Chapter Three
Lightsaber
Late afternoon brought a peaceful still over the Tatooine landscape, and Mayli sighed in contentment, watching the colors of the sky change as the first sun dipped toward the horizon. Satisfied with their work for the day, all the vaporators running well, she shifted around comfortably on the lounge chair in the little hilltop hide she and Obi-Wan built years ago. She would play lookout for her two Jedi as they brought out their lightsabers for their afternoon duel, but she also loved this time because she could be alone with her thoughts.
Bringing out her data pad she updated last time they were in town, she called up an article about the moon they would be moving to in a few short weeks. She and Obi-Wan selected a part of the world to call home, and she made long-distance queries as to housing. Everything seemed to be moving as planned, Zella already admitted to the university.
Unfortunately, Mayli felt, the more the days passed, the closer their departure date came, something would happen to change everything. Perhaps all their plans seemed to be going too well, unusual for the Kenobis. Or maybe the Force spoke to her. She often wondered if a bit of Ben's Force sensitivity wore off on her. Could that be possible?
Nevertheless, she'd slowly been shortening her client list, passing off valuable delivery contracts to other entrepreneur pilots on Tatooine. They'd prepared the homestead for sale, even sold off the last of their eopies, which, at one point, they owned five. She'd also disconnected herself from the Rebellion, having not been in contact with anyone in over eight standard months, when they began to talk of leaving Tatooine.
And they would be leaving, she knew. But she also knew the leaving would not be as planned. But somehow she accepted this, knowing that when she decided to remain on Tatooine with Ben all those years ago, things would never go as planned, never be easy. A sense of danger, and of destiny, always hung around them. This became even more evident when she first volunteered for the Rebellion, then again when she'd given birth to Zella, a Jedi in the making.
Mayli heard the snap-hiss of the lightsabers below, and she looked down, smiling, watching father and daughter duel. Still focused and skilled, Obi-Wan gave instructions to his daughter as they went back and forth slowly, instructions she did not really need.
He's still so handsome, Mayli mused, watching Ben lovingly. Still sporting a beard, he'd given up on his hair a while ago, leaving it to thin and grey. Mayli knew it to be one of his few vanities, but thinking about her own silver locks and the harshness of the Tatooine climate, one needed to let some things go. They'd both shrugged things off over the years, laughing together, always by each other's sides. And while the occasional argument ensued, they still enjoyed trips to the steakhouse without Zella, dancing together at the cantina, romps in the bedroom which ended in satisfaction, laughter, and long talks, Mayli draped over Obi-Wan's bare chest, his fingers twirling through her hair as they reminisced and planned.
The duo stopped their duel, and Mayli could see Zella showing her father a new move she'd worked on alone. Mayli allowed herself to fall into the memory of when Zella first began learning to fight.
Five Years Ago
Mayli sat straight up in bed, startled awake by Obi-Wan's yelling. Looking down at him, he tossed and turned crying out in his sleep.
"Anakin! No!"
Shaking him awake, Mayli felt deeply concerned. He hadn't had dreams of Anakin in years, but the past month, he'd revisited Mustafar at least a dozen times.
"Ben…Ben…" she cooed softly as he awoke, clinging to her in the dark, this time sobbing into her neck.
"I left him burning!" he wept. "I should have gone back. Why? Mayli…I just left him. In pain. Alive…and now the galaxy…I had the high ground…he shouldn't have done…"
"Hush," Mayli said, holding him tightly. "You're safe here, with me. With Zella. In our home. You did the right thing, Ben. Sweetheart, sleep. Sleep peaceful."
He eventually fell back asleep, but Mayli remained up for a while, staring at the ceiling, wondering how to help Obi-Wan. She knew she'd been the one to bring him back from the edge before, but she had no idea where the problem came from now.
The answer came the next day. As Mayli walked up the cliff side path from working on her ship, she heard the whirl of lightsabers, knowing Zella and Obi-Wan to be working in the garden. Zella began training the year before with sticks and plastic pipes Mayli found, but the past two months, Obi-Wan brought out actual lightsabers. He owned three, his own, Anakin's, and the Sith Dia's double-bladed bow staff.
Sitting down on her bench, she put up her feet and watched them, Obi-Wan showing his daughter how to properly defend herself with simple, slow movements. Zella gripped the hilt of Anakin's blade, the blue glow making her eyes bright.
Using his own saber, Obi-Wan showed Zella these basic moves, their blades clashing with a hiss from time to time. Patient and kind, Obi-Wan was a natural teacher, and Mayli wondered if the Jedi purge never happened if he would have eventually moved more into educating the younger generation. Mayli shook her head sadly. The Jedi Order perished fourteen years ago, Anakin ensuring its death by destroying the younglings.
With the lightsaber Zella now held.
"Stop!" Mayli said, standing up suddenly, startling the rest of her family. The duo looked at her, puzzled. "Um…Zella," she stammered. "Baby, I forgot my tool box down in the cave. Could you run down and get it? I turned my ankle on the way up."
"'K mom," said Zella cheerfully, deactivating Anakin's blade and setting it aside. She disappeared with a skip down the hill.
Mayli approached the confused Obi-Wan. "Obi, Zella needs to stop using that lightsaber."
"Why?"
"Those dreams. Of Anakin. Of Mustafar. You've been fighting the lightsaber again during the day, dreaming of the tragedy at night."
Obi-Wan's eyes opened wide, and he looked down at Anakin's lightsaber hilt. "Oh dear…I think you are right." He looked off, worried. "What can we do?"
"Can she create her own? Don't Jedi do that about her age?"
Obi-Wan sighed heavily. "Yes, but there was always a ritual, like a coming-of-age. A group of Jedi would take the learners to one of the sacred worlds to retrieve their crystals. The stone had to speak to the Jedi. Then they would assemble their blades."
"Can I take Zella to one of those places?"
Obi-Wan shook his head. "They were all well known, had Jedi halls, small temples. Palpatine would know. Probably destroyed them already."
"Any other ways to make a lightsaber?"
"Well, a lot of crystals can be molded with the Force to serve a particular Jedi," Obi-Wan said thoughtfully. "I remember reading of such things, but I did my first lightsaber along with the others of my age."
"What about Dia's blade? Can Zella use that?"
"A Sith blade…no! Absolutely not! Imagine how many innocent lives those crystals helped take. How many…" he froze, again looking at Anakin's lightsaber. "Oh…"
"Here mom," Zella said, appearing suddenly, putting the tool box down on the bench. She reached for Anakin's lightsaber. "Okay dad, let's…"
"No," said Mayli firmly, taking the hilt away. "Zella, you are no longer using this blade. We need you to make your own."
Zella's eyes lit up. "Really? Oh good! I don't like the feel of that one." A worried expression took over. "But I cannot do it like you, right dad?"
"Yes…but we can work together to make a crystal of a different sort call to you," Obi-Wan said. Mayli could almost see his brain spinning, trying to find the answer. "We can look in the caves…and I remember hearing a story about the gallstone of a krayt dragon…"
"Ew…no…let's search the caves!" Zella cried, grabbing her father and pulling him into the house. "We can bring up the desert maps, go to some we've hiked through before."
Mayli followed the two smiling, putting Anakin's lightsaber away before taking the tool box back to the cave.
For two months, Zella and Obi-Wan explored Tatooine, searching for a crystal she could use to construct her lightsaber. They ventured far, Obi-Wan making sure they swung by the Lars homestead, at a distance of course, at least once every other week. He always kept these little side trips discreet, wondering when Zella would finally notice his eye often drawn in that direction.
Despite their wonderings, and little adventures along the way involving Sand People, Jawas, and a stampeding nerf herd, father and daughter returned home empty-handed. The first night back, he lie in bed with Mayli, talking of their adventure.
"Well, what are we going to do now?" Mayli asked.
"I remember a Jedi Knight several years older than me whose master died tragically young. Of disease. In honor of his master, the Jedi used the crystal of the deceased man's blade to make himself a new lightsaber. The color even changed."
"How lovely," came Mayli's soft voice in the dark. "Should she take Anakin's? Could she make that crystal her own?"
"That just seems…wrong. I originally planned to give that blade to Luke, but…perhaps that is the right path."
The next day, Obi-Wan brought out the small chest containing the lightsabers, opening it as he explained his theory to Zella. She surprised him.
"I think…yes…that'll work," she said, her voice soft, her eyes focused as if in a trance. She picked up the Sith blade.
"Zella…wait!"
But his daughter already smashed the hilt onto the floor, the two crystals tumbling out. She picked up the metal remains, tossing them in the trash, then retrieved the two red crystals, disappearing into her room and shutting the door.
Obi-Wan made a move for her bedroom, but Mayli grabbed his arm.
"You said the crystals can change for the Jedi," Mayli said.
"Yes, but…"
"Trust the Force," Mayli said, giving him a wink. "Trust your daughter."
The next week proved agonizing for Obi-Wan as he waited for Zella. She joined him for morning meditation but afterwards would disappear into her room. At meal times, she would come collect a plate of food, then retreat once more. When asked if she needed help, she simply gave him her radiant smile and said, "Nope. You've given me everything I need, dad."
Obi-Wan tried not to mope around, but the shift from daddy to dad broke his heart a bit, not to mention his daughter making her first lightsaber.
Several days after Zella began work on her lightsaber, Obi-Wan ventured down the hill to their cave to help Mayli install a new hyperdrive on the Nebula Flame. At one point in the afternoon, Zella entered, carrying sandwiches for her parents.
"Ah, Zella, I…" Obi-Wan began, but Zella turned away, rummaging through a box of spare parts Mayli kept in the cargo bay.
"Still working, dad," Zella said, grabbing a few things. She ran up and kissed him on the cheek before leaving. "But you'll be the first to know."
Obi-Wan looked at Mayli in what must have been an anguished expression, because she moved over and embraced him tightly.
"You need a distraction," Mayli said softly into his ear before nibbling the lobe.
Obi-Wan immediately felt aroused. "What did you have in mind?"
Mayli pulled him toward her cabin, guiding him inside and locking the door. "Strip and I'll show you."
Obi-Wan eagerly obeyed, sufficiently distracted, for a few hours anyway.
Finally, one evening, as Obi-Wan sat with Mayli in the garden, talking quietly and watching the stars, Zella emerged holding a lightsaber hilt, constructed with used parts of the Nebula Flame. Her parents grew silent as she approached and stood before them. Obi-Wan felt his chest tighten. A Sith blade, the red crystals…no, she was too young. He should have barged in, demanded to help.
"I'm finished," she said. "First I communicated with the crystals through the Force, saw their history. You know why Sith blades are red?"
Obi-Wan didn't. He assumed this reflected the heart of the Sith handling the blade, although red didn't always mean evil. In fact, red could be quite beautiful. He shook his head along with Mayli.
"The crystals bleed when consumed by the Dark Side," Zella said confidently. "But these bleed no longer."
Holding out the hilt in front of her, the twin blades snapped to life, and Obi-Wan gasped. Most Jedi lightsabers hovered in the spectrum of blue or green, with a few exceptions. But Zella's blade looked like nothing Obi-Wan ever saw before. One side of her bow staff glowed golden, the other a rich orange. Obi-Wan stared, speechless. Mayli spoke first.
"Zella," she said, Obi-Wan hearing awe in her voice. "They…those are the suns of Tatooine."
"I know!" Zella said excitedly. "The crystals felt such hatred…and so I poured all I loved into them. You two, our eopies, Solla, grandma and grandpa, the Nebula Flame, and here…home…Tatooine. And they became the suns."
Obi-Wan still could not speak, but he felt tears well in his eyes. If only his Jedi brothers and sisters could see this miraculous lightsaber, made of resurrected Sith crystals. If only Master Yoda…but if they were all together, Zella would not even be here, nor Mayli by his side.
But seeing Zella standing that night, her lightsaber igniting the garden with shimmering gold, Obi-Wan felt his heart surge with hope. The Jedi would not perish from the memory of the galaxy; he beheld a new beginning right in front of him.
Now, five years later, he watched his fifteen-year-old daughter show him a new technique, something he'd never seen before, and he again felt this optimism for the future, for not only the Jedi but for the galaxy as well. Whatever happened with Luke, whether Obi-Wan ever got a chance to train the young man or not, he'd raised a fine Jedi indeed.
In the uptown area of Coruscant, Jac entered his luxury apartment building. As the lift whisked Jac up to his suite, he felt a strange calmness take over. Sure, anger coursed through his veins like poison, but his deep resolve to slowly and systematically dismantle Darth Sidious' most beloved projects made Jac feel a deep sense of serenity. Of course another being would be nervous about this resolve, but the fact Jac saw visions of the future, had seen himself and others enacting these plans for years, made him sure of success. Before the events of the past week, these visions were unconnected, but within the past day, everything fell into place, revealing his final path.
Still, he felt a deep sense of betrayal of these visions. Why hadn't he seen what would happen? Why hadn't he seen the fate of his beloved Callie?
Entering his apartment, he found his son, Sam, sitting in his favorite lounge chair, staring sadly out at the Coruscant skyline. He turned to look at his father, sitting up suddenly, his chiseled features resembling his mother, making the anger in Jac's blood heat further.
"Something is happening," Sam said, rising, running his hand through his mop of black hair.
Jac nodded. "Pack your things. Essentials only. We are leaving. And we are never coming back here."
Sam nodded, retreating down the hall. Jac walked over to the comm unit, standing in front so to capture his holographic message to Darth Sidious. The Emperor, currently offworld, would not think twice of Jac leaving, as he often did to check on their other experiments around the galaxy. In fact, Jac was due anyway to check into the facilities he planned on visiting after recruiting a certain exiled Jedi.
The comm unit lit up, recording.
"Hello Sheev," Jac said, once again marveling at his calmness, at his flawless performance. Damn, he missed his calling; he should have been a holostar. "I didn't get a chance to check with you yesterday before you left, but I am going to visit our viral genetic lab in the Outer Rim. A sudden genome formula occurred to me, something that might need to be changed in the development of a bio-weapon against insectoid sentients." This was all true, as last week, before the tragedy, he'd had a sudden epiphany while drinking caf. "While away, I also plan to swing by the Maw Installation, pick up those newest specs on the Sun Crusher, as we discussed a few weeks ago. The black hole cluster continues to make data transmission frustratingly impossible. But I suppose that's why Tarkin hid everything out there, to keep from the prying eyes of the rebel scum. And Sith lords." He chuckled. "I continue to find it amusing good ol' Wilfuff thinks you do not know about his secret research facility." Jac rolled his eyes and shrugged good-naturedly, as if sharing a joke with an old friend. Sidious always seemed to enjoy humorous interactions with the laid-back and snide Jac, possibly because the other Sith he worked with, Darth Vader, had the sense of humor of a wet rag. "I should return in three standard weeks. Until then, good health, my Lord."
Jac signed off, unplugged the comm, and tossed it into the fire his son started before he arrived home. A loud snap and a pop came from the fireplace as the comm unit incinerated.
"Bastard," Jac hissed, moving down the hall to begin packing. He paused at Sam's room. "We leave in ten minutes."
Sam rose from the floor where he shoved his robes into his bag. "What about mom's things?"
The mention of Callie made Jac flinch. "Everything stays behind."
"Can we…can…" Sam stammered, obviously near tears. Nearly sixteen, his boy always seemed strong, sure of himself, like his father, but Jac saw now he'd been deeply hurt by Callie's death.
"We'll bring her lightsaber," Jac said. "And a couple pieces of her jewelry." His voice caught in his throat. "I…the necklace I…"
Sam rose and grabbed his father, the two men embracing in the doorway for several moments before stepping away.
"Ten minutes," Sam said, running his sleeve under his dripping nose. "Where are we going?"
"Tatooine," said Jac. "We're bringing a powerful weapon out of exile."
Author's Note: In the next chapter, Zella visits another Jedi Master.
Also, most of my understanding of lightsaber creation comes from the Expanded Universe novels and comics, which may be different than the "new canon." Just an FYI.
Rest in Peace Carrie Fisher. Such a sad time for our fandom.