Mirror Prism

Chapter 3 - If Your Wings Are Broken

When Hunter wakes, it's with a prickling energy in his body. It burns, but not in a way that aches. His head is throbbing, and a foreign energy is tingling in his palms. He feels – something else. Across the distant galaxy, the stars and planets and energy between them, the flicker of every life on world, though there's a film keeping it apart from everywhere else –

Every life...

His family is here. His entire family's here. Hunter doesn't know how he feels it, but...

He doesn't know what this is.

"Hunter." It's the same voice he said earlier. He freezes, jolting upright. "Once," the disembodied voice says, and the gentleness in it is all that calms him. "Long ago, there were four beings that carried all that wrote the fabric of the universe. Ones of dark and light, and others of chaos and order."

"What does that have to do with us?" Hunter asks, standing.

"Those who held these powers are passed on, their powers held deep within the core of this planet. Mortis has been isolated since their deaths, until your arrival."

He's getting a really bad feeling about this. "You're telling me we have these... powers?" Hunter asks tiredly.

"The wielder of chaos still lives," he answers, "But the other three powers are now split between you and your brothers. They have been seeking vessels since their former carries past on into the Force."

Hunter thinks something's wrong. He can feel it, twisting and rippling deep in his core.

Hunter looks down to where his hands flicker with aqua mist. "This isn't what we are," he argues, "We're soldiers. We're clones. Not..."

"Many will seek to exploit your powers," the voice continues.

"Who are you? Why are you helping me?"

"I was once a Jedi master," the voice answers, "With the name Qui-Gon Jinn. Now, I am one with the Force."

He's a Jedi ghost? Ugh. Can he go back to this morning when he was waking up on Pabu and everything was finally normal? "How can I get back to our ship?"

"Your powers are within you," Qui-Gon Jinn's voice replies, "You can warp the fabric of reality, though be mindful of its consequences."

Easy to say. Not so easy to hear when his hands aren't managing to exist very well. Hunter shakes them a little, mentally ordering them to stop misting out, though the energy is flickering in them hot and burning. They have to get back to the ship. They're still mid-mission.

"I don't know how to control this." He doesn't even understand what this is. Forget knowing anything about it. Truthfully? It terrifies him.

"You already have what you need."

"Do I?" Hunter moves past him closer to the storm – he still feels the flickering clouds and lightning the way he always does, and it's strange to feel it all in another way, too.

"Your connection is to order," the Jedi master answers – Hunter can feel a sort of energy nearby him, though he can't see it, and he's a little too freaked out over it to actually look. "In a galaxy in chaos."

"With all due respect, I don't care about that." He's not going to drag his family into something like this. Nothing's changed. "I have to protect my squad. What's left of it."

"That's all you need."

Hunter glances up as he feels a prickling warmth of a hand on his shoulder through his armor, a gentle squeeze that he would once have given to Omega or any of his brothers before the energy fades away. The storm suddenly sounds louder. Hunter looks down, and in his place is a familiar shoulder pauldron.