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Shadowmoth
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"We are playing the same game we have been playing ever since Myrkr: we are playing 'Who is Jacen Solo?' "
—Vergere, The New Jedi Order: Traitor
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It's Angstember over on the Jedi Council Forums, and this year I've decided to write a collection of short stories focused on Jacen Solo - or at least the version of him that exists in my Enter!verse stories. For more of Jacen in this AU, check out my fics: Sacrifice, The Lands of the Dead, Here There Be Monsters, Metamorphosis, Enter the Drabble, and of course, Enter the Foreign.
"Shadowmoth" is a reference from Matthew Stover's The New Jedi Order: Traitor. Spoilers ahead if you haven't read my other stories (especially EtF), but I hope you'll enjoy regardless!
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prompts:
- All we are is dust in the wind
- Wasteland
- Left for Dead
- "You're finally awake."
43 ABY; Jaina is dead, and Jacen lives on
(takes place right after my fic Sacrifice)
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Ashes to Ashes
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The escape pod had left a gruesome scar in its wake, burning a wide swath through the field as it tore up crops and blackened the soil beneath. Even if his rescuers could afford the cost of removing the wreckage, the fuel and solvents leaking from the pod had already done their damage. Restoring the land would require a herculean effort, and credits. Far too many credits.
"You're finally awake."
Jacen turned to look over his shoulder. The voice belonged to the older woman, the one who'd found him first. Her dark brown skin was weathered from long days spent under her world's sun, toiling alongside her spouse and their agro-droids, and her steel-gray curls were arranged in a tightly braided crown not unlike the one his mother sometimes wore. That thought brought with it a flash of bitter regret, one that sat in his chest like a breath he couldn't expel.
"Wasn't sure if you'd make it," the farmer continued, stopping next to him to gaze out at the destruction his vessel had wrought on her land. "You were in and out for a few days, but I guess you're made of stronger stuff than you look."
"Maybe," he said in a hoarse voice. All he'd had to drink since the crash was the glass of water left at his bedside, and whatever else the farmers had managed to get into him while he was flirting with consciousness. "I'm sorry about your field."
"You're alive," the farmer said, his sense of her resigned but grateful. "Crops can be resown, and the land will heal in time, but you've only got one life."
His eyes drifted from the melted slag of his pod to the ashes scattered across the charred ground. Without meaning to, he touched his fingers to the slim silver cylinder hanging from his belt, and this time the regret was a wave swelling around him, rendering him powerless as it crested overhead and dragged him under.
Burning was so permanent; he should have buried her instead. How could he have let her disappear forever? How could he stand here now, watching what was left of her smolder, accepting kindness from strangers whose lives he'd probably ruined? It was a mockery of everything she'd stood for, everything she'd bled and died for. It was a mockery of his own past self. She'd tried to tell him that, hadn't she?
Force, it should have been him in there, cremated in the inferno and scattered on the wind, his remains poisoning the farmer's field while his sister lived on.
"One life," he murmured, unable to break contact with Jaina's lightsaber. Even without looking, he could tell the farmer was glancing down at the weapon on his belt, but there was no apprehension in her presence. "It isn't worth much."
"I don't know about that," she replied, and he turned just enough to see her lips crack a faint smile. "Every life has its worth. And like I said, you're made of stronger stuff, to survive what you did." She lowered her chin, clearly indicating the wound in his side, the one she'd helped bandage. "You're like this land. You'll heal in time. Won't be easy, but few things worth doing are."
He turned fully to face her, and though they couldn't be more different in appearance or life experience, he was reminded of another old woman he'd known. He could almost see her sharp, soulful gaze, the feathered crest on her head ruffling gently as a genuine smile lit her avian face. "That's an awful lot of sage wisdom to pass along to the stranger who destroyed your crops and ruined your livelihood," he said wryly.
"Would it appeal more to your guilty conscience if I broke down weeping instead? Or would you prefer accusations and empty threats?"
He almost smiled despite himself. "Something tells me a threat from you would hardly be empty."
"Please." She gestured casually at his hip. "As if I don't recognize a lightsaber when I see one." Her brow furrowed deeply as she regarded him. "You said you're sorry, and I can tell you mean it. That's enough for me, Jedi."
His skin prickled at her words. "I'm not a Jedi anymore."
The farmer shrugged and let out a sigh as she looked out over her land. "Well whatever you are, it's past time for you to eat something. Come on back to the house; Bray's fixed you breakfast."
She held out her arm to him – sturdy, dependable, no-nonsense – and after a last look at the blackened carcass of his escape pod, he took her arm and allowed her to bear some of his weight as she led him away from his sister's grave.
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