{{ urbania's void - chapter 14
...daysleeper (day two / +2)
Her eyes didn't want to open. A small part of her wanted to shut the world around her out forever. But she knew that was impossible... and she especially knew that now that he was in trouble.
She was standing at the small table in her quarters, her right hand on the tabletop helping her steady herself. She was feeling quite dizzy and detached and she could find no reason why. Her legs were shaking and a light sheen of sweat covered her body. She paid it no mind.
A pair of strong arms snaked around her middle, from behind her, and the hands clasped at her stomach. She could feel a chin on her left shoulder.
"You're stressing out." The voice was smooth. She had known who it was when he entered the room, but the voice just confirmed it. "I am sure he's fine."
Silence coursing through her body, she took her hand away from the tabletop and slowly turned around in the Admiral's arms, letting her head droop on his chest. "Gadell..."
"I've never seen you this worried before. It's odd." Lifting his right hand up, he ran it up and down her back, in a gesture of comfort. "We'll find him. We'll find him and he'll be perfectly fine. Don't you worry."
With a dry gulp, the Queen Mother lifted her head up and stared the Admiral straight in the eyes. "Do you really think he is alright?"
Tenel Ka had begun to worry when Jacen Solo's Force signature vanished from her mind roughly thirty-eight days earlier. She knew Jacen could take care of himself. He was a General of the Galactic Alliance and he was well on his way to becoming a Jedi Master... but something still didn't sit right with Tenel Ka.
Gadell Vessau placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back to arms-length, with a compassionate smile showing on his face. "Don't worry. I can envision it now. You two will see each other for the first time again and sparks will fly."
With a nod, Tenel Ka returned the expression, which vanished when the two heard a knock on the door.
"Your highness? It's Anhaje."
"Come on in."
The door to the Queen Mother's chambers opened and Anhaje stepped inside, her robe swishing quietly as she moved towards the Queen and her Admiral. Shifting her sleeve, she stuck her arm out to the two, holding up a small, shiny datapad.
"These arrived today." Anhaje bowed as Tenel Ka took the datapad out of her hand. She straightened herself and crossed her arms over her chest, relaxing at the fact that Gadell and Tenel Ka were the only people in the room; she could act casual around them.
Tenel Ka inhaled deeply as she read the notes on the datapad, as if she was breathing them into her mind. They were descriptions of their Mindmaps; little biographies and stats of the people they would be portraying on the Urbania.
Gadell and Tenel Ka had a chat with Master Luke Skywalker and the scientist Danni Quee the day before about the message they had received, which they believed was from Jacen.
"That's quite a disturbing message," Luke had placed his hand up to his chin as he stared into the holo-projector.
The whole transmission was scratchy and choppy. The audio seemed well enough, but the picture quality left a lot to be desired. Tenel Ka had thought it was just the location and such. But Gadell questioned it...
"We'll send you the Mindmaps right away." Danni had nodded. And all they could make out on the other end as they watched was a head of blonde hair, bobbing up and down. No facial features could be made out... they couldn't really see Luke either. The transmission had ended, and the room had fallen under a blanket of silence.
Breaking it minutes later, Tenel Ka had looked to Gadell.
"Can we trust that?"
"You want to save Jacen, don't you?"
The Queen Mother had sighed, leaning forward on the table. "The line was secure and we patched it straight through to the Galactic Alliance Headquarters, correct?"
The Admiral had tilted his chair onto its two back feet and reached over, flipping a few switches and looking to a command screen.
"Yes indeed, your highness," using the term as one of sarcasm, rather than as her formal title.
And now, as Tenel Ka read the datapad she could still feel the disbelief and the uncertainty gnawing at her insides. She remembered sitting at the table in the room the day before, communicating with Master Luke Skywalker and Danni Quee through a patched line.
But was it really them?
She had tried to feel them out in the Force. She could feel them. And she could feel feelings. But the feelings seemed detached from them. Half of her said it was because they were so far away. The other half of her wanted to smack sense into its counterpart. She couldn't feel them...
And that made her incredibly suspicious.
Intently, she tried to focus on reading what she had in her hand, but she couldn't ignore that nagging feeling in her mind...
Gadell felt her confusion and grabbed her face in his hands, pulling it upwards to look at him.
"This isn't like you. Stop."
"What is not like me?"
"This indecision." He took his hands away from her cheeks and placed them on his hips. "It's not like you at all."
Slowly, she nodded. "Then let us begin."
With those words, she handed the datapad to him to let him go over their characters and she turned to Anhaje, to brief her on being Queen Mother. The briefing wasn't too long. Anhaje already knew what to do in about every situation.
The handmaiden had left to go speak to the Court, and Tenel Ka turned to look back at her Admiral, who was casually leaning against the table and twirling the datapad around in his fingers.
"So... you're basically my slave... Rez."
A smirk appeared on Tenel Ka's face as she stepped over to him and swiped the datapad out of his hand. "That is right... Khee."
"Jacen's not gonna believe this." Gadell threw his head back and cackled.
Skimming the words on the datapad again, Tenel Ka mumbled some as her eyes crossed them. "...fairly good fighters, Khee taught Rez all the moves she knew."
Gadell circled her, glancing over her shoulder at the datapad, "I found it interesting that the form he excelled in was Hapan kickboxing. Although, the datapad also says they were good fighters, but didn't show that much... so they sometimes came across as a couple of helpless---"
"I am not coming across as helpless."
"Tenna, it's acting. We have to put ourselves into the roles of these people. We'll pick up their looks, their mannerisms... but we have to put the heart behind it, you know?"
Her eyes narrowed.
"Tenna..." Gadell used their Force connection to flash a mental picture of Jacen to her mind's eye.
Heaving a sigh of defeat, she nodded. "You are right."
"So..." Snatching the datapad away from her hand, he slid the compartment open with the flick of his wrist and extracted the Mindmap. He mentally followed the directions they had been given, on how to put them in and he did so, blinking his eyes numerous times after slipping it over his cornea.
In a slight wave of disbelief, Tenel Ka watched as Gadell's hair began shifting to blonde, while his eyes faded into a bright green shade. He was still blinking furiously, like he was trying to process many things in his head at once.
And then he just stopped shifting and moving.
"Whoa."
With the arch of a slender copper eyebrow, Tenel Ka reached over and grabbed her own device out of the compartment, slipping it into her left eye.
He watched with wide viridian eyes as the Queen Mother's hair turned a brilliant shade of cerulean and her eyes became a rich violet. Her skin drastically changed tones and her face contorted into a look of dismay as Rez Nyena's memories flooded into her mind. He giggled at her extremely different transformation.
"Whoooooooooa."
Her slight Hapan accent with its regal twinges had vanished and contractions crept into her sentences as she snapped. "What're you whoaing about, you big nerfherder?"
Bringing his hand up to his nose, Gadell quickly took Khee's Mindmap off before he fell into the other man's personality and mind too quickly. And reaching over, he did the same for Tenel Ka. She shook her head after the Mindmap fell out of her eye and into his waiting hands.
"That was insanity."
Gadell nodded in agreement, chuckling, "I know. But we're going to have to get used to it." He tucked the Mindmaps back into the compartment on the datapad and set it down on the table. "We'll work with them on the ship tonight."
Later that night, they boarded Gadell's personal cruiser, the Glass Dance, to leave for the Urbania. Before that, they had called a meeting with Anhaje and certain members of the Court to fill them in on what was happening. And now, settling down on the fairly good-sized ship, Tenel Ka finally took a few minutes to relax and let her mind run through everything that was going on.
They had a smooth jump into hyperspace roughly an hour after they left and Gadell took the chance to go get a bit of rest before they began experimenting with their Mindmaps. He left Tenel Ka alone in the cockpit and retreated to one of the two resting quarters in the back, snuggling up under three blankets.
"Hyperspace makes me cold." He had told Tenel Ka once, when they were on their way back from a diplomatic jaunt on Mon Calamari.
She had just arched an eyebrow in response.
So Gadell was cuddled back with his blankets on the surprisingly comfortable cots in the sleeping quarters of the cruiser while Tenel Ka sat alone in the cockpit. Not much time passed before her eyes had closed on her and she was drifting off into the lands of dreams and visions, away from the world of the waking.
The universe was dark. Echoes of familiarity slid around the void, trying to fill the empty space, as time slowly inched on.
"Hey, you fought really well out there yesterday, against that killer seaweed."
"You mean for a girl with only one arm?"
"I... no, I--- Sorry. All I remembered was you fighting that plant. I didn't even think about your missing arm -- it didn't slow you down a bit."
"Do not be sorry, Jacen. Your words were meant kindly. It is I who must apologize. I might have fought better, though, if I---"
"If you had had your other arm? Hey, I might've fought better if I had a blaster cannon, but I didn't. I just did my best."
The smiling face of Jacen Solo flashed through the void for moments before vanishing. He was laughing and speaking. As everything went black, more words could be heard...
I made it from the shards of Nicta's gort egg. Many cultures consider it to be very precious --- the egg, I mean...
Tenel Ka could see Jacen wringing his hands together, with his pet gort sitting on his shoulder. The scene shifted and Jacen was standing defiantly, with his hands on his hips. A young thing, no more than fifteen.
After all we've been through together, I'm not sure anything in the future could surprise me...
He just kept changing. Growing older, growing younger. And she was watching him, all over again.
You must be c-c-cold . . . I guess we make a good team -- always rescuing each other. Thanks . . . Hey, I'm not that easy to get rid of . . . Not on your life. After all, I've got to stay close to you -- just in case you need me to rescue you again . . . You're right. I just wish we could make a blanket out of your hair . . . Wow! That was almost worth falling for . . . It's a long way back up. I guess we'd better get started . . . I'm really sorry I hurt you Tenel Ka. It was all my fault . . . Race you to the shore . . . Well I... I... Um, want to hear a joke? . . . Hey, it's a great room. This is an amazing place. All those fountains . . . Just wanted to keep the score even! . . . If there's anyway I can help you, let me know . . . Hey, I was just trying to cheer you up . . . Blaster bolts! Let's go out and have a good time. It'll be great to be away from the watching eyes of parents and escorts and ambassadors. I promise you we're going to have fun . . . Ah. Aha. You have a lot to learn about jokes . . . Hey, if it was as dangerous to be me as it is to be you, I might try to forget who I was too. . .
"Tenel Ka... when I really love something... I'm never gonna let it go."
Then the void exploded inwardly, like a black hole. Everything was pulled in, twisted about and thrown back out filling the universe with words... with images...
So many things were seen.
Blood. The gort eggshell necklace. Jacen's lopsided grin. The Hapan crown. A snarling voxyn. A bright cityscape. The slice of a lightsaber through tan flesh. Ice blue eyes. The strike team memorial. Ta'a Chume. Hapes through a viewport. Belts on the metal floor of a steamy room. Water lapping across sand behind the Palace. Gadell Vessau, his Admiral's uniform gleaming. A blaster being discarded on the ground.
She saw shades of herself and Jacen Solo on the dusty hilltop, the crimson sky lingering overhead, her lightsaber in her one hand. She had stepped forward to kiss Jacen, before he left to go kill the voxyn queen. She could faintly sense Vergere breaking them up. And a visible portion of each of them turned away from each other, parting ways.
One to become an object of physical torture on a shaped world and the other to become an object of mental torture in a 63 planet cluster gone mad.
But faintly, she could see traces of them still standing on the hilltop, in a gentle embrace, their lips locked in a passionate kiss that could've been their last.
The images were stolen in an instant. And sound took over her mind.
So many things were heard.
i'm really sorry i hurt you tenel ka i'm NEVER GONNA LET GO i'm just keeping the score even an amazing place parents and escorts and ambassadors PROMISE YOU WE'RE GOING TO HAVE FUN um i i want to hear a joke WANT TO HEAR SCREAMING that was almost worth falling for he's almost worth DYING FOR it was all my fault you have a lot to learn about about jokes you're gonna know I EXIST this is a fact AFTER THIS SISTER ah aha blanket let me know let me know let me know I MIGHT TRY TO FORGET tenel ka tenel ka i'm really sorry I'M NEVER GONNA LET IT GO
Jacen's voice spread through the void like a fire, each word, each flame licking at her mind, snaking its tendrils around her innermost thoughts. And those thoughts led her to an image.
For a split second Tenel Ka could see herself being shoved against the wall by an unseen assailant, her voice crying out one name.
"Jacen!"
And she woke up.
"GET AWAY FROM ME!"
"Whoa, Tenna." Gadell sat in the pilot's chair beside her, his hand on her forehead. He had jumped back from her sudden outburst. "You okay? I couldn't sleep because you were in some serious pain."
"I... I had a vision..."
"What happened?"
"Jacen... he is... something is wrong."
Gadell waited for an explanation and Tenel Ka leaned back in her chair, feeding him everything that happened in her dream.
Afterwards Gadell took a deep breath and tried to take it all in. That moment was when Gadell kicked his big-brother protectiveness into full force. Something was seriously wrong on the Urbania ...and something was seriously wrong with Jacen.
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