Chapter 8 – Darkside?
Sam ducked the Lightsaber blow that would have bisected her head, pivoting on her right foot to bring her left around in a roundhouse kick that connected solidly with the chest of the man she was duelling with. She heard him expel his breath in a soft woomph as he used the momentum of it to flip backwards, disengaging his silver blade so that he could plant his hands on the floor.
Straightening from her kick, Sam went on the offensive, thrusting high left, low right, sweeping the blade around in an arc from the right to the left. But her opponent deflected her pale violet blade each time, though the sweat that trickled down his face and soaked his shirt showed how hard he was working to defend himself.
She let him catch her next blow on his blade, suddenly using the Force to push his blade away from them as she slipped inside his guard, placing one leg behind his and elbowing him in the face. His surprise and defensive reactions made him take a step backwards and he almost fell over her leg, instead reaching out and grabbing her arm, using the gravity that pulled him to the floor to roll as he planted his feet in her stomach and pushed her away, sending her flying across the room.
She spun the air, pivoting on one hand and landing on her feet, agile and with a cat-like grace, Lightsaber whirling once again as she bounced forward, aiming to stab directly through his heart. He saw the move easily and stepped to the side, turning his torso away from the shining violet blade, his right arm furthest away from her, pushing her blade away from him with his own.
What she did next, however, surprised him. Lightening quick she disengaged her blade and pirouetted towards him, stopping with a second violet blade in her left hand, hovering unwaveringly at the back of his neck.
He stood there a moment, chest heaving, beads of sweat glistening on his forehead, looking directly into her piercing blue eyes before grinning and relaxing.
"Well I'll be a son of a Sith! You actually beat me." Sam disengaged her second blade, a grin spreading across her own sweat-streaked face.
"Well there's a first time for everything," she commented dryly. "And you don't have to sound so surprised."
A year and a half since she had first come to the Academy on Yavin, after training hard everyday of that, whether it be under Corran's tutelage or that of one of the other Jedi masters if Corran had been away, or with his Wife Mirax and his son Valin, Sam had gained a fair mastery of the Force. But Luke maintained that it wasn't her full potential, no matter how hard she trained and practiced.
Corran raised an eyebrow at her.
"Why shouldn't I be? We both know you have the potential to do much better," he told her sternly.
Sam was suddenly surprised to find herself on her back on the floor, looking up at Corran. "And you know you should be aware of what the Force is telling you all the time," he berated her on one of her main down fallings. He reached down and grasped her by the wrist to help her up.
Sam grasped his wrist in return, but instead of letting him help her up she pulled him down, augmenting the move with the Force, fuelled by her irritation and copied his earlier move, trying to throw him over her head. He had been expecting it, sensing it through the Force and instead, used her own trick against her, bouncing back forwards, igniting his lightsaber and charging at her.
Instead of doing what he expected - which was defending herself with her own blade - she drew on the Force, slowing the movement of the blade enough to reach out and grab hold of it.
Drawing the energy out of it, she watched it flicker, and then die even as she used the extra energy to take Corran in a Force grip, suspending him in the air, his arms pinned to his side.
"I hope you're not damaging my husband," came a voice from the doorway. Sam turned, gently putting Corran back down, and letting the extra energy bleed away into the environment.
"Mirax." Corran's shocked look was quickly replaced with one of joy as he greeting his wife passionately, making Sam blush and avert her eyes.
"Its good to see you again, Sam," Mirax finally greeted her, her arm firmly clasped in her husbands as they started to make their way out of the training room.
"You too, how's Valin?"
"He's well, thank you, showing some very definite signs of taking after his father, though."
"Oh, you poor thing," Sam commented with a smile. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to have a shower, but I'm sure I'll see you again before you leave?"
"Yes, we leave tomorrow morning, along with Kam and Tionne. The others will be going later." Sam nodded and smiled as she boarded the turbolift that would take her to the level where her quarters were.
As the doors closed, she vaguely heard Mirax suggest to Corran that he didn't smell all that great either.
"So how's she doing?" Mirax asked, keeping her hand firmly clasped in Corrans.
"Sam? She's doing really well, apart from only connecting or listening to the Force when she concentrates on it."
"And?" Mirax prompted, recognising the worried frown that played between his brows.
"When you came in just now – that was the first time she'd done anything like that – she had used her annoyance to fuel herself, and she still refuses to abandon her anger, her pain…the emotions of the Dark side."
"Ah, and you're worried that she's going to fall to the Dark side."
"Mirax, the power she holds rivals even that of Luke and Kyp, and if she were to fall…"
"Have a little faith, Corran, she's a good person and I don't think that will happen too soon."
"So was Anakin Skywalker, Senior," Corran muttered under his breath as they continued on to his quarters.
Along with several other Jedi at the temple, Corran was going to travel to Coruscant to attend the wedding of the era. Having been the last people to realise that they loved each other while on a mission to investigate and destroy the Hand of Thrawn – well, it had been Mara's mission, but Luke had gone in to rescue her – the last of the Old Jedi and the ex Emperor's Hand were getting married in a week or two's time.
The news of the wedding between people from both sides of the war with the Empire had surprised most of the Galaxy, and had become a symbol of unity with the Imperial Remnant, to be holocast to most of the Galaxy.
Sam had been one of those that had opted to stay behind at the Academy to allow Kam and Tionne Solusar, among others to attend.
After showering Sam decided to take the X-wing that she had been fixing up in her spare time – of which there was little – out to test the new port repulsor that she had just installed. After Corran had taught her to fly, using the simulator to start and then, taking her up into orbit until she had honed her flying abilities, she had set about on the pet project of retro-engineering the dilapidated fighter that had been left after the evacuation of Yavin in the face of the looming Death Star and rebuilding it into a working fighter.
Blaster and twin lightsabers in place, she climbed into the cockpit, leaving a message for anyone who inquired after her, and brought the repulsors online, steadily lifting the craft into the air and gliding smoothly out of the hangar.
Doing as Corran had been trying to get her to do constantly, she kept a slight connection to the Force so that, at the back of her mind, she was constantly aware of what it was telling her. Corran had found it unusual that she did not do this automatically, but had put it down to a psychological block, which was the same reason he had given for her need to make gestures – which she still had to do for the greatest affect – to manipulate the Force.
Letting the Force guide her, she flew the ship out over the forest, keeping one eye on the diagnostics for the efficiency of the new part at all times.
Sensing some unknown prompting, she set the ship down on the top of one of the many temples that scattered the moon.
Yavin was just beginning to dip behind the horizon, and she sat for a moment, watching it.
Depositing her jacket in the X-wing, she decided to go for a quick run, quickly leaping down the stepped side of the ziggurat, using the Force to control her jumps before setting off at a fast jog.
Running through the forest, she could feel the life of the place, as Stintarils and Piranha beetles flocked around the trees. Birds of one nature or another would take flight occasionally, but it was only when she heard an entire flock of birds take flight that she looked up. Sure enough, a dark cloud suddenly flew away, as if scared off, and she changed her heading that way, frowning at the sense of darkness that she could feel close by.
Her heart leapt into her throat as she heard an all-too-familiar sound reverberate through the trees.
Clunk, rumble-whirr, Clunk, rumble-whirr. When she heard a familiar Kawoosh, she had her suspicions confirmed and was filled with both fear and hope.
Breaking through a last line of bushes, she saw the large, circular device, filled with what seemed to be a puddle of water. It was on a raised platform, with steps leading down and a mushroom-shaped DHD only a short way off.
At the base of the steps, a MALP sat silently. Seeing this she felt her pulse start to race and hope swelled within her; it wasn't the Goa'uld! She slowed as she neared the 'Gate, using a Jedi Calming technique to quieten her fluttering heart.
She gazed, wide eyed at the event horizon of the wormhole, an uncertain grin spreading across her face as she saw the familiar forms of Jack, Daniel and Teal'c come through.
Stopping, she watched in apprehension as they walked unemotionally towards her, their faces blank.
"Hello Sam," Jack said, his voice a monotonous drone. Sam couldn't speak as her senses, through the Force told her that they were all but dead emotionally. Where she should have been able to feel their emotions through the Force, there was nothing, despite the fact that she could feel them to the extent that she knew they were alive.
"Jack? Daniel? Teal'c?" she asked fearfully.
"Yes," replied Jack, without any of his usual, inappropriately timed quips. "We are going to take you home Sam," he said. Sam made to protest but found herself looking down the barrels of three P90's.
She looked back up in time to see three pairs of eyes flash.
"You WILL come with us, Sam," came the inhuman voice of Daniel, without any of the inflections, or emotions that made him the person that he was.
Sam shook her head, backing away from her old team-mates.
"No!" she muttered, still walking away, her hands raised in defence and tears threatening to spill from her eyes.
"No!" she repeated more forcefully, her anger and pain getting the better of her.
"NO!" she screamed one more time, her face scrunching up as she gave in to her anger at the Goa'uld and the pain of losing her friends. She knew that they were about to fire on her and raised both arms, stretching her hands and fingers out straight at them as if grasping for them.
She felt raging power coarse through her as she gave into the darkness that was calling for her and she willingly – even gladly – used the Force to suck their life energy out of them. She watched in an almost indifferent way as their skin began to decompose, all of the energy sucked out of it where it was.
After a few seconds, rotted flesh burst forwards out of them, and the putrid liquids of their dead organs spilled onto the floor before the skin itself peeled off, leaving only bones that crumpled to the floor with a muted, almost melodious sound reminiscent of a xylophone being struck.
Releasing the energy that she had gained in a primal, howling wind that tore up trees and sent animals fleeing, she was suddenly hit by the reality of what had happened, seeing as if for the first time the destruction she had wrought on the harmless plant life.
Shaking uncontrollably, she fell to her knees and slumped to the floor, squeezing her eyes shut and curling into the foetal position.
It is our emotions that set us apart from the Goa'uld, it is our feelings of love for one another, of anger at the injustices that makes us people, that makes us Tok'ra, different to the Goa'uld, who only feel love for power, anger at those who defy them. It is just that we do not let these emotions control us.
She remembered the words that a Tok'ra had once said to her and felt a sense of betrayal to herself, and those who trusted her for not controlling her emotions. She had not lain there long, knowing that she was leaving herself vulnerable to the night-time predators that would not hesitate to make easy prey of her, when she heard a quiet thump, thump, thump of someone running through the forest.
Dentralla.
She sensed it through the Force without trying and heard the worried call of the Wookie as she pushed through the underbrush and bounded into the clearing, shortly followed by Derren, who had been hiding himself within the Force, not wanting to alert whatever assailant it was that was after Sam to know he was there.
Rushing up to Sam, Dentralla skidded to a halt and bent down onto her knees, gently brushing the hair out of Sam's face and rolling her over to see what injuries she had.
"This place is filled with the Dark Side," Derren said, stopping by them and looking around, though it was not his eyes that saw anything. "No, it's not from Sam, this is a shadow of the past, an echo of the Sith that once inhabited this planet," He said, in answer to Dentralla's frantic question.
At Dentralla's persistent coaxing, Sam finally opened her eyes, which had been scrunched tightly shut before, closed against whatever had caused the look of pain on her mud and tear streaked face.
Expecting to find a wrecked site, with the naked bones of her three team-mates and the Stargate looming close by, she was surprised to see only a few small bushes had been uprooted.
Dragging her eyes away from the spot where her team-mates had been, she slowly turned to face the frightened eyes of the Wookie who had crouched down beside her.
Dentralla growled insistently at her, trying to find out if she was okay. Sam nodded mutely in reply, staring wide-eyed and with a dumbstruck expression on her face.
"She's withdrawn into herself, completely cut herself off from the Force," Derren told Dentralla. Though having only a small amount of power within the Force, Derren had an aptitude for the empathic side of the Force, often managing to calm situations and appease people with an uncanny skill. "Whatever happened here, it has something to do with the Dark-side presence I can feel here."
Dentralla growled a reply, telling him to take the X-wing that Sam had flown out here back to the Temple, and to warn Corran and Cilghal that they would soon have company.
With a curt nod, he jogged off in the direction of the X-wing, disappearing into the forest silently.
Sweeping Sam into her long, muscular arms, realising that the woman was shaking like a leaf, Dentralla set off at a much slower pace towards the speeder that she and Derren had come after Sam in when Derren had felt Sam's need through the Force. Placing her gently into the speeder, Dentralla clambered into the driver's seat and took off for the Temple. Though she had not realised it at the time, Sam had been in the forest for over an hour, the nocturnal predators sensing that it was not a good idea for them to go near her.
When she arrived with her charge, she was met by the Mon Cal healer and the Jedi Master, with Mirax hovering nearby, tousled and sleepy.
"She is in shock," Clighal informed them after a brief on-the-spot examination. "Get her to the Med Bay. Do you have any idea what caused this?" Dentralla growled in the negative, angry at herself for letting Sam into danger on her own, almost failing in her life-debt.
"Where we found her, it was tainted with the Dark side," Derren supplied for them. "That's all I can tell you."
"The Dark Side?" Corran queried, a ponderous frown creasing his face. He turned to Mirax, mouth open, but she cut him off before he could speak.
"I'm staying with you; she's my friend too," she said with a raised eyebrow.
"I sometimes wonder that you're not Force sensitive yourself, and just hiding it from us," Corran replied, slipping his arm around her waist as they headed off towards the Med Bay after Cilghal, Dentralla, and Derren.
"No, I've just known you far too long," Mirax replied with a smirk, squeezing his waist in return.
By the time they had reached the Med Bay, Cilghal had calmed Sam, using the Force to soothe her so that she was no longer shaking and yet she was sitting, catatonic on the bed, arms clutched around her knees, staring blankly ahead of her.
"What's the verdict?" Corran asked softly once Cilghal had stepped back.
"She has withdrawn into the Force, not actively using it, but not cut off from it either." Her gravely voice rang out in the silent room. "If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that whatever happened to her during her encounter with the Dark side, it has caused her to withdraw to get a perspective on the matter. But it is an educated guess, nothing more."
Corran nodded and moved to stand beside the bed, next to Sam. Reaching out with the Force, he called softly to her, using the Force to augment it and penetrate her fogged mind.
"Sam!" he called again, a little more forcefully, though still to no avail. Sighing, he decided to take another tact and reached out with the Force, entering her mind in a way that he wouldn't have dared to, given other, more normal circumstances.
Entering her mind he navigated through the chaos that was her thoughts, concentrating all the time on her startling blue eyes. All of a sudden, after an indeterminate length of time, he felt something, a sensitive nub of emotions and, almost instantaneously, he felt the recoil through the Force and spoke the words that came to him, along with the brief image of a grey-haired man in some kind of uniform.
"Snap out of it, Major," he commanded, his tone full of authority, tainted with an odd accent.
"Yes Sir!" The blue eyes that he had been staring into suddenly widened in shock, and he felt himself being thrown out of her mind as the omnipresent barriers that she held up against her innermost mind were slammed into place. "What do you think you're doing?" she demanded, her anger almost palpable. "You have no right to do that!" she yelled at him. Corran could only blink in surprise before she leapt off of the bed and stormed out, pushing past them all with a growled "Leave me alone," Dentralla following in her footsteps.
"What did you do?" Mirax asked him in surprise.
"Nothing…I just…" He trailed off, but Cilghal finished for him.
"He entered her mind to bring her back from the dark place where she was."
"You…entered her mind…I sometimes wonder how you managed to survive as long as you have," Mirax told him, shaking her head and frowning.
"What did I do?"
"What did you…you really don't know, do you! Sam is obviously a very private person – she's told us more or less nothing about her past, her family and friends – how do you think she is going to feel when you delve into her mind like that, without her permission."
"Oh."
"Yes Oh."
"What did you do to get her to respond?" Cilghal asked him after a moment's silence.
"I don't know, the Force told me what to do, and I got the image of a grey haired man in military fatigues."
"You said something, you told her 'Snap out of it, Major,'" Mirax supplied for him.
"Probably her commanding officer, in her 'Air Force'," Corran deduced from what little Sam had told him.
"I suggest you go and grovel," Mirax instructed him. "I'll see you in your quarters. Remember, we leave early tomorrow morning." Corran nodded and gave her a quick peck on the lips, waving goodbye to Cilghal as he left.
Sam was furious, and she took it out on the soft hand-to-hand combat droid that was circling, waiting for her to make the next move. In the opposite corner, the wrecked remains of the saber-droid lay in a sorry looking heap, sparking occasionally, the melted remains of wiring and casing fused together where Sam's two lightsabers had struck it.
She was angry at Corran, for using his ability to affect the minds of people to plant the image of Colonel O'Neill in her mind, to make her think that he was there. She had seen him, stood there as sure as anything, staring into her eyes and ordering her to 'snap out of it'.
She blocked the punch that the droid threw at her, elbowing it in the face, where an angry red mark appeared, showing the damage she had done.
She circled again, blocking with her left and dealing an undercut punch to the soft, flesh-like armour of the droid. A dark Red-Black shape appeared, showing that the force of the punch would have bruised a few vital organs.
The deceptively supple protective gloves that she wore protected her against damaging her own knuckles as she danced deftly around the room, fighting the droid with deceptive ease. After twenty minutes the droid was a mass of angry red, orange and black, the colours denoting the severity of the blows she had dealt it.
She kicked it firmly in the chest, the force of the move sending it flying backwards into the wall, right beside a sheepish looking Corran.
"Stop," Sam commanded the droid, which did as it was programmed, halting where it was and standing listlessly. Grabbing her jacket, Sam didn't look at Corran, moving instead to march past him and out of the doorway, but he blocked her.
"Sam, I'm sorry-" he began as Sam, still not looking at him, turned and stalked back into the room.
"Oh, well that's all fine then," she snarled sarcastically.
"Sam, anger is of the-"
"I don't give a damn if anger is the Dim, Lit-with-a-few-Candles-and-a-Roaring-Fire Side. You had no right to do that, to invade my mind and use my personal feelings like that."
"Sam, I'm sorry, I didn't know that I was doing that; I was just trying to get you to come around. You were catatonic and we were worried." Corran had moved around to stand behind her as she had been resolutely facing away from him. She whirled to face him and he saw the pain in her eyes, the betrayal and the fear.
"That was no reason to do what you did. That is all I have left of those people, of my friends and family, and you had to go and, and…steal that from me.."
"I know. And I'm sorry." Corran spoke softly, meeting her eyes slightly fearfully.
"I know," Sam replied equally softly, seeing the honesty and sincerity in his eyes. "But that doesn't make everything alright. Not by a long shot." Corran nodded, opened his mouth to remind her that she had to control her emotions, and that holding a grudge wouldn't help that but decided – wisely – that it perhaps was not the best idea.
He considered, for a moment, staying behind to support her, and help her work through whatever it was that had happened in the forest, but something told him not to. Whether it was the Force, or his own sense of survival he wasn't sure, but he knew that his place was at Luke and Mara's wedding, not here.
Sam bid him a curt and quiet goodbye before leaving him, her emotions raw and still roiling under the surface, but controlled and kept in check as she headed for her quarters, and her 'fresher for a shower.
