derek Klivian. New Republic Starfighter Command. Rogue Squadron. New Republic Intelligence. Sector Agent, Level 2. Licensed to arrest suspects. Licensed to carry concealed weaponry. Licensed to kill.

Janson swiped his card and the same message popped up. “Level 2?” he said under his breath. “Isn’t that what Iella is?”

“Looks like the general’s wife is somewhat more deadly than we thought,” Hobbie said. Swiping his card at the entrance again, the door opened, admitting him and Janson.

Hobbie’s insistent knock made Duggan raise his head from his work. “Lieutenant. I’ll assume you’ve already received our papers.”

“You have connections that work fast,” Duggan said, pulling a copy of the message from the desk. “Straight from the head of New Republic Intelligence. How did you get this? Who did you bribe?”

Hobbie leaned over his desk, Janson not even bothering to restrain him. “I’m in Rogue Squadron, Sithspawn. If it wasn’t for us, you’d still be sweating under the thumb of the Empire with stormtroopers patrolling through these corridors. I don’t have to bribe people. They do me favors.”

He took a deep breath and backed up. “Now. We’re actually doing you a favor. We’re lightening your case load and taking over Jeni Rutard’s case. So you can hand over all the material you’ve collected, and we’ll be on the way.”

“All the evidence is in the evidence room,” Duggan said, his voice tight, knowing he’d been beaten. He rose, pulling a datacard from the desk. “Here’s everything we have. It’s not much. We’d judged it a suicide.”

“Yes,” Hobbie said, taking the datacard. “We know. Thank you for your cooperation, Lieutenant.”

Janson took the datacard from him as they left. “You want to take a look at this?”

“Not yet,” Hobbie said. “Got the keys to the landspeeder?”

Janson tossed them to him. “Here. Where are we going?”

“Get a datapad and plug that card in. We’re going to her house,” Hobbie said. “That’s where they found her, and that’s where we’re starting.”

***

In Totidem Verbis (002: Middles)

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 14:32:19 GMT

Title: In totidem verbis
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters: Galactica
Prompt: 002. Middles
Word Count: 186
Rating: G.
Author's Notes: My series focuses on one character without an actor: the Galactica. Features Dee.

Thousands of conversations take place in the ship everyday. Between all the ships of the fleet, probably millions, maybe billions.

Galactica has enough to carry her own, words bouncing down the hallways. Dee hears them all, or she thinks she does. She walks into the middle of conversations, walks through them, and puts pieces together in her mind.

Apollo and Starbuck are kidding one another as she passes by, and they wave. She hears them continue to talk—

“—botched that landing. Worst I’ve seen since you flew down from Aerilon.”

“You weren’t there to see that.”

“I had pictures.”

“If he was still—“

The conversation leaves off and Dee continues along the hallway, missing what Apollo would have done, but she can guess that he has stopped mid-sentence and left his thread unvoiced and she guesses that Starbuck has not ceased her teasing.

Dee passes, too, Baltar, with his head against the bulkhead, muttering to himself. He never looks up.

So Dee continues down the hallway to her bunk, where she closes her eyes, wondering at all the words.

Only Galactica hears them all.

Doppelganger (a Hobbie Klivian story) Part 2

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 03:30:55 GMT

This section is unexpurgiated, and therefore deserves a higher rating than the one posted on the JC. In other words, if you don't want to see Hobbie getting laid, don't read this version. Check out the one on the JC.

[Sometime before the Battle of Yavin]

Rand Ecliptic

He wantonly stripped clothing from her body, not taking the time to be careful with her. They clashed for the right of dominance in possession of each other’s mouths and bodies.

His shirt flew over his head and across the room. Her fingers traced along his barely defined muscles, exploring territory that she already knew but was unfamiliar at the same time.

He pushed her back, hands on her bare shoulders, against the mattress, his heave weight pinning her to the bed. She ground herself against him in revenge and he pinned her hands above her head, rising enough that she couldn’t buck up and attempt to torture him. “You can’t escape,” he rumbled, his voice hoarse.

She arched her back, even against his hands, pressing her bare chest against his. Slick skin slid against slick skin and her dark eyes shone. “But I can make keeping me hell.”

“Damn you, woman,” he growled, claiming her mouth. His grip on her wrists came loose, and she suddenly clamped her legs around his waist, rolling over until she was on top.

This was what making love was for them, every time—a hurried fight for control of the moment and the other’s pleasure. He moaned as she climbed on him, gasped her name as she moved, and in one smooth motion, pulled her down to him. Taking her by surprise, he wrapped the bedding around them as he reversed their positions.

Her breathing erratic and her hands gripping the sheets, he knew he’d won this round. With a low laugh of triumph, he watched her face until she gave herself over to him. Completely.

”Mmm,” he said sometime later, the sound rumbling through his chest with vibrations that sounded like a satisfied animal. His fingers tangled through her hair. “You drive me crazy.”

She looked up at him, resting her chin on his shoulder. “Good.”

With one swift motion, he pulled her completely on top of him so if she lowered her head, her mouth would be tilted directly over his. “I think you know me better than I know myself.”

She tossed her hair behind her shoulders, helped by his hands. “Derek, no one can know you better than you know yourself. I’m just letting you be yourself.”

“You don’t think I’m being myself?” he said, an amused smile on his face.

“You don’t let your true self out,” she said softly. “No one sees this side of you, Derek. They see your other side.”

“Old dependable Hobbie?” he suggested, propping his head up on an arm.

“No,” Jeni said, mischief in her eyes. Her hair came forward to fall around his face. “No one sees that you care.”

***

[Semsara. Now.]

Janson managed to arrange flight on a military transport going to one of the orbital defense stations around Semsara so they could take their X-wings with them. Inyri had come and asked if there was anything she could do. Hobbie shook his head and thanked her, but politely declined her offer of help.

The trip from Coruscant to Semsara was nearly twenty-five standard hours. Janson dozed while Hobbie tried to continue the book Duggan’s call had interrupted, but his eyes merely rested on the words without reading them.

He stared out the window into the swirling colors of hyperspace. Around and around and around, they surrounded the ship and he wondered what it would be like to get lost in hyperspace forever and just to wander around until death found him.

His memories kept surfacing, and everyone he remembered he held on to as tightly as he could. He hadn’t realized how important they were then. Now, he would give every credit he had to keep them or to remember more.

He reached up, turning off the light over his seat. Only a few other lights in the transport indicated other personnel were still awake. Closing his eyes, he hoped he wouldn’t dream.

“Derek?” the voice called. “Derek?”

He turned around to see Jeni standing there, dressed in her Rebellion mechanic uniform. “Jeni,” he breathed.

There were tears in her eyes. He’d never seen her cry before. “Jeni?”

“I didn’t do it, Derek,” she said. “I didn’t do it!”

“Do what?” he said, trying to smile at her, putting his hands on her upper arms. “Are you in trouble again?”

“You can’t rescue me this time,” she said defiantly. “I’m dead, Derek.”

“Never,” he said fiercely. “You aren’t dead!”

She stepped back. “I’m dead. But it wasn’t me, Derek. It wasn’t me.”

He cast about looking for her. “Jeni? Jeni!”

The datapad clattering out of his lap and into the floor startled him awake. Taking a moment to reorient himself, he leaned over and picked it up.

“You okay?” Janson said without opening his eyes.

“Just a dream,” Hobbie answered quietly. He looked back out the window and decided that staring into the dizzying vista of hyperspace was preferable to sleeping.

***

They landed their X-wings on Semsara on the landing field for the Public Safety vehicles. The cold air buffeted Hobbie in the face as he raised the canopy of his fighter. Neither he nor Janson had bothered with the standard orange jumpsuit for such a short flight, but even their New Republic military uniforms, when contrasted with the dark black of the Semsara Public Safety men and women running around stood out.

Hobbie shrugged into his jacket and Janson did the same. They did much to allow the two to blend in, with the exception of the bright Rogue Squadron patch on the arms and the combat patches that had long since overrun the fronts and spilled over to the backs. Hobbie had thought more than once about getting a new one, simply so he didn’t get mobbed with requests for stories in tapcafés or for autographs or advice on how to become an X-wing pilot.

Their sidearms were checked at the entrance, and Hobbie nodded politely to the Twi’lek secretary. “I’m here to see a Lieutenant Duggan?”

“Name?” the woman said, without looking up.

“Derek Klivian and Wes Janson,” he replied. He saw the woman’s head suddenly jerk up, and her lekku began twitching erratically.

“Of course,” she said. “Right down this hallway. Take a left at the junction, and then another left. You’ll see his office.”

Nodding politely, Hobbie followed her instructions, and Wes, with a testament to his changed nature since Inyri Forge had claimed him, didn’t give her a passing glance as they passed through the door into a corridor full of holos and commendations for various personnel in the Public Safety department.

Duggan was sitting at his desk when Hobbie’s knock against the glass alerted him to their presence. “Come in!” he said, rising. “Major Klivian, Major Janson. Welcome to Semsara. I’m sorry it’s taken such an event to bring you to our world. Can I get you anything?”

Hobbie shook his head, keeping his face frozen into his customary mournful expression. “That’s all right, Lieutenant. If you don’t mind, can we just get on to business?”

Duggan nodded, tightening his mouth into the regretful expression he’d no doubt used in situations like this many times before—he was sorry for Hobbie’s loss, but it was simply another case to him, because without his detachment, he could go crazy. Leading them further into the building, he kept up a level of talk meant to distract someone, but Hobbie suspected that Duggan’s conversation was more to make himself comfortable than the two military men following him.

“I assure you, Major, Miss Rutard’s body has been treated with the utmost respect. Our morgue is completely staffed and trained to handle any situation. We service the entire city, so our equipment is open to everyone. We keep bodies in stasis until time for the funeral. Here we are.” Duggan pressed his palm to the reader, and the door to the morgue opened, leading them into an antechamber. The two-way mirror showed the way into the morgue, where a body covered with a white sheet could be seen. “The remains are already set out for your identification, Major,” he said quietly.

Hobbie nodded, staring at the door he was supposed to walk through. Janson raised his eyebrows. “Want me to go with you?” he said in a low voice.

Shaking his head, Hobbie glanced over towards his friend. “I think this is something I better do myself, Wes.” And with that, he walked through the door.

The air was chilly, but not uncomfortably so, and the smell of sanitizer and disinfectant burned the nostrils as he stepped into the room, the sound of his boots hitting the tile echoing around. The sickeningly bright yellow of the tiles made everything else dark in contrast, except for the white sheet lying over the body in the middle of the room.

His boots still echoing against the tile, he approached the table. Reaching a hand out, he had to force himself to not shake as he pulled the sheet away from the face of the body.

The shock hit him hard enough that he took a step back, feeling the wind knocked from him as surely as someone had taken their fist and driven it into his gut. The face there was the face he knew. It was older, just as his own was, with a few wrinkles. She was still dressed in her mechanics uniform, as if she’d just come from work, her sleeves rolled up high.

He didn’t want to look, but he had to. The entry and exit wounds on her skull were matted with blood, and he felt sick, trying to imagine what would have caused Jeni to do this to herself.

He stared at his boots for a moment, before looking back up. He’d pulled the sheet down further than he’d intended, revealing her hands, stretched out by her side. Her slender wrist that he’d touched once—that he’d kissed once—was bruised.

His stomach still threatening to spill its contents, he very gently turned her hand over in his. The bruises continued onto the other side of her wrist. In fact, if he held her wrist just so—his fingers almost would match the bruises.

Spreading the sheet back over her, Hobbie sanitized his hands at the provided station before returning to the room. Duggan looked appropriately somber, Janson concerned.

“How did your medical examiner explain the bruises on her wrist?” Hobbie asked bluntly.

“Bruises?” Duggan said. “I’m sorry, there’s no bruises in my report, Major.”

“Take a closer look at the body,” Hobbie said. “There’s a bruise on her right wrist. The blast went in on her right side.”

“I’ll make a note of it,” Duggan said, “but, Major, the both the assistant medical examiner and his supervisor have signed off on this report. Our case is closed, and it has been ruled a suicide.”

“Where’s the weapon?” Hobbie asked.

“It’s being held in our evidence safe until we can finish the paperwork. It’ll be sold at auction,” Duggan said. “There was nothing suspicious about it, Major. It belonged to Ms. Rutard. The silencer on the blaster was a standard one that could have been picked up at any store. She didn’t want anyone to know what she was doing.”

Hobbie persisted. “There was no note, or anything? No indications that Jeni would have been suicidal?”

“Hobbs,” Janson said, his eyebrows furrowed, but he had nothing to say.

“Major,” Duggan said patiently, “I assure you, Semsara’s Public Safety department is top-notch. We’ve ruled it a suicide. Please, Major, let’s get our paperwork finished so we can put that poor girl to rest.”

“I’m not doing anything of the sort,” Hobbie said, feeling the anger well up from underneath him. It was threatening to overflow, and only with the control practiced by fighter pilots was he able to keep it from doing so. “I’m not satisfied with your investigation, Lieutenant.”

“Major, I’m sorry, but this is the only investigation that’s going to be done,” Duggan said.

“Like hell it is,” Hobbie said. He turned his back on the man, leaving the room. For others, the corridors would have been a maze, but he walked straight on.

“Hobbie,” Janson said, jogging up behind him. He had to continue the pace to keep up with his friend. “What are you doing?”

“Going back to my X-wing,” Hobbie said. “I’ve got a call to make.”

Janson’s hand grabbed Hobbie’s upper arm, yanking him around. “Hobbs, who are you going to call? Who is going to be able to make this better for you?”

The deadly look in Hobbie’s eyes made Janson let go of him. “Cracken.”

***

Doppelganger (a Hobbie Klivian story)

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 02:33:00 GMT

Author: CarrKicksDoor
Title: Doppelganger
Fandom: Star Wars
Timeframe: Two and a half years before the Hand of Thrawn Duology (directly before the Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy)
Keywords: Hobbie Klivian, Wes Janson
Summary: There have been two Hobbie Klivians in the universe. Most people have only known one. One woman knew another. And now, the universe is going to know the consequences of angering the other.
Status: In progress
Notes: If you’ve read my Wes Janson story, Unfit for a Normal Life, you may remember one slight incidental about the party at Fey’lya’s—Hobbie never mentioned having a date. There was a reason. This is, however, a stand alone story. Also, most of the italics in this story indicate flashbacks to an earlier time. Most of them should be self-explanatory.

***

[Sometime before the Battle of Yavin]

Rand Ecliptic

“Derek?” the voice said softly. “Derek? Are you there?”

“Hang on,” he said. Biggs had, with a grin, agreed to play sabaac late into the evening. Despite being captain and executive officer of the Ecliptic’s small fighter contingent, he and Biggs still had to share quarters. Shoving a dirty sock underneath Darklighter’s bunk, he opened the door.

Jeni hurried in, shutting the door behind her. Already disliked by the ship’s executive officer simply for being a woman in the Imperial service, if she was caught sneaking into Lieutenant Klivian’s quarters, she’d be drummed out of the service faster than she could say “not guilty” at her court martial.

But if she got caught, she couldn’t participate in their mutiny and join the Rebellion with the rest of them.

At the moment, though, she was here, in his quarters, safe, and she was in his arms. “Jeni,” he said, barely able to breath after kissing her.

She buried her face into his chest and he put his hand on her head, brushing his fingers across glossy dark strands of hair. He could hear her breath heavily against him. “Not much longer,” she said.

He nodded, leading her across the room to the only real suitable seating in his quarters. Sitting down on the bunk, he spoke. “No, not much longer, thank the Force.”

“Thank the Force indeed,” Jeni said. The small defiance in mentioning the Force satisfied them for the moment. “I can’t wait to be shed of this—farce.”

He turned her to face him, pulling her hair out of its severe bun. His mouth descended upon hers, met by an equal ferocity.

He pulled away for a moment, staring down at her. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

Derek Klivian shook his head. “Nothing. Everything’s right.” He ran his hand along the side of her face. “I swear to you—you are the only woman I will ever love.”

***

[Coruscant. Now]

“Hobbie.” The voice over his shoulder was full of fun and mischief. Sitting in the squadron pilot lounge, Hobbie considered ignoring the voice, but he knew that attempting to do so would only make things worse. Sighing, he marked his place on the datapad. “What, Wes?”

A bottle of Whyren’s Reserve dangled over his shoulder. “Corran can’t be here for the bachelor party next week, so he brought me this last night.”

“He’s going to be back in time for the wedding, isn’t he?” Hobbie said, taking the bottle and examining the label.

“He said he was,” Janson said, leaning against the back of the sofa. “He’s off doing some sort of Jedi thing. Besides, he better be, or I’ll have to find another groomsman.”

“So we’re celebrating early?” Hobbie asked.

“Yeah,” Janson said. “Jedi always make a party too dull.” He laughed a Hobbie’s look of irritated disapproval. “No, I’m trying to get rid of it before Inyri sees it and tries to make ryshcate again.”

Hobbie winced, setting down his datapad. Inyri had attempted ryshcate for the engagement party. The result had been an over baked bar that tasted so strongly of Corellian whiskey, Hobbie had taken one bite and found a way to dispose of the rest. Janson, being the good fiancé, had choked down three and needed no lum the rest of the evening. Nawara estimated the ryshcate contained half the bottle.

“Hey, is that the new Jordan Rank novel?” Janson asked as Hobbie rose.

Hobbie glanced back at his datapad. “Yeah. You can have it when I’m done. It’s pretty good so far. Suspenseful. Let’s open up this bottle.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Janson said with a grin. He disappeared behind the bar and two glasses clunked on the tabletop. Hobbie moved to open the bottle when his comlinks began to buzz in his pocket.

Sighing, he answered it. “Klivian.”

“Lieutenant Shore from Communications, Major. I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but you have a priority one message from Semsara, real time.”

“Semsara?” Hobbie asked, a crease appearing in his forehead. “I don’t know anyone on Semsara.”

“The message was quite specific. It seems to be a member of the local law enforcement,” Shore said.

“Put him through down here,” Hobbie said, brushing his hands on his pants. The advantage of being at Rogue Squadron headquarters on Coruscant was the fact that the lounge was outfitted better than those onboard ships. He sat down at the comm unit in the corner.

“Major Klivian,” the man said from the other end of the line, “I’m Lieutenant Duggan of the Semsara Public Safety Force. Major, I need to ask you a few questions.”

Frowning, Hobbie nodded. “Go ahead.” Janson wandered over, curiosity written on his features as he listened.

“Major, do you know a Jeni Rutard?” Duggan asked.

Hobbie paused before answering, the name returning to him with an unforgotten familiarity. “Yes. Is something wrong? Is she in trouble?”

The concern in his voice wasn’t very well hidden. Duggan’s eyebrows knit together. “I’m sorry, Major, but she’s dead.”

The four-letter word held more power than most of the curse words in Hobbie’s vast repertoire. Stunned, he fell back against the chair. “Dead?” he said weakly, his expression too surprised to be sorrowful.

“Yes, sir. We found her in her apartment. You were listed as her emergency contact. Major, had you had any contact with her in the last few months that would have indicated she might have been suicidal?”

“Suicidal?” Hobbie said. “Jeni would never be suicidal. Ever, Lieutenant.”

“But when was the last time you spoke to her?” Duggan asked patiently.

Hobbie ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe four years ago? We—we didn’t talk often. Usually it was just to let one another know where we were. I didn’t know she was on Semsara.”

Duggan nodded. “Major, as her emergency contact, I need for you to come to Semsara to officially identify the body and to take custody of it.”

“Yeah,” Hobbie said. “It shouldn’t be a problem. Yeah. I’ll have to talk to my commanding officer.” The words spilled from his mouth without ever truly being registered by his brain.

“I’m truly sorry for you loss, Major,” Duggan said. “Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you. Contact me when you reach Semsara.”

The comm clicked out, and Hobbie slowly stood. He met Janson’s gaze. “She’s dead.”

“Who is she?” Janson said gently. “I’ve never heard you talk about her.”

“She jumped ship with the rest of us on the Rand Ecliptic,” Hobbie said, still absently. “She was reassigned right after the Battle of Yavin. You never met her—you were still in the med center when she left.” He put a hand to his forehead, still trying to process all the information.

“Why don’t you go talk to Wedge about going to Semsara?” Janson suggested. “In fact, I’ll go with you.”

“I can make it to Wedge’s office by myself,” Hobbie said balefully. “I’m not that discombobulated.”

Janson shook his head. “I meant to Semsara.”

“You have a bachelor party planned,” Hobbie said, shaking his head.

Janson put an arm around his friend’s shoulder. “It won’t be much of a bachelor party without the best man there. We’ll push it back. And since we’ll be back in time for the actual wedding, I think Inyri will be just as glad to have me out of her hair.”

Hobbie opened his mouth to argue, but all his energy left him as the realization finally landed on his shoulders.

Jeni was dead.

Looking over at Janson, he nodded. “I think I could use the company.”

***

My apologies...

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 02:03:18 GMT

To those I've spammed this evening with first the BSG fic, and then four pieces of a Star Wars fic. I live for the day when LiveJournal lets me update with an infinite amount of characters so I can post an entire short story in one post. It will indeed be nice.

To those that do bother to read the Star Wars story, there is more pilot!fic on the way.

To those that do bother to read the BSG story, there is more of that on the way as well.

Eventually, I will grow out of fanfiction. I don't expect it to be anytime soon. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go frak up Hobbie Klivian's life.

Unfit for a Normal Life (A Wes Janson Story) Part 4

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 01:59:11 GMT

***

He opened his eyes, the blur of a dimly-lighted room taking a moment to clear. He was lying in a military sickbay room, and the pain was almost gone.

Turning his head, Wes saw a woman dozing in the chair beside the bed, her head propped up on her fist. Her orange X-wing jumpsuit clashed terribly with the green of the chair. Her hair, plaited into a messy braid, was greasy and there were dark circles under her eyes.

She was possibly the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. It took him a moment to gather enough moisture into his mouth to speak. “Inyri.”

Her eyes opened and she leaned over his bed. “Wes. You’re awake.”

His forehead creased in confusion. “What are—“ he coughed.

“Here,” she said, pouring him a glass of water and putting a straw in it. “Just sip it.”

He did as she said, and she put the cup back down on the nightstand. “You’re here,” he marveled.

“I’ve been here since yesterday,” she said softly. “I’m still listed as your emergency contact.”

“What happened?” he asked as she perched on the edge of the bed.

“You took a shot in the stomach,” she said. “Commander Loran and Captain Nelprin pulled you out and brought you to the Mon Remonda. That’s where we are now.”

He only had one question left now, one to which he still feared the answer. “Why are you here?”

She looked down, clasping his hand connected to the lines keeping him hydrated. “Because I couldn’t stay there.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she leaned closer, touching her forehead to his. “I threw out the divorce papers,” she said quietly.

Wes lifted his hand to touch her face, and with her protective presence over him, drifted back into a peaceful sleep.

***

Outside the room, Shalla Nelprin watched through the darkened window as Inyri gently brushed Wes’ hair away from his face. Other than Inyri’s harried demands to Wes’ whereabouts when she’d arrived after a day and a half in an X-wing to get there and then her quiet, earnest thank you, Shalla hadn’t spoken to the woman she knew only as Wes’ wife.

She kept watch for a few moments more, staring past her own reflection in the window until her comlinks beeped, wanting her attention. “Nelprin.”

“Briefing, ten minutes,” Face said.

Her pause in answering caused the comlinks to crackle back to life. “Shalla, you coming?”

“Yeah,” she said absently. “Yeah, I’m coming.”

Flipping her comlink off, Shalla took one last look at Wes and Inyri before turning her back on them and walking down the empty hall.

***

Unfit for a Normal Life (A Wes Janson Story) Part 3

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 01:58:19 GMT

***

The Kettch, for that was truly the shuttle’s name, was possibly the ugliest specimen of a Lambda shuttle that Janson had ever seen. From its scarred hull to the thread-bare Ewok doll sitting in the cockpit, it was a piece of junk at first sight.

Like everything else about the Wraiths, looks were deceptive. Weapons were cleverly hidden inside and out; Janson immediately liked it. Stowing his bag, he stuck his head into the kitchen, “Are we taking off anytime soon?”

Face looked up from the table and Shalla’s head snapped up unexpectedly, simply at the sound of his voice. Face leaned back in his chair to let Elassar and Runt know they were ready to leave.

“What are you doing here?” Shalla asked.

Janson offered her a smile. “Haven’t you heard? I’m a Wraith again.”

She almost looked like she might be furious, but Face interceded, whether knowingly or unknowingly, Janson wasn’t sure. “Janson, come over here and take a look at this schematic.”

Janson did as he was asked, leaning over Shalla’s shoulder to view the base plans. “Where’d we get this?”

“Cracken,” Face said absently. “It’s recent. It was figuring out who was supplying that was the hard part.”

“Who are we dealing with?” Janson asked.

“Heatech Industries, actually,” Face said, “Private shipments are their specialty. We’re looking at two stages of attacks. First, we break into the president’s house and scare him a good bit. Then we make him watch while part of his factory explodes.”

“Explosions?” Kell spoke up as engines rumbled underneath their feet. “Any plan with explosions is a good plan.”

Janson ignored him and ignored the furtive looks from Shalla’s direction that he couldn’t decipher so he could study the plan. “Breaking into a weapons factory. That’s going to be interesting.”

“Dangerous,” Face said. “It’s got incredible defenses.”

“To be expected,” Janson said.

“Lots of exploding things inside,” Kell said, holding onto the doorframe as the shuttle broke the atmosphere.

Face glared at Kell again. “Do you have anything constructive to add to this discussion?”

“Destructive, actually,” Kell said. “Flash bang grenades with flak at the same time. It’ll take timing, but it’ll take out cameras and guns on the outsides.”

“Still leaves the inside,” Face said. “I’ll have a talk with Asher.” He stood up a moment too soon, nearly falling backwards as Elassar jumped them to hyperspace with the strangely stomach wrenching sensation. The Wraith leader swore, pushing his hand through his hair. “Who put him in the cockpit?”

“You did,” Kell said, trying not to grin as he followed Face from the galley to see the spectacle about to ensue.

Shalla watched Janson for a moment. “Why are you here?”

“Something to do,” he said with a shrug. He was feeling more like his old self than he had in ages.

“No, it’s not,” Shalla said quietly. “You’re here because you don’t know anything else.” She stood up and leaned into him, her face centimeters from his own. “You’re looking for your blaze of glory, Wes.”

“I tried something else,” he said quietly. “I might as well help people by doing what I’m good at. But just because I couldn’t cut it out in the real world doesn’t mean that you can’t, Shalla.”

“You’re such a kriffing liar,” she said, pushing past him.

***

They landed on Jandi, a Corporate Sector world. Droids were lining the street in various states of motion and disrepair. The Corporate Sector, the remnants of the technological corporations that had ruled a great portion of the galaxy before the Clone Wars, was still populated by the shells of some of those Clone Wars era droids and weaponry.

The air smelled like two things—the musty smell of buildings airing out in the breeze and the smell of new transparisteel, clean and sharp. A mix of smells that at once made one want to breathe deeply and not breathe at all, it permeated everything.

“Rodder, this place is depressing,” Shalla muttered.

“Just slightly,” Janson said. The fake beard Face had attacked to his chin was itching and he resisted the urge to scratch at it. “Come on.”

They were all posing as shuttle passengers, coming to Jandi for business reasons, with the exceptions of Elassar and Runt, the shuttle pilots, and Piggy, their security.

Janson and Shalla checked into the hotel as a husband and wife team. Throwing his bag in the chair, he sat down on the edge of bed and flopped backwards. The two day journey in close quarters had been stressful and tiring, and he just closed his eyes.

“Wes,” Shalla said, her voice stern. He looked up enough to see her standing with her hands on her hips.

“What?”

She shook her head, biting her lower lip to keep from speaking. “Never mind.”

He sat up. “No, what is it? Shalla, we’re friends. We can talk.”

She shook her head again. “It’s nothing.” Unzipping her bag, she pulled out clothing appropriate for a businesswoman and hung it up, ignoring him. But Wes Janson had been married long enough to know that when a woman said nothing, it was rarely ever nothing.

“Listen,” he said quietly. “If you decide you want to talk about it, I’m here for you.” He looked around. “I’m going to go check out the downstairs.”

She nodded an acknowledgement, and he patted her shoulder encouragingly before leaving for downstairs.

***

“Okay,” Face said. Asher had hijacked the hotel’s security system they could gather unobserved. “Here’s how this is going to work. Everyone, repeat the plan. Kell?”

“Team One moves into position at dusk. Guard shift change will be thirteen minutes later. We’ll flash-bang the guards and take over their position. I join Team Two for the assault.”

Asher spoke up. “Team Three’s turn.”

“Shalla, Face, Asher and I surprise D.C. Marsin at midnight, local time, right out of bed,” Janson said. “Face does his scary man routine—“

“—including threatening to reveal his mistress to everyone,” Face said with a grin.

“And Asher breaks into the factory’s security settings and disables the weaponry and security substations,” Janson finished.

“Which leaves Team Three,” Piggy said, his soft grunts underlying his computer translator.

“We go in, take out the bad guys and blow up the east wing,” Kell said. “Then we get out.”

“After which we get out,” Asher said, “leaving my little computer virus in their banks. In gives Team One twenty minutes to get out before everything in their computers go blank and all their security shuts down.”

“Then we wait around another day and go home,” Face said, “barring any emergencies.”

“And if we have any emergencies?” Elassar asked.

“Mon Remonda is taking up station outside the Corporate Sector on a routine patrol. She’ll be available for anything we need. Plus, we’ve stolen enough things that we can steal some ships and get out of here if we need to,” Face said. “Team captains can go over their own tasks if they think it’s necessary.”

No one moved. The Wraiths were professional and they all knew the plan inside and out. “Okay,” Face said. “Go to bed. Get some sleep. Stay close tomorrow and be back here two hours before we move out.”

They split up then, and Janson and Shalla returned to their room with little talking—just minor chit-chat about the city and the restaurant they’d eaten dinner at, a few blocks from the hotel. It had been good, and quiet, and on the New Republic’s tab, so they’d enjoyed themselves, despite their disguises.

Shalla kicked her boots off and threw them in the corner before sitting on the edge of the bed. Janson sat down next to her, pulling off his own boots and peeling away the beard with some relief. “You okay?”

She leaned back, propping herself upon one elbow to look at him. “Tired.”

“You sure?” he asked, scooting back on the bed. “You were awful quiet in the meeting.”

She didn’t say anything, and he mirrored her posture. “You want to talk?”

“Why did you come back?” she asked. “The real reason.”

He looked down at the geometric pattern on the bedspread and picked at it. “Military is what I am, Shalla. I’ve made my identity by my rank and what I do. It’s been that way since I was a kid. Ever since I was in the Rebellion. And suddenly, I wasn’t in the military anymore.” He looked up at her. “I never expected to survive the Rebellion. I never made plans for retirement. And then after Isard came back, and I nearly died, that changed. I thought I could get away from it. But I’ve been part of it too long. I’m one of those that are just irredeemable. It just took me this long to realize it.”

Her head dropped to look down at the same patch of bedspread he’d been studying. “I think I’m the same way, Wes,” she said softly. “I don’t know anything else but this life. But I don’t know this is what I want anymore. And I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t do this.”

Her voice cracked slightly, and he reached out to brush hair from her face. “Shalla,” he said, his voice low, “you are not me. You are not trapped in this life.”

“You aren’t trapped here either,” she said, some kind of urgency in her voice now. “Wes, you don’t have to do this. Please don’t do this.”

He smiled. “I wish I could.”

Her hand touched his face, cupping his cheek. “Don’t go out in a blaze of glory on me, Wes.”

He met her gaze. “I’m not going anywhere, Shalla.”

The worry in her eyes barely cleared, and she gently smoothed down his hair. “Shalla,” he said quietly. “Promise you won’t go out in the blaze of glory.”

She didn’t say anything, but leaned forward. Her lips met his, and he closed his eyes. Memories of her kisses from years and years ago, before Inyri, flooded his mind, but he couldn’t return her kiss, despite the bitter thought going through his head. You’re not married anymore.

He pulled away slightly. “Shalla, I—“

“I’m sorry,” she said automatically, sitting up.

“No, Shalla—“ he said, trying to make her understand that it wasn’t a rejection of her. Trying to make her understand that it was himself that was the problem.

“You still love her,” she said quietly, smiling at him so he would know she wasn’t offended. “I’m getting in the shower.”

With a sigh, Janson laid down on top of the comforter and closed his eyes. He pretended to be asleep when Shalla emerged from the refresher. He heard her pad around the room in her bare feet for a moment, heard the click of the light and felt the press of her lips against his forehead. She climbed into the bed and under the covers with her back to him, and Janson tried to sleep, keeping his distance from her.

They tried to ignore it the next morning when despite the comforter between them, they woke up holding on to one another.

***

“We’re on station,” Face muttered. “Stand by.”

“Teams Two and Three, roger,” Kell’s voice said back.

“Eight,” Face said, gesturing to Shalla. She picked up a vase off the dresser. Marsin was along in the other room—his wife and his mistress were both off-world at the moment.

“Too bad,” Shalla said softly. “It’s pretty.” Hefting the vase in her hand, she threw it. It smashed against the wall.

Janson winced as the glass fell to the floor, even as he took his position by the door. Shalla stood across the room, deep in the shadows, and Face stood barely out of the light coming through the window. Asher hid behind Shalla, holding onto his datapads with one hand and his blaster with the other.

The door opened, and Marsin carefully stepped forward, some kind of a blunt instrument in his hand. “Who’s there?”

“Don’t move,” Janson said, placing the tip of his blaster against Marsin’s temple. “Drop it. Now.”

The antique sword Marsin was holding dropped to the floor immediately. “Who are you? What do you want?”

Shalla stepped forward menacingly. Face stayed in the shadows, his voice deep and sinister. “Mr. Marsin. You have been supplying weapons to certain individuals in the New Republic.”

Marsin looked shaken as Asher swung around Shalla and began plugging his datapad into the computer station in the bedroom. “I supply weapons to a lot of people. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“There is when you’re supplying mass quantities of illegal weapons to the private armies of certain influential politicians in the New Republic,” Face continued. “I don’t think I need to continue to spell it out for you. You were in contact with the individual in question only ten days ago.”

“I’m ready for him,” Asher popped up.

“Input your access codes,” Janson said.

“And I wouldn’t try anything funny,” Face continued. “We happen to have contacts at the same conference your wife and your mistress are attending, and we can see that your wife receives certain information you’d rather she didn’t have.”

Marsin quickly input the codes. Asher looked it over for a moment. “Looks good.”

“Team Three, begin your assault,” Face said.

“Assault?” Marsin said.

“That’s right. Assault,” Face said. “Don’t worry. You’re perfectly safe. Your factory on the other hand is going to suffer some severe damage to the droid operated sections.” He gave a slight laugh. “We’re activists, not murderers. Unless we have to be, of course.”

“Sit down,” Janson ordered, and Marsin sat down on the edge of his bed.

“Now, Mr. Marsin,” Face said, coming far enough into the room that only his silhouette was visible. “You and I are going to have a discussion about to whom you are supplying. First of all, you’re going to institute a new business policy. You’re not going to sell weapons in mass shipments except to the New Republic military. Secondly, you know your nice pretty new assault rifles? You’re not going to be selling them to private citizens anymore either. Anything that’s classified as assault, you’re not selling to private citizens. You can call it a renewed initiative to the public safety.”

“I’m not going to make any money,” Marsin said weakly.

Face approached Marsin, and leaned down very close, his black mask nearly touching Marsin’s greasy nose. “Third, you’re going to learn one very important lesson. Money isn’t everything. Get up.”

Janson heard Kell’s voice in his ear. “Three minutes. Team evacuating to staging point.” This was good—it meant the operation was proceeding smoothly, which meant it was nearly time for something to inevitably go wrong as it always did with the Wraiths, but neither Shalla nor Face looked worried.

Shalla tied Marsin to a chair by the window in silence, using undue force to secure him. Face circled the man like a predator, and Janson stood there, leaning against the wall. It was a casual stance, one shoulder against the wall, with the same arm bent at the elbow and his hand holding the blaster out, lazily pointed towards Marsin. Marsin might have though Janson wasn’t aiming.

He would have been wrong. If Janson had a weapon in his hand, he was aiming at something. It was habit. It wasn’t even habit. It was nature.

Face was speaking ominously, his actor’s voice intoning exactly what Marsin was going to do and what was going to happen to him if he failed to do what he was instructed. Kell’s voice spoke up again, jerking Janson out of his dangerous reverie. “Thirty seconds.”

“Look out this window,” Face said, and even Janson felt the thrill of what was coming go down his spine. He knew at times why Kell had chosen demolitions as a career. “See that wing of yours, the wing manned by the droid workers? I want you to watch it. Very, very carefully.”

For a split second, there was almost no sound, just the breathing in the room, and the ambient sounds of outside, the clicks and clatters of vehicles clamoring down the street, the occasional loud voice shouting above another. Then the silence was complete and deafening.

The wing of the building, nearly a klick out, exploded. The sound shook the transparisteel windows and rattled the fragments of the vase Shalla had broken as a fireball rose high into the air and thousands of droids met their deaths among the ruins of the firearms factory.

That damage was very little compared to that which Asher wreaked two seconds later by pressing a button on his datapad. His virus downloaded into the computer system, wiping files and backups. Financial records, orders, invoices—it all disappeared as his bit of programming genius ate data like a hungry rancor after anything in sight.

“Sit here and think about everything I’ve said,” Face said. “Let’s go.”

Janson and Shalla took point, putting Asher between them and Face as they escaped down the hallway. They had twenty minutes before Asher’s bug hit the security subsystems and locked down Marsin’s entire estate, which was more than enough time to get out the way they’d come—up through the kitchen service corridor and the exterior delivery door.

Unfortunately, Marsin’s personal security were using that as a shortcut to Marsin’s living quarters as they bellowed into comlinks, attempting to get their employer to answer them.

“Shavit!” Shalla hissed, yanking Janson out of the way. Her blaster whined as it fired.

“Move,” he said gruffly as she ducked her head out of returning fire. Face and Asher were back behind another corner, both coming around to pop off shots at their attackers, Face somewhat more quickly than Asher was.

A blaster in each hand, he set his teeth, and Janson moved. It was nothing. Point, fire. Point, fire. Point, fire. Three men. Three shots, two from his right hand and one from his left. They fell to the ground, unmoving. “Come on,” he urged, hauling Shalla out. She didn’t hesitate, moving around the corner to keep going. Face came next, resuming his position, nudging Asher to move. The kid’s gaze swept along the dead men in the hallway long enough to see their faces before he too, stepped over them and continued on.

“This way,” Shalla said, moving through the kitchen. She moved quietly, her boots barely making any noise against the tile.

“I hear something,” he said, halting her in her tracks. They ducked down for a moment behind the counter, and Janson held his hand up. The sound continued, footsteps growing closer. A lot of footsteps.

Gripping his blasters, he tried not to breathe as the guards came rushing through. Asher had his eyes closed and looked like he was trying not to hyperventilate.

The stacks of plates in the cabinets burst apart as the blaster fire hit them. Instinctively covering their heads, ceramic and china rained down upon them, and Janson and Shalla pivoted around, their blasters pointing over the counters to fire.

The guards already had cover. “We’re going to have to run for it!” Janson yelled.

The door was barely twenty meters away, and once they got outside, separating into pairs would be the best option. They would be more difficult to catch, and would have more mobility. Face motioned to Asher to move to the next counter. “Lay down covering fire.”

“Got it!” Janson said. “Go!”

He set his blaster to repeating fire. It cycled as fast as it could, spraying the kitchen with blaster bolts. Pans pinged the deadly light back off and shots ran into tile and men as Face and Asher ran for the counter that would provide protection, nearly three meters away. “Your turn!”

“You go first,” Janson said to Shalla, ducking back behind his counter and wincing as the transparisteel countertop began to superheat and spray metal fragments over them. “I’ll cover for you, then you do the same.”

“We should go together,” she said, firing around the corner.

“Face can’t shoot,” he said. “Go.”

She didn’t argue, dashing as he came up higher over the counter this time, his shots no longer rapidly firing, but more accurate, more precise. If he didn’t hit flesh, he hit something that would break and make noise, or splatter them with something painful. Shalla slid behind the other counter, fabric ripping as her knees ran across broken glass. “Now!”

Janson didn’t duck and run. Crossing the gap between the counters gave him the advantage and a clear shot, and it gave Shalla and the others the chance to escape. He stood, firing. One step, one shot. Another step, another shot. One after another, with three meters of territory to go. Four steps would have covered it.

He put his foot down to complete his third step, and felt fire. Looking down at his stomach, he saw blood.

And then he saw nothing at all.

***

Unfit for a Normal Life (A Wes Janson Story) Part 2

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 01:57:20 GMT

***

He opened his closet, where he kept most of his dress clothing, and was confronted with the intermingled scents of his cologne and Inyri’s perfume wafting out of the closet along with memories of parties and good times. Despite the fact that Inyri was gone, she remained in every way; her clothes had disappeared, but her perfume had permeated the wood veneer of the closet walls.

He considered for a moment his choices in attire—his dress uniform, or the stylishly cut suit Inyri had picked out for his lifeday. Leaning towards his dress uniform, he reluctantly took down the suit instead. Brushing off the shoulders, he closed his eyes.

The door buzzer rang as he finished buttoning his jacket. Letting Shalla in, he silently returned to his preparations.

Shalla stood in the doorway to his bedroom watching him. “Unbutton your jacket.”

“I look more professional with it buttoned,” he said as he shaved.

She came into the bedroom and unbuttoned the jacket for him. “You’re going to a party, not a job interview. So you need to look relaxed.”

“Don’t imagine that’s happening without so much lum I’d need Hobbie to bring me home,” he said.

“You rethinking your part in this mission?” Shalla said, and he saw her reflection in the mirror, stiff and worried.

“Not the mission, no,” Janson replied. “Just the party. He put down the razor and turned around to face her.

“You need to talk about this sometime, Wes,” she said.

“The one thing I don’t want to do is talk about it,” Janson said, straightening the jacket over the vest underneath. Shalla was right about unbuttoning it, but he still would have preferred the extra layer between himself and everyone else.

He sat down on the edge of the bed to pull on his shoes and Shalla leaned back against the dresser. He glanced up to see her still watching him and sighed. “What?”

“I’m wondering if you’re ready to do this,” she said. “It’s not to late to back out.”

He stood up, facing her. “I’m not about to abort this mission,” he said. “Get on station. I’m leaving.”

Her hand yanked him around to look at her before he could leave. “Then get your mind off your wife and on what you have to do.”

Janson stared at her a moment before she dropped her hand. “Get on station,” he said quietly.

***

He sat at the bar in the golden yellow room that comprised most of Fey’lya’s suite in the Imperial Palace. This had once been known as the Golden Room, and for this evening, the furniture had been cleverly arranged to the sides of the room to allow space for dancing. Out of the corner of his eye, Janson could see the hallway where Fey’lya’s study was.

Two hands suddenly clapped on his shoulders, interrupting Janson’s surveillance of the dance floor. “Wes, you have got to start answering your messages. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for three days now.”

Janson turned around at the sound of his friend’s voice. “Hello, Bugbite. I’ve been busy.”

Hobbie snorted, his normally somewhat serious expression artificially cheerful for his friend's benefit. “Busy. Like I believe that. You’ve been out playing shockball someplace fabulous, I know it.”

Janson shrugged. “Like I told you—busy.”

Hobbie tried not to laugh, before turning back towards the dance floor. “Can you believe this. Fey’lya’s working hard for the military support, isn’t he?”

“He needs it too badly not to try,” Janson replied, taking a sip of his lomin ale. “Where’s Wedge?”

“He and Iella had the sitter cancel on them. Corran and Mirax are leaving their kids with Booster, so they’re probably trying to convince Booster to take the girls too,” Hobbie said. “Tycho and Winter are here, though, talking to Captain Kre’fey.”

Janson looked over towards the Bothan. “Wasn’t he captaining the Reliant?”

Hobbie shook his head. “He’s moved up in the galaxy. Fey’lya’s cousin is now the proud captain of—“

Janson never actually heard what Kre’fey was captaining, as the herald at the door raised his voice over the murmur of the crowd. “Major Inyri Forge.”

He felt a minor string at the lack of his name next to hers, but she came into view and that was lost.

She was beautiful; of that there was no doubt. Her yellow gown showed off every one of her attributes. He’d always hated that dress. Inyri had two fancy dresses, this yellow one and a red one. He’d always preferred the jewel-toned red, the way it fit about her waist and hips and showed off the expanse of her back. The yellow one showed off other portions of her anatomy in ways that caused men’s eyes to pause and made Janson territorial. She was beautiful in either dress, but the red one with its mystery was Inyri in her glory. The yellow one was Inyri from years and years ago—the yellow one was Inyri with Zekka Thyne.

“Wes?” Hobbie’s voice snapped him back to reality. “You all right?”

Ripping his eyes away from Inyri and reminding himself that it was no longer his job to protect her from the leers of other men, Janson turned away. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

Hobbie’s eyes drifted from Janson to Inyri and back. “I was kind of surprised to see you here. Didn’t expect you to come.”

Janson took a longer drink of his lomin ale, glancing back over towards Inyri. Their gazes met for a few uncomfortable seconds before he turned back. “Well, you can’t play shockball forever.”

“Here comes trouble,” Hobbie said, breaking off the subject, his expression turning dour. “Bothan off your port bow.”

Affixing a fake smile to his face—because he’d at least mustered up a semblance of a real one for Hobbie’s sake—Janson faced Fey’lya straight on. “Councilor. This is quite a party you’ve thrown.”

“Thank you, Major,” Fey’lya said, with one of the polite toothy smiles he showed for the holos. “You haven’t been dancing, I notice.”

“The evening is young,” Janson said, gritting his teeth.

“True. Perhaps you should ask the lady in yellow to dance,” Fey’lya said smoothly. “There is some tension in the room since her arrival, and it would relieve it somewhat.”

“Actually,” Hobbie spoke up, intending to rescue his friend from the situation and the Bothan, but Janson jumped in and interrupted him.

“Of course, Councilor. Whatever I can do to make the evening go more smoothly.”

Straightening his suit jacket, Janson left his lomin ale on the bar, resisting the temptation to take another drink for courage. Hobbie glowered at Fey’lya, then left to join the newly arrived Wedge and Iella.

Inyri was standing speaking with Pash Cracken and smiling, while Pash’s eyes, through no fault of his own except the misfortune of being born male, kept being drawn down towards the bodice of the dress. The band struck up a new tune and Janson interrupted more smoothly than he’d interrupted Hobbie. “Pardon me. Might I have a dance?”

Suspicion flared in Inyri’s eyes, and Pash raised his eyebrows in an expression somewhere between an offer an assistance and a wish to stay clear of the impending explosion. Inyri tossed her hair behind her shoulders, throwing off any assistance she might have requested. “Of course.”

Too many eyes were on them as they stepped on the dance floor. Their breakup hadn’t exactly been private, and Fey’lya had merely wanted more gossip to keep the party going.

“Any particular reason you chose to repeat the incident of our first date?” she asked as they moved into the swirling couples.

“No ‘Hello, Wes?’ ‘It’s good to see you, Wes?’ ‘Where the hell have you been, Wes?’” he said lightly.

“Wes,” she growled.

“Our gracious host suggested that I relieve the tension in the room. If you doubt me, Hobbie was there and properly horrified. The getting between you and Pash was a coincidence.” He swung her out of his arms and then back into them. “You look lovely.”

“Don’t lie. You hate this dress.”

“Is that why you wore it?”

The tempo of the music picked up. “Maybe I wanted other men to look at me, Wes. Did you think about that?”

“In that dress, you’re going after the wrong kind of men,” he said, feeling his voice turn territorial. It wasn't good, and he knew it, because now, she was only going to become angrier.

“Don’t lecture me,” she hissed. “Especially with the kind of women you’ve been known to associate with.”

He spun her out again and pulled her in closer than before. “Fine,” he said. “If you want people like Pash Cracken looking at you like you’re nothing more than a Twi’lek dancing girl, go right ahead. But you’re better than that, and you know it.”

He spun her out for the last time as the music ended, too late for her to make a rebuttal. Her face flushed with anger and exertion, and he bowed to her before escaping off the dance floor.

Pushing it out of his mind, he retrieved his lomin ale in a hurry and put a hand to his head as if it ached, which wasn’t far from the truth. With that, he walked straight for the hallway.

“On station,” he murmured. The microphone was hidden in his suit lapel, which mean a few of the Wraiths had just heard everything that had gone on.

“Hold there,” the answer came in his ear. Asher and Shalla had “filled in” for the security on staff this night. The multi-layered security in the palace relied on secondary stations relaying information to the main stations. Asher and Shalla were clearing the cameras here and then would act as the repair crew to fix it.

“Wes,” the voice was behind him and not in his ear. Inyri stood at this head of the hallway. “We need to talk about this.”

“Now is not the time,” he said.

“Proceed,” said the voice in his ear. “And hurry. I don’t know how long this patch will last.”

“Wes, we need to talk now. It’s not going to get better by waiting,” she said, walking and standing next to him.

“Come on, we don’t have a lot of time.”

Grabbing Inyri’s wrist, he yanked her into the study. “Watch that door.”

Standing there, she cracked it slightly and looked out as he emptied his pockets. “I don’t think we need a lookout to discuss our marital problems.”

“Shut up,” he said brusquely. “Wraith Thirteen proceeding.”

“The portrait on the wall,” Face said. “Of himself. The safe is back there.”

Finishing pulling on his gloves, Janson took down the portrait. “Looks like what we were told.”

“Hook up the datapad and run it through your transmitter,” Asher said.

Digging the tiny microphone out of his lapel, Janson opened it up and plugged it into the datapad. Numbers flashed across the screen as Asher ran through the code-breaking program.

“Are you with Intelligence?” Inyri hissed.

He just raised an eyebrow. “Watch that door.”

“Shavit,” Inyri said. “Fey’lya’s coming. Someone must have seen us come in here.”

“Ten,” Janson said, warning in his voice.

“Got it!” Asher crowed.

The safe clicked open and Janson ripped the datapad loose. Shuffling through the stacks of datacards, there was probably enough information to put Fey’lya away for years, but for now he was only after one.

“Wes, hurry!” Inyri urged.

Grasping the datacard, he put in it in his teeth, pushing the safe closed and rehanging the portrait. Stuffing the equipment back into his pockets, he ripped off his gloves.

Inyri shut the door as he stuffed the gloves into his pockets and jammed the datacard into her purse, shutting the clasp as Janson pulled out a device Shalla had pressed into his hand to burn out any listening devices. “We need to be arguing,” Inyri said in a stage whisper.

“So yell at me,” he said, sticking it back in his pocket.

She looked around anxiously for inspiration. “You have no right to comment on what I wear. We aren’t married anymore.”

At least she’d picked something easy for him to argue with her about. It was something he had feelings about. “I haven’t signed our divorce papers yet,” he said. “And excuse me if I still haven’t gotten out of the habit of not liking men leering at you.”

“Well, excuse me for wanting to feel wanted for once,” Inyri said, raising her voice. Footsteps at the door paused.

“Well, excuse me for still loving you!” Janson shouted back. He reached out and pulled her to him, capturing her mouth in a kiss that should have left no doubt about exactly how much he did want her.

The heavy wooden door opened as Inyri’s hand came up and made contact with Janson’s face. Stunned, he stepped back, staring at her for a moment, oblivious to the presence of the Bothan in the doorway. “I’m sorry,” Fey’lya said. “I didn’t realize I was interrupting a private conversation.”

Janson didn’t even mind the lie from the Bothan. “That’s quite all right, Councilor. We were done talking.” His attention turned back to Inyri. “I’ll bring the finished papers to you tomorrow so we can check them.”

“I’d appreciate that,” she said, her voice somewhere between indignant and breathless.

“If you’ll excuse me, Councilor,” Janson said. “Great party, but I should leave.”

“I understand,” Fey’lya said. Nodding to Inyri uncomfortably, then to Fey’lya, Janson made his escape.

***

His flat was dark except for the light of the holo, and a voice out of the darkness spoke up. “I hope you know Face is out for your head.”

“Because Inyri has the datacard?” Janson said, turning on the lights. Shalla didn’t even squint from her place on the sofa.

“He got it in one guess,” she said sarcastically. “Care to explain why?”

“Too many items, not enough hands, pockets or time,” he said, pulling his tie from around his neck. Unbuttoning the vest to his suit, he hung the tie around the neck of a vase before sitting down on the sofa next to her and putting his feet on the table. He sighed into the darkness before speaking again. “I think I need to get away from here.”

She turned off the broadcast of Coruscant Hourly and leaned her head against her hand. “Not back down to the underground, I hope.”

He shook his head. “Away from Coruscant. Away from all the reminders. Just away. Long enough to figure out what’s wrong with my life.”

Shalla sighed. “Maybe there’s nothing wrong. Or maybe there’s everything wrong.”

He turned his head against the cushion to look at her. “What do you mean?”

She looked away. “Do you ever wonder if we weren’t cut out for this? People like you and I weren’t meant for a domestic life. We were meant to go out in a blaze of glory or something like that.”

“No one is meant to go out in a blaze of glory,” Janson said.

Shalla shook her head. “All I’ve ever known is combat. All I’ve ever studied is combat. Tell me that I wasn’t meant to fight and die.”

“Shalla,” he said quietly. “You weren’t.” But even as he said it, he wasn’t sure he believed it, and he kept his request to himself for the evening.

Shalla rose, regretfully. “Bring that card by as soon as you can.”

“I will,” he promised, his eyes straying towards the comm unit and what he’d been avoiding for too long. Shalla had heard all of that, though, through the microphone in his lapel and he didn’t feel like bringing it up again. “Goodnight, Shalla.”

The door closed behind her, and Wes Janson sat down to work on the process of dissolving his marriage.

***

Inyri answered the door the next morning with the composure of someone who had been out far too late. Her hair, mussed, still curled at the ends, and her face faintly glowed with unremoved makeup. Wrapping her robe around herself, she admitted Janson into her spartan quarters.

“Here,” he offered quietly. The datacard in his hand hung in midair between them. “I promised I’d bring it.”

She took it and laid it down on the desk. “Thanks.”

“Do you want to go over it?” Janson said.

She waved a hand. “Haven’t had that much caf yet.”

“You shouldn’t drink so much caf. It’s not good for you,” he chided gently. “But, if all goes well, I’ll be off-planet for a while, so this is our last chance to double-check everything.”

“Right,” she said, taking a deep drink from her caf. “You’re with Intelligence now. Or have you been for a while?”

“Only a few days,” he said. He didn’t have any reason to lie, and despite the rift between them, he trusted her with his life.

She retrieved her purse from her table and handed him the datacard. “Here. I’m not going to ask what it is or why you wanted it.”

“I appreciate that,” he said, putting it in his pocket.

“If I hadn’t worn that yellow dress, my purse wouldn’t have been big enough to carry your datacard,” she said, and he saw something like mischief in her eyes—the mischief that sometimes would wake him up in the morning when she pounced on him right out of the sonic shower.

“If you’d worn the red dress, I’d never have had the courage to come over to you,” he said, shoving the thoughts out of his mind.

“You bought me that dress,” she said.

He looked down at his feet, the awkward silence growing between them. “I should go. Thanks for your help.”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

Opening the door, he moved to step through, still seeing Inyri, wrapped up in her over-sized robe with her caf in hand out of the corner of his eye. “I meant what I said last night,” he said.

“Which part?” she asked, more than slightly bitter.

“The still loving you part,” he said, looking over his shoulder at her.

She met his gaze for a moment, as if considering what to say. “Goodbye, Wes.”

The door shut behind him, and with a single purpose, Janson walked away.

***

“Asher has the datacard,” Janson said, sticking his head in Face’s office. “He’s started analyzing it.”

“About damn time,” Face grumbled. “I do appreciate your help, though.”

Janson took a seat and put his foot up on the edge of Face’s desk. “How would you like to keep my help?”

Face leaned forward, putting his elbows on his desk. “What do you mean?”

“I mean attaching me to the Wraiths,” Janson said. “Indefinitely.”

Face ran his hand through his hair and leaned back. “You thinking about coming out of retirement?”

“For a while,” Janson said. “Long enough to figure out what to do. And I’m good enough to be on this team, Face. You know I am.”

“I’ll put you in,” Face said, scrunching up his expression in thought. “Indefinite remote attachment. It’ll keep Cracken off my back for a while.”

“Good,” Janson said.

“You moving in here, or you staying at your apartment?” Face asked.

“Too much stuff to move in here,” Janson said easily. “Where’s our base of operations for the next mission?”

“With the Corporate Sector being our likely target, a small ship. Lambda-class shuttle—informally known as the Kettch, believe it or not.”

Janson paused. “You’re kidding.”

Face grinned. “Yub, yub, Major. Welcome back to the Wraiths.”

***

Unfit for a Normal Life (A Wes Janson Story) Part 1

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 01:56:24 GMT

Author: CarrKicksDoor
Title: Unfit for a Normal Life
Fandom: Star Wars
Timeframe: Two and a half years post the Hand of Thrawn duology
Keywords: Wes Janson, Shalla Nelprin, Inyri Forge, Wraith Squadron
Summary: Drama. Romance gone wrong. Espionage. And that was the easy part.
Status: Complete.
Notes: Part of the Quotation Roulette challenge. Also late. But I was sick. That's my excuse. Also, Elli loves me and will let me be late. Will be posted in four separate parts as I get it edited.

Insanity is a minority of one. ~ George Orwell

He had no wisecracks to offer now. He could only offer one of his other skills, one that might make him unfit for a normal life when this war was finally done. The skill that made him proficient at killing people...Janson didn't sight in—he aimed by instinct, by the natural point of his weapon, and fired again. The second stormtrooper took the shot in the dark visor material over his right eye. ~ X-Wing: Solo Command, Aaron Allston

***

He sat at the bar, slowly nursing a lomin ale. It was his third this evening, the two before nursed just as slowly, the end result being that the original clientele of the bar had cleared out, and the rough and tumble crowd of Trandoshans, Rodians and stupid humans had come in.

He supposed staying made him a stupid human, but he really had no intention of moving from his seat in the corner. His eyes tracked the serving girls as they skillfully warded off unwelcome advances and handed out drinks to the late night crowd here in the lower levels of Coruscant, but without much interest. One observer watching from a booth would have said the man at the bar was looking for trouble—but not in the traditional sense. The man sitting at the bar was watching for trouble, and there was a difference.

He minded his own business, and people left him alone. Whether that was because he was minding his own business or because he had a BlasTech DL-44 blaster strapped to both hips and looked like he knew how to use them, only the observer from the booth would have been able to say.

One of the girls squealed as a Trandoshan grabbed her arm. The bartender reached under the counter for his rifle, but the man at the bar put a hand out and set down his drink. “Let the lady go,” he said, just loudly enough for everyone to hear. Someone thumped the musicbox, and the music abruptly quit, and the observer in the booth stirred. The bartender left his rifle where it was under the bar, because if a well-meaning patron wanted to get himself shot instead, he was welcome to do so.

The Trandoshan snarled something, rising, his two friends standing behind him. “You will do something about it, human?”

The man's left blaster was out and fired before anyone could do anything, the blue stun blast engulfing the Trandoshan. The reptilian stumbled backwards, falling into a chair, unconscious. His friends snarled, and the man's blaster turned towards them. “I wouldn't. I'm faster with my other hand, and my other blaster isn't set to stun. Get out and take your friend with you.”

The two Trandoshans looked at one another, and a low rumble from another corner made them realize that they were now not only facing down the human from the bar, but were outnumbered by the Wookiees they'd tracked in here in the first place. Without another word, they picked up their comrade and dragged him out the door.

Someone hit the musicbox again, and the annoyingly loud Ishi Tib tune began playing where it had stopped. Righting the chair, the man from the bar helped the waitress up and pressed a coin into her hand before resuming his position at the bar.

He sat back down at the bar and returned to his lomin ale. The other patrons gave him a wide berth as they ordered their drinks, except for the observer from the booth, who stood and wound her way through the crowd to sit next to him. “Lum. Wes.”

He looked sideways at her. “Shalla. I thought that was you over there.”

“So you've taken to rescuing bargirls in your retirement?” she asked, as the mug of lum was set before her with a splash. “I never knew you to pack quite so much firepower.”

He took a long drink of his ale and didn't answer her question. “Any reason one of Wraith Squadron's finest came to track me down in a low level Coruscant bar?”

“Any reason a Hero of the New Republic is drinking himself into oblivion down here in the first place?” she answered mildly.

“Did you want something?” he asked quietly.

“Major Wes Janson,” she said in a lowered voice, pulling a datapad out of her jacket, “you are hereby requested by General Cracken to join Wraith Squadron for a limited duration.”

Janson snorted. “Requested?”

“You're retired. Can't order you. It was a rather emphatic request from Cracken, the way Face tells it.”

“Should have known Cracken was still running things,” Janson said under his breath. “What does he want me to do?”

“Help us break into stuff. Help us steal stuff. Help us blow stuff up. Deal one high-ranking Bothan of our acquaintance a quiet message from the military before the elections,” she said, a small wicked smile gracing her face.

“And breaking into his house?” Janson asked. Normally he would have been incredulous. At this point, he was inebriated enough to merely sit and listen.

“Actually, you've been invited,” Shalla said. “He's hosting a party in a few days. A good portion of the Rogue Squadron alumni will be there.”

Janson looked back down at his reflection in his ale. “I haven't gotten any invitation.”

“Yes, you did,” she said gently. “Three days ago. How long has it been since you've been home, Wes?” He didn't answer. “It's been a week, hasn't it? You haven't been home since the divorce papers came.”

“Leave Inyri out of this,” Janson said, his voice very low.

“It's been a week, hasn't it?” Shalla pressed. “Look, we could use your help.” She downed the rest of her lum in one drink. “But it you want to sit here and convince yourself that you're not worth a damn, be my guest.”

Her coin clattered on the bar as she walked away from him. He watched her take three steps before he spoke. “Shalla.”

She turned back around to look at him, and it took him a moment to gather the breath to gather the breath to say what he meant. “What do you need me to do?”

Shalla moved back to the bar. Taking the lomin ale out of his hand, she set it down on the bar. “Go home.”

A flicker of pain crossed his face, but without another word, he turned and walked out the door.

Blowing out her breath in relief, Shalla disappeared into the darkness to make sure Janson actually made it home.

***

The empty apartment smelled of recycled air when Janson entered it, blurry-eyed and tired. The bright lights blinked into existence upon his entrance and he winced, having spent the last week in darker locales. Dimming the lights, he continued into the flat, pulling off his gunbelt and dumping it into the chair by the door.

Looking around, most of Inyri's knickknacks were still decorating the shelves separating the kitchen off the entrance from the living area. She hadn't come back to get them, although he supposed she didn't really have room where she was staying with her trainee squadron.

Grabbing a glass of water, he sat down at his comm screen. It was stopped at the official message from the Coruscant Registrar, appended with the divorce papers Inyri had authorized. Swallowing the bitter taste in his mouth, he skipped down the list of messages—advertisements, a message from the Antilles household he ignored, a few transaction authorizations from his week out, a message from Hobbie—finally, the message from Fey'lya, labeled Official Mail.

Selecting it, he sat back, taking a sip of water to help his parched throat. Fey'lya's face appeared. “Greetings. Please do me the pleasure of joining me at a party at my home in honor of our armed forces. Simply reply to this message with your acceptance. I look forward to seeing you there.” The Bothan's face disappeared and a text message with the time and date lit up the screen.

Janson ran a hand over the stubble on his face and replied in text. Ignoring the rest of his backed up messages, he shut his comm screen down. He stopped at the door to their bedroom, contemplating sleep. His bedroom, with the double bed, still rumpled from his attempt to sleep. He shut the door and the hydraulics slammed shut. He'd never quite managed to fix that.

Lying down on the sofa, he turned on the holo. Coruscant Hourly immediately appeared, and he scowled a habit he'd been unable to break—turning it back to Coruscant Hourly, which he hated and Inyri lived on, whenever he turned the holo off so it would be on when she came wandering out of the bedroom in the morning.

Switching it to a comedy channel, he leaned back and drifted off to sleep.

***

He woke to the smell of burning caf. Scorching caf, actually, a smell he considered one of the worst in the galaxy. Opening his eyes to find himself in his apartment, Janson realized there was in fact a pot of caf in the kitchen overflowing.

Jumping up off the sofa cursing, Janson emptied the drawer of towels, sopping up the overflowing caf and turning off the caf maker. Glaring at the carafe, he realized it had been pouring out caf the entire week he'd been gone and scorching the bottom as it boiled away.

Sighing, he emptied out the carafe and looked at it in misery. The buzzer to his door rang, and he wiped his hands off on a dry spot of a towel. “Just a second!”

Slapping the open switch, he was suddenly met with the smiling face of Shalla Nelprin. “Good morning, Wes.”

“That's debatable,” he answered. “Come in.”

She did, her eyes taking in the mess in the kitchen. “Having a problem?”

He snatched up the towels with undue ferocity. “No. No problem. Not like my caf machine hasn't been running for a week straight.”

“Ah, that's what that smell is,” she said. “Here.” Moving to the shelf, she pulled down the fragrancer Inyri had bought—because she'd never realized men just smelled. “This ought to help.”

He gritted his teeth as the fragrancer pulled the burned caf smell out of the air and started to return it to the typical fresh smell. “What did you what, Shalla?”

“Squadron briefing this afternoon. Thought I ought to roust you from your slumber, although I can see the caf already did that,” she said, flopping down on the sofa with the remote and changing it to Coruscant Hourly. Looking over the top of the sofa at him, she remarked, “You might want to get cleaned up. You're covered in caf, you need a shave, and Wes?”

“What?” he growled.

“You smell.”

She turned back towards the news, and frustrated, he realized she was right. Gathering up the caf-soaked towels, he went into the bedroom and dumped them in the laundry along with the clothes on his back. Jumping in the sonic shower, he could hear Shalla moving about in the other room. By the time he emerged, fully dressed and leaning against the door frame shaving, he'd found she'd started a new pot of what smelled like squadron strength caf and there was something resembling breakfast on the table.

After two bites of it, he remembered why he did all the cooking. Inyri couldn't—

Choking down about half of Shalla's well-meaning meal, he begged off the rest, and just hoped there was something better to eat at the squadron briefing.

***

“Out of luck,” he muttered, only faced with a pot of caf.

“Out of luck what?” Kell asked aside.

“I had to eat Shalla's cooking this morning,” Janson answered.

Kell winced and dropped a hand on Janson's back in sympathy. “I'll get Tyria to fix you up something. The woman is a wonder. Jedi Knight, ranger, mother of my child and an excellent cook.”

“You are a lucky man,” Janson said, a shadow of a smile crossing his face, and he saw Kell realize how he'd just gone on about Tyria. “How's your boy?”

Kell's face brightened. “Growing like a Wookiee. If this keeps up, he'll hit two meters in no time.”

An ear-splitting whistle stopped most of the shatter in the room, and what the whistle didn't stop, Face's glares did. “Settle down. We've got work to do.”

“Must we?” A Twi'lek Janson didn't recognize said.

“Yes, we must,” Face said. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce our temporarily assigned help, Major Wes Janson.”

A rowdy roar of cheers and rude noises erupted form the pilots. Janson raised a hand. “Thank you, thank you. I'm pleased to again be in such disreputable company.”

Face raised a hand to quiet the jeers and laughter. “Knock it off. I'd like us to actually get out of here without too many interruptions today.”

“That'll happen,” Kell spoke up from the back with a laugh.

“Enough out of you, Demolitions Boy,” Face said, running a hand through his hair.

“We're waiting for an opportunity to shave his head,” Shalla whispered. “That gesture is really starting to irritate people.”

“For once,” Face said, activating the hologram generator, “we're not hitting anything that involves long travel time—at least not the first part. We are staying right here and going after a member of the New Republic High Council.”

“Kill Pwoe?” Elassar said hopefully. “Can we please kill Pwoe?”

Face glared. “We are going after New Republic citizens. We aren't killing anyone.”

“But Pwoe called me Pointy-Head,” Elassar protested.

“And you called him Tentacle-Face and earned me a lecture on disciplining my pilots,” Face said sternly. “We're not killing anyone.” He waited half a beat for any objections to this before continuing. “We are, however, going to cause some rather lovely damage to Fey'lya's pocketbook and his politics.”

The room was divided between those stunned into silence and those attempting not to laugh in a gesture of near-triumph.

“Fey'lya,” a human in the front said. “Face, if we get caught hitting Fey'lya we'll roast. In a very special level of the nine hells. He'll see to it.”

“Well, I'm not keen on the idea of getting all crispy myself. Hence, Major Janson,” Face said, gesturing to Janson.

Janson held up his hands. “Oh, no. I'm not getting crispified again for you people.”

Shalla barked out a laugh before she could stop herself. “It's not funny,” Janson protested. “I ate bacta for days after that adventure.”

“Fortunately, Fey'lya's flat isn't rigged to burn people to a crisp,” Face said. “Just his rhetoric.”

The image floating in midair changed from that of the Wraith Squadron crest to a picture of a large estate. “This is Fey’lya’s estate on Kothlis,” he said. “He’s got a rather large security force built up—one large enough to outfit some small worlds as an army. This is the army he’s been effectively using to keep a quiet chokehold on Bothan politics. His rivals on Bothawui end up caving or meeting mysterious accidents. What’s stumped us has been where he’s been getting the weapons to outfit them.”

“So now we know who it is?” the same human from the front asked.

The holoimage flipped again to Fey’lya’s large apartments in the Imperial Palace, a suite rivaling only the Solos. “Fey’lya has a safe in his study where he keeps all his important information backed up on datacards. Normally, we’d try to slice it, but—well, Asher, explain.”

Asher, the human from the front, spoke up again. “Basically, Ghent invented the encryption Fey’lya’s using. To get in without being caught is nigh impossible and could take months—maybe years because of the remote connections and firewalls. Give me a datacard encrypted with it, and I don’t have to worry about finesse. I’ll have it cracked in twelve hours—mostly because I have access to the algorithms Ghent uses.”

“Which is where Major Janson comes in,” Face said. “Fey’lya is hosting a party celebrating our legendary heroes of the New Republic military. None of us were invited, but Major Janson was.” He gave the wickedest smile seen in or out of the holos. “He’s going to steal our datacard for us.”

“And then we get to blow stuff up?” Kell asked hopefully.

“Then you get to blow stuff up,” Face said. “Start thinking about what we’re going to need. I’ve uploaded schematics of Fey’lya’s private security measures to your datapads. Dismissed.”

The pilots began filing out of the auditorium, leaving Face, Janson and Shalla in the room with the still present hologram of the floorplan of Fey’lya’s suite. “Get into his study,” Janson said. “I’ll need a good excuse to be in there.”

“Actually, we have one ready for you,” Face said. He looked sideways at Shalla. “Your wife is going to be there.”

It almost seemed to take a moment for those words to sink into Janson’s consciousness. “What?”

Shalla moved between Janson and Face. “Wes—“

“You wouldn’t have liked it if I’d suddenly surprised you with Dia,” Janson said, venom present in his voice.

Face’s expression grew dark, and he turned his back to Janson, striding out of the amphitheatre. “Be back tomorrow morning,” he said harshly.

Janson’s jaw tightened as the door shut behind Face, and Shalla turned. “Please don’t be angry.”

“I’m going home,” he said, gritting his teeth.

“I’ll go with you,” she said, reaching for her jacket. A hand stopped her, a hand that she could have broken seven different ways if she’d chosen.

“I don’t need a baby-sitter,” he growled. Dropping her arm, he walked out the door, leaving Shalla standing alone in the briefing room, a worried frown on her face.

***

Amor Caecus Est

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 01:49:15 GMT

Title: Amor Caecus Est
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters: Adama, Tigh
Prompt: 001. Beginnings
Word Count: 205
Rating: G.
Author's Notes: My series focuses on one character without an actor: the Galactica.

He walked through the corridors, watching his feet. He didn’t have to watch where he was going, because he knew the corridors better than himself and anyone he met at this late hour would move out of the way.

He looked up over his glasses as a few off-duty crewmen, laughing, passed by. They saluted quickly, and he nodded. They continued past him.

Adama paused there at the junction in the corridor, looking over his glasses at the grey tones of the walls. Putting a hand on the deck plate, he felt the cool metal warm under his hand. This was his favorite time of day, when the Galactica was shut down for the night shift and he could be alone with his ship.

It wasn’t for long—it never was. “What are you doing, Bill?”

Adama turned to see Tigh approach. “Thinking about the Galactica.”

Tigh looked around. “She’s saved my life more than once.”

“She’s saved us all more than once,” Adama said.

“You going to bed?” Tigh said, continuing down the hall.

“In a minute,” Adama said. Tigh disappeared around the corner.

Adama patted the bulkhead twice, before letting his hand fall from the plating. “Good ship,” he said quietly. “Good ship.”

To Be Continued.

My Big Damn Table.

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 00:58:46 GMT

001.	Beginnings.	002.	Middles.	003.	Ends.	004.	Insides.	005.	Outsides.
006.	Hours.	007.	Days.	008.	Weeks.	009.	Months.	010.	Years.
011.	Red.	012.	Orange.	013.	Yellow.	014.	Green.	015.	Blue.
016.	Purple.	017.	Brown.	018.	Black.	019.	White.	020.	Colourless.
021.	Friends.	022.	Enemies.	023.	Lovers.	024.	Family.	025.	Strangers.
026.	Teammates.	027.	Parents.	028.	Children.	029.	Birth.	030.	Death.
031.	Sunrise.	032.	Sunset.	033.	Too Much.	034.	Not Enough.	035.	Sixth Sense.
036.	Smell.	037.	Sound.	038.	Touch.	039.	Taste.	040.	Sight.
041.	Shapes.	042.	Triangle.	043.	Square.	044.	Circle.	045.	Moon.
046.	Star.	047.	Heart.	048.	Diamond.	049.	Club.	050.	Spade.
051.	Water.	052.	Fire.	053.	Earth.	054.	Air.	055.	Spirit.
056.	Breakfast.	057.	Lunch.	058.	Dinner.	059.	Food.	060.	Drink.
061.	Winter.	062.	Spring.	063.	Summer.	064.	Fall.	065.	Passing.
066.	Rain.	067.	Snow.	068.	Lightening.	069.	Thunder.	070.	Storm.
071.	Broken.	072.	Fixed.	073.	Light.	074.	Dark.	075.	Shade.
076.	Who?	077.	What?	078.	Where?	079.	When?	080.	Why?
081.	How?	082.	If.	083.	And.	084.	He.	085.	She.
086.	Choices.	087.	Life.	088.	School.	089.	Work.	090.	Home.
091.	Birthday.	092.	Christmas.	093.	Thanksgiving.	094.	Independence.	095.	New Year.
096.	Writer‘s Choice.	097.	Writer‘s Choice.	098.	Writer‘s Choice.	099.	Writer‘s Choice.	100.	Writer‘s Choice.

I think I may be an idiot.

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 23:29:58 GMT

I think it's possible I'm an idiot.

Have you heard of fanfic100? I just signed up for it. It hasn't been officially approved yet, but I've signed up for it.

I signed up for it under Battlestar Galactica. My character? The Galactica herself.

*headdesk*

ACK!

Sat, 17 Sep 2005 03:15:30 GMT

*jumps up and down*

Gaeta-love, Gaeta-love, Gaeta-love.

Also, I saw a stormtrooper today on campus walking with his girlfriend. He was actually a scout, strolling arm in arm with his girlfriend, on a bright sunny day without a care in the world to go get something to eat in the Powell building where he assumedly took his helmet off to eat. Talking to one of my friends today, he apparently lives in the honors dorm and brought the outfit to campus with him. Knowing the rest of the general makeup of the honors program at my university, this does not in fact surprise me.

When I mentioned this to other people, I actually got one response that said, "So? You're going to wear your Trek uniform to campus one day."

FOR THESIS.

(Although if I thought perhaps I could stroll around campus in a Trek uniform on a daily basis without looking too much like a dork, I might.)

Can it be possible

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 03:09:24 GMT

to have as much Gaeta-love as I do right now?