Chapter Text
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
Shakespeare – Julius Caesar
-----
Her collar comes off without preamble and she almost feels stupid at first.
For not asking earlier. For feeling genuinely grateful – towards a fracking Sith – for sparing her the pain and humiliation, as though he's doing it to be kind. (Why is he doing it? Any of it? All of it? Fuck, she hasn't got a clue and there's hardly any time to sit down and think these days.)
For thinking, if only for a fraction of a second, that it was simpler with that slave mark. It had at least given her body pretty damn sharp outlines, formed indirect orders. Go there, stand up straight, don't mock the jailer. The last part had always been the most difficult.
And then this weird Sith had come along, all questions and commands and those deep, calm eyes that don't fit a man in his position. He's clever, she can tell from the start. Clever and fucked up and broken and unwilling; she doesn't think he even knows what he could make her do with that collar on. He doesn't seem to enjoy causing pain, doesn't revel in his kills. Mostly, he seems sort of sad. She wonders what kind of game he plays.
“Let's try this thing as companions,” her sith lord tells her in a noisy cantina full of roaring Imperials and Vette snorts her too-bitter drink through her nose when she's trying not to laugh out loud.
“Sure thing,” she manages eventually; the sarcasm makes her voice thick. “Me and my Sith pal.”
Her Sith pal saves her ass a handful of times on Dromund Kaas. It's a reciprocal thing, of course. Plenty of disgusting wildlife to go around and they may both be pretty marvellous with their weapons but predators smell blood and move in the shadows.
That's an adequate summary of the planet right there, Vette thinks. Wildlife and shadows where freedom goes to die. Hello there, and welcome to all hells poured into one crappy planet.
It's a real difference travelling here with a Sith lord, of course. A weird, slightly uncomfortable difference walking beside this burly guy who carries two lightsabers and low-key humour carefully tucked inside his whole “look at me I'm Darth Baras' entrusted enforcer” persona. He speaks calmly, threads softly, but everyone can see he's got power.
”Nice work.” He crawls up from a lush spot of vegetation, rubbing dirt and entails from his armour. She had shot a yozusk before it took a bite of big fat Sith leg and the beast had knocked him over as it fell down dead.
She nods briefly, tucking her blasters back into her belt. Seems safe enough at the moment. ”Of course.”
She learns a lot of small things about him in the next... well, however long they stay among the shadows and jungle beasts – you don't necessarily want to count time when you live as a slave or on the run, so she has unlearned it over the years. It's a pretty long time. Give or take.
She learns a lot of small things about him, and they form an odd pattern between them, inside her:
In the ridiculously large and bright apartment they rent – one with a view of the Imperial Headquarters where stern-looking people come and go all day and night – he keeps his stuff tidy. Everything in its place, folded and tucked and sorted. Like he's not giving in to the bad or messy habits he might have, like it's part of some overarching scheme of self-control. (Really, he's the weirdest damned Sith she's ever met.) Her side of the place, on the other hand has belts and blasters and ammo and half-eaten ration bars thrown across every surface. He claims he finds her field pants hanging from the ceiling, one morning. She can't swear he's wrong about it either so instead of arguing with him, she makes a joke.
--
There's a lot of jokes. It's what she does and he keeps up, not half as quick or desperate or whatever it is that makes her brain work the way it does, but he gets it. He never laughs - she wonders occasionally if he has ever really laughed in his life – but he smiles and it feels like laughter.
--
He doesn't sleep much. Vette asks him once if it's a Sith thing or a warrior thing and he looks at her for a long time before he replies that perhaps it's neither.
--
With him, there's no past. So many things that don't make sense so she asks, can never really keep her mouth shut if she's curious, and he doesn't give her anything to go by. Something unthawed in him, something buried.
--
After a long day out in the field, he makes sure she has enough to eat and drink. It takes a while before she actually tries the food he offers her and even longer before she drinks the water or wine he hands over (she knows a hundred subtle ways to poison drinks, not nearly half as many ways to poison food without leaving traces) and he notices, but doesn't mention it.
She isn't sure why he doesn't send her to fetch food and when she asks, he shrugs. He's kneeling by his supply bag, typing something while he sorts through medical supplies and stims and he doesn't take his eyes off the task at hand as he speaks.
"I promised you I wouldn't require a maid, didn't I?"
Vette shakes her head. "You're a really hopeless Sith, you know that?"
He looks up at her then, the corners of his mouth twitching somewhat and it strikes her suddenly that if he had been anyone else, if she had been alone in a sound-proof apartment on Dromund Kaas with anyone else his size with the fucking Force at their disposal, she would be terrified. And then dead. Or raped. Or both. But first she would have been really, gut-wrenchingly terrified. Now she leans against the wall, arms folded across her chest, a smirk playing on her lips.
"Go get us something to eat," he says, nodding towards the exit. “That's an order.”
"Or else?" She can't restrain herself, it's like dragging air down her lungs to throw herself into banters with this odd human. To find someone who gets her sense of humour, gets her means of escaping reality - even if he offered to buy her a ticket to some nice, relaxing planet out there, she thinks she would stay just for that. (He does offer to buy her a ticket as soon as they get off Korriban and he considers their agreement to collaborate finished, unless you want to come along? She isn't sure what to say so she says nothing and then he rents a two bedroom apartment and here she is, staying, because she still hasn't figured out an answer to that question.)
"Well, the most immediate consequence is that we'll be really hungry." His voice is dry, the humour in it thin and crisp like newly formed ice.
Vette laughs as she heads to the doorway. "I tremble with fear, my lord."
--
After a long day out in the field, he rolls up the sleeves of his shirt and grimaces slightly behind gritted teeth; the bracers he wears are just slightly too tightly fitted around his wrists, she can spot angry red lines on his pale skin. Even these parts of him are massive, thick with muscle and scar and flesh. It's like he's created not to have any weakness. An animal bred for war but then there's also these banal little injuries, softening some of the edges.
Her gaze lingers and she tells herself that it's not that weird, tells herself that it's a measurement of sorts, an evaluation of the potential danger. (He's stronger, she's faster, he's harder, she's smarter.) She's always been a survivor. It had surprised her that he hadn't sold her on Dromund Kaas but surprise doesn't forge loyalties and she still wouldn't trust him to have her back - or her front or any part in between.
Still.
Her gaze lingers.
There's a small and sudden disruption in the air around them – some comm link shenanigans or the ship droid passing by, she can't tell and it doesn't matter – and he looks up, notices her eyes on him. For a moment she feels caught but then she gives a curt nod.
“Use some coconut gel on that,” she says, before she gets up and leaves.