The frenzied excitement of their attack on the pale-haired one began to die down, Chwuq and Taral slinking back to Roan as the two young ones finished their enemy off. It was over. They had won.
“Roan?” Chwuq whined, pushing her muzzle into his hand. “Rooooooaaaaannnn?”
Taral grunted, pawing at the man’s clothes. Answer us! Why don’t you answer us?! “ROAAAANNN!” They nudged him again, harder. Never bite, they remembered. Never to bite Master Roan, but if he would not answer. His visions consumed his attention, sometimes, a gentle nip could stir him. Roan did not move. Chwuq’s whine accompanied her mate’s. She dropped her head onto his chest, stared at his face, snorted again. There was no breath. There was no Force. Only empty stillness. Like the blackness that came, when there was no more pack. When the planet died. Roan was pack now. All that was left of pack.
And now there was no Roan. No Roan, only the Roan-pup who smelled like him, who did not like them...who called them nasty names. Footsteps came towards them, the Tuk’ata growling softly, tensing as they stood protectively over the body, only to recognise the smell of the boy. The strange boy, joined with the Roan-pup in a way they did not understand. They were mates, they thought, but no, not-mates, Master Roan said. Something else, something called ‘friend’. They could not understand what it meant, only that they must not attack him, sniffing warily as he approached, Roan’s pup behind him.
Would they wake him? No, nobody couldn’t wake Master Roan now. That they understood. There was no Roan, not anymore. Only the girl and the boy. Protect them, Roan had said.
They were pack now. There was still pack left.
______________________
The tomb beasts retreated from Bracknell’s tattered body as Aria and Yerbol finished him off to move towards her father’s, pawing at his robes and nudging him with their noses as they frantically tried to rouse the defeated Sith Lord. Their whining vocalizations were so confused and desperate that Aria almost felt sorry for them. Abbeth had reappeared moments earlier to inform them triumphantly that the Alliance forces down on Zinuthra had dropped their weapons in surrender. They couldn’t stay, they had to return to the others, and get Cheriss into a medbay. Abbeth said she was cut up pretty bad, he wasn’t kidding.
But if they could move quickly back to the planet, she might still make it. The Tuk’ata snapped their attention back to her and Yerbol as the Knight knelt beside her father and murmured something she couldn’t hear, the tomb beasts hauling themselves to their paws (one of them was limping...that would be fun to deal with later, she’d never had to put a bandage on a drooling dog-thing before) and trailed after the duo like lost Kath hound pups, all the way back onto the shuttle, silent but for the occasional low whine or cry of what she could only assume was grief. Her father had always ranted on and on about how they were sentient, capable of emotion and attachments. She wasn’t quite so sure they understood exactly what had happened. She still couldn’t believe it, sitting with her head in her hands as they collapsed into chairs on the shuttle and Abbeth piloted them back into the hangar.
She could hardly recognise it from the state it was in. Not that it was her main concern, her brain still trying to process those final moments as they had rounded the corner back towards the bridge again. The memory played back in her mind’s eye, over and over in slow motion. Her father was gone. She would never see him again, never hear his voice again.
“He loved you, Ari. I know he did.” Yerbol’s voice jolted her out of the reverie, Aria glancing up at him and managing to force a smile as the Knight looped an arm around her shoulders. She sighed, leaning into his embrace as she whispered:
“I just...can’t believe he’s...gone.” the words felt foreign on her tongue. He had been so powerful, so assured, Aria had always believed that nothing in the galaxy would ever be that strong that they could take Roan out of her life. And yet, in the blink of an eye it had happened. But Yerbol was still there. He would be there, he promised. She smiled again and nodded, mumbling: “He was warming up to you, you know. He thought you were alright, for a Jedi.” Aria didn’t know if it meant anything to Yerbol, but somehow it felt like it was right to tell him. Like Roan would have wanted him to know.
She wanted to stay there. Sit with him and just try to process what had happened, but they couldn’t.
Saresh would be there in three days, and people needed their help. Others were wounded or dying, the place looked like...well, a war zone, and was in no condition to receive the Supreme Chancellor. She wouldn’t see Yerbol again for what felt like hours. Aria distracted herself by helping whoever she could, but eventually she could not cope any longer with the chaos of those who were still able rushing to and fro as they tried to clean up, and slipped away. Her feet carried her down the hallway into an empty room. HIS room. Perhaps she had hoped there would be something there for her, something that would make it seem like he was still here...that he would appear in the doorway and tell her what a silly girl she had been for thinking that anything could ever hurt him. But it did. Bracknell did. Tears finally threatened to spill over as she pressed her back to the cot he had slept on and slid onto the floor, knees drawn up to her chest.
Movement in the doorway startled her and she felt a surge of hopeful relief that was quickly squashed like an ant as the Sith hounds slunk into the room and slid across the floor to join her, red eyes blinking as they thrust their noses towards her, sniffing.
“Roan?” one asked in a weak, whispery voice, spindly tendrils of Force energy prodding at the edges of her mind. Similar to the one that connected her with Yerbol, but weaker, more tattered. They had to be coming from the beasts. She remembered Roan telling her once, when she was ten, of how they could feed on Force energy. How it helped them survive in the tombs where there was hardly any other food. But they needed a connection, to a strong presence, a mutual agreement to share power. Roan had let them share his. Angrily, she shoved the tendrils away, lifting her face to glare at them with reddened eyes.
“Go away, he’s not here.” she sniffed. The Tuk’ata grunted again, pushing its nose into her ribs.
“Roan?” it repeated.
“Didn’t you hear me, I said he’s gone!” Aria began to lose her patience. The beasts didn’t understand, still they kept repeating his name, nudging her, bothering her. She wanted them to leave her alone. She wanted to be alone.
“PISS OFF!” Aria screamed at them, the tears finally spilling over as she clenched her hands into fists. “GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULLS, HE’S GONE AND HE ISN’T COMING BACK!!!”
Yelping, the two tomb beasts skittered out of the door as the room’s walls trembled with the force of her shriek. They would pace just out of her view, up and down, grunting and huffing as they watched her from afar, too afraid of being shrieked at again to approach her. Eventually, they would prowl away to search for Yerbol, instead, and she saw no more of them for the hour or so that she spent curled up in that room on her own, giving in to the overwhelming feeling of loss that tightened her chest.
She couldn’t believe she felt guilty for screaming at them. But here she was. Looking for her father’s smelly dog-things to go and APOLOGISE to them. This was new. Aria would find them fussing at Yerbol who was slumped over in a chair in the right-hand corner of the main atrium, grumbling as he swatted away a blood-caked muzzle tiredly.
She felt slightly better knowing that it wasn’t just her that was annoyed with their incessant whining. Aria made her way over, wiping the last tears from her red and puffy eyes and sniffing out an apology:
“I’m sorry, Bol. They were bugging me so I chased them off.” she plopped herself onto the floor beside the chair, back against the wall, smirking. “I didn’t think they’d go looking for you instead.”
One of the Tuk’ata hunkered down next to her, then abruptly crawled into her lap before she could say anything in protest, its nose twitching as it snuffled at the strands of hair that clung to her sweat and blood-stained cheeks.
Force, their breath stank. But underneath, if she pushed past the stench of dried blood and musty tomb-smells, a familiar smell clung to the sleek black hairs. They still smelled of him. Her jaw trembling, Aria wound her fingers into the creature’s fur, desperate to keep it close for as long as she could. They were the only thing she had left of Roan.
She wanted to cry again.
Member
Birdboy
Fetzen
mickilennial
Oso
Lurking Krog
swannie
Kaithe Dame
Dion
Dark Cloud
PrinceAlexus