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CHAPTER ONE. ━━━━━━━━━ Go, my child. Your place is with the living. I will stay here with the dead.
AGATHA CHRISTIE, THE HOLLOW ━━━━━━━━━
THEALA SEES THE TRAP the moment before it springs and thinks no. In an instant she is dashing across the field, light trailing behind her, a solid ribbon in the air. She blazes through the emerging turrets aiming at her squad, cutting them apart, overshoots, and then launches herself back to cover them from a second barrage. At the end of it she escapes with eight troopers, their commander, and a singe across her forehead, but no losses. Theala is annoyed at having only one and a half eyebrow left, but she'll survive.
Her squad is so grateful to her that she wants to cringe. They should expect someone will come to their aid; that they are so surprised to be alive offends Theala's sense of decency. She accepts their thanks quietly and bows out, retreating to the medical bay before Obi-Wan can scold her for her recklessness. It isn't him that corners her in the hallway after getting some bacta for her forehead, though.
Her commander looks pissed and Theala scowls. She is too tired for this. "Leave me alone, Kit."
Not surprisingly, that makes him even angrier. "You could've gotten yourself killed."
"They are your brothers," says Theala. "Your brothers, and mine. How could I leave them? Frankly, I find your lack of trust in my abilities —"
"You could have died," Kit cuts in. Before she can protest, he continues. "That shot was so close to burning a hole through your brain."
He breathes heavily, all semblance of calm gone. He clenches his fist. "You know what I used to think when they gave you to us? Thank the Force that my Jediisn't General Skywalker or General Kenobi. Everyone knows what they're like. One of them is certifiable and the other just pretends to be sane. I dodged a blaster there. No, I get a nice, sensible one as my General. And then it turns out those two aren't the weird ones. Your entire fucking Order can't get itself shot fast enough. Every time I turn around I have to worry about you landing yourself in Medical again pulling some stupid stunt saving brothers or civvies or goddamn beasts! I am a soldier, not a babysitter, and yet here we are having this conversation again because you won't accept you're the only person on this ship who isn't expendable!"
"When they gave me to you," Theala says, scowling, "I swore an oath. Whatever the Republic did to you, I would suffer. Your fate would be mine as well. If youwere to march to your ends, you would not march alone. It has not been so long that I have forgotten those promises."
"You and me are not the same," Kit hisses, looming over her, lips pulled back in a snarl, tense like a live wire. "I exist to die so you don't have to, and every time you pull shit like this, you're telling me that I have no purpose. You're telling me that everyone I've lost is lost for no reason, if we're the same thing. And there isn't a damn person in the galaxy who wouldn't trade a battalion of clones for a Jedi. So fuck you, Theala Visz, and fuck your oath. Shut up and do as you're told."
