Private The Quintessence of Dust

[Dominic Praxon]

// Praxon Estate
// Naboo
// Late morning

He had not moved since being place before the window in order to see the sunrise. What small joy he could find, was found in that one fact. The sun did, indeed, rise again.

The light had first rested upon Dominic's legs, now by late morning it warmed his chest. But he had not moved. He rarely did.

Only when hunger took him entirely did he even deem it necessary to take of the many morsels he was offered each day. And even then, it might only be a few mouthfuls, just enough to crush the worst of the hunger.

His face, sunken and worn, had deteriorated to match the withdrawn, far away stare of his eyes.

The family had sent help. Doctors. Those of both mind and body had tried to break through the near catatonic state of his norm. After five days of being in what should have been recovery from his capture by the Ssi-Ruuk, Dominic Praxon had shown no signs of improvement.

The family reached out beyond the conventional means, to friends of their inner circle. Those said to have connections and abilities of the Force that might assist.

Standing at the door was the woman that had practically raised the man, an aged woman of dignified grace and lifetime employee of the Trozky family. "Greetings, Jedi Sal-Soren. Thank you for coming. The Senator is in...dire need of company," she said, the wrinkles on her face earned from years of mothering children that were not her own were glistening with recently shed tears, "please. Do come in. He is in the parlour. We have found he likes to watch the sunrise."

With a gentle wave of her hand, the matronly woman ushered Bastila towards the statuesque shadow a man, framed by the enormous window and the bright light of Naboo's daytime sky.

Bastila Sal-Soren​

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

Bastila had faced battlefields with less fear than she felt standing upon the threshold of the Praxon estate, a place that to her family was as much a second home as any other. She had been back on Naboo for five days, five days of constant asking and blocked answers. For five days she had not known if Dominic was alive or if the Outbound had claimed him. She had repeated that word “alive” whenever the guilt became too heavy to carry, as though her survival alone ought to have been enough.

Alive was what they had fought for. It was what the teams that had gone out there looking for him had bled for. Alive was what she had promised herself she would accept while carving a path through the Ssi-Ruuk facility, pursued by the stink of alien flesh and the memory of having failed to protect him once already. Alive meant there would be time afterwards. Time for doctors and for healing. Time enough, perhaps, for all the words she had left buried between them.

Nobody however had warned her that Dominic might return without truly coming home.

“Thank you.” Her words were quiet as Bastila inclined her head to the woman. She knew the face, she had been chastised enough by it in her youth for climbing trees that should not be climbed or for sneaking of to annoy the boys playing soldier. Yet maybe it was these memories and realities that made seeing the tears upon the older woman’s cheeks caused something tighten beneath Bastila’s ribs.

She stepped inside, a clear limp still present from the wounds of what transpired there, her body damaged yet not broken as her sister had told her. Brandyn had said nothing yet, he had just disappeared into the void, his mind too busy to comprehend having to protect his little sister as well. She didn’t blame him. She was no one's charge.

Bastila had not come dressed as a Jedi. There was no place for formal robes, nor polished armour or any of the ceremonial dignity that others of her family might have worn when calling upon the senator of Naboo. Instead she wore simple and dark, chosen without much thought beyond the need to avoid being recognised on the journey. Her lightsaber remained hidden beneath the fold of her coat, present only because she had not felt capable of going anywhere without it since Jakku.

The weapon seemed obscene here as did the freshly scarred hand resting near it. How like a child she still was in many ways, caught in her emotions and traits that she couldn’t break. It was like walking passed mirrors upon mirrors all telling her she wasn’t who she was pretending to be.

Her gaze finally travelled across the parlour and found him before she was ready and Bastila stopped dead in her tracks.

For several seconds she could do nothing but look at the man seated before the enormous window. The Naboo sunlight poured across him, gilding the edges of a figure made thin and unfamiliar by captivity. It should have made the room feel warm, the warmth of Naboo was famed across the galaxy. Instead, the brightness seemed cruel, revealing every hollow beneath his cheekbones and every quiet indignity left upon him by those who had taken him.

There was no denying it however, it was Dominic. Her Dominic, whispered some treacherous part of her heart that had decided to show itself. No, not hers. He was never hers. He had made certain of that.

The guilt struck so suddenly that Bastila had to remind herself to breathe. She had seen wounded men before. She had watched soldiers claw through bacta-induced nightmares and held strangers together while life escaped between her fingers. She knew the vacant stare of shock and the terrible stillness that followed suffering too immense for the mind to endure all at once.

None of that knowledge helped now as she attempted to cross the room.

This was Dominic, not some clone of the Republic Army.

This was the man who had kissed her upon Lightspire Station as though, for one impossible moment, neither duty nor war could reach them. The man who had in a way offered her warmth without demand. The man she had been made to leave behind because of service and duty and…

“The Daughter of a Terrorist…”

And now fate brought her back to him. Too late she feared.

Bastila swallowed against the ache rising into her throat and forced one foot before the other. Her steps were deliberately soft, giving him every opportunity to hear her approach. She would not appear suddenly at his shoulder. She would not reach into his thoughts or stretch out through the Force to search for the person she remembered. They had already invaded him enough.

She stopped several paces from the chair.

“Dominic.” His name barely survived her lips. Its meaning fuelled into a solitary tear that had fallen from her eye as she approached. Bastila waited, but did not ask him to look at her. She would ask nothing of him. Not yet and as she took in his face she slowly lowered herself to the floor beside his chair.

Not close enough to touch him. Close enough that he could see her if he chose.

Her hands settled loosely within her lap, though the fingers of one trembled against the other. Bastila watched the sunlight inch across the floor and tried not to count every breath between them. There were things she ought to say. Like how happy they all were that he was safe. That the Ssi-Ruuk could never take him again as long as he was here, that something out there was still there but she would find them and make them pay for what they had done.

They all sounded like promises she had no right to make.

“I didn’t know whether you would want me here.” The confession emerged softer than his name had almost as if it felt that honesty was the only thing she had left to offer him. “But I’m here.”

Bastila turned her face towards the window, taking in the scene beyond the glass, where Naboo lived with complete indifference to what had been done to their senator. The sky remained painfully blue, it had no right to be. The trees stirred beneath the late-morning breeze, bringing the smell of peaches from some open window nearby. Somewhere beyond the estate, ordinary people were laughing, working and beginning lives untouched by the darkness that had followed them both home.

She remained beside him, resisting every instinct to fill the silence.

“I can sit with you for a while,” she whispered. “You don’t have to speak, unless you want to.”

Her eyes burned. Bastila lowered them before the tears could fall and allowed the quiet to gather around them.

“I won’t ever leave unless you ask me to.” He would never hear those words, they never truly left her mouth.

OUTFIT: XoXo | TAG: Dominic Praxon EQUIPMENT:

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