Anakin Solo (anakinsolo) wrote in starnomad, @ 2015-09-11 16:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | character: anakin solo, character: darius vandreen, character: jacen solo, character: jaina solo, date: [61.10] |
Who: Anakin Solo, Darius Vandreen, Jaina Solo, & Jacen Solo
When: 61.10
Where: Shooting Star on the Errant Venture.
What: Anakin is looking for Rikki.
Rating: Low
Status: COMPLETE
It had felt like forever.It had not even been a month, not even the better part of one, but it had seemed as if it had stretched on into eternity. Anakin had recognized nearly within an hour of his argument with Rikki that he had been harsh, that he should apologize, but he had rather hoped that she would do so. And then when she hadn't, his pride had crumbled away and he had gone to find her again only to find that she'd left. He hadn't realized they were that close to leaving, and hadn't realized that nobody would say anything to him. His repentance at being so harsh with her had slid back and forth into anger, irritation, repentance, frustration, anger, and repeated at will for most of the past few weeks. By the time the Shooting Star actually made it back, Anakin was on round 9 or 10 of feeling badly about having been so harsh with her at the time and he was more than ready to apologize and to put all of this behind him - hopefully behind them. By the time he made it to the docking bay, the bridge was down and there were people around the ship. As he made his way down the lift, he stepped past Tenel Ka offering her a quick smile as he moved with a rapid gait towards the ship. By the time he reached it, he found his brother and several med droids making use of a stretcher to move Lyric down the plank. The sight of the other boy looking so poorly was enough to stop Anakin in his tracks, his face furrowing into concern. "What happened?" "Anakin," his brother's face seemed to half-freeze for an instant before he realized that Anakin was staring at Lyric and he shook his head. "Hopefully nothing bacta can't fix," he said quietly, his tone a little too measured for the lightness of the statement. Anakin nodded. "Where's Rikki?" he asked and with Jacen's pause the weight of fear settled in Anakin's stomach uncomfortably. He looked at his brother and then up the gangplank. "Where is she?" A whole ship full of solemn Jedi sure left Darius with a lot of time to think. Granted losses had been high. Two of the Jedi had fallen alongside Rikki and Darius felt all three of those deaths. He'd only just started getting to know the sisters but they were bright, they had been young, and there were three futures now that had just ended for no reason. Granted he knew that Rikki would have said there was a reason, the reason being that they were going to protect so many other futures in the long run. What he thought Rikki would say was probably the only thing keeping him together as he guided the ship back into the jaws of the rest of the Jedi. And of course one of the first faces off the gangplank was Anakin Solo. As much time as he had spent with Rikki in the past few months there was no avoiding how she felt about the youngest Solo boy. If someone asked Darius, which no one had, he didn't really see why. What was so special about this kid who barely seemed to have anything together? The kid even still seemed to have a babyface, which Darius himself had outgrown in his own opinion. Right now Jacen was frozen in front of his brother though, Lyric loaded up on his stretcher to get him into bacta before they really did run out of time for yet another life. "You're heading with Lyric, right?" Darius asked as he walked up to the two, his hand reaching out to brush against Lyric's still one for a moment. "You'll make sure the kid gets in all right?" Jacen still hesitated. Lyric needed the medical attention, but he felt like he ought to be here for Anakin. Darius telling him wasn't going to go over well and really it ought to be Jacen or Lyric - the two of them had been closest to Rikki outside of Anakin himself. But Lyric couldn't - obviously - Lyric didn't even know himself, and Jacen was the obvious person to make certain that Lyric got to medical. He knew as much as anyone about what had happened and what had been done while they were on the mission. "I -" "Go, Jacen," Jaina had appeared at the top of the ramp and was looking down on all of them. "Lyric needs help. You can come find us later." Jacen decided to just take Jaina at her word, before it got difficult and complicated, already Anakin had decided to ignore the four of them and was moving past Jaina into the ship. Jacen looked at Darius, and then at his twin and nodded. "He'll get there." Jacen looked back up at Jaina and she nodded at him, a look that passed between them that said more than any words either could have come up with. He nodded to the droid and put his own hand on one edge of the stretcher moving it towards the lift. His brother had disappeared into the ship and Anakin was searching every part of it even as the pit that had started forming with Jacen's pause seemed to grow larger as if it was collapsing on itself. He couldn't feel Rikki. It wasn't as if he'd gone looking for her exactly, because he hadn't felt anything go wrong. Not that he would claim to be able to feel a non-Jedi die over the types of distances that they were talking about, but somehow with Rikki... Anakin was certain he would have known. They'd had a connection, they'd shared something, and this wasn't just any non-Jedi. Like his Dad, he knew Rikki in the Force, but she wasn't here. If she were here he ought to be able to feel that easily in the Force, he ought to know. He had swung through the cockpit, through the main hold, through the cargo bay, and the small passenger bunk areas and now he was on the top of the ramp again. Jacen had left but Jaina and Darius were still there, and they hadn't answered: "Where is she? Why isn't she here? Has she left already?" Technically Rikki had left already, just not in the way Anakin was referring to. While Rikki wasn't a huge name in the Jedi order the fact remained that there were more people to tell, more people than there would be if he had been the one to go. It should have been him. Leader or not she should have been the one to make it back to the ship. Who the hell was supposed to navigate all this with him now? Someone like Rikki would have known what to say when faced with a kid looking lost at the top of a gangplank after having found an empty ship. But Rikki wasn't here anymore and now that left her last respects to him. And damned if he wasn't going to do his best to try and make sure they happened. Even if Jaina was here too to soften the blow for her brother the responsibility was on his shoulders, for Rikki. Darius looked to Jaina for guidance but there really wasn't any other way about this. "Do you want to go somewhere that's not here?" he asked quietly. Jaina had no idea. It had been over a year since she'd held Anakin as he wept about Chewie, and from everything Darius hadn't exactly said, but had implied, Anakin and Rikki were closer than she'd had any idea. Apparently like Jacen and Lyric were closer than she'd had any idea - after having stumbled across them both sleeping in the same bunk with Jacen wrapped around Lyric as if he were the physical manifestation of a healing trance. It was all making Jaina wonder if she'd lost whatever connection she had to her two brothers in the war. But none of that was going to help them now. Anakin was staring at her and she was half afraid he was going to run off again. "Let's just - Anakin come sit down inside. Let's talk." "You can talk here," Anakin snapped back as he tried to figure out what his sister was saying. Part of him knew, part of him feared what it was they were going to say, but it couldn't be that. He would have known. He was certain he would have known. "No, come on," Jaina reached out for his arm, and he jerked it back, but she'd already started walking back into the main hold where there were benches and a table, and where Rikki ought to be and Anakin knew her well enough to know that she wasn't going to tell him anything unless he did come with her. He flashed a quick look at Darius and followed. "What's going on? Where is she, Jaina? Please just stop -" his voice faltered. What was he hoping for here? something that made sense when Rikki was nowhere to be seen? Something that gave him some idea of why they weren't talking to him? Something that was more palpable than the pit of fear might suggest. Because she couldn't be - gone. He would know. He would have to have known. "Stop treating me like your Little Brother, talk to me." Anakin might be demanding that he not be treated like a child but in Darius' opinion he was acting like one. This wasn't something to be told to him while he was on his feet and desperate. He should have the chance to sit down, the chance to let the shock roll over him. Really Darius shouldn't even be here but at least it was Jaina and not Jacen who would be more than happy to inform his younger brother just who he felt was responsible for this cockup of a mission. Granted they had completed what Rikki had set out to do and that would protect countless Jedi from the jaws of whatever it was that Jacen and Tenel Ka had been fighting. Darius fell into step behind Anakin though, helping Jaina corral him. If he stopped then he would run right into Darius and with this formation they managed to get to the benches where Darius took his seat and looked up at Anakin with weary resignation. "You should sit down." Anakin didn't want to sit down. Sitting down seemed like the sort of thing you were told to do when something bad had happened or when you'd already accepted whatever it was. Anakin didn't want bad news and he was already rejecting everything about this scenario. Rikki was supposed to be here. She was supposed to be able to roll her eyes at him when he stumbled over whatever apology he'd managed to come up with and to punch him on the arm for being an idiot. He would have deserved that. He had been a bit of an idiot. He sat down though when Jaina reached out to pull on his hand but he didn't like the look on Darius' face. If she was in medical already he was going to punch them both for keeping him here instead, but reaching out through the Force didn't seem to give him an easy answer. But she couldn't be... She was obviously just somewhere else. Jaina licked her lips and looked across at Darius. He hadn't said a lot, but he's said enough for her to have an idea that this might not go well. And she could hardly blame Anakin for that. Rikki hadn't been someone that she knew well but she'd liked the girl and she'd done a decent job of putting together the mission. It had been no ones fault that she'd been left behind - whatever Jacen might have implied. Jaina could see that there wasn't time. Darius had made a hard call but she was reasonably certain it had been the right one. "We did what we set out to do," she said quietly. "Rikki had uncovered information that led her to believe that the Yuuzhan Vong were using the vronskrs from Myrkr with some creatures from their Galaxy to create a creature that could hunt Jedi. We needed to destroy that facility and everything in it before they could create them - or as it turned out before they could create more. They'd already created one. Jacen and Tenel Ka had to deal with it which took away two from our team to go in and deal with the labs." "We were already down, Lyric was nearly killed in an ambush. Jovan took him back to keep him from bleeding out. Even then we weren't really sure he'd make it to the end of the mission." Despite Lyric fading in and out of consciousness Darius knew that if it hadn't been for Jacen then Lyric would have been left on Myrkr with the rest. The jedi must really love him and Darius didn't want to think of what would have happened on that ship if Lyric had joined Rikki in the casualties. He'd heard stories of Jedi pushed past their limits and he wasn't in a hurry to see what would happen. Would those extra people have made the difference? The whole trio sent to that part of the labs had been slaughtered. All it might have done was give them five deaths instead of three. His face was stone as he continued on. Maybe he hadn't had a lot of practice at this but he'd seen enough people die on jobs or killed enough to keep his calm. "From there we had to split into two, cover enough ground to make sure that the entire facility was brought down. Rikki was pretty clear that no matter what the entire place had to go. And just seeing one of those things, I see why." Anakin frowned. Both with the information that Jaina had given him about what Rikki had been working on, and the frustration at her leaving him out - shutting him out of helping her with this project rose new and fresh. He should have been on the mission. He knew that he should have been. She would have needed his help, and if they were deep in Yuuzhan Vong territory - which, it seemed very likely at this point that they were - he could have helped. He'd done that with Yavin IV. He'd killed as many Yuuzhan Vong as any of them, and he had skills that might have kept people safe. But he let the frustration rise and pass for the moment. What he could see was that whatever their odds, they'd been made worse with Lyric's injuries, with Jovan being dropped out to care for him. With the unexpected need to deal with a live creature rather than a prototype - that would have pulled his brother and Tenel Ka away. If Lyric looked as badly as he did, what had happened to everyone. Lyric, Jacen, Jaina, and Darius were here. He'd passed Tenel Ka and Jovan on the way in. Zekk had been on the mission, but Jaina didn't look - Anakin pulled his thoughts together and nodded. Jaina nodded. "They were nasty, Anakin. Powerful tails, and their saliva burned Jacen's skin nearly clean off - and both Tenel Ka and Jacen were dealing with some sort of hearing damage from their screams..." she faltered. "If we hadn't realized this was here... if we'd had to deal with this when there were more of them - I don't know. Rikki finding out about this was huge." "Where is she?" Anakin asked again, feeling a bit as if he were a broken holoplayer stuck on one question, one line. But everything felt a little numb - he couldn't quite focus on the possible monster, or the actual monsters that had been created - when he didn't know where Rikki was. "She was setting the charges, Anakin. We couldn't get to her and get ourselves clear of the facilities in time." "So - she's - we need to go get her? why are we sitting here?" "No, Anakin. She was - she didn't make it out." Anakin stared at Jaina. But that didn't make any sense. Rikki had made it out of all types of situations and he'd seen it. And he would have felt it if something happened to her. Anakin didn't know how he could be so certain of that, but he was certain of it. He was more certain of it than he'd been of anything in a long time. "No. She's alive. You left her." "Anakin, she isn't. She was in the facility." "That's not possible. I would know." Jaina blinked. "She's not alive Anakin - there is no way she could have made it out." "No." "Even if she somehow survived the blast." Darius' words were calm and measured, ignoring the rage that was building up in his chest. Was Anakin an idiot or just young? He couldn't be that much younger than Darius was but he was acting as if somehow they would have just left Rikki behind, as if they hadn't seen the entire place get blown to the sky. No one could have survived that and as sick as it made him Darius knew it was true. So he continued on, pushing through and holding down the anger and distaste for Anakin's shock. "Which, the place blew. But even if that somehow happened she was surrounded by Yuuzhan Vong and Peace Brigade. The twins had already fallen, she didn't have a chance." Anakin turned his attention from his sister to Darius. Truthfully he'd never bothered with Darius one way or another. He had been an asset for Rikki and someone that she relied on for information but Anakin couldn't help but feel that he shouldn't have been on the mission overall. Certainly he shouldn't have been there without Anakin being there. Leaving people behind wasn't something they did and as best he could tell that was what had been done. "You left her," the accusation was quiet. He was still too numb with what he was hearing to feel anything like anger. She wasn't dead. If they hadn't seen her die she couldn't be dead. Anakin knew he would have known or felt something somehow. That this didn't make sense and Rikki wasn't a Jedi and that he would have felt no one else that wasn't family or someone he was very close to at the distances they were talking about didn't apply here. He would have known. He had to have known. Jaina reached out to put a hand on his arm, and he could feel the concern rolling off of her. He didn't turn to look at her though. Rikki wasn't dead. Rikki couldn't be dead. He'd left her with the most horrible of words. He'd never gotten to say that he was sorry. Or to apologise for what he'd implied. Or to ask for a second chance. She wasn't supposed to leave him. She's promised - they had promised they'd do these things together from here on out. They wouldn't run off on each other. They wouldn't lose each other. She couldn't be dead now. "She can't be." The words were a barely whisper. His skin prickled at the accusation falling from yet another Solo's lips. As if they thought Rikki would have some lowlife as second in command on a mission this important. But they could think what they liked, the Solo's were really no better than anyone else when it came to judging others. Once this was done he just needed to find a way onto a rock with more Peace Brigade to kill until maybe he met back up with Rikki wherever people without the force went to die. It wasn't the worst thought. He'd done enough for the Jedi anyway. Not to say he didn't have some sympathy. If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, maybe he would have found a way to hold onto hope. That strange woman had found her way out of more scrapes than even Darius knew about and he'd watch her power through enough to wonder just what was up with her, because that training wasn't really like anything he had ever seen. But the truth was the truth, and there was no way around it. "I'm sorry, Anakin." Darius kept his voice soft instead, avoiding the accusations. "But she wanted to protect the Jedi. And that's what she did." Anakin couldn't be sitting any longer. He didn't know where he needed to go, but he needed to be somewhere besides this ship, somewhere besides where he and Rikki had sat and talked and laughed and kissed - The sound of something wounded startled him, and he realized with a bizarre clarity that it was him that had made the noise even though he couldn't recall having tried to say anything. He hadn't intended to make any noise. There were so many things wrong with everything right now. Rikki was supposed to be here. He hadn't apologized. He'd waited - his stupid pride, and not wanting to make the first step. But he was supposed to have been with her. She should have let him come with her. He should have insisted. He shouldn't have left the ship. If he'd been there they would have had another hand and he could have helped her out - and together they would have made it through. He had gotten out of tighter spots, and the two of them together would have been able to make it happen. Anakin hadn't thought he could feel anything worse than how he had felt losing Chewbacca and knowing that it had been him who left him behind. But emotion had rushed back in finally, a weight of loss that was just as heavy, and sharper somehow - he hadn't left Rikki behind, but he hadn't been there for her either. And his last words had been sharp and terrible. He had been terrible. And the thought of Chewbacca somehow focused him back into the present. He had stood, one hand on the wall to support him, and Jaina's face was stricken, as if she couldn't decide if to stand up, or to let him go. Darius' face was - inscrutable to him - he could make no sense of it, and he felt to fractured to try to do so in the Force. His words echoed, but in his father's voice - you left him. You couldn't leave people. You just couldn't leave people. If you left people... The sudden sob was the the thing that pushed Jaina to her feet with her arms sliding around her little brother who was, in all actuality hardly her little brother any more. Anakin had grown taller in the past few months and if there had been any doubt about whether or not he'd grow taller than her, it no longer existed. She needn't have feared that he'd push her away, because his arms wrapped around as tightly as they had a year before with Chewbacca, maybe even more so. She pulled her hand up to his neck and rubbed his back gently. There weren't really words, there couldn't be any words that would make it hurt less. She ought to have known by the way he looked at Rikki the night of his birthday and she ought to have known the way Rikki talked about him. She just ought to have paid closer attention there was no excuse for how distracted she'd been. This wasn't something that Darius should be a part of anymore. The Solo's didn't want him here and he'd done his duty to Rikki to make sure that Anakin knew. Even if he was a kid, he deserved to have his grief with people he knew and trusted. Darius certainly didn't count on that list and likely never would. So he found his way to his feet and gave Jaina a brief nod. There was his own grief to tend to and somewhere in this hole there had to be something he could drink to just forget about the ache in his heart and replace it with a blissful numb feeling. Jaina noticed Darius slip away, and she just gave him a quick, tight smile, her own heart feeling a little pressed in as she listened to her brother cry. She knew Jacen had been equally lost with what had happened, although he'd said very little and certainly not broken down like this. Her own loss was punctuated with her brothers emotional states, not something felt so strongly herself, but Rikki had been a lovely girl, the sort that could have been a friend one day, and it was impossible to not feel her brother's heart breaking as she held him up the best she could. |