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“Leave us alone!”
Daal can’t move.
It’s not- it’s not fair.
She came to save them, to tear down the factory and get them out, take them to something better. They shouldn’t be afraid, not of her - shouldn’t be acting like she’s different, like- like she’s-
...like she’s not one of them anymore.
Slowly, Daal’s outstretched hand curls into a fist.
Fine.
Let them stay in the burning rubble. Let them refuse her help. Daal doesn’t need them. Daal doesn’t need anyone, besides her Master, who’d been right after all.
I will not refuse your request, apprentice, as I did say you could have a reward of your choosing. But heed this: you are above what you once were. Others sense it. Others fear it. Even those others with whom we were once close.
She’d been right.
But underneath the anger, underneath the hurt, there’s still one aching little piece of her crying out- “I came to save you.”
Baython is curled upon the ground. He’d tried hitting her with a pipe when she first cut her way through the door, before Daal could call his name or get her hood and mask off. It was his own fault, really, that she’d moved on instinct, cut through the weapon coming for her, as well as the hand wielding it.
Keena is huddled next to Baython. She’s crying. She’s holding onto him and refusing to look up at Daal, flinching every time her red lightsaber shifts.
Quinn stands braced in front of them both. He’s gotten taller, since Daal left, but no less scrappy, or angry. He doesn’t have a pipe of his own, or any other sort of makeshift weapon. Just his hands. His fists, clenched and held up, pretending he’d have even the smallest chance of actually hurting Daal. “Save us?” the boy asks. His face is angry, his voice incredulous. Daal can still feel his terror hiding underneath. “Like you’ve saved all of them?!”
Behind her, the rest of the factory is quickly going up in flames. Hundreds of voices scream, as the mercenaries Daal’s Master hired proceed to tear the place apart, taking whatever they want. She only gave them a single command, before arriving: to watch for three faces, three people she didn’t want hurt, and leave them be.
She didn’t give a damn about anything else.
She couldn’t afford to.
Three Jedi padawans slain - well done indeed, my apprentice. I believe that entitles you to a three-fold reward, once we go home.
Daal wanted three lives in exchange for three deaths. She’d earned them. But they- they are ungrateful. They are afraid. They don’t deserve to be saved.
Quinn scowls. Baython groans. Keena sobs.
And Daal... Daal aches.
“If you don’t come with me, I can’t protect you from this,” she says flatly, sweeping her free hand out, gesturing to the chaos beyond the little supply closet the four of them are in.
“You caused this!” Quinn cries. “You led those people in here! We saw you open the front doors and let them in!”
A grand entrance. No more slipping out back doors for Daal, no, she wasn’t a scrawny little nobody who needed to sneak about and steal speeders to get anywhere, not anymore. Now she was a Sith, and Sith made their presence known.
But it seems her friends- her former friends- don’t care about such things.
“Just- just go away!”
The last little hurting piece of her old self falls silent. Daal snarls, “Fine,” and goes.
She stalks past broken steam pipes, shattered conveyor belts, bodies lying in crumpled heaps. She cuts a straight line through the flames and blasterfire, all of it flowing harmlessly around her, until she reaches the shattered front doors and the empty night beyond. And there, she throws her head back, and screams.
Just like in the cave. Just like the Screecher, her Master’s master, years ago.
But Daal isn’t a terrified little girl anymore.
The Force lashes out with her pain, striking the factory walls, the support beams. She doesn’t care about the cheap mercenaries hired to help with this endeavor; doesn’t care about useless, dreamless children who drudge away day by day. She does not care about three souls who turned their backs when all she wanted to do was help-
Daal screams.
So does metal and stone.
And the factory, slowly, then all at once, collapses in upon itself.