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The Outlander’s lightsaber cut deep into his chest, though flesh and bone, the blade leaving an ugly, charred rut across his once-immaculate armour.
The impact and the shock of the blow drove Arcann onto his knees and his cybernetic hand immediately went to clutch at his wound. He could see the dying embers left by the lightsaber flickering at the edges of the slash.
He couldn’t breathe. The pain was indescribable. Even the trauma from losing his arm on Korriban all those years ago wasn’t comparable to this.
This must’ve been what Thexan felt when he’d been dealt the killing blow back in the throne room in front of their father. It was only fitting that a man who’d killed his brother would die by the same means. He’d murdered his brother by slashing him across the belly, and he was going to die at the hands of the Outlander who’d done the same to him, only the blade cut into him a few inches higher.
I deserve this, he thought miserably, watching the last of the embers smolder out from the scorched flesh. The wound was so blackened that he wasn’t sure which part of the charring was from burnt fabric and which part was from cauterized flesh. I’ve had it coming for a long time.
A series of explosions went off on the bridge, and he felt the heat waves springing from each one. The explosions put some distance between him and Outlander. She stumbled her away towards the only exit, and he stumbled backwards and up the steps towards the transparisteel viewport.
It hurt to breathe, but he forced himself to as he staggered up the steps. He managed to get himself onto the platform before the pain from his chest and the physical exertion forced him to keel over. He coughed, and waves of excruciating pain reverberated through him. He gritted his teeth and tasted blood, hot and metallic in his mouth.
The bridge shook violently from a renewed Eternal Fleet bombardment. Slabs of duracrete dropped down in sheets larger than his bedspread, cracking into smaller chunks upon impact. Twisted durasteel girders and trusses groaned before crashing down onto the floor, obstructing the path to the exit.
Through the haze of pain, he was dimly aware of the Outlander somersaulting and rolling out of the way from the falling debris. He limped towards the viewport, hunched over from the agony of every breath and step he took.
The bridge swayed from the continued bombardment, which initiated another series of explosions. Fires crackled and the flames licked at damaged equipment and other wreckage. He heard an ominous groan above him.
Instinctively, his arms went above his head to form a Force barrier, but the movement caused his chest to erupt with a searing pain. He coughed, and pushed through the agony to generate a Force barrier around himself.
If he hadn’t been gravely injured, the barrier would’ve stayed put. Durasteel and duracrete rained down and punched through his Force barrier like a hammer through eggshells. Something struck his bad shoulder, causing him to lose his footing. His hands scrabbled around for something to hold onto to help him stand up, but white fireworks exploded through his vision as he felt something land on his chest, sending his intentions straight out the door. Duracrete slabs crushed his chest and abdomen, and warped durasteel trusses pinned him down.
It had hurt to breathe, but now he could barely breathe at all. The most he could do was gasp. Weakened from his wound and now lacking oxygen, he couldn’t use the Force to push away the rubble trapping him. Once the fireworks fizzled out, Arcann saw the darkness from the edges of his vision steadily encroach on his eyesight.
He was no stranger to death. In his youth, he’d been beaten within an inch of his life countless times by the Knights and by his father that there were instances where he’d wished that they would simply finish him off. When he writhed in agony on Korriban, he’d wished for death to take him quickly, but that would only leave Thexan behind to face the remaining Sith and afterwards, the monster that is their father.
Back then, he feared death because it mean leaving Thexan behind to face their fiend of a father. But now that Thexan was gone, he had no fear of dying. It would be a relief, to join his brother, the better half of him, and become whole again.
However, he was afraid to face Thexan and his wrath in the netherworld of the Force.
The thought of having to look his brother in the eye in whatever afterlife existed sent chills down his spine. Thexan’s death was an accident, but remorse didn’t matter. Murder was murder. It didn’t matter that he’d cried himself to sleep every night for half a year after the deed in the privacy of his own chambers. It didn’t matter that he was sincere about his regret and murmured his apologies in his restless slumber. It didn’t matter if he’d bitterly grieved at his brother’s casket at the end of the funeral service and asked for Thexan’s forgiveness because none of those were going to bring him back.
By now, the darkness had already eaten its way through most of his vision. He chose to reminisce on the happier moments of his life, although those were few and far between.
He concentrated on Thexan first. He remembered his brother’s smile and how they’d switch their clothes to confuse their guards and servants as children. He remembered how he and Thexan would run through the gardens and fields playing their games. Sometimes they’d play tag, one day it was hide-and-seek, and on another day they were fierce warriors and starship pilots. He remembered the pride and quiet delight reflected in his brother’s eyes when they traded in their childhood tunics for their princely finery.
Memories of Thexan soon segued into memories of his mother. Although he hadn’t seen her in over two decades, his mother’s laughter ringing crisply in his ears like wind chimes was one of his clearest and fondest memories of her. He remembered her gentle touch when she dressed his wounds after a hard day of training with the Knights. And then she was there, sitting by his bedside when he had a particularly bad fever, and she refused to leave even though the medical droids standing nearby were more than capable in caring for him.
She had always been gentle to him and his siblings and loved them with all her heart even as they scorned her and cast her away.
And Vaylin. He wheezed out a breath of relief after realizing that he could still feel her presence through the Force. He tried recalling her in better times when she wasn’t so whimsical and cruel. She had always been unstable, but he considered childhood Vaylin to be relatively tame compared to the adult Vaylin.
He remembered reading to her when she was a toddler and how he and Thexan would make faces at her until she giggled. There was that time where she jumped with giddy delight when he tricked their servants into parting with a few chocolates for her. His sister had always been a sucker for sweets.
He fought the loss of consciousness for as long as he could. Other memories resurfaced, but they were jumbled and in no chronological order. There was the moment of wonder and childhood curiosity when his mother let him hold his newborn sister for the first time. There was his mother reading to him and Thexan when they were younger way before Vaylin was born, there was the feeling of triumph when he and Thexan built their first lightsaber, there was his mother singing lullabies to them every night, there was his sister joining him and Thexan in their games when she got old enough, he remembered his sister breaking out into a smile when he defied their father and snuck her pastries from the kitchens…
He committed the remaining strength he had left in remembering his brother’s smile, and when he couldn’t fight the darkness any longer, Arcann closed his eyes and allowed it to rush up and consume him until he felt nothing.
A familiar presence tugged at his consciousness.
Everything hurt. Something was crushing his chest, exacerbating his lightsaber wound, and he couldn’t move his arms and legs. He could feel his arms and legs, though. He couldn’t exactly pinpoint where they were, but there were two distinct aches throbbing with the rhythm of his heart, one on each leg. Something was off about his cybernetic arm, too. The sensors weren’t working.
He thought he heard somebody say something, but he wasn’t sure if it was the familiar presence or if he imagined it in his pain-filled delirium.
He felt the vibrations from the continued explosions and the swaying of his flagship from the Eternal Fleet’s barrage. His eyes were closed, but he could see the brightness of the flames from behind his eyelids. He felt the heat from the encroaching fires, and since he apparently survived being crushed by the rubble, he wondered if he was going to suffer the agony of being burnt to death instead. The Lady Scyva wasn’t going to show mercy on a man who had killed enough people to empty out several planetary systems, committed patricide and fratricide, and cast out his mother.
If I do, I deserve it.
The familiar presence got closer, but his still-addled brain couldn’t quite piece together who or what it was.
He felt something – hands, maybe – cupping the back of his head and gingerly lifting it up. Shortly after, those hands grabbed tightly at his shoulders, bunching up the fabric. He felt himself being dragged slowly, and painfully, out of the mess of twisted metal and crumbled duracrete before sitting him upright to lean back on something.
Without the debris crushing him and sitting upright, albeit a bit slouched, he felt his injuries at a greater intensity. His adrenaline must have ebbed away while he was unconscious, because there was nothing helping to dull the pain. His chest now burned as if acid was eating its way through it. He felt the brittle shift of his ribs when he experimentally took a slow breath and exhaled. There was something wrong with his back, but he felt a brief pang of relief when he noticed that he could move his toes within his boots.
He was certain he had fractures in both of his legs, but he was in no position to further assess the damage.
He followed up with a quick once-over of his arms and hands. He balled up both his hands into fists, and to his surprise, his right hand and all of its fingers were still intact. His felt nothing from his left hand, and when tried to nudge himself in the side with his elbow, he felt a dull tap that was higher up than where he expected his elbow to be. That was when he knew most of his cybernetic arm was missing.
So that’s why I couldn’t feel my arm earlier, he thought dazedly. It must’ve gotten crushed and broken off slightly above the elbow when he was crushed by the collapsing ceiling. He foggily recalled that his left arm was still intact during the duel.
Something warm caressed his cheek with a familiar gentleness, although his brain was still too weary to think about why it was so familiar.
“I wanted to save you,” the presence said, the voice almost breaking with heartache.
The presence was his mother. Shock coursed through his body like the time he was struck by his father’s infamous Force lightning. He felt her grief for Thexan flash by momentarily before being replaced by the anguish at seeing him battered and broken.
He felt himself tearing up and choked back a sob. His mother didn’t escape with the Outlander when she had the opportunity to and instead stayed behind in his failing flagship. He’d preferred her to have left him here to die instead so that she’d at least have a chance to make it. But now, he was already dying and she had stayed behind knowing she was going to die too because she, as stubbornly as always, refused to give up on him.
He felt himself tearing up with guilt for putting his mother through so much anguish and for sacrificing herself, but that feeling didn’t last long. The Force urgently tugged on his consciousness, drawing his attention elsewhere.
He felt Vaylin’s presence, and he felt coldness from anger, contempt, and darkness from the promise of violence. His skin crawled and his body broke out in a cold sweat as he sensed that his sister was in the bridge with them. It was as if her very presence sucked out the temperature of the bridge despite the fires growing with every minute that passed.
“You’re too late,” Vaylin said to their mother, her voice laced with barely restrained fury. “You’re always too late.”
“Vaylin, please. Come with me,” he heard his mother beg. “What happened to Thexan, Arcann … I should’ve stayed.”
His mother’s voice warbled slightly at the last sentence as if she was on the verge of crying. Through the Force, Arcann felt the regret she carried for over twenty years for leaving and even after such a long absence, a twinge of hope.
His mother’s remorse was genuine; he didn’t need the Force to feel it but the Force showed him the breadth of it. She’d been ready to give up her old life and all that she knew to shepherd them away from their abusive father; he’d never admitted it to his siblings but he’d yearned to follow her, but at the same time, he wanted to show his father and himself that he was strong and could spurn affection.
And so he did, and their mother had left them to the cruelties and machinations of their father. It didn’t occur to him until he was older that she wanted to leave not just because her children were grossly mistreated, but because she herself was being abused; she just did her best to hide the worst excesses of his father away from him and his siblings.
He had been so angry at her for leaving when he was a boy, but now, he couldn’t be angry with her. He was angry at himself for not leaving with her.
He was foolish; he knew that now. Strength didn’t come from scorning those that you loved.
As for that pang of hope… his mother clung onto it like it was a lifeline. He knew that it was all she had left, that she could still salvage the broken pieces remaining that was their debilitated family and put them back together like gluing back the shattered pieces of a vase after it had fallen onto the floor.
He opened his eyes, waiting for his vision to clear up. His ruined eye couldn’t see anything due to the damaged optical sensors in the mask, but he was relieved to find that he could still see out of his good eye.
Vaylin’s unrestrained rage crashed into him with the force of a hurricane, and he cringed.
“You were weak. You left us,” his sister spat, her tone growing more and more accusatory with each word.
It was a wonder that she managed to keep her voice level, and it was a miracle that his mother didn’t have a mental breakdown over Vaylin’s emotional beating. To his amazement, he felt his sister’s aura in the Force soften, and for a moment, he felt a glimmer of possibility, hope that his unpredictable and unhinged sister would see sense in such a crucial moment and listen to their mother.
“You left me,” he heard his sister say, her voice softer. Sadder.
“I’m here now,” his mother quietly reassured her. Even though her voice was hushed, he heard it break.
Optimism for his sister seeing sense was too much to ask for. In a better time in the future, she may be more receptive to listening to their mother, but he imagined that future being very far away. It wasn’t a future that he’d have the prospect to see.
His sister’s sudden softness was only the eye of the storm. Temporary. Transient.
And then the hurricane resumed, fueled by resentment and hatred. To his horror, it was the same hatred that led him to attack their father. The same hatred that led to him killing Thexan.
“I’ll never be what you want,” Vaylin retorted.
He heard the familiar snap-hiss of his sister’s lightsaber in the distance. Even through the din of the explosions and collapsing structures, he heard the hollow taps his sister’s boots made as she sprinted towards them. Suddenly, he didn’t hear her footsteps anymore.
His mother ignited her own lightsaber in response, shielding him from whatever attack his sister had in store for them.
The last time someone in his family succumbed to the dark side and leapt to do a killing blow with the lightsaber was him, and it had ended appallingly. It had cost him Thexan’s life and what little remaining humanity he had left in him.
He wasn’t going to let his last two remaining family members kill each other. Ignoring his chest injury and the considerate pain that radiated from it when he sat up a little straighter, Arcann gritted his teeth and Force pushed his sister away from their mother.
Vaylin flew backwards, somersaulted, and landed at the entrance of the bridge. Her anger, as if it could’ve burned brighter, crashed into him like a shockwave from a stun grenade.
The Force push left him gasping for air, and stars exploded through his vision. He slumped down slightly and lifted his head up to breathe easier. When his lungs didn’t burn as much, he turned his head to gaze at his sister, who sucked in a breath of surprise. Even at this distance, he could see her eyes, and his skin crawled anew. Her eyes were fiery and animalistic, like those of religiously dark-sided Sith. Perhaps even more so.
“Why? WHY?” his sister howled in disbelief, her voice cracking.
She’s our mother. He would’ve yelled at her if he didn’t have a pulverized chest.
Arcann’s good hand tightened around the edge one of the durasteel girders that have fallen nearby and hoisted himself up. He was still bent over, but putting the weight of his body onto his two legs brought forth even more injuries than he knew about.
From earlier, he suspected that there were two, based on the throbbing in his legs. Those were probably bruises or were due to the lack of circulation when his legs were crushed underneath the rubble. He felt the sharp stab of a hairline fracture on his left shin, but he had no choice but to put his weight on that leg because there was something wrong with his right knee. Bending it was excruciating, and he wondered if he tore something in or around the joint. It was more likely that his kneecap shattered when he was crushed underneath duracrete and durasteel.
“Vaylin. There’s hope for you. For both of you,” his mother started. He could feel that she was carefully walking a tightrope, as if choosing the wrong words to say meant that Vaylin would never listen to her and would be forever lost.
But then again, Vaylin never listened to anybody unless there was a wonderful reward in store for her somewhere down the line.
“Come with me,” their mother implored.
He could hear that it wasn’t just a plea; it was an invitation. An invitation so that she could start making amends.
His mother was determined. If she believed that she could do something, she could do it. She could rescue the pieces of their broken family and bring them back together. They would never be perfect, or whole, but they could be a better family.
At least not so dysfunctional.
A new series of explosions shook the bridge, raining flaming trusses and cracked duracrete. His sister deftly somersaulted out of the way, but the debris now blocked their only exit from the bridge, separating her from them. She hadn’t been crushed by the durasteel; he felt her presence, although it was getting farther and farther away as she abandoned them to make her own hasty escape.
“Vaylin!” their mother screamed.
He lost his balance and stumbled forward, his good hand breaking the fall. He felt his mother loop her arm around his upper back to help him stand and to support him as they hobbled together to the blocked exit.
Moving hurt. He couldn’t run, not with his fractured leg and shattered knee, and he didn’t want to walk as every step alternated between a stab of pain through his shin and a throbbing ache on and around his knee. But if he let his mother take the brunt of his weight and drag him, she’d be slowed considerably and the slim chances of them escaping would only get slimmer.
Breathing hurt even more, especially now that the fires had raised the temperature high enough to scorching. The filters in his mask could filter out the ash and other airborne particulates, but it couldn’t modulate the temperature of the air that came through. Still, he kept mentally chanting to himself to breathe in the air that burned his lungs so that he could get enough oxygen into his system to stay conscious.
In and out. In and out…
It was like Korriban all over again, when he had been unlucky to have been caught in that bombing run. In an instant, the air had turned searing hot, burning his mouth and throat. His missing arm aside, he was unsure which had hurt more, the burns settling on his face or the hot air and ash in his respiratory tract.
A fistful of fabric bunched up on his right side, and he grunted in pain. His mother mumbled something sounding like an amalgamation of ‘sorry’ and ‘hold on’ and she adjusted her hold on him to something more comfortable.
She used her free hand to move away the rubble blocking the exit. He raised his good arm to help, but the physical and mental effort strained him too much, and he gave up soon after trying. Right now, he was his mother’s liability, and he was becoming more of a liability by weakening himself.
In her desperation, she was successful, flinging distorted metal and crushed slabs aside. She looped his good arm around her neck as they shuffled together out of the bridge into the cool relief of the corridor.
They staggered through the corridors, occasionally encountering the scrap metal of defeated Skytroopers and the bodies of unfortunate Knights. Whenever his chest wound and knee became too much to endure, he felt his mother shift most of his weight onto her and they would stumble together, with her dragging him before he found another scrap of energy to limp again.
All of the passageways looked the same in his pained daze, and the longer he limped, the sleepier he felt. Darkness ate away at the corners of vision and he found that it got more and more challenging to stay awake.
“Arcann. Stay with me,” his mother pleaded, out of breath. “Where’s the nearest hangar?”
He wasn’t sure if he answered her before he fell unconscious, leaving his mother clinging onto him and onto the thin hope that at the nearest hangar, there would be a shuttle that survived the bombardment.
He coughed violently as he came around, his fractured ribs cracking threateningly with each cough. He tasted blood and judging by the metallic taste in his mouth, there was a lot of it.
The Lady Scyva must’ve had been merciful to them. He found himself strapped into a seat in one of his shuttles behind the captain’s chair, the latter which his mother occupied as she prepared the shuttle for takeoff.
She was talking to someone over the comms. The voice on the other end replied, and he instantly recognized the Outlander, which jolted him awake.
“Do not betray me, Senya,” the Outlander warned.
Arcann knew the Outlander had a strong moral compass, and he wagered that she wasn’t going to shoot them down. Even though he imprisoned her as a carbonite trophy for five years, probably killed off those she cherished the most, and skewered her on his lightsaber during their duel on Asylum, she was too good for that.
Despite her predictability when it came to making what was deemed the best and most honourable choices, she was still a pragmatist and he knew she wasn’t above making those choices that went against the Jedi Code if they were for the greater good of the galaxy. Shooting them down would go against the Code, but the galaxy would finally be free from him and his tyranny.
He wouldn’t be so sure of her actions if he was the only one on the shuttle, but he knew that his mother was the deciding factor here as the Outlander was loathe to shoot his mother down.
He tasted fear, sour at the back of his mouth. It wasn’t for himself, but for his mother, who didn’t deserve this if the Outlander decided to press a certain button with her thumb. Had he been by himself, he would thank the Lady Scyva if the Jedi decided to shoot him down because it would’ve ended his suffering.
“That was never my intention, but I must do right by my family,” his mother wilfully answered, looking down at him with concern before gently placing her hand on his. He could feel the warmth of her hand through the glove.
He looked up at her exhaustedly. I’m sorry I’ve hurt you so much, he wanted to say to her, but before he could, she had strayed away from his chair back towards the comms. He slumped down again into a more comfortable position.
“He saved my life,” his mother continued. “He can be redeemed. Let me help Arcann become the man he was meant to be.”
He heard a beep and felt the shuttle move. Somebody else protested angrily through the comms. The voice was male, but Arcann was too drained to wring his brain to figure out who the voice belonged to.
“I’m taking him,” his mother boldly responded, cutting communications and guiding the ship out of the hangar. He imagined that this was the same stubbornness and nerve that lead her to speak out against his father, the man who slew a god.
His mother was piloting carefully, not only to avoid the Eternal Fleet’s attacks but also to ensure his comfort and not aggravate his serious injuries.
He fell unconscious again, and when he regained his consciousness, they were both far away enough from his mutilated flagship that if the entire thing went off in one explosion, they wouldn’t be caught in the blast radius.
But they were being followed, and their pursuer was catching up fast.
His mother felt it too. He saw his mother’s gloves grow taut as her hands tightened around the controls, ready to manoeuver out of a dogfight and jump into hyperspace.
Worry flooded through him. His mother was a more than capable pilot, but so was the Outlander. He never faced her one-on-one in aerial combat, but he knew, based on information gathered by Zakuulan intelligence, that she had a high chance of shooting down their shuttle if this progressed into a dogfight. In fine health, he could’ve fought a spectacular aerial battle against her and won, but he was terrified for his mother.
Even the members of her Alliance didn’t seem to know what to do with the dilemma that was him and his mother. Through the open channel, he could hear them arguing amongst themselves.
“She’s in your firing range, Commander. Shoot them down!”
“You’ll kill them both.”
“Senya, what are you doing?”
“Saving my son,” his mother answered confidently.
He felt the tension hang over the emptiness of space between their shuttles, growing more suffocating with each passing second as the Outlander weighed her decisions and their consequences. He felt the Force settle contently around them, and he knew her verdict just before she announced it.
“I won’t shoot an unarmed ship. Arcann’s no longer a threat.” the Outlander declared to her crew. Her voice softened, and she added, “I’m trusting you, Senya.”
“Thank you, Commander,” his mother answered gratefully. “Your mercy will be remembered.”
He felt the shuttle lurch momentarily as the shuttle jumped into hyperspace. He heard his mother pressing a few controls on the dashboard before hearing her muted footsteps.
He glanced up at her and found that it became increasingly difficult to focus. His vision became blurry and increasingly dark, and he closed his eyes.
He opened them again when she gently caressed his cheek, and he noticed that she knelt down considerately so he didn’t have to strain his neck to look up at her. She opened her mouth and said something, but to him, it came out as a string of garbled words and his brain was too overworked to deduce what it was. Perhaps it was their destination?
I’m sorry, he rasped.
He wasn’t sure if he said it for real this time, and he didn’t know if his mother heard, but it didn’t matter, because Arcann fell unconscious as the darkness rose up to claim him once more.