#rhese velaran

[hydrospanners]

when a problem comes along, you must whip it

when an explosion rocks the palace where they're staying in the night, jedi siblings rhese and rea handle the situation with their usual grace and efficiency. this is a very serious fic. swtor act two. genfic; f!jedi knight x doc mentioned. no spoilers. 2700 words. ao3.

Crack that whip Give the past the slip Step on a crack Break your momma's back When a problem comes along You must whip it Before the cream sits out too long You must whip it When something's going wrong You must whip it

-- whip it by devo

In the end, Rea does more property damage than the bomb.

  A year ago he might have let himself shoulder some blame for that, but now--Now Rhese is older. Rhese is wiser. And Rhese knows that his sister would’ve found her way to bringing the place down whether he’d done what he did or not. He has no bearing on Rea’s destructive inevitability, and he sleeps better at night now that he’s made his peace with it.

  He doubts if the Duke will ever get a good night’s sleep again. Not everyone is used to being stirred from sleep by explosions in their rotundas.

  Rhese can’t remember the last time he went more than a week or two without having his sleep interrupted by an explosion of one kind or another. He isn’t sure what that says about his life except that Rea is back in it.

  The building was still trembling from the blast when his feet hit the floor, and he barely took the time to slide his lounge pants on before he went chasing after that familiar pulse in the Force, the powerful thrum of Rea’s presence, knowing she would already be wherever the trouble was.

  He has regrets about that now. You’d think he’d know by now to never go anywhere Rea is without his lightsaber. You’d think he’d know to at least put on some underwear. But he was sleeping deeply and he’s always been a little slow to wake up. It’s the only defense he has for himself, for running into a clusterfuck like that half-dressed and unarmed.

  When he found Rea in the great hall, he could see she wasn’t any better prepared than him. She was messy-haired, empty-handed, and naked from the waist down, wearing nothing but a shirt too clean and too tight in the shoulders to be her own. It was pretty clear what she’d been up to; Rhese just hoped her evening’s entertainment didn’t rush down with as little consideration for appearances as she had. The situation was bad enough without trying to avoid eye contact with Doc’s erection.

  A dozen or so mercs and their assault cannons filled the hall with blaster fire like a driving rain, forcing them both to cover on opposite sides of the room, tucked behind the huge pillars that dotted the room. Normally a pair of Jedi wouldn’t even be inconvenienced by some hired muscle and a bit of blaster fire, but normally Jedi had lightsabers and plastoid armor.

  “Rhese!” He could hardly hear Rea’s voice over the torrent of blaster bolts screaming through the hall between them. She started pointing at him. “Rhese! Behind you!”

  He looked over his shoulder, muscles tensed for a fight, but no one was there. Nothing was there except the display case on the wall. The display case with the--the hilt of a--

  Shit. She couldn’t be serious.

  “I don’t know how to use that!” He shouted back.

  Even through the haze of red, he could see her rolling her eyes. He could feel her rolling her eyes, somewhere deep in his soul. “Throw it to me, dumbass!”

  Of course she was fucking serious.

  “You don’t know how to use that either!” He shouted.

  “Rhese!”

  Stars fucking dammit. He looked at the case then back to Rea, hoping he had somehow misunderstood what she wanted, but she was just gesturing for him to hurry it up. Because of course she was. Of course this was her actual, entire plan. Of course this was going to happen.

  Was one night of peace in a large, comfortable bed really so much to ask for?

  “Don’t look!” Rhese shouted, then dropped his pants.

He wrapped the fabric around his fist, cursing himself for forgetting underwear, and crept toward the case in a crouch. He didn’t see any obvious security measures and there wasn’t time for a more thorough check. The mercs were closing in. There was nothing to do but take the gamble and hope the Duke hadn’t installed anything more serious than a burglary alarm.

  Rhese punched the glass.

  It shattered, exploding in every direction, lashing his skin, leaving tiny cuts across his face and his arms and his chest and his legs. His fist burned as shards of it buried themselves deep under his skin, even with the fabric of his pants to protect it.

  He ignored the pain, too high on adrenaline and annoyance to care. The hilt of Rea’s No Good Very Bad Idea came free from its mount with a tug.

  It seemed to quake under his touch. There was something stirring inside it, something wild and alive. The feel of it coursed up his arm, racing across his skin like electricity, calling to something inside of him, to some dormant part of his--

  Fuck.

  Rhese tossed the thing like it burned him. The hilt hardly left his hand before he felt the tug of the Force pulling it away from him, drawing it into Rea’s waiting palm. Part of him wanted to pull it back, to feel the cool, unyielding metal against his skin, to be the one with his thumb on the switch.

  He smothered that part with a feather down pillow. Let her have it, he thought, a tremor running down his spine. I’m not the crazy one in this family.

  Maybe he should have warned her. Maybe he could have saved the Duke a few million credits and all of them a lot of grief if he’d just mentioned what he felt.

  But probably not.

  Rea’s never let things like total ignorance of what she’s dealing with or the threat of possession by a potentially evil incorporeal entity stop her before, and he doubts she would have started today. He doubts anything would have kept her hands off that thing once she realized she had an excuse to try it out. He remembers how she’d looked at it on their tour, with that hungry glint in her eye, the gears of her scheming little brain turning so fast you could almost see the smoke pouring from her ears.

  Things would’ve turned out the same, no matter what Rhese did or didn’t do. It was already too late for them the moment Rea laid her eyes on that thing.

  She barely closed her fingers around the hilt before the blade was igniting in a shower of sparks.

  If you could call it a blade.

  It was a rope of electric blue light that fell from the hilt in long coils, graceful and deadly, crackling as it melted through the carpet and into the marble floor beneath.

  Rhese had heard of lightwhips before, but never expected to see one with his own eyes, much less one that still worked. He hadn’t thought any still existed considering how badly the stories about them always end.

  And now they have another story for the list.

  Rea gave the thing an experimental crack, sending sparks flying as the thong streaked wildly through the air, a blur of electric blue that lashed across pillars and walls before snapping against a statue of the Duke’s great-grandmother, neatly severing the top half of her marble head. It shattered against the floor as the whip fell limp, leaving trails of lime scarring in the marble as it slid slowly to the ground.

  The flow of blaster fire stuttered, some of the mercs evidently asking themselves what the streak of light scorching its way across the hall might mean for their plans. He doubted any of them were scholars of esoteric plasma weapons, but you don’t survive long as a mercenary without some sense of when the winds of fortune have turned against you.

  Rhese ducked back behind his pillar before Rea made another crack. His night was bad enough without a firsthand lesson on the relative effectiveness of an ancient lightwhip against bare human flesh. He tried to shake the shattered glass from his crumpled pants, but it was no good. Tiny slivers were tucked so deep in the fabric he doubted he’d ever get them out.

  He wondered if he shouldn’t just put them on anyway; he wondered if a little pain wouldn’t be worth sparing himself the humiliation of going hand-to-hand against a dozen armed and armored mercs while his dick flapped in the wind. Then he remembered whose hands would have to dig all that glass out of his balls later and thought better of it.

  With another sharp crack, Rea brought the whip twisting back toward them, lashing wildly between walls and statues and--

  “Fuck!” Rhese swore, rolling out of the way just in time as the tip of the thong sparked against the pillar where his head had been not even a second ago. “Can you maybe try not to kill me?” He shouted.

  “Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Rea laughed, then paused, narrowing her eyes at him. “Where are your panties?”

  Rhese glared back, determinedly ignoring the blush creeping from his cheeks down to his chest. “You focus on the guys trying to blow us up. Let me worry about my panties.”

  “You want my shirt?”

  “No!” The only thing worse than going into a fight with his dick in the wind would be going into a fight with Doc’s shirt wrapped around him like a diaper.

  Rea shrugged.

  And then she was gone.

  She soared through the air, bare-assed and gleeful, cackling as she spun the lightwhip into a whirlwind of a shield. Blaster bolts bounced off it in every direction, blue and red blurring together into a haze of purple light that surrounded Rea like a halo.

  He’d had every intention of helping, of taking advantage of the distraction to drop some of their attackers as mercifully as possible, or at the very least without having to bisect them. But then Rea landed among them, whip lashing, and he watched in abject horror as it tore through their bodies and the walls as easily as if they were flimsi. He watched it snap and whirl and crack with abandon, striking like lightning at anything within twenty feet of his sister.

  Before Rhese could decide if saving people who’d come here to kill him was worth the risk of Rea cutting something from his body he’d much rather have attached, a terrible crack echoed through the hall. A column, gouged and abused by the slashing of the whip, crashed to the floor between them.

  The columns, as it turned out, were not entirely decorative.

  The ceiling groaned where the column had stood just moments before, large cracks splintering out like a spider’s web from the place where the column broke away. Dust and debris poured from the crack, and the alarms finally began to wail as other cracks echoed through the hall, the other columns straining under the load.

  Rea’s laughter and the sharp snap of the whip grew distant as the columns crumbled, and Rhese knew what was left of the mercenaries had tried to run. He knew she was giving chase.

  He dodged chunks of marble and bits of gilded metal as he scrambled through the collapsing room, columns and pieces of ceiling smashing against the floor in turn. His nakedness was forgotten, and he hardly even felt the shards of glass and broken rock buried deep in the soles of his bleeding feet.

  The nakedness is the thing he’ll regret most later, when he sees himself in the holos, dusty and bleeding and wearing nothing but a too-small censor bar over his genitals.

  He follows the path of destruction, hardly noticing the household staff and other guests scrambling past him to escape the building. Definitely not noticing the way they were noticing him, running through the halls with his wang in the wind, screaming bloody murder at his sister.

  It is not one of his finest moments.

  He thought it wasn’t one of Rea’s either. As he was running through the halls, deflecting crumbling chunks of stone and durasteel with the Force, he was so sure she’d been possessed by the sweet pull of chaos he’d felt inside that lightwhip. He was sure that this time, she needed to be saved.

  As usual, he’d been wrong.

  Rhese heard a second explosion just moments before he spilled out into the palace’s rear garden, where the mercs and all their reinforcements were trying to clamber past each other through a hole in the outer wall that had not been there that morning. Rea was there too, strolling toward them almost lazily, snapping her whip in arcs so graceful she might’ve been making them her whole life.

  It’s only then Rhese notices how there aren’t bodies and bits of bodies littering the yard. Only then that he realizes he hasn’t seen a single cut up corpse since the mercs she dropped at the very start of the attack.

  It’s only then, standing in the courtyard ass naked and bleeding, with household guests and staff pouring in from every direction, their holocams live, that Rhese realizes what a complete and total dumbass he is.

  Rea was never possessed by some dark force of chaos trapped inside a lightwhip. She wasn’t murdering mercenaries left and right in a fit of uncontrollable bloodlust. She was putting on a show. With her lightwhip and her crazed laughter and bare-assed acrobatics, she was just trying to scare them off.

  And he fell for it.

  “Fuck,” Rhese swore. Again.

  Rea turned to him, a satisfied smile on her face as the lightwhip fell to the ground beside her in perfect coils “You okay?” She asked, the triumph in her eyes turning quickly to worry.

  “I’m fine,” he lied.

  A voice from the growing crowd shouted, “Yeah you are!”

  Rhese felt another blush rising, setting his chest and the tips of his ears on fire. Laughter spread through the courtyard as he stood there, paralyzed by his own embarrassment.

  Rea, taking pity on him for once in his life, stripped out of Doc’s shirt and tossed it to him. No one would ever laugh at her nakedness. He wasn’t sure what the difference was, but it probably had something to do with how she would never blush about it.

  Rhese’s entire body was flaming red by the time he managed to cover what remained of his dignity.

  And then, as they stood there together, filthy and bloodied and naked, the entire east wing of the Duke’s palace finally collapsed.

  Rea watched it crumble with a smile on her face.

  “You know,” Rhese observed, thinking of how gracefully she’d lashed the lightwhip back and forth when she was menacing the mercenaries out through the wall, “you didn’t have to destroy the whole thing.”

  “Don’t you wonder why the mercenaries came to kill him in the first place?” She asked.

  “To kill him?” Rhese stared. “I thought they were here for us.”

  Rea rolled her eyes. “They would’ve brought bigger guns if they were here for us.”

  That was probably true. Mercenaries didn’t stay mercenaries very long if they were stupid. “And you think they were after the Duke?”

  He was a foolish, frivolous sort of man who was easy to dislike, but Rhese had difficulty imagining what he might have done that would be worth killing over. He didn’t even have much of value to steal outside of the palace the mercenaries had clearly planned to destroy anyway. That and the lightwhip they likely hadn’t even known about.

  “You remember what he said this morning on the tour? About his family owning this place for centuries?”

  The Duke had bragged about that quite a lot, and the fact that he’d doubled the palace in size during his time at the head of the family. Rhese nodded.

  “He’s selling slaves,” Rea said, watching the Duke stare at his wrecked home in abject horror. “He used his own product to build the east wing. But our friend there’s not a very good salesman, and his supplier isn’t happy with him. This is what a negative performance review looks like in the slaving industry.”

  Rhese thought for a moment, frowning. “We were never here to negotiate for a listening base on his land were we?”

  Rea just grinned. 

#swtor #swtorfic #jedi knight #nirea velaran #rhese velaran #the velaran legacy #hydrostuff #hydroswstuff #hydrofic #hydroswfic

[hydrospanners]

trick or treat

#the joke is his name is rhese #happy halloween from one clown to another #halloween 2k19 #rhese velaran #swtor #swtor art #the velaran legacy #hydroart #hydroswart #hydrostuff #hydroswstuff

[hydrospanners]

a very velaran life day

every 3 years, wookiees across the galaxy come together to mourn what they've lost, honor what they love, and celebrate the plans they have for the future. and maybe it's a bit weird to be so invested in a holiday mainly meant for wookiees, but no one ever said the velarans were normal. these are the thinly-veiled holiday vignettes about jedi knight nirea velaran's family and those who orbit them throughout the years. chapter 2 of 17. swtor genfic. character background/origins for my jedi knight nirea velaran who is not actually in this chapter but her dad and aunt are. 1039 words. ao3.

counting down. just as the seconds tick by before life day begins and nirea velaran gets her first turn lighting the tree, so too do the days before she will be sent away from her little family in their little home on imperial-occupied eriadu. she just doesn't know it yet.

10 BTC — Eriadu City, Eriadu

23:59:11.

23:59:12.

Nirea shivers with anticipation.

Her father’s hands settle on her shoulders and she can feel the warmth of his laughter against her cheek as he presses a kiss to her temple. “Just a few more seconds, Turhaya. Almost there.”

23:59:15.

Rhese squeals from their mother’s lap, a sound that almost sounds like “tree”, and claps his chubby little hands together.

23:59:16.

“Yes, sweetie,” Mama coos, wrapping her hands around his so they can clap together. “We’re going to light up the tree.”

23:59:19.

“Everyone smile!” Kieres points the holocam at them, gathered around their little tree in the darkness, no light except what peeks through the cracks between the heavy shutters on the windows. Rea smiles wide, tilting her head against their mother’s lap.

23:59:24.

23:59:25.

“Say ‘Life Day’!” Their father tells them. A bright light floods the room.

23:59:27.

“Got it!”

Their faces are illuminated by the blue haze of the projector as Kieres shows them the picture, three faces smiling at the holocam and Rhese staring at some point off to the side, one of his fists in his mouth.

Nirea looks back to the chrono.

23:59:36.

“Turn it off! Turn it off!” Her finger returns to the button on the tree’s base, hovering just above it, wavering with the excitement. It’s almost time!

23:59:39.

Kieres turns the holo off, bathing them in darkness again.

24:59:41.

“Not long now,” her father whispers. His hands squeeze her shoulders as Nirea rocks back and forth on her toes, the thrill of it all too much for her little body, filling her up and pouring over.

23:59:42.

23:59:43.

“It was you in my lap at the last Life Day, Nirea. Do you remember that?” Her mother’s voice is soft in the darkness, flowing through the heavy, waiting silence like water through the rocks.

Nirea rolls onto her toes again.

“Rhese wasn’t even born yet,” Kieres points out. “I got to light the tree!”

23:59:48.

Something in Nirea’s belly pulls, cold and tight, as her mother hums agreement. Something is wrong in her voice when she says, “And maybe next Life Day, Rhese will get to take a turn.”

23:59:50.

“Let’s enjoy this Life Day before we start thinking about the next one,” her father says, and there’s something wrong in his voice too. Something secret and heavy that doesn’t feel like Life Day at all. She can feel him smiling when he kisses her cheek but she knows, somehow, that there’s no happiness under his smile. That he’s lying to her. She feels something inside of her that’s dark and yawning, that twists her stomach into knots, and she knows it’s coming from him, from her father and her mother and the future and—

23:59:54.

Rea jabs the button for the lights.

Nothing happens.

23:59:55.

She presses the button again. Again and again and again.

“Nirea!” Her mother is laughing, but nothing is funny. “It isn’t time yet!”

23:59:59.

“It isn’t working!” Rea wails. Tears are pricking in the corners of her eyes.

Her father shushes her, his chest warm and solid against her back, his hand heavy on her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he tells her, and she thinks he isn’t talking about the tree.

00:00:00.

The chrono flashes zeroes, and Life Day begins in the dark.

Rea punches the button one more time, and her chest gets tight when nothing happens again. It feels like something heavy is pressing down on her throat, squeezing it closed, and it’s getting hard to breathe and she wants to be sick--

Then her father’s hand is wrapping around hers, sparking something inside her. “I’ve got you, Turhaya,” he says. “Trust me.”

The spark is warm and strong, and it fights back against that heavy feeling, against the thing turning her stomach into knots. It dances through her, coursing down her spine and her legs and her arms; it courses all the way to her fingers and her toes.

And then it surges out of her, leaping from the hand joined with her father’s to the base of the Life Day tree.

00:00:02.

Bulbs of every color flicker to life around the tree. They’re brighter than she’s ever seen them, almost buzzing with new power, filling the whole house with cheerful light.

Rhese gasps and claps his hand against the fist still in his mouth, gurgling as he tries to talk around it.

Kieres starts to sing.

00:00:05.

Nirea’s father pulls her hand away from the tree, his fingers stroking hers in all the places that still tingle with electricity. His heart is pounding against her back and without the spark, without its light and its warmth, she can feel that dark weight coming back, twisting her up and suffocating her.

The lights are on now. Why does she feel so afraid?

00:00:08.

Kieres is still singing, loud and full and happy.

She’s singing alone.

The fear weighs in Rea’s belly like a cold, heavy stone and when she turns around in her father’s embrace, when she looks into his face, she knows somehow that it belongs to him. To him and to her mother, watching her with their wide, frightened eyes.

Safety is secrecy, her father always says. Hold your spark inside you, Turhaya. I know it’s hard, but we could get hurt if anyone sees.

She made a mistake. She made a mistake and she doesn’t know what’s going to happen but she knows it’s bad and she knows it’s her fault. She let herself get so scared she couldn’t keep the spark in and now--Now--

The darkness inside her is building, like the spark but colder. Slicker, like oil. Rea shivers, trying with everything she has to push it back down. To think of something else so she won’t get in trouble again. So no one gets hurt.

Rhese starts to wail.

The chrono flashes 00:01:00 on the worst Life Day Nirea Velaran has ever had.

#swtor #swtor fic #the self-indulgence continues #a very velaran life day #nirea velaran #rhese velaran #kieres velaran #the velaran legacy #hydrostuff #hydrofic #hydroswfic #hydroswstuff

[hydrospanners]

every doubt we had

like a scene from a nightmare he'd never admit to having, darth marr's ship goes down and takes his sister with it. rhese velaran has never had to live in a galaxy without nirea, and he's not sure he knows how. he leans on an unlikely shoulder while he figures it out. SWTOR genfic. M!Jedi Knight & Doc friendship (fraternity?) fic. Background Established F!Jedi Knight x Doc. Grief & angst. 3300 words. AO3.

The chrono reads 0300 hours. 0400 hundred until their arrival on Coruscant. 17 minutes since he checked last.

 Rhese turns his eyes back to the ceiling. Landing prep starts at 0600. He could still get three full hours of rest if he could just get to sleep.

 He draws in a slow, deep breath, willing his racing heart to slow. There is no emotion, he reminds himself. There is peace. No emotion. Peace. No emotion. Peace.

  Peace, peace, peace.

 Peace is a damned lie. There’s only war, constant and consuming. War, where the players may change but the game never does.

 He’s fucking tired of war. Tired of running and killing and being too little, too late. Tired of leaving people behind.

 Marr’s flagship explodes in his mind’s eye. Again and again, a bloom of sparks and flame stretching up and out until it’s nothing, fizzled out. Until the space where she was is nothing but dust and cannonfire and distant winking stars.

 Blood rushes in his ears, the pounding of his heart the only sound in the heavy quiet of simulated night.

Dammit. Rhese taps the comm by his bed, wincing away from the bright blue-white gleam of the indicator light. Teeseven answers immediately, chirping a greeting that’s no less cheerful for having possibly lost his master. His friend.

 “Any communications?” Rhese asks, and the comm terminal flashes, hundreds of messages flooding the screen. From the Council. From the Senate. From SIS. Saresh. “Anything from--” Even if she had survived, she would have had no way to send word. Not yet. “Any new information on Nirea?”

 “Jedi = still missing,” the droid reports.

 It’s what he expected, but knowing the knife is coming never made the cutting hurt any less. He swallows his disappointment. “Keep an audio sensor to the ground. Let me know the second you hear anything.”

 “T7 = Looking. // Jedi = Still alive.”

 “I know, Teeseven.” He’s reasonably sure, anyway. “Thank you.”

 The indicator light blinks out, leaving Rhese alone with his thoughts.

 He remembers a time when he would have killed for this kind of quiet. A chance at sober reflection. Isolation. When he believed peace could be achieved from structure. When a steady heart and an ordered mind were still his best chance at salvation. Or absolution. He’s still not sure what it was he spent all those years looking for, but he’s pretty damned certain it’s gone now.

 Ringing fills his ears again. Someone’s talking shit about you, Ranna used to say. An old Corellian superstition, or maybe a spacer’s. She had so many superstitions it was hard to tell which was which.  Either way, he didn’t inherit Ranna’s penchant for mysticism and the only person who’s ever cared enough to talk about him anyway is--Well, the point is that it’s just a symptom of his hearing giving out. He’s been meaning to have Doc look at it for a while now, but there never seemed to be any time.

 Rhese glances at the chrono. 0321 hours. 21 minutes since he checked last.

 He gets up and dresses quickly, trying not to think of all the shit Rea would give him for picking the robes. The ship is dark and silent, the passageways empty this deep into the night. Not that anyone is actually asleep. Rhese can sense the crew in their quarters as he passes them, all awake despite the hour, all pretending not to be.

He senses Kira’s restlessness. It’s familiar to him as his own anxiety, and he can almost see the defensive hunch in her shoulders as she paces back and forth in the too-small space of her bunk. He can see the little wrinkle between her brows as she kneels, trying her damndest to meditate. He can see the tremble in her hands as she opens up her saber, taking it apart and putting it back together as many times as she has to for the adrenaline to fade.

 Rea would have gone to her. Would have laid upside down on her bed while Kira ranted, absorbing all her rage and being the soft place to land once it was spent.

 Rhese keeps walking.

 He senses Rusk’s tension. How tightly he’s coiled, primed and ready to strike at the first actionable target. He pictures Rusk standing at his worktable, the lines in his forehead cutting deep as he methodically disassembles his cannon. He pictures his hands, rough but nimble as he cleans every part, as he sets the chrono to time his reassembly. He pictures the way he keeps glancing at the comm, twitching at every noise like it might be the news he’s waiting for.

 Rea would have offered to spar. She would have worked him until his muscles were loose and warm and tender, and then she would have worked his mind, cracking open some shitty beers to swap stories about the stupid shit they did when they were young and green. He would have laughed like only Rea could make him laugh. He would have slept a little easier.

 Rhese keeps walking.

 He senses Scourge’s fury. It’s a raging wildfire, consuming everything it touches and Rhese can almost hear the groan of metal bending beneath Scourge’s fists as he burns, feeding everything around him to the furnace of his anger. He is hungry to destroy, to quench the flames in his heart with carnage and violence. He wants a fight.

 Rea would have given it to him. She would have poked and prodded until he lashed out, swinging his lightsaber at full limb-severing power, nothing held back. She would have let him. She would have matched him blow for blow until his fury burned itself out and when it was done, she would smile and complain at the scorchmarks in her deck.

 Rhese keeps walking.

 He senses Doc. Alert and focused, thrown completely into some project or the other. There’s none of the usual thrill he feels from Doc when he’s working, none of the anticipation or pride. The purpose of his work doesn’t matter right now as long as the work is consuming him, leaving no room for other thoughts. For worries.

 He feels clear and steady in a way the others don’t right now, and Rhese sees, just for a moment, what it is that Rea must see in him. What it is that draws her to him.

 Rhese enters the medbay without knocking, his left ear ringing.

 “You should be asleep,” Doc says, not looking up from the viscous green liquid he’s measuring. Beneath the goggles Rhese can see his eyes are puffy and shot through with red. “Got a long day ahead of you.”

 “And you don’t?” Rhese raises a brow, folding his hands in front of him. He tries not to think what jokes Rea would make about his posture. Something about the stick up his ass.

 Doc just snorts. “I’m not a Jedi. Nobody cares what I think. Here.” He puts the green liquid down and pulls a small metal tube from his pocket, tossing it to Rhese. “Take one of those. It’s a low dose; should only put you down for an hour or two.”

 “You carry sleeping pills in your pocket?”

 “You’ve met my wife, right? About this high--” Doc raises his hand a foot over his own head “--brown hair, blue eyes, great ass. Only sleeps if you make her.”

 Rhese smiles, feeling none of the usual discomfort and inadequacy he feels when he has these chats with Doc. For once he doesn’t mind being reminded what a giant Rea is in everyone’s mind, how much taller she seems despite being shorter than him by four inches. For once he isn’t embarrassed and annoyed by the reminder of his sister’s very active sex life. For once, he just feels… fond. “I may have seen her around,” he says.

 “Well if you see her again, you tell her to come home. Her family’s worried.”

 Do you hear that Rea? Your family is worried. Rhese wonders if she can feel their concern. He wonders if she can feel anything at all. He can’t feel her. She’s always been good at hiding, and there were years on Tython when he couldn’t separate the feel of her from the rest of the Force, but he could still feel that she was out there somewhere, could still feel their connection. This is the first time she’s ever just been gone, a hole in the Force where the tingle of her warm, fervent energy is supposed to be.

 He reaches for her on instinct, and the void he finds in her place leaves him cold. For the first time in his life, he feels really alone. Careful what you wish for, Liss always warned him. You might just get it.

 “You okay, kid?” Doc, with his bloodshot eyes and exhausted pallor, is watching him carefully, his brow furrowed in concern. Rhese can only think how he’s going to get wrinkles, scrunching his face up like that. How Rea’s going to kill him for aging her husband prematurely. ‘I only married him for his looks,’ she’ll say. ‘Now I’ll have to trade him in for a younger model.’

 Rhese laughs a short, humorless laugh. Is he okay? “I’m going deaf,” he says. “In my left ear.”

 Doc sighs. “Sit down.”

 Rhese does as he’s told, climbing onto the exam chair and pushing his shoulders back, trying to keep his chin up. Trying to hold it together because someone has to now that Rea’s gone.

 But there’s no point. That pinch in Doc’s brow says he isn’t fooled, that he knows too many of Rhese’s secrets, sees too much through Rea’s eyes. It says there will be no fooling him and Rhese can’t find the energy to try. He tips his head back against the chair and lets his shoulders sag, only a little embarrassed by his ragged sigh of relief.

 “Ringing?” Doc asks, wheeling over one of his scanners. He pulls a headset with an alarming number of wires from the drawer.

 Rhese nods. “Started a couple months ago, but things have been--” He thinks back to Ziost, to Tython, to Manaan. To all the blaster fire and running and death. “Well, you know how things have been.”

 “No kidding. I’m surprised your ears lasted this long, the way you Jedi go on.”

 “You mean the way Rea goes on.” She’s had cochlear implants almost as long as she’s been a Jedi. Went in for her first operation the day the treaty was signed, not even a year after Marefka scooped them up on Corellia. He’d been on Tython at the time, but he’d read the reports from her surgeries. It had taken six. “Most Jedi don’t spend so much time getting blown up.”

 He sees the explosion again. Marr’s flagship consumed by inferno, sparks and flame spitting from the cracks in the hull, a ring of fire expanding slowly around the whole fizzling mass. The only sound the static of the comm crackling over the speakers, the echo of her last words ringing in his ears. His own voice, shouting Rea’s name.

 Rhese flinches.

 Doc’s hand settles on his shoulder. “She’s gonna be fine,” he says, and there’s something in his eyes, in the warmth and certainty of his voice, that makes Rhese turn away. It feels too familiar. Too much like--Rhese can’t feel her in the Force, but he can feel her in the tender way Doc is looking at him, in the way Doc is caring for him, gently and thoughtfully, like family.

 Stars. They are family now, aren’t they?

 Doc’s hands are steady as he lowers the headset onto Rhese’s forehead. The nodes are cold but Doc’s fingers are warm as he massages them into place along Rhese’s forehead and around the delicate insides of his ears. And if he notices the way Rhese shivers, Doc is merciful enough not to mention it. “I know you’re worried, Junior, but this is Rea we’re talking about. She’s survived way worse.”

 If anyone knows what Nirea Velaran can survive, it’s Doc.

 “But it doesn’t take worse,” he argues. “One stray blaster bolt. One piece of shrapnel. One mistake.” Force knows she makes mistakes, no matter what she’d have people believe. “She’s not indestructible.”

 Doc says nothing. A stream of rhythmic beeps fills Rhese’s ears.

 He knows she’s alive. This nothing--the gap in his consciousness where she’s supposed to be--it’s not what death feels like. Rhese has felt death before. He’s felt it in strangers and in allies and in friends. He’s felt it in family. In Ranna. In Qarric and Daeleth. He would have sensed his sister’s death. He would have felt a piece of himself die with her.

 Hell, if she was really dead she’d probably be here, complaining about it. She’d be haunting him the way Master Orgus Din haunted her, refusing the peace of death just so she could pester him.

 Rea has to be alive. But for how long? And where?

 Doc lifts the headset, gently peeling back the little nodes as he goes. “How do you feel about implants?”

 Rhese sighs. “Resigned.”

 “I’ve got a friend on Coruscant. She might be persuaded to do it for free.”

 “Persuaded?” Rhese raises a brow, very nearly smiling. “Just what kind of a friend is this, Doc?”

 “Don’t get your panties in a twist, that was a long time ago. I’ve got no interest in persuading anyone but your sister these days.” He pauses, considering. “Well, no interest in persuading anyone without her, anyway.”

 “Ugh.”

 Doc laughs, and it’s an effort to not laugh with him.

 He feels better. No one is more surprised by it than Rhese--if you’d told him back on Balmorra that Archiban Kimble would ever make him feel anything other than annoyance and disgust, he’d have laughed you into the next sector--but here he is, sitting in the medbay and feeling better for having Doc there with him.

 Here he is, sitting in the medbay because it’s where he wanted to be. Because it’s where his feet carried him when he was feeling lost and alone and there was no Rea to collapse into.

 He’ll have to tell her when he sees her again. That she chose well. That he loves this little family she’s built. That he’s grateful and he’s happy and if she ever leaves him again he’s going to lose his starsdamned mind because he can’t keep doing this--

 “Hey.”

 Rhese blinks and finds Doc’s eyes boring into his. Dark and bloodshot and so, so serious. Worried. Scared. For him.

 “Breathe, kid.”

 Rhese realizes he hasn’t been. He gasps, once, twice, until his lungs remember how they’re supposed to work. He tries to recite the Code, but the words keep getting jumbled in his head. It’s like everything he’s been trying not to think and not to feel is breaking free and rushing over him all at once. “I feel like I’m drowning,” he confesses, voice tight like it’s trying to hold onto the words, trying to keep that truth hidden. “I don’t know what to do.”

 “Must run in the family,” Doc says, surprising a small, shaky laugh out of him. “Now c’mere.” He opens his arms and Rhese only hesitates for a second before sitting up and leaning into him, his forehead pressed to Doc’s chest, hot tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. They start to fall when Doc’s arms wrap around his shoulders.

 At least it isn’t blood. Doc’s always complaining about how many shirts he loses to bloodstains; tears should be easier to clean. Rhese doesn’t know why he’s thinking so much about Doc’s shirts, but he can’t seem to make himself stop. And he can’t stop thinking how that’s a stupid thing to be thinking about at a time like this. Can’t stop thinking how he’s blowing this out of proportion. Can’t stop thinking he’s not taking it seriously enough.

 He can’t stop thinking. Thinking, thinking, thinking.

 His breaths are coming too fast and too shallow, desperate, ragged things just barely escaping the tightness of his throat, and his skin feels so hot. Too hot. He wants to climb out of it. He wants to climb out of his whole body and just--He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he wants but he knows everything is too much.

 Doc pulls him in tighter, blunt nails scraping gently at the nape of his neck, and it’s so much like--His mind swims with memory, of nights spent curled into Rea’s lap, of her body wrapped around his like a shield, of her fingers in his hair, her kisses on his forehead, her voice in his ear, whispering how she’ll protect him, how she’ll always be there no matter what, how it’s the two of them against the galaxy.

 Where the fuck is she now?

 “Me too, kid. Me too.”

 “I don’t want to lose another family.” Rhese whispers the words into Doc’s chest, his eyes squeezed tight against the brutal truth of them. A brutal truth he’s been hiding from for years now. Years of keeping people at arm’s length, of reciting Codes and turning his back and telling himself he’s above it all. Years of trying to keep himself from connecting with anyone because he was so fucking scared of having another connection break.

 You can’t lose what you never had, he reminds himself, thinking of the rest all locked away in their cages, drifting to their own orbits in the absence of Rea’s gravity to draw them together. They were Rea’s family. They’re always just Rea’s. Never yours.

 But then Doc is kissing the top of his head, just like Rea would, and holding him just like Rea would and he can’t be doing it for her cause she isn’t here to see it. He can’t be doing it for any reason but--

 “You aren’t losing anything,” he says, with so much conviction that Rhese almost believes him. “I don’t know where Rea is or what she’s doing, but I know her. I know she loves you more than anyone in this galaxy, and I know she won’t let anything keep you apart for long. She’s coming back, kid, and we’re all gonna be here when she does.”

 Rhese thinks of Tython. Of ten years’ worth of secondhand reports and unanswered messages. Ten years of lonely nights and insecurities. Ten years of waiting.

 “It could be awhile,” he says.

 “We’ll wait.”

 “I waited for ten years last time.”

 “We’ll wait.”

 Rhese lets his eyes fall shut, tilting his face up to the ceiling as breathes a long, shuddering breath. “Okay,” he says, his throat a little looser, his chest a little lighter. “Okay.”

 He sits like that for a long time, listening to the slowing rhythm of his heart and the quiet gurgle of Doc’s equipment, bubbling away on some experiment he doesn’t want to know the particulars of. Listening to the distant ringing in his left ear. He flexes his hands against the exam chair, feeling the cool, smooth fabric shift beneath his fingers, and with each slow breath he feels the sharp sting of chemical cleaner burning his nose.

 Doc is still standing there when Rhese opens his eyes, the little tube of sleeping pills back in his hand. “You’ve got a long day ahead of you,” he says again.

 This time, Rhese takes the pills.

 He curls onto his side on the exam chair, and when Doc lays his lab coat over his shoulders, Rhese pulls it up to his chin and breathes deep of the cologne that always seems to rub off, just a little, onto Rea’s clothes. It makes him feel warm and the drugs make him feel hazy and Doc, steady, certain Doc, shuffling around the medbay behind him and never leaving him alone--Doc makes him feel safe.

 By 0430, Rhese is finally asleep.

#swtor #swtor fic #jedi knight #swtor doc #archiban kimble #rhese velaran #velaran legacy #hydrostuff #hydrofic #hydroswstuff #hydroswfic #aka the one where rhese has the horrifying realization he's doc's brother now #and maybe like six different breakdowns in a row #or the one where the author maybe projects a little too much on her character #but this is my blog and i do what i want #and what i want to do is deposit my feelings in this pile of words #and also cry a little #sometimes a lot #whatever one day at a time

[hydrospanners]

overserved

When the Commander summons him to a backwater world for an emergency, Theron isn't expecting to find her in a rundown Chill-Eez knocking back sugary cocktails with her long-lost husband and brother. But when it comes to Rea you learn to expect the unexpected. SWTOR; Mostly Genfic (F!Jedi Knight x Doc mentioned). Humor that’s probably actually crack. 770 words. AO3.

Four pairs of hands reach out, grasping at the empty air in the space where Jedi Master Nirea Velaran, the Hero of Tython and Commander of the Alliance, was just standing. She covers the length of the room in one leap, landing stomach-first across the bartop with a crack that sounds a lot like credits pouring out of the Alliance reserves. She giggles as she wobbles to her feet, knocking drinks to the floor on every side.

 “Well,” Theron says. Lana looks at him with a resigned expression he’s come to know well over the last few years. In the booths around them, drunken voices rise up in a chant, demanding a speech.

 Rea’s brother sighs into his artisanal fruit juice. “The more things change…”

 “Oh, ease up,” Doc says. “She deserves to have a little fun.”

 Theron, who remembers the last time she got well and truly drunk in vivid detail, isn’t sure he agrees.

 Rea plucks one of the few surviving beer bottles from the bar and raises it to her mouth like a microphone, all the beer inside sloshing out onto the front of her suit. She doesn’t seem to notice. “I have so many people to thank for this victory,” she slurs. Her eyes are wet with unshed tears as she starts patting her hips, right where her lightsabers would be if Rhese hadn’t had the foresight to pinch them ten drinks ago. “My lightsabers,” she sniffles. “I couldn’t have done any of this without them.”

 “Fuck yeah lightsabers!” Someone shouts from a table across the room. Rea beats her chest twice before pointing at them, nodding in solidarity.

 “They’re so good! Y’know that humming noise they make?” She makes a buzzing sound into her beer bottle microphone that none of them can hear. “I love that sound.”

 “She really does,” Doc confirms, watching her make a fool of herself with starsdamned hearts in his eyes.

 “And y’know what? Let’s give the staff a round of applause for making tonight happen. Bringing people food is way harder than it looks. They have to be so nice. I might get stabbed a lot but at least I don’t have to be nice to the people who stab me.”

 Theron glances at the restaurant staff huddled together by the kitchen door, waving nervously as Rea’s audience breaks into another round of cheers. He’s pretty sure their manager has local security on the holocomm.

 “And also Theron too.” Rea pauses to burp. “For all the stabbings.”

 Competing chants of “Theron” and “stabbing” go up all around them. Doc raises his glass to Theron as he enthusiastically joins in on the “stabbing” side. Lana and Rhese raise their glasses too, smiling at his misery.

 Theron glares at them all and downs the rest of his whiskey. This is the reason he doesn’t like to have so-called “fun”.

 “Thanks Theron!” Rea hiccups, teetering unsteadily as she wiggles her arm in a gesture probably meant to be a wave. She isn’t going to last much longer up on that bar. He only hopes she doesn’t break anything important when she falls. It would be a damn shame if she survived this far just to die falling off the bar at a rundown Chill-Eez in the middle of nowhere.

 Though it would definitely serve her right.

 Rea gestures for quiet and the crowd catches on after a moment of confusion, their drunken chanting subsiding. Her glassy eyes land on their table and she starts to sniffle, her emotions taking yet another sharp left turn. “Last,” she says, her voice thick and tearful, “I wanna thank the Force. The Force gave me back my brother,” she points a wavering finger at Doc, “and my sexy husband,” she points to Rhese,  “and I—I—Hang on.” Rea pauses, scrubbing at her cheeks as she chokes on tears and snot. “I just wanna say that I feel the Force in this Chill-Eez tonight.”

 Ten minutes later, their whole party is banned from every Chill-Eez in the galaxy and being escorted from the building by local security. (“We have a strict policy against overserving,” the manager explains. “Apparently this woman was stealing drinks from other tables.”) Rea keeps trying to kiss security while they cite her for public intoxication—she’s an uncomfortably affectionate drunk—but they don’t seem to mind.

 The manager isn’t as easygoing. It takes a few hundred credits and a threatening look from Lana to shut him up about lawsuits.

 As Rea’s benders go, one citation and a few hundred credits in property damage isn’t so bad. Theron just wishes people would stop shouting at him in the hallways about being stabbed.

#swtor #jedi knight #theron shan #lana beniko #archiban kimble #swtor doc #my fic #this is among the dumbest shit i've ever written #come get ya artisanal fruit juice fam #let's have some so-called fun #nirea velaran #rhese velaran

[hydrospanners]

LOOK AT WHAT @meonlyred DREW FOR ME!!! I’M FREAKING OUT IT’S MY ANXIOUS SON. YOU SHOULD GO COMMISSION HER ON TWITTER/PILLOWFORT.

#swtor #rhese velaran #velaran legacy #treasures for me #EXCITED WHALE NOISES #MY CHILD #ITS SO BEAUTIFUL #OSSUS WAS GOOD TO HIM #WHAT A MANBUN #AHHHH

[hydrospanners]

a little eggstra When Doc makes a small addition to the shopping list, a certain Jedi's inexperience with groceries is revealed. Based on a Tumblr post from days of yore. SWTOR. Mostly genfic but established F!Jedi Knight x Doc makes an appearance. 1400 words. AO3. 

0400 hours is a hell of a time for a grocery run, but when your pregnant wife wants fried werris eggs, you get her fried werris eggs. Cherita learned that the hard way.

Even at peak hours, Dellard’s is usually pretty quiet. It’s small and out of the way, and at 0400 she expects it to be deserted. Instead, she’s nearly plowed over by a trolley as soon as she steps through the door. The white-knuckled man hunched over its handle doesn’t seem to have even noticed her, zipping past at a speed she didn’t think Dellard’s old trolleys could achieve, his face all pinched up in an expression that’s either anger or determination.

His trolley is full of eggs.

There isn’t time to count them, not with him trying to make the jump to hyperspace in the dairy aisle, but Cherita is sure there were upward of twenty cartons.

That is so many eggs.

The second she dares to step back into the narrow aisle, she is nearly run over a second time by a woman apparently giving chase to the egg man. She is tall like he is, brown-skinned and broad-shouldered, and apparently sculpted from Durosian marble. The impossibly form-fitting athletic pants she wears cling to the edge of every muscle, revealing a tight, shapely ass that Cherita kind of wants to take a bite out of.

It’s distracting enough she forgets about the weird egg thing.

“Rhese!” The woman shouts, catching up with the man in a tight corner while Cherita contemplates the morality of grabbing a sneak shot of that ass for Lua’s benefit. No one likes a good ass more than her wife.

“You said this was a beer run,” the man who is apparently Rhese shouts back.

“It is! Doc just asked me to pick up a few things while we’re out.”

Cherita turns the corner right behind them, following them a little out of curiosity but mostly because they’ve decided to have their domestic right in front of the eggs. Ass or no ass, Lua only has so much patience.

“What could Doc possibly need twenty-four cartons of eggs for at this hour?”

The woman just shrugs.

“This doesn’t concern you?” The man demands, his voice pitching higher in the kind of exasperation Cherita has gotten to know well through this pregnancy.

“He’s trying to cure Huttese nether-rot or Bothan wasting disease or something. I don’t ask questions.”

“You don’t ask--You’re--” The man gapes at her. Now that she can see their faces, Cherita decides they must be siblings. Maybe even twins. “You’re letting him mix chemicals? On the ship? Where we live?”

Cherita doesn’t think she’s ever heard a man’s voice go that high.

“He’s a doctor, Rhese. What do you think he does while he’s waiting for us to get blown up again?”

“You’re the only one who gets blown up! And I have a very good idea about what he does with his spare time.” The man shudders theatrically, and Cherita thinks she has a pretty good idea what this doctor might be doing with his free time too. Which reminds her they’re almost out of eggplant and she should probably grab some while she’s here.

“I think you might be projecting, little brother.” The woman plucks a carton of something gelatinous from the shelf and casually examines its label, as if she had no idea the man was turning a hue of red so violent it was nearly purple. Their fond antagonism gave Cherita a little pang of longing for her own sisters.

“I do not--” The man splutters before he can quite stop himself. “No. You know what, I’m calling Doc. There is no possible reason he could need this many eggs and I am not going to be trapped on a ship recycling air that smells of whatever he thinks he’s doing.”

“Suit yourself.” The woman drops the gelatinous something back on the shelf and turns to peruse a display of energy pudding, giving Cherita a great view of her ass. So sculpted and firm. Her tenuous commitment to morality and the privacy of strangers withers, and she fishes out her own holocomm as the woman’s brother pulls out his.

She’s already sent Lua three pictures of the woman’s chiseled rear when a blue figure crackles to life over the man’s comm.

“Miss me already?” The figure asks.

The man--Rhese--makes a disgusted noise. “What exactly are you planning to do with three hundred werris eggs?” He demands without preamble.

The woman, paying very little attention to this conversation, shifts her stance and Cherita feels obliged to send Lua another three or four pictures of her ass in this new, slightly different position.

“Three hundred eggs? What are you talking about, Junior?”

The man shifts his comm so the figure can see the trolley full of eggs. There is a moment of silence, and then the figure bursts into laughter.

“Where’s Rea?” He asks.

Frowning, Rhese turns the holocomm so it will capture his sister’s image. The figure gives an appreciative whistle, which Cherita finds immensely relatable, and the woman apparently called Rea answers with a wink.

“Have I mentioned how much I like those pants?”

“You said they looked great on the floor.”

“Damn. I made a good point.”

“Ugh,” Rhese groans. “Can we please focus?”

The figure laughs, but changes the subject. “Listen, Gorgeous. I gotta ask. When I said I needed two dozen eggs--What exactly did you hear?”

The woman blinks a few times before answering. “Two dozen eggs. That’s what I got.” She gestures to the trolley full of eggs and Cherita, despite not knowing these people at all, figures she sees where this went sideways.

“Oh, Rea.” The figure says fondly. “Light of my life. My sun, my moon, my very sexy stars. Did you pick up two dozen cartons of eggs?”

Rea nods. “That’s what you asked for.”

The figure turns back to face the brother, Rhese. A beat of silence passes before they simultaneously burst into laughter. Cherita finds herself smiling too, watching the puzzlement cross the woman’s face. She pops one of the cartons open, her lips moving silently as she counts and--

“Oh,” she says. “There’s twelve eggs in here.”

“Also known as a dozen,” her brother laughs, looking very smug.

“I know how much a dozen is, thank you,” Rea says drily, but with a hint of a smile. She’s evidently the sort of woman who’s comfortable with laughing at herself. Cherita wonders if she’s interested in threesomes.

“I can’t believe you’ve never looked inside a carton of eggs before,” the man on the holo says, still laughing. After a beat, he adds, “No, actually that makes perfect sense. I’ve seen you cook.”

“You said you wanted a hot meal. The only thing you eat is energy pudding. What was I supposed to take away from that?”

Rhese grimaces comically. “What did you do to the poor energy pudding?”

“Let’s say lightsabers aren’t meant for cooking and leave it at that,” the figure on the holo says.

Lightsabers, huh? Well that’s--That’s sure something. Probably answers her question about the threesome.

“If you two idiots are done,” the apparent Jedi says, rolling her eyes, “I think we should probably let this lovely woman finish her shopping in peace.”

The man looks up, startled, and immediately flushes when he sees they have an audience. “Oh,” his voice turns a little breathy, almost embarrassed, as he addresses Cherita. “I am so sorry. I didn’t realize--”

“I should probably get back to this huge chemical fire, anyway,” the figure on the holocomm says, just before winking out.

“Wait--” the man’s attention jerks away from Cherita. “What? Doc? What?!”

The woman looks at Cherita and rolls her eyes. Cherita finds herself nodding along sympathetically, feeling a little bit outside her own body. Almost like that time she met Cole Steele. Or whatever the name of the guy who plays him in the vids is. She doesn’t know why it should feel like that with a  woman who is nothing more to her than a stranger with a great ass and a hilarious misconception about the packaging of eggs, but there it is.

“He was joking, right?” The man asks.

“Probably not.” The woman takes her brother by the elbow and starts to direct them toward the register, two dozen cartons of eggs still in their trolley. Cherita watches them go with a fluttery feeling in her stomach that only multiplies when the woman tosses her a wink over her shoulder. “Get home safe, Beautiful,” she says.

For the first time since her wedding, Cherita finds herself blushing.

She can’t wait to tell Lua about this.

#swtor #jedi knight #swtor doc #archiban kimble #docember #my fic #nirea velaran #rhese velaran #the velaran legacy #this was not as doc-centric as i wanted #for docember #but i found it in my drafts folder #complete since 2014 #it seemed time to finally publish it #so enjoy i guess

[hydrospanners]

Rhese Velaran

#swtor #jedi knight #rhese velaran #velaran legacy #this is really part of the answer to an ask #but whatevs

[hydrospanners]

5,14, and 42 for swtor meme

You didn’t pick a character so I ended up answering for all three anon! Thanks for asking! Meme is here.

5. What planet do they now call home? Either where their stronghold is or where you headcanon they live at.

I’ll answer this one for all three Velarans because the answer is the same: their ships are home.

Rea has a place on Nar Shaddaa and Rhese has a place on Coruscant (his is way nicer than hers) and when they think of home they both immediately think of Corellia, but that hasn’t actually been their home for years now. The place that feels like home and is a home is Rea’s ship, Renegade.

For Kieres, she stopped thinking of Eriadu as home years before she managed to get away from it and now her home is her tiny, falling apart, piece of shit ship where she lives with her falling apart, piece of shit droids and contemplates the misery of existence. She has no other place to live and even if she could afford one, she wouldn’t want it.

Velarans don’t really do roots.

14. Who is/are their favorite companion(s)?

I’m answering this for all the Velarans again because again the answer is the same: T7-O1.

He has the competence and independence that Rea craves in an equal partner and friend, and came along at a time when she sorely needed an equal partner and friend. He never hesitates to dive into shit with her and he doesn’t call her crazy. She appreciates that.

Rhese respects his work ethic, dedication to seeing a thing through, and strong sense of ethics. T7 has strong ideas about what’s right and wrong and isn’t afraid to tell you what’s what or do whatever has to be done to see that things are made right. Plus he manages to do it without pissing off every single person he speaks to, which is something Rhese is still trying to figure out. Rhese admires T7.

Kieres has only met T7 like three times and while she probably likes her own droid companions better, they are invented by me and not real companions in the game, so her answer is T7. All three times she’s met T7 he’s sassed Rea and given no fucks, which are two qualities Kieres respects in anyone. Plus she loves droids and flamethrowers so those things really work in his favor too.

T7 is the Velaran family fave and honestly, how can you blame them?

42. Do they believe these events are destiny as Koth believes or no such thing?

Rhese does. He thinks the Force is constantly nudging events and people in the direction that will bring balance to the galaxy and if people open up to its will and allow themselves to be pulled into its flow that all of the galaxy’s problems will be solved. When things happen, he assumes it is because the Force willed it. Unless, of course, it’s a thing Rea did that he didn’t agree with, in which case she is defying the will of the Force and creating imbalance in the galaxy! Sibling love is the best love.

Rea never used to believe in destiny or even in the Force having some kind of will, but the older she gets and the more shit that happens to her, the more worried she is that it might all be true. Fate, destiny, the will of the Force… She prefers to believe everything is the way it is because of choices people make, especially where her own life is concerned, but she’s had doubts ever since Scourge rolled up being like “I dreamt of you 300 years ago”. She wants to be the author of her own life, but she is growing increasingly scared she is just an actor playing a role that was written millenia ago and cannot be changed. That nothing she’s ever done or ever will do has anything at all to do with her. That she is just a passenger on this ride and she is powerless to change course or get off.

Kieres doesn’t give a single fuck. She thought about it maybe for five minutes when she was thirteen and missing the life she had before her Force sensitive siblings tore their family apart, but that thought was fleeting and she hasn’t revisited it since. There’s no way for her to really know and it’s not like it’s going to change how she lives her life, so Kieres prefers to just drink her Space Natty Light and watch her Space Real Housewives and not think about anything at all really.

#swtor #nirea velaran #rhese velaran #kieres velaran #velaran legacy #i should really figure out my own tags guys #ask meme #thanks for asking everyone!!!! #Anonymous

[hydrospanners]

the thing i love about writing rhese is that at least 30% of everything he is a part of must be dedicated to lovingly roasting him. if rhese is mentioned, he must be gently mocked. i don’t make the rules that’s just how it is.

#i do make the rules #actually #but i think this is a good one #i would feel bad about it except #rhese is like 80% just me #the dumb idiot is basically a self insert #and i am allowed to roast myself as much as i like #it's therapeutic #rhese velaran #i should probably have a writing tag huh

[hydrospanners]

Empress and Emperor, character(s) of your choice!

Thank you for asking!!!! You are so nice!!! Meme is here.

The Empress: Who has been a positive female figure in your character’s life?We’ll do this one for SWTOR Rhese cause I’m on a Velaran bender right now I guess. He grew up on board his aunt’s freighter, The Golden Gizka, and the pilot of his aunt’s crew was possibly his favorite person in the world aside from Rea.

Liss was a Zeltron and a crack pilot who never let the harsh conditions of her life before joining The Gizka turn her heart hard and bitter. She was gentle and compassionate and desperately in love with Rhese’s aunt, so that love just naturally extended to Rhese and Rea when they came into the crew’s lives. Rhese was a sensitive kid, so her tender nature and innate sensitivity to his feelings made her a fast favorite. She always seemed to know what he needed and was never hesitant or reluctant to give it to him. To this day, Rhese credits Liss for any skill he has at nurturing and every ounce of kindness in his heart.

 The Emperor: Who has been a positive male figure in your character’s life?We’ll do this one for Rea, mostly because she is apparently the only character I have with an easy answer to this question.

Rea had been a padawan for 10 years when she met Orgus Din, and in that time she had been trained by six different masters. To every single one of them, she was a bundle of problems and potential, there to be sculpted and wielded and refined. They condescended to her and manipulated her, trying to shape her into what a Jedi should be.

Orgus was straight with her. He was honest about his feelings and his beliefs and he gave her the space she needed to be honest about hers. He respected her and argued with her and never tried to make her mind up for her. He made her feel for the first time in her career that being a Jedi was not diametrically opposed to being Nirea Velaran. That she could be a damn fine Jedi just by being herself.

Their time together was short, but without it Rea never would have remained a Jedi once she’d reconnected with Rhese. The Order was something she had been enduring while she tried to find him and re-establish herself in his life. It was something she put up with because she liked being able to help people who needed help.

Orgus made her want to be a Jedi. He was an example she thought she might be able to follow, if not in letter at least in spirit. There were a lot of things they disagreed on, but the fact that he was able to disagree with her and still value and respect her meant everything.

Orgus was a flawed man and their relationship was brief, but knowing him was critical to Rea becoming the person she is.

#swtor #nirea velaran #rhese velaran #velaran legacy #you: here is a simple ask meme with simple questions #me: i am ready to present my ted talk #servantofclio

[hydrospanners]

waiting.

Nirea Velaran may be gone, but she is not forgotten, and some people will always be waiting for her to come back. SWTOR fic; set during The Carbonite Years. M!Jedi Knight & Doc friendship.  F!Jedi Knight & Doc romance. 500 words. Mentions of limb loss. Written for Fictober.

Rhese flexes the hand, transfixed by the way light catches on the gleaming fingers. “The response time is good,” he says. “It feels…”

“I hear you get used to it,” Doc says. “Eventually.”

“The new articulations are going to take some practice.” Pinching with the flesh-and-blood fingers of his other—his real—hand, Rhese bends the middle finger of his shiny new hand all the way back until the nail is almost touching his wrist. The joints don’t resist him, but he feels, somewhere in the back of his mind, an echo of pain. Ghosts of feeling from a limb he no longer has.

Doc shakes his head. “Your sister is going to kill me.”

“You? You weren’t even there.”

“That’s exactly what she’s going to say.”

Rhese finds himself smiling. He’s sure she’ll understand, eventually, why they couldn’t stay together, but Doc is right. Rea’s always been overprotective. The second she sees the arm, she’ll be letting Doc have it, two years of separation be damned. For reasons Rhese has never understood, responsibility for their little crew seems to default to him when Rea can’t be there to look after them herself.

“I’m sure she’ll let it go when you point out that she wasn’t there either,” he says. “At least you did something to fix it. What did she do?”

“Rhese—“

“Please don’t try to comfort me. You’re no good at it.”

“Now that’s just not true. I’m very comforting. Ask anyone.”

“Your idea of comfort is a quickie in the supply closet. I think I’ll pass.”

Doc sighs. “Some people just don’t want to be helped.”

“Speaking of,” Rhese slides off the exam table and grabs his tunic. He slips his new arm into it slowly, hyperaware of how scratchy the fabric feels against it, and of how distant that feeling… feels. He clears his throat and tries not to think too much about it right now. “You have other patients. I’ll get out of your hair.”

Doc looks thoughtful for a moment, opening his mouth once or twice as if to say something but thinks better of it. Eventually, he just says, “Don’t forget your exercises. And you know where I am if you have any problems.”

Rhese nods, puts on his robe and belt, and turns for the door.

He’s half in the hall when Doc calls his name. He turns, swallowing a sudden rise of emotion in his throat. Doc seems to be doing the same, a curious expression on his face.

“She’ll be back,” he says. “I know you already know that, but… Doesn’t hurt to be reminded.”

Rhese swallows again, not even sure which emotion he’s trying to repress at this point. Anger? Sadness? Loneliness? Fear? There’s a maelstrom of it, spinning and twisting together in his belly. Mostly he ignores it, but sometimes…

He chants the Code in the back of his mind.

“She’ll be back,” Doc promises. “And you and me’ll be here waiting.”

#swtor #jedi knight #swtor doc #nirea velaran #rhese velaran #my fic #fictober 2k17 #cause it isn't really star wars until someone loses a hand #am i right??? #am i also sad????? #the answer to both questions is yes

[hydrospanners]

haunted.

It’s Nirea Velaran’s birthday and the crew of Renegade is faced with the age-old question: what do you get for the woman who is banned from has everything? SWTOR. Kira Carsen & Jedi Knight friendship. F!Jedi Knight & Doc romance. 300 words. Written for Fictober.

“A haunted house?”

Kira grinned. “She’s always saying how she loves them. And this one’s infamous. I tried to sneak in once when I was a kid, but it’s run by Hutts. Security was tighter than a--” Catching Doc’s eager look, she thought better of that sentence. “There was a lot of security.”

“She does love haunted houses,” Rhese agreed. “This is really thoughtful. It’s just…”

“What?”

“We did this one as kids. And Rea--Well, you know Rea.”

Doc started laughing.

“She didn’t,” Kira said.

“You know she did.”

“With the--”

“Yes.”

“Weren’t you two keeping that a secret back then?”

“Yes.”

“That’s my wife,” Doc said proudly. “Haunting a haunted house.”

“Putting the Force to good use as always” Rhese grumbled.

“It’s been a long time since then. Rea’s grown. Maybe they won’t remember. Or maybe they just won’t care. She’s got friends on Nar Shaddaa now.”

A beat of silence passed as the three of them looked at one another.

“Okay,” Kira sighed. “I’ll return the tickets. But I’m starting to run out of ideas.”

“I’d let you borrow mine,” Doc offered, “but I don’t think you’d like them as much as I do.”

“Ugh,” Rhese grimaced. “That’s my sister.”

“Stay focused,” Kira said. “We need ideas.”

“Ideas aren’t my strong suit. I’m more of an operational thinker.”

“Okay. Fine. Process of elimination. The Batwings have a restraining order, she’s banned from half the bars on Corellia, just about every casino in the galaxy has her picture on file. She’s even on the shit list on the swoop racing circuit. Swoop racing, Rhese. What isn’t she banned from?”

“War, mostly.”

They looked at one another. After a moment, Kira started to smile. “I’ll go get Rusk.”

#swtor #kira carsen #jedi knight #swtor doc #nirea velaran #rhese velaran #my fic #fictober 2k17

[hydrospanners]

cute date idea: making your little brother extremely uncomfortable

(draw the squad ref here)

#swtor #jedi knight #swtor doc #archiban kimble #honestly this is just a good idea for any time #making rhese uncomfortable is one of the many great joys of life #nirea velaran #rhese velaran #my art

[hydrospanners]

Hahaha those poors? Let ‘em rot. That’s what they get for being born on Nar Shaddaa and doing whatever they can to survive. 

#swtor #jedi knight #agent rieekan #file this to reasons why nirea resents the republic #and sis in particular #rhese is less concerned about it #he has a job to do #siiiigh #rhese velaran #hydrostuff #hydroswstuff #hydrogifs #hydroswgifs

[hydrospanners]

when the stars are the only things we share on the anniversary of her aunt’s death, nirea velaran connects with an old friend in the hopes of finding her absent brother. swtor. set during kotfe. 850 words. f!jedi knight. gen. 

It’s funny how memories get bound up in smells. Jedi spend a lot of time worrying about their eyes deceiving them, but they don’t say much about noses. That’s the way of the Jedi, though, isn’t it? Smart people with no common sense.

But that was before. Hard to say what the way of the Jedi is now. Hard to say how many of them are even left.

Rea turns the mug in her hands, savoring the warmth and the bitter, earthy scent. She hates caf, has always hated caf, but holding it like this, breathing it--It’s like breathing a memory.

She can feel the worn fabric of the galley booth beneath her thighs and the subtle vibrations of the hyperdrive as it hurls them through space. She hears her brother and Kira’s drowsy argument--they’re always arguing--as they trudge up the stairs. Rusk stands by the caf maker, tearing the lid from his fourth cup of energy pudding as he waits for the caf to brew.

Rea blinks, and she’s below deck. The light is the same but she knows it’s the middle of the night. It’s too quiet to be anything else. Vents hiss overhead and there’s the hum of the engines, otherwise there’s no sound but Doc, quietly slurping his caf. He’s always slurping his caf. He isn’t Doc if he isn’t winking and slurping his caf. Sometimes she wants to slap his stupid mug to the ground and stomp on its shattered remains. Now she thinks she could kiss it.

But it isn’t real. Her ship is dry-docked on Odessen and its crew is scattered to the wind. Another family lost. Her brother lost. Again.

“Didn’t think you liked caf,” Liss breaks the silence after it’s gone on too long. She sips slowly from her own mug.

“I don’t.”

Liss nods. “Didn’t think you were sentimental, either.”

“I’m not.”

She’s lonely is what she is. Lonely and tired and afraid. It’s not a great combination.

“You know what today is?”

“Would I be here if I didn’t?”

“Hard to believe it’s been twenty years,” Liss says.

Rea catches herself before she objects, before she says it’s only been fifteen. For a second, her heart stops. Her breath catches and blood drains from her face. “Twenty years,” she parrots. I’m thirty-five.

Liss gives her a minute to adjust. She watches Rea over the rim of her mug as she sips, slowly. Taking her measure. “I get what you’re trying to do,” she says once the color starts to return to Rea’s cheeks, “but it’d be better if you’d just ask what you came here to ask.”

Rea puts her mug back on the table, caf still steaming and untouched. This whole exercise was a waste of time and resources and she knew it before she left.

Still. It can’t hurt to try.

(Much.)

“Have you heard from him?”

Liss shakes her head. “I’d be with him if I had.”

That’s a truth Rea feels in her heart. Rhese was always Liss’ favorite. He was everyone’s favorite, but he and Liss had something special. She’d wanted to adopt him once, was even willing to take Rea as a necessary part of the bargain, until Ranna had shut her down. Rea never found out why. She never wanted to.

“I haven’t seen him in five years, Turhaya. Not since he came to tell me you died.” Liss lowers her cup and turns her eyes to its depths. “He was so convinced it was true. You know how he gets.” She does. There is no righteous fervor like Rhese Velaran’s righteous fervor. “He said he couldn’t sense you anymore. Neither could that girl, your apprentice. They said you’d never vanished like that before, and they were sure it meant you were dead.”

Rea hears the accusation Liss is trying not to make. She can feel it too, the little spike of anger. Her once-almost-aunt is more controlled than most Zeltrons, but sometimes it still bleeds over. “I was frozen in carbonite, Liss.” Her voice is distant and unwavering as she explains. Someone else’s voice, from far away, laying out the facts like the facts don’t mean her whole life is in ruins and she’s adrift out here, scared and alone. “I never meant to leave. I was captured. I killed Valkorion--” again, she thinks but does not say “--and his son had me frozen in carbonite. That’s where I’ve been.”

“There were rumors,” is all Liss says.

“You don’t believe me?”

“No, no. I believe you. It’s the kind of thing that would only happen to you, Turhaya.” She smiles, a little sad. “I used to think you were like Ranna, you know. When you were small.”

Everyone thought that. Everyone but Qarric.

“I was wrong. You have her cunning. You’re headstrong and you’re fearless, but you aren’t like her.”

“It was always Rhese who took after Ranna,” Rea agrees. “He’s the impulsive one. He hides it well, but it’s there. And he has her bleeding heart.”

“He sent me messages for a while. After you died.”

“Can I have them?”

Liss sighs, but nods. “They won’t lead you anywhere, though. I looked. I looked for years. Your brother--”

Silence stretches between them, deep and black. There is understanding in it.

“I know,” Rea says. “He’s all I have too.”

#swtor #jedi knight #kotfe #guess who's back with self-indulgent fic #and a side of kotfe feelings #my fic #nirea velaran #rhese velaran