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Death is like a thrumming in her skull, a dark staccato wave that threatens to drown her mind, to swallow her entire.
Alilee screams, she can tell, from how raw her throat is, from the vibration of it, but she cannot hear her own voice. It was drowned already by the wails of the dead. She feels the snow under her fingers, tastes blood in her mouth, yet she's blind, her sight lost in vistas of vacuum streaked with bolts of lethal colours.
Almost unexpectedly, Alilee does not die. Instead she becomes conscious of the flow of time again, and regains a tenuous grip on the Force. She is here , on the ledge she sits on to meditate, moving forward through time with each gulp of frosty air, recovering control of her body, and shakily, of her mind.
'I am Alilee,' she says into the wind. 'I am on Entooine to train and to wait. I don't know why you are here but–' her voice cracks, tears well in eyes she has not dared to open yet, '–I hear you. I am a witness to your passing.'
She opens her eyes and looks up at the spectacle of ruin the Force already showed her and still tries to, like rough fingers brushing against the jagged edges of her mind as if clawing for purchase, to tip her back into the black pool of terror and suffering that is spilling across the heavens above her.
There is a star destroyer, shattered like a toy, pieces of it hanging in the sky between Entooine and the enormous milky orb of Mum'Ur, as the locals call the gas giant. Another star destroyer is clearing the horizon. An assault frigate, she thinks, is passing through the debris, and laser fire reveals the presence of many smaller crafts. It is a proper battle now.
Why here though? What did Entooine ever do to anyone?
Alilee gnashes her teeth. She has never felt more helpless in her life than she does in this moment. Not even when the Jedi had died, leaving a hollow feeling in her young chest, not when her master had returned to her with wild eyes and a missing arm, or when he'd left her here–on this empty, icy moon, a pale imitation of her homeworld–with instructions to train and to be good. And to wait. Not even after waiting two standard years.
Alilee feels the helplessness and lets it sink in. It is better that the emotion should take a bite out of her, than to fight it off with anger. The dark side already stalks too close.
So she witnesses the battle raging overhead, feeling the pain rippling through the force, yet refusing to engage. She would not have been caught like this if she hadn't been in a deep trance, training to open herself to all life force around her, when the star destroyer had popped out of hyperspace and almost immediately been blown to smithereens.
Irony sure has a bitter taste.
At least she has warning for the TIE that comes hurtling down.
Alilee scrambles up. She doesn't even need her Jedi powers to tell the careening fighter will pass over her head and crash stupidly close. She runs toward her snow speeder, stiff legs wobbling. She clambers on, punches the switches, and with a roar and blast of fresh powder, she sets off down the plateau. She won't allow one more death, not if she can help it. The shriek of the TIE grows stronger, and a quick glance shows it glowering in the atmosphere, the pilot fighting to keep it straight despite the damaged wings.
Hold on, Alilee begs when it takes her over, and swears as she realises it'll overshoot the plain and hit the frozen lake ahead, and the pilot probably can neither tell it's there nor help it if they could. Alilee goes full throttle, hunched over the handles, she launches off of the edge of the plateau and into free ice, slaps her controls in a lock, and stands up, arms outstretched in front of her, she grabs the TIE through the Force.
Tendons bunch up under her blue skin, fingers curl and cramp, shaking with the strain, as if she were holding onto the hull by her nails. Anger pulses against her, offering its perfidious help. She can't shake it off, she can't be at peace, she's slowing glorified space debris while standing on a speeder and she's just a fucking padawan!
She screams and launches herself off of the speeder, wrenching the TIE to the side as she falls. It slams into the snow, snapping both wings dramatically, and rolls away, finally manageable. Alilee stops it and force-flicks the breaks on her speeder. She staggers forward, dazed. She did it. She, a twenty-two years old overgrown padawan, just force crashed a TIE fighter. She laughs hysterically, shaking, tears coming down her cheeks. And maybe she'll be able to feel pride, if the pilot wasn't turned into a scrambled egg.
'Are you alright? Anyone in there?' she slaps the pod's hull, but gets no answers beyond the faint whine of alarms.
She kneels down to look through the transparisteel. It's charred, but she can spy the red flashing lights of controls, and the dark outline of a body hanging in crash webbing.
The Force is slippery now, hard to touch. She feels like her brain is made of bantha wool, and exhaustion is slowly overtaking her aching limbs despite her training. She's never exerted herself to that extent before. She didn't know she could . Alilee sits in the snow and puts her head between her knees. She slows her breath, and with febrile focus, reaches for the pod in front of her. She can feel the wounded pilot, skimming consciousness, and the grooves along the hull, for her to pry open.
She stops herself for a moment, wondering. Yes, she doesn't want more death, but what about her own? She knows the empire is hunting surviving Jedi. Can she save that one soul and get away in time? Or should she leave them to their fate, the one they bargained for when entering service in the imperial navy?
Would her dreams drag her back here every night, if she walked away? Would food come to taste like ash, if she turned her back? Would she speak her own name without pride, if she chose her own safety?
With a last burst of effort, she rips the pod apart. The alarms fall silent, circuit boards go dark.
Alilee unclips the pilot's straps and lowers them into the snow with a grunt. She takes off the helmet and dark curls come spilling out, framing a tan human face with purplish bruises along the jaw. It's a woman, Alilee realizes.
'Hey,' she calls out, 'come around. Come on, don't do this to me, I gotta know how you feel.'
The woman moans. Alilee slaps her cheeks gently, takes her pulse, realises she has no idea what's normal in humans, and decides to drag her away from the steaming wreck. The pilot screams then, but it isn't the pained sound someone makes when injuries are jostled. It's the blood curdling yell of bone stabbing through innards. Alilee lays her to the ground, mumbling panicked apologies.
The woman's face has greyed, sweat is beading and crystallizing on her skin. Her eyes flutter open and roll wildly. When they finally land on Alilee and stay there, they widen in confusion.
'Y-you're b-blue,' she stammers, 'you're all... blue. Oh... oh s-stars are you–are you dead? A–a–Am I?'
'No no, it's okay,' Alilee soothes. 'I'm a Pantoran. You know? Look at my eyes, yellow.'
The woman nods, coughs, instantly regrets it, and reaches out to Alilee with a trembling hand.
'W-what happened? I remember falling down...'
Alilee bites her lip. 'You crashed. You were coming down very fast.' And then I blew you out of the sky, so you wouldn't sink in the lake. 'I don't know what's happening up there though.'
'S-surprise attack,' the woman mumbles. 'My squadr...on... we were... we...'
'Hey, stay with me! What's your name? Where does it hurt? I need to move you out to shelter.'
The pilot sobs. 'Hurts... everywhere,' she says. She looks up at Alilee, a faint surprise coming over her warm brown eyes. 'I'm dying.'
No. 'No. No, you're fine. We can patch you up. I'll get you warm at my place and drive the speeder to the iura–the town, the natives call it a iura, and they have a space worthy ship there. We can get you up and in a medbay. See,' she points at the star destroyer that now hovers in full view above the remnants of its brethren. She is babbling, but she doesn't care. She can't stop. 'Looks like they're winning. You're winning. We can get you there, if you'll just hang on.'
'It's... it's o-okay.'
'Are you reassuring me now? I'm doing a bad job of rescuing you, aren't I?'
The woman smiles weakly. 'Y-you do good, b-but I... I can tell. I know. It's, it's ok...'
'No– it's really not! I'm going to save you, you'll see. I'll go get the speeder.'
'I knew. When I... enlisted. I was c-captain, I did good, I did well, I-I-d-Did my duty...'
Was your duty to come die in my arms? Alilee thinks bitterly, fighting off tears. 'You haven't told me your name yet,' she says instead, brushing wet curls away from the pilot's brow.
The woman's gaze has shifted past Alilee and into the sky, where the battle still rages on. Mum'Ur shines back down on her, monstrous and indifferent, washing the colour out of her dead eyes.
'How can I pay proper respect to you when I bury you, if I don't know your name?' Alilee whispers to the nameless woman.