Unwanted Afters (Reyn)

[Yasha Cadera]

Medical science, however advanced it was, could only heal as fast as a body could take. The Hell Wolf’s body, complicated by the Vong biot which resuscitated her after the tragedy of Mandalore, was slow to take to bacta and surgical intervention. Once more the Hell Child needed to take the long way round to a level of wholeness. While hopeful, Doc Allard began to wonder if there was simply nothing left of the Yasha they knew. Was her brain too damaged from the loss of her heartbeat? Talk of her soul roaming around the Netherworld searching for [member="Kaine Australis"] began to stick.

Life support kept her organs going for weeks. Doctors from united clans worked in perpetuity, refusing to leave any portion of her injuries untended and unchecked. Silent vigils by the family and friends near were conducted unawares of if she could experience or remember. One by one, life support machines and medical aids were removed. She would wake or die. Doc pulled her breathing tube out himself, alone in the room with the friend and Mand’alor he’d known for over a decade. Yasha didn’t move for hours. Her chest rattled.

The first waking word uttered by the once-Infernal came after dissenting evidence she would wake at all.

“Ram… Where’s Ram?” She rasped.

An indecently tired Doc rushed the room where [member="Reyn Australis"] slept and set up to watch over his mother. Clinging to the door jam, he halted his forward motion so hard the buy’ce fell off his head.

“Yasha’s calling for you!” Weeks of waiting evaporated as Yasha attempted to sit up, shift her numb legs. Olive skin grew pale, a twinge of green around the biot, which for now refused to return to its’ inert slumber.

“Ram… Ram’ika.” She had to see Ram. Yasha needed most of all to look into the eyes of her son, and know absolutely that he was okay.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Artificial light burned at Yasha’s vision, not yet set below the safety line. There’d been no need to dim them with her comatose, the rise and fall of her ruined chest a miracle every revolution. Even half blind by the light causing her face to wince, Yasha saw her son.

Mothers had their own magic when it came to their boys, and however distant, Yasha still knew her Ram’ika. Shifting in bed to raise herself a bit higher, Yasha stopped when a searing pain ripped at the cacophony of stitches, sutures and surgical staples holding her lower torso to her body. Kolcta reigned, alongside bacta, yet slow in its seeping and application. Legs rested immobile, and for a second Yasha grimaced. No. Legs later.

She could watch them float away and not reach out. The usual banter and levity in the young man were faded off. Gone. To a chorus of hazard beeps from the medical machinery, Yasha grabbed her son’s shoulders and with all which passed for strength, pulled him into her maternal embrace.

“My son... My... you’re alive.” Reyn was hurting, she could hear it in his voice. The hazards of pain meant nothing. Yasha tugged him in, gasping at the strain of it. “I love you so fething much... kark. Don’t tell your father I swore in front of you. He’d be chuffed and celebrate.”

Voice weak and throat burning from the breathing tubes removed days before, Yasha struggled to swallow. Why did her throat burn?

Padding in on his black furred paws, Ambrose trotted with a waggling tail and a basket handle in his mouth. Two stim-cafs in sealed tumblers, one black as his fur, the other sweetened with cream and honey for the boy. The boy Tuulu died for. A son not his own.

The Pack shifted in Tuulu’s death, incorporating themselves around the Jare’rami’kad and Reyn. Since Ram’s birth the gurlanin were ever present. Ambrose remembered the feeling of a young Reyn gripping his fur while they rode around the countryside, a noble warrior and his steed. Yet now, the attention was different. No longer cubs and protectors but siblings in arms. In many ways, Reyn would take Tuulu’s place. Even as Tuulu’s son, the Yronwulf, grieved.

Setting down the basket, Ambrose dug in with a morphing limb to place Reyn’s stim-caf on the table beside the bed. Otherwise leaving the parent and child undisturbed, Ambrose padded into the corner, plunking down on a pile of blankets he’d tugged in to rest during his constant vigils.

“Ram... how long...” No... not yet. From the cursory glance at medical equipment and tired set of her son’s face, Yasha hesitated. “You look so tired... Ram, what Koe said in the throne room... seeing you grown, my warrior son, I am infinitely glad you’re here. I’m sorry... I’m sorry Reyn, I was a terrified widow and I... it doesn’t excuse what I almost did to you.”

[member="Reyn Australis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Physical strength failed the once-Infernal. Her arms slid away from [member="Reyn Australis"] until her son dipped and held her so gingerly. So lightly. When was the last time she was held so, as if her body were a fragile gift and divine image?

Yasha shuddered with a stutter.

Her eyes clamped shut against the light in the room, there had been no light where Zambrano held her, warm and mighty in the dark. No doctors buzzing, or gurlanin guardians sliding stim-caf to a teenaged boy who by rights appeared to have been as exhausted as Yasha’s once deceased body. A trickle of memory from beneath Kaas City rebuked the woman resting in her son’s arms. The strength of a mighty grip, unique in its’ ability to crush her, as he’d done earlier and after in tandem, their battles desperate and horrid scraps of predators fighting to the bared teeth for their lives.

Sucking in a haggard breath, Yasha made a single attempt to avoid the sobs, before she burst into fertile and consuming tears. Never crying or showing such serious emotion in front of anyone was a lifetime pursuit for the Infernal.

Ambrose taught her never to cry. Not to show the horror or the pain, lest the enemies of Mand’alor the Infernal pounce upon such hideous moments of weakness. Sequestered in the hospital bed with her eldest son, her beloved and rigid guardian in the corner lapping at stim-caf from his lupine tongue, Yasha broke.

Her spirit shattered on the fault lines of her injuries.

“No, Reyn. No…” The mother stuttered, using his full name in the desperation of their situation. “… Koemi could have hurt me far worse. It wasn’t his desire to cause me pain which locked us together in that battle, it was his disappointment that I came at all. He waited, Reyn. He purposefully waited until I was gone before turning his eye on Mandalore. He warned us, told Adara not to let Girak-Kaine and Magnus go to Mandalore, if he meant to hurt me, Koemi never would have told me to bundle up and protect the twins. I wasn’t supposed to show. I was to stay home with Caz and the children, living the life he knew full well I always wanted. Koe gave me a chance to run and I didn’t take it. Your Dad was fighting, the Clans were going to have to fight for Mandalore, and I thought... I don't know what I thought other than an instinctual desire to save your father from having to die facing him... Kaine Australis, running into battle against the same Dark Lord that took his Master's leg off with a tug. Who nearly killed him in one shot on that silly Jedi library campaign. That’s not on Koemi.”

Yasha stuttered again, as wracking pains stung her ribcage, where Doc Allard worked feverishly with Taozi and Dr. Corek to repair shattered bones, and her inconstant, damaged heart. “That’s not on him…”

“… he let me go…” Another cough of pain, and Yasha clutched her own chest, choking for air. Ambrose snapped up, at the bedside in a milisecond to hold her forehead in his mammoth appendage, chitter and chuff in the gurlanin form of comforting lullaby speak. “… he let me go… and I ruined it. I brought you into a war you weren’t ready for, and got Tuulu killed and I wasn’t ready, it hadn’t been long since the twins were born, and I hadn’t been training and…”

Amber eyes widened at the sobs breaking Reyn’s attempts at restraint. While Ambrose and Reyn were here, there was an all important person missing, one Yasha knew would be quickly by to see her wake up… she grunted as Ambrose helped her sit up. Shaking arms grabbed Reyn and pulled him close enough to sit on the bed beside her, attempting in minute motions to rock them both back and forth.

“… He told me everything would be alright… Gave me the only thing he knew I wanted... freedom from the Throne. Although in the end... no. It's not the end, but it is for me. Isn't it, my love? My strong young man, you've been so brave.” The relief of her son’s forgiveness broke across her cheeks with hot tears. She held him as tight as she dared, rubbing her thumb over his tears to sweep them away. How did she rectify the disparate sides of her soul, Panathan and Mandalorian? As an Epicanthix from a Panathan House, Yasha felt the mercy in the Sith Emperor as only a handful of beings ever had. Darth Carnifex gave bountifully to her, even in causing her death... Even when their blades clashed and threats flew. Yet, he was chaos and destruction given form. A pure extrapolation of the Dark he sought as proof of power and immortality. And in the crossfire, planets quaked.

How could she rectify Kaine Zambrano as both murderer and saviour? How could she rectify the events of Mandalore, when her son was sobbing?

“My boy. My brave young warrior… thank Kad you made it out safely. But… how long have I been… I can’t feel my legs. Why isn’t Kain’ik here?”

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Torrents of sobs stole her ability to speak and breathe. Clinging to her son, the once-Mand’alor continued to shatter. Too much war. Too many battles. Too long she’d been expected to weather it all.

‘You were raised in Hell, little Wolf. This is nothing in comparison. Stand tall, you are no good to us any other way than perfect.’ The constant mantra of Ambrose, as he set a bulwark around a broken hearted 20 year old girl, belly barely beginning to swell with her daughter’s ill-fated life. The Infernal.

Yasha sobbed unabashedly, detaching from the torturous affections of Darth Carnifex’s designs. The designs were over, as her tenure was over. He no longer stretched out his hand to clutch around her ribcage, intended daughter, intended. Given such luxury as removal from his designs, Yasha felt the freedom of both Mantle and man. She became nothing, the moment his gifted blade excised her flesh. Freedom at its’ most intrinsic: freedom with cost.

How did a woman, who became a parent too young look at her eldest son and cry for the man he detested? The man who murdered his mother and left her body splattered on the floor? Why did she grieve at all? Monsters begat monsters, Aditya always said… usually glaring at Kaine Australis.

“How do you think it feels to be the only one shown the Devil’s mercy?” The monster of Yasha’s grief climbed up her numb legs, and gnawed at her ears in Reyn’s voice. ‘I cut his shabla foot’.

“Don’t make Kaine Zambrano the prize you want on your wall. Without him, I’d have died as an infant, and you kids wouldn’t have had Tamar to raise you. He could have done a lot worse and he didn’t. I’m alive. Even after spurning everything he’s tried to give me, I am alive, and he let us go, cyar’ika. Ask Alexandra how many people he’s let go.”

Holding to her son, Yasha tried to be the comforter she never had been in his childhood. Shaking fingers swept upon his hair, a kiss pressed on his cheek. A mother’s love…

“Your father in war time… Kad save us. He’s probably begrudgingly loving this.” Yasha sighed, shaking her head. In her mind-fogged state, hopped up on analgesics, and the medical cocktail holding her body together, Yasha missed the lie. The best lies were ones which helped the hearer believe what they wanted to be true. Kaine made it out alive… It was all Yasha needed to feel the panic ebb away from her shivering muscles. “I told your father once my love kept him alive… I don’t think he realized what I meant… or how hard I negotiated with Koemi to stave the Sith off Clan Australis. Caz was never in danger, Zambrano knew not to touch her, but Kaine… well.. you know how your father is, when there’s a Sith in the room. I… I made myself proud of what I had to do to appease him. It was nothing which endangered Mandalore, just… such little things… such… timid things… speaking Epicant, teaching the kids...”

Yasha’s face contorted as she sunk into hospital pillows and sheets as pale as her deathly skin. Her right hand flexed, the alien biot which refused to die quietly shivering with a sheen of green flesh.

“Your brothers got Panathan names… you didn’t, you were named after Kain’ik’s lost friends, but the others, they… it’s amazing how effective a Panathan gods’ name is to the God-King. Dedicated to Nereus… by Papa Girak… I remember how he held Adara, when she was a newborn. Like… some proud all-father of the Epicanthix race, clucking his tongue and humming lullabies as she settled in and finally stopped crying. Her eyes opened and for the first time in her dangerously short life, she breathed easy. I’ll never forget, ‘Yasha you’re starving your baby. She is a strong Panathan daughter blessed as your family is blessed, by the merciful Dark.’ You don’t know what it was like, widowed barely out of being a teenager with a sick baby, that Kain’ik had to resurrect… and in a single instant there’s Kaine Zambrano going ‘cancel the diplomatic talks. Let me hold her.’ And he fed her and she was better and… that’s what it was always like. We’d get to business in a cold and calculated way, the business of keeping the Sith and Mandalorians from war was tantamount to everything, but the moment it was concluded, he’d open like a night blooming flower and… and it was the most comforting and easy relationship I’d ever had. He didn’t smack me around like Mama, he didn’t try to kill me like Preliat, he didn’t need constant looking after like Gray and he didn’t die like Ra. Since I was a baby he was the only being in the universe I knew I could trust beyond all others… and when he asked for repayment it was always either effortless or negotiable… everyone kept telling me he was using me, but for what? For not starting a war? I turned down most of what he asked, unless it was prudent for Manda’yaim… then he held me under Kaas City, and… I smashed his head into the debris so many times it was softer than pudding.”

Ambrose’s breath caught. He shifted into human form and set his hand on Yasha’s cheek, daring her to seek out his eyes. What passed for a killer’s compassion.

“Sorry… I don’t know why that came out, it… I gave him that shabla sword he used to run me the feth through. It’s over. You’re right. I can’t protect anyone anymore, useless. Tell Kain’ik… tell him to come home to his wife. I… I know he gets obsessed and brings out all his toys, but…” Pressing her lips together, Yasha looked down to her useless legs. “… but… I need him more than… I need… I need him to know I don’t blame him for shooting me. He had his shots and he took them and… he did the right thing hitting us both, if it meant getting Carnifex off Manda’yaim… even if getting shot by your father was the most painful thing I’ve had to endure in my life… he… he didn’t mean to shoot me… he didn’t… he didn’t mean to shoot me.”

Once more Yasha burst into agonizing, gasping tears. She sobbed into her hands, body stinging from the pain of shrapnel slamming into her memory with the cannon-fire of Kain’ik’s cherub.

“I need to see him… I need to tell him… I need…”

Ambrose grabbed Reyn’s shoulder as Doc Allard swooped in. The Doc said nothing, but threw into adjusting drips and checking Yasha’s vitals, as she began choking once more on her own lungs, the sobs triggering sickly wheezes from the miraculously living woman.

Shoving Reyn into the hall, Ambrose smacked him up against the wall after the door closed behind them.

“The HOLY fething dik of Kad Harang’ir you doing, pup?” He sneered in a low growl. “How the kark is lying to her better? She’s going to want to see him, and what then? Are you seriously going to put that broken wreck of a woman through wondering why her own husband doesn’t come see her in the hospital? Are you going to tell [member="Noah Corek"] and [member="Alexandra Feanor"] to lie to her, too? Caz? What’s your plan?”

[member="Reyn Australis"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Unaware of her apologies and admonitions to a dead man, the broken Epicanthix woman settled ill on the sheets of her medical bed. Reyn appeared to misunderstand, or perhaps it was the willful ignorance of the young. Either way, as Caz would say it was the universe’s thoughts now.

Yasha’s thoughts halted as her body spasmed with coughs. Ambrose knew the rattle in a being’s chest near their end, and having heard that damned rattle for weeks in his beloved Hell Wolf, knew to get the boy out. In the hall, three more medics rushed the room as Doc called a code. Ambrose growled and shook his head.

She was too strong to die and too weak to make it without the Yuuzhan Vong biot in her arm, which slowly began attempting to consume her body wholesale.

“She’s survived being widowed before. She survived Carnifex before.” It was a poor accounting from the gurlanin, whose eyes kept flicking toward the door of the medical suite. Dare he peek inside, or lead the boy away? “The palace is ash, Ram. Ash and soot. Sigurd Adolfo was with him, neither of their life signs are… I see.”

The cub grew before Ambrose’s eyes, taking charge the way his father would have, if he’d been there and not a pile of grey and green ash in the shape of a boar’s head at the bottom of a crater. Twitching his head, Ambrose glared.

“I’ve sent Vano and Kip to search for remnants. If there’s an air pocket, they’ll slink through. If there’s a life sign, they’ll smell it.” Yalilyr were the best hunters in Mandalore, all gurlanin, all trained by Ambrose himself over a hundred years of service to the Clans. “There is… another way.”

Reyn’s words stopped Ambrose dead cold.

“Couldn’t… you’ve never been in love, Reyn. Never fought to the death for a person you hold to tightly. All Kaine Australis would have to do to help your mother is sit in the same room. Do you have any idea how much I’ve seen her to do keep that man alive? How many times I pushed Tuulu not to eat his boar-flavoured flesh?” Shaking his head, Ambrose sighed and ran his hand along his grey hair. “Your father was the one part of her life Baiko and I didn’t plan. We demanded more of her than any other person in the Clans, and did it freely. Your Dad was the first and only person since, who succeeded in giving Yasha any semblance of a life outside the Mantle. And he did it by making you. We didn’t want you, or what you represented.

You ruined her in a way no child or person has. Turned her from loving nothing but Mandalore, to loving her Aliit. You were Kaine’s way to show her she was accepted and loved… something none of us wanted her to feel beyond her duty. She learned the freedom Kaine spoke about as he held her was possible. She could claim it. Now her greatest benefactor is gone, and her husband is dead. She’s got a Vong arm taking over her body by microns and a rattle to her ribcage I fear. This is exactly the time she needs Kaine Mother-fething Australis… and I have a way.”

Grinding his teeth, Ambrose watched another two medics rush into the room, one with more equipment.

“Yasha had clones commissioned. Everyone she loved, there are body duplicates, and memory spikes. We could have Kaine’s clone delivered with memories of his entire life up to the battle delivered in three hours.”

“… Baba’s dead?” Soft leather boots made no sound on the flooring as [member="Adara Raxis"] walked up, hands folded in front of her black lace dress. The petticoats bobbed underneath the black silk skirt, her hair braided behind her back with purple and grey flowers woven in, with a small veil. The clothing of mourning for Manda’yaim.

“Ram? Is Baba dead?” Black and red eyes bored into her younger brother. For hours now Adara settled into logistical work, coordinating Clan rendez-vous and calling for the secret militias and civilians to vacate their holdings on Vena, Er’kit and Ploo. “Has Buir died, yet? Death hangs over this corridor like a tapestry… it won’t be long.”

[member="Reyn Australis"]

 

[Adara Raxis]

Inside the medic suite, two gurgling cries echoed past the walls with a dull thud. The door swiped open, one medic being carried out limping and bleeding from the stomach by the other.

“Frakking Vong!” They ceased all talking when they saw Ambrose, [member="Reyn Australis"] and Adara standing in the hall, the more functional medic nodding his head. “Allard’s got it covered… c’mon, Gik.”

Adara’s eyes narrowed. She inhaled, and her skin seemed to glow. Hair shimmering as ‘Gik’ passed out. Nobody would notice… not that they would tell. Smacking her lips, she looked over her brother with the same glare their mother gave during another indecently long council meeting.

“He’s not but he is, but he might not be. You sound like a storybook from our brothers’ play room.” Pressing a hand against her forehead, Adara leaned against the wall. The battle for Mandalore was a fantastic mess. They’d had hours of warning, not enough time to evacuate more than the essentials, no more time than to fortify already present fortifications.

All because Kaine Zambrano sent Adara a single message: “Do not let your siblings go to school on Mandalore tomorrow.”

Or more accurately, Kaine’s daughter Raya sent the message, which Adara knew immediately was allowed by the two Panathan God-Sovereigns to be sent.

“We all should have left Mandalore together. None of this… dying in battle business. What good is a warning to get our family to safety if seventy percent of them didn’t make it out alive?” Retreat was as prudent as defence in Adara’s mind, if it meant having the people and supplies to mount an assault later. “Mother wasn’t supposed to go. He didn’t want her there, he wanted her to be safe, just like us.”

Stomping her foot in a petite fashion, Adara tried to keep calm. With Yasha’s condition a state of purgatory, and so many dead, Clans Raxis and Cadera looked to her, well, and Uncle Darlyn… being the eldest daughter of the Infernal, and Heir to the Throne of Vena, Adara’s logistic and political training had been as exhaustive as Reyn’s combat training. Members of their Panathan House Fitz-Kierke had begun to arrive with Papa Girak and Grandmama Ada, who by rights probably shouldn’t have been setting as much on the teenager’s shoulders.

“There’s enough negative energy in these halls to feed me for a month… We might be on Wayland, but I can feel the death off Mandalore from here… if Baba is alive, I can’t feel him even when I concentrate… time for what?” In such times, the words of her mother curved her spine. “The Palace was eradicated. We shouldn’t be here, we need to get everybody out and to safety. The Sith won’t stop. They know if they do the Mandalorians will rise up and turn this sector into a meat grinder. We had one chance to get everyone we loved to safety and our parents played hero. Why didn’t they stay, Ram? Weren’t we enough? Couldn’t Mama realize that we mattered more than a bunch of stubborn, armour wearing… mooks!?”

‘Rulers do not luxuriate in their own emotions. We set them aside until in the privacy of our aliit. We must stay rational in conflict, and in disaster. Otherwise we’re no better than loose despots playing at thrones.’ Reyn’s offered hug was bound to be warm. Since rushing to get the boys off Mandalore, Adara couldn’t squelch a frigid turn to the air, as if the warmth of living bodies was being replaced by the chill of the dead.

“I can’t feel Mama either. After Ithor I could. She was here, sensible and… whatever that is in there, it’s not the mother we knew.” Maybe Mama’s rules on decorum didn’t work in hallways, while teenagers struggled with parental demise. Pushing her lips together to stop from crying, Adara sunk into her brother’s arms. “Father’d better return or I’ll murder him over and over! Maybe… I could find him. If he’s dead, I can seek out his ghost, if he’s alive and wounded maybe I’d feel it… but… I don’t understand why millions of strangers meant more to them than their own flesh and blood.”

Sniffling into her brother’s shoulder, Adara didn’t miss the strange disquiet of the once bustling medics in Yasha’s room. She shut her eyes and clung to her brother.

“Ram? If I’d done better… or got the news faster, if I’d been a tougher more Mandalorian daughter, do you think Mama and Baba would have stayed with us instead?”

 

[Adara Raxis]

“Sure, we killed them back, but they’re Sith, death is an aphrodisiac. It’s this… drug that slides into our skin and makes us feel powerful. ‘Cause the ones who died on our side were valiant but paltry defenders, and the ones who died on theirs sacrificed to make their gods more whole. Ram…” Adara stifled a sniffle, manic black and red eyes shifting across hull plating and the corridor’s walls. “Dangit I want to go to Mandalore and suck it all up. All of it… it’s like this heady and perfect energy source and I want it so bad it’s worth leaving Mama to die.”

Her eyelids clamped shut. Adara winced, realizing how it sounded. Reyn knew his sister the best of any person in the universe, better than Braxus Zambrano, her shadow-like influence from the Darkest family who breathed. Did this mean she couldn’t see her friends Raya and Kabir Zambrano anymore? That the necklace she wore, blessed of Nereus and gifted to her by Darth Prazutis was somehow a lie? Did the blood running in her veins, gifted by Carnifex himself, make her an enemy of her own family now?

“What if… what if they’re mad at me? I could have gone… maybe if… if both of us were down there… but Baba had the Bral active and I want our parents back. Feels like Mama’s gone.” Biting her lips and stamping her foot, Adara leaned back against the wall as another medic exited the room with a bundle of crimson soaked bandages and equipment for the incinerator. Adara’s eyes chased the bundles in their medi-hazard bin before falling to her brother’s shoes. “Why do you have to keep being right, vod’ika? It’s annoying being the older one when you’re so wise. Momentarily wise… okay just wise right now. Don’t let it go to your head, I’m still older than you.”

Ambrose slunk into the medical suite, leaving the teenaged siblings to their own devices. A flash of anger slid out to a moment of calm.

“Reyn? Mama was leading the Mandalorians, when she was twelve. Seems all sorts of impossible. and she did it without parents… maybe we can do this too. With the Bral gone, I could go down to the surface. Look for Baba. Grab any survivors to get the feth off of Mandalore, before the Sith make their next charge. I know Braxus. He’ll come with a larger force. They’ll sweep through… the question is… are you and I going to tell Yron and Cerani to handle things up here and go together, or am I sneaking off while you hold Mama’s hand? 'Cause if father's alive, he won't be for long.”

Ambrose cleared his throat, nodding the kids toward the door.

"If you want to see her, she won't be awake long... or I can keep her company. Doc's asking if you still want to go in." [member="Reyn Australis"]

 

[Adara Raxis]

“I liked being carried. Baba was always so strong and capable.” Adara pouted, leaning against the wall as Ambrose came to them. The idea of seeing her mother was repugnant. How could she see Yasha in such a state, half dead and fading by the hour? Was this what adulthood was, doing the unpleasant thing with no excuses or ‘oh she’s still young’s to protect her?

“Sounds like she’ll kill herself by breathing. Ram, even though there’s a Vong in there, I… death is close. It’s hovering around her like a bird finding its’ roost. We don’t have long.” Was Yasha even going to make it? Had part of her already passed to another place, another state of being? “I’ll help… but just in case… say goodbye.”

The Duchess of Vena took her brother’s hand, rubbing at her eyes with the front of her palm. Yes, she could handle this. She was all grown. A Mandalorian adult, even, with responsibilities!

Inside the medic suite, Doc had finished reattaching their mother to the host of life support machines he’d previously removed. A rattle stole across Yasha’s chest, as eyes clouded blinked wearily as if behind a fog. Adara stifled a gasp. How could this be their mother, the powerful warrior and Mand’alor? Biting her lip, Adara attempted to halt the blubbering which struck her, bucking up like she did at the Academy or during her duties on Vena.

The fingers on Yasha’s right hand twitched. Everyone in the room stilled, ready to duck and cover…. instead it reached for the children. Doc slumped against the wall and slid to the floor, holding his head in his hand.

“Buir? Buir, we’re here. Ram and I are here… And… don’t fade. Baba’s coming, he just needs our help for a minute. Maybe an hour… okay more than an hour, but Ambrose is here and Doc and you won’t be alone. And when you wake up, we’ll have Baba… Doc can she hear me?” Adara blinked back tears, as she watched her mother’s eyes drift closed.

“She can.” Doc rasped in his exhaustion, taping a bacta patch over a wound he sustained treating that danged biot. As if in answer, Yasha’s hand rose, clutching at [member="Reyn Australis"] ‘ arm, the grip stronger than expected, but weaker than normal.

Yasha let go, fingers moving in Mandalorian sign language.

‘Bring him Home… love my kids.’

Eyes wide, Adara looked at Reyn, her voice stuck in her throat.

 

[Adara Raxis]

All those years in boarding school away from her aliit taught Adara one most important thing: she both loved and missed her brother [member="Reyn Australis"] most of all. Without him by her side, Adara’s training felt as empty as it was bustling with activity. She knew their mother chose to send Adara away to save her from the arrows of Mandalorian Force User hate, that it wasn’t a malice or jealousy of her mother.

“Thanks Ram’ika…” But the sting of all those missed moments paled for how relaxing and settling it felt to have her brother hold her hand. Yes, she could do any manner of difficult things with him by her side. Less than two years apart, Adara had no memory of life without Reyn being precocious or thundering in.

Maybe right now Adara needed her brother’s thunder to get through seeing their mother frail in a death bed. Stuttering out a stifled sob, Adara leaned down to kiss Yasha’s forehead. If it wasn’t for [member="Reyn Australis"]’ steely voice, Adara would have broken down into a sobbing child.

“He’ll be back here before you can think about it, Buir. So you lean on Ambrose and Doc… I love you.” Leaning down for one more kiss to Yasha’s cheek, Adara watched her mother’s once-mighty eyes drift shut. There felt like a piece of her missing.

Hopefully that piece laid in Sundari City’s ruins, and was ready to come home.

 

[Adara Raxis]

Death and its mysteries swirled round the frail bodied teenager ensconced in her brother’s arms. She felt the thud, thud of [member="Reyn Australis"]’ heart as pure and unwavering as his drive to somehow bungle them back to the ship. Words mumbled from his mouth, lost words of a boy attempting his first true foray into total manhood.

Getting his family to safety. None left to rely on but himself, and the confidence that his brother and father’s hearts would keep beating because of the girl in his arms. The true firstborn of Yasha Cadera, Adara’s life, death and resurrection were bathed in magics far beyond mortal cognizance, this was a fact many shied from as they shied from the lonely princess in her brother’s arms.

Reyn never shied from Adara. To his detriment and success.

“I never want to leave.” Adara whispered, voice passing from lips without motion. If not for the weak sound trailing from her lungs, Reyn’s naturally Epicanthix-hybrid mind might miss it. Did he not have his mother’s immunity to the mentalist slings and arrows of the great enemies of their people? Was his mind open like [member="Kaine Australis"]’ was open, given to being locked away by the wrong Darth’s curse?

A fist clung weakly to the front of Reyn’s armour, as Adara gave one lonesome attempt at pushing away before her body slumped unconscious in Reyn’s grasp. The power coursing through her lashed at her skin, cutting deep black gashes in filigree which looked finely sculpted and placed by an artist’s hand. Runes in an unknown language affixed to her skin, dissipating beyond the sight of any without the Force’s bedraggled gift.

Head lolling like their infant brother and sister’s, Adara nigh slumped out of the seat as Reyn strapped her in. Shuddering, she wept. Fingers reached for Reyn’s, then Sigurd’s in turn. Blinking black rimmed eyes searched the ship for sight of Kaine, focusing ill as the pilot lifted off and pushed out of Mandalore’s atmosphere. The shivers cessated the farther she got from the planet and its’ ruined landscape. Its’ unceremonious dead.

“Baba…” Head slumped forward, Adara focused on the man she resurrected moments before. “… did I do well, Baba? Did I do right by you and Sig? Couldn’t… couldn’t let Buir cry… she… part of her’s already gone away… Sig… did I do right by you, Sig? You’re not allowed to die. Not… allowed…”

Eyelids stinging, Adara closed them and whimpered.

“Ram… are they still alive?”

Red and black bolts of miniature lightning coursed through her fingers, jittering along her skin in lay lines until Adara continued to absorb it all, on the day she had the most filling meal of her life…

… and resurrected two in its’ wake. It wouldn't be long until the ship returned to Wayland, and the preparations for the Clans' evacuation. All that mattered less than a micron to the girl swooning with previously untapped raw power. In the back of her mind, she knew Kaine and Sigurd breathed, that Reyn didn't understand what sort of monster, no, goddess his sister became. She controlled the destiny of two souls, crushed another two in her hands to balance the Universe. Rage and pain caused the surge, the sorrow of a planet in painful grief.

Prazutis was right, her rage buried so long in a happy home, was her stop-gap.

'Do you see me, mother? The girl you sent away? Do you see your daughter and how she saved everything you loved? I am above you.' Adara thought, slowly seeping the surges of energy into her skin. Yasha would never know her daughter raised the dead on Mandalore, all Yasha would know was the ignorance of a blissful reunion with husband and son.

Finally the princess deserved her crown.

"Ram... Reyn, status update, son." [member="Ambrose Cadera"] grumbled through Reyn's comm, from his vigil at Yasha's bedside. "I see your ship isn't far off... please tell me they're with you."

 

[Adara Raxis]

Echoes of energy threaded through Adara’s body, until she slumped peacefully back into her seat. Her father’s voice did it, [member="Kaine Australis"]’ croaked ‘Dar’ika’ enough to soothe her. She slept on the way, head sloshing to the side and propped back up by Sigurd-Adolfo’s massive hand. What must be going through the warrior’s mind, the sister he’d known so frail and wide-eyed. A being of power, raw with youth but finessed enough for the clumsy resurrection.

“Sig… I’m glad you’re alive… Daddy.” Ripping apart the universe to bring her family back to her. Adara slept on, body lifted by Sigurd the way he used to, when she was young and weak. Her head nuzzled into Sigurd’s armour, woken only when she heard the scuffle of Kaine and Reyn’s armour.

Baba’s rasping voice. The timid girl-child in Sigurd’s arms woke as a dragon rising over its’ hoard. Adara rubbed her eyes, feet clipping softly on the ground as she wobbled on her own power, Sigurd’s arm still around her.

[member="Ambrose Cadera"] ran to them, swooping beside Kaine with an armour-less vehemence few, if any, ever saw. The elder gurlanin yanked his arm under Kaine’s shoulders, hoisting the man up with his considerable strength and surging toward the medical suite.

“We have to get you out of your armour, Kaine. Washed. The biot… it’s killed two doctors already, when it saw their ‘gam. Hold on, I’ve got you.” There was a kindness to the voice, as Ambrose took Kaine further in with Reyn’s help to the prep room beside Yasha’s private suite. “We’ve got you… Sig, you too. Off with your armour. Sani-up. Yasha’s immune system isn’t strong enough to handle more.”

In the preparation room, Doc Theo Allard leaned his forearms over the sink. Red water ran down the drain, as the caramel skinned Contruumi doctor achingly attempted to wash his hands. Theo stuttered, shoulders shaking in what he thought was a private moment. The bar of soap clattered from his hands to the sink. Ambrose’s gruff voice echoed in his exhausted brain. He craned his head, a raptor at roost with tired wings.

“Kaine… Kad Harang, you… you look as dead as she was…” Doc Allard was indomitable. A physician and friend, who challenged even Yasha when she pushed herself too far. Yet through time, the efforts taken to save Yasha’s life withered him. He moved to check on Kaine, stopped to look down at the blood on his hands. “… not mine… it’s not mine…. not this time… w-we can’t wear armour… n-not in there. Not with that…”

‘Husssshhhhhhh’ Adara stepped along the room, taking Theo’s shoulder and turning him to the sink. Her telepathic voice was a rush in the air, the dominion of a powered mind over the wavering but brave man. “You are not tired. You continue to work on my mother, father, and brother.”

“Y..yes, yeah. I’m not tired…” The drooping mammal snapped up, fatigue a scripture inscribed on his cheeks and under eyes. Adara stared at him, feeding her dark will into the body of a man, who by rights should be resting. “Sorry! Kaine, I’m glad you made it back, here, give me a second I’ll finish washing up and give you a once-over. Hey, Ram, hand me the scanner, eh?”

Doc Allard soaped up and scrubbed down, ditching his scrub shirt when he noticed the well of blood seeping into the thin cotton cloth. Turning to grab another from the laundry, Theo inadvertently displayed a bacta patch on his side, the wound beneath an ugly tearing of flesh sewn together with shaking hands. Adara tsked and motioned with her fingers. The sodden bacta patch flew across the room into a sealed bin, another zooming from the supply cart and plastering to his side. If Allard noticed, he made no indication. His tan skin was ashen around the wound, as grey as the rest of him, stretched into consciousness by nothing but Adara’s compelling magicks.

“Right… sorry Kaine. Glad you’re here, Ram told us you were still fighting on Mandalore, but…” Turning to the supply cart, and groaning into a new scrub shirt, Theo’s hand fumbled clumsily in picking up the bacta shot. “Nngh… long… day? Couple of… here. Give me your neck.”

Theo applied the bacta shot to Kaine’s neck, a surge of healing fluid pumping into his veins. He stayed to help Kaine and Sigurd out of their armour, checking vitals and whispering with the constant flow of nurses and aides, who filtered in and out of Yasha’s room. Ambrose rushed at the first sound of tension, bolting into Yasha’s room with a panic unlike the aged gurlanin.

His cub… His cub was hurting.

Adara’s iron will dominated the room, an oppressive fluctuation in the air causing wounded and exhausted staff to continue plying their medical trade. Her mother’s apoplectic hatred of the Force was broken by the weakened physical state of Yasha Cadera. Now with the authority of the might to do so, little Adara unfurled.

“Baba?” Darth Adarable, a nickname of her childhood, ever present in the reality. Black and red eyes glared up at [member="Kaine Australis"], as Allard helped strip him of his armour, as medical professionals danced to her tugging strings. “I warned you. I came into your bedroom, a scary enough prospect knowing you guys and your…. cuddles… and I warned you. Sure, I expected you’d go help Mandalore, you’re a soldier, it’s what you do. But Mother hadn’t been in armour in five months. She wasn’t supposed to be there. I didn’t want her to go with you… but it is always you, isn’t it?”

Adara’s lip wobbled, the calculating eyes lost in a childish urge to thrust her arms around her father’s neck and cry unrelenting. “Mother asked for you. She breathed for the first time on her own, and asked for you. Ram and I were there, Ram was holding her hand, and she asked for you. Even when you were dead, you were strong enough to take our mother’s heart from us.”

A grand sniffle stole across Adara’s entire body. Sigurd passed her a tissue, silent and watchful for the girl he thought he knew, the timid little thing… wide-eyed child…

“… So I fixed it. Mama wanted you! Ram lied and said you were alive, so she doesn’t know… She won’t ever know. Mama can never know what I did. Tell her… tell her anything, but never ever tell her. Never tell her you died instead of staying by her side.” The penalty of Darth Vesull’s resurrection laid before him. A child grown into the perilous force of nature Adara was becoming. What she would become in time was only for prophets to tell. “Never, Daddy. I will never let you die until you, Mama and Caz are well old and at the end of the universe itself. I refuse to lose you. I refuse to let us grow up without parents, so find the strength and deal with it, or... or I'll make you.”

Perhaps the reason Baiko attempted to murder her own grandchild was apparent at last. Adara turned to go, two Clan mates rushing with questions from Yron, updates from Cerani. Adara turned to answer, standing taller than she ever stood as a child.

Ambrose put his hand on Kaine’s shoulder, more helpmate than battling man. “Come. I’ll take you to her, but no armour. Leave your weapons here, and be quiet. Carnifex… he had one more trick left. Remember Orinda? How hale Carnifex returned her from Helska? Well… come.”

Theo Allard walked first, a tray of dosages lined in a row. The room smelled of antiseptic and copper, a nurse cleaning blood off the far wall from the body in the medi-bed. Attached to breathing tubes and heart monitors, [member="Yasha Cadera"] lied in ashen state. Ambrose moved to keep Kaine standing, yet stayed between Kaine and the Biotic arm. Green flesh pulsing, the Yuuzhan Vong biot which consumed Yasha’s right side raised at the wrist, nail-bed spears receding from their attack position. Lines of green flesh trailed up Yasha’s right shoulder, marring her neck, her cheek.

“Skorvek and Pollux stopped the biot before it consumed more of her, but… Kaine it kept her alive. She wasn’t talking until today, Doc took the respirators offline. It attacks any who get too close, except a chosen few. We… lost Doctor F’ken, and nurse Kiotha. Some form of bio-poison in the spear tips. But… it knows those she loves.” Pale as the sheeting around her thin frame, Yasha laid in supposed state. The Vong biot on her right arm roiled at the proximity of Kaine Australis, raising up on its’ elbow to nudge the parent organism.

“Nngh…” Jolted awake, Yasha’s body shook from brow to waist. A shivering left hand reached for the breathing mask on her face, lungs rattling in a wounded bone-cage. She clawed at it feebly, until Ambrose rushed to her side, and removed it. He gripped her hand, as Theo cleared space on the bed by her left side, bedrail down. Enough space for Kaine to lay beside her. He moved as if locked in place, the compulsion of Adara’s order seeped too far in his blood stream to remove yet. Not yet.

It wasn’t yet time to sleep.

“Kain’ik…” The whisper-weak voice of Yasha echoed in the air. “… wh-where… where’s my Kain’ik?”

The bed was large enough for them both, and would hold both riduur’s burdens upon it.

So it was willed.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“Easy! Easy, I’ve got you.” [member="Ambrose Cadera"]’s arms yanked around [member="Kaine Australis"]’ torso the second the man began to fall. The rumbling tones of the Gurlanin filled the room in a basso thunder atop the staccato beating of the medical monitors. Ambrose picked the smaller man off his faltering feet. Hoisted him over the bed rail and onto the massive medi-bed beside Yasha. Kaine looked ready to crash harder than the Palace, and for once Ambrose didn’t desire to control more… no, not control.

He was scared.

Yasha lying with an alien symbiotic organism attached to her right side was a shadow of the girl he raised. The unbreakable little thing fighting Tuulu for scraps. Tuulu’s familiarity in the telepathic bond between Pack members was as empty as the strength faded from Yasha’s bones. Muscles slack on thin limbs, the pock-marks of scattershot fire remained as pink and fading scars. Enlarged freckles to thumb sized spaces, where the bullets meant for Carnifex chewed through him into the desperate Australis wife. Yet, those were healing. Doc believed they’d fade to the point of barely a shadow on skin.

The sutures and staples binding her midsection together, wrapped in bacta bandages, were a far more grizzly reminder of what she endured. Pale as the sheets, the once Mand’alor craned her amber eyes to search her Kain’ik’s face. She went to speak and only a warble of sound exited lips rubbed raw from breathing tubes.

Yasha wasn’t alone anymore. Her husband survived, the battle finished enough to return home. Chin wobbled at the utter relief of seeing Kaine with medicated, but somewhat clearing eyes.

“I’m sorry…” she choked out, left hand shakily reaching for her Kain’ik. “He used the spear’s momentum. Pulled me in and… it wasn’t… it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t mean to shoot me. You didn’t… You didn’t. He impaled himself to pull me in, he…”

Yasha sputtered as she tried with futile limbs to shift on the bed, body immobile from the waist down.

“Kaine…” All she managed was to interlace the fingers of her left hand with one of his, as the mixture of barbiturates and relief coursed through her. “Kain’ik. My Kain’ik. You came… it’ll be alright… it’s going to be alright…”

Adara watched from the edge of the room as their mother snuggled up to Baba. He’d barely looked at Adara, it was all about Yasha. Barely a word or a sigh or even a hug for the daughter who resurrected him. Yes, Adara knew her mother was important, but she didn’t need to be wounded in the first place.

If they’d listened to Adara, Yasha wouldn’t be hurt.

Lips pursed together, Adara tried to keep the swell of emotions inside. Push them down into the furnace in her ribcage. Behind her, Sigurd crashed with an exhausted groan onto Reyn’s cot. Doc Allard fumbled at his work, a loyal Mandalorian.

“But Baba…” Adara heard a hiccupped sob echo through the preparation room. Aware it was her own, she tried to stuff it down. Hide it. If only they’d listened, if they did what Adara wanted, their parents wouldn’t have died and exorbitant battles by doctors, sons and daughters wouldn’t be necessary.

Rubbing at her cheeks with a palm, Adara felt the relief flowing through Baba’s mind. No. Adara wasn’t wrong in what she did. She wasn’t evil, it wasn’t evil.

Reason cancelled out bad, and a future ruler needed to make decisions which benefited all, not a few. Not two struggling heartbeats stuck in the rubble. Clawing their way out.

“… I’ve never killed anybody before…” Their lives were so small. If she hadn’t sacrificed… no. She hadn’t sacrificed anything. Not really. People died in rubble all the time. “I did the right thing, Ram. I couldn’t leave Baba and Sig there. Not all… still. It wasn’t fair, they shouldn’t have died. And… people always die in rubble. They do, so I didn’t… we need our parents. We need them more than… it’s fine. I did it… I raised the dead. And I’m not sorry. I’m not, I’m glad I did it. I did the right thing. I did the right thing…”

[member="Reyn Australis"]