Fathers and their Daughters (Kaine Australis)

[Adara Raxis]

For months Adara was avoiding the conversation she needed most: With her Baba. How did a fourteen year old look into her father’s eyes and say, ‘I was so mad you died I ripped you from the afterlife and I’m not sorry’? How did one broach that situation?

It would have been easier if she’d stolen a speeder, or kissed a boy and got caught. Ew… no boy was worth kissing. Not unless it was her brothers and a peck on the cheek or forehead. What boy could possibly, ever be worthy of Baba’s little princess? Of Buir’s frail Dar’ika, too weak to pick up a blaster?

The horror on [member="Kaine Australis"]’ face was… real. Sigurd-Adolfo seemed in a daze most hours, clinging to life through Adara’s sense of will rather than a purpose of his own.

So it was, before her mother awoke, Adara Raxis-Australis walked into her mother and father’s bedroom on their Eiru estate with a tray of morning stim-caf and baked goods from the Estate kitchen, for a tete-a-tete with her Baba. Baby Viggo laid in his bassinet beside Yasha’s bedside, while Baby Taika slept with Mama Caz, daughter of daughters.

“Baba? Baba, I know you’re awake, I can hear your heartbeat, hurry up. Here’s your robe, the porch is lovely… mostly because I pushed a storm about twenty hectares north of here, but they needed the rain, so they can be pleased.” Putting on her brightest smile, Adara tip toed into the room carrying her tray via telekinesis. As always, Adara was draped in a soft yellow dress cinched around her upper waist with a light green ribbon. Dainty and given to fancy aruetiise clothing, Adara preened her mahogany hair as she walked out to the vast porch off her parents’ bedroom without looking to her father getting out of bed. Yes, she knew this was her mother’s room, and Baba had his own, just as Mama Caz had her own. The throuple each had their own space, but shared as well, as was their want. Wasn’t hard to feel where Baba was, he shone to her senses. A stable aura in the vault of stars.

The love of her three parents reminded Adara how unorthodox their lives became, but also how much the children were adored. One was not raised in proximity to [member="Caz Australis"] without feeling perfect and ultimate maternal love. Maybe Caz was the one who kept the family together, the glue between these disparate and odd celestial bodies flinging in various gravities…

… or maybe Adara needed to add more cocoa to her stim-caf. After all, she was only fourteen. So, sitting on the porch and waiting for her Baba to come before Buir woke up, Adara poured hot cocoa into her stim-caf, until it was a splash of stim-caf in an ocean of hot cocoa.

She sipped the sweet chocolate beverage, and watched the sun rise over the manicured gardens of their Estate. Workers from the local population worked the gardens even now, certain flora requiring harvesting before the morning dew faded off. It created work for many, rather than the selfish fanaticism of a few. That was what royalty, nobility was, wasn’t it? A group of sapients creating plenty for many, instead of a few? That’s what Papa Girak said, anyway, from his home on Panatha with his spouses.

“… I don’t like Darth Vesull, you know… he’s a… a…. a stupid face… I’m not him. I didn’t resurrect you the same way you resurrected me. I know it’s crazy for a baby to remember, but… the first memory I have is you singing to me, when I was wrapped in your shirt and… I know I was what, six, seven days old? When Buir cured you of the Force, and broke your jaw when you kissed her. I don’t remember the kiss, but Buir told me… I remember you singing to me. You holding me, when I was hungry, and Buir wasn’t awake… she’s still not awake, you know… whatever was left from being dead, she’s… she’s not really here, is she Baba? Not yet. she’s still asleep, isn’t she?” Adara sipped her hot cocoa, mixed with a tiny bit of stim-caf (because she was practically an adult), and sat back to watch the sun rise over manicured trees on this still alien world. “… you… you want to live, don’t you? ‘Cause we need you and Ram is a little dikut at times, and Buir can’t do this life thing without you. She never knew what love was until she met you. And yeah, I’m aware that’s like, insano-levels of pressure, but you’re frickin’ Baba, okay? You… you’re mythic…. and… and I… ”

Adara looked down at her mug, a goddess in training searching for the moral compass she naturally lacked. A little girl, who needed her father.

“I… I’m going to create a universe you want to live in, Baba… You and Buir and Mama Caz. It might take me a couple chances to get it right. But… you won’t let Buir kill me, right? For using the Force on Mandalore? For breaking her unbreakable law? She’s not going to hate me, when she finds out what I did… right? If she… If… she can’t find out… can she?” A daughter looked into her father’s eyes, confusion and hope in equal measures. “I’m only fourteen… I’m too little to take command of anything. And like, Yron, Sigurd and Cerani are like.. technically ten… nine? They’re so not old enough either. Even if they think they are. They’re all technically younger than me and it’s totally not fair they’re in charge, when they’re like, my little siblings.”

 

[Adara Raxis]

“I was adorable… aaand you were really good at singing. You were also the only person other than… well, the Brothers Darth, who held me without thinking I ought to be pitched back into the Nether from whence I came.” Adara smiled up at him, trying to avoid mentioning the Zambranos, who along with Kaine were at times the only ones, who didn’t wish tiny Adara dead.

“No it-“ Adara halted with [member="Kaine Australis"] 's finger, slumping back in her seat to moodily sip her cocoa. “… Ram not in too much… gosh you ask impossible things. Keeping Ram out of trouble’s harder than being Mand’alor. Besides, fourteen is still baby steps for aruetiise. Not even old enough to drive a speeder. But ‘oh, Dar’ika, you Verd’gotenned, here, lead these many thousands to safety. Good princess. Keep going, princess.’.”

Putting on her very best ‘old man voice’ to boot, Adara glowered at her father, as was a teenaged daughter’s want. “Ram is intergalactic levels of chaos-creation. Face it, Baba. My little brother inherited like, 99% you and 1% caution. He’s going to take such looking after…”

Sitting beside her father sipping their drinks, Adara’s smile and the tilt of her head spoke more of her love than any supposed annoyance at Reyn. He kept things fun, that brother of hers. Reminded her that they were, after all, still kids with grotesque responsibilities, instead of tiny adults already grown.

“Haaah. My vote’s for freedom… or… at least monthly ‘still a kid’ parties for like, me, Ram and eighteen of our closest non-related friends. With bouncy castles and candy floss and bumper speeders.” Adara raised her hand and conjured a pair of bumper speeders out of leaves and bric-a-brac, making the telekinetic creations bounce off each other, before letting the leaves fade off in the breeze.

“I’m gonna live forever, Baba. What’s another year or two against millennia of shaping the galaxy to my will? I’m fourteen and there’s entire populations looking at me to command. How did Buir do it? She was younger than I am.” Pursed lips tapped on the side of the mug, a smear of whip cream on her upper lip remaining quite outside of Adara’s usually fastidious notice.

“You’re really okay? Do you think Sigurd hates me? Daddy, it was easy. I got mad, and… I ripped the veil like it was nothing, ‘cause to me it was nothing. A laughable substance every sapient fears, but on Mandalore? It was thinner than wet paper, the kind the twins colour on where their crayons go right through. Maybe… Shia and Ba’buir Gray, and Ba’buir Baiko were right… Maybe I am some whacked out death goddess and the universe is gonna rue me with much… fie and rueing. Maybe Ram’s not the one you should be worried about causing trouble. What even am I? Or am I just a teenaged girl who should worry about what colour to dye my hair and whether that boy in class likes me?

But let’s be real, every boy in the universe is either intimidated, scared, or one of my brothers… wow. From ‘Daddy am I an evil Death Goddess’ to ‘no boy will ever like me’ in ninety seconds… guess I am a teenaged girl after all…" Adara slid her head against Baba's shoulder with a contented huffle. "I don’t regret either."

Killing those people to free you and Sigurd-Adolfo. Who were they, anyway? They didn’t matter, just bodies in the rubble. They wouldn’t have made it out. It worked out better, you’re back! Buir needs you and I need you and I need Sig, too. I can’t even hold a blaster, I can’t fight anything. What’s a couple of destroyed souls against our family’s safety?”

The skyline was dark as night further off, winds lashing at trees, yet in a bubble around the Estate, the early morning sun shone. The wind was warm and docile at Adara’s impervious command. Conditions for their Daddy Daughter talk would be perfect as a girl-child’s demands.

 

[Adara Raxis]

“But... aren’t you proud? I can feel the wind, and the rain farther off. The more settled I feel on Eiru the more of the planet I can feel. I know how much you hate the rain, especially when you wake up. Nobody ever seems interested in what I can do... and we’re not on Mandalore anymore so I’m not going to be threatened by half-witted morons who think the Force is anti-Mandalorian.” Adara shook her shoulders, an exotic bird of prey at roost. So small and diminutive for so much of her life, now the youth was coming into herself. Growing beyond others her age. “Buir sent me away to protect me... didn’t she? I... I know it is... but... it felt like a punishment. Like being sent away from you was my fault. You’re not going to turn Dark like me, right? Ba’vodu Stardust and Ba’vodu Mig think I can shift. But... I don’t know how you lot stand it. The Light. It’s cold and unfeeling. As distant as Buir when she was Mand’alor. Hurts like frostbite.”

All this time, months since the moment of revelation on Mandalore, and her father didn’t despise her for what she’d done. The weight of their deaths lifted. Adara stuttered out a relieved gasp and gazed wide eyed up into her father’s blue eyes.

“I was mad at you... and Sigurd, but mostly you. Killing those people was easy. Didn’t matter until after I did it, you weren’t allowed to leave me. Feels like all I’ve ever done since being little was be pushed away. Except from you. Every bit of Light sided force power burns like acid... except from you.

If there’s any belief that the Light isn’t the worst danger in the galaxy, I only learned that from you.” The shattered infant he refused to let slip away fourteen years prior was becoming the potential doom or salvation of the galaxy.

“You’re welcome, Baba. I hope there’s never a galaxy without you in it... so what do we do about Buir? I can’t feel her anymore, not like I could. Is... is there any of her left? Do you think...” Adara licked whipped cream off her lips. The croissant she chose was still warm, another small bit of force magic. Ripping a chunk off, she spooned some elderflower preserve onto it and took a bite.

“Buir will come back to us... won’t she?” Adara didn’t dare look toward her mother lying prone in bed inside the room. She seemed a distant shade of the woman and mother they knew, a being of trembling fears. Panic and weaknesses. Was all of Yasha destroyed on Mandalore?

[member="Kaine Australis"]

 

[Adara Raxis]

“You… you have? You’ve been proud of me? Me? Even though I’m not a proper Mandalorian? I… I’ll continue making you proud, Baba… you’ll see. I’ll even stop death. Again and again if I have to. Until it sticks.” At the use of her childhood nickname for [member="Kaine Australis"], Adara took his arm and cuddled into her Baba’s side.

“I miss her terribly and… and it’s hard to look at her in that bed, ‘cause she’s not there. That’s not my mother. Buir is the strongest and most resilient person in the universe. But… Baba, she can’t even stand. How can… What if it doesn’t? What if that’s all she’s got left?” The fears of a child, wide-eyed by injury to her mythically terrifying parent were a powerful motivation of their own. For Adara, it meant running from Yasha, staying as far away as she could, to avoid the truth of Yasha’s continued maladies.

“Eugh. The Light side does sound terribly inconvenient.” Adara slid her forehead against Kaine’s shoulder, the bliss of childhood so very far off for a Mandalorian girl of fourteen. Before she could think on the horrors of the Light’s unyielding demands, Adara felt the adoration of her Baba.

Her saviour.

It was as shocking as Baiko turning her sword on a child, the love radiating off Kaine Australis. A sweeping view of a father watching a docile face surrounded by blankets and tender moments she’d never had with her mother. She couldn’t have, while her mother ruled.

“I… I grew up so alone. Not even Ram could understand how I made the toys move. Buir didn’t. Beth’ika was afraid of me even when she tried not to be. Why… why? Why is love so hard?”

The Dark wasn’t difficult. It sang like the lullabies of her childhood, hugged her with its’ warmth like Braxus after the last time she was on Sabarene. Fed her better than any meal or feast.

“But Baba… the Dark is warm and comforting. It’s the knowledge that no matter what I face, it’ll be alright. It’s never felt wrong, or… tricky… Buir screamed and shouted and raged in the Netherworld, wasn’t she just as Dark as me? Isn’t that where I came from?” Adara whimpered and hugged Kaine’s arm, looking out to the wind she held off. “Is… is it really so wrong to feel safe?”

Any whimpering ceased, when Kaine gave her the ‘daddy voice’. Adara scoffed and rolled her eyes, sitting up and preening her braided hair.

“Baba… as IF I’d leave you without cocoa. Seeeriously, Baba. Who do you think I am?” Adara busied about making Kaine a hot cocoa, and passing him a warm mug.

“I love you, Baba.”

 

[Adara Raxis]

The hopeful turn to Adara’s eyes scattered to a stomach-wrenching truth. She was to accept her place in the universe, bind herself to a sense of duty that laid her mother in a cripple’s bed. [member="Kaine Australis"] offered nothing but the silence of a Light which would never take her.

A path she was innocent and ill conceived to handle. The Force was life, abundant and caustic at once. Yet, to be what she was, the child of Hell-bound parents mere hours from leaving their Netherworldly prison, was to be of that same Hell. Adara’s lip wobbled.

She understood then the loneliness which made brothers of uncle and nephew, those terrors Zambranos. Without word, or sound…

… Adara wept.

She became nothing but the goddess of letting go, a fledgeling deity whose origin would come not from the healing of Kaine’s father, but of saying goodbye from all she loved.

Over and over, without ceasing.

All because she had no cognizance of the Light which her father loved. Her head sunk down, bearing the weight of her reality. Never… never would Adara feel the Light as Kaine felt it. Never would it do anything but burn.

“No… no, Baba I can’t accept that. I can’t… there has to be more between the two sides. It cannot be so simple as love in the Light and death in the shadow, it’s impossible… it…” The Hell Wolf’s Daughter hugged her arms across her chest, knees pulling up to rest beneath them.

“The Light burns, Daddy. It destroys my skin like acid. I wasn’t born for it… but… no. It can’t be true. I can’t lose you just because I was born wrong! Buir gets to keep you! Buir gets to love you! Why can’t I!? It’s not fair! It’s not! I’ll never feel what you do with the Light! I’ll never know what it’s like to be held by it!! But ‘oh Dar’ika, once again we’re shunning you, we’re thrusting you away because the way you are doesn’t fit’. How… how can you say you love me, when… when I’m nothing but a lonely little Dark Child, waiting for my family’s destruction!? Daddy…”

Adara sniffled and shook her head. “Daddy I didn’t ask for one side over the other… but if you’re right, I’m damned no matter what I do. You talk like I have a choice of alligment. Like I can snap my fingers and be this... ray of light. Daddy... daddy... don't promise I'll have nothing left but pain.”

 

[Adara Raxis]

Adara chased her father’s offer of security, throwing herself into his arms. There were few moments of security where Adara felt safety enough to let her worries go. Basking in the feel of her face in [member="Kaine Australis"]’ robe, Adara cried until her throat was raw. Feeble muscles clung to black fabric. Slipping until she whimpered and sat down exhausted on the porch seat.

“Baba? My powers are the only thing that makes sense and I don’t even understand how they work... you might hate the Force or... hate how your father hurt you... but you didn’t hate the Force or Vesull enough to let me die. I know you like being a soldier better. And a General. Battle is instinct and strategy and a bunch of Australis luck... but I like being alive. Even if saving me was complicated.” Her eyes stung as she rubbed them with her handkerchief, setting it back in her pocket.

But then her Baba gave her a whole other reason to cry.

“Babaaaaaa.” Adara whimpered, rolling red and black eyes as her lip wobbled. “First you say the Force is tricky then you tell me to solve the millennia long conundrum of the Light side versus the Dark Side by making my own path?! Come oooon.”

Sniffling all over again, Adara flung her hands up in the air.

“Other girls get ‘Oh Millie, pick who you’ll go to the dance with, it might be your future Riduur!’ I get ‘solve the diffident Force with your own path’! Not that I’d go to the dance even if a boy asked me, since it got bombed! It takes half a battle unit to plan me going outside. Almost a legion before I go anywhere with people. Who would ever ask me to dance anyway? Other than my brothers? Why does my life have to be the most complicated life that ever lifed?” The pouting face of Kaine’s daughter looked tragically over at him with all the emotional angst of a woeful teenaged girl. “Isn’t it enough I did impossible magic and got my Dad back? I’ve got to cure the irreconcilable parts of the Force, too? And keep the family together? And answer Buir’s correspondences? And... babysit Ram from destroying half the worlds along the way? You wanna see me create a new colour, too? Baba... I never ask and I don’t try to cause trouble, in my tidy future ruler box. But this? It’s too big and... and... mother was going to teach me how to dance... but it doesn’t matter anyway cause the dance got blown up and... and.... and... Baba I’m scared. Bringing you back was simple and if flowed. Nothing flows anymore.”

 

[Adara Raxis]

Sniffling and blowing her nose on her handkerchief, Adara cuddled into her chair beside [member="Kaine Australis"] until he shifted to take up his lightsaber. Components settled in their places, separated from the whole. Adara didn’t know why, but soon with sight of the gemstone inside, she sat close and watched.

“Will I… can I feel it?” Adara hesitantly looked from the pulsing heart of fire to her father’s cerulean eyes. Did the Epicanthix mind open for psychometric moments, even channelled through someone she loved? Closed by gene-code, Adara’s mind was behind a perpetual wall, never revealed to any who knew her.

Yasha was the same. As was Reyn, and any whose genome included a significant Epicanthix portion. The query was one of intent and clarity: Was it possible for Kaine to get through his daughter’s natural guards and into her mind in the first place? Could the stone focus her, to the point of meaningful interaction?

Hesitant fingers paused in mid reach. It would never work. Nothing like that ever worked on Adara! She was completely immune, unsensible, unscannable, unreachable.

Nope. Nope, nope, nope.

Never. Work.

“Baba don’t get disappointed if I don’t see anything.” Slim fingers stretched to take half of the stone. Adara grunted, eyes shunting closed and whimpered as her mind burst with fire.

Fire and war.

A crack in the impenetrable mind of Adara Raxis… for the first time, some of Adara’s mental texture began to bleed through. The warmth of the Dark's passions, the ice and pain of the Light. Growling, frothing... then nothing but what Kaine wanted her to see.

 

[Adara Raxis]

Adara’s view of the planet shuddered and disintegrated. Images of leaves, the sound of a young boy’s breathing as he rushed through a jungle collided with fire.

A baptism of it, nigh Adara’s age and commanding soldiers as they cleansed the forests of Ithor from the worst of the Yuuzhan Vong. Death chased Kaine Australis like a fire in winter, caustic and warm. Adara’s spirit chased the sensation, that lingering morbidity of her father’s past. Sacred trees lashed in their inferno, Ithorians screaming…

‘RETREAT!’ A young Kaine caterwauling over the din. Adara felt pitched sideways, brought along as the kiffar psychometry and the proximity, and perhaps that small but of loving luck helped some images of her father’s exploits get through. Perhaps the arts Manu taught did have value to the Mando’ad after all.

Ithor burned. The veil cracked.

Adara felt pitched over by frozen fire, burned to freezing by the Light which became Kaine’s bulwark. The Light destroyed all of her until nothing was left but the pulsing scream, no atomic cloud of matter, nothing but the waveform of her vocal emanations.

Nothing but the wails of excruciating pain at that same Light which gave Kaine his courage and grounding.

“She was born wrong, Kaden! Something went wrong!” Yasha's fists clenched. A young mother attempting strength she didn't feel. Kaden held his infant daughter in his arms, blue eyes shining down at her…

“She’s perfect, Yasha.” Kaden’s voice lilted in Adara’s mind, her father’s arms barely capable of holding his baby. So warm… so much love in a new father holding his firstborn… Adara seeped it in, soaking in the delight of a man seeing his child. She pulled at the love in Kaden Farr…

… until his heart seized. Adara’s first kill.

~​

The same Light which beamed through the desert sun of Sabarene, pinpricks and stabbing needles tearing at Adara’s childish skin, while Baiko whispered… while Beth sat and watched Manu’s daughter attempt to ‘heal her’. Adara cried and whimpered. She clung to couch cushions, anything to get her eyes away from the caustic light…

…. but it burnt through. So the five year old screamed and cried and reached for the only person who could hear her.

From across the Galaxy, they came. Baiko ran into the desert… Adara’s shudders grew. Tiny body seizing at the cold, at the sun, at the fluctuating power flowing through her grandmother, until Baiko threw her to the sand.

Baiko’s sword raised. Adara’s eyes widened. The Light… it was nothing but the courage to kill a child.

A being cloaked in black dove for the child, yanked her close in his arm.

“Hush, I’ve got you, little one.” Darth Carnifex curled Adara to his chest, Baiko’s blade cutting into his shoulder. Adara clung to his cloak as crimson streaked into the sand of Sabarene. As Baiko was no more and Adara was nothing more than a sobbing child in pain.

He cradled and wrapped her in his cloak, the twin-sovereign of Panatha. Sang lullabies. The ship was warm, as were the blankets and the songs, and the faces of the brother-uncle and nephew Zambrano. Adara slept, as she couldn’t on Mandalore, even with Baba’s voice lulling her.

~​

“We didn’t know who to call…” The teacher whispered as Aditya pushed out to the playground where fourteen children laid strewn on the ground.

One moved. Clutching her bruised cheek, Adara screamed at the sight of Aditya rushing her, clapping a hand over Adara’s mouth.

“Shush! No noise, not a single peep… Aw, lil’bit. Which one hit’ya?” Adara sobbed as she pointed to a girl near the epicentre, crimson dried on an immobile face. Aditya pulled Adara into her arms, kissed the girl’s temple. “Just like your Mom… ‘cept you’re a frakkin’ weakling in comparison… okay… okay. Okay…. Dar’ika, put your face in ba’buir’s shoulder, ‘kay? Don’t you look now… Not a single second… didn't know what you were doin'. Ain't got th'control. Okay... No peekin' now.”

The teacher had enough time to reach for her blaster before Aditya fired. The training facility went up in a blaze, another terrorist site of the Naphtali Erisi, a ‘so called’ Sith Blood Cult. A grandmother covering tracks, piggybacking off the hatred of others as she rushed Adara onto the Infernal command ship.

“No! No, no, Daddy! I ain’t lettin’ Dara turn into the same monstrosity Yash was back in the hellish yonder. It ain’t happ’n’in! Yash don't have to know!” Aditya roared, pointing at the child in Girak Kierke’s arms. Adara whimpered, digging her face into her great-grandfather’s.

“You might hate the Force…”

“Hate!? I loathe it! All my person. Daddy, she killed thirteen kids! How the holy feth is that kind of power in a child a right thing to keep!? You know how this works! We gotta get her outa here, and on the triple. Catch!?” Aditya shushed and cooed in Adara’s ear, rocking the child. Singing panathan lullabies Adara heard once, from the Zambranos.

“We can’t all pressure our daughters to become force dead, Aditya. Not even by dying in Hell.” Girak rubbed Adara’s back, sighing with a growl. “We’ll take her to Panatha. If we give her to Yasha and Kaine, they'll send her back to Sabarene, and Zambrano's already killed thousands there to get to her. Tell Yasha she’s… she’s in another school. Eh, Adara? You’re going to spend more time with me, eh? More time with Papa?”

The Dark.

What was it? Adara tripped on a bleached bone, one afternoon traipsing toward a ruin to Panatha’s brutal history. Papa picked her up, cradled in his arms and walked the entire way without her touching soil. A lesson in excess and in failure. The spirits of the dead clung to her, begging, screaming... able to serve.

The Dark was warmth. A balmy pleasurable sunlight, which succoured her spirit and alleviated all pain. The passion of a family who refused to give in and die when convenient. The love of parents, who defied all odds to give their children a safe, warm place. The Light was detachment and frigid fire. It burned and scalded all anyone had away until there was nothing left but it. Infinitely selfish. Infinitely right...

“Hi! I’m Raya! ‘Cause I’m my daddy’s Ray’a sunshine. Nice to meetcha!” The Echani girl grinned and shook Adara’s hand, laughing before walking around the playground on her hands. “You an’me? Besties, kay!? We’re gonna be the best friends in the universe! I know it. I always know things like that… gee you look sad.”

“I’m not sad, I’m grieving! It’s different.” Adara whimpered. The echani girl rolled her eyes and flipped back to her feet, ruffling Adara’s hair.

“Yeah. Life sucks and the adults make it like, insane complicated all the time. But… but it don’t matter none! Another few years, and we’ll make all the shots and they won’t know nothing. C’mon! Play with me!” Raya rushed off, and Adara chased after her, laughing for the first time since missing Reyn.

“You really are a ray of sunshine aren’t you?”

~​

“Papa?”

“Sorry, Adara. I was… distant from you. Nobody should ever be distant, it’s a horrible parting. One day you will understand, little one. Your mother chose dying for Mandalorians over being with you. For whatever reason, she couldn’t love you the way a mother… no. Adara, wait, that’s not… Adara!”

~​

"Adie? Ah..."

"Yes, Ray, I'm listening. Hey, what did you get for question three in our mathematics homework, I'm absolutely... rrgh. You know that dance three days from now? Nobody's asked me yet. I'll never get to go at this rate, I'd die if I showed up without someone. I do wish you could come." Adara looked over to the holoprojected image of her friend, one of the few and only.

"Adara, Daddy told me to tell you something. Well more he let me hear it and gave me the stare and... don't let your brothers go to school on Mandalore tomorrow." Raya gasped as a shadow passed over, a face older but familiar as her own. "S-sorry Mum! Adie, I gotta go, but... get them off Mandalore! No-"

The connection dropped.

Hunger. A child’s soul opened to the possibility of being fed, not through caloric intake, but the lives which didn’t deserve another day’s worth of breathing. Who decided which lives survived and which were extinguished in the Dark?

A sister honoured her kin. A future erased at Beth's death became another’s to fulfill. Ithor.

He would show her Ithor.

The place he took her mother to heal her, the same place which screamed to Adara’s senses until recently. Until the Vong’s silence befell her mother.

Ithor. Her mother's drowning screams radiated from the planet surface, as a soul once and forever the toy of dark folk fought for release.

“No! Buir, you can’t! I won’t let you!” Adara ran between Yasha and her armour, hugging the Infernal helmet between expanded arms. “You’re not going to Mandalore!”

“Adara! Oh for the… you’ll never understand, I cannot leave them, my duty…”

“Your duty is to your family! Please, mother, please… he… he doesn’t want to see you. Walk away! Come with me, I can’t do this on my own, mommy, please. Mom no… Mom…” Yasha yanked the helmet from Adara’s arms.

“You always were a frivolous little thing. We don’t get to choose our battles, Adara. Kaine is going to fight for Mandalore. I refuse to let him die without knowing at least one of his wives is by his side.” Yasha yanked on pieces of armour to her bodysuit, taking each from Adara’s clutching claws.

“Mother please. You haven’t worn armour in months, the twins are tiny, please… Mommy no. No! Don’t go.”

“… I love him, Adara. Oh, you’ll figure it out… stop worrying. Kain’ik and I will be fine.”

“You love him more than me. Don’t you?”

“…” The Infernal reached for her sword and clipped the scabbard to her belt.

“Mom? Buir, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“She ain’t here, sweet pea. Y’ain’t got her love like he do. S’all alright, sweetie pie. Us Fitz-Kierke women, we fall in love like gravity hittin’ a new planet’s surface for the first time. Papa’s got you. Now y’go scurry on. Git your brothers ready for th’ship, eh? I can’t ever leave ya. Not till you let me die…”

“Grandmother?” Adara growled, mind folding around the will of a once-dead soul, who could do nothing but comply. “Shut up and kneel.”

Aditya growled and spat. She struggled against the urge, until one knee and the other hit the ground.

“…. At least you make me feel a little better.”

The whisper of a graven image. [member="Kaine Australis"] always thought the fallen daughter in Ahani’s vision was Beth. Of course he would, Beth was his shining star. The Light-Sided healer daughter, who could do nothing wrong. Perked ears, blonde hair… she was allowed to be on Mandalore. Allowed to be by Buir and Baba’s sides.

Adara wasn’t. She was the hidden pain of Mandalore, a penalty of the Force, which twisted and reached for anything which alleviated the cold, stark pain of the Light.

The Galaxy flooded with ash, and then nothing but the gasping silence which emanated from each pull of air into Darth Abaddon’s lungs.

“… I won’t let you die a hero, silly old boar.”

“… Ithor, Daddy. You keep not listening...”

Adara screamed and shoved the Heart of Fire away, breaking the connection to a mind which previously was unalterably impenetrable. Incognizant of how much her father saw, wide black and red eyes bored into the old boar. Eyes wide, those same eyes which peered up at Kaden's chin, seeped his strength until his heart stopped...

... the same eyes which struck created a chain reaction that killed a class full of children...

... who looked into the face of Darkness and found comfort...

The same girl so dangerous as to get her grandmother Baiko to take a sword to her diminutive body...

"... Baba?"

 

[Adara Raxis]

Adara’s scant muscles coiled in her bone-frame, prepared to vault off the porch railing and fly to the ship. Impossible. If he’d seen, it was impossible for an adopted father to love his faulty daughter. A child he neither created, nor owed anything but a cursory glance. But the threat of her own evil.

No man’s love could outweigh his fear.

It was the perpetual lesson of the Dark, those who feared it lost all they could have, all they collected. Only those who found mastery where others quaked would survive. Only those could rule over the throngs in their billions.

Only us, her Papa said, arm round her shoulders as they rested on the couch after a gruelling day’s training. She’d felt such an adult then, a grown-up trusted with the secret to true rule. Her mother tried to befriend those beneath her, called herself a servant of the Vode.

And they hated and bit, and frothed, or looked on her as an equal. But a ruler was never equal to their billions. A ruler was above their lives, peering down from a vantage point so high that the common streets where life began, and continued until death were pinpricks in the tumult. Only there could a proper ruler see wide enough to prevent harm to each of those pinpricks.

And those with fear in their hearts would never drown out their own misgivings. The fearful were a source of fuel. Nothing more.

Adara believed willingly, beyond all her bullied moments, her feelings of abandonment and being passed over by her parents’ love, that alone made her feel better.

Until [member="Kaine Australis"] opened his arms and told his daughter it would be alright. His fear was a cloak around him, suffocating any potential for a mental double-check of what he’d seen. She seeped his fear in like fuel, yanking it away from her father’s aura as if he would never feel such fears again.

“My poor Baba.” She launched into his arms, face burrowed in his shoulder like her childhood years. Adara clung with shaking arms, as Kaine once more gestured rudely to such things as fear overcoming his ability to protect his child.

She was his child, not a half-abandoned little mistake, or the future Queen of all she saw.

“You’re here. You’re here… Baba I have to…” And maybe if Kaine could be brave, then Adara could, too.

“Kaine?” A feeble-husked voice warbled from the bedroom. Lost of its’ once booming power. “Kain’ik… help.”

Adara sniffed in a breath and held it. Her shoulders raised and she pushed away from her father’s embrace. Well, that was it then.

​

Her parents always did love each other best. ​

 

[Adara Raxis]

Kaine would never ever, not in any ever ever, ever, ever chose Adara over her mother. Adara remembered the before-time, when [member="Kaine Australis"] belonged to her. When he resided in the Palace under house arrest and had nothing to do but tinker on his datapad, and hold the infant who Adara became when she thought backward.

It used to be them and sometimes Beth, two girls with their father. Or, two girls, with a father between them. A borrowed father. The switch happened slower than a skittish Shirshoo fawn coming out of the tree line. Yasha got tired more often, sliding onto the couch beside Kaine without her armour. She smiled as she sat in her office, where Kaine brought her a cup of stim-caf and a snack for the long hours of the Infernal’s paperwork after Adara ‘was asleep’.

Then Reyn came, and Yasha almost ruined everything. Kaine fussed over her, taking care of mommy and growing baby and leaving the toddling Adara to her own devices and games. Setting her with the nannies, while he carried Buir to bed. Whispers Adara didn’t recognize until the later years, pleading and reassurance: He would be loved. Please, he should stay.

Kaine would exit hours later, creeping down the hall thinking Adara couldn’t feel where he’d been, but the truth was even that young, Adara knew where everybody around her was. She felt their comings and goings, the beating of their hearts.

Everyone but her mother.

Her mother was separate and untouchable and dim. Then Yasha sent little Adara away. Baba went back to Myrkr, with Ram’ika in tow, and the magic of their young lives was shattered. There was no more warm lullabies and bedtime stories. No more long days of play time and meals around their little family table. Yes, as a teenager Adara realized Kaine Australis only spent the first five years of Adara’s life with her so exclusively because of his prison sentence.

Once it was complete, he owed her nothing more.

That was the lie she clung to in her boarding school bed, with servants and House Girls instead of parents. He didn’t ever, not for an even small ever, want her around the way he did when she was small.

The lie grew, and let in many dark things. It festered with an ill timed heartbeat of its own, twisting to incorporate her mother’s fallen state…

“I’m here. I’m here…”

… until Kaine picked up his daughter, and she felt how his heart flipped. How his muscles strained. Until he carried his daughter to her mother’s side, setting Adara down on the bed like the ginger gift she’d been.

And as Adara looked down at her mother, once so strong now sprawled half off the bed, left arm plastered on the side table, shaking to keep herself from falling out of it, the child sniffled.

“I.. I reached for my water and…” Yasha swooned, collapsing like the broken glass on the floor beside her bed. Kaine would catch her, Adara knew this. He would always catch her mother.

“We’re here Buir… Dad and I are here.” A stronger word than the infantile title given by a girl who had no definition for the man in her life. Adara made the switch.

Dad.

“… you don’t have to be scared.” Adara warbled, sucking up a sniffle as she watched the way her mother’s useless lower body laid akimbo under the tangled, soggy sheets. It was beneath Adara’s skill to dry the sheets, hovering her hand over as moisture from sheets and floor veered into a sphere under her fingers. The glass shards disintegrated into sand. Brushed backward to the deck and away.

Off to the storm Adara no longer held back.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

But Dad…

Adara wanted to unburden the lie which destroyed her childish calm in the same breath [member="Kaine Australis"] sat her down and held his wife and child.

My mother died on Mandalore. We're only watching over her ghost.

The face which nuzzled into Kaine’s hand was marred by an intrusion of green veins. What was left of Yasha Cadera struggled against the life-breathing interloper. The Vong Biot kept her alive, it held up organs which failed and worked her lungs like bellows.

Yet a despicable distance grew over time. Words mumbled in another tongue. Long glances with little recognition. The woman curling her cheek into Kaine’s hand peered through a fogged glass.

Death hovered over her, an unconvinced bedfellow too comfortable to vacate. Still, what was left of Yasha battled.

She was still too brave to die. Stubborn, maybe, if Adara stared long enough into her mother’s fading amber eyes. It made Adara sick to her stomach. The teenager sunk her cheek onto her father’s shoulder, tearing her face away from the spectre in the bed. No doubt Kaine’s mind was elsewhere, on the bravado of another battle to come, or such.

Yasha clumsily worked her jaw, pitching to the side in a nauseous grunt as her equilibrium cut out. Adara flinched as Yasha crashed into Kaine’s arm, righting herself only by virtue of the green-fleshed right Vong biot.

“Gravity is wrong today.” Yasha mumbled through thick lips. Her Epicanthix left hand shook as it clenched around Kaine’s. “Dang well wanted that glass of water.”

The drawl elongated in slow Epicanthix, the only language Yasha spoke since waking on Wayland. Except for the other-words. The Vong-words.

Still…

“I’ll get it Buir.” Adara pushed off the bed and retreated to find another glass for water, shuddering out a loose exhale at seeing her monumental parent so underwhelmingly ill.

“You look shook.” Yasha whispered hoarsely, a slender green finger poking at his shoulder. “What could possibly flap the unflappable Kain’ik Cadera? Dar’ika didn’t tell you she has a boyfriend, did she?”

Propping her chin on Kaine’s shoulder, Yasha smirked lazily up at him, words usually so tangled up to remain unspoken finally getting through. It was the most progress so far, a lucidity Yasha was denied until the morning Adara pushed the storm away.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“Mmh how you think you can lie, c’yare. Talk to me... while I can hear you.” Yasha’s voice wobbled, as she rested into Kaine’s shoulder. Her left arm draped around his stomach, and she hugged into him. Grunting softly, Yasha peered at the fake, then enduring smile on her husband’s face.

“I love you, too.” Slowly, Yasha’s right Biot arm snugged around Kaine’s chest too, completing the embrace she’d wanted in her lucid moments to give. Finger spears thoroughly not apparent, the mottled green flesh slid across to hold a piece of [member="Kaine Australis"]’ robe near his ribs.

“Oohh I’d double check on that. Our fresh-faced little princess borrowed my lipstick. She’s never worn lipstick before, I’m guessing her lips were a little dry.” Yasha chuckled, ending with a rough cough and loss of strength in her side-embrace.

“Mmh… Kain’ik, my back hurts.. and what happened to my hair?” Clearing her throat again and finding it dry, Yasha felt up to the shorn locks which used to be flowing down her back. Shifting to pout by Kaine’s cheek, Yasha kissed him before leaning back down onto the bed.

“Feels like I haven’t brushed my teeth in a month… hey.. Kain’ik.. my back hurts.” Sensation in previously dead nerves. Surprises never stopped in the Australis world today. Adara rushed back in with a glass of water on a tray, and hearing that her mother’s back was hurting, promptly let go of the tray.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“You.” The slender green index finger of her biotic arm tapped Kaine on the nose, drawing along his cheek before settling on his shoulder. A husk of the woman she was, Yasha’s paper pale skin and shuddering shoulders fit ill on a nigh bone thin body. Her brow furrowed, lips dry despite the balm Noah Corek kept beside the bed during his vigils. Such lies in Kaine… her Kaine.

This Kaine. The different one, the one who didn’t loom over her in battle or in the Dark. The one who didn’t stare passively as the Host-woman screamed in righteous agony during the Shaping which gave life. Life through pain. This one would give endless supply.

“Oya? My hair is gone and oy-aah!” The tray crashed and Yasha did the unthinkable. She flinched screaming. The Biot yanked up, firing a finger-spear near Adara’s feet, narrowly missing Reyn’s entry. Hands shivering, Yasha’s amber eyes were wide lidded, lungs in and exhaling like a timid bird. She shivered into her Kain’ik, his smile the only staunch to the Biot’s mission of protecting it’s symbiotic host.

That smile, the cerulean eyes which bored into her saved their children’s lives.

“RAM!” Adara rushed her brother, bowling into him as he entered to grab his shoulders and give them a shake. And another shake. As many shakes as her feeble upper body strength allowed. “Mom’s back hurts! She’s thirsty and! Her! Back! Hurts!”

The significance of Yasha speaking at all was enough to send R Reyn Australis ‘ sister into hear hysterics. Yasha’s eyes continued to stare wide and vulnerable, as her body settled limply against K Kaine Australis side.

“Wh-who is that? Why is it attacking?” Yasha’s shoulders rose, as her eyes flickered to the teenager and back again to Kaine.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Yasha Australis lived inside a flinch.

Lining the wall of the medical prep-room across the hall, plastered on the door in bold print were a series of large black and red notices.

No Armour. No Blades.
No Blasters.​

The medics were a rotating team of Clan Cadera, Australis and Corek medical practitioners, flesh and blood after the attrition rate of droids became too great. Biot hated the tech. Even now, Doc Allard slumped over on a chair, his feet over the arm and slept. Tireless in his attentions, the once valiant Venan was a gaunt stretch of bone and ill worn ragged skin. Every ounce of his energies went to treating Yasha. Bacta patches lined his torso, shoulder, his arm where the Biot sliced at him. Ambrose laid curled in a lupine ball beside him, able to rest with K Kaine Australis on watch.

Keeping Yasha alive was an expense in lifeblood as equally as as bacta, sovereign specific, and surgical intervention. The Biot would only allow so much, holding Yasha's body in its' impervious threads. As she shivered into her riduur, the brave warrior he loved was as shattered as her doctor. Tethered to the Galaxy by an extraneous will.

"D-don't stop." She fell easily into his embrace, lower body following with the dead weight of her condition. Wide eyes gripped at any wrinkle or patch of skin on his face they could hold to. Lips, eyes, the bridge of his nose. His voice soothed through the hammer and anvil of her ears, past the thudding drum of blood pulsing audibly in her skull. Both arms clung to his shoulders, head burying itself into his chest. Her breathing equalized slowly, as her upper body shivered.

Adara pressed her lips together and snuck quietly back to the bedside. Water glass reconstructed, water within as pure as melted snow on a world lacking in industry. She handed the glass to her father, spreading another worried glance back at her brother R Reyn Australis .

"Buir? Is... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to drop the tray and Ram'ika didn't mean to be a raging boar." She reached for Yasha's foot and thought better of it, instead setting her hands on her lap. "But... oh mother, please say something."

"You're terrible at fetching water, Dar'ika. Perhaps this invention called a sealable bottle? Canteen?" Bleary eyes, wounded into near-permanent semi-blindness by the sunlight cascading through the windows sought out the other figure in the room. The brash boy. "Ram'ika. You were there when I woke up. The boy, I remember you. Kain'ik's son... my son..."

Half the words from Yasha's mouth came from immobile lips, the Biot itself working vocal chords and lungs like bellows in a bid to gain speech. Yet as the sun glinted away from the windows, and the room dimmed that small bit more, Yasha sniffled and pressed her cheek against Kaine's shoulder.

"Come... come sit. I can't make it to you, kids, so come sit on the bed. Hurry up! Ram, who attacked your calm? Why were you attacking mine? Oh Adara stop looking like I'm halfway in the grave and sit down child. You might be a teenager, but you're still a kid, Verd'goten be dashed. C'mon."