The most important debate of Xaja's life, and she wasn't permitted to be involved. In the past, she might have railed against that restriction, loudly voiced her complaints -- but that had been before she'd fallen and had the weight of the galaxy thrust on her narrow shoulders.
Right now, Scourge and Doc were both in a closed meeting with the Jedi Council, arguing opposite viewpoints. Xaja knew Doc wanted her to go on leave and recover from her ordeal, while Scourge insisted that Xaja had no time before the Emperor enacted his terrible plans. Why me? she silently asked her hands as she waited outside the Council chambers, watching her pale fingers tremble.
If she thought too hard about it, she could still see lightning racing down her arm and off her fingers, arcing to whoever she'd been told to torture. No, no, don't think about it, she tried to tell herself as she squeezed her eyes closed. I'm not a Sith. I didn't fall, I was dragged down, and Master Orgus helped me crawl back up. I'm not a Sith… I can't be a Sith…
She shuddered. She knew Master Kaedan at least considered her to be a fallen Jedi, little better than a Sith, and would probably vote to expel her from the Order that she had called home. Who else would agree with him? Maybe the Council would let her stay for healing before banishing her to the galaxy at large and eliminating a monster from the Order's ranks. That would be a small mercy, Xaja thought. And more than you deserve. Didn't you enjoy causing pain? Don't you want to track down the Sith who hurt you and make them hurt just as badly? That was a dark thought, but not an inaccurate one. Xaja flinched from her own dark mind and tried to focus on the Code. "There is no emotion, there is peace…" she whispered. "There is no emotion, there is peace… peace is a lie, there is only--" No! She flinched and tried desperately to banish the Sith Code from her mind. "There is no ignorance, there is knowledge…"
Hurried footsteps didn't make her look up, even when the footsteps were approaching her. She kept her eyes closed, trying to make herself unnoticeable, not wanting to see more judging looks or hear the whispers from the other Jedi on Tython -- the real Jedi, the ones who hadn't fallen and done terrible things at the Emperor’s bidding.
Then a pair of large, battle-roughened hands settled on Xaja's own fingers and gently squeezed, ignoring how she flinched and tried to pull back before she could hurt their owner. "Hey, short stuff," came a too-gentle voice from over Xaja's head. "You with me?"
Xaja opened her eyes, and immediately looked away from Jakar’s worried look. His concern made her heart hurt. She had to look as awful as she felt, if he wasn't teasing her like normal. "I feel like I'm in a nightmare I can't get out of," she confessed before she could stop herself.
Jakar squeezed her hands again. "I came as soon as I heard you'd made it back alive," he said. "We were worried about you, Xaja. Are you… no, dumb question, you're not okay."
Xaja shook her head in agreement with her oldest friend's diagnosis. "I'm a monster," she whispered. "They're arguing over my fate." She gestured with her head to the Council chamber door.
"You are not a monster," Jakar firmly insisted. "You're my adopted little sister who just escaped from months as an Imperial POW. Whatever happened to you there, you're here now, and safe. They can't get at you here." He squeezed her fingers again, hard enough to make Xaja look back up. "I know you too well, Xaj. You are not a monster, no matter what they tried to tell you. The Council knows this too."
Do you know me as well as you think? Do you know what evil things I'm capable of? How much pain and suffering I can inflict? Xaja opened her mouth, then looked away from Jakar, shame making her eyes burn with unshed tears. "They made me do terrible things… they made me hurt people…" A tear escaped her eye before she could blink it away. "... They cut my hair," she finally whispered, her tone plaintive. Something stupid to be so upset about, when it was just hair… hair that had been to her waist, long and luxurious, before the Sith hacked it off to barely brush her shoulders.
"I see this," Jakar acknowledged. "It'll grow back, I promise." One of his hands left hers to run his fingers through the shorn locks. "It'll take time to get to where it used to be, but it'll get there. As far as everything else..." He sighed. "I'm sorry. You didn't deserve any of this. And you don't deserve to be hurt for what they made you do while they were trying to break you."
Xaja just shuddered and looked down at her hands, unable to share in Jakar’s optimism. How could she tell her oldest friend that the Sith had broken her, and only Master Orgus' intervention had brought her back? "I hate this," she finally whispered.
"I know you do. And I hate that you had to go through everything that you did." Jakar gave her hands an upward tug. "C'mon. We're going to Corellia so Essi can get her hands on you, and so you have a chance to recover from--"
"I'm afraid that won't be an option, Master Forseti," interrupted Master Bakarn's voice. Xaja jumped as she looked up -- the Council had ended their session, and nobody looked happy. "Knight Taerich is back on active duty as of now."
"Against my recommendation," Doc muttered in a tone that was clearly intended to be heard by everyone present. "I'm still not clearing her for active duty."
"The needs of the galaxy outweigh the opinion of one biased doctor," Scourge dismissively said. "She's the only one who can stop the Emperor before he destroys us all."
Jakar shot back to his feet, protective fury radiating from him in the Force. "Are you insane?" he demanded. "Stop the Emperor himself? When she can barely function as it is?"
"She can still wield her lightsabers," Scourge shrugged. "She's combat ready. And would you rather have her go at the Empire now, while the memory of her wounds are still fresh, or wait until the memory is cold and old?"
Jakar opened his mouth to tell Scourge exactly what he thought, immediate presence of the Jedi Council be damned, but Xaja set her hand on his arm as she stood up. "Jakar, it's okay," she quietly said, trying to convince herself as much as him. "I'm okay enough for duty. And someone has to… to stop him." And I need to atone for what I've done. What better way to seek atonement?
"You are not okay," Jakar protested. "Masters, sending a recently-traumatized Jedi out on a suicide mission is cruelty, and asking for a disaster!"
"We understand your worries about Knight Taerich," Master Kiwiiks finally said, her voice low and calming. "But she does have the best chances of being able to strike at the Empire, and at locating the rest of the missing strike team. If the Emperor’s Wrath was willing to defect based off a vision of her, then we need to take that into consideration."
"And before you ask, you can't lead the Rift Alliance to do this task in her stead," Master Bakarn added. "The Children of the Emperor are a serious threat, and one that only you can deal with, Master Forseti. Knight Taerich simply isn't ready for that."
"No, but she's ready to go charging off and fight the blasted Emperor himself?!"
"Be mindful of your emotions, Knight Forseti," Master Kaedan interjected. "Corellian though you may be, you still need control of your own feelings. Your fear for your friend is blinding you to the needs of the galaxy."
Xaja looked away from Jakar’s furiously flashing eyes and looked for Master Shan in the group, who had been quiet so far in this argument. "I can have my ship refueled and ready to go shortly," she quietly said, and tried to not flinch when she saw the sadness in Master Shan's eyes, or heard Doc's frustrated sigh.
"Whatever support we can give you while you're on your mission, you'll have it," Master Shan finally said. "May the Force be with you, Xaja." She was definitely worried if she was using Xaja's first name and not a more formal tone of address.
It could start being with me any minute now, Xaja thought, but didn't voice that out loud. She just bowed to the Council and turned to Doc, who looked equal parts worried and pissed off. "Can you and Scourge get the Serenity ready to go?"
"Against my better judgment," Doc finally said. "Bloody Jedi," he muttered as he left, with a sidelong glare at the assembled Council. Scourge followed in his wake, uncaring about the angry doctor he was following, or the stares he got from the Jedi in the Temple.
Xaja turned to follow the two men, before feeling Jakar set a hand on her shoulder. "Check in with me once a day," he lowly directed, eyes still flashing with anger at the Council's ruling, but his voice concerned. "Promise me."
"Promise," Xaja quietly agreed, nodding. "My love to Essi, next time you see her." She took a step back, making Jakar drop his hand, then resumed walking to the shuttle, imagining she could feel the stares of every Jedi on Tython. How many of them knew what had happened to her? How many now considered her a fallen Jedi and no longer worthy to be called the Hero of Tython?
A call from behind her made her pause. "One more thing, before you go," Master Shan said as she came up to Xaja, separate from the rest of the Council. She lowered her voice as she came close to the younger woman, blue eyes darting down to Xaja's belt. "This is solely for my own curiosity. Those aren't the lightsabers you went on that mission with, are they?"
Xaja shook her head in confirmation. "I don't know what happened to those sabers," she admitted. "The Sith gave me new ones, but I surrendered those already."
Master Shan nodded. "I don't recognize the new ones you carry. Did Scourge give them to you?"
Again, Xaja shook her head. "They were left on my ship," she quietly said. "With a note from someone claiming to be my… my father. If the note is accurate, they used to be my mother's." She slowly drew the note from her father out of an inner pocket of her tunic and handed it to Master Shan. She'd read it enough times to have it memorized, but it felt good to have the note with her father's love beside her heart.
Master Shan frowned as she accepted the note. "Your father? That raises more questions than answers." She read over the note, her eyes softening a bit before she handed the creased flimsi back to Xaja. "How do the lightsabers feel?"
"They feel good," Xaja softly answered. "I can almost believe they might have been my mother's. They feel like an extension of myself -- almost more natural than my old sabers."
"May they serve you well then." Master Shan hesitated for a moment and set her hand on Xaja's shoulder. "I'm sorry for sending you back out so soon after your ordeal. Remember that no Jedi exists alone -- you have the Force, and you have the rest of the Order. Both will encourage and strengthen you during your mission. I know Jakar told you to check in with him regularly, but check in with me as well. I want to know that you're doing all right, as much as you can."
Xaja really did look like a wreck, then, if the Jedi Grand Master wanted her to personally check in with her. She pushed that thought down and nodded. "I will. Thank you, Master."
Master Shan offered a small, tight smile and squeezed Xaja's shoulder before letting go. "If you need anything, let me know and we'll do our best to make sure you have it. Now, get going, before Scourge comes storming back to find you. The Force will be with you."
There was no escaping duty, and no rest for the wicked, it seemed. Xaja bowed to the Grand Master and got a nod in return, then resumed her walk to the shuttle for the orbital station. Duty awaited.
Xaja jerked awake with a strangled cry, fighting against the sheets tangled around her limbs. She could still feel the burn of lightning in her fingertips, could still see the arcs of electricity coming from her hand, could hear the screams of her victims. Panic choked her for a long minute until she finally recognized her surroundings: this was her small chamber in the Jedi Temple on Tython, kept dimly lit for her skittish preferences when she couldn't handle darkness anymore.
Her stomach churned, and Xaja struggled out of the blankets, barely making it to the refresher before throwing up the remains of her dinner. "Fuck," she finally groaned once she'd finished retching. The sleeping pills Doc gave her didn't do much to stop the nightmares of her time on the Emperor’s Fortress -- she just counted herself lucky that she'd woken up from this dream before she could see who she was torturing.
But Force, she could still feel it. The Force around her felt corrupted and oily, and she could still remember the cold pleasure she'd taken in causing such pain. "I'm not a Sith," she whispered to the refresher, wiping a hand across her eyes. "I'm not!"
A real Jedi wouldn't have fallen and caused such harm like what you did, whispered a cold voice in the back of her mind. The Hero of Tython, just a weak little girl after all. Hardly a Jedi.
"Shut up!" Xaja whispered. "There is no emotion, there is peace…" She sat back and leaned against the wall, eyes closing, trying to calm down with the Jedi Code. "There is no emotion, there is peace… peace is a lie, there is only passion -- no!" Her eyes flew open again. "Force help me, I'm not a Sith!"
But the Sith Code comes so easily to you now, taunted the voice. You're a fallen, worthless Jedi, and you'll forever be tainted by darkness. Failure. Sith. No Jedi at all. Embrace it.
Xaja forced herself back to her feet and, afraid to look, forced herself to meet the mirror in the refresher. She ignored the grey pallor of her skin, or the messy shorn hair, or the tears on her cheeks -- she hardly looked like the Hero of Tython now, at three in the morning. Instead, she forced herself to look at her eyes. They were bloodshot, but green-grey, not yellow. "I'm not a Sith," she told her reflection. "I am a Jedi Knight. I'm not a Sith or a Dark Jedi. I'm not!"
Her hands trembled, and she looked down at her fingers, paling when she saw the red lines through her skin, centering on her fingertips. She'd seen those lines before, after casting Force Lightning on her friends and--
No! She quickly looked back to the mirror. Had she just imagined the yellow tint to her eyes before the green returned? "It was just a dream," she insisted. "A nightmare. I'm sworn to the Jedi. I am not a Sith!"
Her scared-looking reflection didn't look convinced.
"I'm a Jedi, and I'm trying to be a better Jedi, I swear," Xaja brokenly whispered. "I'm not a Sith. I would rather die than become Sith. I'm a Jedi, I promise." She sniffled as a tear ran down her reflection's face. "I am a Jedi. I'm not a Sith. I'm a Jedi who's losing her mind."
And Force help me, I need help. She eyed the pack where her comm rested, considering calling Kira or Doc or Jakar -- or hell, even Master Satele. Her friends had made her promise to call if she needed them, and Master Satele had made no secret of being worried about the younger Jedi. But it was three in the morning… she couldn't wake any of them up for a stupid nightmare. She was an adult, damn it, and a Jedi Knight. She could handle herself after a bad dream, right?
"I'm not a Sith," Xaja finally told her reflection. Maybe if she said it enough, she would start to believe it. "I'm not a Sith. I'm not…"
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength--
Xaja jerked back from the mirror and shook her head hard. "Shut up!" she hissed at the mirror. Maybe she needed some time to meditate in the Temple gardens, try to centre herself again after that terrible nightmare. She sure as hell wasn't going back to sleep tonight. Some time to calm down in the gardens, amongst nature and the starlight, should clear her mind and bring her back to balance, right?
Grabbing her robe, she slipped out of the room on bare feet and hurried off, wishing she could escape her mind as easily as she could flee her quarters.
Well, there was no possible way this could go wrong. Xaja hadn’t taken long to decide she disliked Iokath the first time she’d wound up on this world -- she was taking even less time today to decide that she never wanted to be within a hundred parsecs of this damned system ever again.
“Our entire fleet is disabled,” Theron grimly pronounced from behind her, letting her pilot their shuttle to Iokath while he tried to get the Eternal Fleet to respond. “Good thing is, so are the Republic and Imperial fleets.”
“That’s one small mercy,” Xaja muttered, distrustfully eyeing the stoic fleets of what had once been her home faction and her enemy. She thought she might be able to talk Empress Acina down from whatever stupidity she’d gotten the Empire into… but that being said, she hadn’t exactly expected the Sith to come sauntering into what was officially Alliance-held territory. And the Republic… after Saresh had tried to have Xaja killed, the former Jedi wasn’t sure what to make of her former home faction. Depending who was leading this expedition, maybe she could talk some sense into them?
“Any updates from Lana?” she asked.
“Nothing.” Theron sounded as frustrated as Xaja felt. “Just a set of coordinates where she thinks she’ll be able to rendezvous with us without getting shot.”
“Remember when our biggest worry in this damned system was homicidal droids hijacking our ship?” Xaja asked with a sigh. “And the whole business with Vaylin and her forces trying to kill us?”
Theron snorted. “Do I hear some nostalgia in that tone of yours?”
“Maybe a bit.” Turning her focus back to Iokath, Xaja sighed again, all hints of amusement gone. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“Hey.” Theron leaned over, reaching his arm as far back as he could until he found Xaja’s hand and squeezed. “I’m with you, you know that. This will work out okay.”
“I thought I was supposed to be the eternal optimist,” Xaja snorted. Despite her tone, she willingly reached back for Theron and squeezed his hand tightly, taking comfort from his reassuring presence at her back.
“Figured I’d try it out for myself, just to see how it feels.” Despite their positions preventing Xaja from seeing Theron’s face, she could hear his smirk. “Give me back my job as the permanent realist of the two of us.”
Xaja laughed, despite her anxiety, and turned back to watch the shuttle’s descent into Iokath, never letting go of Theron’s hand. “There’s nobody else I’d rather have with me than you, Theron.”
The tight squeeze to her hand was answer enough from him.
Inktober 9: "screech" In hindsight, I could have drawn a self portrait reaction to the trailer for The Last Jedi. But Xaja screeching for Theron to come save her from another spider is fun too ^^
