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Yavin IV
1 BBY
The broth doesn't taste like anything, except maybe jungle. Or maybe Kleya can't process anything but the jungle air — too muggy, too heavy, clinging to her skin. It makes her head hurt. Maybe her head would be doing that anyway. She sits in some salvaged starfreighter chair, molting in the Yavin heat, and wills herself to stay upright, eyes open, as steam curls off the bowl.
Don't slouch unless you want to look afraid, he'd told her. And she's not. She won't be. Not here, in this ridiculous hut, among these ragdoll soldiers playing army, not after he'd — she screws her eyes shut until the pressure arcing across her forehead passes.
“I sweated a whole five minutes over the hot plate for that," the voice behind Kleya says. “Eat.”
She blinks her eyes open, the only indication that she’d forgotten where the broth came from. Kleya's drilled it into her head for years now: Vel is gone. She keeps being surprised they're breathing the same air.
"You're a terrible cook," Kleya says, past the hoarse hitch in her throat.
"You're concussed," Vel replies, sitting across the table from Kleya. "You'll earn flavor when your brain's up to it."
"Is that Yavin protocol?" Kleya sneers. The insult is the first moment all morning that Kleya doesn't feel concussed — focused and controlled, not unmoored and discarded, among strangers. Vel she knows. The blatant insecurity, the suppressed temper, the impulsive pride, the foolhardy courage — she can toggle between them like radio frequencies.
Or at least, she thought she could.
The Vel sitting across from her is as still as the surface of the soup Kleya's supposed to be eating. This is a Vel, she sees, who has moved beyond Kleya's ability to make her feel small in a sentence or less. The jibe was a swipe with clipped claws. It's weakness, not strength. Kleya reflexively grabs the spoon, to have an implement in hand, now that she feels so foolishly exposed.
"How about this?" Vel says, slow and patient. "You finish that, you sleep for another twelve hours, and I'll wake you when Cassian calls in."
"Why?" Kleya's brows knot together in confusion which she should be able to mask, and it sets off another spasm in her head. Ah. She really might need to sleep for that long.
This apparently calm, steady Vel sits for a beat. Another. She waits, Kleya realizes, for Kleya to be able to focus. She's so surprised at Vel's control — of silence. By Vel — that she does turn her eyes to the redhead.
“I told you. You're here with friends. And, I'd like you to make it long enough for me to prove that I can cook."
Despite herself, despite everything, Kleya scoffs a laugh. "I'm not sure we’ll live that long."
Vel gives her a weary smile. “We'll see."
Cilpar II
1 ABY
By the time Kleya's done junking the listening post, she's pulled enough hypercomm parts to be worth throwing her back out for — although that might not be a problem, because at the moment she might be more oil than person. In the grey-blue, gauzy light of just before the dawn, anything feels possible.
But 'anything' isn't what Kleya and the pathfinder team are on Cilpar for. She snaps the first hardshell case open, sharp, and the sound snaps her into action. She's so focused, she almost doesn't hear the door open. It's lucky her blaster doesn’t fly from her grip, the speed she draws it.
Vel's hands go up halfway — she's holding something in her left — but she gives the passphrase, looking at least outwardly confident the last thing she sees won't be the flash of Kleya's DT-12. Kleya lowers the blaster and hisses, "Problem?"
Vel shakes her head and points in the direction of Kleya's pack on the table, waiting until the taller woman gives a nod. When Vel pulls out a rolled-up kit of some kind that Kleya definitely did not pack herself, it's a surprise. When said kit turns out to be a set of thin, wicked-looking knives and a couple of cleaning mats, it’s surprising enough to loosen her jaw. And when the thing in her left hand turns out to be a fish, Kleya reconsiders her trigger discipline.
"Is this how you hold a perimeter?" She scolds.
Vel just shrugs. “Second squad's on the perimeter, and some imp must’ve built a garth at the crossing before we took the tower. Sinful not to catch them when they're biting."
Kleya has objections, many and sizeable objections, but before she can organize them, Vel's already started splitting, gutting, and boning the fish. She works with a kind of detached ease Kleya's surprised that she recognizes. The same way she'd assemble a fractal, Vel's rendering the creature into thin strips of meat that look, to Kleya anyway, like they’re sushi-grade. Her eyes go to Vel's hands as she works — calloused, moving deftly with the knife.
Vel doesn't seem to notice. After she's finished cleaning the meat, she returns to Kleya's pack and grabs a little pouch from somewhere, from which she sprinkles a rosy powder onto the fish. Vel offers a rag to Kleya to clean her hands.
"Why'd you put all that gear in mine?" Kleya asks as she does. She sounds less annoyed than she meant to.
"Mine's got the extra charges, " Vel says, before popping one piece into her mouth and handing Kleya another. She wants to protest but first she takes a bite. It's delicious. Delicate. And almost... sweet, in a way she can't remember fish tasting — but then, Kleya realizes, she hasn't had fish straight from a river since before she was Kleya. The spice is good, too, a warming but mild kind of horseradish. It takes a second to master her face again, though she sees Vel smile at whatever her first reaction was.
“We’ve a long hike back to the exfil point," Vel's saying, like she hasn't noticed anything. "Eat as much as you like.”
Kleya wants to ask why — why is Vel sharing, why her — but she can already hear the shrug of a non-answer she'd get. "Need to keep you on your feet, Marki." "Gear's no good to us if you aren't." Something stupidly, artlessly Vel.
So instead, Kleya takes another piece. This one she lets melt in her mouth.
Alliance Heavy Cruiser Home One
2 ABY
Static. Notation. Static. Notation. Switch frequencies. Repeat.
Kleya isn't sure how long she's been at the receiver; she stopped keeping track in the last note set. That's the thing she's finding about life on a starship for months on end — the air's recycled, the lights cycle, the water runs through filters again and again so that everything tastes vaguely sour and metallic. It is astonishingly easy to fall into a rhythm that becomes a rut that becomes part of the ambient misery of living on a starship.
On Coruscant, Kleya had always known she could throw all of it away in an instant — the climate controls, the beds, the fruits flown in fresh to the corner store? She didn't need them. But fighting the urge to rest the bridge of her nose on the edge of the desk, she's beginning to realize part of her, at least, needs a breathable atmosphere. The number of imperials whose necks she'd snap for a fresh bread roll was always long, but the number of rebels she’d consider adding to it...
Stop that. Enough. Move.
Kleya rolls her shoulders back, feels something in her back muscles shift as she forces her body to reset. She straightens. "Come on, then," she says to the empty room, and her hand flies back to the dial. Find the rhythm. See the pattern. Keep them alive.
A thing happens that sometimes does, when Kleya's at a comms unit — usually when she's building one, but it's happened when she's monitoring, too. Her sense of being Kleya, of being anyone, fades. She is the action, the task, the pieces fitting together. She sees the pattern.
Flow or Force or whatever it is, when Kleya comes back to the ship and the desk and the stale air she's breathing, she smells something new — which should probably be concerning. But it's nice, herbal. She blinks. Sitting on an empty desk across from her is a clay dish with a foil covering and a torn piece of a duty roster on top.
Taking the paper, she reads: If you're staying here all night again, you deserve an "omelet." - VS.
It is not, of course, an omelet. They haven't had fresh eggs since the retreat after Mako-Ta. It has to be some kind of cake. But as she takes the foil off, the illusion of an omelet is convincing enough, it actually makes Kleya laugh. And the taste, she has to give it to Vel, is very decent. She must've traded for a bit of oil from somewhere; the herbs are dried, but whatever they are, they’ve dyed what is, essentially, a journeycake an optimistic yellow. It's warm, anyway, and not a ration bar. As Kleya ignores the fork Vel left for her and tears off another piece with her hands, she's able to pretend the air blowing on her face is a real breeze.
For a moment.
Then she dives back into the work and looks forward to thanking Vel on the other side of it.
Hoth
3 ABY
"You smell,” Kleya says, playfully pushing Vel out to arm's length.
"We're all making sacrifices," Vel, still covered in patrol gear except for the small, wind-burnt window around her face, replies. Kleya doesn't need to see the curl of her lips to know Vel's grinning — she knows she is, too, even wider because, unlike certain generals and smugglers Kleya could name, she and Vel have scouted an actually secluded corner of the base to sneak off to for the rare hour their breaks line up.
Vel's patrol ran late, so, it’s less this time, and they doesn't waste any more of it. Vel presses in, and for one, wonderful, drunk instant, there's just the kiss, and the faint echo of snow dissolving on both their lips. But then Vel is wearing too many clothes, and Kleya paws at her coat, and that brings the smell of tauntaun right back.
"Do you want me to stop?" Vel whispers from along her neck.
"I want you to have an air freshener," Kleya complains, even as she tilts to give Vel better access.
Vel smiles into Kleya's skin, and it's worth three extra heating units in the officers' quarters. But then Vel steps back, her blue eyes so alight Kleya's convinced they could power a hyperdrive.
"I have an idea. Do you trust me?"
“Yes,” Kleya breathes.
"Good," Vel says, and plants her awful, furry, smelly patrol hat on Kleya's head. "Follow me."
Under — very light — protest, they move all the way topside and along the Eastern trench. If there are more details, Kleya can't see them in the blustering snow. She can barely see in front of her face, her nose numbing. She hates that the hat helps. It's only by the yank of Vel's hand that she knows to turn into a what turns out to be turret room, with a slim opening for the laser cannon.
As the space resolves into sense, Kleya can see something glowing on top of the mini-heater, steam floating out of it. Vel takes two cups off the little shelf and dips them into an upturned ship's ramscoop being used as a pot.
“Try this.” She hands a cup to Kleya, who’s thawed enough to smell some sort of tangy soup base and roast garlic. She looks and sees chopped up pieces of bread, beans, little bits of kibla greens. Kleya takes a small sip. It's better than the mess. She takes another and knows in her bones Vel must have started this hunter's stew days ago to wrest so much flavor from kitchen castoffs.
"How?" Kleya asks, in a tone that would be sharp and demanding, if it were to anyone else.
"One of the vents busted a week ago and now it’s kind of a stovetop. You like the soup?”
"I hate that I'm only learning about it now."
"You command room types aren't interested in base maintenance," the stupid Chandrilan says, smug as anything. "But one upside is: cramped quarters, the smell fills the room."
The smell is pleasant, if mixed with the bite of the wind outside. There's only room around a camp stool, if they're to avoid the cannon and the makeshift thermal. It is still kriffing cold here. But if she and Vel have a flaw together, it's that neither of them will back down from a challenge and, in fairness to Kleya, Vel started it.
"Well, Major," she says. "You've taken me out to dinner. Now what?"
Above Endor
4 ABY
The night they destroy the second one, Kleya stands vigil on the bridge — if only so someone keeps the ship in orbit while everyone else in the Alliance drives towards the worst hangover of their lives. Vel is on Sullust, anyway, embedded with the underground for months now. Others poke their heads in to find Kleya, force drinks on her, tempt her to parties and at least one rave that's sprung up in the hangar. But she stays.
Mon, who has never said a word to Kleya about her and Vel, perhaps afraid to break some sort of spell, pulls her into a bone-crushing hug. "We have a chance now. You both have a chance now," she says, before Kleya can redirect her to the dancing. She gets more hugs from her team, after they've all had enough nog to forget Kleya wasn't with them and then remember to find her. Madine appears later, a circumspect drunk, and offers his hand. "Now comes the hard part," he says, and they shake on that. He stands with her in the quiet, then returns to the celebrations. Still, Kleya watches the stars.
She can't leave, can't sit. There's a buzz in her hands, an itch to get back to work, because if it's over? If they've accomplished what she was so impatient to begin two decades ago? More? It's not that it feels like he's close, in that cloying way Force-lovers talk about. But she wants to hear his voice again tonight like she wants to keep breathing, and Vel isn't here, and if she stops, if she lets the ledger fall open, the ghosts will come back. There are so many.
She remembers all of them.
Kleya wakes up to the unmistakable smell of bacon frying in a pan. She has a vague memory of the day cycle switchover, of Erskin, with terrible breath, putting an arm around her shoulders, the sudden, welcome dark of her and Vel’s quarters. But none of that would explain the kitchen unit being on. The only one who cooks is —
“Vel?!” Kleya jolts upright.
Her redhead has the sense to put the stovetop on simmer before she steps to the bed and Kleya snatches her into her arms.
“Hi,” Vel whispers, when they finally break apart.
“What are you — ?”
Vel hands her the chrono from the nightstand. It's not the next day. It is the morning after the next day. "I got here in a reasonable amount of time, sleepy-head," Vel says, kissing her forehead, and it doesn’t fix everything — but also it doesn’t not.
“I should get up," Kleya says, a little breathy.
"Don't,” Vel smiles. Off Kleya's confused look, she adds, "I've never made you breakfast in bed before. We should fix that."
The correct response, objectively, is for Kleya to kiss her. So she does. And they do, until an alarm goes off from the therma-slice. Vel swears and Kleya snickers. "Promising start."
"You hush," Vel growls, kissing her once more before she returns to the thermal. Kleya goes to the fresher, then returns to prop herself up on the pillow and watch as Vel navigates between things cooking on three different burners — if she knew Vel could multitask like this ten years ago, she would've assigned some missions differently.
"When did you learn to cook?" Kleya asks.
"You'll laugh," Vel shakes her head.
"Try me."
"We had classes," Vel says. "I was 12. I hated them, at first. But there was this girl. Nes. She loved it, and she always stayed after to help clean."
"So you got very interested in cooking," Kleya keeps her voice light, knows how volatile lingering on Chandrila can be.
"Well, I wanted to be good enough to cook something for her," Vel turns and gives Kleya a wink. "And somehow, somewhere, Kleya Marki was already setting herself up to reap the rewards."
Now, Kleya laughs.
The rewards are pan-roasted jogen, bacon, and flatcakes made with some kind of pumpkin flour. They're rich and warm and a little cinnamon-y, delicious even without the syrup Vel puts in a shot glass on the side. The best reward is Vel getting in bed, too, and picking the crispiest bits off the plate for her.
“Utensils,” Kleya jokingly bats her hand away after the whatever-eth time Vel does it.
"'Tis an ill cook who cannot lick her own fingers," Vel says, mock-seriously.
Kleya savors a last bite, then puts the plate down. She turns into Vel's arms, and knows that here, at least, the ledger will stay shut.
Chandrila
5 ABY
Kleya starts planning as soon as she knows they're going to Chandrila. Mon wants them there for the surrender, says they deserve to see it — and, Kleya suspects, wants them both close after the near-miss in Hanna City last year. Vel understands, but she loathes the theater of it and dreads the return. Kleya knows because Vel doesn't say a word, just draws in on herself and braces.
So Kleya plans. She gathers the layout of the city down to floor plans, business licenses, port and customs logs for the last fiscal year. She spends days scanning the topographical maps, studying vegetation surveys, understanding both the sail and flight traffic over the Silver Sea. Only if she's sure that Vel's out, and with a paranoia she hasn't felt since Coruscant, Kleya conducts one or two furtive experiments.
They're both twitchy when they land. The cuffs of Kleya's uniform have run a marathon of minute adjustments across her wrists, and the shine of Vel's boots could blind a droid. They drop their things at the barracks, and Kleya, too brightly, demands to be given a tour. They don't get far down the white cobbled streets before they're stopped for the first time.
Some hail them as Alliance soldiers, here for the big to-do tomorrow. But Kleya's surprised how many recognize Vel, specifically; they pass couriers who wave a welcome home to 'Lady Sartha.' As they cross the greenway, people in tunics of burnished golds and creams keep walking up to them like they were invited.
"Sorry," Vel mutters, after Kleya disentangles them from a toadying, wispy-haired man who swears Mon owes him a dance. "Might be quieter off the main roads."
A part of her — the part Vel discovered, in fact; someone safe and at ease and still wickedly sharp – wants to joke that Vel doesn't need to hide them away. But her counterpart's face is so pinched, her eyes so dulled, that instead Kleya says, "Quiet sounds perfect."
Vel nods, forces a smile, and takes the next side street. Even prepped, Kleya loses her precise sense of where they are, as they pass beneath ivy-covered arches and around little private gardens. A maze of rich blue and white awnings cast shadows over the still-warm stones. But Vel is as good as her word. It is quieter. Kleya's ears calibrate to the sound of birdsong in the trees, to children laughing on the rooftops; so much so that when they reach the Silver Sea, its rumble steals a breath from her lungs.
"The harbor's pretty ancient, if you want to see," Vel says.
"I want to see where you got so good at fishing."
"The Ferthas had a cabin. I'd sneak off there, sometimes,” Vel cringes on 'cabin.' "But it's about four miles up the sea road from here."
It's 4.2. But Kleya says, "I don't mind the walk. Show me?" and is rewarded when, for the first time all day, Vel takes her hand.
The road rises above the sea, so they get a view of the two-story house, not a cabin, by the time they reach the gate. Vel points out the dock, the empty boathouse, the oak with chains still hanging for a swing. "Too much,” Vel shakes her head. “And it's all shut up.”
"No. It isn't," Kleya corrects.
Aldhani was a ferociously good feeling when they first got the news. But the hint of confusion on Vel's face is as satisfying, and when Kleya pulls the key out of her pocket? It might be better. Vel narrows her eyes. "So this is a trap."
"Mmhm," Kleya smirks and opens the gate to the house she'd arranged to be cleaned and stocked two weeks ago. They find numerous additions from Mon inside. Unsurprising. "Is my cousin sneaking out here for dinner, then?" Vel asks in the kitchen, opening up a tin of loose-leaf tea and sniffing experimentally.
"No, she's grounded. Party detail. We can still go back to town and see her at the first banquet. Organa's hosting," Kleya answers. It's important to give Vel the out, and important to enjoy it when Vel looks at her like she's sprouted montrals.
"I'd rather go back to Hoth."
"Then we can stay here," Kleya says, almost too lightly. "I can cook."
Vel puts the tin down and wraps her arms around Kleya. "That is very thoughtful," she says, slow and patient. "But I promise I'm not having that much of a crisis."
"What if I want to?" Kleya nudges.
Vel sighs and steps away. “You've already — all of this..."
"I want to," Kleya repeats, hitting each syllable like a target. Vel's eyes go wide and bright, and it's sweet, but it makes Kleya want to rip someone's throat out because how can the bravest person she knows be so undone by basic care?
Chandrila, is how.
Chandrila is also how Vel relents, with a wincing, self-effacing smile. "All right. But the dishes are mine."
"Done."
They take a pot of the Vel-approved tea up to a high-backed wooden bench on the deck and waste the afternoon there, reading and staring out at the water. But as the wind starts to carry a bite of evening chill, Kleya turns the first floor into an exclusion zone, reminding Vel of the accord they've agreed on.
It's not long before Kleya starts to regret it. The kitchen was all elegant marble counters — the closest she's come to a space like the gallery, since, and maybe that's the variable — but now it's carnage. So much of the pantry is spread across tables, it's reverted to a closet. The sink is full of the metal casualties of Kleya's initial, unsuccessful efforts.
It's not that Kleya is bad at preparing food, though she rarely wants to spend the time. There is a requisitions and equipment list, precise measurements, an order of operations. But this mission, the one she set for herself the moment Vel flinched at the thought of home, is a high-risk one, with exacting specifications. And she's off objective, still. As she thinks, and seethes, and thinks, Vel sneaks one look around the door, says, "Right," and leaves.
The sky goes bruise purple as the sun abandons Kleya. Absurdly — because at the bottom, all this is, is one dinner to make a miserable time slightly less — Luthen's voice comes into her head. I think we may have used up all the perfect. She knows they did. But it stings to be back in the murky silences and dangerous ambiguities of peace, and not have the hope of any left for herself.
Stop that. Enough.
"How fares the battle?" Vel asks when Kleya reappears, already handing her a wine glass.
"Come and see."
The same way Kleya can catch a thermic pulse by ear, without a spectrogram, she knows the set of Vel’s shoulders now by the centimeter, what each means. The rate of change as they relax tells Kleya that Vel was prepared to lie through her teeth and is less concerned she needs to, when she sees the table. The kibla greens sauteed in garlic, the chicken with the jogen glaze, they're simple to make, unshowy, flavors she knows Vel likes. But —
"What're those?" Vel points to the tray.
For the first time in over twenty years, Kleya says the name aloud. Vel repeats it back to her, Kleya corrects, and Vel, ever determined, tries again.
"I don't know it. Obviously," Vel says, looking over the little crescents of dough with interest.
"Try one."
"Mmm. That's very nice," Vel says, face brightening in appreciation, which, they've been together for years now, it shouldn't make Kleya forget how to breathe. Vel, oblivious, starts loading up two plates. "Remind me to interrogate you for the recipe."
"The filling's — there's — but I couldn't find the right substitutes. It should be nuttier," Kleya tries to explain, her plate in a deathgrip.
"I will just have to make do," Vel says, shaking her head in mock disappointment. "Now, sit down, chef.”
Kleya sits like the chairback is made of stun prods. Shit. She planned this, this was the point, why is she sweating? Why can't she talk?
"Where do they come from?" Vel asks, nodding to the tray.
A beat.
"Kleya?"
"Home," Somehow, Kleya gets the word past her throat. "My — You make them for when people come back home." She glances up, sees that Vel's gone very still, and has to turn back down to the food.
"And I know that you hate this place, and it isn't home, but I thought..." Fuck, now she can't stop talking. "Maybe it would help to have a memory of something here that wasn't — that's different."
Before she finds the courage to look at Vel again, Kleya feels a calloused hand take hers. "You don't mess around, Marki," Vel says, a little too lightly. Kleya meets those clear, sharp blue eyes, watching her with one of the rare expressions Kleya hasn't catalogued yet.
"This might be the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me," Vel says, softer.
… Which is more than Kleya can handle. It is her body, even before her conscious mind, that scoffs a smile and says, "Fuck me, right?"
Vel gifts her a warm, patient smile of her own. “First, let’s eat.”