Star Wars: Kleya, Rebel Ch. 02

Possible spoilers for Andor Season 2 could be revealed, such as the survival or death of certain characters.

This story is something I had to just get together after finishing Andor Season 2. I love Kleya as a character and I wanted to explore what she might be up to after she arrived at Yavin. This is intended to be a multipart story. It is a fan fic, but expect it to also have some sexual content too.

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Shan arrived at Hanku's Cantina with her senses pre-tuned to hunt for patterns. Her knowing eyes darted over exits, regulars, odd faces, and rhythms of movement behind the bar. The storm outside had just broken, speckling the glass wall at the front with the last droplets, and the moisture in the air fogged the street lamps that cut through the evening. The dress code was always strictly unstated here: rich offworlders trying to look like locals, bureaucrats with their collars unbuttoned but still crisply starched, and the few true regulars who wore their indifference as if to be invisible from the authorities.

She wore the blue-black dress again. It fit her form with a deliberate precision, and the synthetic fabric shimmered at the hem and the edge of each stripe, subtle, but not so subtle that it disappeared. The satchel, as ever, was slung at her side. She felt within it with silken fingers, the layered stack of forged identities sewn out of sight, velvet bags of pre-determined credits, and a small sample item that showed she meant business in the antiquities.

The booth was hers, and it always would be, so long as she maintained the ritual of arriving just before the evening rush, just after the early drinkers lost interest in the business of other tables. The space offered a view of both entrance and kitchen, a potted relic of a Dantooine cactus forming a living wedge of privacy. She sat with her back to the wall, setting her bag down in the center of the booth's curve, and then, as was custom, looking directly at the bar until she caught the eye of the staff.

Hanku, behind the counter, nodded. Hanku moved tonight as he always did, a Weequay in appearance but doing his best to be less brutish in his cleaning and drink slinging. The caff would come first, as it always did, just as the dregs of the day's office workers filtered in.

Shan's hand went, almost unconsciously, to the scar at the edge of her hairline. It was not visible to a casual glance, not with the hair swept and pinned, but she felt its ridge. The pressure was worse in atmospheric shifts, or when she hadn't slept. She'd barely slept last night, but her hand stayed steady. She eased it down and slid her fingers over the tiny knife at her hip, a comfort and a habit, like breathing, no less essential.

She surveyed the cantina, matching every face to the last week's. The same Twi'lek functionary at the end of the bar, already half through a mug; the pair of local lovers, hands and feet tangled under the table, whispering urgently and then giggling as though they didn't realize how public their intimacy was. The only new thing was the absence of a familiar: the local ISB informant who'd been lingering in her periphery was gone tonight.

She knew, then, that tonight was important.

The caff arrived: black, with two measures of Taanab honey, a segment of rind along the lip for garnish. She sipped, savoring the bitter, letting the sweetness rest on her tongue before swallowing. Only after the second sip did she let herself relax the tension in her shoulders.

He appeared as if conjured, which, to her annoyance, made her pulse skip in a way she could not attribute to fear or anticipation, only to annoyance at herself. Bareth Vrunter did not so much walk to the booth as claim it by proximity. He wore a short jacket with a sharply-cut collar, navy brushed with gray, the fit of a man who never shopped for his own clothes but had them tailored regardless. His boots were not military, but they were old, clean, and expensive. The lines at his eyes were soft, not from age but from laughing more than most men in his circles. He placed his own drink, something dark, likely laced with brandy, on the table and sat without waiting for a cue.

"You're early," he said, and gestured at her caff. "Or am I late?"

Shan felt a tension in her shoulders and glanced at the obvious agent at the bar. In a thin, mechanical gesture, she tried to play off like she'd expected him here. "I'm efficient, what's your excuse?."

He tipped his glass at her and drank. His eyes remained on her face, unblinking, just long enough that most would break the stare or look away. She didn't.

"Have you tried the pastries here? The owner tells me they're imported."

She allowed herself a longer look at him before answering. "Everything here is imported. Even the plants. I prefer things that know where they come from."

Bareth grinned, the lines at his eyes crinkling. "But here you are, drinking offworld caff with a honey from only a few parsecs away."

She fought the urge to smile for real. Instead, she leaned back, keeping one hand under the table, the other resting lightly around her cup. "Here I am. Looking for something new while I sit into something old."

"Are you?" He put his glass down, and let his hand rest flat on the table, palm up, an invitation without pressure.

Shan ignored the gesture. "You seem eager."

He leaned forward. The space between them was not large, but he closed it in stages: one breath, then another, then a hand's width closer, as if marking his advance by lines on a map only he could see. "You," he said. "You seem interesting. You seem different. Not from here. It's refreshing."

She sipped again, heat crawling up her throat and into her cheeks. "I'm not in the habit of making myself predictable."

"That's not what I've heard." His gaze dropped, just for an instant, to her throat, then up again. "Word is, you like a good routine. People who know you say you like to control your environment. That you prefer to have every angle covered."

Her pulse spiked, just a little. "Who have you been talking to?" she asked, but she already knew the answer.

He reached across the table and, slowly, as if waiting for her to pull away, rested his hand over hers. The contact was warm, dry. She could have moved, but she didn't. His thumb drew a line along the back of her knuckles, a slow, calculated movement that let her know that he was leaving himself open, open to a dangerous woman.

"It's not about who," Bareth said. "It's about why."

She stared at their hands, then at him. Her tongue was dry. "And why is that?"

"Because," he said, voice low but measured, "I think you want someone else to take control for once."

Shan laughed, but it was a reflex, a bark that died as soon as she let it out. "You think you know me?"

Bareth didn't pull away. If anything, his grip tightened, and she felt the strength in it. Not a threat, just a fact. "I know what you present. I'm curious what's underneath."

She leaned in, bringing her lips closer to his ear, keeping her tone even and cold. "Careful. You might not like what you find."

Bareth's breath tickled her cheek, and he did not blink. "I've seen worse."

She felt her pulse in her thighs, in her fingertips. She wondered how much of this was premeditated, how much of it was instinct. He was right, in a way. She had set the pattern, and she wanted so badly to break out of it. Someone with senses tuned to such body language and curiosity could pick up on it like it was a thumping musical interlude.

She let her hand slip free from his and, instead of pulling back, placed her palm on his jaw, the pad of her thumb resting just below his mouth. His stubble was soft, trimmed to a calculated imprecision. She felt his jaw tense, just enough to confirm that he was not immune to her either.

"Is this the part," she asked, "where you try to impress me with your suite? With your view of the city?"

He grinned, unrepentant. "I'd hoped you'd say yes."

The conversation had already decided itself. She knew it, and so did he. The question was whether she'd let herself go along, or force him to work for it. There was a satisfaction in both. Also there was that possible agent sitting at the bar she'd love to get away from and to watch how he reacted. Was she overthinking things? Was he perhaps not an agent? She was rusty at such musings without Luthen.

Bareth stood, leaving his glass half full. "Let's take a walk," he said, and offered his arm.

She took it out of curiosity as much as desire. The muscle beneath his jacket was real, not ornamental, and he led her with a gentle but unyielding pressure toward the front. The other patrons did not look up; Hanku nodded, and the door swept open at the barest gesture.

The air outside had cleared, and the humidity pressed the scent of the wet city into her nose. Bareth walked slowly, matching her stride, saying nothing until they were nearly at the end of the block.

"I have a theory," he said, pausing under the lit entry to a highrise. "That you, for all your control, are more curious than you let on."

She leaned against the wall, letting her head tip back so the night air cooled her brow. The scar tingled. "And if I am?" Shan took a glance back the way they'd come, and to her surprise, the supposed agent had not followed them. She'd know, even with this distraction, she was sure of that.

"Then you'll come upstairs." He tilted his head, the challenge plain in the half-light. "And if you're not, you'll walk away, and I'll pretend it never happened."

The silence hung between them, pulsing with the latent energy of everything not yet said. She watched the muscles at his jaw, the way his hand flexed and then relaxed. She thought about the knife at her hip. She thought about Luthen, about Vel, about Cassian's ghost still sitting somewhere at a bar like this on another world. She thought about her own heart, and whether she wanted it to beat faster, or slower, or not at all.

She found her hand on the knife, pressing it through the fabric, and let herself remember the feeling of being wanted, but also the feeling of not knowing the next move. It was intoxicating, terrifying.

Shan looked up at him, her eyes clear, her decision made. "Lead the way," she said.

Bareth did not smile this time. He only nodded, once, and placed his hand--gentle, firm--at her lower back as he keyed them into the building. She felt the heat of his palm through her dress, and followed, for the first time in years, without knowing exactly what would happen next.

The elevator rose so fast that the world dropped away. Shan's ears popped in the pressurized silence, the softest hiss of the cables' motors rising around her and Bareth in their private glass capsule. Her reflection was a blue shadow, blurred and doubled, floating in black as the city lights streaked downward. She watched herself shift, arms crossed, jaw set; her posture was that of a person who could bolt at any instant, who never truly believed she was safe, even in moments she herself had engineered.

Bareth watched her too, sideways, a half-step behind. There was no small talk. The only sound was the subtle click of his tongue, and the hum of electronics that monitored their ascent.

At the penthouse, he stepped ahead to open the suite. The security panel lit up blue and gold, a private algorithm keyed to his palm. The door slid open without a whisper.

Inside, the space was more understated than she'd expected, but every detail signaled money and old privilege. The floors were dark stone, woven with pale veins, and the fixtures in the entryway were a mix of antique and planetary-modern. In the main room, ceiling-high windows overlooked the city, the moon's reflection broken into a thousand ripples on the river below. Low, orange lamps turned the night into a kind of perpetual dusk.

Bareth set his jacket on a hook. He poured a drink at the bar, spun glass crystallized to perfection, and gestured to her to take the window.

Shan drifted over, resisting the urge to cross her arms. She let her hands rest against the cool transparisteel and studied the scene: the distant shuttles looping between towers, the trails of speeder lights on the bridge, the way every living room in the city glowed with its own small story. Just outside, on the edge of the balcony, a row of water-fed plants turned their leaves toward her as if in greeting. The humidity here was faint, spiced by the night-blooming flowers he must have imported at great cost.

She sensed him approaching before he spoke. The subtle pulse of his cologne reached her a moment before his voice. "You never sit down. Not unless you've mapped the exits first."

She kept her face on the window. "You make it sound pathological."

"It's just old habit," he said, echoing her earlier words from the cantina. "Or maybe not so old."

She felt him, inches away, the heat from his body radiating through the fine fabric of her dress. He set a glass on the ledge beside her hand, and the click of it broke the tension.

She turned to face him, her eyes level with his chin. Up close, the blue of his irises was even paler than in the bar, almost white at the edges, and they looked through her rather than at her, as if searching for the outline of something hidden beneath her skin.

He traced a fingertip along her shoulder, from the seam of the dress to the bare stretch above her collarbone. "Are you always this careful?" he asked.

Shan answered honestly, "Careful is the reason I'm still alive."

Bareth set his glass down, then brought both hands to her arms, skimming down until his fingers encircled her wrists. The pressure was feather-light at first, then firmer as he turned her palms over, inspecting them as if for clues. "What would you do," he asked, "if I told you to stop thinking for a night?"

The question landed deeper than she expected. Her first reflex was to laugh, but it stuck in her throat. She let the silence stretch.

He let go of her wrists, but only to lift her right arm overhead, guiding it to rest against the window. The air was warm inside, but the glass was cold and she felt the sensation like a bite. He stepped closer, chest to her back, and she heard his breath behind her ear.

"You want me to stop thinking?" she whispered.

"Just for a while."

He traced her jaw with the side of his hand, then cupped her chin. "Can you?"

She inhaled slowly. Her heart was thundering, but her voice was calm. "It depends."

"On?"

"Who's asking."

His grip firmed. "I am."

He brought her other hand up, aligning both her palms on the glass, then pressed his own hands over hers, pinning them with the barest force. It was the suggestion of strength, not a demonstration. Her pulse kicked up another gear.

Bareth's mouth hovered at her neck, his lips barely grazing the skin behind her ear. "Will you let me?" he asked, as though every move required explicit consent, but the implicit answer was already known.

She nodded, once, sharply. Her arms were pinned above her head, the muscles straining in her shoulders, but the tension was not unpleasant. She focused on the sensations: the icy pane against her fingers, the silk of his shirt where it touched her skin, the faint rasp of his stubble as he pressed his cheek to hers.

He held her there for a full minute, saying nothing. The city, vast and indifferent, shimmered on the other side of the glass. She could see the reflection of their bodies, hers almost swallowed in his shadow, their shapes merged at the contact points.

"Tell me to stop," he said quietly, "if you need to."

"I know," she said. Her voice was lower now, and so was her guard. She felt her thoughts dissolve, replaced by the presentness of his hands, the measured certainty of his movements.

He released her wrists, slowly, and turned her to face him. She dropped her arms, felt the heat rush to her hands as the blood returned. He touched her cheek, then her throat, then the button at her collarbone. He plucked the button open with ease, letting the flap across her chest drop away and reveal the zipper that kept the dress tight around her. His fingers danced across her breast and settled around the zipper.

He didn't ask. He gave the zipper a pull, drawing it down with a deliberate slowness that made her flush up to the roots of her hair. The dress gaped, cool air flooding the bare skin underneath. He watched her in the reflection of the glass as he peeled it from her shoulders, letting it drop to her waist.

The power here was not in his strength, but in his calm. She could have stopped it at any time. She did not.

He stepped back just enough to look at her, mostly in the reflection of the glass, to really look. His eyes flicked down, then up. "Beautiful," he said, and there was no performance in it, no joke. She believed it.

He placed her hands, again, up above her head, but this time against the wall. The material was colder than the glass, and rougher. He pressed her body gently to it, his hands on her hips, his thumbs slipping beneath the waistband of her undergarments.

She hesitated, just for an instant, the rebel in her wanting to push back, to break the sequence. She looked over her shoulder at him, and he raised one eyebrow, wordlessly: Do you want this?

Shan nodded, and with that, he drew the fabric down. The dress pooled at her feet.

Bareth moved with her, turning her so that she faced him, guiding her until she backed against the wall. He pressed her hands up and pinned them with a single splayed hand. The roughness of the textured wall bit at her knuckles, but it was a grounding sensation. He kissed her, softly at first, then with a gradual increase of pressure, his mouth moving from her lips to her neck, then down, his tongue following the contours of her toned body.

She gasped, and he smiled against her skin.

He undressed, methodical and smooth, his movements practiced but not mechanical. She noticed the slight curly greying hair over his chest. He was older, but his body was strong, built from years of something more than desk work.

He pressed his thigh between hers, and she felt the coolness of his skin in stark relief against the furnace of her own. He tasted of liquor and spice and something else, something clean, like ozone after a storm.

He never forced her. Each escalation was a question, and she answered with her body, pressing up to meet his, curling her fingers tighter against the wall until her knuckles paled.

His hands found her breasts, his mouth following, and she arched under the attention, the pleasure both sweet and raw in its urgency. When he let go of her wrists, she kept them where he'd put them, arms overhead, letting him control the rest.

"Good girl," he whispered, and the words struck a nerve she hadn't known was exposed. She shivered.

Her breath hitched as his fingers curled around the nape of her neck, yanking her head back with a force that made her gasp. The sting of his grip was sharp, deliberate, and oh-so-fucking-good. She could feel the heat of his chest pressed against her breasts, his cock straining against the fabric of his pants, a hard, insistent promise against her pelvis. His other hand slid down her spine, slow and torturous, before gripping her waist with bruising intensity.

"You like that, don't you?" he growled, confidently as he reveled in his sudden control. His breath was hot against her ear, making her shiver despite the fire pooling between her thighs. She nodded, too breathless to speak, her nipples hardening under the thin fabric of her bra. He smirked, his fingers tightening on her hip as he leaned in closer, his lips brushing against the shell of her ear.

"Good," he murmured, his voice a dark caress. "Because I'm just getting started."