Tainted Memories

[cityship]

Sometime during the regular comings and goings aboard the meatship, an announcement rings out across all portions of the ship.

||Attention crew,|| Stacy's voice says, ||As significant interest has been shown for it, and enough time has passed since the Nightmare King incident to prevent unnecessary mental issues, the procedure to unlock the memories of the destruction of your homeworlds is now available to all crew members. If you are interested, please proceed to any empty sensorium and I will begin the process.||

A slight pause, then...

||If you have a history of mental issues, please use extra consideration when deciding on whether or not to take the procedure. That is all.||

Should anyone decide to take her up on her offer and head to the sensoriums, they'd find a clean, clinical-looking white room with a dentist-style chair (sans scary drills, of course) in the middle.

||Please, take a seat.||

[OOC:Instructions.]

Comments

[cityship]

||Please try to clear your mind as you relax.||

A needle-tipped tendril pricks Ben's arm, and any emotions still in his mind would begin to fuzz-out slightly.

After a few silent moments, the memories begin to creep back into his mind.

Ben was with his father aboard their ship. It was a routine hyperspace jump, making their way towards Coruscant.

When the ship emerged from hyperspace, however, things were anything but routine. Both father and son were reeling as a wave emanates from the force, both of them feeling the deaths of thousands, millions down on the planet. When they regain their bearings, they see the planet surrounded by hundreds of horrifying organic ships. The planet-covering city below is visibly burning even from orbit.

One of the nearby organic vessels turns, apparently having noticed Ben and his father's ship. It moves straight towards them with blinding speed, their vessel unable to escape. From the windows on the ship, they can see the surface of the planet below erupt and crack as the planet dies, and their own vessel is wrapped up in the organic ship's tendrils, it's massive, pincer-like beak coming down to slice the ship in half.

Suddenly, an extremely bright light begins to cloud his vision, and he is in a dark room on a metal table, being held down by figures that are too hard to make out.

Then, everything fades back to darkness. The memory ends.

[sithhavecooties.livejournal.com]

In an ancient temple on Yavin Four, in the blackness of the Maw, among the trees of Ossus, nestled at the heart of the galaxy at the Temple on Coruscant, the Jedi learn this:

The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.

But when those living things vanished...

*

One moment, he was in a world beyond worlds, hurtling toward a familiar star. The next, he was in a war zone, and felt the universe beyond begin to disappear.

From the Deep Core to the farthest spiraling arms of the galaxy, it flickered and faded. In the Force, he sensed a sustained agony, like a ringing in his ears, as the galaxy’s lowest life forms disappeared without even comprehending their own destruction. There was a slow, sad sigh of growing things, their long years of reaching toward a million suns coming to a sudden stop.

At the highest register of his connection to the Force, Ben felt the deaths of sentient beings. He could not distinguish between them as their far-off worlds disappeared – could not tell if this or that burst of pain was the destruction of Kuat or Kessel, Corellia or Tatooine – and they began to blur together, more than a million worlds gone in what seemed like minutes but might have been hours or days. From the center of the galaxy to the Outer Rim, trillions upon trillions of beings cried out in shock, and fear, and pain, and were gone.

City by city, planet by planet, and star by star, an unknown enemy surged forth like a storm, and the great living web of the Force shuddered.

Outside the Shadow’s viewports, he could see the destruction with his own eyes. Coruscant ablaze, as though the Vong had come to reclaim Yuuzhan’tar and slaughter the heretics of the galactic capital, but surely Sekot wouldn’t let them, and even at the peak of their strength the Vong had never unleashed this much suffering at once, and, and, and it hurt –

He couldn’t think clearly, even as one of the couldn’t-be-Yuuzhan-Vong ships turned toward them; the ache of Coruscant’s destruction, of the galaxy’s destruction, tore at him, more powerful than the Embrace and terrifying in its intensity. Now, when he wanted to shut himself off from the Force more than ever, he found that he could not muster the strength of will. He tried to pull his mind away from the onslaught – I am the child of Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker — but that thought could not stop the rising tide of pain, when his mother was already dead and his father might be soon. I am a Jedi Knight, he tried, as another planet he could not name flickered into oblivion, but what was a Jedi when the Force was falling apart all around him? I am Ben Skywalker, and I will not die here.

I will not die here.

And then there was a light.

*

In a world beyond worlds, there is a ship hurtling toward some unknown confrontation. In that ship, an energy field curls around thousands of living things, waiting to accomplish miracles.

Because there is something else the Jedi learn, though too many forget:

The Force will be with you. Always…

*

He found that he’d been crying. His abdomen ached and his cheeks were cool where the ship’s recycled air brushed against his wet skin. He reached into the Force, wanting nothing more than to relax into its reassuring normalcy. It tied him to presences he knew (there was his father, a blazing light in the Force) or had once known (that was Jacen, still so far away from being Caedus) or had never known at all (there he found Obi-Wan Kenobi, his own namesake) and to ones he might never know (locked away in the pods were the faint, mingled presences of so many beings waiting for this ship to save their homes). Aboard one lonely ship in the Bleed, life went on, a candle in the darkness, ready to rekindle an infinite number of lost civilizations. Here, the Force was whole and vibrant, and, slowly, he began to calm his breathing, to quiet his racing heart, to wipe away his tears.

“Thanks,” he said hoarsely.