Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars. Shocking, right?
Prologue- The Datapad
Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Luke Skywalker paced a darkened room. His eyes were hooded shadows, his face furrowed in deep thought. His clothes were rumpled, as if he'd slept in them, and his posture indicated exhaustion and frustration, hands clenched and head bowed. He sighed every few minutes, exhaling slowly in an attempt to release the tension that held his body and mind taut and unable to sleep.
He'd been like this for three days now. Sleeping fitfully, plagued with nightmares of confusion- memories of a dying man aboard a doomed space station whispering his name, flames of a funeral pyre engulfing a prone, black-clad figure, but one that still breathed. A slim silhouette with long wavy hair. Stormy blue gray eyes, staring, accusing and sad. The desperate cry of a woman. His father's face, icy blue eyes replaced by glowing yellow, loving expression turned to indifference and contempt.
And always, a desperate plea for help, voiced by the heartbroken cry of a young girl.
In exasperation, Luke sat down heavily on his bed, letting his head fall into his hands. "Father, are you trying to tell me something?" he asked, half mumbling. It had only been a week after Anakin's death and he still was unable to remove his father from the forefront of his mind. The last (and perhaps first) time their eyes had met, blue on watery blue, was imprinted too deeply into the mind of the younger Skywalker. He couldn't help but wonder how things could have ended if Anakin had lived, had been able to speak with his children. Luke doubted whether the questions and "what-ifs" would ever really cease.
Running out of options, the young Jedi Knight breathed in deep, crossed his legs, placed his hands on his knees, and began to meditate, putting himself in tune with the living Force. His mind was so full, so questioning, and he didn't know what else he could do to calm himself down.
Unexpectedly, after a few moments, his eyes snapped open to see a ghostly blue figure standing in the corner of his small room.
A tall, handsome, dark-haired ghostly blue figure with Jedi robes and a scar down the right side of his face.
Luke stood with a gasp. "Father?"
Anakin Skywalker smiled sadly.
Son looked at father with slight incredulity. He didn't know what to say. He certainly hadn't expected to see Anakin again after his last appearance on Endor. Why hadn't his soul been absorbed into the Force, like all beings a short time after death?
"What- what are you-?"
Luke couldn't get control of his stuttering voice, and he bit his lip as no words proved adequate for his question in his confused state of mind. His eyes searched the other man's for answers.
Anakin sighed. The smile dropped from his face. "You look so much like she did. It's unbelievable."
Luke knew he spoke of his mother, and didn't say anything. He just waited, watching the spirit of his father with wide eyes.
"I'm still here," Anakin answered after a short pause, "because I have unfinished business. As cliché as that sounds." He laughed humorlessly. Luke raised his eyebrows.
"What unfinished business could you have, Father?" he asked, surprised. "I thought you turned back to the light before you died, and surely Master Obi-Wan and Master Yoda have forgiven you by now." A sudden thought occurred to him. "Is it because you never met Leia?"
His father grimaced. Evidently, he'd discovered his daughter's identity from Obi-Wan and regretted everything he'd done to her. "I do regret that..." he responded with sadness, "but no, that's not the main reason I'm here.
"While I was alive, I made a lot of mistakes." Now it was Luke's turn to chuckle without real mirth, and Anakin grinned with him, the expression on his face now more closely resembling the cocky young Knight he'd been before the fall of the Republic.
"You can say that again," Luke snorted.
"Anyway," Anakin continued, growing somber once more, "There's one mistake that I can't leave for someone else to fix." He stepped closer to his son, holding his ice blue eyes with an intense gaze. An insubstantial hand was placed on Luke's shoulder.
"Luke, I lived my whole life being told I was the "Chosen One". The one who would restore balance to the galaxy. And even with all that preparation, I managed to mess up everything and throw the Republic into a period of darkness. But you are the one who fixed it all in the end. You're the one who brought back balance to the Force. You are the one who is meant to clean up the mess I left behind." At this, he lowered his eyes in shame. "I'm... I'm so sorry you have to deal with that."
"Father," Luke said. Anakin raised his head once more, and his son could clearly see the deep remorse in his eyes. "I forgive you." Luke smiled. "We're all human."
His father smiled tentatively as well, before returning to his serious manner. "Thank you... but there is still one heartbreak I caused that I don't believe anyone can ever forgive me for.
"I need your help, Luke. I need you to go to the Emperor's old office in the Senate building, and find a personal datapad that's hidden there."
Luke's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "But, Father... why would you need me to go there?" What mistake could Anakin possibly have made to request something so strange as atonement?
The spirit closed his eyes. "It's a long story. I'll have to explain it all once you arrive. But this is very important." Anakin's eyes opened to lock again with Luke's. "I made the worst betrayal of my life almost thirty years ago, and I can't let myself fade away until I can at least acknowledge that to the person I hurt."
Luke couldn't say anything after that, even if he still didn't understand. So he stood up, threw some supplies into a bag, and left the dark room as the ghost of Anakin Skywalker faded.
"I promise you, Father," he swore soundlessly. "I'll help you."
Luke handled the speeder expertly, whizzing through the heavy traffic of Coruscant that was present even at night with ease. Soon, the tall skyscraper that was the old Senate Building came into view. His apprehension grew.
He landed on a platform and jumped out of the vehicle, walking quickly inside the nearest set of doors. Not many were present at this time of night, but cleaning droids and a few sleep-deprived politicians left over from the mock Senate still remained. He received startled glances and even a brief bow from one Twi'lek woman as he moved swiftly through the hallways of the top floor. After all, as a war hero of the Alliance (and the brother of a Princess) he'd been given full clearance for every part of the huge building, and was also recognizable on sight as one of the last remaining jedi in the galaxy.
Luke knew the former Emperor's office was located at the west end of the top floor from a tour he'd been given by Leia earlier that week, after returning from Endor. So he headed in that direction, his father's words still ringing in his ears. The man had been so depressed, so remorseful... and as he mentioned Luke and Leia's mother, his face had taken on a strange, undecipherable expression. As if he had been searching for someone else in his son's face, rather than her...
Luke shook off the thoughts. Right now, all that mattered was finding that mysterious datapad and helping his father pass on in peace.
He soon came to the door he was looking for. It was locked, but with a simple wave of his hand the lock clicked and let him enter. The Emperor probably wasn't worried about beings stopped by a locked door, Luke guessed.
The door slid open as he palmed the sensor, and he stepped into yet another dark chamber. Another wave of his hand and the lights flickered on, though dim and rather shadowy. The nighttime cityscape out the floor-to-ceiling windows was breathtaking, but Luke was focused only on the large desk, angled in a corner.
"It's gotta be in here," he muttered, and in a few strides he was at the desk and rooting through drawers. He searched for a moment, sorting through drawers of insignificant official profiles of countless powerless figureheads, holodiscs of hundreds of orchestrated "meetings" with representatives that could do nothing but agree with the all-powerful Emperor, and several documents that looked as though they were records of bribes exchanged over time to help the most high-ranking Imperial officers stay loyal to the Empire- in other words, the ones that the heinous old man couldn't afford to kill. At last, he reached out with the Force and felt it; a hidden drawer, concealed underneath a seemingly larger compartment.
Obviously, Sidious hadn't expected anyone to ever get this far in searching his things, as with another wave of his hand Luke was able to open the lock on the little door and reach inside. The Alliance had surely searched through his possessions already, and yet hadn't located this little hiding spot. It was camouflaged cleverly, and Luke was grateful once again to have the Force on his side. He'd never have found it otherwise.
He reached his mechanical hand inside, and pulled out two items. One was a rather outdated model of a personal datapad, the kind beings recorded in themselves. It had scratches on the surface and looked worn out. The other was a file, titled with the initials J. G. L.
Luke walked over to the wall and sat against it, closing the open door with a wave of his hand. He looked at both the objects, one in each hand, and decided to open the file first. It might give him more clues to understanding the datapad, when he began reading.
The file, upon closer inspection, was another like the profiles of the political figureheads Luke had run across while searching the rest of the desk. However, instead of an image of a pompous, rather old man or woman in official robes, the picture that appeared first on the screen was a head and shoulders shot of a pretty young human girl.
She was quite obviously a teenager, perhaps seventeen. Her honey brown hair fell in waves past the bottom of the picture, and gray-blue, thoughtful eyes stared out at him from her picture. Her skin was tan from the sun, and her eyebrows were raised, as though questioning the photographer. Her mouth was slightly opened, as if she was about to say something, and her face asked a question. He wondered momentarily who had taken the picture. However, two prominent features stood out from the rest to Luke, catching him by surprise.
A front lock of her hair was braided in a rather symbolic manner, a little strip of light blue ribbon running through it. The braid of a jedi padawan, Luke realized with a start. And upon closer inspection, her clothing appeared to be a jedi tunic.
What in the galaxy was a file of a jedi padawan from Force knows how long ago doing in Emperor Sidious' desk? Luke couldn't fathom it.
He glanced down. The picture was captioned merely "J. G. L.", just like the front of the file. As he turned to the next screen, he saw just one more image. She could not have been any older than Luke at the most. Her hair was cut a little shorter and pulled up high, expression hard even though she had a slight smile on her face as she looked to the side, seeming to search the crowd in the background. She had been through war, whispered the small scars that laced her skin and the hand she unconsciously laid at her hip, on the hilt of her weapon. She had experienced heartbreak and pain, spoke her deep, saddened eyes. She stood on a street corner in a busy city. The weather was rainy and gray. She had obviously not been aware of her picture being taken, as she was facing at an angle, and the photographer had caught the scene at a distance. She was the only one in focus in a sizable roaming crowd.
Eventually tearing himself away from the images, Luke began to look through other useless information, pages and pages of cryptic little notes riddled with acronyms and symbols that he couldn't decipher. He stopped on a page titled "General Information", that was slightly more understandable. On it was listed basic information about the girl, and he discovered that she'd been born in the same year as his father and had served as a jedi general in the Clone Wars.
At the bottom of the page, a heading titled "Notes" stood out. Only one sentence was listed under the words.
Watch carefully.
Luke felt a chill run through him. Whoever this "J.G.L." was, he wouldn't want to be her- anyone Sidious had been "watching carefully" was bound to walk a very thin line indeed. Still, the question of why remained. What reason could the deceased Emperor have had for keeping a file on a young jedi woman who was in all likelihood dead by the time he seized full control of the government? What caused him to hold on to this information for over twenty years?
Luke skimmed over some more pages of odd symbols and reminders, possibly events recorded for later reference, judging by the way each paragraph or so was dated. However, he couldn't seem to make sense of them. Then, he came to a page marked "Progress". It looked newer than the rest. Following the title were those initials again, as well as dated entries with what looked like medical charts and small notes to the side, such as "remaining in stasis", "vital signs stable" and "no major brain activity".
Luke didn't understand. The pieces of this puzzle were difficult to put together, and he eventually closed the file when he couldn't make any more of it than he already had, instead turning to the datapad.
Where the title should have been written, there was an inscription. "'For Juli'," Luke read aloud. He slipped the cover open, interested.
Much like the file, the datapad began with images. However, there were many, many more, and of a different sort. The girl had looked more serious and ready to do battle in the previous pictures- and she had always been alone.
But here... here were pictures of a smiling, laughing little girl. She was staring straight at the camera, her huge blue eyes filling her grinning face. Her hair was pulled up to the side in a cute, if messy, ponytail. Her face was so happy that a smile unconsciously tugged at Luke's lips. In the next shot, she was giggling and looking sideways at a blond boy next to her, who was cutting his eyes over at her as well and smirking. They had their arms over each other's shoulders.
There were dozens of images, and Luke looked through them all, laughing to himself occasionally. The girl he presumed was the 'Juli' mentioned on the inscription was in all of them, and he watched her progression from carefree child to laughing teenager to battle-hardened young woman with interest. In most of them, the boy was with her, doing something or other. When Luke came across one image in particular, he nearly dropped the datapad in surprise and recognition.
It was the single picture without the girl in it. The boy featured looked about fifteen or so, with his blue lightsaber out and blazing. He was tall, good-looking, and cocky. His intense blue eyes focused on his unseen opponent, his expression determined. Luke thought that he had looked familiar in previous pictures... but here, his face was unmistakable. As was his weapon.
The boy in all those pictures, the one always with the girl- it was his father.
Luke almost couldn't believe it. He'd never, from Obi-Wan or Yoda or even Anakin himself, heard anything about such a close friend of his father. All he'd ever heard mentioned with Anakin's past was Tatooine, the Emperor, and how he betrayed the Order and became Darth Vader. Through various information, he'd also been able to piece together the story of his father and mother- the jedi and the senator from Naboo.
No one had ever mentioned a Juli. Nothing had ever hinted at the fact that his father may have had a best friend as a child at the Temple. Anakin had never spoken of her, not once... and yet, the pictures made it clear that they had been close friends. It was as if he'd stumbled upon a taboo secret, a piece of his father's old life that was never to be mentioned, or even remembered at all. But Anakin had said he could not rest until he had made up for a heartbreak he had caused... and he must have meant this girl, Luke realized, remembering his father's vague mentions of a terrible betrayal.
Had his father... surely not. Luke shook his head in denial. Surely, even once Anakin Skywalker had turned to the dark side, he had not been so callous as to take the life of his own childhood friend.
Despite his refusal to come to that particular conclusion, the clues were beginning to assemble in his frantically working mind, slowly lining up and making a little more sense. However, Luke knew that the journal he held in his hands must hold the answers he was seeking.
A little shaky from apprehension, the young jedi turned to the first page of writing in the personal datapad he held in his hands. It was a letter.
As Luke began to read, he didn't notice the translucent form of his father begin to materialize behind him, eyes following the text on the screen over his shoulder. And he certainly didn't notice the unnatural brightness shining in his stubborn, unwilling blue eyes as the son of Anakin was introduced to perhaps his father's greatest mistake.
I never used this journal before. I don't know why. Maybe I was just so busy living my life I never had the time or the patience to write about it. You always used to say that people were writers and teachers because they never actually got around to doing things themselves. While I don't necessarily agree, and also don't understand how I never grasped the true depth of your arrogance before now, your words still follow me.
I don't even know why I'm writing now, come to think of it. What am I, a masochist? A lover of dark irony? This might even be considered vain, and rather self-centered.
Why do I feel the need to relive all that's happened?
I'm probably just nostalgic and melancholy. Having your life uprooted and endangered by the very organization you've worked all your life trying to protect and sustain tends to do that to a girl. (And there's that dark irony again.) Or a woman, I should say. I turned twenty-three yesterday, so I suppose I can't really be called a girl anymore. Such a nice birthday present you've gifted me with, dear friend. A broken heart is what every young adult woman wants on her special day.
I apologize if I sound bitter. But you know, that's really your fault, too.
Force knows why, but I've apparently chosen the down time I've got as I run for my life (from the only home I've ever known, and also your fault, I might add) to try my hand at being a writer. What better to record than your own life story? They have to get their ideas for those sappy holos from somewhere, after all.
So, as long I'm pretending that you'll ever somehow come across this and read it- here's my story. Hope you get something out of it, besides a good laugh at my expense.
I still can't believe I was wrong about you. You think you know a person. But there's so many facets of the character of a sentient being that I don't think you can ever fully understand what goes on in their head.
Anyway. I should get started, before I run out of time. I have a funny feeling I don't have much of it left, thanks to you.
-Julianna Galatyn Lumenti
Author's Note: I am so completely sorry that this has taken me three months to get together. I really have no excuse, except for an extreme case of Writer's Block coupled with a healthy dose of caution. But I'm sick of waiting for things now, due to several current events in my life, and so I just decided to throw caution to the winds and post this- after editing it for about half an hour, of course. I hope it works out okay the way I've (hopefully) fixed it. I know I didn't have too many readers before so, as depressing as that is, it makes me feel a bit better about leaving this alone for so long. I hope you forgive me, people that were reading it, and that you continue to read and review. I am so excited for this story(:
A few other things to note- Most importantly, this story is indeed mine! I wrote it and came up with the plot, although it used to be posted under Msmes' account for personal reasons. Now that I have my own, Friendship and Betrayal will obviously be my property. So no scandalized reviews about how I'm a despicable plagiarizer, please.
Also, though I love Star Wars and can prattle on for a long time about details in the series, I have never been into reading the books and anything in the EU. I also happen to possess a very busy life. =/ In addition, I have no beta well versed in the Star Wars universe. Consequently: a) some of my Star Wars information, such as exact dates/ages/events, may be completely wrong. I would appreciate a helpful correction, and I will fix the mess-up as soon as I can. b) my character knowledge of Ferus Olin will be sketchy. I may or may not completely remake the events surrounding him... depending on how lazy I am! and c) unfortunately, my updates will be sporadic. I will try my absolute hardest to have them up every two weeks, though. Usually they'll be posted on a Friday or Saturday evening.
I hope the reviews from the previous version are saved, but if they aren't, know that if you reviewed, I love you dearly, and that your kind words are forever saved in my email. (:
Thanks for sticking with me through that horrendously long author's note (oh, you thought I was gonna say hiatus? Ha, that too I guess) and you can be assured that now this chapter, and hopefully the period of crippling Writer's Block in my life, is coming to a close. I'll try not to make either my breaks or my author's notes this long again.
Please review and let me know what you thought! And also please don't be offended by anything I may have said in the above paragraphs. No offense was intended. ^_^
-Lady E
*Edit November 23
Hehe... yeah... has it really, truly been five months? o_o I am so, so sorry people. Life hit me in the face with a sledgehammer. But an update is coming in the next twelve hours, definitely! I promise! I just figured I'd edit this while I was at it.
A very apologetic!
Lady E