Old Wounds

“Do you remember, General?”

Bao-Dur is a man of few words. The urgency in his tone is what makes me stop, and look at him; he looks right back with a solid face. There is a smudge of motor oil, or something like, across his nose, and cheek.

“There are lots of things I don’t want to remember,” I say. What else can I say?

He frowns, awkwardly twisting his hydrospanner in his hands. The habit of fiddling, that uncertainty about him, is foreign to his personality. Seeing that this is going to take a little while, I set down my datapad.

“Never mind,” Bao-Dur says immediately. He sees me coming, human torpedo – he’s the only one that can.

“No, now you’ve got me curious.”

He gives me that look, hard. I let him look. My own hands are smudged black, and I turn the ugly scarred palms upwards for him to see. They are empty – but more so they are open. Something in his expression sets, like cement sets. “It must be this ship,” he says, the pitch of his voice dropping low. I hate it when he speaks so softly, though when he speaks loudly it is never for a good reason. “This quietness, the ill will in the air, in the Force. I think it may be getting to me. Makes you a little stir crazy, you know?” He flashes me that terrible grin. His harsh wit is his defense, like a creature with poisonous barbs along its back, to ward of those who come too close.

“You can talk to me.” It’s my best offer.

He shakes his head, but he doesn’t move. We stand like that, just staring at each other. It’s like a stalemate. Sometimes I believe he is more closed up than I am, my Bao-Dur.

“What?” I ask. “Can I at least have a hint?”

Finally, a small smile breaks out over his face. “I was just… admiring you, General. It’s…” He pauses, working his brows, twisting that hydrospanner. “It’s been a while. It’s… good, to be under your leadership again.”

“I guess if you want to call it leadership.”

“Self-confidence was never your strong point.”

“Yeah? Talking was never yours.”

“It was a mistake, for God’s sake. Can we forget about it?”

“You know me, Bao-Dur. I forget everything.”

At this, his protests dry up. He sets the hydrospanner down at last and comes to stand beside me. The air here is stale. “It was nothing,” he murmurs softly in my ear. I think he feels it’s easier to talk when I’m not looking at him. I feel the subtle electrical heat from his magnetic arm against my back. “It was just… another war memory.”

“If it’s important to you,” I whisper – too afraid to speak loudly, “then it isn’t nothing.”

“It would only make things unpleasant.”

“Because things aren’t unpleasant already.”

“Exactly. Why add to it?”

I sigh, and he laughs. Hearing Bao-Dur laugh is beautiful.

“I’m frustrating you,” he says. This is his form of apology.

“I just wish you’d talk to me for once.”

“It would be easier for both of us if you’d just forget it.”

I glance at him. He’s too close. It’s been a long time since I’ve been comfortable with people being this close to me; so far, Bao-Dur has won the record for personal contact on this ship. He smells like human odor, I notice with a tickling of good humor; that, and metal, and oil. Something fruity lies underneath, but I believe that is probably Disciple’s fault. In their training they must have touched. I think that if I tell Bao-Dur that I smell fruit on him, he would be mortified.

He isn’t looking at me. He’s staring up at the ceiling, dark eyes narrowed. The usual creamy white of his horns is flushed a dark red around the base. The lines of his tattoos swirl down into oblivion – how I love those marks, how different they are, how beautiful. I reach out to trace them with my fingertips, and he starts, jumping away from me.

We have done this before.

“Couldn’t resist,” I tell his startled face.

“You never could,” he mutters.

I don’t pretend to understand what he means by this. “Are you leaving?”

“Only figuratively,” he says – by way of his usual strangeness – and drops a kiss on my lips before he walks out of the room, with more speed and grace than I could have expected from him; I feel faint.

We have never done that before.

Feeling suddenly very warm, and very confused, I head for the dormitories. A nap might – well – help me forget.

Disciple watches me from the medlab. He offers me a smile, but something isn’t quite right about it. I suppose part of the reason for that is that his eyes are red, from crying.

--

Atton and Disciple had a fight again this morning. While most of the time it’s nothing more than a few angry words, all hot air and yelling, today was different, because Disciple slapped Atton; and Atton retaliated by punching him in the face. In the end, Mandalore, Bao-Dur, Mira, and myself had to jump in to pull them apart.

Now, they’re sitting there on opposite sides of the room, glaring daggers and nursing their wounds. Bao-Dur is taking care of Atton; Handmaiden is tending to Disciple, who snaps at her when she tries to touch him, and squirms away like a child.

“This can’t keep going on,” I say. It’s my “General” voice – the voice that makes Bao-Dur pause, and flush, and frown; I hate that voice. I have to use it every time something stupid like this happens – maybe that’s the only thing that makes me a leader. “Whatever problem you two have, you need to get over it, or leave – for the good of this mission.”

Atton looks at me darkly for a moment before he shifts away from my gaze. Disciple stares directly into my eyes, but his expression is unreadable.

“Maybe,” Mira says suddenly, “if we didn’t have a bunch of stupid men on this ship, they wouldn’t fight so often. No offense, Soto.”

I smile at her – if I adored women, I might have adored her. “None taken.”

Handmaiden looks at her, and blushes, and laughs. They get along well.

There’s a shout, and Atton is coming at Disciple again. Bao-Dur sighs and walks out of the room as Mandalore and Mira move to restrain Atton again.

Disciple stomps off to the medlab and locks the door behind him. Handmaiden sulks. It’s like this all of the time.

I follow Bao-Dur to the garage. He has the most sense out of everyone here. I walk in on him furiously re-winding a weak spot in the mesh holding the hull together.

“They only do it because they love each other,” I say by way of conversation; I know by now that he never likes to start talking first.

“No, General,” Bao-Dur says softly. “They love you. Everyone loves you.”

“Do you love me?”

He doesn’t reply. He just keeps winding the mesh.

Frustration burns in my throat like an ember. “Gods, Bao-Dur. I wish you’d just talk to me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says softly; I hate when he lies to me. Bao-Dur is the most passionate man I have ever met in my life.

Aside from Revan.

And I love intensity. “Look at me,” I say, and the words come through clenched teeth. “Come on, look at me!”

He makes a faint sound; I think it might be laughter. He turns to look at me, and his eyes are black. “I can’t resist a direct order, now, can I, General?”

“I wish to God you’d stop calling me that.”

“It helps me not to forget.”

“Forget what?”

He looks at me a long while before he returns to the mesh.

I’m walking out of the room. I can’t stay there for another minute.

--

“You ought to get that anger under control, General,” Bao-Dur says quietly later that night. I couldn’t sleep. Whenever I’m upset I can never sleep – which means, generally, that I spend many nights wide awake. Everyone else is eating dinner, but I can’t bring myself to swallow a bite. I don’t know - nor will I ever know - why Bao-Dur does anything, but he is with me now.

“Maybe if you weren’t so… so guarded,” I say. It’s hard to grasp my point. I feel almost senile. “It’s always you that gets me so furious.”

“You’re too easy.” Bao-Dur’s voice is flat but he’s smiling a strange, glinting kind of smile.

“Maybe you need to practice some self-control, I think.”

“Little snippy, aren’t we?”

“You can’t avoid talking about yourself forever. I’ve got everyone else’s fracking story and by God I’ll get yours. Just you see.”

“You already have my story, General.”

“How am I supposed to remember that? That chapter has been burned out of the book. Please…”

But he won’t look me in the eye anymore, and I know he’s not going to talk. I realize then that I really don’t know him. I cannot decide if he is a complex man or a simple one. I have the overwhelming urge to touch him, but Bao-Dur loathes being touched.

“You need to start calling me Soto.”

He stares at his mismatched hands for a very long time. It’s obvious to me that he’s not going to say anything more, not tonight. I believe my mistake was bringing him up too many times in one day; we can hold long conversations over droids and battle tactics, but the moment I ask about him specifically he switches off. Atton was very much the same way, but somehow I managed to master him. Mastering Bao-Dur is like mastering a part of myself I hadn’t known existed – which I have done before.

Then Bao-Dur says, suddenly, “You aren’t Soto to me.”

He stands, and I reach out to grab his arm. It’s just blue electricity, and it burns. I’m screaming in pain and he only looks at me. The skin on the palm of my hand blackens and blisters.

“It’ll heal,” Bao-Dur says, almost to himself, eyes glazed. Whatever he is remembering runs across his face like shadows.

I know then that his memories are his to keep.

-          fin