Chapter 7: I Shouldn't Have Done That.
As a Sith apprentice, it had been drilled into Sarlana to wait for the optimal opportunity to act, to move in shadow until light was your ally, but the time in hyperspace on board the famous but much age-abused Millennium Falcon challenged those lessons, that had been drilled into her since her youth. Youthful exuberance will get you killed, Lord Nefarion had told her often enough that he would have despaired of her, if Lord Nefarion despaired. Days, months, one time a whole standard year, she had stayed on her Master's flagship studying under his and Tranx's tutelage, and trapped was never a word she had associated with those times. Now, with Anakin and Dorsca Cherrz, it seemed more like a terrible cantina joke then actuality.
[i]A Jedi, a Sith, and a Yuuzhan Vong are on a ship together, which one will be the first to die?[/i] Sarlana thought sardonically.
Every time Sarlana played it out, it seemed to her that the Sith would always remain standing. The Yuuzhan Vong would attack first most likely, either falling under the Jedi's need for self-preservation or striking the necessary blow, then the Sith would turn on the one left standing, using tactics that neither could repel. The Sith did whatever necessary to continue its survival, unlike the Jedi who fought only to preserve the life of all, and the Yuuzhan Vong who sought death as a reward. Except the Separatist Yuuzhan Vong no longer carried the seeded belief that death was the only answer, their time spent amongst the other beings of the galaxy had softened them. Although they did not fear death, as many of the species of the galaxy did, they no longer sought after it.
Nor was Anakin any Jedi. The battle on Bellalt had proven that, the quick and fluid motions of his lightsaber, how his concentration had never wavered from the battle and yet he had been able to knock her out of the way of a death kill blaster bolt. He was powerful in his own right, coming close to the controlled power of his cousin, Ben Skywalker.
Perhaps it wasn't the close quarters that made Sarlana itch in her skin, but who she was enclosed with, two beings that acted as differently than her preconceived notions of them told her they should as possible. The Jedi would tell her that first impressions could be deceiving, Nefarion that she should not have jumped to conclusions, but irritation ran through Sarlana so deeply that she wished to scream.
Of course, that would be deemed as odd from a Jedi student who had pressed herself on a mission that Anakin hadn't wanted to take her along on. Instead, she marched into the cockpit, hoping to be alone amongst the streaking starlines of hyperspace. Unfortunately, even that hope was stolen from her, as she spotted Anakin in the pilot's seat.
"We'll reach Naboo by tomorrow morning," Anakin said upon her arrival inside the Falcon's cockpit, as if he had sensed her strained mood, something even a Sith couldn't hide.
She gave him a saccharine smile. "Such observation skills," she replied flippantly. She noted that he was only half-listening, his attention and focus drifting to his right hand, which she had seen him stare at often enough during the trip to Naboo. Struggling for a way to broach the subject, Sarlana was surprised when he answered her unspoken question.
"I struck him," he said, bringing the hand up to his face as if it was the first time he had ever seen the appendage, and found it vastly fascinating.
Screwing up her pretty features into a frown, Sarlana asked, "Who? Who did you strike?" How could a simple thing as that affect a man who had killed before?
"Ben," Anakin said, pain permeating the simple name that held so much potential. "He was upset, and I hit him. I can still feel the impact of his skin, see my red palm print on his cheek."
"Surely you have hit him before?" Sarlana said, incredulous. She had been waiting for the Jedi to display the techniques of teaching that she had been exposed to since she was very young. Pain could be a great lesson, it taught you never to make a mistake twice and to never counter your Master. Sarlana had totally missed the fact that it was getting over the pain that held the greatest lesson.
If Anakin found her questions disturbing, he was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he did not speak of it. "You can get pretty banged up in training, but never have I hit him, or anyone, in anger. How will he ever trust me? How can I continue to train him?"
Sarlana wondered at the Jedi. Numerous times she had been struck by her Master, and it had been no little slap across the cheek. No, Lord Nefarion's physical punishment came in the form of draining electric blue lightning that sucked all the much-needed chemicals from her body, and left her feeling ill for weeks afterwards, her vision blurred for days. Never had Nefarion shown the regret she saw flickering in Anakin's ice blue eyes.
Sarlana had always taken her punishments as part of her training, had never shirked or backed away from the tense electric pulse that her Master could emit so freely. The many times he had used it on her as an example of his power, she had accepted and withstood with every ounce of loyalty she had for the man.
Except now that loyalty was beginning to crack, like a dam that had been tried by a sweeping storm, first it had started as a veined split that had snaked along the width of it. Water pressure had built, even spilling in the tiny cracks, until she wondered if her loyalty had crumbled all together. It was only the indoctrination of her youth that kept her tethered to the man who had raised her, the man who had literally ruined her.
The Dark Side was addictive, just as addictive as glitterstim or any other spice you could harvest off of Kessel, and Sarlana was an addict who was catching a glimpse of a way out and yet holding to old habits. And it was the dependence on that power that kept Sarlana by the side of her Lord and Master.
In truth, Sarlana had never believed in the Light Side, had thought of it as some fictional story that Lord Nefarion had concocted to keep her in his grasp; it wasn't until her time spent with the Jedi, namely Anakin, that had shown her that it was a truth, that the Force did glimmer in a different way, unreachable in a sense, in another totally tangible.
Drawing herself out of the strange workings of her mind, the doubts that she had never entertained before, the feelings that sprung inside her at the sight of Anakin Solo, she shrugged her shoulders. "Ben wouldn't hold a grudge against you."
"No, he would forgive me. He already has, but forgiveness is not trust," Anakin countered her. "He has just lost his father, he says one thing in the rage of his emotions and I lash out, because I couldn't handle it."
"You loved him too," Sarlana offered, unable to take the pain inside his eyes. It was so wrong, countering her indoctrination, but she wanted to relieve that pain.
Anakin's eyes grew misty, frosted ice, giving Sarlana the impression that his mind was not in the moment, some place and time that she could not go to. "There will never be another Luke Skywalker," he whispered softly.
It was the humble awe in his timbre that shook her, that rattled the dam of the Dark Side all the more, nicking at the tether that held her bound to her Master. Whenever she thought of her Master, it instilled fear, but also a desire to go beyond what he had achieved, the desire to replace rather than to emulate. Yet she could imagine Skywalker wanting his proteges to go beyond him, to take the Force and the light side one step further, where Nefarion would rather squash her attempts, make her remember that she needed him and his guidance.
Abruptly, Anakin jerked, the images of yesterday shattered in the reality of today, the trance breaking. He looked up at her, slightly chagrined by his actions. "I'm sorry, Analsa, I shouldn't have placed this all upon you."
"We all mourn in our own way," Sarlana answered, her own past flitting to the top of her mind. The love she had born for Padami and the anger she felt at the death of her caretaker. Ben Skywalker was no different, she realized with an alacrity that alarmed her with its significance. She had lost the one woman who had been a mother to her, and Ben had lost his father, each had reacted in their own way. Sarlana had sought out vengeance to rid her of the ache that had filled the emptiness; Ben had sought refuge.
After swearing her to secrecy, Anakin had revealed Ben's capability as a seer, the reason the boy had run from the tentative home he had at the Temple. It had pleased Lord Nefarion no end that Ben Skywalker would join him and that the boy was bound by his own vision, when Sarlana had made her report aboard the Falcon. It had been difficult to make contact with her Master, seeing as he now ruled the Devotee Yuuzhan Vong world of Linnal, gaining more and more power through the suspicious beliefs of the extragalactic travelers, while avoiding the chance that Anakin or Dorsca Cherrz would interrupt her.
Every report made Sarlana colder and colder; her Master's glee at his triumphs were far worse than the rage of his failures. Against her better judgment, Sarlana found herself feeling sorry for Ben Skywalker and the living Eol Sha that Lord Nefarion would put him through. Sarlana knew that it would not just extend to the misery that her training had encompassed, but far beyond that.
"Mourn yes, dwell no," Anakin said, and he stiffened in the pilot's chair resolutely. "The best I can do for Uncle Luke's memory is to save his son."
"But what about Ben's visions, they cannot be changed," Sarlana argued. As powerful as Ben was in the Force she could believe that what the energy field showed him was all but engraved in stone.
Anakin frowned at her. "Many thought that I was dead, that it was impossible that I could be alive. Everyone had felt my death, from my mother to Jedi that I knew only in passing." There was enough fire in his ice-blue eyes to melt them. "I do not believe in the impossible."
The way he spoke of his death, there was a note in the deep voice that informed her that the youngest Solo wished he had taken that path, instead of the fifteen year time jump he had woken up to. Sarlana had wondered how Solo had been recovered, now she understood that Ben had been guided by a vision to find his cousin, that the Force still had a purpose for Anakin Solo just as it had had for his grandfather.
Was it possible that Anakin could change Ben's future, could keep the boy on the light side of the Force? Lord Nefarion certainly thought of him as a threat to their meticulous planning, the reason he had left Ben Skywalker on Bellalt, and why the Sith Lord had ordered his apprentice to keep close to the newly Knighted Jedi. Power certainly thrummed through the man, strange and alien as the Yuuzhan Vong themselves, yet as familiar as her own Force-signature.
She analyzed the look in his eyes, that glimmer of humble ability that held her transfixed for a long moment. "I don't believe you do," she said.
Their eyes stayed locked together, more magnetic in nature then polar ends, then abruptly they turned away together, studying the nearby consoles as though alarms had sounded on them instead of the quiet bleeping that echoed in the now very silent cockpit.
Clearing his throat, Anakin stood from the pilot's chair and offered a hand to her. "We can't neglect your training. The High Council is already going to use their lightsabers to flay my hide, I don't want to make it worse by obstructing the training of the Temple's newest students."
Sarlana took the proffered hand reluctantly, Anakin's fingers warm against her skin. Did she feel a heat rise to her own cheeks? It made her want to snatch it away from his grasp but instead she stilled the reflex and waited for him to release it first, which he did.
"Domain Cherrz is sleeping," Anakin said, still much more apt at sensing the Yuuzhan Vong then she was. "But I wanted to start you on some lightsaber exercises."
Sarlana shook her head. "I still don't understand how you can discern such things from an alien mind." Her training had not amounted to miniscule differences in different species. They either obeyed or they were destroyed.
"The oombassl made them a part of me, and I a part of them. Cherrz can sense me much better then he can Ben, it is an understanding of the different languages that the Force can speak," Anakin said, donning his teacher tone that Sarlana had grown accustomed to. She did not notice how the deep tenor of his voice soothed her, how it created different reflections in the Force inside of her. "It is easier to note the difference when you can speak both." He grabbed her hand again, and she was surprised by the gentleness of it. "Let me show you."
Instinctively, Sarlana threw up the mental shields that might let him into her little secret, forcefully leaving the rest of her mind open to his gentle and tingling mind touch. Anakin's presence was like the streaming of warm water, unlike the cold ice that stabbed at her mind when Nefarion entered. Both could expose her, leaving her practically naked in front of them, if not for her shields. Nefarion tore down the shields; Anakin let them alone. She felt the warmth of him bat against those mental barricades, stopping short as Anakin recognized what they were.
"Relax," he told her, but to relax would leave her open. She feigned the gesture through her shoulders, letting them dip enough to be reminiscent of apathy. His presence extended to the sleeping Yuuzhan Vong, and she traced alongside it as she had so many times in the last few weeks, that alien familiarity nagging at her once again.
The connection to Cherrz was quick, but through Anakin she could tell the difference between the waking Vong and the mind vibration of the sleeping Cherrz. So as not to disturb the Yuuzhan Vong, Sarlana felt Anakin disengage from the touch quickly, although she could not imagine his feather-light presence disturbing a sorely trained mind.
She opened dark eyes that she hadn't realized she had closed, and yearned for the touch of his hand back on hers. Stop it. He is a Jedi, your enemy. Nothing more then that, she ordered to herself.
The gaming area was the only space large enough on the Millennium Falcon that could afford the large arcs of a lightsaber blade. Anakin withdrew two lightsabers from an alcove. Sarlana recognized them as the training ones the younger students used, the Falcon having been used often enough as a practicing ground for young Jedi hopefuls, namely the Solo children. She took the pommel that Anakin handed out to her, and ignited it without any of the trepidation she had seen in the other students when they first held the choice weapon of the Jedi.
Green light slinked out of the pommel, solidifying to a point nearly a meter out from the actuator disk, humming softly with the focused energy. Anakin was leaning against a bulkhead watching her, gauging her reaction to the blade and to what it could do, his ice-chipped eyes intense on her.
"You're not afraid," he commented shortly.
Sarlana froze on the inside. Under her Master's guidance, she had often felt awkward with a number of the exercises he had put her through, but never once had the lightsaber felt wrong in her hands. "Is that good or bad?" she asked, twirling the blade in the air so that it hummed resonating energy.
"What do you think?" Anakin asked.
He was testing her, snooping out the tendencies of her mind. Sarlana could recognize it, even if she was at a loss to answer his question. The Jedi, she had come to understand, taught in riddles, lessons that only made sense if you could discern the meaning behind them. Nefarion told her how to think, the Jedi wanted her to discover her own thoughts.
She swung the blade again, the smell of ozone wafting to her nose. "It feels natural," she ventured.
"That's good," he said pulling away from the bulkhead. "There are some who pick up a lightsaber and fear it, others who become entranced by its energy and what it can do. Those people can be dangerous if they do not learn to overcome these inhibitions. The lightsaber should be an extension of you." It was a flicker of an eyelash, and Anakin's lightsaber was out, ignited and right under her chin.
Sarlana's dark eyes came to focus on the condensed green energy, heat radiated from the blade warmed her exposed chin and neck, but she did not flinch. Instead, she brought her own blade up to bat his away, retarding the movement enough to show that she was indeed a novice, if not in truth.
He rolled the blade in his hand, bringing it up in front of him, displaying classic guard position. Sarlana came to mimic him, finding that the guard position did not mesh well with her usual aggressive style, and did not have to feign the awkwardness to make her look new to a lightsaber.
"Bring in your elbows a little bit," he instructed her.
She obeyed, and felt her grip on the lightsaber quicken, and with that a thrill for battle tingled up her spine. He came at her quickly, but not with the speed she had seen him use during the Battle of Bellalt. With forced sluggishness, she brought her blade up to meet his, blocking it and then spinning off of it to come at him at a different angle. He rolled under her blade, deftly dodging it with minimal effort.
He smiled at her. "You've had weapons training." She bobbed her head in a quick yes. "You're full of surprises," he commented before advancing on her again.
The Falcon wasn't extremely large, leaving the two combatants to battle in the enclosed area of a cargo ship. For Anakin it posed a problem, his tall- built form hindered from the grand sweeping movements she had witnessed from him before. Sarlana had the advantage, being smaller and more maneuverable, and she pressed at every chance she got.
Soon they were each so deep into the Force that they moved in perfect syncopation. Sweat made the cloth of her shipsuit cling to her skin irritably. Sarlana put it out of her head, her focus riveted to the way Anakin moved, the tensing of his muscle for clues to where he would strike next, the placement of his hips. She could read him so easily inside of their Force-produced bubble, and she had no doubt that he could read her.
Anakin's green blade sliced at her neck and she parried it, felt the weight of him lean into his blade in hopes of overpowering her. Eternity passed, and they remained in the position, Anakin continuing to add the bulk of his muscle to his saber. Sarlana was breathing hard from the exercise, and she inhaled the scent of him. He smelled of the pollen of the integrated flora of two galaxies, the heat of Coruscant's primary and his own body temperature, achingly familiar, startlingly foreign.
Frightened by her observations, she struggled to end the confrontation. Raising her saber, she brought Anakin's with her, pointing the two blades towards the ceiling and wiring of the Millennium Falcon, hoping that he would disengage. He didn't; instead, he took a step forward closer to her to balance the rising blades, bending them over her head. His proximity to her was alarming and... intoxicating. His face and full lips in clear view of her mind-muddled eyes.
That's when the Force betrayed her. Without thinking, conscious control gone from her, Sarlana's feet came on tip-toes, levering her closer to Anakin's face, bringing her lips to meet his in crushing urgency. It was all too natural for the moment that he returned her kiss avidly, claiming her lips with his, their lightsabers intersected above them. Her blood thrummed in her ear, pounding so loudly that it was the only thing she could hear, his lips on hers the only thing she could feel.
Abruptly, Anakin staggered away, his ice-chipped eyes confused. "I can't," he muttered.
It was several breaths before Sarlana could reclaim control over herself, this time heat rising out of her anger. "Can't what?" she asked caustically.
"I just can't. I'm sorry, Analsa," he said in return, retreating back towards the cockpit.
Sarlana watched him go, wondering if it were possible for a Sith to love a Jedi... if it were possible for a Sith to love at all.
[hr][/hr]
[i]Are you trying to break all barriers of trust?[/i] Anakin asked himself as he slumped back into the pilot's chair, the hand that he had used to slap Ben tensing before he brought it to his lips. It was true that Analsa had instigated the kiss, but Anakin had been all too willing to return it.
Not so long ago he had kissed a married Tahiri, bound to his brother with their child still on the way, and had felt that all his heart belonged to her. The shattering of the illusion he had of the grown-up Tahiri had not helped the way he had felt about the girl. The effervescent girl, who had spoken too fast with an almost nervous zest for life. That girl was gone, in her place stood a woman self-assured, with a firm connection to the Force and to who she was.
Anakin had hoped that he and Tahiri would find themselves together, that they would grow in the Force hand in hand. Then Myrkr had happened, the ghastly wound in his side that Anakin had just been able to hold at bay long enough to make the final sacrifice for his fellow Jedi, his siblings, and Tahiri. A plea to his brother to take their sister, a promise to give Tahiri one last kiss, hoping that his brother and Tahiri could find the joy Anakin had so wanted for himself.
Now that he was among the living, the sacrifice was more than he could take. How was he to know that his dying wish would become his living nightmare?
Was that why he had kissed Analsa, to let her push away the pain he still felt at the absence of the Tahiri he had known, or was there an actual feeling for the young woman? Analsa was unlike anyone he had ever met. There was a mystery to her that he couldn't identify readily. She had come to the Temple with such an air of confidence and excitement to learn the ways of the Jedi that Anakin had liked her almost on sight. Analsa reminded him of his own first steps towards becoming a Jedi, showing the anger he had displayed when the training had become frustrating.
When the High Council had asked him to start training her to sense the Yuuzhan Vong, he had gone in with trepidation, having himself only been an apprentice not so long ago. However, Analsa had proven to be an apt pupil, advancing far in other aspects of the Force, if not reaching the ability to sense the extragalactic travelers until the battle of Bellalt.
Tahiri was married to Anakin's brother, was carrying Jacen's child, and still Anakin felt that the kiss with Analsa betrayed her. Had Tahiri felt the same thing when she had first kissed Jacen, or had enough time elapsed that Anakin's memory wasn't the foremost thing on her mind? It hurt to think in such abstracts, the thought of Tahiri not remembering him, but he could not pull his mind away from them.
Then there was Ben.
Anakin couldn't brush off his actions and what the consequences to them might be. He had defied the Council to rescue Ben, but would Ben want to be rescued by him? Did Ben need rescuing? Anakin had just explained to Analsa that he did not believe in the impossible, but Ben seemed so sure of his own self-ruin.
The Dark Side. Anakin had never touched it, had never known the negative energy that could thrum through you, but in his youth he had feared the portent of evil that came with his first name. The legacy of another Anakin, who held the Skywalker ability in the Force. Ben, he knew, felt that he was bound on the same path as their shared grandfather, that the prophecy of the 'Chosen One' maintained that there must be darkness before balance could be brought. To the youngest Skywalker, the greatest Seer in the Order, that meant that he would fall prey to the darkness.
He had heard about Vergere's teachings, that there was no side of light or dark to the Force, that the Force cared little for which side you chose. Anakin could believe that to a point, that the Force's will would be done regardless of those who were more fully attuned to it. But could the Force have a will and not care? Was the osmosis of the universe strictly held by the forces of good or evil, or was there a more spiritual quest for the Force?
Belatedly, Anakin realized that these were some of the very same questions that used to irritate him when they had come from his brother Jacen. At the time he had felt Jacen lacked faith, not only in their uncle but in the Force itself. Now he realized that Jacen had been on a quest to find the Force's will.
With a sense of detachment, Anakin wondered where the boy he had once known himself to be had gone to. That boy had been so confident in his path, knew exactly what he was and where he wanted to be. Now that those goals had been accomplished, a Jedi Knight with the Force as his ally, he realized that there was even more to gain in the Force, other lessons life had to teach him. He had grown old before his time.
Namely - where he went from here. In some ways he had gone beyond his expectations as a youth; in others he was sorely lacking. It disturbed him that he had been so willing to push aside Ben's feelings and think mainly of his own. Selfishness had no place in the life of a Jedi.
Again his hand came up to touch his lip. Lips that could still taste the sweet spice of Analsa's breath on them. Yes, he did have feelings towards the young woman, his student, ones he hadn't suspected and didn't necessarily want.
Anakin was thankful for the familiar surroundings of the Falcon. It seemed to him to be the one thing that truly hadn't changed in the time he had been in the oombassl.
Why was I saved? he thought with a mental cry. Why was Ben led by the Force to find me? Why did Vergere risk so much to seclude me on Tatooine?
All questions that Anakin had been reluctant to ask himself, ones that had been inside his mind and yet unheard by his mental ear since he had first learned of his rebirth. In these moments of self-actualization, Anakin forced himself to ponder them, to wonder why he had been allowed to dwell in stasis for fifteen years. The prophecy of the 'Chosen One' was forever in his mind, the possibility that it might be him and not Ben, and if not him, then was he meant to protect Ben and stop him from the terrible destiny the young seer had envisioned? So many questions, and much too few answers.
He longed for the clear presence of his uncle. We all mourn in our own way, Analsa's words came back to him, slapping him this time. In fact, the whole conversation with his student struck him as odd. From her tone, he now understood that she knew what it was to mourn, but there was an underlying anger that didn't surprise him. He had seen that she was quick to anger, as quick as he had been in younger years. It was because of this that Anakin had worked extra hard to rid her of the easy temper, which had cemented Analsa's own feelings towards him.
Who did she lose? he asked himself. There remained a bitterness in her deep contralto, a wound that recently had been reopened and prodded at. Anakin suspected it had to do with Naboo the way she had reacted to the planet's name upon the beginning of their journey. Yet, she did not back out when Anakin gave her the very opportunity. She was a touchy one; Anakin admired that. And he wondered how he had missed the growing feelings between the two of them.
Swinging around in the pilot's seat, he faced the forward viewport, studying the light lines of stretched stars. The elusive quality of hyperspace was far easier to understand than the mystery of Analsa Vinn.
As a Sith apprentice, it had been drilled into Sarlana to wait for the optimal opportunity to act, to move in shadow until light was your ally, but the time in hyperspace on board the famous but much age-abused Millennium Falcon challenged those lessons, that had been drilled into her since her youth. Youthful exuberance will get you killed, Lord Nefarion had told her often enough that he would have despaired of her, if Lord Nefarion despaired. Days, months, one time a whole standard year, she had stayed on her Master's flagship studying under his and Tranx's tutelage, and trapped was never a word she had associated with those times. Now, with Anakin and Dorsca Cherrz, it seemed more like a terrible cantina joke then actuality.
[i]A Jedi, a Sith, and a Yuuzhan Vong are on a ship together, which one will be the first to die?[/i] Sarlana thought sardonically.
Every time Sarlana played it out, it seemed to her that the Sith would always remain standing. The Yuuzhan Vong would attack first most likely, either falling under the Jedi's need for self-preservation or striking the necessary blow, then the Sith would turn on the one left standing, using tactics that neither could repel. The Sith did whatever necessary to continue its survival, unlike the Jedi who fought only to preserve the life of all, and the Yuuzhan Vong who sought death as a reward. Except the Separatist Yuuzhan Vong no longer carried the seeded belief that death was the only answer, their time spent amongst the other beings of the galaxy had softened them. Although they did not fear death, as many of the species of the galaxy did, they no longer sought after it.
Nor was Anakin any Jedi. The battle on Bellalt had proven that, the quick and fluid motions of his lightsaber, how his concentration had never wavered from the battle and yet he had been able to knock her out of the way of a death kill blaster bolt. He was powerful in his own right, coming close to the controlled power of his cousin, Ben Skywalker.
Perhaps it wasn't the close quarters that made Sarlana itch in her skin, but who she was enclosed with, two beings that acted as differently than her preconceived notions of them told her they should as possible. The Jedi would tell her that first impressions could be deceiving, Nefarion that she should not have jumped to conclusions, but irritation ran through Sarlana so deeply that she wished to scream.
Of course, that would be deemed as odd from a Jedi student who had pressed herself on a mission that Anakin hadn't wanted to take her along on. Instead, she marched into the cockpit, hoping to be alone amongst the streaking starlines of hyperspace. Unfortunately, even that hope was stolen from her, as she spotted Anakin in the pilot's seat.
"We'll reach Naboo by tomorrow morning," Anakin said upon her arrival inside the Falcon's cockpit, as if he had sensed her strained mood, something even a Sith couldn't hide.
She gave him a saccharine smile. "Such observation skills," she replied flippantly. She noted that he was only half-listening, his attention and focus drifting to his right hand, which she had seen him stare at often enough during the trip to Naboo. Struggling for a way to broach the subject, Sarlana was surprised when he answered her unspoken question.
"I struck him," he said, bringing the hand up to his face as if it was the first time he had ever seen the appendage, and found it vastly fascinating.
Screwing up her pretty features into a frown, Sarlana asked, "Who? Who did you strike?" How could a simple thing as that affect a man who had killed before?
"Ben," Anakin said, pain permeating the simple name that held so much potential. "He was upset, and I hit him. I can still feel the impact of his skin, see my red palm print on his cheek."
"Surely you have hit him before?" Sarlana said, incredulous. She had been waiting for the Jedi to display the techniques of teaching that she had been exposed to since she was very young. Pain could be a great lesson, it taught you never to make a mistake twice and to never counter your Master. Sarlana had totally missed the fact that it was getting over the pain that held the greatest lesson.
If Anakin found her questions disturbing, he was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he did not speak of it. "You can get pretty banged up in training, but never have I hit him, or anyone, in anger. How will he ever trust me? How can I continue to train him?"
Sarlana wondered at the Jedi. Numerous times she had been struck by her Master, and it had been no little slap across the cheek. No, Lord Nefarion's physical punishment came in the form of draining electric blue lightning that sucked all the much-needed chemicals from her body, and left her feeling ill for weeks afterwards, her vision blurred for days. Never had Nefarion shown the regret she saw flickering in Anakin's ice blue eyes.
Sarlana had always taken her punishments as part of her training, had never shirked or backed away from the tense electric pulse that her Master could emit so freely. The many times he had used it on her as an example of his power, she had accepted and withstood with every ounce of loyalty she had for the man.
Except now that loyalty was beginning to crack, like a dam that had been tried by a sweeping storm, first it had started as a veined split that had snaked along the width of it. Water pressure had built, even spilling in the tiny cracks, until she wondered if her loyalty had crumbled all together. It was only the indoctrination of her youth that kept her tethered to the man who had raised her, the man who had literally ruined her.
The Dark Side was addictive, just as addictive as glitterstim or any other spice you could harvest off of Kessel, and Sarlana was an addict who was catching a glimpse of a way out and yet holding to old habits. And it was the dependence on that power that kept Sarlana by the side of her Lord and Master.
In truth, Sarlana had never believed in the Light Side, had thought of it as some fictional story that Lord Nefarion had concocted to keep her in his grasp; it wasn't until her time spent with the Jedi, namely Anakin, that had shown her that it was a truth, that the Force did glimmer in a different way, unreachable in a sense, in another totally tangible.
Drawing herself out of the strange workings of her mind, the doubts that she had never entertained before, the feelings that sprung inside her at the sight of Anakin Solo, she shrugged her shoulders. "Ben wouldn't hold a grudge against you."
"No, he would forgive me. He already has, but forgiveness is not trust," Anakin countered her. "He has just lost his father, he says one thing in the rage of his emotions and I lash out, because I couldn't handle it."
"You loved him too," Sarlana offered, unable to take the pain inside his eyes. It was so wrong, countering her indoctrination, but she wanted to relieve that pain.
Anakin's eyes grew misty, frosted ice, giving Sarlana the impression that his mind was not in the moment, some place and time that she could not go to. "There will never be another Luke Skywalker," he whispered softly.
It was the humble awe in his timbre that shook her, that rattled the dam of the Dark Side all the more, nicking at the tether that held her bound to her Master. Whenever she thought of her Master, it instilled fear, but also a desire to go beyond what he had achieved, the desire to replace rather than to emulate. Yet she could imagine Skywalker wanting his proteges to go beyond him, to take the Force and the light side one step further, where Nefarion would rather squash her attempts, make her remember that she needed him and his guidance.
Abruptly, Anakin jerked, the images of yesterday shattered in the reality of today, the trance breaking. He looked up at her, slightly chagrined by his actions. "I'm sorry, Analsa, I shouldn't have placed this all upon you."
"We all mourn in our own way," Sarlana answered, her own past flitting to the top of her mind. The love she had born for Padami and the anger she felt at the death of her caretaker. Ben Skywalker was no different, she realized with an alacrity that alarmed her with its significance. She had lost the one woman who had been a mother to her, and Ben had lost his father, each had reacted in their own way. Sarlana had sought out vengeance to rid her of the ache that had filled the emptiness; Ben had sought refuge.
After swearing her to secrecy, Anakin had revealed Ben's capability as a seer, the reason the boy had run from the tentative home he had at the Temple. It had pleased Lord Nefarion no end that Ben Skywalker would join him and that the boy was bound by his own vision, when Sarlana had made her report aboard the Falcon. It had been difficult to make contact with her Master, seeing as he now ruled the Devotee Yuuzhan Vong world of Linnal, gaining more and more power through the suspicious beliefs of the extragalactic travelers, while avoiding the chance that Anakin or Dorsca Cherrz would interrupt her.
Every report made Sarlana colder and colder; her Master's glee at his triumphs were far worse than the rage of his failures. Against her better judgment, Sarlana found herself feeling sorry for Ben Skywalker and the living Eol Sha that Lord Nefarion would put him through. Sarlana knew that it would not just extend to the misery that her training had encompassed, but far beyond that.
"Mourn yes, dwell no," Anakin said, and he stiffened in the pilot's chair resolutely. "The best I can do for Uncle Luke's memory is to save his son."
"But what about Ben's visions, they cannot be changed," Sarlana argued. As powerful as Ben was in the Force she could believe that what the energy field showed him was all but engraved in stone.
Anakin frowned at her. "Many thought that I was dead, that it was impossible that I could be alive. Everyone had felt my death, from my mother to Jedi that I knew only in passing." There was enough fire in his ice-blue eyes to melt them. "I do not believe in the impossible."
The way he spoke of his death, there was a note in the deep voice that informed her that the youngest Solo wished he had taken that path, instead of the fifteen year time jump he had woken up to. Sarlana had wondered how Solo had been recovered, now she understood that Ben had been guided by a vision to find his cousin, that the Force still had a purpose for Anakin Solo just as it had had for his grandfather.
Was it possible that Anakin could change Ben's future, could keep the boy on the light side of the Force? Lord Nefarion certainly thought of him as a threat to their meticulous planning, the reason he had left Ben Skywalker on Bellalt, and why the Sith Lord had ordered his apprentice to keep close to the newly Knighted Jedi. Power certainly thrummed through the man, strange and alien as the Yuuzhan Vong themselves, yet as familiar as her own Force-signature.
She analyzed the look in his eyes, that glimmer of humble ability that held her transfixed for a long moment. "I don't believe you do," she said.
Their eyes stayed locked together, more magnetic in nature then polar ends, then abruptly they turned away together, studying the nearby consoles as though alarms had sounded on them instead of the quiet bleeping that echoed in the now very silent cockpit.
Clearing his throat, Anakin stood from the pilot's chair and offered a hand to her. "We can't neglect your training. The High Council is already going to use their lightsabers to flay my hide, I don't want to make it worse by obstructing the training of the Temple's newest students."
Sarlana took the proffered hand reluctantly, Anakin's fingers warm against her skin. Did she feel a heat rise to her own cheeks? It made her want to snatch it away from his grasp but instead she stilled the reflex and waited for him to release it first, which he did.
"Domain Cherrz is sleeping," Anakin said, still much more apt at sensing the Yuuzhan Vong then she was. "But I wanted to start you on some lightsaber exercises."
Sarlana shook her head. "I still don't understand how you can discern such things from an alien mind." Her training had not amounted to miniscule differences in different species. They either obeyed or they were destroyed.
"The oombassl made them a part of me, and I a part of them. Cherrz can sense me much better then he can Ben, it is an understanding of the different languages that the Force can speak," Anakin said, donning his teacher tone that Sarlana had grown accustomed to. She did not notice how the deep tenor of his voice soothed her, how it created different reflections in the Force inside of her. "It is easier to note the difference when you can speak both." He grabbed her hand again, and she was surprised by the gentleness of it. "Let me show you."
Instinctively, Sarlana threw up the mental shields that might let him into her little secret, forcefully leaving the rest of her mind open to his gentle and tingling mind touch. Anakin's presence was like the streaming of warm water, unlike the cold ice that stabbed at her mind when Nefarion entered. Both could expose her, leaving her practically naked in front of them, if not for her shields. Nefarion tore down the shields; Anakin let them alone. She felt the warmth of him bat against those mental barricades, stopping short as Anakin recognized what they were.
"Relax," he told her, but to relax would leave her open. She feigned the gesture through her shoulders, letting them dip enough to be reminiscent of apathy. His presence extended to the sleeping Yuuzhan Vong, and she traced alongside it as she had so many times in the last few weeks, that alien familiarity nagging at her once again.
The connection to Cherrz was quick, but through Anakin she could tell the difference between the waking Vong and the mind vibration of the sleeping Cherrz. So as not to disturb the Yuuzhan Vong, Sarlana felt Anakin disengage from the touch quickly, although she could not imagine his feather-light presence disturbing a sorely trained mind.
She opened dark eyes that she hadn't realized she had closed, and yearned for the touch of his hand back on hers. Stop it. He is a Jedi, your enemy. Nothing more then that, she ordered to herself.
The gaming area was the only space large enough on the Millennium Falcon that could afford the large arcs of a lightsaber blade. Anakin withdrew two lightsabers from an alcove. Sarlana recognized them as the training ones the younger students used, the Falcon having been used often enough as a practicing ground for young Jedi hopefuls, namely the Solo children. She took the pommel that Anakin handed out to her, and ignited it without any of the trepidation she had seen in the other students when they first held the choice weapon of the Jedi.
Green light slinked out of the pommel, solidifying to a point nearly a meter out from the actuator disk, humming softly with the focused energy. Anakin was leaning against a bulkhead watching her, gauging her reaction to the blade and to what it could do, his ice-chipped eyes intense on her.
"You're not afraid," he commented shortly.
Sarlana froze on the inside. Under her Master's guidance, she had often felt awkward with a number of the exercises he had put her through, but never once had the lightsaber felt wrong in her hands. "Is that good or bad?" she asked, twirling the blade in the air so that it hummed resonating energy.
"What do you think?" Anakin asked.
He was testing her, snooping out the tendencies of her mind. Sarlana could recognize it, even if she was at a loss to answer his question. The Jedi, she had come to understand, taught in riddles, lessons that only made sense if you could discern the meaning behind them. Nefarion told her how to think, the Jedi wanted her to discover her own thoughts.
She swung the blade again, the smell of ozone wafting to her nose. "It feels natural," she ventured.
"That's good," he said pulling away from the bulkhead. "There are some who pick up a lightsaber and fear it, others who become entranced by its energy and what it can do. Those people can be dangerous if they do not learn to overcome these inhibitions. The lightsaber should be an extension of you." It was a flicker of an eyelash, and Anakin's lightsaber was out, ignited and right under her chin.
Sarlana's dark eyes came to focus on the condensed green energy, heat radiated from the blade warmed her exposed chin and neck, but she did not flinch. Instead, she brought her own blade up to bat his away, retarding the movement enough to show that she was indeed a novice, if not in truth.
He rolled the blade in his hand, bringing it up in front of him, displaying classic guard position. Sarlana came to mimic him, finding that the guard position did not mesh well with her usual aggressive style, and did not have to feign the awkwardness to make her look new to a lightsaber.
"Bring in your elbows a little bit," he instructed her.
She obeyed, and felt her grip on the lightsaber quicken, and with that a thrill for battle tingled up her spine. He came at her quickly, but not with the speed she had seen him use during the Battle of Bellalt. With forced sluggishness, she brought her blade up to meet his, blocking it and then spinning off of it to come at him at a different angle. He rolled under her blade, deftly dodging it with minimal effort.
He smiled at her. "You've had weapons training." She bobbed her head in a quick yes. "You're full of surprises," he commented before advancing on her again.
The Falcon wasn't extremely large, leaving the two combatants to battle in the enclosed area of a cargo ship. For Anakin it posed a problem, his tall- built form hindered from the grand sweeping movements she had witnessed from him before. Sarlana had the advantage, being smaller and more maneuverable, and she pressed at every chance she got.
Soon they were each so deep into the Force that they moved in perfect syncopation. Sweat made the cloth of her shipsuit cling to her skin irritably. Sarlana put it out of her head, her focus riveted to the way Anakin moved, the tensing of his muscle for clues to where he would strike next, the placement of his hips. She could read him so easily inside of their Force-produced bubble, and she had no doubt that he could read her.
Anakin's green blade sliced at her neck and she parried it, felt the weight of him lean into his blade in hopes of overpowering her. Eternity passed, and they remained in the position, Anakin continuing to add the bulk of his muscle to his saber. Sarlana was breathing hard from the exercise, and she inhaled the scent of him. He smelled of the pollen of the integrated flora of two galaxies, the heat of Coruscant's primary and his own body temperature, achingly familiar, startlingly foreign.
Frightened by her observations, she struggled to end the confrontation. Raising her saber, she brought Anakin's with her, pointing the two blades towards the ceiling and wiring of the Millennium Falcon, hoping that he would disengage. He didn't; instead, he took a step forward closer to her to balance the rising blades, bending them over her head. His proximity to her was alarming and... intoxicating. His face and full lips in clear view of her mind-muddled eyes.
That's when the Force betrayed her. Without thinking, conscious control gone from her, Sarlana's feet came on tip-toes, levering her closer to Anakin's face, bringing her lips to meet his in crushing urgency. It was all too natural for the moment that he returned her kiss avidly, claiming her lips with his, their lightsabers intersected above them. Her blood thrummed in her ear, pounding so loudly that it was the only thing she could hear, his lips on hers the only thing she could feel.
Abruptly, Anakin staggered away, his ice-chipped eyes confused. "I can't," he muttered.
It was several breaths before Sarlana could reclaim control over herself, this time heat rising out of her anger. "Can't what?" she asked caustically.
"I just can't. I'm sorry, Analsa," he said in return, retreating back towards the cockpit.
Sarlana watched him go, wondering if it were possible for a Sith to love a Jedi... if it were possible for a Sith to love at all.
[hr][/hr]
[i]Are you trying to break all barriers of trust?[/i] Anakin asked himself as he slumped back into the pilot's chair, the hand that he had used to slap Ben tensing before he brought it to his lips. It was true that Analsa had instigated the kiss, but Anakin had been all too willing to return it.
Not so long ago he had kissed a married Tahiri, bound to his brother with their child still on the way, and had felt that all his heart belonged to her. The shattering of the illusion he had of the grown-up Tahiri had not helped the way he had felt about the girl. The effervescent girl, who had spoken too fast with an almost nervous zest for life. That girl was gone, in her place stood a woman self-assured, with a firm connection to the Force and to who she was.
Anakin had hoped that he and Tahiri would find themselves together, that they would grow in the Force hand in hand. Then Myrkr had happened, the ghastly wound in his side that Anakin had just been able to hold at bay long enough to make the final sacrifice for his fellow Jedi, his siblings, and Tahiri. A plea to his brother to take their sister, a promise to give Tahiri one last kiss, hoping that his brother and Tahiri could find the joy Anakin had so wanted for himself.
Now that he was among the living, the sacrifice was more than he could take. How was he to know that his dying wish would become his living nightmare?
Was that why he had kissed Analsa, to let her push away the pain he still felt at the absence of the Tahiri he had known, or was there an actual feeling for the young woman? Analsa was unlike anyone he had ever met. There was a mystery to her that he couldn't identify readily. She had come to the Temple with such an air of confidence and excitement to learn the ways of the Jedi that Anakin had liked her almost on sight. Analsa reminded him of his own first steps towards becoming a Jedi, showing the anger he had displayed when the training had become frustrating.
When the High Council had asked him to start training her to sense the Yuuzhan Vong, he had gone in with trepidation, having himself only been an apprentice not so long ago. However, Analsa had proven to be an apt pupil, advancing far in other aspects of the Force, if not reaching the ability to sense the extragalactic travelers until the battle of Bellalt.
Tahiri was married to Anakin's brother, was carrying Jacen's child, and still Anakin felt that the kiss with Analsa betrayed her. Had Tahiri felt the same thing when she had first kissed Jacen, or had enough time elapsed that Anakin's memory wasn't the foremost thing on her mind? It hurt to think in such abstracts, the thought of Tahiri not remembering him, but he could not pull his mind away from them.
Then there was Ben.
Anakin couldn't brush off his actions and what the consequences to them might be. He had defied the Council to rescue Ben, but would Ben want to be rescued by him? Did Ben need rescuing? Anakin had just explained to Analsa that he did not believe in the impossible, but Ben seemed so sure of his own self-ruin.
The Dark Side. Anakin had never touched it, had never known the negative energy that could thrum through you, but in his youth he had feared the portent of evil that came with his first name. The legacy of another Anakin, who held the Skywalker ability in the Force. Ben, he knew, felt that he was bound on the same path as their shared grandfather, that the prophecy of the 'Chosen One' maintained that there must be darkness before balance could be brought. To the youngest Skywalker, the greatest Seer in the Order, that meant that he would fall prey to the darkness.
He had heard about Vergere's teachings, that there was no side of light or dark to the Force, that the Force cared little for which side you chose. Anakin could believe that to a point, that the Force's will would be done regardless of those who were more fully attuned to it. But could the Force have a will and not care? Was the osmosis of the universe strictly held by the forces of good or evil, or was there a more spiritual quest for the Force?
Belatedly, Anakin realized that these were some of the very same questions that used to irritate him when they had come from his brother Jacen. At the time he had felt Jacen lacked faith, not only in their uncle but in the Force itself. Now he realized that Jacen had been on a quest to find the Force's will.
With a sense of detachment, Anakin wondered where the boy he had once known himself to be had gone to. That boy had been so confident in his path, knew exactly what he was and where he wanted to be. Now that those goals had been accomplished, a Jedi Knight with the Force as his ally, he realized that there was even more to gain in the Force, other lessons life had to teach him. He had grown old before his time.
Namely - where he went from here. In some ways he had gone beyond his expectations as a youth; in others he was sorely lacking. It disturbed him that he had been so willing to push aside Ben's feelings and think mainly of his own. Selfishness had no place in the life of a Jedi.
Again his hand came up to touch his lip. Lips that could still taste the sweet spice of Analsa's breath on them. Yes, he did have feelings towards the young woman, his student, ones he hadn't suspected and didn't necessarily want.
Anakin was thankful for the familiar surroundings of the Falcon. It seemed to him to be the one thing that truly hadn't changed in the time he had been in the oombassl.
Why was I saved? he thought with a mental cry. Why was Ben led by the Force to find me? Why did Vergere risk so much to seclude me on Tatooine?
All questions that Anakin had been reluctant to ask himself, ones that had been inside his mind and yet unheard by his mental ear since he had first learned of his rebirth. In these moments of self-actualization, Anakin forced himself to ponder them, to wonder why he had been allowed to dwell in stasis for fifteen years. The prophecy of the 'Chosen One' was forever in his mind, the possibility that it might be him and not Ben, and if not him, then was he meant to protect Ben and stop him from the terrible destiny the young seer had envisioned? So many questions, and much too few answers.
He longed for the clear presence of his uncle. We all mourn in our own way, Analsa's words came back to him, slapping him this time. In fact, the whole conversation with his student struck him as odd. From her tone, he now understood that she knew what it was to mourn, but there was an underlying anger that didn't surprise him. He had seen that she was quick to anger, as quick as he had been in younger years. It was because of this that Anakin had worked extra hard to rid her of the easy temper, which had cemented Analsa's own feelings towards him.
Who did she lose? he asked himself. There remained a bitterness in her deep contralto, a wound that recently had been reopened and prodded at. Anakin suspected it had to do with Naboo the way she had reacted to the planet's name upon the beginning of their journey. Yet, she did not back out when Anakin gave her the very opportunity. She was a touchy one; Anakin admired that. And he wondered how he had missed the growing feelings between the two of them.
Swinging around in the pilot's seat, he faced the forward viewport, studying the light lines of stretched stars. The elusive quality of hyperspace was far easier to understand than the mystery of Analsa Vinn.