AU: Not Milliways continuity: The Foundry -Reprise

[last_kallig]

Ibani is at a corner booth in Milliways, examining a tactical map of the Kurost sector of the Mid-Rim, specifically the Nanth'ri system.

She's half in, half out of armor, a look worn by many commanders in many worlds and many times. A look that suggests that the Commander was either interrupted en route to sleep or has given up on it entirely.

She has a small stack of holopads set out on the table, listing various groups and their locations, most of them are crossed out. The two on top are for a Major Bessiker and the Sith Hiran Bessiker, his son.

She'd hoped she would never need to enter the Foundry again, but events have conspired against her.

Her stomach sinks as she recalls what she's fairly sure will be Major Bessiker's last message to her or to anyone, that a group of fanatical Jedi had taken the Foundry. She's checked again and again, and there is no one she can send, no one she can spare.

If she can't find an answer here, she'll be going alone into what the data tells her MUST be a trap.

(OOC: dialogue in italics is taken from/adapted from Ibani's canon.)

Comments

[last_kallig]

"If they have any shielding they failed to use it last time," Ibani replies. "They're just tough with a lot of firepower. Which works well enough when there's enough of them."

"They're somewhat vulnerable to force lightning." Which reminds Ibani that, well, they probably ought to talk about the Dark side.

She glances away, then turns her eyes back to him. "I've never used the Dark side around you, I've been very careful not to. With these odds....I'm not going to be able to hold anything back in battle."

Despite her best efforts, some of her uncertainty about what his response might be to her statement leaks into the Force. Will he wind up hating her for being what she is, after all these years?

[acertainpov]

Ben meets her eyes steadily, thinking for a few seconds as he feels out her uncertainty, her worry. When a line furrows the space between his eyes it's from her need to hide herself from him.

"It would be foolish to hold back on something that could mean the outcome of the battle," he says after a second.

And. That's it.

(He's fought alongside Asajj. She knows her own self, and her limits.)

Ben turns back to the plans.

"So how do we gain entry?"

[last_kallig]

Ibani is relieved at his response, and doesn't even try to hide it.

"That might be relatively simple," Ibani explains. "I can stretch a force cloak to cover both of us and a starfighter."

She pauses, then flushes slightly. "At least if your piloting skills are better than mine. Holding up a force cloak like that is mentally taxing and, well, we're likely to go splat if I have to try and pilot the damn thing at the same time."

It's not her fault her education was mostly murder focused, damn it!

[acertainpov]

Right. He'd forgotten about Force cloaking. That's better than any trick Ben was thinking of. And he nods once to show his approval of the plan.

"I can usually land a starfighter," he allows.

An actual landing, where not only can the passengers walk away, but the ship also survives. He's got high standards when it comes to landings.

(It's also a welcome change to have a partner who wants to avoid going splat.)

"And what is our primary objective? Wresting control rather than shutting it down, I assume."

[last_kallig]

"Wresting control, yes. Also either force the Jedi to leave or kill them." Ibani suspects it's going to be mostly kill them, Jedi can be stubbornly resistant to the whole idea of 'run away to fight another day'.

"We may run into Jedi who can use force cloak as well, the Jedi call them Jedi Shadows. Not sure if their training otherwise mirrors mine as an assassin, never had the opportunity to ask."

[acertainpov]

"And leave without any of the droids, I imagine."

Even one droid with that programming would be too dangerous to let out.

"Well," he gives the plans and the holopads another cursory look over, and sits back against the seat back of the booth, "you better get some sleep and a good meal in you before we go out again."

He'll deal with Jedi Shadows and other new tricks when he sees them.

[last_kallig]

"Definitely," Ibani agrees.

She smiles wryly at his comment about her getting some sleep and a good meal in her. "Not sure I can sleep, not and stay asleep, at least. The Force has been very...insistent about showing me the consequences of what will happen if I, we, fail at this."

Ben can imagine the content of those visions, we're sure.

[acertainpov]

Visions can be a pain like that, really.

"Well that I can help with," he says simply. "If you wish it?"

[last_kallig]

"Please," Ibani says. "I've been awake for, ah, about three days now."

She gently takes his hand. "I wouldn't trust anyone else to help me like that, you know. I've had it hammered into me for too long that being vulnerable is dangerous."

He could do much worse to her than KILL her, if he were a different kind of person.

"Does my room here work for you?" Unless he wants her to use his room!

[acertainpov]

Another wry smile.

"I was wondering when you were going to invite up there."

...sometime's Ben's mouth just runs on autopilot.

He closes his hand over hers - dry and sand-worn as always but gentle with it, his thumb gently tracing circles on the back of her hand.

"Come on, let's get you some rest."

[last_kallig]

Ibani chuckles warmly at his comment. "This certainly isn't the context I would have chosen to first invite you to my room, but needs must."

IS he interested in her in that way? As closed off as he is with regard to allowing his emotions in the Force, it's hard for Ibani to tell.

Ibani's room in Milliways is fairly plain, in warm earth colors. There's not much in it besides the bed, a dresser, a desk and a comfortable chair. The half of Ibani's armor that she isn't wearing is sitting on the dresser.

With visible reluctance, she lets go of his hand to get the rest of the armor off.

[acertainpov]

Ben has a lot of interests, and it has been a while. On the other hand, he'd like to think himself a lot less reckles than he once was. Sometimes a comment is just a comment.

He pauses as he often does, at the threshold, just getting a very thorough feel of the romo very quickly, before waving his spare hand and moving the chair from its place at the wall to a more convenient spot by the bed.

"Love what you've done with the place."

Functional and plain-talking, just like her.

[last_kallig]

"Thank you," she says, her smile and the Force showing that she's pleased at his comment. "I admit I wound up with this color scheme in an attempt to get as far away as possible from what I was used on Korriban or when I was enslaved On Ilum."

The armor is red and black, made to scream SITH at 90 decibels to anyone seeing it. To make her look like the monster she was expected to be. She glances at her helmet, sitting on top of the dresser, then turns back to him. She sits on the bed to pull off the armored boots. "Could get you armor, if you wanted," she offers. "Not like mine, a set left with me by a Jedi friend. You're a similar size and build."

[acertainpov]

Ben rolls his shoulders back, his cloak dropping (dramatically) onto the chair behind him before he rubs his hands along the white of his ronbes underneath.

"If you think it will be needed."

His favourite method of protection being to not get hit in the first place, armor always seemed necessary only for the look of the thing.

He sits directly on his cloak and reaches out for Ibani's feet, offering to help with the boot.

[last_kallig]

Ibani accepts the offered help, and it feels intimate in ways she can't quite explain. She doesn't mind that at all.

"Can be hard to dodge when things get really crowded," Ibani replies. "I'd feel better if you had a bit of extra protection, even if I do have extra life energy that I need to burn thanks to certain complications from dealing with the former Emperor."

[acertainpov]

It's no more or less than he'd do for any of his friends, but of course he brings his usual level of compassion and intimacy to it, easing off each book carefully and setting them by the bed.

"If it makes you feel better," he says, "who am I to object?"

[last_kallig]

Ibani hasn't been the recipient of much compassion or intimacy in her life, which might explain why it feels strange to her.

"Thank you," she says, smiling softly. She lies back, fidgeting a little to get comfortable and offers Ben her hand again.

She closes her eyes for a moment, inhales, takes down all of her mental shields, her defenses, surrenders to being present in her body and aware of the aches, pains, fatigue poisons, and other unpleasantness that keeping a human body awake for three days brings.

When she opens her eyes and exhales there is a vulnerability there, a bone deep weariness. "You can stay if you like, after, although I'm afraid I'm not likely to be interesting company," she teases, her voice quiet and gentle.

[acertainpov]

Ben closes her hand in one of his, and reaches his other across to her face as she settles, brushing her hair from her brow. The Force around them both gently settles, warms, and it becomes possible to sense his presence, faint and reassuring in the Force.

"I won't leave you alone," he says in reply. She can be as vulnerable as she needs to be, because he'll be there.

[last_kallig]

She closes her eyes as she drinks in the feel of him in the Force and the feeling of his hand on her face. "When I first met you, felt you in the Force, you reminded me of the first time I ever saw sunlight."

She smiles sweetly, eyes still shut. "You still do."

[acertainpov]

Ben makes a faint 'hmmm' sound of amusement.

"That's less of a compliment if you've lived as long as I have under twin suns," he remarks.

(But he's flattered somewhere under the humour. Flattered, and a bit concerned, because the last thing he needs or desires is to inspire feelings like that from another person after Satine and Asajj.)

He draws back from her head, but only to takee her hand in both of his and to relax into a more meditative pose on the chair, letting his eyes gently close as he invites Ibani's stress to flow into him, or at least away from her.

[last_kallig]

"I suppose it would be," Ibani replies, her tone warm and humorous. "I spent my childhood cold and mostly in the dark or artificial light, to give you some context on the compliment."

Would it be so bad, to be wanted like that, Ben? That it ended badly twice is no guarantee of future disaster, especially since the contexts have radically changed!

Ibani's stress flows away from her, revealing an undercurrent of pain. As close as he is, as good as he is with living things and with her defenses down, he might notice that not all the pain is proper physical pain. Her system is flush with life energy, flush nearly to bursting and straining to contain it within her flesh.

[acertainpov]

There's no reply other than a gentle sshhing, like a father putting a child to bed, with a gentle, loving smile.

One of the things Ben has been working on, in his hermitage, in his meditations with the living Force, is to better understand its flow through and in and between living things. And whereas once he might have just taken this stress and incorporated it into his own to be ignored, now he focuses on letting it flow through him, out into the wider Force, as he's had to do with so much of his guilt - or that which he could afford to let go.

It's still a work in progress.

And then, he finds the pain, and this is going to be harder to work with, so he stills further, and lets that come as well.

[last_kallig]

The pain comes, tied up with the extra life energy. Too much of it, too much for her body to take, but it flows eagerly into him, like water into dry ground. (Warm and sweet and it feels like Ibani in the Force, because it has become HERS.)

He can take the pain away, IF he takes the life energy into himself. (He's spent so much of his life energy over the years that he has 'room' for lack of a better term.)

[acertainpov]

He does, yes.

Years of being at the front line. Years of pushing himself to the very limits of what his body could do, of healing himself at the front lines just enough to stand when even his fellow Jedi were being pulled back to the basta tanks. Years of healing his men on the fly rather than lose a single man more than necessary. Years borrowed from his future life just so he can survive a few more hours.

There's room, but it's slow. If he opens up too much he'll overdo it, open the metaphorical floodgates, harm himself and Ibani.

So he takes it slow, calmly, a little more with each breath.

[last_kallig]

Slowly, so slowly it flows into him, life filling up the empty places inside of him. He's going to have to take quite a bit to make the pain stop, replenish a substantial portion of what he's spent over the years

When the pain is gone, Ibani's mind, edging toward sleep, is a muddle of relief and gratitude and affection in the Force.

And then she's asleep. Hopefully until morning.