WriteHaven

On the unnamed carbonite and tibanna mining world...
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It was quiet in the room, aside from the three of them. Two women sat cross-legged on a rubbery industrial mat that served as a bed, while their youngest brother (only by half an hour, in one case) worked magic taking dust from a baked potato.

The half-sisters were as different as light and dark now. Nomi was the younger; perhaps twenty. Nomi was taller than Ashlin by several inches, and possessed the Panathan genetic traits that she shared with her father and brothers—copper coloring, dark eyes, and glossy black hair which she’d pulled back into a thick braid. Nomi was lean; even the best of them were now, but the wiry muscle in her body remained enough to carry her through each day’s labor without incident.

Ashlin Faithe was nearly decade older; around thirty now. Her paler features and chestnut hair were an almost perfect mirror of her mother’s—aside from the pointed ears of her father, anyone who knew Ashlin’s family had typically agreed that she’d inherited nearly all of her physical traits from their mother, Kaytren. Unfortunately for Ashlin in her past two years; that wasn’t actually true. From blood-markers, bones, and immune system up; Ashlin always had plenty of Sephi in her.

Ashlin had been at least as hardy as Nomi’s current state up until they’d arrived here. After two years on a planet with thin atmosphere, carbon dust, and residual tibanna gas laced into every strained breath she took…. Ashlin was thin as a rail, routinely dizzy, and every fibre in her body ached with hypersensitivity; all of the time.

Nomi’s fingers were painstakingly methodical and self-restrained while she worked the wooden comb through a snarl in Ashlin’s hair; careful not to pull too sharply on any of the thin strands. “Got it,” she announced after a minute.

“Mm… Thank you,” Ashlin murmured.

Nomi kissed the back of her ill sister’s head, and gave her shoulder an encouraging nudge. She went back to braiding Ashlin’s hair.

Ashlin closed her eyes “You’re going to catch up to me.”

Zhi joined Ashlin and Nomi on the mat, bringing a calm peacefulness that both of his sisters soaked appreciatively in, and a plate of warm potato that he handed to Ashlin. The lanky twenty year old was the tallest of the siblings; though they’d always assumed Pax would be a little taller if he were here. Zhi was a bit scrawnier and less hardy than their fierce Nomi, but he really had no complaints.

“She’s going to pass me by a long-shot,” Zhi agreed. “And then maybe you. That's alright. I’ve decided that the extra years will be good for her. She needs it more than we do.”

“Hey, I’m still here,” Nomi complained for the sake of it. “It’s going to be fine. We’ll get home—or we’ll get somewhere else exciting. Then you can wake up together and see if I’m old and wise enough for you yet.”

Ashlin smiled at the mix of calm, banter, and optimism, but she felt her thoughts fading back into herself. She ate quietly, appreciating the presence of her younger siblings while it could last.

Nomi finished up with braiding Ashlin’s hair, and she said as much.

“Good. Now move over.” Zhi pushed their sturdy sister away with a shove somewhere between a pinch and a tickle, and took her space on the mat just behind Ashlin. “It’s my turn.”

Pulling Ashlin carefully backwards until she rested against his torso, he rubbed his sister’s hurting shoulders and gently poured healing into her.

Zhi worked out of order for a moment. They’d done this so many times now that he focused his attention on some practiced work with his eldest sister’s lungs; easing symptoms of inflammation and immune response until Ashlin’s breathing relaxed.

The younger, but significantly taller, of the two healers was leaner, with lower muscle tone than he would have preferred. They had all fallen prey to that after two years of rationing their scarce resources. But Zhi was calm and grateful. His system had adapted to this planet without trouble. The twenty year old still felt an occasional twinge of guilt about his relative health compared to their elder half-sister, but wishing that he was ill too would hardly have helped anyone. He brushed the thought from his mind with a centering breath in, and patiently screened tibanna from his half-sister’s overtaxed systems.

“I think it’s still going to leach back into you from stasis itself. Waking up is going to be hellish,” He told Ashlin in quiet sincerity, rubbing her shoulders empathetically.

“She won’t have to manage that alone,” Nomi Joi interjected while her hands kept busy with small tasks at the table.

She wasn’t any heavier than the rest of them, but the young Guardian woman was the fittest by far, with a coiled energy in her step and hardiness that she’d taught her body to maintain with minimal resources. This planet hadn’t seemed especially bent on killing her, so Nomi honored that and made the best two years of learning from it that she'd been able to — when they weren't busy working, which she'd done her share of. If there wasn't the unspoken sense of uncertainty about the whole thing... and her concern for everyone else; not to mention their sister and the apparently particularly unfortunate genes that Ashlin had inherited from her father's side... let alone their missing mother, or Mission and the others, Nomi had almost succeeded in enjoying this whole experience of testing her limits in new ways. It had seemed the sensible thing to do.

“Master Aero and I will wake you up long before then. You'll be hibernation sick, but you'll get over that and then you can catch Ashlin. That's the plan.”

Zhi glanced across the room to their middle sister, channeling his near-chuckle into nothing but a wry twitch. Debating with Nomi wasn't very helpful to any of them tonight. They were all on the same side, anyway.

“Yes; that's the plan,” he agreed.

He looked back down at Ashlin when she made some faint sound of agreement, brushing against his mind with a quiet confirmation that she’d understood him. He had nearly a decade less healer's practice than she did, but they both knew he was good at it. They were both educated and in-step enough to understand the potential immune crisis that Ashlin seemed likely return to consciousness in the midst of; but there didn't seem much sense in worrying about it. They'd prepared for it as best they could, and there wasn't much else to do besides that.

But even after the tibanna effects were as gone from Ashlin as any of them could manage here, Zhi Reverance didn't stop rubbing their eldest sister's bony shoulders and gently filtering life back into her.

Ashlin leaned gratefully against her youngest brother. She was a bit drowsy and entranced from healing, but she could breathe without pain again for now. And it was so nice for the aching hypersensitivity and malaise to fade away from the front of her senses. She glanced towards her sturdy younger sister just in time to watch Nomi pluck a lightsaber from her belt—the simpler hilt—as if to lay it on the table with Ashlin's things. But then as if on second thought, Nomi abruptly returned the durasteel cylinder to her hip and chose her other: the steely black of her favorite blade, which she’d made in that final year at the temple. It had the trakata trigger, and that handgrip with the sleek channels down the sides; Nomi had always been so fiercely proud of that.

Zhi noticed Nomi’s choice, too. Ashlin felt the empathic echo of his chuckle while some private thought flowed between her younger half-siblings. She smiled faintly at it all.

“Are you sure that you don’t want to keep that?” She asked when she saw Nomi add the subtly shifting shape of their mother’s folded cloak onto ‘Ashlin’s’ tiny pile of belongings. “You might get more use from it than I will anytime soon…”

Nomi glanced their direction with a raised eyebrow. “I’m not planning to play hide and seek much on the ship—And I’m too tall for it. My feet and ankles would always be showing. This one’s still yours, Ash.”

Zhi nodded. “She’s right. We’re too long for it, but it suits you nearly the same as Mom… Now sleep, sister. We love you.”

Ashlin nodded drowsily, giving up her hold on alertness. The fingertips of her left hand drifted to rest over the crystalline heart of her own lightsaber for one more night. She breathed in without much of an ache, and barely noticed a sound at the door or anything else while she drifted slowly asleep, thinking again about the sound of rainstorms drumming on stone rooftops.

When someone's footsteps approached the entrance to the shared family room, Nomi stepped out into the dim outer hall with a quietly fierce protectiveness, closing the door behind her. The twenty year old returned a few moments later, still alone except for the chill that had crept in with her. It was cold tonight. Most of the energy had been set aside for prepping the stasis pods, or for the ship itself.

Her brother remained seated against the wall. His right arm rested lightly against the sleeping Ashlin’s shoulders where she lay curled beside him on the black rubber mat. His dark eyes met Nomi’s matching gaze with a curious expression.

(I told him that she needs to sleep.) Nomi replied in private thought.

Zhi glance down at their sister's curled form, and then back up to Nomi. He answered quietly, in his usual calm cadence. “I’m not sure I agree, but I’m not judging. You’re not wrong either.”

Nomi sighed and realized how cool it was in the room. Picking up their mother’s cloak from the table, the young Guardian woman unfolded the rather drab room-colored fabric. The cloak had been mended over the years, rendering its mimetic properties a little worse for wear in those spots, but it remained warm, sturdy, and serviceable. She gently draped it like a blanket around Ashlin’s thin form and part of Zhi’s right side, watching the Chiss-tech fabric subtly shift to match the darker hues of the mat and floor.

“Are you worried?” She asked in full elder-sister mode, protectively making the most of their thirty minute age gap.

“Yeah. I am,” Zhi replied with a shrug and his calm smile. “It feels like a healthy response given the circumstances… But we couldn’t ask for better guardians, either. Scale of one to ten. How excited are you?”

“Ten-point-five.” Nomi admitted with an instant guilty grin. “We’re moving again. It’s just different than I hoped for.”

He laughed. “I hope so. Otherwise I have severe worries about your judgement… But you’re where you should be. I think we all are.”

She sat on the mat next to his left side, opposite Ashlin. “It’ll be weird to not have either of you now. Or even Ashlin.”

“I know. It’s going to feel strange later, too, even if everything works perfectly. We’ll adapt to all that when we get there, though. Are you ready for it?”

“Force, yes."

“Good. Also… I really am going to miss watching you practice all that patience.”

She smirked and arched an eyebrow. “Because I’m terrible at that and I’ll hate it?”

“Especially those reasons, yes.”

“Your mean streak is showing.”

Zhi grinned. “You’re welcome. Does it redeem me if I mention that you’re going to get... good at some of the patience part? That's why I'd have liked to see it in progress.”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Nomi grinned back and rolled her eyes, shrugging a nonexistent cramp from her shoulders before it ever had a chance to come into being. “It would have been more satisfying to watch you play evil for more than ten seconds.”

The lanky young healer ran a hand through his dusty hair, and then moved his free arm companionably around Nomi. His right hand still rested against Ashlin's shoulder in a quiet effort to keep her sleep peaceful. Closing his eyes, Zhi leaned the back of his head against the wall and let the moment of sitting between his sisters write itself into his memory.

He wasn’t looking forward to the morning. He knew that none of them were — not their father, certainly not Ashlin... not even Nomi, really — Who would? Zhi couldn’t imagine anyone, Jedi or not, feeling particularly excited about submitting themselves to barely tested cryosleep, for unknown years, in questionably stable equipment that they’d retrofitted from archaic parts… He was concerned about the stasis effects on some of them. The ones with Sephi blood were already going to have trouble, but with these conditions any of them might. And even assuming that it all worked as planned; the vessel they’d cobbled together was slow and hardly better than the stasis pods. Nomi, Master Hirius, and the others weren't in for an easy task keeping it running. It was space-worthy enough… but… The years were long and full of variables.

What was that quote Solo had lived by? ‘Never tell me the odds.’ Zhi didn't love that one. Educated guesses prepared him where possible, and his trust for the Force grew. But… regardless… The Force was their ally in a universe that had placed them here… So, he'd keep to his course.

“Go to sleep, Zhi.” Nomi reached over to smooth a matted bit in his hair, giving him her most sensible bossy smile when he glanced at her. “We love you, too.”

Zhi smiled and closed his eyes again.