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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Beyond - Legends "Colors in the Waiting" (SW/Marvelverse AU repost; NJO - SkySolos, many others; hope/etc.)

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction- Before, Saga, and Beyond' started by Onderon1, Jan 22, 2018.

  1. Onderon1

    Onderon1 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 18, 2008
    A/N: This is a repost of a truncated 'fic of mine from a long time ago - thanks to Chyntuck, I was able to track down the untruncated version on the Wayback. :D

    As to how so-and-so is here, or such-and-such is alive - I'll direct all questions to
    this little 'fic (and answer anything in any responses, should anyone be so kind [face_blush]): http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...ysolos-psylocke-etc-concluded-10-12.50043475/

    DISCLAIMER: LFL's are LFL's, Marvel's are Marvel's, and all are Disney's. No money is being made off of this, so please don't sue.

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    29.8 ABY: Errant Venture:
    ----------------------------------------------------------------

    Red:

    It's the lack of bounce in her wavy locks that she notices.

    And the threads of ... slackness, the lack of natural oils; some of it could be blamed on the pregnancy, on her passenger demanding his share.

    More, though, she knows, is from exhaustion. Keeping the wall up now, more than ever.

    It's no longer the fresh-cut bloom of blood, or the umber of Cilghal's darker patches - Mon Cals' skin isn't uniform, if one pays attention.

    She knows part of this observation is her Hand training kicking in. And part of it is self-defense. Ignoring the growing sensation of ...

    gnawing ...

    at her bones.

    But let Anor's cellular massiffs try to even sniff at her boy.

    White cells surge, buoyed on waves of Force, and there's a scream of feral agony. The animals are scorched and sent howling.

    She smiles a little coldly, despite laying in this damned medical bed.

    And she feels/hears a little curious giggle - he laughs back.

    So Mara's smile - despite the cracks in her pale-red lips - becomes warmer. And she shares time with her son.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------

    Green:


    It shouldn't be so fascinating, something so random.

    But Cilghal has a strange - to her - interest in eye color.

    Something so wildly unstable in genetics shouldn't be a pastime, especially to a Jedi Master. She has Mara to look after and share healing with, Tekli to pose unsolvable questions to in order to teach, the unborn boy to continue to marvel over in his freedom from the disease ...

    Still. At times, even Force meditation doesn't keep her from despairing; Mara - her friend - is losing ground. Her womb is her last stand, a textbook case of a mother sacrificing herself to save her child.

    At least with sentients, such an instinct has compassion and not just instinct behind it.

    So, Cilghal takes her distractions while she can. And she posits:

    Will the little one's eyes be green or blue, after the usual period of change which babies go through?

    This supposes, of course, that nothing will go wrong in the next few weeks. Nature can be perversely cruel at the moment of greatest effort; a twist, a misplacement ...

    no. There will be nothing wrong. Too much pain and suffering has already befallen the Skywalkers.

    So far, Cilghal notes - even with the flimsi-thin, ice-pale skin showing the arachnid-webbing of veins, and the lack of vibrancy in hair - Mara's eyes remain a healthy green.

    Defiant. A warrior-goddess on a hill, fighting rabid animals to protect her baby.

    Cilghal hefts her shield and returns to her position in the phalanx.

    She intends to make sure Mara can see her son's eyes.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------

    Orange:


    It's a simple, silly thing - certainly a droid could do it, and she could be in the creche, watching after the children who are here.

    But for a former Senator, who enjoyed being a thorn in the side of the CIS and too-much enjoyed the secret, stolen moments with the Chosen One, knitting is a quiet, private pleasure.

    Especially when it's for her grandchild who's coming into the universe. Even if it's hideous orange booties.

    Really, Padme admits, she's overdoing things - but she never held her twins.

    A baby. A baby, in the face of all this horror. What courage, her son and daughter-in-law have, to bring a child into these times.

    Oh, she adores the teens; Jacen, with his philosophical puzzles. Jaina, with her defiant "I don't have man troubles" face, even as she maintains a coterie. And ... Anakin, who strives to save lives and struggles with his grandsire's truths.

    The girl, Tahiri, is far wiser - hard-won, but no less real - than Padme was when her Anakin swept her off her feet. The pair of them will live long and be happy.

    And Luke and Mara's older children - Kylo, even as grim as he can be. And Rey, laughing and brave.

    But the baby. Part of it, Padme admits softly, is jealousy - but also, moreso, triumph.

    And a continuation, not only of blood but the restarting of her dreams of rocking a newborn in a garden.

    She had such dreams. Another lifetime ago. Before ...

    This year marks 45 years since her husband betrayed her.

    Had it been with one of the handmaidens, she might almost have understood. The historians think they were all friends - and they were - but there was competitiveness, petty jealousy and bloodless cutting of words behind closed doors.

    Hidden beneath white foundation and red lipstick and ornate robes. The Naboo are civil - but can hide strength and knives.

    Instead, her trueheart murdered. Indulged in petty, revolting revenge.

    In her name.

    The grief-stricken sobbing by the site of his pyre vented her shock and horror - helped her face what Vader meant.

    And she has a support system - the twins, of course, and the grandchildren, and Mara, Han, Chewbacca, the droids, and the Jedi. And Elizabeth.

    To be able to indulge all those queenly fantasies of going out to a simple tapcafe with a friend and gossiping. Incredible.

    Especially for a woman who should be a matriarch.

    Padme's technically 72. She should be lined; greying-into-white hair; wearing frumpy clothes.

    Instead, her daughter-in-law is facing death, while Padme looks barely older than Jaina.

    She turns back to her knitting, and sends up a silent admonition to the Force:

    Please let us all see this child born safely ...


    It's a defiant, vibrant mental cry.

    Aggressive negotiation isn't just for Jedi.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------

    Violet:


    "Well, I'm at a loss to explain it, actually," she says - it was genetic in the Kwannon body.

    But she'd been a blonde in her original British body. Whatever's causing her hair to be purple now, after her reincarnation in what should be a replica of her first body, is a mystery.

    Sort of like everything Betsy's faced since landing here.

    Why Star Wars? Why in the middle of the worst, most horrid, war she's ever witnessed?

    "Hey, you were put back together by a teenaged boy with too much power, who remembered you from when he was 4. Strange shavit happens," Mara says, sipping from a straw.

    That Betsy has to hold the glass for her is telling and troubling. Her friend is getting weaker.

    Except - in the Force, the rise of her abdomen is glowing like a small star, walled off from the sickly-green-ebon coursing through much the rest of her.

    And within the golden-white, is pure, innocent silver-white - too young to have color yet. A small body, with a mind so pure and warm and instinctively kind that Betsy can't help but smile.

    She brushes him; greeting - and he calls back.

    "ooh. Meshgroya player in utero. Kid kicks," Mara laughs - the effort is visible, but she'll not say so.

    So like Jean. Yet her armor is external; Jean's is in her bones, Betsy recalls.

    Of course, at no point in any of her pregnancies was Jean Grey-Summers deathly-pale and infected with a lethal spore.

    But if Mara's not a Grey - or a cross-time analogue - Betsy will eat bantha poodoo.

    With fresh beets. Always hated beets. Bloody hideous shade of red-purple.

    The thought distracts her from her fears for Mara, and Betsy smiles, saying, "Speaking of sports, there's a game the X-Men played with regularity, called 'baseball' ..."

    ----------------------------------------------------------------

    Indigo:

    She doesn't quite understand why she's here.

    Maybe because switching the lightsaber on-off, on-off - keeping the indigo spots in front of her eyes - was getting too disturbing.

    "Blue-black" is a misnomer when it comes to a lightsaber, Alema Rar ponders.

    The medcenter has, for the past few weeks, become the center of the Errant Venture - gossip flows in and out of it, like addicts coming and going from a ryll den.

    Daeshara'cor's face flashes before Alema's eyes, and she lowers them; the grief is still strong for her deliverer.

    Not as strong as that for Numa, but still.

    "Alema?"

    "Master Skywalker," she says - so much for the Force; he surprised her.

    What surprises her more is the ... haggard ... look he has.

    The bags under his eyes, she thinks perversely, could be used to distract female Yuuzhan Vong. They'd find them twistedly attractive - that, and his scar.

    She shoves the bitterness aside and tries to find sympathy for him - but it's hard.

    Luke nods, leaning against the wall, and says, "I deserve your disdain. I was rude and haughty to dismiss you as 'lost to the dark side.'"

    "I ... thank you, for admitting that," Alema allows - he recognizes her pain. And she grants him recognition of his.

    Mara Jade, at least, cared. Even if it was to chew Alema out over the debacle involving the Nebula Chaser.

    Alema feels tears of shame start down her face - yes, Numa was lost. It hurt, feeling her death in the Force.

    But all those refugees. How many lived? How many didn't?

    A hand - tentative, uncertain - touches her shoulder, and Alema wipes her eyes. Looks into light-blue ones.

    Ones weighed down by the weight of those indigo bags, and so much more.

    "I wronged you, Alema. And once my family is safe, I'll work with you - with all the Jedi whom I've failed - and try to make amends," Luke - Master Skywalker - promises.

    It's more than he did before. It's something.

    "Thank you, Master. And I hope Master Skywalker and your son will be all right," she manages.

    Again. It's something. A tentative step.

    Alema never thought she'd dance again - dance in a good way.

    It feels almost liberating.

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    Yellow:

    There should be grunting, cursing, screaming -

    this is bloody WRONG, Betsy thinks.

    Mara is ... unnaturally colored; a sickly yellow-green, with hair so leached of flame that it made her want to take a red-daubed paintbrush to it.

    This is her friend, her sparring partner, the wild heart that keeps the idiocy of the Old Jedi at bay -

    and like with Sharon Kelly, so long ago, Betsy can't do anything but ease Mara's pain.

    Instead, this labor is too damnably silent. And Luke starts, panicked -

    the bloody EKG squeals, and Betsy shudders, stepping aside as Cilghal races forward.

    "NO! Mara!" Luke cries - there's quick chatter between him and Cilghal, then some whisper-brush from Mara, barely detectable from Betsy -

    and then Luke dives into the binary-star that is his pregnant wife and the unborn child still joined to her.

    The disease is like some hideous mockery of a molecular cloud, hiding unborn stars within ...

    but there's a joining, then -

    and an unbelievably familiar GOLDEN FIREBIRD that blazes from mother and son, burning the disease away.

    Healing. Knitting.

    THEN, there is a grunt, and a snarl, and Mara - healthy, her color restored and a ferocious mixture of joy and pain on her face - grabs Luke by his shirt collar.

    "YOU," she roars - then she kisses him.

    And pushes - then, then, the Force explodes.

    Like a T-Tauri phase. Like life itself.

    There's a cry -

    then the little rituals, as the cry to the universe - I am HERE! - finishes echoing.

    And a small, cooing figure is finally handed to an ecstatic Mara Jade-Skywalker, as Luke weeps for joy.

    Betsy is still overwhelmed by the golden echo of the fiery bird ...

    but joins in the question:

    "What color are his eyes?"

    ----------------------------------------------------------------

    Blue:

    He sneezes - she smells funny, but she's warm. And familiar.

    "Ben," he hears - big and tan laughs, and he waves a fist, gurgling.

    He can't focus - just blurs, and there's so MUCH, of scent and sight and noise - but he grabs his blanket and tugs at it.

    "I told you. They're grey now - but give it time. They'll be blue," big and brown-red says, gurgling in her own way.

    "I think you're right," the one holding him says, and Ben snuggles in.

    It's been a long journey. And it's just starting.

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    Last edited: Jan 22, 2018
    Ewok Poet likes this.
  2. WarmNyota_SweetAyesha

    WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Aug 31, 2004
    Love the emotional intensity and the color themes. Literal and figurative they stand for so much effort and struggle and triumph in the end, and moves towards healing. =D=
     
  3. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    Yes, yes, just what I needed right now - a happy!fic from you. Admit it, you read my response before posting it. ;) And yeah, I was kind of dopey there, not realising that this was a Marvel!crossover, too...so, excuse me while I indulge in semi-cluelessness. I mean, EX-SQUEEZE ME. :p

    Does the colour scheme have anything to do with, well, anything in particular? I'm a bit of a synaesthete and this kind of stuff always gets me intrigued. :)
     
  4. Onderon1

    Onderon1 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 18, 2008
    WarmNyota: Thank you. :) It wasn't intended as anything overly deep, just a comparison of the classic ROY G. BIV rainbow to different themes and scenes (at one point, Jar Jar was to be the POV for the orange part, but I decided that just wasn't likely to work :p

    EP: Glad to be of help. :D As above, it wasn't a terribly deep exploration of color-as-metaphor - there's certainly some of that, but going through events in chronological order necessitated stepping out of the order of ROY G. BIV, and I didn't want to wander too far afield. [face_blush]
     
  5. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    You're underestimating yourself. This is super-good!
     
    WarmNyota_SweetAyesha likes this.