Star Wars_ Shatterpoint - Matthew Woodring Stover [78]
Now, where the Mark had been was only an ugly ripple of keloid scar, as though the same knife that had slashed away her hair had crudely hacked the symbol of her ancestral religion from the bone of her skull.
And across her eyes, she wore a strip of rag tied like a blindfold: a rag as weathered and stained and ragged as her robes themselves.
But she stood as though she could see him all too well.
"Depa..."
Mace had to raise his voice to even hear himself through the roar of the repulsorlifts and the laser cannons and the exploding dirt and rock around him. "Depa, what happened? What has happened to you?"
"Hello, Mace," she said sadly. "You shouldn't have come."
PART TWO
INSTINCT
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU
I finally understand what I'm doing here. Why I came. I understand the hypocrisy of that list of reasons I offered to Yoda and to Palpatine, in the Chancellor's office those weeks ago.
I was lying to them.
And to myself.
I must have seen the real reason I came here in the first instant I turned to her in the compound: in the pain-etched creases below her cheekbones. In the scar where the Mark of Enlightenment had been.
Yes: it wasn't really her. It was a Force-vision. A hallucination. A lie.
But even a lie of the Force is more true than any reality our limited minds can comprehend.
In the rag that bound her eyes but did not blind her to the truth of me-I found my conditions of victory.
I didn't come here to learn what has happened to Depa, nor to protect the reputation of our Order. I don't care what's happened to her, and the reputation of our Order is meaningless.
I did not come to fight this war. I don't care who wins. Because no one wins. Not in real war. It is only a question of how much each side is willing to lose.
I did not come here to apprehend or kill a rogue Jedi, or even to judge one. I cannot judge her. I have been on the periphery of this war for barely a double handful of days, and look what I am on the verge of becoming; she has been in the thick of it for months.
Drowning in darkness.
Buried in the jungle.
I didn't come here to stop Depa. I came here to save her.
I will save her.
And may the Force have mercy on any who would try to stop me, for I will have none.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU
I don't remember leaving the compound. I suppose I must have been in some kind of shock. Not physical; my injuries are minor-though now the bacta patches from our captured medpacs are needed for more serious wounds, and the blaster burn on my thigh is angry and swelling with infection. But shock is the word. Mental shock, perhaps.
Moral shock.
A veil has fallen: between the moment when Depa came to me in the compound, and the moment I came back to myself on the slope below, there is in my mind mostly a blurred haze. In that blurred haze, I find two conflicting memories of our meeting there-And both of them, it seems, are false.
Dreams. Imaginative reinterpretation of events.
Hallucination.
In one memory, she extends a hand toward me, and I reach to take it-but instead I feel a tug at my vest and her lightsaber leaps from its inner pocket and flips through the air to smack her palm. Blaster bolts from the gunships' laser cannons smash craters in the compound; each bolt makes rock and dirt explode like grenades; the air around us fills with red plasma and orange flame-and that old familiar half smile tugs up one corner of her lips and she says, "Up or down?" and I tell her Up and she leaps into an aerial roll over my head and I take a single step forward so that she lands with her back against mine-And the feel of her back against my own. that strong and warm and living touch that I have felt so many times, in so