Innocence Betrayed

[Lilaena]

Space stretched out in front of the ship like a black blanket. A single star glittered before them, a beacon in the night.

Except it was day time. The six year old in the co-pilot's chair stared out the viewport vacantly, eyelids drooping. She was tired. They'd been in space forever, and after the day of excitement where Master Eldhil had said that all the Jedi were dead (which was just impossible) it had been so dull.

Jump after jump, they'd hopscotched around and now were floating deep between two stars away from the main hyperlanes. Lilaena's body was racked with a deep yawn, and then a small alarm went off. She reached out to the chrono, tapped it to silence the timer, and dutifully hopped down and ran barefooted down the passage towards the three cabins. One was hers, one was empty, and the other...

She reached up and depressed the button to open the door to Master Eldhil's cabin, where she was sleeping. She'd been doing a lot of sleeping lately.

[A'na Eldhil]

A'na tossed and turned on her bed, silken sheets disheveled in her restlessness. Her dreams were dark.

The Jedi Order was dead.

She had received the transmission from the Temple to return... and when she had been one jump away from Coruscant it had changed to a message to flee. What the galaxy was now calling a Purge had happened. Chancellor... no, Emperor Palpatine had issued a single order, Order 66, and the clones had turned on their masters. The Jedi were demolished.

The Jedi Knight was moaning in her sleep when a small hand took her by the shoulder. "Master... its time to get up."

A'na slowly opened her bleary eyes, her tiny padawan slowly coming into focus. The six year old Lilaena was standing beside her bed with a glass of water. She reached out for it, tiredly pulling her aching body into a sitting position before sipping the water.

"Thank you, padawan," she said, her voice hoarse from crying. A'na scrubbed a hand over her face and into her short white hair, which was sticking out in all directions. "What time is it?"

"Tomorrow." Lilaena looked up at her, green eyes serious. "You've been in here for a long time Master. But I got you at seven, like you asked. An' I tried to get you yesterday but you wouldn't get up."

A'na frowned, trying to remember asking the girl any such thing, but the last few days were a blur. Her actions, anyway. "I am sorry for that."

The Jedi were dead.

She wanted to crawl back under the covers and forget about the rest of the galaxy. The Jedi Council was no more. There was no one to -

The child looked to her, and A'na slowly lowered the glass, holding it carefully with both of her hands. In Lilaena's eyes she could see trust. And hope.

And perhaps a future.

The Jedi may be dead, but she was not. A warmth seemed to grow in her belly, spreading outward and into her limbs. The Jedi had been murdered, the younglings slaughtered, the Temple burned and the Archives ransacked.

"We will avenge you," she said firmly, the warmth in her giving her a fire and a will to live.

[Salemescro Avesca]

Salemescro darkened the doorway to his master's cabin. He blinked his white eyes and stared at A'na Eldhil, or at least at the tired thing that looked vaguely like A'na. His mouth was a thin, expressionless line.

“Get up.”

[Lilaena]

We will avenge you? Lilaena didn't know what to make of what Master Eldhil was saying, so just nodded.

"Get up."

The six year old whirled around and found Salemescro standing in the doorway. He didn't look happy. He hadn't looked happy all day yesterday either. Lilaena had tried making herself something to eat and had managed a sandwich. He'd grumbled at the mess, but he'd helped her clean it up.

"She's getting up, she said so," the little padawan said plaintively. Behind her Master Eldhil surged out of the bunk, blanket nearly covering Lilaena as it was flung off. She giggled and struggled out from under it, piling it onto the bed as Master Eldhil walked about, muttering to herself.

"See?" She stuck her tongue out at Salemescro, and then darted around him and into the passageway.

[A'na Eldhil]

A'na gave Salemescro a look, one he'd learned well in the time he'd been with her as padawan learner. It meant watch your attitude. The dynamic between them had shifted once Lilaena had been added as a second padawan. She was so young, and should really have been a youngling still.

But ready or not, those that were highly gifted and tested well had been sent out into the field for one on one training. For some knights that meant doubling up on padawans. And Salemescro had started reverting back to some of his bad behaviors that A'na had previously broken him of. The dark skinned Jedi peered at herself in the mirror above the small dresser that was bolted to the bulkhead.

She looked awful. She felt awful. But with her decision towards avenging the fallen Jedi, Oh gods, Serena...

A'na felt herself start to crumble again, her new found determination beginning to melt. She steadied herself with both hands on top of the dresser, noticing finally Salemescro still in the doorway, studying her in the reflection. She looked at him in the mirror, eyes still a little red from her sorrow.

"We will form a plan today." As she said it A'na felt stronger. Having something to do - that was key. Keep busy. Work towards a goal.

Find reasons to carry on living when all your friends are dead.

[Salemescro Avesca]

Perhaps the girl didn't see it – she was too young to really understand what had happened, what lay before them now – but he knew what was going. The hard, unyielding lines of their master's body had become crumpled and creased. The durasteel of her backbone had become warped out of shape.

“We have to find the others,” he said, not moving from the spot he had taken up in the door way, skinny arms hanging at his sides.

[Lilaena]

Lilaena ran up the passageway to the galley, stopping in the middle of the room and turning about. Twirling was fun. Of course, she wasn't twirling, she was looking around and making sure the room was clean. A'na had given them chores to do around the ship for when they weren't training. Lilaena hadn't done training in days, except for some practice meditation.

It was so hard to meditate lately. The Force was all jumpy. Lilaena frowned, turning and wondering where Salemescro and A'na were.

[A'na Eldhil]

"Of course we do." A'na paused, still looking at Salemescro through the mirror. She slowly pivoted, straightening her stance and her tunic at the same time. "We will find the others. There must be a remnant. But for now we should break our fast."

As if on cue her stomach rumbled, and she remembered that apparently she hadn't left her room in days. A'na walked to her door, gesturing for her padawan to get a move on. It seemed like just yesterday she was with Serena, talking about him. Offering to take him as her own padawan...

Serena. She was on a diplomatic mission to a battle scarred world. Accompanied by clones. The redheaded Jedi was many things, but skilled in lightsaber combat... she had concentrated on healing, and other uses of the Force.

No, Serena was dead. They were all dead...

A'na felt her thoughts spiraling down and out of control, and gave herself a mental shake as she followed Salemescro down the passage to the galley, where Lilaena was poking her head out the door.

[Salemescro Avesca]

For a long time, he hadn't felt hungry. In times of panic, the body entered a state whereby everything that was normal and routine was put on indefinite hold. It would not have done for them to be mid-flight from Coruscant and stopping every half hour every time someone needed the bathroom. Now, in the isolation of space, the mundane returned. Salem's stomach ached with more than a days worth of hunger, but he did not want to eat. Even sitting down felt like a waste of time.

He watched A'na pace her way into the kitchenette that was part of the galley.

“Where are we going to look for them, then?”

[Lilaena]

Lilaena had sat down at the table, and looked up as A'na and Salemescro entered. "Are we going to... eat?" Her voice trailed off as she felt the tension between the other two. Her brow creased with worry.

Everything was going to be all right... right? Lilaena grabbed her hands under the table, clutching them against her hungry belly.

[A'na Eldhil]

Where would they go?

"Illum. We will go to Illum." The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. Illum was a safe place that only the Jedi knew of. If any had survived the massacre it was a safe bet that they might show up there.

A'na looked at Lilaena and had to bite back a sharp reply. "We'll eat in a minute."

[Salemescro Avesca]

Ilum.

He considered the suggestion. Ilum was a world of little worth to anyone other than the Jedi, who valued the planet for its crystal caves. Salem had always known he would go there some day – it was where the masters took all young Jedi, to find their first lightsaber crystal – but he had not imagined it would be under such desperate circumstances.

“I don't have a lightsaber,” he said, giving voice to the train of thought that was marching on through his mind. Surely, they would all need weapons now – even Lilaena. “Can we craft some, on Ilum?”

[Lilaena]

Her mouth made a perfect O as her eyes widened and she forgot about food for the time being. "A lightsaber!?"

Lilaena couldn't believe it. She was too young to be a padawan, but she was a padawan, and she was too young for her own lightsaber. But she'd passed all her tests, and was as skilled in combat as she could be - she was way better than any of the other younglings in her clan. Her old clan.

She had a real lightsaber that A'na held onto for her, but she hadn't made her own yet. All Jedi made their own lightsabers. Lilaena could feel the excitement bubbling up inside her, and swallowed it down with a little bit of effort. A Jedi was calm and in control of their emotions.

"That sounds... good," she said cautiously.

[A'na Eldhil]

She could feel the shift of emotion in the room towards excitement and anticipation. A'na started a pan of do'na eggs cooking, and nodded at her padawans. "Yes, we will visit the temple and retrieve crystals for your lightsabers. It is sooner than I anticipated, for you at least, Lilaena, but logical.

"And we will go immediately. After breakfast." The Jedi stirred the scrambled eggs, and instructed Lilaena to crumble some cheese and toast some slices of bread. The fresh food they had needed to be eaten, and they would need to take on more supplies of preserved foods as soon as possible, and as much as possible.

[Lilaena]

Lilaena looked down dully at the plate of processed eggs and reconstituted meat product that made up her breakfast. She picked up her utensil and dutifully shoveled the mess into her mouth, chewing and swallowing as quickly as she could.

A'na was in large central gathering area of the yacht, going through her kata. The little girl could hear her hitting something with her wooden bo through the bulkheads between them. Salemescro was... somewhere. His face was increasingly frowny, the longer they stayed in orbit of Ilum.

After they had arrived they had traveled to the surface, bundled up in cold weather gear until they were hardly recognizable as people. But after a short trip around the temple A'na had insisted they return to the ship. Leaving it alone in orbit was dangerous. Salemescro had told Lil later that their master was growing paranoid.

She didn't know what a paranoid was, but she'd searched the ship from top to bottom over the next few weeks and hadn't found a plant anywhere.

[Salemescro Avesca]

Across the table, Salem stared at his plate. The meagre portion of pulp was eggs and bacon, according to the air-tight container it had been spooned from, but the boy had serious doubts about whether anything on the plate had ever been near an animal, let alone come from one. He laid his hand down beside his fork and tried to summon the motivation to eat, but the only impulse he felt was the desire to hurl the plate and his breakfast mush against a bulkhead.

There is no emotion... he reminded himself, blinking as he looked across at Lilaena, whose cheeks bulged as she chomped noisily through her food. Salem gave his plate a sharp nudge towards her then swung himself out of his chair, heading with purpose towards the crash and clang of Ana's exercise reigime. He pushed his thoughts outwards, grasping for the cord of the Force that would connect him to his master. In a matter of minutes, he had found her.

“I want to practice too.”

[A'na Eldhil]

A'na paused, sweat dripping down the side of her face, and regarded the boy. After a moment she tossed him the staff she'd been working with, and retrieved another one from a rack on the bulkhead. "Practice then."

Salemescro spun the bo experimentally, and prepared to go through the kata she'd taught him, but she stopped him. "No, against me." A'na turned her hand over, palm up to the ceiling, and gestured him closer. "Come at me then, if you want practice."