Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars (if only!) and write this story not for profit, but solely for my own amusement.
Setting: 25 years after NJO
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Tycho
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I remember the first time my father talked with me about his past – about the life he'd had with the Rebel Alliance. Before that, he'd told me some stories, but until then he hadn't really TALKED to me. Some of what he told me I'd hear about over and over again, and, like any child, I never tired of hearing the stories of his adventures. (A good thing, too, when all your parents' friends have the same stories.) Other things, however, he never spoke of again.
I was doing homework for a class on the history of the New Republic, and we were studying the Rebellion at that point. Though I was only ten or eleven at the time, I'd heard enough stories from my parents and their friends to know the names of most of the places that had figured significantly in the Rebellion. In my text, though, I came across the name of an Imperial prison that had never been mentioned in any story. Given the description, I knew I'd have remembered if anyone had ever told me about it. "Dad," I asked. "Where was Lusankya?"
He didn't answer me, so I turned to face him and repeat myself, figuring he just hadn't heard me. But when I looked at him I realized that something was very, very wrong. His face was white and he was trembling. I remember thinking that he looked absolutely terrified. I had never ever seen my father afraid of something. Now, years later, I realize that he must have spent a great deal of his life being afraid. But at that point the realization that anything could cause such a reaction in my father frightened me.
We both just sat there for a moment. I wanted to get up and go to him but for some reason I didn't dare move. Finally, though, I got scared enough that I felt I had to do something, and I got up to go get my mother. I thought that maybe she would know what was wrong. But as I walked by, he reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me into an embrace. He just held me for a moment, and at that point I realized that there had been more to my father's life with the Rebellion than just the exciting stories my parents and their friends told and the glamour that the holovids talked about.
Finally he stood, and led me to the living room, where we sat on the couch, just staring at each other for a few minutes. Then he began to speak, and I hung on every word. I've never listened to anyone so closely in my life.
"Lusankya was actually a ship, buried beneath the surface of the planet here on Coruscant. It was a hidden prison run by a woman named Ysanne Isard. Do you know who that is?" I nodded and he went on. "Iceheart – that was what we called her – used the prison to brainwash Rebels that they captured. Then she'd let them go free, and later, when she needed them, she'd turn them into spies and traitors. She could make them do whatever she wanted them to do, and it didn't matter that they'd always been good and loyal." He shuddered slightly.
I huddled closer to him and shivered. "Did you know anyone who got taken to Lusankya?" I asked him, my young mind not registering the obvious reason behind his reaction to the name.
He laughed bitterly. "Oh, yes. I knew too many people." His voice fell to a whisper. Then he said the words that finally drove everything home to me. "I was."
I know I just stared at him. I didn't know what to say. Hadn't he just told me that people who went to Lusankya became traitors? Was my father a traitor? I needed to ask, but I couldn't form the words. I was afraid to know the answer.
He looked down at me. "Do your texts say anything about the first real trial they had after the Rebellion won Coruscant?"
I wracked my brain for a minute. "I think so. It was someone accused of treason and murder, right?"
"Yes, it was," he said softly, and I had to strain my ears to hear him. "That was me. They thought that Mr. Horn had died, and because they knew I'd been to Lusankya, and because we didn't really get along too well at first, they thought I killed him." He drew a deep breath. "But mom, and Mr. and Mrs. Antilles, and Mrs. Horn, and the Solos all believed me. They knew I wasn't guilty, and they helped me."
He shook his head, as if trying to clear it of the memories that haunted him. Then, just as suddenly as he'd started to talk about it, he stopped and stood up. "That's what Lusankya was," he murmured, and just walked away, leaving me staring after him.
He never spoke about Lusankya again and I never asked, though later I learned a little more about the prison and my father's trial from my teachers and texts, and even some family friends. That was probably one of the shortest – and strangest –conversations I've ever had with my father. But I think I learned more about him then than I have at any other time in my life. I got a lesson that day about just what the Rebellion was really all about; that it wasn't the battles and the ships and the planets, but the people.