Echoes of the past { sw-adjacent verse- a young conflicted ben experiences fane ciudat’s memories in a vision (they may be galaxies apart or even mid-conversation) }
[ Echoes of the Past / Accepting ]
{ Fane Ciudat: Star Wars AU Stephen Strange }
In the thick of the forest night, there is no breeze… only heavy atmosphere and heavier greenery. Vegetation grows as fervently as the herbivorous wildlife which consume it, for this world has not yet developed life sentient enough to throw its own ecology off-balance and threaten its own thoughtless destruction. The air offers a very different threat to those not accustomed to it, however -- the threat of suffocation. Half and again as heavy as the atmospheric mixture of most other habitable worlds, it inspires every crevice to pour sweat and every foreign cluster of alveoli to throb painfully with the exertion of processing more than it was ever meant to taken on.
The local creatures and insects lie silent, as they have for the last several minutes. They slumber in unison… a most curious effect, and one the stormtroopers had been observant enough to notice just moments before finding their quarry.
He hangs in the air with no apparent effort to that effect, as though his body's specific gravity precisely matches that of the atmosphere. His legs are crossed before him, and were it not for the drooping fabric of his pants, they might have believed him to be seated on some invisible but quite solid surface. But it could not be so. Rather, it is something far more impossible: a simple demonstration of discipline and power that they will never possess.
The radiance of a dozen rifle-mounted glowlamps is trained upon his bare back, illuminating a sheen upon his cerulean skin that suggests he's not even truly sentient… perhaps he's no more than a carving of Hoth core ice over an antigrav platform.
Perhaps they might have even believed it, if he had not chosen to slowly lift both arms, outstretched, palms open. A gesture of surrender. Helplessness. And indeed, there is no help that shall come for him here.
The sergeant scoffs through his buzzing intercom. "Ready."
A dozen rifles are set to stance.
His left wrist twitches, and his fingers swim through the air.
The intensity of all twelve glowlamps suddenly seems to increase a hundredfold. The light itself seems to leap forth from them and curl about through the clearing as ribbons, as though the full measure of their batteries is coalesced into material form and then summoned into the gravity well of his body… like he is in fact a black hole in disguise, accreting the full measure of neighboring stars.
An instant later, so does the ice-blue floating man in front of them… and all in the forest is plunged into the terrible, consuming darkness of the suffocating night.
There is audible shuffling. Movement of body parts and materials that don't lend themselves to quick and easy explanation. Outcries of stormtroopers not in their helmet coms, but in the chokingly heavy atmosphere of the forest air. The silent dark is pierced by a blaster bolt -- three -- ten -- twenty -- all in seemingly random directions, burning through bark and leaves and rot… an assortment of confused and pained shrieks as a handful of those random blasts drill through armor that isn't, really.
A pair of satisfying cracks followed by the thumping of two bodies to the ground.
The last of the troopers, his helmet off, chest heaving and burning in the dark, his rifle clutched tightly -- and when he pulls the trigger, he could swear, he would swear on his life he sees the bolt lance straight into the impossible blue man's abdomen. A killing shot. There should have been the slump of a body, there should have been some kind of noisy disturbance, a clatter, a whimper, a scream…
But instead there's a hand closed over the barrel of his rifle.
He pulls the trigger in abject terror.
The rifle doesn't respond.
In the next instant, a cold palm against his forehead, fingers closing over his scalp.
Fear flees, emptying from his soul like an overturned pitcher… and then when the pitcher is turned upright again, serenity pours in.
A warm timbre wraps around him like a blanket. "You should lie down."
To keep feeling this utter peace and calm, there is nothing in the universe he would rather do.
The shuttle pilot turns about in his seat in surprise as the stormtrooper approaches. "SU-2846, I heard the commotion over the comms. What the devil happened out there?"
The trooper enters the cockpit… but says nothing until his hand is against the pilot's forehead.
"You should go check on the others."
With helmet doffed, the blue man peers out through the transparisteel cockpit window, revealing the curvature of the planet he's finally leaving behind… as well as the vast vista of glittering space beyond it. The only omen to darken his gaze is the sight of a Star Destroyer in geosynchronous orbit around the planet, right at its equator. No doubt the ship that had supplied this shuttle and the platoon of troopers manning it.
The navicomputer is already calculating the jump to hyperspeed. The Impstar Deuce is trying to hail him, and already it's turning away from the planet, but it won't overtake the shuttle in time.
They're becoming agitated. They're making too much noise. They'll be found soon -- and they won't be suffered to leave intact.
He doesn't feel like being around to watch that.
Just as he grips the lever to throw the shuttle into hyperspace, his spine straightens… and he turns towards the unoccupied copilot's seat.
His entrancing golden eyes narrow, and his lips part on perhaps the simplest, and hardest, question of any that could be asked in this moment.
It's a memory. It's a vision. It's in the past. There's no telling exactly how long ago. During the reign of the Empire, clearly, but whether at its peak or during the Rebellion, those are details not evident here.
But… the impossible blue man wearing stormtrooper armor inside a memory… is looking right at him.
