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Asajj Ventress cursed silently as her gaze found her crimson dawn contact sitting in a booth - instead of the sourly human she had expected to meet there was a figure swathed in black robes.
Inconspicuous to most, the lack of discernable force signature was a dead giveaway for her though.
Darth Maul.
Sith-lord renegade turned crime boss, head of the infamous shadow collective and one of the galaxy’s most dangerous men.
All in all, probably one of the last people Asajj had wanted to meet in person, especially with two former Jedi in tow.
Two.
Her current lover, Quinlan Vos, was less of a problem – the man had his own darkness to contend with and was at heart a pragmatist - and smart enough to not provoke Maul’s unpredictable temper unduly.
Tano was a different matter.
The younger Togruta might have left the Jedi order on her own volition but was firmly rooted in the light side of things, and Asajj highly doubted that she would be willing to work with Maul, given her idealistic tendencies.
Maul outright hating anything even Jedi related might also prove to be problematic at best.
Unfortunately, the current matter was time sensitive, so back pedaling and setting up a new meeting was out of the question.
Asajj took a deep breath and stepped forward to make introductions.
Her face schooled into a calm mask, she hoped that there would be no sabers drawn within the next minutes.
“Greetings. I am Asajj, and these are my associates, Quinn and Ashla.”
The Sith looked up, and Asajj silently willed Tano to not react too badly to the red face with the vivid black markings, never mind the golden eyes that clearly marked him as a darksider.
Maul’s yellow gaze swept over her, to her left, assessing Quinlan just as quickly before it came to rest on Tano. The markings on top of his left his eye rose in perfect imitation of a raising eyebrow.
“Ashla? Please tell me this is not the most inconspicuous alias you could come up with, my lady.”
He sounded slightly incredulous, and Tano reacted with a haughty little sniff.
“Says the guy who thought calling himself Bogan was a smart disguise.”
Asajj’s gaze swiveled back and forth between them, breathing in sharply at Tano’s snippy reply, hands inching towards her sabers, already calculating the best angle to dodge.
To her surprise Maul merely leaned back, steepling his fingers in front of his face as he flashed Tano a grin, his voice dropping into an almost-purr.
“It worked perfectly well for those it was intended for, Lady Tano.”
Asajj voice rose slightly in pitch as something became startingly obvious to her.
“Wait a moment. You know each other?”
Maul merely leveled her with a flat gaze before turning his attention back to Tano.
“Indeed.”
That seemed to be all that he was willing to say on this matter, as he then proceeded to tackle business directly.
“Given your account of the troubles you ran into in your attempts to acquire this item of mutual interest, I have taken the liberty to hire another bounty hunter as support. A Duros, highly professional and proficient.”
Tano plopped down on the bench with a notable lack of her usual grace and groaned.
“Please tell me that you didn’t hire Cad Bane.”
Maul blinked.
“I can hold my tongue if that suits you better, my lady, but that would hardly change the facts.”
Tano just reached out with the force and appropriated the shot glass of whatever Maul had been intended to drink at some point given that the glass was still filled with some light blue liquid.
Tano threw the shot back, downing the alcohol in one go, grimacing slightly at the aftertaste.
This time the markings on top of both eyes rose. Asajj felt her own eyebrows follow suit.
“Kark. Two weeks of being stuck with an amorous Bane. Kriff my luck.”
Tano sounded more than a little irritated there.
Mauls previously somewhat jovial mood evaporated like water under the midday glare of Tatooine’s suns.
“Amorous. Bane.”
The two words were bit out from behind clenched teeth as Maul levelled Tano with a glare that promised violence.
Tano met his stare head on but slowly her cheeks started to darken.
“Given that the man is the epitome of professionalism usually, one wonders how exactly such a thing came to pass.”
Maul’s voice was soft and dark, but somehow still managed to convey a sense of barely contained rage.
Tano bit her lower lip, taking a deep breath, voice steady as she started to speak.
“Well… I was tracking this informant who held some very important information about a traitor. Bane had the intel I needed but he was not very cooperative. So, I decided to give him a taste of his own medicine and slapped that shock collar he is so fond of onto him.”
Asaajj’s brows rose to meet her non-existent hairline.
Sweet little Tano resorting to plain out torture? Who would have thought?
Maul was clearly less surprised – eyes narrowing to slits as his glare intensified.
“And?”
His prompt was more of a growl than spoken language.
Tano leaned in, face burning, her voice low but clearly audible.
“Look, how was I supposed to know that he would get off on being electrocuted?”
Asajj was sure her face pretty much mirrored the thunderstruck, wide-eyed expression on Mauls’, a quick glance to the left showed that Quinlan did not fare much better – he was watching the unfolding discussion with an openly stunned expression as well.
Tano leaned back with a sigh.
“And ever since, he’s been trying to get me to do it again. I’ve seen more of Bane than I ever wanted to, and believe me, the man is scarily inventive when he wants something.”
Maul wrested his expression back under control, and blinked at Tano, marginally calmer now.
“Did it occur to you to inform him of your unavailability to such a liaison?”
She gave him an exasperated look.
“Have you ever met Bane? He loves challenges and thrives on any kind of opposition. It only spurs him on.”
Maul’s lips started to twitch, before curving up in a lopsided smirk.
“Only you, Lady Tano. Only you.”
It took Asajj a moment to place the tone correctly –amusement. The rest of the meeting passed by as she mulled over the new information, trying to make sense of these unexpected revelations.
Something churned in the back of her mind, like there was a missing piece of a puzzle.
Later, walking back to the ship with Quinlan, she mentioned it.
“It almost felt like a lover’s quarrel.”
He pulled something out of his pocket, the light of the low hanging suns glittering on the shot glass that both Maul and Tano had touched earlier this afternoon.
“That’s because it was.”
Asajj stopped abruptly, head whipping up to stare into Quinlan’s face, sure for a moment he was having her on, by now used to his weird sense of humor. His contemplative eyes told a different story though – he was serious.
Tano.
…and Maul.
Lovers.
Assajj tried to wrap her mind around it.
“How in the name of the ancestors did they even meet?”
Quinlan just shrugged a shoulder, long fingers carefully stroking the inconspicuous shot glass, voice still low and pensive as he tried to glean more information.
“No idea”, he admitted.
“It’s not a recent thing though. They have a powerful connection. If I had to guess a time frame – years, rather than months. “
Years.
Even more surprising – Tano was alive, mentally sane, at least apart from the usual craziness that all Jedi seemed to be prone to, and decidedly not a darksider – despite her entanglement with Maul.
Asajjj was suddenly rather intent on having a little chat with Tano to unravel all of this, the moment she returned from those personal affairs she had mentioned before they split.
Personal affairs.
On a force-forsaken, dingy little planet in the middle of the outer rim.
Oh, that little….
Both of Quinlan’s eyebrows shot up at the string of colorful profanities leaving his lovers’ lovely lips.
Asajj took a deep breath as she met his inquisitive gaze.
“Personal affairs – Tano said she had to take care of some… personal affairs.”
Quinlan blinked, then his lips curved up in a grin as he mulled it over in his head.
“Well, it is a rather apt way of putting it. Sounds better than late afternoon booty call for sure.”
Asajj kicked away a rusty can laying on the mostly deserted street with far more force than needed, and then groaned as something else occurred to her.
“Please tell me he is not going to insist on tagging along.”
The shot glass spun in his fingers as he considered her request.
“Now, how did he word it so eloquently?... I can hold my tongue….”
“Kark.”