Southern Wastelands, Naboo

0 BBY

Elian opened his eyes.

Above him was an expanse of undulating shades of grey, interrupted by spreading circular ripples intersecting and widening. It was like the surface of a pond from below, except that the ripples were electric blue and glowing.

He blinked and sat up. That was when he realized he was in a bed. The bed sat on a circular floor suspended over rushing water seemingly without walls. No...not without walls. He stood from the bed and approached the edge of the floor, hearing a quiet hum. Hydrostatic shielding. He'd never seen its like. His room was more like a bubble of energy that repelled the water. Beyond it he saw the waterfall surrounding him, feeding into an immeasurably huge river made of the strangest, milky water. Its banks seemed to be covered by endless ancient forests in all directions except for a few primitive huts to his left. They looked abandoned. It was raining.

"You're awake."

He spun around, and realized there actually was a physical wall behind his bed with a door. A woman stood there holding a tray of medical supplies. She was nearing fifty, he guessed, with blonde hair bleeding to gray and more frown lines than smile lines. Her posture had a military rigidity to it, and her garments were simple and worn. She examined him from head to foot with snapping blue eyes.

She sat down the tray. "You look better."

He ran a hand over his eyes and through his tousled hair. "I'm...I'll do. Where am I?"

"The southern wastelands."

"This is a wasteland?" Elian said dubiously, looking over the towering trees roped with vines. He realized that he should have heard the roar of the water, but he heard only a whisper of white noise through the hydrostatic walls.

"As far as the Empire is concerned," the woman replied. "You should know that unauthorized communications are blocked in the surrounding area. Messages can only be sent or received through the central hub, and you won't be going there."

"I have no intention of-" he began, then stopped. "Where's Mara?"

"We'll get to her. Now, will you allow me to draw some blood?"

"Draw some blood?" He said in alarm. "Who are you? Where is Mara?"

"I'm here."

And so she was. She had walked up behind the blonde woman. Her clothes were changed, her hair was brushed, and she looked none the worse for wear, aside from a small bandage over one eyebrow. But she was avoiding his eyes.

"Where are we? What is this all about?"

"This is Eirtae," Mara said, looking uncomfortable. "She has some...concerns."

"Mara here tells me that you claim to be the son of Emperor Palpatine. I think it is a reasonable start to find out if that is true," Eirtae said.

Elian looked between the two of them for a moment and then rolled up his sleeve, sitting down on the bed and raising his arm toward Eirtae. "I no longer have anything to hide."

Eirtae lifted an eyebrow and pulled a chair over to his bedside. She tied a tourniquet around his upper arm and tapped the inside of his elbow. She pulled out a bare needle and inserted it into his vein.

He winced. "You have hydrostatic shielding but no medical droids?"

"We ration our medical care out here," she said. "Besides, the use of medical droids for routine labs could increase our risk of being tracked down."

"Then what are you going to do with my blood?"

"I'll be sending an analysis to a friend in Theed. He'll compare it with Palpatine's natal blood sample kept in the archives. We should have an answer by the end of the day." Eirtae said, replacing the needle with a square of gauze and bending up his elbow to compress it.

"Are you finished?"

"Not quite. Tell me what you know of your past. All of what you know."

Elian paused, looked at Mara. Some of it she knew, some not. "I come from Chandrilla. My mother was the youngest daughter of the Malek family."

"How did she come to have a child by Sheev Palpatine?"

"No one really knows," He admitted. "As a young woman she went to Coruscant with an academy group. She remained there for six months, and when she returned she was pregnant."

"And how did you come to him?"

"When she died in the riots, I was ten. My family were all either dead or uninterested. Word came from Emperor Palpatine that I was his son and I went to live with him. He educated me and trained me in combat and military tactics. When I was of age I became a set of eyes and ears for him in questionable territories. I was young, I was obscure, and I became skilled at infiltrating rebel groups."

"He trained you in what kind of combat tactics?" Eirtae asked, her eyes like blue flame.

He looked back.

"You know the ways of the Force."

He hesitated. "To a degree. To be honest, he found me to be a bit of a disappointment in that regard."

Eirtae looked at Mara meaningfully. "Very well. Come with me."

Elian shook his head and followed her out of the room.

His room was situated on an irregularly shaped hallway, golden in color, with many archways coming off of it leading to other circular chambers large and small. The whole thing seemed to be simply a series of frames and generators for the domed hydrostatic shields. And it was full of Gunguns. There were hundreds of them, all looking at him curiously, and some looking at him menacingly. "What are they doing here?" He asked.

"This is their city," Eirtae replied. "We are only guests here, so if I were you, I would mind my manners."

He noticed the electrostaffs on the back of every Gungan he saw, and silently agreed.

The hallway spiraled in wide loops downward with no steps or breaks of any kind, the floor made of thousands of tiny tiles with scenes of Gungans in it, some engaging in pitched battles with humanoids, and some seeming to be building the very structure he was standing in. There were aquatic scenes as well, and seemingly labeled marine life on old Gunganese. Despite the technology, he realized that the structure was likely generations and possibly centuries old.

Finally they made it to ground level and went out of a door onto the wide, grassy bank of the river. They walked into the forest, and before too long were in the midst of the huts he had seen from his chamber. And there, in what appeared to be the old square of the primitive hut village, he saw three figures in flowing brown, sparring with glowing shafts of blue and green.

Jedi.

They turned toward him in unison, alert, stiff. Like a herd of deer that had sensed prey, or a flock of birds changing direction in an instant. They looked like something out of a Holodrama. He stood gaping at them, barely breathing, until Eirtae poked him between the shoulder blades with an ungentle finger.

"Well," she called to the three Jedi. "Here he is. Make of him what you will."

One was a Chiss, and the other two were a human man and woman. The human man came forward. He had a kind face, but his force presence was wary. He extended his hand, a hint of speculation deep in his deep brown eyes. He smiled. "I am Ra. You are Elian?"

Elian nodded and took his hand, not without trepidation. Immediately icy fingers danced along his spine. He tensed but restrained himself from pulling away. At least with his senses, Ra would know that he wasn't hiding anything further. If Ra's intentions were pure, that is.

After a moment, Ra relaxed. He smiled. "Welcome."

Ra introduced the Chiss as Jemsil and the other human as Gwynnis. Then he showed Elian and Mara around. There was the primitive village that the three Jedi used for training and meditation. There was a small forge for landing and launching bongos, the Gungans' primary means of transport, and there was the great hydrostatic city, which towered over them with the falls cascading over and between its numerous hydrostatic bubbles like the river over river stones.

"How does no one know you are here?" Elian asked, when he could finally speak at all.

"No one sees any reason for the Gungans to get involved in Empire politics, and they don't believe there is anything of value for them to exploit here," Ra said.

"Forgive me, but why do they protect you?" Ari asked.

"Mara's mother."

Mara shifted, and her face was a study. Ari saw that she had learned most of this while he was out cold.

"She did Queen Ganye and her family a good turn in her younger days. After the war, Mara's mother found the three of us trying to flee Coruscant and brought us here. The Gungans would have helped her anyway, but she did them one more turn by bringing them Eirtae." Ra explained.

"I have a knack with technology. It still took me three years to figure out how to repair the ancient Ankuran hydrostatic shields." Eirtae put in.

"A 'knack'. The understatement of the year," Ra winked at her. "This palace was in shambles. It was destroyed in a tribal dispute along with its chief engineers and the Ankura were living in mud huts. Eirtae was able to help them repair the hydrostatic shields and get the compound up and running again."

"So...Mara's mother lived here with you?" Elian said.

"Mara was born here," Eirtae said, her eyes soft.

Elian looked at Mara. Her eyes became glassy, but then she saw him looking at her and blinked them hard, turning away. "Maybe you could show us to your dining hall? I'm starved."

It was during their meal that Mara filled him in on what she had learned of her background. He was entirely unsurprised to learn of her father. Winnis or Sabe or whoever she had been had skills beyond the average force user, certainly, but nowhere near the raw energy Mara had showed during their escape from Alderaan. Force abilities from both parents, and one of them a Jedi, explained a lot. He wondered if she sensed at all her own potential and strength. Unlikely, he thought, watching her frown down at her fish and dig a bone fragment out from between her teeth. Then she looked up and he turned away immediately, flushing slightly.

Elian soon learned that there were several other humans and a few other off world species living at the complex. Some of them were from the village across the river and seemed to act as liaisons to the Ankura. All of the rest were force users. Ra explained that they were only transient residents. It seemed the three not-quite-jedi were running a temporary shelter for force sensitives in the mid rim before directing them to other planets to hide.

"We've only been able to find a few of them," Ra told him. "There's no great systematic way to identify them now that the Midichlorian system collapsed with the Temple."

"That's how the Emperor wants it," Elian told him. "If they can grow a collective, they can fight."

"Which is exactly why we are trying to grow one," Ra said.

They had just finished walking together from the Cascade palace to the hut village. Gwynnis came to meet them, pressing a kiss to Ra's lips, and as they stood there a little girl with bouncy dark curls ran up and jumped in his arms.

"Daddy!" she said ecstatically.

Ra grinned and embraced her before she bounced away just as quickly to play with some friends.

"I've been meaning to ask you about that," Elian said, feeling a bit awkward.

"What's that?" Ra asked.

"Well...I thought Jedi weren't supposed to form attachments."

Ra laughed. "Well, Gwynnis and I have diverged from Jedi dogma on a lot of things. We never became full Knights, after all. We hesitated for a long time, but in the end we decided that there were two acts of resistance that we personally were capable of. One was to help fix up this place and make it a haven for other refugees, and the other was to have babies."

"Babies?!"

"Force sensitive babies raised on the Light Side," Ra said. "There is no greater, crazier act of hope than having a baby."

"If you say so," Elian said, shaking his head.

Crazy seemed to be an apt description, anyway. The little girl jumped and laughed and ran in the sunlight with her companions, her perfect ringlets in a wild halo around her head. He couldn't imagine bringing a creature so helpless and innocent into a world like this.

"I know its a cliché," Ra said softly, as if sensing his thoughts. "But it really is like letting your heart climb out of your body and go trotting around on its own."

The almost-Jedi looked at him sidelong then, smiling slyly. "But I don't need to tell you. Falling in love is a pretty crazy act of resistance sometimes, too."

Elian stiffened, realizing Ra had just caught him staring at Mara.

After dinner that night, Eirtae joined Elian and Mara in the large common room. A huge fire was roaring in a hearth that extended a full quarter of the one permacrete wall, and soft easy chairs were scattered around in groups of three or four. The rest of the room was formed by a solid curve of hydrostatic shielding that showed the innumerable stars above and the twinkling river. Besides the fire, there was no other light present or needed.

"I have your results." she said to Elian, sitting on a chair near to them.

He put down his cup and waited.

"You are not Sheev Palpatine's son."

He looked up, startled, and Mara carefully set down the tea she had been holding to avoid spilling it.

"Then he lied?" Hope rose in his chest.

She paused. "A son would have a certain similarity with his DNA. But you don't have similarity. Your DNA and Sheev Palpatine's are identical."

The hope in his chest snuffed out as quickly as it had risen.

Mara looked between the two of them, confused at first. "Meaning?" She prompted.

For once Eirtae's expression toward Elian wasn't hard, but almost compassionate. "You aren't Emperor Palpatine's son. You are his clone."

Mara left the waterfall palace and walked through the grass on padded feet, leaving little but whispers in her wake. She could hear the hollow gurgle of the river and the roar of the waterfall. It was utterly dark with innumerable diamond stars scattered across the velvet black of the sky. She paused to look at the Tingel Arm. Somewhere there, she should have been able to see the blue glow of Alderaan, but it was gone. She took a shaky breath and continued on her way towards the circle of huts.

Elian sat in the center of them, where Jed had said rituals were still held. The area had been flattened and packed by decades of Gungan feet crouching in communion or dancing the ceremonial dances. They had a ceremonial circle now in the cascade palace, but they still seemed to return to the little village on special occasions. As she stood there, Mara thought she could almost feel the echo of all those rites; rituals of both joy and deep sadness, the deep feelings sunk into the earth and drunk up by the trees nearby until the place was like a temple. Probably that was why the Gungans returned. The earth here remembered them. She wondered if it was also what had drawn Elian tonight.

He turned and looked at her. He looked a little surprised. Then he turned away. "Why did you come here?"

"I guess I wanted to see if you were alright."

"Do you really care?" He asked.

She was silent. Did she? Her emotions about him were aswirl. It was still too difficult to separate her feelings about Alderaan from her feelings about him.

"It's okay," he muttered. "I can certainly understand."

She looked at him. "You aren't him, you know."

"But practically speaking, I am him."

"You know genetic coding is only part of our identities. We argued about it at the Academy, that whole programming vs experience debate. Look at the clone soldiers. They all diverged more and more from one another over time. Its nurture, not nature that makes us who we really are."

"Even if I accepted that, the clone soldiers are a really good example," Elian said. "I could have behavior modifications just like they did. I myself may not know what I'm really capable of."

"Eirtae could find out," Mara said.

"No one could ever really know for sure. The only safe thing for me to do is to leave here. Turn myself into the rebels, and allow them to imprison me."

"And what if they just decide to kill you outright?" Mara asked.

"I DON'T CARE!" Elian cried, jumping to his feet.

A flock of black birds took flight at the noise, disappearing to the sky with frantically beating wings.

Mara shivered. "I do."

Elian ran shaking hands through his hair and then used them to cover his eyes. "I can't take it, Mara. I see their faces when I close my eyes. Ormond, Dahlia, Keo, Vala, Niall, Errol, Bail Organa, Queen Breha. Your mother."

Mara pressed her fist to her lips and turned away from him. She sniffed loudly, angrily, and then turned back with eyes ablaze. "You don't get to do that, though. You don't get to just sit in your guilt and bewail fate. Your guilt alone is nothing. It does nothing. It fixes nothing."

He put out a hand and touched her shoulder. "I'm sorry. I even cheapen your grief. I don't know...how to be."

Mara inhaled. "In the end it's our choices that make us who we are. Not the things we can't control, but the things we can. You chose to get me off Alderaan, and to get me to Naboo. What are you going to choose to do next?"

Elian half smiled, shook his head. "I feel like you are making excuses for me, and I can't figure out why?"

"Maybe I've just had enough rage and hatred and sadness for one lifetime. I'd really just like to see someone heal," Mara said, sliding to a crouch and sitting down, leaning back on her hands.

"So...what do I do? To atone?"

Mara looked up at him sharply. His face was perfectly and earnestly serious.

"You could maybe find some work here," she said. "If you know about how the Emperor uses and manipulates the Force, that could be valuable information for the Jedi here. And you could train new ones. Hell, you could train me. We might actually be able to build some kind of resistance here."

"I could do that...I guess," He said softly.

"You can start by showing me that pushing trick," Mara said.

Elian lifted an eyebrow. "So you can use it against me?"

"Oh absolutely," Mara said.

"Well..." Elian looked around. "Just for my piece of mind, how about we start with a leaf?"

"Fair enough," Mara smirked, plucking a likely candidate from a nearby tree.

An hour or so later, Eirtae came out of the cascade palace, looking around her with a frown. She walked down toward the village. Just as she rounded a corner to the square, a stick whizzed by her, narrowly missing her head with alarming velocity. She gasped and dodged, looking up just in time to see Mara and Elian standing together, Mara covering her mouth with her hand.

"Sorry, Eirtae," she said between giggles.

"What on Earth are you two doing out here?" She asked.

"Nothing!" Mara insisted, and she and Elian trotted back toward the cascade palace like two guilty and mischievous children.

Eirtae frowned as she watched them go inside.

The next day Elian and Mara were both in the village at dawn when Ra and the others started their morning practice. Eirtae had objected to Elian being able to observe anything about the Jedi's methods, but Ra insisted. He seemed to have decided that he could sense enough of Elian's intentions to trust him.

"Anyway," He told Eirtae. "If he thinks he is going to observe anything of military significance at these little practices of ours, he's going to be sorely disappointed."

They always began with a simple meditation, which Eirtae scornfully called the "woo-woo portion of the practice." Eirtae had never stuck around long enough to observe the less simple part of the meditation when the rocks and leaves and other detritus lying on the ground began levitating around them.

Mara stared open mouthed as this was occurring, and her own objects dropped immediately to the ground as soon as her concentration lapsed.

Elian only snorted. "Parlor tricks."

Ra smirked at him. "You have something better?"

"I thought Jedi didn't do grudge matches," Elian countered.

"I keep telling you we aren't exactly Jedi," Ra said.

"Hmm," Elian uncrossed his legs and stood up. "I suppose I could show you something my father really didn't like me doing."

He looked around and saw a small shrub at the edge of the clearing. It must have been in a poor spot either for light or water drainage, or else caught some disease, because it was clearly and obviously dying. Its foliage was drooping and yellow spotted with black, surrounded with leaves beneath. Ari went and knelt in front of it, studying it for several long moments. Then, he gathered himself and everyone around him felt the sudden pull of power toward him, and toward the hand he reached out to the plant. At the moment he touched it, everyone sighed audibly.

Flex.

The world seemed to shift slightly. Then the yellow began to retract from each leave like a wave receding, leaving more and more vibrant green in its wake. The torn edges of the leaves seemed to knit themselves together again. The stems and branches straightened. The entire plant strained upwards, growing several inches and reaching hungrily towards the light.

"You're a healer," Ra breathed.

"Don't all force users have healing ability?" Mara asked.

"Not like that!" Ra exclaimed.

"Why not?" Mara asked.

"There are two aspects to the Force, we were taught," Ra said, unable to take his eyes from the almost luminescent plant. "One orderly and generative, one chaotic and destructive. Our masters told us both were necessary for the wheel of time to keep rolling. Things have to be destroyed and die for things to be born, etc, etc. Partly, they were only reassuring us about our shadow sides. It's always easier to destroy than it is to create. Very few padawans are ever capable of dispelling their shadow halves far enough away to heal. You would have been one. No wonder your father hated it. No ability is more disparate from the kind of energy a Sith uses for his power."

Mara smiled, but Elian only looked troubled.

Mara, on the other hand, could do very little. She could occasionally move matter with the Force, but only in fits and starts that proved chaotic and difficult to control, like the stick that very nearly embedded itself in Eirtae's head. Sometimes she could do nothing at all. And sometimes her frustrated emotions made what she did try downright dangerous.

"It's like you are blocked up," Ra said to her.

Mara's jaw set.

"She was shielded for a very long time," Elian said.

"That could be part of it, but there is also a great deal of conflict in you. I don't think you've really settled with who you actually are," Ra said.

"Well, what do I do about it?"

Ra shrugged. "I don't know. The masters would have known, but we don't have many of them about, now, do we?"

It was Elian who eventually hit upon the answer.

Weeks passed. For the first time since Alderaan their lives settled into a pattern. They woke early and trained in the sticky jungle air with the mist rising behind them from the river. They helped make meals, they hauled supplies, they fixed things. Eirtae stopped glaring at Elian quite so much, and he and Mara shared more and more companionable smiles. By night they listened to the pedantic debates of the Jedi, the folktales of the Gungans, and the bits of news brought in by those the Cascade Palace sheltered for a while. After, when the others had wandered out, they often sat together and stared into the crackling fireplace, not talking much, just sharing quiet space. The knots in their chests loosened and both of them began to feel less like fugitives, more like rebels.

Solstice was approaching in Naboo. The humans liked to celebrate in the traditional Nubian style, with gifts and fire festivals. The Gungans celebrated entirely different traditions and viewed the human excitement with amusement, but also organized a ritual dance of celebration and feast. Their hunters worked for days to bring home game and the female Gungans took charge of the kitchens, working hard to prepare Gungan delicacies. Elian assisted the other Jedi and the Gungan males to hunt for game, but applied himself to an entirely different project.

On Solstice Eve the Gungan dancers put on amazing displays by the firelight, including the re-enactment of the creation of the Gungan species complete with huge masks depicting fearsome Gods. The humans also performed dances and put on a play of their own showing the birth of the Nubian sun god. Elian had no religious beliefs at all, but as he watched them all celebrate it together he couldn't help but feel and share their devotion. There was...something here, something deep and ancient. Beyond species and language there was an awareness of the power within all things.

And then someone grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet. It was Mara, leading him into the thick of the crowd. His heart hammered as she dove under arms and wove between hips and legs to the thickest part of the crowd, just before the great fire. There she stopped, her face rosy in the firelight, staring into it with fervent eyes. Her hand tightened on his. He caught his breath as she turned towards him, pulling the hand she held around her waist and grabbing his other. She chortled at his expression and led him in a merry dance around the fire.

He laughed, and she threw her head back as he twirled her. "Aren't I supposed to lead?"

"Only if you are a narrow-minded fool," she sighed, twirling him under her arm.

He laughed and looped his arm around her waist and pulled her back into him.

And suddenly they stopped, her smiling into his face with her eyes burning, his smile just hovering on his lips, her front pressed to him, the tension between them suddenly rocketing up. Surely not, he thought. Surely after everything she couldn't possibly...

"Gifts!" someone yelled, and they broke apart. He noticed how flushed her cheeks were and tried to calm his own pulse rate.

Then he went to get his gift and presented it to her. It was rather a large box. She looked at it in confusion. "How could you possibly give me a gift when you have no money or-"

"Skills," He said. "I have skills."

She lifted the top off the box and stared.

It was a wooden base topped by a very crooked metal crescent. The crescent was dull and unpolished. It was as crude an approximation as one could get, but it was a Magnolin.

She breathed. "Will it work?"

"I guess that's up to you," Elian said. "But everything in a real Magnolin is here, in slightly cruder form."

Mara lifted up one trembling hand. She traced the air around the crescent very carefully, like approaching a wild thing that might bite. A thin, clear tone emerged, stilling everyone around them with its purity. The Jedi dropped what they were doing and came to see.

She began a solstice hymn from Alderaan. Solstice was for the most part a joyful occasion, but this particular hymn had a good amount of darkness in it. It bewailed the shortening days, the increasing night, the creep of the shadow, the reminder of inevitable death. But just as suddenly at the end the tones swelled to a returning joy. The light would come back, the spring would come, the buds burst into bloom. From death, life would unfurl, fragile and delicate but indomitable.

When she had finished there was scarcely a dry eye around the fire.

After, Elian woke nearly every morning to the sounds of the magnolin from her nearby chamber, drawing him from sleep like a gentle voice. And though she still struggled in training at times, the music seemed to focus her energy, like a ruby in a laser. Day by day as Elian and Mara moved side by side through the forms of Soresu, Elian felt as if they were dancing their way out of the dark.