Chapter Text
It didn’t want her to live, this brittle, glass-sharp corpse of a world. It wanted her poisoned. Buried under rock. Torn to pieces by the vicious humanoid beasts that made the ruins of the city their hunting grounds.
Day after day Mandalore went out of its way to deny her water. To make every excuse for a meal she ate an exercise in neutralizing poisons. The very air was a thing she couldn’t quite trust in many parts of the skeletal metal maze she now called home.
This world was trying its best to put her out of her misery and there were days when she wondered why she fought not to join the legions of its beskar-clad dead. It was the only ending this story could have, after all. Even if her luck held hour after hour, even if it has been with her every step of the way so far, it was hard not to think of it as a finite resource. Bound to run out one day. One day soon the perpetual gloom of the underground was going to swallow her up, like she long since accepted it would.
Bleak thoughts, but those seemed to be the only kind left now.
She survived to live in the shadows with never enough light to see by. A nocturnal creature, just like all those that hunted her.
The pale ape-like bipeds wielding jagged-edged green glass, the winged reptiles whose glowing eyes followed her wherever she went, rodents, small hordes of them, made utterly vicious by living as close to the edge of starvation as she herself did. There wasn’t a creature down here that wouldn’t fight and kill for its next meal and, well... she was a creature living down here.
So much of one that even she didn’t recognize herself as the person she used to be before being brought to this poisoned world. That woman was long since erased.
First taught to believe there was no such thing as hope in the bleak stronghold carved into the rock of the chasm and then, after she took the path of a deserter and chose the certainty of death promised by Mandalore over the certainty of the rest of her life spent following Moff Gideon’s orders, that past self died for good. Died with every action that used to be unthinkable to her – every hard decision that needed to be made to transform her into what she was now. A survivor.
She still thought of her sometimes, of course. That complacent woman content to spend her days in the lab happily crafting antivenoms while a war for the future of the galaxy was fought and won. Noticing some of the small changes, the lessening of the harsh rules they had to live by under the Empire, but usually not letting any of it draw attention away from her work. And if she ever picked up on the rumours of imperial remnants still hiding in out of the way corner of the galaxy she dismissed it as not her problem. What did it matter to her that a few military leaders survived? Who cared about madmen still trying to wage the war they long since lost...
In the long, sleepless hours, in the questionable safety of her hiding place at the outskirts of one of Mandalore’s eviscerated cities, she often wondered how the person she used to be earned her all of this.
All those years going through the motions of a life sheltered from the galactic upheavals by the coincidence of living on a world no one had much interest in fighting over. Safe to believe those things only happened to other people, because for the longest time they did.
Until the universe decided to redress the balance.
Until a megalomaniac refusing to accept the Empire fell decided he wanted more than beskar. Planning to steal even more of what was left of Mandalore’s resources. A Moff sent his people to get him an expert that could survey the remains of the world’s biosphere and do something about the toxicity of what little remained and that was that.
That was the beginning of the end.
A decision someone else made for her that started her on the path to this. The darkness. Surviving on things that were going to kill her, no matter how well her improvised antitoxins managed to counter the immediate effects of ingesting them.
Surviving while slowly forgetting what it even felt like to be living.
“Overrated anyway,” she sighs. Fighting off that sense of dejection creeping into her more and more these days. Feeling sorry for herself wasn’t something her schedule allowed for. Not when she was busy putting one foot in front of the other to spite both the planet that was out to get her and the ruthless madman who no doubt never spared her a thought after being informed she was lost while surveying one of the toxic underground biomes.
Probably sent his goons to snatch him a replacement for her the very same day – not that she could even manage much in a way of bitterness at the thought. Far too drained for emotions these days. Her mood as dark as this cave she came to in search of glowing mushrooms with dusty aftertaste and next to no nutritional value.
Was it ideal? No. What it was, when she got right down to it, was sad. The fact there really were days she only forced herself through to spite that arrogant stranger she only met face to face on a few occasions. Only slightly more sad then the fact she just as often fought to keep breathing to prove to herself – to the person she was, but never could be again – that she could.
For weeks that turned into months she found luck to be on her side. And here she still was – for what little that was worth. Lived through every animal attack, every illness brought on by tainted water, every impossibly long night of staying perfectly still in the shadows while praying a nearby bone-pale carnivore doesn’t sense her presence. What she had any power over, she forced herself to live through. And things she didn’t, well... one of those was going to get her in the end.
It was about then, when her thoughts – circling the same old black hole of self-reflection on her life, the galaxy and everything – have been interrupted. By another thing this planet liked to throw at her, lest she grows complacent...
“Oh yes... Who can forget the goddamn earthquakes,” she rumbles under her breath as the cave walls echo their own, much more thunderous rumble. “Because if you’re gonna take me out, better do it in style.”
Talking to herself was bad. Talking to Mandalore was infinitely less healthy, she was sure.
She should probably discuss that with a mental health specialist of some description – as soon as Moff Gideon had one kidnapped and then proceeded to lose them in the caves beyond his stronghold...
Soft rock dust and dislodged pebbles started to rain down on her as she followed the trail lit by the luminescent mushrooms to the end of the cave that seemed slightly less likely to come apart.
Finding her footing on the shifting ground was, as ever, a nightmare. Holding onto the cave wall for support only made it a little better and in turn made her more aware of the cracks that started forming in the rock than she wanted to be. All the while the seismic tremors made her whole world groan in a way that was... well... deafening. Genuinely making her wonder if her ear drums could survive much more of this.
Mandalore creaking its ancient bones at her just to remind her it was time to stop whining. Because her day could always be worse...
And how thoughtful – since she was in a mood she could really use snapping out of. “Alright already,” she finds herself saying minutes later. Her unamused words muffled by the fabric of the shirt she pulled up over her mouth and nose to cut down on the amount of dust she was breathing in, “I’ll try to cut down on the self-pity if it bothers you so much...”
As if it was waiting for her to say the words, the movement starts to subside a little. Though not before treating her to a few more long, dusty, nerve-wrecking minutes to spend overthinking what was happening. Because, no expert on tectonics, she could have sworn this felt... local.
She didn’t have a seismologist to consult with any more than the psychiatrist she so clearly needed to deal with the effects solitude was having on her mind. “Just an earthquake. They happen,” she says to herself as she runs a hand through hair turned grey by all the dust covering it. “Or maybe we got hit by a meteor. Also a fun option.”
A thought that, for reasons no doubt tied to her slowly deteriorating sanity, makes her smile.
“If there is any justice in this galaxy, whatever it is dropped right on top of Gideon and his army of sociopaths.”