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“Bring us around!” Eli barks.
“Sir, thrusters are offline.”
“Increase shields—” He barely gets the command out of his mouth before Un’hee rockets from her chair.
She covers the entire bridge in seconds, tackling him to the ground as the viewport shatters. White hot pain lances through his left leg, his head hits the durasteel floor with a crack. There is no oxygen. The world fades away around him.
Emergency security panels lock into place and Eli can feel his thoughts seeping back into consciousness. The lights flash red around them, claxons howling to abandon ship. He is wet, and groggily assumes the ship is on fire.
He looks to his side, to where Un’hee landed after tackling him to the ground. “Bun’hee,’ he gasps, pain shooting up to his groin as he rolls over.
“Dad?” she sputters.
Her legs are gone. She is completely severed in half. Her organs spill from under her uniform tunic. Panic ignites Eli’s blood. He doesn’t know what to do.
“Hey, darlin’. You’re alright. You’re gonna be alright.”
Deep red blood pools around them, drenching their uniforms. She is loosing too much blood. There is so much. It is everywhere. He crawls to her, slipping in the ichor of her own demise, and struggles in vain to press her organs back. There is so much blood. “Stay with me, Bun’hee.”
She blinks at him, eyes unfocused. “Dad. I love—I l-love—” Her lolls.
“No,” he sobs. “No. Un’hee, you’re alright c’mon now.” He’s pleading with her in Basic. It's what he speaks to her when she is scared.
Laknym, his weapons officer, bends down to help him up. “Sir, we have to abandon ship.”
“My daughter!” he howls. “I won’t leave her!”
“We don’t have a choice!” Laknym, usually so soft-spoken and kind, snaps at him.
“Leave me!” he sobs, pulling his daughter’s lifeless body closer. “Go!” he barks.
“Someone get me a sedative!” Laknym yells.
Eli holds Un’hee, like he did when she was a child. She still is a child, only sixteen. She has a whole life ahead of her—learning to drive, going to school, deciding things for herself that aren’t dictated by her service to the Ascendancy. He doesn’t even know if she’s had her first kiss or not. She has a whole life ahead of her.
His vision begins to fade and he tucks his head against her shoulder. At least now neither of them will survive to see what happens next.
~
Eli wakes.
The medbay lights are dim. A heart monitor beats steadily behind him. He is alive. Un’hee is dead.
He twists to the left, horribly off balance and falls onto the tile in a heap. He wretches. Nothing comes up.
“Senior Captain.” A nurse appears out of nowhere, cold hands on his side. “You’re safe.”
“Why did you save me?” He chokes on the words. There is no air here. His daughter is dead. He is alive. He wishes he wasn’t.
“You are vital to the Ascendancy.”
“Fuck you.” He pushes her away, tries to climb to his feet and falls again.
He is missing a fucking leg. He groans, anguish washing over him in waves. He should be dead. He should be dead. He should be dead.
~
Time bleeds together. The medical team gives him the mercy of heavy sedation and when he wakes, he tries different ways of making sure he won’t ever wake again. They just sedate him and remove more and more possible risks from his room.
At one point, when he wakes, he isn’t alone. Thrawn sits beside his bed, legs—both healthy and intact legs—stretched out in front of him, hands clasped across his stomach, eyes closed but obviously not asleep.
“Why’re you here?” he croaks.
Thrawn opens his eyes and leans forward. “We were scheduled for re-supply and repairs.”
More like to get a leash on his suicidal alien.
“Un’hee died. Protecting me.” He chokes on the last word.
He’s going to throw up. He leans over the side of the bed, and Thrawn meets him with a bedpan. He heaves up nothing but bile. He hasn’t eaten anything since he arrived here and he isn’t entirely certain how long that has been. He should know. He should know exactly how many days, hours, minutes have passed since he failed his daughter.
When Eli finishes turning his stomach inside out, he falls back on the bed, staring at Thrawn through the tears of his loss, of his hopelessness. “Kill me. Please.”
“I will not dishonor Un’hee’s sacrifice in such a way. Neither should you.”
Eli’s heart races. He wants out. He wants to run. He wants to kill every last Grysk. He wants revenge.
“She will be missed… greatly. But if anyone’s decisions should be trusted, it is those of a precognizant midager.”
“She was a child. My child. I was supposed to protect her.”
Thrawn bows his head. “You did. Her time with you was safe and full of love. You gave her a life worth sacrificing.”
He sobs. This wasn’t supposed to be how it ends—he was supposed to watch her grow up, go to college, study art or music or anything that has nothing to do with the military. He was supposed to help her fix up the shitty speeder they bought because despite his years of service, he is still a Human in Ascendancy space.
Thrawn sits on the gurney, pulls him in close.
“It should have been me,” he mumbles into Thrawn’s chest.
“It wasn’t.”
Eli groans.
“What will you do?”
“I’m going to kill every last Grysk that crosses my path.”
Thrawn runs his fingers through Eli’s hair. “Yes, we will.”