Chapter 6: Rest for the Weary

Tricia slept through the whole escapade at the prison complex, which I think she did just to spite me. We took her straight to the medical center when we got to HQ, but after she woke up, she never left, electing to stay behind and help tend to the patients there. Again, I felt she was spiting me with this decision since as a result, I left was alone in my room with my emotionally scarred daughter. Under any other circumstance, I would've relished the opportunity to catch up with Melody, but now, though I could sense she bore no more hard feelings towards me, I felt the tension whenever we'd be alone together was to thick for a lightsaber to cut.

If anyone got the worst out of this deal, it was her. She didn't even know she was breaking the law, yet she got arrested and became a wanted criminal like the rest of us. On top of that, she never had a chance to prepare herself for something like this since she never saw it coming. She had a life, and in one night, it was destroyed, and I'm practically the one responsible for it. I never prepared her for what I was to afraid to see coming.

I took her life away.

Faith, I'd think at first, I'm sorry. I let you down,but then, one night, when I saw Mel toss in turn on her cold, unfamiliar new bed, my thoughts shifted from past to present.

No, Grace isn't the one I should be apologizing to, I realized, Mel's the one I let down.

Mel, I'm sorry.

I moved close to her and put a palm on her shoulder.

"Can't sleep?"

Her eyes flickered open and she smiled faintly.

"Not for lack of trying."

"I don't suppose you want a bedtime story."

"Not really, but I wouldn't mind hearing yours."

"Mine?"

"You said we'd talk, right?"

And we got off to such a good start too…

"Mel," I said with a sigh, "You have to understand that your connection to the Force was about as much a surprise to me when I found out less than a year ago as it is to you now. As far as I know, your sister wasn't Force-sensitive, so I had no reason to believe you were."

"That's not what I'm asking about," she said to my surprise, "I want to hear your story. I had no idea you could do the things you did back at the prison."

"My story…" I echoed.

It wasn't that I didn't want to tell it; I just didn't know where to begin.

"You could try the beginning," she said.

If only it were that simple.

"It's… A pretty long story," I told her.

"C'mon, it can't be that long. You don't even look like you're thirty!"

I laughed.

"How old do you think I am, Mel?"

"I'd say… Mid-thirties?"

Another laugh.

"Hey, I'd guess better if we'd celebrate your birthday once in a while."

"Can't celebrate something I don't remember."

"You don't know when your birthday is?" she asked with an eyebrow raised.

"When one has lived as long as I have, such things tend to disappear into time," I said, my voice sounding somewhat distant, mostly just to add effect, "Good thing too. It can get pretty depressing to remember."

Her dubious look was replaced by a curious yet slightly fearful one, the kind worn when an asker doesn't really want to know the answer to what was asked.

"How old are you?"

"Your first guess…" I said, groping around in my mind for the right words, "Was about right. If you were to scan my body, you'd find that I'm about thirty-three, give or take a few months. However, one learns as he delves into learning of the Force that we are far beyond the bodily and physical…"

"And?"

Giving up on tact, I surrendered.

"I can't give an exact number," I said, "But I'd say I'm about a few years past four thousand."

Then came the awkward silence I was expecting.

"Okay… how is that possible?"

"That's the complicated part."

I took a nice long breath before continuing.

"You see, Mel, I'm not the typical Force-user. I'm not even Brett Spade for that matter, for that is only the name given this body. I was first a Falleen called Ximon, and at one point of my life, I was considered…evil, so evil that I was second only to one other in the galaxy's entirety. I was Sith."

Another silence, one that I didn't wait to be broken this time.

"As all men corrupted by power do, my master and I sought more, and ultimately, our lust got the better of us. The power we had found nearly consumed us, and, lest that be allowed to happen, we chose death.

"Unfortunately, it wasn't the easy way out that we had thought it to be.

"You see, the Force has a will of its own and a sense of justice to go with it. Evil as we were, it had to punish us.

"We awakened outside of our bodies, which were destroyed by the evil we had unleashed, and in the very realm we had chosen to leave. We were given immortality, and ass good as that might've sounded at the time, it was a terrible punishment.

"As I've said, we are beyond the body, and as such, the body can be replaced. It had taken us some time to discover the secret, but it was not beyond my master and me. With the new bodies, we resumed living our selfish lives, but there was only so much marrow that we could suck out of life, and when we had had our fill, we found we simply could not move on. We were doomed to eternal life.

"My master realized this before I had, and sought a solution. We parted ways, and long before I had the same epiphany, I had lost touch with him.

"So I wondered the galaxy for a long time, looking for an answer that I knew could not be found. It must have at least been a millennium before I finally found my old master, or rather, before he found me.

"He had been cured, by doing some act of great goodness for his adopted people. I could tell he wasn't lying; his aura in the Force had completely changed from a dull black to the whitest white. So complete was his moral transformation that he had lost the very reason he wished to be redeemed. He no longer desired to move on and elected to stay in this galaxy, serving as a beacon light to all those who would need it, myself included.

"He was truly quite clever, my master, and powerful. While I had taken the first Falleen body I had come across, he waited patiently for something more… durable. With power beyond my reach to this day, he took a Kaiburr, and since he is definitely smart enough to avoid serious injury or illness, he probably never had to face the same stress of finding new bodies as I had.

"Every few hundred years or so, for the Force can only augment the body's lifespan for so long, I'd have to bind myself to another body. Since I quit being selective about species, repeating this process eventually led me to Brett, and, a few years later, to this very moment."

We both paused, I to catch my breath, and she to wrap her mind around my tale.

"I guess I can understand what you're saying," she said slowly, "Though I'm pretty sure I missed a few things."

Now I was dubious, wearing the raised eye brow Melody had copied from me.

"I'm impressed, Mel; it took Grace a lot longer to make sense of all this."

"Well, I guess you're more used to explaining it now."

Good point.

"Did you ever see your master again after that last time?"

Inwardly, I felt a pang of jealousy build.

She said she wanted to hear my story, I thought before dismissing the childish thought.

"I do quite often actually though not in person," I answered, "You should be too, in fact, assuming that you keep up on current events. The Kaiburr he possessed all those years ago was none other than Joseph Adun, brother of Emperor Jacob Adun, prince of the Kaiburr Empire, and chief of the Kaiburr warrior clans."

"I do," she said, "The press always presents him as such an amazing person, practically a living saint."

"They're closer to the truth then they probably think then," I mused out loud.

Mel smiled.

"But then that, as his student, you'll probably end up like him as well."

I forced a chuckle, though it wasn't hard, Mel's naiveté being as cute as it was.

"I doubt I'll ever achieve what Revan had; I can only dream of being as powerful, let alone as good, as he is. I can't really bring myself to sacrifice so much as to let go of the realm beyond this one. I don't know how he did it, but I do know that this old nexu can probably never let go of his stripes."

That wasn't entirely true though. Somewhere along the line, I did gain hope in my own goodness from this girl named Faith. After she died, though, that hope disappeared.

Still, with Melody finally falling asleep beside me as I spoke those last words, I felt I could finally dare to hope once more.