Elegy
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My mouth dry, my flesh wet, my heart pounding in my chest; I cling to the darkness, its icy black hands wrapped round me like a second skin. Pale blue eyes dart from side to side, searching…wary. Finally they close, shutting out the world before me, seeking to forget all they have known of love and light; denying both fear and the possibility of flight. Fingers, black gloved and white, close over the pommel of my silent saber as I seek to draw a breath.
Come, knowledge. Come, strength. Come, companion… friend… Source of all. Come with ease. Come with familiarity. Come as a lover. Caress this weak flesh that even now shakes and trembles with unaccustomed fear.
Come, know me… fill me….
It does not come. It will not come.
I am bereft.
The breath escapes. I lean back as my head spins. Even as I wipe sweaty palms on tattered ebon garments I watch a dozen hard-shelled white sharks prowl the grassy waters before me, their muscled bellies and broad brows shining; their hands not hands at all but weapons drawn and held at the ready. Sightless, the storm-troopers seek. Without ears they hear. Metal words jar as they grind through the air. Instinct alone would tell me they are hunting….
Me.
Why? I do not know.
When? Now.
How long?
Too long.
Too long now since that which I had known and come to think of as a part of myself was taken from me. Taken. Hidden.
Destroyed?
Perhaps.
Already I have come to feel that I have always known this grief. This aching void. The weapon in my hand weighs heavy; it is a dead thing. No longer alive. Its light is cold. Its black soul empty as my own. Somehow it senses I am no longer what I was.
It senses we are no longer … connected.
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I crouch in the darkness begging it to bury me as I watch them pass again. I cannot believe they do not hear my inner voice as it screams, proclaiming its loss. Each breath comes harder than the one before. Still they do not notice. But she does. The dark one. The one who leads. She hesitates and stares, but not at me.
Into herself.
First she followed me. Now I follow her. She has it; what I have lost. Somehow it is within her. I know it. Whatever it is, this thing she has taken, it can be mine again. It will be mine. Must be mine. Without it I am not…
No, I cannot be what I was.
Another ragged breath escapes. My hands tremble. My leg aches. Unexpectedly a thin wail escapes the metal throat of the small droid at my side as one of the cold white predators pivot, its fathomless, featureless face turned towards our hiding place. A touch on the shining blue dome quiets the droid as the trooper moves on.
We are safe.
I look at my companion. Why does its gaze – black and unblinking, cold, devoid of life – seem so impossibly human? What is it makes me want to give it a name? Call it by something other than a simple set of letters, of numbers that carry no identity? No sense of self?
No soul?
Dee Too? I whisper. Its head of royal blue shifts and slides. The tin-can body seems to shudder. Ar-too? I try instead.
Unexpectedly the action becomes a silent cry of joy. Ar-too, I say again and pat its shining pate. The small sigh it emits speaks of contentment. It is happy, I guess. My lips twist with wry amusement. Thank you, friend. Thank you.
Without you, I would be dead.
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One. No…. I think two days before I awoke. The cold was bone deep. I was wet, buried in water, my pale face riding on the surface like a raft adrift. I could not feel my legs. Could not find them. Above me a twisted metal bird hung, its' silver wings clipped. Its' single glass eye shattered. It will not fly again. About me twisted trees danced, whispering in the wind, calling my name. A name I could not claim or remember. As I drifted, falling away into a place of warmth, a shrill whistle abruptly shattered the night calling me back. Upon the metal bird's shining back a shadow stirred, white and blue. It stirred. It squealed. It beeped and boomed. It would not let me sleep. Angered I reached out with the only weapon I had – my mind – to still the sound, and at that moment felt something rise up within me unbidden. Something dark and frightening.
Something warm and enticing.
Something powerful that, as with a life of its own, poured from me; taking flight like a great winged creature. Swiftly it sought and found the small metallic cylinder and lifted it high in the air, far above the murmuring trees, far above the wounded ship that had carried me to this place. And then it moved on.
And then, there was darkness.
When I awoke, I was no longer alone. A shining droid lingered nearby keening over me. I think it thought the sodden mud-caked figure it had fought so desperately to pull from the cloying waters was a corpse. It's ice-cold claw was still extended, metal fingers cutting through several layers of thick ebon cloth. Dead or not, it did not mean to let me go… it would not let the silent waters win. As I stirred, a groan escaping frozen lips, it started and chirruped as it began once again to pull me from death to dry land.
It had saved my life. And what was more, it seemed to matter to it that it had.
The universe is at times a very curious place.
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Too soon I tried to regain my feet. My left leg gave way under me. I suppose in the grand scheme of things it was not enough simply to freeze, to feel the blood thicken in my veins and the fearful ice fire begin to kiss my fingers and toes; lying in the water I had narrowly escaped being crushed by the wing of the wounded speeder as it rolled and dipped and came to land on top of me. Leaning heavily on the small droid's circular dome, I surveyed what was left. Within me I found no memory of a crash. Not a remnant of the desperate escape or of the electrical fire that painted the damaged cockpit black. I did not remember falling. All I knew was that I had survived. But something was wrong. Something was missing. Inside.
Inside I was dying.
Gasping, I shoved my quaking hands forward, clenching packed earth. The black one touched something. A hard object, barely a foot in length. A short black stick, like a pommel without a blade. A weapon with no teeth. Unbidden my fingers reached out, gripping it with a memory I no longer owned. This was important. Beyond important. Only not to me.
Not any longer.
The R2 unit spun crazily, lost seemingly as I.
Something was wrong. Things were not as they were meant to be.
And then they came. The white sharks. Sniffing, scanning, seeking. Led by an exotic woman draped in shadows who held in her hand a weapon like mine.
Only hers had teeth.
She caressed its side and it sprang to life. Red as blood. Warm. Alive. Almost sentient. The scarlet blade thrummed; its heartbeat striking a chord deep within the emptiness that had come to be my soul and instantly I understood she had done this thing, and that she hunted not a what but a who.
I was her prey.
Kneeling beside the little droid I bit my lip, seeking to still the horror that drenched me. The dark woman commanded silence. Her men obeyed, though they eyed her with suspicion. She drew a breath so deep it all but filled her slender frame, and then she closed her eyes and began to search… to search as though she could still see. Moments passed until at last her inner gaze brushed my quaking heart. Abruptly her breath caught, her body stiffened, but then just as quickly she looked away as though pained. From my hiding place I watched as a troubled expression washed across the white plains and fine-boned mountains of her face. I knew that look. I knew it well. It was the one a person wears when they know they should be able to find a thing – a thing they have marked, a thing they own – but that thing will not be found.
Confounded she held her hand up for silence as the sharks began to mill nervously about her. With the singing blade silenced, she moved to my grounded ship and began to search the drenched earth about it for clues.
Troubled, I ran away.
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She was never far behind.
Like the tears that streamed down my face, like the sweat that ran after, the dark woman was a part of me and yet not a part. As I dashed through the forested land, the little droid toiling to keep up with me, I felt her mind once again searching. Calling. She was stronger this time. Determined. And when at last our minds touched, fleetingly, I felt within her the echo of all that I had lost. Headstrong, defiant, she held it safe against me and taunted me when, with feeble mental fingers, I sought to take it back.
Weakling, she proclaimed, coward. You are mine.
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There is a pain beyond pain. A loss beyond that which touches blood and sinew, muscle and bone. Beyond the ache of wounded flesh there is the fire of the mind. A crisp blazing all-consuming fire that leaves in its wake naught but ashes.
Beyond the pain in my pale flesh there was an ache in my soul. The hate she bore kept me from all that I known; all she knew. Kept me from my past. From my future. From myself.
From all that I was.
All that I am.
And then amazingly, two days… two years… two lifetimes later I became the hunter.
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Without warning something in the dark woman broke and her resolve shattered like glass underfoot. She became distracted. Tormented.
Aggrieved.
Her dreams became haunted as ancient ruins as failure gnawed at her bones. And as she weakened, I grew stronger as if feasting on her fear.
Now, as I watch her before me, swinging her scarlet sword in desperation, crushing invincible white armor like soft shells and spearing the frail flesh inside; terror fills me anew. The darkness that surrounds her, the cloud of hate and hurt and inestimable loss… this grief that screams from her every pour is soul deep.
And it is a darkness I have known.
As her body grows damp, as she sweats and strains, I feel its sweet call once more and long to surrender; to merge with it so that I may once again know what I have known. But the little metal creature at my side holds me back, its sharp voice trilling, crooning, pleading. Reminding.
My breath catches and my gloved hand returns to my side.
Still this night the dark weapon I hold will sing.
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My mouth dry, my skin wet, my heart pounding in my chest, I cling to the darkness, its icy black hands wrapped round me like a second skin. The white sharks prowl the grassy waters before me, but I am no longer their prey. As is their nature they have turned. Tired of the dark woman's endless commands, her fruitless search, her failure; they have begun to circle. The sharks strike enmasse, and though she is still strong, they draw blood for she has lost heart.
Broken. Defeated.
Her aspect resigned, she spies me at last and sighs.
Too late, she whispers in my mind, too late have you come.
Pale blue eyes dart from side to side, searching, wary. Finally they close, shutting out the world, seeking to forget all they have known of love and light; denying both fear and the possibility of flight. Even though she is my enemy, even though she sought my end, still I cannot let her die.
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Fingers, black and white, close over the pommel of my silent sword as I seek to draw a breath, caressing the dark hilt, and as they do, a bright white light explodes. By my booted feet my companion droid shrieks a warning but I dart forward anyway, parting the remaining troopers like a white wave. My blue blade flies as if with a will of its own, slicing through bone; burning, cauterizing. Flesh singes. Limbs fall like leaves. Screams rend the air. Men die.
I am my enemy.
Moments later I kneel, a black spoke in a wheel of white. My heart pounds. My head spins. About me all is silence.
Or nearly all.
Outside the circle a dying shadow lays, held captive for a moment longer by the flesh and bone of a slender dark woman. She draws a rattling breath and gestures for me to draw close.
I am not afraid.
I crawl. I cannot stand. Pale, panting, I reach her side and lay my hand on her face. It too is white and cold. I try to impart peace to her but she will none. Her eyes are flint.
The color of her hate.
Jedi. She breathes. Jedi. A single word that is a curse. Still she smiles as she breathes it, crimson lips parting with irony. I pulled you from the sky and made you blind, she whispers as her blood colors the field red, but blinded myself as well. You are his son. There is power. Great. Power…within you…. For a moment, it was mine.
And then within her mind I see the image of a man. Tall. Imposing. A black hole in a darker night. But then I see it is not a man at all but a machine. Or rather it… he is both. She loved him. She lost him. She says, by my hand.
There is a name.
Vader.
I don't remember, I begin….
You will, she answers, her black gaze resting on me, seeking to share its poison, for I am dead.
Her cold fingers seek mine and finding it, press my flesh. Suddenly like the burning sun rising above silent shifting sands, like an earthen dam besieged by weeks of driving rain, like an over-burdened heart pressed at last beyond endurance, memory bursts through clear and clean.
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I am a Jedi. My name is Luke.
I walk the skies and am one with the Force.
I came here seeking her. This dark one, taught by my enemy – Vader – the one who sired me.
Rumor spoke of her power, her strength, and of the impressive ability she had. The ability to cloud the minds of those who seek to work with the Force. The ability to pluck it from their very souls.
From my soul.
I came here with Artoo, a true companion, hoping to win her to the light.
While approaching the planet I felt her mind, her power reach out. I knew her hate but not its source. Suddenly, it was as if a pair of powerful hands clamped tight upon my mind's eye blinding me. Stunned, I lost consciousness and like a rock we fell.
And everything changed.
Instead of seeking her, she sought me. But once found, she could not keep me. Could not keep her focus. In stripping me bare she found the truth. Even as I forgot, she knew. And at last, unable to bear that truth, she was broken.
And I was restored. I press her fingers hard demanding that she fight. While there is life, I send, while there is life, there is hope….
Not for me, her dying mind whispers, not for me. Without him. I am nothing….
She is wrong.
She is dead.
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My mouth dry, my skin wet, my heart pounding in my chest, I cling to the darkness; its icy black hands wrapped round me like a second skin. Pale blue eyes dart from side to side, searching… wary. Finally they close, shutting out the world, seeking to forget all they have known of love and light; denying both fear and the possibility of flight. Fingers, black and white, close over the pommel of my silent sword as I seek to draw a breath
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Without him, I would not be.