InsaneJournal

Who: Jacen and Allana
What: Family bonding time, aka flow walking back to a traumatic life event and restoring Allana to the Force. Is this...not how your family bonds?
Where: Tenel Ka and Jacen's apartment
When: Evening of January 25th
Warnings: Not exactly happy times, but it shouldn't scar you for life.


Allana had been waiting when her father had come home from work, sitting on the couch and flipping through channels on the television so rapidly that the soundtrack didn’t have time to start before the next number flickered in the corner of the screen, the next half-formed picture started to unfurl itself into being like a flare of light. Without sound or a settled image the light from the television had been like a signal beacon, flashing in bursts of light, meaningless morse code dances. I should tell him I changed my mind. I should turn off the TV and get a book and go back to my room, I should- but her thumb had kept pressing down convulsively, again and again, like a tic. This is ridiculous, I’m about to get back a power that you need an entire code to regulate, and I can’t even sit and wait without developing a twitch. Very promising.

Then the front door had opened and she had clicked the remote quickly, set it down on the table and turned a suddenly impassive face towards her father. Her grandmother had once told her, back home, back when she had lessons on such things, that when you were in a situation where you were afraid your voice would break you should say nothing, and comport yourself in such a way that you seemed to disdain to speak. She had remembered that and kept her lips pressed together, merely raised her eyebrows slightly at her father and inclined her head in a slight nod, afraid that if she spoke the words would have been, “Never mind, I can’t.”

She hadn’t been sure. Even as she’d agreed to it she hadn’t been sure. It still seemed too big a risk, too high a price if even one person was harmed because she’d taken the Force back. Still, her conversation with her mother had helped convince her that this was what she had to do. She couldn’t make herself stay isolated from her friends and family, even if she had managed it most days she knew she would run back the moment there was a crisis, and she’d already seen that all the warnings in the world weren’t going to make her friends greet her with constant suspicion. The only thing she could do, she had finally realized, was the hardest thing of all – accept that she couldn’t control this, not entirely, and merely try to live her life the best she could, with as little fear as possible. She had been reading the Code, meditating on it in the awkward way of someone unused to taking the topic as seriously as she should have, and she’d found unexpected comfort in it. Her father criticized it and her aunt rebelled against it from time to time, she knew they both found it harsh, too limiting, but she’d begun to think that maybe they needed that, or she did anyway. A reminder of limits, of boundaries and rules.

Still, she hadn’t been sure. Luckily Jacen Solo had commanded troops, and rallying one more gun shy apprentice-level Jedi was not beyond his capabilities. Even uncertain she had gone back with him. Back into the dream, where she’d forced herself not to turn away as she watched everything unfold again. First the old nightmare, Jaina and Ben justifiably turning on her, and then Lucifer’s appearance, which was hard enough, especially with a passenger along for the ride into her private fears. Then she watched herself argue and debate, and ultimately crumble. Heard Lucifer’s words again as he circled her dream self:
“You won't see me coming. You won't know when I'm coming either, try as you might to reach out and find me with your power. You know this to be true, Allana, because I was able to slip into your mind so very easily tonight without you noticing me until it was too late…I'll whisper a suggestion. Just one. And from that point onward, everyone and everything that you love will wither and die at your hand. You can try everything in your power to stop me. You can confide in your friends and family for advice on how to block me from your mind, you can put up every defense in your power, you can warn everyone in advance and pray that it will be enough, but it won't be. I'll take my time. I'll make sure that they're not ready.”

He was right, she’d thought, her foundation of meditation and determination crumbling and whisking away as easily as sand. What am I doing, he was right. I can’t- but there was no time, they’d been back in her apartment as suddenly as waking up, and she’d watched herself sit up in bed, oblivious to Daisy’s howling, hands clutching compulsively at her blankets and sheets for purchase. She’d watched as she’d ripped herself out of the Force fueled by sheer terror of a power that had always been a part of her.

And then it was over, and she was sitting on the couch in the living room of her parents’ apartment and her first thought was, how did I spill something on my hands? I wasn't holding a drink or anything. Then she looked down at her hands and blinked, dazed as someone who really had just woken up from a dream, when she saw that they were clenched into fists, as stiff as if they’d aged suddenly into arthritis. Blood welled, slow and thick and lazy, where her nails dug into her palms. Oh she thought, and then clenched her fists tighter anyway, afraid that if she let go now she’d lose control entirely.