Chapter

14

Zak was outside when Jaina found him later in the day. She noted that the heavy winds of the storm that had swept over Tipoca City in the past hour were carrying the rain in an easterly direction, leaving the area by the door leading to the landing pad safe from the wet of it. Though it could change at any moment, Zak had forgone his robe and was instead standing there casually in a pair of loose, black slacks and nothing else.

"Watching the storm?" Jaina asked him.

Zak whirled around to face her. For the briefest of moments, Jaina could have sworn that she was looking at someone else entirely. For just an instant, she thought that his hair looked too wild, his lips set too thin, his jaw more chiselled than rounded, his eyes lighter, and shadowed with sleeplessness. But when she blinked, it was all back to the way it should have been. It had to be her imagination.

He smiled. "Yeah," he said. His voice was a little strained to keep above the sound of the rain and the wind. He didn't even sound like he was suffering from the chill of the wind blasting across the city. "A chance to unwind a bit after … well; you know?" He circled a finger around the side of his head pointedly.

"How'd it go?" she asked.

Zak hesitated and turned to the storm again, closing his eyes. Jaina didn't like to see him like that. It looked like he was in pain, or brooding over whatever it was that he'd seen while recovering his memories.

Perhaps it was just that he was still angry with her.

"It was what it was," he said flippantly.

Jaina frowned. What the hell was that supposed to mean? She found herself wondering. She tried to reach him across the bond they shared in order to tell what he was feeling, and found herself unable to fully succeed. In fact, the link felt dulled to her; deadened somewhat. It was a sensation Jaina had attributed to times when Zak was asleep or otherwise unconscious.

The only other time the bond had felt that way to her had been when the Sith personality had asserted control of Zak. She'd been unable to reach for him, and the Sith had manipulated that to draw her out.

But Zak had long since reasserted his dominance over that Sith persona. In fact, it was more or less destroyed. Yes, there would always be traces of that darkness within him for the rest of his life, but it would not taint him again, would not rule him again.

"Is everything OK?" she asked, cautious, concerned.

"Sure. Why wouldn't it be?" Zak turned again and looked her dead in the eye. For some reason that Jaina couldn't explain, that one single look sent an immediate chill racing down through her spine and she found herself unable to look him in the eye for very long.

"Well; you just came out of the labs. You just had that first treatment," Jaina put forward. She approached him slowly and stopped just in front and to the side of him. He turned to the storm once more, waiting for her to continue. "I would have thought that whatever it was that you'd seen this time might have upset you."

Zak was brought to a stop at her words. Looking sidelong at him, and trying not to make it obvious that she was, Jaina noted a hint of confusion in his eyes; eyes that seemed just a shade lighter than they should have been. But then, knowing replaced the confusion and he managed a weak smile. "A little," he said quickly. "It's really just the same things I've been seeing already so far—the fight with Skywalker, his wife, your brothers."

Skywalker? Jaina thought to herself. His wife? Your brothers? The terminology confused her.

Zak and Luke had been friends in one form or another since long before Jaina and her brothers had even been conceived. She'd heard her uncle insist numerous times that Zak address him by name rather than by his Jedi title. Her aunt, Mara, though she had known the Arrandas much less than Luke had, had insisted on the same familiarity between them by association.

Jaina had only ever heard Zak refer to Luke by his surname under two circumstances: when following the title of "master" while requesting or stating something to him in an official capacity of a student under lecture, and—

His eyes were too light in the brown spectrum; closer to a darkish kind of yellow. Thinking about that only made her skin crawl.

On instinct alone, she took a step away from him, resisting the urge to reach for the lightsaber that hung from her belt, just in case she was wrong.

"What's the matter, Jaina?" Zak asked her, looking confused once more. She noticed that he didn't even attempt to approach her. Normally, he would have done just that.

"Nothing," she said quickly. Zak frowned, as if he detected the not-quite lie. "It's really nothing. Just … for a second there …"

"I reminded you of the way I was when I was …" he finished for her, circling his finger around the side of his head again. She blinked. Had that been a direct quote from what she had been thinking? It could have been. But if Zak had read it from her mind, why hadn't she felt the awareness across the bond? Moreover, why hadn't she felt the intrusion?

She checked the bond again, and noted that it was still muted, still felt like Zak was unconscious. She decided to have a word with the Kaminoan technicians involved with the procedure later about that. Possibly, it was nothing more than an unforseen abnormality of whatever he had just recently gone through. Perhaps she had grown too reliant on that bond in recent years to even consider being without it now that they were so involved with one another.

Jaina nodded in response to Zak's guess, and she attempted to smile to alleviate her concerns. She had to admit to herself that it worked … kind of. Though, she still could not quite get over the eyes. She knew better than to alert him to that. If she was wrong and just imagining things in the different lighting of this world, then it would only confuse or annoy him. If she was right, then it would anger him and endanger her own life. She just desperately hoped that she was wrong.

"I'm sorry." It sounded genuine. Jaina even found herself believing that it was. How could she doubt someone she loved so much? How could she doubt him when he spoke to her that softly?

"It's all right," she said softly. She recovered the step she'd taken away from him and affected the best smile she could manage. "I guess that I should have expected some residual effects. You've just spent the past few hours reliving some of the most horrible experiences of your life; it's only natural that some of the darkness would still be on your mind."

There was a small moment of hesitation, but the tightness of Zak's lips gave away the frustration and anxiety roiling within. He might not be angry with her anymore that she could sense, but he did still seem to be frustrated both with her and with his memories. At least, that was how she chose to interpret what she felt coming from him.

She laid a gentle hand against his bare arm and looked up into his eyes. "Let's go inside," she offered, giving his arm a gentle squeeze. "Maybe you can show me around the parts of the city Loru Fa showed you yesterday."

"Later," Zak said, and returned his gaze to the empty landing platform. "I have a lot of thinking to do."

Jaina took the remark as it was intended—a dismissal. She nodded, brought his hand up to her face and kissed the palm once, twice, and then released it. "That's fine," she said. "I can wait for the tour. I might go and see Uncle Luke for a little while; find out what he's been up to for the day. I'll see you inside soon?"

Zak didn't reply. His eyes were closed now and he seemed to be listening for something. But whatever it was, Jaina couldn't detect it herself. The only sounds she could hear were the pounding of the rain, the howling of the wind, the rolling of the thunder. They worked in a sort of harmonic unison.

Perhaps that was what Zak listened to. Perhaps he was just finding some measure of calm in the storm that was passing over the city.

Jaina felt a tiny stab of envy at the presumption. There was a time when the only calm he could find was in her company. She wondered when that had changed.

"OK," she said softly. Then she left his side.

"I just don't see what you're getting at, Jaina," Luke said over a cup of caf an hour later.

As she had told Zak she would, Jaina had gone straight to her uncle. She hadn't however, told him that she would be talking about him. But having done so hadn't seemed to do her any favours. Her uncle didn't seem to realise that she had sensed something very wrong in Zak.

Had Luke even seen Zak since the first procedure? How could he know that there was nothing wrong if he hadn't? Was he basing it on faith in Zak that, presently, was shaken in Jaina? Or was it something more? Had he felt something in Zak that contradicted Jaina's statements and made her doubt what she had seen?

It was entirely possibly. After all, he had been reliving some of the worst times in his recent years. That was bound to bring about some dark urges and thoughts and mannerisms that he would have to fight to control once more.

She sighed and ran a hand over her face, as if it could wipe away her worries and doubts for the man she loved. "I don't know. You could be right, I guess," she said after a moment and a sip of caf. "He just didn't seem … Zak-like," she added, screwing up her nose.

"It sounds to me like it might have just been a side-effect of the memory retrieval," Luke said with a shrug. He sipped against from his caf and then set it down on the table between them. "We can't really expect this to not have some kind of effect on him. He repressed those memories for a reason, Jaina. Part of him—not the Sith, part of Zak—refused to accept some of the things the Sith entity within forced upon him. Would you want to remember having attacked him, if your positions were reversed? Would you have wanted to remember attacking Jacen and putting him in the infirmary?"

Yes, she thought to herself irrationally. Then she actually took a moment to consider it. Would she? There were ups and downs to knowing.

On the one hand; if she had been in Zak's place, she wouldn't have wanted to remember hurting him or Jacen, or Tash, or Luke, or Mara. Knowing what she'd have done would have driven her into a pit of despair so deep she wasn't sure she could ever dig her way out of it.

But on the other hand; wouldn't knowing make it easier to apologise to those that she had hurt? Wouldn't it be better than walking around with people shooting her furtive, distrustful, sometimes scathing looks without knowing what she had done to deserve it?

"I don't know." Her caf was getting cold, but it was still in her hands, untouched.

"Exactly," Luke said. "We have to assume that Zak is debating the issue in his own mind and coming to his own conclusions." He uncrossed his legs and then recrossed them the other way and touched a thoughtful finger to the cleft of his chin. I'm more interested, presently, in what you say about that bond of yours. Has there ever been an instance when he's felt muted like this before?"

"Only when Zak's been sleeping or rendered otherwise unconscious," Jaina replied. "That's weird in and of itself, isn't it? That it feels that way now, I mean." Just to be sure, she tested it once more and found it unchanged.

Luke shrugged. "I can't claim to be an expert on that. The bond I share with your aunt is one of understanding and love. We don't have nearly the level of psychic connection that you and Zak formed with Brakiss was holding you. In fact, I can't even account for it. I've been going through the archives since you first reported it to me, and I haven't been able to find any records of any Jedi in history ever experiencing the same phenomenon. However …"

"However," Jaina finished for him, "the Jedi archives are massive, and largely incomplete."

"Precisely." He tapped his chin several times in thought and then shrugged again. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if it has happened before, and that all record of it was lost either when the Sith sacked Coruscant millennia ago, or when Palpatine tried to erase the Old Order."

"Kriffing bishwag!" Jaina muttered without thinking.

"Language, young lady."

She cringed from the rebuke, but didn't rescind it. She considered herself in the right. The Sith had done terrible things over the ages in their quest for power, but despite what current Sith like Alitha and Brakiss did in the years since, it was widely viewed by the Jedi that Darth Sidious—more commonly known as Emperor Palpatine—had been the worst of them all. The only Sith in history to completely decimate the Jedi Order and the Republic and install himself as the sole ruler of a galaxy-wide Empire, he had committed countless atrocities to ensure his ascension, and more to retain his position. That he had not only tried to destroy the Order, but to erase it was just one more tally to his name.

"There's still a small chance that there's something in the archives," Luke said encouragingly. "How did you describe the bond as feeling to you lately?"

"Muted. If it was a living thing I would say it's asleep. I can see the occasional flash of images if I concentrate. They could be memories, bleeding across. Or they could be dreams."

"Have you often seen into his dreams while he's been asleep?"

"If I concentrate enough," she admitted. "But usually that's more than flashes. When I concentrate that much I get clear images, full streams. It's like a live feed."

"That's very peculiar indeed." Luke scrubbed the stubble on his cheek and then lowered his hand to his lap once more. "Have you discussed it with the lab techs to see what they have to say about it? As I mentioned, it could just be an unforeseen side effect. You'd want to at least rule that out before you go investigating it any further."

"I was going to see that chief tech in charge of the procedure later. Uh … Sane Fa, I think his name is?"

"Correct. I suggest you go to the Prime Minister first to organise that."

"I might." She downed the whole mug of cooled caf and set the mug back down on the table before pushing herself up from the seat and rolling her shoulders to ease the tension that had started to bunch. "I'm sorry if I seem to be overreacting, Uncle Luke," she said mutedly.

"Oh, heavens, Jaina! You're concerned for him. That's nothing to be apologising for," Luke assured her. "I think, though, that if this issue is bothering you so much, I might look into it as well. That also depends on how your meeting with Sane Fa goes. I promised Zak that I would take a look at something he found yesterday, but I haven't yet gotten around to that. Perhaps that should be my first task. It might offer clues as to what's wrong."

Jaina was on her way out when he said that, but at her uncle's words, she stopped and spun around so fast it dizzied her. "What? What did he find? He never mentioned anything about this to me," she said, frowning in displeasure.

Luke's brows drew together in something akin to sympathy before he replied. "He went on that tour with Loru Fa yesterday, if you recall, shortly after you arrived here and met the Prime Minister."

"Yes."

"Well, he was able to manipulate Loru Fa's mind just enough to leave a suggestion that they check out one of the landing platforms." Jaina's uncle finished the last of his own caf and then took both mugs to the sink cleaner and set them inside. Then he returned to where Jaina was standing.

"He mind-tricked a Kaminoan?" Jaina could scarcely believe it. There weren't many senior Jedi that could pull something like that off, and fewer that would even attempt it. "That's … unlikely."

"Nevertheless, he succeeded. She led him to the platform in question and he went out to investigate it briefly. He discovered what he believed to be a transport vessel berthed on the pad, equipped with an active cloaking device. Now, ordinarily, I wouldn't bother with such a thing. Many people do value their privacy."

"Granted."

"But," Luke continued, as if Jaina hadn't spoken, "Zak claimed that he witnessed something … dark. On his way back into the dome, he saw some sort of shade that gave off a strong dark side aura and offered some vague threats about him."

Jaina's teeth clacked loudly as she ground them together at those words. How very like Zak to keep something like that from her. He might even consider it some sort of equalising after what he had just learned from her. How very like Zak.

"Jaina …" Luke warned, sensing her thoughts.

"How could he keep this from me?" she demanded. "I—who he claims to love. I—who would do anything to see him safe. He knows that." She spun and went for the door again, keying the release switch. She stepped through it and then turned to face her uncle once more, glowering. "Thank you for informing me of this. I must have words with Zak. Good evening to you, Uncle."