Author's note: This is my fourth story about Akite, the third in chronological order ("The Last Laugh" comes a few years after this one). I have tried to make sure that people can read this without having read the stories that come before it. As one brief explanation: "Survivor's Guilt" is about Akite's journey home from Geonosis after her master's death, and she talks with Bultar Swan and an unnamed master, who are on the same ship as she is.
I'll give pronunciation of the more difficult names as I go along.
Akite Chairu - Ah-kee-tay. "Chai" rhymes with "sky" and "ru" rhymes with "new". Oreti Alo - Or-eht-tee Ah-loh Zefel - Zeh-fehl
After classes, I limp to my room and lie on my back on my bed. I stare at the white ceiling, my mind as blank as it is.
Master.
The thought crawls across the blank whiteness unbidden. I chase it away.
Oreti. My master.
I can't. I can't cry again. I'm a Jedi. I can't cling to the dead.
I want my master back!
I flip onto my stomach and bury my face in the pillow to keep the thought from tearing out in a scream. I can't do this. I am a Jedi. I am a Jedi!
I am also a thirteen-year-old who has just lost the closest thing she had to a parent since she was taken from her real ones nine years ago.
I lie on my side and try to tap into the Force. It is full of pain and fear from other Jedi in the Temple. I am not alone in my grieving. I am simply alone.
The Force shows me a web of connections and faults – shatterpoints – in my room. The door to the 'fresher is open, and I can see that a light strike through the Force in just the right – or wrong – place would break the faucet. I should have somebody fix it.
I have found that shatterpoint every day, several times a day, since I returned here after the Battle of Geonosis four days ago, and I haven't told anyone yet. The faucet is the only thing breakable here. Besides me.
I cry. I can see my master, Oreti Alo, as clearly in my head as if he were still with me. Young, blond-haired, and a bit shy and hesitant. I was his first apprentice. In our short time together, he became very proud of me, and I became very fond of him.
Now, he is dead.
There is no one to comfort me. Everyone is wrapped up in their own personal griefs and the fear of war, which we never learned to understand. My master is gone, and my friends –
I can't even touch that subject yet.
I really can't keep this up. The healers are already worried about me. I tell them that my leg still hurts from the blaster wound that was my only physical injury from Geonosis. They say that after five days (one was one the ship), it would have healed if I would let it.
Maybe I don't know how to let it.
I know my teachers have noticed. The initiates that now make up my classes, since all the padawans my age are dead or on missions, have noticed. Master Yoda has noticed and will surely ask to have a talk with me when he isn't too busy dealing with the war and all the heartbroken masters.
I don't want to talk about it.
But I miss Oreti.
My name is Akite Chairu, and I am a Zabrak Jedi padawan who survived the Battle of Geonosis.
My name is Akite Chairu, and I survived the Battle of Geonosis.
I survived the Battle of Geonosis.
I survived.
It simply doesn't work. I can't make myself accept it.
I shut my eyes and think of Bultar Swan and the things we talked about as we rode home from Geonosis. It seemed that things would be all right then. But that was the first pain, the shock of a blaster cutting my leg. This was the long, unending pain that comes after. And I wasn't alone then. There was me, the knight Bultar Swan, a master whose padawan had been killed, and all the clones. But both those Jedi were sent away within hours of our return to the Temple, leaving me completely alone.
Bultar Swan didn't want a padawan. She said so. But she was kind, and I could have hoped if she had stayed here.
But she didn't. Who will be my master now?
I open my eyes, though they are filled with tears. Today is a new day, and I must get up before I miss breakfast.
The door opens. I jump up – has someone been sent to see why I haven't come to breakfast yet?
A tall humanoid boy with golden skin, hair, and eyes stands in the doorway. I know him very well.
"Fang!" I shout in joy. But my friend's appearance opens a door I had wanted to keep shut. "Zefel," I whisper, remembering my other friend. She will never come back.
"Dorn," he reminds me. Dorn, too, is gone.
"Master…" I tell him.
"I know."
We sit on the bed and cry in each other's arms. I have never known Fang to cry before.
"How long will you be here?" I ask.
"I don't know. As long as they need Master."
"A long time…" I wish.
"Maybe."
Fang's master is a healer-knight. They are needed to heal the soul of the Jedi.
Fang, really Aaffeng Taolong, was the oldest of my group of friends, as I was the youngest. He has always been the wisest, though he keeps what he knew to himself, much to our dismay after we got in trouble for one of Dorn's schemes after another.
"Dorn's dead," I whisper. "I don't believe it."
"They found his body," is Fang's blunt response. "You can't deny that he is dead."
"But… never to get in trouble again? Never to get us in trouble again? Never to come up with another wild idea? Never to call me 'Kee' again?" "Kee" was Dorn's nickname for me.
"I'll call you 'Kee' for him," Fang offered.
I almost smiled at the thought. Fang is Dorn's opposite: tall where Dorn was short, wise were Dorn was anything but, thoughtful where Dorn was careless, serious where Dorn was silly. I just can't see Fang running down the hall, screaming some nickname he had made up for me, until a master yelled at him. Not Fang.
By the time we finished crying and washed away our tears, we have to run to class without breakfast. At least Fang is now with me. I spend more time paying attention to him than the teacher. It's such a relief to have a friend in the Temple. I'm having classes with younger students since nobody my age is around.
We have a lightsaber lesson with the most advanced initiates just before lunch. I am hungry by this point on a normal day, but without breakfast, I feel faint. I should tell the teacher, but he would send me to the healers, who would accuse me of trying to starve myself, or something. So I say nothing.
Because I am clearly the best at lightsaber combat in this group, including Fang, I am asked to demonstrate several moves. I watch the children through the white glow of the practice lightsaber, wishing this were my real green saber and I could be destroying the battle droids that would kill Oreti. My leg begins to throb and my stomach aches in its emptiness to remind me of past and present limitations. I stumble.
As I stand there, ashamed of my mistake in something I ordinarily have no trouble with, Fang chooses to speak: "She didn't eat breakfast."
I glare at him. Right! And if the teacher asks why, tell them how we cried! How un-Jedi we are!
"Is that true, Akite?" asks our teacher.
"Yes, Master," I tell him automatically.
"Why did you skip breakfast?"
"I overslept," I lie.
He frowns. I never oversleep, and in the Temple, teachers know everything about students. "Sit down," he orders me.
He does not ask me to do anything more. We go to lunch, and I hiss at Fang, "You didn't eat breakfast, either!"
He shrugs.
I eat as much as I can. I am silent throughout the meal.
I did the hard work: writing this. It won't take nearly as much effort for you to tell me whether you like it or not. In other words, please review!