Anyway, here is chapter five. I hope you like what I've written. And if there is this tiny little bit of OOCness with one character, I apologize for this as well. So, dear reader, please don't skin me.
Delilah - August 16, 2004
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- Chapter Five - Luke Skywalker -
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"It must be Hell."
I don't think so, youngling.
What? Did I scare the little Jedi?
"... No. I'm not afraid. No."
But...
"It is a bit disturbing to meet you."
Of course, youngling. It would be quite boring if there wasn't a good light show.
"...?"
Infidels. The all of you. The galaxy truly has changed.
"Changed?"
Changed, little Jedi. Changed in a way that most Sith wouldn't even recognize their own birth planet.
"You are a Sith."
And the problem is?
"..."
Really, boy. Are you so cemented in your Jedi teachings that you can't see when someone wants to help you?
Hey. I didn't allow you to go.
HEY...
Children these days. No respect for their elders.
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I walk down the halls of doom to await my punishment. Really, if it were so easy.
No, I don't have to fight this morning. No piloting in a space battle, no sword practice, nothing. Just the most feared moment in a soldiers life. At least in mine.
Doctor Gol wishes to meet me. Only some standard tests. Nothing really taxing, he said. I believe it was supposed to calm my nonexistent fears, make it more palatable for me to lie on an examination table in a mad scientists lab. That he is one of the best of his art doesn't even enter my mind.
Instead I have the distinctive wish to kill something. And it should be a slow and painful death, so that a true connoisseur can appreciate my efforts. Something with many broken bones and quite a little spattering of blood. Oh yes, something artful, something that deserves the name of destruction.
What am I thinking? Have I sunk so low that I cherish the thought of mayhem and bloodshed? Have I become... Dark?
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With my mind on such disturbing things as my own sanity I enter the infirmary only to walk into a white wall. That said wall is nothing but a Stormtrooper's armour with a soldier in it I realize when my backside makes acquaintances with the oh so lovingly awaiting floor.
Ouch, that hurt. But what I see makes me forget any pain I ever had. It makes my mind go completely blank and lets me gape like the farm boy from a backwater planet that I am. Impossible, I tell myself. It can't be. It just can't be. But it is. As real as living, breathing beings can be.
For what I see that makes me act in such an unjedilike manner is at least a dozen Imperial Stormtroopers, as much officers and... can it be?... even a Royal Guard helping patch up the wounded as if they were not prisoners of war but the faithful minions of a demanding master named Jinar Gol. So absent minded am I that I don't see the looming shadow of a red clad warrior come over me. So far gone that I can't remember being lifted and put upon a medical bed to await the tender mercies of a man who prides himself on the absence of his bedside manner.
But it is not Doctor Gol who comes to look for whatever illness is supposed to threaten my life. It is the crimson monster that tries to examine my health. Obviously I can't help bit flinch away from the man.
"I wouldn't do that again if I were you." comes a voice from the bed next to mine. A voice sounding like the one of a man who died days ago. A voice reminding me of the fact that now I really am alone.
I turn my head away from the invading and dearly despised touches of an - astonishing as it seems in an Imperial trained killing machine - fully educated medical officer to the man calmly sitting in a medical bed, surrounded by machinery whose names I can't pronounce, and looking for all the world like a king on his throne. That is, if it weren't for the breathing mask hiding the lower half of his face.
"Huh?" is the highly eloquent reply that leaves my mouth. Oh, the shame. Here I am, Jedi Knight and companion of a princess for nearly five years and the one thing that come to mind is 'huh'?
But it seems that I didn't make as huge a mistake as I think I did, for my neighbour only smiles. That is I think he smiles. One can only guess when sitting across a man whose face is behind a mask.
"The Colonel here," with that he points at the Crimson Guard "is a proud man. He doesn't like it when 'those who search' don't follow his lead in his field of expertise." Again with the instinctive reply that I wish would be something more, maybe a real word with syllables, and not these grunts that seem to love leaving me looking like a far greater idiot than I am.
"My Lord:" the silky tones of a Tatooine accented voice keep him from answering. "It is against the strict orders of Doctor Gol for you to be awake so soon after surgery." Did the voice come from where I think it came from? Yes, the Guard, the Colonel is speaking. "I will give you a sedative if you don't do what you are told and rest."
"I am resting, Colonel. Am I in uniform? Am I on my bridge and commanding my ship? Obviously not or you wouldn't get the chance to play Mother Krayt with me." Do I sense a bit of conflict in the air? 'A bit' seems more like an understatement. "So don't disturb me in my so called rest and do your job. Or do I need to contact Master Hett? He wouldn't like to hear that one of the best students of Yinchorr is not performing to perfection, don't you agree?"
The only reaction this creates in the red armoured man is a flood of curses in... is that Tusken? And what does the patient who acts like he owns everything? He laughs and says simply that no, he is no Ootmann, no Skywalker anymore, that the Suns are his sisters as well.
No Skywalker? What a strange way to tell a Tusken that one is a friend. Not that I've ever heard of a Tusken that can be trusted as a friend. And so I ask my strange neighbour what he meant with 'no Skywalker'.
"Don't tell me that a child of Tatooine knows nothing of Tusken mythology?" comes his disbelieving answer. What can I say to that than it is true, I know nothing of the Tusken and their stories because I grew up on a moisture farm.
He gets this strange look in his eyes and tells me, in a voice that seems to mourn for some heritage I never heard of, that G'nklr, the Skywalker is the son of Light and Fighter of Shadows. That Skywalker is a synonym for death in Tusken belief because they see the Suns, the godly twins, as their Bringer of Balance, because 'only in Light can there be true Darkness'.
He tells me of the Great Fall, how G'nklr died to be reborn as Ft'rvk, the Vader, brother of the Moons and Son of the Suns. How the once fanatical Protector of Light realized that he hurt his people with his deeds and that only Twilight can stand guard against those that seek evil. He tells me that every Skywalker one day becomes a Vader, that they find their balance in the Shadows.
This strange man with the red eyes tells me with these tales that the Jedi were doing wrong and the only way to right this wrong was to follow the Sith and destroy them all. Of course, he never says the words Jedi or Sith, he only uses metaphors of Light and Darkness, talks of Shadows and Twilight.
And if I think about it, he could be talking about any view of Good and Evil in every society ever known. Or is he really only talking about the Tusken way? I don't know. And I don't want to ask.
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I leave the infirmary without looking back. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to be reminded that maybe I'm making a huge mistake with my following the Jedi path.
I don't want to be reminded of my Father's death. Don't want to realize that without me being a Jedi he would still be alive, that it was my fault that made him defy the Emperor and killed him, stole his breath and let him die in this cold prison of metal and technology.
I don't want to know. I don't want to think.
I don't want to be alone.
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This time, little Skywalker, you won't be allowed to run away.
"Leave me alone."
I thought you didn't like to be alone, boy.
"Doesn't matter. Can't matter."
Oh my, I should have known. You are like your mother.
"Don't you mean like my father?"
No, your mother. Your father may be a suicidal maniac with a taste for elaborate torture but he is not prone to depression. When your father feels like that he goes looking for something to kill.
You should have gone through with your fantasies of destruction, Luke.
"But I can't be evil. I can't succumb to the Dark."
Whoever said that you should. I just told you that you need a vent for your aggressions. Nothing more.
"That is the way of the Dark Side of the Force. To follow one's emotions, to succumb to hate."
If you won't listen I can't help you.
"I don't need help from a dead Sith Lord."
I'm telling you a secret, little Skywalker.
"And what lies do you want to tell me, Sith?"
I'm not dead.