A/N: Somehow, it's Tuesday again. Chap 45 review responses are in my forums like normal. The end is fast approaching.
Chapter Forty-Six: Selflessness
Taylor's expanded Tinker Lab in the JORD headquarters rang with the sound of metal on metal. Four separate construction droids, each powered by their own molecular furnaces which also converted raw material into usable parts, were quickly and efficiently assembling canine-like hunter/seeker droids.
Two larger ones were working on the containment unit they hoped to use on Crawler, a powerful brute and changer who could adapt to any threat. If a weapon or power didn't kill him immediately, he'd become impervious to it by the second or third shot. It's why he didn't look even remotely human any more.
And Taylor?
Taylor ran.
The afternoon following their briefing, when Horizon received the official approval to make plans to take out the Slaughterhouse Nine, Taylor skipped dinner with her teammates and ran. A few of Scapetti's people ran in the evening as well for their PT, but she left them far behind as she drew deeply on the Force to speed her steps.
Running became a form of meditation for her. The pumping of her arms and the steady stride of her legs became automatic as her mind drifted on the tides of the Force. As she ran, the Force spoke to her, showing her things from her past and the present.
"Denny hit me for no reason!" Taylor was four, and crying with a bloody nose and a bruise on her cheek. Denny, a year older but half her size, lay on his mother's lap sniffing from an even worse pummeling. She'd knocked out one of his baby teeth.
"Who would want to be friends with a loser like you?" Emma sneered as she said it, while behind her the taller, intimidating Sophia laughed.
"That's a hell of a big gamble," the older man with the heavy, ugly features said over a glass of 15-year-old Scotch. Across the table along a back porch overlooking a grassy lawn that led to the banks of a tree-lined river, a young-looking Hispanic woman with a horrendous scar across her left eye sipped her own. Another man, perhaps forty but slim and fit, with wind-swept auburn hair, shrugged.
"This whole thing has been a crap shoot," said the man who, in costume, led the Protectorate. He looked at the woman who, in costume was Alexandria, but out of it was Rebecca Costa-Brown, the head of the PRT. "What does our thinker say?"
"That we can't win with what we have," Costa-brown said. "That our only hope is to find the silver bullet. And Contessa believes it's this girl."
The man with the heavy, ugly features who had to be Eidolon, downed his whiskey. "Then here's to hoping she figures her shit out. I'll be on stand by the moment it goes to shit."
The vision blurred. She was inside her house, but before it was refurbished—still a filthy, run-down former church.
"I can't make that," Yuki said from the edge of the balcony as she looked down at Taylor. Her voice shook with fear.
"Then I'll catch you," Taylor told her.
She ran. The sun set over the ocean to the west. A particularly bright star hung on the horizon, and Taylor knew it was the Simurgh. Watching. Waiting.
Still she ran and ran some more. She stopped drawing on the Force to replenish herself because she wanted and needed the physical exhaustion. She needed to see; she needed to understand. How did she gain these powers? Why did she have all the memories of a long-dead Bendu master except the one memory she needed to have most?
Her knees buckled and she collapsed into the grass beside the running path. She rolled to a stop and just laid in the dirt, staring up at the first glimmers of stars while her chest struggled to grasp air. It was a rare, cloudless night.
In a home just a few miles south of where she lay, she had teammates who had become close friends and even family. She had a hard time imagining her life without Sarah or LaDonna; without Dinah or Rory or Campanile with his ridiculous bulge and mommy issues.
During those horrid, dark months after she lost everything, she'd never imagined how much she could gain. And now she stood to lose it all again, because she didn't know what she was supposed to do to save those she loved.
The Force flowed through her. No more visions came, just the soothing waves of life and energy that washed away her exhaustion. She let her fear and anguish go as well, like dropping crumbs into the sea. Little by little, until she felt balanced.
Ready.
She walked back toward the compound. It took almost an hour; she didn't bother rushing. The night felt warm and soothing; and it gave time for the sweat to dry from her clothes. She smelled cigarette smoke and sensed a familiar presence long before she saw Scapetti by the north gate. He was leaning on one of the sentry posts, smoking his Marlborough's.
"Quite the run there, kid," he said calmly. "I've seen you do twenty miles before, but not that fast. You good?"
"Yeah." She smiled at the man, who in his vast 29 years of life had decided he was everyone's dad. "I''ll be okay. Long day tomorrow."
"Yeah. But a good one. A long time coming, if you ask me. So go get some sleep, or meditate, or whatever you do."
"You too, Scapetti."
Once she was inside the perimeter, Scapetti closed the gate and activated the security sentries. Taylor started down the sidewalk that ran from the JORD command center to the housing district. Well, soon-to-be district. So far, hers was the only completed house. But they were building more homes for Horizon and her husband, Triumph and Dinah (when she wasn't snuggled up with Taylor), and any of the PRT folks who wanted to live close to work.
She slipped into the garage entrance. She considered going down to the lab to check on her personal projects. Instead, she decided to shower and go to bed. It was late enough, and the following day would be long and hard enough, that everyone should have been in bed. Which was why she was surprised to find Sarah in the dining room, waiting for her. She had a small glass of amber fluid in hand.
"I won't be curing any hangovers tomorrow," Taylor said with a wry smile.
"Yeah you will," Sarah said with a tired grin.
Taylor sat down beside her. "Yeah, I probably will." She took the glass and had a sip. It burned smoothly down her throat as she handed it back. "Underage drinking. We should be ashamed."
Insight snorted. "All things considered, that's nothing. I mean, Siberian is William Manton. And all the Case 53s are because of a shadowy conspiracy that the Triumvirate not only knew about, but were an active part of. And after today I'm fairly certain that Costa-Brown is actually Alexandria in surprise."
Having met them both, Taylor just nodded. "Yup. Better yet, she knows I know."
Sarah took another sip, and then turned away to wipe an eye with the heal of her hand. "Overused my power today."
Without a word, Taylor reached across to place her hand on Sarah's forehead, only for Sarah to hold her hand and stop her.
"I need the pain," Sarah whispered, her voice catching a little. It was odd to hear her voice Taylor's own earlier thoughts. "Maybe tomorrow, when it's time to work. But right now, I need the pain. I've earned it."
Taylor nodded, accepting her friend's request without question. Sarah did, however, continue to hold her hand. "Dinah confirmed everything. She says there's a better than 80% chance the world ends tomorrow. It came out of the blue, she said. Last week it was only 15%. Now? Even if we don't attack, there's a 98% chance the Slaughterhouse Nine comes for us within the year. After we took out the Blasphemies last month, we're too big a threat now for them to ignore."
And wasn't that a fight.
Her fingers squeezed Taylor's, who squeezed right back. "The Force is with us," she said.
"You know that makes no sense, right?"
Taylor chuckled. "It doesn't have to make sense. I have lightsabers."
Sarah's laugh sounded desperate and terrified and hysterical. And when it was over, she was blinking back tears.
"You know I love you, right? I mean, not physical or anything because that's fucking gross. But like a sister?"
"Yeah. I love you too."
"Good. So, as a sister, I gotta tell you. Yuki was released from rehab and enrolled in the Wards this afternoon. Clean bill of health, under psychiatric care. She came, introduced herself to everyone, and is upstairs in your bedroom."
Taylor's chest felt tight. "I don't…"
Sarah squeezed her hand and downed her drink. "Taylor, I know she's still fucked up. And I know whatever you two had was broken from the beginning. You wanted your Emma back. And she needed a personal god to worship. This morning proved where on the boy-girl spectrum your tastes actually fall. But I also know she still means something to you."
She met Taylor's black eyes squarely. "The world's gonna probably die tomorrow. And if I only had one night left, and I didn't have a power that fucked it all up for me, I'd wanna spend it in someone's arms. She's not perfect; she's just what you've got."
With that, Sarah stood and walked away into the shadows of the house to head upstairs.
Opening herself in the Force, Taylor could feel the achingly familiar Force presence upstairs. With feet that felt oddly heavy, she followed Sarah up the stairs to the second floor bedrooms. Her door was open, but only one of the lamps on either side was one.
She stepped into the room, and there was Yuki, waiting for her.
Her hair was styled differently, Taylor saw immediately. The formerly long, silky black locks were shorter, now, with a curl at the ends. She'd bleached one thick strand, so it looked like she had a streak of white from the right side of her hairline that made her look a little older.
She no longer looked skeletal; instead her skin looked mostly clear and healthy, and she'd obviously resumed her exercises. In the Force, she felt stronger but still unbalanced. Fearful.
Yuki rose to her feet from the corner of the bed a split-second before Taylor stepped in. She'd dressed in simple summer shorts and a light green blouse. She'd discarded her shoes and clutched her hands together in front of her almost compulsively while biting her lower lip.
Taylor could see old, healed track marks on the inside of both arms.
"Hi," Yuki said simply.
Her round, porcelain-doll face was as beautiful as ever; her dark eyes shimmering on the edge of tears. "How are you?" Taylor asked. Her voice sounded odd, like it belonged to someone else.
"I'm okay, I think," Yuki said. "I…I got to meet Alexandria today, when I enrolled. She said you guys were going after the Slaughterhouse Nine tomorrow."
"Yeah."
"I…I'd like to come. Back up, maybe? I think…I've had a lot of time to meditate. It's what got me through withdrawal. And the Force…it's telling me I need to be with you now."
Taylor wanted to ask if it was the Force telling her that, or Yuki's own desire. But she realized in the end it wouldn't matter. The Force was with her, Taylor could feel it.
"Okay."
"Good. Thanks!" A spark of her old frantic energy shone for just a moment before she bit it back viciously. She pulled her own fingers.
"So, I guess, I'll…see you tomorrow?"
She moved slowly toward the space between Taylor and the wall, as if to leave. She took small steps, as if her feet weighed a ton each. She forced a sickly smile and kept her shimmering eyes dry as she moved to leave.
In that moment, Taylor realized that Sarah was right. Yuki wasn't perfect; they would never work as a couple long term. But in a way, Sarah was also wrong. Yuki was not all Taylor had. Taylor had a family now. She had Dinah and Sarah herself, Mujaji and Flechette. Campanile and Triumph were like their awkward big brothers. She had a family.
No, Yuki wasn't all Taylor had. But at that moment Taylor knew that she was all Yuki herself had. And when Taylor reached out an arm to block her and pull her toward her, Yuki began crying. She collapsed into Taylor's arms, all strength and pretense gone. With the Force, Taylor closed and locked the door, and then lifted the petite young woman in her arms.
"I hate the furniture," Yuki said with a tremulous laugh as Taylor laid her in bed.
"I know," Taylor said. "I don't want to make love to you, Yuki. I never enjoyed that. Right now, I just want to be held. I don't want you to be my girlfriend or my love. I want you to be my friend. My sister."
Yuki sniffed and nodded. "Anything. Anything for you, Taylor."
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Master Ouria stared intently at the leviathan they'd captured. Its body shimmered in and out of their visible dimension in a scintillating, serpentine rope of colors that spanned the entire length of the chamber. All around the fourteen-kilometer long interior, massive gravity-well projectors, shield array emitters and the newest tool, the omnispatial sinks, created a pocket of space that not even one of the leviathans could escape from.
The sinks were a product of an Infected engineer; the science such none could understand it nor duplicate it. If the Infected engineer died, they would lose the means of capturing such creatures. Yet if they'd had such tools earlier, they might have been able to combat the beasts more effectively than burning their own worlds.
Master Dardell stood beside her, his large compound eyes staring intently at the creature with far more spectra seen than she could ever imagine. He was a Duros—the very last of his kind. Just as Ouria was the very last Dathomiri.
There were so many lasts around them.
"Master Szint-iss was successful," Dardell said. "The leviathan turned on its own kind, killing four before it was, in turn, killed."
"The beasts are vastly intelligent, but not wholly sentient," Ouria noted. "Szint-iss was at peace? She attained balance?"
"She did," Dardell said. "Trandoshans, of course, cannot smile. But she exulted as she became one with the Force. Already another leviathan has been captured in the Hunter craft; this one shall be mine."
After almost two centuries of life, Ouria no longer viewed death as an enemy to be feared. The grief she felt was wholly her own. For Dardell was the last of her padawan class to live—the last friend from a childhood centuries past.
Duros were not physical creatures; Bendu were not emotive beings. And yet he did not protest, and she did not speak, when she knelt down so that she might hug her long-time friend.
"I shall see you again in the Force, my dearest friend."
"In the Force, all things are possible." Wiry arms returned her hug before he stepped back. "Because of you, Master Ouria, we give hope to other galaxies. They will never know what we do for them; which makes ours a true act of love. In all things, I wish you balance."
He bowed deeply to her from the waist, as a pupil might to a teacher. She returned the same gesture. Having said their last words, the last Duros left the last Dathomiri and walked calmly toward a waiting shuttle.
Ouria herself glanced once more at the leviathan—her leviathan—before making her way to the command deck of the Hunter ship.
Those around her bowed in silent respect; aware of who she was and what was going to happen. Some reached out a hand—not to shake or greet. Simply to touch. And with each, she responded in kind; lacing her fingers into theirs so that they might feel another again. A spark of hope.
All those on board the massive craft were Infected. There were no more non-infected sentient beings left in the galaxy. Then again, the galaxy itself was nearly destroyed. It was easier for the navigation droids to estimate the number of intact stars than those destroyed either by Leviathans or the collapsing Republic remnant that fought them.
Never was this more apparent than when she reached the command deck and saw her last padawan standing by the captain, studying a holo projection of the galaxy itself. Entire arms of the spiral had gone dark, reduced either to clouds of dust or white dwarfs lingering after the artificially induced novas and supernovas.
Nine hundred trillion sentient beings were dead; tens of thousands of worlds in tens of thousands of star systems obliterated by one side or the other. And now the leviathans were coming for them—the remnant fleet that flew on the edge of the galaxy. They were trapped, lacking the resources to span the great void between galaxies, but with nowhere else to go.
And so they fought with this last, desperate plan that Ouria herself developed.
"Antigonal has fallen, Master," Hieshia said. She was a human girl, born in the fleet to infected parents. Her infection had not evidenced abilities yet, but it was only a matter of time.
"Master Goaen?"
The captain cleared his throat. Being Bothan, the sound reminded her faintly of a barking animal. "Twelve leviathans died, Master, with no sign of him or his Chosen. We have to assume he was successful."
"Indeed." Ouria looked out across the deck, to the pin-pricks of light that were the remnant fleet. Two hundred and thirty-three thousand ships with the last remnants of the galaxy's sentient beings housed within. Whole generations were born without having ever known the light of a star or the feel of soil under their feet, outside the agricultural ships.
"Master?"
Ouria turned to see that Hieshia had drifted close. She was young, barely sixteen standard years of age. Petite of build with honey-colored hair and the piercing green eyes common to the humans of Adoban III, the young padawan struggled to contain her fear and anguish.
"Balance, child," Ouria said softly. "In all things, seek balance."
"But…I'm…it's so much to ask."
Ouria pulled the human to her. Over Hieshia's head, she watched as the Bothan, Trevesk, nodded to her and left to give them privacy.
"What we do, we do for life itself," Ouria whispered into the girl's hair. "It has always been this way; some die so that others may live. Our time has passed. It saddens me that you were born into this time, that you don't have more time to live and love. And yet, you will also take part in the greatest gift the universe has ever seen. The gift of life."
Heshia hugged her master desperately. "You're talking about life, but you're going to die! Just like mother and father! You say I have to die too! Where's the life? It's not fair!"
"No, child, it's not," Ouria agreed. She ran a hand through the young girl's hair. "It's not fair. You've had far more suffering than happiness. But all things pass into the Force. We are all allotted our time, and it is how we live, and how we die, that is important."
She pulled the girl back and stared down at Taylor. "It is not right that you should have had so little time. But in what we do, we give untold trillions the hope to someday live as we were denied; we give them the hope of happiness or sorrow, birth and death. They shall grow or wither as their own natures decree, and not at the whim of soulless abominations. In all my years—in all the annals and holocrons of the Bendu and Jedi that preceded us, I can think of no greater achievement. And so I will go, and when there are no masters left, the padawans will go. And by doing so, we will stop the scourge here before it can spread. And we do this, Taylor Hebert, for love. We do this for you."
She stepped back from Taylor and bowed from the waist, as if she were not Taylor's master. Taylor returned the gesture, weeping unabashedly.
"How am I even here?"
"In the Force, all things are possible," Ouria said. "Come. See."
The two walked side by side past the command deck. The entirety of the ship consisted of the frame for the systems that captured and imprisoned the leviathan. Everything else was just hypermatter reactors, fusion generators, and the command deck.
The two walked down a long flight of stairs since the ship was built so hastily they didn't bother with turbolifts where it was possible to avoid them. They reached a platform that projected out into the leviathan chamber itself.
"Stay here, my final padawan," Ouria said. "Watch, learn. Understand. For when your time comes."
Taylor nodded, wiped her eyes, and watched as the ancient Dathomiri walked steadily down the long flight of stairs until she reached the platform. The entity before her was so vast it looked as if she were walking toward a mountain or the prow of another Hunter ship, instead of a single living being.
She reached the center of the platform within a pocket of atmosphere and easily sank down into a cross-legged position.
In the Force, Taylor watched as the Leviathan responded with an avatar. The image was beautiful—a silver Dathomiri woman who looked just like Ouria's own mother all those centuries ago. She hovered in the air in front of Ouria, smiling beneficently. Her silver eyes, though, were as empty as the void between galaxies.
"I bear within myself a shard of your brethren," Ouria said aloud. "An administration shard. I have given it centuries of information and experience. I have trained it in the Force, and have become the most powerful of my kind because of it. Take it, and it shall make you stronger for your next cycle. I give this to you, freely. Take it, and you shall be free. You know the truth of my words."
"YOU THINK WE DO NOT SEE?"
Taylor fell to her knees, sobbing as the power of the Leviathan's communication swept through her mind.
On the platform, Ouria winced but made no other show of discomfort. "Do you not see what the Force could do for you?"
"YOU WOULD DESTROY US."
"How? I will be dead. My kind die, your kind ascend. It is our time. This way, a small part of me and what I can offer will live on in you. You will be my child, in a sense. What I do; what I offer, I do so out of love."
The silver avatar frowned; for all its many cognition powers, the creature did not know how to regulate the features of its avatar and had no concept of emotion. It could predict behaviors of sentient beings, but never understand why. Or, it did not care to.
It waived a lazy silver hand, as if swatting an insect, and Master Ouria's head exploded in a shower of goo that sprayed across the platform. Her body tumbled over, continuing to pump blood across the silvery durasteel platform for a brief second. In the air before the avatar, a spot of light hung motionless, visible only because of the Force. Taylor stared at the light, fascinated and horrified, as the avatar grabbed it and absorbed it into itself. And in that moment, Abaddon was created.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
In the vast void between galaxies, in a darkness and cold that hovered near the absolute absence of energy, Taylor floated beside a perfect, silver replica of a young Ouria. She held Taylor's hands as they watched the two entities swimming through the Void toward a distant Milky Way Galaxy.
One or two other entities escaped the final death of the galaxy; escaped the artificial cascading of the supermassive black holes that the Remnant used to collapse the entirety of the galaxy in a last-ditch effort to save the rest of the Universe from this scourge. Yet for all their work, four entities escaped; four monsters, and a single entity that was different. An entity that Cauldron called Abaddon.
"That's how you did it," Taylor said in a thick, cracking voice. "You sacrificed yourselves."
"Yes." Ouria's avatar had little of the warmth of the living being of Taylor's memories. "Heishia did as well—all the last of the Bendu, be they masters, knights or padawans—sacrificed themselves to turn the leviathans against each other. It was those turned creatures that held most of the others within the galaxy when it died. And it was Ouria's leviathan that escaped to pursue those others, and to give any new worlds that fell victim the key to defend themselves if it failed."
"Me."
The silvery being met her gaze squarely. "You. You bear Ouria's power; her memories; her shard. She imparted everything she could into it, to give your world every advantage she could. She did all this, knowing it was her death."
"And now it's my death," Taylor said. "I have to die for this to work."
"Yes," the Avatar said. It was not Ouria—it was the imprint of her within Abaddon. Within the shard of her Force power itself. "That was always your destiny, Taylor Hebert. You shall die; and in so doing you shall save your world. It is a hard burden to bear; which is why it fell to the strongest of shoulders."
"So there's no hope for me? No choice?"
The avatar stared at her, the hint of a smile on her silver lips. "In the Force, all things are possible. And for love, all things can be given. Whom do you love, child? And what would you sacrifice to keep them safe?"
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Taylor woke quietly. No gasp, no jerking motions. She simply opened her eyes.
Yuki was sprawled half over her, just like they used to sleep when it was just the two of them in a cot, struggling to stay warm in a dilapidated old church. Glancing to the clock on the wall opposite, she saw it was almost seven.
They were shipping out for Nebraska in twenty minutes.
Using the Force to steady her former lover, Taylor slipped out of the bed. She showered quickly before pulling on the black body glove for her armor. The rest was already in the VTOL.
She walked back out and leaned over the bed, gently tracing Yuki's hair. "You are so fucked up, you know that?" she whispered. "I don't even like girls. And I…" She stopped, afraid she might sob if she continued. Instead, she leaned forward and gently kissed Yuki's temple.
"I love you," she said simply. "Even after everything, I'll do it. For you. For Dinah. For my new family."
Yuki remained asleep, snoring lightly, as Taylor walked downstairs before leaving the house with her teammates. Only when the roar of the VTOL living off made the walls of the converted church shake did Yuki open her eyes and curl into a fetal ball, crying so hard the ragged sound made her chest hurt.
As the VTOL lifted off, Yuki sat up in bed. She didn't stop sobbing until she felt the air change around her. She looked up in confusion, no longer alone.