In reply to 17: Thank you as always for the reviews! Korkie's got a long way to go, especially when it comes to embracing his name and his past, but I think you'll see him making you proud as he grows.
Another mega-chapter. Too much going on! Do tell me if they're getting too long.
Chapter 13: Hurt and Healing
The desolate second moon of Ryloth was softened by the light of the early dawn. Korkie rose from his bunk and emerged from their battered ship to find the rocky undulations of the moon bathed in a faint pink. Scattered pools of water glinted silver. The planet Ryloth loomed large in the waking sky.
He heard footsteps behind him – soft, well-trained footsteps, but not imperceptible – and turned to find Mace Windu.
"May I walk with you?"
"If you want."
They walked out of the settlement and towards a shining lake that lay deep in a crater below them. Already, there were distant noises from the Twi'leks in their dormitories.
"Were we going to fix that Jar'Kai?"
Korkie looked to the Jedi Master with faint surprise.
"You don't fight Jar'Kai."
Windu chuckled.
"You think I can't?"
Korkie gave a good-natured shrug and unclipped his weapons from his belt, weighing them in his hands. The asymmetry between the Darksaber and lightsaber was striking still.
"The Darksaber is heavier?" Mace observed.
"Much."
Heavy with his unworthiness. But Korkie tried not to think about that.
"Then your stance must balance them."
They had reached the edge of the crater-lake now and paused in their walking. Korkie took his habitual stance then readjusted his feet. It took several attempts. Mace watched patiently.
"You've found it?"
"Maybe."
"Your stance isn't only about the placement of your feet," Mace advised. "It is how the Force flows through your muscles."
Korkie grimaced.
"Honestly, Mace… the Force and I don't talk much these days."
"A waste of your abilities, then."
But Mace was not harsh or unkind in the way that he said it.
"Come, now. Feel the flow of the Force through your muscles and allow it to balance you."
Korkie took a steadying breath. He didn't know how to explain it to the former Jedi Master. No one had ever spoken these words to him but his father. And Korkie had allowed the Force to fall away from him – he had used it as a tool, covering his lies and throwing stormtroopers into walls, but he had scorned it as a companion more and more each day as Obi Wan's voice faded from his memory. He had turned his back on the Force because that gaping absence hurt him. And now Mace was asking him to nurse that wound again.
"The Force flowed through you in your battle against Grievous," Mace told him. "It has not abandoned you. You have simply pushed it away, into your subconscious mind."
Korkie grumbled that this sounded a little too much like Temple blather. But Mace was right, naturally. He closed his eyes and tried for his stance again.
"That's good, Korkie."
When he opened his eyes, Korkie found the former Jedi Master with his own lightsaber clipped still to his belt. With open palms, he levitated stones from the rocky ground.
"Are you ready?"
Korkie gave a nod and the stones flew towards him. Slowly, at first, one by one. And then gradually faster. Korkie had to admit that Mace was a gentler teacher than he might have expected of him.
"There must be a leader and a follower amongst your 'sabers. They must be predictable to one another. Complementary."
Mace observed Korkie's clumsy re-shuffle and paused the stones before he could be struck in the shoulder.
"The heavier blade is usually the leader. It carves out momentum and the lighter blade follows, manoeuvres more deftly, according to what is required of it."
Korkie screwed up his nose and effortfully waved the Darksaber.
"I'm supposed to lead with this?"
Mace smiled.
"Not your favourite blade?"
Korkie sighed.
"Not by a long way."
"It will take time, Korkie," he conceded. "It's new to you still. But you will come to understand each other. You won it, after all."
At this, Korkie snorted and shook his head.
"Barely. I wouldn't have had a chance against Maul if Dad hadn't shot him."
Mace shook his head with a shadow of a smile.
"There are no accidents in the Force."
Korkie had heard this adage before from his father, on a hike with Anakin through the lake country on Kalevala.
Sure, no accidents. Except for you, of course, Korkie.
The memory of his brother's voice, of his rich laughter, gave Korkie the vague feeling of seasickness. But the stones were flying towards him once more and Korkie let it go. He and Mace Windu practised in that manner until the sun rose proper, illuminating the dusty brown of the chalky stone beneath their feet and the blackness of the lake.
"Shall we spar?" Mace offered.
Wielding and leading with the Darksaber had become easier with the drills but Korkie felt awkward still. He nodded his assent only because he trusted Mace wouldn't hurt him.
"Kriff it. Why not?"
Mace shook his head with a half-smile at the profanity. Korkie took a steady breath and advanced.
The former Jedi absorbed his blows but offered little offence of his own. Korkie drew the Force through his feet, through his core, pushed it out to the Darksaber, again and again and again. A leader and a follower. Two overlapping melodies, like the birds that sang in the palace gardens of Sundari. He flowed faster and more surely until Mace edged around him and held his 'saber to the back of Korkie's neck.
"Good, Korkaran."
Korkie rolled his eyes. The whole right side of his body was aching with the effort of wielding the Darksaber. Mace breathed slowly and easily without a trace of sweat upon his brow.
"Again?"
Korkie groaned, but lifted the blades.
His mock decapitations improved, with many iterations, to Mace's blade stopping short of a wrist or a knee. He moved with greater confidence in each round, his fatiguing muscles giving way to a deeper sense of rhythm, his movements falling into place, his efforts ever less. He pushed Mace back towards the lip of the crater, clashed the Darksaber with Mace's purple blade, allowed his lightsaber to cut upwards towards Mace's exposed hip-
But the former Jedi Master leapt easily with the assistance of the Force to land behind him. Off-balance, Korkie lasted a few more short parries until the handle of Mace's 'saber, blade extinguished, was pressed against his chest.
"Ah, kriff. My worst defeat yet."
Mace smiled.
"Not at all, Korkie. You've improved substantially."
Korkie shrugged his thanks and sat down upon the lip of the crater to catch his breath with his elbows braced against his knees, 'sabers extinguished and laid in the dust at his feet.
"All the fights I've survived have been with the help of these," Korkie admitted, indicating to the collection of blasters at his belt. "I'm not inclined to fight with 'sabers alone."
Mace came to sit before him, cross-legged and straight-spined.
"There's no wrong in that. You don't have to fight as the Jedi did."
Korkie raised a brow.
"No?"
Blasters were, as Korkie had been counselled a thousand times, uncivilised.
"No," Mace agreed. "You're a Mandalorian. You have your own culture and training."
"Yeah," Korkie agreed, "But I'm carrying a lightsaber. Surely it's a bit… sacrilegious, no? To use both together?"
Mace shook his head.
"Siri wouldn't mind. She was not pedantic about tradition."
Korkie's eyes widened.
"You recognise it?"
"I'd recognise any lost 'saber," Mace told him, solemnly. "There's still that faint feeling…"
Mace extended a hand, then paused.
"May I?"
"Of course."
Mace took the lightsaber in his hand. His gaze was as tender as Korkie had ever seen it.
"…still that faint feeling of her."
Korkie's chest ached with sudden emotion.
"Dad meant to take it back to Bethal. Her homeworld. Then Maul came and I needed a weapon and…"
He looked to Mace.
"Is it wrong that I've kept it? Maybe I could take it back when we leave Ryloth."
Mace shook his head.
"Siri would be glad to know it was keeping you safe."
Korkie shrugged, uneasy.
"When this galaxy is fixed," he resolved. "When I get to lay down my weapons and never fight anyone ever again, I'm going to take it home to Bethal."
Was that future impossible? It did not feel it, in that moment. Mace Windu gave a bruised smile. His gaze was somehow distant.
"I think that's a good plan, Korkie."
On their return to the cluster of slapdash buildings that made up the guerrilla base, Mace and Korkie found the Twi'leks in a state of frenzied activity. Mace approached Cody at work upon their ship.
"Something's happened."
Cody gave grimace.
"Something rather major, General."
"Yes?"
"Some Imperial informant has told them that the Emperor and Grievous are coming to Ryloth tomorrow. Ostensibly to visit Senator Taa."
Mace sighed. So this was the warning that he had felt.
"We'll be able to leave before then?"
"I think so, General."
Cody carried on tweaking with the jumble of wires before him until the fuse box began to hum with activity and he slid shut its cover.
"Gregor and Trapper have headed out to another settlement to source a part. As long as they find it, and we all put in a good day of work, we'll be flyable by tonight. The panels won't look great, but they'll be airtight."
"Good."
Mace turned to pick up some tools of his own but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder.
"Are you suggesting we leave the Free Ryloth Movement to be destroyed?" Korkie demanded. "The Emperor's not coming to Ryloth to exchange pleasantries with the Senator."
Mace pursed his lips. There was no good way to explain it to the boy.
"It was always going to happen, Korkaran," he sighed. "The Empire does not tolerate resistance."
"There's talk that Ryloth's going on the offensive," Wooley volunteered, swinging past to sip from the canteen at Cody's feet. "They're planning an ambush. Going after the Emperor himself."
Korkie gaped.
"Could they possibly-"
Mace shook his head, voice flat.
"No, Korkie."
But the young man's optimism was not stifled.
"What about with our help?" Korkie pressed. "If we worked together."
"No."
Korkie looked at Mace as though he were perhaps an idiot, and spoke with deliberate clarity.
"The Twi'leks have the advantage of numbers and of home territory," he listed. "The Movement's gathered enough weaponry to set up a dangerous ambush. This is not the sort of opportunity that will come by again. All they'll need is the support of someone capable of holding their own ground in a duel with Palpatine, Master Windu, which you can-"
"I have told you not to call me Master!"
Mace had slipped, then, into the anger that he had fought to tame his entire life. The boy blinked his surprise at the rebuke.
"Korkie," he tried again, reaching for calm. "The time is not right. Even by joining forces we would not succeed."
Arms folded, perhaps unable to dispute this fact, Korkie chewed at his lip.
"But if we continue to live in fear," he probed, eventually, after a few moments of pensive silence, "how will we ever win?"
Mace fished a spanner from the toolbox and set to work removing a battered panel from the hull of their ship.
"We will win when we are strong enough."
The boy looked to him with doleful gaze.
"One cannot hurry the turning of a planet upon its axis," Mace went on. "Nor can we fell the Empire before its time. A tower must be built up before it can be toppled."
He had done all he could to signal the end of the conversation. But Korkie was not having it.
"How will we know when the time is right?" he pressed. "The Empire seems pretty kriffing tall to me already. What are we waiting for?"
Mace removed one bolt and moved onto the next. He wished he knew the answer to that question. But it was not so simple as the boy wished it to be. The Force worked in mysterious ways. And Mace couldn't read it, blast it. All that he knew for certain was that he could not fight that battle today.
"Are you waiting for Anakin?" Korkie asked. "Is that it? Because I've tried with him. I've tried but he wouldn't budge, so if you're waiting for him, maybe you or Master Yoda should head out his way and-"
"It's not that simple, Korkaran."
"What is Master Yoda doing anyway?" Korkie challenged, voice accusatory. "What exactly is there to do on Dagobah? Last I checked, the Empire wasn't much interested in conquering the swamps. Not enough sentient life for them to extinguish, I imagine. They prefer planets like Ryloth and Mandalore where they can destroy whole civilisations."
"Korkaran-"
"And what about you? The second most powerful Jedi alive is running around doing odd jobs and avoiding any conflict that could actually change the galaxy-"
"Korkaran-"
"What are we all waiting for, blast it?"
Clenching the spanner, Mace turned away from his work to face the young man, arms held wide in appeal.
"Listen to me, Korkie."
"If you promise to say something real," Korkie sniped. "Not just about toppling towers and planets turning on their axes."
By the stars. Mace was flooded with the strangest image, then, an overpowering recollection, of Qui Gon Jinn and his unruly Padawan's infamous arguments. He felt the boy's emotions in the Force, completely unbridled, wonderful and terrible. And he relented with honesty at last.
"We are healing, Korkaran," Mace answered, voice low. "All of us. Master Yoda and Anakin and myself and yourself too, even though you might try to ignore it. We are all healing and we must all be stronger before this fight is won."
Korkie's face slackened with surprise.
"But…"
He sighed and shook his head, his anger giving way to an apologetic grimace.
"So that whole no attachment thing really was bantha-shit?"
Mace gave a sigh of his own.
"It was not attachment to people that undid us, Korkaran."
He set down his spanner and gestured for Korkie to walk with him away from the ship.
"We were attached to an idea, Korkie," he explained. "To the galaxy as we knew it. To a galaxy that was balanced, in which good could triumph. And now we've lost that galaxy."
"It's not lost forever."
But even as he protested, the young man's voice had been doused of its fire.
"Nothing is forever," Mace agreed. "But we have without a doubt entered a new age in the galaxy. Greater than any shift between Old and New Republics. The evil that rules this galaxy now… it is greater than any we have ever known."
"When will Master Yoda leave Dagobah?"
"He may never leave Dagobah, Korkie."
The words were painful to say but he could not lie to the boy.
"Yoda was hurt, deeply hurt, by everything that happened. He will never again be as strong as he once was."
"Truly?"
Mace nodded solemnly. Korkie scuffed at the dust with his boot.
"So what do you propose we do, then? Tread water, fight the battles we can win, until we're somehow ready?"
Mace gave a weak smile.
"It's a dissatisfying answer, isn't it?"
"Healing," Korkie muttered, disdainful. "What is that supposed to look like, exactly?"
He caught Mace's eye and frowned.
"Actually, hold on. Don't answer that. I have a feeling I won't like whatever you have to say."
Mace chuckled.
"The Force will show us the way."
Korkie made a face, refusing to share in the smile.
"Yeah. Exactly. Kriff's sakes."
He tugged, irritated, at one of his blonde curls.
"I'll never be karking Jedi."
"As I said on our way here," Mace reminded him, gently. "I don't mean for you to be."
Korkie grunted a noncommittal reply and busied himself now picking at the dirt beneath his fingernails.
"Help us ready the ship, Korkie," Mace prompted. "I'm not asking you to be a Jedi. Only for the chance to let us heal together."
Korkie looked at Mace, slack-jawed and silent, before his expression hardened. He stood unarmoured but Mace somehow saw the beskar in him, the steely determination that had run in the veins of his lineage since the conquering of the great Mythosaur.
"No."
"No?"
Korkie stood taller still. He had his mother's willowy height.
"Leave without me."
Their voices were growing louder, sparking the notice of the clone troopers at work.
"I don't care what you have to say about hurt and healing," Korkie went on. "I'm strong enough. And I'm not leaving the Free Ryloth Movement to fight this battle alone."
"Korkaran," Mace reasoned. "You are not strong enough yet."
"I'm not your child!" Korkie retaliated. "I'm nobody's child! I make my own blasted choices."
A conversation that Mace had not the faintest idea how to navigate. There had been so little of this raw and unbridled adolescent anger in the Jedi Temple.
"Korkie, please-"
But the boy was already walking away. Mace felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He turned to find Cody, grim-faced and heart-aching.
"Let me talk to him, General."
The teenager was halfway back to the Free Ryloth Movement's base camp by the time Cody caught up with him.
"Korkie, wait."
He did not break in his elegant stride and spoke flatly without looking back.
"No, Cody. I'm sorry."
"Come with us."
The boy grimaced as he chanced half a look at his pursuer.
"I said no, Cody."
"Blast it, Korkie!"
Cody landed a hand upon his shoulder and forcibly turned him around. The words, unplanned, spilled from his mouth.
"Korkie, please. I need you to stay with us."
The boy faltered, perhaps unsettled by Cody's vulnerability. He'd never spoken of need or attachment before.
"We were both going just fine before we ran into each other, Cody," Korkie reasoned, with an uncomfortable shrug. "It's been a year already. We can part ways again and nothing will be any different."
Cody shook his head.
"Finding you has changed everything, Korkie."
He'd heard those words once before – from Obi Wan, when he had returned to Coruscant after the death of Maul on Mandalore, and finally told him the whole story. My whole life, Cody… it stopped and started anew when I first held him. Korkie changed everything.
But Korkie wasn't to know that and he continued in his dogged stoicism.
"Cody," he protested, "What are you talking about? We hardly know each other."
"You must think I'm crazy," Cody conceded. "I know that. I'm sorry. But I…"
He looked into that face, so familiar and yet so foreign to him.
"Your father would have given his life for me, Korkie, and I would have done the same for him. And now-"
Korkie looked at him with reproach.
"I'm not my father, Cody."
Cody shook his head.
"This isn't about replacing your father. This is about…"
He was flustered, dry-mouthed. He had never learned to speak of feelings. He'd never been meant to have any.
"This is about what I owe you. What I owe both of you."
Korkie cocked a brow.
"You owe us nothing, Cody."
Cody shook his head.
"We kept him away from you," he confessed. "When he didn't have much time left to be with you."
Korkie gave a snicker but there was no real humour in his eyes.
"You didn't do that, Cody. It was his choice."
"It was a bastard of a choice for him to be faced with."
"Yeah. I guess."
Cody didn't know how to say it. The guilt he felt for taking a father away from a child. The gratitude he had, that relief he could not quite extinguish, that he had gone to war beside General Kenobi.
"He cared for all of us very much," he said.
Korkie nodded.
"He cared for everyone."
"He was very kind."
"Crazy kind."
"I never knew anyone like him."
"Yeah," Korkie sighed, with a wry grin. "Me neither."
"You look a lot like him," Cody ventured.
Stupid. He was saying stupid things. Useless things. Words were always useless.
But Korkie simply shrugged.
"I always thought I looked more like my mum."
Cody studied the fine-boned nose, the soft gold of the boy's hair that the grease and grime could not quite extinguish.
"Maybe," he conceded.
It was certainly obvious which of his parents had been the one to raise him. Korkie stood tall like the Duchess Kryze, spoke with her steel, defended himself with her cool impenetrable righteousness.
"Maybe it's just the busted ribs," Cody proposed instead.
Finally, Korkie smiled.
"True. Busted ribs were very much an Obi Wan signature look."
It was the first time either of them could bring themselves to say his name.
"Look, Cody," Korkie sighed. "I'm glad that Obi Wan was with you on those terrible battlefields. I'm glad that he treated you and your brothers well. I'm glad that you remember him fondly and I'm sorry to have brought back painful memories. But I can't come with you."
He looked genuinely apologetic.
"I think my Buir would have understood that I have to fight this battle. That I can't abandon the Free Ryloth Movement when they defend their home and their revolution today."
Cody sighed.
"I understand, Prince."
He found a smile of his own, then.
"I guess that means I'm staying too."
Korkie looked at him, mouth ajar.
"That's… I mean, that's great, Cody, for the Free Ryloth Movement, if you truly want to stay and fight, but I don't need my own personal bodyguard-"
"Well," Cody interrupted, with finality. "You're getting one."
"Cody, I-"
"You can win every other argument we ever have, Korkie," Cody vowed. "But not this one."
As Cody trooped back to the ship, Mace sensed that he had been defeated. But he hadn't quite anticipated the words that came from the soldier's mouth.
"I'm staying too, General. Protecting the di'kut kid."
Mace opened his own mouth to speak and found nothing.
"I see," he managed, after a prolonged pause, voice barely level.
"I'm sorry."
"No," Mace reassured him hurriedly. "Don't be."
"I know it's not a winnable fight, General. But the kid…"
Mace gave a curt nod of understanding. He wasn't angry, only a fraction unbalanced by the unexpected change. He did not resent Cody his decision. The boy was a hurricane of righteousness in the Force and he had swept the veteran clone up within him.
"I can't let him die for it. That's all."
Kix groaned and threw down his spanner.
"Who's going to patch the two of you up? When you go out there and get your heroes' wounds?"
Silence fell between them.
"Say we all stay?" Wooley suggested.
Mace rubbed his callused fingertips against his weary forehead.
"By the stars," he murmured.
"Is that a yes, General?"
They were waiting for him, all of them, to give his assent.
"I-"
And Mace Windu had the strangest sensation then of being gone from his body. Of being someone else, somewhere else. For he sensed and could feel that the soldiers were looking at him and seeing a person that he was not. They looked to him and saw a hero. But Mace knew that he did not have the skeleton to make this apparition stand.
"The choice is yours, Wooley. But I cannot stay."
The time was not right.
"It is a losing battle in any galaxy," Mace asserted. "And it is better for the Free Ryloth Movement that it be lost without me. It is one matter in this new galaxy to be an enemy of the Empire and another entirely to be a friend of the Jedi."
He looked after the teenager's retreating back.
"You saw what they did to Mandalore."
The clones nodded, Wooley with new sobriety, as they regarded the image that had seemed so impossible, plastered over the HoloNet in a barrage of Imperial propaganda. The home of the warrior, reduced to ash.
"I can do better than this for the galaxy."
It was a plea as much as a promise.
"Of course, General. But you wouldn't begrudge us if we…?"
"Stay, Wooley," Mace bade the soldier, with as much warmth as he could muster. "Stay all of you, if you wish it. We can all only do what we feel is right."
Korkie found Cham Syndulla loading rounds of ammunition onto his personal ship, readying his squadron of guerrillas to depart the moon for Ryloth proper.
"What are you still doing here?"
The Twi'lek, curt at the best of times, was blatantly on edge.
"I'm not leaving. We've got a battle to fight, no?"
Korkie flinched as Cham dropped the crate of explosives he had been carrying.
"We?"
Hands on his hips, Korkie offered a grin.
"The Free Everywhere Movement includes Ryloth, you know."
Cham straightened and wiped the sweat from his brow.
"I fear that in your human arrogance, young Ben, you have forgotten your inexperience as a soldier."
"Adolescent arrogance," Korkie corrected him flippantly. "I don't think it's a distinctly human trait."
Cham remained solemn.
"I understand that Grievous nearly killed you the first time, young one."
Korkie's hand flitted, traitorously, to the dressings concealing his aching wounds, but found his bravado.
"Superficial damage only, General."
Cham raised his brows.
"I heard he reached bone."
"You don't have to cut deep to reach bone," Korkie countered. "I've not got any muscle on me."
Cham shook his head as he returned to his packing of the crates.
"The choice is yours, young revolutionary. But if you are to fight, you follow the directives of your superiors. There is less freedom in freedom fighting than you might imagine."
"Of course, General."
Korkie picked at the edge of his dressing as Cham continued in his work.
"I meant to talk to you about something else, actually."
"Mhmm?"
"What'll happen to Hera if you don't make it back from this battle?"
Cham froze at his work.
"Why are you asking me about my daughter?"
"I'm worried for her," Korkie professed. "My parents went to war and died when I was fourteen standard and Hera must be only-"
"Eleven," Cham supplied grimly.
"I think you ought to give some thought-"
Cham sighed and briefly closed his eyes.
"You think I haven't given this any thought?"
Korkie flushed.
"No, General."
"This is the best that I can do for Ryloth and my people," Cham muttered, speaking half to himself. "I cannot sit in safety with my own daughter while other children become orphans."
Korkie sighed. It was all too familiar. He wouldn't win this argument.
"I apologise for overstepping, General."
"There is no need to apologise, Ben."
There was something strange in the way that Cham said his name. He had his daughter's scepticism, perhaps. Korkie folded his arms protectively about himself in the face of the Twi'lek's scrutinising gaze. He seemed to be searching for something in Korkie's face.
"Kenobi," he declared, eventually.
Korkie paled.
"How-"
"He was one of the Jedi who liberated Ryloth," Cham recalled, quietly. "He was gentle. Cared for our children. Had your Coruscanti accent, not to mention your complexion. And he left behind a fourteen-year-old son, no?"
Korkie nodded, unable to speak. His throat was suddenly tight.
"You are more famous than you perhaps recall, Korkaran Kenobi. Even on Ryloth, we saw the defeat of Darth Maul."
"Kryze," Korkie corrected him. "My surname is Kryze."
Cham smiled. There was a heavy sadness in it.
"Eleni was a better parent than I, too," he recalled, wistful. "I'm sorry for your loss, Korkaran Kryze."
"Thank you, General."
Korkie faltered.
"All I meant to say, General, is that you should make sure you have time for a proper goodbye," he managed. "To Hera. Before you go."
Cham watched him with mournful gaze.
"Thank you, comrade. I will."
Cham found his daughter easily amongst the chaos of the battle preparations. There was nowhere she would be but the hangar, preparing the ships she begged him to allow her to pilot.
A proper goodbye.
What did that mean, exactly, Prince Korkaran? Was a goodbye ever good enough? Cham had told Eleni the day she died that he loved her. He'd told her that every day of their lives together. But it hadn't made it any better, blast it. Their moment together that morning had not been enough. Nothing could have made it enough. No sort of goodbye could fill that gaping chasm of loss.
"Hera…"
His daughter turned from her work at the fuel pump, montrals swishing. Her mouth parted slightly with surprise.
Stars. He was surely the worst father in the galaxy. For his daughter to expect he'd leave for battle without saying goodbye.
"Hera, I just wanted to say…"
Words could never be enough. He lifted an arm and Hera came to fill that empty space beside him, to huddle into his body in the way that she had as a young child, when he had been big enough to shield her from the wind and rain.
"I'm sorry," he managed.
Hera leaned heavily into him, wrapped her arms around his waist and held him tight. Tighter than she ever had before. How long ago had they last embraced like this? For she had surely grown in that time. It was shameful.
"I want to fight, Father."
Her voice was soft but determined. Cham shook his head.
"You cannot, Hera. Not today. I…"
His mouth was dry and his chest aching.
"I love you too much."
Hera buried her forehead into his chest.
"I love you too. That's why I want to fight. For you."
There was no more to say, in that beautiful and horrible stalemate. Cham held his daughter tight and hoped that she understood.
Hurricane Korkie. I love writing him with a bit of adolescent fire. And with such a heart of gold.
Next chapter, we embark on the ambush of the Sidious and Grievous aboard the Perilous. Things, of course, don't quite go as planned.
xx - S.
