Disclaimer: I own none of this. Star Wars belongs to George Lucas and
Company.
"Jacen?" Jaina's voice conveyed wonder and disbelief. "You're alive!" There was so much that she wanted to say to Jacen and so much that she wanted to ask him. They had a lot of catching up on to do. However, now was not the time. She glanced quickly back at Mara and Jag. It was as if the years that they had been separated were gone. "We have to get out of here, now," she said quickly to her brother. "Aunt Mara's pretty badly injured. She needs to get to a bacta tank as soon as possible and Jag- I think Callista hit him hard with Force lightening."
She moved quickly towards Jag. He was the heavier of the two, but it would easier for Jacen to carry Mara without making her wound any worse. She bent quickly between the two. A swift examination revealed that Mara had already slipped into a healing trance, while Jag was still unconscious.
Her comm. link crackled and she reached to answer it automatically. "Goddess," she answered hastily.
"Great One." Even over the comm. channel, the relief at hearing from Jaina was still evident in Teara's voice. "We've evacuated the prisoners from the compound. We only encountered light resistance on the way out and we're waiting at the rendezvous point. Master Durron is sending ships to pick us up even as we speak. We have less than half an hour to get off planet, before the rest of the fleet has to pull back."
"Good," Jaina's voice was calm, although she could feel the worry churning in her stomach. Jag and Mara were not in good condition. "I need you to alert the medical teams, both in orbit and on the ships coming down, I have two severely injured with me."
"Acknowledged," Teara responded promptly, "See you in orbit, Goddess."
The comm. link clicked off. "So much has changed since we were children. I'm so different now, Jaina. I'm so much more."
Jaina was barely listening. "I've changed, too. WE have to go now, Jacen. We can't miss the rendezvous point. Jag and Mar need help, now. I can't do this without your help," she added a moment later.
Jacen didn't move. "That's the wonderful thing about being a twin, isn't it? You never have to be alone. You never have to fear or doubt. Whenever you fall, there's always another hand there to catch you. Your other half is always there to share your joys, and your burdens, as well, I suppose." He stared at her with incredible intensity, his gaze seeming to see into her. "Or at least that was what we used to think, wasn't it Jaina? Together we were unbeatable and unstoppable. The past few years, I've seen things- I've learned so many hidden things, Jaina."
Jaina hardly looked at him, her frustration rising. "That's good, Jacen," her face showed a genuine smile as she spared a quick glance at him, "We have so much to discuss when we get back to the fleet in orbit."
"No," Jacen's word stopped her in her tracks.
"What? Jacen?" Confusion was written all over her face.
"Our time has come, Jaina. This can't wait any longer." The look that he directed at her showed both eagerness that she would understand and pity for her ignorance. "We always believed that together we were at our best. We were so wrong, Jaina. We tried for so long to deny it, but we can't escape our destiny. Only one of us, only the strongest can survive. Even Brakiss knew that it was true. The Yuuzhan Vong have shown me this. It is the only true way, Jaina."
"Jacen what are you talking about?" Her voice was low and serious and her mind refused to believe what she was seeing and hearing him say. The things that Jacen was saying had to be a result of his years of captivity and Yuuzhan Vong propaganda. "Jacen," she said intensely. "We can't do this. You're my twin brother, my only brother now." Tear fell down onto her face as Jacen stared at her implacably.
"That changes nothing, Jaina." He looked at her, as if solidifying her image in his mind. "Now step up and face your destiny with dignity."
"Jacen," her voice was pleading, but her stance never changed as he assumed a fighting stance.
He didn't respond. Instead he knelt down on one knee on the floor. With surprising fierceness from her formerly gentle brother, Jacen began chanting. Jaina didn't recognize the words, but she did recognize a ritualized call to the Gods when she heard one. Jacen methodically pulled a couffee from under his living cloak and reopened a set of particularly nasty scars on his forehead and bare upper torso. Jaina felt mesmerized by the honorific rite.
Jacen had barely started the ritual, however, before she used the Force to yank the couffee from his grasp. "No, Jacen."
He looked up at her and for the first time, Jaina saw a flash of anger on his face. He looked back down at the ruins of the ritual and then back up at Jaina. "So impatient to face your destiny, Jaina?" He asked as he held her gaze. "Impatience was always your flaw."
In one impressive motion, Jacen pushed himself to his feet and launched himself at Jaina, in a Force assisted lunge. He literally flew through the air to meet her. In the next moment, a green lightsaber clashed into a purple one. It seemed as if the lightsabers had simply appeared in the hands of their owner's rather than be drawn.
Instead of trying to counteract the momentum of Jacen's first strike, she allowed it to shove her into a fall. As her back hit the ground, she pushed him up and off of her. He rolled smoothly off her and regained his feet almost instantly. Jaina's move was slightly different from his, but she managed to regain her feet at the same moment as he did. Crouched into low dueling stances the twins circled one another. "I don't want to fight you, Jacen," Jaina called to her brother.
"Then I will kill you." He spoke easily, without malice, as if it were simply a fact. He feinted a slash high at her shoulder. She didn't fall of the ploy and in the next moment their blades met in a fierce display of swordsmanship. Twin fought twin using every trick that they had learned over the years. Their fight became a whirling deadly blur of green and purple. They matched each other blow for blow without faltering until their blades crashed together in a furious stalemate.
Jacen's face was twisted into an expression of fierce, vicious determination. Jaina met him with a look of defiance. The only hint of her conflicting emotions was the tears sliding down her face, trailing through the dust that had caked onto her face. "Jacen?" Her voice was a plea. She would never stop trying to stop this fight. She would not kill her brother and she would not let him kill her. Jaina had lost too much through the years.
Her personal goal on this mission had been to free Jacen and she wouldn't fail. Not even if the thing that she had to free Jacen from was the Yuuzhan Vong propaganda that had been put into his own mind. She had fought too hard and had too much will to survive for her to let this go now.
Jacen seemed to sense her determination and redoubled his attack, pushing harder on their locked blades. Her injured shoulder screamed with pain as their stalemated lightsabers pushed dangerously closer to her. Slowly and implacably the lightsabers inched closer to her. Abruptly, Jaina smiled at Jacen, her face now less than six inches away from his. Without warning she stopped fighting him and let herself collapse to the ground.
The moment she hit the ground, a sweeping kick dropped Jacen to the ground beside her. In an instant she was rolling back to her feet, waiting for Jacen to rise. A glimpse of motion out of the corner of her eye caught her attention and she risked a glance in that direction. Next to Mara, Jag was starting to stir. Jaina didn't have time to do more than shoot him another worried look before she turned back to face Jacen.
As two very evenly matched opponents, the outcome of the fight would probably be do to luck more than overwhelming talent. Jaina, however, didn't feel like relying on luck. This time, she initiated the attack. With the inimitable style that she had learned from Mara, she fought and tested, provoking him to take chances and leave openings. Both were ready and willing to take any opportunity that they could to end the fight, each with a different end in mind.
Luck, however, seemed to be with Jacen. Each thrust of his lightsaber, and every kick or punch that he threw at her was aimed at to put more stress on her injured shoulder. She was fighting with a handicap that he did not have, and as hard as she fought she was still loosing ground. At that point, she shouldn't have been standing much less dueling.
Her one regret was Jag. He was probably the only reason that she had lasted so long. She hadn't been fighting against Jacen, she had been fighting for her life, a life that could now include Jag. It was all that she had longed for, but never allowed herself to contemplate for so long.
[i]It was an unfair choice,[/i] she decided, as she completed a quick series of parries and thrusts with Jacen, [i]but it was her choice.[/i] She could die at the hand of her brother and forever deny she and Jag that chance of a life together. She had seen first hand what that could do to a person, however. Tahiri was living proof of that. Jaina had no doubt that Jag could survive her death, but her heart ached at the thought of condemning him to a life of grief. She could only see one other option at the moment, however. Jaina knew her capabilities and she knew that the only way that she could stop Jacen at this point, would be to kill him. Jaina didn't think that she could mentally survive the death- the murder- of her twin brother at her hands.
Jacen took the choice out of her hands in the next moment. She had seen the obvious opening that he had left her with his recent series of moves, but she could also tell that he was setting a trap for her. The sensation of her head pounding against her skull penetrated her sense and she wondered just how hard Callista had thrown her into that wall. Jaina's next slash swept up a Jacen's left side rather than his right, where he had given her the opening. She felt his surge of triumph a moment later as he took a step closer to her and slammed his blade into hers. As she had been doing she didn't try to stop his momentum, but let him drive her back with the blow. She realized her mistake a moment to late as her back ran into a stone wall. There was no where for her to go.
In the next instant her lightsaber was flying out of her grasp. Without room to move her hand she couldn't prevent him from knocking it out of her hand. It landed across the room, finally rolling to a stop on the floor.
Jacen drew his lightsaber back and raised it for a final blow as Jaina slumped against the rocks. Her eyes found Jag's automatically. He stared at her, frozen by the seen before him. The look in his eyes was full of pain and of love. He knew as did she what her next move would be. Even as her tears continued to fall, a smile lit her face. "I love you."
She could see the moment that he heard the words. A smile, a real, genuine and bittersweet smile lit his face. The tears on his face now matched hers. He nodded at her silently and she looked away. She couldn't bear to see the desperation in his eyes as he watched her.
Time seemed to freeze as the brilliant green light of Jacen's lightsaber fell towards her. Images flashed through her mind. She and Jacen as little children, harassing Threepio together, playing with Anakin inside the stifled walls of the palace. Their first steps together and the many times that they had comforted one another when their parents were gone. Countless little moments and moments that were so large they had changed the entire course of their lives both as twins and as individuals. The grasp of Jacen's hand on hers as they faced Herthir and hundred other kidnapping attempts in her childhood. Training and fighting side by side as teenagers, against Dark lords, imperial forces, and conniving politicians. Their shared grief over Chewbacca and the slow death of their family as a group, loosing Anakin to the Yuuzhan Vong. And in an instant that was all conveyed through her twin bond to Jacen.
He staggered in front of her, clutching his head painfully. "Jacen," her voice was calm, and gentle. She slipped deeper into the Force, reaching out further to him, conveying everything, every emotion that he had forgotten and buried under years of Yuuzhan Vong conditioning. He fell to his knees, and his lightsaber slipped out of his hands, disengaging as it hit the floor. He looked up at her slowly, unseeing. "Jaina?" He sounded bewildered, lost.
Jaina slumped to the ground beside him. "I'm right here, brother dear." The last thing she saw as she faded into unconsciousness was Jag moving towards them.
"Jacen?" Jaina's voice conveyed wonder and disbelief. "You're alive!" There was so much that she wanted to say to Jacen and so much that she wanted to ask him. They had a lot of catching up on to do. However, now was not the time. She glanced quickly back at Mara and Jag. It was as if the years that they had been separated were gone. "We have to get out of here, now," she said quickly to her brother. "Aunt Mara's pretty badly injured. She needs to get to a bacta tank as soon as possible and Jag- I think Callista hit him hard with Force lightening."
She moved quickly towards Jag. He was the heavier of the two, but it would easier for Jacen to carry Mara without making her wound any worse. She bent quickly between the two. A swift examination revealed that Mara had already slipped into a healing trance, while Jag was still unconscious.
Her comm. link crackled and she reached to answer it automatically. "Goddess," she answered hastily.
"Great One." Even over the comm. channel, the relief at hearing from Jaina was still evident in Teara's voice. "We've evacuated the prisoners from the compound. We only encountered light resistance on the way out and we're waiting at the rendezvous point. Master Durron is sending ships to pick us up even as we speak. We have less than half an hour to get off planet, before the rest of the fleet has to pull back."
"Good," Jaina's voice was calm, although she could feel the worry churning in her stomach. Jag and Mara were not in good condition. "I need you to alert the medical teams, both in orbit and on the ships coming down, I have two severely injured with me."
"Acknowledged," Teara responded promptly, "See you in orbit, Goddess."
The comm. link clicked off. "So much has changed since we were children. I'm so different now, Jaina. I'm so much more."
Jaina was barely listening. "I've changed, too. WE have to go now, Jacen. We can't miss the rendezvous point. Jag and Mar need help, now. I can't do this without your help," she added a moment later.
Jacen didn't move. "That's the wonderful thing about being a twin, isn't it? You never have to be alone. You never have to fear or doubt. Whenever you fall, there's always another hand there to catch you. Your other half is always there to share your joys, and your burdens, as well, I suppose." He stared at her with incredible intensity, his gaze seeming to see into her. "Or at least that was what we used to think, wasn't it Jaina? Together we were unbeatable and unstoppable. The past few years, I've seen things- I've learned so many hidden things, Jaina."
Jaina hardly looked at him, her frustration rising. "That's good, Jacen," her face showed a genuine smile as she spared a quick glance at him, "We have so much to discuss when we get back to the fleet in orbit."
"No," Jacen's word stopped her in her tracks.
"What? Jacen?" Confusion was written all over her face.
"Our time has come, Jaina. This can't wait any longer." The look that he directed at her showed both eagerness that she would understand and pity for her ignorance. "We always believed that together we were at our best. We were so wrong, Jaina. We tried for so long to deny it, but we can't escape our destiny. Only one of us, only the strongest can survive. Even Brakiss knew that it was true. The Yuuzhan Vong have shown me this. It is the only true way, Jaina."
"Jacen what are you talking about?" Her voice was low and serious and her mind refused to believe what she was seeing and hearing him say. The things that Jacen was saying had to be a result of his years of captivity and Yuuzhan Vong propaganda. "Jacen," she said intensely. "We can't do this. You're my twin brother, my only brother now." Tear fell down onto her face as Jacen stared at her implacably.
"That changes nothing, Jaina." He looked at her, as if solidifying her image in his mind. "Now step up and face your destiny with dignity."
"Jacen," her voice was pleading, but her stance never changed as he assumed a fighting stance.
He didn't respond. Instead he knelt down on one knee on the floor. With surprising fierceness from her formerly gentle brother, Jacen began chanting. Jaina didn't recognize the words, but she did recognize a ritualized call to the Gods when she heard one. Jacen methodically pulled a couffee from under his living cloak and reopened a set of particularly nasty scars on his forehead and bare upper torso. Jaina felt mesmerized by the honorific rite.
Jacen had barely started the ritual, however, before she used the Force to yank the couffee from his grasp. "No, Jacen."
He looked up at her and for the first time, Jaina saw a flash of anger on his face. He looked back down at the ruins of the ritual and then back up at Jaina. "So impatient to face your destiny, Jaina?" He asked as he held her gaze. "Impatience was always your flaw."
In one impressive motion, Jacen pushed himself to his feet and launched himself at Jaina, in a Force assisted lunge. He literally flew through the air to meet her. In the next moment, a green lightsaber clashed into a purple one. It seemed as if the lightsabers had simply appeared in the hands of their owner's rather than be drawn.
Instead of trying to counteract the momentum of Jacen's first strike, she allowed it to shove her into a fall. As her back hit the ground, she pushed him up and off of her. He rolled smoothly off her and regained his feet almost instantly. Jaina's move was slightly different from his, but she managed to regain her feet at the same moment as he did. Crouched into low dueling stances the twins circled one another. "I don't want to fight you, Jacen," Jaina called to her brother.
"Then I will kill you." He spoke easily, without malice, as if it were simply a fact. He feinted a slash high at her shoulder. She didn't fall of the ploy and in the next moment their blades met in a fierce display of swordsmanship. Twin fought twin using every trick that they had learned over the years. Their fight became a whirling deadly blur of green and purple. They matched each other blow for blow without faltering until their blades crashed together in a furious stalemate.
Jacen's face was twisted into an expression of fierce, vicious determination. Jaina met him with a look of defiance. The only hint of her conflicting emotions was the tears sliding down her face, trailing through the dust that had caked onto her face. "Jacen?" Her voice was a plea. She would never stop trying to stop this fight. She would not kill her brother and she would not let him kill her. Jaina had lost too much through the years.
Her personal goal on this mission had been to free Jacen and she wouldn't fail. Not even if the thing that she had to free Jacen from was the Yuuzhan Vong propaganda that had been put into his own mind. She had fought too hard and had too much will to survive for her to let this go now.
Jacen seemed to sense her determination and redoubled his attack, pushing harder on their locked blades. Her injured shoulder screamed with pain as their stalemated lightsabers pushed dangerously closer to her. Slowly and implacably the lightsabers inched closer to her. Abruptly, Jaina smiled at Jacen, her face now less than six inches away from his. Without warning she stopped fighting him and let herself collapse to the ground.
The moment she hit the ground, a sweeping kick dropped Jacen to the ground beside her. In an instant she was rolling back to her feet, waiting for Jacen to rise. A glimpse of motion out of the corner of her eye caught her attention and she risked a glance in that direction. Next to Mara, Jag was starting to stir. Jaina didn't have time to do more than shoot him another worried look before she turned back to face Jacen.
As two very evenly matched opponents, the outcome of the fight would probably be do to luck more than overwhelming talent. Jaina, however, didn't feel like relying on luck. This time, she initiated the attack. With the inimitable style that she had learned from Mara, she fought and tested, provoking him to take chances and leave openings. Both were ready and willing to take any opportunity that they could to end the fight, each with a different end in mind.
Luck, however, seemed to be with Jacen. Each thrust of his lightsaber, and every kick or punch that he threw at her was aimed at to put more stress on her injured shoulder. She was fighting with a handicap that he did not have, and as hard as she fought she was still loosing ground. At that point, she shouldn't have been standing much less dueling.
Her one regret was Jag. He was probably the only reason that she had lasted so long. She hadn't been fighting against Jacen, she had been fighting for her life, a life that could now include Jag. It was all that she had longed for, but never allowed herself to contemplate for so long.
[i]It was an unfair choice,[/i] she decided, as she completed a quick series of parries and thrusts with Jacen, [i]but it was her choice.[/i] She could die at the hand of her brother and forever deny she and Jag that chance of a life together. She had seen first hand what that could do to a person, however. Tahiri was living proof of that. Jaina had no doubt that Jag could survive her death, but her heart ached at the thought of condemning him to a life of grief. She could only see one other option at the moment, however. Jaina knew her capabilities and she knew that the only way that she could stop Jacen at this point, would be to kill him. Jaina didn't think that she could mentally survive the death- the murder- of her twin brother at her hands.
Jacen took the choice out of her hands in the next moment. She had seen the obvious opening that he had left her with his recent series of moves, but she could also tell that he was setting a trap for her. The sensation of her head pounding against her skull penetrated her sense and she wondered just how hard Callista had thrown her into that wall. Jaina's next slash swept up a Jacen's left side rather than his right, where he had given her the opening. She felt his surge of triumph a moment later as he took a step closer to her and slammed his blade into hers. As she had been doing she didn't try to stop his momentum, but let him drive her back with the blow. She realized her mistake a moment to late as her back ran into a stone wall. There was no where for her to go.
In the next instant her lightsaber was flying out of her grasp. Without room to move her hand she couldn't prevent him from knocking it out of her hand. It landed across the room, finally rolling to a stop on the floor.
Jacen drew his lightsaber back and raised it for a final blow as Jaina slumped against the rocks. Her eyes found Jag's automatically. He stared at her, frozen by the seen before him. The look in his eyes was full of pain and of love. He knew as did she what her next move would be. Even as her tears continued to fall, a smile lit her face. "I love you."
She could see the moment that he heard the words. A smile, a real, genuine and bittersweet smile lit his face. The tears on his face now matched hers. He nodded at her silently and she looked away. She couldn't bear to see the desperation in his eyes as he watched her.
Time seemed to freeze as the brilliant green light of Jacen's lightsaber fell towards her. Images flashed through her mind. She and Jacen as little children, harassing Threepio together, playing with Anakin inside the stifled walls of the palace. Their first steps together and the many times that they had comforted one another when their parents were gone. Countless little moments and moments that were so large they had changed the entire course of their lives both as twins and as individuals. The grasp of Jacen's hand on hers as they faced Herthir and hundred other kidnapping attempts in her childhood. Training and fighting side by side as teenagers, against Dark lords, imperial forces, and conniving politicians. Their shared grief over Chewbacca and the slow death of their family as a group, loosing Anakin to the Yuuzhan Vong. And in an instant that was all conveyed through her twin bond to Jacen.
He staggered in front of her, clutching his head painfully. "Jacen," her voice was calm, and gentle. She slipped deeper into the Force, reaching out further to him, conveying everything, every emotion that he had forgotten and buried under years of Yuuzhan Vong conditioning. He fell to his knees, and his lightsaber slipped out of his hands, disengaging as it hit the floor. He looked up at her slowly, unseeing. "Jaina?" He sounded bewildered, lost.
Jaina slumped to the ground beside him. "I'm right here, brother dear." The last thing she saw as she faded into unconsciousness was Jag moving towards them.