For Whom The Bell Tolls [Flashback]

[Sreeya]

Kale winced at his words. She looked around for anything to hit him with, and was very dismayed to find nothing. Kale simply scowled ahead, pressing her back against the wall and fantasizing about different ways to kill Bastele. Her thoughts led her back to the time she had him as a prisoner. It would have been so damn easy to just kill him then. Kale fiddled with the cuffs, noting how impossible they would be to break out of without obtaining a key. She glanced over at Bastele.

"All right, boss, what's your brilliant plan now?"

She attempted to cross her arms as best as she could.

"Since all my ideas are terrible apparently and you're such a genius. I'm sure you've plotted a way for us to get out of here in minutes. Please enlighten me, oh great one."

 

[Brandon Rhea]

Seconds that felt like an eternity passed him by, as he leaned his head up against the wall, away from the warm glow of the force-field at the front of the makeshift cell. That soon turned to banging, as he quickly, yet gently, knocked his head up against the wall over and over. He was scrambling for something, anything, that he could tell her. Some sort of idea for how they could get out, something to prove that he wasn't a screw up, but he had to face it now. He had to admit to himself, if not to her, that he didn't know what he was doing.

"I don't know. Is that what you wanted to hear? That I don't know?"

He sighed, slumping down against the wall. "Maybe I was stupid. Maybe I'm not cut out for this after all."

 

[Sreeya]

Kale said nothing, scowling at him. After a few moments, she stood up. She walked towards him, her expression softening, showing she understood. Kale sighed softly, closing the distance between them, looking down. Without warning, she lifted both her cuffed hands and swung them at him, smacking him across the face as best as she could. It wasn't enough to break anything, but enough to leave a stinging pain.

"Are you listening to yourself right now? If you want a semblance of a shot at hitting the Imperium, do you expect it to do it with that attitude?"

She looked at him in disgust, walking back to her corner and plopping down.

"You were stupid. And you're not cut out for this."

Kale looked straight ahead of herself, directly through the force-field.

"...But now you are understanding what it means to be truly helpless, when things are out of your control. You can be a soldier or you can be a powerful diplomat..these things can befall anyone. You can throw a hissy fit, or you can deflate your ego and pick yourself up off the ground. You may be a soldier, but you are not a leader. Not yet. You will learn that only from making mistakes..only from being neck deep in the vilest, steaming piles of shit yourself, along with your brothers and sisters. You won't realize it until you look next to you, smile at your brother, and watch him fall in battle a moment later and you keep going. Because at the end of the day, it's your honor you carry with you, and with that lies the lives of all your brethren soldiers. You will not have respect as long as you demand it and command it. You will have it once they present you the burden themselves..yes, I call it burden. Until you see it as your burden to carry and not a shining, golden crown, you will never become a leader."

She rose to stand, closing her eyes, facing the field.

"You will get us out of here, Nathaneau. Not me."

Kale glared at him.

"Stop being a useless lump and get up."

 

[Brandon Rhea]

"How?"

He couldn't stand up, not really. His bluster, his arrogance, the devotion he said he had to this cause; most of it was a facade. Maybe he did once believe he could fight the Sith. It all went back to that final day on Coruscant, to the thrill he felt from standing in front of the Dark Lord of the Sith and spitting in the face of the Empire's might. But that was then. Maybe his devotion was real too, at least somewhat, but he couldn't shake the feeling now that it was all for nothing. There was an emptiness inside him, a hole where the the idealistic, fiery leader he used to be once lived, but that fire was extinguished. He had no idea how to get it back.

"Everywhere I go, they're there too. How do you pick yourself back up when someone just keeps knocking you down?"

 

[Sreeya]

Kale looked at him and smiled. It was a genuine smile. For a moment she said nothing, and he must have thought she was odd for her response. However, she finally spoke.

"I'm shocked you're asking that. Look at you."

She pointed to his eye.

"You're barely held together. I punched you on top of it. Any smart man would have taken a hint by now and sat out. You've been an inch from death and you still got up. You were knocked down, and still you rose up. You know best of all how to get up after being knocked down. Look at it the other way.. everywhere they are, you are there too. You are enough of a pain to where they have to take care to knock you down. Perhaps.."

Kale gazed ahead.

"Perhaps sometimes you should be where they aren't. Perhaps you should itch them where they can't scratch. Where they can't see what hit them..who hit them. Perhaps you have this image of a grand, glorious military force like the Alliance should have been. You will never win against the Imperium like that. Neither will the Mandalorians. There are times to lay low and times to strike. Don't jump when they tell you or expect you to jump. Every action does not warrant a reaction."

She spoke from her knowledge of the Imperium, having worked with them for quite some time now. Kale knew it would be an alien concept to him. Men like him, and even her before she went the route she did, upheld honor and glory above all. It was always a dream of being the heroic savior. That was a dream, at the end of the day. Reality was much more cruel.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

He couldn't face how cruel reality was, though. Not yet at least. Bastele was content to just curl into a ball and stay here for the rest of his life, never having to face the fact that he was a failure. Never having to deal with what had happened on Kuat, when the last delusions he had of the Alliance fell; and never having to deal with what was happening here, and how his own ego had probably contributed to so many deaths and so many failures. Maybe this was for the best. Maybe the resistance would fold without him. Even if the Sith did take over Corellia, at least the killing would slow.

"You got what you wanted. Just go away."

His words were oddly, unfortunately, prophetic. No sooner did he turn away to wallow in his self-pity did the holographic barrier between them and their freedom shut off, to reveal a small squad of stormtroopers on the other side. Before either of them could say anything, one of the troopers shot their stun blaster towards Kale, knocking her out cold as she fell limp onto the cold metal surface. Bastele couldn't muster a reaction before he too was stunned, and everything instantly cut to black within his mind.

They were dragged off towards another level of the base, underground, revealing a much larger facility than Bastele and Kale had believed. It was a dark room that they were tossed into, devoid of all but one overhead light. The troopers worked quickly to secure them both, with Bastele leaned up against the wall, his hands cuffed beneath his back, while Kale was strapped on her back on a metallic device. It was a torture device, the same kind Darth Vader once used to torture Han Solo on Cloud City. Once Kale woke up, after an injection was was now being given to wake her, the interrogation would begin.