Fic: "If You Call" (8/?, J/Z AU; sequel to FaIC)
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven
x-x-x
Zekk was back on the Hawk less than two hours after he had left the underground lab. The contacts were dissolving-or at least leaking out of his eyes in blue goop, with a more-than-faint burn and a great deal of irritation. He spent fifteen minutes alternately rubbing (or jabbing) his eyes, and trying to make himself a glass of brandy.
“You look ridiculous,” Jaina’s voice informed him.
The dark-haired man wiped at his eyes, and blinked up at the spindly staircase that descended from his ceiling hatch. The Jedi’s petite form was little more than a blur to him, when he managed to focus on her. Right, he thought. Of course Jaina had found him now, against all probability and despite every rule of unembarrassing courtship. Of course. “How did you get in here?” he asked. Because he knew Jaina, and she had probably been watching him for at least a few minutes, he gave up and jabbed at his eyes again.
“Oh, honestly,” she said. “You’ll lose an eye like that.”
“It-itches,” he said. Even if he’d love to get Kyp into trouble, Zekk’s ego was not quite prepared to say that it really sort of burned and that her best friend was an overprotective kriffer with a planet in his shoulder.
He heard Jaina tsk and skip a few steps to land on the floor with a light thud. “Well, why did you even leave them in so long? You could have at least rinsed them a bit. Here.” Warm fingers tilted Zekk’s head down, presumably so Jaina could see him.
“‘Rinsed them’?” he echoed.
“To prolong the life of them?” she tried, dropping her hands from his jaw. “And ease the removal, if you ever got around to it. Where’s your sink…ah. Cups in the little cupboard above?”
He could hear her rummaging, so he took the question as rhetorical. “It must have slipped Kyp’s mind.”
The rummaging paused before Jaina said, “Did it?”
Zekk could almost see the other man getting clobbered. He forgot about the contacts for a moment, savouring the image.
The pipes whispered, and the tap spluttered some water. “Sit down on the bed, okay?”
“Why, are you too short?”
“I could just let those things leak out on their own,” she threatened in a singsong voice.
He struggled to keep from rubbing his eyes some more. “This is your friend’s fault,” he said, but sat on the bed.
The bed dipped slightly. One of Jaina’s knees sank next to his right thigh, and rested there. “Hold this,” she said, giving him a cup of water. “Like that, and lean back a bit. Your shirt’s going to get wet,” she warned him, “but it’ll be quicker if I do it.”
Zekk sent up a quick prayer that Jaina was currently more pissed off at Kyp than she was at him. “Yeah. How did you get in here?”
Her hand cupped at his cheek, her thumb on his jaw. The cup in his hand dipped slightly as her other hand took some water. “Tip your head back a little more.” Her hand adjusted on his face, and the lukewarm water slid along his left eye. “I broke in,” she said blithely as he blinked quickly. “You really should get your captain to find better security. Jacen could pick that lock.”
Zekk spluttered. “You didn’t.”
She snickered at him; he could almost see her grin through the water and contacts. “Of course not.” Her fingers swept gently at some gunk near his left eye, then more firmly by his right eye. “I told Raven I was a friend of yours. And then she recognized me-she’s quicker than you, anyway. She assured me,” Jaina’s voice was very grave, “that the Hawk is carrying only legal goods, and you would guarantee it personally. Then she offered me something to drink, and showed me here. Also, she insists you give me a tour if I ask. Smugglers are always so helpful when they see a Jedi.”
More water splashed into his right eye, then a little more into the left. Jaina released his jaw, and rubbed around both of his eyes with her thumbs. When he blinked, she was a much more discernible blob of Jaina-ness. She was also closer than he had thought; he was careful not to look too closely. “We don’t have anything illegal on board,” he dutifully informed her.
She took the glass from his hand, and flicked some water at his face for no purpose at all except to annoy him. “I know,” she said, grinning in amusement. “You’re between jobs right now. Hence the free time you have to meddle in my work.” She put a hand on his shoulder, pushing so that she could ease back and stand by the bed. “Can you see well enough to wash your own eyes out now? I think I got the worst of it-you just have to clear out the last bit, and remove the actual contacts.”
He stretched out a hand for caution’s sake, then dropped it quickly when he considered that Jaina could see him; he walked to the small sink by memory and slightly less blurred vision. He fumbled with the ancient tap, let the water run over his hands. He washed out his eyes quickly before removing the troublesome contacts. “Do you-”
“Just toss them. They transmitted at the time; it didn’t store anything. The others will already have the information to review.”
When he turned around, Jaina had one knee resting on his bed-perhaps for support, he thought. Between the bruises and dark make-up, she looked smudged and shadowed. He glanced at his chrono; it was already 2100 hours, but that was probably the earliest she had left the Dustbowl in a while. When he glanced up again her jaw shifted, and she said, “Did you-”
“You can sit down, if you’d like,” he suggested. “You look-”
“I’m fine.” But she sat down on his bunk, hands on either side of her.
Zekk leaned against his sink, crossing his arms over his chest and ignoring the dampness trickling under his shirt. The burn in his eyes was hardly even an itch now, probably due more to the rubbing he had done than to the contacts’ dissolution. “How long would it have taken those things to dissolve on their own?”
Jaina’s shoulders jutted up as she sank a little into the cot. She ducked her head, and he suspected that she was trying to hide her grin. He hoped she was planning revenge, not just enjoying Kyp’s prank. “They would have come out on their own,” she said. She bit her lip. “Eventually.”
“He’s very mature, this friend of yours.”
Jaina rolled her eyes, but her frame tightened. “He’s not exactly the propaganda image of a Jedi Master. But-he says it’s to lighten the mood, keep everyone’s nerves down.”
Clearly, her own nerves had some resistance to Kyp’s pranks, but Zekk spared a thought for how he must have looked, poking at his own eyes to push out blue gunk. He decided not to ask why she had left the Dustbowl early. “Joolu had me cart some lizard things out into the desert-Traest has an underground lab set up there.”
Jaina’s eyes flickered at his name-dropping, but otherwise stayed fixed on Zekk’s face. “Could you get back there?” she asked.
Zekk grimaced. “No, Joolu’s men blindfolded me, took me out-about thirty minutes into the desert. And…it all looks the same to me,” he admitted.
“It’s fine,” she said, sounding neither surprised nor disappointed. “We have other ways. You saw the-the lab?”
“One of them.” Zekk’s right eye itched, and he rubbed it in spite of himself. “Traest made sure to get a good look at my expression when I first saw them.”
“Stop rubbing, you’ll just make it worse,” Jaina scolded him. Then: “You saw Traest?”
“About our age. Blue hair. He could probably charm Tuskens into buying more sand.” Zekk shrugged. “He introduced himself as Traest.”
“That sounds like him.” Jaina tilted her head. “What’s wrong?”
“He was-”
“Troubling,” Jaina suggested.
“Yes, but I was going to say familiar.” Zekk hesitated, but she would find out soon enough. “He said he recognized me.”
“Recognized you?” Jaina repeated.
“Probably from-”
“You need to get out of here.”
“From Coruscant,” Zekk insisted. “It makes sense. You see a lot of faces in the lower levels.”
Jaina stared at him; he could see her throat working around a swallow, or perhaps it was a more vehement protest. “Did you recognize him?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“From Coruscant?” Once they had begun, the questions tumbled out quickly. “Are you sure you only recognize him from Coruscant? There isn’t anywhere else, or any special reason?”
“Where else would I have seen him?” Zekk shook his head. “For that matter, how bad could it be? I wasn’t anyone important-I just scavenged, and tended bar. I mean, I never belonged to a gang, but I avoided the police as much as anyone as a kid.”
“He could figure out your real name.”
“I doubt I made much of an impression on anyone, let alone someone like Traest.”
Jaina’s fingers flexed around the edge of the bed, and she took a deep breath. “Joolu already finished his background check on you. Did Traest say anything about it?”
“He said he was finishing mine,” Zekk admitted reluctantly. She would find out eventually.
Jaina unclipped her com-link from the shoulder strap of her dress, and stared at the small device. “I need to-”
“Do you want something to eat?” he asked. “We should have something around here that’s edible.”
She looked up at him. “Sure, that’d be-yeah. Do you have any caf?”
He eyed her sceptically, noting the dark lines under her eyes, and the tension running through her small frame. “When was the last time you slept?”
“What are you, my took-off friend, or my mother?” she snapped, which was answer enough. “Besides, I can’t sleep for hours yet.”
“Fine, we might have some.” Decaf, possibly. He wondered if she’d notice.
“I’m going to call Kyp, see if we can’t cover any of your tracks.”
Zekk nodded, and pointed at the stairs. “I’ll be just a few minutes.” He turned to leave.
“Zekk.”
He looked back, his hand on the rail. “Yeah?”
“You’re okay, right? I mean-the labs, and Traest…”
He saw, again, all those beds and beings, the scientist leaning over each with a datapad. He could have killed Traest in that room (maybe), but then had been caught almost reminiscing with the man as if it was the ten-year Coruscant reunion.
Zekk shrugged, wondering if Jaina was reading him-he really needed to find out what, exactly, Jedi could do. Besides this sort of mission for weeks at a time, on only caf and determination. “Are you?”
She smirked. “I’m sure the tabloids will say no, but I’ve been dealing with these things for years. I’ll be fine.”
He nodded, as convinced by her ease as she probably was by his, and climbed up the stairs and out of the hatch.
x-x-x
Raven was no where to be reassured about the Jedi Knight on board, so Zekk resolved to deal with his captain later. Zekk was the only crewmember to regularly make his own food, the others preferring to grab pre-made meals whenever possible. Despite this (or because of it-they had dipped into Zekk’s food before), his own share of the cooking unit was nearly as bare as the others’. Still, he managed to assemble a sorry looking sandwich, and even a small bowl of fruit. In the meanwhile, the caf machine worked at something with less caffeine than Jaina had probably seen in a while.
Carrying the food through the hatch and down the stairs was interesting, but he told himself that space life wasn’t softening his balance.
Jaina was talking softly into her com-link, but finished the conversation when she saw him. “They’re just reviewing your intel now,” she told him, clipping the small com-link back onto her dress’ neckline. “I’m always useless with these things.”
“Do you…need to get back?” he asked.
She shrugged, and folded her arms across her chest. She looked awkward now where she hadn’t before. “I’m already here,” she pointed out. “If he can’t see me, Joolu isn’t the type to search me out.”
He grinned at her. “I found some food.”
Predictably, Jaina reached for the mug of caf first. She looked thin, not just because she was tired. “Thanks.” She swallowed half of it, gave both the mug and Zekk an odd look, then carefully placed it on the top of his dresser. “How’re your eyes?” she asked.
“Fine.” Zekk put the plate on his desk, but held out the bowl. “Bali?”
She took one of the deep purple fruits with a faint smile. “Kyp doesn’t say sorry.”
Zekk rolled his eyes. “I’m not surprised.”
“He is getting someone on your record, though, and he’ll see what he can find out about Traest’s reaction.” She shifted uncomfortably, adjusted the hem of her very short dress, and bit into the fruit. When the skin broke, she swallowed quickly, then licked at a bit of juice on the corner of her lips. Her wrist turned, and she dropped her hand and the fruit to hang by her side.
“Right. Oh, that holo-” Zekk noticed the City Planet on his desk. “I’ve got a copy here.”
She blinked before scowling. “Oh, for-give it here,” Jaina growled, snatching the datasheets from his hand. She put the bali bite-side up on the sandwich plate, and wiped her fingers on the hem of her dress. “Fine, we’ll settle this, shall we? ‘Solo Princess Braves the Knot, C2.’ I’m surprised it isn’t a cover, scoop like this.”
“You got a blurb,” he pointed out.
Jaina rolled her eyes at him. “I saw.” She set the page to flip, and waited as it loaded. “Hey, look: my ex, Raynar, is making out with a Twi’lek girl who looks like his mother’s PA. Oh.”
She had seen the holo-image. Zekk waited, watching for embarrassment or something, but he was unprepared for how white and cold her face became. The triumph of proving her wrong felt bitter on his tongue. He ignored it and pried, “It is you, isn’t it,” because she would never say it on her own.
Her jaw clenched painfully. “Yes,” she snapped. She continued to stare at the image for a long moment before abruptly shoving it back at him. “That’s not Jag, though.”
He glanced at the image, then quickly back at her. “It isn’t?” Truthfully, he hadn’t looked very hard at the back of the man’s head, and he had only seen Jag once in poor lighting.
“Really not. I should sue them for-something,” she snarled. “It’s not even the right kriffing-” She waved a hand in the air, temper threatening her words. She finally pointed at the datasheets. “That was almost a kriffing decade ago.”
Trust Jaina to say the last thing she meant to in a fit of pique. Still, Zekk was too boggled by her words to feel any satisfaction. “What the kriff?”
She winced, a worrisome combination with her scowl. “It was-a long time ago.” She tried to shift the conversation to anti-tabloid sentiment. “I can’t believe they even had that, let alone held onto it. Kriffing-media carrion,” she muttered, starting to look trapped.
“Jaina. You were wearing an engagement ring. We are not leaving it at that.”
“Hells yes, we are.” Jaina snorted and headed toward the stairs. “I am not this hungry. I’ll-”
“You will not.” Zekk looked at the data sheet and the image. She did look younger, but-he had only thought it was because she looked so happy, like during Coruscant’s snowstorm. And there was the ring. “You are staying right here and explaining this.” He paused suddenly, eyes going wide as he began to piece together all the clues. When he spoke, he tried to be gentler: “Traest killed him, didn’t he?”
Jaina paused on the third stair up to stare at him, her expression blank. “What?”
“Your-fiancé.” There must have been a fiancé, Zekk told himself, trying to get past the knot in his gut. Not just a boyfriend, not with the ring, a fiancé, but- “That’s why you’re so invested in this; Traest did something to him, and you lost him.”
There was a long moment of silence, and then Jaina laughed at him. It was an ugly laugh-peculiar and sharp-and when he flinched, she clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle it. Her face had more colour in it now, but even when she dropped her hand to curl around her waist, he could still hear the bitterness.
“I’m-sorry,” she said stiltedly. “A dead fiancé would be…very traumatizing. It isn’t funny.”
He frowned at her, and the way she was just staring him. “Traest does have something to do with this.” He was certain of it.
“Oh. Yes. It’s just that-” She shrugged awkwardly, then seemed to come to a decision. “Traest was the fiancé.”
x-x-x
!
Part Nine
taken-out-of-context-cut!lyrics from Come Be With Me by Bird York.
x-x-x
Zekk was back on the Hawk less than two hours after he had left the underground lab. The contacts were dissolving-or at least leaking out of his eyes in blue goop, with a more-than-faint burn and a great deal of irritation. He spent fifteen minutes alternately rubbing (or jabbing) his eyes, and trying to make himself a glass of brandy.
“You look ridiculous,” Jaina’s voice informed him.
The dark-haired man wiped at his eyes, and blinked up at the spindly staircase that descended from his ceiling hatch. The Jedi’s petite form was little more than a blur to him, when he managed to focus on her. Right, he thought. Of course Jaina had found him now, against all probability and despite every rule of unembarrassing courtship. Of course. “How did you get in here?” he asked. Because he knew Jaina, and she had probably been watching him for at least a few minutes, he gave up and jabbed at his eyes again.
“Oh, honestly,” she said. “You’ll lose an eye like that.”
“It-itches,” he said. Even if he’d love to get Kyp into trouble, Zekk’s ego was not quite prepared to say that it really sort of burned and that her best friend was an overprotective kriffer with a planet in his shoulder.
He heard Jaina tsk and skip a few steps to land on the floor with a light thud. “Well, why did you even leave them in so long? You could have at least rinsed them a bit. Here.” Warm fingers tilted Zekk’s head down, presumably so Jaina could see him.
“‘Rinsed them’?” he echoed.
“To prolong the life of them?” she tried, dropping her hands from his jaw. “And ease the removal, if you ever got around to it. Where’s your sink…ah. Cups in the little cupboard above?”
He could hear her rummaging, so he took the question as rhetorical. “It must have slipped Kyp’s mind.”
The rummaging paused before Jaina said, “Did it?”
Zekk could almost see the other man getting clobbered. He forgot about the contacts for a moment, savouring the image.
The pipes whispered, and the tap spluttered some water. “Sit down on the bed, okay?”
“Why, are you too short?”
“I could just let those things leak out on their own,” she threatened in a singsong voice.
He struggled to keep from rubbing his eyes some more. “This is your friend’s fault,” he said, but sat on the bed.
The bed dipped slightly. One of Jaina’s knees sank next to his right thigh, and rested there. “Hold this,” she said, giving him a cup of water. “Like that, and lean back a bit. Your shirt’s going to get wet,” she warned him, “but it’ll be quicker if I do it.”
Zekk sent up a quick prayer that Jaina was currently more pissed off at Kyp than she was at him. “Yeah. How did you get in here?”
Her hand cupped at his cheek, her thumb on his jaw. The cup in his hand dipped slightly as her other hand took some water. “Tip your head back a little more.” Her hand adjusted on his face, and the lukewarm water slid along his left eye. “I broke in,” she said blithely as he blinked quickly. “You really should get your captain to find better security. Jacen could pick that lock.”
Zekk spluttered. “You didn’t.”
She snickered at him; he could almost see her grin through the water and contacts. “Of course not.” Her fingers swept gently at some gunk near his left eye, then more firmly by his right eye. “I told Raven I was a friend of yours. And then she recognized me-she’s quicker than you, anyway. She assured me,” Jaina’s voice was very grave, “that the Hawk is carrying only legal goods, and you would guarantee it personally. Then she offered me something to drink, and showed me here. Also, she insists you give me a tour if I ask. Smugglers are always so helpful when they see a Jedi.”
More water splashed into his right eye, then a little more into the left. Jaina released his jaw, and rubbed around both of his eyes with her thumbs. When he blinked, she was a much more discernible blob of Jaina-ness. She was also closer than he had thought; he was careful not to look too closely. “We don’t have anything illegal on board,” he dutifully informed her.
She took the glass from his hand, and flicked some water at his face for no purpose at all except to annoy him. “I know,” she said, grinning in amusement. “You’re between jobs right now. Hence the free time you have to meddle in my work.” She put a hand on his shoulder, pushing so that she could ease back and stand by the bed. “Can you see well enough to wash your own eyes out now? I think I got the worst of it-you just have to clear out the last bit, and remove the actual contacts.”
He stretched out a hand for caution’s sake, then dropped it quickly when he considered that Jaina could see him; he walked to the small sink by memory and slightly less blurred vision. He fumbled with the ancient tap, let the water run over his hands. He washed out his eyes quickly before removing the troublesome contacts. “Do you-”
“Just toss them. They transmitted at the time; it didn’t store anything. The others will already have the information to review.”
When he turned around, Jaina had one knee resting on his bed-perhaps for support, he thought. Between the bruises and dark make-up, she looked smudged and shadowed. He glanced at his chrono; it was already 2100 hours, but that was probably the earliest she had left the Dustbowl in a while. When he glanced up again her jaw shifted, and she said, “Did you-”
“You can sit down, if you’d like,” he suggested. “You look-”
“I’m fine.” But she sat down on his bunk, hands on either side of her.
Zekk leaned against his sink, crossing his arms over his chest and ignoring the dampness trickling under his shirt. The burn in his eyes was hardly even an itch now, probably due more to the rubbing he had done than to the contacts’ dissolution. “How long would it have taken those things to dissolve on their own?”
Jaina’s shoulders jutted up as she sank a little into the cot. She ducked her head, and he suspected that she was trying to hide her grin. He hoped she was planning revenge, not just enjoying Kyp’s prank. “They would have come out on their own,” she said. She bit her lip. “Eventually.”
“He’s very mature, this friend of yours.”
Jaina rolled her eyes, but her frame tightened. “He’s not exactly the propaganda image of a Jedi Master. But-he says it’s to lighten the mood, keep everyone’s nerves down.”
Clearly, her own nerves had some resistance to Kyp’s pranks, but Zekk spared a thought for how he must have looked, poking at his own eyes to push out blue gunk. He decided not to ask why she had left the Dustbowl early. “Joolu had me cart some lizard things out into the desert-Traest has an underground lab set up there.”
Jaina’s eyes flickered at his name-dropping, but otherwise stayed fixed on Zekk’s face. “Could you get back there?” she asked.
Zekk grimaced. “No, Joolu’s men blindfolded me, took me out-about thirty minutes into the desert. And…it all looks the same to me,” he admitted.
“It’s fine,” she said, sounding neither surprised nor disappointed. “We have other ways. You saw the-the lab?”
“One of them.” Zekk’s right eye itched, and he rubbed it in spite of himself. “Traest made sure to get a good look at my expression when I first saw them.”
“Stop rubbing, you’ll just make it worse,” Jaina scolded him. Then: “You saw Traest?”
“About our age. Blue hair. He could probably charm Tuskens into buying more sand.” Zekk shrugged. “He introduced himself as Traest.”
“That sounds like him.” Jaina tilted her head. “What’s wrong?”
“He was-”
“Troubling,” Jaina suggested.
“Yes, but I was going to say familiar.” Zekk hesitated, but she would find out soon enough. “He said he recognized me.”
“Recognized you?” Jaina repeated.
“Probably from-”
“You need to get out of here.”
“From Coruscant,” Zekk insisted. “It makes sense. You see a lot of faces in the lower levels.”
Jaina stared at him; he could see her throat working around a swallow, or perhaps it was a more vehement protest. “Did you recognize him?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“From Coruscant?” Once they had begun, the questions tumbled out quickly. “Are you sure you only recognize him from Coruscant? There isn’t anywhere else, or any special reason?”
“Where else would I have seen him?” Zekk shook his head. “For that matter, how bad could it be? I wasn’t anyone important-I just scavenged, and tended bar. I mean, I never belonged to a gang, but I avoided the police as much as anyone as a kid.”
“He could figure out your real name.”
“I doubt I made much of an impression on anyone, let alone someone like Traest.”
Jaina’s fingers flexed around the edge of the bed, and she took a deep breath. “Joolu already finished his background check on you. Did Traest say anything about it?”
“He said he was finishing mine,” Zekk admitted reluctantly. She would find out eventually.
Jaina unclipped her com-link from the shoulder strap of her dress, and stared at the small device. “I need to-”
“Do you want something to eat?” he asked. “We should have something around here that’s edible.”
She looked up at him. “Sure, that’d be-yeah. Do you have any caf?”
He eyed her sceptically, noting the dark lines under her eyes, and the tension running through her small frame. “When was the last time you slept?”
“What are you, my took-off friend, or my mother?” she snapped, which was answer enough. “Besides, I can’t sleep for hours yet.”
“Fine, we might have some.” Decaf, possibly. He wondered if she’d notice.
“I’m going to call Kyp, see if we can’t cover any of your tracks.”
Zekk nodded, and pointed at the stairs. “I’ll be just a few minutes.” He turned to leave.
“Zekk.”
He looked back, his hand on the rail. “Yeah?”
“You’re okay, right? I mean-the labs, and Traest…”
He saw, again, all those beds and beings, the scientist leaning over each with a datapad. He could have killed Traest in that room (maybe), but then had been caught almost reminiscing with the man as if it was the ten-year Coruscant reunion.
Zekk shrugged, wondering if Jaina was reading him-he really needed to find out what, exactly, Jedi could do. Besides this sort of mission for weeks at a time, on only caf and determination. “Are you?”
She smirked. “I’m sure the tabloids will say no, but I’ve been dealing with these things for years. I’ll be fine.”
He nodded, as convinced by her ease as she probably was by his, and climbed up the stairs and out of the hatch.
x-x-x
Raven was no where to be reassured about the Jedi Knight on board, so Zekk resolved to deal with his captain later. Zekk was the only crewmember to regularly make his own food, the others preferring to grab pre-made meals whenever possible. Despite this (or because of it-they had dipped into Zekk’s food before), his own share of the cooking unit was nearly as bare as the others’. Still, he managed to assemble a sorry looking sandwich, and even a small bowl of fruit. In the meanwhile, the caf machine worked at something with less caffeine than Jaina had probably seen in a while.
Carrying the food through the hatch and down the stairs was interesting, but he told himself that space life wasn’t softening his balance.
Jaina was talking softly into her com-link, but finished the conversation when she saw him. “They’re just reviewing your intel now,” she told him, clipping the small com-link back onto her dress’ neckline. “I’m always useless with these things.”
“Do you…need to get back?” he asked.
She shrugged, and folded her arms across her chest. She looked awkward now where she hadn’t before. “I’m already here,” she pointed out. “If he can’t see me, Joolu isn’t the type to search me out.”
He grinned at her. “I found some food.”
Predictably, Jaina reached for the mug of caf first. She looked thin, not just because she was tired. “Thanks.” She swallowed half of it, gave both the mug and Zekk an odd look, then carefully placed it on the top of his dresser. “How’re your eyes?” she asked.
“Fine.” Zekk put the plate on his desk, but held out the bowl. “Bali?”
She took one of the deep purple fruits with a faint smile. “Kyp doesn’t say sorry.”
Zekk rolled his eyes. “I’m not surprised.”
“He is getting someone on your record, though, and he’ll see what he can find out about Traest’s reaction.” She shifted uncomfortably, adjusted the hem of her very short dress, and bit into the fruit. When the skin broke, she swallowed quickly, then licked at a bit of juice on the corner of her lips. Her wrist turned, and she dropped her hand and the fruit to hang by her side.
“Right. Oh, that holo-” Zekk noticed the City Planet on his desk. “I’ve got a copy here.”
She blinked before scowling. “Oh, for-give it here,” Jaina growled, snatching the datasheets from his hand. She put the bali bite-side up on the sandwich plate, and wiped her fingers on the hem of her dress. “Fine, we’ll settle this, shall we? ‘Solo Princess Braves the Knot, C2.’ I’m surprised it isn’t a cover, scoop like this.”
“You got a blurb,” he pointed out.
Jaina rolled her eyes at him. “I saw.” She set the page to flip, and waited as it loaded. “Hey, look: my ex, Raynar, is making out with a Twi’lek girl who looks like his mother’s PA. Oh.”
She had seen the holo-image. Zekk waited, watching for embarrassment or something, but he was unprepared for how white and cold her face became. The triumph of proving her wrong felt bitter on his tongue. He ignored it and pried, “It is you, isn’t it,” because she would never say it on her own.
Her jaw clenched painfully. “Yes,” she snapped. She continued to stare at the image for a long moment before abruptly shoving it back at him. “That’s not Jag, though.”
He glanced at the image, then quickly back at her. “It isn’t?” Truthfully, he hadn’t looked very hard at the back of the man’s head, and he had only seen Jag once in poor lighting.
“Really not. I should sue them for-something,” she snarled. “It’s not even the right kriffing-” She waved a hand in the air, temper threatening her words. She finally pointed at the datasheets. “That was almost a kriffing decade ago.”
Trust Jaina to say the last thing she meant to in a fit of pique. Still, Zekk was too boggled by her words to feel any satisfaction. “What the kriff?”
She winced, a worrisome combination with her scowl. “It was-a long time ago.” She tried to shift the conversation to anti-tabloid sentiment. “I can’t believe they even had that, let alone held onto it. Kriffing-media carrion,” she muttered, starting to look trapped.
“Jaina. You were wearing an engagement ring. We are not leaving it at that.”
“Hells yes, we are.” Jaina snorted and headed toward the stairs. “I am not this hungry. I’ll-”
“You will not.” Zekk looked at the data sheet and the image. She did look younger, but-he had only thought it was because she looked so happy, like during Coruscant’s snowstorm. And there was the ring. “You are staying right here and explaining this.” He paused suddenly, eyes going wide as he began to piece together all the clues. When he spoke, he tried to be gentler: “Traest killed him, didn’t he?”
Jaina paused on the third stair up to stare at him, her expression blank. “What?”
“Your-fiancé.” There must have been a fiancé, Zekk told himself, trying to get past the knot in his gut. Not just a boyfriend, not with the ring, a fiancé, but- “That’s why you’re so invested in this; Traest did something to him, and you lost him.”
There was a long moment of silence, and then Jaina laughed at him. It was an ugly laugh-peculiar and sharp-and when he flinched, she clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle it. Her face had more colour in it now, but even when she dropped her hand to curl around her waist, he could still hear the bitterness.
“I’m-sorry,” she said stiltedly. “A dead fiancé would be…very traumatizing. It isn’t funny.”
He frowned at her, and the way she was just staring him. “Traest does have something to do with this.” He was certain of it.
“Oh. Yes. It’s just that-” She shrugged awkwardly, then seemed to come to a decision. “Traest was the fiancé.”
x-x-x
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Part Nine
taken-out-of-context-cut!lyrics from Come Be With Me by Bird York.