"Kriff...Leia - shit, I mean General Organa - we found the bacta but..."
The radio gurgled and spit static, making anything the General might have said impossible to understand. Jess hammered the panel with her fist, but all she got was a shower of sparks for her trouble. She banged the earpiece against the pilot's console and shook it for good measure, but when she tried to make sense of the message again she got nothing but dead air. She threw the earpiece across the cockpit in frustration, leaned back in her chair, and put her feet up on the console. A bad habit she and Poe shared. But what the kriff did it matter if half the dials and buttons refused to work? It might as well be a footrest.
Autopilot was holding out at least. For now.
At least if we have to steal a ship it will be pretty easy to do with a rancor on our side.
Speaking of the kriffing rancor, she stunk. And had very little room in the cargo bay at the stern, a situation that made her prone to roaring in frustration at all hours of the night. Jess groaned thinking about it, rubbing at her blurry eyes.
She would have missed Zawati coming towards her she was so tired, but the Force aside, the woman's long skirt brushed over the tread plate as she moved. A small sound, but enough for Jess; she'd been across the galaxy enough times and lived through enough messed up situations to develop some instincts that operated whether she consciously accessed them or not.
Zawati took the co-pilot's seat without a by your leave, but before Jess could snap at her the witch thunked a mug of tea into the cup holder on Jess's chair.
"You didn't poison this, did you?" Jess muttered with bad grace, though the smell of crushed herbs and flowers was a welcome change. It had real milk in it too, though she didn't want to think too hard about where that had come from. Did rancors produce milk?
Ugh. Best not think about it.
She took a sip. If rancors did produce milk, it was damn delicious milk.
"I am not above poisoning," Zawati said, and though she didn't turn to look at Jess' expression, Jess got the idea that she was amused instead of insulted, "but you haven't given me a reason. I'll drink from your cup, if you like."
"Naw. In for a wupiupi, in for a trugut. Already took a swig so if you wanted my choobies in a vice, I guess you got em."
"You know," Zawati continued after a moment of silence, "I am no stranger to the Light Side. I used to be a witch, a clan leader, before I was a Nightsister. But even the Light can be used to do evil."
Jess wanted to scoff, but not being able to ken the Force much in the first place kept her from opening her mouth. What did she know about it anyway?
"You don't have to justify yourself to me. You help us help Finn, I'll put in a good word. For all the good it'll do you. I'm just a pilot."
"But one of precious few," Zawati pointed out. "One of very few to survive." Zawati looked at her sideways."It's not all down to luck, Jessika."
"How the hell would you know?" She snarled, feeling about as charitable as a starving fox nosing through snowdrifts. Zawati never looked offended by her little outbursts, which only annoyed her even more.
"I know," Zawati said firmly, and they fell into a quiet that Jess didn't want to call comfortable, just because she felt like being ornery and contrary.
"So what was it?" Jess said, after the silence had stretched just a little too long for her comfort.
"Hmm?"
"What made you turn?" It was too personal a question and she knew it, but kriff she hated having a Nightsister on their ship. Poe was taking it way too easy, had accepted Zawati's presence with the kind of guileless warmth that sometimes got him in deep trouble. Hells, he was napping away in the hold right now, without a care in the damn world.
Zawati sighed and Jess wished she could take it all back, but before she could come up with something Zawati spoke.
"My clan...they were destroyed. I was to be their leader, after my mentor stepped down to enjoy her old age. I can still remember how it felt to stand there in the gathering place, the sacred chants making the earth beneath my feet vibrate. The pelt of leadership clasped around my shoulders, the headdress of raven feathers in my hair."
She looked mournfully into her cup as she spoke, and against her better judgment Jess found herself bewitched by the story. Zawati had the voice of a true storyteller, a shaman, a chanter.
"Into one such gathering, death came. My...my bondmate," Zawati tried, and to Jess' astonishment she had to pause and draw a steadying breath. "He crash landed on Dathomir, and fell in love with both the jungle and with me. But his enemies pursued him, and slaughtered everyone they could find. We fled to the Nightsisters, only for them to be likewise wiped out. Some say only two survived. But they are wrong. Sacred things come in threes. I am the third survivor, and now, the only one left."
"I'm sorry," Jess whispered. "I shouldn't have asked."
Zawati turned to look at her, pinning her with that piercing white gaze.
"No, Jessika. I...while we do not see the Force the way the Jedi do, we Nightsisters were still beings of malevolence and evil. The only way to keep the balance within myself is to be honest about what we did. What we were."
Jess wrestled with a sudden vortex of pain swirling somewhere deep inside her, such that she curled up in her chair as if trying to protect her core.
"I understand."
You must be their witness.
For a moment, all she could smell was jet fuel and chemical fires, roasting flesh and burnt hair. The interior of the cockpit faded out, replaced by X-wing pieces scattered across a tarmac that had turned into a charnel house.
A touch on her hair made her all but jolt out of her seat. Her mother used to do that, when she needed comforting, and it was so unexpected it made the past take its leave as easy as that.
Zawati was gazing at her, arm still outstretched.
"Did...did you do that?" Jess managed, feeling about as clear headed as she did after a night of binge drinking in a pilot's swill house.
"Did I use the Force?" Zawati said, pulling her hand back. "No. I didn't need to."
"Then how...?"
"Do you think I have never seen the marks a galaxy-wide war leaves on people? Ha. Too many times to count. There are precious few winners in this excuse for an existence."
Silence descended again, but this time, Jess decided maybe Zawati wasn't so bad after all.
