((Author note: ten chapters of this story are done but I like to leave them to ferment a few days before posting them, usually reread them a few times so I beg everyone's patience. Also I have extensive notes on this story posted on my author page if anyone wants to know the background for the story.))

Sometimes it is truly a bad thing to be too clever for one's own good. Sometimes it can be a deadly thing.

Hasp Christo may have been aware of this and he might not have been, but either way he would have found very little appreciation for that irony as he ran through the dark streets of Mos Eisley on Tatooine. The twin suns had only recently descended below the horizon as he ran through the maze of narrow and haphazard throughways. The few street lights that lit his way also illuminated the meager handful of other people out walking the streets, none of them so much as looking up at the panic-stricken human running through the city - such was a scene not at all uncommon to the dangerous city.

He was a man who made his living out of poking his nose into places that it didn't belong and profiting off of the things that it sniffed out for him. He never particularly cared about what carnage and destruction fell in his wake after he sold his information to the highest bidder, all he cared about was the feel of good hard money in his pockets at the end of the day. He was a simple man with simple desires and goals, not a man who ever really set out to hurt others but just a man who was primarily looking out for his own best interests. And on this particular occasion, the realization was beginning to dawn in his mind that on top of the other things, he was also about to become a very dead man.

The beat up and dirty cloak that he wore had obviously seen far more use than it had ever really been designed for. It looked little different than the boots he wore, or the trousers and shirt he wore. They all had faded and weathered until whatever original color they possessed had long since been left behind. Now they were the non-color of the Tatooine landscape itself, they were the color of the desolation and the dust that was the planet. For that matter, with his mangy beard and unkempt hair and his craggy and sun-tortured face that looked a score of years older than it really was, Hasp himself did not look all that much better for wear than his clothing did.

And so in the end that was all that he appeared to be; a shambling mass of nothing and dust that was making his one last and desperate attempt to cling to life before succumbing to the inevitable. It was a sight that was far from uncommon in a world that itself seemed to be making a last and desperate cling to life.

Street upon street he rushed down, occasionally tripping and stumbling in the collection of stones and sand that littered the roadway. At one point he ran directly in front of a lumbering dewback being ridden by a large and menacing-looking Trandoshan. The beast reared back at the suddenness of Hasp's appearance and almost tossed it's rider out of the saddle. Hasp could hear the angry Trandoshan shouting curses at him as he ran on into the more aged sections of the city. He had hoped that maybe here in the darkest and deepest pits of the largest city on Tatooine, maybe he could find someone who would help him out of the dangerous predicament he had made for himself. At the very least, maybe he could find some place that he could hide.

Eyes wide and breathing heavy, he suddenly stopped on a dark street in the older part of the city. He neither saw nor heard anything aside from the hushed guttural whispers coming from the direction of a couple pairs of glowing Jawa eyes that watched him inquisitively for a moment before they too quickly departed. After that, the only sound was the sounds of urban nighttime - the gentle rush of the desert wind compared to the more technological and urbane sounds of laughter close by and the sound of a starship's thrusters roaring to live at the nearby spaceport.

The thought of starships suddenly gave him a degree of hope. Maybe he could find someone who would quickly take him off-world. Where didn't matter, anywhere just as long as it wasn't a planet that had someone trying to kill him. The thought did not last, however, his pursuer was not alone and no-doubt had friends who would be waiting enthusiastically at the spaceport in the hopes that he would be unwise enough to attempt an escape.

Seeing nothing else to do, he ducked into the alleyway and slumped down behind a crate which smelled as though it contained vegetables which had been rotting for some time. He exhaled tiredly and looked up into the sky. Easily visible to the naked eye were a pair of Imperial Star Destroyers which were in orbit around the planet, they were part of some task force that had been assigned to this system ever since a dust-up the Empire had with some rebels a few months earlier. That wasn't what he was primarily focused on though; he was far more interested in the sky in general.

Hasp Christo started at the stars, the unending and infinite expanse of starts that spread out over him. He was a thoughtful man in his own way at times, still a coward and a thief to be sure, but a thoughtful man. He looked up into the heavens and wondered what his life might have been like if his lot had been better, if he hadn't been forced to grow up and scratch out a living on this godforsaken ball of sand. He wondered what it was like to live on Coruscant, the imperial seat of the Empire; or maybe to live on Vortex, he once heard a traveler say that it was the most beautiful planet in all of the universe. Hasp didn't know about that, but he very much liked the idea of a place where he might have had an honest trade and something to take pride in, a family maybe.

Kids, Hasp thought. Hasp would have very much liked to have had kids.

He wished he could go back and rearrange the day that he had set in motion the actions that would end his life. He was too clever for his own good; there was no doubt about that. It was only a single gesture, an unguarded gesture that set the wheels of his mind in motion. The culmination of which was the discovery of a secret which he wished he could unlearn, regardless of how much he was sure the Empire would pay him for. But unfortunately, what is learned is not easily forgotten and the knowledge that one person will pay for, another will kill for.

The starship which had recently ignited its thrusters now cycled them up as it prepared to take off. For a moment all sound around him was blotted out from the high pitched whine and then booming of the ship lifting off of the ground and taking to the stars. Hasp watched as the craft thundered over him, a large freighter bound for better places than here. He envied those aboard the ship and in a voice too quiet to even perceive amidst the noise, he gave them a blessing for a safe and eventless voyage.

He watched the freighter as it sped away from Mos Eisley, taking the loud roar of its departure with it. It was only then that he could hear the crunching of boots against coarse gravel walking toward him. Hasp stood up quickly and pulled a blaster out of cloak as he backed up against the wall. A single red blaster bolt shot out from the shadowy figure approaching and struck him in the wrist, causing him to drop his weapon with a shout of pain. Almost quaking with fear, Hasp didn't even look to the charred flesh below his hand that would almost certainly require medical attention. He was far more concerned with living long enough to care whether or not it would require medical attention.

From the shadows stepped a woman and at last Hasp's fears were confirmed. There was going to be no escape from this, Hasp was going to die this night. The look on her face was not what he had been expecting though; there was no hatred or malice in her eyes. He saw no blood thirst, no explicit wish for his death. All he saw in her eyes was a tiredness and perhaps sadness. None of this changed the fact that she had her blaster leveled at his forehead, however.

"You aren't even going to try to run?" The woman asked him, it really was not a question.

"You're Ebra Burden." Was all Hasp said back.

He stared at her in what was either terror or horror. She could not tell which it was, but they both really amounted to the same when it was all over and done with. She had seen the same look on the faces of untold numbers of people about to meet their deaths. She made no reply to him but simply stepped forward and aimed her shot to make his death as quick and painless as she possibly could.

Sensing the end coming, Hasp shook his head back and forth quickly; he was weeping. "Please don't. I'm sorry I was so nosey. If you let me go, I promise that I will never tell anyone that you are alive."

The broken man collapsed to his knees, sobbing into the dry and uncaring dust. The woman that he called Ebra Burden slowly walked to stand over him, her blaster pointing down into the back of his head. She was an assassin, a damn good one, and one more death amounted to nothing; especially not in this place, especially not when it came to a man that would die as forgotten and unnoticed as he had been for his entire life. Nevertheless, a pair of tears rolled down her face knowing that she didn't have a choice in the matter.

"If it were just my life, I would let you go." She told him, sadly. "But there are other people that I'm protecting. If the Empire knows that I'm still alive, it will put them in danger too." And then she added, a little coldly. "You should have just minded your own business."

"I'm so sorry." Hasp coughed out in a strangled sob. "I've made such a mess of my life, I don't want to die. I want another chance."

The woman looked up into the sky for a moment, the endless and omnipresent sky, before looking back down at the man huddled on the ground.

"Please." He wept, his tears wetting the ground beneath him.

Ebra Burden pulled the trigger. The sound of the blaster went unnoticed in the din of the Mos Eisley night.