Archive of Our Own

The first thing the Second Sister notices is how young he is. 

It’s not as if most of the Inquisitors are all that old. The more senior masters were too set in their ways to be turned to the light of the Empire; they perished in the Purge or on the interrogation table, if they ever got that far. She’s quite certain that at least half of the Inquisitorius were once Padawans, though more advanced (not better) than herself. For the past several months, she has been the youngest at sixteen (or would it be seventeen now?) Anything smaller than her was too weak to survive or too young and untrained to be of any real use. 

The new Eleventh Brother does not seem like an exception. She has watched a few of his sparring sessions and she has yet to see him actually win a fight against the others. At least he loses slowly; he holds his own surprisingly well, in a way that speaks of proper training outside of the Temple. Despite his age — thirteen, at the very most — it seems he had been a Padawan, not a Youngling. 

But this does not explain why he is here among them. Padawans were getting younger and younger during the war; his rank could merely be a sign of the Council’s corruption, not a sign of this boy’s strength. Second Sister knows better than to question her superiors, but what reason could Lord Vader and the Grand Inquisitor possibly have for keeping the boy alive? 

He is certainly obedient. Every time he loses a fight, he gets right back up without a single complaint. 

Still, Second Sister doubts he will last a moment in the field. His fragility will only impede a mission and she ought to be disgusted at this. She ought to want him gone. Instead, she can feel something — she can feel Trilla — at the back of her mind wanting to protect him, wanting to push him behind her back as she did with the Younglings and stand between him and this cruel world. Trilla wants to keep him safe. 

But the Second Sister wants nothing but to serve the glory of the Empire and if the Eleventh Brother is too weak to protect himself, he is of no use to this want. 

She buries the protective feeling as deep as she can. It has no place here. 

—

It only takes one mission to learn exactly why Lord Vader wanted this small runt among his hunters. 

Inquisitors tend to travel in pairs. Some go alone — particularly the more violent siblings — but they certainly do not travel in threes. Second Sister supposes this is better than babysitting duty, better than if she had to look after him alone, but she spends the entire trip through hyperspace thinking Eleventh Brother, a small scrap of black plastoid and grey fabric, will be dead weight to her and Fourth Sister. 

He has grown precious little since arriving and Second Sister has only ever seen him train with half of his lightsaber; he must still be too small to dual wield. She’s at least thankful his helmet is so similar to her own. Eleventh Brother is still disappointingly small and nobody would consider him intimidating at first glance, but the helmet hides his freckled baby-fat cheeks and wide green eyes. With it, he looks less like a scared child and more like a short, sharp blade in the Emperor’s arsenal. 

When they land, he tags behind her and Fourth Sister as they walk up to a grey-uniformed officer, flanked by four stormtroopers doing their best not to look at the trio of Inquisitors. The officer explains the report; a known Jedi master was recognised in the town below. She escaped into the hangar bays, found nothing to escape with, but somehow managed to elude them, despite his troops covering all the exits. The officer tries to hide his fear as he says that last part and that fear brings Second Sister no small amount of pride. The Inquisitorius have a reputation already. 

The officers takes them to the empty hangar the Jedi was last seen in and says he and his men will remain outside. The three Inquisitors stand in the centre of the closed, empty hangar. 

There is nothing of immediate note, just some half-open crates and a good decade of dirt and scuff marks all over the hangar. Nothing amiss, no clues left behind to imply where the Jedi went or how she escaped. Knowing how incompetent some of these rural officers were, the Jedi probably dropped out of the hangar door in broad daylight or mind tricked the useless troops and ran. Second Sister hates this. They should be forcibly questioning the locals to find what they know or calling a curfew and enacting a planetwide search from above. If the Jedi is gone and hiding her Force presence, the Jedi’s last known location will give them nothing — at least not without some sort of good forensics team. 

Before Second Sister can point out what a farce this hangar search will be, Eleventh Brother’s gaze catches on something. Fourth Sister notices him looking and pushes him forward. The motion is almost gentle in how small it is, but Second Sister knows better than to think of it as such. 

Eleventh Brother stands in front of a nondescript, certainly useless crate. He tilts his helmeted head as if there is something mesmerisingly dangerous about it, even though the crate is clearly empty. 

Second Sister’s blade-hand itches for a fight, craving an interrogation or three to get this mission truly started. Yet her curiosity betters her blade, so she watches impatiently as Eleventh Brother brushes his black-gloved fingers over the edge of the crate, then presses his hand flat to its side. His sharp inhale is garbled by the voice modulator, the sound ringing out in the silent hangar. He is deathly still for a moment — before he shakes his head, his breathing evening out. He glances quickly between Second and Fourth Sister, then back to the crate. 

“The Jedi—” he starts, red-visored gaze distant— “she went towards the mountains through a secret passage. She was panicked. She didn’t bring more than one day’s supply.” 

Second Sister does not let her surprise show as the puzzle falls into irritating place. Psychometry. She thought only one living — well, likely not living anymore — Jedi master had such a power. She did not know of any younglings with it. Let’s see if he knows how to use it, she tells her pride. 

Sure enough, he leads them to the side of the hangar and points out a slight warp in one of the panels. Fourth Sister pushes the metal panel to the side and the three of them duck through, soon finding themselves on a snow-hidden mountain path. 

It’s not long before finds another trace (no real memory, he says, just a slight echo) as the mountain paths narrow. Soon enough, Second and Fourth Sister begin to sense the light presence, intermittently hiding and sensing for danger, and Second Sister must begrudgingly accept that his power has worked. As they near their quarry in the maze-like, sharp stone passageways, she tells herself she could have tracked this target down even without Eleventh’s vision. He still hasn’t truly proven his worth. 

She redirects this rage to her hands, feeling the Force hum at her fingertips, ready for battle as they reach a fork in the path. 

“I will take the left passage. You take the right,” Fourth Sister orders, though her tone pretends it is a suggestion. She turns to Eleventh Brother. “Remain behind in case she turns back.” 

Second Sister wonders if Eleventh Brother would stand a chance against a master, and moreso wonders if he realises the order is a barely-subtle stay out of our way. 

Second Sister stalks along the path, finding it wider than the previous route and filled with many more crags and gaps that someone could hide in. She checks each crack as she gingerly avoids stepping on the fallen rocks and scree, her lightsaber and footsteps the only sound in the cavern. 

She’s turning to check her left when she senses it. Second Sister swings her blade to her right and the Jedi barely dodges in time. 

The Jedi darts from her cracked hiding spot, blade now lit, and Second Sister gives her no time to recover, darting in for another strike. The Jedi parries calmly, too in control, feeding Second Sister’s ever-growing anger. 

Second Sister strikes again, the Jedi parries again. The fight becomes almost repetitive; slash-parry-slash-dodge. The Jedi’s form is deceptive. She seems defensive, like she does not want to fight, but her parries are just as lethal as the Second Sister’s strikes, and Second Sister soon grows angrier at the faux-pacifism — until the the Jedi strikes first all of a sudden. And Second Sister is so occupied by throwing herself on the defensive, that she doesn’t notice the rock until it’s slamming straight into her shoulder. 

Her helmeted head hits the rock wall before the rest of her body hits the icy floor. It’s a far-too-slow second before Second Sister can blink the haziness in the back of her mind away and spring back into a ready stance. Except the Jedi has not remained to finish the job. Second Sister sees the Jedi’s green lightsaber swinging blurrily in her hand as she runs away. She’s not even sure what direction she’s going when she begins to run too — only that it is the direction of her prey. 

She is close enough to hear the Jedi’s heavy breath when a short dark shape steps out in front of her target, lightsaber humming-red in front of him — and the Jedi hesitates, blade half-raised, at the tiny thing before her. Second Sister knows better than to do the same; she dashes forward to drive a blade through the Jedi’s back. Her traitorous corpse falls to the ground with a pathetic flop, leaving Eleventh Brother standing alone in front.   

On the trip back, Second Sister watches Eleventh Brother with veiled interest. Perhaps there is some use to him after all. 

—

It was an idiot’s mistake, one she was far too old to have made. If Eleventh Brother had not been so quick, she would have singlehandedly lost their prey. 

She had not noticed the second Jedi, hadn’t felt his wretched presence as it snuck up on them. Second Sister wasn’t even sure if she herself did it, or if the Jedi had been skilled enough to break her lightsaber with a flick of the Force. All she knows is one moment she was ready to fight the Jedi’s taunts, the next her saber was sparking in her hand and Eleventh Brother was blocking the Jedi’s swing at her.

Second Sister stares at the malfunctioning mess of a lightsaber in front of her. It has stopped sparking, at least, but the dislodged panel reveals more dislodged components inside. She fears what will be done to her when she returns after almost failing, with a broken lightsaber no less. There is no doubt she would be reprimanded; perhaps she will be forced to train for days without rest. Perhaps she will be banned from missions for some time, humiliated in the halls of Nur for weeks. Perhaps they shall… 

She tries to remind herself that the mission had not been truly failed, that they will have no reason to recondition her. But staring down at the broken thing in her lap, she finds it difficult to convince herself. 

“I can fix it.” 

Second Sister’s gaze snaps up to Eleventh Brother in the seat next to her. He hadn’t said anything since he mumbled something to the Jedi as he gave them a quick deathblow to the heart. He made no comment when he noticed her broken lightsaber, nor when Purge Troopers arrived to carry the bodies back to the ship. He only watched. 

They had all built their own lightsabers, before, but this is not the saber Trilla had built after Ilum. Only the kyber, bleeding red, remains. Trilla could not even fix the one she built herself, Second Sister certainly cannot fix her else-made saber — why would Eleventh Brother be able to? He must be fifteen now, so she must be eighteen or nineteen or something near enough. It does her little good to keep track. She supposes his youth means he made his first lightsaber more recently than her; still, this is no explanation— 

“I was on Bracca for a while before…” Eleventh elaborates, and she imagines his eyes going blank behind the mask. “I can fix it.” 

Her immediate instinct is to berate him. He’s broken one of their unspoken rules, perhaps the most important one: do not speak of the past. 

Second Sister only stares for a slow second as he pulls a small, grey multitool from his belt, wondering where and who he stole it from. Her senses return and she yanks the lightsaber towards the safety of her chest, away from his hands.

“I know what you can do, Brother,” she says. I know I will be giving you far more than my lightsaber, she means. She is not stupid. She is too aware of his abilities and what he will find. He is looking for weaknesses. He is looking to exploit her memories to throw her off on their next mission, so that he may snatch their next prize, undermine her for Lord Vader’s favour. Second Sister is smarter than that; she will not let it happen. 

Eleventh Brother just looks at the saber.

“I’m not letting you touch it,” she snaps. 

She expects him to admit defeat and huff off, realising she is not easy prey. She expects him to push a little more, sweet-talk her into giving up her secrets. 

Yet all Eleventh Brother does is take his helmet off, revealing a wave of ginger hair and scars that seems too red against his pale skin. He hands her the multitool knowingly. “I’ll talk you through it then.” 

—

Second Sister begins to enjoy working with Eleventh Brother. It’s not like he takes the thrill of the hunt away; they have repeatedly learnt that the past does not guarantee knowledge of the future. But his gift turns the tiresome days of searching into mere hours and minutes, allows Second Sister and her screaming red blade to reach the final hunt so much sooner.

He is good company — at least compared to their other brothers and sisters. He speaks little and intelligently. He does not hinder missions with Ninth Sister’s temper or Fifth Brother’s games. The worst he has ever done was linger on an echo a moment too long, or focus on one with no helpful information. 

He made Second Sister laugh once. She still isn't sure what to think about that. 

And he has become a formidable thing in a fight. He began to win sparring matches — by however small a margin — as young as fourteen. As he grows taller (he may well be taller than Second Sister soon), he grows in power — yet his new height is not his advantage. He does not fight with the same anger the rest of them do. The same lethality and brutality, certainly, but he is more controlled. It unnerves Second Sister sometimes, worries her. She chooses to think little of it. 

She doesn’t trust him, exactly; Second Sister’s ability to trust died with Trilla and all those younglings. She tolerates him, perhaps. That is the most she can give him. 

—

Second Sister knew he was weak from the start. She knew he was not cut out to be one of them, knew he should have been put down before he could drag a mission towards ruin. Yet somehow, she is still shocked when he grabs her wrist mid swing, stopping her blade mere inches from a traitor’s head. 

“Second, stop,” Eleventh Brother hisses, the helmet turning his seventeen-year-old mumble into a dark growl. “They don’t know where he is.”

The red blade hums between them, interrupted only by the whimpers of the pathetic lifeform beneath it. The workers in this section of a measly mining station are all lined up on this open platform, their sheer terror lit by the stark-white mining floodlights above. 

“They don't know where he is,” Eleventh Brother repeats with more force.

At first she thinks he has become lazy, that he wishes to give up this slow hunt for a quiet rest. Then she thinks about the insistence in his words, the knowledge laced beneath them, and Second Sister tilts her chin up. “But you do.” 

Eleventh Brother says nothing. 

Second Sister yanks her forearm out of his grip and faces him in full, her blade humming hard at her side. “You know where he is,” she half-repeats, stalking towards him as he steps back. It seemed an insane thought at first, a response of anger, but every second that passes without an answer makes it feel realer.

“I didn’t say that.” 

Eleventh Brother is a great many things; a good liar is not one of them. Even with the helmet on, she can hear the avoidance in his voice, see the tiny panic in his body language. They had been on this forceforsaken planet for almost four days now. All their searching had led them only to this night-dark platform at the entrance of a deep cave hanging half way up this forsaken asteroid-mountain, on the basis that that its crew might have also worked with the Jedi, might have seen where they went. 

“When did you learn this?” How long have you been stalling and allowing the Jedi to escape? 

Eleventh Brother shakes his head. “I didn’t. I—”

“Do not lie to me,” she hisses, taking another step forward.

They are at the edge of the platform now. He spares a glance to the rocky drop behind him before his masked eyes dart to the purge troopers, then settle back on her. 

“The Jedi is long gone,” he admits. “He was supposed to be meeting someone that would help him escape, but he saw us coming and he fled.” 

“Why did you not tell me this?” Second Sister’s rage floods every word as she tries to think of what he could possibly say next. 

“I needed the time.” 

“For what?”

“I’m sorry.” 

“For wh—” her demand is cut off when he takes one more step back and falls.

She darts to the edge and reaches over to grab him — only to see he has dropped-and-rolled onto a speeding cargo train far far below, barely sparing a glance back at her. 

Second Sister shakes her head before she flings herself from the platform, hastening and saving her long descent with the Force. She just makes it onto the edge of the last carriage, her saber melting into its side for grip. 

She hauls herself over the edge, her breath barely staying put in her lungs as the biting wind whips her cape out behind her. She manages to stand, using more of the Force to hold herself down — and sees Eleventh, a blot of black-and-red against the dark blue of the mining planet’s open night sky. 

She forces herself forwards, pushing too slowly against the speeding gusts. She gets closer, closer, but never close enough. 

“TRAITOR!” she screams, the wind tearing the sound from her throat. She can still catch up. He will run out of train soon enough. Backup will arrive soon enough. 

She hears a ship above and momentarily thinks that his time is through — only to see a busted grey yacht slowing at the head of the train. 

Second Sister tries to run harder against the wind, run to stop the inevitable. Her lightsaber burns at her side, waiting to be used against Eleventh, against this contact. She’s almost beginning to near him as the ramp lowers and Eleventh jumps. 

As Eleventh Brother jumps into the speeding ship, a woman shoots back to cover his leap. Second Sister catches only a flash of the shooter’s face, but it's enough to leave her burning with an unquenchable fury for weeks to come. 

—

Second Sister throws her helmet at her bunk wall as she enters, barely registering the violence of its plastoid smack. The anger burns bright in her chest, in the cavity where her heart and soul once were. 

It is not the betrayal itself that hurts the most. She never let herself trust him, she knew better than Trilla. What hurts the most was that he betrayed Second Sister for her. For that selfish, two-faced traitor that Second Sister had once called Master. The one who had allowed Trilla to be murdered. The one she had last trusted.

Second Sister paces the black floor, avoiding her reflection in the polished gleam. Had Eleventh Brother contacted her beforehand? Or simply taken the chance that their target’s disappearance had left? Had she been following Second Sister, just waiting to ruin the mission and steal its prize?

Second Sister paces towards her thrown helmet, picking it up off the floor and holding it in front of her. No use muttering questions to herself alone in the fortress. She will find every answer when she recovered her traitorous ‘brother’.

Second Sister puts the helmet back on. It is time to hunt. 

—

He is much worse at being prey than he was a hunter. It takes just a few short weeks to find him again. He is not making himself awfully hard to find; it seems that every few days there is another sighting of an orange-haired “Jedi” from some unlucky stormtroopers. 

Second Sister tracks his sightings across the galaxy, and realises with a start that she recognises these planets. These are sites of Eno Cordova’s research; he is looking for the holocron of Trilla’s grandmaster. It makes her wonder if Cere is actively trying to lead her new padawan to the slaughter, given how predictable Eleventh Brother’s new mission is. 

Second Sister places her bets and decides to wait on Zeffo and she rewarded with wide, shocked eyes when the elevator doors open and he sees her, standing in the cavern.

She grins a predator-grin beneath the helmet as he steps out. “Eleventh Brother—” 

“Cal,” he snaps. 

Second Sister tilts her head as she begins to pace. “What?” 

He stands up straighter. “My name is Cal Kestis.” 

At this, Second Sister cannot help but laugh. It rings out in the cavern, distorted by her vocoder into something even more bitter than she is. “Your name,” she bites out, “is the Eleventh Brother. You are to be returned to Fortress Inquisitorius, where you belong, and where you will be punished for your short-lived insolence.”

Eleventh Brother stands firm, features set, as his red saber springs to life. 

“I had a feeling you’d say that,” she says, and lights her saber to slam an attack onto him. 

He dodges it with a roll, just quick enough to parry her next strike. Were it not for their surroundings and his clothes, she could easily have thought this was a particularly angry sparring session. Her more aggressive style, all slashes and slams, is matched exactly against his more defensive, all parries and dodges. She tries not to think about how neither of them are really fighting to kill, only to injure. 

She gets a kick to the chest in and he is off focus for a second — but a second is all Second Sister needs. She Force-lifts him up and before he can truly begin to struggle, she slams him through the gate behind. He falls into the now-wrecked metal in a pathetic, defenceless heap.

She has her chance; she leaps, lightsaber aloft. He holds his hand out to block her strike — but she never gets near it. Her lightsaber hits nothing but plasma. 

A bright-red shield barrier stands between them. As she takes a furious step back from it, a droid — probably his, knowing how quickly Eleventh grows attached to things — peeks from behind the gate’s barrier panel. Second Sister wishes she were strong enough to crush it behind the barrier.

She begins to pace behind the barrier, burning with frustration. She knows it is futile, but she keeps her saber lit at her side. 

Eleventh Brother scrambles to his feet and grabs his lightsaber, still crouched in a half-combat pose. She takes a proper look at him now; he still has the red-lined black shirt of the Inquisitorius, but he wears some scuffed, leather-like vest over it that looks like something he might have stolen from a scrapper or miner. Maybe it’s just a trick of the barrier-light, but she could swear little freckles have started to appear across his scarred cheeks. He looks almost… normal. 

“I’m not coming back. I’m not coming with you,” he says desperately. 

He is so naive, so frustrating. Why does he not understand his place? Second Sister tilts her head. “You cannot run forever, brother. I will hunt you until you return home.” 

“That’s not our home!” Eleventh shouts. “That’s where they broke us after they murdered our friends, our masters— our family. That’s not our home, they stole our home when they stole our lives and...” 

Eleventh shuts his mouth, seeming almost surprised by his own outburst. “But they don’t have to win. You could come with me, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to be the Second Sister, you don’t have to… my name is Cal Kestis,” he repeats. He stands up a little straighter, almost proud of what he has to say next. “I’m not an Inquisitor, I’m… I’m a Jedi.”

“You are a child.” 

He ignores her. “You were a Jedi too, before it was taken from you. Your name is Trilla, you’re a person, not a weapon.” 

Second Sister takes a step back, feeling the word harder than a blow to the chest. If he says anything else, it is muffled by her shock at hearing that name. He is not meant to know that name. How could he know that name?

The only reasonable explanation pumps a fresh rage into her veins. “Did she tell you that?” Second Sister spat. 

Cal— Eleventh Brother furrows his brow, as if he has no idea who she could possibly be. “I’ve always known.” 

Second Sister can't help the shake of her head. She never let him touch her belongings. She knew better than to trust. He cannot have always known. He lies. He must be lying. 

Before she can regain her senses to accuse him or force him to explain, he runs, the droid on his shoulder, leaving her alone in the empty cavern. 

She knows she needs to leave, find him, inform her troops on his whereabouts and their orders. She knows what mission protocol is, what she should do, what she has done to tens of other Jedi. 

 Instead, she watches the emptiness where he once was, asking herself if he had always known, why did he never use it against her?

—

To say Ninth Sister almost caught him would be an overstatement. She had found him, yes — but he had not exactly made himself hard to find, so brazenly stealing an AT-AT and blowing up an Imperial base on Kashyyk like that. According to her mission report, Ninth Sister had cornered him alone, intending to kill or capture. She had then lost the fight miserably, returning immediately to the medbay where she had been ever since, with one less limb than before. Nobody had been to visit her in her disgrace — nobody except Second Sister, who wished only to see that she had actually survived the fight. 

It was curious. Eleventh Brother often hesitated, but he would never have shown mercy like this, letting her off with one lost arm. Their brother would have stalked Ninth until her last breath; this ‘Cal’ character he had become was something new. 

Second Sister ought to be furious with both of her siblings; furious that Ninth almost took her prey, furious that Eleventh would evade capture once more. 

She hates how many ought to’s the search for Eleventh Brother has caused, and how many she has disregarded. She ought to be furious — and yet pride bubbles in her chest. He is not the little scrap of a boy that first entered the Fortress just over four years ago; he has become something stronger, and oh-so much more dangerous. 

Second Sister pushes the pride down and focuses on how the prize of bringing in the Traitor Inquisitor is still out there, after this more valuable than ever. She will bring him back. She will be the one to gain their lords’ favour. 

—

This will level the playing field, she tells herself as she tracks him through Bogano. Now he will hesitate, seeing her face, just as he made her hesitate with that name. Removing her helmet is to level the playing field. It is certainly not so that she may see him with her own eyes. 

She steps into the great hollow that might have been part of an ancient temple once, with its circling patterns lining the walls and light streaming down from the centre. It shines down on where Eleventh stands in the water, reaching out to what can only be the holocron, floating in a gentle green above his hand. In another life, she might have appreciated the almost-holy beauty of the scene. But in this one, it is ruined when she ignites her lightsaber and he snaps around to face her, unclipping his own saber. 

Tense silence reigns for only a moment, before he speaks. “We don’t have to do this,” he says again — but there is resignation in his voice now, woven in between some small anger. 

“You mean you will hand yourself in?” she says sarcastically, beginning to stalk around the chamber. 

“Trilla, please.”

“I am not Trilla. Trilla is dead,” she snaps, hoping it sounds convincing. 

“Think about what you’re doing. You know what the Holocron is, think about—”

“Think about the prize I shall recieive when not only do I return the traitor Inquisitor, but the Holocron he has been chasing.” She retorts. “Those children will be a great asset to our masters.”

“You don’t have to do this,” he near-pleads. 

Did he not just hear her? He’s wrong. She does have to do this, doesn’t she? She has to serve the Empire, gain their Lords' favours, yes. Eleventh and the children on that list stand in the way of that mission. She must complete her mission. 

Eleventh Brother sees the resolve on her face and matches it with his own, all pleas in his voice gone. “I’m not letting you walk out of here with the Holocron and I am not going back.” 

“Of course you think that—” 

He strikes first, for once, and she barely parries it in time. She hates that her face is uncovered when his lightsaber ignites silver-white instead of red. She can't stop the small flash of shock when she sees he is really, truly trying to be a free Jedi. He really wishes to betray them all. 

She steps back, and feels as if she is on a constant back-step for the next several parries. He is quicker, he fights with moves he has never used before, daring to repay her aggression with his own — but a controlled, steady agression, with no true anger behind his strikes. 

They clash and defend, never quite falling into an old pattern, and she is constantly moving, constantly having to think as she fights him for once. But she cannot think fast enough. She spins her saber to strike his guard down — and she hits only air as he deactivates his blade. Second Sister has barely a moment to register her mistake before she goes flying backwards.

She stands up and only then realises what is missing from her hand and flying towards Eleventh’s. Her lightsaber hits his palm, and for a moment Second Sister thinks that she has lost, that her life is to be in the hands of Eleventh Brother’s dual-bladed mercy. 

But he does not strike her. He does not move, and Second Sister comprehends what a grave mistake he has made. She watches him shudder, then gasp, then crumble to the floor, frozen, eyes trapped in echoes of her kyber crystal’s past.

Realisation hits her as she steps towards his shaking frame, listening to his quick, scared breaths. She heard he broke on the interrogation table faster than any of them. She used to think it was because he was so much younger, because he was so weak and scared and so very alone. Now she realises that he must have broken the second he touched the machine. He must have felt all the suffering that table had held; Trilla’s and Cere’s and a hundred others before and after them. That this was how he knew her name and past, all he never mentioned. She realises he was a child, so much smaller than Trilla, forced to feel the pain and deaths of Jedi far stronger and older than he. How could something so little have stood more than a moment of that? How could anyone? 

A second realisation seeps into her heart. She is sending him back there. Back to that. Back to endless echoes of torture, back to hours and hours and lifetimes of hurt, until he relents or dies. She is sending her brother back there. 

Two Purge troopers drop into the cavern. She wonders how long she has been staring at him seizing, for them to come after her like this. 

Second Sister shakes her head. She has a mission. Her brother must be returned to the Inquisitorius. That is where he belongs. The Purge troopers know this. She must too.

She injects a small sedative into Eleventh’s neck as the troopers come up behind her. The shaking stops and she catches his limp body in her arms. He’s bulkier, heavier than he had been. He has been eating better than he had in the Fortress. The thought twists the wrongness in her heart even more as she steps back from his unconscious body and allows the Purge Troopers to cuff him. 

In doing so, the troopers do not notice the BD droid run towards the cracks in the wall. The droid is close and unprotected enough that she could dash it against the wall or hold it in place with a simple gesture. It's what she should do. It’s what any good Inquisitor would do. 

She isn't sure why she lets the droid go (lets the droid return to her), nor why she is not feeling the thrill of a successful hunt. She watches the Purge Troopers drag him out and reminds herself that her mission is complete. 

The notion doesn't quite stick. 

— 

She spends the flight back to Nur watching him sleep fitfully across from her. 

He is strapped into the dropship, two purge troopers at his side and shock-cuffs around his pulled-back wrists. The troopers gave him a stronger sedative once he was onboard; it is enough to keep him down, but apparently not enough to keep his mind quiet. His eyes dart behind his eyelids, his eyebrows furrowing in fear and discomfort and a thousand other things that writhe within that uneasiness in Second Sister’s gut. Why does this not feel right? He is a runaway traitor. He is an enemy of the Empire, a dangerous and deadly insurgent, an interloper in its peace. But he is her…

Second Sister shakes her head. He is her mission. That is all she is supposed to think.

She keeps his lightsaber in the back of her belt, hidden under her cape. Protocol says she should put it in a protective box stored in the ship and under guard. She gave the Holocron up to the purge troopers the moment she stepped onto the ship, yet when a trooper asks about the traitor’s saber, she does not reach for it or hand it over. She only sits with it pressed hard between her back and the chair. 

It lies there hidden beneath her cape when she steps on to the Fortress’ landing platform and watches them drag Eleventh Brother out of the ship.

— 

Second Sister follows the purge troopers through the halls of the Fortress. Eight of of them surround Eleventh Brother, two of them dragging him across the sleek floor. 

They take their time as they do it, keeping their pace just below that of their usual march. Officers and troopers all turn their heads to see. Some of them do not recognise the limp body being pulled by the troopers, but Second Sister spots plenty of realisation in other officers eyes. 

They’re making a show out of him, she realises. They are taking the long route to the Grand Inquisitor’s office, making sure as many people see the spectacle of the traitor Inquisitor’s capture. Making sure everyone sees him dragged through the fortress he escaped, beaten and bound. The discomfort in her gut grows ever stronger. 

Second Sister holds her head high and wishes she had put her helmet back on after the fight, praying nobody sees her quiet and all-too-wrong fear. 

It feels like a lifetime before they reach the Grand Inquisitor’s office, but she knows it has been mere minutes. They bring him up to the stairs at the far end of the soulless black room, just below the dais where the Grand Inquisitor and his desk stand in front of the imposing sea-windows. He eyes Eleventh Brother with an appreciative and sharp-toothed grin, like a animal ready to toy with its slow-caught prey. “Ah, finally,” he preens. 

The Grand Inquisitor gives a small hand gesture and a panic spikes through Second Sister as two purge troopers lance their electrostaffs into Eleventh Brother’s back. He jolts awake with a half-bitten yelp, panting as his gaze darts around the room. He stills for a moment, recognition seeping into his body — and then he is trying to get up, trying to flee. But the Purge Troopers are too quick; two force him back down to his knees, while a third electrocutes him again. Eleventh’s cry rings out on the high black ceilings, and Second Sister keeps her head held up. 

The Grand Inquisitor nods at Second Sister, still standing behind the Troopers. She walks around Eleventh to take her place at their commander’s side. “Very well done, Second Sister. I will be sure to relay news of your success to Lord Vader.”

Eleventh huffs out through his teeth, his anger turning it into a hiss. Second Sister ought to feel pride now, ought to be overjoyed at the idea of Lord Vader’s approval. 

The Grand Inquisitor steps down the dais-steps slowly, his boots echoing on the cold floor and his predator-eyes latched onto Eleventh as he draws closer. 

“You think you’re gonna break me again?” Eleventh Brother spits. “I will never serve the Empire again. You’re gonna to have to kill me.” 

Second Sister’s clenches her jaw and stares only at the back wall. She tries to think of the mission. 

She doesn’t need to be looking at them to hear the smile in the Grand Inquisitor’s voice. “You overestimate yourself, Eleventh Brother. Do you not remember how little it took to break you the first time?” 

Second Sister dares a glance down, and sees Eleventh Brother still, his features drawing tight.

“Your gift is far too valuable to waste on a petty execution. Of course, were it any of the others, I would personally be there to make sure their death was very slow and very, very public. But you—” the Grand Inquisitor takes Eleventh’s chin in his hand, forcing him to look up “You will be kept alive and you will be broken. However many times it takes to remake you into something useful again.” 

Eleventh barely manages to pull his face out of the Inquisitor’s hands. 

The Grand Inquisitor turns to her, folding his hands behind his back, entirely unperterbed; “How long do you think it will take, Second Sister?”

At that moment, Eleventh Brother finally looks up at her. She expects anger, hatred, and betrayal in his still-green eyes — but all she finds is a plea. He has clenched his jaw so they cannot see him shaking, he holds his features still and furrows his brow, but Second Sister knows him better than his masks. You don’t have to do this. He is scared and he is silently begging her for mercy. Your name is Trilla, you’re a person, not a weapon. He is her brother. 

She tries to keep her breathing even, but she doesn't quite feel like she is in her own skin. She is in a stranger’s body, in a place she could never call home, and all she can think is they are going to hurt my little brother. I cannot send him back there. I cannot let them hurt my little brother. 

“Second Sister?” The Grand Inquisitor prompts, still waiting for a reply. 

She’s still looking at her brother when she does it. In a second, Second Sister’s lightsaber is lit and slashing ahead of her. The Grand Inquisitor, is just fast enough to dodge the lethal blow, but too slow to avoid a debilitating slice across his thighs. He falls to the steps. She throws her hands out and the two Purge troopers closest to her brother fly back. The remaining troops rush towards them both. 

She throws Eleventh— she throws Cal his lightsaber, and he lights it as soon as he catches it, parrying the attack of a purge trooper from behind before slicing his bindings and following with an efficient slice. She does the same to the ones closest to her, and soon retrieves his confiscated utility pouch off one of the fallen troopers and hands it to him. “We have to find that holocron,” she says. 

Cal nods, and despite everything, he can’t help but grin at her.

—

They hear the Grand Inquisitor’s strained yell as they run out of the room, but he cannot follow and they keep the advantage of surprise. 

Most of the purge troopers don’t know what hits them before they’re on the floor, wheezing or never breathing again. The two of them fight like demons, like one single unit, like they have always been brother and sister and two twin blades. 

Cal is bruised from some stray hits and still clearly feeling the prods in his back, but he is alight. And she feels Trilla — no, she feels herself — wanting nothing more than to keep that safe. 

By the time they retrieve the Holocron, not even catalogued yet, the alarms are finally blaring and the warning lights paint the hallways in flashing black-and-red. It does nothing to impede their senses or fight, the Force singing through their shared reflexes and skills.  

She keeps the Holocron in her hand as she fights, unwilling to risk it falling from her grasp. But she cannot fight as effectively like this and Cal is beginning to wane, his bruises even more prominent under the red light. 

They clear another wave, ready to keep advancing down the large hall, towards a hanger, when they see it. An entire battalion of purge troopers and KXs march towards them. She and Cal turn back the way they came — only to see a second platoon marching that way. 

They dart into the nearest room and she slams the door controls before slashing straight through them. The controls spark pitifully as she steps away and sees how poorly they have chosen their sanctuary. The looming room is some abandoned storage place, filled with nothing but a few small stacks of datadiscs. No furniture they can barricade with, no extra weapons, just one over-large window at the back that looks out into nothing but the mournful depths of Nur’s sea. 

Its only strategic advantage is how small the door is; the army of Purge Troopers will not be able to come through all at once. It means their now-inevitable deaths might not be too quick, that they can do some damage, that maybe the troopers will be desperate enough to kill and not capture. 

She hears more troops’ footsteps followed by a harder, staggering set. The unmistakeable bite of the Grand Inquisitor’s yell is barely muffled through the door and she hears Cal’s breath hitch at her side.

A glaring red lightsaber plunges through the thick metal of the door. Cal darts back and against all her instincts, she takes a step forward. She stands between him and the red plasma making its slow, rectangular slice around the door. 

They will be in soon. There is nothing she can do to stop that now. She considers the holocron in her hand for a moment. It is a valuable prize. She might even be able to bargain her life for it. She glances back to Cal, sees the fear trying to hide behind his bruised determined. She thinks of the holocron’s list of Force sensitive children, then of Cal at-barely-more-than-twelve on the reconditioning table. 

He gives her a nod, like he understands what she wants to do and before she can think twice, she lifts the holocron and slices straight through it. It drops to the floor, now useless. If (when, after) she and Cal do not survive this fight, she will die in peace, knowing she has saved every child on that list. It will not be enough to clean the red from her ledger, it will not be enough to save her Force-forsaken soul, but it will be something. 

The red lightsaber has almost finished slicing through the door. She tightens her grip on her own saber. She will go down fighting. She begins to think of strategies, how they can use the small entrance to their advantage, but behind her, Cal is trying to project something in the Force, like a warning— like a hold your breath or get ready. She barely has a second to decipher it before she sees the cut-door break, hears the glass cracking and a great, green depth smashes into her back. 

She thinks, in her final moments of underwater consciousness, that she sees Cal’s comm blinking, an unnaturally green light, and… her, swimming down towards them. 

—

She wakes and for a single moment, thinks she did not make it. That the cold metal her back lies against is the interrogation table, that they will break her before they kill her again. 

But as she blinks her surroundings into focus, she sees a friendly, scuffed mechanical grey ceiling joined by silver and orange pipes — not the sleek killer-black of the fortress. 

She hears footsteps and someone crouch to their knees at her left. It almost startles her to turn and see Cere there, hair short and in a simple jacket and tunic, at her side, even if the back of her mind sings of home. Cere’s eyes alone ask a thousand questions, some harsh, some soft, but the rest of her face speaks of a quiet disbelief and care. 

“Cal—?” she asks as she pushes herself up to sitting. Cere’s gentle hand comes to support her back in some half-forgotten reflex. 

She hears a semi-distant hey, I’m not done—! before Cal appears at her other side, a blanket wrapped around his shivering frame. The bruises on his face are a mean colour against his pale skin, a couple now interrupted by half-applied bacta, and his hair is so sopping wet that it looks red instead of orange — but he’s still smiling at her. He’s smiling. He’s alive and by her side. 

She takes in the sight for a moment before she says “You saved us,” happily unsure if she is talking to Cere or Cal or both. 

—

Cal is asleep on the couch beside her, leaning on her as if she is something stable and to be trusted. He is still wrapped in the blanket, but dry and warm against her arm, some colour back in his cheeks. 

Trilla — yes, she is Trilla, a person, not a weapon — tries not too move too much, so as not to wake him. The Nightsister and the Latero watch her carefully from the cockpit and holotable, their clear distrust evident in every move. The BD droid isn’t much friendlier, but he’ll get close enough to her to snuggle under Cal’s other arm. Trilla cannot blame them, really. She knows what she is, what the last five years have made her into. What they have made her do. And in the short hour she has been awake, she has already come to understand how much they love Cal, how much they want to keep him safe. She wonders, in the back of her mind, if this is just the effect that Cal has on people. 

Cere sits down next to Trilla, pulling her smoothly from her thoughts. 

“Here,” Cere says, pushing a warm mug into Trilla’s hands. Trilla takes it carefully and looks into the mug; hot chocolate, like Cere used to make when they got back to the ship after a particularly long mission or battle. The smell alone dislodges something stuck deep in her chest, and Trilla swallows the choked-up feeling bubbling up her throat. 

She can feel their shattered Force bond rebuilding itself, slowly, threading itself over the barbs and thorns and ruins that have stood fractured between them for the last five years. 

“I’m sorry,” Cere says quietly, not quite meeting Trilla’s eyes. 

All Trilla can manage in reply is a nod, unsure if she should accept it or plead her own apology in return. They’ll talk about it soon, she knows, and she can wait til then. They have time. For now, Trilla tries to project comfort through the barely-stitched Force bond, and finds something like it projected back. 

At her other side, another bond is forming over all the blocks that the Second Sister and Eleventh Brother had placed there. It is soft and gentle and feels something like home. 

Trilla knows she will do anything to protect it.