Somewhere Between Destiny

The sidewalk was starting to blossom dark spots, and soon the permacrete was an entire shade darker as the rain began to pour. It formed little streams and mighty rivers, that dropped like wild waterfalls over the looming, shining apartment complexes, mansions, offices and dirty slums alike on the city-planet of Courascant. The rain was impartial to whom it gave the precious water.

The citizens of the planet were far to busy to think of how they relied on such a thing as rain, even on such a controlled planet as Courascant. But, there was one who watched the rain. He was confined to a bed of linen and the starch blankness of a hospital room.

He could have been mistaken for being middle-aged, but the lines of his face were mixed from sorrow, sickness, and injury. His ginger hair was disheveled on one side, and large amounts of bacta patches had been used to cover his body. A broken nose (which was already larger and hooked in the first place) and a healing black eye were evidences of either a terrible accident or a fight to tell the grandchildren of.

In one hand, he held a small but thick disk, a holo-recorder. He shifted a button with his thumb, and instantly the appearance of middle age left his face, for now he wore a smile upon it. On the holorecorder was a blue hologram of a teenage boy with a large nose, an exaggerated widows peak combined with bright red hair, and brown freckles against pale skin. Perhaps the thickness of the recorded boy could best be described as that of rivaling a stick, perhaps, even a sapling tree. A sick one, and the thinness was exaggerated by his large Jedi robes that fit him like old Bantha skin.

" My name is Joel Skywalker, and since Jaina and Jacen are so unbearable and likely to exaggerate things, and Ben' was in mothers womb at the time, I have decided it would be best to record of the actual events of what happened concerning my origins becoming public, and the dangers we are now in and also "

There was silence for a moment. The older Joel's face became sober. This was the source of all of his current. His younger self was now crying.

" It's me they want...and now... they have her." His brow furrowed, and he clenched his gloved fists." I can't let that happen. I'm going to leave as soon as I finish this, so I will have to make it quick. My name may be Skywalker, but, I am adopted. And when Mother and Father found me, they tried to get a lot of people to take me. unfortunately, once people found out my genetic origins, they rejected me. You see, I..."

There was another pause. Even on a holo-recording, it had been hard to tell the well-kept secret, one that had even been kept from himself for so many years. The older Joel drew in a sharp intake of breath along with the boy in the recording, as if helping his past self.

" I'm a clone of the Emperor Palpatine. "