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OOC: Continued from here.
IC:
"The Hammer of Martugg in itself is important, but it isn't the reason I came along with you. No, that's more personal. You see, it..."Quote:
Originally posted by Dan the Man
"Well..."
Dan said with a grunt, as he eased himself back in his seat.
"...I do suppose I owe you more of an explanation."
Dan paused, reaching for his stim case.
"You don't mind if I smoke, do you?"
"No, feel free. I prefer cigarras, myself." In fact. . . Arya tapped the arm of her seat, and a compartment popped open, revealing two cigarras. She extracted one, bit off the end, and reached for her lighter as Dan lit up his stim.
The older man leaned forward, offering his light, and she accepted, drawing deeply to help it catch. Both settled again, Arya blew a smoke ring respectfully away from Dan's direction. "You were saying?"
"Ah yes..."
Dan leaned back in his seat, exhaling smoke and arranging his thoughts.
"I've come to Tattooine to attend a wake and a funeral, for someone quite close to me. Apolonia Rosario Patron, the dearly beloved wife of my lifelong friend, Vittorio Patron, a quite wealthy vaporator plantation tycoon."
He paused again, as if savoring the flavor of the words he'd spoken moreso than the stim he clenched between his lips.
"When I was younger..."
Dan arched an eyebrow.
"...many years ago, Vittorio and I were like brothers. His family made their riches off the scarce water of Tattooine, not to mention gun-running for Jabba the Hutt. It was enough to provide themselves an oasis on that dusty dry planet.
Vittorio's father took me in when I was very small. I was his son. Vittorio's brother. In my many years, I have never felt a closer kinship with another person. Mind you, we both followed bent and unscrupulous ways, as was the wont of so many on Tattooine. But we made our choice, and we were never once apologetic for how we lived our lives."
Dan smiled wistfully, taking another pull from his stim.
Arya savored the flavor of her cigarra, and looked at him through half-lidded eyes. "So I'm a taxi, taking you to a wake while I do some good ol' snatch and grab?"
"If it makes you feel any better, you'll be the highest paid taxi driver this side of Coruscant, so long as the job's done."
Flicking some ash to the floor, Dan continued his story.
"I'm not here to simply pay my respects. Not exactly. Perhaps in my own macabre way, I guess. I don't gather you'll understand, and that's fine."
He brushed a lock of grey hair out of his face, and towards the other locks that hung to the side of his head.
"All good things must come to an end, and my brotherhood with Vittorio was no different. It took fifteen years for it to happen, but that's time enough to sever ties, especially in the name of love.
You see, the same woman caught our eyes at the same instant. Her name was Apolonia Rosario, a Princess of Naboo."
Exhaling smoke slowly, Dan seemed to wander in his thoughts. He eventually returned to the task at hand.
"There was little I or Vittorio could do. We were instantly taken. And she, bored of her pampered existence, was delighted in being competed over by such dashing rogues. When she wasn't courting one of us, she courted the other. Vittorio and I gave everything we had to win her heart, including our own kinship.
She, well, she was the only other person in the world I gave a damn about, myself excluded. But as they say, two's company, three's a crowd.
I...was the crowd."
He glanced sidelong to Arya in a discomforting manner.
The little bout of storytelling had taken an uncomfortable turn, and Arya shifted a bit in her seat. With another smoke ring in the air, she put her boots up on the console in such a way that it seemed careless. The truth was that she'd been doing the same for years, and her feet just naturally found the spot on the console where they would do no damage to the instruments. There was even a slightly worn spot to prove it.
"Well. . . " Well, sorry about your long lost love. Now she's dead, isn't that great? Are you going to kill Vittorio? "Well." I hate stories.
"Well..."
Dan shrugged a bit, relieving some of the previous tension.
"...wronged and betrayed though I might have been, I still loved Vittorio and Apolonia more than ever. The cruel irony is that I've killed my fair share of people. Buried them deep down in the cold ground I did, but this time I'd met my match. I couldn't kill love. I was truly and utterly ill prepared for the task. The one moment of bloodsport to crown them all, and I was incapable of delivering the coup de grace."
Exhaling smoke upwards, Dan leaned his head slightly so that Arya was now in eye contact again.
"I decided to leave the plantation, the night before they were wed. I wished them both well, but I couldn't stay. I'd be trapped between the inconsistencies of my life, and my greatest hipocrisy.
Before I left, however, I made a solemn promise. A heartless killer though I may be, Vittorio and Apolonia weren't meant to die that day. I knew from the moment I'd set eyes on Apolonia just how impervious love is to a thing like death. Bloody vengeance would deny them nothing, and the impropriety of my carnage would always remind me that I had taken life too early.
I stayed my hand, but like all contracts with the Devil, there are...stipulations. As long as they both loved each other, who was I to stake my claim on revenge that was not realized? No, I gave them my blessing for a long and fruitful marriage. It was the next best thing my broken heart could desire. But when the day that one passed into eternity came, I promised to return, and take what's due to me, according to the most ancient rules of revenge and broken hearts.
Apolonia stopped loving Vittorio today. He placed a wreath upon her door. Soon he'll carry her away. Then he'll stop loving her today."
"Hmm." Arya mused over the impending death of Vittorio, and pointed a finger to the ceiling to emphasize her point. "However, that is assuming that love is dependant on life. You believe that one cannot love a dead woman, or man?"
It was true she no longer was actively in love with Aaron, and he had been dead for over ten years. But she had not taken another lover, although there had been one or two men along the way that she'd taken in to her bed. No, her affection for Aaron lived on long after she'd been forced to abandon him to his death.
Flash.
A shower of credits, like silvery chunks of confetti, erupted around him as he fell to the ground. "Go! Leave!" He ordered her away. And she went.
Arya blinked, a watery eye threatening her repose. She rubbed it, "Damn smoke." She activated the venting system, a whoosh of air sucking the stim and cigarra smoke from the cockpit.
"It was a figurative expression, from an old sad song."
Glancing at Arya again, he flicked his ash.
"I didn't offer to explain the reasoning, or debate its wisdom. I gave you the truth, best I could. I owed you that much. Now, you know my personal stake in this little mission."
"Well, if you don't want to be all philosophical about it," Arya grumped, and stubbed out her cigarra. Replacing it into the arm of the seat, she got to her feet.
"I think I'll sleep better, knowing that. Hey, speaking of sleep, I'll catch you later. Don't touch any buttons." Arya clumped out of the cockpit, her heavy boots making no apologies as they traveled over the deck plating. She eyed the couch, frowned, and stomped into her cabin and locked the door.
He didn't exactly creep her out, and she didn't feel that she was in danger from him. . . but that Dan character was a piece of work. Arya stripped off her jacket, threw it over a bolted down chair, and flopped onto the bunk to stare at the ceiling.
Dan nodded as Arya retired.
"Have a good one, Smuggler. We go to work in a few hours."
The old snake rose from his seat slowly, draping his black coat over the back as he made his way for the couch. Before laying down, he removed his holster and double blasters, and lastly, his black boots. That done, he stretched out to each end of the couch, and shut off the cabin's light.
***Several hours later***
Dan was up a good ten minutes before the hyperspace exit, and with great care, drew his garb together for another day. He returned to his original seat, and rolled the evening's first cigarette. On Tattooine, the suns should have just gone down.
She heard him enter the cockpit behind her, but didn't turn her head as the jump ticker counted down. Threepio was still confined to the hold, where his complaining couldn't offend her new employer. Or, whoever he was.
Arya eyed him without turning her head as Dan rolled a cigarette. "So, before you go off and kill your foster brother, is there anything I need to know about my job? Like, where, guarded by what, and when?" The last thing I tried stealing, with s'Il, landed me in a fight to the death in a mud arena. Of course, no mud to be had here on Tattooine. But I'd rather not meet whatever that thing is they call the Sarlacc. She found herself wishing the robust Lupine was with her now, although Arya felt fairly certain that Lok s'Ilancy would never put up with Dan and his romantic blatherings.
And she didn't paticularly want her sometimes partner to find out what desperate times she'd fallen upon.
The ship reverted to realspace, and Tattooine glowed in front of them, the sunset creeping across the surface even as they watched. Arya put the Chevette into manual drive, and grasped the yoke, bringing the ship towards the planet.
"I won't know that till we arrive."
Dan replied in a puff of smoke.
"When the time and place are clear, I'll make sure to let you know. Till then, we're honored guests."
Glancing sidelong at Arya, Dan allowed a smile.
"I suppose its a bit late in asking, but you wouldn't happen to have your sunday bests stowed on board?"
"You'll find I'm ready for all sorts of occasions." Arya sucked her bottom lip into her mouth as the Chevette broke atmo, the planet's sky seeming to envelope the viewport as they dipped towards the surface.
Twilight eased over the low buildings that made up Mos Espa, and she communicated with the space port momentarily. They were granted Landing Pad 204, and a few minutes later the freighter was settling down, venting steam and generally cooling off. Arya scratched her head, messing up her chin length black hair, and looked at Dan. "So, I'm going to the wake too?"
"I informed Vittorio that I had a guest. Should I tell him otherwise?"
Rising from his seat, Dan adjusted his jacket as he glanced toward her.
She sighed mentally. "No, no, that's fine. The last party I went to was hijacked by terrorists, so going to a wake that finishes with a murder should be about par for the course." Arya smiled, trying to hide her impatience, and followed him out of the cockpit.
The smuggler leaned against the bulkhead as Dan sat on the couch in the living area, and raised an eyebrow. "What sort of timeline are we talking about? When do I need to be dressed, I mean."
"Now would be a good time. When we arrive, I'm sure Vittorio will be expecting us."
Arya nodded, and turned to go down the passage to her cabin. When the door shut behind her she took off her boots and threw them at the bulkhead. "Frelling funerals."
It took five minutes for her to strip off her clothing and slip into something a little more appropriate for a wake. Black was easy, except that the one evening gown she had stowed was too fancy, but a pantsuit that was stuck in the back of a drawer was too wrinkled.
What was sunday anyway? Arya had never heard the term, but she'd deduced what Dan had meant from the context. She sighed, threw some water in her hair to straighten out the travel kinks, and slipped into the dress. It was a bit slinky, hugging her curves, and the black fabric was sprinkled with tiny sparkles that dipped down from the single strap over her right shoulder.
It was the work of a few more minutes to strap a vibroblade to the inside of her thigh (the dress was too clingy to try the holdout blaster), and dash on a bit of makeup around her eyes.
Arya walked out, and growled, "Good enough?"
A smile criss-crossed Dan's parched face.
"You look wonderful."
Donning a wide-brimmed hat over his greying locks, the shootist pulled the front end down slightly, and lowered the gangplank. At the bottom of the steps, a man in a black suit and two Gamorreans stood.
"You are Mr. Patron's chauffeur?"
The man bowed slightly.
"Yesse. Missa Patron hesse spect you comme shortly. Please."
He gestured to a long, black speeder, parked at the edge of the landing pad. Adjacent to it was a less aesthetic speedercraft with a tripod blaster mounted on the back.
Arya smiled at the compliment, but narrowed her eyes at his back as he walked down the ramp and to the waiting chauffeur. As they spoke, she closed up the ship, locking it securely. Her eyes fell on her wrist, and she saw that she'd left her chrono on. Frelling luck. The beat up grey/black watch clashed horribly with her outfit.
The smuggler took it off as she turned around, and took Dan's proffered arm. Arya slipped the chrono into his hand with a look that explained the predicament, and they sat in the long black speeder. She took a moment to look out the window and get a good look at the tripod blaster bolted onto the other speeder. It looked like someone kept it in good condition.
She scooted over to give Dan room to sit, and carefully arranged her dress as she gingerly crossed her legs. The sheathed and inactive vibroblade pressed against her thighs as she tried to put a sufficiently vacant expression on her face.