~20~
The Premonition
It was Lilandra's expectation and experience that, the night of an affair or a flirtation, she would be blessed with dreams that only served to reassure her that this was the one that would work out in the end. She dreamed vividly on a day-to-day basis, but they were cryptic dreams, filled with symbolism that left her feeling bewildered but pleased with the complexity and depth of her own subconscious thoughts.
It was the dreams reminiscent of puberty and adolescence that gave her cause to enjoy her usual eight hours of unconsciousness – the fulfillment of kisses yet to be had, the faceless bodies of men she had yet to meet, the way she swore she could feel the touch of someone's hand on her back or her shoulder or the exchange of air between her mouth and another's.
The way she always awoke slowly to an empty bed with nonsensical words on her lips that seemed to hold some cherished meaning at the same time, eager to dive into her day, wondering what interesting, romantic somethings she'd have to think about the next night as she was falling gradually away to sleep.
Cace wandered in and out of the visions of shallow sleep as Lilandra traveled deeper into the recesses of her subconscious, heading towards the eventual point where her body would relinquish control entirely to her mind. She would not remember the dreams she passed along the way. Only when her heartbeat slowed and her respiration decreased to half its level of normal function and her body temperature rose several degrees higher as her body became couched in sleep would her memory snap into focus, recording the processes of her mind as it kicked into overdrive, fueled by the fever circulating her sluggish limbs, sickening her body with symptoms of an illness she would not feel until she woke, but that her body had registered the moment the stone on the path had punctured her leg, driving heated blood from her veins.
She lay immobile, drifting further and further away from Cace, disconnecting from reality and signing on to the restless perceptions of her subconscious mind, thinking but not judging, seeing, but only the world projected onto her firmly closed eyelids … feeling much as her entire soul and being was suddenly rocked by a terrifying nightmare.
She was back in the cargo hold of the Imperial Star Destroyer *Sojourner*, her sister's ship, drifting sluggishly through its hideous metal bowels, a lightsaber in her grip.
Five years undone and here I am again where is she and oh I'm afraid, I'm afraid …
Strings bound her ankles, urging them forward, her knees locking then jerking ahead without her consent. Strings around her wrists moved her arms out to the sides, balanced but vulnerable. A string around her neck; she could not turn her head to see behind her.
Who is there why am I what is it …
Mist rose from the machine-hot floor to the freezing cold air. Her breath condensed before her in delicate filigrees, thin and metallic tasting from the coppery blood in her mouth, swift and definite from the fear, and she was walking forward, blind and controlled from above by someone she dared not see.
Oh I don't like this I'll take poison over this I'll take assassination, just let me look …
An airlock hissed behind her; she convulsed, jerking around, wanting to be on the defense but inexplicably forgetting how. The strings tightened in her joints, and she was more afraid than she had been the first time she'd been here, in flesh, in danger. Perhaps because she hadn't really believed that it was really happening until after it had, until after she'd taken Mara's lightsaber and cut her sister down, severed her hand, undid her eighteen years of imprisonment with one deceptively simple flick of her electric blade.
You don't think about endless tears, or casualties, or anyone but yourself and getting out of there alive.
There were footsteps, and her muscles turned to water, her joints to elastic bands.
I didn't think about Kerryna.
She was suddenly coherent, alert, able, and filled with a very awake sensation of having forgotten something very, very important.
"Kerryna," she started, an explanation filling her head, "I'm sorry, I didn't think, I forgot to ask you if you wanted to come along, I think it might've been best, I'm hurt, Ker, just come here and get it over with, say the words, let me harm you quickly and then we can talk about it like rational women …"
Her own familiar voice sounded strangled and high, and the words seemed to be ahead of themselves, and they made no sense, and she was stammering, pleading. Her breathing quickened, became more labored.
My leg oh my leg oh …
A silhouette appeared, framed in the pale, fragmented light from her borrowed lightsaber, very faint as the mists shrouded it like a cloak. The lightsaber's handle slipped in her sweaty palms.
"Kerryna," she whispered, as the silhouette advanced towards her.
"No. ME."
The voice was loud and strong and harsh, seasoned from shouting commands, as Kerryna's had been, and it filled Lilandra's ears with a paralyzing ringing as the fog lifted around her, swirling away, sucked into invisible vents on walls she could not see in the sphere of her mind.
Oh it's not her oh what now what's different I thought we were over this!
Five years ago, Kerryna had entered the airlock in the cargo hold of the Sojourner dragging Mara Jade Skywalker by the collar behind her, and it had been a battle. Five years along, in the tortured, dented, skewed references of Lilandra's memory, it was not Kerryna who hovered above her cringing form on the searing hot floor, but –
VERINA VERINA VERINA VERINA
"Sweet – "
"Lilandra!"
An acute, sharp shriek; it was Tara. Tara and Verina, Verina and Tara, Verina clutching Tara's jumpsuit collar, Tara ashen-faced and spattered with blood, Tara with her shoulder torn and her ribs broken and somehow still able to shout loud enough to pierce Lilandra's brain with cold and terror.
"Drop her, please drop her, please …" Lilandra begged, raising her lightsaber blade, fighting the shackles of sleep to wage war on her mind.
I liked you I trusted you I followed I love it here I don't want to go I can't go please …
Urgency flashed through her, filling her body with heat once more. Her anger exploded; she hurled herself forward, white-hot blade swinging, driving apart the molecules of oxygen with a threatening hiss, only to leap back again as Tara vanished into thin air and Verina thrust out a blade of her own, standing at ready.
Kerryna's clothes and Kerryna's saber and Kerryna's history only it's this woman, this old, old woman I should be laughing I should be killing myself laughing …
… Then, the scene changed.
Lilandra was no longer in the forgotten room of the Sojourner, but balancing on the ledge of the galaxy lake, hovering dangerously close to the edge of the water.
Instead of a smooth, inviting mirror, the lake had become a raging ocean, boiling with angry waves like a hurricane sea, sizzling hot droplets of water like molten lava falling upon the stones at Lilandra's feet, scarring them with brown acid remains, gouging holes in the sturdy rock.
The sky is falling no it's worse than that it's falling on me I can't take this I can't
Verina's blade struck again and again, each thrust met by Lilandra's returning parry, heat cracking against burning heat, all the while Lilandra numb with shock, struggling to keep her precarious perch, her heels sliding slowly down towards the boiling crests tearing up the lake waters.
Why Verina this benign old lady this pillar of salt?
Verina was laughing, harsh and high. Her cackle grated across each and every one of Lilandra's nerves, dragging shudders through her body like razor blades scraping the insides of her stomach and lungs and heart and head. The woman's lightsaber came swinging back around, and though Lilandra caught it feebly with her blue blade, the strength of the thrust flung her off her feet and out over the raging torrent of the ocean.
Grappling with dead air, she felt herself falling, and hit solid floor instead of violent water. She was back in the Sojourner.
With the wind knocked out of her, it was pointless to fight back. The lightsaber bucked out of control in her hand, and she dropped it. The blade vanished, and only Verina remained, leering above her. The laughter echoed in her head, derogatory and superior and ultimately triumphant as Verina brought her blade dangerously close to Lilandra's left leg.
"You poor fool," hissed Verina. "You've no idea, you can't do it, you're too weak!"
I won't listen I won't move I won't look …
"You know what's coming …"
I don't I don't want to know I can't imagine
"And you can't even move!"
It hurts oh it hurts oh move the blade I promise I'll be good
"Idiot girl, open your eyes, see what's missing. Just don't tell."
Nononononononono I won't I won't
"I will!" Lilandra screeched, rolling suddenly to the side to escape the searing heat separating the flesh on her thigh even from inches away.
"You won't!"
Then, Vernira slammed the blade into Lilandra's leg, just below her knee, slicing through skin and muscle and tendon and bone with frozen fire. Lilandra screamed in agony, and jerked violently, and her shoulder struck something hard, and she woke.
She couldn't believe how loud she screamed. She didn't think her lungs had the strength to drive air from themselves so forcefully. But the pain of Verina's lightsaber blade halving her leg was not entirely imagined, and so she screamed, for comfort, and although she sobbed, no tears came to her eyes. She wanted to call for somebody, anybody, just someone who would come and provide mercy, make this pain evaporate, make the confusion vanish, but names and faces eluded her. She knew nothing; saw nothing of the cozy interior of the dwelling. She felt only her leg, and didn't have the immediate sense to realize that feeling the pain meant she was out of danger.
There came a knock on her small wooden door, and it scared her badly enough to start her horrific screaming all over again.
The door burst open, and Lilandra cowered against the floor, half-expecting to see Verina, or even Kerryna standing there, silhouetted in the weak light of a lantern. But it was neither.
It was Cace, drenched with the rain that had begun to pour steadily down sometime while Lilandra dreamed, wearing only a pair of fraying denims and a short-sleeved shirt. He held a lamp in one hand, and the expression on his face was tired, but afraid.
"Lilandra!" he cried, seeing her lying on the floor beside her bed, facing him, rocking backwards and forwards and clutching her injured leg. Her bandage had fallen away, probably while she had thrashed in her bed, and Cace couldn't help but cringe when he saw that the scab half-formed over its length had been torn anew, sending dark rivers of blood spilling down her leg to pool on the floor. Her knee-length shorts were stained with it, and there was a bright smear on her cheek where her dripping hands had reached up to wipe her hair out of her eyes.
Oh, my …
"Lilandra, what happened?"
She just couldn't seem to be able to control the sounds being pushed from her raw throat. At first thought, it occurred to him that she might still be partially asleep, her mind lost between unconsciousness and wakefulness. He didn't dare wake her in that case, or he was liable to kill her with shock.
But then he saw that she had begun to cry, and that she was staring up at him as if to ask why he did not make any move to comfort her, leaving her to sob uncontrollably on the floor, curled tightly into a ball. No, she was awake, and she was in some very real pain.
Cace ran to her, pulling her up into a sitting position, pressing her fighting arms against her sides, taking her freezing hands in his, trying desperately to calm her down, holding her, tightly, tightly, so that she didn't injure herself as she thrashed in his arms, and then putting one hand over her mouth. She bit his knuckles, but the move had the desired effect: she stopped screaming. And once the screaming had stopped, she seemed to come out of it gradually, reduced to a shaking specter tangled in his strong grip on the floor.
She stared up at him with a wild look in her gentle hazel eyes, plagued by visions of whatever had prompted her internal riot. She didn't seem entirely together, and this worried Cace, but he was more concerned about her injury. She had lost a lot of blood in a relatively short time, and he'd seen victims of infection before, so far gone with fever that they could scarcely remember their names. He pressed the inside of his wrist to her forehead. Lilandra was burning up.
Standing, he lifted her now-inactive form up off the floor, and carried her to the bed, laying her upon it before grabbing the vial he had used earlier from where he'd left it on the shelf by the door. There were clean rags, as well, which he snatched up, returning to Lilandra's bedside and cleaning her wound for the second time that night.
It didn't look this bad before, he thought worriedly, noting the splotchy rings of red surrounding the gash once he'd cleared away the blood.
Filled with a sudden desperation, he pulled her up again, and put his arms around her, even to just thaw her out a little bit from the paralysis that had followed her fit. To his immense relief, she slipped one arm around his waist in return, and nestled her head against his shoulder, sighing.
"You'll live," he told her, and she nodded, as if only just realizing this. "Want some water?"
"Yes," she managed to gasp, releasing her hold on him and falling back onto the mattress.
He crossed the room to the pitcher on the windowsill, and filled the accompanying wooden cup with water fresh from the East River.
"Medicinal qualities," he said, trying to keep his tone light as he handed her the cup. She drank thirstily.
"Now," he added seriously. "What in red hell happened in here?"
It was as though Lilandra was hearing him for the first time. Filled with shame as she realized that it was her blood that spattered his shirt and arms, she chewed her lip in silence, trying to think of some words to justify her most un-Lilandra-like behavior. How much would he be able and willing to understand? Five minutes ago, she had honestly thought she was dying. Now, as the cold water slipped down her throat, stirring her pulse and cooling her temperature, she was honestly embarrassed.
It was no longer the reality of the dream that scared her – thinking about it, it hadn't been at all realistic. Verina, in her sister's place as the tyrant of the Imperial court? It was an impossible thought no matter which angle you considered it from. But it had been so vivid an image; the way her face had twisted with delight as she'd driven her lightsaber into Lilandra's already damaged leg, the way she'd taunted, "Don't tell …"
I have to tell, she thought, dismayed.
"I had a dream," she told Cace. "About Verina."
She gave him the heavily edited version of events, craftily erasing the reality of Kerryna from the script tumbling from her mouth, to the effect that Cace had only the knowledge that Verina had captured Tara, and seemed triumphant, defiant … confident that something was going to happen to propel her to even more power, presumably power over Lilandra. Something that she thought Lilandra should have some idea about – which she absolutely didn't – but didn't want her to share.
"I screamed that I would tell, should whatever the something is come to me, and that was when she sliced my leg."
"Sliced your leg?" Cace asked disbelievingly, his hand drifting to the bandage on her shin.
Lilandra drew an invisible line from her knee to her ankle with her finger, showing him exactly how Verina had done it. "With a lightsaber."
Cace chuckled quietly. "That's a laugh. Verina hasn't touched a lightsaber in twenty years!"
"I guess it was just a bad dream, then," Lilandra said, just as softly, gazing straight into his eyes with doubt and uncertainty in hers.
"It really scared you, didn't it?" Cace asked, reaching over to place his palm on her cheek. She nodded, feeling like a child.
"I feel like such an idiot," she murmured.
"Don't. I take it you don't have nightmares often."
She shook her head. "Hardly ever."
"Then you have an excuse. I wouldn't worry about Verina, though," Cace added. "She does talk some vitriol sometimes, but I don't think she'd ever actually want to harm anyone."
He stood, and placed his wrist on her forehead again before moving to her neck and lifting the bottom of her shirt to test the temperature of her stomach.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Checking your fever again before I go. I'm worried that you might have an infection."
She didn't seem to hear the second part of what he said.
"You're leaving?" she cried, sitting up suddenly.
"I need some sleep. Me myoh canai! But your temperature's gone down now that you're awake, so …"
"Don't leave!"
He paused, glancing down at her with eyebrows raised. It struck him that they'd had a complete reversal of roles in the last eighteen hours. Where she had been the dominant, secure, knowledgeable one at dinner and during the dance, she had seemed to relinquish power to him since her fall, needing, perhaps, to feel like someone else could be in control of her destiny as well. He was reminded of something Jiromie had told him once: "A life is entirely too much for one person alone to handle." Maybe Lilandra had been feeling this way for a while now.
"Please stay," Lilandra pleaded. "I won't have another nightmare if someone's here to distract me."
He gave in without much further resistance. The truth was, he hadn't slept much in the past three hours for thinking about Senator Ilkhaine and her awkward ways and painful honesty, not to mention the way she'd kissed him back, completely contrary to his expectations, with the same apparent certainty of emotion as he'd kissed her in the first place. In any other time and place, their encounter most likely wouldn't have ended at kissing. That intrigued Cace enough to concede to hanging around a little while longer.
"I'll stay until you fall asleep again, but then I'm going back, alright?"
"Thank you," Lilandra breathed, flopping back on the mattress, seeming much more herself now that light and human contact had been returned to her realm. "I'm sorry. I never sleep well my first night in a new place."
Her feeble attempt at a joke brought a small grimace to Cace's lips. He crawled over her to the other side of the bed, and pulled a corner of the blanket across his shoulders. "I'm sure the nightmare meant nothing. I guess Verina really scared you on a subconscious level, huh?"
"I guess," Lilandra shrugged, staring up at the circle of light cast on the ceiling by the lantern on the floor.
There was a restless silence, neither of the two occupants of the bed feeling as tired as they had originally thought, but rather markedly awkward. Maybe Verina wasn't the most romantic of topics of conversation at the moment; Lilandra was perfectly willing to dismiss the nightmare completely, feeling now overwhelmed with shame and puzzlement over her own childish reaction, which had left her with a sore throat and a rather fragile leg.
She wanted to relish the irony of this moment, her lying in bed with the most unlikely object of her latest girly affection, the singular one she'd never have expected to work out in a hundred million years, what with all the Whills' religious restrictions on love in the physical sense, and everything she'd done thus far to freak Cace out completely, and her growing appreciation for fate.
"Do you feel a sense of obligation?" she asked quietly of Cace, arching one eyebrow and shivering in spite of herself. She didn't know why she had the impression that they'd missed a vital step in the progression of most normal romances … several months, in fact. Perhaps, as with the senators, she'd been expecting a more conventional dinner and show before sharing a bed. But this wasn't Coruscant or Chad. Here on Terapinn, time had been accelerated. Where any of her dreams were concerned, all bets were off. That included traditions.
"No, not really," Cace murmured, wrapping a comforting hand around her wrist and squeezing it.
Chewing her lip in thought, Lilandra felt the urge to ask the question that had been on her mind since the dance.
"What do you think of that whole marriage thing, anyway?" This she punctuated with a wide, jocund smile.
To her surprise, Cace chuckled softly, and released her wrist to stroke her damp hair affectionately. "I can't say I've ever given it much thought. I've just sort of accepted being single as my vocation in this arrangement, because I don't think I've ever encountered anyone in the village who I was particularly tempted to marry. Maybe in the broader galaxy, I'd have had more of a choice, but I'm not sure what to make of your way of doing things either."
"My way?"
"Your funny little games, Lilandra."
Lilandra bowed her head in shame, feeling heat spread across her cheeks, her returning confidence a little dented.
"Not just you, mind, but Tara and Anakin as well. And Luke and Mara. From what I've seen of your people, love is a competition, and a ruthless one at that."
"Yes, but our 'people' aren't typical of the rest of the galaxy." Lilandra reminded him.
Cace nodded, seeming to catch her meaning.
"I'm not typical either."
"I knew that when you kissed me, though," Lilandra murmured. "That's why I laughed. This place is so unreal."
They chuckled; stunned by the casual nature of the conversation though a bare six inches separated them on the narrow mattress.
"I really like you, senator," Cace said, his voice filled with a quiet respect. "That's why I kissed you. I've never done that before."
"What, acted on impulse? Or kissed someone you liked?"
"The second one." He seemed embarrassed.
"Oh." She smiled a strange sort of smile, knotting her hands.
"Lilandra?"
"Yes, Cace?"
"I've decided I like the marriage idea. From what I've seen of your friends, most relationship problems seem to have been caused by a lack of understanding of the point at which the relationship stands. With marriage …well, you can't really argue with the finality of a commitment like that can you?"
"No," Lilandra admitted. "But have you ever heard of divorce?"
To her shock, Cace laughed loudly. "Te lalai ke te pali lolo," he replied. "Verina's catchphrase."
"Roughly translated?"
"Stay, if you go a little crazy'. Basically, like it or lump it."
Lilandra smiled in the dark at Cace's startlingly modern analogy. "You have such an interesting way of putting things," she remarked bemusedly.
"Everyone says so. Got it from my parents. They didn't like each other much, so they were always kicking around subtle reproofs and sarcastic jabs, but like I said, divorce is unheard of."
"But if marriage is such a spontaneous thing here – I mean to say, once you've eliminated the dating phase and the engagement phase, you're left with a meeting and a wedding – then how come people don't wind up having second thoughts more often?"
"Luck? The certainty of the will? I couldn't tell you, because it's never applied to me. Everyone I've asked has given me the same infuriating answer – that it's fate, that you'll just know when it happens …"
Lilandra considered this for a moment.
"Tara and Anakin have been living together for three months now. Sharing a bed, granted, but it's not like the sex has improved their relationship by any means," she pointed out. "Fate is only a viable excuse until one partner or the other runs out of patience. Then you write your failure off to whatever you want to – angst, desperation, fleeting passion …"
"Tara and Ani seem happy enough," Cace observed.
"Happy enough, but not with each other."
"Why?"
Lilandra sighed. "Tara has this habit of running away whenever she feels too fenced in by Ani's adoration. She's done it more times than I can count, and he hates it, because it confuses him. He's such a simple boy – he sees in black and white terms, and he can't understand how Tara becomes trapped in the gray region so often."
Cace nodded, seeming unsurprised.
"So he gets offended," Lilandra continued dryly, "and they don't speak, and the academy divides by support. Mara, his aunt, sides with him, because she can't stand cowardice, while Luke absolutely cherishes Tara and invariably is the one who convinces her to come back. Jaina joins forces with Mara, while Dave tries to remain impartial because he loves Tara but is Anakin's best buddy."
"And you?" Cace prompted.
"I'm never there to witness it," Lilandra said. "I only hear about it through the Leia Solo grapevine. She's the Chief of State of the Allied Republic, and my boss, and Luke's twin sister. Hence my tenuous connection to the Skywalker family."
"Ah. So you're into family politics as well as galactic politics?"
"Absolutely."
Cace thought for a second.
"So you don't think that Tara and Anakin are meant to be?"
"Who am I to judge?" Lilandra answered. "I've had one relationship that by some remote stretch of the imagination I could equate to something not unlike what Ani and Tara have now, and I was convinced it would last forever. But I was only eighteen – I mean, when I think about it now, I was just a kid. I didn't know what I wanted, and I did exactly what was expected of me when it fell apart – I blamed it on the curiosity of adolescence, and dismissed it completely."
"Oh," said Cace.
"I guess you might say that I believe fate takes you only as far as you're willing to go, as much as I cherish the possibility of love at first sight. You may meet someone by chance to whom you're intensely attracted, and who happens, by some stroke of fortune, to be intensely attracted to you, but when it comes to the pivotal moment that demands commitment … fate isn't going to step in and make up your mind for you. You have to rely on your own convictions, and maybe that's why I'm still single."
She beamed. "I've never had the conviction to adhere to a commitment. I'm too afraid of failure."
"That's incredibly charming," Cace replied honestly, grinning at her across the pillow. "If what you believe is true, then the only reason people stay together is because they aren't entirely certain that fate is going to give them a another chance at finding true love."
"The Last Chance ideology," Lilandra said. "Sounds like a viable excuse for adulterers – every chance could be the last one, so might as well stay for a while, until the next chance comes along. Every philanderer should practice it."
Cace laughed aloud. "When do you find the time to think of these things?"
"Here and there," Lilandra giggled.
"Tell me, though," Cace pressed. "How do you excuse lovers who stay true forever? They exist, perhaps as proof of fate's presence in our lives."
"I fight the temptation of immediate security in pursuit of that ideal," Lilandra murmured, and then smiled sagely, taking his hand at her side. "For all my theories, I still believe that I'll know true love when I crash into it headfirst."
They were still for a minute or two, listening to the rain drumming on the roof, afraid to move, as though the moment were corporeal, some vastly fragile article that could shatter at a breath, something still to be feared and simultaneously admired, protected … obeyed.
Carefully and slowly, Cace released her hand, moving his own to her waist, and in a gesture so innocent and automatic it seemed a command of the very silence surrounding them, kissed her reverently on the mouth, lingering there, encouraged by the gentle weight of her arm curled just as ingenuously across his back.
It was Lilandra who broke their embrace first, however, pushing him gently away and then turning her face bashfully to the mattress, smiling in spite of the seriousness of the moment, and she felt relief flood her when Cace laughed, understanding that she was wondering exactly what he'd meant to imply by his actions. He wasn't entirely sure himself, so he steered the conversation back onto its original course.
"Where does Tara go, when she runs away?"
"Tatooine, Luke's home planet and hers – but I'm not exactly supposed to know that, so shush," Lilandra grinned, again engaged in the discussion.
"How do you know?"
"I figured it out on my own. We stopped to refuel on Tatooine on our way here, and she practically went mental when she found out. I think she was afraid that Anakin would figure it out as well, and then she'd have nowhere to run anymore."
"You're too clever for your own good, you know," Cace teased, poking her in the ribs.
"I just see things that other people usually miss."
"You'd make a good Keeper, then, when Verina finally lets go."
They both laughed then, without knowing why. It wasn't a particularly funny conversation, to be having in bed, no less.
Don't people usually talk about these things over coffeine? Lilandra wondered with a small smirk. Gosh, caffeine … what a forgotten luxury!
"Have you ever tried coffeine?" she asked Cace, knowing full well what a random evasion of the subject of Verina she was making.
He appeared confused for a moment, but then said dryly, "Oh, right – that empowering stuff. No. Never tried it. Heard about it, though. Jiromie had all the experiences out there, and shared the stories with me."
"He sounds like a good teacher."
"He is," Cace said. "He gets lonely sometimes, though. It's strange: I don't think he likes it here very much."
"Maybe he had something better in the real world," Lilandra suggested.
"I don't doubt it. Maybe we all did, even me. I was too young when it happened to remember much about before. Isn't it weird; that for most of us, our first memory is of persecution?"
"Undeserved," whispered Lilandra, looking up at the shadowy walls of the hut, taking in the empty shelves and the wooden furnishings and her cloak hanging from the hook on the back of the door. She wished more than anything that she could tell Cace about Kerryna, and growing up knowing nothing of her real parents except their horrific demise, and the power that had lain dormant in her for seventeen years, and how the past five years had seemed to her to be a beautiful, unreal dream. But although she trusted him, she was still reserved.
Something unknown, vastly unknown, had given her the idea that if she were to tell him her story now, it would ruin their trust rather than strengthen it. The nearest she could come to pinning down the source of her instinct was by labeling it as all the things she still had yet to learn about her sister. It pained her to realize that she couldn't tell her own story, not in its entirety, without paralleling it with Kerryna's, so profound was the influence that her sister had had upon her destiny … and Kerryna was twenty years of blank in Lilandra's memory.
"I guess you wouldn't really know about persecution, Lilandra," Cace said wistfully.
"Oh, I've seen my fair share of it," she disagreed. "Out there, the war trials are beginning. That's persecution immersion." She neglected to mention Kerryna yet again, who had been in and out of court many times in the past years, calling often on Lilandra to testify in her defense. That was really the extent of Lilandra's experience with the trials – a senator's place was in the senate, not the Supreme Court – but she knew, instinctively, of persecution. As a Jedi, it was difficult to disregard the injustices of the past, particularly when they had resulted in the death of two sets of parents, and her subsequent status as orphan for much of her young life.
"Wish I could see that sort of justice," Cace replied. "It would be … like fulfillment for my people." He actually sounded in earnest.
"Maybe you will," Lilandra said hopefully. "My friends and I came here to help you. You counted on that. There might still be a way to free you from this prison."
Cace smiled at her, reaching out to push her hair back behind her ear. "You're sickeningly optimistic, you know that?"
"I've been told," she murmured in reply. "But there's a chance, wouldn't you say?"
"There are too many missing pieces to the puzzle of our imprisonment: my parents' deaths and the demise of their fellow explorers; the return of Palpatine's spirit to guard us – that in itself is the biggest mystery of them all." Cace frowned. "His presence isn't even semi-tangible. It's not as if he's a ghost that wanders our forests and stands guard outside the village gates. The way he manifests this imprisonment is something only my parents could've told us … and they're lost to us."
"It's something even I can't see," Lilandra said quietly. "I would normally look for the obvious, but nothing on this world is obvious."
"The Wills were not an obvious people. We built our legacy on subtlety and harmony."
"Then this will require a lot of investigation."
"Yes."
"We have time."
Cace stared at her in amazement while seconds ticked past, memorizing the expression on her face at that moment. He decided that even if she went home tomorrow and he never saw or heard from her again, he would remember that expression, because it filled him with such hope.
She was offering help – help was a possibility Cace had all but dismissed completely ten years ago, when his family suddenly became the center of a controversy nobody really understood, but that shocked the Whills to the core of their secluded institution.
Maybe, even though they were separated from the galaxy, they had always believed that they could at least own Terapinn the way they had owned Raltonen, that if things became too hard, or the village began to seem too small, or they ran out of resources to sustain an ever-growing population, they could branch out, settle elsewhere, begin anew the way the Masassi had on Yavin when the galaxy was still theirs to colonize in part.
But Palpatine had been thorough in the exile of his people, confining them not only to a single secret world, but to a single river valley as well. They had been well provided for here, they had survived these twenty lonely years with the birth of new babies and the re-establishment of the old norms of the Wills and their misunderstood religion, and yet … it was imprisonment.
That was impossible to forget, no matter how close they came to the way things used to be, no matter how many epidemics they conquered or bad winters they weathered. They were still trapped, unable to move from this place even when the sick surrounded them or the snow was piled to their windowsills in the middle of spring.
That gave such importance to everything they did, everything that happened to them. It was like struggling through a desperately unrehearsed performance, where every accident or drawback or flaw in their methods was painfully obvious, and had such a profound influence on the good. It took the flavor out of triumph … and it made the failures feel so much worse.
This didn't seem to matter to Lilandra Ilkhaine. A stranger could've deduced from looking at her face that she had only come to occupy a small corner of a much bigger picture. For her, Terapinn had begun two weeks ago. For Cace, it had filled his entire life. To her, this was new, this was exciting, while every day that had passed since that crazy moment of desperation when fourteen-year-old Cace had plunged beneath the waters of the lake had felt, to him, like a ridiculously drawn-out demise, like every seed he put in the earth just filled up the soil his bones would eventually occupy fifty, sixty years from now. Twenty years had passed already … what was another day, another week, a month, a year, another twenty?
Lilandra had changed all that. Through no fault of her own, she had added new, remarkable meaning to … to everything. He probably would've felt the same way about any strange woman who had landed in his field with six of her friends, and yet … how could this be anything but divine intervention? He felt now, because of her involvement in the interception of his decade-old message, that he had known her since he was fourteen and stupid, and had somehow known all along that she would be the one to be lying here beside him, talking liberation as though it were backyard gossip.
He felt as though all the days before this one had been preparation for this contact, as though he had simply been building up enough desire to make Lilandra and her friends a reality.
And now, this talk of time! When had minutes become so meaningful? When had an hour spent in conversation begun to look so important?
It seemed twenty years were not enough for the time that Cace wanted to spend with Lilandra Ilkhaine.
She was still there, gazing at him expectantly, no doubt wondering whether or not he was going to answer her any time soon, and his heart was beating unusually fast as he stared back, the rest of his body stilled into submission by the determination in her words: "We have time".
"Sometimes I feel that time is closing in on me," he commented at last.
"Then I'll hold it back," she murmured.
Once again, it was suddenly clear.
She knew what she had to do: kiss him gladly and willingly first, and then sleep, and tomorrow morning have Tara fix her leg up once and for all. Then it was on to find Luke, and regroup with the others, and fearlessly approach Verina, propose an investigation, make contact with Yavin through the galaxy lake, and enlist the help of the Academy Jedi. Whatever would happen from there … they would cross that bridge, like so many others, when they came to it.
It had become an official adventure.
After a moment, Cace spoke again.
"Lilandra?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
"It's no problem. It's what we came a million miles from home for. Some fine holiday fun."
"You know, I'm glad I got chance to talk to you," Cace said.
Lilandra cast a tired glance over her shoulder. "Yeah. Same."
"Lilandra?"
"Yes, Cace?"
There was a pause. "Never mind. Goodnight."
"You aren't leaving, are you?"
"No, I'm not."
Lilandra, hearing something rather entreating in her new friend's voice, turned over to face him. Then, taking his fingers in hers, she softly kissed his palm before drawing her knees up to her stomach and snuggling down into her blankets.
"Sweet dreams," he whispered, holding his hand in front of his face once she had released it.
"No doubt," she said, and smiled.