Private Echoes

[Kassus]

Sajun - Jedi Enclave

It should have been raining.

It seemed wrong that the sky was filled with sun, that the clouds had parted and for once the ice world of Sajun felt almost warm. The snow on top of the Enclave was crisp and new. There was no ugly marr of dirt or sand within the flakes, and everything appeared almost...perfect. It should have been the type of morning one found on their birthday, or another day filled with glee and joy.

Instead, they found themselves here.

Kassus stood at the top of the Enclave, staring out at the cold lands before him. His gaze was hollow, filled with dread and sorrow as he peered across the land. All around him he saw the snowy plains of Sajun, stretching out in what seemed like forever. They offered him no answer, no joy, no reprieve from the despair which gripped his shattered heart. Even hours later he stilled gripped his lightsaber, clinging to it like it might offer some comfort, despite it being the executioners blade.

"Kass?" A soft voice called out from behind him, distant, as close as it might be. The sound carried as though it were a thousand miles away, or maybe that was his hope. The Nautolan was not sure if he could move, not sure if he could even speak. It seemed an impossible task, one that even the greatest heroes of the age could not carry out.

"Kass." The word echoed again. "It's cold, you shouldn't be-"

The words cut off as he turned around, little Othelia standing before him.

She was small, smaller than the others. One of those who had thankfully been spared from the horrors of the day before. In her fingers she clutched a coat, a thing of fur and warmth he did not deserve. A smile was on her face, though he knew there was no mockery in it. The dread he felt was not her fault, but he could not help the stabbing guilt he felt as she held up the coat towards him. "Go inside, Oth."

Kassus said softly, gently wrapping his fingers around her own. "It's too cold out here for you."

The little human shook her head vigorously in objection, doing her best to proffer the coat once more. Her mouth opened to speak, but before she could offer another syllable one of the other Knights stepped up behind her and gently took her shoulders. A gentle squeeze saw her guided away, their only parting a simple look of despair over her shoulders as Kassus once again turned away.

He let a long, cold, breath draw into his lungs. Regret stung his lungs, a thousand failures painted in the crisp white snow which laid before him. Hand coming up slowly to rub at his face, the realization of what he had done laying before him. Slowly, almost painfully so, he allowed another whisper of air to draw through his lungs, accepting what it was that came with it. Eyes closed as he turned around and began to walk down the stairs towards the center of the Enclave.

Scorches marred the walls as he went, broken pieces of wall still scattered on the floor, the burns of a lightsaber left carved into the floor.

Now he knew what they meant, who had left them.

Slowly Kassus made his way back into the center of the Temple, his steps echoing until finally he found he was looking for. The main hall was empty now. Once a monument to the teaching of Sajun, now and echo of what had happened here. The corpse of who had scarred this place now taken away, but her phantom still haunting the one who remained. "I don't think you should be in this room right now."

Kassus said softly, sitting down beside Anselle Tarn .

 

[Anselle Tarn]

She'd found a ledge.

It was a basalt lip, high up where the walls met the ceiling, as if the original builders had started carving the stone and then forgotten. Anselle had found it three days ago and had figured out how to get up there two days ago. You needed to climb the fourth pillar, leap across to a crack in the wall, scramble up, and forget about how far away the floor was. It was easy if you were quick and brave.

Tahli would never find her up here.

Anselle lay on her stomach in the crevice with her chin in her hands, fingers covering her mouth and listened to her best friend count from outside the hall.

"...forty-one, forty-two..."

Hide-and-seek. Blindfolded. Technically, it was training, and the Atoan was ready to argue her point with Master Sael until she was red in the face. It wasn't about seeking with your eyes; it was about seeking with your senses. The fun was incidental.

"...fifty. I'm coming!"

She held her breath and watched from her perch on high as the blindfolded Togruta carefully stepped into the main hall and stopped in the centre, her head tilted in the way she always did when seeking. Anselle was still, perfectly still, the stillest thing in the room, even more than the pillars that held up the enclave. She had never been so still in her thirteen years of living.

She was going to win.

"Elle," Tahli announced, turning to face the wall with the basalt lip, her arm stretching out and then up, exactly where Anselle lay. "You're up... there?"

"What?!" The Atoan squawked, confirming that she was indeed up there. "There is no way! You must have peeked!"

"I could hear you," Tahli argued, removing her blindfold with her other hand and craning her head upwards to look at her best friend's indignant face, peeking out of the crevice.

"I wasn't making any noise!"

"Your hearts are. All of them. You're so loud, Elle. You're the loudest person in the whole, entire Enclave," the Togruta grinned, still pointing up. "Come down from up there; you'll break your neck."

"I won't," Anselle pouted.

"You'll break your neck, and then I'll have to fix it, and I don't want to," Tahli replied patiently, placing her hands on her hips. "So, come down."

So she did come down, by the crack and the pillar opposite, quicker than she had clambered up, just to prove that she could.

---

The lip was still there. Anselle hadn't looked up at it in years. The crack you could use as a foothold was still in the wall; the pillar opposite had a scorched groove where a blade cut clean through it; the basalt turned to black glass.

She sat on the floor in the centre of the hall, knees drawn up to her chest and stared at the spot where Tahli had stood. Where she had stood a hundred times for a hundred games of hide-and-seek, and where she had stood yesterday. It didn't feel real; nothing about it did. She tilted her head like her friend used to and closed her eyes, listening the way that Tahli had taught her, and there was nobody to hear.

Anselle should have been resting. All the little pulses in her body were in chaos, like an audience clapping out of time, and she could feel the familiar pressure of the dampened bleeds across the back of her entire body. The bruising had already shown up, a catastrophe of violent dark purples that engulfed her skin and crept beyond where the bacta patches lay. Up her neck, along her arms, down her legs. Everywhere her body had struck when she had been thrown into the wall.

The Atoan wasn't in the clear yet; she knew her body better than that. Over the next few days, any of the damaged nodes could rupture again and bleed, but she could not bear another minute of lying there and not knowing, not looking.

What for?

Kassus' voice roused her somewhat, though she wasn't sure what from. She was not weeping; there was no serenity in that. She was not grieving; there was no peace in that. She was flat. Still. Composed in the only way that one could be following a tragedy. Shock, they'd called it.

The Nautolan sat down next to her, offering his advice out of duty of care, and Anselle's head moved an inch toward the Knight but did not settle on him. Her eyes, grey in this light, did not look for the man who had brought Tahli Oru to this Enclave and had also brought her out. They settled on the wall.

"Where did they take her?" Anselle asked quietly.