Chapter 7: Nightmares

The sand whirled around her. But it wasn't just sand. The little grains had a deep red tint, and glittered as if recently moistened by something. Where it touched her dune colored Jedi robe, it left little streaks of red. For a moment, she looked down at her slowly changing robe. It didn't seem to register in her mind where the color came from. Maybe it was just dust, red dust from the desert. Something which had rusted, leaving the sand near it tinted red. It wasn't until the wind abated and the sand settled around her that screams broke from her throat. Hands and heads and hair and limbs and robes all lay scattered around her as far as the eye could see. The sand greedily drank up the offered blood, and afar she saw a black clad shape, laughing. It was laughing – at her. Laughing at the folly which had made her think that she could save them.

She screamed at the figure. Telling it to leave. But then it told her to look at the limbs. To look at those whom he had slaughtered so easily. She couldn't breath anymore, and her eyes refused to close as she finally focused on the heads. Mace's was there, as well as Yoda, and Mephisto, and Kuno. Even those of the class of Crèche children she had encountered earlier were there. That life less look in their eyes was too much for her to bear. She fell to her knees and reach out for Mace's head. The blood was still fresh, still dripping from the severed arteries. With tears flowing down her cheeks, she gently closed his eyes.

Then some of the hands reached up, and tried to drag her down to the sand with them. To make her part of them. They held her so tight, she couldn't fight them, couldn't break lose. She was trapped. The heads began to speak to her. Almost mocking her with the words they spoke. The eyes on Mace's face opened again, and stared at her accusingly. Worse the laughter from the dark figure, was the condemnation she saw in his eyes. And of the cacophony of voices she heard, it was his which she heard most of all. It was him speaking to her. In horror she dropped the head, only to feel her hands trapped. Slowly, her friend's head tumbled over her lap down to the blood soaked sand, always looking at her with the look of the disappointed. She had failed him. Failed the Jedi Order. Failed them all.

"Kalé! Wake up. It's a dream. Only a dream" But it wasn't a dream. The heads were wrong. She had to leave. She had to escape. Somehow. Leave the laughing figure and broken limbs. Suddenly, one of the hands holding her down, hovered up to float above her head, and reached back to slap her. She closed her eyes, waiting out the pain. When she opened them again, she wasn't in the desert anymore. There was no blood, no spotted robe, not laughing figure. Only two concerned faces: one scared, one gleaming black.

"M... Master? M.. Mace?" Confused she looked from one to the other. She was in her bed. In her quarters. The sheets were tangled around her, hopelessly tight, trapping her legs. Mace hovered over her, his legs straddling her, his hands holding her down gently. Four slowly darkening marks showed on his face where her nails had dug into the skin, drawing blood. Master Kuno stood leaning down over her, one hand having trapped her arms above her head, the other slowly settling on her shoulder. Slowly the realization came that he had slapped her. Slapped her to wake her from her dream in which he and Mace were nothing but talking heads, dead and lifeless.

The moment Kuno let go of her arms, she threw them around his neck, and sobbed into shoulder. Mace watched her closely, seeing how her hands trembled, and how her legs curled up towards her belly as he moved aside, as if trying to protect herself from what it was which had caused her such terror in her dream. For a long moment, Kuno just held her, letting her weep all the tears she had. Mace watched, seeing how her chest heaved with the effort of breathing, how her hands clawed themselves into the fabric of Kuno's robes, how her tangled black hair, made the paleness of her face even more unbearable to see.

Quietly, Mace stood up and headed to the small kitchenette, leaving Kalé some time to gather her wits again, her Master caring for her - as it should be. He hunted through the cupboards until he found the makings of a Corellian spice tea. With routined movements, he set water to boil, measured out three spoons full of tea leaves, and waited. By the time the tea had seeped enough to be enjoyable, Kuno appeared in the small hallway. Behind him, he caught a glimpse of Kalé as she slipped into the 'fresher.

"She'll be fine." Kuno sat down onto one of the oversize pillows serving as seats, and nodded thankfully as Mace set down the tea and three cups.

"You're right. She has a warrior's soul, she'll fight until she has no breath left in her. She just has to remember that." In silence they waited while Kalé gathered her scattered wits again. They heard how she took a shower, how she happily destroyed the mirror in the 'fresher, and how, presumably, she hunted through the closets for something to bind up the cuts the mirror gave her, all the while muttering loudly enough for the two men in the living room to hear her. When she finally appeared nearly twenty minutes later, her hand was neatly bound up in gauze, and a guilty look caused her face to flush red. She wouldn't look either into the eyes. She accepted the cup Mace handed her, and wrapped both hands around it, as if needing the warmth. They left her to stare into her tea for long minutes. Finally, she spoke.

"I was back in the desert." A shudder shook her, and some of her tea spilled onto her robes. "There were bodies everywhere. But not the right ones. They weren't the bodies of those that should have been there." She fell silent again.

"If not the right one, then whose bodies were they?" Mace asked her. Several times her lips moved, but no words came. Eventually, she looked up at him, her brown eyes looking straight at Mace, but seeming not to see him.

"Everyone from the Temple. There were so many." Her voice broke, and again she cried. Mace stood up and walked the few steps to her side. He knelt before her, gently taking the cup from her hands, and then cradled her hands in his. His dark eyes were so intent, they seemed to see straight into her soul. She leaned forward and settled her forehead onto his shoulder. "He was always laughing. Because I failed." From her position with her head on his shoulder, she could feel how Mace shook his head at her.

"How can you say you failed? If all of us died at his hand, don't you think we fought with everything we had to stop him?" He could feel how every muscle in her body went taunt, as if ready to jump up and run away. But run away from what?

"You don't know. You don't know how to fight him." Kuno watched the pair. The hours he had spend familiarizing himself with Kalé and her life seem to pay of. From what he knew, no one else had been able to get as much out of her as Mace had. He was glad that she had gone to the landing platform as he had suggested. It seems that Kalé could not say no to a good mystery, even if her mind was not as it used to be. Mace let go of her hands, and slowly slipped them around her, pulling her as close as her stiff muscles would allow him.

"Then tell us how? Tell us how we can fight him." Mace's voice was no more than a whisper as he spoke, softly caressing her soul, just as his hands were caressing her back. Kuno suspected that if they had not been Jedi, forbidden those kind of attachment their closeness might imply to one unused to them, they would have been far more than brother and sister of the soul as they called each other.

"I..." Before she could say more than a word, the door to the flat opened, and an angry Aletheia stormed in. Kalé closed her mouth, and fell silent, clinging to Mace as if he were her only hold on this reality.