Chapter Text
Davijaan didn’t tell Kote his criteria for picking the village they moved to, because then he would have had to explain it out loud, and then it would have sounded dumb to his own ears and he wouldn’t have been able to follow through. Thankfully, Kote didn’t ask.
Kote didn’t take any interest, really, but that was fine with Davijaan as long as he didn’t back out at the last second.
They arrived at the town of Kyurem’s tiny spaceport on the last flight of the day with two crates of luggage between them, and rented a speeder at the desk. The trip through the tundra and into the mountains took almost an hour. Davijaan’s annoyance disappeared once the road started to twist and turn through ponds and small lakes and he could see for himself how it would be hard to safely land larger ships out here.
The tundra itself was all dark greenish-red scrub stretching away to the horizon, a towering mountain range rising abruptly from the rolling plains in the distance. There were herds of antlered animals grazing far back from the road, and drab waterfowl in the ponds. The cold wind across Davijaan’s face smelled sweet and spicy and alive.
It was late, but the sun was just starting to set when they arrived at the village. Kote recounted the directions he’d memorized as Davijaan navigated through narrow streets and around the center square and past the outskirts to a house set on a slope far back from the road, among outcroppings of jagged stone.
The house itself almost looked like another outcropping. It was a cylindrical two story building, with a steep domed roof. The first level was partially carved into the slope and had only one door, the second level boasted several windows and the front door, and had a narrow wooden porch with a narrow staircase propped up on stilts to access it. A large stone shed was built behind the house, further up the slope.
It had been abandoned for a few years, and they’d bought it from the village council rather than the previous owner. The representative Davijaan had been in contact with had wanted to meet them first, and asked all sorts of questions about their jobs and why they wanted to move, but when she realized they were prepared to pay the asking price up front she said to message her when they arrived and she’d meet them at the house with the door codes.
Mrs. Chen was waiting in her speeder; a tiny Pantoran lady with lots of grey in her dark purple hair. Storm cloud hair.
“Welcome to Amaura, Mr. Cody, Mr. Odd Ball,” she said as she exited the speeder, with a prim smile, a bow, and an accent he’d never heard before. Davijaan wasn’t sure if she meant the village or the mountain.
“Ah, thank you, ma’am,” said Davijaan, awkward.
“We’re happy to be here,” Kote added.
“You boys must have had a long trip so I won’t take up too much of your time. Here are the door codes.” She handed a piece of flimsi to Davijaan. “There’s also instructions for changing them. I took a quick look around earlier, and aside from a few loose shingles everything seems to be in order.”
“Thank you,” he said, again. Her smile tightened.
An uneasy silence fell over them, neither Davijaan nor Kote sure what to say and Mrs. Chen evidently waiting for one of them to say something.
“Well, then,” she broke the silence, brusque. “Electricity’s been turned on, but water won’t be delivered until tomorrow. If that’s it, I’ll let you get settled in.” She skeptically eyed the two crates of luggage strapped to the back of their speeder, but didn’t say anything as she climbed back into her own vehicle and left.
Davijaan gripped the flimsi tight, trying to figure out what she meant about the water. He supposed they’d find out tomorrow.
The door code worked, though the door itself was a little stiff. The upper level was wide open, empty except for a small kitchen area in the back and a railing around a set of stairs leading down. The lower level consisted of a hall with the stairs and exterior door, with doors opening off into a fresher and what must be a bedroom. A trap door under the stairs led to yet another empty underground level. They stacked their crates to one side of the bedroom, and that was all the unpacking they had to do.
There was so much space, and all of it was empty, and Davijaan had no idea what they were supposed to fill it with.
They were nearing the end of the twenty-one hour day cycle, but the sun still hadn’t fully set. It didn’t matter– soldiers learned to sleep through anything, and there weren’t any windows in the bedroom besides– so Davijaan and Kote pulled their blankets out of a crate and curled up next to each other on the stone floor, and tried to sleep.
Just about as comfortable as an Umbaran cell, Davijaan thought, pressing his cold nose into the back of Kote’s neck and earning himself an elbow in the stomach. Except worse company.
***
Davijaan woke early– though apparently not early enough to see the sunrise– and ate a ration bar sitting on the porch. Kote was still sleeping.
There were things that needed to be done. They needed to return the rented speeder and buy one of their own, purchase more food, find out what was up with the water that still wouldn’t turn on. Not to mention figuring out what to fill their empty house with. Davijaan started his usual mental checklist but didn’t get very far before he realized he had no idea where to start with crossing any of them off.
Back to basics, he reminded himself as he thumped down the porch steps to the speeder. Scout out the terrain, and then form a plan of attack.
Rather than waste time trying to get Kote up Davijaan left a message on his comm and took his own comm with him. He was used to going out alone by now. He drove slowly, making note of the sparse pines scattered across the lower slopes of the mountain and the dry riverbed that ran beside the road for a ways.
The village itself was a collection of stone and wood buildings constructed within the valley between Amaura and one of her sister peaks. Davijaan’s rough estimate was a thousand interconnected structures; three fourths residences– with a similar circular two story design as the house they’d just moved into– and one fourth… Everything else a village needed, he supposed.
He left his speeder in the public lot just outside the village proper and walked down the wide main street, reading the signs on the buildings. A grocer, a tailor, the village office, a library, a hardware store, a bar, a radio communications office, a salon of some kind. Most of the same kind of shops and offices and things he’d seen on Coruscant, and on the rare occasion he touched ground during a campaign, just smaller and less glittery.
There were plenty of people walking around to observe as well. Overwhelmingly Pantoran, but he did spot a Twi’lek parent and child going into the library, and a Wookie outside the hardware store securing a stack of lumber to their speeder. Davijaan himself was getting quite a lot of looks, ranging from startled to curious to knowing, and he hoped it was because he was the only human and not the only clone. Either way, he kept his shoulders back and his chin up and his expression pleasant, and nobody tried to stop him or speak to him.
Just as he was about to turn off the main street, a scrap of sky-blue caught in the corner of his eye. He stopped, and turned, and found himself standing in front of an office with a blue and gold painted sign that read, “Yang Family Shipping and Transportation.”
Shipping and Transportation. Huh.
Davijaan walked inside.
It was a small office; a large desk with two chairs in front and two behind took up most of the space, with two more chairs set against the far wall in a sort of waiting area. The stone walls were decorated with bright cloth hangings. From somewhere in the office a bell rang as the door slid shut behind him, and an older Pantoran man with a shock of vibrant maroon and silver hair and the same accent as Mrs. Chen emerged from a doorway behind the desk.
“Sorry, sorry, lost track of time, I’ll be right with you– oh.” The man blinked. “You must be one of the boys just moved into the old Lin place. Welcome to Amaura!”
Davijaan froze, his hastily slapped on smile already starting to slip.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m Dhanse Yang,” he said, dipping his head briefly and coming back up smiling. “Nice to meet you, ah..? Samra didn’t tell me your name, just said you’d be moving in some time this week.”
“Samra?”
“Samra Chen? She said she’d been finalizing the purchase details?”
“Ah.” Davijaan swallowed down the urge to break into hysterical laughter at the idea that everyone in this village knew exactly who he was and where he lived. “Yes, I’m– my brother and I just got here last night. I’m Odd Ball.”
He awkwardly tried to mimic the head dip, and Mr. Yang’s smile brightened, the row of interlocking diamonds tattooed across his cheekbones crinkling up around his eyes.
“Welcome, Odd Ball! Welcome,” he said, moving around the desk to pull out one of the chairs. “Sit, sit! Tell me what brings you north! Not many humans on this part of the moon. Too cold for them. You and your brother looking for work at the quarry? Always hiring up at the quarry. Pays well, but hard on the body. Though you like you’d manage just fine.”
Davijaan didn’t so much sit as collapse into the chair, scrambling to come up with some kind of response. “Didn’t know there was a quarry, but I’ll keep that in mind, thanks. Um. No particular reason for moving here, just looking for a change of scenery.”
“As good a reason as any! That’s why my wife moved up here, in fact. Got tired of flying over marshes and decided she wanted to fly over mountains. Nothing beats the view in the summer months.”
“I can imagine.” Davijaan relaxed a bit, the conversation turning into territory he was familiar with. “Though the currents around the peaks can’t be easy to navigate.”
“No, no. Not at all. I suppose in some ways it does balance out, the beauty and the struggle. But such is life around these parts. You spend so much time working to keep your blue bright that you can hardly spare a second to look up from your hands to the sky.”
And Davijaan thought maybe Mr. Yang could indeed spare a second, but something about the way he’d phrased that thought sent it spinning around his mind.
“You know a bit about flying, then?”
“Yes, sir. I–” was? “– am a pilot.”
“Hm.” Mr. Yang’s eyes twinkled. “Not looking for work, are you?”
Whatever curiosity or desperation or hope had led Davijaan to walk into this little office flared. He straightened. “Depends on if you’re hiring, sir.”
Mr. Yang leaned back in his chair. “You see, son, we’re a small business and mostly work with established customers in a handful of other villages scattered through Amaura’s sisters. My eldest girl and I handle the customer service and flimsiwork and all that nonsense. My wife’s a pilot– and a damn good one at that– and deals with the practical aspects of shipping and transportation. But neither of us are getting any younger. We’ve recently started looking for someone to take over the longer flights.”
Davijaan tried mostly successfully to hold in his excitement. “Well, sir, I’ve been flying since I was a child.” Probably better not to put an age on that statement. “Fighters, and– and the like. Ships of all sizes, but most under a fifty meter wingspan. I’ve successfully piloted more than one sixteen-hour flight. Mostly spaceflight, but plenty of experience in atmo and through extreme weather conditions, as well as emergency landings.”
Mr. Yang looked surprised, and maybe even a little bit pleased. “Well I doubt we’d have need of you for anything longer than seven hours, but that’s quite impressive. Where have you worked before?”
He smiled, and wished he was any good at lying. “I flew in the war.”
“Ah.” Mr. Yang raised an eyebrow. “You’re a clone, then?”
“Yes, sir. Is that going to be a problem?”
“No, no problem.” He shook his head, thoughtful. “One of our girls met a clone once. Said he was a polite young man.”
“Glad to hear it.” Davijaan knew several of his siblings who would not under any circumstances be described as polite, and was immensely grateful that this particular clone had had the sense to make a good impression.
“Well,” Mr. Yang continued. “That solves the problem of contacting previous employers– from what I’ve seen on the news you boys are damned spectacular at what you do– but you’ll need to get your local piloting license of course, and all the payroll and procedure flimsiwork in order, and my wife will need to see you fly one of her ships, but if we get the process started today you could be an employee by the end of next week.”
An employee. A civilian pilot, shipping goods and transporting locals around the mountains. “That sounds…” he cleared his throat. “That sounds good, sir.”
“Excellent, excellent!” Mr. Yang practically jumped to his feet, and made his way around the desk to rummage in a very loud drawer. “I know I have a few copies of an application somewhere, just give me a moment–”
“Hey, pa?” a voice called through the open doorway behind the desk. “Where do you keep the spare–”
And then Loren walked into the office.
She looked better. Clean, the shadows under her eyes long gone, dressed in a plain tunic and trousers with her hair up in a bun. And she looked– nice. Very nice. Now that they weren’t in a dimly lit cell on a dark planet he could almost count the freckles dusted around her gleaming gold tattoos.
Her eyes skittered over his face, wide with shock. “Odd Ball?”
He realized abruptly that his jaw was hanging down somewhere around his knees, and closed his mouth with a click. “Ms. Loren?”
“Ms.?”
He flushed. “Well, I–”
“What are you doing here!?”
“I’m just–”
“How did you–”
“Hold it, hold it!” Mr. Yang cut in. “Lo, this is the fellow you met?”
She nodded, not taking her eyes off Davijaan.
“Well, well. That puts a new spin on things.” He turned to Davijaan and looked him up and down once rather sharply before turning back to his daughter and giving her a gentle shove. “Go on then, get! Out of my sight, silly girl.”
“But pa, I–”
“No buts. Sounds like you and your friend have a lot to catch up on.”
Loren huffed, but she made it out from behind the desk and grabbed Davijaan by the arm. “Your lunch is on the counter, pa, and put mine back in the conservator!” she called over her shoulder as she tugged him towards the door. “And you’ll have to find your own fork, because Minle’s been into the cutlery again!”
“Wait!” Davijaan dug his heels in and managed to stop her forward momentum with a jerk. “Wait, sir, you said you had an application?”
Mr. Yang grinned. “Come back tomorrow morning with your identification, and my wife and I will be happy to get you sorted out. You two enjoy your lunch. And, Loren?”
“I know, pa!” She snatched a large bag off a rack by the door, and tugged at Davijaan’s arm again, and this time he allowed himself to be pulled out the door.
***
Davijaan didn’t even taste the spoonful of soup he tried, he only registered that it was too hot and put the spoon down before continuing to try and explain.
“I promise I’m not trying to hunt you down, or– or anything! I just haven’t been planetside much since the war started, and I grew up on an ocean planet, so I figured mountains would make a nice change from stars and seas!”
“Mhm.” Loren sipped her water, watching him flail with a single raised eyebrow.
“And how was I supposed to know you lived by the tallest mountain on Pantora!?”
“I did say ‘the tallest mountain–’”
“But you didn’t say it was the tallest, it could have just been the tallest in your local mountain range! There are tons of mountains on Pantora!”
“Alright, I’ll give you that.”
“And your family! They run a shipping company, and I’m– I’m a pilot! That’s the only thing–”
“Sure.”
“So you see–”
“Of course.”
Davijaan heaved a sigh, and went back to his soup. It was still too hot. This time it also tasted bitter. He must have made a face, because Loren almost choked on her water laughing.
He wasn’t even sure what was in it, other than it was purple, and apparently bitter. He’d just ordered the same thing as her and then sat in increasingly awkward silence waiting for it to arrive. The restaurant she’d dragged him to was circular and stone like all the buildings he’d seen so far, but there was intricately carved wood paneling over most of the walls to study, and plenty of other people besides Loren to watch.
Not many families out at the lunch hour, but plenty of couples and the odd group of friends. Some were speaking accented Basic, but most were conversing in a language he’d never heard before that must be Pantoran. The source of the accent. He wondered why Loren didn’t have it.
Trousers with either a loose tunic or poncho seemed to be the outfit of choice, and as well as many different styles of headdress. He wondered if, on a planet relatively untouched by the war, his Coruscanti style shirt and pants said more about him than his borrowed face.
“It’s fine, Odd Ball,” said Loren, setting her water aside. “I wasn’t upset, just surprised. And it’s actually really, really good to see you. And to see that you’re ok. By the time they got us out you weren’t very– and I didn’t know– and there was no way for me to find out, so–”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s… It’s good to see you too.” Because, to his surprise, it was. Because there hadn’t been any way for him to find out, either, other than to take Kote’s word for it that she’d been safely returned home long before he got out of medical.
She smiled weakly, and took a sip of her own soup. He stirred his in a vain attempt to cool it down.
He had no idea what to do. Or say. She’d shocked the “civilian smile” right off his face and he knew technically he was a civilian now too, but that just meant the rules of engagement had changed and he hadn’t had a chance to study up yet. What did a civilian do when they were dragged out to lunch by another civilian they hadn’t seen since sharing a cell six months ago?
“So. You’re up in the old Lin place? You and your… brother?”
Talk about literally anything except that time they shared a cell. Got it. “Yes.”
He could see her trying to puzzle that out, but rather than push she nodded and took another sip. He breathed a silent sigh of relief and desperately tried to come up with something to steer the conversation away from him. “I thought you said you worked out of Coruscant?”
“I do. I moved there several years ago, actually. For university, and then I stayed for work. But I get a tenday off every third month, and when I can afford it, I come home to visit.”
“Oh. And how– how are things?”
“If you mean how’s work, terrible.” She wrinkled her nose, disgusted. “The war ended before I could publish my big exposé.”
“Ah, yes,” he said, dry. “The war ended. Tragic.”
She sputtered, flushing indigo. “I– that’s not– Of course it’s a good thing the war ended, I only meant–”
Davijaan laughed. “It’s alright. It’s different for civvies, I know.”
“No, no, that was insensitive of me.” She groaned, hiding her face in her hands. “It’s just– I didn’t–”
She looked up, gaze hard. “I wouldn’t write about Umbara. It was too much, and my boss wasn’t very… Understanding. So I was on thin ice for about a month after I started work again, and I kept saying I would write something about it eventually, but there’s less interest now in big sensationalized stories like ‘Reporter Held Captive By Umbaran Militia for a Tenday,’ so…”
“Huh.” He didn’t understand why anyone would want to read about that kind of thing, but he supposed it was different if you knew you were never going to have to face it yourself.
There was a basket of thickly sliced and slightly grey bread on the table that he’d ignored until now, but she grabbed a slice and started shredding it into her soup. “Anyway, enough about my terrible job. I promised my parents I wouldn’t worry about work while I was home.” She flicked a crumb at him. “How come you never told me you were a pilot?”
He shrugged, and tentatively reached into the basket. “It didn’t come up.”
“I spent entirely too long complaining about that poor pilot who flew me right into the hands of the Umbarans for you to claim the subject of pilots never came up!”
“Didn’t seem… relevant.” He took a big bite of the bread. It was soft, and to his surprise had a sour aftertaste. But he didn’t mind sour as much as bitter.
“Hmph.” She leaned back in her seat, arms crossed over her chest. “Well. I hope you get the job. They’ve been looking for someone for ages, but we don’t get many newcomers up here.”
“I hope so too. It would be– interesting.”
“Different from what you were doing in the war?”
“Very different.” He hesitated. “Everything about Pantora is different. I haven’t even been here a full day and it’s already so much more than I was expecting. Is it just me or is the air… kind of tangy?”
“Oh, that’s the Pantoran tea! Smells wonderful, doesn’t it?”
“Pantoran tea?”
“It grows on the tundra. It really does make good tea, fresh or dried. You’ll have to try some.”
“Huh. So, do I buy it somewhere?”
“You could, or you could pick it yourself.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere! When we’re done eating, we can go for a walk and I can show you a good spot for it a little ways beyond my parents house.”
“Sure.”
She nodded, satisfied, and dug into her soggy bread and bitter soup.
Davijaan watched her eat in horrified fascination for a few seconds before turning back to his own food. He made a few more attempts on the soup, but mostly focused on cleaning out the bread basket for the rest of the meal. He’d only had bread a few times before, and it had been the crunchy, crusty kind. The soft kind was so much nicer to eat.
She finished while he was still polishing off the last slice, and waved the waiter down for the check.
He swallowed the last bite a bit too fast. “I can pay.” Having credits was a novelty he didn’t think would ever wear off.
“No, I’ve got it.” She was shuffling through her bag rather loudly, and Davijaan resisted the urge to lean over the table and get a glimpse of whatever was making the rattling and crunching noises. “Besides, I’m the one who invited you.”
'Invited' was an interesting choice of word. “Oh. Right.”
She glanced up with a hint of a smile, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “You’re just going to have to invite me out sometime, and then you can pay.”
He blinked. “You want me to?”
“Well, actually,” she sat up straight, suddenly concerned. “You’re probably busy, getting settled in and everything, and I’m only in town for another two days– oh goddess I should have asked before I suggested we go running off to pick tea– but if you don’t have time–”
“No, no! I mean– yes! That would be, yes. I have time. Now, to go pick tea. And also later. To go out again. Absolutely. That would be… nice.”
Because it would be, to spend time with someone who wasn’t a sibling and wasn’t weird about clones and who wanted to show him how to pick tea. It would be nice, and there was no reason to say no because he was a civilian now, too, and the rules of engagement had changed, and they’d just had lunch together and it hadn’t been a disaster. And really, he had nothing but time.
Her whole face brightened when she grinned, her tattoos scrunching across her cheekbones and her eyes lighting up from the inside. “I think so, too.”
***
The front door slid open and Davijaan took a single step inside and then just stood there, several dozen stalks of a spiky-leafed plant that smelled of what he was starting to recognize as tundra held loose in one hand, the events of the last few hours suddenly too much to process.
Kote glanced over from where he was cautiously poking at the rusted stovetop with a metaphorical stick, and then did a double-take.
“Are you alright?” he asked, abandoning the stovetop to cross the room in a few long strides and pull Davijaan out of the doorway, glancing curiously at the plants.
“I– Maybe?”
Kote raised an eyebrow.
Davijaan took a deep breath. “Alright, so. Remember when I got captured on Umbara?”
His eyes narrowed. “Yes.”
“And shared a cell with that Pantoran lady?”
“With the nice hands?”
“Shut up. Yes. Anyway…”
“... Yes?”
Davijaan swallowed. “She’s here. She, um. This is her home village.”
“Ah.” Both of Kote’s eyebrows were inching diligently towards his hairline, but he looked more contemplative than anything else. “Did you know?”
“Did I–” Davijaan sputtered. “No! You think I would have come within a thousand miles of this place if I’d known!?”
“Hm.”
“Get that look off your face.”
“What look?”
“The ‘I’m trying to put together a puzzle but I'm missing a piece’ look. That look.”
Kote rolled his eyes. “Is this a bad thing or a good thing, Davi!”
“... I don’t know. She, um. She said she wanted to see me again. We’re going hiking together tomorrow afternoon.”
“Huh. Well. Good,” said Kote.
And Davijaan hoped he was right.
“And what the fuck is in your hand?”