DP addendum: The Imposter (fancy name, eh?) – Clone of Tenel Ka TC Djo

A/N: Big thanks to SiouxFan for his help on explaining some of the realities of radio operations. I've modified the last chapter to make it a bit more realistic (I hope!) and added a bit more to Jacen's detective work in determining the situation.

To all of you, thanks, and I hope you enjoy this one. It's the longest entry and will answer a lot of questions. We're at the half way point, and you'll start to see some of Jacen's darker side poke through :)

Onimi...you nailed it.


Jacen Solo did not go for his morning run. He also did not enter the private dining area to meet his family for breakfast. Instead, the imposter came into the private dining area for morning meal to find him with the kids. Food was thrown about the table and covered most of Anakin's happy face as was normal for the end of breakfast. Jacen was standing above Anakin disconnecting the safety belt on the high chair when she walked up to him.

"What is going on?" She asked. "We eat morning meal together every morning."

"No," Jacen replied angrily. "My family eats morning meal together every morning. I don't know who you are, but you're not part of it."

She grabbed his arm before he could lift Anakin from his chair and pulled him a couple steps away.

"You need to do a better job of pretending I'm your wife, or your wife will die. Think what you want of me, but I don't want to see anyone get hurt. This will all be over much sooner and much less painfully if you just play along."

A pair of servants came in at that moment cutting off Jacen's reply, but with his back to the servants the imposter was not spared his venomous glare. The servants began cleaning the table, ignoring their queen and prince as they slipped back into their 'normal' roles.

"I'm going to take Anakin to see Astro," Jacen said. "He misses his friend. I may as well take Allaya, too, so he can become more familiar with her."

"That vornskr tried to kill me," the imposter said. "I don't want it anywhere near my kids."

Whenever you have your own kids, you can do whatever the hell you want, Jacen sent to her through the Force. Aloud, he said, "He's quite fond of the kids. Familiarity will help him accept them as part of his pack, and I'll keep everyone safe. I can still control him."

"Up! Up! Up!" Anakin began chanting from his high chair, bouncing as far up and down as he could with his arms held high. "Wanna see Astwo!"

The imposter yawned, giving Jacen the chance to step away and pull Anakin out of the chair and up against his hip.

"First you need a bath to get all the food off," Jacen said. "Astro might lick your face off if you don't."

"No!" Anakin squealed and covered his face with his hands, getting food all over them. "No bath!"

"What if Daddy lets you play in the fountain?" Jacen whispered just loud enough for the imposter to hear, hazarding a glance at her. She glared at him with a nasty face full of hatred, knowing full well he was trying to undermine Ta'a Chume at any opportunity, but she quickly replaced it with her stoic 'Tenel Ka' mask. She looked away for a moment to yawn again, which triggered a yawn in each of the two servants who had been watching them after Jacen's suggestion.

"Sleep well?" Jacen asked sarcastically, using the Force to pull Allaya out of her seat and take her in his other arm as Anakin began smearing his jelly covered fingers against Jacen's face. He did not even pretend to notice.

"Not a wink," the imposter said. "Something was keeping me up."

"Us, too, m'lady," one of the servants, Tresa, said. "It seems nobody in the entire city slept last night."

Both servants chose that moment to take away the dishes they had collected and the imposter turned back to Jacen.

"You!"

"Me," Jacen said smugly. "If I can't sleep, nobody will."

"How?"

"I know you've learned a few things in the Force, enough to pass off as Tenel Ka at first glance," Jacen sneered and started for the door. "But you are nowhere near the Jedi I am."

~! #$%^&*()

After a quick bath in the main fountain in the middle of the royal audience chamber for Anakin, Jacen changed his son into fresh clothes, scrubbed the last remains of the roseberry jam off his face, and retreated to the Solo Quest. The whole time two guards followed him, not even pretending to mask their presence as they kept a close eye on him. It took him doing a Force-assisted leap onto the top of the ship and entering through the dorsal hatch to evade them.

Once inside the ship, Jacen left Anakin with Astro and kept his sleeping daughter in his arms. He found HK-47 in the engine maintenance area accessing the main data terminal for the ship.

"HK, I need you to drop what you're doing and make a recording on a datacard as fast as possible. The guards are going to start hammering the door down very quickly."

"Inquiry: What does the master want on his datacard?"

"Tenel Ka is captured and is somewhere in the Hapes Cluster. She'll be killed if I don't go along with Ta'a Chume's plan. The Tenel Ka on the throne is a clone. Her Force signature is damn near identical to Tenel Ka's, too. I'll protect the kids, but someone needs to find Tenel Ka. Communication encryption codes have been stolen; I need new ones and a new communication encryption module for the Solo Quest as soon as possible."

Three seconds later a data card popped out of the console and the droid handed it to him.

"Here, take her," Jacen handed Allaya to HK-47 and pulled off his boot. He stuffed the data card in the toe like he had done with many valuable objects in his youth and put it back on his foot. An aggressive pounding on the boarding ramp caught his attention.

"Come with me, and listen very carefully," Jacen said. He took Allaya back and, while giving HK-47 some instructions, he walked to the ramp. He held up a finger to indicate silence and hit the intercom button.

"Yes? How can I help you?"

"Prince Jacen, this is Hedy, your guard," a gruff female voice said. "We need to watch you at all times. Please open this ramp immediately and exit the ship."

Jacen gestured for HK-47 to quietly disappear and hit the button again.

"I'm having some family time here," Jacen said. "Unless you wanted to help change a diaper or play fetch with a full grown vornskr, you might find it a little tiresome."

"I'll happily change diapers," Hedi said miserably. "Open up."

Jacen sent a command to Astro and counted to five before opening the ramp. As the guards began charging up the ramp, he held his hand out and stopped the guards with a telekinetic wall.

"This ship is my home," Jacen said. "I will not have you intrude on my sanctuary."

Hedy gestured to the other guards and had them retreat out of earshot. She took another step forward, bumping into his telekinetic wall again.

"Our orders, yours and ours," Hedy said, "are very clear. You stay within our sight at all times, and we don't report you to the Queen Mother."

"Ta'a Chume needs me alive as much as I need her alive right now," Jacen replied coldly. "Your treason to the crowned queen will not go unnoticed when this is resolved. I suggest you rethink your loyalties while you still have the chance."

Astro appeared with Anakin and Jacen took his son's hand. Together they walked down the ramp, leaving Astro behind. Hedy was pushed backwards by the Force, kept a distance of a metre from Jacen.

"Eat anyone who comes aboard that isn't me or the kids," Jacen told his vornskr and sealed the ship. A second after he activated the lock protocol, a faint hum activated as the magnetic shielding activated to protect the hull. He then turned to Hedi and the other thirteen guards who had come to retrieve him. "Happy?"

Without waiting for a response, Jacen took Anakin into his arms and walked through the group of guards with no regard for their presence.

~!#$%&*()

After Jacen's incident with the fountain and escaping the guards, the imposter was forced to clear her schedule and make family time her priority to keep a closer eye on him. Several of the servants noticed some tension between the Queen and her husband, but were wise enough not to make a comment as the family played Force-based games together. The servants also noticed that Allaya had not left her father's arms since that morning and were starting to notice his ever-present miserable mood.

"Fetch us some glasses of water," the imposter ordered the servants. "No ice for Anakin."

"Yes, your highness," the servants said and disappeared.

Once they were alone, the imposter turned to Jacen. "Give me Allaya."

"No."

"Everyone is noticing that you aren't letting her go," she argued in a very not-Tenel Ka manner of emotional tone of voice. "I'm not going to do anything with you right here. Contrary to your belief, I'm not stupid. I've had a lot of the same education that your wife had outside the Jedi Academy."

Jacen clenched his jaw for a moment, reflecting on how different this woman was from his wife. It caught him off guard every time she broke her "Tenel Ka" role and acted like, well, a normal emotional person. Reluctantly he handed Allaya to the imposter and cringed as his baby curled up against the imposter's chest the same way she did against Tenel Ka. A ball bouncing off his head and Anakin's giggling brought Jacen's attention away from the imposter's longing smile and back to the game at hand. He snatched the ball up using the Force and tossed it far across the room. Anakin jumped up and ran after the ball like a small dog, giving Jacen a minute alone with the imposter.

"If you try taking her out of my sight," Jacen warned the imposter. "There will be hell to pay."

"I won't," she said, still watching Anakin. After grabbing the ball and starting back toward his parents, he stopped in front of some other toys that he suddenly remembered he had. He picked up an X-wing and made his own sound effects as it chased the backwards-flying TIE fighter in his other hand. "But you need to understand that we aren't trying to hurt any of you. Ta'a Chume is after the throne, not you. She wants you gone, not dead."

"Hapan politics rarely allow the victim to survive," Jacen told her. "Or did you miss that class?"

"Please, don't make this worse than it has to be," she pleaded. Jacen could almost let himself sense her sincerity.

"Why are you so guilty about this?"

At that moment one of the servants, Tyna, returned with their glasses of water. The look of relief on her face that the queen was holding Allaya was almost too obvious. As he raised the glass of water to his mouth, Tyna addressed him.

"Your highness, there is a secure call for you from a ship that has entered orbit," she said. "It is your friend, Eriana."

"Route the call to this room," Jacen ordered and put the glass down without taking a sip. Tyna left and he stood up and walked to the communication terminal in the corner of the room. Using a thumbprint he unlocked the terminal allowing the protective cover to ascend into the wall. He glanced back at the imposter, but she was standing at his side.

"This is a private call."

"You don't get those anymore."

Biting back one of his dad's favourite curses, Jacen jabbed his finger into the blinking button on the screen and Eriana's face appeared.

"Hey Jacen." Eriana's eyebrows shot up. "And Tenel Ka! Nice to see you, too!"

"Always a pleasure, my friend," the imposter said in perfect mimicry of Tenel Ka. "What brings you to Hapes?"

"I need to drop off the new encryption protocols for Jacen and I thought we could get some training in at the same time," Eriana said. "I can't let him get rusty again with this Krayt guy and his minions on the loose now."

"How about I meet you on your ship in an hour?" Jacen asked. "I can bring the whole family up for a visit. It'd be nice to get off world."

"That would be perfect," Eriana said. "I may need to leave at moment's notice, so I'd rather not come to the surface if I can help it."

"I'm afraid Anakin is due for his nap," the imposter said. "And Allaya must be fed. This visit will not work out. If..."

"I guess I'm coming on my own," Jacen interrupted, sounding as disappointed as he could manage. "I'll be there in an hour."

Jacen cut off the transmission before anyone could reply and turned toward a look from the imposter that could have cut durasteel.

"I really do not want to leave my kids with you, but you backed me into a corner," Jacen said. "I trust you will keep the kids safe while I'm gone? Because if anything happens to them, I guarantee you that there is nowhere in this galaxy that you or anyone that harms my children will be able to hide from me."

"Ta'a Chume will not allow you to go alone! Why did you agree to this? You're obviously going so you can tell them what is happening!"

"Oh, right, I forgot I could do that," Jacen said innocently. "My mistake. But Eriana will suspect something is wrong if I don't go now. Or if I show up with an escort. If you want things to be normal around here, you have to let me go. Alone. Like always."

The imposter looked furious. She turned on her heel and started for the door until Jacen used the Force to grab her by the neck, making her stop and cough from the abrupt but short impact on her throat.

"What the hell is your problem?" She demanded when she recovered.

"My kid?"

The imposter furiously shoved Allaya back into Jacen's arms and stormed out. Satisfied that Allaya was unharmed, Jacen crossed the room to pick up Anakin.

"Nap time, little man!"

"Yay!"

~! #$%&*()

A Tholian philosopher once stated that compromise is a word for those who do not know how to fight. Jacen reflected, as he disembarked from the royal shuttle after it landed on Eriana's command ship, that whoever made that statement had never seen two people put in equally impossible situations before.

Ta'a Chume was livid. She nearly tried to kill Jacen on the spot, and if he was not a Jedi Master in the prime of his life and she was not a frail old woman wielding only a mere blaster pistol, she might have had a remote possibility of doing so. She initially refused to let him go. After watching the video of his conversation with Eriana, she reluctantly agreed to let him go with an escort, provided he was monitored the whole time. And the imposter had to keep a connection to him with so he did not communicate through the Force either.

Jacen was not quick to accept these terms. For one, he and Eriana always trained alone. For the deception to work, that condition had to be maintained.

The compromise, therefore, was the result of two people very much willing to fight and ending in a stalemate. Jacen had to wear a hidden microphone, the imposter had to monitor him with the Force to ensure he was training and not sitting in a meeting with Eriana, and he had to be monitored the entire time he was in transit so he could not find some way of preparing a message. They even searched him and found the data card stuffed in the toe of his boot.

That said, Ta'a Chume did not get away easily either. She agreed that his children must not be harmed or abducted in any way shape or form while he was out of their sight. In payment for not hurting his children, Jacen promised not to take vengeance on her, starting with a crusade to wipe out her entire extended family and erase her existence from every history book and ending with her being tortured to a very slow death using various Yuuzhan Vong techniques he learned while in captivity. The look of wild anger in his eyes was enough to convince her of his sincerity, and the two combatants departed with their terms in place.

To Jacen's surprise, Jaina greeted him at the bottom of the boarding ramp with a hug.

"What are you doing here?" Jacen asked. "I thought you hated Eriana."

"She's been starting me on Vaapad," Jaina admitted. "She suggested we could train together, the three of us. And she's been starting to grow on me since Charnack. You're right; she's really not that bad once you get to know her."

The two siblings walked through the halls catching up about their parents and Jacen's kids until they arrived in the designated cargo bay that Eriana used for training. The blond former Jensaari was already there warming up for the aggressive fighting they were about to engage in.

"What's wrong?" She asked Jacen once he arrived, immediately picking up on his mood.

"Tenel Ka and I got into a bit of a fight," Jacen said. While controlling his emotions as much as he could to transmit to the imposter that he felt dejected and upset, he slowly pointed to the bug in his ear. "We're both being stupid and petty. It'll blow over in a couple days when she sees that. You know how stubborn she can be."

"Just her?" Jaina said sarcastically. "Can we fight now?"

Battling with Jaina and Eriana gave Jacen the release that he had been looking for since discovering Tenel Ka had been replaced. He let the stress of dealing with the situation on Hapes wash away as he released himself to the joy of the fight. Three hours passed before they knew it, and Jacen had to return to the surface. He collected his new encryption codes, which were themselves encrypted, and the new communication encryption module and returned to his royal shuttle. Upon arrival on Hapes, the imposter greeted him.

"I'm surprised how well you behaved," she said. "I have no reason to report you."

"Are my kids safe?" Jacen asked.

"Of course," she said and slipped her arm around his elbow for the sake of the show, leading him back into to the palace.

~! #$%^&*()

Jacen quickly retreated to the nursery after arriving in the Palace to watch the kids as they took their mid-day nap, and the imposter joined him despite his voiced desire to be left alone. They sat together brooding in silence for the first half hour in the viewing area that allowed them to watch the kids sleep without light or sound intruding on their tender young dreams.

"I didn't know how much pain I would be causing your family," the imposter broke the silence.

Jacen's angry yet quizzical glance allowed her to continue.

"You asked why I felt guilty earlier," she said, her cheeks flushed pink with embarrassment – a very odd look for Tenel Ka's face. "I've been raised for this my entire life. They told me that if I learned how to be the queen and fool everyone, I'd be able to be free. That's what I get for all this – freedom. Freedom, credits, and a new arm. They're going to let me go with enough credits to live wherever I want and start a new life. I've wanted to do this for almost thirty years to get it over with, but now..."

She stopped and turned away from him to wipe up some tears and sob out some more, and he merely looked back into the nursery without saying a word. Eventually her sobs stopped and she turned back to him.

"You don't care, do you?"

"It is very hard to feel sympathetic to someone that is blackmailing me by having kidnapped my wife and has been threatening the lives of my children."

"I'm not this bad person you think I am," the imposter pleaded. "I...your family has grown on me. I've never had this – kids or a husband to live a normal life with. As much as I know I'm living someone else's life...I wish I did."

A long silence stretched between them as Jacen resolutely tried to ignore her, and she tried to collect her next words. Eventually she broke the silence again.

"Jacen, I know I'm the last person who should be asking this," the imposter said as she reached over and grabbed his hand. He immediately recoiled and pulled his hand away, but when he looked at her he saw more tears growing in her eyes. "You're a Jedi Master. I think you're the only person I can trust. Can you help me escape this?"

~! #$%^&*()

After a very quiet evening meal where even the kids seemed to pick up on and emulate the sombre mood of Jacen and the imposter, the royal family watched a holovid together. Anakin watched the computer generated fish go on an adventure to find their lost friend while Jacen and the imposter shared uneasy glances and took turns holding Allaya. Eventually the movie ended and the kids were put to bed. Jacen waited outside the nursery for the kids to fall asleep so he could take up his spot on the comfortable chair to settle in for the night again, and the imposter waited with him.

"Should I even bother trying to sleep tonight?" she asked bitterly.

"Your choice." Jacen's lip curled up in a sarcastic, twisted version of his dad's famous smile. "Choose, and act."

"Do you really think that you can protect them?" she asked. "Seriously? There are thousands of guards that will kill you if I give the order. They're loyal to the queen, not to you. There is no way you can protect your kids the way you think you can. Just give up and go along with it. You're only going to wear yourself out and make things worse for you. Ta'a Chume will kill your wife and children before she lets you stop her."

"If you think that any number of guards or weapons or anything on this planet can stop me," Jacen took a step towards her and she reflexively stepped back. "I suggest you review the footage from three years ago when someone else thought they could take Tenel Ka away from me."

He took another step towards her and she backed into the wall. He stared into her eyes until he saw a healthy dose of fear looking back at him.

"And I guarantee you, what you see on that video will look like a warm up act if anyone tries to hurt my kids."

~! #$%^&*()

Jacen sat in the nursery again on his all night vigil guarding the kids from any potential intruders. He sat in the semi-alert state of near sleep that he learned from Vergere many years before that had contributed to saving his sanity throughout the entire period he had worn the Sith amulet that had fused itself onto his ribcage. While not as good as sleep for the body, it allowed him to remain alert enough to wake up at a moment's notice and still attain a functioning level of rest. And, it also gave him the opportunity to think or simply turn his mind off.

That night was definitely a thinking night. The imposter's plea for help earlier that day had caught him off guard. Naturally, he shielded his emotions and tried to brush it off as nothing more than an attempt to put him off balance...but her sincerity shocked him. Looking back, he realized that the nursery observation room was one of the few locations in the palace that has no audio monitoring. Tenel Ka had planned that in the redecoration of the room so they could have a private location to give them a quiet place to watch the kids and speak of things best left unobserved. Would the imposter have known that that was the best place to express such treacherous thoughts? She knew so much else about the palace, their family, him...even the access code to the Solo Quest.

As much as Jacen could not condone her behaviour, her description of her arrangement sounded like something Ta'a Chume would do. Capture DNA from Tenel Ka at birth, create and groom a duplicate to do her bidding, and wait for the right time to deploy her asset. That thought sparked Jacen's mind enough to wake him out of his near-sleep – would she not have been born with two arms? Would Ta'a Chume resort to cutting her imposter's arm off to get what she wanted?

An approaching presence caught Jacen's attention and he extracted himself from the nursery before the person got too close. A few seconds after escaping to the hall, the imposter came around the corner and nearly jumped a metre backwards when she saw him.

"You scared me!" She exclaimed. "I thought you would be inside."

"I wouldn't be doing a very good job of protecting my kids if I didn't know someone was coming." Jacen said. "Why are you here?"

"I, ah...I watched the footage you spoke about." The same embarrassed look Jacen noticed earlier in the day came across her face, and he thought for half a second that it did not look as out of place as he originally thought. In fact, it made her look a bit more...human. "Umm...I don't even know why I'm here. I didn't feel like going to bed."

They stared at each other for a moment until she looked away.

"I'll just..."

"I'm not blocking sleep tonight," Jacen said. "You can get your rest."

"I...thank you," she said. "But that's not it. I'm just..."

"Look..." Jacen started and stopped. "I don't even know your name."

The imposter looked up at him in surprise. "I've only ever gone by 'Tenel Ka.' They've always told me I don't need another name."

"If you're going to be free and have your own life, you'll need your own name," Jacen said. "What do you want to be called?"

Her mouth opened and closed a couple times before she shook her head. "I can't. If Ta'a Chume finds out we're getting too close..."

"You raped me." Jacen cut her off. "We can't get much closer."

"You came onto me!"

"You were impersonating my wife! You could've said no."

"And blow my cover?"

"Oh, come on. You're a woman. Any excuse would've worked. Everyone knows that."

The imposter stopped and crossed her arms defensively. "It's not like I've had much experience with dating."

"If the other night was anything to go by, I don't believe that for a second."

Her slack-jaw look met his angry gaze until she finally turned away and yawned in a not-very-angry manner. Jacen finally noticed how sunken her eyes looked and sensed how weary her body was from the lack of sleep.

"I'm too tired to argue anymore."

"Go to bed," Jacen said softly. "We can keep arguing in the morning."

Jacen watched as she nodded sadly and walked away. After three steps she turned back and said "Carys. I've always wanted to be called Carys."

Jacen nodded, mostly to himself. "Sleep well, Carys."