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She can’t fight the hold she’s found herself in for daring, stupidly she berates herself, to try and take on an adult man who had seconds ago ruthlessly murdered the pirates on their tail, and who also may or may not be a Jedi.
Not physically, nor does she dare to try mentally because she’s been dubious of his concern for them from the start.
Picking them up from the Troik had been something in his favor, but she still found herself in disbelief of his intervention.
And the knife against her neck that she’d seen him float over to return to its rightful place in his pocket, is all the proof she needed to ensure she was right from the start.
Maybe not entirely, because even if she can barely gather her bearings, he hadn’t slit her throat immediately, and the way he tells her to yield so he doesn’t have to partake in the horror of ending her life, is sincere.
He doesn’t want to do it.
That doesn’t mean he won’t, and the instinctual grasp Fern has on the man’s arm threatens to dig in and puncture through his coat the more adamant he becomes that she has to yield, and that she has to do it now .
Except Fern’s never known when to quit, not even with her life in danger.
But her approach now isn’t the trashing calls of he should know better than to pick on a child, nor is it the white flag where she lets him win without a fight.
Maybe if she hadn’t already nearly gotten them all killed, and hadn’t proved herself to be a coward by making KB do the things she’d deemed too scary and dangerous to do herself, she would yield in the way he was demanding, practically begging.
No, she didn’t want to make it easy, and if he wasn’t going to play fair, why should she?
If he doesn’t want to hurt her, she’ll give him no other choice, and he can live with the consequences because they already were.
Dying might be hers, but this skull rock treasure hoard thing required a sacrifice anyway.
It’s all the treasure she had to offer now, and even if it didn’t count for her in the end, it had to count for something.
Even if it’s the brief satisfaction before she dies, that she pulled one over the man that had betrayed her.
So, she lets herself go slack, her hands falling to her sides and no longer bracing his arm as if that would have had any real effect in stopping him.
And then further bears her neck, giving him more room to work with as she lolls against his chest.
There’s a moment the grip he has around her torso tightens as if afraid her feet were falling out from under her, and his upper torso leans down over her, checking to see if he had unintentionally ended her life prematurely in his aggressive cajoling for her to yield.
The position gives her a brief look at his face, and if she’s not mistaken there is the barest hint of relief momentarily taking over his stressed features when it becomes clear he hadn’t nicked her.
Blue eyes meet her own and his confusion is marked by the furrow of his brow.
She hopes he sees her resignation, her acceptance, because really what was left for her on At Attin?
If anyone besides the maid droid even noticed she was gone, it wasn’t out of love, rather because her absence had broken the extravagant unrelenting expectations put upon her.
There was little room at the top her mother had continued to advise her, this was her being kind enough to give up her spot.
Really give it up, in a way that wasn’t annoying the security droids, and picking fights her mother continuously picked up after, effectively making it all for not.
Her eyes are dry and she is not afraid, what she is is tired, angry, and prepared to sow a vengeance that was a treasure all on its own.
“Yield, say it. Say it now,” Jod, Silvo, Dash, the man of many names but so far none true, shouts to the point her limp body shakes with it, and the words rumble her back more than her eardrums.
With the barest ounce of strength, the only active ounce of strength that wasn’t her feet keeping her up, she presses the back of her skull against his rapidly beating heart, her eyes dead in their sockets:
“No,” she breathes, soft yet stern, sounding much older than her years and calmer than anyone with a knife to their neck had any right to be, “You’re going to kill me, and I won’t let you forget it.”
It’s chaos from there, with her friends screaming their objections, now fully under the belief Jod would obey her command.
On the other side it’s quiet and still, Fern can’t even feel the man breathing. Good , she thinks to herself but it’s not enough to bring back the light in her eyes.
No, the light of her vengeance would come…after.
His grip on her isn’t as harsh as before either, though it hadn’t lost its quality of unyielding in the way he hoped she would.
Maybe the both of them were too stubborn for their own good.
Although, perhaps not good enough because the scrambling of the others, how, it doesn’t matter, sets off the booby trap below that Neel would have fallen into before if Jod hadn’t caught him.
An act all for naught now because he, KB, and Wim go tumbling down.
Fern screams then, attempting to launch herself forward as if she could do something to stop them.
Not realizing in the heat of the moment, even if her ears pick up the sound of metal hitting the ground, Jod had dropped the knife at her neck so she wouldn’t slit her throat in her haste to get to her friends.
She’s nearly there, on her hands and knees about to join them in the deep when strong hands are plucking her off the ground and away from a hole so deep she can’t even see the bottom.
So deep she can no longer hear their screams.
They spin with the momentum of the action, and in a second his grip is gone and she’s standing in the middle of the room - her world still spinning in her eyes - the hole in the floor gone, as are her friends.
She’s frozen looking at the stool that marked their last spot, things flying about as Jod for some reason trashed the place in a fury.
Didn’t he know he didn’t need to pretend to care anymore? He’d already held a knife to her throat, what was this for?
“Thirty three,” She calls out on autopilot, this time it’s not protection she’s asking for, she knows better now that the droid had sat still and apologized; he won’t interfere with Jod’s challenge, but as of now she was still acting Captain.
She can ask about her friends.
“Aye Captain?” The droid replies, not moving from its spot as it still didn’t know if whatever request she had could impact a code it cannot break.
From behind she can feel Jod’s eyes on her person , clearly intrigued too. Especially as both his knife, and the genuine lightsaber Wim had failed to wield moments before, go flying past her in his direction.
“Was that an exit? Are they okay?”
“An exit of sorts aye,” Sm-33 confirms in a way that in no way confirms it as a legitimate escape route.
“But are they okay?” She shouts, feeling a few tears spill down her cheeks as she puts on her best Captain’s voice.
“There ain’t no grog d’there, unless it’s changed. Used t’have molten mud an’ as of the Jedi’s command, a fresh happening of acid.”
A sob rips from her throat at that, and someone sighs deeply in remorse but she doesn’t think it’s her.
“Fern,” Jod speaks from behind her then, tight, hoarse, and again so painstakingly sincere and adamant that the deaths of her friends somehow isn’t the first thing on her mind.
Was he trying to comfort her?
Fern doesn’t know, but she’s curious enough to turn back in his direction without trying to grab something off the table to stab him or bash him over the head with.
He’s staring at her, closer than she’d like him to be after he’d threatened to kill her, but the weapons in his hands aren’t raised.
“Please,” his eyes are wet, “Yield and I’ll make sure you get home.”
“You promised that already and broke it,” She argues, standing firm in the same way she had when a rampaging Sm-33 was in her space.
The man rolls his head, groaning in irritation, and before she knows it, an inch away from her chest is the humming blue blade of a lightsaber.
She doesn’t look down at it, no, her eyes are on Jod’s.
“Why?” She asks, feeling the heat of the sabers blade, knowing he’d practically warned them from the start about him not having the best intentions, but she didn’t see the reason for mucking up what they had going now.
He doesn’t answer, instead he uses the hand still holding his knife to tousle through his cropped hair painfully while a sigh born deep in chest makes its way out of his mouth.
“It’s time you yield, little one,” he says instead.
“Promise not to forget us,” Fern demands.
The lightsaber near her chest goes dead and Jod kicks an old vase across the room with a shout.
“What’s one more? You break them anyway.”
“You know, you make a better pirate than I thought,” he admits, the muscles in his neck straining.
“So do you.”
It’s barely there but he smiles for a moment, before he shakes it off at the realization she is still waiting for him to kill her because she will not give him the satisfaction of handing over the reigns.
He wishes they understood he was doing this all for their own good, his more than anyone’s, but a child couldn’t lead a crew, he could.
Not that it mattered anymore when there wasn’t much of a crew left to speak of.
Shutting his eyes, Jod waves his hand and pushes in with his mind as he’d ought to have done from the start.
The only reason he hadn’t was because he was rusty and it didn’t always work, and sometimes the side effects could be painfully severe.
“You yield,” He speaks, foot tapping as there were likely more pirates about and they could not wait any longer to retreat.
“I yield,” her small voice repeats in an unusual monotone before her eyes grow hazy, and her body falls from the pressure he hadn’t meant to exert.
He catches her before she could hit the ground, hoisting her into his arms into a proper carry, her unconscious head nestled into the side of his throat.
Jod hopes they all knew and she especially knew, for whatever it was worth, he hadn’t wanted this to happen, and he was truly sorry, and that for better or for worse he would remember them all.
“Get us out of here Thirty-three.”
“Aye, Captain.”