We Lost Each Other Twice Before (Bambi Maddox)

[Grym Kandle]

Grym sat back in the corner of the bar, a stim between his fingers. He held his hand up before his face in the dim light and glanced over the skin before pressing the stim stick to his lips. He wore none of his usual attire out this time. In fact, no one that was alive would even recognize the man beneath the mask of Grym Kandle. Leaving the stick between his lips, he pulled at the artificial layer of skin. Sadly, it appeared more real than what lay beneath.

At this point, Grym appeared as he might have if he wasn't a glitterstim addict. His hair was dyed a natural brown and his skin was covered in a synthetic layer. For all this and the drab flight suit he wore, he was nothing of the mask and cloak that anyone looking for Grym Kandle would notice. And his 'disguise' covered the excessively apparent scars and side effects of his fancies with glitterstim. He even had contacts on to cover the greened veins of his bloodshot eyes. He wanted to fit in as much as possible. Just another bum in the Outer Rim, wasting his time in the bars when he probably could've been out there working some job that would only pay for the drinks later anyways.

But the bar he was in just happened to be the same bar that Javes Tinarm frequented. His last name was actually a tag on he had recieved for an outdated prosthetic arm. The bum smuggler was so cheap he would never bother with an upgrade. Grym knew that and more. He always knew the ins and outs of the prey. Since he had received his order from the top to make some convenient observations, Grym had determined that the prey was much more available than the hunter. In fact, he had no word on the hunter whatsoever other than it was an assassin new to Sorsha's employ. They had pulled off a few jobs so far from what the word on the street had turned out but little else was available.

The Vigo had just mentioned, since Grym was in the area, he should check out the new agent. If it was even more convenient, he could arrange for the agent to never make it back to Sorsha. If possible of course. He had already dealt with his own business in the area by now, word had reached him obviously well before the assassin's deadline. And Grym had been tailing the smuggler for some time now. Of course it wasn't noticable, Grym was well beyond being noticed by this point. He had the target bugged and then some. And he was playing the role of just another bum pilot, flying a heap of junk that he'd taken off a friend's hand for nearly free. The thing couldn't even leave orbit in truth.

And so he waited. Javes was watching the races at the bar with some friends, all of which Grym could tell their addresses by memory by now. Grym had been an assassin for long enough, all he needed was a glimpse of the hunter and he'd know them for sure. Death reeked off those kind of people, a confidence only gained in murder. And none of the people currently residing within this bar had tasted of that experience like any assassin had. He took another drag before flicking the stick into a flower pot that only held other spent sticks.

[Bambi Maddox]

Maddox stretched, leaning back the length of the speeder bike with her feet up on the handgrips.

She smoked her cigarette leisurely, eyeing the entrance to the bar and contemplating her next move.

Did she wanna wait here, follow ol' Tinarm to his next stop and take him out there, or even enroute? Or did she wanna go in, watch how the dumb drenack spent his last hour in this world before popping him on the way to the john.

The second option sounded more fun. It seemed appropriate somehow that the scum smuggler who had earned a check-out ticket from Sorsha should make his end face-down in some dingy fresher bowl.

A long drag and then a flick of her fingers to send the glowing butt in a red arc across the street, Maddox made her decision.

Swinging long legs over to the side she got off the bike and stood on the pavement. She straightened her blaster belt and crossed the street, stepping on the slowly dying cigarette before entering into the bar.

The stink was the first thing that hit her. The bar smelt like every other intergalactic dive she'd ever frequented and somehow it pleased her. This was familiar territory, places like this. She'd danced enough of 'em to know it like a familiar friend. Maddox felt completely at ease.

She spied Javes immediately upon entering. The ignorant idiot was watching the races, making bets that would not matter tonight if he won or lost. Bambi laughed to herself. She might let him pick up his winnings first before she capped him. A small mercy, why not?

"Corellian head-rocker" she said, acknowledging the barkeep only enough to order as she took a stool at the end of the bar near the hallway to the washrooms.

[Grym Kandle]

He wished that stim had never gone out. He wished that moments before could have lasted forever and not ended so soon. The hunter, Sorsha's newest assassin, technically Grym's prey, had entered the building and taken a seat only meters away. Of course Grym's reaction had been well masked in feigned boredom and the exasperation present in any other of the locals but he hurt somewhere inside like he hadn't felt before.

=======

Grym drove the speeder with ease through the crowding traffic. This was nothing compared to Nar Shadda and it was past midnight here even. He didn't bother turning his masked face towards Bambi who sat beside him as he began to speak again.

"As I was saying, its your first job and its walk in the park. Literally. We've been tracking your target and we know he and his bodyguards take the path through the executive park outside his place of business. Repeat your plan again, and remember its only a tentative outline. Anything could happen."

They'd been over it plenty of times. He just wanted to her to repeat it so he could reassure her that she had done everything correctly so far. He hadn't had such support or tutelage. He had a mentor but she had not held the same kind of relationship like Grym and Bambi shared.

[Bambi Maddox]

Bambi smiled to herself. How many times did Grym need to hear this for crying out loud?

"Your beginning to remind me of an old mother hen, Grym.." she joked, "..only you aint as pretty." She didn't really mind his painstaking attention to detail. It was kind of reassuring actually. And she knew he wanted her to succeed in this hit - maybe more than she did. He knew what really was at stake, whereas Bambi only thought she knew.

She gave an exagerated sigh and then complied.

"Ok, you drop me at the south-east end of the Park. The bodyguards are flanking the target (she had to call him the target, Grym had insisted. It kept the kill from being personal, which all good assassins knew was the golden rule).

I make my approach on the right-hand side of the street, the park side, keeping to the shadows but without trying to really hide. Natural like. As they enter the building, the target routinely puts in an hour or two of work after eating dinner at "Stella Belles." I follow inside, act like Im lost and have come into the wrong place. I take advantage of the mild, momentary confusion to pop first guard in the head, negating his threat immediately (she lifted her hands snuggly gripping her blaster and made as if discharging of the weapon--bang), then pop the second guard, again in the head (same motion--bang). I gotta be pretty darn quick about this, I know. Then take out the target (bang--bang) and then boot it outside and cut back through the park. You meet me at Palpatine's statue.

Easy as pie"

[Grym Kandle]

"Remember, the expediate death of the two bodyguards comes not with a rushed purpose but with grace in purpose. Take out the target with enough rounds to insure that he is in fact dead and evacuate. I've seen targets get back up from a score of blaster bolts to the chest due to this or that. The reader in the glove box is a portable medscanner. It's used to detect vital signs. The second after you blast him, the other hand should have that scanner ready. You can get him from the same distance you shoot from and confirm the kill. This should take all of one second. Hesitation only gives our real enemy, time, the advantage."

How many times had he been told that in his own training?

"And you've got it all down. This will be easy. We'll be back on the ship with your contract credits by the end of the night."

=======

What was she doing here? Hadn't she died? Completely obliterated by that bomb? And why was she working for Sorsha of all people? She couldn't be Sorsha's new agent. It was too ironic, too... unfortunate. The synthetic skin suddenly seemed itchy and he wished for the comfortable static climate of that his cloak provided.

He looked up from his drink just in time to hear the target say something about going out back to relieve himself. This was her chance if she planned on accomplishing it here with minimal complications.

And the eye patch? He could only assume the worst there if she was lucky to even be alive. And here Grym had thought he had laid his sorrows to rest. She had died in a botched mission, her first. He had already moved on from his reasonable portion of grief. He wished he was delusional, wished that it was some mirage concieved by his addiction. But he knew it was only denial that she could've survived and he had somehow missed her. The details of that event were so taxing to recall even now. And even then, his mission now?

[Bambi Maddox]

She laughed in that careless manner that always brought a curl of a smile beneath Grym's mask. Head tossed back, blonde mane whipping about her in the wind and her throat bobbing up and down as she loosed that familiar cackle.

"Aw geez that was funny Grym. You scared the beetlejuice outta that poor rodian"

Grym had been giving an example of how not to misread the scanner - reminding Bambi of the time they had come across a derilect apartment block that was known for squatters. It was an abominable dive and on any given day or night, a person could find some sorry loser who'd crawled his or her way inside and passed from this world to the next in a stim-hazed oblivion wrapped up in old newspapers as their deathshroud.

He and Bambi had crept into that apartment block one night looking for cadavers on whom to practice with the scanner reads. Gryms eyes glowed eerily in the darkness as he moved like a wreath among the shifting shadows of a Nar Shadda moon. In in the dark, he stepped on a sleeping rodians foot, waking the hapless creature and giving him a fit of the terrors so bad the poor thing had stroked out right there. The body language of sheer annoyance and irritation Grym gave at that moment was priceless. And Bambi again pealed with laughter at the memory of it.

Grym then slowed the speeder and Bambi got out, scanner tucked in her back pocket. She gave the edge of the speeder a farewell bang with her hand.

"Here goes nothin. I'll see you later"

======================
======================


Tinarm walked behind her and Bambi watched him in the reflection of a cheap silver-plated "Best Service" plaque mounted on the back wall behind the bar.

She allowed enough time for Javes to work his zipper before turning off her stool and moving off down the hallway after him.


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The explosion rocked the entire block it seemed to Grym as its echo rippled through the park. The sound of it a jolt like lightening through his body as he knew for certainty just one thing as he sat, waiting at the appointed place . It involved Bambi.

[Grym Kandle]

Grym skidded to a stop a few blocks away. The smoke wasn't even done settling. Traffic was congested and the local authorities were buzzing overhead towards the situation. He was breathing heavily and not from running from the park to here. That was nothing close to a long distance, no, it was anxiety that actually struck at the heart of the weathered assassin. He turned down an alley and under a slight feat of acrobatics, scaled a wall to reach the fire exit. In moments, that seemed like it took an eternity, Grym was on the roof of the building. He jumped the gap to the next building and continued to leap, building from building until he was overlooking the debacle that had once been 'Stella Belles.'

The scanner in his mask showed no life signs in the rubble but for the search and rescue team preparing to traverse the rubble. Kandle magnified the view, panned out, and double checked every area he could, maybe her vitals were just hidden by the rubble, as likely as that was. He just couldn't give up hope yet though.

"Bambi..."

=======

She was down the hallway and out of earshot when Grym stood. The bartender gave him a glance, use to his presence by now. Grym raised his eyebrows and gave a mischievious grin, pointing his thumb in her direction.

"'Ey Amos, I'm gonna go give the looker a look. Be righ' back."

The barkeep shook his head with a smile and went back to serving drinks to the other customers as they roared in glee and frustration over the upcoming results of the latest race. Grym made it to the hallway in time to see Bambi head out into the alley to follow the target. She was focused, he could practically taste it from here. Maybe he had stood up too quickly, the hallway seemed to spin slightly beneath his feet.

=======

"It was a what?"

His voice was even more dry than usual as he spoke with a public relations officer. The man seemed nervous but then most of the honest public were uncomfortable around Grym.

"It-it-it was a... det-detonator, th-h-hermal detonator. It completely incinerated everything within the immediate radius."

Grym had understood him the first time. He was just making sure it was really that bad. Everything was gone. Grym had been there for hours and he had even risked associated with the local authorities to find out as much as he could as fast as he could. No sign of Bambi though, and the only conclusion he could make so far was that he was standing on her ashes.

"What was y-y-your name again, s-s-sir?"

"Nothing, its not important. Trust me."

[Bambi Maddox]

"Dont you frelling move!

The city cop boomed out behind Grym and the individual he had been talking to. All and sundry who were standing about seemed to jump in their skins then snap freeze in place, only their eyes swivelling in their heads to see who the burly officer was adressing so agressively.

The object of the policeman's attention was a skulking form that had slithered up on the peripheral of the chaotic scene and was intent on pilfering anything worthwhle from the debris. The collective onlookers sighed with relief and watched as another officer grabbed the vagrant roughly by the arms and pulled him off for questioning.

Grym took his moment to slip away from the scene. There wasn't anything left for him to do now anyway.

========================
========================

"Dont you frelling move"

Bambi's voice was soft, yet intimately threatening. Grym had slipped through the back door into the darkness of the alley only to realise now Maddox had been positioned, waiting for him to come out.

His eyes, needing to make no adjustments for the darkness saw immediately the slowly widening pool of blood spreading on the ground from the other side of a dumpster. The kill had been a silent one. And incredibly quick. He guessed Bambi had used a blade of some description, though this was not the weapon she had trained on him now. A small hand-held blaster was aimed directly at his head.

"Just keep your head forward and step back the way you came. Real easy. Got it."

[Grym Kandle]

The accent he picked up here wasn't unfamiliar, it was straight from the sticks but the average joe spoke the best of it around here.

"Whoa whoa whoa, Lady. I don' want no trouble."

She was fast, faster. And she had some kind of concealed weapon he would be mindful of. The target was already coagulating, the kill had been that fast. And with that out of the way, Grym, was only a liability to her mission now. Something he was determined to remedy as he stepped back into the hallway.

"I'm-m-m s-so sorreh, I was jus-s-s like a, like a..."

His tone changed fluidly, softer but sharper, and the accent replaced by crisp basic, unmistakable to her ears.

"Like a moth to the flame."

The cliche had been the same thing she had said to him the day they'd reunited the first time. And under much better circumstances he noted.

[Bambi Maddox]

The sound of Grym's voice was like the trigger pin to a detonator. Bambi's brain did not reconcile the voice with the features of the individual before her and an instant flash of anger flared up. What was this joker playing at?

She pulled him further inside then pushed him roughly against the corridor wall, hands gripping his flight suit lapels and blaster crammed underneath his chin.

Another bar patron staggered into the hallway at the other end on his way to the fresher, and Maddox stopped him in mid-step with a threatening bark, "Back off!"

"...But I gotta--"

She extended her one arm training the blaster on the newcomer, "Back out NOW"

The man shuffled for a second in hesitation, the weight of his bladder challenging his good sense, then turned back the way he came.

Alone again, Maddox took a very up close inspection of the man in her grip. The man, she noted now, had made absolutely no resistance to her assult, no sudden move. Not even another comment in his defence. It was as if he was just waiting. Waiting for the coin to drop. For the light to go on.

Bambi looked at the skin of the mans throat. His jugular was pulsing normally. His skin was smooth with a few dark hairs curling at the throat base and just visible out of the collar of his flight suit. His cheek was clean shaven with just the faintest sheen of perspiration dampening it. She looked up into his eyes, he was just slightly taller than she, and they were a clear, deep brown. Normal enough.

But for some reason, it was wrong. Something just kind of..off. The brown eyes softened just slightly as Grym spoke again. "You know me yet?"

Bambi dropped her hands, stupefied, and stumbled back a step or two, bumping against the opposite wall as recognition finally hit.

"Grym? How?" clearly she found it hard to collect her thoughts.
Then her expression changed to one of severe annoyance.

"Where have you been? Ive been looking everywhere for you!"

[Grym Kandle]

Grym's voice was casual. Nothing was in a rush right now. And he needed to remain calm and relaxed or his own anger and surprise at the odds of this unfortunate event would overwhelm his defense mechanism of stoicism.

"Let's go. He's dead, you've got time. I need air, you look like you could use it too. I'll drive."

He gave a second of thought to her bike outside but they could come back for it. It'd still be there. This place let the dead lie. Everyone had their own business to worry about before they made a call to the authorities. His ride was parked closer to the back anyways. He stepped back into the alleyway, looking over his shoulder to make sure she was going to cool it enough to follow without making a bigger scene.

[Bambi Maddox]

If Grym was hoping to avoid a scene, he was going to be disappointed, though it was probably not what he was expecting.

Bambi followed him into the alley and watched as he tossed a glance back to ensure she was behind him. She still could not believe her eyes - the handsome face, the clear eyes and thick brown hair was so incongruous to the Grym she knew. But underneath, it was him alright. It was him.

Grym rounded the corner where alley meets backstreet and turned suddenly round, his survival instincts sensing Maddox was coming up close real quick. As he made it 180 degrees, he was accosted by his old partner, wrapped in an embrace that almost took the breath out of him.

"...I can't believe you're alright" she squeezed harder, though he didnt know how that was possible. Gone was her initial knee-jerk reaction of confused anger. She buried her head into the curve of his neck, giving him a mouthful of wind-tusslled hair "Its like seeing a ghost Grym, only not as freaky.. You're alright, you're alright."

She was thrilled, and was not the least bashful to show it.

[Grym Kandle]

Grym had been alone for so long and then had just started to adjust to being around another person and then the drastic change to being alone again. And now this. And the ironic nature behind it all. He wanted to laugh and cry, even if he couldn't do the later due to damaged tear ducts, how he felt so compelled. But it felt like one of those moments you tried to enjoy the most of before reality realized it was happening.

Slowly, as if he were trying to evolve into an emotional being, his arms wrapped around her, returning the embrace. Resting his head against hers, he stared into the shadows of the alley beyond them. She smelled great and he knew he offered an unfair trade, the fake skin smelled like biosynthetics with a tinge of the bar atmosphere. She was so real, so alive, he could feel her heart racing, a testimony against any dellusions that this was a dream.

=======

"Who are you?"

Eight beings stood in the hangar, all standing before the lowered ramp to Grym's ship. All of them were armed and a few of them had felt it necessary to wear armor.

"We're... friends of Cyrus."

Bambi's target, who had died along with the detonation, caused by a failsafe gone wrong on one of his cyborg body guards. At least that was the testimony of the word on the street.

Grym's mask showed nothing, conveying his stoic nature to the universe in a more aesthetic fashion. It also allowed him to count how many weapons they were all carrying and the physical specs on each of them.

"And that means what to me?"

The spokesperson stepped forward as if offended that Grym was trying to play games with them.

"We know you took the contract on Cyrus. You and that fine lady. Your lil' babe bit the big one though when Cyrus' man took a dive, didn't she? Some say she cursed yo' name before she rode that wave of incineration."

"Ok."

A few of the guys who had been snickering at their leader's humor stopped. Two of the three fell backwards, knives protruding from the base of their jaw. The scene erupted into action. The masked figure of Grym Kandle launched towards the leader, the closest. The leader's blaster was unholstered in moments but a moment too late. A gloved hand grasped the man's forearm and the other hand applied enough pressure to break the arm at the elbow in a fluid motion. The blaster fell from the man's grasp and into the open palm of Grym. Three bolts to the leader's face and another man fell shortly thereafter. One man lunged and kicked high to collide with Grym's face. Grym shifted his weight suddenly and dropped to his hands, one lithe leg sweeping the man's grounded leg from out under him. Grym was back up in moments, an open palm uppercutting the man's chin. A satisfying crack could be heard as the man hit the durasteel floor of the hangar.

It was an art, the Echani martial arts style and it stressed pure action, every movement was vital because it conveyed your purpose and existance. Everything around the performer was within their realm of awareness and action could be required at any given time. This is what saved Grym when he detected the grenade roll into his sphere of awareness. He launched backwards and whipped his cloak before him, activating the shield on his belt as the concussive force hit him.

Two of the eight survived that encounter and word on the street was that the nameless masked assassin that had accompanied the other dead beautiful female assassin had joined her only a week later to go beyond the veil as another pile of incinerated ash.

=======

"I'm alright?"

He could only whisper, and it took him a moment to contemplate and even say what he wanted to say to her.

"It was you who died first."

[Bambi Maddox]

"I -- What?"

Bambi lifted her head and stepped back a half-step so she could look at Grym's face. Or the face he was wearing, which was still kinda weird for her to see and was throwing her off balance.

If she thought about it from Grym's perspective, she could see how he might have thought that she'd gone ka-boom with the rest of the building that night. But she always was a little slow at seeing things from anyone's point of reference other than her own. In her mind, she'd never been lost. She'd always known where she was.

"Oh. Well. It was close" she said with a sheepish grin, rolling her good eye in the direction of her eyepatch, which made her look rather bizare. "I followed Cyrus into the building, just as we'd planned" she turned slightly and they both began to walk together down the street toward where Grym had left his transport. "Cyrus and his bodyguards were in there and I came on like I was to meet someone there...."


=============================


"You know where I might find Sam Lyneman?" she called as she came in the doorway.

Cyrus was still flanked by both bodyguards standing waiting in front of a turbolift and one of them turned square on toward Bambi to cover his charge in a protective stance. He held out a palm indicating her not to come any closer. "You got the wrong building lady, try the next one up"

From where she stood, Maddox could see the second guard touching a hand tentively toward his blaster hilt, ready to convince her to back up if it should come to it.

Bambi tried to keep them talking in order to gain her the right moment to pull her blaster and take them out. "Really? Sam said this building, Im pretty sure--"

It was then the turbolift's arrival was announced by a dainty "ting" and the shiney twin doors pulled apart.

Automatically, heads turned toward the open doors, Bambi's head included.

Inside the lift was a slight-framed individual dressed in a drab brown overcoat. But that was not what caught everyone's attention -- it was the detonator he held in his trembling hand.

It was then many things happened all at once and the job went to pot.

The bodyguard closest to Cyrus acted immediately, pulling his charge sideways away from the open doors and the obvious threat standing within it.

Maddox went to draw her blaster, but her eyes on the occupant in the lift and the jolt of surprise at this development caused her to fumble the pull and drop it. The other guard closest to her saw Bambi's movement from his peripheral and as she bent to retrieve her blaster the laser bolt he shot off shattered the glass window behind her. In that split second, she made the decision that there was only one outcome to this situation. And it was gonna be a messy one.

Snatching up her gun, she fired a random volley of blaster fire off, hitting mostly walls and ceiling, and scrambled to the door to beat a get away before the psycho in the lift pulled his pin.

What exactly happened next, Maddox could not be certain, but one thing was sure, the bomber with the deathwish got all the credit for her first kill.

================================

Bambi leaned against the speeder now as she remebered that night. Big blocks of it were a blank. But other details were so clear it was like she was right there, right this moment.

"I never ran as hard in my life, Grym" she said with feeling, "but I felt like I was in slow motion and my legs were made of led. I dont even know which direction I ran. I didnt get very far I dont think. What felt like only seconds later, the detonation went off. BAM!"

She smiled oddly and shook her head.

"That's something I'll never forget. Anyway, I woke up at some point in a crappy apartment with some character smacking me on the face. He couldn't speak basic but he was trying to tell me something important. A while later a friend of his - big guy with bad teeth - came and took me to a hospital on the other side of town.

What I find out later was that the first guy who was hitting me - Looda was his name - it was his brother-in-law who was the suicide bomber. Old Cyrus had all but destroyed the guy, and his family. First ruining the small family business by extorting exorbitant protection money from him, and then when he couldn't pay, Cyrus terrorized the poor bugger until he snapped. Looda had been waiting in the wings incase his brother-in-law did not follow through on the big bang plan and then went to the scene after it was obvious that he had. Thats when he found me, on his way and aparently took me back to the safety of his own place.

When Looda came back to the scene a little while later - looking for peices of his brother-in-law I guess, who knows - he was arrested by the City cops and questioned for two days. Thats what he had been trying to tell me, before, at the apartment. He was sorry he'd been gone so long."

Maddox had spent the next six months being patched up and recovering. After that time, she'd then set out to find Grym.

"And here we are"

She jumped into the passenger seat, and flashed him a grin,

"Let's go celebrate, Grym! You can fill me in on where you've been"

[Grym Kandle]

"Celebrating... I think we'll have to put a hold on that for a little while."

Things had worked out and in such a way, they really hadn't. At least she was alive. Grym eased into the craft and started the engine. He ran a hand through his hair and returned Bambi's smile poorly. Hiding behind his mask for so long had left him a little worse for practice in the facial expressions department. Facing forward, he lifted the speeder out of the alley and joined the nearest traffic vein.

"We're headed to my residence. No one'll bother us there."

He wanted to break it to her slowly. It would be a mistake if he broke it all down right now in front of her. They were assassins, on two very different sides of the coin. And he knew both sides had agents and informants all over the place. The randomness of Grym's arrival and his disguise would keep them from knowing who he was, for the most part, but word would probably already have reached Bambi's boss in the next few hours that her target was dead. And that she had flown off with some random guy.

Fill her in on where he'd been? He had awoken in a bacta tube in a hospital. He had been knocked out of the hangar and into an adjacent building. It hadn't turned out that bad, a few months in recovery, a hefty bill shortly thereafter, and Grym had been back on his feet. He'd believed her dead and had set out upon his goal to reach the Black Sun, alone this time. He had managed as much and obviously, so had she. If Fate was anything alive, Grym would have its name on a death contract for setting things up like this. What a tragedy.

After a moment, he noticed how quiet he had become.

"Uh, right. We'll get to me in a bit. But you, your eye?"

There was always a hope it was only a scanner or something. It pained Grym to think that she had to suffer a wound like that from her first mission if it was truly injured.

[Bambi Maddox]

"The eye's toast" she said flippantly, as if it didnt matter.

"The patch is cool, though, dont you think?" she leaned over a little as if to give Grym a better look. "Saves time when I take pictures, no crunching shut the other eye to focus."

She threw herself back against the seat as Grym accellerated through the spacelanes, the wind whipping her hair about. Just like that last night.

It was impossible for both their thoughts not to be pulled back there and wonder about all the iterminable time in between. So much was lost. They'd just been starting out, not having even begun to hit their stride before it had all been obliterated by one, poor, over-the-edge guy who detonated his, and their, lives into oblivion.

Sometimes life really sucked like that.

"Hey so -- that dude I killed. His name's Javes Tinarm..what the frell kinda name is that anyway?" Bambi laughed infectiously. "Hey, maybe I should be called Bambi One-eye..or Patch Maddox!"

Grym seemed to have lost his sense of humor, not that he had ever been one for hysterics, but he atleast used to find her a bit of amusing. He wasnt laughing tonight, though. Something was heavy on his mind.

Her laugh dwindled, though she couldn't stop altogether. She was actually happy for the first time in...well...since Grym had showed up at Vins Starlit Night to invite her on the ride of her life. And here he was again, showing up, outta the blue. This time, he wasn't gonna go anywhere. Bambi was going to make sure of that.

'How far's your place, Grym? Im gonna fix ya a real drink, none of that grey dren you used to drink before. You still have to take that stuff?"

[Grym Kandle]

That he still drank.

"Yeah, it does the body good. Taste is a temporary sensation. But I could do for a good drink now."

So would she by the time he was finished explaining everything. She seemed so happy. A guilty impulse tempted him not to even mention. Just enjoy things as they were. Wasn't that cheating though? Only running away from the facts that brought reality crashing down and obliterating the enjoyment he could've derived from this?

"We should be there soon."

He needed to keep her talking, he was acting maybe too much out of character for the moment and she had probably already noticed.

"That 'dude' you killed was a drenbag. And I'd stay away from those names..."

Grym smirked with muted amusement.

"... I'm not sure they really convey the job you're looking to represent on the streets."

The speeder made a smooth turn and entered a parking garage to a dingy looking set of buildings that turned out to be apartments upon closer inspection.

[Bambi Maddox]

She craned her head forward now, taking in her surroundings with a dubious look.

Sheesh, they'd been better to go back to her place -- the Penthouse was palatial in comparison to these apartments. Bambi knew Grym preferred to keep a low profile. But there was low, and there was low.

It didn't dampen her mood any, though, and she swung her long body out of the vehicle just as Grym came to a stop. Bambi was not a girl who needed pretty things, though she wouldn't refuse them, as her current lodgings at Sorsha's generosity attested. But she didn't need them. Her tastes were simple and honest. Grym may be the only person who really knew that about her.

"So partner, which of these joints belongs to you?" She rubbed her hands together. "Im in the mood for some good times, so show me the way"

She came around to Grym and threaded her arm through his, hugging close to him. In the past, she would not have been so familiar, but in the past she had not realised how very bad it is when a good thing is gone. Bambi knew better now.

As they made their way forward, Bambi gave him a poke on the cheek with her forefinger. "So who's face is this anyway?"

[Grym Kandle]

Good times? He wanted to sigh, shake his head, just do something to convey the futility that ran from his face to his toes. But he turned his face to her with a smile, holding a hand to his cheek as if she had injured him. He let her be so close to him though, without reluctance.

"Well, if someone would quit trying to kill me too..."

He paused, the words getting caught in throat before he could continue on.

"... It's here."

He led them to a lift, the doors opening slowly with lack of maintenance.

"It's synthetic. My face, Lady. I know it doesn't look anything like it, but if you took away all the saturated glitterstim and did some cosmetic surgery, it wouldn't be too far away from what it looks like now."

The lift ride was fast thankfully and the doors opened to a rather dull apartment.

It was only meant to be temporary and Grym wasn't much of a materialist anyways. As for the general cleanliness, it was immaculate. The holoscreen was on, muted, showing the rise and fall of the prices of shipped goods in the Outer Rim. Just from entering, they could spot the aparatus used to refine glitterstim into several different forms on the small table in the middle of the room. His mask and cloak hung from the hooks of the door to his bedroom. Those two items and the immediate sense of cleanliness were the only signs that Grym had been there recently.

"Its not bad. why don't you go ahead and get to those drinks? I'm going to get rid of this thing."

Pinching the skin on his bare hand.

[Bambi Maddox]

Bambi had known Grym a long time. Before the days they were partners, they had been old friends. But she had never seen this face before. Or at least, this version of it. Flawless and youthful. For as long as she could remember, addiction to glitterstim had held Grym in its vice-grip and his mask had always been the face she knew as his own.

She crossed directly over to the kitchen and rattled through the cupboards to locate the liquor supply. As on his ship, "Breft'kel's Treasure," all the supplies were in a neat and orderly fashion. Bambi smiled at the man's indyosyncratic nature.

"Aha!"

Apparently finding what she was looking for, Bambi set to work, bringing down a pair of decent sized glasses from an overhead cabinet.

"Well, you go get yourself back to normal and I'll have your Reactor Core on ice"

She mixed together a generous amount of Spice rum and blue tonic, stirring it with a metal knife for want of an actual twizzle stick. Dropping in some ice-cubes, Grym heard her clilnking her way to the sofa, where she sat down with a loud exhale of relief.

Sipping from her glass, she held out one to Grym as he returned from his bedroom.

"Here, this'll curl the hair on yer chest"

[Grym Kandle]

One, now gloved, hand reached out and grasped the drink as Grym peeled off the remaining piece of synthetic skin from his neck. He dropped it into the nearby trash can and went to the windows, tinting them slightly so not so much light was allowed in as before as he had removed the contacts providing such comfortable protection. Grym sat down beside her.

His face no longer held the illusion of rugged youthfulness. Hardened veins creeped up his neck and the right side of his face. His skin was paler than pale with a greenish tint to it and the brown hair dye had been partially washed out, revealing the now black hair, almost green in some light. His eyes were bloodshot, green veins crawling from one end to the other. The brown irises twisted into an off color hazel. But she had seen this before with him the first time they had reunited and it should've been nothing to set her off.

He sipped the glass carefully from cracked lips, before taking actual drinks from it. He winced from the first gulp but smiled afterwards and drank it regularly from there on out. He lounged on the couch, nearly taking up as much room as she was, relaxing for a brief moment before he spoke again.

"How long have you been here?"

[Bambi Maddox]

"Long enough to be an employee of the Black Sun" she announced with obvious pride.

That had been their goal all the while. Her and Grym. To work for one of the Vigo's of the Black Sun - the best of the best.

She moved around on the sofa, bringing her legs up to sit cross-legged facing Grym, who now was in profile to her.

He looked worse than she remembered. Maybe that was just because of the contrast now that his synthetic self had been removed. But his skin seemed a little thinner, a little greener. But gods it was great to see him, right there, within spittin' distance. She took a long drink and then swirled the ice around in her glass.

"Finally - I did something right" she lifted her glass in salute and waited for Grym to respond likewise and join her toast.

[Grym Kandle]

"Finally?"

As if she had been messing up all along? But his systematic thinking instantly cut in, that she didn't get that right. It was like... finding out that the shooting sar you just saw wasn't really as fantastic as you thought, that it was a rock falling through the atmosphere. Pleasure and enjoyment destroyed by the overruling details. He continued to stare straight ahead, not looking back at her yet and barely aware of her attempt to toast. He sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees, one hand holding the glass between his legs while the other tucked at the now irritating collar of his flight suit.

"No... you didn't. We didn't."

[Bambi Maddox]

"What?"

Her smile was still in place, but gradually faded as the unpleasant feeling that something wasn't quite right finally crept past the barriers she had erected all night. She knew Grym had been more than his usual reserved style, but Bambi's self-denial that his reappearance was anything other than good news had stubbornly dismissed it.

Now however, Grym would not allow reality to be put off. And this decidedly ticked her off. Couldn't he just fake it - just for atleast the first damned drink?

"What are you talking about?" She tried to put him off. "Drink up, we're both back from the dead, we should be happy"

[Grym Kandle]

"We should. We should be happy."

Despite the tone she was taking, his voice was still calm, remorseful. He was too jaded to believe in something like karma to think that all the death he had wrought had something to do with the twisted irony of their current position. Life was just... cruel. He almost smirked at that. None of this was new but this scenario was new, another tragedy yet overcome.

"You're right, let's finish this off."

He held his drink up, a toast, but not in a manner of celebration.

[Bambi Maddox]

She moved her glass toward his, holding it momentarily in salute, but then allowed it to drop again, untouched. There was no point pretending now. It was too obvious that something serious was going on and she remaining ignorant of it - even for a moment more - was cowardly of her.

"Ok, Grym, what is it that's gone so wrong?"

She was afraid of the answer, he could tell by the way she looked at him and the slight bracing of her shoulders.

[Grym Kandle]

He wasn't very good at making people feel better. He wasn't a guidance counselor; he believed himself to be a retiring assassin, with his hands in a comfortable glitterstim traffic. He shrugged and downed the drink in one pull. He pulled the glass away from his lips and his eyes winced as he felt the drink get revenge for such a choice. Opening his eyes, he looked to Bambi, wiping the edge of his eyes with the tip of his finger.

"We're both in the syndicate now. Both Black Sun members. Who's your employer?"

He already knew, and he didn't want to treat her like she was dumb or anything, but he wanted to make sure that the information was clearly presented.

[Bambi Maddox]

"We're both in the Black sun..?" she repeated, her brow furrowing, not really comprehending the link between disaster and what he'd just said.

"I work for" he could see understanding slowly dawning on her now as the facts started adding up to the one place he could only be going.

"..for Sorsha Kasajian" she finished quietly.

She eyeballed her drink. She was gonna need it, she felt certain.

"And you? Don't tell me....Sasseerri.."

[Grym Kandle]

"I've been with her for sometime now. My glitterstim business has been established though Black Sun already. But my skills as an assassin are still too valuable to ignore from the Vigo's perspective. My ... target tonight was not Tinarm... It was... Sorsha's new assassin."

He wanted to go further in detail, maybe that would just make it worse though? He still had a choice. The Vigo had said only if it seemed convenient. From where he stood, it would never be convenient. He had no intention of killing Bambi Maddox, ever. He had been staring at his empty glass, his eyes slowly turned to her, honestly afraid of how she was going to take this.

[Bambi Maddox]

This was soooo much worse than Maddox could have imagined.

Not only were they in separate camps within the Black Sun -- camps that were more and more engaging in a serious (and all too deadly) rivalry. But worse than that, much much worse than that, Grym had been placed in the position of killing her. Good Grief! How could this have happened?

"How could this have happened?!" Bambi leapt to her feet and began pacing around the room in great agitation, stopping midstride every now and again to look incredulously over at Grym, who, by the way, was remaining very calm about it all. Too calm. God, was he picturing himself killing her even there, as the remnants of the Reactor Core rolled down the insides of his glass to pool in the bottom..?

This was terrible. He shoulda stayed dead. She shoulda stayed dead.

She threw a hand to her forehead as if to stop the turmoil of her thoughts, but it only served to make her look more stressed.

Bambi came to a sudden halt and turned her gaze again on Grym. She looked wild, skittish, like some mare who smelt blood on the air but wasn't sure which way the hunter was coming.

When she spoke again, finally, her voice was surprisingly calm. Almost detatched.

"So, where does that leave us? What's next then?"

[Grym Kandle]

Grym gave a resigned sigh. Sometimes, when he hit a strong batch of glitterstim, he'd have these things, dream-like, and everything seemed so... clear. It granted an amount of clairovoyance for Glitterstim really had no horrible side effects to the user unless you were addicted and used the substance to the point of saturation, like himself. He wished he had that clairovoyance right now. This instant.

Looking up at her, he saw a young woman, caught in such distress. He'd seen the look before, on so many others. When they realized that their mortality was on the line, or that the body that Grym had then stood over was someone they loved. Who was Bambi worried about? Herself? Grym?

He wasn't on any real kind of social level beyond his business to even think what was running through her mind. His automatic conclusions led to only that which he refused to adhere to. Grym, of all the souls, comrades, enemies, superiors, would not kill her. He felt an internal struggle over trying to identify the reason but he didn't have time to deal with his emotions like that; he had made a choice on instinct and he would not go back on it.

"I'm bound to follow Sasseerri by loyalty."

He didn't give her any time to react as he continued to speak.

"But I... You... I'm not going to... kill you."

Saying something that so contradicted his systematic thinking was almost painful to say out loud. He'd never had second thoughts about any contract or target. Bambi wasn't a target, never would be, but it was hard to work that concept into his mind. He'd been taught and lived the rule that everyone but the Boss was a possible target, no one was safe.

"I know the... consequences of that decision. And there's no way to prevent it. Sorsha's attention on you is what made you a discernable target. Its the whispers on the street about you so far. I'm an Outer Rim guy, my name only goes so far; the big 'they' don't even know I'm in town."

Grym actually had no idea how far his reputation went and had never made it a point to find out. He had removed any of his opponents before joining Black Sun though so he knew no one from his past was around to slander him in his absence.

"But you keep pulling jobs, its a no brainer you're still breathing. Not that you're a liability..."

He was slowly but surely watching a plan fall into place behind his eyes.

"... but its not like I had to kill you. She said... if it was convenient. So it wasn't. I return empty handed and with a story that 'I got a score to settle.' Make it personal, ya know? So then she doesn't send anyone else after you..."

He leaned farther forward, hanging his head. Nothing was concrete, he was running through a nebula that he felt could go supernova before the star even was a star.

"Krast..."

[Bambi Maddox]

Grym's words should have been a comfort to her. His assurance that he would not kill her was intended to put her at rest, but they chilled her to her very core. Just to hear him voice such a possibility forced her to see him in a different light. Cold fingers of...not fear, for fear tended to make the blood race and the heart pound as adrenilin reacted to such a stimuli. No. It was more a profound sadness that seemed to grip Bambi in a cold, sinking sensation in the middle of her chest. She suddenly felt all the euphoria of earlier that evening evaporate completely. It was as if it had never been there at all, and in its place was a dark hollow space. Something of Grym had been taken away from her tonight. Something she was afraid she would never get back again. Bambi had trouble naming it, but it was something real and she felt it slip away. She believed him, however. If he was going to kill her, he wouldn't lie to her about it. She knew him well enough to know that she would always get complete honesty from him. She had always known that.

Maddox stood for several moments, just looking at Grym. She was so completely at a loss as to how to fix things. She was still a few steps behind him in realising that there was no fix. The whole thing was skewered beyond straightening.


"That dren-scagging felinoid skrak!" Bambi hissed into the air, directing all her turmoil and frustration onto Sasseerri. Somehow, it was all the Cizerack's fault.

"I'll tell Sorsha that Sasserri tried to have me clipped and it will start a bloodbath" she cried defiantly. "We will kill off that Cizerack Vigo and that will solve the problem for everyone"

Bambi was currently chosing to ignore Grym's stated loyalty to Sasseerri. There was no way he'd let Maddox go off with some plan to destroy Sasseerri, no matter how half-baked and rage-induced it was. The logical side of Bambi knew that. But right now, logic had stepped out for a smoke and emotion had taken the floor. Bambi warmed up to her idea, "I'll see that little cat squawk loud and long for this"

[Grym Kandle]

His eyes slowly drug his gaze from the floor up to Bambi. He was thinking up ways to keep them both alive and she was rattling off a sure enough way to get him killed. But he knew she was running on fumes now. Raw emotions were a powerful motivator, a temporary adrenaline rush that often left you in more long term regret than anything else. At least that had been in his experiences. But this was her way of handling this right now. As much as he wanted to run the needle to his vein, he'd press it through the corner of his eye if he had to right about now, Grym resisted the urge, turning his head up to Bambi and her display of defiance towards fate. Fate. Fate had played them for the bad hand they had, cheated, and still got away with it, leaving them with nothing to do but try to pick up the pieces.

He could work himself out of a fight with eight men. He could survive a hand to hand bout to the death with a trandoshan. But for the life of him, he was left impoverished when it came to handling women, dren, people in general. Did he let her continue to rant until she began to wind down? Was he supposed to say something? What did she want to hear? Did it even matter? He felt honestly that it wasn't about what she wanted to hear or even just what had to be said. Beyond that though, he couldn't decipher another thing beyond the fog of human emotions.

His voice cut at the tension like a rusty dagger.

"Would you like me to leave while you plan to assassinate my employer? Or maybe some more time to what little we already don't have?"

He swallowed slowly before continuing.

"I want your help and I want Us to make it through this..."

Trying to say something like partners caught in his throat. His overpowering sensation to abide by his perception realism to survive prevented him from too much wishful thinking or even trying to support such a notion.

[Bambi Maddox]

As Grym spoke, he was hard pressed to penetrate through Bambi's outrage, but finally his calm and level tone drew her back to their reality.

She stopped her angry diatribe long enough to actually listen to what he was saying and then, with a heavy sigh, she came round to sit on the low coffee table infront of him. Bambi looked him eye to eye, slightly bumping his knee with one of her own as she leaned forward. She took the glass out of his hand, putting it to one side and took his hands in her own.

"We will get through this. We are tougher than this messed up situation. Smarter. But we gotta be committed. We -- I -- gotta know that despite appearances, we are still solid. That we are still on each others side."

She paused, trying to find the right words. Bambi understood the loyalty that their occupational calling demanded. It was a part of their own inward honor, as crazy as an assassin with honor sounds. She would not betray Sorsha, just as he would not betray Sasseerri. It was a given. Those respective Vigos deserved such trust. But the relationship between she and Grym was not one based on contractural agreements, or professionalism. It was based on everything they were to each other, their past and their history together. It was interwoven with the present and she was not willing to sever such ties that were the only real, substantial things she considered ever worth having. Everything else was just existing.

"We are going to have to walk a tight wire. Sorsha will learn we were partners - if she doesn't already. It is not something that can be hidden. But.." and here she found it almost impossible to voice her thoughts, "...times like this, tonight" her voice cracked slightly as emotion cronstricted her throat, "wont be able to happen again"

[Grym Kandle]

Grym looked at Bambi's hands, his gloved fingers in such contrast to hers. At least her anger had taken to the back seat for the moment. She was so alive. It seemed nearly impossible for Grym to change the current of his attitude Like a live wire in Grym's life that charged the air around them.

"I don't expect Sasseerri to care, much less remember anything about this until you take another target. She's got so many things going on right now, one assassin is not going to provide anything but a minor frustration for her. And as long as she knows that I'll take care of it, she won't worry about it."

He was well aware though that while his employer was one personality, Sorsha was a beast of another color.

"But the complications... are inevitable."

There was no point in hoping for... times like tonight. There might've been a desperate chance, but it would risk their lives to attempt it after this evening. After this evening. His fingers slowly wrapped around her wrists as he leaned forward, the slightest amount of awareness that his disposition might possibly cause her discomfort at this such a close distance.

"And... We're going to make it. As... partners. I'm not about to go back on my word."

It felt awkward. Just talking like this. He had agreed to be her partner shortly after they had reunited the first time and nothing had changed since then other than the details. The sense of... relationship remained strong. The longing sensation that felt like a pit in his chest made him think it had been too long since he had his last hit of glitterstim.

[Bambi Maddox]

Bambi bent her head forward, resting her forehead against his so that they both looked down to the floor, their boots making a neat square on the thin weave of the carpet below them, their hands suspended in the air between.

She had calmed considerably, but he could still fell the tension in her as he held her wrists. But she had gone very quiet now.

For a long time, he thought she wasn't going to speak again, so that when she did, Grym's thoughts had to be pulled back from fantasies of glitterstim rushing through his veins to the cold unhappy reality that it was still sitting untouched on the table.

"Are you hungry?" she asked quietly, without enthusiasm.

"No"

"Yeah, me neither" she rejoined in the same tone. Nothing was going to be normal again.

"Im tired, though" she added, as if she had been tired all her life.

[Grym Kandle]

He looked up from the ground to her face. A weariness had clearly set in, Grym could see it at the edges of her eyes. The air seemed dead, cold, lonely. He loosed his fingers from her wrists and removed the gloves from his hands, revealing the pale skin, streak marks between his fingers and dark green veins where his skin remained thin. Grym's fingers moved back to her wrists, his skin was anything but soft in comparison to hers, weathered calluses imbedded in his palms from constant training. His sense of touch was sensitive though, aware of her pulse and the tension that held her entirely.

"Stay here... tonight?"

He knew their time was limited. But it was limited in the fashion that after she left this place and returned... Time seemed so precious and in desperate demand.

[Bambi Maddox]

"I'll leave first thing tomorrow" she agreed, her head still bent, unwilling to meet his eyes.

She'd run the gamit of emotions in the space of what, an hour? two? But it felt like the longest night of her life. And the shortest. There was no time, no frelling time, to sort everything out.

Gryms hands were surprisingly warm - it was an odd time to notice such a thing, she reflected, but it was because he'd never actually touched her without his gloves before. He'd never held her hands like this before either.

Its a funny thing how oftentimes it takes some catalyst of disaster to bring a thunderbolt of clarity to a person. Bambi was struck by such at this very moment, as his fingers rested softly on her skin -- Grym was feeling as great a loss as she was - feeling as robbed, as she felt. It was twisting his insides out just like it did her own. He would miss her just like she would miss him. Grym was feeling...something..the same way she was. And if it hadn't been for the cruel hand of fate, she might never have realised it. Somehow, that made the whole thing much easier to take.

"You know," when she at last looked up there was an unexpected sense of peace in her expression, "Some people live their whole lives and never have a night like we get tonight"

[Grym Kandle]

No, a lot of people didn't. It was a mercy that Grym supposed they both should've been grateful for. Why ask for more when you're being given a little more than what others normally got? There was no point in striving to get anything more than what reality could offer. It was something like this, the subtle urgency and finite amount of time available that reminded Grym of such a profound question. What was the point of living life to it's fullest if you got a second try?

=======

"Hey Bambi, I think I'm gonna get outta here for a while."

He paused for a moment, lounging on the couch in her living room, to move the edge of his cloak off his knee. He'd just bought the thing and he wasn't quite used to it yet. He'd also started wearing gloves even out of the pit and around public to hide the streak marks that had started appearing between his fingers. He needed to find more discreet places to inject his doses of glitterstim.

Bambi was in the fresher, doing whatever she did after getting back in from dancing for most of the night. He had already been through with his bout for the night and had cleaned up back in the locker room hours ago. He ran a gloved hand through his brown hair. She probably hadn't heard him but he figured he could probably have a better conversation with her when she wasn't already preoccupied. Nonetheless, he continued to talk, the silence wasn't something he had grown to appreciate... yet.

"I'll be back everyonce in a while, ya know... I think... I think I might'a found what I'm good for, ya know?"

The Crimson Eclipse, a small time syndicate in the Outer Rim, was hiring him for some contract pit fights. They wanted to take him under their wing and sponsor him. He'd been approached in the lockers by a woman named Celeste. It'd been awkward enough, a stoic female in the male locker room who spoke sheer business for an hour, but he wasn't going to turn down the chance.

"I hate to leave you, cuz' we've been friends for so long..."

And he didn't really have that many left.

"But I'll be back..."

[Bambi Maddox]

She walked into the living room, shaking her hair loose from the clip that had held it piled high on her head, a fluffy blue towel wrapped conseratively around her body and crossed from one doorway to another.

"You say something?" she said, passing through.

She didn't stop for the reply, instead continued on into her room, leaving the door slightly ajar to hear his reply as she dressed in boxer shorts and T. "Speak up" she hollered back out to him, not having yet given him her full attention.

[Grym Kandle]

He raised his voice a fraction louder for her, keeping his eyes glued to the floor from when she had walked by. Frustratingly moving the cloak away from him again, he continued.

"Uhhhh... it wasn't too big a'deal. I'm just heading out for a while. I know I haven't been around that much as is, with the fights and everything, but... I shouldn't be gone for too long."

It wasn't any easier saying it a second time. He supposed he could have saved himself the trouble and waited until she was actually listening though.

[Bambi Maddox]

"You're going?"

She emerged from the room, hairbrush now in hand, and a frown darkening her features.

"For how long? What about the rent?"

[Grym Kandle]

He dropped a datapad on the coffee table hesitantly.

"Yeah... about that... I left enough for... two years of my part of the rent. N-n-n-not that I'm gonna be gone for that long, its just in case I'm not around to wire it in or anything. The access code to the account's in the pad."

He had to quickly explain in fear she might get the wrong idea. He had no intention of being gone that long. He just wanted to make sure he wasn't stranding her or anything. They'd been living together for the last few years and it had turned out to be a pretty comfortable arrangement. Since he'd met her six years ago, bouncing at the bar she danced in, whenever one of them ended up leaving one bar, they'd both move onto the next place. Then he'd taken his Echani style to the pits, and that had proven such a bolster in their income he couldn't turn down the ensuing matches. Until this.

"I figure a few months here and there, mostly traveling as they said the business could take me in and out the Outer Rim."

[Bambi Maddox]

"Two years?!"

Grym needn't have bothered elaborating as he had, Bambi was reacting to the first words as if that's all he'd said.

"Just what am I supposed to do for two years?"

It wasnt only about the monetary side of the issue. She'd gotten used to Grym, to having him around. Even when he took off for short intervals, it had never been a big deal - a few days or weeks here or there, a month now and then. But she'd never really felt like he'd been actually gone. He kept his stuff at their place, his contact numbers were always there, heck, even his bills always came c/-o Maddox.

But two years?

She stomped around to stand in front of him as he sat on the couch in that...ridiculous cloak..when did he start wearing that thing?...and what was with the gloves?

Bambi crooked a hand on her hip and stuck her head foward in that annoying way women did when challenging someone.

"And just who are "they" anyhow...?"

[Grym Kandle]

Grym leaned back against the couch. Not in the sense of relaxing but he was trying to establish as much distance between him and Bambi because there was something behind her eyes. She looked like she was about to explode, something he found himself favoring in her personality, but at the same time taking the time to respect by not trying to provoke her. This time he'd obviously failed.

"Uhhh... yeah. Well, I dunno. Two years isn't exactly how long I'm gone, I'm just leaving two year's worth of rent just in case... And... 'they' might just be... the Crimson Eclipse..."

They were known for pulling small time gigs around Nar Shadda. Nothing too serious or anything near what Grym was about to embark upon usually made it this far down the ears of the public. And he didn't really want to get into an indepth explanation with Bambi at the moment. He wasn't lying to her, just saving her from having to worry about him. Or getting her involved. It was much better for her that way.

=======

"I'm sorry... I left."

[Bambi Maddox]

"I told you that you would be"

There was none of the hot-tempered, righteously indignant fire in her words as there had been when Bambi had originally said them to Grym that night in the apartment.

Things had come full circle, but circumstances now were quite different than that night, years ago.

Bambi smiled sadly, "Hind-sight, huh."

====================


"Might be the Crim---Grym! What are you thinkin? They're just gonna use you up, maybe get you killed or crippled" (he noticed she thought crippling was worse than dead) "..and then what use are ya?"

Geez..sometimes she didn't know where he came up his hair-brained schemes. She suddenly stopped, a new possibility springing into her already revved up thoughts.

"Do you...owe them? You know, for all that rubbish you been injecting into your veins?"

[Grym Kandle]

His eyes leveled with hers. She was going for the heart, not even wasting time.

"If I owed them money for my..."

Krast, why bother dodging around with words anymore.

"... for my addiction, why the dren would I have two years worth of rent saved up?!"

He leaned forward, provoked and hurt at the direction she was taking this.

"They're not gonna use me up, Bambi! They're gonna set me up! Who knows how much money I'll be making but it'll be at least three more digits than what I'm peeling off of now."

=======

That hurt he'd felt then hadn't been because she had attacked him, it had been because she had been truthful in an aspect of it. The money had kept Grym's supply coming in. He'd been younger, maybe overly ambitious, and the advantage and edge that glitterstim offered had been daunting in its temptation. It was back now. Glitterstim was a requirement now, his brain would starve itself without the drug at such a late stage in the addiction. And what a pain it was, paired with the memories.

"What a better view we have of each other now."

His hand went from her wrist and up her shoulder, one finger tracing along the side of her face, over the strap to her eye patch. He had tried to keep her away from this. Upon his return, Grym had asked her if she wanted to come along with him, sure he could protect her then. And look at what happened. The pain, it wasn't getting any better. And it felt tinged with the weight of guilt.

[Bambi Maddox]

"Didn't anyone ever tell you money isn't everything? Not your momma, or your old man, or your frelling wrestling coach or someone?"

She was really winding up now.

"Sure.....they may take care of you, throwing credits at ya until you drown in 'em. But they wont care about you Grym. Not like me. Not like I care."

She was indignant. And hurt. Did he want to get away so bad that he didn't mind hookin up with whatever scum will grease his wheels the best for him? Seems like.

Bambi felt her blood rushing toward her head as she battled for why she felt so angry and...left behind... as she did. Her cheeks flushed and she got that weird constricting in her chest like she always did when her emotions were flying blind.

"You'll be sorry if you go, s'all I can say Grym." She headed back towards her room, for the singular reason to be moving and expend some frustration by simple motion. "Sometimes you're just too dense to know how good you got things round here."


================


Bambi flinched slightly as Grym's finger brushed her eyepatch. Despite all her bravado of liking her new look (which overall, she truly did) she suddenly was very conscious of what Grym might think.

Of all people, he was not the one to feel self conscious in front of, she knew. But this was different. This - tonight - had made her feel more exposed infront him than she ever had in their whole past together.

"I dont think we've changed all that much. Do you..?"

[Grym Kandle]

She had just said... what? Grym felt like he had just been left very alone as she went back to her room. And in that loneliness... he didn't have needle immediately on him, glitterstim wasn't here this time to save the day. His lip lifted in a sneer as he leaned forward from the couch to see if she was coming back. She didn't appear to be. He stood fluidly, the edges of his vision seemed to be shaking. Grym was going places, years of training under that old fart in the Echani style were paying off, so much effort, in death matches even, were all coming to fruition. And she was telling him what...?

Didn't anyone ever tell you money isn't everything? Not your momma, or your old man, or your frelling wrestling coach or someone?

You'll be sorry if you go, s'all I can say Grym

She'd be sorry he was gone, not the other way around. He flipped the edge of the cloak resting against his arm well out of his way. His teeth gritted as he headed for the door outside. His thoughts of how constricting, how stuffy their life was on Nar Shadda came upon him like an avalanche. And his addiction was nagging at him again, dragging at the back of his mind and feeding his unexplainable anger.

He stopped at the door, his hand resting on it, as he looked back over his shoulder. Was this how he had meant to leave her?

=======

"No, no I don't. I think we're still back where we were."

He'd missed that vital part that night. Being brash and young, his ambitious mind in those moments had completely disregarded the mainstream of his life for those last years.

But they won't care about you Grym. Not like me. Not like I care.

"We... I just... know what we're looking at now."

[Bambi Maddox]

She was standing in her doorway watching him, so that when he turned he saw her. Surprise that he was just going to walk out clearly on her face.

"So...you say you'll come back" Her anger was still there, he could see it. But she had pushed it down as best she could for the more important purpose of saying goodbye to him. "You'll always have a place here, Grym. With me." It wasn't said exactly friendly, in fact she had to choke the words out. But he knew once she'd cooled off, it would be no truer than it already was.

===================

"To be honest, I dont know how this will all fall out. Over time I mean." She was finally accepting that despite their intended best efforts, this whole thing could explode in their faces and end very very badly. It was only a matter of time before the Vigo rivalry heated up to the point of boiling over in a steaming, scalding all out war, taking them along with it.

Bambi was dead serious in what she next said.

"If it comes to it - I dont want to see it coming." It took a second for Grym to realise just what she was referring to. "I never want to know it was you"

[Grym Kandle]

Grym turned, took a step towards her and stumbled slightly. She was messing him up pretty badly, going from one polar to the next and then resting somewhere in an indiscernable middle. How was he supposed to react? Wasn't it just easier to storm out and not care. But that was painfully false. He did, he just wasn't good at ever showing as much. Things he did, in which he always thought he was covering his bases and helping others, never seemed to work out the way he planned. He didn't play the 'I'm misunderstood' card either. He just knew he wasn't one of those guys who would always make people happy.

He rested his hand against the door, wincing slightly as it felt like he opened on of the scabbed streakmarks between his fingers. Drawing back to his chest cautiously, he looked to Bambi, calm, but that fire was still readily apparent beneath.

"Don't worry... Lady. I'll be back, for you."

=======

His eyes widened slowly and then focused on Bambi.

=======

"Celeste. There's been a lot of in fighting recently with the Crim bosses. If word gets out that they want me dead, I know you'll know. Don't wast time. Just get it over with and kill me. I won't even run."

"You don't have anything to worry about, Grym."

=======

What a cruel fate they had been given indeed. Emotion, a kind Grym hadn't felt in so very long, gripped him from inside. Death had been his business for so many years, and longing of his emerald obsession, to know something like this was almost foreign. How unfair of life to drive Bambi to ask such a thing of him.

=======

"Celeste...? Celeste...? Answer me..."

She looked up into his mask, blood dribbling from the side of her lips. The knife was still embedded in her chest, the blade stuck imbetween the plates of her armor.

"Grym? How did you...know?"

"I didn't..."

=======

If it would be worth anything to defy fate, life, the stars, whatever name destiny tried to ride in on, Grym would have done it by now. Beyond the emotional turmoil, Grym knew his calculating conciousness was siphoning away his personal problems, trying to reestablish the 'professional' mind set he had been his for what seemed so long now.

A dormant contract established that under given circumstances, if the Vigos made war upon each other, then Grym would insure that Bambi died by his hand alone and that it would occur to her seemingly random and without any knowledge that he or death were coming for her. The price paid by the contractor, who was also the target for said dormant contract, was friendship. Grym's stinted emotions shivered internally at the thought but he agreed to the terms, understanding that after all this, it'd be the only way he could handle it if it came to such a thing.

His head was spinning. His vision was shaking slightly, and he could feel his pulse in his joints. His body was craving the glitterstim in response to the mental duress that he wasn't generally engaged in. It sought to give him release. He deserved the torment a little longer.

"Only if it comes to it..."

[Bambi Maddox]

His reply seemed to satisfy her. Whether she believed him or not, Grym couldnt really tell. But there seemed nothing more that he could say that did not ring of hollow promise or lame patronising.

For her part, Maddox would have to be content to let the chips fall where someone else threw them and rearrange the peices the best she could.

There had never been a time when Grym had not been good to his word, though sometimes months or years separated declaration from deed.

It was this thought that she was left with as she stood in the doorway in her apartment. And, again, as she sat on the coffee table in his. Time had folded in on itself bringing them to the place again where they would just have to trust themselves to each other. And frack the uncertain future.

She said simply and truthfully, "That's good enough for me"

[Grym Kandle]

Grym abruptly stood. A resistant urge welled up inside of him as he stood. His eyes hurt, the light stung his eyes. The feeling was all too familiar, the hunger reaching out from the back of his mind. He gave Bambi the slightest of smiles as he shrugged.

"I need to take a breather..."

He didn't wait for her to respond as Grym turned from the living room and made his way to the counter. His fingers closed over a slim black case.

[Bambi Maddox]

She remained where she was, not needing to turn round in order to know what Grym was doing.


His habit was as necessary to him as breathing. Maybe more so.

Maddox understood that about his addiction, and accepted it.

She didn't like that it was taking an awful toll on him, but that was something he had to square with himself.

[Grym Kandle]

"I need some time to... think..."

He looked to the black case and he pushed open the door to his room. The room was bare but for a bed and a desk. The bed was small but it worked for Grym's sole purpose of sleeping on it. The desk was clear but its shelves were neatly organized with an assortment of Grym's tools. Everything was so simple. Simple and void of anything that conveyed an idea that might complicate the environment. A sanctuary from even himself.

He set the case down on the small table beside the bed as he took a seat on the edge of the mattress. The case opened slowly, revealing several dark vials and two long syringes. The vials vibrated in Grym's vision, alive and screaming for his veins, for release from behind the thin layer of protection that kept them from him.

[Bambi Maddox]

"Oh thinkin' - that's what you're callin' it these days" she said after him, a - dont bs me smile - clear in her voice.

Maddox got up then, moving back to the kitchen area to mix herself up another drink.

"I'll just be doin' some thinkin' too"

[Grym Kandle]

He knew the glitterstim was his weakness. But it was an edge as well. Bambi couldn't understand the advantages gained from the substance. No one could unless they pushed the envelope like Grym and only so many others did. Glitterstim was known for giving near psychic sensations when a concentrated amount was put in the blood stream. Grym had epiphanies when he used enough to feed his ever hungry fix. Thinking was exactly what he was going to do. Lose himself in the current of thought and see if he could understand his position any better from there.

His fingers curled around the syringe carefully as his other hand withdrew one vial. He flicked the vial and the heater attached to the vial kicked in. A small amount of water was dropped from the small machine on the top and in seconds, the glitterstim was liquified. Any small time addict who tried to take in this much glitterstim in one pull would overdose in seconds. This was like an appetizer for Grym by now. Not that he was proud of it. Every reflection he caught a glimpse of was a reminder of the monster that he really was. Such was the price.

The vial slid into the syringe and Grym prepped the needle. It glowed something near a bright orange as it sterilized itself. His body was twitching at his pressure points, the anticipation causing the adrenaline rush of the centrury everytime he reached this point. He used in one hand to peel back his lower lip by making a fish hook with his finger and pulling it down, exposing his gums. He'd done this a few times before and no longer required a mirror.

He didn't hesitate. The needle slid into the soft, moist flesh of his gums and he sighed, the pain could not be denied. He pressed the release on the syringe and the green substance in the vial disappeared in the rush of a vacuum. Grym's eyes almost rolled back in his head as the mental desire was achieved, the substance sucessfully delivered to his bloodstream. The needle slid out easy enough as he set it back down in the case, the needle sterlized itself as he closed the case. Grym felt like he was waking up, having fallen asleep since his last hit.

[Bambi Maddox]

As Bambi mixed up another drink - she was on her third "Reactor Core" now having downed a quick one, and she was making this next one a double - she could smell the rich spice of Grym's hit as he heat it up.

She never did like that smell. It gave her a small shudder as she imagined Grym pressing the plunger of the syringe and that toxin rushing its way into his body.

Taking a deep breath she stood watching his bedroom door, expecting him to emerge back through it.

Adding another splash from the bottle into her glass, she made her drink a triple instead.

[Grym Kandle]

Time, in effect, stopped. Grym could analyze anything he wanted, rewind time upon his focus, and learn everything about it. Not in the sense of following some kind of timeline, or like watching a holovid, but in the sense of how each thing in the universe acted and reacted with everything else. It was an abstract concept that Grym's mortal mind could barely pierce beyond the veil with the assistance of glitterstim, just how much and how little an individual affected the 'grand' scheme of things.

The escape offered by the glitterstim wasn't in this ability though, it rested in the objective state of mind, as in the observer being seperated from everything else, watching the flow of time and life as all others saw it from another vantage. And such was Grym's escape. Not a true relief from reality but one that helped support that foundation of complete competency that Grym always felt necessary to maintain. The necessity, had it ever been unnecessary? That fear of losing control, succumbing to something else's schemes and being powerless against it to the point that one was merely a being of reaction, effect to something else's cause. That fear wasn't Grym's to claim though at the moment. At the moment.

He watched as the other Grym, the one sitting on the bed, stood. Nothing was out of ordinary beyond his routine flaws, so immaculately portrayed for the Grym who stood somewhere outside of the other Grym. This wasn't anything out of the ordinary either. How clear everything seemed to appear in aspect when one could see... properly. Before the now standing Grym could walk out of the room, the other Grym was in the kitchen, behind Bambi. No one acknowledged this Grym, they never had. But loneliness wasn't something that existed beyond the veil.

Bambi Maddox. The castle of cards had been building slowly. The series of events that led to the tragedy between the two assassins only complicated the structure. The subjective perspective could only deduce the most simplest conclusions from the card castle the two had made. Sympathy almost pierced the veil to this Grym but it still remained just out of his grasp, maybe if this visage had even wanted it in the first place.

The Grym that was just now stepping through the door way and walking into the room was no different than when he had entered. He was congnizant of the other Grym that was watching but it never seemed to make that much sense until after the glitterstim's effects had subsided. It was merely another function of the mind. So familiar to the brain's functions that it was like breathing.

Grym ran a hand through his hair as he stepped out of his room. He blinked, a figure wearing his mask and cloak sitting on the counter behind her for the briefest of glimpses. It was more than a comfortable occurence by now. A tell tale sign that the drug had taken effect. He hadn't seen her make a triple but he knew she had; Grym seemed a bit more distant from the entire situation now and he stopped himself from having the audacity to question if a triple was necessary. That image had made Grym slightly desirable of his mask and cloak, feeling exposed after injecting the substance that so marred his body.

Leaning up against the side of the counter, he scratched his neck idly.

"How is it on the other side, with Sorsha I mean?"

[Bambi Maddox]

Glass lifted to her lips, Bambi drank down more of the stringent mix, breathing in deeply its comforting aroma. The harsh glare of the evening's revelations was starting to very slowly dim around the edges as the warm fingers of alcohol began to knead the inside of her belly. She always loved this stage of drinking - its probably why people drank in the first place - the gradual feeling of invincibility that steals over a person's mind and body, the pleasant sensation that things are better than they are, and nothing is really impossible. Of course, as that sensation increased the reality of it usually correspondingly decreased. That part wasn't quite as much fun.

Grym had re-emerged and was trying his hand at small talk. Which was weird after where they'd just been. It was the easy way, really. See what thinkin' did for a man?

"Its good" she replied, "I got a nice place to live, fantastic view. Sorsha is very generous. I got it pretty good." Too bad she'd never be able to show it off to Grym. "Guess you wont ever get to see it though."

[Grym Kandle]

Grym stood in a suite suitable for only the highest paying cosmopolitans of Coruscant. The view was a panorama that took the breath away from those used to a much more humble undertaking. Grym had seen it before. He felt jaded. The place was empty, alone, and empty. People, numbers of people had been there before though. The front door opened, Bambi practically stumbled inside as the lock was undone. Sorsha stood beside her and he could hear her voice clearly.

"Its yours, if you want it to be."

"No, probably not. And Sorsha doesn't just pay her subordinates idly. She can no doubt sense your potential. Sasseeri too, and she only caught wind of your last job, I don't think she's even got your name."

[Bambi Maddox]

Bambi shrugged.

"Probably not. It surprises me that she was even curious enough to send you to check things out"

She came around and hoisted herself to sit up on the counter, long legs dangling the length to almost touch the floor.

"What do you know about their little feud?"

[Grym Kandle]

"Enough. Xizor, the Black Prince, met something of an untimely end some years ago at the hands of rebels, supposedly the late Leia Organa of Alderaan, more likely it suited it his position I suppose. But in his absence was quite a power vacuum. His lieutenants, the Vigos, were suddenly at a stand off. The strongest two were Kasajian and Sasseeri. Kasajian is backed by powerful players that I'm not aware, I've picked up her influence in places that just wouldn't seem like. She's a power that is deeply rooted in the Core systems and is expanding into the Hutt territories. Sass' on the other hand, well... She's ferocious enough to count for maybe three run of the mill Vigos, regardless of appearances."

Grym was reluctant to talk about Sass' too much. Loyalties were loyalties, he knew where he stood on all accounts and he wasn't worried about betraying any of them. It was not necessary or even required of their friendship for him to divulge in personal knowledge of Sasseeri. She could get her own spin on it from her cohorts in Sorsha's business anyways.

[Bambi Maddox]

The answer both did, and did not, satisfy Maddox.

She had a general understanding of the background between the set up of the Vigos of the Black Sun. But Grym, as usual, had the ability to put things in a clear neat box for her. He was much better articulated than she was. It was one of the things she liked most about him - his ability to make sense of things for her.

However, it didn't really shed any light on Sasseerri's and Sorsha's personal vendetta. To Bambi's way of thinking, it had to be more than a mere power struggle. The galaxy was a huge place -- big enough, surely, for the two Vigo's to share its spoils. Atleast, until they both got so big that they started to step on each others operations. Which may, of course, be the case now. Maddox didn't really know enough.

"I'd have thought there'd be more to it though. You know, like, one stole the others man. Or something like that." She swirled her drink as she speculated. "Or..one killed the other's parent or kid or granny or something."

She tipped her glass to her lips and, with a resigned shrug, downed the whole thing.

Returning her glass to the counter she smiled brightly. "You feeling better now?"

[Grym Kandle]

Grym felt all things and nothing at the same time. He slid off the counter and shrugged to her previous statement. He knew there was bad business in the line of Sorsha and Sass'. But did even the other Grym care about the history?

"Yeah, just a little bit of time to clear my head helps."

The Grym standing behind Bambi had sudden flashes of what the other Grym's brain tissue looked like, blood coursing over it and supplying oxygen, as a subsequent picture flashed imbetween of water swirling down a drain.

"What about you? Any of that stuff actually gonna do anything?"

[Bambi Maddox]

"If I drink enough of 'em" she said with an infectious grin.

But she didn't move to make herself another one yet.

"What made you start that anyway?"

[Grym Kandle]

"I heard once that the real deal, the refined rocks of stim give you the edge, kid. The edge..."

The first needle pressed into the prominent vein of his arm, the syringe's sting was a new sensation, one his body would crave in time, the skin parted so easily, the vein begging to be pierced.

"You are walking the edge of a blade, my apprentice. To hesitate, is to stumble, and be cleaved in two. Walk the edge, my young apprentice. Ride the edge, my apprentice, or die trying for the struggle to do so is your destiny as an artist of the Echani way."

"A lot of things, the advantage it gave me in a fight was undeniable. My martial arts training was extensive... but..."

Grym shrugged, there wasn't much to really say about it. He might've been able to go into it further, but he felt like he was pulling his own teeth to do so.

Grym kneeled, sitting on his heels, wearing mask and cloak in a place that he could remember being far before such a time. The old man stood before him, in the most basic stance of the Echani style, poised and to his now trained eyes, fluid in time.

"My young apprentice, on discipline...

One forms habits, then those habits form the one. Conquer your bad habits or they will conquer you, my young apprentice. In the lives of great men, it can be found that the first victory on their path to greatness was that battle they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first. My young apprentice, it is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours.

Discipline...

It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, the light or the darkness. If we don't discipline ourselves, the world will do it for us, my apprentice. No man or woman has achieved an effective personality who is not self-disciplined. Such discipline must not be an end in itself, but must be directed to the development of a resolute character."

Grym fell face down to the ground, prostrate before the image of his old master, who's mouth had never opened but what wisdom had spilled forth nonetheless. Always such wisdom.

"How I have failed you, old master!"

Grym was remotely aware of a pain in the back of his head, something that happened on occasion but was generally nothing of a bother.

[Bambi Maddox]

"It must have been some advantage, then, because you sure stuck with it. I'd have thought all that Echani teaching might have frowned on such a thing."

Bambi didn't know why she was bringing that up at this point in time. She'd never been one to judge Grym. On the contrary, he'd always been the one she'd looked up to. His past had always fascinated her - his Echani ways - as she refered to it. She had often wondered what the old masters might have had to say about his habit, but had never broached the topic. It had never seemed important.

It wasn't important now. Not like it was gonna change a damn thing.

"Makes you look a wreck, though, you know." She noticed him wincing slightly, and pushed herself forward to hop off the counter. "You ok?"

[Grym Kandle]

"Clarity and understanding will always demand a price."

Wisdom comes to the impoverished.

He held his hand before him, perfectly sculpted, like marble, with green veins marring the ivory stone. In a reaction to the saturation of glitterstim his skin had become a solid white sometime ago.

"You think I'm ok, Partner?"

Reality became a tangle of spiderwebs. Everything, from Grym to the wall, to Bambi, to the planet was made of spiderwebs and the weaves connected everything. The other Grym, the one that no one could see, wasn't made of the same material though, he could touch and feel every weave, seeing where all the connections went to, but he wasn't part of the system. He stood between Bambi and the 'real' Grym and ran a finger along the weaves that were between the two. She just couldn't understand what this was like.

Blood splattered against the wall, blasters were fired, and vibroblades sliced through flesh like water. Bodies upon bodies tied Grym to the shadows even from their graves. Each face was there, marked and filed, this Grym could pick each one apart by name if he felt compelled. They had lost their bets and Grym collected like some kind of mob shark. The contracts on lives held more implicated clauses than most would like to know. Not that this Grym, or the 'real' Grym knew anything of regret in this matter. It was merely the consideration of life that went along with the job. Proffesionalism.

"And the advantage was worth it."

If said with only a bit of an edge to his voice.

[Bambi Maddox]

She couldn't deny what he said of advantage - Grym was the best. And being the best had to cost something she supposed. Her eyes drew to his upraised hand and it was as if she was seeing it for the first time. Seeing the cold detachment. The hand of a killer.

It was happening already. She was seeing Grym in a different light because of tonight. She leaned back to grab the liquor bottle, not bothering anymore with the mixers, wanting to fight against these thoughts. Maddox dropped her eyes, suddenly she couldn't look at him for fear he'd see the doubt in her eyes.

She took a long hard drink. They would not survive this.

How could they?

[Grym Kandle]

Why hide it? Grym kneeled just beside Bambi, looking up into her eyes. That doubt, hesitation, it brimmed from so many organisms that it was far too familiar to a being who had been trained to be anything but the stillness caused by the 'excess.' Hesitation, it spread doubt, fear, weakness. Grym didn't want Bambi to have any of these things, she needed to be rid of them to survive, it was the only way. Others came to the same conclusion, by their own means of course, but so many fell in that space, that blink of the eye in which nothing and everything happened. Namely the death of the lethargic. The lips of the mask were suddenly right beside Bambi's ear, the sound of her heart beat clear enough, not in an emotional sense by any means, but that this Grym knew exactly where it was, and the easiest path to reach it with all sorts of sharp objects from where he stood.

"What are you waiting for?"

The question rang inside Grym's head with an echo. He was unsure where it had come from but he knew it to be his own voice, detached from the universe as it was when he used the glitterstim.

"Seriously, you gonna make it? You keep downing that stuff and you won't be up to departing as early as you think in the morning."

[Bambi Maddox]

"The morning's a long way off and Im just getting started"

She smiled, despite the odd chill she had just gotten. Something had prickled the skin at her neck, but she put it down to the overall craziness of this night.

"I left my bike out there though" she remembered suddenly.

"I bought one for you, you know. Back before..well, before. Its a twin of mine. I should get it to you one day. You'd get a kick out of it."

The smile grew wider. She rembered how Grym hated speeder bikes. She knew it was because he hadn't learned to ride from her. No one hated bikes after that.

"If I hadn't already had those three cores, Id take you for a ride"

[Grym Kandle]

"Yeah... that's exactly what I need right now."

Grym was on a swoop. Flying down an alley in a city, but all the buildings were made out of people, towering above him. He knew them all but then again he didn't. They were close, not to him mentally, but close in proximity. Other denizens of the building. But just like the buildings one never noticed as they passed by, these people weren't anymore important.

"I wouldn't worry about your bike. People on the streets have caught wind of Sorsha's new agent. After what was left of tonight, no one'd dare mess with the bike."

The speeder bike was where she had left it. Grym, the unseen, stood at the corner of the building. The owner of the bar, the bartender stood outside, drying his hands with a rag as his lips squirmed. He wouldn't bother it. He didn't want any trouble with Sorsha. Grym could feel it.

[Bambi Maddox]

"Bikes can be replaced" she shrugged, dismissing any appearance of concern. The bike was the least of her worries.

"That stim makes you zone out now and then" she said, looking at him curiously. "Did you know that?"

[Grym Kandle]

Grym smiled wryly at that.

"A stim? A stim just wets the lips; nowadays, an amount that would overdose a normal person only dilates my eyes and makes my blood run a bit faster."

That wasn't the subject of her question but an ironic detail nonetheless.

"But I know what you're saying. Have you ever met a force adept? I did once. She was an old, old lady. She was always in and out of the conversations. I used her at times to track down my hits, because whenever she came back from zoning out, as you would call it, she knew things she shouldn't have been able to know."

Now that he thought about it, it had been kind of creepy at times. But then again, that was a much more normal time then, now he was the creepy one. Interesting legacy.

"I can't say I'm any different now... This stuff..."

Gesturing to the dark green streak marks that were scarred into his body in numerous places.

"... and then the zoning out, its all in the books for what I owe. But the knowledge, the edge that comes with it all, the security..."

His already raspy voice got a little quieter. Grym wouldn't normally go into this. He was secure in his choices, confident in the path he chose to walk and the consequences there in. But having a real friend again, their perspective mattered didn't it?

"Do you think it's worth it?"

[Bambi Maddox]

"Can't rally say" she shuffled her feet together as if to stir circulation in her legs. "There's nothing to compare the cost against. I mean, who's to know where or who you'd be now without all that stuff tearin' around inside ya. You are what you are" she finished simply.
"Except, you'd be better lookin than you are now. Thats for sure." Her grin took any sting from the remark.

"Still, be fun to hitch up to one of those forcies-like that old lady-and see what could have been, dont you think? I mean, that would be cool to do. You think that would even be possible? You know, if we caught one and plugged 'em in somehow?"

[Grym Kandle]

The mental image of Grym laced and wired into a mechanical monument of vidscreens and holos, projecting each and every death by his hands, from the past and even those still to die. His face was only the mask, his neck, muscles, pistons and corded wires and mechanical organs. Exhaust blew from the nostrils of the mask like industrial smoke as he exhaled, a golem of information, a structure and abomination of clairvoyance.

"I think I'll leave that idea to the Empire and their fondness for playing God."

Change of subject. His tone was suddenly as alive as he could make it seem.

"And here I thought my physical appearance as of late was just reaching my prime. The green gives quite a stylish flare I thought."

[Bambi Maddox]

Bambi's laugh was a sweet rumble in her throat.

Grym had a story there, Maddox knew it immediately and his inexpert deflection of the topic was comical.

"O-oh no. I saw that look" she homed in on his eyes, even though he deliberately wouldn't keep his own still.

"What do you mean <i>playing god?</i>"

[Grym Kandle]

"Just a rumor in the wind about the Imps hard at work experimenting on force adepts. That recent burst of appearances with the Inquisitoriate and those adepts, some make a conspiracy out of it that the Empire is setting captured adepts loose and capturing them all over again for publicity's sake and from there a number of conclusions can be made. Some say its an experiment, trying to provoke other adepts to striking out in vengeance and showing themselves finally, or the purge of force adepts caused it to spark back up in the population. I just think that the death of their beloved Emperor sent a message out to the galaxy and some of the adepts in hiding took it as a sign for 'game on'. But it doesn't seem to matter which side of the Force is in control, Black Sun goes on unaffected.

And the thought of people being plugged into a machine gives me the heeby jeebies by the way."

The construct looked up at heaven from where it had been built on top of the black tower in hell. Alone.

"The Clone Wars were bad enough, eh?"

[Bambi Maddox]

"I dont know if the Clones were thought well enough through, if you ask me."
Maddox plonked herself back onto the couch and waved Grym over for him to join her.

"Come and sit with me, Grym. Forget about the Empire and conspiracies and insane experiments. Forget the Black Sun and the Vigos. It'll be just like old times."

[Grym Kandle]

Grym shrugged as he sauntered over to the couch and collapsed beside her, his arms crossed over his lap lazily.

"Just like old times, huh? Two kids with no serious direction in life but for merely existing. It was fun, don't get me wrong... but we were just there, weren't we? What was it all until one of us tripped out of the... well, not so sheltered bubble of the slums in Nar Shadda? And then... well, what would it have been for you if I hadn't even come back?"

Grym, to say the least, wasn't too worried about it. He'd been there long enough to know dren happened. But he still felt partly responsible. Not that he felt regret, the Echani training, following constant movement, as if time and existence was a river current in which one could never go upstream, prevented that much.

[Bambi Maddox]

Maddox swung her legs up and stretched the length of the couch tucking her arms behind her head. Grym doubled as a coushin for her legs and a convienient foot massager, if she could-just-push-her boots-off-aahh, there we go.

"Well," she said casting her mind back to that earlier time, "I probably woulda gave in and married one of those ol' cash-daddies that kept coming to see me at the club"
She smirked as she wiggled her feet in hopes of convincing Grym to knead her toes. "I probly woulda had eight kids by now, all blonde-haired brats named Eugene and Hillary and the like.."

[Grym Kandle]

"What a tragic end that would have been."

It had been a small discovery of theirs that Grym's ingrained knowledge of organic anatomy resulted in the fact that he gave some of the best massages in sharp contrast to what else he could do with the knowledge concerning death and massive amounts of pain.

His fingers slid over her feet gently, it'd been a while since he'd actually been even remotely in this kind of situation much less give someone a foot massage and he felt a little like he had to shake of the social rust of it all.

Not that there was that much social rust to a foot massage.

"I hope you feel honored or something."

[Bambi Maddox]

"Honored?" she echoed blithely, "Of course. A bit to the left."

Maddox was obviously quite comfortable.

"You were always better at these than me" she recalled. "But I was better at the neck-chop thing"

The neck-chop thing being Bambi's way of curing a hangover. A glass of orange juice, chased by two egg yolks and a small jolt of pressure to the trapezius nexus (that was the chop part). It got the blood pulsing and the system up and running again without the headaches, and was a lot of hocus pocus that never worked. But Grym was always usually too under the weather to know any different. Maddox used to enjoy taking the advantage. And watching him choke down those yolks.

"You know," she added after a little while, her tone thoughtful now, "You never taught me that Echani technique of stillness. Do you remember that?"