Fighting with Monsters

Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2

a fanfic by Sisiutil

Chapter 11

"Axel... AXEL!" Kilu yelled, not wanting to believe what the Force, her senses, and her mind were all telling her: that Axel Bergeron was dead beneath the pile of heavy stones that Darth Mostrus had pulled down upon him.

She refused to believe it. She was exhausted from the hot, humid air of the jungle, and from her desperate fight with her former Jedi Master. If not for the abject fear Kilu felt that Axel was dead, she would have fallen into an exhausted sleep right where she stood. She couldn't rely on her senses or her judgement; she wondered if she could even rely on her connection to the Force in her current state. Nevertheless, she could feel fresh adrenaline pumping through her veins, and her concern for her former lover drove her on.

"Axel please, please..." she pleaded as fresh, hot tears ran down her face. She stared at the pile of heavy stones, not knowing where to begin. "Stop it... STOP IT!!" she yelled at herself, furious at her emotional weakness. She had to regain control if she was to have any hope at all of finding him, of rescuing him. She took a deep breath and reached out with one hand, then called upon the Force.

The topmost stone in the pile wobbled, then rose into the air and flew aside. Panting, her eyes opened wide, Kilu smiled briefly at her initial, modest success. She gestured towards another heavy stone. It took her a heartbeat longer, but then it, too, was tossed away from the pile. Grimacing, she reached out towards another stone. It did not budge. A guttural yell escaped her lips, and the stone rolled away from the pile. Again, Kilu reached out towards one of the stones, but this time, as she gulped down her breaths and as more tears spilled from her eyes, the stone refused to move.

Kilu grimaced. Where was her connection to the Force that had been so strong only a moment before, when she was fighting? Why couldn't she draw upon it now as she had then? She silently berated herself; she had used the Force that to save herself, but now she could not do so in order to save another? A Jedi could not be so selfish. She ground her teeth and reached out to the rock again. It rose unsteadily, then moved a meter, dropped, bounced, and rolled off of the pile.

The young Jedi collapsed to her knees. It was exhausting work, and it was taking too long. Axel could be under that pile, dying, and she would never reach him in time. She drew a heavy breath and then exhaled it as a cry of anguish, while hot tears coursed down her cheeks.

It began as a whisper in the back of her mind. The swirling turmoil of her emotions, her fear of losing him, her anger at herself for failing him, her sorrow at her loss, brought the notion forth into her conscious thoughts. Her mourning stopped and her eyes widened. She had resisted it before, even in the face of her own death. But now, confronted with the death of another--of someone whom, yes, she realized now, despite all those months denying it, she loved--her resistance failed her. For his sake, she gave in. She drew upon her anger, her fear, her sorrow; she drew upon their power.

She drew upon the dark side of the Force.

Her face was alight with the intensity of the powerful emotions she felt. She reached out towards the pile of debris. It trembled, then it shook. Then, in an instant, it erupted, stones flying through the air away from where they'd lain, dust and water vapour rising once again into the eerie bluish-green light of the ancient temple. Kilu pushed herself up upon her feet, waved her arms in front of her to clear away the debris cloud, coughing, moving towards the spot where Alex' body must lay, and then she was there, she looked down... and she saw it.

A hole. A hole in the floor, about a meter in diameter. She stood, gaping at it, and then she almost laughed. Axel, clever, resourceful Axel... she should have known. If anyone could have found away to escape certain death at the hands of a Sith Lord, it would be him. But then she felt the knot in her stomach tighten again: how deep was the hole? How far had he fallen? She reached out with the Force. She sensed nothing, probed further down... There! Just over four meters down... she could sense him... he was alive! But was he hurt?

"Axel?" she called out tentatively, hopefully. "Axel! Axel, please..." She waited, listening, for several seconds that seemed liked hours. Finally, her patience was rewarded with the sound of a low, pained groan. "Axel!" she shouted excitedly. "Axel, it's me, Kilu..."

"Uhhhhh..." he moaned from the pitch black depths of the hole into which he'd thrown himself. "Kilu? Unghh... are you okay?"

Oh, she wanted to kiss him for that. There he was, laying in the darkness at the bottom of a deep hole, possibly injured, and his first thought upon recovering consciousness was for her welfare.

"I'm fine," she said, her voice shaking with relieved laughter. "I'm fine. You're the one I'm worried about. Are you hurt?"

"That's a safe bet," his strained voice responded. "Hang on..." She waited for a few seconds. Then he spoke, his voice still tinged with pain. "Okay... right ankle: broken, right wrist: sprained, several cuts and lacerations... including one head wound that's bleeding like mad and hurts like a son of a..."

"Do you have a concussion?" she interrupted him.

"Not sure..."

She couldn't resist; she was feeling giddy about finding him alive, and relatively healthy. "How many fingers am I holding up?" she asked, grinning.

"Very funny," his indignant response echoed from the bottom of the dark hole. "The comedy profession suffered a serious blow when you became a Jedi... Ungh... Hang on..."

She heard a click, and then a light appeared at the bottom of the shaft, though she still couldn't see him. Evidently he'd turned on his flashlight.

"I can't see you," she said. "Looks like you rolled away from where you landed."

"Yeah. Okay, I can see fine, no double vision... so no concussion. Hey, wait a minute..." He was silent for a moment. "Mon Mothma's garters!" he said in a surprised whisper.

"What? What is it?" she asked, then waited for his response.

"You better get down here."

Kilu inhaled sharply, but reached out with the Force--she sensed no danger. What had he seen, then? There was only one way to find out--well, two ways, but apparently he didn't want to just tell her. Then again, she conceded, he was badly hurt, and she had to go down there to help him anyway. She instinctively called upon the Force, but then caught herself. She had been about to summon up her fear and anger again, and call upon the dark side. She shuddered.

"No. Just that one time. Just that once. Never again..." she told herself. The shaking in her hands wasn't just from fatigue.

She would just have to do things the hard way. She looked around; she remembered that Axel had a rope fastened to his belt, but it might be awkward, or even impossible, for him to try to throw it up to her. But there were plenty of vines around. She looked for one that was coiled upon the ground that appeared to be the right length and pulled on it to test its strength. It held. She used her lightsaber to cut it loose, then dragged it over to the hole. She tied one end around a large, heavy stone that had once been part of a wall, then threw the rest of the vine down. She wrapped the long green tendril around her torso and carefully rappelled down the shaft.

She found him laying a couple of meters away from the point directly below the hole, where some debris from the wall collapse lay. The ground sloped away from there towards him, so that helped explain how he'd come to be where he was--and how he'd avoided getting hurt even worse by the debris that fell into the hole behind him. His flashlight showed her what she'd expected: he had several cuts on his head, shoulders and arms, his clothing was badly torn and stained with dirt and blood, and the pain of his injuries was evident in the strain on his face. But he was alive, and she'd never been happier to see someone in her life.

Without even thinking about it, she ran over to him, fell to her knees, and wrapped her arms around him. He inhaled sharply in pain, but then relaxed into the embrace. He wrapped his left arm around her and held her close. She pulled her head back, placed both of her hands upon his face as she gazed into his eyes, then pressed her lips against his. The kiss was deep and passionate and temporarily made him forget all about the pain he was suffering. He pressed his lips against hers and placed his uninjured left hand behind her head to caress her hair.

"I thought I'd lost you," she said once she'd broken the kiss, her voice shaking, her eyes shimmering with fresh tears.

"Same here," he said, his own voice heavy with emotion. "Mostrus?"

She shook her head. "Dead," she told him.

He stared at her for a moment, trying to gauge her feelings, then a proud grin appeared on his face. "That's my girl," he whispered.

A short, bittersweet laugh escaped her lips, then she threw her arms around him again and pressed her body against his. She began to sob as all the anguish of what she had gone through--finding her supposedly-dead Master, discovering he'd gone over to the dark side, having to fight and kill him, nearly losing Axel--overwhelmed her. Through it all, Axel held her with the one arm that didn't hurt like crazy, stroked her hair and her back and murmured soft, soothing words into her ear.

Some time later, she slowly, reluctantly pulled out of the embrace. "Well, I guess we should get you out of here," she said as she wiped tears from her eyes.

"Hang on," he said. "There's something you should see."

He raised his flashlight and pointed it to his right. There, in the small cavern where they found themselves, was a titanium case, about one meter long and half that high and wide, and bearing the unmistakeable symbol of the pre-Empire Jedi Order. Slowly, reverently, she rose and walked towards the case. She opened it. Inside, she could see, were dozens of holobooks. Kilu gasped softly. For several moments, she simply stared at all the holobooks, marvelling at how much lost Jedi knowledge they must contain. She then noticed an identification mark inside the case and another gasp escaped her lips.

"Shaak Ti...!" she whispered.

"What?" Axel queried.

"Not what, who," she responded. "Shaak Ti was one of the few Jedi Masters who survived the Great Purge. She was Togrutan; she had quite a reputation for cunning," she said, smiling as she cast a glance over her shoulder at Axel. "'As beautiful as a flower, but as deadly as a viper,' was how one other Jedi Master described her. But... we have no knowledge of her ever coming to this planet. The last we heard of her, she was on Felucia. Which is thousands of light-years from here!"

"Well, you said she was cunning," Axel remarked. "Sounds like she's a personal heroine of yours?" Again, Kilu turned towards him and smiled, then nodded. "Then I'd say this trip was well worth the trouble. Now," he said in a strained voice as he struggled to push himself up until he was standing on his uninjured foot, "what do you want to get out of here and back to the ship first: that case, or me?"

"You, of course, you big dunce," she said with a smile.

She rose to her feet and walked back towards him. She helped him limp up to where the vine hung down from above. She wrapped and tied it around him, then got ready to shimmy back up to the top, where she would pull him up after her.

"You sure you're up for this?" he asked her.

"Why do you keep asking me that?" she said. "You said it yourself: I'm a Jedi. You believe in me."

"I said that?" he replied. "It must have been under duress."

She gave him a poke in the ribs, which made him wince. "Hey," she said, her expression suddenly serious. She reached out to caress his face with one hand. "I love you," she said.

Axel inhaled deeply as he gazed into her eyes. He nodded. "I know," he said as a grin appeared on his lips.

Kilu frowned and blinked a couple of times, then her eyebrows rose in warning even as she smiled. "Don't get cocky, flyboy," she said, poking him in the chest with her index finger.

His grin broadened into a smile. "I love you too," he told her. "Now get me outta here, will ya?"