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“Make it stop, make it stop. Make it stop.”
Kleya wakes with a quiet start, the sound of her mother’s dying screams in her ears. Now, she stares up at the musty ceiling of a quiet room. Based on the sounds of crickets around her, she assumes it’s still quite late.
Propping herself up onto her elbows, her hair billows back onto the pillow, longer now that she keeps it healthy. She turns her head to the side, surprised to find Luthen is still in bed a few feet away, laying stiffly on his back.
They’re hiding in a dingy inn, having only scraped together enough credits to get a single room with two beds until they get their ship fixed. Kleya - she can barely remember her birth name anymore - has been by his side for a while now. She hasn’t been keeping track. Maybe a year.
She doesn’t know why she swings her legs over the side of the bed to stand up, peering over the sleeping man. Even asleep, he doesn’t look relaxed; his brow is furrowed and his body is stiff. He's told her before that it has something to do with being a soldier, but she can’t help but think there’s more to it. His shoulders always carry a certain tension, as if the weight of the galaxy rests on them. For as cold as he can be sometimes, she’s slowly learning that he does have a method to his actions. He wants to do good.
Suddenly, much faster than anything she’s ever seen, his eyes fly open and he jumps out of bed, pinning her against the wall. His elbow is on her clavicle, pushing hard, his breath shallow and his eyes wild.
“Luthen,” she chokes, the pressure building enough to hurt as she weakly reaches up to pull at his arm.
Within seconds, she sees his eyes change. They focus, and for a moment, she wonders if she sees guilt. He lets go and turns away, running a hand through his thinning hair.
“What did I tell you about sneaking up on me?” he grumbles.
Kleya huffs, brushing herself off as she catches her breath. “A ‘sorry’ would be nice.”
Over his shoulder, Luthen glances at her, then walks over to the bed, sitting down on the edge of it. He rests his elbows on his knees, hands hanging limply between. “I’ll say it if you do.”
Despite herself, she smiles a little, knowing for certain now that she had seen guilt in his eyes earlier. She slowly walks over, gingerly sitting down next to him. “No, you won’t.”
The corner of his mouth quirks up, though not for long. He eyes her, tilting his head. “You look tired. Go, sleep, while the sun is still down. We leave as soon as dawn approaches.”
“I know.” He’s said it enough that she didn’t need to be reminded, though his voice has lost its edge. She sighs, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, knowing he hates when she doesn’t speak her mind. “I was just…wondering why you left.”
“Left?”
“The Empire. Your squad. What changed?” She glances up at him, searching his expression. “You were with them for years. Surely destroying my home planet wasn’t any different than the others.”
Luthen’s eyes darken. He turns away. “It’s not important.”
“You were saying ‘make it stop,’” she continues, unrelenting, “over and over. Like it would stop the screaming and blaster fire. Why only then? What changed?”
“Kleya, stop.”
“I want to know!” she insists, anger flaring her nostrils. “Your men killed my mother, along with everyone else. What changed?”
The words hang in the air, with only Luthen’s ragged breathing filling the silence. After a moment, he exhales, slow and steady, and finally meets her gaze, steely. “…Your planet wasn’t different,” he says finally, uncharacteristically soft. “Until it was.”
Kleya swallows. She holds her breath.
“Your people weren’t doing anything but living in the wrong place at the wrong time. I realized that was the case for every other planet with precious minerals the Empire needed to exploit. I’d seen it too much, the same song and dance over and over. The explosions, the screaming, being consistently covered in dirt and blood , even when I washed my hands.” His hands curl into fists, then relax. “I could barely hear. It was hard to see five feet in front of me. I stumbled back to the ship and couldn’t do anything but say…” he lifts his gaze slowly. “Make it stop.”
Luthen’s eyes are just tired now, and it almost shocks Kleya. She doesn’t think he’s ever looked so defeated before. “And…the reason we always run away?”
“To make it stop,” he answers, giving her a slight smile. “ Rosh ne luts. And in order to do that, we have to be smart about it. We have to stay alive. We have to have a plan. And when I say move…”
Kleya nods, unwittingly leaning against his arm. “I move.”
“Good girl.” Luthen is never one to be affectionate, but Kleya doesn’t really mind. She’s not really affectionate either, but she finds she really likes this.
The next thing she knows, her eyes flutter open, blinking blearily up at him. She’s laying in his arms as he carries her slowly back toward her bed. She can hear his heartbeat right next to her head, slow, steady, and calm.
“Luthen,” she mumbles, trying to pry her eyes open further. He shushes her gently, setting her down atop the creaky mattress. Weakly, she reaches up, grabbing at nothing, not wanting that calm and warmth to leave her.
“Hush, now.” His voice is soft and gruff, the way it always is, but with a certain note of fondness this time. He takes her hand from the air, holding it between his own. His hands, calloused and shaken from countless years of war, and hers, small and unscarred.
As she closes her eyes again, Kleya mutters, “I like being your daughter. When it’s useful.”
It takes him a while to respond. So long that she almost misses it when he says, “So do I.”
***
The hospital is blindingly white, speckled with yellow-clad nurses and dark blasters. Kleya knows what she has to do, and she won’t fail. She weaves through the hospital, finally reaching her destination.
Suddenly, her ears are ringing.
She shuts the window and slowly steps forward, taking in Luthen’s frail and failing frame. She’s reminded of that night all those years ago, seeing him laying there so stiffly, unrelaxed even while asleep. How she wishes he would hop up and attack her out of reflex again.
“We’re out of perfect,” he had said yesterday, solidifying that the day she had been dreading and secretly hoping would never come had arrived. It feels especially true now, in this moment, as her heart contorts painfully. She wets her lips and steps closer, reaching forward to unhook the machine that’s keeping him alive.
Low, slow beeping accompanies the ringing in her ears. She watches Luthen’s brow furrow. She hears his last exhale. And for the first time in her life, she sees him at true peace.
Tears roll down her cheeks as she leans down, gently kissing his forehead one last time. “Thank you for letting me be your daughter.” It’s barely above a whisper, knowing no one will hear it but herself.
When she tears out of the hospital, she says under her breath, “Make it stop. Make it stop.”
***
Kleya stares up at the ceiling of a musty tent, the room quiet, but the sound of a ragged last breath in her ears. Based on the sounds of crickets around her, she assumes it’s still quite late. She doesn’t have anyone to tell her to go to sleep, so she doesn’t.
When she removes the IV from her arm, she isn’t sure where she’s going to go. She isn’t even sure if she’ll live.
She isn’t sure she cares.
Rain soaks her to the bone immediately, her shoes sinking into the mud while she stumbles forward. Her body is wracked with shivers as she shuffles along with no destination in mind. Luthen always told her to know her way out before she went in, but now she’s just moving blindly, not sure where she is, not sure who she is.
She can barely hear. She can’t see five feet in front of her.
“Make it stop, make it stop, rosh ne luts , make it stop.” The cold and the pain and the grief are unrelenting, washing over her in roaring waves, threatening to drown her out here in the rain. “Make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it -”
“Kleya?”
“- stop rosh ne luts rosh ne luts rosh ne -”
Kleya draws a shaky breath as someone appears in front of her, grabbing both of her hands and shaking her out of her stupor. “It’s me. It’s Vel.”
She stares, bewildered, shivering fervently now as tears roll down her cheeks like the rain. Vel places her poncho over her shoulders and allows her to lean her weight against her. Soon, they reach a small hut, which Vel introduces as her home.
By the time Vel forces her into a chair, Kleya still hasn’t spoken a word. With surprising gentleness, Vel places a warm blanket around her shoulders, which helps with the shivering.
She steps toward the stove, putting a kettle onto the flame with a quiet sigh. Kleya expects her to ask why she was no longer in the medbay, to which she would have no answer. Instead, she asks something that sends a shock down her spine.
“What was it you were saying back there?”
Kleya’s throat tightens. “Rosh ne luts.”
“Ah, she speaks,” Vel jokes, turning around to lean against the counter to look at her. “What’s it mean?”
Her eyes flick downward, pressing her lips together. It sounds silly, now, but she can’t help but think she must feel some semblance of what Luthen felt that day that they had met.
“Nothing.”
Vel eyes her for a moment, giving a slight nod. “Okay, then.” She draws a sharp breath, tapping her fingers on the counter, seemingly about to ask something else when the kettle begins squealing.
Pouring two glasses, she sits across from Kleya, watching her as if she’s afraid she might break any moment. Any other time, Kleya would have been offended - but today, she can’t really blame her.
“I’m sorry about Luthen,” she says finally, tentatively. “What you did for him, it can’t have been easy.”
“It had to be done.” The words tear from her throat instinctually, before she has to think. It had to be done, because he never would have forgiven her otherwise. He was cruel like that. He was right.
Vel looks positively exhausted. Sad, even. “It gets tiring saying that, doesn’t it?”
Jagged memories poke and prod Kleya’s brain. She insists she doesn’t even know where she is. Vel says she has friends everywhere.
“I need to find my cousin and you need to sleep.”
Quietly, Vel stands, grabbing her still-wet poncho. She casts one more meaningful glance at Kleya, pulls her hood up, and ventures out into the rain again, leaving Kleya alone.
She lets out a long breath, looking up at the hut’s ceiling. This one wasn’t musty. She kind of wishes it was.
Minutes pass. She can’t gauge how many, but she does know that her cup of tea is suddenly drained, and her hair is almost dry. As she’s contemplating, a voice rips through the wind and rain, calling her name.
“Kleya!”
She glances towards the door, and much to her surprise, ten feet away, is Cassian Andor.
He’s always been a curious man. Out of everyone who had worked for Luthen, he was the most interesting to her, and most difficult to figure out. Perhaps he was only pretending to be selfish all this time. Perhaps he’s done a lot of growing the last few years. It makes the most sense, now, that he was the only one to come to her aid.
“What are you doing out of the medbay?” he asks once he’s crossed through the doorway, his eyes slightly wide, his hair dripping water onto the table below. “You could have gotten sick or worse out here!”
She eyes him. “The beeping was driving me crazy.”
Cassian scoffs, but seems to calm down a little upon seeing her act like herself. He grabs the nearby stool and drags it over, sitting beside her at the table. “What were you thinking?”
Through the fog in her brain, she scans for something to answer with, deciding to spare him any crypticism or lies, if only because he’d risked everything to save her. “I…don’t know,” she says finally. “I don’t know what comes next.”
The words hang in the air, and it seems like Cassian can empathize with that sentiment. He leans his elbows on the table, his eyes not unkind. “You once told me what comes next. We fight, to make our own decisions.”
Kleya remembers that conversation; Cassian trying to bow out, saying he needs to make decisions for himself after the Ghorman massacre. His resolve is steely now, and she knows, once and for all, that Luthen had chosen right.
She nods. They sit together for a moment in the silence until the chair scrapes against the ground. Cassian stands up, looking down at her. “To bed now. Come on.”
Her brow furrows. “What?”
“I know you haven’t slept since we’ve gotten back. Get in bed.”
Weak protests don’t seem to have any effect. Cassian takes her by the shoulders, standing her up and guiding her towards Vel’s bed. Unceremoniously, she plops down with a huff, glaring up at the man who is quite undeterred. He gently pushes her to lay down, pulling the blanket from her shoulders to instead rest across her body. She attempts to sit back up, but to no avail.
“Cassian,” she grumbles. “I am not a child.”
“You are acting like one.”
His voice holds some note of amusement as he finishes tucking her in, sitting on the edge of her bed. For a moment, she’s reminded of that night all those years ago, falling asleep with Luthen sitting so close by. Her eyes burn, so she closes them, trying to hide the way her lip quivers.
“The rain is heavy tonight, but tomorrow, the sun will rise again,” Cassian says softly, with a levity that she isn’t used to. “We have to be here to watch it, for his sake.”
“Okay.” Her voice breaks, barely above a whisper.
Gently, he adjusts her blanket, absent-mindedly humming a tune that she soon recognizes to be the Ghorman national anthem. Despite the fact that she can’t find the strength to open her eyes again, she smiles slightly.
“I have…friends everywhere.”
The humming stops for a second. “Yes. You do.” It sounds like he’s smiling, and then he continues to hum.
And Kleya sleeps, having that one truth to keep her going.