Fic: "those people who smile a lot (watch the eyes)" [SW - "Always" 'verse. Krista. PG.]
those people who smile a lot (watch the eyes)
by moonlightrick
Disclaimer: I own Krista and her brothers, but not the Star Wars galaxy and characters (Jaina, Miko, etc). Ani Difranco owns the occasional clips of lyrics (from her song "Outta Me, Onto You"). I am making no money off of this; it’s just a bit of entertainment.
Rating: PG, at most.
Word Count: 3,852
Summary: “Just remember that I loved you / Just remember you were warned.” (Ani Difranco)
Characters/Pairings: Krista Harif, the Harif brothers, Miko Reglia, Jaina Solo, hints of Krista/Miko and Jaina/Zekk
Author’s Note: Krista, up until her introduction in Always II: Caught in the Rain. Forgive the style; I’m re-adjusting to stories shorter than 200+ pages ;p
~
Krista is seven, and her parents are leaving on a trip. She doesn’t want them to go, and she cries and yells and wraps herself around her mama’s leg. She never likes it when they leave, and she always makes a scene. Gryq is at least a little annoyed with her when their parents pass her off, and his fingers are tight on her shoulders. “Be good,” her daddy says, and her parents bestow last hugs and kisses, and then they leave even with her pleas in their ears.
A few hours later, Gryq has distracted her with a holo-film and a scoop of ice cream. This, too, happens every time.
A day later, her parents are dead. Orphaned without yet knowing, Krista has a nightmare. Gryq cuddles her on the couch until she sleeps, and he stays with her even if he is a grown up now.
~*~
Gryq is pale the next morning, and Bull and Cel’s eyes are red. Cel is always strange and quiet, but Bull never is except for the day when Gryq tells her that mama and daddy won’t be coming back.
She knows how this works-doesn’t like it when they go away, but they come back eventually, sometimes with a new doll. “Gone a long time?” she asks, meekly, her lips trembling. She clutches Cyntha, her favourite stuffed bantha, tight to her chest. She’s seven, and her chest feels funny, but she thinks they’re coming back, even when Gryq says they won’t. Gryq is just her big brother, after all.
~*~
A month goes by, and her parents still haven’t come back. She stops asking when they’re coming home, because Gryq always looks upset, and Cel and Bull get mad at her. Once, Cel yells at her about the funeral they went to a while ago, but she doesn’t believe him-it’s one of his tricks. She gets just as mad as anyone.
One afternoon, she sneaks into her parents’ room, and it doesn’t look right-too many boxes. How are they supposed to find anything when they get back?
Bull finds her crying in the closet, and cuddles her close even though his shirt gets wet.
~*~
For her eighth lifeday, she gets her mama’s makeup bag. Her brothers don’t know anything about makeup, so she spends the rest of the day behind a locked door, experimenting and trying to remember what her mama taught her. She sits on the ‘fresher counter, pretending to be her mama, or at least that her mama is there. She looks beautiful.
~*~
Krista hasn’t let go of the invitation all day, not while she was crying in a ‘fresher stall, not even during class. It’s very rumpled, and at least a little wet. After school, she checks her makeup to make sure the red in her eyes doesn’t show, and her lips are cheerfully glossy. Krista doesn’t need to learn how to apply cosmetics, which she imagines is one of Naala’s Things To Do.
Naala’s waiting for the public trans, talking excitedly with a group of her friends. She waves to Krista, who walks up to her quickly. They used to like the same boy, but Treq turned out to be a jerk (Cel had some other words), and Krista and Naala have been friends ever since. “Ever since” hasn’t been long, though, or at least not long enough.
“I wish I could come,” Krista says, and holds out the invitation. She hasn’t been able to flatten it properly, and the flimsi tells exactly where it’s been. “I have relatives coming in from off-world, and they aren’t staying for long.” She doesn’t have any family other than her brothers, of course, but she’s heard this excuse used before. “My bro-family wouldn’t let me leave the house. Sorry. It sounds like fun.”
A mother-and-daughter slumber party. Krista imagines that she and her mama would be the best, friendliest guests there, and turn even the ugliest girl into a pretty one.
A couple of the girls around Naala look horrified-they’ve known Krista longer, so they didn’t realize she’d been invited or they would have said something.
Krista leaves before anyone can make an exception, and she never tells her brothers. They can play father all they want, but she is her own mother.
~*~
Krista’s first kiss leaves an aftertaste that lasts beyond her brothers’ reactions. She’s thirteen-far too young for anything, let alone kissing, Gryq would tell her. In spite of what Gryq thinks about his little sister, Krista’s kiss happens in an abandoned corner of the library, amongst languages and people so dead they’re still in books, with the cutest boy in her class. He’s new, and smart, and Krista pretended to need tutoring. He isn’t that naïve-two years older than her-and as soon as they turn a corner he grins and swoops in to kiss her. Their noses bump, her hands feel awkward, and he’s quite a bit taller than her so she has to stand on her tiptoes. It isn’t what she expected, but once she gets used to it she rather likes his tongue in her mouth-she’ll find out later that this is due more to his skill than to the general feeling of someone else’s tongue flailing about around her teeth.
She likes this kiss, and the tight hold he has on her, and the gasp he makes when she presses closer. Her brothers, of course, never tell her about any of this-she got The Talk from her friends and some books-but she lives with three boys, and they’re all dating now. They forget, sometimes, that her friendships with girls are getting more precarious, and she does have eyes. She has seen enough, at home and in any of the spaceports that they drag her to, not to be surprised when her first kiss gets hot, and the boy’s hands wander a bit. She adjusts, and then she’s sighing and gasping, and she likes these feelings, the rush of her blood and air, the sounds he’s making, even if this is going faster than she thought it would.
The library isn’t exactly her brothers’ place, so she’s surprised by a familiar voice, but not stupid enough to ignore it. “Shavit,” she says, pulling back from the boy. He looks dazed, or irritated, but she doesn’t have time for a boy’s ego. “My brother-” She grabs her bag and tries to straighten herself out as she runs down the row of books and datapads.
Cel is already waiting at the end, and he grabs her arm tight enough that it yanks her to a stop. “Time to go,” he says, looking very stern.
She glances back and can’t see the boy, but she walks anyway. She likes her secrets, and Cel hasn’t seen anything yet.
She’s wrong, as it turns out, because he tips her head up and studies her in the light before scowling. “You look like a clown,” says the brother whose girlfriends leave lipstick all over his face.
Cel is furious that she was making out with a boy, and even more so when she won’t give a name. Worse, Cel tells Gryq that the baby is growing up, and soon they’re moving again-this time, it’s to the Jedi academy, of all things.
A month later, the boy dies in one of the first Imperial bombings. When she reads his name in the lists, she runs to her room and throws a tantrum. Cel hears her from all the way down the hall, and holds her until the tears are gone and she’s stopped throwing things.
~*~
Gryq is ordered to Coruscant because he’s a pilot. Cel surprises them all by leaving with his older brother-not to be a pilot, but to join the New Republic Intelligence Agency. Bull is left to babysit her until Cel and Gryq’s paycheques aren’t enough to support three homes, and then he takes a job on a transport ship, fixing engines. Naturally, he leaves her at the temple. At first, he tries to get back every weekend, and then every other, but soon over a month goes by and her brothers-constant comm calls and those conversations Krista knows they have with her teachers, aside-have left her alone. On a jungle planet. With meditation classes.
Krista kisses several more boys at the praxeum, and likes them even more.
~*~
The older Krista gets, the fewer girlfriends she has, and she doesn’t really understand it for a long while. She’s pretty-she knows that from the way boys look at her-and she’s happy and friendly, even if she’s bored and irritated by the latest place her brothers have dumped her. She has plenty of boys, and pays for that wealth with girls. It takes time for her to realize that that’s exactly how some girls see it.
~*~
There’s a group of Jedi students who are a little older than her, and apparently well on their way to being the Jedi around the temple, even if they are just apprentices-Jedi royalty, royal Jedi, and someone who’s wasting his chance to be the first billionaire play-Jedi. Ranner, or something. He has terrible fashion sense.
The group is almost matched up, Krista notices one day from a boy’s lap. The probably pretty (but kind of scary; and the lizard skin outfit is…an interesting choice) princess turns in satellite with the Solo prince, who is so very much a teenage boy (although Krista will admit to watching all his lightsaber duels-he looks more like a man, then). Ranner-whoever is ruddy and ridiculous, offset by a lovely, exotic centaur (she’s one of the few people, Krista thinks, who doesn’t need makeup). Slightly on the peripheral, controversially-named Anakin Solo (Krista just knows he’ll break hearts someday) is inseparable from a little blonde girl who never met a brush or shoe she ever liked.
Everyone’s prepared to settle down in their mid-teens, saving the galaxy and being “friends” until they die, which isn’t all that interesting as far as Krista is concerned. They can keep their days out in the sun, and all their happy-ever-afters-Krista’s never believed in them, especially with two brothers getting ready for a war.
Jaina Solo is much more interesting: she has a space beside her empty of love or “friend,” and instead has demons creeping up on her back. If everyone in this kind of group matches up, Krista thinks, then who goes with the good-but-wary princess-who-isn’t?
(Krista sees him in holo-captures, though she doesn’t know it yet. Krista’s always had a thing for bad boys, and the Darkest Knight has the eyes and body to boot.)
Jaina is almost as bad at meditating as Krista is. Krista is as good as she can be, as much girlfriend material as she can be, until they’re texting and whispering while they’re supposed to be getting in touch with the musty Force.
~*~
Jaina is a Jedi, but she’s also a pilot and mechanical whiz, so she’s more interested in grease than nail polish; Krista’s working on that. On one of their free days, she, Jaina and Lusa are out by the water. Jaina’s more clean skin and nails than usual, thanks to her swim, and Krista is taking advantage of the clean slate to try makeup looks.
“I never feel comfortable with it,” Jaina admits, while Lusa is wading in the water. “And I’ve never really had a reason for it.”
Krista hesitates, then uses more mascara. She doesn’t feel comfortable without makeup-she feels too exposed and transparent to the galaxy. She doesn’t tell Jaina this, though, and instead snoops in Jaina’s business. “No guy? Ever?”
Jaina blinks and pulls away. She bites her lip, ruining the lipstick’s application. “There was. Is? I- My best friend, Zekk.” Despite using the clichéd best friend definition, Jaina explains about the street boy, and soon those demons are peeking over Jaina’s shoulder as she admits the guilt she feels, because- “You’d know him as Onyx, now. The Darkest Knight.”
It’s like something right out of a holo-vid. “He is pretty hot,” Krista says, grinning.
Jaina tries to grin back, then suddenly stands, walks to the edge of the boulder, and dives into the water. It’s as obviously a way to hide tears as all of Krista’s mascara.
Krista thinks she’d rather not ever be in love.
~*~
After seven months, meditation and trying to lift rocks gets old, even with Jaina as a friend. The coming war is no longer just whispered and rumoured. Jaina is getting distracted, too, by those demons and Zekk, and her role in a war with both.
Krista, for all the advertising, isn’t so great with the Force; she really only has trace talent with it, and no patience for it. Her brothers needed a safe, closely-monitored place for her, and she’s been keeping busy with all the boys, but it’s past time for her to leave. There’s only so much of a pseudo-religion and partying void that she can stand. Krista can be many things, but a faithful was never one of them.
The next time a ship comes through Yavin IV, Krista stows away and looses herself on an unprepared galaxy. She doesn’t warn her brothers-they’ll find out soon enough, and she isn’t going to give them a head start on finding her.
Not even two weeks later, the praxeum has been decimated by a Dark Jedi siege. The academy burns, over a hundred students and Jedi are killed, and all the Jedi are on the run. Krista, safe and working on a smuggler’s ship, with no traces of Jedi on her in this new galaxy, calls her brothers. Even she isn’t that selfish.
It takes Cel another month to track her down.
~*~
Cel is different when he finds her. He’s just as unnerving for strangers, but she can see the ways he’s grown up. Her brothers are back to not trusting her (or the galaxy, but she can’t blame them as much on that point), and so she gets to live with her more stably-employed and -deployed brother. As the war builds, and Krista gets older, she has more success in making Cel use her for missions. She can flirt entirely off his radar, or she can do it with some purpose (and without her other brothers knowing about some of the costumes) where he can watch her. Krista is, after all, very good at pretending and flirting both. (She also happens to be very good at other things, but her brothers really don’t want to know about that.)
~*~
Krista is fifteen and older than her brothers, even Cel, will admit. On her next mission, she hands in her report and then disappears.
~*~
For a while, Krista dances.
Coruscant falls, and she dances in old Imperial Palace as it is restored to its position of power. She flirts, kisses, and does far more than she could ever safely tell her brothers, and all the while sends in reports to Resistance Intel. She becomes, if not wiser, then at least smarter-she enjoys the looks, the outfits, the things her brothers would never let her get away with; she has enough partying and booze and men to make a girl’s head spin. But she spends a year on occupied Coruscant-half of it dancing, and then odd jobs otherwise-and it makes her think despite her best efforts. She hears what she missed before, understands what she once ignored, and her Intel reports become more detailed, then turn into active missions rather than games for the sake of her brothers’ loyalty.
She doesn’t know if she’s really an exceptional actress, but she is very distracting, constantly underestimated, and if she knows anything, then she knows men.
Some time when she isn’t looking, Krista becomes an Intel agent.
~*~
They offer her a promotion-the opportunity to have her own unit of agents inside the palace, provided she can get them in. Krista absolutely lied about her age and last name when she joined the Resistance, but she is nonetheless sure that they have no idea who she is, except someone who is very good at getting information that no one should be stupid enough to talk about.
Cel, she thinks, would notice such a reckless move. She turns down the promotion, and trades the unit for a partner. The partner is also a contact, and someone slides a holo-capture of Miko Reglia under her door.
~*~
Miko Reglia is (was, rather, according to her information) a Dark Jedi. She’s only seen him from a distance, and that one time at the Jedi praxeum. He blah-blah’ed about the state of the NR, the duty and role of the Jedi, stuff she tuned out at thirteen (and, honestly, still does). If he’s going to be a Dark Jedi stereotype, she expects one of the tortured idealists-everything was wrong, and his own better judgement led him astray. She talks to people, and she knows that he’s never been the death squad (or camp) type.
Miko, who has supposedly turned back, sounds exactly like a man at risk of thinking himself to death. If he starts blabbing about the universe and mortal nature, she’ll go batty-which is exactly what she expects until she sees him for the first time.
~*~
Krista’s memory of Miko Reglia was from a distance, of too-bright red hair and a boring lecture. She spent most of it gawping at his infamous (and very, very hot) master, Kyp Durron. Miko’s mug shot on the holo-web is very unflattering, and rather lonely. He’s a cog in the Dark Jedi machinery, but hardly its poster boy.
This is very hard for her to understand once she’s in the same room as him.
They meet for the first time in a lift, in a forgotten corner of the Imperial palace. When she pulls the emergency break, the lights flicker, and a faint alarm starts. She finally looks over at him-and then promptly takes another, longer look. “Well, kriff,” she says, and lets her grin smoulder. Krista decides that she just might be able to listen to his angst after all. She’s put up with worse, after all, and she really feels that she’s grown as a person. And he looks repressed-which can’t be good for anyone, so who better than her to help him loosen up?
He gives her details like a masochist attending to his own punishment, and eyes her suspiciously. Before the mechanics have even called in to fix the lift, her crush has taken a detour. Miko Reglia knows as much-if not more-about the Palace, and far more about the Dark Jedi’s weaknesses, than she does-he’s nothing like any of her boyfriends, and she’s scrambling to make up for her inattention. She still bats her eyelashes and smiles slowly, and she can’t stop the innuendo once she’s seen him blush, but it’s all on reflex until she’s returned to even footing.
By the time they step out of the lift, Krista knows this partnership is going to be just as good as (better than) any of her boys.
In a month of games and lies, Miko never flirts back, not even once. She gets distracted by boys who are prettier and easier than her partner, and soon she enjoys the view but lets it go. In a month of deconstructing the New Empire, Miko is just (never just) her best friend. It doesn’t escape her notice that he’ll be around longer, mean more-but Miko is okay, isn’t he? Just Miko.
~*~
Krista “sees” boys all the time, of course, but she also dates some who aren’t morally questionable or sources of information. She still loves a bad boy, and at sixteen she finds exactly one of those-a smuggler, not Imperial, older, harder, all fire and (she thinks) some danger.
She miscalculates the danger, and he isn’t one of her boys who want to play with her.
Krista fights back successfully because she has three older brothers, and she gets away because of her training, but later that night there’s enough evidence for Miko to hesitate, and touch her too softly as he treats the only wounds she’ll let him see. She tells him they’re from some daring escape (she cried the whole way home), that she only escaped with her life because one of her captors fell madly in love with her on-sight and turned from his life of Imperial activities. Miko doesn’t believe her, and watches her like a hawk, hovering over her, waiting for the truth.
She hugs him, pretends it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t let him see her fear, and then goes to her room to comm Gryq.
Best friends and brothers help, but Krista wishes so much for-
Jaina has been tracked down by her demons, last Krista heard, and is only now recovering; Krista doesn’t have anyone else-at least, no girls. Instead, Krista spends the rest of the night trying to remember (and, failing that, imagine) the details of a dead woman.
The next morning, everything is back to normal, and Krista keeps on dancing through the storm, keeps on smiling and laughing and doing that thing with her tongue that drives the boys mad. She doesn’t see that bad boy ever again, except for his image in a holo-report of missing persons. She assumes Gryq told Cel, who took care of it, until she remembers Miko’s reaction to seeing her that night.
Despite her suspicions, she never asks.
~*~
At seventeen, Krista gives Miko a kiss for luck, and because it makes him blush, and because one of the Imperial Guards clearly doesn’t think much of Miko. The squeeze she gives his hand, though-you come back, Miko Reglia, hear?-that is all for him (and her). She lets him go easy (not at all), watches the Guards’ threatening posturing, and understands that everything comes to an end-but if she is unwary enough to let another into her heart, she cannot let this end, not here, maybe not ever, and certainly not with a death.
She thinks and stays still for the first time in her life, thinking and not just acting, to save Miko. If it’s strange and fits like a garment her mother bought for her, well, Miko is her partner, after all. They still have work to do.
This excuse is not furthered when her actions draw her brothers’ attention, and a hundred light-years away from Miko and anything Imperial, she is still basking in the glow of her success. Miko is free, not even truly suspected even more. That Guard never saw the charm coming, and Krista has always known the good of a well-decorated face.
Of course, now she needs a way off the rock on which her brothers have dumped her. She has so many plans for the New Empire, yet.
Krista finds an abandoned base, and gets to work.
by moonlightrick
Disclaimer: I own Krista and her brothers, but not the Star Wars galaxy and characters (Jaina, Miko, etc). Ani Difranco owns the occasional clips of lyrics (from her song "Outta Me, Onto You"). I am making no money off of this; it’s just a bit of entertainment.
Rating: PG, at most.
Word Count: 3,852
Summary: “Just remember that I loved you / Just remember you were warned.” (Ani Difranco)
Characters/Pairings: Krista Harif, the Harif brothers, Miko Reglia, Jaina Solo, hints of Krista/Miko and Jaina/Zekk
Author’s Note: Krista, up until her introduction in Always II: Caught in the Rain. Forgive the style; I’m re-adjusting to stories shorter than 200+ pages ;p
~
Krista is seven, and her parents are leaving on a trip. She doesn’t want them to go, and she cries and yells and wraps herself around her mama’s leg. She never likes it when they leave, and she always makes a scene. Gryq is at least a little annoyed with her when their parents pass her off, and his fingers are tight on her shoulders. “Be good,” her daddy says, and her parents bestow last hugs and kisses, and then they leave even with her pleas in their ears.
A few hours later, Gryq has distracted her with a holo-film and a scoop of ice cream. This, too, happens every time.
A day later, her parents are dead. Orphaned without yet knowing, Krista has a nightmare. Gryq cuddles her on the couch until she sleeps, and he stays with her even if he is a grown up now.
~*~
Gryq is pale the next morning, and Bull and Cel’s eyes are red. Cel is always strange and quiet, but Bull never is except for the day when Gryq tells her that mama and daddy won’t be coming back.
She knows how this works-doesn’t like it when they go away, but they come back eventually, sometimes with a new doll. “Gone a long time?” she asks, meekly, her lips trembling. She clutches Cyntha, her favourite stuffed bantha, tight to her chest. She’s seven, and her chest feels funny, but she thinks they’re coming back, even when Gryq says they won’t. Gryq is just her big brother, after all.
~*~
A month goes by, and her parents still haven’t come back. She stops asking when they’re coming home, because Gryq always looks upset, and Cel and Bull get mad at her. Once, Cel yells at her about the funeral they went to a while ago, but she doesn’t believe him-it’s one of his tricks. She gets just as mad as anyone.
One afternoon, she sneaks into her parents’ room, and it doesn’t look right-too many boxes. How are they supposed to find anything when they get back?
Bull finds her crying in the closet, and cuddles her close even though his shirt gets wet.
~*~
For her eighth lifeday, she gets her mama’s makeup bag. Her brothers don’t know anything about makeup, so she spends the rest of the day behind a locked door, experimenting and trying to remember what her mama taught her. She sits on the ‘fresher counter, pretending to be her mama, or at least that her mama is there. She looks beautiful.
~*~
Krista hasn’t let go of the invitation all day, not while she was crying in a ‘fresher stall, not even during class. It’s very rumpled, and at least a little wet. After school, she checks her makeup to make sure the red in her eyes doesn’t show, and her lips are cheerfully glossy. Krista doesn’t need to learn how to apply cosmetics, which she imagines is one of Naala’s Things To Do.
Naala’s waiting for the public trans, talking excitedly with a group of her friends. She waves to Krista, who walks up to her quickly. They used to like the same boy, but Treq turned out to be a jerk (Cel had some other words), and Krista and Naala have been friends ever since. “Ever since” hasn’t been long, though, or at least not long enough.
“I wish I could come,” Krista says, and holds out the invitation. She hasn’t been able to flatten it properly, and the flimsi tells exactly where it’s been. “I have relatives coming in from off-world, and they aren’t staying for long.” She doesn’t have any family other than her brothers, of course, but she’s heard this excuse used before. “My bro-family wouldn’t let me leave the house. Sorry. It sounds like fun.”
A mother-and-daughter slumber party. Krista imagines that she and her mama would be the best, friendliest guests there, and turn even the ugliest girl into a pretty one.
A couple of the girls around Naala look horrified-they’ve known Krista longer, so they didn’t realize she’d been invited or they would have said something.
Krista leaves before anyone can make an exception, and she never tells her brothers. They can play father all they want, but she is her own mother.
~*~
Krista’s first kiss leaves an aftertaste that lasts beyond her brothers’ reactions. She’s thirteen-far too young for anything, let alone kissing, Gryq would tell her. In spite of what Gryq thinks about his little sister, Krista’s kiss happens in an abandoned corner of the library, amongst languages and people so dead they’re still in books, with the cutest boy in her class. He’s new, and smart, and Krista pretended to need tutoring. He isn’t that naïve-two years older than her-and as soon as they turn a corner he grins and swoops in to kiss her. Their noses bump, her hands feel awkward, and he’s quite a bit taller than her so she has to stand on her tiptoes. It isn’t what she expected, but once she gets used to it she rather likes his tongue in her mouth-she’ll find out later that this is due more to his skill than to the general feeling of someone else’s tongue flailing about around her teeth.
She likes this kiss, and the tight hold he has on her, and the gasp he makes when she presses closer. Her brothers, of course, never tell her about any of this-she got The Talk from her friends and some books-but she lives with three boys, and they’re all dating now. They forget, sometimes, that her friendships with girls are getting more precarious, and she does have eyes. She has seen enough, at home and in any of the spaceports that they drag her to, not to be surprised when her first kiss gets hot, and the boy’s hands wander a bit. She adjusts, and then she’s sighing and gasping, and she likes these feelings, the rush of her blood and air, the sounds he’s making, even if this is going faster than she thought it would.
The library isn’t exactly her brothers’ place, so she’s surprised by a familiar voice, but not stupid enough to ignore it. “Shavit,” she says, pulling back from the boy. He looks dazed, or irritated, but she doesn’t have time for a boy’s ego. “My brother-” She grabs her bag and tries to straighten herself out as she runs down the row of books and datapads.
Cel is already waiting at the end, and he grabs her arm tight enough that it yanks her to a stop. “Time to go,” he says, looking very stern.
She glances back and can’t see the boy, but she walks anyway. She likes her secrets, and Cel hasn’t seen anything yet.
She’s wrong, as it turns out, because he tips her head up and studies her in the light before scowling. “You look like a clown,” says the brother whose girlfriends leave lipstick all over his face.
Cel is furious that she was making out with a boy, and even more so when she won’t give a name. Worse, Cel tells Gryq that the baby is growing up, and soon they’re moving again-this time, it’s to the Jedi academy, of all things.
A month later, the boy dies in one of the first Imperial bombings. When she reads his name in the lists, she runs to her room and throws a tantrum. Cel hears her from all the way down the hall, and holds her until the tears are gone and she’s stopped throwing things.
~*~
Gryq is ordered to Coruscant because he’s a pilot. Cel surprises them all by leaving with his older brother-not to be a pilot, but to join the New Republic Intelligence Agency. Bull is left to babysit her until Cel and Gryq’s paycheques aren’t enough to support three homes, and then he takes a job on a transport ship, fixing engines. Naturally, he leaves her at the temple. At first, he tries to get back every weekend, and then every other, but soon over a month goes by and her brothers-constant comm calls and those conversations Krista knows they have with her teachers, aside-have left her alone. On a jungle planet. With meditation classes.
Krista kisses several more boys at the praxeum, and likes them even more.
~*~
The older Krista gets, the fewer girlfriends she has, and she doesn’t really understand it for a long while. She’s pretty-she knows that from the way boys look at her-and she’s happy and friendly, even if she’s bored and irritated by the latest place her brothers have dumped her. She has plenty of boys, and pays for that wealth with girls. It takes time for her to realize that that’s exactly how some girls see it.
~*~
There’s a group of Jedi students who are a little older than her, and apparently well on their way to being the Jedi around the temple, even if they are just apprentices-Jedi royalty, royal Jedi, and someone who’s wasting his chance to be the first billionaire play-Jedi. Ranner, or something. He has terrible fashion sense.
The group is almost matched up, Krista notices one day from a boy’s lap. The probably pretty (but kind of scary; and the lizard skin outfit is…an interesting choice) princess turns in satellite with the Solo prince, who is so very much a teenage boy (although Krista will admit to watching all his lightsaber duels-he looks more like a man, then). Ranner-whoever is ruddy and ridiculous, offset by a lovely, exotic centaur (she’s one of the few people, Krista thinks, who doesn’t need makeup). Slightly on the peripheral, controversially-named Anakin Solo (Krista just knows he’ll break hearts someday) is inseparable from a little blonde girl who never met a brush or shoe she ever liked.
Everyone’s prepared to settle down in their mid-teens, saving the galaxy and being “friends” until they die, which isn’t all that interesting as far as Krista is concerned. They can keep their days out in the sun, and all their happy-ever-afters-Krista’s never believed in them, especially with two brothers getting ready for a war.
Jaina Solo is much more interesting: she has a space beside her empty of love or “friend,” and instead has demons creeping up on her back. If everyone in this kind of group matches up, Krista thinks, then who goes with the good-but-wary princess-who-isn’t?
(Krista sees him in holo-captures, though she doesn’t know it yet. Krista’s always had a thing for bad boys, and the Darkest Knight has the eyes and body to boot.)
Jaina is almost as bad at meditating as Krista is. Krista is as good as she can be, as much girlfriend material as she can be, until they’re texting and whispering while they’re supposed to be getting in touch with the musty Force.
~*~
Jaina is a Jedi, but she’s also a pilot and mechanical whiz, so she’s more interested in grease than nail polish; Krista’s working on that. On one of their free days, she, Jaina and Lusa are out by the water. Jaina’s more clean skin and nails than usual, thanks to her swim, and Krista is taking advantage of the clean slate to try makeup looks.
“I never feel comfortable with it,” Jaina admits, while Lusa is wading in the water. “And I’ve never really had a reason for it.”
Krista hesitates, then uses more mascara. She doesn’t feel comfortable without makeup-she feels too exposed and transparent to the galaxy. She doesn’t tell Jaina this, though, and instead snoops in Jaina’s business. “No guy? Ever?”
Jaina blinks and pulls away. She bites her lip, ruining the lipstick’s application. “There was. Is? I- My best friend, Zekk.” Despite using the clichéd best friend definition, Jaina explains about the street boy, and soon those demons are peeking over Jaina’s shoulder as she admits the guilt she feels, because- “You’d know him as Onyx, now. The Darkest Knight.”
It’s like something right out of a holo-vid. “He is pretty hot,” Krista says, grinning.
Jaina tries to grin back, then suddenly stands, walks to the edge of the boulder, and dives into the water. It’s as obviously a way to hide tears as all of Krista’s mascara.
Krista thinks she’d rather not ever be in love.
~*~
After seven months, meditation and trying to lift rocks gets old, even with Jaina as a friend. The coming war is no longer just whispered and rumoured. Jaina is getting distracted, too, by those demons and Zekk, and her role in a war with both.
Krista, for all the advertising, isn’t so great with the Force; she really only has trace talent with it, and no patience for it. Her brothers needed a safe, closely-monitored place for her, and she’s been keeping busy with all the boys, but it’s past time for her to leave. There’s only so much of a pseudo-religion and partying void that she can stand. Krista can be many things, but a faithful was never one of them.
The next time a ship comes through Yavin IV, Krista stows away and looses herself on an unprepared galaxy. She doesn’t warn her brothers-they’ll find out soon enough, and she isn’t going to give them a head start on finding her.
Not even two weeks later, the praxeum has been decimated by a Dark Jedi siege. The academy burns, over a hundred students and Jedi are killed, and all the Jedi are on the run. Krista, safe and working on a smuggler’s ship, with no traces of Jedi on her in this new galaxy, calls her brothers. Even she isn’t that selfish.
It takes Cel another month to track her down.
~*~
Cel is different when he finds her. He’s just as unnerving for strangers, but she can see the ways he’s grown up. Her brothers are back to not trusting her (or the galaxy, but she can’t blame them as much on that point), and so she gets to live with her more stably-employed and -deployed brother. As the war builds, and Krista gets older, she has more success in making Cel use her for missions. She can flirt entirely off his radar, or she can do it with some purpose (and without her other brothers knowing about some of the costumes) where he can watch her. Krista is, after all, very good at pretending and flirting both. (She also happens to be very good at other things, but her brothers really don’t want to know about that.)
~*~
Krista is fifteen and older than her brothers, even Cel, will admit. On her next mission, she hands in her report and then disappears.
~*~
For a while, Krista dances.
Coruscant falls, and she dances in old Imperial Palace as it is restored to its position of power. She flirts, kisses, and does far more than she could ever safely tell her brothers, and all the while sends in reports to Resistance Intel. She becomes, if not wiser, then at least smarter-she enjoys the looks, the outfits, the things her brothers would never let her get away with; she has enough partying and booze and men to make a girl’s head spin. But she spends a year on occupied Coruscant-half of it dancing, and then odd jobs otherwise-and it makes her think despite her best efforts. She hears what she missed before, understands what she once ignored, and her Intel reports become more detailed, then turn into active missions rather than games for the sake of her brothers’ loyalty.
She doesn’t know if she’s really an exceptional actress, but she is very distracting, constantly underestimated, and if she knows anything, then she knows men.
Some time when she isn’t looking, Krista becomes an Intel agent.
~*~
They offer her a promotion-the opportunity to have her own unit of agents inside the palace, provided she can get them in. Krista absolutely lied about her age and last name when she joined the Resistance, but she is nonetheless sure that they have no idea who she is, except someone who is very good at getting information that no one should be stupid enough to talk about.
Cel, she thinks, would notice such a reckless move. She turns down the promotion, and trades the unit for a partner. The partner is also a contact, and someone slides a holo-capture of Miko Reglia under her door.
~*~
Miko Reglia is (was, rather, according to her information) a Dark Jedi. She’s only seen him from a distance, and that one time at the Jedi praxeum. He blah-blah’ed about the state of the NR, the duty and role of the Jedi, stuff she tuned out at thirteen (and, honestly, still does). If he’s going to be a Dark Jedi stereotype, she expects one of the tortured idealists-everything was wrong, and his own better judgement led him astray. She talks to people, and she knows that he’s never been the death squad (or camp) type.
Miko, who has supposedly turned back, sounds exactly like a man at risk of thinking himself to death. If he starts blabbing about the universe and mortal nature, she’ll go batty-which is exactly what she expects until she sees him for the first time.
~*~
Krista’s memory of Miko Reglia was from a distance, of too-bright red hair and a boring lecture. She spent most of it gawping at his infamous (and very, very hot) master, Kyp Durron. Miko’s mug shot on the holo-web is very unflattering, and rather lonely. He’s a cog in the Dark Jedi machinery, but hardly its poster boy.
This is very hard for her to understand once she’s in the same room as him.
They meet for the first time in a lift, in a forgotten corner of the Imperial palace. When she pulls the emergency break, the lights flicker, and a faint alarm starts. She finally looks over at him-and then promptly takes another, longer look. “Well, kriff,” she says, and lets her grin smoulder. Krista decides that she just might be able to listen to his angst after all. She’s put up with worse, after all, and she really feels that she’s grown as a person. And he looks repressed-which can’t be good for anyone, so who better than her to help him loosen up?
He gives her details like a masochist attending to his own punishment, and eyes her suspiciously. Before the mechanics have even called in to fix the lift, her crush has taken a detour. Miko Reglia knows as much-if not more-about the Palace, and far more about the Dark Jedi’s weaknesses, than she does-he’s nothing like any of her boyfriends, and she’s scrambling to make up for her inattention. She still bats her eyelashes and smiles slowly, and she can’t stop the innuendo once she’s seen him blush, but it’s all on reflex until she’s returned to even footing.
By the time they step out of the lift, Krista knows this partnership is going to be just as good as (better than) any of her boys.
In a month of games and lies, Miko never flirts back, not even once. She gets distracted by boys who are prettier and easier than her partner, and soon she enjoys the view but lets it go. In a month of deconstructing the New Empire, Miko is just (never just) her best friend. It doesn’t escape her notice that he’ll be around longer, mean more-but Miko is okay, isn’t he? Just Miko.
~*~
Krista “sees” boys all the time, of course, but she also dates some who aren’t morally questionable or sources of information. She still loves a bad boy, and at sixteen she finds exactly one of those-a smuggler, not Imperial, older, harder, all fire and (she thinks) some danger.
She miscalculates the danger, and he isn’t one of her boys who want to play with her.
Krista fights back successfully because she has three older brothers, and she gets away because of her training, but later that night there’s enough evidence for Miko to hesitate, and touch her too softly as he treats the only wounds she’ll let him see. She tells him they’re from some daring escape (she cried the whole way home), that she only escaped with her life because one of her captors fell madly in love with her on-sight and turned from his life of Imperial activities. Miko doesn’t believe her, and watches her like a hawk, hovering over her, waiting for the truth.
She hugs him, pretends it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t let him see her fear, and then goes to her room to comm Gryq.
Best friends and brothers help, but Krista wishes so much for-
Jaina has been tracked down by her demons, last Krista heard, and is only now recovering; Krista doesn’t have anyone else-at least, no girls. Instead, Krista spends the rest of the night trying to remember (and, failing that, imagine) the details of a dead woman.
The next morning, everything is back to normal, and Krista keeps on dancing through the storm, keeps on smiling and laughing and doing that thing with her tongue that drives the boys mad. She doesn’t see that bad boy ever again, except for his image in a holo-report of missing persons. She assumes Gryq told Cel, who took care of it, until she remembers Miko’s reaction to seeing her that night.
Despite her suspicions, she never asks.
~*~
At seventeen, Krista gives Miko a kiss for luck, and because it makes him blush, and because one of the Imperial Guards clearly doesn’t think much of Miko. The squeeze she gives his hand, though-you come back, Miko Reglia, hear?-that is all for him (and her). She lets him go easy (not at all), watches the Guards’ threatening posturing, and understands that everything comes to an end-but if she is unwary enough to let another into her heart, she cannot let this end, not here, maybe not ever, and certainly not with a death.
She thinks and stays still for the first time in her life, thinking and not just acting, to save Miko. If it’s strange and fits like a garment her mother bought for her, well, Miko is her partner, after all. They still have work to do.
This excuse is not furthered when her actions draw her brothers’ attention, and a hundred light-years away from Miko and anything Imperial, she is still basking in the glow of her success. Miko is free, not even truly suspected even more. That Guard never saw the charm coming, and Krista has always known the good of a well-decorated face.
Of course, now she needs a way off the rock on which her brothers have dumped her. She has so many plans for the New Empire, yet.
Krista finds an abandoned base, and gets to work.