thanks to @maul-appreciation-week for putting this event together!
a/n: this is posted late because yesterday was A Day and ive written a lot of these prompts out of order. told from Rook's POV. Icarus, Scorn, and Spybot make an appearance. i promise ill write something serious soon. i honestly have no idea why ive kept most of these one shots so light hearted lmao. i need to write something tragic.
Rook Kast toppled Duchess Satine's pacifist government. She rescued Lord Maul from the Spire, escaped imprisonment after the Siege of Mandalore, and returned to his side with his lightsaber. She was Lord Maul's confidant, his right hand woman, and handled the daily operations of the Shadow Collective.
And Rook was assigned to hoodie transportation duty.
Lord Maul summoned her at 0600 to inform her, without once looking up from the star charts, that the garment on the table was meant to be "Delivered to her before the temperature drops." Nothing else. No reason offered. Rook was not above questioning Lord Maul, but she was well acquainted with the concept of time and place.
Lord Maul did not lie, but when he didn't want to answer something, he dodged the truth. The last time Rook questioned him about an order in regards to you, he spent four unbroken minutes rambling about the logistics of requisitioning a specific blanket produced only in the Outer Rim. It was, frankly, a load of bantha shit and a poorly constructed excuse from a man whose deceptions were usually clever.
So Rook took the hoodie, said "Yes, My Lord," and left the room.
The east corridor ended at the crew quarters. The door was open, and inside, the woman in question sat at the small table, oiling her heavily modified rifle. Rook liked you. You were competent and pleasant company away from the horde of testosterone she tolerated before you came along.
She presented the hoodie to you when she walked into the room.
"A cold front is coming within the next few days," Rook said. "This will keep you warm."
You blinked and wiped the oil off your hands before taking the hoodie. "Oh, you didn't have to—"
"It's not from me."
Rook was already out the door before you had the chance to ask who.
You wore it.
The sleeves ate your hands unless you shoved them back, and the hem stretched to your mid thigh. The collar sat wide, and slipped down your shoulder often.
Lord Maul noticed.
He didn't stare. But he stood differently. Briefings that once positioned him at the head of the table, logistics readouts between him and the room, now took place at the table's side, within a pace of wherever you settled. Rook watched Lord Maul claim territory for the better part of two years. She was familiar with what it looked like.
When the shoulder slid, he stumbled through a sentence about fuel reserves. For half a second, maybe less, his eyes slid to the bare line of your shoulder, and the next word caught in his mouth. Lord Maul played it off expertly, as he did with almost all things, and no one else noticed.
Rook did. She wished she didn't.
You wore it for nine days, then stopped, and wore your fitted jacket around the base instead. Rook only noticed because Lord Maul became insufferable on the eleventh day.
Not rage, she could deal with his rage. This was nothing short of nit-picking. He found fault with the docking rotation that had run smooth for a month. He queried perimeter shifts he personally signed off on. The head of the table became his throne again, and he briefed like an exasperated school teacher one year away from retirement.
On the twelfth day, Lord Maul summoned her.
He stood on the causeway with his hands behind his back, and let Rook wait a moment before he spoke, which meant the words were rehearsed.
"The garment," Maul said. "She stopped wearing it."
Rook said nothing.
"Find out why," he continued. "If the provisioning was insufficient, it requires correction."
There were several things wrong with that statement, beginning with the notion that this was about provisions. Rook stared at the back of his head.
"Why don't you ask her yourself?"
Lord Maul turned, just enough, to glare at her from the corner of one eye. "Monitoring the condition of the crew," he said, slowly, "is part of your duties. Equipment that goes unused is a failure in supply. I am asking you to do your job, Rook."
Her job.
For once, in all her time spent in service of Lord Maul, Rook thought that she wasn't getting paid enough to do her job. Never mind that Lord Maul had a habit of being frivolous with their supplies as it stood.
She held his eye long enough to prove a point, then looked away before it became a question of insubordination. "Yes, my lord." And Rook moved to go ask you why you weren't wearing that damned hoodie.
Rook found you in the mess between shifts, alone with a ration bar and datapad, wearing your fitted jacket. She sat down across from you, which was odd enough to draw your attention.
"The hoodie," Rook said. "You stopped wearing it."
You blinked. "I…am I in trouble?"
"Equipment that goes unused is a supply concern."
"It's a hoodie."
"It was allocated."
You set the bar down and studied her for a moment, looking as if Rook had grown two heads.
"Okay," you said, slowly. "It's just too big on me. I normally don't mind oversized clothes, but I look like a toddler wearing my dad's shirt. I tried shrinking it in the wash twice, but the fabric is, apparently, indestructible. It's a nice hoodie, it's just built for someone the size of, I dunno, Scorn, I guess."
Rook said nothing, which historically got people talking.
"And it kept," you gestured vaguely to your shoulder. "Sliding down because the collar was so wide. And, well—" you sighed and scrubbed your hands over your face. "This is incredibly stupid, but during the briefing the other day, I'm pretty sure Lord Maul saw my bra strap. Which, who cares, it's just a strap. But he made this face and— well, you know how he is. I got the feeling he found it distasteful. So I figured I'd stop wearing it before it became a problem."
Rook looked at a fixed point on the wall, roughly a handspan left of your head.
Lord Maul once controlled all the major crime syndicates in the galaxy and took the throne of Mandalore. And you spent your days worrying if he found the sight of your bra strap distasteful. The word Rook would use is not one she wanted to associate with Lord Maul. Yet, here she was, and somewhere else in the galaxy, there were people whose problems were sieges. Rook had been assigned here.
"He didn't find it distasteful," Rook said.
"Did he tell you that?"
"He doesn't need to."
"Then how do you know?"
"He didn't find it distasteful," Rook repeated, and she seriously considered, in that moment, what her life would be like if she quit and lived in a cave somewhere.
"Wait, why are you asking about the hoodie anyway?" you asked just as Rook rose from the table. "Why is it such a big deal?"
"A cold front's coming." Which was the partial truth, and got Rook out the door without further questioning.
She found Lord Maul on the causeway again, working on a modification for Spybot, who sat faithfully at his side.
"I spoke with her," Rook said.
Maul did not turn, but the rise of his shoulders was noticeable. "And?"
"It's too big. She tried to shrink it in the wash with no results."
He set down his tools.
"The fabric is a composite weave," he said. "It isn't meant to shrink."
Spybot looked between them, likely recording their conversation. Little bastard.
"The collar is too wide and kept sliding down her shoulders," Rook continued. "She stopped wearing it because she believes you found the sight of her bra strap distasteful."
The sentence hung in the room between them. Spybot laughed.
Lord Maul turned slowly to face Rook, wearing an expression that was rare as a smile: confusion.
"Distasteful," he said.
"Her word, my lord."
He turned back to his tools and began tinkering again.
"Her comfort with the material is irrelevant. The garment serves a function. If she elects to freeze, then that's her prerogative."
Rook really, truly, did not get paid enough for this. Lord Maul, once the apprentice to Darth Sidious, put her through all of this, because he didn't want you to be cold. The blanket. The Force forsaken hoodie.
Rook needed a drink and to shoot something.
"Understood," she said. "One matter, for the record. The garment was sized well past her measurements. I want to know who specified the dimensions so it doesn't happen again."
He was silent far too long for Rook's liking.
"Supply fills available stock," Maul said.
She blinked. "Available stock."
"That will be all, Rook."
Rook inclined her head and withdrew. She made it three steps into the corridor before the pieces assembled in her brain.
Lord Maul knew the fabric of the hoodie and how it would behave in the wash.
Rook stopped walking. She had access to the requisition logs.
The cargo bay terminal was slow and Rook's patience was thin. She paced while the machine displayed the records.
It took several minutes, but she found the log, a single order placed against your name, and scrolled to the specification field.
Not chosen from the stock sizes. Specific values entered for the shoulder span, sleeve, chest, and length from neck to hem. Rook read the numbers. Then read them again.
She knew those proportions. She walked behind the span of those shoulders for the past two years.
Rook checked the authorization code anyway, because procedure was procedure.
Lord Maul's. Not routed through a supply account, nor laundered through the quartermaster's requisition. There was no attempt to hide it at all, as if it never occurred to him that anyone might check, which was uncharacteristically sloppy for Lord Maul.
He sat somewhere alone, at 0300, she checked, and typed his own measurements into the fields, so that you'd wear something the exact size and shape of him, and never know it. The idiot just wanted to keep you warm and somehow made it everyone else's problem.
"You've got the look of someone who found a body."
Scorn was behind her, soundless, because all the Nightbrothers were incredibly quiet on their feet. He set a crate down and looked over her shoulder at the screen.
Scorn read it, then laughed. Not the maniacal, blood thirsty one he used during mission's. This one was almost fond.
"It was only a matter of time before he laid claim," he shook his head. "This whole place reeks of his pheromones. You humans are lucky you can't smell it. This isn't a subtle thing he's doing."
Rook stared at him.
"It's an old nesting instinct," Scorn explained. "Reserved for someone you're courting. He's doing every step out of order, though. I can't imagine he was old enough to have it explained to him before he was taken."
"Nesting."
Scorn laughed and left Rook alone in the cargo bay, utterly dumbfounded.
Nesting? Claiming? Pheromones?
She wiped her search and powered off the terminal.
Rook was going to get very, very drunk.
Rook planned assaults on missions that took less forethought than she gave the next two days.
The problem was not complex, tactically. She needed two targets in one room, neither aware the other would be present, with the door behind her and the evidence on the table, and she needed them there long enough that neither could retreat. It was a containment operation. She had run a hundred of them. The only novel variable was that both targets were people she could not order into a room without one of them smelling the trap— one figuratively, one, apparently, in the literal sense.
That's where Spybot came in. Rook summoned the droid in a corridor. He hovered at her shoulder with an expectant, curious tilt. Spybot liked one person, and that was Rook. Maul, he loved, as much as a droid could love. Which, currently, was a problem.
"I need you to summon Lord Maul to the briefing room tomorrow at fourteen hundred," Rook said. "Alone. And I need you to tell him it's a security matter."
Spybot went still. The curious tilt drained out of his shell and something warier took its place. He made a low sound. That's a lie.
"Yes," Rook agreed.
The droid's response was immediate and affronted. He growled, his eye shutter rolling to the "anger" position. I do not lie to Master!
"All I want is for you to get him into a room."
By lying! He drifted back from her a few inches, shell rotating, and the noise he made was almost wounded— the closest a machine could come to how dare you. The droid was programmed to lie, cheat, and steal. But not to Maul.
Rook sighed. "Spybot, you want to please Lord Maul, right?"
The shell stopped rotating. Always.
"This is an opportunity to make Lord Maul very happy," Rook went on, quieter. "Sometimes us sentients don't know what's good for us, and we need a push in the right direction. Would you agree?"
Master has been…different. Spybot's optical shutter cycled once, slow. You promise this will make Master happy?
"As happy as Lord Maul can get."
Spybot was quiet for a few seconds before releasing a blood thirsty giggle from his vocabulator. I make Master happy. He floated away and it did not make Rook feel better.
"Spybot," she called out. "Lord Maul cannot know it was me."
Yes, yes, yes. The little droid floated down the hall, talking to himself.
Rook stood alone in the corridor and considered that she had just handed the most sensitive operation of her career to a droid who purred when he was pet and cackled when he killed. And that he was, stars help her, the most reliable conspirator on the base.
At 1350, Rook laid the hoodie out on the table.
You arrived first at 1359, datapad in hand and question already on your face. "Rook, I got your message, but I rebalanced the accounts and—" You stopped and looked at the table. "Is that the hoodie?"
Rook regarded you with the tilt of her chin. "This won't take long."
You looked from the hoodie to Rook and back, caution building behind your eyes. Just as you opened your mouth again, the door slid open at exactly 1400.
Lord Maul was already speaking, jaw drawn tight. "Spybot informed me there's a security breach—"
His eyes landed on you.
Maul stilled, eyes dragging from you to the table, then slowly over to Rook. His shoulders rose like the hackles of a wet tooka cat. Behind him, Spybot lingered.
The droid's shell rotated slowly between the two of you and his master, optical shutter cycling. He made a sound low in his vocabulator— not the evil cackle, something softer. Something that might, on a creature with a face, have been a smile. Lord Maul's head jerked towards him, and Spybot fled, floating off down the corridor, muttering delightfully to himself: make Master happy…no more brooding…happy Master…good droid
The door slid shut, leaving the three of you alone. Maul's gloves creaked.
"Rook," his voice was very controlled. "What is this?"
She stood at attention, helmet hooked underneath her arm.
"Lord Maul requisitioned this hoodie for you," she said to the room. "In his own measurements."
She waited just long enough to watch the realization dawn on your face— and for Lord Maul's eyes to widen.
"She stopped wearing it," Rook continued, pointing at you, "because it doesn't fit. And because she thought you found the sight of her bra strap distasteful. Neither one of you has discussed this with the other. So I've been your messenger, for days."
You covered your face in your hands, and Rook fought the urge to smirk.
Lord Maul hadn't moved. She could lose her job or even her life. Lord Maul did not take betrayal lightly. Instead, he did something Rook had never seen him do: raised one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. Rook had seen Maul enraged, wounded, vicious, triumphant. She had never seen him perform such a mortal, exasperated gesture.
And you dragged your hands over your face, flushed to your hairline.
Neither of you looked at Rook. You and Lord Maul, vicious criminals who killed in cold blood— both bested by a piece of fabric.
"I am a Mandalorian." She stepped back from the table. "Not a mediator. The two of you can sort out the rest."
Rook made it four steps our the door before she heard low, muffled voices through the wall.
"You gave me your hoodie?"
"It was practical."
"…Practical."
"You were cold"
She sped up, because Rook had firmly decided that whatever happened next between you two, she would be left out of it.
Spybot was floating by the stairs, spinning slowly, insufferably pleased with himself.
"Not a word," Rook told him.
The droid laughed the whole way up.
Three nights later, Rook was losing at sabacc and trying to bleach the memory of the hoodie from her brain.
Scorn and Icarus were cheating. She had no evidence, but she just knew it. Scorn said something in Dathomiri that made his brother laugh. Rook took another sip of her whiskey.
Both brothers went still at the same moment. It was a specific stillness she'd come to associate with the Nightbrothers; small lift of the chin, flare of their nostrils. Even if Icarus and Scorn weren't as Force sensitive as Lord Maul, they could always tell when each other was around.
The door opened and Lord Maul came in. He crossed the room towards the cupboard where he kept his tea. Rook turned back towards her cards and startled when Scorn's hand slammed against the table.
"Brother!" the word came out warm and delighted. "You mated!"
Rook folded her cards and stood from her chair. She took the bottle of whiskey with her.
"Finally," that was Icarus. "This place reeked for weeks."
"Enough," Lord Maul snapped, but with little malice behind it.
Rook exited the kitchen and took a swig of the whiskey directly from the bottle.
tag list: @lady-aires@purechickenwing@deluliaa@shitty-pigeon-nest39@p-arapsychology@timeladymorsillon@limousinecatblog@erenstitanweave@thelilypadlounge@lady-bess@ninthqueen@weoweo8@night-erudite @anishinew@kimbasfanfics@lindseybaby@and-bone-appetit@jayleeslasher@aneccentriccatgirl@ive-made-so-many-mistakes @bnuuwitch
percy looking up at the perseus statue with his mom and being told he's named after this hero because he was "brave and kind and . . . managed to find his way to a happy ending." and then, years later, looking up at the perseus statue with a worksheet in hand, trying to study it and knowing it's the hero legacy they all care about, knowing how hard he tries to be brave and kind like his mom, but still feeling so far from a happy ending. because bad things still happen, and then he's standing in the rain and .. and maybe it's not enough just to be brave and kind, because what he needs now is to be a hero for his mom.
im struggling w how to come back w my queue,,,3 posts a day is tewwwww much for me to keep up w but if i go down to one or two it's going to take FOREVER to get to story beats,,,,,idkkkkkkk ugh
