Ashi Tevarl - Song of Sunlight

In Character Roleplay
#1

“Usually after I save people,” Korrl noted, dryly, in his cathar rumbling, “they stay saved.”

“Sorry,” Ashi returned, without meaning it.

Well, she was sorry, actually, she admitted to herself. It just wasn’t Korrl she felt sorry for. They lifted off a proper way, this time, with a handshake and a few credits and the right proper clearances from the Viscara dock. She still came up to sit beside him in the cockpit of his ship, slinging her duffle bag off onto the floor and settling in for the wait for launch clearance.

The old cathar didn’t seem much changed. Sturdy, in his short sleeves shirt, and his pants rolled up over bare feet. Ashi had chosen to wear her light training gear, saberstaff hanging from it’s sheathe on her hip. She saw him glance at it, but chose not to mind. He knew already.

“Nostalgic?” he asked, after a while. He struck up a match afterwards, lighting a rolled cigarette, and breathing out the acrid vapor into the small cockpit. “Trying to become a freighter pilot instead of a Jedi?”

“Nah,” she answered, “at least, I don’t think so.”

“Where we heading, then?”

“Corsucant.”

He raised his brows a little, and scratched at them as he glanced back at her.

“You don’t have the credits for all that.”

“Yeah, I know.”

#2

So it resumed. Strangely. Or, rather, somewhat comfortably. Now that the secrecy was gone, and much of her earlier reservations seemed to have dissipated, things became scarily normal - though Korrl found he was, again, sharing his shower with the curvy little woman.

One morning, a few days out, he grabbed her up and dismissed her huffing to hold her close and settle his head in the crook her lekku made of her head. He stood in the shower, holding her close under the hot water, and asked the question which had been on his mind for a while now.

“You seemed to have a lot going for you in that little world,” he rumbled out. “Why leave?”

“I’m not leaving,” she shot back, “just… Taking a break for family business.”

“Without telling any of your friends or your… Master?”

“It’s not like I’m a Padawan,” was his reply, though he noted the drop in her voice. He rubbed at her hip, hoping to get more out of her. She didn’t budge, though.

“You won’t get it going off with this old pilot, so what is your plan, exactly? Not that I particularly mind, wind-runner, but you seem like you’ve got something on your mind.”

More steam. More water. More silence. She lay off trying to wash herself in his grasp and just stood there, giving off a mix of frustration and sadness. He could feel it in her resigned submission.

“She’s not gonna do it,” she mumbled.

“Your master?”

“Yeah. She always says she will, but she doesn’t. And I always get held back from everything.”

He lifted his head up a bit. Aha.

“You have been doing this, what, half a year? Don’t you Jedi train for years and years before you get there?”

“Yeah but, she keeps saying I will. And I’ve been training really hard but…”

Khorrl rumbled. So that was it.

“You don’t believe her?”

“I do,” she argued, reaching out to turn off the water. “Just, I get tired of nothing happening. So I’m going to go check on my mom.”

#3

It took about a month, round about, before Corsucant. Khorrl traded here and there, inner and outer rings, before finally picking up something or other that would take him to the very center of everything, and Ashi sat around watching him do it. As happened, she made pretty decent security, and found that she had a bit of a talent for sniffing out would-be thieves or the like. Along with the trandoshin co-pilot, who was as close mouthed to her as always, they took turns guarding the pallets while Khorrl argued, wheedled, and traded.

On one of the stations nearer the Cartel’s long reach, Ashi found someone pretty close to the situation that she had been in, and Khorrl, in his long-suffering patient way, gave Ashi a look as though to ask her permission - the slave was pretty, and starving, and clearly broke. Beyond broke.

So Ashi ceded. In her own way. Although she had expected to be shifted out of Korrl’s room, and when she found out that, in fact, she was not, she watched in fascination as the old cathar nursed and nestled the girl through - just about a half a dozen things.

Even more surprising, Ashi found herself helping. She dressed her, encouraged her to eat. Talked to her. Korrl got to hear just about all of Ashi’s own trouble with slavery, just because he was in the same room with the shakey girl she were sharing it with.

When they had finally coaxed her off into the shower, Ashi fell back into her seat on the end of the bed and leaned forward on her knees, rubbing at the base of her skull, her lekku gathered around her neck and draping, as limp as she felt.

“Suppose I got to find somewhere else, huh?”

“Nope.”

She gave him a sidelong look as he sat down next to her, chewing on the inside of her cheek for a moment, both perplexed and annoyed. “What, you want both of us?”

He shook his head, massaging at one of his knees. Old war wounds, Ashi recalled, though she thought she had healed them the last time she’d been forced into his company. He wasn’t a bad sort, she knew now, but this still twisted her into a knot.

“Don’t know yet. Never had two of you.”

“Korrl.”

He snorted good-humored, folding his broad arms over the rise of his belly. “She’s half starved, Asharra. You think I’m really that evil?”

“No, just…” Ashi motioned to the closed door. The water was already running. Ashi didn’t blame the girl.

“I like them with a little pudge anyway,” he observed, conversationally.

“You’re calling me fat?”

“Curvy.”

“Fat. Say it.”

“No.”

#4

“Um.”

Ashi cracked an eyelid.

“Yes?”

“What are you doing?”

“Meditating.”

“Um.”

“What?”

“In the… Cargo bay?”

Ashi opened both eyes and looked up at the yellow-tan Rev. Her full name was longer. Rev worked for her, just like Ashi worked for Ashi. Ashi scratched at her head a bit. “Yeah. It’s not like, dangerous or anything.”

Rav sat down across from her, trying to mirror the way she were sitting. The other previously enslaved woman was still uncertain of herself, like a colt, all thin and wobbly, and Korrl’s hand-me-downs hung off her little form like - well. Like they had never hung off Ashi, anyway. Rav fixed her brown eyes on Ashi, and Ashi sighed.

“You want to learn?”

“Yeah. You’re a Jedi, right? I mean, Korrl treats you like - but you sleep with - uh.”

Ashi gave up on finding inner peace and stretched her back, and then her legs, stretching her boots out on the nonskid deck carefully as she examined the youth.

Had she ever been this annoying? More horrifyingly, was she STILL this annoying?

“I’m just an initiate. I mean, if I don’t get like, fired, or un-initiated or something. I’m not really very good at all.”

“But you can do magic right? I saw your lightsaber.”

“It’s not a real one. It’s just a foil.”

“What’s the difference?”

Ashi scratched at her head again.

"Honestly I don’t really know. It’s the same stuff. I guess it’s just the crystals or something. Or maybe, you get one when you become a knight, and it’s just better. By a lot "

“Oh.”

Rav practically buzzed with excitement. Innocent, pleased excitement.

“…I’m not sure if I’m good enough to like, teach you stuff,” Ashi ventured, suspicious.

“That’s fine. That’s totally okay.”

They stared at each other.

“You’re not gonna leave me alone huh?”

“Should I?”

#5

“Why be a Jedi at all?”

Asharra lifted her head from Khorrl’s broad chest to examine him, sucking her lower lip in, and Khorrl gave the twi’lek his most patient look. He had been watching her with the other, and had found a few old memories stirred out. Asharra reminded him of better times, if not simpler ones.

“It’s what I’m supposed to do,” she said, after some thinking. “It’s like, you have to go through some classes to be a pilot. Well, you have to go through Jedi training to be a Jedi.”

“You seem to have skipped a few steps,” he observed, running his hands along the twi’lek’s sides and finding the pleasant curve of her hips as she lay. She gave him a dubious look, but didn’t roll off quite yet.

“Can we talk about something else?”

“We could.”

“You ain’t gonna let this go though, are you?”

“Nope.”

She slumped forward and groaned, and Khorrl chuckled. “There are other things you could be.”

“Like what?”

“Healer,” he pointed out, punctuated with a friendly little swat on her rump. “Pilot, if you wanted. Any old thing, really. I wouldn’t mind keeping you on, here. You would do alright smuggling, I think.”

“I don’t want to,” she murmured. “I guess it’s stupid, but I want to be a good person, and I want to - help. Like Rav. You know, like my mom. And the rest. I told you about all this.”

He nosed at her forehead, kissed her, for emphasis, too.

“I do all that.”

“You charge,” she mumbled back against his chest.

“You don’t seem to mind.”

“This is still pretty oily.”

He contented himself with looping his arms around her middle and stretching out, lethargic, in post-loved ease. She didn’t budge much, but she did look up at him.

“I am just sharing some old man wisdom. You seem like you’re not sure of what you’re doing. Makes me wonder if you were even listening the first time.”

“I was. I did.”

“You’re growing up, you know. You ought to figure out what you really want. Jedi aren’t the only good people in the universe, Asharra. You don’t have to be a part of them if you don’t want.”

She sucked on her cheek, puzzling. “I do want to, though.”

“Might not get the choice. Aren’t they supposed to be celibate?”

He enjoyed the purplish flush on her face a little too much as she frowned at him. “Yeah. Supposed to be. But every Jedi I know pretty much just does it anyway, like, what do you expect? Most of them ain’t never been out of that temple on Corsucant.”

“And you’re any different?”

“Yeah. I am.”

“You sure?”

“Come off it alright? I am trying my best here.”

“You’re really convincing me.”

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#6

Corsucant was huge. That’s what struck Ashi first - huge, and big, and tall, and everything that she’d ever dreamed a city could be times a planet, times several layers. It seemed impossible as they skimmed over at the very top of the stratosphere, but it seemed like the buildings even reached up to here. She stayed glued to the viewport as Ko brought them around, heading to one of the rooftop starports that dotted the landscape as smaller aircraft whizzed and flitted by, like locusts moving along a summer’s migration.

“Wow,” Ashi breathed out.

“Never been?”

“No. Never.” She reluctantly sat back in the chair and looked up to the pilot, who was wearing that slow, knowing catherese smile he usually did when watching her do something amusing. Ashi had started to like it, rather than her original impression, which had been to think it demeaning and a little patronizing. Now, she kind of thought it a warm look. “But my Master said her family would find my mother some work here somewhere.”

“Any idea where we’re going?”

Ashi looked back out the viewport, suddenly realizing that she had no actual idea. “…The… Mana Household?”

Ko rumbled at the helm, thoughtful and deep.

“Don’t you dare make fun of me,” Ashi grumbled.

#7

It took a little doing, but, Ko found the directory and Ashi set to searching for her mother. Eventually she found an address and, with a kiss and a promise, she separated from her implied-contractual-obligations to the freighter captain so that he could get the other twilek settled somewhere in some sort of upright position, and went off along her chosen path.

She called a transport from a standing kiosk, and thought for a while about where else that she could visit on the capital world. The Jedi Temple was here, too, she remembered. But then, after hearing about the usual training path of initiates from Sandra, Ashi wasn’t so sure that they wouldn’t latch on to her and keep her there until she could be retrieved. But she would be here for a little while anyway as Ko did his trading and everything so maybe she could visit? See the place? Would they mind?

Would they know?

That thought was an unsettling lump in her stomach while she waited on a bench and watched the passing, colorful mix of species and professions. She checked her datapad after a little while, scrolling through streets and levels and - she found that everything pretty much went on endlessly. Eventually she gave that inspection up for the work of a lifetime and just looked up at the skyline.

This planet was really ALIVE.

When the taxi came, she slipped into the back seat and told the human her mother’s address. As it turned out, it was several levels below one or the other of the city’s giant, giant manor houses, so they dropped like a rock. Ashi swallowed the squeak as building windows zipped by, and flushed as the human cabbie chucked at her.

“First time?”

“Y-yeah,” she murmured. “This is a lot at once.”

It was an obvious lead in to a question, but Ashi passed it by. She didn’t much feel like talking, as heavy as her mind felt right now. Instead she made some polite noises as he went on, watching the view zip by as the bright sun-shiney daylight disappeared under an oppressive stretch of buildings, alleyways, causeways, and verandas, that continued down and down and down into the depths of forever.

After a while she realized that she had passed, somehow, underground, into another world entirely - neon of all colors. A mirror of the above world, it dazzled her in an entirely new way.

She felt like a total rube.

As the cabbie was trying his next effort at conversation, she scooted forward on her seat and poked her head over it. “Hey. Sorry. There’s like, some place to shop around here, right?”

“Sure, miss,” he grinned out, “what do you want?”

“I’m actually visiting my mom. I want to buy her something.”

“Clothes?” He guessed, then, “Jewelry? Stuff like that?”

Ashi thought about how little money that she had to her name, and reflected that her wallet might not even be accessible here. Then, horrified, she wondered if she could even pay the cab.

“Uh. Yeah, that.” Trying to keep her lekku from twisting themselves into knots, she brushed them back over her shoulders. “Like, somewhere not too expensive?”

“Don’t Jedi get sponsored by the Temple?” He inquired. She paused at that, and then glanced his speeder’s computer dashboard. There she was, listed out. Kark. She’d screwed up again.

“Not uh, not me.”

He hummed.

“Please? Just somewhere cheap? Maybe something local?”

“Alright. Hold on, I think there’s a place round here.”

#8

Ashi felt a lot like a kid all of a sudden. Back before the Cartel had got ahold of them, her mother had took her on little shopping trips here and there, to dusty little markets or lively foreign places, here and there among the stars or on Ryl. The cabbie, who was waiting on the clock and apparently perfectly content to do so, had found her a place that reminded her a lot of that.

Just bigger. And shinier. And huge. And expensive. And loud. And packed.

She felt totally lost in her plain leather jacket and somber colors. Everyone around her wore the most garish things that they could find, it seemed. She spotted gauze, and clothing so tight it left nothing at all to imagination, and some garments that seemed like they could be substituted for a draft sail in a pinch, if someone wanted to deck a cruiser out in purplish orange.

Eventually she felt a tug at her sleeve and looked down to a tiny shop salesman keeper - or at least she assumed that’s what it was, because the droid was wearing a vest with the shop logo on it. Feeling ridiculous, she squatted down in the isle and introduced.

“Hi. I want to buy something.”

“EXCELLENT. WELCOME TO VRRSJ KRSHB DUBRAWK.”

Ashi nodded, patiently. “A dress. Or a sash maybe.”

She was immediately enveloped in blue holographic light and it took every strand of her suddenly frayed nerves not to jerk her saber into her hand and dice the little robot. But she didn’t. Oh, no. No no. No. Nope.

“YOU WILL WANT ISLE 2B CONCOURSE FOUR: LARGE, BELL -”

“Oh come on,” she groaned. “Really? Okay. I’m a fatass. Kark you, droid, it’s for my mom. She’s smaller.”

The droid processed this. Ashi dug out her datapad and found a picture of her mother, taken before she had forgotten to, right after she had been rescued. Ashi hesitated to show it, because it wasn’t flattering, but she turned the pad around and showed the droid. It examined the data.

“YOU WILL WANT 1B, CONCOUR-”

“Just show me okay?”

#9

Ashi left the bla Dubrok whatever with an armful of clothing, and a half-robe for herself that the remarkably helpful droid had suggested for her. It was the same color as her old clothing, and just about the same material, except that the cut left her legs and her arms free. It came with some pretty sturdy boots, and straps and things to accent her arms and legs. Although she got the vague suspicion that it had been some designer’s wet, force-user dream, it has been in her size and she’d got the muted colors and, honestly, it looked good on her. It really did. It even had a little holster for her saber, and honestly if she couldn’t hide, and she’d already tagged herself to anyone who wanted to look for her, she preferred to have her saber in easy reach.

She slipped back into the cab and eyed the cabbie, eying her.

“Is this too…?”

“Actually,” he noted, judiciously, "that’s a lot tamer than I expected "

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged, shifting the cab arial, again. “Usually the twi’lek I pick up around where I picked you wear even less. Even the force users.” He shifted the rear mirror to look her over, which made Ashi feel a little fluttery, considering how fast they were speeding along. “You know, right? Bra. Little lacy shorts, or something. Always wondered.”

“It gets hot,” Ashi breathed out, sitting back and looking down at the fabric of her robe bottom. “And it’s kind of a thing on Ryl.”

“I getcha.”

They spent a few more minutes in silence as Ashi figited with her shirt, and the robe jacket she had bought, and then went over the wrapped up dress in her lap, thinking.

“Haven’t seen her in a while, huh?”

“I uh, actually rescued her a few months back. From the cartel.”

He took a minute to parse that, glancing up in the mirror a few times.

“Huh.”

“Yep.”

“Wow.”

“Mhm.”

More silence. She could tell he had more questions. She itched at the base of a lekk. “Look, I don’t know where I’m going with life but I just want to see my mom, okay? How close are we.”

“Oh, I’ve just been looking for the dock here. You just seemed like you needed to talk or something.”

“Please just land, okay?”

#10

Ashi wound through even narrower hallways than she had imagined were possible, squeezing past some poorer twi’lek who, in general, looked pretty busy, but spared her a few backwards glances. This felt like a ward. It actually felt kind of like a slave pen, too, but Ashi put that out of her mind along with all the implications it brought and when she found the door she wanted, she had other things to think about.

She rang the doorbell and waited, clutching her little bundled present close and trying to quell her nerves. How had her mom made out? Was she going to be okay? Did SHE look okay? Ashi looked down at herself. She’d never seen a Jedi in a uniform before, at least not like, a regular one. Everyone wore the dun colored robes but that was mostly a male thing, looked like. Sandra wore heels and stockings and tiny, tiny little skirts. And the one other twileki Jedi she had met had pretty much just worn whatever, so a stylish cut half-robe and some neat low-heeled boots was probably more than anyone bothered with anyway.

She puffed a sigh. Maybe the cab driver was more spot on than he realized.

Finally the door opened and - and there she was.

“Asharra?”

“Mom!”

Ashi just stood in shock. Her mom was clean, and surprised, and beautiful, and nothing like the woman she had pulled out of slavery and hell.

They hugged. Ashi hugged back hard. And they cried.

Later, when they had got over the babbling and the greetings and Ashi’s choked explinations, Cassedra nudged her to a small kitchen table and dug through cabinets. Tea. Strong tea. Food. Neither one of them knew what to say or quite how to begin and Ashi didn’t remember it at all.

But her mom was healthy. She still looked a little drawn, and maybe her age was showing a bit more now that it wasn’t buried under makeup. Her lekku were just a little weathered. The light shorts and the shirt were a bit loose. But Ashi didn’t feel the sick touch of drugs or the twinge of bad energy off of her anymore, and she was happy to watch her mother gesticulating and jangling with all her armbands around the kitchen in a sudden rush of motherly joy.

Finally they sat down. Finally, they just looked at one another.

“So, you’re a Jedi.” Cass sat back with her cup in her lap, and looked her daughter over. Ashi straightened a little without thinking about it.

“Sorta. I got picked up by a Republic patrol and kind of got confiscated and let go. I ended up on Viscara.” When her mom slow-blinked Ashi went on to explain about it. About Czerka, and Zao, and Sandra - and Althea, and everyone and everything.

She placed her lightsaber-foil on the table, and set the safety so that her mother could pick it up. Cass seemed a little overawed, and so Ashi just kept talking. And talking. It spilled out in a breathless, endless river, all the good news instead of all the bad news. She even told her about Ko, and about how she had got off the station - and her mother laughed.

Laughed!

“My girl’s gone and grown up on me,” she said. “I really can’t imagine.”

“Yeah,” Ashi admitted, nudging her emptied cup around on the counter, “it’s really been a ride.”

“So are you going to go back? Stay here?” Cass tilted her head a little. “Run off with the big hunky cathar-lover?”

“C’mon, mom.”

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#11

It took a while for the conversation to turn a bit darker but it did, eventually, and it wasn’t really Ashi’s fault at all. Instead, going on into the night, under the thin strain of a low lamp, Ashi heard the front door open.

She tensed a bit, not really knowing what to expect, but her mother waved her back down onto the couch. “It’s alright. You aren’t the only adventurer in the family.”

The twilek who dipped through into the living room wore a dirtied construction suit, and a safety vest, and stopped to stare at Ashi. Ashi stared at him.

They stared at each other.

Cass cleared her throat.

“Asharra. This is Sardis’ik. Sar, this is my daughter, Ashi.”

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

More staring. Eventually he looker to Cass, and so did Ashi. Cass had the presence of mind to wave this off and, after a few awkward nods, the man went back down the hall, presumably to clean himself up. Ashi watched him go, and then looked back to Cass.

“What about dad?”

Cass rubbed at her face, and for the first time, she looked relatively unhappy to Ashi. Ashi herself couldn’t pinpoint why this had started to roll in her core, and made her palms itch and her mouth dry. What had she expected? What was usual?

“Ashi…”

“He’s somewhere on Corsucant,” she blurted, “I mean, he’s got to be, they left him here and -”

“No!” Cass snapped, flattening her palm in frustration on the table. It stopped Ashi, at least. Cass said softer, “no. No, I just, it’s not - not after that. Not after all this.”

Ashi didn’t know what to say. She looked down. But it made a certain, dark, terrible amount of sense, all of a sudden. She’d gone through just about the same thing her mother must have. Maybe she had just got lucky. Or, rather, maybe she had - clung on to something different?

“Sorry,” she murmured.

“I should be the one saying that, Ashi,” Cass replied, softer. “It’s just too much.”

“Yeah.”

They shared a few quiet moments while back somewhere else, the man went about clinking around doing - Ashi didn’t know. Man stuff. It barely registered.

“Don’t hate me,” her mom gentled.

“No, it’s alright.” Ashi rubbed at a lekk, suddenly feeling a headache, and too much suffering at once. “I mean, it’s alright, I understand. It’s okay.”

“I just,” Cass continued, shifting over to sit with her daughter, and touching their heads together. They wrapped a few moments, tails and arms, and just sat. That sentence ended.

“Yeah,” Ashi confirmed.

“Yeah,” Cass sighed.

“Is he good to you? At least?”

“He’s very sweet. Very patient. He’s a lot like your Korrl, I think”

Stirred out of her darker thoughts, Ashi side-glanced her mother. “Less fluffy.”

Cass snorted, and that broke some of the tension so that they could laugh, but later that night, sleeping in a guest room and curled up alone with her thoughts, Ashi felt very uncomfortable. More uncomfortable than when she slept with Ko. More uncomfortable than when she had cuddled with that poor, dark-side sickened boy of Mart’s. She understood her mother and she knew, and knew deeply, but - but where was her father?

Had she really been expecting a happy ending?

#12

That morning, before she rolled out of bed, she dug her pad out of her shorts pocket and checked in with Ko. She learned, through a brief and very businesslike conversation, that he was planning to leave again in a few days. Ashi just nodded at him, and closed the holovid without making any commitments, and then rolled back over to stare up at the ceiling.

Yeah.

She had breakfast with her mom and new step-father, trading cautious words with him. He seemed pretty meek, which she couldn’t quite understand. Was he scared of her, or just like that all the time? He was younger than her mother, too, and Ashi was surprised to find that they weren’t all that seperate age-wise either. He was a construction worker, she learned, working for the same family that Sandra had found to take in her mother, which is how they had met.

He left earlier than Cass did, so when she had her mother alone, she asked just how that had come about.

“Well,” Cass admitted, “he was nice. Listened. He’s really not very social with most people, and is very quiet.”

“I had a hard time, too,” Ashi told her. “I mean, Ko - that made me really sick. That was really hard.”

“It’s not easy, yeah.” Cass’s eyes pinched a little as she stared at the front door through the kitchen. “Like a bad dream. A really bad dream.”

Ashi sipped her coffee, and rubbed a bit more sleep from her eyes. At least, she pretended it was sleep.

“I can’t stay,” she admitted, realizing as she said it that she had already decided. “I mean, I’m really - this is great mom. You’re- yeah. But, I can’t.”

“Are you going to be gone when I get home?”

“I dunno.” Ashi shook her head. “Ko says he’s leaving next week, and I’m gonna go then. Maybe I’ll look for dad. I want to find him. Can I tell him about you? If I do find him somehow?”

Cass had her turn at rubbing sleep out of her eyes, but masked it pretty well with a bit of a smile, rueful as it was.

“You - can. Ashi. If you want. But, I don’t want to see him. I don’t really - want to. Let’s just let it pass on, alright? I couldn’t stand it otherwise.”

Ashi agreed. And Cass left to work in the kitchens of the great manor above them. And Ashi was left in an empty apartment that in no way resembled the home that she had lost.

Bleakly, she realized that it was gone forever. All of it. Gone. Without repair. It was a wound that would not, and could never actually heal, no matter how much fighting she did or Force she could wield, nothing would ever turn back time.

#13

Korrl glanced down at his datapad, away from the fighting ring in front of him, to find that Asharra had left him another message. He narrowed his eyes at the ring, where a pair of brawlers were socking the loving tar out of each other, and then down again to the pad.

Poor girl, he thought. But he sighed, rocked forward off his seat, and elbowed his way out to the alleyway to take her call, shoving just the hottest little piece of ass off his lap to do it.

She popped up in his palm as he leaned on the railing.

“Hey, wind-runner. What’s up?”

“Can you find someone else for me?” asked her holographic facsimile.

He murred, tail swishing as he considered. Behind him, the ring erupted into cheering, and he wondered if he had won or lost the bets he had just placed. He’d have to check. Ah well.

“You said,” he reminded her, “that it was a big favor and really important to you. The first time. This doesn’t come cheaply you know.”

The image looked pretty hard set. Ko couldn’t help smirking just a bit. He liked the little wayward Jedi. She was growing on him, he realized, though he wasn’t sure if he was feeling some sort of parental obligation at this point - disturbing - or whether she was working into the old, nicer, kinder him.

“Alright. What do you want?”

Ko thought about that. Prescient little thing.

He turned and leaned back on the railing, looking up at the vid screen showing the next few match ups. An idea clicked into his mind, like the tumbler in a well oiled lock.

“You said you were a pretty good fighter right?”

#14

Ashi let Ko wrap her hands, watching him twine the tape around her knuckles with interest.

“I’m not really that great like this,” she admitted, nervously.

“You’ll be fine,” he assured her. “You’re a girl. Basically, these are just show fights, anyway. They just want to see you get your clothes all ripped and some hair-” he paused, glancing up at her, and she didn’t quite like the twinkle in his eyes, “- tail pulling.”

“Lekk,” she corrected, “and that hurts. A lot.”

“You’ll do fine. Just do your jedi magic or something.”

Ashi sighed, feeling both frustrated, and nervous. This made her feel very exposed. The outfit, which hadn’t been her doing at all, was just a pair of pasties and a broadcloth sash.

“People should just go buy karking strippers,” she complained, though she knew it was useless.

“Ah,” Ko purred out, “but you can’t bet on strippers, Asharra.”

“I’m going to fall right out of this,” she went on, offering her other hand.

“Pretty much the point.”

“We already fuck. Is this really all necessary?”

“Well, I’m betting on you, if it makes you feel better.”

He finished her up, and then squeezed at her biceps a little with his big hands. He had a pretty good grip, and met her eyes. “You’ll do fine, Ashi. Just relax. It’s just a show. You’re in great shape, trust me.”

Ashi frowned. He dipped forward to kiss her, and she let him, and was ashamed that it made her feel a little better.

“Alright. I trust you. Promise you can find my dad?”

“Absolutely.”

#15

Ashi walked out into the temporarily blinding lights of the arena, swaddled over in some sort of barely transparent gauzy pink affair, and covered - absolutely covered - in spray on glitter paint.

It wasn’t her proudest moment. She suspected, in fact, that it was almost worse than being paraded around for the cartel - at least the Cartel had been straightforward about it. And she prayed, prayed, prayed that this would never, ever, ever surface in Viscara. If she ever went back there she would definitely want to die of shame.

She bucked up and smiled and danced out anyway, twirling about so that the audience could see just almost beneath it, and she swallowed her pride and put on her happy face.

Ko had found her mom. He could probably find her dad, too.

She hopped over the arena ropes to a few cheers, and a lot more whistling and cat-calls, and found her feet on the springy ground. She was interested to discover that it was padded, which was probably for the best.

Then, she saw the girl she was supposedly fighting. Another twilek, and, apparently a very popular one. She blew kisses out into the crowd, and careened around to flash a lucky few in the corner. Ashi huffed a bit in suddenly offended pride, slipped slowly, expansively, out of the jacket, and tossed it into the corner, flexing her legs and bending over in a rather exadurated stretch.

Yeah, she would never want this made public. But it got a healthy amount of attention. Ashi was pretty fucking proud of her legs.

And, alright, yes, she had an ass, as Kor was constantly reminding her.

They met in the center, tapped fists. Ashi hadn’t caught her name in the beginning, but she did catch the wink and puzzled at it a second before she saw stars.

She caught herself before she went down, smarting like hell.

Kark.

The kick she managed to block, recalling at least the bare basics of brawling - okay, not brawling. Makashi. She fought mostly with makashi. Two hands. Alright. Can do.

She kipped up, struck the girl in the stomach, and then struck her in the jaw, wheeling her back. She dodged the next two punches, and caught a kick.

Ashi was surprised to find that her opponent, rather than stumbling around hilariously, could do arial spins. Was that even a thing? She didn’t have a lot of time to disbelieve it, because she caught a foot to the side of the head, and thumped down onto the mat.

She bounced. Dazed, she scrambled back to her feet, to find that she was being danced around by the bouncy, punchy little bitch.

Her ears rang. A lot.

Ashi let out her breath, took it in, and cleared her head, or tried to.

Fuck you, Kor, you furry bastard. Show fighting, my ass.

#16

The first match, she won. The second, she came close, but ended up twisted like a pretzel on the ground beneath a human girl with some, Ashi noted bitterly, pretty obviously fake assets and an apparently unhealthy love of wrestling.

Ultimately, somebody else won the whole night, but Ashi found that she had got an award for crowd favorite for some reason, and she really, really hoped it hadn’t been because the girl had made her display how flexible she could be in such a horrible embarrassing medium.

Kor found her in the back room and came to sit next to her as she tried to stop the hurting, well, everywhere.

She accepted a towel, and dried her eyes and then tried, vainly, to scrub the paint off her face.

“You did pretty well,” he noted. “That first fight the odds were great. We made bank.”

She glared at him. He had the sense to look a little sheepish.

“Sorry. I thought you were a professional.”

“With a lightsaber,” she hissed at him. “Not with all the flipping and kark.”

He reached out to rub at her head, and she winced. She’d had her lekk used as handlebars. Ko removed the hand and she buried her face in the towel.

“I do have some good news,” he observed, scratching at his chin. Ashi groaned into the towel. “Want to hear it?”

“What?” She let out, muffled.

“You have fans. Since you’re new and sexy, they want to buy -”

“No. No, no no no, no. No.”

“But you -”

“Korrl! No!”

“It’-”

Ashi choked a sob, and Korrl shut up and just held her instead.

#17

In the end, she did take a FEW pictures, though it made her miserable and she felt about as small as a flea on bantha. Kor nursed her through the process and, eventually, it was over. There weren’t all that many people who wanted that sort of thing anyway, but, she had made him trade for it. Oh, yeah, he was gonna pay for all of this.

They went back to the ship, and she submitted to being scrubbed. And she did, in point of fact, really need to be scrubbed. Glitter was a device beyond evil, beyond darkness, and beyond, apparently, the bar’s refreshers to totally remove, because it registered as decoration rather than dirt or grime.

Ashi had just enough energy left to curl up in front of a holovid with the pilot afterwards, not caring that she was pulling him away from whatever the cathar had planned to be doing that day. He didn’t want to be doing this, she knew, and she also knew that she was keeping him from the important work of tracking down her father, too, but all of her fucks had been depleted the day before by her Happy Twilek Face and she felt too much like beat up trash to care just then.

After about the sixth or seventh episode of some action series she had barely been watching, she looked up at the big guy next to her, with narrow, rapt attention. He glanced down, and tilted his chin up a bit in query.

“Are we really friends?” Ashi asked.

“Sure,” he rumbled.

“No. I mean, really. Are we? Like, I don’t know.”

He punched the holovid remote to make it stop, and set it aside. Ashi tucked her head against his chest, looking away, at nothing in particular.

“It was a bad idea. I probably shouldn’t have asked. I’d just been losing a lot of money at that and-”

She shook her head. “Not what I mean. I mean, I don’t know whether I’m paying you and this is transactional, or whether you’re being nice, or if you’re taking advantage of me, or what. I don’t know if I would even know. I just feel bad. I feel really bad.”

The old pilot rumbled somewhere deep in his chest, reaching up around her shoulders to itch at his eyebrows, and then back at his mane. His chin tickled a lekk. Ashi did not look up.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know. Just like, the truth.”

“Ah.”

Silence.

Ashi eventually shifted down to put her head on his thigh, balling up on the bed and pulling the covers around herself, and staring at the empty holovid deck. He rubbed at her shoulder, and she let him, and lay like that for a while longer.

“You’re a hard girl to make happy.”

“Yeah.”

#18

Ashi spent a few days just roaming, after that. She stayed on with Ko in the Androit, though she left a message for her mom to reassure her that she wasn’t off Corsucant yet and asking if they could meet for some coffee or something.

None of this felt real. Yes, Ashi was here, and yes, Ashi was an adult, and - well, she had all the adult things, anyway. She had a lover-friend, she had a place to sleep, and presumably, she had a career. After reassuring her, repeatedly, that they were actually friends and Korrl actually cared, at least a little bit, what happened to her, Ashi had been given a little chip-card that connected to the Cathar’s bank account. He did really seem sorry for making her fight mostly naked on holovid, and had, in fact, bet a lot of money on her, so she suddenly discovered that she had money to burn, too, even if it wasn’t all her own money exactly.

However, it didn’t seem like there were anything worth doing. Hollow, she shopped around for minor things. Clothes, mostly. She figured out what to say to the shopping droids. Then, she went and watched a few more holovids, but she found that, like the action flicks Korrl watched, she didn’t really like them. There was too much actual violence, in which she were herself a participant, to make her care about what happened to the actors.

So after a day or two of feeling like a square peg trying to be stuck into a three-dimensional, horizontal, and ever-shifting hole, she drifted, finally, up to the base of the absolutely huge Jedi Temple.

She didn’t go in, mind - Ashi lost her nerve at the last minute, when some very official looking Jedi passed her by and gave her a curious looking-over, which sent her scurrying - but she did look at it.

Afterwards she went back to practicing. She meditated, at least a couple of hours the following day, and did all of her stretches, and then went through her forms. Somehow, she felt that she were wasting her time - Corsucant was huge and she had wanted to go and see absolutely all of it when she had first touched down - but her pride had been nicked and battered and nothing seemed to be able to salve it. She wanted to be good. She wanted to be better than good. But, somehow, she kept screwing it all up, and suspected that this visit was another in the long line of Ashi screw-ups, until eventually she just surrendered to self-loathing and started laying around in her underwear unsexily and eating junk food. A couple of days of sadness wouldn’t hurt and Ashi wanted to stop thinking, so she did.

Korrl ended up staying around on the capital longer than he had planned, because of Ashi’s request to find her father. He interrupted her, midway through the second week of a good pity-party, by taking away her ice cream and giving her an amused, but entirely unsatisfied expression.

“I found him,” Korrl said. “Are you quite done?”

She stuck out her tongue.

“I see why your mother named you little starlight now. You are, truely, a shining beacon for all to follow.”

#19

Ashi found out that Ko had a speeder, so she didn’t have to get a cab this time, which felt like a relief. She got to sit up front with him, and took some comfort out of that, having dressed herself properly for the first time in a few days and suffering from a strange, empty heartache in the meanwhile.

Ko left her alone aside from the occasional prod, so she watched the buildings zip up, and by, through the side-windo, and listened to the low droll of music through the radio. He hadn’t told her exactly where they were going, but the deeper they went past the crust of the planet, the more Ashi’s hopes for a good family reunion sank.

She’d thought her dad might have got on alright and still kind of hoped he had, but by the time Korrl parked their speeder in front of the rundown tenement, Ashi was having struggles with that feeling. The people outside of the buildings looked glassy eyed and dazed. Korrl checked his sidearm before he got out of the speeder, and went around in a show of gentlemanly protectiveness to open her door so she could get out.

So she did. He nodded forward to her.

“I’ll stay with the speeder. It’s room six, second level.”

Ashi looked back at the building, took a deep breath, and went on in. It felt kind of like walking into a sewer, and stank a little bit, but she cast around and found the stairs up - old style stairs, not lifts - and trooped on up.

She knocked on the door this time, and then put her hands behind her waist to wait, where they were safe to figit. The feeling of otherness she got here, wearing her skirt and leather jacket, looking stylish, hurt her heart.

The old man who cracked open the door squinted at her with one good eye.

“What do you want?”

Ashi hesitated. “Does Reashi’di Tevarl live here?”

“I ain’t done nothing wrong,” he grumbled, and shut the door in her face.

Ashi just stood there. When the door didn’t open again, she stepped closer to it, marking that it opened in, not out, and that she was safe from getting whacked. “I’m not trying to hurt you. Dad, it’s Asharra.”

“She’s dead, go away.”

“I’m not dead.”

“You would say that, with your mind tricks. Get gone, I ain’t done nothing wrong.”

Ashi pressed her forehead against the door, and closed her eyes. “Please just open the door.”

Nothing. She heard him retreat further back into the apartment, or hovel, or whatever it was back there. She heard a bit of squeaking, and wondered what it might be that he was wheeling around in there. When it clunked against the door and the latch rattled again, she discovered that she had to look down through the crack, instead of eye to eye.

He was on a wheelchair. Ashi stood back so he could work the door open, and then she really saw her father. His legs looked like scrap prosthetics. He had been battered to hell, it looked like. One of his Lekk was cut off, leaving an ugly scar.

He looked disbelieving. Hostile. Uncertain, but madly hopeful.

She swallowed.

“Hey, daddy.”

#20

Tears.

“Ashi…?”

She watched the struggle on his face and it broke his heart, and hers. When he buried his face in his hands and began weeping, Ashi fell to her knees and hugged him tightly, there in the middle of the dirty hallway. She didn’t know what to say or do, so, when he calmed a little and the twist in her own heart let her do it, she helped him back inside and shut the door.

The place was a total wreck. She barely saw it through tears, but, she saw it anyway.

“It’s okay,” she lied, just trying to find something to say that would get past her tight throat, “it’s okay. I’m here. It’s okay.”

He seemed so frail. He seemed so sick. This place was a trash heap and Ashi wanted to puke, both from disgust and from sorrow and guilt. Why hadn’t she ever tried to find him? She had just assumed.

“It’s really you,” he rasped, “it’s really you.”

“Yeah.”

She crouched down in front of him. He reached out with trembling hands and touched her face, her lekku, and then her shoulders. He blinked away the tears and gasped a breath, and then let it out in a shudder.

“How?”

Crouched on the doormat, Ashi told him all of it. She left out the parts about her mother’s new husband, or lover, and some of the harder suffering that she and Cass had both undergone - Ashi couldn’t imagine he didn’t know. And the longer she talked, the grimmer it got, until finally he looked up from working his hands together.

“You’re a Jedi?” He asked, looking at her staff, buckled to her belt.

Ashi nodded, and said, “Sorta-kinda. I’m not really very good yet. Not even a Padawan. But I got a good teacher.”

“And Cassedra. She’s alive,” he reasoned, slowly.

Ashi nodded.

“So it’s over?”

“Over?” Ashi asked, uncertain, herself. “I mean, we aren’t slaves, anymore.”

“They took everything. Everything. They still - all the credits.” He sat back in the chair, looking distant with his good eye. “Ain’t got nothing, no more. Can’t fly, can’t work, can’t barely eat.”

“Who?”

“Same as took you. Took the rest.”

Ashi tried to parse this. She hadn’t really spent a lot of time as a little girl with the people who had slaved her and her mom, but, that hadn’t exactly been where she had ended up, either. She rubbed at her tchin, and then gathered both of her lekku forward, to hang. “You mean, someone is stealing from you, here?”