Anakin Solo (jediheir) wrote in utr_logs, @ 2008-07-24 18:16:00 |
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Entry tags: | alternaverse plot, anakin solo, jaina solo |
Who: Jaina and Anakin Solo
What: Dueling, possibly to the death
Where: London
Warnings: Violence
Step one was a will, just in case. Most of his possessions were divided between his coworkers, mostly because his family was busy trying to kill him. His lightsaber went to his grandfathermother, who would know what Jedi traditionally did with the lightsabers of fallen loved ones. It couldn't fall into the hands of any other Jedi, since it seemed to be Go to the Dark Side week in this world.
He didn't know for a fact if Jacen had fallen, but that speech he gave to Jaina seemed fairly close, and Anakin knew he'd had... trouble in the past.
Then, at the risk of losing his job even if he did survive, Anakin used the Force to convince Jamie (or at least a Jamie) not to care that he was leaving and that he shouldn't let anyone care too much. That was easy enough with Rahne as crazy as everyone else.
Then he left X-Factor. Too many people in there with too much experience fighting to care that they couldn't take on a Dark Jedi.
Jacen probably had Brooke taken care of. Right now, Jaina was the one who needed him. Either to stop her from hurting someone... or to stop her from hurting anyone.
Anakin was a little disoriented when the Portkey dumped him off in London, but fortunately, Jaina wasn't waiting for him. That would have been his strategy, if he were evil. Good thing for him he wasn't fighting himself.
He went inside Jaina's house, hoping that there was some way to talk to her, but knowing there wasn't. She wasn't home.
There was a park across the street from her place. He waited there for her to come back, listening to the sounds of children playing and laughing. Anakin pushed a few on the swings to pass the time. They didn't seem to mind an invisible hand pushing them higher and higher.
His enjoyment was interrupted, however, by sensing something like a massive ball of rage coming towards him. "Get out of here, kids!" he yelled, his voice laced with the Force. "Go home! Run!" He drew his lightsaber just in time to block a blow from Jaina. She was pale and haggard, her eyes dark and hateful. "You didn't even try to disguise your attack."
"I wanted you to see your death coming for you," she spat. She swung again, more fiercely. And again, and again, and again, blocked each time, but only just. "STOP HOLDING BACK!" Jaina screamed, her rage as apparent in her voice as it was in her attacks.
"No." He pushed her back and leapt away to stand on top of the swing set. Jaina stubbornly followed. "There's no reason for you to be doing this! It's destroying you!"
"No reason? How dare you?!" She swung again, as confidently balanced as Anakin was. "You weren't there! You know nothing!" One of her attacks connected, only slightly, but it was enough to throw Anakin off balance. He fell to the ground, winded. He could feel her eyes on the mark she'd left; she'd drawn first blood, and liked it. A sensible attacker would have killed him now, but Anakin was confident that Jaina wasn't sensible at the moment. She wanted him to suffer. Unfortunately, she knew that making a Jedi suffer had nothing to do with attacking the Jedi.
The bright lights and crackling sounds of the clashing lightsabers had drawn a few onlookers. None of them were the children that Anakin had sent away, fortunately. Jaina sent lightning their way and delighted in their frightened shouts. "Look at them. I nearly kill them and they're still too stupid to run away. Maybe if I kill one of them, eh?" She jumped forward, bringing her lightsaber down in one glowing swing--and was thrown face first into a tree.
Anakin stood up, his hand raised from guiding her with the Force. "No." While Jaina was distracted, he put the image of almost being struck by lightning into every mind around them. "Get out now, or I'll kill you myself!" he bluffed. Fear wasn't one of the tools of the Jedi arsenal he liked to use, but when lives were at stake, his reputation didn't matter.
Jaina was up again, just as angry, but this time she was smiling. "Well, well, Ani has a weakness after all." The screams around them didn't seem to faze her, as if she'd heard them all before.
"More than you know. Of course I don't want innocent lives destroyed, but I especially don't want you to do it. When this is over, I don't want you to regret anything. This isn't you." His voice was soft, as if he were talking to a wounded animal.
It only made Jaina angrier. "I don't regret anything! You don't know--"
"--the power of the Dark Side? Yeah, I've heard it all before. If you're so strong, why haven't you killed me yet? Face it. You don't want to."
"I'll show you exactly what I want to do!" She attacked again, but now she was sloppy. Her skills took a backseat to blind rage.
Anakin continued his own assault. "I'm stronger than you." He pressed his attack. "I'm more experienced than you." She was more destructive now than anything else. She used every blow he redirected to cut something; the bars of the swingset were nothing more than slag. "And I have something you don't: I know I still love you. Stop this."
She paused long enough to take a deep breath, then smiled darkly. "That's the problem with you, Anakin. You never stop to consider the possibility that someone else is as smart as you are." With that, she jumped away.
Anakin sensed what she was doing too late. She used the Force to pull down the already weakened swingset, trapping him in a partially molten prison. He did all he could to stop himself from being injured, but he lost his lightsaber in the chaos. As he crawled out from under the wreckage, burned and bloodied, he found Jaina standing over him, his lightsaber on her belt and her own inches from his throat.
"How does it feel, Anakin, to die? You'd be the person to ask, since you did it once before. Is there guilt, when you abandon everyone you love for your own sense of peace? Did you feel relieved, to just give up and leave us to suffer?" Jaina raised her blade slightly. "Are you ready to die again?"
Anakin took a few deep breaths as his hand inched toward his belt. "That's the problem with you, Jaina. You never stop to consider the possibility that someone else can think ahead." He drew Donnie's lightsaber from his belt and knocked her blade aside, snatched his own lightsaber away with the Force, and ignited the second. "I've been learning."
"GIVE THAT BACK!" she screamed. She locked her lightsaber against his two. "I'll kill you!"
"This? You want this back? I thought you didn't care about anything anymore. Suddenly Donnie's lightsaber matters?" Now she was genuinely fighting with nothing more than blind rage. Every attack parried with Donatello's lightsaber seemed to make her madder.
"I'll kill you!" she repeated. "Then I'll go after everyone you love! I can sense it. Jacen found Brooke, and you found someone else. And I'll cut off her pretty little head." She cackled at the thought, more than half insane.
"I know what you're doing. I'm not Uncle Luke, you're not Darth Vader, and I'm not going to let you hurt anyone else!"
"How do you plan to stop me?"
Anakin kicked Jaina in the stomach and brought Donatello's lightsaber down on her arm. Her hand fell away, and he caught the lightsaber with the Force. He brought his own lightsaber around and cut it in two. "Like that."
Jaina screamed, probably more from surprise than from pain, and clutched her forearm to her chest. Anakin still had his lightsabers at the ready. It would have been easy right now to kill her. Spare her the pain of waking up with the realization of how much suffering she might have caused. He would rather be dead than to have that hanging over his head, and what had her life been but pain?
It wasn't fear of the Dark Side that stopped him. It was, in a way, the acceptance of it; he was too selfish to kill her. He wanted her in his life. Anakin couldn't lose his sister.
He switched off both lightsabers and knelt in front of Jaina. She was shaking. He put his hand on her shoulder. "Let go of me," she muttered.
"No."
"Don't touch me. Don't touch me!" She scratched him across the face, drawing blood. He didn't let go. "I can still kill you," she threatened.
"No you can't." Anakin put his arm around his sister and pulled her closer to him. She struggled a little bit, and then broke down into tears.
"I hated you so much..." she sobbed. "You died, and I felt it, and it was so painful... it was so much easier to hate you than to miss you. I'm so sorry..."
"I know," Anakin whispered.
"I came here and... and..." It got harder to understand Jaina as the tears poured out. "...over it... and Donnie... the kids... Jacen, I was so jealous and..."
"Shh." It was going to be so hard for Jaina if she remembered this when she returned to normal. Even just the past week, to say nothing of her descent into darkness. He tried to think of something to say to make her pain ebb a bit. "I love you." That probably didn't help much.
Jaina just sobbed harder. After a while, Anakin realized that her sobs had gotten very quiet. She was asleep, or unconscious. Either way, Anakin picked her up and carried her home. The strangest part was putting her hand in her lap. The police were there, and probably had questions, but Anakin and Jaina went unnoticed, as did the broken lightsaber floating towards them when Anakin realized he'd left it behind.
Once they were back at Jaina's house, he put her in her bed. Her hand was on ice; he wasn't sure if it could be saved or not. In the meantime, he found a bathroom and checked himself out in the mirror.
He almost didn't recognize the face that stared back at him. Anakin was bloodied, bruised, and burnt. His father would be proud. He did his best to wash off the filth and treat what he could. Then he returned to Jaina's side to bandage her hand. Afterwards, he found a pencil and a piece of paper and began drawing plans for an artificial hand, in case she needed one.
When finally Jaina woke up, she looked over at Anakin, who was still working, and said, "Now what?"
Anakin sighed. "I imagine when this is over, things will go back to normal, and you'll have no idea why you did everything you did. In the meantime, you do the same thing that everyone else does. You do your best to fix your mistakes."
"This isn't a bad transistor coil, Anakin."
"No. This is easier to fix. Transistor coils don't have people that love them."
She smiled a little. "How'd you get so wise?"
"I look at what Jacen does, then I do the exact opposite." She let out a little laugh, which did much more to make Anakin feel better than anything else she could have done. "Are you okay?"
She sighed, and the smile went away. "No. But I'm starting to feel like I might be one day."