New Dawn Fades, Part 9

Awakening – Bond

     She awoke to the sound of air softly whispering in the stillness of the dark.

     Adrift in the unresponsive universe of her senses, escaping from the wispy tendrils of uncertain dreams, her consciousness struggled to find order. Or, failing that, enforce order, upon the transience fleeing before her.

     The low hum of machines, and the sterile smell of a spacecraft, registered in her mind.

     Father? Are we going home now?

     But no... an image of his ghostly form, shimmering before her eyes, coalesced, rising from the battered holocron she grasped too tightly in her hands. Echoes of ache stirred in her heart, the pain still fresh, still sharp in its bite.

     The ghost of the little girl within faded away, taking with her the bitter longing and leaving a dull, but familiar, emptiness behind.

     More memories returned. She shifted, expecting to feel the close confines of her bunk, the soft snoring of Mission above her.

     But this was not the Ebon Hawk, either. The walls were farther away, the sounds of the darkness damped.

     Two yellow blades lit the darkness, sweeping to smash against a scarlet blade. The three blades came together in a powerful burst of light and sound... and then there were three red blades gleaming in the night.

     She opened her eyes, and saw unfamiliar shadows around her.

     The Fury. I’m aboard the Fury. Admiral Dodonna’s flagship. We’re headed to Coruscant, to the Jedi High Council. And my new Master.

     Instinctively, she reached out with a hand, to touch the dimly glowing light contact on the wall next to her.

     Her hand did not respond. She felt the constricting tightness of her right arm, and the ghost of an ache traced its fiery fingers along her shoulder.

     Sighing, she tenderly reached across her body with her left hand, brushing against the green contact.

     Soft white lights, upturned to strike obliquely against the ceiling, came to life.

     It was a spacious room, definitely an extravagance aboard a warship. And so it had been put to good use on the way out to the Star Forge, with a bewildering array of crates and containers stacked all around her, like trees reaching their bulky fingers up from the gloomy depths toward the soft, scattered light above. A winding path snaking its way through the clutter was the only concession to the needs of the occupant.

     "They tell me they’ll clear it soon," Juhani had said, as Bastila had opened the door to the room after the Cathar had led the two of them to their quarters shortly after the Ebon Hawk had departed.

     "No. Please, don’t even offer," she’d replied back quietly, stepping through the doorway before the Cathar could make the suggestion that they switch rooms. The last thing she’d needed was anyone sacrificing anything for her sake. Adding more guilt to a scale she was loathe to even ponder.

     Sleep had quickly overtaken her, once she’d lay upon the bed. The price for her endeavors of the previous night had not yet been paid.

     And what of the price of my deeds from before that? she wondered. How long will that debit last on my soul?

     Outside her room was a short hallway. Along one long side were two doors that led to her room and Juhani’s. Their rooms were in a secluded part of the warship, offering that most valuable of luxuries in space... privacy. The opposite side of the hall was filled by a large window that stretched along the entire width of the hallway, and from ceiling to floor.

     And there, hanging in the vast solitude of space, was the half-lit disc of Lehon, slowly but visibly receding as the Fury and her attendant fleet made their way out of the gravity well of the planet.

     She reached up with her hand and gently pressed a control panel faintly etched onto the surface of the glass. It flared briefly in response, and the hallway lights dimmed gradually to nothing, leaving the corridor to be lit only by the faint light reflected from far-off Lehon.

     As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Lehon glowed even more brightly before her. It was breath-taking in its beauty, filling up the entire window. In that brightly-lit arc she could see the crystal blue waters of its massive, world-spanning oceans, laced here and there by strings of green islands swimming in the brilliant seas. One distant Republic cruiser was silhouetted in front of the planet, running lights faintly twinkling as it silently glided by.

     Images drifted before her, of other times, now long distant, and other worlds. She was a little girl again, staring with eager eyes through the scratched cockpit screen of her father’s spacecraft, fascinated by each and every new world that lay before them, vast and enormous, silent and imponderable.

     The echoes of the simple joys of that younger self came back to her, upon seeing those new worlds for the first time. The feeling of reconnection, of reorientation, of return, after days spent in the eerie, lonely world of hyperspace. A universe that had gradually shrunk down to the few cluttered, crowded rooms of her father’s ship, suddenly exploded into the vast, unknown frontiers of those planets.

     Strange, how she’d always greeted each new destination with renewed hope and optimism, despite the unending streak of disappointments that had inevitably followed all their past arrivals.

     As that distant Republic cruiser finally crawled its way off the disc of the planet, she saw a large archipelago slowly rotate into view on Lehon’s surface. Immediately, she recognized it, having stared at it with burning eyes when she’d fled from her encounter with Enosh and the others, atop the ancient Temple.

     And along with that accursed Temple, the villages of the Rakatans lay on that island chain. And Enosh.

     She closed her eyes and looked inward.

     There. She could feel their bond, and his presence, faintly, despite the hundreds of thousands of klicks that separated them.

     She pushed herself forward, trying to channel her consciousness through their bond, and jump across the immeasurable gap between them.

     This is ridiculous. If I couldn’t even convey more than the broadest of emotions when we were both on the surface, when I was fighting for my life last night, how can I realistically hope to do anything more now?

     But her whole life had been spent attempting the impossible. Chasing the most negligible of rumors across the Galaxy with her father, in an ultimately vain attempt to reverse their fortunes. Struggling to realize the potential of her powers on Dantooine. Cheating death in the impossibly daring, improbably successful raid on Darth Revan’s flagship, and escaping without even so much as a broken fingernail, when so many, including her Master Lonarr and her friend Elywnn, had failed to return. Escaping the destruction of the Endar Spire, the captivity of Brejik, the destruction of Taris. Plucked from the very center of the darkness in the Galaxy, the Star Forge.

     And even as she reflected on the improbability of her life’s path, the tiny spark that was their bond within her thoughts suddenly bloomed to completely engulf her.

     A misty image formed before her. An opening in the thick underbrush and jungle. Deep blue skies above, stretching to eternity. Wild, chaotic, teeming life below, trees gently waving in a soft, unfelt breeze.

     There was a flash of blue lightning, and she saw Mission streak out ahead into the clearing, laughing gaily as she chased her pet gizka into the underbrush.

     There was a rumble, and the viewpoint suddenly shifted to the side. There, looming high above her, stood Zaalbar, his fierce visage softening, eyes warm, as he watched Mission ahead.

     And then the sensation of tranquility, of simple, peaceful companionship, was suddenly overtaken by a feeling of tender warmth, of hope and happiness as it dawned upon his consciousness.

     And now he senses me, as well.

     She felt herself reach out with a hand, and his own grasped her fingers tenderly. His presence wrapped itself around her, soft fingers tracing themselves all about her. At first tentatively, oh so carefully, and then, finally, firmly, folding, intertwining, her within himself.

     She wanted to cry, to feel him so close. She could feel him, forcing his way through the tangle of worries dogging her. The doubts, the guilt, the shame, the self-loathing unraveled from about her, and suddenly she felt free, a child once more, innocent before the world, the sun shining again upon a future still before her, a story still to be written.

     This is what I have denied myself for so long? This is what I pushed away, what I strove to deny, eventually even to destroy?

     Never again. Never again will I believe that something so beautiful as this, could ever be wrong.

     Even as the thought crossed through her mind, she felt everything suddenly, forcefully ripped away from her. Gasping aloud at the sudden, abrupt emptiness, tears squeezing out of her clenched eyes, she stumbled.

     She blinked, brushing the moisture away, her breath ragged in her ears. Through the window before her lay the blurry, streaking streamlines of hyperspace. Lehon was gone.

     For a long time she stood there, looking with unseeing eyes into the emptiness of hyperspace. She immersed herself in the aftermath of what she’d just experienced through their bond, by turns feeling both the wondrous joy of connection and the painful ache of separation.

     The sound of a door sliding open behind her jarred her.

     Turning, she saw Juhani emerge, backlit by the bright lights still on in her room.

     Apparently in a hurry, the Cathar shut the door behind her, then stopped abruptly as her eyes, glowing within the dimness of the hallway, spotted her.

     "Is something the matter, Juhani?" Bastila asked, sensing urgency about the Cathar.

     "What happened to your comlink?" Juhani asked.

     Reflexively, she patted her belt, feeling the empty spot where it should have been. "I lost it somewhere down on Lehon," she replied. "Why?"

     "I just got a call. They were trying to get a hold of you but couldn’t reach you."

     "They? Who’s they?"

     "Intelligence. They want you to come in for a debriefing."