Work Text:
“Ardun Kothe? A pleasure. I’ve been scouring half the galaxy for you,” the Chiss said, his smile widening, vicious in its presentation as his teeth shone from the glow of his eyes. In the dim lighting of the warehouse, he appeared more a predatory beast, prey caught in his claws, than a man on a mission.
Which was a notable feat, considering that he was already holding a knife to Ardun’s throat. Ardun gulped in air as he looked down at the knife, then back to the Chiss, who seemed to be having a battle with himself, if the twitches of his face and the confusion he was radiating out through the Force were any indication.
“Seems like every time I find something, you’re seconds behind me,” Ardun commented as his right hand surreptitiously reached for his pistol, which was tucked into a side holster. “Care to explain that?”
Ardun’s assailant and persistent follower quickly responded; it seemed he was as quick with his words as he was with his weapons. “I have my ways,” he answered, vague as ever, but it was clear enough, considering the context of Kothe’s work and the Chiss’s Imperial accent.
This Chiss agent was good, nearly good enough to best him, but Ardun’s pride, not to mention his desire to live, dictated that he would not bow. He reached for the pistol again, but hesitated, his hand moving towards his lightsaber, hidden inside a sewn-in pocket in his coat near the blaster. But something about the way the Force spoke to him in this moment told him he’d need the advantage of remaining ordinary, so, at least for now, Ardun would maintain the image of a regular, Force-blind SIS operative.
“You and I both. Shame to break it to you that I’ll be avoiding you once again,” Ardun declared, pulling out his blaster and smacking the Imperial agent in the face with it. The impact caused him to slump to the ground unconscious, and Ardun took advantage of the opportunity to run from him for the third time in twice as many months. He’d not kill him if he didn’t have to; though he was no longer a Jedi, the mantra of trying not to take lives when he could avoid it stuck to him still, like an itch that would turn to a scab if scratched hard enough.
When the Republic had signed the Treaty of Coruscant, there had been an order demanding that the Jedi withdraw from open contact with the Empire. Ardun had left the Order in protest of the Council’s decision to agree to the terms of the Treaty; the Empire had no plans of following it, he thought, and it was necessary to bring the fight to them and obliterate them decisively. Luckily, despite the Council rejecting his plea, Marcus Trant of the SIS had embraced his theories and gave him a place to reinvent himself—and even given him his own operations group. While at the time, he’d been consumed by hate and anger for the Empire for the Sacking, the past four years of working to stop the enemy clandestinely had tempered his fury, replacing the passion for stopping them with a sea of regrets and doubts.
Ardun stopped to consider the unconscious Chiss lying before him. He was clearly Imperial, given the accent and the posturing he had done prior to the blaster whipping, but he was impressively persistent. Even now, lying unconscious on the ground. Ardun took a moment to call upon the Force to heal the injuries the Chiss had suffered in their brawl before running as quickly as he could for the safehouse he kept on the Smuggler’s Moon, looking back a few times to ensure that the Imperial wasn’t following him. He had rolled the dice this time, his cards dictating which move he would make; it was a calculated choice to leave his enemy alive, a measured one. There was the future to consider.
Kothe’s fledgling Mid Rim operations group (untitled as of yet, and would remain so if he could avoid the responsibility of giving it a name) was still small, currently consisting of himself and a senior agent on the verge of retirement. Seyda was brilliant, and he couldn’t possibly deny that, but the woman was tired of the dirty business of spycraft and she was clearly looking to retire. So at this point, he was willing to take what new talent he could get at this point, even if they were ex-Imperial. And retirement was rare enough that he figured he owed her that, at the very least , for all the help she’d been giving him since the day he’d left the Order and showed up at Marcus Trant’s office in search of a purpose. But even so, he could use her until she stepped down.
He pressed the button on his earpiece. “Agent Pee-kay, copy?”
Seyda’s voice came in, clearly concerned, as indicated by the speed and cadence of her words. “Kothe, what is it? I thought the mission was ‘Going fine and you didn’t need anything.’ I remember those being your exact words.”
He let out a small chuckle, though it lacked the humor he intended. “The mission is going fine, just...I wanted to ask you something, since I know you’re the one who’s in contact with our mole,” he began. “Can you ask him to give us intel on Cipher Fifteen? Assuming he can get that intel, that is.”
“Wow, I have to say that I’m surprised that you’d want to know about some Imperial spook. Any reason why?” Seyda retorted with amusement.
“Given that he chased me halfway across the galaxy at this point? I think...I think we can turn him .”
Seyda sounded incredulously curious as she asked, “And you know this how , exactly?”
“Just a hunch, PK. Just a hunch.”
--
It seemed that this Chiss was determined to continue to pursue him. Ardun Kothe would not give the agent what his superiors wanted, but it was undeniable that he had promise, if he could only get him to defect.
Ardun was surprised by the decision he had made. He’d been an anti-Imperial hardliner for years at this point, and it was why he’d left the Order. Certainly, the Republic would not have survived if the war had continued, but at the same time, the Empire would hound the Republic to its extinction whether the Treaty had been signed or not. Besides, an Empire that would use the smokescreen of a treaty to rain fire and ash upon the heart of the Republic was not an Empire that could be allowed to remain.
It was simple logic, but deep down, Ardun realized that this Chiss--Idrass, he’d come to learn, faking weakness and deliberately inducing vulnerability with each encounter--was as much a victim of the Empire as the Republic itself. The tremors his hands had taken on when Ardun had had a knife to his throat showed that even the most loyal, most doggedly determined of agents questioned the Empire’s orders.
And this would be Ardun’s opportunity to turn one of the Empire’s many weapons against them. He could not deny the thrill it gave him to have that power. “You know, despite your continued pursuit against me, I get the impression that you have no problems with me personally,” Ardun began, preparing his plan immediately.
Idrass froze, but said nothing. Instead, he looked away, as if that would keep it from being true. The downward turn of his lips into a grimace said what he did not verbalize. However, Ardun was not finished, despite the searing pain in his chest and across his cheek from their blaster-filled altercation earlier. “And the fact that you aren’t saying anything makes me think that maybe, just maybe, you wish you could quit working for the Empire. As if their watching your every move fills you to the brim with fear,” he continued. Idrass, by now, knew that Ardun was no ordinary spy. It was highly likely that, in fact, Ardun had simply felt that through the Force, and the Chiss knew it. “You’re talented. You could leave, if you wanted.”
Idrass froze in the moment, still as his face turned to calculation, a slip of the carefully calculated mask he seemed to wear every time they ran into each other. Selfishly, Kothe wished to rip the mask off and see him at his most vulnerable. The thrill it gave him felt like a quiet betrayal of his code. Luckily, there was no real code left to serve, but his goals were duracrete, and he could not simply drop them on an impulse.
“Perhaps I would, if leaving was a choice in my possession,” Idrass murmured as he placed a kolto patch on Ardun’s slashed cheek and under his shirt where blaster fire had burned away the fabric and left marks that would scar without treatment. “That should work through your system and patch you up. I fear I may have done too much as it is. They have been hounding me about not having dispatched you yet.”
Ardun carefully looked Idrass in the eyes, a smirk coming to his face, not willing to give up on his long term goals just yet. “You know, you could just defect. I’d be willing to sign you off. I know you have no love lost for the Empire, and we could use agents as skilled as you in the SIS,” he replied, watching as the Chiss prepared to leave, watching as he gave one last gaze in Ardun’s direction, surprised yet pleased by the man’s offer. “At least think about it.”
--
“Pherue Chevas lacks the Ascendancy’s brainwashing protocols of the Ascendancy because her place was as a diplomat, her role as a steward to maintain the Ascendancy’s hold and relationship with the Empire. Intelligence decided she was more useful a tool than an ally, before she chose to defy their orders and defect. By contrast, the Ascendancy knew immediately what it wanted to do with me, so...I am a broken husk of a man, while their programming--”
Idrass clung to his throat with both hands as metaphorical Copero beetles crawled out his mouth and he choked on his words, the words that were beyond classified; neither the Ascendancy nor the Empire wanted them uttered, and he was helpless to do anything but obey. Ardun called upon the Force in an attempt to calm him, and miraculously, it worked. Ardun’s expression hardened as he observed Idrass slump to the ground, gasping for air. “They did this to you? Your own people?”
The Chiss laughed, though it was not a joyful laugh so much as a defeated one, bitter like a poison one could taste. “Who else? It’s not as though the Republic would be able to get away with such a thing, not with all its bureaucratic red tape in its science projects. And while the Empire is certainly capable of such... depravity , there are not many Empire-born Chiss. Most of us are exported to them, as if we are goods, exchanged between Ascendancy oligarchs and Imperial bureaucrats.”
“Didn’t your parents object?” Ardun asked, figuring that no matter the answer, he would likely be horrified.
“They couldn’t--they were dead by the time I was two years old. Crossed the Aristocra of one of the Ruling Houses, and the House I was born to lacked the resources to possess the rights to investigate their assassination.”
Ardun froze at the revelation, but after a moment to think over what was said, he inquired, “But you know who they were killed by, don’t you?”
“I do. It was House Miurani,” Idrass replied. He looked away from Ardun, his eyebrows furrowing in frustration. “But the truth has no value in the eyes of the Ascendancy. It is a good to be exchanged for power.”
Ardun admittedly wasn’t familiar with the Ascendancy or its politics beyond the dossiers Agent Chevas (technically, she was Chevas-Ker, but on official documentation she was Agent Chevas, so that was what she was to him) had written up on the Ascendancy as corrections on prior data collection, but he’d heard the name House Miurani on at least one of them. But power was the currency that both the Empire and Ascendancy seemed to operate on, and therefore the words held water as far as he was concerned. He had always preferred to connect faces to big ideas than to look at them wholesale--if only the big picture showed, then it was easier to turn them into the enemy. Knowing Idrass made his job more complicated, but it also gave him a reason to try and turn him to the right side of the war that was threatening to boil over once again. He’d be a useful ally, and even though they should be enemies, Ardun couldn’t help but think of Idrass as a friend on the wrong side of the divide. Which made his next words far easier to speak.
“Consider my offer,” Ardun said with determination, putting his hands on Idrass’s shoulders. “Please. You’d make a great asset to my team, to the Republic.”
“So I can continue to suffer from this affliction, while also being pursued by Imperial Intelligence as a traitor, because of whom I will certainly perish regardless of if–and I do mean ‘if’–you manage to fix me?”
“No,” Ardun countered, “so I can get the Jedi to probe around in your head and remove your Ascendancy brainwashing. So you can escape the tyranny of your oppressors and live life as a free man.”
“You? An SIS agent? That’s laughable,” Idrass refuted, “There is no way you have the ear of the Jedi.”
“I’m full of surprises,” Ardun responded, considering his old friend Syo Bakarn, who rose up to the ranks of the Jedi Council shortly before Ardun had left the Order. Bakarn had always been the best at healing between the two of them and the strangely endrearing Jaric Kaedan, the three archetypes of a model Jedi during the War. He still had favors to cash in with the Council, anyway. How far he’d fallen, that he’d return to what he’d abandoned for his ideals for help.
Idrass’s expression softened. “I suppose I could... consider your offer. But it is only a consideration for now. The choice is still not mine to make.”
“Well, that’s better than we were before,” Ardun concluded with amusement as the Chiss—someone he wished was his rather than the enemy’s—let out a sigh of exasperation before disappearing once again out of the darkness of their preferred retreat.
They really had to stop meeting like this, Kothe thought as he wistfully looked into the darkness of the night where his friend had gone.
--
Ardun desperately called upon the Force to heal Idrass, silently cursing his lack of training in that art. There was absolutely no way he could possibly let him die at this point--it was clear they were friends, their bond solidified by battle and hardship. Was there, perhaps, a bit more to what they had going between them? Was that a future they could live to see? Regardless of the knots in his stomach and the tension in his shoulders, and regardless of what they were at this point, Ardun knew he could not let him die. Death was not in the sabaac deck and if it was he could not place that card on the table. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if he failed, but considering the worst case scenario was on the bottom of his priority list. Slowly, as the former Jedi’s connection to the Force worked through the Chiss’s body, Idrass’s breathing became less ragged, although he was clearly still unconscious. The Empire would pay for this, Ardun swore to himself. The death machine they had created needed to fall. By any means necessary. After finding the Chiss to be stable, he allowed himself to collapse next to his friend, slumped forward as he sat. Finally, he could rest.
The hours spun by as Kothe rested, drifting in and out of sleep as he looked over his shoulder for another Imperial assassin. The Force had given them certainty in a time where he’d have expected random chance to be a bigger piece of the puzzle. Idrass stirred awake, blearily opening his eyes. “Easy,” Ardun interrupted as the Chiss struggled to pull himself up. “You nearly died. No need to start running just yet. We have time.”
As if safety were a foreign concept, Idrass’s expression turned to genuine confusion in the silence that continued. “Do they think me dead?” he asked, seeking insurance on the risk they had taken. “If they think me alive, this will never end.”
“Did my best. Gonna have to have faith in me for the rest,” Ardun answered, coming closer to inspect his work. Stable, healed, but scarred by everything that had happened both in the past and present. Wounded flesh remained on several parts of Idrass’s body and face but it was nothing a kolto tank couldn’t fix.
A hand was on Ardun’s cheek as he was turned back in his friend’s direction. Pulled in by an invisible thread, perhaps an abstract one, the Chiss brought his lips to the other man’s. An urge to be selfish kicked in on Ardun’s end, and he allowed himself that moment as their lips connected. The moment to give in completely would come. For now, they needed to get home, to the Republic that would be their safe harbor.
Ardun outstretched his hand for Idrass. The other man took it, carefully pulling himself up and leaning on his shoulder as they walked to the shuttle, visible as the star of this world began to rise above the horizon.
They would make it. They just had to keep fighting. Perhaps together, this time.