Dark Day: Part Eight

Part Eight

     That revelation, which was in no way small, went over about as well as Lire had anticipated.  She’d figured that Carth wouldn’t take this lightly; she still recalled the rather explosive argument they’d had when she’d revealed her bond with Bastila.  She and he didn’t speak to each other for at least two days afterward.  In the end, they’d only finally broken the tense silence when Mission locked them in the cargo hold together to force them to apologize.  In the back of her mind, Lire could hear herself accusing Carth of being nothing more than a revenge-lusting, bitter old fool and how she’d stormed off, avowing to never again speak to him as long as she lived.  Well, people had always told her she was a stubborn mule of a woman . . .  Perhaps that was truer than she’d ever realized.  But as Carth’s brows furrowed and his breathing picked up, Lire realized that she had to tread carefully lest she spark another verbal war with him.  Biting her lip, she reached over and firmly gripped his hand.

     “Easy, now, Carth,” she said cautiously. “You’re in no condition to be getting this riled.”

     “Easy?” he hissed in return. “Easy?!  You come in here, telling me we’ve got one of those Force-damned bonds the Jedi Council is always mumbling about, and you expect me to take it easy?!  I can take a helluva lot of things, Lire, but this isn’t one of those things!”

     “Carth, please,” Lire replied, a good deal more firmly. “You’re acting like a child—a relatively hung over child!”

     “Child?!  Look, I’ve got every right!  Force bond, my—”

     “Carth!”

     He grumbled angrily under his breath, rubbing at his temples and clenching his jaw.  Lire thought she heard his back teeth grinding together.  She sighed to herself; this certainly was going well.  A moment later, Carth leaped to his feet, and anger was evident even in his sightless eyes.  Fists clenched, he stormed toward the dorm door, pausing momentarily to turn back in Lire’s direction.  He sighed, shoulders slouched ever so faintly.

     “Look,” he said, voice just a bit calmer, “it’s not that you’re a bad person to be bonded to.  You’re a nice girl.  It’s just . . .  well, never mind.  You wouldn’t understand where I’d be coming from, anyway.”

     With a frustrated sigh, he pounded a fist into the doorway before trudging off.  Lire jumped when the blow to the doorway echoed into the dorm, and she sighed.  That certainly went well.  He hadn’t let her explain; then again, she really didn’t blame him.  That was what she’d wanted to tell him: that she did understand from where he was coming.  He was afraid, and he certainly had ever right to be.  She knew he probably felt as if his personal privacy had just been invaded, and she certainly didn’t like the feeling of being the one doing the invading!  She’d worked so hard to gain his trust; would it be shattered now so suddenly by something over which she had no control?  She wondered to herself if she shouldn’t have told him, but then she wondered if not telling him would’ve been the same thing as outright lying.  Oh, sometimes life was too confusing for its own good!  With a muffled groan, Lire buried her head in her hands and just sat there on the edge of Carth’s bunk for a long time.  Absently, she noticed how she could feel his anger burning like great, leaping flames, yet she dared not venture farther into his mind.  She feared that he would be able to sense her presence and garner enough strength to rather violently force her out.  So she just sat there, trying to work a way around this mess.  Part of her wished that this had never happened.

     “Lire?” a young voice asked suddenly and cautiously—Mission’s voice. “What’s wrong?”

     “Nothing, Mish,” Lire replied, sighing as she sat up. “Just not a good day, I guess.”

     “Oh.  You told him about the uh, thing, didn’t you?”

     How that girl could ever be so perceptive, Lire had no idea.  Perhaps she’d merely spent much time practicing the fine art of reading one’s body language.  Lire saw she couldn’t hide anything from Mission anymore, and she sighed again.

     “Yeah, I did,” she confessed. “You heard him explode?”

     “Nah, but I saw him storm up to the cockpit and lock the door,” came Mission’s answer. “And, well, he was swearin’ under his breath the whole way—some pretty nasty things, too.”

     “How nasty?”  Lire wasn’t sure she truly wanted to know.  Mission sighed and just looked at her, head tilted.

     “Let’s just say that, even though I grew up on Taris around the swoop gang, I now know a whole bunch of new words.  Those Telosian curses are potent, lemme tell ya.”

     “So I imagine.”

     “And you’d never believe what he wanted the Council to do . . .”

     “Oh, yes, I would.”

     Mission snickered under her breath as Lire sighed and brushed a hand through her hair.  After a minute, she stood and walked over to Mission, clapping a hand on the girl’s shoulder.

     “You say he’s sealed himself in the cockpit?” she asked.  Mission nodded.

     “Yup.  Went off muttering that he didn’t want anybody botherin’ him.  Said if anybody so much as knocked on the door, he’d punch ‘em.”

     Mission frowned, brows furrowed concernedly.  Then she looked up at Lire and cocked her head to the side.

     “He sure ain’t in a good mood today.”

     “Well, you wouldn’t be either if your life seems as if it’s going to be one continuous bad day.”  Lire paused, patting Mission’s shoulder.  “I’m gonna go see him.”

     “And risk gettin’ hit?!”  Mission was incredulous.  Lire just smirked at her.

     “Mission, Mission, Mission,” she sighed. “The difference between him and me right now is that in the time it’d take him to decide where I was, I’d be on the other side of the cockpit.  And, well, I can hit just as hard.”

     Mission giggled as Lire flashed her a smirk and headed off to the cockpit.  She took the long route, however, for she stopped by the galley to put together something that would perhaps pacify Carth for a little while.  She could still feel his emotional trauma, and she thought she sensed a feeling of deep-rooted violation.  Hm. 

     A few minutes later, Lire left the galley with a plate of hot food that was, in fact, leftovers from the night before.  Yet they were the nicest looking leftovers that had perhaps ever been seen by the Ebon Hawk’s crew, so Lire took that plate up to the cockpit to brave the troubled waters inside.  She knocked cheerfully on the hatch that was indeed sealed.  Even Mission might have a little trouble with this one, and most locks were normally no problem whatsoever for her.  The only thing that answered Lire was a gruff “Go away.”  She frowned to herself.

     “Would you open up already?  I’m just trying to bring you a bite to eat.”

     “Don’t want any.”

     “You haven’t eaten in two days, Carth.  You’ll pass out!”

     “Went longer without eating in the war.”

     “Well, this isn’t ‘the war.’  This is the Ebon Hawk.  And what did you learn about this ship having a democracy?”

     “It doesn’t.”

     “Right.  It has a Bastilocracy.  If you don’t open this door, I’ll tell her, and then she’ll get you stuck in the Jedi medcenter where they will force-feed you until you never want to see another IV drip in your life.  How does that sound?”

     There was a long moment of silence that seemed almost foreboding.  Lire decided right then and there that she absolutely hated that silence; she certainly knew how stubborn Carth could be, but then again, she could be just as stubborn.  She just had to remind herself that no matter how hard he pushed, she could push equally hard.  As strange as it sounded, perhaps that was why they got along more often than not.

     The silence was soon broken, however, by the sounds of leather squeaking and Carth grumbling under his breath.  The lock on the cockpit hatch soon broke open with a snap, and the door hissed open.  Lire stepped cheerily in as Carth stomped back to his regular seat and flopped into it.  Lire carried the plate over to him and set it down on the first flat spot she could find, and she noticed that as she did, Carth straightened a little bit.

     “Is that real food?” he asked, and she laughed.

     “What did you expect?  Protein powder?  Nutrient bars?”

     “Somethin’ bad enough to count as punishment.”

     Lire frowned to herself as she passed him the eating utensil she’d brought along.  She watched as he went after the plate, albeit slightly cautiously at first, and it occurred to her then that he’d been expecting her to punish him for his reaction.  Why should she?  He’d done nothing wrong; his reaction was almost the same as hers . . . just a little more explosive.  She didn’t blame him, anyway; finding out that she was bound to him was a little disconcerting, to say the least.

     After a minute or two, Carth had dutifully polished off his plate.  Apparently he’d been far hungrier than he’d allowed himself to think.  But he leaned back in his seat, brows furrowed as he dragged out that bit of chain he’d had earlier.  Once more, he began to tug at it, and it seemed as if that steady, rhythmic action calmed him somewhat.  Lire watched him in silence for a while; the only accompanying music was the occasional beep from one console or other.

     “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked softly.  Carth sighed.

     “You ask that a lot.”

     “Because you get that look a lot.  Whenever you need to talk, your eyebrows crease like so . . .”  She traced them for him.  “And you start looking thoughtful as well as glancing in my direction.”

     “Well, I’m not doing too much glancing now, am I?”

     Lire winced at the pain so thick in his tone.  Force, he was hurting.  She could feel his anguish as clearly as if it were her own, as if this burden had been leveled on her shoulders rather than his.  Quietly, she eased over beside him and laid a cool hand on his broad shoulder.  He heaved a shuddering breath, causing his chest to shake somewhat.

     “Why me?” he asked, voice tired and pained. “Why’d this happen to me?”

     “Do you mean the blindness or the bond?”

     “Either one.  Why?”

     “I don’t know, Flyboy,” Lire answered with a sigh as she sat down beside him.  He scrunched over a little bit—enough for her to get settled relatively comfortably. “I don’t know any of the answers.  You’re blind because of an accident that might’ve happened anyway.  The bond . . .  I think that one’s just because we’re friends.  I checked it out; it’s nothing like what Bastila and I have but that I wish we didn’t.  This one is . . . it’s not destiny.  It’s association, I think, but . . . I can still feel what you feel.  And . . . Flyboy . . . I’m sorry.  I’m sorry this hurts so much.  If I could help . . . you know I would.”

     Silence.  Carth just kept tugging at that chain, each little jerk on it causing it to clink in a dull, sad way that mimicked the negative feelings Lire could sense welling inside him.  She squeezed his shoulder harder as he kept yanking on the chain, but after a long moment, he sighed and reached back, grabbing her hand and holding it.

     “Yeah,” he murmured. “I know.  It’s just . . .  You know I don’t like feeling helpless, and I do feel helpless like this.  Life ain’t supposed to be fair any way you look at it, but this really isn’t.”

     “I know, Carth,” Lire replied as gently as possible. “And I’m so, so sorry . . .  If I could take it on myself . . .”

     “Don’t even say that.”

     “But I would.  And you know it.”

     Another long, silent moment.

     “Yeah.  You’re . . . you’re a helluva woman.”

     Lire arched an eyebrow as she studied him a moment.  Almost instantly, he seemed to realize what he’d said, and as he rubbed the back of his neck, his face turned nearly purple with . . . embarrassment?  Lire partly wished that weren’t so but immediately berated herself for that thought.

     “Yeah,” Carth sighed, “about that . . .”

     “What about ‘that,’ Flyboy?” Lire asked, sounding just a little amused.

     Carth sighed, still rubbing the back of his neck.  He shifted slightly in his seat as he just stayed silent for a few minutes before lifting one shoulder and letting it fall limp.  Lire didn’t like his long silence, but he finally cleared his throat somewhat.

     “I shouldn’t have done that,” he sighed, and Lire was surprised to feel her heart sink at his words. “I was drunk, I was stupid, I was wrong, so . . . I’m sorry.”

     Lire didn’t say anything at first, and that was primarily because she didn’t know what to say.  Part of her wanted to leap into his arms and make him take that apology right back, but the other part wanted to thank him for being a gentleman.  She wasn’t sure which half she should listen to, so she just sighed.  She gazed down at her hands, trying to think of what to say when unexpected words came tumbling from her mouth.

     “Why are you apologizing?”

     When those words came out, she clamped both hands over her mouth as her eyes widened with shock.  What made it worse was that she was certain she’d spoken that sentence with a sultry little voice.  Oh, Force . . .  Were she not careful, she’d soon be in his arms again.  Perhaps in her many lectures, Bastila had said one thing of truth: things like this could be deceptive luxuries—pleasant one moment and bearing consequences the next.  Lire sighed to herself, wondering if it’d be so wrong . . . but her attention was captured by the way that Carth interestedly cocked his head.

     “You’d rather I didn’t?” he asked.

     Was that a playful tone he had?  Lire didn’t know what to say now.  She didn’t know how to respond.  Her face grew hot and red as she backed away from him.  She could see a faint grin on his face, and she immediately became more flustered.  When his grin widened, she hauled off and whacked the back of his seat.

     “Carth Onasi,” she sputtered, “you are the most difficult man!”

     “Hey,” he chuckled, “you’re the one who asked why I was apologizing.  So maybe I’m the most difficult man to flirt with?”

     Lire squeaked under her breath and smacked him across the shoulder.  Carth laughed for a moment before he lifted one shoulder and let it drop.

     “Point is,” he said, “that was inappropriate.  Should’ve had more self-control, no matter how much I’d had to drink.  So, you accept my apology?”

     “Somehow I feel we’ve covered this ground before,” Lire said, composing herself.  The last time he’d said something to that effect was the last time he’d done something worthy of an apology. “But yes, I do.  So can we go have a little talk with the Council now?”

     “What for?”  Carth was immediately defensive, and his grip tightened on his piece of chain.

     “To let them try to repair the damage.  They can go in and heal, you know.  They just need the opportunity.”

     “Jedi in my brain.  Right . . .”

     “They’ll be gentle,” Lire coaxed. “C’mon, please.  I don’t want to watch you suffer anymore.  It hurts me, too.”

     That did it.  For some reason, Carth eased out of his seat with a sigh, hand resting on the wall for a little support.  Lire put her hand on his shoulder as he turned in her direction, and she touched his cheek as if that would heal everything: his sight, the wounded fragments of his brain—everything!  Then she took his hand and gave it a squeeze, and he actually squeezed back.  When she tried to pull her hand away again, however, he seemed almost reluctant to let go.

     “Guess we’d better go have that little chat,” he sighed resignedly.

     He seemed so depressed by that thought that Lire couldn’t help herself.  Her heart clenched with empathy, and she pitied him so very much that she pushed herself up onto the tips of her toes and ever so gently planted a kiss on his jaw.  He went stiff for only a moment before he clutched her hand again, and Lire just let him hold on to her as they headed out of the Hawk and toward the Council chambers.