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Etain sits across from him, scrapes on her elbows, hair a mess, wordlessly nursing her own pride. It’s unlike her to be so quiet, but her silence mirrors his own. She cannot protest- doesn’t dare- and he knows it. But her still tongue speaks her resentment. Her hands stay steady as she pulls another spray of bacta from her kit, but her eyes do not.
He ignores it, and continues to tend to the grey-faced farmer kneeling in the dirt beside him.
She is angry, and he should chide her for it. She has no right. She is Jedi, a Padawan, meant to be serene, to serve, to accept his guidance. Her short temper, her impatience for answers, do her little credit. Kast, as her Master, is meant to admonish her.
He is bad teacher, so he does not. He is too tired, and this night has been too long. Etain is angry because she knows he’s hiding, but Kast only lies for good reason. She is his student, his to guard, and this cannot be her burden. Not yet, when his own mind is so unsettled.
How is he meant to chide her for her faithlessness, for her questions, he wonders, when his mind is so full of his own? Whatever else he may be, Kast Fulier is not a hypocrite.
The Order has sent him here with a purpose, one Etain can only half guess. It leaves him ill at ease.
The Separatists are here on Qiilura. He and Etain have snuck onto this planet of tenant farmers to hunt them down. It is a simple task. And though Kast has never considered himself a man of politics, that alone would be enough to make him wonder. He does not know how this conflict will end, doubts that even the Council can guess.
But the secret thing, the thing his Padawan can see him concealing in his furrowed brow- that is almost beyond imagining.
They come not just to hunt the Separatists, but a Separatist virus. Miniscule strands of DNA tumbled and knitted together so as to bring down an army. A Republic army, new-made for the growing unrest. Flesh and blood bought with Republic coin.
Kast Fulier, who once defied the Council to pursue Trandoshan slavers into the Outer Rim, is tasked with this army’s protection. He wonders at the Council’s purpose, and bites his lip when he thinks Etain isn’t looking. Otherwise, he keeps his face a mask of perfect calm, as if meditating in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, and continues tending to the farmers.
No creature deserves such a fate, he thinks as he spends the last of his medkit. And so, for now, they stay.
“Kast,” Etain says finally, still clearly reluctant to speak at all, “We’re almost out of bacta.”
The half-starved boy she’s been treating looks up, dark smudges beneath his eyes that might or might not prove dirt in better light. His mother watches him anxiously, her tooth-marked arm twitching beneath Kast’s hands. He can smell the alcohol on her breath.
No creature, Kast thinks, but the farmers were not the objective. Etain is right. They were sent only with enough supplies to protect two Jedi from the local Gdan, and they’ve burned through almost all of it. Without medicine to treat the infections caused by the deadly bacteria in the creatures’ teeth, Kast and Etain will soon be restricted to movement in the daylight hours, the same as the locals.
No creature.
Somewhere nearby, a scientist is crafting a plague for millions upon millions of commodified men. Here around them, people starve, hiding because there are no doctors.
“Go on, Etain.”
Etain frowns at him, but his expression remains firm. They are Jedi. They live to serve. And with or without the medicine, they will adapt. He is not thinking of goals, now, but faces. Could he call himself Jedi any other way? They will adapt. Or they will not.
“Etain.”
Etain bows her head and breaks the seal on the last medpack, still prickly, bristling with questions. But she obeys.
Later that same night, as they sit by an empty hearth, Etain meditating unsuccessfully, Kast wonders if she is right. If he should have told her. She is no longer the child he once moved to save. She is Jedi, and almost old enough for her trials. He must teach her, while there is still time left.
But though he knows the Force has lead them here, he cannot think why. Its purpose is as inscrutable as the Council. What is it he is mean to teach, here on this sickly planet, serving a government that buys men? What is he meant to learn?
He and Etain- they’re both bound up in it somehow, he knows that much, but he cannot see how. For what purpose? To what end?
A Jedi’s life is sacrifice- but for what?
It has been a long time since he felt so adrift, and vainly, he wishes for his own Master, long since gone to the Force.
In the end, he decides not to tell Etain about the clones. Not yet. Let her resent his lack of trust for now. First, he must come to understand his own answers. But they have plenty of time yet.