The Young Republic | A Star Wars Story

Chapter 9

She will make it

"Believe in yourself, or no one else will."

"She's seizing!"

Master Al Sher cursed, grabbing at the vail of medicine laying beside him. He ripped out a needle, his skilled and trained hands already filling it up with enough substance to - hopefully - cease the girl's violent spasm.

The whole time, while Xena was lying in the med bed, she had been spasming and twitching. Her muscles had pulled tight and her veins had been straining to let blood flow through, standing out pronounced against her tightly pulled skin. Her condition hadn't changed much in the night she lay there. Her brain waves had been low, but steady. Her heartbeat was irregular at times but low and slow. She struggled to breathe, but the ventilator had helped.

Obi-Wan had stayed by Xena's side the whole time. He held her hand and prayed for her to wake up, dabbing some of the cold sweat on her forehead away with a warm cloth. He had used all his strength in the Force, every healing chant he knew, to help his Padawan escape her silent torture.

But at daybreak, when the first rays of the sun shone on the Temple steps, Xena had flatlined. The healers sprung into action. They already had the defib ready in case that was where the girl was heading. They shocked her. Three times it took for the volts to travel through her heart to get it to beat again.

But then she was seizing.

So when Xena suddenly shook so hard that Obi-Wan couldn't even grip her hand, the first dooming thought of death enter Obi-Wan's mind.

Obi-Wan watched as Xena's neck bent at an odd angle, the veins popping up through her translucent skin, threatening to burst. Xena's mouth opened in a silent scream, her eyes unseeing, the blue of her irises hidden away.

Death would have been easier to watch than this.

"This isn't something physical," Master Al Sher notified, standing next to Obi-Wan. He stripped off his gloves, throwing them in a dustbin. He was irritated, and rightly so. Nothing he did worked to help the dying girl.

"What do you mean?" Obi-Wan asked hesitantly, too afraid to hear the answer.

The great healer sighed, feeling extremely sympathetic to Obi-Wan. "I think it is the Force."

Obi-Wan shook his head. No, no that can't be it. Xena was strong in the Force. Much stronger than anyone Obi-Wan ever knew. If he hadn't known better, Obi-Wan would have said Xena was the Chosen One instead of Anakin from the sheer intensity the Force swirled around Xena. The Force would never torture Xena with a death so painful.

"No it can't be," Obi-Wan denied. "Why would... Xena had never overused the Force to result in this."

The healer shook his head. He had considered it, but that would result in vomiting, pain, fever, and when pushed to the extreme passing out and maybe landing in a coma. Not this. The Force rarely destroyed a body like this, unless it is to bring an unwilling soul to the other life.

"Look," Al Sher pointed to Xena's hand, the one Obi-Wan had been holding until a moment ago.

Her hand almost seemed invisible. Obi-Wan could see right through, the crinkles of the white linen that Xena was lying on shining through. Her last two fingers were almost completely gone, as if they had passed through the bed Xena was lying on.