Chapter 15: Harter Kalonia I

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

19 ABY, Hosnian Prime Penitentiary Center

"Hello."

She searches for whomever greeted her, hoping to find a possible friend. The person who spoke is nowhere to be found, the only sentient being her eyes catch is a battered-looking man with a straight-jacket on him, strange-looking robes or is it a dress? barely peaking out of the eggshell fabric to give a splash of creme amidst white-washed walls and scarlet drops dripping out of this man's nose and mouth. It is only her well ingrained manners that prevent her from staring any longer and allow the young Doctor to say 'hello' back to the mystery man who blesses the guards after they give him a barely edible meal he can't reach, much less chew. Oh no they didn't...

She taps on the glass to get the prisoner's attention. "Excuse me Sir, is this cell 308?"

He coughs so badly she's afraid they've sent her to treat a lung cancer patient. She watches this human sentient with a shaved head whisper to himself, as if practicing how to speak after a long period of silence. Finally Kalonia hears his voice, shocked to find a distinctly Tatooinian accent shining through the syllables so hoarsely pronounced. "It was eighteen days ago."

Textbook discrimination towards immigrants: In Sirpar I work in the emergency room, In Hosnian Prime I wait three weeks to be cleared so I can spoon-feed some Outer-Rim crackpot. Joyless bastards probably heard my accent and thought they were doing me and the patient a favor.

"So you're the new nurse?"

"Actually I'm a doctor, not that these Core-Worlders care. To them a Middle-Rim doctor's a nurse and a Outer-Rim doctor specializes in fledgling mumbo-jumbo."

"What planet you from?"

"I'm Andoweelian, my parents worked on the Triellus Trade Route. Not smugglers, doctors- Where are my manners? My name's Harter, Harter Kalonia. What's yours?"

"My name? I'm Luke, Luke Skywalker."

Self-control abandons the good doctor as she struggles to stifle a laugh at her patient. Harter Kalonia's parents grew up in the Clone Wars and they recorded every scrap of information they got their hands on: she memorized every new flick retelling the stories about the champions of the freedom in the galaxy, clung to every word spoken by the few senators that actually gave a damn about something beyond political ambition. Hell, she remembers Anakin Skywalker's face better than her little brother's at early childhood. It was no surprise to anyone in her family that she held a torch for his son when the first wanted posters were sent throughout all corners of the known galaxy. Her friends almost got into trouble for saying if 'Public Enemy Number One' was that handsome then they'd sign up to the Rebellion just to date him. This odd and dirty (albeit ruggedly handsome) man has the right eye color, the right hair pigmentation if his eyebrows are natural, even the right height and bone structure but he completely lacks the dauntlessness, the gaze of eternal hope she saw in every one of his old rebel pictures. Commander Skywalker, it was said, seemed to live in a state of permanent joy and truth and courage. He could march to war for you laughing, not because he found killing pleasurable, never that they would swear. It was because he believed that the person he was fighting for was in him/herself a noble cause. Luke Skywalker was a warrior who stood his ground, this patient probably didn't ask for a release date. But still delusions are a hard thing to break and he might harm himself if she threatens his fantasy.

Conclusion: she's been transferred to a crappy job with minimum pay that she probably can't tell anyone about since they brought her to a section that wasn't shown in the visual mother bought. The only upside to this whole thing is that her patient is one of the good guys, even if he is bat-shit crazy. She can feel it deep in her bones. Like any good Outer-Rim girl Harter Kalonia was taught by her parents to never ignore the quiet ideas that tickle and nag at the back of your head with no logical explanation in sight, for them lie the seeds of destiny. All of them are telling her to befriend this mysterious human who smiled charmingly despite the fact his stubble was more red than blond and his clothes smelled like they haven't been washed in a week. (And that's being generous.) Wordlessly, she picks up the hogwash the guards sent to feed him and flushes it down the fresher with no regrets.

"Do you like bantha stew? My mom sent me a whole batch to last the month. She claims the government puts hormones on the food here to kill our brain cells. I'm sure she wouldn't mind me sharing, especially not with a fellow Outer-Rim citizen."

His posture changes, the unsaid resignation in his pale desert sky lessens, replaced by something she can't quite comprehend. Something she's never let herself fully experience. It looks a lot like hope...

"So shines a bright soul in a haggard world."

The words are said with her patient's voice but she never sees his lips move and the walls are made to prevent voices from carrying out. More importantly the phrase touched her, it snuggles against her skin and delivers the gentlest of hugs to her soul.

"Master Skywalker?"

"Pleased to meet you."

She ends up falling a little bit in love with him in those twelve hours they spend together, though she's quick to suppress it when realizing Luke's devotion towards his dead wife remains strong and unyielding. But he needs a friend in that dark hell hole they're keeping him in so she swears to fill that role to the best of the ability. (Most people spend their whole lives hoping somebody loves them half as much as Luke Skywalker loves his friends so it's not like she walks out with crumbs.) Her neighbor calls her crazy when she puts on lipstick to work on a psych ward (the official cover up story provided by the government) that'll just ruin her good mood. That grim prediction's proven right when Natasi Daala calls her over just as she's going to punch her work card, showing Kalonia the video tape in which she took off Luke's straight-jacket so they could eat together. What did she do wrong? She checked his psych profile beforehand in case of hints towards aggressive behavior and the guards gave her permission. Silence is the only answer granted as she and both of Luke's guards are forced to sign even more confidentiality reports. Kalonia files a case against Natasi Daala for placing hallucinogens (she'd bribed a boy in the kitchens toswap a bit of that gunk they gave him and ran tests.) in the Jedi Grand Master's food. It was only with the former guard's help she avoided waiting all day in the legal procedure files. When she asks them why they bothered each responds differently. Karé Kun replies that she can no longer stand by and do nothing while a good man is made to suffer, even if he is Darth Vader's biological son. Yissino Byde claims that he's becoming worse than the Imperials, that maybe by helping Dr. Kalonia with her case he can gain some fragment of peace. The case doesn't get through, news reporters label it conspiracy theories. For eleven days the three swim through seas of red tapes and lose track of how many lawyers slam the door on their face out of fear or sheer malice. She probably looks like an escaped mental patient with her heavy eye-bags, dry lips and fingernails thoroughly bitten. Night is a thing to be dreaded now that it serves as a reminder that one more day has passed in failure, sleep becomes a pre-course to nightmares of Luke being tortured or forcibly sedated or-

The good doctor's thoughts are interrupted by a stranger's hand grabbing her sometime around 2am in the morning. She bites her aggressor's palm in an effort to escape. Another person she hadn't noticed presses chloroform to her nose. She wakes up a bus with blacked-out windows and 20 people some robot shoot if they attempt to speak to. A security droid keeps them in line as they march blind-folded, blaster at their backs all the while. When they finally reach the destination a butler droid unties their blindfolds, apologizing for his master's lack of propriety. In the light she recognizes a few of her fellow hostages, these are some of the best doctors in the galaxy; more specifically the doctors who re-defined the field of medicine during the great Bacta shortage. (Whose are these kidnappers and what do they want with them? What do they want with her?) Then all of a sudden footsteps come from what Harter assumes to be the hallway. She straightens and proudly faces her possible doom. Instead of the hooded executioner her mind constructed they're met with a dark skinned woman* in a doctor's suit who addresses them.

"Ladies and gentlemen: as doctors our lifelong goal has been the preservation of life. Tonight our goal is not only to preserve a life but in doing so we will prevent the harsh blood-letting of Civil War. Each of you will enter individually and proceed as best as you can. Succeed and rewards shall follow, fail and the war begins. "

One by one different doctors are led by the woman beyond the uniform white walls of the small 'guest' room. None of them return and the tension is so thick somebody could cut through it with a blunt knife. Harter is the seventh to be brought inside, the supposed luck of the number instills hope that she won't die here in this strange place, a helpless victim for some demented psychopath's whims. She looks to her right and recoils as one of the doctor's arms is reset. Whatever it is these people want them to do is dangerous, maybe even lethal. Her heart's beating so fast it might jump out at the slightest provocation. Stars let me live through this horrid night, let me see my family again, let me see Luke again...

'Be careful what you wish for' takes on a whole new meaning upon seeing Luke's unconscious form twist the arm of the sixth doctor as he tries to inject a sedative. The Jedi is writhing, with each seizure the machines keep breaking and Kalonia has to tread carefully since she's barefoot and broken glass with bits of metal are scattered all across the floor. She barely hears the dark-skinned woman whose name she didn't catch bark orders, eluding once more to the war. Is that all Luke is to the Republic? Did he bleed and mourn and fight all his life just to become a sacrificial lamb in their political game of chess?

"Master Skywalker? Luke can you hear me? I'm going to help you but I need your cooperation. Otherwise-"

"I'll die?" She weeps tears of joy upon hearing his voice in her head, then she puts herself together.

"Yes. You'll die. Luke?"

"I'm scared, I don't wanna die. I don't want to leave her alone." (She assumes Luke is referring to his sister but in truth he speaks of Mara.)

"Don't worry: I'm gonna fix you up. Just me, none of the people that did this are going to operate on you. I'm so sorry I couldn't stop this."

"Harter, I know you did your best and you didn't leave through your own accord. That's enough for me. Now please hurry: My left side's going numb."

When she loosens his robes Luke's ribs are visible and angry red scars clash with blaster wounds, on the back are whip marks that still feel relatively fresh as she runs her palms over the surface. It is a canvas of sacrifice, a story of painful loss repeated over and over. They perform a full scan of his body to find what's killing him, she tells them to look at the left firsthand. Turns out Luke was suffering from three things: untreated infections in his right leg, pneumonia and most pressingly: respiratory failure caused by liquefied standard military rations, raw eggs and a substance eerily similar to human feces all flooding his left lung. She completely detaches herself from emotion whilst draining his lungs and the medical procedures that follow, this alone prevents her from hacking off an assistant's face when she hears 'I guess Master Skywalker just needed an Outer Rim whore to stop complaining.' (Her feet bleed profusely by the time she's finished her job.) They allow Harter to stay until he wakes up, they don't let her treat the twitching she reads about in his medical portfolio. She creates a copy of his medical report whilst writing the details of his operation which is promptly hands it to Karé and Yissino, both watch and read the disk in private. Karé calls in an old favor that gets them the former Senator Organa's contact number, Yissido hangs himself in front of the Official Senate Building. His suicide note reads 'thus perish innocence in the New Republic'. The First Order uses him as proof of gubernatorial oppression.

Ten days later, when men and women are already sending their children off to school as if they were treading on war-zones she finds the man who held Luke up so he wouldn't cause an uproar by walking on crutches, sends him the disk and prays that he kill the people who did this. By this point she is convinced that there is no justice in the galaxy save what one takes for themselves. She wants them to die and start the rest of eternity in Hell. Instead she finds out some teenage boy decided to play champion of the light's crusade and convinced General Solo to show mercy. Harter goes to the Corellian underworld, buys an unregistered blaster and times the moment when Luke's torturer leaves the building. At 9pm in the New Republic Academy of Science Harter Kalonia stands at the roof, waiting until at long last the monster crawls out of his cage. She raises the blaster, ready to impart just vengeance-

"Don't do it Harter. It's not worth the stain on your soul."

"Stay out of my head Luke!"

"Fine, then turn around so we can talk this over."

He's cleaner than all the previous times they've met. Still walking on crutches but truthfully he's fortunate they didn't have to saw off his leg so the crutch is comforting to her since it means Luke has only one prosthetic. If not for his scarred lips and the bloodshot tinge to his eyes she'd claim he hasn't changed at all but too much has happened to both of them for that to be true. Luke is beautiful in the moonlight, even now. His skin glows like a citrine and the pinkish tone of his eyes makes them look like twin sapphires nestled in soft rose silk. She is so caught up in her admiration that she doesn't register him taking the gun away with the Force until she sees it in his organic hand.

"Give me the gun Luke."

"No."

"He's getting away!"

"Good. Let him."

"What's wrong with you?!" He tortured you, he humiliated you, he drove Yissido to kill himself and you won't let me do what you're too saintly to carry out yourself."

"You wanna kill him? Fine: He left the building now so you'll have to kill in his home. He lives at Syndulla Lane, House 44-B, Wheater Street. Of course his wife will be there but she's just a monster's whore so you can off her too if you like right? Oh and the kids too, he has two daughters. The eldest's 14 and the youngest's 9 so you better nip that poison flower in the bud otherwise those girls will grow up dreaming painful ways for you to die, hunting you down till you're dead or they are. That's the nature of revenge: people take a bite thinking it ends when your rival's gone but there's no such thing as a little vengeance. So choose wisely because the rest of your life: a life that so far has been defined by healing will instead be weighted in view of that dark moment where, in a fit of raging sorrow, you sought salvation in hate. It's reasons like this we make oaths and creeds and constitutions in the first place."

She kneels to the ground and cries, large ugly sobs that probably ruined his Jedi robes permanently. Luke holsters her back up and suppresses a wince. He stays by her side as she drives home, joking that this way the cops will arrest him instead if she gets pulled over. Out of sheer impulse Harter kisses him on the lips before stepping out of the speeder, wanting to see some trace of romantic affection but finds only the same love he carries for everyone else. There was no lover's pleasure, no youthful happiness, not even satisfaction emerging from him. Just that all-powerful anguish, overwhelming him like one chosen for nothing but sorrow.

"I'm sorry."

"We don't choose whom we love, we choose whether or not to act upon it. Part of me wishes I could love you the way you want me to. But I can't fall in love with somebody when my heart is already taken. I apologise if this hurts you."

It does hurt, it feels like her heart's being torn to shreds but it was the truth and all after the bantha fodder she's been privy to a strict truth is loads better than a seductive lie. What do you say to a love that was doomed from the beginning? What do you say to a man who just saved your soul but doesn't accept anything in return? How do you mend a pain that should have never existed? Bitterly, she think Luke's wife would have known what to do. Radiant, badass Mara Jade whom she couldn't compete with in her wildest dreams. Next to whom she is plain and boring and unsophisticated. Harter has no clue how to handle this situation: she was used to deworming children in third-rate worlds and ER late hours. When there was no bacta or anesthesia of any kind her hospital brought a hypnotist for the amputation surgeries. The hypnotist claimed the key to ensuring they felt no pain was to redirect focus so she tries to do that in her own awkward way.

"Luke:do you want to change the topic?"

"Yes, please tell me what happened today at the Senate."

"Senator Caster Fo wants you to publicly relate what happened on the Jedi Academy. Your sister thinks you could use to this to denounce what was done to you legally."

"And be the spark that lit the dynamite on a War? No, I'm sick of fighting: that's all I've done since Han, Chewie, Ben Kenobi and I got caught in that tractor beam. Battles for freedom, for words scribbled on paper, even the right for my soul; something takes for granted in this universe, has been a struggle. I'm not showing my face anywhere a federal building ever again."

"Luke... What was done to you, it was people and they were probably a separate part of the government that the Senate knew nothing about."

In that second Luke was no longer the man she knew: he was disillusion personified, his usually gentle voice turned arctic and unforgiving. Caught by the realization that his dreams had resulted in children's slahed bodies and spiritual bleeding and bitter despair. It's 90 degrees but she feels cold.

"Tell keeping yourself that. Better than the whole anarchist vigilante stunt you pulled."

"But don't you see: you restored my faith in the Republic by choosing to uphold the law's spirit even as its wording pulled towards the abyss. If you could do that surrounded by the hounds of Hell then surely it's no trouble to fulfill your duty and settle accounts with the New Republic."

"I'm not obligated to give the Father or Anakin Skywalker or the New Republic any explanations. It is they who owe that to me, to Lady Ashla and all my Jedi brethren. For the existence they've made us suffer."

He presses a gentleman's kiss to her palm and tells her 'May the Force be with you'. A secret hidden in his eyes that he might not be able to explain to anyone, even to himself. Harter waves her hand at Luke as he fades from view, completely unaware that she'll be the last person to ever see him on Hosnian Prime. The next day she cancels her lease, empties her bank account and joins General Organa's fledgling resistance. (She spends the next 17 years wishing she'd begged him to stay.)

34 ABY (1 month before the Force Awakens)

"And then?"

The aged doctor stares at young Jessika Pava in confusion. She thinks perhaps she's truly old now that the next generation and hers face communications barriers yet there's something to it than that. Jessika Pava is a smart girl, even if she did have to be bribed with this story to skip flight practice since she's still on bed-rest. But Harter can't quite put her finger on it.

"What do you mean by then Jess?"

Pava smiles and rows of teeth seeming more red than white is a painful reminder of the man whose story Jessika follows with the same zeal she once did, just as Harter's parents followed Luke's father. Skywalkers and their inherent majesty-

"What happened to Luke Skywalker after that? Doc?"

So many things painful to answer for that innocent-looking question: a hero was lost in an exile of his own making; a love everyone had thought invincible drifted apart, twilight fell across the galaxy. But what happened to Luke? She doesn't know, all she's is certain is that part of him died that night on the operating table or even further back, in whatever room they used to play with the flesh of a man who could have grinded their bones into dust with minimum effort. Part of her died with him in that frigid little room whilst performing mayor surgeries in her pajamas but that rooftop intervention with the Last Jedi took what was left and fortified it to good use. If she's remembered at all Dr. Kalonia would like to be remembered as the healer who gave everything to the Resistance, who sought to do good even when there's no sense to it as did another youth from the Outer Rim who left home an innocent and came back a phantom. That is the price of entering History: mistakes and triumphs are signed in blood. Sign enough times and one day the face that stares back at you in the mirror will be irreconcilable with the one imagined by lovable rogues like Jessika and girls like Kaydel who gets a faraway glance whenever she focuses on Luke Skywalker for too long. 'There are two truths' Luke had told her. 'First, there's our version of truth which we use as bedrock during life and battle. Secondly there's our enemy's truth which bends to whatever perks their ambition.' Neither of those definitions fit her so she responds with her version of the truth.

"For the Luke Skywalker you idolize there was no then, there was no after."

Notes:

*Picture Viola Davis in an Amanda Waller/nicer doctor from Season 2 of Stranger Things crossover.
Hands out tin cup: Comments please?/