Prompt: A Decade Later (Commander Kelvin (CC-5580) x General Riola “Rio” Prean)
I’m so sorry about this.
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: none
rain falls onto the parched earth, staining it rich red.
This old battlefield holds many memories. But there is nobody to visit. Nobody to find them, the remnants of lovers past.
There are many pieces of armour in this otherwise empty desert basin. The spoils of war. A massacre. White plastoid covered in tan-orange paint almost the same shade as the mud it lies is.
The rain clatters on the helmet. The one with the brim over the visor. It’s scratched and stained. There’s a blaster-bolt hole in the side of it.
The rain also falls onto the object beside it. It hums with energy, despite its age and abandonment. It cries out for its master, but she doesn’t answer.
The lovers lie here, as they have and as they will, until the sands of this desert or the elements of the weather destroy them.
It is perhaps a comfort, that they lie here together.
- - -
“Kelvin, what do you think you’ll do, after the war?”
“I think… that I’ll go with you. Wherever you go.”
“Oh!” The woman’s lightly-furred face lit up with a bright, toothy smile. CC-5580 couldn’t take his eyes off of hers. They were so large, and entirely white. They glittered in the stark light of the hangar. Insect-like. Beautiful, in a strange, unfamiliar sort of way.
The Jedi stuck her hand out for a shake. ‘80 looked at it. It was filthy. Covered in engine oil and dirt. He didn’t even want to think about her fingernails. For a moment, his mind fought with itself between obedience and maintaining his own state of hygiene. The Jedi stared at him, smile loosening, then grabbed his hand before he could decide.
“Pleased to meet you, Commander.” His new General greeted him, her voice lilting with humour as ‘80 stared down at their connected hands in mild disgust and complete violation.
“Riola Prean. Jedi Knight.” She continued.
“Clone Commander CC-5580.” He responded.
She quirked an eyebrow. Questioning. Anticipating. Oh no.
“I- I don’t have a name, Ma’am.” ‘80 jumped in, quickly. Thank the stars the other Commanders had warned him about the Name Thing. Prean released his hand, turning back to the open fuel cap of her starfighter. She glanced over her shoulder as she grabbed a rag off of the mobile workbench.
“Well now, we’ll have to resolve that, huh, honey?”
Prompt: Close Call (Commander Kelvin (CC-5580) x General Riola “Rio” Prean)
The tension here is VERY much due to the peril, at least for Riola. She’s mostly focused on Not Dying. I haven’t included Kelvin’s internal dialogue, but the atmosphere on his end is a much more conflicting mix. He’s terrified but also he’s going bright red every time he looks up at Rio, lol. Might reblog with his side later if I feel so inclined :)
Fic below cut!
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: none
“This is all your fault, you know that!?” Riola barked, aggressively, at her Commander, who was currently dangling from her leg. He was heavier than he looked.
“It was you who brought us out here in the first place!” Kelvin yelled back over the roaring wind, looking up at her briefly before refocusing his attention on trying to take out the STAP that was hovering below them. The droid pilot seemed to be aiming specifically for Kelvin’s hand, the one keeping him aloft rather than in pieces on the rocky cliffs below.
Riola grunted as she swung her saber to deflect a shot from one of the hoard of other droids that were currently trying to kill them. These ones were up on the platform. The platform they’d run off of. The platform she’d suggested they run off of. Kriff, Kelvin had that part right.
“Well then I suppose we’ll just have to kill each other, later, huh? Payback!” She shouted down to him. He was swinging from her leg now, after Riola’s rapid movements, but miraculously his aim was still precise. He was barely missing the pilot of the nimble STAP.
“I’m not dying for something I didn’t do!” Kelvin hollered, sounding genuinely distressed now. A spark of fear ran through Riola. Their banter was a mask for their stress, but it was slipping. Riola groaned as she felt the grappling wire start to cut into her hand.
“Let’s hope so!” Riola responded, deflecting another blaster bolt from the droids above her. A sudden gust of wind roared across the cliff-face. Riola lost grip, and slid down the wire a foot or two. She yelped as the friction burned her skin, but reaffirmed her hold desperately. Kelvin’s hand tightened around her ankle.
“You alright?” He shouted, panic lacing his tone. Riola gritted her teeth and took a few heavy breaths as she tried to ignore the blood seeping into the gaps between her fingers.
“Fine!” She answered, voice hoarse, “I just wish G3 would hurry his polished behind over here and pick us up!”
Another blaster bolt. Deflect. Another. Again. Kelvin hit the droid below them in the shoulder, unbalancing it and forcing it to drop its blaster to avoid falling off of its STAP.
“Got im!” Kelvin celebrated, though his tone was somewhat more grim than it usually would be. He let another bolt fly, and this one connected right in the center of the disorientated clanker’s faceplate. It toppled into the deceptively still-looking ocean below.
“Al-right!” Riola congratulated. “Comm G again, make sure he got the message!”
“Yessir!” Kelvin agreed, obediently activating his commlink.
The droids on the platform were persistent. Fortunately, they also had quite poor aim. And Riola had a lightsaber. If this grappling line had a reeling-in function, and if she hadn’t expended most of her energy breaking in to the base they were trying to escape from, they could be out of here in seconds. Alas.
“He says he’s coming as fast as he can!” Kelvin reported.
“Not fast enough!” Rio rasped, voice beginning to give out. As if on cue, the roar of engines rose over the gusting wind.
“You dramatic little tinpot.” Riola said to herself, teeth bared as she steeled herself against both another blast of wind and the rapid movement required to deflect yet another bolt.
Riola’s starfighter, sleak yet battlescarred, rounded the sharp edge of the cliff, rolled a-hundred-eighty degrees, flew downwards, did another twirl and flew up to them, stopping about thirty metres below Kelvin’s dangling feet. Clever G3, flying low like that. Anti-aircraft guns aren’t designed to fire horizontally, after all.
“Right!” Riola barked, tapping into her authority as General. Kelvin wouldn’t like this, but it had to be done. “Time to drop!”
“What?” Kelvin screamed, with a noticeable increase in pitch.
“You heard me!” Riola retorted, as G3 positioned below them. She reached out to the Force as Kelvin’s panic reached its peak. It answered, as it always did. “Buck up, honey! We’re going!” She decided. Then, before Kelvin could protest, she thrust out one hand towards the droids, sending them stumbling back from the edge of the platform, released the grappling wire, and threw Kelvin up into the air with her newly freed hand. She caught a brief scream as he passed her, then all attention was on landing safely. G3 had taken the liberty of activating the fighter’s cannon, which wasn’t supposed to exist, but was proving very useful. The droids were firing less, but they were still firing. Riola swished her saber to deflect them even as she was falling. Kelvin, thankfully, was moving too quickly for them to hit.
Riola’s feet landed on the hull of her fighter with a tip-tap. Her arrival was followed quickly by the Commander. Too quickly. She’d intended to catch him, fully, with the Force, levitating him a half-metre or so off the hull. But he was falling so fast that the best she managed was cushioning the impact. His armour clattered as he landed. Riola grabbed his arm quickly to pull him into the cockpit. A blaster-bolt immediately hit the hull, right where Kelvin had landed only milliseconds earlier.
The cockpit was small. And Kelvin was not. They were crushed into it like ration bars in a crate. Riola suspected she could count the air molecules between them. Too bad.
“You alright?” Riola asked, over the dim of blaster fire hitting their hull, as she flicked on the switches to activate the starfighter’s custom mods. It was geared for speed. Kelvin was breathing suspiciously shallowly behind her. And he was nervous. But not ‘afraid’ nervous. It was a strange combination for a man who’d just left a life or death situation. Riola ignored that, as usual.
“Fine, just get it moving. Please.” Kelvin asked, an almost imperceptible tremor to his voice.
“Oh, please?” Riola drawled as her rapid prep continued, sarcasm returning with force, “well ain’t that just delightful.” The engines whined, higher and higher pitched as they warmed up for flight. She grabbed the control column and looked over her shoulder. “Hold on to your helmet, honey.”
Prompt: A Good Memory (Commander Kelvin (CC-5580) x General Riola “Rio” Prean)
Tiny little conversation below! (This is where Friday’s quote comes from!!)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: none
“Kelvin,” Riola said, voice suddenly clearer, “what do you think you’ll do, after the war?”
Kelvin hummed, captivated by the rings of the gas giant above them. His legs dangled off of the side of the fighter.
“I think,” he started, resting his hand on Rio’s, “that I’ll go with you. Wherever you go.”
Riola went quiet for a moment. Kelvin was fine with that. Sometimes it took her a few seconds to consider things. Especially deeper, emotional things. She was cautious about those.
“I don’t know what I’ll do, Kel.” She admitted, sounding forlorn.
“You could be a racer.” Kelvin suggested, entirely serious. “You’d be good at it.”
Riola laughed. And to Kelvin, it seemed the sweetest sound in the Galaxy. “I can’t disgree, sugar, but don’t you think I’d be at an unfair advantage?”
“Well then,” Kelvin considered, “I’ll be the racer, and you can manage me.”
“You’d crash.” Riola chided him, though her smile never left her face, even for a moment. “You’d blow yourself up into orbit the moment you got on the track.”
“Yep.” Kelvin agreed, nodding lightly. “But we’d be together while I did it, right?”
Riola’s hand turned underneath his. She intertwined their fingers and squeezed. Kelvin squeezed back, and the galaxy brightened.
“Yeah, we would be.” Riola hummed. “Maybe I’ll teach you how to fly properly, one of these days. Then maybe you won’t die, hm?”
“I’d like that.”
Exclusive R2G3 internal dialogue:
Bruh. Get a room. The stars is wrong with you two? What did I do to deserve to be here? I’d rather be minding a classroom of younglings.
Riola settled deeper into the warm folds of her robes as she slumped against the side of the bed. She liked being on the floor, particularly on transports like this. She could feel the power of the hyperdrive pulsing through the metal beneath her. It was soothing. She opened her comm to the last recorded message.
“Hey, General, um.” It began, awkwardly. The Commander, who Riola had affectionately dubbed ‘CC’ to avoid having to call him Commander all the time, was wringing his hands rather firmly, and radiating a sort of fuzzy, warm anxiety that could be felt through the Force even from a simple recording.
“So,” CC began, “I’ve been thinking about the name thing.” A whisper from somewhere out of the holo’s range emerged and CC stiffened slightly as if coming to a sudden realisation. He took his helmet off and tucked it under his arm, which helpfully, finally stopped the fidgeting. Riola examined his face, flickering blue-ly on the hologram.
“I know all the other Commanders have names. That you would like to call me by a name.” CC continued, eyes fixed firmly on the camera. “And, to be honest, sir, CC’s not really doing it for me. Or anyone.”
Riola chuckled a little to herself. Of course. Cece wasn’t a name that inspired particular awe, and she knew that. It was somewhat intentional, a sort of friendly teasing which she wasn’t entirely sure whether or not he was really aware of.
“So I’ve come up with a list, Sir.”
Riola snorted. This man had written a list of baby names, like a prospective parent. For himself. A list of names. To name himself. A grown man. Riola tried very hard not to immediately start recording a message back regarding this specific point.
“Some of them are from the boys,” the recording continued, “and a couple of the natborn officers, but I can’t…” CC’s clear explanation was broken by a sudden hesitation. “Kriff, this is stupid…” he muttered under his breath, reaching up to rub the back of his neck and averting his gaze briefly.
“I can’t decide. I can’t decide, on a name.” CC eventually huffed. Riola snorted again. He had a list. And he still couldn’t choose a name. From a list. A finite supply of names, and still.
“Please, Sir. I know this is strange to ask, but… could you, maybe, pick one? Any of em. I like them all. I just can’t decide, and I think you know me well enough to say which one ‘sounds like me’, or however names are supposed to work.” CC finished. Riola shook her head slightly, grinning like a mad thing as CC’s pleading eyes, full of embarrassment, stared at her from the holo.
“Sure.” She whispered to herself, though it came out with a lot more laughter in it than intended.
“Right, well, anyway, I hope you have a nice trip. I look forward to seeing you again.” CC said, with some finality, before immediately straightening up and correcting his last sentence with: “uh, I mean, I anticipate your imminent arrival. Sir.” This was followed by a salute. The holo froze as the message concluded.
“It’s alright, CC, you’re allowed to miss me.” Riola hummed, affectionately, unable to keep a smile from her lips. “Sure honey, I’ll give you a name, since you can’t come up with one yourself. You silly boy.”
She sat there for a moment, staring at the frozen, anxious image of her Commander, having feelings that she was sure Jedi were not supposed to have. She told herself it was friendship. Nothing more. And then she tried to believe it.
There seems to be a severe lack of middle aged female main characters in Star Wars, especially Twi’leks (I assume because they’re treated as sexual objects), but Sevilei is, in fact, a middle aged Twi’lek!
Lore belowwwww :)
She’s very maternal towards the men she leads, especially her Commander, Brox, who she “adopts” through a legal loophole to have him classified as her personal military property. He holds the same status as her armour or starfighter. Which is weird, but it also affords him certain protections.
The Army of course, tried to prevent this, because the clones are living soldiers and really should be accountable to the law, but since they have to have them classified as “property” to get round the slavery thing, there’s nothing they can do about Madame Tivvine’s little “reallocation of resources” without disrupting the entire war. So she gets away with it and Commander Brox gets to do whatever he wants. Such as having a girlfriend. And potentially a son. Oops. Don’t tell the GAR. Tivvine is a very loving grandmother on her part.
To much dismay, Brox’s carefully protected independence does not make him immune to the effects of his inhibitor chip. What it does do is help him make the quick decision to desert from the Empire soon after its installation. He actually gets a happy ending with his little family. Unfortunately he has to live with the weight of his Chip Induced Sins. At least Sevilei got a quick death. Brox’s entire current existence is owed to her, and he makes sure his son knows that.
