Private Mourning and Pardon

[Eva Betrik]

Dantooine. Eva had never been here before, but she had always known she'd make the journey.

It'd taken a while to get all the paperwork straightened out. Thanks to the generosity of the Jedi Aaran Tafo, Eva had been allowed to defect from the Sith military, formally becoming a refugee and a citizen of the Galactic Alliance. It'd been the right time, as it turned out; the Empire had fractured under the weight of its countless enemies. If she'd stayed, there would have been nothing to fight for anyway. That didn't negate the guilt of turning her back on what she'd fought and bled for, but it did help. The problem with visiting Dantooine, of course, was that it was well beyond the Alliance's borders. The New Imperial Order had recently retaken it, driving out all of the Sith-Imperial holdouts. It'd been quite the propaganda coup for them, taping footage of the Imperator finally returning home, victorious in the war.

Of course, as far as the NIO's records had been concerned, Eva was an active Sith-Imperial military combatant - not the kind of person who would be welcome on Dantooine. She'd despaired of ever making it to the planet; if she went, she knew she would be suspected of traveling there to support the Sith guerrilla resistance. But all that had been before the declaration of Sith-Imperial Amnesty. Renounce the Sith, the decree went, and receive a blanket pardon for your participation in the war. It was a generous offer, and Eva had been more than happy to take it. She'd signed up to fight for the security, prosperity, and opportunity the Empire provided. It'd never been about the Sith themselves for her, and she felt even less loyalty to the masters of the Dark Side after what she'd seen on Krayiss II. She was happy to leave them behind.

What was harder was figuring out what was ahead for her. She still wasn't sure, so here she was, living in the past.

Eva and her mom had never found out what happened to Quinn's body. It hadn't been shipped home, as they'd hoped it would, and they'd never received any information about where he'd been buried. Or if. They'd finally held a small, private ceremony at their farm, lowering an empty coffin into the earth and gently covering it over. They'd picked a good spot, beneath a fruit tree he and Eva had climbed as kids. Quinn would've liked it, and the simple headstone they'd made for him - just his name and the years he'd lived, as simple and straightforward as he himself had been. But it'd always felt hollow, a gesture as empty as the grave itself. Eva often had the same nightmare - of Quinn still lying on some battlefield somewhere, uncared for as he rotted away to nothing. It didn't matter, she supposed. He was dead, and didn't care.

But she hadn't been able to stop caring, so here she was, to... to what? To pay her respects, she supposed.

Dantooine reminded her of home, but even more beautiful. Instead of Soullex's marshy reeds and mossy bushes, it was covered in golden grasses that swayed in the breeze, as if they were waves on an aurodium ocean. She had admired the tall, strong trees and peaceful farmsteads as her shuttle had glided down from orbit, heading for the city of Garang. It was in Garang that most of the local SICA battalions had been deployed, and that meant it was Eva's best guess for where Quinn had died. The streets had been quiet, orderly, and more than a little subdued. Eva had felt her heart leap into her throat every time an NIO patrol passed by, almost going for a blaster she no longer carried. She had to make herself breathe slowly, unclench her muscles, and remember: the war was over. She wasn't a soldier anymore, and these weren't her enemies.

It'd taken a few hours of asking, and a few more of searching the wrong places, but she'd finally found the Sith-Imperial military graveyard just beyond the edge of town. No one had wanted to talk about it; every citizen of Garang, it seemed, was eager to put the war behind them. Eva could understand that, given that Dantooine had been on the front lines not so long ago. The graveyard itself was a simple, spartan affair, overgrown with clumps of grass and climbing ivy. It was clear that no one had bothered to keep it up after the Sith had been forced out, though she was glad to see that no one had vandalized it yet, either. She gazed at the gate for a long, long while, gathering her courage. What was she doing here? What did any of it matter? All she was going to do was renew that old grief, the one she'd pushed down hard the day she'd joined the SICA.

Eva stuck out her chin in defiance of herself, gritted her teeth, and pushed open the gate.

Row after row of simple durasteel markers denoted each narrow grave plot, all arranged alphabetically. At least they'd had the decency to bury everyone separately. Eva walked slowly, fingernails digging into her palms, biting her lip. She had to see, but she dreaded the moment, as if not witnessing the grave would somehow keep hope alive that Quinn might still somehow come back. She dragged her feet, delaying the inevitable, but it was no use; even with the huge breadth of casualties, it didn't take long to get to Betrik. Taking a deep, steadying breath that still ended up shaky, Eva knelt at the graveside. It was even more cursory than the one she and her mom had offered: PFC Quinn Betrik, SICA-Soullex, First Division. The ex-trooper put her hand on the dirt, splaying her fingers. It was cool and moist. It held no answers, no resolution.

"Hey, Quinn," Eva whispered, biting her lip hard to keep her voice steady. "It's... it's good to see you again. I missed you."

The wind made the tall grasses sway, a soft and rolling whooosh. Everything else was silent.

Hakon Fett​

 

[Hakon Fett]

Rolling waves of straw on a sea of gold, bales dotted the horizon and the sporadic blba trees of dantooine hummed to the light tune of early autumn's breeze. High noon shone from above grazing the fields but no field workers to sweat under its embrace caressed the field. The season had turned and the day had come for them to reap what they had sown. Just like Emmett Hayes.

Day of the Harvest.

The day both he and his son died.

Fruits of his labor.

A few years ago, on this exact day, Abaddon was born from the limp body of the son he had killed. And every year, on Harvest Day, Emmett Hayes came to face his regrets. Standing a dozen or so feet behind the daughter that had come to pay her respects, the masked assassin watched with a paper plane in hand. Its diminutive size and exquisite design hinted at a surgically precise master of the craft, one no one would expect to be the one-eyed behemoth in orange and grey blue.

The wind rustled the weeds, its whisper carrying the deadly whistle of artillery shells hammering the ground. Commanding shouts echo through the air, the ground turns upside down in a symphony of destruction only war could conduct. The sound of chaos disappears as he gazes into his scope, he finds the sick comfort in the touch of his barrel and the holding of his breath as his victim falls in the eye of his crosshair for a thousandth time. He pulls at the trigger, the spring coiling against the tug defiantly struggling to disobey the order to kill. The resistance harder than ever before, it wants to warn him, scream, but it has no mouth. Cold blood runs through his veins and the trigger concedes under the pressure. The magnetic coils of the verpine sniper stir to life and the round is launched in a deadly quietness. The silent killer, the assassin's favored weapon, bags another soul. With a loud crack, the Sith-Imperial's helmet breaks in two to reveal the killer's face only much younger.

In war, they say, the father buries the son.

"And he misses you, too." Hayes' voice escaped through the helmet's vocoder, then trailed off in hesitance. The war was practically over, the New Imperial Order had won. The Sith were all but destroyed and the amnesty brought those smart enough to renounce the Dark Lords under the safe embrace of the New Imperials. His curse of silence could finally be lifted. Confession would never lift the full weight of his shoulders but it could take some of the burden off. "There's something you should know, Eva Betrik ."

Tentatively, he removed the helmet off his face to reveal eyes (or rather - an eye) completely identical to Evalina's.

"I'm your father."​

​

 

[Eva Betrik]

Eva hadn't expected to find anyone else here, in this quiet, neglected place. The locals were eager to forget this chapter of their history. The SICA regiments from Dantooine itself, the poor idiot farmboys who had died in droves in Garang's streets, were buried elsewhere. They would be remembered. They had left behind fathers and mothers and aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and cousins and friends who lived here still, people who quietly visited their gravesides even though they'd been enemies to the new government. The NIO, for all its emphasis on loyalty and control, had wisely left well enough alone, letting their reclaimed citizens mourn.

If the roles had been reversed, the Sith probably would've buried the place in duracrete and had visitors shot.

But this graveyard was for other SICA regiments, shipped in as emergency defensive troops from a dozen worlds that weren't actively besieged at the time. It was a sign of how desperate the Empire had become by the time of the third Civil War. SICA regiments had been conceived as defenders of their own homeworlds, fighting a guerilla war through terrain they knew well because they were locals. But as external threats multiplied and manpower became stretched, regiments from the eastern frontier - unthreatened until the rise of the Warlords and the Ashlan Crusade, well after Dantooine - had been brought in to supplement dwindling Sith Legion troops.

And they had died too, died in droves on a planet far from home, fighting a war they didn't really understand.

No one from Dantooine remembered these soldiers, and no one cared to; their headstones were nothing but reminders that this city had once been the front line of a war that had repeatedly turned the lives of everyone on the planet upside down, a war fought by two superpowers based on far-off city worlds that had nonetheless ended up in their peaceful, rural front yard. No one here had wanted offworld soldiers from either side to be blasting their way through the streets back then, and no one wanted to honor or mourn the ones who'd died in that clash now. The only visitors the cemetery had seen in a long time were fresh-grown weeds and bold Iriaz grazing on them.

Which was why Eva was shocked to hear a voice behind her... a voice that had haunted her dreams for months.

The young woman whipped around, dropping into a practiced crouch, her hand falling to a sidearm she no longer wore. As her fingers closed around empty air, she cursed herself, wondering whether the instincts drilled into her over the past year would ever fade. She stared up at a bodysuit she'd first seen through a visor on Vjun, distorted by the greenish tint of night vision mode. She recognized the colors well enough, though; she'd seen them up close before the end of that terrifying night, the night Bast Castle had blown sky high and her week-long "debriefing" at the hands of the Saaraishash had begun. It was the NIO operative that'd had her at his mercy.

That one-eyed mask - lean, predatory, and almost featureless - lived rent-free in her nightmares.

It took a moment for the man's words to register. "And he misses you, too." Eva was stunned, then furious. What gave him the right? What did he know about how she felt, or who she was here to see, and why? But that initial rush of anger quickly abated, replaced by a feeling of dread and suspicion that coiled up her spine. Why was he here? He obviously had some interest in her, since he'd abandoned his mission as soon as he'd seen who she was... but there was no way he'd just been tracking her this whole time. She'd been across several battlefields since Vjun, battlefields far from the NIO warfront, and she'd not seen any sign of him again. So he knew this place another way...

The dread settled in her stomach like a mass of durasteel, making her queasy. Back on Vjun, the operative had almost taken off his helmet. He'd reached up for the clasp, as if he had something to show her, something to prove... but then he'd blasted off into the sky, flying far from the defensive battery, vanishing into the night and resurfacing only in her most terrifying dreams. Now he reached up again, just as he'd done before. The click of the helmet release seemed as loud as a gunshot in the stillness. Eva's breath caught in her throat as she crouched there, paralyzed, wishing for the security of a blaster in her hand and knowing it wouldn't matter if she had one.

Knowing that her world was about to turn upside down again, and wondering if her soul could withstand it.

A single eye stared back at her out of a scarred, lined face - the face of a soldier, of a man who didn't know how to live without a war. There were differences between them - he was all sharp angles and harsh edges, his features like drawn blades and fitted armor plates, while hers were rounder, softer, only just beginning to thin and hollow with the burden of bloodshed. Her lips were thicker than his, her nose a little thinner, a little more upturned. But there was no denying it in the eyes. They were the same eyes, the same icy grey with a hint of blue, above the same high, sharp cheekbones and beneath the same arched brows. Anyone could have seen it.

Something she should know. Well, now she knew, and her heart was racing, and her cheeks were hot, and her stomach was doing flips while her fingers clenched so hard that her nails dug painfully into her palms. "Emmett Hayes," she said, and she was proud of how controlled and level her voice sounded - only the slightest quaver at the end gave away the turmoil she was feeling inside. She didn't call him father. That was what he was, at least biologically... but this was a man she could barely remember, who had been gone from her life since she'd barely learned to walk. She knew far more about him from mom's stories than she did from her own recollections.

Mom had lied about Coruscant, about the Alliance, about the Sith. Had she lied about her husband, too?

Maybe. Probably. But here Emmett Hayes was, doing exactly what his estranged wife Marin would have predicted - becoming a soldier in another war against the Sith. The way mom told it, this was a man unsuited for peace, who was never happy without the thrill of mortal danger and the belongingness of military service. Eva understood that, in a way. She knew she would miss the camaraderie of SICA Soullex for the rest of her life, the sense of being part of something greater, a band of brothers and sisters united in duty and prepared to die for one another. It had been like ripping out her own heart to defect, betraying her squadmates in order to save them.

Would she be the same as him, then? Would Eva never be able to find another way to live, now that the purpose the Sith military had given her was gone? Mom had told her about her dad in peacetime, in Silver Jedi space after the fall of the Core Worlds to the One Sith. He'd been absent more than he was around, a gambler and a drunk, unable to hold down a civilian job or settle into the quiet rhythm of a simple, family-oriented life... until finally he'd reenlisted with the Anatarian Rangers and rushed back to the brutal straightforwardness of war. Would that be his daughter's fate, too? Was fire and iron her birthright, an unwanted gift from a father she'd never truly met?

Until now. "I..." She hesitated, keeping her distance, her voice guarded. "I don't know what to say."

Hakon Fett​

 

[Hakon Fett]

For eternity there was silence in the air between them. Only Dantooinian wind daring to whisper tales of a past burdened with grief and regret. Of mistakes and consequences. Of a family he had destroyed. He stood frozen, feet planted to the same cursed soil watered with the blood of his son, until the hand grasping the helmet shifted to clip it to his belt. An urge buried deep within made him pause the motion. He yearned to simply drop it - leave Abaddon behind and reunite with his sole remaining child. He clenched his fist at the harsh reality and clipped the helmet to his utility belt.

That door had been shut. Closed, locked, barred and even concreted for extra measures.

Beneath the assassin's ice lied a longing heart. Craving for a future the mind knew was impossible. Reconciliation, at least in the form he silently had prayed for, was out of the question. Yet, the heart of a father would always defy the mind of an assassin when it came to blood, to family. To his daughter.

"I--" he began, taking a step forward but immediately stopping. The fear in her eyes clenched his throat. What father scared their child? The one which the mother would flee from. For a brief moment, he understood Marin, but even then forgiveness would never emerge. Too burdened down by the weight of the pain he had felt when she had disappeared with their children.

"I believe you have a lot of questions." he started, uncertain in what to say. For one of the greatest assassins in the galaxy, his nerves never felt as limp as now. "But if you don't--" he contemplated over his next words cautiously, perhaps even more diligently than any assassination attempt before. He winced, swallowing the hard realization that this could very well be the last time they ever exchange words.

"-- I'll understand."

You won't see me again.

Eva Betrik

 

[Eva Betrik]

Well, Eva thought, at least this is awkward for both of us.

She studied her father's face, so different from the blank mask he wore. Both were images of war, shaped by the brutal demands of battle, but it was so different to see the one beneath, the one that showed human feeling. Back on Vjun, with that razor-sharp sword pressed against her back and that cold voice in her ear, she couldn't have imagined seeing uncertainty or hesitation or regret on the wielder's features. But here they were now, warring for their place on a soldier's disciplined features. This wasn't a way that Emmett Hayes was used to feeling, that much she could tell. He was directness and competence and professionalism. These emotions clashed with his sense of self.

But he wanted to be there, talking to her, trying to reach out. That much she was sure of. And that intention, as clear as the bright Dantooine day, begged a question of her in turn: what did she want? When she'd been a child, her mother had taught her to despise her absent dad, to blame him for everything that went wrong. Whenever the farm struggled, it was because Emmett had left them to fend for themselves. Whenever Quinn or Eva acted out, it was because they didn't have a father figure to raise them right. Whenever the far-flung isolation of Soullex wore on Marin, it was her husband's fault she'd been forced out there, to a place beyond the endless war against the Sith.

At least, it'd been beyond that war at the time. Nothing and nowhere in the galaxy seemed to stay safe forever.

To her mom's face, Eva had always agreed; Emmett had left them, and they were on their own, and all they needed or wanted was each other. Secretly, though, she'd always been curious about her dad. When she'd turned out to be more than a bit of a tomboy, climbing trees and fixing speeders and learning to drop a womp rat at a hundred meters, she'd always wondered if those interests came from him, from the man who'd grown into a perpetual soldier. Until she'd been in her mid teens, she'd kept secretly hoping that he would turn up some day, that it would all turn out to be some big misunderstanding and he would come back and they'd all be a family again. Maybe he'd take her shooting.

It hadn't happened, and the more Eva learned about the way the galaxy really worked, the more she'd agreed with her mom.

But they hadn't turned out so different from each other in the end, had they? They'd both run off to war at the first opportunity, to find that belongingness that only fighting side by side with other warriors could bring. If she'd lasted long enough in the Sith military, if the Empire hadn't collapsed and she hadn't defected, maybe she would've ended up in a suit like his, taking on special operations across the northern front. Maybe they would've met again on the battlefield, never knowing what they meant to each other, fighting for opposite causes - him because fighting against the Sith had been his whole life, and her because fighting for the Sith was all she'd ever known.

Fate, or the Force, or that cold schutta Lady Luck had decreed it all different. So here they were instead, at Quinn's graveside.

"A million," she finally replied, and it was the truth. "But I... I know who you are, but I don't know you. I don't know where to start. I'm nineteen years old, Emmett." She didn't call him dad. She wasn't sure she ever would be able to do that. "I'm nineteen, and I don't remember a thing about you. All I know is what mom told me, and none of it was good. You've missed my whole life, and I don't know where to start with that, for either of us." What did he even want out of this? Did he think he was just going to walk back into her life, that they'd somehow be a family again? Quinn was dead. Marin still hated him, and always would. They were all so far apart now.

"So," she finally said, blowing out a long breath as she cut through the awkwardness. "The NIO, huh? Last thing mom heard, you were back with the Anatarian Rangers." She didn't say it, but the implication was there: but that was a long, long time ago.

Hakon Fett​

 

[Hakon Fett]

She called him by his name - it was expected. It didn't make it hurt any less. Beneath the duotone mask of death lied a man broken by a horrible galaxy and rearranged to serve the only purpose he'd ever fully understood. War. He wasn't there when neither Quinn nor Evalina was born. He'd barely spent any time teaching his son to walk and hardly any time even seeing his daughter. The last time he had seen her, Evalina's hair had merely begun to grow. To her - Emmett was simply a fledgling memory lost in the haze and rebuilt in the image of her mother.

An image he could only assume was demonic, to say the least.

But not too far from the truth.

He had sold his soul to war, to retribution against the Sith. Now when the dust has settled, Emmett could only stare in the abyss of his regret illuminated in the eyes of a fatherless daughter.

"I left the Rangers years ago when the Silvers opted to remain passive against the Sith." the assassin explained, his one eye fixated on Evalina but not a step forward did he make. It was as if an invisible barrier weaved of his mistakes prevented him from closing the distance to his daughter.

"The Imperials were the only ones taking the fight to these savages." he added, a frown materializing over his face at the mention of the Sith. His restless fight, he believed, was for the safety of his family. To be their hero. Marin disagreed. Rage suddenly built up in his guts and escaped through his mouth in a cold tone, "Was it your mother's idea to send you both into that--" human shield. sacrificial lambs. He struggled for the word in disgust. "--citizen army."

Eva Betrik

 

[Eva Betrik]

Emmett Hayes, Eva reflected, hadn't changed one bit. She watched his features close into a frown, pulling his scarred skin tight across the hard lines of his face, as he spoke about the enemy he'd spent his whole adult life fighting. There was no staying out of it for him, not even for the sake of his family - and certainly not for his own happiness, because Emmett Hayes had never learned how to be happy, and his only satisfaction came from fighting against the Sith. It didn't even matter who he fought for, only whom he fought against. That much was clear. Passivity, neutrality, these were sins to him, signs of weakness that the warrior could not abide.

What would he do now, she wondered? The Sith Empire was gone, with no clear successor state, and the eastern warlords and the feudal Sith Eternal hadn't lasted any longer. The great contest to see who would carry forward the Sith tradition had ended with no one left standing, a backfire that had cost everyone involved everything. But to a man like Emmett Hayes, would the breaking of the Sith governments be enough? Eva doubted it. There were rumors of where the Sith survivors had gone, rumors that many had started their own petty dominions or joined the rampaging Brotherhood of the Maw. There were even rumors of a hidden empire, pulling strings from the shadows.

Her father, she suspected, would spend the whole rest of his life chasing down every last rumor.

Emmett's voice shifted, his words turning as cold as winter winds, as he mentioned the SICA... and Eva's mom. "No," the ex-trooper replied, her own voice firm. "Mom never pushed us to join the SICA. We volunteered. Both of us." She looked down at Quinn's grave, bitterly wishing that neither of them had. Their lives would have been so, so different. Quinn would still be alive, for one. But what would they have thought of all this chaos, if they'd stayed on Soullex? Eva would never have seen the Empire for what it really was. She would have been a bitter patriot, full of anger as she watched the government that had brought her so many opportunities suddenly collapse.

She would have hated herself for not standing up and fighting for those opportunities, even if it wouldn't have mattered.

But there was no use going back to hypotheticals anyway. What was done was done, and couldn't ever be changed; the grave dirt on her hands was a stark reminder of that. Eva took a long, deep breath, then looked her father in the eyes. Well, in the eye, anyway. "I don't know if I can make you understand," she told him, "but I'll try. My first experience of the Empire had nothing to do with the Sith. It was free healthcare, free education, booming trade, and a sense of... of being part of something bigger, something that mattered. Soullex was the back end of the fething galaxy. We never had anything like that." She shook her head and looked away.

"I don't know if Quinn ever saw more than that. He died on his first deployment, and I signed up almost as soon as I heard. It felt like we were on the defensive, trying to preserve the stability and prosperity the Empire had given us, and I... I wanted to pick up where he left off, to make his death mean something." She'd cried the day the report of Quinn's death had come home, cried from the moment she got the communique to the moment she finally fell into tormented sleep. Then she'd been numb for a week, barely talking, barely eating. On day eight, she'd taken the family speeder to town, walked into the recruiter's office, and enlisted with Third Battalion.

Her mom had cried again when Eva told her what she'd done... but she'd also said she was proud of her daughter.

"It wasn't until later," the ex-trooper continued, speaking slowly as she collected her thoughts and chose her words, "until I'd met some of the Jedi, until I'd seen what the Sith were really like, that I started to question what the Empire was built on and who it really served." She shook her head again, remembering the downtrodden people of Bitter End and Krayiss II, shivering as she recalled the horrific Sith ghosts that had nearly ripped her apart in the ancient library. "We didn't hear about the massacres, or the dark rituals, or all the betrayals and sacrifices of our own citizens. We thought we were looking out for our people."

She looked at him again. "I still want to believe in the Empire, and all it could offer. But the Sith... I know they're evil."

Hakon Fett​