Star Wars: Daughter of the Dark Force

Chapter 16: Visions

I'm so sorry!!! I was supposed to update on Sunday but I didn't >___< I went snowboarding with my boyfriend and completely forgot. Sorry!!!

I'll update again on Saturday. I promise!

Kimmy (AKA DarthKemberli)

---------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER 16: VISIONS

"It is in the dark side that I have found my destiny."

 - Darth Kemberli, Sith apprentice

How long I was there, I couldn't tell. Spinning in the vortex of the dark side, numbed to all physical sensation, I could have been wandering through eternity, yet have spent but a second in space. Or it could have been the other way around: one second in the blissful haven of the dark side could have been eternities upon eternities in space. And that was the charm of meditation: I could never know how much time passed until I came out of my trance. And there, in the black pit on the Executor, there was no way of telling how much time had passed on the rare occasions that I did come out of my trance. I didn't return to the sensible world often; my weak body made its demands known more and more harshly, and I knew that life without sustenance existed only in the Force. And so in the Force I remained.

Suspended within myself, murmuring Sith mantras to myself, my inner psyche made itself apparent to me. Some of it I grasped, while other parts eluded themselves. It was hard to grasp just what my weaknesses were, while it was easy to see what was important to me. I saw how fear played a large, perhaps too large part, in how I lived. I saw how the Force favoured me for my love of solitude, my cynical views, my few words. I saw that Vader was easily the greatest thing in my life. I saw how anger, lurking dormant below the surface of my mind, insinuated itself into everything I did, even when I wasn't aware of it.

Anger. It was a dominant passion in me, and so was fear. Fear that I was ultimately unworthy to be Vader's apprentice. Fear that I couldn't be as strong as I wished to be. Fear that I lose what was important to me, which, of course, was Vader once again. This fear propelled me to sink deeper into the Force, to find sustenance in the Force to fuel my ragged body. And I was succeeding. With the help of anger. For anger at myself, at Vader, at fate itself fired my will to keep pushing itself. Instinctively I knew better than to pursue the reasons underlying my anger, and so I left them alone, for another time, when my focus and self-control were less necessary to survival.

And I saw visions. They were inevitable, given my intimate union with the dark side. My visions were concerned only with myself, with what the Force saw in me, and touched not on persons not in my memory. I dared not fight the visions, not wanting to jeopardize my body's fragile state, so I accepted them, watching in wide-eyed wonder at their clarity.

I saw myself back on Aetheria, younger by a few years, stripped down to but my undergarments and frolicking in the warm ocean waves with a boy my age, similarly half-naked. Yurlon Batado was watching from a safe distance, chuckling to himself. I flushed, even though spirited away in the ethereal realm of the Force. Yurlon had seen us? How... mortifying. Though he was dead now, dead and gone and buried away in the clutter of my mind, I was embarrassed that he had seen me so loosely carefree with that boy, Senji Lolotow. We had been friends, training mates, and perhaps we had had a youthful romance between us. Nothing serious, nothing distracting... But with Senji I had been able to smile and laugh and talk and forget the fear of the black markings on my body. And now we were lying on the sand, staring up at the blue-green Aetherian sky, talking in low husky voices about personal things. Oh, and I was so happy. Senji's contented smile told me that he was happy too. He inched his hand over the sand, and I grasped it, and as a observer I felt the sweet sensation of young love blossom through the Force. Yurlon's face was a bit graver now, but he didn't look angry. Only resigned, and through the Force I realized that he believed that it was better for me to make friends and then let them go in my own time. I remembered that he said nothing of the incident, and I remembered thinking how clever and lucky I was to have gotten away with my escapade with Senji. Really... If Yurlon had been alive now, I certainly would have smacked him one for spying on me and Senji in our private moment.

That vision whirled away, almost too soon, to give way to another one. Around me stood trees that reached up to the clouds themselves, and underfoot, under my bare feet, was a thick blanket of soft, soft moss. Yurlon's hand rested on my shoulder. He was pointing at a bird fluttering joyously in the filtered sunlight, and he was saying, "Be gentle. Guide her down here, onto your hand." And I remembered instantly where I had been. This was Kashyyyk, when I was fourteen years old. Yurlon's Wookie friend Jordonno had secured for him a pair of stolen Imperial ships, and so Yurlon had taken the chance to take me here, leaving our small community back home on Aetheria. After looking over the ships and replacing the entire computer system and going over it to get rid of every single bug and tracker, he had taken me into the glorious Kashyyyk woods for some serious Force training. Here were many animals and plants I had never seen before. Indeed, I had no memory of setting foot on another planet since I could remember. With youthful enthusiasm I hung on Yurlon's every word. And the little blue-and-yellow feathered bird came obediently down onto my hand, chirruping. I trembled with barely contained emotion as the bird brushed both my body and my consciousness, and it was hard for me to let it free.

Another memory, of flying the Star Princess with Yurlon for the first time. Delighting in the roar of the engines beneath me. Enthralled by the power of the controls I held in my hand. And then the memory of tinkering with our few speeders, and hacking into Yurlon's personal computer. Ah, but that had been a blast. Who would have known that my oh-so-sage-like master had kept a copy of every episode of that sappy Chandrilan holovid series, "Heartholders, Keyholders"? And he had protested, too. Said that every phrase in the entire series could be interpreted as something else. I had laughed at him, wondering if Master Yoda would have approved, and then we launched into a whole argument about what was and wasn't reasonable in the old Jedi Code.

But as all childhoods come to an end, my visions of my youth were replaced with the sobering images of Vader's sudden intrusion to my life and my turn to the dark side. I saw Vader striking Yurlon down, felt his cold seething power in the Force, saw him utter that fateful invitation, saw him leaving me lying unharmed in the sand. I saw myself huddled in a bundle beside Yurlon's cold, broken body, tears spilling down my face. Alone, completely and utterly alone, feeling abandoned by the Force itself, I struggled to come to a decision about the rest of my life. To go to Vader, or remain an inexperienced Padawan that saw no escape from death, anyhow? And I saw myself, eyes hard, face more angled, mature. Walking with a purpose to my stride, a darksome light in my face. My hands curled firmly around the Star Princess's controls, my whole being focused on my next destination, aiming for my next target who would lead me ever closer to Vader.

The memories and visions came liberally, and I fed off them. I embraced them with all I was worth, for if I fought them and destroyed my body along with my mind, I would be worth nothing. And so I meditated on and on, until I was plunged into a vision so vivid I doubted it was a vision at all.