Fein has been a spectacle for years, and while Matt doesn’t know it, if you look in his eyes, you might think he’s reflecting it. Even as he’s used to being all shadow, all phantom, he enjoys a good show, enjoys seeing faces whiten when the look upon him. Can’t you see him even now, body a flickering thing, a ghostly thing, until he has no Force Signature at all, ask him if he’s alive if he can disappear like that. Making himself known to frantic Stromtroopers the last moment before he shows them how a lightsaber can burn flesh. The Creche’s teachings almost lost to him, drowned out by voices that were more powerful for too long. Still for them, he knew to take the full force of any blaster.
“Oh, my poor brother, I didn’t need to be on a holoscreen for that,” Mathias barks out a laugh, we’ll worry about consequences later, we’ll worry about them when Mathias has to face them, when he has to learn there are few he can’t run away from. He won’t be able to run away from this, and the realization of it just begins to sink inside of his chest. But, for now, there’s more to worry about. For now, he’s the same child lost in the galaxy, the same man who lived like this for so long, “What the fuck is this, a funeral? Shit, wrong joke. But next time, we’re still bringing a speaker.”
He feels it, that oil slick against his skin, crawling up his legs to his chest, incomprehensible, indescribable, and only shown to have affected Mathias in the way his form flickers back into focus, before almost out again, like blinking. Make him think of death, or the lack of. Numbness. But so used to this too, it doesn’t stop the fight, it doesn’t make him think it’s Fein, at all.
“And still so much to learn,” as he says it, he can feel the eyes on them, from the cameramen, from the other Jedi, those with more expectations than he’ll ever be able to meet, more than he was ever given so he doesn’t know what to do with it. With movements like Matt’s, you’d think he wasn’t thinking at all, thinking his movements weren’t planned, but they are, in their chaos, in the way he pushes Fein into the crowd as the hum of sabers hits his ears. “Think you get to be a hero?” The crowd will be aimed at now, not just them.
Mathias is flickering – his body literally willing itself in and out of existence, corporeal and phantom all at once, one and the same. It takes Fein a moment to connect the phenomena with his own powers, takes him longer than it should to recognize the roll tide of his own doing. He let himself get caught up in the power of the violence, in the call of blood. His breath comes heavy in his chest, heart pounding along his collar bones. He lets Matt’s body move him to the crowd, lets himself fold into the place he belongs – an echo of his brother’s grace – and with an effort he reigns his Force ability back.
Like pulling ocean waves out of their consistent and immoveable patterns he pulls the nightmares back – Mirialan hands scrabbling at his throat to will him into silence, layers of dirt burying him into a long cold dead earth. He faces the crowd, shaking from the exertion, just in time to wonder idly out loud, “A speaker? What the fuck are you going to play? That trash you call music?”
Fein’s eyes flick to the crowd in front of them, taking in the chaos they’ve started. With little speck of recognition he sees their people taking action – Fein doesn’t know where Bail and Leia are. He hopes they’re in the hands of the rebels, not the alternative. Littered between frightened civilians and faceless troopers, he can see the flash of a saber, the call of a voice he knows, or the flash of someone moving towards the action.
That’s who they’re supposed to be – moving towards, not away; to protect, not condemn.
Hero, Matthias’ lips shape the word, but Fein’s never known it to be applied to him. He wonders if somewhere on a cold planet, in a temple of rules, if there’s a child who will see his green skin and know that there is always another choice.
“I think I’ll leave that label to the professionals,” he nods to where Rishla and Llewyn carve their way into the depth of the chaos, his eyes locking into the whirlwind of deadly grace Llewyn’s become, “We can be their backup.”
That felt more natural – backup. The shadow’s shadow. Fein was born to be a second son, the other brother, the back-up. That made sense to him.
“Come on,” he carves a gap between a trooper’s third rib and his stomach, “I think they’ve had enough of our faces.”
