Disclaimer etc: see 1st chapter.

I like this one! Please tell me what you think!

Choices

4 - Discovery and Loss

Her boots made no sound as she walked the corridors of the space station. Tenel Ka's hand was wrapped firmly around the hilt of her lightsaber, and Jacen's weapon hung at her belt. Her grey eyes scanned her surroundings, every muscle in her body tensed to the point of snapping.

She had come across a few guard patrols and had avoided them, just wanting to get to Jacen. Unnecessary bloodshed would only speed up her discovery, so she crept through the corridors like a shadow, searching with her eyes, the Force and her heart.

>>>>>>>>>

The last expression on Velac's features was one of supreme shock and disbelief. His lips moved soundlessly before he felt back, impaled on his own blade, his head cracking against the floor. Jacen stood above him, panting, bent over, his hands pressed to the wound in his stomach, trying to staunch the bleeding. Velac's blood was splashed across his chest and thighs, staining his skin red.

He looked up laboriously, shifting his gaze to the door, and he began to stagger towards it, just trying to get as far away from Velac's lifeless body as possible.

>>>>>>>>>

Leia leaned over Han's shoulder at the controls of the Millennium Falcon. "Follow Tenel Ka's course," she ordered.

"I know," Han replied tersely, his hands flickering across the dials and switches sprawled over the control board. "And I'm already on it."

Lowie growled softly, and the Chief of State rested her hand on his hairy shoulder. "I wish I knew what she's doing too," she said softly, staring out at the black. And I wish I knew where Jacen was…

>>>>>>>>>

Footsteps.

Tenel Ka froze as she heard slow footsteps, coming closer to her. Her subconscious fear sharply overwhelmed the grip she held on the Force, and for a moment she was blind to all else. She felt her heart rate speed up rapidly, and her suddenly-sweaty fingers clenched around her rancor-tooth lightsaber. There was nowhere to hide, and she had no choice but to stand her ground. She gritted her teeth resolutely and spread her feet, firming her stance.

She inclined her head minutely, listening. Her forehead crinkled slightly. On closer listening, the steps were irregular, one heavier than the other. Tenel Ka's fingers went lax around her lightsaber hilt, and she pushed back her fear, and reached out through the Force, centring herself.

It only took a second.

She gasped, and immediately lunged forward, running around the corner. "Jacen!" she cried.

He looked up at her, and his face immediately filled with shock. "Tenel Ka?" he asked faintly.

Her vision zeroed in on his face, his familiar, beautiful features filling her gaze. She could see nothing else, could register nothing else. Nothing else mattered. He was alive.

She ran forward, her lightsaber falling from her hand to land with a clang on the deck plating. She threw her arm around his waist, holding him close, and kissed him firmly on the lips. She felt him sag against her, and suddenly felt her eyes fill with tears. Jacen… Her hand curled against his bare skin, revelling in the contact.

Then she realised two things.

One. He wasn't kissing her back.

Two. There was a strange coppery tang in her mouth, a taste that was at once oddly familiar and utterly abhorrent.

She pulled back, frowning at him. "Jacen?" she asked softly.

He gazed at her, his vision barely focused. His lips moved, but no sound came out. His legs suddenly gave out and he slumped down, pulling Tenel Ka with him. She fell to her knees and stared at him, horrified, frozen, finally registering the gaping wound in his stomach. "No…" she whispered, her fingers running through his brown hair, trying to wake him. "No!"

She pulled back her hand and fumbled in the pouch at her belt, trying to find her comm link. She finally grabbed it out and flicked it on. "Millennium Falcon, can you hear me?" she called, not bothering to keep the tremble out of her voice.

>>>>>>>>>

Han, Leia and Lowie immediately jerked up as Tenel Ka's voice rang through the freighter's cockpit, and Leia reached out for the comm unit. "Tenel Ka, are you alright?" she demanded, concern filling her voice.

"I found Jacen," the Dathomirian said, her voice choked with emotion.

"Is he alright?" Han exclaimed.

"He's collapsed," Tenel Ka replied, her voice choking.

"Can you get back to the Rock Dragon?" Leia asked.

"Jacen is seriously wounded," Tenel Ka answered, her voice regaining some semblance of her usual calm. "I cannot move him. It would further damage his body."

Han looked up at Leia. "If they stay in one place they'll get found, and caught," he said softly and urgently.

Leia nodded. "Tenel Ka," she said, "you have to move. If you're caught again…" She trailed off.

Tenel Ka remained insistent. "If I try to move Jacen, he will die," she stated. "And I will not lea—"

With a rush of static, the transmission was cut off, and Lowie howled in protest. And fear.

Leia looked down at Han in askance. "I don't know!" he exclaimed, slapping the controls. "All the Falcon's system's are down!" He toggled a switch a few times, and then whacked a dial with his clenched fist. "It's not working!"

Lowie was staring out the window, and he let out an amazed growl. Han and Leia looked up, and were both shocked into silence. There was a huge space station hovering in the atmosphere above Yavin 4, heavily shielded and bristling with weaponry. There was a jerk and a mechanical crunch, and then the Millennium Falcon started to move towards the monstrosity that lay before them.

The Wookiee growled softly, and Han nodded in agreement with Lowie's assessment, still dazed. "Tractor beam," he said slowly. "We're being pulled in."

>>>>>>>>>

The comm link suddenly went dead, a useless lump of metal and circuits in Tenel Ka's hand. The device fell from her fingers, and she returned her full attention to Jacen. She pressed her hand to the wound in his stomach, pressing down, attempting to stop the bleeding; feeling his life slipping through her fingers.

She couldn't tear her gaze away from his face, and her heart filled with fear as crimson blood bubbled up from his lips. He couldn't die. He just couldn't…

She felt a single tear slip down her cheek, and she leaned over her unconscious husband, pressing her forehead to his. "Wake up," she whispered. "Wake up…"

>>>>>>>>>

"The Millennium Falcon just went off scanners!" Zekk called sharply.

Jaina jerked up. "What?" she demanded. She and Luke were immediately at the console beside the dark-haired Jedi.

"I said, I just lost sight of the Millennium Falcon," Zekk repeated tersely. "It just vanished from the sensors."

"Don't be stupid, a ship can't just vanish!"

"Jaina!" Luke chastised.

Jaina ignored her uncle, and took over the controls from Zekk. "They have to be up there somewhere," she said softly.

Zekk and Luke glanced at each other, and then back at Jaina. Luke reached out and gently, but forcibly removed Jaina's hands from the consoles. She looked up at him, anger and fear and pain in her brown eyes.

Luke released Jaina's wrists and she pulled them away from him. "We won't see anything from down here," he said softly. "We have to go up there."

"But there aren't any ships on Yavin 4," Zekk pointed out. "Tenel Ka took the Rock Dragon, and the Millennium Falcon just vanished!"

Luke smiled slightly. "Don't be so sure about that."

>>>>>>>>>

His eyes slowly flickered open, and he opened his mouth slightly, his lips forming letters and words, but there was no sound. He coughed slightly, his bare chest spasming, and that was what drew her head up, staring down at him. "Jacen?"

"Ten…" He was unable to form the rest of her name as he coughed again, blood bubbling up from his lips, spilling down his cheek.

He saw the twinkle of tears starting in her eyes, and she reached down, wiping the blood from his face. "I thought you were not going to wake," she said softly, hoarsely.

He tried to smile, but the movement hurt. He hurt all over. Consciousness hurt. "I'm not that… easy to get… rid of," he managed, every syllable agony.

She pressed her index finger to his lips, silencing him. "Shhh," she said softly. "Don't speak."

He was all too happy to comply with that order, but her next words yanked dread back into his heart.

"Can you move?"

He bit hard down on his lip, forcing himself to focus on her. "I can… try," he replied hoarsely, summoning his strength into a wafer-thin façade.

She saw right through him immediately, and a smile played in her eyes. She reached up and stroked her fingertips through his brown hair. "My Jacen," she said softly.

A tiny smile twitched up the corners of his lips, and, with a spasm of pain, he snagged her hand in his. "C'mon," he rasped. "Let's go."

>>>>>>>>>

"Wow…"

Luke glanced over at Jaina and Zekk, who were both stood stock still in awestruck wonder. "Wow." Zekk echoed Jaina's statement of a few seconds before, his tone as full of amazement and reverence as hers had been.

The Jedi Master grinned, and then looked back at the lone ship in the hangar bay, a tingle of pride running through him as he ran his gaze over the sleek ship's multi-hued hull. To get this craft spaceworthy had been a real labour of love, and it was about to pay off.

Jaina turned her awestruck gaze to her uncle. "Where did this come from?" she asked slowly.

"Lando," Luke replied. "He found her drifting, picked her up, and gave her to me. Took a lot of restoration, over the past year, but…" He trailed off, a proud smile gracing his lips.

Jaina took a tentative step towards the ship, smiling. "What's she called?" the young Jedi asked softly.

Zekk followed Jaina, his mouth hanging open, absolutely gobsmacked. Jaina trailed her fingers over the smooth hull, Zekk moving to her shoulder. After a second she registered that Luke hadn't answered. She frowned and looked up at him. "Uncle?"

He had hung back, a strange smile on his lips. He looked up at Jaina. "I don't know," he replied simply.

"You… don't know?"

He looked again at the elegant ship, with a year's worth of hard work contained in her. "I don't know," he repeated, smiling. He glanced back over at Zekk and Jaina. "She hasn't told me yet."

>>>>>>>>>

The Falcon was dragged into a docking bay of the monstrous space-station, Han pounding on the consoles every other second. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!" he yelled, frustration, fear and anger seeping through his voice.

Leia lightly touched his shoulder. "Han…"

He ignored her and pounded the console once more. "COME ON!" he yelled. Lowie added a roar to Han's empathic cry.

"Han!" She yanked his hands away from the console, swinging him around to face her. "Let us go in," she said, her voice calmer.

"What!" he yelled at her. "Are you crazy!"

"If we can get inside that station, then we can find Jacen and Tenel Ka," Leia answered levelly. "We're much more use to them in there than we are out here."

Han narrowed his eyes at her. "And what happens when they pull the Falcon apart and disable her so we can't leave!" he countered angrily.

"We'll worry about that if and when it happens," Leia replied, just as dangerously. "For now, we need to find them!"

>>>>>>>>>

Tenel Ka wasn't stupid, far from it. And she knew, despite what Jacen insisted, that he was dying.

They stumbled through the station's sparse corridors, neither with any idea of where they were going. Jacen's breath was becoming steadily more ragged as the light that usually twinkled in his brown eyes rapidly dimmed.

Finally she knew they had to stop.

She came to a halt, and bent down, lowering her barely conscious husband to the deck. He didn't protest, just looked up at her through hazy eyes. "Tenel Ka…" he managed through cracked lips. The wound in his stomach was barely bleeding any more, and the Dathomirian knew that was a bad sign.

She reached up and ran her fingers through his brown hair, trying not to let her hand shake. "You will be okay," she said softly.

Some of the fog cleared from his gaze, and he managed to lift his own hand to let his palm rest against her cheek. A hint of the lop-sided Solo grin graced his lips, cracking the brittle flesh. He seemed not to notice as blood beaded on his chin. Regret filled his voice. "No I won't."

>>>>>>>>>

The ramp into the belly of the Millennium Falcon lowered slowly, and a squad of heavily armed and ominous-looking men waited at the bottom. The leader, judging by the amount of guns he carried, stepped up and peered into the freighter. "Come out, and no one gets hurt!" he yelled into the darkness inside, his fingers clamped around a heavy blaster.

"Yeah right!" a Corellian accented voice called back.

Leia shot Han a look. "Shut up!" she hissed.

He looked back at her, a grin on his lips. "If we're gonna find them Princess, we're gonna have to be a bit more aggressive than negotiating," he answered cockily.

She had her mouth open to protest, but before she could stop him, he yanked his DL-44 from its holster and charged down the ramp, screaming crazily at the top of his lungs, firing wildly. Lowie followed him with a Wookiee bellow, his lightsaber glowing molten bronze in his hands as he followed Han.

Leia rolled her eyes, trying not to grin as she heard Han's crazed war cries, blaster bolts ricocheting off of the walls and ceiling of the docking bay and Lowie's echoing roars.

She stepped over to the landing ramp and looked out. Han was stood amidst a pile of unconscious bodies, his blaster in hand. As she looked, he did a sort of crazy little victory dance. She rolled her eyes and jogged down the ramp towards him.

He calmed himself, finally, and looked over at her, instantly serious. "C'mon," he said to her and Lowie. "Let's go."

>>>>>>>>>

Jaina sat in the co-pilot's seat of Luke's ship, watching as he fired her up. Zekk was seated behind them, a shell-shocked expression still plastered across his features, but he was gradually recovering. Gradually.

She smiled, looking around at the inside of the vessel, which was every bit as gorgeous as the outside. She smiled, her mind leaving her missing twin for the shortest of seconds.

And then, she felt something suddenly wrench at her insides, and she gasped sharply, pulling her knees up to her stomach.

Luke looked over at her, worried. "Jaina?" he asked, worried.

She looked up at him, her eyes wide. "Jacen," she gasped. "He's…" She couldn't bring herself to say it, but the other two understood. She looked back at Zekk, and then at her uncle. "We have to go."

>>>>>>>>>

"You… have to… leave me."

She shook her head vehemently. "Never."

"Listen!" He coughed harshly, his face creased in pain. "I'm… dying."

Tenel Ka had know that for a while, but hearing him say it somehow made it seem more real, more immediate. She denied it to herself though, and smoothed his hair back from his forehead. "No," she replied. "You will live."

He managed a weak smile, his trembling fingers brushing her cheek. "You were… always stronger… than me," he murmured hazily, his eyes losing their focus. "Always…" He came back to himself for one more second, and the Solo grin spread fully across his lips. "I always loved you," he said softly, his voice the weakest she had ever heard it, his fire gone.

"No!" Pain filled her voice and her granite-grey eyes. "Jacen Solo, you will not die!"

He didn't answer, and his hand fell away from her face to land with a thud on the deck plating, blood from his fingers smearing across the metal of the deck.

No, no, no, no, no!

JACEN!

>>>>>>>>>