Part 2 (1/2)

Because Jacen was dead.

”Is that why you keep coming here?” he muttered into his folded arms.

”To gloat? To humiliate a defeated enemy?”

”Am I gloating? Are we enemies?” Vergere asked, sounding honestly puzzled. ”Are you defeated?”

Her suddenly sincere tone caught him; he raised his head, and could find no mockery now in her eyes. ”I don't understand.”

”That, at least, is very clear,” she sighed. ”I give you a gift, Jacen Solo. I free you from hope of rescue. Can you not see how I am trying to help you?”

”Help?” Jacen coughed a bitter chuckle. ”You need to brush up on your Basic, Vergere. In Basic, when we talk about the kind of things you've done to me, help isn't the word we use.”

”No? Then perhaps you are correct: our difficulties may be linguistic.” Vergere sighed again, and settled even lower, folding her arms on the floor in front of her and arranging herself on top of them in a way more feline than avian. Secondary inner lids shrouded her eyes.

”When I was very young... younger than you, little Solo--I came upon a ringed moon shadowmoth at the end of its metamorphosis, still within its coc.o.o.n, ” she said distantly, a little sadly. ”I had already some touch with the Force; I could feel the shadowmoth's pain, its panic, its claustrophobia, its hopelessly desperate struggle to free itself.

It was as though this particular shadowmoth knew I was beside it, and screamed out to me for help. How could I refuse? Shadowmoth coc.o.o.ns are polychained silicates--very, very tough--and shadowmoths are so delicate, so beautiful: gentle creature whose only purpose is to sing to the night sky. So I gave it what I think you mean by help: I used a small utility cutter to slice the coc.o.o.n, to help the shadowmoth get out.”

”Oh, you didn't, did you? Please say you didn't.” Jacen let his eyes drift closed, sorry already, for how he knew this story would end.

He'd had a shadowmoth in his collection for a short time; he remembered watching the larva grow, feeling its happy satisfaction through his empathic talent as it fed on stripped insulation and crumbled duracrete; he remembered the young shadowmoth that had emerged, spreading its dusky, beautifully striated wings against the crystalline polymer of its viewcage; he remembered the shadowmoth's thrilling whistle of moonsong, when he had released it from its viewcage and it had soared away under the mingled glows of Coruscant's four moons.

He remembered the desperate panic that had beat in waves against him through the Force, the night the shadowmoth had fought free of its coc.o.o.n.

He remembered his ache to help the helpless creature--and he remembered why he hadn't.

You can't help a shadowmoth by cutting its coc.o.o.n,” he said. ”It needs the effort; the struggle to break the coc.o.o.n forces ichor into its wing veins. If you cut the coc.o.o.n...”

”The shadowmoth will be crippled,” Vergere finished for him solemnly.

”Yes. It was a tragic creature--never to fly, never to join its fellows in their nightdance under the moons. Even its wingflutes were stunted, and so it was as mute as it was planetbound. During that long summer, we sometimes heard moonsong through the window of my bedchamber, and from my shadowmoth I would feel always only sadness and bitter envy, that it could never soar beneath the stars, that its voice could never rise in song. I cared for it as best I could-- but the life of a shadowmoth is short, you know; they spend years and years as larvae, storing strength for one single summer of dance and song. I robbed that shadowmoth; I stole its destiny... because I helped it.”

”That wasn't helping,” Jacen said. ”That's not what help means, either.”

”No? I saw a creature in agony, crying out its terror, and I undertook to ease its pain, to a.s.suage its fear. If that is not what you mean by help, then my command of Basic is worse than I believed.”

”You didn't understand what was happening.”

Vergere shrugged. ”Neither did the shadowmoth. But tell me this, Jacen Solo: if I had understood what was happening--if I had known what the larva was, and what it must do, and what it must suffer, to become the glorious creature that it could become--what should I have done that you would call, in your Basic, help?”

Jacen thought for some time before answering. His Force empathy had enabled him to understand the exotic creatures in his collection with extraordinary depth and clarity; that understanding had left him with a profound respect for the intrinsic processes of nature.

”I suppose,” he said slowly, ”the best help you could offer would be to keep the coc.o.o.n safe. Hawk-bats hunt shadowmoth larvae, and they especially like newly coc.o.o.ned pupae: that's the stage where they have the most stored fat. So I guess the best help you could offer would be to keep watch over the larva, to protect it from predators--and leave it alone to fight its own battle.”

”And, perhaps,” Vergere offered gently, ”also to protect it from other well-intentioned folk--who might wish, in their ignorance, thelp' it with their own utility cutters.”

”Yes...” Jacen said, then he caught his breath, staring at Vergere as though she had suddenly grown an extra head. ”Hey...” Comprehension began to dawn. ”Hey...”

”And also, perhaps,” Vergere went on, ”you might stop by from time to time, to let the struggling, desperate, suffering creature know that it is not alone. That someone cares. That its pain is in the service of its destiny.”

Jacen could barely breathe, but somehow he force out a wisper.

”Yes...”

Vergere said gravely, ”Then, Jacen Solo, our definitions of help are identical.”

Jacen s.h.i.+fted forward, coming up onto his knees.

”We're not really talking about shadowmoth larvae, are we?” he said, his heart suddenly pounding. ”You're talking about me.”

She rose, legs unfolding like gantry cranes beneath her. ”About you?”

”About us.” His throat clenched with impossible hope. ”You and me.”

”I must go, now; the Embrace has become impatient for your return.”

”Vergere, wait...!” he said, struggling to his feet, the Embrace's branch-grips dangling from his wrists. ”Wait, Vergere, come on, talk to me.... and, and, and shadowmoths...” he stammered. ”Shadowmoths are indigenous! They're not a transported species... they're native to Coruscant! How could you have found a shadowmoth larva? Unless, unless you... I mean, did you... are you...”

She put her hand between the lips of the mouthlike sensor receptacle beside the hatch sphincter, and the warted pucker of the hatch gaped wide.

”Everything I tell you is a lie,” she said, and stepped through.

The Embrace of Pain gathered him once more into the white.

Jacen Solo hangs in the white, thinking.

For an infinite instant, he is merely amazed that he can think; the white has scoured his conciousness for days, or weeks, or centures, and he is astonished now to discover that he can not only think, but think clearly.

He spends a white eon, marvelling.

Then he goes to work on the lesson of pain.

This is it, he thinks. This is what Vergere was talking about. This is the help she gave me, that I didn't know how to accept.

She has freed him from his own trap: the trap of childhood. The trap of waiting for someone else. Waiting for Dad, or Mother, Uncle Luke, Jaina, Zekk or Lowie or Tenel Ka or any of the others whom he could always count on to fly to his resque.

He is not helpless. He is only alone.

It's not the same thing.

He doesn't have to simply hang here and suffer. He can do something.

Her shadowmoth tale may have been a lie, but within the lie was a truth he could not have comprehended without it. Was that what she had meant when she said, Everything I tell you is a lie?

Did it matter?

Pain is itself a G.o.d: the taskmaster of life. Pain cracks the whip, and all that lives will move. To live is to be a slave to pain.

He knows the truth of this, not only from his own life but from watching Dad and Anakin, after Chewie's death. He watched pain crack its whip over his father, and watched Han run from that pain halfway across the galaxy.