Dark Matter: Episode 2

She gasped when the door to the small shower compartment opened, and breathed a momentary sigh of relief that it was only her mother. It's only my mother joining me naked in the shower, she thought miserably. Nothing surreal about that.

Sheefa had done her best to avoid calling her mother anything other than 'Mother', despite both her mother and sister insisting she be called 'Vulva'. She hated it. It unpersoned her mother. Reduced her and objectified her, which, Sheefa thought, had been the point, but still. She was still trying to get used to the idea that her mother was alive at all.

The Jedi Order forbade personal attachments, and for many years she had followed this teaching to the letter. With the blossoming of her relationship with Master Toberin, however, she had begun to secretly think about her family. What they might look like, and be like. The lives they might have led. She had fostered this fantasy for years, entertaining many variations. The reality of the shell of a person in front of her shattered this thinking, and exposed her naivety in a way she was embarrassed to confront.

She turned away as Vulva stepped in, as much to shield herself as to turn her eyes physically away from her mother's sensuous curves. The seconds stretched out, jaw clenched, while she waited for the inevitable soft touch. A mother's touch, and when it came she could not stop herself from flinching.

"Shhhh," Vulva said, stepping closer. She hummed a lullaby under her breath as she lathered her hands and pressed them against the small of Sheefa's back.

"No," Sheefa groaned, arching away, but the hands followed; slipping out and around her hips, and up toward her ribs. "Mother, please—"

"Hush now," Vulva whispered. "We must take care of ourselves."

"Nooo," she groaned. Sheefa grabbed her mother's wrists and pushed them out away from her body, while taking a step into the corner to put distance between them. "You shouldn't be doing that, Mother." The shower was not large, and there was no more room to retreat.

"Please call me Vulva," she repeated, for at least the third time that day and the hundredth time that month. She twisted her arms free of Sheefa's grip, but was stopped by a hand to her chest before she could advance on her daughter. "She wants you to call me Vulva." Her brow knitted in confused effort as she tried to find a path to her goal, but Sheefa stymied her over and over again. "Please—"

"No, Mother."

The more her gentle redirections proved impenetrable, the more frustrated and upset her mother became, and it was a combination of guilt and exhaustion that finally brought down Sheefa's defenses. The lullaby came right back as Vulva spread soap over her daughter's skin again, as if nothing had happened. "Such a beautiful girl."

Sheefa bit down hard on her lip, trying to overwhelm her nervous system with pain as soft hands moved slowly over and underneath her breasts. Across her shoulders and down her back. She had to actively stop clenching her cheeks before her mother's fingers could slip through to clean her rear. Despite the blood on her tongue, her nipples hardened and pulsed rhythmically.

"...and this way," she sang softly, pushing on the inside of Sheefa's left knee. Sheefa braced herself against the wall of the shower and raised her left leg to be balanced on the tip of her toe as her mother squatted in front of her. "We must keep our fruit fresh and clean." Her cheeks exploded with color as fingers probed her labia, and she almost screamed when the door to the small shower compartment opened again.

Vaux'avh smirked as she stood in the doorway. "When you're done having Vulva fingerfuck you, we have work to do."

After the door closed, Sheefa clenched her teeth and bit off a frustrated scream.

There were some parallels between this, the way she was treated by both Vauxa'vh and Vulva, and Master Toberin. Toberin might not have been a relative, but he was certainly a figure of unimpeachable authority. This aspect had been central to the enjoyment of her time together with him, if not the only reason. Their intimacy had built over years.

With Vaux'avh, and by extension Vulva as well, there was no intimacy. There was a relationship, a blood bond perhaps, but it meant little Sheefa. She hadn't grown up with them. She didn't know them at all. When Vaux'avh touched her, though, it struck the same chord. The same taboo note, one Sheefa had been primed to respond to, and she hated it. It felt like Vaux'avh had used a back door, a shortcut, and the cheapness of it did not sit well with her.

"Other leg now, Figria." Daughter.

Sheefa reluctantly shifted from one foot to the other and sighed. A delicate touch, rising from her heel to her calf, along the inside of her thigh, and over her tummy. Vulva smiled proudly as she stood, though whether in the work or in her Sheefa could not say, and placed her hands on Sheefa's shoulders.

"You can trust her," Vulva lilted, eyes traveling back and forth across Sheefa's face without quite meeting the younger Mirialan's gaze. "You must trust her."

"How can you say that?" Sheefa shouted. "She's vile, and—"

"She is your sister."

Sheefa grabbed her mother in return. "That is not a reason! How am I supposed to trust her?!" She shifted her head down to try and stare her mother in the eye, but no matter how close she got, Vulva's eyes slid just a little lower. "She's abusing you. She's abusing us!"

Finally Vulva looked up at her and smiled, as if looking at her daughter for the first time. "You're so beautiful," she said. Tears forming in her eyes.

Sheefa slumped forward, touching the top of her forehead against her mother's forehead, and sobbed.

"So beautiful."

***

"The frame and the hull are a hundred percent," the hauler said as he stood next to Vaux'avh, who in turn fumed in silence while her damaged ship was lifted by crane into her personal hangar. "We had to replace the damaged airlock so she'd be spaceworthy, though, and that aft compartment is blown to shit. Not sure why you wanted to go to all this trouble for that ship. It'd'a been cheaper to just get a new one."

"And it's just the one engine?" she asked, staring back at Sheefa out of the corner of her eye.

"Replace the number two port side, and you'll be in good shape."

"Thank you, Captain," Vaux'avh said crisply. "You'll find a little something extra transferred to your account for your haste, and your... discretion."

The hauler nodded and walked off, shouting and pointing emphatically as his crew set the black gunship down.

Sheefa pulled her arms tighter around her chest. "I still don't understand why we couldn't just keep my ship."

"First of all, it wasn't your ship. It was your owner's ship."

Sheefa rolled her eyes.

"Second, a Jedi craft would have drawn attention we can ill afford. Third, he would have come looking for it eventually. And finally, this is my ship. I deci—" Vaux'avh stiffened, eyes wide, and stopped. She took a deep breath and drew herself up to her full height. Sheefa's older sister's demeanor changed completely right in front of her eyes. Gone was the fury. Gone was the outward display of frustration. In their place, Vaux'avh wore a mask of composure. Sheefa could think of no other way to put it.

And then she felt it too, like an icy blast. Sheefa looked back over her shoulder and immediately wished she hadn't.

The hangar door, large enough to allow a battalion to march through side-by-side, was just closing behind a single orange-haired human woman. Her small frame, shrouded in armor, was at terrifying odds with the intensity of her gaze. Red eyes burning. Sheefa had to fight to keep from withering as the woman stalked closer. Vaux'avh shifted her weight from foot to foot, one shoulder lowered. A very intentional kind of casual that Sheefa made a mental note to dissect later. Their mother seemed unaffected, though that seemed to Sheefa to be her natural state.

"The harem increases," the woman giggled, maniacally, as she eyed Sheefa from head to boot. She continued to walk around them until she stood before them, and gave them each a knowing grin. "... and the resemblance is just—"

"What do you want?" Vaux'avh asked, rolling her eyes.

The woman's jaw dropped, and she placed a hand on her chest. "Manners, Apprentice. The day we abandon our graces is the day we devolve into beasts." The last word released with a guttural intonation akin to barking. The repetitive echoes within the hangar added a layer of menace to the smaller woman's already-imposing presence. Sheefa was proud of herself for not having flinched.

"Sheefa, this is Darth Nazaya," Vaux'avh said, gesturing curtly. "My Master. Master, this is Sheefa, formerly a Padawan of the Jedi Order and now my Apprentice."

"And?"

The Sith took a slow breath. "And my sister."

Nazaya smiled, a grotesque expression, and nodded. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

"What do you want?" Vaux'avh repeated.

She stepped closer to Vaux'avh and tilted her head forward slightly so that her eyes were right under her brows. "I allowed you your little excursion," she said, glancing sideways at Sheefa for a moment, "and I lent my name to get you your ship back. Now my good will is exhausted. You owe a debt."

The older Mirialan nodded to the side, toward their mother. "I'm more or less done with her."

Nazaya's eyes lit up as she stared, but Vulva's expression remained calm and neutral. "No," Nazaya sang, a moment before Sheefa would have interceded. "My tastes lie elsewhere. We will deal with your debt to me another time, but it is, unequivocally, a debt. For now, you have a job to do."

"I hadn't forgotten," Vaux'avh said, lifting her chin slightly.

"Wonderful to hear, because it's past time you were gone already."

Vaux'avh gestured to two workers standing near the ramp. "We'll have the Conquest fully repaired and off-world by tomorrow night, if not sooner."

Nazaya turned and, without pause, strode toward the workers. Their attention was on the sleek black gunship, and they never saw her coming. Sheefa sensed the coming actions, but Vaux'avh extended a hand in front of her to stop her from intervening. By the time Nazaya ignited her lightsaber, a short fiery blade, they were already dead.

"Tomorrow night," Nazaya said, grinning as she strode past them. "I'll be counting the minutes."

Sheefa stared in shocked disbelief as the large hangar doors closed, leaving them by themselves again, but Vaux'avh paid her no mind. Her older sister started toward her ship, and their mother dutifully followed.

"What the hell was that?" Sheefa shouted. One of the dock workers' bodies was still twitching. Fingers clawing at the permacrete floor. "What just happened?"

"'What just happened'," Vaux'avh said, not stopping or slowing, "is that a dangerous woman just made her timetable crystal clear, or were you not paying attention?"

"But those workers would have helped!" she shrieked. "They'd already been paid!"

"They knew the risks of working for a Sith."

Sheefa slowed to a stop, her jaw hanging slack. "This is senseless! How can you just throw away lives like that?"

Vaux'avh stormed back to her, eyes ablaze, and grabbed her arm tightly around the bicep. "Your Jedi instincts have blinded you," she snapped. "You look at those bodies and see a travesty. A murder. Something to be discussed in committee and unilaterally condemned by proclamation." She leaned in closer, jaw clenched. "I look at them and see an example I do not wish to follow." Closer, hissing, with her left arm pointing behind her. "Now get on that ship and get to work."

Sheefa took one last look at the two bodies, lying prone on the ground, and stamped up the ramp.

The inside of the ship was a mess. Everything not bolted in place had been tossed about when the ship came down. There was scoring on the walls of the hallway just outside the engine room, and the room itself was several orders of magnitude worse.

Just then, as Sheefa stood in the center of the damage she had caused and not regretted before that moment, she heard a familiar tweeting. "N1?" she asked, turning. N1 tweeted cheerfully as it rolled up behind her. She smiled as she lowered herself into a squat, grateful for another familiar presence, and ran her hands over its front. "What are you doing here?"

"Surprise," Vaux'avh growled, as she plowed through the hallway.

"But... you said we couldn't risk keeping him!"

"He's confined to the ship," she snarled, digging into her toolbox. "The restraining bolt is not negotiable."

Sheefa nodded, trying not to cry, and stood. "Ok. What should I do?"

The older woman turned and stared at Sheefa over her shoulder. "Did they not teach you how to do proper ship maintenance at Jedi daycare?"

The Apprentice sighed and shook her head, but N1 immediately interjected.

"Fine. Do whatever he says, and if I find so much as a bolt out of place you will regret it."

***

N1 chirped cheerily, rousing Sheefa from troubled sleep. She rubbed at the bridge of her nose as she sat up, feet dangling over the side of her bunk, and took a few deep breaths. Her dreams had been plagued with crumbling floors, fires that pursued her, and a hundred other subconscious permutations of feeling unsafe and unsteady. Those were easier to deal with, upon waking, than the dreams of being fucked by her sister. The times she'd woken from the force of the orgasms in her dreams were the worst.

The two-tiered main area of the ship served as part-galley, part-infirmary, part-conference room, and more. Only the flight cabin, engine room, hold, and crew quarters were separate rooms. The chaos in the main area, after the crash, had been monumental, but Vulva's quiet caretaking had made a significant dent. 2E, the astromech that normally served aboard the Conquest, was grudgingly assisting her in that.

"How long until we arrive?" Sheefa asked, stretching and suppressing a yawn as she exited her quarters. N1 tweeted brightly in response.

"Which leaves plenty of time," Vaux'avh said, as she came down the steps from the cabin, "to resume your training."

Sheefa balked. "Resume?"

"A Sith is constantly improving. Constantly striving for more." She tossed Sheefa her lightsaber and smiled sardonically. "There is no point at which we are 'done', and that is why the Sith will ultimately overcome the Jedi."

"Achieving the rank of Jedi Knight would not have absolved me of further efforts to better myself." Sheefa sighed and ignited her blade. "What I meant, though, was that 'we' haven't started yet."

"What do you think we've been doing for the past weeks?"

"Errand work," she said tersely, as her older sister crossed blades with her.

"I'm disappointed," Vaux'avh replied. "I didn't realize I needed to hold your hand quite so literally." Their blades crackled, sending out blinding sparks as they connected three times in quick succession while Sheefa tested her defenses. "Although you do favor a Master who leads you around by the—" Vaux'avh cut off in laughter, deflecting a spirited assault, but the perspiration on her forehead spoke volumes of the effort involved in doing so. "What I've been doing is helping you acclimate to your new environment. Helping you understand the stakes. We are not on your placid little garden world anymore."

"You do your Master's bidding," Sheefa grunted. She feinted high and came in low, blocked only by a powerful burst of Force lightning directed to her blade. Vaux'avh countered by striking her on the side of her head with the butt of her own blade, and sent Sheefa spiraling to the ground. Sheefa bounced to her feet again but was unprepared for a powerful Force wave. She cried out, as the back of her head bounced viciously off the wall behind her, and tried to push herself free, but Vaux'avh kept her pinned.

"We all serve Masters. The Sith simply do not lie to themselves about it. Becoming a Knight would not have freed you from doing the bidding of your betters. The time for coddling is over," she snarled. "You cannot be soft. Cannot be so blind. Not anymore."

"You're a slave to softness," Sheefa snapped, and they both glanced sideways at Vulva as she sat meekly on her knees in the corner. The momentary distraction was enough for Sheefa to break free, and she was surprised when her enraged attacks brought laughter from the older woman.

"Good," Vaux'avh said, smiling even as she held her defense by the skin of her teeth. "Good! Use whatever you have at your disposal to keep your enemy off balance."

"I should kill you for offering her up to that monster!"

Just like that, her momentum was lost. Sheefa cried out as her attacks found only air, and had to step lightly to stay ahead of the counter-stroke.

"It's amusing that you think you could," Vaux'avh laughed, as she once again backed Sheefa into a corner. Two feints had the younger Mirialan so far off balance that the impact of stopping the third attack was enough to knock her onto her backside. Vaux'avh's slinking style belied her strength, and her eyes were ablaze as she strode. "I feel the need to re-establish the hierarchy of our relationship."

She lashed out from her back, swinging frantically, but Vaux'avh's defensive swipe knocked the hilt clear from her hand and sent it skittering down the hall toward the engine room.

"Get up."

Sheefa tried to crawl backwards but the wall came far too soon for her liking and, for all her scrambling, Vaux'avh needed only a single step to match her. She looked back and forth, desperately trying to formulate some sort of defense.

"Now."

Any kind of defense.

"Figria," Vulva purred, as she reached across Vaux'avh's chest from behind. "It's been so long since you touched me." The two sisters shared a look of unsettled surprised, neither having noticed her approaching, but the similarity in their reaction ended there. Sheefa blushed, symbolically turning her head away from the lust of her family without actually looking away, while Vaux'avh merely sneered. Skillful finger stroked the older sister's jawline, pulling. Both sisters' heads turned to their right sides, but their eyes stayed locked on each other. "Please."

It wasn't until Vaux'avh and Vulva's lips met that Vaux'avh finally looked away, but she kept her body facing her beaten sister, moaning and shifting as their mother's hands roamed. Squeezing. Sheefa whimpered as she watched, as overwhelmed as she was turned on and completely unable to divert her attention.

It was like a mirror image, reflecting a truth she could neither deny nor resist the pull of. The closeness. The intensity. She longed for it. Longed to be a part of it again.

Very quickly, though, the tides reversed. Once Vaux'avh was well and thoroughly turned on, she went on the offensive. She turned toward her mother, brushing Vulva's hands away and focusing her own fingertips on her mother's body. Cupping the heavy, fleshy breasts through the insult of a dress her mother wore. She smirked as she rubbed her thumb around the very edge of the darkened areola, stroking through the tented fabric. She swallowed Vulva's submissive whimpers, and fed them back to her as possessive groans of her own.