A/N: Is it happening? It's really happening! AN UPDATE, WAAAT?!

Yes, OMGG! It's forreal, I'm not dead! D: I can't express how profusely sorry I am for having been totally MIA for such an unforgivably long time. Hell, I don't even know if anyone's still following this story anymore, lol. BUT I'M ALIIIVE! It's been like a Himalayan uphill battle, but I finally got there! *triumphantly stakes flag into summit*

That said...as promised, I haven't and still have no intentions of calling quits on any of my stories! I do have to ask for everyone's godly patience with me, though. I just can't keep to a reasonable schedule when life/work things start to get hectic. Sowwy... :( I still can't say when to expect the next update after this, but I will try my hardest to not let it be 2.75 years... :|

Anyway, I hope whatever readers still following out there will find at least somewhat of a treat out of this! I have to admit, I do feel pretty rusty, and there was a lot of periodic hiatus time to catch myself up on. I hope the writing hasn't dipped too badly from that. (It's a pretty decent amount of fluff and junk in this one, if that makes up for anything?)

(And for the few people who've taken time to PM me at some point, I promise I'll find a chance to respond! I haven't forgotten, I swear! ;_;)

One Thousand And One

Through the dark of the room, the dark of the night, it is only a pair of child's eyes that peers past the thick of it all. The sliver of light from the door's cracks dim just as stealthily as they widen to the softened hums of pattering child's feet.

As all dear, loving children do, this one stalks through the daunting darkness like a game—a ghost, a whisper wafting through a place she shouldn't belong—and she knows it, knows it well, but it hardly gives her any pause. Games are fun. Games are the things that children, by nature, seek. Even ones found in the most unwonted depths of the dark.

Her eyes trace the outline of the single mattress against the wall, slowly coming into focus with the drifting seconds under the faint veil of the moon's light through the window. She is cautious, unmoving. Because her eyes also begin to glimpse the silhouette stirring in even breaths beneath the heap of covers there. The only other soul in this room—the lone witness to the child's smile, if not for the spell of slumber that presently keeps the other pair of eyes so tightly hidden away, as with all the other occupants of this still, silent home.

Asleep in these chambers lies this beautiful queen. Or rather, she is one only in a child's exuberant fantasies. Like those stories she has been told of the sleeping maidens, sleeping princesses, sleeping queens—this is the closest thing to it she can find outside of these child's tales. But there lies a lovely lady, the most beautiful her eyes have ever beheld. And how she adores her, how she absolutely loves her.

Only a child of seven, she imagines herself one day becoming a beauty just like her. She already has her eyes. She already has her hair. Well...almost. The child has found that her own is not quite as long, as light, nor as fair.

So she comes like so on many nights. Sneaks through the queen's door, a little stowaway, a little spy. Her bright, adoring eyes marvel at the peaceful face of the sleeping lady. And she thinks to herself how different people seem to be when they sleep. When they are still. When they are silent.

There grows a quiet longing in her child's heart to join the lady, to climb beneath the covers with her and nestle herself within her arms. But then she remembers that she is no longer so small to do so without disturbing the queen's slumber. She wishes she could sleep as easily as her. It is the child's restless spirit in the nights like these that draw her to this room. It is nights like these that make her wish she were not alone. So she finds games in place of company. Most nights, she doesn't find one, so she creates them.

Her child's ears are first drawn by the hypnotic patter of raindrops against the pale glass of the window. She listens. Counts. Though she soon finds that they come far too quickly for her tiny fingers to number. She then comes to the window's sill, standing before the fogged glass canvas. She thinks, then, to count the stars she can find beyond it. There usually aren't many to glimpse under the skies of this world, but that never deters her from looking. The flannel of her sleeve dampens chillingly against her hand as she wipes away the condensed haze of the glass, only to see that there is only more of it veiling the sky up above. Much too far out of reach for her tiny hands to ward away. She squints and peers with such focus, such tenacity, only to find that the light of the stars remain invisible even to her brilliant eyes.

She gives a resigned breath, dropping her gloomy face against her small palms as she lingers within the window's glow. Hardly tall enough to stand above the sill, the pale radiance before her frames the child's tiny form like a strange, misshapen halo. Her lonely eyes then begin to number the beads and streams trickling down the glass into her line of sight. They follow each one's path, observe, evaluate. How curious it is, that no single droplet falls in exactly the same trail. She thinks to look harder, to see and figure why that is. Her eyes peer deeper into the field of nebulous grey until they look past the drops, past the glass, and past the world on the other side, until they find the image of the world behind her reflected back.

There, she sees the outline of the door. She sees the bed, the covers, the lady lying in it. She sees her still-sleeping face, her golden hair, her lovely, unstirring features. The child thinks, then, to see what her eyes can recognize in this mirror world—looking, numbering, memorizing every vague detail before she turns to test what she finds against the real thing. Though once she does take her first glimpse again, she realizes that there isn't much to be found there at all in the dark.

The child knows she shouldn't disturb the sleeping lady. Beautiful queens need their rest, after all. But she is so very lonely. So much so, that she can't help but linger back to her side. She comes, only to find that the lady appears to have pushed away her covers amidst her otherwise tranquil slumber. Out of her child's instincts, she reaches daintily for the quilted cloth, grasps them with her little hands, and pulls them back over her. She thinks to herself how distressing it would be if her lady were to become sick from the cold. Not under her vigilance, the child resolves.

Oh, she is then reminded—

Her eyes drift away from the lady and over toward the nightstand beside her. There, as the routine of her memory expects, is a glass, emptied of water. Beside it, the seemingly knocked-over bottle of her medication, also emptied...mostly, with its remaining contents spilled about around it.

How curious, she thinks to herself, Mama is usually not so careless.

The child only ever wants to be good, to be helpful. She diligently plucks each of the stray tablets from the wooden surface, dropping them one by one, rattling back into their container. Six, she counts in all, though she oddly feels that there should be more.

Mama isn't always so diligent about taking her medicine, her wayward thoughts recall.

Her eyes glimpse then, a hand—the lady's hand—drifting into her peripheral. Even in this briefest glance, she can see how frightfully it shakes the farther it reaches for her. Until it finds her. Until she feels the maternal touch of this lady's gentle caress against her face. And it seems to take only that momentary split-second. She doesn't know or understand what it is, but it's as though what small measure of strength she has to possibly offer is just enough to sustain her, and her unsteady hands are becalmed as the gracious gaze of her pretty, angelic eyes.

"...My perfect little helper," the lady speaks with the sweetness of an angel's very own essence.

There is something in the beautiful lady's gesture that is so unspeakably somber. Whatever it is, she can't quite place it, but it is enough to dim her child's radiance.

"Won't you smile for me, Lana...my darling dear?" she urges her.

Because this lady is who she is, because this woman she adores so is her dearest Mama, she cannot possibly refuse her this simple request. What else is there for a child to do other than just as she is asked?

"There's my darling Sunshine," she whispers to her with a frail one of her own.

There is something peculiar about the way she says it this time—the way she calls her her 'Sunshine.' As though it were a kiss goodnight instead of a greeting. And even more curious yet, she sees a stray little tear trailing from Mama's eyes. It is strange, she reasons, because Mama is smiling. Because Mama appears to look happy.

So the child does as she has done many times for her before—she reaches her tiny hand to brush the unwelcome tear away from her mother's beautiful face.

"Are you sad, Mama?" she faintly utters through the dark in her small voice.

And the bare little question seems enough to nearly rend the lady's very heart.

"How could I ever be sad, seeing that sweet little smile?" she tells her. Makes it sound as though it were a promise. "Now...won't you do one more little thing for me, Sunshine?"

Of course, the child nods obediently, eager to do what she asks if it would make her Mama happy.

"Won't you crawl back into your bed and try to sleep for me?" She makes certain to accompany this request with the grace of her own most delicate smile.

"But I want to stay here with you," the little girl protests dolefully, grasping her mother's hand.

"Sweetheart...you're a grown girl now," dear Mama encourages, brushing her slender fingers through her daughter's rolling locks. "I know these stormy nights can be frightening..."

"...I'm not scared."

Hearing only her mother's silence, she is compelled to lift her reluctant eyes in search of her gaze.

"Lana... Sunshine..." the gentle lady then beckons once more in a bid to unravel the child of her own stubbornness, beaming with ever-enchanting persuasion. "...Please?"

There is something uncharacteristic about this request, she begins to feel. She isn't sure why that is, but she knows Mama has never denied a single thing so sweetly.

But, as ever, if a simple thing would make her happy, she could not refuse her dear mother anything in the world. So earnest a child she is, she cannot bring herself to falsely smile with such ease. Not the way her Mama has done before. She reluctantly comes to her, climbs over the side of her bed to give her a kiss.

"Goodnight, Mama," she whispers plaintively to her ear, wrapping her small arms over her shoulders.

Nestling herself close to her dearest little girl, she responds in kind, "And goodnight to you, my darling Sunshine."

Even such a small child like her can feel this frail queen trying her hardest to tighten her hold, trying so to return her little child's embrace, but she seems hardly able to even bring herself upright. Even when she begins to feel heavy in her tiny arms, it is her great child's heart that refuses to let her Mama slip from them.

"May the Force bring you the sweetest of dreams tonight," she hears her mother breathe to her ears. "And every other night beyond the next," she adds with a gentle, returning kiss to her brow. "And beyond the next..."

As she watches her ease herself back into her pillows, the child once again helps to pull the covers back over her before sliding away over the bed's edge. She lingers by her side, only taking her leave at her mother's final, insistent trickle of a smile. It is so pale in its melancholy, a color she doesn't yet immediately recognize. But it is enough to kindle one of her own, glowing just bright enough to bring warmth back to her dwindling countenance.

Like a good, obedient girl, the child shuffles back to the door where she'd entered from. She grasps for its knob, balancing on the balls of her bare little feet, just too short to quite reach it with ease. But before she disappears into the hall completely, it is her child's love that keeps her lingering vigilantly just outside the door.

There, in the light of the corridor beyond this room, she hovers like an unwanted little ghost-girl, cast away and lost as she peers back through the veil, into the darkness of a place where she should not belong.

Finally, upon closing her eyes, their pristine clarity is at last regained.

They open once again to the darkness—reconstructed, remade, and no longer those of a child.

Again... Great Force. So inopportune, so poorly timed. Always, with you and your mischief.

Awakened by a breath, Lana opened her eyes to the quiet dark.

A dream.

Of course.

In her addled, waking mind, her eyes came to a blinking flutter as they adjusted to the absence of light. It was nighttime, she quickly recalled. Her fingers and toes curled reflexively in themselves as they, too, began to stir awake. The familiar feeling of finely woven fiber and cushion between them reminded her also, that she was lying stretched out, cradled in the comforts of a warm bed.

Her sleepy, wandering eyes glazed across the depths of the unlit room from the ceiling to the walls, then to the floor. The bemusing thought, then, only returned to her present mind once she glimpsed the scattered pieces of clothing strewn across the carpet below. A pair of trousers... A dress... A button-up... And, of course...the curious collection of various undergarments pooled in between it all.

Right. She gave an inward, scandalous hint of a smile only the void had been permitted any glimpse of. This was Theron's room.

Theron's bed.

So, of course, she glimpsed over her shoulder to see the darling man in question, lost in his own undisturbed slumber beside her. But as it would seem with her, she'd been roused to yet another restless hour in a world where all else had been safely nestled away in the comforts of sleep and its realm of dreams. Just like the child in the one she'd awakened from only moments ago.

Lana had been careful not to stir so as she slipped out from the covers, peering back over her shoulder at Theron to be certain. Stepping gingerly onto the carpet, the whole of her body felt the shock of the night's chill as it crawled along the skin of her bare legs to steal what warmth she'd held in her small frame. She willed herself to withhold a shiver until she'd completely risen from the mattress, making her way on the tips of her toes across the dim expanse to the closet at the opposite wall.

Something easy. Something comfortable. Something simple.

She sifted through the hanging garments until she found a plain shirt of his—a white chemise. She'd thrown it over herself, finding quickly that as with almost any man's garment, it'd been several sizes too large for her. How comical it looked, draped over her like a painter's billowing smock. It'd appropriately also been just long enough for modesty's sake, much to her amused satisfaction. And most notably of all, the simple garment carried within its folds the hint of just a particular scent her senses had grown to recognize so familiarly. She paused with a the knowing smile of mischief, bringing her nose down toward the shirt's collar as she delicately inhaled the essence of the man it'd belonged to.

She'd known Theron to be a rather tidy man, especially for one who'd proven to have long been a pathological bachelor. Immediate of the aromas to be sorted had been the fresh tinge of detergent, only mild and indistinct in its fragrance, but surprisingly potent in masking the collective traces of sweat and a spectrum of colognes.

A curious thought—on what nature of occasions had he worn this certain shirt? Its immaculate, unsoiled white suggested the detailed care it must have seen, yet its cornucopia of distinct aromas—odors and perfumes alike—hinted otherwise. Nondescript as it was, even Lana could not recall with certainty if he'd ever donned this shirt in her presence. Her delicate fingers worked with ease each of the clear buttons into their counterparts, sealing away the undesired touch of cold air against her flesh. Or...at least as far as where the protection of the simple garment reached.

The first requirement upon stepping through the door of Theron's room—light. Led by the vague snippets of her memory, Lana's blind fingers tapped and shuffled along the wall space to her right until they'd found and flipped the appropriate switches one by one, illuminating the open spaces of his apartment.

Now that the matter of the night's dark had been remedied, next came the other of its accompanying silence. Always a peculiar one she'd been—never quite contented by the calm most would usually find in the empty space of contemplation.

Because utter silence meant solitude. On most nights like these, it had not been solitude which she'd sought.

What better way, then, she thought, to quell the discordant silence than with the temperate tides music could bring? Of course, she wouldn't fill these walls with their sounds, out of courtesy for their other occupant. So her eyes searched abroad for her comlink, finding the device right where she'd last left it on the living room coffee table.

This had been the closest space just beyond Theron's door. The very last of spaces in the whole of his modest apartment they'd idled within before the bedroom. Lana picked up her little device, fixing its companion earpiece into place beneath her tousled locks. There'd been no question in deciding which sample within her great library of music to play. Not on nights like these.

At little over forty-six and a half minutes, Lana selected the longest of the musical tracks stored on her personal device. Though it'd hardly come close to being the one most played, it'd been the one she'd kept most easily accessible of her files—only ever a simple click away.

Who knew how much time she would while away before exhausting herself again to return to bed? There'd been many past nights already when she'd let those full forty-six and a half minutes fill her senses, telling their familiar stories that her own memory had recited and replayed again and again until their hundredth time. Until they'd become just a familiar cacophony ghosting the bounds of her subconscious, only semblant of the core memories and stories they'd once evoked like a vision. Like a dream.

Perfect for nights like these. For forty-six and a half minutes, she need not consciously seek contemplation. She would simply ride the sounds until it'd come to her. And it would come freely without hindrance. What a strange notion, she'd curiously considered before upon such a night—that the purest, most organically trailing thoughts were so much rarer to come by than those a restless mind always found ways to manufacture.

In its aimless paces, her awareness first began its immersion into the simple, tactile sensations to be found all about. How the chilly night air on Coruscant always seemed to be a fixed constant at every coordinate of the world—the same in this small, humble space as it would be in the expanse of a lavish hotel lobby.

How inornate and indistinct the interiors of Theron's apartment appeared to be—suspiciously so, even if only upon her cursory scrutiny. Although it'd been but a sparse confined space, she'd felt little welcoming warmth in his home. It'd been too reticent, too bare. Almost as though the most cogent of its presumed multi-facets had been rather wittingly camouflaged somehow. Quite possibly even in plain sight, she would believe. But even the absence of clues were, in themselves, clues. And the peculiar riddle that was Theron Shan had never failed to inspire in her, the greatest of fascinations.

How this left end of the sofa upon which she'd been sitting had such a distinct depth and curvature in its recessed cushion, likely Theron's preferred side, she surmised. In recollection of what sparse edibles his kitchen stocked—little beyond frozen preserves and packaged non-perishables—she knew the nights he'd spent in his own home had been few and far in between. To consider, then, how many of those few nights he must have spent on these very cushions, only but several paces away from the door of his room. How exhausted he must have been in those nights to have forgone the comforts of his own bed. Simply because of the hindrance those several paces had pitted against his wearied mind and body? Yes. Surely, yes, Lana could relate entirely.

Her eyes loomed ahead to find a perfect line of sight to the holovision set just several feet beyond the coffee table (left on from hours ago it, she now realized as she stared into its steady, humming glow.) Hm...it'd come as no wonder then, why he'd refused to stir from his end of the couch. After their previous evening's meal, they'd spent hours in repose watching almost any and all things only numbing enough in interest to distract. And through these languid hours, no matter how much she'd shifted and stirred against the cushions, Theron hadn't moved a hair, poised resolutely behind his unspoken designation of their sofa arrangements. The more she dwelled on it, the more unsubtle she'd realized his juvenile nonchalance had been. What an insidiously fussy crab he could be. Yet, of course, the very musing hardly failed to bring a smile gleaming in its brilliant mischief across her lips.

Yet another curious thought. On that very couch, she couldn't recall to mind a single thing they'd watched on the holovision that remotely struck any chord within her memories, despite being fresh only hours ago. No...but it had been the halfway inane banter shared between them that she seemed to remember most vividly. Though for the life of her, she couldn't even recall how each of these absurd conversations began. Their contents, on the other hand, had been a special brand of amusement in themselves.

She remembered—the tedium of whatever unmemorable movie paring away at her wits at last, and to relieve her listlessness, she'd stretched herself out along the length of the couch. Then came the sudden stroke of her own mischievous whims, born completely of her boredom, that compelled her to lounge her feet out farther to the very opposite end. Crossing her ankles with her most calculated flourish of grace, she'd dared to volunteer Theron's own lap as her unwitting rest, blithely unbothered by any concern over the matter of consent.

The dirty little look he'd turned to her came plainly to mind then, and she smiled. But of course, he'd always been enough of a gentleman to refrain from any ill-behaved temperamental tantrums. At least of late. And most absolutely not until he'd conceived of some clever shot witty enough to fire back. In that particular instance, he'd opted instead for the total dismissal of his aloof silence against her juvenile wiles, which had accomplished nothing more than to provoke her devilish behavior. Since he'd refused to claim the first shot, she'd been the one to take the initiative. Replaying the full course of the exchange that followed to herself, she beamed with the duplicitous secrecy of a natural mastermind...

"...They're a bit ungainly, wouldn't you say?" she asked aloud.

(A question. A tease.)

"What?" he questioned in a murmur, more suspicious than baffled by such an offhanded comment.

"My feet," she clarified with a twiddle of the toes, watching with amusement as Theron gave them a cursory little peek.

(A test. How will you respond...?)

"Why's this a problem all of a sudden?"

"You don't think my feet are too ungainly? And I mean for the purposes of anything beyond running and gallivanting across a lit battlefield," she mused. "No, for purposes far more delicate in nature. Like...dancing, perhaps?"

Theron responded with a droll little smile. "What do you mean? Don't dancers have like, the worst feet?"

"Do they?" she wondered aloud, her eyes still curiously inspecting what she believed to be the rather roughly hewn contours of her own.

Oblivious to the sheer boredom that had prompted such aimless banter from her, Theron grew quiet in deeper consideration of the familiar piece of trivia. "...Yeah. I'm pretty sure they do."

"Hm."

(...So we'll play this game.)

Her absentminded hum drew his gaze. He turned to see her quite lost in her own circumspect scrutiny of those two little feet in question. Glancing at them, he'd seen a pair hardly any different in semblance to that of her equally small hands. It'd been clear, however, that she did not appear to feel the same about them in the least. The adoring little wrinkles at her brow and beneath her lips outlined the unmistakable look of displeasure. It'd been almost comical, and certainly most endearing, to see how focused her gaze had been then.

"Well. I think...you've got pretty little feet," he assured her with a lothario's cajoling charm. Giving one of her toes a little wiggle, he then allowed his hand an ingratiating touch as he trailed it along from the skin of her foot to her taut calf. Lana's slender frame had been deceptive, he'd long come tolearn. He'd known now with intimate familiarity just how well-toned this flesh was, a most private secret he had every intention of hoarding all to himself.

What a silly idea that she would harbor any unwarranted self-conscious thought toward herself, he mused. And of her damned little feet, of all things. With every inch he traced along, he found that therest of her had been no different. All of Lana had been every bit as fair and silken beneath his hands.

Theron allowed them to roam farther along, drawing her closer by a tug of the legs. His fingers' trace began with a most delicate touch, only for the tenderness to quickly dissolve inelegantly into a tangle of mass and limbs as he dragged her the rest of the distance across the cushions. Rather in spite of the utterly graceless gesture, he'd still managed to coax a squirm of laughter from her as she struggled to level herself upright again and into his lap.

"So I guess that answers it. You'd want giant, ugly feet to be a dancer, right?" he teased.

With a warming smile, Lana slipped her arms around his shoulder. She gazed at him, her parting lips only breaths away from his own as though she'd meant to bestow him with all the sweetness of heraffections for his words.

"Hm. Like yours?"

The underhanded quip had been enough to deaden all the adoring regard he'd held for her just then. Taking her into his full hold, Theron then sent her off with a good, unapologetic chuck from his lap and back into the cushions before scooting in retreat back to his end of the couch. Helpless against his retaliation, Lana fell backwards into the pillows in a heap of laughter between her protests and cries.

"Yeah. That's the last time I'm gonna lie to feed a girl's ego."

Taking pretended offense at his backhanded grumbling, Lana gasped as she nudged at his knee with a playful little kick.

"Hey," he retorted, swatting her foot away, "you're the one who's always telling me to be more honest." Accompanying his most pointed glare, the slightest hint of a smug little grin began to color his sour countenance. "You want honesty?"

She'd read his intentions clearly as he daringly began to advance back across the couch toward her. Narrowing her eyes, she returned him a chastening look. "Theron—!"

"You've got..." he spoke over her.

"Don't you dare—"

"...Ass. Ugly. Feet."

Before Lana could mutter another berating word edgewise, he'd had her wrestled and pinned back down into the cushions beneath him. Her defiance soon became swallowed by the swells of uproarious laughter, conjured forth in full like a violent gale by the mastery of his expert fingertips. In the barest measures of manipulation, he could render her defenseless in a multitude of manners. All it'd taken was just the right hand—in this instance, the slightest feathered brush along her ribs—and she'd come undone in utter hysteria.

"Theron...Theron, don't! Stop—I can't...!" she cried in her broken bouts of laughter in her vain attempt to bat him away.

The very thought seemed completely infantile when it'd first come upon his mind. But indeed Theron had learned, to his great delight, that even Sith Lords could be susceptible to a good tickle.

Only when Lana managed to peel her arms free from him momentarily, when she'd reached for him, cradled him by the face and drew him in for the single thing she'd known to be capable of distracting him from the gratification of this torment, did he begin to relent.

"Please..." she implored with a desperate little kiss, "Theron, please. I'm asking—" her voice quieted with her waning laughter.

Her plea had been returned with a tease of his own lips, followed by another, and another. She could feel the curling smile of his amusement with each of his trailing kisses, tracing her face, her neck, her shoulder. Until she let her eyes ease shut as their bodies fell to rest where they'd lain. She wound her fingers through the ends of his hair as he lied with his nose buried against the skin of her neck, feeling the flow of warmth carried by every breath he'd taken.

"...But the rest of you is pretty okay," he murmured, bringing his tease full circle.

"Hm. Only 'okay'...?" she sounded with an unsatisfied hum.

Theron parted from her neck to look at her, eyes narrowed with a clever smirk. "What? You want me to lie, or tell you the truth?"

With a challenge of a smile to match his own, she raised her eyes to him with all the imperious hauteur of a true-blooded Sith Lord. "I dare you to be honest."

Letting his eyes linger, the light of humor began to lift from his countenance to reveal a most genuine gaze beneath it all. He sank to her lips with another sweet little kiss. "I think you're fucking beautiful."

His voice spoke this plainly in his earnest regard, tempered of the previous moment's mirth and caprice as he admired every color and contour of her features. Always, he'd gazed in search of the things to be found beneath the surface. Of course he'd memorized every visual, tangible facet of her by now. But the things to glimpse beyond that seemed to shift and change with every new point and perspective in time. They were never stagnant, it seemed. The time shared between them was never stagnant.

"Honest? Hearing you over comms for the first time, I thought... 'damn, she's got a sexy voice...'"

His comment drew a gentle whisper of a laugh on her breath.

"And I secretly, really hoped you'd turn out to be some...old, ugly hag or something."

"How disappointed you must have been then," Lana mused in her quiet delight.

Theron gave her another droll look. "Wow. Why did I ever feel like you even neededan ego boost...?"

In a scoff, she slapped his shoulder with the roll of her eyes.

"Yeah. Pretty girls are the worst with that." He turned to her with a glowing, knowing grin. "You can see why I was a little peeved at meeting you in person for the first time."

Lana thinned her lips with the brilliance of pure sarcasm. "I'm sorry I wasn't ugly enough for your liking, Agent Shan."

Theron laughed soundly as he recalled the times on Manaan to memory. "I even...went a little out of the way to be a bit of an ass around you."

In spite of his airy spirits, even Lana couldn't decide how much of this he'd shared in jest or not. Oh, certainly. She—the very object of his conscious disaffection—could remember vividly just how sub-lukewarm his welcome had been then. Even in light of their aligned objectives, the SIS agent had made no secret of his indisposition toward anyone to do with the Sith Empire, and she'd admittedly been a bit unsure of how to best parley with such a man at the time. Naturally, all she thought to do was to fall back on her good manners and 'inhuman' patience, as Theron had put it many times before.

"I thought...maybe if I could get you to hate my guts, it'd be easier to piggy-back on that and make the feeling mutual."

She turned her eyes thoughtfully to him, brimming in her own nostalgic amusement. "I willadmit—you were nothing short of trying, Theron." Her fingers continued to stir absently at the tail ends of his hair. "But there was simply...something innate about you. Something I couldn't place. Something that was...unusually immune to any lingering trace of scorn to be had."

For the brief moment that passed, he'd appeared to show an earnest glimpse of surprise at her words. As though the memories he'd held had been so thickly colored by his admitted prejudices, he'd continually found it difficult to comprehend how she could possibly have put up with his inexcusable attitude at all. Though it hadn't been long until another brewing fancy brought with it that insufferable smirk back to his lips.

"You had the hots for me too, huh?"

The shameless tease dispelled any visible sign of affection left to be found from her droll expression.

"Admit it—you wanted to jump my bones."

With another roll of her eyes and a half-disgusted scoff, Lana pushed herself upright again. "And youdare accuse me of an inflated ego." Swinging her legs over the edge of the cushions, she positioned herself back against the couch as she'd been sitting earlier in the night. "Your irony is an entire wonder to behold, my love."

Wearing a self-assured grin, Theron drew his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. "Don't you fucking know it..." he murmured, giving her an affectionate little tug. "My whole life's been one giant fucking irony."

Though it had been but another of his common, sardonic jests, there'd been a fine shroud of bitterness that eclipsed his words then. Enough for Lana to discern above the usual remarks he'd made of this nature. Sometimes, she wasn't entirely sure of how to respond when this side of him filtered through the surface. And it would do so a bit more often than he was aware, she was certain.

"I've no doubt," she remarked in her own tenuous humor. With a hanging pause, she turned to look at him. A modest little glance. Stately, and just as much exquisite in its guileless honesty. "I think I'm proof enough of that. Wouldn't you say?"

Irony in itself was not always such a pessimistic thing by nature. Though it'd seemed to be something Theron managed to forget almost all the time.

With this sentiment came a passing little amusement of hers. One she'd dallied with in her most inward child's marvel on many occasions since her earliest memories. Her eyes glazed ahead at the screen of the holovision's sleepy hums to see still, not a single thing of interest in any of its illuminated images. So, why not make a game from their boredom?

"Have you ever wondered, Theron?" she inquired aloud. Her breaths only carried the words through the air as they'd surfaced from the vacuous plains of her present, halfway-absent mind.

The fanciful lull of her voice drew his gaze. So gentle in its pensive daze it'd been, that he didn't dare think to intrude on her lofting whimsy, so he watched her in his expectant silence. Allowed her just enough of his patience so such shapeless thoughts could be given full form.

"Say we hadn't become what we are. If we weren't a Republic agent and a Sith..."

Curious words. They'd enticed Theron's wildest imaginings every bit as much as they'd incited them. Of course he'd given thought to such fictions before. He was only human, after all. Just as she was. He, too, had been a youth once. A child. He'd imagined all the alternate possibilities a thousand times over, considered each and every hand in existence he hadn't been dealt. And of those thousand, he'd come to realize that in no place within his very soul did any stand above the rest. Perhaps it'd been his lack of imagination, he'd reasoned before. Or a lack of passion? A lack of yearning?

"...What would you imagine yourself to be?"

Or, perhaps, he'd truly been the altruistic masochist the young Theron Shan had been destined to become since the very moment of his conception. It would not be his mother's Force senses that he'd inherit, but rather this—the immutable, inborn affliction—the very legacy of the Shan line. Though he had to admit, there'd been some degree of comfort in the certainty of predictability. The Force was just as benevolent in its providence as it was brutal in its exacting irony. Its dualistic profundity embodied far beyond the proverbial Light and Dark, it would seem.

Before he'd even been given a moment to sum up an entire lifetime's fantastical woes, Lana blithely claimed the liberty for herself to answer first. It'd come as hardly any surprise to him that she would. Not as much as it'd have been at another, earlier time. Before he'd ever known that she'd been every bit as much of a closet dreamer as he was. Possibly even more so.

"Since I'd brought it up," she mused gently over an earlier thought. "Yes. I rather like the idea."

"Yeah? Of what?" Steering his curious gaze back to her in full amusement, he caught sight of her sparkling eyes daring to peek up at him, her taut lips colored by an eager, tickled little smile. "What's...'Hypothetical-Non-Sithy-Anti-Lana' do?"

Her quaint little smile only tightened as she seemed to shy away within herself at the idea. But oh, how she beamed at her fancies, a thing only Theron, seated at so close a vantage point, could bear witness to.

"I think..." she hummed into a lingering pause.

As though it'd been the most natural thing for her to do, with his patient, eager eyes set on her, watching and waiting, Lana's rare theatrical whims drew her to do as all players do for a wanting audience. With such grace that suggested an instinctive ability she did not have, she drew her arms up high, wafting into air.

"...I would have liked to become a dancer," she beamed with the daring earnestness of a youth unhindered by any notion of limits and bounds.

With a playful flair, she began to shape them by the elbows to the wrists, and on through to every moving muscle in the digits of her small hands. In no sense did she have even an inkling of an idea of what she was doing, only imitating what fine movements her inexperienced eyes had glimpsed in performance before, as recalled by her amateurish reimaginings. Some manner of ritual dance, she vaguely remembered. Elegant and nimble...well, some sort of felinoid people—not the Cathars. Who were they again?

Ah, the Trianii. How could I forget?

Even if she hadn't claimed to hold an ounce of a dancer's grace within her, she could well have fooled Theron. His eyes trailed along the movements of her hands as they climbed through the air. How her fingers tugged and flicked as she imagined them adorned with the tiny cymbals the dancers played. She threw her head back as her own eyes followed where they wandered aloft with a playful glint and a smile.

It was not unheard of for people to equate one's skill with sword or lightsaber forms to that of a dancer's adept movements, and he was certain that had been where Lana's own natural grace had been born of. He mused within himself at the very notion—imagining what a dancer she would have been if fate had permitted her such a draw of the lot. He pictured her like the Trianii dancers, bedecked with flowing streamers that wafted in the shadow of her movements, the gentle ringing of bells and chimes adorned at her feet with every step, pivot, and whirl...

He watched as she drew her hands to a stop, twirling her hands and fingers in small flourishes until they reached as high as they could—skyward, palms open, fingers outstretched toward the heavens. This had been the iconic, climactic gesture of the Trianii's dance. As if cued by her soft laughter, his arms then found themselves following the outstretched form of her body, slipping one around her waist as the other reached where her own had.

While he'd mimed her own imitated motions of the ritual dance, that had been as far as the resemblances bore. Theron raised his arm in reach not of the lofty, stellar heavens overhead as the spirit of the dance entailed, but rather of what had been obtainable within his own mortal reach. His fingers found hers, gently entwining with them as he drew her back down to the terrestrial grounds. Back to the planes of his existence, where she could always find him in wait while her dreams and reveries carried her away far and wide. But always, she would find herself drifting back home. Back to him.

Letting herself be guided as she imagined the dancers had, Lana followed the flow of his movements. She shut her eyes as she felt his hands roam over her flesh. She drew her head toward his as she felt his lips graze her neck, easing just enough of herself to match his gentlest of gestures. By his hand's lead, she'd drawn her own back down and into herself, cradling them along the recess between her shoulder and neck while his own held her being cradled in entirety. She kept herself blind, eyes closed, allowing herself only to feel. And she'd felt his presence. Felt his touch. She felt the warmth of his breath as his lips drew close, its formless caress lasting only a moment before they came and found her own.

For that moment, they'd become like two dancers—two separate bodies who shared a single soul. Where one's lead and the other's follow symphonized, interwoven into one movement of harmony and wholeness.

That had been as far as Lana's memory could trace in full imagery. What came after had been a smattering of impressions, both of the kinesthetic and subconscious kind, outlined between the throes of the mildly inebriated kisses; of drifting hands raking through cloth in search of the warmth of flesh beneath; of whispers, laughter, and bliss... And what gratifying slumber that followed such exhaustive pleasures as that.

In only a flurry of passing thoughts and sensations (mostly sensations), her restless memory reenvisioned these moments of their previous night spent. Funny how the channels of the consciousness worked. In the flashes of each moment glimpsed, she could relive it all by the seconds within the seconds—the advantages of having it still so freshly imprinted to mind. Very much the reverse of the far outnumbering memories of days past. Even those held closest to heart required her conscious effort to salvage if they'd been old enough. Sometimes, she wondered if her mind invented certain details in order to fill the irreparable holes and gaps. It ailed her to even think it.

(A different story to be told each time.)

Hmm. Perhaps beneath the uncertainty of the ever-shifting, ever-changing recollections, that had been the living, breathing essence of all stories told. Stories involved more than just the words and images, after all. They were just as much shaped and formed by the teller and the listener. Perception was never a stagnant or impartial thing. And stories would not be stories without the heart of such sentiments giving them life, form, and color.

Lana smiled as the music still playing in her ears drifted to a decrescendo from the movement's fluttering grand apexes of bursts and swells.

Six minutes and thirty-eight seconds.

A familiar highlight, and a shift. The quiet hum of muted light and sound from the holovision flickered to black at the click of the remote in her hand before she set it back down and rose from the cushions.

How curious, she mused to herself, only now able to take note in the silence of Theron's absence. His living space had been an obvious bachelor's apartment; the marks and signs of it were found everywhere. There were no extras of anything beyond what had been the bare minimum for the sole inhabitant of the unit. No guest room. No secondary refresher. A kitchenette with space and accommodations for hardly even one, let alone another (which made for an interesting time attempting to prepare dinner the previous night.) And the dining table—if it could even be called that. How fortunate that no one had ever heard of a dining set that only included with it one chair. But upon closer inspection as she passed by the small dining space, it'd been clear by the tell-tale scuff marks (or lack thereof) beneath the legs of the chairs that only one of the two had seen any regular use.

Even so, something had crossed her mind enough about this living space that simply seemed...off. Theron Shan had never come off as a messy or unkempt person in the brief time she'd known him, so it hadn't been as though she'd expected to suddenly see this in the ways of how he'd kept his apartment. But something… From the very moment she'd walked through his door, it'd struck her, even if in the most subliminal vestiges, just how suspiciously tidy and uncluttered and spotless this place was.

Every corner her curious, vigilant eyes drifted, there'd been no immediate trace or clue anywhere that spoke remotely about the man who lived here. It'd been peculiar, even for a withdrawn agent like Theron. It wasn't as though he ever needed to mind guests to entertain (she was almost certain she'd been the first in a long while, if not the first.) There was no advantage or necessity to keeping a barren, private living space. This—she'd known intimately well. If there had been anything to glean from these walls and all that could be seen within them, it had been the sheer conscious effort given to make all these otherwise natural idiosyncrasies all the less conspicuous.

Lana's idle gaze drifted across the dimly lit space at nothing in particular, only subliminally searching for some manner of distraction. Anything to disrupt the incessant presence of the looming stillness. From the darkened screen of the holovision, she glanced over toward the awkward, haphazardly positioned legs of the two dining chairs. How unseemly, she'd thought to herself, that they'd left the condition of the dining space as unkempt and askew as they had. They'd been in some kind of hurry, apparently. To do what, she couldn't even recall. After all, the rest of that evening had been spent in uneventful repose in front of the holovision.

Two plates cluttered with dirtied utensils and some uneaten scraps. Why hadn't she managed to clear her own plate, she mused to herself. The dish was quite delicious—cooked by none other than her gracious host himself. A rare occurrence it'd been, too, she figured as she plucked a morsel from the plate for another sample. The bite was just as savory as how she'd recalled her first taste, even when chilled after some hours of neglect. Who would have guessed the agent to possess such culinary talents? (There never even seemed to be an occasion to showcase it during all the months they'd spent alone together on Rishi.) Lana smiled at the thought and licked her lips.

Two crystal-clear glasses beside each plate, still filled with more than just a trace of the rich red liquid they'd gotten half-drunk on through the evening. Ah, what a sin to leave it to waste like so, she lamented within. Especially when Theron had managed to find a red wine she could hold. It'd been a bit tart to the taste, but just sweet enough to satisfy her abnormally fastidious palate. And, as it seemed, with each progressive sip she'd managed to swallow, the easier (and quicker) it'd been for her to down the next. And the next. She made a mental note of what the drink was called and where it'd come from—some extravagant label bearing the name of some Alderaanian nobility she felt she ought to recognize but didn't. Not that it'd mattered much; Lana was certain she'd forget it by the morning anyway. With the plates stacked in one hand, she hooked her fingers between the stems of the glasses and padded over toward the sink in the kitchen.

Seeing little sense in operating the entire dishwasher for the few pieces of soiled wares, Lana opted to diligently rinse and wipe them herself under the running faucet. She had never been above manual tasks like these and lamented how convenience often bred languor amongst the populace. It'd made day to day life in hiding on Rishi for Theron and herself all the more uncomplicated, having had overwhelmingly little access to the urban amenities and comforts to be had at their respective homes.

After emptying the contents of the glasses into the sink, she rinsed them out under the running tap. Little else other than the musical waves of the movement playing on in her ears occupied her senses until the barest brushing glimpse of bright red amidst the surrounding dreariness caught her discerning gaze. She held the glass she'd been wiping down up to her eyes and spotted the opaque stain of her lip coloring imprinted along its sparkling, transparent rim.

Red. Deep, rich, passionate red. There'd been only a trace of it left on her own lips now, and they curled wickedly at the very thought, knowing exactly where the rest of it had gone. She knew every place she'd left her mark.

Just as she'd done with this glass, she'd stained his lips with the same burning shade of red. She'd left stains all over his neck—on the silken skin of his flesh and the soft folds of his collar (who knew if he'd ever even be able to get it out of fabric that white, but he should have known better anyway, she mused without a shred of guilt to be had.) They'd been left all over his shoulder, his chest, his...

Lana's lips glowed with the smolder of a private, secretive smile as she wiped the red imprint clean from the rim of the glass. Once she'd been finished with them, she dried and stored them away in a cupboard overhead with the rest of the matching, unused set.

As she proceeded to clear the portions of leftovers from the plates into the waste receptacle, yet another minor passing musing gave her a moment's pause. It hadn't been much, but why waste even a bit of perfectly good food? After all, if there'd been anything Rishi had taught them, it'd been the values of resourcefulness and frugality. She pressed her lips together in thought before turning to the nearby fridge.

Once she'd opened its door, Lana was given a bout of second thoughts yet again, seeing nothing but a nearly emptied storage space, occupied by only few scant items in the smallest of compartments within. How peculiar, she'd thought to herself then. There'd been an abundance of fresh ingredients and the like the previous evening when they'd prepared the dinner to be had. She couldn't imagine that it had all been spent and consumed so thoroughly. But surely, it must have been the case, she figured, identifying only some packaged preserves and non-perishables scattered sparsely about.

However unexpected, this was no unfamiliar sight to her. Lana's thoughts then trailed along the recollection of her own living space back home on Dromund Kaas. This had only been the unmistakable sign of one obvious recurrence.

Is 'home' really home if we're away from it more often than we're not...? And here, it takes inviting just a single other soul over for you to be able to have a proper meal within your own private walls...

Her countenance faded to a pale melancholy over the somber thought, Lana shut the door softly and emptied the plate's contents into the waste receptacle before washing it clean under the running water. She herself had not set foot in her own apartment for some months now. The life of a transient was not an easy one, but she supposed it'd kept people like herself, like Theron from becoming too attached. Attached? But to what?

To a 'home?' Is that so bad?

There'd been many nights when Lana found herself missing 'home.'

But now...

Now...she hadn't been so sure she was ready to leave. To go back home. And it'd been such a strange, unfamiliar feeling. The indecipherable, indescribable longing already taking hold of her by the deepest roots of her being. Something about this was simply different.

Lana blinked away the dampness from her eyes as she finished wiping the dishes dry, storing them, too, away in the cabinets.

Not tonight.

This was not a night for such doleful contemplations. She would not have them. No, not tonight.

With a cleansing intake of a deepened breath, she relaxed her conscience to the calming subdued strings of the solo drifting in her ears—the second iteration of the opus' recurrent leitmotif.

Ten minutes and twenty-one seconds.

At ten minutes and twenty-one seconds, as Lana memorized well, this second iteration marked, too, the opening of the opus' second movement. She stood still, listening until the climbing winds chimed in, picking up where the hush of the strings left off—one voice giving way to the next. A shift in narration, though they'd spoken the very same language, overlapping and interlocking at the edges and seams in perfect harmony. In between the story's every subtle bend and turn, Lana memorized the exact phrases and lilts and trills that told of them down to the very incremental notes and tones.

Along the passing seconds, the music continued on in its tidal ebb and flow, taking all her conscious thought adrift with it. In her idle, absent-minded curiosity, her exploring hands began to wander along all manners of surfaces within reach in brushes and strokes. She heedlessly allowed them to pry and prod as they pleased with little expectation. What was there to be found in a small, empty kitchen anyway?

Cups and bowls in one cabinet. Plates in another adjacent to it. Eating utensils in the drawer. Cleaning supplies in the one beneath it. An empty one next to another. On occasion, Lana would pick up an item or two for a quick glance, only to quickly replace it with little more than oblivious disinterest.

More glass cups.

Caffa mugs. Lots. Some plain and undecorated, others bearing some tastelessly overwrought logo or slogan of some manner (perhaps souvenirs of Agent Balkar's from exotic places of interest, she thought.)

Assortments of bottled liquor. (Goodness.) Each already opened and sampled to varying degrees, it'd seemed. One could only guess how old and how frequented each of them had been. And though Theron had never struck her as any sort of heavy drinker in all the time she'd known him, her lips stiffened by the merest hair at the ineludible curiosity tugging at her core. After all, what were the greatest of vices that drove men to drink?

Lana pressed her lips thin as her fingers tightened around the neck of the bottle held in hand. With a sigh, she dismissed it all and set it back in the cabinet with the rest. She'd made haste to shut the cabinet and stow away such disquieting thoughts once and for all, until the gleam of another peculiar little bottle caught her eye before she could banish it all from sight and mind. Reaching into the shadows at the back of the cabinet, she curled her fingers around the small, rounded container. This was no manner of drink she'd been familiar with. She felt no weight of any liquid sloshing within it as she pulled it out. Non-descript white, stout and cylindrical in form. Medicinal.

Sleeping pills.

The action in itself was nothing really. But how curious that simple pathways of simple actions, negligible in almost every sense of the word, could resound and echo into the recesses of memories so long past and dilapidated as certainly as this. It'd been her small child's hands she imagined once again, reaching for the familiar bottled medication that seemed a fixed detail of all her memory of her mother's bedside. She remembered how she'd counted them night after night, driven by the unbearable silence of the still night's boredom. She'd fiddle with the little caplets, flicked them across the endtable, scooped them and poured them like trickling beads from one hand into the other. She'd found some form of amusement in the curious little things in myriad ways, though she'd always been diligent enough to know what was not to be done with them. Such things were meant for the grown-ups. She never swallowed them, never tasted them, never even so much as licked them, as many small children were prone to do with all manners of the tiniest curios. And she remembered again the night when she'd found her mother's medication bottle peculiarly short on pills from the night before. Peculiar enough to have given her pause to ponder, but little more. The minds of small children rarely dwelled on such mundane things after all. Yet Lana would come to be filled with such lament in the following years over her child's ignorance, over the absent wisdom that no seven-year-old little girl could possibly have hoped to have.

In her haste to replace the bottle, her hands fumbled, nearly dropping the container entirely. It was then that she'd noted its fullness, the lack of movement or sound from its contents. Unable to resist her curiosity, she gave the container another inquisitive rattle, finding that indeed, it appeared to be quite at capacity, possibly even untouched.

Had it not been the memorized hands of her younger self roaming then, she might have had the better sense to leave the matter of Theron's privacy be. Stealing a briefest glance at its label, it'd revealed that this bottle had been prescribed quite some months ago. Nearly an entire year, in fact. And the pills—untouched in all that time it would seem, much to her curiosity (and comfort.)

Enough now. Respectfully, she banished all notion of this from mind before she delved too far, put the bottle away exactly as she'd found it, and moved on.

Lana briskly left the kitchen area to explore another darkened corner of the apartment. Just past the door to the bedroom lied a display shelf that drew her attention. By all logical reasoning, there ought be some noteworthy memorabilia to be found there. The immediate of these items to catch her keen eye—a small, unremarkably nondescript black box. So fine and well-kept amidst the haphazardness of its surroundings, it appeared indubitably to be a displaced something among a clutter of nothings. So naturally, as all nosing meddlers would think to do, Lana unlatched it, lifting its lid to peer at its contents within.

She'd nearly halted on a breath at the glimmer of the shining, finely polished trinket stored inside. Such a thing of prestige, it hardly mattered that she'd been an Imperial Sith far removed from the innerworkings of the Galactic Republic. It'd only taken one glance for her to recognize with certainty once her eyes had seen it, the Republic's honored Cross of Glory.

In her initial glance, she'd been struck by nothing but thoughts of wonder and even pride, for what acts of heroism and valor must he have accomplished to earn such a decoration? Until her thoughts paled upon a deeper lingering consideration—that a Republic agent such as he could only have received an award like this for his valiant actions against the enemy.

The enemy. Us.

Of course that must have been why he'd never thought to regale her with the fantastical story behind such a thing as this. Lana brushed her delicate fingers over the silver cross. Such a small thing it was, but such weight it'd carried beneath its brimming form. It'd been a thing hardly big enough to fit in the palm of her hand, already so small in itself, yet all in the whole of the galaxy knew of the kinds of stories such a treasure entailed. Lana had never been one to undervalue the power symbols like these held. Surely, the Cross of Glory meant nothing to an Imperial of even the humblest ranks, let alone a Sith Lord. But even deeper than the most elementary particles that made up its composition, Lana knew—felt—in her small hands, the weight of so much more. Of all the very things that nothing in the physical realm of the world could possibly measure.

With an ambivalent heart, she gently placed the medal back into its case and shut it. She'd returned it so pristinely back to its place that not a soul could have thought it'd have been disturbed in any manner—save for the faint imprints in the fine coat of dust left by even the most delicate brush of her fingers. The sensation of its gossamer grime drew her eyes to her fingertips, where she'd only then noted how mottled they'd become by those sheer flecks of brown. She now pondered over the dilemma of whether she ought to wipe the case entirely of any evidence of her meddling, or if it'd only serve make her intrusion all the more obvious. How stupid of her to overlook it, she'd thought then—the damned thing likely hadn't even been touched since the day it was placed there.

With an uncertain frown, Lana waved the thoughts away from mind as she wiped her fingers along the hem of her borrowed shirt. May as well make a game of it—see how long it takes for him to notice. And if he notices, see if he'll even be bothered to ask anything of it.

Then in that case...I suppose I'll have some questions for you, too. It'd make for even more interesting stories to trade, wouldn't it?

Next...now here was something her eyes seemed to recognize. One familiar piece of this small private space. Floating over toward the desk in the far end of his apartment, she immediately recognized it from the many instances of their numerous transgalactic correspondences. Lowering herself delicately into his chair's large leather cushions, she'd almost felt a thrill to know that Theron himself had been seated in this very spot those many nights, making all of those holocalls from this very same console before her.

She first brushed only a fingertip across its flat, transparent surface—keener this time not to inadvertently leave such obvious trails and traces of her roaming fingerprints about. Yet to her rather unexpected surprise, it'd seemed as though Theron had been almost compulsively meticulous about ensuring that every inch of this space had been spotless. Unlike the neglected medal of honor left and seemingly forgotten in the most inconspicuous corner of this entire apartment, this space had been made to be absolutely immaculate. She'd been certain that he'd taken great care to clean this particular area prior to her arrival. All save for one peculiar corner, that is, only discovered upon closer inspection. Despite his ultimate oversight of this odd patch of dust off at the far edge of the console, she couldn't help her teeming, adoring smile at his obvious efforts.

Beside this anomaly, Lana spotted a small, framed panel—the only one of its kind to be found anywhere in the whole of the apartment, it'd appeared. With a curious quirk of her lips, she hovered her finger over the panel, hesitating only for a moment before she'd brought it glowing to life at the tap of a finger. The figures projected in full view from the framed panel began to flicker and move, casting a soft tint of blue as the tiny hologram came into complete focus.

With a delighted gaze, she'd found herself immediately in love with the scruffy young lad scampering about in this brief, moving vignette. There'd just been something all too familiar about him that tugged at her heartstrings, so endearingly so that she had to mind herself not to make a peep as she withheld the forgivable breath of gentle laughter that naturally followed. She watched as this lad scurried along a riverbank, waving around his little broken stick with such conviction, she would have thought he'd believed it'd been a true lightsaber held in his tiny hands. The lively little boy barreled here and there enough times for her to spot the company of a second figure—an elderly man, garbed in what looked unmistakably to be Jedi robes—standing in watch with pure amusement at his boy's tireless exuberance.

Then this must be the illustrious 'Old Man Zho.' We meet at last...

Lana giggled softly to herself before the room dimmed again once the projection faded back into the empty framed panel.

...I'll have you know, your keepsake is in good hands. Theron saw to that.

She lowered her eyes to the afterglow of a distant fondness and an inexplicable sense of piety welling in her heart, evoking the memory of this old man—memories which she knew she did not truly have. Even so, what she could grasp was the presence of his heart and soul, which seemed to exist on some plane in this very space. As ethereal and intangible as it ever was, she felt its presence closely enough to believe in its veritable existence. Though she did not and would never come to know this man in any true sense, there still remained the single enduring connection tethering her to his memory. So long as he remained, so long as he continued to tell his stories, Master Ngani Zho, too, would exist on in heart and soul.

"If there was anything I could say to you, anything at all..." Lana began to whisper to the air in the faintest voice. She gently folded her hands at her lap as her eyes eased shut. "It would be...'thank you.' For his heart. For his spirit. I feel...no—I know—he's inherited far more than just an old Jedi's lightsaber."

Upon the breath of a prayer on her lips, she allowed her sights to return to her eyes, peering past the physical confines of these walls, even that of this very plane to the vastness far beyond any mortal senses.

"Oh, Great Force...how thankful I am for him. For all of him."

With a great, all-consuming breath, she sighed out all of the night's cold, still air from her lungs, as though she'd meant to clear away all the remaining trace of doubt or misgiving left lingering within.

Led once again by some inscrutable sense of a child's mischief (though one might argue it to be a simple and healthy predilection for curiosity and wonder), Lana's eyes led her to begin surveying the offhanded, sundry inconsequentials within her immediate periphery. The small, top-most drawer at the console's right had been closest in reach. She slid it open with more care than was necessary, as it made no sound in what little resistance it'd given.

Within, in all its unheralded irony, she'd found heaps within heaps of indiscriminate miscellany. Scattered styluses of all shapes and colors. Some small, novelty magnets with assortments of clips and pins and other unrecognizable metallic knickknacks clumped to them. What looked like a string...or a stray scrap of thread? Two (that she could count among the cache) mismatched buttons. A single, unused pouch of (fairly cheap) instant caffa. And those had only been the easily identifiable things among the clutter. Clearly, this had been the convenient dumping ground for all the salvageable odds and ends one couldn't completely dismiss as entirely useless rubbish.

While her gaze gave this wonderfully hidden trove a thoughtful once over, Lana resisted the urge to shake her head at Theron's deliberately superficial organizational habits. Of course, she shouldn't be so surprised. And she couldn't exactly fault him for the effort either. He'd indeed made certain to keep up appearances, after all. That he'd taken care in making such a gesture at all (and such an inconsequential thing it truly was in the end) had simply pulled at her heartstrings.

Pushing the drawer closed, she moved on to the one beneath it. This one appeared double in size to the first, and as her fingertips tugged at its handle, she felt too, that it'd may as well be double in weight. She couldn't dare to even guess at what manner of chaos she should expect to find within this second compartment.

Perhaps it'd been the excruciating sense of the listless loneliness the dead of night often brought that inspired within her such a longing for wonder. Or perhaps that pure, profound sense of mystery had taken hold of her nerves at last, drawing her hands like a puppet master's strings as it drove her heartbeat along to a most harrowing rhythm.

Or...perhaps (and most likely), it'd been the crashing swells and waves of the ongoing music in her ears, intensifying at the thrilling climax of the opus' second movement. How vivid the scenes of this excerpt had always been to envision in her mind. It'd been like the lost seafarers sailing against the wind into the eye of the storm. It'd been like the final ascent of the greatest of summits of the most considerable heights. It'd been like staring into the face of the dark unknown, daring to peer into the void, to tread through its boundaries of nothingness in search of every single thing there ever was to find. And here she'd been, standing on one side of these same borders as she reached across the threshold. With such soaring melodies filling the senses, how could one help but be carried away by the breath of its essence? Its ardor and zeal? Oh, how fantastical this moment had felt...how exhilarating...how...

...Goodness, how melodramatic.

Lana couldn't help but roll her eyes at the stupendous absurdity of her own heavy-handed imaginings. Almighty Force—such apprehension over a simple file cabinet. She sighed in wry laughter as she proceeded to haul the heavy drawer open.

Twenty-two minutes and fifty-five seconds.

All the crashing, racing sounds of the orchestra fell to silence once again as Lana's brightened gaze peered into the void of the unknown. How peculiar the treasures it'd yielded were. There'd been but only two objects that made up the contents. The first—a small, flat, boxy object of some manner. Beneath it lied the second—a thick, bound...almost like a massive volume of some sort.

Lana's brow furrowed in curiosity as she reached to pick up the smaller item set atop the other. Only upon closer inspection in the dark did she come to realize what it was.

"A picture frame..." she uttered, noting the hinged leg on its backing. Shifting her chair to catch more light from the illuminated kitchen space, she flipped it around to take a look.

Her breath had nearly halted once she'd gazed at the image held within the plain black frame. She'd racked her mind again and again and could not recall where and when this photograph could have possibly been taken. But she'd recognized the scene—the setting, the table, the chair in which she'd sat. She'd recognized her attire—the white sheath dress (now bearing the immortalized stain of red wine that she never could quite clean away completely), the cream coat draped over her chair, her caramel cloche hat set on the corner of the table.

When did he...?

Lana replayed the events of that night, retraced the minutes and the seconds backwards and forwards, but she simply couldn't comprehend. She peered back into the photo, back at herself. Her face. Her body language.

No, he was sitting right in front of me...

She appeared quite content, albeit rather adrift in whatever thoughts she might have had at that moment (which, she admitted inwardly, she couldn't quite recall). The more she dwelled on it, the less of a wonder it'd become that she hadn't noticed when this shot was...

...The photographer.

The flashes had gone off in the scenes unfolding in her memory. Yes, she'd recalled that lively man and his novel and rather antiquated camera. How he'd floated between the tables, entertaining the many dining patrons about. He never did seem to pass by theirs as far as she could remember.

Try as she might, she simply couldn't piece enough of that night together to figure this end of its story. No, something quite else about that night had been the imprinted vision she could relive and retell again and again. As the focus of her eyes drifted afar at the incendiary tenderness the very memory could still conjure within her, they caught sight once again of the strange blemished spot at the very edge of the console. Her sights glowed with the beginnings and ends of all the inward, floating thoughts coming together as she narrowed her sights—first at the peculiar vacant space, then back at the small, frozen vignette held in her two hands. And they, too, began to drift. It hadn't even become a fully-formed conscious thought yet, when her small hands set the missing puzzle piece back into its rightful place, as though it'd been the most natural thing to do. The unfinished canvas now filled. The anomaly reconciled.

Lana's lips parted at the breath drawn by this most tender epiphany. Even if it was completely senseless, completely baseless to feel this way, she couldn't banish away the irrevocable tinge of guilt. As though she'd wrongfully intruded upon some sacred, private realm of Theron's. As though such an act would give him every grounds, every purpose to spurn her. And though every part of her that held any reason and sense knew that he wouldn't, that he would never, she knew deep inside that her perceived offense lied in the simple notion—that these had all been stories he himself had yet to reveal to her. For what reason, to what end, she couldn't possibly comprehend. And she'd now single-handedly all but spoiled it entirely, a violation that could not in any permissible way be undone.

It'd almost been too much then, so staggering that it'd left her no chance to even consider his own infringement against her wishes—that no photo, no holorecording, no shred of any record be taken of them together. All for obvious reasons in her mind, and she'd indicated this expressly, which they had agreed to without debate.

Yet here, held in her very hands lied the undeniable proof that he did not keep his promise. And even in light of his small untruth, she found herself utterly incapable of even the slightest bit of discontent toward him for it. Of all secrets he could possibly keep from her, it had been this.

Her present musings sought to replay and retrace the very motions Theron himself had taken in this very space, to gather what intentions could possibly have led his decisions. Where he'd taken great care to clear this corner of clutter and non-essentials, even so far as removing the single object of his utmost endearment from it altogether, though only so in afterthought—in afterthought of accommodating her—she'd reversed it all back to its natural, intended state. An accidental, unwitting path it had been, but its symmetry, as she could now perceive and realize, could only have been but by design. It was as all stories must go. Movements and motions toward meaning. Beginnings coming full circle to beget newer, greater cycles.

Lana's heart grew heavy as she lamented what thoughts must have crossed his mind when his hand reached for this simple little thing. How he must have known what it represented. How reluctant he must have been to bury it away in a place so dark and secluded for reasons he surely must have resented. All because she had asked it of him.

'All you need do is ask, and it shall be yours.'

What a contemptible irony. The rueful tears began to well at her eyes, and in her rebellion, she banished them away by the cuff of her sleeve. The Force knew she had deserved so little from them. Her sights, now addled by those unwelcome tears, drifted and spotted again the forgotten second item still lying at the bottom of the drawer. It'd been enough of a sight to overwhelm her with the impulse to know—what else to learn of this? To learn of him? What else of the stories to be told? There'd been so little thought behind it when her small hands lowered to reach deep into the compartment for the only other object he'd thought to stow away. Once her fingers found the thick edges, she recognized it instantly to be some kind of bound book. Hauling it from the compartment, she knew that it'd been the bulk of the cabinet's load. Setting it onto her lap, she found herself hesitating for another moment before turning her chair toward the light again.

An album.

Lana brushed her hand over its embossed cover. It was plain, but she could tell it'd hidden many layers of years upon years within, if there'd been anything to discern from its weathered surface. Ordinary as it appeared to be, there'd been something inexplicably telling about it beneath her fingers, that this was a treasure that could only belong to Theron Shan. Yes. It was unmistakable.

Her eager little fingers trailed along the edges of the cover, but they did not dare lift it to reveal the contents within. She tightened her lips before turning a wary glance through the dark toward the door where its keeper lay sleeping, as though the very intent would rouse him awake any second. The stillness remained unchanged. And why shouldn't it?

She parted her lips with a quiet breath of guarded anticipation until her decision was made. Like a precious stolen child, she clutched her bounty in the tightened embrace of her arms as she crept back to the table beneath the kitchen's light.

# # #

Awaking to an empty bed, he'd taken every care to be silent as the grave as he rose in search of his wayward guest. He knew she should've heard when he passed through the threshold of his bedroom door. He knew she should've spotted him within even the most elusive corner of her eyes as he crossed the dark of the empty expanse between them. He knew she should've felt his idling presence as he lingered just beyond the reach of the scant light. How many seconds, how many minutes he'd stood spying on her, even he'd lost count. But he dared not stir, so captivated by the simple enthrallment of her affectionate regard for each and every little photograph strewn and lain in maps along the surface of the table before her.

He'd been discreet to tread only until the ends of the shadows, standing in his motionless vigil behind its covers. Such a snoop his guest was, he mused with a faint smile. Like a nosy little delinquent child. And as no soul with even a portion of a heart could possibly bear any ire toward a child's purity, there'd been no trace of it to be found in his entire being before a sight like this. Torn between coaxing her back to bed (as was natural to do in the case of nearly all young, restless children), and leaving her be to indulge her floating wonders and curiosities, Theron could only release an indecisive sigh. Slight as it was, it came to be his unwitting misstep—just enough of a ripple against the still air to disturb the idyllic reverie.

"Theron—" Lana gasped in the instant of her merest notice of his presence. Her startled hands inadvertently shuffled at the photos lain on the table as she nervously blinked.

"I... I'm sorry, I just—I couldn't sleep," she uttered, stumbling over her words like a child caught in the mischief of her own doing. Too flustered to meet his eyes, she quickly hastened to collect the photos she'd known well she had no permission to view. "I'll put it away immediately."

Giving the back of his neck a lazy scratch, Theron paced into the kitchen's light toward the table. Lana thinned her lips abjectly as she peered up at him. It'd been clear by the languid strides of his steps and dulled expression that he'd only recently awakened. He did not appear to be upset by her meddling, but it didn't assuage her guilt any bit to now realize she'd also managed to disturb his sleep. Only once he'd dropped into the chair opposite of her did her unease begin to subside. Though she'd been familiar with how volatile Theron's temperament could be at its worst (and the deprivation of sleep was never anything to help with it), she simply couldn't be sure of how to conduct herself then. Without a word, she watched him tentatively for any evidence of unspoken disapproval.

Teetering at the edge of her anxiousness, Lana nearly jumped at the swift contact of Theron's hand. It'd taken her suddenly, since her uncertain gaze remained fixed on his own, seemingly in search of all the vestiges of discontent that had been entirely absent from him.

In light of the visceral and rather uncharacteristic trepidation written all over her composure, he'd given but a slightest, wily little glance as he reached across the table. Though it would seem that his lighthearted intentions had gone completely unrealized, feeling her tense rather noticeably the moment he brushed his hand over hers. Masking his ingratiating grin beneath his feigned listlessness, he cleverly snatched away the photo clutched in between her stiffened fingers.

"...I don't know the last time I took a look at these," he murmured in warming fondness, gazing at the small piece of memory in his hand. The smile worn on his face seemed to embody a mixture of affection and lament. He'd forgotten the sensation of peering into these little vignettes of his past, and in this moment, he was both glad for being reminded of the intrinsic sentiments they so easily brought forth, and somewhat disheartened that he had neglected them for as long as he had. They were all pieces of him, after all. What sort of man he would become if he were to ever forsake the most meaningful facets and layers of his being.

Like the Jedi. Like Satele.

He would sooner wither away into the void than willingly sacrifice these parts of himself. Even in the face of oblivion, he could at least walk to his end knowing he had existed as himself in his entirety. And it had been for this indomitable self-awareness that Theron was eternally grateful for never having become a Jedi. Where their Order would have deemed such a fate ill-fortuned, he'd come to realize it had truly been a blessing by the Force itself, if he had ever been granted one.

With only half a heart, he laid the photo back down atop the disorganized pile on the table. "Come on. Let's get back to bed," he urged Lana gently, "I can clean this up in the morning."

No harm done, it'd seemed. But his dismissive intonations, no matter how delicate, only served to dampen her heart even more so.

"Theron, wait," she called to him as he rose from his chair. Her small voice had been enough to halt him completely. "Not yet. Please...?"

How rueful her eyes had been when he looked to her. And he couldn't exactly be sure as to why. "Lana, it's late—"

"—I know. I just..."

Her brows furrowed as she lowered her eyes in search of her words. The sudden thought of what sank so deeply within her depths now took full hold of her heart. She'd avoided its lingering presence all night. She'd banished away its somber pall during their time shared together, refusing to be reminded of how brief it was to be. They'd both known well enough already.

"It's my last night here. My last night with you. For who knows how long."

Her voice had become brittle once the words sounded in the air. There'd been such a finality to them, now hearing it spoken so plainly. And now, she had no heart left to will away all the lament that they bore.

"I just..."

The image of her dearest mother came to mind. How gentle and loving her words had been to her on their last night. How could she have known then? All Lana thought to do was be a good and obedient little girl to Mama. To do as she was asked.

"Please. Just don't...don't tell me to go back to bed."

All she'd wanted was to be near her. To see her smile and be happy again. To make more stories with Mama.

"I don't want to sleep it away."

She blinked and lowered her gaze, frowning at the familiar feeling of unwanted tears welling at their corners. These had been the words she'd wished she had spoken to Mama that night. If only there'd been enough courage in her little child's heart to do so.

Lana willed herself to meet Theron's eyes. "...Please."

She'd already had him the moment her voice called for him. She didn't need to plead with him to do this simple thing for her, but she had anyway. Of course he couldn't refuse her. Not when she asked it of him. And never when her heart was ailing. It'd been clear there was something lying deeper beneath her despondence, but it'd been enough for her to remind him again that it was indeed their final shared night then. For how long, neither of them could possibly be certain. He understood, and he'd been convinced—he, too, did not want to sleep their last night away. If such a small thing as his mere presence would lift her waning spirit, he would gladly stay as she asked.

"You haven't even gone through them all yet, have you?" His question came with a tender humor as he sat back down in the chair.

Lana smiled softly in gratitude at his response. Her hands hovered over the scattered photos before them, strewn across the tabletop when she'd been in such a haste to collect them earlier.

Silently, he reached across the table for the album sitting on her end, drawing it back toward the center between them. He then tapped his fingers on its hardbound cover.

"Flip to the end."

She glimpsed the playful reticence beneath his otherwise patient countenance. A plainspoken invitation. Such a thing could only mean mischief with him, she'd come to learn. What a master of this tenderhearted artifice he was. With some few sparse lines, he'd managed to seize both her fascination and uncertainty—just the very things to make her forget her sorrows, even if only for the moment.

Her hands paused over the bound cover, lingering for only as long as her eyes had on him before she proceeded to do as he prompted. Her slender fingers flipped through the multitude of pages, then by the tens of pages, bit by bit until her sights stilled over the recurring images of a face she'd least expected to find among the sea of others. The focus of her discerning gaze then shifted to the settings captured within the frames, soon recognizing from when and where this set of photos had been taken. It had been unmistakable.

"...This is...Dantooine...?" Lana murmured in wonder. She recalled this trip to mind with a fleeting whisper of a smile. It had been some months ago now, but she'd been pleased to know that the memory still remained fresh in her heart as she gazed upon the still-frames, arranged before her like an unfolding story in sequence.

Lana simply couldn't believe this sight. She'd been both astonished and entranced by this proof of his very deliberate and very meticulous deception. He had completely broken their agreement, after all. Detoured quite out of the way to do exactly the opposite of the single thing they agreed not to do. This had taken a great deal of diligence to achieve. So naturally, Lana couldn't find it in herself to feel even a trace of any displeasure she had every liberty to feel. And of course, of all men, only Theron Shan could manage to get away with slighting a Sith Lord so brazenly.

She peered back at him to see how beyond unapologetic he'd been for it. No. If anything, this jackass of a fearless man appeared to be quite smug about it, even. Lana could not in earnest tell if the warmth filling her cheeks had been because of the sheer, overwhelming affection she'd felt for his little secret, or if it'd been her equally teeming desire for retribution for being so thoroughly played by him of all people. The very sentiment had been just as sickening as it'd been sweet, and never before had she wanted so much to kick him clear in the head for it.

One by one, each of the pages upon pages of these photos led her to retrace the steps of this certain memory. It seemed as though he'd captured every waking hour of the entire fortnight they'd spent together then. Or, at least, he'd captured her in these moments' frames. She couldn't even fathom how or when he had managed to do so. And these had all certainly been candids, caught during only the most opportune moments in between words, glances, and smiles. She had been at the focus of every shot, while her own lied anywhere else but on the photographer or his lens. And there'd been something surreal about all of it. To see herself through the eyes of another like so. To be the object of focus, of reverence, of a seeming wonder that she couldn't even begin to imagine had been deserved in the slightest on her part. What a vantage point it'd been. She'd come to almost shy away from looking anymore the longer she'd gazed, yet there'd spoken something so simple and raw through the images that drew her heart deeper and deeper into the world behind them. Nothing about it had been imagined. This was no fantasy, no fiction.

...Here, one shot of her strolling down a lane between the rows of sunflowers in Dantooine's golden fields. Her face turned ahead, away from where Theron had been trailing from behind. The bright heads of the flowers high atop the stalks, her yellow locks, the skirt of her gauzy, sunlit dress—all of it swayed and billowed in the same direction south of the sunset along the horizon. Right, she remembered, the breeze had been much stronger than she'd thought. Theron had warned her. And she'd lost her matching scarf to the wayward winds for her unmindful nonchalance.

...Another one, of her resting by a creek side as she knelt to the ground in reach of something—a peculiar crystalline rock of some sort, she recalled. Theron must have been seated on the fallen tree trunk she vaguely remembered lying some paces away. The rock now sat in a little souvenir box, displayed on a shelf back home in her apartment. Citing the area's close proximity to the Crystal Cave, Theron had suspected it may have held traces of Adegan crystal in its contents. She never did find a chance to solve its mystery in the time since then.

...And yet another, one of her sprawled along the lounge chair in their room rented at a local inn. It'd been taken on the afternoon they'd decided to spend away behind their locked door, when the day's heat had grown too unbearable to endure beyond the comfort of their room's walls. It was midday, she could tell, judging from the vivid orange light blazing through the window, softened by the veil of its sheeted curtains. And it'd been the hour of day she'd chosen to take a nap on that lounge chair. How unkempt she'd looked in that still frame. She hadn't even bothered to change out of her sleeping clothes that day. Her hair in tangles, unbrushed. One arm draped over her face, and loosely clutched in the other, a copy of The Traveler's Historical Hologuide to Khoonda. The worldly vision of sloth itself in the form of a laggard, disheveled woman...hardly a beauty for the eye of any beholder. Why, in all the Force's name, Theron would choose to immortalize this image of her, she simply couldn't comprehend.

Perhaps that had been it, then. There was no delusion of fantasy in the stories told from these photos. There was no arcane secret to interpret. No esoteric thought to illustrate, no enigma to resolve. Merely life, captured onto a single piece of printed paper. Four inches by six inches. Such an archaic little novelty it'd been, yet it'd come as no wonder how such things still existed, hardly changed over the millennia's succession of mortal innovation.

"Theron...I don't understand. Why would you keep all of these photos stored away like this?" Lana's faint voice sounded through the silence at last. Even as she gently placed the print she'd been holding back down, her gaze didn't drift from the sea of images lain before her. She simply couldn't understand. A person who kept so many remnants of his life and memories did not put forth such effort simply to hide them.

"Not a single one to be found. Anywhere."

All the pieces of his heart. Why...? Why is it that he conceals it all like so? Even here, within the safety of the walls of his home. Certainly, there'd been traces of his habitation about. Evidence that simply told of some man's tenancy. But among them, not one distinguishing piece of his identity to be seen.

Theron lowered his eyes as he sincerely considered an answer to this. It'd taken but only several passing seconds. With his realization came such clarity, and his voice and gentle countenance brought forth his spirit in entirety, free of any hesitation or doubt.

"There's one."

The single exception.

Lana's eyes followed the line of his thoughtful gaze back toward the shadowed corner where his desk lied, where she could still see the faint outline of the plain black frame standing at its edge.

"Only one," she echoed with a somber trace of a smile. "Why only one... " her voice trailed on as her eyes drifted back over the countless prints between them, "...when there are a thousand others like it?"

Theron trailed his hands over each of the photos before him, bringing forth all the nostalgia's warmth and sentiment by a mere finger's touch as he took each of them into hand for a passing glimpse. One glimpse was all that was needed, and in an instant, the world of words and emotions composed itself into the memories resurfacing from the idle depths in his heart, given new breath, new life from slumber.

Why only one...?

He wasn't sure he could provide her with an answer. All he'd known was that it had been the natural thing for him to do. To protect all that was closest to him. To store it all safely away, ensure that they would never be lost to the void. That they would never be disturbed by the world's relentless movements and machinations.

So why only one?

"Sorry."

There'd been no shred of earnestness to be found in his half-assed mumble and the ingratiating little smirk he could barely contain.

Lana furrowed her eyes at what jest he meant to throw next. "About what?" she asked dubiously.

"For breaking the promise."

"...Promise?" She narrowed her eyes, sincerely clueless as to what he was getting at.

He glanced up at her from the photos, and his smile swelled. Here had been yet another moment of perfection to capture, he thought to himself, seeing the look on her face. Something between the welling gloom of solicitude and the haze of sheer, mind-boggling bewilderment. It had been moments like these when Theron knew he had her. Moments that had been too few and much too far in between.

"You know. The photo thing. That time you flipped the crap out when I tried to take a selfie of us."

Lana's lips parted in incredulousness. "I did not..."

'Flipped the crap out'...? She'd been beside herself at the casual bias he'd colored his recounting of this incident with. But how experience had sharpened her against his schemes by now. When she realized how thoroughly she'd been baited, she paused to collect her wits. She eyed him as though she'd held a dare behind her thinning lips.

"You're saying I overreacted?" she inquired calculatingly.

"You practically slapped the comlink out of my hand. Yeah."

"I...grabbed it from your—why are you—?" she sputtered before stopping herself once more.

Clever little smart-ass, aren't you?

"...I know what you're doing," she calmly threw back. "And you're avoiding my question."

"It wasn't rhetorical?"

"Theron."

Oh, that infectious, smarmy little grin again. For as long as Lana lived, she would never allow him to know just how irresistible that crooked smile of his was. And coupled, then, with his gravelly laughter? That low-toned snicker that came from deep in his gut when he'd been thoroughly entertained. And all of it at her expense? No. This was unacceptable. This would not do at all.

"Hate to break it to you," he spoke between his broken chuckling, "but honestly, I never really even cared."

Theron gave her an innocent glance, a brief assurance of his best intentions in spite of his unrepentant audaciousness. His countenance then softened with his simmering laughter before he regarded her once again in earnest. His eyes first looked to her own, then on to someplace distant, far beyond the physical borders surrounding them. Lana had seen this look of his many times before. The wonder it'd brought on could be likened to that of another's clairvoyant gaze into the spectral bounds of the Force itself. The enlightening marvel held in his distant sight always became her own when she looked to him. If only she could see, too, with her own eyes what it was that he'd seen. What it was that he knew.

"When I looked across the table that day, I saw a beautiful moment. I didn't care what we agreed on. Being careful. Discreet. I just...I didn't care," he spoke in even breaths, reenvisioning what it was to be back in that very moment, seated at the table in that restaurant across from her again.

"I got home, got the image printed. I was gonna put it in the album with the rest of these, and that was gonna be that. But...I don't know. When I looked at the picture of you, there was just...something I felt. Something inside I just couldn't shake off. Something...comforting. A presence, almost. Which is weird, I guess. I mean, I get to see you and be around you and talk to you enough. It isn't like you're ever really gone, gone, you know?"

Lana watched all the subtle shifts and turns of his features. The colors and tones of his inflections. Every natural little tug and pull of his lips as he spoke. His words meandered with the winding course of his memory. Flowing forth, guided only by obscurity and incomprehension, they were torrential and unfettered like the currents of his unbounded thoughts and emotions. It'd been an adoring thing to bear witness when Theron searched to find clarity in the sentiments he endeavored so wholeheartedly to express. He was never so artful with his words, but one could always rely on his intention with them to be most genuine. To read the language behind his words—what was deciphered in his gaze, his voice, his movements—had been an art in itself, one she'd grown profoundly enamored with commanding as consummately as she had.

"And it wasn't about...that night specifically. It wasn't...some substitute for you or anything. No, that's not it. But something... Something...calm? Quiet...easy..." he continued vainly to describe to her. It'd been a mix of things. A tangled amalgam of familiarity. Something that felt so simple. Too simple. Even for words.

"Warm," Theron breathed with a fond, airy gaze. "Like you."

Between their roving thoughts lied two open, awaiting hearts. It hadn't seemed like he'd quite resolved all he had to say just yet, and she had no heart to intrude on his flowing musings until he'd grasped it all himself. She watched his wandering eyes intently, eagerly anticipating his next breaths, only to have her converging enthrallment dissolve at the sound of his own amused scoff. He shook his head as he calmed his shaking frame from the bout of tender laughter overtaking him.

"How stupid do I sound right now? I've got a photo of you that reminds me how it feels like when you're around...'cause the photo of you...reminds me of you," he wryly recounted what now seemed to be the painfully obvious.

Lana watched as he frowned and furrowed his brows, still vexed by his own nebulous, roundabout reasoning. When he'd found no satisfaction with anything he could manage to say, he shook his head again and sighed.

"No, it's... It's not just that. It's not a 'memory' thing. It's a...'you' thing." He dwelled on his words further before he steered his gaze back to meet hers. "An 'us' thing."

There it'd been. She could see its embers in his eyes now.

"And...I guess I...I just didn't have the heart to put it away with the rest. I couldn't. I didn't want to lose that feeling, you know?"

And yet, he could never find it in himself to do the same with the others. As enticing as the peace brought on by those very sentiments had become to him, Theron could never let down his caution completely. Even against all the most precious things that had embodied all the light and grace of his entire existence.

The Light, too, was just as capable as its opposite of overwhelming, and deep down, he'd been afraid of what it'd meant for him to relinquish himself to it all entirely. Though he could number all the times in his life when he had born witness to the greatest of the Force's very own providence, he'd never been a man of such faith to commend the whole of his being unto the hands of another, less so that of an entity he could never fully grasp. That lied just too far beyond where he'd dare to tread, too tethered by the discipline of his own single-minded resilience and self-reliance.

But this had been one concession he'd been unsparingly willing to place his trust in. What she could offer him was beyond faith. It'd been something living and breathing, tangible as his own pulsing heart. And it'd been something he could take and shape as he willed. Something he could touch and embrace. Something he could claim exclusively, before passing it forth yet again as his very own.

Staring across the table, Theron couldn't quite read past Lana's quiescent gaze. In a wayward attempt to ease himself of his own unsettling anxiousness, he flashed a clumsy little smile as he broke away from her eyes once more.

"Yeah, I'm...I'm probably barely making any sense, am I?" he groaned, rubbing his hand across his face in exasperation. "Ugh, fuck me. It's too damn late—or...early, I dunno—for me to come up with any half-assed thought. And now you got me all awake..." Theron continued to mindlessly mutter between his fingers. "...Well, barely. But still. I'm gonna have a hell of a time trying to get back to sleep at this rate."

Too absorbed in his own wallowing frustration, Theron failed to notice when she'd reclaimed her comlink from the corner of the table, tapping blissfully away at its keys. She then set it down, propped on its side at the table's edge, taking some brief seconds to position it just to her liking, centered somewhere across from where he'd sat.

"Hm. Well, it's comforting to know I'll have company, then," Lana responded in a leisurely hum as she tapped another key once before rising from her chair. In two and a half paces, she brushed by his side, sneaking her hand across his shoulder as she lowered herself to meet his eye-level.

Having swept by entirely beyond his notice, Theron nearly jumped at the contact. He stilled when he felt her fingers reach for the dark fringes of hair at his neck.

"Whoa, h-hey... Lana, when did—what are you—" he managed to sputter while he straightened in his seat, watching as she brushed aside his fumbling hands with little effort before slipping into his hold. The feather-light graze of her fingertips across his skin had been enough to leave him in spellbound silence before she softly drew him by her delicate hands toward her lips.

In the following seconds came the faint flash from the pin-sized light from Lana's comlink sitting across the table. Meaning to give his compliant lips a playful little tease, she indulged in a full breath, prolonging their kiss before finally releasing him.

Theron peeled open his dazed eyes to the exquisitely bemused smirk she now bore. There'd been an air of elusiveness and intrigue in her regard before she fluttered away and out of his arms with the same leisured grace. He watched as she plucked the device from the tabletop, tinkering away with it as she padded across the tiles back again. This time, she'd unabashedly taken full liberties to make herself comfortable in his lap, unburdened by his lack of any invitation.

"Wh—hey..." he groaned as she nestled herself well within his personal space. Beneath the sweet and innocent caprice of her smile, Theron could spot her true intent in all its shameless delight. Go ahead, her lips read, I dare you to do something.

In most occasions, he would meet her challenge without reservation or clemency. But his impulses to retaliate had been far eclipsed by his sheer curiosity of her wonderfully peculiar antics at the moment. He offered her but a plain, insipid gaze as she eased one arm around his shoulder, completely unfazed.

"Comfortable?" he asked her with all the volumes his exalted sarcasm could muster.

Beaming, she nodded with a childlike exuberance. Without revealing a word, Lana minded the little device once again, tapping through the many menus and keys to access its functions. He mused over the nimble shift of her fine-tuned focus until he'd been tempted to peek at the screen of her device to see for himself what it was she was up to. The sudden sound of a digital ping then caught his ear, drawing his attention away to its source tucked away in the folds of his trouser pocket.

With a final swipe of the finger across its screen, Lana then set her comlink back down on the table, the same smile returning to her lips as she turned to him.

Theron eyed her suspiciously.

"It sounded like you just received a message. Aren't you going to check it?"

Wary of taking his eyes off her, he reached into his pocket to retrieve his own comlink. On its screen showed the notification for a newly received message, as expected. With several taps of the keys, Theron opened it, his breath halting once he set his eyes on the simple image file illuminated on the device.

Lana watched him in her gentle anticipation. He'd grown quiet in his seeming reflection as he stared at the picture before him. Where her hand met the skin of his flesh, she could feel the rush of his pulse falling to rest, when only moments ago, it'd been racing at the tumult of their teasing games.

"Hm. What is it, I wonder...? Something sent so late in the night," she mused benignly. "Let's have a see here." She reached for his hand to steer the little screen over for a view.

How sweetened her tones had been to humor him like this. There'd been no trace of mischief or mockery at play in the least. It'd been so simple and so quick. Only now had it dawned on him the implications of what she'd just given him. In light of all that had been said between them, she'd done this, all of her own volition.

"Well? What do you think?" Lana asked in a barest breeze to his ear.

He couldn't turn his eyes away in marveling awe of them. An immortalized still frame. The first and only one of its kind. His gaze drifted away once broken of its spell, only to coincide with her own. He could only mirror what he'd seen in her countenance then. A gentle regard. A plainspoken light of a smile. Quiet reverence.

"Looking forward to even better ones," Theron answered at last.

Sharing in his sentiment, Lana tightened her arms around him and buried her face into his unruly mop of dark hair. They'd only been asleep for little more than three hours or so, and it'd already become this wild, unkempt mess. She could still catch the hints of his cologne, same as the lingering traces in the collar of the borrowed shirt she'd been wearing. She laughed aloud all of her most endearing amusements then, stifled into muffles by the thick of his mane.

"One day," she mumbled against his scalp. Lifting her head, she rested her chin at his crown. "When the day comes... When you've grown tired of me, and you've moved on..."

Theron furrowed his brow at the morbid implications of her jest and shuffled free from her smothering embrace. "Hey. Come on," he urged with a dubious smile, "cut it out."

She laughed again, continuing with her hypothetical. "You can look back on this. A souvenir."

He shook his head ardently, a definitive 'no.'

"Something to remember us by."

Theron gave a snort, thoroughly bemused by her droll pessimism. "Some faith you've got there."

"I'm a pragmatist. Remember? Isn't that what everyone claims?"

For a moment, his thoughtful little grin lingered. But his silence hung long enough for Lana to begin foolishly doubting the harmlessness of her humor just then.

"I was just thinking," he began, taking a more plaintive tone.

Lana frowned at this and spoke endearingly in a bid to raise his spirits again. "Theron, I was only joking."

"How...do you feel about nude photos?"

There'd only been stark silence on her parted lips, coupled by her bleak, incredulous stare.

"I think they'd make way better souvenirs."

She gave an offended scoff, overwrought with more disappointment with herself over anything else for having been so easily played by the ruse of his seemingly pensive lull.

"Or we could make a holorecording of us—"

"—All right, that's enough of that," she quipped, refusing to even let him complete the filthy thought. "I'm rather disappointed in you, Theron. I'd expect this degree of indecency from the likes of Agent Balkar."

He pressed his swelling grin to the hollow of her neck. With her every chastening remark, his arms locked tighter around her waist as he resisted the vulgar impulses of his laughter to spare her any more of his indignities.

"No, stop," she mewled against him, helplessly unable to feign her outrage through the involuntary giggles he wrested out of her. "Theron..."

Lana squirmed in his arms in a vain attempt to loosen from his suffocating embrace. When it'd seemed clear that he wouldn't budge even a hair, she slumped over his shoulder in defeat as she dropped her head against his own. She gave a final sigh and mumbled to his ear, "You're awful, you know that?"

His silent, affirmative nod was all it'd taken to break what was left of her composure, leaving her defenseless against her next bout of exasperated laughter. When she heard something of a murmur out of him, she eased away to hear him speak properly. "What?"

"I said...you're wearing my shirt."

"I am."

What little regard she held for any insinuation he might have had, jest or not, was simply incredible.

"I don't like it. It's too big, and it smells like you. I looked through everything you had, and nothing was to my liking," she declared pompously, channeling to her words and her glances all the narcissism she'd ever known of the many other Sith Lords she'd encountered.

"Yeah. You're real comfortable with snooping through my stuff now, I see." He steered his eyes pointedly at his open album and jumble of photos still strewn across the table. "Dirty Imperial spy..."

Lana raised her brows at the cheeky insult.

"Says the shameless Republic agent who'd degrade himself enough to seduce and sleep with a Sith Lord...then proceed to coordinate an 'assignment' to some world in the middle of nowhere called Dantooine in order to vacation with his illicit lover in order to further his ploy...even going so far as to employ underhanded tricks like keeping an entire library of compromising photographs, no doubt to emotionally manipulate and extort her into compliance..."

Theron resolved to appear as unfazed as he could in the face of her flawless wit. To succumb first was to forfeit this match, and he'd been far too petty to undermine their unending game of tit for tat even now.

"You're pretty good at putting a bullshit spin on things."

Lana's teeming smile glowed with her playful artifice. "I've been told I have a talent for imagining the most inconceivable stories. But...it's all quite preposterous when you really think about it, isn't it?" she hummed, letting a small hint of a giggle slip. "In what world do such things like that happen?"

Beneath the satire had been something quite resonant and profound that began to temper Theron's spirited humor, ever the man always at the ready to extinguish the embers before they'd ever have a chance of igniting. He would let nothing of his burn away into ash. Not under his vigilance.

Gaze drawn to the distant fringes of her contemplation, Lana began to ponder on a notion that begged at her innermost thoughts. She briefly let her gaze pass over the photos once more, collecting her wits bit by bit until she'd no longer been too timid to inquire on this loosened thread within the tapestry.

"May I ask you a question?"

That occasional little quirk of hers, he mused. It'd been a curious habit he'd known of her for some time now. "You know—you always ask...when you wanna ask about something."

"What?"

"For someone who's usually really articulate, you're also really redundant sometimes," he teased.

Hardly aware of what it was he'd been heckling her about this time, she responded with a tenuous smile. "What do you mean? An honest attempt at...some conversationalcourtesy, and it still earns me your undue ridicule?" she countered, her nimble wits adeptly deflecting the focus of his light-hearted jab.

"What...? Man, leave it to a Sith to put a spin on a compliment."

"A 'compliment'? Oh, so you were being facetious."

Incredulous, he sputtered in laughter at this unbelievable gift of hers. "Okay, would you just...stop?" He shook his head at her tightening lips—an ill attempt at taming her delight. "What? What do you wanna know?"

And just like that, at the adoring sound of his nagging tones, Lana seemed to lose command of her nerves again, withdrawing like a bashful child too shy to ask her most aching questions the moment the chance at last offers itself. She retreated from his expectant stare, looking back over the tabletop.

"You keep photos of every person of importance in your life..."

Among the multitudes, she'd spotted a scant few with faces of those even she could recognize.

"Your master. Jonas and Amy," she murmured, a flickering light of affection coloring her smile as she looked to each one, "Even Teff'ith."

"And a bajillion of you," he soundly added. Yet another who rightly belonged among this modest circle of those he'd cherished utmost. "Yeah, what about them?"

She'd taken a moment to look again. Just to be sure.

"Just about everyone is here. Save for...two faces I can think of that appear to be absent."

Unsure of who she might mean, Theron peered over her shoulder at all of his pictures. He knew each and every face that lied in this selective pool of memories. Anyone who had been worth committing to heart had been there, he knew.

"Have you ever wondered," Lana tread along the words carefully, her voice waning under the certainty in her mind of the faces she meant to invoke and what meaning it all might possibly have for him. "Ever considered, perhaps...including your mother and father?"

Theron grew still at the very mention of them. His arms stiffened where they'd held fast around her waist. His entire frame rigid in his silence. Such a visceral response. No words had even been necessary for her to glean how deeply sewn the emotions attached to these two people had been for him. She almost nearly regretted mentioning it at all, until the stirring in her conscience served to remind her just why exactly she was bringing this up.

"It's just," Lana quickly spoke before she even knew what to say. She closed her eyes to find her words. "Theron, there are times when I still..."

Still...

No. No words could come. There'd been so much inciting her heart to speak, only for her to find her resolve withering by the passing seconds of her failing silence. The window was closing, and this poor, pathetic little girl still couldn't find it in herself to overcome her senseless reticence.

Swallowing the lump in her throat back down into the pit of her stomach, she let out a resigned breath. "I'm just concerned."

Theron still had not stirred a hair. Had not uttered a whisper of a word. If he hadn't been holding her so tightly in his arms, she may have even wondered if he'd even been breathing at all. Lana didn't know what to make of it, but she propelled herself to speak anyway.

"Family is family. And...I suppose what I mean to say is," she lingered over every doubtful syllable forming on her tongue, afraid of any missteps. Afraid of making a tragic blunder of her fervent and aggravatingly inexplicable intentions. "It would be a terrible shame. To relinquish what chances there are before it...before even allowing yourself a brief glimpse—"

"—I have all the family I need..." Theron spoke at last, cutting over her fumbling words as if to spare her the daunting task of defining what it was her heart struggled so to divulge. Whatever it was, he'd been pretty sure he had a good sense of it himself. He locked his fingers together where they'd met around her waist and drew her closer against him. "...Right here in my hands."

The certainty in his words then. With Theron Shan, stubbornness and certainty came hand in hand. However that managed to work out. And it would be this certain stubbornness of his that would never fail to provoke her privately defiant nature. Only true heartfelt rebels could have pulled together what they had against the Revanites, when the whole of two opposite worlds had been pitted against them. And they'd both been proven rebels at heart. He—proudly and sincerely so, while she had always taken to a far less conspicuous manner of it. (Rebellious Imperials, after all, were rarely met with accolades or acknowledgements of any order. Unless they'd emerged triumphant in their endeavor, of course.)

"You're forgetting something about me."

Lana did not intend against him any defiance, but she would challenge him to reconsider. The greatest shame would have been an opportunity missed, and she would not settle this without having at least tried to dissuade him from it.

"Hadn't I been a chance you'd taken a great gamble on?" she boldly questioned him. A swift reminder. A piercing wake-up call guised in the dulcet voice only a paramour could conjure.

"...You weren't a gamble, Lana. It didn't take a leap of faith to stumble onto this."

Had this been his clever play on semantics again this time? Such certainty he'd committed to his words just then, but she couldn't imagine that he had always been so sure. She'd known Theron to always have been a careful and astute man. And above even that, he was always unnaturally talented at convincing others that he was, even when he had no idea what thoughts to think, much less what actions to take.

"An accident of circumstance, then," she revised her words with a gentle laugh.

In truth, Lana was rather surprised to hear him say this, knowing too well of his precariousness around her in the past—a direct repercussion of her own doing by no small measure. She'd been there to see all the light of his faith in her extinguished once, even now still unsure of how it'd been restored to his heart. If the words had come from any lips other than his very own, she would find every reason to disbelieve such a claim. But they were his words. Theron never once lied to her. His words were as good as a promise.

There'd been certain sentiments he wished to speak, to explain himself. All the humor had by now washed away, leaving nothing but utmost sincerity in his patient gaze. He didn't want to use words like "fate" or "destiny." They were contrived words that rickety old Jedi who were too out of touch with the rest of the galaxy around them used, ones that cheated out of any true explanation of anything. So what had this feeling been? The feeling that all of this had come together by some will, that it'd all fallen into place in exactly the right ways, however meandering and roundabout the pathways had been. Perhaps this was simply how things felt when they went right, like some strange, distorted perspective. (Most certainly one he had little familiarity with.)

Whatever this feeling was, it was very certainly never something he could shake off, finding himself thankful toward something for having Lana. For finding her. Or for her finding him. Whichever the case, there'd been something deeply underlying that he couldn't believe had been so simple as an 'accident of circumstance.' No, there'd been something that had drawn some sort of chain or link between them both, something that allowed them to be every bit as autonomous in walking their paths as it had guided them.

The more he considered it, the less it made sense to even try to articulate. What he had been certain of was the space shared between them. That he'd now come close enough to walk beside her, to take her by the hand as he did this very moment. And now that he'd felt her so firmly in his grasp, he determined never to let go.

No. To Theron, this could not have been an accident of circumstance in any iteration of the universe their lives could ever have existed in.

Through all the deepest reaches of contemplation his thoughts had exhausted, he could only manage a sigh.

"I…"

"—All I meant to say was…" Lana began over his single breath, meaning to stop him from deterring her from her pursuit of the very subject, "...just to take care not to let any good fortunes pass you by."

Her somber eyes drifted from their entwined hands at her lap back across each of the faces lain before her.

"Before you know it, the doors that have stayed open for so long might suddenly close," she continued in the barest tones. "What it's like to truly regret…" She swallowed, her heart lingering on these poignant thoughts. "It's one of the worst things you can feel. Because once it's there, there's no taking it back. And it stays with you."

Sure, his twenty-six odd years of being alive was bound to yield some regrets, but there'd been something far more profound he could sense from the kind she'd meant that moment. Buried at the innermost core from where she'd spoken, there'd been an old wound, still burning even after all this time. It hadn't been the burning of violence and flames, but that of the smoldering embers left behind in their wake. The kind that left no destruction, but had been still entirely capable of branding those who'd been foolish enough to reach their hands too close.

As a child, Theron was never one to shy away from the fire, no matter what warnings Master Ngani scolded him with. The foolish child had long grown into a foolish man who'd never quite outgrown his youth's folly, seemingly so innate of his being as though inherited by birth (just as his heart and will, too, assuredly had been). And as expected of his incorrigible simplicity, the man now withered to ashes from the sorrow of his living heart's remorse. (Should've listened and kept that hand of yours away from the fire, as his master would say to him countless times.)

The mere sight of the mournful despondence in Lana's waning countenance had marred his conscience. Here, his living heart bled in his very arms, and all he could do was feel sorry for all her pain. He'd take it all away, take it all unto himself if he could.

I'm so sorry you ever had to feel this.

He could sympathize and condole, but that had still been a leap away from truly understanding. As deeply as he wished to, if it would only ease the burden of her sorrows, he couldn't dare to pry, fearing it would only carve her wounds even deeper.

Theron sat patiently still, silent and in waiting for her. She hadn't stirred, hardly even breathed. Her crestfallen gaze hung heavily as her head had, letting her stray locks fall forward over her face. Her countenance was obscured like this, though he only ailed to think what volumes of somber notions there'd been to unravel even in her silence. No, he did not want to see her like this.

"...Theron," her brittle voice hardly managed to breathe.

He hated to see her like this.

"Just...be careful not to let it come to that."

Lana's shoulders rose as she quietly drew in all the air her being pined for, letting it all out in a fluttering sigh. She pursed her lips as she tried to blink away the prickling tears from her eyes, shrugging her hair away from them. With another refreshing breath, she gave a small, courteous laugh that did nothing to hide the gentle sniffs she'd taken to clear her nose. Another graceful sweep of her fingers to tame her unruly hair had only been a thinly veiled attempt to dry her dampening eyes. Theron couldn't figure why she still tried to hide from him like this, only to realize shortly after the fleeting thought that this was her gentle effort to cast away all the welling heartache once and for all.

Just a few mere moments, a few more breaths. As her gaze returned to meet his own—waiting so quietly, so patiently—so had her smile. Muted and subdued, but teeming at its core. In such ways, Lana had been every bit as simple as he was. No hidden meanings. No complications. Just purely her. Just Lana, smiling for him. Just Lana, all on her own, trying to banish away the sadness for him. He could remember a time not long ago when she could hardly bear to look him in the eyes when her heart had sunken so low, lost to the depths of despair. But she'd done this all on her own this time, never once reaching in search of his hand, for a lifeline to take hold of to pull her back up. She'd done it all herself this time, not without struggle or difficulty, but she'd done it. He wondered if she even realized it herself.

Only then in the clarity of her own self-reconstruction had he come to realize his own bearing on her conscience. It hadn't been deliberate, but even thoughtlessness could be as hurtful as intent, though he was certain she would never hold a single disparaging thought against him for it. For him to so selfishly shun the very notion of mothers and fathers in her face, when she had neither left to even consider.

You can be such an asshole sometimes...

Theron inwardly berated himself, but some things, some sentiments were simply too resolute to change. If only she would understand this and let it be, though he would keep his heart open just for her because she'd asked it of him. He returned her flicker of a smile with a brimming one of his own, gazing in marvel of all her abject perfection. Spotting a rogue lock still hanging just left of where she liked to part her hair, he reached over to tuck it behind her ear. It'd been then when he curiously glimpsed the small earpierce she'd seemingly been wearing, hidden beneath her mop of tresses the entire time. How convenient it'd been, he thought—a natural, timely distraction to recourse their conversation to other, less despondent matters.

He gave it a light tease of a tap. "Listening to something?"

Lana had long forgotten about her music by now. A cursory glance at the small screen of her comlink reminded her that the long track had been muted, though still running this entire time.

Forty-four minutes and twenty seconds.

Smiling, she clicked her earpiece off, keyed in some selections on her device, and set it down on the tabletop.

"My favorite part..."

Theron waited and listened with her. The audio began with the trailing sounds of a wind ensemble, sustained until its last fading measures. From the drawn, cavernous silence, the first sounds of a single violin began playing. A beautiful sound that seemed to dance between its notes seamlessly as it climbed higher and higher. He could even hear through the projected audio the vastness of the concert hall surrounding the soloist's performance. A phrase passed, and the lilts of the supporting harps sounded to frame the soloist. At its peak, the somber trails of the horns and winds carried in the undercurrent against the lifting violin, easing it as it drifted back to the middle, then the lower registers.

The melody wasn't entirely familiar to him, although he'd never had much of an ear for classical pieces like it. It'd been unmistakable though, that this was surely one of those famous pieces. The solo continued on for hardly a minute's time until its whispering close, sublime and quite beautiful in its simplicity.

Forty-six minutes and forty-four seconds.

Lana clicked to stop the track at the recording's final second and smiled, just as she always had listening to this piece to its end.

"Scheherazade."

Theron recognized the piece's name for that it was, but little beyond that.

"I didn't know you liked this old-timey classical stuff."

She considered it thoughtfully for a moment. "I suppose I like it all right. The genre, it...it's beautiful. But I don't listen to much of it, really. Perhaps only nights like these when I find it difficult to sleep..." Her eyes glanced back toward her comlink on the table. "And this piece—" she traced her fingers delicately over the device, "this recording—it holds some particular importance to me."

Lana's gentle expression seemed to embody a mix of peaceful longing then as the fleeting memories drifted in and away.

"This was the last concert my mother ever played in."

Theron was deeply surprised to learn this, as she'd never once spoken of her mother in all the vast conversations they'd shared. It'd been like a strange unspoken secret revealed at last. One so far out of mind that he hadn't even known had been a secret until its revelation. And now, he'd been filled with questions. Regarding the very woman who'd given birth to Lana Beniko, Theron had been swept by his curiosity.

"She was a musician?"

"A violinist," she spoke, turning to him with a smile painted over with a childlike pride. "That was her solo."

She lowered her voice with her gaze, now staring into the distance of her memories, all the multitude of times she'd listened to this recording. "A quiet finale...so beautifully played." Lana's love for this piece had been spoken not in so many words, but rather by her faintest pitch, the silent splendor of her reverence.

"My mother, she..."

As the remnants of her mother gathered into mind, she felt compelled for the first time in far too long to speak of her. The fragments never faded, stored and locked away in their individual pieces, held someplace where their ghosts might not rise (save for these kinds of silent, sleepless nights that welcomed their presence all too warmly.)

"...She was so lovely. A beautiful woman. But she hardly ever smiled. I never remembered her to be a very happy woman," she began to share with a plaintive resonance.

Lana found herself hesitant to say further while the stark memories that came with this unfurling vision of her mother drew forth. The woman in her memories always embodied a vision of beauty, but it'd been a cold image, one that held beneath its facade a profound sense of isolation. While she recalled of her mother a lovely and wonderfully talented woman, so too had she been every bit a desolate, withered soul. A certain aching sadness that no child, even one as exuberant as herself, could ever comprehend.

"She'd...suffered a degenerative affliction. One that slowly deprived her of her mobility." Clinical. Factual. Even then, the words were laced cold with such chilling finality.

It was what it was.

"It'd started in her extremities. I remember...suddenly one day, she could no longer walk. And as much as she fought the very idea, it inevitably came to affect her hands as well. Eventually, she could no longer play."

Somehow in his mind, Theron had imagined something particularly different in the woman who'd been her mother. Surely, Lana's resilience must have come from somewhere. Not this image of a fragile, dispirited soul.

"Is that how she died?" he asked gently.

Lana sighed. A wisp of a breath, as though resigned to the truth she'd lived so long to bury. "In a sense."

Theron felt her fingers tighten between his own. She didn't seem aware of it in the least.

"When she learned she could no longer play, she'd struggled through long bouts of depression. There was a time when she even refused to go anywhere beyond her room." Lana's lips lifted only fractionally, a shadow of a child's waning smile. "I'd asked her to come outside and play with me sometimes. Asked her to sit in the garden with me."

She turned her tear-filled gaze to meet Theron's own. Even as she'd come so close to weeping, her smile hadn't gone.

"...To tell me stories."

As the lament of these memories fought to subdue what trace of light and joy she could still grasp from them, her mask once again began to crumble. Yet even so, she'd faltered and refused to shatter entirely. Shaking her head, she continued to tell her mother's story.

"I couldn't even get her beyond her door. 'Perhaps another day, dearie,' she'd always say. And I knew she never meant it because she never could look at me when she made promises like that."

Just breathe.

Tightening his arms around her, he felt her do just that, as though heeding his guiding will by heart.

"Then one day...she'd taken some medicine, gone to sleep. And she never woke up."

If it would put a stop to her sorrow, Theron would've ended it there. But he willed everything deep within to stay himself. To remain silent. Respectful. Watchful as ever. She needed to finish. He would watch and catch her if she faltered, but these had been her steps to take, and he would let her finish them to the very last.

"Sometimes, I...I wondered if I...could've done more for her. I didn't even understand why she was the way she was. But I thought...perhaps I hadn't tried hard enough. To show her...to remind her...that she needn't be so sad."

For all her great effort to fight her tears, she could do little more to stop them from running.

"My father never kept many photos of anything. I was never certain as to why. Perhaps it was just too painful. But he had this recording. It'd been the most...genuine piece of her that he had left, I suppose..."

So this had been why. His photos. The absences of Satele and Jace Malcom. To Lana, it'd been a simple luxury to know one's parents were still alive at all, to know where and who they were. In reflection of his convenient and neglectful privilege came now the inescapable twinge of guilt. How he'd so easily forgotten that she no longer had the comfort of this certainty, all while having harbored such resentment and disdain toward his own. When Lana had known the comforts of her parents' love and care, she'd now lost it all to memory. In all honesty, Theron couldn't be sure what was worse, but he'd known better that this was no place for comparison. Her intention had only been to spare him any cause for regret by his own foolish squandering and nothing less.

Dearest Lana. Sweet and kindhearted in ways he was sure she herself did not fully realize. Thinking, as always, only of him, his interests, his emotional well-being. And as ever, he'd found himself marveled by her capacity for compassion and love—what he'd been convinced of had been a truly innate aspect of her very nature, in spite of what influence the Sith doctrines might have held over her upbringing. A veritable, undeniable thing that he was still unable to fathom how she could so easily and readily dismiss as if it were of no significance.

Instead of offering words, he merely clasped his hands around her waist, drawing her closer. He held her until they'd shared each other's warmth. He grazed his brow in the barest brush against her own until he felt the traces of her tears against his skin, proceeding to gently wipe them clear from her face altogether. None of that now. He pulled her closer until he enveloped her, until she curled herself into every shape and contour his body made for her (as though it were meant only for this and nothing else.)

She tucked her face away into his shoulder, hidden against the flesh of his neck. In measures, her small frame came to repose into the refuge of his own, arms lightened and entwined like a cradle, like solace, like love. Until there was only peace. Until they could feel their shared breaths. Their pulses. Their very beings.

In resonance, he breathed her in wholly. Shut his eyes as she'd done. Their fingers slowly unraveled—a singular action without a leader, without a follower. They morphed and danced in unison until they came palm to palm. One pair of small, delicate hands—gentle palms, a set of dainty fingers—lain flat against another beneath—this pair larger and rougher, yet unfathomably tender to the touch.

The tactile familiarity of the smaller hands were a memorized sense to their counterparts by now. Their size, their shape, their texture. All of it could be recalled at will. There'd been a certain artistry to that in itself. Surely, nothing even the most sophisticated engineering of cybernetics could possibly ever replicate. Even he, who'd come to rely on such to sustain his own mortal body, did not believe in its capability to do this.

Theron could do little more than simply imagine Lady Beniko's plight. Certainly, she would have regained function in her hands through the innovation of cybernetics, but she truly would never have been able to play her beloved violin again. Not in the way one's inborn soul was meant. But yes, even so—what if Lana's hands...? Of course... He would still love every bit of her, regardless of what was lost. And Lady Beniko surely must have been loved the very same.

And what if that which was lost had been one's own living soul?

But there's always more to live for.

Easy for anyone to say.

There'd been no point in pondering over the moral right of this tragedy. There was no way he, or anyone for that matter, could truly comprehend either face of it. It'd happened and gone, and Lana remained, both a casualty and creation of her mother's loss. And she was there now. He held her in his arms, touched her with his two hands. In them now, he held the two smaller ones of her own.

Resting his chin against her shoulder, he marveled at them, still lain across her lap. He smiled in a curious wonder as he curled his fingers just so delicately, only to watch as she mirrored him in perfectly the same way without a single thought.

"Did you ever learn to play?" he asked. Even in his cautious tones, he thought to bring a touch of levity back to their (now seemingly ever more sleepless) night.

Lana slowly opened her restful eyes to glimpse their seamlessly folded hands before her. She loved everything about his hands, yet she'd never once thought much of her own.

"No," she answered without much commitment after a moment to consider the entire length of her childhood. What embarrassing things for the memory to revisit, she thought to herself with a clumsy, inward smile. "I... I'd pick up her violin sometimes. It was far too large for me, but I'd... I'd hold it like I'd seen my mother do. Pretend to play like she did." Unexpectedly, a fond little bit of laughter sounded from her breath then. "Absurd little child's imagination... I was concertmaster only in my loftiest fantasies."

"Nah... I'll bet you would've been a hell of a violinist."

His remark brought a bashful hint of color to her cheeks. "Oh? And what makes you say that? Assuming this isn't some shameless attempt at flattery to lift my spirits now."

"Well. You're pretty handy with a lightsaber. Can't imagine a violin being any harder than that," he reasoned half in jest. "Swap out those years at the Sith Academy for music school," he leaned close to her ear, "I'm sure you would've been amazing."

Despite the playfulness of his tease, there'd been an earnestness to this hypothetical of his. She was humbled that he would believe this even in the least bit.

"It's one thing to hold a lightsaber in your hand. To defend yourself. To fight. To do harm." A very sobering sentiment eclipsed her disposition then. "It's quite another to hold, instead, nothing but...pieces of wood and wire...and bring life to something beautiful." Lana gave a dismissive smile and shook her head. "It's never been something I was ever good at."

"There's still plenty of time left to try." Theron's lips hovered close enough along the nape of her neck for his trailing breath of amusement to tickle her skin. "You're not an old lady yet."

With her hands firmly in his grasp, he lifted them up into their shared line of sight, his thumbs delicately caressing over the little contours of her knuckles. "Honestly. First look—you'd never think these hands were ever meant to be holding something like a lightsaber..."

"Maybe not."

What was it about her unremarkable hands that enamored him so? Her entire life, they'd been put to use in every common manner as much as any other.

"But I've made do with what I was given." With a flickering spark of her clever daring coming to life again in her gaze, so too had her accompanying smile regained its edge. "I've turned out well enough. Wouldn't you think?"

There she is.

Theron kissed her lips.

"Yeah. I think so."

Such exquisite affection filled her sights then. All her innermost warmth resurfacing in the uplifting curl of her lips, the elusive pitches of air and melody that sounded from them—all reciprocated by the touch of flesh upon flesh as she pressed them over his brow, his face, his own lips in return. Lana drew him fully into her arms, showering him again and again in all the excesses she had to offer until they'd become a squirming bundle of laughter and knotted limbs.

As much as he'd known how much his body would punish him the following day for foregoing any rest the remainder of the night could have still provided, he simply didn't have the heart to squander away this moment they had together. He cupped his hand against her face as though it'd held the most precious treasure in the galaxy (to him, anyway), brushing the pad of his thumb just beneath her eye.

"Listen. I adore you."

There'd been an emphatic note about his manner then, urging her to pause and listen well to what he meant to say.

"I really do, so...take it in the best way possible when I say this—"

Theron's thought halted by the sharp breath he'd taken in his pause.

"—You're not a kid, and...my leg's getting numb. So...you know, if you don't mind...pulling up a chair or something...?"

The initial shock of his cheeky, though ingeniously timed quip only caught her unaware for the briefest fraction of a second before she swiftly joined along in its intended tides. As ever, she'd affected the perfect embodiment of all-unassuming innocence in the merest shifts of her expression and gestures.

"Why? We're so comfortable like this..." she crooned ingratiatingly. "No, you always do this when we finally settle down in some cozy way. I don't think we should..."

Theron read her game at her first syllable uttered. That honey-silken tone was unmistakable. As though it hadn't already been all the more obvious in her facetious nonchalance, purposely slackening the weight of her entire frame in his arms. Now suddenly, he'd felt as though an overgrown (and, yes, dare he add—overweight) child now made her unconcerned self quite cozy in his lap.

"Okay, okay—you want me to pull out the big guns? You're heavy and you're fat. Get off me. Please."

Evidently, she appeared to be far too shameless in her own entertainment to be bothered by his blatant shots, only bearing down on him even more so in her playful defiance.

"Really, Lana? Are we gonna have to have a repeat of what happened on the couch—?"

And with this efficient little threat, she gasped and immediately sprang to her feet as quickly as if she'd been touched by fire.

"—NO. Fine."

Sulking, Lana reached for the other chair, pulling it beside him as she plopped into its seat without a remote ounce of her usual dignified manners to be seen. "You're awful," she remarked dryly at her spoiled fun.

"All right, come here," he coaxed, helping to inch her chair flush against his as he made more room for her in front of the small table. "You can sit closer, you tightwad. Just not...on me."

"You know, Theron, if...if this stint with SIS ever falls through," she spoke candidly as she nestled closer against him, no doubt the beginnings of another clever crack, "I could see you falling back on photography."

He responded with a scoff of a laugh. "You think so?"

Letting her hands mindlessly roam across his photos, Lana gave a thoughtful moment to imagine this in earnest. She picked up an odd one here, another there, placed them back down, shuffling and rearranging them in no order in particular. Strangely enough, it seemed an easy, almost natural thing to consider.

"Hauling your holocamera equipment about—the unnoticed beast of burden, the lone non-participant shadowing the liveliness of whatever...grandiose event, or wedding, or...whatever it may be. Unconsidered and unobserved, but always the most observant." Come to think of it, she mused, it didn't seem to require any new skill set outside of where his talents already lied. "Such understated importance...even confined to the backdrop of the goings-on, your eyes alone would have to be the most discerning among them all. Imagine that."

"Sounds terrible," he wryly panned the very idea. "I know what those photographers gotta go through. You don't even get a second to eat 'cause you might miss something. It's like one of the most underappreciated jobs out there. Fuck that."

"But you can't deny that it's decent pay," she beamed, though Theron was certain she'd done so solely for annoyance's sake. "And you can't say it's any worse than what we do now."

Hard to argue, he thought.

"Just...substitute a battlefield of armed hostiles for...schmoozing socialites, and..." As the conceived scenarios played out in the theater of her imagination, the light of her enthusiasm paled rather abruptly. "...Come to think of it, I gladly recant what I've said. It does sound terrible."

"Yeah, didn't think even you could kiss that much ass, even for a decent living." Theron's shoulders shook as he snickered. "All right. So...retirement plan—we got a photographer. And...you still got your heart set on that dancing thing?" he mused in jest, recalling where they'd last left off along this particular thread of inspiration the previous night.

Lana's gaze brightened at the thought, still quite foreign to her imaginings as she'd forgotten all about it until just then. She nodded with a rather a rather exuberant enthusiasm.

"Okay. So...you'll work nights dancing while I take cool, artistic pictures of you between wedding gigs?"

She laughed at the ridiculous notion.

"We'll sell calendars—"

The man was daft.

"—Twenty creds a pop."

"Only?"

Theron's brows perked at her swift objection. "...Thirty?"

Within the mirth of their lively exchange came yet another opportune piece of fiction to play at. Lana loved these stories and seized them at every chance. The fantastical tales they'd spun between one another. Some utterly nonsensical. Others, often stitched together by partial memories, were full of heartfelt charm. There'd even been those that were daringly provocative (often in more ways than one.) The most meticulous ones were often the most challenging. Yet she'd found those most memorable to be the most profound in simplicity. The prospect of this one unfolding beckoned her pursuit, and she longed to see what visions it would impart.

"Hm. I don't know, Theron dearest. We're aiming to retire, aren't we?"

"We're artists. I thought we were aiming to get famous."

"That's the first I'm hearing of your ambitions now," she mused. His artistry lied truly in his gift for spontaneity, always a thing that delighted her when it came most unexpectedly. "What's your plan, then?"

"My plan," he echoed.

He was thinking, she mused to herself with an eager grin. Vamping for time. It was how he stalled to have a moment for his machinations.

"Maybe...my plan is...a hundred years from now, someone'll find this album. They'll find these photos and go, 'I wonder who the model in these pictures is,'" he spoke with an emphatic flair, flipping through the multitude of pages filled with her image alone.

Smiling fondly, he removed one of his favorites from its sleeve—the shot he'd taken of her from behind as they walked along the edges of a tall sunflower field. Lana had chosen to wear a lavender hued dress that day, a fitting contrast against the gold of the flowers and sun-drenched sky. Setting it down, he picked out another where her face had been in full view of the frame, the very personification of absolute serenity in her distant, contented gaze.

"'She's absolutely stunning.'"

Placing this one down beside the first, he found another.

"'What's the story behind these?'"

Gathering all the stills he admired most, he set them all down in sequence.

"'What was this amazing artist trying to say...?'"

Lana very nearly hid her face into his shoulder at his gratuitous narrative. It'd been a strange thing—to see all these views, all these glimpses of herself as her own observer. There'd been something disconcerting about it, though she reasoned that it was likely nothing more than one's natural sense of self-consciousness in the face of self-realization.

Seeing her shy behind him only spurred him on. He'd have none of that—this was his muse, after all, exactly as he wanted for the entire galaxy to see. With a spark of mischief beneath his amusement, he shrugged her away from his shoulder, shifting his arm around her shrinking frame to draw her closer.

"And it'll spark this whole...galaxy-wide Holonet crusade—'Find the woman in the photo.'"

She nestled into the crook of his arm, fondly gazing at the photos as she envisioned this dubious fantasy of his.

"But what about the photographer? As I recall, he wanted fame for the artist that he was. Credit should be given where it's due." Hovering by his ear, she gave him a chaste little peck. "It's every bit as much his story to tell as it was hers."

Flashing that abhorrent, clever little smirk of his, he whispered playfully to her, "Won't it be a kicker, then, when they find out he was just some two-bit amateur...?"

Her air of laughter followed. "Just some...glorified, no-name wedding photographer..."

Theron's face immediately dulled to a grimace. "Whoa, hey. I never said I was actually gonna roll with that idea."

Typical. He'd say one thing only to conveniently retcon it out of existence just because. But Lana knew better than to try and quibble over something petty like this (again.)

"'SIS agent's voyeuristic photo collection of unnamed Sith girlfriend'? You'd rather the Holonet in a century's time from now sensationalize on that instead?"

"Hey, you gotta admit. There's definitely a story behind that one."

She had reserved for him nothing short of a bare, unamused look. "The self-indulgent infamy."

And for her, his stupid grin hadn't waned in the least. "Glorious infamy."

"You're so vain," she sneered in pretended disgust.

"And you're so obvious," he shot back with a quick kiss. "You like the idea."

As their faces pressed close, Theron could feel her sweetened smile against his lips. Ah, he'd caught her. He always did. He traced his lips across her cheek this time, the palm of his hand cradling the nape of her neck with all the tangles of her hair between his fingers. They opened their eyes to one another to see the humor gone with the laughter.

"A hundred years from now, they won't be talking about the stupid war. They won't be talking about the Jedi heroes, or the Dark Council, or any of that crap." He spoke as though it'd been as true as the history of days past. "They'll be talking about a dead guy's pretty pictures of his girl."

If only his certainty that very moment were all it'd taken to legitimize this future. She might even believe him if he repeated this story enough to her. But the sentiment, even if in but a small fiction, was enough for her heart. She smiled for him.

"The novel...presumed artistry of captured moments," she mused aloud as her eyes wandered away, back toward all the pieces and traces of Theron's life lain before them. "Vignettes. Of bygone days. The lives of people who once lived..."

A curious notion. Even as she'd spoken the words aloud, listened to her own voice say them, none of it at all sounded so depressing or rueful as the sentiment they carried. Nor had the images before her then. The culmination, the records and pieces of Theron's memories. The sum of all Theron's life. All there—able to fit in a volume small enough to hold in her two hands. All fragile things would eventually be lost to time once they'd lingered long enough. Yet therein lied the true beauty of it all—the impermanence of all things. Of all lives.

And what of her own? The remnants captured from the span of her life?

"You know... Growing up, I've listened to this opus so many times, through and through. It's just so...colorful," she began to speak, meaning to share with him the closest thing she'd had to his collection of photos. "A single movement of—well...just sounds, really—that tells a story about...telling stories."

An almost esoteric fondness graced her countenance then, as she pondered to the deepest reaches of her comprehension how to even begin to define this elusive sentiment.

"Scheherazade... Courageous. Calm. Captivating. Her voice, her stories...they're all in the winds." Glimpsing in Theron's attention a faint trace of bewilderment, she clarified, "The woodwinds—flutes, clarinets..." She replayed the concert purely by imagination and transcribed the corresponding imagery her mind always seemed to project into words. "There's a certain character to her voice. It's...playful. The fluttering excitement—it's all there when she tells her stories."

Listening to her sincere endeavors in trying to describe this was like listening to a retelling of a dream with little more to go by than a smattering of still frames and noises and perhaps an inkling of a partial feeling. He could tell by her barely formed sentences that their words had only come from mere snippets of ideas, pulled from mind out of pressure and sheer convenience. She'd been just coherent enough that he could follow, assembling what had ultimately been just an interpretation of an interpretation. But it hadn't been only the words. He listened to her cadences as well, rising and falling, quickening and slowing with the symphony itself that she'd recalled by memory, as though invoking the spirit of the legendary story weaver herself. Or at least that of another telling her story.

"...And the king—Shahryar. The entire story unfolds first with him. His voice...the flaring, thundering horns. You can just imagine—the king—a man like that, as he makes his entrance. As all kings do."

Theron had never listened to the whole of this famed piece, nor had he been at all familiar with it outside of the iconic solo she'd just played for him. With truly virginal ears, he gathered all the pieces of the tale through Lana's imagery alone. For him, it had been just as much her story to tell as it'd been the composer's, as it was the eponymous queen's. As it'd been her mother's. He'd been entirely captivated by her excitement, by her enthusiasm, all so perfectly and appropriately 'her'—as full in its enchantment as it was in its elegance.

Perhaps this had been what King Shahryar experienced himself, meeting and listening to Scheherazade tell her stories. It'd come as no wonder then how the cynical, brooding king could become so utterly enthralled by her in the end.

"...And it's...it's boisterous. It's chaotic. An argument. The horns bellow while the winds sing back. He's shouting. The king is angry, frustrated—why won't she finish her story? He commands it. But Scheherazade isn't afraid. She isn't even shaken. What is a man's anger—a king's, even—in the face of his own insatiable curiosity? His fascination? His desire to know?"

She turned to briefly look at her lone listener, charmed by the unassuming, barren scope of his sights—itself a tell-tale measure of the state of his spellbound mind's presence.

"And she knows she has him. Clever queen."

She smiled.

"And everything she says to him henceforth can only quell him from there. Every bit as much as it entrances him."

Her trailing voice followed in her softening gaze.

"Because she is a true artist. And her love...for life—hers, her family's, her king's—her love for all the gifts she can bring... I think that was why Scheherazade triumphed. Why she was so beloved."

Her lips then quirked at the tail-end of her inward touch of humor. "And what eternal patience she commanded. It'd only taken her one thousand and one nights to persuade the king."

"Or maybe he was the one with all the patience," he quipped, mirroring her in both expression and wit.

"Perhaps he was, then. After all, he'd been the one who'd waited for her each and every one of those nights, hadn't he?" She narrowed her eyes with another clever promise on her tongue. "Now there's a value to be taken from this tale, Theron."

Rolling his eyes, he swatted at her face, only managing to elicit a tender little laugh from her as she dodged the lazy swipe of his hand. "Smart-ass."

"No..." Lana hummed, coaxing him back as she draped her arms around his shoulders, inching herself unendurably closer. In a fit of giggles, she latched onto him in a near-mockery of an embrace the more she felt him resist. "Oh, Theron...no..." she crooned on, burying her face against the hollow of his neck. For all his flailing and glowering, he truly had little in him to repel her advances and soon resigned himself to her insufferable doting. The mere glance of a kiss beneath his ear was all it'd taken for his undoing, and he'd all but capitulated then without any further fuss or clamor.

"No man has ever been so patient with me as you have," Lana spoke, holding him between her hands as they rested brow to brow. "How in all existence did we end up here? Like this?" she whispered so close to his lips, he'd felt the tickle of her very breath against them. "I remember a time when you hated me."

"I didn't hate you." His immediate counter came seamlessly with the perfected harmony of their resonant spirits.

"And I wouldn't have entrusted my comlink to your care, let alone my life."

So blasé about it. As though all his plainspoken words were outright of no consequence. Her wits were quite quick with that, he had to admit.

"Well..."

Fine. This once, he'd play along.

"'One thousand and one,' right? Still a couple hundred left to go to iron it out a little more. One story at a time."

The placid silence only carried Lana's sweetened regard for so long before the spark of a child's mischief began to glow beneath the surface once again. She slipped comfortably back within the confines of her own personal space, propping herself upright into the seat of her chair as she turned her attentions back to his photos, now strewn in piles in total disarray across every inch of the table's surface.

"I like stories," she announced before arbitrarily singling one out among the chaos. "Tell me about this one."

Theron responded to her demand with only a dubious glance. "It's 3:42 in the morning," he responded flatly, pointing at the clearly stamped time visible on the screen of her own comlink still sitting at one corner of the table.

"Well, perhaps if you tell enough, it'll help me sleep," she asserted, as though it were a harmless minor point of observation. "One thousand and one stories. One thousand and one nights."

Right, he reminded himself. This once.

"Make it good," she added as he slid the photo closer for a better view.

"Anything else you wanna add, Your Highness?"

She flinched with a stifled giggle. "Only that I demand to be entertained."

"Princess Ass-Pain..." he grumbled, holding up the photo for the both of them to look at.

"You know it well," she hummed, unfazed in her complete ownership of what had by now become somewhat of a pet name he'd given her. "So. What's the tale behind this...rather scrawny—though endearingly so—little lad?"

This earned another of his famously insipid glances. "Okay. One of these days, you're gonna have to show me your kid photos."

"What exactly is that thing you're leaping off from?" she pointed, blithely dismissing his commentary once again.

Theron perked a brow, unsure if the question was made in earnest or yet another of her smart-ass teases. "That?"

"Yes, that."

"...You mean that tire swing?" he questioned emphatically as if it'd been some massively facetious joke.

Lana gave an amused, quizzical little smile as she turned to him with a dubious look. "A...'tire swing'..." she repeated, genuinely unconvinced. "No. That can't be a real thing."

Her dismissal floored him as it became increasingly obvious that she truly didn't believe this for whatever incomprehensible reason.

"It's a freaking tire swing. What rock did you live under?"

Lana's brows knitted in confusion. "Wait, how—" Feeling mildly insulted, she fumbled over her words as she tried to comprehend this. "How does one even get his hands on something so...antiquated...? A tire? An actual rubber tire?"

"Yeah. A rubber tire," he responded, his tones still as thick in his wry sarcasm as they could ever possibly be. "Hey—you grow up poor, you make do."

Her bleak look now seemed almost pitying as she wrapped her head around the very idea.

"Something like that...I feel like it should be on display in a history museum or something of the sort..."

"You know, not everyone grows up having loaded parents to buy you everything you want," he droned.

His humor had purely meant only to tease, though he knew he might just be jabbing a bit hard on this one. Still, she'd walked so blindly into this that he simply, in good conscience, couldn't forego taking the shot. Such luck seemed perpetually skewed in her favor; it'd have been criminal to pass this by.

"Excuse me, Papa never—"

Lana swiftly caught herself before getting too offended, realizing the bait. Steering her narrowed gaze elsewhere, she held her head high, topping her pretended look of conceit with a lofty quirk of the lips.

"Hm. Well, it sounds like someone might just be a tad bit sore about his own lousy childhood. I mean, if a little boy is allowed no luxuries beyond an oversized rubber doughnut with which to entertain himself..."

"It's called having an imagination. And, sorry—that's just one of those things you can't throw moneybags at to buy, Princess."

Left with a daring challenge in her gaze that simply fell short, Lana came to a standstill—lips parted, with the unfulfilled rebuttal on her tongue effectively silenced. Her wits never failed to pull up a hasty quip in return, but she'd been left still hanging at a stall, drawing complete blanks. Each passing second only cemented her mortification, though it'd seemed that her subconscious had already known well before she would ever care to admit, already undoing itself at the seams with the threat of a sheepishly swelling grin on her lips. She pressed them thin in a vain attempt to mask it, now beyond any lingering chance at a comeback. Their snide banter so thoroughly amused her, but more so had its underlying affection overwhelmed her completely.

There'd been no hiding from Theron's eagle-eyed senses, spotting the cracks in her facade with teeming satisfaction. It been a truly astonishing sight to bear, and oh, so sweet to the taste.

"Hey..." he hummed at her ingratiatingly. Coupled with a self-assured smirk, he resolved to be as graceless in his triumph as he could get away with. "Did I really just...? I think I did. I got you..."

Even Lana had been surprised with herself. At the very least, she should be able to take a loss with dignity. Yet it would seem that the more he reacted, the more her mask crumbled away. Bubbling at her own amusement, she tightened her curling lips with a stubborn shake of the head.

"I did—I totally got you."

Unable to contain her impulse to laugh, she drew in a great breath for one final, desperate reach, only to come up empty yet again.

"...I have nothing," she finally conceded.

"No..."

"I don't."

"Stop screwing with me."

"I don't!" she sputtered in laughter. The impossible man! The right to doubt and disbelief should've been reserved for her alone between the two of them.

"...Really?"

(Only...his insightful skepticism still hadn't failed him thus far.)

"I really don't."

She wasn't quite sure herself why she'd been so blithely overcome. Her amusement had been genuine, and this juvenile little exchange had been nothing unusual. Yet she found such difficulty quelling even this mild bout of laughter. Shaking her head, she let it drop forward against his shoulder, seemingly to hide her unraveling composure.

By now, even Theron found her small breakdown to be a bit peculiar, though more so endearing for its caprice. He permitted her full use of his shoulder as she desired, chuckling to himself as he draped his arm around her to draw her closer. She at least appeared to simmer down some, her face still buried deep into the arm of his shirt with the intermittent quivers of restrained giggles. He wasn't even bothered by her pressing weight as she proceeded to draw her legs up from the floor, curling into herself against him across their adjacent chairs. This had become a habit she'd often done when they'd been soundly situated on a plush couch or bed of some sort (often at the expense of his own comfort, and quite on purpose if only for the express purpose of irking him.)

But there hadn't been a remote quip or remark from her this time. Not even so much as a word. And still, her brief convulsions persisted even as she waned. Theron grew wary of her seeming silence, unconsciously tightening his hold around her, only to find her own small frame grow taut in response, withdrawing deeper into herself. Even as close as they were, she felt utterly shut off in his arms, until he began to feel the creeping moisture seeped into the sleeve of his shirt catching against his skin beneath.

"...Lana?"

She remained stubborn with her silence, reluctant to give herself away even after she'd been revealed. But the sharp, reflexive inhale of breath that followed shattered what had been left of her partial denial.

Theron's heart sank. There'd been no need to ask. This had been something they'd avoided well enough for some time now. His gaze began to dampen, but he resolved to at least be present to support her frail frame. Softening his composure, he hoped that it would at least urge her to do the same, to resurface again from the depths.

"Lana..." he coaxed softly. "Come on...didn't we promise not to do this?"

Even he could only manage a halfhearted consolation. Still, not a sound from her. Though he'd felt her stir, loosening her arm as she reached waywardly with her hand. He felt her fingers clutch at the fabric of his shirt, clinging as though she'd been terrified of falling if she lost hold of him. Fitting his hand over hers, he eased her clenching fingers to fit his own between them, holding their locked hands right over his heart. Letting his head drape over hers, he brushed his face along the crown of her head, breathing in the tangles of her messy golden locks.

"Don't cry," he urged her somberly. "It's only a couple hours until sunrise." A gentle reminder, because even he knew painfully well that they couldn't pretend it'd still been at the far-off horizon.

Lana managed a pained, disheartened little laugh, lost to the sniffling of her tears in spite of her best efforts. She could then spare little more than a feeble, reluctant shake of the head after, felt where his own lied pressed against it.

"I don't want to go..."

Her brittle, failing voice nearly tore his heart apart. Even so, he smiled. A determined attempt at dawning humor to lift the heavy haze. "A couple hours of shut-eye. It's all I ask."

Not at all won by his intent, she shook her head more firmly. "No. Stop..." Her urging came as though to berate him for his levity, but she couldn't have been more grateful for it. Better to have only one heart wallow in its dismal gloom than in tandem with its counterpart. "Theron... I don't want to go," she wept.

"...I don't want to go."

His smile waned with every pleading word she wept, but he refused to be pulled under. He held fast to her as he felt the corners of his own eyes dampening.

"Coruscanti high life really starting to grow on you, huh?" he gently teased again.

She gave no words, only a brief pause.

"You're coming to Kaas City next time."

Though she'd still been wrought with tears, her mild response to his well-meaning sentiments had been enough to raise his heart.

"No way in hell, Beniko," he laughed.

"Not even if I asked?"

Her voice came more clearly this time as she seemed to dislodge somewhat from Theron's drenched sleeve.

"Nope."

A laugh this time. As though his stubbornness had meant solely to spite her tears.

"I'll make a request to Director Trant."

His teeming smile swelled at her languid threat. "That's gonna be a hard 'hell no.'"

He could feel the trembles of more than just his laughter at the core of his words then, and his expression slowly began to wane. For that, he'd been glad that she still remained half-buried in the folds of his shirt.

Lana couldn't help but break under the gleam of a demure little smile at his childish persistence. It'd been an ambitious thought, even in jest, but she knew even now his resistance had only been to humor her.

After a brief draw of silence, she lifted her face from his shoulder. Feeling the dampness of the soaking mess she'd left beneath her cheek, she almost lamented what she'd done to his poor shirt.

"I'm going to miss you."

Tightening his arms even more, Theron, too, had become reluctant to let go. The light of his humor slowly siphoned away by the passing moments. "Yeah. I know," he nodded, pressing his lips to her crown. "I'm gonna miss you even more."

Her aimless, waterlogged gaze wandered toward their tangled fingers still pressed over his heart. She gave her dainty fingers a little wiggle as she played at the threads of his mangled shirt between them.

"Won't you think of me a little?"

As if she even needed to ask. "All the fucking time," he breathed.

"...You'll call me?"

It seemed in the wake of his own withering voice, hers lifted by degrees as her questions grew more insistent in her longing. Theron tightened his eyes shut at the first sense of the wells prickling at their corners. "...Yeah," he all but croaked before clearing himself with a strong intake of the thickening air.

"Everyday?"

The sweetness beneath her melancholy was unbearable. He sputtered with a faint laughter shaken by his grief as he responded, "Everyday? I've got my own shit to take care of too, you know..."

Joining in tandem, her gentle giggles managed to clear away a coming sob. Blinking the traces of moisture left from her eyes, she gradually picked herself back up, rising just enough to meet his gaze. It would seem that the tears had momentarily left her reddened eyes only to pervade his own. Before another word was exchanged, he placed a firm hand at the nape of her neck. With the gentlest touch, he drew her in, catching her lips in brief, successive kisses.

"...I'm not out of the job yet," he teased, still trying to cling to their fractured spirits.

"You'll let me know when you are, then? I mean to retire with you, remember?" she smiled. "You'll need a model for your calendars."

With a lingering, plaintive look, he brushed his fingers through her hair, straightening out its tangles. He picked at some locks, tucking them behind her ear away from her face. "Trust me. When all this shit's finally done with...you'll be the first to know, Lana."

She took this to heart, even in the greatest chances of its unlikelihood, guarding it like a promise. Gradually drawn inward by her pensive reflection, her gaze fell from his eyes then. In her contemplation, she found that her breathing had grown steady once again. The sounds all around and within quieted once more. The world slowed to a standstill.

The inevitability of her departure remained, and there still wasn't a thing to be done to keep it from coming to pass short of abandoning their present lives and responsibilities, which they'd both had far too much sense to do. In some ways, their retreat to Rishi seemed so simple and easy by comparison. But as she dwelled on the scope of their time shared, the briefest modicum of a moment by the scale of existence, the past and the future truly had no bearing on this present. This now. With her acceptance of this, she dismissed all notion of it from mind.

She was happy with Theron now.

Lana looked on at his compiled pictures, looked at the ones of her—frames from other moments they'd shared, other times that were 'nows' before they'd passed. Times when she had also been happy to be with him. The 'nows' came and went, and at the same time, there was only ever a single 'now.' This one at present.

She then began to see, began to understand this place—Theron's home, Theron's treasures, Theron's life. Why this place was kept the way it was. Why, when he possessed such precious things as this—his photos, he'd stored them away and completely out of sight. Why he is who he is.

"Theron, I'm not like you," she spoke, brought back to the present by her realization, "I don't have photos like you do."

Her nomadic thoughts brought the words to her breaths as they came—an intention behind the aimlessness.

"But I have...my mother's music. I have the silly little plaid valise my father bought for me when I was nine. I have your master's lightsaber..." she paused before beaming inwardly, "...The stupid little rock I picked up by the stream on Dantooine."

Meeting his eyes again, she raised her hand, pulling back the long cuff of his borrowed shirt. "I have this."

Fastened around her small wrist had been the little lavender cord he'd given her all those months ago.

"I think I understand, Theron."

Lana trailed her far-reaching gaze over the multitude of photos before them, looking into each little world, each present that had passed before this.

"All of it."

A/N: Fyi... I'm gonna get a bit chatty here (nothing new, I guess), since it's been quite a while... If you don't really care then you can just skip it all over (and please kindly leave a review! ^_^), lol. Just me blabbing about the status of things, excuses, life-story and comments...

So...yeah, gosh, it has been...a LONG time. A really...really, really long time. Again, so, so sorry for the ridiculous wait. The last two-ish years have been kind of a roller-coaster ride. I mean, I've mentioned randomly here and there before about me and dancesport and work and all. My dance partner and I had been doing really well since the start of our partnership (which coincidentally came around about the same time as when I started the fic, hehe), and so we really worked hard to get more serious and competitive each progressive season. Of course, this meant less free time for just about anything other than work for me, hence the massive delays in updates with each chapter.

We've since split up earlier this year, and it's been kind of...weird getting back into a normal equilibrium between everything. I thought for sure the first thing would've been to get back to writing! But...actually no, that did not pan out at all. For a while, I was really in the dumpster without a dance partner anymore, also...trying to figure out new prospectives, lesson/practice schedule and regimen, etc etc. It was...a lot. But things have started to finally settle down a bit since a month or so ago! I'm definitely in a better and more relaxed place to do extra stuff now, which is...honestly such a relief, lol.

I really missed being able to write as often as I had maybe during the first half of the story. And when I started losing time, the momentum really dipped, too. It was just tough getting back into the rhythm of things. Every time I wanted to pick back up, I really had to go back and re-read a lot of notes or even some previous chapters to freshen my memory a bit. And I barely had spare time to do even that, which usually led to me being next to not even remotely making any progress. :( But hopefully, this new normal really sticks, and I'll get to stay somewhat consistent with writing!

Whew, so that's sort of my lamo excuse if people were wondering this entire time if I'd gotten into some terrible accident and might've died suddenly or something, lol. (I think at least one buddy PMed me to make sure that wasn't it, haha).

About the chapter and the writing in general... I really do hope this one meets some measure of expectations you guys might've had, especially after waiting so long. It's nothing amazing or flashy, which...I apologize for after, you know...2-ish years, lol. I've had pretty decently fleshed out notes for this story until the end for a while now, like a skeleton of sorts. The actual content of this one has been a WIP since the last chapter was posted, so it's pretty intact in terms of what the original ideas were.

I think the hard part was just finding the voice of the writing again. Every time I went back to it after a long hiatus, it felt so...bleh. And at its worst, I felt like I had to manufacture a lot of it just to get content down, and I ended up being really dissatisfied with most of the stuff I could come up with during those times. It'd felt a lot better since I really got a chance to come back this past month, and I'm really hoping it's retained enough from where I last left off. It felt like a bit of a struggle for consistency too in a lot of aspects... That said, I hope it's not a heaping mound of suck... Lol...and you know...feel free to give me any constructive two cents about anything. I hate being in this massive rut, and any words to help pull my butt back out would be gladly welcome, lol.

And, I guess...last comments... All I kind of really wanted to share regarding the background of this chapter was (if it wasn't already super obvious) that it was heavily inspired by Scheherazade and 1001 Nights. I absolutely, absolutely adore Scheherazade...like everything about her story. I've always wanted an excuse to write SOMETHING that could draw ideas or anything, any sort of reference or inspiration from her. And from the start, I'd already decided to try and somehow incorporate the symphonic Scheherazade (Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Op. 35) into the chapter somehow as a thematic kind of thing. Also as a challenge, lol. I don't know, I hope it wasn't an utter fail.

Also, please give Rimsky-Korsakov's suite a listen... Scheherazade is my absolute most favorite classical piece, and the violin solo is absolutely breathtaking. I've seen plenty of full concerts and just solo compilations uploaded onto YouTube, so if any of you guys aren't familiar with the opus, I super-duper encourage you to give it a listen. (If only to at least gain another level of sensory immersion for the chapter or something, haha.) The random time tags I used in the chapter are from the one concert recording I have, which might not match up with others, unfortunately. Not that it's really all that super important anyway. But um...I'd be happy to somehow...share my version if anyone's interested? (Feel free to just shoot me a PM! :)

Oh, I guess one more side note—I also want to share that the back story regarding Lana's mother for this is somewhat inspired by real people I've known. I won't go into too much specifics, but there have been some suicide scares among some close people I know. No tragedies, thankfully! But...very distressing and terrible experiences nonetheless. I'm no expert at all about depression and suicide, and I really don't know much about the subject myself, so everything I've drawn from and written is really from the 3rd person observer's POV.

I can't possibly ever imagine trying to fully express the kind of emotions someone suffering from depression could possibly be going through because I've never suffered from it myself. But as someone who's been witness to it, I do feel like I have a point of view that I feel I want to express, even though it's really hard to put into words. So I did try my best to be sensitive and respectful about it in this chapter, keeping what I could write about most genuinely by drawing from what I knew from my own experiences. If any of it was upsetting in any way, I do apologize, and I sincerely hope I haven't unintentionally offended anyone. The intention was to have some relevant insight into Lana's character and motives leading up to the present, and possibly to set up more for the rest of the story.

And most importantly, if any of you guys do suffer from depression, or know of someone who does, please, please go seek help. Either for yourself or for your loved ones. Again, I'm not an expert, but I've experienced that just having a compassionate listener and friend has been able to do enough to prevent a tragedy. I think a small act can go a long way, and we should never be afraid of reaching out for help when we need it. :)

All right, I think I've got it all out... Thanks so much again to everyone who's stuck with the story this far, haha. We're actually not too far from the end! (I think. Hope. Well, in terms of chapter count, not necessarily word count, LOL.) As always, please feel free to leave a review, and/or PM me if you have any questions or comments or if you wanna just chat! ^_^ Since I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna make any upcoming holiday deadlines... Happy be-early holidays! See you next update! :D

11/4/18