If Nadia could use the Force, the first thing she would have done was convince the Dathomirian to keep her mouth shut about everything that had just happened. Then she would have made herself forget everything about it, and the entire matter would have never been spoken of again. But she did have access to the same 'magic' that the witch did, so as they both sat there in the ship's cockpit, all she could do was stare straight at one of the consoles and hope nothing too terrible was aired.
But the entire time she had sat there, the witch had done much the same. Andrews had asked them what had changed in their schedule, and Nadia had managed to mutter something about convincing one of the guards to alter the launch patterns. That story proved to hold true when they weren't stopped by a turret on their way off-world. Now he was sitting there, looking between them as the ship made its way through hyperspace. Waiting.
Waiting for one of them to slip with what had really just happened. But she wasn't going to do that. Imperial training would have helped her withstand weeks of interrogation. This was no matter in the slightest. She could sit here for days without breaking. The witch, on the other hand, was far more likely to spill any proverbial beans.
Except she didn't. Even after they had been sitting there for something like an hour, the witch had never taken her gaze off of her. What exactly the woman was trying to discern with those yellow eyes, she couldn't say. All she could say was that all of the possibilities terrified her.
There was the possibility that she was just going to say something right here, right now. That meant that everything got aired now, which wasn't terrible. Most people in the Rebellion weren't exactly aware of her background, but at present it didn't feel like enough to sink her reputation too much. She had never hidden her accent, and thus most people had managed to guess her roots. Another thing that could happen was that the witch waited, and opted to kill her or worse when the time proved right. The latter was obviously much more terrifying.
Letting out a cough, Andrews broke the silence, "Anyone want to say anything?"
"No," Gwynara said flatly, leaning back in her chair with her arms crossing, "Not to you."
The man sighed, turning to look at Nadia, who just shook her head. Tossing his hands in the air, the man stood, making for the door, "Air whatever the hell you two need to air then. 'Fore we all suffocate under how thick the stinkin' air is." With that, the door opened, he walked through it, and shut behind it.
Those remaining the cockpit shared a glance, before settling into an odd silence. Neither appeared to be the one who wanted to say the first though, though she had come to expect as much from the woman. The witch wasn't one for words. Why would that change now?
With a sigh of her own, Nadia leaned forward, "I did not intend for that to go as it did."
Gwynara's head shifted to the side, her short bangs falling in that direction, "Did you know he was on this world?"
She bit her tongue. Of course she had known. She was meant to have a firm understanding of the Imperial situation on those worlds where the Rebellion operated out here, so of course she knew who was in charge. The fact that that was so obvious convinced her that there was no point in lying on the matter, "Yes."
"Yet you came here regardless."
"I did," Nadia said, almost to herself. She had. She had known, and still she was here.
"Was it for your own revenge?"
That stopped her current train of thought. Of all the reasons she had allowed herself to be carted about throughout the galaxy, revenge hadn't necessarily been the top of her mental checklist. Spite, perhaps, but not vengeance. She hadn't left home to get even, she had left home because she could no longer stomach her work.
"No," she finally said, "It wasn't."
It was the truth. Or at least the truth as far as she could see it. No piece of her that she could think of wanted to bring harm to her sibling, not that that had prevented her from making sure that she had done just that. At this point it was collateral damage. Acceptable according to her own parameters. Which on its own was somewhat mortifying.
"Does it bother you?" Gwynara murmured, leaning forward to focus on the other woman's face. Nadia half expected the mental probing she had read Force users were capable of, but felt nothing of the sort. For the time being, they were just talking, as anyone else did.
"It does."
She took in a breath. The pale woman sat there, staring her over. Like her eyes could see past anything she tried to throughout that might be false. After a moment, she nodded approvingly, awkwardly resting a hand on Nadia's knee, "It is hard to face family. That you fight against them even still is honorable."
Nadia frowned, but before she could probe into the statement, the Dathomirian stood, and made her own way out the door. Letting out a long sigh, Nadia slumped back in the chair, staring up at the ceiling. She wasn't wrong. These things were hard. And she had the feeling that monitoring Imperial channels was only going to be harder for the next few weeks, depending on how harshly Gideon was punished.
No comments:
Post a Comment