Author's notes: Thank you chord! Thank you charm school drop-out! I'll never forget the debt I owe you two.
Anakin stood at the edge of the cliff, his hands behind his back, gazing at the two suns of Tatooine rising in the distance. This was the best time to be awake and to meditate. He closed his eyes and reached out into the Force.
He wished that he could rid Lunaris of her dreams. He remembered how tightly she'd clung to him as she woke up, crying, from her dream. He remembered telling her soothing words and coaxing her to tell him about another dream she had of her father. He remembered wiping away the tears that coursed down her cheeks, as she haltingly told the story of her dream that night. He remembered the anger he felt towards her father; because of the way he haunted her dreams. And he remembered rocking her back to sleep, whispering calming words and enveloping her in the Force.
He sensed Lunaris' presence coming up, then leaving behind him. "Don't go," he said, without opening his eyes.
"I didn't want to disturb you," she murmured.
"Your presence is soothing," he assured her.
He felt her reach for his hand with hesitation, and in that slight moment, reached out toward her with the Force, urging her...
A sudden whirr and beep caused Lunaris to withdraw her hand, awkwardly avoiding Anakin's eyes.. Artoo rolled towards Anakin and bleeped informingly. "You have a live Holonet message right now from Uncle Luke? Let me take it, Artoo."
A shrill toot and a click, and Luke Skywalker's holographic form stood in front of Anakin. "How is your mission coming along? I got Lunaris' message. Is she alright? What's happening out there?"
Anakin glanced at Lunaris, who had then chosen that moment to fix her things, well away from Anakin and Luke. "She's fine. She got a huge cut on her forehead, but we were able to heal it." In a lower voice, he added, "She's been having her nightmares again about her father, and they're getting worse." He quickly recounted the dreams Lunaris told him to Luke.
"That's one thing I wanted to tell you. Your father and Jaina--"
"They're back? Jaina and Mom and Dad? Since when?" Leia Organa and Han Solo had just returned from another meeting with the Senate, to plead for the Jedi's safety in the galaxy.
"Yesterday. I filled them in on where you were and whom you were with. As a matter of fact, it's your mother who insisted on paying for this Holonet message. Who was I to refuse?" He shook his head. " Typical of Leia."
Anakin grinned. It was pretty typical of his mom to do that. "What about Dad and Jaina?"
"When I told them about Lunaris' dreams, they set to work on this machine, built specially for Lunaris' purpose. She and another person willing enough will go inside her dreams and help destroy whatever's haunting her in there."
"I'll go," Anakin automatically said, though in the back of his mind he wondered what made his dad and Jaina suddenly work on this…contraption.
"I was hoping you'd say that," said Luke. "You could think of it as a sort of mission, and this time, Lunaris won't be disappointed, since it'll be just the two of you to share the glory. By the way, where is Tahiri?"
Anakin briefly told Luke about Tahiri's sudden voluntary decision to go to the Yuuzhan Vong base. "I don't know what's gotten into her, Uncle," he said. "I don't think she's mad, or obliged to go or anything."
"Think about that later," Luke said. "Right now, you and Lunaris will have to look for the base…and Tahiri. Good luck. May the Force be with you."
"May the Force be with you, too." Luke's holographic image then vanished. "Thanks, Artoo." The droid gave a short whistle and rolled back to Lunaris.
Anakin walked over to his apprentice. "We're going to have to leave now if we want to find the base and Tahiri right away."
"Hold on," she said, clipping her lightsaber in place and lifting up her bag. "There. Let's go."
The two went to the edge of the cliff and stopped. Artoo had gone on down ahead and was currently waiting for them below. "I've got this all figured out. When I count to three, we jump."
Lunaris gawked at him. "Are you insane? After what happened to me yesterday?"
"We use the Force to help cushion our landing. We'll support each other while falling." He'd done this with Tahiri in an elevator shaft before; he had to get it right again this time.
"You haven't taught me this yet." Lunaris gulped.
"Well, now is the best time to learn, isn't it? Experience is the mother of knowledge!" he said. "One…"
"I promise to always practice my lightsaber techniques everyday …" she mumbled.
"Two…"
"I promise never to be mean to all the children at the academy…"
"Three!" Like clockwork, master and apprentice jumped from the edge and down to the forest below.
Anakin reached out to Lunaris in the Force, and she automatically reached back, the two of them clicking as though they had never been apart, so intensely it actually frightened him. They fell in a sort of lazy way, Anakin supporting Lunaris using the Force, and she slowing his fall. It was a game he and Tahiri had often played as children, and now that she wasn't with them, he felt he ought to play it with his apprentice.
We touched down safely on the ground, with no broken bones. I took a moment to collapse gratefully on the ground. "I'm never leaving you again!" I said to the grass, breathing in its fresh scent.
Master Anakin laughed. "You're not very used to this," he said.
He let me lay down there for a while until a sharp toot from Artoo reminded us of the mission. I groaned and picked myself up from the ground. "It's too soon to start going," I said as Master Anakin helped me get up.
"We're just going to have to think of Tahiri and how much Yuuzhan Vong butt we're going to have to kick and the future of the entire galaxy in our hands," he said, and started to walk into the woods.
That's not exactly a comforting thought, but nevertheless, I followed him anyway.
"I think I may have found a way to get rid of your dreams," Master Anakin suddenly said.
"What?" I almost tripped over a tree root.
"Well, actually, my dad and Jaina did. Uncle Luke told them about your dreams, and they were able to make this sort of machine that allows the dreamer and someone else to get inside the…alternate reality."
"Alternate reality?"
"Dreamland." Master Anakin shrugged. "The dreamer and someone else can do whatever they want to in the dream. They have control over themselves in there."
"So…me and some other person are going inside my dreams? To what?"
"Destroy your father. Protect you from him."
"And…I have a feeling that that person is you…right?"
"You learn fast."
A few hours later, Lunaris begged Anakin to stop and rest for a while. "Please, Master, I'm not as strong as you are."
"Sorry," he apologized. "But we're going to have to make it fast. At this rate, we'll never get to Tahiri on time. For all I know, she might be in another shaper laboratory, and I'm going to have to rescue her again." He slumped down under a tree.
"'I'?" Lunaris raised her eyebrow.
"Sorry, I meant 'we'."
He watched Lunaris as she untangled her Padawan braid and redid it, her long fingers moving swiftly along the black strands, weaving them into a neat and even plait. "You know," he suddenly said. "I wish Tahiri didn't have to grow up."
She abruptly stopped, her hands halfway down to her waist, as was the length of her hair. "What makes you say that?" He was telling her something important, something that had been tormenting at him, and she knew she had to listen, or it may never come again.
"She's grown up too fast. When I last saw her, she left for on Yavin 4, to help rebuild the Jedi Temple. Almost a year passed without seeing each other, and I took for granted that she would be the same old Tahiri I always knew: loud, talkative, dependable and cheerful. But when I saw her again, just recently, it hurt a lot to realize how much she'd already grown, and how much I'd missed out on it all."
"I knew I loved her, when I first kissed her on the Yag'Dhul space station and when she left for Yavin 4. I always thought I did, until she arrived. She's changed a whole lot, and I can't be myself anymore around her. Maybe I loved the old Tahiri, the one I rescued from the Yuuzhan Vong almost a year ago, but I don't know if I can still love the new Tahiri: the one who's so self-assured, so perfect, so serious, and so…gloomy. There's this gloomy feeling about her, and although I sense it isn't my fault, I somehow know that I'm included in it all."
"When she went to Yavin 4, I envisioned her to grow up to be this woman, this person whom I knew I'd love and marry and have children with. I even had her personality ready: still the old Tahiri, but with a lot more…confidence and happiness. I guess I had fallen in love with this version of Tahiri I expected her to be. And I always thought we were really…meant to be. But when she came back to Coruscant and she was nothing like the Tahiri I'd imagined in my head, it hurt so much to realize that she won't be the woman I thought she would be. And I don't know if I can love her now. I can accept her, and I can still say that she's my best friend in the whole world, and I can still say that I love her as a best friend, but that's all. I don't know if I can ever love her, the way I did almost a year ago. I guess we really weren't meant for each other."
Lunaris tied up the end of the braid and moved over to stay beside him. "It isn't your fault she's changed so much."
"But I wasn't with her when she…grew up. Maybe I'd still love her that way, then."
"You can't stop change the way you can't stop the twin suns from rising. Master Anakin, I believe that everything is settled through fate. They don't work directly by telling us to go this way or that way. It's our choices that determine our destiny. It's just fate that surprises us along the way. If it was Tahiri's choice to stay in Yavin 4 to help rebuild the Temple, that's part of her destiny. If you chose to stay on Coruscant to help Master Skywalker, that's your destiny. If Tahiri wanted to go back to the praxeum, that's her choice, and a part of her destiny. But fate starts to work here when you realized how much she's grown up, or how disappointed you were when she wasn't the Tahiri you knew anymore. It's destiny if you choose to accept who she is but not love her the same way you did, but it's fate if you also realize that she may not be the right one for you."
Anakin lifted his head from his hands. "You really think so?"
She smiled at him. "Fate tells me to say I know so."
"Ah, but it's your destiny if you choose to tell me that you do know."
"You're toying around with my words, now. That isn't very nice." She stuck her tongue out at him.
"Fate says I shouldn't be nice to you today." He grinned.
"Oh yeah? Right now, fate's telling me we really ought to go right now if you want to save Tahiri. Of course, whether you decide or not to rescue her is all a part of your destiny."
He stood up and extended a hand to help her up. "Let's go. I think I want to have her back, old or new Tahiri."
Anakin had barely taken a few steps forward when Artoo whistled lengthily. "Tahiri's sent you a message?" he said, practically diving over to Artoo. He could feel Lunaris rolling her eyes behind his back, but he ignored it. "What'd she say?"
Tahiri's hologram hovered before them. "I was able to get in the base and sneak around for a bit, before they captured me and threw me into prison. They recognized me as the Jedi who'd been shaped before, and I don't know what they're going to do with me this time." She pressed a button on her wrist comm, and two holographic windows showing a map and a three-dimensional layout of the base appeared beside her. She pointed to the map. "This is how you're going to find the base. If you had climbed up some sort of mountain, that's the right way. Just follow the map. I sent Artoo a larger, easier-to-read version of it, so you'll see it better. And this--"she pointed to the three-dimensional layout—"is the Yuuzhan Vong Base. There are only three main buildings, and a battleground on the outside for I don't know what. Most probably for execution purposes, but I'd rather not think about it. The main power control room is in the dome-shaped structure in the middle, and it's guarded by a whole bunch of warriors and a shaper and her adept. I don't know why the shaper's there, though."
She pressed something else on her wrist comm, and the two holograms disappeared. "I've sent whatever information I have to Artoo which I might have forgotten to mention now. You have to come here right away, Anakin, they're starting to get deeper inside the mausoleum. I don't know when they might find the scrolls, and if they'll figure out how to use them. I don't know what they're going to do to me, too, but that's not important now. Hurry, Anakin, I'm counting on you. Good luck, and may the Force be with you." The holographic message ended there.
"What do we do now, Master?" Lunaris said.
"What else? Use the map she sent to find that base." Whether Tahiri had changed or not didn't matter now. He was her best friend, and he had to find her.
"We have to stop here," Lunaris said to Anakin. They had been following the holographic map leading to the Yuuzhan Vong base, but night had already fallen, and it was too dark to see anything.
"We can't." Anakin refused to stop. "We have to find the base right away. Who knows what might have happened to Tahiri? They may have found those scrolls already, and are probably figuring out how to use it at this very moment. Besides, half a mile and we're there! Come on, 'Ris… 'Ris?"
She had fallen to the ground, gasping for breath. "I think…you forgot…" she managed to choke out.
"Forgot what?"
"If I'm…too tired…can't breathe…" She clawed frantically at something in her robes, her lips and fingers turning blue. "Medicine…please get…"
"Sith spit!" How could he have forgotten? If she'd been overworked, or if she was too tired, her lungs would refuse to take in anymore air and stop working. The last time he saw her like this was when he forced her to continue practicing her lightsaber techniques, well after midnight. Luckily, she had already anticipated it and had already drunk her medicine before she got worse. "Hold on, I'm getting it." He dropped down to his knees and looked inside her robes for anything that could pass for the medicine she used…anything.
Finally, he pulled out a red liquid inside a clear glass container. "Is this it?" he asked her, cradling her head in his arms. She weakly nodded.
Anakin only had less than a minute left before the oxygen would make her brain stop working and cause permanent damage…if she still lived. He lifted the flask to her lips and poured the liquid in, tilting her head back a bit so she could swallow it. A drop managed to escape from her mouth and ran down the side of her cheek; Anakin was faintly reminded of blood…he shuddered. He didn't want to think about it now.
She jolted and coughed, causing some of the red liquid to stain her black robes. Color was returning back to her face, and her lips and fingers turned to their usual hue. Anakin took her by the shoulders and shook her. "Are you alright?"
"I would if you'd please stop shaking me." He instantly let go of her and hugged her instead. "I'm so sorry, I honestly forgot, 'Ris, I shouldn't have been so insistent, I should've stopped when you asked me to, I'm so sorry, I--"
"It's okay, Master, I'm fine. You don't have to worry, it wasn't your fault, really, it wasn't." She sat up and returned the flask into her robes. "We're just going to have to rest here for tonight, can we?"
"Of course," he stammered. He looked around. "Where's Artoo?"
"I asked him if he could get some wood," Lunaris said, turning on her lightsaber. "We're going to need a fire, so my lightsaber crystal's energy won't be exhausted."
"A fire? How do we do that? We haven't got anything to light it with." Artoo had already returned a large pile of wood and set it down on the ground.
"Like this." Lunaris held two sticks and rubbed them rapidly against each other. Within minutes, a fire was burning merrily on the pile of wood.
"How the--?"
"I read it in a book in the Jedi Archives. Pretty neat, don't you think?" She reached for her lightsaber and thumbed the toggle.
"Yeah…neat." He wished he thought of it first.
She was lain down beside him again, and this time, it was he who couldn't sleep.
She'd narrowly avoided death's grip again, and it was still his fault. He should have listened to her when he was supposed to, but he had been his stubborn self and refused to pay attention. He was failing in his duties as her master to protect her and look after her, and he bitterly blamed himself for it.
He looked down at his sleeping apprentice, safe for the moment from hallucinations of her father. Soon, he would be stirred awake by her muffled cries, and between sobs and whimpers, she would retell the dreams she'd just seen. Then, he would have to soothe her and help her get back to sleep, with the unpromised reassurance that she would never dream about her father again. She'd cling to him trustingly, her sobs drawing to small sniffles and tempestuous quiverings, then finally falling back to sleep.
He didn't want to see her suffer anymore than she deserved. If there was anyone who deserved pain, it was he. He who he blamed for causing the death of a family friend, he who had destroyed so many lives by using the Force, he who had almost caused his apprentice to almost die twice.
He shook his head clear of those thoughts. Right now was not the time to contemplate on the past. Right now, he had a duty to do: to protect his young Padawan.
He brushed away the strands of hair that had drifted to her face. She was so different from the young woman he used to love. She wasn't talkative, cheerful and optimistic all the time, but she wasn't self-regarding or overly attention-aware, either. He had to admit, he had a high regard for her. She was strong-willed because she didn't let her bad relationship with her father be an excuse for her for people to fell sorry for her. She was emotionally strong because she continued living, despite the tribulations that would often surround her. She hated pity, and she told him so a lot often. He also admired her because she helped him more often than he did her, and he felt grateful for that.
It was then that he realized that her features weren't as imperfect as he thought when he last looked at it. He could tell her eyes, although closed, had lightened a few tones and had become larger in shape. Her nose wasn't so big as he said it was when he used to tease her about it; the freckles scattered on it were gone, too. Her hair wasn't so unruly as he last remembered it; it lay behind her back in black silky waves, and had a fresh, after shower scent to it. Hesitantly, he reached out and touched her face. He drew back when she stirred a bit, and extended his hand again when she was still. Her skin was smooth and delightful to the touch, and it showed no signs of flawing or imperfections. His hand went down to her Padawan braid and toyed with it; even the plait was perfect in its evenness and simplicity. She had grown, and she had grown beautifully.
He held her hand in his, noting how her fingers were delicately interlaced with his own. It was skin against skin, and as his eyes moved up to watch her face, made pale by moonlight, he wondered how different contact would be with her on an entirely different level. His eyes lingered at the curve of her lips and then sighed, throwing the impossible into the wind.
He was then painfully aware of the fact that he was beginning to fall in love with her.