A Star Wars FanFiction by Riamca
It was dark in the dormitory when I opened my eyes, darker than I remember it ever being before. I wasn't afraid though, I'd never been afraid of the dark. To fear the dark was only a symbol, to fear the unknown, and while I was certainly afraid of the latter, the dark was a warm, familiar blanket I'd gladly wrap myself up in. It was late at night, and the other girls in the room were still beneath the covers, save for the gentle pattern of breath each one of them possessed. I slowly drew myself up into a sitting position, stifling my yawn with a hand, and lowered my skinny little legs to the marble floor. I knew perfectly well I wasn't to be out of bed at this hour, but I couldn't help myself. An irresistable pull drew me to the metallic door, and I raised my hand to the touchtone pad that would open it. Silently, it slid open, and the light that fell through it cut into my blanket of protective darkness like a knife, slicing through the familiarity with a keen edge.
I felt my feet slapping against the cold floor before my mind registered the motion; I was running. How or why that'd happened, I wasn't sure, but it wasn't long before I was outside the door to one of the other dormitories, one just a little ways from my own. It was the boys room, and the room of my friend. The touchtone pad didn't work for me here, and would detect my escape and report it to my teachers. I'd have to get around that. I squeezed my eyes shuft tight, and focused on what I wanted. 'Open, open, open...' Although I was the only one who could hear my little voice in my head, it was only a moment before I heard the quiet click of the lock, and the door slid open. I crept inside, my eyes quickly adjusting to the minimal light, and stole across the room to where I knew he'd be sleeping. Without even thinking about why I was doing all this, I placed my hands on his shoulder and shook him, ignoring his grumbled moans of protests as he roused.
"Drace! Drace, wake up!" My voice sounded much more urgent than I thought it should be...I didn't wonder why, although I didn't know, either. It wasn't of consequence. Right now, the only thing that mattered was doing what that irresistable pull wanted me to. I was helplss to it. After a moment, my friend sat up, rubbing his eyes, and I grabbed his wrist. He protested as I yanked him out of bed and towards the door, he too weary to argue much. I dragged him through the stone halls of the temple without too much trouble, after he ceased his whining, as though the same pull that drew me was now working on him, too. We had just made it to the main hall when we heard the footsteps. Ordinarily, footsteps would never scare me, not here. But the pull told me, made me back against the wall, cower behind a large stone pillar, and Drace followed willingly.
I didn't see them when they walked by us, nor did I catch the words they spoke in hushed voices, but I was glad when their footsteps faded and finally went away, and I started on the journey again. Drace needed no prompting to follow along, and I felt sure the only reason my hand was still clamped in his was for our mutual security.
We reached the hangar bay undisturbed by anyone else, until we saw her. There she was, dressed in the plain brown tunic of a jedi, her hair twisted into the braid of a padawan, standing before the control console, waiting for us. We didn't try to hide, knew there was no need. She regarded us for a silent moment, and I would later learn how silly we looked, two seven year olds in our night clothes, clinging to one another as we left all we'd ever known behind. And she nodded, pressed a button, and whisked us away from it all.
And somehow, I always knew that if she hadn't, we would've died that night.
--
Her name was Terryn Soralia, sixteen years old, and now in charge of raising two children all by herself. We barely spoke that first night we met, Drace and I sat in the sleeping quarters of the small cruiser we'd taken, drifting in and out of sleep, while Terryn piloted the ship through hyperspace, taking us to the outer rim, outside of republic space. Here, the Jedi council wouldn't be able to help us, even if they could find us. But, it wasn't until the second day that this stopped worrying me.
I was cycling through the star map when it happened, checking over our course for the past twelve hours to make sure it didn't intersect with any trade routes. Terryn had already explained that we were here because the force willed it, it had been what had made her whisk two younglings from the academy, abandoning both the order and her master in order to do what she knew she must. What she didn't know was why. She'd been in meditation, leaving Drace to watch the auto-pilot light blink softly, for almost three hours now, and I couldn't shake the feeling that something bad had happened, something horrible.
And then the pain hit. It was like a knife, twisting in my heart like an assassin's dagger, then leaving a devastating hole where it had been. It felt like my insides had been torn out and strewn about the tiny cabin. Drace fell out of the pilot's chair, and I knew his pain was the same as mine, as I gasped for breath on the cockpit floor. Terryn barrelled through the door then, her breathing erratic and beads of sweat forming on her brow, her eyes wild as she looked at the two of us, then sank down to the floor in defeat. Drace and I were still gasping for breath, for while the pain itself had gone by, the hole that it'd left was still something we couldn't deal with. She looked lost in sorrow, and I touched her knee, my wide eyes curious.
"They're dead," her soft voice was hollow, her eyes didn't see me, only looked through me, as though she didn't even mean for me to hear. "The entire jedi order...I can't feel any of them." I didn't understand what she could mean. The force linked all jedi, but a few dying couldn't hurt this much. And it hurt, it hurt so very much. Tears streamed from Terryn's eyes, and she shook her head, not believing it could be true. "Oh no, oh no, no no no no." She mumbled, and she sat there, a shadow of herself, for what seemed to me to be a great many hours. Drace and I took turns making sure the auto-pilot stayed on course and looking after her, until we had to shake her out of her reverie. That would prove to be our difficulty.
"Terryn, you need to eat. Get up!" Drace ordered her sternly, and standing he was the same height as she was sitting on the floor. He put his hands on his hips and scowled at her commandingly. "If you don't eat, you'll waste away, and you'll die! And then you'll be just like the rest of the order!" I winced. That was definitely not the right incentive. As I watched them, a slow beeping emerged from the console before me, and I jumped.
"Drace! It's beeping at me!" I squeaked, my wide eyes switching between him and the furiously blinking red light before me. I heard his light footsteps behind me, and I kept my eyes on the screen before me.
"We're here." He spoke after a moment, then looked to Terryn. "Where's here, exactly, I don't know. We never studied this planet." I stood on the seat to look out the wide window of the ship. It was a planet thick with green, dense with more greenery than I'd imagined a planet could have. My eyes widened. I didn't recognize the shape of the continents, or the oceans. He was right. "Terryn? I don't know how to land." He added, and I turned around to look at our new mentor.
For the first time in hours, Terryn's eyes seemed to open, and she blinked the dead look away from her eyes. "Right. Of course." She breathed, lurching to her feet on legs that were still wobbly. She barely made it into the pilot's seat as I hopped out of it, peeking around the chair as she took the controls and steered us down to the planet's surface. I watched out the window as we descended into the masses of unruly plantlife, trees whose growth had been curbed by no one, growing tall and unrestrained. My mouth dropped open with the knowledge that no one else lived here, that this was a place that belonged only to the beasts.
Once we touched down on the surface, Terryn returned to her zombie-like state. We stayed inside the ship for almost a week, talking very little, eating the emergency rations stored in the ship. As our food and water supplies diminished, Drace and I started to consider the possibility of leaving the ship on our own to look for supplies.
"If we stay close, we should be okay." Drace said as he looked through the compartment that held the weapons, sifting through until he found a plasma torch that was about the right size for him. "You need a weapon too, Sakina." He looked to me, but his stern look was ruined by the surprise that took his face as Terryn lifted him off his feet, wrenching the torch from his grasp. She didn't set him down until she'd locked the compartment again.
"Sakina, I know you can open this. But you're not going to until I get back, are you?" I could only nod in agreement to her, and Drace frowned at me.
"We can help you! We're not babies!" He argued, seeming all the more childish for it. Terryn shook her head at him before she headed out the door.
"Wait for me here."