Chapter Text
Was it just him, or was Leia’s breathing shallower?
Luke lay next to his sister, watching her chest rise and fall, her breaths misting in the cool winter air. He tried not to notice the dark circles under her eyes, or the way her skin was too pale. He tried not to think about how she was conscious less often. All that he could focus on was her breathing, as if he had control over that, as if he hadn’t already done his best to keep her alive.
What she needed was a med droid. He was pretty sure he’d stitched up the gaping hole in her abdomen as best he could, but there was still the fever and the infection to deal with.
The planet they were marooned on…well, he was sure it had medicine, but it was likely in the possession of the cruel adults they’d run into shortly after their escape pod had crashed. He wasn’t sure what planet they were on, or what had happened there to make the adults there so quick to jump to attempting to murder two kids, but he didn’t have time to find out.
He had to protect his sister, who’d been stabbed by sharp metal debris during their crash landing. He had to protect her until their father came to rescue them.
Because he was coming, right?
Sure, he’d sent them on the military retreat in the first place. Sure, their last conversation had been an argument–neither Luke nor Leia had desired to go on this ‘retreat’ in the first place. They’d wanted to stay on Coruscant with their father, fixing ships and hanging with friends. But apparently, their father hadn’t wanted to deal with them all summer.
And now they were on some winter planet, stranded, after an attack by…someone. Honestly, he still wasn’t sure. Pirates? Rebels? Did it even matter? Luke had estimated in the panicked first few hours after landing there and barely escaping the adults who’d tried to finish them off, that his father would first find the cruiser they’d been on by pinpointing its last signal location. Then, he’d search the surrounding planets for their escape pod and find them.
Except his father hadn’t shown up. It had been weeks, according to the scratches he’d made on the floor of the abandoned building he’d found for their shelter, and still there was no sign of his father.
He tried not to think the worst: that their father was still angry, or that the Emperor had ordered him to go do something else and he’d chosen work over his kids. Again.
If he thought about it too much, he’d spiral. Leia couldn’t afford for him to spiral.
“I have to go find food.” He whispered. He knew there would be no audible response, but he told her anyway. Just in case. “I’ll be back. Stay here.”
As if she was going to move anytime soon.
With a wince, he pushed the blanket off of him, ignoring the bite of the cold that seeped through the walls of the building, and got the gear he’d managed to scrounge up before heading out to hunt.
The Force was…strange, here. Murky, almost. There were entire stretches of land where he couldn’t feel the Force at all…actually, most of the planet seemed that way. The areas where he could feel it were limited, and then it felt like he was wading through thick mud. He longed to ask his father if he knew why. He himself had studied numerous types of planets, thanks to the education his father ensured both he and Leia have, but none of them had ever mentioned whatever was happening here.
It meant that he was forced to rely on himself. He’d never been great with the Force, considering his father had only taught them the basics to appease the Emperor’s paranoia, but he could have used it for survival. All he had left was the few lessons he’d learned at military camp, and what he’d seen on holodocs and read in holocomics.
But actually doing things like tracking prey, like setting traps and hunting and killing animals…it was unsettling.
Snow muffled the entire world around him as he checked the traps. The crunching of his boots in the snow, his breathing, sounded too loud as he moved from snare to snare. There were two rabbits in the various snares he’d set up. He took multiple deep breaths before looking away as his hunting knife sliced into them, killing them with a quick shriek.
If his father was there…he didn’t want to imagine his disappointment. He was a Sith. Killing rabbits was nothing compared to what he one day expected Luke to do.
If Leia was with him…she’d probably be better suited for this. She excelled in her survival course, and though she hadn’t liked the hunting portion either, but she had a better brave face than he did. “Do what you have to.” She’d told him once when he’d failed a test and fretted about it reaching his father.
He repeated it now to himself as he strung the corpses onto his belt.
Snap.
His head whipped around.
There.
A deer.
His breath caught in his throat as he pulled out the blaster he’d managed to steal a few weeks back. They wouldn’t have to hunt for a few days if he caught that. He wasn’t sure how to skin and gut it, but he could figure it out. He had to.
They needed this.
As quietly as he could, he lifted the blaster, taking aim at the grazing doe. Instinctively, he drew on the Force to steady his aim, but he was met with the same invisible wall he’d grown accustomed to.
He let out a slow, frustrated breath. It misted across the blaster as he pulled the trigger.
It hit, but not cleanly. The doe yelped and sprinted shakily away. Luke cursed and took off after it.
They sprinted through the trees, leaping over fallen icy logs and ducking under frosty branches that threatened to snag at his clothing. Even when the doe disappeared from sight, he followed after the clear blood trail staining the snow.
It took longer than he would’ve liked for the doe to finally drop. He found it in a small clearing, body still in the snow. At the edge of the clearing was a small wooden shack. He slowed and carefully picked his way over to the body.
As he stepped into the clearing, the Force came roaring back, murky and uncertain, but accessible. It was like he was being wrapped in a blanket, and he breathed out a sigh of relief.
The doe was dead. The Force told him that before he knelt down next to it. When he touched its neck, it was still warm. Guilt flooded him, not only because he’d had to kill the poor thing, but because his shot hadn’t been clean. It had taken far too long for it to die, and he could still feel its terror evaporating into the Force.
“I’m sorry, but we–”
He cut off as a warning triggered through the murkiness of the Force. He whirled, blaster raised, as two adult men slowly stepped out of the underbrush.
“Hi,” The leader said with a tentative smile.
Luke did not move. Not as a terrible sense of danger wrapped around him. These men may not have attacked him on sight like all of the other adults did here, but somehow they felt worse. Would they have attacked him had the Force not warned him in time?
“There’s no need for that,” the leader motioned to his own blaster and slowly set it on the ground. He motioned for his partner to follow suit, and reluctantly he did. “See? We mean you no harm.”
Luke still did not move. He didn’t say anything–he kept his blaster pointed at him, unwaveringly.
“We got a whole town to feed. That doe would go a long way to feeding most of them.”
Luke tensed. “I didn’t shoot it because I didn’t need it,” he snapped. Was this why the Force was warning him? Was he going to have to fight to keep his food?
Would he have to kill them?
“Now, now, we’re not going to take it, but we were hoping to trade. Maybe we could trade supplies or–”
“A comm?” Luke asked hopefully. He still didn’t trust these guys but if they could give him a way to call his father…
“All comm systems went down years ago.” The man said it like he should have known that.
Luke cursed silently, but if he could still get something he needed… “What about medicine, then?”
The men looked at each other. “Yeah, we have medicine. Cael, go get the kid medicine.”
The other man, Cael, looked at his leader with concern. “I’ll be fine. I’m not going to do anything, so there’s no reason for the kid to shoot, right?”
Luke hesitated. He wasn’t as…prone to violence as his father was, but he didn’t want this guy to know that. He didn’t answer.
The man motioned for Cael to go, and reluctantly, he did so, leaving Luke alone with the man.
“What’s your name?” He asked Luke after a long silence.
“It’s not important.” Luke said, firmly. So stop asking.
“You’re cautious. That’s good. Explains how you survived alone all these years.”
Luke didn’t answer. He suspected he was fishing for answers. The less this man knew about him, the better.
“My name is Greg.” The man said. “It’s kinda cold. You mind if I start a fire?”
A fire actually sounded nice. Even with his winter gear on, he could feel the chill in his bones. But should he trust this man at all?
When he said nothing, the man leaned down and started prepping a fire. Luke kept his blaster on him the entire time.
Soon a fire was going and Greg knelt by it, warming his hands. Luke was almost tempted to do the same, but he didn’t dare, even as his fingers ached. “I thought all the kids were sent off planet before everything went to shit.”
Luke hesitated, realizing with a jolt that this could be a good opportunity to finally get some answers about this place. He didn’t want to reveal too much, though–he had stolen from various encampments, and he didn’t want to tip the guy off just in case he’d accidentally stolen from him. It probably wouldn’t end well.
“How old are you? Nine?”
Luke bristled but didn’t reveal the truth: twelve. But the look on his face must have given it away, because Greg chuckled and said, “Older, then. You don’t look it, sorry.”
“Is there an Imperial outpost on this planet?” Luke asked instead. If he could just get to one, maybe they could get him and Leia off world.
“They left with the kids. Promised to come back for us. Didn’t ever come back.” Greg shrugged.
Luke frowned. Why? What interest could the Empire possibly have with a bunch of kids? Did his father have anything to do with this?
But Greg continued. “Kids have different reactions to the disease. If they get bit, they die a slow, terrible death, but they stay dead. But adults?” He shook his head.
Luke was almost afraid to ask, but it seemed like important information. “The adults?”
Greg looked up at him, straight in the eye. “They die and return as monsters.”
A chill ran up Luke’s spine. It was a struggle not to visibly react. “Oh. Right.” The lie tasted awkward on his tongue.
“We don’t get them as much up here,” Greg continued, poking at the fire with a stick. “Not as many people lived up here to get the disease. Still. Can’t be too careful.”
That would explain why he hadn’t seen anything like that. Still, if they were around, he needed to get back to Leia and protect her.
“But I’m sure you knew all that.” Greg finished, not looking up.
“Yeah…” Stars, if only Leia was here. She was the better liar. Even his father knew to come to him if he suspected they’d done something wrong. He couldn’t last very long under the weight of his father’s glare.
But Greg never had a chance to call him on his lies. A scream came from the nearby woods–not a human scream, but a terrible, guttural one.
“Kriff!” Greg stood abruptly. “Speak of the rancor, they’re coming!”
What are coming? He was too terrified to ask, not as an internal war raged within him–the side that wanted answers, and the side that didn’t trust this man. But Greg was picking up one of the fallen blasters, running to the shed, tearing open the door and gesturing inside. “Come on! Don’t just stand there!”
Monsters. Monsters that had once been people. A bite that could kill him, that could turn Greg into a monster like them…
He complied, and as soon as he was inside the shack, Greg slammed the door and threw his weight against a large, old tool desk, shoving it in front of the door. “You take that window, I’ll take this one!” Greg motioned to the window that was much too large for Luke’s liking, and took up his own position at his window on the other side of the one-room shack, aiming his blaster. “You have to shoot them in the head. It’s the only way to kill them.”
Stars, that was so specific, and not a large, easily hittable target. Did this guy even have decent aim? Luke dove into the Force, pleased that it was still accessible, and took up his spot, aiming his own blaster out his window.
He’d have to deal with it. He would. He was Luke Skywalker, the son of Darth Vader and Padme Amidala. He had the Force. Even in its murky state, he could do this.
He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t what emerged from the tree line. It wasn’t…human, or sentient looking at all. Even though Greg had told him they’d been created from the deceased, these things…
They had long, skeletal bodies, with elongated limbs that bent at wrong angles. There was no skin, but rather muscle sinew stretched thin over bone. On their hands and feet were long claws that could easily rip them into shreds. They had no faces. All that was left was an impossible large mouth full of rows of sharp fangs, and their brains were exposed and took up the entire rest of their head.
“What the hell?” Luke breathed, terror gripping his throat as he watched them sprint on all fours towards the shack. He was half-certain they’d straight up eat him before he could die a slow, painful death. In fact, just looking at those, he was kind of glad he was still a kid, because if this didn’t work and he was bit, he’d rather die than turn into one of those.
He was kind of starting to see why the Imperial Navy left the adults behind, if there was a chance the infected would turn into that.
Greg was already shooting on his side. “Start killing!” He yelled, and on instinct, Luke reacted.
The Force was with him. His father told him that whenever he’d woken up from a nightmare, or he was about to do a particularly difficult test at school. The Force will be with you. Always, my son. He could practically hear the deep baritone of his father’s voice echoing in his head as he shot, never once missing his target. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think about how these…things had once been people. It did, however, feel surreal that he was even in this situation in the first place.
Do you know about these things, father?
Why haven’t you found us yet? Why aren’t you here, helping me?
He was terrified, and yet every shot was taken confidently and precisely. His side was clear when he heard Greg shout.
He whirled as glass shattered, and Greg had fallen to the ground as one of those things attempted to climb through his smashed window.
Luke reacted. A quick blast, and the thing collapsed, hanging half in, half out of the window, the stench of rot filling the small room. He maneuvered himself more into the center until he could see out both windows. “Stay out of the way,” he snapped, shooting more monsters from Greg’s side in the head. They collapsed far too close to the shack for Luke’s liking.
Greg complied, and Luke kept going. Most were now on Greg’s side, but occasionally they’d try to get around to Luke’s. The Force pinged a warning every time, and his reflexes had him moving, shooting, and killing before he even registered what he was doing. By the time the monsters stopped coming, he was breathing hard, and there were corpses littering the snow around the shack.
“I…it’s done,” He wheezed. He hadn’t moved like that in…well, a while. He was so rarely presented with opportunities to use the Force like that on Coruscant, not when his father was around to jump in and protect them before he could.
Protect.
I will always protect you.
That’s what his father had promised, and here he was, lost on some literal mostly Force-forsaken planet, killing monsters far worse than he ever could have imagined by himself. His teeth clenched as he tried to ignore the bitterness and worry at the thought of never leaving here again, all because his father hadn’t wanted to deal with them for a summer so he could do who knew what for Emperor Wrinkles.
“That…that was amazing.” Greg’s voice brought him back to reality. The older man had picked himself up, and stared at Luke with a different sort of appreciation. “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”
Luke’s jaw clenched and he looked away. “Like you said. I had to learn to survive.”
There was a pause. “Right,” he finally said, then grunted as he removed the desk from in front of the door. “Let’s check on the doe, shall we?”
Luke said nothing as he followed Greg out. The doe’s body still lay where he’d left it, but the fire had gone out, probably stamped out by the monsters. Snow all around the clearing was trampled. The bodies of the monsters lay slumped in the snow, a thick, black ooze seeping from where they’d been shot. At first, he began closely examining them, but after seeing the size of their fangs and claws up close, he decided better of it.
“You and I make a good team,” Greg said, kicking one of the monster’s clawed hands.
“We got lucky.” Luke turned away.
“No such thing as luck, kid.” Luke’s jaw clenched. His father would say the same thing, but he wasn’t about to reveal what he’d actually done back there. Greg continued. “See, I believe there’s a reason for everything. This winter has been…especially difficult.”
Winter. It was so strange how on another planet, it was winter while back home it was summer.
“We gathered plenty of supplies. We were prepared. Then, suddenly, supplies go missing.”
Luke tensed, slowly turning to look at Greg. He was back by the trampled fire, trying to restart it without looking up at him as he spoke.
“Now, couldn’t be any rivals. We scared them off a long time ago, showed them exactly what happens when they take from us.”
Exactly what happens…?
“We do some digging. Come to find out, an escape pod crash landed a while back. Witnesses say two kids were in it, but they were assumed long dead, given…well.” He gestured to a nearby corpse of a monster.
The bad feeling was back in force, so overwhelming that on instinct Luke aimed the blaster back at Greg.
“Now, there’s no need for that. I forgive you. Clearly, you’re desperate.”
Don’t trust him. Don’t trust him. Don’t–
“Stop pointing the blaster at the boy, Cael.”
Luke whirled to find Cael had returned, and he was currently aiming a blaster at him.
“But he stole from us!” Cael hissed. “People are gunna suffer and it’s because of him!”
He hadn’t known. Well…no, he had assumed, he’d felt bad about it, but Leia needed him more, and anytime he saw any adults here they attacked. It wasn’t like he could have asked for help even when he’d wanted to.
But he doubted Cael would care.
“I said,” there was a threatening edge in Greg’s tone and it was almost as terrifying as the monsters dead at their feet. “Drop the blaster and give him the medicine.”
Cael didn’t move for an agonizingly long second. Then, with a curse, he pointed the blaster at the ground and tossed Luke a bag. It fell at his feet, almost swallowed up by the snow. Awkwardly, Luke leaned down to get it, keeping his own blaster on Cael as his fingers fumbled for the bag. He found it, stood, and began backing away from the two men.
“You could stay, you know.” Greg was watching him leave, and Luke didn’t like the way he watched him. “I’ll protect you.”
It was an effort not to recoil. “No thanks.” He said, and as he backed into the edge of the tree line, as the Force suddenly disappeared, leaving him to his own devices, he whirled and ran, running as quickly as he could back to his own shelter.
When he got back to the abandoned building he’d left Leia in, he headed straight for her room. As he did, his mind forgot about the men in the forest, focused solely on the worry over what he’d find when he entered Leia’s room. As it always did when he returned.
He opened the door, and his eyes found her.
She lay still.
His heart leapt into his throat as he instinctively called upon the Force to check whether she was alive or dead…nothing. No response.
“Leia?”
There was silence, dreaded, awful silence…then a cough, her breath misting above her face. He breathed out a sigh of relief and knelt beside her.
“I have food.” He pulled the two rabbit corpses from his belt. “It’s not much, but it’ll do.”
He pulled out the medicine. A stim shot. It would go a long way to helping her heal, but she still would need a real doctor soon.
“I got medicine, too.” He was glad she wasn’t conscious enough to ask him how he’d managed that as he prepped the shot, following the instructions on the back of the box to the exact detail. Then, he leaned over her, pressing the needle against her neck. “This isn’t going to feel great.” He warned her, then he pressed the compression.
With a hiss, the stim injected into her, and though her eyes didn’t open, she gasped in pain. He quickly withdrew, the stim empty. “Sorry, but you’ll be better soon, now.” At least, he hoped. He waited, watching anxiously as she settled back down, though she began shivering. That was…probably a good sign. If she was shivering, her body was fighting to survive, right? It was better than the stillness.
He pulled the covers over her further, then lay next to her, wrapping an arm carefully around her. “You’re going to be okay,” he promised. He hoped he was right and that he hadn’t brought the medicine too late.
“I’ll take care of you.”