((going to write the long version first- then will condense it down to bullet points for the char sheet- but I want people to meet her that way I see her.))
Jelly BeanHer hair is Harlow gold
Her lips are sweet surprise
Her hands are never cold
She's got Bette Davis eyes
She'll turn the music on you
You won't have to think twice
She's pure as New York snow
She got Bette Davis eyes
And she'll tease you, she'll unease you
All the better just to please you
She's precocious, and she knows just what it
Takes to make a pro blush
She got Greta Garbo's standoff sighs,
she's got Bette Davis eyes
She'll let you take her home
It whets her appetite
She'll lay you on the throne
She got Bette Davis eyes
She'll take a tumble on you
Roll you like you were dice
Until you come out blue
She's got Bette Davis eyes
She'll expose you, when she snows you
Off your feet with the crumbs she throws you
She's ferocious and she knows just what it
Takes to make a pro blush
All the boys think she's a spy,
she's got Bette Davis eyes
And she'll tease you, she'll unease you
All the better just to please you
She's precocious, and she knows just what it
Takes to make a pro blush
All the boys think she's a spy,
she's got Bette Davis eyes
She'll tease you
She'll unease you
Just to please you
She's got Bette Davis eyes
She'll expose you
When she snows you
She knows you.
She's got Bette Davis EyesBette Davis Eyes - Kim Carnes****
Part 1
"Can you say it again?"
"I have said it five times now..."
"But I still can't pronounce that..."
"That isn't MY problem."
The man lying on the bed, barely able to sit upright sighed, "I'm just going to call you Jelly Bean."
The Twi'lek woman shook her head as she raised a finger in the injured man's direction and cooly stated, "No, you will not."
But he already had said it and nicknames had a way of sticking when tensions were high, and stress and anxiety were unrelenting. These were the kinds of situations where bonds formed and the Twi'lek woman had no interest in making new friends, especially with this man. She should have followed that inner voice that told her that responding to a distress locator beacon would only bring trouble... maybe sooner, maybe later. And yet, here she was. Someone needed help and so she helped. But dragging him from the pod onto her beater little ship was another bad idea. He wasn't even trying to hide who he was, but then again this particular Twi'lek had no b grudge against his people.
The Hutts learned early on these guys were not interested in operating the same as the Imperials. And so, the Hutts kept distance and worked the edges. If the Hutts didn't do business with them, the neither did she. That was her life then. Now? Well, apparently she was doing business with them... at least one of them that is.
"I am going back to the cockpit to check on our course heading. When I come back I will help you get to the refresher... but if you call me that name again, well... then I will throw you out the airlock. Understand?"
"Yes Ma'am... Got it, Jelly Bean!"
She glared at the man, her lekku twitched violently, and she growled through clenched teeth. If she went to the extra effort to save him from starvation or hypoxia, then she wasn't going to dump him into space. And he knew it. She turned on heel and stalked away from him, her stomping feet could be heard all the way back to the pilot's chair.
****
"Kriff me," she hissed when the spanner slipped off the coupler and her hand banged into the bulkhead strut with a sharp 'thwang'. She leaned down and offered the tool/weapon to Maljahn, or Jahn as he liked to be called. Her hand was throbbing now and she wouldn't be able to exert enough pressure to open the access panel behind the conduit coupler. He would have to it from below.
"Here, take my fusion cutter and set it for low. You'll have to reach up and get the panel open first, then use the cutter to seal the coolant line to the plasma inductor... there... right there... look where I'm pointing... yes, that's it." That she offered him a weapon at all had to say something for the state of their relationship in close proximity to one another. It had nearly been two weeks since she found him adrift in open space, his escape nearly out of air and him severely dehydrated, and injured.
"Got it," he said as he took the tool from her and wedged himself into the bulkhead crevice to reach for the split line from below her. "Okay, charge the line and let's see if we can get this tub up and running again."
"Well get out of there first, you stupid nerf-herder. If it can't hold pressure again then it will melt your face and probably kill you before I can throw the cut-off again," she exclaimed.
"So you like my face?"
"What? No... If it kills you then I will miss all the fun tossing you out the airlock, okay?"
"You like my face," he teased. "It's okay Jelly Bean, you can tell me how you really..."
"I didn't say that..." She growled at him as she jumped down to the deck. "Whatever, just get out of the crevice first."
****
"It's been two weeks and I think you are just messing with me now," he said as he sat across from the red skinned Twi'leks. That race was from the planet Ryloth. That was the major planet in the sector he had been assigned to... 'patrol'. Her people actually called themselves Ryllian. He knew all this. He also knew that the name Twi'lek came from early explorers charting this sector at the fringe end of the Correllian Run. It was a mash of Galactic Basic and the Ryllian word for those prehensile tentacle-like appendages that dangled from their heads... lekku. Two lekku. And most importantly he knew she was what was known as a Lethan Twi'lek. Red Skinned. Extremely rare. Caused by a genetic mutation and not an actual racial sub-group of her people.
She was the first thing he saw after he woke up again. The heavy cruiser he and his team were using as a base of operations had been in combat. The foolish and arrogant Commander couldn't accept that he might get ambushed this far from their normal operating theaters. It did get ambushed, took heavy damage, and they forced to make an emergency jump. And then it all went wrong. The damage caused a cataclysmic failure that spun them out of hyperspace with shearing gravitational forces. The ship was ripped apart and was being scattered across an entire parsec of space.
She was an alien. Every instinct, honed, sharpened, whetted, and sharpened again told him to kill her right then and there. But he couldn't even get off the bed without her help. He was at her mercy. He was at the mercy of an inferior being. And now? Two weeks later? He had come to know that she wasn't inferior to anyone. If not for the fact that she was slinking through open space and avoiding normal routes, he would have died out there in the emptiness. She didn't have to help him either, but she did. She was nothing like what he expected. She was kind and compassionate, and patient with him. Even with the hardened facade she presented he could tell she was different than what he expected. Where was the corruption of soul and spirit?
He could tell that she was wary because he had said some unkind things those first two days before he realized he would never be able to stop her from spacing him as she threatened.
"I am not messing with you," she said with a laugh. She looked up coyly and smiled. She WAS messing with him. It was fun and it passed the time. Sure he probably thought of her like she was vermin, but he was doing a remarkable job at hiding it. Those first few days though, Boi'shai! He was insufferable. Fortunately he was also unconscious for most of the time.
"I have said your name every way possible and I am not a stupid nerfherder, no matter how many times you call me that... I was close when I said 'Jealousy'... wasn't I?"
She shrugged and that smile was thin and mischievous now. She liked looking at his eyes.
They were hours away from Ryloth now. She was happy that he had finally come to accept that she was not going to use the standard trade routes. Those co-ordinates paths were well established and part of every nav package. All the major routes were. But she tried to explain to him that his people weren't her biggest worry. The Hutts, their bounty hunters, and their slavers were. And they would be watching that route like farlus hawks. So, she was making many small jumps and manually plotting each jump to make a route to get them to her homeworld. She hadn't been there since she was six. She had no idea if her family was even still alive. They had lived in a rather remote village.
She thought back to when he was first able to speak clearly. He wanted, actually he demanded that she drop him at the closest world immediately... hmm, two weeks ago now. Not happening. She promised him that she would get him to Ryloth and then he was free to do whatever he wanted and go wherever he needed to go, on his own. But her ship was going to Ryloth and only Ryloth and she was going to make sure no one followed her and that they came across no one... at all.
He shook his head in mock frustration, but he was close to laughing out loud, "Then Jelly Bean it is... I'm done playing your silly game... that's your name now."
She shrugged, maybe it was her name after all. In two weeks she had allowed this man, Maljan Relnard, Colonel Maljahn Relnard, to give her a nickname. That intensity had lessened, the rage softened. He was different than she expected, and over the last two weeks of being confined in a small Starlight freighter that was barely space-worthy, she had come to find she actually liked the guy. Maybe when they reached Ryloth she would tell him her story. They were parting ways once they landed. He had hopes of getting back to his people and his war and she just wanted to go home and be left alone to enjoy her life as a free person. Telling him her story might confirm all those feelings he had when they first met, that she was a vile, corrupted... whatever. She didn't think so though. Not now. He was different... He deserved to know more than what she told him so far but she feared that these last two weeks getting to know one another would be undone if she were wrong about him. Besides, how do you tell someone you barely know that you are an escaped slave , an Hutt Cartel dancer and prostitute? But she wasn't that anymore... But being a Schutta was a reality she would probably have to face coming back to Ryloth, from her own kind. But Jahn was not Rylothian. Yeah, his people killed people like her out of principle. Stupid principle... But she wasn't that anymore, and... he wasn't the same man who woke up worried she might have infected him with her very presence. To think, she contemplated ignoring the distress call. She tried to convince herself that maybe getting rid of him would be the safest thing for her. She threatened him with spacing several times, until she knew that he knew she wasn’t serious. Over two weeks together now.
Well, didn't she owe that much to herself to know if he had truly grown, changed? Probably, but that would have to wait until they landed now.