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When he wakes up he retches because the sheets have no smell. When he pushes himself up, and he does push, his muscles weigh him down. They should be getting lighter. He touches his forehead so his palm covers his eyes. For a moment of peace he thinks of nothing. He will think of nothing all day.
His robes are clean. There’s nothing here to obstruct their purity. His eyes stay low when he follows the line they stand in, though no one fills them. No one will fill them all day.
He steps, without hesitation, face first into blackness. He appreciates how lucky he is to never have to work to hide; he also appreciates the gold drilled into this face. He is fortunate, for the luxury, and everything happened for a reason.
Air’s released and when the pressure drops he’s invited to cross the barrier. The door’s slid into the wall and gets to stay there, hidden, until the Sentinel says so.
⁂
Consistency is survival, survival gets comfortable and here that means straight faces that whisper he’s been baptized in the same marble they’ve been. He gets to see just how comfortable through a tunnel, straight ahead; there’s no temptation to look back, or side to side. Mercifully, the Jedi have him polished as bright as his brethren.
⁂
Maintaining vigilance is a perfected art, but for him perfected four times over. He’ll perfect it a fifth before the war’s out. Thinking on the war makes his heart beat faster. The Sentinel adjusts his grip on his saber, tightening his form. He allows himself leniency and decides perfection will wait until after the war. He holds sacred his smile under his mask.
⁂
Drallig’s voice carries only a few choice words for The Sentinel. If he pays him too much mind he might lose his. He doesn’t let himself wander much farther than “Eastern-most part of the Temple” and “five hour intervals”. He is thankful a Sentinel is not a soldier; “Yes, sir” would never make it past his teeth the way they’re clamped together.
⁂
Tonight he’s studious. The only spontaneity a Sentinel is rewarded is not knowing whether they’re protecting dreaming Jedi or working ones. If he were permitted a preference—the vents, idle tech, and scattered footfall all sound too loud at night—daylight affords distraction from the excitement of thoughts he’s not had since this uniform was a promise of a life pardoning such danger. He recalls someone telling him years ago that the dark side only feeds on those who are hungry like it, stay full, he was told.
The vents clatter incessantly.
⁂
The Sentinel stands for a moment outside his quarters. His body begs for reprieve after hours on his feet, but tonight his mind worked harder. He eyes the door, it’ll open when he’s ready, whenever he’s ready. He reaches out his hand, but it goes limp and he does not engage the Force. He will engage it when he’s ready. The Sentinel breathes deep, cycling the same air inside his mask he’s been cycling the moment he put it on. He straightens his back and opens the door.
Stripping down is a ritual just for him: once the mask is off, the blood rushes back to his face. He sheds until he’s down to his robes and the sun leaking through the shutters hits his bare hands. He slides his sash languidly from around his shoulders and wraps both ends around his hands three times before winding it around his neck and pulling tight.
He opens his mouth letting the air escape him, pulling harder so his eyes water. The sensation of it rolling down his face and hitting his lips is an intensity that’s dulling every day. He squirms until the strain in his arms overtakes the numbness of his cheeks. Just as the panic sets in, he’s (at last) happy to guzzle down everything sanitized in the air.
He falls backwards onto his cot, his makeshift noose is slack in his hand as useless as it's always been.
⁂
He wakes up with a fistful of pillow; he clutches. His eyes are lidded and he’s nose-first in nausea. He pushes himself up with greater effort than yesterday. He covers his face. He feels faint which can only mean his constitution didn’t wake up the same time he did.
He stares out at the even paneling on the floor for a moment too long before directing his attention to the empty robes hung in perfect synchronicity, save for one: wrinkled by routine, his routine. He runs the sleeve between his thumb and index fingers, daring to admire.
He viciously pulls the robe’s sleeve shuffling onto something befitting infallibility.
His mask clicks, his hand falls, air’s released and pressure drops.
He cannot look peripherally, so he turns his head to see the door fitted into the wall.
⁂
The shine off his stoney brothers and sisters gives him the illusion they’re walking past him too; he’s drowning in illusion, but thankfully the mask he wears is airtight.
⁂
Tonight will be another night. He looks past Drallig’s boastful commands at a column he finds particularly not boastful. It stands unassuming yet supports the weight of the entire temple, and it shines a brilliant ivory. He tilts his head, wondering what it would take for it to topple.
⁂
He fibs tonight, using a younger Sentinel’s inexperience against them. He does not consider it wrong because he’s breaking no rules. By their nature they are interchangeable so tonight he doesn’t steal their position outside on the balcony, he’s just a Sentinel positioned outside on the balcony.
The city’s lights do not steady his grip, they instead make everything seem inconsequential, like he’s dreaming. Even the speeders sound like they’re humming. He can remember his last dream, or at least the shapes of it.
If he could taste the air—
Riding on the high of a lie, he feels opportunistic enough and walks toward the ledge. He steps his foot out and dangles it.
The city’s lights bounce off the white of his boots dazzlingly.
⁂
The Sentinel stands outside his quarters staring at his feet. He shuffles and lets his left boot squeak across the floor. Not a scuff, nothing can tarnish even the ground they walk on.
He cycles tonight in a weighty breath then opens the door. He grips the doorway’s frame hoping it will keep him upright until he’s tucked away. He lets his hand slide down and eyes the door in the wall. He thinks to reach into the space it's slotted in and pull; he imagines himself screaming with the effort before ripping it from wherever its hinges meet the Temple’s architecture.
He pushes himself off the frame and onto his cot.
⁂
He wraps his sash around his fists three times.
⁂
His ears are the first to recognize it’s the afternoon. Then his skin when he feels the sun itch. He pulls his commlink to him. It’s still dark behind his eyes, but the nausea’s settling in and he can picture the comm’s light flashing green, mocking his seniority here. A lifeless reminder that today he’ll be around beating hearts and blinking eyes; he opens his.
The shutters serve no traditional purpose. Even closed, they’re eager to push light into the dead spaces of his quarters.
His arms are still sore, so he props himself up onto his elbows and blinks towards the row of robes. Two stick out, they stand there crumpled above him, like molted second skins.
He grimaces.
Mask, hand, air, pressure.
He walks past the door.
⁂
The statues are still in the daylight. Between them and the rowdy, chattering bodies, the Sentinel finds himself existing in a space both unblooded and breathing. A purgatory like that is always a room for one.
He pays extra attention to the rowdiness today.
⁂
Drallig’s voice sounds farther away, like it’s been stretched until holes started to show. The Sentinel looks over Drallig’s shoulder. The column he’s been admiring recently looks more imposing in the moonlight.
⁂
He can feel the pride rolling off the Sentinel chosen to be Drallig’s decoration while they watch the protestors. He wonders if the Sentinel were pushed into the crowd, would he succumb to their collective, impotent rage.
He tightens his grip on his saber.
⁂
The door to his quarters is pristeen. He’s never had the need to maintain it. If its surface had ever been violated, it’d have been long before his time (if his imagination could run that distance).
He runs his gloved finger up the middle and looks back at any evidence of life.
As gray and unsullied as it was this morning, the fibers of his glove nearly sparkle.
His hand shakes.
⁂
He leaves his eyes open tonight when he's ritualistic. In the darkness it makes little difference; it's only him here admiring how the adrenaline floods his face.
⁂
His brow is furrowed tighter than his gut is churning harder than his body’s shaking. He curls the sheets closer to him then kicks them away before he sullies them. He presses his palms to his face, his fingers fitting perfectly into the grooves dug into his head.
His muscles relax. He runs along the lines left by primitive minds and barbary. The Jedi should never have given him a mask, they could’ve just poured the gold right into his face. Fill mutilation and he’d look the part of a divine, be marked with his master’s words eternally, and feel it too.
He heaves and turns his head toward the formless Sentinels hanging from his clothes rack.
Three wrinkled. It’s piling up now.
Mask, hand, air, pressure.
He walks past the hole in the wall and what’s been forced inside.
⁂
He’s planted himself onto a spot in an empty corridor. The red carpet under him and the towering Jedi success stories compliment the white of his uniform and the useless, frozen body inside it. If he admits he’s losing his mind now, the pillars in this Temple may as well snap and bring the ceiling and its ceiling and its ceiling down onto him.
The saber lies limp in his hand until he hears footsteps. He makes his way to the congregation.
⁂
His eyes are glowering at the column behind Drallig. He doesn’t blink; he’s shining a spotlight for it the way the actual spotlights shine for the statues when the sun goes down.
⁂
He’s tricked himself onto the ledge again. The Sentinel walks along its spine wondering how the weight of him feels on it. Probably something lighter than a feather. He stops and looks off the side to the city. Then lower, down to the real city.
If he fell, would he drop like a feather? Land safely into a space stinking of Spice and stain the softness of him, or to his surprise his barbules would be just as sharp as any celebratory killer’s knife waving in a cantina right now.
He fiddles with his mask, to be sure the fresh air can’t contaminate him.
⁂
He collides mask-first into the door to his quarters. He doesn’t think if anyone can hear his dramatics. Sometimes he feels he’s guarding absolutely no one. Often times he gets the idea the Sentinels are spellbound, patrolling endlessly protecting an abandoned and decaying castle.
He butts his head against the door a couple times before opening it and falling onto his knees, collapsing on the floor.
He goes to remove his mask, feeling first to see if he’s done any damage. He lies face to face with it. Impeccable, he runs his fingers along the holy yellow bits. His sash is marked similarly, and it's the only malleable part of him.
He stands, still dressed like he’s on duty and scrunches up his face, kicking the door hard enough that he falls backwards onto his bed. His vision’s a little blurry so he crawls forward to appreciate the boot mark he’s left. It’s faint, but it exists, made with smog and dirty flotsam from the underbellies of speeders.
It stays there, made for no one’s eyes.
He falls asleep with three creased robes on his clothes rack.
⁂
He’s awake and on his elbows, the sheets are up to his stomach and he doesn’t feel sick. The sun must be setting the way the light is hitting the room. Truthfully, he hasn’t seen it in this color. The walls aren’t gray, they’re golden and halfway to red, and with his mask off it’s like he’s finding a hidden part of the day he’s never seen.
He’s not worried about the shift he missed. Maybe he should be worried about what’s raining from the ceiling. It’s falling in black flakes and collecting onto his chest. He wrinkles his brow and picks up a piece of the debris watching it wither between his fingers. He looks up to see the ceiling chipping away, but he can’t bring himself to think there’s cause for alarm. The process is so delicate, like that time of the year the Great Tree finally lets go of all the weight it’s been collecting since Spring.
It looks damning, resembling a water stain except made from heavy oil. It’ll give any minute, but the minutes aren’t minutes, they’re hours or they’re days. He knows better than most how time can drag, the problem now is that there isn’t one and there hasn’t been one for a very long time. He doesn’t have a single problem. He looks down to see the mess that’s gathered and the perfect, hollow ring that’s formed from it. It’s all but a bulls-eye on his chest, telling the rot where it should lay its waste.
He blinks up and watches the ceiling crumble without prelude, soundless.
He gasps and grabs for his chest.
He’s gripping the sheets, only sheets.
⁂
He hesitates before securing the mask to his face. He feels himself wincing. The change in the air is catching up to him, it’s working its way through his nerves and sparking them up like matchsticks. Or better yet, a speeder being jumped somewhere lawless and foul.
He clicks his mask into place and runs his finger along the sash holding his robes together.
Air release. Pressure drop.
⁂
The moons are hitting the sash across his hands blue-like. He hopes to choke this new rattle out of his system, two negatives and all.
He wraps his fists.
He pulls, but it’s not kicking and he knows it, so his arms give in before they’ve even started. He’s got a petulant look on his face, if it were in a Jedi’s powers to whine he would. He drops his hands to his lap and the sash hangs about his neck like a scarf.
He supposes the next best extreme would be elbowing open the window and to leap. He looks at his upturned hands and his previous attempt at finality across his forearms. He swallows and tugs at his sleeves so they creep closer to his palms.
He sneers at the window, then rests comfortably lulled by the rattle the hangers make against each other on the rack, adding a fourth robe to ruin.
⁂
He’s not slept long enough to warrant the intrusion, but his commlink is bleating and burning. He doesn’t have a moment to feel anything but a learned responsibility and charge to duty. Everything’s put precisely in its place just as he’s been trained.
He stops and removes his mask before he leaves for Drallig’s call to action. The heat against his back is scattered as the sun sits on the horizon, and the door’s stained halfway to red. It’s the color of urgency, perfectly made for this moment, but just like in his dream, he’s catatonic. If he stands still and listens hard, the voice scratching at his ear whispers that after today, he won’t have much longer left in this life.
Before he takes in another promise, he hopes he’ll have enough Sentinel skins to last him the length of his stay.