Chapter Text
Of all the kriffing people who ever lived in this galaxy.
Ashkhen spun around, half-expecting, half-hoping to jerk awake and fall off the couch on Boonta, or her bunk aboard the Celestial IV, or her bed in the rental on Coruscant, or her cot in the senior Padawan dorms at the Jedi Temple. Okay, maybe not that.
This can’t be right!
Fong. Arms folded across his chest, head tilted to the side.
This… this is a bad joke.
Unquestionably, undeniably, unmistakably Fong. The exact shade of his green skin, headtails casually slung back, the spots on his cheeks that did their own little choreography with every word he said. That very same laid-back hum of charisma around him that had unraveled her the first time. In his black shirt, he presented a look that wouldn’t have been out of place at the annual Glee Anselm Holofilm Awards Gala.
“Catfish got your tongue?”
Ashkhen snapped somewhat out of it, enough for her logical mind to fire up and start assessing. With colossal effort, she shoved most of the confusion away, reined in most of her meandering thoughts, nipped those charged sensations stirring in places that had no kriffing business stirring right now, and focused on the most pressing issue at hand: the irreconcilability.
Fact Aurek: Fong was a bounty hunter.
Fact Besh: Ashkhen had a stupendous bounty on her head.
Fact Cresh: Fong was a convicted felon. Ashkhen had gotten him arrested, accidentally. Accidents like that happened when she let her emotions run amok, which habitually led to astronomical-scale kriffups.
Fact Cherek: Fong was on the run. Ashkhen—hearts vastly outnumbering her brain—had engineered a springing operation that left his prison transport a smouldering wreck on the side of the road, a fitting metaphor for a lot of things in her life, all things considered.
Fact Dorn: Ashkhen wasn’t famous for making the most grounded decisions in critical moments.
Oh, it’s kriffing turtles all the way down!
The intended calming breath diminished into something between a shudder and hiccup.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Kriffing up my retirement plans, quite obviously.” Fong glanced around in a theatrical fashion. “Now the more interesting question is, what are you doing out here by your delightful self, wearing a”—he gave her the fourth up-down in half as many minutes—“three thousand credit Isli Eebel piece?”
“Playing dress-up with a small Mid Rim family’s six-month food budget, quite obviously,” Ashkhen replied. She paused for a moment to take in the backwardness of the luxury fashion industry, attaching such an obscene price tag to so little fabric.
“I sense tense. What’s up?”
Ashkhen’s eyes narrowed. “I’m trying to gauge how badly you are in need of thirty thousand credits.”
“Gods below, you can’t be serious!” His face split into a grin. “Come on, Ash, it’s me!”
“My point exactly.”
Fong sighed. He put his right hand on his centermost heart, pointed at the ground with his left and recited in a solemn tone, “I swear before the deepest abyss that I have no intention whatsoever to check in for your mark on the Hunter’s Net. If I betray these words, may the oceanic crust hold my soul to ransom for all eternity.”
Ashkhen stared at him, mouth slightly agape. “What a dour kriffing ancient oath that was!”
First, it was the play of light in the eyes. Exuberance exploded in the air around Fong; a moment later, he started laughing a hearty, genuine laugh.
“You’ve no idea how incredibly endearing it is that you’ve no clue about your heritage.” He wiped at his eyes. “I was kriffing with you, love, I made that up. Every single word.”
Ashkhen exhaled sharply, stance shifting a little. “So you’re on the clock.”
“No. That part was true. You can even check my profile if you want to.”
“Yes, please.”
For a moment, Fong seemed genuinely taken aback. “Ouch.”
“Fong, you’re as honest as the day is long on Malachor,” Ashkhen said. “I want to confirm that with my own eyes.”
“Pssh. Suit yourself.” He pulled his datapad from his pocket, typed in a few words, then turned the screen towards Ashkhen. “See? That’s me”—he scrolled down a bit—“that’s my status: out of office. And there is”—he squinted at the device, trying to make sense of the upside-down layout—“your bounty, and all the hunters who’ve checked in. My name is not among theirs.”
Ashkhen’s face fell. “That’s a mob!”
“Eh, most of them are just lonely as kriff. They see a beautiful woman, swipe right, and keep dreaming.” Fong shoved the datapad back in his pocket. “Say, how about we move this riveting conversation about bounty hunter psychology to a less dull background and hit the bar around the corner? I’d love to buy you a drink. For old times’ sake.”
How little it would have taken to cross that threshold, to nestle snugly in nostalgia, and forget all about the next and the next and the next task! Vocarno’s code cylinder, however—tucked safely away into a headtail band, burning cold against her skin—required full focus. Ashkhen dropped her gaze.
“I… I can’t.”
Fong raised an incredulous eyebrow. “I haven’t seen you in almost a year, and you’re busy?”
“I mean I can’t leave with you right now.”
Fong’s eyes lingered on the outfit for about the forty-third time. “Dressed to the nines, but not allowed to socialize? It can only mean one of two things.” He leaned closer, voice dropping to a concerned murmur. “Are you currently experiencing involuntary enslavement?”
“What!? No!”
Fong manifestly got the reaction he was scoping for. “Then you’re a super secret spy doing super secret spy stuff! Oooh, love that. Now that I figured it out, will you have to kill me? Like, in a spectacular way?”
“As per usual, your mind is spiralling.” Ashkhen shook her head, but her mouth—the traitor—quirked upwards at the corners.
Stars, I missed that so much.
“One drink.” She held up a finger. “Maybe some food. Then I have to get back on track.”
••• ••• •••
Ashkhen squinted through the bottom of the third glass, then set it quickly down on the table.
“Still here,” Fong said across from her, as if he was reading her mind. “For real.”
“No, it’s just—”
Fong smiled the same smile he always had when he knew that she knew that he knew what she was thinking. Wistful nostalgia curled up around itself in the pit of Ashkhen’s stomach and purred.
What are you doing?
“Now, I’ve gone through a period in my life when I was doing a lot of self-reflection and I realize that I could probably keep talking as long as there is breathable air in this station, but I think we’ve had the right amount of me.” Fong leaned on the table with both elbows. “So, what have you been up to since, you know, you blew up my life, got me arrested, then shot me out of the kriffing sky?”
“I, uh…” Ashkhen quickly closed her mouth. If she were to say something stupid, the least she could do was to arrange her features into a little less stupid expression.
Fong let up in a way that made it clear that his words of blame didn’t have an ounce of sincerity to them.
“It’s all traffic over the bridge now, love.” He stole a glance past Ashkhen. Not a moment later, a waitress appeared with two glasses on her tray, then left as unobtrusively as she came. “You did the best you could with what you had, and I’m grateful. But back to my question, what did you do afterwards?”
Ashkhen sighed, leaning back in her seat. “I kriffed up.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.” Fong took up his glass and encouraged Ashkhen with a nod to do the same. “If you’re interested in my professional opinion, a thirty grand bounty is big leagues, love.”
“Was that a compliment?”
“I’d rather classify it as a warning, but I don’t want to kill the mood here. So, was I right about the secret agent schtick, or are you here with someone for leisure? Should I start mentally preparing for a hasty exit?”
Ashkhen reached for her glass to gain a few moments to think. Fong’s phrasing sounded more like a statement than an educated guess. Was he just needling, as always? Working an angle? Too cunning and slippery to pin down. Ashkhen, nowhere near the top of her game for obvious reasons, knew she was quickly losing her footing in this grip fight of the minds.
“Work brought me here,” she said. “I’m in debt. Quite a lot, actually.”
“You need help with that?” Fong asked without missing a beat, so earnestly that Ashkhen didn’t even notice the new crack on her resolve. “How much?”
Not wanting to kill the mood either, Ashkhen tried to hit a nonchalant tone. “A hundred grand.”
Even Fong’s high-caliber performative skills failed him for a moment. Some of his drink went down the wrong pipe. “How in the—how!?”
Shit, I killed the mood.
“I, uh… accidentally stole something.”
“Give it back!?”
“I can’t.”
“Oookay… so, you’re here to bend the odds in your favour and cash out big?” Fong’s eyes flashed with challenge. “I’ll help. Let’s go together, like old times, remember? Teamwork makes the dream work!”
“I’m not here for creds,” Ashkhen said, anchoring her mind on the code cylinder and Tuxa still out there and security who almost recognized her face so she wouldn’t lose focus remembering the old times. “I came here to, uh… steal something else in return.”
“Offer still stands. I mean, you can probably open heavier doors than I, but should any other need arise, I’m entirely at your disposal.”
Ashkhen put her glass down quickly. The last thing she needed right now was help dissolving her commitment.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but I already have it. I’m waiting for my transport.”
Fong regarded her through slitted eyes. “Is there another, even more expensive dress hidden under this one?”
“No,” Ashkhen said. “If you must know, it’s data. Or rather, a means to access data.”
Fong’s face twisted into an afflicted grimace. The kriffing show was still on. “Why would you say that, love? You know what happens to me when I hear the words closed-source intelligence.”
“It’s getting late.” Ashkhen let a smug smile spread on her face. “This has been lovely, but I need to get to the docking station.”
Only, she had no idea where it was, no ways of getting there, and likely a whole host of politely barring droids in the way. One vague idea slowly took the shape of the figure sitting right across the table.
“So, if you meant what you said about helping…” her fingers raked through her headtails until they found a specific one, then flicked it back, “Maybe I’ll tell you what I pinched.”
For a fraction of a second, Vocarno’s code cylinder unlocked a part of Fong’s nature that thoroughly frightened Ashkhen. The warm fuzziness budding within was pierced by the predatory focus in his eyes. It was a well-timed reminder of who he was, and that his moral compass was sorely missing its needle, if he even had one in the first place.
Fong quickly got it under control, and arranged his features into a look of genuine appreciation.
“That is very impressive, love. Out of curiosity, what level of clearance are we talking about?”
Ashkhen considered him for a long while, self-preservation battling with the nonsensical urge to further impress him. “Fleet admiral.”
“Could I…” Fong dropped a handful of Wheel-issued tokens on the table, and gave the approaching waitress an absent-minded nod. “I’m taking you to whichever dock you want, of course, but would you… grant me just a peek?”
“I’m not letting this out of my hand.”
“And you very well shouldn’t! However…” Fong stood and gestured towards the entrance with a sweep of his arm. “Look, I don’t want to bring down the tone griping, it’s just that living on the run like this, looking over my shoulder…”
You’re preaching to the choir here, man.
Fong returned a smile to the hostess by the door while he let Ashkhen pass.
“I know, I know, same boat,” he continued. “But hear me out. Your client wants to access classified Imperial data, that’s fair and understandable. You stole that code cylinder for them, that’s commendable. But it’s not a single-use device, love.”
He stopped at an intersection on the main promenade and turned to face Ashkhen. “Intel could be altered, overwritten, deleted. You could breathe fresh air. I could go back to the Core.”
Ashkhen dropped her gaze. Fong’s exile hadn’t been a conscious choice on his part. It was she who had pulled that life from under him. Accidentally.
“This guy’s military”—she jerked a thumb at her head—“not Intelligence.”
“Doesn’t matter if his security clearance is high enough.”
“What, you a techie now?” Ashkhen folded her arms across her chest, partly to apply a bit of counterpressure on the painful pang of guilt.
“It only takes threshold level IT skills to type words, love.”
Fong’s right arm swept to the side. “That way is the docking area. Say the word and that’s where I’ll take you.” His left arm extended to the opposite direction. “That way is Tech Ops.” The rest of the sentiment swirled in his eyes.
Ashkhen hung her head, eyes closed. Then she laced her fingers through his, and tugged on his hand.
The left.
“One hour, tops,” she warned him. “Then I’m heading for the bay.”
••• ••• •••
White. White. White-green-white.
Ashkhen sat on the spare seat, right leg crossed over the left, feet bobbing to the rhythm of the tiny LED light flickering on the side of Vocarno’s code cylinder. The device had been plugged into the central access port in Server Room oh-one-two-nine, one of the hundreds that lined one of the dozens of corridors on level six of the Technical Operations Center of the Wheel.
Fong occupied the other stool, giving the holoscreen in front of him a hefty dose of the evil eye. Ashkhen didn’t find whatever was happening on the screen particularly interesting; she studied his profile instead. The complexity of the task left plenty of time to rediscover the nuances beyond his most prominent features that first struck the eyes.
Few things existed that had the same universal, subtle yet tangible refining effect on the face of men as focused problem-solving. It had happened to Master Balian when he was poring over documents, data, reports and testimonies from the opposing sides of a conflict before a mission; she had seen it on Surot, whether he was doing weapons maintenance or tactical research; and Fong was no exception, either.
There. An occasional flicker of the muscles around his eyes, the way his skin was drawn across the cheekbones, how he set his chin as his fingers worked the keyboard. Ashkhen’s gaze lingered on his jawline, following its upward curve, and nestled into the hollow behind it. That right there was a very nice spot.
A tsk and an absent-minded scratching of his forehead shook Ashkhen out of her thoughts.
What the kriff am I doing!?
“Is it working?” she asked when Fong pressed the same four keys in the same sequence for the fourth time.
“It should. Soon.”
Fong snatched his datapad up from the terminal, answered a question, asked another one, then dropped it back with a soft metallic clunk. Watching seemingly random sets of characters unfurl on a screen, line after line after line, lost its novelty pretty fast for Ashkhen. Without anything more useful to do, she occupied herself with practicing exactly how much leg push was needed to complete a perfect 360 degree twirl on her swivel stool next to Fong’s.
“Will you please check the door?” Fong asked without looking up from the terminal.
Ashkhen pushed herself off the seat, walked down between two towering aisles of softly blinking lights, and peeked around the edge. The door to the server room remained closed and locked from the inside, hardly surprising.
“Coast is clear.” Ashkhen squinted at the server cabinet to her right, trying to figure out the rhythm and pattern of the small, colorful LED lights, and played a few rounds of improvised whack-a-molerat with her index finger.
The enthused clickety-click of a keyboard turned her attention back towards where Fong sat.
“You got it?” she called.
Fong slowly exhaled. “Sluicer, not slicer, remember? It’s a little more sophisticated than I thought, and I won’t pretend that this is my area of expertise. Give me a moment here, please.”
Ashkhen ambled back between the server cabinets. Her eyes needed someplace to go, so they settled on Fong’s back. Was it out of sheer vanity or an elevated sense of style to have had his shirt tailored? Whichever it was, it did a wonderful job of accentuating the shape of his shoulders. Shoulders that had the pull that took one around an equator against the prevailing currents.
Ashkhen was struck by the impulse to wrap her arms around his waist and see if the fabric of his shirt was as soft as it looked.
It’s official. I’m kriffing insane.
She walked up to the terminal and leaned over him. If there was anything different on the screen from five minutes before, she couldn’t tell. Fong chewed on his lower lip as his fingers scuttled across the keyboard.
“You said it was just typing words, Fong. Grep is not a real word.”
“It is in this language,” Fong muttered, eyes fixed on the screen. “Now this should… shit!”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.” Fong exhaled. “Literally nothing. Could you please stop breathing down my neck for a minute? It’s making it hard to focus for all the right reasons.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Head of Tech Support, I was just worried that you pressed the wrong button and summoned an Imperial fleet here.”
“This is a database, love.”
“Yes, and?”
“Can I not explain what commands are in this context right now?”
“Fine, whatever.”
Ashkhen straightened back up, arms crossed. The cracking took way longer than she expected, and there were already far too many irrelevant thoughts romping around in her idle mind. And taking deep, calming breaths around Fong had the exact opposite effect.
“Ha! Kriffing finally,” Fong suddenly said, all tension evaporating from his tone at once. His brows shot up when he scrolled down a bit. “You didn’t visit Boonta for the scenery, I assume?”
“The Empire knows I was there?” Ashkhen’s face fell. “That was two days ago!”
“Three bounty hunters were crossed off your list on Boonta, love,” Fong said, scanning her file. “That’s a very specific kind of weeding to be dismissed as coincidence.” He adjusted his rolled up sleeves. “Anyways, now comes the words part that you oh so patiently waited for. Scratch Boonta, you were spotted on”—his hands hovered over the keyboard for a moment—“Eriadu instead. And before that… Sullust seems an inoffensive choice. Is there a specific pattern you’d like to project?”
Ashkhen shook her head. The idea of a phantom Ashkhen Dakiis slowly coming to life was a lot to grasp all at once. That Fong would press keys and send the phantom running around in the opposite corner of the galaxy, to draw all the unwanted attention and danger away…
Fong kept typing for a few more minutes, checking his datapad every once in a while, answering a message here and there.
“That should about do it.” He stretched his back, rotated his chair, and stood to face Ashkhen. “Eventually, they’ll catch on and retrace the modifications, but you’ve got at least a week or so of a head sta—”
Her kiss missed its mark and landed on his chin. Fong had leaned out. Ashkhen’s smallest heart shattered like a wine glass on a marble floor.
“I’ve seen the boyfriend you came here with, love,” Fong said, palms open, arms to the sides. “Him reaching down my throat, grabbing my balls and turning me inside out is not the way I’d want to go.”
Tease flickered in his aura, negating his words in an instant. Damn the stop-and-go reeling games to the ninth Sith hell! Ashkhen exhaled through the nose, ignoring the spots on his cheeks clearing the stage for his grin.
“Tuxa’s not my boyfriend. He’s my attack dog.” Her hand skimmed up his arm, and she sensed the quiver zap through him from head to toe and smiled. She had him finally pinned. “So it’s either you kiss me right now, or I’m siccing him on your sorry ass.”
The same erratic pattern flickered in Fong’s eyes as on the equipment around them. “Whoa! Can’t decide if a power move like that makes me more scared or turned on.”
“Just what are you going to do?”
She never had him pinned. Swift and fluid, Fong completed a half-circle around Ashkhen and planted himself between her and the door. Her heels knocked flush against the base of the computer console.
“Unspeakable things,” he said in a measured tone. “Things I couldn’t do up there on the main deck, with all those people around.” He leaned in. “But I absolutely kriffing will, now that you’re locked in here with me.”
His sheer presence obliterated common sense and had Ashkhen capitulate before her mind could catch up. Fong’s hands went to her waist, and she found it a great nuisance that there was entirely too much fabric interfering with his hold.
He propped her up on the console’s edge, and a sound escaped Ashkhen that she had forgotten she could make. His hands roamed and Isli Eebel’s vision was hiked up so it wasn’t running interference any longer, then the feeling of his breath on her lips hit the kill switch of her upstairs brain.
Fong kissed her like old times, then like never before, and Ashkhen let herself dissolve in the present. For a brief moment, she clocked him reaching around her, towards the code cylinder still in the port. How dare he let his focus drift!? Ashkhen grabbed him by the belt and pulled him closer, as much in challenge as in burning anticipation. The threat—the promise—still thrilled in that whisper of space between them.
Fong stilled for a moment to soak it in, his smile a crescent of white against the twinkling half-lights of the server cabinets behind. That one heartbeat of a strategic pause in the lead-in was all it took for Ashkhen to lose the rest of her kriffing mind.
Thank the high seas it was one of those occasions where Fong made good on his words.
••• ••• •••
By the time Ashkhen’s inward focus started to shift outwards again, she had already missed her self-imposed time cap by threefold, coming up on four.
Textures and sensations gained a bit of definition, sharpening into a layout of her surroundings. The sharp edges and hard surfaces of the server room had long been replaced by a nestle of pillows, the harsh office lights dimmed into the ambient glow of the cozy room. Not a beat of urgency near or far. Just the lazy hemiola of Fong’s heartbeats against her temple.
She was content, curled up against his side, eyes half closed. A faint smile played around her lips—every last one of his spots was exactly where she remembered. The contemplation of her eventual departure from Fong’s hotel suite was also deferred to a later convenience.
“Bath’s all yours if you want to,” he said.
“Not falling for that again.” Ashkhen gave him an admonishing poke between the ribs. The kiss-here dimple appeared on his cheek, but his face was too far and she didn’t have it in her to move her head from his shoulder and bridge the distance.
Ashkhen tried focusing on the dotwork right in front of her eyes, but from her angle, the design was too distorted to make out. Her fingers traced the outline, curving around his ribcage, eliciting a ticklish shudder from Fong.
Feathers. A wing. She raised her head a little and squinted at the black form spilling down his side.
“Is that a raven?”
“Mm-hmm.” Fong sounded like he had been pulled back over the knickpoint of sleep in the last moment.
“That’s new.”
“Relatively.”
Ashkhen propped herself up on her elbow, head resting in her hand. “There used to be a constellation here, right? You covered it up with a bird?”
“I’ve never had a cover-up done in my life. Skin regenerates way too fast for tattoo regret to set in. I just spend a kriffton on touch-ups, absorb the ones that become obsolete, piss out a rainbow, reuse the surface.”
“And your choice was… a bird?”
“What’s your problem? It’s a sick ass raven.”
”No, it’s nicely done, it’s just… I don’t know about the, uh, cultural relevance.”
“You’d rather have me walk around with a giant kriffing geoduck chest piece?”
Ashkhen burst into laughter. “Stars, no!”
Languorous silence settled over them. Fong adjusted the pillow under his head, ready to succumb to sleep. His breathing slowed, inviting Ashkhen to match his rhythm once again.
Ashkhen snuggled closer, wrapping her arm around the raven as though she was afraid that it would take flight and vanish into the night.
“Tell me the story.”
“It’s deeply personal, love, and you’re just gonna fall asleep. You always do.”
“No, I’ll listen through the end! Promise.”
Fong let out a long sigh. “So anyways, this one time I was on my way back from…”
In the end, the soft bed, dim lights, and still ambience won. Ashkhen never learned where the raven that she fell asleep on came from or what it stood for.
Fong looked at her, stretched out by his side, in complete surrender to him. Soft. Warm. Peaceful.
He kissed her forehead, then rolled out of bed. Left foot, right foot hit the floor. Standard hotel carpet scuffed against his soles. He leaned forward on his knees. Toes dug into the strands, curling.
He snatched up his comlink from the nightstand, sent a two word text, then tossed it onto the pillow.
In his other hand, an empty syringe still dangled between his fingers.