Star Wars fic: AU: "What Is Lost" (2/2)
Mar. 17th, 2007 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardgo back to part one
“Lieutenant,” Hellsbane said without looking up or waiting for Traynt to sit down. “I was wondering when you’d come calling.”
“General Hellsbane,” Traynt returned, sliding into the seat across from him. “We’ve been looking for you a long time.”
“You can keep looking a little longer,” Hellsbane said sedately. “You’re a bit out of your jurisdiction, Lieutenant.”
“Not particularly. The Ixtapa System would be a good addition to the Empire.”
“The Ixtapa System is allied with the rest of the Ten Systems. Invade one, and you’ll have to fight the others as well.” He still hadn’t looked up.
“The Empire’s fought worse odds.”
“The Grand Army, you mean. I remember. Did you want something?”
Traynt unclipped Starkiller’s lightsaber from his belt and put it down on the table between them. “A message,” he said, trying to ignore the lingering headache Starkiller’s attack had left him with. Bloody bastard.
Hellsbane’s eyes flickered upwards, and he put the spoon down, pushing the bowl aside. “Well, Lieutenant,” he said, “I suppose you do have my attention after all.” His gaze sharpened suddenly and he snapped out one hand. Traynt reached for the lightsaber, but too late; he only touched empty wood and Hellsbane was turning it over in his hands. “Be glad you weren’t holding it,” he said without looking up. “What is this? Another one of Palpatine’s tricks, to hand me my old apprentice’s lightsaber and expect me to come running, as if I didn’t know that he died that night in the Temple with the rest of the Jedi? What kind of fool do you take me for?”
Traynt blinked at him, startled out of his headache. “Your apprentice? This was taken off an Ixtapan mechanic just this afternoon and he was alive when I left him.”
Hellsbane’s head jerked up. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not. Aren’t you supposed to know if I’m telling the truth? Some kind of Jedi mindtrick?” Pressing his luck, probably, and with Ben Hellsbane of all people - a Jedi who had evaded the Empire for ten years, and caused as much trouble as any ten other Jedi. He’d been captured three times and the captain who’d captured him that third time and confidently assumed that he’d be the one to keep Hellsbane in custody – he’d next been seen on the floor of his starcruiser with a lightsaber wound through his chest. Hellsbane hadn’t reappeared for another six months when he’d hijacked an Imperial prison transport and vanished with it into the Outer Rim.
Hellsbane stared at him for a long moment, the silence between them like a lit lightsaber on the table. “You are telling the truth,” he said finally, tone grudging. “And I suppose you got those bruises on your face at the same time.”
Traynt put his hands flat on the table in order to avoid touching his much-abused jaw. Starkiller had a hell of a right hook. “Come peacefully and I’ll treat you as befits your rank,” he said, uncomfortably aware that it came out more like a suggestion than an order.
“No guards?” Hellsbane said, cocking his head to one side. “No binders, no Force-inhibitors, a fair trial in front of the Imperial Senate?”
“I’m not authorized to offer that,” Traynt admitted.
“Good. I wouldn’t have believed you if you said you were.” His handsome face was characteristically opaque, blue eyes shuttered. “So really, Lieutenant, what incentive do you offer me to come in?”
“None, I suppose,” Traynt said, watching as Hellsbane stood up to leave, hooking Starkiller’s lightsaber on his belt and tossing a few credits on the table. “But I can tell you that the mechanic we took that lightsaber off of is still alive and in Imperial custody. We’re running his face against the Imperial databanks right now.”
Hellsbane froze with his back to Traynt. “Why should I care?”
“General, everyone in the galaxy knows you’ll come running at the faintest hint of a Jedi in trouble. I hardly think you need more than that trinket on your hip as a good excuse,” Traynt said, more calmly than he felt, leaning back in his seat with his hand on his holstered blaster. “Besides,” he added, watching the muscles in Hellsbane’s back tense, “you said he was your apprentice.”
“I also said he was dead,” Hellsbane said shortly. “Good day, Lieutenant.” He vanished out the door.
Traynt stood up, pulling his jacket up over his blaster, though he really doubted it would garner too much attention in this neighborhood, and nodded to the Mirkannan waitress as she came to clear the table off, humming to herself and clicking her pinchers. He remained standing for a minute, eyes on the windows at the front of the diner, then he followed Hellsbane out the door.
Perrik was standing on the other side of the street, leaning against the shop and raising a cigarette to his lips. He dropped it when he saw Traynt, crushing it beneath the heel of his boot as he crossed the street. “Where is he?”
“He just walked out,” Traynt said, startled. “Don’t you –”
“The last person to walk out was a woman, an Ixtapan,” Perrik said. “Hellsbane hasn’t –” They both turned to stare up the street.
“I will be damned,” Traynt said. “Bloody Jedi and their damn mindtricks.”
-
-
Nakin came back to consciousness abruptly – he hadn’t gotten out of the habit of drifting out of sleep until after the war, when he’d barely slept at all – to the breezy, slightly tinny sound of a hologram’s speech.
“…Hellsbane lost us, damn the Jedi bastard,” Lieutenant Perrik was saying bitterly.
Nakin craned his neck around to see who he was speaking to and caught a glimpse of the bridge, just barely visible from the room he’d been left in, cuffed to a chair with arms and legs – not Force-inhibitors, thank the stars, just ordinary durasteel binders. Either the Imperials hadn’t been thinking straight, or they were saving the Force-inhibitors for something else – like the Jedi they were hunting. He couldn’t see the other speaker’s face from here, though: just the back of his head.
He listened with half an ear to Perrik and the junior officer’s conversation as he catalogued his injuries: blaster burn across the back of one hand and up his arm, gash in his forehead where he’d collided foreheads with a helmeted clone trooper (smart, Skywalker, he chided himself, and shuffled the thought away), numerous bruises and smaller cuts, the lingering aftereffects of the drug being purged out of him by the Force.
“Did a match turn up for Starkiller in the databanks yet?” Perrik asked, and Nakin’s attention snapped back to the conversation.
“No, not yet,” the junior officer said. “It’s crosschecking against –”
“Never mind that,” Perrik snapped. “Hellsbane said the lightsaber we picked up off him belonged to a Jedi that died in the Temple on Coruscant. There’s no way it should have gotten out to Ixtapa unless someone took it there.”
Nakin blinked slowly. Each lightsaber was unique to the Jedi that made it, but that didn’t mean every Jedi could identify another’s with just a casual glance, or even a long inspection. Only someone who knew that Jedi well. Like – a Padawan. Or their master.
“You talked with Hellsbane?” the junior officer questioned.
“Yes, he and Lieutenant Traynt had a nice chat before he buggered off into the bleeding sunset. Mindtricked us all. Before he left he said something else, though, about the lightsaber belonging to his former apprentice. Check that and get back to me.”
A console powered up on the bridge. “You’re aware of the belief that ‘Hellsbane’ is an assumed name?”
“I’m aware of it. Check anyway. See if any of the Jedi that Hellsbane could be had apprentice or former apprentices that were on Coruscant at the time of the Purge.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Perrik out.”
“Erebus out.”
Nakin closed his eyes, breathing in and out in a meditation pattern. He didn’t want to slip too deeply into trance, just enough to pick the locks on his binders using the Force, delicate, careful work that required the utmost in concentration. Ten years ago he couldn’t have done it. He’d had the power, sure, but the control had been beyond him until he’d had the time and the patience – and the surety of a quick trip back to Coruscant hanging over him if he failed – to get it to work.
The binders fell away. He leaned over to put his palms, durasteel and flesh alike, on the binders on his ankles and shoved the Force through them, snatching his hands away as durasteel exploded.
“What’s that?” It was the junior officer on the bridge. Nakin heard booted feet on the floor and leapt straight upward, using the Force to boost him, and let the door slide shut. He heard the footsteps stop outside it, then they faded away as the junior officer went back to the bridge.
Nakin dropped back to the floor. The Imps hadn’t left his gun belt in here – he reached out for the Force for his lightsaber’s energy signature and realized it wasn’t anywhere in the ship – that was right, Perrik had said he’d taken it. What about the other one? The energy stamp wasn’t quite as strong – he hadn’t made it, only saved it from Sidious’s grasping hands and carried it alongside his own for ten years – but it would do, in the absence of his blasters. No energy stamp on those at all, except for the faintness that came from daily wear in his presence. Not enough for him to track them through the ship – well, probably enough, but he didn’t feel like taking the time and the energy right now. So. He had to get to his lightsaber, because he could leave the blasters but there was no way in hell he was leaving Qui-Gon’s lightsaber to be desecrated by Sidious, and then he had to get off-planet as quickly as possible.
Good plan. Better than most. He’d take it.
-
-
Lieutenant Cafferti was pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers as he read the profile the databanks had finally presented him as a match to Nakin Starkiller’s face. Taking his hand away from his face, he reached to flick on the holoprojector again; Perrik was going to be either extremely happy or extremely pissed off and Cafferti wasn’t sure which one it was going to be just yet.
“Don’t,” a low, level voice said, and Cafferti turned to find a boot sole leveled at his throat, Nakin Starkiller attached to the other end of it.
Starkiller’s blue eyes flickered down towards him. “You found my file,” he said mildly. “Read anything interesting?”
“You –” Cafferti began and Starkiller’s heel pushed even harder against his throat. He cut the words off.
“Good answer. The Jedi your superiors are out looking for. Who is he?”
Cafferti took a shallow breath, as deep as he could manage with Starkiller’s boot pressing against his windpipe, and shook his head.
Starkiller cocked his head to the side. “Wrong answer,” he said and moved so quickly Cafferti didn’t see more than a blur; the next thing he knew was blinding pain as bone snapped in his right hand. He couldn’t scream; something had closed over his mouth like an invisible hand and when he looked up again Starkiller was in the same position, boot up against his throat. “You were saying?”
“Hellsbane,” Cafferti said shakily, a ragged pant in his voice; yes, he’d sworn his loyalty to the Empire, but he didn’t have a death wish. “Ben Hellsbane. He was a general during the Clone Wars –”
“Lie,” Starkiller snapped. “I was there. I know all the Jedi generals. No Hellsbane.”
“It’s an assumed name,” Cafferti whispered, cradling his ruined hand in his left one. “We think. Only the Emperor and Darth Cidal know who he is – might be. We know he’s a Jedi –”
“Obviously,” Starkiller interjected, not moving. How the hell could the man hold his balance that long without even wavering?
“– he was a Master. We think. We got a tip that he might be here; Lieutenant Traynt made contact with him today.”
“I heard,” Starkiller said, voice surprisingly serene. “You lot are all idiots. Can’t even keep track of one Jedi – here’s a word of advice, Lieutenant: next time you capture someone wearing a lightsaber, it’s generally wise to assume they’re Jedi.” His foot swung around suddenly and met the curve of Cafferti’s skull with a surprisingly loud crack.
-
-
“Something wrong with your bag of bolts?”
“I just want to get it checked over before I head out again,” Hellsbane said, voice light and musical despite the damage that had been done to it sometime in the past. “There was a problem with the hyperdrive a few months back; I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Who’s best?”
Kandir ran his good hand over his close-cropped head. Like most of his generation, he was a veteran of the Ten Systems War; the withered remains of his left hand were proof enough of that. “For a hyperdrive? Starkiller. Nakin Starkiller. He’s expensive, but he’s the best when it comes to anything mechanical, and there’s no one in the Ten Systems better at dealing with faulty hyperdrives. You’ll find him at Zsuzsi Dj’onz’s joint, The Sand and Stone, up on Priester’s Way.”
“Nakin Starkiller,” Hellsbane noted. “And The Sand and Stone. My thanks.”
Kandir eyed him carefully. Hellsbane had been less trouble than most renters he’d had, quiet as a ripza and sleeping in his starship most nights, but he’d never shown any interest in anything going on in Per Macchu. He rather thought this was the first time Hellsbane had said more than two words to him since renting out his hangar. “Get there early if you can,” he added finally. “Starkiller’s fighting tonight, and you won’t want to miss that.”
“Fighting?” Hellsbane repeated, with an elegant raise of one fiery eyebrow. “For money, you mean.”
“Zsuzsi cuts him a share of the credits her place brings in on a fight night, so yeah. As long as you’re in the city, though, it’s not to be missed.” Kandir let out a low Ixtapan whistle of titillating appreciation. “The boy can take down anything, bipedal or not. You might try him yourself if you don’t believe me.”
Hellsbane pushed overlong strands of gray-streaked red hair out of his face. “Maybe I will. Priester’s Way, you said?”
-
-
Nakin came into The Sand and Stone using the back entrance, appearing abruptly next to Zsuzsi behind the bar. She gave him a long look, taking in the blaster burn across the sleeve of his shirt, the dried blood on his neck and caking above his left eye, his skinned knuckles and bruised face.
“You look like hell, Starkiller,” she noted, reaching back for a bottle of chacharan brandy and pouring him half a glass. Nakin regarded it with the customary dismay he extended toward all types of liquor. “I take it the Imperial job ended badly.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Nakin said, making a face at the taste of the alcohol.
“Recognized your face from your broadsheets, did they?”
“They also didn’t pay me,” he added, pouring chacharan over his split lip.
Zsuzsi snatched the empty glass from his hand. “I don’t know why I waste the good stuff on you. You don’t appreciate it anyway.”
“I appreciate it,” Nakin said indignantly. “I just don’t like it.” He ran his fingers over the cut on his forehead. “Do I really look that bad?”
“Yes,” Zsuzsi said flatly. “You want me to find a pair of meertzus? Turnout’ll be less, but if you’re not up for a fight –”
“I can fight,” Nakin said, a little indignantly. He put a hand on the bar and vaulted it easily, barely missing a gifga’s curling horns. The gifga – not one of Zsuzsi’s regulars, but she recognized him from previous fight nights – turned, opening his mouth to berate or threaten, but he fell silent when he saw Nakin’s face.
Zsuzsi snorted. “You’re famous,” she pointed out.
“Yeah,” said Nakin, looking a little hurt. He started scraping dried blood off his forehead, flinching as flecks of it came flaking off onto his fingers. “Great. Who’m I up against?”
-
-
Nakin took out the first three comers in less than ten minutes put together, barely moving except to abruptly lash out. There was careful control in each movement, contained rage that Zsuzsi recognized from the war. This was more of it in one place than she’d seen in years, though; usually Nakin took the time to play with his opponents, give the audience a show, have Zsuzsi sell enough drinks to make a tidy profit. Right now he just wanted to kill something and was barely holding it off.
At least he was holding it off. Ten years ago he hadn’t been able.
“Is that it?” he spat, staring out at a crowd that was suddenly silent as the last opponent was dragged out of the ring. “What are you all, cowards? This is pathetic.”
“What about me?” That was a man’s voice, a stranger’s, a clipped Core accent with a slight roughness around the edges that came from old damage. Zsuzsi, perched behind the bar, scanned the crowd for the speaker – that took fucking guts, right after three prospective fighters had had to be carried out.
She didn’t see him until he’d pushed his way into the fight ring cleared for Nakin. A small man, lean, with gray-streaked red hair tied back from his wasted but still handsome face. Nakin’s eyes widened minutely when he saw him, and Zsuzsi saw his lips part to speak. He stopped when the stranger shook his head slightly in negation.
What the hell? Nakin didn’t know anyone off planet besides other smugglers and most of them had come through The Sand and Stone at some point. This man was a complete stranger – more, Nakin wasn’t acknowledging him besides that first flash of surprise.
Some of the anger had gone from his voice when he said, “You got a name, off-worlder?”
“Ben Hellsbane.” There was a note of warning in his clipped syllables. “And if I’m an off-worlder, then you are too. Where?” He slipped his jacket off over his shoulders, dropped it at the edge of the ring along with his gun belt.
Nakin smiled slightly. “Good call. It’s Tatooine – but I haven’t been back in years.”
“Hypnos,” Hellsbane said. “But I was only there the once.”
“Tiny little swamp of a moon in the Core. Fail to see why I should care.” Nakin tossed his head back with a snort of disdain. “Enough preliminaries, O – old man. Let’s fight.” He raised his hands in front of him, fingers curved inward and flared out.
Hellsbane smiled slightly, but didn’t say anything. His own hands were open and loose at his sides. This time it was Nakin who couldn’t stop moving, contrary to everything else Zsuzsi had ever known about him, shifting from foot to foot and circling Hellsbane.
Both of them moved at once, moved as one, mirror images of each other, and then fists and feet lashed out, blurring together. Nakin and Hellsbane were a blur, matching each other blow for blow. Abruptly Naking leapt straight up, twisting in midair to snap out a kick to Hellsbane’s head. Hellsbane ducked it and rolled into a somersault; he and Nakin came up opposite of where they had been and started circling each other before diving in again.
Zsuzsi couldn’t take her eyes off them. They moved like two halves of a whole, flawlessly and seamlessly countering each other’s moves; money changed hands in the crowd behind them, whispers stirring like sarradan winds in the savannah. Where did Nakin know Hellsbane from?
There was a slight pause in the action as both Nakin and Hellsbane bounced back to the edge, time enough for Nakin to wipe a smear of blood off the reopened cut on his forehead. “Not bad.”
“Are you holding back?” Hellsbane asked.
“Little bit.”
“Well, don’t!” Hellsbane said sharply, and they were at each other again, rolling over backwards, grappling at each other with hands and arms; Hellsbane pinned Nakin to the floor and Nakin flipped them both, leaning down over Hellsbane. “Give up?”
“Not yet,” the older man said, and threw Nakin backwards over his head. The crowd scattered as Nakin arched up and twisted coming down, landing in a half-crouch one hand flaring out in front of him.
“Not bad.” There were a pair of long-bladed durasteel knives suddenly in his hands. “Now let’s dance.”
Hellsbane rose with a dagger in his right fist. “Nice warm-up, Starkiller. Let’s.”
There was no expected beat of silence. He and Nakin were both abruptly chest to chest with the barest possible minimum of motion needed to get them there in between, knives pressed blade to blade, and then they broke apart, circling once before diving in again. Durasteel clashed and both men snapped out bare hands and feet, elbows and knees, throwing each other up and away often enough that the crowd scattered back permanently, fluctuating like a living thing.
Without looking away once Zsuzsi reached for the bottle of chacharan and poured herself a glass, knocking it back. Nakin was damn well alive and enjoying it. She’d be damned if she’d seen him this happy in years.
There was no warning at all when Hellsbane’s knife came to rest on the side of Nakin’s neck. “You’re dead,” the stranger noted.
“So are you,” Nakin said, and Hellsbane’s eyes flickered downward to see the kknives pressed crosswise over his stomach.
A draw.
They drew back from each other and bowed at the waist, formally, then strolled back to the edges of the ring where they’d left their things. The crowd seemed a little shocked. No one had fought Nakin Starkiller to a draw in the history of fight nighting – years – and this was…unthinkable. Worse, Nakin didn’t even look surprised. Who the hell was Ben Hellsbane?
-
-
Nakin finished buckling his gun belt on in time to look up and meet Obi-Wan’s – Hellsbane’s, better if he didn’t forget himself – eyes across the circle, eyebrows raise a little in question.
“Buy you a drink?” he called, pulling up the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face.
“I won’t say no to that.” Hellsbane folded his coat over his arm; his voice was rough and a little harsh and surprisingly dapper. Nakin thought of innumerable planets and the way light fell in the practice rings of the Temple, and then he thought of death in the halls. You bastard, I thought you were dead.
Zsuzsi was looking at them oddly when they pushed through the crowd to the bar. “I’ll take that drink now,” he said, smiling and tasting blood on his mouth where he’d cut open the inside of his lip on a tooth.
“Good liquor is wasted on you,” she snorted, picking up the bottle of chacharan. “I’ll put it on your tab. Same for you?” Her eyes were startlingly bright when she looked at Hellsbane.
“Not if he’s having something bloody awful,” Hellsbane said, slow smile spreading over his still handsome face. The years hadn’t hurt him badly at all, Nakin thought, so long as you didn’t look too closely at the oversized knot of scar tissue that seemed to encompass his maimed left hand.
“He’ll take the good stuff,” Nakin said easily, feeling Hellsbane’s eyes on him. They were both studying each other, mapping out the changes ten years and a second war – or a continuation of the first one, the war they’d been fighting since Qui-Gon Jinn died on Naboo all those years ago – had wrought.
Zsuzsi poured them both tall glasses of chacharan, topping Nakin’s off with water and Hellsbane’s with kirioo, a sharp-tasting cordial made from kiri roots from the Radja Jungle. Nakin didn’t like the stuff much himself, but it was a traditional savannah addition to chacharan. “Nice show,” she said to Hellsbane as she handed him his drink. “How do you two know each other?”
Well, Zsuzsi wasn’t stupid, and he and Hellsbane had put on a bit of a show. “From the Clone Wars,” Nakin said, smiling thinly. There had been a lot of people involved in the Clone Wars, and not all of them were clones or Jedi.
“We were wing mates,” Hellsbane added, smiling disarmingly. There was sudden gathering of the Force in the air around him and Nakin thought, oh hell no, he’s not going to mindtrick Zsuzsi. He put his hand on Hellsbane’s arm.
“Come upstairs with me.” Off Zsuzsi’s startled expression, he added, “We can catch up.”
Hellsbane was frowning at him, eyes narrowed, but the corners of his mouth turned up a little at Nakin’s words. “Of course,” he said smoothly.
Nobody watched them go upstairs. The cantina was still buzzing with people, most of them eagerly discussing the fight and too occupied to notice Hellsbane and Nakin ascending the stairs.
“My room’s at the end,” he said over his shoulder to Hellsbane, pressing his palm to the recognition screen. He’d fixed that up himself, still paranoid in the early years of the Purge, just beginning to believe he might actually have something resembling a base.
Hellsbane’s gaze was steady and calm as the door slid shut behind them – too steady and calm. Nakin put his still-full glass of chacharan down on top of his weapons chest and reached for Hellsbane’s. He let him take it, fingers opening loosely when Nakin’s closed around the glass. Nakin turned back to him, well aware that a bare three feet lay between him and the man he’d once called master.
They both stared at each other.
“The room’s safe,” Nakin said finally, desperately. “No one gets in here except me, not even Zsuzsi. It –”
“Anakin,” Hellsbane – Obi-Wan – said softly.
And Anakin Skywalker broke.
-
-
Obi-Wan caught Anakin as his former apprentice flung himself at him, hands coming up to slid over the small of his back and cradle him, balance him out. Anakin let out a shaky breath, turning his face into the curve between neck and shoulder, breathing hard and clutching at Obi-Wan as if he expected him to melt away into smoke beneath his hands, broken gasping sounds in the small of his throat.
“Shh,” Obi-Wan said, “Shh, Anakin, I’m here. I’m –”
“You were dead,” Anakin said, the words muffled against his skin. “You were very, very dead.” He thumped the heel of his hand against Obi-Wan’s chest, but without much force. “I felt you die, you –” He cut off abruptly. “I felt you die.”
“Anakin –”
“No.” Anakin jerked back, away from him, and wrapped his arms around himself. His face was utterly cold and closed off. He didn’t look anything like the Anakin Skywalker Obi-Wan had known “No, you don’t have the right.” He shook his head. “Ten years, Obi-Wan. Ten fucking years, and I thought you were dead through all of them.” A deep, shaky breath as his eyelashes dipped downward, then snapped up again. “You have no right to waltz in here, into my life after all these years. No right at all.”
It was like a slap in the face. Obi-Wan reeled back, hurt to the bone and feeling oddly empty. “You were my brother,” he snapped. “Do you think that means nothing, Anakin? I spent three years looking for you after Utapau, after everyone I knew told me you’d died on Coruscant. I never gave up, even – I never gave up.”
“You didn’t look hard enough,” Anakin said quietly. “You should have.”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan agreed. “I should have.”
“I heard what Perrik was saying about you – about your alter-ego Hellsbane,” Anakin continued, blue eyes flashing. “Were you too busy trying to save the galaxy to bother with yourself?”
“Anakin, this isn’t about me.”
Anakin shook his head again. “Isn’t it?” Another step backwards, his face falling half in shadow. “You didn’t come to Ixtapa for me.”
“Anakin, I –”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“Anakin, don’t.” Obi-Wan said sharply, and stepped forward to grab Anakin’s arm and pull him closer.
He didn’t get that far, mostly because Anakin drew back his arm and punched him in the face, then twisted to one side and grabbed for Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan snapped his elbow into Anakin’s face and his knee up into Anakin’s groin; Anakin took both blows, the first to his nose and the second on the outside of his thigh, face absolutely blank against the pain, and kicked Obi-Wan in the kneecap. Obi-Wan curled his hands around Anakin’s biceps as he folded backwards with the kick, bringing the younger Jedi with him; Anakin turned the momentum in a backwards roll as the Force peeled Obi-Wan’s fingers apart, separating them. Both of them jerked apart, in balanced fighters’ crouches now, Anakin leaning forward slightly with his eyes wide and blood running down his face from his broken nose.
“Don’t touch me,” he snarled as he straightened, turning away and raising his hand to his face.
“Anakin –” Obi-Wan began as he stood, touching his jaw tentatively. One thing was sure, and that was that Anakin’s hand to hand had definitely improved since they’d last sparred, sometime back on the Outer Rim between battles.
He saw Anakin’s shoulders tense, and then his former Padawan raised his head slightly. “I’m sorry, Master,” he said, perfect conciliating composure in his voice, as if he were a Padawan again, although he’d never used that particular tone. “That was uncalled for.”
Ten years ago that would have been welcome. Now it seemed like a cheat, like a resurrected ghost of something that had never really been. Obi-Wan shuttered his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, Anakin was still turned away, the line of his skull limned in light and revealing the faint lines of scar tissue beneath his short blond hair, bleached golden by Ixtapa’s twin suns. “No,” he said finally. “No, I suppose I deserved that. I’m sorry I never found you.”
“It’s – a very large galaxy,” Anakin said with some difficulty, turning back to him. “I – I felt you die, when Order 66 went through. I was meditating, in the Council chamber, and I – snapped. I didn’t think I was wrong, not that time.”
Obi-Wan ducked his head, hair falling over his shoulder. He should cut it again, maybe. “You weren’t,” he admitted. “After a fashion.”
Anakin’s eyebrows arched slightly. “You were dead,” he said flatly.
“Very, very dead,” Obi-Wan agreed, repeating Anakin’s words back at him.
“But you’re not dead now.” Anakin held his left hand out an inch or so from his broken nose, not even wincing as the cartilage repaired itself. “Ow,” he said, more an expected statement than an expression of pain, and moved his hand upward, healing the cuts on his face with a minimum of power. Funny; he’d never been particularly good at healing before. It had taken too much care and concentration for him to bother, not when he could finagle Obi-Wan into doing it or just slap a bacta bandage on. “Let me guess: there is no death, there is the Force?”
“Something like that,” Obi-Wan admitted, decidedly fascinated with the progression of healing on Anakin’s body. “What did you do to your face?”
“Ran into a clone in full armor,” Anakin said easily, frowning at the blaster burn on his flesh hand and arm. “Or did you mean before? It was an unfortunate incident involving a twenty-story window, a bounty hunter, and a percussion grenade. Well, that and a few bar fights. The arm’s from getting shot.” He looked briefly pensive. “I haven’t actually been shot all that much. Tossed out windows, punched in the face, knifed, arrested – not a lot of shooting. It’s kind of a new experience.”
“Oh,” Obi-Wan said, startled for some reason he couldn’t quite define. “I’m –”
“Apologize to me again and I’m going to punch you again,” Anakin said flatly, smile fading. He met Obi-Wan’s gray eyes with his own blue ones, gaze steady and a little cold. He didn’t look like the Anakin Skywalker Obi-Wan remembered.
“You’ve changed,” Obi-Wan said, blinking. He hadn’t expected – well, he hadn’t expected to find Anakin here, of all places, but he hadn’t expected Anakin to have – “You’ve grown up.”
There was a surprising amount of bewilderment in Anakin’s eyes in reaction to that. He ducked his head, almost looking nineteen again for a heartbeat. “You know I’ve wanted to hear you say that for thirteen years?” he said softly. “Ever since Padmé – she told me that. Before Geonosis.”
Obi-Wan sighed. It was a small sound, and it stirred the hot, humid air in the room. “I’m telling you now.”
For a moment Anakin was silent, face distant, and then he smiled, the expression breaking over him like a Coruscant sunrise. “That’ll do.”
-
-
Anakin didn’t stir when Obi-Wan slipped out of his arms and onto the floor, pulling on his clothes. They’d talked most of the night, Zsuzsi’s chacharan loosening both their tongues, and fallen asleep at some point in the early morning. Half drunk, exhausted, and deep in sleep, Anakin had finally lost what inhibitions he’d still had up and wrapped his arms around Obi-Wan, clinging like a Mon Calamari gihra, turning his face into the curve of Obi-Wan’s neck and muttering slightly in a mixture of Huttese and Basic. Obi-Wan hadn’t pushed him away.
Anakin’s lightsaber was still hanging on his belt. Obi-Wan unclipped it and weighed it in his hand thoughtfully, looking at Anakin’s bright head, still and scarred in sleep. He hadn’t asked for it, the first thing almost any Jedi would have done upon losing his lightsaber, and even with Anakin’s penchant for such – this was the same lightsaber he’d had ten years ago; Obi-Wan rather thought that was some kind of record for Anakin. Still, he hadn’t asked for it, or even commented on it. And he had been wearing a gun belt with well-used blasters holstered there; Obi-Wan touched briefly on the energy stamp on them with his mind.
There was another lightsaber as well. Obi-Wan put Anakin’s lightsaber down on the bedside table and stooped down next to the foot of the bed, where Anakin had hung his gun belt off the post. Lightly, he reached out with mind and hands, touching the lightsaber and suddenly wanted to both laugh and cry. Qui-Gon’s lightsaber. Anakin had been carrying Qui-Gon’s lightsaber with him for ten years. Obi-Wan kept his hands on it, reassured by the lingering touch of his old Master’s mind, and then reluctantly let go.
He could smell ozone in the air as he made his way downstairs. The promised storm had finally come to Per Macchu, dark clouds hanging low and heavy over the city and wind whipping against the side of the building.
The cantina was nowhere near last night’s capacity. A few tables were taken and a few patrons sat at the counter, speaking in the soft gurgling lilt of the continental Ixtapan tongue. Obi-Wan wondered briefly if Anakin had bothered to learn it or if he’d stuck to Basic like he had as a Padawan. The realization that he wasn’t sure which one it was disturbed him more than he cared to admit.
Zsuzsi eyed him warily as he approached. “Nakin kick you out of bed, Hellsbane?” she demanded.
“I’m an early riser. He’s not,” Obi-Wan said, leaning on the counter and letting his gaze travel leisurely over the cantina, looking for anyone out of place, anyone that tugged at the Force he carried around him like the Jedi robes he no longer wore. “Cariik’aa, if you’ve got it.”
“I do,” Zsuzsi said, reaching for the container and flicking on the plasmaheater behind her. “How do you know Nakin?” she asked again, with the same suspicious expression she’d worn last night.
“I told you,” Obi-Wan said, “we met during the Clone Wars.”
“No. Nakin told me that. I want your side of the story.”
“There’s nothing else to tell,” Obi-Wan said calmly.
Zsuzsi leaned forward toward him, thick dark braid falling over her shoulder. “No one ever says that unless there’s a lot more to tell. And I’ll tell you what I think it is: I think you’re dangerous to him,” she said in a low, steady voice. “And I want a reason for Spaceforce to haul your ass off my planet.”
“I would never hurt him,” Obi-Wan told her flatly. “Never. And I’m no more dangerous to him than he is to me.” A lie. The Imperials wouldn’t have come to Ixtapa if it hadn’t been for him, but he’d spent the last ten years lying, and it was a hard habit to break. “I’m glad he has friends here.”
She said, “How do you know Nakin?” She hesitated briefly, then went on. “You’re too like each other to just be friends.”
“I trained him,” Obi-Wan said, and turned his head as the door opened. The flash of white clone armor was the first thing he saw.
-
-
Zsuzsi turned back to the plasmaheater to get the cariik off before it congealed. “I still think you’re not telling me something,” she said, meaning to get the truth out of Ben Hellsbane one way or another. Nakin was off-limits, but a stranger –
He wasn’t there.
Zsuzsi was blinking at thin air, bemused and more than a little startled, when the clones at the door finally got her attention. She reached for the plasma rifle beneath the counter – Imperials were not welcome here, or anywhere else on Ixtapa for that matter –
“Put both your hands where I can see them,” a woman’s cool voice said.
“Who the hell are you?” Zsuzsi demanded, not complying. The stranger was maybe a head smaller than her, with olive skin and a spray of black teardrop tattoos across her nose and cheeks. She wore power like a nearly invisible cloak, the same way Nakin and Hellsbane both did.
“I’m with the Empire,” the girl – young, in her early twenties, Ixtapan years at least – said. “You don’t need anything beyond that.”
“I damn well do,” Zsuzsi snapped. “Your kind aren’t –”
The girl raised a hand and Zsuzsi went flying back into the plasmaheater behind her. She rolled off as soon as she could, the coils burning patterns in her ass, and grabbed the edge of the counter to pull herself upright. She knew who the girl was – one of the Emperor’s Hands, the one they called the Emperor’s Dog. She shouldn’t have come to Ixtapa.
The Imperial tossed a palm-sized holoprojector down onto the floor, where it unfolded a life-size holo of a tall young man – soft-faced, handsome, long-haired, with a scar down one side of his face. “Anakin Skywalker,” she said coldly. “A Jedi Knight. Where is he?”
“Lady, this is Ixtapa,” one of Zsuzsi’s regulars, a wrangler down at the Hahaari Market, snapped. “Jedi aren’t welcome here. And neither are Imperials,” he added significantly. “So why don’t you –”
The girl snapped a hand out toward him, fingers closing into a fist, and Zsuzsi’s eyes widened as the wrangler’s hands went up to his throat, clawing at the flesh there as though he meant to claw straight through to his windpipe. The girl turned away from him, ignoring him as he fell to the floor, blood spattering over his fingers.
“I know he’s here, so don’t even think about lying to me. Where is he?”
“There’s no one named Anakin Skywalker on Merapesh,” Zsuzsi snapped, eyes on the holo. “If he’s on Ixtapa, you’re on the wrong continent.”
“Maybe this picture’s too old,” the girl said, waving a hand toward the projector. The holo changed, growing an inch or two and several years older, curls shortening to a short clip along the curve of the skull, robes molding to trousers and a loose laced shirt, scars added to the smooth skin of the face. “Recognize him now?”
“Hey, that’s –” someone said, and was quickly silenced by his companion.
“Maybe he didn’t tell you his real name,” the Imperial went on. “He always was lying to us back during the Clone Wars. Maybe you know him better as Nakin Starkiller.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Tcella burst out from his seat at the bar. “Nakin’s good people. He’s no Jedi.”
The girl cocked her head to one side. “So tell me where he is, you miserable little sand flea.”
Tcella’s mouth dropped open in perfect indignation and he clicked his pinchers together with a hard clattering sound that echoed across the bar. “Nakin’s good people,” he repeated angrily. “One of us.”
“And I’m sure he’ll appreciate the sentiment when he’s examining your dismembered corpse. I’ll ask one more time before I start removing limbs: where is Anakin Skywalker?”
“I’m right here,” Nakin Starkiller said, and everyone looked up to see him standing at the top of the stairs, blasters in his hands. “You want me, Yulalli? Come and get me.”
The shining metal cylinder at the girl’s – Yulalli’s – waist sprang into her hand, a long line of crimson red sprouting from it. “No lightsaber, Skywalker?”
“A Jedi’s weapon,” Nakin said, not moving. “And there are no Jedi anymore. Your treacherous master made sure of that. No, Sha’re Yulalli, I’m not Jedi. And I think you’ve said it yourself: I never was.”
“But I am.” Ben Hellsbane stepped out of thin air and put his unlit lightsaber against the back of Yulalli’s neck. “So you can see where we might have a difference of opinion.”
Yulalli’s lips drew back from her teeth in a savage snarl. “Master Kenobi,” she said, then looked furious at herself for using the honorific. “I should have expected to find you here. You and Skywalker always were joined at the hip. Probably because no one else would have him.”
Hellsbane leaned forward, lips brushing along the fine hair bound at the back of her skull. “Master Skrik would have been so disappointed,” he said softly.
“Don’t talk about him,” Yulalli snarled and leapt straight upward, turning in midair. Hellsbane met her, lightsaber suddenly in hand and arcing over his head, and the air crackled when they met.
For a moment time seemed to pause and still, everyone’s attention on the duel of titans. Even Zsuzsi was enthralled; she – and probably everyone else on Ixtapa – had never seen a lightsaber duel before. Nakin was the first to move; he raised both blasters and shot two clone troopers cleanly through the neck, one and then the other. That broke the spell; most of Zsuzsi’s patrons shrieked and dove for cover, at least one of them going through Zsuzsi’s expensive glass windows in the process, while others went for their own blasters. This was the Outer Rim, after all; the Empire got no respect here. Zsuzsi snatched the plasma rifle out from beneath the bar, raising it to her shoulder, and aiming carefully. Nakin took out the clone she’d been aiming at with a flying kick to the jaw and a shot to the head before she could fire.
“Look at yourself, Sha’re,” Hellsbane cried over the clash of lightsabers. “You were a Jedi, a promising Padawan –”
“Shut up!” Yulalli yelled. “You’re a dead man, Kenobi, you and your precious Chosen One Padawan.”
“Anakin was knighted years ago,” Hellsbane said calmly as a thunderclap sounded outside the window. The storm had finally come to Per Macchu. “What would Master Skrik have said about what you’ve become?”
“I told you not to talk about him!” One of Nakin’s shots had gone awry and shot out the lights in the cantina; the lightsabers beat red and blue shadows on Yulalli’s face.
“He was a good Jedi,” Hellsbane continued. “A good man. I liked him. If he was here today –”
“He’s not,” Yulalli snarled, stabbing upward; Hellsbane blocked it and forced her lightsaber down and around, back behind her. She kicked him in the jaw and he took half a staggering step backwards before regaining his balance. “So don’t talk about him, Kenobi, don’t you fucking dare –”
“And you’re working for the man who killed him?” Hellsbane said softly, the words half-drowned in the sound of lightsabers clashing.
“He was murdered by a clone.”
“The order came from the Chancellor, Sha’re,” Hellsbane said, still calm. “I know. I was one of the victims.”
“Don’t talk to me about Order 66!” Yulalli screamed, and her lightsaber dashed down toward Hellsbane.
Hellsbane’s hand snapped out toward her. Zsuzsi saw the girl’s teeth grit as if in pain, arm – and lightsaber – slowly forced backwards. “You bastard,” she whispered, breathing hard. “You sick bastard.”
“You’re the murderer, Sha’re,” Nakin said.
Zsuzsi looked up. There were no clone troopers left standing and Nakin was crouched on top of a table a few feet away, blasters held lightly in his hands. He was watching Hellsbane and Yulalli with startlingly bright eyes, brows narrowed in judgment.
“You can still come back, Sha’re,” Hellsbane said, without looking up at Nakin. “It’s not too late.”
“Yes,” Nakin said. “It is.”
Hellsbane’s head snapped up. “Anakin, don’t!”
Anakin shot Yulalli through the back of the head. She slumped forward, lightsaber falling from her hand and deactivating before it hit the floor, and Hellsbane leapt to catch her body, lowering her to the floor. When he straightened again he was still holding his lightsaber, although it was deactivated now.
“Anakin…”
“Say it,” Nakin invited, nostrils flaring. “Say it, Obi-Wan. Tell me off like I’m a Padawan.”
“I don’t think we should have this conversation here, Anakin.”
“I don’t think we should have this conversation,” Nakin snapped back. He leapt down off the table and stepped over toward Hellsbane. “We’re over, Obi-Wan. I’m glad we’ve had this conversation.”
“Anakin!”
Nakin unclipped one of the lightsabers on his belt and slammed it into Hellsbane’s chest. “I was there, Master,” he said. “I saw them die. I was on Coruscant when Palpatine sent clones through the city dragging out children and slaughtering them in the streets like animals. There is no forgiveness. No Jedi-killer deserves that – especially not a traitor.”
“Anakin –”
“The name’s Starkiller,” Nakin said, very softly. “Nakin Starkiller. Anakin Skywalker died ten years ago on Coruscant.” He took his hand away, and Hellsbane caught the lightsaber before it could fall. “You’d better get off-planet before the Empire sends someone else to investigate the Dog’s disappearance,” he said in a normal tone. “We’ll take care of the Imps.”
“Anakin –”
“Goodbye, Obi-Wan,” Nakin said, and turned away, going to Zsuzsi’s patrons.
“Don’t even think about it,” Zsuzsi said when Hellsbane took a step forward, raising the plasma rifle slightly. “We take care of our own here.”
There was a pained look on the man’s face. “I can see that,” he said, and then he turned around and walked out of the cantina. “I’m sorry for the trouble,” he added before the door closed behind him.
end
Author's Notes: Originally, this was meant to be the beginning of a much longer story, and so issues that are glossed over or never brought up in this story (Padmé and the twins, Darth Cidal, what exactly happened with Order 66) aren't explained. This does not mean they were not thought of, and I'll be happy to explain them if anyone's interested.
Not having a working knowledge of the Star Wars EU, Ixtapa and its inhabitants are my own invention, as are the inner workings of a Nubian hyperdrive.
“Lieutenant,” Hellsbane said without looking up or waiting for Traynt to sit down. “I was wondering when you’d come calling.”
“General Hellsbane,” Traynt returned, sliding into the seat across from him. “We’ve been looking for you a long time.”
“You can keep looking a little longer,” Hellsbane said sedately. “You’re a bit out of your jurisdiction, Lieutenant.”
“Not particularly. The Ixtapa System would be a good addition to the Empire.”
“The Ixtapa System is allied with the rest of the Ten Systems. Invade one, and you’ll have to fight the others as well.” He still hadn’t looked up.
“The Empire’s fought worse odds.”
“The Grand Army, you mean. I remember. Did you want something?”
Traynt unclipped Starkiller’s lightsaber from his belt and put it down on the table between them. “A message,” he said, trying to ignore the lingering headache Starkiller’s attack had left him with. Bloody bastard.
Hellsbane’s eyes flickered upwards, and he put the spoon down, pushing the bowl aside. “Well, Lieutenant,” he said, “I suppose you do have my attention after all.” His gaze sharpened suddenly and he snapped out one hand. Traynt reached for the lightsaber, but too late; he only touched empty wood and Hellsbane was turning it over in his hands. “Be glad you weren’t holding it,” he said without looking up. “What is this? Another one of Palpatine’s tricks, to hand me my old apprentice’s lightsaber and expect me to come running, as if I didn’t know that he died that night in the Temple with the rest of the Jedi? What kind of fool do you take me for?”
Traynt blinked at him, startled out of his headache. “Your apprentice? This was taken off an Ixtapan mechanic just this afternoon and he was alive when I left him.”
Hellsbane’s head jerked up. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not. Aren’t you supposed to know if I’m telling the truth? Some kind of Jedi mindtrick?” Pressing his luck, probably, and with Ben Hellsbane of all people - a Jedi who had evaded the Empire for ten years, and caused as much trouble as any ten other Jedi. He’d been captured three times and the captain who’d captured him that third time and confidently assumed that he’d be the one to keep Hellsbane in custody – he’d next been seen on the floor of his starcruiser with a lightsaber wound through his chest. Hellsbane hadn’t reappeared for another six months when he’d hijacked an Imperial prison transport and vanished with it into the Outer Rim.
Hellsbane stared at him for a long moment, the silence between them like a lit lightsaber on the table. “You are telling the truth,” he said finally, tone grudging. “And I suppose you got those bruises on your face at the same time.”
Traynt put his hands flat on the table in order to avoid touching his much-abused jaw. Starkiller had a hell of a right hook. “Come peacefully and I’ll treat you as befits your rank,” he said, uncomfortably aware that it came out more like a suggestion than an order.
“No guards?” Hellsbane said, cocking his head to one side. “No binders, no Force-inhibitors, a fair trial in front of the Imperial Senate?”
“I’m not authorized to offer that,” Traynt admitted.
“Good. I wouldn’t have believed you if you said you were.” His handsome face was characteristically opaque, blue eyes shuttered. “So really, Lieutenant, what incentive do you offer me to come in?”
“None, I suppose,” Traynt said, watching as Hellsbane stood up to leave, hooking Starkiller’s lightsaber on his belt and tossing a few credits on the table. “But I can tell you that the mechanic we took that lightsaber off of is still alive and in Imperial custody. We’re running his face against the Imperial databanks right now.”
Hellsbane froze with his back to Traynt. “Why should I care?”
“General, everyone in the galaxy knows you’ll come running at the faintest hint of a Jedi in trouble. I hardly think you need more than that trinket on your hip as a good excuse,” Traynt said, more calmly than he felt, leaning back in his seat with his hand on his holstered blaster. “Besides,” he added, watching the muscles in Hellsbane’s back tense, “you said he was your apprentice.”
“I also said he was dead,” Hellsbane said shortly. “Good day, Lieutenant.” He vanished out the door.
Traynt stood up, pulling his jacket up over his blaster, though he really doubted it would garner too much attention in this neighborhood, and nodded to the Mirkannan waitress as she came to clear the table off, humming to herself and clicking her pinchers. He remained standing for a minute, eyes on the windows at the front of the diner, then he followed Hellsbane out the door.
Perrik was standing on the other side of the street, leaning against the shop and raising a cigarette to his lips. He dropped it when he saw Traynt, crushing it beneath the heel of his boot as he crossed the street. “Where is he?”
“He just walked out,” Traynt said, startled. “Don’t you –”
“The last person to walk out was a woman, an Ixtapan,” Perrik said. “Hellsbane hasn’t –” They both turned to stare up the street.
“I will be damned,” Traynt said. “Bloody Jedi and their damn mindtricks.”
-
-
Nakin came back to consciousness abruptly – he hadn’t gotten out of the habit of drifting out of sleep until after the war, when he’d barely slept at all – to the breezy, slightly tinny sound of a hologram’s speech.
“…Hellsbane lost us, damn the Jedi bastard,” Lieutenant Perrik was saying bitterly.
Nakin craned his neck around to see who he was speaking to and caught a glimpse of the bridge, just barely visible from the room he’d been left in, cuffed to a chair with arms and legs – not Force-inhibitors, thank the stars, just ordinary durasteel binders. Either the Imperials hadn’t been thinking straight, or they were saving the Force-inhibitors for something else – like the Jedi they were hunting. He couldn’t see the other speaker’s face from here, though: just the back of his head.
He listened with half an ear to Perrik and the junior officer’s conversation as he catalogued his injuries: blaster burn across the back of one hand and up his arm, gash in his forehead where he’d collided foreheads with a helmeted clone trooper (smart, Skywalker, he chided himself, and shuffled the thought away), numerous bruises and smaller cuts, the lingering aftereffects of the drug being purged out of him by the Force.
“Did a match turn up for Starkiller in the databanks yet?” Perrik asked, and Nakin’s attention snapped back to the conversation.
“No, not yet,” the junior officer said. “It’s crosschecking against –”
“Never mind that,” Perrik snapped. “Hellsbane said the lightsaber we picked up off him belonged to a Jedi that died in the Temple on Coruscant. There’s no way it should have gotten out to Ixtapa unless someone took it there.”
Nakin blinked slowly. Each lightsaber was unique to the Jedi that made it, but that didn’t mean every Jedi could identify another’s with just a casual glance, or even a long inspection. Only someone who knew that Jedi well. Like – a Padawan. Or their master.
“You talked with Hellsbane?” the junior officer questioned.
“Yes, he and Lieutenant Traynt had a nice chat before he buggered off into the bleeding sunset. Mindtricked us all. Before he left he said something else, though, about the lightsaber belonging to his former apprentice. Check that and get back to me.”
A console powered up on the bridge. “You’re aware of the belief that ‘Hellsbane’ is an assumed name?”
“I’m aware of it. Check anyway. See if any of the Jedi that Hellsbane could be had apprentice or former apprentices that were on Coruscant at the time of the Purge.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Perrik out.”
“Erebus out.”
Nakin closed his eyes, breathing in and out in a meditation pattern. He didn’t want to slip too deeply into trance, just enough to pick the locks on his binders using the Force, delicate, careful work that required the utmost in concentration. Ten years ago he couldn’t have done it. He’d had the power, sure, but the control had been beyond him until he’d had the time and the patience – and the surety of a quick trip back to Coruscant hanging over him if he failed – to get it to work.
The binders fell away. He leaned over to put his palms, durasteel and flesh alike, on the binders on his ankles and shoved the Force through them, snatching his hands away as durasteel exploded.
“What’s that?” It was the junior officer on the bridge. Nakin heard booted feet on the floor and leapt straight upward, using the Force to boost him, and let the door slide shut. He heard the footsteps stop outside it, then they faded away as the junior officer went back to the bridge.
Nakin dropped back to the floor. The Imps hadn’t left his gun belt in here – he reached out for the Force for his lightsaber’s energy signature and realized it wasn’t anywhere in the ship – that was right, Perrik had said he’d taken it. What about the other one? The energy stamp wasn’t quite as strong – he hadn’t made it, only saved it from Sidious’s grasping hands and carried it alongside his own for ten years – but it would do, in the absence of his blasters. No energy stamp on those at all, except for the faintness that came from daily wear in his presence. Not enough for him to track them through the ship – well, probably enough, but he didn’t feel like taking the time and the energy right now. So. He had to get to his lightsaber, because he could leave the blasters but there was no way in hell he was leaving Qui-Gon’s lightsaber to be desecrated by Sidious, and then he had to get off-planet as quickly as possible.
Good plan. Better than most. He’d take it.
-
-
Lieutenant Cafferti was pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers as he read the profile the databanks had finally presented him as a match to Nakin Starkiller’s face. Taking his hand away from his face, he reached to flick on the holoprojector again; Perrik was going to be either extremely happy or extremely pissed off and Cafferti wasn’t sure which one it was going to be just yet.
“Don’t,” a low, level voice said, and Cafferti turned to find a boot sole leveled at his throat, Nakin Starkiller attached to the other end of it.
Starkiller’s blue eyes flickered down towards him. “You found my file,” he said mildly. “Read anything interesting?”
“You –” Cafferti began and Starkiller’s heel pushed even harder against his throat. He cut the words off.
“Good answer. The Jedi your superiors are out looking for. Who is he?”
Cafferti took a shallow breath, as deep as he could manage with Starkiller’s boot pressing against his windpipe, and shook his head.
Starkiller cocked his head to the side. “Wrong answer,” he said and moved so quickly Cafferti didn’t see more than a blur; the next thing he knew was blinding pain as bone snapped in his right hand. He couldn’t scream; something had closed over his mouth like an invisible hand and when he looked up again Starkiller was in the same position, boot up against his throat. “You were saying?”
“Hellsbane,” Cafferti said shakily, a ragged pant in his voice; yes, he’d sworn his loyalty to the Empire, but he didn’t have a death wish. “Ben Hellsbane. He was a general during the Clone Wars –”
“Lie,” Starkiller snapped. “I was there. I know all the Jedi generals. No Hellsbane.”
“It’s an assumed name,” Cafferti whispered, cradling his ruined hand in his left one. “We think. Only the Emperor and Darth Cidal know who he is – might be. We know he’s a Jedi –”
“Obviously,” Starkiller interjected, not moving. How the hell could the man hold his balance that long without even wavering?
“– he was a Master. We think. We got a tip that he might be here; Lieutenant Traynt made contact with him today.”
“I heard,” Starkiller said, voice surprisingly serene. “You lot are all idiots. Can’t even keep track of one Jedi – here’s a word of advice, Lieutenant: next time you capture someone wearing a lightsaber, it’s generally wise to assume they’re Jedi.” His foot swung around suddenly and met the curve of Cafferti’s skull with a surprisingly loud crack.
-
-
“Something wrong with your bag of bolts?”
“I just want to get it checked over before I head out again,” Hellsbane said, voice light and musical despite the damage that had been done to it sometime in the past. “There was a problem with the hyperdrive a few months back; I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Who’s best?”
Kandir ran his good hand over his close-cropped head. Like most of his generation, he was a veteran of the Ten Systems War; the withered remains of his left hand were proof enough of that. “For a hyperdrive? Starkiller. Nakin Starkiller. He’s expensive, but he’s the best when it comes to anything mechanical, and there’s no one in the Ten Systems better at dealing with faulty hyperdrives. You’ll find him at Zsuzsi Dj’onz’s joint, The Sand and Stone, up on Priester’s Way.”
“Nakin Starkiller,” Hellsbane noted. “And The Sand and Stone. My thanks.”
Kandir eyed him carefully. Hellsbane had been less trouble than most renters he’d had, quiet as a ripza and sleeping in his starship most nights, but he’d never shown any interest in anything going on in Per Macchu. He rather thought this was the first time Hellsbane had said more than two words to him since renting out his hangar. “Get there early if you can,” he added finally. “Starkiller’s fighting tonight, and you won’t want to miss that.”
“Fighting?” Hellsbane repeated, with an elegant raise of one fiery eyebrow. “For money, you mean.”
“Zsuzsi cuts him a share of the credits her place brings in on a fight night, so yeah. As long as you’re in the city, though, it’s not to be missed.” Kandir let out a low Ixtapan whistle of titillating appreciation. “The boy can take down anything, bipedal or not. You might try him yourself if you don’t believe me.”
Hellsbane pushed overlong strands of gray-streaked red hair out of his face. “Maybe I will. Priester’s Way, you said?”
-
-
Nakin came into The Sand and Stone using the back entrance, appearing abruptly next to Zsuzsi behind the bar. She gave him a long look, taking in the blaster burn across the sleeve of his shirt, the dried blood on his neck and caking above his left eye, his skinned knuckles and bruised face.
“You look like hell, Starkiller,” she noted, reaching back for a bottle of chacharan brandy and pouring him half a glass. Nakin regarded it with the customary dismay he extended toward all types of liquor. “I take it the Imperial job ended badly.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Nakin said, making a face at the taste of the alcohol.
“Recognized your face from your broadsheets, did they?”
“They also didn’t pay me,” he added, pouring chacharan over his split lip.
Zsuzsi snatched the empty glass from his hand. “I don’t know why I waste the good stuff on you. You don’t appreciate it anyway.”
“I appreciate it,” Nakin said indignantly. “I just don’t like it.” He ran his fingers over the cut on his forehead. “Do I really look that bad?”
“Yes,” Zsuzsi said flatly. “You want me to find a pair of meertzus? Turnout’ll be less, but if you’re not up for a fight –”
“I can fight,” Nakin said, a little indignantly. He put a hand on the bar and vaulted it easily, barely missing a gifga’s curling horns. The gifga – not one of Zsuzsi’s regulars, but she recognized him from previous fight nights – turned, opening his mouth to berate or threaten, but he fell silent when he saw Nakin’s face.
Zsuzsi snorted. “You’re famous,” she pointed out.
“Yeah,” said Nakin, looking a little hurt. He started scraping dried blood off his forehead, flinching as flecks of it came flaking off onto his fingers. “Great. Who’m I up against?”
-
-
Nakin took out the first three comers in less than ten minutes put together, barely moving except to abruptly lash out. There was careful control in each movement, contained rage that Zsuzsi recognized from the war. This was more of it in one place than she’d seen in years, though; usually Nakin took the time to play with his opponents, give the audience a show, have Zsuzsi sell enough drinks to make a tidy profit. Right now he just wanted to kill something and was barely holding it off.
At least he was holding it off. Ten years ago he hadn’t been able.
“Is that it?” he spat, staring out at a crowd that was suddenly silent as the last opponent was dragged out of the ring. “What are you all, cowards? This is pathetic.”
“What about me?” That was a man’s voice, a stranger’s, a clipped Core accent with a slight roughness around the edges that came from old damage. Zsuzsi, perched behind the bar, scanned the crowd for the speaker – that took fucking guts, right after three prospective fighters had had to be carried out.
She didn’t see him until he’d pushed his way into the fight ring cleared for Nakin. A small man, lean, with gray-streaked red hair tied back from his wasted but still handsome face. Nakin’s eyes widened minutely when he saw him, and Zsuzsi saw his lips part to speak. He stopped when the stranger shook his head slightly in negation.
What the hell? Nakin didn’t know anyone off planet besides other smugglers and most of them had come through The Sand and Stone at some point. This man was a complete stranger – more, Nakin wasn’t acknowledging him besides that first flash of surprise.
Some of the anger had gone from his voice when he said, “You got a name, off-worlder?”
“Ben Hellsbane.” There was a note of warning in his clipped syllables. “And if I’m an off-worlder, then you are too. Where?” He slipped his jacket off over his shoulders, dropped it at the edge of the ring along with his gun belt.
Nakin smiled slightly. “Good call. It’s Tatooine – but I haven’t been back in years.”
“Hypnos,” Hellsbane said. “But I was only there the once.”
“Tiny little swamp of a moon in the Core. Fail to see why I should care.” Nakin tossed his head back with a snort of disdain. “Enough preliminaries, O – old man. Let’s fight.” He raised his hands in front of him, fingers curved inward and flared out.
Hellsbane smiled slightly, but didn’t say anything. His own hands were open and loose at his sides. This time it was Nakin who couldn’t stop moving, contrary to everything else Zsuzsi had ever known about him, shifting from foot to foot and circling Hellsbane.
Both of them moved at once, moved as one, mirror images of each other, and then fists and feet lashed out, blurring together. Nakin and Hellsbane were a blur, matching each other blow for blow. Abruptly Naking leapt straight up, twisting in midair to snap out a kick to Hellsbane’s head. Hellsbane ducked it and rolled into a somersault; he and Nakin came up opposite of where they had been and started circling each other before diving in again.
Zsuzsi couldn’t take her eyes off them. They moved like two halves of a whole, flawlessly and seamlessly countering each other’s moves; money changed hands in the crowd behind them, whispers stirring like sarradan winds in the savannah. Where did Nakin know Hellsbane from?
There was a slight pause in the action as both Nakin and Hellsbane bounced back to the edge, time enough for Nakin to wipe a smear of blood off the reopened cut on his forehead. “Not bad.”
“Are you holding back?” Hellsbane asked.
“Little bit.”
“Well, don’t!” Hellsbane said sharply, and they were at each other again, rolling over backwards, grappling at each other with hands and arms; Hellsbane pinned Nakin to the floor and Nakin flipped them both, leaning down over Hellsbane. “Give up?”
“Not yet,” the older man said, and threw Nakin backwards over his head. The crowd scattered as Nakin arched up and twisted coming down, landing in a half-crouch one hand flaring out in front of him.
“Not bad.” There were a pair of long-bladed durasteel knives suddenly in his hands. “Now let’s dance.”
Hellsbane rose with a dagger in his right fist. “Nice warm-up, Starkiller. Let’s.”
There was no expected beat of silence. He and Nakin were both abruptly chest to chest with the barest possible minimum of motion needed to get them there in between, knives pressed blade to blade, and then they broke apart, circling once before diving in again. Durasteel clashed and both men snapped out bare hands and feet, elbows and knees, throwing each other up and away often enough that the crowd scattered back permanently, fluctuating like a living thing.
Without looking away once Zsuzsi reached for the bottle of chacharan and poured herself a glass, knocking it back. Nakin was damn well alive and enjoying it. She’d be damned if she’d seen him this happy in years.
There was no warning at all when Hellsbane’s knife came to rest on the side of Nakin’s neck. “You’re dead,” the stranger noted.
“So are you,” Nakin said, and Hellsbane’s eyes flickered downward to see the kknives pressed crosswise over his stomach.
A draw.
They drew back from each other and bowed at the waist, formally, then strolled back to the edges of the ring where they’d left their things. The crowd seemed a little shocked. No one had fought Nakin Starkiller to a draw in the history of fight nighting – years – and this was…unthinkable. Worse, Nakin didn’t even look surprised. Who the hell was Ben Hellsbane?
-
-
Nakin finished buckling his gun belt on in time to look up and meet Obi-Wan’s – Hellsbane’s, better if he didn’t forget himself – eyes across the circle, eyebrows raise a little in question.
“Buy you a drink?” he called, pulling up the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face.
“I won’t say no to that.” Hellsbane folded his coat over his arm; his voice was rough and a little harsh and surprisingly dapper. Nakin thought of innumerable planets and the way light fell in the practice rings of the Temple, and then he thought of death in the halls. You bastard, I thought you were dead.
Zsuzsi was looking at them oddly when they pushed through the crowd to the bar. “I’ll take that drink now,” he said, smiling and tasting blood on his mouth where he’d cut open the inside of his lip on a tooth.
“Good liquor is wasted on you,” she snorted, picking up the bottle of chacharan. “I’ll put it on your tab. Same for you?” Her eyes were startlingly bright when she looked at Hellsbane.
“Not if he’s having something bloody awful,” Hellsbane said, slow smile spreading over his still handsome face. The years hadn’t hurt him badly at all, Nakin thought, so long as you didn’t look too closely at the oversized knot of scar tissue that seemed to encompass his maimed left hand.
“He’ll take the good stuff,” Nakin said easily, feeling Hellsbane’s eyes on him. They were both studying each other, mapping out the changes ten years and a second war – or a continuation of the first one, the war they’d been fighting since Qui-Gon Jinn died on Naboo all those years ago – had wrought.
Zsuzsi poured them both tall glasses of chacharan, topping Nakin’s off with water and Hellsbane’s with kirioo, a sharp-tasting cordial made from kiri roots from the Radja Jungle. Nakin didn’t like the stuff much himself, but it was a traditional savannah addition to chacharan. “Nice show,” she said to Hellsbane as she handed him his drink. “How do you two know each other?”
Well, Zsuzsi wasn’t stupid, and he and Hellsbane had put on a bit of a show. “From the Clone Wars,” Nakin said, smiling thinly. There had been a lot of people involved in the Clone Wars, and not all of them were clones or Jedi.
“We were wing mates,” Hellsbane added, smiling disarmingly. There was sudden gathering of the Force in the air around him and Nakin thought, oh hell no, he’s not going to mindtrick Zsuzsi. He put his hand on Hellsbane’s arm.
“Come upstairs with me.” Off Zsuzsi’s startled expression, he added, “We can catch up.”
Hellsbane was frowning at him, eyes narrowed, but the corners of his mouth turned up a little at Nakin’s words. “Of course,” he said smoothly.
Nobody watched them go upstairs. The cantina was still buzzing with people, most of them eagerly discussing the fight and too occupied to notice Hellsbane and Nakin ascending the stairs.
“My room’s at the end,” he said over his shoulder to Hellsbane, pressing his palm to the recognition screen. He’d fixed that up himself, still paranoid in the early years of the Purge, just beginning to believe he might actually have something resembling a base.
Hellsbane’s gaze was steady and calm as the door slid shut behind them – too steady and calm. Nakin put his still-full glass of chacharan down on top of his weapons chest and reached for Hellsbane’s. He let him take it, fingers opening loosely when Nakin’s closed around the glass. Nakin turned back to him, well aware that a bare three feet lay between him and the man he’d once called master.
They both stared at each other.
“The room’s safe,” Nakin said finally, desperately. “No one gets in here except me, not even Zsuzsi. It –”
“Anakin,” Hellsbane – Obi-Wan – said softly.
And Anakin Skywalker broke.
-
-
Obi-Wan caught Anakin as his former apprentice flung himself at him, hands coming up to slid over the small of his back and cradle him, balance him out. Anakin let out a shaky breath, turning his face into the curve between neck and shoulder, breathing hard and clutching at Obi-Wan as if he expected him to melt away into smoke beneath his hands, broken gasping sounds in the small of his throat.
“Shh,” Obi-Wan said, “Shh, Anakin, I’m here. I’m –”
“You were dead,” Anakin said, the words muffled against his skin. “You were very, very dead.” He thumped the heel of his hand against Obi-Wan’s chest, but without much force. “I felt you die, you –” He cut off abruptly. “I felt you die.”
“Anakin –”
“No.” Anakin jerked back, away from him, and wrapped his arms around himself. His face was utterly cold and closed off. He didn’t look anything like the Anakin Skywalker Obi-Wan had known “No, you don’t have the right.” He shook his head. “Ten years, Obi-Wan. Ten fucking years, and I thought you were dead through all of them.” A deep, shaky breath as his eyelashes dipped downward, then snapped up again. “You have no right to waltz in here, into my life after all these years. No right at all.”
It was like a slap in the face. Obi-Wan reeled back, hurt to the bone and feeling oddly empty. “You were my brother,” he snapped. “Do you think that means nothing, Anakin? I spent three years looking for you after Utapau, after everyone I knew told me you’d died on Coruscant. I never gave up, even – I never gave up.”
“You didn’t look hard enough,” Anakin said quietly. “You should have.”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan agreed. “I should have.”
“I heard what Perrik was saying about you – about your alter-ego Hellsbane,” Anakin continued, blue eyes flashing. “Were you too busy trying to save the galaxy to bother with yourself?”
“Anakin, this isn’t about me.”
Anakin shook his head again. “Isn’t it?” Another step backwards, his face falling half in shadow. “You didn’t come to Ixtapa for me.”
“Anakin, I –”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“Anakin, don’t.” Obi-Wan said sharply, and stepped forward to grab Anakin’s arm and pull him closer.
He didn’t get that far, mostly because Anakin drew back his arm and punched him in the face, then twisted to one side and grabbed for Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan snapped his elbow into Anakin’s face and his knee up into Anakin’s groin; Anakin took both blows, the first to his nose and the second on the outside of his thigh, face absolutely blank against the pain, and kicked Obi-Wan in the kneecap. Obi-Wan curled his hands around Anakin’s biceps as he folded backwards with the kick, bringing the younger Jedi with him; Anakin turned the momentum in a backwards roll as the Force peeled Obi-Wan’s fingers apart, separating them. Both of them jerked apart, in balanced fighters’ crouches now, Anakin leaning forward slightly with his eyes wide and blood running down his face from his broken nose.
“Don’t touch me,” he snarled as he straightened, turning away and raising his hand to his face.
“Anakin –” Obi-Wan began as he stood, touching his jaw tentatively. One thing was sure, and that was that Anakin’s hand to hand had definitely improved since they’d last sparred, sometime back on the Outer Rim between battles.
He saw Anakin’s shoulders tense, and then his former Padawan raised his head slightly. “I’m sorry, Master,” he said, perfect conciliating composure in his voice, as if he were a Padawan again, although he’d never used that particular tone. “That was uncalled for.”
Ten years ago that would have been welcome. Now it seemed like a cheat, like a resurrected ghost of something that had never really been. Obi-Wan shuttered his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, Anakin was still turned away, the line of his skull limned in light and revealing the faint lines of scar tissue beneath his short blond hair, bleached golden by Ixtapa’s twin suns. “No,” he said finally. “No, I suppose I deserved that. I’m sorry I never found you.”
“It’s – a very large galaxy,” Anakin said with some difficulty, turning back to him. “I – I felt you die, when Order 66 went through. I was meditating, in the Council chamber, and I – snapped. I didn’t think I was wrong, not that time.”
Obi-Wan ducked his head, hair falling over his shoulder. He should cut it again, maybe. “You weren’t,” he admitted. “After a fashion.”
Anakin’s eyebrows arched slightly. “You were dead,” he said flatly.
“Very, very dead,” Obi-Wan agreed, repeating Anakin’s words back at him.
“But you’re not dead now.” Anakin held his left hand out an inch or so from his broken nose, not even wincing as the cartilage repaired itself. “Ow,” he said, more an expected statement than an expression of pain, and moved his hand upward, healing the cuts on his face with a minimum of power. Funny; he’d never been particularly good at healing before. It had taken too much care and concentration for him to bother, not when he could finagle Obi-Wan into doing it or just slap a bacta bandage on. “Let me guess: there is no death, there is the Force?”
“Something like that,” Obi-Wan admitted, decidedly fascinated with the progression of healing on Anakin’s body. “What did you do to your face?”
“Ran into a clone in full armor,” Anakin said easily, frowning at the blaster burn on his flesh hand and arm. “Or did you mean before? It was an unfortunate incident involving a twenty-story window, a bounty hunter, and a percussion grenade. Well, that and a few bar fights. The arm’s from getting shot.” He looked briefly pensive. “I haven’t actually been shot all that much. Tossed out windows, punched in the face, knifed, arrested – not a lot of shooting. It’s kind of a new experience.”
“Oh,” Obi-Wan said, startled for some reason he couldn’t quite define. “I’m –”
“Apologize to me again and I’m going to punch you again,” Anakin said flatly, smile fading. He met Obi-Wan’s gray eyes with his own blue ones, gaze steady and a little cold. He didn’t look like the Anakin Skywalker Obi-Wan remembered.
“You’ve changed,” Obi-Wan said, blinking. He hadn’t expected – well, he hadn’t expected to find Anakin here, of all places, but he hadn’t expected Anakin to have – “You’ve grown up.”
There was a surprising amount of bewilderment in Anakin’s eyes in reaction to that. He ducked his head, almost looking nineteen again for a heartbeat. “You know I’ve wanted to hear you say that for thirteen years?” he said softly. “Ever since Padmé – she told me that. Before Geonosis.”
Obi-Wan sighed. It was a small sound, and it stirred the hot, humid air in the room. “I’m telling you now.”
For a moment Anakin was silent, face distant, and then he smiled, the expression breaking over him like a Coruscant sunrise. “That’ll do.”
-
-
Anakin didn’t stir when Obi-Wan slipped out of his arms and onto the floor, pulling on his clothes. They’d talked most of the night, Zsuzsi’s chacharan loosening both their tongues, and fallen asleep at some point in the early morning. Half drunk, exhausted, and deep in sleep, Anakin had finally lost what inhibitions he’d still had up and wrapped his arms around Obi-Wan, clinging like a Mon Calamari gihra, turning his face into the curve of Obi-Wan’s neck and muttering slightly in a mixture of Huttese and Basic. Obi-Wan hadn’t pushed him away.
Anakin’s lightsaber was still hanging on his belt. Obi-Wan unclipped it and weighed it in his hand thoughtfully, looking at Anakin’s bright head, still and scarred in sleep. He hadn’t asked for it, the first thing almost any Jedi would have done upon losing his lightsaber, and even with Anakin’s penchant for such – this was the same lightsaber he’d had ten years ago; Obi-Wan rather thought that was some kind of record for Anakin. Still, he hadn’t asked for it, or even commented on it. And he had been wearing a gun belt with well-used blasters holstered there; Obi-Wan touched briefly on the energy stamp on them with his mind.
There was another lightsaber as well. Obi-Wan put Anakin’s lightsaber down on the bedside table and stooped down next to the foot of the bed, where Anakin had hung his gun belt off the post. Lightly, he reached out with mind and hands, touching the lightsaber and suddenly wanted to both laugh and cry. Qui-Gon’s lightsaber. Anakin had been carrying Qui-Gon’s lightsaber with him for ten years. Obi-Wan kept his hands on it, reassured by the lingering touch of his old Master’s mind, and then reluctantly let go.
He could smell ozone in the air as he made his way downstairs. The promised storm had finally come to Per Macchu, dark clouds hanging low and heavy over the city and wind whipping against the side of the building.
The cantina was nowhere near last night’s capacity. A few tables were taken and a few patrons sat at the counter, speaking in the soft gurgling lilt of the continental Ixtapan tongue. Obi-Wan wondered briefly if Anakin had bothered to learn it or if he’d stuck to Basic like he had as a Padawan. The realization that he wasn’t sure which one it was disturbed him more than he cared to admit.
Zsuzsi eyed him warily as he approached. “Nakin kick you out of bed, Hellsbane?” she demanded.
“I’m an early riser. He’s not,” Obi-Wan said, leaning on the counter and letting his gaze travel leisurely over the cantina, looking for anyone out of place, anyone that tugged at the Force he carried around him like the Jedi robes he no longer wore. “Cariik’aa, if you’ve got it.”
“I do,” Zsuzsi said, reaching for the container and flicking on the plasmaheater behind her. “How do you know Nakin?” she asked again, with the same suspicious expression she’d worn last night.
“I told you,” Obi-Wan said, “we met during the Clone Wars.”
“No. Nakin told me that. I want your side of the story.”
“There’s nothing else to tell,” Obi-Wan said calmly.
Zsuzsi leaned forward toward him, thick dark braid falling over her shoulder. “No one ever says that unless there’s a lot more to tell. And I’ll tell you what I think it is: I think you’re dangerous to him,” she said in a low, steady voice. “And I want a reason for Spaceforce to haul your ass off my planet.”
“I would never hurt him,” Obi-Wan told her flatly. “Never. And I’m no more dangerous to him than he is to me.” A lie. The Imperials wouldn’t have come to Ixtapa if it hadn’t been for him, but he’d spent the last ten years lying, and it was a hard habit to break. “I’m glad he has friends here.”
She said, “How do you know Nakin?” She hesitated briefly, then went on. “You’re too like each other to just be friends.”
“I trained him,” Obi-Wan said, and turned his head as the door opened. The flash of white clone armor was the first thing he saw.
-
-
Zsuzsi turned back to the plasmaheater to get the cariik off before it congealed. “I still think you’re not telling me something,” she said, meaning to get the truth out of Ben Hellsbane one way or another. Nakin was off-limits, but a stranger –
He wasn’t there.
Zsuzsi was blinking at thin air, bemused and more than a little startled, when the clones at the door finally got her attention. She reached for the plasma rifle beneath the counter – Imperials were not welcome here, or anywhere else on Ixtapa for that matter –
“Put both your hands where I can see them,” a woman’s cool voice said.
“Who the hell are you?” Zsuzsi demanded, not complying. The stranger was maybe a head smaller than her, with olive skin and a spray of black teardrop tattoos across her nose and cheeks. She wore power like a nearly invisible cloak, the same way Nakin and Hellsbane both did.
“I’m with the Empire,” the girl – young, in her early twenties, Ixtapan years at least – said. “You don’t need anything beyond that.”
“I damn well do,” Zsuzsi snapped. “Your kind aren’t –”
The girl raised a hand and Zsuzsi went flying back into the plasmaheater behind her. She rolled off as soon as she could, the coils burning patterns in her ass, and grabbed the edge of the counter to pull herself upright. She knew who the girl was – one of the Emperor’s Hands, the one they called the Emperor’s Dog. She shouldn’t have come to Ixtapa.
The Imperial tossed a palm-sized holoprojector down onto the floor, where it unfolded a life-size holo of a tall young man – soft-faced, handsome, long-haired, with a scar down one side of his face. “Anakin Skywalker,” she said coldly. “A Jedi Knight. Where is he?”
“Lady, this is Ixtapa,” one of Zsuzsi’s regulars, a wrangler down at the Hahaari Market, snapped. “Jedi aren’t welcome here. And neither are Imperials,” he added significantly. “So why don’t you –”
The girl snapped a hand out toward him, fingers closing into a fist, and Zsuzsi’s eyes widened as the wrangler’s hands went up to his throat, clawing at the flesh there as though he meant to claw straight through to his windpipe. The girl turned away from him, ignoring him as he fell to the floor, blood spattering over his fingers.
“I know he’s here, so don’t even think about lying to me. Where is he?”
“There’s no one named Anakin Skywalker on Merapesh,” Zsuzsi snapped, eyes on the holo. “If he’s on Ixtapa, you’re on the wrong continent.”
“Maybe this picture’s too old,” the girl said, waving a hand toward the projector. The holo changed, growing an inch or two and several years older, curls shortening to a short clip along the curve of the skull, robes molding to trousers and a loose laced shirt, scars added to the smooth skin of the face. “Recognize him now?”
“Hey, that’s –” someone said, and was quickly silenced by his companion.
“Maybe he didn’t tell you his real name,” the Imperial went on. “He always was lying to us back during the Clone Wars. Maybe you know him better as Nakin Starkiller.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Tcella burst out from his seat at the bar. “Nakin’s good people. He’s no Jedi.”
The girl cocked her head to one side. “So tell me where he is, you miserable little sand flea.”
Tcella’s mouth dropped open in perfect indignation and he clicked his pinchers together with a hard clattering sound that echoed across the bar. “Nakin’s good people,” he repeated angrily. “One of us.”
“And I’m sure he’ll appreciate the sentiment when he’s examining your dismembered corpse. I’ll ask one more time before I start removing limbs: where is Anakin Skywalker?”
“I’m right here,” Nakin Starkiller said, and everyone looked up to see him standing at the top of the stairs, blasters in his hands. “You want me, Yulalli? Come and get me.”
The shining metal cylinder at the girl’s – Yulalli’s – waist sprang into her hand, a long line of crimson red sprouting from it. “No lightsaber, Skywalker?”
“A Jedi’s weapon,” Nakin said, not moving. “And there are no Jedi anymore. Your treacherous master made sure of that. No, Sha’re Yulalli, I’m not Jedi. And I think you’ve said it yourself: I never was.”
“But I am.” Ben Hellsbane stepped out of thin air and put his unlit lightsaber against the back of Yulalli’s neck. “So you can see where we might have a difference of opinion.”
Yulalli’s lips drew back from her teeth in a savage snarl. “Master Kenobi,” she said, then looked furious at herself for using the honorific. “I should have expected to find you here. You and Skywalker always were joined at the hip. Probably because no one else would have him.”
Hellsbane leaned forward, lips brushing along the fine hair bound at the back of her skull. “Master Skrik would have been so disappointed,” he said softly.
“Don’t talk about him,” Yulalli snarled and leapt straight upward, turning in midair. Hellsbane met her, lightsaber suddenly in hand and arcing over his head, and the air crackled when they met.
For a moment time seemed to pause and still, everyone’s attention on the duel of titans. Even Zsuzsi was enthralled; she – and probably everyone else on Ixtapa – had never seen a lightsaber duel before. Nakin was the first to move; he raised both blasters and shot two clone troopers cleanly through the neck, one and then the other. That broke the spell; most of Zsuzsi’s patrons shrieked and dove for cover, at least one of them going through Zsuzsi’s expensive glass windows in the process, while others went for their own blasters. This was the Outer Rim, after all; the Empire got no respect here. Zsuzsi snatched the plasma rifle out from beneath the bar, raising it to her shoulder, and aiming carefully. Nakin took out the clone she’d been aiming at with a flying kick to the jaw and a shot to the head before she could fire.
“Look at yourself, Sha’re,” Hellsbane cried over the clash of lightsabers. “You were a Jedi, a promising Padawan –”
“Shut up!” Yulalli yelled. “You’re a dead man, Kenobi, you and your precious Chosen One Padawan.”
“Anakin was knighted years ago,” Hellsbane said calmly as a thunderclap sounded outside the window. The storm had finally come to Per Macchu. “What would Master Skrik have said about what you’ve become?”
“I told you not to talk about him!” One of Nakin’s shots had gone awry and shot out the lights in the cantina; the lightsabers beat red and blue shadows on Yulalli’s face.
“He was a good Jedi,” Hellsbane continued. “A good man. I liked him. If he was here today –”
“He’s not,” Yulalli snarled, stabbing upward; Hellsbane blocked it and forced her lightsaber down and around, back behind her. She kicked him in the jaw and he took half a staggering step backwards before regaining his balance. “So don’t talk about him, Kenobi, don’t you fucking dare –”
“And you’re working for the man who killed him?” Hellsbane said softly, the words half-drowned in the sound of lightsabers clashing.
“He was murdered by a clone.”
“The order came from the Chancellor, Sha’re,” Hellsbane said, still calm. “I know. I was one of the victims.”
“Don’t talk to me about Order 66!” Yulalli screamed, and her lightsaber dashed down toward Hellsbane.
Hellsbane’s hand snapped out toward her. Zsuzsi saw the girl’s teeth grit as if in pain, arm – and lightsaber – slowly forced backwards. “You bastard,” she whispered, breathing hard. “You sick bastard.”
“You’re the murderer, Sha’re,” Nakin said.
Zsuzsi looked up. There were no clone troopers left standing and Nakin was crouched on top of a table a few feet away, blasters held lightly in his hands. He was watching Hellsbane and Yulalli with startlingly bright eyes, brows narrowed in judgment.
“You can still come back, Sha’re,” Hellsbane said, without looking up at Nakin. “It’s not too late.”
“Yes,” Nakin said. “It is.”
Hellsbane’s head snapped up. “Anakin, don’t!”
Anakin shot Yulalli through the back of the head. She slumped forward, lightsaber falling from her hand and deactivating before it hit the floor, and Hellsbane leapt to catch her body, lowering her to the floor. When he straightened again he was still holding his lightsaber, although it was deactivated now.
“Anakin…”
“Say it,” Nakin invited, nostrils flaring. “Say it, Obi-Wan. Tell me off like I’m a Padawan.”
“I don’t think we should have this conversation here, Anakin.”
“I don’t think we should have this conversation,” Nakin snapped back. He leapt down off the table and stepped over toward Hellsbane. “We’re over, Obi-Wan. I’m glad we’ve had this conversation.”
“Anakin!”
Nakin unclipped one of the lightsabers on his belt and slammed it into Hellsbane’s chest. “I was there, Master,” he said. “I saw them die. I was on Coruscant when Palpatine sent clones through the city dragging out children and slaughtering them in the streets like animals. There is no forgiveness. No Jedi-killer deserves that – especially not a traitor.”
“Anakin –”
“The name’s Starkiller,” Nakin said, very softly. “Nakin Starkiller. Anakin Skywalker died ten years ago on Coruscant.” He took his hand away, and Hellsbane caught the lightsaber before it could fall. “You’d better get off-planet before the Empire sends someone else to investigate the Dog’s disappearance,” he said in a normal tone. “We’ll take care of the Imps.”
“Anakin –”
“Goodbye, Obi-Wan,” Nakin said, and turned away, going to Zsuzsi’s patrons.
“Don’t even think about it,” Zsuzsi said when Hellsbane took a step forward, raising the plasma rifle slightly. “We take care of our own here.”
There was a pained look on the man’s face. “I can see that,” he said, and then he turned around and walked out of the cantina. “I’m sorry for the trouble,” he added before the door closed behind him.
end
Author's Notes: Originally, this was meant to be the beginning of a much longer story, and so issues that are glossed over or never brought up in this story (Padmé and the twins, Darth Cidal, what exactly happened with Order 66) aren't explained. This does not mean they were not thought of, and I'll be happy to explain them if anyone's interested.
Not having a working knowledge of the Star Wars EU, Ixtapa and its inhabitants are my own invention, as are the inner workings of a Nubian hyperdrive.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-18 05:41 am (UTC)I can definitely tell that there's something missing, but that doesn't detract from the fic... it makes it mysterious, little things that you have to guess at because they're glossed over, they're not important to this plot, this moment.
Also, the fight between Nakin and Hellsbane would have been awesome to witness :D
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-18 07:07 am (UTC)See, I know what happened, with the things that aren't there, but they really aren't relevant. If you're curious, I can tell you, though.
Uh-huh. *nods, like, a lot* Actually, all of Nakin's fights are just -- man, I want to see those onscreen.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-19 01:32 am (UTC)Add me to the list of people who'd love to see those fights on film.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-19 02:21 am (UTC)These fights would be awesome onscreen. (Although my choreography probably sucks, so we'd best leave that to an expert.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-17 06:11 pm (UTC)Lol, don't feel bad: I don't know anything about SW EU. I've made it a habit to avoid the books. ^^;
Anyway, I'd very much like to hear what you've done to Padme & the twins...I can guess enough about Order 66 and Darth Cidal.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-18 03:00 am (UTC)Rather than try and research the EU, I decided I was better off just making stuff up. Hey, it's big galaxy, right? :D
Oh, God, Padme and the twins...let's see if I can remember. (It's been, uh, a while.) After Anakin got the Padawans and younglings in his starship offworld, he went back to Coruscant to get Padme. Originally, his plan was to take her away with him, but he was forced into hiding on Coruscant for sometime, and he saw the horrors that were being done to the city-planet in the name of Order 66...most of the young Jedi had fled to hide in the city and Sidious was rooting them out one by one and murdering them. Anakin knew Padme wouldn't be safe with him, so after he snuck into her apartment he mindtricked her into agreeing to go back to Naboo and retire there (note: first time Anakin has ever successfully mindtricked anyone). She was only safe, so far, because Sidious was trying to use her as bait to get Anakin back to Coruscant to capture him. She left that night; Sidious wasn't sure enough in his position to risk going after her on Naboo, not when she could still be used as bait. And there were those kids of hers... Anyway, Padme eventually remarried and the twins grew up -- when this story would have continued some time later, Leia would have been taken to serve as a page for the Empire and Luke would be training as a pilot.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-18 06:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-19 12:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 06:48 pm (UTC)I really really enjoyed this story. I love where Anakin is as a person. It only makes me wish harder that we were able to see him grow up properly. I loved his hardness and wisdom as an older person, and loved his interaction with Obi-Wan.
Write more!! Pls....
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 09:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-24 07:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-26 12:30 am (UTC)Nakin's posse...heh. I bet Zsuzsi wouldn't appreciate that. There is, as of a few weeks ago, actually a sequel tentatively in the works which should close up this 'verse, but that particular part may or may not happen.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-15 02:49 pm (UTC)This is amazing. A very, very well-written fic, and just so chillingly possible - I'm not quite sure why to me this seems so chilling considering the canon alternative (Anakin killing jedi, etc), but there's just so much emotion here. So much desperation.
And Anakin saying he's no longer a jedi - at first I thought that he didn't use the lightsabers in order to make them think he wasn't a jedi, but he didn't use them because he doesn't consider himself a jedi.
And how he can't forgive Yulalli - when in canon that was him.
And how he spends the night clinging to Obi-Wan - and then the next morning walks away from him - so heartbreaking, wanting to cling to what they had, but ripped apart by what's happened since then.
I simply loved it.
(also, thought I should mention that I read this fic due to a recc by
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-15 11:58 pm (UTC)I think the world of "What is Lost" is, in several ways, both darker and lighter than canon. Lighter, on one level, because there was no great traitor, no Anakin Skywalker turned Darth Vader, so to speak. There were a lot of lesser betrayals, but not in the first hours of the Purge; there was no great betrayal and the massacre at the Jedi Temple was nothing like what happened in canon, which seems like it should make the whole thing less dire, but it actually ends up with the opposite reaction. Um, I may end up going into this in a separate post.
And Anakin saying he's no longer a jedi - at first I thought that he didn't use the lightsabers in order to make them think he wasn't a jedi, but he didn't use them because he doesn't consider himself a jedi.
Yes! Thank you for picking up on that. I haven't quite figured out exactly why, but I knew it was important to put it in there (I also know that it was by no means something he suddenly decided on, but was a slow process that has a lot to do with what he went through during the Purge).
Anakin and Obi-Wan are so messed up. I love it.
Thank you for the lovely feedback, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-06 11:04 pm (UTC)ANYway, this is so well-done. VERY creative and original and honestly in some ways even more tragic than what happened in canon. Anakin's whole existence since becoming a padawan after Qui-Gon's death was about being a Jedi, so to see him in a future in which he no longer identifies as one is... quite intense and sort of heartbreaking even, to say the least (apparently I can't express myself for shit tonight; hopefully what I just typed makes sense).
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-08 06:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-15 02:17 pm (UTC)Right. I think that's a big part of the appeal of the characters in the SW universe. I'm of the opinion that no single character (with the arguable exception of Palpatine) is a study in absolutes. These shades of grey, if you will, therefore provide much fodder for AU fanfic. And it`s a testament to your writing skill that despite Anakin`s... different outcome, he is still plausibly himself.
Would you mind terribly if I friended you -- not to put any pressure, of course, but I would love to check it out whenever you decide to update. :)
(Goddamn laptop keyboard is acting up on me and messing with my apostrophes and question marks. Heh.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-15 11:38 pm (UTC)I love writing AUs; I think it's fascinating to see what parts of someone's character changes or stays the same depending on circumstance, and this was hard because it's so different than what happened in canon. I'm glad it worked!
Would you mind terribly if I friended you -- not to put any pressure, of course, but I would love to check it out whenever you decide to update. :)
No, go ahead! I don't mind at all. Always glad to have someone new along for the ride. *grin*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-16 02:02 pm (UTC)Exactly. I think an 'action of the Force' being evil or good lies in the hands and heart of he or she who wields it, not in the Force itself.
And yes, I have no idea how anyone could argue that the Star Wars universe is 'a study of absolutes'. My god, it's anything but!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-16 11:57 pm (UTC)