Second Chances
Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy or Star Wars.
Summary: Xander-Halloween fic. Xander goes as a Jedi Knight, giving to two young lovers a second chance.
Rating: PG-13; just to be on the safe side.
Author's Notes: Thanks for all the reviews!
Harry 2: Spike's not going to be in the rest of story! The voxyn scared him so bad, he went home!
Rankokun Alpha: of course they're going to keep their memories :) If the didn't I couldn't write any sequels;)
Dogbertcarroll: He wasn't, he was dressed in his mother's best sheets as a ghost! He is of no consequence in this story.
Perfect Darkness: Yes I read that as well, but there is a reason for that, after the Voxyn Primary was killed, no new voxyn were grown, so all the voxyn that appear after Star by Star are rapidly aging and on the verge of dying. This one is a very young, health specimen. Also the Jedi thing on Coruscant wasn't a clone, and I think you have underestimated just how powerful that thing was. It strong enough to take on more than a dozen Yuuzhan Vong, both Skwalkers and Tahiri, at the same time!
Contains Major Spoilers for the New Jedi Order series! And I mean MAJOR! I DO!
Chapter 4 Revelations
Tahiri stood in shock in front of the mirror. Her emotions were in turmoil.
She had been among the Yuuzhan Vong on Zonama Sekot, meeting with some shapers and Tekli when she had suddenly felt a wave of dizziness come over her and suddenly she had been alone on a strange world. For brief while she had felt Anakin near her (she still did but now she knew the truth). She had thought that some how the Force had decided to reunite them.
But the Force hadn't.
If the girl Willow was to be believed, and Anakin believed her.
Looking in the mirror had convinced her that Willow was telling the truth.
Instead of seeing her face, she had seen someone else's. A young girl with a larger nose, thinner cheeks and a stronger chin, who had the same scars, marking her as being of Domain Kwaad on her forehead as Tahiri had recieved during her shaping on Yavin 4.
All thanks to the gentle ministrations of the Shapers Mezhan Kwaad and Nem Yim.
Seeing Willow then walk through a solid wall had just cemented the deal for her.
And now this vampire, Angel was standing in their mix.
The situation could not get anymore weirder here, wherever here was…
The only thing she currently certain of was that she needed to talk to Anakin…alone.
She spoke up to the group, "Listen, I need to speak to Anakin, alone." She grabbed his hand and pulled him up the stairs, leaving the others behind in the downstairs of the house. She picked the first door she came across and opened it, still dragging Anakin behind her. The room appeared to belong to a young girl. She pulled Anakin into it and closed the door behind them.
She turned to look at him and her heart, whoever was dressed in the same armor that they had worn on the Strike Team mission. Soul shattering memories assaulted her mind; the grassy plane, Anakin literally blazing in the Force as he cut down Yuuzhan Vong warriors by the dozen.
"Look Anakin, I don't know what is going on here, why we're not in our bodies, but as far I am concerned; I AM Tahiri Veila! And you are Anakin Solo! The Force says we are, therefore we are!" proclaimed Tahiri.
"Calm down Tahiri," Anakin said eyeing her in confusion, "What's wrong?"
She let out a burst of air in frustration, "You! That's what! Do you have any idea what it's like to seen you now, like this? It's been five years, and the pain still hasn't stopped!"
"Five years? How? I just died!" he paused for a second, "I think..."
This brought her up short. She eyed him uneasily. She swallowed trying to wet her parched throat, "What was the last thing that you remember before you were brought here?" she asked him.
He looked quizzically at her, "I was fighting the Vong in the shaper's den, the thermal detonator I had just thrown at Nom Anor had hit him in the head. Why?"
She hesitated, "I don't know how to tell you this. But it's been 5 years since your death…" she trailed off.
Anakin's jaw dropped.
He hadn't seen this coming.
He went and sat down at the edge of the bed in shock, trying to assimilate what he had just heard. He looked up at Tahiri, "Five…years!" he asked aghast.
She nodded slowly confirming this statement.
"What happened to the Strike Team mission? Did we lose anybody else" He asked. He needed to know, he had been the team leader, it had been his team, his responsibility.
She shifted uneasily from foot to foot, "We got out and technically…no."
"What do you mean technically?" he asked slowly
"Well…Jacen managed to kill the Voxyn Queen, but he got captured alive in the process. And…" she stopped.
Anakin's blood ran cold, "Jacen got captured and there's still an 'And'!"
"Well yes…its just that after you died…Jaina didn't take it well and Zekk…" she paused fearfully, "…Zekk saw her use Force Lightning."
Anakin's felt his guts collapsing in on itself in shock as he was dumbfounded by this piece of information. The image of sweet tempered innocent Jaina dressed in black wielding a red lightsaber crossed his mind. "My sister? Jaina!" his voice quivered in infinite sadness and disbelief as he said her name.
"After we escaped to Hapes, it even blinded her to Ta'chume's manipulations. She nearly found herself sitting on the throne of the Hapes Consortium," Tahiri added.
"What!" exclaimed Anakin, "How did that happen? Why were you even on Hapes in the first place?"
"I don't know and it was the only place we could go after we watched the Yuuzhan Vong take Coruscant," explained Tahiri.
Anakin felt like someone had just sucker punched.
The Yuuzhan Vong took Coruscant!
He lay back in the bed trying to absorb all of these shocks. "I think you should give me the run down on how the war is going," he said without looking at Tahiri.
"We won two years ago."
He looked up at, eyes wide in shock, "The invasion only lasted 5 years! How did that happen? Never mind just give me the main points." He waved for her to continue.
She took a deep breath, "Well…we lost Coruscant, Jaina started to pretend to be the avatar of the Yuuzhan Vong trickster goddess, Yun-harla. Tenel Ka became Queen Mother of Hapes. Jacen escaped from Vong captivity with the help of his new master, Vergere. Jacen has become really powerful Jedi; he found what you were on the track of concerning the true nature of the Force. She turned out to be a surviving Jedi of the Old Republic. She then managed to stop the New Republic from deploying a biological weapon that was supposed to wipe out the Yuuzhan Vong. The New Republic became the Galactic Alliance, under Cal Omas. We won the war with the help of Zonama Sekot, a living sentient planet that turned out to be the offspring of the Yuuzhan Vong's original homeworld, Yuuzhan'tar. Their homeworld, which was also sentient, had apparently stripped them off the Force that was way we couldn't sense them in the Force. By the end of the war the Galactic Alliance, Imperial Remnant and the Chiss Empire were all working in tandem against the Yuuzhan Vong…"
Anakin snorted, "Oh is that all?"
She had kept the most shocking for last, "Oh and Riina resurfaced," she said quietly as she looked at her feet.
Anakin shot up to his feet as if someone had touched him with a live wire, "Sithspawn! What!"
She raised her hands in a placating gesture, "Relax," she walked up to him and pushed back down onto the bed, "I took care of it with a little help from Jaina. Did you know she's dating Jagged Fel now?" She paused as Anakin's eyebrows shot up into his hairline in surprise, "You do realize that with the amount of flying talent in both their genes that if those two have kids, the kids are going to learn to fly before they walk?" she joked as she took a seat next to him.
"My family tree just keeps getting more and more interesting…" conceded Anakin after a while. He looked at her sharply, "You're dodging the subject! What happened with Riina?"
She moved in closer to him, "Look before I explain, I want you to know that both Riina and Tahiri loved you…"
He looked at her confused by the weird wording of that remark.
"…and I do love you…You sewhen she resurfaced, the only way my body could survive was for both the personalities to merge and become one, a new personality," she finished hesitantly unsure of how Anakin would react.
Shock and confusion warred for dominance of his face, "You mean that you are not the Tahiri that I grew up with?"
"She's a part of me. An important part."
Anakin didn't know what to say. The beautiful blonde female that he loved was telling him that she was not the person he had fallen in love with in the first place. He examined her closely.
He noticed how she held herself, more confident than he remembered. She was wearing some type of living Yuuzhan Vong cloak over a normal shirt and trousers, on her belt her lightsaber hung. She was even wearing shoes and not complianing about how she was being forced to punish her feet.
His eyes widened with surprise.
Wound round her small waist was an amphistaff.
"An amphistaff!" he said in shock.
"Well yeah, I can use them now," she said defensively.
He looked disbelievingly into her eyes. They held his gaze, those two green eyes and he noticed how they were filled with such soulful longing for him.
That calmed him down again and he realized something…the new Tahiri really loved him, just as much as the old Tahiri.
He reached out and slowly tenderly, caressed her cheek.
He felt her tremble at his touch.
He leaned over and kissed her.
For a while the kiss was all that existed for the two of them.
The world was left behind, they lost themselves in one another…and only they existed in the Force.
Then they felt something hungry latch onto their consciousness'.
They both abruptly broke away from each other in dismay.
"Sithspawn! It's a Voxyn!" exclaimed Anakin in alarm.
"Buffy! Buffy!" came Angel's scream from downstairs.
They raced to the origin of the sound and found Angel holding down another vampire. They recoiled in shock as they saw his vampiric visage.
Anakin got over his shock and grabbing his lightsaber, brought the handle down on the second vampire's forehead knocking him out.
Angel got up and dusted himself off, "We've got to go after her," he said heading for the door.
Tahiri and Anakin exchanged knowing glances, even with a voxyn coming for them; they had to go after Elizabeth.
Such was the life a Jedi.
They followed quickly in Angel's wake, with Cordelia reluctantly behind them constantly muttering to herself about her bad luck and why did she always get stuck with these losers.
Author's Notes: Hope u like this chapter. Please Read and Review. Small note: the original Tahiri considered shoes to be a crime against her feet. She was renowned for always walking around barefoot.