Space

[Andon]

She laughed and his smile widened, but it quickly began to fade as the laugh changed its pitch and escalated into a full fledged scream. She tensed up, the pulse of her outcry keeping tempo and smashing against his eardrums as her hand took his. It wasn't the gentle touch of a wife, she clamped down with a ferocity that suggested she believed all the tension of her body could be relieved if she just squeezed it hard enough. He would have winced if not for Jedi pain tolerance.

 

Jaina gazed at him emptily for a moment; a recollection struck him of a time from another life where she looked at him just as blankly. The pain in his hand couldn't match, if only for a fleeting second until her life returned to the auburn-green portals boring into him now. Did she... actually just blame me?

 

"I did this?"

 

He found himself somewhere between a smirk and puzzlement.

 

"Hang on there, sweetheart, it takes two to dance. You tackling me once the suite door closed behind us comes to mind. It's not my fault." There was a gentleness about his voice and being, but little did he know even those couldn't have countered the reactive implosion of hormones. "Okay, one plus one equals baby, so it's not 100% my fault. It's 50% me, I'll admit.," he half exhaled, "But that still leaves you with half the blame. That's like 50% on you, darling."

 

He reached out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

 

"I'm just the silly boy, remember," he lightly began with a half-grin, "You're the smart one."

[Andon]

If he thought her voice was cold, it quickly changed after receiving a glare that could freeze rain drops. For every petal you bloom, so groweth another thorn, my Jaina...

 

Her fingers dug deeper into his palm and he wondered for a moment if it was because she had gleaned that thought off of him; the expression on her face told him differently. She tensed again and her husband winced, but not for any physical pain. The innate warmth of his face slowly etched away as she continued to chip away at him with those pain filled eyes. His heart was turning to sand with every second. She exhaled and Andon breathed in her misery, it smacked him awake from his state of panic. He remembered who he was and what he needed to do.

 

"Beeps, get us out of hyperspace NOW...," his voice cracking lightly.

 

Jaina spoke his name and the sand became the rock she needed. The rock that heated but never melted underneath hazel-green mirrors that burned into him pleading that he someone make this all go away. The former Jedi's voice found strength again as he called his astromech "... and find me a system to land on." Clinging to him with unsourced strength, the wife carrying his unborn child began to pull herself to a standing position; his hands finding her sides to help balance her. Arms around her, Andon half-carried her back towards their room and laid her down on the bed. Propping a pillow up behind her, his fingers traced her shoulder and neck to rest upon her face.

 

"Everything's gonna be alright, Jai, I promise..."

 

In a blur he was gone leaving her in the care of Vee, the renegade in the bridge of the ship looking over navigation charts with the little droid. Finding one close by that suited his needs, he plotted a short hyperspace jump and the Rapture Star disappeared into hyperspace.

[Andon]

She loved you very much…

 

Even here, orbiting within the halo of asteroids tumbling about a vacant world ten thousand light-years from Corellia where he first heard the sentence, Andon’s heart still turns to sand when he dares to let the sentence cross his mind. For all of his prowess and talent, his niece’s childhood recollection of the life he once robed himself in is enough to dwindle away the last of his resolve. After all this time, he is still lost. After the years that have passed since Emily’s revelation had been imparted to him, Andon is still adrift in the shade of his former completion.

 

You were very much in love…

 

The castaway was trapped in the poison of sobriety, resigned to the punishment of an unclouded mind in which he could not hide from that which he dared not know. Alcohol no longer did anything for him, not after the… immersion. No substance could rob his mind of the eternal clarity that now plagued him; the clarity that had too resigned him to what was to come.

 

“I’ve tried to be a good man, Master. I have tried.” Even now, Hale Akturus is the one who he has reserved his last good-bye for. “I gave myself to the Order. All you entrusted me to, I gave of myself to see its task through. I’ve sacrificed friendships and loved ones, but I could not save the Order. I couldn’t be the man you hoped I could be. I couldn’t stop the Jedi from crumbling around me. I had to leave… I had to be more then they allowed me to be. I took up your cause for the innocent; I remembered all your lessons on justice and morality. I didn’t pity the weak or view them as inferior; I gave of my own will so that I could be strong for them. I shed blood… I killed.”

 

In his slumber, there was no reality because reality was determined by your focus. His focus was to transcend to that which did not need to focus; the focus was to undo the need of focus. To recuse focus, in essence, is to recuse reality. This slumber was a quest of madness by degrees and little by little the Jedi was coming to a close of that which could be measured. To drown and be submerged is to be dragged beneath the crash of the surf and tumble haplessly to the whim of a current; to be pulled down and crushed by increments as the pressure collapses around you. Immersion was different; it was the absence of pressure.

 

One is not crushed, there is no gravity or substance, and you float away skin cell by skin cell in an endless tide of being undone. If clarity was a needle it required one to be stretched infinitely thin in order to be threaded through the eye, only to have to weave oneself back together again… atom by atom. With each progressive dip of his toes into the stream, it was becoming more and more taxing to recall the rest of his body sitting along the shore; the Jedi feared he was surely losing himself to this monster he had birthed, but it was not a path he could diverge from. Andon had made a commitment, one not easily broken.

 

He hasn’t slept for days, but he is not haggard. He is strong, for he has not slept out of deprivation but because of focus. He cannot sleep; sleep is the enemy. When he sleeps he dreams and when he dreams he cannot steer, but merely witnesses. What he dreams is not what is to come, but what has always been. It is easier for him to change reality than it is a dream.

 

**

 

There is a click of static followed by a subtle hum as the holo begins to record the last image of Andon as a finite being. Shaggy brown hair frames his cheek bones as his mouth grows into a lopsided grin, because it is good that a recording will be made and proof of what he has become will be documented. He does not know if another living soul will ever find this recording, but the uncertainty makes it all the more important to share.

 

“This is the last testament of the Jedi known as Andon Colos, left to Emily Skywalker, my only remaining family in the known universe.” Hazel gray eyes are sharp and focused as they lock onto the lens of the holo, his shoulders square and his posture strong. “I am farther into the stars than I have ever dreamed to travel. So far out, in fact, I can barely detect any other beings through the Force. There is such an emptiness on the fringe, there is so little here that is actually alive.” He pauses, as if to gather the resolve to form his next sentence.

 

“I cannot feel the flicker of your future, I do not even know if you are alive, but I choose to believe that somewhere you are safe and loved. I have no possession of worth to leave you with, but what I have is a tale. It is the tale of how I came to witness the fabric of eternity unravel and mold before my hand.” Andon’s eyes glass over for the briefest of moments, as if he is seeing something familiar, but cannot quite place remembering what it means to know it. “My story is not an easy gift to receive, but it is mine to give and I will gladly share it with the little girl I remember, whose eyes were too smart for her own good. And like all good stories, my Emily, it all starts with a girl…”

[Andon]

I am full of years and out of time. I have laid along the shoreline of creation and watched the last sunset that will ever grace the horizon fade. My walk has passed through every history that will ever be and the sandy grain of possibilities that never were. And the memories of untold lifetimes and the empty in-between have been washed clean, as the tides of eternity crashed gently against my feet. I am full of years and time is slipping away, but the tale of my demise has been partially exaggerated.

 

In the farthest reach, of the most desolate expanse, hidden in the most remote nook, within the smallest corner, a lone ship haunted a virgin patch of space. The ship is tiny in comparison to the vast sea of empty black that envelopes the horizon as far as forever can be. In this vessel, the only three beings for a hundred thousand light-years can be found. An astromech and protocol droid lay dormant in the current of electric dreams from long ago. Untold years passed with the two the only company to be had in this voyage through derelict waters and starlight vacant skies. Even now the droids are waiting for their master to stir from the long winter’s nap he has endured.

 

And in this lonely ship anchored at the edge of existence, a single man sleeps, but does not dream. He has many years left waiting to be explored and an unknown amount of time to experience. But he is now the boy that can no longer be, drifting in a deep slumber. He can not feel, nor want, nor miss; but he is forever young and full of life, in this stasis amongst the nothing. His heart does not beat, and his lungs do not exhale. He is immersed within the most inward part of his being. Woven about him is the essence of all creation, the universes that have been and have yet to bloom flow through his veins, sustaining him in this journey of being undone. In this chrysalis of the Force, he is the treasure hidden away, waiting to be revealed.

 

Reflection: I had a wife and daughter once, long ago. And, very recently. And, I will again. It is confusing, is it not? I assure you, it will only become more curiouser and curiouser the longer you listen to my tale. Question: Can you truly be lost, when you can be found anywhere? Answer: Questionable.

 

The treasure is not the boy in chrysalis, for he is only the shell. His boast to steer the tide of the Force was one of misconception. Steering implies having to travel from a place where you are, to a different place where you are yet to be. When you are everywhere in the Force, there is nowhere left to travel. In this maw of infinity, he is every moment that has ever occurred, and will ever be experienced. Splintered into an infinite number of pieces, he dwells along every avenue of reality and stands as Guardian against the vastness of unexistence. He has lived every second, of every day, of every year, of every life, surrounded by every being that could possibly be. And he is alone.

 

For this journey began with a girl. It began with a life that was to never be known, and the inability to grieve all that he had. For it was not one girl, but two, that haunted his dreams. Wife and daughter. Gone, erased, stolen. A husband and father. Nevermore. It would undo anyone.

 

I loved them very much. Every day, all day, with every beat of my heart. All that I was, I gave to them. I abandoned war to keep them safe and killed to create a day in which such acts were no longer needed. But they were gone, and no longer needed me. Yet, I needed them.

 

But, Andon was not anyone. He was brave and loyal. He did what was necessary, against all odds of loss, without remorse. He was Jedi. Jedi do not mourn. There is no death, there is only the Force.

 

In my grief, I made the only logical choice a man could. I undid reality and broke creation.

 

There are certain realms of knowledge that no man should ever ascertain to possess. The very nature of life and death is enough to drive a man to madness, even with only the tiniest glimpse of the modicum human wisdom can muster. In ignorance, there is a certain innocence that can never be recovered once you have known a world outside of its protection. Andon would never possess such mortal innocence again. He did not ascend to a plain of enlightenment beyond his comprehension and lose his mind to the vastness of reality. He stole the secrets of eternity from the Room of Infinite Thrones and smirked as he razed the castle to the ground behind him. But he was empty.

 

Emptiness is everywhere. Emptiness is crushing, it was the only anchor that held him firm, delaying the eradication of his person within his complete Immersion. So, he became empty, because empty can fit into any space and make claim to it. In every moment and experience, he allowed his empty to make it unto his own.

 

He is the boy that peeked at every Christmas present through the span of a billion universes’ entropies and held the secrets ransom. He wandered every minute of creation searching for them, just to see his wife and daughter once more, if only in glimpses. After an irrevocable amount of time, he had found them. Instead of a gift, it was a curse, for he could see them, but not be with them. He could no longer share his life with them. He had spent so much time in the waters of eternity, he had forgotten how to return to the shore. So, he could only observe and influence; he could never truly embrace them.

 

I used to shape my daughter’s dreams. They were vibrant, full of color and wonder and magic and all the things a little girl needed to be reassured by. All the things I was unable to give her. Sometimes she would dream of my face. The older she got, the more blurred her image of me would become. I gave context to the lines, connecting the fragments of what she was losing, allowing her to hang on to my memory, if only for a little longer. I used to sing her to sleep, on the whispers of the wind; a gentle breeze tracing through Tirzah’s mind, keeping her safe. I played with her and listened to every story she could conjure, for as long as she could muster. And I adored every syllable she gave me. But it was a limited time. Eventually she stopped dreaming of me. I was the imaginary friend that she had left behind. And it was better that way. But I am selfish. Sometimes when I am weak, I plant in Tirzah’s mind my memory of holding her on the day she was born. I let her feel my joy and love and completion in that moment. It is all the good I have that remains.

 

His knowledge was not limited to only the things that had ever been; his wisdom entailed that which cannot exist. He had lived for a trillion eons past a time when his wife’s bones had returned to the dust that created her. This is a thing that no man should know and a burden no man should carry. But man was no longer an accurate term for the one that used to be called Jedi Master. Now he was master to none and Gatekeeper to all. Andon was a blight amongst celestial beings… and they trembled because of it.

 

He could do anything, but he remained with her.

 

I am weak. There is no other world, but the one by my wife’s side. I am the visage that haunts Jaina; the reflection in a mirror that cannot be found. Yet, I am the warm hand that quells the doubt that all things can be overcome. I whisper to her when she is least likely to listen: this is when I am the easiest to hear. I, too, visit her in dreams. It is our escape, the only reconcile in all the lifetimes we could ever have. But each time Jaina wakes, the same wound carves a hole in her heart that not even I can repair. For all my ability, she is the only one that makes me helpless. So, I savor the time we have in her dreams, and unravel the memory that she ever saw me as she wakes. In this refuge, she gets to have me, but without the anguish of having to remember me. This way she gets to move on without me, but know that she will always have my love. So as her slumber ends, I lose her each morning, again and again. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

He is full of years and almost out of time. And he is restless. He is restless, because the only life he dares not venture to, is his own thread of existence. His timeline, his world, his people, his life. He experiences everything except that which has been given him. The Immersion could not be undone, not entirely. Not yet. But it was time. It was time to begin. It was time to show his girls they had not been abandoned. The Force was his ally, and a powerful ally it was.

 

A curious thing happened across the expanse of a galaxy far, far away. A distortion began from the furthest reaches of the cosmos, and it spread inward. Through the Unknown Regions, to the Outer Rim, to the Galactic Core, the distortion spread. It reached all homes, in every city, on all planets, in all systems, within every galaxy, of the entire universe. It halted all communications. Local, planetary, system wide, galactic, universal: they were all interrupted. Beings on countless worlds experienced the vidscreens of their comm units and computer terminals go black. The entirety of the Holonet froze within its quantum transmissions. In place of the infinite exchange of data streams, a single video file emerged. It was blurry at first, but the outline sharpened with each passing moment. It was a human male. Shaggy brown hair gave way to a pair of eyes, framed by a scar on the right side of his face that ran the length of eyebrow to jawline. A neatly trimmed beard surrounded a lopsided grin. The face was younger than the life contained within his hazel-gray eyes. The man spoke a single sentence that could be heard just before the video ended.

 

“I am alive.”

 

The transmission lasted for exactly seventeen seconds. In his desperation, Andon influenced the very fabric of creation. His message wasn't merely sent to his own universe, but to every universe within the realm of eternity. His words reached as far as infinity could encompass. It wasn’t just data streams he influenced, it reached further: dreams, thoughts, telepathic messages, every form of intelligent communication was replaced. For that seventeen seconds, across all of time, no other information existed that was not willed by Andon to be known. His message sent a ripple through existence, invoking something primordial that had remained untouched since life began.

 

Within his chrysalis induced slumber, Andon’s right hand stirred in movement for the first time in many years. And deep within the blackest crevice of Creation’s void, something stirred with him.

[Andon]

Right. Oxygen. Suffocation. These are still things. I should probably fix that…

 

Jaina had made no attempt to respond to his last revelation, so he departed her company and wandered to the cockpit. While he was waiting for her to sort out whatever existential longing had gripped her spirit tight, he would ensure that the Traitor’s Hope didn’t catastrophically decompress and kill everyone inside. The horrific deaths of everyone would put a certain damper on the reunion. If I can actually be killed. As of yet, all signs pointed to no. He sighed, mindlessly tapping on the computer screen as the terminal performed its self-diagnosis of the ship.

 

The Traveler felt the burning warmth of Jaina’s presence as she approached him. A swarm of feelings and emotions began to boil over as the emotional currents of her inner storm began to churn and shudder. His face was hidden from his wife as she entered the cockpit, the weight of her footsteps screaming her frustration, as they always had in their frantic clatter. Despite himself, Andon smiled, if only for a moment. She was still his Jaina.

 

No foreplay, straight to business, as she unloaded the verbal assault that had been building since Andon first entered her life again, cavalier and full of magnificence as only a celestial scoundrel could. He had traveled so far and overcame odds that would have driven any other being in the depths of endless despair, spiraling into irrevocable madness. As he listened to her pour out the wellspring of her heart to him, Jaina’s words wounded him more intimately than any trial could. The brilliance of his presence wavered in her crumbling walls relaying the bitterness and agony that had been haunting the length of her days in his absence and the beguiling ache of his return. Her last sentence shattered all that.

 

Did she honestly ask me about touching the ship? A smile broke out across his face and it took all his eternal restraint to stifle a warm-hearted chuckle, staring at her in all her rage, covered head to toe in hyperdrive grease. She was definitely still his wife.

 

“Are you for real right now?” His smile was warm and reassuring. “Are you seriously upset about me fixing your ship?”

 

The furrow of her brow flickered for a moment, as though she had expected him to respond to her flurry of frustration in kind. Her auburn-green eyes darted to the lit panel behind him, then back to meet his, suddenly seeming drastically less sure of herself. “Yes?” Her chest heaved an exasperated sigh that was laughably familiar. “You just--you came out of nowhere--like you can fix everything--but I can fix it just fine, I just--” her words trailed off in a sputter of backfiring emotion and irritation as she pressed a hand to her eyes.

 

He closed the gap between them and rested his hand along her face. The touch of his fingers were light and warm as he brushed the stray strands of her brandy brown locks out of her face, taking in the softness of her skin against his. With a delicate tracing of his fingers, the chestnut strands of Jaina’s hair were tucked tenderly behind her ear. Andon held his hand there for moment, taking in the sheer experience of being near her once more.

 

“I know.” His words were soft, whispering all the affection he could not speak in this moment. “You’ve always been strong, but we’re better together. We’ve always been stronger as a team.”

 

Andon’s hand brushed aside a patch of grease that had collected at the corner of Jaina’s chin. “You and I… it’s the most irreplaceable feeling in all the universe.” Hazel-gray eyes carried a flicker of something within his gaze, a hint of understanding waiting just beneath the surface.

 

Irascibly, Jaina swiped at the same grease spot with her sleeve. Though obviously intent to rub it out of existence, the movement only resulted in leaving a new streak along her jawline. “For anyone else, that would be merely superlative,” she shot back waspishly. “For you, I’m not at all sure. Maybe you’ve been through the universe looking for that same feeling.” The pettiness of her sharp words belied the flicker of insecurity that blossomed in the recesses of her murky eyes.

 

Andon studied her eyes for a long while and his smile grew after finding what he sought. “This universe, that universe, many universes. Did you know you’re irritatingly unique in all creation?”

 

She was not amused.

 

“Don’t patronize me, Andon,” she said, a spike of pain echoing through the Force as she folded her arms across her chest. “You could mend every facet of this ship just by looking at it, somehow, and you’re only letting me put my hand to it to begin with.”

 

He reached out and removed the streak of grease that Jaina had managed to smear even further across her jawline. She showed him no warmth, but did not recoil nor prevent his touch. “Let’s be honest, no one LETS you do anything.” His eyes squinted ever so slightly, with a hint of teasing. “Not now, not ever.”

 

She had, somehow, become even less amused: a monumental achievement in doghouse dwelling.

 

The choleric glint of her stare hardened. “Did you just up and disappear from this galaxy to seek your fame and fortune as some interstellar quantum ship mechanic? Being a Jedi wasn’t good enough for you?”

 

She had wiped the kind smile from her husband’s face and replaced it with a coy smirk.

 

“You got me dead to rights. The whole Hero and Husband thing just lacked a certain pizazz. Changed career paths and traveled to the far reaches of the universe to be a flight jockey and mechanic extraordinaire.” He turned his back to her and began rummaging through a nearby storage compartment, withdrawing a somewhat clean rag. He tossed it to Jaina, for it was decidedly less filthy than her currently.

 

“Even had my own show on the Holonet, very popular in syndication.” His eyes looked past her, towards the hyperdrive, and his smirk grew. He snapped his fingers and the ship dropped out of hyperspace. “By the way, you crossed your dampening capacitors on the hyperdrive, we were three seconds from implosion. Not a big deal for me being… a thing. A terminal gravity shear wouldn’t even affect me.” A wave of his hand hurtled the ship back into depths of hyper travel. “You know, quantum mechanic intuition. You’re welcome.”

 

The light in his eyes dimmed and the emotion fell from his face. “Is that honestly what you think, that Jedi just wasn’t good enough and I left?”

 

He turned to face her once more, taking several strides to stand before her. “Go ahead, Master Jedi, ask.” Not even his celestial resolve could mask the hurt in his voice. “Ask me why I left.”

 

The frigid, stony resolve on her face contorted in response to his cutting sarcasm, and the rag he had tossed to her became the scapegoat of the torrential emotion that spilled out from inside the buttoned-up exterior of his wife, wrung mercilessly between her hands. The pointed barb of his final words had pierced the shield of her rage, and the frost in her eyes melted into runoff that erupted onto her cheeks as she shook her head, unwilling to meet his gaze, obviously struggling to collect herself into words.

 

As though she bore heavy weights around her neck, it took a concerted effort for his wife to meet Andon’s gaze. The hollow sadness that emanated from her deep eyes painted a grand mural that he could read, the time and space she had inhabited without him displayed as a work of art painted in fresco, dried into the plaster of her soul. Unspeakable loss wove its way to the forefront, and the fear that colored her thoughtless jabs spilled out from between trembling lips.

 

“You left me nothing,” she whispered pleadingly, pressing the rag into his chest. “There was no word, dead or alive, no one who could tell me anything about where you’d gone. All I wanted was--something--some word, anything--” Pain strangled her words into nothingness as Jaina and Andon locked eyes, all pretense set aside. Breathlessly, achingly, she pressed her hands into his chest as though she could make him more real.

 

“Why did you leave?” There was no accusation in her voice, just the phantom of her lonely sadness.

 

Her words extinguished the fervor of his anger, but he wasn’t quite ready to let it go entirely. The anamorphic display of all she contained behind the walls that had become the shelter of her trembling heart had fallen to the touch of his forceful display of wit. He had expected the razor of her fury and the guile of her venom; however, the tenderness of his wife’s heart had struck him as decidedly unexpected.

 

Unnervingly unexpected.

 

He tilted his head to the left as he searched the cascade of her auburn-green eyes, unable to reconcile why she had chosen this moment to reveal her depths to him. There was no answer he could comprehend, that would make rational sense. Though when it came to navigating the waters of feminine rationale, such concepts were not always necessary.

 

“I had nothing to leave you with.” His voice was decidedly more tender than the last time he spoke. “There was no goodbye, no grand farewell, no kiss good night… because there was no you. There was no memory to leave it to.”

 

The hands of his wife that were pressed into Andon’s chest were taken into his own, his fingers entwining with hers: both now shared hands of grease and grime.

 

“The Grey Goddess robbed me of any feeling and thought that our family ever existed. She exorcised my longing and desire, casting me into exile and forcing me to wander without any notion that I had a wife and daughter. Meeting Emily on Corellia that day ended everything for me.”

 

Her face looked up to him longingly, the warm tears of her remorse carving deep trails through the grease on her face. It was utterly endearing, in the most Jaina way possible.

 

“I didn’t leave. I searched for you and Tirzah, for some answer to why I couldn’t even picture your faces. I traveled and learned many… unnatural abilities… but none led to you. And when this galaxy no longer had any more answers, I ventured outward.”

 

Andon reached up and cupped his wife’s chin in his hand.

 

“I didn’t abandon you, there are places I went that one does not simply leave. I got lost and searched for a way back.” He could feel his own tears begin to well now, reliving where he had gone through the lense of Jaina’s loneliness. “I entered a threshold that was meant to never be crossed… and then I could see you and Tirzah again.”

 

She had finally undone him.

 

“That’s why I came back. It’s why it had to be now and here that I am with you again. It was the first moment I could. Everywhere I’ve been… it’s not like what you think. It’s not an infinite cycle, it’s a series of choices and doors to navigate.” Andon’s voice became infinitely soft. “Sometimes it takes you places that you don’t want to go. But I found you again.”

[Andon]

Within the jaws of Creational Zero, cast asunder from the Waterfalls of Endless Realty, our Traveler had been isolated within the Empty In Between of all that would ever exist. He pondered if he had made a catastrophic mistake in his process of being infinitely undone, wondering if it would have been better to let the tunnel finish its task of floating away all that he was. Atom by atom he had been scattered into the unknown, yet the smallest speck of his failing heart would not yield. That tiny, stubborn fracture of consciousness that could not bid goodnight to the light of Jaina’s love, was the catalyst that marked the end of the omniverse’s curtain call and became the prelude to Andon’s great Encore of Creation.

 

Deeper down he sank within the maw, tendrils of warmth grasping desperately to his ankles, taking him down 20 Million Leagues Below the Sea of The Endless. There was no shaping this current, nor steering its intent to conform to our hero’s will. For this, he was a mere passenger, terrifying in its own right to the boy who would be king. Hands desperately clawed for any notion of grip within the tides of ethereal empty, revealing no foothold for which to brace himself upon. Downward he went, reaching skyward toward a plane that bore no skies, only to find his hand breaching the break of lavender waves and and depositing him upon a beach of pale azure sand.

 

There was no sun on this world, he soon realized, as he gazed upon the horizon and found dozens of small moons that refracted light from an unknown source upon the shore. How so many satellites in close proximity did not shear the planet into fragments with the multitude of contrasting gravity pulls, he did not know. But in this moment Andon did not care, for he exhaled in relief that he was somewhere. He did not know, he was in fact *many* somewheres, but that is a tale for another time.

 

For now, he reveled upon the world in which he found himself on. He never envisioned that his life would take him to such a place, but he realized that it was, indeed, a good place to find himself. Movement in the distance drew his eyes from the horizon, down to slender forms that vanished as their gazes met his. Something here was alive with him…

 

***

 

Andon opened his eyes and found that he was no longer staring at the waves of lavender ocean, but was laying in the Captain’s Quarters of the Traitor’s Hope. He no longer dreamed when he slept, if such a thing as sleep could describe the quiet motions of his mind in slumber amongst the tides of eternity. Jaina stirred in the bed next to him, and he smiled, realizing this too was a wonderful place to find himself in. Reluctantly, he unraveled himself from the form of his wife and the endless plush sea of blankets she was now surrounded in, and stood up from the bed.

 

It was good to be home.

 

He walked over to the bulkhead wall that was shared between the Captain’s quarters and life support control room… something had caught his eye when they had passed from one side of the wall to the other. Hazel-gray ears looked upon a particular panel for a moment, before he squinted his eyes and the panel slid back, revealing a hidden compartment. He did not find a smuggler’s bounty of treasure within the walls, but to Jaina it was a treasure, indeed. In this sliver of the ship, hung neatly pressed shirts and pants. Clothing that belonged to Andon, specifically. He turned his face toward his wife and smiled, for no matter how hard she had tried to remove the Jedi from her thoughts, Jaina had kept that which reminded her of her husband close and safe. Finding that his current robes would be in need of a deep scrubbing after Jaina’s escapades in repairing the hyperdrive, Andon was glad to have something else to wear.

 

From the hangers, he removed a charcoal gray, long-sleeve button up shirt and black pants; the clothing still immaculately tailored, just as he remembered. Black boots with a surprisingly recent shine and an onyx colored thigh-length long coat completed the outfit change. Andon did not wake Jaina when he exited the room, for she would know where he had gone.

 

Emily.

 

He began to walk toward her quarters, sensing the increasing confliction of his niece’s thoughts. The perpetual struggle to go or stay: she was more like her Aunt Jaina than she realized. Andon stood before the door leading to her room for a moment before knocking, gleaning from the air the chill of jealousy and ache that echoed within the corridor. He lightly rapped on the door with two knuckles, knowing his presence had already announced who was on the other side. It just wasn’t polite to simply barge into a lady’s quarters, after all. There was no immediate answer to his request to enter.

 

“The answer is stay. Don’t leave…”

 

It was abrupt, yet intimate in tone. One day, Andon would have to work on answering questions that only existed as thoughts in the minds of others. But today was not that day.

[Andon]

Her words hung in the air and all that was left unsaid reverberated between the walls. For the briefest of moments, Andon turned his head to face an empty spot within the room, as if another person had entered it. Curious. His gaze held the spot for a moment, before his shook his head and returned his attention back to Emily.

 

“I understand”, his voice was noticeably heavier. “You’re not our prisoner. I won’t keep you here, if that is what you wish. I don’t want to cause you pain by keeping you too close.”

 

Andon no longer leaned against the bed frame, but moved toward Emily. His index finger found her chin and gently turned her face to him, their eyes meeting once more. “But we’re all that we have left. Trust me, it’s so much lonelier out there then any of us could ever realize. We’re here, together, now. That’s more family than the three of us have had in our entire lives.”

 

His voice softened, no longer carrying the carefree humor that it possessed earlier. “So don’t go. Stay with me. Stay with both of us. I’m asking you to stay, for me. I’ve done things that have… changed me. I need you to be around, I need your help to remember what I once was.”

 

Her uncle’s voice trailed off, as if even he was at a loss for words to describe all that he had been through and seen. “Stay for Tirzah. She wasn’t there to be a part of any hurts that may have been caused. She needs her cousin…”. For the first time in years, his voice sounded sad as the last sentence left his lips and floated outward into the air. He knew that the mere mention of Tirzah would draw about an agonizing loss from Emily that he would not be able to understand, as a man.

 

“But I need to tell you something if you’re going to stay, something you should know.”

 

Unconsciously, he reached out with his hand as if to trace the scars upon her stomach, but withdrew his hand. She had not taken it well the last time he had shown such affection, and didn’t want to cause her any more confliction.

 

“On Yavin IV, when I … understood… what happened to you. When I touched the marks on your womb, I- I tried to change what had happened.” Andon dropped his gaze to the floor, ashamed to look at her. “I tried to save your child. But I couldn’t. For all I’ve become, there are still some things that I cannot do. What happened with the Cult, it was a fixed event in time. Not even I could change what happened… I couldn’t take that hurt from you.”

 

He sat down on the bed, resting his chin within the web of his hand. He was dangerously mortal in this moment, and became unsure for the first time in many lifetimes. “I tried, but I couldn’t save you from that. I’m so sorry…”