Lexi stood in the center of the Crimson Raider's main hold, cradling her bandaged arm and trying to keep weight off her wounded right light as she stared at dead speeder tipped on its side against the wall on the other side of the large room, an eyebrow rising up from oddness of it. Feeling the rumbling under her feet, she assumed her ship was at least in the sky, and judging by the whine of the hyperdrive just audible through the floor, possibly in hyperspace too.
Was she supposed to be here? Lexi softly let go of her bandaged arm and began rubbing her temple with her hand, her mind trying to break through the haze to find the answer. After almost a minute, she gave in to the nagging feeling of defeat and gave up with a heavy sigh. They told her the short-term memory loss should only last an hour. That was a while ago.
Tucking her arm under the bandaged one, Lexi limped herself toward the bike. But she wasn't half way before she recognized the Sith emblem painted on its side, peeling at its edges from age and use.
Falling into the focused and all too familiar mind set of battle, Lexi quietly stepped forward and to her right, stopping when her shoulder brushed the wall in front of both the speeder and hallway. Inhaling a quick breath, she turned her body and peered down the hall with half her head still behind the corner. Someone was there, all right. The top of a head was visible just above the main seat's headrest, but the mysterious person's face was beyond her.
She twisted her body back, doing an immediate double-check to insure she was out of sight. Whoever this person who was stealing her ship was, she promised to make sure they knew the error of their mistake.
Then she would end them.
Bending down, Lexi winced from the jolt of pain that ran through her body as she freed her backup blaster from its holster strapped to her ankle. After standing, she glanced down at the small weapon to make sure its setting were correct, then wrapped his finger around the trigger and began making her way down the hallway.
Hyperspace was truly a marvelous thing. Flying through the mesmerizing blue vortex that swirled into endlessness while dark rings, almost serpent-like in their movements, encircled the ship, guiding you on your journey. But Ben was unable to enjoy it. As minutes after entering hyperspace, he was lulled slowly into a deep sleep. . .
His eyes opened to nothing, and as the gut-wrenching feeling of falling consumed Ben, he desperately fought the coming urge to vomit. His muscles ached beneath his skin, but still, he could not explain what was happening.
Until, with an abrupt flash, it was suddenly replaced.
He stood at the edge of west courtyard of the Enclave, next to the great structure he'd always called home, where on days it didn't rain; apprentices would come out for daily lightsaber drills and other instructions by the masters. And though there was not a cloud in the sky, Ben was alone, except for the two beings sitting on the short wall across the courtyard from him.
Both were dressed in traditional brown robes of the Jedi, with quite an age difference between them. The older of the two, an adult female Bothan that Ben noted was shorter then most was typing away at a datapad in one of her hands, her blue eyes darting across the screen and fur ruffling as the display changed over and over. The second was a human child, who couldn't have been more then of seven years standard age by Ben's estimate, sat next to the Bothan, staring up at the clear with the innocence only a child could display. Her loose, yet clean-cut raven hair was starting to grow out, having almost reached her eyes. She kicked her legs energetically away from the wall.
The large door close to him opened, breaking into three pieces and each going off in a different direction. Another Bothan, this one just taller then Ben, strode out, her walk as graceful as it was powerful. She stopped in front of the two, and Ben only then noticed the small thing cluttering around the other side of her. He decided he needed a better look at this.
As he walked closer to them, the little girl took notice of the being standing in front of them, her shadow almost dwarfing over them. Still staring up at the alien, she reached up and tugged the sleeve of the Bothan next to her until she dragged herself away from the datapad and looked, with a twinge of annoyance, Ben noted, to see what it was. The twinge disappeared the moment her eyes found the being.
Suddenly, she dropped the device and threw herself forward; wrapping her arms around the being in the tightest hug Ben had ever seen as he approached. But the other apparently didn't mind, returning the kind gesture, though with a bit more finesse.
Eventually the embrace ended and the shorter of the two jumped back down, landing just before the little girl leapt down from the wall.
The shorter Bothan's eyes lit up as a smile crept onto her mouth, looking down at the taller one's side. When Ben reached them, his heart panged with a strange combination of pain and regret. It was Gallai. The spitting image of her, in fact, minus a couple lines on her face and a few inches off the long braid that fell behind her head and down her back. And cowering behind the ends of her dress-like robes was. . .
"Me," Ben breathed, staring in amazement at the frightened child. His dark hair was cropped short with a small Padawan braid hanging next to his ear. Gallai's dress shook as he hid his face away from sight of the unfamiliar people. But once in a while, he would peak one eye out at them, only to return back to safety behind the dress.
Breathing suddenly became harder to accomplish. Ben's mind ran off in a thousand different places at once, and the calming methods he'd been taught failed to ease the feeling. Distantly, his eye caught the rustling of the leaves on small trees looming above them. Yet he felt no touch of the breeze on his face, nor did his ruffled hair budge.
The entire scene began to slowly pull away from him, falling into familiar blackness and leaving him in it. Ben tried to call out, but his voice was gone.
And in the span of two heartbeats, his situation shifted from one kind of terrible confusion to another as he felt himself be pulled further into the darkness at jaw-dropping speed. It was like he was being launched into atmosphere without a suite or ship by way of cannon. Ben grinded his teeth and clenched his hand into useless fists, fighting the incredible force of it with no success.
Until, it came to an end.
He blinked. Every trace of the rushing feeling had dissipated from his body. Though when the young man looked down, he found his hands still trembling from the memory.
"Ben," A calm, soothing voice called out. He jerked back in response of hearing Gallai. "Hear me,"
Ben's eyes were darting from one end of the darkness to the other, searching for any sign of her. "You're starting down the self-destructive path of darkness, Ben. You're angry, about Kane and my death," His lip twitched from the mention. "but if you let it consume you as it has, then all will be lost. For in you, lies everything."
"I'm sorry to lay another burden on your shoulders, Ben, but the choice was not mine to make."
He tried to speak, but still his voice had not returned. "You have a destiny, Ben, and like it or not, you are special. Unique. And when the time comes, when a choice must be made, I hope-- I pray-- that you remember who you are, and what you have been taught. . ."
With a silent gasp, Ben was jolted out of the vision, his face covered with chilling beads of perspiration. What had just happened? He shut his eyes and reached out for any hint of Gallai's presence, combing through the intangible web that connected the galaxy that was the Force.
His search came to an abrupt end as a cold blaster pressed into the back of his head. "Don't move, scum," An eerily familiar voice warned.
Ben inhaled sharply, recognizing the voice. Slowly, he raised his hands, showing they were empty of weapons.
"Lexi," He said, finding the words weak as he began rising from the chair. "It's me," Ben started to turn around to her.
She was still worse for wear, but the small cuts across her face and body had at least healed, leaving behind only a faint hint of their existence. She was limping, he noticed, throwing a quick glance down, with her other arm wrapped up as tight as it could be and a large white bandage attached to her temple. Her eyes stared directly into his, the blaster still pointed forward, now at the center of his chest.
And judging by the violet under her eyes, she hadn't slept much while they broke into the Sith Base.
He caught the blaster shaking a little, causing him to hold his tongue and try to reason with her. Moments later, something clicked and her eyes went wide with realization. "Ben," She gasped, lowering the weapon. Then quickly collected herself. "What are you doing here? Why are we in hyperspace?"
Ben grimaced. How was he supposed to tell her . . .? "Let's sit down," Ben suggested, leaning back into his chair and watching as she took the other seat on his right. For a long moment, nobody spoke, Ben trying to find the right words and avoid her stare.
Eventually, he broke the silence. "After your crash, Master Gallai and I went to infiltrate the Sith's base and get Kane out before anything could happen," Ben began, feeling his stomach begin to knot up with each word that left his mouth. "We failed. The Sith took Kane in a shuttle and killed. . ." Ben found he couldn't finish the sentence, shaking the memory away. "So now we're in hyperspace, following the scum that took him."
Again, silence hung in the air as the two couldn't bring themselves to look at the other. Until, something hit the metal floor with an echoing thunk. Ben forced himself not to flinch, turning back and finding Lexi staring out the viewport, the soft glow of hyperspace reflected in her glassy eyes with her small blaster now at her feet. He watched with a feeling of guilt bubbling back to the surface as she fought back the tears. Eventually, she turned her attention back to him.
"What about your master?" She asked him, sounding as if the words were painful just to get out. His silence said it all, and for what seemed like eternity, they didn't speak, merely lost in their own worlds of grief.
Ben forced himself to look at her. She still gazed out the viewport, only now no longer forcing back tears. She looked so sad, yet beautiful while running a shaking hand through her hair. The braid holding it came undone, but she didn't seem to notice. Strands of raven hair fell across her eyes, and as they did. . .
It hit him. The girl. He thought as the image of the child flashed into his mind, staring up at the sky with a smile. . .
It couldn't be. It just couldn't . . . could it?
He was talking before his mind could compute the question. "Have you ever been to Dantooine before?"
She reacted. It wasn't much, and despite her current situation, covered it up well. But he caught it.
"Dantooine?" Lexi asked, stiffening against the back of her seat and shaking her head slightly. "No, don't see why you would want to, honestly."
Ben stared at her, feeling the waves of emotion coming off her. "You're lying," He growled. Ben hastily got to his feet, yet she continued to ignore him.
The time for secrets ended when his master died. Reaching out, he dived into her mind, swimming his way through the currents and turmoil churning within her. Soon, he found the core of it all, the 'Eye of the Storm' where all secrets were kept. He began his way toward it—
And Lexi turned around to him, her expression not faltering. "Get out," She said grimly. And abruptly, he was, shut out of her mind by barriers he could not hope to break and thrown back into his seat, baffled and angry.
"What did you do?" Ben demanded. To his shock, she did not recoil, but instead hardened.
"Don't like it, do you? Can't do it the easy way and pry into my mind to get the answers you want? Maybe you should try using your own brain instead of mine."
Setting his teeth, Ben fought the urge to try and break those mental barriers just to prove her wrong. But the act itself would be, and was, wrong. So as she suggested, he began scouring his memory, passing through the events of the past day; starting with ambush, both in space and on the ground, the revelation of his parents past and his own, the battle outside the great city after the call, afterward, when they were preparing to depart. . .
Ben stopped himself. There was something Gallai had said just before they left, a single word: Lyrisa.
"Lyrisa," He echoed, noticing the not-so-subtle change in Lexi's emotions, changing from grief and despair to unbridled anger, with a twinge of regret behind it.
As she turned away, the memories began flooding back. Lyrisa was another Bothan, a friend of his master. He'd heard that few Bothans' came into the Jedi way, and when they both came into the order at the same time, formed a bond, despite their differences. Where Gallai was the refined warrior, Lyrisa was the energetic wanderer, traveling across the Outer Rim and settling local disputes and troubles that would have fallen under the councils' notice. Ben would hear tales of her exploits, usually from his master, of how she, knowing or not, saved entire sectors from falling under prey of war and tyranny. And even with her many 'aggravated discussions' with the High Council, she continued to do it, even when threatened to be cut off from her ties to the order. But she always won the voting, saying: "Though your paths remain clear, mine is tangled. What you see as reckless, I see as simply making my way through the maze, one twist and turn at a time." But with their separate tasks often a great distance from each other, the two Bothan's rarely found time to see the other.
But Ben had been under the impression that she had never taken a Padawan. Perhaps he was wrong.
Apparently, his expression wasn't hiding the emotions he felt. "Figured it out?" Lexi asked, her words dripping with impatience.
Ben nodded slowly. This didn't make any sense; Lyrisa had went missing over a decade ago, with no hint or word of her popping up anywhere in the rim. Again, his face betrayed his thoughts.
"I suppose your going to pester me until I tell you anyway," She said, apparently remembering about the tears and wiping them away with her sleeve. She straightened herself in the chair. "Yes, I was accepted into the order when I was young, but it wasn't as simple as yours probably was," Ben doubted that. "I was what they called, "emotionally unstable for normal training". They told me it was brought on by something I had experienced or saw before coming to them, but I don't remember before that. So after going through three separate masters, they decided one wild card should be with another, and so they called Master Lyrisa back and I was given to her."
Ben felt the emotions swelling beneath stir. "At first, it was all fine. Roaming the galaxy with her, solving any kind of disruption that came our way; all from single-handedly stopping wars to just helping two boys get their toy down from where they'd thrown it. And during all this, instead of taking me out to a building in seclusion and just telling me how to move a rock without touching it, Lyrisa taught me fundamentals most Jedi would discourage. She told me what the council hid from others, and just how bad things were on the rim. And if I failed in any way, didn't keep something levitated long enough, fell down while trying to balance the weight of my body on one hand, anything, she would always be there to catch me."
"And the first thing we did when we got back home, even when the council was waiting for us, was visit Gallai. Sometimes for hours."
"So when did we meet?"
Her expression softened. "That was the last time we were on Dantooine. Gallai had been telling her friend that she had a 'surprise' to show us." A light chuckle came from her. "You never came out from behind her dress for longer then a second."
Again, logic was missing from the puzzle. If he had been under Gallai's for his entire life, then why did she wait to show him to her friend? Unless. . . "Exactly how often did you get back? And how did they keep in contact?"
"Lyrisa and Gallai?" Lexi shrugged. "To the first, not very often. Actually, I only saw the place—and your master-- a handful of times. To the second, I believe it was by hologram."
The pieces fell into place. Gallai wouldn't want to introduce her friend to someone like him via a quarter-scale hologram, which meant she probably waited years for Lyrisa to return so she could finally have them meet. That left only one more piece to finish it.
"What happened after you left?"
There was another noticeable shift in her emotions. "We were inbound for Taren," She began, her voice growing darker. "There'd been rumors surfacing about the Guild using slave labor, a direct violation of their contract with the Republic at the time. So we went to investigate, but our ship wasn't using a registration code they could recognize, so we were shot down by the automated turrets before we could reach the city."
Ben saw her hesitation to continue. "When we hit, the fuel cells were the first things to go. Everything around us was on fire. Breathing was almost impossible for me. Lyrisa was out of her seat in the blink of an eye, but I was stuck in mine. The crash webbing wouldn't come undone. But instead of saving herself, she used her lightsaber to cut me free and toss me out through the destroyed viewport. The ship exploded a second later. I was ten."
"From there, I forced my way to the Grove, taking any small job an orphan child could get. At night, I would re-live the crash in my dreams. Even now, I can still see it. My plan was to get enough credits to go back home, but one day while I was helping a cleaning crew in the main house of the city; a little boy stumbled past us and saw me. He asked what I was doing with the adults, and after telling him, he wanted me to play with him. I tried not to, but I was ten, and after all I'd been through, I just wanted to play, not do grueling work with people who didn't care. Kane and I became friends that day, and after he and Gonab took me in, I never looked back. My Force-powers slowly deteriorated away as I tried to forget all of it. It was my escape from one life to another."
"Later on, I discovered that the rumors were wrong. They were created just to keep us away from a little moon we often dropped by so they could raze it. Nothing there remained."
She turned away from him, and he did the same. Ben wasn't sure what to think about this, his mind floating in empty numbness until Lexi jolted him out of it with a single question.
"How long did they search for us?"
Ben turned back to her, even while she stared out the viewport. "A few months," He told her. "But with the demands of the war, they couldn't keep it up."
This time, she did turn around. "When did Gallai stop?"
He hesitated, thinking back to all the times she had left him behind to take the slum-mission nobody wanted. "I don't think she ever did." Ben said softly, the revelation of the words sinking in.
For a long moment, they didn't speak, though still glanced at the other. It came to an abrupt end when Lexi's eyes started to roll back as she collapsed out of her seat. Ben threw himself out of his chair, reaching out and catching her as quickly as he could, only to see what condition she was in. Her skin was purged of color and air came in hallow breaths. Her limbs appeared to be all but useless, dangling aimlessly.
"Just need rest," He heard her mutter under her breath.
So wrapping her good arm around his shoulder, Ben proceeded to stand with her and turn toward the exit, trying his best to keep all the weight on him, but only now, after the past day of fighting, death and destruction, did he realize he himself needed rest. He took one step toward the doorway.
"Wait," Her weak voice brought him to a complete stop. What had he done? Did he brush against one of her wounded limbs? His answer came in the form of her good hand slowly open. Baffled, Ben followed where the palm of her hand was facing, finding himself looking at the blaster at their feet.
The small weapon shook against the metal floor for a moment, paused, and resumed its rattling. And after a couple dozen seconds with held breaths, the blaster shot up into her waiting hand and her fingers wrapped lazily around the grip.
Finally tearing his eyes away from it, Ben looked down to find the faint hint of a smile on her lips. "Like riding a bike," She murmured. Nodding slowly, Ben quickly re-gained his footing and proceeded out of the cockpit with Lexi, his mind asking a thousand different questions that he no answers for.