Chapter Text
18 BBY, Summer
Those early days, when he smelled of grog and she cried in the dark.
She didn’t know the name of the planet they were on. She wasn’t going to ask. Why should she? Everything he did back home, and still he refused to talk to her or look at her. In those days, it was silence, except for when they needed to eat or drink or sleep.
Or steal.
“Watch.”
She didn’t know what to watch. Which meant he was nearly caught. But she learned. Quickly. He couldn’t be caught stealing. Or she would have nothing to eat.
But this was a different planet. The aliens had tentacles and eyes that could see out the backs of their heads. By the third day, he still had nothing, and she was very hungry.
But she wasn’t going to beg. Not from him.
She wasn’t going to ask why they were now in the forest either. Maybe he was looking for berries like her fath…
No. It hurt to think of them. So she won’t.
Now he was talking to an old man with a gold tooth and he was smiling. She stared at him. He was always so heavy. He never smiled. Or said three words together. Or talked in a language she couldn’t understand. But she did see the children around her. In chains. Slaves.
He was going to sell her. For food.
“Kleya.”
But she had already fled.
-
By the time she stopped, it was dark and her body was shaking. Bad. But she hadn’t heard him come after her.
Good.
But what next? She had no idea where she was. What would her fath…
Tears again. Always easier at night. But she couldn’t cry now. She had to leave. She had to get to town and figure out what to do next.
So she stumbled forward. Except she had no idea where forward really was. And now there was a shadow up ahead. Skinny at first. Then larger and larger. She squinted.
And there he was.
“Kleya!”
She whipped out her blade without thinking. Small. Foldable. Something she had found (it wasn’t stealing if no one claimed it) in the last planet. It swished to shape, the pointy end, suddenly inches away from him, and she was slashing and slashing and slashing cause she saw what he did to her home and she wasn’t going to let him do it to her. Ever, ever, ever.
Except everything suddenly hurt. And she was sure he was supposed to hurt. Not her. Then her back was against a tree and he was holding her there and she couldn’t move and she couldn’t feel her blade anymore…
She shoved him away. He wasn’t going to touch her. She wasn’t going to let him.
She wanted to turn and run again, but everywhere she looked, all she saw were more trees. And he was coming closer, and her blade was in his hand now and it was silver in the moonlight and…
He folded the pointy end back into the handle. A sharp click.
And then he held his palm out to her. Blade and all.
She grabbed it back.
But she didn’t slash at him again. There didn’t seem much of a point, when he could take the blade away from her just like that.
“You guide it. Thumb on the handle. Not wave it in the air.”
It was the most she had heard him say. Ever.
She unfolded the blade and tried just that. One straight motion downwards. That sudden power. She imagined doing it to the troopers who came to her home. The pilot who shouted at her.
Him.
He was already walking away.
She saw the coins in his other palm. Dirty and wet. She thought for a bit. Then followed. As they walked out the woods, she could see the same old man with the gold tooth, digging holes. She could see the white burial cloths in the holes in the ground and the tips of the bodies they covered. She could see the slave children, crouching in the holes, cutting open the burial shrouds and sticking their hand in the little slits they made.
Grave robbers.
Some of the bodies, she noticed, had coins where their eyes should be.
Some didn’t.
-
She was still practicing with her blade that night. She didn’t care if he was going to say anything about sleep. Cause he didn’t sleep. All he did was drink and lie down with his arm over his eyes. And if he did sleep, she would know. Cause he would shout and scream and dream bad dreams.
Like her. Except her dreams weren’t bad. Her dreams were her moth…
She looks away and wipes her tears. She wasn’t going to let him see. So she went back to her blade. Up. Down. Up. Down. The pointy end landed on some bone from dinner. She sucked on it to see if it still had meat and when she was sure it didn’t, she threw it at the fire and watched it burn. This was her shelter, her raggedy blanket on her raggedy sticks, and she wanted to keep it clean.
She didn’t know what happened next, or why his bottle of grog was with her. All she knew was that his hand reached out for the bottle, her blade went down, bright silver, and came up, bright red. She had sliced through the edge of his palm.
She instantly pulled the blade towards her. Pointy end extended towards him. Thumb on the handle. To guide it. Just in case.
He regarded the drops of blood, darkening the leaves beneath them. She swore he looked a bit lighter. And now that she could see him so close, she thought he looked like that toy boat she once had. It always sank cause it was so heavy, but once she poked it, the water inside would come out and it would rise to the top again.
Then he smiled, and he finally looked her in the eye.