Chapter Text
The workshop smelled faintly of oil and old stone — a strange marriage of machinery and age. Copper wiring snaked across the floor in careful lines, tied off with scraps of cloth and little metal clips. The walls were lined with shelves, each one stacked with old relics wrapped in neat folds of cloth, tagged with scraps of flimsi written in Aiden’s precise hand. It shouldn't have been organized. By all rights, the room of a young adult scraping by in the lower levels should have looked like the rest of the city block: cramped, grimy, chaotic. But here, in this little bubble carved from the concrete bones of the district, there was a sense of control. Aiden made sure of it.
Aiden moved with the quiet economy of someone used to working in tight spaces. She was tall enough to loom when she stood, but she carried herself low, shoulders easy, as if she’d learned early that drawing attention invited trouble. Her dark hair fell loose around her face, usually tied back when she worked, with faint streaks of old dye still clinging to the ends — remnants of a phase she never quite had time to finish.
She dressed for function, not fashion: worn boots, fitted pants reinforced at the knees, a simple shirt beneath a short crop jacket with sleeves that never stayed rolled as neatly as she intended. There was nothing ornamental about her, but nothing careless either. Every strap, every seam had a purpose.
“Another chunk of dust polished for the queen of dust herself,” a voice chimed. R3-D3, though she preferred “Rede,” stood on the bench beside her. Unlike most droids in the district, Rede had been rebuilt too many times to count. His plating didn’t match, his vocabulator buzzed when he spoke. But his tone? Crisp Basic with just the right amount of sarcasm.
Rede perched beside her like an overconfident bird. One photoreceptor flickered slightly out of sync with the other, and his left arm whined when he gestured too enthusiastically — a souvenir from repairs done with limited tools and stubborn optimism. For all his cosmetic flaws, he stayed close, angled toward her as if proximity alone counted as protection.
She sat at her workbench, elbow deep in the guts of something that had once been ceremonial — a broken idol from a forgotten shrine. The dim glow of a small lamp painted her light skin in gold as she scrubbed the grit out of etched runes. Every brushstroke was careful, deliberate, almost reverent.
“You know,” Rede continued, watching her brush, “most people would’ve just pawned that rock as is. Who cares if it’s clean? Dirt adds character.”
Aiden smirked, not looking up. “Dirt doesn’t sell, Rede. Clean edges do. Doxa won’t even look at it otherwise.”
“Doxa won’t look at it unless you smile pretty, and you know it.” Rede’s dome tilted in mock judgment.
Aiden snorted softly, finishing the last of the idol’s cleaning before setting it aside on a cloth. Her hands moved to another piece without pause — the rhythm of her nights was always the same. Fix. Clean. Sort. Prepare for Doxa Jihal’s stingy approval.
The light from her lamp flickered slightly as if straining against the dark. Aiden’s eyes, sharp despite the tired rings beneath them, tracked the tremor. Power grid must’ve been dipping again. She filed it away — another problem she couldn’t afford to fix.
Rede rolled closer, lowering his voice. “You ever wonder where these things came from? All these relics? Statues, urns, fragments. Half of them look like they were worshipping something nasty.”
Aiden leaned back, wiping her hands on a rag. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that Doxa pays, and the orphanage eats. That’s the deal.”
Rede buzzed in irritation, his vocabulator popping with static. “That’s a boring answer.”
“It’s the only answer.”
Her tone came out sharper than she meant. Silence hung for a moment, broken only by the faint hum of the lamp. She exhaled and softened, brushing back a strand of her dark hair streaked faintly with dust.
“Besides,” she said, quieter now, “somebody’s got to do the boring work. Vreez keeps the kids in line. I keep the credits flowing. That’s balance.” Rede gave a theatrical sigh, servos wheezing. “Balance, schmalance. One of these days, darling, you’re going to crack open something you can’t put back. And then—”
“And then you’ll panic and complain while I figure it out,” Aiden cut in, smirking.
The droid beeped a grumble, but his dome tilted in amusement. The lamp flickered again, and the shadows stretched long across the walls, draping over the neatly stacked shelves of forgotten history. Aiden ignored it, picked up her brush, and kept working.
Because that’s what she did.