Work Text:
1.
Her first days on the moon are the worst. Yavin exists as a blur beyond the door of Vel’s yurt; rain falling in sheets as solid as the roof above her, greens so bright they seem fake, the roar and rumble and reverie of a whole base carrying on just past the threshold. The only constant is the dull, unrelenting ache behind her eyes, the lingering reminder of the Imperial stun grenade and her involuntary introduction to the duracrete of the safehouse wall.
Even Vel exists in flux. Her comings and goings seem almost entirely arbitrary by Kleya’s reckoning, though her bouts of unconsciousness make ascertaining any kind of pattern almost impossible. Mid-morning reveals an empty yurt, only for Vel to suddenly be present upon Kleya waking later that afternoon, only for her to once again be absent that evening. One or both of them is unmoored from time, though Kleya can hardly muster the energy to truly determine which.
She wakes one evening to a clatter, or is it early morning? It's her second, maybe third day here. Vel is working on something on the far – ‘far’ being ambitious in the tight quarters of this yurt – side of the space from Kleya’s makeshift bunk. The faint smell of hot solder and something oily dances through the room, just enough for Kleya to deduce that Vel is working on something mechanical. How did the superweapon elude you for so long with such remarkable observational skills?
Vel is generous enough to provide more intel quickly, albeit unwittingly, when she places a carbine next to her workbench, stock down and resting with a bundle of other rifles that have up until now avoided Kleya’s notice. Losing your edge, Marki. Another rifle is quickly retrieved from a decidedly less-organised bundle on the other side of Vel’s bench, ignition chamber clearly blown out even through the omnipresent concussed haze Kleya has spent the past… however many days resenting.
Vel carries on working like that for a while, inspecting a rifle, making – to Kleya’s eyes – extremely neat repairs, then adding it to its waiting peers beside the bench. Kleya just… watches. There’s something almost comfortable about Vel’s process, how methodical it is. She’s the first thing Kleya’s really been able to focus on since arriving on Yavin, or in this bed at least. The walls and ceiling and details of the yurt have slid out of her mind as quickly as she’s taken them in, more flux. Vel at least sticks.
A real hand-canon of a blaster – Cassian’s old one, from the shape of it – is the first of the assembled weapons to give Vel any kind of pause. She’s up before Kleya’s fully aware of the movement, crossing to a series of drawers at the midpoint between the two of them, digging and muttering as some required part eludes her. A chance glance towards Kleya stops Vel’s search in its tracks.
“You’re awake,” Vel says with a soft smile, not bothering to wait for a response before crossing to the kitchen and retrieving a flask of some kind. “Med-nog,” Vel gestures with the flask as she approaches, sitting gently on the edge of Kleya’s cot as she offers the flask. “Just a sip, but it’ll help get you on the mend.”
Kleya reaches for it, hand shaking worse than she’d let anybody see under normal circumstances. Vel cups it from underneath, steadying her and helping to guide the flask to her lips. Even the sip burns on the way down, but it's far preferable to the alternative, to medics and the smell of antiseptic and the beeping of the machines.
“Any better?” Vel’s eyes meet hers, open and honest, as she helps Kleya shift back down to a more comfortable position on the cot.
Kleya wants to say no, wants to complain about a dozen different aches all over her body, but the words won’t come. She has them, but she can’t say them. Even holding eye contact with Vel feels like a battle she’s losing. The most she can muster is a soft shake of the head, faintly ridiculous looking from Vel’s perspective, she’s sure.
“Good thing I got the nog, then.” Vel smiles again, soft and a little sad. “Still struggling to speak?”
A nod is all Kleya can manage this time, sad and defeated.
Vel had clocked how quiet she’d been on the first day, and the two of them had just about managed to bungle their way to an understanding through a combination of gestures and singular word answers from Kleya. Vel, for her part, showed a remarkable grasp of the various manifestations of PTSD, which had helped.
It was infuriating, how helpless she felt. Embarrassing, that her command of Galactic Basic has been reduced to as few words as viable to maintain a conversation, and sometimes fewer still than that, by losing Luthen.
“I know…” Vel starts, something like guilt in her tone. “I know you don’t want to go back there, but maybe I could ask one of the medics to drop in here? It’s the kind of thing that goes away with help, but–”
Kleya’s hand is in motion before Vel has a chance to finish, grasping at her forearm. Her head shakes emphatically this time, her lower lip quivering just a touch as she squeezes.
“Okay, no medic,” Vel reassures, putting her free hand over Kleya’s. “But try to rest, okay? I’m sure there’s nothing so important that I’m doing that requires your intelligence gathering at this exact moment.”
Vel huffs a soft laugh at that, one Kleya almost matches, the corners of her mouth quirking into something that might approximate a smile, on her at least.
“I’m observant by nature,” she manages to force out, barely above a whisper, each word a concerted effort.
“There’s something.” Vel smiles then, fond beyond anything Kleya deserves. “And most people would call that staring, or paranoia. But there’s plenty of that going around this place, so you’ll fit right in.”
Kleya just rolls her eyes at that, giving Vel’s forearm one more squeeze before settling back into bed.
“I meant what I said, try to rest.” Vel’s hand comes up to rest on Kleya’s bicep, thumb tracing backwards and forward in an unexpectedly reassuring motion. “I’ll be here for the rest of the night, and I’ll wake you when I’m leaving tomorrow, if you’d like?”
Kleya nods again, any other words proving too much of a struggle for her in this state. Vel had deduced that on the first night, too, that Kleya’s sleep was markedly more sound when she was present in the yurt.
“Goodnight, Kleya. Sleep well.” Vel gives her bicep one last squeeze before returning to her parts draw, finally recovering the piece she needs before moving back to the bench.
Kleya makes no attempt to sleep, not immediately. She just watches again. Vel’s steady rhythm: assess and fix and inspect. She turns once after finishing Cassian’s blaster, catching Kleya’s gaze and smiling another one of her soft, sad smiles.
Kleya is awake for a while longer before sleep finally claims her, but that smile is the thing that stays with her into unconsciousness.
2.
Weeks blur together, here, beneath the Damoclean sword of the Imperial blockade.
In Kleya’s brief time on Yavin, it has turned from a hidden rebel base to a pre-dug tomb for the superweapon to fill, and then to a cattle pen; thousands waiting for the Empire to finally deign to slaughter them.
The unquestionably triumphant and unquestionably trapped Alliance were doing their best to busy themselves in the face of the waiting Imperial threat. Endless drills and battle simulations, tactical plans drawn and redrawn, scouting parties sent out when gaps were spotted in the blockade, desperate to find allies and the scattered fleet on the outside to help punch a hole back through.
Kleya mostly just lingers on the margins. She hasn’t yet been inducted into the Alliance proper, though Mon and Vel’s vouching is keeping her largely safe from those with lingering doubts about her, or the network, or Luthen. Even after we brought them the superweapon. She’s more present now, at least, able to focus clearly now the ache behind her eyes has all but dissipated. No, her current, almost existential problem is that she has, for the first time in nearly two decades, nothing to focus on.
Well, that isn’t entirely true. She has, since those first broken nights in the yurt, found her focus rather inextricably locked on Vel, whose presence has proven to be one of the few truly grounding things on this otherwise adrift moon. Kleya’s taken to… following her. Not for any especially sinister purpose, just… as a fixed point. Vel had specifically encouraged her to spend more time outside of the yurt as her recovery progressed; Kleya could hardly be blamed for the form that time outside took.
The form that time outside takes is largely more lingering. Most mornings involve finding a nice perch just beyond the day's training ground and waiting there. Vel arrives not much later with her latest gaggle of green children, somehow endless despite the restrictions of the blockade. If she’s noticed Kleya thus far, she hasn’t mentioned it in their– her yurt of an evening. From Vel’s perspective down on the training field, Kleya can’t be much more than a blue smudge on top of a crate.
It’s not until the third week of watching that she’s finally rumbled. A pair of Vel’s current crop of recruits, two who had stopped by the yurt the night prior to deliver some new intel report from Draven, find Kleya waiting on her crate as they scurry towards their gathered cohorts beyond, clearly late for the day's activities.
“You’re the one bunking with Commander Sartha, right?” asks Kabreel, the shorter of the two, a girl so young she couldn’t be long out of nappies.
Kleya tries to muster something biting, the kind of cutting remark she so often dealt in on Coruscant, but yet again, nothing comes. The words meet the solid wall of lips sealed shut and bounce right off. Instead, she answers with a nod, curt and to the point.
“Well… enjoy watching us, I suppose?” says Zenah, the taller of the two, a girl who reminds her all too keenly of Lonni when he first joined the network, all awkward manners and nervous ticks. The two of them exchange a look before carrying on their way.
She doesn’t make much of them beyond that, just a pair of kids giving her a pair of bewildered greetings before their panic at being late sets in. The first sign of trouble is when they stop, not in the gap in the formation waiting for them, but a few strides away from Vel, gesturing back in Kleya’s direction, too far to make out what they are saying.
Vel doesn’t seem to make much of them either, at least initially. She carries on with the drill as standard, organising a series of sparring demonstrations for the recruits, taking no small amount of pleasure in using the latecomers to demonstrate the particularly physical throws she's instructing them in. It’s not until the group is split off into pairs and running the grapples themselves that Vel finally turns, trudging up the leaf-strewn hill towards today’s perch.
Kleya doesn’t bother to avert her gaze from Vel, or pretend she hasn’t been staring for most of the morning. Vel’s too sharp to have not noticed, and Kleya’s starting to believe she deserves a kinder treatment than she’s subjected her to in the past.
“More intelligence gathering? Or more staring?” Vel jokes, not unkindly, leaning herself against the crate Kleya is currently perched on.
“You told me to get out of the yurt more,” Kleya says, with a strength that shocks both of them.
“Mhm, convincing,” Vel replies, grinning. “And that’s going well, I hope?”
“Well, enough,” Kleya manages, soft but steady, eyes still locked on Vel. There are still blocks but… the words come easier when it's just the two of them, like there isn’t some terrifying thing clamping her jaw shut.
“That’s good…” Vel trails off, finally meeting Kleya’s gaze, concern clear in her sky-blue eyes. “You know you only have to ask if you want to come with me, right? You don’t have to sit here staring.”
Kleya’s mouth quirks, grimaces, falls; words fail her again. Something must shift in her expression, because Vel’s softens by degrees, too.
“But… you aren’t one to ask even– well, you aren’t one to ask. So,” Vel stands now, moving to a position just in front of Kleya, her thighs pressed up against Kleya’s knees. “Would you like to come spend the day with me on the training field? …I’d like you to.”
Kleya considers, smiles the best she can, and nods. Vel gives her room to hop down from the crate, then leads her back down to the day's activities.
The same happens the next day, and the next. By the third, Vel doesn’t even bother asking, just waits for Kleya to be ready at the door of the yurt before they leave together.
Even after Kleya finds a posting in intelligence, the pattern continues. Vel finds Kleya when she’s free from her duties. Kleya, in turn, finds Vel when she’s on a break from hunching over a listening post.
The rhythm of it all is steady and gentle. Kleya feels herself going from lingering, to waiting, to almost belonging, thanks to Vel.
3.
Home One is an altogether different world from Yavin. The jungles always imposed a level of chaos, be it rain or mist or the incessant yelping of doodars, nature was as regular a feature of the base as anything the Alliance had put in place.
This ship is nothing like that. By its nature it is anything but natural. There is a baseline frequency here, not a living pulse like on Yavin.
It has its benefits and its drawbacks. The order of it all means Kleya is hardly surprised by chance encounters anymore. Everybody has a routine, and she has memorised them all. She controls her interactions with others carefully. Quiet meetings with Mon, time allocated to build up to answering in more than one-word sentences; evenings spent with Dreena and Wil, the two of them making as great an effort as reasonably possible to accommodate Kleya’s new, largely gesture-based style of communication.
They are all so kind, so considerate, and she feels so keenly, desperately less than she once was.
Her still-frequent off-duty periods spent with Vel are the only time that gnawing feeling of inadequacy dulls. Even beyond sharing quarters, Vel makes a conscious effort to spend time with Kleya whenever she has it. The two of them can even engage in something approaching a real conversation, on the days when Kleya is feeling strong.
It’s grounding in a way she hasn’t known in a long time. On the days when Kleya isn’t feeling strong, it almost feels like pity, like she’s become Vel’s eternal burden to bear, but then Vel will make her laugh and break down her barriers long enough for a real reply, and those doubts dull too. They’ve started to make new routines together now, as part of this… whatever it is they are. Friends? Comrades in arms? A broken woman and her slightly less broken carer? Or…
One of those new routines is Vel’s gym time. She’d clearly been trying to stay active beyond what duty required on Yavin, with frequent runs and an improvised set of weights in the side room of the yurt, but Home One’s gym blew all of that out of the water… jungle.
Kleya, for her part, spends much of their time in the gym as Vel’s especially attentive but especially unengaged spotter. She joins Vel for the cardio portions of her workouts, long bouts jogging on the treadmills or riding the pedal speeders, but the kind of strength training Vel has eagerly taken up is far beyond her.
Most of said training involves Vel babbling away and Kleya replying when she can, which is becoming increasingly frequent. Companionable silence holds between them when they aren’t engaging in their own form of conversation, Vel working as Kleya watches.
“Watches” might be generous. “Stares” is probably more apt. Vel teases her about it occasionally, but never seems to take offense. It isn’t intentional, exactly, Kleya just… likes looking at her – for reasons she has rather staunchly refused to engage with until now. It’s become as much a part of their routine as any of this has, since those first nights spent together in Vel’s yurt.
Kleya especially likes looking at her at times like this. Vel’s doing sets on the lat pulldown as Kleya muses about the quality of Vel’s form, the way the muscles of her back flex beneath her tank as she works, the way Kleya wants to map them with her lips. She hasn’t been able to help herself of late, her mind always wandering this way as Vel worked up a fine sheen of sweat. So many places she wants to feel Vel, and have Vel feel her, so many places she wants to mark her, and–
“Particularly thorough intelligence gathering today, I see.” Vel is smirking as she speaks, catching Kleya’s reflection in one of the transparisteel panels of the equipment.
“Just… appreciating your form,” Kleya murmurs, more due to being caught red-handed than the words refusing to come.
“Oh, that’s a good one, you’re getting better at the excuses.” Vel lets the handles of the machine go, pivoting on the bench to face Kleya. “Well I appreciate you… appreciating my form. Really.”
Kleya smiles, suddenly shy beyond reason, and Vel matches it.
“I was going to fill this back up,” Vel says, gesturing with her canteen. “Do you want me to get yours, too?”
“I’ll go,” Kleya says, as naturally as she can manage. “I need to use the fresher, besides.”
Vel looks as if she’s about to say something, but acquiesces, handing the dented hunk of durasteel over. She’s been particularly protective of Kleya recently, to the point of trying to do almost any mundane task for her. It's sweet, but doesn’t do much to help with the feeling of inadequacy all of this has given rise to.
She’s most of the way to the water fountain by the time she hears the commotion. Three… four sets of voices, barking in what sounds like the prelude to a full-blown brawl. Two of them she recognises; Zenah and Kabreel, now regular parts of Vel’s team of marines aboard ship, but the other two are strangers.
The scene before Kleya has her stomach turning as she finally reaches the skirmish. Zenah is bleeding from the cheek, a jagged line left by the fist currently being nursed by one of the strangers. Kabreel notices her first, eyes widening before darkening with rage.
“Major, he–”
“I?” Says the man nursing his hand. “This karking rat was–”
“Say that again.” Zenah says, stepping between them, her own fists balling as blood drips from her cheek. “Go on, say it.”
“Oh, don't even start, girl,” says the second man, reaching for something in the pocket of his jacket.
Kleya should say something, she knows. She holds rank. She’d have skinned them alive verbally, before.
Nothing comes. She feels like a deer in the headlights, watching the speeder-truck barrel towards her. The man's hand begins sliding out of his pocket–
“Hey!” The sound rips from behind her, the kind of controlled fury she so rarely hears Vel deploy. “Attention – on deck – now!”
The four of the would-be brawlers turn at once, various kinds of panic playing on their faces as they snap to attention. A stun prod, half-drawn before Vel’s arrival, drops from one of the men’s pockets.
“Privates Zenah, Kabreel, Rondo, Halme, do any of you have an explanation for, as I see it, behaviour worthy of a tour in the brig?”
“No, Sir.” Zenah and Kabreel return, almost in unison.
“You wouldn’t, you–”
“Rondo!” Vel shouts again, approaching the man with the fist fragile enough to ache after a single punch. “And Halme. The two of you are to report to the master at arms and explain, in unsparing detail, why one of my troopers has been struck, and why a stun prod was drawn off duty, understood?”
Each man is a head taller than Vel at least, but both seem to shrink before her. Both of them nod, salute in turn, and quickly scurry towards the exit.
“And you two,” Vel turns to Zenah and Kabreel, the relief plain on their faces suddenly shrinking into fresh panic. “Report to Captain Glège, and explain all of this. I’ll be seeing to both them and you, so the stories you all tell best match, understood?”
“Sir, yes sir!” The two of them reply, again in near unison, squirrelling off in the same direction as Rondo and Halme.
Vel turns as they disappear through the doorway, face softening as she takes Kleya in. She steps in almost immediately, one hand finding Kleya’s forearm and the other settling at the small of her back.
“You’re okay. I’ve got you.” Vel’s voice is achingly soft, blue eyes wide with concern.
“Not.” Kleya forces out, a mix of anger and self-pity in her voice. “I just stood– there. Fucking incapable.”
“Oh, Kleya.” Vel shifts, cupping Kleya’s face in her hands. “You are the most capable person I know. This? It doesn’t change that. They wouldn’t have you all but running intelligence if you weren’t.”
Don’t leave me is what Kleya wants, more than anything, to say. It catches against her teeth, dying on her tongue. All she can do is look at Vel, and hope the meaning carries.
“Let’s get you home, hm?”
Vel, to her credit, reads it perfectly. She turns, gesturing to the door and to their waiting quarters beyond, never once removing her hand from the small of Kleya’s back.
4.
Night on Home One, or what passes for night on a ship entirely untethered from a celestial body, has its own kind of rhythm. The regular thrum of duty hushes into occasional bursts of noise; the scrape of a maintenance droid itself in need of maintenance, the too-loud conversation of patrolling watchmen, the telltale feeling in your bones of a hyperspace jump winding up.
Something is disturbing that regular rhythm tonight. Kleya wakes in starts, awareness coming to her piece by piece as unconsciousness gives way to the waking world. Vel she realises, chattering– no, crying in her sleep. Half broken sobs and scraping pleas, small and terrified in a way that makes Kleya’s heart sink. Even in the dimmed light of their quarters, she can see Vel shaking in the bunk across from her.
She’s on her feet before she has time to think, instinct pulling her towards Vel even as panic gnaws at the edges of her. Vel, who cared for her so naturally on Yavin; Vel, who has been so resolutely at her side through all of the new agony this condition has caused; Vel, who she desperately–
The need to act cuts in before Kleya can finish that particular thought. There’s no way to approach Vel that doesn’t require at least some degree of physical contact, so Kleya decides to throw caution and any potential embarrassment to the wind and climbs onto the bed, almost straddling Vel. Her hands come up, stuttering and awkward before finally making contact, cupping Vel’s jaw in the way that always works on Kleya herself.
Panic has sent her barriers all the way up, but Kleya just manages to rasp a single “Vel,” into the space between them. It seems to land; Vel’s shaking calms and her sobbing recedes as blue eyes, shot red and full of tears, flicker open, finding Kleya’s face instantly.
“Kleya, I– oh.” Vel’s hand comes up by instinct, mirroring the placement of Kleya’s, cupping her face. Kleya manages a soft smile before shifting, settling with her back against the headboard, jammed in the gap between Vel and the bunk’s wall. Vel joins her after a moment, sitting against the headboard with her arm firmly pressed against Kleya’s.
“Did I wake you?” Vel asks, almost apologetic.
Kleya shakes her head, eyes never leaving Vel’s face. Her hand settles on Vel’s forearm, her thumb idly tracing a path back and forth over the bump of Vel’s wrist bone.
“You used to be better at lying,” Vel huffs, close to a laugh, trying to match the smile Kleya had given her.
Kleya can feel her barrier dropping, just a little, questions and comforts and confessions all dancing to make their way out first.
“Ghorman?” She finally asks, soft as anything, but steady.
“Aldhani.” Vel shakes her head, voice distant. “Nemik, in the shuttle. Every time, I try to catch it, but… It’s not meant to be.” Vel gives Kleya another sad, soft smile; the kind that sets her heart aching. “Its the way of things, for me at least. I lose the people I love.”
Vel sniffles, a single tear rolling down her cheek. There’s so many things Kleya wants to say to her. I’ve lost everybody that I love, too, by my hand or by Luthen’s. But I will not leave you, and I cannot lose you. None of it comes. Kleya shifts her hand instead, snaking her fingers between Vel’s, and looks.
Vel looks to their hands first, squeezes, then shifts he gaze to meet Kleya’s. Her next words come out as a whisper, soft and full of something unspoken.
“You’re staring again.”
“I’ve no excuse this time.” Kleya’s voice is equally soft, coming out fragile and just as full of the thing she cannot yet name. “I just want to look at you.”
Vel’s lips twist, neither smile nor frown, just… acknowledging. She grips Kleya’s hand a little tighter before shifting to rest her head against Kleya’s shoulder.
“Thank you,” Vel says, the heat of it dancing across Kleya’s cheek.
Vel drifts off first, her breathing leveling into something softer, her body pressing against Kleya’s. Kleya waits a while longer before letting sleep take her, her gaze never shifting from the linked hands resting on Vel’s thigh.
5.
She hates hospitals. The smell of antiseptic and artificial clean, the whirs and chirps and beeps of machinery, the sound of the rasping, dying breath of a man who had been so mighty in life.
Home One’s med-bay is a picture of hell, now, full of the dead and the damned as the ship flees the slaughter at Mako-Ta. It's a miracle Kleya is even standing here unscathed; paid for with the lives of a dozen troopers who held the door to Alliance intelligence against the worst the Imperial boarders had to offer.
The entire bay is chaos. Even at Home One’s size, this many wounded is pushing its medical staff well beyond their limits. Every member of the crew with any kind of medical training has been drafted; even Mon is in the fray, quietly rationing off pain meds in a little alcove, trying to make what they have last.
Kleya knows Vel is here. Word came up right at the start of the attack, a boarding party had touched down in the hangar she’d been assigned to guard, and the fighting had been fierce. She isn’t in the morgue yet, at least, and she isn’t unscathed down in the hangar proper, so she has to be here. She has to be.
It takes what feels like an eternity of searching before Kleya finally finds her. Her mistake had been starting in intensive care, assuming the worst, expecting to find Vel at death's door as she went bed to bed. She’d been unsuccessful in that search, but it had indirectly guided her to where she needed to be. The last of the beds in intensive butt up against the lower priority patients, wounded that aren’t at imminent risk of dying without attention.
Vel is there, half listening to a doctor as he reads from a datapad, the right side of her body a constellation of blues and purples and reds. Kleya just stares, as she so often does, afraid that if she looks away Vel might somehow slip away from her. A medical droid beeps rudely at her, catching her shoulder as it swerves past, but she remains fixed in place. It isn’t until the doctor leaves that Vel finally sees her, blue eyes softening even as one is sealed half shut by swelling.
Kleya’s feet are moving before she realises, she feels like she’s almost floating as she arrives at Vel’s bedside, Vel’s non-wounded side, her hand instinctively finding Vel’s as she comes to a stop.
“I’ve gathered all the intelligence I need already, if that’s why you're staring. The doctor was very helpful.” Vel jokes, her voice is weak and achy but the humour of it cuts through, and something like affection too.
Kleya can feel her bottom lip quivering, but nothing comes. Too many people, they can hear, they can’t hear.
Vel notices, because of course she does, and gestures to the little control unit on her bad side.
“You can close the curtains around us with that, if it would help?”
Kleya nods, reaching over to the button she’s fairly certain is the one Vel meant, and is relieved when her guess is proven right, the curtain of Vel’s little unit slowly whirring round, at least visually giving them some privacy, although the panicked chatter of the med-bay is still omnipresent.
“There we go.” Vel smiles with the good side of her face, the bad side seems too puffed up to let her lips move like that. Kleya’s eyes linger on them, even now.
“You…” Kleya manages, voice shaky.
“It’s nothing permanent,” Vel starts, nodding right as if to indicate that half of her body. “There was a KX droid with the boarding party, he decided I needed to be introduced to the wall of the hangar. It looks… okay, it looks as bad as it is, but the doctor says it's nothing that time and a soak in the bacta won’t fix. Just need to wait for the more urgent patients to have their turn, and then–”
“I am in love with you,” Kleya blurts, like it's the most natural thing in the galaxy, and like she had to shove every word out from between her teeth.
“Oh,” Vel says, then quickly follows when she realises how that sounds with “No, I mean– I love you, too. Kleya, I love you so much, you have no idea, and that’s my fault because I’ve been too scared to say it… I’m just surprised you said it so easily. Not that I’m not– Merles, I am rather ruining this, aren’t I?”
“You aren’t,” Kleya says, smiling, fighting as hard as she ever has to keep her barriers down for this. “I… needed to say it. I can’t lose you, and I was so scared. Me, scared. Can you…”
Kleya trails off, flagging, but she finds Vel’s hand again, squeezing it as tightly as she dares. Vel just looks at her, eyes shining and full of adoration, smiling as widely as the good side of her face can manage.
“I was scared, too,” Vel whispers. “That I wouldn’t get to tell you, or something would happen to you while we were apart. I’ve grown rather stupidly fond of having you with me.”
“So have I,” Kleya manages, and she’s sure she’s smiling just as wide as Vel is.
“I might need you to help me with something, though,” Vel says, suddenly a little sheepish.
“Anything, you know that,” Kleya says, and the words feel like they're coming easier than they have in months.
“I really want to kiss you.” Vel’s eyes dart to Kleya’s lips as she says it. “But… it’s rather difficult to move with all this going on, so I might need you to…”
Kleya leans in before Vel can finish, capturing her lips in a kiss that feels months in the making, and like the only thing she’s ever needed in life. Vel winces into it at first, but the two of them muddle around to an angle where she can reciprocate without hurting the bad side of her face.
“I don’t need words for that,” Kleya whispers, and Vel stares at her almost aghast before giggling, so full of joy she could almost forget she is almost more bruise than woman.
“Help me shift, a little,” Vel says, something driving her all of a sudden. “I think we can both fit on this if we try.”
“Vel, is that really–”
“I did the intelligence gathering, remember?” Vel says, full of humour. “And the doctor was very clear that holding the woman I love would have me on the mend quicker than any bacta.”
“Was he now?” Kleya answers in kind, suppressing a giggle as she helps Vel shift sideways before awkwardly joining her in the hospital bed, careful to wrap herself around Vel without causing any additional pain.
“He was. Wouldn’t stop harping on about it, in fact,” Vel teases, pressing another kiss to the side of Kleya’s mouth. “And who am I to argue with a medical professional?”
“Very diligent of you, Commander Sartha,” Kleya murmurs, suddenly overtaken by a fresh wave of emotion. “‘The woman you love,’ I like that. I…” Kleya pauses, battling to not be overwhelmed by how overwhelming this all is. “Can I hear it again?”
“I love you, Kleya,” Vel says, nuzzling their noses together. “I love you, I love you, I love you. Exactly as you are.”
+1
There are, by Kleya’s reckoning at least, two facts, one good and one bad, about Alliance promotion ceremonies that stand above all others.
The first, the bad, is that they are tedious even to a woman who spent a decade cleaning coins professionally.
The second, the good, is that she’d had to say two words during the entire duration of said pomp and ceremony, and she’d had ample time to prepare for them.
She is on her way home now, freshly polished rank plaque shining like a mirror on her chest, decidedly non-standard – and, decidedly less ghastly – new uniform so meticulously kept that you could hardly tell she’d spent the better part of the day slouched in it.
The promotion had rather blindsided her when Mon first told her, but Mako-Ta had gutted the ranks of Alliance leadership, and she was all but running Intelligence already, so who was she to refuse the call?
The door to their new, rather more spacious, quarters slides open with a woosh, revealing Vel sitting at their dinner table, only slightly awkward with one leg jutting wide from the chair, still stiff from its injuries.
“You’re back,” Vel says, beaming, clearly thinking about getting up before deciding better of it.
“You’re meant to be in bed, my love,” Kleya returns, feigning grumpiness even as she cups Vel’s face in her hands, gentle still on the right side, and kisses her.
“I’m tired of being stuck in bed… without you at least.” Vel smirks, squeezing Kleya’s hips before releasing her.
“Tea?” Kleya asks, shifting to their kitchen and busying herself with the kettle.
“Please. Now, how did it go?”
“Dreadfully boring,” Kleya answers, hoping she can get across an eye roll vocally. “But I got my lines out, so not terrible.”
It is, day by day, becoming a little easier to speak in situations like that. Never perfectly, but enough that she could answer most questions to some degree now. With Mon and Wil and Dreena she is even managing full sentences, albeit sparingly.
Conversing with Vel is almost effortless, now. There are still some things she struggles to say, but that is as much because of who she is as a person, as it is her condition.
She’d finally been brave enough to speak to a doctor about it during Vel’s time in the med-bay. ‘Trauma induced selective mutism’ was the diagnosis, as the two of them had long suspected. She’ll probably never be entirely comfortable with speaking in public – not to the degree she was before, at least – but with friends, and especially with Vel, the day will come where she doesn’t struggle at all. Even now, she doesn’t feel like she’s lesser, or Vel’s burden, or anything worth pitying.
“Have you had your nog today?” Kleya asked, glancing at Vel in the mirror above their sink.
“No, but I’ll take the tea meddy, thanks.” Vel huffs in response, fond even as the prospect of another med-nog laced drink clearly does nothing to thrill her.
“Just a splash, you’ll…” Kleya trails off, catching Vel’s gaze in the mirror again. “You’re staring.”
“Am I?” Vel answers, innocently, slowly rising from the table.
“Or gathering intelligence,” Kleya responds. “What is it you’ve observed, Commander Sartha?”
Vel finally reaches her, hands grasping at Kleya’s hips as Kleya’s arms settle around Vel’s shoulders.
“That I rather enjoy how you look in that uniform, General Marki,” Vel replies, teasing as the tip of her nose grazes Kleya’s.
“And you aren’t worried about me pulling rank on you?”
“Well,” Vel whispers, leaning in so their lips graze. “I’ve discovered I’m rather fond of taking orders from you, on occasion.”
Vel kisses her hungrily, guiding the two of them towards their bed, lowering Kleya down before joining her, taking great pains to not cause herself great pain as she shimmies up to the pillow. Kleya’s eyes meet Vel’s as she settles, so full of adoration.
“Who’s staring now?” Vel says softly, bringing her hand up to tuck a strand of hair behind Kleya’s ear.
“I’ve always liked looking at you. And I especially like looking at what’s mine,” Kleya whispers back, her own hand coming to a rest on Vel’s jaw as she shuffles closer.
They stay like that for a while, bodies pressed together, looking into each other's eyes and just… seeing each other.
And for the first time in a long time, Kleya feels entirely like she is nothing but herself.