Equivalent Exchange (a SWTOR story): Chapter Twenty-One- Immortals
Equivalent Exchange by inyri
Fandom: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Characters: Female Imperial Agent (Cipher Nine)/Theron Shan
Rating: E (this chapter: M)
Summary: If one wishes to gain something, one must offer something of equal value. In spycraft, it’s easy. Applying it to a relationship is another matter entirely. F!Agent/Theron Shan. (Spoilers for Shadow of Revan and Knights of the Fallen Empire.)
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Immortals
16 ATC. Yavin IV.
Back at camp, Nine stops by her tent first.
She desperately wants a shower. She’s got enough of an excuse for one after a day’s work in the field, tired and sore and dirty from prowling through the ruins, but more to the point she needs to refocus and cool down before the evening’s meeting. Stripping out of her armor, robe wrapped around her body and feet slipped into bathing shoes- barefoot won’t work here, not with the rough stone underfoot, and she’d normally just wrap up in a towel but given the number of soldiers between her tent and the showers that seems an exceptionally bad plan unless one likes wolf-whistles- she pads across the Imperial half of the encampment toward her destination.
They’re only field showers, of course: sun-heated water rationed out in minute-long portions, the interface flatly refusing any attempts at overrides and beeping rudely when she tries to adjust the timer up to a more reasonable three minutes.
Oh, well.
She hangs her towel from the hook in the narrow cubicle and strips down before hitting the panel and letting the water, barely lukewarm despite the solar tank, run over her skin. In the cubicle beside hers someone’s singing an old military cadence, off-key and in a bass voice loud enough to set the thin wall vibrating; after two verses, the song cuts off with a grumble and a muttered curse.
(For a moment she remembers the Academy, remembers her school days.
Privacy was a privilege to be earned there, open dormitories with their beds in long uncurtained rows until their fourth year and communal showers divided by gender until lower sixth. It was meant to break them of bad habits when they were still young enough to take the breaking without question, strip down their individuality to make them malleable- little boy-and-girl-shaped dolls to be fit into molds to make diplomats and ambassadors and Minders and Fixers as the needs of the Empire required. It worked, most of the time.
When it didn’t, one of two things could happen. Sometimes the pressure made one fragile, brittle, prone to shatter with too much force applied; those were the empty beds, the cadets there one day and gone the next. They’d all shake their heads at those, when they were old enough to understand what went home really meant, that it meant failure- weak, they’d say, pathetic.
Children could be very cruel. That, too, was molded into them.
The other thing that could happen was subtler. Sometimes one template never quite suited, never quite fit, a sly, slippery sort of resistance that made the instructors shake their heads even as they smiled behind their hands. Only one thing to do with a cadet like that-
The ones like that, the ones like her- they went to the field.)
The water cuts off with a harsh chime and she sighs, grabs her towel to blot the water from her skin. Good enough.
Back in her tent, hair piled in a damp coil atop her head and changed into training clothes, simple black drawstring trousers and a short-sleeved shirt- she's past caring about proper dress for the meetings; none of the rest of them are stuck outdoors all day in leather and kinetic plating- she lays her armor out to air on her cot with a few sprays of cleanser for good measure.
Vector’d have seen to her gear, normally, one of so many tasks he’d taken on without complaint. Despite her protests, though, he’d been commandeered for logistics nearly as soon as they’d touched down and she’s barely seen him since. The rest of her crew stayed shipboard; Kaliyo, still wary of prolonged contact with the Empire after the last time they’d tried to arrest her, chose to remain behind; Lokin was still rebuilding the infirmary; SCORPIO would have raised far too many questions and Raina- well. If either the Jedi or the Sith got scent of her-
Best to stay away. It left her short-handed, though.
Where is everyone? She thought she’d have been summoned to conference by now, but the others seem to be occupied elsewhere: Theron and Satele are nowhere to be found and Darth Marr’s clearly in his tent given the guards posted outside; when she approaches, Lana’s alone at the War Table, two datapads in front of her and maps and diagrams from three different projectors hovering in the air around her head.
Lana waves distractedly, still focused on one of the maps. “Hello, Cipher. I'll take your report when it's ready. I've got the map all ready to integrate the new data.”
“In a little while, hm? I thought I'd work on it while I eat.”
“Best do it now. Something's got both Darth Marr and Grand Master Shan in a temper today- I feel it in the air, too, but if they know what it is they haven't seen fit to share.” Her hand skates along the holos, pulling tiny renderings of soldiers from one screen to another. “Theron ran in late for some meeting she’d scheduled and I thought she'd drag him off by his ear. I'd be careful if I was you.”
“Slavedrivers, all of you,” she grumbles, suppressing a smile. Not that Satele could ever find out why he’d been late, of course, but oh, to be a fly on that wall if she did- the look on her smug Jedi face would be delicious. “If I didn't know better, I’d think you were ordering me around, Lord Beniko.”
She, predictably, wrinkles her forehead. “Of course I'm not. It's only that-”
“I know. You Force-users run things, after all. The rest of us are just your little soldiers.” She reaches up, moving one of the groupings along the projected map to the center of the Imperial Guard facility. “We’ll need those there, to begin with, but I'll get the data processing. After I get some food.”
“I don’t run-“ Lana says, then sighs. After a moment she pushes away from the table, letting the projections fade. “Oh, hang this. I’m starving. Come on.”
(And in that moment I realized the Lana I knew had been replaced with some kind of clone. Quite a good likeness, but the work ethic- she waves a hand, mouth tilting wryly- totally unrealistic.
I can relax, Lana grumbles. Sometimes.)
***
They sit and watch the soldiers spar as they eat.
After the first awkward day the mood in camp’s a little lighter, a mixed group of scouts and infantry from both sides swapping fighting techniques in the ring beside the common area. Datapad on the table beside her as the day’s analysis compiles, she drains the last of her caf, eyeing one of their scouts critically as a Republic soldier gets him in a chokehold.
“He’ll never get him off balance that way. That ‘pub’s built like a wampa.” Setting her cup down, she mutters at Lana. “If that’s how they train, no wonder we’ve lost a squad already.”
Lana, mouth full, tilts her head in agreement as the scout tries another angle and ends up face-down on the cobblestones. Oh, honestly. She stands, striding to the middle of the ring.
“Look,” she says- the scout rolls onto his back, staring up at her. He’s just a pup, really, no more than twenty by her assessment and probably younger- “you’re doing that all wrong.”
“Don’t think he asked you, lady.” Stars, the man’s enormous. If he was half again his opponent’s weight he must be double hers. “Unless you think you can do better?”
Lana starts to stand up, opens her mouth to intervene; she waves her off, then holds up one finger to silence him. “In a minute. Here-” she turns back to the boy, giving him a hand up- “what were you trying to do, exactly?”
“D’you know the combat manual?” He’s got gravel pebbling his forehead and scuff marks on his trousers. “Maneuver sixteen, but I can’t make it work.”
“That was your first mistake. Starting from a throttle, that’ll never work on someone his size. Try… hm. Twenty into seven into thirty-two.”
“How does that-” his forehead scrunches. He’s trying to picture it, clearly, his hands moving little circles as he works his way through the different forms. “Sorry. I can’t-”
She turns back to the ‘pub, who’s got his arms folded across his chest- and no armor. Perfect. “I’ll demonstrate. Shall we begin?”
He grins and lunges for her neck.
Overconfident. Typical.
She darts her left arm outside his right, brings her cupped left hand down sharply at the crease of his elbow as two fingers of her right hit the hollow of his throat and dig in hard; his arm bends and he chokes as she pivots her weight into him. When his knees hit the ground she pulls back from his throat, slides her left hand grip down to his wrist and rotates, snaps it back against her thighs- a little more force and she’d have put his elbow out of joint, but this is meant to be a friendly spar; still, he flinches. She lets her own knees bend, driving her weight between his shoulder blades until he falls forward, pinned by her momentum and wrist still caught in her grasp, arm twisted behind his back-
“And then,” she exhales, looking up to the scout, “with a little leverage-”
She’s barely torqued his shoulder before he’s tapping out.
“Or if you’ve got a knife-” she doesn’t draw hers, leaving it tucked into her boot, but pushes a fingertip into the base of his skull, his back at the heartline and at the level of each kidney- “here, here or here. All good options.”
“What if he’s in armor, though?” Another scout, a stocky woman in Republic fatigues, calls out across the ring. Her demonstration took ten seconds, maybe, probably less, but in that time they’ve attracted quite an audience. Letting her opponent go, she settles cross-legged onto the ground beside him; he rolls over, rubbing his arm.
“Then you screwed up. If you got close enough to an opponent in full armor to let him get his hands on you,” she says, “you’re probably going to get your ass handed to you and you probably deserve it.”
Beside her, the soldier snorts in agreement, then coughs. She might have hit his throat a little hard.
“Yeah, okay-” another voice, behind her- “but what if-”
When the light starts to fade half an hour later she’s sweating, covered in dust from the cobblestones, and she’s put most of the gathered ring through their paces in some form or another.
Dodging one last attempt at a grapple with a forward somersault, she turns around-
The Grand Master’s standing at the edge of the ring with Theron at her shoulder, arms folded across her chest, looking entirely unamused. “Cipher, I really shouldn’t have to ask you not to injure our infantry.”
“No one’s injuring anything.” She wipes her face. “Just training. They’re playing too close to the book, your people and mine both. If they can’t improvise in the field, they’re all going to-”
Probably better not to say that out loud.
“She does have a point,” Theron chimes in as Satele shoots him a look out of the corner of her eye. “I thought you wanted us cooperating. Joint training isn’t a bad idea.”
“What you do with your leisure time is up to you. For tonight, however, I need you both at the war table in fifteen minutes. Promptly.” That last comment directed at Theron, Satele turns toward Lana. “Lord Beniko, you as well, please.”
As she heads off across the courtyard, the three of them roll their eyes in synchrony.
“Promptly.” Theron snorts. “Subtle as a lightsaber to the face. I should go take a nap just to spite her.”
She laughs; her datapad, still on the table, chirps as the compiler finishes and she walks across to pick it up. “Hear, hear.”
Lana slides off the bench. “I’d better go finish that map. Send me that file, won’t you?”
“On its way.”
With a nod, she stacks their empty plates, dumping them back into one of the collecting bins. “See you both shortly.”
Theron tracks her as she walks away. “Lana’s still avoiding me, isn’t she?”
“Not really. I pulled her away from work when I came back. That’s got nothing to do with you.”
“I guess,” he says. “I just keep catching her looking at me. After Rishi, it’s a little disconcerting.”
“She is sorry, you know.” Her sparring partner’s still standing near the edge of the ring, waiting; she waves the woman off with a nod. “You know she is.”
“Maybe. Anyway, that looked like fun.” Perching on the table, Theron shifts his gaze toward the still-training soldiers. “I may ask you to put me through my paces soon, if that’s okay with you. With all this down time I’m definitely getting rusty.”
“Whenever you like, once you get the all-clear. I don’t want your-” she catches herself on the words- “Grand Master Satele to shock me to death if I break one of your fingernails.”
“Jedi don’t use Force lightning, as a rule. And that assumes you can beat me, so-”
She grins. “I assume nothing. I’ll stomp you flat any day of the week.”
“I’d say you could try, but I just watched you spar for the last ten minutes. Honestly, yeah, you’ll probably kick my ass.” He returns her grin. “Do I need to read that file, too?”
“No, it’s just scouting data from today’s run. I’m sure we’ll go over it shortly. In exhaustive detail.”
“I hope not. But I’d better take notes, then. I might be talking you through tomorrow if I still can’t get field clearance.” Theron makes a face, reaching into his pocket. “I- shit. I left my datapad on my desk.”
As he pushes back up off the table, she nods. “I’ll meet you over there, then.”
“Walk with me? I just need to grab it.”
They make their way through the rows of tents, lamps within casting shadows on the canvas walls, until they reach the western edge of camp and the Republic command quarters and Theron’s tent, wedged between Satele’s to its right and the brigadier’s on its left. He starts inside, gesturing for her to follow- he wasn’t lying about the space, barely enough for the two of them standing, a cot with a duffel bag tucked underneath, a tiny desk and matching chair.
(He’s always tidy, everything neatly stacked or folded away, a tendency she recognizes in herself-
They were used to running, both of them, in those days: only the essentials kept near to hand in the field, ready to shove into a bag in ten seconds or less, ready to bolt at the slightest sign of trouble. An old habit, born of necessity.
They’ve gotten a little messier, now.)
“How did your meeting go, by the way? I heard she wasn’t happy when you made it back.”
“How do you think it went?” Plugged into a charging cable, Theron’s datapad’s on the corner of the desk; he picks it up and slips it into an inside pocket of his jacket and then turns, wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her close, face to face. “I’m standing there talking about troop deployments and getting lectured on punctuality, and all I can think about is your-”
(She clears her throat, hides a smile behind her hand. Never mind. We were still on time to that meeting, if you’ll recall.
Yes, with a minute to spare. You weren’t seriously- Lana sighs. I do not want to know. I really don’t.)
***
(“-and all I can think about is your fucking mouth,” he says, the last words muffled in the press of his lips against her forehead. “You did that on purpose, I swear.”
“And what if I did?” She slips her arms around his neck, voice pure innocence and lashes fluttering. He’s even better sport than she’d hoped for, now that he’s decided to play after all. “I thought it was better than the alternative. But if it’s too much of a distraction, I won’t do it again.”
“Not what I meant, and you know it. How much time do we have?”
Not enough. Never enough to- stars, she needs to be smarter than this. The lamp’s flickering; the power from the generators gets spotty after nightfall, especially when they’re drawing off it to run the War Table equipment. All it would take was the wrong person outside, a glimpse of silhouettes, a little too much noise-
No risk, no reward.
“Let me-” she reaches up, switches off the light (yes, that's better) and checks the time. “Minus five for walking time, that leaves us… hm. Three minutes.”
“And I still owe you.”
“Mm-hm-” he pulls at her drawstring, fingers sliding down against her skin- it’s such a cliché but ah, clever boy, his hands- “you do.”
Her knees buckle; she reaches back for the edge of the desk, something to brace against.
“Then I may need to pay my debt,” Theron says against her mouth, words against the silent ohs she’s choking back, “in installments.”)
***
He did have a point: concentrating on the maps was rather difficult after that.
Thankfully, she’s used to working around distractions.
***
By the time they drag the Commandant from the shuttle pad down the pathway to the War Table she’s in a foul temper.
She’s known she was in over her head the whole time they’ve been here. This entire mess, Revan and the Emperor... her training never covered anything like this. She can’t negotiate with these people. They’re completely insane, all of them, ranting about the Emperor, how he must feed, must feed- Force knows what the ghost of a Sith eats, but she’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to find out.
(Spirit, he says, a correction that snaps her head backward, sharp as a slap. Spirit, not ghost. I am beyond death.
Lana reaches for her arm.)
“You’re not one of them,” Iven said, “you’re meaningless.”
He doesn’t even have to quantify it. She knows exactly what he means. In the annals of history, she won’t even be a footnote in this mission. Normally that wouldn’t bother her; Cipher work means passing unnoticed, after all, a quiet hand, a shot in the darkness. There’s no fame to be had for work done well, only infamy in failure.
But meaningless? It strikes a nerve.
The man’s still raving when she shoves him to the ground at Marr’s feet, even when one of her strike team hits him with the butt of his rifle. Her own shoulder’s throbbing, a lucky blow from one of the other Guards- dead now, burning in the center of the complex courtyard- and she rubs it as they close ranks around their captive.
“We won’t get anything out of him that way.” Satele gestures toward the Commandant, at the trickle of blood now dripping from the corner of his mouth. “Let me speak with him personally. Given his mental state, I think some delicacy is required.”
Marr shakes his head, a hint of irritation in his voice. “That will take time we do not have, and we must breach the temple before Revan. He will speak, whether he wishes to or not. With Lord Beniko’s talents-”
Lana looks as though she’d like to sink into the ground. “With respect, my Lord, I can’t force him. I can only tell you what I see, not pry it out. If you mean to question him, may I suggest you’d be far better served by Cipher Nine.”
She wrinkles her nose- Theron sees it before she can compose herself, the angle of his head a question she’d rather not answer. She has experience enough in the finer points of interrogation, true, but since Hunter she’s got no taste for it and Satele’s right, anyway. Hurting him won’t give them what they need. One can't break what's already broken.
“If you torture him, you’ll only kill him without learning any more than what we already know. He needs to be tricked into confidence, not beaten.” She looks down to the man, still rocking back and forth on his knees. “But I agree with the Grand Master, I must admit. It’ll be subtle work, but manageable, I think.”
Marr sighs, and if tone could kill she’d be dead at his feet. “I can always look to you,” he says, “for a particularly skewed perspective. What a pity we can’t simply command him with a word.”
Damn him. Damn him to the Void and back.
She doesn’t answer, bites down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep herself from snapping back, to keep her muscles from shaking in helpless rage. How dare he-
“Have him moved to my quarters.” Satele turns to the guards, who move back to flank the Commandant again, one on each side, hands beneath his arms to drag him away. “We’ll begin immediately. Lord Beniko, with me, please. The rest of you are dismissed.”
Meaningless.
She turns on her heel and stalks away down the path.
By the time she’s back through the archway she’s no longer bothering to hide her fury and it must show, given the way people dart out of her way as she storms through camp toward the taskboard and the speeder bikes. She needs to get out of here. There must be something on the board, some excuse-
Massassi sighted near Watchpost Dorn. Perfect.
She moves her marker to the assignment, picks a fast speeder, and goes.
***
It was only one Massassi. Disappointing.
It never saw her coming; with poison and a few quick knifestrikes she drops the creature to its knees before she ever breaks stealth. It gets a few swipes in, none of them coming anywhere close as she dances in and out of arm’s reach and it roars, raging.
“I know exactly how you feel,” she mutters, driving her blade in deep, and it flails one last time and goes still.
Sitting down on a fallen tree beside the watchpost, she cleans her weapons and takes a few deep breaths, tries to settle her nerves.
Nope. Still pissed.
Her comm rings. She doesn’t even bother to see who’s calling, simply ignoring it; it rings again, this time on a private frequency, one they used on Rishi. Lana can’t possibly be done with the interrogation yet and Jakarro barely uses comms, which only leaves-
She answers. “What?”
“Where the hell are you?” Theron’s hard to hear, speaking just above a whisper. “You know as soon as they’re done with that lunatic they’ll want us back.”
“For what? All I’m good for is wetwork, clearly. I could have had him talking half an hour ago. You probably could have, too, and instead it’s a fucking Force-user party.”
“I know, but-” he pauses. “You okay? You sound out of breath.”
She sheathes her knife, rolling her shoulder back and forth- barely sore, now. Good. “Oh, I’m fine. My Massassi friend’s somewhat less so.”
“Your- wait, you left? ” His voice rising, Theron sighs. “Seriously. Where are you?”
“Check the board- I’m out by Dorn. I needed space.”
“Meet me at Esk again. We should talk,” he says as she starts to object- she’s really not in the mood, literally or euphemistically. “Actually talk, I mean. I’ve got a feeling you need it, the way you looked when you walked off.”
She chuckles. “Very perceptive of you."
“It’ll help, won’t it?”
“I doubt it.”
She can hear the eyeroll in his voice. “I insist.”
“Force, you’re a damned nag. Fine. You’ll need an excuse to get out of camp, though.”
“Oddly enough-” a beep over the channel, then a second; she shakes her head, trying not to laugh- “the power just went down again. I’d better go check it out. See you soon.”
She beats him there this time. Inside the cave it’s cool and quiet and peaceful; she cycles the generator back on and sits, back against the wall, beginning a memory exercise meant to calm her fraying nerves. By the time she hears him outside she’s nearly calm.
Nearly.
“So.” Theron steps out of the sunlight, blinking, looking down at her. “What the fuck was that about?”
She folds her arms across her chest, suddenly back on the defensive. “I thought we were talking. If I want someone to lecture me, I’ll take my chances with Marr again.”
“You know what I mean. I was pretty sure nothing could faze you, but you were about two seconds away from going for Marr’s throat.” He sits down beside her. “What’s wrong?”
“Thought I’d hidden it better than that.”
“You hide a lot of things,” he says, “and yes, you’re very good at it. I just know what it’s like. Also, honestly, I’ve spent way more time in the last month watching you than I care to admit, so-” he shrugs. “That was a deep cut, whatever it was.”
(Does it still bother you that much?
She makes a noise, mixed agreement and equivocation. I still dream about Hunter. I suspect I always will, even with all the desensitization training I’ve been working on, but back then I was just pretending it didn’t bother me so it was a lot worse. About a month before you and I met, before that first raid on Tython, I was trying to turn a Republic senator. She liked poetry, she murmurs, so I met her at a reading. We were discussing literary techniques.
Lana nods. I think I see where this is going.
She was particularly fond of the poet’s use of- she swallows, forces the word out, syllable by syllable- onomatopoeia. The third time she mentioned it, she says, I threw up in an ornamental rosebush. Blamed it on too much wine.)
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You were right about how to handle Iven, whether he likes it or not, and to come back at you with whatever that was… It isn’t right. Why didn’t Lana say something?” He frowns.
“She has no more idea what he’s talking about than you do, and she’s not going to speak against Marr any more than you’d speak against your mother.” Wrapping her arms tighter, she shakes her head. “It’s an old wound. Let it be.”
He’s quiet beside her, thinking; she knows by the way he’s focused on the ground in front of him. She’s spent too much time watching him, herself. “You were tortured,” he says a moment later. “Weren’t you?”
She nods.
“By the Empire?”
“No.” Mostly true. A one-word answer to an ugly question. “Please, Theron. Don’t ask me any more.”
He takes a deep breath. “I- look, hear me out. When this is over, you could defect, you know. We could protect you.”
She turns to stare at him. He didn’t know, of course, couldn’t possibly have known, but she hears Ardun Kothe echoing in her head and for a second she’s back on Quesh, facing the same offer, the chance to make a lie real-
“No,” she says flatly. “Absolutely not. Never.”
“Why? You call yourself independent, but you’re still stuck under the Dark Council’s thumb. You deserve better than that.”
He really believes that. She can see it in his face.
But Ardun believed she’d really defected, too, at first, and it didn’t stop him from using her.
“You’re so sure of what I deserve? You have no idea. Absolutely none.” Looking away, across the cave, she focuses on a thin crack on the far ceiling. “I could say the same of you. ‘My agent.’ Do you really think you’re any more free than I am?”
A bow drawn at a venture, but it hits its mark. Beside her, Theron flinches, muscles tensing, then lets his held-in breath go in a slow, sad sigh as his head falls back against the wall with a soft little thump. “No. But the Empire-”
“We don’t all want to watch the galaxy burn, you know.” She ought to apologize but he doesn’t quite deserve it; he shouldn’t have asked that of her. She doesn’t need rescuing, doesn’t need to be saved. “Some of us realize we’ve still got to live in it.”
“You should tell your bosses that sometime, then.”
She closes her eyes. “Go to hell.”
“I would.” He’s so quiet it’s hard to make the words out. “But aren’t we already there?”
It might have been funny, some other time, if it weren’t mostly true. Letting her arms fall to her sides, fingertips raking furrows in the dirt as her hands clench into fists, she doesn’t reply. After a minute he shifts, just slightly, resting his right hand on her left; when she relaxes he threads his fingers through hers.
She doesn’t move. She should, but-
“I’m sorry,” he says. “So much for letting you vent- shit, you probably think I planned that.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Not even a little bit. I just- I’ve seen what you can do, and I thought if-” he sighs again, squeezes her hand. “Forget I said anything. Please."
“I understand.” She does. She’d have done the same, under different circumstances. “But you promised, Theron. No sides. No games. Not with me.”
(He was never going to be any good at that, was he?
She should have known better.)
“I know. But-”
Their commpads chime, Lana’s frequency; she glances down as the message scrolls, holding up her wrist so he can see it, too.
Nearly finished. Lots to discuss. Table in 30- LB.
The light from the screen dies and they glance at each other before Theron starts to stand. “We should get moving. I’ve screwed this up enough without getting us into more trouble.”
“In a minute.” She doesn’t follow, stays seated, a weight on his arm pulling him back down until he stops, not sure whether to hold on or let go. ”Will you sit with me,” she says, looking up, “just a little longer?”
He nods, settling back to the floor beside her, and she rests her head wordlessly on his shoulder.
***
Up next: Risk/Reward. Two Revans, one fight, one promotion and too much alcohol.
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