scavenger.

19 - something

She was something.

Jace stood watching with his hands in his pockets.

Surrounded by pilots hanging onto her every word, Anri was laughing sweetly at some joke, her hands busy at work fixing some poor sod's severely beat-up fighter.

(She'd caught sight of it while blatantly ignoring him [other than taking his jacket] as they were walking through the relatively tiny hangar—the aforementioned poor sod was kicking the everloving shit out of the fighter, half-reduced to tears, but within minutes Anri had already managed to start it humming back to life—unsurprising, given her experience with lost causes such as this, Jace thought.

Now she was inside the fighter, tinkering away at the control unit, already half a rebel pilot herself...)

"Nah, I'm not joining," Anri was saying in response to some question. "I'm not interested in this kind of thing. It's a noble cause, but I'm just not interested. I got dreams that don't involve me getting killed, or shot out of space, or you know. It took me long enough to get into space, for one thing."

This elicited a round of laughter from a few pilots, but she was deadly serious. The poor sod leaned against the fighter.

"If you're not here to join," said the sod, real smooth, "why are you here?"

Anri leaned back in the cockpit, crossing her arms, a sort of worldworn wisdom folding her features as if she were meditating on the question's existential undertones. After a pregnant, dramatic silence, she replied, with a whisper that somehow boomed—"I'm being held hostage."

Jace rolled his eyes.

The pilots were incredulous.

"Hostage?!"

"By us?"

"What for?"

"Are you an imperial?"

"Don't think the worst of me, now," Anri laughed again. She was laughing much more than usual, Jace thought. She'd never been so damn charming in all the time he'd known her. "All I ever did wrong was save your captain's life..."

All heads turned to Jace, as if just realizing he was there.

He shrugged.

"It was gruesome," Anri lamented. She pulled herself out of the fighter with a somewhat pained grunt, swatting away someone's helping hand. "First I nearly starve for a week or two keeping this guy alive, then, to top it all off, I got shot in the gut." She untucked her uniform shirt and pulled it up. Her audience was mesmerized, nearly falling over each other to catch a glimpse of her stomach. Jace pursed his lips. "By imperials," she said, and sounded almost proud. "And what do I get in return? Your captain won't let me leave. I barely even get to walk around the base like this! I damn near had to go on hunger strike..."

"Speaking of which," Jace spoke up, trying to hide his amusement, "it's about time we head back now, you know. These guys need to get back to their posts."

The pilots groaned. Anri pouted, making eye contact with him for the first time since they'd left the room. "I was just starting to have fun," she said.

"I know," Jace held up his hands, all humble apologies. "I'm the bad guy."

"That you are," she heaved a sigh, then grinned brilliantly at the crowd. "Back to the cell for me, then. I'll come back tomorrow."

Annoyed, grumbling and half-in-love, the pilots finally dispersed, except for the sod, who took Anri's place in his fighter and eyed her for a moment as she made her way towards Jace, her grin growing and becoming more...real, somehow.

"Just when I was starting to enjoy myself, captain."

"For someone who doesn't want attachments, you certainly didn't mind them warming up to you." He nodded at the sod, who quickly looked away.

Anri hadn't even looked back. "Iye, they'll forget about me tomorrow," she replied simply, taking his arm. "I just like messing with people like that. I'm very good at it."

Jace bristled at the sudden contact.

(Every time Anri touched him, no matter how little—it meant more, somehow, than anything anybody had ever done his whole life. Like she was making some great sacrifice, even though she never seemed to mind and even was doing it absentmindedly half the time...perhaps he was the only one making a big deal.)

"One more place, captain," Anri insisted, holding up a finger. "Then we can go back."

Jace let out a breath. Her hand was freezing. "Depends on where it is."

"I wasn't asking," she chided. "Take me outside. I've never seen a tree before."

—————

It wasn't a long walk to get outside—all they had to do was go across the hangar, and there was a door there—but Jace took the long way around on purpose, knowing the longer she wasn't cooped in her room, the better. He remembered his restlessness on Jakku—but his restlessness had cost him. His old wound still wasn't healing right.

Anri still didn't seem affected, but...

"I'm fine," she said, interrupting his thoughts. "Really. It barely hurts anymore. I was laid up far longer than you were."

Jace looked at her. "How do you do that?"

"Hm?"

"What I was thinking about, how did you know?"

She looked confused. "It was just hanging around you."

"Around me?"

"Yes, don't you...?" But then she stopped walking, looking elsewhere.

They were outside now. Jace hadn't even noticed any doors, but they were outside. Somehow he was overwhelmed, and all seemed too bright, and then he felt an ache in his chest—but this wasn't his own feeling. He looked over at Anri, who was still as stone. She blinked, and all was normal again.

The patter of rain became audible to his ears, and he welcomed it. He hadn't felt rain in so long...

Anri flinched at first. "What's falling?"

"Rain," Jace replied. "Water."

"Water just falls here?" She let go of his arm and stepped further out. Jace moved to stop her—freezing as she was, she'd catch a cold—but then knew he shouldn't. She held out her hands, catching the droplets. Chlorophyll seemed to rise like steam off the ground. Everything was green.

None of this had ever seemed so beautiful to him before. He never noticed it.

Anri turned to him, a strange expression on her face—the widest grin he'd ever seen, a sort of wildness in her eyes, which were right at home with the wilderness around her. Jace realized suddenly he'd never seen her happy before.

Her mouth didn't move, but he knew what she was asking him.

Is Corellia like this?

"Yes," Jace replied, a smile stretching across his face. "Just like this."