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Recognising the serial on the blaster settles in Vel’s stomach with a weight. A damp, beautiful camp under the stars. The nerves in her guts before leaping from a great height.
It feels like desecrating a shallow grave.
For a moment, her whole world lurches sideways and backwards, to the last time it felt like anything made sense.
To a time before she was the last survivor of the original Aldhani heist team.
Swallowing the sudden burst of grief is as awful as it ever is, and with gnawing anxiety, Vel turns, raising the blaster and asks, “Who belongs to this?”
Vel doesn’t see ghosts, and she doesn’t see one now as one of the fresh arrivals raises his hand and says, “I think that’s mine.”
She doesn’t recognise him, not that she should’ve expected to. Vel’s not sure what exactly she had expected to find, other than it should not have surprised her that it was a complete stranger. She studies him in his place at the back of the crowd as he lowers his hand again and she lowers her own.
He holds her gaze, though not with any kind of malice or challenge to her authority. Placidly calm, perhaps a hint of concern, which she can respect. Vel gives him a quick nod of acknowledgement. Lets him see her tuck the blaster away inside her jacket.
Vel breathes, and lets the feeling go.
The rest of the induction goes ahead without remark. Your weapons will be checked and redistributed. You will report to the next station immediately. You will be provided with a meal in the mess hall once you have completed your rotation.
It’s always that last part that gets people moving. Usually because they’ve just spent however many hours or days travelling to get here, and everyone gets bored of nutrient paste and ration bars soon enough.
The recruit hangs back - and that at least Vel had expected - while the rest of the crowd thins out, retrieving their now cleared weapons from the table. Waits, until the few remaining stragglers clear out before advancing.
She studies him, cataloguing what details she can. It's a clinical, albeit useful skill. Tall, broad and a little worn looking, clad in gear suited to a much colder climate, and does a pretty good show of hiding his nerves as he approaches.
Vel tries to imagine him in the miserable, wet-dank streets of Morlana One. Maybe he fits. Maybe he doesn’t. The accent, the little she had heard, is hard to place but doesn’t seem fitting for the sector. Though she supposes that means less than nothing these days.
“Corpo issue, hell of a thing to carry around,” she starts, once he’s close enough not to have to raise her voice.
That does stop him where he stands, though his eyes don’t stray from her face as he says, “I’m not a Corpo,” like he’s rushing to get the words out.
“I can see that,” and she can, he stands like a soldier at ease, nothing like the Corpos she’s seen with their stiff straight postures, particularly when surrounded by their superiors. “We have to pull anything of questionable providence,” she continues when he says nothing. A muscle tightens quickly in his jaw.
“Traceable is trouble I’m afraid. Why not swap out for a less problematic piece? We can provide you with something.”
His gaze drops to her jacket and up again almost instantly.
“That one’s been with me for a while now is all,” he says, fingers tapping out a rhythm on the side of his thigh.
“Everyone gets a fresh start here, soldier.” Her lips thin as she watches his composure slip for a moment, throat working as he tries to find the right words to offer.
“It was given to me,” he says finally, like admitting that costs him something. So not a stolen piece, or bought black market then. No, this is something else entirely. Sentimentality.
She considers him. It's becoming vanishingly infrequent these days to encounter someone so attached to a particular weapon. Though, she does know a few who are. In fact, she could count them among her closest confidants.
And yet, this particular piece had been nowhere to be seen the next time she’d met the man who’d wielded it. That had made no impression on her then. Things were always coming and going out of the spheres of fleeting ownership in their lives in times like these.
People on the other hand.
It could be…or it could be nothing, and Vel isn’t in the business of giving people false hope.
“What’s your name?”
“Melshi. Ruescott Melshi.”
“Ever had any others?”
He blinks at her, confused. “No,” he says, a frown forming at his brow, “does that happen a lot around here?”
“Not for most people,” but definitely for one person in particular.
Well, one name does make her life a lot easier.
“There’s something I’ll need to check, probably file off the serial, but you can have it back,” she says, then watches him frown, unconvinced. He doesn’t try and push back on her authority though.
He’s a stranger to her, which, she realises, also makes her a stranger to him. He has every right not to take her at her word, when the first thing the alliance had done on arrival was strip him of his protection. And it’s not as though almost everyone else isn’t walking around with some form of weapon either.
She takes her own blaster from her left hip, Cinta’s still secured tightly on her right, and offers it, hilt first. He doesn’t take it, but his eyes jump between her face and the hilt rapidly enough to make her feel dizzy secondhand. “Collateral,” she clarifies and he stops on her face again, nods, and takes the blaster from her grip.
“Thank you, Ma’am.”
“Captain Sartha will do nicely,” she replies, leaving him looking stricken until he catches the curve of her smirk and relaxes. “Go on. There’s a hot meal waiting for you somewhere.”
It’s his turn to smirk this time, “Rations suit me just fine. I’ll pass judgement on the barracks when I see them for myself though, Captain.”
Vel thinks she could end up liking this guy. Maybe. If everything goes well, she’ll put in a request to have him put under her command.
“Are you going to tell me where she is?” Cassian doesn’t even raise his head as Vel enters the droid maintenance bay.
The KX unit is powered down again, sprawled across a workbench, Cassian intently focused on reconnecting the severed mechanics of its spinal column. Or so it seems. Not that Vel really know’s anything about droids, or their complicated inner workings. What she does know is that droids can’t feel, or even really die, save from being obliterated beyond repair. Just wires and code. It's the opposite of sterile. No need to rush. No fear of life essence leaking out and pooling on the table and floor.
Yet the scene still fills her with that unsettled, awful grief for the second time in as many days. Vel takes a breath, searching for the right tone to settle on.
“She didn’t tell me, Cassian,” and it’s true. Bix’s sudden departure had come as much of a shock to her as it had been for everyone else. Shock, and with no small amount of bitterness that her friend, or so she had thought they were friends, had not trusted her with that, nor even come to say goodbye.
Vel watches as the tension rolls though his shoulders, fingers gripping tightly at the fine tools of his work. His focus is on that alone, but she can see his lips thin, downturning at the edges.
“So it’s like that is it?” he says, dropping the connector in his right hand onto the table and rifling through a stack of tools with entirely too much force. She expected this. Cassian’s been sniping at anyone and everyone within a three foot radius of him all day, if the gossip of the techs is to be believed. Vel sighs.
“It’s not like anything.”
Cassian stops, hands curling into fists on the workbench. She knows him well enough to recognise the attack before it comes, wound tight, a taut wire ready to shear under load. Taking the time to find exactly the right thing to make her bend under interrogation. Unfortunately for them both, there’s nothing for her to admit.
When he finally speaks, it’s so quiet she almost misses it. Then wishes she had.
“Luthen wouldn’t tell you where Cinta was and it killed you.” His words strike at her throat with an unexpected viciousness and the breath goes out of her.
Cassian always did have a way of cutting in the place it would hurt the most. Vel had never expected to be on the receiving end of it again.
How dare he . How dare he compare her to Luthen. How dare he say her name to wield it like a knife twisting in her guts.
“I don't know where she’s gone!” Vel snaps, rage flaring through her blood, her own hands similarly tightly gripped into fists of her own.
This is nothing like Luthen keeping her and Cinta apart, because Vel honestly, truely, does not know where Bix is. And suddenly Vel understands exactly why Bix didn’t tell her anything. Because it would’ve been worse, knowing, and being right of the very thing Cassian was currently accusing her of.
Her face burns, has half a mind to turn tail and leave him here where he can stew in his own self pity and she wont be more likely to throttle him. Damn the thing that brought her here in the first place.
Then as quickly as the rage had flared it dies.
That's not why she's here. Not for the grief she hasn’t caused. Not for the things she's tried so hard to make her own peace with. She’s tired. Tired of a lot of things. Tired of people needing people and being able to do nothing about it.
She’s not the only one who’s tired. That’s clear enough to see. Vel presses her fingertips to the space between her brow and takes a deep breath.
He doesn’t mean it. He’s just hurt and lashing out. She knows that feeling well enough. And if Vel knows anything about Cassian, it’s that he’ll stubbornly ice out anyone who might be able to see it.
“I didn’t come here to talk about Bix.”
Cassian’s fists uncurl but the tension in his shoulders remains the same.
“Then I’m not interested in talking,” he says, and turns back to looking for whatever tool Vel had interrupted him from finding.
Okay, maybe she will still throttle him. Cassian really is testing the limits of her already stretched patience right now. Tries, with significant strain, to remind herself that he is still her friend, even if he is making it very difficult in the current moment.
Instead, Vel slips the blaster from the holser at her hip and all but throws it down on the table in front of him. Watches as he does a poor job at hiding the way his body flinches at the noise. She might feel bad about that, if he hadn’t just been such an asshole.
“Recognise this?”
He barely glances at it.
“I’m the wrong person for a weapons evaluation.”
“Humor me,” she says, and pushes the blaster closer.
He almost hesitates and, Vel thinks, that in that moment, Cassian must decide that on the basis of evidence, Vel is telling him the truth.
Still, he seems almost bored as he picks it up and gives it a once over. Checking the sights and energy canister, dismantling and reassembling the stock and barrel like it's second nature to him, before starting to place the blaster back on the workbench again.
Then he sees the serial number, and much like Vel had done the day before, freezes.
Which answers her question better than words, as Cassian’s world lurches sideways and backwards with a punch of exhaled breath.
“Where did you get this?” And for the first time since she entered the room, Cassian actually looks at her. Disheveled, nervous; the skin bruised beneath his eyes, dark and flat, but also, barely there, is the smallest spark of hope.
“There was a recruit intake yesterday.”
“Vel, please,” and there’s a note of poorly concealed desperation.
Well, since he asked so nicely.
“You know a Ruescott?” She’s hardly gotten halfway through the name before his face crumples, and she quickly offers, “Or a Melshi?” And Cassian’s eyes go wide and far too wet for her liking. Which means that on the whole, he must be feeling pretty awful to let her see it.
Cassian’s voice cracks on the single word, “Where?” His hands now tightly gripped around the barrel and hilt, white at the knuckles.
“I think they billeted him out in the east hall - hey!” she shouts, because Cassian takes off faster than she can react to stop him. Not that she really planned to. She calls after him, already halfway out the door, “You better tell him I still want my blaster back!”
He almost certainly doesn’t hear her and Vel sighs disparagingly, letting her shoulders drop to ease after all the tension she somehow got herself into.
It doesn’t matter, she’ll get the blaster back eventually. She does know where he lives after all.
Anyway, it’s just a thing, and Vel isn’t attached to much these days. Things are always coming and going, and she’s found it easier to let them do so and take the moment as it stands in front of her.
She's already carrying the most important thing with her, securely strapped at her side.
More than that. Wherever she goes.
Vel smiles, only because no one is around to see it.
Maybe she’s not so against the business of hope after all.