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It was a late night in the ship, and a freezing one too.
Kira, Rusk, and even good old Doc were passed out in their bunks, bundled up and cozy as the temperature from outside the ship started to seep in with the ice particles.
Hoth was a cruel planet for sure.
Athe stared at the controls one last time, before giving up for once, and sighing into her hands and slumping in her seat. Golden hair made a curtain for her face, shielding her from the confusing mechanism before her.
It was late into the night, nearly morning even, and still she was trying to fix the damn ship's heat controls. They'd been blown out during the firefight and now they had all the parts at last, but everyone was asleep, and the ship wouldn't freeze irreparably for a while, so they'd left it for the morning, all exhausted and nursing their wounds.
However, here the Jedi was, staring at gibberish and loose parts and strange wires, hoping that perhaps, at the stroke of hours-past-midnight, she might finally understand how this worked.
But no. That hope died with a sad, red, beep from the controls.
She was nearing tears and she knew it, and nothing would get done in that state, so instead, she left everything out for the real mechanics, and stretched as she stood.
A mewl escaped her as she bent near in half backwards, before she finally straightened and started for her bunk with a small sniffle. But once she got there, and as soon as a single, bare, foot touched the metal flooring, she hopped right out again with a yelp.
Big, fat, shiny tears welled up in her eyes. This was just another thing to add to a long, long day, and she was too tired to deal with this...
Her room, as nice as it was usually, had turned into an ice block. There was no sleeping in there, not comfortably. Even in all her robes and with all her blankets, she’d be frostbitten by dawn.
Hands scrabbled at her face and she felt the Force spreading out with the expanse of her anxieties. First the mission, then the heat, and now her room... She was so done, and so tired-
But then it all just slumped down over her, the force swirling about her. Where was she going to sleep? Her mind was spinning around enough with exhaustion and worry to make her nauseous.
At this hour she could risk waking the Sergeant, but that sounded dangerous, with how tightly wound he was even in sleep. Of course, that was also excluding the fact he slept with a blaster under his pillow.
Kira, she knew, would just accidentally kick her to the floor in the middle of a nice dream. There was no escaping her long legs and mighty deep sleeping. All she’d get in that bed would be bruises and not a lick of rest.
T7 was, of course, a Droid, and she'd also never be able to sleep next to all the machinery of his usual space.
And Doc was absolutely a no, he'd take it as her trying to seduce and charm him, or she'd wake to a very convenient arrival of morning wood. She shuddered in distaste at the mere thought.
No one... She had no one to go to on this cold, sleepless, night...
And so she gave a shuddering breath and hauled her things out of her room, wrapping them around her, and set off to try and find a space with at least somewhat more heating than that area of the ship.
"I'll take the kitchen table if I have to..." Athe muttered to herself.
But she was shocked upon peeking into the main living space of the ship, she'd only passed by before and hadn't looked in, but...
There was someone in there.
As a Jedi Knight, or just as herself, she never dared to waltz into Scourge's room without being invited or in an emergency, so she didn't see him all too often when he didn't want to be found.
But here he was, out of his hiding place and lounging along the plush sofa in the living space, reading something on his monitored datapad.
When she didn't move, frozen from shock and embarrassment at her state of near crying and overloaded with blankets and robes, he noticed her from the corner of a searing red eye.
He frowned.
"Athe..." He turned his head towards her but didn't sit up. "Might I inquire as to what you are doing?..."
She sniffled, and she tried hard to school her face to look just tired, not so very exhausted as she really was, but he was perceptive as always and rose a tendriled brow at her.
"The truth, if you wouldn't mind."
Athe let her head hang and she sighed with it.
"Long day and now my room is the first one to go freezing."
A chuckle from him, and she scowled up at him, swarmed under all the warm things she had. “What? What’s so funny about me being unable to sleep in my ice-box of a room?”
“You fear I see you as weak just for being cold. It amuses me as much as anything can.”
“You’re not judging the fact that the ‘big scary Jedi’ is crying?” She sounded both joking and incredulous.
“No.” His rumbling voice was oddly comforting to her. “No, you are expressing emotions as one should for this sort of week. I know many more insects that would have failed their task and perished while doing the same, it is expected for you to be stressed and exhausted.”
A pale hand ran over her face, dragging over freckles gone stark and clearer in the cold, and a pinkened nose that twitched with another sniffle.
“Besides, though you are destined to defeat the Emperor, you are not terrifying to me-”
She looked up.
“-Or big.” He looked back to his reading and nonchalantly held his hand parallel to the floor at nearly a third her height--which was already pretty short next to all her crew, aside from Tee-Seven.
A laugh burst out of her, unrestrained, and as soon as the one was out, she was left giggling uncontrollably. “Was that a joke, Scourge?” She waddled over with all her things and poked his arm, staring him down with a playful grin and teasing eyes, still reddened, but slowly clearing.
“As Kira says, ‘I’m no fun’, so that’s not possible.”
“It was a joke!” Athe was laughing loud now, sitting herself and her cocoon down on the smidge of sofa left next to his lounging form, and she jokingly shoved his datapad at his face.
The Jedi earned a neutral face, oozing displeasure. She still smiled, laughing at him again before quieting down.
“Sorry.”
“Apology accepted, now what are you about to ask?”
“Can’t you leave some things in suspense?”
“I’ve lived too long to bother, and it isn’t suspenseful to you if you’re already thinking about it.” His crimson face stared up at her, ridges and tendrils so foreign and exotic, but also so normal to her now. She noticed how warm he was, and got an idea that might save her a crick in her neck or a bruised rib in the morning.
“Scourge, can I sleep with you tonight?”
“...Excuse me?” The air got sucked right out the room, the force crackling with a hint of shock and all her sudden fear as she realized her mistake.
“Not sex! Not sex. I’m not asking to do that with you Scourge, no! Not- I mean-... I’m just very cold! And you’re warm! And everyone else either will try and do that with me or they’ll kick me out of bed in their sleep-...”
He relaxed and she felt all the anxiety dissipate from her body, shocked by how tense she’d gotten in the matter of a moment.
He looked her over with a calculating eye, frowning in confusion.
“There’s the kitchen, and the dining room, I’m sure there’s something warm in there-”
She frowned at him right back, “I don’t want to sleep on the floor. If I did I wouldn’t be asking.”
He looked almost confused, though a bit teasing, “Then why with me? I’m a Sith Lord, what makes you think you might not die in your sleep?”
“You need me still, and you’re not that dishonorable. You’d want a fair fight, not just a quick and painless death in my sleep.”
He nodded with a shrug, agreeing with the assessment.
“-And because I trust you, Scourge.”
That earned her a hint of a shocked look, at least as much as he could manage without the ability to, well, feel emotions. The Jedi before him confounded him every day, but with every moment that passed, he found himself equally if not more in some sort of awe of her. Perhaps he might describe it more as admiration, respect maybe.
This powerful creature was small and tiny, a squishy human woman with skin as pale and thin as paper.
But she was so powerful. She felt with all of her being and cared with even more. She did all she could to save and rehabilitate the lowest of worms, ones that any lesser person, including many a Sith, would have crushed under their heel. She so passionately believed in the good of people until they forced her hand, and she even then would extend a branch again, pulling them up from desperate and maddened places.
And now…
And now she was extending that to him. The Hero of Tython, Athe Mahtu, the slayer of dark council members and legendary creatures, the kindest and most foolish of the Jedi he’d known, and the one destined to destroy the Emperor and save the galaxy-
-Said she trusted him: the immortal Emperor’s Wrath, a Sith Lord, the killer of Jedi and Sith alike, the right hand of the man they hunted, and a traitor to his people and way of life, solely for this one mission.
He felt both vague disappointment and a wispy thankfulness that she hadn’t been born a Sith.
“Scourge? If you’re still not okay with it, just tell me…”
He snapped back out of his thoughts and stared back at her, silently and only slightly wishing he might have been able to see what color he was staring back at, perhaps feel the warmth or cold of her.
“Alright.” She beamed as bright as the ship lights, crawling over him, her tiny body sprawling out over his larger one. Her blankets followed over her, turning her into a weight on his chest with only a partial face to be seen.
“Just know that I will not tolerate you kicking me in your sleep. If I lose a kidney I will personally stick you back in your room.”
A muffled “okay” from under all her things, fluffy or just thick fabric, the happy human curling up on her new, living and breathing, bed.
Scourge huffed and pushed her blankets to her shoulders, halting her protest with a smack to the forehead with his datapad and a shake of a claw.
“You’ll suffocate under there. None of your crew will believe you died of such a thing yourself if you died by morning.”
“Good point.” Her eyes started drifting closed, happy to be warm again, and so comforted by such odd words as his.
Tentatively, as she drifted away, he reached down to her head with a clawed, red, hand. Bloody hands that had snuffed out many lights, now hesitant to near this burning flame as it slept. But gently, ever so gently, his datapad held away from him, he let his free hand drift over her.
He sensed it in the Force: comfort and relaxation blooming at the movement over her cranium. Scourge did it again, softly brushing over her similarly soft hair, long and so often tied and tucked away. He could feel her nearly purr into him, her head unconsciously pressing into his touch as she fell asleep.
Silently, as he went back to reading with his other hand, but still brushing his claws through her odd, human, hair, he thought to himself a simple thing.
“Adorable.”