3951 BBY, Telos IV
Eden
"I thought Kreia said the person she sensed was just beyond the door," Atton grumbled, aiming his pistols as they neared another corner. "I'm getting real tired of disabling mines."
The man knelt down for the umpteenth time that hour to dismantle yet another trap, the entire facility littered with them and buzzing softly as a result, as if they'd wandered into a wasp's nest.
"Whoever they are, they're awfully handy," Eden said absently. Another active war droid lingered in the hall beside them, its intelligence module glowing but reacting to them none. Her eyes scanned its looming frame until her gaze settled on its rifle, following the barrel of it until she noticed the merc lying dead at the end of the hallway.
Atton's eyes flashed in her direction before she'd even taken a single step, frustration beading on his brow as if he were about to reprimand her for being careless. Atton, instead, only huffed in annoyance before returning his attention to the mine at hand once he realized Eden was being mindful.
"I thought I asked you stay still," Atton sighed as she took a calculated step, "I can't concentrate if I think you might walk yourself into an explosion."
"Sorry, it's just-" Eden raised a hand to the droid, its hulking silver frame gloomed in the dimly lit hallway. "I'm just piecing things together."
With her eyes still fixed on the dead body across the hall, its ribcage blown open, she accessed the droid's control panel and ran the same diagnostic she'd run on the machine in the main hangar. Unlike her still-shaky hold on the Force, Eden found she could still type in commands one-handed and without looking. Finally tearing her eyes away from the dark-clad merc staring her dead-eyed from the other side of another unseen mine, Eden glanced at the control panel. This droid, too, was set only to stun organics, not kill them. Non-Republic droids, however, were fair game, with the simple directive to 'eliminate' them emboldened in red font.
Atton nodded in Eden's direction, trying not to sound interested.
"Find anything?"
"Sort of," Eden cocked her head, still assessing the scene. "Do you mind handling that mine over there? I want to check something."
Atton's eyes traveled from Eden to the body, the man jumping slightly before his gaze returned to Eden.
"Gotta hunch, I take it," he said, shaking his head before getting to work.
The hall was lined with doors, all shut, though laser scoring was seared into the surface of the space around them. She could still sense the faint smell of burnt metal.
"All done here," Atton announced after a moment and moving on. "Hopefully this is the last of it, or I'll-"
If Atton continued speaking, Eden didn't notice. As soon as he gave her the go-ahead, she rushed to the other side of the corridor and knelt before the body still slumped there. This merc was a humanoid female with limp brown hair falling in front of her dead eyes, her skin greyed. Rigor mortis had set in, her features more akin to a mannequin than a person. Eden rummaged around for the gold coin tucked into the woman's holster and held it up to the light as if it might reveal something. It only reflected the door behind her, its panels closed, but it perhaps revealed the very place the merc was looking just as all life left her body, the echo of it ringing heavy in the space surrounding them.
Eden turned, facing the door, the feeling hanging in the air as if like a mist.
"You okay?" Atton asked after a minute. "I think we're all set with the mines here, if you wanted to snoop around."
Eden didn't respond. Instead, she kept her eyes focused on the far door, a ghostly feeling overcoming her as she tried to tap into the Force surrounding them. She could sense the inactive mines, the hall still slightly buzzing with their once-lively hum like a fast-receding resonance, and she could feel the pull of Atton and his desire to know what she was thinking, what she was feeling. But she also gleaned some numbers, an equation, or something similar.
"Watch the end of the hall for me, will you?" she asked, glancing his way. Her eyes met Atton's for a brief moment, the number twelve ringing clearly in her mind though she didn't know why. Atton's eyes went wide, wondering, blinking twice before he eventually nodded with a silent sure. Atton did as he was told and Eden turned back to the dead body, the woman's matte eyes staring back at her lazily. It had been a while since she'd done this, but as if no time had passed, Eden took a deep breath and gently raised her hand towards the woman's face. Placing her fingers on her resistant eyelids, she closed them and wished the woman peace, but in the same breadth send a tendril of the Force through her corpse and gleaned what she could from the rotting flesh.
At first there was only decay, a certain nothingness, a lack. But then there was a flash – a sense of shock and the taste of blood. Eden leaned in further and suddenly she was there in the merc's final moments, her blaster poised towards an HK gleaming through the doorway across the passage. Its laserfire shot past her, her blaster going off a millisecond later. The HK collapsed, and yet a blaster shot still hit her square in the sternum just as two thoughts fought for dominance in her mind: a simple how? accompanied with a loaded I shouldn't have yelled at Pela this morning. It was all quickly followed by a simple it hurts, it hurts, oh gods. The feeling lasted longer than Eden would have liked to reimagine, the pain ebbing and flowing while the panic rose and fell, until the woman eventually surrendered, her last thoughts being that of just how much her chest ached.
Eden shook her head, the feeling of death still heavy within her.
"Can you try to open that door?" she asked of Atton. The man stared at her for a moment, a beat passing between them before he nodded fervently and accessed the panel beside it. When the thing didn't open, he simply shot at it. The door still didn't open.
"Usually that works," Atton muttered as he fiddled with the panel again. After some decided mumbling and shooting eager glances over his shoulder, Atton managed to get the door to open. And sure enough, a limp HK sat slumped on the other side. "Shit."
Atton shot a round and kicked at it before realizing it was already deactivated.
"Just wanted to make sure," he said, glancing at Eden again and trying to act cool about it, though she wasn't even looking at him. Eden glanced from the HK to the droid and back to the body again.
"This one doesn't make sense," she said, shaking her head. "So far, every merc we've found was killed by an HK. But she managed to knock out the HK first, and was killed by the droid, which was only programmed to stun her."
"Might've been a mistake?" Atton offered with a shrug, though Eden wasn't having it. She finally got up again, this time racing to the other side of the hall to review the war droid's control panel again.
"Can't be," she said. "I mean, it's possible, but if this droid were glitching, it surely would've tried to fire on us, too."
"Okay, true, guess you have a point," Atton said, absently kicking the dead HK in the head followed by a quiet ow.
"The history log's cleared for this droid," Eden said, looking down the length of the untraversed corridor ahead of them, "Whoever did this deleted this droid's history."
"I take it that's significant?"
Atton shuffled his feet as Eden shot him an impatient glare.
"Whoever Kreia sensed at the end of this hall didn't mean to kill anyone, at least not initially."
"So they were desperate," Atton shrugged. "Can you really blame them?"
Eden paused and swallowed, thinking of herself and how she would react in such a situation.
"No," she said. "I can't."
But it was more than that.
Like the merc, she gleaned a feeling from this hallway. A resonance that rang heavy with regret.
They've done this before, Eden knew somehow. But they didn't want it to come to this.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Atton asked, extending a hand that Eden retreated from on instinct. Atton recoiled, holding his hands up in surrender. "Sorry, I didn't mean to-"
"No, it's fine," Eden interrupted. "I'm fine. We should move on, find whoever this is and get on with it."
"Sure, yeah," Atton acquiesced, still backing away, "Whatever you say."
3951 BBY, Beyond the Unknown Regions
Revan
There was so much she hadn't known about herself.
There was still the question of what her favorite color was. There was a push and pull – a propensity for reds and purples, but also a proclivity for yellows and oranges. Neither yet both suited her. Even still, the current crystal housed in her saber (violet for the time-being) felt more like a placeholder than anything that rang true within her. The crystal didn't speak to her. It didn't sing. But it would do. For now.
She remembered being fond of severe cosmetics in the time before, often painting her lips dark red or deepest black, maintaining her sheath of pin-straight jet-black hair with masks and treatments to use almost as a cape, a veil with which to hide as well from which to reveal herself. Now she preferred to be plain-faced if only for the sheer lack of effort it cost her, her hair's natural waves finally finding freedom. Her freckles finally breathing from beneath the mask she often wore, Mandalorian or no. This part felt akin to her. Not to the woman she was before or the one she was convinced to be after – even the façade of Nevarra Draal kept shortly cropped hair and darkly lined eyes. But the person she was now wanted neither of those things, not that it mattered in a place like this anyway.
No one here made eye contact with one another. They didn't need to. Time moved so slowly, thoughts simply seeped into the open air and hung there for centuries. The only time she heard anyone speak was when the Emissary came to her with a message, as he had just that morning.
"You are doing exceptionally well," he'd said, steepling his fingers and bowing his head slightly. His features were sharp and angular, almost human but not quite. "He is pleased with your progress."
He. As if there were a proper label. As if a singular person was responsible for all of this. She knew it was only a matter of decorum, of linguistics. So she wasn't about to argue. But the wheels in her mind turned anyway, trying to make sense of it and remind herself why she was here. To remind herself what it was she'd meant to recover from her first visit to this place with Alek at her side, even if the memories were only half-remembered and fast slipping away.
You hate it here, don't you? Alek had asked when they'd stayed on the outskirts. Not enough action I take it?
He'd flashed her his trademark grin, wide and charming, his blue-eyes glinting in the unearthly light.
Shut up, she'd chided with a jab to his ribs, which were a good foot higher than the comfort of her elbow's reach. This is fascinating and you know it.
She had been so in awe then, and she hated to admit that she was now as well. She wondered if this were an anomaly or some fossilized version of the world before, of life before the Republic, before humanoids, before any written history known to her or the people she knew to exist. This reality was outside the realm of everything she knew to be true, yet inside the realm of all she wanted to learn, to know intimately. And she had been invited to do so. Twice.
He will be happy to know that you have returned, the Emissary had announced upon her arrival, just as he had all those years ago. He didn't seem to notice that her old apprentice was gone this time, though she felt his ghost with him always. And perhaps the Emissary picked up on that, too.
Let me know if you need anything to further fuel your studies, the Emissary had promised both then and now. Just as before, the Emissary spoke in an ancient dialect she somehow understood, though where from she was not sure. Both times, he used a form of 'you' that insinuated the plural. Either he meant to address both her and Alek, and then both versions of herself, or the two of them always. Time did not act the same way here as it did where she was from so it was hard to tell.
He is most interested in your progress.
Whether he meant her and Alek's progress, or Revan's and Nevarra's progress, she did not know. And she did not know how to ask.
3951 BBY, Telos IV
Atton
"You'll never find him," the merc laughed through blood-stained teeth. "No one will ever tell you where to find him, or where he is."
The humanoid man spat straight into Eden's face. The woman blinked back his scarlet-laced spittle and tightened her fist around his collar, holding up his mangled body up against the wall in a way that made Atton feel uncomfortably warm.
"He, huh?" Eden smirked. "Learned something new already."
Atton could have sworn that Eden's fingers bristled with electricity, as if she'd run her palms across a carpet before wrangling the half-dead merc into her bloodied-again hands. He felt like Jaq again, in league with Dark Jedi as they hunted what remained of Revan's army before they were lost to the wind. Like Eden had been.
The merc's eyes flashed as he looked down at Eden's firm grip, his feet only just brushing against the floor as she held him even further up against the wall. Atton closed his aim on the man while also getting a better look at him – older, grizzled, and heavily scarred – morbidly curious if they may have crossed paths but finding that nothing about the man rang true with his unfortunately razor-sharp memory. The merc glanced in his direction, almost bored.
"Too bad you won't get anything else out of me," he smirked before biting down. Within a second, his mouth was frothing and white, his body convulsing and erratic. Eden dropped him and jumped back.
Atton holstered one blaster and reached for her, keeping the other on the merc dying before them, his eyes wide and unblinking, almost as if he were laughing.
It was instinct. Atton kept his eyes trained on the merc as he succumbed to the poison no doubt implanted in his tooth for situations just like this, and with one blaster pistol still aimed at the man's still-jerking head should the toxin not take, he felt Eden ease into his side, his free hand closing in around her waist.
They stood like that for a long while, watching wordlessly as the merc finally perished. The body twitched unnervingly until the last. And still, they waited and watched.
Atton wasn't sure what made him do it, or what instinct it was of his that automatically reached out for her, but it was uncomfortably comfortable having Eden this close. To feel her against him, almost hip to hip, her bloodied hands gripped his arm as she slowed her breathing to quell what he could only guess was an oncoming panic attack.
"I can't do this anymore," Eden gasped softly at his side. "It feels so far away and yet it's just so easy-"
"Hey, hey, you're alright," Atton assured her, finally holstering his other blaster and turning to her in full. Eden was still mindlessly grabbing at his arm while he moved to grip her shoulders, forcing her to face him in the eye. After a moment of heavy breathing, her eyes darting around the room at first, Eden eventually took a deep breath and met Atton's gaze. "Listen to me, okay? You're alright."
Eden shook her head.
"Doesn't matter how I am," she said, breathless. "This isn't right."
"You didn't start this," Atton said. They had never stood this close before, and while some inner part of him felt anxiety cresting just within his chest in the realization of it, another part of him realized that the same was likely true of whatever happened at Malachor, the panic still clear on Eden's face. "You can still walk away."
Just like I will, he thought bitterly as Eden shook her head at him yet again.
"I can't, not this time."
Eden closed her eyes as she reined in her breathing again, still holding Atton's arm. He remained still, silently vowing to wait as long as she needed, knowing he should move away but also knowing that this was likely the last and only time this would ever happen. His mind ached to trace the Ison Trade Corridor in his mind again, but instead he found himself tracing Eden's every feature – the way the curve of her lashes fell softly on her freckled cheeks, splotched red and anxious but all the more beautiful for it, the precise curve of her jaw before it crested at the point of her chin, the pleasing edges of her collarbone, the way her hair fell into her eyes, and –
"I won't walk away this time," she said again, opening her eyes this time. Atton stood transfixed, plumbing the depths of her warm green irises, mossy and earthen, speckled with gold. Something about her was familiar still, yes, but she was also so unlike anyone he had ever met.
"Well," Atton swallowed, hoping Eden didn't hear or at least focus on the audible gulp his throat made. "You at least have a lead now, right?"
Eden nodded.
"I do," she said, finally inching away. "Thanks."
Thanks, he echoed bitterly in his mind, knowing he didn't deserve it.
"Let's finish this, shall we?" Eden implored, readying her weapon before she faced the remainder of the hallway, no doubt not far from their quandary. Atton nodded, feeling sick.
"Gladly," he lied.
3951 BBY, Dantooine Grasslands, Jedi Temple Ruins
Mical
He was beginning to forget what day it was.
As much as Mical wanted to continue reading whatever the archive had to offer him, he chose instead to map out what remained of the academy. Part of him reconciled that it would aid in his eventual escape. But another more reality-bound part of him knew it was more-so because if he looked at another Maker forsaken datapad he would permanently go cross-eyed.
You're awfully busy, the mysterious voice spoke in his head again as he drew a crude map of the academy ruins. You should rest.
His peculiar benefactor had grown more talkative of late. Mical's suspicions grew into two branches of thought – one was that he was speaking with some rather curious creature that had somehow gained sentience in his time away from Dantooine, the other being that he was conversing telepathically with a rather small but articulate child.
Either that or he was going utterly insane. Which was also a possibility.
"I'm fine," he said, still unsure how to convey his thoughts without speaking. "I appreciate your concern though."
It wasn't just the voice or the ghostly presence of whomever he was speaking to, but the other plethora of restless phantoms he shared these ruins with. They may have been a fabrication of his own lingering sentiments for this place, but they felt heavy, almost real. He would often see things move in his peripheral vision, chalking it up to a skittering laigrek or simply a shadow, but another part of him felt less than alone here. He'd felt it when he was here with Erebus and Vash, wondering if the feeling were a side effect of Erebus' affinity for the Dark Side somehow, but now he feared it wasn't that simple.
I can teach you how to harness it, the voice promised. It can help you, just as it's helped me.
"Perhaps," he sighed. Mical completed his rough sketch and looked about, making sure he accurately tracked his footsteps through the fallen debris. He hadn't spent much time here in the grand scheme of things, but it was the one location he'd lived in the longest. Some of his earliest memories were of this place. "Did you happen to know Master Vandar?"
I did, yes, the voice rejoined in a spectral echo within his mind. He was kind to me.
"To me as well," Mical said, thinking of the man, nearly his size when he was first brought here at the age of four and more like a father to him than anyone else he might have known from before. It's a shame what happened to him and the others.
It is, the voice agreed.
Mical paused.
You heard me? He thought errantly. He could have sworn he felt the ghost of a laugh within his chest at the notion, though the sentiment did not come from him.
I did, the voice said. You're more open to it than you think.
The Force.
His connection had come freely as a child. It was the reason his caretaker looked at him funny, and the reason he was thrown to the wolves so easily once the Jedi came, though thankfully they were not wolves but instead gentle shepherds. Or so he thought. And so he still hoped to believe all these years later…
You fear it, the voice continued. Just as I did.
"Why did you fear it, though?" he asked quietly, comforted by the sound of his own voice. He was standing half-way between two collapsed rooms, a sliver of night sky peering down at him from above.
Because it did not feel like me, the voice said. Because I could not control it. At least not yet.
"I know what you mean," he said, thinking back to the front lines. The Mandalorian Wars unfortunately occupied space in his mind as both the distant past as well as the all-too-recent present. The only way the Force felt comfortable to him was by means of healing. He liked the warmth of it in his fingers, the welling of it in his palms. He could rein it in that way and know that whatever his efforts at least they were used for good. As for the Jedi fighting out on the field however…
But it does not have to be that way once you get better acquainted with it. I can teach you.
Mical lowered himself onto a slab of rock and looked up at the makeshift portal of sky, admiring the stars as he considered it.
Perhaps, he thought loudly enough for his companion to hear. Where do I begin?
At first there was silence. He heard the rustling of wind in the trees outside, the tall grasses whistling. And then he heard it – the trademark clicking of laigreks he'd grown so accustomed to cohabitating with. The night air was full of them, calling to one another, a lone kath hound howl piercing through the quiet thrum.
You are already familiar with it, even if you think you are quieting it, the voice began. The chorus of creatures rose gently as the wind picked up, the sounds of their calls reaching Mical as if they were meant for his ears alone. It is always there, like a heartbeat. A constant. A warm star, like the sun. Central to the galaxy and ever-present even when the world is dark.
He heard it, then. Felt it. But it had always been there. An undercurrent, an imperceptible energy that felt as simple as if he were merely adjusting the frequency on a radio. But it hadn't always been so straightforward, at least not before the Golden Company forced it on him.
Most people can attune themselves to the sound of it but many learn to ignore it before they even know what it is.
"That… makes sense," Mical said, suddenly feeling sad. "How did I not know that?"
Many don't, the voice sounded almost smug. You've done it before. Try it now – simply listen.
He didn't need to be instructed to do so – he was already doing it.
You feel that energy? It surrounds everything – the laigreks, the grass, the kath hounds beyond – but also you, and the temple, and me as well.
He felt it then, he truly did. As if both sensing and becoming a single organism, a hive mind inhabiting his own before splitting itself off and allowing him to simply observe from afar. He felt it all – the animals nearby, the plant-life, the temple beneath and around him both past and present, as well as a singular presence within, no longer ghost-like but small and warm, like a star buried in the night sky.
I won't hurt you, you know, was the first thing he thought, sending his sentiment through the ether and sensing a small smile in return.
I know, the voice assured. But I'm not ready yet. I may never be.
Through the same energy he felt sewn into like a constellation lassoed and tethered to the very plane of existence instead of simply the stars, he sensed it – a small bead of energy at the heart of the temple, buried deep, deep within. A single kernel of life housed within the ruin like a reptile huddled in its shell.
I owe you, he said, just as he felt something else – a tug, a sharp pull that brought him out of his reverie. His eyes shot open though it was a feeling he sensed only through the Force. Intruders.
They are coming, the voice warned, worry painting its thoughts. It was bound to happen.
"I can fend them off," he promised in a hurried whisper, unsure if he could stay true to his word. Perhaps the Jedi had thought the same.
The pebble of an energy source he once sensed at the heart of the temple vanished, all traces of it disappearing as soon as the threat became apparent, quickly encroaching on their position.
I will be fine, the voice assured. Always have been.
The laigreks' song stilled suddenly, their every sense on edge. Even the kath hounds grew quiet. Mical felt their every nerve and intuition as if it were his own.
"But I-"
Yet as soon as he spoke, the voice was gone, his head empty, and the forest on guard just as he was.
He was alone again, but unfortunately not for long.
3951 BBY, Telos IV
Atton
"This one cleared?" Eden asked, back to him, baton and blaster drawn. Atton nodded.
"Affirmative," he assured her, "We're good to move on. Shouldn't be much longer now."
The last stretch of windowless corridor proved to be the most harrowing yet, the maze of the military base stretching beyond Atton's imagination and into the stuff of nightmares. His internal list of hyperspace routes weren't cutting it, and his mind was starting to blank when he tried to mentally recall his emotional support Pazaak hand.
You scared? Corr Desyk had asked through the dark curtains of his intricate braids. I have a feeling we're about to win this one. The Jedi flashed him a confident grin despite the grim news they were about to receive, their entire squadron set to be briefed about the assault on Malachor V. Desyk was to remain on the surface of the moon and clear the field for their charge, ensuring that no Republic nor Jedi soldiers were harmed in the firefight to come. Or so that had been the plan…
"What do you think this place was even used for?" Atton asked Eden into the quiet, even his whisper echoing within the dark space. "All I see are droids and storage rooms."
Atton felt Eden shake her head at his back, their shoulders still pressed together as they circled the junction before finally falling into step down the last corridor after escaping one hell of a booby trap a few meters back. Atton's leather jacket was singed at the lower seam, and part of Eden's fringe had unfortunately caught fire, masking the smell of death with the scent of burning hair. Atton was oddly thankful for it. Atton wondered if Desyk's braids had been consumed all at once or slowly, or if the man had felt anything at all.
"There has to be something important here," she muttered, moving leftwards to slam her hand on an access panel, revealing another empty room. "Czerka operatives and Habat's missing tech were supposedly snooping around this part of the Restoration Zone, this fort was the one that wasn't on the map remember?"
"Right," Atton said, feeling oddly at ease knowing Eden was at his side as he, too, demanded one of the rightward doors to open, only to reveal another body. "Well, we can confirm Czerka's been here at least."
"Really?"
Eden rounded on him as he stood in the dark of the doorway, a crumpled corpse clad in Czerka colors awaiting them on the other side of the threshold.
"Shit."
Atton had seen his fair share of bodies, and he knew Eden had as well. But he couldn't help but think of his squadmates as they burnt up like husks within the shells of their ships, unable to escape the explosive pull of the Mass Shadow Generator.
You are to fire on the bulk of the horde, another Jedi had told his squadron in Desyk's presence prior to the battle. Push the Mandalorians back. And once that's happened, then we unleash the big guns.
Eden rushed towards the body and turned it over until another lifeless face looked back up at her. Atton was still trying to rid his memory of the body from earlier, the woman's face eerily similar to another face he'd very much like to forget, their complexion similar and their dead eyes just the same.
Atton retraced the Rimma Trade Route – even accounting for a detour to Peragus, just for fun – as Eden examined the body and ruminated for far longer than Atton was comfortable with.
The route didn't last long, his mind hurrying through it as another memory rushed in like water on a fast-sinking ship.
Big guns? Atton had echoed. The Jedi, a Togruta, nodded.
We have the means of wiping out the entire moon, but only once the Mandalorians are cornered, the Jedi announced, pride radiating in his voice. Desyk nudged Atton and the two exchanged mirrored smirks.
"This one was shot by one of the military mechs, too," Eden said after a while, bringing Atton out of his reverie, exhaling deeply as if she'd been holding her breath. Atton felt very much the same. "Like the one from before."
Still half-poised beside the body on one knee, Eden pointed her glowrod about the room in search of a droid only to come up empty.
"Must be elsewhere," she said with a sigh as she got back to her feet. On instinct, Atton almost helped her up, eager to feel her skin on his more than anything, before he thought the better of it. Eden only furrowed her brow at him before returning to the hallway.
"So, what other revelations are in store for us?"
Eden dusted off her knees and crept onward. Atton had no choice but to follow.
Wiping out the entire moon? His squadmate had asked, her face scrunched in confusion. How is such a thing even possible?
The Togruta shook his head. I can explain it to you, though my account would not do it justice.
The remainder of the hallway felt wrong. But Atton remained in step with Eden, again oddly comfortable with how easy it was to remain at her side, as if their minds were already attuned to the same page, their every step in sync. They walked slowly forward, weapons drawn, and just as Eden glanced upward, Atton did too. Just as he registered the anomaly, he fired, his aim true. From the lifting smoke he spied a minuscule machine as it wilted and fizzled in the corner of the ceiling before completely sputtering out.
"A camera," Atton muttered. He shook his head, about to move on, but Eden held up an arm to stop him in his tracks. "Should've figured we were being watched."
"I had a suspicion," she said quietly. "But… if we were being watched, and those droids are capable of killing organics, then… what stopped them from offing us too?"
Eden turned to him, her gaze boring into the side of his face. Atton swallowed before facing her. Eden's expression was imploring bordering on desperate, her green and gold eyes wide as she searched his face for an answer she was not about to receive. He didn't know what she wanted to hear, nor what reassurance she was hoping for. All he could do was shrug.
"Maybe they're with Habat," he offered. "Maybe they know you're a friend."
Friend.
The word felt strange on his tongue, but he meant it in earnest. Eden had gone out of her way to help the Ithorians here in a way that made him feel terrible. Even the mere scent of the fresh earth outside made him sick. Revan wanted this place decimated, wiped off the map. And Atton was only too eager to oblige. He was never one for asking questions, at least not back then. Eden had asked the very same of Malachor, and yet a part of him resented her for it. She'd only followed Revan's orders, no? Just as he had. And he'd bombed Telos long after Malachor was gone to the galaxy. Still, the word friend rang true as he thought it, thinking again of the woman who fed him not once but twice before ever thinking of herself. And it was only on the behalf of the Ithorians that she wanted Loppak Slusk dead, wasn't it? And the death of countless others for the bounty now on her head?
"We can only hope," Eden sighed before urging them both onward.
Atton shook his head and his errant thoughts along with it. The corridor was oddly empty, but it still felt wrong, each closed door housing nothing but shadows and countless crates, secrets piled high but none of their concern right now. At least not until they cleared this place of its ghost, its resident specter watching them always…
"Please tell me this is the end of it," Atton groaned quietly as they neared what he hoped was the conclusion of the hall. Like the rest of the facility, the corridor was dimly lit and dark, so it was only as they neared that the bodies that they came into view, their shadowed forms creating miniature mountains against the far door.
Neither Atton nor Eden said anything.
Atton holstered one of his blasters and traded it for his glowrod, holding it aloft until it illuminated the pile before them. The bottom was all metal. Silver and gleaming, a single HK intelligence module looked up at them dead-eyed. But there were mechs at the base, too, their hulls burnt and bent. Above them were the bodies, both Czerka and mercenary alike. And above them hung a laurel, a wreath of ivy spilling out from the cracks of the closed door ahead of them as if it were an infestation and a miracle both.
"Just like the Ithorian Compound, huh?" Eden asked almost reverently, as if the dead were not there.
Atton was about to make another remark when he felt it – no, heard it – and looked upwards again. Whirring almost indiscriminately, a miniature camera looked in his direction just as he made eye contact with its miniscule lens. Like locking eyes with an insect.
"They know we're here," Atton whispered, nudging Eden and indicating that she glance upward too. "How much you wanna bet whoever's inside knows who you are?"
And wants to cash in on that bounty he didn't say, though he thought it. He looked at Eden, watching as she registered the camera and considered it, her gaze eventually meeting his as well.
"Guess that's a risk we'll just have to take," she said, readying her weapons once more. Atton sighed.
There's that we again, he thought. Though he had to admit he was getting used to the sound of it…
"On three," Eden instructed as Atton hooked his glowrod back onto his belt and retrieved his other blaster, holding both pistols aloft and at the ready. "One, two-"
Before Eden could utter three, the doors ahead of them swooshed open as if quietly ushering them inside.
The inner space was cavernous and lush, like the Ithorian stronghold on Citadel Station but also decidedly not. Where the compound was curated and manicured, this place ran wild, with vines and ivy sprawling ever onward over every space of wall until there was none visible to the naked eye and to the point that the space between was overcrowded and claustrophobic. Even a thick coat of moss covered the floor and blanketed their footsteps.
Eden took a step forward, but Atton reached out for her. His hand closed around her wrist, holding her back and urging her to look at him. Their eyes met and he mouthed I think it's a trap.
A trap. He should have known it then on Malachor, too. It had all sounded too good to be true. And this felt too inviting to be real as well.
It is one thing to tell you how such a thing is possible, the Jedi had explained. But it is another to hear it from the tauntaun's mouth. The Togruta stepped aside to reveal a man from the far end of the room, humble with his head bowed.
"We'll be careful," Eden mouthed silently just as a voice rang out through the room, muffled by the green crowding the space.
"I hadn't meant for any of this," the voice said, soft and steady, though sorrowful. "I promised myself I wouldn't. Not anymore."
Eden and Atton locked eyes, nodding in unison once they honed in on the voice and slowly began making their way towards it with steady strides, in step as usual. Atton hadn't even been this close with Desyk nor as in sync, and never on quite the same page with his squadmates, though they came close.
"They urged my hand," the voice continued, harrowed. "I had no other choice."
Eden's face wilted, her eyebrows lilting sideward as she registered the confession. Atton only shook his head. No, don't listen to them. Not yet. Don't-
"Only you might know the feeling," the voice said as they neared, Eden's face betraying more emotion than Atton had known it to in the few weeks he'd known her. Another one for the books.
Once your squad clears the field and pushes the Mandalorians back, this man's device will complete the deed, the Togruta explained, side-stepping to reveal a wiry Iridonian who bowed his head and avoided each of their gazes. He was pale and beautiful, his amber eyes looking out at them briefly before gazing back to the floor. This is Bao-Dur, the genius behind the device that will finally end this war.
The room was dark and full, the voice somehow everywhere and in Atton's mind at the same time, playing in conjunction with his unwitting memory. He imagined Corr Desyk again, proud and smiling as the Iridonian tech was brought before their squad, his head still bowed as he avoided each and every one of their gazes.
I'm no genius, the Iridonian had muttered.
Don't believe him, Desyk retaliated with pride. This man's the best there ever was.
Atton wondered if he could summon ghosts or sense them. Because just as they turned a corner sprawling with brush and ivy, he spied a man huddled in the corner of the adjoining space, head in his hands. His skin was pale, ivory spikes cresting his head like a crown of thorns. His voice was soft, familiar, and ghostly. But when he looked up, he looked at Eden, his eyes wide and pleading.
"I thought you of all people might understand. Wouldn't you, General?"
General.
Atton looked from the man to Eden, wondering if he was imagining the entire thing, a memory and fabrication both.
Eden balked, her eyes wide as she registered the man and took in his appearance, eventually stepping towards him with a confounded, "You."
Just as Atton thought the same.
Atton could have sworn that the man that looked back at them, a pale Iridonian with a crest of barbs adorning his warm slate-grey skin, was the very same as the one that haunted his mind's eye now.
The image of Corr Desyk hung spectral in both Atton's memory as well as his peripheral vision, promising, You'll never find a more impressive Iridonian this side of Hutt Space. Atton could even imagine the Jedi's warm eyes as he'd said it – dark and brown, almost candied in the way they were honey-limned and bright despite the darker depths of his irises.
"Bao-Dur?" Eden asked, echoing Atton's memory, untethering him completely from the here and now.
Bao-Dur.
Atton blinked, seeing both the wiry tech from years before and the muscular stranger he saw before him, reconciling that they were indeed the same person.
He may not have known why Eden was so familiar to him, her eyes and her visage still a mystery he was unfortunately still very willing to uncover. But there was no question as to where he knew the man before him from.
If Eden was the Jedi who made the call, this was the man that made the call possible. Not that Atton ever would have guessed back then, or even now for that matter.
And here he stood, between the made and the maker, wondering just where he fit into all of this. Fast realizing that he didn't fit anywhere at all.
