sith_happened | Office hours [all day]

That was the face of the man who'd haunted his namesake grandson's nightmares for years, and Tahiri understood a little more of her Anakin's fears now. Her face paled visibly, the scars on her forehead almost disappearing, and she took a deep breath.

"I can't speak for any other versions of myself, but I promise I'm going to do everyting I can to keep that from happening. And if I'm going to do that, I need your help."

Ben's version of Tahiri should be counting herself lucky that she'd probably never run into his grandfather's righteous fury. Anakin wasn't nearly as forgiving as the later generations.

"What do you need from me?" he asked, slipping back into his semi-civilized Jedi Master role.

Ben's version of Tahiri might be lucky to never run into this one, either, at that.

Briefly (for her), she filled him in on Karla's theory about not being able to get rid of Riina, concluding with, "And if I really don't have any choice but being stuck with her, I'm going to need to figure a lot of things out."

Anakin nodded. "If she's truly a part of you, you need to come to terms with it," he said quietly. "I spent twenty years running from a dark, terrifying part of myself I didn't want to acknowledge. It became the weakness Palpatine used to manipulate me. A Jedi must know all facets of themselves--we called it facing the mirror and it was part of becoming a knight--because willful blindness causes disaster."

"She scares me," Tahiri said simply, and looked at him. "And we know where that goes."

"Very probably to Ben's version of the future," Anakin said. "Is that why she scares you?"

"That part doesn't help." There was no point in trying to lie to him. "She scares me because she's Yuuzhan Vong. She's everything I'm not, everything I'm not supposed to be."

"A humorless, technology-hating killing machine?" Anakin replied dryly.

"For starters." Tahiri almost cracked a smile.

"And Karla believes she can fix this?" Anakin sounded a little dubious.

"Fix? I'm not sure. I don't want to get my hopes up." Tahiri frowned, biting her lip. "I'll never be the person I was again, not any more. But she thinks we can make me less . . . fractured."

He nodded. "All of us have demons," he said. "Most of them just don't have other names."

"And memories." Riina bristled at the description, and Tahiri's jaw tensed slightly. In a quiet voice she asked, "Is this going to make you treat me differently?"

"Some version of you hurt Ben badly enough that he won't talk about it," Anakin said, eyes hard.

So...yes.

Tahiri flinched, her Force-sense spiking with hurt. "That version of me doesn't --" She cut herself off and shook her head. "Fine. That's fine. I should be used to people looking at me like I'll turn on them any second by now anyway."

That hit close enough to how he had felt as a teenager that his Force-sense turned guilty.

"He's my son's son, named for my best friend," he said. "I don't do rational" at all, "well...when he's involved."

Tahiri stared down at her feet, not wanting to see that look on his face or let on that she was fighting back tears. "I know. And I don't blame you for that . . . he's Ben. Look, Master Skywalker, don't you see? I saw what Anakin went through all those years, worrying if he'd fall to the dark side. It was hard enough for him, and he had people there to support him. Now I'm the one worrying about that."

"Every Jedi fights the dark side," Anakin said. "Most of them just won't mention it."

He bit back his rant about Luke's Jedi and their apparent need to visit the dark side like it was some kind of vacation destination.

"He was worried because we shared a name, right?"

Tahiri nodded briefly. "That and the Emperor's clone touching Leia while she was pregnant with him."

Anakin's lips curled into a snarl. "That won't happen in my galaxy," he said. "I made sure he was staying dead."

"And maybe this won't happen in mine," Tahiri said quietly.

"It won't," Anakin replied, voice steely. "I'll drag you back from the dark side by your hair if I have to."

Tahiri rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes and looked up at him, her expression equally stubborn. "If it comes to that, and I'm not planning on it."

"I hadn't planned on ending up where I did either," Anakin replied.

And neither, Tahiri realized, did the Jacen she knew. Her shoulders slumped again, and she asked, "So what do I do, then? Just go on like the idea doesn't scare me?"

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