Black Hole Sun

Everything hurts.

Her body's heavy, muscles aching like she's been running for hours and scintillating patterns dancing on the reverses of her eyelids until she forces them open. Whatever she's laying on, it's cold beneath her back; the ceiling's a dark void stretching far above her head and the walls of this place, wherever it is, the same solid black, so dense she could reach her hand out and press it flat against the surface.

And then there is a light shining bright into her eyes and the light hurts, too, but it's hard to move so instead she just turns her head to the side, away from it. That helps a little. Nine blinks, once and then again, as a figure wreathed in shadow coalesces out of the dark.

At first she thinks it's Theron, implant on his forehead glimmering as the figure moves toward her, but no- the location of the hardware's all wrong and so is the shape of the face, the contour of his bald head-

"Hello, Cipher." Watcher X smiles wryly as he draws alongside her prone body. "I thought it was time we had a little chat."

She twitches, forcing herself onto her side, away from his outstretched hand. "You're dead. Leave me alone."

Does anyone stay dead any more? The thought drifts vaguely in and out of her mind, bothering her less than it probably ought to. First Revan, then Valkorion and now this- it's absurd, really. Or- wait. Am I dead?

(If there is such a place as hell, it would figure she'd be destined to share it with the rest of the monsters.)

"Quite," he agrees. "You made very sure of that. Quick and professional. Though I must say-" with a shrug, he sits down beside the bed- no, not a bed: too sterile, too metal-smelling- in a chair that she's completely certain wasn't there until he gestured- "watching oneself die really is disconcerting."

She swallows.

"And no, you aren't dead." She didn't say that out loud. How did he- "Your body is sleeping. Recovering."

It's easier to move now, her muscles unlocking; she sits up on a too-familiar operating table, runs her fingers over an irregular stain on the rim nearest him. (Eleven years ago she focused on that stain for nearly an hour, trying not to scream or gnaw through her own lip, while wire by wire he laid the implant along her spine.) "I've gone insane, then. I killed you. I hallucinated you as a side effect of the Castellan restraints and I'm hallucinating you now."

"Did you really?" Watcher X crosses one leg over the other with a knowing smile. "And you went to the Archive all on your own, and somehow you knew exactly the right search parameters to solve a problem you didn't even have a name for."

Rubbing her temples- dead or mad or neither, she's got a ferocious headache- she narrows her eyes at him as she considers. It was so long ago. She barely remembered what query she'd entered to pull up that first recording of the Minister, but she must have figured out-

She must have-

Oh, for fuck's sake.

"You put yourself inside my head," she scowls. "How?""

His smile widens. "You're cleverer than that, Cipher. What do you think?"

"The implant, I assume. Straight shot to my nervous system." At his approving nod she continues, tucking her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her shins. "But you're not really Watcher X, are you? Not a ghost- a program? An AI?"

"Not precisely, but near enough that the difference isn't important. The programming was somewhat rushed." Hands pressed against the bridge of his nose, he looks at her over his steepled fingers. "It retains my personality, my knowledge base, but was meant to be an observation platform. You provided an ideal opportunity, but accelerated the timeline."

"I really ought to have known better."

He chuckles. "Yes, you ought to have. But you were very young, then."

(She had been, hadn't she? Scarcely twenty-two when Keeper sent her to Nar Shaddaa, she was so certain of things, so convinced of her own cleverness. She hadn't trusted Watcher X, of course- he'd been imprisoned in Shadow Town for a lengthy list of very good reasons- but she'd thought he-)

"As I said," he murmurs as she cuts the thought off abruptly and she crinkles her forehead in irritation- he needs to stop doing that, inside her head or not- "you were very young. But I've seen so very many interesting things though your eyes. You really do lead a fascinating life."

She makes a face at him as he continues. Stars, if he's seen everything she has- but then, Valkorion's doing the same, isn't he?

What an unpleasant thought.

"But my death threw rather a wrench into the works, to put in mildly, and this fragment is now all that remains of me."

"If you think I'm sorry, think again." If she's asleep, why can't she wake up? She shifts over, dangling her legs off the edge of the operating table. "Whatever assistance you claim to have provided, you've been silent for ten years and frankly I preferred it that way. Now tell me what it is that you want."

"Right to the point. Efficient. A credit to your training." He nods, lowering his hands into his lap. "I'll be brief, then. Your new guest claims to want to help you, Cipher. Do not listen to him."

She thinks she's strong enough to stand. "I haven't been." Pushing herself up with both hands, she eases herself down until her feet touch something solid in the darkness. "Which hasn't stopped him from trying to bore holes in my brain. But what do you care?"

"I know what it's like to live with a bomb inside your head. There may come a day when you find yourself wishing it would go off."

She shakes her head. "You, maybe. Not me."

"As you say. Regardless, fragment or not, my continued existence is dependent on yours: if you die, I die. And if your consciousness is driven from your body, well-" a shrug, nonchalant- "I do not think its new occupant will permit me to remain."

"I don't plan on dying."

"Neither did I."

"Force, you're a broken fucking holo. I'll say it one more time-" half a turn and she's facing him, arms folded across her chest- "what do you want from me?"

His smile is almost gentle, then, an uncanny thing. "I want you to survive. I can help you fight him."

He doesn't need to clarify who him means- she knows that perfectly well, and she suspects there is a reason he's avoiding the name.

(It's like the old game they used to play in school, crammed into a pitch-dark bathroom and chanting the rhyme toward the mirror in unison, where if the words were said in just the right way three times in a row- nothing ever came through, of course.

But rumor had it that in the Sith Academy, sometimes something did.)

"I can only fight so many wars at once," she snaps. "I'm busy enough trying to keep his children from killing me, and he could have let Arcann do so at least once already. I've no choice but to tolerate him- for now, at least."

"Like the Minister wanted to help? Like Hunter?"

Her lip curls. "Shut up."

"As you wish. Your control block will help for the time being." Snapping his fingers, he gestures away from her as a glowing outline forms on a far wall. "But he will keep trying until he finds a weakness he can exploit. I can- how did we used to say it?-" he considers for a moment- "run interference, but I thought it better that I make you aware of it first."

"Now you decide to ask permission?"

Another shrug. 'I'm strictly digital. His magics cannot hurt me, and his pursuit of me might give you some respite."

"No." She shakes her head immediately, not even allowing herself time to consider. "If you're in here forever, so be it, but I won't give you free rein of the place. I learned that lesson well enough the first time."

Damn him. The implant has to stay- she and Lokin discussed it years ago and agreed there was too much risk of damaging her spinal cord to remove it, and even knowing what he's done she'd rather risk a continued mental stowaway than permanent paralysis. But she trusted him once, more fool her, and now her head's even more crowded than she'd thought.

"The offer remains. If you wish to reconsider-" another gesture, the outline broadening into a door- "I will be here. I will always be here."

She takes a few steps toward it, her footprints leaving bright marks behind her on the ground. "Noted."

"Then farewell for now, Cipher Nine." His outline's starting to fade as the door opens, a shadow against the growing light. "And don't be too angry when you awaken. Your lover means well. But he doesn't know what this place is to you."

The brightness catches her, an irresistible pull forward even as she startles and tries to turn back toward him. "What do you-"

For a moment she is falling- or flying, she's not sure which, weightless and graceful and haloed in the glow until she has to shut her eyes against it before it burns them out entirely. Someone's calling her, somewhere far away.

Come on, Nine. Wake up. Please wake up.

She opens her eyes.

She opens her eyes.

For the first few seconds they won't focus and all she can make out is a shape moving in front of her.

"It's been two hours, and she's still out." Theron's facing away from her, jacket off, shirtsleeves pushed up to his elbows, pacing back and forth between her and a hovering holoprojector; his incessant motion makes if difficult to see past him to whomever he's speaking to. She blinks, once and then again, as the room takes shape- industrial and sparse, ferrocrete walls and a corrugated metal roof. Too clean to be Dynamet. Where are they? "I don't have a scanner here, but it's not infection. None of the raks got that close to us, and I checked her skin once we got here. She was fine and then her nose started bleeding and then she just dropped-"

"Theron." Lana glances past Theron as he moves out of the way, eyes meeting hers, and cuts in with one hand raised.

If he heard Lana he doesn't show it, still pacing. "-and I can get her back to the ship, but if she doesn't wake up I-"

"Theron."

"-don't know what else I can do besides-"

"Theron, would you stop?" Clapping her hands sharply together, Lana sighs at him as he finally stops pacing. "She's awake."

He startles and spins around abruptly, crouching down beside her cot (familiar, somehow, tucked back against a wall, the angles of the ceiling above pinging off a memory she can't pin down) as she glances around the room and starts to try to sit up. She's barely dressed, just her shirt and underclothes. What-

"Wait," he says, "go slow. Are you dizzy at all?"

"No. I'm-"

I'm losing it, she doesn't say. I've just spent the last Force knows how long talking to the AI living in my spine about the ghost living in my head. Never better.

"I'm fine." As she says it Lana looks at her skeptically and Theron steadies her with one hand, helping her into a seated position; there's a streak of dry blood across his forearm and a dark blotch on the front of his shirt. "I just fainted, I think. Give me a moment and I'll be ready to go."

"If you're sure, Comman- Nine." Lana sounds as doubtful as she looks, but does manage to catch herself on the title. "Another run-in with Valkorion?"

She nods and Theron looks at her sidelong, a flicker of surprise and something else she can't quite read in his eyes. She should have told him sooner- no one else knew but Lana, even now, but he didn't know that; she can feel the hurt radiating off him that she'd kept it hidden, just for a second, before he tamps it down and turns back toward Lana's image.

But there wasn't anything to be done for it. He'll only worry that much more, and he worries enough already.

"Crisis averted." He shrugs an apology at the holo. "Sorry for pulling you out of the meeting. I just wasn't sure if-"

"It's fine, Theron. You were right to call." Rolling her shoulders backward until one cracks audibly, Lana stands up straighter. "Will you be heading back to Alderaan now, then?"

She nods. "As soon as we're back to the ship from wherever this place is. We've got what we came for. If I hadn't-" she gestures vaguely toward herself in lieu of words, wrinkles her nose in irritation at herself- "we'd have been gone already."

"Let me know if I can assist. Oggurobb's asking for more supplies again, so I'm sure I can twist his arm a bit if you need to co-opt some of the research equipment- metaphorically speaking, I mean." Lana's smile rather suggests a more literal approach. "But until I hear differently, I'll plan for our usual update tomorrow."

As she and Theron nod again, Lana waves and disconnects the call. She tries to push herself back up off the cot; her legs seem mostly steady, and with Theron's hand still on her shoulder she manages to stand with minimal wobbling. "Was I really out for hours? I must've hit my head pretty hard on the way down, or-"

"You didn't," he says. "You were still right beside me. I caught you- well, you and the sample box, but then you seized, Nine, and I couldn't get it to stop."

She blinks. No wonder she's still so fucking out of it, and- she wrinkles her nose. That would explain the acrid odor, as well. Lovely.

"Finally I remembered I had a dose of sedative in my medkit. That helped, but… " Theron frowns. "Seriously? You tell me it's nothing and next thing you're-"

She takes a step forward, out of his reach. "It was nothing. Just the nosebleeds, that's all it's ever been. I've never had a seizure in my life."

"Well, you have now."

"Apparently."

Behind her, he sighs. "Sorry. I'm not angry, I just-"

"I'd certainly hope you're not," she snaps, "given that it's completely out of my control."

"You know that wasn't what I- oh, damn it-" She's nearly to the doorway- out to the main area of the building by the look of the room beyond- when he finally catches her hand in his and tries to hold her still. "I was afraid you weren't going to wake up, okay? Or you weren't going to wake up… well, you. "

"But I did. And I'm fine now. Still me."

Theron shakes his head at that, but if he had a clever reply he doesn't say it. After a moment, he takes a deep breath. "Will you at least sit for a little while longer? We ended up with a big pack chasing us on the way here, and you might need to gun while I drive."

"You can ride gunner, if you're worried about my aim," she says, pausing as he laces his fingers through hers; she'd have pulled away again if it was anyone else, but there's a sweet affection in the gesture that stops her and makes her turn back toward him. "I'll drive."

"Nice try. You drive like a maniac at the best of times, let alone postictal. I'm driving." He reaches up. At first she thinks it's to trace along her cheekbone, one of his usual gestures when he's trying to soothe her temper, but he stops at the neckline of her undershirt, at a scattering of droplets beneath one strap. "Once we get you cleaned up. I washed your armor, and I thought I'd gotten most of the blood off you while you were out, but it looks like I missed some."

"It does have a tendency to get everywhere." Though she doesn't remember it being quite so bad- it must have started up again during the seizure.

Seizure. Shit. If it happens again, if she's alone in the field-

It won't. It can't.

Shoving the thought aside, she turns back toward the main room. "Is there a refresher here, whatever we are?"

Theron nods. "No hot water, though. This place was decommissioned years ago. Honestly, I was a little surprised it still had power, but it was the closest quasi-secure building to the hospital that I had on my map. Before they shut it down, it was an-"

She steps through the doorway and the memory breaks on her like a sunrise and she knows this place, she knows it: a round table in the room's center with her armor and their gear and the sample box laid out atop it, four chairs, a few empty shelves. Three more doors just like this one- two across the way, one to her left on the wall she's passing through. An entrance corridor, further left. To the far right, the 'fresher with its door standing open, once-white tile grimy with years of neglect but water beaded on the floor where he must have rinsed her things, drain in the back corner like every other 'fresher in a prefab building like this one-

If she looks hard enough, she almost imagines her own bloody footprints, a lurid line across the threshold from tile to cold duracrete.

So that was what Watcher X meant.

-"old SIS safehouse," he finishes.

(She knows.

It's just that her room was opposite this one; she hadn't placed it at first because she was used to seeing its reverse when she opened her eyes. The room Theron put her in, the cot she'd slept off the sedative on, had been Chance's.

The one next to hers was Hunter's.)

She inhales- one, two, three, four- and holds the breath in, filling her lungs, keeps counting and lets it out slowly, slowly, slowly. "I know. I've been here before."

"You-" The catch in his voice is audible, and when she looks back over her shoulder at him he's gone still and tense, jaw set and teeth clenched. "Oh, fuck me running. This place would still have been an active site back then."

"Yes," she says, and takes another few steps toward the open refresher door because the alternative is to keep moving away forever and she's so, so tired of living that way. "Do you remember the night before we hit the Hoth fortress? You woke me up from a bad dream, and we spent the rest of the night talking about it?"

He nods.

Her bare feet leave marks in the dust as she crosses the threshold, turning fully around- as she does she could swear there's a glint of glass from beneath the drain grate and stars, that'd figure after ten whole years; Republic cleaners always were shitty at their jobs- and raises her right arm out straight in front of her to chest height, palm upturned.

Theron blanches, presses one hand to his mouth. Clearly, he remembers.

"I didn't know." His voice is muffled behind his hand. "I promise you, I didn't know. Let's just go. The speeder's right outside the entrance. If we run, the raks might not get scent of us until we're already moving."

"You couldn't have known." She lowers her arm. "There must be a dozen safehouses on Taris."

"Fifteen," he mutters. "Counting the decommissioned ones. But I should have-"

Forcing her pulse into regular time, her breathing to ease, she closes her eyes as a whisper starts to build in the back of her head. Oh, Cipher. Such a-

She pushes it away. No. They're dead. Hunter's dead, and Watcher X is dead, and Valkorion is dead, and her body is hers. She locked that door a long time ago and threw the key into the Void. She will not be a puppet. Not again.

No, she snarls, silent, and the voice goes quiet.

"You couldn't have known, Theron," she says again. "But you're right. I ought to get cleaned up."

Before he can stop her she presses two fingers against the panel to activate the water.

It's as cold as she remembers, the stream fast and heavy, shocking her into alertness as it hits her skin.

"What are you-" Startled into motion by her audible gasp, Theron crosses the rest of the room in three steps and stands in the doorway, reaching his hand in to try to move hers off the panel as she keeps hers stubbornly in place. "Are you crazy? I told you, there isn't hot water. You'll freeze."

Pulling her undershirt over her head, she looks down at the smear of blood running angled along her chest. She ought to clean her clothes, too, soiled with blood and worse; they'll be back to the ship soon enough. What's an hour's discomfort, bare beneath her armor? She drops the shirt at her feet and unclasps her bra and slides her underpants down over her hips and lets them all sit in a heap beside her feet, water soaking into them. "I'm not crazy. You know I'm not."

"Of course you aren't. That wasn't-" Alarm flashing across his face, he reaches toward the panel again- that wasn't what he meant to say and she knows it as well as he does, but it still stings when the voices in her head are actually real.

(This time around, at least.

Or maybe she is crazy. Maybe all of them are. Given those options, she hopes the voices are real.)

"Please," Theron says, trying to nudge her hand down with his. "That's good enough, Nine. You can finish up shipboard."

She doesn't move. "It isn't so bad once you're used to it," she says, teeth chattering, and watches the blood trickle down her body to disappear down the drain, "and I can always turn it off when I want to. Can't I?"

He looks down, watching the water swirl around her feet, and then turns silently and walks out of her line of sight; she can hear his footsteps echo across the room. After a long moment, as the water starts to run clear as she rubs at her skin with one fisted hand, she can see him again, standing just outside the door with the cot's fitted bedsheet held out toward her.

He just stands there, holding the impromptu towel, until she's finished.

When she finally shuts the water off and the last drops fall from the nozzle overhead, Theron waits for her to move, waits for her to take the first steps out of the 'fresher into the room, and when she does he wraps her up in the sheet, arms around her body, until she's warm again.

"Come on." He looks down at her, chin resting atop her sodden hair, her face nestled into his neck. "Let's get out of here."

This time, she nods.

"Okay."