Chapter Text
Worldeater
Chapter One: Little Star
It would have been hard to say when this story began exactly. It might have begun years before, when Anicca’s mother met Anicca’s father in a forest on a distant world, each on opposite sides of a desperate war yet drawn together by a strange compulsion. It might have begun a little later, when Anicca’s older brother had first watched a Resistance X-Wing rocketing up through the atmosphere and felt the fire of purpose ignite inside him. Could the origin have been traced even further back, to a time when there were not yet words for jedi and sith when a young woman held the body of her dead lover and felt a fear so powerful it would destroy worlds? Or perhaps there was no one cause of the disaster, no one reason, and few who could see the warning signs to stop it in time. Although the seeds of destruction were scattered along the years, growing slowly and taking deep root, as far as Anicca was concerned, everything was fine one day, and the next... it was not.
That day was today, though it started as any other.
“Anicca, he’s coming! Hurry! ”
“I’m trying, damn it!”
Anicca's slippery fingers fumbled through the slimy mud, scrabbling desperately to snatch up the dropped pistol and jam a fresh power cartridge into the chamber. It was difficult with hands that had been numbed and chapped from fighting her way through the dense jungle, and it did not help that they shook with precipitance.
“Anicca!” gasped Lucas, his eyes widening in fear. “He’s coming!”
“Hush!” She shoved her younger brother's head down toward the squelching ground. “Stay there!”
She only had one shot. One chance. She had to make it count. The figure lumbering through the trees was getting closer. She could hear the crack of dead vegetation under his feet, ringing clear through the silent forest. Not a bird or creature uttered a breath. Anicca thought her own sounded thunderous in her ears. Surely he would hear the hammer of her heart too?
A glimpse of blue flickered between two trees - he was almost upon them. Anicca’s pulse leapt again and she lifted the pistol. As always, her hands steadied to preternatural stillness whenever she took aim. One eyelid flickered shut and her tongue caught between her teeth. At her knee, her younger brother held his hands over his mouth as he stared at her in breathless awe.
The figure moved directly into sight. He saw Anicca the same moment she saw him and stopped dead.
She squeezed the trigger.
The blaster bolt flashed with a soft screech through the air, scorching the leaves and striking its target dead on: an enormous, bulging fruit high in the tree tops that had ripened and should have fallen to the ground weeks ago. Instead it had caught in the boughs of its own tree, continuing the grow and swell with increasingly sugary, rotten fluid until only the slightest tap might cause it to burst.
And burst it did, in a terrific saccharine shower of its near-foul guts - drenching the man beneath it from head to toe.
Anicca leapt up from her hiding place with a loud whoop of triumph, punching the air with both fists. Lucas lurched out of the ferns, laughing so hard he needed to clutch his belly. “Tanaan! Tanaan, she got you good! She got you good, Tanaan!”
Tanaan had barely moved. He dripped, in a resigned sort of way, and glared at Anicca with all the restrained resentment that was possible for a Jedi who knew giving into such things would only lead to the darkside. Anicca flashed him her most charming grin and bolted away - just in case today was the day he decided to add force-choking to his repertoire of talents. Lucas could not run as fast as her, so it was best to leave him behind. She would let him occupy Tanaan while she dashed back through the mangroves toward the Temple of Sen.
The lightsider Jedi initiates were out on the beach today, meditating on the Force and perhaps hoping today was the day they figured out the secret of the universe. Anicca scrambled past, kicking up sand and huffing as she fled towards the green waters to wash off the mud and the evidence of her afternoon’s ‘expedition’. Irritable jedi initiates and their teachers glanced towards her, but they never said anything. There was an unspoken and grudging tolerance toward this half-feral girl that scuttled around their dignified practices like a rat running around the walls of a grand house. Or at least that’s how their looks somehow made Anicca feel. She tweaked her nose rudely at one particular female initiate who was haughtily staring at her as if she could smell the mud on Anicca from where she was sat. Then she ran on, up to the painted plateau of the formal training grounds and into the cooler, darker passages at the base of the mountain, the foundations upon which the Temple of Sen nestled.
Flicking water off her hands, Anicca examined her pistol as she walked. The mud might damage the firing mechanism if she didn’t clean it properly, and that would never do. She tried vainly to clean most of the offending grime off with her sleeve as she stumped her way along a familiar route.
Then a voice brought her to an abrupt halt.
“And just where have you been? I sent Tanaan to fetch you back hours ago.”
Anicca turned with a guilty flinch, hiding the pistol behind her back. “Mom! I didn’t see you there.”
Her mother moved like a ghost, and sometimes looked like one too, dressed in pale, flowing robes that always seemed to flare and sway in an unseen breeze. She had emerged silently from a side passage, flanked by several of her most senior Jedi Sentinels and Officiates from the Church of the Force. She was not the tallest member of the party, but she always exerted the most calming gravity. A streak of grey beginning at her right temple risked making her look quite severe, though her mother almost always carried herself with a gentle smile that put others at ease.
There was no smile today, however. Her mother’s dark eyes swept over Anicca and seemed to know instinctively that she had been up to no good. “Where have you been, Anicca?”
“I’ve been looking after Lucas and Kerrin, like you told me,” answered Anicca indignantly, as if the question itself had wronged her.
“And where are they?”
Ah. Well. Anicca licked her lips and her gaze wandered away as she searched for a good excuse. In truth, Kerrin had peeled away hours ago, saying she had better things to do than play pranks on their mother’s First apprentice, and Lucas was now most likely at said apprentice’s mercy having been soundly abandoned.
“Tanaan was to give you my message,” said Anicca’s mother, her brow knit together in a way that warned the admonishments would come later when they were alone. “Master Solo will be arriving soon and I expect you to be in my quarters for dinner in a timely fashion at-”
“Dad’s coming?” Anicca blurted. “Why didn’t you say-”
“I am saying-”
“Please tell me he’s leaving that horrible witch at home.”
“Maia won’t be coming, no,” said her mother grudgingly, coming over to cast a more critical eye over her daughter. “I know Maia is sometimes hard to get along with… but she’s your father’s First. One day she’ll be the leader of that Order, so we have to get along with her.”
“She looks down her nose at everyone,” protested Anicca. “And I think she’s having an affair with Dad.”
Rey gave her a hard look. “Don’t make up stories.”
“I’m not! She’s like a slithery blonde snake, making puppy eyes at Dad all the time and hissing at everyone else- ”
“Annica!”
Annica fell silent again.
“Now if you are ever to do at least one thing you are told, would you please go have a wash and try not to turn up to dinner smelling like a swamp?” Her hand brushed the edge of Anicca’s tangled mop of hair. “And do something about this?”
“What about it?”
“Brush it.”
Anicca gave her a reproachful look.
“Could you at least remove some of the twigs and leaves?” Her mother asked, faintly pleading. “It looks like several birds have set up nest in there-”
“Alright, alright.” Anicca touched her hair protectively.
“And we will talk later about what you did to Tanaan-”
“But I didn’t-”
“Later. ”
Her mother swept away with her entourage, leaving Anicca to make her grumpy way up through the Temple to the lofty suites. Being the daughter of the resident Jedi Master certainly afforded some privilege, with a nice spacious room to call her own that had an excellent view of the glittering bay.
The Jedi liked to keep their rooms sparse- uncluttered surroundings made for uncluttered minds, or so the saying went. So what Anicca’s rooms might say about the state of her mind was a subject best left untouched, for she filled her rooms with so much junk and curios that perhaps some would argue there was not much room left for thought. Her mother called her a hoarder. Anicca thought of herself as a collector, and a curator of useful objects. She had hundreds of parts from at least fifty different types of engines, from racing pods to old imperial yachts. It was difficult to sleep sometimes, when she forgot to clear all the reels of wire off her bed, and for the last month one had to take a flying leap over a heap of carefully laid out circuitry that mostly blocked the door to the refresher. To move any part now carelessly would lose her weeks of work.
But now was not the time for tinkering. As promised, she screwed up her courage and submitted herself to a bath - and took some satisfaction in the black swirls of mud that came off her body and soon turned the water a nice shade of brown. Her hair was always an ordeal to tame. Washing it was only half the battle - for once it was washed it would always puff up to twice its usual size. Only her grandmother had ever been able to truly turn Anicca’s hair from a frizzy bundle into a ‘style’. When she had died, she had bequeathed a wealth of hair accessories that she had sworn by. Anicca was still learning to master them, and used one now to twist her unruly brown locks up into a spiralling bun that she could not quite get centred, and so it sat a little awkwardly over her right ear.
It would do, she told herself, nodding in satisfaction to her reflection in the mirror. It did not matter to Anicca whether the reflection she saw was ‘pretty’ or not. It was always the same pair of bright eyes she saw every time she looked in the mirror; the same old freckles and moles splattered across her cheeks and nose like mud that would never wash off, the same wide, tilted mouth and dimples. She did not look much like her mother, who had elegant almond eyes and a smile like a sunbeam. Nor did she look much like her father. She had gotten her short stature from her grandmother, for sure, but if one wanted to find the origin of Anicca’s sombre eyes and wild hair, one might search the holonet for files on one of the former queens of Naboo.
Face suitably clean, Anicca checked the timepiece in her pocket and saw there was still a few hours until dinner would be called. She glanced at the cluttered circuitry on her floor and twisted her mouth. It wouldn’t hurt to just work a little more on her project until then. What else would she do? Float around the temple and smile and tell people the Force Would Be With Them? Besides, she was feeling inspired. Watching stinking fruit juice drip from Tanaan’s overly serious nose might have had something to do with that.
So it was within the hour that Anicca suddenly hopped up from her floor, avoiding the worst of a blue bang of power and a puff of purple smoke. She gave a great hiss of success, turning the remaining fuses over in her hand. They worked! It was a break through.
She had to go show Ten-bee at once!
There was still an hour before dinner - plenty of time, she told herself, and it was the perfect time for an excursion. The residents of the temple would be converging on the great hall to make their own dinner preparations, emptying out the rest of the temple. She grabbed her satchel of necessities and headed down to the lower levels.
When the new Jedi order had first found this planet and settled the Temple of Sen, it had required some deep excavation. Over sixteen years later and there were still parts of the temple that had never been unearthed or explored; narrow passages that ended in cave-ins, chambers with too low a ceiling to be of use to anyone taller than a jawa, and doorways that led to nowhere but a steep black drop. It was forbidden to travel into the lowest levels of the Temple, where the air grew colder and the only light came from faintly glowing crystals and cave worms embedded in the rocky walls. It was too easy to get lost or trigger a collapse. There were also things down there… artefacts from an ancient age that the new Jedi Master would prefer to leave buried.
These were precisely all the things that Anicca loved about the lower levels of the temple. When she got fed up of tripping over jedi and hearing them whitter on about the mighty Force, the lower levels were a tranquil retreat. When her feet itched to explore and she had already acquainted herself with every tree and twig above ground, there always seemed to be more of this labyrinth to find. She doubted anyone else realised just how deep or how far this temple’s passages ran. On her last expedition, she had counted her steps and realised she must have walked well beyond the limits of the island - in fact the tunnel must have gone under the sea. No one knew or understood these secret passages like she did, and so this was her space and hers alone.
Not even her mother knew the temple the way Anicca did.
But over the years her mother had grown wise to Anicca’s excursions and had done an effective job of sealing up the entry points to the lower tunnels. Walls and thick doors with complicated locks stood in the way of many of her old routes, but her mother had yet to discover this one. It lay at the back of one of the lower chambers which was ostensibly used for laundry, where many narrow and mysterious recesses had been dug into the walls for purposes unknown to the current generation. They were only a few feet high and a couple of metres deep, so most of these recesses had been used as extra storage space for boxes and baskets. One, however, went at least ten metres back into the rock wall, and anyone peering inside would not immediately realise that at the back lay a thin hole through which a person of small and slim stature might just squeeze through.
Anicca was not acquainted with the feeling of claustrophobia. She thought nothing of sliding on her belly into this recess and then forcing her way through this narrow hole that scraped her cheek and required some carefully wiggling to get her hips through. The rest of the way down was a blind, somewhat bumpy slide until she landed on her knees in a cold puddle of condensation. There was a lamp in her satchel, but Anicca hardly ever used it, for it only took a little time for the eyes to adjust to the new darkness and see that the silky threads of luminous blue and glittering yellow spun by worms gave just enough light to guide the way.
Down the familiar paths, Anicca trotted, avoiding the worst of the loose rocks and slippery steps. Anyone attempting to follow her would never be able to navigate the maze of turns and chambers she passed through to find the one she called her own. She knew she was getting close when she heard the gentle chiming of water - a thin stream that ran between the layers of rock on a journey to deeper waters than the sea. Anicca stepped over the small valley it had worn on the rocks and into a small cavern on the other side.
Two round red eyes swivelled toward her in the darkness and blinked. “Two days, thirteen hours, eleven minutes and thirty-five seconds,” announced a synthetic voice. It held a slightly accusing edge.
Anicca twisted the battery powered lamps she had hung around the cavern walls, gradually filling the chamber with a dull orange glow that cast deep shadows around the large droid slumped against the far wall. “What are you whirring about now?” she asked.
“You said you would be back… ‘soon’,” the droid said softly.
“It was as soon as I could,” she replied, withdrawing the lamp from her satchel to hold it near the droid, the better to see the ancient patina of rust around its joints and the calcified rock that had grown around its form until it was now part of the cavern wall. Only its arm and head had any movement. “My mother suspects where I’m going and she watches me like a Trubian hawk. If she knew I was here...”
“She would be angry. She would be correct. What you are attempting is extremely dangerous.”
“Ten-bee, would you like to lecture me about the dangers of modding half-fossilised battle droids, or would you like to try out these new fuses?” she asked, tipping her satchel of necessities onto the floor. The red eyes of the droid swivelled hungrily towards the pile of little chips.
“Yes,” it said urgently.
“It took a while sourcing some that would keep up with your circuitry. These come from imperial cruisers, you know? They really don't make droids like you anymore.”
“My make and model were banned under galactic law after two months of production,” agreed the droid proudly. “Possession of this droid may lead to three-hundred and fifty years imprisonment and hard labor.”
“You’re not my possession so that’s fine. Although, whatever civilisation created you turned to dust a long time ago along with their laws. Besides,” she said, flicking its head to create a hollow ringing noise, “there’s not much of your original programming left in there.’
Anicca was no slouch when it came to tinkering. She’d been taking things apart and putting them back together since she was old enough to hold a screwdriver. When she had found this slumbering droid, it had taken months to ‘resurrect’ the badly damaged program, at which point it had whirred to life bleating an incomprehensible language and soundly attempted to smash her to death with its one working first before she'd pulled the power source. She had made sure to open its head and wipe all the original command functions and replace them with an amalgamation of modern protocols before she had ever reconnected the power source. And what a power source! The crystal at the heart of this battle droid had lasted several thousand years and would likely last many more before it ran dry.
“This could take a while,” she said, picking up a crowbar from her makeshift workbench formed from a protrusion of rock in the wall. “But with any luck, by the end of today you’ll have power to your lower half.”
Breaking through the rock to allow the droid to move would be a problem for another day. It had taken forever to chip away enough calcified rock to reach the core panel on the droid’s torso, the one stamped with the ancient designation that resembled: 0-10-B.
With the crowbar, Anicca cracked it open once more and deftly grabbed the core processor and reached for her ionic solder.
“Please be careful,” said Ten-bee, sounding a little nervous. Perhaps with good reason. On more than one occasion her tinkering had disconnected its power core or a new installation had led to a sudden cascade of failing systems. Given that she was building the system from the ground up with whatever parts she could get her grubby paws on, it was amazing it had not overloaded and fried a long time ago.
“What do you take me for?” she asked with just enough bravado to be reassuring. Installing a new fuse to loop power back through an ancient motor chip with dubious compatibility was always a risky move, even for Anicca. However, the last thing she needed was a nervous droid the size of a wampa to start flinching. “Give me five minutes and you’ll finally put those leg pistons to good use.”
“That would be nice,” said Ten-bee placidly. “Then I could come to the temple?”
Anicca scratched her nose awkwardly. “Yeah… maybe.”
Ten-bee had been a rusted husk barely protruding from a natural rock wall when she’d started. While she might have thought the droid was a treasure beyond his weight in aurodium, not everyone would see it that way. In order to be mindful of her mother’s warnings about messing with potentially dangerous tech left by the previous civilisation that had abandoned this planet millenia ago, Anicca had done the perfectly sensible thing... and simply not told her mother that she was refurbishing an ancient droid piece by piece in an underground cavern in order to reactivate it.
She might have rebuilt its program entirely, but she still sometimes worried that bits of its original processes might still be lurking somewhere in the code. Anicca could only imagine exactly how hard her mother might hit the roof if she found out that her daughter had been squirrelling away a dangerous prehistoric battle droid.
She could only imagine what her father would do…
“It would be nice to see daylight again,” said Ten-bee.
Anicca looked up at the droid with a scowl. “What do you mean ‘again’?” she asked. There should have been nothing in its memory banks about ever being outside this cavern.
“I am attempting to be wistful.”
That would be the personality subroutines she’d added last month. “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This upgrade might not even work,” she told it, twiddling a stray wire she wasn’t sure belonged to what.
“You’ve told me so much about your temple, I would like to see it for myself. I would like to see if the ‘twins’ are as bad as you make out,” said Ten-bee.
“Worse!” declared Anicca. “Mom let’s them get away with anything these days. Total gremlins- the both of them.”
Ten-bee’s glowing red eyes swivelled. “I think you are jealous.”
“Of those two squirts, I don’t think so.”
“They are jedi, are they not? As is your older brother? And both your parents?”
“Don’t know what’s so great about being jedi,” Anicca mumbled under her breath. “Seems like a lot of sitting around and meditating and being boring.”
“I would so like to meet a real jedi,” said Ten-bee, delving back into its wistful language banks. “A pity you are not-”
“Well, we can’t all be so gifted!” Anicca said loudly, and decided she would need to spend some time later tweaking Ten-bee’s personality matrix.
Ten-bee’s eyes fixed on her for a moment before flicking away tactfully. “I think I can feel my feet.”
“Try moving them,” Anicca said, and looked down at where a rusted metal plate emerged near the base of the wall. She had always assumed this might be part of Ten-bee’s foot, and her suspicions proved correct as the plate now gave a grating kind of tremor.
“Ah.” Ten-bee sounded satisfied.
“At least now I know I’m in the right circuit,” sighed Anicca, setting her ionic solder between her teeth as she delved deeper into the control panel.
Ten-bee looked down at her once again. “You’re wrong,” it said.
“What am I wrong about this time?” she asked distractedly.
“You are gifted.”
Anicca’s fingers paused in her work. A tinge of red flushed over her cheeks, which was the only acknowledgement of the compliment which had been uttered in surprisingly sincere tones.
Perhaps she wouldn’t fiddle too much with Ten-bee’s personality matrix.
Anicca emerged a few hours later with her satchel much lighter and a spring in her step. She poked her nose out of the door of the launderette to make sure the coast was clear, then scurried out. She would still be on time for dinner if she hurried, so she sprinted the rest of the way through the temple complex, climbing the dozen stairs and ramps to reach the private suites at the summit. At the top of the last set of stairs she came across two whispering twelve year olds. They jumped guiltily as Anicca swung into view.
“What are you up to?” Anicca asked suspiciously.
The twins relaxed. “I thought you were him,” sighed Lucas.
Anicca blinked. “Who?”
“Father,” answered Kerrin, who looked at Lucas with mild disgust. “He’s scared of him.”
Anicca already knew that, but it always amused her to see the usually bumptious and fearless boy turn pale at the prospect of meeting his own father. “He’s as soft as a pufferkat,” she said dismissively.
“You would say that,” said Lucas bitterly. “You’re his favourite.”
“Don't be ridiculous,” she replied. “Tam is his favourite.” But the twins would hardly know that, as they hardly knew Tam. He'd already gone to join the Resistance by the time they came along.
“If I was his favourite, then I’d probably have to spend more time with him.” Lucas did not look at all happy about such a prospect.
“Anyway, why are you skulking back here. He’s probably not even here yet,” Anicca told them.
“He is,” said Kerrin.
“He is,” agreed Lucas in a tone of dread.
Well. They were strong with the Force. Sometimes Anicca forgot they could know things like that, when she was limited to only what her eyes and ears could tell her.
“If you can sense him then he can probably sense you two loitering about like worms,” she said.
Kerrin sighed. “That’s not how it works,” she said, which wasn’t the first time she had ever uttered those words to her older sister.
“Whatever, just get moving, Lumps,” Anicca retorted, giving them both a firm shove further down the corridor.
Her mother’s solar was a light and airy space, crawling with greenery and a number of small water features that filled the air with a sweet sound like trickling bells. The central table had been laid as usual, with some of the family favourites. Her mother turned away from the plant she was tending at the stomp of arriving footsteps. Her eyes alighted on Anicca’s appearance with a scowl, and Anicca suddenly remembered that she had spent the last hour after her bath crawling around grimy caves, shoving her hands into a droid chest cavity full of ancient silicone lubricants, and the hair she had managed to pin in place against her head was now half unravelled down her back.
“Um…” she said to her mother.
Rey blinked and turned her attention to Lucas instead. “At least Anicca thought to wash off the rotting fruit smell,” she remarked.
Lucas reddened slightly but otherwise strived to look confused. He had never been a particularly good liar. The rosy tint to his cheeks quickly drained to a pallid white when a tall figure swathed in dark blue stepped in from the bright balcony to cast a long shadow over the room.
“Every time I come here, you seem to be in trouble,” said their father to Lucas, who seemed to shrink where he stood.
“Dad!” Anicca dashed across the gap between them and threw her arms around his middle. She felt his hand land atop her rumpled hair and this one affectionate touch alone made her glow with pleasure. He was not a demonstrative man, but she had learned to see the love in his small gestures and words - something the quaking Lucas had yet to understand.
“Come, you’ll get him as filthy as you,” Rey admonished her gently, steering her daughter to her place at the table.
“Dare I ask what you’ve been up to, that you seem to be carrying half the island’s mud on your face?” Ben Solo asked his eldest daughter.
“I was taking a walk around the eastern shore, just contemplating the ways of the Force,” began Anicca, “When a great seasnake came out of the water and attacked a baby leafstalker just grazing in the mangroves. I leapt in to save the poor creature - I had to wrestle it for ages and then I finally shot it between the eyes! That was enough to convince it to leave, and then I had to return the little leafstalker back to its herd - it was shaking so hard. Poor thing. I couldn’t just do nothing, even though I knew Ma would be mad I got mud on my sleeve.”
Lucas and Kerrin stared at her. Rey’s gaze was hooded, unamused. Ben Solo nodded faintly. “You shouldn’t have intervened. It’s the natural way of things, Anicca. Predators eat prey, the strong kill the weak. The seasnake may go hungry now. Should we intervene every time it hunts until it dies? What then for the creatures that depend on the seasnake, who feed on the carcasses it leaves behind or the nutrients it provides the waters that feed the mangroves? What do you think happens when you upset that natural balance?”
“Urgh,” said Anicca, slumping back in her chair.
“You should always protect the weak, Anicca, you did the right thing,” said Rey, looking at Ben sharply.
Anicca knew perfectly well that neither of her parents believed her tale, but sometimes the best way to distract them from criticising her was to set them off against each other. It was remarkably easy. There were no two people more diametrically opposed than Rey and Ben Solo, their politics and philosophies so strong but so divergent.
“Typical lightsider sentimentality,” said Ben. “You’d see the collapse of a whole eco-system with your good intentions.”
“As if you would stand by and let a vicious sea monster tear apart a baby animal,” Rey responded hotly.
"I would."
“And by that logic, you would have stood by and let Anicca get murdered by those bounty hunters that time?”
“That’s different.” Ben Solo shifted in his seat.
“Ha! Darkside hypocrisy at its finest.”
Anicca poured some vegetables onto her plate and the plates of her younger siblings. These were root vegetables grown in the slopes of the island, and while they were delicious when roasted with the native herbs, she sometimes missed meat. It was never served in the Temple of Sen. The only time she got to eat meat was at the Temple of Lin, or when she visited her mother’s friends on Resistance bases.
Which reminded her.
“I thought Tam was supposed to be coming too.” She had only just noticed that the table was set up for five instead of six.
Rey turned back to her. “He didn’t answer the invitation.”
“Again,” added Ben.
“He’s busy,” said Rey.
“Busy being a lackey for an insipid ‘Resistance’ which is resisting... what, these days?” he asked Rey, who glared back at him.
“Huh,” said Anicca. “You should invite Maia to dinner, he’d be over in a flash.”
Rey’s lips settled into a line of disapproval even as Ben said, “Maybe we should."
Rey looked at him. “We’re not encouraging that,” she said.
“Aren’t we?” Ben looked innocently confused.
“You know what he’s like,” Rey muttered, dumping purple root vegetables onto her place with unnecessary aggression. “Finn hardly spoke to me after that business with Hanna. We can’t have the same thing happen with Maia.”
“It’s fine,” said Anicca. “Maia is more likely to shoot him than fall in love with him.”
“Can we talk about something else?” Rey asked. “Like what I found in the laundry rooms today?”
The carrot on its way down Anicca’s throat seemed to get stuck, resulting in a lot of sudden coughing and spluttering.
Her mother’s hand reached up and smudged across her daughter’s cheek. She looked at the offending oil stain that was transferred to her thumb. “So there is another entrance in the launderette.”
Anicca deflated. She didn’t bother to deny it.
“I’ll see that it’s sealed up, though no doubt you have plenty more,” said Rey. “Is there absolutely nothing up here amongst the living that can tempt you to stay?”
“Endless chanting about how wonderful the Force is can get pretty tiresome when you can’t even feel it,” said Anicca. Not for the first time, her mother shot her pitying look, as if she felt Anicca’s failure to be one with the Force was her own failing. Anicca hated that look.
“Anicca, I haven’t forbidden those old tunnels just to ruin your fun. They are dangerous. I wouldn’t send even my most seasoned apprentices down there, let alone you-”
“Because I’m so helpless, I got it.” A hot, angry stone burned in her stomach, making it hard to breathe. “It’s a wonder I can make it through the day with my weak, feeble body.”
“That’s not what she’s saying, so don’t play the little martyr,” her father said. “There are safer, more productive things you can be doing than trying to get yourself killed in old collapsing tunnels filled with toxic gases.”
Great, now her parents were agreeing on something. Her parents being on the same page rarely worked out in her favour. “I doubt it.”
“Maybe it's time you went to live with your father for a while,” suggested Rey.
Kerrin and Lucas had been quietly eating until this point, but now they stopped dead and looked to Anicca for her reaction. They’d all had stints over at the Temple of Lin.
Anicca shut her mouth sharply, worried that any further comment she made might turn that ‘maybe’ into a ‘definitely’.
It wasn’t that she disliked her father. Other people found him profoundly disconcerting and even terrifying, but she personally did not see what they saw. And it was not true that she would want for places to explore - there were just as many hidden passages and underground lairs in the Temple of Lin as in Sen.
But it was a different vibe, that was for sure.
Tam seemed to thrive when he was at Lin, and young Kerrin even seemed to prefer the peace and darkness of the mostly subterranean temple. Lucas looked the most concerned - the longest he’d lasted in Lin was a week before their father had sent for a shuttle to return him to his mother. It wasn’t always clear which path a young jedi would end up on, but there was little doubt that Lucas was an incurable lightsider. Anicca didn’t mind the atmosphere all that much… the problem was the company her father kept.
“Next week. You’ll go stay with your father next week. At least you pretend to obey him - I have no idea what else to do with you.”
Anicca looked at her father.
“It’s not a punishment,” he said, sounding ever so slightly injured.
“I know…” she sighed. After her breakthrough with Ten-bee today, she’d been fired up to continue working on the droid, but now it looked like she would have to take an extended break. Perhaps it would be kinder to power the droid down until her return, lest it get lonely again.
That was the end of the matter.
After the dinner Anicca would normally stay to catch up with her father, but this time she slunk away, somewhat deflated and not entirely sure why. It wasn’t really about being sent away to Lin that bothered her, or even being forced to take a break from Ten-bee… but the reminder that her mother thought her so helpless.
Anicca skulked around, not sure what to do now. She passed by one of the training halls for the newest initiates and watched her mother’s apprentice, Tanaan, instruct his attentive audience on the ways of the light and feeling the Force in the room around them. Anicca slipped away. She could never join the ranks of the Jedi, and as the daughter of the Jedi Master, the expectations placed on her were too high to allow her to join in a supporting capacity like the Church of the Force. Besides, it was bad enough watching everyone lift rocks with their mind, to outright worship it, and by extension her own family, would drive Anicca crazy. And if she could not be a jedi, and she could not support the jedi, then what else could she do?
She’d made noises about leaving Lin-Sen before, but her mother had always shot her down for being too young. Anicca’s birthday was only a few months away and after that it would be impossible for anyone to refuse her based on age, not when Tam had left to join the Resistance when he was seventeen. Not to mention, it was rich that her mother should try to wrap her in cotton wool when she herself had been doing far more dangerous explorations of old ruins for most of her teenage years. Rey had repeatedly reminded her daughter that it had not been her choice, but to spend her days exploring old wrecks and ruins without parental supervision sounded like a hoot.
Perhaps visiting her father was more of an opportunity than she’d first appreciated. If she was going to make the case that she should be allowed to leave Lin-Sen, he would be the easiest to convince. He imposed few rules on his children except that they should never join the Resistance, and given that one already had, he was weak on that point too. Since Anicca had no intention of joining any Resistance, as exchanging one dull hierarchy of restrictions and dogma for another seemed counter-productive, he might be on her side.
Where she would go…? Well, she hadn’t quite decided on that part.
Somehow Anicca had ended up on the beach. She shook off her boots and wriggled her toes in the white sand and looked across the bay at the calm turquoise sea. Her mother described this planet as a paradise. It was the only home Anicca had ever known, and as idyllic as it was, the same sights everyday just made her more restless.
She unlatched the pistol from the holster at her hip and took aim at a distant tree, a lonely thing that grew on a scrap of rock in the middle of the bay. The jedi referred to it as a sacred tree, and Anicca had lost count of the times someone had tried to explain the Force to her by using that tree as a metaphor. Something about the branches and leaves soaking up the light while the roots thrived in darkness, and both parts of the tree were needed to survive in balance.
Anicca’s gaze followed the line of her arm to the sight of the pistol, lining it up with the heart of the trunk. Her hand was steady and her gaze was clear. But Anicca didn’t fire. After a moment she lowered the weapon and absent-mindedly rubbed her thumb over the scratched barrel. It was an old pistol, gifted to her from her mother, who had in turn received it from her grandfather. It was the only thing she had of her grandfather’s, though her father sometimes muttered that she had inherited more from Han Solo than she realised (and more than he liked). Tam had called it her peashooter.
On the beach, Anicca could turn and take in the full view of the temple built into the sheer white rocky face of the island. Her mother’s solar was the small balcony on the highest level, and she could see her parents leaning against it now.
For all their bickering and opposition, there was little doubt how they loved one another. Neither of them were taking in the view. They looked only at each other, and though Anicca was too far away to hear what they spoke of, she imagined it was probably what they called ‘sweet nothings’, for the way her father’s hand lingered on her mother’s cheek and her mother leaned close.
Anicca turned away from their private moment to watch the foamy waves instead.
Along the beach came the sound of childish laughter and shouts. Anicca glanced up to see a black haired girl and a blond boy running in zigzags along the shore. It looked like the girl was chasing the boy with something on the end of a stick, and though her shouts were full of laughter, the boy’s had a more genuinely panicked edge. This was quite normal for the twins. Anicca holstered her pistol.
“Were you going to shoot the sacred tree?” Kerrin asked as she and Lucas arrived to a panting stop before their elder sister.
“Maybe.” Anicca looked at the stick in her hand. “Why are you terrorising that poor Sucker Slug?”
The aquatic green slug clung to the stick, wobbling in confusion. Kerrin laughed and flicked it at Lucas who ducked out of the way with a squeal. Anicca sighed and went to retrieve the poor animal.
“Don’t pick it up!” cried Lucas. “They bite.”
“They don’t bite humans,” said Anicca, picking up the trembling lump that felt rather like a wad of jelly pudding.
“Oh, gross!” Kerrin threw down her stick in disgust.
Once Anicca dropped the creature back into the surf, she turned on her younger siblings. “What happened to respecting all life? That’s the Jedi way, right?”
“That’s not the Jedi way,” argued Kerrin. “The jedi way is balance at any price.”
Anicca didn’t know or care enough about Jedi teachings to say otherwise. She shrugged at them. “Same thing.”
“How long will you be gone at Lin, Anicca?” asked Lucas.
She shrugged.
“You promised to take us shooting next week,” he protested.
“I’ll take you when I get back, it’s not a big deal.”
“We could always-” Kerrin began, then broke off with a dramatic shiver, as if something had caught in her throat and choked her words.
“What’s the matter?” Anicca asked. She looked at Lucas and realised he’d turned almost white and his gaze was distant.
The disaster had begun.
“I’m too hard on her, I know. I don’t know why she vexes me so.”
“Because she’s like you.”
Rey wrinkled her nose, wondering if Ben was remarking on their daughter’s lack of hygiene, and how often he liked to remind her that Rey’s layer of grime had been one of her defining qualities when they’d first crossed paths. But he didn’t seem to be in the mood for teasing. His fingers traced the outline of her cheek and jaw, his eyes soft. He meant what he said.
“Do you think?” she sighed.
“She’s clever, resourceful… a terrific liar.” He sighed. “Too kind for her own good.”
“She wants to leave Lin-Sen,” Rey whispered. “She doesn’t fit in here.”
Ben shook his head. “She can’t.”
“We can’t say no, after we let Tam-”
“That’s different,” he interrupted. “Altan is… Altan. He can destroy fleets with a thought. He’s capable of looking after himself.”
“And Anicca can’t?” Rey wondered. “I survived fifteen years on Jakku with just a staff and my wits, before I ever learned about the Force.”
“You didn’t need to know about the Force in order to feel it and let it guide and protect you for all those years,” he remarked. “And you’re… you. Anicca is… very small.”
That she was. She had only just made five feet in the last year. His own mother had been a small woman, and Leia’s short stature and lack of interest in the Force had never held her back from breaking an empire. But Ben was biased. Ever since the bounty hunter incident, he had been so afraid for their daughter. She felt it now in their connection… or was it her own fear that seemed like a cold hand around her heart?
Rey lapsed into silence, contemplating the problem. How was it that she could never stop worrying about her children? She had thought once she had built up her new jedi order and brought her small family into the heart of its protection, her life might finally be free of fear. But if it wasn’t Tam flying into battle on the other side of the quadrant, it was Lucas being terrified of his own shadow, or Kerrin’s lack of empathy for anyone, or Anicca’s unhappiness at being the odd one out.
“They’re alright,” said Ben.
They looked down over the balcony at the beach below. She could see the twins running along the sand, chasing each other, Anicca intercepting them.
They were alright.
Ben’s fingers caught her chin. “We could have another.”
“Absolutely not,” said Rey almost instantaneously. Four was enough. Four was plenty. Four was too many already, given not one of them had been planned. Besides… “We’re too old for that now.”
“You maybe.”
The cheek of a man nearing his fiftieth year! She could see the mirth behind his eyes, only growing as she stared at him. “That’s a very steep drop behind you and you are very close to the edge, young man,” she said, reaching out to gently push her hand against his chest.
He caught her wrist with a smile. “Then don’t talk nonsense about being too old when you’re barely changed since the day we met.”
“Then you’re going blind in your old age, Ben,” she huffed. “The number of greys Anicca alone has given..”
She stopped.
Something around them had changed. Something inside her had torn lose. As loud and sudden as a scream, and as violent as her heart being ripped from her chest. Nothing in her room had changed, no flicker of light or change in the soft breeze, but around them the Force had shifted.
Ben stood sharply, but he didn’t reach for her, even as her legs gave out and she slid to her knees. He turned to stare out across the blindingly bright ocean, across the clear blue sky, looking at something too far away to see.
He felt it. She knew he felt it.
“Ben,” she whispered, her hand clawed against her chest, where a pain spread like a shadow she would never be free from again.
“I don’t understand,” he said blankly.
But he did.
Somehow, somewhere, Tam had just died.
TBC.