First Steps

[Jane Starborn II]

Light.

Movement.

Shadows and hands grasping, pulling... fluid all around only noticed when it departs...

Coughing, gagging...

”Brain function is normal. Matches the last scans on file for the subject.”

Hands massaged limbs.

”Muscle tone is that of an older adolescent, looks like we cooked her just long enough.”

”Don’t say ‘cooked,’ it’s ... well just don’t say it.”

”Whatever. Decanting process is complete.”

”Is she conscious?”

”No. Wait - fuck! Up the sedatives.”

....















Brown eyes opened. The ceiling was off-white, a light fixture hanging in the center. It was off. The room was dim. Lit by a... The girl turned her head and located the source. A small nightlight plugged into the wall near the floor.

She was lying in a soft bed, a clean white duvet pulled up over her. The chrono on the pale wooden nightstand read 11:00. She sat up, and a figure in the corner moved, eyes gleaming in the dark.

”Mistress Starborn,” said the figure, it’s skin metallic and voice synthetic. “I will get your mother.”

The girl watched the figure...the droid leave the room. There was a small datapad on the nightstand near the chrono, and she picked it up. Her touch activated it.

My Diary
Jane Elise Starborn age 10

The girl flipped to the first entry, reading curiously.

[Celeste Starborn]

“Madame Starborn,” said a voice full of an artificial cheer that was entirely at odds with the nausea in Celeste Starborn’s gut.

There was a chair in the anonymous room that she waited in, but she had not been able to sit. Every part of her was tense, on edge. Her shoulders and back ached, as if she had been walking out in a winter chill for too long, holding her body rigid as a way to fight the cold.

The droid stared up at Celeste with luminous yet empty eyes. Beneath an otherwise cold exterior, her heart fluttered, beating like the wings of a trapped bird. Had she done the right thing? It was too late to say.

Wordlessly, she walked past the droid before it even spoke.

“Your daughter is awake.”

[Jane Starborn II]

Jane Elise Starborn.

Jane Elise.

Jane.

That was her name. Somehow it felt right, though it was strange not to know your name but also to know it at the same time.

The girl set aside the ‘pad just as a regal looking woman walked into the room.

Jane smiled, but her words were hesitant, as if she’d never spoken before. “Mother..?”

[Celeste Starborn]

Confronted with what she had done, Celeste could say nothing at first. When the girl before her smiled, it felt like she might collapse. Like some part of her had just - cracked and that crack might, at any moment, splinter outward in a thousand directions and render Celeste Starborn into a useless heap of flesh and bones. Her lips quivered, a hard line at one moment then trembling at the next. Celeste caught her lower lip between her teeth and forced herself to smile.

“Hello, Jane.”

She walked over to the small bed that the girl lay in and, smoothing a patch of the covers with one hand, sat down, perched on the edge. She turned, enough that she was facing Jane. Her Jane. It - she was… remarkable.

“Did you sleep well?”

[Jane Starborn II]

“I did. I ...think I did.” Jane frowned slightly.

Her mother, Celeste, had a strange look on her face. Like she had received good and bad news at the same time. Similar to the aftermath of Endor, when they had achieved a victory but at a terrible cost. Skywalker. Ackbar. The princess. Jane could see the names of the dead as she had scrolled through them on a datapad two days after the battle. Antilles, Calrissian - killed in the blast as they had crippled the second Death Star.

In her memory it was as if she could not look away from the datapad and the names kept scrolling. She could hear her mother crying behind a closed door but when she appeared again she was perfectly put together. Jane had never heard her cry before. She had eaten grains soaked in hot milk and sprinkled with brown sugar for breakfast that day. She’d needed to do laundry but put it off. Intel had called everyone in so they could determine what the Empire’s capabilities still were. Where the soft points were that could be exploited in the aftermath. She had taken twenty steps from the room to the refresher where the soap had been empty -

Jane blinked hard, squeezing her eyes shut before opening them again. The flood of memories receded slowly, but she could feel them out there, a vast ocean of recollections.

She reached out and took her mother’s hand.

”Am I... am I sick? I don’t remember coming home...”

[Jane Starborn II]

"There was an incident. You were injured during a mission." Celeste squeezed Jane's hand, and then got up abruptly, turning away. "You need to rest some more. I have to go to work."

There was an undercurrent of meaning in her mother's words that Jane couldn't quite grasp. She looked at her hands, turning them over slowly as her memories bubbled back to the surface. A scar across her index finger from field-stripping a DL-18 blaster pistol too quickly and scratching herself. It had seeped blood but not much, and she had forgone any bacta -- frivolous use in wartime for a scratch -- only to have it scab deeply and eventually scar.

They weighed about 1 kilogram: the BlasTech DL-18 was in the same manufacturing line as the DL-44, and its chief competitor was Merr-Sonn's Model 44. When one was pointed at your head, the small round hole where the highly compressed, focused high-energy particle beam would exit was quite riveting.

She saw herself chopping Giddean (https://theholo.net/forum/showthread.php?18903-Tales-of-the-Galactic-Civil-War-(see-OOC-thread)) in the throat with the side of her hand, remembered how his body had banged into the bulkhead and slid down it as he gagged and gasped, his windpipe crushed.

Jane's eyes focused on her finger and the scar that wasn't there.