Looking at Alynna now, with the light of the setting sun warming her white markings to a soft gold and setting her blue eyes aflame, Lux was certain he'd never seen anything more beautiful.
And it wasn't just the glow of the setting sun, either. She'd changed in the last week. Her silly pretense of being nothing more than a meek, feeble slave girl had been steadily eroding for some time now, but never before had he seen her so full of life – so radiant. Her full lips would part in a sharp-toothed grin at the slightest hint of a challenge, with clever wisecrack never far behind...
Lux sighed as he disembarked from the speeder, listening with half an ear to her animated critique of his last – and, in his opinion, his best – speech of the tour of the mining villages. Was it possible to know so little about someone and yet be so drawn to them? He felt like he could stay at the villa for the rest of his life, forever in her orbit and forever basking in her light.
"Hey. Hey. Onderon to Lux, do you copy?"
Lux shook himself out of the daydream, managing to smile at her through the color rising to his cheeks. "Forgive me. I must've zoned out."
"It's– no, no, it's fine," she said, looking away. She was flushing, too. "I just complimented you, and you didn't brush it off. That usually means something's up."
"Well, I'm sure you were being too generous, anyway, and–"
"Ohhh no, you don't!" She poked him in the side, grinning. "You missed your shot for excessive modesty, my lord. No speedy riposte, no excuses. Silence means you accept it."
Lux shook his head, laughing to himself. Alynna's grin widened, and she took his hand – something she'd been doing quite a lot lately. Lux's flush deepened.
"So. It's back to Kyzeron tomorrow morning, huh."
He drew his shoulders further back to keep from slouching. He'd go where he was needed, even if he was dying to stay right where he was. It was his duty. "It is."
"I wish we could stay longer. I feel like there's so much more I can do here."
"Me too." The additional freedom was nice. Recently he'd even been able to cut down on the amount of guards accompanying him to his speeches or fancy private dinners. Away from Kyzeron, Lux had been free to investigate the contents of the datapad he'd ripped in Izadash to his heart's content...
And somehow, he still hadn't gotten much done. He'd started off with a whole list of leads to investigate, but after a week, they'd begun to feel less like leads and more like a series of dead ends.
He'd read of countless allies to reinforce, countless credits to funnel to off-world buyers and local officials, countless villages to 'requisition' equipment and supplies from. How could anyone cover all that up so quickly? He'd run every cypher and code breaker he knew of, and still found nothing.
Lux took a deep breath, setting his frustrations aside for the time being. He had to believe there would be other opportunities, and this would probably be his last night without stress in a long time. He wanted to use it to celebrate with the one person besides Dakharen who'd actually rejoice in his achievements on the tour.
In fact, if he wasn't wrong...
Lux beamed when, some few hundred meters in the distance, he picked out the two twisted palms that had once marked the spot. He let go of Alynna to double back to the speeder, grabbing a few blankets and bundling these under one arm.
By this point she'd caught on that he was up to something. "What are you doing?" she asked, raising an amused brow as she came over to meet him.
He took her hand again and drew her off into the jungle, glaring at the guards who'd accompanied him back to the villa to stop them from following. "Would you care for a brief history lesson if I promised a reward at the end? A celebration of the past four weeks to give them a proper sendoff?"
"I've already taught you a lot. I guess it's only fair you reciprocate – not that you haven't taught me anything. I just– kriff, never mind. Tell me."
Lux snuck another look at the guards. Captain Felarra looked antsy, but she and the rest of her forces were hanging back, less than eager for a repeat of the last time they'd approached unannounced. He kept voice low as he spoke, though – just in case. "After the Rebellion was defeated, King Rash had us publically defamed. His propaganda was sound, and even if people were sympathetic to our fight, before long they were all insisting we'd been a small group, out of the way, easy to defeat.
"Both of those were true, in a sense. We didn't have access to the numbers or the supplies to maintain an active guerilla war... but one thing we were very good at was sneaking around the border villages. Rash never found half of our old hideouts."
Alynna's eyes widened. "Was this place one of them? I never noticed–"
"You weren't meant to. Father's replaced most of the staff now, but at the time, they were all loyal to my family – the Bonteri side, I mean. They kept us fed while we camped out on the grounds, but we left after a few weeks." Lux pursed his lips, remembering arguing with Saw about whether to stay or leave. "They were good people, and I didn't want to endanger them by their association to me."
"I can understand that," Alynna said, strangely morose, but her expression brightened again before he could call her on it. "Did you have others?"
"What?"
"Other places? Nearby?"
"Well... it's not really relevant anymore," he muttered, avoiding the question. He was used to her being direct with him, but this time, it was unnerving.
Alynna caught on quick, and smiled reassuringly. "So why are you telling me all this? Do you have one last spot to show me? Or did you leave something behind?"
"I never actually went to university – Mother had my tutors fast-track me through the political science and government classes I'd need to become Senator – but my comrades told me about a tradition of theirs from the University of Iziz. The night before critical exams that decided whether or not you'd have to retake the term, groups of friends would buy a bottle of fine spirits and squirrel it away."
Smiling faces flicked through his mind – Dono, Saw, Steela, the general – but he found it wasn't as hard to remember them when Alynna's hand was clasped in his. He could think about the good parts only, the happy parts, if he really focused.
"If they failed, they'd drink it the day after their results were published to commiserate. If they passed, they drank in celebration," Lux continued. "Saw had a fine bottle of Chandrilan rum he'd been carrying around with him for weeks. While we were here, we decided to bury it under those trees–" he pointed to the two interlocking trunks, "–and come back for it later. If by some miracle we won, we'd drink to celebrate. If we didn't, and the survivors eventually met up here again..."
"It would be as a farewell." Alynna put her free hand around his arm as they came to a stop in front of the landmark, twining their bodies together like she was imitating it. "That's fitting on several levels, actually."
The flat piece of slate Saw had left behind to covertly dig the bottle up was half overgrown, but still in one piece. "So," Lux said conversationally as he picked it up, "feel like getting so drunk sharing our trauma turns into a comedy routine?"
Alynna smirked, and Lux knew without asking that her answer was a yes.
As though to spite the reputation of the planet it hailed from, Chandrilan rum was known for its potency. Lux was a social drinker, save the odd glass of wine on a quiet evening. Alynna, by her own admission, hadn't had enough to drink in months to build up any kind of tolerance. They got drunk very quickly, each absentminded swig from the bottle dulling their sorrow and bolstering their laughter a little more.
And Lux savored every second of it.
"Why didn't you save this?" Alynna asked as she flopped down beside him on one of the blankets, stretching her booted feet out toward the little fire they'd built. It was only after a long moment of trying to figure out where she'd just gone that he remembered she'd left some minutes before, claiming she had to 'use the facilities'.
He wondered if she knew there were no facilities in the jungle.
"Huh?"
"The rum. Why're you drinking it with me?"
"Spent five months here under house arrest before Fa... Father cleared my name." Lux laughed as he turned toward her. "Did you know he jumped in right as they were about to execute me?"
Alynna gasped. "No. I thought that was only something that happened to me!"
"Right? So yeah, he, um..." He faltered when he realized how close Alynna actually was. Their faces were only inches apart, and her gaze was penetrating. "Well, I was here for months, but Saw never came back. His pardon was sketchy, so he... he hopped a ship to the mining outpost on Morvolo and never looked back."
"What 'bout the others?"
"Everybody who knew to meet back here was dead by then." Lux shrugged, and had to puff out his cheeks to keep from laughing aloud at the absurdity. Those were dead people he was talking about. It wasn't polite to laugh at dead people.
Alynna took the squat, wavering bottle from him and made a grandiose gesture with it, like she was trying to toast the sky. "You don't think the glorious Rebellion of Onderon will ever rise again?" She drank deeply, and instantly made a face – something she'd been doing a lot while drinking it, he suddenly realized.
"Not to your liking?" Lux asked, grinning.
"It's too karking sweet. Drinking it makes my teeth hurt."
"Shall I try to find you some spotchka, then? Or some jet juice?"
She smacked his arm. "Show some respect for the poor sentients' drinks, mister rich high-and-mighty Senator... guy. It was jet juice or nothing where I come from, 'less one of my brothers forked over the credits for a bottle of wine. Ha! Like any of us ever had the credits for a bottle of wine to begin with!"
"You had brothers? How many?"
"Thousands. Millions. As many stars as there are in the sky," she said with a broad smile, pointing up at the space between the moons high above them. The fire made it difficult to pick any out in particular, but even with a light source so close to them he swore he saw thousands clustered in any given patch of indigo-black.
"Uh-huh?"
"Yup... though I only really knew about four hundred of them well enough to talk to person to person." Her brow furrowed. "Does that still count?"
"You have had way too much to drink."
"Like you haven't!"
"Point. But millions?"
"Making me do math when I'm drunk is a war crime."
Lux's brows shot up, and he laughed, slinging an arm over her body – supple softness over muscles, utterly inviting, inevitably distracting – to take back the bottle. "And I assume you're an expert on war crimes?"
Alynna inclined her head nonchalantly.
Lux downed a generous swig of rum. The bitter aftertaste stung after the overwhelming sweetness on his tongue, but the way it burned in his chest as he swallowed was bliss. "You're funny drunk. You really can't hold your liquor."
"Your face is funny."
Lux snorted. "You can do better than that."
"Fine! Your face is funny – so Human and weird and unfairly handsome."
A flush came over him that wasn't entirely from the rum. "Compliments," he said, trying to keep calm, "are not good roasts."
"Kriff, you're right." Alynna groaned, pressing closer to hide her face in his shoulder. Her right lek was startlingly hot against his jaw. "I'm so drunk."
"Time to stop drinking, then."
"When'd I say that?" Alynna demanded, snatching the bottle and holding it protectively to her chest.
"Fine. A little more. Forgive me if one of us has to be responsible."
"You're one to talk."
"Am not! 'f anything, I should be the one hogging the bottle," Lux said. "I'm gonna make sure you get to stay out of the way, that you're not involved like you were at the auction unless you want to be. But starting tomorrow it's back to all those stupid House politics for me, and the silly gala..."
"Gala?" Alynna frowned. "What gala?"
"Every couple o' years Galactic New Year falls near the midsummer festival on Onderon – something to do with the orbit, but doing math when you're drunk is a war crime, apparently."
Alynna nodded sagely.
"When it does, there are always extra parties – sometimes a weeklong holiday, if the two are just a few days apart. This year, I think they're... two days after each other. Midsummer first, then the New Year. Father's probably gonna throw a big gala, and if I'm not there..."
"You're weird. I thought you loved politics. Those big Senate parties on Coruscant were always just another political arena. Isn't it the same thing here?"
He was weird: a politician who hated Onderon's epicenter of House intrigues because no one there was ever genuine. The contradiction might've made him laugh, had be been someone else looking in on a stranger's life. A historian, perhaps. He'd always loved history, though the irony in historical parallels often made him cringe.
Well, considering he was the most eligible bachelor on the planet, he was justified in being weird. Half the attendees under thirty years old Standard would be vying for him, trying to make themselves noticed over the rabble, and his preferred style of finding a romantic partner was definitely not to be aggressively flirted at.
Alynna wasn't like that. Well, not that there was anything truly romantic between them, but he appreciated her bluntness – her honesty.
"You're gonna call me out on my privilege again if I say otherwise," Lux said finally, realizing she was still waiting for an answer, "so I'll say yes."
Alynna grinned slyly over the rim of the bottle. Why did something as simple as that set his insides on fire?
Shaking himself, Lux propped his torso up on one elbow and reached for the bottle. "Okay, responsible Lux time begins now. Stop drinking before you pass out."
"You don't own me," Alynna said, clutching it tighter.
"Well, technically, I do, but we're... not... gonna go there right now. Just give me the bottle, Alynna, would you? I'm trying to help you."
She darted to her feet and swayed there for a moment. In a sudden panic the rum would interfere with the way her montrals and lekku regulated her balance, Lux scrambled up after her to steady her. She stabilized on her own before he got close, and then she was dancing away from him, giggling like a child as she went.
Even drunk and stumbling more than dancing, he had to admire the innate grace in the way she moved, the lithe rippling of muscles as she pulled her body into a turn. Lux wondered what it would've been like to meet her in her element while he was in his, instead of the strange way they'd begun their friendship: him a Senator, and her the proud warrior she must once have been.
But this was here and now, a precious moment without anger or sadness or flashbacks to dark places, and it was the most fun he'd had in ages. Chuckling to himself, Lux followed her, aiming to grab her around the waist.
His aim was off, naturally; he could barely see where he was going. (When had the trees at the edges of the training clearing started splitting into duplicates? That wasn't fair. They had to be in league with Alynna.) Only a few more feints – most of them unintentional – and a lucky break finally allowed him to catch the neck of the bottle and pull it away as he chased her back across the blanket.
Alynna gave an irate hiss and tried to steal it back. His response was to lift it as high as he could. Her eyelevel was a good seven inches below his, and the height difference was just enough to keep it out of her reach.
Standing on tiptoe, she put a hand on his left shoulder and pressed down, using his body as some kind of stepladder while she reached for the rum with her free hand. The look on her face drew another laugh from him. With her tongue stuck halfway out between her teeth and crisp white brows scrunched together, she looked as intent on completing her task as a solder defusing a bomb.
It took him a moment to register the way her gaze had suddenly slanted down to his, her tongue withdrawn and lips hanging open in a quiet circle.
"Give up?" he whispered.
Instead of pressing, she maneuvered her body around him, her legs snaking through his. Her grip on his shoulder went lax, and the hand that had been straining for the bottle dropped to his chest.
And with the way she was staring at him, her blue eyes like whirlpools and he a lost seafaring vessel about to capsize, he couldn't help but move closer, couldn't help but do the only thing his rum-saturated brain construed as sensible. It was an understandable move, given the circumstances, but with the implications attached, definitely not something he'd be proud of later.
He kissed her.
Before his synapses could connect, spurning him away again and concocting a suitably self-deprecating apology, Alynna kissed him back. And then she groaned into it like his mouth was the best thing she'd ever tasted.
His grip on the bottle went slack. No – that last part had to be his imagination.
His knees buckled when her tongue swept past his lips. She followed him down to the blanket, somehow timing herself perfectly so the sweet warmth of her hands on his body and the deeper pleasure of the kiss didn't break for a second. When Lux finally landed on his haunches, she scrambled up into his lap, her teeth catching on his skin when staying joined made the gesture awkward.
Need sparked up his spine. Oh, he thought dizzily. Perhaps it wasn't just me.
Stifling a whine, he pressed up into the canine responsible and tried – unsuccessfully – to shift her hips higher into his lap with only one hand free. Alynna grinned against him, slipping one hand up over his shoulder and the other into his hair as though to spite him. When her mouth opened again, it was to take his lower lip between her teeth and bite it sharply.
Lux saw stars, and prayed his contraceptive implant was still functional. His self-control was whittling away by the second, and if Alynna was interested, too–
The hand on his chest snapped up, finding the neck of the bottle he was holding captive and yanking it from his fingers with startling accuracy. She slid out of his lap, crowing triumphantly, and took another long swig.
"You– why did– what?" he said. Not dazzlingly articulate by any stretch of the imagination, but caught between the rum and the sudden burst of feelings swarming in his head and chest and lower as he was, it was all he could manage.
Alynna grinned, the same grin he'd felt against his mouth seconds before, and abruptly Lux put it together. "You conniving little vixen!" he gasped, shock sobering him some. "Kiss me like you want to bed me just so you can steal back the rum?"
"You kissed me first," Alynna slurred, pouting. It was unfair how cute that was on her. All of this was unfair.
"Well, you used me," Lux said, pouting right back. His pout probably looked more like a scowl, but he was too drunk to ponder the technicalities. To suddenly feel like he'd wandered into a waking wet dream and just as suddenly be torn out of it, well, it made sense that he was a little upset.
"I didn't," she insisted, but her conviction faded in an instant. "Did I...?"
"I don't like being played with. And 's not the first time, either."
Her expression crumpled. "Oh... oh. I did, didn't I? Alynna's gonna be so mad," she said, the words practically a sob. "I take her name, 'n this is what I do with it?"
Lux tried to stitch her words together into something he could understand, but the pattern of the tapestry always escaped him before he could take a step back and see the whole picture. "What?" he asked uselessly.
Alynna crossed her arms over her chest, the bottle dangling from one hand. If Lux hadn't known better, he'd have thought she was on the verge of tears. "Doesn't matter. I made a mess of things with you years ago, anyway." She brought the bottle to her lips, then frowned. "Why's the rum always gone right when you need it?"
"Is the bottle empty?"
"Yup," she said morosely, tipping it over and shaking it.
Nothing came out. Stars. They'd already finished the entire thing?
Alynna looked between the bottle and Lux for a long moment before a tremor went through her. She dropped the bottle, disgusted, and marched back over to him in as straight a line as she could manage. Thumping back down to the blanket, she threw her arms around him and buried her face in the crook of his neck.
"Tell me I haven't lost you, Lux," she begged. "Please."
Worry returned a measure of sobriety to him. "What? No. I'm here, always," he whispered, reaching up to cradle the back of her head as he hugged her back.
The tension in her body left her in a long sigh, and she pulled him down so they were lying side by side. She nestled closer to him then, fitting their bodies together, and he let her.
He rubbed her back for what felt like hours after that, quieting her whispered promises and insistence on a strange name so like hers until, at last, they fell asleep.
Slowly but surely, that which lies hidden is coming to light... Lux's feelings for Ahsoka are already strong enough to overwhelm him, and Ahsoka's may be about to boil over in turn. With things finally looking up with Rebel Command, will she finally tell him who she really is? More importantly, if she slips up like this again when the return to Kyzeron, will she even have the choice after all? Only time will tell...
My brain ALLLLL THE WAY THROUGH WRITING THIS CHAPTER:
The timing for this chapter and this week was unexpected but absolutely not unwelcome, so I hope everyone enjoyed their (impromptu) Christmas present from yours truly: LUXSOKA FLUFF
(Yes, the title has multiple meanings. No, I'm not sorry for that word choice.)
With a bit of angst and plot, of course. Unfortunately that couldn't be helped. Lux and Ahsoka are starting to be more open with each other, more prone to jokes and physical touch, and a wonderful, quiet night away from all the craziness was exactly what I needed to bring their walls and push their boundaries a little more. I promise it'll pay off in the next ten chapters ;)
Happy belated Hanukkah, Merry Christmas in advance, and Happy Kwanzaa in advance, depending on which one you guys celebrate. The holidays are pretty iffy this year with the pandemic, and I'm feeling the separation from my extended family especially keenly; my only wish now is to give someone else's day little extra warmth and brightness.
Next chapter we'll be taking another trip down metaphorical memory lane with another flashback to the investigation into Palpatine death. I'll talk to you guys then!