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Title: The X-Files: Masters of the Force Summary: episode six Note: okay, here's episode six. This one's taken me forever to write, but after watching the Special edition trilogy over New Years, it just came to me, kind of like when the first story fell on me like a ton of bricks at the movie theatre. Yavin 4 D'niallana Skywalker looked up when a twig snapped. Her silver eyes spotted her stepmother standing ten yards away. She smiled. Dantana Skywalker came forward. "Hello, D'nia. How is your training going?" D'nia sighed. "Poorly. It doesn't look like I have the same abilities as my cousins." Dana smiled and nodded. "It's different for everyone. If this isn't going well, maybe you'd like to try your hand at healing, with Michelle and Samantha." D'nia smiled. "I'd like that." She looked up at the sky. "When I heard Father introduce you to Mother as his wife, I thought, maybe-" "That Luke had cheated on me with Callista?" Dana shook her head. "Luke and I have only been married a little over a year." She motioned for D'nia to accompany her, and they headed for the Great Temple. Dana picked up the scalpel and examined her patient silently. Tenel Ka Solo closed her eyes and leaned back against the pillows. It had been a long, hard labor. Her husband, Dana's nephew, Jacen Solo, eyed the scalpel suspiciously. "What are you going to do with that, Aunt Dana?" he asked. Dana turned to her nephew. "I''m going to make an incision an inch and a half above her pubic bone, into her abdomen and uterus. I will then surgically remove the baby. Her hips aren't wide enough to deliver the baby normally, and if I weren't to perform a Cesarean section, it would cause hip dislocation, internal injury and bleeding, and/or tearing." Jacen went a little pale. "D'nia, please see Jacen out of the room before he faints," Dana directed, picking up a hypodermic. D'nia took her cousin's arm. "She'll be okay, Jace." As soon as the door closed behind him, Dana said, "Although they can be good for support, I've found that sometimes, it's best to have the father out of the room." Cilghal, the Mon Calamari healer who'd completed Dana's training, laughed. "Sometimes, yes." Tenel Ka opened her eyes. "Are you sure you know what you're doing, Mistress Skywalker?" Dana nodded, then abruptly stuck Tenel Ka with the hypodermic and injected a powerful pain killer. Quickly, she wiped the area she was going to cut. "I used to cut people open and sew them back together for a living," she said. "You could say I know what I'm doing." Michelle and Samantha exchanged looks, then snickered. They both knew that the people had been dead at the time, but neither of them were going to tell Tenel Ka or Cilghal that. Three hours later, Dana stood by the river running past the Academy. The water was a murky green. She stooped and picked up a rock, skipping it across the water. She sighed. Jacen and Tenel Ka were now the parents of a rather large baby boy they named Ulic. "Having fun?" Dana whirled around. Fox Mulder, Michelle's husband, stood a few feet away, dressed in faded jeans, beat-up running shoes, and his torn Knicks t-shirt. "Hi." He came forward, his hazel eyes dark and brooding. "Things aren't going so well for you and Luke, are they?" She shook her head. "Life was so simple, even when the government that trying to kill us, before I got that box from Sean." Fox didn't answer. "I mean, yeah, it got a little hairy at times, but I miss those days. I miss going on those wild goosechases. "On Earth, before Luke entered our lives, I was just your partner, but here, all I'll *ever* be in Dantana, wife of the great Jedi Master Luke Skywalker." She used the Force to pick up a rock. Holding it in her hand, she continued, "I miss trusting in science and God, putting my faith in Him, not the 'Force'. Today was the first time I'd picked up a scalpel in nearly two years. It felt good." She threw the rock at a tree across the river and knocked a hunk of bark off. Dana reached up and touched the cross she'd worn for 24 years. "Sometimes, I wish we could go back to the way things were. And others, I look at my three children and think that I wouldn't change a thing. "Once, I wanted nothing more than to be healthy, to be able to chase those UFOs." A tear slipped down her cheek. "Once, I wanted nothing more than for you to be the father of my children." There was a long silence, then Fox said, "That almost happened." "I know," Dana whispered. "And I wish Emily had made it into the world. And as much as I love Luke, I'll always love you." Fox hesitated, then put his arms around her as she broke down and began to cry. "Shh." Behind them, a cloaked figure turned and moved away soundlessly. Dana walked into one of the rec rooms at the Academy, where Han Solo was teaching William Arthur Philip Louis Mountbatten-Windsor, or Wills Windsor, as he preferred, to play sabacc. D'nia stood nearby, watching. "Morning, everyone. Wills, D'nia, I'm going too the Earth colony on Corsinne. Would you like to come with me?" Wills jumped at the chance. "I'll go. Things are getting a bit monotonous here." D'nia was a little more hesitant. "I don't know. What would Father say?" "I'll deal with your father when we get back." Dana smiled. "We're leaving in an hour. Go pack enough for at least a week." As Wills and D'nia left the room, Han eyed his sister-in-law. "Does Luke even know you're leaving?" Dana headed towards the door. "I don't want to talk about Luke, Han." She left the room. Han tapped a card on the sabacc table. "Trouble on the home front, maybe?" Corsinne Margaret Scully looked out the window at the sound of a landing ship. Her daughter was just getting off a small freighter, with two others. Brushing her hands on her slacks, she went to pick up ten-month-old Brennan Gylian Skywalker, Luke and Dana's youngest child. The door opened and Dana came in. "Hi, Mom." Margaret always knew when something was amiss with her children. "What is it, Dana?" Dana took her son from her mother and looked into his smiling face. "Mom . . ." Maggie looked at Wills and D'nia. They took the hint and went outside. "Now, do you want to tell me what's wrong?" Dana sat down on the floor. "When I divorced Fox, I thought I was doing what I needed to do. But recently, I've realized that I'm still in love with Fox." "Oh, honey!" Maggie sat down next to her daughter and put her arms around her. "You've had such a hard time the past several years." "I don't know what to do, Mom," Dana said. "I love Luke, but I've been through so much with Fox. Dad's death, my abduction. His father's death and Missy's. The many times I've been in the hospital." She paused. "My cancer." "Does Luke know about your cancer?" Maggie asked. Dana shook her head. "No. I haven't found the words to tell him." Maggie sighed. She thought of her own husband, dead now for ten years. He probably would have been the one Dana would have gone to, if he'd been alive. "Dana, you love Luke. I know you love Fox, but that's to be expected. For years, I wanted Fox for a son-in-law, and for a time, I had my wish. But you're married to Luke now. Not matter what happens, he'll be there for you. Fox is married to Michelle, anyway. Your student." Dana smiled wanly and sighed. "You're right, Mom. You always are, of course. I've been silly about it." Maggie nodded. Now take your son out to play." Yavin 4 They returned after a week and Dana immediately sought out Luke. She found him meditating on the roof of the Great Temple. "Enjoy your trip?" he asked, without looking up. "Luke, I-" "What?" He spun around, his eyes angry and holding more hurt than she'd ever seen before. His cloak flapped wildly in the wind. "Have you come up here to tell me you're leaving me four your exhusband?" Dana fought back sudden tears. "Luke, you have no idea what it's been like for me. Five years ago, I found myself a single mother, alone and frightened, with an awesome powers I didn't yet completely understand at my fingertips. You'd practically ordered me to marry Fox, whom I'd loved for years. "For a moments, I though, 'To hell with Luke. He walked out on me.' But then I thought about Leia, and what was best for her. "About a year after the wedding, I was really down. In a fit of despair, sure you were never coming back, I went to Fox. "I've never told you this, but I got pregnant. It was going to be a girl. I was nearly six months pregnant when some lunatic pushed me down the stairs. I went into premature labor, too far along for it to be called a miscarriage." Dana looked at the gigantic gas planet Yavin hovering on the horizon. Fighting a wave of grief, she faced her husband. "Emily Christine Mulder only lived five hours. She died at 3:25 in the morning, the 13th of October, 2000. "We buried her a few days later. That effectively ended an chance at a real marriage Fox and I might have had. We tried again about six months before you came back, but it didn't look like I'd ever be able to have another child. "Leia was too young. We never told her she'd almost had a baby sister." Dana closed her eyes for a moment. "Luke, I've been a fool. I knew about Callista. I mean, I'd read 'Children of the Jedi,' 'Darksaber,' and 'Planet of Twilight.' I'd just hoped it wasn't true, and you never told me otherwise. "But to find out that my husband has an illegitimate daughter? Will and Leia were born out of wedlock, but we corrected that slight." "It was as much of a shock for me," Luke admitted. "But with your track record, it doesn't really surprise me that you reacted how you did. You've been through a lot." Dana almost flinched at the nearly unfamiliar sensation of him embracing her. Then she relaxed and let out a sigh. "It's been a long time since I've held you," he whispered. "Oh, Luke, I'm sorry!" He tipped her head up and kissed her softly. "Shh. I know." Na'a'li "S'enor . . ." S'enor Ma'an woke from a light slumber and jerked upright in bed. "Huh?" A woman stood at the foot of the bed, her naked body silhoutted in the moonlight. "Oh, it's you, Callie." Ma'an tossed back the covers and climbed out of the bed. His gray skin was hairless. The hair on his head was jet-black, with a crimson streak running through two inches from the top of his head on his right side. His eyes glowed an eerie green. Ma'an liked to think he was a Sith Lord. He was strong in the Force, but not as strong in the Dark Side as the woman standing next to him. "S'enor, I've decided you're in the way. You're foolish and arrogant. Reckless. It won't do any good to take the children. What use would they be? It's Skywalker's wife we need." She grinned, the faint light glinting off her teeth. S'enor Ma'an knew he was going to die an instant before the gold beam of her lightsaber flared to life, an instant before his head flew from his body in a shower of blood. He landed on the white rug with a thud. Callista looked down at the blood, and her lover's body. She shrugged. "Sweet dreams, S'enor." Yavin 4 Dana woke with a start, finding herself in a half-sitting position. Evil laughter still echoed in her mind. She got up and went to the "window," which was more of a screen set in the wall, with an image from a camera fed into the transparisteel and metal contraption set into the ten-foot-thick wall. Dana had no idea why it was called "transparisteel" here. It was glass to her. She closed her eyes and let the Force flow. In her mind, she could see flashed of the future, but had never really been able to grasp them. Her sister, Melissa, dead now for eight years, had excelled at it, even without Jedi training. With a sigh, Dana got back into bed. Luke woke with a jerk. "What- Dana?" She moved close to his heat. The jungle planet was surprisingly cold at night, sometimes. "Something's wrong, Luke." He sighed and closed his eyes. "We'll deal with it in the morning." Dana nodded and closed her eyes. But one image kept her awake, that of D'nia and Callista, in a battle to the death. end
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