A/N: dammit i had opened the tab and forgotten to update....
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I woke up to silence.
Not the kind of silence you get when you're drifting through hyperspace, where the hum of the engines forms a constant white noise that your brain eventually filters out. This was real silence. The absence of movement, of vibration, of anything that suggested we were going anywhere.
We'd stopped.
I blinked up at the ceiling, my brain slowly coming online. The pain in my ribs was still there, but it had dulled from "someone's grinding broken glass into my chest cavity" to "got hit by a speeder bike." Progress. The bacta must have done some work while I was out. External wounds sealed, internal bleeding stabilized, and judging by the floaty feeling in my skull, someone had pumped me full of the good painkillers.
A soft weight rested against my side. I turned my head carefully and found Arachnae curled up next to me, her limbs tucked in close, optical sensors dimmed to a faint blue glow. She looked almost peaceful. As peaceful as a spider droid could look, anyway.
The moment my eyes focused on her, her sensors flared bright. She uncurled in an instant, scrambling up onto my chest with a flurry of excited chirps.
Piing! Pi-pi-piing!
"Ow, ow, careful," I wheezed, raising a hand to ward off her enthusiasm before she could trample my broken ribs. "I'm still kinda fragile here."
She immediately backed off, but her chirps turned rapid and worried, her manipulator arms waving in what I'd come to recognize as her version of distress.
"I'm okay," I said, reaching out to run my fingers along the smooth curve of her chassis. "See? Still breathing. Still kicking. Well, not kicking. More like... gently hobbling."
She tilted her head, optical sensors narrowing as if she didn't quite believe me. I stroked the top of her head, right where the central processor housing met the forward sensor cluster. She always liked that spot.
"Aren't you a too good of a gal, huh?" I murmured.
Her sensors flickered, and if a spider droid could blush, I was pretty sure she just did. She ducked her head, tucking it against my palm with a soft, contented trill.
I smiled despite myself. At least someone in this galaxy gave a damn.
The moment of peace lasted about three seconds before my paranoia kicked in. Old habits. I needed to know where we were, who was around, what the tactical situation looked like.
I took a breath and reached out with my Hyper Perception, letting it expand outward from my body like ripples on a pond.
Pain detonated behind my eyes.
A sharp, white-hot spike drove straight through my temple, and before I could even process what was happening, something erupted out of me.
An invisible shockwave tore through the room. Every loose object in the cabin launched itself away from me like I'd just triggered a kinetic grenade. The blanket whipped off the bed. The canteen on the wall hook went flying. A metal toolbox slammed into the far bulkhead with a reverberating clang.
I hit the floor on my knees, gasping, one hand braced against the durasteel deck as my vision swam. The pain in my skull pulsed in time with my heartbeat, and I could feel the aftershocks of whatever the hell that was still rippling through the Force around me.
A high-pitched shriek cut through the ringing in my ears.
PIIIING!
I looked up just in time to see Arachnae tumbling through the air, her limbs flailing as she tried to stabilize herself. At the last second, something shot out from her undercarriage. A thin, metallic cable, tipped with a magnetic grapple. It latched onto the edge of the cot with a sharp clack, and she swung herself to safety, landing on the bed frame with all the grace of a cat that definitely did not just fall off the counter.
"Arachnae!" I gasped, my voice hoarse. "Are you okay?"
She chirped immediately, rapid-fire and insistent.
Pi-pi-pi-piing! Piing-piing-pi!
"Yeah, yeah, I'm okay," I muttered, though I wasn't entirely sure that was true. "But what in the seven hells was that?"
I stared down at my hands, half-expecting them to be glowing or crackling with energy or doing literally anything that would explain what just happened. They looked normal. No sparks. No aura. Just my hands, shaking slightly from the adrenaline dump.
"Since when did I start having Force seizures?" I said to no one in particular. "Like, bro, I can't even do this with all the ass-clenching focus in the world."
Arachnae chirped again, this time with a distinctly worried edge.
Piing?
"I don't know," I admitted. "I don't—"
Footsteps.
Heavy. Deliberate. Coming down the corridor outside.
My heart rate spiked. I wasn't exactly in a state to explain what had just happened, especially if whoever was out there had felt that little Force explosion.
"Helmet," I hissed. "Arachnae, where's my helmet?"
She spun around, her forward strut pointing toward the cot.
I followed the line of her aim and spotted the edge of my helmet poking out from underneath the bed. Of course. It had gotten shoved into the corner during the blast, wedged into the gap between the bed frame and the bulkhead.
"Fantastic," I muttered.
I crawled toward it, my ribs screaming in protest with every movement. The footsteps were getting closer. I could hear voices now, muffled but distinct. One of them was Obi-Wan.
I reached out, fingers stretching toward the helmet.
It flew into my hand.
Not slowly. Not gently. It rocketed toward me with enough force that I nearly took it to the face, catching it at the last second before it could knock my teeth in.
I stared at the helmet in my hands, my brain struggling to process what had just happened.
I hadn't pulled it. I'd just... wanted it. And it came.
"What the actual—"
The door hissed open.
I jammed the helmet onto my head in one smooth motion, the seals engaging with a soft click just as Obi-Wan stepped through the doorway. He was still wearing his mask, the featureless white surface reflecting the dim overhead lights.
Behind him was Nari.
The younger Jedi looked exactly like I remembered from the show—maybe early twenties, with the kind of face that still held onto a sliver of optimism despite everything the galaxy had thrown at him. His robes were dusty and worn, and there was a lightsaber clipped to his belt, the hilt wrapped in leather that had seen better days.
His eyes swept the room, taking in the scattered debris, the dented toolbox, the general state of chaos. Then his gaze landed on me, kneeling on the floor in full armor, and his expression shifted from concern to confusion.
"Uh," Nari said. "Everything okay in here?"
I stayed on my knees, one hand braced against the floor, trying to project "injured but stable" instead of "just accidentally launched everything in the room with my brain."
"Yeah," I said, my voice coming out slightly modulated through the helmet's vocoder. "Just... stepped wrong. Flared up the internal injuries."
Obi-Wan's masked face tilted slightly, his focus sharpening on me in a way that made my skin prickle. He didn't say anything, but I could feel the weight of his attention, the silent question hanging in the air between us.
Because we both knew that was complete bantha shit.
I'd never had that kind of Force output. Not even close. The most I'd ever managed was wobbling a spoon or launching myself into the air with Resonance. What just happened was on a completely different scale.
Under my helmet, I met where I assumed his eyes were behind that mask. A silent conversation passed between us.
We're talking about this later.
Yeah, I figured.
Nari, thankfully, seemed to buy it. His expression shifted from alarm to concern, and he took a step forward. "Do you need medical attention? I can fetch the medkit."
"I'm fine," I said, waving him off. "The bacta's doing its job. Just need to remember not to move like an idiot."
Arachnae chirped from the bed, her tone distinctly skeptical.
Pi-piing.
"I'm fine," I repeated, shooting her a look. "Traitor."
She tilted her head, optical sensors narrowing in what I'd come to recognize as her "I'm watching you" expression.
Nari glanced between me, the scattered debris, and Arachnae, clearly trying to piece together what had happened. "If you're certain..."
"I'm certain." I pushed myself to my feet, biting back a groan as my ribs complained about the movement. "What's the situation? Why aren't we moving?"
Obi-Wan spoke up, his voice calm and measured through his own vocoder. "We've landed at a waypoint approximately sixty kilometers from the Tusken encampment. The prisoners required immediate medical attention that could not be administered in flight. We've been on the ground for three hours."
"Three hours?" I looked around the room, taking in the damage with fresh eyes. "How long was I out this time?"
"Another four," Obi-Wan said. "You've been unconscious for ten hours total since the incident."
Ten hours. I'd lost ten hours, and I didn't even remember most of what happened. Just fragments. Cold. Darkness. Something vast and—
The thought slipped away before I could grab it, leaving only a dull ache behind my eyes.
Nari shifted his weight, and I caught the way his hand drifted toward his lightsaber before he forced it back to his side. He looked agitated. Not scared, exactly, but wound tight, like he'd been waiting for this conversation and wasn't sure how it was going to go.
"Fulcrum," he said, and there was an edge to his voice now. "We need to talk."
I glanced at Obi-Wan, who crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. Clearly, he wasn't leaving. Great. An audience.
"Sure," I said, trying for casual. "What's on your mind?"
Nari's jaw tightened. "Why in the Force did you not tell me that the aid you were calling was a kriffing Jedi?"
Ah. There it was.
"You didn't ask?" I offered.
"I didn't—" Nari cut himself off, taking a breath like he was physically restraining himself from throttling me. "You told me you had contacts. You said you were calling in a favor. You made it sound like you were hiring mercenaries or bounty hunters. Not—" He gestured at Obi-Wan. "Not another Jedi! Especially one that is intent on hiding his name and purpose!"
The latter part seemed to have slight accusations toward Obi-Wan who just pretended to look elsewhere. They don't call him Negotiator for no reason after all.
"Technically, I did hire him," I said. "He's just... very particular about his payment methods."
The payments of course included beating my ass till it was red.
Obi-Wan made a sound that might have been a sigh. "Fulcrum."
"What? It's true."
Nari rubbed his face with both hands, and I heard him mutter something in a language I didn't recognize. Probably a curse. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? The Inquisitors were in the system. If they'd sensed even a fraction of the disturbance you two caused—"
"They didn't," I interrupted. "Because they were too busy chasing a phantom smuggler named Lando Calrissian. The plan worked, Nari. We got the prisoners out, we dealt with the Warlord, and nobody died except the people who deserved it."
"Nobody died?" Nari's voice rose slightly. "You nearly died! You collapsed in the sand with your heart stopped and your friend here had to drag you back from whatever edge you'd thrown yourself off!"
I opened my mouth to respond, but Nari wasn't done.
"And what was all that about sending coordinates to assassins?" He was pacing now, his hands moving in sharp, agitated gestures. "You told me we were just gathering intelligence. You said we'd pass it along to your contacts and let them handle it. You made it sound clean. Professional."
He stopped, turning to face me directly. "Not only did you jump into the fray yourself, you got yourself wrecked like bantha shit! So either you lied to me, or you changed the plan without telling me. Which is it?"
The room went quiet except for Arachnae's soft, worried chirping.
I could feel Obi-Wan's attention on me, waiting to see how I'd handle this. Nari had every right to be pissed. I had lied. Sort of. I'd fed him a story about professional killers and intelligence gathering, then turned around and gone full Rambo on a Tusken camp with a Jedi Master.
But was I gonna explain the full truth? That I'd needed to radicalize Obi-Wan, that I'd needed him to see the atrocity firsthand so he'd drop his pacifist stance and help me kill a future Sith Lord? That wasn't exactly something I could share.
So I did what I did best. I lied.
"The plan changed," I said simply. "My contact here arrived earlier than expected and assessed the situation. We realized waiting for external assets would take too long. The prisoners were being tortured. Every hour we delayed meant more people died."
I gestured at Obi-Wan. "He offered to help directly. I accepted. The rest... improvisation."
Nari stared at me, his expression caught between frustration and disbelief. "Improvisation. You call what happened out there improvisation?"
"I call it adapting to circumstances," I said. "The outcome was the same. The Warlord is dead. The prisoners are safe. We're not dead. I count that as a win."
"You stopped breathing," Nari said, his voice quieter now, but no less intense. "Your heart stopped. That is not a win, Fulcrum. That is you throwing your life away when I was right here, ready to help."
The anger in his voice had shifted, no longer directed at me for risking myself, but for not including him in that risk.
"I could have been there with you," he continued, his voice tight with conviction. "We could have faced him together. Instead, you shut me out and nearly died alone."
Something in his tone made me pause. This wasn't just about being lied to. This was about a Jedi's calling to help others, even at great personal risk.
"You were needed to get the ship ready," I said, my voice softer now. "We needed a quick escape route. If something went wrong, you were our only way out."
"And if something had gone wrong with your plan?" Nari shot back. "If your contact hadn't shown up? You would have faced that Warlord alone, with no backup. That's not strategy, Fulcrum. That's recklessness."
He took a breath, the anger in his eyes softening slightly. "I understand why you did it. Those people needed help. But next time—next time, trust me enough to let me help."
I looked at him, really looked at him, and saw the genuine conviction in his eyes. This wasn't just about being kept in the dark. This was about a Jedi's need to serve, to protect, to make a difference.
"Fair enough," I said finally. "Next time, you're in the loop."
Nari nodded, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. "The prisoners are stable. Herana is recovering faster than expected. The others are shaken but alive. We should be ready to move within the hour."
Instead of responding to that, I asked something else.
"Where are the refugees?" My voice modulated by the helmet but I couldn't hide an edge of concern. I had spent so much effort saving them, so if something happened to them, it would be like paying for food but not even eating it.
"They weren't brought aboard, were they?"
Nari shook his head. "No, they're resting outside. We set up a temporary camp in the rocks. The desert provides natural cover, and it's better than keeping them cooped up in here."
I nodded, then glanced between Nari and Obi-Wan. "Did you guys do it?"
Nari looked confused. "Do what?"
I didn't elaborate, just kept my gaze on Obi-Wan, who sighed and gave a slight nod.
Understanding dawned on Nari's face. "Oh. That." He shifted uncomfortably. "I was against it at first. Messing with people's minds like that... it doesn't sit right with me."
"Sometimes necessary precautions are unpleasant," Obi-Wan said quietly. "The memories of what they witnessed in that camp would have haunted them for the rest of their lives. Better they remember only the rescue, not the horror."
Nari grumbled, crossing his arms. "I still don't like it. But... I see the logic. If any of them were captured and interrogated, they couldn't reveal what they saw. What we are."
"Exactly," I said. "We can stay here for now. The desert provides perfect cover. It's wise to wait until tomorrow before moving them."
Obi-Wan nodded in agreement. "The Inquisitors are still focused on Mos Eisley. Another day won't change that, but it will give the refugees time to recover."
My thoughts turned to the two I'd personally saved. "How are Lyra and Herana doing?"
Nari's expression softened slightly. "Lyra's holding up. She's worried about her sister, obviously." He paused, his brow furrowing. "Herana... physically, she's stable. But her mind..."
"What about it?" I pressed, leaning forward despite the protest from my ribs.
"When we found her, there were no external injuries on her head, but her mental state was the worst among all the prisoners," Nari explained, a hint of anger in his voice. "I don't know what those Tuskens did to her, but she was completely unresponsive. Just... empty."
I stayed silent, waiting.
"Strangely, though, she's been improving on her own," Nari continued, looking puzzled. "It's like whatever trauma she suffered is slowly healing itself. She's more alert now, responding to her sister. The healers can't explain it."
I felt a strange mix of relief and confusion. I'd healed the physical damage to her brain, but I hadn't expected it to have such a profound effect on her mental state. The Force worked in mysterious ways, even when I tried to treat it like science.
"That's... good to hear," I said finally. "Keep me updated on her progress."
Nari nodded. "Will do."
Obi-Wan watched me with that inscrutable masked face, but I could feel his curiosity through the Force. He knew there was more to this story, just like he knew there was more to my "internal injury" explanation.
For now, though, he let it go. We all had our secrets.
Nari gave me one last look, somewhere between exasperation and concern, then turned and left the room. His footsteps echoed down the corridor, fading into the distance.
The moment he was gone, Obi-Wan closed the door.
The silence that followed was heavy.
"Internal injuries," Obi-Wan said finally, his tone dry. "That was your explanation?"
"It worked, didn't it?"
"It worked because Nari does not know you well enough to recognize a blatant fabrication." He crossed his arms. "I do."
I sighed, leaning back against the wall. "Yeah. I figured."
"What happened, Ezra?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "I woke up. The moment I expanded my senses to feel the force around me, my head felt like it was splitting open and everything in the room went flying."
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