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chaoticevilbean · 3 years

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What if....

Ahsoka decided to stay with the Order?

What if she looked at Anakin? Looked at her Master, the one who raised her and taught her, the one who told her what she needed to know and prepared her how he could. Looked at the one who she would die for in an instant, who she never wanted to leave. The one who battled tirelessly to save her, who she knew, despite the Jedi way, despite all the time he’d spent as a Knight, was attached to her.

What if she looked at him, as he held out his hand, hopeful, and decided she would do as he had done for her? She would be attached, but learn to be powerful enough to not fail. What if she took his hand, and stayed, not with the Order, but with Anakin?

Anakin is overjoyed, but also worried. He doesn’t know how being betrayed will affect her, how being hunted by clones will change her dynamic while fighting. So he decides to leave immediately to ‘scout’. A different yet familiar setting should help, and they’ll avoid actually battling for at least a little while.

They get on the ship, and Ahsoka sticks close to her Master. The clones are cautious. They all heard the stories and rumors, and also heard the accomplishments of the Commander. Wrongfully accused, wrongfully convicted, and still loyal, still strong. Her life, dedicated to helping others.

Ahsoka is fine, if a little quiet. She participates sparingly in the take-off briefings, and she’s absolutely silent when Anakin informs the Council of his entire plan.

Then Anakin sends her off to rest, so she can fully recover. He drops her off at her quarters, gives her the next day off. The night passes as it used to.

Then the clones comm Anakin in a panic. They say there’s something wrong with Ahsoka. “Come to the cafeteria! Quickly, general!” Rex’s voice is barely audible over the distressed shouts of his fellow soldiers. Anakin rushes over. He’s scared, scared that something has happened to the Padawan he only just got back.

He gets to the cafeteria to find all the clones outside a locked door. The key pad has lightsaber cuts on it, slashed the exact way he taught Ahsoka to do when she didn’t want anyone inside. Rex says that they were all heading to breakfast as scheduled, and Ahsoka was already inside. She seemed fine, but when she saw the clones, she freaked out. She started pushing the tables at them, blocking their way inside and forcing them out. She came closer only to slash the doors before jumping back.

Anakin tells them to go about their days as usual. They’ll have to skip breakfast for now, until Ahsoka is okay. All but Rex leave. Anakin accepts that. It takes a half hour to get inside, opening the door without the keypad and deciding against just cutting a hole through. Every table is piled haphazardly in the way, nearly falling on the duo.

Anakin moves them with the Force. Carefully but not gently. At this point, he can hear crying. He becomes less careful. It takes an extra ten minutes.

The moment he can, Anakin sprints into the cafeteria. It takes him two seconds to spot his Padawan.

She’s in the corner, curled as tight as can be, sobbing. She doesn’t react to the presence of her Master, but the moment she sees Rex, she wails, pressing further and further into the walls. Anakin motions for Rex to stand down, and the clone moves as far back as he can without losing sight of his friend.

Ahsoka lets Anakin walk over, eyes trained on the white behind him. She only looks away when hands start to gently pull her up, pull her in. She doesn’t fight, hiding in the safety of her Master.

“What’s wrong, Snips? What happened?’ She doesn’t respond right away, but there’s no rush here. When she answers, her words are broken, strained.

“I- I was- was back there, and I cou- couldn’t let them get me, but there were so- so many.” Anakin tugs her closer. His heart that had only begun healing from the recent events was breaking all over again.

“You aren’t, Snips, okay? I won’t let that happen again. As long as I’m around, you’ll be okay.”

Ahsoka takes a long time to calm down. It’s a good thing nothing was planned for this day. Rex stays back the entire time, thinking about the pain his sister-in-arms had been brought because he and his brothers refused to disobey orders. He wouldn’t do it again, he promised himself. He wouldn’t let anything like it happen again.

Anakin spends the day comforting Ahsoka. He asks her if she can stay in her quarters that night. She says she’ll be fine, but that’s their personal code for “I’ll push through it.” He lets her stay with him that night, taking the mattress from her room so she can have a bed.

Midnight comes, and Anakin wakes up suddenly. It isn’t a threat, so he stays still.

A smaller hand reaches up to grab his. It squeezes. He squeezes back.

The next day, Anakin never leaves Ahsoka’s side. Even when they have to, he waits for her, never letting her remain alone. The clones keep a bit back, the word having been spread about the Togruta’s fear. They don’t want her to be scared, not when she asks them for honest opinions, speaks to them like she does anyone else, knows each one of them by name and can tell them apart even when they’re wearing the same armor with no characterization.

The next night, Anakin learns about Ahsoka’s nightmares. She sits up, fast, and she’s crying again. He hugs her, whispering that he’s there, that she’s not in danger. They fall asleep like that, the Master and the Padawan, holding onto each other like they’d always done.

A month passes of the same routine. Ahsoka sticks close to her Master, and sleeps on the floor next to him at night. When the darkness gets too much, she grabs his hand, anchors herself with his presence. When the nightmares come, they wake up in the morning as if they hadn’t fallen asleep hugging. The clones gradually get closer, until it’s almost like normal. They’re lucky there haven’t been any battles.

Then the battle does come. They go up against an all-droid ship, and the droids manage to board. Ahsoka gets separated from Anakin, but they’re in the middle of a fight, there’s no time to find him, no time to panic. So Ahsoka goes to the next best comfort: the Force.

It takes all of two minutes to take down the remaining droids in that area. The clones are standing back in shock. In the moment she gave in to the Force’s power, she became a blur. Her mind was no longer filled with the memories of the very men she fought with turning on her. Instead, it was filled with thoughts of how each one had dedicated their lives to the cause, how every last one of the soldiers were literally born and raised for battle. So many had died thinking their sacrifice was worthless, unimportant. So many had died, period. Ahsoka would not let that number grow if she could help it.

With the Force guiding her every move, more powerful now that it was her second companion, she's ten times as strong. Without waiting for the clones to catch up, she rushes through the ship, taking down droids by the dozens.

Every last boarder is destroyed, with minimal casualties. The enemy ship blows up and they make it safely away. Anakin is glad when Ahsoka reaches him, perfectly fine. She’s still wary of the clones, but she can feel their good, their light.

The day after she tries again to let the Force guide her. She’s sitting near Anakin as he fixes a fighter ship. There are clones all around her. She feels the light once again.

Then she feels something else. A little switch in the minds of all the soldiers, one that will change that light to darkness in a heartbeat.

She tells her Master what she felt that night, just before they rest. He says they can tell the Chancellor tomorrow.

The holograph forms of Palpatine. Ahsoka slams her fist down to shut it off.

“What was that‽”

“He isn’t good.”

“What do you mean he isn’t good?”

“I.. don’t know. I saw him, and I just felt so much darkness. He isn’t good, Master.” Anakin accepts the answer for the moment. Then he calls Obi-Wan. The two relay their message about the clones. Obi-Wan promises to look into it. Ahsoka speaks up quickly, much more confidently than before.

“Don’t tell anyone but the Council. Please.”

Obi-Wan agrees.

The days keep passing. The nightmares are more frequent, if less painful. Ahsoka no longer sleeps on the ground. Anakin won’t let his little sister be in so much pain for nothing. The nightmares are better like that.

The clones get closer to their commander. They drop ‘hints’ about how they see her.

“Commander Tano is one of the best people I’ve worked under, hands down.”

“What about the general?”

“Listen, I’d die for either in a heartbeat, but if you forced me to choose, I’d pick Ahsoka every time.”

Ahsoka was sitting a table away in the cafeteria. Anakin smiled at her then, though it was more of a smirk.

“She’s basically one of us at this point.”

“I know. We might as well call her sister.”

Rex was walking into a briefing. Ahsoka hid her face in Anakin’s arm, blushing bright orange at the words.

She lets the Force guide her constantly. Anakin follows her lead, and they both find that their attachment to one another actually helps. They’re bonded through the Force, and they grow stronger as they grow attached to one another. There is no way they��ll separate anytime soon.

Ahsoka can temporarily leave her Master’s side. It takes a lot of courage, and Rex usually has to be nearby, but she pushes away her doubts.

One day, she’s walking with Rex, trying to see how long she can go before her fear grows too large. She still feels that switch, and she hates it. Hates that her friend could become evil in a second and she can’t even tell why. So she reaches towards it. Maybe she can get it stuck on the light side, or something of the sort.

Rex freezes when he feels it. The little voice in his head, the very reason he followed orders he hated, the reason he listened to Krell at all, suddenly disappeared.

Ahsoka didn’t mean to destroy the switch, but she was happy that it happened. The switch was meant for dark, and so the light destroyed it.

Rex looks at Ahsoka, who’s grinning that sharp-toothed grin at him. He’s glad the voice is gone, but he also wants to know what she did. He doesn’t want people messing with his mind unannounced.

“What did you do?”

“I got rid of the switch!” It doesn’t immediately occur to her that Rex doesn’t know about the switch. If every clone has it, then surely they know about it and simply didn’t know the use.

“What switch?”

“The one that was gonna turn you bad. Luckily I felt it after that big battle we had against those droids. Master Obi-Wan’s looking into it, but I wanted to see what I could do myself. I only meant to keep it from working. Apparently, I can get rid of it.”

Rex is still confused, but he’ll ask General Skywalker later. Instead, he grabs a passing soldier’s arm, pulling him into the conversation.

“Does he have one?”

“Yeah! Every clone has one!”

“Can you get rid of it?”

There’s a pause as Ahsoka’s eyes close, then the trooper stiffens. He was highly bemused, even more so now, but he can feel the difference. The constant need to follow orders now seems more like a choice.

Rex and Pint take Ahsoka throughout the entire ship, randomly dragging their brothers towards the Togruta and waiting for her to destroy their switches. Anakin finds them later, having gotten an update from Rex that the Padawan was fine. He’s happy for his men, and for Ahsoka. An hour into their crusade and the clones are coming to the trio, gathering to see what’s going on with only the assurance from their comrades that it’ll be worth it. It is.

Ahsoka doesn’t feel the need to find Anakin that day at any point. She’s ecstatic that she could help the troopers. Rex is glad his family is no longer faced with that voice compelling them. At least not on this ship. Not anymore. He tells her the thought running through each of their heads in replacement of that switch.

“Thank you, sister.”

Anakin almost completely panics on finding a crying Ahsoka, but she says they’re happy tears. Happy tears.

A quick visit from Master Windu is all it takes to undo so much work.

Ahsoka is silent as he visits. Windu asks how she’s recovering. She nods and moves behind Anakin just a little.

The clones notice the change in their sister. She tries to feel their light as she’s been doing for a while now, but the memories of that time, of when she thought no one cared anymore, no one but Anakin, they shove themselves into her heart, undoing the stitches that hold her together.

Windu only came for an update and a small resupply. He leaves within a day. It’s still too late.

Anakin starts thinking it all over that night, while he’s holding Ahsoka close and attempting to ward off her nightmares. Why would his Snips stay if she had so much pain associated with the Order?

He comes to the conclusion just before they have to get up. She stayed for him. If anyone else had asked, she would’ve left. She’d latched onto him for a reason, and they’d both helped each other recover.

If she was willing to stay for him, he’d leave for her.

He forms his plan mentally as he walks with Ahsoka to do their rounds. He’ll prepare a ship, stock it enough they can make it to a more neutral planet. He’ll leave a message for Rex to let him know what had happened. Then Anakin would breach the topic with Ahsoka and convince her that he was okay leaving. She probably wouldn’t mind never having to see the Council again.

It takes a week before Ahsoka can leave her Master’s side again. Rex is by her side as she leaves, but he glances back at his general in suspicion. The man had been acting weird.

Anakin records his message and leaves it on his desk. He goes to the hangar and starts prepping a ship. The clones ask what he’s doing and he brushes them off with a vague excuse. After all, he has a lot of work to do.

He goes to sleep knowing there’s very little work left to be done. Soon, he can help Ahsoka leave behind what has hurt her so much.

He doesn’t notice his message to Rex is gone.

Anakin sends his Padawan off with Pint and Fives before he goes to finish his preparations. None of the clones question him this time, but they seem to look at him in mild amusement. He wonders why...

... until he enters the ship to find it completely empty of the supplies he’d stocked.

He’s confused. It’s not like the clones to play a prank, at least not one like this. A throat is cleared behind him. He turns sharply to find Rex standing in the entrance.

“Uh, Rex. I thought you’d be on the bridge.” Rex doesn’t speak. He instead opens his palm to reveal a holodisk. Anakin’s message plays before their eyes. The Jedi says nothing, shocked that he hadn’t noticed the missing disk and nervous about his commander’s reaction. They both stand in silence for some time, until Rex finally breaks it.

“She’s our sister, and you’re our brother. She gave us freedom. We’ll use it to help you get yours.”

When the general and the commander walk off with smiles on their faces, the surrounding clones cheer. They’d all had to talk it over, and the agreement had been unanimous.

Ahsoka is briefed on what’s happening. She’s concerned, uncertain, and takes her time to think. She eventually agrees. With everything considered, it will be better.

They reprogram the ship, No one will be able to track them easily. Anakin, Ahsoka, and Rex plan. They’ll go to an uninhabited planet. They’ll land the ship and start building. If they can grow or craft things to sell, money won’t be a problem.

Ahsoka reminds them that the loss of the ship and its entire crew will lead to the Republic suffering in the war. Rex suggests helping discreetly. Anakin suggests something a bit more... radical.

They have skill on their side. If Ahsoka and Anakin can make their way to different Separatist planets, then maybe the duo can find evidence of the Separatists’ more nefarious deeds that were kept hidden. Seeing that they were lied to could cause some of the planets to turn to the Republic or neutrality, thus aiding in the war.

They begin their journey, taking the more obscure and isolated routes. All calls to the ship were blocked, and there was a team of clones assigned to making sure they weren’t tracked. Ahsoka declared she would teach some of her brothers the finer points of engineering and tech. Anakin declared that she would not, but he would. Instead, she could help them learn to craft some things, or study subjects outside of their war training.

They soon find that some clones are incredibly talented at art, and others at engineering. Rex understands physics better than any of his brothers, and Six-Piece ends up having to be dragged away from his agriculture books just to eat. The clones better at building make a forge out of the incinerator, and some of the others practice smithing. And when that goes wrong, a medical droid starts teaching a small group how to heal small wounds (and not-so-small wounds).

Some clones find that they really are made for fighting. So Ahsoka helps teach them to fight with swords and staffs and knives and every weapon they have onboard.

It takes two months to get to their final destination. A planet void of any sentient species, but with plenty of edible flora and fauna. They land the ship in a wide open space, and the real work begins.

They spend the first few days drawing up plans and unloading what they can. A few dozen clones begin to gather lumber and clear land for buildings. The next few days, those dozen are joined by more, and supplies are organized. They build a storehouse first, basically just a huge room. It will hold whatever they collect for now.

Six-Piece leads some of his brothers in clearing more land for farming. Pint starts collecting seeds. Fives draws blueprints for different tools and crafts. Ahsoka and Echo disappear for several hours one day and return with canine creatures of a scaly nature. Anakin nearly has a heart attack at the sight of the green and purple scaled animals following his Padawan. Rex almost entered a similar state, but managed to avoid it by scolding the two.

The canines were kept, and Echo and Ahsoka started training them to guard against threats and help out on the construction sites.

Within the first month, they have several rows of edible flora sown. The storehouse is built and filled with lumber. They begin reinforcing it. The ship is restructured and reorganized. The forge is upgraded the best they can, and the hangar is converted into an enormous workshop. Fighters are moved around to accommodate the new order, and several clones begin setting up work areas and tables.

They begin separating. Anakin realizes that they’ll need more rations if they want to last long on the planet. He sends some of the men to gather food and some to cultivate the land further. Then he finds the clones that seemed only meant for battle. He tells them to hunt.

They take the canines, begin training them for the trips. There’s plenty of animals to track, and plenty more that seem trainable, if only in the future. They report back with plenty of meat and a list of the more docile creatures. Who knows, maybe they can domesticate them like the canines.

The men start building more rooms to the storehouse, so that they can put the supplies in separate areas. Tools begin to be stored, the food as well. Fuel goes next, and Rex starts making cranes with his new knowledge of physics and Pint’s knowledge of engineering.

Ahsoka helps make the workshop, using the Force to lift the heavier items. Her and Anakin compile everything that isn’t necessary and doesn’t have much value to the group. They load what they can onto a transport and head for the nearest outpost. Out where they are, there are four near enough, and each is neutral.

They sell their wares. It seems what isn’t valuable to them fetches high prices at the market. They use the money to buy tools and rations, along with several books for the clones to read and some textiles. They leave quickly, not wanting to be noticed.

Clothes are made with the textiles, mostly for Ahsoka and Anakin since they’ll be going off-world the most. But some of the clones discard their armor for cloth, and some repurpose the armor for the canines.

Ahsoka names the canines Flurrians. She thinks it sounds cool. Anakin doesn’t bother arguing.

The crops grow faster than expected. The clones are ecstatic to have so much to do and it isn’t fighting.

A few find strange rocks. They crack easily with the new pickaxes their brothers fashioned from spare parts. The smiths melt them to make nuts and bolts and screws and tools and buttons and all sorts of small and large things to help. The builders finish making the storehouse, only to have to build more with all the new supplies coming in.

With the hunters bringing back animals (some simply captured so they can be domesticated), a few clones learn to clean and tan the hides. Some learn to cure the meat. Some begin teaching themselves to cook, and some to sew.

The smiths work together with their new metals to forge Anakin a mask. It looks like that of the notorious Boba Fett, but simpler and softer in the features, painted blue and grey and white. They make a little headpiece for Ahsoka, to wrap around her montrals.

Ahsoka discovers she can see around her with the Force. Anakin can as well, but he doesn’t find the need to use it often. His Padawan trains herself to connect with that sight constantly. She finds her montrals capture more sound, more waves that give her a clearer view of things nearby. Both the Force and her natural ability give her a boost.

A boost that leads to several complaints and near heart failures.

Apparently, being able to ‘see’ so well makes her entirely silent while moving around, unless she’s purposefully making noise. More than a dozen times, Rex screamed at the sudden ‘appearance’ of his sister. Anakin didn’t think much of it until he had his own minor heart attack one day. He tells her to find a way to announce her presence before she gets too close. She does.

It starts with Leo giving her a small stone he found on the ground.

“It’s pretty,” he justified. “I thought of you.” She attached it to the headpiece with help from Pip.

Then Pint handed her a shell, and Echo a feather. Beads and pebbles and scraps of metal, all handed to her because they were shiny or colorful. She slowly began to accumulate long chains of the items. The weight didn’t bother her as she gradually gained more and more prizes. Then one day, Ahsoka looked in the mirror and saw a young Togruta with a beautiful headpiece and montrals and head-tails covered in strings of trinkets. She looked eccentric, but also free.

She finds Six-Piece and he helps her make paint. She uses blue to highlight her face markings, brightening her appearance further. She’s happy.

Rex and some of the others make more paint. They decorate their buildings in colorful pictures and draw on each other’s faces. Ahsoka nearly cried when she saw Rex with paint matching her markings.

Anakin wears his helmet on trips or at night. He puts it on his belt otherwise. He makes retractable staffs that include his and Ahsoka’s lightsabers in the handles. Ahsoka’s can be separated, but is better as a staff when used as one. They would allow the blades to be carried with them, but not noticed.

As they expanded and learned how best to utilize the land, the large group gained a surplus.

“We’re going to have to sell these,” Anakin announced one day, standing in the storehouse that was packed.

“And we still have to go after some of the Separatists,” his little sister reminded.

“You’ll need new names, otherwise there’ll be bounty hunters and troops crawling everywhere,” Echo added, petting his favorite Flurrian, Sil.

“How about Socks?” Anakin smirked at the glare sent his way, but felt pure dread when the look mimicked his own.

“How about Sky?”

“Sky and Socks, sounds good to me,” Rex commented as he walked by.

The two former Jedi attempted to protest.

Sky and Socks begin a routine that becomes well-known to those who meet them. Each of the four outposts are visited at different times. The duo sells their crafts and supplies each time, and always use their money to buy more tools and more materials and more books.

And their wares are always incredibly valuable. Plants that can be used to make fuel, food that can’t be found anywhere else, metals that are so rare some don’t believe in their existence. It seems that the siblings (for that is what they are, as they assured their customers) didn’t know their items were worth so much. They start coming every month to at least one outpost, with the fact that they now know that one of the plants they grow is a highly efficient fuel and they won’t have to buy some for every trip.

Ahsoka often listens to the gossiping beings around her as her brother handles customers. She gains information on nearby planets and the frequent visitors. There are many criminals and bounty hunters around.

The first planet to turn is small. A mysterious pair of beings are said to have broken into the governor’s mansion and found evidence of his misdeeds. They sent it to the entire planet. The Separatists had been separating families and quietly getting rid of the governor’s opponents. The Republic gained a new ally.

Anakin and Ahsoka kept up their work. All planets they could reach quickly, they went and managed to convert to the Republic or to neutrality. Usually, it was to the Republic after the Separatists were proven to be traitorous. Some turned without evidence after hearing tales of what had happened elsewhere.

Sky and Socks always made it back home.

They made their own small civilization, with a farm and stables and workshops and storehouses and barracks.

Sometimes, Sky and Socks came across clones while traveling. The switches were destroyed, and the clones always agreed to go back with the two, even though they never offered, only explained what had happened to Rex Chief and his brothers.

Asajj Ventress came across them at an outpost while they headed back from a newly-aligned Republic planet.

Ahsoka hugs her, much more energetic with all the freedom and light she’s had. She gushes about the many good things that have happened to her since those dreadful days.

Ventress joins them. It takes less than a week before Ahsoka calls her sister. It takes a month before Witch joins Socks and Sky, dressed in a blue and black version of the Nightsisters garb.

Word gets around about the Clone Snatchers and Separatist Traitors.

The Clone Snatchers steal clones from battles, without any signs of struggle. The Separatist Traitors turn Separatist-aligned planets to the Republic.

There are bounties for both in both alliances. Both are wanted alive by the Republic, the Clone Snatchers so they can get their missing soldiers back and the Separatist Traitors so they can meet and possibly join forces. The Separatists want the Traitors dead or alive, preferably dead, and the Snatchers alive so that they can... ally themselves.

After only a month of radio silence from Anakin and his ship, before they established themselves so well, Padme heard the news. All that was known was that the Separatists had nothing to do with the disappearance. The senator was not pleased, and proceeded to call her husband as quickly as possible.

He picked up on the second ring, despite Obi-Wan never managing to get a call through.

“Padme, are you alright?” Anakin is calm, collected. Not at all troubled, it seems.

“Where are you?” the woman demands.

“Um... on our way to an uninhabited planet that we can land on and then live there.”

“Without me?”

“... Do you wanna know the coordinates? I kinda had to deal with changing alignment and reorganizing and reprogramming everything, and I sorta assumed you’d want to remain a senator?”

“Of course I’m going to remain a senator, but I’m still going to visit my husband.”

“HUSBAND‽ Rex, did you hear‽ Anakin and Padme are married! I’ve got a sister! Rex!”

“Is Ahsoka listening?”

“Yeah, she wanted to know why I would answer a call when we’re on radio silence.”

“So, why the change? I thought being a Jedi was everything to you.”

“No. The people I care about are everything to me. Ahsoka wasn’t going to be able to recover while constantly around the Order. Our marriage went against the code. The clones were always dying for what felt like no good reason. It makes sense to get away from what causes so much pain.”

“I understand. I’ll visit as soon as possible.”

“I call you when we land.”

FEEL FREE TO ADD MORE BC I MIGHT NOT (or might, who knows)

#star wars #clone wars #ahsoka tano #anakin skywalker #obi-wan kenobi #rex #mace windu #asajj ventress #republic #separatists #clones #flurrians #may add more later

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capricornus-rex · 4 years

Text

Two Sides of the Coin (3)

Chapter 3: Picking Up A Lead | Jidné Sheedra x Cal Kestis

Summary: Hell-bent on exacting revenge and retrieving the Holocron, the dreaded Darth Vader is now on the hunt for the young Jedi Knight, Cal Kestis. Under the assumption that he still possessed the artifact, while fueled by the intrigue of the boy’s strength and skill with the Force, the dark lord hires the bounty hunter, Jidné Sheedra, to track him down and have him delivered alive. However, the task becomes a trial for young Jidné, as she faces a conflict that tests her beliefs of a scarred past she had hidden for so long.

Also in AO3

Tags: Fem OC, Jidné Sheedra, Force-Sensitive! Fem OC, Bounty Hunter! Fem OC, Jedi! Fem OC

Chapters: Part 1 | Previous: Part 2 | Next: Part 4 | Masterlist

3 of ?

As Jidné got out of the castle, her stomach plummeted to her feet and her legs transformed into limp noodles—barely doing their job and instead dragged her along in every step. It was gradually sinking into her that the person who gave her the job was one of the most feared figures among the Jedi. She clutched her abdomen, crumpling the center of her jacket while waiting for the entry ramp to unfurl.

Not wanting to look back over her shoulder, she knew that she’d have the safety and privacy she needs within her vessel: a Dynamic-class freighter that she personally retrofitted and anointed the Crescent Scarab. It was a fine work of art that she greatly took pride in, so much so, that she has modified everything to her liking. She darted to the lounge of the ship, lousily putting down the canister and then splaying herself over the sofa.

Coming from the cockpit, an ID seeker droid acknowledged her arrival and greeted her. Its multiple claws on its tentacles flowed and twitched as its single eye panned left and right, scanning its owner.

“Hey, Eye-Dee Three,” Jidné greeted back.

The droid named ID-3, formerly Imperial property of another probe droid variant, is the only other passenger in the Scarab besides the pilot, Jidné herself. The droid chittered in its raspy, monotonous string of notes as it hovered closer towards its owner.

“Yeah, I’m okay, just… felt like jelly is all,” she brings her hand on the top of the black droid’s flat dome for a head.

The young bounty hunter detached the holster from her belt and set it down on the table, right next to the canister of credits. She stared at both objects for a good long minute, contemplating and pondering her strategy on how she’ll begin with this contract. Jidné reached out for her weapon holster first, taking it with both hands and then unbuttoning the flap—a polished, silver emitter pokes out of the lining.

She gently tilted the holster downward until an enough length of the weapon inside slid out. She caught the shaft before it could completely fall off. She rolled the hilt across her hand, feeling and tracing for the etchings, curves, and dips of the design. She held it high and proud, in the same way as she finished constructing it, the tassel that she knotted around the ring of her pommel caught her eye. Two strands, unequal in length, dangling at the very end of the hilt. The longer strand had seven turquoise beads, at the end of its thread is a cluster of feathers—three to be precise—though the wear and tear was very obvious; the short one had four beads of the same color but lacks a feather.

“Feathers are almost gone,” she hummed, fiddling the remaining tufts.

Her heart skipped a beat—it always does, even though she has done this many times. In her hand, the cold metal of the lightsaber’s sleeve stung the nerves of her palm. A small, somewhat satisfied smile curled along her lips—the weapon had brought her good memories, but also nightmares—and that smile became fleeting like a comet. Her thumb ran across the metal finish of the body and found the switch, the idea of igniting it was seductive—a temptation that she has no strength to fight back.

The snarl of the ignition took her breath away. A vibrant purple blade bore out of the emitter, its glow colored the paleness of her cheeks and reflected against the gloss of her brown irises.

“Jedi, huh?” she muttered to herself.

“Beeee-deee, trill?”

“That’s right, ID, we’re after a Jedi,”

Jidné sighed, and then switched her saber off before tucking it back into the pouch.

When her legs finally regained their strength, she walked to the cockpit and beckoned her droid companion—who still hovered close to her side—and joined her in the seat. As she put herself into work mode, she recalled the very helpful detail that Darth Vader gave. She breathed out a resigned sigh that drowned in the hollow hum of the Scarab’s engine revving up.

In a galaxy that stretched a thousand times more than the eye could see, how is she going to narrow down to finding a single Jedi?

“Say, ID, how likely are we to stumble into a redheaded Jedi on the run?”

“Beee… chirp!”

Jidné chuckled at the response, “I figured as much.”

With little base information she has, she knew she had to be resourceful. Lately, she’s picked up murmurs from Baz’s stronghold—as well as the gossips in the cantinas she frequented in Modala—that bounty hunters were also after a Jedi, solely for the bounty on his head, not because Darth Vader had hired others behind Jidné’s back or the other way around.

While gossip wasn’t exactly the best source material, she had to make do. The young bounty hunter swallowed her pride and entered the coordinates of her first stop.

Upon seeing the coordinates on the computer, ID-3 erratically chittered in protest.

“We have no other choice, buddy. They’re the closest we can get to the target,”

ID-3 lowed in disagreement, submitting to Jidné’s decision and continued assisting her in the ship, much to his chagrin. His owner sensed the disdain and petted its flat dome again.

“Don’t worry, you’ll stay close to me, right?”

“Beeep!”

Jidné smiled and boosted the ship’s throttle, following their course to Ordo Eris.

——————————————————–

Jidné piloted the ship with great care, evading the rock debris and asteroids that floated within the orbit. Her destination was dead ahead: one of the biggest rocks in the field, a needle of the infrastructure built within, a fiery orange glow encircled the central crater’s inner rim.

“I really don’t like this place,” she complained to no one in particular—except herself.

She slowed down the speed of the freighter until she got close enough to the outpost. A red blip flashed on her screen and vanished seconds after spotting it. There was a noticeable gaping crack of the arena’s ray shield wall that protects the outpost from the elements outside the planetoid, the young hunter added that to her list of questions once she lands.

The Scarab docked on the empty arena. It wasn’t entirely new for her see it devoid of animals and sentient creatures fighting for dear life, though it was a better sight than the deafening chorus of wild cheers mingling with animal roars. The Scarab’s landing gears disturbed the floor of the arena, creating clouds of sand around its pads, the exit ramp unfurled for Jidné and ID-3 to alight the ship.

A trio of bounty hunters approached her, there were more standing by the arena’s walls as well. Shortly after, they gave way for their Umbaran boss clad in silken, luxurious violet robes—he stuck out like a sore thumb around the orange light that filled his colosseum. For someone with sallow, prominent cheekbones and paper-white skin, he moved quite flamboyantly—contrast to his sickly appearance—perfectly matching up to the vibrancy of his rich, violet robes.

“We need to talk, Sorc,” the bounty hunter abruptly began, not having time for the dilly-dallying.

“Well, well,” he spoke in a singsong manner. He rubbed his goatee as he swayed. “It’s been way too long, dove. Come, come!”

Jidné didn’t come closer, even though Sorc beckoned her with his fingers covered in rings, so much so that the fingernails were the only ones exposed.

“Oh come on now, little dove, you act like we didn’t have history together!”

The bounty hunter rolled her eyes and shook her head, “Don’t call me that. Plus, that history was basically me being your delivery girl of animals and captives. It’s no big contract, just a sideline.”

“Ah, but you gave me a lot of good stuff for my arena! When you worked for me back in the day, I never ran out of customers—always looking for some mauling, goring, and all that crazy stuff!”

Completely uninterested of Sorc’s rambling about his business of arena fights between humanoids, humans or sentient beings against wild, senseless animals, Jidné cut to the chase.

“I don’t have time for stories, Sorc,”

“Of course, you aren’t. But, you know, intel—”

“Isn’t your expertise,” Jidné finished the sentence, even though that wasn’t exactly what Sorc was going to say. She put her hands over her waist, “But you’re the only one I know who could give me just that. Think of it as a compliment.”

The Umbaran pursed his lips, he opened his palm right in front of her. Fishing two gold chips out of her pocket and then tossing them to the hand, his fingers greedily caged the money into his fist and hurriedly tucked them into his robes.

“Always so hasty,” he rolled his eyes and smacked his lips. “Alright, what do you wanna know?”

“A boy. Redheaded Jedi.”

Sorc Tormo purred a long “Ahh” and wagged his finger at the girl, a mischievous grin stretching ear-to-ear on his pale white face.

“Handsome?”

Jidné’s eyebrows pulled together, creasing her forehead.

“I don’t see how that’s relevant, but okay, I guess?”

A throaty snicker rumbled from the Umbaran, still wagging his finger at the girl in a more teasing manner—it was almost childlike.

The surrounding bounty hunters subtly showed signs of hostility towards Jidné, her eyes already caught their movements with the slightest of side-glances: the ones standing closest to them were tightening their grips around their blasters, the ones who were a little far away but still within earshot had their hands slowly wandering towards their holsters.

She got the hint. Apparently, the Jedi was a prize indeed.

“Now that is an interesting subject—even for you, sweetheart!” Sorc Tormo guffawed, leaning to his knees while keeping his eyes on her.

She pointed at the damage with her thumb over her shoulder, without needing any words to make out the question, Sorc Tormo immediately has the answer.

“Ah!” he clicked his tongue. “We got a little… caught by surprise.”

“One hell of a surprise, if you ask me,”

“Oh honey, you don’t even know the start of it!” he swatted the air with his hand.

“He did that, didn’t he?”

Sorc Tormo’s boisterous guffaw startled the young girl as she awkwardly watched him laugh straight at her face. When he still hasn’t gotten all of the laughter of his system, he’s still chortling as he swings his arm at the air.

“Aww, ya shoulda see the baby go! Slashing away and getting chocked up by my pets and men. Crowd was wild, I had a full box that day!”

“You don’t know where he is, but you’ve seen him,” she insinuated.

Sorc got carried away with the compulsive need to tell it all, a force of habit, from the way she picked up his words, it was clear as the eye-straining color of his gaudy robes—the redheaded Jedi has engaged with the Haxion Brood.

“And you’re after him, too?”

“Hey, it pays the bills, sweetie!” he throws his arms to his sides, solely focusing on the topic of money. “Honestly, I could care less about the kid, but knowing the price on that pretty head of his, you really can’t blame us tryna make honest work, eh?”

“He’s mine!” she snarled, taking two steps towards Sorc.

Immediately, his bounty hunters became defensive of him, stopping her in her path by pointing the barrels of their rifles at her. That didn’t scare her, though, she takes another step close to the point that the holes of the blaster press against her body. She shot a dirty look at the pair of bounty hunters.

“If there’s one thing I hate: it’s competition.” She added.

Sorc chuckled, unintimidated and kept up his lurid façade, he gestured his hand in a circular motion that covered Jidné’s front.

“From what I could read in all this defensiveness, I strongly deduce that you have a contract out to get him.”

“Good job, man, do you want a prize for that?” she sardonically rebutted, keeping up with the Umbaran’s sarcasm with her own flavor.

There was no constructive reply from Sorc, other than another throaty chuckle. The girl’s patience is being stretched thin by the minute, not until she’s satisfied of filling the gaps that Darth Vader left in the job description.

Her sarcasm was quickly replaced with an imposing snarl through the clench of her teeth, “What else do you know?”

“He travels with that little gray grub that owes me a shitton of money!”

“A lot of little grubs owe you a shit-wad of money, Tormo, you’re gonna have to be much more specific.”

The syndicate boss sighed, often forgetting that this little bounty hunter was a persistent one—too persistent for her age rather. He shooed away his bounty hunters from being human barricades between Jidné and himself. They eased up, leaving a gap for Sorc and Jidné to converse with less distractions, but they still kept an eye on the girl—wary of her movements as she’s already starting to be aggressive.

“Alright, alright, fine! Your redhead is with the ship called the Mantis—it’s an S-161, you’ve been a mechanic part-time, right? You should know what that looks like. Now, for the grub that baby boy drives around with—he’s a stubby, little guy. Kinda old, wiry hair, bald on the top.”

“The companion—is he human too?”

“No, that grub is a Lateron. Stout, little thing. Four arms.”

Jidné tossed one last golden chip at Sorc, to which he skillfully caught into his hand; he fluidly slipped it into the inside pocket of his robes, making a soundless clink with the others, as he watched Jidné turn her back at him and walk away.

“Pleasure doing business with you, dove! Don’t be a stranger!”

“I plan to be!” Jidné clapped back before fully disappearing into the ship.

Sorc Tormo watched Jidné prep up the freighter, he even giddily waved goodbye at her to which she repaid with a fed-up rolling of the eye; she ignored him after that, focusing on the dashboard monitors of her ship as she eagerly flies the ship out of the rock. The freighter’s throttle blew at the entire arena—everyone’s capes and coattails flapped and smacked against their legs wildly as Jidné maneuvered the ship to face the gaping crack of the outpost’s wall.

“Are we gunna go after ‘er, boss?” one of the bounty hunters asked.

“Sure. It might be fun to have the baby boy and the baby girl together—they either kill each other or save each other, whatever and whichever works,” Sorc thought out loud, he rubbed his goatee with his ring-covered fingers and a grin stretched across his wrinkled, sallow face. “A ransom… no, a fugitive’s bounty on her head too! Yes, that would be very delicious. Go on now, SHOO!”

All of the bounty hunters dispersed, whooping in glee and greed as they gathered into their crude ships, bringing along the HURID-class droids for added muscle and brawn. Sorc Tormo stood idly in the exact spot he’s been staying in ever since Jidné came until she left, he listened to the barbaric laughter and chatter among his men; that greedy, coy grin never melted in his face—the only thing that ran around his brain was the idea of having sacks upon sacks of credits delivered to his private chambers, rewarded for the joint bounties of the Jedi and Jidné.

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themattress · 4 years

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Upon further reflection...

I truly believe the critical backlash toward The Rise of Skywalker (and I’m talking about critics, not the “fans” in the Fandom Menace who were never going to be pleased with the film no matter what) is largely not because of anything in the movie itself and more because of what the movie itself represents to them, what it made them realize: that Kathleen Kennedy and Disney-owned Lucasfilm had no cohesive plan for the Sequel Trilogy from the very start.

The Force Awakens was made under the sense of continuing a cyclical myth, with familiar themes and beats everywhere. Rey was the new Skywalker hero for all intents and purposes, and even if she wasn’t a Skywalker by blood there was clearly something important about her lineage Force-wise. Finn and Poe split the difference between Leia and Han, BB-8 was the new droid companion, Kylo Ren was the new Vader but who’d develop in reverse (starts out sad and conflicted, ends up cool and composed), Snoke was the new Emperor, and Luke would have an important role (but not the expected one, which would actually go to Leia - that’s one of the few things set in stone; Kathleen Kennedy wanted her to be “the star”). Critics curiously didn’t mind any of this at the time, giving The Force Awakens rave reviews.

But then Rian Johnson was allowed to do whatever he wanted with The Last Jedi, and he clearly balked at the familiar story set-up he was handed. And so, despite the fact that this set-up existed, he ignored it or deliberately subverted it in order to get the story going the direction he thought it should go. Rey had no important lineage, she’s just some random girl who is naturally gifted with the Force just because. The Luke/Leia/Han dynamic was not allowed to repeat itself, making a trio of Poe, Finn and new character Rose instead, with Finn/Rose going on a socially-conscious thematic side-mission while Poe had to learn that being a “flyboy” isn’t going to fly anymore. Snoke is killed and Kylo Ren becomes the new Emperor while formerly credible General Hux became a total buffoon. And while the stuff with Luke and Leia followed along the lines of what Kathleen Kennedy wanted, it was still very surprising just how little a role Luke seemed to ultimately play in the ST’s overall story despite his character arc being pretty central to the movie itself. Johnson paved the way forward for uncharted territory, which would have worked for the start of a trilogy or the end of a trilogy, but was disastrous to do for the middle because now there’s no real set-up for the final film other than the basic “Rebels vs. Empire” premise that the original A New Hope opened up on!

Yet critics still adored The Last Jedi, moreso than The Force Awakens, and were now totally on board with Johnson’s vision even though it really was not sustainable for Episode IX (btw, that’s actually why I’m glad it happened the way it did - Colin Trevorrow’s inability to make a satisfying conclusion with it is why he got fired, and I had never liked the idea of him as the director for Episode IX to begin with). When J.J Abrams returned, he wanted to finish the ST’s story the way he had in mind back during The Force Awakens, with the set-up he had created, and so he made multiple backtracks from The Last Jedi, rendering many of that film’s creative choices seem kind of pointless in retrospect. Critics exploded with anger, saying that The Rise of Skywalker suffered from a “frustrating lack of imagination”. This statement from Rotten Tomatoes’ critical consensus baffles me, because as I said before The Force Awakens had this exact same kind of cyclical familiarity and rehashed beats; in fact by the standards these critics are using it had MORE of a “lack of imagination” since its whole plot was almost a remake of A New Hope that caused George Lucas himself to bemoan “there’s nothing new!", while The Rise of Skywalker at least has stuff like Exogol and everything connected to it, Lightspeed-skipping, Force-dueling from different locations between Rey and Kylo Ren, worlds that don’t look like anything we’ve seen before like Kijimi, deep and dare-I-say imaginative ways to call back to earlier films and tie the whole saga together, etc. Yet The Rise of Skywalker is the worst-reviewed movie in the whole series, while The Force Awakens is among the best? It’s a double standard that makes no sense.

Unless you’re not thinking logically, of course, and are thinking emotionally. And that’s what critics are doing, as The Rise of Skywalker made them realize that this was exactly how the creative process behind this whole trilogy went and it pisses them off. But even though if you look at that scenario objectively Rian Johnson and The Last Jedi deserve more of the blame, that director and that film and other people attached to it received toxic hate from the aforementioned Fandom Menace, and in today’s Culture War critics didn’t want to give people like that anything that could be taken as legitimacy, so they cast the blame onto Abrams and The Rise of Skywalker instead and accused it of “pandering” to those fans and committing a creative sin by discarding Rian Johnson’s vision for the direction Star Wars should go, as if Johnson hadn’t done the same thing to Abrams’ vision first and as if a conclusion following everything that Johnson set up wouldn’t have depressingly bleak and giving off a far deeper feeling of pointlessness than what we actually ended up with.

Ken Miyamoto (insightful on Star Wars in a way he isn’t for Game of Thrones) sums it up:

It’s just such a shame that, simply for being the final installment and being the film that made the Sequel Trilogy’s biggest problem apparent to critics even though it was apparent to many viewers since The Last Jedi (or even earlier!), The Rise of Skywalker gets the mass critical condemnation, since both at its core and given the circumstances it found itself in, I truly think it’s the best and most impressive of the three (also, it has Palpy in it so I’m naturally biased).

#Star Wars #The Rise of Skywalker #Opinion #Analysis #Executive Incompetence

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coruscantexpat · 4 years

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Bonds Unbroken - Chapter 19: Reunion

Meetra felt the sunlight first.

It spilled over her, warm and bright behind her closed eyelids. After the sterility of Peragus and Citadel Station, the warmth was overpowering, so much so it took several seconds for the pain to register. Meetra’s jaw clenched, breath hissing through her teeth. Everything hurt, a dull soreness that spread downward from her shoulders, concentrated in her arms and hips and one oddly specific spot near her hairline. Even her most intense training sessions at the academy had been kinder.

She took a deep breath to steady herself, compartmentalizing the aches and pains away, and pushed herself upright, lifting a hand to shade her eyes before she opened them. For a moment, there was nothing but brightness, Telos’ sun blotting out the planet with its brilliance. Then Meetra’s vision adjusted, and her breath hitched in her throat. Short scrub grass stretched out in front of her, racing away to the craggy hills in the distance. Small crooked trees broke through here and there, limbs outstretched at impossible angles. A sliver of ocean hovered at their edge to her left, too far away for her to smell the salt. It caught the sunlight, jewel-like, and reflected it among dancing waves. Above, white clouds scudded lazily through a pale blue sky. It was simple, primitive — the earliest step in the Ithorians’ restoration — but it was beautiful compared to the chrome and ceramic of the station or the thick drifts of Belsavis.

“Quite the view, isn’t it, General?”

Meetra started, hand flicking toward her waist before she caught herself. She’d been so captivated she hadn’t heard his approach. The speaker held up his hands, a self-conscious grin pulling at his lips. This was, without a doubt, Bao-Dur. The standard horns of the Zabrak were prominent with him, forming a circlet around his head. A complex web of facial tattoos lined his gray skin, framing golden eyes, and when he smiled, she saw sharp canines. His right arm drew her attention from his face. Cybernetic, a long ribbon of energy connecting the “hand” to the rest of his arm - something about it unnerved her and made her sad all at the same time.

Bao-Dur followed her gaze to his hand. He let his normal arm fall and spread the mechanical fingers in an exaggerated wave. “Gets everyone the first time. You get used to it.” His voice was soft and measured, and Meetra got the sense that it was his natural tenor rather than any effort on his part. As he spoke, a small spherical remote droid zipped up behind him, hovering at shoulder level. Without addressing it, Bao-Dur resumed his approach and held out a hand to help her to her feet. “Welcome to Telos, General — one of the habitable bits, anyway.” The golden eyes softened, the sun lending them a warm glow. “It’s good to see you again.” Meetra stared at him, unsure how to continue. He scanned her face, saw the confusion, and a flash of disappointment flickered in his eyes. “You don’t remember me.”

“I… I’m sorry, no.” Guilt came with the admission. “We’ve met before?”

He smiled, a touch of sadness in the lines around his eyes. “In another life. It’ll come back to you. Why don’t you tell me your story first?”

“The Ithorians — I mean, their leader, Chodo Habat sent us to — “ Everything came back in a rush. Reuniting wordlessly with Kreia at the shuttle dock as they boarded. Entering the Telosian atmosphere, dipping beneath the shield of the Restoration Zone to sweep through the clouds. Heavy, shuddering impacts along the shuttle’s keel and the sharp tang of burning circuitry. Shouting for her companions, only Atton’s voice answering. A bone-shattering impact and then… nothing. Meetra’s chest tightened, panic clawing its way up her throat. “Our shuttle — There were two others with me — What happened to — “

“Slow down, General.” Bao-Dur squeezed her shoulder. The gesture felt surprisingly familiar and Meetra didn’t shy away from it. “Take a breath.” He smirked. “And maybe a look around.”

She stared at him for a moment, then turned from the vista to the land behind her. The shuttle was a few yards away, a long divot in the earth leading from the crash site to where it lay with its nose buried in the dirt. Parts of the fuselage near the cargo doors and the cockpit were stained dark with soot, but Meetra didn’t smell anything burning. She spotted Atton and Kreia next, near where she’d woken, the former’s jacket draped over his chest. Both were unconscious and Kreia’s robes were perhaps a shade darker in places, but they appeared otherwise unharmed. A small collection of their belongings, including Chodo’s canvas bag and hers and Kreia’s weapons, had been gathered in a pile nearby.

Meetra crossed the space quickly, Bao-Dur trailing in her wake, and knelt in between Atton and Kreia, inspecting first one and then the other. “They’re alright; probably took a harder hit than you did. I was a few klicks out when I saw your shuttle come in. Thought it was some of Chodo’s herd, so I got here as quickly as I could - imagine my surprise.” He chuckled, the warm sound soothing some of her fears. “Got the fire down pretty easily, but most of the systems are fried. Between that and the structural damage…” He trailed off with a shrug. “Hope you didn’t plan on getting out the way you came in. Do you remember what happened?”

She shook her head. “Something hit the shuttle. Must have bounced us around pretty good.” More than that, if the dull ache running the length of her body was anything to go by. Meetra carefully lifted Atton’s jacket and tested the straps on his sling. He moaned softly as her inspection jarred his arm, but didn’t wake. “I remember the fire, some shouting, but after that…”

“Could have been a lot worse. You’ve got a hell of a pilot.” Meetra smiled and pulled Atton’s jacket back over him. Bao-Dur was right. By all accounts, they should be dead from the crash, but Atton had come through. She doubted it was the last time she would be thankful she’d released him on Peragus. Unbidden, Bao-Dur’s remote let out a sharp trill. “Fine, fine. I’m Bao-Dur, by the way. My friend thinks it’s a bit rude I didn’t introduce myself under the circumstances.”

“I know.” She saw the flash of hope in his eyes and felt guilty for quashing it with her next words. “Chodo said he worked with you, that you built the shields for the Restoration Zones. Our ship was stolen from Citadel Station and brought here; he said you could help us find it.”

“What kind of ship?”

Freighter, Dynamic-class. Goes by Ebon Hawk.”

He frowned, brow creased in thought. “I can’t say I’ve seen any freighters come through recently. Granted, I haven’t really been in a position to track new arrivals for a while.” He gave a sheepish smile in the face of her confusion. “Better to wait for your friends to wake up — that way I only have to explain once. But don’t worry, General; if your ship’s here, I’ll help you find her.”

“You keep calling me that.” Meetra stood, eyes narrowed and arms folded over her chest. “No one’s called me that since…”

“The wars, yeah.”

“You served?”

“Not with the Republic.” Bao-Dur chuckled and rubbed one of his horns with a thumb. “I was actually part of your regiment. Joined a few years before the end as technician, then an engineer. Thought I would have made more of an impression, honestly, being the only Zabrak.”

She stared at him, rigid posture loosening. “I… I’m so sorry. Everything from then is… hazy.” Except in her nightmares, when it seemed determined to return in horrific and warped detail.

Bao-Dur’s gaze fell and he sighed, the fingers of his prosthetic clenching into a fist. “Don’t push yourself. I’ve tried to put it out of my mind, too... as much as I can, anyway.”

“Why?”

He risked a glance at her face, saw the genuine confusion there. “Because I…” His jaw clenched, the lines of his skin and tattoos tightening around his eyes. “General, I built the Mass Shadow Generator. Designed it to Revan’s exact specifications and fired it on your order.” His voice rose in volume and pitch, the soft warmth replaced with anger and desperation. “I stood on the bridge with you — you looked right at me, the longest you’d ever looked at me, and you nodded. Just once — a single nod… How can you not remember this?!”

Meetra didn’t answer. She stared at Bao-Dur - no, not at him, but through him. For a moment, she was back on the bridge, staring out at the massive battle sprawled above Malachor V’s atmosphere. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, under the weight of the memories. There had been someone with her, but she’d barely taken notice - by the end of the wars, it was easier not to care, to see those under her command as tools rather than people. The figure was fuzzy in her memories, but she remembered nodding — only once, as Bao-Dur said — and outside the ship, the world imploded. Everything after was chaos, a cacophony of sounds and images that was incomprehensible when it was fresh, much less a decade later.

The anguish drained from Bao-Dur as he watched the muted horror play across her face. He sighed and reached out to take her hand in his flesh-and-blood one. “I’m sorry, General; that was unkind of me. Neither of us knew what would happen. Revan kept everyone in the dark.”

“She never told me who built it.” Meetra’s voice was small and soft, the words thick, like she was forcing them out from deep in her chest. Her hand stayed loose in his, but she didn’t pull away. “I — I never asked. I always assumed she… I thought she told me everything, and if she didn’t, it wasn’t important.” She blinked, pulling herself out of the dark memory, and looked back at Bao-Dur. Although her eyes were dry, they burned with regret, a spark of anger at the very center. “There’s nothing I can say to change that. Even apologizing feels pathetic. I should never have let her put you in that position — I should never have put you in that position.”

“I made the choice to join — and I don’t regret that choice” His voice was warm again, but there was a firm edge to it now. “Whatever came after, I try to hold on to that. You should, too, General.” He squeezed her hand and smiled when her fingers curled around his. Meetra’s gaze fell and he followed it back to his cybernetic arm. “Souvenir, of sorts. It happened after the shockwave hit the ship. I remember seeing you fall, following you down, but after that… When I woke up, it was gone. The Republic doctor who did the surgery said it was crushed, probably under something that came loose in the blast. Thankfully, I was unconscious for most of it.”

Meetra slipped her hand free of his and brushed the prosthesis with her fingertips. “You built it yourself.”

“I have high standards.” The spherical droid at his shoulder made an indignant whistle. “And I guess I had a little help.” She laughed and Bao-Dur smiled, the lines around his eyes and mouth crinkling. “You know, I always wondered what that sounded like. Not a lot of fun to be had after I joined.”

“Watching a planet glassed firsthand kind of killed the ‘fun.’” A darkness flickered across her face, just as quickly banished. “How did you end up on Telos and fall in with the Ithorians?”

Bao-Dur was silent for a moment, eyes unfocused as he lost himself in his own memories. “When I woke up, you were gone, too. You and Revan and — �� His voice caught on the third name, much like her thoughts did every time they turned to her former friend — “Malak. The wars were over, and I was alone. Without a purpose. We’d won, but the costs…” He trailed off, and the haunted look in his eyes sent a chill down Meetra’s spine. She was fairly certain she wore the same expression when she thought about the Mandalorian Wars. Bao-Dur swallowed, finding his voice again. “I wanted… needed to do something, to make up for my mistakes. I started drifting, helping out where I could before moving on to the next city, the next planet… and then Revan and Malak returned.”

“And started the Civil War.”

Bao-Dur nodded. “You heard about that.”

“Not at first.” She didn’t like thinking about the years after her exile. Truthfully, she still wasn’t sure how she’d survived the first few — she hadn’t exactly made an effort to stay alive. By the time she’d returned to something resembling her pre-exile self, Revan had made her second return and saved the Republic from Malak’s Sith army. “I only found out recently. Did you… What was she like?”

“No idea.” Bao-Dur shrugged. “I stayed as far out of their path as I could. Didn’t want to be recognized; although, if your reaction is anything to go by, I probably shouldn’t have bothered.” He smiled to show he was teasing her. “By the time everything was done, a lot of refugees didn’t have a home to go back to. Malak had a habit of bombing entire planets. He was very sporting, that way. I caught wind that the Republic had authorized a restoration effort, and Telos was going to be the flagship project. As soon as I heard, I knew this was what I’d been waiting for, so I made my way to Citadel Station and joined up with Chodo and his herd. I had a talent for shield tech and he had a dream.” His smile turned sad. “Almost worked out.”

“‘Almost?’” Meetra waved a hand, indicating the land around them with the expansive gesture. “Looks to me like the idea was a success.”

His expression darkened. “We should have had half the planet covered by now.”

She raised an eyebrow at the anger in his words. “What’s stop— ” A soft groan cut her off, and she and Bao-Dur looked over to see Atton stirring, the whites of his eyes just visible beneath fluttering lids. A sudden panic seized Meetra, her chest tightening. She turned back to Bao-Dur, struggling to keep her alarm in check. “They — ” She paused and glanced back at Kreia. The idea that she had any secrets from the old woman was laughable. “He doesn’t know…”

Bao-Dur glanced from her to Atton and back again. “And you don’t want him to.”

Meetra shook her head. “Most of my friends are dead or missing. I’d prefer not to lose any more, so just ‘Meetra’ from now on, alright?”

He raised a brow, but nodded. “As you wish. Forgive me for saying so, Gen— Meetra, but is he really a friend if you don’t trust him with who you are?”

“Who I was.” She stressed the last word, the syllable slipping through her teeth like a curse. “And I do trust him. He’s fought with me, saved my life more than once… I don’t want him to leave because of what I’ve done.”

Bao-Dur inclined his head. “I’m sorry; that was more than a little hypocritical of me. It’s not as if Chodo knows what part I played in the Mandalorian Wars.”

“It’s alright,” Meetra relented, kneeling down again. “The question isn’t entirely unwarranted.” She pulled Atton’s jacket off of him again and put it to the side before touching his good shoulder. He came awake instantly, gaze finding hers, and for a moment, a flicker of fear and something darker passed behind his eyes. She leaned away, startled, but the shadow was gone before she could seek it out again. Atton blinked at her, as if unsure she were an illusion, then grinned. She returned the smile and held out a hand. “Welcome back.”

“And I was having such a pleasant dream, too.” Atton took her hand and let her pull him to a sitting position, grimacing only a little when the motion tugged his injured arm. He leaned around her to look out at the Telosian surface and his sour look intensified. “You sure we’re awake? This isn’t some shared nightmare?”

Meetra laughed despite herself. “It’s not that bad.”

Atton raised an incredulous eyebrow. “This makes Nar Shaddaa look civilized. At least you can buy drinks.”

“And thanks to your fool’s incompetence, we are stranded here.” Meetra started and turned to find Kreia already on her feet, dusting Telosian soil from the hem of her robes. The old woman’s ability to move without notice was unnerving.

Atton scowled up at her. “My ‘incompetence’ is why you’re still alive and not a pile of ash mixed with ship slag.”

Bao-Dur chuckled, breaking the silence that accompanied Kreia’s withering glare. “Interesting company you keep, Meetra.”

“It would be boring otherwise.” She stood, pulling Atton to his feet as well, and helped him slip his jacket on. “Bao-Dur, Atton Rand and Kreia”

He nodded to first one, then the other. “A pleasure.”

“Yeah, sure.” Atton eyed the Zabrak warily, ignoring Meetra’s frown. “Know anything about that AD tower that took us out? That was a pirate set-up; I thought the Ithorians were running a research project here.”

Bao-Dur’s remote jerked toward his shoulder and whistled, zipping back out of reach when he swiped half-heartedly at it. “Yes, yes, you were right.” He turned back to Meetra and thumbed one of his horns again. “It’s like I said earlier — I haven’t been able to keep track of anything coming to Telos because of Czerka. Chodo probably told you about the obstacles he’s been facing with them.”

“He actually asked us to help him find evidence of it,” Meetra said. “The Ithorians should have enough to bury Czerka now.”

Bao-Dur raised an eyebrow. “Well… that’s good to hear, but the news hasn’t made it down here. To answer your question about the tower: Czerka sent a ‘research’ team to the surface a few weeks ago.” His lips curved in a humorless smile. “Why the company needs so many mercenaries for research, I don’t know. They set up shop in one of the Ithorians’ abandoned compounds, cut off any outside communication, and sent a pursuit team after me when I started nosing around. Luckily, I know the terrain better than a bunch of Nar Shaddaa cast-offs.”

“Yeah, well, even a half-deaf and blind bantha will have heard that.” Atton jerked a thumb at the wrecked shuttle. “The longer we hang around here playing catch up, the sooner Czerka finds us.”

“As much as it pains me, my opinion aligns with the fool’s.” Atton rolled his eyes at Meetra, but otherwise ignored Kreia’s jab. “We are no closer to finding the Ebon Hawk, and we will be less so if we are taken captive.”

“Not necessarily. We can help you find your ship.” Bao-Dur waved a hand to indicate both himself and the remote. “I doubt the mercenaries thought to reset the shield network passcodes, so it’s likely I still have access. If we can get into the compound, I can locate records for any ship passing through the network. That’s the easy part, though.”

Meetra tilted her head. “And the hard part?”

“Besides getting past Czerka’s guards? It’s a bit of a trek from here.” He turned and pointed toward the shimmering water in the distance. “We’ll have to take the long way to avoid any patrols or the pursuit team. Not to mention the wildlife.”

“What ‘wildlife?’” Atton shook his head. “Unless Telos had some bomb-resistant blarrg I’m not aware of, the fauna’s as dead as the rest of this planet.”

“Chodo thought it best to introduce a few herbivore species to keep the new growth in check,” Bao-Dur explained, either ignoring or failing to notice the sarcasm in Atton’s voice. Judging from the smuggler’s sour look, Meetra suspected it was the former. “When their numbers started to get out of hand, the Ithorians’ decided to bring in a predator — cannoks.” Meetra kept her face carefully blank, but couldn’t suppress the shudder that rolled down her spine. An image of the squat little monsters flashed before her — rough, craggy gray skin, thick eyestalks moving independently of each other, and a mouth full of needles. A native of Dxun, they had been the cause of more than a few injuries throughout her regiment. The cannoks’ small size meant they weren’t life-threatening to humanoid species, but those impossibly sharp teeth combined with their tendency to attack anything that moved had made them a formidable nuisance. “Unfortunately, after Czerka forced Chodo and his herd off Telos, they made no attempt to maintain the ecosystem the Ithorians’ put in place. The result: no herbivores, and a large number of very hungry cannoks who will try to catch and eat anything — including us.”

“Great. I’m so thrilled we passed up drinks on Nar Shaddaa for mercs and flesh-eating mon— ” Atton cut off, posture stiffening as his gaze locked on a point behind Meetra. Before she could ask what was wrong, he drew a blaster with his good arm and fired past her in one fluid motion. Meetra flinched away and lifted a hand, the gesture unconscious, the Force surging into a concentrated point, but Bao-Dur caught her arm and gently forced it down.

“Nice shot,” he commended Atton, fingers pressing lightly into Meetra’s arm. “A scout drone — looks like Czerka’s goons are getting smarter. I doubt it was able to transmit much, but you’re right — we should get moving.” He squeezed Meetra’s arm once and released her. Atton holstered his blaster, face carefully neutral, but his eyes held hers, a flicker of uncertainty in their depths. Meetra broke the gaze first, hot shame crawling up the back of her neck. Losing control was embarrassing, especially with her weakened connection to the Force, and the idea of hurting Atton turned her stomach. Avoiding his eyes, she stepped past him and collected their belongings, tossing Kreia her vibrosword before slinging the canvas bag over her shoulders.

“Let’s go.”

Full chapter available on AO3 and FFN.

#KotOR 2 #kotor fanfic #atton x exile #The Jedi Exile #Female exile #atton rand #bao-dur #Kreia

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