Eclipse Ch. 09

Quentin remained silent for rest the trip, lost in his thoughts. When they arrived at the starport he led her through a warren of passages, avoiding the few concourses where passengers gathered to await transport. Finally, through windows that overlooked the exterior of the dome, a squat little ship could be seen. "The Scrapper," he declared.

It was a shabby, patchwork thing if I determinant origin. Roughly shaped like a flattened cone, with a bulbous cockpit at the tip and turrets on the dorsal and ventral sides, it looked rather more comical than impressive.

The interior, though, belied that impression. It was a gleaming white, clean and well-maintained. The living and crew areas were compact and well-organized. "Here," he said, gesturing to a small bench that circled a table just big enough for two people to eat at. Two friendly people, that was.

Kaydia started, reaching for his hands across the table. "Quentin I...I am the one who hit you, back in the warehouse. When you were running for Tuzza. I didn't think you'd be able to dodge the blasts from the blaster pistol, so I pushed you." A pause and a sigh, "Through the force."

"I'm...I'm force-sensitive," She started, still trying to hide her background from him before sighing loudly. "No, it's more than that. Before I came here, to Mustafar, I was a padawan in the Jedi Order." Saying the words out loud was petrifying, and yet, relieving, finally unloading the burden she had carried for over a decade.

"I probably shouldn't have told you that, but you make me stupid sometimes. Stupid in a way no one else ever has. Besides, if someone is gunning for us, I might have to rely on those skills I learned then, to keep us safe. And things like that require an explanation." She was quiet for a while, before deciding just to let it all out now. She didn't want secrets between them.

"When I was seventeen, near the end of my training, my master and I were investigating a drug smuggler who may have had ties to the Jedi Order. We were captured by the Black Sun, and..." She stopped for a moment as the memories came on like a torrent.

"They experimented on us, injecting us with drugs until physical addiction overwhelmed our senses. Well, my senses. I became hooked on Inertia and they used my chemical dependence and previous Jedi training to turn me into an assassin for the Cartel.

"Eventually I broke away and got clean, and since then I have been trying to get my revenge on those who did this to me. Including Tuzza, who oversaw my conditioning, and commanded my hits. But...killing him didn't fix everything like I hoped it would. It didn't fix anything, or make me feel better. And I don't suspect that killing those who set us up- whoever they are- will help us out much anyways.

"I haven't told you everything about me either, Kaydia " Quentin hesitated, then drew his lightsaber and laid it on the table. "This, for instance, is the casing of an AdascaTech weapon. But I gutted it the day I bought it, and rebuilt it." He rolled the machined aluminum hilt on the table. "I'm a Jedi, Kaydia. Believe it or not. And I can't leave. Not yet. I'm... here on business."

He sighed. "See, when I was nineteen, I went with my Master on my last mission before my trials. We were looking for a Jedi Master who'd gone missing in the Outer Rim. A Master, and her apprentice." He looked at her. "Master Bry-Ta, and her apprentice. I didn't quite recall her name, but she was a young woman - maybe a year or two younger than me - with the prettiest red hair I'd ever seen."

He sighed and looked away. "Every trail we followed went cold. We gutted the Black Sun, the Hutts, and the Krystinari organizations across three sectors and found no trace of them - Master or apprentice. We'd have kept going, only we couldn't track them any farther."

Turning back, eyes like roiling waves looked back into hers and he took her hands. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "We failed you. I failed you."

His voice choked, and it took a minute to find it again. "I want to leave with you. Right now. Go... anywhere, as long as it's with you. But I've got a mission to finish."

"Because I'm after the most dangerous agent the Black Sun has, Kaydia. A fallen Jedi, named Linora Sunfell."

Kaydia sat across from Quentin, stunned by his admissions. It was a lot of information to take in, and she wasn't even sure where to start.

"You're a Jedi?" She asked finally. It made sense, why her subconscious was trying to tell her that she knew him, from somewhere. She must have seen him, at the temple while they were both there. Still, as much as It might have made sense, there were things about his confession that didn't.

"But, we...we had sex. Really passionate sex," Kaydia reminded him, feeling warm as she remembered it. Incredible, mind-blowing sex that made her think there might be something more between them. "I remember learning that 'There is no passion, only serenity. ' Have things changed that dramatically since I left the order?"

As she spoke the words, it hit her. There was no future between them. He couldn't be with her, as long as he was a Jedi. Pain gripped he heart. Maybe he never had any intention of being with her. "Did you just use me to get to Linora? Was all of this just an elaborate ploy to stay undercover?"

"So what, you get Linora and then what? Go back to the Order as if there was nothing between us? I thought...I thought we had...I don't know, something." Her eyes were wet with tears that threaten to flood her face. "Was I just fool?"

"No!" Quentin cried out, pulling her into an embrace. Then he chuckled ruefully. "I mean, I had looked for an angle to get close to Black Sun on Mustafar. And working as your back-up did let me do that. But..."

He kissed her forehead. "I wasn't using you. Hell, I didn't know you worked for Linora when I met you. And..." This time, he kissed her lips gently. "That night? After the hit? When we talked and laughed and danced and fucked? None of that was a lie. I wanted to be with you Kaydia, then and now. And tomorrow, and after that."

Chuckling, he pressed a finger to her lips as she started to speak. "And yes, I know the Code. It's artificial, Kaydia. A hedge, to keep young Jedi from straying too close to the Dark Side. Odan Ur penned it in the years before the Great Hyperspace War as a poetic description of being in harmony with the Force - it didn't become 'the Code' until after the Jedi reorganized in the wake of the Jedi Civil Wars."

He laughed. "And there I go, spouting trivia when it's not what I should be saying. Because what I should be saying is that, if I have to choose between you and the Code... I choose you."

She knew she probably should have asked more questions. Should have tried to have a serious conversation about the information he revealed to her. Should have been more concerned about what it all meant, in the long and short-term. But, she couldn't care. She couldn't care about anything, not after those three last words.

I choose you.

They may as well have I love you for all Kaydia heard in them. Her arms went around his neck as she pulled him into her, her mouth capturing his in a kiss. A kiss that was not approved by the Council, but what she care? What did he care? He didn't he didn't care about that. He chose her. After nearly a decade of fearing that she killed the last person to give a damn about her, it felt good to know that she mattered to someone.

That knowledge filled her with a need, a need to feel him inside her. She was ripping off her own shirt as they kissed madly, the weight of their confessions and near death coming off with each piece of clothing. She sought out the feel of his skin, soft fingers groping at his muscles, leaving pink impressions of her need.

Even more, she could feel her own touch through his skin, their sensations blending and bleeding over until distinctions between them were minimal, and meaningless. She hadn't intended to open an empathic link with him, but she wouldn't dare close it now.

"Fuck me," she gasped, her hands worked at his belt as their mouths came back together. "I need you inside me." So, as her finger gripped his manhood, she gasped with sudden bliss, feeling the soft hands gripping the throbbing organ, pulsating in demand to plunge into moist supple flesh. The dual sensations, both feeling with her hands and feeling his ache in her mind, were confusing and amazing and she moved without thinking. Just feeling.

He leaned into her, his tongue fucking her mouth as she stroked and squeezed him. His hands roamed her back, tugging and tearing at the hooks of her bra before tossing it aside to push her back. His lips closed on her nipple, tugging and sucking, and she shared the sensation with him, let him experience his lips on her breast through her mind. "Fuck..." he breathed, the air hot on her damp flesh.

With a sudden motion, he rose, his hands slipping under her ass. He lifted her up, kissing her again with a desperate need as he let her drop on the edge of the small table. He tore at her belt and fumbled with her zipper, hungrily biting at her throat and shoulders. "I need you," he groaned, tugging her pants down. "I need you now..." The pants hung up on her boots. He swore, then gave up. More than enough room for what they needed, now.

Quentin's fingers hooked in her panties, tugging them to one side. " I wanted you slowly," he groaned, cock throbbing as she clenched from his nails grazing her slit. "I wanted to make love to you for hours..." With a single thrust, he buried himself to the hilt in her sex.

"Later," he gasped, hips rocking as he began pounding himself into her. "Now... I just... need you..!" He pulled her mouth to his, letting her taste his desperate desire for her. He could feel himself stretching her around his cock through her nerves, taste him fucking her through her mind. "Do..." he moaned, angling his thrusts in response to her wordless cries, "do... you... you feel... it... too...?"

"Yes..." She moaned and admitted, bouncing against his cock fucking him as he fucked her, and feeling him fuck her as she felt herself get fucked. "I... feel... it," She gasped, head thrown back in joyful abandon, "I feel... you. Everything...I feel... everything" She wrapped her arms around him, sighing against how soft her breasts felt pressed into his chest. Kissing him, wanting to complete the entirety of their connection, tongues slipping and filling each other's mouths, his cock parting her walls, her slit gripping his girth their bodies against each other, soft and hard and sweaty and perfect.

"Perfect..." he gasped as she wrapped her arms around him. "You feel... perfect... on me..." Her tongue filled his mouth, and he subtly altered his thrusts as he felt her need for a different angle. "Perfect... around... me. Perfect... in... me..." She could feel both their orgasms building, his as a rising tension in his cock and balls and hers as a growing pressure that began in the pit of her stomach and radiated outwards. She could feel his cock straining against the silken walls of her slit and taste the salty sweat of her skin and the musk of their mutual lust in the air.

"Cum...cum in me," She implored him, forehead resting against his, "I want to...feel it... as you do," the words with laced with indulgent cries and breathy rasps. "I'm so... so close..."

"Close..." he echoed, the word a low moan. "I want... want you... to... to feel... me..." His fingers dug into the meat of her ass as he plowed into her. "Feel my... my... cum... filling you..." It was getting harder and harder to speak, harder to think of anything but her body gripping him and the feel of his meat filling her, and her hands and her lips needy on his skin. "Kaydia!" he gasped. "Fuck! Kaydia! I'm... I'm close! Kaydia! I'm... I'm..."

It was hard to tell if his orgasm caused hers, or if hers caused his. Perhaps it happened simultaneously, and escalated from there, with each pulse of his semen and every tightening of her core. The eruption into her hungry womb, the milking of his cock, it seemed to last forever. All Kaydia could do was hold Quentin tight against her, feeling the sweet sting of her nails biting into his skin.

Even once it had subsided, she rested against him for several minutes, craving his heat and skin against her, craving her own body against his. She didn't want to disentangle arms or legs or fingers or mouths, she just wanted closeness, that feeling of completion and connection.

Pleasantly exhausted in the afterglow of passion, Quentin slumped against Kaydia's sweat-slick skin and she leaned into his shoulder.

"That was... mind-blowing. It's never been so...intense for me before.," She tried explaining, rubbing her cheek against his. "Perfect." Repeating what he had said earlier, while he filled her with bliss. "It was perfect."

"Perfect," he repeated as well, then kissed her gently. "You're perfect."

"What do we do now?" She asked, looking into his eyes once more, hoping she was able to conceal the struggle raging within her.

Quentin forced a smile. "Your thoughts betray you," he said, stroking her cheek with his thumb.

Kaydia felt the embarrassment wash over her. While there were some obvious benefits to being with a fellow force user, benefits she was still reeling from, there were downsides too. Like the loss of privacy over her own thoughts. Suddenly she was a self-conscious teenager again, always monitoring her own mind for fear of Master's Bry-Ta's quiet judgment. Quentin might have said it playfully, but it was still a reminder of the ways she had failed to live up to being a Jedi.

"And... I don't know. For the first time since... well, since she betrayed me, I don't know." He left who she was unsaid, but the meaning was clear.

"So Linora was the pretty brunette who broke your heart?" Kaydia pieced together. She watched as he also struggled with his duty versus what he wanted. Duty, loyalties, they just got in the way. Even more now, she just wanted to leave it all behind.

"I mean, I know what I want to do. And I know what I should do. What duty demands of me." He pulled her close, nestling her against his chest. "But... I don't want to ask you to make the decision you're faced with."

"Yeah, It's bad form to ask your new girlfriend to help you kill your old girlfriend." Kaydia teased, trying to lighten the mood. "Or I guess capture in this case? Do you really have to do this?"

He fell silent, his own thoughts roiling through the force with the conflict between duty and desire. "I'm a Jedi," he repeated, as if reminding himself. "And I know her better than any of the other Shadows. But...We could leave. For a while. Figure things out. Decide what we're going to do."

It was a compromise. A decent one too, and it was all Kaydia needed. Once they got away, and Quentin realized how good things were, when it was just him and her, he wouldn't want to come back. She kissed him before he could finish his thought, lingering for a bit before he pulled away. Face buried in the masculine musk of his shoulder, she sighed. "I just want to be with you, Quentin. I need you."

"Now, do you have a shower on board? Or some kind of fresher? Not that I mind smelling of you, but I am still covered in blood, and would rather not be."

"I do, actually." He gestured at a door behind him. "It's a dual-function model, even. Regular shower when I'm hooked up to an external supply and flip a switch, and fresher when I'n not."A light chuckle. "It's a bit of a splurge, but worth it."

He stumbled a little as he moved away, only now remembering that his pants were still around his ankles. After a moment of waffling, he kicked his boots across the room and stepped out of the trousers. Clad only in his socks, he pulled open a small closet.

"Here," he said, tossing her a towel, "and I can toss your clothes in the cleaner. Should get the blood stains out. I will prepare to lift off."

***

Dressed in her now cleaned clothes, , Kaydia joined Quentin in the cockpit, greeting him with a kiss on the cheek. "Given any thought to where we are heading?""Not really, no," he confessed, flicking more controls. The ship began to vibrate, just a little, as he brought the reactors fully online and began to warm the engines. "Away from Mustafar for the moment." He shot her a grin and leaned over to kiss her back, before turning his attention back to the controls. "Someplace out of the way and relaxing, for a few days at least. So we can get a chance to decide what we're going to do next. Manaan, maybe. It's certainly out of the way." He chuckle.

"Manaan?" Kaydia repeated, trying to remember. It had been years since she left Mustafa hen she traveled the galaxy with her master. "The ocean planet? I had hoped for somewhere with a beach."

"If you are in the mood for something a little more civilized, we could head into the Colonies and the Tapani Sector, instead."

"Sounds good to me. As long as we are together," She admitted, settling down in the cockpit.

The vibrations of the engine stopped as he cut in the gravatics and retracted the landing claws. Slowly the Scrapper began to lift from its docking cradle, following the launch vector he'd been given.

"So tell me more about the Jedi thing. I don't think I was ever cut out to be one. I always had a hard time with that 'No emotions, only peace' thing. "

"The 'Jedi thing'?" he echoed. "Hard to say, since I haven't been the typical Jedi for... hmmm... a decade, now." He chuckled. "See, I'm dead. If you check my records in the Archive, you learn that I was killed by Lorin Shaal, former Jedi Master, when I uncovered his role in a drug running and blackmail scheme."

"Oh, you're dead too? Yet another thing we have in common!" Kaydia laughed.

He adjusted course slightly as the Scrapper plowed through Mustafar's exosphere. Joining her in laughing, he continued, "And now I'm a Shadow, lurking on the edges of the Order and constantly watching for threats from the darkness. Whether within or without the Order." Another chuckle. "Sounds romantic, doesn't it? In practice, it means I get to clean up messes the Council would prefer never get made public." He flashed her a grin. "So I can tell you a lot about the Force, and the light and the darkness, and about the soul of a Jedi. But the lifestyle?" He shook his head.

"It's almost funny. The Order might have sent you after me, if not for the fact they think I am dead. That really would have put a damper on our budding relationship," Kaydia teased, reaching to run her fingers down his shoulder.

"It might have," he agreed, choosing to concentrate on the feel of her fingers on his chest and the teasing flavor of her emotions. "But... well, I'm a free agent. If I'm sent after someone, I'm expected to determine if they're a threat and then neutralize that threat." He grinned. "But how is utterly at my discretion. I've managed to set four fallen Force-sensitives on a path of redemption, and there are two renegade Jedi on Dantooine that I decided to utterly ignore -because starting a farm and raising a family hardly constitute a threat."

His expression hardened a little. "Hell, I'd even bring Linora back to the Jedi path if she'd come. And she's tried to kill me three times."

Kaydia didn't need to be force sensitive to see how Linora still weighed on him. It wasn't hard to imagine why, either. It wasn't so long ago that she and linora had been tangled up like this. Before the jobs became more important. But Quentin was different. He chose her. So, with a giggle and a smirk, she trailed a finger down his face. "Oh, and how would you neutralize a threat like me?" she asked as he pulled her into his lap, indulging in playful kisses.

Suddenly laughing, he caught her fingers and pulled her into a kiss. His fingers combed through her red hair as his tongue parted her lips. "So the way I see it," he grinned, "you can hardly be a threat if I keep you exhausted from mind-blowing sex, right?"