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bedlamsbardWhen I wrote "What is Lost", I did something that I've never really done before for any other story: I threw out almost eight thousand words of text for the final version. I also wrote multiple versions of very nearly every scene in there, and I wrote a number of scenes that never showed up in the story. With WiL, I wrote what I call "concept writing" -- writing with no particular aim in mind, just trying to see where the characters and the setting takes me -- much like the concept art done for the movies. What this means is that I have a lot of scenes just sitting around on my hard drive -- and for a shock, actually on the hard drive of this computer, since I moved them over here before I left for Brown -- that aren't bad, they just didn't fit into the story for whatever reason.
For reference, the main text of "What is Lost" is here.
He couldn’t seem to stop moving.
Anakin kept pacing the Council room, feeling more confined by its broad windows and high walls than ever before. He wrapped his arms and robes around himself, shivering despite the warmth in the room. He kept running over the previous hour in his head. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep Palpatine’s – Sidious’s – voice out of his mind.
Too much silence. Too little space. Anakin had thought he’d never wanted to see another battlefield again, but this waiting was worse. He very badly wanted to destroy something.
Ten minutes since Windu had left him. Fifteen. Twenty. Half an hour. Anakin knelt down in the center of the floor and tried to meditate, but he couldn’t concentrate. He’d always been bad at meditation. Obi-Wan had said –
Obi-Wan. He’d know what to do. He always – he would have done what Anakin had done, gone to Windu. Done the right thing. Done his duty.
He should have gone with Obi-Wan to Utapau! Or with Yoda to Kashyyyk, or Ki-Adi-Mundi to Mygeeto – anywhere but Coruscant. He couldn’t do this, politics and black ops – all he could do was destroy things and build them up again. Anakin knelt with his hands on his knees and tried to breathe, staring at Obi-Wan’s Council chair. At the holoprojector in front of it.
Anakin stood up abruptly, unfolding from the meditative posture he’d been kneeling in. He flicked a hand toward the holoprojector, watching it flicker on. Someone had to know what had happened here, and Obi-Wan was the only Jedi he trusted.
*
He couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t even breathe.
Pain poured over him in waves, death – darkness – inundating the Force. He wasn’t Anakin Skywalker anymore, he was the Force, and the Force was suddenly roiling with the deaths of hundreds – thousands – of Jedi. Anakin Skywalker would have screamed for his master, breathless and blindly terrified, but the Force had no one to scream for. He couldn’t even identify Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Force-signature among the hundreds striking him all at once. And then –
Cold. Washing over him. Clean, cold water. He was – surrounded. Hot blood cascaded around him, burning his flesh. He fought for air, reaching for his rebreather, and then laser bolts cut through the water, striking from the rebreather from his hand, his torso, his arm, burning the hair from his head. Automatically he went for his lightsaber, but it had fallen from his hand when he fell. He tried to call for the Force but couldn’t; the death of his friends – his family – rocked him back, water filling his lungs. And as laser bolts boiled the water around him, he fell.
Endlessly.
“Anakin!” Someone grabbed his shoulder. Anakin gasped, water – fire – poison gas – tearing at his throat. He couldn’t even scream.
“Anakin. Ground and center, child, control yourself, don’t let it control you. You must control yourself, young Skywalker.”
A woman’s voice. A master’s. Who –
“Master Nu,” Anakin whispered. His voice came out in a thin croak. He opened his eyes slowly, all the strength drained from his body, to find Jocasta Nu kneeling in front of him where he’d collapsed on the floor. “You’re alive.” He thought – “There are still – Jedi. We’re still –”
“They’re coming for us,” the master said, drawing him to his feet with her hands on his arms. “Clone troopers from the Senate.” For the first time in thirteen years at the Temple, he saw a lightsaber clipped to her belt.
“Clone troopers,” Anakin repeated. His voice was flat; he couldn’t find the energy to add emotion. “Master Windu went to arrest the Chancellor.”
“To arrest the Chancellor?” Nu repeated blankly. “What for?”
“Palpatine is Sidious,” Anakin said tiredly. “He fooled us all – he fooled me. He wanted –”
“You,” Nu said. “He wanted you. The Chosen One.” She looked out the window, down at the cityscape below. Anakin trailed after her and saw an army.
The Grand Army of the Republic.
Coming for the Jedi.
“Suns’ end,” Anakin swore, pain still spiking at the back of his head. Jedi were still dying. In the Outer Rim, the Mid Rim, even the Core Planets. Even – on Coruscant.
Mace Windu.
“He’s dead,” Anakin said blankly.
Nu turned toward him. “Who’s dead?”
“Master Windu,” Anakin said, raising a hand to his head. “Palpatine – Sidious – he killed him.”
“And now he’s coming for us,” Nu said. She turned toward the door, opening it with a flick of her wrist. “We have to get the younglings out of the Temple now.” She looked back at the last minute, eyes on Anakin. “Skywalker?”
He knows about Padmé. He wanted me – he wanted to use her to get to me. He –
“He killed Obi-Wan,” Anakin said blankly; it was the only thing he could say.
“Yes,” Nu said calmly, and laid a hand on his arm. “But you’re still alive.”
*
“My poor Padawan…you have been very brave, my Padawan, and I’m afraid you must be brave for a while longer…Obi-Wan, you must wake up!”
He…hurt. All over. Some places more than others. There were large hands on his chest, hands he knew but hadn’t felt in years. Obi-Wan spasmed, gasping, water spilling from his mouth, and reached out blindly with the Force.
Blue warmth spilled over and around him. Obi-Wan was cradled and held, wrapped up in a Force-presence stronger than anything he’d ever known, even Anakin’s.
Anakin.
He jerked away, still spasming, reaching past the presence surrounding him for his partner and best friend.
Pain. Death. Darkness. The light had gone out of the universe.
Obi-Wan Kenobi screamed.
Or he tried, at least. One large hand clapped down across his mouth, stifling the scream in his throat. Obi-Wan lashed out, eyes snapping open in time to see his fist pass harmlessly through Qui-Gon Jinn’s blue-rimmed head.
Obi-Wan jerked backwards, eyes wide, wincing as the hard stone beneath him tore at his wounds. “Master –?”
“Shh, Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon said, holding him with both hands pressed to his upper arms. “You must be quiet. The clones are still searching for you.”
“You –” Obi-Wan said blankly, staring at him. “You’re – the clones?”
“Yes,” Qui-Gon said. “You must have felt the great darkness in the Force, Padawan.”
“Jedi are dying.” Blaster wounds. Obi-Wan forced himself upright and started to peel burned cloth out of the scar in his flesh, flinching. He was badly injured. “The spy in the Senate – the Sith lord –”
“The Chancellor himself,” Qui-Gon said. He reached for Obi-Wan, frowning as blood started seeping out beneath Obi-Wan’s fingers, clasped tightly against the blaster wound on his arm. “Here, Padawan. Let me.”
Obi-Wan let his hands fall into his lap. Qui-Gon leaned over him, huge hands surprisingly delicate on Obi-Wan’s battered flesh.
“The Chancellor?” Obi-Wan repeated disbelievingly. “But – of course!” He shook his head, sending spikes of pain shooting behind his eyes. “Anakin’s on Coruscant!” He tried to stand, couldn’t, collapsing back into Qui-Gon’s arms.
“It’s dangerous,” Qui-Gon said, stroking one hand over Obi-Wan’s forehead, frowning deeply. “Coruscant is no longer a safehold for the Jedi.”
“Which is why I have to go to him!”
Qui-Gon put a gentle luminescent hand on his knee. “Obi-Wan,” he said softly, “he may not be there anymore.”
Originally, the flashbacks were written to be interspersed with Anakin and Obi-Wan in bed -- the next scenes -- with Anakin and Obi-Wan explaining to each other what had happened over the years to them, as well as, obviously, where the canon and the AU split off. I looked it at long and hard and went, "Oh my God, if I do, the entire story will end up being told in flashbacks and I'll kill myself writing them." Therefore, the only flashback in WiL is the opening one of Anakin and the Last Stand at the Temple.
Anakin straddled Obi-Wan easily, hands braced on his hips. Obi-Wan’s hands came up to touch his face, fingers skating over the bones, lingering on the scars, feeling out the changes ten years and a second war had wrought.
“I missed you,” Anakin whispered, breath hot against Obi-Wan’s face. “thought you were dead – I felt you die.”
Obi-Wan let out a very soft sigh. “We thought you’d been killed in the attack on the Temple,” he admitted, hands still on Anakin’s face. “But we never found your body, so I hoped –” He shook his head slightly. “I thought I’d found you on Mykale six years ago, but –”
Anakin’s hands tightened on his hips. “That was you? Suns’ end, we were so close – and to think Master Yoda said some very disparaging things about my ability to hide my Force-presence, too.” He lapsed into silence, listening to Obi-Wan breathe. “Master Yoda,” he said eventually. “Did he –?”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan said. He seemed to be grateful, somehow. “The clones tried to kill him on Kashyyyk – apparently the Wookiees were very put out. He and I met with Bail Organa – you remember –”
Anakin had to search for it. “The senator from Alderaan?” he hazarded finally.
Obi-Wan nodded. “We went back to Coruscant and snuck into the Temple to change the signal.” He sighed. “The dead –”
“I know.” Anakin bowed his head. Obi-Wan’s fingers brushed over his short-clipped hair. “I was there. We didn’t have enough time –”
“Tell me,” his master ordered, and then he added, “But get off me first. You’re heavy and I’m old.”
“You’re old,” Anakin muttered, sliding off him. There was only one chair in the room, so he went to sit on the edge of the bed instead. “I’m older than you were when you started training me.”
Obi-Wan dragged the chair forward so they could sit with their knees touching. “You can’t possibly be,” he said, an expression of absolute horror in his voice.
“I’m thirty-two,” Anakin said, enjoying the look on his face.
“And I thought you were bad when you turned twenty,” Obi-Wan muttered. “I was hoping you would mellow with age.”
“I was very mellow for the year I spent completely drunk,” Anakin assured him.
Obi-Wan raised his eyebrows. “Only one? I spent three years without getting sober once except for the time I was captured by the Kyrii.” He put his hands on Anakin’s knees. “Tell me about Coruscant.”
*
“I got your message, by the way,” Obi-Wan said. “It was very sweet of you.”
“Clearly not soon enough,” Anakin said. He folded his hands over Obi-Wan’s feeling the bumps of poorly set bone where his master must have broken his knuckles some time in the past. “As I recall, it had a rather abrupt ending.”
“Rather. Well, you always have been responsible for any gray hairs I may have grown.”
Anakin squinted at him. “You look exactly the same as you did ten years ago.” He leaned forward earnestly, knowing Obi-Wan would feel the change in the air. “Master, tell me the truth: have you been using the Force to color your hair?”
Obi-Wan’s face registered blank disbelief for a moment, then he burst out laughing. “Anakin, I have missed you,” he said, still smiling. “I really did think I’d lost you, you know. Yoda would be proud.”
“Of you finally letting go of attachment?” Anakin said, unable to hide the bitterness in his voice. He’d learned to. After a fashion. He stroked his thumb over Obi-Wan’s wrist in silent apology.
Obi-Wan’s smile was a little sad. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid I never have been able to do that. I’ve always disappointed Yoda in that, I think. He would be proud of you, though.” He raised a hand and cupped Anakin’s face gently. “You have managed to hide even from him for more than a decade.”
Anakin arched into the tough, eyes slanting almost closed. “I thought you were dead,” he whispered, basking in his master’s Force-presence. “I was so certain you were dead.” I felt you die, Master – you. Yoda. Master Windu. All the Jedi. All at once. I couldn’t move. I wanted to die. I thought I was the last of the Jedi. And then –” He shuddered all over and Obi-Wan’s grip tightened on his hand. “They came for us. For the Temple.”
*
“We had no time,” Anakin said, stricken. “Less than a quarter-hour till the 501st arrived, and we had more than two hundred younglings to evacuate. Half as many Padawans. Four masters. A handful of knights, many of them wounded. Less than a dozen ships.”
*
“Anakin…”
He slashed a hand viciously across his eyes. “I still don’t understand! I told them to run – to survive. I gave them an order. I was senior to them. Why didn’t they listen? I don’t understand.”
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said gently, and reached forward. “Even you have never been particularly good at following orders. We are Jedi. Sometimes – especially for the young ones – fighting is all we can understand. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Besides,” he added, with a ghost of a smile, “not many Jedi can say they have fought at the side of Anakin Skywalker.”
“Well, you’re at the top of the list,” Anakin said stubbornly. “If they’d just listened to me, they’d still be alive –”
“Sixty younglings died in the attack on the Temple,” Obi-Wan said. His hands hovered just beyond Anakin’s shoulders, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to touch. “More Padawans, percentage-wise – nearly forty. Five knights. Four masters. It wasn’t – quite – the massacre Yoda and I expected to find when we arrived at the Temple. You saved enough, Anakin. That’s all that matters.”
Anakin bent his head forward and laced his fingers behind his skull. “Not enough,” he said. “No matter how many I saved, it wasn’t enough. I should have – I could have – saved all of them.”
Obi-Wan’s hands finally found him and tilted his face upwards. “No, Anakin,” he said, and his voice was as infinitely sad as Anakin had ever heard it. “No, Anakin,” he said, “no one could have saved all of them.”
*
Anakin’s hands closed suddenly on Obi-Wan’s shoulders. “I felt you die,” he said desperately, pulling Obi-Wan forward against him. “I felt you die and I wanted to let the clones shoot me.”
Obi-Wan put his arms around Anakin, letting the younger Jedi’s head rest against his shoulder. “I was dead,” he said.
Anakin raised his head. “I thought so,” he said accusingly. “It clearly didn’t last,” he added, eyeing Obi-Wan. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“No,” Obi-Wan said, resting one scarred palm on the curve of Anakin’s skull. “No, it didn’t. Qui-Gon came for me.”
Anakin jerked upright. “Master Jinn?” he said disbelievingly. “But he’s –”
“Dead?” Obi-Wan finished gently.
“For twenty-three years,” Anakin said miserably.
“Well,” Obi-Wan said. “Yes.”
*
“There is no death, there is the Force,” Anakin said, and started laughing, closer to hysterical than he’d been in years. Well, it had been years since he’d had the leisure to be hysterical; he might as well start catching up now, since there was definitely enough to be hysterical about.
Obi-Wan pulled him forward, closer. Anakin wanted to crawl inside him and melt. “I’m glad you’re all right, Anakin,” he said, face pressed against Anakin’s forehead. “I thought – I feared –”
“Nothing less than I thought.” Anakin wrapped his arms around him. Even before the Purge it had been years since they’d been this close; both Padmé and the Clone Wars had only served to drive them apart, despite – or maybe because of – the hours they’d been forced to spend together on battlefields. After the Purge…he hadn’t been lying earlier, when he’d said he’d wanted to die after feeling Obi-Wan’s death in the Force. Padmé had been right when she’d said that maybe he hadn’t appreciated Obi-Wan until he was gone. Even after Jabiim, Anakin hadn’t thought that Obi-Wan would ever really be gone…until he was.
“Master…”
“I hoped,” Obi-Wan said, very softly, and his grip tightened on Anakin’s back. The swell of emotion through the Force was enough to rock Anakin back onto the bed, clutching at Obi-Wan like a lifeline as he dragged his master down with him.
*
Abruptly, Anakin leaned up and kissed Obi-Wan, letting the Force roll through them both. For a moment his master’s mouth was slack and startled beneath his, and then Obi-Wan tugged his hands out from under Anakin and put them on Anakin’s shoulders, kissing him back with quiet desperation in the touch of his lips and tongue. Desperation – and despair. Anakin knew suddenly that Obi-Wan hadn’t expected to ever see him again, and that the lack of protest – what he would have expected from his master, even now – came from the fact that Obi-Wan was still afraid he wasn’t real, that he was going to melt away like dew in a Tatooine dawn.
“Anakin…”
“Master,” Anakin said, and pressed himself up into Obi-Wan, offering everything he could to let him know that he really was here, really was alive. He couldn’t force the bond between them, didn’t particularly want to because he knew he could overload it if he tried too hard.
“Wait.” Obi-Wan pulled back, not far, just enough to lick his lips and look at Anakin with his blind eyes glazed over. He could feel the Force moving between them, from Obi-Wan’s end this time. He finally let out a long sigh, leaning back over Anakin. “You’ve changed,” he said, a little sadly.
“I had to,” Anakin replied, and kissed him again.
*
“I missed you.”
Obi-Wan cupped his face in his hands and kissed him. “The feeling,” he said through touches of his mouth, “is mutual.”
Anakin wrapped his hands in Obi-Wan’s fine hair. “I dreamed of you,” he managed, gasping. “Every night. I dreamed of you. I thought you’d left me.”
“Never,” Obi-Wan said, hands moving downwards to the laces of Anakin’s shirt. “Never. Not you too.” He found Anakin’s bare flesh – familiar hands, callused from years of lightsaber use, the bones broken and reset, scars patterning them in an unfamiliar spider web. Anakin covered one with his own palm.
“How –”
“Darrigan,” Obi-Wan whispered. “Clone troopers. A percussion grenade. Nine years ago. I was –”
“Suicidal?”
“Unstable,” Obi-Wan said. “Desperate.” He stroked a thumb over the tracery of scars on Anakin’s face. “Tell me.”
“Fights,” Anakin said. “One explosion. Here.” He brought Obi-Wan’s hand to his cheek, letting him feel the spider web there. “Dove through a glass window three stories up.”
He felt rather than saw Obi-Wan’s wince. “Ow.”
“Haven’t actually been shot all that much,” he admitted.
“I suppose I got the share of that between the two of us,” Obi-Wan allowed.
“Show me,” Anakin ordered.
Obi-Wan demurred, “We’d be here all night.”
Anakin kissed him again. “That’s the plan.”
“Well, in that case…” He ran his hands up under Anakin’s shirt, smiling against Anakin’s mouth.
“Fewer clothes,” Anakin said, finding the ties on Obi-Wan’s shirt. “Less talking. More kissing. Suns’ end.” One deep pucker of scar tissue. Another. A star-shaped flare over his heart.
Obi-Wan found his hand. “Sorry,” he said softly.
“You’re lucky I like you,” Anakin told him agreeably. “Besides, you’re the type that looks good with scars. Adds to your mysterious allure.”
“Well, then,” Obi-Wan said, sounding gratified. “Put it that way…mysterious allure?” he added dubiously.
“Don’t worry,” Anakin said, leaning up to kiss him again. Obi-Wan’s mouth was soft and welcoming; at the risk of sounding like a character in a bad holoromance, Anakin would go so far as to say kissing Obi-Wan was like coming home. “It doesn’t affect your girlish figure at all.”
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, utterly frustrated and laughing a little through it. Anakin had the feeling he hadn’t laughed in far too long.
*
Sometime in the night Anakin ran his hands up Obi-Wan’s back and felt the thick ridges of scar tissue there, crisscrossing the skin like a KarTathi tartan. Whip marks. Old.
“Master,” he said, Obi-Wan utterly still beneath his hands. “How –”
“Kyrii freedom fighters,” Obi-Wan said, sighing a little. “Hate the Empire. Also, coincidently, hate the Jedi. The planet’s rich in jaarium –”
“A natural Force inhibitor,” Anakin said, wincing. “You need someone to watch your back, Master. What happened?”
“Quinlan Vos,” Obi-Wan said. “I still don’t know how he heard. I was useless, of course –”
“I’m sure.”
“– and he was outnumbered twenty to one –”
“Even odds, then.”
“Yes, well,” Obi-Wan murmured. “I don’t remember most of it – the Kyrii used a drug called makar on me. It’s a hallucinogen – and other things.”
“Other –”
“You don’t want to know,” Obi-Wan said firmly.
Anakin leaned up and brushed his lips over his master’s. “I’m sure I don’t, but I think I’ve had a run-in with the stuff – or something like it, anyway.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s past.”
He could feel Obi-Wan’s brow furrow. “Anakin, you have grown up.”
“Sorry, Master,” Anakin said, smiling despite himself. He ran his hands down lower on Obi-Wan’s scarred back. “You know how these things happen.” He pressed a kiss to the corner of Obi-Wan’s jaw, enjoying the slight bristle of beard there. “Now…maybe we can reminisce later. You’re talking too much.”
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, running one hand down the outside of Anakin’s hip. His fingers stilled a little at the tattoo there, and then he moved on. “You’re the one who asked.”
*
Anakin woke alone in bed, sated and surrounded by his master’s Force-presence. For a long moment he just lay there, basking in it, then he raised his head, sitting up and reaching for the blaster under his pillow more out of instinct than anything else. He put it down again when he saw Obi-Wan standing by the window, speaking into a comm unit.
“I take back everything I said last night,” Anakin said. “You look like hell.”
*
If there was ever a time for alcohol, Anakin was fairly certain that this was it. He even had some on hand, thanks to Zsuzsi – he didn’t like chacharan, but it was the drink of choice in Merapesh and after a decade on the continent he was finally starting to understand why, what with Obi-Wan looking at him like Anakin was something lost and broken and put back together – which, he supposed, he technically was, from a certain point of view.
“Why did you come here?” he asked finally. His head ached – most of it aftereffects from the healing, some of it from being beaten up and drugged and not eating enough since breakfast. Turning away from Obi-Wan, he began to dig through his drawers, finally finding his stash of protein bars.
Obi-Wan was eyeing him worriedly. “I was on a trading run from Kyr,” he said. “I’ve been to Ixtapa before, but not recently, and not Per Macchu. Usually my runs take me to Sarsasai on Selket.”
“You’re a trader?” Anakin said, peeling the wrapper off the protein bar. Tasteless but filling; exactly what he needed right now in lieu of one of Zsuzsi’s dinners, which probably wasn’t an option considering the crowd below.
“From a certain point of view,” Obi-Wan said, almost sounding apologetic.
Anakin raised his head. “You’re a smuggler,” he stated, faintly amused. “In between pissing off the Imperials, of course.”
Obi-Wan smiled slightly at that. “Something like that. And you – apparently you’re the best mechanic on the planet. In between running guns.”
“The other way around, actually,” Anakin said. “I’ve more or less given up on the gun-running thing in favor of a nice, quiet life in the city.”
“Quiet? You?” Another faint smile. “I don’t believe it.”
“Staying off the radar is a good way to stay away from the Empire.” He crumpled the protein bar wrapper in his hand and tossed it into the wastebin in the corner of the room. The motion sent waves of pain up his just-healed arm. Of course. “The Empire’s looking for you. There are Imperials here – a starcruiser, Imperial officers, clone troopers. And now they know about me.”
“I know,” Obi-Wan said. “We met. Did you do that to the lieutenant’s face?”
Anakin smiled. “Yes. Then his friends shot me. 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.”
Et cetera, et cetera, insert softcore porn, angst muffins -- I'm sure we can all see why this didn't make it into the final cut. I later decided I wanted my Anakin angrier at Obi-Wan than he is here.
You can see some of the holdovers here that appeared in the initial draft -- Obi-Wan being temporarily blind, the comm unit (he's speaking to Han Solo, by the way; this Obi-Wan pilots the Millennium Falcon). Obviously, the Obi-Wan/Anakin, which I took out of the final draft. One of the things that did remain in the final draft was Anakin not actually getting shot all that often, which still amuses me for some reason. Knifed, tortured, blown up, tossed out windows, arrested -- not shot all that often.
You can also see the progression -- and this is clearer in a couple scenes below -- of Nakin Starkiller from smuggler to mechanic.
“My lord,” Darth Cidal said. “I believe I have found Anakin Skywalker.”
*
“He’s using the name Nakin Starkiller,” Darth Cidal said. “My informant tells me he makes his base on a planet called Ixtapa, on the far edge of the Outer Rim. He rents a room above a cantina, The Sand and Stone, in Per Macchu, a smuggler’s port on one of the smaller continents. He’s a bounty hunter, a mercenary.” He flicked a hand toward a holoprojector in the center of the table.
The Emperor cocked his head to one side. “The picture is bad,” he observed.
“He was arrested once on Chachaliera,” Cidal continued. “For smuggling. He escaped four hours later, injuring two guards. Once more on Telærik – this is his mugshot. They kept him for three days. On the third day he killed two prisoners and injured four more before escaping. That arrest was for murder. My agents are looking for other arrests under different names.”
“When?”
“Chachaliera was seven years ago. Telærik was six. Eight years ago he was involved in a fight on Ferinau against Ferinaun kan-fighters. He used a lightsaber – a blue one.”
“Ah,” Palpatine said, sitting back. “Find him, my apprentice. Take him alive, if you can. Bring him to me.”
“Yes, my master,” Cidal said, and bowed before striding away.
Palpatine steepled his hands in front of him. “Anakin Skywalker,” he murmured, eyeing the flickering holo in front of him. A handsome man no longer young, his face scarred and bruised. There was a cut at the corner of his eye, another slashing across his cheekbone. He licked blood from a split lip. He’d cut his hair, shorn close to his head now in something vaguely reminiscent of his days as a Padawan. His stance was arrogant, a fighter’s wariness held in the set of his shoulders. He didn’t wear Jedi robes, but instead trousers and a loose shirt rolled up at the sleeves. He didn’t look at all like a Jedi, but Palpatine would know that face anywhere.
“Anakin Skywalker,” he said again. “I will have you.”
Too awkward, not relevent enough to the story in WiL. Also, just not enough initial concept scenes to really work with the two.
I note that the identity of Darth Cidal is still a state secret.
alive,” Anakin said, reaching up to the cuffs on Obi-Wan’s wrists. He snatched his hands away almost immediately, his fingers numb. “Force inhibitors.”
“My face is rather well-known on Imperial broadsheets, I’m afraid,” Obi-Wan said, his light tone failing to disguise the relief in his voice. “Captain Perrick has the keys, I believe”
“Good. I’d hate to have to pick the locks without feeling in my fingers.” Anakin snapped out a hand toward Perrick’s limp body, thinking very clearly, keys, and was rewarded when they came flying through the air at him. He opened the cuffs with a flick of his wrist and caught Obi-Wan as his old master dropped down and nearly fell, stumbling. It gave him a good look at Obi-Wan’s milky white eyes.
“Master –”
“Carriell spores,” Obi-Wan said. “It will pass.”
“In a few months!”
“By now, a few days, I expect,” Obi-Wan said. He smiled slightly. “Besides, I have the Force.” His smile grew. “And now you.”
“Well,” Anakin said, gratified, and couldn’t stop himself from snapping out, “I felt you die.”
Obi-Wan’s smile curdled slightly. “Now is perhaps not the time.” He raised his head, frowning now. “I need my lightsaber.”
“You’re going to have to explain,” Anakin said, more harshly than he meant.
Obi-Wan turned blind eyes on him. “So will you,” he said. “But not now and not here.” He pulled away from Anakin and stretched one hand out to Perrick’s body, calling the officer’s blaster into his hand. “Uncivilized,” he muttered, “but adequate.”
“Elitist,” Anakin said, grinning. He glanced around the cargo bay, hoping the Gerians had been dumb enough to leave his gunbelt and Obi-Wan’s lightsaber lying around.
He could feel Obi-Wan reaching out with tendrils of the Force, trying to find the energy stamp on his lightsaber. “You try spending thirty-eight years as a Jedi and you’ll dislike them too, my former Padawan.” He raised his head. “There.”
“Got it,” Anakin said, and stalked over, buckling on his gunbelt over his hips. He snatched up Obi-Wan’s lightsaber, snorting under his breath. “Imperials. They get stupider every year.”
“Charming,” Obi-Wan murmured, abruptly at Anakin’s shoulder. He lifted his lightsaber lightly out of Anakin’s hand, clipping it to his belt. “Let’s go.”
Anakin unholstered one of his blasters and palmed it, more reassured by the familiar feel of it in his hand than the heavier Imperial-issue he was holding in his other hand. “Just like old times.”
Very first version, and I'm still rather fond of it -- I cut it for logic reasons, because it didn't quite work and it would have taken too much ironing out for it to do so. You can see that Obi-Wan's blind in this version and Anakin's your standard kickass Bedlam Skywalker -- prefers blasters over lightsabers, again, and this is also the first instance of the "picking locks with the Force" trick.
*
The Jedi called Hellsbane was sitting alone at a booth in a cantina called Wayfarer’s Rest, on the edge of what was popularly called the Traitor’s District in Per Macchu. His back was to a corner, giving him a clear view of the rest of the room; his eyes flicked unceasingly around the room as he ate.
When a stranger dropped into the seat across from him, Hellsbane didn’t move at all, although he did say, a twist of irony in his cultured voice, “The seat’s open.”
The stranger’s reply was to place a powered down lightsaber on the table between them.
Hellsbane put his spoon down. “You have my full attention, lieutenant,” he said, and saw the stranger start at the realization the Jedi had known he was an Imperial officer all along.
The officer leaned forward. “Maybe we should speak in private, Jedi,” he said, and started to put his hand over the lightsaber hilt. It snapped abruptly away from him and into Hellsbane’s hand, moving as though of its own volition.
Hellsbane raised it up to the light, a frown darkening behind his neatly clipped beard. “Where did you get this?” he demanded. “Where? How?”
The next thing the officer put on the table was a pair of Force-inhibiting binders. “If you want to find out, Jedi, you’ll have to come with me. Willingly. Quietly. Or I’ll arrest you right here and now, and it won’t be pretty.”
“No,” Hellsbane said, utterly calm. “It won’t be. It would be a pity for the manager to have to clean up your decapitated corpse.”
“All I have to do is call, and there will be a dozen stormtroopers in here to take you down.”
“All I have to do is flick my wrist –” Hellsbane moved his hand the slightest bit, his thumb sliding down to cover the circle of metal that would ignite the lightsaber, “– and you won’t have a head. But,” he said, lowering the lightsaber hilt slightly, “I’ve never been one to fight when there are options.”
“Wise choice, Jedi,” the Imperial officer said, although one hand had vanished beneath the table; Hellsbane knew he was fingering the blaster he had unholstered in his lap, barrel pointing at Hellsbane. He stood, slipping his blaster back into its holster. “Let’s talk somewhere…else.”
“Is he alive?”
“What?”
Hellsbane raised the lightsaber again. “The Jedi you took this from. Is he alive?”
The officer regarded him for a moment. “Yes.”
“Good answer.” The Jedi kept the lightsaber in his hand as he stood, tossing a few credit chips onto the table with his other hand before following the officer out into the bright light of an Ixtapa day, tinted slightly green by the huge trees dissipating the sunset of the first of the planet’s three suns in the north.
The officer led him through a maze of tangled streets that drew tighter and tighter together, all the while leading deeper into the midst of the Traitor’s District. While Per Macchu itself was not a disreputable city by the standards of the Outer Rim, this district of the city – lying at the very heart of the starburst of Per Macchu – was one of the worst in the Outer Rim. Smuggler’s bay was the least of the names it had been called.
They stopped in front of a large building Hellsbane recognized as a bunker that serviced mostly smugglers and gunrunners. “This is the best the Empire can offer for its ships?” he said, a hint of a sneer lifting the corners of his mouth.
The Imperial lieutenant turned back to him with a returning sneer and the Force-inhibiting binders in his hands. “This is the best the Jedi Order can offer up?” he returned, and another Imperial officer – this one in uniform, the idiot – and a dozen clone troopers stepped out of the shadows of the door.
“General Kenobi,” the other lieutenant said, head tilted slightly to one side. “You’re under arrest for high treason against the Galactic Empire.”
The lightsaber in Obi-Wan’s hand blazed into a blue bar that cut lights across the Imperials’ faces. “Is that what Palpatine is calling it now?” he said scathingly, blue eyes burning with the same cold anger as the lightsaber he was holding – not his lightsaber at all, but one he knew almost as well as the one clipped at his belt. “If you want me,” he added, “come and get me.”
“Jedi filth,” the first officer hissed. “Blast him!”
“Traynt, you idiot!” the other lieutenant barked, holding up one hand. The stormtroopers’ blasters dropped again. “General Kenobi,” he continued, scowling. “You have the option to surrender peaceably to Imperial justice, or you will be taken by force.”
“Imperial justice?” Obi-Wan said lightly. “I know Palpatine’s idea of justice. I really feel no particular urge to join the Dark Side, so I’m afraid you’ll have to go for the second option, Lieutenant.” He raised the lightsaber into a Shien ready position, the same one Anakin had used all those years ago against Dooku.
The lieutenant blinked once, perfectly calm. He would have made a good Jedi, if he’d been born Force-sensitive and at the right time. “Very well, General,” he acknowledged. “Take him!”
“That was a bad decision, General,” the lieutenant told him grimly as a pair of clone troopers hauled him to his feet.
Obi-Wan spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground in front of him. “With what you know about me and my reputation, Lieutenant, did you honestly believe I’d just hand myself over to the Emperor without a fight?”
“Not particularly,” Cafferti admitted. “Although I must admit I’d certainly hoped you’d show a little sense and throw yourself on the mercy of the Emperor. You can’t run forever, General.”
“No, I suppose not,” Obi-Wan said. “It doesn’t mean I can’t die fighting when the time comes, though.”
Traynt was cradling his broken arm against his chest, looking sulky beneath the wreck of his shattered nose. “Take him in,” he ordered. “He’s so worried about Starkiller, he can watch that merc die. There’s nothing the Emperor needs with an Outer Rim gun for hire.”
Anakin? Ixtapa wasn’t so very different from Tatooine, and most of the adult Jedi who’d survived the initial Purge had fled to the Outer Rim, especially those without real connections further in-galaxy. Obi-Wan had never been sure whether or not Anakin had survived the attack on the Temple, but the original surge of hope that he’d felt upon failing to identify Anakin’s body among the others had faded over the years, until it resurfaced at the moment Obi-Wan had picked up his former partner’s lightsaber less than an hour ago. He’d made it off Coruscant, at least.
Traynt smiled viciously at his silence, although the effect was undercut by his wince of pain. “No reply to that, Jedi? He’s a real little bastard; I’ll be happy to fire the blaster myself.”
“Shut up, Traynt,” Cafferti snapped. He held out a hand for the pair of lightsabers one of the clone troopers had liberated Obi-Wan of when they’d cuffed him. “You gave him Starkiller’s lightsaber?”
“I didn’t give it to him,” Traynt whined, as the clones muscled Obi-Wan past them into the depths of the hangar. “He took it.”
“So you take it back.”
“Ah, sir?” the clone trooper holding Obi-Wan’s right elbow called. “Lieutenant Cafferti?”
“What?” Cafferti demanded, stepping inside with Traynt and another clone on his heels.
Obi-Wan smiled a little, grimly. “You appear to have misplaced your prisoner, Lieutenant,” he said.
The chair in the center of the empty room – the hangar itself would be in back, Obi-Wan knew; his own ship was housed in a similar hangar – was empty, broken wrist and ankle binders on the floor beside it, while two clone troopers and one Imperial officer – a third lieutenant, by his uniform, which raised the question of where the ship’s captain was – sprawled out on the floor, blaster wounds dark on their chests. Only the officer had his blaster out, and the barrel was bent nearly back on itself.
Cafferti turned to Traynt. “Get the captain on the horn,” he said. “Tell him the prisoner’s missing.”
“He’s not missing,” a familiar voice rasped out of the darkness. “He’s right here.”
The blaster shot took Cafferti in the head, and he went down without a sound.
“Jedi!” Anakin yelled, as Obi-Wan’s lightsaber shot out of Cafferti’s hand into the air. Obi-Wan jammed his elbow into the crook between helmet and armor of the clone next to him and twisted to grab the lightsaber as it came down, taking it in a two-handed grip as he swept it around to take the other clone’s head off. The clone he’d knocked over had his blaster in his hand when a quick rat-tat of blaster fire blew him off his feet, and Obi-Wan somersaulted in the air over his falling body to put his lightsaber through another clone’s chest as he tried to get between Anakin and Traynt. There was a burst of blaster fire – the remaining clones, including the two that had been taking care of the bodies Obi-Wan had left outside, had managed to draw and were exchanging fire with Anakin, who’d moved out of the shadows, a blaster in each hand.
Then he saw Obi-Wan.
Version two. Kickass Anakin, again, and Obi-Wan this time -- discarded for logic reasons as well. I reluctantly gave up on the Anakin-and-Obi-Wan-as-Imperial-prisoners idea because it seemed weird for both of them to be taken prisoner. I am madly fond of Anakin escaping from his bonds, though, so that remained in the final version.
You can see the genesis of the Imperial officers here -- I changed them because I wanted to make them people, not just caricatures, so their personalities were changed slightly. As well, we've also got Obi-Wan meeting the Imperials at a tavern in the guise of Ben Hellsbane, but he soon switches to Obi-Wan Kenobi again.
*
He’d known it was another Jedi even before the clones had manhandled him inside. There was no other reason to take his lightsaber; no clone or Imperial officer would use one, especially not a Jedi lightsaber. He’d recognized the energy stamp on the lightsaber when he sent it over to the Jedi, but hadn’t realized – his shields were tight enough that he’d recognized it as familiar, but hadn’t realized whose lightsaber it was, until he got a good look at the Jedi it had gone to.
He’d thought Obi-Wan was dead. He’d spent the past decade, ten fucking years, thinking Obi-Wan was dead – he’d felt his master die all those years ago on Coruscant and it had nearly killed him.
Yeah, I've got no idea what this one's in relation to.
Anakin had his feet up on the table when the trader came in.
“Starkiller?” Zsuzsi at the bar said. She jerked a hand in Anakin’s direction. “Over in the corner. Be nice; he still hasn’t paid off the last damage he did to the joint. You plan to order anything?”
The trader squinted at the drinks menu above the bar. “Tsa’tsa ale,” he said finally, looking dubious.
“Lightweight,” Zsuzsi snorted, pushing it across the counter for him.
Anakin didn’t move his feet when the trader came by. “You Traynt?” he asked, arching his scarred eyebrow.
“Yes,” the trader said, bobbing his head. He walked like he had a plasma rifle stuck up his ass, Anakin noted clinically. Someone willing to take his first swing at a little business on the side, he guessed. “You’re Captain Nakin Starkiller?”
“Not a captain,” Anakin said. “Sit. Talk fast. I’ve been told I have a very short attention span.” For emphasis he flipped a small knife out from up his sleeve and began to clean his nails, pretending to ignore the trader while studying him under lowered lashes. Obi-Wan would have been proud. He always had said Anakin wouldn’t know subterfuge if it bit him on the nose. Well, it had bit him somewhere.
Traynt sat, playing with his glass. “I need to move some things,” he said, watching Anakin like he expected him to go psycho on him. Honestly. Anakin hadn’t done that in years.
Well, weeks at least.
Anakin cocked his head, eyes still on his flesh hand and the star shaped scar on the knuckle of one finger. “Illegal things?”
“Imperial weaponry. There’s a weapons dealer on Pokapa –”
“Geerd Haa,” Anakin said. “I know him. I assume the Empire doesn’t know about this.”
“No, of course not,” Traynt said hurriedly.
“Good.” Anakin jabbed the knife point down into the table, giving Traynt the full impact of his gaze, the Force behind his eyes. He still couldn’t mindtrick, but the power in him could be picked up even by a non-sensitive. Had some nice effects on the easily-impressed, too, although little more than Anakin could have got by glaring alone. “Because if this is some kind of Imperial trap –”
“There’s nothing out here,” Traynt snapped, and something in his voice made Anakin narrow his eyes. His anger must have showed on his face, because Traynt added quickly, “Thirty thousand credits. Fifteen when you pick up the package, fifteen when you deliver it to Haa.”
“No deal,” Anakin said, still narrow-eyed. “All of it when I pick up the weaponry or the deal’s off. And an extra ten grand for aggravation purposes if I run into trouble on the way there.”
Traynt shook his head. “How do I know you’ll deliver the goods?”
Anakin jerked the knife out of the table and tossed it up into the air, catching it by the blade. “My reputation. I’m just that good. You’re lucky I’m not adding on another ten grand for having to go Mid Rim Empire territory.” He licked his lips, slow and deliberate and well aware of the effect it was having on the other days. Some days, who needed the Force? “I don’t like the Empire,” he said, and smiled, showing all of his brilliantly white teeth. One part of his body that didn’t have durasteel in it, at least; sometimes he felt like half his bones had been replaced with artificial replacements, although it was really more like his right arm and three bones in his left foot.
Traynt quailed in the face of Anakin Skywalker threat. “My ship’s docked at number 42,” he said, rising as quickly as humanly possible. “Come by around ten standard tomorrow.”
Anakin sheathed his knife. “You didn’t try your drink,” he called after him.
*
Fucking Imperials. Anakin should have been able to call it as soon as Traynt walked into The Sand and Stone, but the past few months had caught up to him and he’d been off his game. Or he’d just gotten complacent. The only good part of this situation came from the realization that at least the Imps hadn’t recognized his face.
Yet.
They had recognized the lightsabers hanging off his gunbelt, though.
Traynt waved one in front of his nose. “Where’d you get this, you filthy piece of mercenary scum?”
“Took it off a corpse.” Anakin eyed the other, older lightsaber perched on the edge of the small kariek-wood table next to the first lieutenant. “Or two,” he added. True enough, after a manner of speaking; the Jedi Anakin Skywalker had been was as dead as the Republic and the Jedi Temple had been an empty hulk filled with rotting corpses when Anakin had snuck back in to fetch Qui-Gon Jinn’s lightsaber from Obi-Wan’s quarters.
“Jedi?” Traynt demanded, looking disbelieving.
“This scum?” Casserti said, arms crossed over his chest. “Everyone in the galaxy knows there’s a bounty on lightsabers. There’s a reason he hasn’t brought them further in-galaxy.”
“Sure,” Anakin said brightly. “I hate the Empire. Oh yeah, and the Jedi.”
Casserti rounded on Traynt. “What were you thinking? This mercenary isn’t the Jedi we’re here for. If this is all we’ve got when the Emperor’s Dog arrives –”
Anakin didn’t miss the tick in Traynt’s face as he insisted, “Starkiller’s bait. Hellsbane comes at the slightest hint of a Jedi in trouble. Use the lightsabers to lure him in, then use Starkiller as a hostage. Hellsbane’s known for compassion, more fool him.”
Hellsbane. Anakin didn’t remember a Jedi named Hellsbane – it wasn’t something the Council would have approved of – but chances were it was an alias, not a birth name. So. Who was it?
Cafferti scowled at Traynt. “You’d better hope the captain agrees with you, because you’re the one explaining why we have this sh’shar’ri mercenary with us,” he said shortly, and walked out of the room.
“Bait,” Anakin said. “I hate being bait.”
“Shut up, scum,” Traynt snapped, slamming down Anakin’s lightsaber on the table. He snatched up a syringe, flicking the side with his thumb. “This will hurt a lot,” he added, sounding satisfied.
“Oh good,” Anakin said, forcing himself not to tense up. “I hate it when people do things by halves.”
*
“So tell me,” Nakin said once they were out in the streets of Per Macchu’s Traitor’s District, navigating the tiny winding alleyways, “What brings an Imperial cruiser out to Ixtapa? This is a little out of your usual district.”
Traynt flicked a startled look at him. “How did you know I was Imperial Navy?”
“Besides the fact you just said so? You’re packing an Imperial-issue Elin 550 blaster, which even I haven’t been able to get hold of yet. And you walk like you’re wearing a uniform.” He tilted his head back consideringly to feel the heat of the planet’s twin suns beat down on his face, over-long hair curling against the back of his neck. He’d have to cut it again soon.
“Seems like you know a lot just for a mechanic,” Traynt observed, his balance regained now.
“I pay attention,” Nakin said shortly. “So what’s wrong with your cruiser?”
“The hyperdrive went out when we came out of hyperspace above Ixtapa. We were able to land, but –” He shrugged. “Our engineer doesn’t know what’s wrong. We managed to get out of the Core without running into any trouble, so it can’t be a hit to anything.”
“Huh,” Nakin said, tilting his head to one side consideringly. “I can fix anything, but if I have to order parts it’s coming out of the Empire’s treasury. And you didn’t answer my first question.”
Traynt raised his chin. “We’re a hunting a fugitive, a Jedi Knight. Our sources report he might be hiding on this planet.” He paused. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
“On this planet?” Nakin snorted, lips curling back from his teeth in a silent laugh. “Ixtapa hates the Empire and it hated the Republic; I’d hate to see their reaction to a Jedi. You’d be better off looking elsewhere on the Rim.”
“It sounds like a good place to hide,” Traynt said, his voice carefully neutral. “Besides, you’re not from around here, are you? You said you lived in the Core.”
Here we go, starting to get into the meat of things. A first look at Zsuzsi Dj'onz and The Sand and the Stone, a look at the Imperials as they start to develop farther, another look at Anakin as mechanic, some world-building -- and more Anakin being awesome and kickass.
“Lady Yulalli!” Traynt said, snapping to his feet. He didn’t have to salute, not to her, but he did raise his chin and go to an automatic parade rest.
“Lieutenant,” the Emperor’s Dog returned coolly. “I need to speak to the captain. Fetch him for me.”
“Captain Aryal is out on Imperial business, my lady,” Traynt said; the truth from a certain point of view, since Aryal made a habit out of whoring and drinking at every port they stopped at, Imperial or independent. “I can record your message, or I can get First Lieutenant Perrik, if you’d rather.”
Yullali’s full lips pressed together. “Record this,” she finally ordered. “Captain Aryal: Jedi Knight Ben Hellsbane has been identified as General Obi-Wan Kenobi, a formerly a Master on the Jedi High Council, previously believed killed in an explosion on the Mid Rim planet Alcazaar.
Cut because it didn't fit and wasn't necessary; I did have to add a tiny bit of exposition into the story to explain who the Emperor's Dog was.
*fans self* God, that's a lot of text.
For reference, the main text of "What is Lost" is here.
He couldn’t seem to stop moving.
Anakin kept pacing the Council room, feeling more confined by its broad windows and high walls than ever before. He wrapped his arms and robes around himself, shivering despite the warmth in the room. He kept running over the previous hour in his head. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep Palpatine’s – Sidious’s – voice out of his mind.
Too much silence. Too little space. Anakin had thought he’d never wanted to see another battlefield again, but this waiting was worse. He very badly wanted to destroy something.
Ten minutes since Windu had left him. Fifteen. Twenty. Half an hour. Anakin knelt down in the center of the floor and tried to meditate, but he couldn’t concentrate. He’d always been bad at meditation. Obi-Wan had said –
Obi-Wan. He’d know what to do. He always – he would have done what Anakin had done, gone to Windu. Done the right thing. Done his duty.
He should have gone with Obi-Wan to Utapau! Or with Yoda to Kashyyyk, or Ki-Adi-Mundi to Mygeeto – anywhere but Coruscant. He couldn’t do this, politics and black ops – all he could do was destroy things and build them up again. Anakin knelt with his hands on his knees and tried to breathe, staring at Obi-Wan’s Council chair. At the holoprojector in front of it.
Anakin stood up abruptly, unfolding from the meditative posture he’d been kneeling in. He flicked a hand toward the holoprojector, watching it flicker on. Someone had to know what had happened here, and Obi-Wan was the only Jedi he trusted.
*
He couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t even breathe.
Pain poured over him in waves, death – darkness – inundating the Force. He wasn’t Anakin Skywalker anymore, he was the Force, and the Force was suddenly roiling with the deaths of hundreds – thousands – of Jedi. Anakin Skywalker would have screamed for his master, breathless and blindly terrified, but the Force had no one to scream for. He couldn’t even identify Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Force-signature among the hundreds striking him all at once. And then –
Cold. Washing over him. Clean, cold water. He was – surrounded. Hot blood cascaded around him, burning his flesh. He fought for air, reaching for his rebreather, and then laser bolts cut through the water, striking from the rebreather from his hand, his torso, his arm, burning the hair from his head. Automatically he went for his lightsaber, but it had fallen from his hand when he fell. He tried to call for the Force but couldn’t; the death of his friends – his family – rocked him back, water filling his lungs. And as laser bolts boiled the water around him, he fell.
Endlessly.
“Anakin!” Someone grabbed his shoulder. Anakin gasped, water – fire – poison gas – tearing at his throat. He couldn’t even scream.
“Anakin. Ground and center, child, control yourself, don’t let it control you. You must control yourself, young Skywalker.”
A woman’s voice. A master’s. Who –
“Master Nu,” Anakin whispered. His voice came out in a thin croak. He opened his eyes slowly, all the strength drained from his body, to find Jocasta Nu kneeling in front of him where he’d collapsed on the floor. “You’re alive.” He thought – “There are still – Jedi. We’re still –”
“They’re coming for us,” the master said, drawing him to his feet with her hands on his arms. “Clone troopers from the Senate.” For the first time in thirteen years at the Temple, he saw a lightsaber clipped to her belt.
“Clone troopers,” Anakin repeated. His voice was flat; he couldn’t find the energy to add emotion. “Master Windu went to arrest the Chancellor.”
“To arrest the Chancellor?” Nu repeated blankly. “What for?”
“Palpatine is Sidious,” Anakin said tiredly. “He fooled us all – he fooled me. He wanted –”
“You,” Nu said. “He wanted you. The Chosen One.” She looked out the window, down at the cityscape below. Anakin trailed after her and saw an army.
The Grand Army of the Republic.
Coming for the Jedi.
“Suns’ end,” Anakin swore, pain still spiking at the back of his head. Jedi were still dying. In the Outer Rim, the Mid Rim, even the Core Planets. Even – on Coruscant.
Mace Windu.
“He’s dead,” Anakin said blankly.
Nu turned toward him. “Who’s dead?”
“Master Windu,” Anakin said, raising a hand to his head. “Palpatine – Sidious – he killed him.”
“And now he’s coming for us,” Nu said. She turned toward the door, opening it with a flick of her wrist. “We have to get the younglings out of the Temple now.” She looked back at the last minute, eyes on Anakin. “Skywalker?”
He knows about Padmé. He wanted me – he wanted to use her to get to me. He –
“He killed Obi-Wan,” Anakin said blankly; it was the only thing he could say.
“Yes,” Nu said calmly, and laid a hand on his arm. “But you’re still alive.”
*
“My poor Padawan…you have been very brave, my Padawan, and I’m afraid you must be brave for a while longer…Obi-Wan, you must wake up!”
He…hurt. All over. Some places more than others. There were large hands on his chest, hands he knew but hadn’t felt in years. Obi-Wan spasmed, gasping, water spilling from his mouth, and reached out blindly with the Force.
Blue warmth spilled over and around him. Obi-Wan was cradled and held, wrapped up in a Force-presence stronger than anything he’d ever known, even Anakin’s.
Anakin.
He jerked away, still spasming, reaching past the presence surrounding him for his partner and best friend.
Pain. Death. Darkness. The light had gone out of the universe.
Obi-Wan Kenobi screamed.
Or he tried, at least. One large hand clapped down across his mouth, stifling the scream in his throat. Obi-Wan lashed out, eyes snapping open in time to see his fist pass harmlessly through Qui-Gon Jinn’s blue-rimmed head.
Obi-Wan jerked backwards, eyes wide, wincing as the hard stone beneath him tore at his wounds. “Master –?”
“Shh, Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon said, holding him with both hands pressed to his upper arms. “You must be quiet. The clones are still searching for you.”
“You –” Obi-Wan said blankly, staring at him. “You’re – the clones?”
“Yes,” Qui-Gon said. “You must have felt the great darkness in the Force, Padawan.”
“Jedi are dying.” Blaster wounds. Obi-Wan forced himself upright and started to peel burned cloth out of the scar in his flesh, flinching. He was badly injured. “The spy in the Senate – the Sith lord –”
“The Chancellor himself,” Qui-Gon said. He reached for Obi-Wan, frowning as blood started seeping out beneath Obi-Wan’s fingers, clasped tightly against the blaster wound on his arm. “Here, Padawan. Let me.”
Obi-Wan let his hands fall into his lap. Qui-Gon leaned over him, huge hands surprisingly delicate on Obi-Wan’s battered flesh.
“The Chancellor?” Obi-Wan repeated disbelievingly. “But – of course!” He shook his head, sending spikes of pain shooting behind his eyes. “Anakin’s on Coruscant!” He tried to stand, couldn’t, collapsing back into Qui-Gon’s arms.
“It’s dangerous,” Qui-Gon said, stroking one hand over Obi-Wan’s forehead, frowning deeply. “Coruscant is no longer a safehold for the Jedi.”
“Which is why I have to go to him!”
Qui-Gon put a gentle luminescent hand on his knee. “Obi-Wan,” he said softly, “he may not be there anymore.”
Originally, the flashbacks were written to be interspersed with Anakin and Obi-Wan in bed -- the next scenes -- with Anakin and Obi-Wan explaining to each other what had happened over the years to them, as well as, obviously, where the canon and the AU split off. I looked it at long and hard and went, "Oh my God, if I do, the entire story will end up being told in flashbacks and I'll kill myself writing them." Therefore, the only flashback in WiL is the opening one of Anakin and the Last Stand at the Temple.
Anakin straddled Obi-Wan easily, hands braced on his hips. Obi-Wan’s hands came up to touch his face, fingers skating over the bones, lingering on the scars, feeling out the changes ten years and a second war had wrought.
“I missed you,” Anakin whispered, breath hot against Obi-Wan’s face. “thought you were dead – I felt you die.”
Obi-Wan let out a very soft sigh. “We thought you’d been killed in the attack on the Temple,” he admitted, hands still on Anakin’s face. “But we never found your body, so I hoped –” He shook his head slightly. “I thought I’d found you on Mykale six years ago, but –”
Anakin’s hands tightened on his hips. “That was you? Suns’ end, we were so close – and to think Master Yoda said some very disparaging things about my ability to hide my Force-presence, too.” He lapsed into silence, listening to Obi-Wan breathe. “Master Yoda,” he said eventually. “Did he –?”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan said. He seemed to be grateful, somehow. “The clones tried to kill him on Kashyyyk – apparently the Wookiees were very put out. He and I met with Bail Organa – you remember –”
Anakin had to search for it. “The senator from Alderaan?” he hazarded finally.
Obi-Wan nodded. “We went back to Coruscant and snuck into the Temple to change the signal.” He sighed. “The dead –”
“I know.” Anakin bowed his head. Obi-Wan’s fingers brushed over his short-clipped hair. “I was there. We didn’t have enough time –”
“Tell me,” his master ordered, and then he added, “But get off me first. You’re heavy and I’m old.”
“You’re old,” Anakin muttered, sliding off him. There was only one chair in the room, so he went to sit on the edge of the bed instead. “I’m older than you were when you started training me.”
Obi-Wan dragged the chair forward so they could sit with their knees touching. “You can’t possibly be,” he said, an expression of absolute horror in his voice.
“I’m thirty-two,” Anakin said, enjoying the look on his face.
“And I thought you were bad when you turned twenty,” Obi-Wan muttered. “I was hoping you would mellow with age.”
“I was very mellow for the year I spent completely drunk,” Anakin assured him.
Obi-Wan raised his eyebrows. “Only one? I spent three years without getting sober once except for the time I was captured by the Kyrii.” He put his hands on Anakin’s knees. “Tell me about Coruscant.”
*
“I got your message, by the way,” Obi-Wan said. “It was very sweet of you.”
“Clearly not soon enough,” Anakin said. He folded his hands over Obi-Wan’s feeling the bumps of poorly set bone where his master must have broken his knuckles some time in the past. “As I recall, it had a rather abrupt ending.”
“Rather. Well, you always have been responsible for any gray hairs I may have grown.”
Anakin squinted at him. “You look exactly the same as you did ten years ago.” He leaned forward earnestly, knowing Obi-Wan would feel the change in the air. “Master, tell me the truth: have you been using the Force to color your hair?”
Obi-Wan’s face registered blank disbelief for a moment, then he burst out laughing. “Anakin, I have missed you,” he said, still smiling. “I really did think I’d lost you, you know. Yoda would be proud.”
“Of you finally letting go of attachment?” Anakin said, unable to hide the bitterness in his voice. He’d learned to. After a fashion. He stroked his thumb over Obi-Wan’s wrist in silent apology.
Obi-Wan’s smile was a little sad. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid I never have been able to do that. I’ve always disappointed Yoda in that, I think. He would be proud of you, though.” He raised a hand and cupped Anakin’s face gently. “You have managed to hide even from him for more than a decade.”
Anakin arched into the tough, eyes slanting almost closed. “I thought you were dead,” he whispered, basking in his master’s Force-presence. “I was so certain you were dead.” I felt you die, Master – you. Yoda. Master Windu. All the Jedi. All at once. I couldn’t move. I wanted to die. I thought I was the last of the Jedi. And then –” He shuddered all over and Obi-Wan’s grip tightened on his hand. “They came for us. For the Temple.”
*
“We had no time,” Anakin said, stricken. “Less than a quarter-hour till the 501st arrived, and we had more than two hundred younglings to evacuate. Half as many Padawans. Four masters. A handful of knights, many of them wounded. Less than a dozen ships.”
*
“Anakin…”
He slashed a hand viciously across his eyes. “I still don’t understand! I told them to run – to survive. I gave them an order. I was senior to them. Why didn’t they listen? I don’t understand.”
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said gently, and reached forward. “Even you have never been particularly good at following orders. We are Jedi. Sometimes – especially for the young ones – fighting is all we can understand. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Besides,” he added, with a ghost of a smile, “not many Jedi can say they have fought at the side of Anakin Skywalker.”
“Well, you’re at the top of the list,” Anakin said stubbornly. “If they’d just listened to me, they’d still be alive –”
“Sixty younglings died in the attack on the Temple,” Obi-Wan said. His hands hovered just beyond Anakin’s shoulders, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to touch. “More Padawans, percentage-wise – nearly forty. Five knights. Four masters. It wasn’t – quite – the massacre Yoda and I expected to find when we arrived at the Temple. You saved enough, Anakin. That’s all that matters.”
Anakin bent his head forward and laced his fingers behind his skull. “Not enough,” he said. “No matter how many I saved, it wasn’t enough. I should have – I could have – saved all of them.”
Obi-Wan’s hands finally found him and tilted his face upwards. “No, Anakin,” he said, and his voice was as infinitely sad as Anakin had ever heard it. “No, Anakin,” he said, “no one could have saved all of them.”
*
Anakin’s hands closed suddenly on Obi-Wan’s shoulders. “I felt you die,” he said desperately, pulling Obi-Wan forward against him. “I felt you die and I wanted to let the clones shoot me.”
Obi-Wan put his arms around Anakin, letting the younger Jedi’s head rest against his shoulder. “I was dead,” he said.
Anakin raised his head. “I thought so,” he said accusingly. “It clearly didn’t last,” he added, eyeing Obi-Wan. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“No,” Obi-Wan said, resting one scarred palm on the curve of Anakin’s skull. “No, it didn’t. Qui-Gon came for me.”
Anakin jerked upright. “Master Jinn?” he said disbelievingly. “But he’s –”
“Dead?” Obi-Wan finished gently.
“For twenty-three years,” Anakin said miserably.
“Well,” Obi-Wan said. “Yes.”
*
“There is no death, there is the Force,” Anakin said, and started laughing, closer to hysterical than he’d been in years. Well, it had been years since he’d had the leisure to be hysterical; he might as well start catching up now, since there was definitely enough to be hysterical about.
Obi-Wan pulled him forward, closer. Anakin wanted to crawl inside him and melt. “I’m glad you’re all right, Anakin,” he said, face pressed against Anakin’s forehead. “I thought – I feared –”
“Nothing less than I thought.” Anakin wrapped his arms around him. Even before the Purge it had been years since they’d been this close; both Padmé and the Clone Wars had only served to drive them apart, despite – or maybe because of – the hours they’d been forced to spend together on battlefields. After the Purge…he hadn’t been lying earlier, when he’d said he’d wanted to die after feeling Obi-Wan’s death in the Force. Padmé had been right when she’d said that maybe he hadn’t appreciated Obi-Wan until he was gone. Even after Jabiim, Anakin hadn’t thought that Obi-Wan would ever really be gone…until he was.
“Master…”
“I hoped,” Obi-Wan said, very softly, and his grip tightened on Anakin’s back. The swell of emotion through the Force was enough to rock Anakin back onto the bed, clutching at Obi-Wan like a lifeline as he dragged his master down with him.
*
Abruptly, Anakin leaned up and kissed Obi-Wan, letting the Force roll through them both. For a moment his master’s mouth was slack and startled beneath his, and then Obi-Wan tugged his hands out from under Anakin and put them on Anakin’s shoulders, kissing him back with quiet desperation in the touch of his lips and tongue. Desperation – and despair. Anakin knew suddenly that Obi-Wan hadn’t expected to ever see him again, and that the lack of protest – what he would have expected from his master, even now – came from the fact that Obi-Wan was still afraid he wasn’t real, that he was going to melt away like dew in a Tatooine dawn.
“Anakin…”
“Master,” Anakin said, and pressed himself up into Obi-Wan, offering everything he could to let him know that he really was here, really was alive. He couldn’t force the bond between them, didn’t particularly want to because he knew he could overload it if he tried too hard.
“Wait.” Obi-Wan pulled back, not far, just enough to lick his lips and look at Anakin with his blind eyes glazed over. He could feel the Force moving between them, from Obi-Wan’s end this time. He finally let out a long sigh, leaning back over Anakin. “You’ve changed,” he said, a little sadly.
“I had to,” Anakin replied, and kissed him again.
*
“I missed you.”
Obi-Wan cupped his face in his hands and kissed him. “The feeling,” he said through touches of his mouth, “is mutual.”
Anakin wrapped his hands in Obi-Wan’s fine hair. “I dreamed of you,” he managed, gasping. “Every night. I dreamed of you. I thought you’d left me.”
“Never,” Obi-Wan said, hands moving downwards to the laces of Anakin’s shirt. “Never. Not you too.” He found Anakin’s bare flesh – familiar hands, callused from years of lightsaber use, the bones broken and reset, scars patterning them in an unfamiliar spider web. Anakin covered one with his own palm.
“How –”
“Darrigan,” Obi-Wan whispered. “Clone troopers. A percussion grenade. Nine years ago. I was –”
“Suicidal?”
“Unstable,” Obi-Wan said. “Desperate.” He stroked a thumb over the tracery of scars on Anakin’s face. “Tell me.”
“Fights,” Anakin said. “One explosion. Here.” He brought Obi-Wan’s hand to his cheek, letting him feel the spider web there. “Dove through a glass window three stories up.”
He felt rather than saw Obi-Wan’s wince. “Ow.”
“Haven’t actually been shot all that much,” he admitted.
“I suppose I got the share of that between the two of us,” Obi-Wan allowed.
“Show me,” Anakin ordered.
Obi-Wan demurred, “We’d be here all night.”
Anakin kissed him again. “That’s the plan.”
“Well, in that case…” He ran his hands up under Anakin’s shirt, smiling against Anakin’s mouth.
“Fewer clothes,” Anakin said, finding the ties on Obi-Wan’s shirt. “Less talking. More kissing. Suns’ end.” One deep pucker of scar tissue. Another. A star-shaped flare over his heart.
Obi-Wan found his hand. “Sorry,” he said softly.
“You’re lucky I like you,” Anakin told him agreeably. “Besides, you’re the type that looks good with scars. Adds to your mysterious allure.”
“Well, then,” Obi-Wan said, sounding gratified. “Put it that way…mysterious allure?” he added dubiously.
“Don’t worry,” Anakin said, leaning up to kiss him again. Obi-Wan’s mouth was soft and welcoming; at the risk of sounding like a character in a bad holoromance, Anakin would go so far as to say kissing Obi-Wan was like coming home. “It doesn’t affect your girlish figure at all.”
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, utterly frustrated and laughing a little through it. Anakin had the feeling he hadn’t laughed in far too long.
*
Sometime in the night Anakin ran his hands up Obi-Wan’s back and felt the thick ridges of scar tissue there, crisscrossing the skin like a KarTathi tartan. Whip marks. Old.
“Master,” he said, Obi-Wan utterly still beneath his hands. “How –”
“Kyrii freedom fighters,” Obi-Wan said, sighing a little. “Hate the Empire. Also, coincidently, hate the Jedi. The planet’s rich in jaarium –”
“A natural Force inhibitor,” Anakin said, wincing. “You need someone to watch your back, Master. What happened?”
“Quinlan Vos,” Obi-Wan said. “I still don’t know how he heard. I was useless, of course –”
“I’m sure.”
“– and he was outnumbered twenty to one –”
“Even odds, then.”
“Yes, well,” Obi-Wan murmured. “I don’t remember most of it – the Kyrii used a drug called makar on me. It’s a hallucinogen – and other things.”
“Other –”
“You don’t want to know,” Obi-Wan said firmly.
Anakin leaned up and brushed his lips over his master’s. “I’m sure I don’t, but I think I’ve had a run-in with the stuff – or something like it, anyway.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s past.”
He could feel Obi-Wan’s brow furrow. “Anakin, you have grown up.”
“Sorry, Master,” Anakin said, smiling despite himself. He ran his hands down lower on Obi-Wan’s scarred back. “You know how these things happen.” He pressed a kiss to the corner of Obi-Wan’s jaw, enjoying the slight bristle of beard there. “Now…maybe we can reminisce later. You’re talking too much.”
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, running one hand down the outside of Anakin’s hip. His fingers stilled a little at the tattoo there, and then he moved on. “You’re the one who asked.”
*
Anakin woke alone in bed, sated and surrounded by his master’s Force-presence. For a long moment he just lay there, basking in it, then he raised his head, sitting up and reaching for the blaster under his pillow more out of instinct than anything else. He put it down again when he saw Obi-Wan standing by the window, speaking into a comm unit.
“I take back everything I said last night,” Anakin said. “You look like hell.”
*
If there was ever a time for alcohol, Anakin was fairly certain that this was it. He even had some on hand, thanks to Zsuzsi – he didn’t like chacharan, but it was the drink of choice in Merapesh and after a decade on the continent he was finally starting to understand why, what with Obi-Wan looking at him like Anakin was something lost and broken and put back together – which, he supposed, he technically was, from a certain point of view.
“Why did you come here?” he asked finally. His head ached – most of it aftereffects from the healing, some of it from being beaten up and drugged and not eating enough since breakfast. Turning away from Obi-Wan, he began to dig through his drawers, finally finding his stash of protein bars.
Obi-Wan was eyeing him worriedly. “I was on a trading run from Kyr,” he said. “I’ve been to Ixtapa before, but not recently, and not Per Macchu. Usually my runs take me to Sarsasai on Selket.”
“You’re a trader?” Anakin said, peeling the wrapper off the protein bar. Tasteless but filling; exactly what he needed right now in lieu of one of Zsuzsi’s dinners, which probably wasn’t an option considering the crowd below.
“From a certain point of view,” Obi-Wan said, almost sounding apologetic.
Anakin raised his head. “You’re a smuggler,” he stated, faintly amused. “In between pissing off the Imperials, of course.”
Obi-Wan smiled slightly at that. “Something like that. And you – apparently you’re the best mechanic on the planet. In between running guns.”
“The other way around, actually,” Anakin said. “I’ve more or less given up on the gun-running thing in favor of a nice, quiet life in the city.”
“Quiet? You?” Another faint smile. “I don’t believe it.”
“Staying off the radar is a good way to stay away from the Empire.” He crumpled the protein bar wrapper in his hand and tossed it into the wastebin in the corner of the room. The motion sent waves of pain up his just-healed arm. Of course. “The Empire’s looking for you. There are Imperials here – a starcruiser, Imperial officers, clone troopers. And now they know about me.”
“I know,” Obi-Wan said. “We met. Did you do that to the lieutenant’s face?”
Anakin smiled. “Yes. Then his friends shot me. 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.”
Et cetera, et cetera, insert softcore porn, angst muffins -- I'm sure we can all see why this didn't make it into the final cut. I later decided I wanted my Anakin angrier at Obi-Wan than he is here.
You can see some of the holdovers here that appeared in the initial draft -- Obi-Wan being temporarily blind, the comm unit (he's speaking to Han Solo, by the way; this Obi-Wan pilots the Millennium Falcon). Obviously, the Obi-Wan/Anakin, which I took out of the final draft. One of the things that did remain in the final draft was Anakin not actually getting shot all that often, which still amuses me for some reason. Knifed, tortured, blown up, tossed out windows, arrested -- not shot all that often.
You can also see the progression -- and this is clearer in a couple scenes below -- of Nakin Starkiller from smuggler to mechanic.
“My lord,” Darth Cidal said. “I believe I have found Anakin Skywalker.”
*
“He’s using the name Nakin Starkiller,” Darth Cidal said. “My informant tells me he makes his base on a planet called Ixtapa, on the far edge of the Outer Rim. He rents a room above a cantina, The Sand and Stone, in Per Macchu, a smuggler’s port on one of the smaller continents. He’s a bounty hunter, a mercenary.” He flicked a hand toward a holoprojector in the center of the table.
The Emperor cocked his head to one side. “The picture is bad,” he observed.
“He was arrested once on Chachaliera,” Cidal continued. “For smuggling. He escaped four hours later, injuring two guards. Once more on Telærik – this is his mugshot. They kept him for three days. On the third day he killed two prisoners and injured four more before escaping. That arrest was for murder. My agents are looking for other arrests under different names.”
“When?”
“Chachaliera was seven years ago. Telærik was six. Eight years ago he was involved in a fight on Ferinau against Ferinaun kan-fighters. He used a lightsaber – a blue one.”
“Ah,” Palpatine said, sitting back. “Find him, my apprentice. Take him alive, if you can. Bring him to me.”
“Yes, my master,” Cidal said, and bowed before striding away.
Palpatine steepled his hands in front of him. “Anakin Skywalker,” he murmured, eyeing the flickering holo in front of him. A handsome man no longer young, his face scarred and bruised. There was a cut at the corner of his eye, another slashing across his cheekbone. He licked blood from a split lip. He’d cut his hair, shorn close to his head now in something vaguely reminiscent of his days as a Padawan. His stance was arrogant, a fighter’s wariness held in the set of his shoulders. He didn’t wear Jedi robes, but instead trousers and a loose shirt rolled up at the sleeves. He didn’t look at all like a Jedi, but Palpatine would know that face anywhere.
“Anakin Skywalker,” he said again. “I will have you.”
Too awkward, not relevent enough to the story in WiL. Also, just not enough initial concept scenes to really work with the two.
I note that the identity of Darth Cidal is still a state secret.
alive,” Anakin said, reaching up to the cuffs on Obi-Wan’s wrists. He snatched his hands away almost immediately, his fingers numb. “Force inhibitors.”
“My face is rather well-known on Imperial broadsheets, I’m afraid,” Obi-Wan said, his light tone failing to disguise the relief in his voice. “Captain Perrick has the keys, I believe”
“Good. I’d hate to have to pick the locks without feeling in my fingers.” Anakin snapped out a hand toward Perrick’s limp body, thinking very clearly, keys, and was rewarded when they came flying through the air at him. He opened the cuffs with a flick of his wrist and caught Obi-Wan as his old master dropped down and nearly fell, stumbling. It gave him a good look at Obi-Wan’s milky white eyes.
“Master –”
“Carriell spores,” Obi-Wan said. “It will pass.”
“In a few months!”
“By now, a few days, I expect,” Obi-Wan said. He smiled slightly. “Besides, I have the Force.” His smile grew. “And now you.”
“Well,” Anakin said, gratified, and couldn’t stop himself from snapping out, “I felt you die.”
Obi-Wan’s smile curdled slightly. “Now is perhaps not the time.” He raised his head, frowning now. “I need my lightsaber.”
“You’re going to have to explain,” Anakin said, more harshly than he meant.
Obi-Wan turned blind eyes on him. “So will you,” he said. “But not now and not here.” He pulled away from Anakin and stretched one hand out to Perrick’s body, calling the officer’s blaster into his hand. “Uncivilized,” he muttered, “but adequate.”
“Elitist,” Anakin said, grinning. He glanced around the cargo bay, hoping the Gerians had been dumb enough to leave his gunbelt and Obi-Wan’s lightsaber lying around.
He could feel Obi-Wan reaching out with tendrils of the Force, trying to find the energy stamp on his lightsaber. “You try spending thirty-eight years as a Jedi and you’ll dislike them too, my former Padawan.” He raised his head. “There.”
“Got it,” Anakin said, and stalked over, buckling on his gunbelt over his hips. He snatched up Obi-Wan’s lightsaber, snorting under his breath. “Imperials. They get stupider every year.”
“Charming,” Obi-Wan murmured, abruptly at Anakin’s shoulder. He lifted his lightsaber lightly out of Anakin’s hand, clipping it to his belt. “Let’s go.”
Anakin unholstered one of his blasters and palmed it, more reassured by the familiar feel of it in his hand than the heavier Imperial-issue he was holding in his other hand. “Just like old times.”
Very first version, and I'm still rather fond of it -- I cut it for logic reasons, because it didn't quite work and it would have taken too much ironing out for it to do so. You can see that Obi-Wan's blind in this version and Anakin's your standard kickass Bedlam Skywalker -- prefers blasters over lightsabers, again, and this is also the first instance of the "picking locks with the Force" trick.
*
The Jedi called Hellsbane was sitting alone at a booth in a cantina called Wayfarer’s Rest, on the edge of what was popularly called the Traitor’s District in Per Macchu. His back was to a corner, giving him a clear view of the rest of the room; his eyes flicked unceasingly around the room as he ate.
When a stranger dropped into the seat across from him, Hellsbane didn’t move at all, although he did say, a twist of irony in his cultured voice, “The seat’s open.”
The stranger’s reply was to place a powered down lightsaber on the table between them.
Hellsbane put his spoon down. “You have my full attention, lieutenant,” he said, and saw the stranger start at the realization the Jedi had known he was an Imperial officer all along.
The officer leaned forward. “Maybe we should speak in private, Jedi,” he said, and started to put his hand over the lightsaber hilt. It snapped abruptly away from him and into Hellsbane’s hand, moving as though of its own volition.
Hellsbane raised it up to the light, a frown darkening behind his neatly clipped beard. “Where did you get this?” he demanded. “Where? How?”
The next thing the officer put on the table was a pair of Force-inhibiting binders. “If you want to find out, Jedi, you’ll have to come with me. Willingly. Quietly. Or I’ll arrest you right here and now, and it won’t be pretty.”
“No,” Hellsbane said, utterly calm. “It won’t be. It would be a pity for the manager to have to clean up your decapitated corpse.”
“All I have to do is call, and there will be a dozen stormtroopers in here to take you down.”
“All I have to do is flick my wrist –” Hellsbane moved his hand the slightest bit, his thumb sliding down to cover the circle of metal that would ignite the lightsaber, “– and you won’t have a head. But,” he said, lowering the lightsaber hilt slightly, “I’ve never been one to fight when there are options.”
“Wise choice, Jedi,” the Imperial officer said, although one hand had vanished beneath the table; Hellsbane knew he was fingering the blaster he had unholstered in his lap, barrel pointing at Hellsbane. He stood, slipping his blaster back into its holster. “Let’s talk somewhere…else.”
“Is he alive?”
“What?”
Hellsbane raised the lightsaber again. “The Jedi you took this from. Is he alive?”
The officer regarded him for a moment. “Yes.”
“Good answer.” The Jedi kept the lightsaber in his hand as he stood, tossing a few credit chips onto the table with his other hand before following the officer out into the bright light of an Ixtapa day, tinted slightly green by the huge trees dissipating the sunset of the first of the planet’s three suns in the north.
The officer led him through a maze of tangled streets that drew tighter and tighter together, all the while leading deeper into the midst of the Traitor’s District. While Per Macchu itself was not a disreputable city by the standards of the Outer Rim, this district of the city – lying at the very heart of the starburst of Per Macchu – was one of the worst in the Outer Rim. Smuggler’s bay was the least of the names it had been called.
They stopped in front of a large building Hellsbane recognized as a bunker that serviced mostly smugglers and gunrunners. “This is the best the Empire can offer for its ships?” he said, a hint of a sneer lifting the corners of his mouth.
The Imperial lieutenant turned back to him with a returning sneer and the Force-inhibiting binders in his hands. “This is the best the Jedi Order can offer up?” he returned, and another Imperial officer – this one in uniform, the idiot – and a dozen clone troopers stepped out of the shadows of the door.
“General Kenobi,” the other lieutenant said, head tilted slightly to one side. “You’re under arrest for high treason against the Galactic Empire.”
The lightsaber in Obi-Wan’s hand blazed into a blue bar that cut lights across the Imperials’ faces. “Is that what Palpatine is calling it now?” he said scathingly, blue eyes burning with the same cold anger as the lightsaber he was holding – not his lightsaber at all, but one he knew almost as well as the one clipped at his belt. “If you want me,” he added, “come and get me.”
“Jedi filth,” the first officer hissed. “Blast him!”
“Traynt, you idiot!” the other lieutenant barked, holding up one hand. The stormtroopers’ blasters dropped again. “General Kenobi,” he continued, scowling. “You have the option to surrender peaceably to Imperial justice, or you will be taken by force.”
“Imperial justice?” Obi-Wan said lightly. “I know Palpatine’s idea of justice. I really feel no particular urge to join the Dark Side, so I’m afraid you’ll have to go for the second option, Lieutenant.” He raised the lightsaber into a Shien ready position, the same one Anakin had used all those years ago against Dooku.
The lieutenant blinked once, perfectly calm. He would have made a good Jedi, if he’d been born Force-sensitive and at the right time. “Very well, General,” he acknowledged. “Take him!”
“That was a bad decision, General,” the lieutenant told him grimly as a pair of clone troopers hauled him to his feet.
Obi-Wan spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground in front of him. “With what you know about me and my reputation, Lieutenant, did you honestly believe I’d just hand myself over to the Emperor without a fight?”
“Not particularly,” Cafferti admitted. “Although I must admit I’d certainly hoped you’d show a little sense and throw yourself on the mercy of the Emperor. You can’t run forever, General.”
“No, I suppose not,” Obi-Wan said. “It doesn’t mean I can’t die fighting when the time comes, though.”
Traynt was cradling his broken arm against his chest, looking sulky beneath the wreck of his shattered nose. “Take him in,” he ordered. “He’s so worried about Starkiller, he can watch that merc die. There’s nothing the Emperor needs with an Outer Rim gun for hire.”
Anakin? Ixtapa wasn’t so very different from Tatooine, and most of the adult Jedi who’d survived the initial Purge had fled to the Outer Rim, especially those without real connections further in-galaxy. Obi-Wan had never been sure whether or not Anakin had survived the attack on the Temple, but the original surge of hope that he’d felt upon failing to identify Anakin’s body among the others had faded over the years, until it resurfaced at the moment Obi-Wan had picked up his former partner’s lightsaber less than an hour ago. He’d made it off Coruscant, at least.
Traynt smiled viciously at his silence, although the effect was undercut by his wince of pain. “No reply to that, Jedi? He’s a real little bastard; I’ll be happy to fire the blaster myself.”
“Shut up, Traynt,” Cafferti snapped. He held out a hand for the pair of lightsabers one of the clone troopers had liberated Obi-Wan of when they’d cuffed him. “You gave him Starkiller’s lightsaber?”
“I didn’t give it to him,” Traynt whined, as the clones muscled Obi-Wan past them into the depths of the hangar. “He took it.”
“So you take it back.”
“Ah, sir?” the clone trooper holding Obi-Wan’s right elbow called. “Lieutenant Cafferti?”
“What?” Cafferti demanded, stepping inside with Traynt and another clone on his heels.
Obi-Wan smiled a little, grimly. “You appear to have misplaced your prisoner, Lieutenant,” he said.
The chair in the center of the empty room – the hangar itself would be in back, Obi-Wan knew; his own ship was housed in a similar hangar – was empty, broken wrist and ankle binders on the floor beside it, while two clone troopers and one Imperial officer – a third lieutenant, by his uniform, which raised the question of where the ship’s captain was – sprawled out on the floor, blaster wounds dark on their chests. Only the officer had his blaster out, and the barrel was bent nearly back on itself.
Cafferti turned to Traynt. “Get the captain on the horn,” he said. “Tell him the prisoner’s missing.”
“He’s not missing,” a familiar voice rasped out of the darkness. “He’s right here.”
The blaster shot took Cafferti in the head, and he went down without a sound.
“Jedi!” Anakin yelled, as Obi-Wan’s lightsaber shot out of Cafferti’s hand into the air. Obi-Wan jammed his elbow into the crook between helmet and armor of the clone next to him and twisted to grab the lightsaber as it came down, taking it in a two-handed grip as he swept it around to take the other clone’s head off. The clone he’d knocked over had his blaster in his hand when a quick rat-tat of blaster fire blew him off his feet, and Obi-Wan somersaulted in the air over his falling body to put his lightsaber through another clone’s chest as he tried to get between Anakin and Traynt. There was a burst of blaster fire – the remaining clones, including the two that had been taking care of the bodies Obi-Wan had left outside, had managed to draw and were exchanging fire with Anakin, who’d moved out of the shadows, a blaster in each hand.
Then he saw Obi-Wan.
Version two. Kickass Anakin, again, and Obi-Wan this time -- discarded for logic reasons as well. I reluctantly gave up on the Anakin-and-Obi-Wan-as-Imperial-prisoners idea because it seemed weird for both of them to be taken prisoner. I am madly fond of Anakin escaping from his bonds, though, so that remained in the final version.
You can see the genesis of the Imperial officers here -- I changed them because I wanted to make them people, not just caricatures, so their personalities were changed slightly. As well, we've also got Obi-Wan meeting the Imperials at a tavern in the guise of Ben Hellsbane, but he soon switches to Obi-Wan Kenobi again.
*
He’d known it was another Jedi even before the clones had manhandled him inside. There was no other reason to take his lightsaber; no clone or Imperial officer would use one, especially not a Jedi lightsaber. He’d recognized the energy stamp on the lightsaber when he sent it over to the Jedi, but hadn’t realized – his shields were tight enough that he’d recognized it as familiar, but hadn’t realized whose lightsaber it was, until he got a good look at the Jedi it had gone to.
He’d thought Obi-Wan was dead. He’d spent the past decade, ten fucking years, thinking Obi-Wan was dead – he’d felt his master die all those years ago on Coruscant and it had nearly killed him.
Yeah, I've got no idea what this one's in relation to.
Anakin had his feet up on the table when the trader came in.
“Starkiller?” Zsuzsi at the bar said. She jerked a hand in Anakin’s direction. “Over in the corner. Be nice; he still hasn’t paid off the last damage he did to the joint. You plan to order anything?”
The trader squinted at the drinks menu above the bar. “Tsa’tsa ale,” he said finally, looking dubious.
“Lightweight,” Zsuzsi snorted, pushing it across the counter for him.
Anakin didn’t move his feet when the trader came by. “You Traynt?” he asked, arching his scarred eyebrow.
“Yes,” the trader said, bobbing his head. He walked like he had a plasma rifle stuck up his ass, Anakin noted clinically. Someone willing to take his first swing at a little business on the side, he guessed. “You’re Captain Nakin Starkiller?”
“Not a captain,” Anakin said. “Sit. Talk fast. I’ve been told I have a very short attention span.” For emphasis he flipped a small knife out from up his sleeve and began to clean his nails, pretending to ignore the trader while studying him under lowered lashes. Obi-Wan would have been proud. He always had said Anakin wouldn’t know subterfuge if it bit him on the nose. Well, it had bit him somewhere.
Traynt sat, playing with his glass. “I need to move some things,” he said, watching Anakin like he expected him to go psycho on him. Honestly. Anakin hadn’t done that in years.
Well, weeks at least.
Anakin cocked his head, eyes still on his flesh hand and the star shaped scar on the knuckle of one finger. “Illegal things?”
“Imperial weaponry. There’s a weapons dealer on Pokapa –”
“Geerd Haa,” Anakin said. “I know him. I assume the Empire doesn’t know about this.”
“No, of course not,” Traynt said hurriedly.
“Good.” Anakin jabbed the knife point down into the table, giving Traynt the full impact of his gaze, the Force behind his eyes. He still couldn’t mindtrick, but the power in him could be picked up even by a non-sensitive. Had some nice effects on the easily-impressed, too, although little more than Anakin could have got by glaring alone. “Because if this is some kind of Imperial trap –”
“There’s nothing out here,” Traynt snapped, and something in his voice made Anakin narrow his eyes. His anger must have showed on his face, because Traynt added quickly, “Thirty thousand credits. Fifteen when you pick up the package, fifteen when you deliver it to Haa.”
“No deal,” Anakin said, still narrow-eyed. “All of it when I pick up the weaponry or the deal’s off. And an extra ten grand for aggravation purposes if I run into trouble on the way there.”
Traynt shook his head. “How do I know you’ll deliver the goods?”
Anakin jerked the knife out of the table and tossed it up into the air, catching it by the blade. “My reputation. I’m just that good. You’re lucky I’m not adding on another ten grand for having to go Mid Rim Empire territory.” He licked his lips, slow and deliberate and well aware of the effect it was having on the other days. Some days, who needed the Force? “I don’t like the Empire,” he said, and smiled, showing all of his brilliantly white teeth. One part of his body that didn’t have durasteel in it, at least; sometimes he felt like half his bones had been replaced with artificial replacements, although it was really more like his right arm and three bones in his left foot.
Traynt quailed in the face of Anakin Skywalker threat. “My ship’s docked at number 42,” he said, rising as quickly as humanly possible. “Come by around ten standard tomorrow.”
Anakin sheathed his knife. “You didn’t try your drink,” he called after him.
*
Fucking Imperials. Anakin should have been able to call it as soon as Traynt walked into The Sand and Stone, but the past few months had caught up to him and he’d been off his game. Or he’d just gotten complacent. The only good part of this situation came from the realization that at least the Imps hadn’t recognized his face.
Yet.
They had recognized the lightsabers hanging off his gunbelt, though.
Traynt waved one in front of his nose. “Where’d you get this, you filthy piece of mercenary scum?”
“Took it off a corpse.” Anakin eyed the other, older lightsaber perched on the edge of the small kariek-wood table next to the first lieutenant. “Or two,” he added. True enough, after a manner of speaking; the Jedi Anakin Skywalker had been was as dead as the Republic and the Jedi Temple had been an empty hulk filled with rotting corpses when Anakin had snuck back in to fetch Qui-Gon Jinn’s lightsaber from Obi-Wan’s quarters.
“Jedi?” Traynt demanded, looking disbelieving.
“This scum?” Casserti said, arms crossed over his chest. “Everyone in the galaxy knows there’s a bounty on lightsabers. There’s a reason he hasn’t brought them further in-galaxy.”
“Sure,” Anakin said brightly. “I hate the Empire. Oh yeah, and the Jedi.”
Casserti rounded on Traynt. “What were you thinking? This mercenary isn’t the Jedi we’re here for. If this is all we’ve got when the Emperor’s Dog arrives –”
Anakin didn’t miss the tick in Traynt’s face as he insisted, “Starkiller’s bait. Hellsbane comes at the slightest hint of a Jedi in trouble. Use the lightsabers to lure him in, then use Starkiller as a hostage. Hellsbane’s known for compassion, more fool him.”
Hellsbane. Anakin didn’t remember a Jedi named Hellsbane – it wasn’t something the Council would have approved of – but chances were it was an alias, not a birth name. So. Who was it?
Cafferti scowled at Traynt. “You’d better hope the captain agrees with you, because you’re the one explaining why we have this sh’shar’ri mercenary with us,” he said shortly, and walked out of the room.
“Bait,” Anakin said. “I hate being bait.”
“Shut up, scum,” Traynt snapped, slamming down Anakin’s lightsaber on the table. He snatched up a syringe, flicking the side with his thumb. “This will hurt a lot,” he added, sounding satisfied.
“Oh good,” Anakin said, forcing himself not to tense up. “I hate it when people do things by halves.”
*
“So tell me,” Nakin said once they were out in the streets of Per Macchu’s Traitor’s District, navigating the tiny winding alleyways, “What brings an Imperial cruiser out to Ixtapa? This is a little out of your usual district.”
Traynt flicked a startled look at him. “How did you know I was Imperial Navy?”
“Besides the fact you just said so? You’re packing an Imperial-issue Elin 550 blaster, which even I haven’t been able to get hold of yet. And you walk like you’re wearing a uniform.” He tilted his head back consideringly to feel the heat of the planet’s twin suns beat down on his face, over-long hair curling against the back of his neck. He’d have to cut it again soon.
“Seems like you know a lot just for a mechanic,” Traynt observed, his balance regained now.
“I pay attention,” Nakin said shortly. “So what’s wrong with your cruiser?”
“The hyperdrive went out when we came out of hyperspace above Ixtapa. We were able to land, but –” He shrugged. “Our engineer doesn’t know what’s wrong. We managed to get out of the Core without running into any trouble, so it can’t be a hit to anything.”
“Huh,” Nakin said, tilting his head to one side consideringly. “I can fix anything, but if I have to order parts it’s coming out of the Empire’s treasury. And you didn’t answer my first question.”
Traynt raised his chin. “We’re a hunting a fugitive, a Jedi Knight. Our sources report he might be hiding on this planet.” He paused. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
“On this planet?” Nakin snorted, lips curling back from his teeth in a silent laugh. “Ixtapa hates the Empire and it hated the Republic; I’d hate to see their reaction to a Jedi. You’d be better off looking elsewhere on the Rim.”
“It sounds like a good place to hide,” Traynt said, his voice carefully neutral. “Besides, you’re not from around here, are you? You said you lived in the Core.”
Here we go, starting to get into the meat of things. A first look at Zsuzsi Dj'onz and The Sand and the Stone, a look at the Imperials as they start to develop farther, another look at Anakin as mechanic, some world-building -- and more Anakin being awesome and kickass.
“Lady Yulalli!” Traynt said, snapping to his feet. He didn’t have to salute, not to her, but he did raise his chin and go to an automatic parade rest.
“Lieutenant,” the Emperor’s Dog returned coolly. “I need to speak to the captain. Fetch him for me.”
“Captain Aryal is out on Imperial business, my lady,” Traynt said; the truth from a certain point of view, since Aryal made a habit out of whoring and drinking at every port they stopped at, Imperial or independent. “I can record your message, or I can get First Lieutenant Perrik, if you’d rather.”
Yullali’s full lips pressed together. “Record this,” she finally ordered. “Captain Aryal: Jedi Knight Ben Hellsbane has been identified as General Obi-Wan Kenobi, a formerly a Master on the Jedi High Council, previously believed killed in an explosion on the Mid Rim planet Alcazaar.
Cut because it didn't fit and wasn't necessary; I did have to add a tiny bit of exposition into the story to explain who the Emperor's Dog was.
*fans self* God, that's a lot of text.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-26 04:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-27 12:19 am (UTC)