Beyond - Legends Measure of Merit - Diary of a Shadow Child - 2012 DD Challenge - updated 2/26

I would run away if I were him. He didn't ask for this life as a shadow child.

Nice post though. I like his musings about the military life. I come from a big military family. It is weird but I never once worried about any of my deployed family members dying. It's like you put that out of your head. You convince yourself that their job won't take them to the danger zone or they are so good at their jobs that they will be alright. My husband is retired bomb disposal and I never worried once. I also never asked him what he did at work today. LOL!

Cem's thoughts sound very much like the thoughts of a child in a military family. Nice job.

 

Great post. Kids and grandkids sometimes follow that example. And I would make the same choice again

 

I really like this part. It's such a human reaction. Also a very understandable reaction to the news. There's grief here but a whole bunch of anger towards Soontir.
Can't even begin to imagine what Soontir must be going through...heh...why not write Soontir's diary next year?

The poor kid! But he'll get there. Everyone is devoted to some thing or another.

Wonderful updates.

 

A/N: So for anyone still with me- sorry for the long absence! October and November were absurd months complete with moving, 4 straight weekends of all-day grad class obligations, a trip to Virginia, and then a trip to Ohio. Throw in the excitement (and assorted other emotions) with telling both of our families finally that I'm pregnant... yeah, nothing got done on a fanfic front that whole time.
Anyway, here's a short entry to hopefully get this going more smoothly again. If I stay on my schedule as planned, it'd be done sometime in February, but I might try to ramp it up a little and get it done before classes kick up again at the end of January. The end of the year time frame is pretty solidly out the window by now.

Entry 14

Jagged left this morning with two young Chiss who were also approved for the academy in the past few months. Obviously unable to see him off at the hangar, we exchanged our final farewells in Jagged’s room; I could not help but notice that behind the pride in his eyes rested some latent nervousness… that he looked unsure, and younger than his fourteen years. The nervousness dissipated, and only one who knew him as well as I would have noticed it in the first place. But there was still something about his departure, as he slung his small travel bag over his shoulder, that made me briefly want to echo Wynssa’s sentiments and ask him not to go. A vulnerability.

He was up late with father in his study last night. I do not know of what they spoke, but I wonder if father is the source of Jagged’s subtle yet abrupt changes, or whether father simply picked up on it first and so initiated their late conversation. I did notice, however, that the last thing Jagged packed in his small satchel was the small Clawcraft model that Davin put together when he was last here; father must have given it to him, I had rather forgotten about it in the past several weeks. A nice gesture, sentimental- perhaps not uncharacteristic of father, but unusual at any rate.

My ability to keep in touch with Jagged will be somewhat hindered by my nonexistence. Correspondence necessarily cannot be addressed to or sent from a hidden person, but Cherith will act as a proxy. Her own free time will lessen substantially soon, however, as Jagged’s departure comes just before the start of a new season here on Nirauan, too. Wynssa will commence a more formal routine of study on a stricter schedule with Chiss children who are younger than she but of an approximately equivalent mental development. Cherith will move on from primarily classroom-based study and begin applying her knowledge in more practical training in a variety of areas- all somehow pertaining to the warrior culture of these people and of the Hand itself.

As Cherith flits between combat training, piloting, communications, intelligence analysis… I shall, of course, remain here. As I did when Davin, Chak, and Jagged progressed to that stage as well. The resentment I felt when Jagged moved on (heart fully set on piloting, of course), has mostly gone away. Though a definitive purpose has yet to be established, I continue to study and research people and places in the galaxy beyond even my siblings’ wildest imaginings.

Pieces of a complex historical puzzle are working through my brain, some fitting together and others still looking for their place in the bigger picture. Puzzles of a galactic scale and a personal one, for the Fel family… puzzles pertaining to the last war and, if I am coming to understand father, to the next one as well. There are answers to be found; the problem is that I am so far unsure of the questions… or, for that matter, of who is really asking them.

X---X

Tags: earlybird-obi-wan, AzureAngel2, Ceillean, Jedi_Lover, Jade_eyes, TrakNar

 

Nice post showing how busy the family is. Reflecting your life?

 

To live a shadow life is really tough.

 

A great post reflecting busyness, Cem's sense of isolation, Jag's character, and Soontir's fatherly care And and huggies for your personal good news!

 

Congrats at your personal good news! Nice update! It is bad enough that he has to be away from his brother, but he can't openly communicate with him...that sucks. What happens to a shadow child when he becomes a man?

 

Thanks! Almost halfway there already (yikes), yet May seems so far away...

 

Entry 15

We again find ourselves absent father for a couple weeks while he journeys once more to the so-called Imperial Remnant. I sometimes wonder- if Bastion is the remnant of the old Empire, then what are we? An experimental offshoot of it? A successor to it? A bastard child of it?

The more I ponder it, the more I think that is what father is trying to discover as well. What are we? What is the point, precisely? The Hand has been capably guided by Parck for more than a decade, but it lacks the merit of vision, of direction. It maintains a status quo while waiting for something to come along strong enough to do one of three things: crush it, splinter it… or lead it. For ten years did Parck, Stent, and father do little but watch and wait, pursuing the same campaigns to exhaustion- only to find it futile, in the end, years of devotion and sacrifice in the name of misplaced faith.

It has been a slow crossroads, from the time the visitors destroyed our hangar to father’s latest parleys with the so-called Remnant. A slow acceptance that, promises be damned, Mitth’raw’nuruodo was not returning to lend visionary purpose to his past absence and the Hand’s future. And with a new but so-far stable peace between the Remnant and the New Republic, the questions are only multiplied.

Mitth’raw’nuruodo gave his life for that conflict- was it, therefore, wholly futile? Did his final push for which he abandoned the Hand accomplish anything, or merely delay the inevitable peace and at the cost of many more lives? Or could it be, instead, that his successors are so far inferior that they failed to carry out whatever visionary course he may have laid before them in advance of his death?

These are the questions, I believe, that delayed the final decision to contact Bastion; that still keep father wary of the leadership there. Whatever his experiences prior to the Hand, he has spent too long around the chiss now to accept the premise of compromise; too long reassured of the need to beat back the Rebels and reclaim the Empire’s lost territory.

Of course, his conviction is swayed by experience. He served the early New Republic loyally, if briefly. But I believe that only heightens his confliction now. He abandoned comrades, family, let them believe he was dead, with the assurance that his work here was of the utmost importance, that it was part of something far bigger than the squabbles between the Rebellion and the Emperor-less Empire.

Why then, did Thrawn himself give his life to those squabbles? And what mystery of purpose did he leave behind him?

X--X

Tags- AzureAngel2, Jade_eyes, earlybird-obi-wan, Ceillean, Jedi_Lover, TrakNar

 

a very thoughtful reflection. Will you continue the diary?

 

I love his voice. Or rather the way you write his voice.
I wonder what kind of adventure will be waiting for him? He must be going crazy hiding behind the secret around his life.

Thanks for the tag. Looking forward to more.

 

Great reflections and pointed questions. Fits in canon seamlessly.

 

Nice update!

 

I am very committed to finishing it (not least because the end is mostly already written, lol), so never fear. I've just been quite swamped the last few months. Next update should be up in a few days and hopefully (*fingers crossed*) they'll come more smoothly after that.

Thanks everyone for sticking with me despite my lengthy absences!

 

Oh Lexi, I forget how good your stuff is sometimes. I need to get back into writing and reacquaint myself with the Boards. My life is seriously lacking in fanfic at the moment.

Also, still waiting on the second half of my birthday/Christmas/New Year's fic

 

And we all love your stuff too Lori!

 

Thanks, love. And I'm working on it! Probably 3 parts actually, part 2 is well underway.

 

Why then, did Thrawn himself give his life to those squabbles? And what mystery of purpose did he leave behind him?

Good questions throughout the entire update. I hope we get them answered.

 

Entry 16

Father is due back tomorrow. Cherith and I connived a trip into orbit in the Starflare out of mother. Just a joyride (where would we go?), but any day spent out of our apartment is a liberating one for me. And in talking to Cherith, I think she too enjoys the escape from the fortress, though she would never complain of her isolation in light of mine.

We had an enlightening discussion, actually, one that made me feel guilty for spending nowhere near the time engaged in close conversation with my sister as I did my brothers. It was a natural division of our ages though; it was not really until Davin left and then Chak that even Jagged became more of a confidante than an at-times annoying younger sibling. Their proximity in age always kept Jagged closer with our sister than the rest of us.

She is quiet, Cherith, watchful and observant, but she knows what she wants; or rather, what she does not. She confessed to me during our flight that she had decided some time ago that she does not wish to pursue piloting as all of our brothers have. Part of her is nervous to discuss her path with father upon his return- not because she believes he will be angry, I think, but because she fears he will not understand. I don’t believe that she herself even understands. There is something about being a Fel that equates to the cockpit. There is also probably some measure of guilt or confusion in her mind over honoring Davin’s life, and Jagged’s choice to follow in his footsteps.

Though her commitment to the Hand and all it stands for- or rather, what she perceives it stands for- is still as strong as ever, as strong as any of our brothers, Cherith did confess something else to me: she’s dreamed of some day taking off, seeing what else is out there. Going to Corellia even, and attempting to find what remains of father’s family. Living a life in the service of but not wholly defined by the Hand, by the chiss, by Nirauan.

I doubt it should ever happen; once Cherith’s path becomes more defined, it will take over that part of her life she now has to spare on such flights of fancy. But part of me will longingly envision some day, a few years from now when Cherith is a little older, that we might take another joyride around Nirauan in the Starflare… and just keep going. Set a course for Corellia, for Coruscant, for any of a thousand other worlds where we are all unknown, where the concept of a shadow child is entirely relative to our strange surroundings and our strangeness to them.

I wonder what mother and father would say when we returned from such a hypothetical trip.

I wonder if I would return at all.

That thought occurred to me as I sat in the cockpit of the family yacht, staring blankly at the vast array of distant stars. Cherith was in the galley looking for snacks, and my sudden urge to program hyperspace coordinates for somewhere, anywhere, almost overtook me. It is no wonder that we reserve these pointless flights for when mother, ever more lenient than father, has the final say on them.

Father is not a stupid man; he must know that there is a limit to how long I will stay confined. That one day, I could very well succumb to that urge and just disappear into the vastness of the galaxy, never to be heard from again. Realizing then just how easy it would be, curiosity won out and I keyed for the database of planetary coordinates in the hyperdrive…

…to discover it passcode protected.

Perhaps it always has been, I do not know. I’ve never looked. But though I had no intention of going anywhere then and there, I feel somewhat bested in a round of dejarik. Like father is sitting on a shuttle en route home from Bastion, leaning back with that calculating look in his eyes as though to say, ‘your move, son.’

Touché indeed.

X---X

Tags- AzureAngel2, Jade_eyes, earlybird-obi-wan, Ceillean, Jedi_Lover, TrakNar

 

Cem should put on some blue makeup and stow away on a freighter, just vanish off into void and start a new life. Honestly, no one would notice that he's gone. It would be very easy, but he needs to bring up the courage to do it. Is Cem up to the challenge?

 

Very understandable longings on both their parts to pursue other paths, especially since thw ell-worn ones led to heartache.

 

Does he stay a shadow child for life? At what age will he allowed to venture out on his own? Doesn't his parents one day want Shadow Grandchildren?

Nice update.

 

Will he be free once to lead his own life?
Nice to see him with his sister

 

I wonder what Cem will do!