The Mirror within the Mask 3

In the darkness of the tunnels we walked quietly. I knew the way well enough I didn’t really need the little flashlight I held in my hand and as he had often explained to me before, the Chiss had exceptional night vision. I concentrated on the force, stretching out as far as I could to see for hidden dangers. This wasn’t a skill I was very good at but even the little bit I could do helped to ease my growing sense of unrest. Every now and then I felt the brush of Thrawn’s hand on my arm reassuring me, a reminder that I was not alone.

“How did you find this passage?” he asked when we were about half way to the temple.

I told him about the blueprints in the library but not about my first trip to the temple with my uncle.

“And you have to be force sensitive to enter?” he queried.

“Yes. All the locks are opened by using the force but I don’t know how to explain it. It is a little like the retinal ident scans that you sometimes see. It is as if what is holding to doors shut recognize the touch of the force.”

“Interesting.” Was the only thing he said to that and we were silent for the rest of the trip.

Once inside the temple I led him to the great library. I felt his awe and nodded a little. The soft light from the archives cast eerie shadows around us and I shivered. This was not where I wanted to be at two in the morning even with Thrawn. I went to the terminal I had used before and activated it.

“What do you want to know?” I asked him.

“Look for any information on the Outbound Flight Project.” He said.

I nodded and began a search. It didn’t take as long as I had thought. The project had not been a secret. I had pulled up the available files and began to skim through them. He stood behind me and read the information with me.

“Wow, that thing was huge!” I whistled. Looking at the picture of the actual ship, or rather ships that had been some how bound together around a central core.

He nodded. “It was.”

I looked up at him. “You sound like you saw it.”

“I did.” He replied coolly in a voice that said ‘please stop asking me questions about this right now’.

“What are we doing here?” I asked him, tugging on his sleeve.

He turned to look directly at me. “You are helping find information on something that happened thirty years ago. I need some answers.”

“Does this have to do with your brother?” I asked starting to recall some of our previous conversations.

“Partially.” He said and then he looked at me. “Let’s get this done first. I will tell you everything you want to know when we return home.”

I nodded and stepped aside to let him continue. While he was busy I began to look around. The great library was huge, with two floors of shelves and stacks filled with data-logs and books. There had been busts and statues lining the main hall way but many of these had been toppled over and smashed or destroyed with blaster fire. Many of the holo-books had been destroyed but not all and although the library was peaceful now, it had been the scene of great violence. I shuddered. It was the first time I had taken the time to look around. The past two visits had been hurried and fearful. Looking around at the wilful destruction of what had once been an extraordinary peaceful place to be did not ease my fears any. This was not a good place any more. It was full of bad memories and restless ghosts.

“A’myshk’a, come here.” Thrawn said calmly, his voice echoing about the room..

I went to him and peered over his shoulder.

“I need to find out more about this person.” He said tapping the screen.

I looked at the image of Jedi Master C’boath and nodded. He moved out of the way and let me search through the system.

“There might be some more information in the other record’s room.” I said and went to the room where my uncle had found the holocrons from my mother. He followed me silently, watching with keen interest as I opened the locked door.

In the small room I needed light. I pulled out the small torch from my satchel and began to search. The ghosts here nagged at me, tugged at me and frightened me. After what seemed too long a time I found what I was looking for. The little storage drawer slid open under my touch. While the door to the room was force locked, the rest wasn’t. I peeked inside and pulled out the data chips that lay there. They sat in my hand but did not give up any secrets. I looked at Thrawn and then handed them to him. Before he could say anything I began to look for a name, Jyrki Andando, it was easy to locate but any information that had been removed. I brushed my fingertips over the drawer and let out the breath I had been holding. The last person to have touched this had been my uncle. I glanced over at Thrawn. He was inserting the chips into the terminal reader.

“You can do that at home.” I said, angry without knowing why.

He shook his head. “It may be the data leads me to more information we can find here. You don’t have to be a force user to access the information inside this room it seems.”

I shook my head. “Guess the Jedi were a trusting bunch.” I said tartly.

“It was a different time.”

I sighed. Then, quite suddenly, I felt a tug from within. Something in the temple called to me, much as it had done the very first time I had been here.

“I have to go find something. Will you be alright here?” I asked.

He nodded, fished in his pocket and tossed me a small comm-link. “There’s a built in tracking signal. So you don’t get lost.”

“I never get lost.” I told him tartly. He just smiled slightly but didn’t say anything and before I had turned around to leave he had gone back to studying the information on the data chips.

Maybe I never got lost but I didn’t know where I was going. Pulled by an invisible hand I made my way through parts of the Temple I had never been before. I didn’t like how I felt. That itchy niggling sensation between my shoulder blades that I associated with very bad things was stronger than ever. I became aware that I was being pulled to the center of the great building, and when I stood in front of the turbo lift I hesitated. Then I stepped in, muttering to myself about what a really terrible idea this was. I didn’t know what to expect when I stepped out of the lift but the council chamber wasn’t it.

It was a huge room with an ornate floor and chairs of assorted sizes that had once been set in a circle. Behind the chairs were large picture windows. From this room you could look out over Coruscant for as far as the eye could see but it was not these things that stopped my breath. It was the remnants of chaos in the room that caused me to tremble. I walked in and stepped over clothes, broken furniture and what looked like dried blood. My heart raced. I had no idea what I was doing here and I was very afraid.

I walked around the room slowly, hugging my arms close to my body and staring out of the windows. There was so much power in this room and it frightened me. I resisted the temptation to touch the seats. They were all different shapes and sizes and I guessed they had been specifically designed for the person sitting in it reminding me that once upon a time aliens had been as welcome as humans in important roles in the Old Republic.

“Why have you brought me here?” I whispered to the dark but the dark had no answers for me.

Twice I circled the room and then because I didn’t know what else to do I slowly and very carefully began to let my fingers brush objects. There were so many memories here that most of what I saw was jumbled and made no sense. I got vague images of the people and beings that had once made major decisions for the Republic’s law and order. It was strange and unsettling but it did not answer the nagging feeling that still had not gone away yet. As I began my third time walking behind the seats in a circle I noticed a piece of clothing that had been almost brushed under one of the seats. Without thinking about what I was doing I picked it up. The little robe had belonged to a small boy. I was brought to my knees instantly by the images that the robe sent me. I clutched it to my chest as the visions crashed through me.

It was night and they were hiding. She had told them to hide, Jocasta Nu, the librarian. “Go to the council Chambers and hide, wait for help!” The children had all hidden away from the noise, from the chaos and the screaming. They were very young and they were scared.

One of the little girls was crying. Sors Bandeam, the boy with the blond hair, tried to comfort her but she was too frightened.

“Shhh, Caitie, shhhh.” He was trying to hush her.

Caitie hiccupped and shook. “Why is this happening? The soldiers were killing them.” She cried.

“Sors, what do we do if no one comes?” the owner of the tunic said.

Sors shook his head. “I don’t know Kelou, trust in the Force, like master Yoda says.”

All the children had clustered together, hiding behind the chairs. They waited in terrified silence until the sound of the turbo lift broke the night’s hush, frightening them even more. They held their breath until the doors opened and a figure stepped out into the dimly lit room.

“It’s Master Skywalker.” Kelou whispered.

Sors timidly moved from behind the chair where he had been hiding. He stepped forward to face Anakin Skywalker and the others peeped from behind the chairs, watching.

Sors looked up at Anakin “Master Skywalker! There are too many troops! What should we do?” he asked.

For a moment there was absolute silence and then Anakin ignited his lightsaber and before anyone could do or say anything he had slaughtered Sors. The others were stunned into silence then Caitie screamed and tried to run. Anakin’s saber throw cut her down. Kelou tried to grab the others, to get them to make themselves small, invisible but it was of no use. For a moment there was absolute chaos as the children tried to defend themselves but in the space of seconds Anakin had killed them all. As his lightsaber cut the through body of the boy whose tunic I held in my hands, I felt the blow as though it were real, pain sliced through me and I saw the blackness of death as it sucked Kelou down into its maw. He had been the last of the children to die. He had watched all of his friends being murdered by Anakin’s hand and his very last thought had been ‘Why, Master Skywalker, why?’

I sat on the floor gripping the tunic in my hands so tightly I could feel my own nails cutting through the fabric into my palms. As the visions and memories faded, letting go of me I vomited violently.

“Why?” I whispered echoing Kelou’s words, wiping the spit from my mouth with my sleeve. “Why did you want me to see this?” I was covered in an icy cold sweat and I was shaking. I grasped the back of the nearest chair to try and get to my feet only to be assaulted by a second equally powerful memory.

Anakin sat in the chair and looked around the room. The bodies of the children he had slaughtered lay on the floor. The air was filled with the stench of ozone, blood and charred flesh. As the rage which had flooded through him faded he realised what he had done. He had known these younglings since the day they had been brought to the temple. He knew each of them by name. They had looked up to him, admired him and wanted to be like him. They had come to him with their questions, their smiles and in the worst time ever they had come to him out of fear looking to him for protection instead, without thinking about it, he had killed them in cold blood. There, in the silence of the council chambers, Anakin Skywalker leaned back in the chair and covered his eyes with his gloved hand. He knew what he had done was wrong beyond all belief, he knew it but he felt powerless to stop it. He could feel the dark side of the force, its energy seductive and sweet course through him, twisting him from the inside out but somewhere deep down in his soul he also understood he had lost something very precious and he wept. It was there that the Emperor found him, when their eyes met Anakin knew there was no turning back. The Emperor smiled gleefully, his laughter echoing around the blood tainted room and eternally into my brain…

I might have screamed then but I wasn’t certain. I had covered my mouth with my hands, pressing tightly against my lips to stop the terrible sounds that threatened to break out of my chest. I couldn’t seem to catch my breath properly. This was how Thrawn found me, kneeling on the council chamber floor, with the stench of vomit on my clothes, trying to remember how to breathe. He didn’t try to speak to me; he just pulled me to my feet. A surge of anger so swift and sudden raced through me that I didn’t have time to think, I just acted.

I turned on him. “Why did you make me come back here!?” I screamed at him. “Why?!”

“What happened, are you alright?” he asked.

“No!” I yelled at him, on the verge of hysteria. “No!” I slammed my fists against his chest not once but twice. I hurt him but before I could do it a third time he caught my wrists. I fought him, struggling and shouting at him. What came out of my mouth was gibberish, a mixture of languages and thoughts. I was out of my mind, caught some where between my own memories and the memories that did not belong to me at all.

“Merlyn, stop it. Stop it!” He said sharply, holding my arms firmly. I was hyperventilating. He pulled me to him whispering calmly in my ear over and over again. “Breathe sj’iu tekari, breathe, you have to calm down.” Under the spell of his voice I did as he asked and slowly, slowly came back to myself. Only then did I sense how worried he had been.

“What happened?” he asked again when he knew I could speak. “Tell me.”

But I couldn’t. How could I verbalize what I had seen? What this room had shown me? What Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader had done. What the Emperor had asked of him and what it had cost. How could I tell him about the pain of being cut down? How a lightsaber, as it sliced through one’s skin, felt? What death looked like or smelled like? I pulled away from him slowly. I felt as though I were moving through soupy, murky water. Somewhere in my brain I knew I was not right, that something was very wrong with me but nothing connected.

“Did you get what you wanted?” I asked, my voice sounding to my ears as though it were coming from some place a billion kilometres away.

He hesitated a second and then nodded. “Yes.” The half truth hung in the air. He was torn between his desire and thirst for knowledge and concern for my well being.

“Can we please go now?” I asked. I was scattered and unfocused, and using every ounce of inner strength not to let the rising swell of emotions the visions had created engulf me once more. The screams of the children clamoured in my head and the Emperor’s laughter taunted at me, lingering like a terrible smell.

He nodded. He followed me to the turbo lift and we headed back down into the main hall. By the time we had reached the library I had become devoid of all feeling. I stopped in mid stride and looked around. My uncle had been right, I should not have come back here, not because there were dangers lurking waiting to kill me in the shadows because there were too many memories and some how uncle Vahlek had known my talent was getting stronger. It wasn’t the present that would hurt me here, it was the past. Thrawn said nothing as I led the way back to the passage under the city. We slipped out of the Imperial palace and he drove home in silence.

He opened the door to his flat and I pushed past him. I tore at my clothes, stripping them off as I fled to the ‘fresher. I desperately needed to wash the stench of fear and the cold, sickly sweat from my body. I stood naked in the bathroom and looked around. I could not recall how I came to be in this room. I felt the kiss of cold touch my soul and the remnants of the Emperor’s laughter rippled about me from the inside out. I could still feel the vicious burn as Anakin’s lightsaber had sliced into Kelou’s flesh, as though his body and my body were one in the same. In many ways it was as though Anakin had murdered me along with the boy. It was just a memory but it was too real for my mind to separate. Nausea welled up as my stomach rebelling against the visions and their reality. The taste of bile was bitter and acrid in my mouth. Unwanted and unexpected rage, pure and white hot, along with a thousand other emotions suddenly exploded inside of me. I sank to the cold tile floor because my legs couldn’t hold me up. I began to scream and I couldn’t stop. I knelt on the cold floor, holding my head in my hands trying to block out all images which had branded them selves in my brain, hearing a voice I didn’t realise was my own pierce the air. I knew something was really wrong but I was so far removed from myself, it was as though I were watching this person go quite mad from very far away.

I wasn’t sure when I became aware of Thrawn at my side. He had wrapped a robe around my body and was rocking me back and forth. His arms held me tightly; one hand pressing my head against his chest as though holding me close to the sound of his heart would somehow make things better. He stroked my hair and whispered to me in his native language, eventually bringing me back to the present. The silence in the room was more frightening than my hysterical screaming had been. I sat ridged in his embrace, staring into a void only I could see, clutching at the invisible wound from a lightsaber that had never touched me. It burned.

“Are you calm now?” he asked after what felt like hours. He lifted my face up to look in my eyes. He didn’t like what he saw, his worry was palpable.

I nodded but it was a lie. I wasn’t calm, I was numb.

“What happened?”

I shook my head. “Can’t tell you.”

“Why not?” He demanded, there was no mistaking the hint of anger underneath the concern.

“I don’t have the words.” I told him. “There are no words, none…” I could feel the swell of panic begin to rise again, what I wanted to say tripped on my tongue and came out as babble. He silenced the rush of nonsense with his fingertip.

“Then show me, the way you do with Vader.” He said firmly. He knew me well enough to understand that whatever I had seen, whatever it was I had experienced at the Temple was beyond bad but he didn’t know what he was asking me to do, what he was asking me to do to him.

I shook my head. I wasn’t even sure I could. I had never intentionally tried to share anything with him telepathically and this was not what I wanted to start with. I knew this method of communication worked with Lord Vader, but he was so powerfully in tune with the force it somehow seemed easy and I knew it wasn’t. I had no idea how it would work for someone who was head blind to the force.

“Show me.” He said punctuating each word, a command rather than a request, still holding my face in his hands, making me look at him. He nodded. So I opened myself up, just as Lord Vader had taught me, I could see the living force all around me, all around him. It danced and rippled. I brushed his mind with mine and felt him fight the invasion for a split second then he opened to me, just enough.

I did as he asked and I showed him exactly what I had seen and felt. Everything I had experienced in the council chambers flooded into him the same way it had done with me. I heard him grunt with the shock and gasp at the pain of it but I didn’t stop. When I was finished all he did was hold on to me and he didn’t let go. In the silence of the ‘fresher I realised that what ever he had been imagining, he had not been expecting or prepared for that. Stunned, he wasn’t sure what to do next. I pulled away from him and got up slowly. I was chilled and stiff from sitting half naked on the cold floor.

“I need to shower.” I told him.

He nodded, letting me go. When he joined me under the very hot running water I didn’t complain, instead because his kindness and his gentle touch were far more damaging to my ability to hold it together than harsh words or brute strength could have been, I wept. He caressed me as though he could take away the pain, the anguish with the brush of his fingers but it didn’t work that way. I tasted of death and it coated everything thing. These memories which were not mine had been permanently burned in my mind, in my soul. I didn’t want them and I didn’t know what to do with them. After a while I stopped crying, I had no more tears left and just stood under the running water in Thrawn’s arms. There was nothing left to do or say. When the water ran cold, he turned it off, covered me in a towel and lifted me up. He cradled me next to him.

“I am so sorry, A’myshk’a. I did not understand” he whispered in my ear. “This gift of yours, it is a terrible thing and I had no idea, no idea at all.”

I nodded. “How could you have known?” I asked, suddenly weary beyond belief. I patted his shoulder so he would set me down. I wrapped the towel around me. I didn’t know what else to say to him so I just left him to dry off. I dressed for bed and slipped under the crisp, clean covers of his beautiful antique bed. He followed me, holding on to me tightly. Neither of us uttered a sound and for what little was left of the night we stayed that way neither speaking, nor sleeping. For the very first time in my life I wished that I was force blind, or better yet, dead.