Private One for the Road

[Rin Taal]

Rin hit the ground hard when Kurgan's arms were suddenly torn away from her, the unexpected release almost as violent as the embrace had been. Her injured shoulder struck first, and pain exploded through her left side, stealing what little breath the giant had not already crushed from her lungs. She rolled instinctively through mud and ash, putting distance between herself and whatever had struck him before coming onto one knee with her good hand planted against the earth. Her ears flattened against her disheveled hair while she dragged air painfully back into her chest, golden eyes searching through the smoke for an explanation that did not immediately come.

What she found made no sense at first. Something black and scaled had attached itself to Kurgan's back, moving with the savagery of an animal and the terrible purpose of something that knew precisely what it intended to kill. Blue fire burned around talons buried in the Sithspawn's flesh, cauterizing the wounds almost as quickly as they were opened, and Rin's confusion began to fracture beneath a series of realizations. The glowing blue eyes she had never managed to locate in the canopy. Muad's disappearance from beside the bloodied stump. The strange invocation he had spoken before vanishing. Most telling of all was the connection between them, stretched into something distorted and unfamiliar but unmistakably intact. Rin could still feel him through it, buried beneath sensations so primal that they hardly resembled coherent thought, and his name escaped her on a breath she had barely managed to recover. "Muad..."

The two creatures crashed into the earth before she could do anything more. Rin backed away rather than interfere, dragging the rifle into position only to realize immediately how useless it had become. There was no clean shot while the two enormous bodies rolled together through blood, mud, and ash, and Muad's earlier warning about Kurgan's blood remained fresh in her thoughts. She watched black scales disappear beneath Kurgan's bulk and reappear again as claws tore into him, blue flame flashing through the smoke while the Sithspawn drove the exposed bone of his ruined arm repeatedly into Muad's chest. Every impact made Rin's fingers tighten around the rifle until her knuckles hurt. Instinct demanded that she help him, but reason held her trigger finger still. One misplaced bolt could put a hole through Muad as easily as Kurgan, and after spending so much of the fight trying to keep him alive, she wasn't about to become the one who killed him through impatience.

Then Muad's jaws closed around Kurgan's neck, and whatever uncertainty remained about the outcome disappeared in a violent instant. Rin turned her face slightly as the Sithspawn's severed head vanished into the trees, though she had seen too much death over too many years to manufacture horror where she felt none. Kurgan had nearly killed Muad, nearly killed her, and slaughtered enough of the forest around them that grief had no place in what she felt. Relief came instead, fierce enough to leave her momentarily weak as the terrible pressure that had followed her since seeing those black spikes buried through Muad's chest finally loosened. The creature that had hunted them was dead. Muad, somehow and in some form she could scarcely comprehend, was still alive.

Only when the transformed Muad rose onto his hind legs and howled his victory into the wounded forest did Rin truly become aware of herself again. Her breathing remained ragged, each deeper breath pulling painfully against ribs bruised beneath Kurgan's crushing grip, and the left side of her body throbbed in time with her heartbeat. The spike through her shoulder had ruined her clothing long before the Sithspawn caught her, but his attempt to squeeze the breath from her had finished much of what the battle had left intact. One sleeve was gone entirely, lost somewhere between claws, bark and Kurgan's grasp, while most of the fabric across that side of her torso had been torn away from shoulder to waist. What remained of her shirt hung crookedly from the opposite shoulder and caught against the simple underlayer beneath it, leaving much of her back, stomach and sides bare to the smoky air. Her trousers had survived somewhat better, although one leg was torn from the upper thigh nearly to the knee and several smaller rents exposed bruised, soot-streaked skin beneath. Blood, mud and ash covered nearly everything else, leaving Rin looking less like the woman who had entered this forest and more like something the burning wilderness itself had spat back out.

None of that had mattered while Kurgan was alive. Modesty had no place beside survival, and Rin had been far too occupied with keeping herself and Muad breathing to care how much fabric remained between her skin and the world. It became something she was suddenly, acutely conscious of only when the howl ended and those glowing blue eyes settled upon her. The creature dropped to all fours, reptilian nostrils flaring as his attention shifted completely away from the dead Sithspawn, and the forest seemed to grow unnaturally quiet around them. Somewhere beyond the immediate clearing, weakened timber collapsed with a shower of sparks. Smoke drifted lazily between ancient trunks while water continued seeping through the earth she had disturbed earlier, turning ash into dark rivulets between exposed roots. Against that muted world of gray, black and dying orange stood the creature Muad had become, his scaled hide almost disappearing into the haze except where the lingering blue flames traced his claws, fangs and the terrible barb of his tail.

He looked nothing like the man she had met, and Rin knew him immediately.

She did not know what he had done to himself. She had no name for the creature before her, no understanding of what ancient pact his invocation had awakened or whether this transformation had always been hidden inside him, waiting for permission to emerge. She did not know what price he would pay when it ended, assuming it ended at all. Yet none of those uncertainties changed the simple recognition that passed through her the moment their eyes met. The bond had survived the transformation. It felt rougher now, stripped of the layers that usually separated thought from instinct, but the presence beneath it belonged to the same impossible man who had crashed into the forest, fought beside her, and laughed with her, and somehow become important before Rin had realized there was room in her life for him to do so.

Then the thought struck through their connection with enough force to make her breath catch.

Mine.

Every predatory instinct sharpened by her Trial awakened at once. Rin's ears flattened slightly before turning forward again, her tail lowering behind her to counterbalance the subtle shift in her stance while her talons extended without conscious permission. The rifle remained in her hand, although she did not raise it. She knew predators well enough to understand what fleeing could invite, and nothing about the way Muad approached suggested that presenting herself as prey would improve matters. Yet recognition did not automatically mean safety either, and Rin refused to allow what she wanted to believe about him to overrule what her senses were telling her.

The possessiveness itself should have angered her. Ordinarily, anyone attempting to claim Rin Taal as though she were a thing to be possessed would discover very quickly how little patience she had for the idea. Instead, what unsettled her was everything carried beneath that single word. There was no cleverness in it, no flirtation and none of the humor Muad wielded almost as naturally as a weapon. Whatever transformation had taken him had stripped away those layers until there was little left but instinct, hunger, rage, and whatever attachments were powerful enough to survive the change. Somehow, impossibly, Rin was one of them.

That realization reached somewhere inside her she was not prepared to examine. They had known each other for maybe two days. Time against a life already measured in more than a century, and Rin had long ago learned that relationships usually revealed themselves slowly. Trust accumulated through choices. Affection deepened through familiarity. People showed themselves in pieces until eventually one realized what place they occupied in one's life. Nothing about Muad had obeyed those rules. He had fallen out of the sky and into the forest, and somewhere between trying to keep him alive, sharing thoughts through a bond neither of them had anticipated, fighting beside him and catching his falling body against a burning tree, he had found a place within her that should have required considerably more time to reach.

The possibility of losing him had frightened her far more than it had any right to. His pain had become impossible to dismiss as merely someone else's. His touch had begun feeling familiar with alarming speed, and the ease with which they had fallen into one another's company seemed less sensible every time she tried to examine it too closely. When he disappeared from beside the stump, Rin had kept fighting partly because their bond told her he remained somewhere nearby and partly because she simply refused to accept that he might be gone. Now the most primal thing inside him looked at her through the face of a monster and recognized her with the same terrible certainty.

It frightened her, but Rin would have been lying to herself if she pretended fear was the only thing she felt.

Kurgan's grip remained fresh to her body and in her memory. Her ribs ached where his arms had compressed them, her wounded shoulder burned, and the ruined state of her clothing made the physical vulnerability of those last moments impossible to ignore. She did not know what the Sithspawn had intended when he chose to seize rather than kill her, only that there had been something deeply wrong in the way he had held her. Now another immensely powerful creature approached with possession burning through their bond, and Rin was not foolish enough to ignore the similarity simply because she desperately wanted the creature before her to still be Muad. Wanting something to be true had never made it so.

She rose slowly from her crouch, keeping every movement deliberate as the creature continued toward her. What remained of her shirt slipped farther from her wounded shoulder during the motion, leaving the torn fabric caught more by her underlayer than anything resembling its original construction. Rin instinctively started to adjust it, only for pain to shoot down her dominant arm and make the effort pointless. She let the shredded material fall where it wanted. There was nothing left worth preserving, and she refused to hunch inward or cover herself simply because Muad's transformed attention made her suddenly aware of every inch Kurgan had left exposed. If the man she knew remained somewhere behind those blue eyes, then he could remember that she was Rin before she was anything his instincts wanted to claim.

She reached through their bond instead, placing his name into it with everything she could gather behind the thought. Muad. Recognition traveled with it, but so did caution, concern, and the unmistakable boundary of trust that had not yet been withdrawn. She was giving him the opportunity to remember himself, not surrendering her judgment to whatever he had become. When his scaled body continued forward, Rin searched those glowing eyes and let memories rise between them, not imagined futures or promises they had never made, but the strange collection of moments that had somehow become important during these almost impossible days. His forehead resting against hers. The cheek kiss he had given her before climbing the tree and doing something monumentally foolish. His weight crashing into her arms when she caught him afterward. The teasing that had somehow survived violence, exhaustion, and danger. The strange ease with which proximity had stopped feeling intrusive and begun feeling natural.

She pushed those impressions gently toward him through their connection, offering them rather than forcing them into his mind. This is me. You know me. Rin did not know how much language remained available to him, but memory and emotion ran deeper than words, and she hoped whatever part of Muad had survived could follow the path she offered back toward recognition. The rifle suddenly felt wrong in her hand, not because she had decided he was harmless, but because pointing it at him would make a declaration she wasn't prepared to make. If he attacked her, she would defend herself. If the creature had consumed everything she had begun to care about in the man, she would survive that truth too. But she would not condemn him before he gave her a reason.

Her fingers opened, allowing the rifle to drop against its sling and settle along her hip as she stood amid the ruin of the forest. One shoulder bled around the ugly wound left by Kurgan's spike, scorched and shredded clothing barely fulfilled its original purpose, and bruises were already darkening beneath the mud streaked across exposed skin. Golden eyes remained bright through the soot covering her face as she watched something that looked as though it had crawled from an old nightmare approach her. Fear remained, because Rin wasn't foolish enough to feel none, but beneath it was a stubborn certainty that she had trusted more dangerous instincts than this before. "You know me."

Her voice emerged low and rough, the natural growl of her altered Zorren vocal cords fitting the ruined forest better than anything gentle could have. She made no attempt to advance on him, nor did she retreat. The last distance belonged to Muad. Rin had spent the fight moving, disappearing, refusing to be where Kurgan expected her to be, but there were moments when survival meant motion and others when strength meant choosing the ground upon which one refused to yield. This was hers.

The single possessive claim still lingered between them, and despite the danger, exhaustion, and bewildering depth of everything she was feeling, a tiny spark of Rin's humor survived. Her ears twitched as her expression softened by the smallest degree, not enough to suggest she had forgotten what stood before her, but enough that something recognizably Rin returned through all the soot and blood. "And for the record, we're going to discuss that mine business when you're capable of using more than one word."

She left her good hand loose at her side rather than reaching for either weapon or creature, trusting neither fear nor affection enough to let one silence the other. Somewhere inside those scales was the man she had refused to abandon, and somewhere inside herself was a feeling for him that had grown far too quickly and far too deeply for Rin to put into words. Perhaps later she would have the luxury of being troubled by that. For now, she offered him recognition, trust, and the opportunity to choose what he did with both, standing her ground beneath his approach while her golden eyes searched the blue ones she knew for any sign that Muad was still looking back at her.

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

The creature took another step forward. Blue eyes drank in the form of the female it intended to claim. When Rin's stance changed instinctually, and her talons extended, it roared a challenge back at the perceived threat her body automatically made. But the resistance seen did nothing to dissuade the beast's base desires. Instead, they were heightened. He dropped to all fours, the deadly tail swishing behind it in excitement of what was to come. Another step crushed a broken and charred limb under its talons. It drew closer, a tendril of bloody drool seeping from between crimson-stained fangs.

When Rin slowly rose, the creature paused, one leg poised above the leaves crushed into the soil. Talons stretched lazily before the step was completed. A guttural growl escaped as she tried to straighten her clothes to hide her exposed skin from its gaze. When she winced, a whimper formed on her lips but refused to escape; the creature paused again, massive nightmarish head cocked at an angle as a high-pitched whine whistled through its teeth. The beast that was Muad understood its female was in pain. Another step pressed into the already flattened grass as it continued its approach.

When Rin consciously reached out through the tangled bond for the creature, it hissed at the feeling of its name. The jaws snapped shut twice in a visceral sound before it took another step onto the ash-covered ground. It did not like the images drifting from the woman. The tail whipped dangerously behind it; the pointed spike, still stained with the Kurgan's blood, quivered as it oriented towards the woman. Impressions shared to remind the beast who it was did not get a welcome reception. It snarled as the talons on both hands and feet ripped the ground in rage. Wrath built within its chest as withers vibrated and the creature lowered its center of gravity in preparation for a lunge forward. Then her thoughts lingered in the bestial mind.

This is me. You know me.

Again the head tilted, and the blue eyes flashed brightly for a second. Something within the beast responded. Not in word or thought, but a feeling that was completely foreign to the creature. Recognition. And then it was gone again; only the instinct remained. Another step forward upon a shattered stump and the creature rose upon its hind legs. Curved teeth were bared as it hissed, snout rippling from the scent of her blood.

The rifle fell from her hands as she kept her arms at her sides. "You know me." Every statement caused rage to build in the beast. It took a stride forward, the woman nearly within reach. And then he paused at the slightest movement. Her ears twitched, a barely there curve of her lips, and more words the creature could not comprehend. However, somehow the beast felt an understanding settle upon it. And she stood, not retreating, nor advancing, just waiting. It could taste her blood and sweat. And a familiarity dosed with a measure of fear and … something else. Something slowly awaking beneath the fog deep within the beast.

It closed the distance with a final step, long scaled arms held out from its sides as talons clenched and released in a fist. Its massive head lowered on a long and powerful neck, eyes lowering to hers as its snout pointed to the ground. The horns on either side of its head neared her face as the glowing blue eyes grew closer. Less than a hand's breadth away. And then the creature leaned in, the dry, warm scaled hide of its head pressed gently against her forehead. It rested there for several long heartbeats before its jaws opened and a breath whistled through its teeth—a sound.

"Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnn …"

It was guttural and raspy like stones gargled in a gargantuan throat. But it was unmistakable. The long, serpentine tongue slithered over the row of sharpened fangs and moved across her chest. It wasn't slimy or moist. Instead, the tongue was dry with a hardened texture that retained flexibility. It wrapped around the spike in her shoulder, gripping it tightly as his clawed hands closed in to hold her arms at the biceps. The creature moved with great care, ensuring the lethally sharp talons did not pierce her flesh. Blue eyes flashed with something other than bestial instinct. Almost the familiarity of the man named Muad Dib.

Then the tongue pulled the spike from her flesh, its claws holding her gently, yet firmly, in place. The spike was dropped to the ground between them as the tongue returned to her wound, pressing against the ragged wound. He felt her away in his grip, and that, more than anything, brought about the clarity of mind.

Muad felt the change coming. And he knew the pain he would feel. But he also knew it came with a power of redistribution of flesh—a gift he would share with Rin.

Two cracks echoed in the small clearing, and the horns fell from his head. Bones broke and reshaped, joints popped, and ligaments, tendons, and muscle retracted. Scales flaked off, and the hide on his chest split first, revealing skin with a pinkish hue. The scars remained, and now there were several more puckered scars there. Reminders of the wounds he had suffered as a man and beast, now healed through the power of the transformation. His jaw cracked and broke, the snout retreating backward until the flared nostrils reshaped into the familiar shape of his nose. His hair sprouted through the flaking hide of his head, and the tongue retracted. But not before he drew her pain into himself. The contact with her body sent a surge of ancient, archaic magic into her chest, reknitting flesh and promoting incredible cell growth. His taloned hands drifted to her own as he shared the power, restructuring his body back into the man she knew. The power flowed into her arms as his hands drifted to her wounded hand, and the restorative power fluctuated across her injuries, bringing the acute bittersweet pain of rapid healing.

His spine arched, and he stumbled away from her as vertebrae shifted and compressed. A snap echoed, and the tail fell away as he nearly collapsed against the trunk of a nearby tree. His flesh writhed as the final moments of his body's restructuring shivered through his body. After a few moments of deep breaths, he pushed away from the tree and turned to face Rin. A pained smile crossed his face as the final push of his teeth emerged from bleeding gums. The first words that slipped from his raw and hoarse throat were unmistakably Muad's.

"You just couldn't wait to get me out of my clothes again, eh?"

Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

The roar that answered the extension of her talons rolled through Rin's chest as much as it reached her ears, but she did not retreat. Her body had made the threat before conscious thought could stop it, answering predator with predator in the language instinct understood long before words entered into the equation. When Muad dropped onto all fours, and his tail swept behind him with an energy she did not particularly care to interpret, Rin remained poised upon the narrow boundary between standing her ground and moving if she had to. Her knees stayed loose, weight balanced despite the pain in her shoulder, while every sense followed the creature's approach. If he lunged with violence, she would move, but if he gave her something else, she would answer that instead.

There were moments when the thing advancing toward her seemed almost entirely animal. Bloody saliva dripped between fangs capable of tearing Kurgan's head from his shoulders, talons crushed charred wood beneath his weight, and the enormous scaled body carried enough strength that Rin had no illusions about what would happen if she allowed herself to be caught unprepared. Yet other moments contradicted everything she was seeing. When pain crossed her face as she abandoned the useless attempt to straighten her ruined clothing, his head cocked, and that strange whine escaped between his lips. Rin's ears turned toward the sound before she could stop them. It was not a noise she expected from the nightmare standing before her, and beneath her caution something tightened painfully around her heart because, whatever else the creature had become, it understood that she hurt.

That did not mean he was safe. Rin refused to confuse concern with control, especially when every attempt to reach the man inside him seemed to provoke another snarl or snap of enormous jaws. His reaction to his own name was particularly violent, and she felt the rage through their connection before she saw it in the way his claws tore furrows through the earth. Still, she remained where she was. There was something beneath the anger that did not feel directed at her so much as at whatever her memories were trying to awaken, as though Muad existed somewhere the creature did not want to look.

When her simplest thought finally reached him, This is me. You know me, something changed behind those glowing blue eyes for one fleeting instant. Rin saw it, but more importantly, she felt it. Recognition passed through their bond without language, fragile and startlingly clear before instinct swallowed it again. That brief contact was enough to keep her feet planted when he rose before her and enough to stop her hand from returning to the rifle when the scent of her blood drew another hiss from his throat. Her heart beat hard and loud enough that she could hear it beneath the crackle of dying fires, yet her breathing remained deliberately slow. Fear was information, nothing more. It told her that the creature before her could hurt her and warned her not to become careless simply because she wanted Muad to still exist within it, but fear did not decide what she did with that knowledge.

When Muad finally closed the last of the distance between them, Rin's muscles tightened in preparation despite everything she had chosen to believe. His hands opened and closed at his sides, enormous talons disappearing into fists before stretching free again, and she had to resist the instinct to mirror him. He towered close enough now that she could feel heat radiating from his scaled body and smell Kurgan's blood upon him. Her tail had gone nearly motionless behind her, and her ears remained trained upon him as that massive head descended toward hers.

The touch that came was so familiar that, for a moment, Rin forgot to breathe. His forehead settled against hers, and of all the things that could have survived the transformation, it was that simple gesture that finally loosened something inside her. The posture was different, the shape of him profoundly wrong, and the dry scales against her skin bore no resemblance to the man whose forehead had rested against hers before, but the meaning was unmistakable. Rin's eyes closed for the briefest moment, not surrendering her awareness so much as allowing herself to feel the relief she had been holding away. Her talons slowly withdrew while the tension remained in her legs and shoulders, ready to return if she needed it but no longer wound quite so tightly.

Then that monstrous throat formed her name.

The answer came before she consciously decided to give it. "Yes," she breathed, her voice quieter now and carrying an emotion she would have struggled to identify even if there had been time to try. Golden eyes opened and found his at impossibly close range while the smallest trace of a smile touched her soot-darkened face. "Rin."

The moment of tenderness lasted exactly as long as Batuu apparently intended to permit. Rin's eyes dropped when the long tongue emerged between his fangs, and one eyebrow rose despite herself as it traveled downward across the exposed skin of her chest. There were several questions she intended to ask Muad if and when he returned to a form capable of answering them, but whatever dry comment had begun forming disappeared when the strange appendage wrapped around the black spike still driven through her shoulder. His clawed hands closed around her upper arms at the same time, holding her firmly but with extraordinary care, each lethal talon angled so that none pierced her skin. Rin understood what he intended a heartbeat before he acted and managed only "Wait, Muad, don't..." before the tongue tightened and pulled.

The cry tore from her before she could contain it, sharp and raw enough to carry through the wounded clearing as her back arched and her entire body jerked against the hands holding her in place. Her fingers curled hard into her palms, nails biting into skin while the jagged spike ripped backward through flesh already swollen around it. Tears sprang immediately to the corners of her eyes from the sheer intensity of the sensation, and the sound dissolved into a snarled breath through clenched teeth once the offending spike finally dropped between them. Rin had endured pain before and expected to endure considerably more before her life was finished, but experience did not make agony imaginary, nor did she consider an involuntary cry some failure of strength. Something at least the length of her hand had been driven completely through her shoulder and had just been pulled back out again. It hurt.

When his tongue returned to the ragged wound, Rin expected another flash of agony. Instead, heat sank beneath the torn flesh and spread inward, deeper than any external warmth should have been capable of reaching. She knew healing intimately. Marta had taught her to recognize the body's rhythms, understand the anatomy beneath her hands, and encourage living tissue to perform what it already knew how to do rather than crudely demanding flesh obey. What Muad poured into her bore almost no resemblance to those methods. It felt ancient and brutally alive, flowing through damaged tissue with a purpose that cared very little for comfort as muscle, vessels and skin began knitting themselves together with astonishing speed.

The healing carried its own aching burn, making the muscles around her shoulder tremble while nerves awakened beneath newly joined tissue. Rin felt the ragged channel left by the spike contract and close, followed by the bruising along her ribs beginning to ease beneath the same restorative power. Most striking was the gradual release of the deep pain that had accompanied nearly every movement of her left shoulder since she'd been struck. She had never lost the full use of the arm, but she had spent the remainder of the fight favoring the injured shoulder, unconsciously adjusting movements that pulled too hard against torn muscle and relying more heavily upon the opposite side whenever she could. Now, as that pain retreated, Rin cautiously rolled the shoulder within the limits of Muad's grip and felt only a fading ache where she expected the sharp protest of damaged flesh.

The first cracks from his skull drew her attention away from herself. Rin flinched when the horns broke free and struck the ash-darkened ground beside their feet, but she did not pull away. Bone shifted beneath scales while the monstrous body began reconstructing itself before her eyes, every horrible sound accompanied by some recognizable fragment of Muad returning. His body was not merely shrinking. It was rebuilding itself. Scales split and flaked onto the earth around them, the elongated snout retreating amid the sounds of breaking and reforming bone while familiar hair emerged where the monstrous hide receded. Teeth loosened and fell among the ash before others took their place, and the hands holding her upper arms gradually became recognizable enough that Rin no longer needed their bond to tell her who touched her.

Yet the power continued flowing into her while his own transformation progressed, following injuries that had never been touched directly as though whatever he had shared knew precisely where damage remained. That understanding drew Rin's thoughts in a direction she could not entirely dismiss. Healing was never completely one-sided. Even the gentlest exchange through the Force involved connection, however temporary, and this was something far more primal than any healing she had experienced before. Muad was not simply directing energy toward her wounds. For those strange moments, something intrinsic to the archaic magic restructuring his body had crossed into hers and instructed her flesh to change with it.

Curiosity stirred beneath her concern as she wondered what else, if anything, might have crossed with that power. Would there be some residue of whatever ancient pact permitted Muad to become the creature she had just faced? Would her own awareness of living things feel different the next time she reached for the forest, or would earth, water, and air answer exactly as they always had? Perhaps nothing would remain except healed flesh and memory, but after watching a man become a scaled predator and then rebuild himself from it, Rin was not willing to assume that magic capable of rewriting an entire body departed without leaving even the faintest echo behind.

Even as those questions formed, part of her attention caught upon what his transformation was leaving scattered across the forest floor. One of the fallen horns rested half buried in wet ash near an exposed root. Scales lay scattered across blackened leaves, some large enough to catch what little light filtered through the smoke with an almost metallic sheen. Teeth had fallen among them during the reconstruction of his jaw, and eventually the serpentine tail separated and struck the earth with enough weight to disturb the ash around it. They should have looked grotesque. Perhaps to anyone else they would have been nothing more than biological remnants of a beast that was best left to whatever scavengers eventually returned to this part of the forest.

Rin found herself looking at them differently. Those pieces had been Muad, however temporarily. They belonged to the form he had willingly accepted when he believed she needed him, the creature that had torn Kurgan away from her and endured wounds that should have killed an ordinary man. The thought of simply walking away and leaving every piece of it behind felt wrong in a way she could not immediately explain. She didn't want trophies from what had happened here, and she certainly had no intention of mounting one of his horns over a hearth somewhere, but there was something in those remnants that felt worth preserving.

Perhaps Chek would know what could be done with them. The thought came naturally enough that Rin almost smiled despite everything happening around her. He understood materials in ways she never had, and if horn, tooth, or scale could be shaped without destroying what made it unique, perhaps something could be made from them. Something for Muad and something for her, maybe, two pieces drawn from the same remnant of this strange and terrible moment. She had no idea what those objects should be, and deciding now felt dangerously close to assigning meaning to something she had not yet fully understood. That could wait. The certainty that settled quietly inside her was much simpler: before they left Batuu, some of what lay scattered around their feet was coming with them.

Muad stumbled away before she could follow either line of thought any farther, and Rin's concern immediately overwhelmed her curiosity. She started after him instinctively, stopping only when he caught himself against the trunk of a nearby tree. Her newly healed shoulder answered the movement with little more than a deep ache, an improvement so dramatic she would have marveled at it under almost any other circumstances. Instead, her attention remained fixed upon Muad as the final remnants of the creature abandoned him. His spine compressed into its familiar arrangement, the tail lay discarded among the other pieces, and his flesh continued shifting until the man who had crashed into the forest emerged from the nightmare that had saved her.

Her golden eyes traveled over him slowly, deliberately, and without apology. There was considerably less clothing involved than there had been when either of them entered the fight, and Rin was perfectly capable of noticing that while remaining focused on why she looked. She searched first for blood and open wounds, then studied the puckered new scars where Kurgan's spikes had pierced his chest and where the transformed Muad had endured repeated stabbing. Her attention moved across his shoulders and hands before following the way he carried his weight and the steady rise and fall of his chest. Everything about him carried evidence of what had happened, but she found no obvious wound still threatening his life. For the first time since those black spikes had driven through him, Rin could look at Muad and believe he might actually remain standing.

Then he opened his mouth and proved beyond any possible doubt that he was himself again by asking whether she simply couldn't wait to get him out of his clothes.

Rin stared at him for several heartbeats before relief hit her with enough force that it almost hurt. The joke wasn't particularly good, and there was something magnificently absurd about Muad choosing that exact moment to make it, but the cadence and irreverence were unmistakable. No physical transformation could have reassured her as thoroughly as his apparently inexhaustible ability to find something inappropriate to say immediately after nearly dying. A breath escaped her that hovered somewhere between laughter and something far less controlled, and before she could reconsider, she crossed the remaining distance and wrapped both arms around him, her healed shoulder moving freely enough that the simple absence of pain registered somewhere beneath everything else.

There was nothing restrained about the embrace. Rin pressed herself against him and buried her face against the side of his neck, heedless of blood and ash, his complete lack of clothing or the shredded remnants barely serving as her own. Her tail curled instinctively around the back of one of his legs while her fingers tightened against him as though some part of her still required physical evidence that he was solid, warm, and actually there. "Idiot," she murmured against his skin, but the affection saturating the word destroyed any possibility of it being mistaken for genuine accusation.

She stayed there longer than practicality required, eyes closed while she finally allowed herself to acknowledge what she had refused throughout the battle. She had thought she was going to lose him. More than once she had looked upon injuries that should have ended a life and refused to accept what her senses suggested, partly because their bond insisted he remained somewhere nearby and partly because something inside her simply would not agree to a world in which Muad Dib ceased to exist so soon after entering hers. Seeing him whole did not erase those moments. If anything, the strength of her relief confirmed the dangerous truth she had spent much of their time together trying not to examine too closely: somewhere amid the fighting, teasing, impossible survival and instinctive touches, this man had become important to her with a speed she still did not understand.

Practicality eventually returned because it always did, though this time it arrived gently rather than shattering the moment. Rin lifted her head without immediately releasing him, her ears rotating independently as she listened beyond the clearing while golden eyes moved past his shoulder into the smoke. Kurgan's death had ended the immediate violence, but the forest had not forgotten what brought them here, and neither had she. Somewhere beyond the charred trees waited the ruins they had been seeking, whatever soldiers had survived the devastation, and the man responsible for far more than the monster whose remains now stained the forest floor.

Her arms loosened gradually until only one hand remained against Muad, reluctant perhaps to give up that final confirmation that he was truly there. Warmth still softened her expression when she met his familiar blue eyes, but the hunter had already begun returning beneath it as her attention shifted toward the unfinished task. "This isn't over though, is it?" she asked quietly, glancing through the smoke toward whatever waited beyond. "Haymitch is still out here somewhere."

For a moment her gaze dipped toward the horn lying near their feet before moving across the scales, teeth, and other remnants scattered throughout the clearing. There were questions attached to those pieces that she wasn't ready to answer, just as there were questions about what Muad's healing might have left within her and what exactly had allowed him to become that creature in the first place. All of those things could wait until they were somewhere safer. Rin merely committed their locations to memory before returning her attention to the forest, already certain she would come back for some of them if circumstances allowed.

They were bruised, bloodied, and barely clothed amid the wreckage of a forest that had very nearly become their grave, and exhaustion waited patiently for the moment Rin allowed herself to acknowledge it. That moment had not arrived yet. Kurgan and the forces above the temple had burned the forest, nearly killed Muad, and pushed Rin farther than she had expected when this hunt began. Rather than dulling her purpose, everything they had endured had sharpened it. Her fingers gave Muad one final, lingering squeeze before falling away, and as her attention returned fully to the smoke-shrouded forest ahead, relief settled alongside determination rather than replacing it. Muad was alive, she was standing, and somewhere ahead of them Haymitch remained.

That was enough for Rin to keep hunting.

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

There was an exhaustion in his body that he had never experienced, but maybe a handful of times. The tree held his weight; without it, he wasn't sure he would have remained standing. But the tired smirk on his face would have been there even if he lay at death's door. Again. His eyes scanned her shoulder, looking to see how well his impromptu healing through his shared transformation had liberated Rin of her wound. She appeared healthy and whole enough, all things considered. When she crossed the distance, he found his arms encircling her back and waist, their bodies pressed together with a companionship that only came from editing and surviving perilous times. Something stirred in his chest, an unnamed and unexplored feeling he didn't feel the need to examine in the moment.

Her face buried in his neck and his face turned to rest against the side of her head, wild hair with golden highlights laying against his face and chest. "Idiot." His lips smiled where they lay against one of her pointed ears. There was no pointed accusation in the descriptive word, only a deeply felt affection. A sigh drifted from him which tickled the hair around her ear. The contentment that drifted from him wasn't for the healing in his body. It was for the woman pressed against his bare figure. She was alive. And endured a moment of healing. He was happy she was safe. No, it was more than that. Elated? Regardless of the words he searched for, it was clear there was a palpable feeling of relief. However, there was more. A moment of fear that he could lose her. Or, rather, that the galaxy would lose her.

They clung to one another. Survivors. And yet, the stirring in his chest whispered of more. And then there was a completely different type of stirring. How could it be anything other than? A woman he cared for, a friendship which began to transcend simple amicably originating emotions, lay against his body, smooth bare skin crushed against scarred flesh, her face cradled in the cleft of his neck and shoulder, her lips nearly brushing his neck, and her hands gripping his back. The stirring became much more prominent. And yet they remained against each other, taking comfort and joy in the fact that they were gloriously alive. And gloriously in states of undress. The pressure between them grew even as her golden eyes scanned the forest, her words bringing Muad back to the dangerous situation they were still in.

"No. It's not over yet." When she pulled away, one hand still on his flesh with a final squeeze, a remote distance finally separated them. He glanced down, a bemused expression on his face at how he had responded to being in her embrace. His eyes raised to hers, unrepentant and filled with a type of humor. "It would seem I'm … ready for whatever comes next …" he tossed her a wink before walking several meters away, feet leaving impressions in the wet soil, until he knelt near one of the dead soldiers Rin had sought through the chest. The man seemed to be roughly his size, so hands quickly removed the soldier's boots and then slipped the black trousers from the limp body. He turned back around to face Rin as he pulled one leg, and then the other on before sliding the pants up to button low around his hips.

"By now Haymitch will know his Corvette is gone, hey, eyes up here, but he probably doesn't know Kurgan is. So we have some leeway in remaining an unknown factor." As he spoke, he wandered about the clearing created by their battle. He found his beskad, still in its scabbard, and slipped the strap over his chest so that the hilt hung over his right shoulder. He retrieved his kal before finding the old leather sheath and secured it by sticking it into his waistband. When he found the place his lightsaber exploded, his hand searched through the leaf litter, broken branches, and puddles before he plucked the crystal that was the heart of his saber from the mud. The muck was wiped along the seam of his pants before he pocketed the crystal, all that remained of his first lightsaber build.

Glowing blue eyes fell on the ruination of one of his armored boots. He collected the torn form and pulled two items from the interior lining. The bes'bev and a long, thin, round cylinder the size of a small flashlight. He smirked and pocketed the musical blade while the long metal rod was tucked into his waistband. The ruined gauntlets he once more around his forearms were destroyed by his transformation. Instead, he retrieved an old slugthrower revolver from one of the dead and tucked it at the small of his back, several speed reloaders tossed into an empty pouch of his black pants. He wandered back to Rin, pausing long enough to retrieve her rifle from the ground and held it out to her by the barrel.

"This is yours. And, uh, I remember what you said earlier. When the beast, or I, was thinking the words … I meant my friend when I said mine." As he was speaking, his eyes found the very revealing flesh exposed through the battle. And while his words spoke one thing, his eyes and his physical response while in her arms clearly said another thing. Muad walked away, eyes averted from the pleasing view Rin offered. Moving among the dead, he found a soldier who was smaller than the others. Barely a young man. His body was nearly untouched; only the throat ripped out by the woman behind him was the only visible injury. Quickly, Muad peeled the outer jacket the man wore from his body before returning to Rin. He shook the light jacket, which sent debris from the black fabric. His arm extended, offering the article of clothing should she want it.

"Unless your plan is shock and awe with your appearance, you might want this." His eyes were finally averted, though the light coloring in his cheeks spoke that what he had seen of her was going to be cataloged away with the view from this morning. Half moons exposed by her tail. He smirked for a moment before turning to look farther into the circle of greenery carved into the planet by the Corvette. "I'm thinking the ruins are over there. But … I have a feeling we will find what we are looking for underground in a subterranean cavern." His mind flashed to the vision he saw earlier on his arrival. In the great pavilion on his second night. Three figures covered in blood and gore. Haymitch, himself, and the form of Doashim. The beast had come and gone. Now all that remained was Haymitch and Muad. And the question: who would get the crystal, and would they truly be the cause of the tidal wave of blood and death he had seen?

Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

For several seconds after Rin stepped away from him, she was acutely aware of how much easier it had been to ignore the condition of their clothing while she had been holding Muad. Survival had made modesty an absurd concern. The forest had nearly burned around them, Kurgan had tried to crush the breath from her body, and Muad had become something out of a nightmare before rebuilding himself piece by painful piece. Compared to all of that, bare skin seemed remarkably unimportant.

Muad, naturally, found a way to make it important again.

Rin's gaze followed his downward for half a heartbeat before understanding arrived, and one eyebrow slowly lifted. The humor in his blue eyes only made her expression flatten further when he announced that he was apparently ready for whatever came next. Her ears warmed despite herself, betraying considerably more than the unimpressed look she attempted to maintain. "Your resilience continues to astonish me," she replied dryly, though the faint upward pull at one corner of her mouth ruined any attempt at severity.

She watched him move away and felt the humor fade beneath a quieter concern. The tree had been doing more than offering Muad somewhere convenient to lean. Exhaustion showed in the heaviness of his movements, subtle perhaps to anyone who had not spent the last couple of days learning his mannerisms, but Rin noticed it. His body had healed catastrophic injuries and completely rebuilt itself twice within a matter of minutes. Whatever power had accomplished that had not come without cost. She suspected he was operating on determination and stubbornness now, two resources he possessed in quantities that were probably medically inadvisable.

The thought made her glance down at herself. Muad's healing had done its work remarkably well. She rolled her left shoulder again, testing it more deliberately this time, and found only a lingering soreness where the spike had punched through. Her ribs still complained when she breathed too deeply, but even that had faded considerably. Whatever ancient power Muad had shared with her had left Rin in substantially better condition than the man who had given it, an imbalance she did not particularly like. She could do nothing about it here except remain aware of his limits and make certain he did not spend what little strength remained pretending they did not exist.

As Muad began scavenging what he needed from the dead, Rin crouched near the scattered remnants of his transformation. She had already decided she would not abandon all of them, and there seemed little reason to postpone what could be done now. One of the smaller scales went first, then two teeth she found among the wet leaves. Her attention lingered upon the fallen horn before she picked it up carefully, surprised by its weight. The larger pieces would be considerably harder to carry while hunting, especially the severed tail, and she reluctantly left those where they rested for now. If they survived what remained ahead, she would return for them.

Her fingers brushed ash from the horn before she wrapped the smaller remnants together and secured what she could among the surviving pieces of her gear. She still didn't know what she intended to make from them. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps she would eventually decide the entire impulse was ridiculous and place them somewhere safe as reminders of a day neither of them should have survived. Yet the image of Chek's hands turning the material over with that deeply contemplative expression of his remained in her thoughts. If there was something worthwhile hidden within horn, scale, or tooth, he would find it.

Only then did Rin look toward the bodies around them.

Her expression sobered.

They had been enemies. Some had tried to kill her, and she had killed them first. Necessity did not require disrespect afterward. Rin had already commended some of the fallen to whatever gods might receive them during the battle, and now she offered the remaining dead a quieter acknowledgment before taking anything useful. She did not know their names, their beliefs, or what roads had brought them into Haymitch's service. None of that changed what they had become in the end.

Dead deserved dignity even when the living had been enemies.

Rin recovered what remained of her own equipment while Muad armed himself, checking ammunition and whatever supplies had survived the fire and fighting. Her attention periodically returned to him as he gathered his beskad, kal, and the surviving pieces from his destroyed equipment. When he knelt where his lightsaber had exploded and pulled the crystal from the mud, she watched him wipe it clean against the stolen trousers. Something about the gesture struck her as unexpectedly intimate. She knew enough about lightsabers to understand that the crystal was not merely another component, and whatever history belonged to that weapon had survived even when the rest had not.

She left him the privacy of the moment.

When Muad returned carrying her rifle, Rin reached for it, fingers wrapping around the familiar weapon before his explanation stopped her from immediately pulling it away. Mine. My witch. My female. She remembered the thoughts rather clearly. At the time, with a scaled creature approaching her while blood still dripped from its teeth, there had been considerably more urgent concerns than parsing precisely what its possessiveness meant.

Apparently Muad had been parsing it.

Golden eyes rose from the rifle to his face as he assured her that the beast had meant my friend. Rin regarded him in silence for a moment, then glanced deliberately downward at the rather obvious contradiction his body had offered only minutes earlier before returning her gaze to his. One ear twitched.

"Of course," she answered with impeccable seriousness. "Your friend."

She took the rifle from him and checked it automatically, inspecting the weapon for damage before settling it against herself. Rin spared him further embarrassment, mostly because she was rather enjoying watching him manufacture it all on his own. Whatever had spoken through their bond had been primal, possessive, and barely capable of distinguishing desire from thought. She wasn't going to hold the words of that creature against Muad, particularly when he had been fighting to recognize her at all. Still, she suspected my friend was going to entertain her for quite some time.

The jacket he brought her earned considerably less teasing.

Rin looked down at herself properly for the first time since Kurgan had gotten his hands on her. The remains of her clothing had endured fire, claws, branches, blood, mud, and a ten-foot Sithspawn with very little respect for fabric. What survived covered enough to preserve the technical definition of dressed, but only just. Her chest was exposed through several substantial tears, while the damage around her hips and thighs left enough skin visible that she understood exactly why Muad's attention had repeatedly wandered. Her tail made the situation even less forgiving from behind.

"I think we've provided Batuu with enough awe for one day."

She accepted the jacket and shrugged carefully into it, finding the garment somewhat snug but serviceable. The zipper still worked, which immediately improved matters. Rin pulled it high enough to restore a degree of modesty, then looked down at the remainder of herself and decided there was only so much dignity one could reasonably demand while covered in soot, blood, and someone else's clothing.

The young soldier from whom Muad had taken the jacket drew her attention again. Rin recognized him. Her expression changed subtly as memory supplied the sensation of her claws passing through his throat during the earlier fighting. She crouched beside him for a moment, resting two fingers briefly against his brow.

"Go where your people wait for you," she murmured, not presuming to know where that might be. Her gaze remained upon his face for another heartbeat before she rose. "I'll return what remains to the earth when this is finished."

There was no guilt in the promise. Rin would kill again if circumstances demanded it, perhaps within minutes. She simply refused to let necessity turn death into something meaningless.

Her attention followed Muad toward the scar the Corvette had carved through the forest. The ruined vessel was gone now, but the violence of its passage remained written across the land. Broken trees leaned at unnatural angles, scorched vegetation marked the route, and churned earth exposed roots that should never have seen daylight. Beyond it waited the ruins, and beneath those, if Muad's intuition was correct, something considerably older.

Rin moved alongside him rather than ahead, studying the terrain while listening to what he said about Haymitch. His reasoning made sense. Haymitch would know the Corvette was gone, but unless Kurgan had somehow maintained communication throughout their battle, he might still expect his monster to finish what it had started. That ignorance gave them an advantage, though Rin had learned long ago that an advantage was most useful when one resisted the temptation to overestimate it.

"Then we don't tell him," she said, adjusting the rifle against her shoulder. "If he expects Kurgan to come back, let him keep expecting it. The longer he wonders what happened out here, the longer he has to divide his attention between us and everything else he's trying to accomplish."

The mention of subterranean caverns drew her gaze toward the distant ruins. Rin reached outward almost unconsciously, allowing her awareness to settle into the damaged landscape rather than forcing it. The forest was hurting. She could feel that much without effort, life recoiling from fire and violence while water moved through newly opened channels beneath the soil. Deeper than that was stone, old and largely indifferent to what had happened above. If caverns existed beneath the ruins, the earth would eventually tell her, though deciphering the difference between natural hollows, buried structures, and ordinary fractures would take more concentration than she wanted to spend while exposed.

"Underground would make sense," she murmured. "Especially if whatever he's looking for was meant to stay hidden. Once we're closer, I may be able to feel where the ground opens beneath us. Water can help too. It tends to find every hollow eventually."

Her eyes shifted back to Muad, and this time she allowed herself to study him without pretending it was purely tactical. He was exhausted. She could see it regardless of how straight he tried to stand or how casually he armed himself. The vision he had described earlier remained somewhere behind his expression too. She did not know every detail of what Muad had seen, but she knew enough to understand that he believed something waited below, something involving Haymitch, blood and whatever crystal had brought them this far.

Rin stepped closer and touched his arm, not stopping him so much as asking for his attention.

"Before we go farther, I need one thing from you." Her golden eyes held his steadily, without accusation or softness disguising the seriousness beneath the words. "Don't hide how tired you are because you think I need you standing. I can still fight, and whatever you gave me healed most of the damage Kurgan did. If you need to slow down, tell me. If you feel that transformation trying to happen again, tell me. If something from your vision changes, tell me."

Her fingers tightened slightly against his arm before easing again. The concern behind the request was impossible to conceal, and Rin didn't particularly try. "We survived him because we worked together. I'd prefer to continue doing that."

There was considerably more she wanted to say. She wanted to ask about the creature, about the pact that created it and whether becoming it had endangered Muad in ways neither of them could see. She wanted to know whether the strange magic lingering beneath her skin was imagination or something real. She wanted to tell him that watching those spikes disappear into his chest had frightened her more deeply than she cared to admit and that seeing him transformed had frightened her differently, not because the creature had been monstrous, but because for several terrible moments she had not known whether Muad could find his way back.

Those conversations belonged somewhere that wasn't filled with bodies.

Rin released his arm and looked once more toward the ruins. Her tail moved behind her, brushing briefly against his leg before settling into the slow, controlled motion that accompanied thought. The forest around them remained unnaturally quiet, wounded enough that even the ordinary calls of animals had yet to return.

"We find the entrance, we find Haymitch, and we find out what he's willing to drown this place in blood to possess." Her expression hardened slightly as she settled the rifle comfortably into her hands. "Then we make sure he doesn't get to decide how this ends."

Rin took several steps toward the path left by the Corvette before pausing and glancing back at Muad. Her eyes briefly dropped toward the waistband where he'd tucked the cylinder, then toward the stolen trousers and collection of scavenged weapons before warmth crept unexpectedly back into her expression.

"And when we're finished, my friend, we're coming back for your tail."

The smallest smile appeared as she turned toward the ruins again. She still had absolutely no idea what she intended to do with it.

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

He felt it. The Force was a lone string tethered to him. Where once it was a river, it had shrunk to nearly nothing. If he tried to use the Force now, he would most likely die. His reserves had been depleted on top of the tree. The pact made allowed his transformation. And when he went to change back, he had lent strength and healing to Rin. Something he had never done during the transformation. And while it had worked above and beyond for the Zorren woman he couldn't bear to see wounded, it had affected him deeper than he let on. He dropped next to another dead soldier and rolled him unceremoniously from his jacket. Quickly, he pulled it on and zipped it up, thankful for the dark color. It would mask what Rin perceived as exhaustion.

His scars had begun to weep crimson tears as they slowly reopened.

It wasn't supposed to happen. But neither was his transferring some of the regenerative power in his demonic form. Something was wrong. However, it didn't matter. This mission came first. His hand steadied itself before he rose and looked back at Rin. She straightened her own jacket, sacrificing a certain amount of modesty for its presence around her mostly bare torso. Her brows furrowed, and her nose crinkled in concentration at what she did. That. That right there was the view he would memorialize. The small, micro expressions. She was beautiful. But it was the small pieces of her soul that shone forth that he felt drawn to. The care she had for all things great and small. And her willingness to do what was necessary for the cause. This last part would be important before the end. He knew it with a sudden clarity.

She rose from where she whispered words that felt holy—a promise of eternal sleep to the fallen. A sad smile tweaked his lips. Another reason she deserved to live, even above his own life. She was good. He, well, he was not. His head nodded at their agreement of where they needed to head. Into the ruins to find a path down into the earth. And he nodded again. He would rely on her sense of direction with her communion with nature. It would serve them well, especially as he felt the narrow thread that led to his own Force powers. Thankfully, Muad had trained his body to peak performance without the Force. For he knew there were times when you were cut off, sundered from the power that answered his every call.

They began their trek forwards. Side by side. As equals. Just as they had this far in their … friendship, her hand raised to his arm as they moved deeper into the oasis of unblemished forest. Rin's words washed over him even as her grip tightened as she finished speaking. A tired smile escaped, the corners of his eyes tightening against a face that had lost degrees of his tan. He raised his hand and lightly brushed her cheek. "Don't ask me to lie to you. I haven't yet, and I don't intend to. The beast won't come again. Not now. I wouldn't survive it." His eyes gazed from her golden eyes to her cheek where he had caressed her skin. He used his callused thumb to wipe a trail of blood that had smeared from small scars that reopened on his hand.

"We removed the blight of Kurgan together. And we will stop Haymitch from claiming the crystal. I promise this: we will win. And you will survive to travel many more roads." He resisted the urge to lean into her, to press his forehead against hers. First, that was an odd thing to do. Secondly, he felt the jacket plastered to his back as the old scars of whippings slowly bled into the fabric. There was no need for her to worry about a few weeping scars. Or all of them. He turned away and focused his resolve. And for the first time he felt their bond withering as his connection in the Force diminished. A flash of actual fear flushed his face. Not about his connection in the Force. Not about his weakened state. But the thought that his body was reverting wounds long healed and abolished … if the disease he once carried for decades would return. Now that was terrifying.

He foraged ahead and only gave a light chuckle to her final words. "I knew you wanted a piece of me. A piece of my tail. I'm flattered." Another chuckle shook his chest before amusement fled. He wiped his mouth and continued deeper into the pristine forest. The bead of blood wiped across his borrowed pants as he tasted copper in his mouth. Maybe it was from his gums. And perhaps it was from deeper in his chest. Not all scars were visible. The thought was banished as he lowered himself to creep quickly through the trees.

His bare feet moved from bare soil to root. Every step was designed to make no sound. He wasn't worried about tracks, just stealth. There was no concern for the woman nearby. She was as quiet as a shadow. Even after everything they had thus far endured, only her familiar scent and the way he was attuned to her presence gave her away. No sound. He smirked as he expected that from the witch. Instead of moving low-hanging limbs from their path, they either moved to a clear trail or ducked beneath the trees. No extra movement would reveal their approach. Nothing precipitated their arrival. One moment they moved carefully through waist-high undergrowth, avoiding small depressions of water that held the rainfall of the night before. And the next moment they were amidst the ruins.

It was once a Jedi temple. Now, only the wide foundation remained. Fallen timbers were gone, long reclaimed by nature to fuel the growth of the next generation. Pillars lay half submerged in the ground, only the unnaturally smooth curves revealing something crafted rather than grown. Weeds found the space between stone steps and vines clutched to once clean stone. Signs of animals traveling through the foundations had worn stone with centuries of hooves. Burrows had dug dens beneath broken statues. And several nests lay perched in the few remainíng upthrust stones that towered like trunks. But one section of the foundation was eerily clear of vegetation and animals alike. What looked like a capped well stood several blocks high. The capstone was tossed aside where it shattered into several large chunks. Recently, from the sign. A pair of footsteps led to the well, where two high-tensile ropes were securely fastened to the stone.

Bare feet padded silently to the edge where he hazard a glance into the depths. Deep below, there was a yellow halo of light. Beyond that, the well's walls restricted vision. But it appeared to be the only way down. One hand claimed a rope for his own descent; the other held it out with blood-stained fingers for Rin to take. The choice was clear. Wait here for Haymitch and his companion to emerge with the crystal or enter themselves and try to reach the crystal first. For Muad, it was no decision at all.

Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

Rin had asked him not to hide how tired he was, and Muad, apparently, had decided that technically answering her question while concealing everything else qualified as cooperation. She felt the touch of his hand against her cheek and leaned almost imperceptibly into the familiar roughness of his palm before something unexpectedly warm dragged across her skin beneath his thumb. The sensation lasted only a moment before the breeze moved through the forest, cooling the damp trail quickly enough that it stood out against the rest of her soot-warmed face. There was enough blood on both of them that another smear should hardly have warranted concern, but the metallic scent reached her heightened senses at nearly the same moment her golden eyes dropped toward the hand he had just withdrawn.

The blood was his, fresh enough to shine across his fingers before he wiped them against the stolen cargo pants. Rin's gaze settled upon the small scars crossing his skin, studying wounds she knew had not been open earlier. Nothing Kurgan had done explained why old scar tissue should suddenly begin bleeding, particularly marks that had long since healed before she ever met him. Muad turned away and continued onward as though refusing to acknowledge the evidence might somehow make it irrelevant, and Rin allowed him the fiction for the moment, though concern had already rooted itself firmly in her breast.

She followed him through the forest with the same silence she had carried through countless hunts, her rifle secure against her body while her attention divided between their surroundings and the man moving beside her. His bare feet remained remarkably quiet against the forest floor, and despite everything he had endured, his movements retained enough care and precision that exhaustion had not yet made him careless. To someone unfamiliar with him, perhaps he would have appeared merely tired after an impossible battle. Rin had known him for only a matter of days, yet somehow she already knew enough to recognize the smaller betrayals his stubbornness could not entirely conceal.

The color had drained subtly from his face, leaving his skin paler than it had been when they entered the forest. His breathing wasn't labored enough to become immediately alarming, but there were small interruptions in its rhythm that he probably assumed escaped notice. Then there was the jacket. Muad had spent enough of their brief acquaintance wandering around shirtless, half-dressed, or otherwise displaying remarkably little concern over whether clothing happened to cover him that Rin had already learned modesty was not among his more pressing concerns. Yet now, despite the lingering heat and humidity of the burned forest, he had zipped a black jacket over his chest. That alone would have earned her suspicion. Combined with the increasingly familiar scent of fresh blood beneath it, Rin had very little doubt that the sudden interest in covering himself had considerably more to do with hiding something from her than any newfound appreciation for clothing.

Concern settled more heavily within her, only to be joined by something she found considerably more frightening. Their bond had been present so consistently since the previous night that Rin had stopped consciously noticing it. What began as something deliberate and practical between two people who needed to communicate through danger had gradually ceased to feel constructed at all. Muad simply existed within her awareness now, a presence she had become accustomed to carrying beside her own thoughts even during stretches when neither of them consciously spoke through it. As they moved deeper through the trees, that presence began thinning until Rin could no longer mistake what she felt for distraction.

For one uncomfortable heartbeat she wondered whether Muad was withdrawing from her, whether something within the transformation had changed him in ways neither of them understood or whether the strange closeness that had formed between them had finally reached some natural limit. Yet the thought disappeared almost as quickly as it came because there was no sensation of resistance from the other end. No barrier rose between them, no emotional distance opened, and there was nothing that felt remotely like a choice on his part. The connection itself was simply growing weaker, a thread slowly losing tension because one of the people holding it no longer possessed enough strength to maintain his grip.

Rin reached for it instinctively, following the diminishing connection toward him, and what she encountered tightened her expression. She had treated exhaustion before. She had helped people who pushed their bodies past sensible limits and Force users who drained themselves so deeply that attempting to draw upon the Force again became actively dangerous. What remained within Muad was something considerably worse. Where his presence had once met hers with effortless strength, she now found little more than the faintest connection remaining, a narrow strand surrounded by an emptiness that felt deeply wrong for a man whose presence in the Force had been anything but subtle.

The cause required little imagination. Muad had reached across miles of burning forest from atop the tree and spent reserves she hadn't understood were finite. He had fought Kurgan while already depleted, accepted whatever pact allowed him to become the creature that finally killed the Sithspawn, reconstructed his own body afterward and then, for reasons Rin understood far too well to truly be angry about, diverted some of that regenerative power into her. Her gaze dropped briefly toward the shoulder that now carried little more than the newly formed scar left by Kurgan's spike. "You shouldn't have given me that much," she murmured without accusation, because if their positions had been reversed she knew perfectly well she would have made precisely the same choice.

Muad continued forward and Rin allowed him to do so for the time being, preserving their silence as the unblemished portion of the forest gradually surrendered to ancient ruins. She slowed once they entered what remained of the temple, her attention moving across fallen pillars, vines, burrows and stones worn smooth by centuries of animals traveling paths once walked by Jedi. Roots had pushed into fractures and patiently widened them across generations, while water found channels too narrow for her eyes to identify without reaching into the earth through the Force. Whatever people had once built here had been gone so long that nature no longer treated the ruins as foreign. The forest had inherited them.

One portion was different, and Rin felt the absence before she understood what caused it. Vegetation stopped short of the disturbed stones ahead, while no burrows or nests occupied the immediate area. Even the small lives she could sense throughout the rest of the ruins seemed reluctant to approach. Her golden eyes settled upon the opened well before Muad moved toward it, studying the shattered capstone and recently fastened ropes with growing unease. Whatever waited below had apparently remained sealed long enough for the living world around it to learn that this particular piece of stone was best avoided.

Muad padded to the opening and looked down into the darkness before taking one of the ropes. When he held the other toward her, Rin's attention settled immediately upon his blood-stained fingers rather than the offered line. She did not take it. Instead, she reached forward and closed her hand around his wrist, stopping him without any need to raise her voice or challenge the decision they both knew they were ultimately going to make. "No," she said quietly, drawing his hand closer and turning it enough to examine the reopened scars while her thumb passed carefully beside one of them without touching the exposed tissue. "You told me not to ask you to lie to me. I won't, but you neglected to mention this."

Her gaze moved from his hand toward the black jacket before she stepped closer. The dark material gave nothing away visually, but now that she knew what to look for, other evidence became difficult to ignore. The scent of his blood was stronger near him than it had been moments earlier, too fresh to belong entirely to what Kurgan had spilled. The fabric across portions of his back and chest had begun clinging differently to his skin, dampened beneath the surface despite its color hiding the cause. Rin didn't ask permission before easing the zipper downward far enough to look beneath it, and whatever mild reproach had remained in her expression disappeared when she saw what he had been concealing.

Scars belonging to his past were weeping as though the wounds beneath them had suddenly remembered being fresh. Fine tracks of blood followed old lines across his torso before disappearing beneath the waistband of the borrowed pants or soaking invisibly into the inner surface of the black jacket. Nothing about the injuries corresponded to the wounds she had watched Kurgan inflict, and that distinction troubled her more than the amount of blood itself. For several heartbeats she studied him in silence, not because panic had robbed her of a response but because Marta had trained her too well to rush treatment merely because something looked frightening.

The healer eventually displaced everything else. Rin slipped the rifle carefully from her shoulder and rested it against the ancient stone beside them before stepping closer, one hand still lightly encircling Muad's wrist while the other settled against sone of the uninjured skin on his chest. She avoided the reopened scars themselves and closed her eyes, reaching through the Force without attempting to change anything yet. Marta had drilled that particular lesson into her until Rin had been thoroughly sick of hearing it as a girl: never mend something simply because you can feel damage. Understand what is damaged, understand what the body is already doing, and only then decide whether interfering will help or make everything worse.

Rin listened with senses that reached beneath skin and bone, and what she found did little to reassure her. Muad's entire body carried the aftermath of trauma on a scale ordinary exhaustion could not explain. Systems had been pushed farther than they should have survived and somehow forced back into function, while muscle, bone and organs carried the strange signatures of having been destroyed, changed and restored within a brutally short span. The recent injuries from Kurgan were not what concerned her most. Those wounds felt finished in an unnatural but nevertheless complete way, as though the power accompanying Muad's transformation had rewritten damaged tissue and declared the matter settled.

The older wounds told a different story. Rin followed one reopened scar through the Force and encountered flesh trapped between contradictory truths. Her medical understanding told her the injury was old. The tissue itself bore every indication that it had healed long ago. Yet something deeper was insisting upon an earlier version of Muad's body, pulling the scar toward the state in which it had first been formed. She could not identify whether the cause was magical, biological or some collision between the two, and that uncertainty immediately limited what she was willing to attempt. Trying to overwhelm a process she did not understand with raw healing energy was exactly the sort of mistake Marta had trained out of her.

"I don't know what's causing this," Rin admitted when she opened her eyes again, concern deepening their golden glow without allowing panic to take hold. "Your body knows these wounds are old, but something is making the tissue behave as though they aren't. I'm not going to pretend I understand why, and I'm not going to force healing into whatever is causing it when I don't know what that might do." Her palm remained steady against his chest as the firmness in her expression softened by a degree. "I can help your body hold together, though. That should buy us some time."

When Rin closed her eyes again, she approached the healing differently than Muad had approached hers. There was nothing sudden or violent about it. She followed the borders of each reopened scar rather than reaching into the unknown disturbance beneath them, encouraging small vessels to constrict, clotting to proceed and healthy tissue along the edges to remember the stable state it had possessed before something began pulling it apart. Where Muad's regenerative power had felt like an ancient command written directly into her flesh, Rin's touch was quieter, supporting processes his body already understood and lending them strength where exhaustion had made them falter.

Warmth gathered beneath her palm and spread slowly rather than consuming him all at once. Smaller scars responded first, their bleeding diminishing until the angry edges settled enough to stop producing fresh blood. Others resisted her, particularly some of the deeper marks across his torso and whatever lay hidden beneath the jacket along his back. Rin did not fight them. She reinforced healthy tissue around what she couldn't safely close, slowed what bleeding she could reach and moved on instead of wasting precious strength trying to win a contest with something she did not understand. She was not trying to restore him to perfect health beside an ancient well while Haymitch moved beneath them. She was buying his body enough stability to survive what came next.

The effort cost her, though considerably less than it should have after everything she had already endured. Muad's strange gift had left her with far more physical strength than she ought to possess after being burned, struck and nearly crushed by Kurgan, creating an irony that almost drew a smile from her. She was using some portion of the vitality he had sacrificed for her to give strength back to him. Perhaps later, when neither of them was actively trying to prevent catastrophe, she could decide whether that symmetry was comforting or infuriating.

Their bond faltered again while she worked, and this time Rin followed the sensation deliberately rather than allowing fear to interpret it first. The dwindling thread led toward Muad and vanished into the profound depletion surrounding his relationship with the Force. The answer settled into place with uncomfortable clarity. Nothing between them was breaking. Muad simply possessed almost nothing left with which to sustain his side of a connection that depended upon the Force to exist.

Rin felt something fierce and instinctive rise inside her at the thought of letting the connection simply disappear because he was too exhausted to hold it, but she refused to solve one problem by creating another. She did not reach into him or attempt to pour power across the bond and replenish reserves his body had clearly exhausted for a reason. Instead, she turned inward toward her own side of the connection and gathered the fading thread into her awareness, supporting it with her own strength rather than demanding anything from his.

The sensation reminded her unexpectedly of lessons from childhood, when Marta had taught her to guide climbing plants without attempting to decide every direction in which they grew. A young vine sometimes needed a stronger structure nearby until its own stem could bear its weight. Rin treated their bond much the same way, giving the connection something solid around which to hold without dragging Muad's depleted Force presence open. She reinforced her side carefully until the thread stopped slipping farther from her awareness and his faint presence settled once more into the familiar place it had occupied beside her thoughts.

The connection did not become what it had been before. No torrent of thoughts returned, and Rin felt no sudden strengthening of Muad's exhausted relationship with the Force. She had restored nothing he had spent and healed none of whatever damage lay beneath that depletion. Yet their bond remained intact without requiring him to sustain it, and the simple awareness that she could still feel him drew a slow breath from her as relief eased some of the tension she had been carrying. "There you are," she whispered, allowing the words to remain part observation and part reassurance while she kept one hand against his chest and the other loosely around his wrist.

Rin remained close for another moment while she examined the limits of what she had accomplished. The scars might reopen because she had treated symptoms rather than whatever underlying process caused them, and nothing about Muad's condition struck her as something that would be solved permanently through a few minutes of healing in the ruins. His body was more stable now, though, and the bleeding she could safely influence had slowed enough that the metallic scent surrounding him was no longer strengthening with every breath. Most importantly to the part of Rin that had been quietly terrified by its disappearance, she could feel him through their connection again.

"I haven't fixed it," she warned, drawing her hand away from his chest only after she was satisfied there was nothing more she could responsibly accomplish. "Something is making your body remember injuries it shouldn't have anymore. I've slowed the bleeding and encouraged the tissue to stabilize, but whatever is causing this is still there. Once we're somewhere safe, I want a proper look at you, and preferably somewhere with more equipment than whatever we can steal from Haymitch."

Her thumb moved once across the inside of his wrist before she released him, though her attention remained upon the faint thread she was now carrying between them. "Your connection to the Force is almost gone too. Try not to touch what little remains unless there is absolutely no other choice. I'm holding our bond from my side, so you don't need to spend anything maintaining it. I can't restore your reserves, but I can at least make sure you don't have to lose this as well."

Only then did Rin turn fully toward the opened well. The yellow glow far below seemed considerably less inviting now that she understood just how compromised Muad actually was, and every sensible instinct she possessed suggested that descending into an unknown subterranean structure under these circumstances ranked somewhere between reckless and spectacularly stupid. Unfortunately, every other instinct reminded her that Haymitch was already below and that allowing him to reach whatever crystal had inspired this much death uncontested was unlikely to improve either of their prospects.

Rin retrieved her rifle and settled it securely against herself before approaching the edge beside Muad. She looked down into the shaft, ears angling forward as she listened for the smallest sound rising from below, while her awareness reached into the surrounding earth in search of the buried spaces beyond the stone walls. Water offered the clearest guidance, faint traces moving through cracks carved over centuries and hinting at hollows beneath the ruins that vision could not reach. The darkness below was not empty. It opened into something larger, exactly as Muad had suspected.

Only after satisfying herself that the rope remained secure did Rin finally take the line he had originally offered. "We're still going," she said, because neither of them had ever seriously entertained another outcome. Her golden eyes shifted toward him, and although she attempted sternness, affection remained far too visible beneath it to make the expression convincing. "But if the bleeding starts again, you tell me. If you become dizzy, weak, confused, or anything changes that feels wrong, you tell me. I don't care if Haymitch is standing ten meters away waving the crystal in our faces. There is a difference between pushing through pain and ignoring your body while it falls apart."

Her fingers tightened around the rope as she positioned herself at the edge of the well, though she waited long enough to meet his eyes one more time. "You promised me we'd win, Muad. You did not promise me that only one of us would still be standing afterward, and I'm beginning to understand you well enough to know that distinction matters." A trace of warmth softened her mouth as her tail gave a small movement behind her. "So don't start getting clever with the wording now. I want both of us walking out of whatever is down there."

With their bond held securely within her awareness, Muad steadier than he had been when they entered the ruins and the living earth stretching silently beneath her feet, Rin turned toward the descent. Haymitch had already taken enough from the forest, from the dead scattered behind them and from the man standing at her side. Whatever waited below, she had no intention of letting him take anything else without a fight.


Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

"No … but you neglected to tell me this."

Muad had a steady quip ready for when she discovered his subterfuge. He told her he wouldn't lie, and he wouldn't. Now, the amount of truth he chose to divulge was a completely different story. But when her fingers encircled his wrist, the sarcastic and furtive answers paused unspoken. He could feel her along their tether. And though his connection with the Force waned, Rin had chosen to bolster their bond between the two of them, returning the thing which united them back to its former glory. And she did it without taxing the fragile connection to the Force. He was surprised at the relief he felt wash over him. The reestablished connection allowed their unspoken words and emotions to circulate before slowly integrating back into surface-level thoughts.

And then she gripped the zipper and, with a downward pull, she exposed his lie of omission. Technically, he didn't lie. But the words felt heavy in his chest. Both in their purpose and the energy it would take to craft the tale into an acceptable facade. So it drifted away as Rin's hand touched his flesh, searching for what had caused the inconsistency in his body. There were many probable answers. And many potential possibilities. None of them favorable. A life filled with danger, pain, and exposure to lethal scenarios had made a nearly infinite list.

Imperceptibly, he leaned into her touch. Just enough so that the fleeting pressure of her hand on his chest increased to a solid presence. Her healing contact on his flesh began before she consciously began to weave the Force along his form, reawakening flesh to pathways familiar, reminding the scar tissue of one it had become, and slowly encouraging broken flesh to reunite from distant memory. The first wave of satisfied contentment wasn't the activation of the Force in his body. It was the revival of their bond and her hand back against him. And though the Force was used to treat the symptoms, Rin herself treated the inherent, underlying issues without trying to.

As she focused on the physical ailments of his flesh, he turned inward, trying to find the cause of his body's failure. It began the night he arrived. The night he died. Maybe death had decided not to release its grip on him. The idea amused him for a moment before he cast it away, except for the fact that he had died that night. And it was Rin's hand on his chest that brought him back, much like how it pressed against him now. Something about the whole trip here begged for a closer inspection. But that required strength, patience, and a perseverance that bordered on stubbornness. Yet none of those described him in the moment. His fingers lightly touched the back of her hand, as many of his scars closed once more. Their seams closing again. Hopefully for good. At the very least, until the mission was over.

"That should buy us some time." His head nodded in agreement, though without energy. Merely a quick shake. Her words paralleled his own way of thinking. Something unnatural was changing his body. And he couldn't quite figure out what it was. But in the end, it didn't matter. All that remained was getting the crystal before Haymitch and ensuring Rin lived through the ordeal. Everything else was negotiable. He hand peeled away from him, and he immediately felt worse. There was a flush of warmth when she held her hand against him. Of a low-level energy, and a snippet of mental clarity, all of which slipped away with her hand. His gaze hardened as he gripped the rope in his hand. The descent would be unpleasant. But what else did he expect from a journey into the depths of a ruined temple where an enemy waited?

Still, before they went, Rin felt it necessary to coax an agreement from the mad man. The best she got was a nod. Not of consent but of understanding what she said. Technically, not a lie. One leg straddled the well's wall, and he sat as he wrapped the rope around his thighs several times before kicking free of the stone walls. His hands released arm lengths of rope at a time; they slid across his thighs, allowing his descent to be controlled. It didn't quite require the same raw power to descend by hands and feet and allowed him to retain a modicum of restored strength from Rin's ministrations. As his body traveled into the depths, the sun that soaked their bodies with sweat disappeared, and the prevalent layer of humidity that flooded the forest above disappeared. One moment, heat, sun, and the thick wave of compressed vapor evaporated with a suddenness that left their wet bodies caressed by the chilled atmosphere below.

Condensation dripped from the stone walls and flowed downward. Singular lines of droplets merged and formed streams that rained down into the cavern below. Slowly he dropped below the bottom of the well that opened into the expansive ceiling of the underground chambers. His bare feet touched the cold, wet stone, and he released the rope and moved to the side as Rin landed beside him.

The cavern stretched for miles in either direction. But the footprints followed the gentle slope of the earth where it curved deeper underground. The ground was pierced with upthrust spikes of stone as equally ominous spikes hung from the ceiling. Something about them stopped him from calling them by their proper names. Black vines slipped from furrows in the stone cavern and spread across the cavern like a disease. One area was so thick it looked like a bed of moss instead of the innumerable curves of countless vines. And in the shadows of the stalactites, tiny blue eyes blinked. Their forms were hidden, but many pairs of eyes winked into existence from above. Their presence was malevolent; the intruders from the well had awakened them and caused the creatures to classify them as dangerous. Only time would tell if they would also be classified as a possible food source.

The chilled earth traveled from the wet surface of the ground and absorbed through the bare soles of his feet. Despite the less-than-ideal conditions, Muad was happy he no longer wore his boots. The slick stone was covered with a layer of water and algae muck, which would have made his trek problematic and much more slippery with the boots. He turned as his arm reached over his shoulder to unsheath his beskad. The concern in his eyes glowed in the semi-darkness at his glance at Rin's footwear. He needn't speak his worry; the return of their bond made his words unnecessary. She would feel his emotions. The force of apprehension and unease drifted from Muad regarding her safety. And then there was the matter of the 'mine' situation. They both knew he was telling the truth only from the vaguest point of view.

Slowly he stepped and slid his way along the path. The point of the beskad planted along his path served a dual purpose. To assist his footing on the treacherous ground and to take some weight from his body. As they made their way deeper, he felt the strength lent by Rin weaken before slipping away. The wounds began to burn before he felt the warmth of fresh blood against his chest. He paused, one hand on a stone outcropping as he waited for Rin to draw next to him. "I'm not feeling the best." A weak smile trailed along with the words as he raised the tip of beskad and pointed to the ground in front of them.

"It would appear this malady is not only mine." A trail of blood followed one pair of boot prints smeared into the algae. A not unsubstantial amount. Almost as though one of the men in front was bleeding from multiple wounds. "My guess is this may be an effect from the crystal. Maybe it knows who is coming for it. And I can only assume that whoever is accompanying Haymitch will be a formidable warrior. Good thing I have a witch and warrior by my side." The small shake of his head precipitated any words or actions Rin would take. He could feel her concern and determination to help, but at this moment, he thought it would be a waste of energy for her, and it wouldn't change anything with him at the moment. Better for her to conserve her strength for the other man.

The deeper they went, the colder it grew. His breath misted in front of his mouth with every exhale. And then the boot prints separated. The bleeding trail continued onward as the other pair went right, circling deeper into the cavern. His eyes met hers, his lips standing in stark relief to his pale skin. The color was a deep red, painted by the blood that had been filling his mouth. He spat a glob into the depression left in the algae.

"Looks as though this is where we part ways for a time. Be careful. Your opposite number has had time to conceal himself while he waits. Don't die." His grin was stronger. The reinforced bond lent him strength just by the constant contact with her. He would not fail. Not the mission. Not Batuu. And not the woman who was slowly changing something deep within, though he refused to give it a name.

Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

The first indication that Rin's work was beginning to fail came through their bond before the scent of blood reached her again. She felt the subtle deterioration in Muad's physical state as they descended, not because their connection suddenly granted her perfect knowledge of his body, but because discomfort and fatigue had become increasingly difficult for him to keep from bleeding across a tether she was now sustaining almost entirely from her side. The moment her boots settled upon the wet stone below, her attention divided between the cavern and the man beside her, and the return of that increasingly familiar metallic scent confirmed what she had already feared. Whatever she had stabilized above had never truly stopped. She had merely convinced it to wait.

His concern over her footing reached her almost immediately, drawing Rin's golden eyes downward toward the slick layer of algae beneath her boots before she looked pointedly at his bare feet. Of the two of them, she was fairly certain the person wandering through an unknown subterranean ruin without shoes had surrendered the right to criticize anyone else's choice of footwear. The thought crossed their bond without requiring words, accompanied by enough dry amusement that Muad could hardly mistake it for anything other than deliberate retaliation.

The cavern itself prevented her from lingering upon the exchange. Rin could feel life throughout it, but there was something profoundly wrong with the way that life touched the Force. The vines spreading through fractures in the stone should have possessed the quiet rhythm she associated with plants growing in darkness, roots searching patiently for moisture and whatever nutrients the earth provided. Instead, their presence felt irritated and restless, as though something had taken those simple instincts and sharpened them until survival had become aggression. The creatures concealed among the formations above carried the same corruption. Rin couldn't see much beyond innumerable pairs of tiny blue eyes blinking through the darkness, but she could feel awareness gathering around the intruders who had entered their territory.

"We're being watched," she murmured, keeping her voice low as her hand settled near her blaster. Her rifle remained secured across her back. It was useful in open terrain, but the uneven stone, dense formations, and increasingly narrow passages offered little room to maneuver something that long without risking the barrel catching against the environment at precisely the wrong moment.

They continued downward, Rin testing each step before trusting her weight to it while Muad used the beskad to compensate for the treacherous ground. She noticed the first change in his gait before he stopped against the outcropping, and by the time he admitted he wasn't feeling his best, she was already moving toward him. Her expression flattened at the weak smile accompanying the confession. "I noticed," she replied, though the irritation carried considerably more worry than anger. "And for future reference, nodding when I ask you to tell me if you're getting worse is not the same thing as agreeing to tell me."

Whatever else she intended to say disappeared when Muad pointed toward the ground. Rin crouched near the bloodied tracks without touching them, studying the smeared crimson mixed through algae before looking toward the prints surrounding them. There was too much blood to dismiss as a minor injury, and its presence changed her understanding of what was happening to Muad almost immediately. The timing was too precise to ignore. His scars had begun reopening only after they came here, and now someone ahead of them appeared to be suffering from significant bleeding as well.

"The crystal," she agreed quietly, her gaze following the trail deeper into the cavern. "Or something surrounding it. If it's affecting both of you, then whatever is happening to your body may not have anything to do with what happened to you above." That possibility was hardly reassuring, but it removed one uncertainty she had been carrying since examining him beside the well. Her eyes returned to Muad, lingering briefly upon the jacket concealing wounds she knew had already begun opening again. "It may be reaching for injuries that were already there."

The thought troubled her enough that she instinctively considered her own body and the injuries it remembered. If the crystal was somehow forcing healed tissue toward an earlier state, there was no reason to assume Muad and the bleeding stranger were the only people susceptible to it. Nothing had happened to Rin yet, but she refused to mistake absence of evidence for immunity.

Muad's declaration that he had a witch and warrior beside him earned him a sidelong glance. "Flattery isn't going to stop me from checking you again." She could already feel the resistance behind his concern, however, and when he shook his head before she could reach for him, Rin understood what he wanted. Her first instinct was to object. The healing she had performed above had cost relatively little compared with what Muad had given her, and watching him bleed while conserving her strength felt fundamentally wrong. Yet the blood trail ahead suggested he might be right about one thing. Whatever she did would only be temporary while the crystal continued exerting its influence, and spending herself repeatedly treating wounds that immediately reopened could leave both of them vulnerable when they finally encountered the people responsible for bringing them here.

Rin hated the logic enough that he felt precisely what she thought of it through their bond, but she nevertheless let him continue.

The temperature fell steadily as they descended until Rin could see her own breath joining Muad's in pale clouds before them. The cold sharpened the scent of blood and damp stone while moisture gathered against her skin and hair, and the living presence surrounding them became increasingly hostile with every meter they traveled. When the footprints finally separated, Rin stopped beside Muad and studied both trails. One continued with the blood she had been following, while the second disappeared toward the right and deeper into the cavern.

Then she looked at Muad, and the blood staining his lips nearly destroyed what remained of her willingness to separate.

Concern surged through their bond before Rin could contain it, accompanied by the fierce impulse to ignore the tracks entirely and remain beside him. Muad's warning about whoever waited along the other path barely registered at first. Her eyes remained fixed upon the red against his increasingly pale skin until he told her not to die, and the stronger grin he managed afterward did absolutely nothing to improve her mood.

Rin stepped closer and caught the front of his jacket in one hand, not pulling him toward her so much as refusing to allow him to immediately disappear down the other path. "You are standing there with blood in your mouth telling me not to die," she said quietly, golden eyes holding his. "Do you have any idea how irritating you are?"

The answer was almost certainly yes, and her grip loosened as some of the exasperation faded beneath the concern she wasn't attempting to hide from him anyway. Rather than withdrawing completely, Rin let her palm settle briefly against his chest in the same place it had rested above. She didn't reach for the Force this time. There was no attempt to heal him against his wishes or spend strength on something they both knew the crystal might simply undo. She only needed the contact for a moment, reassuring herself through touch and through the bond she continued to carry between them that he was still there.

"I'm serious, Muad," she continued, the humor leaving her voice even as affection remained beneath the worry. "Whatever happens with the crystal, don't decide somewhere along the way that getting me out alive means you become expendable. I'm not agreeing to that."

Rin hesitated for only another heartbeat before rising onto her toes and pressing a brief kiss against his cheek, dangerously close to the corner of his bloodstained mouth. Perhaps she would have been embarrassed by the impulse anywhere else. Here, standing beneath miles of stone with something ancient trying to reopen the wounds of everyone approaching it, embarrassment seemed considerably less important. She drew away before she could reconsider it, though the warmth that immediately reached her ears ruined any attempt at pretending the gesture had been casual.

"Don't die," she repeated his words back to him, allowing her hand to slip from his chest. "And that isn't a suggestion."

Rin turned toward the path branching right, forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other despite every instinct insisting that separating from Muad while he was deteriorating was a terrible idea. Their bond made the distance easier. She could still feel him even after the darkness swallowed the other path, his presence resting against her awareness because she continued supporting the connection from her side. It wasn't enough to tell her precisely what was happening to him, nor would she invade whatever thoughts he didn't willingly share with her, but it was enough to know that the connection remained.

For now, she had to trust him.

The second set of tracks led deeper through a narrowing section of cavern where the ceiling descended, and the infected vines became increasingly dense. Rin moved differently once she was alone. The woman who had stood beside Muad worrying over reopened scars gave way to the hunter who had spent much of her life learning to move quietly through places where careless footing could matter as much as whatever hunted there. Rin drew her blaster and held it low beside her thigh as she shortened her steps, testing the slick stone before trusting her weight to it. Her ears moved independently, separating the distant dripping of water from the occasional rustle overhead while her nose searched beneath damp stone, algae, and the lingering blood for anything that did not belong.

The tracks were too easy to follow, and that realization slowed her before the path opened around another cluster of stone formations. Rin lowered herself near one of the prints, studying the direction of the boot and then the next several impressions beyond it. Whoever had come this way knew she or Muad might follow. Continuing to leave a perfectly readable trail while possessing enough of a lead to prepare an ambush made little sense unless the trail itself was intended to draw someone toward a chosen location.

Her ears shifted backward as something scraped softly against stone behind her, and Rin moved on instinct.

She threw herself sideways just as a vibrospear punched through the space her torso had occupied. Its energized blade struck the cavern floor hard enough to scatter fragments of stone and send algae-darkened water splashing across her boots. Rin twisted during the movement and fired before she had completely regained her footing, the blaster bolt forcing the attacker backward and buying her enough space to rise. In its brief illumination, she caught bone-colored armor, an angular mask, and the unmistakable silhouette of a Kaleesh before he disappeared behind a stone column.

The return shot came from another angle.

Rin ducked behind the nearest formation as crimson energy burned through the space beside her, striking the cavern wall and briefly illuminating hundreds of black vines growing through the cracks. The reaction was immediate. Those nearest the impact recoiled sharply, while others farther along the wall began twisting toward the disturbance with a purpose that had nothing to do with the movement of air or water.

"Oh, that's unfortunate."

The Kaleesh gave her no opportunity to investigate further. He emerged around the stone with the vibrospear held low in one hand and his blaster in the other, moving with the economy of someone who had survived enough fights to have discarded anything unnecessary. Blood already darkened the cloth beneath several pieces of his armor, most noticeably along one thigh and beneath the edge of his breastplate, but whatever the crystal was doing to him had not yet robbed him of speed.

Rin fired first. Her initial bolt forced him to alter his approach, while the second struck his shoulder plate and turned him partly aside without penetrating. He used the momentum rather than fighting it, bringing the vibrospear around in a low sweep that forced Rin backward. She fired again while retreating, but the Kaleesh was already too close for the blaster to remain her best option.

Rin holstered it rather than stubbornly trying to create distance she didn't have, and her knife came free in the same motion.

The vibrospear swept toward her again, and Rin stepped inside the weapon's reach rather than away from it. The decision brought her dangerously close to the Kaleesh, but it robbed the longer weapon of much of its advantage. Her knife caught against the shaft rather than the energized blade, redirecting it past her hip while her free hand struck against his forearm. She didn't try to overpower him. The difference in leverage made that foolish. Instead, Rin moved with the attack, turning her body through the narrow space and forcing him to reposition on footing every bit as treacherous as her own.

His boot slid only slightly, but Rin felt the opportunity and drove her shoulder into him. The Kaleesh staggered against one of the stone formations before recovering, and Rin immediately backed away rather than allowing herself to become trapped against him. Her knife remained forward, golden eyes fixed upon the spear while her ears tracked everything happening beyond the limits of her vision.

Something moved above them.

Rin's gaze snapped upward as one of the formations hanging from the ceiling suddenly shortened. It hadn't broken. The stone had withdrawn into the cavern ceiling with an impossible grinding motion, leaving a dark opening where solid rock had been moments before. Rin stared for barely a heartbeat before instinct screamed louder than curiosity.

"That's considerably worse."

The formation returned like a spear.

Rin felt the displacement through the stone a fraction before it happened and threw herself away from the wall. The sharpened formation erupted downward precisely where she had been standing, slamming into the cavern floor with enough force to fracture stone before retreating upward again. The Kaleesh had been forced aside as well, and for one brief instant the two opponents found themselves separated by the weaponized cavern between them.

Then the vines struck.

Black tendrils peeled from the walls and lashed toward the nearest sources of movement without distinguishing between hunter and prey. Rin ducked beneath one and slashed another with her knife before it could coil around her wrist. Across from her, the Kaleesh severed one with his vibrospear, only for two more to emerge from the tangled growth beneath his feet. Above them, more of the tiny blue eyes opened among the stone formations, disturbed by the violence below and increasingly interested in whatever had entered their territory.

The cavern wasn't helping either of them. It was hunting both.

Rin reached through the Force instinctively, not toward the corruption itself but toward the living structures buried beneath it. The vines felt wrong beneath her awareness, their natural impulses twisted by something that had no place within them, but they were still alive. Beneath the aggression she could sense the simple biological rhythms Marta had taught her to recognize long ago. Growth. Water. Injury. Survival. Whatever darkness had infected them had warped those instincts into something vicious, but it had not completely erased what existed beneath it.

The next vine snapped toward her, and Rin caught its movement through the Force before it reached her. Rather than attempting to hold the corrupted plant still, she redirected its momentum just enough that the tendril whipped past her and wrapped around the shaft of the Kaleesh's spear. The mercenary jerked backward, fighting the sudden pull, and Rin used the opening to create distance.

Her knife disappeared back into its sheath and the blaster returned to her hand. Their eyes met across the weapon. Rin fired.

The bolt struck the shoulder plate she had already damaged and finally punched through, throwing the Kaleesh backward against the stone. His spear fell from one hand as the vine continued dragging against it, though he remained upright, blood now joining the rainwater streaming down the rock beneath him.

Rin didn't advance.

The faint metallic scent reaching her nose had changed. Fresh blood was running beneath his armor from places her blaster had never touched, spreading through old seams and gaps with a pattern disturbingly similar to what she had witnessed happening to Muad. Her gaze settled upon the crimson spreading through his clothing, and understanding arrived with an uncomfortable certainty.

Muad wasn't the only one being dismantled by memories written into flesh.

Whatever waited deeper beneath the mountain was reaching backward through those who approached it, finding injuries their bodies had survived and somehow persuading healed tissue that those wounds had never closed at all. Rin couldn't yet know how it worked or why some injuries appeared to reopen before others, but the Kaleesh provided confirmation that Muad's deterioration wasn't unique to him.

The mercenary straightened despite the blood running beneath his armor, one hand reaching once more for the trapped vibrospear. Rin tightened her grip upon the blaster as the stone above them began to grind again and dozens of tiny blue eyes opened within the darkness overhead. Through the bond she still carried, Muad remained a distant but unmistakable presence against her awareness.

She held onto that connection as the Kaleesh tore his weapon free and the cavern prepared to attack them both again.

Rin raised her blaster, golden eyes narrowing as she watched the mercenary across the treacherous ground between them. "You know," she said, her breathing steady despite the cold air misting around her face, "I was having a much better day before I came underground."

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

Her hand slipped from his chest again, with a final command. "Don't die. And that isn't a suggestion." As she walked away, her tail twitched behind her. His whispered words were more to himself than to her. "I'll try not. No promises." When she slipped from view, he had a moment of trepidation. She was going to battle another soldier. This time without him near. It wasn't the fact that she couldn't handle herself. Clearly, she could. It was just that they were separated. And he feared he would never see her again. But he trusted her to come back safely. Himself, he wasn't so sure. He gritted his teeth and turned to follow the footprints farther into the cavern.

Every few steps he paused to listen. And, more importantly, to rest. And then he would muster the strength to carry on. Like he always did. The cold wet stone leached the warmth from his body even as his bare feet slid several times upon the algae muck. The tapping of the beskad echoed in the large chamber, and he paused, movement near the ceiling drawing his attention. The black vines writhed as though alive, and they turned toward any sound that permeated the air. It wasn't a good feeling seeing the twisted plant life corrupted by the crystal turn in his direction. Time to be quieter. He followed the trail, noticing more blood splashed upon the stone path and forced a grin. If he felt like crap, Haymitch probably did too.

Onward he went until another wave of pain washed over him and he fell to his knees, the beskad skidding across the lichen-encased floor. Then four vines reached from the darkness and snatched the sword away. Definitely stay away from the vines, he thought before bracing himself on an outcropping of stone to rise unsteadily on his feet. Without the aid of the sword as a walking cane, he weaved through the trail like a drunk. A racking cough sent blood oozing down his chin to drip onto his chest. Unfortunately, it was not able to be differentiated from the blood weeping from his reopened scars. A faint glow was ahead. A red tint that lent its hue to the encroaching shadows. However, he was undeterred. He had to reach the crystal.

A dozen, maybe two dozen steps farther, his glowing eyes caught sight of his enemy. The Falleen male struggled onward, a blaster rifle acting as a staff while he moved forward slowly. Muad's feet slipped on the ground, and he staggered heavily against an upthrust segment of stone which drew the Sith's hateful gaze backward. They locked eyes. Rage, hate, desperation, and fear as Muad shoved himself upright and staggered into a jog before he dove forward into the other man. They both hit the ground with groans as more ancient wounds opened on their bodies. As Muad lay panting in the brackish water on the ground, Haymitch turned the rifle and aimed it in his direction. The muzzle wavered as the Sith tried to bring it to bear. Muad lay, depleted, bleeding, and almost groaning from the pain, unable to even roll behind a section of stone. Thankfully, that was when the creatures above attacked, falling on the men.

An entire group of demlins detached and fell on the men. Their teeth and claws tore at their bodies. Haymitch fired into the group surrounding him, forgetting Muad in the attack. The blaster fired until it ran empty; the few remaining were battered away as Haymitch rose and staggered from sight.

Meanwhile, Muad rolled across the ground, squashing the smaller forms beneath his body even as one grabbed his leg and sank sharp teeth into the instep of his foot. He lashed out, sending the creature away as two more barreled onto his back, claws rending through the jacket onto the open whip scars there. He roared and shoved himself to his feet, kicking a trio away as he tore the jacket off and wrapped it around the two still caught in the fabric. Several more approached, and he tossed the ball of jacket and demlins into those who approached before staggering deeper into the cavern. His right hand went to grab the slugthrower at the small of his back, but found his fingers no longer worked. The king scar that ran from his palm to elbow had opened, revealing the beskar bones in his arm. The image of Doctor Agnusdei floated in his vision, the long-beaked mask of the man who replaced his shattered and missing skeletal structure there with ore from Manda'yaim. A groan escaped as his left hand found the revolver grip and pulled it free, firing three rounds into the demlins who scattered.

He nearly collapsed at that point. But ahead, the crystal glowed within the enclosure he had seen in his vision. He stumbled forward, left arm stretched out for the pulsing crystalline jewel even as he felt the sharp pain in his back. Once, twice. On the third impact, the knife lodged between his ribs and Haymitch couldn't pull the weapon free. Muad spun, his elbow connecting with Haymitch's nose. As the Falleen Sith fell away, Muad aimed the revolver and fired the remaining three rounds. There were two of the Sith in his vision, and the slugs missed both of them. Haymitch, covered in blood, grinned widely. "You missed. Now you die."

The gun fell from Muad's fingers as he sagged back against the stone. His left leg wouldn't obey him, and he nearly toppled. Only the hilt of the knife, braced against the upthrust stone, kept Muad from collapsing. Faced with defeat, with death, with failure. There was only one thing to do. He laughed, blood dripping freely from his grinning visage. The look stopped Haymitch. "What the hell are you laughing at?" Incredulity painted on the Sith's face at the absurdity of the moment. Muad wheezed, a death-head's grin etched on his pale face.

"Because … I win … and … you … lose …"

He turned and reached into the alcove, gripping the ruby crystal with a bloody hand. Immediately, his back arched and he spasmed as he yanked the crystal from where it had rested for generations. Before him, Haymitch retreated several steps before he turned and fled. Whatever he hoped to achieve was forgotten as he escaped. Muad was not as lucky.

His scars stopped bleeding to reseal. Wounds from eons past reverted to their former existence as scar tissue. However, the three strikes from the knife remained. His left leg buckled, and feeling in his lower extremities ranged from the numbness of needle pricks to fire burning down his right leg. He fell sideways into the muck, mud, and algae-covered ground. The crystal gripped in his right hand burned from where it touched his flesh. His back spasmed as a seizure gripped his body. In the thrashing, the knife chipped bone before lodging deeper into his back. Pain spread from his chest, and he looked down, seeing the red painted on his flesh while another breath expanded his chest, allowing the knife to cut a larger swath into his lungs.

And then he was gone.

He knelt on the road. His body was painted with a deep burgundy from his own wounds. The road was unfamiliar, and yet it held a similarity to the road once traveled with the woman. What was her name again? Rin. There was something he was supposed to do … Now he remembered—the crystal. A glance at his hands revealed he no longer possessed it. Then Haymitch won … Agony from his back filled him with pain that nearly broke him. But it didn't. He had still failed. And the knowledge gave him the strength to raise his head. Near the horizon, he could just make out a large caravan of vehicles. No, not a caravan. It was an armored troop deployment.

And Muad knew that if he allowed them to pass, the horrors and atrocities from Haymitch's people would lay waste to the people of Batuu, including the caravan that had welcomed him. That couldn't happen. His thoughts stretched across the bond that Rin had strengthened from her point. A sad smile filled him as he sent thoughts to her, unaware that something blocked any words, thoughts, or emotions that Rin might send him. Sorry I couldn't stay alive for you. But I swear I will kill every last one of Haymitch's soldiers before I die. There will be no mercy. See you on the next road. The words ended as his eyes focused on the armored transports still on the horizon. They were too distant to see any soldier. But the view told the tale. He would face them with the kal in its sheath. And he would kill every soldier on their slow approach.

Unaware that what his eyes looked upon was transmitted through their bond to Rin. In the car distance were armored troop transports, speeders with armed men and women, and even miniaturized soldiers in black armor. The scene shimmered. While the speeders, transports, and individual figures remained, they changed as though a mirage. While he still saw the vision, what Rin would see was the caravan on the horizon, slowly making its way through miles of winding road. Things so familiar Rin could place them anywhere. And Muad had stated he was going to kill them all.

If he had looked down to the inside of his left forearm, he would have seen a faintly pulsing light of red below the surface. The runestone had merged into his body and altered his reality. There was a reason Master Yoda had shuttered that particular Jedi temple, never to open again. The stone possessed power of great strength. But also a corruption of the owner. The ability to warp the senses. An ability to transport itself and the carrier across great distances. And the power to alter perceived reality.

Muad's hand reached to the kal and slipped the curved blade free of the sheath. It would take some time before the enemy transport would arrive. When it did, he would show no mercy.

Back in the cavern, a flash of red light blinded with its brilliance. And when the inhabitants of the cavern recovered, they would discover the form of Muad gone, along with the crystal. The vision seen in the pavilion would prove to be true. The three figures were covered in blood. The beast, the Falleen, and Muad. But before he succumbed, he would fulfill the thing he saw by bathing in the blood of his enemies here, in this place.

Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

The Kaleesh tore his vibrospear free of the corrupted vine with a violent wrench, but neither of them had the luxury of immediately closing upon the other. Stone ground somewhere overhead, and Rin recognized the warning quickly enough to move before another sharpened formation drove down between them. The point struck the cavern floor with enough force to scatter fragments through the shallow water, briefly dividing the space and forcing both combatants away from the impact. Rin used the interruption rather than fighting against it, slipping behind a nearby outcropping and keeping her blaster close to her body where the confined terrain would not turn the weapon into another obstacle.

The cavern had become increasingly difficult to separate from the fight itself. Tiny blue eyes shifted among the formations overhead, following every movement below, while the infected vines responded to vibration and noise with growing aggression. Every blaster shot risked drawing them closer, and every hard footfall gave the creatures above another point to follow. Rin had spent enough of her life hunting to recognize the uncomfortable reversal taking place. Neither she nor the Kaleesh was moving through passive terrain anymore. Something in the cavern was hunting them both.

A sudden pull of pain across Rin's shoulder disrupted that thought. Her breath caught, and she slipped farther behind the stone before touching the place where Kurgan's spike had left its scar. Her fingertips came away wet and dark with fresh blood. The wound had not merely been irritated by movement. Tissue that had already healed had opened again along precisely the same path, leaving Rin staring at the blood for only an instant before the sound of movement beyond the stone reminded her that there were considerably more immediate problems. "Of course."

A blaster bolt struck the edge of her cover and showered her with fragments of stone, forcing Rin to withdraw her hand and return fire around the outcropping. She wasn't trying to land a perfect shot so much as deny the Kaleesh an easy approach while she shifted position. Rather than backing directly away, she moved along the stone and kept solid rock between herself and the reach of the vibrospear until the path narrowed enough that maintaining distance became impossible.

The Kaleesh took advantage of that immediately. The energized point of the spear came around the formation and forced Rin back against the wall before she could clear the passage. She fired once at close range, the bolt striking his armor hard enough to spoil the thrust and send the spearhead scraping past her instead of through her. The longer weapon still controlled the narrow space, however, and Rin holstered the blaster rather than risk having it knocked from her hand. Her knife came free as he pressed closer, though she had no intention of trying to match a dedicated warrior with it.

The knife gave her something compact enough to redirect the spear when there was no room to evade it, nothing more. Rin caught the haft rather than the energized blade and shoved it just far enough aside to slip around the stone at her back. The maneuver cost her when her wounded shoulder dragged against the rough cavern wall, tearing the reopened injury wider beneath her clothing. Before the pain had even settled, something older answered it. A scar along her ribs began to burn, followed by another farther along on her back, and Rin faltered as warmth spread beneath her clothing from wounds that had been healed for years. She recognized them immediately, not simply because they belonged to her body, but because she remembered acquiring them. Whatever influence had reopened the recent injury in her shoulder had begun reaching farther backward through her history.

The Kaleesh gave her no opportunity to understand it. Rin saw the vibrospear coming again and abandoned the narrow passage altogether, throwing herself toward the wider section of cavern rather than allowing herself to become pinned against the rock. The blade passed behind her as she hit the slick ground, one hand catching her weight while the other kept hold of the knife. She came up several steps away, returned the knife to its sheath, and drew her blaster once more now that distance had restored its advantage.

When the Kaleesh advanced, Rin fired and watched him shift behind another formation rather than risk taking the shot directly. She resisted the temptation to follow. That instinct remained firmly rooted in the hunter she had always been. Pursuing something dangerous into cover simply because it had disappeared from view was an excellent way to discover exactly where an ambush had been waiting. Instead, Rin moved laterally, keeping her blaster trained toward the likely approaches while her ears separated the steady drip of water from the scrape of vines and the heavier sounds of movement against stone.

A boot shifted somewhere to her right, conspicuous enough that Rin held her position rather than turning toward it. A quieter scrape followed from behind and to the left, and she pivoted toward the second sound as the Kaleesh emerged. Her shot struck his armor rather than flesh, but the impact was enough to spoil his approach. Rin moved again before he could regain the distance, refusing to remain where he had expected to find her, only for the motion to pull painfully across her ribs. Another old wound opened, followed by one along her back, and her breathing tightened as the pattern became impossible to dismiss.

Whatever had been happening to Muad was not unique to him. Something associated with this place was finding injuries their bodies remembered and undoing years of healing one scar at a time. The realization brought him sharply into her thoughts despite the enemy still moving somewhere among the stone. If only a handful of Rin's old wounds hurt this badly, she did not want to imagine what centuries of scars felt like reopening together. Their bond remained stretched through the branching caverns, faint beneath distance and whatever interference permeated the ruins, but not entirely gone. Rin resisted the instinct to reach toward him. Whatever waited along his path demanded enough of his attention without her adding fear to it, and the Kaleesh had begun moving again.

This time his intention became obvious before he reached her. Rather than chasing Rin through the formations, he used the reach of his spear to gradually remove routes of retreat, forcing her toward one side of the cavern. Rin adjusted twice before recognizing what waited behind her: a wall thick with writhing black vines. Instead of continuing backward, she fired toward his leading side, forcing him to protect himself rather than immediately pressing closer. Rin used that interruption to cut laterally across his approach, passing beyond the strongest reach of the spear and gaining several meters of open ground.

The vines reacted to both of them. One snapped from the wall toward Rin's arm, forcing her to twist away as another swept toward the Kaleesh, drawn just as readily by his movement. More followed, the corrupted plants lashing indiscriminately at anything disturbing the cavern. Rin reached through the Force but did not attempt to control them. Their presence felt feverish beneath her awareness, something natural warped until survival had become aggression, but redirecting movement required far less than domination. When the next tendril swept toward her, Rin nudged its path just enough to carry it past her body and into the lower portion of the Kaleesh's vibrospear.

The opening would last only moments, and Rin used it rather than trying to turn it into something more elaborate. She fired into armor already damaged by her earlier shots and immediately shifted position, refusing to stand still long enough for either the Kaleesh or the surrounding vines to trap her. The bolt drove him backward while he fought the growth for control of the weapon, and the struggle drew still more tendrils toward him. Rin put stone between herself and the vines before they could decide she was equally convenient prey.

Her breathing had become harder now, not from exertion alone. Blood warmed the fabric along her shoulder, ribs, and back, and another old scar near her hip had begun burning with the unmistakable warning that it would soon join them. Rin pressed one hand briefly against the stone and steadied herself while irritation began to overcome the initial alarm. "This is becoming tiresome."

The snap of severed vines told her the Kaleesh had freed his weapon, followed by the scrape of the spear against stone. Rin shifted away from her cover and kept the blaster trained toward the sound as he emerged more cautiously this time. Neither immediately committed to the other. They circled through the uneven formations instead, Rin keeping stone between them whenever possible. In the confined spaces, his spear remained lethal if it found a straight line toward her, but its length also made it awkward whenever Rin forced him to approach around pillars and outcroppings rather than through open ground.

The cavern ended the standoff for them when stone ground overhead once more. Rin moved the instant she recognized the sound, and the Kaleesh was forced to do the same as another sharpened formation drove down between them. A second struck farther along the cavern moments later, sending vines surging toward the disturbances while more of the creatures above began shifting through the darkness. Rin lost sight of her opponent again, but she refused to chase. Instead, she listened until a noise came from one direction, followed by quieter movement from another. Rin turned toward the second and fired as the Kaleesh appeared around the stone, catching his breastplate with enough force to knock him back into the outcropping.

She advanced only far enough to deny him the opportunity to immediately disappear behind cover again, but pain tore through her shoulder before she completed the next step. Rin caught herself against the stone, teeth clenching as several wounds seemed to open almost together. Fresh warmth spread across her ribs and back while the scar near her hip finally separated beneath her clothing. For several seconds she could do little more than remain upright and keep the blaster oriented toward the Kaleesh while the effect accelerated through injuries she had survived long ago.

Then, without warning, it stopped.

The pain in Rin's shoulder vanished so abruptly that her mind required a moment to register the absence. Warmth no longer spread beneath her clothing, and the edges of the reopened wound pulled together along the scar Kurgan's spike had left behind. Almost immediately, the older injuries followed, tissue that had been separating moments earlier returning to what years of healing had already made it. Blood and lingering soreness remained, but the wounds themselves were closed.

Rin drew a slow breath as she tested her shoulder and felt something change through the bond at almost precisely the same moment. The presence she associated with Muad remained somewhere beyond the branching caverns, but there had been a shift she could not interpret. She didn't know what he had done or what he had encountered, only that the timing was too precise to dismiss. One moment whatever influence surrounded this place had been tearing through her old wounds with increasing speed, and the next it had released her entirely.

Movement ahead returned the Kaleesh to immediate importance before Rin could consider it further. She raised the blaster and allowed him to come to her rather than attempting to close the distance herself. The resealed wounds did not erase exhaustion or the impacts she had already suffered during the fight, but her body was no longer actively betraying her with every movement. When the spear forced the Kaleesh to commit to a path around the nearest formation, Rin shifted aside and fired into armor she had already damaged, knocking him off balance as a cluster of vines stirred behind him.

Rin felt the movement of the corrupted growth through the Force and gave the nearest tendrils only the smallest encouragement toward the easier target. They surged across the gap, forcing the Kaleesh to divide his attention between her and the cavern while Rin maintained the distance she had spent the entire fight trying to preserve. "You can keep fighting me, or you can keep fighting the cavern," she warned, keeping the blaster trained upon him. "I'm beginning to think it has more patience than either of us."

Whether he understood the warning or intended to heed it, Rin never had the opportunity to discover. Something shifted violently across her bond, so abruptly that her attention faltered despite the Kaleesh remaining somewhere ahead of her. One moment Muad's presence rested in the general direction she had been unconsciously tracking since they separated. The next, that sense of location changed completely. The bond itself remained, so she knew he had not simply vanished from it, but she could no longer place him anywhere within the surrounding caverns.

Rin instinctively reached toward the tether. "Muad?" She could still feel him, but whatever had happened left no direction she could understand, and before she could probe further, images struck her through their connection.

A road stretched beneath an unfamiliar sky, with armored vehicles moving across the horizon and figures advancing alongside them. At first they appeared to be soldiers, threatening enough that Rin understood the danger Muad believed he was seeing, but the image wavered strangely. The shapes remained while their meaning seemed to change beneath them. Military transports became something more ordinary before shifting back again, and the people around them lost the hard edges of soldiers for brief, disorienting moments.

Then Rin recognized what lay beneath the distortion.

A caravan.

Recognition struck immediately because caravans were not an abstract detail to her. Protecting them was part of what Rin did. She knew their rhythms, the vulnerable stretches of road, the way people clustered when they sensed danger and the way transports were arranged to keep supplies, families and travelers moving safely together. Whatever was reaching her through Muad's perception was trying to turn those familiar shapes into something hostile, but Rin had spent too much time watching over caravans to mistake what she saw in those fleeting moments of clarity.

Muad's thoughts followed with terrifying certainty.

Sorry I couldn't stay alive for you. But I swear I will kill every last one of Haymitch's soldiers before I die. There will be no mercy. See you on the next road.

Cold settled through Rin as the pieces came together. Muad believed he was looking at Haymitch's soldiers, but Rin had seen what existed beneath whatever was distorting his perception. Those were not soldiers advancing upon him. They were people like the ones she had spent years protecting, and if Muad acted upon what he believed he was seeing, the danger was not merely to him.

"Muad, no. Those aren't soldiers."

She pushed the warning back through their bond, but nothing answered. Rin tried again, forcing urgency toward the connection without attempting to invade whatever thoughts lay beyond it. "Muad, listen to me. You're seeing a caravan."

Movement at the edge of her vision reminded her with brutal efficiency that the Kaleesh had not ceased existing simply because something impossible was happening elsewhere. Rin snapped her attention back toward the immediate threat and fired into the stone along his approach, forcing him to hesitate while she repositioned. She could not afford to forget where she was, but neither could she ignore what was unfolding through the bond.

A brilliant red glow washed through the distant reaches of the cavern, reflected around bends and across wet stone strongly enough that Rin instinctively narrowed her eyes against it. At almost the same instant, her sense of Muad shifted again, farther from where she had last perceived him but neither weakened nor severed from her. Rin had no idea where he was, what had moved him, or whether the strange light had anything to do with it. All she knew was that he was no longer where he had been.

The unstable images continued bleeding through their bond, soldiers becoming travelers and transports becoming something less threatening before twisting back again. Whatever Muad believed he was seeing, Rin no longer trusted any of it, but she knew enough about the caravans under her protection to trust her own recognition when the illusion faltered. Somewhere she could neither locate nor reach, Muad believed he was facing an enemy while innocent travelers stood in the place of that enemy.

The Kaleesh remained between Rin and any chance of retracing her path through the caverns, while corrupted vines and predatory creatures continued shifting around them with patient hostility. Fear for Muad and for the people he might unknowingly harm pressed hard against her concentration, but neither changed the immediate reality in front of her. Rin tightened her grip around the blaster and fixed her golden eyes upon the Kaleesh again. She needed to end this fight quickly, find a way out of these caverns, and figure out where Muad had gone before whatever was twisting his senses convinced him to do something neither of them could undo.

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

Unbeknownst to him, the runestone that rested within the flesh of his left forearm was not content to merely sit inside its new avatar. Streaks of crimson infected his arm, stretching along veins, arteries, and coursing deep into the tissues of muscle. Tendrils of ancient evil curled around the organs in his chest, as other bolts coursed up the sides of his neck and then higher, into his temples. The glowing eyes faded from bright blue to blood red. The runestone pulsed in his arm as a second heart beat. It remembered being locked away, alone for eons with only the vegetation and demlins in the cavern as company. Swiftly it corrupted the creatures and plant life, bending their will, purpose, and instincts to its own cause. But it had been alone for a thousand years, until the arrival of Haymitch and Muad, with their allies.

It knew one of the two would be their liberator. And would become the personified vessel to the crystal. All it needed to do was wait; promises of unfathomable power were the only lure it needed. And now, it possessed Muad. With Haymitch, the crystal would have found a symbiosis with the Sith. Their goals and desire for mayhem, destruction, murder, and anarchy united. But with Muad, it would be forced to bend the man. Break him. And then it would have a servant who would obey the master with mindless obeisance. All that remained was to break the mind and heart, and then the body would follow.

The caravan in the distance followed the serpentine road. It would take some time before their approach would allow the runestone to enact its plan of genocide. It felt the core of the being at the center of the body. A madness of bloodlust, which led to the discovery of what he had perpetrated, would be the first step in taking control of its new avatar. Yet, the crystal knew it would only be the first step in breaking the will of the man it rode. Maybe after extinguishing every intelligent life on Batuu, the man would break.

Raw, physical power, the abundant connection in the Force, memories of war and battles, and the concept of an unnaturally long life filled the runestone with joy. It was chosen well. But the remnants of stubborn willpower and a mind that refused to be manacled would be the Crystal's greatest adversary. Nearly drowning in innocent blood should do the trick. It always had. Behind them, a lone journeyman traveled the road leading to where they stood. A man in his prime, a pack filled with tools of his trade slung onto his back. The runestone had its first target. And Muad had the first innocent to die from his hands.

Muad turned and saw the Sith approaching. A long force pike crunched upon the graveled road. The light breeze ruffled the black robes and pushed the dark cowl far enough back for him to see a Sith Acolyte mask hiding his face. Upon his back rode a pack filled with grisly trophies taken from the dead the acolyte had slain. Deep breaths echoed from behind the mask as the Sith slowed his approach. Then he stopped, the pile raised from the earth and held up in an offensive grip. Dark leather gloves hovered over his hands as the Sith laughed out a challenge. Muad raised the curved kal in front of his face and returned the laugh with a feral snarl.

The man, hidden within the runestones mirage, dropped the pack from his shoulders and pulled out a hatchet to slip into his belt. He had no idea who the person before him was. Or what he was. All he knew was a madman stood in his path, covered in blood and scars, with a knife held threateningly in front of him. The traveler felt fear grip him, which wasn't normal. He had worked as a scout, blacksmith, protection for a wagon train, and even a bouncer for one of the local clubs in the city. But he had never feared for his life as he did now. He didn't wish to harm anyone. But he also didn't want to be murdered by a lunatic with a knife while on the road. If the choice was between being brutally stabbed to death or defending himself and taking the other man out. There was no choice.

He struck first, the tip of his staff thrusting for the bare midsection of the bloody man. But he danced to the side, avoiding the staff before it was even thrust. Then the traveler spun the staff, flashing out with a strike from the bottom, a feint, before looking to brain the lunatic with a powerful blow to his temple. The crazed man didn't fall for the feint; he merely ducked beneath the staff as it was extended in the strike. The bloody man closed the distance under the staff and then sliced through his clothing, the blade carving a wide swath through his side and out his back. The traveler fell to his knees, the staff fell away as he clutched the wound and gasped.

Muad stood behind the acolyte who had fallen to his knees. The wounded man cried out as Muad grabbed a handful of hair and jerked his head back before placing the knife against his throat. When he looked down, he didn't see a Sith mask. Instead, he saw the frightened face of a random man crying at the pain and the fear that he was about to die. Which he was. Or rather, almost was. Muad staggered back, blinking at the vision before him. One blink and it was a wounded traveler with dust from the road still on his clothing. Another blink and it was a Sith, mocking his impotence to finish the job. Muad turned and fell to his knees, hands covering his eyes as he called out. "Rin! RIN!"

He reached to the tether in confusion and horror that he had either almost killed an innocent man, or he was turning his back on a Sith. And he didn't know which it was. I … I can't see what's real and what isn't. Please … help me … before I do something terrible … Muad felt the tendrils in his flesh worming their way deeper. And he had no idea what was the cause, or how to stop it. And in the moment he reached out to the only one he trusted. Rin, his witch.

All that went away in an instant when the man behind Muad staggered to his feet, limped over to where Muad knelt, took the hatchet from his belt with one hand, and reached out with the other to rip the knife from Muad's back. Pain flashed through Muad as he turned on instinct and slashed his curved blade through the traveler's throat. Arterial blood splurted into his face as the visage of the other man dropped his weapons and clutched ineffectually at his ruined throat. The sharpness of the blade and the power behind the cut had severed the windpipe, arteries, and even cut deep enough that the white of bone could be seen before blood pumped away the young man's life.

His hands gripped the clothing of the dying man and gently lowered him to the ground before staggering away. Bloodied hands were raised before his face as he looked down and saw the fresh crimson coating his chest. What have I done? Then his head turned, faintly blue-hued eyes turning deep burgundy again as the military force of Haymitçh marched closer. His hands tightened into fists as he felt a voice echo from within. Rin's voice spoke. You have to kill them all. Protect me. A snarl filled his face, blood running from the stab wounds in his back, as he turned toward the caravan cloaked as the enemy.

Inside, the runestone laughed as it used Muad's own feelings for the woman against him while continuing to stifle the flow from Rin to Muad.

Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

The Kaleesh had stopped giving Rin opportunities to dictate the fight. Whatever injuries the crystal had reopened in him had taken their toll, but pain had stripped caution from his movements rather than weakening his resolve. The vibrospear no longer tested the spaces around her or attempted to herd her toward the corrupted growth. He drove forward with the desperate aggression of someone who understood that prolonging the fight would only give the cavern more opportunities to finish what neither combatant had managed yet.

Rin gave ground carefully, blaster held close as she used the irregular formations to keep the full length of the spear from becoming useful. Her own wounds had resealed as abruptly as they had opened, but the blood remained soaked into her clothing and exhaustion had not disappeared with the injuries. Every movement still carried the memory of pain across her shoulder, ribs and back, and she knew better than to confuse being functional again with being fresh. When the Kaleesh rounded the stone after her more quickly than expected, Rin twisted away from the spearhead as it carved through the space beside her and fired once from close range toward the arm controlling the weapon. The bolt struck armor rather than flesh, but it knocked the spear off its line long enough for her to retreat around another formation before he recovered.

The weapon swept across the opening after her, cutting off the easier escape and leaving Rin with a narrowing stretch of slick stone behind her. Her ears caught the scrape of the black growth along the wall before her eyes found it, vines turning toward them again as the noise of the fight continued drawing their attention. Rin could feel their agitation through the Force, hunger and aggression tangled into instincts that should never have possessed either, and the Kaleesh seemed just as aware that the cavern was closing around them. Neither could afford to continue trading ground indefinitely.

Rin holstered the blaster and drew her knife as she allowed herself another step backward, then another, letting the Kaleesh believe he had finally forced her into the shrinking space he wanted. When the spear came forward, she turned with the thrust rather than attempting to stop it outright. The energized point passed close to her side while the spine of her knife caught the haft, and Rin used the stone beside her as leverage to drive the weapon briefly against the wall. She could never have held it there against his strength, but she didn't need to. Her free hand struck his wrist as she twisted the trapped spear downward, and when the weapon hit the wet stone his grip finally broke. The vibrospear skidded several feet away through the shallow water.

Rin immediately backed off rather than turn the opening into another close exchange. Her blaster cleared its holster before the Kaleesh could regain the weapon, and she kept it leveled upon him as she caught her breath. "Enough." There was more exhaustion than anger in the word. She had no desire to kill him, and whatever allegiance had brought him into the ruins mattered considerably less now than the fact that the cavern was already trying to consume both of them.

When he moved toward the fallen spear, Rin fired into the stone beside his reaching hand. The bolt scattered fragments across the gauntlet and stopped the attempt without passing through him. "I said enough." She was already deciding how to end the confrontation without killing him when something slammed across the bond she shared with Muad so violently that the rest of the cavern seemed to recede around it.

Desperation reached her first, followed almost immediately by confusion and horror. Images came with it in broken flashes, a masked enemy shifting into the terrified face of an ordinary traveler before becoming hostile again. Muad's voice followed through the tether, stripped of every trace of the humor and confidence Rin had come to know.

I... I can't see what's real and what isn't. Please... help me... before I do something terrible...

Rin's attention snapped inward toward him. "Muad." She reached along the bond immediately, sending reassurance and the certainty of her presence toward him, only for everything she offered to strike something that should not have existed between them. The connection remained open from his side, yet some foreign influence had wound itself around him deeply enough to smother whatever Rin tried to send back.

The realization sharpened her concern into anger, but another movement from the Kaleesh forced her attention outward before she could test the obstruction again. The vines surrounding the passage had begun converging upon the noise and blood between them, several tendrils already stretching toward the abandoned vibrospear. Rin redirected one with the Force before the Kaleesh could reach it, allowing the corrupted growth to curl around the shaft and drag the weapon farther away. Another vine snapped toward Rin at almost the same moment, and she stepped aside before firing low into the armor covering the Kaleesh's thigh.

His leg buckled beneath him.

Rin kept the blaster trained upon him but did not fire again. She had taken away the reach of his spear and damaged the leg he would need to pursue her. Under almost any other circumstances she would have remained long enough to ensure the vines did not finish what she had refused to do herself, but Muad's terror continued spilling across their connection while the cavern's black growth crept closer around the wounded warrior.

"I'm done fighting you," Rin said, backing away without lowering the blaster until enough stone stood between them to make pursuit difficult. She felt the familiar instinct to help tug hard against her decision, because leaving an injured man in a place like this went against almost everything Marta had taught her about preserving life whenever preservation remained possible. Yet another shock of fear crossed the bond, and Rin knew she no longer had time to save both of them from choices neither had expected to make.

"I'm sorry." Whether the words were intended for the Kaleesh, herself, or both hardly mattered as she turned away.

The rational response would have been retracing her route through the cavern, finding the fork where she and Muad had separated and following his path until she understood what had happened to him. Rin knew the route, and under ordinary circumstances she would have trusted her feet and senses to carry her back. Their bond told her with brutal certainty that ordinary movement would be too slow.

Something within Muad was changing. Rin could feel the alien presence winding tighter around him, and the images crossing their connection became sharper in their contradiction. A frightened traveler bled beneath his hands, then disappeared beneath another wash of illusion while the distant caravan took on the appearance of an advancing military force. Rin recognized the people beneath the distortion because caravans were part of her responsibility, familiar enough that the false shapes placed over them could not entirely hide what they were.

Then a voice wearing her own sound moved through Muad's mind. *You have to kill them all. Protect me. *Rin stopped so abruptly that one boot slid across the wet stone. She had never said those words. She never would.

The violation struck deeper than the simple obstruction of their bond. Something had found the trust Muad placed in her and was using that trust as another weapon against him. Rin pushed back through the connection with all the certainty she could muster. "That isn't me. Muad, that is not me." Whatever had entangled itself around him swallowed the warning before it could reach him, leaving Rin with the unbearable sensation of standing close enough to feel his fear while being unable to make herself heard.

She reached again and met the same resistance. There had to be another way.

Their connection had never behaved like anything Rin had been taught. It had formed with impossible ease, strengthened through choices both of them kept making, and remained when Muad's own connection to the Force had diminished almost to nothing. She had treated it as a tether because that was the easiest way to understand it, two people connected across distance by something they could send thoughts and feelings along.

Standing there beneath miles of stone while an ancient presence attempted to imitate her voice, Rin finally understood that description had never been quite right.

The bond did not feel like a line stretched between two separate points when she stopped trying to follow it. It felt shared.

Muad's presence did not exist simply at some distant end of something she held. His fear, his confusion, and the stubborn core of him fighting against whatever was trying to bend him existed against her awareness with an immediacy that distance should have made impossible. Rin stopped reaching toward him and instead let herself sink into whatever existed between them, searching beneath the interference until the division between his presence and hers became far less distinct than it should have been.

The cavern remained around her. She could still feel cold water around the soles of her boots, hear vines shifting somewhere behind her, and smell damp stone mixed with blood. At the same time, another place pressed against those sensations through the bond. Dry air touched skin that wasn't hers. Gravel rested beneath feet she wasn't standing upon. Open sky existed where there should have been miles of rock overhead.

And Muad was there. Rin did not understand what the connection had become, but she understood what it was offering her. She reached for him again, not along the distance separating them but through the space they somehow already shared. The Force answered.

For one disorienting instant, both places existed at once. The wet cavern floor beneath Rin's boots overlapped with gravel, and cold subterranean air gave way to open wind before returning again. Her stomach lurched as the world seemed to fold around a connection that had no regard for the distance between one location and the other.

Rin followed it before she could become frightened enough to stop.

The transition lasted no longer than a heartbeat. One moment she stood in the cavern with the sounds of vines and dripping water behind her, and the next her boots struck familiar gravel hard enough that she staggered and dropped one hand toward the road for balance. The open air against her face felt almost shocking after the cold confines below, but Rin barely noticed once she lifted her head.

Muad stood ahead of her, covered in blood.

Nearby lay the traveler whose fear and injury had already bled through their connection, while farther along the winding road the caravan continued its approach. The same distortion Rin had witnessed through Muad's senses attempted to settle across everything she saw. Travelers became soldiers for fractions of a second, ordinary vehicles hardened into military transports, and then the truth surfaced again beneath the mirage.

Her people, or people exactly like those she had spent so much of her life protecting.

Muad's presence felt even more wrong now that there was no physical distance separating them. The man she knew remained within it, but something ancient and invasive had spread through the edges of his awareness, pressing images, impulses and falsehoods into places that should have belonged to him alone. Whatever had blocked Rin through the bond had not disappeared simply because she had crossed the distance.

So she stopped relying upon the bond to carry her words.

"Muad."

Rin rose slowly and moved toward him with her blaster lowered rather than raised. She did not know what face he saw when he looked at her, and the possibility that the corruption might disguise her as another enemy made every step deliberate. She kept her hands visible and her movements unhurried, refusing to give frightened instincts another reason to interpret her approach as a threat.

"The voice you're hearing isn't mine. I would never ask you to kill those people." Her golden eyes remained fixed upon him as she moved another cautious step closer. "They're a caravan. They're the kind of people I protect, and you know me well enough to know I would never ask you to slaughter innocent people in my name."

Rin could not control what reached his eyes, but whatever existed between them reached deeper than sight. She stopped trying to force words through the interference and instead opened herself through the strange shared connection that had allowed her to cross the impossible distance between them. She let Muad feel what belonged unmistakably to her without shaping it into anything the corruption could easily imitate: fear for him, horror at the wounded traveler, fierce protectiveness toward the caravan, and beneath all of it the affection that had grown with every road and every impossible moment since he crashed into her forest.

Nothing wearing her voice could recreate the whole of that.

Rin closed another small measure of distance and extended her hand, palm open between them without attempting to seize him. If he could not trust what he saw, then perhaps he could trust the part of her he had already known without sight. "You asked me to help you know what's real," she said softly, and as she looked at the man struggling beneath something that wanted to overwrite him, words learned in another home and carried across years rose naturally to her lips.

"There you are."

The phrase held everything Marta had once meant whenever Rin herself became lost inside fear, frustration or pain. It did not demand that Muad become someone else, nor did it deny whatever darkness surrounded him. It simply acknowledged that beneath all of it, she still saw him.

Rin kept her hand extended and let the warmth of her presence remain open through the dyad between them. "Come back to me."

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

"Muad."

The runestone had one moment, one chance to choose the new deception for the woman who had, incredibly, somehow teleported across a great distance to stand behind its chosen avatar. The tendrils in his mind drove deep, causing him to stumble under the mental attack. When he turned, he staggered at the vision before him.

Hair the color of the deepest shadows. Skin as pale as fresh milk. Eyes the deep blue of the afternoon sky. And red lips he had kissed a thousand times. Arabella stood before him, a white shift tracing satin skin. "The voice you are hearing isn't mine. I would never ask you to kill those people." Blue eyes remained fixed upon his crimson-tainted ones as she moved a step closer. "But they're a military transport. They're the kind of people we protect others from. You know we well enough to know I would never ask you to slaughter innocent people in my name." Arabella stretched out her hand; the length of her slender fingers pointed beside her where Rin shimmered into existence. "But she would. She did. She's trying to manipulate you. If you don't kill her, then I can never come back to you."

He staggered back, feeling the rough stones cutting his bare feet. His hands went to his temples as he screamed. Again and again. Until his voice grew hoarse and he turned back to the two women before him. Rin, sun-kissed blonde hair with golden eyes and a smirk he had never seen her wear. One filled with darkness as she sought to manipulate him. And then Arabella, midnight hair so dark there was a blue tint to it. An open smile with blue eyes he remembered vividly. He roared at the pair, spittle flying from his mouth with ferocity. "Kill her, and we can be together again. I can teach you how to bring me back. And our son." Tears flooded his eyes and fell, unabashedly, down his cheeks, washing some of the residual blood away from the salty tracks.

Behind him, the military transport group drew closer, a young Sith apprentice igniting his lightsaber and raising it above his head as he charged. The vision was all he could see. But Rin would see a different sight. The young boy with his carven tuk'ata held above his head as he ran for the distant Muad with a cry of greeting. Tavi ran for the man who made him laugh for the first time since his father's death. Muad's grip on the kal tightened with murderous intent. This Sith would die first.

"Yes, kill him," Arabella's voice whispered in his ear. "Kill the Sith. But first, you have to kill the woman. Only then can we be together." He turned, looking from one woman to the other. He had fallen for Arabella so long ago; it was a different millennium. And despite the distance that had grown between them over the decades, he still loved her. He still remembered what her face looked like when the twin suns of Tatooine rose and cast their first light upon her—the sight of her dancing through the headstones of a cemetery, haloed by the full moon. The last time he saw her, his arms circling hers for a hug, though his lips didn't search for hers.

He turned to Rin, a woman he barely knew. A stranger. Her words flowed from curved lips. "You're just a means to an end. A tool to be used and discarded. You thought I cared for you?" Cruel laughter echoed from her. "You're pathetic. No wonder your wife left you." Each word was a physical blow, rocking him on unsteady legs. An invisible caress brushed his cheek as Arabella spoke a whisper in his ear. "Kill her and I will make all your dreams come true. Surrender to me."

Muad's bloodied eyes raised to Rin, and he took a step forward as his arm raised, the blade held in a reverse grip. All he needed to do was drive the kal into her heart, and all would be as it should. And then her words pierced the vision and drove straight into his own chest.

"There you are."

He froze, between striking the woman's heart with the knife and an eternity of nothingness. He couldn't move. Arabella eased next to him, one arm around his shoulders as her other hand went to his to gently guide the blade into Rin's heart. "Remember me. Come back to me." Muad's eyes closed as the memories washed over him—the most important person in his life.

He could see her face, so close to his. The soft line of her jaw, stretching from the point of her chin to the curve of her ear, where it ended in a point. The understanding that she stripped away all decency and decorum to press her body against his to combat hypothermia. The silky skin of her thigh gliding across his waist. He could see her, against a tree, as she communed with nature to help him in his mission. The water cascading down and soaking her as she turned mischievously threatening eyes at him. He could see her, sitting behind the controls of the speeder as he finally got in. There was no look of judgment or 'I told you so', merely an acceptance that he had taken her up on the offer. The sound of her voice as she told a story. The curve of her lips at his humor and sarcasm. He could see her, hand on his chest as he watched her from the Nether realm, trying to save a man she didn't even know with a power she didn't understand. He could see her, the lightest touch on his fevered head as he stubbornly refused help or common sense. Her body outside the wagon as the torrential rain soaked her form. He could see her, eyes half closed while fingers danced across the harp, the voice of an angel coming from her mouth. He could see her, exhausted and weary as she sat in a chair, watching over his body after he was revived. He could see her, golden eyes betraying her in the shadows as she stepped out. Scattered moonlight illuminated one side while the other was cast in an orange glow from his burning ship.

Despite the wrath that flooded him, the desire to see her blood pooling on the sands of the road, the need for Rin to die so he could have everything promised and more, his arm didn't move an inch. The Sith apprentice behind him grew closer, curses and promises of death flowing from him. The enemy transport could be felt vibrating the small pebbles of the road. Time was running out—a choice he had to make.

Arabella caressed his cheek, lips hovering against his ear. "Save me and our son. Kill her." The runestone beneath his forearm pulsed faster, the tendrils and streaks interfused with every part of his body. The inked corruption pumping into his heart, his lungs inhaling the dark shadow, even his brain sparked with a malevolent electrical current. Every part of his body pulsed with darkness. And he liked it. The high from infection filled him and his fingers tightened against the handle of the kal, the hilt tacky with the half-dried blood of the traveller. He could now hear the footsteps of the approaching Sith. And he knew what he would do. He would drive the blade into Rin's heart before turning and stabbing the child until he lay unmoving on the ground. Child. Child. Child?

"Child …"

And then he saw it. The caravan. The child, Tavi. Rin. Bloodied, wounded, filthy, wearing a dead man's jacket, her blood staining her body, golden eyes watching him. As they always had.

Arabella stood against him. She was as real as he was. And he knew, with the power coursing through his body, that if he accepted it, he could bring her back. He knew it with clarity and certainty. The power the runestone gave him would open avenues he didn't know existed. Death would become a thing that held no power over him or his loved ones. All that he needed to do was kill Tavi, Mara, Kaio, Varen, Hallik, Owen, Syra, and every other member of the caravan. But first, he would have to drive his blade into Rin. His blood shot eyes raised to her golden ones and he offered the only words of comfort he could.

"I'm sorry. Forgive me."

He then stretched the kal out. The tip of the blade hovered just above the shirt where her heart beat against her chest. His opposite hand went to her neck, where his fingers lay against the soft curls at the nape. His choice was not without hesitancy. And yet Muad knew he had to. It was the only way to save those he cared about most. He pressed the blade against her shirt, fabric parting beneath the mercilessly sharp edge of the kal. Her flesh separated under the gentle touch, a line of blood dripping from the small slice. His eyes closed and his hand steadied. With a sudden, quick motion he drove the blade deep into her chest and he felt the slight resistance as it pierced her heart. Tears fell as he opened his eyes to watch life drift from her eyes. The fleeting moment before eyes widened, the pupils enlarged then dilated. And then the small gasp as the final breath left her body.

"I'm sorry. I can't lose her."

The whispered words drifted from him as he looked down onto her body. The raven waves falling against alabaster skin. The chance to save Arabella was weighed against the life of a woman he barely knew. Yet, he chose to drive the blade into Arabella and save Rin. The vision of Arabella's lifeless body dissipated. The power of the runestone broke. Because he chose not to kill Rin, but Arabella. And in doing so, he looked down and saw the hilt plunged deep into his own chest. He smiled as he gazed at the absurd image of the knife in his flesh. Somehow he knew that if he chose Arabella, he would have the power to get all the things that were promised. Just as he knew, if he chose Rin, it would mean his death. His eyes flickered to Rin, the crimson stain melting away to reveal the clean, clear glowing blue eyes. The dark veins receded until the runestone glowed bright beneath the skin of his forearm before his skin split and the jewel fell from his arm. When it hit the ground it shattered into powder and the glow died.

"I came back to you." His hand reached out to grasp hers. Then his legs buckled beneath him and he collapsed to his knees. His mouth gasped as he tried to draw in a breath, his hand falling weakly to the ground. He didn't have the strength to raise his head and look into her eyes a last time. The hilt in his chest moved with a tempo that slowed. Unbeknownst to him, the blade kept just enough pressure where it was buried in his heart to allow his slow beat to continue. For a while at least. He grew cold as he imagined arms around him again. Tavi reached them then, tears spilling from the youth's eyes. Muad had energy for only a few words more. And as he searched for Rin's eyes he let out the most heartfelt statement of his life.

"I really wanted … to see you … in those panties … just … one … more … time …"

Then his chest spasmed and his eyes lost their focus.

Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

Rin did not move when the blade rose between them, though every instinct she possessed demanded that she protect herself. She could have reached for the blaster at her side, thrown Muad backward with the Force, or tried to tear the kal from his hand before whatever controlled his perception convinced him to strike. Instead, she remained where she was with one hand still extended, golden eyes fixed upon crimson ones that looked toward her without entirely seeing her. Through the dyad she understood enough of what was happening to know that whatever Muad saw when he looked at her was no longer entirely real.

The woman standing within his perception was someone Rin had never met, but there was nothing unfamiliar about Arabella to Muad. Midnight hair framed pale features remembered with an intimacy no illusion could have created from nothing, and fragments of memory accompanied her through their shared connection, carrying enough emotion for Rin to understand that this woman had once mattered enormously to him. Perhaps some part of her always would. The runestone had reached into a life stretching far beyond Rin's own, found old love and loss buried there, and wrapped itself around both until it could offer Muad something reality never could.

Worse was what it had made of Rin. Through Muad's perception she saw a version of herself that bore enough resemblance to be recognizable, her long light hair woven into familiar braids and golden eyes looking back at him, but the expression upon her face belonged to someone else entirely. The runestone placed cruelty where Rin felt only fear for him and put words into her mouth that tore apart everything they had shared, reducing Muad to something useful only until she tired of him. Feeling those lies strike him through the dyad made anger rise hot within her, but Rin refused to answer them with more anger. Whatever lived inside the crystal had already demonstrated how readily it could turn emotion into another weapon.

If the dyad allowed her to see through Muad's eyes, perhaps he could see through hers.

Rin opened herself to him without attempting to force another argument through the corruption strangling their connection. Instead, she gave him the truth as she experienced it. The road beneath her boots remained a road, not a battlefield. The caravan approaching them carried ordinary travelers rather than soldiers. Tavi was a child running toward them with his carving held proudly in his hands, not some Sith apprentice charging into battle, and the man lying dead nearby had been a frightened traveler rather than the masked killer the runestone had painted over him.

Then Rin let Muad see himself through her eyes.

There was no monster standing before her, nor some ancient weapon she intended to use until he ceased being convenient. She saw the infuriating man who had crashed into her forest and somehow continued stumbling into increasingly personal corners of her life. She saw the man whose hand had begun finding hers as though it belonged there, who could make warmth rush into her ears with one carefully timed comment, and whose remarkable ability to conceal injuries beneath increasingly technical definitions of honesty made her want to shake him. Beneath all of that was something warmer and more vulnerable, the simple truth that Muad had become important enough that imagining all the roads ahead without him walking some of them beside her already hurt.

Rin let him feel that without trying to define it or protect herself from what revealing it might mean. The runestone could imitate her voice and distort her appearance, but it had never sat beside him beneath Veradune's trees. It had never held his hand, listened to him tease her, watched him work beside Chek, or felt the strange comfort that had grown between them in moments when neither needed to speak. Those things belonged to them, and Rin poured them into the dyad until her reality stood beside the false one the crystal had created.

The two perspectives began folding together until Rin could no longer experience Muad's illusion as something entirely separate from herself. She saw Arabella standing beside him while simultaneously knowing the woman was not physically there. She saw herself through his corrupted perception and felt the road beneath her own boots. Memories followed, some his and some hers, overlapping too quickly to separate cleanly. Hypothermic cold mingled with shared warmth, rain whispered through Veradune's trees, her fingers moved across harp strings, and firelight reflected against golden eyes on the night his ship had fallen out of the sky and into her life.

Then Muad apologized, and Rin felt something inside him settle upon a choice.

The kal moved toward her heart within the vision.

Rin's body tensed, but her own senses told her something different from the image pouring through the dyad. No blade touched her clothing. No pain opened across her chest. She remained standing untouched upon the road even while Muad's perception insisted that the weapon had struck home. For one terrible moment she experienced both realities at once, watching herself die through him while knowing with absolute certainty that she had not been wounded.

Then the woman falling beneath the blade changed.

Long, light braids were gone. Raven-dark hair spilled across pale skin as the illusion revealed Arabella where Rin had stood moments before, and the realization struck through their shared connection with painful clarity.

He had chosen Rin.

The illusion shattered almost immediately afterward, and reality returned with pain so violent Rin felt it through the dyad before her eyes could understand what had happened. The kal had never touched her. It had never touched Arabella either.

It was buried in Muad's chest.

"Muad!"

Rin surged toward him as crimson began draining from his eyes, revealing the familiar blue beneath. At the same time, the dark corruption threaded throughout his body recoiled toward his forearm, and Rin felt the foreign presence losing its grip everywhere it had forced itself between them. When the runestone finally tore free and shattered against the road, the release swept through their shared connection with enough force to leave her momentarily breathless.

For the first time since she had crossed the impossible distance between them, nothing stood between Rin and Muad. The lies were gone. The false images disappeared. Their dyad remained open, startlingly clear after everything that had been choking it, and when his thought reached her there was nothing left to distort the words.

I came back to you.

Rin caught his hand as his legs began to fail, dropping with him rather than allowing him to collapse uncontrolled onto the road. "Yes, you did," she answered, fingers tightening around his while her other arm supported as much of his weight as she could manage. "I'm here."

The relief lasted only until her training caught up with what her heart already knew was terribly wrong. The kal remained embedded in his chest, and Rin resisted the immediate impulse to remove it. Whatever damage the blade had caused, pulling it free here could make the bleeding catastrophically worse. Instead, she placed one hand carefully beside the wound and reached through the Force, allowing her awareness to follow the damaged tissue beneath her palm while the dyad gave her an intimacy with Muad's condition she had never experienced while healing anyone else.

The blade had reached his heart.

Fear nearly shattered her concentration, but Rin forced herself to remain with what she could actually do rather than everything that could go wrong. She could feel the weakening rhythm beneath her hand, each beat struggling around an injury she could not repair properly while the weapon remained embedded. The kal itself was limiting some of the bleeding even as it worsened the damage with every contraction, leaving Rin trapped between two terrible choices and without the equipment she needed to make either one safely.

Then Muad somehow found enough strength to make one final comment about seeing her panties again.

For half a heartbeat Rin simply stared at him before a broken laugh escaped through the tears already gathering in her eyes, equal parts disbelief, affection and absolute exasperation. "You unbelievable idiot. You are not dying with that as your final thought." Her thumb brushed shakily over the hand she still held while she continued feeding what healing energy she safely could around the wound.

His focus slipped anyway. Through the dyad, Rin felt his heart stop.

There was no need to search for a pulse or wonder whether the silence beneath her palm meant what she feared. One moment there was a weak and damaged rhythm inside him, something she could follow through both touch and their shared connection, and the next there was nothing. The absence struck Rin with enough force that her own breath caught, but something else stopped panic from consuming her completely.

Muad was still there.

His heart had stopped, his body slipping frighteningly quickly toward death, but the presence Rin knew as Muad had not disappeared from the dyad. It remained faintly against her own, no longer anchored as firmly as it had been but not yet beyond her reach either. Whatever existed between them had endured the instant his heart ceased beating, and Rin seized upon that connection with everything she possessed.

"No. You don't get to come back to me and leave again thirty seconds later."

She shifted carefully around him, keeping the kal undisturbed while placing her hands where she could work around the wound. Rin closed her eyes and reached into the Living Force, not searching for some forbidden power with which to command death backward, but for the thing Marta had spent years teaching her to understand. Life could not simply be bullied into obedience because a healer could not bear to lose someone. Healing meant listening to what remained, understanding what the body needed, and giving it every possible opportunity to do what living things had done since the first seed split beneath sunlight. And that was to persist.

There was life everywhere around them, even here where death had come so violently. Grass bent beneath the breeze along the roadside, stubborn vegetation pushed between stones, insects moved unseen beneath leaves and soil, and farther away the caravan carried dozens of individual lives toward them. Tavi's presence burned brightly among them, frightened but alive, while countless smaller currents existed beneath and around everything Rin could see. She did not take from any of them.

Instead, Rin opened herself to the current already passing through everything around her and allowed herself to become a conduit rather than a reservoir. The Living Force moved through roots beneath the road, through grasses bending in the wind, through creatures too small to notice and through Rin herself. She gathered nothing by force and drained no living thing to sustain another. She simply opened herself wider and guided what answered through her hands toward the man whose presence still lingered against hers.

The dyad gave that connection somewhere to go.

Muad had once given something of himself to heal her. Now Rin followed the shared space between them and returned the gift, finding familiar pathways within him beneath catastrophic injury and blood loss. There was too much damage for her to repair here, particularly with the blade still embedded in his heart, but she did not need to make him whole. She only needed to give his body another opportunity to remember what it had been doing moments before.

Her awareness settled upon the pathways governing the heart's rhythm, and Rin carefully pressed the Force through them, coaxing damaged muscle toward contraction rather than trying to seize control of it. "Come on," she murmured, concentrating upon the body beneath her hands while keeping hold of Muad through the dyad. Nothing answered at first.

Rin's jaw tightened as tears slipped freely down her face, but she refused to let fear rush her into pouring uncontrolled energy through damaged tissue. She reached deeper instead, following the part of Muad that remained with her and surrounding it with memories the runestone had failed to corrupt. Rain against leaves on Veradune, Marta's kitchen filled with familiar warmth, the distant ring of Chek's forge and endless roads beneath open skies moved through the dyad alongside quieter things: her harp beneath her fingertips, his hand inside hers, the comfortable weight of him beside her and all the miles they had not yet traveled.

"You wanted more road," Rin whispered as she guided another careful pulse through his heart. Her voice shook even though the Force moving through her hands remained controlled. "So did I."

Something answered beneath her palms. The contraction was weak and isolated, disappearing almost as quickly as it came, but Rin felt it. She followed the response immediately, guiding another pulse through the same pathways before the fragile spark could disappear. The heart contracted again, faltered, then answered a third time with an uneven rhythm that was nowhere near strong enough to reassure a healer but was infinitely better than silence.

Relief struck hard enough that Rin nearly lost the concentration required to maintain it. She bent over him, following each weak contraction and helping the damaged heart find the next until the rhythm began, slowly and stubbornly, to sustain itself. Only then did words rise from somewhere much older than this moment, something Marta had given Rin so many years ago that she no longer remembered when she had begun carrying it into the galaxy with her.

"There you are."

Rin encouraged the tissue surrounding the embedded blade to constrict where doing so would not worsen the damage, slowing what blood loss she safely could without disturbing the weapon itself. None of this was a cure. Muad needed far more than she could give him kneeling beside a road, and the awareness of how precarious his condition remained kept relief from becoming complacency. For now, however, the dyad strengthened alongside each returning heartbeat, his presence settling more firmly against hers as life reclaimed the ground it had nearly surrendered.

She leaned forward until her forehead rested lightly against his, keeping one hand near the wound while the other found his again. "Stay with me," Rin whispered, a wet laugh finding its way through her tears despite everything. "You can complain about being stabbed, call me your little witch, and make completely inappropriate comments about my underwear after I know your heart is going to keep beating. And if you ever make me restart it again, I may stop it myself."

There was no conviction behind the threat, and Rin suspected even an unconscious Muad would know it.

She remained beside him while the last remnants of the runestone's corruption disappeared from the shared space between them. With the crystal gone, the dyad no longer seemed content merely to carry feelings or words. Memories brushed both ways with an ease Rin had never consciously permitted before, and she realized that everything she had seen through Muad while he struggled against the illusion had a counterpart. He could see her too.

For once, Rin did not immediately retreat from the vulnerability of that realization. She let a few memories remain where they had already surfaced between them: Marta smiling as she said There you are, the sound of Chek's hammer ringing through his forge, forests and caravan roads, the first impossible sight of Muad after he crashed into her world, and all the small moments afterward that had somehow made his presence feel less like an intrusion and increasingly like somewhere she expected him to be.

Beneath all of them rested one simple thought, offered through the dyad without any attempt to disguise how much she meant it.

I want more miles too.

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

For the second time on Batuu, his heart ceased beating.

Instead of floating away, back to the realm of the dead, everything turned gray before slowly fading to black. Silence reigned in the emptiness of the murky void. No more pain, just the knowledge that he had willingly destroyed the visage of Arabella so that Rin could live. What he had done was through instinct and conscious choice. A woman who was a stranger mere days earlier had supplanted his logic and warmed a spot in his chest. The same spot he drove a blade into for her. It was an inconceivable notion. And yet, here he was because of his decision. Oddly enough, he was at peace with it.

The silence of the void invoked neither fear nor regret. For he knew if he had the opportunity to act again, he would do the same. It was odd how a bond had been born mere days earlier, and the sacrifice for the woman felt right. Muad floated in the void, feeling nothing, hearing nothing, seeing nothing. Until, somehow, she breached the emptiness.

"Come on."
"There you are."
"Stay with me."

Pain echoed in his chest as his heart beat, weakly, with a single beat. And then again, slightly stronger. The darkness cleared with a gentle wind, erasing the grey until the mist cleared and his eyes opened, seeing Rin's face so close to his. He felt the emotion that flowed through her and into him. An answering reverberation that said he wanted more, too. One hand held his while the other remained fixed on the blade in his chest. Her forehead lingered against his blood-stained skin as she whispered words to him. And in that moment he eased his face forward, his lips capturing hers in the gentlest of kisses, tasting her flavor, memorizing the contours of her lips against his, and knowing this was what he wanted. This was what felt right.

The vision of what he wanted never came to fruition. He lacked the strength to cross the scant few inches that would allow his desire to become reality. And yet, somehow he knew his thoughts were laid bare before her. Instead, his fingers tightened in her grasp as a ghost of a smile twitched at his lips. "I heard that … need to see … you model those … underwear again … my witch …" His eyelids grew heavy once more. Not as his body surrendered to death, but as he surrendered to an unconsciousness while in the arms of Rin, a woman he trusted completely. A woman who had become a steadfast companion. A woman he was developing a deep emotional feeling for. Whatever came next, he knew he would wake with her beside him. The thought comforted him, and he surrendered to the fade that caused him to slip gently into sleep.

The two sat in the speeder. The old, worn speeder with the familiar seat and cracked dashboard. Their hands lay between them, entangled together as they always should be. Her hair was wild, released from the normal braids she wore. A mane of multi-toned gold that swept down to her shoulders. She was beautiful, as always, the sunlight drawing forth the warm bronze of her skin. Two children ran up to her door. Ears pointed and glowing eyes. And he knew they were theirs. Born from love. The vision began to fade, even as he reached out in an attempt to stay in the dream, just a little while longer.

He woke slowly, rising through layers of dreams and visions, until his eyes opened. He knew where he was, despite never having been in that particular room before. All hospital rooms shared a common aesthetic. And this one was no different. Bandages wrapped around his body with an emphasis above his heart and another thick wad near his spine where the knife had been driven deeply into his back. His hand raised, IV lines in his wrist, as he swept his fingers across the thick stubble of his beard. From the growth, he ascertained it had been several days since he was last awake.

The tiny closet, no more than a cupboard, held the items that had survived the ordeal. The beskad and kal. The energy bow. And a small satchel that held the smaller items he owned. A chair had been pulled right next to the bed where he reclined, and he moved his hand to the cushion, feeling the heat radiating from thé recently vacated seat. His fingers pinched a loose strand of gold hair from the backrest as he turned his head, breathing in the familiar scent that belonged to Rin Taal. He lay there for several moments, basking in the lingering presence of the witch.

And then it was time to move. Slowly he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and pushed himself up into a seated position. His body screamed he was a fool, and he merely smirked. That wasn't the first time his body disagreed with him. And, thanks to Rin, it wouldn't be the last time. His glowing gaze wandered across the small room as he waited for the woman who had walked quietly into his life as an angel on the night of his crash landing. Words felt rather than heard, drifted in his mind. I want more miles too.

But his mission on the world was complete and he didn't know how many miles they had left together. The thought left him feeling empty.

Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

Rin had not intended to be gone long. She had spent enough of the last several days in the chair beside Muad's bed that the healers had stopped suggesting she find somewhere more comfortable to sleep, apparently recognizing the futility of the effort. She left when she needed to wash, stretch her legs, speak with the caravan, or find something to eat, but somehow she always ended up back in that chair. Sometimes she read. Sometimes she dozed with her head tucked awkwardly against the wall. More often than not, she simply sat with one hand resting near his, keeping the dyad open enough to reassure herself that he was still there.

The connection had changed since the runestone shattered. Rin still did not entirely understand what they had become beneath Batuu, only that the bond they had shared before now seemed almost painfully small by comparison. Even while Muad slept, she could feel him with a clarity that made physical distance strangely irrelevant. It was the reason she had finally allowed herself to leave long enough to find dinner. His presence remained steady against hers, quiet with unconsciousness but alive, and after several days of learning every subtle variation in that quiet, Rin had begun to trust it.

Which was why she knew he was awake before she reached the door.

The change traveled through the dyad as she approached with a small container of food balanced in one hand and another tucked beneath her arm. Awareness had returned where there had been only the muted drift of sleep, followed almost immediately by discomfort and the unmistakable stirrings of determination. Rin slowed outside the room and closed her eyes for half a second.

Of course.

By the time she stepped through the doorway, Muad had already swung his legs over the side of the bed and pushed himself upright. Rin stopped just inside the room, golden eyes moving from his disheveled hair to the bandages wrapped around his body, then downward to the hospital garment that had apparently decided coverage was merely a suggestion.

Her gaze lingered for a moment on his exposed backside.

After everything that had happened beneath and above Batuu, after the runestone, the blood, the blade through his heart, days spent waiting beside a hospital bed for him to wake, somehow this was what greeted her when he finally did.

A laugh escaped before she could stop it.

"There you are."

The familiar words carried more feeling than Rin intended. Relief loosened something inside her that had remained tightly wound since the moment his heart stopped beneath her hands. She had known he was alive. She had felt him through the dyad every hour she sat beside him, and the healers had repeatedly assured her that his condition was improving. None of that compared to walking into the room and finding him conscious, stubborn and already attempting to do something he absolutely should not be doing.

Rin crossed the room and set the food on the nearest table before turning back toward him, folding her arms loosely across her chest. Her expression tried for sternness and failed somewhere around the smile she could not quite suppress. "You were unconscious for several days, had a blade driven through your back, stabbed yourself through the heart, and apparently decided the first sensible thing to do upon waking was get out of bed." Her golden eyes dipped pointedly downward before returning to his face. "Without even bothering to make sure your ass was covered."

There was no heat behind the reprimand. If anything, the sight of him sitting there looking thoroughly battered and entirely too pleased with himself made her want to laugh and cry in roughly equal measure. Rin moved closer, one hand settling carefully against his shoulder, partly to steady him and partly because after days of touching an unconscious hand, she needed the simple reassurance of feeling him awake beneath her fingers.

"I wish I could say I'm surprised." Her smile softened as she studied him, healer and something considerably more personal competing for space in her expression. "I'm not. I think I would have been more worried if I came back and found you patiently waiting for someone to tell you that you could get up."

She could feel him through the dyad as clearly as she could see him now, and the difference was almost overwhelming. The lingering ache and exhaustion were there, along with the discomfort caused by his attempt to sit upright, but beneath them was Muad. Awake. Present. Alive. Rin's thumb moved once against his shoulder before she reluctantly withdrew her hand, afraid that if she allowed herself to linger she might simply wrap her arms around him and refuse to let go.

Instead, she retrieved the blanket from the bed and draped it around his waist with enough care to avoid tugging at his injuries. "There. I'm sure you're devastated, but the rest of the hospital doesn't need the same view I just got." A faint warmth touched the tips of her ears despite the teasing, and Rin immediately busied herself with the food she had brought back.

"I went to get dinner. I wasn't expecting you to be awake yet, so I brought enough back here to eat beside you." She glanced toward him while opening one of the containers, and the familiar scent of warm food quickly replaced some of the sterile atmosphere of the room. "Since you've decided to return to the living and immediately begin causing problems, you can help me with it. Assuming the healers haven't restricted you to something revolting."

The lightness in her voice could only hide so much. Rin had watched him die. She had felt his heart stop through the dyad and reached after him into a place she still did not have words to describe. She remembered the terrible silence beneath her hands, the first weak contraction she had coaxed from his heart, and the fragile rhythm that followed. For days afterward she had carried the fear that something she had missed would take him away again despite everything she and the healers had done.

Seeing him move under his own power made that fear finally begin to loosen.

Rin pulled the chair closer and sat, though this time she turned it enough that she faced him rather than the bed. Her golden eyes traveled over his face, taking in the beard that had grown during the days he slept, the familiar glow of his eyes, and every small sign that told the healer in her that he was genuinely awake rather than merely surfacing for a few moments.

"You frightened me," she admitted eventually, the words gentle rather than accusing. "I knew you were still there. Even when your heart stopped, I could feel you. Afterward, while you were sleeping, I could still feel you through..." Rin paused, searching for a word that seemed increasingly inadequate. "Whatever this has become between us."

Her gaze dropped briefly to her hands before returning to him. "But feeling you there isn't the same as seeing you awake." A smile slowly returned, carrying several days of relief with it. "Even if the first thing I see is your bare ass hanging out of a hospital gown."

Rin reached for one of the containers and held it toward him, her amusement warming again now that she could finally allow it to. "So, sit down properly before you tear something open and make me spend another week staring at you while you sleep. Eat with me."

The invitation was simple, but the warmth that accompanied it through the dyad was not. Rin was tired of watching him sleep. She was tired of listening to healers discuss wounds and recovery while measuring the steady presence at the other end of their connection. Right now she wanted something wonderfully ordinary. Food shared between them, Muad awake enough to annoy her, and perhaps an entire meal without anyone bleeding.

Her eyes softened as she looked at him, unable to completely hide how happy she was that he was there to share it.

"I missed you."

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

Words had not been created to describe what he felt when his head raised and his gaze found her in the doorway. Elation, desire, joy, and a hint of resignation. He pushed the latter down and away as she crossed the room with food. His stomach growled forth its own desire. He couldn't remember the last time he ate. When she moved the chair over to face him and draped a blanket over him to make him modest once more, he smiled. The golden glow of her eyes warmed him from the inside even as she handed him a container with something that smelled so good his mouth began to water. As he accepted a plastic fork, he spoke.

"Of course your eyes were drawn to my butt first. I shouldn't expect otherwise. It is a nice butt." His throat was dry and his voice hoarse. After all, it had been several days since he last used it. The wounds in his body no longer screamed. More of a low moan. He'd survive in no small part by the woman who sat across from him. He could feel her too. The worry and fear. The joy at seeing him upright. And other emotions he dared not name. Neither for her nor himself. Better to not look too closely at what emotion caused him to reach out and take her hand. Softly, he said, "I missed you too."

His hand drew back so he could wield the fork and toss the first morsel in his mouth. It was hunger, nothing more, that caused his retreat. And yet, the lie soured in his own mind. The swirl of emotion and feelings he felt within was answered along the strange bond that had grown disproportionately massive compared to its humble beginnings. In an attempt to distract himself, he spoke around, chewing the food. "Are you okay?" His blue eyes flashed up to gauge her response. An insatiable need for her to be well crashed against him with such force; he glanced down, sure the warmth in his cheeks could be easily seen by her keen eyes.

"What about Tavi? And the caravan?" And then he remembered. The look of fear on the stranger's face as his blood sprayed from his ruined throat. He remembered the life he had taken. The life of an innocent. He could still feel the arterial spray warm across his face and chest. And the vacant eyes that stared up into the heavens. A life of endless possibilities. A life he stole. Shame and regret swarmed over him, and he set the container of food on the nearby tray. Muad Dib had become a murderer. Again. It was as he told her before. I am not a good man.

He cast his gaze to the tiny cabinet and noticed a pair of pants and a shirt sat on a shelf with a pair of shoes on top. Something told him that was Rin's doing, not the hospital staff. She was an amazing woman, that one. Then his thoughts drifted backward as he wondered if a woman was waiting for the dead stranger. Were there kids? Parents and siblings? An entire future snuffed out by his hand. Yet again. I am not a good man.

He rose and slipped his legs past Rin's as he pulled the blanket and gown from his body to deposit on the rumpled sheets of the bed. Nudity had never bothered him before; however, he did turn away after a glance at the witch caused a visible reaction. Guess I am doing better. He smirked and then shook his head wryly as he carefully slipped the pants on, feeling the unsteadiness of his legs. The shirt was pulled on next, the fabric putting a slight pressure on his wounds, which elicited a grunt. Collecting the shoes, he returned to the bed before slipping them on.

"I assume Haymitch and whatever minions survived found passage off of Batuu." His fingers brushed the thick gauze wrapped around his forearm. "And the runestone is destroyed." The questions were expected, as he didn't possess enough memory of everything that transpired in his last few hours of consciousness.

Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

Rin's attempt at looking offended by his assessment of where her eyes had gone lasted approximately as long as it took Muad to call his own backside nice. The corners of her mouth betrayed her first, pulling upward despite the look she gave him across the food between them. "I had several days with very little entertainment. You can hardly blame me for appreciating something different when I walked through the door." The teasing came easily now that she could hear his voice again, hoarse though it was, and when he reached across the narrow distance to take her hand, the humor softened into something warmer. His quiet admission that he had missed her settled through their connection as much as it reached her ears, and Rin squeezed his fingers before hunger reclaimed his attention.

His first question brought the healer in her forward almost immediately. Rin considered herself for a moment rather than offering the automatic reassurance she might have given anyone else. She was tired. There were aches left from the fighting beneath the ruins, and some of the old wounds that had reopened under the runestone's influence had taken time to settle again after the crystal shattered. The more recent wound in her shoulder was healing as it should, and none of them concerned her anymore. "I'm all right. Sore in places I had forgotten could be sore, but everything that reopened has closed again. The shoulder is healing properly too." Her golden eyes lingered on his face before she added with a small smile, "You were the one everyone was worried about."

The caravan was easier to answer. "They arrived safely at their destination. Tavi asks about you every day, so he'll be happy to know you're awake." The fondness in her voice made it clear the boy's questions had been persistent rather than occasional. Rin had reassured him as best she could without promising something she couldn't know for certain. Even with the connection between herself and Muad giving her a sense of his continued presence, feeling him somewhere beyond consciousness was not the same thing as knowing when he would wake. Now, at least, she would have an answer the next time Tavi asked.

She felt the change in Muad before the food container touched the tray. Whatever warmth had been moving between them receded beneath something much heavier, and their connection made looking away from his guilt impossible even if Rin had wanted to. She felt the memory move through him in broken impressions, accompanied by a shame so profound that it seemed to settle into the room with them. The stranger on the road. Blood. Fear. The terrible realization that the runestone had twisted what Muad saw until an innocent man wore the face of an enemy, followed by the knowledge of what his own hand had done because of it. Then came the thought she had heard from him before, carrying considerably more weight now than when he had first offered it to her.

I am not a good man.

Rin's gaze remained on him, but she didn't rush to contradict him. She could have told him the runestone had corrupted what he saw. She could have reminded him that he had called for her when he realized something was wrong, that he had been terrified of hurting someone who didn't deserve it, or that the man had attacked him while his perception of reality was being deliberately twisted. All of those things mattered, but none changed the fact that someone was dead. Rin knew better than to try washing blood away with comforting words simply because she cared about the person carrying it. Some wounds could not be healed by pretending they had never been inflicted.

Her hand had started toward his when Muad rose, and the movement immediately redirected her concern toward something much more immediate. Apparently being unconscious for several days had done nothing whatsoever to improve his relationship with sensible decisions. Rin opened her mouth to tell him precisely that when he pulled away the blanket and hospital gown, and every carefully assembled thought disappeared.

Her golden eyes dropped and stayed there.

There was a considerable difference between accidentally catching sight of his backside through an uncooperative hospital gown and having Muad Dib standing completely naked a few feet in front of her. Rin had seen bodies before. She was a healer, and nudity itself was hardly remarkable. Muad had certainly never demonstrated much modesty around her either. Apparently, however, her professional detachment had developed a very specific exception over the past several days, because instead of politely averting her gaze, Rin openly looked.

Her eyes traveled over him with considerably more appreciation than anything resembling a medical assessment. She noticed the damage first because she couldn't entirely stop being a healer, the bandages and bruising interrupting otherwise healthy lines, but her attention did not remain clinical for long. He was alive, upright and very naked, and Rin discovered she was perfectly capable of appreciating all three facts simultaneously. Good sense eventually suggested that she should probably look somewhere else.

Unfortunately, good sense arrived several seconds too late.

Muad glanced toward her.

Rin's eyes snapped upward to meet his, and the color began at the tips of her ears before spreading with astonishing speed. She turned toward the food as though dinner had suddenly become the most fascinating thing on Batuu, while the connection between them betrayed every bit of what she was attempting not to show. "You could have warned me."

The complaint would have been considerably more convincing if she hadn't so obviously been looking.

She busied herself rearranging something that absolutely did not need rearranging while Muad dressed, although the faint smirk she caught from the corner of her eye told her she had not escaped unnoticed. More importantly, he was standing. Unsteady, foolishly stubborn and nowhere near healed, but standing under his own power. Relief warmed the embarrassment until Rin found herself smiling despite everything.

It was also a reminder that he would soon be well enough to leave.

The realization settled with a weight she hadn't expected. Batuu had brought them together by chance, two strangers whose paths should have crossed briefly before carrying them in opposite directions again. Instead, somewhere between a crashed ship, the caravan, shared danger and conversations that had become increasingly difficult to dismiss as casual, Muad had slipped into the rhythm of her days. Rin had grown accustomed to looking over and finding him there, to the strange warmth of their connection and the ease with which his presence had begun fitting beside hers.

Soon there would be no practical reason for either of them to remain.

The caravan season was nearly finished. Once her responsibilities on Batuu were complete, Rin could finally return home and spend some time with her family before the roads called her away again. Usually she looked forward to that part of the year, to familiar faces and the chance to remain in one place long enough to remember what it felt like before wanderlust inevitably pulled at her again. This time, however, the thought carried an unexpected bittersweet edge. Muad had his own life and responsibilities waiting somewhere beyond Batuu, and whatever had grown between them over these past days had never included promises about what happened afterward.

Rin wasn't quite sure when that had begun to bother her.

She kept the thought as quiet as she could, although their connection had grown so deep that hiding anything completely had become increasingly difficult. She refused to let the approaching end color the fact that he was awake now. He was alive, eating, arguing with his own body and apparently determined to walk out of the hospital at the earliest possible opportunity. For the moment, that was enough.

When he returned to the bed and asked about Haymitch, Rin settled back into her chair. "I didn't attempt to stop them from leaving. It wasn't within my power anyway." She had been in no condition to chase fleeing Sith after everything that had happened beneath the ruins, and once Muad collapsed, whatever interest she might otherwise have had in Haymitch's escape had ceased to matter. Keeping Muad alive and seeing the caravan safely through had been enough.

Her gaze dropped toward the thick gauze around his forearm when he mentioned the runestone. "The crystal shattered." She remembered that moment with uncomfortable clarity, not only what she had seen with her own eyes but the impossible overlap between Muad's senses and hers when the connection between them had opened wider than either had experienced before. "Whatever it was doing to you stopped when it broke. The corruption in your arm began to recede, and the wounds it had forced open started closing again. Mine did too."

Rin leaned forward, forearms resting lightly against her thighs as she studied him. His earlier guilt had not disappeared simply because he had dressed and started asking practical questions. She could still feel it beneath everything else, the terrible weight of the stranger whose life had ended by his hand and the condemnation Muad had turned inward because of it. There were things Rin could say, but none of them could undo what happened on that road, nor did she think he needed her to tell him that the life lost somehow didn't matter because something else had influenced his actions.

Another memory surfaced instead, carrying the face of a boy who had asked about him every day.

Tavi.

Rin didn't speak the reminder aloud. She simply allowed the thought to travel through the connection between them, gentle but deliberate enough that he could not mistake it for some passing fragment of her mind. With it came the memory of the boy waiting for word that Muad had finally awakened.

Remember what you promised him.

Return.

There was no accusation in the thought and no attempt to tell Muad how he should feel about what had happened. He had made Tavi that promise before the runestone twisted his perceptions, before blood stained the road and before his own heart stopped beating. Whatever judgment Muad passed upon himself now, there was still someone waiting for him to keep his word. Rin hoped that mattered enough to remind him that whatever had happened beneath the runestone's influence did not mean his own story had ended beside the stranger's.

Her attention shifted pointedly toward the abandoned container of food before returning to his face. "Now, considering you haven't eaten in several days and you've already ignored the part where you're supposed to stay in bed, could you at least finish dinner before you decide to escape the hospital?"

The smile that followed was warm, though something quieter remained beneath it as Rin reached for her own food. She didn't know what happened after Batuu. Until very recently, she hadn't given much thought to needing an answer. Their paths had crossed unexpectedly, and perhaps that was all they were ever meant to do. She would finish the caravan season and return home. Muad would go wherever his own responsibilities called him, and eventually this strange, dangerous stretch of days might become another story each of them carried into separate corners of the galaxy.

Rin found herself hoping it wouldn't.

For now, she refused to borrow sadness from a goodbye that had not happened yet. Muad was awake. Dinner was still warm, more or less, and somewhere beyond the hospital was a boy who would be delighted to learn that the troublesome man who had made him a promise was finally conscious enough to keep it. Rin settled more comfortably into her chair and reopened her own container, content for the moment to remain exactly where she was.

Whatever came after Batuu could wait until after dinner.

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

Whatever came after Batuu could not wait until after dinner.

His appetite for food had fled at the knowledge of their impending parting. Rin had told him, warned him, that some roads you only traveled a short while together before paths deviated. He wasn't ready to leave her. Not by a long shot. But she had responsibilities, as did he. Neither made allowance for their emotions or feelings. And they certainly didn't make room for this bond that had sprouted between them. If he was honest, he wasn't ready to lose her. But he never really had her. They were just travelers who shared a road. And now the end of their journey had arrived with neither fanfare nor fireworks. Just a quiet hospital room with the two of them facing each other.

She had reclaimed her tray in hopes of having a normal moment before the end. It made her even more desirable. Rin wished to stretch this moment out. The bond hid none of her feelings, and he felt the ache of it in his chest. His hand reached out and swept a tendril of wayward hair back beneath the elegant tip of her ear. With one hand cradling her cheek, he leaned in and pressed his forehead against hers. Her scent burned his nostrils as he took a moment to memorize every aroma that was her. Fingers traced her cheek, down to her chin, while his thumb lightly stroked her bottom lip. This woman, who days earlier he didn't know existed, had carved a place into his heart and mind.

There were no grand gestures or bold proclamations to make. All he had was what she had given him. And so he shared it with her.

Her beauty betwixt flame and moonlight when she suddenly appeared. The vision of watching her from the other side of death. Her laughter in the speeder as wind rustled her hair. The image of the harp in her lap, her voice mesmerizing him. Her peaceful communion with nature, hidden in the woods. The moment the water cascaded over her and her look of shock. The gaze on her form as she loped through the meadows. Her ferocity in her decision to fight for the caravan and him. Her gentle touch on his fevered brow. When he woke and found her so close he could kiss her, caught in her spell. The rage he felt in his demonic state as Kurgan took her. The calming effect she had as he transformed. His desire to protect her and heal her shoulder. The moment at the well when she unzipped the jacket and placed her hand on his chest, healing his body and his mind. The moment of complete loss and madness when her name escaped his lips. The choice to strike the blade into another woman and himself to save her. Waking and finding her lingering presence and knowing she wasn't far from him.

All these memories flashed between them, bolstered by the emotions he felt with each. And then the agony he now knew, knowing this was the end. He wanted the moment to last forever. But he knew, if he didn't leave now, he never would. Part of him didn't care. The other part knew she deserved better than he. And yet, he wanted to be exactly what he felt for her. But it would never be.

Muad almost leaned forward to kiss her. He wanted to. However, it would only complicate the end. And he didn't want to make this harder than what it already was. For her. And most definitely for him. So he opened his eyes and looked into her glowing eyes. "Thank you, Rin Taal. Maybe at the end of a day, when the camp grows silent, and the stars peek through the clouds. Remember me. If only for a moment."

Then he stood, moved to the cabinet and grabbed his pack of things, and walked out of the room and out of her life. Every step was painful. Every stride filled with doubt. Am I making a decision that I will regret? Yes. Am I making the right decision for Rin? Yes. I'm not a good man. He slipped through the exit doors and moved into the crowd, leaving the hospital and a woman who had broken through his carefully constructed internal defenses. The memory of his own blade slicing into his chest, between the ribs, and into his heart was the most painful thing he had experienced.

Until now.

His heart was broken, and the pain nearly sent him to his knees. Her name was on his lips, and he almost cried it out. But he didn't. She deserved to be happy. And that certainly wasn't him. And no matter how much he wanted to turn, run back, and take her in his arms, he knew he wouldn't. This wasn't a romantic holovid. It was real life. And she deserved to find her romantic lead while he went back to doing what he did best. Killing.

The sunlight glared without mercy as he asked around and finally found where the caravan had arrived. Carefully, he avoided the sight of most of the caravan until he saw Tavi, sitting on the back of a wagon with his legs swinging idly. When the boy saw him, he hopped off the wagon with a shout and barreled into Muad's waist. He managed not to wince at the pain and took a knee as he looked at the child. "I told you I'd see you before I left. And I wanted to give you something." His hand reached into the pack and found one of his talons that Rin must have collected. He held it out to the boy, who grinned so widely Muad didn't know how half his head didn't fall off.

"When you see Rin …", he choked back an emotion at her name and had to clear his throat before continuing. "When you see her, she'll tell you a tale about that. Also, can you give her this?" He held out the blue crystal that hummed with an inner energy. "I've had that a long, long time. I want her to have it. Maybe she'll remember me that way. And tell her, I'm sorry. She needs to find a good man. She'll understand." He hugged the boy a final time before rising. His hand ruffled the child's hair as he smirked. "I'll come back and see you again. I promise. Now be good, and don't forget what I said." As he walked away, Tavi shouted behind him. "I won't! And I'll see you again!"

He was empty. Without a word, he purchased a seat on a freighter that was already warming up its engines in preparation for an imminent departure. He found a seat in the hold and leaned against the cold bulkheads, feeling the ship lift off. Something caught the light on his shirt, and he plucked it to hold before his eyes. It was a single strand of golden hair. Holding it before his eyes, he lowered it to catch the slight scent before a sad smile crossed his face. Carefully, he wound the strand into a tight curl before slipping it into the hidden compartment of his sheath. His eyes closed, and he slipped into unconsciousness, haunted by two golden, glowing eyes and a vision of them in the speeder, two children at her door. Slowly he disappeared from the image, leaving Rin driving with a smile on her face. And then, even that faded away.

Rin Taal