That's CAPTAIN Vyen'a to you, kid.

A mark on the day

The quiet, constant hum of the kolto tank buzzed soft and low against the back of Vyen’a’s consciousness, creating an almost comforting blanket of sound.

Except the sound wasn’t comforting.  And she was so cold.

She stared down at her legs, her boots still speckled with bits of a mix of sand and blood.  How long had she sat here?  She lifted a datapad from the floor by her foot, tapping the display to life.

By Galactic Standard Time: four days, sixteen hours, four minutes.

That is how long it had been since she nearly broke flight speed records, cursing and biting back tears the whole way from Tatooine to Coruscant, precious cargo stable and asleep in her med bay’s kolto tank.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust them.  Sotori and Rikur were fine medics.  But the man in the tank was still unconscious when they left the planet.  And he still hadn’t woken up, even after a steady stream of doctors and specialists had poked, prodded, checked and rechecked his vitals, his bioscans, and everything else they could think of.

Jerax still did not stir when they moved him from the kolto tank after day three, laying him in a fresh layer of sheets on a narrow hospital bed.

He didn’t move when his mother and father came, sitting a while with Vyen’a, urging her to take a room in the wing designated for family members.

He didn’t move.  So she didn’t move.

Vyen’a sighed, lowering her head to rest on the pillow next to Jerax, fingertips turning the thick platinum band around and around his ring finger.

All she could do was wait, they had said.  He could wake up in a day, or he could wake up in a decade.  So she waited.

She would always wait.

The datapad bleeped an alert on her lap, making her sit up with a slight start to look at the readout.  She couldn’t help but choke back a strangled sob of a laugh.  The calendar was displayed, a small mark on the day.  

She set the datapad down on the floor again with a small sigh, running fingers through her unkempt hair, and leaned forward, kissing the man’s brow softly and whispering almost inaudibly.

“It’s been a year since Ord Mantell.”  She paused, then sighed, resting her forehead against his.  ”Happy anniversary, Jerax.”

The man did not stir.

A reason to feel

The thin line of smoke curled against the bluish light of a datapad readout screen, tendrils illuminated against the darkness of the room.  Vyen’a sat, legs tucked under, the cigarette dangling from her fingertips as she absently read the datapad, lost in thought.

Been a helluva year, ain’t it?

The woman smiled, lavender eyes glancing to the half-open doorway.  A figure could be seen curled on its side, blankets wrapped around the masculine frame half-exposed by the empty spot on the bed where she’d been shortly before.

Yeah.  A helluva year.

Memories tumbled around her as she tightened the blanket around her shoulders; that first chance meeting on Ord Mantell seeming absolutely innocuous until Jerax took off his helmet.  Vyen’a had seen hundreds of faces in the years before that, taken plenty of the prettier ones to bed, but something in his eyes struck her down to her very core like no one else.  It’s why she’d stuck around after getting him in bed, rather than sending him on his way.  She wanted to know more.  

Even with that jealous streak.

Vyen’a smirked slightly.  They hadn’t been without their problems.  The whatever it was with Dhen.  The fights.  The breakup and break.  It was simple enough to fall back into old patterns while they were split.  Tal was easy to fall into bed with; the twi’lek had the same drive, the same spirit between the sheets as she did.  The fact that he’d seemed to be almost infatuated with her was fun, too.

Wonder where he got off to.  Trouble, knowing him.

Her smile faded slightly.

And then there’s Ihlrath.

The smile dissolved into a scowl, slender fingers stubbing out the cigarette as she glanced at the necklace resting on her table.  She’d stopped wearing it a few days after she was pulled out of the kolto tank, its slender gold chain replaced by the carefully wrought platinum one from Jerax.  Vyen’a kicked herself for having fallen for Ihl’s words.

Of course he told you he loved you, dumbass.  You were gonna stop sleeping with him.

It still didn’t take the prideful sting away.  When he’d stopped talking to her, slowly at first, then just not responding at all.  When Alasha grabbed him at the trials like she had a claim others didn’t.   

Bet she thought I told her I’d look out for him for her.  Bet she hasn’t a clue about me and him.

The few times after the trials when she’d tried to reach out to Ihl and got nothing didn’t sting as bad as the knowledge that she’d actually believed it.  She’d known better; she had her boundaries that only one or two others had gotten past before.

And he never even thanked you for rewiring his ship, or the Hyperion.  Eh, you’re a dumb slua, girl.  Live and learn.

She lit another cigarette, burning ember glowing red hot against the dark of the room, and glanced over her shoulder toward Jerax’s sleeping form again.  He was the one that mattered the most.  The trick was to get him to understand it.

The good lieutenant doesn’t need to know about what happened.  Any of it.  All he needs to know is that whatever happens, whoever shows up, I’ll always come back to him.  I’ll always be his girl first.

She’d kept people at arm’s length for so long; Jerax had finally given her a reason - and the want - to open up and truly feel.  Vyen’a glanced back down at the datapad on her lap, the small smile creeping back across her face at the display of elegantly wrought, delicate yet somehow still masculine rings listed.

Always his girl first.

A Moment in Time

0322, Galactic Standard time.

A med bay.

A row of kolto tanks, each filled with bodies, some two to a tank, the healing properties of the liquid silently working, the only noise the beep of machinery and droids.

It was late.  Or early.  All the other living souls on board the Hyperion were asleep.

Except her.

The chill of the glass seeped through her fingertips and crept up her arms, causing Vyen’a to shiver slightly in place.  Still, she stood, hands pressed flat against the outside of the tank, forehead resting against the thick glass.  She hated med bays.  She hated being tanked.  Right now, though, she would trade everything she’d ever had to be inside, floating unconscious.  Instead of him.  The cot she’d made up lay untouched; the blankets, unfolded.  

She shivered again but didn’t recognize the motion, eyes squeezed tightly shut as she silently mouthed the almost forgotten words from her childhood.  The prayers she had learned, drawing figures with the edge of a stick in the hard-packed dirt of the grotto’s floor, carved from the thick rock halfway up the mountain.  A place to meditate and become a part of the life force with the goddesses, the gentle old priest had told her.  

And she had. 

The memory of the warmth that came with prayer never left her; how after she felt as though she glowed brighter than any star in the night sky.  How she felt so peaceful - so right.  Like her face turned toward a warm spring sun after months of rain.  When she was removed from training after her parents were gone, the feeling was gone.  Lost forever to time, she’d assumed.

Until she met Jerax.

And then the warmth came back.

She took a shuddering breath, tear slipping out from the corner of her eye to creep down the bridge of her nose, hanging from its tip until it broke free and fell, splashing against her boot.  A droid rolled near, beeping, and she shook her head.  

“No.  Still stable.  I’m watching this one.”

The droid beeped in acknowledgement, moving to the next tank.  Vyen’a let out a shaky breath.  She’d not let Jerax know how bad his injuries really were.  She may have even tried to play them off, urging him to have a drink with the rest of the less-injured.  But now her eyes opened to stare down at the readout, the scan results flashing across the screens.  She knew how close he’d come.

Her eyes raised to look at his face through the thick glass and greenish liquid, still somehow peaceful in artificial unconsciousness, and her breath caught slightly in her throat.  The prayers started up again, haltingly, before trailing off into a shuddering sigh as she pressed her forehead against the glass again.

The droids beeped their readouts.

The kolto tanks hummed.

A minute clicked on the chrono hanging on the wall.

0323, Galactic Standard time.

Reborn

Vyen’a stared up at the ceiling of the Hyperion’s med bay, listening to the quiet thrum of activity around her: the sickly cough of a soldier, the gentle hum of the kolto tank behind her, whir-beeps of attendant droids as they checked patient after patient.

Fuckin’ hate these places.

She struggled to sit up, propping herself on her elbows shakily and looking around the bay.  She had to promise to come back for them to let her get out of the tank in the first place.  The kolto tank, where she had floated, unconscious and oblivious, for well over a full galactic standard day until Ihlrath had nudged her mind.  

Do you plan on sleeping all day?

The question had curled around the edges of her consciousness, shaking her awake mentally even as the heavy sedation kept her body asleep.  It was through that conversation she had learned of the end of the battle, how the walker she and Book and a dozen soldiers were moving in took a direct hit.  How it was sheer luck that she wasn’t killed outright; the soldier to her left took a piece of shrapnel through the throat, cutting apart his heavy armor like it was the most delicately woven synthweave.  

That was the last thing she remembered seeing; the shock in the man’s eyes fading to the flat emptiness of death.  Apparently one of the Marran - Soterius? - turned back to find the walker and pulled the survivors free, one by one.

More lives than a manka cat, hon.  You’re gonna run out of luck soon enough.

Vyen’a flexed the toes on her broken leg, frowning.  Between the kolto and the force powers that had been used, her right leg was quickly stitching itself back together.  Crushed under an armor box this time, she thought wryly.  Shot.  Stabbed.  Shot again. Infected.  Might as well hack it off at the knee and get cybernetic replacement at this point. She flexed her toes again.  Like hell.

Her thoughts drifted back to the night before.  Waking up mentally, if not physically, to speak with Ihlrath.  Waking up again to stare through the thick liquid and thicker glass, the blurry figures staring back.  Laughing.  Her mouth drew down slightly at the memory.

Tlau, the lot.  Let’s see how -they’d- like being stuck in that thing.

But coming out, finally.  The first breath of fresh air - as fresh as recirculated air could get - felt like heaven.  And Jerax.  The look of relief, of love on his face as he helped her down and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.  Niatara’s grin, turning almost sheepish as Vyen’a had looked between the diminutive Zabrak and the hulking soldier next to her.

Good on ya, Ansten.  Y’contacted her.  Don’t fuck it up, eh?

And the way she felt, cradled in Jerax’s arms as he carried her around.  Like a tiny baby, somehow.  Reborn.  Maybe it was the look of actual, honest relief and…  happiness, maybe? On the face of everyone who saw her out of the tank, alive. Cursing as the pain crept back into her chest, her leg.  And - when they all suddenly found themselves face to face with the oldest, ugliest, most insect-looking fuck she’d ever seen - the sharp edge of pain glistening just under the numbing of the med stim the droid had shot her full of before they went planetside  made everything far funnier than they should have been.  

Niatara and Alasha didn’t seem happy about what the creature had said to them.  Jerax seemed tense at the words directed toward him. Only she had laughed.  Whether she was delirious from pain or kolto, or the irony of the situation hit her before it truly sunk in, she had laughed.

He don’ know what he’s talkin’ about.

She rubbed her eyes, her own words echoing in her head.  He had known what he was talking about, that was the problem.  The years spent carefully crafting her identity, running from place to place, seemed so foreign to her even now, barely a week from when she was considering disappearing again.

I don’t regret it.  Not any more.

She looked up, smiling, as a familiar voice echoed from outside the bay; the low, masculine rumble echoing against the durasteel walls the same way it had echoed off the inside of his helmet on their first meeting, way back on Ord Mantell.

It brought me here.

Feels like home

The low crackle-buzz of automated lights clicking on filtered through Vyen’a’s subconscious, her eyes opening slowly.  Unfamiliar walls, an unfamiliar ceiling, an unfamiliar bed gently became known as she woke, turning her head to glance back toward the sleeping man curled around her.

A familiar face.

Jerax.

She hadn’t expected to see him there.  She hadn’t expected to be there; it took some careful slicing and flying to get within range, spending way too much on a half-junked personal shuttle only to abandon it if necessary, holding her breath more than once doing things that should have gotten her killed, her head smashed like an overripe berry from the pressure of space; whispering thankful prayers when they worked, wondering when her luck would run out.

And then while she was working; expecting a quick slice in and slip away, the Marran, the Seventh, all of them arriving for the real work.  The hard work.  And her blending back in with them seamlessly.

And their insistence that she return with them to the Hyperion.  

Up until then, she was still uncertain if she would return, or if she did, if she would stay.  Then they started.  Ihlrath’s warm smile as she walked onto the bridge.  Jerhal’s words echoed in her head,  ”Dumb cunt, don’t you ever do that again!”, whispered as he crushed her into a hug.  The crudeness of the statement belying the very deep emotion beneath.  Even then, though, she wasn’t sure.  It would have been easy, so easy to just slip away again.  To make her own way again.

Like the sent holo, though, Jerax’s emotion at seeing her had broke her will to be alone again.  Through the stoicism of his face, his eyes gave it all away.  The hands on her waist and in her hair as he had pressed his mouth to hers, the surprising amount of fear that tinged the kiss sealed it.

She couldn’t leave that.

She couldn’t leave him.

Vyen’a shifted, rolling carefully to face Jerax and resting her forehead against his as he slept.  A small smile passed across his face at the movement; she smiled back softly.  She knew, now.  She could stop running, for the first time since she left Mirial.  She could stop looking.  No matter what happened - with the Nemesis, with this idiot Colonel trying to take them out, with the Sith, with the Seventh, with anyone anywhere.

Right here is where she wanted to be.

She was home.