Chapter Nine: In Which Daegen Discovers He Owes Cake
Looming invasions were a nuisance, Shae decided. She could have been spending her time productively, observing the recently hatched saarl young and their mother, but no. Some stupid horrible space-imperialists were going to insist on being horrible space-imperialists and that meant she had to spend more time on practicing sword-fighting.
Not that she was bad at it, but it was not her primary interest. It had been occasionally useful before, but nevertheless, she had not intended to devote herself to the way of a warrior. And now the choice had been taken from her.
Not to mention, the energy-blade thing was just plain weird. A number of smiths had forged themselves more complex swords, with a collapsible blade which once unfolded would be engulfed in energy so that they didn't have to relearn the balance of their blade. But building one like that required more skill in metal-working than Shae and many others possessed, which meant they all had to build the ones made just of energy.
Handling them was odd—there was no weight where there should be, but on the other hand, she and the crystal were bonded in the Force. With every swing, every moment she spent handling the blade, it was growing easier. There were moments when it felt like she and the blade were one. Letting another build a sword for her would perhaps not be unthinkable, but not the choice she'd make.
She wondered if Xesh missed his sword. But then it wasn't like they could give it back to him just yet—there was no telling how he'd react to so many situations. It was simply better if they did not take the risk.
She took a sip of water and sat down to watch the others practice while she rested.
Shara, who had taught Shae about probability and statistics, was facing another cathar—a man younger than her. They moved with graceful litheness, and one could almost forget that this was combat practice and not a dance. It stood in stark opposition to a trio consisting of a Tythonian native, a togrutan woman—who was probably Sek'nos's cousin—and a heavy-set iktotchi man, who Shae recalled as the person who could eat most cakes in an hour in their Temple. Despite the disparity in size, it was the tythan who was winning—their small size made them a hard target to hit, and they kept on bouncing like a very energetic ball. With an energy sword.
Similar scenes were happening all over Tython. People getting ready to defend their homes, their lives. It would be a lie if she'd said that it did not scare her. It did. How could one system discourage a whole empire, comprising so many systems, from ever invading them again?
After all, if they had found them once, they would be able to do it again.
But it was not the only thing that was bothering her. There was too little of them to make a difference, but this should not be the case. They didn't have ships that could bring them outside of their system in a reasonable time-frame, one that would allow them to accomplish anything. And there were so many people out there, who were either already enslaved or would become so, in the coming years.
Then, there were the sleeper ships with their frozen crews. Had they unknowingly sent them to their doom?
There was no answer for her questions, just like there was nothing anyone of them could do right now to stop the Infinite Empire.
Shae had been acting strangely during this visit—she had asked Xesh if he was tired and if he was feeling well several times, and he could sense something was worrying her. Something that had to do with him, and if he had told her everything was fine, it'd just make her worry more. And if he told her the truth that would also make her worry more.
Really, what was the use of being taught how to kill others nearly in one's sleep, when something like this made him feel so utterly helpless? He rubbed his wrist absent-mindedly, as he tried to think of something to say.
"You look tired," she said.
He was tired and couldn't really deny that. "It's nothing. Just a bad dream."
Shae gave him a rather sceptical look. Which probably was well-deserved, since saying it was 'just' a bad dream was a monstrous understatement.
"Make it a really bad one," he said. "I couldn't sleep later. I… didn't really want to either."
He swallowed, but saying anything more suddenly seemed quite impossible. It was as if talking had opened a gate in his head, and the fear was back again, making him feel almost sick.
"I'm right here with you," Shae said.
It didn't banish the fear completely, but he managed to push it back and focus on her presence instead of the dream. He reached out to take her hand following a half-forgotten impulse. Her fingers were warm, and her grip a reassuring anchor to the now.
"Do you want to tell me about it?" she asked, after a moment. "You don't have to, but I'll listen. And you might feel better."
That didn't sound terribly likely—but then ignoring it and hoping it would go away hadn't been working at all either. So he closed his eyes and tried to make himself calm down enough to talk. In the end, he wasn't sure if he had managed or not, but he tried anyway.
"Imagine you're locked in the dark and there's a monster with you," he said. "It's hungry, but if you feed it bits of yourself, it will leave you alone. But then you're missing more and more of yourself, so you take the dark and try to replace what you've lost. And after some time, someone opens the door, and you realize that the darkness is the monster and you're a part of it now."
There had been a number of reasons why Daegen had avoided taking an apprentice for so long. Sitting in the desert, baking himself into understanding his own prophecy had been only one of them. Several of them had been things that he had hoped to avoid—and he had, mostly, given that for all his flaws, Xesh was unlikely to spontaneously revert back to teenagerhood.
Others, not so much.
"Here," he said, giving the boy some chocolate. It seemed to confuse him mostly, but then, what were teachers for if not to make one think? Having now made sure that niceties have been observed, he proceeded to move to the actual subject. "I think you have an idea what that means and therefore you'd rather not think about it."
Xesh, who—predictably—had started eating, now stopped and looked away. His hand moved to his forearm, but Shae intercepted it and squeezed his fingers.
"It's about me," he eventually said. "What I am. And you should stop bothering with me-"
"Stop," Daegen said, holding out his hand. Clearly, this was not going to be easy—they wouldn't neatly move to discussing what it meant, since the boy was clearly not fully capable of separating the meaning of the dream from his fear and guilt. "We will do no such thing."
"But-" Xesh started to protest.
"Child, whatever you did before you came here, you did not deserve what was done to you," Daegen said firmly. "Whatever you think, that dream does not mean you are beyond help, or a monster—if you really had been, that wouldn't worry you at all."
The boy gave him a startled look. Likely, the thought had not occurred to him. Well. Had it done so, perhaps he would have put some thought into figuring out what was going on in his head, instead of avoiding it.
"I thought it sounded vision-y," Shae said.
"Hm, yes," Daegen nodded. "It does. It's too coherent for a dream." He focused on Xesh again. "So, do you want to try again?"
"No," the boy replied quietly. "I don't think I can."
Which was fair enough. It did not sound like something that anyone would want to go back to. Although, to be fair, so did most things they had learned about his past so far. That, however, meant he was going to start dropping transparent hints.
"Hm, how would you describe the Empire you came from?" Daegen asked. If it had been his dream, he wouldn't have doubts, but with such subjective things as impressions in the Force, one had to be careful. "In the Force."
"Oh," Xesh said his eyes going wide. "That's how they taught me to use the Force. And what they make from it—it feeds on them and on us, and they feed on it, and it's- it's not what it should be."
As he spoke, there was a shift in the Force, like something lifting. The sense of wrongness was gone—Daegen could still sense fear and pain from Xesh, but those were simple reactions to trauma.
A piece of chocolate likely didn't cover something like this. Daegen probably owed him a cake now.
"Do you know when you were born?" Daegen asked Xesh, who stared at him blankly for a while. Shae was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that apparently, all they needed to do is convince Xesh he didn't need to hold onto what he'd been taught by the rakata and he'd just somehow move back to what a person should feel like in the Force. Well, now she was trying to wrap her head around that and how Daegen jumped from the previous subject to dates of birth.
"No," he said to the surprise of absolutely nobody. At least, not to Shae's and Daegen was not showing any either. "Humans generally don't remember being born, and even if they did, they don't learn to count until much later."
Shae had by now decided to label that kind of statement from him as 'defensive non-humour', and suspected this time it was an attempt to get Daegen to drop the topic. Which had absolutely no effect at all on the older man, who proceeded with all the subtlety of a boulder to the head. "Hm, people usually celebrate that day every year."
Xesh absolutely failed to even realize there were any dots, let alone that he was meant to connect them. Or perhaps they managed to sync perfectly and were engaging in a comedy show just for her.
Shae on the other hand was starting to grasp where Daegen was heading, and even possibly why he'd make the jump between subjects.
"Surviving another year can be an achievement," Xesh said solemnly. Then, his frown grew deeper. "In the Infinite Empire. If you're a slave. Or old. Or useless."
Daegen rubbed the bridge of his nose. "That... might be the origin of that particular custom. Surviving another year, I mean. As far as we can tell, it does date before antibiotics."
Shae started debating with herself internally in earnest, whether she should help him out and spell it out, or just wait and see how he'd do it. Compassion won in the end, and she said, "What Master Lok is trying to say is that since you don't know, you could just pick a day—like today. If you want to. You have to occasionally make allowances for him, since he's ancient and fried his brain."
"I believe one must make more allowances for your impatience, child," Daegen answered haughtily. "I had an intricate plan on how to explain this."
"Far am I from correcting you, but you were stumbling like a blind uxibeast," Shae shot back. "It was painful to watch."
Xesh gave them both a milder frown, and made a show of sitting down more comfortably on the pillows that had been scattered on the floor for them to sit on. Then, when they both looked at him, he said, "I'm deciding."
It sounded suspiciously like 'Go on'.
"He's learning," Daegen said. She thought his lips were twitching under the beard.
"I'm supposed to," Xesh replied maintaining an expression of perfect seriousness.
"Shush," Daegen said. "You're supposed to be thinking."
"You wouldn't know I'm learning, if I were quiet," Xesh replied.
Shae gave up then and started giggling.