Private Tears of the Nonborn

[Abishai Jade]

DEEP SPACE
Mid Rim
​

The battle was short. Those left breathing were few, and only reserved for the victors which had since departed, scared off by an approaching Jedi vessel. Their salvage operations had barely begun. Raiders with loot left behind. Pirates with no booty to return home counting. They were surely be back and in great numbers soon. The sole survivor of the raid was adrift in space. Their terror writ large across their face.

Amongst the wreckage, illuminated only the occasional flickering of dying computer panels within the debris and the distant twinkling of stars, floated a carbonite storage unit. It spun just off it's central top to bottom axis, leaving it in a not quite perfect spin. Chunks of the now destroy vessel and its crew collided with the back of the slab of carbonite. Several impacted around the system panel, nearly releasing the occupant into the vacuum of space.

----​

"Shields failing! We cannot hold out under this...argh!"

The explosion seared the pilot's face, and left him hunkered over his console and burnt beyond recognition. A young blonde boy looked on in horror as his simple journey to the core erupted into chaos amid the onslaught of pirates, or marauders, or some such thing.

"Abishai...come...come with me..."

He had no choice. His arm was already grabbed, and painfully so. He was pulled towards the back of the small transport, and before he knew it was being maneuvered into a small metal frame. His brain registered what it was just before he the buttons were pushed by his attendant.

"You're going to freeze me!" He cried out, struggling to get out of the carbon freeze chamber, "I don't...want to be frozen..."

He was put back in his place forcefully, jarring his arm.

"You must live. You must survive Abishai. This is the only way. I am sorry...dear boy..."

"Jayl. No! Please!"

But it was too late. Gases poured out of vents, and carbonite engulfed the mold.

----​

The slab of solidified carbonite spun, coming into view of the one remaining steady light from what remained of the dorsal fin of the the vessel. Encased within the prison of stone was the form of a young boy. His hand was outstretched. He was mid-scream and wide-eyed upon witnessing the explosion they witnessed as stone took his senses. A hibernation of nightmares and unease. A life ripped from its ease and delights, into a void of eternal screams.

| Romi Jade |​

 

[Romi Jade]

Deep Space

Abishai Jade
​

She glanced over, mystified, when he mentioned it was her presence, that he actually felt. "Well, you and I both know there aren't many coincidences, if any at all." It all made sense, and was even greater proof of the ways in which the Force worked -- it had eluded them both, and brought them together.

His eyes brimmed with restrained emotion. Zark San Tekka could feel her doubt and realized the Force must have brought him here for more than one reason. Like Romi, he was not a man who believed in serendipity.

----​

"What happened here?," She sauntered in slow motion towards the viewport, closing in on the void touched glass -- it had a cold aura. "This...is a mess." speaking under her breath, she scanned the wreckage panning the barrier that kept her from what was out there.

"R0, are picking up any life? pods? Or any signals beyond the one that ping'd us earlier?" She nodded slowly to the cadence of the astromech's song; the droid voiced a series of mechanical clicks in various notes, in various patterns.

She had been out scouting. Since joining the NJO she had been occupied with putting a training retreat of sorts together. When she hadn't been researching the prophecy, she spent the rest of her time looking for worlds to host her practicum. This particular day, however, she was on her way back to Coruscant, back to her family.

The next series of click prompted a fast reaction from Jade, She whipped around and strolled along the port almost as if she was following the droids directions -- she was.

"A block of carbonite?" she cuffed her eyes and pressed up against the glass, next she was on to the projector in the center of the deck, swapping through holographic images in search of her target. "Well we can't just leave them out there--" her droids cut her off with a mechanical rebuttal. "Even if he was a criminal of sorts we'd still need to take him in. Authorities would be able to take it from there, reel em in." She took off for the docking bay.

---

She watched the retrieval from the computer, locking and stabilizing the bay once the hangar doors came to a close. "This doesn't look like some criminal R0 -- he looks scared. I mean anyone would be.." she ran her hand across the surface of the statuette, but it felt weird to the touch, like something strong and tethered....and she had touched carbonite before.

"It looks like a kid...either way we should un-freeze him, can we do that onboard? I mean we should collect and test a sample or something and send it ahead for a match in their system, if he is in some sort of trouble it's best to know what we're getting into. Move him."

She escorted the lift and R0, her head shot down "Oh you think you could make some modifications to get a freezing chamber going? Well rather an un-freezing chamber?" Her droid companion shot back its own inorganic answer. "How long would something like that take?" Jade followed.

"Alright, well we got time. I'll start getting some scans while you begin that. Then I guess we wait."

By this point that carbonite block at been set upright, off into a side chamber in the med bay. Several scan gave nothing, and during that time they had began the process of unthawing this person. Now it was a waiting game.

 

[Abishai Jade]

​

The whirring sound was constant. There was no discernable pattern or rhythm. It was just a long persistent noise. A scream locked in half a heartbeat threatened to become a child's entire universe. But then, there was a warble. After what felt like a subconscious eternity, aware of being unaware, that the sound modulated. A new crest to the sound waves meant that something outside of the mind's eternal hellscape had begun to happen.

And then a dip in the sound wave, slow, but there.

A flicker of awareness, drowned by a life's worth of sorrow felt in a moment.

The ship was exploding. The thought of imminent doom entered the mind. Explosions. Destruction. Death.

They were all wrong. Your life didn't flash before your eyes when you died. The moment of your death did. Hell was real, preserved in the split second when you realize you are about to die.

Fear.

A gasp.

"No. Please. Jayl..."

The boys words were croaky, gummed up by dried phlegm in the back of his throat. He choked, gagging on what refused to go down. A boy, no more than thirteen, with fine though distressed features and the blondest of blonde hairs, collapsed out of the carbon freeze.

| Romi Jade |​

 

[Romi Jade]

Deep Space

Abishai Jade
​

Romi watched the carbonite crack, and wither back into a malleable form. Each second molded life into the canvas' features, and she stood, bewitched, in some form or fashion for the story to come from this. There was something about the human presence, one didn't need the Force to feel it always, but being around another living being filled the space and she felt that presence emerging.

R0 had clicked up in a scale, she shook her head in a simple gesture, "No, keep going..." her weight shifted from one leg to another as she swayed a bit in her stance. But what presented itself, confirmed her suspicions but shocked her all the same. Her body straightened out quick and it was there, all in her face -- "It's an actual kid."

She threw her hand out, "Stop! R0 run a bioscan." She pushed off her back foot and shot through the next couple of doors from the observation room right into where they'd just unthawed this boy.

"Are you alright?" She stumbled in, but her first glance over his frame brought on something...

She knelt down. Hovering over, and cuffed his head in her off hand while searching for life in his features with the other. "Come on, can you hear me?"

This boy...

Abishai Jade

 

[Abishai Jade]

"Why can't I see..."

The boy fell out of the carbon casing, falling to all fours.

He felt the hands of someone taking hold of him. Instinctively, he withdrew from the unfamiliar touch, hitting the carbon stone behind him. He let out a yelp of pain. His hand stretched tentatively forward.

"I can hear you. But...why can't I see?" He said, voice quivering under the shock of what felt like just a few moments.

Grabbing a hold of the arm that had been reaching for him, he gripped the woman's sleeve. She sounded nice. But trust was not easily given.

"Where am I? Who are you? Where is Jayl? Can you please call my mother?" He said, words bleeding into each other in his haste.

There was a flair in his Force aura, a defensive readiness set to lash out on any that might seek to hurt him.

| Romi Jade |​

 

[Romi Jade]

Deep Space

Abishai Jade
​

He retreated. She gave him the necessary space, leaving her physical presence to still be sense as she held her hand out.

"Take a breather, you were involved in some sort of skirmish, and we found you incased in carbonite--"

R0 broke out into robotic rhythm, and at a pitch that was alarming. Romi suppressed the beeping for the time, hoping to not stress the kid out. Slowly, gradually, she proceeded forward hoping to calm him down -- she could feel his anxiety growing. Much to her surprise, he sought her out.

"--Not now R0!"

He tugged at her sleeve, and she reach underneath, cuffing his underarm. She let the embrace be what it was, she couldn't imagine the fear and apprehension he felt before things went totally black. She tried her best to imprint her presence on the air around him to make it as safe and welcoming a space as she could.

She didn't expect trust.

"You're safe. I'm Romi, who is your mother sweetheart? What's her name?" She nearly whispered. She reached around with her other hand, cuffing his forearm.

Still, their background was full of the franticness that befell the astromech droid.

 

[Abishai Jade]

Something touched his mind, calming his breathing just slightly. The whistle of the droid caused him to be startled once again. "Where...am...I?"

The young boys head was on a permanent swivel as he took in all the errant noises of an unfamiliar...ship? He was on a ship. He had been rescued. This Romi didn't seem too bad. He could certainly imagine worse people that could have found him. Slowly, the boys heart rate began to ease, as he rested into the offered embrace of his rescuer.

"My name is Abishai Inkari...son of Valara..."

Romi Jade