Chapter 8 - Sleep

Afraid of the dark that surrounds me,
Hide in the dirt of the ground,
Free in the wind that surrounds me.
I'm not afraid to sleep in the night,
Not afraid
To sleep in the night.

Mazzy Star

It took Skywalker a couple of hours to safely remove the power cells and bring them back to the shuttle. It was a lot harder to navigate through the jungle in the dark, but he amplified his other senses through the Force. Darth Pyra's pod was in far worse condition than his. It had crashed into a rocky formation in the middle of a clearing and there was debris everywhere.

"She had a rough landing, which gives me an odd sense of comfort" he thought. Despite the tattered look of her vessel, Darth Pyra herself had looked alright, a few scrapes but nothing serious. "Maybe she has some sort of internal hemorrhage or something like that", he thought hopefully. He carefully removed the power cell and brought it back to the complex.

He then searched for the tools he needed around the basement, but he still came up short. He had to improvise and sometimes use the force to get the fine tuning done. Also, he had to work by the light of the fire, which wasn't the most appropriate for what was essentially delicate work. He was determined to last through the night, but exhaustion soon took over. His eyelids were getting heavy and it was harder and harder to focus. For some reason, he feared going to sleep. What if Darth Pyra or Mara or whatever her name was came back and decided she didn't need a jedi running around and would take advantage of his vulnerable state (namely sleeping) to finish him off.

"Of course, she could've killed me earlier, he mused, but didn't. Maybe she's being honest. Oh, wake up already Skywalker, he snapped at himself. She's a sith. Trusting her would be suicide. The only reason she let you live is because she thinks that other people know where you are, a fact which you made sure is completely untrue. Even so, I doubt she's going to kill me in my sleep, since she needs me."

He went up to one of the living areas and collapsed near a corner. There were no bed pellets or mattresses in the room, but the good news was that it was a warm night. He wondered in passing if Darth Pyra might've been killed by some creature of the night but then laughed at his own naiveté. 20 of Alderann's best and brightest couldn't kill her…

"Still, he thought. A man can hope."

He started a fire, to have some light. He watched the flames dance and observed that even alone, there was still something to remind him of his strange companion.

"Sith… everything that I hate, he mused. Everything that I've tried to fight since I was old enough to hold a lightsaber."

He fell asleep with that thought …