Chapter 1: The Call
If one were ever crazy enough to believe that the many riches of the galaxy were comparable to a sunrise on Tython, then the sole witness to this singular phenomenon likely would've snapped their neck out of mercy—one who had lost so much of themselves would be blessed with a quick end.
An astonishment of this magnitude was worth every organ, every blessed first memory, every cherished hug one had to bid. Even the most hardened of killers could catch a glimpse and remember what it felt like to experience a mother's embrace. It was right up there in the big leagues, amid the feeling of rain kissing one's skin and the first glimpse of stars after a stormy season, sandwiched somewhere between a father's laugh and a brother's smile.
One simply couldn't put a price on those things which were divine.
It felt almost oppressive, in a way, how its brilliance set everything else aflame and dared the world to ignore its might. It was staggering. Humbling, even. Meant to remind you just how small you were, and how large.
She took more than a few moments to soak it all in, dangling one-handed from her position on the cliff face, stone solid and cool with the early mornings dew.
Awash in yellows and pinks and orange of every shade, and deepened by the amethyst of night still grasping at the edges of the sky in desperation, the colors danced across the sky, the clouds great stone pillars guarding the entrance to the heavens.
She didn't normally take the time to marvel at natures gifts, not at the expense of her mission anyways, but she watched the splitting of the sky with rapt attention: it gave rise to new energies within her and that was precisely what she needed. She had still been unable to shake the unease plaguing her, looking for any out to the anguish and tension that had soaked into her skin the previous dawn and coated her bones like magma, weighing her down.
This helped…a little.
But alas, sunrises only last so long, so she was pressed to continue with her journey and find another means of relieving the rigidity that had found a home in her.
Making excellent time for the holds being as slippery as they were, she had already climbed close to the halfway mark. Just another 1,567 feet to go, give or take.
She was provided another hope for distraction as the sounds of the planet began to roar to life, the diurnal creatures leaving their nests to take stock of the day. The ghoulish cries of the screech cat echoed its way throughout the canyon and up the cliff face to alert its fellow day-dwellers of its presence. Scavengers took up their positions around their territories, ready and waiting for an opportunity, while riti deer cautiously left their burrows to teach their young how to fend for themselves.
Securing her next hold, she lifted herself effortlessly. One foot after the other, over and over again. A simple enough task, physically demanding, and for anyone else it might have proved challenging enough to be an exercise in mental discipline. But it wasn't challenging for her, not even with the immense weight of the pack strapped to her back, so it was therefore not distracting.
So, she reached out.
She extended herself out into the vast, vibrant current of life all around, the cacophony of existence blazing into the fore. Allowing her body to take her where it needed to go, she slipped away from herself and into the skin of her surroundings, one with the earth and the air and the birds and the beasts—one with the planet itself.
She was the passing arb-bird, wind gliding effortlessly through her wings while she sung her morning song; she was the aging harkmouse, bones aching as he gathered fresh leaves for his new den; she was the sunlight filtering through the trees and the water cackling in their streambeds, the great pulse of life emanating from the heart of Tython as its molten core burned fierce.
This distraction proved fruitful to her efforts, her agony smuggled away to the deep recesses of her mind as she focused solely on the task at hand. The rhythm of her breath and steady beat of her heart, the feel of the stone beneath her fingers and the gentle burn of her worked muscles all worked in harmony, as much a part of her as the roots that poked through the mountainside to greedily drink the sun's rays.
She was lost in the climb. No pain, no fear, no distress. There was only the climb…
…until a high-pitched, soft trill snapped her attention back into her own form.
There was an opening in the cliff face to her left, a crack less than a meter high and barely a foot wide, where a small, observantly curious bird blinked at her.
A baby, she realized. It couldn't be more than a few weeks old.
The tiny nest-ling cocked its head and stared at her with big, vivid orange eyes, examining the strange alien near its home with interest. An adolescent male of its species, going by the vibrant plumage and the extralong tuft of feathers along the crest of his head.
A slight shuffling sound and an accompanying coo drew her attention to the back of the cave, where her eyes struggled to make out the form of another juvenile; more subdued in color, and tuft feathers far less extravagant, identified this one as female. Its sibling, most likely.
The little guy approached her fearlessly, the creatures of this planet too long unfamiliar with humanoids to be frightened. Unlike her brother, however, the female hung back cautiously, watching the interaction warily as her nest-mate drew ever closer to the giant until he settled down right near the edge.
He sat there, cocking his head from side to side curiously, trilling and chittering to her and wondering why she couldn't chitter back.
A ghost of what once might have been a smile played at the corner of her mouth as she gave the little guy a scratch under the neck. He leaned into the touch, turning his head just so every now and then to ensure she got every inch, chirping merrily and shaking his feathers in delight at the attention. She abided him, even when he flopped over for her to get his belly feathers in the mix, too. When she moved to get his head once more, his beak latched onto her finger playfully, tugging it from side to side in a jovial bout of pretend. That was fine—he wasn't yet mature enough for it to hurt.
Besides, his innocent contentment was infectious to say the least, drawing her into his own sense of ease and fulfillment so completely that she failed to notice when he took one step too many to be closer to her.
She was yanked out of him by his own terror as he tumbled over the side of the cliff face.
She caught him, hand darting out swiftly before he fell more than a foot. So small was he that he weighed less than the ration bar she'd been nibbling on that morning. Cradling him carefully, she placed him back on his ledge.
"No," she said firmly, nudging him back farther into his hollow. "You're too young for adventures. Stay put."
She made to retreat, balance shifting ever so slightly to the right, but stopped when the hatchling began to follow her once more.
"No, I said." The tiny thing trilled at her sadly, clumsily flapping his wings in what might be considered a tantrum. "Go back to your sister," she demanded. "She's the smart one." The creatures nest-mate seemingly agreed, crying out from the shadows of their den to beckon the curious male back to safety. Good. He circled in place once, twice, three times, clawing at the ground and cooing at his alien friend pathetically. She fixed him with her gaze, broaching no argument. He peered up at her one final time with his big orange eyes, pouting, before recognizing a losing battle and retreating, with a sad trill and drooping feathers, to curl up beside his sister.
She waited until they were sufficiently settled, wings overlapping and necks tucked tight, before moving on—she preferred to make the top before the sun reached its zenith.
Three quarters of the way up the cliff face, making excellent time and reaching for her next chosen handhold, was when the bottom dropped out of her stomach and the world began to violently spin around her.
Deep green moss and earthy, unyielding stone vanished into nothingness, replaced by an all-consuming swirl of gleaming yellow sands and striking blue sky. Every now and then, the flashing titanium alloy of a ship's hull would punctuate the edge of her vision.
A shiver of thought danced through her minds periphery in delight. 'I can do this.'
So potent and sudden was the experience that she was wrenched entirely from the confines of self and began to plummet like a rock, fingers scrambling frantically for any kind of stable hold she could find, at the same time hands readjusted their grip on the leather-coated control levers before her and yanked hard to the left.
'Just a little farther…just keep them off a little longer.'
Fear took a backseat as a deep and innate sense of exhilaration and freedom swelled within her. She could do this—she was doing this. They were still being pursued but they hadn't been shot out of the sky yet because she was doing this.
She pulled hard on the control levers once more to careen wildly in a downward spiral, quickly exchanging any amount of pride she might have felt for an excess of caution. The sands came up to meet them, fast, then exploded into waves as the ship pulled up just in time, pursuers still hot on their heels. Sand and sky, sky and sand twisted in a passionate dance as she was forced into more and more dangerous stunts.
All she had to do was keep them alive till they reached the heart of the Graveyard, that was all she had to do, and by damn if she didn't know she was going to succeed when they were only seconds away—
Having blindly secured the briefest of holds beneath her fingernails, she threw up her mental barriers with a vengeance, and the visions stopped.
Sand and sky alike faded into the background like smoke on a breeze, the world steadying once more as moss and firm stone returned to prominence.
No more spinning, no more pursuit—sensations of exhilaration and determination extinguished. The only things remaining from the event were a raging pulse from an adrenaline high not her own, badly scraped fingers, and a desire to purge that familiar and natural contact from every ounce of her reality with desperate fervor.
Not now. Please. It couldn't be now. She wasn't ready yet.
She tried to take a deep breath to steady herself. Instead, she threw up, just barely managing to lurch to the side in time to spare her boots.
Leaning her head against the cool stone, she closed her eyes and breathed deep, allowing her physical senses to take control so she might once again find focus. Her hands were covered in wet red and pulsed with a burning and singular agony, accompanied to a lesser degree by her scraped knees and elbows. The scent of fresh blood was so overpowering it masked the hint of sweat and freshly-sunned earth, reaffirming her need to see to her wounds before she resumed climbing.
Singing softly on a breeze all its own, the arb-bird, blissfully unaware of her troubles, lulled her into a state of calm.
Seeing no ledges within sight, she tightened her hold on the rock between her thighs, balancing all her weight on her lower body so she might free her aching hands. She shrugged her heavy pack off her shoulders, moving carefully, and reached inside gingerly for the medpac.
She made quick—if stinging—work of cleaning and wrapping the wounds: she sprayed both hands thoroughly with an antiseptic, then ripped and folded the cleanest cloth she could find around them.
There was no point in seeing to her knees—they would heal in time.
Once she'd replaced the medpac and taken a mouthful of water to get rid of the taste of sick, she resumed her climb—much more slowly—and concentrated all her energy into reinforcing her mental and spiritual barriers. She cursed herself to the Thirteen Hells of Cystees for being distracted enough to let them fall so far in the first place—it was not like her. Not at all. In hindsight, she might've blamed the previous mornings occurrences for her distraction, but it made no difference. This had been close—much too close, and she was infuriated at the risk that had presented. She was enraged.
That rage helped to carry her the rest of the way on her journey. All manner of curiosity or concern was shoved aside and washed away like a blade of grass on a stream—only the anger, channeled into pure physical fuel, remained.
There wasn't much farther left to go, regardless.
She was roughly two meters from the apex of her journey when a mechanical whee-boop, jarringly out of place on this technology-barren planet, drew her attention. Steadying her grip on the stone, she sighed before craning her head to look up into the face of one very annoyed, very worried, very dirty astromech. The silver and blue of his paint job was hardly recognizable under the layers of dirt, moss, and brambles tangled about him.
He stared at her. Whilst others might have thought the 'staring' a delayed circuit in his construction, she knew better—he was really debating on the level of petty he wanted to be. After a few moments of silent stubbornness between the two, the droid backed up just enough to give her the space to heave herself, finally, onto solid ground.
They then faced off quietly, each regarding the ragged state of the other, in the shadow of her aging UT-60D ship.
She knew she was late, but after the events of the past two mornings she wasn't sure she could stomach a lecture.
Mouth set in a grim way, she said, "Don't give me that look, Artoo."
His lights flashed as he absorbed her words, but whether that was because he was angry or surprised at her tone she wasn't sure.
Then he started yelling at her.
Well, the droid equivalent of yelling was really just an escalated burst of harsh beeps and whirs, punctuated every so often by a purposeful bump into her shins, but she got the point: her lateness had scared him. She stood still and allowed the astromech to rant himself to satisfaction despite herself, tuning out most of what he had to say but allowing him to say it nonetheless.
Artoo Deetoo smacked into her legs once more, declaring his worry: —ARE 27 HOURS OVERDUE. YOU DID NOT EVEN SEND UP THE FLARE. I THOUGHT YOU HAD GOTTEN HURT.
Normally she wouldn't mind his excesses, but her legs were still scraped to hell and it wasn't exactly pleasant for her when he rammed into them—not that he could be blamed for not noticing the damage. Her clothes had always been dark enough to hide blood.
Keen to do something productive while he fussed, she moved close to the loading doors of her ship and removed her pack, placing it and its contents delicately upon the ground. She started removing the precious cargo carefully.
Artoo followed her, annoyed. DON'T IGNORE ME, BREHA, YOU LITTLE—
"Easy," Breha warned, done with the scolding. It wasn't her fault that the planets most widespread natural ore vibrated at an electromagnetic frequency that jammed all communications. "And good morning to you to, by the way."
His lights flashed at her again. Breha ignored him and got back to work.
Pulling a bundle no bigger than her fist from the pack, she unwrapped the cloth from around it to reveal a small grey canister. Airtight as well as radiation, heat, and lightproof, this small preservation pod contained a sizeable biological sample from the canyon floor. Her pack contained a dozen more like it, each carrying inside them their own organic sample.
These could change everything.
Artoo watched her remove the remaining pods excitedly, grievances forgotten: YOU WERE ABLE TO GET THEM ALL?
"All of them," Breha confirmed. "Though I had to leave some of them below in the cache, they were just too big. We can come back for them if necessary once we have the proof we need."
And she was close. She was so close, she had almost all the evidence she needed. This collection was just the latest avenue to support that evidence.
Artoo pulled in closer. ARE WE GOING HOME NOW, BREHA?
"No," she snapped, a little too quickly. "We're not that close."
He beeped sadly.
"It's not time yet, buddy."
Artoo whirred, domed head swiveling a little from side to side. He stilled when his photoreceptors beheld her hands. She had bled clean through her bandages. A soft whine of concern was released as he examined her more closely: her eyes were bloodshot and more sunken than normal, skin paler than fresh snow, shoulders so rigid one could break a boulder over them.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Breha had to guess at what he meant, before looking at her hands. "Nothing happened. I'm fine." He stared at her. "Just lost control of my grip, is all. It's nothing, Artoo."
She went to the change the subject, productivity still her main concern. It also helped that one couldn't dwell on undesirable topics when prioritizing action.
"After we take off we need to get these to Besh immediately. The sooner they're tested the better." Artoo was signaling in agreement. Concentrating on the power console inside her ship, Breha flipped a switch and watched as it powered up. She stood and made her way to the loading door just as the entrance swung open, then placed the containment pods on the floor. As she spoke she busied herself pulling out and sorting the remaining items of her pack: plasto-canvas, empty ration wrappers, AT-environmental mapping scanner, canteen, datadisk…the works. She pulled out the medpac too, unwrapping the soiled bandages, and began to rewrap her hands. "Then I wanna' head on over to the Drive Yards—I'm positive Kuat's Archives are where the other half of those encrypted files are."
Artoo snuck up behind her:…AND THEN WE CAN GO HOME? IT HAS BEEN SO LONG. I'M SURE YOUR PARENTS—
"I said no!" she barked, wheeling on him in a fury.
Artoo jolted back in surprise, lights flashing in self-preservation mode.
Regret flooded her instantly and her throat tightened, chest constricting painfully at the distance he'd unwittingly put between them. She clenched her fists at her own thoughtlessness and wallowed in the fresh pain that blossomed in them anew.
"I'm sorry," Breha started, defeated. "I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. I know you're just trying to help." She leaned down to rest her forehead against his own and place a reassuring hand on his dirty plating, knowing he was just trying to help. "That wasn't fair of me. I'm sorry, buddy."
He cooed at her, concern for the well-being of his human still evident. This wasn't like her. This wasn't like her at all, and it worried him.
Something had happened.
He leaned into her, the support she could always rely on. She held him tighter.
They stayed that way for a good long while, Breha seeking out every ounce of forgiveness and peace she could while Artoo pretended not to notice the way she trembled from head to foot.
The sun had more than reached its peak, and was on its way down once again by the time she let go of him.
She remained where she sat and started to pick the moss from his gears and untangle the vines jammed around his wheels. As meticulous and careful as Breha always was, it took a while, and when she was done she searched around for a small stick to help dig out the mud caked in the furrows of his design.
"San Tekka's dead," Breha finally whispered.
It was said so quietly that anyone lacking his advanced audio processors likely wouldn't have been able to hear—which was probably the point. She wanted the wind to take her words and carry them far, far away, where they would cease to be real.
His human continued to gently carve out the dried earth stuck in the grooves of his plating. "He was killed yesterday morning. The whole settlement, too. They're all gone."
Artoo was quiet, then let out one low, long whine of sadness. He had always had a fondness for Lor San Tekka—the man was one of the most palatable humans he had ever met, wise and mischievous. He was sad for his loss.
He was sadder for the one before him, his own human, and felt weighed down by the feelings that must be coursing through her like magma.
Artoo didn't have to ask how she knew he had been murdered, and her silence only confirmed who the killer was. Breha was in agony, but she wouldn't let her pain stifle her focus.
He remained silent, letting them both process their grief, and regretted chastising her as he did earlier. That had probably made her feel worse.
The furrow of her brows and the tension that had taken up permanent residence in her back alerted him to something else bothering her.
SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENED, DIDN'T IT?
She took him in fully. He could read her like a holomap.
"No," she lied. He could see right through her, but knew it better to let the question rest. To let her rest.
Breha took an unsteady breath and cleared her throat, wanting to be rid of the guilt that ate away at all corners of her subconscious.
Eager to change the subject, she let the conversation shift to the task at hand. "So what the hell happened to you? Pick a fight with the local wildlife, did ya'?"
As if waiting to answer that very question, a loud, chorusing ruckus erupted from the tree line. A number of bright, orange, primate-like creatures appeared and started looping and shaking their fists angrily in their direction, shaking the trees so violently in their passion that purple fruit and leaves fell off by the dozens.
The biggest one—large and muscular and noisiest by far—dared to come the closest, kneading the dirt between his claws furiously and occasionally throwing handfuls at Artoo as though he were challenging the astromech to a fight. Or to another round of one, was probably more like it.
Guess that answered why he was such a mess.
She turned to her companion. He tried to turn his head away in embarrassment.
"…What'd I tell you about pissing off the locals while I was gone? They might've dismantled you."
He whirred in indignation: I WAS TRYING TO SCOUT OUT A SAFE ROUTE DOWN TO COME LOOK FOR YOU. Then he called her a series of names, most of them revolving right back around to her being an ungrateful little shit, before he started insisting—more to himself than to her—that no army of tiny, orange, fuzzy little rodents could ever best him.
Breha gazed at Artoo fondly. She didn't know what she'd do without him.
When the other primates started throwing fruit and mud as well, aim improving with practice, she had had enough. She stood to her full height, which really wasn't that impressive, and turned to the offended creatures.
Still as the world beneath her feet, grounded and weightless and empty, Breha reached briefly within herself, barely skimming the surface of the currents swirling around her, and extended a tendril of herself out towards the rioting creatures.
She had barely so much as brushed against their presence when they jerked to attention, forgetting about the poor droid to face her with a mix of confused yowls and warning calls. A few seconds more and they all turned in unison to disappear back to where they'd come from, eager to get away from the unsettling being.
Good. Nobody threw things at her friend.
An hour later and they were just about ready to depart. Having safely secured the precious cargo for which she'd come in the smugglers holds (just in case), Breha was having a brief rest, sitting on the edge of her ship and shaking gravel out of her boots.
The sounds of the day were dying down around her, the sun-dwellers preparing to find their ways home before dusk settled in.
Hopping down from her perch and back to the clearing, she took a few deep breaths before falling into a gentle pose, elongating her limbs to ease out the kinks she'd gotten from the climb. Breha flowed from that pose to another, then another, holding each for a steady few heartbeats. It was calming. She focused solely on her bare feet upon the dirt, of how the cool earth felt between her toes and how it shifted when she did.
Breha was as immovable as the planet itself, fluid only by her own blessing.
Drinking deep of the atmosphere and allowing it to soak into her bones, so clean and pure and energizing, she declined to acknowledge the ache in her chest at the idea of leaving the solace of this world and instead moved to another stance, basking in the stretch along her biceps.
Artoo wheeled up beside her carrying a sample of the native plant life in his utility arm. He presented it to her view like a gift—something to lift her spirits. The size of a fist, the plant was three-leafed and spiky, reaching up like shards of glass, the centers a blood red before fading to a deep, dark green.
THIS ONE IS GOOD, he said.
"Yeah?" She poked at it briefly—it was definitely sturdy, and she had no doubt he had already run the necessary biological scans on it. She scooped up a handful of soil. "Alright. Give it here."
He handed it over gingerly, before taking off to run last minute diagnostics on the ship.
Time to go, she supposed. There were things to do in the big, wide galaxy.
Without further ado she straightened and extended her free hand—summoning her boots to her —before making her way into the belly of the ship, exchanging the blinding vitality of the planet for the dark, familiar recesses of her tiny home.
The sun was just grazing the horizon went they broke atmo and left the planet of Tython behind, a green hunk of rock floating all by its lonesome in the vastness of space.
Tython had been entirely untouched by foreign hands for twelve millennia, a planet lost to the rest of the galaxy so long ago most had thought it a myth. Breha had been the one to find it again—not that she was about to tell anyone. And now she was saying goodbye.
The blackness of deep space rushed up to greet them like an old friend and she instantly relaxed. She was more settled. To her, there was almost no sight in the galaxy as comforting.
This was her place.
Breha had spent more of her life in this endless expanse of nothingness than she had on every planet she'd ever visited combined—the stars were guardians and her watchful protectors, the enveloping darkness the keeper of her secrets.
Sanctuary.
Artoo didn't input the calculations to hyperspace immediately; instead, he allowed her those precious few moments to find her center before they were warped into the fabric of lightspeed. She was grateful, but they had already delayed too long in her opinion. She signaled him to make the jump.
Deep space ripped by them like pitch-black ink on a flimsi, replaced a moment later by the blinding brilliance of hyperspace. It would be a few hours until they reached their destination.
The two sat in companionable silence, Breha's fingers interlocked tightly on her lap as though she were wary of separating them. Artoo had noticed she was avoiding the control levers. In fact, she had avoided touching anything on the control panel since take off. Odd.
The low droop of her eyelids alerted him to the biological needs of his person.
SLEEP. I'LL WAKE YOU BEFORE WE GET THERE.
Breha considered the idea. She didn't want to sleep. She hadn't readily gone to sleep in 15 years—too many things waited for her in unconsciousness. But she was nothing if not practical, and nothing if not constantly aware of her limits, so she reluctantly agreed.
Patting him on the head as she passed, ever confident in his abilities, she made her way to the back of the U-Wing. She had removed the crew seats many years ago for more ample space; the copilots seat had similarly been ripped from its station, and instead replaced with a complicated array of utility lifts, mag-locks, and charging portals so that Artoo could lock into position when necessary—as he was now.
Her hammock hung in the back next to a small, exposed panel which housed a series of shelves. They were jam-packed with plants of all kinds: short and stubby ones, frilly and extravagant ones, some of dull, earthen tones and others of colors and patterns so wild they could make you sick. The new addition Artoo had given her was there, too, tucked between the Corellian snake grass and the Felucian thunder pods. She had thanked it for coming along, and promised it would be well taken care of.
Breha didn't bother with changing—there was never any point—she merely fell into the makeshift bed. She wrapped herself in a dark brown robe—nearly black—meant for a man twice her size and rather itchy. Decades old grease and mechanics oil still stained the thing, but she didn't care. That was part of why she treasured it so much. She let sleep take her.
Her dreams that night were more disturbed than normal.
Visions of white-clad stormtroopers and twisting spartan hallways danced to the beat of heavy combat boots. Orders from on high, the time had finally come. They were gathering. Preparing. Endless masses of white illuminated with a terrible, scarlet blaze of fire as their spirits soared—they were invincible. They were righteous.
White on white on red, stormtroopers in the snow.
The scene shifted. A black room. One she was familiar with. Her-room-but-not-her-room. She was in that room, crying out into the dark desperately. Where are you?
The room collapsed into nothingness as bright sandstone flew past her, faster and faster and faster, looking out to the ship next to hers, racing faster, true joy filling her for the first time in months as he smiled too, the last smile she ever got.
And then came the grey and the rain. Always the rain. Thundering and overwhelming and changing. Hands, reaching for her, eager for one last embrace that would never come. Too stubborn, too prideful. Guilty eyes boring into her but unmoving in their decision. Pain, pain, and more pain. More rain, more pain, drowning in it all.
Everything spun and the room of black was back—this time with a presence. His presence. My presence. Our presence. A bond as old as time and as familiar as truth. Desperation. Beckoning. Not beckoning. Beckoning again, needed help. No, wait.
A wall, and then no more room. No more black. No more whole.
Breha wanted to wake up. It hurt too much.
Instead she dreamt of green. Dark green, baby green, green from memories long past but green all too new—fresh and wonderous and loud. Never had there been so much green. So much to see, so much to hear and touch and taste. Fear and red came too, hot on the heels of the new. She saw a face. Her face, the one she saw every time she closed her eyes. Young and fresh, older now than it'd been when she'd—
It was contorted in pain. She was scared. Fear and dread and I am so, so dead. Please don't kill me.
And then…nothing.
Darkness. Silence.
Until the screams.
The dying screams of trillions, piercing and heart-wrending—terror and love and panic and terror again. Desperation, screaming, crying, it wouldn't stop. The screaming wouldn't stop. She couldn't wake up. She was there with them as they were disintegrated, turned to ash in an instant, felt her flesh burning and her eyes turn to molten lava in their sockets, the pain, the pain—
—then quiet.
No more voices, no more screaming. Not a one.
Just black. Just nothing.
She fought and fought and fought for an escape. She cried into the dark. She was alone. She was so alone, where were the others, where was Ben and Papa and—
A voice. One voice in the absence of voices, trying to claw its way its way through her walls.
Wake up, Bree. Come to me.
No.
She threw up her barriers, and then she was awake in the confines of her U-Wing, convulsing violently on the floor.
Artoo was next to her, bleeping at her frantically, trying his best to help but also trying not to make it worse. Breha's body twisted and jerked in a horrendous fashion, alarm bells echoing shrilly around her as she fought to regain control of her limbs—and her sense.
No. This couldn't be happening. This couldn't have happened.
A whole system—gone. A whole system obliterated. All those lives…
Sweat drenching her person, she just barely managed to roll over in time not to choke on her own vomit. Unfortunately, that meant it ended up painting Artoo's legs.
The droid barely registered the sick, so consumed was he with worry. Everything had been just fine till she started screaming. The force of her reaction to the nightmare, or to whatever it was she had just experienced, had shaken and thrown the ship clear out of hyperspace and shot off every alarm they had. If his mag-locks hadn't been activated, he might've been flung clear through the transparisteel.
What had she seen?
Breha remained on the floor, tremors racking her body, embracing the cool of the metal against her forehead as Artoo cooed at her gently.
She struggled with herself. It wasn't supposed to be now, she tried to make herself believe. She was supposed to have more time to get everything in place, her heart insisted. It couldn't mean now. But perhaps that had just been wishful thinking on her part; aware as she might be, she was only human, and still preferred the odds to be overwhelmingly stacked in her favor before she struck.
But now was the time. Time to come out of the shadows. It was calling to her.
She knew when to be unrelenting…and she knew when to yield.
"Change of plans," she rasped, struggling to be heard over the din.
Her will was simply not going to be.
The Force had other plans for Breha Organa-Solo. It always did.