For the night is dark and full of terrors [Solo]

[NightSister]

Aria sits by a lake on Eshan, looking out onto the crystal clear body of water. She admires the sun's rays, transfixed as they dance on the surface of the lake. Lying down, she looks at the clear, cloudless sky, feeling peaceful and safe.

Then the sky darkens, and lightning starts slicing through the air. Wind howls through the night, and Aria can hear screaming. Aria gets up to run back home, but the night is dark and she can't see a thing.

The screams sound oddly familiar -

Shivering, Aria sat bolt upright.

Although she missed her parents, having not seen them in almost three years, Aria's sleep had been dreamless and her thoughts untroubled for the past few months. Every part of her said to write it off as unhappiness with her current situation or anything else, but by now Aria had been fully exposed to the Force and she knew that dreams like that came with meaning. Still, Eshan was a peaceful planet - what was the worst that could happen? Her foster parents were young and healthy and kept themselves to themselves. The last few weeks of training had been rigorous but void of Echani fighting. She was getting frustrated with the training. That was all.

It had to be all.

The next night, Aria woke up again with the same nightmare and couldn't get back to sleep. Then the next night. Then the next. Finally, Aria was getting very concerned and so that day, the moment that her training was finished, Aria raided the kitchens for a portable dinner, hotwired a starship like her best friend had taught her to do, and had left the temple within minutes.

 

[NightSister]

Although Aria had never been the most skilled pilot - usually when she had somewhere to go, she was going with her Tech Mage friend Celiana who was far more advanced with these things - but the route to Eshan was straightforward and relatively safe. She had reached her homeplanet within hours.

Even as she was coming down to land, Aria knew something was wrong. The planet looked different from far away, but through the ship's very distanced camera view it was hard to tell just what. Jamming on her brakes, she slid to a halt in a large meadow she knew to be close to where her parents lived and darted out of the starship.

The first thing that she noticed was the smoke. The acrid smell left by the aftermath of fire was faint, but it was the first thing that came to her attention. Her frown deepened as she turned and sprinted to the village where she lived. It had been a small town, but only a few minutes' speeder drive to battle school and buzzing with life.

Immediately Aria saw it: the smoking ruins of the village that she loved so much. There was nothing left but the remains of the houses that she had lived in and made friends with the people that lived in, and it was like a stab to her heart. More important, however, were the implications it left: had the residents of the destroyed village burnt along with it? Had they escaped?

Aria hadn't brought a speeder with her, so she ran and ran, passing several other village that had been burnt to the ground, until she found a small town that was still intact. Panting as she slowed down, she ducked into a street and approached the first person she saw.

"Excuse me," she said, the panic evident in her voice, "do you know what's happened with the villages nearby?"

"They burnt," the man said, looking at her as if she was stupid.

Aria sighed and tried not to roll her eyes. "Yes, I know, but why? Who was it? Have the residents--"

"Woah, slow down now, beautiful," the man replied. "It's nothing you need to worry about, alright?"

Glaring at him, Aria repeated, "what happened?"

Seeing that she was in no mood for his cheap attempts at flirtation, the man quickly replied, "everybody's saying it was a cult of some sort. They came in the middle of the night three nights ago and suddenly everything's in flames too fast for even Jedi to put out."

Even the Jedi. "Did anybody survive?"

Looking at her as though it was obvious, he shook his head.

Aria turned on her heel and ran again, to where she wasn't sure, only that she couldn't stay there, couldn't stay anywhere, couldn't stop to let herself think about the fact that her parents were - too late. Coming to a halt, Aria collapsed to the ground with a cry of anguish.

She lay with her face buried in the grass for what felt like hours. It might have been - the sun was already down, so she had no way of telling. All that she could think of was her parents, crying as they said their goodbyes. The last bit of family she had left - except, Aria suddenly thought, that wasn't true. In fact, it was very likely that her real parents were still alive, holed up in Corellia somewhere dumping another baby in the forest. It occurred to Aria that she still didn't know who they were.

Sitting up at last, Aria realised that she was by the same lake where her nightmare had taken place - four nights ago. The realisation that the dream had in fact been her chance to rescue her family hit her like a sledgehammer. She wanted to dive into the lake and swim in the icy water, alone with her thoughts, but she had a mission in mind now.

Returning at last to the ship she'd stolen, Aria started the engines. Tonight would be a long night.

 

[NightSister]

Even with the year Aria had spent travelling before joining the Silver Jedi, she had always been afraid to return to Corellia because of all the painful emotions it was sure to provoke. Well, her emotions were jarred and her heart bruised already, and with the loss of her foster parents - who she still thought of as her parents without a second thought - still fresh and raw in her mind, she had nothing left to lose. Except maybe her life, but at that precise moment it had seemed of little value to her.

Landing on a landing pad and almost crashing, Aria was in the city in moments. She had thought out how she would track down her parents once she made it onto the planet and assuming they hadn't moved - which instinct told her they hadn't - she had a plan with a decent chance of success.
First she slid into a tourist center and emerged less than a minute later observing a holomap of the planet. Using the Force and her very distant memories, she located the forest where she'd been found all those years ago.
Next, she found a garage nearby and hired a speeder, promising to return it within three hours and praying that it wouldn't take longer. Revving up the engines, she zoomed into the blackness of the night.

Eventually she found the thick forest she'd been abadoned in, feeling a painful wave of nostalgia as she recalled the faded memory of seeing her father's face for the first time. Her adoptive father, she reminded herself. Her dead father.

Navigating around the edge of the forest until she saw a town a short way off, Aria let the Force guide her as she came to the town and then to take her to a small apartment. She parked her speeder and looked at the names by the doorbells until one caught her eye: Zione. Her name was Aria Zione.

She picked the lock on the front door and darted up the stairs to the third floor and with a sudden burst of strength, Aria kicked down the door. At once she saw two figures scuttling from a bedroom: a man and a woman, her face a perfect blend of the two.

Her parents.

 

[NightSister]

They both looked at her like she was some sort of thug. Could they recognise her, she wondered, see their faces in her own? Did they care?

"Who are you?" the woman asked, looking somewhat afraid.

The question filled Aria with rage like she'd never felt before. Not when she failed her tests in school because a girl who disliked her had rigged the results, not when her one romance was cut short and abandoned, not then and not ever.

"Don't recognise me?" Aria said, her voice dropping an octave to a deadly whisper. "You don't recognise your daughter?"

They both continued looking at her as though she were insane.

"The daughter," Aria continued, anger seeping into her voice, "that you left to die?"

Well, that sorted it out fast enough. Her mother would notice how she had her sea-green eyes, her father would notice that she'd inherited his sharp cheekbones. They would both see that the shade of her golden hair perfectly matched theirs, that like her mother she was tall, like her father she was slim and muscular, oh, they would realise.

"I'm sure you're both wondering how I'm here, thinking that no child can survive by themselves in the woods? You'd be right. I didn't survive by myself, because I was taken in by a couple who had ten times your compassion without even trying. They named me Aria."

"Aria," her father said, his expression unreadable, "why -"

"And they're dead!" Aria screamed. She had probably woken the whole building up, even the whole neighborhood, but she didn't care any more. "The only family I ever knew and they're dead!"

It was evident that neither parent knew what to say or how to react. She wasn't sure herself what she had been hoping they would do. Maybe apologise, embrace her and tell her that they had regretted it every day since, take her in and make up for all the years they had lost. Instead they just stood there, blank, impassive. And she hated them for it.

"We're sorry," her mother finally said.

"Oh, don't make me laugh," Aria said bitterly. "Don't pretend that you give a damn what happens to me or the people I love. If you'd cared, you wouldn't have left me in the forest to -" her words got stuck in her throat.

"YOU LEFT ME TO DIE!" she roared, all the pain and resentment she had felt against them for so many years finally exploding in a torrent of rage. "You left me to die and you have the nerve to try and act like you care? If you really couldn't take care of me, you could have given me to somebody where you could visit, or just struggled along, or just never been careless but instead you leave me in the middle of a forest where nobody goes, where the chances of me surviving were almost nothing, and you try and apologize?"

Too late, she remembered the real reason why she hadn't gone looking for her parents, why she'd never dared to confront them: she didn't know if she could control the bitterness she had bottled up against them. She hadn't known if she'd find it in herself to walk away from them if they didn't have the reaction she'd hope for without unleashing that anger.

But by the time she remembered, they were already dead.

 

[NightSister]

Aria stood in numb shock as the full horror of the situation hit her. All her life, she had been the sensible one, the one who thought first and acted later, and yet there she was, a lightsaber in her hand and two corpses lying in front of her with shocked horror still etched on their faces.

But the strangest thing, and the thing that truly terrified her, was that she didn't feel guilt for what she had just done. Shocked, certainly. Afraid of the aftermath, certainly and afraid of what she would become, without a doubt. But killing the two people who had given birth to her had caused her no emotion whatsoever.

Pain and fear raining down on her like a thunderstorm, Aria opened a window and Force dropped down. She ran again, leaving the speeder behind, running and running until she reached the ship, and immediately started up the engines. There was no way that she could return to Voss - the Silver Sanctum were forgiving, but they couldn't possibly be that forgiving - so instead she flew back to Eshan, to the lake of her nightmares, landing just as sunlight began to streak through the sky in striking shades of red and pink and purple.

Ignoring the fact that she was fully clothed, Aria dived into the lake. As she cut through the freezing cold water, the shock jarred her and helped her focus. She swam up and down the huge body of water, thinking on life and death and herself and the Silver Jedi, until it felt as if her mind had been searched through and emptied out.

Finally, she swam back to the edge and hauled herself onto the grassy meadow, panting with all her emotion as she lay on her back watching the sun rise. Aria knew that she had to go back - Voss was home to the only remaining people that she cared about including possibly the only person alive who could help her come to terms with everything that had happened. As much as she felt like staying in the meadow until her bones withered to nothing, Aria forced herself to remember her best friend, who had been through so much and was the toughest and bravest person she knew, and told herself very firmly that of Celiana could survive then so could she.

Despite all the effort it was to haul herself up and return to her ship, Aria knew that life went on.