I'm back!
Thank you all for being so patient. I'm planning on updating this story every Sunday for the next month or so, and after that we head into major exam season, so we'll see how that goes.
Part II is very different to Part I in that it delves into the characters a lot more, and is a much more spiritual journey than Part I. There are lots of different subplots that I'm trying to handle, so don't be shy to point out where I haven't managed to adequately explain something. I think it'll be about as long as Part I was, and the story will end with it - that is, there won't be a Part III. I've got nearly all of it planned out, even though it's not actually written yet.
I think that covers everything that needs to be said at this moment in time, so thanks for reading this far and I hope you enjoy Part II!
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Part II: Jedi-Killer
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"Looks like we missed one," Nina mused, moments after they watched the cargo ship take flight. She didn't seem frustrated - no, by this point she just seemed resigned. That perhaps scared him more than anything. He was so used to Nina being an emotional whirlwind that her conducting herself with the peace and calm the Jedi were supposed to possess was. . . unnerving.
Matthias cast her a sidelong glance. "So, what do we do with it?" Purpose - having a purpose often seemed to snap people out of their dazes.
Nina shrugged. "Leave it here? It's all just more dust in the end."
How was the knowledge that Inej was up there, fighting for them, affecting her? She didn't look good. She didn't look good at all.
"Nina. . ." he began, then trailed off as she looked at him. He bit his lip. "Are you alright?"
Her brow creased faintly as she considered the question. There was a long pause before she took in a deep breath. "I-"
Her wrist-mounted comlink went off. Matthias couldn't hear what was being said, and the emotions that flickered across her face - sorrow, hope, joy? - were too muddled for (he suspected) even her to decipher, let alone him. He had no way of reading the situation.
Fortunately, he didn't have to. Because Nina told it to him.
"I'm not alright," she admitted, her voice trembling, "not right now. But I will be." When she looked up at him, her eyes were shining. "Inej did it. She blew up the Death Star. We won."
Euphoria exploded in his chest. Wylan wasn't going to die today - Nina wasn't going to die today - Matthias wasn't going to die today. Inej had done it.
The respect he'd already held for her swelled tenfold.
Nina was halfway out the door. "Wait - where are you going?"
She turned back, agitation making her words short and sharp. "To the medical centre. Inej was taken there - I don't know if she's injured, or if they just want to check her over regardless. But I'm going with her."
"What should I do with this crate?" It was a stupid question, he knew, but happiness made him stupid. Joy, glee, unparalleled relief - he could be forgiven a little stupidity.
Nina clearly thought so too: a smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth. They'd won.
They'd won.
"Keep it, throw it out an airlock, dance on top of it singing sea shanties." She shrugged. "I'm going to see my friend."
"Okay." Matthias stared down at the crate. He'd join her later, but first. . .
First, he had a good feeling about this.
He removed the lid of the crate. He raised his eyebrows at the contents, his heart thudding faster in his chest.
Then carried it to his dorm room, and went to see Inej.
Nina couldn't quite contain her shock at who she found in the infirmary. Sure, she'd expected Wylan to be there - the members of their merry gang seemed to have struck up that sort of camaraderie - and he was, along with Jesper. That, in hindsight, should've been her first clue; hadn't he left Yavin IV with Kaz before the battle?
But what really brought her up short was the sight in the infirmary, of Inej lying barely conscious on a bed with a medical droid prodding at her torso, yet still having an avid argument with Kaz.
"And I'm eternally grateful for your assistance-" Inej was drawling, only to be cut off by Kaz's:
"The Barrel isn't even operational anymore! I'll have a lot off repairs we need to get done. Those TIE fighters. . ."
The smuggler sat on a chair on the spy's right, leaning forward almost into her personal space. They were arguing in hushed voices - at least they were, until the med droid moved up to Inej's head and started wrapping a bandage round it. She contained her hiss, but couldn't quite suppress a flinch, and Kaz leaned back.
"Maybe we shouldn't have this conversation now," he cautioned.
Inej rolled her eyes, then actually cried out when the med droid pulled the bandage tighter.
"Careful!" Kaz snapped.
"Don't abuse the droid, Kaz," Inej murmured as it trundled off to the next patient. She touched her fingers gingerly to her now bandaged head.
"I don't like droids."
"Thought you used to be a moisture farmer."
"Didn't like them then and I don't like them now."
"Yes, Kaz," Inej said in a tone just a touch too placating to be sincere, "I know." She looked up then and noticed Nina's approach. Her face broke into a smile worthy of the brilliance of Tatooine's binary suns. "Nina."
"Hey," Nina replied in a hushed voice, pulling up a chair on Inej's other side. She pointedly didn't look at Kaz - or notice the faint flush on his cheeks as he considered what parts of their conversation she might've heard. "Heard you blew up the planet-killer."
"I heard that too," Inej tried to laugh, then cringed as the motion disturbed her injuries. She took in a deep breath between her teeth. "Don't know when that's supposed to have happened."
Inej's hand was idly atop the bandages round her stomach; Nina took it, and clasped it between both her own. "You saved us," she said softly.
"We're Rebels," her friend replied. "That's what we do, isn't it? We save each other."
A moment of silence fell as that, before she added, "Of course, Kaz saved me, but he says he's not a Rebel, so I don't know what that makes him."
"A friend." Nina looked up at Kaz then. There was something calculating in his eyes as she looked at him, and she hoped he understood the mixture of gratitude, warning and challenge issued in, "It makes him a friend."
While Inej wasn't looking, Kaz nodded once. He understood.
Don't you dare push her away like that again.
Don't you dare hurt her the way you did when she joined us.
Just to illustrate the point, Nina shimmied her hips slightly so the metal of her lightsaber banged against the side of the chair. Kaz just raised his eyebrows.
He had fortitude. She had to give him that.
"Inej," called another voice. Nina turned to see General Kir-Bataar approaching them. She felt Inej shift position. "No, don't get up. I just came to congratulate you, and- and thank you." Inej creased her brow in confusion. "You saved us all. You and the rest of our pilots."
"Everyone's dead."
The words were quiet, rasped out of a throat hoarse from screaming. And Tamar didn't flinch at them.
"Yes," she said, "they are. But we're not." She pulled herself up again, and her voice recovered its normal tone. "Nikolai has been talking with some of the other members of High Command, and we've decided that it was too much of a risk to have so many cells converge on Yavin Four at once. We almost experienced the annihilation of the main bulk of our Rebellion."
Nina pinched her lips together, remembering what she'd told Matthias.
"So we're dividing again," Tamar went on. "I'm going to lead a cell and relocate to another base; Nikolai and Tolya and the other members will do the same." She gave Inej a moment of silence to process that, then said, "I'd be honoured if you joined us." She glanced at Nina then, over to the corner where Jesper and Wylan stood, to the door where Matthias had just slipped it. She barely looked at Kaz. "You and your crew of rogues."
Inej barely took a moment to reply, however weakly, "I can't speak for the rogues, but," she coughed slightly, "I'd love to."
Tamar grinned, and patted her shoulder. "We're finishing our evacuations of the base and then heading out. No, don't get up; you don't have to help. Especially not in this condition. You'll be escorted onto the flagship when it's time for all personnel to leave."
Inej frowned, but nodded.
"General," Nina said. Kir-Bataar turned to her, eyebrows raised. "I have something to do before we leave Yavin Four."
"Jedi business?"
"Jedi business. Permission to leave the base?"
She sighed. "Permission granted. Make sure you're back by the end of the cycle so you don't get left behind."
"I won't," Nina promised, then checked her chrono. She had. . . seven standard hours to track down those old friends of Starkiller's Zoya had talked about. "I'll be here." She said the last part to Inej, whose hand she was still gripping tightly. She squeezed it, then let go and walked out of the infirmary.
She had a job to do.
Yavin IV had a small population, so it was fairly easy to locate the person Zoya had been talking about. The settlement was remote and quite a distance from the base, but it was a short trip on speeder bike, the sense of sentient life bright in the Force.
It probably helped that there was an actual Force-sensitive tree living in a garden there as well.
"Where did you get it?" Nina asked, then looked closer. "Is that-"
"-the tree from the Jedi Temple," finished Genya, a heavily scarred woman in her forties. Nina dimly remembered her from around the temple when she was young, but she didn't remember the scars. She assumed she'd sustained them during the Jedi Purges. "Yeah. I know that when the Republic fell, Zoya sent out a message that any surviving Jedi should flee, but I wasn't about to let the tree I'd watered and looked after for so long be cut down or used as fuel." She shrugged. "It took a while, but I uprooted it and planted it here."
"You were a Jedi?" Nina asked curiously.
Genya shook her head. "No. I was never strong enough with the Force for it to be worth training me. But. . . I was too strong to just ignore it. So I worked as a servant in the Jedi Temple instead." She jerked her head back towards the house, a misshapen bungalow built out of sturdy wood and random metal parts. "David was - he was one of the temple guards. It's how we met."
Genya may not have been strong enough to be trained, but Nina could still feel her presence, brighter than she might expect. And the emotion she felt from Genya when she mentioned her companion. . .
"I thought love was forbidden for the Jedi," she said.
Genya didn't even look surprised. She just shrugged. "The Jedi are gone. And even then, it wasn't uncommon for a Jedi's heart to get the best of them. Even Grandmaster Baghra wasn't immune to attachments - she had a son, after all."
Emperor Morozova. Nina suppressed a sneer. How ironic that it was Baghra's one attachment which had killed them all.
"I mean, even Alina, who was practically the poster Jedi of the Clone Wars, had her attachments," Genya went on. "She and Mal were honestly the cutest couple ever - if, that is, they hadn't done their utmost to convince everyone else that they were indifferent to each other."
". . .oh." Nina had nothing else to say. It made her uncomfortable, hearing the monster who'd killed her master - had nearly killed her - being referred to fondly, like a sentient being.
Because she is a sentient being. Because she was tempted by the Dark Side. Just like you might be.
Nina shook her head. No. No negative thoughts today.
"Anyway," she said, slightly too fast for her mind to keep up with. She took a moment to let it catch up. "I was sent here by my master."
"Zoya?" Genya cocked an eyebrow. "She didn't come herself? I seem to remember she was of the 'If you want something done right. . .' variety."
"She's dead," Nina said baldly. "Her ghost gave me the instructions."
"Huh." Again, Genya didn't seem surprised, just thoughtful. "So David's path to immortality does work? He spent so long studying that, trying to teach the other Jedi how to do it as well. Only Zoya and Alina and Baghra ever listened to him."
Nina decided she wasn't going to ask. "She sent me to find. . . something. . . of Alina Starkiller's. She didn't specify what, exactly."
Genya blinked. "Well, we've got lots of Alina's stuff in here. Do you want to come back and look?"
Lots? Nina wondered. If Genya had enough of Alina Starkiller's stuff for it to count as 'lots', did that make it 'clutter'? Excess? And why had she kept it?
She shrugged. "Sure. I'll have a look." She still had four standard hours to get back to base. How much could there be, after all?
"Stars," Nina said. "How much stuff do you have?"
Genya shrugged - or, at least, it looked like she'd shrugged. Her heavy shawl concealed a lot of her movements. "Alina was my friend. When Koroleva first led all those troopers to march against the temple, I knew that our end was nigh. But I figured, if we could get our stuff away and run, set up a home in a remote corner of the galaxy. . . We'd be fine. So I gathered up her prized possessions, threw them in a bag with mine, and ran."
She sighed. "We'd already lost nearly everything in a political war; I didn't want to lose everything in a religious one. And I figured that if Alina survived, she'd find us. She'd find us, and we could set up a new life, somewhere far from the Empire and the Sith and all the evil in the world. We could survive.
"But Alina never came," Genya sighed. "And we never left Yavin Four. So we're still here today."
"You would run?" Nina was aghast. "You would ignore all the suffering and just run?"
Genya's back stiffened; the eyes that surveyed Nina were suddenly hard.
"I do what I can," she said coldly, "but I am no Jedi. Your precious order saw to that. I cannot help anyone. I can barely look some people in the eye without them screaming."
Nina narrowed her eyes at Genya's face, the scars that her snarl stretched into jagged, gruesome lines. Then she looked away. "Let's look through her things."
A little while later, and she had found nothing relevant. Nothing but old holos and clothes and - one time - a music box containing a figurine wreathed in scavenger's robes, which played a heartbreakingly simple song. She slipped it into her satchel when Genya wasn't looking; it felt important.
But nothing stood out to her - nothing for which the Force whispered, This is it. You've found it.
Then she came across the lightsabers.
She didn't come across them so much as spot them on her way out. By all rights, she should have seen them earlier; the rack was in plain sight and there was a clear path to it from the door. Nina had just chosen not to look there.
"Whose are these?" she asked, awed, as she ran her finger along the hilts of one. They were all polished to a shine, perfectly maintained. There was a simple curved lightsaber with faded etchings on the side, a long one made of a dark substance that looked like wood, and even a guard's double-bladed saber. It was this one which Nina picked up and held gingerly in her hand as she ignited it. The beams that shot out of either side were yellow.
She blinked back tears. Of course it was yellow. That was the colour of a temple guard's lightsaber.
"Fallen friends," Genya said softly. "Koroleva may not take lightsabers as trophies, but other Imperials do. And a Hutt, once - Grakkus was merely a collector, a hoarder, but he was still allowing a legacy he had no part in to die, or worse yet, be paraded around as some sort of historical artefact." Genya shrugged. "I stole them from him. I refuse to let my companions' blades be used like that. And besides," she added, "cleaning them is one of David's hobbies. It takes a lot to maintain a lightsaber."
Nina put down the guard's one to let her hand slip to her own at her waist. "I know."
The silence stretched for a moment, then Genya prompted, "So. . . Have you found what you need?"
Nina began to shake her head, then paused. Glanced over the lightsabers again. None of them called out to her that they were what she was looking for, but. . . "Do you have Alina Starkiller's lightsaber here?"
Genya blinked, then frowned. "No," she said bitterly. "Alina had twin lightsabers, but I never managed to retrieve them. I never managed to give them the respect they deserved."
Silence fell again. They both stood there, among the relics of a shared past, and never had Nina felt the loss so keenly. This was all that was left of the temple that her been her life. Nothing but dusty music boxes and stale memories and lightsabers that should have shorted out long ago.
And she couldn't stay.
She couldn't stay, because the past was dead and gone but the future was still bright, still real, and why had she even come here?
"I need to go," she heard herself say. "I need to get back to base in time for the evacuation." She didn't - she still had three standard hours to spare.
But Genya didn't object. "I understand."
Nina believed her.
This time, on the way out of the haphazard bungalow, Nina could barely look at what had fascinated her so much. These were relics, older people who'd seen enough evil in the universe and were now just waiting to die. They had no hope. Nina couldn't accept a life without hope.
She tried to make haste.
But when she passed under the tree from the Jedi Temple again, she paused. Glanced up at its leaves. Genya paused next to her without comment; it figured she'd seen enough strange behaviour from Jedi to last a lifetime.
The tree was. . . humming?
And. . .
"Oh," Nina breathed. "Oh."
Tell them I sent you to pick up something left buried long ago, Zoya had said.
Buried long ago. . .
She sank to her knees and started scrabbling in the earth at the roots of the tree.
The earth was soft under her hands, yet it wore at her skin anyway. Before long her palms were raw, her cuticles bleeding. But she almost had it. She - almost - had it-
Her fingernails clinked off metal. Her breath caught in her throat as she unearthed one, silvery Shoto saber.
Twin lightsabers, Genya had said.
Nina kept digging. She'd dug up the second one soon enough as well.
"Way to be vague, Master," she muttered under her breath, clutching the sabers in her hands, then she turned to face her hostess again. Genya's scarred face still wore a faintly serene look, but Nina could tell she was shocked - even if understanding was beginning to dawn as well. She laughed.
"So you found what you need." She clapped her on the shoulder. "Get out of here, Nina Zenik. The Empire's on its way."
Nina turned back to her speeder bike to go, depositing the dirty lightsabers into the satchel slung over her shoulder.
"Oh, and Nina," was what stalled her. She glanced back over her shoulder to see Genya's faint smile. "If you somehow find Alina, alive. . ." She took a deep breath. "Tell her I miss her."
For a moment, Nina wanted to tell her. Wanted to shatter Genya's peaceful, passive world, wanted to tell her the truth about her friend, about what had happened and how the evil currently squeezing the galaxy was far more personal than she seemed to believe. . .
But she didn't.
Because that would be cruel, and Nina was not a cruel person.
She hated these people, Nina realised. She hated their lack of commitment to the Jedi ways she held so dear, their apathy when faced with the horrors of the Imperial regime. She couldn't understand how someone who'd suffered as much as Genya Safin had could bear to watch the suffering at hand without doing something.
But it was not her place to judge that which she did not understand. Genya was done fighting - David too. The Clone Wars had drained them, and the Purges had sucked them dry. They genuinely believed they had no blood left to bleed. Nothing left to give.
She couldn't understand that. There was always more to give.
But when faced with that philosophy, the question was: when had someone given enough? Had Genya? Zoya? Inej?
Nina?
"I will," she promised, and left the village in a much more pensive mood than the one she'd entered with.
She made it back to the base in good time, and it wasn't long before she'd secured a spot on the same evacuation ship as Inej.
Her friend, mindless as ever of her own woes, asked, "How'd it go?"
Nina rubbed her arm. "Alright, I guess?" At Inej's raised eyebrows, she conceded, and sat down on the bunk opposite her friend. She didn't know what ship they were on, but Inej hadn't fulfilled her prescribed bed rest yet, so she'd been dumped on a ship with a dormitory. "I wasn't prepared for it."
"For what, precisely?"
Nina huffed a laugh. "You're not my counsellor, Inej."
Inej suppressed a smirk. "Try me. What weren't you ready for?"
She considered it, then shrugged. "Eh, why not. I guess. . ." She scratched the back of her head as she searched for the right words. "I wasn't ready for the realisation that Koroleva was once a person. I wasn't ready to see the Jedi Order as nothing more than dust on the pages of a history book. I wasn't ready to look into the eyes of someone who survived the Jedi Purges and yet who isn't willing to fight the Empire."
"Didn't the Jedi used to have a saying," Inej said slowly, "that went something like 'It's not whether or not we fight, it's how we choose to fight that matters'?"
"Yes." Nina gritted her teeth. "But-"
"If people have had their share of fighting, then let them muster out," Inej said. Her voice was gentle, soft - soothing. "Let them deal with their own demons, in their own time. Not everyone can be as strong as you."
Nina looked up at her. "Do you ever want to muster out? Do you ever. . ."
"Wonder whether this fight is even worth it?" Nina nodded. "Every day. I admitted it to Kaz in a moment of weakness." Inej closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "But I'm still here." She opened her eyes and offered Nina a weak smile. "I'm still fighting."
"Inej. . ." Nina blinked. "What's going on between you and Kaz?"
Inej laughed. "Nothing. Old history."
"He risked his life to save you," Nina pointed out. "He's a heartless smuggler. That's not nothing."
"It's complicated, okay?" Inej scratched the back of her neck. "I guess I feel like I owe him or something - he did get me out of. . . that place. . . and I just left. There're still some debts to pay, I suppose?" It was the weakest argument her friend had ever made.
"Translation," Nina corrected, "you think he's just 'protecting his investment'."
Inej looked startled. "Well, yeah."
Nina sighed. "Inej, I thought you were supposed to be the wise one. The emotionally adept one. But you can't handle whatever it is between you and Kaz?"
She was itching to talk more about it, to burrow to the very roots of whatever made this matter so complicated (Kaz's overall personality, perhaps?) but that seemed contrary to everything this conversation had been about.
Nina had to let her friend deal with this demon on her own. It was difficult to think about.
"Okay," she forced herself to say, taking a deep breath and steadying herself. "Okay. So you can't deal with it now. But you'll be able to deal with it one day. And if not, then that's okay. Some things can't be resolved." Inej was looked at her funny. "What?"
"Nina." Inej shook her head. "You're growing up."
