{{ simply being loved - chapter 19
As he walked, he heard a quiet plea, something between a gurgle and moan. It was obviously a sound of pain.
Jacen had retreated back to the Gardens, taking a stroll. The Gardens, he realized, seemed to be his only place of solitude in the insanity that surrounded the Palace and it's inhabitants. But it wouldn't be his place of solace after what happened that night.
The sound grew a bit louder as Jacen pressed his back to a wall of smooth branches, which was growing around a memorial of the late Queen Mother, Teneniel Djo. In the same memorial grove stood statues of many of the Hapan's war leaders and a statue of one of the Hapan fleets best Commanders.
Erianh Ryiath Vessau.
Gadell's mother, who had died in battle with the Yuuzhan Vong. She had been killed in a battle while Tenel Ka, Jacen and the strike team were on their mission to Myrkr. Tenel Ka hadn't really known Gadell before he became the Commander of the fleet.
Teneniel and Erianh had been close. Erianh had been a superior Commander as well as an advisor to the late Queen Mother. She had looked upon the royal family as her own and they treated her with incredible amounts of respect, which she found peace in. Her husband had died many years before, when their son was only four.
Their son. Commander Gadell Vessau.
Jacen knew about, and had even met Erianh once or twice during the war with the Yuuzhan Vong. But he knew nothing about Gadell's father. And later in Jacen's life, he wished that he had bothered to learn about him before this whole ordeal had started.
The sound silenced itself as Jacen slowly reached the entrance. Whoever it was, was inside.
"I can't believe you."
Gadell.
"You were with him weren't you?"
Pulling his back away from the wall of branches, Jacen dashed across the entrance of the late Queen Mother's grove and ducked into a corner around on the other side of it, to a place where he could spy on the Commander between the branches, and hopefully, stay hidden.
Gadell glanced up towards the opening, obviously hearing a noise, but he shook his head, passing it off as an avian creature or the settling of the greenery. His gaze fell back to whatever his mind was on that was behind the base of Teneniel Djo's statue.
"You're incredible," Gadell's voice seethed with anger and disgust. "You're to be married in two weeks and you're off with the General of the New Republic."
He growled and stepped a few paces west before jumping on the base of his mother's statue. Her stone body was two times the size of him, and Jacen watched as he circled around her, keeping his feet on the high base and keeping his right hand on her waist. He peeked around from behind his mother, like a shy child peering out towards the world and looked back down.
"How is he then?"
Jacen scowled at Gadell's comment. He knew that Gadell had to be speaking to Tenel Ka and he knew that Gadell was inquiring Tenel Ka about Jacen's sexual prowess.
I know he did not just ask her that.
And as that thought crossed Jacen's mind, a head of copper hair appeared from behind the base of Teneniel Djo's statue. Tenel Ka turned and pulled herself up onto her own mother's statue, crouching on the base, in front of Djo's legs.
"I bet you would like to know, would you not?"
Jacen's breath was stolen from his chest as he saw Tenel Ka; still clothed in the purple dress which was now torn and stained with small, dark splotches of blood. Blood that had seeped out of her mouth, which was swollen and cut. Stains also appeared down the left side of her dress, near the place where the mechanical arm attached to her flesh. Black splotches, which Jacen now identified as the poison. Her eyes flashed in the dim light, a bright silver, rivaling the glacial shade of Gadell's. Her feet were bare and the way she was crouched down let the thin dress settle across her legs, which allowed Jacen to see every muscle twitch in her calves and around her ankles and feet.
"I am absolutely sure that he is much better than you." A sneer as she shot up to a standing position, clasping her mechanical digits onto her mother's forearm, which was right above her head. Teneniel Djo's statue was created in a pose of confidence, chin high, both hands on her hips. She looked almost too regal. And it contrasted with the way her daughter, her only child, the Queen Mother, looked standing in front of her. Angry, torn up, sultry and vicious.
Jacen took a deep breath and continued to watch the scene unfold, debating on whether or not he should intervene.
"Seeing as how I have gotten nothing out of you... yet..."
Jacen's scowl grew, but inside he felt a tad relieved, knowing that Gadell and Tenel Ka's bedtime activities hadn't been anything serious.
YET?! If I can help it, you aren't getting anything of that sort out of her, EVER.
"...you wouldn't know how I am, now would you?" Gadell stopped circling Erianh's form and crossed his arms in front of his chest, head tilted, smirk showing.
A laugh escaped Tenel Ka's crimson stained lips, drops of blood flying into the air at the sound. It wasn't the laugh that Jacen was used to, the laugh that he, and no one else, only heard about once every eon, the musical tone that always took him to a new level of euphoria. No. It was a low, throaty sound; a malevolent cackle that pounded into Jacen's eardrums like an amphistaff slamming into it's enemy.
"What?" Gadell began tapping his foot.
Tenel Ka leaned back against her mother's stone skirts, placing her hands behind her and arching her back ever so slightly, in a move Jacen registered as a playful seduction. "You are so cute, Gadell." Sarcasm radiated from her voice and Gadell knew that, and took it as a dare. Jumping down from Erianh's base, he sauntered past a statue of another Hapan fleet's General before leaping onto the base of Teneniel Djo's and stopping in front of Tenel Ka.
"I know."
"And I want to hurt you for it."
Gadell smirked. Tenel Ka lightly shoved Gadell backwards off of the base and he landed on his feet, glancing back up towards her, "I'll get you for that."
And as the last word passed his lips, a bare foot crashed into his face, knocking him backwards onto the cold ground.
"That was for punching me," Tenel Ka jumped off of the base, the silver in her eyes glinting from the grove's dim lanterns. Her metal hand wrapped itself around the collar of Gadell's robes and pulled him halfway up off the ground and as she was about to hit him again, she felt his hands clasp around her neck.
Jacen pulled himself up from his crouching position and hesitated, glancing towards the grove's entrance. When he looked back at the two, he saw Tenel Ka bracing Gadell back against the base of his own mother's statue, clawing at his face, his hands were around her wrists trying to keep the dense metal and the sharp nails away from his skin. A grunt turned growl sounded as he shoved her back into the stone of Teneniel Djo's base. Kneeing her in the stomach brought the Queen Mother to the ground, where he stood over the battered Tenel Ka, hissing nonsense.
Jacen, watching the whole thing, tried to sense them through the Force, he tried to sense Gadell's feelings and emotions.
He found a void. A void wrestling with the emptiness of Tenel Ka.
Damn!
Bolting into the grove, Jacen slammed all of his weight onto Gadell and both men tumbled effortlessly to the side, leaving Tenel Ka cringing on the ground. Pushing herself onto her side, she let her eyes focus on Jacen and Gadell. Jacen, straddling Gadell's stomach, his hands around the Commander's throat, his brandy-brown eyes boring into Gadell's.
Anger was slowly seething into his veins and as much as Jacen tried to fight it, he couldn't. He had the urge to fight, the urge to bait and tease and he was going to give in to his urges. There had been too many times where he fought them off.
"I'm better than you'll ever dream of being, Commander." He didn't just mean in a sexual way, he meant in every way possible, which was really his anger speaking. After trying to search out Gadell in the Force, and finding a void, Jacen came to the conclusion that the Commander was also poisoned. And seeing the different ways the poison changed Tenel Ka's personality and attitude, Jacen had no idea what Gadell was really like.
Jacen! STOP. Dark side. Dark side equals bad. STOP NOW.
Jacen dropped Gadell and pulled himself off of him, stepping to Tenel Ka and holding out and hand, to help her up. His chestnut eyes met Tenel Ka's mercury shaded orbs and she took his hand...
Everything froze for a moment, in Jacen's mind. He collected himself.
...and she yanked him to the ground, causing him to fall on his stomach. Tenel Ka delivered a kick to Jacen's side and then stood up, Gadell throwing himself on her back. She knocked him to the ground also and paused, staring down at the two.
"I do not know who I hate more right now," a sneer.
"Tenel Ka." Jacen turned over on his side, speaking weakly, "I'm here for you. You're poisoned. And so are you Gadell. Can't you see it's obvious; you're both being controlled?"
Tenel Ka and Gadell both looked to Jacen then to each other and then back at Jacen, Gadell crouching on the ground and Tenel Ka leaning against the base of Djo's statue, arms crossed.
Everything froze.
And the next moment, Jacen saw both Tenel Ka and Gadell lunging towards him, arms out, and the three were on the ground. Punches thrown. Kicks delivered. Grunts, growls and curses spoken.
Tenel Ka pulled herself out of the fray and watched as Gadell sat atop Jacen, throwing punches into his gut. Reaching her metal arm out, she smacked Gadell in the face, causing him to glance at her, giving Jacen the chance to slam his fist into Gadell's side.
The Queen Mother then pulled the least regal act, spitting blood onto the General, then the Commander and turned, her barefeet running as fast as they could out of the grove and into the massive Gardens of the Hapan Palace.
Gadell slowly pulled himself to his feet and ran past Jacen, whom he angrily kicked on the way out. Observing the abusive relationship between the two made Jacen feel incredibly uncomfortable and he knew that he had to stop them from each other at all costs.
What is Ta'a Chume thinking?
Jacen tried to get up to his feet, but he couldn't, not because of pain, but because another spell was washing over him. The visions were coming more often now, he noticed. And his last attack had only been hours before, while in bed with Tenel Ka. And another was seizing him now. Stumbling backwards, he slammed into the stone base, his body covering "--eniel Djo" on the plaque behind it. The letters became visible as Jacen slid to the ground, his face turned towards space above, a look of neurotic shock on his clear face.
Jacen watched, from his mind. These seemed to be visions of the future, unlike his past set, which were all flashbacks. Some moved at the same speed that the ones before did, some went with the slow bacta-treading feel, while others sped up, lending Jacen a drug free view of what glitterstim must've felt like.
A flash of light assaulted his eyes, before dropping him into the bright white light of the main medical bay. Everything was blurry, except a lone bacta tank in the back corner and a person standing beside it, slamming his fists into it.
Himself.
He was clothed in a bacta cloth, wrapped around his waist like a skirt and he was dripping clear drops of the medical fluid. To the floor from his fingertips, from the ends of his messy, damp brown hair, down pooling at his feet. As he looked at himself in the vision, his face was splattered with drops. Some of which were bacta... and others which could only be tears. His eyes were red and narrowed and his face was twisted into a look of anguish. He couldn't hear anything and things sped up and slowed down at random intervals, but when Jacen's mind turned to glance at the bacta tank that he, himself was banging on, all he could see was a cloudy, red fluid.
The bacta tank was filled with blood.
And looking back to himself, sound finally broke through the vision.
"Tenel Ka! No! This can't be happening!"
Light engulfed the scene.
An angular face, creased with wrinkles, peered down upon him as Jacen opened his own eyes. Blinking he tried to move and pain attacked him with everything it had. Turning his head with as much strength he could pull from himself and the Force, he saw blood spreading across the floor, under him, from behind him. He rolled onto his back and flipped his head to the other side, slowly but surely.
Chest heaving, her right hand clutched over the stump of her bleeding left arm, Tenel Ka snickered up to her grandmother.
"I hate you."
"Do not say things like that, young lady. A Queen Mother doesn't speak like that."
Behind Tenel Ka, the body of Gadell Vessau, colorless, his face serene with his passing death. Jacen looked down to himself, his legs were twisted at a horribly odd angle and just seeing them made Jacen sick to his stomach.
"I really do hate you. For what you did to Gadell. For what you did to Jacen." She let her left arm go, blood pouring from her wound and she raised her right hand. "For what you did to me. And my planets, my people. My people."
Lightning danced from her fingertips, surrounding Ta'a Chume in a brilliant electric violet glow. Jacen cheered inside, yet he also screamed. Tenel Ka had just used dark side powers.
The light grew brighter until it covered Jacen's vision.
It was replaced by a dark room. He could hear breathing, heavy breathing. Everything became fast.
He could feel himself sweating. And everything became slow.
He was on his hands and knees, hanging over Tenel Ka, smiling. He could feel himself smiling. It felt odd, a different kind of smile. Maybe it was the fact that his deduction of the scene led him to believe that...
Crashing beside her, still breathing heavily, he felt her curl up on her left side beside him, their bare skin meeting as they cuddled beside each other. Her right hand ran up and down his chest as he stared to the ceiling, a feeling of contentment and numbness washing over him. His body felt different for some reason, but Jacen just passed it off as an after effect.
But then Tenel Ka murmured something before falling into a light sleep, "I love you, Gadell."
...gadell...?
Quickly sliding out of bed, he cringed at the frigid air snaking over his naked body; but he didn't mind it as he dashed to the huge mirror across the room.
Shoulder-length black hair, ice-blue eyes, pale skin.
From the bed, he heard a soft voice, "What is wrong, Gadell?"
no... it's me... jacen... it's me...
Throwing his eyes open, Jacen rolled to his hands and knees, his left hand clutching at his throat and his right steadying himself on the ground. His throat was working around coughs and gags, he felt as if he would vomit any second.
The feeling passed moments later and Jacen rolled over, falling onto his back, peering up at the seemingly monolithic faces of the Hapan royalty above him. It was still nighttime. And everything seemed the same. The visions just then, must've only lasted mere minutes.
Cringing, Jacen Solo stood up and took a few deep breaths before chasing the two out of the entrance. He fell into the Force and searched out voids in the massive living garden. He sensed two. One, at an intersection a good distance away and the other running towards the Strike Team's memorial grove.
And Jacen Solo knew...
It's going to be another long night.
And so it began. The longest night of Jacen Solo's life.
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