Return of the Aurors
Chapter 13: Bond
By Anne B. Walsh
Possible BYOT and an evilness warning.
"She’s going to be fine, Auror Skywalker," the Mon Calamari medic said, twitching her barbels in the closest thing the species had to a human smile. "She’s far more stable than I would have assumed, given the severity of her injuries, and already beginning to respond to the bacta. Perhaps as little as two or three standard days tank time, and then a few weeks of rehabilitation, and I doubt you’d ever know she’d been injured."
Drake let out the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. One worry, out of thousands, lifted from his shoulders. He hadn’t killed Luna with his stupidity. She might look dead, floating in the viscous pinkish bacta with her face obscured by a breather and her body covered only in the minimum for modesty, but she would be free and laughing again soon enough.
Now I just have to worry about what I have done.
Vaguely he registered the others’ reactions, Threelo’s chirpy "Oh, I am glad!" and Emtoo’s gleeful whistle, Neenie’s shaky laugh and Ron’s one-sided grin. Hairy and Chinna’s two-part harmony roar and the medic’s startled jump got his attention, and the ensuing laughter brought him fully out of his gloomy thoughts.
Whatever I did or didn’t do, we won this war. We destroyed something evil, and we’re all alive. There’s a lot still to do, but this is a time for celebration.
The door shooshed open. Sirius stood beyond, a reasonable facsimile of his usual grin on his face. "Anyone up for a victory party?" he asked. "There’s a load of pilots taking a shuttle down to Hogwor to celebrate with the Ewoks. Little furballs seem to think they won the war all by themselves. No offense meant," he added quickly to Chinna, who showed him her teeth but made no other comment.
"You all go," Drake said. "I’m staying here."
"Oh, no, you don’t." Ron stepped around Drake and folded his arms. "You can’t not show up to your own party."
"You lot fight it out," said Sirius, shaking his head. "I’m going to get a good seat. See you if you decide to come." He disappeared down the corridor.
"It’s not my party," Drake objected. "Hairy was the one who killed the Emperor. Neenie fought him off. You got everyone to attack the guards so we could get away, Sirius blew up the Death Star... there are better people to celebrate than me. And some of them can’t come."
He waved a hand at the bacta tank. Movement from within caught his eye.
Luna, her eyes open over the breather mask, deliberately pointed her finger at him, then flicked her hand towards the door.
"You want me to go?" Drake asked doubtfully, approaching the tank. "But I promised I’d stay..."
Luna’s eyes showed him the smile he was sure covered the rest of her face, and one hand flattened against the inside of the tank. Drake laid his own hand against the outside and smiled up at her. "Well... if you say so."
One firm nod, and Luna closed her eyes again.
"Well, now that that’s settled," Neenie said, coming forward and taking Drake by the arm. "You can use the shuttle ride down to explain what you said in the lounge on the Hawk. Something about a separate reality?"
"Yes." Drake sighed as the weight of their position, and the fact that it was his fault, came down on him again. "Yes. When Voldemort, the Emperor, whoever he was in the end, when he put that lightsaber through the floor, it was a trigger on a prepared spell he’d brought with him. I think all he intended to do was reproduce the effects on our dream bodies in reality, so that we’d die there the same way we did here. But what he did was something a little bigger." He stamped his foot on the hard floor. "This isn’t a dream anymore."
"You mean he turned this world real?" Ron exclaimed. "But that’s—"
"Crazy?" Drake shrugged his shoulders. "No one ever said he was sane. Just clever and very, very powerful."
"My word," said Threelo, his voice sounding more worried than a droid’s vocal processors could usually manage. "What does that mean about our chances of going home again?"
"Honestly, I don’t know." Drake sighed. "I’d guess they’d still be able to see us—they know where we are and what we’ll be doing—but even getting in contact would be major magic now, let alone transferring anything over. Unless we hear differently in the next couple hours, I think we have to assume we’re here for good." He turned to look back at the motley group. "And we’re on our own. No more script. No more plan."
"I don’t know," Neenie said, frowning. "I thought I saw Star Wars books the last time Danger and I went shopping at the Muggle store..."
"Yes, well, they won’t do us much good if we can’t get at them, now will they?" grumbled Ron.
Good question, said Hairy in a more thoughtful roar than usual. Will what happens in those books still happen to us if we don’t know how they’re supposed to go?
"Ayjus twon tout vis firsoot," Chinna said with a scowl. "Antoo tol clykap ersunug enn!"
Drake tuned out the ensuing arguments, conducted simultaneously in Basic, Wookiee, Ewok, and droid. His mind was too busy laying out the facts for him.
We may all be alive, but we’re trapped here. Forever. Strange bodies, strange names, strange lives...
His hand went to the hilt of the lightsaber at his belt. Though if I had to choose someone to be forever, this wouldn’t be a bad choice. I mean, he’s the first of a new line of Jedi—Aurors, I guess, here—and he’s going to help establish the New Republic. And Luna’s is pretty good, at least as she’s played it. She wouldn’t do well as the original.
The thought was good for a brief mental laugh.
Ron and Neenie have decent parts too... no, actually, now that I think about it, these parts fit them just about perfectly. Drake glanced back over his shoulder at them, Ron backing up Neenie’s argument as Hairy howled into her face. The cultured intelligent diplomat and the crazy ex-smuggler scoundrel, and they’re crazy about each other...
But what about Harry and Ginny, and Neville and Meghan? The fate he’d unwittingly condemned them to squeezed Draco’s heart. It was funny for Harry and Ginny to be non-humans for a one-night dream, but how will they handle it for the rest of their lives? Neville and Meghan... can they stay themselves, or even human, being droids? Will they have to watch us all get old and die while they stay exactly the same?
They rounded the final corner into the shuttle bay.
And last but certainly not least, Padfoot.
Sirius sat by himself in a corner of the troop shuttle, occasionally smiling at a joke someone tossed off, but more often staring into the back of the seat in front of him, his expression fixed and dull.
He thinks the people he cares about most in the world are dead. And I can’t tell him they’re not, because he’s so into his character he’d think I’m crazy and because they might as well be. They’re in another world, we can’t get there, and they can’t get here...
Drake stepped aboard the shuttle and took a seat in the row in front of Sirius.
I’d do anything to fix this mess.
Anything.
He hoped the Force, or the Founders, or somebody, was listening.
xXxXx
Danger continued to run her hand up and down the movie screen, now showing the shuttle in flight. The stench of Voldemort was fading rapidly from the newly created world, leaving behind a copper-iron smell coupled with green leaves and clean sweat.
I should have a report on the worst injured of our travelers any minute. Remus and Aletha, after hearing Draco’s description of Voldemort’s spell, had departed immediately to check on the other dream travelers. Based on what they’d seen, one house went to the top of the list to investigate. A good thing Gerald keeps us up to date on all his security charms...
On cue, Remus’ soft curse reached her mental ears.
I don’t like the sound of that, Danger sent, watching the shuttle glide down for a landing where the bunker once had been.
You shouldn’t. We’re at the Landing Zone and it’s not good.
Define ‘not good’.
Remus sent her a visual image. Aletha knelt by Luna’s bedside. The girl lay on her back, burn marks vivid across her arms even in the moonlight, her eyes half-open and her chest still. As Danger watched, Aletha reached down and drew the sheet up and over Luna’s face.
But that doesn’t make any sense! Danger protested. She’s alive in that world, I saw her a few moments ago—they would have called Drake on his comlink if she’d taken that sudden a turn for the worse—
I know. But I can’t deny what I’m seeing.
"This doesn’t make any sense," Aletha murmured, the frustration and confusion in her voice poor masks for her grief and fear. "Remus, ask Danger for a time check? How long has it been since we saw Luna talking to Draco?"
Danger ran the movie back in her mind. About fifteen minutes, she said, Remus echoing her aloud. It could be twenty, but no longer than that.
"That’s what I thought." Aletha tapped her wand twice on Luna’s sheeted form. "As far as I can tell, she died at that exact moment. Except that you told me she’s been awake and communicating with them since then... wait." She twisted her wand through a complicated pattern, frowning in concentration. "Could it be... she’d be the one to know it if any of them would..."
"To know what?" Remus asked, his calm tone masking an urgent need for some way, any way, to bring his cubs home again.
"I think she did this on purpose." Aletha looked up from her spellcasting, her face intent. "She realized what had happened—that the world around her had become real, that she had two bodies, both of them badly injured—and she decided to cut her losses and focus on the body that was in the same world as her soul, to make sure both bodies didn’t die on her. That’s why she was in better shape than the medic expected, because she had the energy from her other body to help heal the one she has now."
Remus had been piecing it together as Aletha spoke. "That choice may have saved her life, but it came at a price," he said quietly. "Even if we’re able to bring the others home, she can’t come."
"She’d be a ghost now," Aletha agreed. "Or she’d die. Unless we could get physical access between the worlds, and I don’t think we can. They’re just too different. The structure of the magic, the basic assumptions... no. It would be a life’s work trying to figure out how to do that, and we don’t have a lifetime to spare..."
A sound as of a polite knock jarred Danger from her contact with Remus. Who—what—
"It is I," called the voice of Albus Dumbledore. "May I enter?"
"Of course." Danger willed a door to form in front of the Headmaster, and a moment later Dumbledore stepped into the back of the cinema, still wearing the sand-colored robe he’d donned to take the role of Albu-Wan Dunobi.
"We must hurry," he said, his tone only half-teasing as he hurried down the aisle to meet her near the screen. "Our cue is coming up."
"Cue? What—" Danger stopped, realizing exactly what he meant. "But I don’t know if we can—my access was blocked when it went real—"
"I believe this world retains enough ties to its roots that it will grant us entrance at the proper time," Dumbledore said, watching the action on the screen, where Ewoks were piling brush into a bonfire pile and hooting excitedly. "As well, you may find it a bit more flexible at the moment than it was when you first attempted to reenter it."
Danger laid her hand on the screen once more, this time thinking hard of entering the scene, walking towards that bonfire, smelling the smoke and the evening air of Hogwor...
Her hand slid through the screen. Quickly, she yanked it back.
"Do you actually know everything?" she asked irritably, sending a thread of magic towards her husband and sister, who had checked on the other dream travelers (all fine except for mild brushburns on Harry’s hands and some good-sized bruises on the Weasley twins) and were returning to dream-state as swiftly as possible.
"No, I merely try to stay as well informed as possible on the situation at hand." Dumbledore nodded to Remus and Aletha as they reappeared in the cinema. "For instance, I spoke with Severus a few moments ago, and he had some news I believe you will all enjoy hearing. But it should wait until you all can hear it. Which, if I recall the film correctly, should not be long."
"Shouldn’t you be getting dressed, love?" Remus said delicately as Chinna tossed a torch into the brushpile and the crowd of Ewoks and Rebels cheered.
"Getting—oh you have to be kidding me."
"It would make it more likely that you’ll get in there and out again in one piece," Aletha put in. "Since it fits the original better."
Danger glared. "Traitor."
"That assumes I was ever on your side in the first place."
"Fine." Danger waved her hands down her own body and shrank into her brown-skinned Auror Mistress Gerta body. "Happy now, you are?"
"Ecstatic," Aletha said blandly.
"It is time," Dumbledore warned, and Danger flicked her finger to create herself a flight of steps she could climb to step into the dream world through the screen.
Her body peeled away as she passed. She was a spirit, translucent and rendered in washed-out color. Fleetingly, she wondered if the counterpart to the third person who should be there would make an appearance, but banished the thought as she saw Drake standing alone watching the fire and the dancing.
"Going to tell me what’s happening, you are?" she hissed at Dumbledore.
"In a moment." Dumbledore closed his eyes, and Albu-Wan Dunobi opened them. He stepped forward, catching Drake’s attention. "Do not speak yet," he warned the young man. "There is little time. We are here because of Luna."
Of course! Danger felt her mind shifting, falling into the wise and careful thought patterns of Gerta, an Auror Mistress of nearly seven hundred years’ standing. "Injured in both worlds, she was," she said, coming to stand beside Dunobi. "Choose to remain in this world only, she did. Created thus a bond between the two worlds was."
"Does that mean..." Drake’s eyes flickered, and Gerta could feel him assessing the new information. "Is she..."
"She is alive, here," Dunobi said, placing emphasis on the final word. "But her body in the world from whence we came is dead. She cannot return there. Nor can any of you, at the current strength of the bond between the worlds. Our passage has stressed it already; the only reason it was possible is that, in this world, we are both dead. The transfer of a soul from one living body to another..." He shook his head. "The bond would snap and the soul would be lost."
"How can we make it stronger?" Drake asked without a moment’s hesitation.
Gerta reached out with the Force to touch the bond, and knew the answer. "Another sacrifice, it requires," she said calmly, though her heart cried out in protest. "Another to make the same choice, to remain here for all time and allow the body left behind to die, it would take."
"But everyone else could go home again." Drake might have been asking for clarification of a technical point in class.
"Yes," Dunobi confirmed. "The bond would be strong enough for their passages one-way. The worlds would remain linked enough that you could watch one another in dreams and visions, but there could not be a permanent portal for passage back and forth unless twice again that amount were willing to remain."
"Never mind that." Drake waved away the annoying additional point. "How do I do... whatever has to be done?"
"Sure, are you?" Gerta asked, and dropped the mask within her mind. Drake, Draco, think about this, please—this is your life, you can’t just throw it away—
Luna’s stuck here no matter what, Draco shot back. I’m not leaving her. I promised. Besides... He grinned, the expression at once Luke Skywalker’s and Draco Black’s. Like I was thinking earlier, if I have to be somebody else for the rest of my life, at least I’m somebody with a lightsaber.
Danger laughed aloud. "Proud of you, we are," she said aloud, dropping back into Gerta’s role. "But miss you, we will. And watching, we will be."
"Me too. To both." Drake blew her a kiss. Take care of Neenie for me?
Always.
The first of the new generation of Auror Knights straightened his shoulders. "Tell me what to do," he said. "I’m ready."
:runs away giggling: No killing me! The best is yet to come!