I awakened on the ground, my arm wrapped in a bandage. It looks like we made it inside a mountain cave.
Then I remember the Rebel prison. I remember fighting the Purge Trooper. I remember my arm being electrocuted by a metal staff.
It all comes back to me, and I look around for Yoda. Yoda senses me and walks over to me using his cane.
✦✦✦
"Recovered, have you?" Yoda asks. "My arm has gotten a bit better at least," Zara replies.
"Well," Rex chimes in from a station he's set up in the cave, "I got there just in the nick of time. It looks like your new pilot wasn't so bad on the first mission."
"Then, you'll fight with us?" Zara springs up. "I'm still a Rebel, and I'll fight alongside anyone who wants to take down the Empire for good," Rex replies.
"If he's the pilot, then we may have a chance of surviving," Dorian says, seated on the stone ground.
"Haste, you must make. Training you have." Yoda says, walking to the entrance of the cave.
Zara follows after Yoda as he walks outside.
They stand on the flat surface of the mountain, where Yoda begins his training. As the wind blows harshly, Zara pulls on the hood of her cloak.
"Do the Jedi not train in peaceful conditions?" Zara asks over the harsh winds. "Train in any circumstance you must," Yoda replies.
He sits down and meditates, Zara follows after, sitting down across from Yoda. She peeks curiously to see what Yoda will do.
Would he levitate using the Force? Or will he display his mastery over the Force by picking up a giant boulder? To Zara, the Jedi were mythical, powerful fighters, yet Yoda was an odd master.
She expected a powerful one with great strength who could teach her all the ways of the Force and how to become stronger. Power. She wanted power, but she was still far too weak.
If she wanted to take down the Empire and free her home and every other planet in the galaxy under Imperial rule, then she would need the strength of a thousand armies.
Her armies would wage in countless battles, millions of lives lost for the sake of a free Republic. She would convince them that they were fighting for the Republic, for democracy.
If only she had Yoda's power, she wouldn't hide from the Empire in a desolate swamp, but rather, she would form an army of powerful Force wielders who would overturn the system of the Empire.
She first saw this when her planet, Korriban, was first under Imperial forces. The Empire's ships could be seen from the planet's atmosphere. More of them arrived, and soon the entire planet was under Imperial rule.
She had stood behind her father back then, still afraid of the troopers. Her father soothingly patted her dark hair, and she turned her head up at him. The bright sun in her eyes clouded her vision of his face. All she remembers now is her parents' faceless silhouettes.
Tom was a newborn then; his haunting blue eyes and blond locs were a stark contrast to Zara's tan skin and black hair. She had more of her father's features, while Tom held their mother's light eyes and fairness.
A few nights had passed since the Empire took control of the plant. She had laid on the cot beside Tom when she heard a noise outside. She stepped outside and saw a Stormtrooper grab a man, claiming that he was a Rebel.
As the sun was beginning to rise, she looked away for a moment to watch it. Then she heard the sound of a blaster, the man was now motionless on the sand. A stormtrooper had pointed towards her, with a group of them walking up to her.
"What about this one?" A stormtrooper had asked his group. Zara then heard the door swing open, I was her father hurrying over to her.
"Are you hurt?" He held her small face as he scrutinized it.
"No, I'm okay," she replied.
"Then what are you out here at this time of day? Get back inside," The warmth in his tone had disappeared.
"We have a few questions for you," A stormtrooper had marched over to them.
"We don't know anything about those filthy Rebels," Her father had eyed the trooper's blaster in hand.
"Let's move on, then," The stormtrooper had said to the others.
Watching them leave, her father had grabbed her hand, pulling her back to the cot.
"I wanted to see," she said.
"You don't want to see them, Zara. They are nothing but trouble." She had noticed that her father was scared. His hands shook as he held onto her arm.
"Promise me that you will never go back there again. Promise me, Zara," He had pleaded.
"I promise," Zara said, still not understanding.
A few weeks had passed. Zara had often heard her parents discussing something in the living room, but they would always cease their conversation whenever she walked by.
The entire village had seemed to be uneasy as if they were anticipating something to happen. Zara had laid awake on the cot beside Tom, who was fast asleep, when she heard a noise outside. She got up and saw light dancing on the ceiling.
Walking to the door, she saw the mud sheds on fire. The village people were panicking, a giant mass of them was in the street.
"Mama, Papa! There are flames everywhere in the village!" Zara called out. Her parents had picked up Tom and grabbed Zara's hand, running outside. "I forgot Tom's teddy," Zara said. "There is nowhere to go back to anymore," Her mother had said.
As they fled, the mob of villagers obscured their path, and they had to push and shove their way out. People were crowded together, separating her from her parents.
"Mama, Papa!"
"Take Tom," Her father extended his hand to her.
"But what about you?" Zara said frantically as the crowd separated her parents.
"Watch after him, Zara," Her mother had said, giving her Tom, who was crying his eyes out.
"Mama! Papa!" She shouted.
"Zara!" was faintly heard in the crowd.
As the sun rose, it revealed the decimated village. The fires had burned the cots, leaving them in ashes. Those who escaped had long been gone. Zara held a crying Tom in her arms and looked beyond at the horizon of endless sand.
Tom's blue eyes were red from crying all night. For the next few months, Zara and Tom walked across the dunes of Korriban, setting up camps as they went. They had reached a city in search of food. Zara held Tom's hand tightly as they walked through, covering her face from the sun in a ragged blanket.
✦✦✦
Zara quickly opens her eyes from the meditation. "Where am I? What happened?" Zara says, looking around and seeing the mountain they are on, and not being back in Korriban.
"Meditating, we are. Seems like you had memories of your part, hm?" Yoda says. "I guess I did. I don't know why, we're supposed to be training right now," Zara says. "Training we are," Yoda says. With that, she closes her eyes again to meditate.
In her memory again, she and Tom were scavenging a vacant Imperial ship.
A few years had passed since they lost their parents, and they were now orphans. "When do you think Mama and Papa will be coming back?" Tom had asked, taking pieces from the ship. "We are on our own now," Zara said. She sat across from him, looking for her piece of scrap metal.
They had gotten familiar with finding valuable chunks in old abandoned ships for selling. "They must still be out there somewhere. We have to go find them," Tom turned to her with determination in his eyes. "They aren't coming back for us," Zara said, shoving a metal fragment into a pouch.
"Mama and Papa could still be out there somewhere looking for us, asking our old neighbors if they had seen where we went," Tom says. "I wish that were happening, but it's not. Look, I don't want to talk about this today," Zara finally said.
She didn't have the strength to tell him why he never came back, not when he still had hope. The best-case scenario was that they locked him up in a jail somewhere, never to return. And their mother was lost in the commotion to escape.
She may never come back for them if she has even survived. It was better that they were on their own anyway, as they would have been burdens upon her mother, who had already lost everything. A reminder of that night.
"Let's go," she said, lugging the bag of scraps on her back.
✦✦✦
Zara returned to the present, still meditating on the mountain with Yoda. "Overcome yourself, did you? Hm?" Yoda asks. "I'm not sure how reliving my old memories fits into training me to become a powerful Jedi," Zara says.
"Power now you want, but to overcome the past is the first step," Yoda says. "I think I understand," Zara says. Tom's face flashes through her mind, and her heart tightens.
"Forget the past, you must, to become Jedi," Yoda says. "The whole reason I want to become a Jedi is so that I can avenge Tom," Zara states. "Then misplaced, your reasons are. Becoming a Jedi will not give you immense power, but rather, you must use it to defend," Yoda says.
"Then I will defend my friends. You, Rex, and the others are all I have left," Zara says with a newfound purpose. Yoda mods, then they return to meditating.