Upside to Anger

He awoke drenched in sweat with his heart racing and his eyes refusing to focus and the only thing he could think was "Tell me this is not happening." With the thudding of his heart pounding within his ears, he turns his head slightly left, and is rewarded for his effort with a strong shock of pain, going from the base of his skull to his mid back.

He feels live things crawling around on his back, and long leather straps attached to his arms and legs. He feels a fire in his head and throat. Looking around he sees all sizes and shapes of eyes looking at him, and in one corner a bundle of feathers which smiles at him.

“Good morning young Solo.”

“Who are you” he attempts to say, but all that comes out is “Huh err uu.”

She places a damp rag on his tongue, which quells slightly the fire in his throat. So he tries to speak again, “Who arr you.”

At least it was closer he thinks.

“I am Vergere. Who are you?” came the over simple reply.

“I know you, you were one of the ones that came to kill the Jedi. What are you doing to me?”

“Me? I am doing nothing to you.”

“That’s not what I mean, what do you want?”

“What do any want?” With that she smiles and hopes out the doorway, leaving the young man alone.

He screams out “Wait!” as he feels the straps around his arms and legs begin to tighten, pulling him up off the floor and twisting his body in ways it was never meant to go.

Then he can speak no more, for the pain has him. At first he resists. He makes an attempt to control his pain in the way of a Jedi. Pushing it down, telling his nerves they do not really hurt or just plain ignoring it.

Yet what holds him, what tortures him, has the patience of a machine, where the young man, running on little water and less food, has limits on his strength. Slowly the pain eats through his defenses. Slowly the pain eats him.

He does not know how long he exists this way. The slow cycles of pain, the cryptic statements from Vergere, but he comes to realize that the pain cannot kill him if he does not let it. After all, it is just pain.

So he turns his mind away and considers and tries to remember. He remembers dying, he remembers blonde hair and sad blue eyes, and he remembers arguments and the battle meld. Most of all, he remembers his promise.

He remembers that he promised her; he remembers that the promise was he would return. He remembers that she would kiss him if he returned.

He wants more than anything to return.

He feels the anger rise up within him, eating away his pain. He remembers the visions he had as a child, of him wearing his grandfather’s mask.

And he embraces both.

To him, the anger and hate does not feel real. He does not feel that it is the danger that he was always told it was. It feels like it is not happening to him, it feels like it’s not even real. It is real though; anger can mold you, change you, and make you become something you are not. The only upside to anger is that it does change you.

And change him it does. Gone are the doubts and fear, gone is the pain. He feels relief and freedom. With the changes the anger within causes, he knows he can do anything to survive. He can fulfill his promise; the anger will allow him to.

Even though the pain is trying to eat away at him, all he feels is relief.

He thinks that when next Vergere visits she is in for a surprise.

Time passes, anger grows.

One day, the door way opens, and it is not Vergere that walks through, but rather two Yuuzhan Vong warriors and Nom Anor.

The young man looks up and croaks out “What do you want?”

Nom Anor smiles as he replies “Ah, young Jedi. Did you know that you are being compared to Yun-Yammka? That your fight on Yavin IV and the worldship at Myrkr are already becoming the stuff of legend? Tell me young Solo, are you Yun-Yammka?”

“I just know you would not fight me at Givin.”

Nom Anor smiles as he barks an order to the warriors.

The young man can sense in the Force their intentions and smiles back. He draws on a power dark and terrible, lashing out with lightning causing the creatures that hold him to drop him.

He smiles as he dances around the warriors, and effortlessly slaughters them, even without weapons.

Dripping with the ichor of Vong blood, he gives Nom Anor a malicious grin and the executer quickly backs out the doorway.

As his grin grows ever larger, he reaches out in the Force, and yanks the doorway open, walking through, stalking the hallways slaughtering warrior, shaper and intendent indiscriminately. The entire time he did this, he did so with a smile on his face that had at one time been compared to Han Solo’s famous grin, but now was cold, calculating and malicious.

Gone are the doubts, fear and pain, but gone also are love, compassion and hope. He is happy, he has a worldship full of Yuuzhan Vong to kill, one at a time, or in dozens, it makes no difference to him. He feels anger, he feels the swell of victory, and he is content in the dark.

Drifting in space off to the side of the worldship which holds the young man, sits another smaller ship, like all things Yuuzhan Vong it is a living creature. Within this smaller ship sit Vergere and Nom Anor, waiting, watching.

Slowly, the worldship’s dovin basils turn upon themselves, stretching and tearing the worldship. The worldship is rent and torn to pieces, collapsing into a singularity, until only small chunks remain.

One turns to the other and says “Well that did not go as well as expected. I hope your plans for the other Solo go better.”

Verger regards Nom Anor with large black avian eyes and replies “It shall Nom Anor. Anakin was the stronger, the warrior, but Jacen the thinker, the priest. You saw the results, Anakin accepted the pain, but he learned the wrong lessons. That was his nature. No, Jacen will convert to the True Way or he will die.”

“You had best be right.” Is the half-snarled reply, “both of our necks rest in the balance with this effort.”

“Rest yourself executer, when will you realize that everything I tell you is the truth?”

Betrayed

As he held her chin in his hands and looked into those beautiful tear filled eyes, he felt a tremor run through his entire body and knew what he had to do. Lowering his hands, he wrapped one arm around her, and the other unsheathed his vibroblade. As he slid the vibroblade between her ribs and piercing her heart, he considers everything that has happened to bring them to this point.

A single tear escapes from him as she gasps and draws her final breath, the life quickly leaking out of her.

He silently curses the Force, fate, destiny, whatever powers that be, which have required that he be the one to end her life. He loved her. They were soul mates. There were predestined to be together for all time. Why would she then go and betray him in such a way? He just cannot understand or maybe he merely refuses to do so, but it could very well be that something inside of him, bent and broken by the trials and tribulations of the Dark Side, of War, of duty, that elusive something we call sanity, finally just stopped working for him.

He just doesn’t know, and she is now beyond answering his questions. In acting on the choice to extract the payment for betrayal, he has made it such that he can never know the answer to why. Slowly, carefully, he lifts her body and places it on the bed. Why could they not be happy? Why? Due to her betrayal the blood of many now stains his hands.

He is a Jedi, he knows better than this and he is better than this.

He is a man, he knows how to loves, and he knows how to live.

He is an animal, he knows how to hate and he knows how to kill.

All those betrayals, the fighter pilot, the street urchin, who knows how many others there were, how many other times did she betray him, betray all they meant to each other. It hurts to think about it. He wishes he did not have to think about it, but as he stares at her thin form, lying on the bed in repose, he cannot but help to do so.

Even now, he loves her and wants her by his side, where she should have always been. Looking down at his hands, he sees the blood that covers them, her blood, and wonders for the thousandth time why it had to be this way. Why could she not see reason, and understand that she only needed him, that all the others where unworthy of her, a blasphemy on their destiny.

He remembers them being happy once, before the war and during the war, and for a time even after the war. He knew even then that she was betraying him with the others. Of course back then he was able to overlook the drawbacks and faults, because she listened to him, she trusted him, ultimately she understood him. He never knew how much he needed that, until she took it away. That was the final betrayal in her long list of them, the fact that she would not see and understand.

If she had only seen and understood, then her blood would not be on his hands.

If she had only seen and understood, then Jag’s blood would not be on his hands.

If she had only seen and understood, then Zekk’s blood would not be on his hands.

He bends down, and kisses the lifeless body on the forehead. It would have been a sweet kiss, a chaste kiss, even a loving kiss, had his hands not been covered in her blood.

“Good bye Jaya” Is the simple statement he makes, as yet another tear escapes from his strong emotional control.

Ah the cruel tricks and trials of fate. He finally understands that we truly do hurt the ones we love. The more we love them, the more we hurt them, and ultimately the more we hurt ourselves. What is tragic in this, is that we love and hurt family above all others.

“Oh, Jaya, why couldn’t you have listened to me? We could have ruled as brother and sister.” With that said and his emotions held firmly in check, Jacen Solo walks out of the room, not bothering to look back.