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Her master’s skin tans easily, so much so she jokes that Tatooine wanted to turn her as red as her fiery hair, but so too does it apparently easily bruise. They are strolling the path leading to Kallikori village on Tython, revelling in their survival from the Planet Prison when Kira sees it properly – a long, deep purple bruise swelling on her master’s cheek.
“Master, what happened to your face?”
Daefi turns her head as they walk, brow furrowing in confusion.
“You mean, ah..” with one hand she gestures to the whole left side of her face where the tan skin bears deep burn scarring, a remnant of her pre-Jedi youth. “This?”
“No, you told me about that one, I meant this bruise.” Kira lifts a hand too, channelling a little Force healing as she points to the injury. Daefi touches it too, and for a moment her shoulders tense and the corners of her mouth droop. Then it passes, and she relaxes again, waving a hand to move a fallen tree from their path.
“It was a blow from the Emperor, on board Darth Angral’s ship.” She says. But though Daefi’s voice is calm her words pass through Kira like an icy chill and she stops in her tracks. Deep in her mind, the healing hollow where that depraved voice used to whisper shudders, and when she clenches her palms they are suddenly sticky with sweat. “Kira?”
“I did that.” Kira whispers, her mind reeling all over again and her gaze fixing on that bruise. “I did- ”
“Kira.” When Daefi speaks like this, her voice seems to tremor the ground itself. Certainly it snaps Kira out of her trance and she blinks, looking up at her master. Daefi has stopped too, a pace or so ahead of her onetime-padawan, and gazes down at her with green eyes that are far too piercing and luminous to be entirely human. But her expression isn’t pinched with severity or furrowed in anger, and she moves those two paces back to Kira and lays her hands on her shoulders, her head tilting and her voice soft as the air once more. “You did not do this, Kira. The Emperor did, and it is nothing.”
“Yeah but-”
“No-one holds you culpable, least of all me.”
“Still, I…” Kira’s throat feels very tight all of a sudden, and she looks away from her master’s allseeing gaze and towards the lush mountains and waterfalls that feed Tython with the Living Force. “I’m sorry.” She mutters at last. Daefi’s hands, their palms as roughly scarred as her face, squeeze her shoulders.
“You have nothing to be sorry for. You are strong and courageous, and have overcome trials of a
magnitude few Jedi will ever face.” Kira looks back up at her master in time to see the gentle smile cross her face. “I’m very proud of you, Kira. I hope I say that enough.”
“Well they didn’t knight me for nothing, huh?” Kira shrugs, the storm clouds retreating and clearing her mind. Daefi lowers her hands from her shoulders.
“Indeed they did not.” With a smile that Kira can’t help but return, Daefi gestures up their path, to the village and the help they had promised there. “Shall we?”
“Lead the way, Master.”