Embers: Sequel to Crash and Burn

EMBERS (Sequel to Crash and Burn)
Begins six months after Crash and Burn.

The galaxy was trying to put itself back together. The war with the Stellar Imperium was over, and had now been over for six months; however, that wasn’t really enough time to do anything more than find most of the damage and take an assessment of how bad it was. For most of the worlds, the differences didn’t seem to be that much at first glance; with a few exceptions, most had only known of the Stellar Imperial War from the holovids and hearsay, and perhaps had lost a few of their own in the fighting, but that was all. Then there were the few worlds that had been completely obliterated; nobody was left on them to contemplate their lack of existence. The real trouble – with plenty of survivors, but not whole - lay on Coruscant, with the Jedi Order all but destroyed. Most of the Jedi were still alive. The problem was that they weren’t Jedi anymore.

For the first time in a long time, though Leia Organa-Solo pulled her thoughts away from the whispers and rumors that the Jedi order was all but extinct and focused on something brighter. That would be the necklace from Queen Breha of Alderaan, one of the few things that survived the destruction of Alderaan twenty-five – almost twenty-six, now – years earlier. Once worn by her adoptive mother, the necklace of deep sapphire beads strung onto a thin chain of pure silver was hanging from the neck of Leia’s only daughter, Jaina Solo. Who was less than an hour away from becoming the wife of Zekk, who was known to friends (Leia had never met any of his family; his parents had died fifteen years earlier, and his sister never contacted any of the Jedi) as Zekk of Ennth. She would remain a Solo in name as well as fact, and Leia did feel that she was not losing a daughter, but gaining a son.

At least one of her children was able to find happiness.

Jacen and Anakin, her sons, had disappeared at the beginning of the Jedi involvement in the war, only to turn up a year later on a remote planet, after being imprisoned on the cold world without any guards. It was enough that the Force was darkened during Lady Lumiya’s brief reign of terror, and that they had no ship to fly away with. Jaina was able to locate them near the end of the war and bring them home, but even without her Jedi powers, which had been taken away by the plague that destroyed midichlorians, Leia knew that there had been profound changes in both of them. A few for the better, most for the worse.

Anakin wasn’t even at the ceremony. He had promised that he would come to Yavin 4, but he wasn’t there yet, probably still on Coruscant with his friend, Dyar Leeds. Leia didn’t like Dyar for many reasons that made sense and a few that probably didn’t. It didn’t help, either, that Dyar had a history of running into trouble, and had recently left his smuggling life behind to start new on Coruscant. She suspected that he had merely traded in one form of trouble for another and not running weapons and drugs from planet to planet didn’t mean that he wasn’t doing the very same thing without setting foot on a ship. At first, when she discovered that she was wrong about thinking that her youngest son was dead, she thought that he would come home, have a happy reunion, and get on with his life. Return to the Jedi Academy, get back together with his girlfriend Tahiri Veila, and in a few years she would have been standing in the same place watching them take their vows.

Not likely, not now. She suspected that Anakin and Dyar were lovers, and although Han had dismissed her guess as reading too much into things, she almost reminded him that she was Anakin’s mother and that a mother’s intuition is a powerful thing. Not only that, but she was starting to get her powers back, now that the virus was out of her system and her cells were slowly starting to heal.

Jacen was another story entirely. If things didn’t work out for Anakin and Tahiri, she could believe that, since Anakin obviously had a lot to work out on his own and Tahiri was happy with Valin Horn. Even if it was probably puppy love and not likely to last a long time. Anakin had borne the brunt of the Sith attacks when they actually were attacked on their ice planet, and nearly died; Jacen, as far as she could get the story out of them, had fared better. But he had been replaced by a brooding young man who was barely keeping it together, and in the past few months, had almost completely fallen apart. She was actually surprised to see him and even more surprised to see him apparently sober.

Why he didn’t try to rekindle his relationship with Tenel Ka Djo, Leia had no idea, and felt it wasn’t her place to pry. Jacen was twenty years old and could make his own decisions; he was Jaina’s twin, after all, and she was already moving forward with her life, without needing to cling to others or to the past.

Although Jaina could certainly take care of herself, there was no shortage of help in the dressing chambers, which was just a room in the Massaassi temple now cleared of everything but chairs and a vanity table with mirror. It was the first truly joyous occasion since the end of the war itself, and of course the homecoming of the Solo brothers, and that might have been an explanation for why everybody there was so eager to be a part, even if it was a small part.

---

Jaina was just glad that her friends were there – most of them, anyway. Alema Rar hadn’t survived the war, but she was the only conspicuous absence among the bridesmaids. Jaina was surrounded by Tahiri, Tenel Ka, Numa Rar, her mother, and her aunt, Mara Jade Skywalker, who had married Jaina’s uncle Luke almost immediately after the fall of the Stellar Imperium, in a quiet ceremony that could have even been called hasty. Now the reason for this was obvious; Mara was carrying Luke’s child, and from the size of Mara’s waistline, Jaina doubted that her cousin was conceived as late as the honeymoon.

Which then brought up the issue of exactly how she was going to handle her own honeymoon. Although there weren’t many that would believe it, Jaina Solo was still a virgin. Sure, she’d been a pilot since she was sixteen, and trained with a lightsaber long before that; the number of kills she’d racked up between ground (or intra-station) combat and in her X-wing were too many to count on hands and feet combined. Even if one happened to be a Codru-Ji. But that didn’t automatically translate to having experience in all areas of her life.

And Zekk was half a meter taller than she was. She’d never even gotten far enough to determine the truth yet, but she suspected, given the length of his arms and legs, that pretty much all of him was scaled upwards. Jaina felt a warm blush creep across her cheeks.

“It’s normal to be a little bit nervous,” said Leia, misinterpreting the reasons for Jaina’s sudden pink color. “This is a big day for you.”

“I know that,” she said. “But it still hardly seems real. I keep thinking that I’m dreaming and I’m going to wake up to another alarm.”

“There won’t be any alarms to bother you – not now, and not any time in the near future,” Leia said firmly, and spun Jaina’s chair around to face the mirror.

Jaina didn’t say anything at first, and Numa immediately piped in with, “I told you that rouge was too bright. You should have gone with ‘bronzed sand.’”

“No, it’s fine,” said Jaina. “I just look like a doll, that’s all. A doll some kid painted all over.”

“Then it’s not fine. Here, let’s try again…”

Leia hastily re-did Jaina’s makeup job and the second attempt was taken much better than the first. She thought that it was a little too understated, a little too natural, but it wasn’t her wedding. That had been twenty-one years ago to an ex-smuggler named Han Solo, and this time the details were up to Jaina.

Maybe I shouldn’t judge Dyar so hard, she thought, and once again her mind drifted briefly to the son that hadn’t yet deigned to show up to his own sister’s wedding. The only wedding in the family that there was likely to be, the way things were going.

Even after they’d assembled in the meeting hall, and seated themselves, there was no sign of Anakin. The male friends of the couple – and Jacen, of course – had joined the rest of them and took their places in the makeshift chapel, but Anakin was still missing. It was little consolation that Zekk’s sister hadn’t tried to call him even after the news leaked that he was getting married. She was his twin, the lucky firstborn who was, like all firstborn of twins on Ennth, sent away to a foster home shortly after she was born. She hadn’t been seen since, and for all they knew, she was dead, or in some remote region of the galaxy where she wouldn’t have received the news.

“He’ll be here,” Leia whispered to Jacen.

Jacen shrugged his shoulders and showed his hands, palms up. “Doesn’t matter to me where Anakin goes.”

Leia nodded and held her tongue. This was a complete turnaround from the protective, affectionate young man he had been even after he returned from his shipwreck, but this was neither the time nor the place to make a big deal about it. This was Jaina’s day, and she would just have to sit the boys down and discuss their problem later.

---

“Tell me again why we’re here,” Dyar said.

“Because we’re going to Jaina’s wedding.” Anakin ground his teeth and pulled on a lever inside their miniature transport ship. “I told her I would be there, and I meant what I said.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s a smart idea to be flying around in my old transport when we’re somewhere we can easily be found. Dershen probably still has a price on my head.”

“You could have stayed home.”

“And let you hang around your old flame by yourself? Uh-uh.”

“Let it go,” Anakin growled. “There’s nothing going on between me and Jacen. Nothing at all. He said it was over, and I agreed with him, and hell, we haven’t even touched since then.”

“You still called me his name once.”

Anakin scowled. “Seems like you’re jealous.”

“Of that? Wouldn’t you be? The truth is that he’s no good for you, Ani. At least I let myself be seen with you in public. That’s more than he would do, except when you’re playing like brothers for the camera.”

Anakin didn’t feel like getting into another argument about specifically why it would have been a very bad idea for him and Jacen to start groping each other in the middle of a crowded Senate hallway. So he just nodded and continued flying, and they touched down in a secluded area about a hundred kilometers from the temple.

“I think the ship would be safer if it was closer to everybody else’s,” said Anakin.

“It’s my ship and I don’t want it spotted.”

Anakin caught a tiny motion out of the corner of his eye – a motion that was somehow different from the birds and the clouds on Yavin 4, things that he was used to. This was definitely out of place, and he glanced over his shoulder to get a slightly better look at it. “Too late,” he hissed. “Unidentified flyer at five o’clock.”

Dyar finished pulling the speeder bike out of its holding bay and climbed on board. “Then be quiet and get on, and we’ll outrun him.”

“Let me steer. I can ride faster without hitting anything.”

“Sit down and shut up. I let you at the control of my ship, but this bike handles a little differently than the ones you’re used to. I don’t want anything to happen to you, and if you’re in the front and it smashes into a tree, you’re the one who’s going to leave an impression on that tree. Hold on tight.”

Anakin sighed and sat down behind Dyar. “You like that part, don’t you?”

“The hold on tight part? Oh, yeah.” Dyar turned around with a look halfway between a smirk and a leer in his hazel eyes, and he planted a brief kiss on Anakin’s mouth before revving up the engine. “You can put your hands a little lower, you know…”

“Won’t that distract you?”

“Think with your other head. Hold on to the safety belt.”

Their discussion was broken by the ping-ping-ping of a few blaster shots peppering the top of the transport craft behind them. The bike shot away and Anakin instinctively clung to Dyar to keep from being thrown off.

“Now this,” Dyar shouted, “is living!”

“It’s more like getting caught up with!” Anakin shouted back. “He’s gaining on us!”

The other bike was less than half a kilometer behind them, and the gap was getting noticeably narrower every minute. Anakin had no idea why the pursuer wasn’t shooting at them, unless it was that flinging them off the bike at these speeds would probably kill them. Apparently he wanted to take Dyar back to Dershen alive.

Except that he was a she, Anakin realized. It didn’t really matter; they just had to get to the temple before the hunter did whatever it was that she had planned to do.

Fwoop. Ping. Thunk.

A metal hook had lodged itself in the back of Dyar’s speeder bike, perilously close to the engine, and it now ran from that bike to the one behind them. “Try to knock her into something,” Anakin pleaded, and he tried to swing the rope using the Force. He didn’t dare let go and try to cut through the rope with his hands.

The black-haired woman, tall and lanky and dressed in an old brown jacket over old brown trousers, kept climbing across the rope.

“Ingvor Gord,” Dyar said. “That’s the girl who was bothering me on Nal Hutta. Doesn’t have any weapons beyond those blasters, so don’t worry about her. Just get her off the rope or get rid of the rope.”

“If she’s that bad, then how did she track us way out in the middle of nowhere?”

“Don’t know. I’ll try to shake her off, and if nothing else works, we’ll just go faster.”

The bike whipped around trees and through leafy branches, and the speck-sized Temple in the distance grew and grew. They flew up over the hangar bay and towards the front doors to the main hall. “Open up the doors,” Dyar said.

Anakin reached out through the Force and threw the doors open. Dyar brought the bike to a halt just outside them, which made the cable smack into the side of the building, and he pulled Anakin inside.

Neither was entirely surprised to see a looming shadow limping up behind them, from a figure a little bit taller than both of them. “We are in a temple,” Dyar said to Ingvor. “This is a no-capture zone.”

Ingvor arched one black eyebrow and rubbed some of the dust off her face. “Your bounty has been reduced to two thousand credits and you’re almost not worth the cost of dragging back to Nal Hutta,” she said.

“Then why were you chasing me?”

“I just needed a ride. My bike is almost out of fuel.”

“I told you she wasn’t any good,” Dyar whispered, and slipped his arm around Anakin’s shoulders. “And, look – we’re just in time.”

“I’ll get you after the reception,” Ingvor snapped. “I said you’re almost not worth the cost.” She left a trail of dirty footprints up the center aisle.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Anakin asked.

“My twin brother,” she said impatiently, “is getting married to some Jedi girl – your sister, I think - and if you don’t mind, I’d like you to take your hand off my arm and let me sit down. We’re practically siblings now. Let’s not start out on the wrong foot. As for you, Dyar, you don’t count.”

Dyar and Anakin let her pass, and Dyar whispered, “Your family is all kinds of kriffed up, you know that?”

“I figured that out already, thanks,” Anakin said dryly, and they took their seats in the front next to Leia. Dyar wedged himself between Anakin and Jacen with his arms folded across his chest, and Anakin rolled his eyes.

Then the music started to play, from a set of pipes half-hidden behind the wall, and Zekk stood up near the front of the temple. He fidgeted for a moment before closing his eyes, and used a Jedi calming technique to get his heart rate back down to normal. He nodded slightly at Ingvor, and then was obviously failing in his attempt not to look at the carved side doors.

Luke presided over the ceremony, and Han led Jaina, dressed for once in white instead of orange, through the back of the room and down the center aisle.

She and Zekk said made their vows, and when Luke told Zekk that he could kiss the bride, several of the seated people started clapping. Tahiri and Valin made googly eyes at each other, and Dyar turned to Anakin with his half-smirk.

Tenel Ka made a quick glance in Jacen’s direction, but Jacen was still cold, impassive, there physically but obviously not really there. She looked away quickly.

The tradition of throwing the bouquet was followed, and there was no shortage of girls running up to try to get it. Leia and Mara hung back to watch them make good-hearted fools of themselves, and it came as a surprise to both of them when the bouquet of rare Dantooine blossoms, shipped in from a botanical garden elsewhere (since Dantooine was destroyed in the war), landed squarely in Tenel Ka’s lap. Tenel Ka wasn’t even trying to catch it.

“It’s a shame you didn’t get it, love,” Dyar said, and licked Anakin’s ear.

“I’m pretty sure Uncle Luke wouldn’t like that,” Anakin said. He let his eyes wander and noticed that Jacen was staring at him. He met the stare bravely, and Jacen was the first one to turn away.

Zekk flung the purple garter far into the room, but it floated over to Jacen and fell over his outstretched hand. “Hey, he used the Force!” Valin gasped. “That’s cheating!”

“No reason you couldn’t have done the same,” Jacen pointed out.

“But I don’t want to marry Tenel Ka,” Valin protested. “Uh, I didn’t mean that in a rude way. I just meant –“

“I know what you intended,” Tenel Ka replied. She looked uncertainly at Jacen.

“It’s time I left the past in the past,” Jacen said. “Thinking about things that happened to me is just making me mad, and it’s getting in the way of my training, and it’s getting in the way of something I should have done more than six months ago. When I left this very building to go to Dantooine, most of my thoughts were about you. And I didn’t stop thinking about you, ever.” Not quite the truth, but not quite a lie. “I haven’t been a very good friend, but it’s only because I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t think you’d understand me. I had to kill a Sith Lord – I had to take someone’s life.” He was getting a little too good at the lying-without-lying thing to be comfortable with that fact.

“I have taken lives when necessary. I am a warrior. We are all warriors of a kind.”

“So you wouldn’t pass me up just because I said that I never would use the Force to fight and then I did?”

“Jacen, my friend, of course I would not think less of you for doing what you needed to do to save yourself and save your brother.” Tenel Ka caught Jacen in a one-armed hug. She rarely wore her prosthetic arm, and had opted not to bring it with her.

“Then let’s pick up where we left off two years ago,” he said as he hugged her back. “We’ve been in love with each other since we were teenagers.”

“We are only twenty,” Tenel Ka pointed out.

“You know what I mean. If I bought you a ring when I got back to Coruscant, would you wear it?”

“Only if you also wear one, and it does not get in the way of my training exercises.”

“You’re so practical,” Jacen said, and he smiled. “That’s one of the things I love about you. One of the many things.”

He pretended not to notice when Anakin stormed out of the meeting hall, leaving his half-full Orange Rocket Fuel Blitzer glass on one of the tables. Or when Ingvor gave him her partial squint, glanced at Anakin’s trail, and back at him before tapping her long, thin cigarra on the side of a crystal ash tray and resuming her conversation with her brother’s new father-in-law. Something about engines. He actually didn’t notice Jaina shaking her head and covering her eyes with her hand.