D E S T I N E D
B E F O R E
It came in waves, the pain, the violent recollection of what was happening. Each wave unpredictable; dragging her under before spitting her back out into something worse.
At first there was only the dark again, swallowing her whole, until a sudden spike of pain ripped through her side so sharply she thought it might split her in half. Her lungs seized and refused to fill. Then, just as quickly, the pain dulled into a heavy, suffocating ache, replaced by the sound of hurried footsteps and something metallic snapping shut nearby.
Her eyelids felt like they weighed a hundred kilos, but she managed to force them open for a heartbeat. White light flooded her vision, stabbing straight into her skull. Blurred shapes moved around her, unfocused shadows bending over her, their hands pressing, their voices rising, but she couldn’t make out faces. She thought she heard someone say her name.
Bastila.
Then the light was gone, and she was falling again. Back to the dark. Back to the wet rasp of her own breathing, the heat of fever rolling off her in waves. The smell of smoke and blood twisted together in her senses until she couldn’t tell if it was here now or if it was some memory dragging itself to the surface.
Another voice cut through the haze, lower, urgent.
"Pressure’s dropping…"
"Someone get the…"
She tried to move, to let them know she was still here, but her body wouldn’t answer. She was trapped somewhere between wherever she was and the void, her soul being dragged toward both at once.
The pain surged again, tearing a ragged gasp from her throat. Someone’s hand pressed against her shoulder, softly trying to hold her down, she didn’t have the strength to fight them even if she’d wanted to, so she just let it happen. The world bled in and out, her realisation of hands over her, the sound of metal instruments clattering, the ship’s low vibration in her bones; then without warning it was gone again, replaced by a field under a Naboo sky. Baros was there. Smiling. Reaching. Telling her to join them in the field.
The illusion shattered under another flash of agony, ripping her from him. She heard a voice she knew. Briana; sharp and breaking. Then Blaire’s, steadier, but edged with fear. A med-droid chimed something clinical in the background, words she couldn’t hold onto before the dark took her again.
She slipped under, just far enough that the noise faded… but the fear didn’t. The last thing she felt before it swallowed her whole was the winds of the force battering at her body daring her not to let go.
N O W
The medical wing was bathed in soft gold from Naboo’s afternoon sun, but the light never reached Bastila Sal-Soren.
She lay in a cocoon of white sheets and pale shadows, the world reduced to the hiss of oxygen regulators and the soft, periodic beep of monitors marking each fragile heartbeat. Her body bore the aftermath of violence; skin the colour of frost under bruises the colour of deep oceans, hair matted with dried blood, ribs bound in synthweave wraps. Needles were burrowed into her arms, allowing tubes to feed warmth and nutrients into a frame that had been pushed far beyond its limits.
Around her bed, the machines kept vigil from infusers dripping slow liquids to allow her body to heal, respirators pressing air into lungs that had been crushed and broken, and stabilizers coaxing her faltering pulse to remain steady. Every so often, her fingers twitched, or her hand made a fist along with a facial twitch, as though some part of her still gripped the edge of the world and refused to fall.
But Bastila was no longer here.
She had fallen into the Force as it had asked her to.
Her first step was onto wet stone, the air heavy with the scent of mid-summer fruit on Naboo, a fresh downpour of harvest rain filling the world with the incredible smells it brought. She was six again, chasing the echo of her brother Brandyn’s laughter down an endless hallway. The doors along the corridor were ajar, but each time she peered inside, she saw not rooms but moments; her brother’s smile dimming into ash as the sound of blaster fire rolled in from somewhere unseen. The floor beneath her feet turned slick and red.
She blinked and the stone gave way to temple marble, cool beneath her bare toes. The hall stretched impossibly far, lined with tall, unlit sconces. Shadows whispered her doubts, the asked her whether she belonged, whether she was worthy and with each doubt a sconce’s flame, small and blue, would erupt; lighting her way forward. Bastila learned fast that the hall was lit entirely by her own uncertainty.
Then the marble fractured underfoot, the pieces falling away into rust-red deck plates. She was Seventeen now, standing before a pirate captain whose face rippled like water, shifting between stranger and friend, enemy and brother. Every lie she had told in her life spilled from her lips in reverse, curling like smoke back into her mouth until she was choking on them. The captain handed her a mask, its surface cracked and flaking, and when she put it on, she realised it bore her own face.
The deck plates dissolved, and she was in a market square crowded with faceless figures. Only one had features and he was standing at the far end of the square staring at her with piercing eyes that filled her with dread and anxiety. Her Father. The harder she pushed through the throng, the farther he receded, until he disappeared through a doorway made of light. She followed, and the light swallowed her.
She emerged into a vast, dark sea. The water was not water but fragments of memory; glimpses of friends, battles, laughter, and grief swirling around her legs. Something deep below tugged at her, pulling her under. She let herself sink, watching as the surface receded, until the darkness became total.
And there, in the abyss, upon a bridge of unnatural light stood a younger version of herself. Barefoot. Hair wild. Eyes steady.
In her hands was a key made of gold and blood.
Do you still want to live?
The question reverberated through the void, through her bones, through the machines somewhere far away that still pressed air into her lungs.
“I don’t know.”
