Loss

[Anna Sachae]

Breath rushed into her lungs.

‘All you have to do is let it out every once in a while. If you can forgive your own mistakes, forgive yourselves, then you’ll feel truly alive.’

It was wet. In fact, it was water, or something like it. Her eyes tried to open, but they were also wet. Covered in water. She needed to get out of here. She would drown if she didn’t get out of here. When her eyes opened a second time, she could almost see. Blurry lines around her, splotchy colors...nothing but light. Also, she couldn’t breathe. She thrashed, slamming her fists slowly through the water surrounding her. They connected with something in front of her. Glass?

She slammed again, this time in a panic, and the glass seemed to respond to her sense of urgency. There was a mighty thump, not audible but tangible. The water shook, the glass shook, and it began to crack. That was audible. Within seconds, the liquid around her was already leaking out, and it wasn’t long after that that there was a loud shattering sound. Fluid rushed out of her ears, mouth, and within a few violent, hoarse coughs, her lungs. She sat on her knees coughing and wheezing for at least a couple of minutes.

When she had centered herself enough to look up, she was almost horrified by what she saw. The room was dark. Void of anything resembling light, except the light of whatever had been containing her. Some kind of glass tube. As she stood up and looked around, though, she noticed her tube wasn’t the only thing in the room that was shedding light. Across from her were more tubes. Beside her tube were even more. All of them shed the same soft light, and in tandem they almost lit up a portion of the room. As she stood to inspect them, her heart jumped into her chest.

Next to her was a person, in the tube, the same as her. The one in the tube beside that one looked identical. So did all of the rest in the room...and judging by the black hair sticking wet to her back and her skin tone...

 

[Anna Sachae]

‘There’s a strong heart in there. A heart capable of love, and passion, and belief. I’d know. I put it there.’

That voice...it was what had woken her up. It was coming from inside her head, which honestly didn’t help her scattered, panicked state of mind. Who had put her heart in her? Who had done this to...all of these...clones? Probably clones. Why did she know all of these words, anyway?

In confusion, despair, or possibly just frustration, she opened her mouth and shouted out to nothing in particular. “What the hell is going on?!”

It wasn’t a heartbeat after she started speaking that she stopped short. The startled realization that her voice was identical to the one in her head was...unsettling, to say the least. So whoever was cloning her was her? She was a clone of herself? And if that was true, why was she awake when all of these were asleep? With a grumble, she stood and began to wander around the room. She wouldn’t find any answers sitting in slime and staring into uncomfortable lights.

The room was dark, but she thought it might have just been her eyes to begin with. Since all of these clones probably hadn’t ever used theirs, it was a pretty good assumption that she hadn’t, either. As her vision began to come into focus, though, it became very clear that it was simply a very, very dark room. Cold, too. The liquid surrounding her had been warm, if disgusting. This place didn’t even have that much going for it. From how the light was shining from the pods across the room, there was some kind of console in the center. She approached it.

As dark as the room itself. Pushing buttons had no effect whatsoever, and as she touched the machine, she got the impression that it had been asleep for at least as long as she had. Why she got that impression she didn’t quite understand, but she knew that it had been at rest, and that waking it up would be almost impossible. The words ‘even for me’ tugged at the back of her mind, and once again she had no idea why.

There were other things on that console, though. A small picture frame, sealed in some kind of plastic to keep it from ever being affected by the cold, wet room it was sitting in. She picked it up and walked with it towards the clone tubes for some better lighting.

 

[Anna Sachae]

Petra. Fabula. Kristin. Anna. She knew the faces in this frame. Knew their names, and each one of them brought different feelings to the fore. “Anna” brought fewer feelings, and since the woman in the picture looked like a slightly older version of her, it was easy to put the pieces together. “Anna,” she sad aloud. The voice in her head replied in kind.

‘This place is doing neither of you any favors. It was important that you saw this, but there’s so much more to you than your mistakes.’

Raising an eyebrow, Anna looked up for no reason in particular. After all, she was speaking to herself through her own mind. Why would she need to look at an empty ceiling. The sound wasn’t coming from above her. In fact, there was no sound at all. Stupid girl. Focus on the problem, not the voices in your head.

There were more of them now, though when she looked at the photo again, she began to realize that they weren’t hallucinations. The picture was of Anna holding one of the girls - Kristin - on her shoulders. The other, Fabula, was tagging along with Petra, holding her hand with tiny fingers. All four of them seemed to be laughing, and she could hear that laughter. She knew everything about that day. These weren’t voices in her head, but memories. Rushing back into her mind as if filling an empty glass.

At first, this seemed like a fantastic thing. All of her memories of these two were the kind of warm that made a mother’s heart melt. Put into perspective exactly what life was about. These were her girls. They were happy. She was happy. The fire of love ignited inside her, burning hot enough to keep her body warm even though she was naked in a cold, dark cell.

That didn’t last, of course. Not all memories could be good. Anna’s entire life was flashing before her eyes, from growing up with her parents to being a mother. She had served in the military, run with pirates, and always left because she realized she was contributing to others doing harm. She wanted to do good, to help people. Since the galaxy seemed to be full of selfishness and horror, that was always a far-off goal, so on she went.

When she came across the memories of what Petra had done to her...there was no warmth left in her heart. No fire that burned. Only pain.

 

[Anna Sachae]

The fact that they dumped into her skull like so much water probably didn’t help Anna process memories of capture, torture, and worse. A year of it when she had first met Petra, supplanting anything resembling “love.” Her mind had adapted for her own survival. Love this woman, because otherwise the hurting will continue. If there had been something real there...why couldn’t she have just waited for it to develop naturally? Worse...how it had all ended.

How she had died.

“No. No no no. No no no NO NO NO NO AAAAIIIIIGHH!!” Alone in a cold room with dead bodies that all looked like her identical twins, Anna was confronted with the memory of seeing her daughters killed in front of her. Kristin first. Fabula when she tried to avenge her twin. Petra had gone even more insane than she had always been. Wanted to wipe her entire family from the galaxy. And Anna was forced to watch before she finally died. She sank to the ground, her legs giving out beneath her. A dam broke somewhere behind her eyes, letting an uncontrollable torrent of sorrow greater than any happiness she’d ever known wash down across her face.

Minutes passed. Her breathless sobbing was eventually interrupted. One more memory.

‘Shh…’

As if she’d been comforted by an actual, physical hand, Anna stopped. She looked up again, craning her head around. No one there, of course. She was still alone, save for her braindead clones. She shivered and breathed deep, half out of being cold and half out of something entirely different. The realization that she was back - that she was alive again - hit her like a ton of durasteel. She had died. They had all died. So why was she here?

The woman stood, taking her picture frame with her. Her fingers rubbed across it idly as she moved to look for a door, as if the act of rubbing a centuries-old still image her daughters would in any way allow her to hold them in her arms and make Petra killing them all better. As she searched, she tried to sort through the other memories that were flooding into her thoughts. Death had been an ordeal, but there was...more, after that.

There was a door on the far side of the room, to the left of her pod as she was looking at it from the console. She left the others where they were. Getting out of here was more important than destroying herself a dozen times over in penance for letting the most important things in her life be murdered in front of her eyes.

 

[Anna Sachae]

The door was a machine. As she brushed her fingers across it, Anna knew everything about it. She asked it kindly to wake up, and it responded by explaining to her that it couldn’t without electricity. With a smile, Anna nodded and went to work. She returned to the console, opening its maintenance hatch with a tap. Inside were a dozen wires, and she could tell exactly which ones did what simply on instinct. This one was lighting. This one was pod life support. This one was flash-imprinting an education into dead brains.

“And this one,” she said to herself as she tore the corroded wire from the access panel, “is for console controls.” The part of the wire still in her hands was where all of the damage had been. Rust or insect damage, whatever had caused the console to short out was localized. She could simply hold the corrosion down with her picture frame, pull and…

Seconds after she reconnected the wire to the console, it lit up, and Anna pressed the button for the door. It creaked open, tearing roots that had grown on the outside of it as it moved. Outside the room was moss, and vines, and grass. The old Morte Clan stronghold on Dathomir. It didn’t look that out of use...this was maybe ten years’ neglect, not six hundred. The Morte Clan might still have been around, then. Or Petra.

Naked as a babe, Anna walked out until the door shut behind her, then continued making her way through overgrown areas, unused backups of Cavataios preserved forever through a nuclear-powered life support system. Unless Dathomir was destroyed, the Cavataio family would apparently never be truly dead. And since all of them were more powerful in the Force than little old Anna was, it wouldn’t be impossible for them to awaken themselves, either.

In one of the rooms, she grabbed some basic clothes that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a hospital, including shoes. They were plastic-sealed, keeping them nice and fresh, which was important. It didn’t take clothes six centuries to biodegrade. In another, she grabbed a few basic tools, small things to help her move around more easily. She cracked open doors that had been sealed for longer than many Wookiees had lived, and it took her a few minutes to find exactly what she was looking for.

She did find it, though. The sun peeked through a damaged ceiling, the roots of a tree climbing down towards the stronghold’s basement. Anna stood in its rays for a long moment, holding out her arms and smiling in silence and alone. As if on cue, another memory.

‘I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you.’

 

[Anna Sachae]

Anna wasn’t a climber. In fact, physical stuff in general was beyond her purview, especially now that what little muscle mass she’d developed in life had been stripped from her. Upsides of being a clone: youth and longevity. Downsides of being a clone: I don’t even lift, bro. It took her several minutes to climb an awkwardly-grown tree to get to the surface of Dathomir. Green and wild smells awaited her, of course, confirming that her memories of Dathomir, at least, were still pleasant. She could hear bugs chittering at each other, the cries of distant birds...every once in a while, a larger beast would howl.

Idly, she wondered how many of the rancors on the planet right now were Carmenta’s children. Or...great, great, great, great grandchildren? Hm. She’d have to think about that one.

Grandchildren. Memories of a life between lives had begun to slowly leak into Anna’s head on her climb to the top. As her feet first touched grass and she looked around for something relatively stable to sit on, she tried to sort through them. She was always most calm in the guts of some massive machine, but natural places like this were plenty calming on their own. She could focus here. She could work out exactly what had happened to her after she died.

Most of it was a long, if pleasant, white haze. Death had obviously not been the end. There was some measure of existence after her death, because she had memories from that. Long, fuzzy memories that she didn’t feel were important to comprehend. There was something waiting for her after she died this time, too. Something that she didn’t feel any major concerns about. What she was concerned about was the short spot of chaos on this long spans of gleeful half-consciousness. At some point in the very recent past, the place she had been came into contact with the galaxy at large. It was not a happy reunion.

No, she remembered much worse than just that. One of her daughters had been there. Fabula. She’d probably been revived as a clone, exactly like what just happened to Anna. She’d been in such pain when Anna had seen her in life, and then in the afterlife, it had been even worse. She was wild, enraged, probably even terrified. Her confusion had been understandable. Unlike Anna, she didn’t have the benefit of being...wholly there when she first arrived in the world. Becoming complete had been a traumatic experience.

She was saved from that by someone Anna had nothing but warm feelings about.

‘Hello Fable.’

Another clone? Was her entire family line clones now? It didn’t matter, of course, because Anna remembered what she’d seen in Fable, her “granddaughter.” She was lost and scared, like Fabula, but just being around her made Fabula more certain. She was a stabilizing influence on Anna’s errant daughter, and the reverse seemed equally true. Unsurprising that little Fabs would feel protective of such a beautiful girl. Fable was a sign that Fabula’s life in this new galaxy had been so much less tragic than their lives hundreds of years ago. She’d gotten another chance to be a person, and she’d taken it by the horns.

Looking up at the warm, morning sun, Anna enjoyed her momentary reprieve from all of the pain and anguish she’d been dragged through since waking up. Someone she loved had finally gotten a happily ever after. It was a pity Kristin couldn’t have known the same...

 

[Anna Sachae]

Just the thought of Kristin sent Anna’s mood crashing down. She clenched her grip tighter around the little photo in her hands, ignoring the sound of her own sobs as tears began to splatter on the time-proofed casing. “Kris...I’m so sorry, Kris.” No one was around to hear her, least of all Kristin. She was dead. Petra and Lauda and all of the others were probably dead, too. Fabula had received a second chance at life, but Kris had faced unspeakable horrors and nothing else. She’d grown up tainted by a psychotic matron and a mother who was powerless to help her.

No...Anna hadn’t been powerless. She’d been weak. She’d watched her daughters warped and tainted by madness without doing a thing to stop it. Was it fear of Petra that had kept her from giving the girls the loving, tender childhood they deserved, or was it fear of what they were becoming? Kristin had always been abrasive and selfish, and Fabula was unstable and violent. Was that natural, or was it just her own failings as a parent? Who did she blame for never being able to hold her daughter again?

Once again, her own voice echoed in her head. Things she’d said in the past came back to ring true in the present.

‘The only one who needs to forgive you is you.’

Anna sniffled a bit, rubbing her eyes clear with one hand as the other ran her thumb over the picture of her baby girls. Kristin, so full of life and potential. Fabula, so innocent and open. She’d made thousands of machines in her life, but these two were her masterpieces. They were perfection, and while they had been stolen from her, the Force was kind enough to give one back. Her family wasn’t dead. In fact, it had grown!

There wasn’t a single part of her that didn’t ache to hold Kris in her arms, to run her fingers through her hair, feel her heartbeat on her skin. Anna would never be able to forget her precious, darling girl, but she might be able to let her go. Their time was over. Kris and Fabs and Anna had all reached the end of their lives. That Fabula and Anna were given an extension to make up for all they had lost was the will of the Force, and whether or not Kristin deserved such a chance at redemption was beyond Anna’s control.

With a quiet, somewhat sad smile, Anna traced her thumb over the picture of Kristin’s hair. “I’ll always love you, baby. Every second of eternity. Every waking moment. I’ll always ache without you. But you’re resting now, and I think you’ve earned that.” She sniffed back tears, rubbing her eyes again with her free hand. “You’re an auntie now, you know. A beautiful niece. Fable. From what I’ve seen of her, she takes a little after…” The dam broke again. “...After you… Oh, Kris…”

 

[Anna Sachae]

Well that plan had backfired fantastically. Instead of making herself feel better, Anna was fully weeping. Alone with her thoughts on a planet that had been nothing but heartache to her, she gravitated towards that heartache almost instinctively. Her failures weighed more heavily on her mind than the happiness she’d created for her lovely baby girls. She probably would have spent a great deal more time sobbing, too...

‘You did all that you could, dearheart. You don’t need to ask my forgiveness for a crime you didn’t commit.’

Giving a single long, sharp breath, Anna sat up properly and looked at her picture one more time. This was her family. She had lost part of it, but gained another. She had lived happily with them for years, and now she had years more to enjoy. She had been given a second chance. She would not forget her precious daughter, but she wouldn’t languish here grieving either. She still had one more left alive, and the Force itself couldn’t stop her from getting to her.

Standing, Anna looked around the dilapidated Morte Clan stronghold. It wasn’t yet damaged enough to be called “ruins,” but it was hardly a proper reflection of its former glory. Anna put the picture of her family in her salvaged toolbelt, then walked off into the small fortress/former vacation estate. The grass and vines of Dathomir had begun to trespass on the territory of progress and innovation here like an invading army, and from where Anna was standing, they had a damn good shot at winning, too. It was more a war of attrition at this point, but that meant there might have been enough time to check for survivors deeper inside.

The first obstacle she came to was another locked door. Anna leaned against, it, pressed an ear to its surface to listen. Unlike the door to her clones’ storage room, this one wasn’t asleep, but in a great deal of pain. Moss and vines had violated its inner workings, and though it yearned to perform its function one more time, it wouldn’t be able to without some help. With a little smile, Anna backed off, leaving her fingers tracing a small trail along the durasteel surface. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’m here, and I’m going to fix you right up.” She reached down to her toolbelt and pulled out a can of utility spray - grease, alcohol, and a cleaning solution all in one - before pressing the nozzle to the door’s hinges. “Just give me a few minutes, and we’ll have you good as new.”

Spraying only into the exact contact points where the damage was minimized how much fluid was in the door’s release mechanisms. In seconds, when Anna asked the door to open again, it complied with a quite groan of age and anguish, but she could hear its thanks as it finally opened for the first time in years. “You’re very welcome. I’ll make sure to use you again on my way out.”

 

[Anna Sachae]

The old Morte Clan mansion was as dilapidated as the outside. Most of it was open to the elements, after all. Dathomir had remarkably mild weather, and weather shields were a thing. There was no reason to have things like windows or drapes. As a result, everything was sun-bleached, and wildlife had been left free to reclaim the whole building. Fortunately, the power of technology was pretty impressive. Doors to the interior that had been closed for years still functioned, and properly closed off rooms had only dust and darkness to make them feel unused.

Anna didn’t for a moment think that the communications array was still functional. Dathomir was lacking in things like man-made satellites and general intergalactic infrastructure. What was still functional was the nuclear power core contained deep beneath the ground, and as a result, most of the lights, doors, and even computers were quite functional. Spending a couple of hours to familiarize herself with the very basics of the time she’d been away - namely the galactic year, which happened to be somewhere in the 800’s ABY - she salvaged a few useful parts to make herself a local broad-wave radio. If anyone within a hundred or so miles in any direction was even the least bit civilized, they’d be able to pick that up, and she could work from there.

Of course there was no answer, but the fact that she had a radio was an improvement over her previous situation. She stocked up on a few energy cells to power it, and jury-rigged a stun blaster with enough kick to put down most of the critters she knew were on Dathomir. No food, of course, but Dathomir was a wild planet. She’d be able to find berries until she could barter for something more substantial. As she exited the fort through the same door she’d entered through (just like she promised), Anna gave a sigh and walked out into the early midday warmth.

Her thoughts drifted to Fabula, where she might be right now, and...well, memories that were still leaking back. She was getting context for them now, at the very least.

‘You've faced so much pain, Fabs. So much of it was of your own making...I can't bear to think about what kind of horrors you're seeing in this place.’

 

[Anna Sachae]

It took Anna hours to be within range of someone with an actual radio. Mandalorians, apparently. That made sense, of course. Mandalore was quite close to Dathomir, and while the whole empire had been in terrible decline during her lifetime, it was good to see they had survived. Anna’s Mando’a was pretty much non-existent, so she felt like a bit of an odd gizka out when she was trying to arrange for a pickup to a slightly more civilized area. The moment she arrived, of course, she made herself as invaluable as possible. After all, Mandalorian techs were more interested in making a big boom than having a reliable piece of gear, and nothing would ever beat precision Kuati engineering for reliability.

A couple of days later, when the next Mando shuttle landed on the planet, she had amassed enough goodwill to trade it in for a ride offworld. In that time, though, she didn’t hear Fabula even once in her sleep. She reflected on it while looking out the shuttle’s exterior windows on their way out of orbit. The Force’s ways were strange, at times, but she had no doubt that she’d see her daughter again soon. Even if it had no intent on reuniting them, Anna would not let herself be kept apart from her family for long. No force or Force in the universe could stop her from holding Fabula in her arms again.

The last of her memories finally began to sort themselves out as the shuttle broke atmo. Anna’s lips moved in tandem with her mind, and she heard her own words in her head at the same time as she spoke them with her lips.

"Few things in this galaxy are more powerful than a mother's love."