CHAPTER LIII
Twilight
The relief and joy that was expected to come after a harrowing escape was non-existent. Instead, there was a chilly silence that filled the ship – a gift from the uncertainty of what had actually occurred at Kuduran and what would happen next. Anakin remained still in the pilot's chair, his hands refusing to move away from the controls. It was as if he was unsure whether or not he wanted to turn the ship around and return to Kuduran. Kyp had not been present for the battle between Anakin and Sidious, but he was keenly aware that something had passed between the Jedi and the Sith Lord and it was affecting Anakin deeply. Obi-Wan also had not moved; he appeared lost in thought. He had an assortment of lightsabers that he had taken from somewhere within the prison – he was playing with one of them, passing it from one hand to the other. R2-D2 whirred and hummed quietly to himself, making a long string of electronic comments that no one bothered to listen to and interpret.
Jaina had lost consciousness moments after entering hyperspace; the exertion imposed on her frail, weak body during the escape had been too much. Rising to his feet, Kyp carefully lifted Jaina and carried her to the small passenger lounge. Setting her gently down on the nearest couch, he fetched a blanket and returned as quickly and quietly as possible. He was in the process of draping the blanket over her when her eyes cracked open and she seized the blanket as she struggled to sit up.
"Jaina—"
She made an indistinguishable noise in her throat and finally managed to sit up. She slowly swung her legs around so her feet touched the floor and she leaned into the back of the couch. Kyp watched, concerned, as she attempted to wrap the blanket around her shoulders, but her movements were slow and arduous. A thread in the blanket's fabric caught in one of the joints of her metal hand. Jaina's increasingly frustrated attempts to get the blanket around her shoulders caused it to rip. Kyp caught hold of the blanket before she could damage it further. Jaina shook her head violently, fiercely clutching at the blanket, unwilling to let it go. The hole in the fabric grew larger.
"Jaina—"
"No," she grunted.
"Jaina—"
"No."
"Look at me," he said quietly.
She turned her head and met his gaze. Her brown eyes were wet, filled with tears that had not yet fallen. Her face was ashen and she was trembling uncontrollably. Her grip on the blanket slowly slackened. Kyp hurriedly sat down beside her, placing the blanket around her shoulders and wrapping her tightly in it. Silently, she collapsed against him.
"Hold me," she whispered.
He obliged automatically.
Kyp wasn't sure how long they stayed like that. There was no sound but the hum of the ship's engines. Jaina remained silent, the tears in her eyes refusing to fall as she stared blankly at the opposite wall. Kyp cradled her gently; there had never been a time where he had seen her like this. She was fragile, almost child-like in her distress. It was painful to see her so defeated, so crushed, all of her strength and willpower dissolved. Jaina was one of the strongest women Kyp knew. She always fought on, no matter what, pulling through even the most difficult situations.
Yet even with her current condition, her presence in the Force remained undiminished. Instead, it seemed even larger than before. Her Force-signature had become a vast power that pushed dangerously against his own mind due to the connection they shared. Jaina did not appear to be conscious of the fact, which was something that troubled Kyp. He could not understand how this phenomenon had taken place, but now was not the time to find out. He carefully shielded his mind, in case Jaina did something without realizing it.
"It's so cold," Jaina finally said, her voice little more than a whisper.
"It won't be long now," Kyp murmured, rubbing her shoulder. "We're going to Mon Calamari. The others are going to meet us there."
Jaina didn't respond. There was a sharp intake of breath, similar to the sound one made right before one started crying. But she didn't cry. The silent emptiness returned and she continued to stare blankly at the wall.
"Mon Calamari, Jaina," Kyp said quietly. "You'll see Padmé again, and Bail and Yoda. We're going someplace safe where they won't be able to find you. It's over now."
Jaina shuddered. "It's never over," she said, her voice monotone. "He will come back, you'll see. That blast won't have killed him."
"We still have Anakin. We've all survived. That counts for something."
Jaina struggled for a moment and sat up, the blanket falling loosely around her shoulders. Her eyes and cheeks were wet, tears falling freely from them. "He always comes back," she said, her voice becoming choked in her throat. "He's too powerful, too strong. He knows everything about the Force. He can manipulate it in ways that we can't even begin to imagine. There's no way of stopping him now." She raised a hand and wiped the tears from her eyes.
"He'll be going up against two Skywalkers," Kyp said softly, his hand finding hers. "That's a force to be reckoned with right there."
As he spoke, Jaina's fingers tightened their grip around his hand. She shuddered, her trembling becoming almost out of control. "I thought it was the end, Kyp," she whispered, staring straight ahead at the blank wall. "I held on so long to the hope that you were coming, that Anakin was coming, but in the end that hope died. I was ready to give up fighting, I was prepared to look death in the face and accept it."
She looked like she was going to start crying again.
"Shh, it's all right," Kyp murmured, placing one arm around her shoulders. Jaina leaned against him, her face buried in his shirt. "Anakin's going to get him in the end, and then we can go home. Everything will be all right, I promise."
"Promises are fragile," she said, her voice hardened. "Comforting, but fragile. Everything is not going to be all right. It might have been better if we had never come at all—"
"Jaina, don't say that—"
"We've entered a situation that could destroy the whole universe and we're too involved now to back out. Everything is going wrong."
"And it would be worse if we hadn't come at all. Neither of us will forget what Palpatine did that day on Mustafar, or what that incarnation of him was capable of—"
"No!" If her voice hadn't been so hoarse, he was sure she would have shouted the word. "Listen to me," she hissed. "I wanted it to end before they could use me to get to Anakin, to get to you. To get to any and all Jedi."
It was very cold in the passenger lounge.
"What happened?" Kyp said bluntly. "What did he do to you?" Anger and loathing for the Sith Lord was rising within him. The monster of a man had lived long enough. Jaina was lucky to be alive, but her capture and torture was only one thing on the long line of cruel accomplishments Sidious deserved to be punished for.
Jaina sat up again and faced him. Her eyes were bloodshot and wider than usual. Accompanied by her pale, broken appearance, she looked like the ghost of a dead child.
"He's been experimenting on Jedi," she said, her voice hollow. "I'm the only one who's survived. For now."
"What?" Kyp breathed. His free hand slowly clenched into a fist.
"It's called Delik-66," Jaina continued quietly. "It doesn't have an effect on normal people, or so they say. I don't know how it kills, only that there's enough of it in my system now that eventually it'll get me."
The burning anger, now veering towards uncontrollable, forced him to stand up. "That kriffing bastard," Kyp hissed. "I'll kill him myself."
"Kyp—"
"What?" he growled. He turned around and his next words fell silent as he saw Jaina, curled up frailly on the couch, her expression calmly desolate. He could see in her eyes that she had already accepted her fate, whatever the Delik-66 brought. In that moment, he realized that some part of her had broken while she had been imprisoned. Some part of the strength that had always been embodied within her had been drained. She was facing an inevitable death and did not know how long she could last.
"Don't you give up," he said. "Don't you dare give up now. We're in this together."
If there hadn't been a flicker of hopelessness in her eyes before, there was one there now. "I'm changing, Kyp," she said quietly. "I see things now. Every time I close my eyes, I can see things. People and places that I don't know, but seem so familiar. I can see the disasters and tragedies that wait in the near future, ones that are unavoidable because we're on a path that can never be left. And I can see him. Always him."
Kyp sat down next to her again. "It's not the end," he said firmly. "Even the precognisant can't see every twist in the path. No one – not even those who control time and plot and connive until they believe they have the whole Galaxy under their thumb – can say how things will turn out."
Jaina bit her lower lip. "I'm afraid," she whispered.
Once again, he wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. "So am I, Jaina," he said. "But I will always be here for you, and don't you ever forget that."
She smiled faintly and he kissed the top of her head.
"Try to get some sleep," he said, moving to get up.
Jaina caught his hand. "Stay… please."
He nodded.
Her eyes closed and she lay down on the couch, her hand still grasping his. Kyp stayed with her until her breathing had gained a steady rhythm. Deciding that it was time to return to the cockpit, he stood up, gently rearranged the blanket around Jaina's sleeping form, and quietly left the passenger lounge.
When he returned, Anakin was checking the navchart to see how long they had left in hyperspace. Upon hearing Kyp's boots clanging on the floor, he spun the pilot's chair around.
"How is she?" he asked anxiously.
Obi-Wan didn't stir at the sudden rise in sound. He continued to stare off into space, apparently lost in thought. His expression made him appear deeply troubled. R2 whirred unhappily from the corner.
"Not good," Kyp answered, sitting down. He ran a hand through his hair. "Sidious did something to her. I don't know how, or why, or even what it was, but—"
"Would it have anything to do with her Force-signature being suddenly so…" Anakin's expression scrunched up as he tried to think of the right word. "—loud?" he said finally. "I didn't notice it when we were escaping – the adrenaline rush tends to make you unresponsive to everything other than the thing you're concentrating on, but now—" He shook his head. "It's strange. It's like she's grown in the Force."
"I have an answer," Obi-Wan said heavily. "As best as answer as we will get."
"What is it?" Kyp asked shortly.
"I stumbled across something I'm sure the Empire wishes I hadn't," Obi-Wan explained. "They were… experimenting on Jedi. That seems to be a primary reason for the prison being built in the first place. I came across a listing of all the names of the Jedi who had been captured during or after Order Sixty-Six and taken to the facility. All of them were non-human. All of them died." He raised one of the lightsabers he had taken from Kuduran. "This belonged to Kit Fisto. He was one of the Jedi imprisoned there."
"And Jaina?" Anakin asked.
"Artoo can show you. I was fortunate enough to download the file."
R2 rolled forwards and plugged himself into the console. Kyp came forwards so he could see the screen as the file R2 had taken from the prison flashed across it. As he read the words describing the experiments with Delik-66 and the dangerous effects it had on Jaina, his anger for Palpatine and his fear for Jaina increased, flooding him with mixed emotions.
Delik-66 is imperfect, as whether it increases or decreases the midichlorian count in a being, the ultimate result is fatal. Extrapolation of Solo's given data with reference to Arkheenan's notes has shown repeatedly that there will come a point where the subject's midichlorian count becomes too high and the subject will "dissolve" into the Force, ceasing to exist. There were hopes to use Solo's case to find a cure for this failure; however, the Emperor has, as of now, annulled the experiment and we have declared the case a test malfunction.
Kyp's hands clenched into fists. Palpatine was good – too good. When one experiment used to perpetrate his sick, cruel ideals went wrong, there was always a way of getting rid of the problem for it became a dilemma. If he had survived the blast that destroyed Kuduran, Sidious was still ahead of them. It didn't matter that they had rescued Jaina. He had found a way of removing her permanently. She may be alive now, but with the data from the file, it was too clear how things would turn out.
She was dying and there was nothing he could do about it.
He had never felt so helpless – angry and helpless. It was all out of his hands now, there was no power in this world that could stop the progression of the deadly substance. Even if they killed Palpatine, it would not replace what was lost. Kyp already knew that the act of revenge would not solve anything. They should not have come here. Jaina should not have come here. If someone had had to return to the past to save the future, he should have come alone. Then she would have been safe.
Kyp sat back down. "This is even worse than I thought it would be."
"It explains the increase of her Force-presence," Anakin said darkly.
"Has Jaina spoken to you about it?" Obi-Wan asked.
Kyp nodded. "Yeah. I don't know how much she knows – I get the feeling that she wasn't going to tell me everything – but she's at the point where she's already accepted the fact that she's… that she's going to—" His voice stopped abruptly. Jaina was still alive, and where there was life, there was hope.
That was all he had to hold on to.
"She's the only one who reacted this way," Kyp said, re-reading the data, searching desperately for some loophole in the findings.
"Yes," Obi-Wan said. "Until something went wrong, I'm sure Palpatine was pleased with the results. According to his xenophobic standards, Jaina would be classified as a pure human. Considering how obsessed with power and immortality our Sith Lord is, Palpatine would be content that only the 'pure' human would exhibit signs of increasing Force sensitivity, whereas all the others… lost it." He blinked and rapidly reached forwards and shut the screen off. "It's disgusting," he said, mostly to himself.
"He's callous and sadistic," Kyp grunted.
"I should have killed him when I had the chance," Anakin growled through gritted teeth.
Obi-Wan sighed. "Anakin, you did what you could—"
"No!" Anakin shouted. "I could have done more! I could have tried harder! I could have – I don't know!" He stopped abruptly, wincing in pain. His hand pressed against the side where he had received a wound during his fight with Ursel Isard. "I had so many chances where I could have killed him! For a moment – more than a moment – there was no Force at all. I could have taken him down then, he was a harmless old man without any support. I could have killed him, but something stopped me. There are so many things I could have done, but I DIDN'T DO THEM!"
"Anakin," Obi-Wan said quickly, "calm down—"
"I WILL NOT CALM DOWN!" Anakin yelled. "IT'S MY FAULT JAINA'S DYING! I'VE FOUGHT PALPATINE TWICE NOW AND HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO KILL HIM! HE'S ALWAYS WON, AND IT SEEMS AS THOUGH HE ALWAYS WILL WIN!"
"Then take matters into your own hands!" Obi-Wan snapped. "You still have much to learn, Anakin, before you're ready to face him. Your inability to defeat him shows that you are still conflicted—"
Anakin made a wordless, screeching sound. "I AM NOT CONFLICTED! I KNOW WHO I AM! I KNOW WHAT I HAVE TO DO! THE GALAXY'S IN A DISASTER RIGHT NOW AND IT'S ALL BECAUSE OF ME! BECAUSE I CAN'T TAKE DOWN ONE OLD MAN—"
"One old man who is much more than an old man!" Obi-Wan interrupted harshly. "He was your friend – evidently you are still feeling the burn of his betrayal, the bite of discovering his true nature! Something stopped you from taking action when you could – Palpatine knows how you think! Until you sort out your emotions, you will still be prey to whatever temptations and reasonable offers he can make! You must find your place before you saunter in and take command! You may be the Chosen One but you aren't ready for it yet!"
"I'M READY FOR ANYTHING!"
"Clearly you are not!"
Anakin stood up. He looked like he was going to shout or scream directly in Obi-Wan's face. His expression flickered through several emotions, anger reeling off him through the Force. Slowly, he took control and sat back down. He was silent for a few moments and then turned to Obi-Wan.
"How can you be so calm?" he spat.
"I'm calm because I'm angry!" Obi-Wan snapped.
There was silence in the cockpit. Kyp couldn't bring himself to say anything. Both Anakin and Obi-Wan were almost shaking with anger.
With great effort, Anakin stayed still. He rubbed his forehead, staring blankly out the viewport. "I couldn't fight him," he said quietly. "He was too strong. His defences were impossible to get through. I was doing all I could to keep him from gutting me the moment our lightsabers clashed." His fingers vehemently tapped the side of the console. "He's still out there. I know he is. I can sense him. That blast won't have killed him. He might have prevented me from winning this time, but I won't stop until I run him through."
"He probably teleported through time to a safe zone," Kyp said darkly.
"He what?" Anakin said gutturally.
"That's what he did last time," Kyp said. "Remember when he jumped out the window when you confronted him on Coruscant?"
Anakin nodded bluntly.
"I'm almost certain that he employed that favourite trick of his there to save himself from the fall. The Palpatine from this era is no different than the one that we encountered in our time."
"The one who forced you to come back," Anakin said.
"Yes. He killed Jaina's brother and then disappeared before any of us could get to him."
Anakin's expression hardened and his attention wandered down as he stared intently at his feet.
R2 whistled sadly. Kyp glanced at the droid and smiled slightly. A strange thought passed through his mind – through everything, R2 had always been there. He was the one, constant thing about the Skywalker family. He had even been there, with the ships, when Luke's band of Jedi had first gone to Mustafar on what became a disastrous investigation.
"Maybe it would have been better if we'd never come at all," Kyp muttered.
Anakin's head shot up. "To rescue Jaina?" he said, outraged.
"Here," Kyp snapped. "To this time. If we'd stayed in our own time, Jaina would never have been captured. She wouldn't be dying." He sighed. "But Augustine was very intent on sending Jaina here after that mess with Sidious. Someone had to come with her, and I was the only one who could."
"Why?" Obi-Wan asked.
"The rest of them – Han and Leia, Luke and Mara… Corran – they were all too old to come. It would have been a paradox for them to travel to this time, as a younger version of them already existed, or would soon exist. It had to be me. It had to be Jaina. There was no one else there."
"But if you hadn't come," Anakin said hollowly, looking at his feet again, "I would be a scorched corpse kept alive by a suit and I'd be serving my ultimate enemy. Padmé would be dead and the Jedi Order would be even more destroyed than it is now and my son and daughter wouldn't meet each other for another twenty years." He glanced at Kyp. "At least you have the Chosen One on your side. I don't have to guess at how much worse things would be if I had turned to the dark side."
Kyp nodded.
"I'm going to go see her," Anakin said, standing up and leaving the cockpit abruptly.
Kyp quickly followed him, wondering whether Anakin's shouting had woken Jaina up and thinking that she needed sleep. He entered the passenger lounge a little ways after Anakin, but paused at the entrance way. Anakin walked quickly across the room. The sound of his boots on the floor caused Jaina to stir from her sleep. Her eyes opened and she struggled to sit up, but Anakin shook his head.
"No, you stay there," he said, sitting down at the edge of the couch next to her feet.
"You were yelling," Jaina murmured. She looked exhausted, but her speech was not slurred by lack of sleep. "It's not your fault," she said slowly and firmly.
Anakin didn't answer for a long time. The angry blaze in his eyes hadn't died down; instead, it had turned into a determined burning to prevent what Palpatine had started. Kyp recognized the look – it was the sort of manic expression all of the Skywalkers obtained whenever they chose to persist with something, whether it be a battle to stop a Sith Lord or a fight with food in the kitchen.
"I'm not going to let you die, Jaina," he said finally.
"Anakin, there's nothing you can do," she answered.
"No," Anakin growled. "He thinks he has the upper hand, but I'm going to march right in and take it out from under him. He think he may have won by killing you, but you aren't dead yet and I will find a cure for this Delik-66 thing. I will do whatever it takes to bring him down. He's overrun the Galaxy and he's hurt my family and attempted to destroy it. I don't like people who do that."
There was something about the simplicity of his last statement that Kyp found to be almost morbidly humorous.
Jaina, however, had a completely different reaction to it. She struggled for a moment and forced herself to sit up. Her movements caused the blanket to fall to the floor. She locked eyes with Anakin, refusing to let her gaze leave his face.
"You know," she said.
Anakin nodded shortly. "Yeah. I know."
"When did you find out?"
"No long after you were captured."
Jaina was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry." Her voice sounded so little, so very frail.
"For what?" Anakin asked. "You have nothing to be sorry for, Jaina. You did what you thought best. Who am I to judge you for your actions? You came here to save me. I was so close to falling to the dark side – not everyone could have pulled me back from the brink." He took her hands. "But you and Kyp did just that, even without me noticing what you were doing. You let me figure things out on my own; you should not be sorry for withholding information. Even if I didn't like it, I think now that it was probably for the best. I doubt that I would have believed you, or trusted you enough to let you do what you did, if you had told me the whole truth at the very beginning because, well—"
"It's a damn unbelievably story," Jaina said softly. The corners of her lips turned upwards in a small smile.
"Yeah," Anakin said. He laughed faintly. "But then we're one hell of an unbelievable family."
Jaina looked as though she wanted to keep smiling, but couldn't. Her eyes glanced past Anakin and met Kyp's. A worried expression flickered briefly across her face. He felt her Force-presence – so much brighter and larger due to the effects of Delik-66 – push against the barriers he had established and her thoughts echoed in his mind.
He's come so far, she said.
I know, Kyp thought.
What will happen when I die? He could lose everything he's gained.
He won't. He's stronger than that. He'll continue to push on, to fight on, until he kills Palpatine or dies in the process.
They were all silent for a long time, listening to the hum of the engines and glancing at each other. There were no words that needed to be said. They all knew the predicament they were in. It was twilight on the days of running, hiding and searching – every action they took from now on would be directed at bringing down Palpatine. Though it seemed even more like an impossible mission now than ever before, it was the only thing they could do. Though some parts of their minds accepted the fact that Palpatine was much stronger than they ever could be, though some part of them believed that they couldn't defeat him, they still had to try. They had too much to lose if they didn't, there was too much to fight for. If they all died in the process, then at least they would go out fighting for the people of the Galaxy.
