Location: Roon
One week after Atrisia, after the Death Star. The hospital room was quiet, Ace sat leaned against his bedframe, bare shoulders bowed, the sheets draped loosely around his waist. The light above him was a muted amber, enough to catch the dull gleam of the new prosthetic where it joined his skin.
It didn't feel real. Not yet. The arm moved when he willed it to... but the sensation stopped just past his elbow. The weight of it threw off his balance; every motion felt rehearsed, disconnected. He turned the hand over slowly, watching servos shift beneath black plating, and felt nothing. Just machinery where life used to be.
Tic perched quietly on the edge of the bedside table, photoreceptor flickering in faint, rhythmic pulses that matched the medbay's monitors. The little droid had been unusually still since Ace's surgery. Every so often, he released a soft chirp, low and uncertain, like he didn't know how to help.
When Ace's new fingers twitched too fast and the joints whined in protest, Tic tilted his head and let out a quick worried trill. Ace didn't look up.
"It's fine." He muttered.
The words had barely left his mouth before the smell hit him - acrid, seared flesh, and for a heartbeat, the room blurred into red light and steel. He could feel it again. The heat. The pressure. Ravoch's weight behind the blade. The flash of crimson. The white-hot pain.
It was all there, the roar of the Sith's lightsaber splitting the air, the sickening hiss when light met flesh, the animal scream that had torn from his throat before the world went silent. He could smell the burning. See the smoke. His vision swam with red strobes.
And then... he was back. His breathing was ragged before eventually settling into a calm rhythm again.
Aether had been by his side from the moment he found him on the Death Star. Rescuing Ace from death or worse, out from beneath the shadow of the Sith Lord who took everything from him. And yet Ace could barely look at his brother. Gratitude twisted into shame every time Aether's eyes lingered on the prosthetic.
Worse than the arm was the silence where his lightsaber had been. It wasn't just a weapon to him. One of the only things that tied him to her, to Orryn. That skeletal hilt had followed him through every world, every battle, every narrow escape since he was old enough to hold it. Losing it on Atrisia felt like losing her again, as though the last tangible piece of her had been cut away with his arm.
He hated looking at it. The sight of it caught the light too easily - a metallic reminder of what he wasn't anymore. The Mandalorians said it made him stronger, but he didn't feel strong. He felt displaced, like the Force itself recoiled from the dead metal. It no longer flowed through him cleanly; it stopped short, diverted, leaving a numbness that went deeper than nerves.
He lowered the arm. Stared at it. Hated it. There would come a time when he'd learn to move again, to fight again, to let the Force find its way around the break. But for now, all he could feel was the absence... of the arm, of the blade, of the part of himself that had died on Atrisia and hadn't yet found the will to come back.
