Chapter Text
Commander Carth Onasi had naively allowed himself the thought that this particular tour of the Outer Rim during the Jedi Civil War couldn't get any worse. For all of his experience during the Mandalorian Wars dealing with Jedi like the young Padawan Zayne Carrick, some laser brain got in their heads that he would make a good advisor to young Padawan Bastila Shan. Not that Bastila Shan was interested in his advice. This wasn't the first time she'd been stationed with the navy, but as the war dragged on and Republic and Jedi numbers waned, their critical shortage meant the Jedi Order could only spare one Knight to accompany the prodigious Padawan.
Not that Knight Nacinta Qiort had been any help in wrangling her younger charge, despite technically being the highest ranked soldier on the ship, automatically granted the honourary rank of General. From Carth's limited understanding of the meaning of their different coloured lightsabers, blue meant that Nacinta was a fighter first, a diplomat second, and at all times in the gym. At least, that’s where he was told she was, apparently training whichever soldiers wandered in, any time Carth enquired after her whereabouts.
Bastila Shan as a Jedi Padawan was automatically granted the honourary rank of Fleet Commander, which meant that she also outranked him even if only just, and she knew it. With that came a prickly attitude to his attempt to provide any kind of guidance. A small part of him didn't blame Nacinta for sequestering herself away for such long stretches, because it was exactly the sort of thing he wished he could do. A much larger part of him did blame the Jedi General for it, because it made his job that he was still turning up for that much more difficult.
Of course, within a few days they dropped out of hyperspace in the Taris system right into a Sith ambush, proving him wrong. This particular tour of the Outer Rim could get much, much worse.
'Easy, old girl.'
From his position at the terminal by the escape pods, Carth watched more and more life signs of Republic soldiers be extinguished by more and more emerging life signs of Sith soldiers. He reached out a hand to pat the bulkhead in front of him. The Endar Spire shuddered and groaned. Losing air through her multiple wounds, she was breathing what would surely be her final breaths. Was it irrational to attempt to comfort the ship as if a dying friend or beloved pet? Absolutely. But there was nothing else Carth could do for her at this point, her fate had been sealed the second they'd arrived in-system alongside a Sith battle fleet.
Bastila had been hiding from Carth in her room, and he immediately advised her to get to the escape pods. It was the first recommendation he'd given her which hadn't been met with any objection. Nacinta had led the crewmembers she had been training in the gym on a valiant push towards the bridge, holding off Sith boarding parties much larger than their own until she finally met her match against a Dark Jedi. From Carth's limited understanding of the meaning of their different coloured lightsabers, red meant a dirty fighter. Still, the fact that he never had a run in with that particular Dark Jedi must have meant that Nacinta's sacrifice wasn't in vain.
At least, it wouldn't be if he and this last soldier managed to make it off the ship alive. With General Qiort and Captain Allaran dead, he was the ranking officer remaining, and therefore responsible for not abandoning his final crewmate.
The Endar Spire screamed with an overloading power conduit, sacrificed to safely deliver the last soldier past a whole squad of Sith troopers and into his care. The problem was immediately apparent the moment he saw them. They were already dead.
'Morgana?'
The shade of his deceased wife looked at him, confused.
'Sorry sir, you must have me confused with someone else.'
Carth had been about to disagree, the woman before him bore a face he had known so well. A face he had berated himself for as late being unable to picture in his mind’s eye, having since been replaced by the disfigured and burnt version of it he saw last, but here again before its old appearance the memories returned with fresh clarity. And her voice, even from that short snippet, was a perfect match to conversations he'd replayed over and over and over in his mind wishing he could have them again, whether they had been perfect or whether he would have said something different if he’d had his time again.
But the Endar Spire's cries of pain dragged his attention back to the more life-threatening of his immediate concerns.
'We’re the last two crew members left on the Endar Spire. Bastila's escape pod's already gone, so there's no reason for us to stick around here and get shot by the Sith.' And then as much for his benefit as for her own he added 'Now come on, there'll be time for questions later!'
Her look of confusion persisted, but evidently she trusted him enough to bundle herself into the escape pod after him. The explosion of the Endar Spire moments after they'd jettisoned away rattled their tiny craft. Carth was not especially muscular by any stretch of the imagination, but he was still a solid man, and firmly strapped into his seat he experienced what he would describe as moderate turbulence. Morgana The other occupant was smaller and had more give in her safety harness, and he heard a sickeningly loud thud coincide with her head hitting the hull behind her.
Kark.
She was out cold after that. He sincerely hoped there actually would be time for questions later as he'd asserted, because they were running non-stop through his mind.
If this is Morgana, why would she go all these years letting me think she was dead?
Where are we going to land?
Surely it’s not possible that Morgana had a twin sister I never met?
Do the Sith already have a ground presence?
Has somebody actually managed to perfect the art of cloning?
What if I get injured in the landing, and can’t pull her from the pod?
Even if cloning had been perfected, why would anyone bother to clone an archaeologist?
How difficult is shelter going to be to find?
If this woman really isn’t Morgana, who the Hell is it?
If I can even find shelter, how will I get enough medical supplies and food to keep us going?
Her injuries look pretty bad, what if she doesn’t-
He couldn’t finish asking that question. The longer he stared at her the more the sick feeling in his gut grew. The reality was that he was stuck caring for this woman whose appearance and voice were identical to Morgana's, and he feared he would die himself if he were forced to watch her die a second time.
He was given a brief reprieve from her haunting visage as the escape pod rapidly decelerated thanks to impact with fortunately very few levels of Upper City walkway. His hands shook so much he had no idea how he managed to undo the buckles of his harness, but the need to save the woman spurred him on, and somehow they came away. Equally shaky hands pulled her long sword from its sheath and cut her free. He lifted her from the pod in a bridal carry, and he thanked whichever deity, if they existed and had cared enough to intervene, that the combat suit was not too bulky for him to be able to comfortably lift her, but just bulky enough to render the feeling of carrying her out of there different to all of the times he’d swept Morgana, sweet Morgana who had only ever seen combat on the day it killed her, off her feet and into his arms in safer places and safer times.
He rushed away from the crash as fast as he could, adding to his thanks that he at least had escaped relatively injury-free. He pushed on past his limits of his own exhaustion, getting as much distance between himself and any Sith patrol that was on their way to investigate, spurred on by the second chance granted him to save the woman he had loved to the exclusion of all others.
Eventually he stumbled into an unremarkable apartment building, willing to accept any large enough hiding location, even a janitorial closet, it seemed that his possibly-existent-or-not guardian deity had provided once more as a Durosian took pity on him, showing him to an entire abandoned apartment unit.
He laid her in a bed, and turned to stare at the Durosian who was hovering by the door, letting out a weary 'Thanks'. They seemed to get the message, mumbling something in Durese he didn't quite catch and closed the door behind them as they left. Carth shuffled to the door to make certain it was locked. He rested his head with a much less dramatic thud against the cold metal. He could do this. There were only two things he wanted more than to sink into the floor and sleep for a decade. The first was to somehow find Bastila and get the Last Hope of the Republic off Taris and out of Sith clutches. But he couldn't do that if he were dead on his feet. The second thing he wanted was to properly care for his injured wife dependant.
He dragged himself back to her side, and resisted the urge to undress her. Morgana had her fair share of scars she had acquired through accidents at work where she had tried to scale the outside of crumbling buildings or navigate precarious cave systems. Some of the times they had met, Carth wondered if her work actually was somehow more dangerous than his own. If he could just see her bare skin he could put the matter to rest once and for all, but…
He didn't undress her, instead he rolled her over to free up the blankets, and rolled her back beneath them, tucking her securely in and hoping it would be warm enough. That was not a question he was in a state to have answered. Either it was his wife he undressed, in which case, what the Hell? He literally didn't know. Or it wasn't, and he would have just stripped and ogled and unconscious subordinate. And even if no one ever needed to know, Carth would know, and it would be just one more burden he would have to live with on his own. If he even survived Taris. But more importantly, having the reality of his wife's death ground into his soul once more was not something he felt he could bear this night.
He grabbed the old thin blanket and pillow off the other bed in the room. The blanket he gave to her, knowing his combat gear would keep him just warm enough, and exhaustion make him just apathetic enough that he would be able to sleep without it. Not comfortable, just able. On any night before, the ghost of Morgana was apt to keep him awake. But tonight, her visitation in the flesh provided him with just enough hope to distract from the rest of the day's horrors. The pillow he folded in half so that it could provide him with even a modicum of support, and he lay on the floor next to her bed, eyes fixed on those blankets to make sure they shifted slightly signalling each of her breaths.