Morning greets us quiet as we step back into the world, leaving the Rebel Base far behind. For once, color is actually touching the skies, kissing them with faint, tender hues; I guess you could even call it a sunrise, a real one. A rusted, burning beauty that will soon fall, surrendering to the demands of noon.
Maybe that's why they call it "daybreak". Because the day, the morning new and baby-pink, is fragile. Is something altogether delicate, breakable. Human. So when the watery paints of the horizon don't immediately fade as Kenobi and I reach the Sundari city square, I begin to wonder if it's clawing, striking back at the all-consuming sun.
And I take it as good omen, as a sign that we might not be as screwed as I thought we were.
A few paces in front of me, Kenobi pauses. His back is taut, rippling like dead magma instead of rivers ever-flowing, and his shoulders are frozen in place, stone-set. Only his head moves, neck craning to glance back at me with solemn eyes. "I don't believe we're going to make it off-world before they locate us, my young friend. We have around ten minutes, I'd say, until they force our hand."
I amble up to him, careful to stay in the shadow stretching, reaching, grasping from his back. Not that I'm nuna-hearted or anything, mind you. Really, I'm not. His back just seems so vulnerable, so exposed in this glassy city-sea, and I feel obligated to protect it from enemy eyes. From the searching, venomous gazes I sense are closing in, tightening around us like phantom hands.
Hopefully, though, that's not going to happen for…well, another ten minutes.
By far, this wasn't bet decision Bo-Katan had ever made. Not even remotely. But she didn't really see any other alternatives, anything that might more slightly viable, and she'd gone for it. Tucked into her steel-cold armor and set off into withering dawn, Kenobi's and Tano's silhouettes stalking a few hundred feet ahead.
Still, she wasn't entirely sure why she'd opted to do this. And maybe she would never be, in a way; answers, after all, were never as concrete as they seemed. You could try and grab them, curl titillated fingers about their squirming waists—but in the end, they would always manage to slip away. They'd melt, changing into their true ethereal selves and waft away, leaving you with nothing more the echoes of echoes.
All you had to do was accept the here-and-now, swallow your cloying doubt. Douse your stagnant pride, watching it smolder on. Follow the rising smoke-pillars into the ever-growing unknown, leaping in, setting a waving candle ablaze.
And when you finally struck earth's emerald breast, there'd be an entire army of lit-wick dancing at your back.
Or that's what she hoped, anyway. She was pretty sure she could count on Kenobi, her gut still fluttering with sensations from that night under the stars; he seemed like he was hiding something, sure, was veiling some mortal flaw under his fraying robes and placid, azure eyes. But there was still something worthwhile humming beneath all the failures and falls, and she'd cling to those parts of him with her dying breath. Hold it tightly, press it deep into the pulsing warmth of her chest till the day shattered dawn.
Because he echoed of her, she realized. They were juxtaposed, of course, his tarnished day forever at odds with her laved night. Were as starkly contrasted with one another as a silhouette under the moon's silver nimbus. Like life and death, thrashing under the same, gossamer sheets—but in when it was all said and done, even the two would be forced to reconcile. Life would bring death if you tried to obtain yourself, and death would bubble life, gush it out freely out like a mountain spring.
If a two-face like Kenobi had some hope of being redeemed, maybe there was still a ghost of chance left for her, too.
Obi-Wan felt her long before he glimpsed her shape in the distance, lean, svelte frame clad in sky-blue armor, but he didn't acknowledge it. Not immediately, at least. He had enough problems to deal with, was ensnared with enough clinging, clutching tendrils, their barbed, serpentine arms digging deep into his skin. Cutting into it, letting tiny, scarlet rivers flow.
Ahsoka tugged on his sleeve, suddenly every bit her naïve seventeen years. "Master, how long do you think she's been following us?"
He shrugged, hapless. "For quite some time now, apparently. Perhaps Senator Bonteri wants her to make sure I get off-world as soon as possible."
"Or maybe she's here to help."
"Well, either way she's coming along on a wild ride. But Bo-Katan seems to have certain proclivity for messy situations, so..." He turned, signaling sharply at the woman's crouched, semi-concealed figure. "You do realize that we can see—"
Before the last word rolled off his tongue, hell was snapping free, raining down on terra.
Honestly, I'm not sure what's happening right now. One moment, we're locking gaze's with Bo-Katan's avian helmet, her expression totally obscured from us by a black t-visor; the next, lightning's flashing, striking. An brand of it—all hot blues and searing whites—is arcing downward, connecting with Bo-Katan's chest in an electrifying spray, sending her twisting to her knees. Writhing against spines-curling pain as smoke begins to curl up from her armor's seams.
"See if you can find the source, Ahsoka," Kenobi orders, jerking his head toward the melee. "I'm going to lend Bo-Katan a hand."
Despite the circumstances, I find the time to glower up at him. He's older, wiser, more experienced—so why is he sending me to face some crazed, wannabe Sith? It's his fight, after all; the blasted Inquisitor knew he'd be here, had watching, watching, watching for the opportunity to spring his trap. "Why?"
Kenobi whirls on me, managing to put more juice behind his glare than I ever could. "Because I said so, that's why! And we both know that between the two of us, you're the faster one."
"But—"
"Go!"
Sparing him one last, defiant look, I take off, running full-tilt towards the source of force-lightning. I can see him now, perched on a window seal's skinny lip, and make a leap for him. Shoot through the air like a homing missile, my head-tails streaming behind me. Hit the ledge beneath him, fingers barely finding purchase on the narrow overhang.
The Inquisitor's luminous, amber eyes dart in my direction, just long enough to break his focus. Or…well, I'm not really sure that it is a him. Not right now, anyway: concentrating slipping, his face seems to melt, the skin rippling into innumerable shapes. There's no defining most those, yes—but it's what his face initially warp into that grabs my attention. Has me gawking up at a woman's soft, alluring face.
A Twi'Lek woman's face.
Pain punched through Bo-Katan's body, twisting it into dozens of impossible shapes. Her blood was boiling, its flow struggling to keep in time with her staccato heart, and for one surreal, lingering moment, everything was fire. Burned her, and burned deep. Ate at muscle, lapped her at bones till she was sure they were nothing more than a blackened.
Then everything was superseded by blue—bright, brilliant, cooling sky-ocean-rain.