Embers: Sequel to Crash and Burn

Five years later


Allana stayed perfectly still while the small transport touched down and sank several centimeters into the moist, swampy dirt. She shivered a little bit from the cold, as the air recycler’s temperature controls hadn’t been calibrated correctly, and Master Luke thought it would be good practice for what was to come.

What was to come. She had no idea what that was, and couldn’t get any answers. She asked many times what her Trials would be like, and everyone she asked refused to tell her. Master Luke told her that it was different for every person, and anything that he might tell her about his experiences would only steer her astray. Ben and Nilla were both very tight-lipped about what it had been like for them, and even her father would give her nothing but words of encouragement, telling her that if she trusted in the Force, then she would pass. That was as much as she could get.

“Remember,” Master Luke told her at last, “you will only find what you take with you.”

What does that mean? she thought desperately. She wasn’t planning on taking anything with her; just herself, the clothes she was wearing, and her lightsaber.

“Do I need my lightsaber?” she asked.

“I can’t answer that for you, Allana,” said Luke.

“I’m taking it, then.” One could never be too careful, and although she was only seventeen, she was not a bad fighter by any stretch – even though she started her training a year behind, she’d managed to catch up, and the Force was strong on both sides of the family.

“That’s your choice,” said Luke, in that overly calm and controlled voice that Allana knew to interpret as You’re making a mistake. But she had made that choice, and she didn’t feel comfortable going into unfamiliar territory without something comforting at her side.

Allana climbed out of her seat and looked around. Jacen was there, but he didn’t speak, and she knew that he was only waiting for her to finish. He couldn’t follow her into the dark cave on Dagobah, and he couldn’t help her with her final tasks. It was something that she had to do by herself.

If they can do it, I can do it, she thought. Ben and Nilla, like her, both had two Jedi as parents, but she didn’t see any reason that they would be more special and more gifted than her. Except maybe her own self-doubt; that was something that she hadn’t really seen in either of them. “Dad?” she said.

“What?”

“Did you ever… doubt yourself? Wonder if you could do something?”

“All the time, Allana,” he said. “But you have to forget about that right now. It won’t help you and will only make things harder.”

“He’s right,” said Anakin.

“But you’ll at least be watching me, right? If anything goes wrong?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” said Jacen. “I can’t see anything after you go in the cave, and neither can anyone else but you – not even Uncle Luke.”

Allana gripped her lightsaber tightly and didn’t say anything.

“If you’re not ready, you can wait,” Jacen went on. “There’s no hurry. Many trainees don’t take their Trials until they’re well into their twenties; you could come back in a year or two. The worst thing you can do is to plunge forward when you’re not absolutely sure of yourself.”

“I am sure,” Allana said, but she really wasn’t. She had too many thoughts bouncing around in her head. It couldn’t be all that dangerous – she hadn’t heard of any trainees actually dying in the cave. But from the few rumors she had picked up in the years, there were a lot of close calls. What if she was the first one that wasn’t just close?

Dad wouldn’t let me go if it was really dangerous, she thought, but that wasn’t true. Jacen let her do a lot of things that most parents wouldn’t ever dream of allowing their children to do, mostly since they’d gotten back from Dathomir. And she knew that he had gone on many missions much more difficult and dangerous than hers when he was younger – and Uncle Anakin was her age when he’d embarked on the fateful mission to Dantooine twenty years earlier, the one that had never been completed, and led to her father and uncle being stranded together on G0-CVII for a year.

But this was different. There was no danger here – nothing, as Luke had said, except what she took with her. She focused on calming her mind and pushing out thoughts that she didn’t want, and waited while her pulse dropped and her breathing became even. “I’m ready to start now,” she said.

Luke took her by the hand and led her through the swamp. Her boots sunk almost to their tops in gooey muck, but she kept on going, until they reached a place where the ground grew firmer. There was a rock formation, and a small cave opening into the beginning of the swamp. “This is where you have to go,” said Luke.

“What do I do when I get in?”

“I can’t tell you that, because I don’t know what you’re going to find. You’ll know when you’re done.”

Allana swallowed hard. She never really liked open-ended tasks like that; she had no idea what to expect. She nodded, though, and took a step inside the cave, before she could change her mind. The light from outside filtered in a little bit, but soon she was in complete darkness.

She lit up one of her small glowrods and held it up. There was nothing remarkable about the cave, except the feeling of dread that had begun as soon as she saw it, and deepened as she walked further inside. The Dark Side is strong here, she thought, and was immediately on her guard. Who and what was here? Did the Jedi keep a Sith trapped here in reserve to test the trainees?

The cave didn’t look like it was that large when she was outside of it, but now she walked deeper and deeper into it. Either the cave floor was at a slight decline, too slight for her to notice, and she was actually underground, or it was some kind of trick. She reached through the Force to find the transport, but couldn’t find it; the entire area was too clouded with the Dark Side. She fought hard to keep her breathing even and gasped when her glowrod started to flicker out. Luckily, she had two more, so she lit up the second one and let the dying first rod drop to the ground.

She pressed onwards towards the source of the darkness, step by step. Whatever it was, her test had to be somewhere around it; to face the dark and overcome it. Somehow. A fleeting thought about leaving and going back the way she came came to her mind, but she pushed it out, because she’d already begun and didn’t want to stop. She didn’t want to face her fathers and have to tell them that she failed because of her own weakness of will. Both of them had gone through the Trials at about her age, as had her mother, and she didn’t want to disappoint them or fail to live up to their standards.

Something rustled nearby, and she immediately grabbed her lightsaber. A shadow appeared and she flicked the lightsaber on; its white beam illuminated the space around her much better than the weak glowrod did, and she saw gray walls slick with slime and dripping water, and a large black bird flying towards her. She raised the lightsaber and swung it at the flying creature, and she easily cleaved it into two halves that shot out around her before falling on the ground a few meters away. There weren’t any more of them – at least, she couldn’t feel any – and she wondered if that was all there was to her task; a simple test of reaction speed and calm when under pressure.

Then there were two smaller birds, each molded from half of the larger one, and they came at her at once with silvery beaks open and ready to strike her. Allana, however, had worked with training remotes much faster than that and spitting bolts at her much more numerous, and she swung this time in a large arc that slid through both of the creatures, leaving four pieces writhing on the ground.

The pieces took to the air.

Now Allana wasn’t sure that standing and fighting was a good idea. Four birds was fine, but she had a suspicion that they would become eight – and that was a few too many for her to feel comfortable against. And if those eight became sixteen, then she probably wouldn’t have much of a chance.

Allana readied her weapon again, and when the four skull-sized birds came in to attack her, she cut them up one more time and took off running. The pieces were behind her, blocking her exit, so she went deeper into the cave – it had to have another end, and if it didn’t, then she could probably fight her way out one more time, just enough to run past them. For now, she had to get her bearings and focus her mind so that she would be ready for that last fight.

She thought she heard voices, and after she caught her breath, she crept closer to them. She wasn’t followed by the bird-creatures, so she kept walking, alert for danger, but noticing nothing other than the voices themselves. The sounds grew louder, and she was able to pick out a few words, here and there, in a mostly indistinct cacophony of cries and shouts. She recognized the voices and the words as Hapan, and her first thought was why are people from Hapes hiding here in the cave? Was it just a trick, or had she come upon a secret hiding place?

Allana knew that there were many refugees from the Consortium that had fled. Queen Mother Loralia was slowly disbanding the monarchy, turning power over to a Parliament chosen from nobles and from representatives from the New Republic. It was the first step in a move that would eventually turn the Consortium into a democracy, and it was only by miracle and by the lives of many, many guards that Loralia had not been assassinated. Many people called for her abdication, and several civil battles had broken out. Some people left, and others chose to stay and either fight for the future of the democracy or for the preservation of their ways. That was why Allana wasn’t sure about her path, about whether it was right of her to remain with her Jedi training and ignore what was going on in the Hapes Consortium. In the place that should, by rights, be ruled by her; she was the Chume Ta’, and she was now old enough to claim her birthright and rule it alone. Loralia was a placeholder, and Allana could go home at any time and force her to step down and stop the civil wars.

There was a large set of metal doors blocking her path forward, and the voices were coming from the other side. Allana pulled on the unlocked but heavy doors, using the Force to augment her strength to superhuman levels, and she managed to pull the doors apart just enough to slip inside and see what was on the other side. When she reached it, though, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

She was standing on the lip of a recessed arena, circular in shape and large enough to hold twenty thousand people. It was packed with people, nobody that she recognized but in styles of dress that she did. Twenty thousand Hapan citizens, wedged into the arena, and no sign of why they were there, or how they’d managed to get there in the first place.

The voices merged into one phrase: Ereneda Allana. She was aware of a throne ten paces away, sleek and cut from a single black stone. She approached it, and put her hands on it, but she did not sit down.

The arena began to fill with smoke. The temperature was rising, and Allana was now more confused than ever, and frightened. She had to save the people, but how could she do that? The chair was waiting for her, and she looked it over, and noticed that there were straps hidden just on the inside of the arms and the back of the throne. She passed her arm over one of them, and it snapped out as if to ensnare her. She barely was able to pull her hand away in time, and the hard leather struck her wrist and stung, leaving a red mark.

The doors were still open, and she might be able to lead them to safety. “Follow me!” she shouted, and she made sure that her voice carried over the crowd. But nobody moved, and they simply repeated their chant – Ereneda Allana, over and over.

She didn’t understand. Flames boiled up on the far side of the arena, and there was no reason she could see that would prevent anybody from climbing out of the shallow pit and leave it. But they wouldn’t move, choosing instead to stay right where they were while the smoke and flames covered over them.

And in that moment, everything did become clear. She couldn’t force anybody to do what they didn’t want to do, and she had to leave them to make their own choices. Even if they weren’t good for them, it wasn’t up to her to impose her will on anyone else.

The Consortium was just going to have to go on without her, and there wasn’t much that she could, or should, do about it. Nobody was forced to stay. Anybody who wanted to leave, perhaps to return when relative peace had come in or at least wait for the Republic troops to enforce it, was welcome to – and if they didn’t, then it wasn’t Allana’s fault if something happened to them. Teneniel and Tenel Ka had done their parts to get the people ready for possible changes, joining the New Republic and strengthening their ties to it, but the final part of the change was up to Loralia and the people. It was no longer Allana’s concern.

She left the room with a heavy heart, still unsure if what she had seen was real or an illusion. She passed through the cave, ultimately coming back to the place where the birds had come for her, and now there was the swarm of them that she had feared. This time, she didn’t think about cutting all of them down, but only slowing the nearest ones down enough that she could get away. Again, they only followed her for a short way, and then she was clear of them, clear of everything except the last half-kilometer that would take her back to the opening of the cave.

Allana crossed the distance in a short time and found Master Luke waiting there for her, along with Jacen, Anakin, and now Master Leia. Luke held out his arms to Allana, and embraced her. “Congratulations, Jedi Djo,” he said.

“You’ve done well,” Leia agreed. She turned to her sons. “Jacen, your daughter is a Jedi Knight today. The formality of Knighting her will be done later, but her initial training is complete. I’m proud of her – and of you, for raising her.”

“I was raised by two people,” Allana said quietly.

Leia nodded and looked up at Anakin. “You too, Anakin. Allana needed two parents, and you were there to be the second. That… well… I’m not angry at you. Neither of you. I may not agree with the way that you live, and I may not approve of it, but you’re still my sons, and Allana is my granddaughter.” She hugged each of them and then Allana.

“Where’s Grandpa Han?” Allana asked.

Leia glanced over at Jacen, then at Anakin again. “He’s in the Millennium Falcon, up in orbit.”

“Still not talking to us. Emperor’s black bones, it’s been eleven years.”

“I know, Allana. One of these days he’ll put on his big-boy trousers and deal with things. But your grandfather can be very stubborn. I’ll make him go to the knighting ceremony, at least.”

Allana nodded and climbed back up into the transport. Even though there was still a lot that was wrong, she felt as if a large weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She didn’t have to go back to Hapes; she could look forward to her life as a Jedi Knight, with her friends, and her family.

However, when her brown hood was to be drawn over her face, one week later inside the Jedi Temple, she was glad to have her face hidden. She had passed her Trials and been deemed good enough to take the title of a Knight, but there was something missing. Her mother wasn’t there to watch her take the next step in her learning. It had always been Tenel Ka’s dream to have Allana join the Jedi, somehow, and now that she had, Tenel Ka wasn’t there anymore.

Jacen tied her belt around her robes, and Anakin clipped her lightsaber to it on the right side. As much as she loved them both, her heart, ached, and more than anything she wanted Tenel Ka to be there. Something brushed against her cheek, then, and she smelled leather oil. She opened her eyes, and saw a blue haze in front of her.

Tenel Ka leaned over her daughter, in ethereal form, and pulled the robe’s hood forward. “You have come a long way, Allana,” she said, and briefly caught her in a one-armed hold. Tenel Ka then whispered something to Anakin and vanished.

She didn’t really hear the rest of the ceremony, with Verayan knighted behind her. The entire group was together now, except for Xander, back on Coruscant. But Ben, Nilla, herself, and Verayan were regrouping on Coruscant again, now as full Knights instead of trainees.

Her heart ached with a bittersweet sadness, missing her mother but thankful for the bit of closure.

Almost everyone left the auditorium, but Allana stayed on her seat long after they were gone. Verayan seemed to sense that she wanted to be alone, and he left her be, but Jacen and Anakin came to find her about ten minutes later. “You’re missing dinner,” Jacen said.

“I know. I’m not hungry,” Allana replied. She wiped her eyes. “I miss her, Dad. I’m sorry – I know you’ve been with me for eleven years and Uncle Anakin is supposed to take her place, but I can’t really just forget about her.”

“Allana.” Anakin shook his head. “That was never my intention. I can’t replace your mother, and I never would try. You have three parents – Tenel Ka, Jacen, and me. I’m an addition, not a substitution.”

Allana nodded slowly. She wasn’t hungry, but she was a little bit thirsty, and maybe she’d feel all right if she got some fresh air for a few minutes. “I can live with that,” she said. “Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“What did Mom tell you before she left?”

Anakin smiled a little bit and said, “She told me to take care of Jacen for her, and keep you out of trouble.”

Allana hugged him. “All right. You can do that.” Then her face took on a serious expression. “But I want you to promise me something.”

“What’s that?”

“No half-sisters. Ever.”

“Jedi’s honor,” Anakin said with mock horror. “One little Jacen-spawn is enough. Do you remember what you were like when you were six?”

“All too well,” Allana replied. “There was the time I tried to get you to shut off the droid so I could run away – what was I thinking?”

“And don’t forget your dress-up games,” Jacen added.

Allana turned bright red at the memory. “Ew. Now I really am not hungry.” She dashed off towards the makeshift buffet tables to get a drink before Anakin or Jacen could bring up any more embarrassing stories.

When Allana had rounded the corner, out of sight, Jacen pushed Anakin gently against the wall and kissed him. Five years of marriage, six more of living together, and they never tired of each other. (Well, there was that one time on Merooine, but that had more to do with the confines of their needleship than the company.) Jacen felt the heat of Anakin’s body seep through their clothing and warm his own skin, and the kiss went deeper, deeper, tongues twirling around each other, drinking in the taste...

“Would you two knock it off?”

Jacen pulled away from Anakin when he heard the gruff voice of Han Solo behind him. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“You’re in the Temple,” Han said. “But… never mind. Congratulations on your daughter reaching Knighthood.” He clapped a hand on Jacen’s shoulder. “You raised her well. Much better than I thought you would.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Han gave them a half smile and nodded as he proceeded on towards the mess hall.