Green Eyes

Keilana was barely holding it together and the three Jedi could see that. They had sensed and had seen the growing darkness in her since they had been captured and now they could feel it breaking against the walls she had constructed. Keilana appeared as if she was going to snap. Again.

As they came to a halt in the grand throne room, Keilana's stance was defensive, her muscles tense and ready for action. Kyp, who was the closest, could actually see her shaking with anger, her fists clenched at her sides, her eyes two dark slits. He was surprised the guards hadn't bound their wrists again now that all four of the captives were free of their restraints.

Aena Lytio was sitting on the thrown as if she hadn't moved since the last time they were brought before her. Her clothing had changed and her hair now fell in a long braid over one shoulder, but otherwise the scene was very much the same. Her two large canines, however, were nowhere to be seen. Kyp studied her as he was led a few steps closer. It was obvious that she knew they were there, but it was also obvious that she was seeing them better than any blind person should be able to. A furrow came to the large Jedi's brow but the question was unable to fully form itself in his mind as Keilana started to speak.

"I know he's here," Keilana said, her voice demanding the full attention of everyone present. Her mother simply tilted her head to one side and blinked. Once. Twice…

"Who, dearest?" She asked as if feigning innocence. The tone only made Keilana shake harder.

"You know damn well who I'm talking about. Give me back my son." Keilana seemed to break down. "Jaxon… I know he's here. Please…"

"Your son? Little Jaxon?" Aena gestured to the shadows, which stirred. Her eyes never moved from where they were fixed.

Keilana's own eyes shot in that direction and held the two golden orbs that had appeared. She could feel him there, her son, and she wanted so bad to see him, to hold him, but the Fin Ghula remained where she was in her cover of shadows. Kyp hadn't even seen the alien woman leave their escort.

"Yes, Jaxon." Keilana's voice was pained, her eyes straining to see her child in the shadows. She sounded more desperate than before. Aena chuckled deep in her chest as she smiled. The smile widened as Keilana breathed: "Please."

"I've grown quite fond of him, my love. I might just keep him."

Keilana's whimper was barely audible.

Even though he had already witnessed Keilana's breakdown, Kyp found this hard to watch. He had never seen her beg for anything nor was he able to imagine her doing so but seeing her practically on her knees was too painful to watch. Kyp had to turn away.

"Just let me see him," Keilana whispered. "I just want to see my baby. Oh, Jaxon…"

Aena's smile widened into a grin as she motioned Llywen out of the shadows. The blue-skinned female stepped slowly into the light, Jaxon cradled in her arms. Keilana seemed to calm for a moment—Kyp could feel the relief roll off of her—until the boy opened his eyes and looked directly at his mother. Keilana sucked in a breath as her dream from Geonosis returned, her mind swimming with her grandfather's words, her vision filled with the green eyes of her mother that now belonged to her son.

Kyp and the twins exchanged glances; there had been truth in her delusional rambling.

Aena broke the silence: "Your son will be yours if you come sit by my side, my dearest Keilana. Until then, he will remain mine, just as he is now."

The throne room fell once again into silence, all eyes on Keilana, waiting for her answer, for her reaction.

Wailing, Keilana clutched her face in her hands and sunk to her knees. Kyp was just about to kneel by her side to offer comfort when Keilana's presence in the Force flickered. He paused mid-kneel in shock and horror. He had seen this before; it had happened to him. Standing, Kyp barely had time to turn to warn the twins before the Force exploded in to a white-hot pain that numbed his mind. He gasped and fell to his knees gripping the sides of his head—the twins mimicked his actions in their own pain. Llywen recoiled a step, her legs shaky, as Aena started to laugh.

Breathing heavily through her teeth, Keilana looked up at her mother, her eyes on fire and glowing green. Aena's laughing stopped almost instantly as she held her breath and stared down at her daughter, fear blossoming in her green eyes. She hadn't been afraid in any of the long years since she had abandoned her daughter in the arms of a ruthless bounty hunter.

And then Keilana stood. As she did so, purple lightning danced across her palm from tip to tip of each flexed finger. Glancing at the ground, she did not blink as she rose her left arm and the room started to shake. It was slight at first, enough to loosen dust, but the shaking quickly escalated and grew more violent as cracks formed in the walls and danced across the ceiling. Though the flickering of the lightning intensified the more the room shook, Keilana did not release it, the ball of energy simply growing in her outstretched palm.

Kyp, who was eventually able to fight off the blinding pain, rose to his feet and looked between the fear stricken Fin Ghula and Keilana. He knew he had to get the child to stop Keilana but if Keilana did not stop soon, she would bring the ceiling down, killing them all. Without a chance to think, Kyp sprinted towards Llywen, holding his hand out for her lightsaber; she didn't have time to react before Kyp activated one of the double-blades. He feinted from his original high line of attack and brought the blade towards her torso, just below where Jaxon lay cradled in her arms. Llywen threw the Force into her leap backwards, the tip of the blade singeing the exposed skin on her arm. Jaxon barely made a sound, unaware of how close the blade had come to him.

Swearing under his breath, Kyp watched Llywen as she started a slow circle around him. She had the advantage, there was no doubt about that. It was not due to her training—Kyp was the superior Jedi by all means—but the fact that she held a child, a child that Kyp desperately wanted to save. She could throw young Jaxon in front of the blade or toss him to the side in order to defeat or distract her enemy. Because of that, Kyp simply had to outmaneuver or out trick her. He grimaced, simple indeed.

Ignoring Keilana and the guards who had come creeping into the large room, Kyp watched Llywen for patterns in her step, falters in her movement. When nothing immediately presented itself, Kyp grew frustrated. He didn't want to engage in anything that could potentially harm the child, but to defeat the young alien, he would have to. Deactivating the lightsaber, he held it firmly in his hand; Llywen's surprise was evident as she paused mid step. Kyp grinned; the fault was barely noticeable, but it had been there.

Cautiously approaching Llywen, Kyp began to withdraw into the Force ever so slightly. Her golden eyes narrowed in suspicion. She did not know what he was doing, but she knew that something was going on. Quickening her step, Llywen continued her circular movements as Kyp approached her.

Positioning his thumb over the activation pad, Kyp sped up the process of dampening his presence in the Force (a trick he had picked up from Keilana). Forcing Llywen to look at him, he made sure she caught the exact moment he completely disappeared.

Her stumble was more obvious this time and Kyp reacted with lightning speed. The lightsaber came alive with a flicker of his thumb and Llywen had no chance to feint away from his attack. With incredible precision, the midnight blade of her stolen lightsaber arched towards her thighs, dismembering them from her body. The Fin Ghula screamed as she fell and did not fight Kyp as he took the child from her arms. Instead, she arched her back in pain, her fingers curling, her nails drawing blood from her palm. A dreadful wail escaped her lips in her agony.

Turning his attention from the woman and looking up as he held the screaming child to his chest, Kyp started in surprise. Was that Boba Fett? By the time he turned to get a better view of the far off entry, the man had disappeared. Kyp blinked, sure that he was seeing things and turned from the whimpering female alien. He was just in time to see a tall woman in a black flightsuit advance towards a pair of stunned guards (they were watching their Crimelord), a long dagger held in third. Her hair was braided and beaded and her blue eyes were alight with anticipation as she thrust her blade through one man's back. The tip tented his tunic where it emerged from his chest; Kyp could see Seva's fencing background as she held for a moment before withdrawing to fend off an attack from the other guard. She feinted to the left and lunged forward, her blade sliding into the man's abdomen at a downward angle. The guard seemed to stare at the beautiful woman who had taken his life before sliding off her blade and joining his companion in a heap on the floor.

All the while, Keilana was continuing to hold an ever-growing ball of lightning, oblivious to the events happening around her. Her eyes were only on her mother, her mind only on revenge.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kyp saw Seva's wingmates creep into the room, their blasters held to cover their leader. Seva was wiping her blade of the guards' blood as she looked to the twins, her brow furrowed. Both Jacen and Jaina were still clutching the sides of their heads, the Force screeching through their minds. Kyp—who's mind was still reeling from the pain—yelled out for Seva and pointed at the twins. Picking up on what he had to say, she turned to her wingmates and gestured to their unused daggers.

"Jacen!" Kyp yelled above the cracking and rumbling of the cavern. Jacen twitched and looked up at Kyp, the movement obviously painful. With a sympathetic glance, the older Jedi pointed at the two Lyians in the doorway as they were drawing their daggers. Nodding, Jacen roused his sister out of her pain and held out a hand for one of the daggers as they were tossed into the air. Jaina imitated his move. Before the wave of thugs that was pouring into the room could reach the small group in the middle, the twins were armed and ready for a fight, their movements sluggish as they attempted to touch the Force through their pain.

Turning back to Keilana who had not moved since he had last looked at her, Kyp started to run through all of the possibilities for stopping her. The task was difficult considering all that was going on around him. The Crimelord was gripping her throne in pain, her head thrown back, the veins in her pale skin throbbing a dark blue while Keilana simply smiled, reveling in her mother's pain and using it to grow stronger. The lightning in her palm flashed towards the blonde woman without reaching her but Aena jerked nonetheless, a tortured moan escaping her lips.

Holding Jaxon tighter in his arm, Kyp started to cross the floor to Keilana, his mind slowly coming to a decision on how to stop her. The best way—the worst way—was the only way he thought effective enough. However, he did not have the chance to act. Keilana suddenly pulled her eyes away from her mother and turned towards Kyp, a smile crossing her lips. She held up her other hand to stop his progress, laughter dancing through her eyes, her irises and pupils lost in the lightning light. Before he could cry out for her to stop, a fork of lightning flickered from her fingers and Kyp was just able to stop it with his borrowed lightsaber before it hit the child in his arms. Jaxon immediately started to wail, his voice carrying to the ceiling as his mother's anger intensified.

Before long, Keilana turned her attention back to her mother. Aena had slouched in the throne and was barely able to move. All she could do as Keilana approached her was widen her blind eyes in fear.

"I've only ever wanted to love you as you should have been loved!" Aena cried as Keilana paused at the base of the dais. She tilted her head as if to look at the woman three steps above her and closed her palm, the lightning flashing brilliantly as it was contained. "I fought for you, my child, my love, my dear Keilana. I never meant to hurt you, only to love you."

"You've never been able to love, Mother," Keilana said, her voice distant and unlike her own. The twins stopped fighting the guards and turned towards Keilana and the Crimelord, just as the guards did. The three Lyians paused, smoke rising from their blasters, to watch something they barely understood. The throne room fell silent except for the rumbling of the failing stone as all eyes watched mother and daughter. "You've haunted my dreams for longer than I can remember and I want you out of my head."

"I'll give you anything—gold, riches, a whole starfleet for you to command. Please, please just spare me as I did you years ago on Coruscant."

Tears glistened in Keilana's eyes and she fell silent, the lightning in her palm nearly disappearing. When she spoke, her voice was quiet and shaking with the tears that rolled down her cheeks.

"You gave me to a man who hardly cared for his own life, let alone that of another being. I am lucky I survived but I would never consider what you did to me a favor."

"They would have killed you, Keilana," Aena said, tears falling from eyes that could not see. She lifted a hand to touch her daughter's cheek…

---

All intentions he had to save his daughter were wiped from his mind the moment he laid his eyes on Keilana. This was not the girl he knew. She looked dangerous and not in the way he had raised her to be. Fett actually found himself flinching as a bolt of lightning escaped his daughter's hand to flicker dangerously close to the woman sitting on the throne. The woman who had borne his child.

He narrowed his eyes as he slinked through the shadows, watching the scene in the center of the throne room. He could care less for the fighting Lyians and the Jedi and the pile of bodies they had amassed around them; his eyes were set on mother and daughter. How could things have gotten so complicated? Before this his life had seemed so simple. His father's death (and the beginning of his life) had been simple. Even raising Keilana seemed simple in comparison. Somewhere along the way, however, a former lover had grown twisted and his daughter had fallen deep into her own pain and anger. He felt out of control. Fett hated being out of control.

He was just about to draw his rifle to assist the Jedi when the throne room fell still and silent. The click of his safety lock seemed to echo through the hall as all eyes turned towards Keilana as she advanced on the throne. Though he could not hear the words they exchanged, he could imagine them by the pain in both women's eyes. He started to lower his blaster just as Aena reached up for her daughter's cheek, her finger's barely brushing Keilana's skin.

Keilana sobbed once, the lightning in her palm flickering to almost nothing.

And had it not been for the guard who suddenly decided to take action, Keilana would have accepted her mother's touch. As it was, Keilana stood and and spun on her heel to envelop the man in purple lightning. His cries and screams of pain shook Kyp into action as well. Handing Jaxon to Jaina—who took the child without a word—Kyp pushed the guard away from Keilana's fury and ran towards the woman. Before she could react, Kyp brought his midnight blade down on her shoulder, severing her left arm from her body. Keilana howled in pain and would have turned her anger on Kyp had he not brought around his pummel and caught Keilana across the forehead. Fighting unconsciousness, her eyes locked on Boba Fett as she started to fall.

"Papa!" She screeched, her mind folding in on itself as her eyes rolled back in her head. Before people could turn to see him, Fett disappeared into the shadows.

---

As Keilana crumpled to the ground, Aena fell limp in her throne and the shaking stopped. The Crimelord's blind eyes fell on Keilana where she had collapsed and Kyp could see the tears that dripped from the blonde woman's eyes as he bent to scoop the bounty hunter up. Keilana's head lolled towards his shoulder, her forehead bleeding and purple as a bruise started to form. She groaned and her eyes flickered for a moment before she fell limp with a sigh. Though Aena was blind, her gaze followed Kyp and his suspicions were confirmed; Keilana's mother was Force sensitive and unaware that she could not physically see. Kyp held her in his gaze for a moment before turning around and starting across the throne room.

The guards who moved to stop them from leaving suddenly found themselves rooted to place as Jacen glanced in their direction. He held out his hand and used the Force to rip the weapons from their hands and throw them across the room. Seva, in the meantime, was gesturing and yelling to her wingmates to escort Kyp to the hanger.

Jacen allowed the Lyians and the other two Jedi to pass him before he gave the thugs one last look. Glancing to the spots where Llywen lay moaning and the Crimelord lay motionless in her throne, Jacen turned from the room just as the ceiling began to crumble. He could hear the scramble behind him as men tried to save their Crimelord and dart for safety all at the same time. The moment he turned a corner, however, it was all out of his mind. They had to find a ship and fast before the entire complex came down on their heads.

It took Kyp and Jaina little time to find the hanger and less time to find a ship. The Lyians went to their own Phantoms; the Slave I was gone. Jacen went immediately to the cockpit to start up the engines and Kyp and Jaina took care of their charges, respectively. As soon as Jaxon was safely strapped in, Jaina joined her brother and it was not long before they were in the air and out of the hanger. Kyp came to the cockpit just in time to see the compound crumble from the damage Keilana had inflicted upon it.

As soon as the magnificent dome collapsed, Keilana's scream echoed through the small ship and the Jedi did not need to ask each other what it could possibly mean.

Aena Lytio was dead and the nightmare the young woman had been running from for so long had ended.