FIC: The Maid in the Mirror [Star Wars, Qi'ra x Enfys]
Title: The Maid in the Mirror
Author: Omnicat
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: Solo: A Star Wars Story
Warnings: Canon-typical.
Characters & Relationships: Qi’ra x Enfys
Summary: The thief who steals out of necessity and the thief who steals out of desire. The righteous law-breaker and the selfish one. The sleepless killer and the warrior with a clear conscience. Two sides of the same coin, all of them. // 2213 words
Author’s Note: Written for saiditallbefore in the 2018 Trick or Treat Exchange on AO3. Enjoy!
The Maid in the Mirror
There are certain constants to Qi’ra’s life that refuse to be ignored. She thinks of them as coin-credits: two-sided and inextricably linked, all of them. There are shame and necessity, for instance; need and indignity; the things she finds herself willing to do and the things she can no longer bear to imagine after; power and disappointment; fear and ruthlessness, and calculations followed by more calculations, and more, and more, and more.
There’s also Enfys.
They met when they were both still barely more than girls, something Qi’ra is willing to admit in some circumstances and makes a point to disprove in most others. A mutilated, murdered rebel for a mother, the Silo - such things do not tolerate little girls. They demand women, warriors. Freedom fighters. Crime lords.
Sometimes, Qi’ra entertains the thought that she and Enfys form a coin too.
She departs Savareen for Dathomir, and eventually, when Maul is done with her, Dathomir for many, many other places. Enfys, Qi’ra imagines, never truly leaves her home behind, but she gets around regardless.
The next time they see each other is years later. On the other side of the bridge, that distinctive mask cocks to the side. She passes the case Qi’ra wants to another masked Cloud Rider and dismisses them with a gesture.
The vocoder renders Enfys’s voice unreadable. "We meet again."
"We do," Qi’ra says uselessly, because silences are only ever filled with assumptions. "How’ve you been, Enfys?"
"I haven’t destroyed any innocent lives lately. You?"
"Oh, you know, same old, same old."
A silence falls. Qi’ra lets it. It would be good to know what Enfys fills it with, if possible.
Enfys seems content to wait out their respective underlings’ dogfight for the case. That’s fine. Qi’ra is too.
"I have the package. Cloud Rider dispatched, now headed for the rendezvous point," crackles her comlink in the end - but not before Enfys starts walking, the loss of her line to her comrade needing no report.
She stalks toward Qi’ra radiating fury, and the low hum of her staff activating is just barely audible over the sound of running water.
"I’m disappointed, Qi’ra," she spits in a harsh electronic rasp.
"This wasn’t my ideal outcome either," Qi’ra admits. "But what can you do?"
"Plenty!" Enfys says, and leaps, staff raised.
"Come on, come on, come on, come on," she grunts, screwed-shut eyes leaking and shoulders shaking. Qi’ra pulls at the torn edge of the shuttle’s wreckage until her fingers bleed and Enfys manages to claw her way out from under it.
The metal sheet drops with a sound like thunder, and Qi’ra with it, a scream trapped behind her teeth as she cradles her shredded hands to her chest. Shit. It hurts, oh it hurts. Shit, shit, shit -
"Why?"
She lifts her head. Enfys’s eyes are hard and incredulous and alarmed, darting between Qi’ra’s sweat-drenched face and bloodied blouse. Enfys’s leg is twisted behind her at an unnatural angle. Her arms, when she pushes herself up from the forest floor, quake.
"Why would you...?"
"I don’t trust that the move against the Hutts will succeed without you," Qi’ra croaks, too wrecked to see the point in trying to spin this as altruism.
Enfys frowns. "How did you hear about that?"
"You know I can’t tell you that."
"You know I can beat the answer out of you."
"You can try, but you won’t."
Enfys does not protest, just drops back down into the leaves and fists her hands in the mulch above her head.
"See if the medkit survived the crash," she says eventually. "I’ll do your hands. You’ll need them to help me with my leg."
Qi’ra does not insult her by asking if this means they have a truce.
"Please," Qi’ra begs, knees in the mud and electroripper at her throat. "Just this once. He’ll kill me if you keep doing this to me."
"I could kill you," Enfys retorts coolly. "Either way, the galaxy would be a better place for it."
But Enfys has a moral code and a soft heart. Crimson Dawn’s greatest advantage over the Cloud Riders is that, for all their intimidation, they have so many lines they will not cross.
"A deal," Qi’ra proposes, knowing that Enfys is keen for it. "You give me this, and I will find a way to give you something of equal or greater value in return."
"Such as?"
Qi’ra’s mind is racing. Debts, assets, favours owed. There are too many steps to this equation, always too many, but she can solve it. Make it work. "Prisoners. Our Imperial penitentiary facility. It doesn’t matter to us who our workforce consists of, but some of them matter to you."
Enfys lowers her staff, just a bit. There is a terrible hunger in her eyes that Qi’ra recognizes. "What guarantee do I have that you’ll hold up your end of the bargain?"
"You know me," Qi’ra says, putting on a faint smile. "As I know you. We’ve never been able to avoid one another for long before, have we?"
"No, we haven’t," Enfys allows.
And, after a moment, she holds out her hand.
Laughter rings out from the cliff behind her, and Qi’ra has whirled and shot thrice before she stops to wonder who it could be that’s followed her.
Enfys lowers her shielding fans and calls out a jaunty, "You again!"
Remembering Enfys’s habits and spotting no obvious new holsters or bulges, Qi’ra allows herself to spread her hands and shrug, blaster swaying with demonstrative carelessness.
"Me again."
"You going where I think you’re going?"
"You bet!"
Enfys takes a step back and pushes off, leaping the steep and treacherous incline and not engaging her jetpack a second sooner than she has to. Dust and dirt kick up into Qi’ra’s face, and by the time it’s safe to lower her hands, Enfys is in her personal space.
"Sorry," she says with a smile, but she’s too close for Qi’ra to raise a blaster against without having her wrist grabbed and she doesn’t look the least bit apologetic about it.
Qi’ra smiles back, slow and appreciative. "Hi."
"The stories say every visitor who passes the trials is granted the same reward. We are no rivals here. Shall we travel together?" Enfys says.
"I was about to ask you the same thing."
With a lightness in her heart she had begun to forget existed, Qi’ra holds out her arm for Enfys to hook into, and they walk the dry, rustling grass until the primary sun starts to set.
"I hate rations. I can hunt us down something fresh," Enfys suggests, eyeing the sky.
"I’ll help," Qi’ra says.
"You’ve done that a lot?"
"You’d be surprised."
"What did you hunt?" Enfys asks, with a grin that is all tease and no malice. Enfys’s business has been booming, rumours flying about rebels from across the galaxy calling for an alliance. Qi’ra’s business, not so much. "People?"
Qi’ra turns her expression wry. "On occasion. Though I was thinking of food."
Andorian bred game, wild Dathomirian wood-beasts, sewer-crawlers mutated especially in the filth of Corellia’s industry, a rat-strangler that had woken her by trying to eat her first, once...
"Two mutually exclusive groups, I hope," Enfys quips.
This time, Qi’ra’s face makes her expression for her. "So far, I’m glad to say they have been, yes," she laughs as she catches Enfys’s eyes, and together they scare away every eared creature in earshot.
Qi’ra hasn’t worn a backless dress since Maul or bare arms since Dryden Vos, but Enfys pulls off both like she’s never done anything else. The simplicity of her gown is offset by the riot of freckles on her tan skin, the wild storm of copper curls that is her hair. Silver-white bursts behind her ears keep her field of vision clear and her pearl-shimmer gown with the high slits will seal to her legs like a catsuit with the press of a button. It’s perfect.
Enfys is perfect. A vision.
"You look nice," Qi’ra says, settling beside her at the balcony railing with a drink in her hand and a restrained smile on over her best sabacc face.
Enfys looks at her from the corner of her eye, wary of acknowledging their mutual recognition until she realizes how openly Qi’ra is staring.
"First time pretending?" Qi’ra asks fondly.
"Yes."
"I can hardly tell."
Staring back openly now, Enfys’s mouth pulls into a crooked smile. "Thank you. You look like you’re in your element."
A perfectly appropriate repartee, though one that makes Qi’ra’s stomach sink and her reflection in her mind’s eye shrink in on itself. For the briefest of moments, she wonders what she could possibly say to that. ‘Thank you, I try.’? ‘You wouldn’t think so if you knew the sewer I crawled out from.’? ‘This is all I ever dreamed of and I still don’t feel happy, or done, or safe.’?
Because she might at least learn something useful from it, she settles for: "I don’t usually?"
Enfys shrugs.
Or she might not.
"Maybe it’s that nothing’s gone wrong yet tonight," Qi’ra jokes.
Enfys grins. "Maybe."
"Have you ever considered how high you could rise if -" Qi’ra starts, but all it takes to stop her is a look. "Thought not." Wiping a slow-rolling drop of blood from her chin with her shoulder, she whispers: "I have, though."
It’s a cruel, selfish thought. She would never have entertained it if she were less certain she was done for.
"Is that supposed to be a compliment?" Enfys asks dully. Her blackened eye looks more painful the longer Qi’ra holds her gaze, her uniform more stifling.
Qi’ra smiles tiredly. "I think, if we had time for me to explain my reasoning, you would consider it one."
But they haven’t the time. The New Republic has gotten everything it can justify to itself from Qi’ra, and Crimson Dawn has already declared their ties cut. As soon as their transport reaches its destination, Qi’ra will disappear until an opening is found for her execution.
Qi’ra is no defector or wet-behind-the-ears foot soldier with leniency to look forward to. Amidst all the thorny questions about what to do with the losing side of a civil war that tore society clean down the middle, an obvious offender like Qi’ra is a breath of fresh air.
"Thank you, then," Enfys says simply. "And same to you."
Qi’ra doesn’t think Enfys is very surprised when the first explosions sound outside and Qi’ra drives her own vibro-knife into her gut. Her eyes get very wide, though, when Qi’ra shucks her mag-cufs and moves to leave but makes herself turn back one last moment more to kneel, and take Enfys’s face between her hands, and kiss her, finally.
"I’m sorry," Qi’ra tells the tears spilling from Enfys’s big brown eyes, tells the rapidly breaking heart her oldest remaining foe and greatest friend, for once, wears on her sleeve.
Then she runs.
Every good thing in Qi’ra’s life is tainted by something. Every sin and horror and violation has had something hidden inside that necessity forces her to admit, sooner or later, has helped her survive and climb.
There are few things in Qi’ra’s life that are whole unto themselves. Han was. A bright, unsullied memory of a boy who simply cared, who she never hurt beyond repair. A balm, a hope. A good deed, uncorrupted even by what came after.
Enfys isn’t - but what she and Enfys are to each other, in the end, that might be.
There are accents of silver in Qi’ra’s hair by then, and more apparatus to Enfys than just what’s built into the old mask she was never able to put aside for long.
"Enough, Qi’ra," she pants. Her left leg clanks on the tilted bulkhead as she gets to her feet and approaches. Her tread is cautious on top of precarious, her expression a jumble of conflict. "Aren’t you tired of this?"
Qi’ra has been tired for so, so long. Fatigue was not a luxury she had ever been able to afford, but now...
Enfys holds out her hand and beseeches her. "You don’t have to die here."
It looks like the time has come for Qi’ra to cash in all her lost sleep at once. Her limbs are heavy and her head is light. She is losing blood hand over fist - so literally so she almost wants to laugh. Where Qi’ra finds the strength to even speak, though, she will never know.
"I’ve found... the only thing that wa - washes the blood... of others... from your hands... is your own."
Enfys’s face hardens. And then, somehow, she smiles.
"And I’ve found -" she grunts, grabbing Qi’ra’s arm and hoisting her limp weight over her shoulder. "- that if you want something and the unjust won’t give it to you, you just have to take it."
The thief who steals out of necessity and the thief who steals out of desire. The righteous law-breaker and the selfish one. The sleepless killer and the warrior with a clear conscience. Two sides of the same coin, all of them.
But when you flip it, it spins too fast to make out which is which. And when you report a wanted woman dead while you nurse her back to health in an old bolt hole, and then retire to the Unknown Regions together, well. What could anyone do about it?
Author: Omnicat
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: Solo: A Star Wars Story
Warnings: Canon-typical.
Characters & Relationships: Qi’ra x Enfys
Summary: The thief who steals out of necessity and the thief who steals out of desire. The righteous law-breaker and the selfish one. The sleepless killer and the warrior with a clear conscience. Two sides of the same coin, all of them. // 2213 words
Author’s Note: Written for saiditallbefore in the 2018 Trick or Treat Exchange on AO3. Enjoy!
The Maid in the Mirror
There are certain constants to Qi’ra’s life that refuse to be ignored. She thinks of them as coin-credits: two-sided and inextricably linked, all of them. There are shame and necessity, for instance; need and indignity; the things she finds herself willing to do and the things she can no longer bear to imagine after; power and disappointment; fear and ruthlessness, and calculations followed by more calculations, and more, and more, and more.
There’s also Enfys.
They met when they were both still barely more than girls, something Qi’ra is willing to admit in some circumstances and makes a point to disprove in most others. A mutilated, murdered rebel for a mother, the Silo - such things do not tolerate little girls. They demand women, warriors. Freedom fighters. Crime lords.
Sometimes, Qi’ra entertains the thought that she and Enfys form a coin too.
She departs Savareen for Dathomir, and eventually, when Maul is done with her, Dathomir for many, many other places. Enfys, Qi’ra imagines, never truly leaves her home behind, but she gets around regardless.
The next time they see each other is years later. On the other side of the bridge, that distinctive mask cocks to the side. She passes the case Qi’ra wants to another masked Cloud Rider and dismisses them with a gesture.
The vocoder renders Enfys’s voice unreadable. "We meet again."
"We do," Qi’ra says uselessly, because silences are only ever filled with assumptions. "How’ve you been, Enfys?"
"I haven’t destroyed any innocent lives lately. You?"
"Oh, you know, same old, same old."
A silence falls. Qi’ra lets it. It would be good to know what Enfys fills it with, if possible.
Enfys seems content to wait out their respective underlings’ dogfight for the case. That’s fine. Qi’ra is too.
"I have the package. Cloud Rider dispatched, now headed for the rendezvous point," crackles her comlink in the end - but not before Enfys starts walking, the loss of her line to her comrade needing no report.
She stalks toward Qi’ra radiating fury, and the low hum of her staff activating is just barely audible over the sound of running water.
"I’m disappointed, Qi’ra," she spits in a harsh electronic rasp.
"This wasn’t my ideal outcome either," Qi’ra admits. "But what can you do?"
"Plenty!" Enfys says, and leaps, staff raised.
"Come on, come on, come on, come on," she grunts, screwed-shut eyes leaking and shoulders shaking. Qi’ra pulls at the torn edge of the shuttle’s wreckage until her fingers bleed and Enfys manages to claw her way out from under it.
The metal sheet drops with a sound like thunder, and Qi’ra with it, a scream trapped behind her teeth as she cradles her shredded hands to her chest. Shit. It hurts, oh it hurts. Shit, shit, shit -
"Why?"
She lifts her head. Enfys’s eyes are hard and incredulous and alarmed, darting between Qi’ra’s sweat-drenched face and bloodied blouse. Enfys’s leg is twisted behind her at an unnatural angle. Her arms, when she pushes herself up from the forest floor, quake.
"Why would you...?"
"I don’t trust that the move against the Hutts will succeed without you," Qi’ra croaks, too wrecked to see the point in trying to spin this as altruism.
Enfys frowns. "How did you hear about that?"
"You know I can’t tell you that."
"You know I can beat the answer out of you."
"You can try, but you won’t."
Enfys does not protest, just drops back down into the leaves and fists her hands in the mulch above her head.
"See if the medkit survived the crash," she says eventually. "I’ll do your hands. You’ll need them to help me with my leg."
Qi’ra does not insult her by asking if this means they have a truce.
"Please," Qi’ra begs, knees in the mud and electroripper at her throat. "Just this once. He’ll kill me if you keep doing this to me."
"I could kill you," Enfys retorts coolly. "Either way, the galaxy would be a better place for it."
But Enfys has a moral code and a soft heart. Crimson Dawn’s greatest advantage over the Cloud Riders is that, for all their intimidation, they have so many lines they will not cross.
"A deal," Qi’ra proposes, knowing that Enfys is keen for it. "You give me this, and I will find a way to give you something of equal or greater value in return."
"Such as?"
Qi’ra’s mind is racing. Debts, assets, favours owed. There are too many steps to this equation, always too many, but she can solve it. Make it work. "Prisoners. Our Imperial penitentiary facility. It doesn’t matter to us who our workforce consists of, but some of them matter to you."
Enfys lowers her staff, just a bit. There is a terrible hunger in her eyes that Qi’ra recognizes. "What guarantee do I have that you’ll hold up your end of the bargain?"
"You know me," Qi’ra says, putting on a faint smile. "As I know you. We’ve never been able to avoid one another for long before, have we?"
"No, we haven’t," Enfys allows.
And, after a moment, she holds out her hand.
Laughter rings out from the cliff behind her, and Qi’ra has whirled and shot thrice before she stops to wonder who it could be that’s followed her.
Enfys lowers her shielding fans and calls out a jaunty, "You again!"
Remembering Enfys’s habits and spotting no obvious new holsters or bulges, Qi’ra allows herself to spread her hands and shrug, blaster swaying with demonstrative carelessness.
"Me again."
"You going where I think you’re going?"
"You bet!"
Enfys takes a step back and pushes off, leaping the steep and treacherous incline and not engaging her jetpack a second sooner than she has to. Dust and dirt kick up into Qi’ra’s face, and by the time it’s safe to lower her hands, Enfys is in her personal space.
"Sorry," she says with a smile, but she’s too close for Qi’ra to raise a blaster against without having her wrist grabbed and she doesn’t look the least bit apologetic about it.
Qi’ra smiles back, slow and appreciative. "Hi."
"The stories say every visitor who passes the trials is granted the same reward. We are no rivals here. Shall we travel together?" Enfys says.
"I was about to ask you the same thing."
With a lightness in her heart she had begun to forget existed, Qi’ra holds out her arm for Enfys to hook into, and they walk the dry, rustling grass until the primary sun starts to set.
"I hate rations. I can hunt us down something fresh," Enfys suggests, eyeing the sky.
"I’ll help," Qi’ra says.
"You’ve done that a lot?"
"You’d be surprised."
"What did you hunt?" Enfys asks, with a grin that is all tease and no malice. Enfys’s business has been booming, rumours flying about rebels from across the galaxy calling for an alliance. Qi’ra’s business, not so much. "People?"
Qi’ra turns her expression wry. "On occasion. Though I was thinking of food."
Andorian bred game, wild Dathomirian wood-beasts, sewer-crawlers mutated especially in the filth of Corellia’s industry, a rat-strangler that had woken her by trying to eat her first, once...
"Two mutually exclusive groups, I hope," Enfys quips.
This time, Qi’ra’s face makes her expression for her. "So far, I’m glad to say they have been, yes," she laughs as she catches Enfys’s eyes, and together they scare away every eared creature in earshot.
Qi’ra hasn’t worn a backless dress since Maul or bare arms since Dryden Vos, but Enfys pulls off both like she’s never done anything else. The simplicity of her gown is offset by the riot of freckles on her tan skin, the wild storm of copper curls that is her hair. Silver-white bursts behind her ears keep her field of vision clear and her pearl-shimmer gown with the high slits will seal to her legs like a catsuit with the press of a button. It’s perfect.
Enfys is perfect. A vision.
"You look nice," Qi’ra says, settling beside her at the balcony railing with a drink in her hand and a restrained smile on over her best sabacc face.
Enfys looks at her from the corner of her eye, wary of acknowledging their mutual recognition until she realizes how openly Qi’ra is staring.
"First time pretending?" Qi’ra asks fondly.
"Yes."
"I can hardly tell."
Staring back openly now, Enfys’s mouth pulls into a crooked smile. "Thank you. You look like you’re in your element."
A perfectly appropriate repartee, though one that makes Qi’ra’s stomach sink and her reflection in her mind’s eye shrink in on itself. For the briefest of moments, she wonders what she could possibly say to that. ‘Thank you, I try.’? ‘You wouldn’t think so if you knew the sewer I crawled out from.’? ‘This is all I ever dreamed of and I still don’t feel happy, or done, or safe.’?
Because she might at least learn something useful from it, she settles for: "I don’t usually?"
Enfys shrugs.
Or she might not.
"Maybe it’s that nothing’s gone wrong yet tonight," Qi’ra jokes.
Enfys grins. "Maybe."
"Have you ever considered how high you could rise if -" Qi’ra starts, but all it takes to stop her is a look. "Thought not." Wiping a slow-rolling drop of blood from her chin with her shoulder, she whispers: "I have, though."
It’s a cruel, selfish thought. She would never have entertained it if she were less certain she was done for.
"Is that supposed to be a compliment?" Enfys asks dully. Her blackened eye looks more painful the longer Qi’ra holds her gaze, her uniform more stifling.
Qi’ra smiles tiredly. "I think, if we had time for me to explain my reasoning, you would consider it one."
But they haven’t the time. The New Republic has gotten everything it can justify to itself from Qi’ra, and Crimson Dawn has already declared their ties cut. As soon as their transport reaches its destination, Qi’ra will disappear until an opening is found for her execution.
Qi’ra is no defector or wet-behind-the-ears foot soldier with leniency to look forward to. Amidst all the thorny questions about what to do with the losing side of a civil war that tore society clean down the middle, an obvious offender like Qi’ra is a breath of fresh air.
"Thank you, then," Enfys says simply. "And same to you."
Qi’ra doesn’t think Enfys is very surprised when the first explosions sound outside and Qi’ra drives her own vibro-knife into her gut. Her eyes get very wide, though, when Qi’ra shucks her mag-cufs and moves to leave but makes herself turn back one last moment more to kneel, and take Enfys’s face between her hands, and kiss her, finally.
"I’m sorry," Qi’ra tells the tears spilling from Enfys’s big brown eyes, tells the rapidly breaking heart her oldest remaining foe and greatest friend, for once, wears on her sleeve.
Then she runs.
Every good thing in Qi’ra’s life is tainted by something. Every sin and horror and violation has had something hidden inside that necessity forces her to admit, sooner or later, has helped her survive and climb.
There are few things in Qi’ra’s life that are whole unto themselves. Han was. A bright, unsullied memory of a boy who simply cared, who she never hurt beyond repair. A balm, a hope. A good deed, uncorrupted even by what came after.
Enfys isn’t - but what she and Enfys are to each other, in the end, that might be.
There are accents of silver in Qi’ra’s hair by then, and more apparatus to Enfys than just what’s built into the old mask she was never able to put aside for long.
"Enough, Qi’ra," she pants. Her left leg clanks on the tilted bulkhead as she gets to her feet and approaches. Her tread is cautious on top of precarious, her expression a jumble of conflict. "Aren’t you tired of this?"
Qi’ra has been tired for so, so long. Fatigue was not a luxury she had ever been able to afford, but now...
Enfys holds out her hand and beseeches her. "You don’t have to die here."
It looks like the time has come for Qi’ra to cash in all her lost sleep at once. Her limbs are heavy and her head is light. She is losing blood hand over fist - so literally so she almost wants to laugh. Where Qi’ra finds the strength to even speak, though, she will never know.
"I’ve found... the only thing that wa - washes the blood... of others... from your hands... is your own."
Enfys’s face hardens. And then, somehow, she smiles.
"And I’ve found -" she grunts, grabbing Qi’ra’s arm and hoisting her limp weight over her shoulder. "- that if you want something and the unjust won’t give it to you, you just have to take it."
The thief who steals out of necessity and the thief who steals out of desire. The righteous law-breaker and the selfish one. The sleepless killer and the warrior with a clear conscience. Two sides of the same coin, all of them.
But when you flip it, it spins too fast to make out which is which. And when you report a wanted woman dead while you nurse her back to health in an old bolt hole, and then retire to the Unknown Regions together, well. What could anyone do about it?