Chapter Text
Coll flings a hand out, seizing the blaster bolts and freezing them in their tracks. He grits his teeth. The bolts ooze with the pirates’ avarice, feeling slimy and repugnant in the Force. With a flick of his wrist, he deflects them into the shuttle floor where they disperse in a flurry of sparks. He levels his Glie-44 pistol at the nearest pirate and fires rapidly, blaster bolts crackling through the air. The pirate topples just as Coll’s pistol jams.
Coll curses and ducks behind a pile of crates. He discharges the pistol’s energy bank with a ‘snick’ and slaps in a new magazine. There’s a lull in the blaster fire and the sounds of many (too many) feet approaching. Coll’s heart sinks. He can feel the gut-wrenching terror and anxiety of the initiates locked safely in the cockpit behind him. Force sensitives, much less child force sensitives, sell for far too much on the black market for him to hope that the pirates will spare them.
Coll feels his eyes well up, panic thick in his throat. They’d planned this exodus to Yavin for months, spent nights strategizing how to evade the Empire’s patrols and transport their precious initiates safely. The children had been ecstatic at the prospect of meeting more of their kind, squealing in delight over the view from hyperspace and peppering Coll with questions. Coll squeezes his eyes shut. If he doesn’t hold the pirates here, his little ones will grow up with collars around their necks. The thought of their eyes, dulled with resignation and pain, sends a spike of fury through his veins and his eyes snap open. Like hell will he let that happen.
Coll takes a deep breath and readies the pistol. He twists out from behind cover and fires as fast as he can. The world narrows to the end of his blaster and the roaring of blood in his ears. Pirates drop around him. For a moment, he feels a spark of hope, thinks that they might get out of this alive, then the ship shudders, walls quaking and rattling as another ship latches onto them. He stumbles and the crates behind which he’s hiding tumble down, exposing him. A slug nails him in the shoulder and he falls to his hands and knees. Pain rips through him. A high pitched whine pierces his ears and his lungs constrict. He can’t breathe, he can’t see. Only feel the fractured slug burning through his shoulder, the echoes of pain blinding in their intensity. He sways, the world spinning and lurching around him.
The ship stops shaking and a hail of blaster bolts flies so thickly through the air that it glitters with them. A rough hand seizes him by the hair and presses a blaster against his head. Through the darkness eating at the edges of his vision, he sees light glinting off of helmets with T-visors. A stillness falls over the room, the only sounds the ringing in Coll’s ears and his labored breaths.
The Force screams at him.
He lurches forward, the pirate’s blaster discharging so close to his head that it singes his hair. There’s a staccato of fire, then a muffled thump as the pirate falls.
The initiates’ terror spikes at the sound. Get up , he commands himself. He bites hard on his lip, the iron taste of blood filling his mouth. Coll drags himself up against a crate and levels his pistol at the blurry armored figures with his other arm. He coughs, blood splattering the front of his shirt.
One of the soldiers lowers their rifle and lifts their hands placatingly. They remove their helmet and their lips move, but the meaning of their words are lost to the ringing in his ears.
Clones. The Empire had found them.
The terror sitting in his chest crawls up to his throat and the room swims. Sweat drips down his face and into his eyes. His aim wavers in front of him, pistol swaying from clone to clone.
The Jedi who vanish into the Empire’s clutches reappear complacent and mind-wiped. He doesn’t want to imagine what tortures the Empire does to lobotomize them. The Force pulses through him, and for a moment he’s in a dark, empty room and screaming into the void. Coll blinks and the world reappears around him. Ice skitters down his spine and his breath catches. He doesn’t want that agony of existence for himself. For anyone, much less the children he’s guarding. His breaths hitch and despite himself, he glances toward the cockpit where his initiates are.
When he looks back, the clones’ attention is on the cockpit door. Alarm, thick and viscous, floods Coll’s throat making it hard to breathe. He snarls, baring his bloody teeth and fires off a shot toward the ceiling. The clones recoil and level their blasters at him. Look at me , he screams in the Force even as he swathes the cockpit in a shield so that any observer’s attention will slip away from it.
The clone with their helmet off gestures at their squad to stand down. Coll glances at their lips.
“--ettle down, verd. You’re okay, just put the blaster on the–”
He looks away, glancing around the ship for anything that might help. There’s five of them and one of him, a slug in his shoulder, and six initiates hiding in the cockpit. He had hit the emergency beacon when the ship first shuddered to halt in the pirates’ tractor beam but any help, present company excluded, is going to take time to arrive. He looks back at the clones. They’d crept forward while he was looking around. He jerks his blaster up at them.
“BACK OFF!” he barks, an edge of hysteria creeping into his voice.
He sways with effort. The dim light hurts his eyes and the burning pain in his shoulder hasn’t subsided. He glances down. As he watches, a drop falls from his blood-soaked shirt to splatter on the ground. His stomach churns and he grits his teeth against bile. He shivers even as his heart pumps so quickly he can feel it in his throat. He’s so cold that he’s surprised he can’t see his breath in the air. Bloodloss , his mind whispers to him.
The helmet-less clone is speaking to Coll again, but he can’t make out what they’re saying. He backs away toward the cockpit door and sags against it then sinks slowly to the ground, blaster pointed at the clones the entire time. The initiates on the other side of the door cluster against it as close to him as possible, little stars in the Force.
A spike of pain pierces him as his muscles spasm then release. The heat in his eyes spills over. Coll doesn’t have much time, already darkness eats at the edges of his vision. His gaze catches on the ship’s window that opens out into pitiless space.
The cockpit is atmospherically sealed.
The cockpit is built to be the last refuge if the hull’s integrity is breached. If he can open the airlock, he and the clones will be sucked out into space but his little ones will be safe until help arrives. His gaze flicks to the airlock console and he stretches toward it in the Force, even as it screams at him, its vehement reproach cutting him like shards of glass.
The airlock’s latches start to disengage and the clones whirl toward the noise. One lunges for the emergency override, fist breaking the glass cover and slamming into it, and the shifting mechanisms halt.
Coll’s heart stutters then anger surges and he shoves with the Force, sending crates and bodies flying into the walls. Memories of his children flash before him. Finding them, one by one, little treasures in need of rescue and comfort, then watching their chests rise and fall as they slept peacefully.
And these clones would take them from him.
Coll snarls and batters them with wave after wave of crushing pressure. Years of bitterness from a life on the run from the Empire bubbles up within him and twists into fury. How dare they force him to hide, to suppress who he was to escape notice? All the times he stood to the side to preserve his cover, a bystander to injustice, flash through his mind and he bares his teeth. Around him, objects rise into the air, vibrating with the force of his rage.
Then out of the corner of his eye, he glimpses a reflection of himself, eyes flashing between their normal brown and Sith-yellow. His breath catches and he stares at himself, transfixed.
This is who you’ll become unless you stop, the Force whispers to him.
Ice squeezes his heart. If he releases the clones they’ll hurt him, hurt his children. Lock him away in a lightless void. Coll stares at the men pinned to the bulkhead. He meets the eyes of the helmetless clone, whose face is twisted in pain and desperation. Coll did this. This man was once as young as the little initiates he’s guarding. His long-dead master’s words echo in his ear, “Pain, fear, anger. That is not the way of the Force.” His limbs tremble with indecision, then he allows the objects and men floating in the air to fall.
Coll stares at his hands. They’re smudged with his own blood and with grit from his blaster. He almost fell to the Dark Side. Coll feels bile crawl its way up his throat. It was so easy to embrace the rage, to allow protectiveness to morph into vindictiveness.
He looks up at the men picking themselves up off the ground in time to see one level a blaster at him and fire off a blue stunner. Faster than he can think, he throws up his hands, grasping for the Force, but it slips past him. His muscles seize as the stunner envelops him and icy heat skitters through his body. Coll collapses and curls in on himself, breathless and unseeing. He feels the ground tremble with footsteps as the soldiers approach.
Get up!
He’s screaming inside his mind, panic swirling like a burning maelstrom. Then a second stunner hits him and blackness overcomes his vision.
—-----------------------
Clone Corporal Tavo catches his eye in the reflection of the observation window and grimaces at the dark circles under his eyes, then goes back to watching the rise and fall of the Jedi’s chest as they sleep in the med bay.
Someone walks over to stand next to him and Tavo’s gaze flicks over to them then back to the Jedi. Reluctantly, he turns away to stand at attention and salutes.
“Sergeant.”
Despite sharing the same face, the sergeant wears his with such stoicism that his face might as well have been carved from stone.
Sergeant Hash regards him for a moment, “At ease, soldier.”
Tavo falls into a parade rest. Despite himself, his gaze flits back to the observation window. “Permission to speak, sir?”
“Granted.”
“How are the ade doing?” The Jedi had woken screaming for the ade and needed to be sedated.
A flicker of something resembling approval flashes through Sergeant Hash’s eyes, “Good. As well as can be expected. Aniss checked them over and they’re fine. The CDC has them now.”
Tavo frowns, “CDC?”
Sergeant Hash shrugs “Childcare Development Center. They’re with the other force sensitive ade we’ve found.”
Tavo’s eyebrows raise. He hadn’t realized that their Finders had been successful in identifying and retrieving force sensitive children. That must be highly classified information.
He glances sharply at Sergeant Hash, “Should you be telling me that?”
The good sergeant smiles slyly, “You deserve to know since your Jedi’s going to be working with them. Congratulations by the way. Your claim’s been approved.”
Approved . Tavo’s eyes widen and elation rushes through him. He fights not to break into a grin. His squad will be delighted. The atin cabur is theirs. He looks back at the sleeping Jedi, eyes hungrily tracing the contours of their sleeping face.
Sergeant Hash clears his throat, “Due to the Jedi’s injury, you’ll be bonding the old fashioned way. I suggest you start before he wakes up.”
Tavo nods wordlessly. His. His to treasure and protect. To embrace as his own.
“This is for you.”
Tavo reluctantly tears his gaze away from his Jedi to take the thick folder from the sergeant. He flips it open. The Jedi's face stares back at him, innocent and fresh-faced in the photograph, so different from the rugged man in their med bay.
He thumbs the page, “This is everything we have on him?”
The sergeant says, “Almost everything. We lucked out when we picked him up. Finder Regald Coll, assigned to the Mid-Rim. High retrieval rate of force sensitive ade . He’ll keep you busy once he’s redeployed.”
Tavo lets himself grin, “I’m looking forward to it, sir.”
Sergeant Hash nods, “Good man.” He leans in, “Fair warning. Intelligence is going to come calling after your Jedi.”
Tavo blinks, mind spinning. It makes sense that they would take an interest in his Jedi. Rumors that there are more Jedi, hidden in plain sight, had spread like wildfire once the Sentinel squads had been put on alert. Since his Jedi is a Finder, he must have communicated with the greater network of Jedi so that he could deposit any ade he discovered with their creche. Intelligence must be ecstatic. His Jedi is a veritable treasure trove of intel.
He nods at the sergeant. “Understood. Thank you, sir.”
Sergeant Hash nods back then turns to leave. “I’ll let you review the file and break the news to your squad. Retur’cye mhi .”
Tavo salutes. Once the door closes, he exhales shakily and grips the file with trembling hands. His Jedi.
Since the moment they decanted, they had been told that they were made for the Jedi. He’d been one of the lucky few Sentinels to have served with their Jedi General during the war. It’d been such a temptation, working with them and catching hints of a bond. There were times when he’d caught his General’s eye over the fire, late at night, and had allowed himself to fantasize about holding them close. The night that Order 66 happened, they’d been on leave on Coruscant and his General had bidden his squad to enjoy themselves in the city while they rested at the Temple. Tavo and his squad had seen the missiles strike and flames rise in the distance, grief and horror piercing them.
Tavo exhales shakily and unclenches his hands. No one could have anticipated the early issuing of Order 66. While other Sentinel squads had captured their Jedi, his had lost theirs. Six years later and his heart still twinges whenever he sees other squads happy with their Jedi.
Tavo looks back at the Jedi. Something warm blossoms in his chest as he watches them sleep. He feels heat prickle behind his eyes and grits his teeth, fighting it back. Years of grief, and finally his squad has a Guide to call their own.
With one last look at his Guide ( his Guide), Tavo turns to leave. Time to break the happy news to his squad.