Chapter 20: And We're the Bait.
The sound of rushing waterfalls, and the cold mist of a summer's eve on Naboo, caressed Anakin's senses as he stepped out onto the large balcony that he had traced his cousin's Force-essence to. Sure enough, just an outline against the darker shadows, stood the short but compact form of Ben Skywalker. Elbows leaning on the guard railing, Ben was hypnotized by the sound, the rays of the blue moon glittering off of the palace's waterfall. So much so that he did not turn to greet Anakin - perhaps didn't even know he was there, but Anakin doubted it.
Coming closer, Anakin took the slowness of his pace as opportunity to study Ben before disturbing the boy from his thoughts. It now no longer confused Anakin when he thought of Ben as just a boy. Keorra Cereaslean had pinned it right when she said that Anakin had matured not by years but by unique experience. He was no longer that seventeen-year-old boy who had given his life for the secured future of the Jedi and his family, but a man grown in the Force.
Although the galaxy around him remained on the whole foreign, and sometimes even frightening, he now understood why it was that the Force had saved him, had caused him to awaken at this point and time. And in that purpose he had found his stability, and hoped to share it with Ben.
As the blue light of the moon bathed Ben's still-youthful face, Anakin was forced to recall the reason for the harshness in the young Seer's features. The dark circles that rimmed Ben's blue-green eyes, the sharp gauntness in his cheeks, the way the muscles in his jawline clenched and unclenched as though he were continually fighting something unseeable to the rest of them. Keorra had explained to him that Ben had not slept much while on the asteroid world that Karrde had founded his home base on, that when he had it hadn't been long before he awoke screaming or wide-eyed.
Pausing just short of Ben, Anakin took a deep breath of the nectar-filled night air. There was a familiarity to this place, as though it were born inside of his bones, if not inside of his mind, a place that caused the Force to tingle inside of him. A feeling that had more than the obvious teeming life on Naboo to it. No wonder Ben had come here in his search for peace.
"There is an old tale that is told to children here on Naboo. That the Force itself plucked a jewel from the earth of an unknown planet in another galaxy and stuck it in our own, to brighten the skies of the universe," Ben said without preamble, a strained smile touching his fatigue-drawn face. "Before, there was only darkness in the galaxy, and the Force wished to bring in the light to balance it."
Anakin mimicked the smile. "It is a lovely tale."
"A story of hope," Ben said, morbidly defeated.
"Hope is not resigned to children's fairy tales, Ben," Anakin reminded.
Ben's profile was almost ghostly in the pale light. "My parents used to tell me similar stories. Stories of a man who had once been the light itself, and had turned as dark as charcoal, only to be revived in the fires of his son's love."
"History has many such stories," Anakin agreed. "I remember one of a baby, not even out of his mother's womb, who healed her of a vicious disease. Even as he was being attacked by the disease himself."
"While his mother protected him," the Seer nodded. "Except now he has no mother, no father, and no one to save him."
Anakin closed his eyes and shuttered a breath. "I will not believe in your vision."
"Whether you care to believe in it or not, it is true nonetheless," Ben said, finally facing Anakin in his anger. "Avoiding it will not help. I tried that. I ran away, ran away from the future. Do you know what the problem with the future is, Anakin?"
Swallowing, Anakin shook his head. "Tell me."
"We forget the moment. The now. Except, once you focus too tightly on the now, you lose sight of what your actions might bring to the future, and the past - how do we learn from it and not dwell on it?" a mocking laugh colored Ben's voice. "And I see them all. The future, the past, and the present. Slivers of them, but important slivers."
"You are still on the side of good in the now," Anakin said tightly, controlled.
"Do you know who the savior of Naboo was during the Trade Federation blockade so many years ago?" Ben asked, in a sudden reversal that sent Anakin's head spinning. "A boy of nine years, a former slave from Tatooine who held the light of the Force inside of him. He was our grandfather, Anakin. The one whose name you bear. The man of fairy tales."
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Tarsvin Shraq hefted the limp body of Leia Organa Solo into his arms, her head and legs flopping with each step. Behind the door their grandmother had just passed through, Tad and Auni watched the Yuuzhan Vong leave with eyes colored with fright.
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"Our Grandfather fell because of his own designs, Ben, not because of some pre-destiny," Anakin shot back at his cousin angrily. Why was Ben forcing him to come to terms with this possibility? It was a possibility all Jedi held inside of them, even himself. The temptation of the Dark Side. It wasn't foreordained, but a choice each person made, no matter what Ben's visions held.
"I've seen the past, Anakin, and you're right - Anakin Skywalker did not fall because he was destined to. He fell because of power. He was the 'Chosen One', the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy, the Force did not only whisper to him but it shouted. It was because of this fact that my father limited his use of the Force - he didn't want to hear the screaming, but the small intuition. He could have whipped out the Yuuzhan Vong when they entered our galaxy, Jacen could have, you could have, but you each chose the higher path. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
"Are you saying you have absolute power?" Anakin asked, pushing the lump in his throat aside.
Ben turned back to the waterfalls, frustration, fatigue, fear, and longing all written on his features. "I don't want to."
Tentatively, Anakin placed a hand on his cousin's shoulder. "Ben, you are the 'Chosen One'."
To his surprise, Ben shook his head, the collar-length locks of the ruddy brown hair ruffling in the evening breeze. "I am the spearhead of the Chosen."
"I don't understand," Anakin admitted. Ben's mind seemed to jump from subject to subject with no matter and no meaning.
"Is the Force really in balance, Anakin, or did my father and our grandfather create an opening for the Jedi to build before the true disruption, the onslaught?" Ben asked pointedly, his eyes now colored in steel. "The Yuuzhan Vong invasion came in a time of supposed balance, the destruction almost as bad, if not worse, than what Palpatine wrought during his reign as Emperor. Now Nefarion rises, a man who is Palpatine reincarnated, and has the aid of the Yuuzhan Vong. This is not merely the fate of the Order, but the fate of the galaxy. Was balance brought fully, or does it need to be finished?"
Anakin sighed, wishing that Ben would stay on one subject at a time, answering one thought pattern before moving on to another one. "Balance is something we constantly fight to achieve."
"And can never attain?" Ben questioned. "I don't believe that. The Jedi had balance for over a thousand generations, and yet after we defeat the Sith, we continue to be thrown into conflict, a few decades between each, but what is a few decades compared to the peace of thousands of years?"
Anakin had to admit these were questions that he had asked himself not so long ago.
"You're saying that these are more than just ripples from Palpatine's initial disturbance?"
"I'm saying this is the same disturbance. Palpatine's death just gave us more time to prepare for what he had brought about. The purges of the Jedi left the galaxy hardly in balance. We had one Jedi facing everything that was thrown at him," Ben elucidated. "Now we have hundreds to fight the rise of the Dark Side. This is the final moment, the moment of decision, Anakin." Ben clenched his hands together so tightly that they went white under his tan. "And I can't be a part of it."
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Jacen and Tahiri ran with everything they had, thud bugs thunking into the tile of the Temple below their feet, some of them nipping at their heels so that they left blood as they ran. Somehow, Tahiri was managing to keep up with him, but pain was etched into the soft contours of her face, causing her flesh to harden. They were running out of time, Jacen could feel that, and they were running out of places to run to. It was only a matter of time before they were caught.
He understood that they wanted him and Tahiri alive. The Solo family were to be sacrifices unto the Gods, had been meant for such an offering since nearly the beginning of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion. However, if they kept up their retreat, these warriors may decide not to put off the sacrifice any longer, and deal with them now. And Tahiri was tiring.
"We can run no longer," he breathed to her, as he brought her hand back, slowing his hurried pace. Jacen sliced his green lightsaber downward, burning a number of thud bugs on the intensity of the saber.
"I won't be under their captivity, Jacen," Tahiri hissed at him. "I can't be."
"They want us alive for the time being. They'll be busy enough trying to gather the rest of us, we have time yet," Jacen explained, as he continued to block the oncoming assault. "Trust me, love."
He saw the internal battle rage inside of her, the need to protect their unborn child, the fear of her previous encounters with the Yuuzhan Vong. Tahiri had come to accept the Separatists, but the Devotees she had no feeling for. He could not fault her, as his thumb came up to trace the three balled-tissued scars on her forehead.
"I trust you, my husband," she assured him.
Jacen squeezed her hand, and batted thud bugs away from them before calling out to their pursuers. "We surrender."
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"You must be a part of it," came the voice of Keorra Cereaslean, intruding as planned into the conversation between Ben and Anakin, her violet eyes shining, even more enigmatic in the pale blue light of Naboo's moon. "You must make sure that the sword of destruction remains sheathed."
Ben rushed the girl, gripping his hands around her shoulder, locking his gaze on hers. "Look into my soul," he pleaded. "See into me, Upoi Soulreader. Will I go Kalla?"
Keorra did not wince under the iron grasp of Ben, but gazed into his eyes, not searchingly, because her own gaze became cloudy, but Anakin felt as though something important was happening. Suddenly, she went limp in his arms. "I cannot see it," she whispered. "But there is also hope in doubt."
At Ben's distraught look, Anakin felt he had to step in. Keorra was being brave, but Ben was on the edge of desperation, there was no telling what he would do. Gently, but firmly, he pulled Ben's arms away from Keorra. There was so much sorrow in her gaze, a sorrow that matched that of the Jedi's greatest Seer. Then abruptly, as if the light inside of her had come on, Keorra's eyes brightened.
Without a word, she ran across the length of the veranda, and hopped onto the railing that Ben and Anakin had just been leaning over. Balanced in only the way a Upoi Warrior could be, Keorra glanced over the side of the building, and by the way her eyes widened the drop was incredible. She turned to face the two stunned Jedi.
"Do you wish to know who you are, Skywalker?" she asked.
Next to Anakin, Ben tensed, ready for action, but unsure what was going on. He was not the only one. When planning this little confrontation, Keorra had never told him anything close to this. If she were to slip, she would die.
"Keorra, step down. This isn't funny," Ben snapped, and Anakin felt the concern his cousin had for her.
She smiled at him. "Then follow me," and with that, she flipped off the edge of the railing, plunging down into the darkness of the night.
"No!" Ben cried, calling upon the Force and leaping from their standing point and over the ledge.
"Ben!"
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Ben ejected his grappling hook as he fell, just a moment behind Keorra, and using the Force to push his descent further. He caught her nimbly, and held her close to him as they plunged together into the darkness, when abruptly the hook caught onto the veranda railing overhead, and they jerked with the effort of stopped motion.
"Are you insane?" he cursed her as they hung suspended over the waterfall runoff.
There was that mysterious smile on her face, the same one that she had given him before she had leapt off the edge. "If you do go Kalla, and you fall away into the abyss," she said and twanged the tight cord with her fingers. "Tether yourself, and there will always be someone ready to reel you in." Her finger pointed up to where the grappling hook held them balanced, Anakin's nervous face bathed in the light of the moon. Then she placed a hand to his cheek, cupping it. "And there will always be one who will go over with you."
"I'm afraid," he told her, feeling safe admitting this to her. "I'm afraid of the dark." He knew he sounded as though he were a little child, wanting to stay in his parents' bed, inside their protection, but he knew she would understand. She would see into his soul, had already.
"Fear is the path to the Dark Side," she reminded him, quoting the adages her parents had taught her.
He saw her pain in them. "And a caution," he countered. "We fear what could hurt us. Just as you fear your parents. They aren't really dead, are they."
"No, they aren't," she answered truthfully. "But they might as well be, for I am dead to them."
Ben wanted to ask her more, ask her who they were and why they had abandoned their daughter so willingly, but knew that would only compound her pain. "We each try too hard to please our parents. I remember, as a child, my father and I got along quite well, but as I grew older I felt that to make him proud I had to make him think. I started acting up, started questioning him, trying to define myself against him, while at the same time trying to be him. It caused so much needless discord between us." Ben frowned as tears began to fill in his eyes. "I never got the chance to tell him how sorry I was for that."
"He knew, Ben, he knew," Keorra assured him. "I can see him reflected in your soul, and he was so proud of you."
Which was more than Keorra had ever got from her parents, Ben thought. His father had worked to incoporateJedi and non-Jedi into his Order, to show those strong in the Force that they could learn from those who were not, just as he had learned from his friend and brother, Han Solo. Luke had also wanted it as a sign of healing between the galaxy and the Jedi who had sworn their lives to protect them. Somehow, Keorra had gotten lost in the mix.
Suddenly they jerked again, as Anakin began to bring them up, with the help of some of the Queen's guards. "You know, the Queen is going to think you're suicidal now," he joked.
"I prefer to call it an interesting personality quirk," she replied back with a cocky grin. "Besides, I had to show you that right now is all that matters, not visions of the future. Like your grandfathers, you still have good to do, and that is all that matters. Whether you fall to the darkness or not."
"Thank you for reminding me of that," he said, solemnly. Her head came forward, her eyes closing as though to kiss him. Little did she know that it would be his first kiss, and as he reached out to the Force to feel the sensation fully, he was catapulted into a vision.
Hovering in mid-air, Ben's every muscle contracted as he was gripped inside the waves of the Force. Images cascaded into his mind, as he struggled to gain control, but then he remembered the fear that he could have stopped the attack against Naboo if he had let his visions come, and he ceased struggling. He found as they came that he had more ability to navigate through the visions when he did not fight against them, when he let the Force draw him to the points that needed to be made.
He only marginally felt Anakin and the palace team lift him up and over the rail, with Keorra still in his grasp. "He's fine," he heard Anakin tell the worried palace workers, when they found Ben almost in an unconscious state. "He is meditating on the Force."
Ben would have laughed at the strange excuse if he could. Who goes over an edge to meditate on the wonders of the Force? But the palace workers were not about to argue with a Jedi Knight, let alone the reborn Anakin Solo. "I must lead him out of his thoughts." Anakin and Keorra laid him gently on the stone veranda as the workers took note that Anakin wanted to be alone with his apprentice.
"What happened?" Anakin asked.
"He's in a vision," came the girl's voice, the sweet contralto he had come to rely so heavily on. A girl he cared all the more for because he had not foreseen her presence.
A hand came to rest on Ben's shoulder, but then it was pulled away just as rapidly as it was placed. "No, don't disturb him," Keorra said, distantly. "He needs to see this through."
And Ben did. He allowed the Force to use him as its tool, the vessel through which its future was possible, and to show the present that was rocking Coruscant. It was a long, arduous vision, seeing what was happening at the Temple and not being able to stop it, but taking hope in the fact that the Yuuzhan Vong Devotees seemed to want to keep most of the Jedi alive. When the images finally cleared, Ben focused his eyes on his cousin and Keorra.
"Ben, what did you see," Anakin asked him.
Ben rolled to his feet. "We've got to get home, Anakin. The tide has already fallen."
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Jaina and Jag were tossed into one of the training rooms inside the Jedi Temple; the group of Yuuzhan Vong who had captured her had stumbled upon Jag during their march towards the Temple. They fell to the training room floor, the barest minimum of light coming from the overhead illumination banks and lighting one another's faces. Jag's eyes roved over her, making sure that the Vong had not hurt her. Then he flung his arms around her, crushing her to him for a long moment.
"I can't feel my mother, Jag," she whispered into his shoulder, trying to hide her fear that Leia was gone.
He pulled her back, locking her at arm's length. "The children?"
"Fine, but frightened. I don't know how they're evading the Vong, but they are," she said, pride and hope vying with fear.
"What about your brother and Tahiri? Are they safe?"
She shook her head. "I'm not sure. I can't feel them when they think like Yuuzhan Vong. They disappear." She fell back into his arms. "If only we had seen this coming."
He held her tighter, as if the strength of his arms could last them through this trial. "Ben and Anakin will come," he said, to assure her that all was not lost.
Jaina only wished that it were true. This was the darkness that Ben had ran from, the darkness he feared would change him from the boy he was. She did not want her cousin, who in some ways was like a son to her, to come near this Temple until this crisis passed. And what could Anakin do when he had the Sith apprentice, Lady Sarlana, with him? She had failed to get the warning transmission off to her youngest brother, and Anakin was now doomed to manipulation under the Sith witch.
The door shifted open and two Yuuzhan Vong Devotee warriors came in, carrying Leia's limp form in their arms. Jaina leaped to her feet as soon as she saw her prone mother. "Mom!"
Amphistaffs appeared out of nowhere and pointed at the soft flesh of her neck. "Don't move, infidel."
"What have you done to her?" she demanded. Unafraid at this moment, but seething with anger.
"She is merely knocked out. You will all be safe until the Jeedai infidel Skywalker comes, then you will be prepared for the sacrifice," one of the Vong Devotees told her as he unceremoniously spilled Leia to the floor.
Leia's head cracked against the tiled floor as she fell, and it took every ounce of Jaina's control not to attack the Devotee warrior. As soon as the Devotee warriors left, Jaina crawled to her mother on hands and knees. "Mom?"
But whatever the Vong had done to her, it had worked well, and Leia's only response was a moan as she writhed on the floor of the training room. Jaina looked to her husband. "She needs a healer."
"They'll hardly offer us one. You don't heal someone you are only keeping alive as a sacrifice," Jag retorted, in that maddeningly cool tone of his. Why was it during these times of stress that her husband seemed more Jedi than she did?
She nodded. "Most likely not." She sighed, lifting her mother's head so that it might be pillowed on her lap, instead of on the harsh hard floor. "I wonder where the children are?"
"You can still sense them, can't you?" Jag asked, now portraying the worry she had already known was there.
Reaching out to the Force, she traced tendrils through the Temple until she found her children, frightened but alive and conscious. "They are still alright. They're managing on their own."
They fell into companionable silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Jaina worried that they would not bother keeping the children for the sacrifice if they were found, and hoped that they could be their usual sneaking selves and steal away from the Temple undetected. But then where would they go? The forests outside could be just as dangerous as the Temple full of Yuuzhan Vong Devotees.
It was only a few moments later when Tahiri and Jacen were also brought, Jaina moving quickly to keep Tahiri and her swollen belly from crashing to the floor. The Devotee warriors did not speak, but just exited. Jaina hugged her sister-in-law to her as Tahiri trembled in her grasp. "Are you alright? You're shaking!"
Jacen came over and took his wife from his sister's grasp, sending waves of Force energy to Tahiri and their unborn child. "After I got your message, we tried to escape, but they had already come into the first levels of the Temple. We went up, but there was no other place to go. We ran across some of the Jedi that weren't fortunate enough to survive the invasion. Some of them were young children." Jacen suddenly looked around and Jaina knew he was searching for her children. "Tad and Auni?"
"Hiding," Jaina said, miraculously her voice kept even and unshaken. The Devotees had resorted to murdering children. She didn't know why this surprised her so, it had been no different when they had first invaded, but somehow the mellow quality of the Separatists had softened her perception of all Yuuzhan Vong. "I'm not sure where. Mom was with them, settling them to bed. Jacen, they found the ship of our spy. Auni wanted to learn how to sense the Yuuzhan Vong in the Force, and convinced Tad to go with her. The spy is Analsa."
"Analsa," Tahiri spoke up from her husband's side. "Anakin's Analsa?"
"Yes, she's Nefarion's apprentice. He's been directing the show through her the whole time," Jaina spat out. "The Sith have been one step ahead of us from the beginning. It was a miracle of the Force that they didn't get Ben back on Bellalt."
"But now we're the bait," Jag broke into the conversation. "Nefarion knows that Ben wouldn't come back to resume his training unless we were at stake. Unless his family were in danger."
"Which means that Analsa will be revealing her true identity soon," Tahiri added. "I just hope Anakin will be prepared for it."