A/N: Okay, I would like to say I sorry for the delay. I lost everything on my computer again and had to re-write this chapter. I also had surgery and couldn't use my left arm for a while, but that all still doesn't account for the huge lapse in time, I just felt defeated in terms of writing, and couldn't get the fire going, but now it's burning again so I hope you enjoy!
WARNING: This Chapter takes a darker turn near the end, and while there is nothing graphic, it could be upsetting to some readers. I won't give details, but it is a more mature in terms of content, It's not M, but it is a hard T in my opinion.
Disclaimer: Star Wars is owned by Disney and LucasFilm.
Chapter 11
Grunting as he fastened the two piece of metal together, Dral gave the new "tool" a tap on the floor of the cargo hold. He'd never been great shakes at making improvised tools or weapons, but knew Dathomir was rugged terrain and you needed or at the very least would prefer some sort of knife or machete in wild country like that, which he never really ever bother to acquire.
What he had here was a mongrel pieces of scrap metal he had found and bolted and welded together, it looked more like a meat clever than a proper tool. Cursing silently to himself, he started to dismantle it, ready for another attempt.
If he was honest with himself he didn't even want the damn thing, he was trying to keep his mind focused, because if he thought too much about what Zann did to him, what the Imperial Agent did to him, his current situation, he was bound to snap and start having various fits of rage. Last time he did that on this ship, Zeb had put him down pretty quickly.
It was more a matter of personal pride that he wanted to avoid another fight than anything. He'd been beaten down far too many times in the past few days for his liking, and in fact could only count one of his fights as an actual win.
Absentmindedly he reached up to the bandaged over where his right eye used to be. It had actually healed up, thanks to the drug that up jumped crime lord had given him. That meant that if he got a prosthetic the surgeon would have to reopen the wound.
Dral started grinding his teeth. He had never really controlled his temper all that well, but everything kept piling up on him, and he never got any help for it, and he didn't want it. As much as he hated everything that had happened to him, the idea of people seeing him as a victim, that was worse. The idea of pity and the shame that came with it, no he'd rather fight "The Shape" with a toothbrush than have that.
Looking back down at his lost cause of a tool, he decided to give it up for the day.
Leaning against the wall, he slumped to the ground and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, or he supposed eye now. His life had taken a turn for the worst ever sense he started to associate with these rebels. When he meet them he had his own ship, a piece of junk for sure but it was his, a small arsenal of weapons and tools and his right eye. All gone now, and even if they paid him what they promised, he might break even, but it still wouldn't undo the trauma and the pain.
Slamming his fist into the floor with a loud "THUNG" from the impact. If it were up to him he'd of bugged out by now, but he was tied to the fate of this Rebel cell, or at least to Ezra and Sabine's. But if this turned out to be a dead end, if there wasn't a cure at the end of trip or at least something to alleviate it, well he might just do all of them a favor and put them out of their misery. He'd seen people with defective immune system's, usually from something they picked up from some questionable activities, and the fact was if you didn't have the money to pay for extremely expensive medication that could keep you going, you would…well you wouldn't go out in a pretty way. Any minor infection or dieses would take you out.
He wasn't going to waste away like that if he could help it, he'd make sure of it. And if he could he's take Zann out with him.
Ezra had no idea it was possible to be in such close proximity to so many people and still feel so alone. He was responsible for his own circumstances as well as Sabine's. Dral too he supposed, but he was having a hard time feeling the same magnitude of sympathy for the bounty hunter as he did for Sabine. He own feeling for her aside, she was unequivocally more sympathetic than the crass and mean spirited Dral.
He had to come clean to Sabine about his role in this, Kanan and Hera already knew what he had done to Zann, which left only Sabine and Zeb. He had thought on it, and decided to tell Zeb first, for two major reasons. First he felt that Zeb would understand what he did more than Sabine would. Second he wasn't suffering from any life threatening condition from his actions. Ezra knew he was taking the easy way out by talking to Zeb first, but Hera hadn't found of from him and it was hard to even look at her. He felt like she was thoroughly disappointed in him, and he couldn't help but feel that this was due in part to him not coming clean to her either.
Setting of to talk to Zeb Ezra wouldn't help to feel like a rock had dropped into his stomach, this was not going to be fun experience.
Sabine felt shell-shocked, feeling absolutely no motivation to move from her bunk, just staring at the ceiling, with the same thoughts echoing in her mind "Her father, her brother." It was almost too horrible to think about, but at the same time she couldn't shake the thought.
"Jaden." She whispered without even realizing it, her little brother, or rather half-brother, what they had done to him was beyond horrible, and she wished she had never read the report at all. But the fact her father sold him to the Empire to be experimented on, was almost too much to bear. She didn't recall much of her father any more, but the few clear memories she did have of him didn't betray any darker nature.
She couldn't help but wonder if the times it….he, had stared at her were because it somehow recognized her? That was impossible, she had never meet Jaden, but in a way she could swear he recognized her.
Following these thoughts came guilt, she had shot him and attacked him with the intent to kill, had lite his face on fire. She knew there was no way of knowing who he was, but still, that was her blood.
She had to talk to someone about this, anyone, it was to much for one person to bear on their own.
As if on cue a laoud knocking came from her cabin door.
"Hey! Sabine, let me in I need to ask you somthin'!" It was Dral.
The door opened with a "hisss" and Dral walked in "You got any…. Whoa." The look on Sabine face was one of someone who had lived a life time of misery, and she had clearly been crying. "I'll come back…" he made to step backwards out of the room.
"Dral do you have any family?" she asked before he could clear the room.
Letting out a heavy sign, he mentally kicked himself for letting himself get drawn in. He had made a carrier of being emotionally detached as he could with people, but he didn't know what it was with these people, maybe it was the extended period of time he'd found himself spending with them, maybe it was his own recent troubles, or maybe it was the fact he knew he really didn't have anywhere to go, but he found himself compelled to stay. "Yeah, I got my mom and a little brother and sister, well somewhere, haven't seen them in years, and their ten years younger than me, but yeah their out there."
This in turned stirred feeling he thought he had squashed years ago, any sense of attachment, but speaking about them outload seem to breath the life of reality back into them, and he felt a sick feeling in his gut.
"Dral what would you do, if you found out your mother had sold your brother or sister to someone, a slaver or someone …." He voice trailed off as she noticed the expression on his face darken and become absolutely thunderous. "Dral…." She began but he cut her off.
"You think you're clever?" he said in a voice barely above a whisper, but the amount of venom in his voice a palpable. She had no clue was he was thinking, but she was realized that she may of hit something close to home in him.
"Dral, what are you talking about?" her voice questioning and confused. That seemed to diffuse something in him, he face softened a little, he looked slightly lest dreadful, but his jaw started to clench tight, and she could tell he was grinding his teeth, as if he was growing less angry and more irritated.
That was a mistake on his part, he'd let him temper get the better of him and he jumped to the conclusion that she had found out something about his past, but now he realized that had been premature, she looked and sounded genuinely confused at his outburst.
"What are you talking about?" was all he responded with, his voice more even than before, but with an edge still in it.
She looked like she wanted to continue questioning him, but instead decided to continue her original line of questioning.
She lifted her datapad to him "The Shape, or JV-FR13, you know that thin….guy we paid you to help capture?"
"Well, you haven't paid me yet…." He started to say, but one look at Sabine's face told him now was not the time to bring up the issue of his payment. "Yeah, I remember than thing, what about it?"
She winced as he spoke, but she continued. "He…Dral, you know where he came from right? You read up on him right?"
Dral nodded, he had read up on the thing while he was planning to capture it, the thing came from an experiment station, some attempt at a super soldier.
"Dral, I've got more information on him." She said in a cracking voice.
Dral couldn't help but notice she was continually calling it "Him" or "He" rather than "It".
"His name was Jaden, Dral, he was just a little kid, and the Empire turned him into…." She trailed off, either unable or unwilling to find the words to describe what he had become.
Now Dral wasn't overly in touch with his feelings, but the thought of a young boy being taken and having…..things done to him against his will, that hit closer to home than anyone could realize. But he wasn't making the connection to family, why had she brought that up?
"Dral, he's my little brother, my father….he sold him to the Empire."
Sabine didn't really think Dral was the best person to talk to about this, Kanan or Hera would have been her first choice, but she needed to get it out, and sometime it was easier to talk to a relative stranger than someone one as close as family.
But his reaction to her questions was disturbing, he was acting like she was onto a secret of his when she asked him about family betrayal.
After she told him about her brother and father however, his face had gone as white as a sheet. Something she had said had scared him, and that was weird enough as it was, Dral didn't seem the type to be easily spooked.
"Dral you okay?" his ghostly complexion as driven everything else temporally to the back of her mind, he looked ready to faint straight away.
He was turning to leave, but his actions were slower than usual, like he was moving through wet cement.
"Dral, what's wrong?" she said while grabbing his shoulder to stop him, it was more than just a question about how he was acting in the moment, but she knew he was suffering from something else, PTSD to some degree.
"Leave me alone!" he practically shouted, spinning on her and throwing her hand off.
But they were both wired, their emotions at the straining point, and Sabine grabbed his shoulder and with much greater strength than one would expect for someone her size, tossed him back into the room.
She wasn't exactly sure why she was lashing out at him, he wasn't even remotely responsible, but she was tired, scared, angry, and more on edge than she had ever been. She was going to apologize immediately but, Dral rose to his feet with that thunderous expression back on his face, and swung his right fist at her, and hit nothing but air about a foot in front of her.
For a moment she was puzzled as to how an experience bounty hunter, and a Mandalorian no less, could make such a big miss, then looker into his one remain eye, he'd lost his depth perception with that eye. But that apparently didn't deter him as he wound up for another strike. Sabine didn't give him and chance and kicked him directly in the solar plexus doubling him over, gasping.
"Dral!" her voice was as stern as she could make it, as she knelt down next to him. "We're going to be on a hostile planet, with yours, mine and Ezra's lives on the line, I know you have some issues, but we needed to know if you are stable enough to help. I've kept it to myself so far, but that swing you just took at me is making me thinking of having Kanan lock you up while we look for that cure. Unless you give me a good reason why not to, I'm gonna go to him right now."
Dral glared daggers at her, but there was a defeated look under his eyes as well, like someone who was just tired of trying.
"What do you want me to say?" he whispered out.
"How about the truth?"
He started grinding his teeth, "Dral, keeping it bottled up inside isn't going to do you any favor, it's won't fix everything, but it helps to talk, that's why I told you what I did, get it out, it will help, trust me."
Dral's face slackened and he fell backwards onto the floor, resting has back against her bunk, and Sabine thought she might never have seen a more defeated and exhausted looking person. When they had meet Sabine already noted he looked quite a bit older than he was, that something, stress likely, was ageing him prematurely, and now that affect was greater than ever.
"Whatever, finer." He finally grunted out.
Well that was what she was after, and now she wasn't sure she was going to like what she heard.
Dral took a deep breath and looked Sabine in the eye "You noticed, I bet, that jumped on you a bit when you mentioned your little hypothetical question right?"
She nodded "Did your….." she began, but Dral raised his hand.
"You wanted to hear, don't interrupt." He took a deep breath "well, that's exactly what my mother did to me, sold me to a Hutt named Sorgruta, and he was…. Prone to unnatural things with humans, human boys….. he." He looked down at his hand shaking, the sure signs of one of his episodes.
"Dral…are are you." Sabine began, but was stopped by the frantic breathing of Dral, his shaking hands on his temples. "Dral, it's okay, you don't have to go on." She didn't need him to explain in detail what had happened to him as a child, Sorgruta was a Hutt with an absolute vile reputation, and even other Hutt's didn't want anything to do with him.
Dral raised one hand "Well you see why it triggered me, it happened to me, my mother sold me to that disgusting worm. She didn't know what would happen, she thought, and so did I, I was going to be learning some sort of trade skill, that they were paying her my labor wages in advance. But I spent three years as that worms toy, and finally when his compound got raided by another crime syndicate, I managed to get away, and from what I hear, Sogruta was reed to a hoard of rodents, too good to him."
Dral didn't even notice how close Sabine was, and only saw her when she pulled his hand away from his remaining eye, and took the other he had let drop in hers.
Sabine had thought Dral was suffering from some gruesome battle or seen a friend die, this was much more…disturbing. Not that battle trauma was any less horrible, but the protracted abuse, constant over three years, there was something unnaturally disgusting about doing that to a child.
She was crouched down in front of Dral, holding both his hands in hers. Looking into his one eye, she could see it was blood shot, and tears running out of his one eye, this was an emotional breaking point.
"Dral, I don't know what to say, but you don't have to deal with all this alone, no one should ever have to deal with, this sort of thing alone."
His prematurely aged faced soften slightly, then the first genuine smile she had ever seen on his face cracked the corners of his lips. He pulled his right hand free of hers and made a loose fist and taped her lightly on the shoulder.
"Hate admit it, but I feel better." He said as his hand feel back to his lap.
It took her a second to realize what he had said, but as soon as she processed it, it made her realize soothing as well, she was feeling better about what she read about her father and brother.
She still felt horrible, and there was still a tremendous weight in her stomach, but it had eased some. She supposed he was feeling the same way, letting someone else take some of the weight off, sharing the pain, it was cathartic to say the least.
Rising to her feet Sabine pulled Dral up with her, not as easy as she thought it would be, the guy was solid, but with both them on there feet, they stared at each other for a moment. It was at this time Sabine really started to appreciate that Dral was another Mandolorian just like here. Maybe it was him finally sharing some of his issues, but she felt more comfortable around him than before.
A sudden knocking on the door caused them both to jump, despite both of them blowing off some steam they were still high strung.
As they both looked to the door they heard Ezra's voice call through "Sabine, can I come in? I need to talk to you about something."
A/N: Okay, leave a review, tell me if you liked it, loved it, hated or felt totally indifferent.
The Next chapter will actually run partially alongside this one, with Ezra talking to Zeb and lead into where this one leaves off.
