The affectionately-named Milk Battalion had just come off of their biggest bust yet. Thousands of enslaved souls were set free, many of them receiving immediate care from the Clone medics aboard the Gruyere even as the crew set out to celebrate. Pat’s ship, the Beholden, and his own actions on the ground, had brought about the traffickers’ capture. All night, he soaked up commendations from the officers and the Clones. Aheka and Sinvulkt looked so proud.
He flashed his trademark grin until his jaw hurt, sipped the drinks they bought for him, and altogether, did his best impression of himself all night. But unlike the big-wigs and the adoring public, he had been in the trenches, with Clones shot out from right beside him. He was in the blocks of cells and the webs of chains, slicing the bonds off the emaciated bodies of the underworld’s worst victims. He saw their wounds and scars up close. Too close.
Some days, it all got to be too much for Pat.
People enthusiastically pointed out, thanked, and praised Pat all night. He was honestly thrilled that he was recognized for doing something great. At the same time, though, he grew more and more anxious and queasy. Why could this be celebrated when it couldn’t take place without suffering? Surely they don’t know what I had to see… I just want to be with my pack right now…
Eventually, the four weary warriors stepped away from it all, the merry buzz of the party carrying them back to their quarters. Pat tried to just keep walking, make it to his room before dropping his facade, but it was no good. Rema, Sinvulkt and Aheka noticed immediately as they looked at him more closely.
“Pat, what’s wrong?” Rema asked, spotting the signs of distress rapidly. Aheka and Sinvulkt stopped cold, also looking at him with concern. He gave a heartbroken smile.
“You saw things down there, didn’t you,” Rema murmured.
Pat’s eyes welled up. I’m ruining this night for everyone, his mind wailed.
Sinvulkt acted first, rushing to wrap her wings around his shaking form and gently letting him down as he fell to his haunches, sobbing.
Aheka placed her hands on his shoulders, being careful never to touch his neck. “You can talk to us,” she assured. “About whatever you saw down there.”
“N-no… I’m okay,” he pleaded. “Please… keep having fun and don’t lose sleep over me…”
Each of them looked outraged at the suggestion that they should leave him alone with everything he’d seen. “We aren’t going anywhere,” they all asserted.
“I-I don’t deserve this! I deserve to be a slave myself! It should have been me… oh, now I sound so ungrateful…” he curled even tighter, writhing with humiliation and grief.
“Easy, Pat, let’s all breathe together, okay?” Aheka urged everyone to join in and they walked Pat’s breaths back to normal.
“I-I-I couldn’t save everyone… I can’t bear what I saw… I’m such a disgrace…” he hiccuped through the words. At least he was breathing. The three looked ready to go to war against Pat’s feelings.
“We’ve all seen the horrors of war, Pat,” Aheka reassured him. “And we’re all here for you.”
“I’m supposed to be happy…” he whispered, brokenly. Sinvulkt’s wings tightened protectively around him.
“Talk to us, my Padawan,” she whispered. “Don’t hesitate.”
“All of the captives were… in such bad shape,” he choked out. “We took out the guards but before we could stop all of them they started to shoot people… one after another…”
He couldn’t stop a sob from tearing out of his throat.
“A-a-and… I was trying to pull this girl… out from under a huge pile of chains… d-d-died in my arms…”
Aheka looked heartbroken, though unsurprised, that one of her children had to witness such atrocity. Sinvulkt looked like she’d never let Pat leave the safety of her wings. Rema clamped down on her own flashbacks to keep on rhythmically stroking the top of Pat’s head.
“It hurts,” he finally whispered.
No one disagreed.
Eventually, Aheka stood, gradually letting the others help Pat stand up. The three were bone-tired, but Pat’s eyes looked like they’d be open until the end of time. “You know where to take him,” she whispered to Sinvulkt and Rema, herself sneaking away to Pat’s room to grab his favorite blanket.
The next morning, any other Jedi walking through the common room would have stumbled upon quite the sight. Aheka’s outstretched arms and Sinvulkt’s wings curled around Rema and Pat, who’d both fallen asleep curled around the other. The former two had been awake for hours, but would do anything not to wake their sleeping charges.
Whenever it got to be too much, they deserved every moment of comfort they could provide.
I woke up to a dark room and the song of the Force. It soothed my aches, warmed my chills, healed my wounds. There was no danger here, it whispered to me. Pain and suffering raged nearby, but between these enclosed walls, there was only calm and peace.
Under it’s soft lullaby, I wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep.
So I did.
✯ ✯ ✯ ꒰ঌ ⚔ ໒꒱ 𓆩⚔𓆪 ꒰ঌ ⚔ ໒꒱ ✯ ✯ ✯
My body rested and rested, until survival instinct took over the grogginess, and I began to wonder about my surroundings. My questions were quickly answered: I was in a 4x4 square room, devoid of any window, trapped between heavy walls and a heavier door. From the humid atmosphere and the fresh air, I guessed I was underground.
When I reached out to the Force, it felt both too bright and dampened by the distance between me and the surface. A strange sore had overcome my sense during my time in the collar, like being put into a well-lit room after weeks of darkness. I played with its current, enjoying the sensation of free energy running through my fingers.
By the thunderous wind, I had missed its power!
With the Force at my side… it felt like nothing was impossible.
(And yet, I didn’t need to hear its whispers to know I was still trapped.)
The room was solid enough that no Force Blast would break through its walls. Furthermore, even in the unlikely case I successfully left it… I couldn’t beat all the guards outside.
My memory of the previous hour remained fuzzy, void of sense, except for the doctor's words that rang in my head. He had said I’d need a few days with the Force to regain my full strength… but I felt better already. Surely they didn’t intend to leave me here any longer than a few hours? My feathers flattened against my skin.
(I had heard of what isolation did to some slaves).
✯ ✯ ✯ ꒰ঌ ⚔ ໒꒱ 𓆩⚔𓆪 ꒰ঌ ⚔ ໒꒱ ✯ ✯ ✯
The hours passed, and no one came. Hunger clenched my stomach, but there was no food to calm it. My throat felt raw from the times I cried for the door to open, but there was no water to soothe it.
Even the Force had abandoned me. After so long without a proper connection to it, it felt foreign, slippery, dancing just at the edge of my fingertip but never in my palm. I yearned for the warmth of the Light, but it seemed hesitant, repulsed even to be brushed by my filthy hands.
Frustration became anger as I tried to Force it under my held, desperate for any form of stimuli in this dark, empty room, but it only drove it away from my grasp. The Dark was here as well, but I knew better than to touch it in such a dangerous place. Its impulses would make me defy my jailors, and this was the shortest road towards death.
I stayed there an eternity. My hooks broke from scratching the door. My knuckles bruised from knocking desperately on the too-narrow walls. My lungs hurt from howling, be it just to hear my own voice.
Nothing felt real.
For all I knew, nothing was real.
At some point, a glass of water was thrown into the room, and I was never so happy to lick the dirty ground. The soiled water felt heavenly on my too-dry tongue.
When the door opened, and the Governor second made a disgusted frown at the sight - or smell - beholding him, I was all too happy to put the Force-suppressant collar around my neck.
The sturdier chains were those you refused to fight against.
I only realised my mistake the next time I met with Scel, and he cried for the Force in longing.
I learnt, later, that being cut from the Force was what had caused my fever. Inevitably, a few weeks later, I felt ill again. And every time, the governor second made sure I regretted being connected back to the Force as I recovered, as he trapped me in the Room for days.
The first time, I screamed and cried. The second time, I layed down for hours, letting the Force wash through me. The third time, it showed me the outside world. My body may have been trapped in the dark room, without any stimuli to distract it, but my mind traveled kilometers. As long as the room was dark and empty, I became something else. For a few hours, I was a runyip, a womp rat, a bogwings... By a few months, I could maintain the strange form of meditation for the whole length of my isolation without taking a break. By one year, I knew most of the fauna and flora of the planet intimately.
Always, I made sure to scratch the walls, to appear delighted when cutting myself from the Force, to struggle until the last moment when exhaustion dragged me down to announce that the heavenly hours with the Force were near. My captors remained unaware all throughout, that what had been made for torture, was the time I was the freest of them all.
The only time when I wasn’t a slave.
(I never had a good poker face. But let it not be said, that I was a bad liar.)
I was a slave. This was a truth no one, not even the other slaves that scorned every breath I took, could deny. It meant my every step was carefully watched over, limited, judged like a prised asset. It meant I was to obey the governor's second’s commands, and never, ever fail. It meant I was a well oiled, beautiful tool.
Slaves were like droids in a way. Were we to stray too far away from our programming, to break some costly part and stop functioning, we’d be sent away to the landfill the same way.
Getting upset, sick or broken in some way lowered your value, took you closer to the landfill, and simply wasn’t allowed if you wanted to survive. Which is why, when I first felt a wave of fever cloud my senses, I ignored it.
Despite the first-class care I was provided as the ‘governor’s Jedi pet’, I had caught a cold a few times already. Everytime, I managed to hide it, and kept my usefulness all throughout. When I was too sick to truly hide the rawness of my voice, the tightness of my throat, the hissing breath, the governor second shifted most of my duties to harder, but less political chores, where I wouldn’t hurt the governor’s reputation nor his friends' sensibilities. I never vocally told him I was sick, but I doubted the shifts were a coincidence.
This time, the fever came slowly. It slithered through my body like water, dampened my awareness one inch per day, never too slow, never too fast. No mucus filled my nose, but it felt like cotton had replaced my brain. My feathers were damp, covered in moisture from dawn to sunset. Each step felt more difficult, more heavy. The temperature in my room seemed to drop lower at night, chills running down my spine as I struggled to fall asleep, only to jump awake feeling on fire.
It took me several ‘accidents’ during my daily chores, broken tableware mixed with shattered dishes, guest tripped or glasses knocked out, to understand I was sick. It took me a single glance at the governor second to know my lack of foresight would have consequences. It took me failing to take off after the dozen lashes I had been saddled with as punishment to realise the sickness was serious.
A grounded bird is a dead bird, my mind whispered.
I weakly flapped my wings again, to no success. The simple action of holding them up was an impossible task, and I soon let them fold back limply on my shoulder blades. The change of balance was enough to make me waver.
I geared myself up for the long walk ahead. The walk from downtown to the palace was barely a few kilometers. Through flying, I could do it in minutes, but now, with my limbs weaker than a loth-kitten’s and my vision blinking in and out of existence, it felt like crossing the whole planet.
That night, I arrived late to the palace. The governor second didn’t punish me however— and simply locked myself in my room earlier for the night. I was still a potential asset, and we both knew I would only get better if I was allowed to rest.
The next day, I opened my eyes to a world of blur.
Today there was a big meeting, and I would have to serve. I clenched my fists, preening hooks biting at flesh. There was no cutting it.
I stumbled upward, nausea balling inside my stomach. Only the fact that I missed most meals the previous day stopped me from soiling the floor in vomit. Using the wall as support, I slithered towards the corridor. The door of my room was so hard to open I almost thought it had been left locked.
(But it hadn’t been)
I blinked, and I was in the meeting room, a plate in my hands. I had a vague recollection of struggling through the halls, of getting my assignment and being ordered to serve guests their wine, but nothing more. My memory was as fuzzy as my thoughts. Everything felt suddenly confusing and disorienting, tinted with an unreal edge.
"Sinvulkt,” I almost dropped the plate at the voice of the governor’s second. “Come serve sir Beral, would you?"
I nodded. The movement was enough to send my world into a whirl, and I flared my wings to retain balance, almost knocking a vase off its shelf.
One more step.
Someone was speaking angrily at me. My feathers flattened. What were they saying? I tensed, forcing my leg forward, a false smile on my face. If I obeyed, everything would be alright.
One more step.
The speaking turned into shouting, but I felt far away from it. Had I done something wrong? The vase was still at its place. The wine glass was only a few centimeters away now. I was almost close enough to pour the ambery liquid inside.
One more step.
I wavered, but held on. My heart clenched under the fear of what would happen if I stopped being useful. I needed to reach the glass.
One more step.
Uncontrollable shudders racked my body. Had the glass always been so far away? My breath came in short, and my head spinned. An icy void filled my stomach, sending my heart racing, and yet, I was burning. Dark spots kept appearing in front of my eyes, hindering my vision.
