It was just as well that Sedryn made a point of arriving early to appointments. He suspected that Litavii would be the type of person to do the same, and he was not disappointed. She was there at the spaceport already, looking hopefully at passing strangers as if one of them would suddenly admit to being her sister.

He hoped that optimism would not prove false. This... 'Bondara' had not been particularly friendly, especially when she thought he was a Jedi. Would she really be happy to see a sister who was a Jedi? He knew all too well that unexpected family reunions were not always welcome...

But he would not say any of that.

"Litavii." Sedryn inclined his head as he approached her. "Are you ready?"

At Sedryn’s approach, Litavii turned her now apparently permanent grin to him and nodded.

Sedryn wrote:

"Are you ready?"

“I’ve been ready for years.” She scooted toward the door, beckoning him to move with her. “Maybe you should go first. So she sees someone she recognizes.”

She stayed more or less right at his shoulder as they entered the busy building, her gaze scanning the faces inside. Vii had never seen her sister, but she’d been mistaken for her more than once during her attempts to follow the woman’s trail, so she imagined she shouldn’t be hard to recognize. She wasn’t wrong.

Dannik wrote:

“Hey. You okay?”

The voice was distorted through a helmet filter, but Miki had probably heard it more often like that than not and recognized it immediately. She pried her eyes open again to peer up at the source, flooded with an odd crush of relief and renewed tension all at once.  Relief because Dannik had shown up. Tension because, well… Dannik had shown up. Of all the people she’d prefer not see her at her darkest, he was at the top of the list, and she’d told him as much when he’d first offered to come along with her.

It would seem that at least part of her was willing to take the risk. Or just trusted him that much. She wasn’t sure which possibility was more unsettling, and she had very little energy to devote to dwelling on it at the moment.

But she cracked a grin – knowing he’d probably see right through it – and shrugged casually. “Who, me? ‘Course I am.  Just, uh… ” She trailed off, unsure of how to even explain why she’d decided to call him in after all. ‘Please tell me it’s okay to run away before it’s too late,’ probably wouldn’t have been the most impressive display of character.

She wouldn’t get a chance to explain anyway. Before she could start realigning her thoughts, she caught sight of herself strolling with unmasked restraint towards this side of the lobby. Only, it wasn’t herself. Because she was sitting right here going numb.

She’d seen the image of the woman on Dannik’s helmet recording when he’d happened across her at some plague-related event, but it didn’t compare to seeing her in person. There really was no denying the relation. It wasn’t exact – besides the most immediate obvious differences like the missing scars and the different eye hue – but it was damn close enough. The hair color, the face structure (for the most part), the body build… if she had any reason to suspect Ubbit would bother to set this up as an elaborate scam, she could almost believe that he’d improved upon his initial cloning attempts and gotten the kriffing thing right.

Litavii charged ahead of Sedryn as they neared Mikita and her entourage, and she took Mikita’s hands in hers as she slid onto the bench beside her. “Oh, you did come! Not that I didn’t think you would, of course, only… your message was very vague, so I just hoped, but oh! We should be properly introduced. I’m Litavii, but really, just call me Vii. Not Lita, though. Only my fa—well, or, our father calls me Lita. It’s, y’know,” she shrugged, rolling her eyes with a bubble of laughter, “cute, I guess, but it gets, um… old. And you! You’re Mikita, of course, right? That’s what your message said, anyway. I didn’t even know until Sedryn showed me, which is silly, but I guess if I had any reason to know, it wouldn’t have been so hard to find you!”

Vii laughed again, finally pausing to breathe as she watched Mikita with wide, excited eyes. Miki had gone stiff, letting the girl hang onto her hands but casting an uneasy flick of her eyes back toward Dannik. She wasn’t sure what she was scared of. A tranq needle to the back of the neck? This was all just so out of her realm of comfort.

I snorted quietly to myself in response to Mikita’s assurance that all was fine, but I didn’t press and instead continued leaning against the back of the bench, behind her.  I probably looked a bit like a dour guardian thundercloud.

What had I been hoping?

I couldn’t say.  This was Mikita’s reunion, not mine.

However, I had gotten a holorecording of this “Litavii” at a plague vaccine event put on by CTE – why I’d missed that memo and why it’d been this Sedryn helping to dispense the vaccines was another mystery for another time – in it I had seen the silver cylinder at her waist.

I had hoped I’d been wrong about what I’d seen, but here came a blonde-haired woman with a spooky similarity to Mikita bounding across the spaceport.  At her waist swung, yes, a silver cylinder.  And a few steps behind her came Sedryn.  A man who – despite all protests to the contrary – seemed to be a Jedi in all but title.

Jedi. 

Frankly, I’d rather go through a self-inflicted vasectomy than deal with Jedi.

Instead I settled for gritting my teeth, and trying to contain my anxiousness by playing with the grip of my old blaster pistol slung at my hip.

Mikita seemed no better off than I was; she kept flicking nervous glances my way.  I really wanted to tell the not-Mikita to bug off, to tell her to give Mikita some space, to tell her to let Mikita absorb all this. 

Instead I settled for consciously unclenching my jaw, and pulling my hand away from my blaster’s grip and settling it on Mikita’s shoulder, hopefully in a comfortable manner, though I was unsure how well that would translate through an armored gauntlet.

I kept my mouth shut and listened to the other woman bubble over.  One thing did stand out to me: “Father”?  I looked down to catch Mikita’s eye at that.

I looked up towards Sedryn, to see what the other Jedi seemed to make of all this, if he responded much at all and in the process I saw Jeos hurrying across the spaceport towards us.  Stuffed Shirt himself had put in appearance.  Did Mikita invite him?  Or Sedryn?  I gave him a curt nod of the helmet as he approached.

Litavii watched Mikita expectantly as her pause stretched into an awkward silence. Miki realized it was probably her turn to say something, and she cleared her throat to give her a moment to find her voice. Jeos, though, provided an excellent diversion as he arrived, and Miki was quick to respond to him instead.

“I didn’t start.” She pulled her hands out of Litavii’s, pointing over at her with one as it was freed. “She started.”

Vii seemed to suddenly realize that there were others present. She glanced first over at Jeos, her face flushing as she stammered quietly, “Oh… I am sorry, I didn’t realize…” she trailed off as her gaze shifted over to Dannik, and her reddening of her face faded quickly as her eyes widened. Had her sister hired a mercenary to serve as bodyguard? For this? Meeting her? She relaxed, though, as she noticed the hand on the shoulder – not hired, then. A friend.

The silence settled on them again, and Mikita glanced back over at Vii with the grace to look a little guilty. She did her best to sound polite without displaying an unnecessary amount of interest. “I, um. It’s nice to, er… meet you. Litavii. Vii.” She hesitated, and Vii perked up by flashing her a bright smile. Apparently she was expected to contribute something more.

Irritation leaked through in her words as she continued, fishing up the first thought that came to mind. “So you, uh, you grew up with your dad, then?”

Confusion flicked across Vii’s face as she nodded. “Our father, yes, of course. He’s never told me much about the other half of the family, though. I only found out about you because a classmate saw you during a trip to Coruscant with his Master. I was hoping that maybe our mother had been more forthcoming with the story of the split, but… perhaps not?”

Mikita cringed at the word ‘master,’ glancing down at the ‘sabers she’d been ignoring at Vii’s waist.  And how could she act so surprised? She had the gall to waltz in here gushing about her ‘dear daddy’ when Mikita had grown up with no one. She managed not to completely scowl when she looked back up at Vii, but her words still came out in a snap, “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. I was abandoned on this moon as an infant, and no one has ever been able to provide even so much as a clue toward who left me there.”

She went silent, remembering the audience. Jeos had heard part of this when he’d prodded her to give this meeting a chance, but she didn’t think she’d ever gotten around to being such a drag with the details to Dannik. The less said, the better.

So she went back to the mention of ‘masters’ instead, nodding down toward the lightsabers warily. “So you’re a Jedi, then? Should I be concerned that I’m going to develop a lack of humor and a poor taste in clothing?”

Vii had taken on the appearance of being slightly crushed and blatantly bewildered by Mikita’s outburst, but she quickly recovered over the Force-sensitivity inquiry – notably ignoring the jibe against it.  Before responding, she glanced over at Sedryn and managed a hopeful smile. He’d said he’d been through a reunion like this, although his family had turned out to be Sith. Even though this wasn’t starting out as smoothly as she’d hoped it would, she kept in mind that it could have been worse.

“No, on both counts,” she started slowly, as if trying to decide how to best choose her words, “I’m not technically a Jedi, anyway. And you do not need to be concerned. We were both tested when we were born, before our parents split up. I had the potential to wield the Force and you…” Vii shrugged. “You just didn’t. So Father kept me with him and our mother took you, which left me assuming that she wasn’t a Jedi herself.”

She hesitated, casting Mikita another confused glance.  “You really have no idea where she is?”

Instead of responding, Mikita just glared. That seemed to speak enough for itself, and Vii looked uneasily away.

Litavii turned a confused gaze up to Dannik behind the bench, but with Mikita not offering any other immediate input, she decided there was no reason not to answer him. Mikita, in fact, was growing more and more tense with every passing minute. Her eyes had acquired a sort of distracted gaze as she looked off over at one of the hallways that led to the hangar elevators. Vii sighed very softly as she started to reply.

“Our father is a Jedi. A real one, not like me. He teaches at the Academy on Tython sometimes, and other times his work for the Council takes him away for long periods of time. I do not know why our parents separated, but I got the impression it was a difficult decision.”

Although she was responding to Dannik’s questions, Vii looked back to Mikita as she spoke. The other woman would not look back at her.

“And, no, I’ve only known I had a sister for a few years now.  Maybe not even two. A classmate came back from a trip with his Master gushing about a woman he’d seen in passing who unmistakably resembled me. Naturally, I went to my father about it. It seemed to be the fact that you were seen on Coruscant that finally made him decide to explain a little. I wasn’t able to come looking for you right away because of my training. I did take a hiatus once… I spent many months tracking you down, but you do not seem to stay in one place long. I was almost arrested on Taris because I was mistaken for you when I landed.” She managed a small smile, but Mikita was watching a pair of Evocii counting credits between themselves as they rushed to catch up to a group on its way to a shuttle bay.

Vii finally gave up and looked back to Dannik instead. “I had to return to Tython before I found her so I could try to finish my training, but that... did not happen. I left the Academy before I did my Trials and determined not to give up again until I found her, and here we are.”

As Vii continued talking, Mikita had twisted in her seat to face Jeos. She looked up at him, speaking quietly through clenched teeth while Vii was otherwise occupied and hopefully not listening. “I don’t think this is going to work out.”

A sister who was Sith was one thing. What could you say to a sister who did not even want to speak to you? Sedryn didn't know where to start. Litavii was pouring her heart out, and Mikita wasn't even reacting.

"How can you say that about your own family? Don't you know--"

He stopped talking when the Jedi, Fabrica, appeared out of nowhere. It was probably for the best, because the rest of what he had to say wouldn't have been nice. Antagonizing her wouldn't help, would it?  Sedryn fell silent, and eyed the Mirukala.

Jeos had attended funerals with more upbeat atmospheres than this. The air was simply awash in tensions that, honestly, he didn't understand. Wasn't this supposed to be a good thing? Two sisters meeting, old relations rekindling? But judging from Mikita's body language and Dannik's ever so characteristic lack of diplomacy, they  thought that Litavii was about to sprout face tentacles and reveal herself to be a deviously cunning and sadistic Sith. There was an equal sense of suspicion levied right back at them by her companions.

It was not as if Jeos blamed them. He didn't. This was no easy thing to do, for either of the women. And it probably didn't that he and Dannik looked more like hired thugs than anything else. Especially Dannik. Being clad in armor was sort of like telling everyone around you that you didn't trust them. It wasn't the most healthy of messages to send. Jeos observed the conversation for some time, unsure of whether or not to say anything. It all seemed to be happening too fast for his liking. Just when he thought he might be able to speak up, the moment was gone. Perhaps he shouldn't have come. Mikita had Dannik afterall, and whatever strange, near paternal sentiment Jeos felt for the young woman were probably unwelcome.

But he'd stood idly by long enough. Shifting his weight nervously, he spoke up. "Listen...maybe we ought to, y'know...just give the girls some space, right?" he suggested. "This ain't an easy thing they're doing and it's probably even harder with us right on their shoulders.."

Jeos Dinas wrote:

"Listen...maybe we ought to, y'know...just give the girls some space, right?" he suggested. "This ain't an easy thing they're doing and it's probably even harder with us right on their shoulders.."

I counted heads.  Jeos, myself, the two sisters, two Jedi, I didn't think . . .

I found myself agreeing with Jeos.

This was quickly moving from "reunion" to "spectacle".  Too many people, too many tense glares.  We were bringing in a lot of weight and causing a lot of nervousness.  The two of them should’ve hashed this out by themselves.

I was opening my mouth when Mikita cut Litavii off and stood up, clearly leaving.


Well, that went . . . no one was dead, and we weren't outright hostile.  I couldn't imagine things going much better under those circumstances.  Personally, I had it in my mind that if I'd had a reunion with old man Quillor - my own father - it might not go to much better than this did.

I didn’t send a message to bother Mikita, she needed to vent on her own, if she wanted me around now, she’d let me know.  I’d talk to her after she’d cooled off.

I stayed where I was; my hand was back to playing with the grip of my pistol, but my mind was elsewhere.  Thinking.