O what tangled webs we weave
When first we practice to deceive.
-Sir Walter Scott
Twenty-Six Years After the Battle of Endor
Tahiri was staring at her ceiling, as though she hoped to find the answer to her predicament somehow written there. Naturally, no answer was forthcoming, from the ceiling or elsewhere.
By all rights, this should have been an exceptionally easy first assignment. The difficult part, the reason Tahiri had been assigned to such an otherwise easy mission in the first place, should have been infiltrating the Rebel Alliance, or Alliance of Free Planets, or whatever they were calling themselves these days. That, of course, had turned out to be unexpectedly simple. So, really, what the mission now entailed was waiting for an opportune moment and nabbing an unsuspecting target. And an opportune moment shouldn't be too elusive now that Anakin trusted Tahiri and relied on her more than most of the his other pilots.
There was just the one problem. She didn't want to do it.
So, while the rest of Rogue Squadron was enjoying their downtime, Tahiri was staring at her deplorably unhelpful ceiling. That is, until the comm unit on her wall started beeping.
Tahiri frowned. She barely even knew how to use the thing. Its usual function was for soldiers to contact their families whenever it was safe to do so; of course, Tahiri had no such need. Thus hers had remained unused until now.
It couldn't be someone from the Guild. Could it? How could they know where she was assigned?
Well. There was only one way to find out. Tahiri accepted the transmission -- text-only, as it turned out. She read it completely through, without really comprehending it. The sender's address indicated a fairly typical commercial communications network provider, and it appeared to be a mundane message from her brother, full of trivial details about life at home. The problem, of course, was that she didn't have a brother.
Home. The only home Tahiri had ever had was the Guild, and she wasn't sure she entirely missed it, though she was in no position to sort through those emotions at present. Whether the message was from the Guild was no longer in question. But who would be trying to contact her?
With the understanding that the whole thing was a code, Tahiri re-read the message. One paragraph in particular jumped out at her, and seemed somehow different from the rest of the otherwise mundane message.
You wouldn't believe how much time I've had to spend with sister lately. She seems convinced that if this new job doesn't work out for you, she'll have to come down there and give them a piece of her mind. You know that wouldn't make Mother very happy.
A few things were immediately obvious. "Mother" had to be Guildmistress Jade. "Sister"... well, that had to be Alema, based on the content. Someone was warning her that Alema was going to try to finish the job if she didn't get it done soon, and that Guildmistress Jade might even be starting to have doubts about her start pupil.
But who in the galaxy was this "brother"? Tahiri wasn't particularly close with any men in the Guild.
After pondering this for a few moments, Tahiri had a sudden flash of memory. Her and Zekk circling, ready to attack. Zekk looking wary, but also... something else. Eager, almost. Even the look of disappointment on the beaten boy's face seemed tempered by something... admiration?
Oh hell. So don't need this to get even more complicated.
Naturally, it was at that exact moment that Tahiri's door chimed. The universe hates me.
"Come in," Tahiri called, as casually as she could manage.
As she expected, the object of her mission, dilemma, and desire stepped into the room, oblivious to her distress. "Hi, Anakin greeted, smiling warmly. Not exactly a typical exchange between officers.
Tahiri almost sighed outloud. The reality of the situation seemed somehow farther away, less important, in his presence. "Hi yourself," she greeted in return, feeling suddenly as casual as she had earlier tried to convey.
"I was wondering," Anakin continued, betraying slight nervousness by rubbing the back of his neck, "if you were still interested in that cup of caf we agreed on if I survived."
Tahiri briefly glanced at the message from her "brother" before smiling at Anakin. This was getting dangerous.
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Fallen
Leia Organa Solo; President, Alliance of Free Planets (female human from Alderaan)
Commander Anakin Solo; Rogue Leader (male human from Hapes)
Flight Officer Tahiri Veila; Rogue Two (female human from Tatooine)
Agent Jaina Solo; Alliance Intelligence; captain, Millennium Falcon (female human from Hapes)
Doctor Jacen Solo; Alliance Medical Officer (male human from Hapes)
Commander Jagged Fel; 181st TIE Interceptor Group (male human from Corellia)
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"Tangled Webs"
It was understandable that Jacen's mother wasn't waiting to meet him at the docking bay. He was, in fact, slightly shocked to be ushered into her office upon his arrival. He had assumed that she would be in the middle of an important meeting.
As it turned out, she was. Jacen recognized everyone in the room, if not by name certainly by face, as being extremely important. He felt a bit out of place in his military fatigues, and assumed he had been taken into the office by mistake, but his mother smiled and waved him to a seat. "Jacen, good. Come in."
Still feeling somewhat self-conscious, Jacen sat down somewhat out of the way of the main group, but still somewhat near his mother. Everything felt very awkward; he wanted to talk to his mother, but she wasn't his mother right now, she was the President, and he didn't want to do or say anything to embarass her. As she continued speaking to one of her advisors, and Jacen continuedl wondering why he was here when Winter leaned over to whisper to him.
"She wants you here to observe."
"Observe what?" Jacen asked.
Winter shrugged.
"Alright," Leia said. "Now that all that's taken care of, there's something you all need to know. We've recently been approached by an Imperial Moff who is interested in negotiating a strategic alliance."
The room somehow seemed to get even more quiet before someone asked, "Which Moff?"
Leia paused briefly before answering heavily, "Kuat."
Several gasps of shock were stifled, but the general air of the meeting had changed noticably either way.
"I'll want to hear your thoughts at our general staff meeting this afternoon," Leia went on. "In the meantime, this will certainly give you something to think about during lunch, yes? Thank you all."
The dismissal was impossible to miss, and did not invite further discussion. With very little conversation, unlike the exchange of pleasantries Jacen assumed followed most of these meetings, Leia's staff began filing out of the room, eventually leaving Leia and Jacen alone; even Winter retreated from the room. Finally feeling the pressure of the unfamiliar setting ease, Jacen walked up to his mother and they hugged each other tightly.
"I'm so glad you're okay," Leia said when she finally tore herself away from her son. Then she hesitated. "Are you okay?"
Jacen shrugged. "I'm sure Dad told you the pertinent details."
Leia winced at the formality of his response, but did not say anything about it. "Jacen…"
"You're not going to convince me it was all okay, Mom," Jacen insisted stubbornly. "I'm sorry, I know I'm letting everyone down by leaving… but I just need some time. To sort things out. I don't know… I don't know if I can keep being a doctor if I can't…"
"Jacen," Leia interrupted, "this might be hard for you to hear, but you need to stop being so hard on yourself."
"Why would that be hard to hear?" Jacen answered, still sounding angry at himself. "It's exactly what I want to hear, isn't it?"
"No," Leia answered. "You want me to be mad at you. You want everyone to be mad at you. And do you know why?"
"Because I'm deranged?"
Leia sighed. "Jacen… you betray your own nature all the time. You can be so gentle, so caring, so understanding… so loving… but you choose to bury it under a staggering mountain of moral certainty. You have impossibly high standards, which makes you judge yourself and others too harshly."
Jacen was too caught off guard to effectively argue. "Shesh?" he asked, instead, trying to put some distance between them and the topic of his own psyche.
He immediately regretted the tactic as his mother looked incredibly weary. "It's a terrible decision, Jacen. I realize I can't trust her, but I also can't ignore what she's offering. If she's telling the truth, we might actually be able to end the war."
End the war? The concept was completely foreign to Jacen. As much as he hated war, he had been intimately acquainted with it since his early childhood. The idea of it ever ending had never occurred to him.
And suddenly Jacen understood his mother a lot better than he ever had. She approached the decisions she made as President almost exactly the way he approached his decisions as a doctor. And what she faced now was her equivalent of his choice between Jaina and Anakin.
Now Jacen decided to stop running from the topic. "Mom. Why did you want me here?"
Leia actually hesitated before answering. "I needed you to see this. The timing of your leave of absence actually ended up being remarkably good."
"Why?"
"Because you need to learn to compromise, Jacen. And you need to learn how all this works."
"Why?" Jacen repeated.
"Because you're going to be President someday."
Jacen stared openly at his mother now. What? "I know you're not suggesting some kind of inherited monarchy."
"No, Jacen. They're going to force you to. And they're going to be right."
"But you just said--"
"Listen to me, Jacen," Leia insisted. "You're going to be President someday, and moral certainty is not a position you can be in and make decisions on behalf of billions of people. Not unless you're tapped into some source of knowledge far beyond human experience."
"Like the Jedi?"
Leia's expression darkened. "The Jedi made plenty of mistakes, Jacen."
"Isn't your hatred of the Jedi an example of moral certainty?" Jacen pressed.
"No one's perfect." Leia sighed. "And for all of their other problems, at least the Jedi realized... usually... that they were in no position to tell other people how to live their lives. They resisted the temptation to become a governing force. And I have to give them credit for that."
"What if I don't want to be President, Mom?" The idea seemed so far-fetched, Jacen hadn't really thought about whether he would want it or not. He had never even considered it. He was a doctor, for stars' sake.
"Oh, I know you, Son. I know you don't want to. That's how I know you will." She sighed. "But we have to survive that long. Which means we have to figure out what to do with Shesh."
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When Jaina visited a cantina, it was usually for one of two reasons: assessing the mood of a local population, or discretely meeting with a contact in public. Very rare were the occasions when she actually went to a cantina for its more typical use.
Tonight was one of those occasions. Tonight she was here to gather alcohol, not information.
A few shots of Ithorian Mist later, Jaina was still seeing Darth Starkiller in her gun sights at the bottom of every glass. She noticed in a disinterested way that the man who sat down next to her was an Imperial pilot before she noticed in a slightly less disinterested way that he was very cute. She took her time noticing the latter before picking up on the fact that he was clearly disgruntled about something.
Jaina's instincts as an Intelligence agent kicked back in and told her she had stumbled upon a very useful source of information after all. Certain other instincts told her she had perhaps stumbled upon a source of something else. Hell, why not both? Jaina was just drunk enough to seriously entertain this notion; of course, her training insured that no amount of alcohol would make her loose-tongued in any dangerous way. So there really was no danger.
Jaina had weighed the risks and rewards, arguments and counter-arguments, long before the Imperial pilot noticed there was a very attractive looking woman sitting next to him, apparently equally interested in consuming brain cell-murdering quantities of alcohol. That, of course, was enough to start a conversation on just about any planet.
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Six Alliance Y-wings streaked towards the atmosphere. In the lead fighter, Anakin was trying his best to keep himself from being distracted by the fact that a very beautiful woman was sitting very close behind him in the gunner's seat.
Focus, Anakin scolded himself. He was going to need to get over this crush he had somehow developed for his wingmate. It might be okay for two pilots to have a relationship, but not the Commander.
Of course, the Alliance didn't have any rules against it...
Focus, Anakin repeated to himself resolutely.
APPROACHING TARGET.
"Alright, Rogues," Anakin called over the comm. "Two passes, empty your bomber payloads, and get out of here before their air support aarrives. We won't outfly much in these crates."
Comm clicks acknowledged the orders, and Anakin banked and began descending, the other five fighters following in his wake.
Anti-starfighter fire erupted from the ground, but the Y-wings were flying at extreme firing range. Even with their limited maneuverability, they were able to complete two successful bombing runs with minimal damage.
Everything was going great when Anakin suddenly felt an unexplained wave of anxiety, that something was very, very wrong.
Proximity alarms started blaring, at the same time one of his pilots shouted, "SIR! Incoming fighters!"
Oh hell. "Escape vectors! Rogues, get out of here!"
Laserfire began raining from the sky, forcing Anakin to lose altitude, and fall into range of the anti-starfighter batteries. The next several minutes were spent dodging like crazy. It took Anakin several minutes to realize that all of the fighters were following him, not the rest of his squadron.
It's a trap.
"Sir—"
"Get out of here, Rogues! That's an order!"
"But sir, they're not—"
"I said that's an order."
Then Anakin's fighter shook violently, and he was forced to lose even more altitude as an entire squadron of TIE Interceptors swooped towards him. Within minutes, Anakin was out of range of the Imperial base's defenses and over wilderness. Either he would lose the TIEs – doubtful – or he would be able to find somewhere to eject and hide in the wilderness. That would make any rescue mission very problematic, but it would also make capture equally unlikely.
Any further thoughts along this line were cut short when two blasts hit the back of his fighter and both engines died. And another hit overloaded everything. His displays exploded, and Anakin screamed in pain as the sparks caused angry burns on whatever flesh was not covered by his flight suit.
"Anakin?" Tahiri sounded concerned. Anakin tried to shake his head to indicate he was okay, but he was too busy trying not to crash.
Another hit, and propulsion was completely gone. The fighter started dropping like a rock.
Alarms blared throughout the cockpit. Anakin fought with his controls, but it was no use.
"Thrusters are unresponsive," he shouted to Tahiri over the noise. "At this altitude..." He turned away from his instruments to face Tahiri. Her eyes were widened slightly in alarm, but she didn't look terrified. "I'm sorry," Anakin said, not knowing what else to say.
The turbulence was too strong for Anakin to continue the awkward position necessary to face her. The g-forces pressed him against his seat as the ground rushed up to meet them.
No! Anakin shouted silently.
Everything stopped. The insistent beeping of the altitude alert indicating rapid descent. The shaking. Even the g-forces pressing Anakin against his seat. He felt vaguely as though he were floating.
So this is what it feels like to be dead. Odd; Anakin hadn't even felt the impact. He must have been killed instantly.
"Anakin."
Tahiri? Well. The afterlife would certainly be pleasant if he got to spend it with her.
No. Something was wrong. Anakin wasn't actually floating in nothingness. He could feel his flight restraints holding him, even as gravity tried to tug him forward. Slowly but surely, Anakin realized he still felt pain the burns and scrapes he had sustained during the battle.
"Anakin," Tahiri repeated, more forcefully this time. She was trying to get his attention, but there was something else. Surprise, almost... awe.
Anakin opened his eyes to find himself, as he had already realized, still in the cockpit of his Y-wing. And he saw the ground below them. A few meters below them.
We're floating in midair, Anakin abruptly realized.
Anakin gasped in shock, and whatever spell had previously held them just above the ground was broken. The ground rushed up to meet them, crushing the nose of the Y-wing. Another violent impact shook the fighter as it flipped over, something hit Anakin in the head, and he knew no more.
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With a great deal of effort, Tahiri had managed to get an unconscious Anakin to safety.
She had ejected right before the fighter finished crashing and flipped over. A rather unorthodox maneuver, certainly, but there weren't very many tips about what to do when your fighter is suspended in midair and then crashes nose-first in the Combat Training Manuals.
What was that about, anyway? Tahiri shook her head. No obvious explanation was forthcoming. A Jedi could probably have managed the feat, but Anakin was no Jedi. The realization hit her full force. Anakin had somehow stopped the fighter from crashing, whether he realized it or not.
Of course, he looked somewhat less formidable right now, as Tahiri was busy treating his injuries. She had satisfied herself that Anakin had not broken any bones, had no internal bleeding, and had not suffered any significant trauma – all of which were almost miraculous – and quickly set to work treating the nastier of the burns and abrasions.
"What--" Anakin mumbled as he woke up, finding his mind still muddled with confusion, even as the pain lessened.
"Luckily the med-kit wasn't destroyed in the crash," Tahiri answered. "Just about everything else was, though."
"You know, nothing really seems to go right when I'm around you," Anakin informed her with mock annoyance. "I get shot... crash..."
As the confusion began to clear, Anakin realized that most of his injuries had already been treated, and Tahiri was now rubbing bacta gel on his back. It felt very, very good, but was also unnecessary, which he pointed out to her.
"Oh, shut up," Tahiri dismissed, almost annoyed. "Not only do you need the medical attention, you know you're enjoying it."
Anakin probably would have retorted had his eyes not already closed in pleasure, and not just from the relief the healing gel provided.
Now, Tahiri realized. It would be so easy… It would. She was in a very favorable position, and Anakin was helpless beneath her. But… she wasn't sure she wanted to.
Oh come on, she chided herself. You have to do it... it doesn't matter what you want. He's your target. This is your job, your life. You're a bounty hunter. But Tahiri couldn't deny that Anakin was not the only one enjoying the physical contact.
Anakin actually whimpered as Tahiri's hands – without her particularly telling them to – began playing with his hair. Against her better judgment, Tahiri relaxed, a satisfied smile lifting her lips as Anakin writhed with pleasure under her touch. "Who's the commander now?" she whispered playfully.
After a few moments of motionlessness, Anakin turned around under her and half-sat up. Tahiri didn't really move, so she still straddled his waist. Another snide comment died on Tahiri's lips at the intense look in Anakin's eyes. She felt herself drowning in his blue eyes. Oh no…
And then they were kissing urgently, their arms carelessly winding around each other. And their fate was sealed.
