Lady of the Sky
By JalendaviLady
Chapter 2: A Lady's Dilemma
Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars.
If you recognize any characters, locations, or things in the following story, George Lucas owns them.
News filters through the world of smugglers and independent traders slowly, ever so slowly.
It's been days since any news filtered from the Alliance. Not that I really care... but I do. I'm in my hiding place on my ship, so I can care.
That sheaf of flimplast prints off the holonet is proof enough of how much I care.
Prints of a few very impressive Senate speeches by a woman—no, she was a girl then, not much older than I was once, long ago—who tried to change the system from inside and came to realize there wasn't much left to salvage.
Tales of a strange Tatooine bushpilot—or shouldn't that be dunepilot? crazy linguists—who came out of nowhere to save the Alliance. I've seen more than a few girls in spaceports from Bakura to Belkadan swoon over the slightest image of him in the news.
I can't blame them. He did grow up handsome.
Maker bless him. Maker bless them both.
How can I feel so protective toward someone I barely even had contact with, much less two someones?
But that was another time... another life...
There's no news, not even an addendum to the Imperial Traitor List, now including the near-complete crews of several Star Destroyers and a Super Star Destroyer.
The list used to be a few thousand on its wanted list, a list almost unending on the executed list. For the first time since the dawn of the Empire, the wanted list is the same length or longer.
I'm still high on the list. Or, rather, she who I once was is. Funny, those who oppose the Empire curse she who I was, and the Empire still wants to execute me... she... whoever.
She who I was can go nowhere. She who I am can go almost anywhere other than Imperial garrisons, secret bases, and the like.
She who I was would have access to her family now. She who I am will be lucky to get within a parsec of her family.
Who am I?
My leg still hurts from where I banged it this morning.
I suppose I really should explain. The medallion only blocks my sense in the Force, not the sense of other things in the Force. I can sense what little I could always sense, but to most Force-users I'm a blank wall now. A really blank wall.
I've never been very Force-sensitive at all, except in dealing with a few people I was close to. Him, the children when they were very small, my sister. That and huge disturbances. I'm not good at blocking, so when Alderaan blew up I passed out for a long time, deep in space.
It's dangerous sometimes, but by the time anyone realized I had even minor Force-gifts, the Jedi were fleeing Coruscant for their lives.
I felt him this morning. I haven't felt anything from him since he turned, which is no minor blessing. He was in pain, but it wasn't physical. Something was wrong, deeply wrong.
I fell in shock and from the shared emotion.
Something was wrong, that I could feel clearly. A stationary Force-disturbance.
But there was something else.
The rumors from the Alliance were correct.
I felt him. My Ani, not whatever he became, and he was clinging to the Light as he was buffeted by the disturbance's effects.
He turned back.
He turned back!
And then there is the thing that now makes my head and heart hurt worse than my leg.
I can't go to the Alliance now, for if I do, no one anywhere will be keeping an eye out for those stupid cylinders. If I let the Alliance know, if I beg them for help, news that someone knows of them will leak out somehow. The stakes are too high.
And anyway, I would have to remain Lady anyway to keep up the search. A glance across a room at my children and my once-lover, is this something to risk the world for? Am I willing to take the risk of destroying them by seeing them?
And so, I sit glancing through my holonews printouts, coldpack on my leg, and ponder why Palpatine needed cloning cylinders.
What I ponder scares me.
Author's Note: As of this chapter, Lady of Sky is posted as far as it has currently been written. Thanks for reading.