#Kairn Kallig | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stargazersith · 1 year

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Screw it, here’s some stuff I’ve wrote for my one true love, Kairn Kallig, my SI OC. It’s like one long ass prologue for her (over 4k words), I don’t expect anyone to read it but at least it’s out there. I’m sure we’re all aware but the SI backstory deals with slavery, so that’s in here as well as physical violence and verbal abuse. She’s just generally having a really shitty time.

3 years after the Treaty of Coruscant…

Dust streamed down the broken shaft and into the darkness, billowing like a cumulonimbus cloud until it was all Kairn could breathe in. She coughed and coughed until she tasted blood, as her eyes streamed with tears. A cacophony of voices echoed around her as she desperately tried to gather her bearings, clawing at the ground for grip, ignoring the rattling noises in her skull and the scratching at her throat. She just needed to breathe; to ‘take a moment to quiet her mind’ as Lieutenant Ryyz would say.

Kairn, was a girl of 13 with no surname and no family. She was a slave to the malevolent Sith Lord, Lord Karrion, an eccentric collector who forced her to delve into the tombs of ancient Sith Lords to look for the artefacts he was too cowardly to get for himself. She was a slight, gangly thing, with protruding collar bones and ribs like a bird’s cage. She was so much of nothing in fact, with her dull, brown skin and black, matted hair that one could be forgiven for passing her by without much thought, except perhaps for the fact that she had two extraordinarily bright, green eyes. She’d been bought by Lord Karrion for a measly 170 credits 6 months ago and had been forced to do his work for him since. As he’d told her with an unfeeling smile just before he’d thrust her into the pitch black of the tombs for the first time, he’d sent hundreds of slaves down before and most had never come back, but he had a good feeling about her. She was sure he’d said that to every pawn he’d owned, she wasn’t special. Except that she was. Kairn had one unique characteristic that differentiated her from all the other slaves he’d sent down there; she was force sensitive.

She’d known about it since she’d been four after she’d managed to push something she really shouldn’t have been able to push back on the subterranean agri-farms of Sernpidal. The knowledge of her power had only ever caused her trouble since. Now it was the reason Lord Karrion had picked her to be his slave, and it was the reason she was here shuffling in the darkness, trying to not let her panic overwhelm her.

Something brushed against her hand, so cold it leeched the warmth from her skin. What was that?! She tried spinning around but she couldn’t see anything in the pitch black. The shouting of the other slaves started to settle into something more telligible, “Kairn?” And then a scream followed. More shouting ensued. As she crawled up onto bruised knees, a crack thundered from a distance followed by the emergence of ghostly, white hands. Her dilated pupils ached from the shock but she couldn’t look away as they waved towards her. Was it a ghost?! They were in a tomb after all, it wasn't out of the question. She tried to scramble away but as her back hit a wall, she was forced to watch as the hands neared and her heart drummed in a runaway rhythm. And then a face followed, that of Micah, the oldest slave boy of the group who’d been sent down.

She sighed with relief. He helped her up onto shaky feet as he said, “I broke the illumination rod. The chemical mix should give us some light for a time.”

She nodded. That made more sense than ghosts. “What happened?”

Micah grimaced, “Dobie happened. He freaked out and accidentally set off a trap. And then the floor collapsed beneath us.”

She tried to recollect the moments before everything had fallen in, the tension of the rope tied around her middle, around each of their torsos in fact, the rise in people's voices, the sound of skin slapping. Karrion didn’t just send her down alone to look for artefacts, he sent a group of 10 slaves, all connected by some rope so that they didn’t lose each other in the darkness. Because she was the force sensitive one she’d been put at the front of the group, (Karrion hoped that her sensitivity would lead her towards objects emitting energy), meaning she was far away from the scuffle when it broke out and unable to see it. She’d certainly felt it unfold however, and then gravity had swallowed them all whole.

“And the rest? How many of us are still alive?”

It had been a violent fall amongst the crashing debris and rubble. In fact she was lucky she hadn’t injured herself more. There was a stabbing pain in her left ankle but it was yet to be debilitating and she had scratches all over her body but that was it.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

A wail of pain grew from the shadows. Kairn and Micah looked at each other. Clearly someone else was alive. The sound of whimpering followed, it seemed they also needed help, “We need to go help them.”

Micah hesitated but she was already hobbling towards the sound, her footsteps crunching on the remains of whatever cavern they’d fallen into. Micah quickly followed her bringing the light of his hands with him. “Are you sure about this?”

Of course not. She wasn’t sure of anything. But they weren’t going to escape just by standing around, so she lied, “Of course. The more of us there are alive, the more likely it is we’ll find a way to escape.”

As soon as her words left her lips, they passed by the glazed, dead eyes of Syreen, a girl who’d been at the front of the rope chain with Kairn and who’d acted as the group’s navigator. She’d been a nervous sort of girl, who chewed on the ends of her fingers, and spoke with a stutter, but she’d been kind to Kairn when Kairn had first been brought to Korriban. Syreen had had a memory like a data stick; she’d known the ins and outs of every tight corner and haunted corridor of this twisted place. Now she lay still, back collapsed at an unnatural angle, her chest still as stone. ‘You’ve got a strong stomach Kairn, you can handle this’, she said to herself as she walked past. Still the urge to crumple over, vomit and cry was hard to subdue. That so easily could’ve been her, strewn dead and broken. Micah muttered behind her, some form of prayer for the dead she didn’t quite understand. She didn’t bother with her own. Prayer required some hope for peace, a concept she’d never found appealing. Or real. They moved on with much difficulty, and eventually they reached the sight of the whimpering.

Kairn rushed to the sound. Jayce was grey with pain, his lower body pinned to the ground by a boulder so big they couldn’t see the other side of it. He was shivering with a sheen of sweat all over his body, and as Kairn stroked his hair away from his forehead, she noticed he was cold to the touch. Jayce was a slave just like her, and five years her senior. He’d held her at night when she’d first arrived on Korriban, separated from everyone she’d ever known and loved, and desperate for comfort. He’d rocked her to sleep and whispered into her hair, “You’re okay, you’re safe.” And he’d done it every night for a week straight until she could sleep on her own.

She started crying as Micah tried pushing the boulder, but despite his efforts it didn’t move an inch. He grunted with frustration, “It’s no use. It won’t budge.” He looked down at Jayce and with a trembling voice as if the weight of what he was about to say overwhelmed him, “Maybe we should just leave him behind.”

She shouted, “No!”

“Then what are we going to do Kairn? He can’t move!”

And give up that easily? Is that what he wanted to do? She pushed him to the ground, “Move! I’ll free him.”

Micah was incredulous, “You’re just a little girl, what are you gonna do?”

But she wasn’t listening to him, or to Jayce’s agonised wheezing. She needed to focus. She closed her eyes and placed her palms flat to the boulder. It was wet and slimy with algae. There must’ve been a trickle of water that was seeping down from the surface into the tombs, which meant that there was an opening somewhere, maybe one big enough for them to escape from. But that was immaterial for the moment, she needed to free Jayce. So she listened to the rhythm of her heartbeat, quick and pounding, and tried to slow it down. She counted each breath and slowed them down too, until she could feel the dank air of the tombs rushing in and out each of her nostrils. ‘Let your emotions guide you. Make them into a fist in your mind.’ Ryyz’s words echoed through her mind. She was angry at being down here, angry at Dobie for being such a coward and dragging them all down with him. She hoped he was dead. She was terrified that they’d run out of air down here, that they’d find no way of escaping and that she’d slowly die an unremarkable death as her body gave up from the lack of food and water. She was scared that she wouldn’t be able to free Jayce, that he’d die here in pain. Because why wasn’t this stupid rock moving? Why was it that when she pushed and pushed and pushed, nothing moved?! Why can’t she save him, save herself, do anything with these damn blasted useless powers, given to a slave of all people, someone who’s nothing, who’s dirt in the ground in the scale of the universe? Why, why why?! Why was she here?!

She screamed. The boulder moved. Micah gasped. And then the ground collapsed beneath them all.

——

“Kairn, wake up. We’ll be late for the morning count.”

Was that Myri’s voice? She peeled her eyes open and yawned. Where was she?

Myri shook her shoulders playfully, “Come on sleepyhead. The overseers will have your head again if you’re late.”

Overseers? Morning count? Was she back on Sernpidal? Had Korriban just been one extended horrible nightmare? She burst from her sleeping mat and enveloped Myri in a hug, “Oh I’ve missed you so much. I never thought I’d see you again.”

Myri pulled her back by the shoulders and looked at her strangely, “Missed me? We’re never apart.”

But Kairn persisted and pulled her in again, her head tucked over Myri’s shoulder and by her friend’s lekku. “I’m sorry ok. I’m sorry for everything.”

Myri decided to just let her friend squeeze the breath out of her, “Sorry for what? You haven’t done anything?”

Sorry for being so angry. For threatening to kill you. For that being the last thing I’d ever said to you, Kairn thought. Or what she’d thought was the last thing. “I just- let me hug you,” she pressed chapped lips to her friends cheeks, “and kiss you.” They both collapsed into a fit of laughter, tangled in each other’s arms, and Kairn relished the warmth of her best friend. It had been far too long since she’d felt the touch of another. As she came down from her high of laughter, Kairn whispered, “Let me just miss you, okay?”

The remaining trembles of laughter still remained in Myri for a while but eventually she whispered back, “Okay.”

Heartened by her friend's response, Kairn took her by the hand, ready to run to the front of the field where the slave masters did a daily count of the slaves, “Come on, or we really will be late.”

But Myri’s arm had turned to lead. Kairn looked back and the Twi’lek was staring at the ground, standing eerily still.

“Myri?”

Myri’s voice vibrated with disgust, “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll slit your throat!”

Kairn started shaking her head, like she could wipe away what she was hearing. This couldn’t be happening. “No, no, it’s not like that.”

Myri glared at her, her hand tightening around Kairn’s in a vice grip, “That’s what you screamed at me, remember? 6 months ago. To this day.”

6 months? So Korriban hadn’t been an awful dream? She really was gone. And she really had said all those awful things to Myri, “Myri please, just listen-“

But Myri wasn’t listening. She’d pushed Kairn to the ground and pinned the smaller girl down by her shoulders, “You would’ve killed me you bitch.”

Kairn was crying again, filled with the tears of a guilty child, “I wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t. I’m sorry. I would never hurt you.”

Myri took Kairn by the shoulders and smashed her into the ground. Kairn’s head smacked against it, and she felt the cool sting of blood oozing from the back of her head. Myri shouted into her face, raw and furious, “I loved you like a sister.”

Kairn didn’t fight back. She looked up into the eyes of her dearest friend, saw the hatred burning there and closed her eyes as Myri pounded her into the ground again.

——

Kairn awoke to the smell of her own blood, and the taste of damp rock in her mouth. It was pitch black again, none of Micah’s light was around, and she couldn’t hear any coughing, or screaming or whimpering anymore. She was truly alone. The thought terrified her. When she tried curling up onto all fours the darkness spun around her and she collapsed onto her front with the overwhelming urge to vomit. The burn of her bile was strong as she hacked up the empty contents of her stomach. She was well and truly trapped now. She had nowhere to go. Despair seemed like the most rational option.

Something cold bushed up her arms again. Something unnatural and sinister. She held her breath, her heart hammering away in her chest. She waited in complete darkness for that feeling to return and as soon as she’d started to convince herself that it had only been a figment of her imagination, it returned to seep the warmth from her face. She started shivering.

She shouted, “Who’s there?” As if she’d get a response and of course she didn’t, until a sickening howling started echoing from behind her at a pitch too painful for human ears. She clasped her hands over her ears and begged the force for it to stop, but it kept howling and howling, screaming like the dying agonies of a whole civilization, until her whole body was shaking and she was screaming along with it. And then she turned to face it, and she shook with so much fear she felt like she could explode. She scratched at the stone, trying to claw her way towards anyone, anything, begging for help. But no one ever came.

——

The next thing Kairn remembered was waking up in a medbay, her fingers bandaged with a fine layer of kolto and her head stuck in some sort of plastic cone. She tried moving around but she was restrained to the bed by her arms, and she struggled to move her head around in the cone. Her shifting seemed to have caught the attention of a med droid, who rolled over to her with a datapad, “Ah, it seems you have awoken. I’ll go fetch Lord Karrion”, it said with its robotic voice.

“Wait-“, But it had already rolled away. Lord Karrion was the last person she wanted to see right now. Unfortunately he arrived by her bedside within the minute, sounding far more cheerful than she’d ever heard him before.

“Ahh, if it isn’t my favourite slave. Get her out of this bed and cone, I need to speak to her at once.”

The droid objected, “But sir-“

“Do it or I’ll scrap you for parts.”

“Yes, as you wish my Lord.”

With what sounded like a heavy sigh, although she wasn’t sure if droids were even capable of that sort of emotion, it unlocked her shackles and carefully unwound the plastic cone. To her surprise she found that her neck still felt intolerably stiff. Had she broken it? Was she going to be paralyzed for the rest of her life? But when she went to touch her throat she felt the familiar feel of cool metal underneath her fingertips. She traced its outline all around her neck, the curve of the emitters, the squareness of the latch at the back. Lord Karrion watched the realisation dawn on her face.

He smiled, “Do you like it? It’s your new shock collar.”

She stared at him blankly. She’d worn one on Sernpidal, every slave had there, but they’d been rudimentary and smaller. Even so the shock from those collars had rendered her unconscious from the pain many times over. This one seemed huge in comparison, and it made her neck ache whenever she tried to move her head.

“I’ll take your silence as a yes. It’s a new model, specially brought in for you. It attaches directly into your spinal cord at the back there, hence why you might be feeling a bit sore. And it has a tracker embedded in it so that I know where you are at all times. I don’t want to lose my most important slave.”

She didn’t know what to say. Well… she had a lot to say but all of it would get her killed immediately, besides she was breathing so harshly it was too difficult to speak anyways. He’d surgically attached a shock collar to her body. He’d violated her with a smile. She felt faint. The skin around her throat started to burn, like her very being was rejecting it. She glanced around the room even if it felt like it was spinning; it was a medbay with several beds and three kolto tanks but she was the only patient in there.

With much effort she managed to choke out a question, her voice hoarse from her endless screaming, “Did anyone else escape?”

Karrion widened his blood red eyes in mock horror, “Escape?! No slave ever escapes me. Oh you mean the tombs? Two others did.”

She hated the sound of hope in her voice when she asked, “Jayce?”

Karrion tilted his head to the side, his golden earrings dangling in the air, catching glints of light from the flashing instruments in the back. “I don’t know who Jayce is but I’m assuming he’s one of your slave friends. The droid can tell you about it, I don’t know anything.”

Of course he didn’t, they were all just expendable commodities to him. The droid ambled over again and started going through a list of each of the slaves they’d recovered. Micah came up, he’d been one of the two to survive, but Jayce’s name hadn’t been on that list. Eventually she asked the droid directly.

It told her, “Jayce’s body has not been found in the three days-“ Three days? How long had she been unconscious?,”-since the incident. According to the accounts of another slave, Jayce suffered from major crush injuries. On two counts.”

Kairn stopped breathing. On two counts. On two counts. She was the second count, she’d caused the second injury, she’d killed Jayce! She looked down at her hands, wrapped in bandages stained with blood that had dried brown and crusted, as a strangled gasp escaped from her tightening chest. “What have I done?”

Karrion intruded into the conversation with about as much tact as a rampaging bantha, “What have you done? You’ve brought me my Sith abattar, the one I’ve been looking for for years.”

But she wasn’t listening. Her mind couldn’t let go of what she’d done. Jayce, crushed and dead and alone because of her. She started whimpering as Lord Karrion continued rambling, “It’s an ancient translator capable of allowing the wearer to understand any language they desire. You hobbled out of the tomb with it clutched in your hands. You got your disgusting blood all over it, but I’ll let it slide just this once. And as a reward for being such a good slave and retrieving it for me, you’re going to be at the dinner I’m hosting tonight. I want to show everyone my new favourite slave. And perhaps, if you’re good, I’ll let you eat some of our food after we’re finished.”

It wasn’t until he’d finally paused for breath that he’d noticed Kairn had fallen into a full body racking sob and wasn’t listening to a word he’d said. She didn’t notice in time as he raised his hand and slapped her hard across the face.

“Stop your snivelling slave and look at me.”

But she only remained ever more hysterical. She missed Myri, she hated Korriban, she’d just killed a boy. She couldn’t bear it.

Karrion was displeased with this. He grabbed her by the scruff of her robes and dragged her off of the bed. She wasn’t able to land on her feet quick enough as he stormed away with her in his hands, so her feet scraped across the floor as she desperately tried to escape his grasp.

“Stop flailing!”

All sense of self preservation was flying out of her, “No!”

He tightened his grasp but remained silent which was almost worse. He was taking down her halls she’d never seen before, filled with intricate golden rugs and paved with gleaming, red and brown tiles. It was more luxurious than anything she’d ever seen in her life. She could hear his servants gasp and anxiously run to the side as they saw him storming along with her in tow. He took her up some stairs that she tripped along and that tore up her knees. Eventually he burst through two double doors, nearly running over the small servant girl who was replacing his towels, and flung Kairn to the edge of his balcony.

“You think you can ignore me?”

She crawled onto all fours and stared at him wide eyed and terrified. He stalked closer and closer until she was forced to scramble back to the edge of his balcony.

He sneered, “Look down.”

She peered over the edge, her heart in her throat and saw two massive tuk’ata hounds prowling a sand pit underneath. They seemed to have sensed her fear and stopped to watch her from a distance, hunger for her flesh ripe in their eyes.

Karrion chuckled, “Like them? They have a taste for force sensitive little girls.” He bent down until his unfeeling eyes were all she could see. “Dare to ignore me again and I’ll throw you into the pit and watch as they tear you apart, limb from limb. I have no use for pathetic, snivelling little girls. Understand?”

She stopped crying. She didn’t want to die. Despite hating everything about her very existence she wasn’t brave enough to end it all now. So she numbed herself to the pain raging inside her, throwing all thoughts of Jayce away and nodded. She was going to survive another day even if it cost her her heart.

——

Later that evening as she stood pin straight in her fresh new clothes, specially prepared for the occasion, and let Karrion’s friends poke her left and right, she gazed up at the starlight. They were outside in his visitors courtyard where he was hosting his guests, with tables overflowing with food and servants at the ready with his most expensive wine. Her hands were shackled together, a symbol of her status amongst the gathering, and she was relegated to the coldest corner of the courtyard, but otherwise she was free to do as she liked. So she stared into the night sky like a dumb, mindless animal and wished to be taken away from here. She wished she was back on Sernpidal, near Myri again, somewhere familiar and warm. She never thought she’d miss a subterranean farm and yet here she was, willing the sky away for a chance to see her friend. But that wasn’t going to happen. She was trapped here, perhaps forever, yearning for freedom. And she had to learn to accept that if she wanted to survive. She must. Except Kairn never did learn to accept it. She was stubborn like that, strong willed, headstrong, and a perfect candidate for a certain set of Sith trials many, many years later…

#swtor #swtor oc #swtor sith inquisitor #darth nox #sith lord #sith sorcerer #star wars #kairn kallig #swtor writing #swtor fanfiction #i have much much much more stuff in store for her #the poor baby #the suffering never ends #swtor fanfic

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