that awkward feeling when Who: Kaz & Liri. What: Kaz transports Liri and her new crew to Coruscant to deal with the slasher problem. When: A few days after Liri asks for help on the holonet. Where: Space. Rating: G.
The Hands flew through space at a steady speed, having left hyperspace for a few moments in order to rest the engines. Kaz sat at the helm, feeling good for a number of reasons: the fact that his ship was restored to him, that he was behind the wheel once more, and that strange warmth that altruism gives a person. Nudging their flight path a touch, he glanced to Liri in the co-pilot seat.
"You've been oddly silent thus far," he commented, looking back to the viewscreens to see how the situation with the hyperdrive was faring. He held no desire to overclock anything and shut down his ship mid-space, especially when he was transporting so many over such a distance.
“It’s not exactly the best situation,” Liriael offered, with a heavy sigh. Her eyes had been fixated on the stream of stars, when she wasn’t adjusting the controls as he needed. “I just assembled a crew to go and possibly hunt down someone that I loved. And to boot, one of my friends thinks I am crazy for pursuing it, and I cannot explain to him that I can feel what’s going to happen.” Absently, she took her hands from the controls so she could scrub at her face, with a small groan. “It’s….I don’t know yet how to handle this. I have to assume it will come to me, if I am patient.”
"Jedi mind trick?" He glanced at her again, this time feeling confident enough in the controls to leave them be for the moment. He leaned back in his chair, giving Liri his full attention. The dull sound of quiet conversation in the cargo hold was present, but Kaz wasn't worried about those who were following Liri into this potential fool's errand; he was doing his small part, and that would be that. He didn't want to get into the habit of doing favors without any recompense, even for Sinjir.
“If I was a Jedi, perhaps.” It was said wryly, but there was a trace of longing there too; she hadn’t wanted to leave Dermos, nor take a break from her training when she had just begun, but her master, Qui-Gon, and the others were called away as often, now that they had aligned with the Resistance. And she wouldn’t abandon Cassie to her fate, not without attempting to help. Still, accusatory words rang in her ears. “Kaz, I know Cassie’s history and where she is from, and she didn’t want to turn into this. Am I crazy for preparing for that eventuality, that I can’t save her? Or am I giving up?”
Silence met her words as Kaz carefully considered his reply. Gloved hands ran over his slacks, smoothing out imaginary wrinkles.
"I've always been a believer in preparing for all eventualities. To go in believing that there will only be one outcome is truly setting yourself up for failure. Telling yourself now that you may need to let her go...
"If the moment comes, you know you won't falter. If you know her as well as you think you do, and you know she wouldn't want to be this, it would be kinder to ensure that you're able to strike the killing blow." His tone was soft but certain, his gaze that held hers unerring.
In return, her eyes held a wealth of sadness, but also certainty. “I can see the path laid out, as if I have already walked it. I don’t know why...I just do. And it’s unexplainable, but I am preparing for that. I let her go some time ago, although it’s not complete, but that’s the nature of grief.” A small half-smile quirked her lips, albeit without humor. “It sounds crazy even when I say it. Jedi mumbo-jumbo, right? Maybe Sinjir had it right.” She wilted, in the seat, closing her eyes. “Maybe I am getting carried away.”
The slightest tinge of surprise colored Kaz's face. He was momentarily torn between continuing their current leg of conversation and sating his own curiosity. The latter won out.
"And what did he have to say on the subject?"
If she heard the faint firming of his tone, carefully made to frame his question as neutral, she did not seem to register it. “He said that I jumped right to executing her, without trying anything else,” she answered, a mumble. “He already detests that I have joined the Jedi and started training, but that’s nothing new.” Realizing she was being obtuse, she reopened her eyes. “Sorry….this doesn’t give you much to work with. Sinjir is an old friend of mine. I’ve known him since I was thirteen, when I first left Malastare. He’s practically family, but just like my blood family, he’s never approved of my wanting to become a Jedi. I think this has just made it worse.”
Kaz listened, his face growing darker by the moment. "I know Sinjir, and he can certainly be hotheaded, but he never seemed to me one to jettison a relationship over a minor disagreement like joining the Jedi. What slight did they do to him?"
“You know Sinjir?” That made Liriael straighten up, surprised, before she added, “I suppose that should not shock me. Both you and he have made it a priority to know anyone of consequence.” Torn between her loyalty to her longtime friend, and honesty, she finally relented with, “I can’t imagine they did anything to him, since they didn’t really exist when he and I were first friends. It’s more what they represent. He looks at them...at us, I guess I should say….as cowards and charlatans. He doesn’t like the Code, either. He thinks,” she punctuated this with a wry, sad smile, “that I should be out there ‘living life’, as he says, rather than holed up with the others.”
He nodded slowly in reply as he listened. "I'll admit, I only know a cursory history of them. What they were certainly did not seem to aid their cause; they grew complacent, mired in their ways, and that lead to their downfall. It's no different than any other organization; you change or you die.
"It sounds like he's worried for you, in his own way. Which, I admit, is very off putting, but," he continued with a shrug, "he tries."
“It was many years ago,” she pointed out, “that the Jedi Order fell, just prior to the Empire. And we know that a lot of it was orchestrated by the Emperor himself. I’m not saying it didn’t have those exact issues, just that the rampant hatred doesn’t make sense. Especially when for so much of our time, they weren’t even here.” She shook her head a little. “I still consider Sinjir a friend, mostly, but there was a lot that happened that damaged my trust, and this is just a part of it. I’m fairly sure he would say the same thing about me, to be utterly fair.” Liriael glanced over at Kaz, speculative. “How do you know him? You aren’t usually one for friends.”
"He's..." Kaz seemed at a loss for words. "...a business associate." He looked down to the dashboard controls, fiddling with calibrations that were unnecessary. "How does the hyperdrive look to you?"
Liriael blinked, then said, smartly, “It looks like it’s avoiding answering a question, but that’s hyperdrives for you.”
Kaz frowned, his face turning slightly red. "I didn't avoid the question. He's a business associate."
She gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “Business associates don’t make you blush. In fact, I’ve never seen anything make you blush, Kaz Brekker. Now ‘fess up.”
He swallowed, staring hard at the dashboard as though he could will the ship into motion and remove himself from the situation. Finally he sighed and relented, though he did not turn to meet Liri's gaze. "He is a business associate; that's how I met him. Been doing deals for awhile now, and we finally met in person since he's upscaling his operation.
"Beyond that, he's also...a friend. I'm not sure what to term it beyond that." He reached and flicked a few buttons, adding a little more power to the engines and thrusting the Hands forward a little faster. Then he turned back to Liri, one brow arched. "Is that a sufficient enough of an explanation from the hyperdrive?"
“For a hyperdrive, certainly. A little less for a person.” Relenting, Liriael continued, “Kaz, I’m not here to pry into your private life, so I am sorry. It just surprised me, that’s all. Certainly, Sinjir makes an interesting friend.” Her gaze had softened, as she leaned back once more. “You don’t need to term it any differently. I’ve known him a long time, and I know what he is like, and he’s not a bad person at all.”
"He's aggravating, but no, not a bad person." He sat back in his chair, rolling one shoulder to relieve his tension. "I apologize, I shouldn't have snapped. You know me better than most, and I do consider you a friend, Liriael. I've just..." Sighing, he passed a hand over his already impeccable hair.
"I wouldn't say confusing, necessarily, though he does tend to bring a certain amount of chaos with him wherever he goes. The simplest way to explain things is that he's important to me, but I had no idea that you two were acquainted." A new thought dawned on him, furrowing his brow. "Is he assisting you in this endeavor?"
She had to smile at that description of Sinjir; chaos did follow him like an ion trail. “He’s important to me, too,” she offered, before she added, “Yes, he is helping me, on Coruscant. Is that going to be a problem?”
Kaz shook his head, though the worried look did not leave his face. "I'm not going to be the one to tell him what to do, but I would prefer to have him back in one piece when you're finished with him. I'm sure having you there to temper him, though, will be for the better." He sighed, releasing the worry to the ether since there was little more he could do for it. Instead, his mind switched gears.
"If you don't mind, I'd like to hear more about what it is exactly you're doing. You said this involves one of your friends? The Cassie girl we spoke of before, on Naboo?"
Briefly, Liri smiled at the protectiveness she felt from Kaz when he spoke of Sinjir, understanding it better through the flow of the Force than from his words. But that was indeed private. She instead answered, “Yes….Cassie Hack. She came through the rift several years ago, and got by working on ships here and there, which is how I met her. We became pretty fast friends.” Her eyes darkened with the memory. “My best friend, in time. I bought the Vagabond with the plan that she and I could finally be independent, have our own ship and take what jobs we wanted. I was teaching her how to fly it.” Her smile flitted across her mouth, like a ghost. “She had her fair share of bad memories….back in her world, she was a hunter, which made us good bodyguards when we worked together. She hunted slashers….undead murderers, crazy as that sounds. She had started out because her own mother had come back to life as a slasher after she died. She had wanted so badly to leave that life behind when she came here…..a fresh start, she said.”
His gaze rested nearly unblinking on her, listening as she explained. "And you believe that she's risen, as her mother did. She's the one responsible for these murders that the Order has been denouncing."
Liriael didn’t nod, but her expression spoke volumes. “I felt it,” she admitted, “when we went to collect her body. I could tell that something was off, but I did not pursue it, since I was keeping to a role in order to retrieve her. Not until they admitted that she was missing, did I know for certain.” Her shoulders sagged. “This is why Sinjir and I don’t get along anymore, you know. He used to laugh at it, these flashes of insight, but he still listened. He knew it wasn’t a trick; he knew the Force, too. But then, we spent so much time together that we became family, like brother and sister.” Her lips had tightened, face drawn with strain from the memories. “I didn’t know that people like us, Force-users, could create bonds. It wasn’t until years later of studying the Archives, the Jedi records that I found, that I understood. Just as a Master and a student can bond, so can any two who work together and are both sensitive to the Force. But what did happen in the end was that he accused me of some pretty vile things…..reading his mind, affecting his emotions. And perhaps he was right. I may have been doing that unconsciously as our bond grew, even though I didn’t think I had. In return for his accusations, I broke that bond.” She lifted her eyes to Kaz’. “Painfully, brutally, and not slowly either. I was angry, and scared at it, and….I wanted it gone, eradicated. It pretty much ended any connection we had for one another. Neither one of us trusts the other now, not with anything approaching real emotions.” She sighed, and scrubbed her fingers across her face. “Yea...you asked about Cassie, though.”
Kaz was taken aback by the sudden influx of information. His eyes narrowed, but he calmed before launching into a tirade as Liri had just done.
"Sinjir is very opinionated," he agreed. "But surely he's not the same person as he was. What happened between you two is in the past. Are you trying to warn me away from him?"
Surprise flooded her eyes, before she shut down her expression completely, regretting the admission. “No,” she said, evenly. “It’s none of my business, and I certainly don’t expect this to be of consequence. Forget it.” Now it was her turn to look at the hyperdrive, but she only glanced over the controls before she said, “I should probably warn the rest of the team what they are going up against. Frankly, I still wish I was going alone.” More under her breath, she said, “It’s not too late for that, really…”
Kaz turned back to his controls, hearing her muttering enough to discern its meaning. "It's not your fault any of this is happening, Liriael, and there are more than just me who would see it a waste for you to sacrifice yourself for this. They signed up willingly, did they not?" He flicked controls, bringing the engines to life with a subtle roar. "Besides, we're almost halfway there. I'm not turning around now."
“It’s not a sacrifice, but it is partly my fault. My crew was targeted because I brought Dee on. Cassie’s death was a result of that. I’m firmly putting her death on Glasya, so it isn’t that, but I did put her in the position to be found. And now? I should have taken care of her body, should have respected what she told me before. I know I left to protect Caine, and so far, he’s still safe, but I failed in several respects before we got to this point.”
He pushed the Hands forward, bringing the hyperdrive online. "It's all well and good to take responsibility, Liriael. Now you just have to do better with this crew, which I believe you can. You just have to agree." He settled back in his seat, waving a hand at the controls to imply she should activate the hyperdrive, if she so chose. "It's your choice."
Liri sighed, frowning deeply at whatever internal thoughts still ran through her head. But in the end, she reached over and activated the hyperdrive. As the stars became thin, white lines streaming across the plexisteel screen once more, she looked over to Kaz. “It needs to be done,” she answered, quietly. “At least I have a chance of understanding what we will find.”
He offered her a quiet nod in return, having no more to say. Instead, he turned his attention to the ship, and the physical tasks he could accomplish therein.