I should never have left him.
"We're coming up on Telos." The murmur of the cockpit, the rudimentary checks and balances of making sure the ship ran weren't enough to jolt her out of her reverie, but the mention of Telos, of Carth, was.
She blinked a few times and moved her hands quickly over the consoles, at the very least for the appearance that her mind was on the present and not on the past.
"There's nothing out of the ordinary. Should be smooth sailing." Canderous' razor bladed voice sounded almost a little disappointed. She smirked at him.
"Even so, keep your eyes open, hmm?"
The Mandalorian shook his head. "You know who you sound like, don't you?" he muttered.
Like Telos. Like Carth. I should never have left him
Her pounding heart couldn't seem to decide whether it was regret or otherwise, although she preferred to think otherwise. Regret was something she'd seen far too much of.
She rose from her chair, leaving Canderous alone in the cockpit. He couldn't be counted on to distract her from her thoughts; reverence for her as a formerly brilliant tactician was one thing, but engaging her in conversation (or anyone else for that matter) was another.
The Ebon Hawk did not hold its arms out to her as if it were home- it carried too much emotional baggage for her. But she couldn't help running a hand along the corridor as she walked towards the crew quarters, remembering the feel of it. Maybe not welcoming her with open arms, but at the very least nodding in respect.
She also couldn't help smiling ruefully at the Jedi whose council she had come for, sitting in quiet meditation on one of the bunks. "You never do see me coming, do you?"
Bastila opened one eye cautiously, then closed it again.
"Simply because I do not react does not mean I have no knowledge of your presence," the Jedi said, her half-cocked eyebrow tellingher that, as usual, she was covering up a failing with bantha fodder.
She couldn't blame her for her pious Jedi airs as she had before the Star Forge. They were Bastila's security blanket, and she would be damned if she would be the one to criticize them.
"We're coming up on Telos." Her voice sounded much older than she was. She could repeat the phrase over and over and she felt that it would never sound any less foreboding than 'we're coming up on the rancor breeding pit'.
"Your thoughts scream while you whisper."
She looked away. While Bastila could read what her thoughts were, she could not understand them. Not anymore than she could understand them herself.
"Too much has changed, Bastila." She seated herself next to the Jedi, who immediately uncurled from her meditation pose.
"A Jedi must always change and learn. Surely in choosing to love one, he must have accepted that."
She never did know Carth Onasi, she thought with a smile.
"You fear that because everything has changed for you," Bastila's voice had always sounded ethereal but direct, she decided, as though she was a deity offering counsel. "And nothing has changed for him-"
"Everything has changed for him." Her own voice, she decided, had been full of anger for so long that the lack of it sounded foreign and unsettling.
"He just doesn't know it."
Something had returned. Of that much Katrina was certain.
There was, in the back of her mind, the memory of the last few moments. Moments that might have occurred a few seconds or a few hours ago depending on how long she had been unconscious. The memory of blackness, of hearing the sounds of thick metal tearing and bright flames of red and yellow licking at her sides.
She didn't dare open her eyes yet. They were too comfortable in the reassuring feeling of seeing nothing, not knowing what had happened or what was now waiting for her. Her hands groped around her. The metal grating was still beneath her. The Jedi Chaser was intact; the floor, at the very least. And she was alive, so it had not been destroyed by whatever it was that had made her surroundings so suddenly changed.
A sticky substance coated her hands. It clung to her neck and face, her clothing too. She blindly ran her fingers over these parts, registering the status of them. Good. The more bearings she got the better she would be able to face whatever blinding reality awaited behind the shelter of her eyelids.
Something heavy was on top of her. The feeling of weight and substance was comforting for only a moment until her fingers touched the tendrils of greasy hair. Carth.
He had leapt at her, his erratic breathing a terror in her ear for the few seconds she had been conscious. Somehow his head had moved from there and ended up somewhere near the edge of her abdomen.
She ran her hands through his hair. One thing at a time. Feel the floor; your face, your clothes, Carth's hair. She wasn't ready to grasp the status of the rest of him.
It was rough and abrasive in parts, and her fingers came away with bits of a grainy feeling. Singed hair.
Katrina felt her heart beginning to race. Calm down. Think things through. Remember your training. The heat had been fire; fire had burned Carth's hair. Burned hair did not mean...
She couldn't even form the thought.
Slowly she opened her eyes. The light wasn't blinding as she had expected, and it only took a moment for her pupils to adjust. The low level emergency lighting gave an eerie pale glow off the metal floor. She stared straight ahead for a moment. Stars were the only things in her field of vision, covered with a hazy purple glow she quickly identified as the emergency force field. So the hull of the cockpit had been breached.
Small, simple facts. One at a time.
Around the edges of the ripped and twisted metal, various broken wires sparked and fizzled in their death throes. It had been some kind of explosion, something undetectable by the ship's sensors, and no ordinary blaster fire either.
Leaving one hand securely resting on the top of Carth's head, Katrina lifted her other hand. Parts of her arm were burned. They ranged from simply bright red to the blistering pale and blackened parts of skin that must have been throbbing with pain. Oddly she did not feel anything. Or maybe she did and it was only a part of the situation she had not registered yet.
One thing at a time...
Her hands were also caked in soot and dried blood. She reached to brush a piece of hair out of her mouth and felt something sharp sticking out of her forehead.
There is no chaos. There is no fear. There is no large piece of shrapnel stuck in my head.
Her hand flew back to Carth. He was safe, he was solid. He was not a mortal wound. Katrina concentrated on him, ignoring the red haze near her left eye.
Her hands moved from his hair and gingerly ran over his cheek.
It felt like leather. Carth's face was always rough but this was not stubble or dirt or grease. Like leather but different. For a moment she couldn't place the difference.
It was identical to the texture of her burnt arm.
His hair is burnt. The side of his head is burnt.
"Carth?" Her voice sounded so foreign amid the relative silence. There was the hiss of steam from some broken conduit, the crackle of electricity from the hanging wires. Her voice seemed to break the natural order of this new world.
He did not answer. Her hands reached his cracked lips at the precise moment she registered that his breathing, whether steady or erratic, was not part of the order of this new world either.
New plan. Many things at once. As much information as I can get.
She pushed herself up, dizzy only for a moment. Carth lay prostrate on the floor, his burned head still in her lap.
"Carth, Carth-" She suddenly found that she could not stand the silence and repeated his name over and over until it felt like jelly against her lips and she was mumbling incomprehensible syllables.
She struggled to turn him over, to see more of him. He was heavier than she had ever imagined.
There is no chaos. There is no fear. There is no Carth Onasi lying in my lap without functioning lungs.
There is no breathing coming from his body.
Whether it was this one immutable fact or the metal having punctured her brain she did not know, but suddenly she registered the pain in her arm, her head, and strongest of all in the left side of her chest. Katrina fell back to the floor, grasping for Carth as her eyes closed, once again enveloping her in darkness.