[Inspired by an anonymous ask. Thanks again. Set post-KOTET in my “the Alliance survives” universe. Continued under a cut for length. Content warning for alcohol use.]
Read it on AO3 here.
Dinner was over and Xhareen noticed that both Kayda and her wife, Esmiala (A/N: aka, Pierce’s sister) were nudging each other like they were sharing a secret.
“OK, spit it out, you two,” Xhareen said. She could almost guess what was coming next, though.
“I’m pregnant again,” Esmiala said. Malavai ran in from the dining area where he was helping his mother scrape plates and hugged her. Like most of the new Zakuul, they eschewed service droids for many household tasks and didn’t engage paid staff for family meals.
Kayda, always the big sister, attempted to shoo him away. “Out of my way, Big Ugly.”
He laughed and let Kayda take her side. A few moments of accolades and an “I thought so” from their mother, Ellys Quinn, and the group fell silent.
“Wait, ‘Big Ugly?’ You know, Mal, I haven’t heard that story,” Esmiala said.
Malavai, who was himself still beaming over Xhareen’s now apparent pregnancy, had tucked into a few drinks before dinner and had continued after.
“I’m eating for two, you’re drinking for two,” Xhareen teased.
“If you insist,” he replied.
Xhareen made it no secret she was already tired of synthahol and couldn’t wait to have a real drink again. But she wasn’t upset or concerned about her husband. He only let loose the two nights each fortnight he had off from his new position as Commandant of the Zakuul Prime Military Academy. It was good to see him relaxed and able to enjoy intimate domestic moments like this.
“There’s not really a story, Kayda just likes calling me names, although that one is a fond memory,” he said with a smirk.
“Oh, there’s a story,” Kayda said. Malavai shook his head to disagree.
“Wait a minute, I have learned the hard way how to tell when you’re hiding something, darling, and I’d like to hear this story,” Xhareen said, quite seriously.
Malavai started to squirm, but threw up his hands in defeat. “Let her have at it, I suppose,” he said.
“So, the way I heard it,” Kayda began, “when Mal was in the academy back on Dromund Kaas, he was leading some wilderness scouting trip …”
“No, Kayda, it was a full-on military survival exercise and I was a 2nd year and it was quite prestigious to be chosen to lead such an exercise at such a young age.”
Kayda rolled her eyes. “OK, so Cadet Remarkable here was leading his fellows through the Dark Forest on a life and death mission to impress their superiors …”
“Who graduated top of their class?”
“Shut up, toad. I was fifth in mine, and I had a lot more girlfriends than you did.”
He went over to Esmiala and patted her on the back in mock sympathy. “It’s OK, Malavai. I ended up with her,” she said.
“Yes, my condolences, Esmi. You are a saint.” They both laughed. Though he and Pierce had put down their swords, they were hardly friends. Pierce was still on Balmorra anyway. But Malavai had grown quite close to Esmiala.
Xhareen, though, was not amused. She started to pull at her hair, which she had had done up for an event earlier in the day.
“Can I hear the story, please? All of you? Kayda, do continue.”
Even though she was their friend, sister, daughter and wife, and loving and thoughtful, there was a residual acceptance among all of them that she was a powerful Sith and now Zakuul’s premier political force, someone who both commanded a lot of respect and could wipe them all out in a heartbeat if she wanted. When she asked like that, people complied.
“Sorry, so anyway. The squad’s gotten a bit lost because part of the training is you have to find the designated camp site without nav devices. And Mal realizes they’re being followed, or more accurately, stalked. He takes a bio reading because the rules didn’t say no devices whatsoever and I have to admit, that was clever. My squad went out with our bedrolls and blasters, but I’ll finish that story later.”
Malavai snorted. “Unlike the mission, which you never did.” Kayda smacked him across the back of the head. He was really into the brandies by this point because he laughed again.
Xhareen was having trouble getting into the spirit, though. “The story?” she sighed.
“OK, anyway, Our Hero tells the squad to stay put and he and another junior genius go off trying to see what’s stalking them.”
Malavai pretended to whisper: “She banged that junior genius later on, that’s how she heard the story.”
That actually made Xhareen smile.
“Moving on,” Kayda said. “They get supremely lucky and pick up the mighty beast’s trail, only to realize it’s a person. Now, to be perfectly honest, any person who’d go that far into the Dark Forest to stalk someone is probably scarier than the krakjias so I will give them some kudos for bravery.
“So the Boy Brain here scans the terrain. Again, he has no clue where he is but he can get a good read on the terrain and they move forward and their predator becomes their prey, or else whoever it was just gets a whiff of them and is running from the stench, but they get supremely lucky and follow their stalker all the way to a cliff.
“When they get there, they find a young girl wearing a tracker’s mask with a homemade bow who tells them to stay back, or she’ll shoot the Big Ugly one in the face.”
Kayda looked over for Xhareen’s reaction. She seemed stunned and looked over at Malavai. He stopped laughing. “Darling, what is it? Are you OK? The baby?”
“I’m fine, but what I actually said was, ‘Stay back, Big Ugly, or I’ll shoot that squashed bug off your face.’ ”
Quinn nearly spilled his drink. “That … that was you?”
“I put so much of what happened while I was living on Darth Neveris’s estate out of my mind. I’d completely forgotten the details.”
Quinn sat down on the arm of the sofa. “So I met you 18 years before Balmorra?”
Xhareen nodded and went and sat on the couch. He slid down off the arm next to her.
“Wait, what happened next?” Esmiala asked.
“Well, against the orders of their fearless leader,” Kayda continued, “the rest of the squad had followed, and came into the clearing. So the girl, knowing she’s surrounded, tosses down her bow and surrenders.”
“I thought they’d take me back to the city,” Xhareen explained, “and I could run away and get back to the estate somehow and lie and say I was in the city. No one would have been surprised. I didn’t want Darth Neveris or Lord Gamheen to know I was hunting.
“Then one of the cadets cuffs me and the minute she turned away, I used the Force and slipped out of them. So Big Ugly here,” she said as she slid up under Malavai’s arm, “realizes I’m a Force user and gets out some cortosis cuffs, and why in the galaxy he was carrying those I’ll never know.”
“Because Jenkyns had stolen my regular set to use on his girlfriend the night before we left.” Malavai’s face was as red as the Jurios brandy in his hand, but he was still smiling.
Kayda just shook her head.
“I never learned your name, and you refused to take the mask off. I only took you back to the compound because it was the nearest structure with bio-readings to where we were. I had no idea it was a Sith facility,” Malavai said. “An Imperial Guard met us at the gate and you disappeared.”
“Darth Neveris didn’t advertise he had a gaggle of alien children strong in the Force out in the middle of nowhere. For all the good it did him,” Xhareen said, any trace of a smile gone now.
Malavai put his arm around her and pulled her close. “Did I get you into too much trouble then?”
She poked him, softly, in the chest. “I wasn’t able to go hunting again for almost a year.” But her smile had returned. “Maybe now you’ll believe me that it was Fate that brought us together?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps I will.”
“We’ll see how strong your faith is come morning when all that brandy has worn off.”
Malavai put the drink down on a side table, and put his other hand across Xhareen’s abdomen. “As long as I wake up next to you, my faith will be just fine.”
