Close Quarters

1.

Asaaj Ventress propped her booted feet up on the battered portside console and leaned back in the soft-padded chair. The cockpit – now escape capsule – was claustrophobically small. Too small to contain both herself and Kenobi. Outside the viewport, the stars wheeled, but did not blur; they had no hyperdrive capacity beyond the initial jump which took them out of the Brothers' reach. That convenient getaway effected, they had no choice but to limp on sublight emergency thrusters to the nearest inhabitable system.

She hoped it was in neutral space, or failing that, Hutt controlled. Or, better yet, Separatist territory. That would make things difficult for the Jedi.

Because Asaaj wasn't stupid, and she knew that the moment they landed – be it in spaceport, orbital docking station, or wilderness, the truce would end. The spontaneous, desperation-forged alliance which had brought them this far – more or less intact – would promptly dissolve into the cherished rituals of enmity. She would rather Kenobi not be on his own turf when that happened; bruised and battered or not, he was still quite a handful.

And they both had their 'sabers.

She caressed the curving handles of her own pair, now strapped within easy reach, one upon either shapely thigh. She crossed her legs again, reflecting that her obscenely proportioned curves should be enough to rouse a dead gundark…. And yet, the man sitting in the pilot's seat, spitting distance away, never even seemed to notice. The arrogant barve.

He didn't even acknowledge that she had once tortured him to the brink of death and madness. In his smugly uncommunicative posture there was dismissal – contempt for their shared history. How could a man forget a thing like that? How could a man forgive a thing like that? Asaaj hadn't forgotten him… perhaps when she found him all but unconscious on the decks of Maul's ship, she should have issued a tart reminder of his obligations to her. A backhanded slap across the face had merely brought him back to reluctant awareness; what she should have done was brand him with the memory of her dominance, that delicious span of captivity in which he could not taunt her with his affected indifference.

She should have kissed him, long and deep, until he woke up choking on her hot breath. Damn it to the nine hells – why hadn't she thought of that in the moment? Her tattooed lips curled lasciviously, lingering in the imagined act. She tightened her already adamantine shields a bit further and hunkered down into the fantasy's warm nexus. After all, it was going to be long, long trip…and the company wasn't much company.

"Is that really necessary?" Kenobi complained, in his lovely growl, not even bothering to open his eyes or turn around.

Ooops. Some images were more easily projected than others. She ran the tip of her tongue over her slightly parted teeth, leaned back to survey him from under half-lidded eyes. "Go back to your meditation, Obi Wan dear," she purred. "You can keep your precious Light side company… I've got other things to keep me warm."

"This is going to be a very tedious trip, isn't it?" he grumbled, more to himself than to her. He sounded dead tired. It suited him. But then, most things did.

She chuckled low in her throat. "Stop griping, or I'll think about something even more interesting."

She watched the Jedi's shoulders tense – an infinitesimal twist of muscle beneath the smudged and filthy cloth of his tabards – and stretched back deeper into the molded chair's contours. A moment ago, she would have agreed with him. But now, she mused, the journey did not have to be so very dreary after all. She could wait until they made groundfall, wherever that might be. For now, trapped in a claustrophobically small space with the unlikeliest of companions, Asaaj decided that she could just enjoy the…scenery.

Obi Wan weighed options, keeping his back turned to the salacious witch lounging in the comsat seat just behind him. She was projecting her …whatever that was… so vibrantly that every Sensitive in a six parsec radius must be feeling the sultry disturbance in the Force. He constructed another mental barrier between himself and her fetid imaginary frolicking and studied the nav readout.

It was lean pickings out here. Separatist interests controlled most the inhabitable systems; one or two technically neutral space stations hung isolated between here, and there… and there was a Hutt-owned asteroid belt, a mining operation circling a dying star. That would never do. No matter where they eventually settled, he would be hard put to make it out again alive, and it would be reckless folly to summon a Republic ship to such a compromised rendezvous. He was on his own, with two broken ribs, sundry other internal injuries, and a most uncooperative assassin whom he intended to arrest and drag – kicking, screaming, and leering – all the way to the nearest high security holding cell, preferably one known only to the Order.

Assuming he could still best her in a 'saber contest, given his current condition.

Well, of course he could take Asaaj Ventress hand to hand, even if he were a little worse for wear. Couldn't he? Unarmed, opposed only in the Force and sheer physical strength, he could certainly teach her a lesson never to be forgotten…show her who was the master-

Blast it. He snuffed the thought out of existence, with the ruthless skill of a life-long ascetic. If her phantasmagoria could penetrate his mental shields that easily, he likely had a concussion, on top of the other inconveniences plaguing his sore body. It seemed more than possible, considering the abuse Maul and his hulking brother had inflicted on him in the course of their prolonged conversation.. He heard Ventress' throaty chuckle of enjoyment at his irritation, her perverse mirroring of his reactions, so that annoyance was reflected in her dark soul as amusement, pain as pleasure, agony as ecstasy. A ghostly shred of memory wafted its way up out of the past's graveyard, a phantom echo of Jabiim, and he quashed that unruly mental impulse, too, forcing his gaze up and out the viewport to the glittering field of stars, tugging vexedly at his beard.

Despite the aggravating nature of her presence, there was no doubt that Ventress had somehow changed. He could sense it. On Jabiim she had been a black hole, an imploded star sucking Light into itself, endlessly ravenous, preternaturally Dark. But now… inexplicably, but undeniably… she was merely Gray. Clouded, dimmed, hollowed out by a merciless scouring wind, the husk left over when the Dark was finished feasting.

He felt pity. He wished, if it were possible, to …what? See her redeemed?

Why was that so important to him? Or should he rather ask, why was it so necessary to him? What did it mean, what deep assurance did he crave under the veil of that impossible event, the restoration of one so far fallen? Some buried instinct cried out for confirmation of this possibility, a small voice nearly smothered by the silent menace of some near, yet indiscernible future, that evolving tapestry into which his nightmares were woven, more and more darkly with each passing year.

"Keep brooding," her softly rasping voice purred at him, husky and smooth in the cockpit's tight confines. "It's lovely."

He clenched his teeth, noting with a renewed flare of irritation that one of his molars was loose. The decision where to land seemed suddenly a very simple one indeed: the closest planet, moon, space station or barren asteroid would be quite sufficient, and the sooner the better. It mattered little who or what controlled it, in the end. After all, it hadn't been his day for warm welcomes.