Disclaimer: George Lucas owns Star Wars. This story is purely a work of fan fiction, and I am not making any profit from it.
Author's note: I got my writer's block unstuck, and here is the result. Special thanks to those who have reviewed so far. You are a select and wonderful group. :)
CHAPTER FOUR
The shadows breathes in, savoring the distant flavor of a young boy's pain. Breathes out, releasing a sigh of lingering delectation. Somewhere in the galaxy - somewhere on the edge of another - Anakin Skywalker is exquisitely unhappy.
Even better, he is confused.
The Force shows him the striking girl who accompanied the Jedi to his office only once before. The shadow stretches out to taste to her and finds the sharp tang of sorrow. A counterpoint to Skywalker's storm of fevered passion.
So.
An operative had asked him - oh, months ago now, before she ever met Skywalker - whether the girl should be quietly eliminated. What purpose that? She could be a tool as well as a hindrance - like Kenobi, like even old Yoda himself, all unknowing. All the shadow had to do was let her stay and let Skywalker be himself.
The rest would be inevitable as falling.
We need Gunryth. Ryn stood on the high stone wall and watched the sun set over her home planet.
Obi-Wan would say that her focus determined her reality. If that was true ... Are my doubts making things worse?
She turned North and stared into the distance, eyes straining for things she knew weren't there, all her senses reaching for any sign of her brother. Please be all right.
They gathered around the table at one end of the main hall. Ryn stood with her hands braced flat against the table's surface, as though the physical support could help her give the bad news.
"Okay," she said, dragging in a harsh breath. "Here's the thing. Aharu's advisor is perfectly capable of raising the land against Khalî. Unfortunately, she is very unlikely to help us do it. She has enough artifacts related to her worship to convince any reasonable person that she is Khalî's servant. I can't think of any incentive we could offer that would persuade her to change allegiance now. Khalî is not known for her mercy to the disloyal.
"We have the hedge witches and healers," Evinne said, looking worried. "But who's going to lead them?"
Ryn took another breath. "We are."
Dead silence. Evinne recovered her voice first. "What?"
"We are of the old kind," Ryn said. "We carry the birthright, you and I."
Evinne drew up and stared at her. "The old power of the ylfe? The sovereignty?"
"Can you think of a better way?"
"Women don't -"
"They don't," Ryn said, "but they did." She straightened her shoulders. "Besides, we have something no one else has ever had."
Evinne raised her eyebrows in question. "What's that?"
"The Chosen One."
Silence again. Evinne looked from her to Anakin and back again. "What's Skywalker got to do with it?"
Ryn pulled a sheaf of papers - not flimsis - out and spread them on the tabletop. "I had the women you summoned draw maps of the energy in this place." She touched the bold symbol drawn on each map, different each time but always larger than any of the others. "They're not artists, but it's pretty clear they're all trying to represent a particularly intense energy signature. I took down verbal descriptions, too. They make sense if you know Anakin."
"Or if you're obsessed," Evinne said, eyes wary on her. "Ryn, get a grip. Anakin Skywalker is not the answer to everything."
"Except when he is," Ryn said - right over Anakin, who was saying hey, I'm standing right here. Ryn shot him a look and he shut up, which wasn't as satisfying as it should have been. "Look," she said to both of them, employing a little Basic slang because she could. "We belong to the land. That's a good start. But we have to be able to come back, not lose ourselves in the planet somewhere." She gestured with fingers still bleeding from the rest of her day. "If we create the dyad around Anakin as the center ..." She drew some quick marks on the paper. "We get an anchor, of sorts. Or maybe a better way of saying it is that we get a new center of gravity."
"Gravity?" Evinne said, plainly disbelieving.
"It's a figure of speech," Ryn answered. "But all language is figurative anyway, so it doesn't matter. The point is: this will work."
Evinne and Anakin exchanged glances. "Are you sure?" the former asked, and Ryn almost laughed.
"Hell no," she said, punch-drunk. "This plan is suicidal. But it's the best I've got."
They both stared at her.
"Fuck," Evinne said, finally.
"Tell me about it," Ryn responded feelingly.
"Fuck," Evinne said again, and then she met Ryn's eyes. "You're crazy."
"Yeah," said Ryn. "But I'm also right."
Evinne mouthed fuck again, not inventive but heartfelt, and turned to Anakin. "Skywalker, you game?"
Anakin breathed in, refusing to look in Ryn's direction. "We have to get Obi-Wan back," he said, like it was a mantra. "I'm in."
"Okay." Ryn slapped the table with her open hand. "We start at midnight, out in the courtyard. I'll put together a chorus of adepts to give us some weight." She gathered the papers in one hand and pointed them at Evinne. "Find someone you can trust and set them to watch your grandfather's witch and what's left of your family while this goes down. We can't take any chances."
Evinne snorted. "Better forget this plan, then."
"Evinne -"
The older girl raised her hands. "I know, I know. Best we've got. I'll take care of it."
"Thanks." Ryn shifted her gaze to Anakin, trying to see teammate instead of lover. They'd never really gotten there except in her head, anyway. "If you want some meditation aids, anything like that, you'll find them in an artificial cave beneath the courtyard where we're meeting tonight."
"I'm fine," Anakin said tightly.
"Okay." Ryn clenched her jaw and did not push. "I'm going to try and get some rest before tonight. If anybody needs me, I'll be down near the south wall."
"Ryn," Evinne began, and Ryn turned to look at her. "Just ... be careful, okay?"
Ryn forced a grin. "Why start now?" she asked, and left.
They meet in the central courtyard, the focus of the dun's native power, or so the Lorethans say. Anakin is trying to take it on faith.
The night is dark, darker than he's used to on Loreth, heavy cloud cover hiding even the triple moons. Evinne explains in an aside that the tang in the air bespeaks impending rain.
It should be Ryn explaining this, and it hurts until it makes him angry. She's being unreasonable. She's wrong. But she's also hurting, and Anakin doesn't know what to do about any of it.
She's almost too sharp, now. Fierce, driven, focused. People get out of her way and can't help following. She hurts to look at, and yet she won't let you look away. She is ... riveting. She's like free fall, the rush in his ears, terrifying.
It's not supposed to be this way. Ryn has always been the safe place. If he could just reach her, maybe everything could somehow still be all right again. But nobody can reach her now. It's not even that she feels withdrawn. If anything, she's a little too invested. But it's like ... nothing stops her, any more. She gives no quarter, especially to herself, and just keeps going.
It's more than a little unnerving.
"All right, people," she says, surveying them. Anakin has to listen closely to follow her native tongue. "We've only got one shot at this. If we're very careful and nothing goes wrong and we get very lucky, we might just make it work."
"Way to inspire the troops," Evinne mutters, and Ryn almost cracks a smile.
"I'm not going to pretend things are better than they are," she says in answer. "But we do stand a chance. So let's take it for all it's worth, all right?"
Over the distant sound of thunder, the Force-adepts gathered in the courtyard murmur their approval.
Evinne steps into the center of the forming circle with Ryn. "You realize if we succeed, we'll be making history."
Ryn actually laughs. "We're making history either way." She nods to Anakin. "Come on," she tells him, and casts a glance at the others. "You understand what to do? Here we go."
The Lorethans strip naked and paint themselves with alien symbols in the dark, smelling of rain. Evinne and Ryn together help Anakin out of his clothes and trace the same designs on his body, whorl marks and the patterns of the world, a map of energy laid out on his skin.
They reach past him and touch each other, the contact almost sexual in its potency - from the outside, anyway. They let go and come to join hands around him, forming a tight circle with Anakin at the center.
"What do you want me to do?" he asks quietly, but the answer doesn't help much:
"Sh," Ryn tells him, "just be."
So Anakin tries to be, whatever that means, and feels the energy tighten around them as the two women join each other in some sort of wordless chant, whose harmonies are picked up and played out by the ring of Force-adepts around them, who also beat the ground in a driving rhythm.
It really is like gravity, more than Anakin would have expected, anyway. He can feel the energy concentrating on them, spinning out in orbit like the far-flung arms of the galaxy itself, building rotation.
When the storm breaks, it's practically orgasmic: a quick rush of release that sends a shockwave of power into the life of the planet, the swirl in the Force that signifies Loreth.
In the wake of that release, charged with meaning, all is still. Slowly Anakin opens eyes he doesn't remember closing and takes in the first gray light of dawn.
Evinne and Ryn break apart, gasping raggedly, as exhausted as he has ever seen either of them. Even the circle of dancing Force-adepts, grinding slowly to a halt, looks wrung-out, breathing hard in the aftermath of ecstasy.
"Did it work?" Evinne pants, clutching at Anakin's shoulder for support.
Ryn nods shakily, weaving on her feet. Anakin holds out a hand to help her, but she waves him off. (He can't tell whether she means it as a dismissal or not.) "I think so," she rasps. "Time will tell for sure." She throws her head back and looks at the sky, her white throat exposed to the morning. "Saints, I'm tired. Who's ready for bed?"
It's anticlimactic, but then Anakin realizes there's nothing else they can do. So they gather their discarded clothing and stagger wearily back into the main house, to surrender to the sleep of exhaustion.