Forget Me Not

17

I stared blankly at the pale blue horizon, illuminated by the high noon sun. Hours that felt like minutes had passed since I had hung up on Obi-Wan. I had cried until I couldn't breathe, breathed until I had fainted, and then sat quietly until my headache had subsided. My risky cubby hole in the broken building had sheltered me from spitting fires and searching soldiers, but I knew from the creaking and groaning that my safe place was no longer safe. I would have to move before the building buried me beneath its bulk. 

Walking one hand along the wall behind me, I straightened up slowly, keeping my left arm pinned against the wound in my side. I didn't know how much blood I had lost while I was unconscious, but I could only hope that my makeshift bandage had prevented too much from escaping.

Lowering myself out of the smashed window, I lodged my toes into a crack further down, gripping the windowsill with a trembling hand. A pair of thick wires were strung between my building and its mate, and I stopped briefly to wonder why they still chose that form of drying clothes. Then I made the mistake of glancing over my shoulder.

I had no fear of heights; in fact, I loved the freedom of soaring thousands of miles up in the sky. But this time, with my head spinning from blood loss and my recent knock to the brain, the dark street, enclosed by frowning structures and littered with scraps, debris, and shattered glass, swam in my view, twirling and curling to form strange patterns. 

My light-headedness doubled, and I would have passed out if I hadn't squeezed my arm against the blaster wound. The shock of pain caused me to gasp and crumple in on myself, but it chased away any thoughts of blacking out. 

My sudden movement, however, was all the permission that the building needed to begin its self-destruction. And all I could do was hang on. 

My wall was the first to go. Ugly splits raced through the stone at my feet like a discouraged tailor tearing his garment down the middle. Tiny fault lines spread out from the main break, skipping across the surface of the wall, becoming a vertical sheet of ice that had just been smacked by an ice-cutter's pick. Dust exploded in a massive, choking sandstorm, billowing up in blinding, grey-brown clouds. The sound was deafening, and the feeling of it crumbling in on itself was more terrifying than it was fun.

But I was determined not to share the same demise as my former shelter. Moments before I was trapped beneath its crushing weight, I leapt off the broken wall, stretching both hands towards the wires that dangled between the two buildings. The wire slid between my fingers, and I clenched them shut before it, too, could abandon me.

But as the line pulled taut, I knew I shouldn't have trusted it. Having been snapped off the first building, the wire wasn't strong enough to support me. It broke, falling with me to a hard landing below. If I could angle myself right, I might evade serious injury. But I just couldn't see straight ....

The impact hit my body moments sooner than I had anticipated, and instead of being thrown against a concrete wall, my momentum was caught, almost as though by a cushion. The breath was still knocked out of me, but some bruising and another stab to my blaster wound were my worst complaints.

Then I was fully dropped to the ground, and a heavy weight pinned me down, with shouts ringing in my ears. Rough hands forced cuffs around my wrists, and then I was being pulled to my feet, though I couldn't stay upright for long. My knees buckled, causing the people in white to grab me under the arms and practically carry me. My boots dragged along the pebbly ground while voices reverberated around me.

"We've got him, General."

"Well done – take him to Coruscant. Let the Jedi decide where he should stand trial."