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This is not Third Brother's usual sort of mission. It is a test, he knows this, because normally he wouldn't go near Project Harvester with a twenty foot spear, he is more suited to the vicious, showy, explosive missions that pit him up against violent rebel cells. He is not sent after Jedi much anymore, too quick to kill instead of bring in, always with a ready excuse and unable to be broken out of the habit. Third Brother is a wildcard of an Inquisitor, still not quite full grown, and not entirely broken, his golden eyes still just a little too green and his lightsaber just a few shades off the violent crimson of the others - but just loyal enough, and ferociously competent enough that he is allowed to continue to live, providing he remains useful.
Torture has had little impact on Cal Kestis, and there is just enough of him left in Third Brother that he actually flinches when Sixth Sister casually cuts down a young Pantoran woman in her home before she's even gotten up out of her chair. One second, there is life in her eyes – a flash of horror and an agonising, instinctive knowledge that her life is over – then there is nothing, her body dropping to the floor.
“Was that necessary?” Third grunts, reaching down to close her eyes. He dislikes Sixth intensely, she is casually cruel and ice cold, and from under her helmet, he hears her huff with laughter.
“I can see why they don't send you on these missions, brother. What mother would willingly give up her own child? Better she died defending it, no?”
The child. Of course. The reason they are here – to take a force sensitive child back to the Fortress to be raised into the ranks of the Inquisitorius, in a vicious and horrible parody of how the Jedi would take in their younglings. He follows Sixth, a creeping chill flickering up his spine as he tries not to look at the dead mother. He doesn't know where the father is. If there is one – he didn't read the brief in that much detail, if he was honest. He wasn't much for listening to instructions.
Third watches Sixth Sister approach the crib, frozen in place. He notices for the first time that the room, the nursery, is painted a soft lavender, flowers decorating the ceiling and real, colourful, actual books stacked neatly on a little shelf to one side. Little decorated aurebesh letters spell out her name over the crib – Morwenna. The little Pantoran baby is called Morwenna, and she has a name, she has a life, she is so tiny, he can see her through the white-painted bars of her crib.
It feels like the galaxy slows down as Sixth draws her lightsaber, and the pink-lavender room is bathed in ferocious crimson. Her blade illuminates everything in a sinister light, and in the crib, the baby girl stirs, whimpering quietly as the sound and light disturbs her slumber.
Cal thinks of the nameless mother, her body still warm in the next room, and he stifles a small sob along with the baby, rooted to the spot as his fists clench and unclench beside him, twitching towards his own lightsaber. Morwenna does not deserve to grow up in the bleak grey horror of Fortress Inquisitorius. She is so small and soft and Light in the Force, a little candle flame flickering brighter as she wakes, crying for her mother.
It happens before Cal really thinks about it. It happens fast. If there's one thing that everyone on Nur knows about Third Brother, it's that he is fast, and lethal, and his innate ability to slow everything around him is something that has been ruthlessly honed by his new masters to the point where he doesn't even notice he's using it. The galaxy slows, and Cal moves, and Sixth Sister lies dead at his feet, the slice to her spine brutal and efficient, the flicker of Cal's blood-orange blade so momentary it might have been a flash of Dathomir lightning. He feels nothing, which once would have alarmed him, but three years as an Inquisitor has dulled him to the darkness of a swift, clean kill. He has killed another inquisitor before, and not been punished – that was in the training halls on Nur, and Eighteenth Brother had pushed him too far. Cal is a killer, and he knows it.
This time, there will be punishment. But Cal does not intend to return to Nur to claim and bear it. He steps over Sixth Sister and leans over the crib. The little girl inside looks up at him with her dark eyes and pale blue skin, and the ice inside Third Brother's heart melts just a little. He will be pursued for this, violently and viciously, and almost certainly by Second, and Grand, and Lord Vader, the ones he has never been able to best in combat. He will be pursued, and destroyed, and little Morwenna snatched up by the dark, inexorable machine of the Empire.
“Well...” He says quietly, leaning into the crib and reaching out, his green-gold eyes bright. “They'll have to catch us first, won't they?” He says fiercely, standing with Morwenna in his arms.