Saga Awakenings--OC post-Purges vignette

Title: Awakenings
Author: DarthIshtar
Characters: Ana, others
Timeframe: Two weeks post-ROTS
Summary: Some things you never want to survive.

"YOU LEAVE ME TO DIE! You leave me the way you've left him. KILL ME!"

"I can't let them be the ones to control the manner of my death."

"Kiss for luck?"

A thumb pulled her unwilling eyelid up and she instinctively turned her head away to avoid the blinding light.

"Well," someone muttered, "that's more response than we've gotten in four days."

Had it been that long since it had happened or since she had begun to find her way back to consciousness?

What exactly was the 'it' that had happened?

"It's more response," another voice countered, "but she's still not speaking to us."

"Her skull was fractured. You can't expect her to be reciting all seventeen volumes of the Imperial Penal Code after only three weeks of recovery."

"No," the other agreed, "but given her brain activity, I'd at least expect her to give us her name."

That would have been easy, if she could remember her name.

"Have you considered that it has nothing to do with her brain activity?"

A long pause and then the other voice spoke again, sounding wary. "What do you mean?"

"Three weeks ago, her own troops tried to kill her," the first man explained. "It could be that she doesn't want to tell us."
*****
She was on her back this time when she woke up, memorizing the pattern of the stains on the ceiling, but her thoughts were hardly clearer than the last time she had seen daylight reflected through the window at her right hand.

The pain was better today. She still couldn't move her head very much because that made the lights explode in her eyes, but her vision wasn't as blurry. She could finally breathe without her chest hurting.

The worst of it were her legs and arms, since the pain in those had been like nothing she'd felt before, but at least they were getting better.

"Jedi."

That word made her heart pound and her eyes sought the speaker without knowing why that title meant anything to her.

"You confuse me, Jedi."

It was not an accusation, but his words inspired a kind of guilt that she could not explain.

"You are a Jedi--that much is clear because you were defending yourself with a lightsaber--but it was not the crash that nearly killed you. It was the lightsaber wound that came within five millimeters of evaporating your heart."

"Leave me the way you've left him..."

"KILL ME!"

"What enemy tried to kill you with your own weapon?"

That seemed wrong, not because of the question, but because of the idea that it had been an enemy.

She had the strangest feeling that he had tried to kill her because he loved her.

"I can't let them be the ones to control the manner of my death."

She could not explain to herself why the only words she had to explain this were riddles of desperation.

"Still no words?" the man asked with a heavy sigh. "Do you know where you are?"

Finally, her lips parted slightly and she rasped out the first word that she had spoken since it had happened.

"Hell."
*****
She slept fitfully that night, her dreams plagued by fire. It filled her lungs in the heat of battle or drilled through her without mercy, but she could not escape it.

She had earned this fire of condemnation, but she had no idea if she would ever know why.

When she awoke, the cold night air entered her lungs in a cleansing rush, shocking her mind into stimulating tears that she had been unable to shed in memory.

No voices clawed at her mind, demanding answers that she could not provide, so, instead, the air left her lungs to ask herself a single question.

"Ana, what have you done to yourself?"

Immediately and inexplicably, the tension in her chest seemed to ease enough for her to breathe more comfortably.

It was a question that she rarely voiced, since she had heard it spoken in wry affection from her Master as well as her husband. She could remember it coming from someone in a Healer's robes as they

 

Well done, sad, and strange. I enjoyed it.

 

Chilling! Very compelling character here and an unexpected ending. Great story.

 

Wow! Wonderful little peace.


"He tried to take me into death with him as I requested," she said at last. "It is a higher form of love than you could ever imagine."

I really liked this line

 

I loved that line as well. To give you a bit of explanation on this, Ana was the first Jedi I ever wrote after watching TPM. I was 18 and I did a horrendous job of writing her life story...in a grand total of 86 pages. Recently, because I feel like I have a better grasp on the Jedi and on life, I've been reconsidering writing part of her story. This vignette was a big challenge to write so I could look at her existing in a very similar situation to Anakin/Padme, but having an unresolved idea of what she had to live for. I'm contemplating the idea of rewriting her story.

Thanks. I'm very glad that you liked the character as compelling because she's definitely one of the more complex OCs that I've ever written.

Thanks!

 

Go for it! I'd be interesting in reading it.

 

wow. I'm hooked. This is amazing.

 

Thanks to you both for the encouragement.`