{{ simply being loved - chapter 07
The Queen Mother opened her eyes to darkness.
The heavy burgundy curtains were pulled over the large windows in her bedroom, blocking out the natural light from the outside. She couldn't see a thing. Hapans had genetically bad eyesight in the dark, but thanks to Tenel Ka's Dathomiri heritage, it balanced out. And she actually got away with fairly good night eyes.
That didn't even help her now.
Her eyes slowly traveled around the room, working on focusing on something.
Anything.
Blinking a few times, Tenel Ka shook her head back and forth, attempting to clear it. She ripped the covers off of herself and swung her feet over the edge of the bed, lethargically letting herself slide off of it.
As her feet hit the ground, the hem of her nightgown tumbled down around her ankles. It was a sleeveless black nightgown, like most of the Queen's clothes, made of Hapan silk. It skimmed the ground whenever she walked around in it and usually when she was dressed in her nightclothes, she only walked around in her chambers.
But not tonight.
A little thought scratched at the back of her mind.
She couldn't put her finger on what it was or what it meant. But it caused her to stumble over to the main door of her bedroom, press the release button and start down the hallway, off to what would be the demise of her sanity.
Eyes closed, cross-legged, calm.
He couldn't sleep.
And Jacen Solo's answer to insomnia?
Meditating.
He sat on the floor, in front of his bed and drew from the Force around him. He searched for answers.
Answers to questions...
What's wrong with Gadell? What about Tenel Ka? What's wrong with her...?
Kriff... what's wrong with ME?
He found none.
As he stood up to get back into bed, he felt a blaze in his head. He could feel it close to him...
Tripping around past his door in the hallway.
Tenel Ka?
Jogging over to the door, he placed his ear up against it and closed his eyes. The door was durasteel. But durasteel never stopped the Force.
It was Queen Mother Tenel Ka Chume Djo. Jacen could feel something malicious pulsing through her veins as she stumbled by. It was void of any life.
Jacen Solo waited a few moments until after she passed, threw the jacket to his CorSec uniform on over his nondescript black pants and white shirt and pulled on some boots. Then he hit the door's release button and took a deep breath.
He stuck his head out and turned it towards the way she was walking.
His jaw dropped, slowly.
He saw the back of the Queen Mother, she was advancing down the hallway, her hair tangled and wavy from her restless sleep. The left strap of the nightgown hung off of her shoulder and she was hunched over slightly, running her right hand along the wall as she staggered away from Jacen.
Something is definitely wrong here.
The voice of reason sounded in his head. He needed to see what was wrong. But something in the Force told him to stay back.
A growl escaped his lips as he cursed his indecisiveness.
She was getting away.
He decided to hang back and watch her from afar.
Treading silently down the hallway, staying a safe distance away from her, Jacen wondered if this was the right thing to do.
He was questioning himself so hard that he didn't even realize he had followed her outside.
Into the Gardens.
Jacen Solo followed and pressed himself back against the outside wall of the memorial grove, shutting his eyes and cringing as Tenel Ka stepped inside.
Tenel Ka felt heavy. Her emotions were getting the best of her as she bumbled through the Gardens, seeing the faces of the dead.
Wurth Skidder.
Numa Rar.
Lusa.
Chewbacca.
Teneniel Djo.
Her emotional shield she always held on high was dropped to ground as the poison seeped into her system. Every emotion hit her harder than anything imaginable.
The grove.
For some reason, when she woke up in her bed, she had thought of it. If the poison wasn't coarsing through her, she would've come out to the grove and admired the beaming faces of her fallen comrades and possibly even spoken to them through the Force.
But the poison wouldn't let her.
She stepped up to the entranceway of the Memorial Grove, shuddering, sweating, panting. She would normally have been able to feel Jacen Solo following her the whole way there, and hiding on the other side of the grove. But grief was blinding her.
Crashing through the archway of the grove and into the center spot led to a series of visions more horrible than Tenel Ka ever thought possible.
Jacen, hiding out on the other side of the wall of vines, rolled his eyes back, shutting them... letting himself open up fully to the Force.
To try to experience what Tenel Ka was feeling.
There are times he wished he had never done that.
Jacen and Tenel Ka both saw the visions, Tenel Ka more than Jacen. He was seeing them second-hand; flickery and out of focus.
The ground in the circular grove was littered with the color-changing flowers, it was like a carpet of them.
Blood red.
And the color was seeping out of them, leaving the flowers wilted. Dead.
The holo-projecters were the things that affected their emotions the most.
Instead of the smiling portraits, each of the pictures was of the respective person, frozen in their last moment alive. Expressions of fear, hurt and anger plastered on their faces.
Anakin's portrait had twisted into a shot of him with a sneer on his face, his arm outstretched out in front of him, levitating a thermal detonator. Concentration masked his expression and his jumpsuit was covered in blood and acid.
Ganner Rhysode, clutching Anakin's violet lightsaber, a sheer look of determination and pain on his face as blurs of Yuuzhan Vong surrounded him. His image seemed to drown in the scarred skin of his enemies.
Ulaha, playing her instrument, sitting in the cockpit of a rugged Yuuzhan Vong ship, blood streaming down her face. As calm and peaceful as she could appear, moments before her death.
Eryl, a look of fear as a thudbug was frozen inches in front of her face. Every little marking and piercing could be seen on the thudbug, each tiny claw and leg visible, ready to tear through skin.
Raynar. Lying in a pool of blood in the cargo hold of the Strike Team's stolen ship. His eyes half-closed. His image seemed blurred, as if his death was unconfirmed.
Krasov and Bela, both knocked out, one with a amphistaff sticking out of her chest. Their bodies laying, sprawled out, one almost covering the other, like they were tossed uselessly aside.
Jovan, in the middle of batting at flitnats, his large black eyes were narrowed from concentration. He couldn't get all of them. They covered his skin like a blanket of death, ready to snuff out the last of the Rodian's life.
A flash of light and the holo-projecters began to flicker.
Tenel Ka was completely still in the center, watching in horror.
Another flash of light filled the grove.
The dead flowers began to blow upwards, like they were caught in the middle of a Tatooine sandstorm. Petals hit her cheeks as she continued to gawk.
She began mouthing a silent plea as blood began dripping out of the screens of the holo-projecters, just trickling out of the bottom corners.
And what happened next almost drove Jacen back to his room, until he remembered this was a vision... and it wasn't even his.
Out of Anakin's portrait, a spill of blood. A leg, covered in blood and torn brown material. An arm. A head ducked out from under the top of the holo-projector.
And as if on cue, blood-splattered shades of each of the fallen, slid, crawled, limped and jumped out of their respective portraits.
Anakin's face burned from a thermal detonator, his back covered in voxyn acid. Ganner, gashes all over his body. Jovan, flitnat bites oozing blood all over his exposed skin. Every shade was like a living corpse.
The blood that had seeped out of the portraits was now moving in with the flowers upwards. Tenel Ka was right in the middle of it. An upwards column of blood and dead flowers with visions of her dead comrades...
Her dead friends ---
...towering over her cowering form.
Another flash of light and they vanished, their portraits flickering back to their moments of death for a few seconds before going blank, leaving the grove basking in a soft, empty glow.
Tenel Ka had fallen to her knees, and she looked up at the worst sight yet.
Two more holo-projectors were added, above the row of eight.
On the left side, an image of herself... clutching at the bleeding stump of her left arm. Her face was smeared with blood and her eyes were filled with rage as she stared up to someone. She could only see the back of the person's head in the image. It played out.
A repeating five second clip of her screaming something at the person and raising her right hand, sparks of electricty dancing on her fingertips before the clip started over again.
On the right, a five second clip of General Jacen Solo.
He was tied to chair. In the clip his eyes trailed up to an unknown assailant, holding a blood red lightsaber under his neck. His eyes slowly closed and the clip started over, repeating itself endlessly.
Another flash of light. The grove was back to normal.
She couldn't hold it in any longer.
A scream, more like a shriek, sounded as she fell from her knees to the ground. Crumbling up into a pile of black silk. Tears formed a pool on the ground under her eyes. White petals began falling from the top of the grove and the walls. A quiet snowfall of feathery petals, landing around and on top of Tenel Ka.
Jacen Solo was outside leaning on the wall, gasping for air. He had slid down to a crouching position at an unknown time during the vision. He could feel Tenel Ka's pain and it hurt him almost as much as it did her.
He couldn't even walk.
Crawling towards the entrance of the grove, he could see through some of the vines at what was waiting inside for him.
He could see white petals raining down from the high, dark upper half of the grove. The glow from the back-to-normal holo-projectors and their smiling faces, showed Jacen the body of Tenel Ka, her black nightgown in sharp contrast with the pure white of the flower petals.
As they hit the ground, they splashed into different colors. All the ones landing on Tenel Ka turned from white to a shade of turquoise and finally into a deep red.
Jacen pulled himself to the entrance and crawled inside, still on his hands and knees. He kneeled in front of the unconscious Tenel Ka.
He recalled Ganner's yellow petals and Anakin's purple.
The flowers were programmed for lightsaber colors, right?
Jacen cupped his hands together and held them out in front of him, letting a few petals land in them.
They turned a brilliant shade of green.
He let them fall to the ground.
Why are the petals on Tenel Ka turning red?
He shut his eyes for a moment, recalling the one of the visions he had before.
No...
Leaning down and reaching his hand out to her face, he tucked some loose strands of red-gold hair behind her ear and wiped a tear away from her closed eyes. He gently pushed her left shoulder, to roll her onto her back.
The General planted a soft kiss on the Queen Mother's forehead, lingering there for a few moments.
"I heard the scream a few minutes ago! She is out here somewhere! Spread out!"
Gadell.
Jacen knew if he was found here with an unconscious Tenel Ka, he would probably be framed for whatever they thought happened to her.
I can see it now. 'Jealous lover boy from the past, trying to kidnap the Queen Mother after her marriage announcement!'
Jacen scowled.
He placed two fingers to his lips, kissing them delicately; then he lightly pressed them to Tenel Ka's lips before pulling himself to his feet. He was still breathing heavily and he was exhausted from the energy-sucking vision he felt through Tenel Ka. He sensed some of the guards getting closer.
He slipped out before they were in view of the grove's entrance.
Pressing himself back to the spot he was hiding in when Tenel Ka had her vision, he waited there until Gadell found her in the grove and picked up her body. Jacen watched through the vines.
Gadell's eyes were ice.
That can't be the same Gadell who helped me back to my room.
Jacen shook his head and stared after the couple. Gadell was cradling the Queen Mother in his arms, her nightgown matching his black pants but contrasting with the pale skin of his chest.
He must've woken up from her scream.
As Gadell carried Tenel Ka back towards the Palace, with the guards flanking them, Jacen noticed something on Gadell's back left shoulderblade.
A scar. In the shape of an X. It looked a bit worn down, like it was old. But it still intrigued Jacen. The Queen Mother, the Commander and the guards entered the Palace, leaving Jacen Solo alone in the gardens.
He cautiously entered the grove once more, and fell to his knees in the middle of the sea of petals. The faces were beaming once more. They were never anything more depressing than grins.
It was all in the vision.
Jacen breathed a sigh and stared upward into the darkness of the top of the canopy, petals were still falling, just at a slower rate. He let them slide across his face and float to the ground.
A small breeze hit his face.
'Go get some sleep, Jace.'
I should.
Jacen stood up and nodded to his brother's frozen smiling face, then turned and left the garden with white petals still clinging to his CorSec jacket.
He just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep.
And he just wanted to know if the Queen Mother was alright.
| 