"If you'd like, I can arrange for you to have confetti and a party hat, to celebrate. When that day comes."

"Confetti and a party hat! These must be the material temptations of the dark side Yoda warned me about."

"They definitely are, and you should absolutely be on your guard. I might break out," she lowers her voice to a whisper, "streamers."

"Let's not get too crazy. We wouldn't want overwhelm the poor Lieutenant again."

"Ah, yes. Streamers are certainly ranked up there with strange Jedi on the ship and strange bars in the cargo hold. I forget."

"Would it help if I stayed technically-not-on the ship?"

"I expect it won't, but you're free to try it."

"I wouldn't want her to feel like she can't move around freely."

Callida smiles at him.

"She's okay. She's not precisely afraid of you anymore, she just - she has her element, and she is very, very good at it. Then if you give her anything that is not that element, she doesn't know what to do with it and flees, because it's strange and confusing and she doesn't like not knowing what to do." Pause. "Also she trusts that if you were a threat I would handle it. So there's that."

"That's good to know. Thank you."

"You're welcome." She sips her hot chocolate.

"What're you drinking?"

"It's this weird exotic drink I turned out to like, called hot chocolate. I'd offer to go get you a cup, but I'm currently being a doorstop, so. You can probably get it from Bar if you're curious."

"I think I will." He goes to procure some.

"This is quite good."

"Isn't it? I don't know why people don't drink it more often."

"Probably only because they've never heard of it."

"Probably."

Sip sip sip hot chocolate.

Callida sips her own hot chocolate, too, and types at her datapad. Her list of Milliways information is coming along nicely.

... She sort of wants to be hugging Luke again. Not that she's going to bring this up.

The hug was nice, but he doesn't want to push her if she doesn't want to be pushed. He'll just be right here, sipping chocolate and being eminently huggable.

Yeah, she doesn't really have much experience initiating physical affection of any kind, so. She'll just finish this list up.

They'll be like that for a while unless he decides to start a conversation.

"So where'd you meet the Lieutenant?"

"I'd recently earned Lord status, and Occlus decided to give me my own ship. At the time I wasn't, ah, in much of a mood to try and learn how to fly it, so I started looking for a pilot. I got a list of who was working for Occlus that could be safely moved - not just pilots, I also hired Gelrath and an engineer during this - and I got to looking. Deenia was stationed on some backwards out of the way station on - I think it was Eriadu, piloting freighters. I noticed her qualifications, and how she was kind of being wasted on freighter transport, and I invited her to work for me. I think she just wanted to fly my ship, and get away from her boring job."

"You don't like wasted potential, do you?"

"It's sort of a personal nemesis of mine." On account of how it almost got her. If she hadn't have been Force sensitive... "I thwart it where I can."