"Master, will I die here?"
Suuk Kaskada's eyes opened from behind the goggles that rested in front of them as they registered the ringing, frail voice of her former protege. The Kel Dor Jedi inhaled a deep, shaken breath, and exhaled a calm one in its place. Closing her eyes once more, she returned to her meditation as best as she could manage.
She had been meditating at the foot of the grave of her padawan - the place where she spent most of her days performing that activity now. Her first, only, and clearly to be final student, a young Neimoidian named Parsac Hac, was with her aboard a small shuttle when their clone fighter escorts suddenly opened fire upon them from out of nowhere. Barraged by more blaster shots than its hull could handle, the half-destroyed ship careened away into the atmosphere of this world and crash-landed upon its swampy surface. It all happened as they entered the system containing this planet, and ended as swiftly as it shockingly began.
Suuk and Parsac were the only ones who survived the immediate crash of the shuttle, upon which it was instantly beset upon by a fiery explosion that destroyed any available technology they could have hoped to use to call for aid. Parsac himself soon after succumbed to the dreadful wounds he had accrued from the ordeal, leaving his master alone and in mourning over his excruciatingly-sudden death. Not by choice, Suuk had taken refuge and lived on this uninhabited planet, eternally shrouded by dense and dark clouds, from then on and for longer than she could ever remember. She could not distinguish whether it had been many months, or a meager few years, and her mind became all the more feverish for it. Wild creatures of varying shapes and sizes roamed its murky and damp forests, but sensing her as not being native, few dared to approach the Jedi. She easily cut down any that tried to make a meal of her.
Without sunlight to shine down in place of the almost-constant rain, Suuk's thick, hairless, leathery flesh had become as pallid as death. The Jedi robes she still wore all this time were ragged and coated in filth and muck; their color now dull with wear. It seemed only her lightsaber holstered by her side and mask on her face were the only untarnished parts of her. The mask was her most valuable asset, more so than her lightsaber now, for she needed the rebreather system it possessed to stay alive. This atmosphere, rich with oxygen, was a type her species could not survive in. To take it off and go without it for too long had the easy potential to poison her immediately.
And yet, that was perhaps the least of her worries. The worst was the voices. She was strong in the Force, as Jedi normally were, but it had nothing to do with the voices that plagued her. Diagnosed with schizophrenia very soon after being taken in to the Jedi Temple she once called home as an infant, she took medication to cope with it. The problem irked her no longer, until that accursed day took place that left her marooned here. Deprived of the medication, she struggled to manage without it. Exercises, relaxation and meditation were the actions she partook in most when not looking for food, and though it was her best method to combat her mental illness' symptoms, it was never enough.
The voices persisted like an aching cancer, and having to deal with them in complete isolation didn't help in the slightest. Her only companions now seemed to be them, and the occasional sights and hallucinations that followed in their wake. Some she recognized - however vague they were - as resembling her Jedi friends and colleagues she considered to be her family, but most were utterly alien. Some sounded or appeared light and benevolent, but many were malevolent and daunting.
The forsaken cries, cruel taunts, figments she wished with all of her being were real but knew in her heart weren't, and outright torture of it all was an unbearable torment to struggle against, and Suuk could feel her mind slowly slipping away from reality with every passing week she remained alone on this private hell of hers. The Kel Dor tried to endure, but even she knew it was a losing battle. The only thing between her keeping her senses and full-on insanity was her faith in the Force and her stubborn resolve in the belief that she would escape this horrid world, someday, somehow.
It was some time later that Suuk stood up from the dirt floor and looked at her surroundings that were setting into almost pitch blackness. Night was fast approaching, and to keep a healthy mind, she needed to rest. She looked at the plain, unmarked grave of Parsac for a few minutes longer, observing the tender soil sitting above where his remains she had properly, and traditionally cremated rested, and then set off on a path through the bog she had learned to familiarize herself with that would take her to her makeshift home.
"Worthless scum," a sudden voice with a gravelly tone rattled from a nearby bush she passed by, not a short time after departing from the spot. Cowardly, worthless scum... stranded and afraid, like a small, lost child. Couldn't even save him with all of your power... yet, you feel yourself of worth to constantly be in his presence?
She ignored the rancid chittering and walked onward. Five minutes later the paranoid feeling of being watched set in like an awful itch. She too knew that this was not real as well, but she kept her guard up just in case; a four-fingered hand gripping nervously onto her lightsaber. Eventually she reached her home. It was a small cave that naturally extended from the ground, with brush she had placed above it acting like a curtain or set of drapes. She grew closer to it, and was seconds from entering when a queer feeling streaked through her brain like a flash of lightning.
Suuk turned to the cloud-covered sky without hesitation, even though she saw nothing in it. She could feel something was approaching the planet, specifically close to her position. By pure instinct she knew, right off, that it wasn't anything to do with her illness that prompted this sensation. It was a... presence. One strong in the ways of the Force! A fellow Jedi come to her rescue at long last? A manner of which to escape this world? Or... was that even it? Was it even, truly there? Was this merely another cruel hallucination she was to suffer through?
Doubt set in, but like the troublesome, fat flies that littered the landscape, Suuk shook it away. Hope was all she had anymore, and hope was what rode her next action. Turning away from her cave, she fully let herself go to the Force that directed her to where the presence was indubitably approaching, and quickly broke into a run that dashed through the thick, murky, marsh-laden terrain; determined to catch this chance before it could slip through her grasp.
Author's note: For anyone who needs confirmation on this, her name is pronounced 'Sook/Sue-k'. Not 'suck'.