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rosheendubh · 3 months ago

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Thrawn...Sox...more Sox...

Tragically Defined...

Ceiling lights flickered, casting a yellow pallor over figures huddled in the waiting area. The antiseptic reek failed to mask the stench of sickness permeating the lower-level Coruscant clinic. Rhyanon navigated a crowd of alien bodies. Her medical droid, IT-7, hovered beside her, its optical sensors scanning, cataloging ailments. Misery smothered hope in these festering warrens of Coruscant's underbelly. Only Imperial decree dragged the reluctant elite down from their glittering spires above.

IT-7's bleep disrupted Rhyanon's thoughts. A Rodian's mottled skin pulsed green with fungal infection. A hulking Gamorrean whimpered, tusks cracked and oozing, its cries like those of a child. A gaunt woman cradled a feverish infant, its skin burning. Rhyanon treated them, dispensing medication, offering quiet comfort with practiced hands. But her heart churned. Thrawn's promise gnawed at her, unrestricted access to these forgotten levels, with only IT-7 as chaperone. A test? A power play?

Hours later, she navigated the grimy cityscape toward Thrawn's residence. The monolithic structure, polished durasteel and tinted transpariplate, loomed like a predator. The ceaseless grind of lifts, speeder traffic, and distant sirens were a constant reminder of the ecumenopolis beyond. After the clinic's stagnation, the cool, still air felt alien. She sought refuge in the training dojo, a spartan space with smooth floors and reflective glass walls.

Rhyanon moved through rehearsed battle-forms, each motion precise, but memories crowded her mind. The night before... a sharp ache, bruised flesh, violated trust. She shifted, elbows and knees striking. Geis's image shattered the dojo's calm. Her sister's face, contorted in agony, lifeless eyes. The Reavers, grotesque nightmares, hands stained crimson. She cut the air with fighting sticks, beating back phantoms branding her wrists and thighs. She drew an electro-staff with a snap-hiss. Its energy field crackled, mirroring the tremble in her hands. Thrawn's iron control shattered, replaced by something feral that used her, took her, left her raw. The staff became a whirlwind. The Emperor's game. She, the pawn, her sister the sacrifice. Rhyanon stilled. A pounding heart, sweat beading her forehead and dripping between her shoulder blades. Her ragged breaths filled the silent training chamber, a maelstrom of thoughts, far too loud.

A female Twi'lek, not the usual alien staff, met Rhyanon as she exited the dojo. Her green skin flawless, her dark eyes held unsettling insight. In lilting Basic, she delivered the summons. "Grand Admiral Thrawn requests your presence at dinner. Medic Yhana. He understands you may have other obligations, but wishes you to know the decision is yours."

Rhyanon recognized her from the clinic. She'd come in with a fretful toddler, his tiny lekku inflamed. Rhyanon had given her the unaffordable anti-infective.

Declining was unthinkable, a subtle display of Thrawn's power. Rhyanon considered it in silence, broken only by the residence's churning atmospheric cyclers. Sensing Rhyanon's unease, the Twi'lek ventured, "He might find some comfort in seeing you tonight. He seems...troubled."

"As opposed to what? His usual ebullience?" Rhyanon snapped. The Twi'lek's lekku twitched, her expression tightening. Rhyanon regretted her outburst. "It's fine," she said, her voice flat. "Just let me clean up, and I'll be available presently."

The Twi'lek nodded, a brief, strained smile on her lips.

"Thank you. For helping my son," the Twi'lek said, before she led Rhyanon to her chambers "Few venture to the lower levels. Fewer still treat us as people."

Rhyanon inclined her head. "It's my duty," she murmured, the words hollow.

A gown, hair ornaments, and jewels for her throat, ears, and upper arms glittered under soft lighting. When she emerged, the servants lining the corridor gasped, their eyes wide with a mixture of admiration and fear.

Rhyanon entered the hall, a dancer's measured strides showcasing the sorn-silk molding to her curves. The amethyst garment shimmered. Thin straps bared her shoulders and arms, her skin alabaster in the dim light. A silver chain circled her waist, a reminder of her status: a captive adorned for her captor. Her damp, moon-pale hair, braided and cascading over one shoulder, was woven with blood-rubies and sea-ebonies. Matching ear-bobs swayed, catching the light. A sea-pearl circlet graced her throat, serpentine bracelets coiled around each upper arm.

She schooled her face to serenity, her ice-blue gaze on her Twi'lek escort's swaying lekku as they moved through an outdoor arcade. Muffled city sounds faded into the distance. The path wound through towering Wroshyr trees, their long shadows stretching in the artificial twilight toward a meticulously crafted oasis that defied the sterile, urban landscape: an inner-courtyard garden, a bioluminescent sanctuary for nocturnal flora and fauna. Shrubs, trees, and flowers flourished in darkness, petals unfurling in a silent ballet. Insects like living jewels and birds with starlight plumage flitted through the air, lacing patterns of light against the velvet night.

Rhyanon gasped, her composure faltering. She turned, ensnared by the garden's marvel. Walls resembling a tumbling mountainside descended into a vale. A stream, alive with glowing fish, crawled through the scene, its surface rippling with sky-midges. The waters tinkled, spilling toward a fountain-pool, surrounded by countless floral species. From the pool's dark surface rose a magnificent Orga tree, a living relic recalling the night she'd met Thrawn. Then, it had been a cluster of dried twigs. Now, luminescent branches reached toward the artificial sky like supplicating arms, a tapestry of gleaming leaves and fragrant blossoms.

Beneath the Orga tree's canopy, Thrawn sat on the fountain's edge, a white smudge against the gloom in the impeccable uniform of his new rank: Grand Admiral. His back to her, he angled toward her at her gasp of astonishment. He inclined his head, a slight motion conveying absolute authority. His garnet eyes fell on her. Anxiety constricted Rhyanon's ribs, but she schooled her features to placidity.

He nodded toward the Orga tree. "Impressive, isn't it?" His voice sliced the silence, ominous and alluring. "Your touch, Yhana. It lingers."

She bowed her head, a noncommittal gesture. "It was nearly dead when we first met."

"And now?" He turned toward her, his crimson gaze unreadable. "Is it merely alive? Or something more?"

She stepped closer to the Orga tree, her form vivid in its glow. "Life finds a way. Even in the most sterile of environments."

"Indeed. Evolution. Adaptation. All things you understand intimately, wouldn't you say?" The banked coals of his eyes scoured her.

She lifted her chin, her gaze ice-cold. "I understand the will to survive, Grand Admiral. As do you."

A smile ghosted over Thrawn's lips. "Astute as always, Yhana. Even after last night's...passion." He paused, noting her wince. She felt the weight of understanding in his gaze. Thrawn, different last night, his iron control shattered. Palpatine, unable to read Thrawn through the Force, had devised the encounter, seeking any glimpse of sedition in his pet admiral.

"You were right about Palpatine's machinations," he said, his features tensing. Perhaps recalling how she had fought him through every moment of that macabre dance.

"The Unknown Regions," she said, her tone clipped. "An inconvenient censure. Especially on the eve of the Empire's final push."

"The Emperor's plans are not always transparent. Even to me." He paused. "I considered questioning the assignment. Briefly."

"But you didn't." A prime military leader sojourning like a scavenger beyond Imperial territory. Most officers of his rank would have fumed at the obvious political slight.

"Discretion, Yhana," he said softly, "is sometimes the better part of valor. Even for a Grand Admiral."

"Two weeks," she whispered, her gaze drifting to the Orga tree's brilliance, the words belying the horrors in her mind. "Blood under my nails, matted in my hair. Two weeks before I realized it was my sister's. The Emperor made me forget."

Uncertainty held them speechless, Thrawn's expression shadowed. He sensed the currents beneath the surface. She refused to make this easy for him as he searched for his next words, a rare lapse of awkwardness.

Predictably, he retreated to the cerebral. "Loyalty," he posited, voice ironic, "never questioned, yet always tested."

Rhyanon turned to him, eyes flashing. "Fragile. Easily broken," she challenged.

"And yet," he continued, gaze unwavering, "the greatest betrayals come not from enemies, but from those we trust."

"Or those who claim to protect us," she countered, a hint of bitterness in her voice.

He inclined his head. "The Emperor sees what he wishes to see. And uses whatever tools are at his disposal."

"Including us?"

Regret flickered across his crimson eyes. "We are all instruments, Yhana," he said softly. "In the hands of fate. In the hands of the powerful. Do we choose our own music? Or simply dance to the tune played for us?"

A pained laugh, a despondent shake of her head. "How metaphoric. I imagine my patients wonder who stiffed them with their selection of tunes." She turned from him, staring into the sparkle of winged insects flitting amid the fountain's waters and flowers.

"I imagine so. You do good work. I wouldn't dream of impeding such essential service," he replied, drawing another fierce glare. "Regardless," Thrawn continued, his tone bland, "if Nuso Esva is anywhere, it's in the Unknown Regions. And Tyber Zann with him, not including whatever factions are supporting them." The names caught Rhyanon off-guard, a manifestation of the galaxy's shifting political chaos. A tainted favor, Thrawn having given her viable targets for her vengeance, gleaned from her memories. Someday, making the perpetrators pay for her abduction and her sister's death.

Sensing her anger, he gestured to the garden, the vibrant, teeming life. "Tell me," Thrawn probed, his voice low, "does this please you?"

"It's extraordinary," she admitted, the orchestrated beauty soothing her resentment. "But still, life under glass." She ignored his considering hum.

She stepped around the pool, drawn to the Orga tree. Bioluminescent mycelia ran in pulsing sapphire veins along its trunk and branches, plaited by delicate fronds, trailing in scintillating cascades into the water. A gasp escaped her lips when a geyser of light erupted from the top branches.

"I thought the flames were just a projection," she exclaimed, strands of mist spinning out from the Orga tree's blossoms, coalescing around her. Glitterbugs and nymphadoptera swarmed through tendrils of scarlet light, a twinkling halo drawn to her energy.

"What is this place?" she asked, breathless. Living fire plumed from her palms, intermingling with the insects.

Thrawn's crimson eyes, reflecting the garden's kaleidoscope, absorbed her wonder. "A retreat," he said softly. "A refuge. A sanctuary. A homage to the worlds I've lost—" his voice dropping, a peculiar shyness she found unsettling. "A place of worship. How did that tale end?" he asked, dredging the past. "The one you told, the first night I’d requested your company?"

"Of Blodeuwedd. The Lady of Flowers?" she replied, captivated by the spectrum of currents spiraling about her. “She fled her maker, Gwydion ap Don.” Forms resolved between her extended hands, like miniature organic galaxies. “A woman, sown of blossoms, who left a track of stars across the heavens. My ancestors called it the Milky Way, the path of her freedom." The ancient myth resonated with her own yearning for autonomy.

Oblivious to Thrawn, she traced the lifecycle of the glitterbugs. "They lay their eggs within the Orga fruit," she explained, “a symbiotic relationship. Each relies on the other."

"The effect," Thrawn added, his voice a low rumble, "produced by spores, pollen dust, the release of water vapor. It stimulates the bioluminescence of the winged fauna and the mycelia on the tree bark." He paused, fascinated by the subtle energies she summoned. "I've never seen a closer embodiment of the Red Flame.”

"Spare me," she teased, attempting to breach the intensity of his gaze with levity. "I thought lectures on obscure iconography were off the agenda. For tonight, at least."

"No lecture," he assured with a wry look, familiar with her impatience regarding his cultural fetishes. "Just an ancient belief. An imparted philosophy. The Red Flame. Cunning, courage, discipline, and preparedness. Mind and body in perfect harmony with the universe.” He stood and approached, stopping just before her amid the swirling light. “Beauty." The word snared her with its magnetism.

He reached out, palms hovering in the glowing nimbus just above hers, a silent offering. "Ever since my brother's death," he began, voice strained by old grief, "I dreamt of climbing a great ladder into the heavens, trying to carry him, you, my crew... even my enemies. Trying not to leave anyone behind, reaching for the stars, but still flailing, falling. Like he died, I imagine, crashing in that colony ship. I haven't had that dream for years," he confessed. "Until last night."

"That was the memory Palpatine dragged from you?" Rhyanon asked hesitantly. The humiliation he'd inflicted on her, even at the Emperor's impetus, still stung like a fresh cut.

Something cold and hard flickered in his crimson eyes. "No. All Chiss learn to fortify against telepathic intrusion. A precaution, should one fall into enemy hands." He paused, his gaze locking with hers. "It was you. Whatever opened between us during our—" a rough catch in his voice, "—initial encounter." Thrawn reached toward her, hands passing through the parting phosphoric mists. His long fingers folded with hers before she could retreat. Rhyanon’s gestures stilled within his gentle grasp. Small, amorphous clouds of light floated, swirling, between their palms. He filled the tranquil garden with a mesmerizing whisper. "My people speak of a prophecy. So old, some scholars say it predates the Primordial Migration off Riy'a'silva, long before Csilla's Ice Age. Of a girl who sacrificed herself to flame, bringing light and warmth to her kin. She rose from the ashes of her pyre, awakening the sun and stars with the First Dawn, leaving behind an eternal ember hidden in time and space before fleeing into a distant sun, mounted upon a Thunder Hawk."

His gaze, a bloody sunset, seared her soul. "The Red Flame was her oath of protection against evil. A promise of rebirth, a woman appearing in a time of great darkness, bringing justice, commanding the secrets of elemental life."

His conviction bewildered her. "That seems an impossible feat for anyone. In one lifetime—or a thousand," she remarked with a brittle, humorless laugh.

"An aspiration, then," he allowed, amused by her deflection. “Serving through one’s lifetime, or—a thousand lifetimes."

"Thrawn," she whispered, a fragile protest, as he closed the distance between them. "Please, I—" His mouth pressed to hers, swallowing her gasp. A kiss that reeled, both question and conquest.

"You are amber and silver and starlight to my sight," he murmured in Cheunh, against her. "Fleeting dawn and fleeing dusk...ephemeral, Rhyanon." The words echoed in her mind with longing. Let me bathe of your essence.

Caught in the whirlwind of his emotions, the sheer force of his will, Rhyanon surrendered, fingers tangling in his midnight hair, body molded against him. Vibrant currents pulsed from her hands, swirling around them. She felt his heartbeat, a counterpoint to her own, the rush of his blood mirroring the heat coursing through her veins.

A low groan vibrated through his chest as he shifted, arms tightening around her. The kiss deepened, a dizzying vortex of raw, untamed need. His skin tasted of salt, his breath of Corellian ale. He clutched her to him as if he feared she might vanish. In that moment, at the heart of that enchanted garden, beneath that magnificent Orga tree, she was his, and he was hers, the rest of the galaxy fading into insignificance.

Thrawn swept her up, carrying her from the pool. Kneeling, he set her gently upon a blanket spread over soft grass, a bed strewn with glowing star-lilies. A low table nearby was laden with delicacies – exotic fruits, glistening meats, crystal decanters of what she suspected were expensive vintages. A testament to Thrawn’s meticulous planning, his desire to seduce her senses, offering a taste of the pleasures he could provide. A feast untouched, forgotten.

Rhyanon couldn't look away. He was a paradox, this man. A warrior and a scholar, a pragmatist and a dreamer, a captor and a lover. And in this moment, in the heart of this mystical arcade, she was utterly, irrevocably, lost in him.

He released her, his fingers grazing down her arms, tingling paths of pleasure burning along her skin. She watched him undress, each movement deliberate, almost ritualistic. Piece by piece, the stark white of his Grand Admiral's uniform fell away, revealing the alien blue of his skin, hard muscle sculpted by rigorous training. Intricate tattoos adorned his arms and shoulders, standing out in stark relief against his chest, scars puckered across his torso, an old scorch mark seared into his thigh.

Rhyanon's heart skipped as he turned to her, his physique chiseled by shadow and the garden's dim light, a masculine perfection that stuttered her breath. His eyes blazed with a hunger mirroring her own. He reached for her gown, brushing bare skin, a jolt of electricity. She shivered, anticipation warring with resistance.

His fingers tarried at the base of her throat, roving to the thin straps, slipping them from her shoulders. The fabric pooled around her hips, then her feet. His gaze darkened, lingering over her breasts, his nostrils flaring as he drew a deep breath.

He urged her backward with a hand on her chest. "Lie down," he commanded, his voice husky.

She obeyed, sinking onto the blanket of glowing star-lilies. He followed, his body a welcome weight, radiating heat. He shifted, settling to his knees, his hands framing her contours, possessive and oddly reverent. He drew her legs apart, exposing her to his gaze.

His fingers traced a path from her throat, down between her breasts, to the juncture of her thighs. The caress dallied, awakening a dampness that betrayed her response. His erection pressed against her belly, the heat of him, an insistent pressure, exuding the musky scent of arousal.

"Thrawn..." she sighed.

He didn't answer with words. He moved lower, between her parted knees, his gaze unwavering. "I've no record of your people," he said, his voice hypnotic. "Their artistic expression, spatial or aesthetic progression." Shifting into her native Brytonic, a direct transmission to her mind, And you-an enigma...oeth and anoeth. The thought trailed off as his tongue dipped, warm and demanding, to her core. She gasped, fire blooming, flushing her skin as she arched against him, fingers tangling in his hair.

Vurawn , she whispered, his birth name, a ripple in the bridge linking them, a relic from his life before the Empire. It wrought a tempest of conflicting emotions within him, echoing back to her. Desire battled apprehension, her senses devoured in the flames stoked by his hands and lips. Did the shadow of past trauma still sour their burgeoning passion?

Thrawn felt her turmoil, shared it. His name, spoken in the intimacy of their thoughts, awakened unfamiliar feelings he tried burying, seeking the intoxication of her flesh and mind, his lust a gathering storm.

Amid the exquisite torment, a tendril of thought, shaped out of Brytonic, reached her. Do you wish me to stop? <Ydych chi'n dymuno i mi stopio?>

Sharp, sweet sensations overwhelmed her. Rhyanon trembled, hands knotting in his hair, hips rising instinctively, a primal surrender. A gasped "Yes," escaped her lips, a plea born of despair. She craved his touch, even as she yearned for it to end.

He opened his mind to her, a conscious offering. He needed her to understand, to see beyond the Grand Admiral, beyond the Empire's shadow, a crusader driven by a purpose purer than Palpatine's, a man yearning for a connection that transcended their circumstances.

Thrawn's voice, low and resonant, evoked the ancient music of her native tongue. "Do you want me to stop?" <Ydych chi eisiau i mi stopio?>.

Her heart twisted, a pang of grief piercing the haze of desire. His need, his vulnerability, drew a shuddering sigh. "Vurawn," his name, a melancholic surrender. Her eyes closed.

The secret vestige of that name stirred something within him. Vurawn —in Brytonic, a croon resonating from Rhyanon's mind. Fuaran —artesian waters bursting forth. Varuna —a god of lost oceans. The glide of his tongue, the way he savored her taste, a tremor of their surging lust, became a torrent sweeping away all resistance, leaving only raw craving.

Thrawn rose above her, seeking her mouth, her tang on his lips. "Don't fight me," he breathed, pressing against her entrance.

She reached up, tracing his shoulder. He leaned in, nipping at the delicate skin beneath her jaw. She shivered. He continued, nips and languid licks tracing her neck, down to her shoulder, then back along her collarbone to the frantic flutter at the base of her throat.

He ground his hips slowly against hers. Pleasure soaked her core. Her hands found his neck, smoothed down over his shoulders. He moved with slow, deliberate thrusts, each stroke against her mound a throbbing ecstasy.

Gripping her from beneath, he lifted her, hitching her knees against his waist. He plunged into her heat, tearing a strangled cry from her.

Her nails raked across his back as he shuddered against her with a staggered groan. Her legs wrapped around his hips. She taunted him with nips and fierce kisses, sweeping wet warmth along his neck, biting, suckling at the pulse line of his throat.

He sank into her again, and she sighed, desperate in her rising desire. Her thighs tightened around him as he bottomed out, and she tilted her hips, each upward sway driving him deeper.

She pulled his lips between hers. A sharp gasp escaped him. He bit her lower lip, their limbs locked, motions brutal.

Thrawn settled against her, their bodies aligned, skin to skin. His thrusts set an instinctive rhythm, his hands tracing her sides, fingers digging into her hips as he pounded against her with tender savagery.

One hand grasped her hair, a subtle tug eliciting her ragged sigh. His face was right beside hers, mouth just to the side of her lips, so close she felt his breath on her skin. Muscles deep inside clenched, and she ground herself up against him, meeting each downstroke.

Rhyanon opened her eyes to his gaze. Those enigmatic red slits held no secrets, the most unguarded she'd ever seen him, rabid and carnal in her embrace.

His pace increased, each thrust powerful, driving her higher. A sensuous litany poured from her lips.

A single, sudden thrust, and she felt him pulse, buried deep inside her. His low groan sent her into a euphoric spin, hot seed flooding her. She rocked against him, clutching his buttocks, waves of fire washing up along her limbs from her battered cleft, leaving her dragging for air, wrung and exhausted. They clung to each other, breath mingling, sweat-slicked bodies racked together in a final, spastic release as he collapsed over her, both gasping, spent.

Thrawn rolled onto his back, with a contented sigh, one elbow bent behind his head. Rhyanon shifted with him, nestling into his side. Above, the Coruscant night glittered through the skylights, an endless stream of traffic punctuated by distant flares of planetary shields resetting, a universe away from their haven. She rested her head on his shoulder, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath lean muscle.

His breath caught at her fingers, prodding along the ridges of his abdomen, mapping the vast scar spanning his right side, where a percussive incendiary had ripped into the viscera. Rhyanon allowed herself a passing gratification. A vague concavity in the blue-tinted epidermis was all that remained from the collagenic layering, testifying to her training, enhanced by her innate biopsionics—talents exploited by Palpatine, who deployed her as a populist foil of Imperial charity, and privately hoped she was an antidote against the ravaging decay of the Dark Side.

”Acquiring you proved one of the Emperor’s wiser gambits,” Thrawn said, watching her fingers along his scar, his words deliberate, gauging adversaries’ reactions.

She glanced up at him, seething. Baste him! Was it the action of an adversary that saved his life? The words unspoken, but clear in the firm pinch she gave to delicate, newly healed skin.

He grimaced, jaw tightening at the discomfort. No, the word floated into her thoughts, flavored by his particular solemnity. But it is the action of a courtesan in service to Palpatine.

That stung, as he meant it.

“You know full well,” she admonished, “the Emperor never takes random chances on anything. Or anyone. Especially you. I imagine you didn’t tumble into his service by mere chance. Whatever that backstory involved,” she huffed, dropping back against his shoulder, eyes fastened on Coruscant’s river of lights blinking across the ceiling.

Her hands remained on his stomach. She felt his breath falter, how he stiffened. "I was exiled." His bald declaration, an old wound rising from a void of melancholy he shuttered away. Black brows skewed in a brief scowl, dulling his glowing irises. "I never conformed,” he continued, “to the strictures of Chiss hierarchies. Even in the Defense Fleet." A sigh. "The Patriarchs, the Aristocras...they saw me as a threat. Too unpredictable. Always contradicting the rules.”

Vexation or remorse, she’d pierced something more fragile than he would admit, leaving them both fuming in aggravation, even twined in each other's arms. She hated what she read of him through this novel intimacy, how he’d hurt, humiliated her, how he believed this toxic alchemy between them absolved him of responsibility, entitled him to her affections, fully cognizant her position lent little choice.

Ultimately, the sylvan ambience faded the remnants of their anger. The fountain bubbled, the trickling waters, a balm mingling with the Orga tree's soft glow. An illumination of spectral avians and twinkling insects, dancing amid the shadows, soothed their prickled tempers. Thrawn seemed enticed by the way the alpine breeze caught at the loosened strands of her hair. He stroked the luxuriant tresses spilling over her shoulders. The braid had come undone in their coupling, the jewels scattered about the grass.

Breaking the quiet, she murmured, "You should return to your people, Thrawn."

For a moment, she thought the only response would be the hum of insects and the splash of falling waters. Then— “There's no returning. Only leaving it in the past,” his utterance edged in steel. Or, he hesitated, before pushing the rest of the thought into her sense, reconquering it.

Startled by the menace in the words, Rhyanon turned, rising onto his chest, peering from beneath lowered lashes into his scarlet gaze. "Huh," she exhaled, her head cocked. "A tyrant.” His brow creased, and she smoothed away the lines. "And still an outsider. Envisioning a new confederation, joined by other outsiders." Her fingers played along his scalp, into the thick blue-black tousle, combing lightly through the flecks of white dusting his temples. "Willing, I wonder? Exiles amongst exiles."

His lids closed as her touch trailed beneath the hollows of his eyes, over the sharp hook of his nose. His thin lips, in repose, relaxed at the corners. Most sentients, unfamiliar with Chiss infrared vision, misread him as cold. Rhyanon understood that emotions, read through temperature changes invisible to the human eye, lacked the usual markers.

A sad smile quirked her mouth. "That's what we are," she said. "Exiles. From home. From love."

She leaned down, brushing Thrawn's lips in a tender caress. A hushed gasp, a flicker of scarlet as his lids fluttered open. He didn't expect spontaneous displays of affection from her. Truth be told, she was equally unused to giving them. She tasted the warmth of his surprise, the sweet liqueur of his yielding, as the kiss deepened, folding both of them into a dizzying breathlessness.

His gaze followed her as she drew back, desire burning through her veins. Marred, of course, by his fleeting smirk. "As I said, you'd find pleasure in anger." Oh, that familiar smugness.

"Anger?” A short, smoky laugh. “That wasn’t anger that happened, just now.” The levity too quickly receding before the disquiet haunting Thrawn's eyes, his awakening to the complex tangle of her emotions inundating his mind. Her hand drifted up, the backs of her fingers sliding along his cheek. You'll never ask my forgiveness, will you? Her question weighted by resignation of reparation he owed her.

Thrawn’s gaze narrowed, concentrating on this rediscovered Third Sight. Bewilderment cracked his composure. His hand rose to cup hers, savoring her touch. You're not likely to grant it, are you? Not yet, anyway? Palpatine's manipulation smarted at his ego, even if acknowledging how long he'd coveted Rhyanon.

"No," she admitted softly. "Maybe, in time, forgiveness. But...it's bigger than just you, Vurawn." The name wielded like a key, claiming a hidden part of him.

His fingers traced her face, drifted down, pausing between her breasts. He brushed her nipples, eliciting a sharp inhale. Pleasure stirred, unwanted yet undeniable.

In his eyes, she saw herself transformed into a constellation of light, her nanoplexus a network of shimmering energy.

"You are... Oeth and anoeth ," he murmured, his fingers moving over her lips, her native words a strange delicacy on his tongue.

But not so unique, amongst my own people . A confidence she quickly sublimated, feeling the predatory glare from Thrawn's gaze. This, she realized, was how he ensnared others, coaxing secrets through art and word, a subtle brilliance, manipulation aided, she now understood, by a dormant, preternatural insight.

Instead, softly against his finger, she replied in carefully enunciated Cheunh, "We are all creations of wonder. At least, that's how I perceive this marvelous travesty of a universe." <Nah cart sea vsaecim bah ch'er. Mah ch'itt'tam, csei cart veah Ch'ah ran'cah csei s ch'esen'bo ch'irvim'i bah ch'a in'ezasr>. And I'll be damned, she vowed, directly into the calculating tangents of his mind, if I'm ever enticed into revealing my people's home sector to you, Mitth'raw'nuruodo.

Across a distant wormhole lay shining Celtica, independent and proud, a Fringe system, defying the Core Parliament of the Terran Federacy. Her sister's dying words returned to her. Cofiwch pwy ydych chi , <Remember who you are> .* Eurein yn euryll . <A Golden Gem in a Golden Jewel> . Thrawn's prophecy, pitched to adoration, threaded throughout. *Of a girl, who sacrificed herself to flame...< Cofiwch pwy ydych chi ,>...And left behind an eternal ember...< Eurein yn euryll >...hidden away in time and space...< Cofiwch pwy ydych chi >...before fleeing into a distant sun...< Eurein yn euryll >.

Beneath her hand, his laughter thrummed through his chest. A single word, returned. "Perhaps."

#Thrawn #Chiss #Star Wars #Rhyanon ferch Garowen #Firefly Serenity #the Keltiad

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