bleach the skeletons of kings (star wars | rey/qi'ra)

[fiachairecht]

bleach the skeletons of kings. star wars (solo + sequels), rey/qi'ra. serial killers in the jakku deserts. 3.6k words, rated m. for spookykingdomstarlight in femslashafterdark 2019.

The courier limped into port nearly six day cycles early, its hull scored with plasma burns and one engine pod trailing unhappily behind. Qi'ra watched on the monitors, lips pursed in disapproval as inertia carried the ship forward, its blunt nose missing the airlock twice before the docking clamps finally connected.

"Is that pilot even alive?" she asked. The question was directed to the room at large, but no one met her eyes. "Fine," Qi'ra sighed, and pulled her cape tighter around her shoulders. "I'll figure out what's going on, and you lot can think about the implications of four of our ships in as many weeks coming back like this."

Assuming they had that many collective brain cells to rub together. In the early days of the Crimson Dawn she had plucked only the best from the galaxy's swirling winds — the smugglers, the archaeologists, those with shining coins and malleable minds. But as the First Order continued its long, almost lazy sweep along the Outer Rim, more and more hopefuls were coming to the Crimson Dawn looking to fight or to scavenge.

And Qi'ra was finding, to her dismay, that she could ill-afford to turn the majority of them away. This courier was one of the recent additions, she remembered as she made her way to the airlocks through the twisting corridors of the asteroid. It was why she had given him the Jakku run in the first place — an out of the way port, an easy to bribe boss in Niima, and nothing so valuable to be found that failure would be catastrophic.

Not that that stopped the failure from being deeply irritating. There was an element of chance in everything they did, but Qi'ra and her lieutenants had worked over the years to bring that chance as far down to zero as possible, even in the Unknown Regions. Four ships meant something was wrong.

The guards at the airlock snapped to attention as she approached, weapons pointed at the sealed doors with a studied level of carelessness that Qi'ra knew to be deceptive. "The cargo?" she asked.

"We sent the droids to fetch it, ma'am," the Twi'lek guard said. "They, ah. Haven't returned yet."

Qi'ra frowned. It couldn't have taken her more than five minutes to get to the bays, and the droids were usually faster than that. "Well, have they at least scanned the cargo? Has the pilot reported in?"

The guards shifted uneasily, exchanging uncertain glances that told Qi'ra more than she needed to know.

"Stars. Open the airlock, I'll deal with this myself." She pulled her filtration mask up and hit the button to cycle the doors with more force than strictly necessary. Normally she wouldn't show such emotion in front of the guards, but — but.

There was an odd heat curling under the ostensibly secured doors, and discomfort was growing in the pit of Qi'ra's stomach. She'd been in this business long enough to know that something was different about this ship.

The air that greeted them when the doors rolled back was hot and dry, more fitted to a gust of wind than to the unscented recycled air that the couriers relied on to survive. Qi'ra stepped in gingerly, the heels of her boots ringing against the metal far louder than it seemed they should be.

The heat was more pronounced inside the ship, and the arid atmosphere seemed to scratch against her skin as she surveyed the silent courier.

The pile of picked-clean bones in the pilot's seat wasn't a surprise. It was the handprint, smeared bloody across the placidly blinking nav computer, that made her draw in a breath that felt as if she had swallowed a desert whole.

 

**

 

The emergency meeting of as many members of the Crimson Dawn leadership as could be found in the sector lasted a full five minutes before devolving into a useless shouting match which, looking back, Qi'ra would consider a success, all following events considered.

But in the moment, there was very little to recommend the meeting. Qi'ra leaned back in her chair and focussed all her willpower on not using the heels of her palms to drive her eyeballs out the back of her skull. Around her, her lieutenants had moved on to debating the viability of various methods of digging for water in a desert, and Qi'ra would cheerfully toss all of them out into space in exchange for one useful comment.

She leaned over to Elia after someone's glass hit the wall, and, as softly as she could, asked, "How long do you need to get my shuttle ready and load everything you know about Jakku onto its local computer?"

Elia shrugged. "Two hours? It's not like I got around a lot when I lived there."

"Make it an hour," Qi'ra said, and left her crew to finish their arguments on their own.

 

**

 

Jakku smelled of death. The hot, dry reek of things too long and too well preserved suffocated Qi'ra the moment her boots touched the sand, and she shivered despite the blazing heat of the clear-eyed sun above. This was nothing like the death of the sweltering compost heaps of the sewers where she'd grown up, teeming with busy microbes and hidden treasures.

Nothing beautiful could grow from this sort of death.

Her feet sank impossibly deep with each step even on the landing strip, as if the sand itself was dragging her down. She'd changed into thin linen wraps for the journey on Elia's advice, and the rough fabric clung to her sweat-damp skin before she'd even reached the end of the landing strip. The pistol holstered at her thigh usually gave her some measure of comfort, but all she could think was that it would do nothing against the elements here.

The scavengers, though — those, she was confident she could deal with. Especially the ones like the Teedo at the edge of the packed sand that passed for tarmac, gesturing at her with a lit flare that seemed entirely unnecessary in the sunlight. "Where's Plutt?" She asked impatiently, and was more relieved than she would ever admit that her words weren't lost to the wind.

The Teedo lifted one shoulder in a universal sign of disinterest and pointed down a line of dusty stalls, each covered in thin canvas that was only just starting to settle from her shuttle's landing. Qi'ra followed the line of his arm to where a full tent was pitched at the end of the aisle, as wide as at least four of the other stalls and with a ragged flag pitched unevenly at its top.

"Thank you," she said, but as she stepped from tarmac to sand, the Teedo's hand snaked out to grab her wrist.

"Port fee," it hissed in heavily-accented standard.

Qi'ra removed her hand from its grasp with exaggerated politeness. "Arranged in advance, thank you."

"Dock fee was. Port fee for ... ship safety."

Qi'ra scowled, but the Crimson Dawn had the same procedure. Landing privileges were cheap, but returning to an untouched ship was something that not everyone knew to expect to pay for — or even wanted to, once they learned it was expected. For now, Qi'ra flipped him a credit chip — she wasn't doing anything to jeopardise her chances of getting off this rock. He slipped it somewhere in the folds of his robes, and Qi'ra discreetly wiped her wrist on her leggings as she stepped onto the sands.

It didn't get any easier to walk as she made her way through the makeshift market. There was no rhythm to the shifting sands under her feet, and she didn't know the curves and eddies of the paths the way she'd once known the sewers. But she kept her head up and walked with a purpose, and that was enough for the shopkeepers to refrain from reaching out to her as she passed.

The canvas of Plutt's tent was sturdy, but Qi'ra tore open the entrance flaps with little resistance. Inside, the air was close and still, barely moving and not at all cool despite the hum of fans. In the centre, Plutt sat court over a table heaped high with ration packs and bits of twisted metal, his wrinkled bare head bent over the remnants of a rifle and two of his thugs at his side.

"Plutt," she said, and though her voice was not what she would have called loud but his head snapped up, narrow eyes darting around the tent until he spotted her in the shadows. Even absent her usual crimson cloak, she could see him recognise her immediately.

"Imperial brat," he sneered, and his thugs shifted just enough that she could see their weapons more obviously.

Qi'ra kept her face carefully blank. "The intra-Jakku trade treating you so well these days that you're going to talk to me like that?"

Plutt frowned, but the next words out of his mouth were, at least, "What do you want?"

"You sent my last man back dead," Qi'ra said, with a casualness that she wasn't sure she felt. "Tell me who dealt with him."

An unpleasant smile spread across Plutt's face. "Well if he was dead it wasn't me," he said. "And I know every trade that happens in Niima."

Qi'ra suppressed an eyeroll. "How much?"

"Twice my commission for the next twenty runs," he said promptly.

Qi'ra folded her arms. Just as promptly, he amended, "Commission and a half for the next fifteen runs."

As pathetic as the worms used to be and twice as predictable. "Deal. Give me names."

Plutt cackled, the glistening skin wrinkling across his face as he slapped his small hands on the table. "She doesn't have one. Look for the busted AT-AT with all the skulls in front, she's in there."

Qi'ra grit her teeth at the implied threat. "Thank you," she said, as sweetly as possible.

"Don't thank me!" Plutt yelled as she pushed open the tent. Sand swirled around her feet, gripping at her ankles as if in agreement. "And if you don't come back don't think anyone's going in there after you! And I'm keeping your ship!" The last was muffled as the tent swung closed behind him, and, out of the junk boss' sight, Qi'ra let herself shiver for reasons that had nothing to do with the shift in temperature.

 

**

 

To Plutt's — she didn't want to give him credit even in the privacy of her own thoughts, but he didn't lie: she saw the crumpled AT-AT as soon as she crossed the dune at the western edge of the outpost, the grimy weather-beaten durasteel hull distinctly offset from even the other well-spaced dwellings.

Qi'ra touched the blaster at her side, looking for a reassurance she wasn't sure it could give her. She liked her head where it was, like any self-respecting criminal, but then, so had her courier.

As she drew closer to the AT-AT she could begin to make out a shape crouched in front. Human, she wanted to think, but part of her mind rebelled. The limbs were too long, it reflected too much light, it was—

It was a girl, hardly more than twenty cycles, golden brown skin shimmering and wavering like the sand she must have emerged from, carefully arranging a piece of twisted metal protruding from a gash in her arm so that it returned to the sand, and—

Qi'ra stopped, shook her head. The heat must be getting to her, she wasn't prone to such flights of fancy. Especially since she could quite clearly see as she drew closer that there was nothing out of the ordinary at all. The creature's hair hung limp over her shoulders, the ragged edges of her pale wraps fluttered in the nonexistant breeze like torn flaps of skin, and sunlight glinted off the polished white bones of her skull where they peeked through the rest of her face.

Qi'ra must have screamed, or fallen, or otherwise alerted the creature — girl, it was a girl, why must her mind insist that something else was there? — because before she could do more than grope for the waterskin at her hip, the girl was bounding across the desert towards her, a look of panic on her youthful, sun-beaten face.

She caught Qi'ra before she hit the ground, before she was forced to inhale the sand. Limp in the girl's arms, staring up at the blurred image of her backlit face against the vast emptiness of the sky, Qi'ra wondered for the first time if she had made a mistake.

 

**

 

When she woke — became aware once more — the smell of death was suffocating to such a degree that she almost wondered that she had ever been able to notice its absence. The sensation of stagnation and burning, the memory of things that hadn't been allowed to decay, all threatened to completely overwhelm her. For a long time, scent was the only sense allowed to her, but her eyes focussed, eventually, on her captor-saviour lying next to her.

They were in the shade of the AT-AT's cockpit, hidden from sun and sight alike. All sight but the other's, that was — Qi'ra had never been studied quite so intently, not even by Proxima's people, and she wasn't sure she liked it. The girl's eyes, wide and brown like dried blood but impossibly liquid at the same time, were unsettling in a way she didn't know how to name.

"What's your name?" she asked, to break the silence. She wanted to sit up, she wanted water, but her head was swimming and part of her was still unsure if moving would anger the creature.

The girl paused, not like she was making up an answer but like she genuinely wasn't sure what sort of answer Qi'ra wanted to hear. "Rey," she finally said with a shrug, as if it was as good as any.

Qi'ra didn't believe her, but then, she didn't really need to. "It's nice," she said, wondering as the words left her mouth what sort of autopilot she'd slipped into. She lifted a hand to brush her hair off her damp forehead, and the movement was too slow, sluggish like her thoughts. What had the creature done to her while she'd slept?

"It's a god's name," Rey said. She reached out to rest a rough hand on Qi'ra's cheek, hot leathery skin in a mockery of intimacy, and Qi'ra took a shallow breath. "R'iia. The desert-witch. The Teedo are frightened of her."

"And of you? Should they be scared of you?" Should I be scared of you, the question she isn't stupid enough to ask, even though the glimpses of the creature she'd seen under Rey's skin haven't surfaced since she'd woken.

Rey shrugged. "They're harmless. All the things their species has done to survive Jakku, and they're still mostly just good for food."

Something dark flickered over her eyes, a thin membrane Qi'ra wouldn't have noticed if Rey had blinked even once. She dropped her gaze to Rey's mouth, away from those inhuman, hungry eyes, and saw her teeth had been filed down to needlepoints. Whatever food Rey got from the Teedo, Qi'ra doubted it was ration packs.

And part of her was already wondering what it tasted like.

"You're not food, though," Rey was saying when Qi'ra had managed to drag her focus back to the creature in front of her. Her hand was still on Qi'ra's cheek, skeletal and almost a threat. "Why did you come to me?"

Why, the wind echoed outside, and Qi'ra suddenly yearned to be there, past the line of empty skulls, out of the shadow of Rey's claustrophobic home. She pressed her palm to the mat, wondering if she should sit up, and beneath the woven fabric she could feel the sand move like a living thing, parting to swallow her whole.

She looked up and Rey's teeth were gone. Her mouth was gone, sewn beneath a burn scar that stretched ear to ear like a smile. It was an image so unexpectedly terrible that for a moment Qi'ra's mind simply refused to process it at all — the threads, the dangling threads like something that had once been alive — but it shocked her out of the heat-induced stupor.

"Where's my pilot?" she asked, even though she was beginning to think she already knew. "What did you do to him?" Her cheek scraped against the rough reeds of the mat as she spoke, and when Rey sat up Qi'ra didn't follow: she didn't want to check if the skin was still attached.

Rey smiled as she watched Qi'ra's mouth move in silence. "He went back, didn't he? The important parts."

Bones. The pilot had been bones, and she'd come to Jakku chasing the killer of a man whose name she didn't even remember. Her throat was tight. Rey's hand was on it, she noticed then. "The rest?"

As easy as if she were asking a contact for payment. Rey pointed up, and Qi'ra's eyes followed her finger of bone up to where dried flowers hung from the ceiling, knotted artfully about strips of leather.

The whole ceiling was full of them. Plutt had said Rey collected skulls. Did he know what she did with the rest of the bodies?

"Did you like him enough to join him? Any of your pilots?"

Qi'ra shook her head, and felt blood trickle slick down her torn cheek. So there was one answer, or perhaps two. Rey had killed, would, kill, and Qi'ra had helped her. Would help her. It was no different than the Crimson Dawn disposing of clients and agents alike who had outstayed their welcome, but it felt different. Better.

Because it was Rey, and not Dryden Vos? Qi'ra could only hope she lived long enough to find out.

Rey clapped her hands in eerie delight, and the sound sent shivers down Qi'ra's spine. Sand picked up between them, disturbed by the movement, and Qi'ra blinked furiously as it scored across her already-raw face. "Good. And don't worry about that last part, I've waited for you for too long. We have work to do."

Qi'ra tried to open her mouth, but Rey shut it again with a surprisingly gentle finger. "Shh. Not yet."

Qi'ra took a breath. No one was coming for her.

Rey must have seen the acceptance in her eyes, because she dropped her hand and leaned forward, pressed her mouth to the open wound under her eye. Sharpness flared at the edges, like something that wanted to be pain, but then Rey licked away the sand with a soft tongue until all that was left was the slick warmth of her, a heat that Qi'ra thought she might come to wish for, unlike that of the desert.

Qi'ra collapsed to the floor — let Rey's hands guide her to the floor as her mouth drew away — and as she looked up she watched Rey pull something pale from her mouth.

"What—" she started, but when Rey held the small object out to her it was immediately recognisable.

"Thank you," Rey said. "You're very pretty."

It was the sort of thing, Qi'ra thought, that she should respond to. But she just watched as Rey pressed the piece of Qi'ra's skin bloody side down to her own wrist and smoothed the edges down. It fit seamlessly, and if not for the difference in colour Qi'ra might easily believe it Rey's own.

"I'll give you mine soon," Rey said. She knelt down, cradled Qi'ra's face in her palms, brushed away tears Qi'ra hadn't realised she was crying. "You're the first one who's been right for so long."

With one last kiss on the lips, she left Qi'ra alone.

 

**

 

There was a body outside, when the sun had set and Rey took her hand to lead her into the Badlands for the first time. Its throat had been cut, and though the distant firelight that made its way over from Niima was too dim to let Qi'ra see for sure, she imagined that she could see damp clumps of sand under the corpse's neck.

Rey's doing? Qi'ra tried to think back. Rey had left the AT-AT after she had kissed her, unless she'd just gone so still and quiet that Qi'ra had imagined herself alone. But the time was a haze in her memory, and the more Qi'ra thought about it, the more she wasn't at all certain that she had even been awake between then and now.

Rey knelt by the body anyway. "Come here," she said, and Qi'ra knew an order when she heard one. She dropped to the sands on the opposite side of the body from Rey, wondering what protection she thought that might provide if she tried to run.

She watched without a word as Rey methodically stripped the body of first clothes, then skin. "You'll help me dry and craft the leather, of course," Rey said as she worked, as matter of fact as if she were writing an inventory. "Once you have the fingers for it, you'll help with this part as well. I average about a kill a tenday, though you're free to add to that count."

Almost against her better judgment, Qi'ra looked down. The knives that spun out from Rey's wrists weren't more comforting than her skeleton hands, but they were more understandable: Qi'ra knew from cyborgs, but Rey - Rey was something else. Qi'ra hadn't thought there would be enough people on the planet to support that, but she remembered Elia's ghost stories. Perhaps there was more that she would find out — that Rey would teach her, that she could exploit when — if — she got off this rock.

But that would mean leaving Rey behind. Qi'ra lifted her eyes to the wasteland and wondered how long it would be before she, too, was something like Rey. If she would ever return to the Crimson Dawn.

If she did, it would be with Rey between her teeth and sand in her blood. But it would work out. Qi'ra had always been good at improvising.