#basically: jaq is cela's only oasis in korriban's hellish landscape but cela is half convinced he's a mirage

[sovonight]

undone, part 1 | atton/exile, sith exile au, kotor 2

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

✧ — ✧

“So,” says Jaq.

“So?” Says the apprentice, expectantly. “What do you think?”

“You want me to help you game the prestige system by rigging all the trials in your favor, obtaining the headmaster’s resources and authorization codes, and destroying her trust in me in the process?” Jaq pauses as though to take that in, and follows it with, “What’s in it for me?”

“What isn’t in it for you?” The apprentice asks, incredulous. “The headmaster treats you like trash. She has you running around the academy like you’re her personal slave, not a trained Jedi killer. Don’t you want to, you know, stick it to her?”

Jaq sits back and pretends to consider the offer, a smirk hidden behind his hand. Jaq’s often seen this apprentice running errands around the academy, kept too busy to tackle the prestige tasks that could elevate him above his peers. Unlike him, though, Jaq holds no such resentment towards his “master.”

“You know, I see your point,” Jaq says, “But I’m going to need a more tangible reward if I’m going to help you.”

“When I ascend and claim her title—”

“And those are the words I was hoping not to hear,” Jaq sighs. He stands, cracking his knuckles, and the idle action alone is enough to motivate the apprentice to take a cautious step back. “Look, kid—plot and scheme all you like. Stab your master in the back, I don’t care. But the headmaster? She’s off limits.”

“But she—”

“I don’t care what you think of her. You’re rolling this little plan of yours back, effective immediately. And if you ever think about hurting her again, you’re out,” Jaq says.

“You—you don’t have the power to make that decision,” the apprentice says weakly.

“Don’t I? I have the headmaster’s ear,” Jaq says. “And even if she doesn’t believe me, I’m a "trained Jedi killer,” aren’t I? I’ve never hunted a Sith before, but, well… I think I can make it work.”

Jaq’s smirk has stretched across his face now, and the apprentice gives him and the barely concealed weaponry lining his jacket one look before hurrying out of the room, intimidated. Amused, Jaq calls out a parting, "Good talk!” to the apprentice, only to see them freeze a moment later, just a short distance outside the door.

Curious, Jaq approaches the closing gap between the doors, but can only catch a last glimpse of the apprentice’s robes before they shut, leaving only muted audio.

“G-good evening, Darth Vidious,” Jaq hears the apprentice stutter, tone quiet and respectful, in stark contrast to the way he was talking about her earlier. Even through the thick stone doors, Jaq can feel the familiar, dark weight of Vidious’s presence outside. His amusement fades, and he tries to sink back into the shadows, but the sliding doors draw back open to reveal Vidious’s hooded form—and reveal Jaq to her. The apprentice slips away into the shadows of the quiet hallway, and Vidious lets him go, gesturing only for Jaq to follow her.

““Good talk”?” Vidious asks him. Jaq resists the urge to rub at the back of his neck, a nervous habit that she knows him well enough to recognize as such.

"Just collecting student feedback on the new electronic lesson system,” Jaq says. Vidious gives him a look, but his mental shield is enough to dissuade her from seeing the truth, and she accepts his words as they are, turning her attention back to the walk with a sigh.

“I’ve made edits to the lesson programs,” she says. “You will return them to the other Masters tonight.”

The sun has long set; none of them will be happy to see him. But now is not the time to question her—not when Vidious has taken, and will continue to take, the brunt of the academy’s bitterness.

“What did the apprentice say?” Vidious asks. At his brief confusion, she prompts, “About the new system.”

“He doesn’t like it,” Jaq admits, knowing it’s what she expects to hear anyway. “None of them do. But you know how it is—they’ll come around eventually.”

Vidious remains silent; skeptical. Jaq tries again.

“Everyone understands these are ultimately Revan’s orders,” he says. “You can’t be faulted for this.”

Vidious doesn’t look at him, this time. Jaq chooses to believe it’s because she knows he means it.

They’ve arrived at her quarters. The doors open, and Vidious enters. Jaq waits silently upon her doorstep until he’s waved inside.

—

The landscape here is green, lush, and full, as far as the eye can see—the polar opposite of Korriban’s arid climate. Cela’s hood is down, leaving her face open to the cool air, and she closes her eyes and just breathes.

She always forgets what it feels like to be free of Korriban’s pressure. Newly centered, she shoulders her pack, just as Jaq steps down from the exit ramp.

“You’re bringing that whole thing again?” Jaq asks, and Cela spares him only a glance before she turns away.

“I’ll need the equipment for the tomb,” Cela says. Amusement rises from him in response, but she feels no such thing, setting her shoulders and walking off with a frown. Though Jaq calls out for her to wait up for him, she doesn’t slow. She knows he’ll catch her soon.

—

As Korriban’s landing pad sweeps into view, she can already spot the lone figure waiting at the steps below to greet them. Cela sighs and pulls her hood back up; Jaq, who glances at her movement from the pilot’s seat, quickly pulls his gaze back away before she can turn to meet it. As the ship settles, Cela stands and makes her way to the exit.

As usual, Whinu is already walking up to her, even before the ramp has come fully down. She’s granted only the barest last moment of quiet as he waits for the ramp to hit the surface of the landing pad, and then the questions commence.

“Headmaster!” Whinu says, coming forward to meet her halfway down the ramp. “How was the search? Were you successful?”

“It was fruitless,” Cela says, moving forward without waiting for him. He turns quickly, following her without skipping a beat, telling her he has further ideas on where to search next.

She will never become used to the conversations on Korriban. No matter how innocuous the words, the speaker always has a certain look in their eyes—vicious and cutthroat. Cela knows Whinu only wastes his words on her because he aims to succeed her, but any number of the dead ends she has found on the scattered planets he has pointed her to are preferable to a day spent at the academy. She tilts her head, a signal that she’s listening, and Whinu yammers on.

—

“Still holding out for that sweetheart of yours?”

It’s a slow hour at the cantina; the bottles strung up inside, revolving slowly in the near-dead air, are the second most interesting thing in the place. The bartender pours out his shot, and Jaq gazes pensively into the liquid.

“Yeah,” Jaq sighs longingly, leaning his cheek on his hand, as he turns the shot glass idly. The images of the few other patrons in the place are tiny and distorted in the glass; only three figures are there besides him. “I’ve been waiting two years for her to walk through that door. I mean… not that door, exactly, but—to meet me in the middle. You know?”

“Uh huh,” says the bartender, skeptically. “Look, buddy, if she hasn’t yet, it doesn’t sound like she likes you much.”

“No, she does,” Jaq says, with a faint smile on his face; then it fades. “She’s just been under so much pressure. Ever since she got here, really. Her job keeps her busy all the time.”

The bartender, oblivious to Jaq’s newly subdued mood, only scoffs.

“Yeah, alright,” she says. “Take it from me: unless your girlfriend’s in charge of the whole Sith academy up on that hill, she just doesn’t like you.”

“She is, actually.”

“What—? You mean the Darth Vidious? Ha!” The bartender barks out a laugh. “Okay, now I know you’ve got to be joking. I don’t think she even knows you exist.”

The bartender’s still laughing to herself when Jaq straightens in his seat, having spotted the other three getting up to leave.

“Yeah, I guess she wouldn’t know her own right hand man,” Jaq says idly, and downs the shot. He pulls out a loose handful of credits. “So how much do I owe you for the juma?”

The bartender is uncharacteristically silent, and Jaq looks up to see her face has paled.

“Uh… I… It’s on the house,” she says.

Jaq pockets his credits again. Then, on second thought, he drops a few onto the counter anyway; genuine conversation’s hard to come by on Korriban.

“See you next week,” he calls as he leaves, then sets out on the heels of the trio.

—

“Bury them,” Vidious commands. The Sith academy hopeful is crumpled upon the cracked earth, their limbs loose as though there were no struggle, though the face Jaq tips over with his boot is twisted in agony. While his mind tells him he’s dealt worse fates, a strange air hangs about the corpse, and his gut tells him this is the worst fate of all.

“Bury them?” Jaq repeats, hollow. “How?”

The earth is too dense to carve into; even the excavation took months to make a dent in the planet’s surface. No one would bat an eye at the body, anyway; here, death is frequently delighted in.

Vidious stalks up to him, and in her shadowed eyes beneath her dark hood, he sees something like fear.

“I don’t care how,” she says. “Hide them, at least until they rot.” There’s an acid that will do it, his training tells him, but Vidious sweeps past him before he can relate this to her.

It’s only as he watches the flesh melt away, baring the sickly white bone underneath, that his goosebumps finally fade.

—

The Masters of the academy sit before her in a half circle, their table a crescent that terminates in two sharp corners that point to either side of her. Cela sits alone at a height above the rest, feeling, amid the cacophony, barely present.

The argument that rages before her has become all too familiar in these past several days. She’s heard it all: that the academy’s foundations are too ancient to be tainted with the installation of these modern terminals; that the Dark Side was never meant to be understood through the dull medium of written texts, let alone through emotionless programs; and that these “lessons” would only discourage students from maiming each other in dark hallways, and where would they learn their strength from then?

Cela casts her gaze across the room. A few Masters have even worked themselves up into shouting matches, their white-knuckled fists gripping the edge of the thick stone table. Among them, only Whinu is subdued and contemplative—and as though feeling her gaze on him, he looks up and meets her eye.

Cela glances away—but it is too late. Whinu stands.

“Everyone, everyone… please,” Whinu begins, gesturing with his hands spread outward, quieting the entire table. “We need not argue amongst ourselves, but direct our displeasure towards the propagator of this change.”

“And who will convince the Dark Lord of the Sith to change her mind? You, Darth Whinge-u?” Says the Master beside him, her upper lip curled in disdain. A titter of amusement ripples across the table; Cela does not join in.

“No, no, not me,” Whinu says, gracefully ignoring the jab. “And not you either, dear Arekus. Indeed, none of us could ever sway the great Darth Revan… but you, Darth Vidious.”

“Her most prized General, who ended the Mandalorian Wars,” Whinu continues, “Who proved herself so worthy from that feat alone that she was granted the title of Headmaster.”

There is a brief silence, as Whinu’s words echo out and the other Masters take this suggestion in. Even without use of the Force, Cela knows what they must be thinking. Revan had placed her at the top of the academy hierarchy with no experience; with no vetting; with no support from the other Masters at all. Whinu alone had been the apprentice of the previous Headmaster—who of course had met an untimely demise—but once Revan had handpicked Cela and dropped her in with the wolves, all the Masters had felt equally entitled to the role. If it could be Cela—who hadn’t emerged as a Dark Jedi on Revan’s side until a year after the invasion of the Republic began—it could have been anyone.

Dissent coalesces into unison. Now all the Masters are calling for Cela to pass their complaints up the chain—to speak directly to Revan. And once again, she feels that pressure building greater than ever: the jealousy, the resentment, the very malice of Korriban itself.

She takes all of this in… and Darth Vidious raises her head at last, needing only one word to still the room: “Enough.”

In an instant, the room is silent. A true silence, held by Vidious’s displeasure, which thickens the air in the room, settling into their throats and lungs, threatening them to hold their tongue or choke.

Vidious’s words are low and deliberate, knowing her voice is felt all throughout the room.

“Darth Revan will not be informed of your complaints,” she begins. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Arekus’s mouth open to speak, but Vidious compels it back closed with a curl of her fist.

“She will not be told,” Vidious continues in a calm and measured meter, “Because Revan’s orders are absolute. You will make the system work, and anyone who is found shirking their responsibilities to me, the academy, or the Dark Lord of the Sith herself, will answer to my wrath.”

To underline her words, she holds the air in her grip for a moment longer, then releases them all to wheeze in their next breaths. The argument does not resume, but she feels the glares of all twelve sets of eyes upon her, their animosity freshly renewed.

—

By the time Cela returns to her quarters, long shadows have stretched across her room, cast by the last of the day’s harsh light. Everything is as she left it: the rumpled blankets upon her bed, the datapad filled with unfinished work upon her desk, and even the cup of steeping tea beside it, which has surely grown cold and bitter in her absence. She moves to flick on the lights—and freezes, noticing movement in the shadows.

None of the Masters could have made it here before her, but any one of their servants could have. Thinking this, she Force grips the air there blindly, and drags what she finds into the light, revealing—

“Whoa, hey! Easy, it’s just me!”

Startled, Cela releases him, and Jaq stumbles into her desk, pulled by his residual momentum. Her datapad is knocked from its perch, and she reaches for it with the Force, but Jaq catches it for her first, his reflexes faster. He holds it out to her. Cela pulls the datapad roughly from his hand, no longer shocked, but annoyed: for a moment, he’d scared her.

“Explain yourself,” Cela demands. “What are you doing here?”

“We just got a new shipment in,” Jaq says, somewhat pained, massaging his struck hip. “Thought I’d let you know that I evaluated it this afternoon.”

“By waiting for me in the dark,” Cela says.

“By being discreet,” Jaq corrects. “I know you like your privacy—I didn’t think you would want me to advertise that there was someone waiting for you.”

Cela feels her shoulders relax just a fraction. Of course; she needn’t have worried. This is Jaq, after all: he would no sooner obey a Sith Master than defect and join up with the remaining Jedi. Of all those here, Jaq only answers to her—and, she suspects, only does so because of her close ties to Revan.

A pressure makes itself known in her hand, and Cela realizes she’s still gripping the datapad, tight enough to leave a mark. She pushes it back onto the desk, an action that Jaq follows idly with his gaze, before he turns his attention back to her.

“So,” Jaq begins, a little too casually. “Meeting not go well?”

Jaq has that look on his face. She knows, that he knows, exactly how poorly it went. Still, she takes the invitation to heave a frustrated sigh, and pulls her heavy, oppressive cloak off her shoulders, throwing it across her chair.

“I’ve lost ground with them again,” Cela says. “Whinu always manages to single me out. They wanted me to bring their concerns to Revan—but I had to deny it. I tried to reach her, days ago, but all I was allowed to speak to was her droids!”

Jaq folds his arms, leaning lightly back against her desk.

“Was it her secretary droid, or her assassin droid? Because don’t let the assassin droid fool you—the secretary manages to be worse,” Jaq says.

“I don’t know,” Cela sighs, pulling a tired hand across her forehead. “They keep changing—or being upgraded. I can’t tell which.”

“I’m starting to think these decisions aren’t coming down from Revan,” Jaq says. Cela’s gaze snaps to his in confusion, and he shrugs, “I mean, programming an academy? Only a droid would think that was a good idea.”

Cela almost smiles at the joke, and Jaq’s own faint smile begins to brighten in response, but the weight of reality is never so far from her mind, and the corners of her lips soon drop again, falling into a serious frown.

“It doesn’t matter,” Cela says. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s Revan’s wish—and as Revan’s wish, it will be done. No matter the cost.”

She doesn’t know when her gaze had dropped to her hands; doesn’t know when her hands had balled into fists, either, painful and trembling. She can feel Jaq’s eyes on her once more. Part of her wants him to try again—to tell her another joke—but he remains silent. After a moment, he pushes himself off her desk.

“Come on,” Jaq says, “I’m taking you out.”

He grabs her cloak from the chair and holds it out to her. Cela only stares at it.

“I’m in no mood for the cantina,” Cela says. After all, Darth Vidious could never be seen there.

“Not talking about that,” Jaq says, with a light chuckle. “I mean the hopefuls I rounded up. Three of them, this time; you looked like you needed them.”

He gives up on handing her the cloak, and just drapes it across her shoulders himself instead, walking around her to arrange it correctly, then pulling the hood up for her. The movement is clumsy—the cloth does not lay flat, and the hood has pulled strands free from her braided and arranged hair—but Cela barely notices. All she can hear is her heartbeat, pounding in her ears.

“What did you say…?” Cela says, but her voice is too low. Jaq has turned away, walking to the door. That familiar fear gripping her heart now, she slows him with a drag of the Force.

“Cela, what—”

“What did you mean when you said that,” Cela presses. The fingers of her half-raised hand, held open in manipulation of the Force, tremble and twitch against her will.

“Nothing,” Jaq says, confused. “I thought you could use the kills because of all the stress you’ve been under lately. Did… did you not want that many?”

Cela breathes out in relief. He doesn’t know. Of course he doesn't—he’s an assassin, a hunter. Bloodlust is the only hunger he knows. Her heartbeat fades from her awareness; her hand lowers, relaxed. Jaq is still staring at her when finally, calm, she raises her head and meets his eye.

“Ever thoughtful,” Cela says. “Three is fine.”

—

“You left quite an impression on the young ones,” says Master Vash. “You’ve inspired many of them to follow the path of the Jedi. Even I did not leave unimpressed.”

“Thank you, Master Vash,” Cela says, accepting the praise with a bow of her head. “But I only mirrored what Master Vrook demonstrated for us when I was a youngling myself.”

Master Vash shakes her head with an amused smile.

“Don’t be so quick to discount yourself—an excess of humility can harm you just as easily as its absence,” she says. “Recognize your strengths; take confidence in them. You have a natural instinct not just for leadership, but for mentorship.”

“Mentorship?” Cela says. “I… don’t mean any offense, but guiding younglings through a demonstration of the Force is far from mentorship. Anyone could do it. Myna did, just yesterday. —I, I mean.…”

Cela holds her tongue, embarrassed at the slip; but Master Vash doesn’t fault her for it, only moves with it to make her point.

“But does she also help padawans in the same way? Her peers?” Master Vash asks. Cela remains silent, and with a gentler tone Master Vash answers for her, “You do. I’ve seen you; you center them, calm them, even connect with them in a way few others do.”

“You have much training left ahead of you, of course—and at times you lack patience,” Master Vash acknowledges, “But I believe you have the makings of a great Jedi Master, should you choose to walk our path.”

Cela bows her head once again, meaning only to give an elegant and subdued acknowledgement of Master Vash’s praise, but cannot help the flattered smile that blooms across her face.

—

A hand on her shoulder pulls her from slumber. Groaning, she only curls the pillow of her arms tighter beneath her cheek. The desk she is slumped over is hard and cold, but she needs just a moment of rest to return to her studies; surely the scholars of the Jedi Archives are not so impatient that they can’t spare her that.

“Pssst, Cela. Come on.”

That voice… she had known nothing of that voice in her time as a Jedi. Even though the fog of sleep begins to lift, she only screws her eyes shut tighter, swatting the voice away.

“Leave me alone, Jaq,” she mumbles. “I never gave you permission to enter my quarters….”

“We’re not in your quarters,” Jaq says, quietly, as though not to be overheard. Quietly… as though there were others around—

Cela lifts her head so quickly that her hood flaps against her eyes. Her surroundings come into view beneath the edge of the black fabric, revealing her to be sitting in the academy’s library. From behind a pillar, a couple students peer at them, their curious faces peeking out from behind the carved stone. As soon as Cela’s gaze falls upon them, though, they startle and depart.

Cela pulls her datapad towards her and stands. As soon as she does, her head swims, but she grits her teeth and wills the weakness away; if she sways now, and Jaq is seen helping her, her reputation would suffer for it. She checks the time, and is relieved to find that she could only have been asleep for half an hour, at most.

“You should really get some rest,” Jaq says. Cela ignores him, pushing past him to leave.

“I don’t have time to rest,” Cela mutters. If the Masters of the academy are against her, fine. She’ll do it all herself. Let it not be said that she was the weak link in Revan’s empire.

“System integration, reprogramming,” she lists to herself, “Combat forms, secondary abilities—”

“Wait!” Jaq calls. Cela glances back; Jaq was still standing by the alcove he’d found her in, but now, with her attention, he jogs back up to her.

“I just remembered—Whinu had a message for you,” Jaq says. “He says he’s got another lead.”

“So soon?” Cela asks, certain Jaq must be mistaken—but on second thought, she can believe it. “It must be an apology for putting me on the spot before.”

“I’m sure that’s it,” Jaq agrees. “You know, the ship’s still ready to go. We could leave today.”

Memory crashes over her: she remembers stepping into that lush clearing, the feeling of lightness, and that simple breath of air. Even if their destination isn’t quite as healing as that, any place would be an improvement over the hostility of Korriban.

“Then make your preparations,” Cela says. “We leave now.”

—

Jaq practically runs to the ship. The mechanics milling about the hangar turn to stare at him as he passes them, only used to seeing him saunter and loiter about, wearing only wry or sarcastic looks. Jaq’s still grinning with relief when he reaches the ship: who knew all it would take to help her was a little white lie?

So, the sacrificial trio hadn’t worked. Of course it hadn’t. They were caged; it wasn’t organic; there was no hunt. He had hunted them. But even better than the release of a kill, is a release from responsibility. He’ll take her back to that green planet. He hadn’t been too fond of it himself—too much local flora for his taste, and only a small town stood nearby—but he could tell that Cela had loved it. She’d even smiled as she walked beside him, and their hands had almost brushed….

Lost as he is in memory, it takes him longer than he should to realize that the loud mechanical sound he’s hearing is no longer coming from the hangar bay doors, but from the ship itself. Climbing onto a nearby crate to gain some height, Jaq spots a stray repair droid clinging to the roof of the ship, working busily away at a join between the panels.

“Hey!” He yells. The droid turns its eye to him for a moment, then has the gall to return to its work, ignoring him. “No, hey! Stop that!”

“I thought I told you guys, I wanted that fixed after I took her out today,” Jaq says sternly, when the droid finally stops to listen to him. “It’s nothing but cosmetic damage, and it can wait until the weekend. Got it?”

Seeming to understand, the repair droid scuttles away at last, leaving him free to catch a glimpse of the work it’d left behind.

“And one more thing,” Jaq yells out after the droid, “Get your welding protocol checked!”

—

Cela expects relief to wash over her as she watches Korriban shrink away in the viewport. Though she feels it, it’s overshadowed by her elevated heartrate; the nausea in her stomach; and the headache building in the back of her head. Jaq glances over at her.

“You can sleep, you know,” Jaq says. “I’ll wake you up when we get there.”

Though she is tempted, and Jaq had been right earlier to say that she needed rest, Cela shakes her head. She’ll sleep once she’s there.

Her leg bounces slightly as she stares vacantly out the viewport. One moment Korriban is there, suspended in darkness, and the next, rays of bright white have swept the sight away, pulling them into the swirling blue of hyperspace.

“Oh,” Cela says.

“Yeah?” He looks over at her.

“I left so quickly, I forgot to ask Whinu for on-site coordinates. I should message him now.”

Cela reaches for the ship’s comm, but Jaq stops her by the wrist.

“It’s fine,” Jaq says, a little too quickly. “I got the coordinates for you. It was all part of the message.”

Cela gives him a suspicious look, and tries subtly to shake off his hand—but he holds firm. He’s serious.

“Okay,” Cela says slowly, still holding onto her composure, but just barely. “Then what are they?”

“Uh,” says Jaq, “Two-ninety-two, four, and fifty-six?”

“Stop the ship.”

“No, wait—Cela!”

She makes a grab for the hyperspace lever, but Jaq does too, the wrap of his fingers pressing her palms painfully into the metal grip.

“Cela—” Jaq says, struggling against her pull, “Stop—I’m the pilot here, you can't—”

“Don’t try to pretend it’s all technical—” Cela grits out, drawing on the Force to help her, “You always complain about how simple it is!” With that, she overpowers him and pulls the lever back, and they’re snapped out of hyperspace. Jaq checks the diagnostics display immediately, flipping a couple switches in quick succession as though they mean something, but Cela is too angry to care.

“What’s the meaning of this? You know how much work I have at the academy. You know what I have to deal with! What was the point of lying to me?”

Jaq meets her glare with a matching one, not sorry in the slightest.

“Because I could see that you needed this!”

“I don’t need this,” she seethes. “What I need now is to return to Korriban, and rid myself of a certain pilo—”

The ship shudders, sending her stumbling from where she’d risen to her feet in anger. Blindly, Jaq grabs a handful of her cloak and pulls, putting her roughly back in her seat; his eyes are once again glued to the screen.

“Sit down. Buckle in,” he says. “Something’s wro—”

Cela barely has enough time to process what Jaq would’ve finished saying before the ship shakes and shudders once more, then finally barrel rolls over, veering sideways. Unable to get the seat’s buckles to clip together, she abandons them, reaching out to brace an arm against the wall. Beside her, Jaq wrestles with the controls as red lights flash across the length of the control panel. They’re careening, ship tumbling stem over stern, and Cela’s last sight is of a pale crescent passing across the front viewport, flashing by again and again, as it grows ever larger—

—

Cela stumbles out of the damaged ship. The first thought that occurs to her is that this landscape is disappointing. The cliff they’ve landed on is far too pale and barren, and the chasm that stretches out beyond the edge of it would surely have spelled certain death, had they crashed just a few meters forward.

Behind her, smoke continues to billow out of the wreckage, and Jaq emerges from it, coughing and waving it away. The sight of him alive would usually cheer her, but she’d lost all her cheer on the way here. She greets him with a lightsaber to the throat.

“You planned this,” Cela hisses. “You sabotaged me.”

“What? Cela,” Jaq says, open palms held up in appeasement, “Let’s just slow down, alright? We just crashed, we’re lucky to be alive—”

“You’re lucky to be alive,” she snarls, and presses forward a step; Jaq has no choice but to back away lest her blade singe his throat, even though it brings him closer to the smoldering metal behind him. “Admit it—you engineered the crash hoping it would knock me unconscious. While I lay there bleeding, you would take your chance to strike.”

“Cela, I’m a great pilot, but even I can’t fake a crash like that,” Jaq says. As if on cue, the ship punctuates his statement with a small boom, raining fiery bits of metal into the air behind it. Cela glares at him with renewed suspicion, not entirely certain he doesn’t secretly have some command of the Force, and Jaq continues, desperately pointing to his head wound, “And come on, I’m the one bleeding here!”

“Then whose fault is this?!”

“No one’s!” Jaq says. “Sometimes these accidents just happen! Sure, most of the time it’s because you get shot out of the sky, but sometimes—”

Jaq cuts himself off mid-sentence, looking accusingly into the middle-distance.

“That droid,” he says. “There was a repair droid on our ship before we left!”

“Stop trying to distract me with new information!” Cela cries. “Perhaps someone sabotaged the ship. Perhaps Whinu, the only person besides myself who has access to both the droids and that part of the hangar, was the only one who could have done it. But that doesn’t change the fact that you lied to me!”

“That’s what you care about?” Jaq says in bewildered anger. “Have you met me? I lie all the time!”

“But not to me!”

The words leave her in a painful cry; it rips across her raw throat, leaving her breathless and heaving. Somehow, though, she feels lighter for it—and Jaq stares at her in quiet shock as Cela begins to laugh.

“I’m such a fool,” Cela says, helplessly. “I wanted to believe you for so long. Whenever you waited for me, whenever you comforted me… I wanted to let you in. But you were only toying with me—making it more personal for when you finally twisted the knife. Your transfer to the academy never did make sense to me. Why would you come to Korriban, when you loved your work as a Jedi hunter?”

For the first time since Cela has known him, Jaq is struck speechless. She’s thankful, really—every word out of his mouth has only ever served to endear himself to her further, only convinced her to ascribe to his actions a myriad of flattering motivations. She watches Jaq’s mouth work silently, stopping and starting as he tries to word his response, until finally, his voice is freed.

“The work wasn’t what I loved,” Jaq manages at last. The look in his eyes is unbearably tender; the tone of his voice frames his words as a deep, dear admission; but it only serves to break Cela’s spell of bitter amusement, leaving a hollow smile behind.

“Don’t try to fool me again, assassin,” Cela says. “I know every emotion I feel from you is a mask. I know why Revan placed you here.”

She disables her lightsaber and lets its warm metal roll from her fingertips, dropping it to the ground with a dull thump. Somehow, Jaq looks more disturbed to witness that than when she’d had her blade up to his throat.

“I’ve failed in everything,” Cela says. She’d thought the admission would hurt more, but she only feels dull inside. “Failed to conquer the academy, failed to realize Revan’s vision… failed to see the threats around me for what they are. I won’t entertain you any longer, Jaq. Just do as you were told.”

She bows her head, defeated. With no hood to conceal the world from her, she can still see Jaq’s boots in her periphery, just paces before her. She closes her eyes just as he takes his first step—ready to die by his hand, but unwilling to watch him do it—but finds herself embraced instead.

“I’ve never been anyone’s pawn but yours,” Jaq says. “I thought you knew… or maybe I was too afraid to spell it out for you. I only came to Korriban for you.”

Cela has never felt Jaq like this. His jacket is rough against her cheek; the fabric of his sleeves have dragged new folds into her robes; and the embrace he holds her in is almost… hesitant. It runs contrary to the way he has always presented himself, and she notices then, too, that his mind feels different.

Jaq had explained his training to her, once. Lust, impatience, cowardice… all emotions thrown up to convince Jedi to overlook the hunter in their midst. She didn’t blame him when he continued keeping those walls up on Korriban; in fact, she’d grown used to them. There’s a smoothness to the technique—a simplicity—and in a place as crowded with emotion as the academy, she’d come to appreciate the way he broke himself up into such easily recognizable elements, a place of rest amongst the noise.

She doesn’t feel that simplicity now. She feels… a knot. Twined together, uncertainty-anger-fear, coiled up, hunger-resentment-guilt, and running through it all, a thread of—

As soon as she touches upon it, Jaq flinches, and she realizes she’s reached out too far.

“I’m sorry,” Cela says, finally opening her eyes. The wrecked ship is still behind them, but smoke is no longer in the air.

“It’s fine,” Jaq says. “I want you to see.”

But his fingers, now curled tightly into her cloak, say otherwise.

“I’ve seen enough,” Cela says. A flash of hurt, then dull resignation, passes across the surface of his mind, and his breath stills against her. But she doesn’t pull away; she leans into him, not with mind but with body, and holds him too, as tightly as she’s long yearned to.

Relief overwhelms her—not only her own, but his. He tilts his head in against hers, pressing his cheek into the inner corner of her shoulder, and his hesitance melts in the warmth between them, leaving only their embrace.