2
The two figures sat side-by-side on a rocky outcropping, facing the ocean. She took in the easy lapping of the waves against the shore, the porgs waddling about the beach, the other islands nearby. He, eyes squinted, studied the confluence of ocean and sky. For long minutes, neither spoke; the silence was neither uneasy, nor particularly comfortable.
"Where'd you find the girl?"
"Jakku. She was scavenging the Inflictor for scrap. Basically indentured to a junk dealer and living in an AT-AT."
He imagined that life and grimaced. "Hnh." The wind blew a lock of unruly hair into his eyes; he brushed it away.
"…So, you went back."
"I went back." He didn't respond immediately; in the silence, she asked herself whether she wanted to get into the reason for her return to Jakku right then. Ultimately she decided to stay on-topic for the moment.
"Some other scavengers were roughing her up just outside a tiny outpost - or trying to rough her up, I should say, since she was doing a pretty good job taking on all three of them with her staff. I watched, partially in case I needed to step in but really mostly to admire the whupping. It's interesting - I can tell she's totally untrained, but her moves almost have a technique to them. Kind of a Niman with a Soresu focus. Kind of like early footage I saw of you, from Cymoon 1."
His eyes flicked briefly to hers, held searchingly, then returned to the horizon. When it was clear he was not going to speak, she continued, "Backup arrived for the punks so I stepped in, ran them off. Introduced myself to her."
He briefly imagined just what 'running them off' would entail from the thoroughly armed and massively capable former operative. He sympathized with the probably still alive, but possibly slightly maimed, hooligans.
"When did you realize she could touch the Force?"
"As soon as I shook her hand. I'm not sure if she knows it even now, but she was in my head the moment we touched."
"Hmp. Need to work on your shields."
She huffed. "My shields are fine, thank you, I was just surprised. I pushed her out right away. And, maybe, I followed the link a little bit. Out of my head, into hers."
Had this occurred during their travels together, he might have chastised her or at least counseled against such casual invasion. Now he simply replied, "And?"
"And, on the surface, she's a highly independent and resourceful loner who wishes for adventure but accepts her circumstances. Self-taught mechanic/engineer. Heckuva pilot, again, natural, lots of potential. Quick to smile, finds the joy in little things. And knows how to whack a shin with a stick to stay safe. Beneath that…" she trailed off, pulling his attention back to her visage. Reading her expression, he determined to wait her out.
After a long beat, she said, "Beneath that, my old friend, she is the loneliest soul I have ever encountered in my travels. Her yearning for connection is almost a physical thing."
He pondered a tension-breaking joke about her being bitter over getting knocked out of the top spot, but she barreled on before he'd decided. "I tried to look deeper, but she broke the link on her end and I didn't want to push in.
"Anyway, without giving her name in return, she says 'Were you just going to sit there and watch me get mobbed by those idiots?'" She snorted, getting into the tale. "I told her, I said, 'Nah, kid. I was just going to sit here and watch those idiots get mobbed by you.' Ha!" He started at the sudden laughter. "You should have seen her face, she was stuck between surprise, embarrassment, and poodoo-eating pride. So we sat down. I got her a juice, asked her what her story was."
His lips twisted. "You asked a Rimmer hermit you'd just met for her story, five seconds after she barely staved off a beating outside a sketchy outpost?"
She snorted. "Yeah, you could say she was a little reticent."
He snorted back but said nothing.
"Anyway yeah, you gotta give to get, I get that. So I told her a bit about what I was doing there."
He cocked an eyebrow. "What were you doing there?"
She paused. Took a deep breath, released it. "Looking for a lightsaber."
The other eyebrow rose to match its twin. "You couldn't just build one?"
She rolled her eyes. "I was looking," she bit out, "for a specific lightsaber."
"In the wreckage."
"Around it, yeah."
"Of the Battle of Jakku."
"Yep."
"A battle at which no Force-users were present."
Her eyes narrowed. "Whose story is this?"
He kept the smirk he felt from showing on his face. "Sorry." (He wasn't.)
A silent beat.
A sigh. "Have you ever wondered why the remaining half of the Imperial fleet holed up at Jakku?"
He frowned. "I've heard a hundred conspiracy theories, but the truth is we didn't find anything to explain it. There was the Imperial base, that it took a month to dig them out of, but there were hundreds of those in the Inner Rim. Thousands. Rax was supposedly from Jakku, but since we know he was operating on Palpatine's orders throughout the Contingency and Operation: CINDER, I can't see it being a sentimental choice of any kind."
She drummed her fingers on her thigh. "No, my old Master was not widely known for his whimsy. On the other hand, he was also not widely known for his hoarding, and he definitely did that."
"As we have seen. There was one of his hidey-holes on Jakku?"
"Yeah. I don't know how read-in you are on the intelligence from that time, you were pretty wrapped up in your Jedi stuff - "
"I was wrapped up."
"We, we were wrapped up in your Jedi stuff. Difference is, I figured out how to unwrap."
Here we go. It's my Jedi stuff. "Difference is, you wanted to unwrap."
"Whatever. The important difference is that I went back to Chandrila and read over the intel digests from those days, chaotic as they were."
"The days, or the digests?" He asked, as he made a concerted effort to unclench his jaw.
"Yes. So, it turns out that a small group had uncovered the final Contingency gambit at some point early in the battle. This particular hidey-hole ran deep - all the way to the planet's core, in fact. The idea was, lure the New Rep fleet to Jakku, get them fully stuck-in with the Imps, drop a big, big bomb down the deep, deep hole and blow up the planet, taking both fleets along with it. 'If I can't play with my toys, nobody gets to play with my toys'."
"His toys being the known galaxy and its constituent resources."
"And any and all sentients residing therein, yes.
"So this group - a couple of Rebels, a bounty hunter, one repentant Imperial Grand Admiral, and a psychopathic B1 battle droid of all things - they stop Rax. Rax runs away, takes what ships are left and kriffs off to the Unknown Regions."
"And creates the First Order."
"And creates the First Order, with which this story is not concerned. I had tracked one of the Emperor's sick Jedi Purge Trophy Cases to this observatory, and the lightsaber of a particular Jedi to this particular case."
"Who was the Jedi?"
"A Zeltron Shadow named Vayaa Sultros. She was one of the group of Shadows assigned to investigate the Sith role in the Clone Wars. I came across a list of their names in the Coruscant Temple archive ruin - I figured if I could locate artifacts of theirs, hopefully their sabers or at least the crystals, I could see a bit of what they knew and try to piece that part of the puzzle together."
"Hnh. Psychometry?"
"…A variant of it, yes, that allows me more than brief snippets of sight."
"A Dark Side technique." It wasn't a question.
"It is." She was unaware that she was holding her breath.
He pursed his lips tightly. "Did you find the lightsaber?"
"Did I — what? Oh. Yes, I have it."
"What did you see?"
"What did I — you're not going to lecture me about the Dark Side technique?"
"What, at this late juncture in time, would be the point? You've made your choices."
"And you've made yours."
"I…have, yes." He blew out a breath. "And they've brought us to where we are." A reminder to them both that where he was, was not where he'd envisioned his choices taking him. "So I'm more interested in a new story than an old argument."
She blinked rapidly, belatedly closed her mouth, recollected her thoughts. "Fair enough. What did I see? That the Shadows got far closer than they clued the High Council in on. I saw an interrogation. Sidious, pondering idly to himself in front of a tortured Jedi spy, asking why she would keep such vital intelligence to herself when reporting her findings might have saved the Order." She smiled slightly. "Sultros died without breaking, but her final thought was telling: reflecting on her findings, she had concluded that the Order didn't deserve saving."
His forehead creased. "She had fallen?"
Ugh. "If you mean, was she using Dark Side powers or actively seeking to increase the amount of suffering in the galaxy for the purpose of gaining power, then no, not that I could tell. Rather, she had come to understand that the fall of the Jedi was the will of the Force."
He said nothing for long minutes; she did not intrude upon the silence.
It was still neither uneasy, nor particularly comfortable.
"I…have begun to wonder the same," he said. His voice was taut.
She turned fully toward him. There was tightness in his eyes and around his mouth. "Look at me."
He turned fully toward her and complied.
"You weren't wrong to rebuild the Order."
His eyebrows climbed his forehead. "You don't think so?"
"It was also the will of the Force."
The laugh he barked out was completely bereft of humor. "An unpopular opinion - one with which this story should not be concerned. So, you found what you were looking for, you met the girl, then what?"
Her right hand lifted from her lap briefly but returned, its mission of comfort aborted. She turned back to the surf and her idle survey of the environment.
"When I told her I was looking for artifacts from the war, she perked right up, asked me what I found. I had some other stuff besides the real prize - showed her some bits of old armor, broken datadiscs, the like. I'd disassembled the lightsaber, so I offered her the power cell and said it was hers in exchange for her story."
"And," knowing her well enough to know that that story was not forthcoming - it wasn't hers to tell - "whatever she told you was enough for you to decide you'd found, what, an apprentice?"
"She's not for me to train."
Silence.
Then:
"…Have. You lost. Your mind."
"Not yet!" She exclaimed with sudden and suspect brightness and a toothy, equally questionable grin.
"After nearly three decades without a word, you track me halfway across the galaxy to the literal middle of nowhere to bring me a Padawan?"
"Among other reasons, yes," she replied calmly.
"If you really expect me to take on a student, I wish to reiterate my concern for your mental stability."
"I carry no expectations of you whatsoever, but I do come with requests."
"Plural."
"Plural," she confirmed.
"…Let's say we'll get to those later. Any more to this story, or did you sweep her up after a juice and a coerced autobiography?"
"Well, put it this way, there's other stories to tell between her sweeping me up - in the Falcon, which had been gathering sand outside the outpost for at least five years - and us finally making our way here. But those stories can wait."
"Wait, the Falcon was - what? Why was the Falcon sitting abandoned on Jakku for five years?" If anything serious had happened to any of his family, he'd have known. He wasn't that cut off from the Force.
"Probably you'd have to ask Solo. Or, if you want the true story - "
"Chewie," they agreed.
She huffed out a breath. "But I'm hungry. Come on Farmboy, what do you got to eat on this backwater paradise?"
"Porg. And also, porg." He gestured to his ubiquitous cohabitants.
"…Dinner's on me tonight."