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~ Chapter One - Carnor Jeren ~
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"Mama..."
Hush, little princess. Don't cry.
"But..."
Yes, I'm going to leave you, but you won't be alone for long. My darling, remember what I told you about angels.
Remember I love you.
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"Wake up, fighter. You're late for school."
School. That is what my brother calls my job. If asked, he only says I'm going to school to make the family proud. Never once did the truth leave he lips. Never once did he even think the truth.
Rebel. That is what I am. A rebel fighting against a megalomaniac despot. And all my big brother can say about it is that it's a kind of school for me. A way for me to find my destiny.
As strange as it may sound, that is exactly what I'm doing. I'm not with the Rebellion because I believe in what they do. No, I'm with them because it was the only way for me to do what I was taught to do. I'm with the Rebels because, even with an age of only fifteen years, I'm one of the best pilots ever to leave the Academy.
"This is the fist warning. You won't get a second chance. The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am."
I have to smile at my brother's antics. Only he can make that sound funny.
I leave the bed and walk to the computer terminal. Once activated, the screen should show my brother's laughing face. But today he is not smiling. What happened...
"Quoting dad's boss again, bloodshed?" I ask him with a smile that feels more like a fake limb than anything else.
"I'm coming for you. Be ready to leave your Rebels in three days."
What in the name of all thirteen Sith Hells?
"You can't control my life, brother. I'm..." I wanted to say more, to tell him how angry it makes me when someone tries control me, but he just tells me the one thing that shuts me up more perfectly than the black angel himself.
"He's dead, fighter."
No.
No, that can't be true.
No...
"You're lying. That is not true." I whisper. Somehow I can't bring myself to speak louder. Shaking my head, I'm going backwards till my legs touch my bed. I have to sit down.
He can't be dead. Not him. Not the reason I left home and joined the Rebellion. He can't be dead.
I never got the chance to tell him I love him.
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Hours later, and I still can't believe what my brother told me. True I fought at the battle, piloted one of the fighters which attacked the station, but it just can't be true. I know it is not true. I feel it in every fibre of my being. He is not dead.
Vanished. Stopped from living. But not dead.
He's too much of an angel to just die.
And so I wander the halls of victory, our not so glorious battle ship that orbits this sanctuary moon. I wander without knowing my destination, aimless, without purpose, only knowing that I will find him earlier than I ever wished.
How I found my way to the doors of the infirmary I can't remember. How long I stayed in front of these foreboding gates to everlasting pain, I don't want to think about. Though it warms my heart to know that I despise the white halls of healing as much as my black angel.
A loud crash makes me leave my musings. A voice shouting choice words only reserved for annoying surgeons makes me return to old, ingrained habits. Makes me act again like the ten year old child I was the day I first laid eyes on him. And with all the confidence of a child that believes himself immortal, I stride through the gates of hell and follow the path that was my destiny since I met him.
"Stop being a baby." My voice is just loud enough to be heard above all the noise he makes with his temper tantrum. Sometimes he's so... childish.
"If you weren't such a coward and allowed Dad to fix your life support, you wouldn't have these problems all the time. It's how long, more than twenty-five years since this butcher put his hands on you and you still don't trust a qualified surgeon. Stop being an obnoxious brat and do what you are told."
That shuts him up. To tell the truth, the whole infirmary is gone as still as death.
"And what, my dear Carnor Jeren, gives you the right to say this to me?" His voice is as soft as silk, and only a fool wouldn't know that he is the most dangerous when sounding like a spoiled courtier.
"The right is mine, because my father isn't here at the moment, oh great master of darkness. And someone has to knock some sense into your thick, doctor hating head."
This makes him smile. Well, okay, to say he smiles would be like saying a Hutt isn't a corrupt crime lord. My black angel doesn't smile. There is only this tiny sparkle in his pale eyes that makes you realize that you won't die in the near future. At least not through his hands.
"Than, heir of Professor Carnor Jocvin, explain to this... doctor, exactly why I refuse to accept a Class IX Devublin."
A bit more sarcasm and one could believe he is talking about the construction of another Death Star.
"Because Class IX Devublin are organic." Now I look at the young doctor who dared to even suggest such a thing. "And every idiot who survived the first month at med school knows that a Type XIX quadriplegic with a Midi Chlorian level over 50.900 will get the life expendency of a Therolian fruit fly it they are equipped with an organic transplant."
I can't suppress a facial expression that can only be called smug. Swallow that, idiot. Now I understand why my black angel only allowed my father to treat him. Now I understand. Most physicians are fools who know nothing about what is needed to give an angel-bred the chance at survival.
Angel-bred. How long, since I last thought in the old terms of Iego? High level of Midi Chlorians, they call it now. Angel-bred are the children called who are born like this. But the angels of Iego were never able to use the Force like the angel-bred born on other worlds.
Mother explained it to me. The reason for the blindness to magic the children of Iego show is the absence of natural light on the inhabitable moons. The only angels with magic were pure blood. Pure and of eternal thirst. And these angels faced their extinction millennia ago.
"Who are you?" the doctor asks me. I answer the only way I am able to, with the truth.
I tell him that my father is the private surgeon of Darth Vader and that it would be becoming to his health if he did what my Lord, who at the moment is doing what he does best - even if he is chained to a medical bed - namely, looking like he knows at least two thousand ways to end your life as messily as possible with only a finger, suggested.
With this said, I leave the infirmary. A smile of happiness on my face.
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I only realize that the man behind the white gates of doom, the man whose whole being just screams Dark Lord of the Sith. This man with the pale red eyes I always knew a pure blood angel possessed. This man can't be who I imagine him to be. He can't be Darth Vader. He just can't be. He is too young.
Though... I've heard that angels are often reborn after death. That they return like they were the time they drank blood for the first time.
But it is impossible.
Impossible...
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"Who are you?"
That is of no importance, princess.
"Who are you?"
You have to protect my son, little fighter. You have to protect the last son of darkness.
"He really is..."
Yes. He is my darkling.
"Than he doesn't need my protection."
He needs you more than you can imagine. Be there. Be his guardian.
Be his way...