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bedlamsbardOriginal story here
Go back to part one
Anakin POV – note that he’s thinking of himself as Nakin Starkiller, who he is; the Skywalker ref is a reminder that he hasn’t forgotten who he is, I think.
Nakin came back to consciousness abruptly – he hadn’t gotten out of the habit of drifting out of sleep until after the war, when he’d barely slept at all – to the breezy, slightly tinny sound of a hologram’s speech.
I really don’t know what that sentence even says. I think it’s supposed to mean that Anakin got really used to waking up abruptly during the Clone Wars and never lost the habit.
“…Hellsbane lost us, damn the Jedi bastard,” Lieutenant Perrik was saying bitterly.
Nakin craned his neck around to see who he was speaking to and caught a glimpse of the bridge, just barely visible from the room he’d been left in, cuffed to a chair with arms and legs – not Force-inhibitors, thank the stars, just ordinary durasteel binders. Either the Imperials hadn’t been thinking straight, or they were saving the Force-inhibitors for something else – like the Jedi they were hunting. He couldn’t see the other speaker’s face from here, though: just the back of his head.
He listened with half an ear to Perrik and the junior officer’s conversation as he catalogued his injuries: blaster burn across the back of one hand and up his arm, gash in his forehead where he’d collided foreheads with a helmeted clone trooper (smart, Skywalker, he chided himself, and shuffled the thought away), numerous bruises and smaller cuts, the lingering aftereffects of the drug being purged out of him by the Force.
And this is why he has scars all over the place.
“Did a match turn up for Starkiller in the databanks yet?” Perrik asked, and Nakin’s attention snapped back to the conversation.
“No, not yet,” the junior officer said. “It’s crosschecking against –”
“Never mind that,” Perrik snapped. “Hellsbane said the lightsaber we picked up off him belonged to a Jedi that died in the Temple on Coruscant. There’s no way it should have gotten out to Ixtapa unless someone took it there.”
A lot of Jedi died in Coruscant. Anakin was assumed to be one of them. Which is to say, Yoda and Obi-Wan still made it back to the Temple and wandered around going “Oh my God, what the hell has happened, the children,” but Obi-Wan, sick with terror, turned over every body that could have been Anakin’s, searching their faces, and even though he never found Anakin’s body he’s never been completely convinced that Anakin survived, either, because the Temple is very large and they didn’t have time to go through all of it.
Nakin blinked slowly. Each lightsaber was unique to the Jedi that made it, but that didn’t mean every Jedi could identify another’s with just a casual glance, or even a long inspection. Only someone who knew that Jedi well. Like – a Padawan. Or their master.
Which means that it has to be Obi-Wan. Which means that Obi-Wan’s alive. Which means that Anakin has to get the handcuffs off RIGHT NOW and go find him.
“You talked with Hellsbane?” the junior officer questioned.
“Yes, he and Lieutenant Traynt had a nice chat before he buggered off into the bleeding sunset. Mindtricked us all. Before he left he said something else, though, about the lightsaber belonging to his former apprentice. Check that and get back to me.”
A console powered up on the bridge. “You’re aware of the belief that ‘Hellsbane’ is an assumed name?”
“I’m aware of it. Check anyway. See if any of the Jedi that Hellsbane could be had apprentice or former apprentices that were on Coruscant at the time of the Purge.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Perrik out.”
“Erebus out.”
Nakin closed his eyes, breathing in and out in a meditation pattern. He didn’t want to slip too deeply into trance, just enough to pick the locks on his binders using the Force, delicate, careful work that required the utmost in concentration. Ten years ago he couldn’t have done it. He’d had the power, sure, but the control had been beyond him until he’d had the time and the patience – and the surety of a quick trip back to Coruscant hanging over him if he failed – to get it to work.
I love the idea of Anakin finally, finally, having enough control to do work as delicate as picking locks of the Force, which I think is the coolest idea ever. I mean, come on! It’s a metaphysical lockpick! It’s also one of two ideas which survived from the conception of this story – the other one being the image of Anakin with short hair and a pair of blasters.
I have no idea what the circumstances of the quick trip back to Coruscant were, but I think it has something to do with Anakin in the fairly early days of the Purge – second, third – maybe fourth year tops, but I doubt it – being arrested and identified as a Jedi, but not specifically as Anakin Skywalker.
The binders fell away. He leaned over to put his palms, durasteel and flesh alike, on the binders on his ankles and shoved the Force through them, snatching his hands away as durasteel exploded.
I kept forgetting Anakin has a durasteel hand while writing this story.
“What’s that?” It was the junior officer on the bridge. Nakin heard booted feet on the floor and leapt straight upward, using the Force to boost him, and let the door slide shut. He heard the footsteps stop outside it, then they faded away as the junior officer went back to the bridge.
If you couldn’t figure it out, Anakin is using the Force to keep him stuck to the ceiling. Not really the smartest way to hide, but I think Anakin’s plan if Cafferti comes in is to fall on him.
Nakin dropped back to the floor. The Imps hadn’t left his gun belt in here – he reached out for the Force for his lightsaber’s energy signature and realized it wasn’t anywhere in the ship – that was right, Perrik had said he’d taken it. What about the other one? The energy stamp wasn’t quite as strong – he hadn’t made it, only saved it from Sidious’s grasping hands and carried it alongside his own for ten years – but it would do, in the absence of his blasters. No energy stamp on those at all, except for the faintness that came from daily wear in his presence. Not enough for him to track them through the ship – well, probably enough, but he didn’t feel like taking the time and the energy right now. So. He had to get to his lightsaber, because he could leave the blasters but there was no way in hell he was leaving Qui-Gon’s lightsaber to be desecrated by Sidious, and then he had to get off-planet as quickly as possible.
Because Obi-Wan kept Qui-Gon’s lightsaber, and once he went back to the Temple Anakin rescued it and has carrried for ten years, never using it unless he has to. Also, note that the first weapon he mentions isn’t his lightsaber, but his blasters.
Good plan. Better than most. He’d take it.
Because Anakin Does Not Make Plans. This goes back to the RotS novelization, when Anakin and Obi-Wan are screwing around on Grievous’s ship and Palpatine goes, “What, this was a plan?” in tones of great horror.
-
-
Lieutenant Cafferti was pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers as he read the profile the databanks had finally presented him as a match to Nakin Starkiller’s face. Taking his hand away from his face, he reached to flick on the holoprojector again; Perrik was going to be either extremely happy or extremely pissed off and Cafferti wasn’t sure which one it was going to be just yet.
Hi, you’ve captured Anakin Skywalker, the Hero With No Fear, one of the most dangerous Jedi in the galaxy. Congratulations!
“Don’t,” a low, level voice said, and Cafferti turned to find a boot sole leveled at his throat, Nakin Starkiller attached to the other end of it.
I love this image.
Starkiller’s blue eyes flickered down towards him. “You found my file,” he said mildly. “Read anything interesting?”
“You –” Cafferti began and Starkiller’s heel pushed even harder against his throat. He cut the words off.
“Good answer. The Jedi your superiors are out looking for. Who is he?”
Cafferti took a shallow breath, as deep as he could manage with Starkiller’s boot pressing against his windpipe, and shook his head.
Starkiller cocked his head to the side. “Wrong answer,” he said and moved so quickly Cafferti didn’t see more than a blur; the next thing he knew was blinding pain as bone snapped in his right hand. He couldn’t scream; something had closed over his mouth like an invisible hand and when he looked up again Starkiller was in the same position, boot up against his throat. “You were saying?”
Anakin = hardass. Not sure if he’s using the Force to injure Cafferti or not.
“Hellsbane,” Cafferti said shakily, a ragged pant in his voice; yes, he’d sworn his loyalty to the Empire, but he didn’t have a death wish. “Ben Hellsbane. He was a general during the Clone Wars –”
“Lie,” Starkiller snapped. “I was there. I know all the Jedi generals. No Hellsbane.”
Which is kind of a scary thing to hear someone who was just supposed to be a mechanic say. “I know all the Jedi generals” indeed.
“It’s an assumed name,” Cafferti whispered, cradling his ruined hand in his left one. “We think. Only the Emperor and Darth Cidal know who he is – might be. We know he’s a Jedi –”
The first mention of Darth Cidal, the other Sith Lord. The one who’s taken the position Anakin held in canon. Most of the Sith names we have – Vader, Tyranus, Maul, Sidious – are pieces of other words that mean something destructive; “Cidal” is from “homicidal.” Or “genocidal”, or “xenocidal”, or “suicidal”…you get the picture.
“Obviously,” Starkiller interjected, not moving. How the hell could the man hold his balance that long without even wavering?
“– he was a Master. We think. We got a tip that he might be here; Lieutenant Traynt made contact with him today.”
“I heard,” Starkiller said, voice surprisingly serene. “You lot are all idiots. Can’t even keep track of one Jedi – here’s a word of advice, Lieutenant: next time you capture someone wearing a lightsaber, it’s generally wise to assume they’re Jedi.” His foot swung around suddenly and met the curve of Cafferti’s skull with a surprisingly loud crack.
Yes, some of the Jedi are better at hiding than the others, so don’t be stupid. Anakin also probably should have killed Cafferti here, but he didn’t.
-
-
I don’t particularly like this scene, but it’s necessary to get Obi-Wan to The Sand and Stone.
“Something wrong with your bag of bolts?”
“I just want to get it checked over before I head out again,” Hellsbane said, voice light and musical despite the damage that had been done to it sometime in the past. “There was a problem with the hyperdrive a few months back; I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Who’s best?”
Traynt said mechanic, Obi-Wan knows Anakin can fix anything, therefore he’s got to be the best in town.
Kandir ran his good hand over his close-cropped head. Like most of his generation, he was a veteran of the Ten Systems War; the withered remains of his left hand were proof enough of that. “For a hyperdrive? Starkiller. Nakin Starkiller. He’s expensive, but he’s the best when it comes to anything mechanical, and there’s no one in the Ten Systems better at dealing with faulty hyperdrives. You’ll find him at Zsuzsi Dj’onz’s joint, The Sand and Stone, up on Priester’s Way.”
“Nakin Starkiller,” Hellsbane noted. “And The Sand and Stone. My thanks.”
Kandir eyed him carefully. Hellsbane had been less trouble than most renters he’d had, quiet as a ripza and sleeping in his starship most nights, but he’d never shown any interest in anything going on in Per Macchu. He rather thought this was the first time Hellsbane had said more than two words to him since renting out his hangar. “Get there early if you can,” he added finally. “Starkiller’s fighting tonight, and you won’t want to miss that.”
I really wish I’d gone more into Obi-Wan in this story, but it’s Anakin’s story, not Obi-Wan’s.
I figure a ripza is a little savannah mammal, a predator that only looks cute until it’s ripping your ankles apart, but it’s also the quietest animal on the planet.
“Fighting?” Hellsbane repeated, with an elegant raise of one fiery eyebrow. “For money, you mean.”
“Zsuzsi cuts him a share of the credits her place brings in on a fight night, so yeah. As long as you’re in the city, though, it’s not to be missed.” Kandir let out a low Ixtapan whistle of titillating appreciation. “The boy can take down anything, bipedal or not. You might try him yourself if you don’t believe me.”
Hellsbane pushed overlong strands of gray-streaked red hair out of his face. “Maybe I will. Priester’s Way, you said?”
-
-
Nakin came into The Sand and Stone using the back entrance, appearing abruptly next to Zsuzsi behind the bar. She gave him a long look, taking in the blaster burn across the sleeve of his shirt, the dried blood on his neck and caking above his left eye, his skinned knuckles and bruised face.
“You look like hell, Starkiller,” she noted, reaching back for a bottle of chacharan brandy and pouring him half a glass. Nakin regarded it with the customary dismay he extended toward all types of liquor. “I take it the Imperial job ended badly.”
EU canon, I think – Anakin doesn’t particularly like drinking, and I think he’d dislike it rather more so now, because it means being out of control, and being out of control means possibly getting careless, and getting careless means getting caught.
“That’s one way to put it,” Nakin said, making a face at the taste of the alcohol.
“Recognized your face from your broadsheets, did they?”
Because, even as Nakin Starkiller, he’s wanted for any number of things within the Empire itself. Mostly smuggling.
“They also didn’t pay me,” he added, pouring chacharan over his split lip.
The horror! And he was so excited about the Empire paying by the hour, too.
Zsuzsi snatched the empty glass from his hand. “I don’t know why I waste the good stuff on you. You don’t appreciate it anyway.”
“I appreciate it,” Nakin said indignantly. “I just don’t like it.” He ran his fingers over the cut on his forehead. “Do I really look that bad?”
“Yes,” Zsuzsi said flatly. “You want me to find a pair of meertzus? Turnout’ll be less, but if you’re not up for a fight –”
Meertzus - more or less the equivalent of wolves. Vicious, vaguely canine predators that are fought for money on Merapesh – like dogfighting or cockfighting.
“I can fight,” Nakin said, a little indignantly. He put a hand on the bar and vaulted it easily, barely missing a gifga’s curling horns. The gifga – not one of Zsuzsi’s regulars, but she recognized him from previous fight nights – turned, opening his mouth to berate or threaten, but he fell silent when he saw Nakin’s face.
Coming up with random aliens was fun. Gifgas are sentient humanoids, more or less; I don’t think they’re native to Ixtapa.
Zsuzsi snorted. “You’re famous,” she pointed out.
“Yeah,” said Nakin, looking a little hurt. He started scraping dried blood off his forehead, flinching as flecks of it came flaking off onto his fingers. “Great. Who’m I up against?”
Yes, and the last time he was famous his world basically ended. You can see why he’s not the most excited person in the world at this realization.
-
-
Nakin took out the first three comers in less than ten minutes put together, barely moving except to abruptly lash out. There was careful control in each movement, contained rage that Zsuzsi recognized from the war. This was more of it in one place than she’d seen in years, though; usually Nakin took the time to play with his opponents, give the audience a show, have Zsuzsi sell enough drinks to make a tidy profit. Right now he just wanted to kill something and was barely holding it off.
Clear evidence that Anakin is either (a) in a bad mood or (b) distracted. Or both.
At least he was holding it off. Ten years ago he hadn’t been able.
“Is that it?” he spat, staring out at a crowd that was suddenly silent as the last opponent was dragged out of the ring. “What are you all, cowards? This is pathetic.”
“What about me?” That was a man’s voice, a stranger’s, a clipped Core accent with a slight roughness around the edges that came from old damage. Zsuzsi, perched behind the bar, scanned the crowd for the speaker – that took fucking guts, right after three prospective fighters had had to be carried out.
Obi-Wan’s accent – pure deep Core accent which I really doubt he’s able to hide well at all.
She didn’t see him until he’d pushed his way into the fight ring cleared for Nakin. A small man, lean, with gray-streaked red hair tied back from his wasted but still handsome face. Nakin’s eyes widened minutely when he saw him, and Zsuzsi saw his lips part to speak. He stopped when the stranger shook his head slightly in negation.
What the hell? Nakin didn’t know anyone off planet besides other smugglers and most of them had come through The Sand and Stone at some point. This man was a complete stranger – more, Nakin wasn’t acknowledging him besides that first flash of surprise.
Honey, that’s what you think.
Some of the anger had gone from his voice when he said, “You got a name, off-worlder?”
“Ben Hellsbane.” There was a note of warning in his clipped syllables. “And if I’m an off-worlder, then you are too. Where?” He slipped his jacket off over his shoulders, dropped it at the edge of the ring along with his gun belt.
I actually think that Obi-Wan doesn’t wear a gun belt, he wears a shoulder holster, but that idea came around after I’d already written and posted this story.
Nakin smiled slightly. “Good call. It’s Tatooine – but I haven’t been back in years.”
I think Obi-Wan’s double-checking that it really is Anakin, but it may just be verbal sparring.
“Hypnos,” Hellsbane said. “But I was only there the once.”
Hypnos = Greek god of sleep.
One of my personal bits of canon is that Obi-Wan is one of those Jedi, the ones who’ve never known anything but the Jedi Order. As far as I’m concerned, Obi-Wan has never known his family, has no memory of his mother or his father or anyone outside the Order. He was given to the Jedi hours, if not minutes, after he was born – which would, of course, be the only time he’s ever been to his birth-planet.
“Tiny little swamp of a moon in the Core. Fail to see why I should care.” Nakin tossed his head back with a snort of disdain. “Enough preliminaries, O – old man. Let’s fight.” He raised his hands in front of him, fingers curved inward and flared out.
Hellsbane smiled slightly, but didn’t say anything. His own hands were open and loose at his sides. This time it was Nakin who couldn’t stop moving, contrary to everything else Zsuzsi had ever known about him, shifting from foot to foot and circling Hellsbane.
Both of them moved at once, moved as one, mirror images of each other, and then fists and feet lashed out, blurring together. Nakin and Hellsbane were a blur, matching each other blow for blow. Abruptly Naking leapt straight up, twisting in midair to snap out a kick to Hellsbane’s head. Hellsbane ducked it and rolled into a somersault; he and Nakin came up opposite of where they had been and started circling each other before diving in again.
A lot of people have said that they’d love to see Anakin and Obi-Wan’s fight onscreen. So would I, baby, so would I.
Zsuzsi couldn’t take her eyes off them. They moved like two halves of a whole, flawlessly and seamlessly countering each other’s moves; money changed hands in the crowd behind them, whispers stirring like sarradan winds in the savannah. Where did Nakin know Hellsbane from?
There was a slight pause in the action as both Nakin and Hellsbane bounced back to the edge, time enough for Nakin to wipe a smear of blood off the reopened cut on his forehead. “Not bad.”
“Are you holding back?” Hellsbane asked.
“Little bit.”
“Well, don’t!” Hellsbane said sharply, and they were at each other again, rolling over backwards, grappling at each other with hands and arms; Hellsbane pinned Nakin to the floor and Nakin flipped them both, leaning down over Hellsbane. “Give up?”
I love the “holding back” exchange. It’s possible I wrote this fight scene just so I could have them snarking at each other.
“Not yet,” the older man said, and threw Nakin backwards over his head. The crowd scattered as Nakin arched up and twisted coming down, landing in a half-crouch one hand flaring out in front of him.
“Not bad.” There were a pair of long-bladed durasteel knives suddenly in his hands. “Now let’s dance.”
Hellsbane rose with a dagger in his right fist. “Nice warm-up, Starkiller. Let’s.”
There was no expected beat of silence. He and Nakin were both abruptly chest to chest with the barest possible minimum of motion needed to get them there in between, knives pressed blade to blade, and then they broke apart, circling once before diving in again. Durasteel clashed and both men snapped out bare hands and feet, elbows and knees, throwing each other up and away often enough that the crowd scattered back permanently, fluctuating like a living thing.
Without looking away once Zsuzsi reached for the bottle of chacharan and poured herself a glass, knocking it back. Nakin was damn well alive and enjoying it. She’d be damned if she’d seen him this happy in years.
There was no warning at all when Hellsbane’s knife came to rest on the side of Nakin’s neck. “You’re dead,” the stranger noted.
“So are you,” Nakin said, and Hellsbane’s eyes flickered downward to see the kknives pressed crosswise over his stomach.
A draw.
Just about any time before this, Obi-Wan could have beaten Anakin at hand-to-hand – but they’re on very nearly equal terms now.
They drew back from each other and bowed at the waist, formally, then strolled back to the edges of the ring where they’d left their things. The crowd seemed a little shocked. No one had fought Nakin Starkiller to a draw in the history of fight nighting – years – and this was…unthinkable. Worse, Nakin didn’t even look surprised. Who the hell was Ben Hellsbane?
Fight nighting. Worst – word – ever.
-
-
Nakin finished buckling his gun belt on in time to look up and meet Obi-Wan’s – Hellsbane’s, better if he didn’t forget himself – eyes across the circle, eyebrows raise a little in question.
“Buy you a drink?” he called, pulling up the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face.
“I won’t say no to that.” Hellsbane folded his coat over his arm; his voice was rough and a little harsh and surprisingly dapper. Nakin thought of innumerable planets and the way light fell in the practice rings of the Temple, and then he thought of death in the halls. You bastard, I thought you were dead.
Obi-Wan, on the other hand, drinks a lot canonically. (What’s the joke, that he’s a violent drunk because every time we see him in movie canon he cuts someone’s arm off?)
Zsuzsi was looking at them oddly when they pushed through the crowd to the bar. “I’ll take that drink now,” he said, smiling and tasting blood on his mouth where he’d cut open the inside of his lip on a tooth.
“Good liquor is wasted on you,” she snorted, picking up the bottle of chacharan. “I’ll put it on your tab. Same for you?” Her eyes were startlingly bright when she looked at Hellsbane.
“Not if he’s having something bloody awful,” Hellsbane said, slow smile spreading over his still handsome face. The years hadn’t hurt him badly at all, Nakin thought, so long as you didn’t look too closely at the oversized knot of scar tissue that seemed to encompass his maimed left hand.
Originally I had Obi-Wan with a pair of knives and Anakin with just one, but then I got to this part, realized what I’d done, and had to go back to change it.
“He’ll take the good stuff,” Nakin said easily, feeling Hellsbane’s eyes on him. They were both studying each other, mapping out the changes ten years and a second war – or a continuation of the first one, the war they’d been fighting since Qui-Gon Jinn died on Naboo all those years ago – had wrought.
Restatement of something brought up in the RotS novelization. For the rest of the Jedi, the Clone Wars were a new war, but for Anakin and Obi-Wan it’s always been the same war, over and over and over again.
Zsuzsi poured them both tall glasses of chacharan, topping Nakin’s off with water and Hellsbane’s with kirioo, a sharp-tasting cordial made from kiri roots from the Radja Jungle. Nakin didn’t like the stuff much himself, but it was a traditional savannah addition to chacharan. “Nice show,” she said to Hellsbane as she handed him his drink. “How do you two know each other?”
More world-building – I have a lot of fun coming up with different kinds of alien alcohol when I’m writing sci-fi, and chacharan and kirioo are one of my staples.
Well, Zsuzsi wasn’t stupid, and he and Hellsbane had put on a bit of a show. “From the Clone Wars,” Nakin said, smiling thinly. There had been a lot of people involved in the Clone Wars, and not all of them were clones or Jedi.
“We were wing mates,” Hellsbane added, smiling disarmingly. There was sudden gathering of the Force in the air around him and Nakin thought, oh hell no, he’s not going to mindtrick Zsuzsi. He put his hand on Hellsbane’s arm.
Obi-Wan is suspicious, Anakin just doesn’t want to have to explain to Zsuzsi that his old friend is a Jedi. Plus, it’s a betrayal of his friendship with Zsuzsi if he lets Obi-Wan mindtrick her.
Also, Obi-Wan? Canonically really good at mindtricking people, and a little too eager to do so. Remember in AotC when he mindtricks the dealer? Probably does it a lot more now, too.
“Come upstairs with me.” Off Zsuzsi’s startled expression, he added, “We can catch up.”
Anakin: lives like a monk.
Hellsbane was frowning at him, eyes narrowed, but the corners of his mouth turned up a little at Nakin’s words. “Of course,” he said smoothly.
Nobody watched them go upstairs. The cantina was still buzzing with people, most of them eagerly discussing the fight and too occupied to notice Hellsbane and Nakin ascending the stairs.
“My room’s at the end,” he said over his shoulder to Hellsbane, pressing his palm to the recognition screen. He’d fixed that up himself, still paranoid in the early years of the Purge, just beginning to believe he might actually have something resembling a base.
I still feel the palm recognition scene is a little too non-technical for Anakin as a person and for the Star Wars ‘verse in particular, but I couldn’t really think of anything else. I like to think there are a lot of other tricks to go through to get in, Anakin just doesn’t mention them.
Hellsbane’s gaze was steady and calm as the door slid shut behind them – too steady and calm. Nakin put his still-full glass of chacharan down on top of his weapons chest and reached for Hellsbane’s. He let him take it, fingers opening loosely when Nakin’s closed around the glass. Nakin turned back to him, well aware that a bare three feet lay between him and the man he’d once called master.
They both stared at each other.
“The room’s safe,” Nakin said finally, desperately. “No one gets in here except me, not even Zsuzsi. It –”
“Anakin,” Hellsbane – Obi-Wan – said softly.
And Anakin Skywalker broke.
And here we switch over from Nakin Starkiller and Ben Hellsbane to Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
-
-
Obi-Wan caught Anakin as his former apprentice flung himself at him, hands coming up to slid over the small of his back and cradle him, balance him out. Anakin let out a shaky breath, turning his face into the curve between neck and shoulder, breathing hard and clutching at Obi-Wan as if he expected him to melt away into smoke beneath his hands, broken gasping sounds in the small of his throat.
“Shh,” Obi-Wan said, “Shh, Anakin, I’m here. I’m –”
“You were dead,” Anakin said, the words muffled against his skin. “You were very, very dead.” He thumped the heel of his hand against Obi-Wan’s chest, but without much force. “I felt you die, you –” He cut off abruptly. “I felt you die.”
I cut this scene, and I’m sad I did, because I really liked it, but it didn’t fit – Anakin felt all the Jedi die, lost himself in the Force for a time, and finally fixated hard on Obi-Wan drowning on Utapau. Which would be a traumatic experience for anyone, but for a pair as close as Anakin and Obi-Wan – and this on top of a couple thousand other simultaneous deaths too.
“Anakin –”
“No.” Anakin jerked back, away from him, and wrapped his arms around himself. His face was utterly cold and closed off. He didn’t look anything like the Anakin Skywalker Obi-Wan had known “No, you don’t have the right.” He shook his head. “Ten years, Obi-Wan. Ten fucking years, and I thought you were dead through all of them.” A deep, shaky breath as his eyelashes dipped downward, then snapped up again. “You have no right to waltz in here, into my life after all these years. No right at all.”
Anakin deals really badly.
It was like a slap in the face. Obi-Wan reeled back, hurt to the bone and feeling oddly empty. “You were my brother,” he snapped. “Do you think that means nothing, Anakin? I spent three years looking for you after Utapau, after everyone I knew told me you’d died on Coruscant. I never gave up, even – I never gave up.”
Call back to canon! “You were my brother, I loved you!” Except not that last part. And the idea of Obi-Wan, searching the galaxy ceaselessly – for Anakin, for Anakin’s body, for anyone who might know anything – breaks my heart.
“You didn’t look hard enough,” Anakin said quietly. “You should have.”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan agreed. “I should have.”
“I heard what Perrik was saying about you – about your alter-ego Hellsbane,” Anakin continued, blue eyes flashing. “Were you too busy trying to save the galaxy to bother with yourself?”
He has a point. Despite the fact that Obi-Wan is basically an assassin ninja prison-breaker-outer, he hasn’t been acting in his own best interests, which probably have something to do with not getting himself very nearly killed every other day.
“Anakin, this isn’t about me.”
Anakin shook his head again. “Isn’t it?” Another step backwards, his face falling half in shadow. “You didn’t come to Ixtapa for me.”
“Anakin, I –”
“Of course you didn’t.”
Whenever Anakin’s pissed off and he’s around Obi-Wan, he reverts back to being a teenager. Don’t all people do this no matter what their age, blame their parents for their problems? So totally Anakin in AotC. Unfortunately, this time he’s right.
“Anakin, don’t.” Obi-Wan said sharply, and stepped forward to grab Anakin’s arm and pull him closer.
He didn’t get that far, mostly because Anakin drew back his arm and punched him in the face, then twisted to one side and grabbed for Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan snapped his elbow into Anakin’s face and his knee up into Anakin’s groin; Anakin took both blows, the first to his nose and the second on the outside of his thigh, face absolutely blank against the pain, and kicked Obi-Wan in the kneecap. Obi-Wan curled his hands around Anakin’s biceps as he folded backwards with the kick, bringing the younger Jedi with him; Anakin turned the momentum in a backwards roll as the Force peeled Obi-Wan’s fingers apart, separating them. Both of them jerked apart, in balanced fighters’ crouches now, Anakin leaning forward slightly with his eyes wide and blood running down his face from his broken nose.
I love this mini-fight.
“Don’t touch me,” he snarled as he straightened, turning away and raising his hand to his face.
“Anakin –” Obi-Wan began as he stood, touching his jaw tentatively. One thing was sure, and that was that Anakin’s hand to hand had definitely improved since they’d last sparred, sometime back on the Outer Rim between battles.
He saw Anakin’s shoulders tense, and then his former Padawan raised his head slightly. “I’m sorry, Master,” he said, perfect conciliating composure in his voice, as if he were a Padawan again, although he’d never used that particular tone. “That was uncalled for.”
Ten years ago that would have been welcome. Now it seemed like a cheat, like a resurrected ghost of something that had never really been. Obi-Wan shuttered his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, Anakin was still turned away, the line of his skull limned in light and revealing the faint lines of scar tissue beneath his short blond hair, bleached golden by Ixtapa’s twin suns. “No,” he said finally. “No, I suppose I deserved that. I’m sorry I never found you.”
“It’s – a very large galaxy,” Anakin said with some difficulty, turning back to him. “I – I felt you die, when Order 66 went through. I was meditating, in the Council chamber, and I – snapped. I didn’t think I was wrong, not that time.”
Obi-Wan ducked his head, hair falling over his shoulder. He should cut it again, maybe. “You weren’t,” he admitted. “After a fashion.”
Anakin’s eyebrows arched slightly. “You were dead,” he said flatly.
“Very, very dead,” Obi-Wan agreed, repeating Anakin’s words back at him.
I think I may have gone slightly overboard with the AU here, but I really did want Anakin to feel Obi-Wan die and snap. What happened was that Obi-Wan drowned, sort of, when he and Boga went over the cliff in Utapau – minor AU, couldn’t get to his rebreather in time – and Qui-Gon came back and saved him. Sort of. I can’t believe no one’s called me on this, because it’s completely pointless.
“But you’re not dead now.” Anakin held his left hand out an inch or so from his broken nose, not even wincing as the cartilage repaired itself. “Ow,” he said, more an expected statement than an expression of pain, and moved his hand upward, healing the cuts on his face with a minimum of power. Funny; he’d never been particularly good at healing before. It had taken too much care and concentration for him to bother, not when he could finagle Obi-Wan into doing it or just slap a bacta bandage on. “Let me guess: there is no death, there is the Force?”
I think Anakin has had to force himself to learn how to heal himself with the Force, because he got hurt too often to rely on bacta, which wasn’t always there anyway.
“Something like that,” Obi-Wan admitted, decidedly fascinated with the progression of healing on Anakin’s body. “What did you do to your face?”
“Ran into a clone in full armor,” Anakin said easily, frowning at the blaster burn on his flesh hand and arm. “Or did you mean before? It was an unfortunate incident involving a twenty-story window, a bounty hunter, and a percussion grenade. Well, that and a few bar fights. The arm’s from getting shot.” He looked briefly pensive. “I haven’t actually been shot all that much. Tossed out windows, punched in the face, knifed, arrested – not a lot of shooting. It’s kind of a new experience.”
I love this line. He’s so nonchalant.
“Oh,” Obi-Wan said, startled for some reason he couldn’t quite define. “I’m –”
“Apologize to me again and I’m going to punch you again,” Anakin said flatly, smile fading. He met Obi-Wan’s gray eyes with his own blue ones, gaze steady and a little cold. He didn’t look like the Anakin Skywalker Obi-Wan remembered.
“You’ve changed,” Obi-Wan said, blinking. He hadn’t expected – well, he hadn’t expected to find Anakin here, of all places, but he hadn’t expected Anakin to have – “You’ve grown up.”
Oh, baby. Because he has, and it breaks my heart – this is the Anakin we never saw in canon, one who has been forced to grow up before his time. I don’t know how much time he spent out in the real world as a Jedi – doing, you know, actual person stuff and not Jedi stuff – but I’m willing to bet that it wasn’t all that much, and he’s been forced into it now. And he’s grown up.
There was a surprising amount of bewilderment in Anakin’s eyes in reaction to that. He ducked his head, almost looking nineteen again for a heartbeat. “You know I’ve wanted to hear you say that for thirteen years?” he said softly. “Ever since Padmé – she told me that. Before Geonosis.”
Obi-Wan sighed. It was a small sound, and it stirred the hot, humid air in the room. “I’m telling you now.”
For a moment Anakin was silent, face distant, and then he smiled, the expression breaking over him like a Coruscant sunrise. “That’ll do.”
Coruscant sunrises and sunsets are the most gorgeous things ever. Also, oh, baby.
-
-
Anakin didn’t stir when Obi-Wan slipped out of his arms and onto the floor, pulling on his clothes. They’d talked most of the night, Zsuzsi’s chacharan loosening both their tongues, and fallen asleep at some point in the early morning. Half drunk, exhausted, and deep in sleep, Anakin had finally lost what inhibitions he’d still had up and wrapped his arms around Obi-Wan, clinging like a Mon Calamari gihra, turning his face into the curve of Obi-Wan’s neck and muttering slightly in a mixture of Huttese and Basic. Obi-Wan hadn’t pushed him away.
See, I don’t think they had sex. I think they slept together, but just for comfort. It’s one of those images that I really like using in fiction, because there’s something really intimate about actually sleeping with someone else – like sharing dreams, breath, body.
Originally, the story was pretty much all just Anakin and Obi-Wan in Anakin’s room, talking. Well, making out and flashbacking, but there was so little action that it was kind of pointless, so instead it gets summed up as “They’d talked most of the night.”
Anakin’s lightsaber was still hanging on his belt. Obi-Wan unclipped it and weighed it in his hand thoughtfully, looking at Anakin’s bright head, still and scarred in sleep. He hadn’t asked for it, the first thing almost any Jedi would have done upon losing his lightsaber, and even with Anakin’s penchant for such – this was the same lightsaber he’d had ten years ago; Obi-Wan rather thought that was some kind of record for Anakin. Still, he hadn’t asked for it, or even commented on it. And he had been wearing a gun belt with well-used blasters holstered there; Obi-Wan touched briefly on the energy stamp on them with his mind.
God, yes, it is a record for Anakin to keep a lightsaber as long as he has this time.
There was another lightsaber as well. Obi-Wan put Anakin’s lightsaber down on the bedside table and stooped down next to the foot of the bed, where Anakin had hung his gun belt off the post. Lightly, he reached out with mind and hands, touching the lightsaber and suddenly wanted to both laugh and cry. Qui-Gon’s lightsaber. Anakin had been carrying Qui-Gon’s lightsaber with him for ten years. Obi-Wan kept his hands on it, reassured by the lingering touch of his old Master’s mind, and then reluctantly let go.
He could smell ozone in the air as he made his way downstairs. The promised storm had finally come to Per Macchu, dark clouds hanging low and heavy over the city and wind whipping against the side of the building.
I finally remembered the damn storm. God, I really should have done more with it.
The cantina was nowhere near last night’s capacity. A few tables were taken and a few patrons sat at the counter, speaking in the soft gurgling lilt of the continental Ixtapan tongue. Obi-Wan wondered briefly if Anakin had bothered to learn it or if he’d stuck to Basic like he had as a Padawan. The realization that he wasn’t sure which one it was disturbed him more than he cared to admit.
Anakin learned Ixtapan. He speaks Basic, and he mostly thinks Basic, although he lapses back into Huttese sometimes, and he swears in Huttese, but he learned Ixtapan and speaks it fluently.
Zsuzsi eyed him warily as he approached. “Nakin kick you out of bed, Hellsbane?” she demanded.
“I’m an early riser. He’s not,” Obi-Wan said, leaning on the counter and letting his gaze travel leisurely over the cantina, looking for anyone out of place, anyone that tugged at the Force he carried around him like the Jedi robes he no longer wore. “Cariik’aa, if you’ve got it.”
Also take a moment to note that Obi-Wan thinks of himself as Obi-Wan Kenobi, even while using the Hellsbane alias, but Anakin thinks of himself as Nakin Starkiller when using that name.
“I do,” Zsuzsi said, reaching for the container and flicking on the plasmaheater behind her. “How do you know Nakin?” she asked again, with the same suspicious expression she’d worn last night.
“I told you,” Obi-Wan said, “we met during the Clone Wars.”
“No. Nakin told me that. I want your side of the story.”
“There’s nothing else to tell,” Obi-Wan said calmly.
Zsuzsi leaned forward toward him, thick dark braid falling over her shoulder. “No one ever says that unless there’s a lot more to tell. And I’ll tell you what I think it is: I think you’re dangerous to him,” she said in a low, steady voice. “And I want a reason for Spaceforce to haul your ass off my planet.”
Of course Obi-Wan is dangerous to Anakin, Obi-Wan is dangerous to everyone he’s ever met.
“I would never hurt him,” Obi-Wan told her flatly. “Never. And I’m no more dangerous to him than he is to me.” A lie. The Imperials wouldn’t have come to Ixtapa if it hadn’t been for him, but he’d spent the last ten years lying, and it was a hard habit to break. “I’m glad he has friends here.”
She said, “How do you know Nakin?” She hesitated briefly, then went on. “You’re too like each other to just be friends.”
“I trained him,” Obi-Wan said, and turned his head as the door opened. The flash of white clone armor was the first thing he saw.
-
-
Zsuzsi turned back to the plasmaheater to get the cariik off before it congealed. “I still think you’re not telling me something,” she said, meaning to get the truth out of Ben Hellsbane one way or another. Nakin was off-limits, but a stranger –
Man, if she really thinks she can get anything out of Obi-Wan –
He wasn’t there.
Obi-Wan’s using the Force to hide himself again.
Zsuzsi was blinking at thin air, bemused and more than a little startled, when the clones at the door finally got her attention. She reached for the plasma rifle beneath the counter – Imperials were not welcome here, or anywhere else on Ixtapa for that matter –
“Put both your hands where I can see them,” a woman’s cool voice said.
“Who the hell are you?” Zsuzsi demanded, not complying. The stranger was maybe a head smaller than her, with olive skin and a spray of black teardrop tattoos across her nose and cheeks. She wore power like a nearly invisible cloak, the same way Nakin and Hellsbane both did.
A lot of the humans (or near-humans, I really doubt they’re all the same exact species) in the SW ‘verse have markings of some sort – Quinlan Vos’s yellow stripe, for example. I thought there were more, but I can’t really think of them at the moment, but that’s why I chose to give Sha’re Yulalli tattoos.
“I’m with the Empire,” the girl – young, in her early twenties, Ixtapan years at least – said. “You don’t need anything beyond that.”
“I damn well do,” Zsuzsi snapped. “Your kind aren’t –”
The girl raised a hand and Zsuzsi went flying back into the plasmaheater behind her. She rolled off as soon as she could, the coils burning patterns in her ass, and grabbed the edge of the counter to pull herself upright. She knew who the girl was – one of the Emperor’s Hands, the one they called the Emperor’s Dog. She shouldn’t have come to Ixtapa.
The Emperor’s Hands are EU canon, but my Hands aren’t the same as the EU’s. Mine are Padawans and younglings who’ve been turned – probably a couple young Knights in there, too. They’re also called Jedi hunters, since that’s what they spend a lot of their time doing, wandering around the universe hunting and killing surviving Jedi.
The Imperial tossed a palm-sized holoprojector down onto the floor, where it unfolded a life-size holo of a tall young man – soft-faced, handsome, long-haired, with a scar down one side of his face. “Anakin Skywalker,” she said coldly. “A Jedi Knight. Where is he?”
Anakin as he was the last time the Emperor saw him, back in RotS.
Cafferti must have told her that the mechanic they captured was actually Anakin Skywalker, a greater prize than Obi-Wan Kenobi, despite the fact that Obi-Wan was who Yulalli originally came to Ixtapa to capture. Wow, I can’t believe I never noticed this.
“Lady, this is Ixtapa,” one of Zsuzsi’s regulars, a wrangler down at the Hahaari Market, snapped. “Jedi aren’t welcome here. And neither are Imperials,” he added significantly. “So why don’t you –”
The girl snapped a hand out toward him, fingers closing into a fist, and Zsuzsi’s eyes widened as the wrangler’s hands went up to his throat, clawing at the flesh there as though he meant to claw straight through to his windpipe. The girl turned away from him, ignoring him as he fell to the floor, blood spattering over his fingers.
Force choking! I really need to have Anakin do this somewhere, use the Force as a weapon instead of just a tool.
“I know he’s here, so don’t even think about lying to me. Where is he?”
“There’s no one named Anakin Skywalker on Merapesh,” Zsuzsi snapped, eyes on the holo. “If he’s on Ixtapa, you’re on the wrong continent.”
“Maybe this picture’s too old,” the girl said, waving a hand toward the projector. The holo changed, growing an inch or two and several years older, curls shortening to a short clip along the curve of the skull, robes molding to trousers and a loose laced shirt, scars added to the smooth skin of the face. “Recognize him now?”
There’s a cut scene where Darth Cidal shows this holo to Palpatine – it’s basically Anakin’s mugshot, from one of the (many) times he got arrested in the years after the Purge.
“Hey, that’s –” someone said, and was quickly silenced by his companion.
“Maybe he didn’t tell you his real name,” the Imperial went on. “He always was lying to us back during the Clone Wars. Maybe you know him better as Nakin Starkiller.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Tcella burst out from his seat at the bar. “Nakin’s good people. He’s no Jedi.”
He’s a nice guy who beats people up for a living. He can’t possibly be a Jedi!
The girl cocked her head to one side. “So tell me where he is, you miserable little sand flea.”
Tcella’s mouth dropped open in perfect indignation and he clicked his pinchers together with a hard clattering sound that echoed across the bar. “Nakin’s good people,” he repeated angrily. “One of us.”
Again – Nakin Starkiller, the adoptive Ixtapan.
“And I’m sure he’ll appreciate the sentiment when he’s examining your dismembered corpse. I’ll ask one more time before I start removing limbs: where is Anakin Skywalker?”
“I’m right here,” Nakin Starkiller said, and everyone looked up to see him standing at the top of the stairs, blasters in his hands. “You want me, Yulalli? Come and get me.”
Because Anakin won’t let anyone die for him, not after the Purge and the Temple massacre.
The shining metal cylinder at the girl’s – Yulalli’s – waist sprang into her hand, a long line of crimson red sprouting from it. “No lightsaber, Skywalker?”
“A Jedi’s weapon,” Nakin said, not moving. “And there are no Jedi anymore. Your treacherous master made sure of that. No, Sha’re Yulalli, I’m not Jedi. And I think you’ve said it yourself: I never was.”
Which is why Anakin will carry a lightsaber, but won’t use it. Also, I tend to think that there was a lot of low-level animosity towards Anakin from the other Padawans at the Temple – Anakin was too old to be a Jedi, he shouldn’t have trained with Obi-Wan because Obi-Wan was too young, he got special treatment because he was the Chosen One.
Sha’re is Daniel Jackson’s wife’s name from Stargate SG-1, and Yulalli has no meaning.
“But I am.” Ben Hellsbane stepped out of thin air and put his unlit lightsaber against the back of Yulalli’s neck. “So you can see where we might have a difference of opinion.”
Yulalli’s lips drew back from her teeth in a savage snarl. “Master Kenobi,” she said, then looked furious at herself for using the honorific. “I should have expected to find you here. You and Skywalker always were joined at the hip. Probably because no one else would have him.”
More Padawan-Padawan insecurity. Seriously, I have the feeling Anakin pissed a lot of people off when he was a Padawan. I also have the feeling that a lot of younglings and the younger Padawans wanted Obi-Wan as a Master, too, and were pissed off when Anakin – the freak, the new kid, the one who doesn’t know anything – got him.
Hellsbane leaned forward, lips brushing along the fine hair bound at the back of her skull. “Master Skrik would have been so disappointed,” he said softly.
Yulalli’s Master, of course. I think he died in the Purge, but he might have died during the Clone Wars proper.
“Don’t talk about him,” Yulalli snarled and leapt straight upward, turning in midair. Hellsbane met her, lightsaber suddenly in hand and arcing over his head, and the air crackled when they met.
For a moment time seemed to pause and still, everyone’s attention on the duel of titans. Even Zsuzsi was enthralled; she – and probably everyone else on Ixtapa – had never seen a lightsaber duel before. Nakin was the first to move; he raised both blasters and shot two clone troopers cleanly through the neck, one and then the other. That broke the spell; most of Zsuzsi’s patrons shrieked and dove for cover, at least one of them going through Zsuzsi’s expensive glass windows in the process, while others went for their own blasters. This was the Outer Rim, after all; the Empire got no respect here. Zsuzsi snatched the plasma rifle out from beneath the bar, raising it to her shoulder, and aiming carefully. Nakin took out the clone she’d been aiming at with a flying kick to the jaw and a shot to the head before she could fire.
I kept having to figure out what happens to the patrons in this scene. Curse them for getting in the way!
“Look at yourself, Sha’re,” Hellsbane cried over the clash of lightsabers. “You were a Jedi, a promising Padawan –”
“Shut up!” Yulalli yelled. “You’re a dead man, Kenobi, you and your precious Chosen One Padawan.”
“Anakin was knighted years ago,” Hellsbane said calmly as a thunderclap sounded outside the window. The storm had finally come to Per Macchu. “What would Master Skrik have said about what you’ve become?”
Brief storm mention. I think I had to edit this line in, too.
“I told you not to talk about him!” One of Nakin’s shots had gone awry and shot out the lights in the cantina; the lightsabers beat red and blue shadows on Yulalli’s face.
“He was a good Jedi,” Hellsbane continued. “A good man. I liked him. If he was here today –”
“He’s not,” Yulalli snarled, stabbing upward; Hellsbane blocked it and forced her lightsaber down and around, back behind her. She kicked him in the jaw and he took half a staggering step backwards before regaining his balance. “So don’t talk about him, Kenobi, don’t you fucking dare –”
For all Padawans, their lives revolve around their Masters. The reverse is also true; it’s just more obvious for Anakin and Obi-Wan.
“And you’re working for the man who killed him?” Hellsbane said softly, the words half-drowned in the sound of lightsabers clashing.
“He was murdered by a clone.”
“The order came from the Chancellor, Sha’re,” Hellsbane said, still calm. “I know. I was one of the victims.”
“Don’t talk to me about Order 66!” Yulalli screamed, and her lightsaber dashed down toward Hellsbane.
Oh, wait, no, Skrik did die in the Purge.
Hellsbane’s hand snapped out toward her. Zsuzsi saw the girl’s teeth grit as if in pain, arm – and lightsaber – slowly forced backwards. “You bastard,” she whispered, breathing hard. “You sick bastard.”
Mirroring Anakin and Obi-Wan’s fight on Mustafar, to an extent. But Obi-Wan is stronger in the Force than Yulalli, and better trained at that.
“You’re the murderer, Sha’re,” Nakin said.
Zsuzsi looked up. There were no clone troopers left standing and Nakin was crouched on top of a table a few feet away, blasters held lightly in his hands. He was watching Hellsbane and Yulalli with startlingly bright eyes, brows narrowed in judgment.
“You can still come back, Sha’re,” Hellsbane said, without looking up at Nakin. “It’s not too late.”
Oh, Obi-Wan. I know I shouldn’t be making dolphin sounds at my own fics, but this kills me everytime. Because in canon Obi-Wan couldn’t forgive, couldn’t bring himself to believe in redemption because if he did it would negate what he gave up, what he destroyed. But this isn’t canon.
“Yes,” Nakin said. “It is.”
Hellsbane’s head snapped up. “Anakin, don’t!”
Anakin shot Yulalli through the back of the head. She slumped forward, lightsaber falling from her hand and deactivating before it hit the floor, and Hellsbane leapt to catch her body, lowering her to the floor. When he straightened again he was still holding his lightsaber, although it was deactivated now.
And Anakin can never forgive, because he saw the destruction of the Jedi up close and personal, and anyone who can still side with Sidious after that, can be responsible for any of that, deserves to die. And what makes it worse is that in canon, it was him.
“Anakin…”
“Say it,” Nakin invited, nostrils flaring. “Say it, Obi-Wan. Tell me off like I’m a Padawan.”
Which isn’t what Obi-Wan was going to do. I don’t think even Obi-Wan knows what he was going to say, but he wasn’t going to tell Anakin off.
“I don’t think we should have this conversation here, Anakin.”
“I don’t think we should have this conversation,” Nakin snapped back. He leapt down off the table and stepped over toward Hellsbane. “We’re over, Obi-Wan. I’m glad we’ve had this conversation.”
“Anakin!”
Nakin unclipped one of the lightsabers on his belt and slammed it into Hellsbane’s chest. “I was there, Master,” he said. “I saw them die. I was on Coruscant when Palpatine sent clones through the city dragging out children and slaughtering them in the streets like animals. There is no forgiveness. No Jedi-killer deserves that – especially not a traitor.”
The Children of Coruscant. Most of the younglings and Padawans didn’t manage to get off Coruscant during the Purge, and so they ended up hiding out all over the city. Palpatine sent clones to find them and to kill them. The real tragedy is that this inspired a civilian witch hunt all over Coruscant, one that ended in the slaughter of hundreds of children, the majority of whom weren’t Jedi. Anakin was on Coruscant for a year after the Purge began, and he was a direct witness to at least one of the massacres.
Also, it’s Qui-Gon’s lightsaber he gives Obi-Wan.
“Anakin –”
“The name’s Starkiller,” Nakin said, very softly. “Nakin Starkiller. Anakin Skywalker died ten years ago on Coruscant.” He took his hand away, and Hellsbane caught the lightsaber before it could fall. “You’d better get off-planet before the Empire sends someone else to investigate the Dog’s disappearance,” he said in a normal tone. “We’ll take care of the Imps.”
And that’s what’s lost, right there. Anakin Skywalker as Jedi.
“Anakin –”
“Goodbye, Obi-Wan,” Nakin said, and turned away, going to Zsuzsi’s patrons.
“Don’t even think about it,” Zsuzsi said when Hellsbane took a step forward, raising the plasma rifle slightly. “We take care of our own here.”
You know, I’m kind of sad I never let Zsuzsi shoot anyone.
There was a pained look on the man’s face. “I can see that,” he said, and then he turned around and walked out of the cantina. “I’m sorry for the trouble,” he added before the door closed behind him.
OBI-WAN. BABY.
The end scene was the last scene I wrote, and I sat on the story for four months before writing it because I couldn’t figure out how to end the story. I’m glad I ended it like this, though; this was the only way it could end, because Anakin and Obi-Wan are never going to be what they once were, not ever again: too much time, too much damage.
I finally understand why writers wander over the Internet going, “No, you don’t understand, that’s not what I wrote” now, because everyone who read this went, “Oh, this is such a sad story” and I keep trailing around going, “Well, no, it’s not, actually…” because it’s about change and growing up and adapting. I mean, I guess it could be construed as sad because of the gap between Anakin and Obi-Wan, but I don’t think it is. But what do I know, I’m just the writer.
end
Only it’s not, because there are two sequels in the works, the bastards. And besides, it’s Star Wars, which is the most cyclical universe ever.
Go back to part one
Anakin POV – note that he’s thinking of himself as Nakin Starkiller, who he is; the Skywalker ref is a reminder that he hasn’t forgotten who he is, I think.
Nakin came back to consciousness abruptly – he hadn’t gotten out of the habit of drifting out of sleep until after the war, when he’d barely slept at all – to the breezy, slightly tinny sound of a hologram’s speech.
I really don’t know what that sentence even says. I think it’s supposed to mean that Anakin got really used to waking up abruptly during the Clone Wars and never lost the habit.
“…Hellsbane lost us, damn the Jedi bastard,” Lieutenant Perrik was saying bitterly.
Nakin craned his neck around to see who he was speaking to and caught a glimpse of the bridge, just barely visible from the room he’d been left in, cuffed to a chair with arms and legs – not Force-inhibitors, thank the stars, just ordinary durasteel binders. Either the Imperials hadn’t been thinking straight, or they were saving the Force-inhibitors for something else – like the Jedi they were hunting. He couldn’t see the other speaker’s face from here, though: just the back of his head.
He listened with half an ear to Perrik and the junior officer’s conversation as he catalogued his injuries: blaster burn across the back of one hand and up his arm, gash in his forehead where he’d collided foreheads with a helmeted clone trooper (smart, Skywalker, he chided himself, and shuffled the thought away), numerous bruises and smaller cuts, the lingering aftereffects of the drug being purged out of him by the Force.
And this is why he has scars all over the place.
“Did a match turn up for Starkiller in the databanks yet?” Perrik asked, and Nakin’s attention snapped back to the conversation.
“No, not yet,” the junior officer said. “It’s crosschecking against –”
“Never mind that,” Perrik snapped. “Hellsbane said the lightsaber we picked up off him belonged to a Jedi that died in the Temple on Coruscant. There’s no way it should have gotten out to Ixtapa unless someone took it there.”
A lot of Jedi died in Coruscant. Anakin was assumed to be one of them. Which is to say, Yoda and Obi-Wan still made it back to the Temple and wandered around going “Oh my God, what the hell has happened, the children,” but Obi-Wan, sick with terror, turned over every body that could have been Anakin’s, searching their faces, and even though he never found Anakin’s body he’s never been completely convinced that Anakin survived, either, because the Temple is very large and they didn’t have time to go through all of it.
Nakin blinked slowly. Each lightsaber was unique to the Jedi that made it, but that didn’t mean every Jedi could identify another’s with just a casual glance, or even a long inspection. Only someone who knew that Jedi well. Like – a Padawan. Or their master.
Which means that it has to be Obi-Wan. Which means that Obi-Wan’s alive. Which means that Anakin has to get the handcuffs off RIGHT NOW and go find him.
“You talked with Hellsbane?” the junior officer questioned.
“Yes, he and Lieutenant Traynt had a nice chat before he buggered off into the bleeding sunset. Mindtricked us all. Before he left he said something else, though, about the lightsaber belonging to his former apprentice. Check that and get back to me.”
A console powered up on the bridge. “You’re aware of the belief that ‘Hellsbane’ is an assumed name?”
“I’m aware of it. Check anyway. See if any of the Jedi that Hellsbane could be had apprentice or former apprentices that were on Coruscant at the time of the Purge.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Perrik out.”
“Erebus out.”
Nakin closed his eyes, breathing in and out in a meditation pattern. He didn’t want to slip too deeply into trance, just enough to pick the locks on his binders using the Force, delicate, careful work that required the utmost in concentration. Ten years ago he couldn’t have done it. He’d had the power, sure, but the control had been beyond him until he’d had the time and the patience – and the surety of a quick trip back to Coruscant hanging over him if he failed – to get it to work.
I love the idea of Anakin finally, finally, having enough control to do work as delicate as picking locks of the Force, which I think is the coolest idea ever. I mean, come on! It’s a metaphysical lockpick! It’s also one of two ideas which survived from the conception of this story – the other one being the image of Anakin with short hair and a pair of blasters.
I have no idea what the circumstances of the quick trip back to Coruscant were, but I think it has something to do with Anakin in the fairly early days of the Purge – second, third – maybe fourth year tops, but I doubt it – being arrested and identified as a Jedi, but not specifically as Anakin Skywalker.
The binders fell away. He leaned over to put his palms, durasteel and flesh alike, on the binders on his ankles and shoved the Force through them, snatching his hands away as durasteel exploded.
I kept forgetting Anakin has a durasteel hand while writing this story.
“What’s that?” It was the junior officer on the bridge. Nakin heard booted feet on the floor and leapt straight upward, using the Force to boost him, and let the door slide shut. He heard the footsteps stop outside it, then they faded away as the junior officer went back to the bridge.
If you couldn’t figure it out, Anakin is using the Force to keep him stuck to the ceiling. Not really the smartest way to hide, but I think Anakin’s plan if Cafferti comes in is to fall on him.
Nakin dropped back to the floor. The Imps hadn’t left his gun belt in here – he reached out for the Force for his lightsaber’s energy signature and realized it wasn’t anywhere in the ship – that was right, Perrik had said he’d taken it. What about the other one? The energy stamp wasn’t quite as strong – he hadn’t made it, only saved it from Sidious’s grasping hands and carried it alongside his own for ten years – but it would do, in the absence of his blasters. No energy stamp on those at all, except for the faintness that came from daily wear in his presence. Not enough for him to track them through the ship – well, probably enough, but he didn’t feel like taking the time and the energy right now. So. He had to get to his lightsaber, because he could leave the blasters but there was no way in hell he was leaving Qui-Gon’s lightsaber to be desecrated by Sidious, and then he had to get off-planet as quickly as possible.
Because Obi-Wan kept Qui-Gon’s lightsaber, and once he went back to the Temple Anakin rescued it and has carrried for ten years, never using it unless he has to. Also, note that the first weapon he mentions isn’t his lightsaber, but his blasters.
Good plan. Better than most. He’d take it.
Because Anakin Does Not Make Plans. This goes back to the RotS novelization, when Anakin and Obi-Wan are screwing around on Grievous’s ship and Palpatine goes, “What, this was a plan?” in tones of great horror.
-
-
Lieutenant Cafferti was pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers as he read the profile the databanks had finally presented him as a match to Nakin Starkiller’s face. Taking his hand away from his face, he reached to flick on the holoprojector again; Perrik was going to be either extremely happy or extremely pissed off and Cafferti wasn’t sure which one it was going to be just yet.
Hi, you’ve captured Anakin Skywalker, the Hero With No Fear, one of the most dangerous Jedi in the galaxy. Congratulations!
“Don’t,” a low, level voice said, and Cafferti turned to find a boot sole leveled at his throat, Nakin Starkiller attached to the other end of it.
I love this image.
Starkiller’s blue eyes flickered down towards him. “You found my file,” he said mildly. “Read anything interesting?”
“You –” Cafferti began and Starkiller’s heel pushed even harder against his throat. He cut the words off.
“Good answer. The Jedi your superiors are out looking for. Who is he?”
Cafferti took a shallow breath, as deep as he could manage with Starkiller’s boot pressing against his windpipe, and shook his head.
Starkiller cocked his head to the side. “Wrong answer,” he said and moved so quickly Cafferti didn’t see more than a blur; the next thing he knew was blinding pain as bone snapped in his right hand. He couldn’t scream; something had closed over his mouth like an invisible hand and when he looked up again Starkiller was in the same position, boot up against his throat. “You were saying?”
Anakin = hardass. Not sure if he’s using the Force to injure Cafferti or not.
“Hellsbane,” Cafferti said shakily, a ragged pant in his voice; yes, he’d sworn his loyalty to the Empire, but he didn’t have a death wish. “Ben Hellsbane. He was a general during the Clone Wars –”
“Lie,” Starkiller snapped. “I was there. I know all the Jedi generals. No Hellsbane.”
Which is kind of a scary thing to hear someone who was just supposed to be a mechanic say. “I know all the Jedi generals” indeed.
“It’s an assumed name,” Cafferti whispered, cradling his ruined hand in his left one. “We think. Only the Emperor and Darth Cidal know who he is – might be. We know he’s a Jedi –”
The first mention of Darth Cidal, the other Sith Lord. The one who’s taken the position Anakin held in canon. Most of the Sith names we have – Vader, Tyranus, Maul, Sidious – are pieces of other words that mean something destructive; “Cidal” is from “homicidal.” Or “genocidal”, or “xenocidal”, or “suicidal”…you get the picture.
“Obviously,” Starkiller interjected, not moving. How the hell could the man hold his balance that long without even wavering?
“– he was a Master. We think. We got a tip that he might be here; Lieutenant Traynt made contact with him today.”
“I heard,” Starkiller said, voice surprisingly serene. “You lot are all idiots. Can’t even keep track of one Jedi – here’s a word of advice, Lieutenant: next time you capture someone wearing a lightsaber, it’s generally wise to assume they’re Jedi.” His foot swung around suddenly and met the curve of Cafferti’s skull with a surprisingly loud crack.
Yes, some of the Jedi are better at hiding than the others, so don’t be stupid. Anakin also probably should have killed Cafferti here, but he didn’t.
-
-
I don’t particularly like this scene, but it’s necessary to get Obi-Wan to The Sand and Stone.
“Something wrong with your bag of bolts?”
“I just want to get it checked over before I head out again,” Hellsbane said, voice light and musical despite the damage that had been done to it sometime in the past. “There was a problem with the hyperdrive a few months back; I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Who’s best?”
Traynt said mechanic, Obi-Wan knows Anakin can fix anything, therefore he’s got to be the best in town.
Kandir ran his good hand over his close-cropped head. Like most of his generation, he was a veteran of the Ten Systems War; the withered remains of his left hand were proof enough of that. “For a hyperdrive? Starkiller. Nakin Starkiller. He’s expensive, but he’s the best when it comes to anything mechanical, and there’s no one in the Ten Systems better at dealing with faulty hyperdrives. You’ll find him at Zsuzsi Dj’onz’s joint, The Sand and Stone, up on Priester’s Way.”
“Nakin Starkiller,” Hellsbane noted. “And The Sand and Stone. My thanks.”
Kandir eyed him carefully. Hellsbane had been less trouble than most renters he’d had, quiet as a ripza and sleeping in his starship most nights, but he’d never shown any interest in anything going on in Per Macchu. He rather thought this was the first time Hellsbane had said more than two words to him since renting out his hangar. “Get there early if you can,” he added finally. “Starkiller’s fighting tonight, and you won’t want to miss that.”
I really wish I’d gone more into Obi-Wan in this story, but it’s Anakin’s story, not Obi-Wan’s.
I figure a ripza is a little savannah mammal, a predator that only looks cute until it’s ripping your ankles apart, but it’s also the quietest animal on the planet.
“Fighting?” Hellsbane repeated, with an elegant raise of one fiery eyebrow. “For money, you mean.”
“Zsuzsi cuts him a share of the credits her place brings in on a fight night, so yeah. As long as you’re in the city, though, it’s not to be missed.” Kandir let out a low Ixtapan whistle of titillating appreciation. “The boy can take down anything, bipedal or not. You might try him yourself if you don’t believe me.”
Hellsbane pushed overlong strands of gray-streaked red hair out of his face. “Maybe I will. Priester’s Way, you said?”
-
-
Nakin came into The Sand and Stone using the back entrance, appearing abruptly next to Zsuzsi behind the bar. She gave him a long look, taking in the blaster burn across the sleeve of his shirt, the dried blood on his neck and caking above his left eye, his skinned knuckles and bruised face.
“You look like hell, Starkiller,” she noted, reaching back for a bottle of chacharan brandy and pouring him half a glass. Nakin regarded it with the customary dismay he extended toward all types of liquor. “I take it the Imperial job ended badly.”
EU canon, I think – Anakin doesn’t particularly like drinking, and I think he’d dislike it rather more so now, because it means being out of control, and being out of control means possibly getting careless, and getting careless means getting caught.
“That’s one way to put it,” Nakin said, making a face at the taste of the alcohol.
“Recognized your face from your broadsheets, did they?”
Because, even as Nakin Starkiller, he’s wanted for any number of things within the Empire itself. Mostly smuggling.
“They also didn’t pay me,” he added, pouring chacharan over his split lip.
The horror! And he was so excited about the Empire paying by the hour, too.
Zsuzsi snatched the empty glass from his hand. “I don’t know why I waste the good stuff on you. You don’t appreciate it anyway.”
“I appreciate it,” Nakin said indignantly. “I just don’t like it.” He ran his fingers over the cut on his forehead. “Do I really look that bad?”
“Yes,” Zsuzsi said flatly. “You want me to find a pair of meertzus? Turnout’ll be less, but if you’re not up for a fight –”
Meertzus - more or less the equivalent of wolves. Vicious, vaguely canine predators that are fought for money on Merapesh – like dogfighting or cockfighting.
“I can fight,” Nakin said, a little indignantly. He put a hand on the bar and vaulted it easily, barely missing a gifga’s curling horns. The gifga – not one of Zsuzsi’s regulars, but she recognized him from previous fight nights – turned, opening his mouth to berate or threaten, but he fell silent when he saw Nakin’s face.
Coming up with random aliens was fun. Gifgas are sentient humanoids, more or less; I don’t think they’re native to Ixtapa.
Zsuzsi snorted. “You’re famous,” she pointed out.
“Yeah,” said Nakin, looking a little hurt. He started scraping dried blood off his forehead, flinching as flecks of it came flaking off onto his fingers. “Great. Who’m I up against?”
Yes, and the last time he was famous his world basically ended. You can see why he’s not the most excited person in the world at this realization.
-
-
Nakin took out the first three comers in less than ten minutes put together, barely moving except to abruptly lash out. There was careful control in each movement, contained rage that Zsuzsi recognized from the war. This was more of it in one place than she’d seen in years, though; usually Nakin took the time to play with his opponents, give the audience a show, have Zsuzsi sell enough drinks to make a tidy profit. Right now he just wanted to kill something and was barely holding it off.
Clear evidence that Anakin is either (a) in a bad mood or (b) distracted. Or both.
At least he was holding it off. Ten years ago he hadn’t been able.
“Is that it?” he spat, staring out at a crowd that was suddenly silent as the last opponent was dragged out of the ring. “What are you all, cowards? This is pathetic.”
“What about me?” That was a man’s voice, a stranger’s, a clipped Core accent with a slight roughness around the edges that came from old damage. Zsuzsi, perched behind the bar, scanned the crowd for the speaker – that took fucking guts, right after three prospective fighters had had to be carried out.
Obi-Wan’s accent – pure deep Core accent which I really doubt he’s able to hide well at all.
She didn’t see him until he’d pushed his way into the fight ring cleared for Nakin. A small man, lean, with gray-streaked red hair tied back from his wasted but still handsome face. Nakin’s eyes widened minutely when he saw him, and Zsuzsi saw his lips part to speak. He stopped when the stranger shook his head slightly in negation.
What the hell? Nakin didn’t know anyone off planet besides other smugglers and most of them had come through The Sand and Stone at some point. This man was a complete stranger – more, Nakin wasn’t acknowledging him besides that first flash of surprise.
Honey, that’s what you think.
Some of the anger had gone from his voice when he said, “You got a name, off-worlder?”
“Ben Hellsbane.” There was a note of warning in his clipped syllables. “And if I’m an off-worlder, then you are too. Where?” He slipped his jacket off over his shoulders, dropped it at the edge of the ring along with his gun belt.
I actually think that Obi-Wan doesn’t wear a gun belt, he wears a shoulder holster, but that idea came around after I’d already written and posted this story.
Nakin smiled slightly. “Good call. It’s Tatooine – but I haven’t been back in years.”
I think Obi-Wan’s double-checking that it really is Anakin, but it may just be verbal sparring.
“Hypnos,” Hellsbane said. “But I was only there the once.”
Hypnos = Greek god of sleep.
One of my personal bits of canon is that Obi-Wan is one of those Jedi, the ones who’ve never known anything but the Jedi Order. As far as I’m concerned, Obi-Wan has never known his family, has no memory of his mother or his father or anyone outside the Order. He was given to the Jedi hours, if not minutes, after he was born – which would, of course, be the only time he’s ever been to his birth-planet.
“Tiny little swamp of a moon in the Core. Fail to see why I should care.” Nakin tossed his head back with a snort of disdain. “Enough preliminaries, O – old man. Let’s fight.” He raised his hands in front of him, fingers curved inward and flared out.
Hellsbane smiled slightly, but didn’t say anything. His own hands were open and loose at his sides. This time it was Nakin who couldn’t stop moving, contrary to everything else Zsuzsi had ever known about him, shifting from foot to foot and circling Hellsbane.
Both of them moved at once, moved as one, mirror images of each other, and then fists and feet lashed out, blurring together. Nakin and Hellsbane were a blur, matching each other blow for blow. Abruptly Naking leapt straight up, twisting in midair to snap out a kick to Hellsbane’s head. Hellsbane ducked it and rolled into a somersault; he and Nakin came up opposite of where they had been and started circling each other before diving in again.
A lot of people have said that they’d love to see Anakin and Obi-Wan’s fight onscreen. So would I, baby, so would I.
Zsuzsi couldn’t take her eyes off them. They moved like two halves of a whole, flawlessly and seamlessly countering each other’s moves; money changed hands in the crowd behind them, whispers stirring like sarradan winds in the savannah. Where did Nakin know Hellsbane from?
There was a slight pause in the action as both Nakin and Hellsbane bounced back to the edge, time enough for Nakin to wipe a smear of blood off the reopened cut on his forehead. “Not bad.”
“Are you holding back?” Hellsbane asked.
“Little bit.”
“Well, don’t!” Hellsbane said sharply, and they were at each other again, rolling over backwards, grappling at each other with hands and arms; Hellsbane pinned Nakin to the floor and Nakin flipped them both, leaning down over Hellsbane. “Give up?”
I love the “holding back” exchange. It’s possible I wrote this fight scene just so I could have them snarking at each other.
“Not yet,” the older man said, and threw Nakin backwards over his head. The crowd scattered as Nakin arched up and twisted coming down, landing in a half-crouch one hand flaring out in front of him.
“Not bad.” There were a pair of long-bladed durasteel knives suddenly in his hands. “Now let’s dance.”
Hellsbane rose with a dagger in his right fist. “Nice warm-up, Starkiller. Let’s.”
There was no expected beat of silence. He and Nakin were both abruptly chest to chest with the barest possible minimum of motion needed to get them there in between, knives pressed blade to blade, and then they broke apart, circling once before diving in again. Durasteel clashed and both men snapped out bare hands and feet, elbows and knees, throwing each other up and away often enough that the crowd scattered back permanently, fluctuating like a living thing.
Without looking away once Zsuzsi reached for the bottle of chacharan and poured herself a glass, knocking it back. Nakin was damn well alive and enjoying it. She’d be damned if she’d seen him this happy in years.
There was no warning at all when Hellsbane’s knife came to rest on the side of Nakin’s neck. “You’re dead,” the stranger noted.
“So are you,” Nakin said, and Hellsbane’s eyes flickered downward to see the kknives pressed crosswise over his stomach.
A draw.
Just about any time before this, Obi-Wan could have beaten Anakin at hand-to-hand – but they’re on very nearly equal terms now.
They drew back from each other and bowed at the waist, formally, then strolled back to the edges of the ring where they’d left their things. The crowd seemed a little shocked. No one had fought Nakin Starkiller to a draw in the history of fight nighting – years – and this was…unthinkable. Worse, Nakin didn’t even look surprised. Who the hell was Ben Hellsbane?
Fight nighting. Worst – word – ever.
-
-
Nakin finished buckling his gun belt on in time to look up and meet Obi-Wan’s – Hellsbane’s, better if he didn’t forget himself – eyes across the circle, eyebrows raise a little in question.
“Buy you a drink?” he called, pulling up the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face.
“I won’t say no to that.” Hellsbane folded his coat over his arm; his voice was rough and a little harsh and surprisingly dapper. Nakin thought of innumerable planets and the way light fell in the practice rings of the Temple, and then he thought of death in the halls. You bastard, I thought you were dead.
Obi-Wan, on the other hand, drinks a lot canonically. (What’s the joke, that he’s a violent drunk because every time we see him in movie canon he cuts someone’s arm off?)
Zsuzsi was looking at them oddly when they pushed through the crowd to the bar. “I’ll take that drink now,” he said, smiling and tasting blood on his mouth where he’d cut open the inside of his lip on a tooth.
“Good liquor is wasted on you,” she snorted, picking up the bottle of chacharan. “I’ll put it on your tab. Same for you?” Her eyes were startlingly bright when she looked at Hellsbane.
“Not if he’s having something bloody awful,” Hellsbane said, slow smile spreading over his still handsome face. The years hadn’t hurt him badly at all, Nakin thought, so long as you didn’t look too closely at the oversized knot of scar tissue that seemed to encompass his maimed left hand.
Originally I had Obi-Wan with a pair of knives and Anakin with just one, but then I got to this part, realized what I’d done, and had to go back to change it.
“He’ll take the good stuff,” Nakin said easily, feeling Hellsbane’s eyes on him. They were both studying each other, mapping out the changes ten years and a second war – or a continuation of the first one, the war they’d been fighting since Qui-Gon Jinn died on Naboo all those years ago – had wrought.
Restatement of something brought up in the RotS novelization. For the rest of the Jedi, the Clone Wars were a new war, but for Anakin and Obi-Wan it’s always been the same war, over and over and over again.
Zsuzsi poured them both tall glasses of chacharan, topping Nakin’s off with water and Hellsbane’s with kirioo, a sharp-tasting cordial made from kiri roots from the Radja Jungle. Nakin didn’t like the stuff much himself, but it was a traditional savannah addition to chacharan. “Nice show,” she said to Hellsbane as she handed him his drink. “How do you two know each other?”
More world-building – I have a lot of fun coming up with different kinds of alien alcohol when I’m writing sci-fi, and chacharan and kirioo are one of my staples.
Well, Zsuzsi wasn’t stupid, and he and Hellsbane had put on a bit of a show. “From the Clone Wars,” Nakin said, smiling thinly. There had been a lot of people involved in the Clone Wars, and not all of them were clones or Jedi.
“We were wing mates,” Hellsbane added, smiling disarmingly. There was sudden gathering of the Force in the air around him and Nakin thought, oh hell no, he’s not going to mindtrick Zsuzsi. He put his hand on Hellsbane’s arm.
Obi-Wan is suspicious, Anakin just doesn’t want to have to explain to Zsuzsi that his old friend is a Jedi. Plus, it’s a betrayal of his friendship with Zsuzsi if he lets Obi-Wan mindtrick her.
Also, Obi-Wan? Canonically really good at mindtricking people, and a little too eager to do so. Remember in AotC when he mindtricks the dealer? Probably does it a lot more now, too.
“Come upstairs with me.” Off Zsuzsi’s startled expression, he added, “We can catch up.”
Anakin: lives like a monk.
Hellsbane was frowning at him, eyes narrowed, but the corners of his mouth turned up a little at Nakin’s words. “Of course,” he said smoothly.
Nobody watched them go upstairs. The cantina was still buzzing with people, most of them eagerly discussing the fight and too occupied to notice Hellsbane and Nakin ascending the stairs.
“My room’s at the end,” he said over his shoulder to Hellsbane, pressing his palm to the recognition screen. He’d fixed that up himself, still paranoid in the early years of the Purge, just beginning to believe he might actually have something resembling a base.
I still feel the palm recognition scene is a little too non-technical for Anakin as a person and for the Star Wars ‘verse in particular, but I couldn’t really think of anything else. I like to think there are a lot of other tricks to go through to get in, Anakin just doesn’t mention them.
Hellsbane’s gaze was steady and calm as the door slid shut behind them – too steady and calm. Nakin put his still-full glass of chacharan down on top of his weapons chest and reached for Hellsbane’s. He let him take it, fingers opening loosely when Nakin’s closed around the glass. Nakin turned back to him, well aware that a bare three feet lay between him and the man he’d once called master.
They both stared at each other.
“The room’s safe,” Nakin said finally, desperately. “No one gets in here except me, not even Zsuzsi. It –”
“Anakin,” Hellsbane – Obi-Wan – said softly.
And Anakin Skywalker broke.
And here we switch over from Nakin Starkiller and Ben Hellsbane to Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
-
-
Obi-Wan caught Anakin as his former apprentice flung himself at him, hands coming up to slid over the small of his back and cradle him, balance him out. Anakin let out a shaky breath, turning his face into the curve between neck and shoulder, breathing hard and clutching at Obi-Wan as if he expected him to melt away into smoke beneath his hands, broken gasping sounds in the small of his throat.
“Shh,” Obi-Wan said, “Shh, Anakin, I’m here. I’m –”
“You were dead,” Anakin said, the words muffled against his skin. “You were very, very dead.” He thumped the heel of his hand against Obi-Wan’s chest, but without much force. “I felt you die, you –” He cut off abruptly. “I felt you die.”
I cut this scene, and I’m sad I did, because I really liked it, but it didn’t fit – Anakin felt all the Jedi die, lost himself in the Force for a time, and finally fixated hard on Obi-Wan drowning on Utapau. Which would be a traumatic experience for anyone, but for a pair as close as Anakin and Obi-Wan – and this on top of a couple thousand other simultaneous deaths too.
“Anakin –”
“No.” Anakin jerked back, away from him, and wrapped his arms around himself. His face was utterly cold and closed off. He didn’t look anything like the Anakin Skywalker Obi-Wan had known “No, you don’t have the right.” He shook his head. “Ten years, Obi-Wan. Ten fucking years, and I thought you were dead through all of them.” A deep, shaky breath as his eyelashes dipped downward, then snapped up again. “You have no right to waltz in here, into my life after all these years. No right at all.”
Anakin deals really badly.
It was like a slap in the face. Obi-Wan reeled back, hurt to the bone and feeling oddly empty. “You were my brother,” he snapped. “Do you think that means nothing, Anakin? I spent three years looking for you after Utapau, after everyone I knew told me you’d died on Coruscant. I never gave up, even – I never gave up.”
Call back to canon! “You were my brother, I loved you!” Except not that last part. And the idea of Obi-Wan, searching the galaxy ceaselessly – for Anakin, for Anakin’s body, for anyone who might know anything – breaks my heart.
“You didn’t look hard enough,” Anakin said quietly. “You should have.”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan agreed. “I should have.”
“I heard what Perrik was saying about you – about your alter-ego Hellsbane,” Anakin continued, blue eyes flashing. “Were you too busy trying to save the galaxy to bother with yourself?”
He has a point. Despite the fact that Obi-Wan is basically an assassin ninja prison-breaker-outer, he hasn’t been acting in his own best interests, which probably have something to do with not getting himself very nearly killed every other day.
“Anakin, this isn’t about me.”
Anakin shook his head again. “Isn’t it?” Another step backwards, his face falling half in shadow. “You didn’t come to Ixtapa for me.”
“Anakin, I –”
“Of course you didn’t.”
Whenever Anakin’s pissed off and he’s around Obi-Wan, he reverts back to being a teenager. Don’t all people do this no matter what their age, blame their parents for their problems? So totally Anakin in AotC. Unfortunately, this time he’s right.
“Anakin, don’t.” Obi-Wan said sharply, and stepped forward to grab Anakin’s arm and pull him closer.
He didn’t get that far, mostly because Anakin drew back his arm and punched him in the face, then twisted to one side and grabbed for Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan snapped his elbow into Anakin’s face and his knee up into Anakin’s groin; Anakin took both blows, the first to his nose and the second on the outside of his thigh, face absolutely blank against the pain, and kicked Obi-Wan in the kneecap. Obi-Wan curled his hands around Anakin’s biceps as he folded backwards with the kick, bringing the younger Jedi with him; Anakin turned the momentum in a backwards roll as the Force peeled Obi-Wan’s fingers apart, separating them. Both of them jerked apart, in balanced fighters’ crouches now, Anakin leaning forward slightly with his eyes wide and blood running down his face from his broken nose.
I love this mini-fight.
“Don’t touch me,” he snarled as he straightened, turning away and raising his hand to his face.
“Anakin –” Obi-Wan began as he stood, touching his jaw tentatively. One thing was sure, and that was that Anakin’s hand to hand had definitely improved since they’d last sparred, sometime back on the Outer Rim between battles.
He saw Anakin’s shoulders tense, and then his former Padawan raised his head slightly. “I’m sorry, Master,” he said, perfect conciliating composure in his voice, as if he were a Padawan again, although he’d never used that particular tone. “That was uncalled for.”
Ten years ago that would have been welcome. Now it seemed like a cheat, like a resurrected ghost of something that had never really been. Obi-Wan shuttered his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, Anakin was still turned away, the line of his skull limned in light and revealing the faint lines of scar tissue beneath his short blond hair, bleached golden by Ixtapa’s twin suns. “No,” he said finally. “No, I suppose I deserved that. I’m sorry I never found you.”
“It’s – a very large galaxy,” Anakin said with some difficulty, turning back to him. “I – I felt you die, when Order 66 went through. I was meditating, in the Council chamber, and I – snapped. I didn’t think I was wrong, not that time.”
Obi-Wan ducked his head, hair falling over his shoulder. He should cut it again, maybe. “You weren’t,” he admitted. “After a fashion.”
Anakin’s eyebrows arched slightly. “You were dead,” he said flatly.
“Very, very dead,” Obi-Wan agreed, repeating Anakin’s words back at him.
I think I may have gone slightly overboard with the AU here, but I really did want Anakin to feel Obi-Wan die and snap. What happened was that Obi-Wan drowned, sort of, when he and Boga went over the cliff in Utapau – minor AU, couldn’t get to his rebreather in time – and Qui-Gon came back and saved him. Sort of. I can’t believe no one’s called me on this, because it’s completely pointless.
“But you’re not dead now.” Anakin held his left hand out an inch or so from his broken nose, not even wincing as the cartilage repaired itself. “Ow,” he said, more an expected statement than an expression of pain, and moved his hand upward, healing the cuts on his face with a minimum of power. Funny; he’d never been particularly good at healing before. It had taken too much care and concentration for him to bother, not when he could finagle Obi-Wan into doing it or just slap a bacta bandage on. “Let me guess: there is no death, there is the Force?”
I think Anakin has had to force himself to learn how to heal himself with the Force, because he got hurt too often to rely on bacta, which wasn’t always there anyway.
“Something like that,” Obi-Wan admitted, decidedly fascinated with the progression of healing on Anakin’s body. “What did you do to your face?”
“Ran into a clone in full armor,” Anakin said easily, frowning at the blaster burn on his flesh hand and arm. “Or did you mean before? It was an unfortunate incident involving a twenty-story window, a bounty hunter, and a percussion grenade. Well, that and a few bar fights. The arm’s from getting shot.” He looked briefly pensive. “I haven’t actually been shot all that much. Tossed out windows, punched in the face, knifed, arrested – not a lot of shooting. It’s kind of a new experience.”
I love this line. He’s so nonchalant.
“Oh,” Obi-Wan said, startled for some reason he couldn’t quite define. “I’m –”
“Apologize to me again and I’m going to punch you again,” Anakin said flatly, smile fading. He met Obi-Wan’s gray eyes with his own blue ones, gaze steady and a little cold. He didn’t look like the Anakin Skywalker Obi-Wan remembered.
“You’ve changed,” Obi-Wan said, blinking. He hadn’t expected – well, he hadn’t expected to find Anakin here, of all places, but he hadn’t expected Anakin to have – “You’ve grown up.”
Oh, baby. Because he has, and it breaks my heart – this is the Anakin we never saw in canon, one who has been forced to grow up before his time. I don’t know how much time he spent out in the real world as a Jedi – doing, you know, actual person stuff and not Jedi stuff – but I’m willing to bet that it wasn’t all that much, and he’s been forced into it now. And he’s grown up.
There was a surprising amount of bewilderment in Anakin’s eyes in reaction to that. He ducked his head, almost looking nineteen again for a heartbeat. “You know I’ve wanted to hear you say that for thirteen years?” he said softly. “Ever since Padmé – she told me that. Before Geonosis.”
Obi-Wan sighed. It was a small sound, and it stirred the hot, humid air in the room. “I’m telling you now.”
For a moment Anakin was silent, face distant, and then he smiled, the expression breaking over him like a Coruscant sunrise. “That’ll do.”
Coruscant sunrises and sunsets are the most gorgeous things ever. Also, oh, baby.
-
-
Anakin didn’t stir when Obi-Wan slipped out of his arms and onto the floor, pulling on his clothes. They’d talked most of the night, Zsuzsi’s chacharan loosening both their tongues, and fallen asleep at some point in the early morning. Half drunk, exhausted, and deep in sleep, Anakin had finally lost what inhibitions he’d still had up and wrapped his arms around Obi-Wan, clinging like a Mon Calamari gihra, turning his face into the curve of Obi-Wan’s neck and muttering slightly in a mixture of Huttese and Basic. Obi-Wan hadn’t pushed him away.
See, I don’t think they had sex. I think they slept together, but just for comfort. It’s one of those images that I really like using in fiction, because there’s something really intimate about actually sleeping with someone else – like sharing dreams, breath, body.
Originally, the story was pretty much all just Anakin and Obi-Wan in Anakin’s room, talking. Well, making out and flashbacking, but there was so little action that it was kind of pointless, so instead it gets summed up as “They’d talked most of the night.”
Anakin’s lightsaber was still hanging on his belt. Obi-Wan unclipped it and weighed it in his hand thoughtfully, looking at Anakin’s bright head, still and scarred in sleep. He hadn’t asked for it, the first thing almost any Jedi would have done upon losing his lightsaber, and even with Anakin’s penchant for such – this was the same lightsaber he’d had ten years ago; Obi-Wan rather thought that was some kind of record for Anakin. Still, he hadn’t asked for it, or even commented on it. And he had been wearing a gun belt with well-used blasters holstered there; Obi-Wan touched briefly on the energy stamp on them with his mind.
God, yes, it is a record for Anakin to keep a lightsaber as long as he has this time.
There was another lightsaber as well. Obi-Wan put Anakin’s lightsaber down on the bedside table and stooped down next to the foot of the bed, where Anakin had hung his gun belt off the post. Lightly, he reached out with mind and hands, touching the lightsaber and suddenly wanted to both laugh and cry. Qui-Gon’s lightsaber. Anakin had been carrying Qui-Gon’s lightsaber with him for ten years. Obi-Wan kept his hands on it, reassured by the lingering touch of his old Master’s mind, and then reluctantly let go.
He could smell ozone in the air as he made his way downstairs. The promised storm had finally come to Per Macchu, dark clouds hanging low and heavy over the city and wind whipping against the side of the building.
I finally remembered the damn storm. God, I really should have done more with it.
The cantina was nowhere near last night’s capacity. A few tables were taken and a few patrons sat at the counter, speaking in the soft gurgling lilt of the continental Ixtapan tongue. Obi-Wan wondered briefly if Anakin had bothered to learn it or if he’d stuck to Basic like he had as a Padawan. The realization that he wasn’t sure which one it was disturbed him more than he cared to admit.
Anakin learned Ixtapan. He speaks Basic, and he mostly thinks Basic, although he lapses back into Huttese sometimes, and he swears in Huttese, but he learned Ixtapan and speaks it fluently.
Zsuzsi eyed him warily as he approached. “Nakin kick you out of bed, Hellsbane?” she demanded.
“I’m an early riser. He’s not,” Obi-Wan said, leaning on the counter and letting his gaze travel leisurely over the cantina, looking for anyone out of place, anyone that tugged at the Force he carried around him like the Jedi robes he no longer wore. “Cariik’aa, if you’ve got it.”
Also take a moment to note that Obi-Wan thinks of himself as Obi-Wan Kenobi, even while using the Hellsbane alias, but Anakin thinks of himself as Nakin Starkiller when using that name.
“I do,” Zsuzsi said, reaching for the container and flicking on the plasmaheater behind her. “How do you know Nakin?” she asked again, with the same suspicious expression she’d worn last night.
“I told you,” Obi-Wan said, “we met during the Clone Wars.”
“No. Nakin told me that. I want your side of the story.”
“There’s nothing else to tell,” Obi-Wan said calmly.
Zsuzsi leaned forward toward him, thick dark braid falling over her shoulder. “No one ever says that unless there’s a lot more to tell. And I’ll tell you what I think it is: I think you’re dangerous to him,” she said in a low, steady voice. “And I want a reason for Spaceforce to haul your ass off my planet.”
Of course Obi-Wan is dangerous to Anakin, Obi-Wan is dangerous to everyone he’s ever met.
“I would never hurt him,” Obi-Wan told her flatly. “Never. And I’m no more dangerous to him than he is to me.” A lie. The Imperials wouldn’t have come to Ixtapa if it hadn’t been for him, but he’d spent the last ten years lying, and it was a hard habit to break. “I’m glad he has friends here.”
She said, “How do you know Nakin?” She hesitated briefly, then went on. “You’re too like each other to just be friends.”
“I trained him,” Obi-Wan said, and turned his head as the door opened. The flash of white clone armor was the first thing he saw.
-
-
Zsuzsi turned back to the plasmaheater to get the cariik off before it congealed. “I still think you’re not telling me something,” she said, meaning to get the truth out of Ben Hellsbane one way or another. Nakin was off-limits, but a stranger –
Man, if she really thinks she can get anything out of Obi-Wan –
He wasn’t there.
Obi-Wan’s using the Force to hide himself again.
Zsuzsi was blinking at thin air, bemused and more than a little startled, when the clones at the door finally got her attention. She reached for the plasma rifle beneath the counter – Imperials were not welcome here, or anywhere else on Ixtapa for that matter –
“Put both your hands where I can see them,” a woman’s cool voice said.
“Who the hell are you?” Zsuzsi demanded, not complying. The stranger was maybe a head smaller than her, with olive skin and a spray of black teardrop tattoos across her nose and cheeks. She wore power like a nearly invisible cloak, the same way Nakin and Hellsbane both did.
A lot of the humans (or near-humans, I really doubt they’re all the same exact species) in the SW ‘verse have markings of some sort – Quinlan Vos’s yellow stripe, for example. I thought there were more, but I can’t really think of them at the moment, but that’s why I chose to give Sha’re Yulalli tattoos.
“I’m with the Empire,” the girl – young, in her early twenties, Ixtapan years at least – said. “You don’t need anything beyond that.”
“I damn well do,” Zsuzsi snapped. “Your kind aren’t –”
The girl raised a hand and Zsuzsi went flying back into the plasmaheater behind her. She rolled off as soon as she could, the coils burning patterns in her ass, and grabbed the edge of the counter to pull herself upright. She knew who the girl was – one of the Emperor’s Hands, the one they called the Emperor’s Dog. She shouldn’t have come to Ixtapa.
The Emperor’s Hands are EU canon, but my Hands aren’t the same as the EU’s. Mine are Padawans and younglings who’ve been turned – probably a couple young Knights in there, too. They’re also called Jedi hunters, since that’s what they spend a lot of their time doing, wandering around the universe hunting and killing surviving Jedi.
The Imperial tossed a palm-sized holoprojector down onto the floor, where it unfolded a life-size holo of a tall young man – soft-faced, handsome, long-haired, with a scar down one side of his face. “Anakin Skywalker,” she said coldly. “A Jedi Knight. Where is he?”
Anakin as he was the last time the Emperor saw him, back in RotS.
Cafferti must have told her that the mechanic they captured was actually Anakin Skywalker, a greater prize than Obi-Wan Kenobi, despite the fact that Obi-Wan was who Yulalli originally came to Ixtapa to capture. Wow, I can’t believe I never noticed this.
“Lady, this is Ixtapa,” one of Zsuzsi’s regulars, a wrangler down at the Hahaari Market, snapped. “Jedi aren’t welcome here. And neither are Imperials,” he added significantly. “So why don’t you –”
The girl snapped a hand out toward him, fingers closing into a fist, and Zsuzsi’s eyes widened as the wrangler’s hands went up to his throat, clawing at the flesh there as though he meant to claw straight through to his windpipe. The girl turned away from him, ignoring him as he fell to the floor, blood spattering over his fingers.
Force choking! I really need to have Anakin do this somewhere, use the Force as a weapon instead of just a tool.
“I know he’s here, so don’t even think about lying to me. Where is he?”
“There’s no one named Anakin Skywalker on Merapesh,” Zsuzsi snapped, eyes on the holo. “If he’s on Ixtapa, you’re on the wrong continent.”
“Maybe this picture’s too old,” the girl said, waving a hand toward the projector. The holo changed, growing an inch or two and several years older, curls shortening to a short clip along the curve of the skull, robes molding to trousers and a loose laced shirt, scars added to the smooth skin of the face. “Recognize him now?”
There’s a cut scene where Darth Cidal shows this holo to Palpatine – it’s basically Anakin’s mugshot, from one of the (many) times he got arrested in the years after the Purge.
“Hey, that’s –” someone said, and was quickly silenced by his companion.
“Maybe he didn’t tell you his real name,” the Imperial went on. “He always was lying to us back during the Clone Wars. Maybe you know him better as Nakin Starkiller.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Tcella burst out from his seat at the bar. “Nakin’s good people. He’s no Jedi.”
He’s a nice guy who beats people up for a living. He can’t possibly be a Jedi!
The girl cocked her head to one side. “So tell me where he is, you miserable little sand flea.”
Tcella’s mouth dropped open in perfect indignation and he clicked his pinchers together with a hard clattering sound that echoed across the bar. “Nakin’s good people,” he repeated angrily. “One of us.”
Again – Nakin Starkiller, the adoptive Ixtapan.
“And I’m sure he’ll appreciate the sentiment when he’s examining your dismembered corpse. I’ll ask one more time before I start removing limbs: where is Anakin Skywalker?”
“I’m right here,” Nakin Starkiller said, and everyone looked up to see him standing at the top of the stairs, blasters in his hands. “You want me, Yulalli? Come and get me.”
Because Anakin won’t let anyone die for him, not after the Purge and the Temple massacre.
The shining metal cylinder at the girl’s – Yulalli’s – waist sprang into her hand, a long line of crimson red sprouting from it. “No lightsaber, Skywalker?”
“A Jedi’s weapon,” Nakin said, not moving. “And there are no Jedi anymore. Your treacherous master made sure of that. No, Sha’re Yulalli, I’m not Jedi. And I think you’ve said it yourself: I never was.”
Which is why Anakin will carry a lightsaber, but won’t use it. Also, I tend to think that there was a lot of low-level animosity towards Anakin from the other Padawans at the Temple – Anakin was too old to be a Jedi, he shouldn’t have trained with Obi-Wan because Obi-Wan was too young, he got special treatment because he was the Chosen One.
Sha’re is Daniel Jackson’s wife’s name from Stargate SG-1, and Yulalli has no meaning.
“But I am.” Ben Hellsbane stepped out of thin air and put his unlit lightsaber against the back of Yulalli’s neck. “So you can see where we might have a difference of opinion.”
Yulalli’s lips drew back from her teeth in a savage snarl. “Master Kenobi,” she said, then looked furious at herself for using the honorific. “I should have expected to find you here. You and Skywalker always were joined at the hip. Probably because no one else would have him.”
More Padawan-Padawan insecurity. Seriously, I have the feeling Anakin pissed a lot of people off when he was a Padawan. I also have the feeling that a lot of younglings and the younger Padawans wanted Obi-Wan as a Master, too, and were pissed off when Anakin – the freak, the new kid, the one who doesn’t know anything – got him.
Hellsbane leaned forward, lips brushing along the fine hair bound at the back of her skull. “Master Skrik would have been so disappointed,” he said softly.
Yulalli’s Master, of course. I think he died in the Purge, but he might have died during the Clone Wars proper.
“Don’t talk about him,” Yulalli snarled and leapt straight upward, turning in midair. Hellsbane met her, lightsaber suddenly in hand and arcing over his head, and the air crackled when they met.
For a moment time seemed to pause and still, everyone’s attention on the duel of titans. Even Zsuzsi was enthralled; she – and probably everyone else on Ixtapa – had never seen a lightsaber duel before. Nakin was the first to move; he raised both blasters and shot two clone troopers cleanly through the neck, one and then the other. That broke the spell; most of Zsuzsi’s patrons shrieked and dove for cover, at least one of them going through Zsuzsi’s expensive glass windows in the process, while others went for their own blasters. This was the Outer Rim, after all; the Empire got no respect here. Zsuzsi snatched the plasma rifle out from beneath the bar, raising it to her shoulder, and aiming carefully. Nakin took out the clone she’d been aiming at with a flying kick to the jaw and a shot to the head before she could fire.
I kept having to figure out what happens to the patrons in this scene. Curse them for getting in the way!
“Look at yourself, Sha’re,” Hellsbane cried over the clash of lightsabers. “You were a Jedi, a promising Padawan –”
“Shut up!” Yulalli yelled. “You’re a dead man, Kenobi, you and your precious Chosen One Padawan.”
“Anakin was knighted years ago,” Hellsbane said calmly as a thunderclap sounded outside the window. The storm had finally come to Per Macchu. “What would Master Skrik have said about what you’ve become?”
Brief storm mention. I think I had to edit this line in, too.
“I told you not to talk about him!” One of Nakin’s shots had gone awry and shot out the lights in the cantina; the lightsabers beat red and blue shadows on Yulalli’s face.
“He was a good Jedi,” Hellsbane continued. “A good man. I liked him. If he was here today –”
“He’s not,” Yulalli snarled, stabbing upward; Hellsbane blocked it and forced her lightsaber down and around, back behind her. She kicked him in the jaw and he took half a staggering step backwards before regaining his balance. “So don’t talk about him, Kenobi, don’t you fucking dare –”
For all Padawans, their lives revolve around their Masters. The reverse is also true; it’s just more obvious for Anakin and Obi-Wan.
“And you’re working for the man who killed him?” Hellsbane said softly, the words half-drowned in the sound of lightsabers clashing.
“He was murdered by a clone.”
“The order came from the Chancellor, Sha’re,” Hellsbane said, still calm. “I know. I was one of the victims.”
“Don’t talk to me about Order 66!” Yulalli screamed, and her lightsaber dashed down toward Hellsbane.
Oh, wait, no, Skrik did die in the Purge.
Hellsbane’s hand snapped out toward her. Zsuzsi saw the girl’s teeth grit as if in pain, arm – and lightsaber – slowly forced backwards. “You bastard,” she whispered, breathing hard. “You sick bastard.”
Mirroring Anakin and Obi-Wan’s fight on Mustafar, to an extent. But Obi-Wan is stronger in the Force than Yulalli, and better trained at that.
“You’re the murderer, Sha’re,” Nakin said.
Zsuzsi looked up. There were no clone troopers left standing and Nakin was crouched on top of a table a few feet away, blasters held lightly in his hands. He was watching Hellsbane and Yulalli with startlingly bright eyes, brows narrowed in judgment.
“You can still come back, Sha’re,” Hellsbane said, without looking up at Nakin. “It’s not too late.”
Oh, Obi-Wan. I know I shouldn’t be making dolphin sounds at my own fics, but this kills me everytime. Because in canon Obi-Wan couldn’t forgive, couldn’t bring himself to believe in redemption because if he did it would negate what he gave up, what he destroyed. But this isn’t canon.
“Yes,” Nakin said. “It is.”
Hellsbane’s head snapped up. “Anakin, don’t!”
Anakin shot Yulalli through the back of the head. She slumped forward, lightsaber falling from her hand and deactivating before it hit the floor, and Hellsbane leapt to catch her body, lowering her to the floor. When he straightened again he was still holding his lightsaber, although it was deactivated now.
And Anakin can never forgive, because he saw the destruction of the Jedi up close and personal, and anyone who can still side with Sidious after that, can be responsible for any of that, deserves to die. And what makes it worse is that in canon, it was him.
“Anakin…”
“Say it,” Nakin invited, nostrils flaring. “Say it, Obi-Wan. Tell me off like I’m a Padawan.”
Which isn’t what Obi-Wan was going to do. I don’t think even Obi-Wan knows what he was going to say, but he wasn’t going to tell Anakin off.
“I don’t think we should have this conversation here, Anakin.”
“I don’t think we should have this conversation,” Nakin snapped back. He leapt down off the table and stepped over toward Hellsbane. “We’re over, Obi-Wan. I’m glad we’ve had this conversation.”
“Anakin!”
Nakin unclipped one of the lightsabers on his belt and slammed it into Hellsbane’s chest. “I was there, Master,” he said. “I saw them die. I was on Coruscant when Palpatine sent clones through the city dragging out children and slaughtering them in the streets like animals. There is no forgiveness. No Jedi-killer deserves that – especially not a traitor.”
The Children of Coruscant. Most of the younglings and Padawans didn’t manage to get off Coruscant during the Purge, and so they ended up hiding out all over the city. Palpatine sent clones to find them and to kill them. The real tragedy is that this inspired a civilian witch hunt all over Coruscant, one that ended in the slaughter of hundreds of children, the majority of whom weren’t Jedi. Anakin was on Coruscant for a year after the Purge began, and he was a direct witness to at least one of the massacres.
Also, it’s Qui-Gon’s lightsaber he gives Obi-Wan.
“Anakin –”
“The name’s Starkiller,” Nakin said, very softly. “Nakin Starkiller. Anakin Skywalker died ten years ago on Coruscant.” He took his hand away, and Hellsbane caught the lightsaber before it could fall. “You’d better get off-planet before the Empire sends someone else to investigate the Dog’s disappearance,” he said in a normal tone. “We’ll take care of the Imps.”
And that’s what’s lost, right there. Anakin Skywalker as Jedi.
“Anakin –”
“Goodbye, Obi-Wan,” Nakin said, and turned away, going to Zsuzsi’s patrons.
“Don’t even think about it,” Zsuzsi said when Hellsbane took a step forward, raising the plasma rifle slightly. “We take care of our own here.”
You know, I’m kind of sad I never let Zsuzsi shoot anyone.
There was a pained look on the man’s face. “I can see that,” he said, and then he turned around and walked out of the cantina. “I’m sorry for the trouble,” he added before the door closed behind him.
OBI-WAN. BABY.
The end scene was the last scene I wrote, and I sat on the story for four months before writing it because I couldn’t figure out how to end the story. I’m glad I ended it like this, though; this was the only way it could end, because Anakin and Obi-Wan are never going to be what they once were, not ever again: too much time, too much damage.
I finally understand why writers wander over the Internet going, “No, you don’t understand, that’s not what I wrote” now, because everyone who read this went, “Oh, this is such a sad story” and I keep trailing around going, “Well, no, it’s not, actually…” because it’s about change and growing up and adapting. I mean, I guess it could be construed as sad because of the gap between Anakin and Obi-Wan, but I don’t think it is. But what do I know, I’m just the writer.
end
Only it’s not, because there are two sequels in the works, the bastards. And besides, it’s Star Wars, which is the most cyclical universe ever.