A Life Not His Own: Chapter 23

“What are you?”

Jacen opens his eyes, to find himself staring once more into the black pools which server as Vergere’s eyes.

“I am a Jedi.”

A flash of beak and fur. A twist of crest feathers. “No, we have been over this. You are not a Jedi. You must be alive to be a Jedi.”

Jacen drops his head, not wanting to look at her any more. “But I have the Force!”

A cawing sound assaults his ears. “Ah, but the Force does not a Jedi make.’

A feathery finger touches his chin, and he allows his chin to be lifted up, her beak is opened wide, her approximation of a human smile. “And if the Force is keeping you from realizing that, then let us see what we can do about that.”

Confused, he reaches out with the Force, touching her and finding a wellspring of it within her. Deep, powerful, controlled. Trained.

His eyes widen, and his mouth drops for a moment. “You. You’re a Jedi.”

Her head shakes. “You will find no Jedi here, young Solo.”

Her hand touches his head for a second, and a blinding flash of pain rips through him, a silent explosion of pain which drowns out even the White. He gasps aloud, a sharp intake of breath as the room closes in around him.

He has been raised with the Force his entire life. It has always been there for him, a comforting, calming breath of life and laughter, washing through him at all times.

With that flash of pain, that explosion of self, it is gone.

The river of life has dried up.

The world is now all grey, leeched of the colors that he has always seen.

The world is silent now; the sounds he has always heard have been stilled.

It lacks substance and depth. The nothingness within his head and heart scream at him, echoing the fact that he no longer has the Force. He reaches for his twin sister through their bond, slamming his self against that spot where she has always been.

And he is met with silence, with lack, and with an overwhelming emptiness. Even his bond with Jaina has become a void.

He is alone.

He is dead.

His lungs scream for air, and he finally remembers to breathe again.

“Why? What did you do?”

Her head cocks to the side. The crest of feathers on her head raises, shifting, catching the light, reflecting the yellow of surprise. “The Force is life,” she spreads her hands wide, takes up a questioning stance, “and what does life have to do with the dead?”

Jacen sobs, his entire body shaking. “But I’m not dead.”

“I have told this to you already, you are dead. Just because you are still moving does not change that. The galaxy thinks you are dead, your family and friends cry over your memory; they mourn you and believe you have become dust. Your mother and sister weep, your father rages, and your brother? Your brother rushes to his own doom. They are as lost to you, as you are to them. Gone are the bright fields of day.”

Jacen looks up at her, the tear tracks shining slightly on his face.

Her hands flap away in front of her. “Your life has been terminated. A line of division has been drawn between you and everything you have ever known.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Choose and act.”

“What?”

“Choose and act.”

He shakes his head slightly. “I don’t-”

“You must choose and act. Will you stay here, and live out your entire life in pain, or will you choose to learn the True Way? Choose and act.”

“I trusted you.”

“Yes you did. Why?”

The simplicity of the question astounds him, draws him back, and his mouth opens in surprise. Why indeed? Could it be because he was raised on Coruscant, among the multitude of species and beings? Could it be an instinctive aspect of his Jedi training, of the empathy which allows him to handle the deadly animals in his menagerie without fear of danger?

He looks at her, his thoughts collapsing and sluggish in the void which exists in his mind.

“But, you healed Aunt Mara.”

“Did I? And what significance did you attach to that?

His body shudders, and tears drip from his eyes, shattering on the floor beside Vergere.

“But…” Jacen’s breathe shudders in his body as he wonders how the universe could be so fragile, how his life could be so futile. “But I’m a Jedi.”

“You were a Jedi. Have you not been paying attention? You are dead, what about that do you fail to understand?”

Another sob hitches Jacen’s body. “I don’t understand anything. Nothing makes sense to me anymore…”

The sound of whistling chimes comes from her again. She leans up and forward, her beaked mouth near her ear, her whiskers tickling it. “Jacen Solo, Listen well.” Her voice is filled with warmth and kindess and her breath smells of alien spices and meats. “Everything I tell you is a lie. Every question I ask is a trick. You will find no truth in me.”

She pulls back so Jacen can see into her blank, black eyes. “Though you believe nothing else, you may rest your faith on this.”

“What are you?”

“I am Vergere, what are you?”

She waits, motionless, patient, as if expecting an answer. When he doesn’t provide one, she turns away, the door way opening with a wet smacking sound. She hops through it without a backward glance. The door slides shut with a slight sucking sound, as the Embrace of Pain pulls on him once more.

Drawing him up and into the White.

Only now he lacks the Force, and as the White consumes him once more, he can feel the beginnings of despair.

-----------------------------------------------------

She stalks through Bast Castle, wondering what could have called her here. What icon of the Dark Side could have awakened? Her form-fitting silver armor gleams in the soft lights. A burqa covers her face, save for her eyes, which glitter with madness and power. A whip is curled, and attached to her belt, a steelweave cape flapping behind her.

She has walked the halls for hours, hunting for whatever presence she felt calling her. She savors the pain and misery found through out the building. It is a pain that flickers a memory into existence. Luke. A name from another time and place. Vader’s son. Vader himself. Her old master was here. No, someone of his lineage. She looks around Vader’s private chambers, and leaves. Her final stop is the infirmary.

She walks into the clean room, with its slight tangy smell of antiseptic. She sees the numerous droids lining one of the walls, but that is not what has her attention. They are not what is calling her. She follows the trail of despair and pain to a single, lone door and opens it. And finds something that draws her attention.

What has her attention is the lifeless husk which floats in the bacta tank before her. She walks close to the tank, and presses her hand against it. She smiles even as she wonders who would have placed someone who is dead into a bacta tank.

She drains the tank, as the medical droids around her come alive.

The muscles on her cheek move, the scar next to her eye twisting subtly. Amusement dances in her eyes.

She looks between the nearest droid and the being in the bacta tank. As the green fluid flows out, the body within thumps to the side, her blonde hair lying damp and limp around her scarred face. The twist of the scars, a crinkling of the flesh around the eyes. Amusement gives way to madness in her eyes. “I will have an apprentice, if I have to assemble one from scratch.”

Lumiya, Dark Lady of the Sith beckons one of her guards to come forward. “Take her to the Corruption, and tell the helm that as soon as I’m onboard we are to set course for the Kalakar system.”

The trooper salutes, and turns to obey; he drags the girl’s still body away and down the hall.

Lumiya watches for a moment, and then laughs out loud, a crazed, dangerous laugh. She looks around the still medical room, humor still shining in her eyes. “Yes, I shall soon have my apprentice, and then I shall have my revenge.”

------------------------------------------------------

Jaina is in the midst of battle. Her self an extension of her fighter. In the Force she can once more feel the seepage of agony which her twin brother is in. A pain so intense that even though he keeps it from their bond, it still trickles through to her, keeps her awake and with a headache all through the night.

Her X-Wing twists and tumbles through and around the thousands of fighters and coral skippers which surround her. There are so many, that she spends most of her time dodging things rather than actually firing her lasers.

Her wing is tucked tightly beside her, her moves echoing Jaina’s own in a wonderful precision which comes about only after hours of sim time together.

Suddenly a white light goes off in her head, a supernova of pain and emptiness. For a second she can feel everything, and then she feels nothing.

Her eyes slowly open as her body contorts from the strength of the cough from the smoke in her cockpit causes. She can hear Illisa screaming her name.

And twists on the com. “I’m here.”

“Are you all right Sticks?”

Jaina nods her head before remembering that there is no visual feed. “Sorry, I, I don’t know what happened, but I need to return to the Ralroost.”

A click answers in reply, and she peels off, heading towards the Ralroost. She dodges plasma balls and grutchins, and gasps as she sees another of the slave ships slam into Coruscant’s shields, plowing through them, and crashing towards the planet below. She yanks her eyes away, as the Force floods with the pain of shared, fear-filled death.

She continues to the Ralroost, her fighter, listing to port. She is halfway there, when a message comes over the system, a wide-band broadcast. “This is Admiral Kre’fey. This is the Omega Signal. Repeat, New Republice Forces are going Omega. Coruscant, I’m sorry.”

She lands her fighter, and crawls out, falling more than jumping to the floor. She kneels there, and tries to reach for her twin brother, meeting only an empty void. An anguished cry of grief and sorrow rips through her, causing technicians and flight crews to stop what they’re doing and stare.

----------------------------------------------

The Millennium Falcon flips and dives. Dodging plasma balls and grutchins, and even turbolaser fire as if she was a starfighter rather than a light freighter.

Han Solo sits within the cockpit, with Leia Organa there beside him. Two of the Senate security personnel man the quad lasers, the steady beats of their sustained fire an indicator of just how many enemy targets surround them.

“Jacen. JACEN!”

Leia’s scream catches Han off guard, and he glances at his wife, to see her curling herself up, wrapping herself around the center of her being, a wail of grief ripping from her throat. Leaning over in her seat, pressing her forehead against the co-pilot's station in front of her.

Han pushes the ship down. “Princess, tell me.”

Leia looks at him, her eyes wild, and filled with pain. “He’s gone. I-I can’t feel him, just, just a void.”

Han growls low, an angry, desperate look appearing in his eyes, as he aims the Falcon for the Vong flagship.

Their com crackles to life, receiving a wide-band broadcast from one of the New Republic military ships. “This is Admiral Kre’fey. This is the Omega Signal. Repeat, New Republice Forces are going Omega. Coruscant, I’m sorry.”

Leia looks at Han. “They’re abandoning Coruscant.”

Han nods his head. Leia looks out at the mass of yorik coral they’re aimed at.

“Do you plan on ramming it? Killing us, and all those in the hold?” Han looks at her, his grief mirrored in her eyes. Leia lays her hand on his arm, even as her tears flow freely down her cheeks. “This is not the way. We need to live, for Jaina. For Anakin.”

Han closes his eyes, and yanks the Falcon to port, dodging the fire coming from the Vong flagship. She grips his arm, giving it a gentle squeeze, even as more tears flow down the side of her face.

She watches the first of the Imperial Star Destroyers jump out of the system, and sighs. She feels that same fire burning in her from the rebellion after Yavin. It is the fire that drives her to want to destroy the enemy because they had hurt her. And even as she knows that that feeling is beneath her as a Jedi, she knows that it is a natural emotion and that all those in the system, in the New Republic, feel it.Leia activates the com, setting it to a wide-spectrum broadcast, allowing every com unit in the system to pick it up, including the holonet.

She was raised as a politician. To be able to give rousing speeches at the drop of the moment. And though she has long since given up on the desire to be involved in politics, she knows that she cannot let her life's work fall apart.

Taking a deep breath, she composes herself and then begins to speak.

"This is not the end. Two years ago, the Yuuzhan Vong entered our galaxy. They came not as friends and equals, though we would gladly have welcomed them as such, but as thieves and conquerors. They saw a galaxy at peace and mistook the strength of our convictions for frailty of arms, the wisdom of compromise for the timidity of cowards. They attacked without provocation or mercy, slaying billions of our citizens, enslaving entire worlds, and sacrificing millions of beings to appease the bloodlust of their imaginary gods. They believed we would be easily defeated, because they believed we would yield without a fight.

"They were wrong. We have fought at Dubrillion, Ithor, the Black Bantha, Borleias, and Corellia - we have fought them every leg of the way from the Outer Rim into the Core. We have lost untold numbers of loved ones, my own son Jacen and my husband's dear friend Chewbacca among them, and now we are battling in the skies over Coruscant itself. We are still fighting.

"Soon, the enemy will be on our rooftops, in our homes, roaming the dark underlayers of our city. To those able to evacuate and to those trapped behind, I say the same thing I would tell my children. Keep fighting.

"This is not the end. In the past, Jedi-led forces have decimated Yuuzhan Vong fleets, and we enter each battle with new weapons and better tactics. We have prevailed against ruthless enemies before, against Palpatine, against Thrawn, against the Ssi-ruuk. This is a war we know how to win. Keep fighting until you can fight no longer, then exhaust the enemy chasing you, and turn and fight some more. Keep fighting. I promise you, we will prevail."