Carapace
She works on the Genoharadan armor, exhuming old memories from the graveyard of her past. Months ago, this would have been a time-consuming chore; something her fake smuggler self would never have dreamed of knowing how to do. But she knows how; she learned during the Mandalorian Wars.
She'd pulled it off the Genoharadan in the Dantooine desert. Her companions had wondered where she'd found it when she'd returned with the droids and the strangely powerful items. Canderous had remarked that it wasn't anything that she could have bought at the Czerka outpost. She had smiled and said nothing.
She cannot wear it because it restricts her power. She usually has no patience for anything that restricts her, but she makes an exception for this armor. It is strong and reliable and she likes strong and reliable things.
When she puts two edges together, she pulls back sticky red fingers. Blood is swallowed up on the armor's matte surface. It is another reason she likes this armor.
She stripped it from its previous owner only an hour ago. He'd been alive when she'd knelt next to him and pulled it from him piece by piece. He had not fought her, had not asked for a quick death. He knew that she wouldn't have come as far as she had if she'd been a person prone to fits of mercy.
She'd felt his eyes on her as she worked at straps and snaps slick with his blood. He had followed her quick hands until his gaze had fixed on something far beyond her. Now she wonders what those eyes saw. Had they focused on a redemption she would never see or simply the empty void over her shoulder?
The slack face had revealed nothing to her, but that was no surprise. She had given up looking for answers in the faces of the dead two wars ago.
The armor is still warm. She imagines, in a flight of fancy that belongs to the person she was and not the person she is, that the armor will always retain the heat of the still living body she stripped it from; the ghost of a worthless life trapped in her service forever.
She looks at her adjustments critically and smiles, pleased with her work.
She muses that it was too bad that Carth never appreciated the art of this armor. She is not given to regrets, but one of her few is that she ever granted the use of it to him. Misused, it had only encased the rot of weakness within a carapace of strength.
Satisfied, she leaves the pieces of the reclaimed Genoharadan armor on the workbench. She will fit it for the mercenary later.
Author Notes: Originally written for the character death challenge at