Meet Me in The Pit

var sc_project=11101842; var sc_invisible=1; var sc_security="340777ec"; I'll fight you and the Sarlacc. | 37/M/Nar Shaddaa | Bio | Combat Sheet | IC Writing (An aesthetic blog chronicling the misadventures of a Jedi Sentinel from SWtOR. Icon by: Ghoulie)

[theworstjedi]

Backalley Medicine.

The heavy smell of blaster fire settled on the back of Friyr’s throat, making him cough. He was bleeding. He could smell the rusty smell under the sting of laser cauterized flesh.

He kicked the blaster he dropped away from the security officer’s prone body. He’d pistol whipped a good-sized concussion into her, but he didn’t want her to start blasting again when she came to.

Friyr’s fingers shook as he pulled a burner holo from inside his robes. The pads of his fingers fed him too many details about the way the cheap plas felt weird against his skin. The seams of where it had been melted togther bothered him at the best of times, but his mind was racing through sensory input at miles a minute, as though the fight was still happening. Unable to slow down.

“Sudas,” he mumbled as he punched in the frequency by muscle memory.

The buttons were stiff and slow, and the Jedi cursed again before he got the number right. It rang in a tinsly tone once before the holo flared to life. The light flare made Friyr’s head dance with pressure points.

“I need a doctor or something,” he said without wating for a greeting. “Some contact I was talkin’ to drank somethin’ spiked an’ attacked me. She needs to live.”

“Where are you?” the staticky figure asked.

“I need her to live-- uhhhh-- Sudas.” He  pressed the inside of his wrist to his forehead. He knew it popped him out of frame, but the cool pressure relieved the tension building inside of his head. Kark sighted people.“--Where am I?” He exhaled. “Red-- Red Light. Red Light District. ‘M in the Howlin’ Gauntlet slums.”

“You’re in luck. There’s a clinic on Boonta and one-fifteenth.”

“That’s-- That’s cross the way. Thanks.”

“Force be with you, Knight Illust--”

Friyr punched the disconnect key.

____

Zentra’s body was heavy. She was slipping. His arms were insufficiently skinny and his chest was narrow. Illustratum was built for running from one moment to the next. He wizzed away before life’s teeth caught up at him. He wasn’t durable, and he was woefully aware of this as Zentra’s body weighed the Jedi to the empty street pavement. He stumbled forward blindly, darting into the street before his arms could fully fail and running across it with the recycled wind in his ears.

The metal-pave of the other side caught his sandal, a droid screamed behind him, and the world tipped. Friyr’s heart fell into his mouth as the moment slowed itself amidst the panic. His arm holding Zentra’s legs had stretched out as though to stop the ground rushing up. They both lurched to a stop mid motion as the Force’s arms caught them both midtumble and lowered them both down to the metal ground.

Cold. Scuffed. It did bad things to his skin that cold sweat didn’t allieviate, but Friyr didn’t linger. Had to move on. Had to move on. He was vaguely aware of being on his knees (haha) and unthinkingly was digging his hands into Zentra’s arm pits and dragging backward aimlessly. His need to keep moving quenched the terror of being blind and lost in a world so many used their eyes to navigate.

“More to the right, Jedi.”

Friyr’s shoulders relaxed as the grumbly layers of Zentra’s wan voice flushed into the air. He didn’t allow himself to stop, but he did pause as she stirred. Grunting to pick herself up witha few choice Huttese words.

“I hate to say it, but I’m glad they didn’t get you. Where-- where did they go?”

Instead of answering, Friyr lifted under her pits until the weight of her rose. She stumbled against him, grasping for purchase on his arms. His breath staggered for a second, but Friyr stayed steady.

“That might be a liddle bit better.”

She sagged against his shoulder groaning and cracking the pain in his chest open with a fresh mallet. But she was here, and something frantic inside of Friyr’s chest settled with a finality. The body he held, the Force murmured, was a corpse already. The Force lingered. Over her, like a buzzard and in other people who saw them.

People didn’t spare the two a second glance. And Friyr - who was used to wide berths normally - could feel the tension of their repulsion to death and violence pricking at him. They emptied several blocks. “We’re goin’ to the clinic on Boonta. Tell me where to go. You c’n pull my clothes in a certain direction if you can’t talk. It’ll be slow, but I’ll eventually figure you out.”

Her hair tickled his cheek as she nodded. “Okay, Jedi. You’re facing the right way.”

She walked, both of them clinging to each other the way they were clinging onto life. Zentra was slower than he was. For every two steps his heels scuffed into the metal, she took one and a half. They ambled, like a  two headed akk. Their pulse was too slow. The lukewarm stale air around them was growing too cold. But Friyr was determined.

“Where are they?” she asked again.

“Where’re who?” Friyr asked as calmly as he could between clipped breaths.

“There were monsters, and I couldn’t see you anymore, and one of them-- lunged at me.”

Friyr winced as Zentra’s body shuddered. He wanted to tell her the monsters were dead. Sheilding her from the processing of her own horror the way one might shield a child. But Zentra was no child, and he needed her sharp.

“You had a bad trip,” Friyr said with a  heavy heart. “The water bottles’re spiked with whatever made the other two shooters go crazy.”

Zentra let loose a string of profanities. “Aren’t you a Jedi? Can’t you feel that stuff?”

“I-- The Force didn’ tell me until you’d already-- I think this is how the Force meant to show me.”

“You’re so bad at your job, the Force needed me to-- Kark. You remember what happened to those other people? The drug bleeds them, Illustratum. It bleeds them.”

Friyr remembered. He nodded silently.

“And you’re just okay with that?”

Friyr responded shakily. “Me personal? I don’ know what ‘m okay with. I trust in the Force and--if she’s takin’ you back,” he sighed a hot dry breath. “then its your time, Zentra. Not a thing I c’n do to stop it. But I need to know what you know, we can stop other people from..."

There was only the scuff of their boots for a few precious seconds on the metal.

“We’re almost there,” Zentra said softly.

Her voice below his ear was meek and he could smell the traces of stim coating the air. Hospitals smelled clean, but there was nothing more pungent than the shacks that took in bodies on Nar Shaddaa. Friyr had to fight down bile to stop his stomach from rolling.

“Jedi?” she asked, turning Friyr’s thoughts from morbidity.

“Mmn.”

“If you end up in a story, make my part a good one. I took down two gangsters and a Hutt ‘fore I went down. Real blaze of glory stuff.”

Friyr laughed shakily. The sound escaping his lips dislodged something in his throat, making his face flush hot and his brain shut off in a doorway that smelled recklessly chemical. He scrubbed at his cheek with a sleeve to wipe away any tears, but his face was dry.

“Hey! We need help!” he shouted into the darkness. The rest of Nar Shaddaa soundlessly shouted the same words back through the Force

___

“Kark, you wanna scare everyone else in here more or what? Think you’re the only one who’s having a bad night?” the doctor had said, then had shoved his body into a bed and something up his arm.

And Zentra-- Zentra was somewhere to his right. This had been both a relief and a torment once the Force around her started to sound like death.

“You must be pretty jumped up, guy. The amount of pain killers you’re on should’ve put you under an hour ago,” she sounded like she was talking through a wall. The world was-- a radio out of tune.

“No, I feel ‘em,” Friyr responded delayed. “I just-- when did she die?”

“She’s stable,” the doctor who had told him to shut up when he came in, sounded tired now. “Remember? Your girlfriend’s stable, and you were shot in the chest four times. You need to save your strength worrying.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.” She had been investigating the murders with him and would’ve hated any insinuation she and Friyr had known each other tangibly. “You’re a bad doctor,” Friyr mumbled.

The Force ate at the edge of his soundscape, pressing his broken cheek against the pillow.

“I’m a bad Jedi,” Friyr mumbled even more quietly.

“Why is everyone in the slums half-crazy before they get here?” the doctor muttered. “Even the Jedi’re loony.”

Somewhere in Friyr’s tired brain, he new she would’ve dismissed him had he not the robes and lightsabers to proove it... He was.... fading... to the hum of...... narcotics......... slugging through his veins. He could almost.................................... see them if he tried. But he...... could still hear...................................................................... Zentra’s song............................................................................................................ fading. Faster than he ..........................................................................................................did.

...........................................................................................................................

“What the fuck is going on?” The doctor sounded urgent.

............................................................. “Hemorraging? .......Impossible......she.. stable! She was just stable. I need twenty mils of..............”

Zentra sounded wet, and the air was rusty, like the inside of a body without the body smell. ....... Friyr’s brain at delay supplied that a ‘hemorrage’ was a lot of blood. ............... He bet Sahley could’ve told him.......................

“We can use her parts for someone else....”

...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Why were hospitals always cold when you woke up? Not that he was complaining. Air against his bare skin had always steadied him. Friyr couldn’t feel his fingers, but he could flex them. The short nails scraped into his palm jaggedly. Ah, well. There went his acrylics. They had cost a lot. Friyr idly wondered how much Zentra must’ve cost on the black market without stopping to think where he’d learned the knowledge that she was to be recycled.

The air smelled like every cheap cleaner in the world and like security agent insides. He should know, he used that brand and Zentra had died on his watch.

He bent his arm. Much like getting stiff doll limbs to marrionette, Friyr’s body responded jerkily. The needle in his arm was tight. Frankly, the mental numbness just meant the traumatic parts had passed; he could work again for a little before it caught back up to him.

He paused. Realizing for a second that he hadn’t been bare when he came in. His fingers came up to touch his chest. Instad of skin, gauze snagged at his finger pads in that skin-crawlingly rough texture. It took all of Friyr’s willpower not to yank them off. As if on response, his chest ached deeply. Sudas, he felt pulverized.

“At least the guys’ll find the scars hot when you get back out there.”

Friyr’s head snapped to the sound of a familiar Core Wolder voice to his left, and his chest ow.

"What’re you doin’ here?” the Jedi whimpered despite himself.

“Why’d you think HQ sent you here? I’m apparently an organ harvester lookin’ to make a clean run, Investigator Illustratum.”

Friyr frowned at the allusion to their mutual disingenuity and shushed.

“It’s fine, everyone’s gone. You and your contact were the last of the night. The doctor went to clear her head.... Who did that to you?”

Friyr tilted his head grimly to the right where--- Zentra had been and the smell of her citrus cleaner blood remained.

The undercover Republic plant whistled. “No kidding? Your contact ambushed you? We really need to vet these psychos properly. I thought she was just Cartel.”

“She... was.” Friyr puased, loathe to try and unpack how wrong the past-tense sounded. His tongue dragged agaisnt his dry lips instead. “She drank something that drove her up the wall--” Friyr tried to gesture with an arm, but they wouldn’t lift without a fresh nauseating roll of pain.

Ah. Reality. Welcome back.

A warm hand rested on his forearm. “Take it easy.”

Friyr shook his head without thinking. “I have work to do.” A fearful sweat popped into existence along the craig of his skinny shoulder bones. “I hate hospital beds. You know that. And--?” Friyr wore at the sheets beneath him with his broken nails. They were the kind of soft that only threadbare brought.

“And--?”

“There’s a guy who died from Howlin’ Gauntlet a little while back. Outside of territory. He was stabbed, but a sniper got him or somethin’.”

“Ah-- heard about that one. There was no holovid feed of it happening or something? All the cameras had been taken offline. It was probably just some gang killing, honestly. Everyone’s got a slicer these days. Probably some guys looking to digitally flex a little on the Gauntlet.”

Friyr shook his head at the expense of another nauseated roll. “I think-- I think it’s connected. Too much is goin’ on with that sector. I gotta rule it out myself.”

The other agent exhaled, and there was a few beats of silence before his clothing rustled. Friyr listened to the other man tap tap tap. A digital chime of confirmation. “I can get the body here for you to do your uhh-- thing. One of our guys’ll move it. Pretend it’s a part scrap or something.” Friyr winged at the phrasing. “Do you need help with it?”

“I don’ think I can stand by myself.”

“I’ll help you piss, then we can do your space magic. But first--” The agent began fiddling with something that pulled at the line in Friyr’s arm. The tugging sensation made him curl a lip. There was a pressurized hiss and the fiddling stopped.

“Goody!” Friyr rasped in a highly disaffected manner. Perhaps the first time in a while he hadn’t been enthused about another man talking about his dick. “Also uh-- start puttin’ recalls or warnings out about the bottled water or something.”

“Bottled water? Why?”

“It’s what she drank.”

“Force. Okay. I can tell field agents, but we can’t go public with this.”

“But--”

“None of that Jedi talk about morals,” the agent cut Friyr off. “If you expose the lead, the guy’ll know he’s been fingered. You should lay low for a while.”

The fight left Friyr’s body. His neck rolled back onto the pillow. His veins were warm and tingly. “I hate that,” was all he managed to say beneath the outrage stuck in his throat. Partially for the dead people he’d met this morning, for Zentra, and for every person on Nar Shaddaa looking for a way off of it. ... Partly because he realized that pressurized hiss had been the SIS agent dosing him with more pain meds.Then sleep collapsed onto his small abused body like a ton of bricks in that ramshackle slum clinic.

[theworstjedi]

Parental Issues

3636 BBY

The boy’s eyes were ringed with amber. Friyr Illustratum. A hefty name he had chosen for himself. The old Shadow recognized the solemn conventions of a Darth name too well to mistake it as a mere surname. She had spent too many years hunting after their misused and discarded artifacts. As a young woman, she had never had much consideration for the Sith she encountered. She had certainly never considered that an apprentice could be treated the same as an object. But here he was, Alema’s greatest moral objection and the last attachment binding her to the mortal plane.

“Sit down,” she said.

He did as he was told. His fingers curled around the sand of the garden beneath his knees. He drew in on himself, shivering and defeated.

Friyr had been her sister’s last padawan. She had raised many. Alema had raised none. Friyr was her first Sith but the last before her old age reconsumated her into the Force. He was the last frayed string of her life and Alema the only Jedi with the desire to resolve it.

Alema lowered herself onto the sand slowly before him, like approaching a wounded animal.

Friyr shrank back as though sensing the inate revulsion. His blue-amber eyes cast elsewhere, as though looking at the slanted light on the ground.

3630 BBY

Alema’s finger traced down the grimy plastifilm. Rows of scribbled names next to call buttons passed by until she reached a nondescript X. Far be it from Caretaker Alema’kekori to visit shady apartments on Nar Shaddaa at the smuggler moon’s slinkier hours, but she had a sweet yam casserole to deliver.

She pushed the clean white button, and it depressed without complaint. This came as little surprise. It looked almost polished from all the use it’d seen. She waited. Listening to the quiet hum of speeders over head and relaxing her shoulders into the calmness of a night illuminated by ever burning lights.

Uhhh yah?

A sleepy little blue holo of Friyr Illustratum and his favorite baggy shirt popped to life next to the X. The white coarseweave her padawan wore now billowed down over his thighs. A stray sleeve had drifted partway down one of his broad shoulders. The looseness had a softening effect on his hard physic so that what Alema would normally class as “wiry” became “slim.”

She was glad Friyr was fond of long floaty tops. He had been growing into his thirties when she met him and though what someone approaching forty did with the agency of his body didn’t make her blink, she felt fondly enough of the young Jedi that she preferred a less casual audience with him.

Dunno what this is about, but th’answer’s prahhhably no.

Alema held up the wrapped tray as though Friyr were capable of seeing it. “And if I brought food?”

The holo-Friyr stopped grinding a palm into his eyes and swallowed a yawn. “Master?”

“One of them, yes,” Alema deadpanned.

“I’ll put on pants,” Friyr said quickly, then winked out as the apartment door buzzed her up.

Alema adjusted her plain plait of lekku with a smug line to her lips and let herself in.

___

Friyr had found more than a pair of pants when she came up, she observed. A pair of iconic Corellian green jedi robes hung over the plain shirt. It looked like they’d been cut for a woman from the way they tapered at the waist. Alema didn’t ask many questions about this; she was sure she’d seen it on him some long time ago.

He fidgeted with its fit over his shoulders in the doorway. “How’d you find this place?”

“Shoney said Boris had placed you in one of his resort homes,” the older woman said mildly.

She brushed past Friyr - who grumbled but flattened himself to the wall to accommodate the gargantuan twi’lek. A sense of curoisty compelled her in. This was an emotion to conquer, perhaps, but she didn’t find the mere pursuit of knowledge out of bounds. It upheld the second line of the Code, afterall.

The apartment was open floorplan to accommodate for a Hutt’s girth. And it was splendid. Somewhere between a spa and a living quarter, Friyr had high ceilings and cavernous walls. Even for a full bodied slug, the space was roomy and bronzed. The decorations were pleasant, in style, and large.

Though the attention laid in the details. It looked like Friyr had quarreled with the light fixtures and left traces of a Jedi sized panic attack here or there. Uncleaned food cartons and wires made little paths that followed his relentless pacing between the couch and a mess of screens and keyboards. Their plugs half in and out of sockets. He had never coped too well with empty metal spaces.

In her adventures, Alema stepped on something soft. She started backward, only to find a puddle of blankets and pillows on the floor near the door. It looked luxurious, but it was an odd mess to find anywhere outside of an unmade mattress.

“Bed’s too high,” Friyr explained at Alema’s pause. A hand on the small of her back urged her forward. She pranced over Friyr’s little bed to a red overstuffed couch. She straightened her shoulders, then turned to face her bemused padawan.

“I take it you’re well.”  Alema seated herself straightbacked on the couch behind her and sunk into its fluffy maw. Underterred by this indignity, she set the small tray in the center of her lap. It was still warm in her hands, which was relieving. Nar Shaddaa was a big city to traverse from sector to sector, and she wasn’t sure she was keen to find the state of Friyr’s microwave.

“‘M ohhhkay.” Friyr shuffled to the coffee table by memory and seated himself opposite Alema. A few empty microwave meals were pushed back as he claimed the space upon which they sat. “You uh-- What’re you doin’ off Eedit?”

“The Hexagon Square Feast was today.”

Friyr snapped his fingers and pointed at the couch cushion next to Alema. “Riiiiiiiight. Right. How was that?”

“Taste for yourself.” Alema unfolded the geometry of her foil packaging. “It has marshmallows and sweet yams; I know you enjoy your sugar.”

Friyr’s lips twitched into a smile. “I dooo~” he purred.

Once the smell of carmelization spiced the air, his stomach betrayed subtlety with a wanting sound. Her padawan had a deceiving streak of flirtatiousness, but Alema knew confection and fruit purees were Friyr’s biggest vices.

Alema didn’t smile, but she did quicken her unwrapping, so she could trade the gooey homemade meal to Friyr for a sense of peace that sat around her shoulders. She had known that Friyr’s path of pursuing the war effort would bring lean times to an already lean man, but Jedi made no money. Perhaps credits here and there or a meal or two in return, but their life was spare. The Republic’s reliance on them as miricle workers, ground what Jedi were left on the front lines to their bones. Alema had come to know this as a Shadow, and so she understood the language Friyr’s simple display of hunger was speaking in a home that wasn’t exactly his own.

She watched him gnaw a fluffy clump of marshmallow off of his thumb with claspd hands. “I wanted to talk to you about-- Boris.”

Friyr sighed into his food. A wilt followed the line of his shoulders. “Talk then,” he murmured politely around his mouthful of yam.

Alema’s calloused thumbs traced the length of each other in turns as she delayed a second longer. “Couldn’t you ask the SIS for accommodation?”

Friyr’s defeated shoulders tensed. “Alema,” he said. His voice was rigid with a talk they’d gone over before. “You know s’not that simple. I gotta make some of my own way out here. It traces too easy if they give me everythin’. Boris is my alibi.”

“Boris is a Hutt,” she said patiently, but her voice had a tension to it too.

“I-- yah? Would it be better if he was Black Sun? Exchange? Any other of th’swoop gangs or pirates out here?” Friyr made a sweeping gesture with his fork in the mushy ‘tato.

Alema followed the motion. “I can’t judge the merit of an alternative keeper, Padawan. But I’ve seen girls in your situation. Effeminate boys too. The life they’re granted by their benefactors is only good on whim. As long as their benefactors are attached to them.”

She watched his lips purse.

“You are a convincing desperate damsel, but you play your role too well. We all did when we served the Republic.” Alema’s voice hitched. “I played a Shadow too well.” She had never sugar-babied for a Hutt, but the role had consumed her body, mind, and soul.

Friyr let out a clensing breath. His eyes closed. “I ‘preciate that. I really do. But no offense t’you, Master, ‘m dif’rent.”

“You aren’t. You let a gangster attach himself to you.” Alema’s voice hardened, and Friyr looked away expressionlessly. The half-eaten tray sat limply in his lap.

The passing traffic hummed between them. Headlights slatted growing columns on the floor. Alema could hear the faint sounds of a resonant argument from two aprtments down without trying. The silence was loud.

“Look,” Friyr finally said. “You knighted me. You knew I was always gonna try fer--” Friyr waved his arms to encompass the magnificently hollow room. “this.” The young knight exhaled deeply. “Boris-- is pretty terrible.” Friyr laughed uneasily. “But he’s got no ability to hurt me. Not in anyway that matters.”

Friyr held his hands out, and Alema took them if only because making him search for hers would take longer. He rubbed his thumb over the backs of his old Master’s knuckles, both pairs of palms flat from years of lightsaber work.

“It’s hard, I won’ lie.” Friyr’s voice broke as he hesitated between speaking and staying silent for a moment. “I see a lot of stuff I used to be on the other side of. Stuff I couldn’ make a dif’rence in. Keepin’ people in the gutter so a few Hutts can feed ‘em a meal at the end of the day? Like whatever, you got good at their game and then flipped it on ‘em. But ‘m a Jedi now. Shouldn’ I be doing somethin’ more than playing the game. Shouldn’t I stop this?”

“Those aren’t easy questions, but your only dedication as a Jedi is to the Force if you wish it to be,” Alema said evenly. “On the other hand, the Force is an extension of everyone. Your job could be to stop it, if they ask for your help.”

Alema brushed a pale shock of hair out of the human’s face and studied his broken alien features. He teased a smile.

A relief lived inside her ribcage. A worry that Boris was her padawan’s primary concern had spent too much time in the halls of her mind. That he had more quandry with his title, was-- relieving.

“That’s th’biggest way t’not answer a question ever.”

“The practice of being a Jedi, I find, is searching for answers yourself,” she cheeked. 

Her eyes fell to the plate of root and melted sugar. “Is that good?” a note of curosity entered her voice.

Friyr’s gaze dropped down too. “Yah, I mean. I’m preddy into it.” Friyr’s pale blue eyes flickered between his old master and the lukewarm tray. “You uh--” He held it forward with a sheepish smile.

Alema stared. A steady of mild diet vegetable and starches had made garden salad the limit of her decadence. The casserole was positively unapaltable. “Well. Hm.” She tapped Friyr’s fork ridden fingers with a nearly grave hesitance. He folded the utensil into her fingers with a single motion, but it took far longer for Alema to select the most palatable part of the remianing plate. It was a difficult decision with Friyr’s predeliction for shoveling, but she found a reletively unharmed corner. Breaking the crust, the fork scooped up a small portion.

Friyr snickered. “Don’ need good eyes t’know yer a wuss.”

“Hush,” Alema snipped marmishly before sticking the fork in her mouth. Haste would make the experience easier. Sugar exploded like little stars across her palate. It settled like a coat on her tongue. “Oh Force.” She gagged, but forced a swallow.

“That’s what the dark side tastes like~” Friyr sniggered.

Alema rapped his knee with her palm.

[theworstjedi]

Investigator Noir

“Well, that was a bust.”

The droid leashed to Friyr freed itself of the lead, whilst chiding.

“How was I supposed t’know two dif’rent people would know me on this rock hole, huh, George?” He didn’t sound particularly upset. His soft voice was calmer than the bitcher falsetto it often occupied. “Gettin’ laughed outta a bar s’prahbably th’best outcome.”

The droid made a sound like a button panel being stepped on and sprung free of the lead, leaving it slack in Friyr’s hand.

Friyr laughed in his chest at the memory. Some embarassment was still flush on his cheeks. If one caught the Jedi right now, they might even call him sincere. Not something Friyr Illustratum had been known for since maybe the last time he’d sparred Kyuga. Maybe since the last time he and Sahley had talked without awkward spaces?

He wound the leash around his palm and listened to the crooning of the cantina singer deep inside Slugfall Cantina. The traffic of feet, fizzing neon ights, and speeder bikes was an anchoring ambiance, but Friyr was aware of all the eyes. He blinked and tilted his head.

“Lets get somewhere people can’t see me yeah? Don’ really feel like answerin’ quesitons ‘bout 'm hangin’round outside th’cantina I just left.”

Without George’s help, Friyr skimmed around the side of the building into a narrow alley away from the main street. A cold draft made the small Jedi rub his bare calves together. More compressed air gushed from around his kness as the atmosphere conditioning released the excess pressure into the ally.

He could smell the walls. They were rusting quickly from some metal in the asteroid itself. There was a bin of various leftovers and the toxic preserving slime near by. It was the smell of a city left unkept. Friyr was well familiar with the smells of civilization forced together in proxemity. Ecumenopolises, Hutt Worlds, and Kaas City all thought themselves wholly unique, but wherever life was, sentient patterns followed. An...otherwise comforting thought in a galaxy too large.

This was a reletively tame night. No Republic, no SIS, no Jedi Order asking him to crack into the unregulated drug trade tonight. No, Friyr answered to the Force first and foremost. And she had told him he would be here tonight.

No wonder two people had known him.

George’s spider feet clicked on the alley floors. The little droid whirred to life as he accessed his video banks for his memory of the night. Friyr’s eyes moved toward the sound instinctually.

Holofilms had all these ideas about spies and gumshoes. Of which, Friyr was neither, but he had never quite been accustomed with the heartless hole that occupied those protagonists’ hearts. Yes, Jedi Investigators squirmed on the inside.

Was it ethical to film someone without their knowledge and play it back on a good day? No, he was sure there were laws. Laws that he was allowed to operate above. But the alternative was allowing George, a cognizant being, to be forcibly deleted. Chunks of him taken away. This was a question for much better men than Friyr Illustratum, but yet, those men didn’t play with the politics of lying on behalf of a government at war.

Friyr was happy enough that he was blind, he supposed. In this case.

He listened to George review in his little tinny voice the assortment of people and things they’d seen quietly. Chewing over the fragmented pieces of information he’d gleaned that night.

George singled something out with a little garbled whistle.

“I thought she was innerestin’. Th’ two women and th’Mandolorian.” Friyr picked at a cuticle. “They stood out to me,” he mumbled. “Lykaios mostly. She was... Force was upset around her.”

George clicked as he flipped back through. Replays of their conversation playing on the shrill speakers. The volume was low, thankfully, but this also made the audio whine and pop. A muscle twitched in Friyr’s jaw, but he listened faithfully. Hearing the shit rendition of her voice made it easier to recall the churn of emotions the Force inside her provoked. Frantic and deep. His eyes slipped closed and he exhaled. The breath leaving him...empty.

It was easier with repetition to slide away from the timeline of reality and into the breathy whisper of the Force. As usual, her voice was multituddenous and constant. She spoke, sometimes sang, as she tended the universe. It was enough to tear Friyr apart, and he struggled to not truly join with her and drift. To merely listen to her say words in a lagnuage he didn’t always understand until he could focus in on what she said about the things around him.

Which required... incredible patience. The Force was full of things to say about Mek’Sha’s impermanence. How it had been built form the bones of rock and the fullness of life, but to pick out the strains of three people from a myriad of people that lived, died, and would come to be on the strange asteroid colony was hopeless, and Friyr’s mind felt like an empty refrigerator when he returned to his body.

He thunked his head softly on the building. The pulse of music rumbled gently along the back of his scalp. Groundingly. The lead he had was on Devaron, but Friyr had a few days before he was obligated to return to Eedit. He also had a chit in his belt and no idea what he was searching for. Time to sort his head would be good.

This was as solid a plan as any, and his bones were aching to return to Nar Shaddaa. But as he stood, a gust from the atmosphere conditioning swirled around his chest and ruffled his hair. The words “You’ll be on Eedit tonight,” on its tongue. Friyr’s heart sank.

“You uh-- say somethin’ George?”

The droid bleeped negatively.

“I thought not.” Friyr paused. His lips thinned. He adjusted his skirt. “C’n you get me tickets to Devaron?”

[theworstjedi]

Take the L

“You have to let go of excusing every evil thing that happens simply because you don’t care to do anything.”

Friyr hadn’t spoken much to Sahley on their trek back to Eedit. He regarded the mountain as meditative. The journey to it as spiritual. Friyr merely counted himself present for the experience of returning to it. Each beath was hard won as the altitude rose and his thighs quivered with the exhaustion of a well-walked day. Chirping birds, bats, and insects filled the air, and the Force filled his mind. All consuming and yet clear, like cold rain in the middle of a tropical day.

The steps built into the mountainside eventually turned into flat rock platform, and Friyr knew they had arrived. He sat in the dirt, refusing to walk further than they had. He waved a hand. “Go go. I’ll catch up,” he said breathlessly.

Someone hesitated but turned and left the Jedi to his sitting. Friyr looked out over the dusky blue sky without any notion of what he was seeing, but he knew that it felt beautiful. The Force that resided inside him told him as much.

He knew this in the same way Sahley sounded like water. Though that was all Friyr knew about Sahlye anymore.

___

Friyr tied the hair in his eyes up into a scruffy tail atop the crown of his skull. It stuck out like bristlebrush and the shorter pieces fell out in messy little strands over his ears, but visual appearance had never mattered much to Friyr’s vanity. And Friyr was a vain little creature.

Eedit’s basement was silent as the stone it was made of and so was Alema. Friyr let out a breath and listened to the gentle reverbrations off the walls. Stone was both ugly and beautiful. The concepts were not separate in Friyr’s mind. It made horrible sounds, offered no gentle touch, but it too offered security. It was the lifeblood of trade, organic life. Thus was how Friyr judged beauty.

He closed his blue eyes. That they remained open was more courtesy than need.

He unhooked the lightsaber from his belt and switched it on. It was smooth. Friyr could feel the blade extending through the hilt in the pads of his fingers. The beam of light arched through the different lens into the mouth of emitter - where it errupted into sound and color. The hum of the blade traveled into the bones of his arm, wrapping it in a kind of power.

Friyr flexed his wrist, straightening it into a proper grip and breathed in. The light was faint against his translucent eyelids. Red had a way of doing that. Even the fuzzy purple blade he’d modified from a ready-made hilt was brighter. And, for that - though he’d never seen it - Friyr considered the color red pretty. Beautiful in fact. Though, it had never been his luckiest color.

From red heads, to red skin, to an Empire drenched in the red of blood.

“Ready?” his old master asked.

The sound of her skirt made a  muffled shush against the floor as she widened her stance and switched her own lightsaber on.

“Course.”

She waited, balanced on the balls of her feet, and Friyr took the opening. Simple as a game of chess played a thousand times, but complicated as they played it once more. The moves were old, but the construction of the fight was unique and evolving as the players.

Friyr met resistence against his lighsaber, tasted the heat of sparks against his sun damaged cheeks.

She shoved him back, and Friyr spun off the momentum, slashing quickly at her flank. She caught him, but the crackles of energy were loud. Friyr’s hilt jumped under his palm. He’d caught her at the emitter. He adjusted the angle. Alema’s catch slipped, and Friyr siezed the chance to sweep one hand from its purchase on the hilt.

She grunted, and Friyr smirked. It was a short lived although sweet victory as a wall of Force caught him in the chest. The breath knocked clean from his body. So he thought until he hit the floor and the remaining air fizzled from his lips.

“Ow.”

“I’ve seen you Sun Djem Sahley too often,” Alema remarked about the beforetimes as she waited for him to get up.

Not Sahley. Friyr wanted to talk about anyone but the revolutionary little Mirialan. Sahley’s heated words stung fresher than the ache Alema had rattled into Friyr’s lungs.

“Sometimes I forget Sahley had a lightsaber,” Friyr groaned from the floor. He’d be feeling the impact in his left side tomorrow morning. The penalties of age.

“I doubt that,” Alema said in her blunt innocent way. “You had a nickname for him derived from his lightsaber.” She paused. “I don’t remember what it was quite.”

Friyr groaned and coiled his legs. “Dukarte Vidta.” He srung up and stepped into a low cut at Alema’s midsection, that she predictably blocked. He didn’t throw his full weight into the blade lock. His lightsaber sprung off of it going high. “Means Double-Saber.”

Alema grunted again in exteriton as he forced her to windmill the heavy lightsaber. Friyr grimaced as well. His back wasn’t what it used to be. But she was feeling it too. He muscled through the pain into a  step forward, and she stepped back. A hot pole of energy burned Friyr’s abdomen in sacrifice for the ballsy move. He skittered back a half-step and wobbled.

“You two were close,” Alema mused. Friyr felt his face flush. “He misses you sometimes, you know.”

Friyr sacrificed the whole step forward for four back as Alema jabbed at him again. He had a good position, but the conversation was making him feel...some type of way. He circled at a safe distance around to her other flank, trying to place her back up against the wall.

“Sahley an’ I don’ really get along too well anymore, Alema. S’in the past.”

A sour feeling rose in his gut that had little to do with the fight.

“Sahley is too passive, and you’re too quick to judge a situation.”

Friyr half-shrugged and pressed the attack, knowing that a victory wasn’t possible with his guts full of nostalgia, acridity, and tinges of wistful desire.

“Sahley’s torn up about some stuff I did like years ago. Things I can’t change. And-- I suck at apolo--” Something hard caught him in the middle. “--gies.”

Alema had used the wall as leverage to kick off of, putting Friyr back on the ugly stone floor. He didn’t get back up, instead choosing to catch his breath.

“Geeze.”

Alema’s footsteps ran up his spine as she walked to him. Her lightsaber retracted.

“If you can help him move on from something he’s attached to...”

She leaned down. Friyr could feel the heat of her hand over his skin. He took it.

“It’s my compassionate duty to,” they finished together. “Yeah, yeah. Good talk.”

Alema slapped Friyr on the back good-naturedly. With her hand. Her heavy, strong, broad hand. 

“Owwwwwwwwwwwww.”

“I-- Sorry.”

“‘M like tiny an’ old Alema, y’can’t just do that.”

“Work on your stance and maybe you’ll fall less.”

Friyr stuck his tongue out.

“Let you win.”

[theworstjedi]

A Mandolorian Wannabe and a Jedi Walk into a Cantina

The metal door slid open with a grating rattle that might have set anyone else’s teeth on edge, but the protest of technology on the threshold of disrepair and the rolling stench of alcohol and vomit let Taizi know she was home. The Smuggler’s Stim was a dimly lit kriffhole too seedy for even the dregs of society. This was a place for the scum that floated on top of the dregs to amass in search of drink and job. Sometimes company. Taizi dispassionately watched a lizard man rake his tongue over the temple horn of an overpainted Twi’lek as she and her two companions shouldered their way through the closely packed bodies.

“Are men always that disgusting, Moussa?” she asked the man shrouded in a helmet to match her rough cloth keffiyah own at her shoulder. Unlike hers, which left her mouth free, the beskar betrayed nothing aside from a black t-visor, but the neon murk of the cantina swallowed even that in obscurity. Although he was only average height, he loomed over the woman accompanying him.

“What you call disgusting—” the man pulled his helmet up over his ginger stubbled chin, “—I call a good time.” His unmuffled timbre danced around a mischevious grin.

“What’s not a good time is you blowing the speeder out again,” she snapped. Her crips Kaasian accent became sharper.

“If you think you can drive that pile of trash better--”

“I know I can,” Taizi sneered and swung herself into a seat next to a gold bangle covered figure staring absently into the distance at the bar. Moussa moved quickly to occupy the seat next to Taizi before the lizardy alien and his “date” could squish both of themselves into it.. He pulled the rest of the helmet offback so it fell away around messy, although neatly tied back, shocks of red hair, green skin, and ritual black tattoos. The bar was the most brightly part of the establishment. The light was a florescent white rather than the colorful haze of the mood lights tucked into small alcoves. The bartender slapped two glasses down in front of them. His hard gaze brokered no argument; if you sat here you bought.

“Tihaar and lime-spritz.” Taizi didn’t bother to look at the blob of an alien glaring holes into them.

“I was wondering if any wine had come in yet?” MOussa asked. The etiquette stuck out like a clean thumb in his surroundings.

Taizi snorted. “It’s not real wine.”

“What? If you can pretend to be Mandalorian, I can pretend this place has fine wine.”

She shook her head but didn’t pursue it.

“La yama beestoo,” the bartender gargled.

“Great. I’ll have a glass of red.”

In the light, Taizi could see the water stains on the glass as clearly as she could see Moussa’s wandering eye settling on colorful twi’lek ladies. The world at this bar counter on Nar Shaddaa was as unsubtle as his hair. Sometimes she rescued his one night flirtations from Moussa’s unrelenting overtures, but really, Taizi wasn’t the keeper of woman (and occasional man) kind just because she had a pair of tits. His interest had been become a line in the sand a few months ago when the bounty board had still been their biggest priority. It was quaint now. So much of Taizi’s galaxy had changed in the Cold War, but Nar Shaddaa hadn’t. Of course, Moussa hadn’t. He could be counted on to be consistent, if nothing else.

Taizi pretended not to see the unfortunate alien’s half-hearted answers to her companion. She looked to the figure beside her instead. See no evil. Now that she was sitting by him, she could see he was distinctly male. If the lean muscle of his freckled arms was any benchmark. Perhaps, it was his disinterest in his surroundings that spurred her to stare longer than she knew was necessary, but Taizi found something about him implacably interesting. He was clothed in a thin white tunic and adorned with a heavy gold collar dripping over his chest and neck. She could only see the tip of his pale nose, lips, and chin from behind the palm cradling his cheek and shock of blond hair. Like them, he a weapon secured to his back, which was straight as a board but not rigid. It suggested uncharacteristic discipline that set him apart from the lawless irreverence of the typical bounty hunter or smuggler. A gloved hand was wrapped around a glass he was mindlessly rotating against the bar. A curiosity. A…compelling curiosity. Taizi could feel Moussa’s eyes on her as he noticed his partner’s intent interest in an affair that wasn’t her own. Taizi’s eyes drifted from the line of the golden boy’s back to his hip. The hilt of a lightsaber rested against his belt.

She stopped breathing. The moment she felt her blood chill, the man’s determined stare at a point beyond their perception tilted towards her. It did not face her but rather cocked his head at an angle that suggested it might be staring at her in return. A flash of cold ran through Taizi. It was not unheard of to see a Jedi in Hutt space – unusual but not unheard of. She was more preoccupied with the old scar that still looked raw cut into a deep trench from corner of his lips, like an extended mouth or like someone had bridled him at the mouth and pulled too hard. Her eyes traced up along the flattened disfigured cheek. The jagged eye socket around blue eyes. Blue eyes that should’ve been yellow.

“You’re my father’s apprentice--,” she said compelled by the same force that had made her gaze linger. “Elutherius.”

The Sith apprentice formerly known as Elly W’ks stiffened, going paler under his freckles. “Farkle me.”

“I’m considering it. You don’t look bad for a dead man, Elly.”

---

“What’s the Jedi Code about?” Taizi demanded suddenly in the long stretch of silence. If one could call the hollow wail of Nar Shaddaa streets quiet.

It was followed by the sound of a spanner clattering on the floor and an “Ow!” as Friyr smacked his head on the panel under the edge of Taizi’s speeder. “What?” he asked and extracted himself from the innards of her retooled junk pile more mindfully that time.

His Guide Droid, NM1, began to grumble in Taizi’s direction.

She waved him away and fell into the space he’d been occupying by Friyr’s side. Their knees brushed. “The Jedi Code. Tell me about it.”

Friyr followed the trajectory of NM1’s complaints and accusatory scittering against concrete, then sighed. He looked Taizi in the eyes. His pale blue irises were unnaturally faded and electric all at once, and they possessed no sight to speak of. But the way they caught and held hers felt like they did so intentionally.

“The Code?” he asked. His voice was as incredulous as his grease stained skin and disarrayed hair falling into his face and across his cheeks. “You thinking of joining up?” he teased and flicked her knee.

“Not on your life Elly.”

Friyr chuckled, but she could see that her question had taken him aback. He scrubbed a hand over his face, and her eyes traced the deep-seated burn patterns splashed over his tendons and wrist, all the way down to his forearm. “Whaddaya wanna to know ‘bout the Code? I can’t really summarize what it’s about without a coupla full days, and half the Order would still say I’d gotten it wrong.”

“Uh—” This was a harder question to answer.

“So, d’ya know what the Code says?”

“I—” Taizi thought. “No emotions, no love, only the Force.”

“Emotion, yet peace,” Friyr began to recite. “Ignorance, yet knowledge./ Passion, yet serenity./ Chaos, yet harmony./ Death, yet the Force.” His effeminate voice seemed fuller, like there was something behind it, and by the time he’d finished speaking gooseflesh trailed along her arms with a cold feeling that told her honed instincts beyond all logic that they weren’t alone. Friyr simply waited.

“What—does that mean?”

Friyr pulled a face as she still pursued the grandiose philosophical answer he was avoiding. “It’s a code of discipline for wieldin’ the Force; at its core it’s’about self-mastery over everythin’, so that the Force isn’t misused or whatnot. But it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.”

“What does it mean to you?” she asked and watched Friyr respond with a dramatic groan. She smiled despite herself.

“So, I take a stance nobody else likes I believe that the Force is beyond our ability to get. I think she does what she wants, doesn’ care much what we do. I b’lieve we’re a parta that, an’ we got dark ‘n light same as she does. Force changes; we change.” Friyr gently thunked his head onto the concrete. “So, I believe that the Code really means nothing outside of Jedi philo-whatever; it’s just like a little thing that people need to repeat and sometimes shove all the way up their ass because they’re a Ver-ry, Serious. Jedi.”

Taizi rubbed at her arm still aching with goosebumps. A sad quirk turned up the corners of her painted lips. “You’re such a Jedi, E-- ... Friyr, was it?.” And he was so different from what he had been. A hard edge of discontent had been worn down into a belief that she could tell he’d poured his heart into.

“Yup.” Friyr popped the p. “What? You think I’d join a kinda-religious order without believing in what they were sayin’?”

Taizi gave him a doubtful look before she remembered that he’d lost what little sight he’d had when he was young. She instead made to tap him reproachfully on the shoulder, but her fingers hesitated over the fabric of his white tunic still streaked with black. She pushed them into his beached straw hair instead and ruffled it. It was a thin excuse for just wanting to feel close to him, and she thought they both knew that. Friyr pointed out often how her Force presence was the equivalent of an enraged Nerf in a china shop.

“Yeah, I guess I would, wouldn’t I?” He smiled and caught Taizi’s wrist.

“What’s this about, Wk’s?”

“So, where does ‘no attachments’ come in?”

They asked both questions at once. Their words ran together in a confused jumble; one question the answer to another. Taizi closed her eyes and groaned. She watched Friyr swallow hard as he processed her clumsy and unwitting admission.

“No attachments—” he said then swallowed again. He pulled her fingers from his hair. “–actually has very little to do with the Code. S’derived from the Code, but s’not a part of it. It’s covered under the passion and serenity part, right? You don’ have passions, so you got no reason to do things t’benefit yerself. You have to serve the Force not use it. Attachments cause you to be like “oh yeah! I do want stuff.” Wantin’ stuff leads to the Dark Side, and ‘Passion will break my chains/ the Force will set me free.’ You see how that fits together in a nice little slippery slope?”

“Kurt never had you declared dead,” Taizi murmured. Any attempt at being subtle was gone. Friyr stiffened. “If you’re still attached to my family...”

The air deflated out of Friyr. “You know—the funny thing about love, ‘n family, ‘n all that stuff is that I never believed in it. I thought once—” he started to say then shook his head.

“I know love’s a lie. It’s another extreme the Sith try to sell you, and it’s a nice luxury,” he said the word with so much disdain, “But my apprenticeship with Ignolis? S’a lie. Iggy gettin’ us hitched? A lie. My freedom? A lie. Priv’lige at best. I, as a Force whatever, have to know better. An’ I owe the Force the truth. Myself too by extension or whatever.”

Taizi had never been much of a speaker – not like he was. “That’s not fair,” was all she could say and still be eloquent. “We gave you everything, and you left.”

“Them’s the breaks, kid.”

She slipped her fingers into his, and he sat up. His rough hands squeezed them back apologetically. The neon sign for an ad flickered off as a quarrel started a few blocks down. It was just them and the curb.

“Taizi,” Friyr said softly.

“Mnn?”

“Don’ tell anyone. Please. You were always... chasin’ the next adventure or whatever. You weren’t parta this... Sith nonsense.”

The feeling of steeping self-pity turned acrid. Friyr had left her alone without a thought and he didn’t even have the pair on him to respect her after the fact. She pulled her fingers away, leaving the Jedi’s hand empty.

“I have to get going now that the things fixed.”

“Taizi.”

She turned back, hands jammed in her pockets and saw him sprawled on the wet concrete. His wirey frame and gold adornments something like a doll dropped on the ground.

“Fine. But. You owe me one.”

Friyr grinned as bright and cheerful as he ever had been before he died. It was almost forgiveable.

[theworstjedi]

Facing the Mirror

Friyr heard metal spikes scrambling down a cantina counter and across the room in that very same insectoid manner NM-1 possessed.

“Hullo, George. Stop tryin’ t’get th’bartender t’serve you alcohol,” he intoned without greeting. He tapped the weapon turned makeshift staff in his hand around the room as she stepped forward.

Rrzzzwiittt

Friyr snorted as the butt of his piping hit on something solid, and Friyr edged his way around it. “No you didn’t. I don’ think your audio sensors pick up anythin’ beyond this room.”

Zzzwroot

A smile tugged the cut corner of Friyr’s mouth. “Truuuue a lotta people don’ deserve me; that’s fact. Dunno why you’re so concerned with it though.”

Reet

Friyr’s expression quickly turned to a frown in the wake of the sliding doors. “Even if I was th’type t’get all jolly with m’master, there’s a big ol’flaw in your get me with Tabris plan.”

Friyr wiggled his fingers at Mader Gunns spiel in Huttese, he didn’t fully understand, then stepped out into Ambria’s dry coarse heat. Old sunburns immediately stung in protest. Friyr dug his teeth into each other. Time made callouses but did not build pain resistance. Ambria. Ammmbria. It got under his skin the way sun damage soaked up heat, and yet—the perverse call over the rocky wastes appealed something fierce to him.  

Wrrrrooottoo doot doot

“Yeah, I guess there’s plenty’a green guys around.” Friyr made a face. “Why’s everyone think I gotta green fetish?” he muttered as NM grabbed his pants leg. Friyr stopped, a displeased bent to his mouth as the droid pinched the fabric, tugged for security, and began to climb up until he was perched on Friyr’s good shoulder, which Friyr leaned away to accommodate. He could feel NM’s little legs digging into his chest through the clothing. He began to walk again. His pace was more burdened by NM’s heavy carapace.

The little but weighty droid trilled again. “Yah, aliens’re preddy hot,” Friyr conceded in an undertone on the off chance any were around. “I never did getta try out Chiss.” Friyr bounced to the balls of his feet to jostle the stowaway. “By th’way. Yer not stayin’ up there.”

Delet doorooo too otooo

The droid fiddled with the bag on Friyr’s back, making the man duck with a pouch to his lips as the fabric of the study canvas pulled and the metal fastenings came undone. “Yer not comin’.”

<<Stop me bitch,>> The droid said in fully rendered basic automation.

Friyr’s lips parted in combination surprise and resignation.

<<I wish to see what happens in this desert.>>

“Well there are no big booty red heads, I prahmise.”

<<We will see. I have heard tales of lone desert spirits in the form of beautiful women offering favors to men.>>

Friyr rolled his eyes so hard he felt the strain in his sockets. “Yah? Bully fer ‘em. Tell me when there’s Massassi suckin’ dick out there. I’ll bring cred chips.”

___

Friyr bounced the pack to a string of binary to audio curses, chuckled, and left on his way. The desert was cruel. The sand shifted with the movements of the Force, belying his own insignificance in it. Wails of a past pain were resonant with each gust of wind and beaten ray of sun that peeled him, so Friyr didn’t judge Ambria too harshly. The planet had come to suit his soul.

Though it didn’t think kindly of him, he did of it in a sense. Caring about something Sith scorned was as futile as the last steps of the behemoth that had staggered and died in the sand. Friyr felt the gargantuan skeleton loom out of the desert easily. The currents of wind diverted in its wake. The creature had died alone. Perhaps scared. But it had tried. Friyr could try and hope it made a little bit of difference before he kicked it.

The first thing Friyr did when he waded through the sand trails to his chosen spot, was throw his pack inside of the skull. It was shaded and spacious in the maw of the beast. Friyr climbed in through the crown of teeth and reshouldered his staff. The plain bone agianst his flat palm acted as his guide.

The Force was warm here. Familiar, like home, but it was uncontestedly dark in concentration. Friyr couldn’t count how many times he’d come here and—

He dropped his jaw, his walls to the Force, and screamed until the dead world, plagued by its own pain, resonated with the chills of his own echoing from his body. Sand eddied with his voice heightened by shame, failure, defeat.

When you scream for blood, you lean the weight of every decision that has led you here to it so that your enemy might know it. Herald his death with your unquenchable thirst for it. You are Sith.

It was transformative. Friyr channeled the unused emotions cluttering his stomach into the darkness he felt deep inside him still, and the unearthly wail welcomed by a world that had seen many desperate and dying beasts before haunted and unhallowed the ground he stood on. Not that it had been hallow to begin with; Ambria was not an innocent planet.

Friyr panted as his breath, taken from far beyond his lungs, ran dry. His eyes wide and  blown a beautiful gold. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.He fell back against the bone. Heaving.

“Friyr?”

…

Luca Dorne was not the highest on the list of people he wished to talk to in his moment of weakness. No one was, but—Friyr turned to face him.

___

Luca had left after a brief moment of sitting in the sun talking and giving himself heatstroke all the while. Talking. NM had busied himself arranging the small encampment Friyr kept in the skull. He dug in the sand and complained as Friyr leaned back and settled himself against the bone wall, feeling the temperature fade by degrees. He drifted… in and out of a trance, sometimes replying to the small droid’s complaints.

When he came to, the sun had set, and NM was furiously keeping vigil for the aforementioned spirits. Friyr could hear the tap of his legs shifting the sand. He smiled. Friyr closed his eyelids and savored the coolness. He was distinctly hungry from the trance. The screams had left him empty, elevated and awash in the Force’s grip.

Friyr leaned the forward and pulled the pack forward, feeling for the oilcloth of food he’d settled next to the bundle he’d made for Marzian. His fingers touched the soft skin, and he pulled it out. His fingers unknotted the thin twine as he thought.

Something had to give for Friyr Illustratum. Becoming a Jedi had forced Friyr to strip himself down in front of a mirror and admit he hated parts of himself he’d grown to love. He had been created in adversity and forged by his own callousness. Friyr remembered what it was to be Sith every time he wailed into the empty dunes with no one to hear and no one to care.

Power, strength infused his ruined body, soothed the muscles that no longer worked. The Force murmured that she had him so long as he paid his due to her in the end. It was comforting even if the sum he owed for these narcotic injections of calm assurance were steep from his past usage. Friyr remembered what it was to keep a clear mind in those precious moments of sight and … ability. Free of his body and the prison of stubbornly tormented thoughts. It was a lie.

Friyr only ever had wanted to be alright, he realized, and the decrepit price he’d paid for it was more than he had realized. Sith was fantasy borne of desperate men who didn’t want to admit they were dying. They took people with them before they went but—

Friyr pushed the cloth back and brushed his fingers over the dried fruit and bread. The fruit leather was oilier than the dried oro. He brushed over the rough meat to soft pillowy yeast.

Friyr wanted nothing more than to cut his connection to the Force. He might’ve asked had he not respected the time Teran, As’traa, and Ma’lar had done to pull him back from the brink. Friyr tried not to disappoint people. Especially those he made promises to. Jedi did not make bonds wantonly and neither did slaves.

Friyr tore a piece of the bread with his teeth, calm now. Unnaturally so.

He could only imagine what Sahley would’ve thought. He had changed. The Sahley he had bedded would’ve thought different of the old Sith. Impressed somehow by his scars and the obvious experience behind his words. The way that Friyr had ran his hands over him and the express interest that Sahley had admitted to finding only once before.

This Sahley, the one that Friyr was less apt to take advantage of, believed more in the Sith’s capacity to give in to his own pain. To desert. To run. Like Friyr had run from him. There were furls of difficulty in his words. Distance from the hard and fast way Friyr had been living as though it had been expected. And why shouldn’t he? Friyr had severed the budding connection Sahley had searched for with a purposeful cruelty. Pain, he’d justified then, was the only teacher and none of his business if it wasn’t his own. Friyr hadn’t given anyone any other impression than fast, loose, and easy anyhow.

Friyr swallowed and began to gulp small mouthfuls of water, so it wouldn’t hit him all too hard.

Friyr didn’t know when that had become the rule. It wasn’t him, but he was lonely, starved for close relationships, and half-crazy from his time in the Empire. Bodies were grounding, and he was good at having people but not carrying them with him. They filled a need left vacant. That was fine. Friyr wasn’t a creature of luxury. He was simple. He needed food, sex, and George in that order.

But every so often. A Kurt. A Sahley. He’d wander by, and Friyr would wonder. He hadn’t known he liked the green skinned alien until last night. Sitting in a tree with a girl he barely knew but liked very well enough. In this quiet moment Friyr could pinpoint the exact moment he’d endeared himself to the one-night stand.

He capped the bottle, placed it back into the sand, and wandered outside, pushing heaps of sand in his wake. His face turned up to a distant moon washing the sand in a dim glow that gauzed his eyes.            Sahley had taken his wrist and pulled him out onto the deck of Outpost Aether. The Jedi inside milled around talking about things Friyr didn’t quite understand.

Can you feel the sun on your skin? he asked, and part of Friyr’s heart melted under the feeling of being cared for, paid attention to despite every part of him that people gawked at, pointed out, made awkward jokes over to cover their own anxiety. Sahley had grabbed his wrist and asked a blind man, if he could feel the sun. It was so pathetic. Wanting.

Friyr realized that he would always be dogged by the curiosity of what it was to be loved by someone else in the way he loved them. The attachment was not to Sahley. Perhaps not to Kurt, but rather the need to feel—wanted?

Friyr closed his eyes and breathed outward. A stray breeze cradled his face a moment before it returned to the heavens. A chime of musical notes followed it, and Friyr hummed to the tune of the universe gently singing. Today had been good for him. Friyr had asked Sahley to be his in a way Friyr already knew he didn’t want but couldn’t exist without. The man had said a clear no, and Friyr had finally exhaled a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. In truth, he didn’t know what he’d do with Sahley if he’d said yes.

The rejection was closure. Friyr still nursed a sweet spot for the mirialan, but he didn’t ache for him. Not the way he’d ached for Kurt in silence and shame. Friyr knew he’d never be wanted, if only because logically he didn’t care for the concept and people were smart enough to understand that chasing that was trouble. His heart, like his body had needs though. Something would need to be arranged because Friyr couldn’t avoid attachments any longer, wait for someone else to tell him no. He needed to deal with them.

Friyr thumbed the Force Bond within him thoughtfully. Thoughtfully. Somewhere in the Empire, a pang of a memory found Kurt Wax, but the Pureblood didn’t pull back. He was trying to move on. Friyr smiled sadly. Perhaps this was his answer.

[theworstjedi]

Pieces of the Lake that Stayed

This wasn’t how Friyr had envisioned the night ending. He made it as far as the ravine before he staggered onto the hard sandstone. His knees scraped as he fell onto them. The heels of his palms hit the edge, knocking his breath from his body as his head dangled over the irrigation ditch below. Friyr gulped down large breaths of the cooling air, but it wasn’t enough.

The thing that he’d wrestled down for the past ten minutes scrabbled it’s way into his throat. A wave of provoked nausea followed it, and Friyr knew better than to resist when it brimmed over his lips. His shoulders sagged in defeat as he heard the liquid slap some of the rock and water below.

Friyr had never wanted this. You were happy as a slave, the beast he’d been fighting crooned.

“I wasn’t.”

But… You stayed.

Friyr flushed a violent red. His arms trembled as he recalled standing there by his loosened floorpanel. He took out the fist-sized bundle wrapped in oil cloth. Every single credit build over seven years was enough to buy his way out from bondage, a berth on a ship, and then some extra for whatever along the way. Elutherius cradled it to his chest. He meant to stow it under his skirt, wrapped around an inner thigh with the length of twine he’d pilfered, but–

Elutherius looked up, toward the empty room he shared with his young master. Quirt'ansilm would be announcing to his father he intended to join the military tonight at Elly’s behest. Years and years of suggestion, tailoring of Quirt’s activities, and … behest. He couldn’t see it, but the empty air pressed in on his ears. His master had left to clear his head. He wouldn’t be back for some time, while the Lord of the manner was at the citadel. The house, for once, was silent. Empty. It would not be so again.

Elutherius trembled, then set the oil cloth back in place amongst the other things he’d gathered. He replaced the floorpanel. He went into the small darkened room, sat on his floor pallet, and waited. He loathed each second if his freedom he let slip by, but he told himself it was well deserved to see Ignolis’ plans to send his son to Korriban ruined. Victorious to saddle the man with a Forceblind son and a sense of shame. ‘I took your heir,’ Elutherius repeated amidst the sensation of unease that something terrible would happen if he stayed.

“I– stayed because I was stupid. Hot-headed.” Friyr clawed to stay in the present. The past poisoned him with the weight of choices he had long since justified; it was foolish to dwell on that which he couldn’t change.

You stayed because you loved him. Loved serving him.

“That came after.” Friyr gripped the rock beneath his hands. “I was on Korriban; I was lonely,” Friyr growled, trying to drown out his own voice.

No, no. You loved him before then. The other slaves saw it. They pittied you for it. The boy who was foolish enough to fall in love with his Master.

Friyr pushed himself into his side and curled up. Tears pricked at his eyes, and Friyr choked back a sob.

There had been nothing romantic about that. Friyr knew there were a lot of holos. Torrid romances between the slave and the kind master who freed her. It had never worked that way; it never would. Friyr had been bound to please someone, to derive pleasure from happiness, fear from dissatisfaction, anxiety from being alone. Even at his kindest, Quirt had still hurt him by the simple act of holding autonomy over his body. Friyr, painfully aware of his situation had rebelled by throwing himself into the arms of people who would have him. Sneaking out at night, at parties, Friyr had always found someone. He was uncommonly pretty in the Empire - before the ruining of his face. And that had drove him into the arms of–

Darth–

Friyr screwed up his face. He harshly swiped the tears away and picked himself up. The night air was cool. Silent. “–Shuddup,” he muttered.

So you regret that.

Friyr frowned deeper, and wiped his eyes on both sleeves. “Kriff,” he mumbled. “I was a kid, he was–”

Older.

Friyr frowned. “He had his own kids.” Friyr remembered being borrowed for “chores,” and slipping around in secret. Quirt’s bemusement but willingness to hand over his favorite slave to a Darth.

That’s slutty. Even for you.

Friyr 'tch'ed and paced back toward the building with a stray sniffle. He could hear the soft croon of Master Or'blanc’s tombstone. He paused, then followed the gentle hum of light until he felt it against his outstretched fingertips. The stone was worn and warm from the fading desert day. Friyr licked his lips.

“It was a dumb choice. It sucked, but it made me who I am. If it makes me a slut, whatever, ’m a slut.”

For all that that had been, it was freedom from feelings that imprisoned him. For all that it had hurt. Friyr traced the stone as he searched for the inscription of Master Or'blanc’s name. Rerunning over tired thoughts he had put to rest was pedantry. He had settled on how he’d felt a long time ago. He’d moved on. He found the name and meditatively soothed over the letters.

You used Sahley in the same way. The voice had adopted a more even tone as though discussing. It hurt worse somehow than going through long delayed motions of self-hatred.

“What? Sahley, is my kriffin’ age. The kriff’s it my prahblem if he caught a crush frum a one night stand? He knew what he was gettin’ into.”

He was raised in the temple, the voice said patiently. He experienced his first important loss at your age. He knows nothing about any of what you hunted him down for. Then, he got thrown aside.

Friyr’s hand dropped. He had earlier toyed with the concept of kissing Sahley and playing with his hair at Nalre’s suggestion that they were together. It was idle thought that hadn’t stayed long past Friyr’s brief amusement with it. In retrospect, so too had the actual person when Friyr was done playing around them. He had pushed Sahley away, but too little too late. Damage had probably already been done to the tender-hearted man.

People here aren’t like you Elutherius. They’re kind, naïve; they’re not damaged. Do you know what damaged people do to people that aren’t?

Friyr quivered with guilt slowly eating his stomach. The chewed away at his person numbed his mind.

Damaged people damage other people.

The night air was silent from these accusations, but it brought Friyr no reprieve.

You don’t belong here, Elly.

[theworstjedi]

Slimy Negotiations

Sloo-sector transport bound is boarding at gate Besh-43,  a cool Alderaanian woman announced over the comm system of the Pallista Spaceport.

Friyr’s lips twitched at the mention of “Sloo-sector.” Force knows what that system had done to him. He’d missed the first transport off of Alderaan trawling through the markets for something warm to wear. He’d settled on an Echani desh breastplate. Soft, manicured, and battleready - it wasn’t hard to part with his dwindling credits for it. It was warm even in the open maw of the cold spaceport.

He had planned on staying, but a very raw feeling had erupted inside of his chest. 

Friyr took a deep breath and rubbed at the leather bracers he’d made to support his wrists. He was possessed of a strong feeling of disbelonging, something that he often felt when he had first come to the Jedi. Something that Knight Ward had imposed on him like a wayward child in his inability to understand that blindness was not a baggage. The knight was young. Almost haughty in his assumptions if not his manner. Friyr had experienced this sort of emotional neglect in his earlier tenure with the Disciples, but-- Friyr found it a hard thing to return to. Where it had once been a hazard of slipping around the underbelly of the Empire, the haunting reflection of those who had held his chains in a place he had learned to settle felt like iron in the belly rather than around his wrists.

Friyr was coping, re-reticulating his emotional responses and picking through the weakness as he stood in the long shuffling line of bodies before the ticketing counter. It was shameful really, but Friyr had little time to dwell as he stopped at the counter. He seized the opportunity to vault over his feelings.

Friyr fixed a cheery smile on his face as he emerged from the line of weary Alderaanians. “’M goin’ t’Ambria.”

The woman’s voice had the same quality of feeling he had from eating dehydrated Imperial rations.

“We have a direct transport--”

“D’ya have layovers?”

“Hold.” Friyr tapped his foot and hummed obnoxiously. His blind blue eyes raised to the ceiling.

“We have a layover in Hutta leaving soon.” “Whattabout Carrick?”

“In a few hours.” Friyr was warm but not warm enough. 

“I’ll wait,” he sighed.

 Lack of patience was a lack of credits. He didn’t need to know that Nal Hutta was going to cost more to dock into than Carrick. 

He returned to a bench tucked in front of a Starship Repair store. It was warmer away from the open mouthed entrance. It was still a little warm from whoever had paused there last in his absence.

 His head jerked up at a sharp ping emanating from the droid at his feet.

“Who’s callin’, George?” Friyr asked in a voice was a little too apprehensive, even to his own ears.

The small droid staticed out an answer that made Friyr’s sightless eyes pop round.  “Pudd’im through.”

<<Hello, Friyr right? The Magnanimous Mister Juunaba told me you were expecting a call from me--?>> The garbly blue figure was inquisitive.

Friyr blinked spots out of his eyes. He had shoved a holofrequency chip into Boris Juunaba, owner of the Cartel run Pick ‘n Mix bar that Friyr had started frequenting for pickups as of late. Friyr had put on quite a show swooning into that Hutt’s arms, but he hadn’t expected anything to come of the little play. Now...here he was, cards in hand for so long that he wasn’t sure how to lay them.

“Fer business, not pleasure ‘m afraid.” Though...” Friyr hitched on a crooked smile. “We could make it both.”

___

The connection to Hutta had taken him to Rhu Caenis Spaceport, then finally finally the Hutts’ domain. The language of the announcements through the transport carriers was frilly and unfamiliar. Hard as they began to descend. Sickly yellow light filtered through the windows, and NM chattered quietly in Friyr’s clasped arms.

“I-- I goddit, George. I c’n--” Friyr closed his lips to hold a roll of nausea. “I c’n deal with the Hutt. ‘M pretty coy too when I needa be.” A concerned rumbled from the little self-proclaimed smuggler. 

“Can’t be worse than Sith.” Dewootoowoo.

 Friyr squeezed. “I’ll be careful.”

Reeetwwooooo.

Friyr half shrugged through deep breaths. The transport’s pressure dropped sharply, popping his ears. Friyr stiffened in time for the craft to come to a bumpy but secure landing. 

Yatuka mapke bai pikee, the pilot announced in the same sterile garble. Friyr couldn’t tell if it was a droid or-- well a person.

NM sprung from Friyr’s arms to the floor and scuttled to the aisle. Friyr snatched the harness and stumbled his way into a very cushy body.  

“Adtahia peee uba doth bolla,” its owner remarked roughly.

Before Friyr could stick on his sheepish grin and raise his hands the small droid shrieked, clicking as he claw talked and walked forward. Threat this, blaster that. Friyr allowed himself to be pulled closer tot he persons belly so they were almost nose to nose. The person growled, and Friyr caught a wave of heavy wet breath.

“Geooorgeeee,” he muttered and shifted his hips, so the lightsaber on his belt caught the light. “Stoooop, please.”

The person stiffened.

“Kark Jeedai,” he spat at Friyr who was somewhat wide eyed.

NM tugged Friyr forward with a sharp grumble. 

“Kark Jedi?” Friyr asked as he stumbled into a wave of smog.

<<Kriffing Jedi>> the droid translated in a tinny robotic replication of standard basic.

“Oh,” Friyr said, then pitched his guts. 

____

Customs wasn’t much better, but people gave Friyr and the one other Knight from Alderaan a wide berth. He’d given Friyr a paper bag to retch into and pressed his cape against the padawan’s nose, like a smog filter. Chems were still sharp in his nose and watering eyes long after.

“Make sure you eat and drink something soon,” the smooth gentle voice said. The knight’s hands were firm holds on Friyr’s forearms. Friyr nodded. 

“Why’re you here? You don’t look like you’ve even gone one level down Coruscant before.” The warmth in the knight’s voice translated to his laugh, which flowed easily at Friyr’s expense.

“Hey, hey. You gotta travel t’get galaxy wise don’ya?” “I guess, but you’re a padawan you said? You should be with your master.” “Heh.” Friyr waffled as the throngs passed them by. The filtered air of Nal Kragga’s Spaceport was cleaner. Friyr glanced up towards the mans voice and imagined he was looking into a pair of brown eyes. “Our place it-- needs this. An’ I did ask th’council first. I wouldn’ just run off, ya know?”

The knight sighed. Friyr could hear his head lower. 

“It’s th’only thing ‘m good at,” Friyr said quickly, before the man could get a word in edgewise. “Talkin’ t’people is my...thing since my shoulder got busted. S’always been my thing, but I c’n do this fer my Jedi. If they don’ wan’it then.” Friyr shrugged. “Then I tried, but if no one does it, then...we missed out.”

The knight squeezed Friyr’s leg. “I was a difficult padawan too, so I get it. I’m sure there’s more to you than just talking, but maybe-- you should focus on becoming a Shadow or an Investigator instead of calling shots by yourself. They train people for this, you know.”

Friyr gave him a difficult smile.

”Let’s get you to customs then.” A large hand pulled Friyr forward. “You know what you’re gonna say to your Hutt?” ”No idea! I gotta feel a situation first, then swing it.”

”You’re so not a Guardian type, padawan.” ___

There was a guy fussing about his wallet behind Friyr at customs. The knight was ahead of him finished the process of declaring his lightsaber and rattling through the list of questions spoken in a greasily accented common. Even inside, Friyr could still smell the smog. 

Friyr notated the questions, spun up his answers, and stepped forward after the knight had passed. He stepped forward queasily, accutely aware of the guy still looking for his wallet behind him. Friyr was going to guess that in a place like this, it’d already been palmed by someone looking for a next meal.

“Do you have anything to declare?”

“I--”

“Meryn!” the wallet man behind Friyr called out happily and left the line.

“Do you have anything to declare?” the customs officer asked as Friyr began to fish for his lightsaber and the eerily hissing rod on his back 

“Yah, I--”

“He’s with me,” someone side quietly to the irate officer. Friyr zoned in on the distinct rattle of credits, so everything else fell to the background. He knew the sound of money against skin. 

Friyr’s head tipped up and with urging from his little seeing eye droid, he shuffled out of line with a sheepish smile and a wave. No one said a thing, which told Friyr that this occurred with some commonality and that whoever had just greased palms was someone of rapport. 

NM followed the man around the winding throngs of people, acrid stench of Hutta already sticking to their clothes. Friyr took a moment to cough.

“Thanks, but ‘m guessin’ ya didn’ just help me out ‘cause I got a pretty face,” the disfigured sundamaged Jedi said. He was aware of the cottony press of the Alderaanian fabric around his skin and the way he must’ve stood out in those clean cut clothing.

“Heh-- only in part. I’m Meryn. I work for Boris. We talked.”

Meryn had a much nicer voice when it wasn’t being compressed through a holo frequency, Friyr noted with a nod. “Riiiight, right,” he pretended to recall. “’M boyfriend here then?”

“Waiting to receive you in a local cantina.” There was a smirk to Meryn’s voice. “If you’ll come this way?”

“Yah, shur. Follow Meryn, George?”

___

The cantina was playing something quiet. Something swanky over the speakers. What hit Friyr first was the freshness of the air as though it were being double filtered as it eddied through the cantina. Hutt’s domain. Friyr followed Meryn and NM through a giggling group of patrons, laughing at seemingly anything in cool blissed out voices. The whole place made someone want to drop their shoulders and sway to the music. It was everything Friyr had once dreamed of. He’d come in from some job, glide over polished floors, and have a guy drift onto his hip, push his hair back, press a drink into his hand.

Friyr had never really expected to grow up into a half-Jedi who hated alcohol. Or grow up at all, really. Reaching Hutta was always one of those...pipe dreams. 

“Hellooooooo hello, my esteemed patrons!” a low booming sound resonated through Friyr, turning his knee caps to a weak sort of jelly. There was a slimy sound, as though the Hutt were trying to dance. “To what do I owe this occasion?”

The revelers in Boris’ presence stopped talking over the low playing band and the pitchy whine of the singer. Meryn stepped in front of Friyr.

“His Magnamity, himself, Boris of the Juunaba Kajidic.”

 Friyr didn’t need to be blind to know that everyone’s eyes were on him. A distinct Jedi with a kriffed up face and a golden smile. “I once shook his slimy hand,” one of those gathered muttered. 

“Borisssssss~!” Friyr drawled a little too loudly and spread his arms wide.

“I once shook his slimy hand,” one of those gathered muttered as Friyr stepped forward to wrap himself around Boris’ soft gooey belly. He hummed to the dark staccatos of jizz wailing swirling around them, and let the music play him into a state of loving adoration.

“Friiiyr, Fairest of them All! that is a legitimate title he won at my establishment to brandish as he pleases.”

“Fairest of them all? Debatable,” the same man who’d bragged about touching Boris’ hand said. Friyr could feel his eyes roaming the scars. Friyr unstuck himself with a slow wink in the man’s direction. “I once kissed him~”

“What?”

Friyr giggled girlishly and beamed at his so called Hutt boy toy.

“I-- don’t wanna know what else they do.”

“Hi!” Friyr tuned the bemused patrons to the background and stuck his hands in his pockets.

“I hope you don’t mind that I shared your holofrequency with Meryn,” Boris rumbled. A breeze of Hutt mouth stench washed over Friyr.

“Oh shur. I dun mind. I ~missed~ ya. How you been?”

“Friyr dear, I did too.” A large hand ruffled Friyr’s silky head of hair. “Now, business?”

“Shur, straight to th’point. ‘M lookin’ fer a bit of help.”

“Aaaah, there we go; proceed.”

“Chair, George?” The droid led Friyr to a barstool that was no doubt connected to a counter. Friyr planted a foot on the stool to a protesting warble from NM and scrambled onto the counter with a grunt of exertion, a sharp pain down his left side.

“I’m for hire!” someone yelled in the background. “I’m more than just a hot-shot Corellian swoop racer!”

Friyr grinned off the side at the heckler, his palms supporting him as he leaned back on their heels. “I could use a hot-shot Corellian, shur. But not fer work.” An easy laugh as he rolled his head back to Boris. “This is about food. If it was killin’, I’d saber it m’self.”

“Oh food I am well-vested in,” Boris intoned. “I have connections, supply...” The Hutt moved, and it made another wet sound that Friyr idly tracked with his head. “Technologies?”

Friyr nodded and hummed along to the slow warble of the new song. “’M a Jedi who lives in a refugee town. We get funded t’take in people fleein’ planets with war ‘n all, but the planet we’re on? Ambria? It’s got no natural resources an’ we’re at the end of our rope with th’ R’Pahblic givin’ us stuff. These Jedi. You know how we are; we take in anyone. Big hearts, no stuff t’keep ‘em beatin’. I thought maybe I’d look into private contractin’?”

“A Republic settlement... Ohh dear,” the Hutt fussed. A slow slimy sound of anguish. The Hutt equivalent of running fingers through hair, Friyr supposed. “My Imperial leaning allies would be very upset. Most upset indeed, hmhm.” 

The slimey sounds trailed their way softly to Friyr. His chin tipped. The next rumble of the Hutt’s big voice was low. Intimate. Deep in Friyr’s chest, breath against his face.

“Have you heard of hmm... The Vorulan system?”

Friyr leaned forward and slid his hands down the new pants to rest them on his knees. His washed out blue eyes fed off the way Boris’ voice penetrated him for a lover’s intensity. “Nah, I can’t say I have.”

“Well, it so happens they have a space colony; that space colony was formed after however long in isolation, and they have a little innovation I like to call space farming.” Boris paused then added. “OH and hydroponics. Can’t forget the hydroponics.” He leaned closer to the little Jedi, almost skimming Friyr’s up-turned nose on Boris’ top lip. “Turns out, some oligotrophic organisms are quite sustainable! But then I’m sure you’ve heard of Mynock Coronet City?”

Friyr breathed in the unheady smell of hutt and swallowed a thick resurgence of bile. “Coronet? Corellia?” 

His mind processed at lightyears a minute all of the wordy language and civilizations he knew nothing of. The reins of this situation disappeared over his head as the Hutt plunged him into the realm of unknown. This was big leagues talk, and Friyr didn’t quite have the mouth to back it up, but-- do or die that had never stopped him before. 

“‘M not too edumacated, but hydrophonetics? That have somethin’ t’do with water?” he breathed out.

“Yes, that would be the flavor assortment - point being, you can treat mynock meat with spices to make it palatable. And yes, some cultivated plant varieties need not soil, just water and perhaps a cotton substrate.”

Before Friyr can puzzle this into a cohesive assortment of words in his brain, Boris’ tail wrapped around them, sectioning off human and Hutt from prying eyes. The Hutt leaned still closer, and Friyr obligingly skimmed his nose against the Hutt’s face as he spoke. Friyr held his breath.

“If you can’t use the soil... well... space potato seems to grow plentifully in asteroids and that colony was making exogorths and dianoga that will feed off of whatever refuse substrates you have. Dianogan pie, I’m sure you’ve seen at some lower level diners.”

Friyr stroked the Hutt’s face. If the accent recalled the lower levels of Coruscant, then it did its job. “Iiiii think I see,” Friyr dodged answering; he knew As’traa wouldn’t want him to sell his soul in a lie, but nor could he tell the truth. “Ambria is a wasteland. Worse than Tatooine. We got a lake but no soil.” Boris’ skin was slick and foldy under the forner SIth’s burned fingers. “What kinda supplies do ya need t’grow this?” he whispered.

“Hm, the spacefarming? Well, I’d hope you have an outlying station or craft. Not quite sure how they pick space potato out of asteroids. Hydroponics you’d need water and a suitable container of course. Buuut there are third options.”

Hydroponics stuck to Friyr, and he seized it with both hands before Boris could draw him off on a third venture.

“We got a lake. Would that do okay?” Friyr arched his pointed brows high.

Boris flexed his brows under Friyr’s fingers and leaned still more into the Jedi so Friyr’s legs could straddle around his chest. Friyr did so, obligingly, feeling Boris’ thick slick sides beneath his heels in an altogether surreal experience for the human.

“Oh yes, the lake water would be fine as long as you acquire the plants themselves and somewhere with shade - now consider algae vats. The subterrainian bounty of many a city-world. Why milk a bantha when you can cultivate something resembling milk-proteins and the end result? Little dark interior, a lot of UV light, a lot of the relevant strains, and you can emulate that which you can’t grow.”

Friyr’s mind stopped. That could save lives, to cultivate other crops by synthetic means, but Boris was making slimy sounds of excitement with his oversized tail. A mutual excitement. “Aaaaaaaaaaand I know where you could happen to find a spare one.” Sure that a scalping was on the horizon, Friyr braced dread against the feeling of victory whelling into his chest. Boris’ solution was perhaps worse.

“Could ya give me a sample of th’plants this produces. If I get somethin’ t’take back, I c’n get th’ council t’make a better decision. ‘Cuase ahhhh- s’not me you gotta convince at th’enda the day.”

“Oh yes! And perhaps a sample of that which they use to treat mynock meat to render it suitable for your consumption? It turns spaceflight pest into a resource!” The Hutt clapped his hand in jubilation. “And perhaps some dianoga. I have my fees, but consider it a veritable starting point! I’m also impartial to sewer-fed gorgs. Oho! You can’t taste the difference honestly.”

"Youra lifesaver Boris.” Friyr leaned in and pressed his mouth to the Hutt’s before he started getting too carried away. It was as warm and ... wet as before. Like kissing a syrupy tongue. Friyr licked off the slime. He’d started getting accustomed to it by this point... though it did no wonders for his nausea. “So! About your fees! I don’ think I c’n pay fer this with my body. ‘M guessin.” Friyr picked at a nail, pretending he hadn’t just kissed a Hutt twice.

“Ohooooo!” Boris laughed. Perhaps form the kiss, a potential deal, both? “Hm, fifty credits. I have to think about the shipping costs of course. An entire algae vat, however, hmmm...” Boris’ tail moved thoughtfully over the floor, and Friyr watched stoically. Herein lay the catch.  

“So fifty fer now,” he reaffirmed. “Whattabout the full operation? If we were t’get shipments every other week.”

“Ohh, full operation,” the Hutt tsked. Friyr felt it against his whole body. “Fifty credits is for the sample you understand. If it is to their liking we could be looking at a hundred a week for a more significant supply. You want a miscellaneous assortment?”

“Shurrr. About that vat, then? Ya had somethin’ on yer mind?”

Boris’ voice dropped again. “There are several inside faction elements who would be a little upset if one of their supply units went missing - just the one of course!” Of course, Friyr thought dryly. “But if you can procure it without their notice, I can manage the shipping.”

Oh. This was different. Boris didn’t want to dip his tail in, which meant that if this failed the Jedi would bear the brunt of the blame. Clever clever hutt. Friyr glanced tot he side, as if still checking on their privacy as he thought. “I c’n, but yah’d have t’give me details on it.” He dropped his voice just under the chatter of the bubbly crowd of patrons. “What faction and where?”

Boris pressed into him, thrumming, and Friyr pliantly obliged the hands on his back with a blank face. The rather public display of his sexuality was purely performative in nature and so were Boris’, though he was falling into partnership with the Hutt in a purely different way. And what was sexuality but an exchange of give and take? So too was this intricate ritual. He let Boris place his lips into his ear, legs around the Hutt’s chest and arms around his neck.

“New Providence is very politically, hm, something. Imperial elements, Republic elements, former cannibals, two of the factions despise each other. It makes for interesting meetings.”

Friyr licked his lips again as Boris whispered his “sweet nothings.” “Sounds like, heh, a lotta politics. Who’d be missin’ it then?” Friyr’s played footsie with one of Boris’ fat rolls, dislodging something that the Hutt quickly pushed back in. Friyr held a surprised chuckle. Clever Hutt.

“Weeeell, just the one little one wouldn’t be amiss; That is! If you aren’t caught pilfering it. If you were then... Well, you see why I’m leaving the pilfering to you and yours. If I were caught doing such a thing, Queen Aemelia would be quite upset!” Friyr hummed and lidded his eyes so they were almost closed. “Also I am told the Sewerbeast has a fondness of algae vats. Consumes the contents unrefined, straight from the water, mm.”

“Queenie, huh?” Friyr idly storked the back of Boris’ head. “Queenie someone I should be worried about?”

“Oh well, she is Imperial with a self-proclaimed title. She hasn’t barred Jedi, would make the cross faction populace too uneasy, but... well, you can see why she would be most upset with me, which is why I’ll cover extraction to the hangar bays! Careful though, there’s an old legend that the Sewerbeast will try and drag you into her waters. Oho.”  Friyr rolled his eyes behind the Hutt’s back, but pulled back and held two of Boris’ fat rolls, just under his neck to pull his head close to Friyr’s. The padawan laughed lightly. “You drive a hard bargain Boris. Tell ya what.” Friyr’s blissed out eyes complimented a wide spreading smile on his cut lips. A satisfied expression, but one that drew attention to the scars on his face and darkened Friyr’s easy-going nature. “Give me th’ full schims an’ I’ll think about it. ‘M still trainin’ an’ can get kicked outta m’Order, but I’ll pitch your idea. No prahmises though. But if not, then we’ll find other means, ‘less ya c’n sweeten th’deal. Say if we take th’vat, we keep it. As in property of th’ Jedi Order. Knock some credits off shippin’? A liddle manpower wouldn’ hurt none too.”

“Mapping the Harrower isn’t as indepth as it could be, but yes. Mmm, credits, manpower. Oh Merrrrrrynn!”

Friyr untangled his fingers from the rolls, and the Hutt’s encircling tail disappeared as the man who’d fished Friyr form customs hurried over. Convenient lovers no more, Friyr’s palms were still dirty from the exchange.

“Yes, your Magnamity?” the voice at floor level said, and Friyr looked down form his adopted cantina counter perch.

“How would you feel about a mission procuring some New Providence goods for this nice man?” Friyr wagged his brows in Meryn’s direction as the Hutt spoke. “You know. Lower levels... the waterworks... the vat room... One little vat? The room with the beast sightings...? That room...?”

Friyr hummed idly as Meryn directed a him. “The Sewerbeast?” 

The man, confident before, sounded concerned. Friyr almost felt sorry for him. “Yes, by all accounts it helps as well as it hurts!”

“Don’ worry,” Friyr reassured underneath his lazy grin. “‘m a Jedi.” It wasn’t very reassuring.

“Yes! You’ll have a big strong Jedi to help you!” Boris chimed in.

“More’n one. This’ll need more’n me, an’ less th’ thing is dark sided, it won’ be killed. We’re Jedi; we capture.” Friyr slid down the counter and edged past Boris’ belly to lean against the surface he’d just been sitting on. “‘M more worried ‘bout Aemelia than a--”

“Six foot tall beast with abs, several appendages, eyes like the void.” “Yah.. That. Why’d she be mad about missin’  these vats anyway?”

“She is the Queen of New Providence,” Boris said as Meryn idled across from Friyr. “An Imperial Captain. More or less in charge among the in-charge groups. Also because the vats are something of a New Providence property.”

Their food source. Any pang of sympathy Friyr might’ve felt was drowned by the lack of sorrow he had about stealing form Imperials. Kriff it. Kriff them. Kark the Empire.

Friyr tapped his chin, like he wasn’t feeling a sensation akin to bloody murder inside. “Hmmmmmm, well that’s more tricky. I’ll let ya know what the Council says. Fer now, we got ourselves the start of somethin’. We’ll talk, we’ll talk. Meryn nn~ baby!” He turned his hundred watt smile on the Enforcer watching and eyeing both his employer and the affectionate Jedi. “Mind if I cheat on Boris an’ take ya home with me?”

“Oh, by all means!” Boris obliged with an answering smirk form Meryn that Friyr could hear in his voice when he left with the Hutt’s pet on his waist later on that afternoon. Who was to say Friyr wasn’t living his day dreams to the fullest?

[hermoanie]

[greyjedimichi]

Tricky, basically.

[tackled]

[azaleatown]

Got a problem with me? Kiss me on the lips dude

[amputationss-deactivated2023020]

…because things change, and friends leave, and life doesn’t stop for anybody

Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

[za-ra-h]

Finished this drawing of Apollo and his golden arrows.

He’s my favorite of the Greek mythos.

[aygyegywgew-deactivated20170515]

[theworstjedi]

What Happens in Hutt Domain...

Have you ever seen those holovids that where the hero wakes up to see the ceiling and there’s this loud ringing sound? Neither have I. Mostly ‘cause I can’t see. Though not for a lack of trying!

I’m the hero in this one. (Naturally), and when I woke up all I knew was that I lost time, someone had punched my jaw back into place (Thanks fer that), and I was incredibly aroused.

Hey, hey, heyyy. George. George lookit me. It’s not that kinda story. I mean if ya really wanted—okay okay come back! I’m done. Prahmise.

I’m not unused to wakin’ up sticky and sore, but I’m not usually covered in Hutt slime, blood, and like prahbably a few bad decisions.

----

“I think he’s coming to.”

Friyr licked a line of drool from his mouth that had long since dampened his shirt beneath. Funny. Considering his mouth was dry. The thick mucus strings tasted like he’d he’d sucked on a perfumed hutt.

Wait. Friyr blinked. His jaw muscle memory recalled thick blubber slicing beneath his incisors as he kicked at the floor. He’d been beat until tender and was suffocating underneath the weight of an overgrown slug and and the idocy of not knowing when to quit. Friyr wretched and coughed up another wave of mucus that slid down his chin. He smelled blood, though the distinct taste wasn’t in his mouth.

He liked to call this tenacity.

He exhaled and propped his hand against padding of the seat he was sprawled on, like some sort of inelegant ragdoll in pleather a size too tight. He had intended to push himself into a sitting position, but he groaned through his teeth instead as pain lanced through battered bones. Friyr exhaled. His chest was tight and a dull ache in his ribs promised to keel him over if he tried to find his footing.

“Aya aliyana su, Friyr. Rua khoe Su uchu ik wich'a kho p'u?”

Green. Way too much green. If she was wearing a shirt at all, it was a flimsy one. He could feel that from the soft echoes of their voices, though right now? That could’ve been the sound floating in and out of his head.

Friyr scoffed and spat foul fluid out. “Did-- did I win, Master Tabris?”

“Well, you’re not dead, so I—” The alien words still had her tongue twisted around.

“Are you proud of me?” he asked. His jaw moved awkwardly. Either the numbness in his cheek was swelling or someone had finally chipped it back into place.  

“I—Padawan, of course I’m—” as Master Tabris flustered, the sound ebbed out of Friyr’s ears in favor of a deeper ringing. He couldn’t feel his body. Taking advantage of the numbness, he moved his hand to the part of his face that was suspiciously and pleasantly hot. They came back wet from the stream of blood pouring from his left eye.

He grinned and laughed in blissful forgetfulness. He didn’t manage a wheeze before the burgeoning pain in his ribs kicked him, like a mule, and Friyr’s pretty blue eyes rolled back.

___

When he woke up next his master wasn’t there, nor was he in pleather. Someone (Tabris, likely) had stripped him out of it and replaced his normal green robes and sandals. His ears were still ringing, but the volume was much lower. He was no longer covered in hutt slime. He blinked and touched his face. Nor blood. The ceiling was a blurry gunmetal gray instead of the neon red of artificial lights. Friyr swallowed and winced around the aftertaste of Hutt butt.

“If I ever get my schutta together,” Friyr began to promise, “I’ll never ever get into a ring fight in a sketchy Wild Space bar again.”

He tested the dry words, seeing how they felt in the moment after regret, like the morning after a bad one night stand. Friyr hummed. “Probably not,” he said.

The remnants of an Imperial accent laced the last two words then fell silent. His throat felt like wind tunnel. He hurt like he’d been runover by a Harrower class Dreadnaught (ironically the model of ship that had been appropriated by the elements that had moved in when the Imperials had moved out.)

“Faaarkle,” he groaned and rubbed out a messy blotch of eyeliner and wheezed out a laugh. His ribs kicked his again, but the pain wasn’t so bad now. It’d probably been a day gauged by the fading bite of his bruises and the recalcitrant brittleness of his bones.

He pushed himself up, and the world spun. He caught himself on the arm of a couch and held in a late wave of vomit. Run over by a Harrower? Kriffed by a Gundark? …Sat on by a Hutt? Two lies one truth.

Ever since Friyr was little, he had had vivid daydreams that he remembered with a clarity he barely remembered his younger life in Kaas City’s slave barracks with. He’d entertained private fantasies of blaster slinging in the Outer Rim. The place where he thought outlaw heroes were born. The part of the Outer Rim that didn’t belong to Imperial space anyway. He was wild and free hunting bounties, taking mercenary contracts. Maybe he wasn’t the hero. Not in a classical sense anyway, but he could spin stories to the tune of those imagined adventures.

He caught the shuffling and clink of glass outside of his own sustained misery and listened to the rustle of another human being….alien? Didn’t matter. It was grounding, and Friyr couldn’t really dwell on living out some of his rough and tumble fantasies. He needed to find a Jedi’s headspace, a servant’s discipline and pick himself up. He straightened. SOmething popped; he really wasn’t in his twenties anymore, huh?            “Hulloooo~?” Friyr called out.

“That’s a bold choice of robes,” a decidedly male voice answered with a familiar undercurrent of calm that Friyr was used to finding in a certain order of monks.

“What’d ya mean?” Friyr said as he limped his way over to the bar. Oh, a three person barfight wasn’t glamourous.

Things had changed as he’d grown and reality had imposed its bleak choices on him instead. Force sensitive, low caste, and between a rock and the ire of a Sith Lord Master – Friyr had absolved debts at Korriban. No one had told him it’d cost his soul, but— he nicked a bottle from behind the counter, both eyebrows raised – Everyone made decisions. He wasn’t particularly remorseful for trading in morality to save his life. He’d…ended up in the right place? Right?

“In robing of a color that isn’t black?”

“Oh!” Friyr grinned, and it winged. “The guy who gave this t’me had a terrible thing fer green. It was all he wore. Green Jedi? Y’know?”

Friyr pressed a hand to his jaw to see if he could jank it back into the position it’d occupied before. Gratned, it had been in the wrong position before from the first person who’d forced it out of place; Friyr had just...kind of gotten used to it. The tender edges of a suspiciously deep bruise deterred him. Well. There was the answer as to why it was off its misalignment, but what specifically-- The memory of a large red woman snapping his chin upward with enough force to rocket him back to the Empire careened into his waking thoughts. Ah. Riiight.

“I’ve never met any Green Jedi. I’m of the Tython Temple. If that still stands.”

Focus, said the voice of every Jedi Master Friyr had ever had in varying degrees of patience…exasperation.

“Dunno why it wouldn’ be.” He pulled the cork out with his teeth and spat it. (Ow, jaw) Drink. The bitter cut of alcohol woke his bleary sense for a moment. Friyr wiped the spirit from his face and listened to the voice he’d made the aquiantence of. A sharp restlessness took the former Sith’s bones for better or worse. Friyr considered his options, that which was most constructive. “Are you—y’know--?” He tilted his head suggestively.

“Jedi Pathfinder Lincen Namara, of what remains of the Jedi Exploration Corps…”

“Oh, I was gonna ask if y’were gay.” Friyr took another pull and set the bottle down. “’Cause yer inna gay bar.” Friyr held out a hand. “Fryer. ‘M a padawan.”

___

“Do I want to ask where you were?”

Master Tabris’ voice had a disapproving bent from down the corridor. Friyr was…limping again, but the reason he can’t quite walk straight? That’s entirely different.

“Calm yourself!” He called out. His own voice was dangerously sober and straightened from it’s usual teasing wobble. Friyr’s head buzzed pleasantly with healing injury and… distraction, but he felt oddly in control of his own destiny at the moment.

As he met his master down the hallway his eyebrows popped up silent question. He forewent words. Her body heat was close to his and her silence was still considering his sudden reappearance and calm condition.

His head cocked. “You sound like you have more clothes on?” Indeed the reverberations of sound are crisper, not like when they echoed off of bare skin. He grimaced to bite back a reflexive smirk. He wasn’t feeling it at the moment.

“I just—you’re very quiet.” She felt his forehead, and Friyr leaned his head into the cupped hand obligingly. “And you were gone from the bar when I checked back tonight.”

“Haaa, riiight. I uh—went on a ride?”

“On an enclosed ship?” she asked skeptically. 

“Yup.” Friyr popped the ‘p.’

His makeup, the little that remained was smeared, like a teeage girl after her first broken heart. But only at the edges. Most had been cleaned off or wiped clear at this point. Friyr rocked on his heels as he parted his lips and decided on the persona he wanted to wear on the way back. He decided he didn’t particularly want to talk about it.

His mood wasn’t dark. Not at the moment. He’d safely sealed himself back inside his body and shuttered his connection from the Force. By all means he was cozy. Friyr just didn’t want to. Not before he had time to process the last seventy-two hours of his life.

“Dooon’t” he started to drawl with as much curling satisfaction he could muster. His eyes narrowed mischievously as he put on an entirely ‘you know what I did last night’ expression on the set of his brows and the quirk of his mouth. “Don’ ask questions ya don’ wan the answer to~” The hastily skewed robes, the somewhat awkward waddle, and the word ‘ride’ pieced together into perfect awful sense for his poor master in the silence that followed. His wide mouth stretched in anticipation, and Master Tabris disappoint. She groaned. Loudly.

“I don’t know why I ask.” Her boots click across the floor as she marched off, leaving Friyr to trail behind her.

Friyr chuckled. “’Cause ya caaaare about meeee,” he teased, as though her motherly attachment to him were as juvenile as a crush.

He wasn’t going to pretend they had a normal mentorship. The Sunriders... their littany of attachments made messes for them, and Master Tabris’ had hit her hard. He’d met her late husband, had heard about the littany of cheating, profession of love, held their child’s hand through the desert and caried her on his shoulders. Master Rajjaet Or’blanc was top shelf scum. Sure, Friyr had liked him for the Jedi he had been, but Friyr was also woefully aware this didn’t negate the way he’d used and abused his family. Friyr, afterall, was very much the same as a partner, better in some ways - worse in others.

Jedi weren’t made for relationships, but it was perhaps the crisis that As’traa Tabris’ old one wrecked through her middle age that suited her to Friyr. They were a mess and perhaps Friyr’s ability to own his predilections that stripped As’traa of this painful veneer of togetherness she tried to maintain when she was boiling inside.

In a way? He and Tabris were both trying to learn how to be Jedi; he just needed help more than she did.

“I don’t know why I do!” There’s the hint of a laugh in her voice.

“’m glad y’came with me…” he tried for instead. Sobriety returned now that she’d been deflected from his personal affairs.

“I—I am too Padawan.” Tabris’ voice cracked, and Friyr understood in the deepest recesses of his soul why. He felt sorry for her, a man removed from his own heartache looking in on anothers.

They walked in silence for long moments of durasteel and litter crunching on retreating boots.

“’M goin’ to remake my lightsaber. The one I have now.”

“I’m proud of you, padawan,” she said again, and Friyr gave her a difficult smile but an appreciative one nonetheless.

[blackboysrmagic]

@giofilipinohair