Private Dream No More

[Lief]

For an eternity there was nothing.​

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An inky abyss lay sprawled before him, unable to be touched or manipulated, refusing to be added to, he was kept in permanent suspension. No thoughts, no feelings, nothing. It was as if the universe had been shut off. Then, one day, slowly but surely, that emptiness began to fill.​

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It started with the subtle twitching of a finger, and from there the vitality spread. Soon after others were made aware of the change, as subtly he became aware of the presence of individuals around him. Eliphas couldn't quite make out what they were saying, it came to him more like muffled warbles, but it filled the void nonetheless and he clung to it in response.​

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From there smaller things fell into place. It was as though he was learning how to exist once more. Vision came in miniscule steps, at first just light alone and then shadowy shapes unfocused and without dimension or detail. His ears sharpened too, and soon he could hear what was said, the mutterings of the doctors and those who passed through to ask after his progress. Still he couldn't quite differentiate voices, he didn't know who was there and who wasn't.​

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But it was progress, it was all progress...​

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Then, finally, his eyes opened.​

 

[Starlin Rand]

"Finally, you're awake."

Starlin's voice was the first Eli would hear upon his awakening. The Jedi Knight had a front row seat to Eli's sickbed, and he wasted no time in trying to talk to his apprentice.

"You gave me quite a scare, kid. What's the last thing you remember? Is it those flying spider bat things that came after you, the ones with the paralyzing venom?"

That was what the doctors and medical droids all assumed was the cause of Eliphas' coma, anyway. It had put him out of commission for a few months, during which quite a lot had happened... but Starlin was waiting to deliver the bad news until Eli had a chance to get his bearings.

Alas, the trauma and strife of the last few weeks was written all over Starlin's face. Exhausted and mourning the deaths of two friends at Tython, he hadn't been sleeping or eating much. The gleam in his good eye remained, but it had gone just a little bit dimmer since the last time Eli had been awake.

Lief​

 

[Lief]

No sooner had his eyes opened than a familiar voice broke through the general din of the ship. The whirring and beeping machinery in their vicinity, and the hum of the vessel itself, had been something of a soothing presence, but finally hearing his Master's voice?​

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Well that was borderline angelic.​

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Eliphas tried to feel his way around a few words, though ultimately landed on whetting his dry lips. Eyes closed, then reopened and focused overhead. A long intake of breath and a soft sigh was the only response he'd receive for a short while.​

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And then the boy nodded.​

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"Bloody...Spiders..." he rasped, something akin to a chuckle underlining the words. "Did we win..?"​

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Little did Eliphas know how insignificant that day was in comparison to all that had come since...​

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Starlin Rand ​

 

[Starlin Rand]

Seeing Eli licking his dry, cracked lips, Starlin got up to get the kid some water. A cup was pressed into Eli’s hands; if he was too weak yet to grip it, Starlin would prop him up and give him the drink himself.

“No.” Starlin’s answer sounded flat, dulled by defeat. “We lost Copero and Selvaris.”

And Xa Fel, and Foerost, and Empress Teta…

Eli seemed to be fairly alert, though about as groggy as one would expect after being asleep for months. Starlin was tempted to poke him or do something similarly startling to test his reaction time, but for once he opted to keep his more obnoxious impulses in check. This level of seriousness was uncharacteristic of him, but it gave more gravity to the words he was about to say.

“You’ve been asleep for a long time, baby.” It was perhaps the gentlest, most unteasing baby he had ever uttered. “A few months, in fact. A lot of crazy chit has happened since then.” He paused, rubbing his face and especially his tired eyes with a bony hand, before continuing. “The Maw made it all the way to Tython before the train derailed. Cut a straight line through the stars from Selvaris to there, destroying as they went.”

Eli had been a navigator before he joined the Jedi. He had to know what Starlin was getting at, had to be able to picture a galaxy map in his head and see Empress Teta, his homeworld, in the Maw’s path of destruction.

Lief​

 

[Lief]

"Oh..."​

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The initial news was deflating, and as he was propped into a seated position and helped to drink Eliphas' brow crinkled into a frown. They'd failed, then... He should have done more. Instead he'd been overwhelmed.​

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Apparently Starlin wasn't too happy about it all either, as he seemed particularly somber. The boy opened his mouth to respond further once he'd had his fill of water, but his apology was cut off by the uncharacteristically soft words of his Master. He blinked as he tried to comprehend what he was being told. Months? No, no way, Starlin was toying with him right?​

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But his usual humour was missing. Eliphas kept waiting for the punchline, a gotcha moment, but it never came.​

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Brain whirring, he began to process exactly what Starlin was getting at. Months. Further devastation and loss. It took a little while for his navigational mind to kick in, and when the implications became clear he bowed his head solemnly.​

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"Teta..?" he whispered, unsure if he actually wanted to hear the answer or not.​

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Starlin Rand ​

 

[Starlin Rand]

Starlin watched as Eli seemed to shrink down, as though the news had made him smaller. Then, as the realization kicked in, he felt guilty for making the boy figure it out on his own. He thought it would make things easier, but now he wasn’t so sure.

“Yeah,” he replied. “They got Empress Teta. I'm sorry, Eli.”

He wasn’t sure what that meant for Eli’s family. They may have survived by evacuating early on, or escaped the carnage simply by virtue of not being there when it happened. As far as he knew, they had made no attempts to contact him—which was probably a bad sign.

Reaching over to the bedside table, he picked up Eli’s datapad and offered it to him. The device could provide anything from the latest galactic news to communications with his parents (not to mention the holo-letters Starlin had been writing to him while he slept).

Lief​

 

[Lief]

Eliphas was quiet as he processed the news of his homeworld's invasion. So quiet in fact that he seemed to not even breathe. He found a spot on the bed and stared for a long while, until the datapad was passed over to him. He took it instinctively but rather than turn it on and make use of it he tucked it partially under the sheets and finally swallowed down the quickly forming lump in his throat.​

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Holding off on finding out the truth wouldn't make it any easier, but for now he couldn't even look at the device.​

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"How long has it been?" the boy finally asked, slumping down some from his seated position to lay back once more. For all the rest he'd had as of late, he was certainly feeling exhausted.​

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Starlin Rand ​

 

[Starlin Rand]

“Since Teta?” Starlin rubbed the back of his neck, trying to think that far back. “Uh… You didn’t miss it by much. Maybe a few days after you went out, the invasion reports started coming in. So about… five months?”

Not good news, he knew. The fact that Eli had quickly shoved his datapad away rather than try and contact his family didn’t go unnoticed by Starlin, either. He braced himself, expecting his sensitive apprentice to burst into tears, or possibly even react with anger.

Lief​

 

[Lief]

Another slow and methodical swallow was his only real response to the news.​

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Five months.​

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Five... Months. His gaze shifted briefly to the corner of the datapad which was peeking out of the blanket, before he looked away again. His stomach spasmed and he closed his eyes tightly in response. When they opened again he didn't look at Starlin or at anything really, his eyes became unfocused and glassy.​

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Then he spoke, and the words were uttered with a softness of volume yet a rough and firm tone, a whisper filled with disgust he couldn't hold back.​

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"I should never have left."​

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If he'd been there on Teta maybe he could have done something. Maybe he could have ensured their escape. He'd have been able to keep Annalis safe, and journeyed with them wherever they ended up. Instead he was sat here, barely minutes into being awake once more, physically weakened and exhausted, without a single clue of whether they were even alive much less where they ended up.​

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He wanted to stand and leave, head out there to find them, but he could barely muster the strength to push himself up enough to drink, and even then he'd needed Starlin's help. After so long laying in bed without use of his limbs he'd have to work to rebuild all that the atrophy had destroyed. He wasn't going anywhere.​

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And the frustration that brought about was more than evident upon his expression.​

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Finally he reached for the datapad, and the time it took to activate and load was excruciating.​

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Starlin Rand ​

 

[Starlin Rand]

Starlin was slow to understand what Eli meant. When understanding did dawn upon his sleep-deprived brain, he reacted with anger.

“You never should’ve left?” he echoed incredulously. “What the hell would you have done then? Do you think those fencing lessons your father paid for would’ve been enough to fend off a Mawite invasion?”

He shook his head, standing up and beginning to pace the floor as Eli reached for the datapad. “Yeah, why don’t you actually find out what happened to your family before you say shit like that? For all that you know, they might be just fine. They’re rich, after all. I’m sure they could pay for a first class ticket out of there ahead of everyone else.”

Lief​

 

[Lief]

Starlin's frankly understandable rage was met with a thousand yard stare from his student. The datapad fell from his hand in the midst of it, screen on but for now ignored. Eliphas just sat there and took it, wincing at the way in which he spat back about their difference in circumstance. What use was credits when an unexpected invasion falls upon a world?​

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Especially when it was the Maw who were responsible for it.​

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None of it felt real. The boy felt numb and confused, disoriented in more ways than one. He didn't even realize he was crying until the tears blurred his vision and stung. "I'm sorry" he whispered, though the words were squeaked into existence and barely audible at all.​

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Starlin Rand ​

 

[Starlin Rand]

“Crying! Of course!” Starlin threw his hands up in the air. “Can’t you do anything else?”

He heard the boy's apology, but it was useless as far as Starlin was concerned. Once again, Eli had abandoned his datapad, the question of the century left unanswered.

“I can’t take the suspense, baby. Are they alive, dead, missing?”

Starlin seized the datapad, flicking through the screen. His vision blurred. Not sure if the extra moisture was his eyes watering with exhaustion, or tears of his own, he swiped the back of his hand over his eyes and kept searching, perhaps hopelessly, for answers.

Lief​

 

[Lief]

Eliphas had never seen his Master so enraged, much less at him. Some small part of him wished he was still unconscious so he could avoid it entirely, but he reckoned he'd done enough 'sleeping' to last a lifetime these past few months. Instead he tried to stifle the tears, doing his best to become at least a little more stoic.​

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But given everything that was falling in his lap all at once, it was no easy feat.​

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The boy raised both hands and pressed them to each ear, squeezing his eyes shut, and tried for a moment to block it all out. Overwhelmed, sore, and barely able to move, he needed at least one second of quiet. Time to process.​

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He doubted he was going to get it.​

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As for the datapad, there were plenty of messages - some from Starlin himself, many from Iris, and a handful of other Jedi - but not a single one from any other Dune. Nor anything pertaining to the Tetan family. Nobody had reached out.​

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Starlin Rand ​

 

[Starlin Rand]

Dad, Mum, Danithel, Annalis. He saw them listed in Eli’s contacts. The complete lack of messages from any of them was alarming. Unless they didn’t give a damn about their son/brother, it didn’t bode well for their fate.

Eli had gone silent. Starlin looked up to find him covering his ears with his hands. Carefully setting the datapad aside, he hesitated a moment, then lifted one of Eli’s hands away so that he could hear him ask, “Do you want me to leave, or do you want me to stay?”

There was no trace of anger in his voice now, save a slightly elevated respiratory rate that made him sound a little bit breathy. While awaiting a response, Starlin found himself looking down at his own skinny arm next to one of Eli’s atrophied limbs. Force, they were both so wasted… and not in a fun way...

Lief​

 

[Lief]

The silence lasted just a moment, but it was a respite he sorely needed. When one hand was removed from an ear and Starlin's only statement was to inquire as to whether he wanted to be alone or not the boy's heart sank.​

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He'd taken the datapad. He'd looked through it. But he wasn't spilling the beans... Which meant there wasn't any information to give, didn't it?​

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His throat constricted just enough that each breath he took was worth less than half of a standard one, and the room began to spin. He lowered the other hand, which fell heavily to his side, and then opened his eyes to look at the man.​

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"Stay" came the cracked tone of his response, "Please."​

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Let him be angry. An angry Master was better than nobody at all.​

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Oddly enough, Eliphas at this point was just numb. No more tears, he didn't even feel like he could cry even if he wanted to. He just felt... Hollow.​

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Starlin Rand ​

 

[Starlin Rand]

Eli sounded like a little kid begging a parent to stay in his room at night for fear of a monster popping out of his closet. Starlin sighed, trying to center himself in the Force.

“I’m sorry for giving you such a hard time,” he said. “It’s just… been really rough. Nimdok’s dead, for one. He died on Tython. I blamed myself for it because I was here with you rather than there with him. If they had succeeded in destroying the planet too, I… don’t know what I’d do.”

He no longer felt so detached and adrift, severed from both his mentor and his apprentice, with no past and no future. But Nimdok was still gone, and there was no going back.

“So, look. You’re going to concentrate on getting well, young Padawan. After you’re back in shape, if your family’s still out there somewhere, then we go and find them. Yeah?”

Lief​

 

[Lief]

Nimdok was gone, something about Tython, and Starlin was blaming himself because...​

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Oh. Because he'd been here, worrying over Eliphas, rather than out there with the Professor. It seemed as though they both had their regrets then, didn't they? A desire to be where they hadn't been, to fend off the inevitable.​

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Slipping back down beneath the blanket, head pressed into the eternally-indented pillow, Eliphas just sort of sniffled. Nimdok was gone... Who did he return the holocron to now?​

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"I'm sorry" he said again, not for the first or the last time that day. Fresh exhaustion washed over him, for just a few minutes of lucidity alongside his Master he'd certainly expended any remaining energy he'd had. "You... You don't have to stay, if I'm in the way." He yawned as he said this, and his heavy eyes closed.​

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"I'm sorry I fell to the spiders..."​

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What a failure he was.​

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Starlin Rand ​

 

[Starlin Rand]

It’s going to be okay. Everything’s gonna be fine...

Lost in thought, Starlin was startled when he turned to find Eli laying down again. Something was wrong. A gut feeling told him that his apprentice wasn’t just going to rest.

He was slipping back into a coma.

"You... You don't have to stay, if I'm in the way."

“No, no. I’m staying, Eli,” he insisted, grabbing Eli by the shoulders and shaking him a little. “Stay awake. Don’t go to sleep again…”

But he could sense the boy in the bed weakening, could see the light going out of his eyes, wilting and withering. “Wake up!” Starlin pleaded. “Padawan Eliphas Dune, you can’t go back to sleep! You might not wake up again!”

One arm holding Eli upright against his chest, Starlin pressed the button to summon a nurse, then hit it repeatedly, cursing and slamming his fist against the wall out of desperation. “Please don’t do this to me,” he whispered hoarsely. “Not again, not again…”

Lief​