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inyri · 5 years

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Equivalent Exchange (a SWTOR story): Chapter 36- The Best Policy

Equivalent Exchange by inyri Fandom: Star Wars: The Old Republic Characters: Female Imperial Agent (Cipher Nine)/Theron Shan Rating: E (this chapter: M)

Summary: If one wishes to gain something, one must offer something of equal value. In spycraft, it’s easy. Applying it to a relationship is another matter entirely. F!Agent/Theron Shan. (Spoilers for Shadow of Revan and Knights of the Fallen Empire/Knights of the Eternal Throne.)

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***

The Best Policy

Theron exhales.

“Probably too much to hope it’d stay a secret for long,” he mutters, straightening up. He doesn’t let go of her, though, fingers working along her neck- after this long in kolto she ought to be a limp mess but it’d probably take years to get all the tension out of her muscles. Her shoulder’s better for the time spent soaking, at least. “I just- Force, I’m never going to hear the end of it. You’re sure Lana doesn’t already know? My dossier-”

Nine does shake her head then, immediately regrets it, and makes a muffled mmph noise instead that’s half-negation and half trying not to throw up on the War Room table. “She doesn’t. And that was never in your dossier- say what you like about the state of the Republic now, whoever knew that secret kept their cards close. None of us knew.”

“But my mother was, wasn’t she? After Rishi-”

“No. We kept that out deliberately, even after we knew.”

(It hadn’t even been her idea; Lana had been the one to suggest the omission. “It will make him far too much of a target. Anyone trying to lure out the Grand Master-”

Guilty conscience or not, Lana had been right. That was a method she’d used herself when there was no other way to a target: take a friend or lover or spouse instead, living collateral to be dangled as bait. (Never children. She drew the line at children. Ruthlessness was all well and good, but that kind of sociopathy was a one way ticket to a padded cell- or Shadow Town, which was just a padded cell with better locks.) With his parentage on his dossier Theron would have had every Sith with access to the mainframe- which was nearly all of them back then, puppet to the Council that Sith Intelligence was in its resurrected form- hunting him within a week. He’d have been dead, or worse, within two. And for what? By the rules of negotiation he’d have been doomed, a marginally valuable hostage that the Republic would never in a hundred years have bartered for one of its most celebrated heroes. Satele might have come for him herself, of course. But would she have?

Lana had looked to her, questioning, and she heard Theron in her head: my agent, the words bitter on his tongue. Like it’s a coincidence we share a name.

“It wouldn’t be fair, would it?” She’d nodded, locking down the file. There was very little fair about their line of work and nothing given for free, but this seemed somehow right after the awfulness of Rishi. It wasn’t a question of judgment. Her judgment was fine. It was- “I agree. We leave it out.” )

He has to clear his throat before he continues, whatever he meant to say first catching on his tongue. “I didn’t... I didn’t know that. Thank you.”

“Thank Lana,” she says. Theron’s hands go still. “She approved the addendum.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask. Did she think you’d go too easy on me?”

She turns her head just enough that he can see her wink. “Or put too much in. Theron Shan, Republic SIS. Caf addict. Terrible taste in music-”

“You used to let me pick the music, if I remember correctly.” Hands slipping beneath the knot of her hair, he cups the base of her skull, leans down to kiss the top of her head and then her forehead and then further still, curling over her to nip at the tip of her nose. “I must have missed the complaints trying to block out your off-key singing.”

“I like you-” she closes her eyes, a slow blink; he’s not wrong. She was never any good at singing- “so I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Let’s see. Easily identified due to prominent cybernetics and appears to own exactly one jacket, or possibly twelve copies of the same jacket. Marginal slicer. Does this absolutely delightful thing with his tongue-”

When Theron grins she can feel it, his breath huffing against her face. He’s trying not to laugh but can’t quite hold it back and he has to let go of her to brace himself against the table. “Please tell me you’re not serious.”

“Of course I’m not.” Oh, it sounds good to hear him laugh. He’s so good at distracting her from the stress of everything and she’s been so bad at reciprocating; she brings him caf and the best of what she can sneak from the mess hall, pulls him into bed to work the day’s tension off in pleasanter ways, but it’s not nearly enough. He deserves so much better than her fumbling attempts at comfort. “Someone else might have gotten ideas-” she rests her hand on his, clumsy in its heavy brace- “and I wouldn’t want them trying to edge in on my territory.”

“Your?”

A loaded question for all of its brevity.

She shrugs in reply, forcing a smile in place of words she doesn’t know how to say, and Theron overlaps her little finger with his thumb. She can’t quite feel it properly- what ought to be the friction of his skin on hers just registers as pressure- but it’s better than nothing. Better than it should be. A gift. (Or not, but the idea of the alternative is far less pleasant.)

“It wouldn’t have been much,” she says softly, “in the long run. But if the war had kept going it might have kept you out of the crosshairs for a little while. We just- I just-”

The corners of his mouth quirk upward. “Not ‘compromised objectivity’?”

“Certainly not. I’m a professional, after all.” He’s still standing just beside her chair; she leans on him, rests her aching head against his side. “And we did say no strings.”

“We did. No strings, no sides, intact judgment et cetera.” Theron glances down at her and then turns, just enough that she can rest against his stomach instead. When he exhales she moves along with him, gently to-and-fro with the in and out of his breath. “So I probably shouldn’t mention that I put a DNE on your file after Ziost, then.”

She blinks. Lies by omission were one thing, the usual selective recordkeeping that let one spare allies and target enemies as the situation required, but- “Trant let you? Forgive me when I say that seems unlikely.”

“Let is a strong word. He asked me how to put together a team that’d survive you and I gave him my honest opinion: we couldn’t. Do Not Engage.” He scrawls the words in the air with his finger. “You were taking us apart- no, no, I know you didn’t have a choice-” she’d gone tense against his body, not wanting to argue; they were all following their orders and they both know that but she must have killed a dozen or more of his friends in those last few months of war before the Zakuulans came. But he strokes her hair until she calms. “We all did what we had to back then and despite what my… what Jace said, my loyalty to the Republic was never a question. But when it came to you-”

“I told you I was bad for you.”

“Stop that. I told you-” his voice is gentle and he almost taps her forehead before he mercifully thinks better of it- that would have hurt, today- and just presses his fingertip against it instead- “that you weren’t. Aren’t. You saved me. I had to- I had to return the favor.”

Stars, she doesn’t deserve him. “He didn’t listen, you know.”

“I know. But I tried.” Theron sighs. “Anyway, you’re sure Lana doesn’t-?”

Three knocks.

Lana’s silhouetted in the doorway when it slides open, caf pot in one hand and three mugs dangling from the other. “I take you’ve finished your calls? You mentioned before that we three needed to talk.”

“Yes. Hold on.” She presses the intercom, opening a line to the bridge. “Kaliyo, we’ll be in the War Room. Ring through if we’re needed.”

“Got it.” The speaker crackles as the reply comes through. “Ears off?”

Nine sighs. “What do you think?”

“Secrets, secrets are no fun,” Kaliyo drawls. “Locking you down. Have fun.”

She straightens in her seat, beckoning Lana into the room; Theron takes a step back and then settles into the chair beside hers. “Two quick things before we start- I’ve got Ioana Rist working on a countermeasure to the Exarchs’ new little trick.”

“How much is that going to cost us? Their work doesn’t come cheaply.” Setting the caf and cups down on the table between them, Lana slips around to the far side.

“Only a case or two of brandy. I’ll talk to Hylo about sourcing it, but that’ll be strictly out of my pocket. We’re on fragile enough ground with our Jedi as it is without word getting around that I’m using a Force-breaker.”

Lana wrinkles her nose. “Not just the Jedi. The Council banned them for a reason.”

“The Council banned Force-breaker toxins-” she rolls her eyes and even that small motion makes the world spin- “because they’re afraid of what people like me would do if we had them. But that’s beside the point. Second, I’ve finally got a lead on the Alderaan staging site we discussed last week. It won’t be actionable for a month, though, and I need to-” she pauses. She needs to figure out what the fuck she’s going to do. Research first, she supposes: she thought Galen had retired after that business with Malgus but his new rank certainly suggests otherwise- had he gone back voluntarily? That might be something she could use. “I can’t delegate that, either. So if we hear anything more from Voss before-”

“I was going to save that news until we got back to Odessen, but I did hear from our Gormak friends. Apparently their visions have coalesced.” Lana says the last word like she wants to spit it out- for all her Sithness she always was a skeptic, with little faith in the prophecies and mysticism that drove some of her peers, and she seemed to find the Voss- and Gormak, by proxy- particularly maddening. “We have a timeline.”

Theron’s already poured himself a mug of caf and pauses mid-sip with it still raised to his mouth. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“It’s... not an ideal timeline.”

“Nine needs to rest, Lana. How not ideal?” He frowns.

She reaches out for her own mug; Theron fills it unprompted and she curls her fingers around it. The warmth, at least, she can feel.

Lana slumps into her seat. “Twelve days. I tried to argue it, but the-”

“She has a broken wrist. There’s no way she’s going to-”

The headache hits her like an icepick to the temple- ah, concussions- and she winces, closing her eyes as they bicker back and forth. “Would both of you,” she snaps, “please shut up and let me speak?”

They actually do.

“Twelve days. We’re- what, four days from Odessen now?”

“Three and a half,” Lana says quietly. “And I’ve mapped a route back to Voss that uses some of the Imperial hyperspace lanes. We could get there in six days, I think. Possibly faster, with Theron piloting.”

Theron hums idly under his breath, the way he always did when he was doing calculations in his head. “Giving us two days’ turnaround- maybe three. Not enough.”

“I’ll manage.” The moment the words leave her mouth she hears them both sigh; she makes a face at them, tongue sticking out. “Hush. I’ll spend the rest of the trip home in the tank, and I’ll check in with Doctor Lokin once we’re there. I’ve gone back into the field sooner after worse.”

“We can still refuse. Visions notwithstanding, if you aren’t ready-”

“I’ll be ready, Lana.” Does she really have a choice? “Tell the Gormak to expect us.”

(There are many ways to hasten the healing process. She sees his outline on the backs of her eyelids, brilliant white against the darkness. Good as new in hours, rather than days or weeks- better than new. Stronger. Quicker. I could-

Pass. Go away.

Valkorion chuckles and something’s hiding beneath the laughter, dark and creeping and ugly for all his sleekness and his gleaming armor. Look at you. Broken by a mere exarch. My children are going to kill you, little Cipher. And I may very well let them.)

“Nine?” When she blinks back to herself Lana’s biting her lip, eyes narrowed. “Was that-”

“It’s nothing- more color commentary as per usual. I’m fine.”

They look at each other across the table, Lana and Theron with matching expressions- she’s not fine, of course she isn’t fine and they all know that but no one wants to be the first to say it. Saying it out loud makes it real. Instead, they turn to each other.

“Send me the route.” Theron finishes off his cup and pours himself another. “I’ll look at it tonight and see if I can shave a little more time off.”

“Of course.” Lana’s datapad rings metallic against the tabletop as she pulls it from its pocket in her tunic. “Transmitting now. But- oh, Force, never mind. The rest of it can wait until later. What was it that you wanted to discuss?”

“I- um.” Clearing his throat, Theron fidgets in his chair until the seat creaks beneath his restless weight.

Poor Theron.

“Several days ago,” she begins so he doesn’t have to, “Theron became aware of a complication of his recent trip to Coruscant that we- and by we I mean I- are going to have to deal with.”

Lana nods. “I assume you’re referring to Agent Balkar?”

“Only indirectly. That he was there at all was a particularly bizarre coincidence, true, but that wasn’t the complication.” If only it were that simple. “To be frank, we probably owe him a favor. He was the one who told Theron about the death mark.”

“The what.” It isn’t a question. Hands folded, Lana’s holding on to herself so tightly that her knuckles blanch. “How did we get from a failed recruiting trip to a- and who in the Void placed the mark? With whom?”

Theron glances at her out of the corner of his eye; she rests her hand on his. “Do you want me to-?”

“No. I was the one who fucked it up,” he says. “You shouldn’t have to make excuses for me. We lied to you, Lana, but Nine did it because I asked her to. It wasn’t a recruiting trip. I went to Coruscant to ask my father for a favor.”

Lana’s expression barely changes, just the faintest hint of hurt in the set of her mouth and the line of her shoulders. “You told me you didn’t know who Theron’s father was, Nine. Or was that a lie as well?” Oh, hells. They should have told her sooner. If they can’t trust each other-

Theron shakes his head vehemently. “She didn’t. I promise she didn’t. Not until it went bad.”

“An understatement, I think,” Lana snaps. “But even so, why would your own father-”

“Jace Malcom is my father.”

(Is this the first time he’s said those words out loud? She wonders. She thinks so.)

Theron slouches lower into his chair, staring at the tabletop and carefully avoiding returning either of their gazes- her own cast sideways in quasi-apology, Lana’s an open-mouthed stare- until she taps one of his fingers with hers; his focus shifts toward the motion and she traces out a clumsy message. It’s okay. He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t move, but the frown lines across his forehead soften.

Clearing her throat, Lana finally breaks the silence hanging over the room. “Somehow I feel as though I ought to say I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am.” He sighs. “Maybe I should start at the beginning.”

***

The caf pot’s empty by the time he finishes, an uneven split: three cups to Lana instead of her usual tea, more than enough that a fine tremor settles into her hands by the middle of the second, and two for Theron plus half of her own. (She managed a few scant sips before her stomach started to turn; she’d pushed it away with a grimace and Theron paused in his storytelling long enough to fetch her a glass of water instead. She always knew when she was really hurting, she’d used to say, when she couldn’t keep her caf down.)

“So.” Lana licks her lips. “Jace Malcom, your father, believes you’re a traitor to the Republic, Marcus Trant wants you dead, and both of them think Nine somehow brainwashed you into defecting.”

“That’s it in a nutshell, yeah. I probably should have expected it, but… y’know. Family, right?” Rubbing his eyes and then pushing his hair back from his face- it’s a mess, flopping across his forehead; then again her own’s a mess of knots from floating and Lana’s got circles beneath her eyes so dark they look like bruises- Theron smiles wryly.

“I can’t say I do. It would figure, though- all those years spent making sure my work couldn’t be traced back to me, and I end up taking the blame for something I didn’t even do.”

That gets a laugh out of both of them, at least, if only a small one, before Lana opens a new window on her datapad. “We’ll need to put new security measures in place, of course. I have a few suggestions, I think, if you haven’t already-”

“Not so many. Theron knows how to watch himself, though we’ll need a hard lockdown,” she says, “the day after our retun- no one outbound without proof of orders. If any of Trant’s people have made it to Odessen he’s going to need to call them back, and they’ll do one of three things.” She counts off each one on her fingers. “Least likely, they’ll stay undercover. That’s a long game and the SIS is spread thin enough that he can’t afford to keep too many eyes on us. Marginally more probably someone will make an attempt against orders. Suicidal, but if they hate us that much… but they’re probably going to try to slip the net, and we’ll need to be ready.”

Eyebrow raised, Lana stops taking notes. “Why would he call them back? He doesn’t know that we know, correct?”

“No. But he’s going to.”

“And you think that’s enough to make him cancel the mark? When I was Minister I had the misfortune of having to negotiate with that man more than once, Nine, and I’ll tell you from from experience: he isn’t going to back down because you ask him nicely.”

She bares her teeth in a slow smile. “You ought to know me better than that by now. I’m not planning on asking nicely.”

“Then what-”

“I’m going to blackmail him.”

Lana blinks. Pushing back out of her chair, she walks wordlessly around the table and taps the access panel beside the door and when it slides open she simply leaves the room.

Theron raises one hand, opening his mouth to speak. She shushes him and listens instead to Lana’s quiet footsteps in the corridor, a cabinet opening- the middle one in the shared mess by the way it squeaks- and the clink of glass and then more footsteps, louder, returning. When Lana enters the room once more she’s got a half-full bottle of whiskey clutched in one hand and a particularly disgruntled expression on her face; she retakes her seat, pulls the stopper free of the bottle, and pours a generous portion into her coffee cup before draining the whole thing at a go.

“All right.” Lana coughs. “Now I’m ready. Say that one more time.”

***

It’s not a good plan. She knows that. It’s probably a terrible plan.

It’s all they’ve got.

She wobbles when she tries to get up. They’ve sat talking too long and her head hurts and her wrist hurts and she could probably sleep for a month and it wouldn’t be enough (even if she just spent five years in stasis- but she wasn’t sleeping then, she was dying.) When she has to stop to brace herself against the wall for the third time in a dozen steps, Theron lifts her up, her arm around his neck.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get you back to medbay.”

She wrinkles her nose. He’s right, of course, but that doesn’t mean she has to like it. “Are you sure you two don’t need me to-?”

“Believe it or not, we can occasionally plan things on our own.” Lana- slightly more relaxed now thanks to the whiskey- points toward the door. “Theron and I will start work on this in the morning. For now, you need to recover and the rest of us need to rest.”

Theron nods, steadying his grip on her. “I’ll put a few things together once I’ve got Nine set up the tank. We can talk after-”

“You will not.” She rests her head on his shoulder. “Lana, make sure he sleeps. If he doesn’t, shock him and throw his jacket out the airlock.”

“She wouldn’t dare.”

Lana wiggles her fingers in Theron’s direction. “Don’t be so certain. Now go.”

Careful not to jostle her, he carries her down the hall and around the corner to the medbay, sets her down on the examining table while he gets the kolto tank set up for her next round. For better or for worse he’s an expert at running it now and after a few keystrokes it chimes softly, soft blue light illuminating the base.

“Tank’s ready if you are.” He turns back toward her but she’s only half-listening, attention drifting over to the scanner and the readout still scrolling across its screen.

“I’m not. But I know that doesn’t matter.“ Pulling off the wrist splint, she sets it down beside her. “Will you download a copy of that scan to my datapad? I want to show it to Lokin.”

He nods. “He’s already got it. We needed to make sure we hadn’t made things worse while we were trying to set your wrist- Force knows I’m a lousy medic when it comes to anything beyond medpacks and suturing. But if you want a hard copy I can-”

“No,” she yawns. “Never mind.” She slips her shirt off next, one-handed. There’s no rule against clothing in a kolto tank but no point in dirtying what she’s wearing, either, and she’s used to it this way; in the infirmary at school and in Intelligence training and even in the clinic at headquarters it was always the same with any major injuries. Kit off, my girl. Let’s get a look at you.

It wasn’t a bad thing in retrospect, not for her. It was only a body, after all, not something shameful to be covered up, and by her teens she could have- and did, once, thanks to a senior class prank that left the whole lower sixth with nothing but their identification badges and a single hand towel each with twenty minutes before the midyear examination began- walked naked through the Academy halls with her head held high. (She’d brought the towel, but only because she drew the line at sitting bare-assed in a hard plastic chair for the entire exam. Two-thirds of the class refused to leave the dormitories; the maestra failed them all.

She had the top mark.)

Theron helps her down. “Pants off too?”

“You know me too well.” His fingers hook into her waistband and she wriggles just a bit to help ease the fabric down over her hipbones. Ungraceful, still off-balance, she lifts one foot and then the other clear. “Though I’m afraid it’s all tease and no payoff tonight.”

His hands rest carefully on her waist as he straightens up, a kiss pressed feather-light to her forehead. “I don’t mind a rain check,” he murmurs. “The best things are worth waiting for.”

“Flatterer.”

“Not flattery when it’s true.” And then he helps her up into the tank, up over the lip of the base until she’s standing securely within it, and keys in the final sequence. The glass surround slides shut, closing her in as the seals engage; the kolto starts to bubble up through the ports, covering her feet, her ankles, up to her knees and then her waist and then her chest-

She hates this part.

In and out. In and out. She slows her breathing. The kolto reaches her chin.

Theron presses his hand to the glass. Just breathe- she can’t hear him but she can read the words on his mouth- I’ll be here when you wake up.

She nods, lifting her hand to match his. I know. Now go to sleep-

The last syllable cuts off when she inhales and the kolto fills her mouth, covers her head and she can’t breathe, oh Void (every single time she should be used to it by now but she’s choking and she’s going to die in here and-)

It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay. He pauses a moment. The kolto’s kicking in; her vision goes hazy. I l-

Her eyes close as the sedatives take her.

***

Another three days gone.

By some miracle- Theron could be impressively persuasive when he set his mind to it- Lana seems almost convinced of the plan by the time they land. More than that, between the two of them they’ve drafted a security protocol that might actually work and that they probably ought to have had in place all along: while their ragtag rebellion needs all the help it can get, they all admit they haven’t been screening newcomers with any particular scrutiny.

They can’t afford to scare recruits away. For so many of them Odessen is hope despite the war, despite the threat of Arcann and his fleet arriving any day, hope that maybe they can win this after all and the galaxy can go back to being what it was or maybe something even better. They need that hope.

But she’s not a general, not a Lord or a chancellor or a queen. She’s a spy.

If they’re going to make her be the former, she can keep them all safe as the latter, too.

***

Doctor Lokin’s sitting at his workbench when she reaches his little room at the back of the lab.

Though he was officially assigned to Military Strategy (much as Aygo would prefer it they can’t stay entirely aboveboard all the time, and Eckard was as sly as they came, half of his record a black box of redacted text even to her) he spent much of his time in the science wing; he’d only partially recovered from his near-permanent transformation, his cancers stabilized but still more than enough to keep him out of the field for good. In between strategy sessions it was one experiment after another, one more chance at a cure.

She owes him that, after everything he did for her.

He looks her over quickly, glancing at the splint still on her wrist and the almost-faded bruises beneath her eyes that had been such a shock when she finally made it to a mirror. “Cipher. How are you feeling?”

“Like I had a console dropped on me a week ago? I’ve had worse.” A timer on the benchtop beeps. “I need you to check a few things, but if now isn’t convenient-“

“The wheel of research turns ever over,” he says, and smacks the timer until it quiets. “One moment.” Raising an autopipette over a row of racked test tubes, he adds a single drop of liquid to each one and they start to glow a violent shade of neon green. “There we are. You have my attention.”

Is the rack vibrating? Oh, dear. “You saw my initial scan, yes? I need you to look at my wrist again.”

Lokin nods, rolling back from the bench. “Not healing as expected? Remember, the neuropathy might take weeks-“

“That’s the problem. It’s healed- bone and nerve. I could use another day or two to knit the fracture a little more before I starting training on it, but it feels perfectly normal.” He raises an eyebrow as she hands him a datacard. “This is from this morning. 144 tank-hours since injury.”

The casters of his chair rattle across the floor tiles as he moves to a console tucked into one corner. The card slots into an empty port with a click, the first images of the scan loading one by one until a cross-section of her left hand and wrist fill the screen.

“Good callus formation,” Lokin murmurs. “Appropriate to tank-hours. The compression on the neurovascular bundle’s been reduced, of course, so I would expect to- hm. Let me cross-reference.” He opens another file- her previous scan, the one they’d sent from Nightshrike - and lays the sections atop each other. He squints.

He squints again.

“Stay here.”

She does. It never did do well to ignore doctor’s orders. A few minutes later he wheels a small cart into the lab, a screen mounted on its top and a tangle of wires dangling beneath. Lokin gestures to her wrist, to the splint hidden beneath her shirtsleeve.

“Brace off, sleeve up, and bring that extra chair with you.” He taps a clean corner of the workbench. “Hand here, please. Don’t move.”

Staying still for the cleansing swab’s easy. Staying still for the needles is slightly harder but she exhales (her tattoo was far worse- this is just a few little pokes, sharp stings before the pain eases) as he connects the leads to the taped-down electrodes, testing, testing, testing and then looking to the screen and testing again.

“It’s normal,” she says, “isn’t it?”

“Very nearly. Ninety-five percent of your baseline-” he unclips the wires- “which is remarkable in and of itself given what I would have expected from your scans, and even more remarkable given that your best measurement since the incident on Corellia was eighty-eight percent. Pre- and post-carbonite.”

Pulling the needles out one by one, beads of blood well up in their places as she sets them on the countertop. Odd that the sight of her own blood is reassuring, that’s there’s still something of herself in her own body to go with the ghost in her brain and the spirit- AI, projection, whatever the fuck he is- in her spine-

She looks up. “Eckard, I need to ask you something and it’s very important that you’re honest with me. My spinal implant, the one that Watcher X installed- you told me a long time ago that it was inactive. Are you absolutely certain?”

He sighs.

Oh, Void.

“I suppose that would depend,” he begins carefully, “on one’s definition of inactive."

***

He only meant to keep her safe.

If she’d known it, at her lowest when she was afraid of losing control again more than she was afraid of anything else, she might have done something foolish. She would have done something foolish. She would have-

(My job was- is- to keep you alive, Cipher. Alive and fighting. And if I had to lie to accomplish that then so be it.)

She knows. She-

***

She locks herself inside the sub-basement storage room and screams herself hoarse.

Fuck, fuck, FUCK-

***

If they hear it in her voice at dinner that night neither Lana nor Theron say anything at all.

But Theron brings her honey-sweetened tea instead of her usual caf that night and the tea is one of Lana’s blends; she knows it by its scent. Curling up on the couch, she holds the cup between her hands and sips at it slowly. The splint has to stay another few days- she promised Lokin at least four hours in the tank tomorrow and the day after, before they leave again- but the heat’s pleasant on her fingertips and the tea’s heavily spiced, pleasantly tingly on her tongue.

“Everything’s ready for tomorrow.” Theron sits down on the bed, his duffel at his feet. They’ve only been back on Odessen for twelve hours and it feels like years with all the work already done; they’ve barely had time to breathe, let alone see to mundanities like unpacking or laundry or operational reports. “Hylo had a lot of questions I couldn’t answer but she’s on board. We’re going to need a half-dozen barrels of Alderaanian ale, though.”

“Do what you need to, and forward me the invoice. I’ll take care of it.”

He flops back, staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t even want to move. Wake me up next year?”

She doesn’t want him to move, either. His quarters might not be safe despite the extra hallway cameras, for one thing. They wouldn’t have stopped her, once upon a time, and she knows he thinks she’s being paranoid but she can’t shake the feeling that something’s moving around them in a pattern she can’t quite see yet. “Go to sleep, then. I don’t mind.”

“I know, but I’ll probably go straight through until morning at the rate I’m fading here. Plus, I still need to haul this thing back downstairs.” His foot connects with the bag as he kicks at it blindly. “Gotta hang up that fancy jacket you bought me before it gets wrinkly.”

“Just hang it up here, Theron,” she rasps- ugh. Another sip; she clears her throat. “There’s more than enough room. And it’s leather. It doesn’t wrinkle.”

“Semant-” Theron rolls onto his side, angling his body so he can look down the stairs to see her. “Wait. Now I have a toothbrush and closet space?”

She makes a face at him. “You know what I mean. If you don’t want to stay-”

“Of course I want to stay. I just-” He sits up. “Is this just for now, until we get this thing with the mark worked out, or-?”

A very good question.

She wants him to stay. Stars, she wants him to stay. Her dreams are better with him close, still restless but somehow bearable, and that alone might be enough to keep her sanity in all this mess. But if what they are- another good question she only knows how to answer as she did a week ago, a ferocious mine through gritted teeth- still needs to be kept secret-

Curling in tight, she tucks her knees up to her chest. “That’s up to you. I don’t want to make things more difficult for you than they already are.”

“Do you want me to stay?”

(She doesn’t know how to do this, not when it’s true. But it can’t be that hard, can it?) “Yes,” she says. “I do.”

Theron gets up, a yawn barely hidden behind his smile, and comes back down to her; he settles in beside her on the couch, arm around her shoulders, until she’s nestled in against him. “Then I’m not going anywhere.”

*** Author’s Note: this wasn’t where this chapter was supposed to end. But seeing how that part’s still fighting me six weeks on (and three 50+ hour workweeks in there didn’t help), we’ll wrap up here and deal with a certain SIS director next time…

#equivalent exchange #inyri writes #swtor fanfiction #imperial agent/theron shan #theron shan #nine #lana beniko #doctor lokin #i've had lots of medical tests done in the last few weeks #can you tell?#the awkwardest people alive #they can talk circles around people on ops #and yet

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