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Something is not right.
You feel it the moment your hand wraps around the sword’s hilt. You attribute the spark of electricity to your adrenaline, still spiked from the fight; your head still stuck on a single thought: to get the kid to safety.
Then the child is gone.
Taken.
No, that’s not fair. The kid is back with his own kind, where he belongs, where you were supposed to deliver him. You repeat this fact like a morning prayer, rolling it in your mouth whenever the desire to contact the Jedi arises.
It feels like you only spent minutes together before losing him again. This is the way this is the way this is the way, you chant under your breath. But it feels like the man has taken a part of you too, something you weren’t prepared to lose.
You gained so much, everyone tirelessly reminds you. The power, the influence, the authority.
You throw the darksaber into a drawer in a compartment of your ship you rarely use.
Days pass.
You look up from your blaster and it’s yet another perp’s face, taunt with fear, as he surrenders and drops his knife. You count the credits that will roll in from this puck. It’s the same sum as the day before and the day before and—
You go to the locker, open the drawer and the darksaber is still there. Silent. Still.
You look up from the dashboard in your cockpit and hyperspace flashes all around, taking you— where?— a new place, new opportunity for a payout.
Days pass.
The ship feels wrong.
It’s an old model, just how you like them, undetectable the way Razor Crest was. But something about it bothers you. Your brain is trying to tell you about something that’s beyond your understanding. It’s like being given instructions in a language you don’t understand, so you just try to catch the gist from the tone of someone’s voice, the shapes they make in front of you.
You push the perps into the ship, past the gate and they smash into obstructions.
Everytime, you and your charge have to squeeze past pipes and lockers to get to the carbonite chamber, the walls hugging you as you pass. Your cape, your utility belt, they catch on crates and boxes; your vambrace leaves a deep scratch on the wall when you reach up to the controls on the carbonite chamber. The machine hisses out fumes that nearly fill the small space entirely, threatening to choke you. There’s a moment of panic each time, when you check if the helmet is pressurized, watch the display of your vitals on the HUD. It’s all good, always, nothing’s amiss. Your mouth takes like metal anyway.
Then, once the bounty is secured, you make your way to the cockpit and nearly stumble on the way as you reach out to lean on the wall, only to realize that it is far away. Your footsteps echo on the metal floor of the empty space.
It takes so long to reach the dashboard and actually type in the coordinates. By the time you punch in the next destination, your eyelids hang so heavily it takes a conscious effort to keep them open. But it’s normal, supposedly, to feel out of place in a new ship. Lots of credits went into it, you think guiltily, there’s no reason to complain. You just— you just need to get used to it, that’s all.
There’s a half-eaten ration bar on the dashboard that wasn’t there before. You pick it up in confusion. You weren’t raised to waste food, so you take off your helmet and bring the bar to your mouth. The smell makes the back of your throat convulse. The bar drops out of your hand as you bend down and heave; dry, gasping breaths erupt to keep the bile from rising up. The bar of packed nutrition lays innocently by your feet and you kick it away, not caring where, just to get the foul smell away from you. It must have gone rotten in storage. That doesn't sound right, you’re not in the habit of buying so many reserves that food would stay uneaten for long.
Slowly, with an arm still wrapped protectively around your stomach, you move to the corner of the hull you use for sleeping. Unlike in your previous home, it’s not an alcove, but a Murphy bed that drops down from the wall. You lay down with a groan that reverberates off the wall. The space is so big for just one person.
It takes so long to fall asleep in the belly of this enormous, empty space, so you just lie on your pad and feel that emptiness seep into you. The hole around your heart, the rift the Jedi ripped into you, gets wider and threatens to crack your chest cavity open. The kid’s safe; he’s being trained; he’s with someone who will protect him better than you ever could, you whisper to yourself. A dull ache pulses deep inside, swelling your torso. You loosen the clasps keeping your armor together. You turn and toss. Sleep seems always at the end of your fingertips, but the second your reach for it, it slips away. It only seems logical to stop wasting time lying around.
Days pass.
You throw away the rest of the rations. The smell alone makes you want to retch. You’re not hungry anyway. You can always pick some up later. The odor is hard to get out. It follows you, a fetid reminder of the time you lost control and kicked the rotting food with your boot. You scrape the sole and the toe cap, washing the boot carefully, once, twice, five times and the scent is still there when you move.
The world outside feels wrong; the light hurts your eyes even through the black visor; the air is too sharp against your body; the gravity stronger than anticipated. Everytime you enter the ship, the pressure elevates a little bit and you catch yourself going to that blasted corner more than once. Your legs carry you there and before you know it, you’re standing in front of the locker where the darksaber awaits.
Your chest pounds.
You look down the barrel of your gun. The perp is scared. You’re used to eliciting that reaction, but there’s something about the way he keeps glancing past your right shoulder that gives you a pause. You throw him into the carbonite chamber with a little more force than necessary.
Days pass.
Days pass.
Days pass.
The ship is too big and you can barely fit in it. Your body seems bloated; sinews stretch and your skin tightens over your flesh. Loose clasp don’t do the trick anymore — now they can’t be closed at all. You forgo wearing the armor, there’s no one around to pay witness, after all.
The ship is silent, still.
You moan, throb.
Pain pulsates at your temples and, with a jolt, you realize it does not thump to the rhythm of your heartbeat. It’s more a complicated pattern, set to some distant melody that only gets louder if you try to not think about it.
You look up from your knees and you’re at that locker where you put it. Your hand reaches out, not on your suggestion, but you accept the movement as it happens. The shelf gets opened. Your hand wraps around the familiar, heavy weight of the darksaber’s hilt.
It is so quiet here. It is so loud here.
Your body swells. And when you click the saber on, you bloom.