Chapter Text
“This is my brother Jaal.”
When Jaal met Evfra for the first time, his big sister Orinna had a hand placed firmly between his shoulder blades as she pushed him forward for scrutiny. The Aya sun was sinking, bathing the room in a dark orange glow, and against the window stood Evfra, framed by the burning sky.
Jaal had seen him before, of course, on the news or in vids. He was no Moshae, constantly taking centre stage to inspire and lead in the public eye, but he didn’t play unnecessarily coy, either. Anyone who paid even a little attention would have heard his comments and speeches, would have seen images of him surrounded by armed men and women between the pristine white houses of Aya or in the lamp-lit, barren caves of Voeld.
Now in front of him, Jaal saw the details one missed in pictures. He stood with a straight back and habitual tension in his shoulders, alert in the way predatory animals were even if not on the prowl. The blue of his skin bled into purple where scarred lines furrowed his face. His piercing, inquisitive gaze turned on them as Orinna spoke. He looked handsome and distant, like he was watching them through a glass door and hadn’t yet decided whether he wanted to open it.
“The sniper,” Evfra said, after a brief moment of contemplation.
“You remember, great. He brought his own weapon, too, and it’s a fine one. He’s basically ready to go,” Orinna announced.
“We’ll see about that.” Evfra’s eyes searched Jaal, looking over his shoulder rather than at his face, where the barrel of his rifle stuck out. “Is that a kett weapon?”
Jaal had to shake himself out of his reverie. It was not every day one met a man who had shifted the fate of one’s people as drastically as Evfra de Tershaav had.
“Yes. I took it apart and rebuilt it with modifications.”
“I see.”
Jaal looked at him feeling foolish, not sure what to make of that comment. Evfra’s tone was rough, but he didn’t look displeased.
“The kett have more resources than we do,” Evfra explained himself, after the silence had dragged for long enough to make Jaal squirm a little. “Someone who can turn their own weapons against them should be of use.”
“I hope so,” Jaal said, relieved.
“So do I. Bring him to Olvek for a check-up, Orinna.”
With those words, Evfra left them standing and turned his attention to one of the large consoles that lined the wall.
“I can’t tell if that went well,” Jaal told his sister after the doors had closed behind them.
“You never can with Evfra. You’ll get used to it.”
-
Right from that first moment, Jaal had a crush on Evfra; he suspected quite a few people did. His history of building the Resistance from a gaggle of unorganised freedom fighters into a precise weapon against the kett made him a good target for admiration. So, in all honesty, did a voice as deep as a ravine, a face with beautifully full lips – even if they were always turned downwards in a frown –, scars that made him look a warrior, and the soft interplay of white and blue in his face like dispersing clouds on a sunny sky.
Those were idle and superficial thoughts, though, and while they always stayed, by the time Jaal had finished his twenty-sixth year, having been with the Resistance for closing in on two years now, he had long stopped expecting that his dreams of Evfra’s mouth pulling into a smile under his would ever come true. Evfra had more of a heart than people gave him credit for; Jaal was convinced that a man without one could not have been as passionate about his cause as he was. He suspected the reason Evfra didn’t share it with people was not that his heart was hard, but that he feared it would be fragile enough to fail for good if broken once more. Still, his walls were mile-high and besides, Jaal spent most of his time with Resistance cells off Aya, happy to get away from the planet of bureaucrats whenever the opportunity arose, so he didn’t get to work with Evfra a lot.
Then, Evfra started taking notice of him.
“I want to keep you here for a couple of weeks,” he told Jaal off-handedly, after he had finished his latest debriefing.
Jaal felt exasperation creep up. He’d hoped to get back to Havarl in time for his youngest sister’s first coming-of-age celebration and the prospect of Aya’s stuffed atmosphere of endless discussions and political negotiations was not a great trade-off.
“What do you need me for?” he asked, still a bit too curious to sound disappointed.
“Education.”
Jaal had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Had Evfra found him lacking in some way?
“What kind?”
“You’re a good shot, better than most, and I know if I send you out in the field you’ll get results. I think you also have potential in other areas, though,” Evfra said. “I want to see if I’m right in that assumption.”
Jaal halted, looking at him silent surprise. In truth, he had to admit he’d stopped hoping for something like this to happen. Wherever he had ended up before, he’d routinely proven himself to be mediocre, from his first year in school to his studies under the Moshae. He wasn’t noticeably terrible, but his teachers and superiors always seemed to know that what he had convinced himself was his destiny today really wasn’t meant for him. After half a dozen failed attempts to find the one thing he’d excel at to meet the level of his largely brilliant older siblings and cousins, Jaal was left with little but confusion about his future.
In the Resistance, he’d already been put in context before he’d joined. His sister Orinna herself had come here months before him and she was already doing black ops work when he’d followed. Next to her, Jaal had never expected to be much more than a simple soldier, just like he’d never been more than a rookie next to Akksul, or a distraction for the first woman he’d loved next to his older brother. However, Resistance work had been too important to pass up regardless – and now he realised that for once, he may not have been knocking at a locked door.
“I’d be happy to learn more,” Jaal said, unashamedly beaming.
Stone-faced as usual, Evfra gestured at him to follow.
-
Jaal spent more than just those next two weeks with him. Evfra now alternated between integrating Jaal into the command structure on Aya and sending him out attached to strike teams. Though he didn’t shower Jaal with encouragement, he could draw it from the fact that he was becoming a well-known face around the Resistance HQ.
It was a cloudy morning some four months after that first conversation about his changing duties when Jaal joined Evfra in his office, wiping warm summer rain off his face.
“Rofra told me he can’t figure out the signal trail of a labour camp transport we were tracking off Voeld through the Scourge,” he said, looking over Evfra’s shoulder at a snow-storm blurred picture on the screen of his console.
“I’ll let Feira take a look at it. Little escapes her.” Evfra glanced at Jaal from the corner of his eyes. “I didn’t plan for you to become my secretary, but it’s your fault for being more approachable than me,” he added.
Jaal had to smile. One more thing that had happened was that he had also gotten acquainted with Evfra personally, to the point that people sometimes spoke to Jaal first when they wanted something from Evfra. From errand boy to right-hand-man to bodyguard, people had given his position many names. What it really was, Evfra only knew; but Jaal thought it was, in any case, much more interesting than being in the reserves. He still wasn’t on a level with his sister, but it felt for the first time like people knew him for something else than his family name.
“Maybe Rofra just didn’t want to bother you.”
The look Evfra gave him told him Evfra knew Jaal didn’t believe that, either. Rofra was a bit of a coward. In Jaal’s experience, having watched him so close, Evfra only came down hard on people who made mistakes born out of inattention or laziness. He didn’t get unnecessarily upset just because someone failed to climb the mountains they all faced dealing with this towering, viciously smart enemy. If he had been that strict, he’d have to be screaming at someone every hour of the day, every day.
One of the men manning the large console to the side approached Evfra before he could say anything else, clearing his throat to get his attention.
“The Red Ilev just went dark , Evfra.”
“Mark their last position. We’ll try to ping them in twenty-four hours if they haven’t come back online.”
Evfra excused the man with a nod.
“The Red Ilev again?” Jaal asked, looking at Evfra.
“Good, you noticed. Their leader Gemai is a careful woman.”
“Perhaps a bit too careful?”
It seemed to Jaal like they hardly knew what Red Ilev was up to most days. They certainly would have made the small, almost transparent freshwater fish that their team was named after proud with how completely they managed to vanish, but Jaal wasn’t convinced that was a good thing. Cutting all coms and trackers would make them harder for the kett to find, but if they got in trouble, sending help could be a problem, and with no idea about their position, the base could never warn them if something was headed their way.
“I’ve told her a dozen times that some communication could be helpful in keeping her people alive, but she’s set in her ways. That aside, though, she’s a capable leader and I wouldn’t want to cut her,” Evfra answered.
“Isn’t this habit dangerous to the people who follow her?” Jaal asked.
“It is, but I don’t have the manpower to wait for perfect lieutenants. I know her faults, which makes it my responsibility to send her where her paranoia is an asset rather than a hindrance. Highly patrolled areas, places like that.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s still a risk I’m taking. Any people she loses because of an unnecessary communication cut will effectively be people I have lost...” Evfra frowned at the console. “But that’s just the way it is,” he finished, after a moment. “What I mean to say is that if you are a bad soldier, you will use a sniper rifle when you need a shotgun, and a pistol where an assault rifle would serve you better. It’s not the fault of the weapon that you lose the fight, it’s yours for not keeping in mind what they do best and what they fail at. It can help to think of the strengths and weaknesses of the people in your command the same way.”
The responsibility seemed crushing to Jaal even at a distance. He wondered if it ever bothered Evfra. It had to; he doubted any being with feeling left inside them wouldn’t have suffered getting a casualty report where they found themselves guilty in some measure for every name displayed. That was not a question he could ask him, though, not even after all the time they’d spent together. Evfra was not in the habit of sharing his emotions like that.
“What are my strengths and weaknesses?” Jaal asked, instead, to distract himself from the topic.
Evfra looked at him with one brow raised.
“You should know that.”
“I haven’t looked at as many soldiers as you. I don’t have your experience.”
Evfra cocked his head. Jaal’s argument seemed to be good enough for him.
“You’re too emotional, which compromises your decision making. You also talk too much when often it would serve you better to listen and wait without revealing your own position,” he said. “On the other hand, people have an easy time liking you, you treat everyone who deserves it with respect, and you try to employ your head. That’s why I think that for you, the right spot to be is where you see the bigger picture work of the Resistance, even though I could use a sniper and technician of your talents out in the field more often.” He switched on his universal device, tapping the round hologram with a finger as he lowered his gaze. “Try not to prove me wrong,” he added.
That put his recent work in perspective. Jaal had noticed how Evfra had tried to clue him in on his thought processes and strategies, but he was a hard man to read, especially when you were used to people being as open about their feelings as pretty much everyone Jaal knew was. Jaal didn’t think he succeeded at hiding the pride in his smile at the revelation.
“I’ll get on a shuttle to the Tarak Veya Resistance station on Voeld tonight. You should come with me, meet the people there,” Evfra said. It was the kind of order Jaal had gotten used to now. Evfra liked to have one or two soldiers that he knew well along on his trips off-planet and Jaal was often chosen.
“If warriors are like weapons, am I your sidearm?” Jaal joked.
“Don’t expand on my metaphor, it was bad enough to begin with,” Evfra asnwered, shaking his head.
Jaal chuckled. After four months at Evfra’s side, he had learned a lot, about leadership, about the Resistance, about himself. He’d also learned that he had a bit of a crush on Evfra still, a subtle but noticeably different feeling than before. He liked his dry humour and his dogged determination, how he never shirked from duty, how he reached out, in his own way, to those who had been hurt and tempered those who were just gagging for a fight; he also liked how Evfra would pour over mission reports or kett code fragments at all hours of the night if need be, even when his eyes were half-shut and he yawned into the crook of his arm. It was an appreciation for a man, not the idea of a leader standing tall and untouchable.
Jaal was reasonable enough to ignore it – knowing that there was no point in pursuing it helped –, except for when Evfra looked at him like he did now, almost smiling.