The Survivors
The hull groans and shudders like a freight train. She doesn't know what exactly the top fin does for the ship, but missing half of it clearly isn't doing any favours for the Mantis's hyperspace performance. The rattling wasn't nearly this bad even through the Arendelle hyperlane. Greez and BD-1 shoot frantic messages at each other every once in a while from across the dashboard—though Anna's pretty sure Greez understands binary about as well as she does, so it's probably a one-sided conversation.
As hard as she tries, she can't keep her eyes from drifting toward the empty seat at the comm terminal. She tries to focus her gaze on Cal, instead. The side of his head pokes up over the top of the copilot's seat, a mop of loose hair draped carelessly over his face in ash-stained maroon. He's staring motionlessly out the window, not so much as blinking. She watches a single tear roll down his cheek, glistening in the swirling blue backdrop of hyperspace.
He hasn't spoken since they escaped the dungeon ship.
Cere Junda seemed like the toughest, most jaded person in the whole galaxy. The woman seemed like a brick wall—a wall marked with the scars of the history she kept locked behind it. Anna felt like she barely scratched the surface of that wall, yet in the end, Cere trusted her to bear the burden of the future. For all their bickering and disagreements, in the end Cere sacrificed herself so Anna could live.
She looks down at the lightsaber in her lap, the one that belonged to the Inquisitor that was Cere's Padawan. Somehow, it survived the punishment from both the Inquisitor and the Purge Trooper relatively unscathed. A small victory.
A meaningless victory.
They failed. They walked right into that Inquisitor's trap. They couldn't save Merrin and now Cere is dead.
Her fingers curl into fists. How many more will die? Is this her fate? To have those around her cut down by the enemy, one by one, until she's alone for good?
The lightsaber feels heavy, and she feels cold.
When Cal finally speaks, the words are so quiet they're almost drowned out by the hum of the hyperdrive.
"She shouldn't have died. She didn't have to die."
Greez lets out a low sigh.
"Don't say that, Cal," he says softly. "Don't do that to yourself."
"But it's true, isn't it?" Cal's words are clipped, jagged. "I could have held them off. I could have been the distraction while you escaped. Cere would still be alive."
"And you'd be dead," Anna says quietly. She rises from the bench and walks up the cockpit until she's standing next to Cal at the dashboard, putting her hands down in front of him. "This isn't your fault, Cal. If anything, it's mine for letting the Inquisitor ambush me."
"That wasn't a choice, Anna." The tears are flowing freely now, running in rivulets from Cal's eyes, but his expression is slack, shell-shocked. He continues staring forward, not meeting her gaze. "I made a choice back there. I chose to abandon Cere."
"That's not fair, Cal," Greez interjects. "It was life or death. If you'd rushed out there instead of coming on board you'd have both died, and then where'd we be? It's no use dwelling on what-ifs. Nothing can change the past."
"How can you be so calm?" There's a sudden fire in Cal's eyes as he whirls on the captain. "You knew Cere longer than I did! Don't you get it? She's dead, Greez!"
"You think I don't know that?" Greez barks, so sharply that Anna can't help but flinch. The captain glares at Cal for a long moment, chest heaving. Slowly, he raises a finger. "I was gambling my life away before Cere came along. Cere made a somebody out of my nobody. She's the closest anyone's gotten to being family in a long time." He takes a long breath before continuing in a calmer voice. "But I outgrew denial decades ago, kid. It's a cruel fucking galaxy out there. The last enemy you need is yourself."
Cal doesn't respond. BD-1 trills a low note, hopping as close as he can to Cal while still being plugged into the dashboard through his other leg and laying his head on the Jedi's shoulder. Cal's lip quivers.
"I should have known this was a trap," he finally chokes out, staring into his lap. "We never should have come. This… this is all on me."
Anna feels her throat constrict at the ragged sorrow in Cal's voice. The urge to wrap him in a hug is overwhelming, but something tells her to hold back. This isn't the kind of grief a hug can fix.
Eventually Cal's breathing calms.
"What do we do now?" he whispers.
Anna's heart breaks a little at the note of defeat in his voice. That's supposed to be her line. He's supposed to be the one with the answers.
"We'll finish what they damn well started, is what we'll do." Greez's tone is hard as stone. "And that starts with fixing my ship."
"Where can we even go?" Anna asks, her heart sinking as she glances back toward the holomap. "The Empire's probably got every hyperlane from Corsun locked down across half the galaxy."
"I know some routes that are off the grid." Greez gives a mirthless chuckle. "This ain't our first rodeo."
"Maybe it's time to ditch the ship," Cal says quietly. "Find something the Empire hasn't seen us flying yet."
"I'm gonna pretend you didn't say that," Greez growls. "I ain't ditching my baby. There's thousands of other S-161's flying around. A new paint job and the Imps'll be none the wiser."
"Thousands is tiny in a galaxy this size. It's not worth the risk."
"I ain't negotiating this, kid."
Cal glares at the side of the captain's head.
"You still haven't answered my question," Anna presses. "Where are we headed?"
Greez combs a stiff hand through his beard, his eyes still focused out the front window.
"It's too soon to go back to Nal Hutta, they'll be expecting us there. I've set a course for Tatooine."
"Tatooine?" Anna frowns. "Where's that?"
"The middle of nowhere. Exactly where we need to be." Exhaling slowly, Greez makes a small gesture toward the comms station. "You should grab some seat. This'll be awhile."
It takes Anna a moment to realize Greez is talking about that seat. Carefully, hesitantly, she approaches the comm terminal. The leather of the cushions is hard and well worn as she eases herself in. It feels like a stolen jacket. Staring at the text scrolling up on the terminal, she lets out a small breath and closes her eyes.
This isn't how she wanted to get a seat in the cockpit.
The girl's pale fingers work delicately in the air, adding to the thin piece of ice sitting atop the mahogany desktop in bursts of clear crystal that emit faint wisps of steam in the morning light.
"Elsa, when will I get to do the magic?"
"I don't know, Anna." The girl—her sister—keeps her eyes focused on the sculpture, her brow knitted in concentration.
"Mama says it'll be soon—she says she can feel it," Anna mutters. She gasps as an excellent new question comes to mind. "What does it feel like to use your powers?"
Elsa lowers her hands and steps back, tilting her head to inspect her handiwork. A gleaming statuette of sits on the table between them, barely larger than her hand. A dragon. She pushes it across the desk toward Anna.
"Do you like it?"
Anna takes the sculpture in her hands. The dragon's transparent wings are spread wide as if in flight, its body detailed down to every individual tooth and scale. She hugs it to her cheek, ignoring how cold the ice is on her skin.
"I love it! It's just like from Papa's stories!"
She holds the dragon in front of her, moving it through the air and imagining it roaring and breathing curtains of fire like in the bedtime stories Papa likes to tell. She tries to imitate the roaring noises that Papa does, and Elsa giggles.
"Do you think we'll ever get to see dragons?" Anna asks excitedly, her eyes going wide as moons.
"I don't think we have any dragons on Arendelle," Elsa replies thoughtfully. "I read about beasts on other worlds that look like dragons, but they're far, far away."
"That's disappointing."
"Disappointing" is a long word. She's proud she managed to say it without stumbling. Elsa's always using long word. She turns the figurine over in her hands, holding it close to her eye.
"Careful, it'll melt," Elsa whispers.
Anna quickly puts it back down on the desk. The places where her hands touched the statue are glossy with water, and she feels a pang of guilt.
Then she realizes Elsa still hasn't answered her question.
"So?" She leans toward her sister with her elbows on the table, supporting her face with her hands on her cheeks. "What does it feel like, when you make the ice?"
Elsa clasps her hands at her waist.
"It's hard to explain." Her sister opens her hands again, blue eyes staring intensely from beneath her platinum bangs. A diamond-shaped crystal of ice grows in her palm as Anna watches, mesmerized. "It feels like… breathing," she continues, placing the piece of ice beside the dragon, "after having your head underwater for a long time."
Immediately, Anna sucks a breath and holds it in. Elsa holds a hand to her mouth to stifle another giggle as Anna puffs out her cheeks.
"I don't think that's how it works, Anna."
Just you wait! she wants to say, but that would require opening her mouth, so she only manages, "mm mm mmph!"
It's not long before her lungs are screaming for air. She can feel her face turning red. Elsa's laughter fades as her expression turns to one of concern.
"Okay, you can stop now."
But Anna's too determined to stop. Dark spots float in her vision. Finally, the pressure is too much. She gasps, dropping forward onto the desk and desperately sucking in air.
Slowly, her heartbeat settles. Apart from the burning in her lungs, she doesn't feel anything out of the ordinary.
"Anna, look out!"
In slow motion, Anna watches the dragon statuette teeter off the edge of the tabletop, tumbling end over end before shattering on the hardwood planks of the floor. A searing stab of panic pierces her heart, instantly overtaken by a wave of guilt.
"Elsa… I'm sorry," she stammers. "You worked so hard on that." She wants to cry.
But when she musters the courage to glance back up, Elsa isn't looking at her anymore.
"Anna… Anna, look."
Confused, she follows her sister's gaze to the fireplace on the wall behind her—the fireplace that she watched Elsa douse only minutes before, now flickering with living flames.
She wakes with her chin pressed to her collarbone and a crick in her neck. Bright sunlight colours the insides of her eyelids pink. Everything aches.
She must have slept through the landing again.
She cracks her eyes open and immediately regrets it. The cockpit slowly comes into focus out of a sea of blinding white. There's a soft brushing sound almost like rain as something washes against the outside of the ship, stirred up by strong winds. Squinting, she directs her gaze out the window. Beyond the dust, twin suns scorch down above rolling dunes of yellow sand. She's never seen so much sand in her life.
She sighs. Hunkering down in a tropical paradise was obviously too much to ask.
Pieces of the dream echo through her mind. She frowns at the memory of the fireplace. Did she really…
Another memory hits her like a train, one of fire pouring from her hands like water from an open tap. What the hell was that back on the dungeon ship? She looks down at her hands.
Why hasn't she been able to do that before? Is that part of her still repressed, somehow, a side-effect of what her mother did to her before… sending her away?
She needs to talk to Cal.
She rolls her neck to a chorus of popping vertebrae. Pushing her grimy hair out of her eyes, she glances around the cockpit and finds it empty. The displays are dark, and judging by the silence, the engines are off. Frowning, she stands and makes her way into the lobby.
"Greez? Cal?" Cere, she almost calls out of habit, but she stops herself.
The lobby is also empty. The exit door is closed, but according to the indicator lamp above the doorframe, the ramp is extended. She presses the button to open the doors and is blasted by a wave of heat and grit. Sand is already accumulating on the ramp outside. Fading footprints lead away into the yellow sea, toward a group of squat stone buildings poking above a valley between two dunes in the distance.
"Greez went to scout out the town," a rasping voice says from behind her. "He said to keep the door closed to keep the sand out."
She turns. Cal stands by the hallway toward the engine room, his empty gaze directed at something on the floor. Sealing the doors with a press of the button, Anna takes two steps toward him.
"How… how are you?" she ventures.
Cal raises his eyes. His hair is more unkempt than she's ever seen, draping in greasy locks over the right side of his face, but he doesn't seem to notice. The shadows under his eyes make him look positively haggard.
"I've been better." He sighs. "I'll be better. Soon."
A crease forms between Anna's eyebrows.
"Cal, you don't have to shoulder this alone," she says gently.
Cal's lips curl into something more of a grimace than a smile. "I'll be fine, Anna. Just… just give me time."
There are no tears this time, but the dry pain in Cal's eyes is somehow more haunting. Damn it all. Anna closes the distance and wraps her arms around him, crushing him to her in the tightest hug she can manage. He tenses for an instant, his breath hitching ever so slightly. Then he's melting into her arms, his stiff posture deflating like a balloon.
"Thank you," he whispers, barely audible. Warm tears soak into the shoulder of her tunic.
"I owe you at least one use as a tissue box," Anna laughs softly, trying to keep down tears of her own.
"Yeah, I guess you do," Cal sniffles.
It's a while before they pull away.
"There is no emotion, there is peace," Cal mumbles. "Some Jedi I am, huh?" He shakes his head bitterly.
"Are Jedi not allowed to grieve?" Anna's eyes angle upward.
"We're not supposed to mourn," Cal says with another sniff, roughly wiping away tears with the palm of his hand. "The Force is within all living things. Those who die become one with the Force, at peace forever. At least, that's what they told me. Haven't died yet—wouldn't know." He tries to laugh, but it sounds more like a cough.
"That's a nice thought." Anna wonders if parents are there, one with the Force, at peace. And her sister…
The Temple of Ice rises in her mind's eye.
This is where your sister found her element, when she was not much younger than you are now.
She remembers the cold gust when her sister raised her hands in the ballroom, moments before the bombs dropped. She sees her sister's hands sculpt a figurine of a dragon out of crystalline ice. Ice… ice was her sister's element.
She sees the gleaming spears of ice leap up from the floor before the Inquisitor's outstretched hand. She staggers backward as the realization hits her.
"Anna? What's the matter?"
She lets herself fall onto the lounge couch. Cal rushes forward, his lips curling into a frown. "Anna, talk to me."
Anna nods dumbly.
"I still don't remember much of my life on Arendelle," she starts in a quiet voice, looking down into her lap. "I guess that makes sense—I was only five when the Empire came. Ever since I got my memories back, though, I've been getting these dreams." She swallows. "Every Arendellian is connected to some aspect of the elements of nature. I was looking for mine, before my mother took away my memories. But my sister, she'd always known hers, from as early as I can remember." She looks straight into Cal's eyes. "I remember now. My sister's element was ice."
Cal goes completely still.
"Anna… do you think…" His voice trails off. The unspoken words hanging in the air send another pulse of cold terror through Anna's body.
"You said it yourself, didn't you?" she murmurs. "You've never seen powers like that Inquisitor's before. Well, I have."
Cal is silent for a long time.
"I'm sorry," he finally says. "I'm sorry, but I don't have answers for you. I couldn't sense anything but darkness from that woman. So much grief and hate and… hunger."
There's a hard edge to his voice—an edge that tells Anna there will be no mercy for the Inquisitor that took the life of Cere Junda, sister or not. She suppresses a shudder.
Is that what it will come down to? Could she let Cal kill Elsa? Anna tries to brush the thought from her mind, but it refuses to be dislodged.
"Cal, how do people become Inquisitors?" she asks slowly. Cal draws in a breath, his expression becoming pained.
"All Force-sensitives captured by the Empire are either executed or put into the Inquisitorius program. Some are willing. They feel the call of the Dark Side, and Vader trains them to use it. The others…" He winces. "The others are tortured until they break."
She knows he's thinking about Merrin imprisoned on that ship, being carried off to suffer exactly that fate. For the first time, she hopes against hope that her sister died on Arendelle.
Elsa could manipulate ice, yes, but surely she couldn't have been the only one. The Inquisitor could be anyone. There's no telling what's behind that mask.
"There's something else," Anna finds herself saying, loudly enough to distract them both from their thoughts. "Something happened when I faced the Inquisitor last time. I felt something different in the Force. I panicked and fire came out of my hands." She raises her hands in front of her, palms up, still half-expecting to see third-degree burns on the skin.
Cal's eyebrows raise slightly.
"Force fire is not a common ability among Jedi. I've certainly never heard of a Padawan learning it." The corner of his mouth twitches slightly. "Then again, you're no ordinary Padawan."
"I had a dream before we landed. Another memory. I lit a fireplace without touching it. I think fire is my affinity, like ice was for Elsa." She's careful not to let her voice hitch on her sister's name. "I guess that Arendellian blood is still doing its thing."
She doesn't realize she's still holding her hands out until Cal takes them in his own—one gloved, one bare.
"Anna, listen to me." His eyes are suddenly sharp as steel. "There was a time when I was ready to train an entire new generation of Jedi. That ship has flown, but I can still train one. I will train you, Anna. I'll teach you every damn thing I know about being a Jedi. No more distractions. It's time I was a proper Master to you."
Anna's eyes widen.
"But Merrin-"
Cal's grip tightens until it's painful.
"Merrin is gone." She can feel the pain radiating off of him as he bites off each word, but his gaze doesn't waver. "I will train you. Here, on Tatooine. When you're ready, we'll go to Ilum and get you a lightsaber crystal. It's not the traditional order of things, but it's the safest way."
"And then?"
There is fire in Cal's eyes, a resolve that carries the momentum of a falling star and has Anna's heart beating like a drum.
"We finish Cere's plan. We burn the Fortress Inquisitorius to the ground."