Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars™ or any character, event or location from that said series. To the guy that does – Can I have a Darth Caedus action figure?
Extracts from Troy Denning's excellent work, Star by Star.
Seeking the Dead
Their Jedi courier vessel touched down, passing through the thick treetop canopy to settle in the mud of the swamp world, Dagobah. Seventeen year old Allana shut down the repulsorlift engines and looked to her aunt for approval. Jaina did not disappoint.
"Smooth. Although, I disagree with your choice of landing sites."
"This mud?"
"This planet."
Allana flushed. Jaina had yet to call her out on her decision to travel to Dagobah, though she felt sure her aunt would and soon. She suspected Jaina realised her motives and quite possibly understood them. Understood them all too well. For now avoiding the subject, Allana suggested they take a look around and slipped out of her co-pilots chair. Anji, her pet Nexu, waited patiently behind the crew seating for her mistress to set down the ship. Now she happily shadowed Allana aft to throw together supplies for their short journey. Jaina, however, was not ready to relent. Following her niece aft she finally admitted, "I know who it is you seek in the cave, Allana. I'm not sure this is a path you should be following."
Not 'what' she sought. Who.
Jaina's charge merely flicked some of her long hair, dyed brunette, out of her face. She did not turn to met her aunts gaze. "Sometimes to put someone behind us, first we have to face them."
"Even the dead?" Jaina countered. "Not everyone has that luxury Allana, seldom even the Jedi. To seek the dead is folly; they are one with the Force. Leave them to their peace."
When Allana failed to take any notice Jaina reminded her, "Failure to let go has been the downfall of the Skywalker's and Solo's too often in the past. Don't you think I ever feel the need to seek him out as Master Luke did? Do you think I don't have questions of my own? Will his answers finally make everything make sense?"
Her words did not deter Allana at all. "That's not why I need to see him."
"Why then?"
Anji was very sensitive to her mistress's feelings. Recognising her discomfort, Anji turned her head lopsided and studied Allan quizzically. Allana too studied her beloved Nexu friend which she had raised from a cub, another prime example of why she felt the need to take this journey. Allana relented and answered her aunt. "Because everyone thinks we're so alike. They can't help but considers how similar we are. I know he wasn't always…," Allana stopped to think of how best to explain her feelings. "I'm my father's daughter. I have to know I'm not on the same path."
"You've a lot of your mother in you too, and your grandmother; and especially your grandpa Solo. It is our choices that make us who we are…."
Allana turned and met Jaina eyes. "Then I choose to face my fears," she said pointedly. Her tone was stern yet diplomatic, a skill she must have picked up from her Grandmother Leia. Not for the first time Jaina reflected on the difficulty of raising Solos.
...
"I assume you know how this is meant to work," Jaina commented.
"There is nothing in there but what I take with me," Allana replied, unhooking her belt and passing her blaster, lightsaber and over pieces of equipment to her aunt. Jaina took them and nodded.
"The dark side is strong in the cave. I can't imagine anything it has to show you will bring you peace of mind." She sighed. "Be careful not to lose yourself in there."
"I won't."
Jaina nodded and crouched down to meditate. Allana took it as a sign that it was time. Wary, she approached the cave and entered. The dark side reached out its cold tendrils through the force to welcome her. She shuddered at its touch and resisted the urge to escape. Allana pressed on.
There were a great many life forms in the cave. Overgrown swamp plants and animals. As she moved deeper and deeper inside the plant life covering the cave walls began thin and disappear. The rock of the cave wall was exposed.
After anywhere from ten to twenty minutes of travelling deeper and deeper into the earth an alarming development happened. Everything around her was suddenly cut off from the Force! She could still feel its power and call upon it to give her strength. Certainly she could still feel the oppression of the dark side all around her. But she could no longer sense the plants and animals that had been with her until a moment previous, nor Jaina waiting for her outside. Not event the cave walls. Her senses were severely crippled and she did not like it.
At the precise moment the world around her was cut off from the Force, a light appeared further ahead. She heard war cries. The hiss of blaster fire and lightsabers. Other weapons too, and a language she was unfamiliar with. The source of which lay beyond a bend in the tunnel. Wary, she pressed forward. She did not hurry. Whatever the cave had to show her it could show her in her own time.
As she moved closer the light changed somewhat. It was still sunlight. Or a close approximation to it. The echoes of war were louder now. She could hear voices she believed she did recognise.
Allana rounded the bend to hear an anguished scream.
"Anakin!" Jaina screamed.
Through the Force Allana felt a powerful urge. "Go!" it commanded. She was startled to find herself in the midst of the infamous Myrkr Mission to end the threat of the horrendous Voxyn Jedi killers. In the light it was revealed what she had assumed to be cave rock was actually Yuuzhan Vong engineered yorik coral. She stood unnoticed, just below the bunker where younger versions of her father and aunt watched in horror as their little brother made his heroic sacrifice to hold off the Yuuzhan Vong warriors. While the event transpired before Allana's birth, the story was legendary among the Jedi. All the younglings knew it well.
Anakin dropped Yuuzhan Vong as fast as his blaster could fire yet still more warriors poured into the arena. A razor bug burying itself in his shoulder did not faze him. Anakin merely allowed the impact to spin him around and keep firing until he heard the depletion alarm. Dropping yet another warrior with the thrown blaster Anakin thumbed his lightsaber to life and ran to meet the Yuuzhan Vong head on. Overwhelming Force energy guided his hand and caused his very being to glow with a blue hue, but it was also disintegrating jumpsuit and, Allana remebered, Anakin along with it. Now she was here, wittnessing her heroic uncles death firsthand. She was filled with both the beauty of his movements and his sacrifice, and the horror at seeing such a nobles soul end. The raw power of the Force tearing him apart.
A longblaster roared and a blowing a head-sized hole appeared through a Yuuzhan Vong warrior, as well as the one behind him. Allana looked back to her Father and aunt's position. Jaina held the longblaster propped up against her should with tears streaming down her cheeks. Allana's father, weeping also, was trying to pull her away but Jaina refused to be moved, even refusing another Force urge from Anakin to "Go now!"
She fired again.
Anakin's purple blade wove back and forth, blocking and parrying and slipping strike after strike through his attacker's defences, cleaving the skulls of the vicious warriors. The entensive use of force energy was taking its toll as Anakin's aura flashed and dimmed, flashed again and dimmed as more and more of his cells ruptured. Realising this was the end, Anakin pulled his last thermal detonator off his harness and thumbed the timer three clicks.
"Go now," the Force urge repeated one final time.
"Anakin, I can't!" Jaina desperately wept.
Anakin raised the detonator so his brother and sister could see.. "Take her, Jacen. Kiss Tahiri for me."
He released the trigger and threw it into the crowd of Yuuzhan Vong.
There was a flash and then everything changed.
...
She was with the remnant of the Jedi strike team now. Still they either could not see her or took no notice of her. They spent this reprieve from the Yuuzhan Vong's relentless assault to eat and mourn.
Jaina was not eating. She sat alone, her vacant eyes staring at her feet. Allana felt the urge to comfort her in some way yet knew she could not interfere with what was happening. The cave would show her what it willed and no more. So she was glad then when her father, Jacen, scooped a bowlful of pulp from a shell-like serving basin and pressed it into Jaina's hands. "I don't feel like eating either, but you need to keep up your strength."
Jaina violently hurled the gruel against the coral wall. The coral began to glow more brightly as it absorbed nutrients, and no one spoke. A few seconds after the outburst Jacen tried again. He laid a hand on her knee and reminded her, "We can't give up. We still need to destroy the queen."
Jaina looked up, a faint spark of presence finally showing in her vacant eyes.
"You left him to the Yuuzhan Vong."
The accusation echoed all around the Dagobah cave. The dark side began to grow stronger.
"We had to. They were all over him. You saw that."
Jaina pushed his hand from her leg. "He put you in charge, and you left him behind."
The statement, "you left him," echoed again and Allana felt the weight of the cave's evil pressing down on her. It was oppressive. For Allana it became harder to resist and more difficult to concentrate on the scene before her. Her father said nothing. Fortunatly her mother, also part of the Myrkr strike force, came to the rescue.
"Jacen does not deserve your blame." Tenel Ka said sitting on the other side of the small room, her legs crossed beneath her and her posture as erect as ever. "Everyone heard the command, and we all know why he gave it. To disregard such an order would have been to dishonour Anakin's memory and dismiss his sacrifice."
Her strength, even in this vision, was enough to drive the dark side back. The presence of her mother gave Allana hope.
"Stay out of this, Tenel Ka," Jaina demanded. "You can't possibly know anything about it. You have the emotional depth of a ronto."
The speed with which Tenel Ka unfolded her legs and stepped around the low table proved otherwise. Allana thought for a moment her mother and aunt might start a brawl here and now, or then and there as she reminded herself. Tenel Ka only continued to glare until Jaina finally grew uncomfortable and looked away. When she did, Tenel Ka said, "We are all hurting, Jaina. Your brother, too."
Both women opened their hands and continued to stand and stare. The room remained uncomfortable and silent. The other Jedi stared into their gruel. This new tension weighed Allana down more than the dark side around her. She was viewing two women she loved and respected ready to tear each other apart and she didn't even know if what she was seeing was real. She looked into her father's eyes. He must have felt the way as her. He just didn't know how to relieve the situation.
He was spared the necessity of finding a way by the chirp of a comlink. Jacen snatched his own.
"Tesar?" he asked. "Did you find her?"
He was answered not by the Barabel's voice, but by another low growl. Wookiee voices did not carry well over comlinks.
"Lowie?" Jaina gasped, grabbing her own comlink. "Is that you?"
Lowbacca confirmed his identity with a groan.
"Lowie, forget it - they fooled us, too," Jacen said. "Where are you now?"
The answer Lowbacca rumbled was considerably more than a location. Young Jaina was filled with a new determination. "Keep watching," she ordered, "and whatever you do, stay with him. I'll be there as soon as I can."
She snapped her comlink off, and Jacen barely caught her arm before she reached the door.
"What are you doing?"
Jaina did not grant him the curtiousy of an answer. Instead Tahiri replied, "Going after Anakin's body - what do you think?"
...
The Jedi strike team split up and parted ways. Jaina, Tahiri, Alema and Zekk collected their gear to pursue Anakin's body, leaving her mother, father, Tekli, and another Jedi she wasn't familiar with to complete their mission. In a sense Allana was relieved. She already knew her aunt, mother and father would succeed in their respective missions and she was glad her mother and aunt had not come to blows. Now she could finally concentrate on her father and what the cave had to show her of him. Allana had hoped to confront more than visions of the past. She had hoped the Force Spirit of Jacen Solo would stand before her and submit to her demand for answers. If all the cave had to offer, however, was glimpses of the boy who would later become Darth Caedus, than so be it. She could judge for herself if it were true she had a great deal in common with this Jedi boy.
She was dumbfounded as an invisible barrier blocked her path. Worse, it was forcing her away from her parents. Astonishment turned to distress as Allana desperately fought against it, fought to stay with her parents. It was a hopeless battle. The barrier effortlessly swept her along after Jaina and her team to recover Anakin's body. Allana fumed at the unfairness. She had travelled so far expecting to find her father in the darkness, only for the darkness to tease her with the sight of his younger self.
The cave had other events it desired Allana to witness.
...
Jaina lined up the feathered Fosh traitor in the sights of her longblaster. As her finger squeezed the trigger, one of her companions brushed up against her. The shot went wide.
Jaina whirled on Zekk. "What'd you do that for? I had her!"
"And we don't know you should have," Zekk retorted almost as hotly. "She's done us no harm, and she's had the chance."
"The company she keeps is harm enough!" Jaina peered back into the pit, but her target had already snatched Anakin's lightsaber up and ducked out of sight.
"Zekk, don't do that again. Don't you dare stand in my way!"
Standing invisibly between her aunt and Jedi Zekk, Allana winced. She knew Jaina could have a harsh edge at times but here she threatened her friend with extreme venom. Zekk's worried expression was understandable.
The crowd of warriors below reeled as they realized they were under attack. Jaina shouldered her blaster, then snapped her lightsaber off her belt and hurled herself headlong into the pit. A warrior backed under the wall, using Anakin's body to shield himself.
"You two secure the shuttle," Jaina ordered Lowie and Tahiri. "Alema and I will get Anakin."
"You want your Jeedai?" The warrior placed the tip of his coufee against Anakin's cheek. "Stay back, or I give him to you in pieces!"
Jaina was clearly furious. She reached out into the Force with her rage and shoved Anakin's body hard. The warrior yelled in surprise and stumbled back into the collapsing arch, his coufee sliding away from his 'hostage'. Jaina jerked her brother free of the warrior's grasp and sent him floating in Alema's direction.
"Take Anakin," she ordered.
Allana could see it in her eyes. She could feel it all around her. As Jaina spoke, she was opening herself to her anger, using the power of its emotion to draw the Force, just as Allana had witnessed her father do during the Second Galactic Civil War. The power of the dark side emanated from Jaina in cold waves, feeding on her hatred of the Yuuzhan Vong and pouring it back to her twofold in power. Knowing she was just a witness, that she couldn't interact in any way with what was happening, Allana still called out for Jaina to stop.
In a motion so fast Allana barely saw it, the warrior sat up and flicked his coufee at Jaina's throat. The fallen Jedi did not bother to dodged or deflect the blow, although she easily could have. Instead, with ferocious energy she released the dark power. A fork of lightning crackled into existence a few centimetres beyond her glove tips and blasted a hole through the Yuuzhan Vong's chest. The dead husk was hurled onto a rubble pile, smouldering and motionless.
Ever since her traumatizing experience with her father and the destruction wrought by the Corellians and Centrepoint Station, Allana had always felt distressed by the touch of the dark side. It chilled her to feel it in others. Never had Allana considered Jaina had ever gone down the same dark path. Not Jaina, Sword of the Jedi, tireless defender of justice. Not after she had slain her own brother when he walked the path of the dark side. It could have been a dark side trick. Only in her heart she knew there was truth here. The cave relished revealing it to her.
Jaina seemed to fell someone watching and turned. Almost too late Allana realised Jaina was staring straight at her. Jaina's hand started to rise again and Allana sensed the dark side within her building. Without a lightsaber Allana could only roll out of the way before the deadly blast. Electrical forks lashed at her feet.
"What's the matter, Allana? Were you expecting someone else? You're father perhaps?"
Allana came up on her feet, keeping legs ready to spring and her centre of gravity low. Even deprived of her weapon, as a Jedi Allana was still far from defenceless. Even in this dark place she had the light side of the Force and the power of compassion to sustain her. She could draw on this powerful ally through her serenity and the love evoking thoughts of her family. Feelings this dark doppelganger of Jaina Solo, drawing so deeply on her rage and her pain, could never understand.
"You're not Jaina! This is a trick."
"I am Jaina Solo. I am Jaina unshackled from never-ending duty and sacrifices of being the 'Sword of the Jedi'. I am Jania having relinquished the burden of watching everyone she cares for be driven away or slain. Sometimes by her own blade. If you wish to deny the truth, continue to delude yourself by pretending I'm not Jaina Solo. You may call me Darth Fraudatio instead, the Dark Lord of Trickery."
"Not a title that endears me to your 'truth'."
Fraudatio's yellow on red eyes flashed with amusement. "Nothing anyone ever tells you is the truth. Your father knew the truth of this. The truth is too big. You can only realise that everything you are told is a lie, and the truth is in your heart."
"If the truth is in my heart than I know you're not Jaina."
"Maybe. But I'm what she could have been."
The young Jedi didn't respond. In her heart, Allana knew the claim was not a complete fabrication.
"I'll tell you what, Jedi," Fraudatio mocked the title, making it sound repulsive; "you came such a long way to find your answers. Why don't you ask me instead?"
"No, thank you," Allana offered diplomatically. "It's kind of a personal matter. I think I can wait for the genuine article. You wouldn't happen to know any abandoned star cruisers or asteroids Jacen Solo haunts, would you?"
"Forget your father. The inept philosopher had no spine when he was alive, why would you assume he would front up and face you now that he's dead? He abandoned you Allana, abandoned you like he abandoned Anakin. So if you won't ask your questions now you'll never again have the opportunity."
Allana considered this carefully. She wasn't sure if this mockery of Jaina told the truth this time. Allana felt abandoned; she would not have travelled here if she did not. She felt her father had put his own twisted vision of an ordered galaxy ahead of her. However, Allana also felt sure if Jacen could have appeared to her, here and now, he would have done. As her grandmother had once told her, "he would have changed the galaxy for you." If Jacen could not be found here then he was not anywhere.
Bitter dissapointment filled Allana, stregthened by the dark side around her. It was true. This was her only chance to express her questions and doubts. Perhaps even have them answered.
Before Allana had entered the cave, Jaina had told her she doubted it would bring her peace of mind. Studying Fraudatio, Allana saw that she was right. Nothing in this cave was going to bring her comfort. She turned to leave this dark place and its trickster.
"You want to know, if he was so very like you, why did he fall?" Fraudatio called after her. Allana ignored her. The Dark Lord of Trickery could get bent. Allana wasn't going to play her game.
Her path was suddenly blocked. Allana was in a new location now, though still deep within a Yuuzhan Vong ship or structure. In front of her was a young Jacen Solo, her father, strapped to the embrace of pain.
Fraudatio no longer appeared in her physical form, but her whispers spoke directly into Allana's ear. "I had my revenge. I made him pay for leaving Anakin behind. I left him to play with his demons."
Jacen was delirious. In terrible pain, and not just the physical kind the Yuuzhan Vong specialised in. Allana could sense the terrible strain he was under. And she could hear it. The echo.
"You left him."
"No."
"You left him."
"No choice," Jacen choked out.
"You left him."
In his delirium Jacen left out a terrible scream. "Anakin!"
...
Anji stirred beside her and propped up her head. Jaina too sensed Allana was emerging from the cave and unfolded her legs from her meditative position. The girl seemed a little rattled by the experience, and disappointed. At least she was still in good health. The Jedi really had not idea how damaging the tree could be to a persons physical or mental well being. She stepped forward to help her niece while Anji rushed over to greet her friend on return.
Allana gratefully hugged Anji, genuinely happy to see the large domesticated predator with its four eerie eyes, rows of razor sharp teeth and a maw that could swallow an Ewok whole. She only tensed when she saw her aunt. Jaina sensed this was significant, though she did not yet want to badger Allana about it. Instead she commented, "I take it you didn't find him," and held out her hand.
Allana's wariness hung in the air a moment longer before she released her tension and took the outstretched hand. Jaina helped her out of the cave and back to the ship.
"No," was the answer to Jaina's question. "Yes. Just glimpses of the past. It wasn't really him."
Jaina couldn't help mirroring the girl's disappointment. While it may be folly to seek the dead, she could not totally quash her interest. To see her brother again, feel their twin bond once more... The prophecy warned she would stand tall and alone. Jaina hadn't known 'alone' until she had slain the one constant in her life.
"Then you didn't learn what you wanted?"
"No, but I learned – I learned you were right," Allana admitted. "I can't count on the dead to appear and make everything alright. I have to face the future without the luxury of my father answering me for his actions."
Jaina considered it a victory so far as reigning in Solo hard-headedness went. "I'm glad to hear it Allana."
"That doesn't spare the living from a brain picking, however," Allana warned. "The cave. It showed me things. The Myrkr mission. Retrieving Anakin's body. The last things you said to my father before he was captured by the Yuuzhan Vong."
Jaina winced, sorry that her niece had to see that awful part of her life and the mistakes she had made. Certainly this revelation explained why Allana tensed upon sighting her earlier. By all accounts Jaina seriously went off the deep end after Anakin's death. Perhaps the scariest aspect of the episode was all she remembered feeling was righetous. "The cave is strong in the dark side, Allana. I don't think it cares about your desire to see Jacen. It only wants to hurt you."
"So you're saying the cave was lying?"
"No," Jaina stated. "I'm saying the cave told you the truth, or at least the truth from the dark side's point of view. Sometimes the most painful weapon of all is the truth. Are you strong enough to accept it what it showed you?"
Allana considered. "I think I am."
"Do you forgive me?"
"Yes."
"It didn't show you the crummy things I did it at Hapes did it?"
Allana eyed her aunt, puzzled. "No. Why?"
"No reason," Jaina assured her. A few more steps trekking through the swamps she added, "what about me and Zekk alone as Killik joiners?"
Author's Note: Remember – the tree is screwing solely with Allana. Don't read too much into its portrayal of Jaina and Jacen.