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bedlamsbardTitle: What is Lost
Fandom: Star Wars
Summary: You can't go home again. AU, ten years after RotS.
I love AUs. I mean, you can really tell when I’ve gotten into a fandom because I start AUing everything I can get my hands on; for Star Wars, the first story I ever wrote was an AU. I really am surprised that there aren’t more “Anakin doesn’t turn” stories out there and that of the ones there are, none of them have the Purge still happening almost exactly as it did in canon. Of course, the Lostverse Purge doesn’t go exactly as planned either, but more on that later.
This story didn’t have a title for the longest time. The working title was “Still Fighting It” – I had another SW story on my computer titled “What is Lost”, but I eventually co-opted the title from that story – which still doesn’t have a title, the bastard – and gave it to this story. “What is Lost” is from a Smashing Pumpkins song, but the version I have is a cover by Frida Snell. Now, the song – “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” – doesn’t really fit Lostverse Anakin, but I always think of it as my Vader!Anakin song. The title came from a line in the chorus: “Then someone will say what is lost can never be saved” because doesn’t that just sum up the Dark Side and the Jedi relationship thereof? Until RotJ, no lost Jedi has ever come back from the Dark Side. Lostverse Anakin hasn’t gone Dark Side, of course, but something is still lost.
Jocasta Nu. Shaak Ti. Cin Drallig. Jurokk. Four Jedi masters against ten thousand clones. It was a suicide mission.
When it comes to the various Jedi referenced in this story, Wookiepedia is my friend. All of them were canonically in the Temple at the time; they are, I believe, the only Jedi Masters specifically stated to be in the Temple at the time of Operation: Knightfall.
The Jedi had no choice.
They’re Jedi. They will fight, and they will die, and they will do it gladly so long as it serves a greater cause, and for them, there’s no cause greater than making sure their young – their future, as Cin Drallig says in a couple paragraphs – survive.
“Let me stay,” Anakin said desperately. “I’m a better fighter than any of you. I can buy Bene and the others time. You need me.”
Anakin hates running. Bene – another Jedi, a Padawan, who was canonically in the Temple at the time of the Purge. Vader killed her.
Drallig’s strong hand closed on his shoulder. “We need you alive, Skywalker. You and all the younglings, all the Padawans. You’re our future. Us, we’re old. We’re the past. Save them – take them somewhere safe, away from Coruscant, back to their families – and you save the Jedi. Do you understand me?”
I just realized that Drallig doesn’t bring up the fact that Anakin’s supposed to be the Chosen One, which is actually pretty damn smart of him, because if he did, Anakin would stay – would feel he had to, because he won’t let someone else be a sacrifice for his sake, not when so many other Jedi are dead already. But if he’s fighting for someone else, then it’s all right.
Anakin looked down at the elaborately tiled floor. “Yes,” he said, in a very small voice. “But –”
“Obi-Wan would want you alive, Anakin,” Shaak Ti said, voice as calm as if she was lecturing a classroom of younglings. “Always remember that.”
Guilt trip! Obi-Wan tends to make all of Anakin’s hard decisions for him, and the Jedi know that there’s no one Anakin knows as well or trusts as much as Obi-Wan, so of course they’re going to bring him up to get Anakin out of the Temple.
Nu swept into the Great Hall. “The Databanks have been wiped,” she said briskly, only a hint of pain in her librarian’s voice. “No Sith will ever have all the Jedi’s secrets. The Archives are locked – forever, if need be.”
Wah librarian’s pain. *weeps*
The four masters moved to arrange themselves in a straight line across the front of the Great Hall, lightsabers in their hands, but still unlit.
The thump of booted feet echoed through the Temple.
“They’re coming,” Jurokk said unnecessarily.
“So they are,” Ti observed calmly. “Anakin, the power, if you please. Then go. Don’t sacrifice yourself.”
Anakin raised his hand – his flesh hand, not his metal one. The lights flickered, dimmed, and went out, plunging them all into darkness. Not simply in the Great Hall, but all through the Temple. He’d done this once by accident when he was fourteen; now he did it on purpose.
I love the idea of Anakin having really, really bad control of the Force – and this tends to show up a lot in my SW fic – especially when he’s younger. I mean, poor Obi-Wan, having to deal with baby Anakin accidentally destroying all the power in the Jedi Temple and probably part of the neighborhood around the Temple too.
Night fell on the Jedi.
Not just literally, but figuratively as well: Anakin has turned the lights out, but the light has, literally, gone out. The Dark Side of the Force is the dominant power now; this is the end of the Jedi. Never again will they be as great as they once were; their day has ended.
Anakin backed away toward the back of the Hall, unlit lightsaber leaping to his hand. He head still hurt, less and less with every minute that passed; Jedi still fought and died on other planets, but there were fewer of them now. Now, the fight had come to Coruscant itself. To the Temple. To the very heart of the Jedi.
There’s a discarded scene from this story (well, there are a lot of discarded scenes, something like 8K worth) where Anakin feels the Jedi die as Order 66 goes into effect. Again, I’m playing off how strong he’s supposed to be in the Force, and how the Jedi are tied into the Force – Obi-Wan’s hit hard in ANH when Alderaan is destroyed, and those aren’t even Force sensitives, never mind the fact that Obi-Wan’s not as strong as Anakin. Order 66 nearly destroyed Anakin’s mind, because they’re all dying at once. Never mind the fact that canon has Sidious speaking to each clone commander personally; in the Lostverse it did go out as a mass order.
There is no emotion, there is peace.
The Jedi Code.
Ships were taking off from the Temple, filled to the brim with younglings and Padawans, piloted by knights and senior Padawans. Other, smaller groups were spreading through the city, looking for Jedi sympathizers, quick ways to get off the planet – somewhere to run to. Somewhere to hide. Anakin had to get to his own ship, his own younglings. He had to get off-planet. He couldn’t take his eyes off the four Jedi masters preparing to die in front of him.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
Of the bits of the code that are in here, this is the one that least fits what’s going on, but I couldn’t really leave it out.
The doors opened abruptly. Anakin saw the dark familiar shape of clone troopers there, lit by the lights of the city behind them.
One by one, four lightsabers sizzled into life. Four Jedi masters stood as one, faces lit by the ghostly glow of their blades.
“You shall not pass,” Jedi Master Shaak Ti said.
Shaak Ti as Gandalf?
There is no passion, there is serenity.
The sound of blasters was the clones’ only reply. Lightsabers moved only as blurs, but several bolts made it past. Anakin’s lightsaber sprang into life in his hand.
Hi, he’s Anakin Skywalker. He’s genetically unable not to fight. Luke is a genetic aberration. He must get it from Padmé.
“Skywalker!” Jurokk yelled, breaking the spell. “Run!”
Anakin ran.
Clones made it past the masters and followed him, out to the landing docks of the Temple. There were still younglings in the hall, gathered together under the tutelage of older Padawans.
No idea how many people there are in the Temple at any given time during the Clone Wars, but not enough to be evacuated via ship.
“Run!” Anakin yelled, and turned back. He could do what he’d said he would. He could buy them time to run and hide – to live. His lightsaber swept the air around him, parried back blaster bolts, sheered through clone armor and flesh and bone. He fell into battle trance, unaware of anything except the swing of his lightsaber.
Canonically, there is no such thing as “battle trance”, but Anakin is canonically bad at meditating. Fanon has him involved in moving meditation; I took that one step further and gave him battle trance. In retrospect, I’m unsure whether I should have kept that in or not, but it’s not really that big of a deal.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
A line of the Jedi Code that isn’t always used – whether it’s actually in the Code or not is debatable. I kept it, though.
When he came out of the trance, dead clones littered the floor around him. Not all the dead were clones, though – Anakin saw Padawans riddled with blaster holes, lightsabers still in their hands – even younglings, dead in the halls of the Temple. Some held their own lightsabers, others had snatched up their fallen comrades’. Some even held clone blasters.
And yes, a lot of the younglings still died. But not as many!
All of them were dead. Anakin stared at them blankly, lightsaber in his hand. Why hadn’t they run? He’d told them to run.
Anakin, honey, would you have run? Baby thinks that he’s the only one with the right to be a martyr.
More footsteps – the thud of booted feet in unison. The clone troopers had made it past the line of Jedi masters.
There were still younglings in his ship, waiting for him. Anakin Skywalker turned and ran.
One of my reviewers commented that the one completely unforgivable thing Anakin did in RotS was slaughter younglings, and that he did the opposite here. (Of course, I have to say, “One completely unforgivable thing? Hello, he killed Padmé, he tried to kill Obi-Wan, he betrayed the Jedi Order, he led directly to Mace Windu’s death, and oh, yeah! He turned to the Dark Side!” But I digress.)
There’s one line of the Code that isn’t in the opening flashback: “There is no death, there is the Force”, which is probably the best known line of the entire Code. It’s not there because this is Anakin, and no matter what, Anakin will never believe it, especially at this point in his life. I mean, hi, the guy’s, like, an hour from barely resisting losing everything to keep Padmé from dying.
Originally, this story was pretty much all flashbacks – it was Anakin and Obi-Wan meeting again after ten years and in between making out, telling each other what had passed. There were a lot of Anakin-in-Coruscant immediately pre-Purge flashbacks: his breakdown when he felt the death of the Jedi, Jocasta Nu coming to fetch him from the Council chambers as the 501st arrived – it eventually just got narrowed down to this one opening flashback.
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And enter Captain Exposition. I’m still not sure whether this worked or not, but I do admit that it does build up to a little of what Ixtapa is.
Of the planets that had been involved in the Ten Systems War some years earlier, Ixtapa had probably come through the best; only one major battle had been fought there and that had been on the small eastern continent, which boasted, rather than a population of respectable citizens, a population made up mostly of smugglers, bounty hunters, slavers, and fugitives from Imperial justice. Still, the Battle of Ixtapa hadn’t been so bad as such things went; it hadn’t devastated the planet, as some of the battles fought in-galaxy during the Clone Wars had, and the continent was still occupied – roughly the same members of the population that had been there before the battle and some time before the war as well.
Moment to point out that Ixtapa wasn’t part of the Republic and didn’t have anything the Seperatists wanted. It’s a planet a lot like Tatooine, only with a lot more geographic diversity. *grin* Not everything in the galaxy centers around the Republic or the Jedi; the Outer Rim planets had their wars and alliances as well, some of which overlapped with the Clone Wars.
The capital of the continent was Per Macchu; smuggler’s bay was the least of the names it had been called in its years as host to the worst of the Outer Rim. It served as refueling station to any number of semi-legal ships on their way through the Outer Rim, as well as boasting a booming market in slaves and other illegal goods: Imperial weaponry, drugs, and the odd pirated starship. As such planets went Ixtapa was as good as any of the others, and better in some cases: unlike Tatooine, it wasn’t ruled by the Hutts, and unlike Kyr, it didn’t have a civil war tearing up the planet. Distant from Mid Rim edge of the Outer Rim as it was, it also garnered little if any Imperial presence, not being an Empire planet or worth adding to the Empire’s small collection of Outer Rim planets. For anyone planning on avoiding the Empire, it was a good place to hide.
I worked very hard during this story to build to a sense of setting as character, trying to make sure that the only place this story as is could be set was Ixtapa and nowhere else.
The name “Ixtapa” came from a Mexican restaurant I drove by somewhere. Upon googling, it appears to be a city in Mexico. Per Macchu comes from the ancient Inca ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru.
The planet Kyr initially played a slightly larger part in the story, as the location of one of Obi-Wan’s flashbacks.
One of Per Macchu’s many cantinas, this one on the edge of the Traitor’s District downtown, was The Sand and Stone, run by a Ten Systems vet and Ixtapan native called Zsuzsi Dj’onz. She served any number of disreputable types, some more regularly than others, and one of these regulars actually lived in The Sand and Stone, renting a room above the cantina for almost as long as the business had been in Zsuzsi’s seven-fingered hands. He’d fought in the ending days of the Ten Systems War with her; although he hadn’t come to the Outer Rim until the last year of the war, she’d known him for a fellow war vet even before he’d picked up a blaster. Clone Wars, he’d told her later, and flashed a blinding grin, one that was tinged with more sorrow than he’d probably meant. With the fighting done he made his living the same way most of the Outer Rim did: hovering on the edge of the legal and sometimes outright illegal, though really, neither one existed in more than name out here. Unlike most of the other guns for hire in Per Macchu, though, Zsuzsi trusted him, despite – or maybe because of – the bitter twist to Nakin’s scarred face, the sense that he’d seen and done more than even she’d ever dreamed of – and all of it the right thing, or close enough to pass on the Rim. Honor was a rare quality out here, almost nonexistent, but he had more of it than any other being she’d ever met.
I love Zsuzsi’s name. It cracks me up everytime, because I took what’s more or less the equivalent of Jane Doe and turned into something alien by adding some extra letters and apostrophes. Susie Jones = Zsuzsi Dj’onz.
I also hate those last two lines, by the way, because I told rather than showed and it pisses me off. Plus, there’s this whole thing about the Jedi not having any honor; they have the Force instead. On the other hand, Anakin = rebel.
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Most of this story is not told from Anakin or Obi-Wan’s POV; I wanted to look at the two of them as changed, and it’s hard to do that from inside their own heads. So, in accordance with their existence as movie characters, we get outside POVs – the audience, so to speak. Zsuzsi is the most prominent of these.
“Get your damn feet off my table, Starkiller,” Zsuzsi snapped, flicking a raggedy towel at his boots. Nakin took them down, grinning lazily.
Starkiller was Lucas’s original surname for Luke, way back when, and Nakin is Anakin with the A removed. It’s pronounced like “Nathan”, only with a hard “k” sound rather than the “th.”
“And here I thought you loved me, Dj’onz,” he said amiably, picking up his glass of tsa-tsa juice and swirling it around. When he knocked it back, it stained his teeth the crimson red of bright blood.
Tsa-tsa juice – worldbuilding.
“I love your credits,” Zsuzsi informed him, sweeping the towel over the spot on the table where his boots had been resting. “The rest of you I can take or leave. Especially your dirt.”
Nakin squinted at the bottom of his boots. “This isn’t dirt,” he said indignantly. “This is sand.” He squinted some more. “From Chiang, probably,” he added. “Last planet I went to where the port was in a desert.” He rolled his shoulders back and Zsuzsi winced at the pops she heard.
“Not that I care or anything, but you oughta take better care of yourself. Keep the rest of your body from going the way of that pretty face of yours.”
Nakin ran a hand reflexively over the ruined skin of his face. “I dive out one window –”
“One window that’s glass, not transparisteel, and that stuff shatters. And how many feet up did you say it was?”
Anakin lives an exciting life! Also, I spend most of the description in this story talking about Anakin and Obi-Wan’s scars – changes again, another war, another time. Plus, I just really like the idea of Anakin jumping out of a window. I didn’t realize at the time that Obi-Wan had done exactly that in AotC.
“Too many,” he said shortly, still touching the fine tracery of scars over his face. He took his hand away and picked up the glass again, frowning at the remaining skin of juice on the bottom of it. “When’s the next shipment of tsa-tsa coming in? It’s had to have been at least three months since the Duurs were here last.”
Tsa-tsa was native to the western coast of the north-northeastern continent and, despite numerous attempts to grow it elsewhere, only grew to its natural strength in its native environment. Half a dozen times a standard year the migratory Duur traders came through Per Macchu with their shiploads of goods from all across the planet, and for the week or so they stayed the Mil Maiaya market never closed, even after Ixtapa’s twin suns went down.
More worldbuilding – this story is what got me hardcore into writing sci-fi. I’m not sure why I gave Ixtapa twin suns; it just seemed like another touch of the exotic. Does call up images of Tatooine, though.
Zsuzsi shrugged, the old wound in her shoulder aching with the movement. Storm coming in, maybe. She glanced out the window at the pale sky, discerning the dark shape of clouds in the distance, closing in from the mountain on the savannah. “Nothing’s going to be able to land in a storm,” she said with feeling; the army’d had to land on the savannah in a storm once, years ago. They’d lost more ships than they’d landed.
Zsuzsi, like Anakin, like most of the characters, is a war veteran. She thinks that way.
Nakin stood up and came over. “Nothing I like better than a little bit of hell on my front porch,” he said dryly. “Never thought I’d see anything worse than a Tatooine sandstorm till I came here, but hey, what do you know. Nothing natural, anyway,” he added, shadow on his face for a moment before he shook it away. He picked up a piece of fruit from the bowl on the table and bit into it, eyes on the coming storm. It’d be here by the evening, maybe; the next morning at the latest. On the savannah you could forecast the weather days in advance.
All through writing this, I kept forgetting about the damn storm and having to write lines in about it. I think I should have done more with the storm as metaphor and motif.
The door of the cantina banged open and Zsuzsi turned, plastering a smile onto her face. “Hey,” she said cheerfully. “What can I do for you?”
The newcomer walked like he had a plasma rifle up his ass, Zsuzsi noted silently, and he was packing. She could see the holster beneath the line of his jacket. “I was told I could find a Nakin Starkiller here?” he said, looking at the almost empty room dubiously. Most of Zsuzsi’s regulars were out so late in the morning, and Nakin was the only other one there, due to his abnormal sleep habits.
Anakin’s a bacheolor, what do you expect?
She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “That’s him. Try not to piss him off; he hasn’t finished paying off the last damage he did to the place yet. You planning to order something while you breathe my air?”
I have the idea that Anakin has the reputation of being this trouble-maker from the depths of hell. Plus, as mentioned later, he basically gets in barfights for extra cash; that’s gotta do hell to Zsuzsi’s joint.
He flicked an eye at the menu on the edge of the bar, looking vaguely bewildered by the no doubt unfamiliar list of foods and drinks. “Something to drink,” he said, and flipped a couple of credits over to her.
Zsuzsi caught them in the air. “Coming right up,” she said.
She caught the murmur of their conversation as she dug around in the cooler, coming up with a jug of cariik juice and a clean glass along with a few rare ice cubes. Nakin was threatening him, as was to be expected. He made a career out of threatening people, and somehow managed not to piss them off permanently when he did so.
“Because,” he was saying, a little of his Tatooine drawl in his voice now, something Zsuzsi hadn’t heard until years after they’d met, “I’m just that good.”
We don’t really see it in canon, but I like to think that each planet has its own peculiar accent – more and more obvious the farther out you get from the Core, since that’s presumably the purest form of Basic. The Jedi probably speak pure Basic with very little accent – well, to them it’s no accent; once they’re out on the Rim it’s immediately obvious where they’re from. Anakin has some accent because he’s from Tatooine, but has stifled it a lot; my inclination is that he reverted back to his Tatooine accent the longer he was out on the Rim. A good way to hide.
“He is, too,” Zsuzsi said, sliding the stranger’s drink over to him. “No one better. Is he trying to hire you for smuggling or mechanics?” she asked Nakin.
Originally, Traynt was hiring Anakin for smuggling. Originally, Anakin was a smuggler with a sideline in mechanics; here he’s turned into a mechanic with a sideline in smuggling.
“The latter,” Nakin drawled. “We got a deal?” That was to the stranger, who’d picked up his glass and was sipping it, looking pleased.
“Yeah,” he said. “Can you come now?”
“Sure,” Nakin said. He snatched a cariik from the bowl in front of him as he stood, moving toward the stairs. “Just let me grab my kit and I’ll be right out.”
Zsuzsi rested her hip against the side of the booth. “So,” she said, tray tucked under her arm, “you from off-planet?”
“Yeah,” the stranger said. He held out a hand toward her. “Jer Traynt. Nice to meet you.”
“Zsuzsi Dj’onz,” she replied, shaking his hand with her free one. “You’re not from the Outer Rim, are you?”
“Alderaan,” Nakin said from the stairs. “Mountain district, if I’m not mistaken. That right, Lieutenant Traynt?”
More accents. I figure the Jedi are really good at knowing where people come from just based on where they speak. If Anakin had spent a lot of time on Alderaan, he’d probably be able to pick out the exact village Traynt had come from, too. (Just about anywhere on Tatooine or Ixtapa he could do. Probably Coruscant, too, but with most of the other well-known planets he’d be limited to major cities, if that. Rather like someone from the West Coast of the USA being able to differentiate a New York accent from a Boston accent.)
Traynt raised his head, looking startled. “How did you know?”
“I spent some time in the Core when I was a kid,” Nakin said casually. “I can tell an Alderaan accent when I hear one. And an Imperial officer.” He slung his bag over his shoulder, having shrugged his jacket on sometime between going upstairs and coming back down. “Let’s go.”
Zsuzsi blinked once. “You’re lucky he’s not in a bad mood,” she told Traynt, keeping the surprise out of her voice. Off-worlders didn’t need to know Ixtapan secrets, even if Nakin wasn’t Ixtapan by birth. “Usually he can’t shut up about how much he hates the Empire.”
First mention of the fact that Anakin’s considered an adoptive Ixtapan. Hey, he fought and bled and killed and nearly died for them in the Ten Systems War and now he lives on the planet; it’s the least they can do.
His face carefully neutral, Traynt drained the last of his drink and stood up. “What was a Rimmer doing in the Core?”
I don’t think canon ever calls them “Rimmers”, but it’s the obvious choice. New Englanders, Southerners, Mid-Westerners, etc. – it seems likely that the SW galaxy would have the same kind of generalized term for someone from a certain section of the galaxy, especially as it is sectionalized.
“Trust me when I say you don’t want to know.” He nodded at Zsuzsi. “See you, Zsuz. Keep someone for me to beat up, yeah?”
“Don’t stay out too late,” she shot back. “Fight night tonight.”
Originally, this exchange was “Keep some food warm for me,” and I couldn’t come up with a really cutting rejoinder. The fight night showed up later, and I went back and changed it so it shows up here.
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“Nice,” Nakin said brightly, slipping a hand along the starcruiser’s sleek side. “Modified Nubian, right? I’ve done some hyperdrive work with these before – how long has this one been battle-fit? The guns might be misbalancing it, which’ll throw off the hyperdrive depending on how much the original design of the ship was changed –”
None of what Wookiepedia said about hyperdrives made sense to me, so I just made shit up. And it’s a Nubian because, well, why not? We’ve seen them before in canon, and they’re sleek, fast ships – perfect for an Imperial forerunner.
Traynt and the first lieutenant, Perrik, shared looks of mutual confusion. “The Nubians were commissioned about three years ago,” Perrik said. “The Erebus has been out for about a year now – in-Core work; it’s never been farther out than Naboo in the Mid Rim, where the original modifications were done.”
Erebus = darkness. Part of Hades, in Greek mythology, the place where the dead passed immediately after dying.
“That’d do it,” Nakin said absently, eyes and hands still on the ship. “Naboo hyperdrives are designed to work with the shape of the ship itself – there’s enough leeway for small changes, but big changes will definitely throw off the ‘drive, especially in conjunction with a long jump. If that’s what it is, I can fix it, but I’ll have to completely reconfigure the hyperdrive.”
“How long?” Perrik asked crisply.
“Not really sure,” Nakin said. “I’ve never done this before. Shouldn’t be too hard, though. I can fix anything.” He leaned down to pick up his toolkit, the old, soft leather automatically curving into the palm of his hand. “Especially with the Empire paying by the hour.”
Anakin has settled down some. Otherwise he’d be killing them, not milking them for all they’re worth. Hey, he’s human, he just wants to turn a profit like any other respectable businessman.
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“Is it what you thought it was?” Traynt asked when Starkiller stepped into the bridge, the doors sliding open silently and quickly for him.
“Pretty sure it is, yeah,” Starkiller said, running a hand over his short-clipped blond hair. He’d shed his leather jacket somewhere along the way and was standing in just his shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, gun belt slung low on his hips. He swung a hydrogrip idly back and forth from his other hand.
Guh. The image this story started with was basically this – Anakin with short hair and holstered blasters. I am a very shallow person.
Traynt turned toward him, back to the databank console. “You can fix it?”
“Sure,” Starkiller said, spinning the hydrogrip up and around his wrist. “I need the schematics for the ship, though. The originals and the modified ones.”
“Of course.” Traynt turned back to the console, pulling up the schematics for the ship. “I’d put them on a chip, but that’s against regulations, so –”
“Never mind that,” Starkiller said, taking his words as an invitation and coming forward to lean over Traynt’s shoulder. “I’ve got a good memory.”
Traynt pushed away from the control board, stepping up towards the holomap on the wall. Imperial ships moved across the galaxy, blinking in and out of hyperspace; the Erebus itself was stationary in the dot labeled Ixtapa. He pressed the tip of one gloved finger to it, watching the planet expand to the size of a fist and a scrolling list of its traits appear in midair next to it, the rest of the map shrinking down to a small spiral near the corner of the ceiling.
I love this map. I use a variant of it in every sci-fi story I write, because it’s just so cool.
…seven continents, five habitable by standard Core humans, including Luminae (also known as the northern continent by the natives), Selket (the northeastern continent), Merapesh (the eastern continent), Xelxerah (the southern continent), and Kimmeriaa (the north-northeastern continent).
They were on Merapesh. Traynt called up the information on it.
…capital city is Per Macchu, a small trading city on the edge of the Keklaarah savannah, base for a number of smuggling operations. Likely hideout for Jedi, despite the natives’ animosity for both the Old Republic and the Empire –
Exposition, exposition.
Traynt stopped reading and turned, feeling eyes on his back. Starkiller was still bent over the console, but there was something –
“You know, I’ve never really seen a gun belt on a mechanic before,” he said casually.
Which isn’t the issue, of course; the issue is that he’s a Jedi hunter – not one of the Emperor’s Hands, but he can recognize a lightsaber when he sees one.
Starkiller twisted around slowly, straightening. “Clearly you haven’t been on the Outer Rim very long. Just wait until you see what the whores wear.”
Which raises the question of, of course, what do the whores wear? I’m sure Anakin knows for one twisted reason or another.
“No, I don’t think that’s what it is.” He leaned forward, one hand on his blaster, unbuckling the strap of the holster, the other behind him, ready to sound an alarm that would alert the rest of the ship. “Because, you see, I’ve never seen a mechanic with a lightsaber.”
“Payment for a job,” Starkiller said easily. His hands were open and empty in front of him; he’d put the hydrogrip down on the edge of the console.
“I don’t think so.”
“Good guess.” All of a sudden Starkiller was in front of him, his fist flying forward into Traynt’s face. Bone didn’t shatter when he connected, but it was enough to send Traynt flying backward into the wall, crumpling down onto the floor.
Starkiller leaned over him, eyes narrowed on concentration. He raised his hands to either side of Traynt’s face. “You don’t remember anything,” he said, voice soft and clear and sure, with the crispness of Core World syllables in it now. “You tripped and fell.”
Here we go back to accents – the Jedi of course have deep Core accents, so whenever Anakin’s trying to do something really Jedi-like he’s automatically going to revert back to what he knows.
“I don’t remember anything,” Traynt repeated obediently, murkiness behind his eyes. “I tripped and fell.”
Starkiller leaned over him, face open and honest. “You all right, Lieutenant?” he said. “You took a bad fall.”
Traynt ran a hand over the back of his head, feeling blood on his fingers where he’d hit the wall. “Mmm,” he said. “I should probably –”
“If you have a medic, this would probably be a good time to call him.” Starkiller said.
“You may have a –” Traynt blinked. He remembered – he didn’t. He did. A metal cylinder on Starkiller’s hip – no, two of them, hanging off his gun belt where they’d normally be covered by the fall of his jacket. Abruptly, he snaked an arm around Starkiller’s waist to touch one.
I always figured Anakin is really, really bad at mindtricking people, because it’s fairly subtle work and Anakin is bad at subtle. He’s better now than he was ten years previous, but most of the time it still comes back to bite him in the ass.
“Hiding something?”
Starkiller jerked back. “Like I told you,” he said carefully, “it was payment for a job. Guy’s starfighter was trashed.”
“I don’t think so,” Traynt said, and hit the alarm.
Starkiller was on his feet in less than a heartbeat, his booted foot coming around to hit Traynt hard in the jaw. When Traynt passed out, he was already spinning his blasters out of their holsters.
Not the lightsabers.
Not because he doesn’t want to pretend he’s not a Jedi – hello, he’s carrying two lightsabers – but because he doesn’t consider himself a Jedi anymore.
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Perrik came running at the sound of the alarm, blaster out of its holster and clone troopers flurrying around him. Most of them were carrying tranq guns rather than blasters; they’d come to Ixtapa prepared to neutralize a Jedi, not kill one. It would certainly be enough to take down one mechanic, even a well-armed one.
Naïve idiots.
At least that’s what he was thinking until Nakin Starkiller leapt down out of the starcruiser, blasters in each hand. Perrik turned his charge into a duck and roll out of range, blaster coming up as Starkiller kicked one clone in the face and shot two more, not even glancing to either side as his arms shot straight out and then forward again, taking two more clones with dead center shots in their foreheads. The slower clones, the ones who’d been on guard around the hangar were still running in; they stopped by the doors to aim more carefully.
The first handful of tranq darts went awry. Starkiller batted them out of the air or ducked them or both; Perrik was fairly certain he’d only touched ground to launch himself upward again. Carefully, Perrik sighted down his arm, knowing that all of Starkiller’s attention had to be on the clones, and fired.
Starkiller’s spin kick turned into a controlled fall. He hit the ground and came up again, jamming the butt-end of one of his blasters into the space between helmet and armor of a clone coming up behind him and firing in the same motion. One tranq dark took him in the neck and he spared a moment a moment to yank it out with two fingers, but the next few sprayed him across the front and he didn’t bother taking those out, just went on fighting, kicking and punching and firing his blasters.
I love hand-to-hand fighting. We don’t see Anakin do as much of it as Obi-Wan does – Obi-Wan is better at it, and Anakin’s better with a lightsaber – but within three years after the Purge began he stopped using a lightsaber for anything except an emergency and he’s a Jedi; he’s trained to be deadly with anything, even if all he has is his body.
Perrik stood up. “Isn’t this stuff supposed act faster?” he demanded of the third lieutenant, Cafferti, who’d come in with the clones out back. He was holding a plasma rifle in one hand
“Thirty seconds,” Cafferti said.
“It’s been two minutes and he hasn’t blinked,” Perrik snapped as Starkiller’s heel sent a clone flying backwards into two more. “We don’t have enough clones to take this kind of losses, not until Lady Yulalli arrives. Take –”
First mention of the Emperor’s Dog, Sha’re Yulalli. And I think Anakin is using the Force unconsciously to keep the tranquilizers out of his system, but his attention is mostly fixated elsewhere.
Starkiller went down. It was abrupt, with no buildup, and Perrik hadn’t seen any of the clones’ blows connect recently, so the drugs must have finally worked their way into his system, at three times the length it should have taken. A Jedi, maybe? But not Hellsbane; Traynt would have recognized him. Perrik stepped over to Starkiller as one of the clones dropped to his knees to tug the blasters out of his hands and put binders on his wrists and saw the lightsabers still clipped to his belt. He hadn’t gone for them, and every Jedi or Jedi trainee Perrik had ever met had gone down fighting with a lightsaber in their hand. Not a Jedi, just a thief.
Again, I repeat: naïve idiots. But they do have a point, because no ordinary Jedi would dream of going into a fight without a lightsaber.
“Go find Lieutenant Traynt,” he said to Cafferti, who’d stepped up behind him, young face painfully earnest. “See him to a medic if he needs it.”
“Yes, sir!” Cafferti said, and didn’t bother saluting, just dashed up the ramp into the Erebus.
Perrik squatted down next to Starkiller’s limp body, taking the mechanic’s chin in hand. He hadn’t paid much attention to him when Traynt had brought him in earlier, just registered him as a possible, but improbable, threat and hoped that he’d fix the Erebus before the Dog arrived.
There were scars on Starkiller’s face, a faint spider web of white lines some years old, another, older scar cutting against his right eye, more scars scattered around his mouth and across the curve of his cheek. Perrik cocked his head to one side, trying to remember if he’d seen the face on the Imperial broadsheets or not, and couldn’t. He’d have Cafferti run a picture through the databanks for a match to be sure, but he really doubted they’d turn up something. A Jedi would have gone for his lightsaber, and he wouldn’t have carried two. Perrik let go of Starkiller and unclipped the lightsabers, weighing them in the palm of his hand.
Me: scars, accents, and hand-to-hand fighting. And Perrik really doesn’t know the Jedi if he doesn’t think some of them don’t carry two lightsabers.
“Take him inside,” he said, nodding towards the cruiser. “Make sure he’s tied down securely. I want to interrogate him when he wakes up.”
In the original draft – or one of the original drafts, rather – we actually saw the interrogation scene, and I’m rather sad it was cut because Anakin sat around being hardass and awesome. Plus, you know, the Imps came at him with drugs.
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Enter Obi-Wan.
“Lieutenant,” Hellsbane said without looking up or waiting for Traynt to sit down. “I was wondering when you’d come calling.”
“General Hellsbane,” Traynt returned, sliding into the seat across from him. “We’ve been looking for you a long time.”
“You can keep looking a little longer,” Hellsbane said sedately. “You’re a bit out of your jurisdiction, Lieutenant.”
“Not particularly. The Ixtapa System would be a good addition to the Empire.”
“The Ixtapa System is allied with the rest of the Ten Systems. Invade one, and you’ll have to fight the others as well.” He still hadn’t looked up.
“The Empire’s fought worse odds.”
“The Grand Army, you mean. I remember. Did you want something?”
Of course he remembers, considering the fact that he was the one fighting.
Traynt unclipped Starkiller’s lightsaber from his belt and put it down on the table between them. “A message,” he said, trying to ignore the lingering headache Starkiller’s attack had left him with. Bloody bastard.
I worked really hard to humanize the Imperial officers, rather than just villainizing them into caricatures.
Hellsbane’s eyes flickered upwards, and he put the spoon down, pushing the bowl aside. “Well, Lieutenant,” he said, “I suppose you do have my attention after all.” His gaze sharpened suddenly and he snapped out one hand. Traynt reached for the lightsaber, but too late; he only touched empty wood and Hellsbane was turning it over in his hands. “Be glad you weren’t holding it,” he said without looking up. “What is this? Another one of Palpatine’s tricks, to hand me my old apprentice’s lightsaber and expect me to come running, as if I didn’t know that he died that night in the Temple with the rest of the Jedi? What kind of fool do you take me for?”
OBI-WAN. BABY. I think Palpatine’s just about going crazy trying to get Obi-Wan under control and it’s not working, never has worked, but it’s had the adverse effect of making Obi-Wan completely fucking paranoid.
Traynt blinked at him, startled out of his headache. “Your apprentice? This was taken off an Ixtapan mechanic just this afternoon and he was alive when I left him.”
Hellsbane’s head jerked up. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not. Aren’t you supposed to know if I’m telling the truth? Some kind of Jedi mindtrick?” Pressing his luck, probably, and with Ben Hellsbane of all people - a Jedi who had evaded the Empire for ten years, and caused as much trouble as any ten other Jedi. He’d been captured three times and the captain who’d captured him that third time and confidently assumed that he’d be the one to keep Hellsbane in custody – he’d next been seen on the floor of his starcruiser with a lightsaber wound through his chest. Hellsbane hadn’t reappeared for another six months when he’d hijacked an Imperial prison transport and vanished with it into the Outer Rim.
Because Obi-Wan is a rockstar, man. And I think Obi-Wan gets captured specifically so he can free other Imperial prisoners – escaped Jedi, captured rebels, even murderers and thieves and smugglers, just so he can cause the Empire lots and lots of trouble.
Ben Hellsbane is one of those names I’m not entirely certain about – Ben is canon, obviously (Ben Kenobi in ANH), and Hellsbane is a name I’m pretty sure Obi-Wan didn’t pick himself, but which kind of just got tagged onto him by someone he rescued or helped or something. It’s a little too flashy to be straight Obi-Wan.
Hellsbane stared at him for a long moment, the silence between them like a lit lightsaber on the table. “You are telling the truth,” he said finally, tone grudging. “And I suppose you got those bruises on your face at the same time.”
Traynt put his hands flat on the table in order to avoid touching his much-abused jaw. Starkiller had a hell of a right hook. “Come peacefully and I’ll treat you as befits your rank,” he said, uncomfortably aware that it came out more like a suggestion than an order.
“No guards?” Hellsbane said, cocking his head to one side. “No binders, no Force-inhibitors, a fair trial in front of the Imperial Senate?”
“I’m not authorized to offer that,” Traynt admitted.
Because Traynt’s not an idiot, either. Offer that to Obi-Wan and he’ll be out in five minutes flat. Of course, Obi-Wan’s not stupid enough to believe him.
“Good. I wouldn’t have believed you if you said you were.” His handsome face was characteristically opaque, blue eyes shuttered. “So really, Lieutenant, what incentive do you offer me to come in?”
“None, I suppose,” Traynt said, watching as Hellsbane stood up to leave, hooking Starkiller’s lightsaber on his belt and tossing a few credits on the table. “But I can tell you that the mechanic we took that lightsaber off of is still alive and in Imperial custody. We’re running his face against the Imperial databanks right now.”
Hi, excellent way to get Obi-Wan’s attention. Everyone knows he’ll do anything for Anakin, even if they don’t know they’re Obi-Wan and Anakin.
Hellsbane froze with his back to Traynt. “Why should I care?”
“General, everyone in the galaxy knows you’ll come running at the faintest hint of a Jedi in trouble. I hardly think you need more than that trinket on your hip as a good excuse,” Traynt said, more calmly than he felt, leaning back in his seat with his hand on his holstered blaster. “Besides,” he added, watching the muscles in Hellsbane’s back tense, “you said he was your apprentice.”
“I also said he was dead,” Hellsbane said shortly. “Good day, Lieutenant.” He vanished out the door.
Traynt stood up, pulling his jacket up over his blaster, though he really doubted it would garner too much attention in this neighborhood, and nodded to the Mirkannan waitress as she came to clear the table off, humming to herself and clicking her pinchers. He remained standing for a minute, eyes on the windows at the front of the diner, then he followed Hellsbane out the door.
See me make up alien races that aren’t Star Wars canon. Mirkannans are native to Ixtapa.
Perrik was standing on the other side of the street, leaning against the shop and raising a cigarette to his lips. He dropped it when he saw Traynt, crushing it beneath the heel of his boot as he crossed the street. “Where is he?”
“He just walked out,” Traynt said, startled. “Don’t you –”
“The last person to walk out was a woman, an Ixtapan,” Perrik said. “Hellsbane hasn’t –” They both turned to stare up the street.
“I will be damned,” Traynt said. “Bloody Jedi and their damn mindtricks.”
Jedi mind skills for the win! I have no idea if the Jedi can actually use the Force to influence what someone else may see, or to camouflage themselves, but they can in the Lostverse, so they do. Actually, I think Obi-Wan can and Anakin can’t, because he doesn’t have the control, poor baby. Or he just doesn’t care; that one may be more likely.
My original plan – and this is pretty much the first scene I ever wrote for this story – was that Obi-Wan and Anakin were both taken captive by the Jedi, and Anakin broke them out. Then I changed that scene, and Anakin was taken captive first and Obi-Wan was arrested later, and when the Imps escorted Obi-Wan back to the hangar where Anakin was being kept, they found everyone dead and Anakin going psycho on their asses. Then I realized that Obi-Wan is way too smart to get arrested by the Imps if he doesn’t have to be – and he can trust Anakin to break out of jail all on his own – so that scene got dropped. Still makes me sad, though, sometimes.
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Continue on to part two
Fandom: Star Wars
Summary: You can't go home again. AU, ten years after RotS.
I love AUs. I mean, you can really tell when I’ve gotten into a fandom because I start AUing everything I can get my hands on; for Star Wars, the first story I ever wrote was an AU. I really am surprised that there aren’t more “Anakin doesn’t turn” stories out there and that of the ones there are, none of them have the Purge still happening almost exactly as it did in canon. Of course, the Lostverse Purge doesn’t go exactly as planned either, but more on that later.
This story didn’t have a title for the longest time. The working title was “Still Fighting It” – I had another SW story on my computer titled “What is Lost”, but I eventually co-opted the title from that story – which still doesn’t have a title, the bastard – and gave it to this story. “What is Lost” is from a Smashing Pumpkins song, but the version I have is a cover by Frida Snell. Now, the song – “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” – doesn’t really fit Lostverse Anakin, but I always think of it as my Vader!Anakin song. The title came from a line in the chorus: “Then someone will say what is lost can never be saved” because doesn’t that just sum up the Dark Side and the Jedi relationship thereof? Until RotJ, no lost Jedi has ever come back from the Dark Side. Lostverse Anakin hasn’t gone Dark Side, of course, but something is still lost.
Jocasta Nu. Shaak Ti. Cin Drallig. Jurokk. Four Jedi masters against ten thousand clones. It was a suicide mission.
When it comes to the various Jedi referenced in this story, Wookiepedia is my friend. All of them were canonically in the Temple at the time; they are, I believe, the only Jedi Masters specifically stated to be in the Temple at the time of Operation: Knightfall.
The Jedi had no choice.
They’re Jedi. They will fight, and they will die, and they will do it gladly so long as it serves a greater cause, and for them, there’s no cause greater than making sure their young – their future, as Cin Drallig says in a couple paragraphs – survive.
“Let me stay,” Anakin said desperately. “I’m a better fighter than any of you. I can buy Bene and the others time. You need me.”
Anakin hates running. Bene – another Jedi, a Padawan, who was canonically in the Temple at the time of the Purge. Vader killed her.
Drallig’s strong hand closed on his shoulder. “We need you alive, Skywalker. You and all the younglings, all the Padawans. You’re our future. Us, we’re old. We’re the past. Save them – take them somewhere safe, away from Coruscant, back to their families – and you save the Jedi. Do you understand me?”
I just realized that Drallig doesn’t bring up the fact that Anakin’s supposed to be the Chosen One, which is actually pretty damn smart of him, because if he did, Anakin would stay – would feel he had to, because he won’t let someone else be a sacrifice for his sake, not when so many other Jedi are dead already. But if he’s fighting for someone else, then it’s all right.
Anakin looked down at the elaborately tiled floor. “Yes,” he said, in a very small voice. “But –”
“Obi-Wan would want you alive, Anakin,” Shaak Ti said, voice as calm as if she was lecturing a classroom of younglings. “Always remember that.”
Guilt trip! Obi-Wan tends to make all of Anakin’s hard decisions for him, and the Jedi know that there’s no one Anakin knows as well or trusts as much as Obi-Wan, so of course they’re going to bring him up to get Anakin out of the Temple.
Nu swept into the Great Hall. “The Databanks have been wiped,” she said briskly, only a hint of pain in her librarian’s voice. “No Sith will ever have all the Jedi’s secrets. The Archives are locked – forever, if need be.”
Wah librarian’s pain. *weeps*
The four masters moved to arrange themselves in a straight line across the front of the Great Hall, lightsabers in their hands, but still unlit.
The thump of booted feet echoed through the Temple.
“They’re coming,” Jurokk said unnecessarily.
“So they are,” Ti observed calmly. “Anakin, the power, if you please. Then go. Don’t sacrifice yourself.”
Anakin raised his hand – his flesh hand, not his metal one. The lights flickered, dimmed, and went out, plunging them all into darkness. Not simply in the Great Hall, but all through the Temple. He’d done this once by accident when he was fourteen; now he did it on purpose.
I love the idea of Anakin having really, really bad control of the Force – and this tends to show up a lot in my SW fic – especially when he’s younger. I mean, poor Obi-Wan, having to deal with baby Anakin accidentally destroying all the power in the Jedi Temple and probably part of the neighborhood around the Temple too.
Night fell on the Jedi.
Not just literally, but figuratively as well: Anakin has turned the lights out, but the light has, literally, gone out. The Dark Side of the Force is the dominant power now; this is the end of the Jedi. Never again will they be as great as they once were; their day has ended.
Anakin backed away toward the back of the Hall, unlit lightsaber leaping to his hand. He head still hurt, less and less with every minute that passed; Jedi still fought and died on other planets, but there were fewer of them now. Now, the fight had come to Coruscant itself. To the Temple. To the very heart of the Jedi.
There’s a discarded scene from this story (well, there are a lot of discarded scenes, something like 8K worth) where Anakin feels the Jedi die as Order 66 goes into effect. Again, I’m playing off how strong he’s supposed to be in the Force, and how the Jedi are tied into the Force – Obi-Wan’s hit hard in ANH when Alderaan is destroyed, and those aren’t even Force sensitives, never mind the fact that Obi-Wan’s not as strong as Anakin. Order 66 nearly destroyed Anakin’s mind, because they’re all dying at once. Never mind the fact that canon has Sidious speaking to each clone commander personally; in the Lostverse it did go out as a mass order.
There is no emotion, there is peace.
The Jedi Code.
Ships were taking off from the Temple, filled to the brim with younglings and Padawans, piloted by knights and senior Padawans. Other, smaller groups were spreading through the city, looking for Jedi sympathizers, quick ways to get off the planet – somewhere to run to. Somewhere to hide. Anakin had to get to his own ship, his own younglings. He had to get off-planet. He couldn’t take his eyes off the four Jedi masters preparing to die in front of him.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
Of the bits of the code that are in here, this is the one that least fits what’s going on, but I couldn’t really leave it out.
The doors opened abruptly. Anakin saw the dark familiar shape of clone troopers there, lit by the lights of the city behind them.
One by one, four lightsabers sizzled into life. Four Jedi masters stood as one, faces lit by the ghostly glow of their blades.
“You shall not pass,” Jedi Master Shaak Ti said.
Shaak Ti as Gandalf?
There is no passion, there is serenity.
The sound of blasters was the clones’ only reply. Lightsabers moved only as blurs, but several bolts made it past. Anakin’s lightsaber sprang into life in his hand.
Hi, he’s Anakin Skywalker. He’s genetically unable not to fight. Luke is a genetic aberration. He must get it from Padmé.
“Skywalker!” Jurokk yelled, breaking the spell. “Run!”
Anakin ran.
Clones made it past the masters and followed him, out to the landing docks of the Temple. There were still younglings in the hall, gathered together under the tutelage of older Padawans.
No idea how many people there are in the Temple at any given time during the Clone Wars, but not enough to be evacuated via ship.
“Run!” Anakin yelled, and turned back. He could do what he’d said he would. He could buy them time to run and hide – to live. His lightsaber swept the air around him, parried back blaster bolts, sheered through clone armor and flesh and bone. He fell into battle trance, unaware of anything except the swing of his lightsaber.
Canonically, there is no such thing as “battle trance”, but Anakin is canonically bad at meditating. Fanon has him involved in moving meditation; I took that one step further and gave him battle trance. In retrospect, I’m unsure whether I should have kept that in or not, but it’s not really that big of a deal.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
A line of the Jedi Code that isn’t always used – whether it’s actually in the Code or not is debatable. I kept it, though.
When he came out of the trance, dead clones littered the floor around him. Not all the dead were clones, though – Anakin saw Padawans riddled with blaster holes, lightsabers still in their hands – even younglings, dead in the halls of the Temple. Some held their own lightsabers, others had snatched up their fallen comrades’. Some even held clone blasters.
And yes, a lot of the younglings still died. But not as many!
All of them were dead. Anakin stared at them blankly, lightsaber in his hand. Why hadn’t they run? He’d told them to run.
Anakin, honey, would you have run? Baby thinks that he’s the only one with the right to be a martyr.
More footsteps – the thud of booted feet in unison. The clone troopers had made it past the line of Jedi masters.
There were still younglings in his ship, waiting for him. Anakin Skywalker turned and ran.
One of my reviewers commented that the one completely unforgivable thing Anakin did in RotS was slaughter younglings, and that he did the opposite here. (Of course, I have to say, “One completely unforgivable thing? Hello, he killed Padmé, he tried to kill Obi-Wan, he betrayed the Jedi Order, he led directly to Mace Windu’s death, and oh, yeah! He turned to the Dark Side!” But I digress.)
There’s one line of the Code that isn’t in the opening flashback: “There is no death, there is the Force”, which is probably the best known line of the entire Code. It’s not there because this is Anakin, and no matter what, Anakin will never believe it, especially at this point in his life. I mean, hi, the guy’s, like, an hour from barely resisting losing everything to keep Padmé from dying.
Originally, this story was pretty much all flashbacks – it was Anakin and Obi-Wan meeting again after ten years and in between making out, telling each other what had passed. There were a lot of Anakin-in-Coruscant immediately pre-Purge flashbacks: his breakdown when he felt the death of the Jedi, Jocasta Nu coming to fetch him from the Council chambers as the 501st arrived – it eventually just got narrowed down to this one opening flashback.
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And enter Captain Exposition. I’m still not sure whether this worked or not, but I do admit that it does build up to a little of what Ixtapa is.
Of the planets that had been involved in the Ten Systems War some years earlier, Ixtapa had probably come through the best; only one major battle had been fought there and that had been on the small eastern continent, which boasted, rather than a population of respectable citizens, a population made up mostly of smugglers, bounty hunters, slavers, and fugitives from Imperial justice. Still, the Battle of Ixtapa hadn’t been so bad as such things went; it hadn’t devastated the planet, as some of the battles fought in-galaxy during the Clone Wars had, and the continent was still occupied – roughly the same members of the population that had been there before the battle and some time before the war as well.
Moment to point out that Ixtapa wasn’t part of the Republic and didn’t have anything the Seperatists wanted. It’s a planet a lot like Tatooine, only with a lot more geographic diversity. *grin* Not everything in the galaxy centers around the Republic or the Jedi; the Outer Rim planets had their wars and alliances as well, some of which overlapped with the Clone Wars.
The capital of the continent was Per Macchu; smuggler’s bay was the least of the names it had been called in its years as host to the worst of the Outer Rim. It served as refueling station to any number of semi-legal ships on their way through the Outer Rim, as well as boasting a booming market in slaves and other illegal goods: Imperial weaponry, drugs, and the odd pirated starship. As such planets went Ixtapa was as good as any of the others, and better in some cases: unlike Tatooine, it wasn’t ruled by the Hutts, and unlike Kyr, it didn’t have a civil war tearing up the planet. Distant from Mid Rim edge of the Outer Rim as it was, it also garnered little if any Imperial presence, not being an Empire planet or worth adding to the Empire’s small collection of Outer Rim planets. For anyone planning on avoiding the Empire, it was a good place to hide.
I worked very hard during this story to build to a sense of setting as character, trying to make sure that the only place this story as is could be set was Ixtapa and nowhere else.
The name “Ixtapa” came from a Mexican restaurant I drove by somewhere. Upon googling, it appears to be a city in Mexico. Per Macchu comes from the ancient Inca ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru.
The planet Kyr initially played a slightly larger part in the story, as the location of one of Obi-Wan’s flashbacks.
One of Per Macchu’s many cantinas, this one on the edge of the Traitor’s District downtown, was The Sand and Stone, run by a Ten Systems vet and Ixtapan native called Zsuzsi Dj’onz. She served any number of disreputable types, some more regularly than others, and one of these regulars actually lived in The Sand and Stone, renting a room above the cantina for almost as long as the business had been in Zsuzsi’s seven-fingered hands. He’d fought in the ending days of the Ten Systems War with her; although he hadn’t come to the Outer Rim until the last year of the war, she’d known him for a fellow war vet even before he’d picked up a blaster. Clone Wars, he’d told her later, and flashed a blinding grin, one that was tinged with more sorrow than he’d probably meant. With the fighting done he made his living the same way most of the Outer Rim did: hovering on the edge of the legal and sometimes outright illegal, though really, neither one existed in more than name out here. Unlike most of the other guns for hire in Per Macchu, though, Zsuzsi trusted him, despite – or maybe because of – the bitter twist to Nakin’s scarred face, the sense that he’d seen and done more than even she’d ever dreamed of – and all of it the right thing, or close enough to pass on the Rim. Honor was a rare quality out here, almost nonexistent, but he had more of it than any other being she’d ever met.
I love Zsuzsi’s name. It cracks me up everytime, because I took what’s more or less the equivalent of Jane Doe and turned into something alien by adding some extra letters and apostrophes. Susie Jones = Zsuzsi Dj’onz.
I also hate those last two lines, by the way, because I told rather than showed and it pisses me off. Plus, there’s this whole thing about the Jedi not having any honor; they have the Force instead. On the other hand, Anakin = rebel.
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Most of this story is not told from Anakin or Obi-Wan’s POV; I wanted to look at the two of them as changed, and it’s hard to do that from inside their own heads. So, in accordance with their existence as movie characters, we get outside POVs – the audience, so to speak. Zsuzsi is the most prominent of these.
“Get your damn feet off my table, Starkiller,” Zsuzsi snapped, flicking a raggedy towel at his boots. Nakin took them down, grinning lazily.
Starkiller was Lucas’s original surname for Luke, way back when, and Nakin is Anakin with the A removed. It’s pronounced like “Nathan”, only with a hard “k” sound rather than the “th.”
“And here I thought you loved me, Dj’onz,” he said amiably, picking up his glass of tsa-tsa juice and swirling it around. When he knocked it back, it stained his teeth the crimson red of bright blood.
Tsa-tsa juice – worldbuilding.
“I love your credits,” Zsuzsi informed him, sweeping the towel over the spot on the table where his boots had been resting. “The rest of you I can take or leave. Especially your dirt.”
Nakin squinted at the bottom of his boots. “This isn’t dirt,” he said indignantly. “This is sand.” He squinted some more. “From Chiang, probably,” he added. “Last planet I went to where the port was in a desert.” He rolled his shoulders back and Zsuzsi winced at the pops she heard.
“Not that I care or anything, but you oughta take better care of yourself. Keep the rest of your body from going the way of that pretty face of yours.”
Nakin ran a hand reflexively over the ruined skin of his face. “I dive out one window –”
“One window that’s glass, not transparisteel, and that stuff shatters. And how many feet up did you say it was?”
Anakin lives an exciting life! Also, I spend most of the description in this story talking about Anakin and Obi-Wan’s scars – changes again, another war, another time. Plus, I just really like the idea of Anakin jumping out of a window. I didn’t realize at the time that Obi-Wan had done exactly that in AotC.
“Too many,” he said shortly, still touching the fine tracery of scars over his face. He took his hand away and picked up the glass again, frowning at the remaining skin of juice on the bottom of it. “When’s the next shipment of tsa-tsa coming in? It’s had to have been at least three months since the Duurs were here last.”
Tsa-tsa was native to the western coast of the north-northeastern continent and, despite numerous attempts to grow it elsewhere, only grew to its natural strength in its native environment. Half a dozen times a standard year the migratory Duur traders came through Per Macchu with their shiploads of goods from all across the planet, and for the week or so they stayed the Mil Maiaya market never closed, even after Ixtapa’s twin suns went down.
More worldbuilding – this story is what got me hardcore into writing sci-fi. I’m not sure why I gave Ixtapa twin suns; it just seemed like another touch of the exotic. Does call up images of Tatooine, though.
Zsuzsi shrugged, the old wound in her shoulder aching with the movement. Storm coming in, maybe. She glanced out the window at the pale sky, discerning the dark shape of clouds in the distance, closing in from the mountain on the savannah. “Nothing’s going to be able to land in a storm,” she said with feeling; the army’d had to land on the savannah in a storm once, years ago. They’d lost more ships than they’d landed.
Zsuzsi, like Anakin, like most of the characters, is a war veteran. She thinks that way.
Nakin stood up and came over. “Nothing I like better than a little bit of hell on my front porch,” he said dryly. “Never thought I’d see anything worse than a Tatooine sandstorm till I came here, but hey, what do you know. Nothing natural, anyway,” he added, shadow on his face for a moment before he shook it away. He picked up a piece of fruit from the bowl on the table and bit into it, eyes on the coming storm. It’d be here by the evening, maybe; the next morning at the latest. On the savannah you could forecast the weather days in advance.
All through writing this, I kept forgetting about the damn storm and having to write lines in about it. I think I should have done more with the storm as metaphor and motif.
The door of the cantina banged open and Zsuzsi turned, plastering a smile onto her face. “Hey,” she said cheerfully. “What can I do for you?”
The newcomer walked like he had a plasma rifle up his ass, Zsuzsi noted silently, and he was packing. She could see the holster beneath the line of his jacket. “I was told I could find a Nakin Starkiller here?” he said, looking at the almost empty room dubiously. Most of Zsuzsi’s regulars were out so late in the morning, and Nakin was the only other one there, due to his abnormal sleep habits.
Anakin’s a bacheolor, what do you expect?
She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “That’s him. Try not to piss him off; he hasn’t finished paying off the last damage he did to the place yet. You planning to order something while you breathe my air?”
I have the idea that Anakin has the reputation of being this trouble-maker from the depths of hell. Plus, as mentioned later, he basically gets in barfights for extra cash; that’s gotta do hell to Zsuzsi’s joint.
He flicked an eye at the menu on the edge of the bar, looking vaguely bewildered by the no doubt unfamiliar list of foods and drinks. “Something to drink,” he said, and flipped a couple of credits over to her.
Zsuzsi caught them in the air. “Coming right up,” she said.
She caught the murmur of their conversation as she dug around in the cooler, coming up with a jug of cariik juice and a clean glass along with a few rare ice cubes. Nakin was threatening him, as was to be expected. He made a career out of threatening people, and somehow managed not to piss them off permanently when he did so.
“Because,” he was saying, a little of his Tatooine drawl in his voice now, something Zsuzsi hadn’t heard until years after they’d met, “I’m just that good.”
We don’t really see it in canon, but I like to think that each planet has its own peculiar accent – more and more obvious the farther out you get from the Core, since that’s presumably the purest form of Basic. The Jedi probably speak pure Basic with very little accent – well, to them it’s no accent; once they’re out on the Rim it’s immediately obvious where they’re from. Anakin has some accent because he’s from Tatooine, but has stifled it a lot; my inclination is that he reverted back to his Tatooine accent the longer he was out on the Rim. A good way to hide.
“He is, too,” Zsuzsi said, sliding the stranger’s drink over to him. “No one better. Is he trying to hire you for smuggling or mechanics?” she asked Nakin.
Originally, Traynt was hiring Anakin for smuggling. Originally, Anakin was a smuggler with a sideline in mechanics; here he’s turned into a mechanic with a sideline in smuggling.
“The latter,” Nakin drawled. “We got a deal?” That was to the stranger, who’d picked up his glass and was sipping it, looking pleased.
“Yeah,” he said. “Can you come now?”
“Sure,” Nakin said. He snatched a cariik from the bowl in front of him as he stood, moving toward the stairs. “Just let me grab my kit and I’ll be right out.”
Zsuzsi rested her hip against the side of the booth. “So,” she said, tray tucked under her arm, “you from off-planet?”
“Yeah,” the stranger said. He held out a hand toward her. “Jer Traynt. Nice to meet you.”
“Zsuzsi Dj’onz,” she replied, shaking his hand with her free one. “You’re not from the Outer Rim, are you?”
“Alderaan,” Nakin said from the stairs. “Mountain district, if I’m not mistaken. That right, Lieutenant Traynt?”
More accents. I figure the Jedi are really good at knowing where people come from just based on where they speak. If Anakin had spent a lot of time on Alderaan, he’d probably be able to pick out the exact village Traynt had come from, too. (Just about anywhere on Tatooine or Ixtapa he could do. Probably Coruscant, too, but with most of the other well-known planets he’d be limited to major cities, if that. Rather like someone from the West Coast of the USA being able to differentiate a New York accent from a Boston accent.)
Traynt raised his head, looking startled. “How did you know?”
“I spent some time in the Core when I was a kid,” Nakin said casually. “I can tell an Alderaan accent when I hear one. And an Imperial officer.” He slung his bag over his shoulder, having shrugged his jacket on sometime between going upstairs and coming back down. “Let’s go.”
Zsuzsi blinked once. “You’re lucky he’s not in a bad mood,” she told Traynt, keeping the surprise out of her voice. Off-worlders didn’t need to know Ixtapan secrets, even if Nakin wasn’t Ixtapan by birth. “Usually he can’t shut up about how much he hates the Empire.”
First mention of the fact that Anakin’s considered an adoptive Ixtapan. Hey, he fought and bled and killed and nearly died for them in the Ten Systems War and now he lives on the planet; it’s the least they can do.
His face carefully neutral, Traynt drained the last of his drink and stood up. “What was a Rimmer doing in the Core?”
I don’t think canon ever calls them “Rimmers”, but it’s the obvious choice. New Englanders, Southerners, Mid-Westerners, etc. – it seems likely that the SW galaxy would have the same kind of generalized term for someone from a certain section of the galaxy, especially as it is sectionalized.
“Trust me when I say you don’t want to know.” He nodded at Zsuzsi. “See you, Zsuz. Keep someone for me to beat up, yeah?”
“Don’t stay out too late,” she shot back. “Fight night tonight.”
Originally, this exchange was “Keep some food warm for me,” and I couldn’t come up with a really cutting rejoinder. The fight night showed up later, and I went back and changed it so it shows up here.
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“Nice,” Nakin said brightly, slipping a hand along the starcruiser’s sleek side. “Modified Nubian, right? I’ve done some hyperdrive work with these before – how long has this one been battle-fit? The guns might be misbalancing it, which’ll throw off the hyperdrive depending on how much the original design of the ship was changed –”
None of what Wookiepedia said about hyperdrives made sense to me, so I just made shit up. And it’s a Nubian because, well, why not? We’ve seen them before in canon, and they’re sleek, fast ships – perfect for an Imperial forerunner.
Traynt and the first lieutenant, Perrik, shared looks of mutual confusion. “The Nubians were commissioned about three years ago,” Perrik said. “The Erebus has been out for about a year now – in-Core work; it’s never been farther out than Naboo in the Mid Rim, where the original modifications were done.”
Erebus = darkness. Part of Hades, in Greek mythology, the place where the dead passed immediately after dying.
“That’d do it,” Nakin said absently, eyes and hands still on the ship. “Naboo hyperdrives are designed to work with the shape of the ship itself – there’s enough leeway for small changes, but big changes will definitely throw off the ‘drive, especially in conjunction with a long jump. If that’s what it is, I can fix it, but I’ll have to completely reconfigure the hyperdrive.”
“How long?” Perrik asked crisply.
“Not really sure,” Nakin said. “I’ve never done this before. Shouldn’t be too hard, though. I can fix anything.” He leaned down to pick up his toolkit, the old, soft leather automatically curving into the palm of his hand. “Especially with the Empire paying by the hour.”
Anakin has settled down some. Otherwise he’d be killing them, not milking them for all they’re worth. Hey, he’s human, he just wants to turn a profit like any other respectable businessman.
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“Is it what you thought it was?” Traynt asked when Starkiller stepped into the bridge, the doors sliding open silently and quickly for him.
“Pretty sure it is, yeah,” Starkiller said, running a hand over his short-clipped blond hair. He’d shed his leather jacket somewhere along the way and was standing in just his shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, gun belt slung low on his hips. He swung a hydrogrip idly back and forth from his other hand.
Guh. The image this story started with was basically this – Anakin with short hair and holstered blasters. I am a very shallow person.
Traynt turned toward him, back to the databank console. “You can fix it?”
“Sure,” Starkiller said, spinning the hydrogrip up and around his wrist. “I need the schematics for the ship, though. The originals and the modified ones.”
“Of course.” Traynt turned back to the console, pulling up the schematics for the ship. “I’d put them on a chip, but that’s against regulations, so –”
“Never mind that,” Starkiller said, taking his words as an invitation and coming forward to lean over Traynt’s shoulder. “I’ve got a good memory.”
Traynt pushed away from the control board, stepping up towards the holomap on the wall. Imperial ships moved across the galaxy, blinking in and out of hyperspace; the Erebus itself was stationary in the dot labeled Ixtapa. He pressed the tip of one gloved finger to it, watching the planet expand to the size of a fist and a scrolling list of its traits appear in midair next to it, the rest of the map shrinking down to a small spiral near the corner of the ceiling.
I love this map. I use a variant of it in every sci-fi story I write, because it’s just so cool.
…seven continents, five habitable by standard Core humans, including Luminae (also known as the northern continent by the natives), Selket (the northeastern continent), Merapesh (the eastern continent), Xelxerah (the southern continent), and Kimmeriaa (the north-northeastern continent).
They were on Merapesh. Traynt called up the information on it.
…capital city is Per Macchu, a small trading city on the edge of the Keklaarah savannah, base for a number of smuggling operations. Likely hideout for Jedi, despite the natives’ animosity for both the Old Republic and the Empire –
Exposition, exposition.
Traynt stopped reading and turned, feeling eyes on his back. Starkiller was still bent over the console, but there was something –
“You know, I’ve never really seen a gun belt on a mechanic before,” he said casually.
Which isn’t the issue, of course; the issue is that he’s a Jedi hunter – not one of the Emperor’s Hands, but he can recognize a lightsaber when he sees one.
Starkiller twisted around slowly, straightening. “Clearly you haven’t been on the Outer Rim very long. Just wait until you see what the whores wear.”
Which raises the question of, of course, what do the whores wear? I’m sure Anakin knows for one twisted reason or another.
“No, I don’t think that’s what it is.” He leaned forward, one hand on his blaster, unbuckling the strap of the holster, the other behind him, ready to sound an alarm that would alert the rest of the ship. “Because, you see, I’ve never seen a mechanic with a lightsaber.”
“Payment for a job,” Starkiller said easily. His hands were open and empty in front of him; he’d put the hydrogrip down on the edge of the console.
“I don’t think so.”
“Good guess.” All of a sudden Starkiller was in front of him, his fist flying forward into Traynt’s face. Bone didn’t shatter when he connected, but it was enough to send Traynt flying backward into the wall, crumpling down onto the floor.
Starkiller leaned over him, eyes narrowed on concentration. He raised his hands to either side of Traynt’s face. “You don’t remember anything,” he said, voice soft and clear and sure, with the crispness of Core World syllables in it now. “You tripped and fell.”
Here we go back to accents – the Jedi of course have deep Core accents, so whenever Anakin’s trying to do something really Jedi-like he’s automatically going to revert back to what he knows.
“I don’t remember anything,” Traynt repeated obediently, murkiness behind his eyes. “I tripped and fell.”
Starkiller leaned over him, face open and honest. “You all right, Lieutenant?” he said. “You took a bad fall.”
Traynt ran a hand over the back of his head, feeling blood on his fingers where he’d hit the wall. “Mmm,” he said. “I should probably –”
“If you have a medic, this would probably be a good time to call him.” Starkiller said.
“You may have a –” Traynt blinked. He remembered – he didn’t. He did. A metal cylinder on Starkiller’s hip – no, two of them, hanging off his gun belt where they’d normally be covered by the fall of his jacket. Abruptly, he snaked an arm around Starkiller’s waist to touch one.
I always figured Anakin is really, really bad at mindtricking people, because it’s fairly subtle work and Anakin is bad at subtle. He’s better now than he was ten years previous, but most of the time it still comes back to bite him in the ass.
“Hiding something?”
Starkiller jerked back. “Like I told you,” he said carefully, “it was payment for a job. Guy’s starfighter was trashed.”
“I don’t think so,” Traynt said, and hit the alarm.
Starkiller was on his feet in less than a heartbeat, his booted foot coming around to hit Traynt hard in the jaw. When Traynt passed out, he was already spinning his blasters out of their holsters.
Not the lightsabers.
Not because he doesn’t want to pretend he’s not a Jedi – hello, he’s carrying two lightsabers – but because he doesn’t consider himself a Jedi anymore.
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Perrik came running at the sound of the alarm, blaster out of its holster and clone troopers flurrying around him. Most of them were carrying tranq guns rather than blasters; they’d come to Ixtapa prepared to neutralize a Jedi, not kill one. It would certainly be enough to take down one mechanic, even a well-armed one.
Naïve idiots.
At least that’s what he was thinking until Nakin Starkiller leapt down out of the starcruiser, blasters in each hand. Perrik turned his charge into a duck and roll out of range, blaster coming up as Starkiller kicked one clone in the face and shot two more, not even glancing to either side as his arms shot straight out and then forward again, taking two more clones with dead center shots in their foreheads. The slower clones, the ones who’d been on guard around the hangar were still running in; they stopped by the doors to aim more carefully.
The first handful of tranq darts went awry. Starkiller batted them out of the air or ducked them or both; Perrik was fairly certain he’d only touched ground to launch himself upward again. Carefully, Perrik sighted down his arm, knowing that all of Starkiller’s attention had to be on the clones, and fired.
Starkiller’s spin kick turned into a controlled fall. He hit the ground and came up again, jamming the butt-end of one of his blasters into the space between helmet and armor of a clone coming up behind him and firing in the same motion. One tranq dark took him in the neck and he spared a moment a moment to yank it out with two fingers, but the next few sprayed him across the front and he didn’t bother taking those out, just went on fighting, kicking and punching and firing his blasters.
I love hand-to-hand fighting. We don’t see Anakin do as much of it as Obi-Wan does – Obi-Wan is better at it, and Anakin’s better with a lightsaber – but within three years after the Purge began he stopped using a lightsaber for anything except an emergency and he’s a Jedi; he’s trained to be deadly with anything, even if all he has is his body.
Perrik stood up. “Isn’t this stuff supposed act faster?” he demanded of the third lieutenant, Cafferti, who’d come in with the clones out back. He was holding a plasma rifle in one hand
“Thirty seconds,” Cafferti said.
“It’s been two minutes and he hasn’t blinked,” Perrik snapped as Starkiller’s heel sent a clone flying backwards into two more. “We don’t have enough clones to take this kind of losses, not until Lady Yulalli arrives. Take –”
First mention of the Emperor’s Dog, Sha’re Yulalli. And I think Anakin is using the Force unconsciously to keep the tranquilizers out of his system, but his attention is mostly fixated elsewhere.
Starkiller went down. It was abrupt, with no buildup, and Perrik hadn’t seen any of the clones’ blows connect recently, so the drugs must have finally worked their way into his system, at three times the length it should have taken. A Jedi, maybe? But not Hellsbane; Traynt would have recognized him. Perrik stepped over to Starkiller as one of the clones dropped to his knees to tug the blasters out of his hands and put binders on his wrists and saw the lightsabers still clipped to his belt. He hadn’t gone for them, and every Jedi or Jedi trainee Perrik had ever met had gone down fighting with a lightsaber in their hand. Not a Jedi, just a thief.
Again, I repeat: naïve idiots. But they do have a point, because no ordinary Jedi would dream of going into a fight without a lightsaber.
“Go find Lieutenant Traynt,” he said to Cafferti, who’d stepped up behind him, young face painfully earnest. “See him to a medic if he needs it.”
“Yes, sir!” Cafferti said, and didn’t bother saluting, just dashed up the ramp into the Erebus.
Perrik squatted down next to Starkiller’s limp body, taking the mechanic’s chin in hand. He hadn’t paid much attention to him when Traynt had brought him in earlier, just registered him as a possible, but improbable, threat and hoped that he’d fix the Erebus before the Dog arrived.
There were scars on Starkiller’s face, a faint spider web of white lines some years old, another, older scar cutting against his right eye, more scars scattered around his mouth and across the curve of his cheek. Perrik cocked his head to one side, trying to remember if he’d seen the face on the Imperial broadsheets or not, and couldn’t. He’d have Cafferti run a picture through the databanks for a match to be sure, but he really doubted they’d turn up something. A Jedi would have gone for his lightsaber, and he wouldn’t have carried two. Perrik let go of Starkiller and unclipped the lightsabers, weighing them in the palm of his hand.
Me: scars, accents, and hand-to-hand fighting. And Perrik really doesn’t know the Jedi if he doesn’t think some of them don’t carry two lightsabers.
“Take him inside,” he said, nodding towards the cruiser. “Make sure he’s tied down securely. I want to interrogate him when he wakes up.”
In the original draft – or one of the original drafts, rather – we actually saw the interrogation scene, and I’m rather sad it was cut because Anakin sat around being hardass and awesome. Plus, you know, the Imps came at him with drugs.
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Enter Obi-Wan.
“Lieutenant,” Hellsbane said without looking up or waiting for Traynt to sit down. “I was wondering when you’d come calling.”
“General Hellsbane,” Traynt returned, sliding into the seat across from him. “We’ve been looking for you a long time.”
“You can keep looking a little longer,” Hellsbane said sedately. “You’re a bit out of your jurisdiction, Lieutenant.”
“Not particularly. The Ixtapa System would be a good addition to the Empire.”
“The Ixtapa System is allied with the rest of the Ten Systems. Invade one, and you’ll have to fight the others as well.” He still hadn’t looked up.
“The Empire’s fought worse odds.”
“The Grand Army, you mean. I remember. Did you want something?”
Of course he remembers, considering the fact that he was the one fighting.
Traynt unclipped Starkiller’s lightsaber from his belt and put it down on the table between them. “A message,” he said, trying to ignore the lingering headache Starkiller’s attack had left him with. Bloody bastard.
I worked really hard to humanize the Imperial officers, rather than just villainizing them into caricatures.
Hellsbane’s eyes flickered upwards, and he put the spoon down, pushing the bowl aside. “Well, Lieutenant,” he said, “I suppose you do have my attention after all.” His gaze sharpened suddenly and he snapped out one hand. Traynt reached for the lightsaber, but too late; he only touched empty wood and Hellsbane was turning it over in his hands. “Be glad you weren’t holding it,” he said without looking up. “What is this? Another one of Palpatine’s tricks, to hand me my old apprentice’s lightsaber and expect me to come running, as if I didn’t know that he died that night in the Temple with the rest of the Jedi? What kind of fool do you take me for?”
OBI-WAN. BABY. I think Palpatine’s just about going crazy trying to get Obi-Wan under control and it’s not working, never has worked, but it’s had the adverse effect of making Obi-Wan completely fucking paranoid.
Traynt blinked at him, startled out of his headache. “Your apprentice? This was taken off an Ixtapan mechanic just this afternoon and he was alive when I left him.”
Hellsbane’s head jerked up. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not. Aren’t you supposed to know if I’m telling the truth? Some kind of Jedi mindtrick?” Pressing his luck, probably, and with Ben Hellsbane of all people - a Jedi who had evaded the Empire for ten years, and caused as much trouble as any ten other Jedi. He’d been captured three times and the captain who’d captured him that third time and confidently assumed that he’d be the one to keep Hellsbane in custody – he’d next been seen on the floor of his starcruiser with a lightsaber wound through his chest. Hellsbane hadn’t reappeared for another six months when he’d hijacked an Imperial prison transport and vanished with it into the Outer Rim.
Because Obi-Wan is a rockstar, man. And I think Obi-Wan gets captured specifically so he can free other Imperial prisoners – escaped Jedi, captured rebels, even murderers and thieves and smugglers, just so he can cause the Empire lots and lots of trouble.
Ben Hellsbane is one of those names I’m not entirely certain about – Ben is canon, obviously (Ben Kenobi in ANH), and Hellsbane is a name I’m pretty sure Obi-Wan didn’t pick himself, but which kind of just got tagged onto him by someone he rescued or helped or something. It’s a little too flashy to be straight Obi-Wan.
Hellsbane stared at him for a long moment, the silence between them like a lit lightsaber on the table. “You are telling the truth,” he said finally, tone grudging. “And I suppose you got those bruises on your face at the same time.”
Traynt put his hands flat on the table in order to avoid touching his much-abused jaw. Starkiller had a hell of a right hook. “Come peacefully and I’ll treat you as befits your rank,” he said, uncomfortably aware that it came out more like a suggestion than an order.
“No guards?” Hellsbane said, cocking his head to one side. “No binders, no Force-inhibitors, a fair trial in front of the Imperial Senate?”
“I’m not authorized to offer that,” Traynt admitted.
Because Traynt’s not an idiot, either. Offer that to Obi-Wan and he’ll be out in five minutes flat. Of course, Obi-Wan’s not stupid enough to believe him.
“Good. I wouldn’t have believed you if you said you were.” His handsome face was characteristically opaque, blue eyes shuttered. “So really, Lieutenant, what incentive do you offer me to come in?”
“None, I suppose,” Traynt said, watching as Hellsbane stood up to leave, hooking Starkiller’s lightsaber on his belt and tossing a few credits on the table. “But I can tell you that the mechanic we took that lightsaber off of is still alive and in Imperial custody. We’re running his face against the Imperial databanks right now.”
Hi, excellent way to get Obi-Wan’s attention. Everyone knows he’ll do anything for Anakin, even if they don’t know they’re Obi-Wan and Anakin.
Hellsbane froze with his back to Traynt. “Why should I care?”
“General, everyone in the galaxy knows you’ll come running at the faintest hint of a Jedi in trouble. I hardly think you need more than that trinket on your hip as a good excuse,” Traynt said, more calmly than he felt, leaning back in his seat with his hand on his holstered blaster. “Besides,” he added, watching the muscles in Hellsbane’s back tense, “you said he was your apprentice.”
“I also said he was dead,” Hellsbane said shortly. “Good day, Lieutenant.” He vanished out the door.
Traynt stood up, pulling his jacket up over his blaster, though he really doubted it would garner too much attention in this neighborhood, and nodded to the Mirkannan waitress as she came to clear the table off, humming to herself and clicking her pinchers. He remained standing for a minute, eyes on the windows at the front of the diner, then he followed Hellsbane out the door.
See me make up alien races that aren’t Star Wars canon. Mirkannans are native to Ixtapa.
Perrik was standing on the other side of the street, leaning against the shop and raising a cigarette to his lips. He dropped it when he saw Traynt, crushing it beneath the heel of his boot as he crossed the street. “Where is he?”
“He just walked out,” Traynt said, startled. “Don’t you –”
“The last person to walk out was a woman, an Ixtapan,” Perrik said. “Hellsbane hasn’t –” They both turned to stare up the street.
“I will be damned,” Traynt said. “Bloody Jedi and their damn mindtricks.”
Jedi mind skills for the win! I have no idea if the Jedi can actually use the Force to influence what someone else may see, or to camouflage themselves, but they can in the Lostverse, so they do. Actually, I think Obi-Wan can and Anakin can’t, because he doesn’t have the control, poor baby. Or he just doesn’t care; that one may be more likely.
My original plan – and this is pretty much the first scene I ever wrote for this story – was that Obi-Wan and Anakin were both taken captive by the Jedi, and Anakin broke them out. Then I changed that scene, and Anakin was taken captive first and Obi-Wan was arrested later, and when the Imps escorted Obi-Wan back to the hangar where Anakin was being kept, they found everyone dead and Anakin going psycho on their asses. Then I realized that Obi-Wan is way too smart to get arrested by the Imps if he doesn’t have to be – and he can trust Anakin to break out of jail all on his own – so that scene got dropped. Still makes me sad, though, sometimes.
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Continue on to part two