A Flow'r, Once Fallen/Part 10

Narasi slept until dusk and spent the next few hours yawning from oversleep. Princess Vamiri herself had made Narasi breakfast, which was delivered by a palace attendant; bemused but touched, Narasi ate in her soft, comfy bed for the first time she could remember. Tirien, she learned from the guards when she finally emerged, had slept only a few hours himself, appearing around midday and spending the remainder of the afternoon with the king and his royal guards, coordinating security arrangements for the Organas and Senator Antilles. Narasi first tried to check on Elyria, but even when the ring of guards stepped aside to let her through, BD-505 answered the door.

"Feeling better, Beady?"

"Oh, much better, Padawan Rican, thank you for inquiring! Stun weapons, as you know, are designed primarily for organic beings; it was only the proximity of the discharge that addled my circuits, but the royal engineers had me back in working order with minimal delay."

"I'm sure Princess Elyria was happy. How is she?"

"Her Highness is quite all right," the minder droid assured her. "She was very frightened by last night's events, of course, but she's unharmed."

"Can I see her? Just for a minute," Narasi added when the droid hesitated.

"I'm terribly sorry, Padawan Rican, but…but Princess Elyria isn't feeling up to visitors right now. I'll let her know you stopped by, though; I'm sure she'll be most touched by your solicitousness."

Narasi could feel Elyria in the room beyond, present, awake…and afraid. She had hoped her memories from the library had been addled by lingering after-effects of the half-resisted stun shot, but now she was well-rested and alert, and it seemed Elyria's fear had only grown. Narasi nodded to Beady. "Thanks."

She had tried to keep the hurt off her face, but apparently some of it came through regardless, because the droid said, "Padawan Rican…I'm so very grateful to you. King Rosulus and Princess Vamiri are as well, of course, but I wanted to express my personal gratitude for your valor and devotion to the royal family."

"Beady speaks for all of us, Padawan Rican," one of the royal guards said suddenly, and her comrades rumbled in agreement. Bowing from the neck with a forced smile, Narasi left them.

She found Tirien still at work on security and stepped to his side; he merely nodded, but the king paused a moment to thank her, as did Jerex Antilles, who was corresponding by holo from Coruscant. They worked well into the night, and Narasi learned her master had also observed some of the interrogations of the other mercenaries, though he had declined to question them himself and had acted instead as a sentient lie detector. Narasi joined him for a late interrogation, and he let her try to screen falsehoods; she caught most of them, and in retrospect she could identify the mental hallmarks on which she had hesitated.

There was no follow-up interrogation of Captain Rotef, and he was rarely mentioned.

It was the wee hours of the following morning when Tirien announced he was going to nap to reset his sleep schedule; they would be leaving the following day, one later than planned. Left to her own devices, Narasi gave Moving Meditation a try as she walked the halls of the palace. The guards had cleared away the bodies and severed limbs, and droids had done a decent job of cleaning scorch marks from the walls around the residential library, though the rainbow wood doors still bore evidence of the failed siege. Reciting a Jedi mantra to herself as she walked, Narasi could feel the echoes of the conflict, ghosts of fear and pain where the Organas had been betrayed, where she herself had maimed Marsh and struck down the other betrayers. Did it take meditation to perceive such things, she wondered, or was it like this for all Jedi Knights with enough experience?

Tirien rose before dawn; when he found her he did not speak, but merely followed her in silence, letting her process. When she finally turned to him and bowed, he led her down into the palace gardens.

"The royal guard have assured me we won't be disturbed."

Narasi sat, aware that she was doing a bad job hiding her trepidation. "More meditation, Master?"

The look in his eyes as he sat opposite her told her he had noticed even in the twilight gloom. "Just talking. Your visions, Narasi—what did you see?"

"A lot of things," she hedged.

"You saw Darth Shakelli, and the Organas."

"Yeah." Her stomach turned. "I didn't understand it all then, but Princess Vamiri had a bundle in her arms…the baby?"

Tirien nodded; someone had clearly shared the secret with him while she was unconscious. "I haven't had many visions like these before, and I'm not a Seer, but I know that visions often aren't clear until they come to pass. Easier to understood the summary when you've read the whole datafile, if you will."

Narasi nodded until his words registered. "You saw things too? A lot of things?"

"I did. Multiple presents, or possible futures.  Probably both.  What else did you see?"

She tried to remember. "Aldayr and Mali. They were in a space battle; Aldayr was in a fighter, Mali was on a destroyer…the Coronet's Jewel, I guess."

"You guess, or you know?"

Narasi frowned. "I guess. I mean, Aldayr's described it to me, but I've never actually seen it, and it doesn't have a sign or anything."

Tirien showed no sign of amusement, though neither did he seem annoyed; he just asked, "Now—well, then, I suppose—or in the future?"

"Then, I…guess. Or the near future.  It has to be, right?  I mean, they looked the same as the last time I saw them, and they're up fighting Aresh's fleets, right?"

"Sometimes visions are symbolic," he reminded her.

Which did indeed jog her memory… "I saw Aldayr fighting a skeleton.  And there was a snake trying to bite him.  That has to be symbolic, right?"

"A skeleton? Not some ultra-thin species, or a Givin like Soolorl…?"

"Skeleton. Skull, bones, y'know…a skeleton.  With a black left hand.  It was trying to put a crown on him, but Aldayr didn't want to wear it—it had acid on it.  Or maybe it was poison?"

Tirien frowned in thought. "Yes, I'm going to bet that's symbolic, not literal. Who was winning?"

The way he asked that made Narasi shift. "Do you understand what it means?"

"I'm trying to."

"I think…I think the skeleton was winning."

Tirien sat and thought for a long time before he asked, "What else?"

She shared her other visions as best she remembered them—Kenza and Seldec, Tirien and Narasi herself on the Crescentia, Narasi back-to-back with Aldayr against a welter of threats. She omitted the kiss from that one, and she thought Tirien could tell she was holding back, but though he narrowed his eyes, he didn't push her. He interrupted only once: to ask about her vision of Alecto.

"She stabbed both of us? That doesn't sound like her."

"I think she wanted to stab you—well, it was hard to tell what she was thinking, she kind of wanted to and didn't—but when she did, it became a double-bladed saber. I don't think she knew she was stabbing herself."

"The antidote…?" Tirien mused, mostly to himself; Narasi wasn't sure Human ears would've caught the whisper of sound. In the end he asked no more questions, but waved her on.

He frowned all through her description of his duel with Mali, but said nothing, even as she piled on every detail she could squeeze from her memory. She held back only the vision of the gold-skinned, beaked monster and the mingled terror and determination that had carried her to battle; something about that rattled her more deeply than all the rest. But she told Tirien of the voice, the assurance of her fall.

"The dark side would like that, I'm sure," he replied. "The fall of the only Zygerrian Jedi to the darkness, evidence that we have it wrong and you're fated to be what your people are. But it's a lie, as the darkness always is; it will deceive you if it can, but it has no power over you that you don't give it."

"I'm what I choose to be, and I choose to be a Jedi," Narasi said, and he nodded, but she frowned anyway. "Was I…did I do that? Drive my mind into the dark side when I was trying to see things?"

Tirien was quiet for a moment. "The Unifying Force…it's different from the Living Force, I think. Obviously it is, but in a more fundamental way.  A way we as Jedi don't really think about often."

Narasi rarely saw her master struggle for the right words, and she sat up straight and focused harder as he continued. "In the moment—in any given moment—a being can choose between light or dark, be it Jedi, Sith, Dark Jedi, even those who can't touch the Force's power but still feed into its energy. That's the Living Force, the here and now, the individual steps we take at any given time.  The Unifying Force, though…that's not a step, that's the whole journey.  A galaxy worth of beings' journeys all woven into a single fabric, the galaxy's own journey too.  That's so much more than one moment, even one lifetime, that the darkness is part of it.  Not a good part, mind you, not some essential part of the Force we should be seeking, but a reality of the galaxy.  The dark side has been there since the beginning of the Jedi, when we called it Bogan and realized its evil; since before the Jedi, even, in the time of the Rakata.  When we take ourselves outside our own lives, outside time, we catch glimpses of the Force in all its aspects— past, present, and future; proximate and distant; familiar and foreign; and yes, light and dark. It's a reality of seeking the future, but you—we—need to be extremely careful; the dark side has a will of its own just like the light, and if you intentionally gaze into the dark side, sooner or later the dark side will gaze back."

"Yes Master." Narasi shuddered. "Are visions always like that?"

"I've had visions before, but never quite like this. I thought meditation together would help us see a common course, and I was right, but I think it also amplified both our visions; we combined our efforts and our powers, and it helped us see more, and more clearly.  And because it was the two of us, mind-to-mind, it showed us not only ourselves and each other, but friends—the people we care about."

Narasi smiled, but Tirien didn't smile back, and after a moment she asked, "Speaking of us being mind-to-mind…what's wrong?"

He gave her a measuring look, but finally sighed. "I suppose you need to learn from it too. Rotef."

"The merc? What about him?"

"Reading his mind…" Tirien stopped, then restarted. "We spoke about the nature of Force powers our first day here. Some, like healing, are inherently light; others, like Force lightning, inherently dark.  Some are truly neutral, like telekinesis—good, evil, or indifferent only in how they're applied.  But sometimes…sometimes there's a spectrum."

"A spectrum?"

"Consider telepathic manipulation. On one end of the spectrum we have mind tricks.  They're…I suppose not inherently good, they can be used for evil purposes, but most Jedi accept them as a power of the light when they're used for the greater good, not personal gain.  On the other end of the spectrum of telepathy, there are dark side powers that can cause fear, even insanity.  And then there's what I did."

"You read his mind. That was for a good purpose, right?  You weren't trying to hurt him, we needed to know about Darth Shakelli!"

"Yes, we did. But I didn't just pick up thoughts he happened to be thinking, I dove into his mind and pulled out what I wanted to know with him fighting me all the way.  The last time I did something like this…"  He sighed. "Do you remember, toward the end of the Battle of Taanab, the day we fought with the walker to take that bridge? Master Cazars was with us."

"The day I saved your life?" Narasi grinned. "Sure."

As she had hoped, she finally got a smile out of him, though it was fleeting. "You know that walker pilot shot and killed the Sith Lord. What I never told you was that I made him do it.  I don't mean a mind trick, I mean I took over his mind and pulled the trigger like it was my hand on it.  That's the closest power I've experienced like what I did to Rotef, and that was wrong."

Narasi had never known that part of the story, but she thought about it now. "Well…if it's a spectrum, there's no bright dividing line that says 'Hey, dark side starts here!', right? There must be some things in the middle that aren't light or dark, but are kind of…shadowy."

She caught herself from saying 'gray', knowing how Tirien would take that, but he winced anyway. "The shadows are a dangerous place for a Jedi to be. When you're half in shadow it's harder to see the darkness growing."

"But what if you hadn't?" she asked. "What if the king had arrested Senator Antilles?"

"I know," Tirien said, but his yellow eyes were still troubled. "We'd best get our things packed."

She blinked. "But…what are we doing? Where are we going?"

He sat back down. "I'm so sorry, Narasi, I wasn't thinking. Your vision of the Crescentia—you said you were teaching Initiates, and I was there?"

"Yeah. I was teaching them—"

"—the stars," he told her. "And Slejux was with me."

Narasi stared for a moment before she nodded. "You saw what I was seeing?"

"I saw the same thing, but I don't think I was just overlapping with your mind. You saw things I didn't, I saw things you didn't, but that's the only one we have in common—and it's the only one we were both in."

As she thought about it, Narasi realized he was right. "So that's where we're going? To the Crescentia?"

"We looked for our destiny, and it's the only overlap the Force showed us—I think that's a sign we'd be fools to ignore."

Narasi nodded as they both rose, walking through the gardens back toward the guest wing as dawn lit the palace rooftops. "So what'd you see?"

"Many things. Like you, I think some were present, and others were future."

He didn't elaborate and Narasi didn't push; she hadn't been completely open herself. But she did think to ask, "I know you're going to tell me it's just me not wanting to, but I didn't see the Temple in any of my visions. Did you?"

Tirien missed a step, catching himself on the doorframe. His eyes were distant and his face hard to read. As he started to walk again, he said, "Yes."

Something was off there. "Something related to why the Council wants you there?"

"Possibly."

"But I wasn't there?"

Tirien must have been relying on Force sight, because he kept walking as he closed his eyes. "No, you were."

"So you saw me in two visions! Are we just going with the Crescentia because it's the overlap?"

"No, it's different."

"Why?"

Tirien stopped and opened his eyes, and the look he gave her chilled her. "Because in my vision, I was fighting Sith Lords as the Temple burned into ruin around me. And when I saw you, you were dead."

Narasi swallowed hard, and after a moment Tirien's expression softened and he squeezed her arm. "Not everything seen in a vision is a future that will be; some of them only may be, and a wise Jedi doesn't mistake one for the other. Here we have a single shared vision; that's about as clear of direction from the Force as we could desire, and the mistake would be ignoring it."

Narasi pored over her own visions and what little Tirien had shared of his while they packed; Tirien told her in no uncertain terms that the various clothes provided by the Alderaanians were a loan, not a gift, so it took only a few minutes to cram her belongings into her rucksack. The Organas had breakfast delivered to them again, and they ate together in Tirien's parlor, talking of the Crescentia, its fight against Lakalt in light of Gasald's latest onslaught, and the friends they had left behind. Narasi saw the holocron sitting on Tirien's pack and wondered what he had been studying.

After breakfast Narasi returned to her room and gathered up her things. The rose Elyria Organa had given her had darkened with wilt, and a petal fell as she lifted it, but she tucked it carefully over her ear and through her Padawan braid anyway.

The Organas met them with a contingent of royal guards in the gardens.

"Again, you have the thanks of the House of Organa and the people of Alderaan," King Rosulus said. "So long as I live, Jedi will always find safe haven and friendship here."

"We're honored to serve, Your Majesty," Narasi took the initiative to say, and Tirien nodded.

"Whatever else we find out, we'll pass along to the Judicials and the Jedi Temple," Acting Chief Draulet promised.

"Thank you both, for myself and my children," Princess Vamiri said, hugging each of them in turn, and Narasi smiled as Tirien bowed.

Elyria stood a few paces back, holding BD-505's hand and wearing an expression of great unease. Her dark hair hung in a single braid down her back, and when Narasi smiled, her dark eyes tightened and she stepped a little farther behind BD-505. Narasi felt an ache as she remembered Elyria's carefree laugh on thrantaback as they soared through the skies.

"Elyria, come say goodbye," Vamiri said.

When Elyria hesitated, Narasi started, "It's okay—"

Vamiri raised a hand to forestall her, waited until she was sure Narasi had paused, then looked back at her daughter. "Elyria Organa. You are a Princess of Alderaan, and you will behave like one.  Come here."

Elyria walked forward, trading Beady's hand for her mother's, bowed her head, and mumbled to the grass, "'Bye."

"I'm sorry?" Vamiri asked.

Elyria raised her head; her eyes darted to Narasi before looking between the two Jedi. "Goodbye."

"Goodbye, Your Highness," Tirien said gently.

Narasi tried to smile. "Be safe, Elyria."

Elyria nodded, then walked back to BD-505, which led her away. Vamiri sighed. "I apologize. She doesn't mean to hurt your feelings, she was just frightened.  We explained to her as best we could, but she understands that the guards died, and she's confused now because of her uncle's death."

"It's okay," Narasi forced herself to say; she could well imagine Elyria's confusion when her friend had become a killer, just like the woman who had made her uncle die. "It was a frightening thing for a kid."

"Yes," Vamiri agreed, "especially a child of Alderaan, where violence isn't common. Trauma at that age—"

"Believe me, I know."

Narasi regretted the intensity of her tone, fearing the princess consort would ask, but she let it go, merely taking and squeezing Narasi's hand before stepping back. Narasi hefted her pack as she turned to Tirien, touched the rose over her ear, and smiled sadly. "A flow'r, once fallen…"

He nodded, and though Narasi knew he would not extend her any gesture of consolation in front of others, she felt his comforting touch on her mind and nodded back. He bent for his own pack, but stopped and took the beacon transceiver from his belt; drawn, Narasi heard it buzzing in his hand. "Excuse me a moment."

He stepped away as he plugged it into his datapad, and Narasi took the opportunity to joke with Acting Chief Draulet about combatives practice to clear the lingering awkwardness with the Organas. They laughed, but their smiles faded when they looked over her shoulder, and she turned to see Tirien's grim expression as he returned.

"I'm very sorry, Your Majesty, but it turns out we're going to have to impose on your hospitality a bit longer."

King Rosulus blinked in surprise. "It's no imposition—you're welcome here as long as you wish to stay, of course—but I thought the Council would want you back."

"The Council wishes us to remain here for a while. For your safety."

Vamiri stepped to her husband's side, laying one hand on his arm and the other on her abdomen. "Are we in danger?"

"Unknown, but the Council isn't taking risks."

"Master, what happened?"

"There have been a string of assassinations through the Expansion Region and the Inner Rim—Republic governors, sector senators, military commanders…"

"Assassinations?" Rosulus asked. "More mercenaries?"

"A few, but most of them were Darth Alecto's Anzati. With Taanab fallen, it's the next stage of the campaign—the Sith press toward the Core."