Song: "Rebellions are Built on Hope" from Rogue One OST
She deactivated the electrostaff, dropping against the wall. Sweat stuck her hair to her neck. Only now did she touch the focal point of the pain in her head, drawing away sticky liquid. She had to find a back exit from this prison so she could get it patched up, but how, when every MagnaGuard and droid knew who Khagan Kummar was?
Her eyes landed on the khaki cloak of the MagnaGuard. With great difficulty due to the numbness of her shoulders, she pulled it off and fastened it in a cloak-and-cowl style around her body. She slipped the electrostaff beneath her cloak and pressed the key into the door.
✺✺✺
Finding the underground waste system just beneath the prison, she climbed in and secured the lid. The rancid smell overwhelmed her almost instantly. These sewers had been her home once in the days when she'd fled the traditionalist khans that wanted her flogged for immodesty.
Particular in her mind was a time she'd bargained with her body for food. At night, the khan had called her in for the duties she'd promised him, but upon seeing what she was—frail, deathly thin, and with peeling scales—he'd cast her out of his house with nothing but a thin sheet over her cold body.
They'd been planning to lash her then and there, until they'd been called to go to the temple for prayer. Dizzy with shame, she'd considered slitting her own throat in front of the traditionalistic people, who could not fathom the possibility of a little girl caring more about her life than her honor.
The biggest irony was that they claimed to be holy. Rather than saving those they should have loved, they decided to let their acrimony affect their actions. She was determined not to make the same mistake with anyone who chose alliance with the droid. There had to be an explanation for their actions.
Eventually, she collapsed on the stone out of exhaustion. There was little hope of finding her children and Bent again, especially if the general had locked down internal communications.
Her heart sank into her stomach. "Quemáy," she moaned softly, burying her face in her cloak. Her body was racked with chills, and heat blazed against her forehead—especially from the cut and concussion. Infections. I should have bound it before I fell down here....stupid, reckless....
"I will find you....Quemáy...." She staggered to her feet.
Now would have been the time for nursing—for the girl to take her mother's finger in a dark hand and close her eyes as she nourished herself. It would have been the time for her to curl ever so gently against Ronderu's body, trusting her completely to feed her.
"I will find you," she said even more emphatically, beginning to walk—using her electrostaff as a support. She continued down the corridor. "I will find you, my Quemáy," she continued saying like a mantra, because it was all that she could muster to stay moving. Her body was wracked with cold and heat all at once. "I will find you."
It must have been hours later that the first hallucinations set in from her fever. Hallucinations of MagnaGuards where there were none; dreams of Qymaen, urging her to fall asleep because of how sick she'd become. Stop exerting yourself. Rest in my arms. I'm right here.
Those dreams hurt worst of all. She was too sick to block out her emotion. The buried sorrow from his death came out in tears—loud, delirious sobbing that was sure to give her away.
But she forced herself to sort out reality from dream, spoke the words through parched lips, even as she grew dizzy and her walk turned to a limp. "I will find you, Quemáy. I will find you."
✺✺✺
She finally found a computer—beaten-up and cracked, and powered off, but a computer.
Taking her staff and activating it, she shoved it into the port on impulse. Trembling hands dialed Bent's com number, and she prayed that something would happen—that he hadn't been caught, that he had escaped Kaleela before the droid general had arrived.
"Who?" his voice called.
"Bent...." she gasped, collapsing on the ground and weeping out of delirium. "I'm here. I'm alive."
"Mapait," Bent murmured—the Yamikh analogue of her name, in case anyone was listening. "You are? Where are you?"
"Kabisera," she gasped through crying. "Kabisera."
✺✺✺
"Ama," Rón whispered, kissing Ronderu on the cheek. "Ama, wake up."
She found herself in a homely little room with a tiny hearth and several cots, and clean. "Where's Quemáy?"
"War bunker," Bent said from across the room. "Kept here from the days of Bitthævria." He cleared his throat and passed Quemáy to her. She breathed in as tears began to fill her eyes. Her daughter cooed softly in return, clawing at her sternum with chubby hands, and Ronderu hugged the baby tightly—filled to the brim with affection for her child. Oh, my love. My Quemáy.
She frowned. "Won't the general be able to track us down here? Dooku fought in Bitthævria. He probably knows the secret bunkers."
"Should've studied war history, my khagan," he chuckled, letting Rón scurry up to his shoulder. "We didn't give out our locations to the Republic. Khan Jai Shurga wouldn't allow it."
She nodded. "How many other khans survived?"
Bent sighed. "Don't know. I fled the incident. Majority's dead, either from the general himself or the battle droids. My estimate's probably that the ones who survived are heavily injured. Heard from no one."
"We can't stay down here," she said, letting Quemáy take her finger in a hand. "We'll be cornered if anyone traces the location of the call."
"Assuming the leader's that smart. Seems like brute strength t'me. And you're in no condition to move, Ronderu. When I found you, you were the sickest I've ever seen you."
Then he medicated a new bandage and placed it over her head. "When you're well again, we'll move to the underground tribes. Somewhere we won't be found."
"I can pretend to be your daughter. I went by the name Ru san Jinn when I was on Mandalore."
"Don't think I'm that old," her friend said with a chuckle. "I'm only five years your senior."
"Then you can be my brother," she said stubbornly.
A nod. "And we can't let our new dictator know that we have Qymaen's kids." He paused. "But I will always recognize your rule, my lady."
"I'll just have to get my mask done-over," she said. "Paint new markings on it. There's no way I can just toss it aside."
"Very well, then," he said. "I'll scratch the blood off your mask for now."
She closed her eyes. Time to disappear. Time to fade....until the Republic comes to bait us into the war.
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Did you know....
● Ronderu's backstory is shrouded in mystery in canon, but there were rumors that caused her to be marked with a name meaning temptress. Because I had to expand on her story, I decided to make it a story about people who refused to give grace to a desperate young girl.
● Because my headcanon is that the Kaleesh traditionalists value virginity and see all losses of it as the fault of both parties who lost it, they see her as impure. This is not a reflection of my beliefs, and never has been. But it is the reflection of how some people around the world think.
● I will focus on her story more if I write a non-AU version of Unknown Soldier.
Tell me what you think....
● Since bynames are supposed to reflect who you are, do you think you would have believed the rumors about Ronderu?
● Would you have been able to continue on in that situation? Why or why not?