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His face, sunken and worn, had deteriorated to match the withdrawn, far away stare of his eyes.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

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[Dominic Praxon]

He had reached out for her on the skyhook, believing she was there to rescue him — again. It had not been the case.

Instead, he was dragged out by two valiant Jedi, while Bastila was...where?

It was not her job to save him. Yet, she had always been there. When she wasn't, it left him empty.

Now, her voice drifted through the static of his violated mind.

“But I’m here.”

The words bled into a memory, the night after the dressage. He saw her by the seaside balustrade, the air thick with the scent of closing flowers. Stars sparkled in her eyes, bright with the fierce, foolish promises of a lovestruck child. She had leaned against the stone, looking at him with that same terrible devotion.

“I won’t ever leave unless you ask me to.”

In the memory, he reached for her. You weren't there, his ghost whispered against her lips. You are always there.

Then the tide of cold numbness rushed back, drowning the garden. The warmth of her phantom kiss withered into the cruel, security that the First Order had stolen from his soul.

Outside, Dominic did not blink. He did not turn. He remained a statue, leaving her completely alone in the sunlit silence.

Bastila Sal-Soren​

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

Silence was his answer and it was stronger than any words he could have said in that moment.

Bastila continued looking towards the gardens, pretending an interest in the painfully blue sky because looking at Dominic himself was becoming too much. She had told him that he did not need to speak, yet some part of her was still waiting for him to prove her wrong.

He did not. Perhaps he really could not hear her. The thought should have frightened her. Instead, it gave the coward within her permission to speak, like he had called her out somewhere deep in her subconscious and now she was struggling with that truth.

“I tried to reach you.” She almost blurted it out, like a child who had been told to tell the truth against a parental stare. She was painfully conscious of her fingers tightened together within her lap, the side of her nail digging into the skin of her thumb. “But once I realised you weren’t where I was told to go.”

Those words tasted bitter. She had followed the path laid before her, fought her way through that place believing each step brought her closer to him, only to discover that she had been sent somewhere else entirely. He had never been where her team had gone, he had been in the skyhook. Instead what they had found was something else entirely.

“They used you as bait and I fell for it. We all did.” It was still unclear what they had wanted, was it for her? Had they found something while digging through his mind that made them need her to have been there? The truth sat between, too cruel to be spoken aloud. They had known she would come. They had known Dominic was enough to draw her deeper into the facility, away from where he was truly being held.

“I did what I could. I distracted them. Drew as many away as possible so the others could reach you.” They were excuses. Every word she spoke sounded like another poor excuse.

Bastila finally looked up at him. The ghost of a memory playing across her face, his hand against it, his lips brushing…

“You thought it would be me. You called out to me and I…”

She rose onto her knees and shuffled closer, ignoring the sharp pain from wounds not long healed and slowly enough that he might pull away if he wished. Her hand lifted hesitantly from the floor and reached towards him. The scarred fingers trembled as they crossed the small distance between them, uncertain whether her touch would offer comfort or drag him further into his darkness.

“I tried so hard…” Her voice broke as her fingertips came to rest gently against his hand, the tears fell freely now as she looked upon his face that was showing no sign telling her whether the words or her touch had reached whatever distant place he had retreated to.

“I’m so sorry, Dominic.” The confession barely escaped her. “I’m not my brother, I wasn’t strong enough.”

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[Dominic Praxon]

When she closed her eyes, the bright daylight withered into the dark, heavy air of the Praxon estate from a lifetime ago.

In the dream, the parlor was cold, lit only by the low, dying amber of a fireplace. Dominic sat before the hearth, a heavy crystal glass held loosely in his hand, the amber liquid inside catching the firelight. He looked at her not with this terrible, hollow vacancy, but with a sharp, deliberate distance.

"I tried so hard…" Her dream-self spoke the words she had just confessed to the quiet room, her voice fracturing against the stone walls of the past. "I'm so sorry, Dominic. I'm not my brother, I wasn't strong enough."

The memory shifted, thick with the phantom scent of rain and woodsmoke. For a fleeting moment, the cruelty in his eyes faltered, replaced by a desperate, aching friction. He set the glass down upon the low table with a sharp, hollow click that echoed too loudly in the quiet.

He did not deny her apology. He did not offer her comfort. He merely looked up at her through the gloom, his features sharp and uncompromising in the firelight, choosing the shelter of a familiar, protective malice over the vulnerability of his own bleeding heart.

"You were never meant to be strong," Dominic said, his voice flat and deliberate, cutting through the warmth of the fire like a sudden winter wind. "Strength was never what I required from you, Bastila. And it is certainly not what will save either of us now."

Then the fire flared fiercely, turning the color of blood and coal, and the dream collapsed back into the suffocating stillness of the present day.

Bastila Sal-Soren​