Dark Day: Part Four

Part Four

     “Tell me you’re kidding,” Lire said, jaw slack. “Tell me you’ve grown a sense of humor in the last thirty seconds.”

     Carth slowly, sadly, shook his head, and Lire hissed in a breath as if someone had just balled their fist and rammed it into her solar plexus.  She tightly gripped Carth’s arm as if willing him to somehow remember.  He rubbed his forehead, grimacing somewhat.

     “I don’t believe this,” he muttered. “Took me four Force-damn years to forget Morgana’s face . . .  Dammit, I oughtta know yours!”

     “You haven’t exactly kissed me or had a son with me, though,” Lire said slowly as she reached up and pressed the back of her hand to his forehead.

     She pursed her lips as she gently touched his forehead, closing her eyes and calling on the Force to try to determine what had caused this.  This was much too soon after the accident for him to be forgetting faces.  Something else had to be wrong.  She sighed thinly as she searched for a cause and inhaled sharply when she found something that could be one.  Parts of Carth’s mind were fragmented, almost like T3’s databank when it didn’t get compressed periodically.  It was like looking at a jumbled computer hard drive, almost, for there were pieces scattered out all across Carth’s consciousness.  Lire had feared something like this, and now that she saw it through the Force, it left a bitter taste in her mouth and a tightness in her stomach that she couldn’t be rid of no matter how hard she tried.  After a minute, she pulled back her hand and sighed heavily.

     “Carth, I think I’ve got some bad news for you.”

     She noticed that as soon as she said that, his back straightened considerably, as if he could sense the severity of her “bad news.”  Lire bit her lip and kept going, squeezing one of his hands between both of hers, tenderly stroking his palm.

     “It looks like you’ve got some brain damage.”

     Even with his sightless eyes, gray and hazy instead of whiskey brown, horror was scribbled across Carth’s face.  Lire’s heart clenched at his pained expression, and she gave his hand a squeeze; that was her way of telling him that she’d always be there for him, brain damage or no.  He bit his lip before heaving a shuddering sigh, his shoulders quivering ever so faintly.

     “But . . . how?  I—I know who I am, where I came from . . .  I remember my past, what I did growing up, who my next-door neighbor was when I was twelve, even!  How can I have brain damage when I remember all that stuff?!”

     “It could be that your short-term memory is damaged,” Lire said slowly, touching his forehead again and nearly staggering at the pain that rolled off onto her. “Maybe if I were to ask you something and then remind you about it five minutes from now, you wouldn’t remember.  But . . . we could swing by Dantooine, see if the Jedi Council can do something.”

     Carth’s face had been falling rather steadily for the past few minutes.  Whatever glimmer of hope that had been instilled in him by his success in crossing the cargo hold just by following Lire’s voice was slowly fading.  Lire bit her lip worriedly; he was at a crucible, and any push from the wrong direction could send him and his now-fragile emotions spiraling out of control.  Quite frankly, she feared for him.  After everything he’d been through in his life, it certainly wouldn’t take much to force him to his breaking point.  She felt somewhat guilty for telling him that he might have brain damage, but she wondered what would’ve happened had she not.  Perhaps he would’ve discovered it on his own after being unable to remember something recent.  She could imagine the coarse swearing that would’ve come flooding from his mouth after such heartbreak.  Perhaps it had been good that she’d told him.  Yet he looked so pained, so agonized, that she wanted so desperately to ease his suffering.  For the first time in quite a while, she was at a loss of what to do.  She had no grand escape.  Instead, she just sighed and wrapped her arms around his neck, blinking back tears.  Strangely enough, or perhaps not, he returned the embrace, holding on to her ever so tightly, and she could feel his chest heave with a deep sigh.

     She hugged him for a few minutes before he pulled back and looked faintly embarrassed but very obviously sorrowful.  He reached out and touched a wall, feeling the cool metal and rounded rivets, sighing every once in a while.

     “Doorway this way?” he asked, and Lire realized with a sinking feeling that he was having trouble remembering the ship’s layout.

     “Three feet to your left,” she said as brightly as she could.

     Carth went to the doorway and paused there, seeming so confused and even angry with himself.  He turned his head slightly.

     “Which way’s the guys’ dorm?”

     Lire bit her lip worriedly.

     “Right through the garage, then right again, then left.”

     “Sounds so easy I bet it’s not,” he muttered, lightly rubbing the cargo hold’s entryway.

     Lire sighed and bowed her head for a moment.  She couldn’t bear seeing him like this.  It broke her heart to watch him suffer so.  She crept up behind him, gently laying her hand on his shoulder.  He flinched ever so faintly, but she just gave his shoulder a squeeze.

     “Flyboy,” she murmured, “let me help you.  Please.”

     Carth sighed to himself and was silent for what felt like a very long time.  Lire gave his shoulder another squeeze before he shrugged.

     “Might as well.”

     He held his arm out slightly, so Lire clasped her hands about it.  Carth turned in her direction for a minute, and there was the faintest flicker of a smile on his face.

     “I don’t care what Mission says behind my back,” he said. “Just don’t hobble me along like some old geezer.  I—”

     “I know,” Lire smiled. “You haven’t hit forty yet.”

     Carth nodded once, decidedly, as Lire shook her head slightly.  Well, she’d have no problem walking him to the men’s dorm at a normal pace.  She didn’t want to make him feel like an old man any more than he wanted to feel like one.  Besides, she’d seen Jolee in combat; he didn’t totter along even though he was old enough to be her grandfather.  Yet he still kept up quite well with the rest of the crew even though he grouchily called them “whippersnappers” from time to time.  Lire smiled to herself as she and Carth started off down the corridor toward the men’s dorm.  They passed through the cargo hold, careful not to awaken Canderous or HK-47 (who had rather willingly offered to blast “the defective piloting meatbag,” much to Lire’s consternation), before soon arriving at the dorm.  But at the door, Lire released Carth’s arm and ushered him on ahead.

     “Find your bunk,” she told him.

     His eyebrows skyrocketed even though he didn’t say anything.  He’d learned the hard way that it was difficult to try to argue with Lire.  So he just stepped hesitantly into the dorm, running his hand along the wall to find the bunks.  When he did, he started prodding each of them, testing them for familiarity.  Lire nodded slowly; he was learning to recognize things by using reference points that had nothing to do with sight.  After a minute, he let out a breath and sat down on one of the bunks.

     “It’s this one,” he said, sounding certain and even proud of himself. “I know it is.  Smells like my aftershave.”

     Lire smiled broadly although she knew he wouldn’t see it.  She crossed the room to his side and sat down beside him, taking his hands and putting them to her face so he would be able to feel her smile.

     “You got it,” she said. “I told you that you’d be able to do this.”

     A smile almost, almost dawned on his face, but it was quickly supplanted by a miserable frown.  Lire couldn’t remember seeing such a roller coaster of emotions since she was dawning on her own adolescence about eighteen years ago.  But she didn’t ask him what was wrong.  Instead, she just reached over and snaked her hand into his.  He sandwiched her hand between his palms, sighing thinly.  They sat there in the dimly lit dorm for a long time before he even dared to speak, and when he did, it was in a hushed tone.

     “I’ve still got that brain damage.  And who’s to say it’s not going to get worse, that I won’t forget everything?”

     “That’s why I want to get you to the Council,” Lire replied gently. “They’re good at things like this.  They pretty much have to be, if you count the way Bastila practically worships them as a good indicator of their skills.  But they had to have mastered the Force; otherwise they wouldn’t be in charge of the Academy.”

     “I just . . .”  He paused, sighing again and running a hand through his hair.  “I don’t want to lose everything.  Or myself.  I don’t want to be the poor demented freak who sits in the corner all by himself, avoided by everybody who passes by.  Yeah, I know I’m getting poetic, but dammit, Lire!”

     He growled in frustration under his breath, but Lire didn’t jump in with some cheerful response of “Nonsense!  You’ll be fine!”  Instead, she just decided to let him get this off his chest.  Normally she could tell when he needed to talk.  Whenever that was the case, he got stoic and unnaturally silent.  She just decided to head this off before he got to that point.

     “How much more am I gonna forget, huh?” he asked, staring straight ahead as he would for Force knew how long. “I already forgot your face . . .  How long’s it gonna be before I can recognize, say, Mission’s voice but won’t be able to put a face to it?  And hers oughtta be easy to remember!  I mean, how many fourteen-year-old Twi’lek girls do you know?”

     “Just the one,” Lire replied, “and she feels horrible about all this.  Carth, she thinks all this is her fault!  She got a moment of target fixation in that tomb and freaked, and now she thinks that she’s to blame here!  And she’s worried sick about you, bless her heart.  Maybe once you learn the ship’s layout, you can go see her, go talk to her.  She’d like to know that this isn’t her fault.  And, Flyboy, I know you’re hurting.  But . . . you just need to take this one step at a time.  Like in the cargo hold.  Remember?”

     She waited to see his response to that, and after a moment, he nodded.  It wasn’t hesitant, as it would be if that memory were already hazy, but it was slow and mournful.  She just gave his hands a squeeze.

     “Let us help,” she said. “Please.  We’re your friends, Carth; don’t shut us out.”

     He didn’t reply to that.  Instead, he turned away and stretched out on his bunk, folding his hands behind his head.  Lire took the hint and stood, sighing almost inaudibly as she turned toward the dorm door.  When she reached the door, she paused with her hand on the circular frame and glanced back inside.  Carth’s eyes were closed, and she couldn’t tell if he were asleep or not.  Yet in the faint light that the dimmed sconces on the wall were emitting, she thought she could see several drops of water on his face, slipping from the corner of his eye and down his temple toward his hairline.  Lire’s heart clenched with sympathy, and she patted the doorway once.

     “Good night, Carth,” she murmured. “If you need anything, you yell, okay?”

     No response.  Lire wondered if she should have said that.  She wanted to help him, but she also knew he didn’t want to feel helpless.  But what else could she have said?  “If you need something, get it yourself”?  That wouldn’t have sounded right, either.  She just prayed he’d understood her meaning as she left the dorm, headed back for her own bed.  Yet as she crossed by the main hold, she made a detour for the comm room just off of the cockpit.  T3-M4 was recharging for the night in there—the droid equivalent of sleep—but when she entered, he readily awakened upon recognizing his master.  Lire smiled at the little droid and crouched down next to him.

     “Do me a favor, T3,” she said, and the droid whistled his consent. “Get us to Dantooine, but take the longer route.  I don’t want to risk crossing Sith airspace and getting their fighter squadrons after us.  Sidestep any known locations of Sith fleets.”

     T3 blipped questioningly; he obviously wanted to know why his master wanted to take the long route to Dantooine instead of the normal way.  Lire sighed.

     “Let’s just say I hope not to need to go there by the time we get there, okay?”

      T3 beeped an acknowledgment as he unhooked himself from his charging station and zipped off to the cockpit.  Lire rose from the floor and watched him go, feeling the lurch when the ship took off from Korriban’s dark surface (she was grateful she had obtained permission to come and go as she pleased) and leaped to hyperspace.  That little droid was handy little fellow, she found, and he seemed to be developing an almost human personality the longer he was with sentient beings.  T3 returned shortly to inform her that the Ebon Hawk was flying completely on auto-pilot, and he admitted that he had total faith in that particular auto-pilot configuration.  It was one of the most reliable auto-pilot mechanisms on the spaceship market, he informed Lire, and she smiled.

      “Thanks, T3.  You get yourself charged up again.”

      With that, she turned to leave, and T3 beeped something that sounded like “Good night!” as she left.  Lire nodded to him before disappearing, and in a few moments she was back in the ladies’ dorm.  Bastila was still hard asleep; Mission, on the other hand, was wide awake.  She was sitting on the edge of her bunk, hugging her knees.  She looked imploringly at Lire when Lire entered.

     “He’s gonna be okay, right?” she asked for the hundredth time.  Lire sighed.

      “Yes, Mish,” she said, wondering if lying to protect someone led to the Dark Side.  She figured it didn’t. “He’ll be fine.”

      There was silence for a minute as Lire crawled into her own bunk and snuggled down under the blankets.  Yet when she saw that Mission had not done the same, she rolled over onto her side, propped her head in her hand, and looked steadily at the girl.  Mission frowned deeply at her. 

     “How long are you gonna keep lyin’ to me, huh, Lire?” was all she asked. “Every time I ask, it’s always ‘He’s fine, Mish’ or ‘He’ll be all right; I promise.’  What gives?!”

     Lire inhaled sharply yet silently.  That girl certainly could be astute, she mused.  She pushed herself up again, legs draped over the edge of her bunk as she looked at Mission.

     “You want the truth, Mish?” she asked, and Mission nodded. “All right.  He’s got some brain damage.  But I’m hoping it’s nothing that a little time won’t heal.  But just to be sure, we’re headed for Dantooine now.”  She noticed that Mission now looked stricken, and she hurried to continue.  “And no, it is not your fault.  He doesn’t blame you; I don’t blame you; so you shouldn’t blame yourself.  He’ll heal, Mish.  I know he will.”

     “Are you sure?”  Mission’s voice was unnaturally small and timid.  Lire nodded once.

     “Yes.”

      Yet even as she said the word she wondered if she were indeed certain of that.  She hated to give out false hopes to which to cling, but she really had no alternative.  She didn’t know what would happen; as it were, the Force was hard enough to monitor from one moment to the next without tragedies and such that could alter it in a million ways.  But Mission seemed to accept her seemingly resolute belief that all would be well in a little while, so she rolled over and tugged the covers up over her head.  Lire lay awake a while longer, thinking, before she crawled out of bed and padded back down the corridors to the men’s dorm.  Silent as a shadow, she crept into the dorm and eased herself into one of the other bunks.  She watched Carth for a long time before she concluded that he was asleep; his slow, steady breathing indicated this quite clearly.  Yet she was intent upon keeping an eye on him, and her plan was to watch over him that night and be gone before the morning cycle.  And now she was anticipating the barrage of questions and complaints that would come from her asking T3 to fly them away from Korriban for the time being without telling the rest of the crew.  But that didn’t matter much to her, so she just rolled over onto her stomach and watched Carth sleep for a good hour or two before she shoved a pillow under her head and closed her own eyes to attempt to get some rest of her own.