The Benevolence of the Force by Spiritofthesky4 (WILL RETURN)

Chapter 15: Navis

I jolted awake to the sound of whispering.

The LAAT/I's pitch-black insides yawned, cavernous, like the mouth of a monster, and I squeezed Tup's hand. His hand didn't move for a moment, and panic sparked in me-- what if he'd died somehow? What if everyone had died somehow and I was left drifting alone in the vacuum of space? Luckily, after a moment, Tup's hand squeezed back.

"Tup?" I asked, barely a breath.

"I'm here," he replied. "Did we make it? Why is it so dark? ...Are we dead ?"

I pinched him, and he yelped. "Not dead. But who's whispering?"

"No one's whispering, except us," Dogma said groggily. He ran his fingers through my hair. "The kriff are you talking about?"

"Whispering. People are whispering. A lot of them."

The voices were overshadowed for a moment by the vbmmm of an igniting lightsaber, bathing Kix's face in blue. "Is everyone okay?"

"Domino twins are okay," Fives said from beside him.

"Hardcase, Jesse, and I are alright," Rex added.

Tup squeezed my hand and told Kix, "We're okay too."

"Obi-Wan's... not dead," the medic reported. "General Skywalker? Commander Tano? You guys alright?"

There were a few moments of silence, and then the comms crackled to life. "Right as rain, Kix!" Anakin said cheerily. "Hold on, let me get the lights for you guys. I... hit the switch with my head when we went through the wormhole."

There was a moment of silence again, and then the lights inside the gunship flickered on.

Obi-Wan groaned, shielding his eyes with his uninjured arm. "Guh, please turn off the lights, Anakin, it's too early...training doesn't start for a whole hour... really, if you're going to make me go to 79's with the 212th and the 501st you must let me sleep later."

"We made it, General!" Echo said, gently shaking him.

His eyes fluttered open. "We're home?"

"I can feel the Force again," Ahsoka chirped through the comms from the cockpit of the LAAT/i.

"Yeah! We're back in our own galaxy!" A cheer rose up. Hardcase flung himself at his brothers and they all hugged him. Obi-Wan's face broke into a broad smile as he slowly struggled to stand up, and Tup gently let go of my hand to join the group hug.

"I'm scanning frequencies right now, trying to see if there's anyone who can pick us up," Anakin announced as Rex gave Fives a terrifyingly aggressive noogie. Fives shrugged him off and picked up Echo, flinging his brother at the captain. He caught the ARC in his arms, but too late; they both crashed to the ground in a pile of giddy giggling. Fives flopped on top of them, followed by Hardcase, Jesse, Kix, Tup, resulting in a pile of clones, all laughing hysterically. Only Dogma, Obi-Wan, and I were left on the floor, my head still dead weight in Dogma's lap.

Under their laughter, though, I could still hear it. The whispering. Thousands of voices. And emotions-- I could feel all the emotions. The clones' joy, Obi-Wan's pain, Ahsoka's amusement, Dogma's anxiety. Something strong and powerful and overwhelming with a buzz of something wrong inside seeping from the cockpit. Everything. The whispering rose and rose and rose until it was deafening, and I began to cry, and I dimly noticed the smiles disappear from the clone's faces as they noticed my tears. Obi-Wan, however, was the most concerned. He knelt beside me and touched my cheek with his uninjured arm.

"Make the voices stop," I whispered, though I couldn't hear it. " Please. " I hated how whiny I probably sounded but it didn't matter as long as they STOPPED.