Very important author note: I changed nickname. Still me, still the old The Edge Of Darkness. I was just tired of an eight years old nickname. This ones sounds... better. Thank you for your attention. Have fun now!
Chapter 1 - The Wind Which Blows Before The Rain
A storm was coming.
It was in the air, in the Force. I had been feeling that for weeks now. There was something announcing it. A storm was about to blow up, and we could do nothing but wait for it and see what it would bring.
I stood beneath the ivy-covered patio at the Varykino Retreat, facing the lake, cold beer in my hand, thinking about what was going on and waiting for the thick clouds coming from the north to obscure the setting sun and night to fall. Making the kids sleep would be tricky.
After years of thinking about it, roughly two years ago we had decided to move away from Dantooine. Most of the Rebels were now scattered around better equipped bases and small operative cells all around the galaxy. The only "historic" base remaining was the one on Yavin IV, and we were doing fine with that.
But when an accident nearly killed one of the children, we thought we couldn't stay there anymore with them, it wasn't safe for them (for anyone actually) and we went to Naboo. The recent change in government, from a pro-Empire one to a more neutral administration allowed us to move there and settle our little Jedi school in the Naberrie family summer house. And there the kids grew. Some of them, well, most of them were now teenagers, were almost ready to become Jedi Knights, with Luke and Leia leading the group of the most advanced trainees.
We were already discussing about when, where and how let them sustain the Trials.
Well, times goes by quite fast when you're having a good time, but the good times were almost over. I could feel it in my bones, not only in the Force. The incoming storm was both literal and metaphorical. We were about to face something new, something dangerous. The skin in the back of my neck tingled with anticipation and fear.
I admit I longed the feeling of adrenaline rushing in my veins during battle. That was the only thing I missed about being on the field fighting my way back home with my lightsaber. Not that family life was bad, being a teacher was awesome and being the father of four amazing kids was indeed nice, but I was born to be a fighter, I was trained to be a warrior and except for some minor stunts chasing off a bug here and there I didn't do much fighting. My twisted back and always sore shoulder were thankful for that, but my inner jackass wasn't much.
Oh well...
Seemed like destiny had something more for us incoming.
I looked up at the darkening sky and saw a couple of early stars twinkle in front of me, with the reddish light of twilight lit the valley on my right. It didn't feel right.
Normally, a landscape like that would leave me breathless, at loss of words and at peace. Unfortunately, that evening it left me chilling and unsure, a feeling of lacking safety that I doubted it would let me sleep that night. That's how I work, if I don't feel fine about what the Force is telling me, or if I don't understand what it's telling me, like in that occasion, was not able to sleep. I was used to that, but it had been seven years since it had happened last time,
And that was right before we left and roamed the Galaxy to find Jax and bring him back home.
Seven years later, many things had changed.
For instance, as I said, the whole Jedi compartment of the Rebellion was now based on Naboo, back where we belonged. Second, there were more kids. Four more, to be exact. Matt and Jessie, Hilean's younger brother and sister, Willow, Darrick and Lysveet's daughter, and Lennart, the last adjunct to the Skywalker family. Padmè had broke the news the night of Lena's first birthday, leaving me speechless to say the least. And there soon would be a fifth one, since Lysveet was pregnant at the time, so...
We were becoming bigger and bigger by the year. The youngest was was Jessie, barely two years old, but she was already showing signs of a strong connection with the Force. Well, considering who her parents were, that was sure. She was the mascot of the "team", in a way. Hilean, now, fifteen, felt like the well-being of her siblings was her responsibility, which she had taken quite seriously, taking good care of them, since she was one of the older teens, second only to the twins.
They were now eighteen and things were messy with them.
They felt constricted.
I knew how they felt.
They wished they could be normal teens, but they knew the weight of their role and stayed quiet, but both their mother and I knew we couldn't keep them tied at home for long. They needed to be themselves, and forcing them to be someone else wouldn't have worked. It nearly made me turn to the Dark Side, I knew all too well how they felt.
Leia wanted to pursue a polical career, like Padmè. And Organa was ready to take her with him as his assistant, but we felt it was better for her to get a better grip on her Force abilities. She had a terrible temper and when she was frustrated she tended to let her powers slip from her control. Being so close to the Emperor wouldn't do her any good if she couldn't control herself.
On the other hand, Luke strained to prove her worth not only with his saber, as he was a formidable swordmaster, but also at piloting. He had taken that from me, that was sure. Padmè was an amazing pilot, but she lacked the passion for tinkering with engines and ships of any kind. And that was something Luke loved. When he had some spare time he was always working on his bike, an old swoop bike I had scavenged at a yard sale not too far from there when the original owner wanted to get rid of it. I paid it way less than its real worth, put it back together, cleaned it up and gave it to him for his sixteenth birthday.
That was only a month after we had moved to Naboo. He was grumpy as hell because he had to leave his old low-power bike back at Dantooine, and that was the only way to get him back on track with his training. When I drove it off the driveway to the front of the house, where he stood, he was happy as a clam. I had seen him so happy only the day his sister Lena was born. With Lennart he was a little bit upset, because he had broken his leg only six days earlier.
And it was only three months after that accident that had forced us to move away. Since most of the people living on Dantooine had been moved, security had been lowered and one day I was supervising a work in the cargo area of the base, with Lennard in tow, since he was cranky and didn't want to leave me (he was a bit clingy when he was two, three years old). Since security measures were lower than standard, while I was concentrated on the incoming ships, someone bumped one of those small vehicles used in warehouses to move stuff into a pile of boxes. Very heavy boxes. Some of them crashed on Len, and nearly hit me in the process.
I swear I went into panic mode in the span of a second. One moment I could hear Len playing with a small droid his brother had built for him, the next I couldn't hear him anymore.
Fuelled by terror and rage, I moved all the boxes away from him, found him unconscious, pinned by the left shoulder under one of the heaviest ones. When I moved it away from him, the pain woke him again and he started crying like hell. Poor kid. Trying not to hurt him more than necessary, I brought him to the infirmary and left him to the caring expert hands of our favourite trauma surgeon, proceeded to call his mother and then ran down again to the cargo bay and beat the shit out of that asshole that had dared to get distracted while working in a high danger area where he knew perfectly well there was a kid, since he had played with him for a while, not ten minutes before the accident.
I nearly killed him for hurting my son. I was angry as hell. Later, when Len was safe and sound, sleeping in the huge hospital bed that nearly swallowed him, sedated and with his shoulder carefully rebuilt and now in one piece again, someone told me that I was literally springing electricity all around me when they had separated us.
That's how I learned how to use the Force Lightening. I wasn't exactly happy about it, since it was a Sith trademark, but after a while I learned how to use it for something nice: it was great to warm up cold coffee. Nearly instantaneous.
Worked great.
That accident made us question the safety of the younger kids, since there was one incoming at the time, and how the recent changes in security guidelines in the base, we soon decided to get the hell away from Dantooine. Soon after we left, everyone else moved away, and the base was dormant. Ready to be used, but we had agreed to use that base as a decoy in case any agent of the Alliance was caught, he or she could use the abandoned base to gain some time and escape from the Empire without putting the Alliance in danger.
Anyway, I digress. As always.
Truth is, I was looking for something else to think about other than the bad feeling I had and that kept making me shiver as if I was back on Hoth and not in the middle of one of the hottest summers ever recorded on Naboo, with a sweat-drenched t-shirt sticking to my back and the signs of all the time spent outside marking my skin, making it more tan than usual.
I didn't like it at all.
A crow screeched far away in the forest, pulling me out of my stream of consciousness. Rethinking about Lennart accident made me suddenly angry and even more unsure of what to do. That was the worst day of my life, for real, and even after three years, even if I knew Len was fine and barely remembered that day, it still made me mad as hell with myself for not taking better care of him.
That bad feeling was quickly becoming stronger as time passed wasn't good. I took a deep breath and tried to shove it in the back of my mind in order to set back to a normal, relaxed state. Not exactly the easiest thing in the Galaxy, I tell you, but I had become a champion of calming down when stressed, angry or whatever.
I drank what was left of my beer and sighed. It was now warm and the tasted had deteriorated. I shook my head and... well, didn't do much. I was working hard on everything I had my hands on, but that weight was becoming too much. I had to talk about it with someone.
I was standing amidst the gusts of wind that blows before the rain, alone and afraid. I couldn't do much and I had to adapt fast to the new situation.
The sun had almost set completely behind the mountains. It was time to do something.
I threw the bottle in one of the many trashcans in the patio and stretched my back. Yeah, I was ready to talk about this bad feeling and get it out of my system.
"Dad, come in, dinner's ready!" shouted Lennart from the doorway.
I breathed the cooling air and smiled. "I'm coming Lenny, tell mom I'm coming."
A storm was coming and I wanted to be ready to face it.
Here we go again! Almost two months after the ending of Red Rain, here come Last Of The Runaways, and as you can see... well, something big is coming. This is just a short prologue to connect Red Rain with this one. Next one will come as soon as I can. Have fun!