Private Threads Drawn by Light

[Isla Reingard]

Isla didn't think; she just moved. One second she was halfway down the corridor, heart rattling in her ribs, and the next she was sprinting back toward the idiot dangling off the ceiling like some half-frozen loth-cat.

"Abishai! Let it go!" she shouted, skidding to a stop next to him. The cold thickened around them, heavy and deliberate, like breath on the back of her neck. Whatever that whisper belonged to, it was getting closer. Too close.

"Why do you have to be so unbelievably stubborn?" she snapped, grabbing for his jacket as if she could shake sense into him. "Seriously, I am the only actual child of a Jedi here, so maybe let's not be standing around when the creepy cave-ghost comes looking for me!"

The crystals glimmered above them, tauntingly out of reach, green and violet twinned in the frost. Isla groaned, planted her feet, and jumped, fingers grazing the edge of the frozen ledge. Not enough. She tried several more times, each attempt more frantic than the last, breaths turning sharp in the frigid air.

"Force, fine! Hold still!"

She grabbed Abishai by the waist, braced one boot against his thigh, and shoved off him with all her weight. Her hand slapped the ice shelf hard enough to sting. The ridge cracked. A second shove made the whole thing shudder. Then, with a crack, both crystals broke loose, tumbling through the air.

Isla twisted mid-fall, landed awkwardly, and snatched the violet one before it hit the ground. The green clattered beside her, skittering across the stone. She wheezed, hair falling in her face. "There. Happy? Now grab it and move, because we are leaving."

Abishai Jade​

 

[Abishai Jade]

Her words flowed over him, his focus so drawn to the crystal. Even as it hit the ground, the sound of it was louder than he thought possible. Almost as if the kyber hurt with each moment of impact. Abishai dropped to his knees, an awkward gangly effort that prevented some but not all of the pain from shooting up his leg.

He scooped up the crystal and held it up to his face. The colour shining across his face, his eyes going from an icy blue to an aquamarine as the crystal reflected off his irises. He smiled. Not a smile of joy, but success. Finally, success. Something had gone his bloody way.

He tucked the crystal in his pocket. But his hand still clung to it through the fabric of his pants. "Thank you, Isla..." He said, sincerely, with a look towards the Jedi that showed a genuine gratitude.

But she was afraid. And he quickly picked up on why. Whatever it was was approaching. The euphoria claiming his very own kyber began to fade as he felt the chill of the oncoming presence.

"I won't be going with you," he said, looking up at her as he stood.

But it was too late. The presence enveloped him like a rush of cold wind, that chilled him to his bones. He blinked, Isla still stood there. She was with him in this moment.

Children of Jedi...your death...is nigh you.

A woman was crying. Abishai looked past Isla to see a woman lying back on a medical bed. A man was at her side. The woman screamed in pain. The man held her hand.

Abishai could not take his eyes off the moment. Even as he walked past Isla, bumping into her shoulder, he understood what this was.

Romi Jade , Jedi Master, was losing her child. Grief hung in the air. Sorrow cloaked every tear as it fell to the man's shoulders. This was the day that Abishai had died. Before he had truly seen life.

He turned away from the scene. Eyes straining at tear that would bid themselves flow freely. He clenched his jaw, refusing to partake in the sorrow. It was not for him. It was for someone he never was. She did not cry for him. She cried for someone she had wanted.

Muscles taut, in face and body, Abishai looked to Isla, watching her face to see if she understood, hoping that she did not. The questions this would create were ones he did not want her to know the answers too. They would be...inconvenient...for her.

Like dust in a storm, the scene blew away in the cold wind. The moment was not done with him, for in the dust a purple glow was seen behind Isla. He stepped to her side, and heard the deactivation of a lightsaber as the purple light faded and the scene solidified. A woman, thin and elegant, stooped over a fallen warrior with matted, greasy, blonde hair that hung haggardly over his shoulders.

The fallen warrior had a burn mark on his chest, sign of a lightsaber having impaled him. He looked old. Face grey, cracks in his flesh wide enough to, at times, see bone beneath. His whole form seemed held together by hate, and pain.

They dying man spoke. Abishai stooped slightly to listened. "When you asked...I should...have said...yes..."

Abishai stumbled backwards, keeping his footing. The man's last words were uttered with his voice, aged and frail.

"Cark this, Princess...you were finally right about something...we do need to get out of here."

Isla Reingard

​

 

[Isla Reingard]

Isla's breath fogged in front of her as the visions tore the cave open around them. One moment she stood in Ilum's frozen corridor; the next, she found herself drowning in memories that weren't hers.

A woman was screaming in a medical bay. A man gripped her hand, grief swallowing the room whole. Isla stumbled back, lifting her hands uselessly as though she could ward off the pain crashing against her chest. She didn't know these people, yet something inside her tightened, like a thread pulled between two lives that had never met. The dust swirled, and the world reshaped again.

She saw purple light. A fallen warrior, rotting flesh and blonde hair, lay beneath a woman standing over him, elegant and ghost-pale. The man's last words echoed through Isla's bones, spoken with the aged dying sound of Abishai's voice. Her stomach twisted. She hated visions that felt this way: too real.

The world snapped back to the cave. The cold rushed in, and Isla exhaled shakily, fingers curled tight around her crystal. Abishai looked at her and confirmed they needed to leave. She had been right.

But he wasn't going with her.

"Wait, what?" Isla stared at him like he'd just declared he could breathe vacuum. "Where in the Force do you think you're going to go? You don't have a ship. You don't even have a jacket thick enough for Ilum's weather!"

Her voice cracked, half panic, half frustration. "You can't just walk off into the snow! That's not mysterious, that's suicide."

She stepped closer, lowering her voice. "Come with me. Just back to my shuttle. Just to Republic space. I'm not asking you to join the Order or… or swear loyalty or whatever."

Her amber eyes searched his, earnest and stubborn.

"But maybe the Jedi could help you. Someone like you shouldn't be stuck scavenging in gutters and nearly freezing to death for a crystal. You could actually… I don't know. Do something."

She swallowed, softer now. "Just come with me. Please."

Abishai Jade​

 

[Abishai Jade]

For a heartbeat, he almost said yes.

The word sat there, right on the edge of his tongue. Despite himself. He could see it, not a vision per se, just a stupid little daydream the caves had shaken loose. Him limping up some shuttle ramp beside her, pretending he belonged there while Masters and Padawans looked down their noses and called it rescue.

His jaw clenched until it hurt.

He'd done the temple thing. The meditations. The lectures. The we can help you talks. And after that, he'd done it with Revna Marr , too. Different promises, same leash. He'd run from both. It had cost him, but at least the mistakes were his.

He wasn't putting a collar back on just because one very pretty, very annoying Jedi Princess had decided he could "be something."

"There it is," he said quietly, a bitter little smile tugging at his mouth, "knew it was comin'."

He shifted his weight, testing the splint. Pain flared bright up his leg, but it held. The crystal in his pocket felt warm against his palm, a small, sharp anchor. Mine. Whatever happened next, that much was true.

"You Jedi..." he huffed, lifting his eyes to hers, something harder flickering there, "always the same. If I'm not with you, I'm wasting it. If I don't play your game, I'm just some gutter rat 'scavenging in the streets,' yeah?"

His voice dropped, rough around the edges.

"What, you gonna fix me, Princess?" The title came out harsher than before, stripped of most of the teasing. "Slap a robe on me, sit me in a circle, tell me if I behave real good I might 'actually do something' one day?"

He looked away, suddenly tired. Tired of being a project, a weapon, a mistake someone else was desperate to redeem.

"I get that you mean well," he added, almost grudgingly, "you don't gotta lie about that. And..." His hand tightened on the fabric over his pocket, fingers curled around the outline of his kyber, "...I won't forget you helped me. I won’t."

He sucked in a breath, the cold cutting his lungs, and jerked his chin toward the darker end of the tunnel.

"I've got a ship," he said simply, "close enough. I can make it." She didn't need to know it was half-held together by rust.

Abishai turned, taking a halting step away from her, then another. Every movement sent sparks of pain up his leg, but he forced his body into motion anyway. Better the ache he chose than the chains someone else wrapped around him.

After a few limps, he stopped. The whisper of the cave seemed to press in again, but quieter now, fading as whatever had stalked them lost interest. He glanced back over his shoulder, eyes catching hers in the dim violet and green afterglow.

"You wouldn't want me around," he said, and for once there was no sarcasm in it. Just a flat, resigned certainty. "Your Order...your family...they'd hate what I am long before they ever liked what I can do." His mouth twitched, almost into a smirk, but it never quite made it. "And I don't trust anyone who thinks the only way I get to 'be something' is if I do it their way."

He gave her one last look. It was a strange mix of challenge, gratitude, and something approaching a warning.

"Get your crystal back to your Grandmaster, Isla," he said, her name soft but steady, "try not to die for them, yeah?"

Then he turned back toward the darkness and started limping into it, one hand on the wall, the other pressed over his pocket where the crystal burned like a small, defiant star.

Isla Reingard
​

 

[Isla Reingard]

Isla's mouth fell open as he started limping away into the pitch-black, storm-ridden frost tunnels of Ilum. It was baffling; an entirely unreasonable thing for someone with a half-dead leg and questionable survival instincts to do.

"I swear, you are an absolute moron," she blurted, marching after him. "You don't get to just limp dramatically into the abyss because you're allergic to being helped!"

Her boots crunched hard in the snow-dusted ice as she caught up to him, stubborn fury burning bright enough to melt the frost on her lashes. She kept pace beside him, refusing to fall behind even when the cold bit into her bones.

"You think I'm just gonna let you wander out there and die?" she snapped. "Sorry, no. Not happening. If you keel over, I'm dragging your stupid dramatic body back to my shuttle by the ankles." He didn't stop. Of course he didn't. He was, without exaggeration, the most infuriating person she'd met in her entire life.

Isla threw her hands up. "What is your problem? I'm offering you a way out... food, heat, medical care, not being buried in a snowdrift before sunset... and you act like I'm trying to enslave you!"

Her breath came out in a huff of white fog. She dropped her voice, frustration and something softer mixed together. "I'm not trying to fix you. I'm not trying to make you a Jedi. I'm just trying to keep you alive, you stubborn, self-sabotaging gutter gremlin!"

"Why would you want to stay in the gutter?" she demanded. "Why is that better than a chance? Any chance? You think staying miserable makes you free? Because it doesn't. It just makes you miserable." Her voice cracked on the last word. She hated that. She stepped in front of him to block his path, planting herself in the dim tunnel glow.

"Abishai, I don't care what you were, or what someone told you you'd be. I'm not letting some half-frozen cave on Ilum prove you wrong." She crossed her arms, chin lifting defiantly. "So you can either come with me willingly, or I swear to the Shiraya, I will pick you up and haul you back myself."

Abishai Jade​

 

[Abishai Jade]

He stopped when she planted herself in front of him, boots squeaking against the ice. For a split second, he actually looked like he didn’t know what to do. He was a trapped animal, wide-eyed...caught.

Then her words caught up to him. Every. Single. Ignorant. Word. “Stubborn, self-sabotaging gutter gremlin...”

His jaw flexed. That one hit like a slap. Not because it was wrong, but because it was exactly the kind of thing people said before they tried to “fix” him. “Right,” he said, voice low and brittle, “there it is again. The gutter. The gremlin. Nice to know what you really think.”

He gave a humorless laugh, and stepped closer, anger warming the cold around them.

“And you’re not trying to fix me? That’s funny, Princess, ’cause saying ‘I’m not trying to fix you’ is exactly what people say right before they grab a leash.”

He mimicked her voice....badly, mockingly. “‘Come with me willingly, or I’ll drag you back.’”

He leaned back, eyes narrowing. “You hear yourself? You don’t even realise when you sound like them.”

He didn’t specify who. Jedi or Sith. It didn’t matter. The cage always looked different from the outside.

Her next words, why would you stay in the gutter, lit the fuse. “Why would I want to stay in the gutter?” he repeated, voice rising, “’cause at least down there, nobody pretends they’re saving me while talkin’ down their nose!”

He jabbed a finger at her, but there was hurt under the fury. “You think misery makes me free? No. But it’s mine. My choices. My mistakes. Not yours.”

He shoved past her shoulder, not violently, but with raw determination, like it cost him something to break the line she drew.

“You don’t get to tell me what I am, or where I belong, or how I get to survive.” He limped forward into the dark, breath sharp in the cold. One step. Then another. He didn’t look back this time, not until he reached the edge where the tunnel bent into shadow. Then, over his shoulder, voice roughened by something almost like doubt, “And stop pretendin’ you’re doin’ this for me. People don’t fight this hard for strangers unless they want something.”

His jaw clenched. “Let me go, Isla. I'm nothing like you...remember?”

From his vantage, he could see a dim light, the flurry of snow at the end of the tunnel. He pushed forward with determination. Upon reaching the tunnel's edge, he found a long slope going down towards the plains on the south side of the cave system. The sun was close to setting. He knew his ship was not far away from the bottom of the slope.

Isla Reingard​

 

[Isla Reingard]

Isla froze as he shoved past her, anger digging under her ribs. She stared after him, jaw tight.

"Oh, give me a break," she snapped at his retreating back. "I'm not grabbing a leash, you emotionally constipated disaster! I'm trying to stop you from dying like an idiot in a snow cave!"

He kept going, limping stubbornly into the dimming light like misery itself was pulling him forward by the collar. Isla threw her hands up.

"Yeah, fine! Go freeze your butt off! See if I care!" she yelled after him, then muttered under her breath, "I will absolutely care, I hate this."

He accused her of wanting something, claiming people didn't fight for strangers unless they had an agenda. That accusation stung more than she wanted to admit.

"Oh, right, because it's impossible for someone to not want you dead or miserable!" she called, voice cracking on frustration.

He didn't slow. Not for a second.

Isla stomped after him, not quite done, not willing to let the last word belong to him. "You're going to regret this, Abishai! I mean that!"

He reached the tunnel mouth, snow whipping in, the glow of a dying sun painting the ice orange. As he braced himself on the edge, shifting his weight, something small slipped from the torn pocket of his pants. A faint green glint hit the ice. It was the kyber. He didn't even notice; he was too focused on escape. Too proud, too wounded, too much himself.

Isla halted, staring at the little crystal spinning to a stop at her feet. She bent, dusting frost off its surface. It warmed faintly in her palm, pulsing like a nervous heartbeat. She exhaled, long and heavy.

"Figures," she muttered. "You finally get one good thing, and you can't even hold onto it."

For a moment, she almost ran after him, almost called his name. She nearly told him he dropped the thing he'd nearly broken himself claiming. But he wanted to go. He wanted away.

Isla closed her fingers around the crystal. "Fine," she whispered to the empty tunnel. "Have it your way." She glanced one last time at the silhouette limping into the storm, then turned back down the path to her shuttle. She held the purple crystal in one hand, the green in the other, a hollow ache she refused to name sitting cold beneath her ribs.

Abishai Jade​