This post has the following content warnings:
In the dark privacy of her quarters, with no-one around but the droid standing motionless at the foot of her bed, apprentice Deskyl meditates. Remembering how to establish a telepathic link is hard, and doing it is even harder, but she thinks in this case it will be worth it.
Hello? It's more a sense of presence than a proper word, easily mistaken for just another thought by someone not expecting such a thing.
Love you, too.
I'll be back. It's not - fast, or pretty, but I will be.
It's not that kind of thing; it's not something she has a choice about. It's not even something where she could give up, and opt out that way; it's wholly and utterly outside of her control, and making a promise about it makes about as much sense as promising that the sun will rise in the morning.
But he needs it, she can tell, so: Yeah. I promise.
...he knows that, really. It’s shameful to ask for and ridiculous that it even helps, but still, he needed it. And he can’t thank her with words for giving it but he can show her the lifeline she’s handed him.
(He hopes he can give her something like that. He hopes remembering someone to come back to can anchor her, even a little, keep her from spinning out into space.)
It helps, yeah. (And she doesn't care that what he needs is a little ridiculous; it doesn't even occur to her to care.) Love you.
He doesn’t want her to go.
Neither of them have a choice.
He loves her.
(he’s so scared)
You'll make it through. I believe in you. Stand up, warrior.
They will.
She goes limp, when she feels them coming for her; they aren't too rough, dragging her out to the shipyard and loading her onto a shuttle. The connection fades as she's taken out of the planet's atmosphere, and he is alone again.
It is a hard four days.
They take him twice for the same thing as before, and this time he's alone and has nobody even to apologize to.
She comes back, in a sense, but only in a sense.
She's there; he can tell she is - he can feel her body, where she's slumped bonelessly in the returning shuttle, upright only because of the straps keeping her that way. He can see through her eyes, staring motionless and uncomprehending at the shuttle floor; he can hear the sounds of the shuttle, the incomprehensible speech of the others in it, too loud, painfully loud, without the muting Force effect; smell the recycled air and feel the hunger in her belly and the ache of her healing, overworked muscles.
In another sense, she's not there at all: it's not that he's being blocked from seeing her thoughts; the filter is gone with everything else, and there are no thoughts to see.
She stirs, after a minute, a vague shifting of attention so subtle that it could easily be his imagination, finished almost as soon as it begins, and then nothing.
...it's not nothing. She's not nothing, she's still there.
(He thinks. He's not sure. He has to be sure, but)
He tries again.
No response.
The shuttle lands, and they transfer her to a float chair, hands firm against her skin; she's not aware enough to anticipate them, or to be surprised.
The chair is pushed through unfamiliar corridors to familiar ones; her droid is waiting for her in her room, and helps transfer her to her bed, where she carefully strips her clothes off and checks her for injuries - none - before putting her in a nightgown and tucking her in.
She stares at the decorated ceiling, as uncomprehending as ever.
She has to be in there somewhere. She can't have just gone.
(She could have.)
It wouldn't be fair.
(What part of any of this has been fair?)
He just...has to wait. Needs to wait and see.
He curls up with all the nothing that he feels from her and tries not to scream again.
She's left alone for a while, and then the droid sits her up for dinner - thick soup, almost gruel, delivered by slow spoonfuls, running down her throat of its own accord more often than swallowed, and running down her chin instead just as often, but slowly the ache in her belly eases.
There's that subtle shift of attention, again, a little stronger, and a change in the tension of the muscles around her eyes - barely perceptible, still, and hard for him to be sure even moments later that it wasn't his imagination.
The droid finishes feeding her and lays her back down again, this time on her side.
Evening comes, with no change; the droid comes back to roll her over - she's so still, she doesn't move at all on her own - and turn off the lights.
She doesn't sleep; she's tired, physically, though that's fading with time, but it's unclear whether she's able to be sleepy, or to go to sleep.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
