Chapter 10

Piece of the Puzzle

Zak woke ten minutes earlier than he had set the alarm to wake him. Finding himself unable—and failing to see the point in trying—to get back to sleep, he kissed Jaina on the cheek, got out of bed and headed for the refresher. After a sanisteam, and a strong cup of caf from the caf dispenser in the kitchenette, he got dressed in plain, nondescript clothes and headed out.

He decided that since he was due to arrive at the lab chamber where his memory recovery procedure was going to take place minutes later anyway, he would head there early and get started early.

In fact, he was just about to enter the lab when Jaina caught up to him, fully dressed and none-too-pleased, it seemed, with him.

"You could have woken me as well," she said indignantly. Zak sighed with resignation.

"I woke early. I thought I'd let you sleep in, is all," he said plainly.

"And you thought, at the same time, that you would just come straight over here and get started on the memory recall early so that I wouldn't have another opportunity to try and talk you out of it," she accused.

Zak resisted the urge to frown. She was, in fact, correct; though that didn't at all enter into things.

"Jaina, we can argue about this later. I would just like to get this first treatment over with while I'm still keen so that I know what the whole procedure is going to be like."

"You're wavering." It was a statement of fact.

"That's neither here nor there," Zak said dismissively. "I've already agreed to do this, and so that's precisely what I'm going to do."

"Zak …" Jaina reached for his hand, and for some reason that he wasn't able to fathom, brought it to rest under her blouse, just above her hip at the back.

Instantly, Zak found himself drawn back into the all-too-familiar sensation of recalling a memory …

They kissed with all the fire, all the passion that both of them could bring to the encounter. Zak was dressed in a black top tucked into equally black fatigues. His black gloves were on, and a cloak was draped over his shoulders, with the hood pulled back from his face. Jaina was dressed in blue on blue, with a white stripe going down the left and right sides of her fatigues, and had foregone her own cloak. He knew she had left it in the lower levels.

His eyes were closed now, but through the power of the Force, he could see her so clearly through his eyelids. It was a strange sensation, as though everything was muted and clear at the same time. It was like looking through glass that was neither clean nor dirty.

But the kiss …

While he meant every emotion he poured into it, every feeling and sensation that passed between himself and Jaina through their first expression of their feelings for one another, it was but a means to an end.

He knew Jacen had followed her.

He knew Jacen was waiting.

He knew Jacen was watching them both, with his lightsaber drawn, but not activated yet; expecting trouble from Zak.

He also knew why they were both there. Jaina had not come to see him. Jaina had come to sequester him. He could feel it, just barely hidden in her thoughts behind the passion burning within her. It was such a shame that he would have to break her heart, as well as his own.

He would have preferred to keep her around, perhaps take her on as a willing, and most certainly capable, apprentice to the dark side. He was strong enough now that he knew he had to do that; to keep the legacy of the Sith alive. But as much as he wanted it to be Jaina, as much as he would have given for it to be her, it wasn't to be so.

She was too old, for a start; too ingrained in the Jedi beliefs that she wouldn't just give up on them because he asked her to. And he doubted he could exactly force her hand by killing those she loved most—her uncle and aunt, and her two brothers; any of them were accessible, and Mara and Luke had both proven themselves inadequate to stand against him.

If he remembered correctly, and he knew he did, Mara had been near death when he'd been chased off by the Wookiee and the shape-shifter.

And so, because of the lack of required criteria, Jaina had to be sacrificed. He had to immortalise the woman he cared for to pave his way to the Sith, and to anger the rest of the Skywalkers. He had to provoke them, so as to weaken them.

When she pulled away from the kiss, Jaina's eyes fluttered open and she looked up at him, smiling faintly as if she could not believe they had just kissed. Zak could believe it, but he had not wanted it to stop. Not so soon. He found himself despising that desire. It would make him weak. He opened his eyes also, looking down at her and cradling her cheek and chin gently in the palm of his hand.

"I never knew you felt so strongly," Jaina purred, closing her eyes again. Zak merely nodded and she looked back up at him. "Come back with me, Zak. Will you please? You haven't done anything terribly heinous yet. There's still hope of redemption for you. I know it."

"I …" He deliberately faltered, allowing her to think she was getting to him. He sensed that Jacen nearby didn't buy his hesitation one iota.

"Do it for me," Jaina whispered. "Do it for Tash."

He pretended to think about it, cocking his head to the side enough that he could see Jacen's hiding spot behind the rising stone pews from the corner of his eye. He nodded. That was all. Just a single nod to let Jaina think she had won.

Believing it fully, she pecked him on the cheek and then turned and started across the raised dais toward the steps leading to the central space in the Grand Audience Chamber. She moved slowly, so that Zak could easily catch her as she so expected him to.

What she didn't expect was an attack, and that was precisely what came.

Leaving his lightsaber hanging from his belt, Zak drew the Force heavily into both of his hands, bending it to his will and shaping it into an attack so vicious he would never have conceived of using it when he had been a weak Jedi. He flung both of his hands out, and brilliantly violet arcs of electricity leapt from his palms and fingertips and across at Jaina.

Sensing the attack at the last second, she started to turn, and the blast caught her to the lower-left area of her back, burning through the material and charring skin as it flung her sideways into the stone pews only a handful of steps away.

She hit with a hard thud and screamed in agony as the electricity sizzled across her skin, burning away.

Zak would have kept up the attack, but he sensed the need to switch immediately to his lightsaber. The instant he plucked it from his belt, Jacen came around from behind the pews and at him with such speed he was no more than a featureless blur in the dark. A feral scream rent the air, filled with hatred directed at Zak.

He had his lightsaber on a split second before Jacen's was past where it hissed to life and the blades clashed, sending a brilliant array of sparks around them both and nearly blinding Zak.

He threw Jacen off him so hard he fell backwards. Expertly, however, the rash young man recovered from the dive and turned it into a backwards handspring. Zak could not miss the second lightsaber hanging from Jacen's belt, and he frowned. Surely, Jacen would not be able to coordinate two weapons against him.

He dashed forward, his lightsaber extended to impale, but Jacen dodged to the side and batted down at Zak's second blade, driving the tip into the stone of the dais. It hissed angrily as it punched through the material that was nothing to a lightsaber, and Zak quickly pulled it free before whirling and aiming a Force attack straight at Jacen as he jumped for him again.

Again, Jacen recovered. When he hit the stone, he switched his lightsaber off and rolled backwards twice before springing to his feet and flicking the lightsaber to life once more. Zak flipped forward, ignoring the hood that flipped up and over his head to throw his face into shadow.

Jacen hesitated when he looked upon him again, and Zak took the chance to dash forward and launch into a series of powerful strikes, forcing Jacen to dodge away from most of them and parry the ones he couldn't avoid. But parrying came at a cost, and threw him off-balance enough that he couldn't turn the parry around on Zak and start into his own sequence of strikes and feints.

Jacen darted to the left, away from Zak's blade, and when Zak turned to correct, he saw Jacen flying through the air at him. The hand enclosed around the hilt of his lightsaber pummelled Zak's jaw, causing his head to snap back and a spike of pain to shoot across his face and up into his brain. It hurt … a lot.

Jacen wasn't going to get away with that.

He pivoted on one foot, and sent the bridge of the other crashing into the side of Jacen's head, launching him across the chamber.

Once more, Jacen proved his prowess and hand-sprung to his feet on the top-most pew on the western side of the chamber.

While slowly walking towards that set of pews to catch up, he took advantage of the lull in action to check on Jaina. She was still slumped heavily against the eastern-most pews, groaning as she tried to block out her own pain, and failed.

Zak shut her out of his mind again, and took each pew toward Jacen one at a time, savouring the moment, and breathing in the fear coming from his former friend.

For a moment, Zak could sense the defeat in Jaina's twin, and at the same time the determination in Jacen's eyes dimmed but a little. But it flared back to life again, as the thought of his sister, wounded as she was and still trying to get back to her feet after the sneak attack Zak had launched upon her, crossed his mind. Instead, he jumped back off the pew, and grabbed the edge of the stone with the tips of his fingers, flinging himself high in the chamber to the ceiling above.

Zak spun quickly to track him with his eyes, and saw Jacen speed like a dart to the hard ceiling, right himself and thrust his feet flat against the stone to spring straight back down at the ground where Zak stood.

He jumped to the side, flicking his lightsaber off and rolling far from Jacen's landing. He heard a loud crack and thud behind him, and a light shockwave of Force energy slammed into him mid-roll and threw him out of control against the wall.

It took him longer than he planned to get back to his feet. Counting now; that was twice that Jacen had struck him and dealt him some measure of pain. He was going to have to think of something appropriately hurtful.

Perhaps Jaina would be of some use in that regard.

But when he turned to her, he saw her back on her feet, staring at him through eyes that expressed the hurt and betrayal within; eyes that were brimming with tears. She took one step toward him, and Zak started over to meet her, his lightsaber raised and one of the deadly crimson blades lit in anticipation. Jacen beat her to him, though, and his blade was manoeuvred into place with enough force to push Zak back a few steps to recover.

Jacen spun, and it was hard for Zak to miss his left hand darting to his belt, plucking the second lightsaber from it, and tossing it to Jaina mid-spin before he clasped his own lightsaber with both hands and battered toward Zak.

Jaina leapt high over them both, igniting the violet blade of her weapon simultaneously and slashing at Zak's back the instant her feet touched the stone behind him.

Zak returned to the present with a deep, gasping breath and his eyes blurred. He blinked several times to try and clear them, but all it seemed to do was make it worse. Also, his cheeks felt wet, cold.

Jaina reached out and wiped the tears from his face, but said not a word.

It took him another minute to reacclimatise himself to his surroundings and to the fact that what he had just remembered had happened four years ago. When he was sure of himself, he straightened and pulled his hand away from the ever-so-faint scar of his unprovoked attack on her.

He now realised why no one would tell him what had forced all three of the Solos to assault him so viciously. He had deserved it. He'd provoked the men by attacking Jaina without reason. No; he had had a reason—he'd done it to provoke. Despicable!

"Zak!" Jaina admonished with a frown, as if she had heard his thought. He had to admit that she probably had, due to the bond they shared.

"How could you keep that from me?" he demanded, taking a step back from her. "All that time that I've been trying to remember, and no one would tell me what I'd done. Nothing I'd remembered before even compared to that!"

"Because I knew you would hate yourself for it," Jaina hissed, keeping her voice low so that the pair of conversing grey-eyed Kaminoans that passed wouldn't pause to ask if there was a problem. "Or are you denying that you do?"

"How could I not?"

"Then deciding not to tell you was a good judgement call, as I see it. If you didn't remember it, then that was fine and we could go on and forget that it even happened. And if you did—you had the rest of the memory already and you know full well that that confrontation led directly to your redemption!"

"Redemption means nothing if the acts one commits are so heinous against those he loves."

"Redemption means nothing only if you let yourself believe that it doesn't," Jaina hissed stubbornly. A passing Kaminoan shot them a rueful glance, and picked up their pace to escape the vicinity.

Without responding to her argument, Zak spun on his heel and pressed the switch next to the door. A couple of seconds later, it whooshed open, revealing Loru Fa. He responded to her greeting as friendly as he could with how furious he was feeling towards Jaina, and without turning back to say he would see her later, followed Loru Fa into the room and shut the door behind him.