Beyond - Legends Dark Paths (Jacen, Tahiri, Anakin, Jaina, Jag - 5 years after "The Unifying Force"!)

[Originally concieved of as a one-post scene from the Jedi Purge? Hmm... Perhaps this should be in the Saga Forum? But now plot bunnies have bitten me, and most of it is going to be "Beyond the Saga"... so I'll leave it here for now, and see what people think...]

Another Galaxy, Another Time...

Slowly, she dragged her mind out of the darkness, unwilling to face the uncaring universe, but coaxed by the knowledge that she was no longer alone amid the shadows of her cell, spurred into awareness by the subtle, pressing presence of the man who had come to mock her.

She was a prisoner, she remembered, sprawled supine on the deck of an Energy Cage in a featureless cell aboard a nameless Dungeon Ship, twitching and shifting in pain, mouthing wordless whispers of delirious protest.

I am a Jedi Knight, she told herself. The last of the Jedi, for all I know. But as long as I stay alive, the Jedi Order lives with me.

That much she could hold onto - a mantra, if nothing else. I am a Jedi. There was no Republic any more. No peace, no justice, and no freedom.

No hope.

A Jedi knows no grief...

But she knew that it was only exhaustion, dehydration and defeat which meant she could not cry.

The low-voltage charge which coursed through the deck and barred walls of the cage frayed her nerves and numbed her mind, keeping her weak and helpless - forcing her to use all her Jedi powers simply to keep the burning pain bearable.

Twice, she had mustered the strength to attempt to break out - and she knew that to do, she had come dangerously close to the Dark Side. But both times, the Energy Cage had responded by sending a searing bolt of lightning through her body, almost crippling her.

So she had stopped trying to fight, and concentrated on staying alive.

I am a Jedi. I am alive.

She remembered the rain-darkened sidestreet where they had finally caught her on Reboam, the pale armour of the shock-troops, the grey uniforms of the officers, their arrogance, the sharp edge to their accents that couldn't hide their origins among the street-scum and labourers who formed the political powerbase of the new order.

"Jedi trash", one of them had said, and offered her a parody of a smile. "We have you now."

She had laughed in their faces, even as the stun-bolts slammed her back against the wall. She was a Coruscant girl. She knew what real Core World accents sounded like.

Only it wasn't called Coruscant any more, she reminded herself. Nothing was the same any more.

Slowly, she rolled over onto her belly and dragged herself towards the barred edge of the cage, slowed by the clumsy weight of the disabled cyborg gauntlet which had replaced her shattered right hand.

What was I fighting for? she wondered. Where did we go wrong?

As she reached the edge of the cage, she reached up and grasped the bars with her good hand, ignoiring the electric fire that sheened its surface and lanced along her arm, and hauled herself clumsily upright.

She blinked, unsteady on her feet. But she already knew what she would see.

A tall man dressed in black, watching her. Wearing a black cloak over black power armour and black Jedi robes, the black metal hilt of his lightsaber clipped to his broad black belt. His face was hidden by a black durasteel mask, stylised to suggest the skull of a needle-toothed Noghri.

She felt her lip twist into a grimace of pity and despair. Lord Vader, they called him now, and the Death Commandos served him with blind loyalty, believing that he was their species' saviour, repairing their ravaged planet - when in fact, he had betrayed them.

Just like everyone else.

She remembered when he had returned to the Jedi Temple - back from the dead, hailed as a hero by the war-weary citizens of the Galaxy. None of the surviving Jedi had raised so much as a whisper to the ceremonial welcome orchestrated by the black-robed bureaucrats. None of them had even thought about questioning it. After all, he was their[/i

 

OMG!!!!!!!!!!! That was a HUGE plot twist!!!!! OMG...It was just plain awesome, I loved it, I loved it!!!

Yay...I got the first reply!!! Lol

 

Thank you! And you're welcome

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Dude...props...

And it didn't even have Gilad Pellaeon in it...

 

This one will, though...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Wow. Powerful. Ouch. Cool. In no particular order.

Is there going to be any more?

 

You definitely had me going there for a minute. Incredible, and superbly done!

 

excellent job

~TJF

 

Now that was a helluva twist!

 

[grins like a stuffed Ewok]

Or is that 'chuffed Ewok'?

Anyway... thank you, all of you!



Beyond that, Blended: no plans to follow up anywhere with Dark Pathsas yet... a couple of minor tweaks, though... one typo, one sneaky addition to make it all even more twisty...

- The Impeiral Ewok

 

Uppity!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

That was good, will there be more?

 

Yor really should consider making this into a fic. I bet you'd get loads of readers. ANd that one-poster seems like it could be expanded so much more.

*chants* fic fic fic *chants*

 

I'll think about it...

In the interim, I'll plug the monster that is Hostile Forces and the nascent "semicircular robin" The New Order...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Funny, i'm working on a fic that is beyond the saga where another Jedi purge takes place (had taken place). Very interesting.

 

[Oh, what the heck. Plot bunnies bit me. This is going to be slow, experimental, and character-driven... by my standards, at least...]

Falcon's Landing, New Alderaan; Year 35 of the Skywalker Era

Jacen Solo rinsed the last of the shaving gel from his face, rubbed his chin with a hot towel, and studied his reflection in the lopsided mirror.

A young man looked back at him, a young man with eyes as blue as the morning sky, a clean outdoor tan, and unruly, sun-bleached hair that hadn't seen a pair of vibro-scissors in several months.

He smiled slightly. He looked too much like a hero for his own comfort. That, he supposed, was the price he paid for being a Jedi Knight.

Stepping out of the 'fresher alcove, he tip-toed quietly past the bed-recess where Tahiri was still sleeping, smiling as he made it across the room without waking her, and softly pulled back the curtain on the shared rack where their simple clothes were kept.

He dressed quickly, but without any real haste. Baggy breeches in a local fabric, dyed a brownish shade that was supposed to be hydenock-red. High boots, their toes spattered with two days' mud. A faded old tunic, with the Callery label almost falling off at the back of the neck. And a sleeveless, nearly shapeless surcoat which he'd made himself - coarse, undyed linen, cut loose enough to hide the droop of the deep pockets inside where he kept his datapad and vibrotool.

All in all, he looked not much different from any other human settler on a million backwater worlds around the Outer Rim. In a crowd - even a group of five or ten - he would be invisible.

Apart from the lightsaber, he thought, smiling again as he wrapped his broad belt around his waist. Anywhere else in the Galaxy, he would have been reluctant to carry the weapon of a Jedi Knight in public. But on New Alderaan, at least, there was no need to hide the truth.

In fact, the locals expected it. Almost all of the planet's ten thousand inhabitants thought of themselves as Alderaanians - even the small minority who weren't survivors or their descendants - and as such, they saw the Jedi as guardians of peace and justice. More particularly, they saw Jacen and Tahiri as their guardians.

The planet was well-hidden - as a former Rebel Alliance safeworld, its coordinates had only ever been logged in the navacomps of a handfull of starships, most of them long-range transports operated by Intelligence or the Alderaan Alliance. But with a tiny population scattered across three continents, and only a handfull of old fighters and freighters on the entire planet, Jacen and Tahiri would form New Alderaan's only real line of defence if a hostile warship ever found its way into the system.

He wasn't entirely sure what they would do if it ever came to that, but for the time being, they were able to reassure the people, and that was what mattered.

Opening the door as quietly as he could, Jacen winced as the hinges creaked, and he glanced at Tahiri in guilt and alarm - but she just rolled over, and offered him a sleepy grin, before pulling the covers over her again, and going straight back to sleep.

Chuckling to himself, he stepped out into the mountain dawn. In front of him, the valley plunged down towards the plain, the bare ramparts of the mountains rising up on either side above the forest-darkened lower slopes and the bright grass of the meadows, all joined together by the molten thread of the river, all alive with morning sunlight.

For a moment, he listening to the sound of the chuckling stream and the distant roar of the rapids and waterfalls, five miles away. The cairokas were singing in delight as they wheeled overhead, and on the morning breeze, he could smell the ladalum, and the first arallute of the spring.

Tahiri will like that, he thought.

Slowly, he relaxed, a faint smile on his face, and slipped into a light meditation trance, so that he could see everything as it truly was - as part of the multifaceted wonder of the Force.

It felt good to be alive.

 

Awesome!

Very Cool!

I'll be checking in on this one from now on!

 

Thanks - and to all of you! Just don't expect it to be fast...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

That's okay with me.

I'm probably gonna have an angry mob after me if I don't write more in my fic.

 

Run along, then...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Simply because I loath the character that Jacen Solo has become, I hope he ejnoys simply being alive while he still can.

And then falls into a plot hole.


Interesting concept, though. I hope this 'fic works out for ya, T McE.

 

Tahiri blinked, suddenly awake. Through the Force, she felt Jacen nearby, calm and confident as ever - and all around, the warm glow of life from the plants and animals of New Alderaan's rich biosphere.

She smiled faintly. Jacen already knew that she had woken up, and in her mind's eye, she could see him standing in the clearing outside the cabin door, surrounded by the life that they both loved. There were no secrets between them - not any more. There couldn?t be. They were at one with their adopted homeworld, and with each other.

But in the back of her mind, she felt a flicker of anxiety - not caused by anything on New Alderaan, but by a more distant tremor in the Force. That was what had roused her from her sleep, she realised, although her conscious mind had done her best to ignore it.

High above the planet, a ship had just come out of hyperspace. No - two ships, one larger than the other, weapons fire sparking between them as they raced towards the planet.

She understood immediately what she was looking at - the alert, military minds of men and women whose lives had been hardened against the anvil of technology and tempered by the deadly vacuum of space. Men and women for whom life and death had been redacted down into the raw data on the repeater screens in front of them.

She sighed slowly.

Normally, the war stayed far enough away that they felt it only as a muted shading in the texture of the Force. Even rumours reached the planet only rarely, and they had little idea of how the conflict was progressing, and even less interest in the issues and ideologies which were supposed to have caused it.

The propaganda of governments and generals simply distracted from the reality they could feel in the Force. War was about death and pain and danger, nothing more. And now, the danger was very real.

Now, finally, the war had come to New Alderaan.

Swinging out of the bed-space, she walked quickly across the cabin, taking her heavy Jedi robe from the rack as she went, pulling it on as she stepped out through the open door, still barefoot.

It felt strange to feel the tickle of the dew-soft grass on the soles of her feet, triggering old memories. There had been a time when she had refused to wear shoes, a bright-eyed little girl who had thought it brought her closer to nature and the wonder of the Force.

But that had been a long time ago. She wasn't that little girl any more.

"Tahiri?" Jacen asked, turning towards her, concern in his eyes. For the first few seconds, he had - understandably - been distracted by the immediacy of her emotions, and her well-being was still uppermost in his mind.

"Trouble," she nodded, her voice calm. Letting him know that she was okay. That the only threat came from the approaching warships.

"We don't know that yet," he answered, breathing in very slowly, glancing up into the still serene sky.

"We will soon enough," she told him, her eyes sparkling with anxiety. "I have a real bad feeling about this...."

 

Cool. A fic. Is Jacen "with" Tahiri? Cuz now I see why Anakin turned dark! Nice start.

 

Aye, a fic. And it's all your fault.

But yes, Jacen is "with" Tahiri, I suppose... more precisely, they are as you see them... explanations and implications should unfold as the fic does...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Up!