{{ simply being loved - chapter 22
With that smirk plastered on his pale face, Gadell made his way down off of the dais and over to Tenel Ka's sprawled out body. His boot heels clicking on the cold floor, breaking the solid sound of the lightsaber's hums. His hands were clasped behind his back and his eyes were narrowed to slits as he stared down to the sputtering Queen Mother.
"Finish her off?" Gadell spoke back to Ta'a Chume, "Gladly."
Ta'a Chume, Exna and Jeauno, all grew wide-eyed and hunkered forward, watching closely as Gadell crouched beside Tenel Ka. Sitting down cross-legged, he swung his hands around from behind his back and took her head in his lap.
Jacen shifted, scooting himself onto his side so he could look at Tenel Ka and Gadell. The pain in his back laced through his system as he tried to numb it with the Force. It wasn't working. His mind was too focused on what Gadell was planning on doing with Tenel Ka. As he pushed his mindframe back into the flow, he could feel Tenel Ka's Force presence slowly returning. Slowly, as the poison and ysalamiri blood trickled from her twitching muscles to the stone floor. The poison must've lost it's effect when it left her body, because even though she was still in the vicinity of it, she wasn't affected.
Gadell stared down at the serene, splotchy face of the half-Hapan, half-Dathomirian woman, running his hands to the back of her neck, and wrapping his fingers around to the right places. Jacen winced as he tried to move.
He's going to break her neck...
But Gadell hesitated. As he stared down to the visage of the Queen Mother, something clicked in his mind. He was reminded of Teneniel Djo, the woman who was so kind to his mother. She was kind to both of them, Erianh and little Gadell. Tenel Ka had her eyes and the shape of her face. She had her figure, her lips. Her spirit.
His grasp on her neck loosened.
"What's he doin'?" Exna snickered to the two beside him.
"Shut up you big lug," Ta'a Chume sneered, "He is concentrating!"
"On wut?" Jeauno's lower lip jutted out as he stared at the trio on the ground ahead of them.
"On... on... oh he just is!" Ta'a Chume believed that Gadell would follow through, killing Tenel Ka. Then all the blame for her murder would be on his shoulders. Ta'a Chume giggled at her plan.
Exna and Jeauno traded a confused glance to each other, over Ta'a Chume's head, before looking back to Gadell, Tenel Ka and Jacen.
His eyes drifted shut as memories flooded through, breaking the gates of poison and ysalamari blood locked up in Gadell's mind. As he gently cradled Tenel Ka's head in his lap, visions flashed through his mind. All the things that had happened...
All the things he had forgotten.
His father, Kaden Vessau, dying in front of him, when he was four. Suicide, because he thought Erianh was having an affair. She wasn't. Gadell, meeting Isolder and Teneniel Djo for the first time. Meeting Tenel Ka for the first time. Tenel Ka, the woman he would grow up to admire and respect. The war with the Yuuzhan Vong. Gadell taking over the Hapan fleet after his mother was killed by the...
Killed by the...
Killed in front of him by the...
It wasn't coming to him. That was the only thing being held back. He could envision her writhing around, clutching her throat.
Killed by the...
"Gadell." Ta'a Chume crossed her arms. "Go on."
Killed by...
Killed by you.
The last of the memories spilled through the floodgates of his mind as he saw his mother, curling up on the floor of an unknown location, whimpering...
"Do not die now Gadell, stay alive for me..."
...he saw Ta'a Chume's sickening thin-lipped smile, as she motioned for a couple Hapan men to rid the body from her sight.
And his eyes shot open. Both Jacen Solo and Tenel Ka were watching him intently, Tenel Ka with half-lidded eyes. She was growing weaker by the second. As was Jacen, whose flightsuit had a huge rip in the back, where his burn was.
Gadell slowly nodded once, softly setting Tenel Ka's head on the floor. Standing up, he kept his back to Ta'a Chume and the boys.
"What are you doing, Vessau?" Ta'a Chume went on the verbal defensive as Exna and Jeauno readied their blasters.
Jacen and Tenel Ka watched weakly as the Commander stared down at them, eyes twitching, neck twitching. They both knew he had to be fighting a war inside himself. But for what reason, they had no clue. And as his swirling ice blue and azure eyes locked on the faint Tenel Ka, he spoke to Ta'a Chume, unwavering, deadset and grim, his voice full of anger towards the old woman.
"What have you done to my Queen?"
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