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kleyasradio · 7 days ago

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this heavy cage of bones [ch. 1]

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Summary:

Even in stillness, her mind was always working. Always in motion. She was everywhere at once, reaching across the far ends of the galaxy.

Yavin breathes around her and demands her to be still.

She isn’t needed here. There is no use for the sharpened edges she’d built into herself.

She just has to exist.

She doesn’t know how to do that.

[Kleya tries to adjust to her new life. Lost and unmoored, she develops an unexpected bond with the last person she expected.]

A/N: Kleya and Vel have captured my heart so obviously I had to write way too many words about them. This story follows the development of their relationship in the aftermath of the events of Andor, their individual struggles with their feelings and with letting go of the past.

Any comments/thoughts/feelings are truly appreciated. Hope you enjoy.

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Yavin has a pulse she doesn’t know how to read.

Coruscant’s heartbeat was relentless. Every street, every level, thrummed with sound. And to her, sound was information. She belonged in the Capital’s chaos, moving through the noise like a shadow. Sight and hearing sharpened like those of a predator, she trained herself to be invisible and sift through chatter for the whispers that mattered, that could hurt an Empire more than a thousand bombs.

Her world was never quiet. The constant drone of comms was like a second skin. She could trace a hum through the most intricate layers of encryption. Every pulse code, every crackle, was a language she understood, a rhythm she followed seamlessly.

She was a hunter.

A good hunter understood patience, that it was a skill you could not do without. She was not born with it, it took her years to learn it, to master it. She would wait by the switchboard, alone in the backroom of the gallery, scrubbing frequencies for hours until she found what she was looking for. A single name, a glitched voice through static, a plea for help.

Even in stillness, her mind was always working. Always in motion. She was everywhere at once, reaching across the far ends of the galaxy.

Yavin breathes around her and demands her to be still.

She isn’t needed here. There is no use for the sharpened edges she’d built into herself.

She just has to exist.

She doesn’t know how to do that.

The rainstorm stopped sometime during the night, leaving behind the damp scent of earth and dew. A gentle breeze rustles the leaves of the jungle, small droplets of water leak through the wooden rooftop, hitting the ground in uneven taps.

Kleya sits on the floor of Vel’s hut, her back against the cot and fists clenched tight in her lap. She retreated back inside that morning, overwhelmed by how sprawling and alive and beautiful everything around her was. Untainted. It made something twist inside her. A deep, visceral discomfort. It reminded her how much she did not belong in a place like this. She did not dare step outside and contaminate it.

Her fingers twitch against her thighs, chasing the invisible pattern of a pulse code. She closes her eyes and focuses on the aches in her body. She welcomes the pain. The pounding in her head has settled into a dull throb that puts pressure behind her right eye, but her back hurts with every breath, her ribs sore and bruised where the stun grenade slammed her into the wall of the safehouse. She hasn’t looked at herself, but she knows her skin must be scraped raw, because she feels a sharp burn whenever the fabric of her shirt shifts.

She has felt worse, so much worse.

This is nothing, not enough to distract her. Her nervous system is wired to be always alert. This calm is suffocating her.

Her mind scrambles for anything familiar to anchor itself to. She tries to imagine herself behind her comms, to vanquish Yavin’s pulse with the memory of static and multi-layered frequencies. She needs something she knows, something to center her.

But the only pulse that comes to her is the one she does not want to remember.

It comes back uninvited and takes root in her brain.

The long, agonizing beep of Luthen’s heart monitor, slowing down to a stop after she unplugged him from the machine that was keeping him alive.

She had expected a blaring alarm. Instead, it had been something quiet. A smothered whimper dissolving into silence. In that moment, it had sounded like weeping.

An ache spreads in her chest, different from the pain in the other parts of her body. A heavy, horrible pressure right above her lungs, like someone strapped a boulder to her torso and told her she must keep going anyway.

She killed him.

It was logical. It had to be done.

It was mercy. She couldn’t let him suffer.

It hurt.

Hurts.

She made it stop. She did what she couldn’t do the day they met, when Luthen did not exist, and her name wasn’t Kleya.

“What’s your name?”

She doesn’t answer, just glares at him from the corner she’s tucked herself into while he takes off his jacket and rubs a damp cloth over his face. There is blood and ash on him, sticking to his skin. It’s not just ash, it’s what remains of pulverized bodies.

It’s on her, too. They are on her. She wants to rip her skin off.

“I know you’re not deaf. What’s your name?”

She gives him nothing.

He looks exhausted. Hollowed out, like something that was eaten from the inside. His eyes are sunken, his entire frame sagging under an invisible weight.

She doesn’t care if he feels guilty.

He was one of them.

He let it happen.

After the other trooper exited the ship, he took her hand and helped her out of the compartment where she had been hiding. Her body screamed with the movement, but she didn’t make a sound.

He said nothing, just stared at her with something akin to fear in his eyes, like she may hurt him somehow.

The ramp was down. Red light filtered in from outside, smoke rose from the scorched ground.

She didn’t wait. She ran past him.

He caught her after three steps. He clamped a hand over her mouth before she could scream and lifted her clean off the ground.

She thrashed like an animal, twisting her body and kicking the air, but her limbs were weak and every jerk sent fire knifing through her back. He needed no effort to restrain her.

“If you run, they’ll kill you,” he said, voice rough in her ear. “You hear me? There is nothing out there to go back to. They’re all gone.”

He let her wear herself out and held her until the fight went out of her. Until she slumped in his arms, drained of all energy.

When he let go of her, she crumpled to the floor and crawled away from him, dragging herself into the farthest corner of the ship, curled up between two crates.

He didn’t come after her. Didn’t say a word.

He climbed into the cockpit, started flipping switches.

The engines hummed and roared. The ramp closed. The ship lifted off.

The sudden weight of ascent pressed down on her body, a sensation unlike anything she had felt before.

She had never left the planet. She had never been in space.

The sky darkened, and then the stars swam into view. Not the pinpricks she could see from the roof of her house, but a tapestry of light.

Then the stars stretched, pulled into lines, and everything she’d ever known was gone forever.

She doesn’t know how long they’ve been in hyperspace.

Everything outside the viewport is a spiraling tunnel of blue and white. It pulses faintly, like they are moving inside a living thing. She feels nauseous watching it.

She redirects her gaze to him.

He sits at the edge of the bench, shoulders hunched forward. She stares at him in silence for a long time. Her eyes settle on a dried streak of blood across his hairline. She wonders who it belonged to, who of the people she knew and loved now only exists as stain on a killer’s face.

Her voice comes out thin, shakier than she would like.

“What are you going to do to me?”

He doesn’t meet her eyes. Nothing comes out of his mouth except for a heavy sigh.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“I would’ve already,” he murmurs. “Don’t you think?”

She swallows hard. Her throat is scraped raw.

“Are you— are you going to sell me?”

His eyes snap to hers. He furrows his brows in genuine surprise, like the mere thought offends him, or disgusts him.

“No, I’m not going to sell you.”

She doesn’t believe him. There is no line men like him would not cross, there is nothing that is too immoral.

She looks around the bay, not quite sure on what she is searching for. Something to defend herself with, however absurd and hopeless that may be, anything that will delay whatever it is he wants to do to her.

That’s when she spots the knife, discarded on one of the seats. She tries to calculate the distance, how fast she would have to move to grab it.

He sees her. Sees what she is doing.

He gets up, crosses the bay in two strides and picks up the knife. Then he slowly walks towards her.

She tenses, bracing. She will not beg.

He crouches down in front of her. He turns the knife in his hand and holds it out to her, handle first.

She narrows her eyes. It has to be a trap. Lure her into a false sense of security to hurt her when she is vulnerable.

She poses no threat to him, she tells herself, mind running. He doesn’t need tricks. Unless he enjoys cruelty, but he doesn’t seem the type.

Serel’s screams echo in her head, reminding her he is one of them. Their cruelty defies imagination. She cannot trust him.

Still, he doesn’t move. Just waits with a tired look in his eyes, holding out the blade like an offering.

Cautiously, she extends her arm and takes it.

Her fingers close around the handle. It is too big and heavy for her hand, holding it up makes her wrist hurt.

She tightens her grip, never looking away from him.

Her body acts before her mind.

She strikes fast, as fast as her little arm allows, slicing him open right below his shoulder.

He winces, bringing a hand to the fresh wound. Blood quickly seeps through the fabric of his tunic, staining it red.

She holds the knife in front of her, knuckles white. Her heart pounds so hard it hurts. She keeps her eyes locked on him, waiting for violence, for him to make her pay.

But he doesn’t move. He stays right where he is, crouched low and bleeding. He doesn’t even look angry.

There is something in his eyes that tells her she could stab him in the neck and he would welcome it.

“If you’re going to kill me,” he says, voice flat, “wait until we land. You can’t fly the ship.”

She grits her teeth. The words ignite something furious inside her. She hates that he is right, this reminder of her own helplessness, of the fact that she needs him to survive because he killed everyone she has ever known.

The knife is so heavy. Her arm is trembling.

She wants to scream. Wants to cut deeper, make him hurt the way she hurts.

She lunges again, to kill this time.

It’s not clean, nor precise. It’s a weak, desperate strike that goes nowhere.

He sidesteps her easily and she stumbles, the weight of the knife pulling her off balance.

Her body betrays her, muscles giving out even when her mind is screaming at her to keep going. She collapses, the knife drops from her hand with a clang.

He catches her before her head can hit the floor. She wants to push him away, but her arms don’t work anymore.

He eases her onto her side. She feels him lift the jacket Serel put on her, his fingers move to the edge of her tunic.

She tries to say ‘no’, but her voice fails her.

He pulls up her tunic, the fabric peels away from her back where it’s sticking to raw, burned skin. A blinding agony tears up her spine like liquid fire. She screams once, an ugly, high-pitched sound, before the pain robs her of her breath.

He curses in a language she doesn’t understand, the words harsh and unfamiliar. He sounds horrified.

She doesn’t want his horror. She doesn’t want his hands on her.

She wants to fight him.

She wants to go back.

She wants to die.

None of those things are possible.

Her body is done. Her vision blurs and everything starts to fade. As he lays her down carefully, she hears the hum of the ship, the way the vibrations pass from the floor through her body. She hears her own heartbeat in her ears.

It’s strangely calming. A steady thud.

Kleya’s eyes snap open, taken out of the fog in her mind by the sound of footsteps dragging on wood.

A moment later, Vel appears.

She stops on the doorway, taking in the sight of Kleya sitting on the floor.

“There’s a chair right there, you know?” she says as she walks inside.

An edge of humor colors her voice, but it is not unkind. It lacks the bite and contempt that used to define all their interactions.

Kleya makes no move to get up, but she rolls her shoulders and instinctively straightens her spine, suddenly very much aware of how insane she must look. Muscle memory, years of training her body to conceal any vulnerability.

It’s a foolish thing to do, after last night. She can cling to a pretense of control and self-restraint, but it doesn’t change the fact that Vel Sartha saw her sobbing in the rain and had to help her walk back because she couldn’t even keep herself upright.

She gave her a weapon to use against her. She cannot take it back.

“I brought you something,” Vel says, gesturing at the small plate in her hand. It contains some kind of bread and something that could be eggs or gruel, Kleya isn’t sure.

“I figured you hadn’t eaten since… in a while,” Vel trails off. “It sort of all tastes the same, but it beats an empty stomach.”

Kleya stays where she is, but her stomach turns in on itself, clenching demandingly. Her last real meal was shared with Luthen. The ration she forced herself to swallow in the safehouse only had the purpose of keeping her functional, of preventing her body from shutting down before delivering the information Luthen had died for.

She wasn’t supposed to survive long enough to feel the pains of hunger. Instead, the faint smell of the slop Vel brought her makes her stomach growl, embarrassingly reminding her that she is alive.

Vel sets the plate down on the table, for Kleya to take if she chooses to.

“I know this is a big adjustment,” she says with patience in her voice. “Take your time, alright? Just focus on resting for now.”

Resting is an alien concept to her, a luxury she hasn’t allowed herself in years. She granted it to Luthen far more often than she granted it to herself.

“I’m fine,” she replies. Her fingers twitch in her lap. “I don’t need rest.”

“You’re concussed,” Vel says. There is no snark in her voice, it’s a simple fact. “I know what it’s like to be hit by a stunner. You need rest.”

Kleya grinds her teeth together. She hates being reminded of her pitiful condition, stuck in a body that failed her and forced to depend on anyone but herself. To be told she is a cracked thing that needs mending. She spent years turning herself into a sharp instrument. Now she is fragile. Human. Fed by someone else’s hand.

It’s pathetic.

She wants to hit Vel for seeing her like this, for making it impossible to escape her own weakness.

She clenches her hands into fists and redirects her mind, brute-forces it away from her own feelings and towards something that really matters.

“Where is Cassian?”

“Off-planet. Following a lead.” Vel pauses, as though considering whether to say more. “Your lead,” she then adds.

“Where?”

“It’s classified.”

Kleya scoffs at that, her brows setting into a scowl that makes the cut on her forehead sting. Yet another humiliation forced upon her, to be denied details about the intel she brought to them, the intel Luthen died for.

This is how the Empire wins, with the self-appointed leaders of the Rebellion wasting time bickering with each other like children about whose voice has more value.

“My cousin talked to Organa last night,” Vel says. “I can’t tell you more, but she believes Cassian. Believes you.”

Kleya looks at Vel. The defensive part of her feels like she is being thrown a bone, a pacifying gesture meant to distract her from the fact she has been sidelined, kept away from information she has delivered to them.

Perhaps it’s the exhaustion, but in that moment, her pride takes a backseat, and she allows herself to feel the tiniest measure of relief.

She has always respected Mon Mothma. Even when she and Luthen argued over strategy, when the Chandrilan senator was still naïve enough to think she could spark a revolution and keep her hands clean, Kleya admired her resolve. Mon had the kind of strength Kleya understood: quiet, exacting. She carried the weight of a mask she despised in order to help those who could not hide like she could.

And when it mattered, she put herself on the line for what she believed in. She set her whole life on fire in pursuit of what was right. Kleya recognized true bravery because of how rare it was.

Mon Mothma believes her. Whatever she told Organa, it set Cassian in motion.

It’s a small comfort. Fleeting. She still takes it.

Kleya looks away, hiding whatever might have flickered in her eyes. She won’t offer Vel the satisfaction of seeing anything soft.

“About time,” she says instead, sharpening her voice. “There’s at least one person with common sense in this forsaken jungle.”

Vel doesn’t take the bait. The ghost of a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.

“There you are,” she just says.

It’s quiet. Almost fond, like Kleya’s acrimony makes her recognizable at last.

They sit in silence for a moment. The drip-drip-drip of water leaking through the roof sounds obnoxiously loud.

“I have to run drills with the new recruits,” Vel finally says. “Half of these kids can’t fire a blaster without making it kick back into their faces.”

Kleya doesn’t say anything. She regards Vel from where she’s sitting on the floor. She remembers her arms around her, surprisingly strong. The way Vel had held her close to her body, guiding her every step. Something warm and unfamiliar coils in her belly at the memory.

Vel heads to the doorway. “Eat, before it turns into glue. As I said, take it easy. But when you’re ready… you should come outside. You’re not a prisoner.”

Kleya huffs a breath through her nose, something between a scoff and a sigh. “Right.”

Vel stares at her, then adds, “There’s a crate with my clothes in the bedroom. You can take whatever you want. We’re the same size, I think.”

“I’m taller than you.”

It’s out of Kleya’s mouth before she can stop herself.

Vel eyes her from across the room. She gives a dry chuckle. “Are you complaining or are you bragging?”

Kleya doesn’t answer. She hadn’t meant it in either way. It was just a fact, a petty, inconsequential fact to throw in Vel’s face to feel like she had some sort of upper hand on her.

She feels fucking stupid.

“Maybe when you can stand up straight again,” Vel says with a shrug. “The clothes are there if you want them.”

She is nearly out the door when Kleya speaks again, asking the question that has been tormenting her since Vel found her in the rainstorm.

“Why are you doing this?”

Vel stops.

“Why are you being kind to me?”

Her voice is barbed, the question posed as an accusation of sorts. Like gentleness is something to be suspicious of.

Vel turns around again, watches her with a slight raise of her eyebrow.

“Would you rather I wasn’t?” she asks.

Kleya presses her lips in a flat line. This version of Vel, calm, restrained, unsettles her. They could be mean to each other, they could be absolutely fucking awful, but there was comfort in their verbal sparring. She could poke and prod without feeling any guilt about stooping low, because the Chandrilan heiress was just as caustic, a spoiled brat who thought the world revolved around her feelings.

Vel’s scorn made sense to Kleya. Her kindness makes her feel naked.

“I don’t want your pity.”

The words come out hard, defensive.

Vel studies her in silence for a long moment. Her expression sharpens, something flickers in her eyes and her blue irises flash a shade colder. Then she blinks, and the same quiet sadness that hangs over her like a halo is back.

“I don’t pity you, Kleya,” she says, her voice clipped and tired. “I couldn’t even if I tried.”

Kleya’s chest tightens with discomfort. She knows what is hiding beneath Vel’s words. The ghost that neither dare name out loud.

Vel would have every reason to hate her. If she were cruel, if she used Luthen’s death to try to hurt her, it would be logical. It would be far easier to handle her hatred than her compassion.

Kleya cannot hold her stare anymore. She looks down at her hands, fixing her eyes on the small scar between her index and middle finger, from that same night that robbed the Rebellion of one of its fiercest warriors, and robbed Vel of the woman she loved.

The wooden floor creaks underneath Vel’s footsteps as she goes. She lingers by the doorframe, turned away from Kleya.

“This is harder for you than it is for me,” Kleya hears her say.

Then she slips out, leaving Kleya alone.

Silence presses down on her again, heavier than before. Back to the stillness she cannot escape. The sickening weight of her own uselessness clings to her like cold sweat.

She pinches her brows together. She can still feel Vel’s eyes on her, stripping her down to the bone.

“This is harder for you than it is for me.”

The words burrow under her skin, worse than any blade could have. Because they are true. Vel sees through her. She sees the wretched human being no longer clad in steel and spite, and forces Kleya to see herself that way, too.

Her body is sore. Her mind adrift. Every part of her that is raw and aching and human feels like a betrayal. She lived inside pressure. She had clarity there; the constant tension made her razor-sharp. She was not built for this. Resting. Being cared for.

Her eyes drift to the plate on the table, and her stomach complains again.

Slowly, she gets her legs under her and gets up. It is mortifying, how much effort such a simple action requires. Her joints are stiff, her ribs protesting against every breath. Her entire body feels like it’s lagging behind her commands.

She walks to the table and stares down at the food. The color is a horrifying beige, but it smells good, inviting.

Her body insists on needing things. It’s as humiliating as it is inescapable, this tether to survival.

It isn’t the first time this has happened to her. Rest was forced upon her before.

She was forced to live before.

She doesn’t know where she is.

For a moment, she doesn’t even know who she is.

Her senses are slow to return. Patchy and muffled, the world only half-formed around her.

The quiet beeping of machinery. There is a faint pulse, mechanical and constant, thrumming under her body and through her bones.

Everything hurts. A deep, throbbing ache she can’t pinpoint. It’s everywhere beneath her skin, waves of heat.

She tries to open her eyes, but her eyelashes are stuck together. On the second attempt, her lids peel apart slowly. Her vision is blurry. She sees shadows and metal, darkened by grim. Blinking lights.

She is lying on her stomach. Her body registers it before her mind does. Her cheek is pressed against something coarse and stiff, her mouth dry and open against scratchy fabric. She tries to swallow and fails. The taste of dust and iron chokes her.

Her fingers twitch. She wants to move. She draws a shallow breath, but something constricts her. There is an uncomfortable pressure stretching across her back and ribs. Her skin feels pulled taut, pulsing.

It hurts.

And then she realizes.

Her clothes are gone.

She can feel air on her back, her shoulders. There is something light draped over her right above her hips, a sheet maybe.

Panic flutters beneath her ribs. She tries to get up, but her limbs are leaden. She makes a sound without meaning to, something small and broken. She wants to run, but the pain is too much, her body too heavy.

“Don’t move.”

The voice cuts through the haze, not warm nor kind.

His voice.

It brings it all back.

The need to move becomes desperate. She tries again, wills her body to respond against the pain and exhaustion. She lifts maybe an inch, then a hand on the nape of her neck presses her back down. It squeezes the air out of her lungs.

“Stop it,” he repeats. “Lie still or you’ll tear the bandages.”

He lets go. She doesn’t move again.

She hears his foot dragging across the deck floor. He is close, somewhere behind her, or next to her, she cannot tell. She doesn’t have the strength to turn her head.

Her mind latches onto one word.

Bandages.

She feels them now, wrapped tight around her back and ribs. They tug at her with every breath.

“You’re hurt,” he says, quieter than before. “I used the patches I had, but with burns like that you needed a bacta tank. I did what I could.”

He sounds almost apologetic. His words glide over her like water. She doesn’t care if her body is ruined. It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing does.

The memories come back in fragments, unbidden. The smell of plasma and melting skin. The fire, a smoke so thick she couldn’t breathe. Serel’s screams and their laughs. The silence, after.

A single tear slips from the corner of her eye, down the bridge of her nose.

Then another. They pool in the fabric of the thin pillow.

They are all gone. Everyone she ever loved, or known, is ash and bone, scattered across scorched ground.

She is alone.

Her voice is hoarse, she doesn’t recognize it.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

In the periphery, she can see the shape of him, leaning against the bulkhead. Instead of answering, he brings something to his mouth, a flask. Takes a long swig and exhales.

“Why didn’t you let me die with them?”

“You’re the one who hid in my ship.”

There is something accusatory in his tone, like she forced him not to kill her and made her survival his problem.

There is a silence after that, filled only by the hum of the ship.

“Just rest,” he mumbles, much softer than the grating tone he used right before.

It’s still an order. Something he is demanding of her after taking everything away from her. As if resting is something she is capable of.

Something unravels within her. Pain pushes at her from the inside, looking for cracks to leak through. Her breath catches in shallow pulls that make the raw skin on her back burn.

She doesn’t sob, she doesn’t make a sound. Tears spill from her eyes in silence, refusing to stop even when she shuts her eyes so tight she sees bright spots. She shakes in tiny, exhausted tremors.

He keeps his distance, doesn’t try to comfort her. She would have clawed his eyes out if he had.

A rage and hatred she did not know she was capable of feeling burns through her. She feels it spread, scorching the hollow spaces inside her. She clings to it, breathes it in like oxygen.

“I’m going to kill you.”

It’s a whisper through her teeth. Her voice doesn’t waver.

He doesn’t react, takes another sip from his flask.

“Good,” he says. “Stay alive to do that.”

Wood digs into her fingernails.

She is gripping the edge of the table so hard that her knuckles hurt.

When Kleya realizes what she is doing, she wills her hands to relax and let go. That’s when she sees that they are shaking.

They were supposed to burn together. She made him turn her into a weapon, something that could make the Empire bleed and burn and hurt, and then be discarded once she served her purpose.

She told him what she wanted, and he guided her towards it. He made her revenge his life.

Her grief has nowhere to go. She cannot scream, not here. He wasn’t her father. He wasn’t anything that could be named aloud. But he was hers. And now he is gone.

She didn’t choose this. She didn’t want to outlive him.

But she has. She is still here, whether she wants it or not.

She is alive.

She drops into the chair and scarfs down the food.

#icymi

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kleyasradio · 9 days ago