Prologue: Where do you go when home is gone?
Sounds echoed in this place, magnifying themselves again and again as they leapt from wall to wall; a steady but sluggish drip of water, the shuffling of inmates against the concrete, a cough, an almost inaudible whimper. She had to wonder just who it was that still cried in their sleep. Every last one of them had been here longer than she. Who still whimpered for the life they had lost? While muffled, dejected noises assaulted the ears, the sheer oppressiveness of grey assaulted the eyes. Everything was the dull shade of old concrete; a cold, wet colour, suffusing everything with a dreary air. Even the people began to take on a dull pallor after a few days in this place. Their eyes grew tired, hair matted and filthy. Skin would take on an unhealthy shade, and even those who never really cared for bright light would find themselves longing for the kiss of a single sunbeam on the floor.
Saede sat hunched over, curled in on herself in one corner of her cell- the corner that she imagined was filled more heavily with shadows than the others. Pulling her knees up to her chest, she buried her face in the tiny space between. She had her arms wrapped around herself, hugging her legs tightly against her body. A deep ache permeated her entire body. Shifting uncomfortably, she winced. An insistent throb emanated from her ribs, and the sharp pain from a long gash across her forehead made it hard to think. Deep lines of bruises peaked out of the collar of her smock, trailing up her neck and over her face, running down the entire length of her body. At some point in the last week she had been kicked so viciously that the skin on her thigh split, leaving a jagged wound on her upper leg. The cold from the concrete walls and floor, which she had so thoroughly wedged herself against, soaked through the thin cloth and into her skin. A deep chill settled into her, though it seemed that she was never really warm anymore.
The tell tale whine of a door sliding open sounded somewhere out of Saede’s field of vision. Everything seemed to freeze. No one moved, no one breathed when they heard the sound slice through the cell block. Even the incessant drip of water seemed to pause, only starting up again when the first footfall echoed in the hallway.
One pair of boots stalked down the row, pausing now and then, as though the person were looking into the cells, trying to decide something. But every time the footsteps stopped, they would continue a moment later without incident.
She knew exactly how many steps were between her cell and the door to the guard room. Dread filled her as each sound brought the invisible footsteps closer to her cell.
Thirteen, fourteen. Squeezing her eyes shut, Saede wracked her brain. What shift was this? What time of day? It couldn’t be night, or he would be waking each person up, asking them their number. Just one more way they seemed to suck any remaining spark out of you. A person couldn’t find escape even in sleep. Twenty six, twenty seven. A fog seemed to settle over her thoughts. Day and night were the same here. No true dark, no true morning, just a constant low, flickering dusk. Her head pounded dully, reminding her to breathe, forcing her to inhale raggedly.
Which guard was it?
Thirty four, thirty five, thirty six. The man paused again in front of the cell next to hers; Nicodemus’s cell. She remained absolutely still, straining to hear. But the only sound was her own pounding heart and the steady drip, drip, drip of the water. She focused on that sound, clinging to it, using it as a thready lifeline.
A cold hand covered her heart, squeezing harder and harder. There was still no sound from the hall way or the other cell. She couldn’t hear anyone breathing. Burying her face farther between her knees, she concentrated as hard as she could, willing whoever it was away from Nico’s cell. The thought of something happening to him again was unbearable. She didn’t know if she could take that, and wondered if they knew that anything they could do to her would be easier to suffer through than listening to what they did to him.
The sound of the next drop of water falling to the floor was drowned out by another footfall, propelling whoever was in the hallway right to her cell.
Refusing to look up, Saede clenched her teeth together, now willing whoever it was to keep walking, keep moving. Go anywhere but here.
But whatever force had averted the guard from Nicodemus’s cell seemed to have fled, abandoning her. Heavy footsteps approached, as though the cell walls weren’t even there. A hand roughly cupped her chin, wrenching her head up from her knees. Saede bit down hard on her lower lip to keep from making a sound. The sharp metallic tang of blood filled her mouth as her teeth cut into her lip.
A harsh, but purring voice spoke just loud enough for her to hear.
“Open your eyes.”
She understood that obeying quietly caused so much less pain in the end, but knowing who that voice belonged to caused a faint tremor to pass through her. The voice laughed loudly, the sharp edge of cruelty rippling through the cell block. Forcing her eyes open, she looked up at the man standing above her.
A sharp, pockmarked face stared down at her, a cruel half smile twisting his lips. The uniform of a low ranking imperial officer hung askew on his frame, as filthy and faded as everything in this facility. She focused on the details, anything that her frantic mind could fixate on. His scuffed boots, a small stain on the lapel of his uniform, the dirt beneath his fingernails. A small, cloth name patch sat above his left breast, peeling slightly at one corner. Sgt. Brenin knelt slowly, bringing his fraying name right to Saede’s eyelevel. She swallowed, meeting his gaze. It took all of her self control not to flinch when his cold, blue eyes met hers.
Saede blinked slowly at him, a confused notion washing over her. Those blue eyes. Something about his eyes stirred another memory.
Sergeant Brenin was dead. She’d killed him herself.
As that thought flooded over her, his face twisted in intense pain. She watched, horrified, as his eyes seemed to collapse in on themselves, indentations like five fingers forming on his cheeks where an invisible hand had just thrust its thumbs into his eye sockets. He reached up, clawing at his eyes, his mouth moving wordlessly in shock. Blood ran in tiny rivers down his face, and he buried his head in his hands. A thick red fluid mingled with a thinner clear one, seeping through his fingers.
Saede watched, unable to look away. A high keening sounded from the man’s thoat. A ghastly fascination filled her as she looked on, knowing that she had done all of this. She remembered now.
The keening lowered in volume and pitch, becoming a soft sobbing sound. She looked on, enchanted as his fingers subtly shifted shape, becoming slimmer, elongating slightly. The hair matted on his head grew lighter, cleaner. His waist slimmed and shoulders evened out, giving the man a slightly more graceful appearance. The blood and clear fluid continued to run through his fingers, though Saede now recognized the fluid as tears. Why she hadn’t been able to tell that before she couldn’t fathom.
She reached out, her hand trembling, to touch his shoulder. Hands dropped slowly from Nicodemus’s face, twisted in grief. Blood and tears still mingled on his face as his eyes met hers.
“I told you to forget about me. Dreaming about me isn’t forgetting.”
Saede sat up with a start, breathing heavily. She pulled the blanket up around herself, tucking it firmly beneath her chin. She wasn’t on Dathomir. Not in that awful prison. Brenin was gone.
And so was Nico.
She slipped off of the couch, pulling the blankets with her. A small pink stuffed bantha lay on the floor, fallen off of the couch sometime in the night. Reaching down, she plucked the furry little toy from the floor, placing it tenderly next to her pillow. Wrapping the blanket around herself, she wandered from the living room to the adjoining kitchen.
The apartment was small and mostly empty. Other than a couch and a two-drawer filing cabinet, the living room was devoid of furniture. The bedroom had a twin bed, but it was stripped of linens, sitting abandoned these months she had been living with Nicodemus. Clint lay sprawled on the bed, snoring softly, one arm flung over his face. Her brother had been staying here for awhile, but had recently found an apartment of his own and had already moved most of his possessions there. Saede had told him to keep the bed, though they had been unable to move it that day.
She probably wouldn’t have even known that he was moving into his own place if she hadn’t wandered back into Coronet for the first time in weeks, not really sure where else to go. She had paused in front of the door to her own apartment, unsure if she should knock or not when he came barreling up the stairs, a stack of empty boxes clutched under one arm. Clint had lifted her in the other arm, surrounding her with a tight, brotherly hug before hustling her inside. He talked virtually non-stop about his job with the Correlian police and the new midtown apartment he’d managed to procure, right across the street from a good bar of course. She had let herself get washed away in his conversation, nodding where appropriate, smiling when he looked up at her from packing the mess that he had made. It was a perfect distraction, the only way she would have been able to ignore what had happened just last night.
They spent the day lugging boxes uptown, loading as many into his speeder as possible, snagging the help of some of his friends who lived in the same complex. He didn’t have much, so they managed to move almost everything before it got too dark. Clint and two of his friends dragged her out to the aforementioned bar for a few drinks afterwards, though he still hadn’t picked up on the fact that anything at all was wrong with his sister. She spent the next two hours mulling over a single drink before she toted Clint back to her apartment. He waved and shouted goodbyes to his friends loudly, one arm wrapped around her shoulder, the other gesticulating wildly while he yelled. Saede helped him into bed, then curled up on the couch herself, tossing fitfully for several hours before finally falling asleep.
A window gazed down on the main street, and Saede sat quietly at the kitchen table, a rickety affair with one leg slightly shorter than the others, to look out over the thoroughfare. Even at this time of night, Coronet was moving. People walked the streets, singly, in pairs, some small groups. A couple walked by arm in arm, and Saede’s eyes followed them until they passed from view.
She looked around the kitchen, wrenching her eyes away from the window. Standing up, she clutched the blankets tightly. A bare light bulb flicked to life at the flip of a switch, and she flinched, closing her eyes quickly against the onslaught of the harsh overhead light. A small refresher unit led off from the kitchen, connecting it to the bedroom. The tile floor was grimy from the months of Clint’s stay, and a lone beer can sat forlorn in a dusty corner. She grimaced slightly, also noting the pile of dishes in the sink. Upon closer inspection, it was all of the dishes from her cabinets, some of which looked as though he may have used them his first day here and never washed them. A salt shaker sat on the window sill, though the matching peppermill was no where to be found. Sighing softly, Saede padded over to the refrigerator, opening the door and peering in. Several bottle of alcohols, a box of baking soda and a half of a jar of mustard stared back at her. She shook her head and closed the door, leaning heavily on the cool white ceramic.
All of this was to keep from thinking of one thing. All of the attention spent on each tiny detail around her. She let her mind drift back to the dream, fingering a small crystal pendant that hung from her neck.
“I told you to forget about me. Dreaming about me isn’t forgetting.”
She said the words aloud, turning them over in her mouth. It was exactly what he would have said if he were here. Her hands clenched around the edges of the bedspread, fingernails cutting slightly into her palms. Up until this point she had managed to keep it out of her mind. But something about the bright anonymity of an apartment that was no longer truly hers made everything a little more real, a little colder. She slid down the length of the refrigerator, ending up on the floor with her face in her hands.
A muffled sob broke the silence of the small apartment. The tears followed shortly thereafter. Wave after wave of violent tears wracked her body. Images flashed through her head like a video, pausing to linger on certain moments. Days on Tatooine, on Corellia; days and nights on Dathomir and Dantooine. Flashes of him smiling, frowning, laughing, pretending to fix a halo above his head. Skipping stones, watching him ride down a water fall, the bridge in Tyrena. That last day on Endor. That last night on Dantooine. It seemed that she could barely remember a time when she couldn’t look behind her and he’d be there. It never occurred to her that one day she’d look up to watch him leaving, instead of seeing him walking towards her. And now, he was just gone.
She pulled the blanket around her shoulders again, wiping her eyes on the corner of the fabric. Stumbling back into the living room after turning off the light, she curled up on the couch again, pulling the bantha tightly to her chest within the blankets.
She whispered, slightly muffled into the bantha, “I’ll try not to dream about you Nico… but I won’t ever be able to forget you. I hope you can forgive me for that.”
*****
The next few days passed by in a blur for Saede. Each second crawling by, as though it had no place better to be. But when she looked back, nothing was clear except the time she spent asleep. She would go out with Clint, or spend hours on end at the Cantina, trying to catch up with people she’d left behind after the accident. But she wasn’t the same. She supposed she hadn’t been the same even before Nico left, but it was more noticeable now. They had nothing in common any longer. No common ground to walk on. After a few days, she even stopped going there, spending more and more time alone in the apartment. Even the twins, whom she’d been training the last few weeks within the rebellion didn’t quite know what to of the sudden distance she had thrown up around herself.
There were no answers for her here.
*****
Night shrouded the installation, the darkness lying like a thick wet blanket over every contour of the complex. Lines and edges were dulled, corners hidden in shadow and the entire image had an eerie, surreal aura about it. She knew that she was looking at the prison from an impossible angle; somewhere above the canopy hundreds of feet up, but completely unobscured.
The view panned out, pulling back even farther until she couldn’t make out the individual buildings. Something about this distance calmed her, making the place seem somehow less frightening. Maybe it was not knowing what was going on inside the walls, but somehow it wasn’t so bad from out here. A part of her, someplace in the back of her mind screamed that she was still inside. She silenced it, knowing there was nothing she could do for that part of herself which remained trapped in the prison.
Pivoting, the vista spiraled out over the tree tops, bringing her farther and farther away with every rotation. Each moment brought new things into view, things that she had never actually seen when on the planet. Deep lakes, mountain passes with strange stonework, tar pits and a wreck lost deep within them all circled into view, only to be lost again as more things were revealed. This was farther away from the prison than she’d even been. A tall, forbidding mountain now dominated her view, leaving all thoughts of the prison and its occupants behind.
The spiraling stopped, leaving her drifting towards the mountain, pulled by some as yet unknown force. She knew that if she could just go a little bit farther, the last nights would be worth it. Everything seemed centered on this mountain, as though it was all that mattered anymore. Her scope of vision narrowed, everything else retreating into a dark haze. Lights danced along the ridge of a sheer cliff face. In the darkness, she couldn’t see what held the torches as they sputtered and flared in the night, but she knew that if she could just get a little closer…
Saede awoke with a start, just like the last five nights. Rubbing her haggard face, she stood up and headed into the kitchen. She moved as though she were still dreaming, so lost in thought that she didn’t even realize she had poured herself a glass of milk until she was half way through drinking it.
Still fixated on the dream, she finished the drink, then rinsed out her glass. Each night for the last week, she’d dreamed of Dathomir. Each night, the dream had brought her a little bit farther from the prison, every image revealing something that she had never seen before. Each night, she got closer to that mountain. The first night it had just been a shadow in the distance, but every dreaming moment brought it more clearly into focus. She put the glass back in the cabinet absently, looking around the apartment.
Except for a little food in the kitchen and the general improvement of the cleanliness level, the apartment remained unchanged. No new furniture had been added. Her clothing hadn’t made it to the closet in the bedroom. It was as though this place weren’t her home anymore. As though she had already...
Already left, she thought. Even Clint had noticed. He had commented just yesterday that is felt like she wasn’t here anymore. Even worse than just before she left home for the first time. It was as if she was already gone.
I don’t even know where I’ve gone to. It’s not like I have anywhere to go. But she knew that was a lie. Saede knew exactly where she was. Where she was headed.
Dathomir.
Continue to Chapter 1: Mistakes Made In Ignorance
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