A/N: One more chapter to go! Warning, this chapter contains a bit of violence and blood.
Next time: Lessons can be learned even in the darkest of times.
Through the Daybreak
Part Nine
Ezra is utterly taken by surprise as the ground falls out from underneath him. For one endless moment, he's falling down into the darkness. From experience, he knows that the ground of these underground caverns is smooth rock, so he braces for impact.
The air around him seems to vibrate; the moonlight catches on an undulating mass of exoskeletons far below. A herd of stampeding krykna had caused the collapse, the pounding of their legs on stone shaking the roof of the tunnel free.
Suddenly he remembers the violent nature of the nonsentient creatures. They were impervious everywhere except their eyes, and then only could be taken down by blaster fire. He'd forgotten to grab one in their haste to reach the barricade.
Seconds before he falls on top of the swarm, a great draft of air sweeps underneath him and pushes him to one side. Ahsoka clings to a nearby projection of the cave floor, her legs wrapped around it for support. As the young man draws near, she reaches out to him and pulls him in the rest of the way.
Unconsciously, his hands wrap around her forearms from the opposite side of the stalagmite. Craning their necks, they make eye contact. Maul is nowhere to be seen.
Clinging to the formation for dear life, Ezra sheaths his saber and waits for the stampede to pass. It could have been anywhere from thirty seconds to one hour-every heartbeat feels like an eternity. At last silence falls over the caverns. After checking her surroundings one final time, Ahsoka drops to the ground.
It's so dark that she can scarcely see her hand in front of her face. But there is someone hiding in the shadows; she can feel it.
Far above them, Hera is locked in an intense confrontation with New Seeker. With every step they grow closer to the gaping hole in the ground. They are mostly evenly matched.
The fact that the twi'lek is even still alive infuriates Saneetra. It was ridiculous. She followed no particular form of bladework, which made her every movement unpredictable. Typical of any pilot, her hands were extremely strong, her upper body impossibly flexible. But this woman didn't know what she was doing.
Hera, in the meantime, was only focused on giving Kanan and Ketsu time. Depending on which way she faced, she keeps them in her peripheral vision and adjusts her attacks accordingly. Depa's niece stares her down with such undeniable rage that she begins to feel the same. How dare she strike her daughter deaf because of some irrepressible ego trip. How dare she threaten the life of her lover and everyone else on Chopper Base. How dare she-
"I grow tired of this, Captain Syndulla," New Seeker snarls, blocking an attempt to knock her saber from her hands.
She steps back and twirls Kanan's saber in a circular motion at her side. This leaves her front completely vulnerable, but as she steps towards the Chalactan, she's satisfied to see her take a step back as well. "I could say the same."
"It would be easier for all of you if you just surrendered now. I can promise your death with be swift and painless," Saneetra says, not realizing that she's being backed up to the chasm. When her opponent doesn't respond, she presses, "Your kind doesn't belong here."
Hera doesn't want to ask what she means by that, because she already knows. It's what she heard in the days before she met Kanan, and even now with clients they didn't know particularly well. With a flick of the wrist, she catches New Seeker across the nose with the tip of her blade, drawing blood.
Her opponent pauses to cough, still holding on to her side where she's already been gored. She makes a lazy attempt towards Hera's midsection. "Females of your species should be dancing on tables or serving drinks. Tell me, how many beds did you have to jump into in order to get your ship?"
That was it. Turning to one side and raising her leg, Hera lands a solid kick to her abdomen. With a muffled gasp, she falls backwards into the blackness of the pit.
A moment passes. Hera wipes the sweat from her brow. "None," she answers confidently, to no one in particular.
Somewhere behind her, someone plaintively calls her name. Kanan is quickly coming around to consciousness. Carefully, she cradles his head and feels the massive knot forming where his ponytail meets his neck. "Where are they?" He stammers out, reaching out to cup her cheek.
She kisses him briefly, before helping him up to his feet. Gesturing to the massive hole in the ground just out the circle of the sensor beacons, she says, "She's all yours."
"And Ketsu?"
Over her shoulder, Hera gestures to the smoldering form of the wrecked speeder. The bounty hunter's form is just barely visible behind it. "I'll see to her."
Kanan takes his saber from her hands. He didn't know what had just transpired, and perhaps she would never tell him. But that didn't matter now. "See you on the other side."
"Be careful, love," Hera calls out, just as he takes a flying leap into the caverns below.
-0-
Ahsoka nearly jumps out of her skin when her companion lands next to her. One saber comes out, providing a light to the darkness, and she's never been so relieved to see Kanan.
"A stampede-"
"There was a collapse-"
"I don't see where-"
He holds up a placating hand as he takes silent stock of the situation. His apprentice is suspended at least twenty feet in the air, hanging onto a stalagmite like his life depended on it. Ahsoka looks harried, on edge, and he doesn't blame her. He can feel it too.
"Duck!" Ezra suddenly shouts. Both comply. In the next second a spinning circle of red light soars over their hunched frames.
Kanan turns to behold his childhood friend, who looks a little worse for wear since he'd seen her last. A broad cut across her nose was bleeding profusely down her mouth and chin, her teeth bared and gnashed together. He almost didn't want to know what had happened while he was unconscious.
New Seeker charges on he and Ahsoka, catching her saber midair as it hit its arc and travels back. It was almost pitch black in the cavern; Kanan's cybernetics were struggling to compensate. He finally closes his eyes, relying on his other senses as he had in the early days after his injury.
Ahsoka's aura was self-assured with nervous impulses mixed in. At her core lay what made her unique, the force of optimism and good will. He could feel her at his elbow, responding to his every strike with deadly accuracy.
His apprentice's anguish cuts through his concentration. Behind them, Ezra is being pried off his vantage point by Maul, who has suddenly emerged from the shadows. He continues to cling on for precious few seconds, terror evident, but then he lets go and drops to the ground in a crouched position. This time, Kanan knows he is solid in his beliefs and won't let the ever-encroaching dark side influence the battle.
He has to believe that. He and Ahsoka are beyond helping him, having been driven to the opposite end of the circle of moonlight on the cave floor. At some point New Seeker's steadfast adherence to Form VI falls by the wayside; she isn't following any particular school of bladework, rather lashing out and swinging her saber erratically. The glint in her eye is positively feral.
Kanan reaches within himself to find the bit of his past that he's always been so careful not to lose. He keeps his memories of Depa there, her strength, her wisdom, her affection for him. He recalls Sar Labooda's kind words and melodious laughter. And he forces all of them toward New Seeker, breaking through her fragile mental barriers like a tidal wave.
An ear piercing scream escapes her lips as everything comes rushing back. She's spent her entire life trying to forget her love for the Order, her mother's funeral, her disappointment at being held back from training like her friend Caleb, her father's body lying lifeless in the corridor as fire ravaged the home…
Then she resumes her attack with renewed purpose, all vestiges of sanity gone. Nothing in her training with the Inquisitorius, the lonely life she lived on Coruscant at their behest, could have prepared her for this. The weight of her actions pressed down on the former Ninth Sister from all sides. She sees no other way out but straight through.
Kanan's companion leans back as the circular saber very nearly nicks her neck. He has to jump vertically about a foot in the air to avoid the backswing and losing both feet. Together, they come about and aim for New Seeker's center of balance. The combined action of the three blades cuts the spinning section roughly in half, causing either section to go spinning across the cavern. It was reminiscent of how he'd taken down the Grand Inquisitor, except that this time Saneetra was forced to her knees with the two jedi standing on either side.
Truth be told, he never expected to get this far. Even through all their missions, Kanan hadn't put much thought to taking lives, though in this case he sincerely wanted to. Over her head, he makes eye contact with Ahsoka, who nods slowly.
The crack of discharge from a blaster fills his ears. Spinning around with saber aloft, he catches a glimpse of Ketsu, who has dragged herself to the perimeter of the hole, sights on her weapon fixed. She waits until New Seeker keens forward, clutching her chest, and then empties no less than five additional rounds into her body.
It's a flawless execution in the style of the Black Sun bounty hunters. Now spent from her crawl across the dirt, Ketsu disappears from sight.
New Seeker rolls over onto her back, the burns in her chest coursing blood. She reaches for Kanan's pant leg, but stops short.
"Caleb," she gasps, struggling for breath.
Against his better judgment, he stoops down to study the life disappearing from her eyes. He wonders if this was what Depa had looked like, laying on some battlefield all alone with the cries of her brothers in arms filling her ears.
She's not afraid. That much is evident. Saneetra is every inch the confident young woman he met in their childhood, even until the end. She waits until his face is within spitting distance, then whispers, "I swear to you that you will never know peace."
As if in slow motion, her features relax, follow by the rest of her body. Staring into Kanan's eyes, she breathes her last. For one endless moment, he can't move. The jedi reaches out and touches the Lesser Mark of Illumination set in her brow, then closes her eyelids with the thumb and forefinger. After everything they'd been through, finding and evading and finding each other again, it was finally over.
Ahsoka pulls him out of reverie, charging across the uneven ground towards Ezra, who is quickly tiring in his fight with Maul. He follows, jumping into the fray at his apprentice's side.
Old Master's skills are unparalleled, but he is ill-equipped to handle three challengers at once and they quickly gain the upper hand. Ezra throws the old man off balance and he takes several steps backward, fighting to catch his breath. "How much longer do you think your rebel cell can last?"
He had a feeling this question was rhetorical. Beneath their feet, a distant rumbling begins to shake the ground.
"Come with me, boy. You are more powerful than you know. The dark side will serve you well." It is the same tired argument, one that Ezra had learned to ignore. Kanan, meanwhile, starts to get a sense of the impending danger.
"Climb," he urges Ahsoka, who quickly complies, shimmying up the same projection of the cave floor they'd clung to earlier. His apprentice was unwilling to move until the hissing of the krykna reached his ears. Having reached the end of the caverns to one side, the herd was doubling back the way they came. They'd soon be their meal if something didn't give.
At last he turns and offers Kanan his arm. Together the two climb to safety.
They lose track of Maul in the ensuing stampede. The krykna kick up a lot of dirt as they scurry along, sparing no time for the three force sensitives high above their heads.
Eventually the throng dissipates and they're left with silence. With a little force assist, the trio jumps to safety. The sun's only just beginning to crest over the horizon, shedding light on the crumpled forms of their patrol just inside the sensor marker barricade. Ketsu lays mere feet from the edge, blaster held tightly over her chest.
Ahsoka offers her a hand, but the Mandalorian shakes her head, watching as dawn breaks over the sphere of Atollon. One leg lays at an odd angle, probably broken in multiple places. Oddly enough, she seems content.
No one says anything for quite some time. Kanan covers his face with his hand and sinks down to his haunches. At last from the direction of the dunes a familiar figure approaches.
Hera looks a little worse for wear, her pilot's uniform covered in grease. As they watch, she produces some sort of device covered with alternating lights. She makes a wide circle around the hole in the ground and walks straight into her son's embrace.
Over his head, she says, "He got away, if that's what you're wondering. But I tracked his ship to a quarter mile that way and before he even got there I rigged it with so many tracking beacons that we'll know if he adjusts his heading even a tenth of a degree."
Kanan steps closer and wraps his arms around her shoulders, pressing a kiss to her brow. How was it that the woman to which he'd promised his heart could think so far ahead, even when everything was in jeopardy?
His apprentice steps out of the impending embrace at the last possible second, though Kanan reaches out to tousle his hair. Ezra rolls his eyes in spite of things, and turns to Ahsoka, who is looking straight through him at the deceased troops on the ground. He starts to open his mouth to say something, but decides against it.
He walks some distance away to contact the base. When someone answers, Sabine's voice is in the background. She sounds incongruously excited. "Ezra, what happened out there?"
As if on cue, the sensor markers flicker on.
(to be continued, one last time)