Title: Special
Author: obaona
Summary: The Exile's wandering - pre-game - in the Outer Rim.
A/N: This is part of a series of missing scenes from KOTOR2, mostly following canon ("A Jedi, or Something Like It" is in the same 'universe').
Feedback is loved!
She was running.
The plains of Irvi V were golden, long strands of useless grass that were nevertheless pretty, a stark contrast against the deeply blue sky. The twin suns were small, distant, not making the planet as hot as would normally be expected of a binary system. The air was cool, with a breeze, but she could hardly feel it, running in the sun.
She was running, but nowhere.
Legs pumping at full speed, arms working, her muscles aching with each stretch, at the limit of her body's capabilities - and it still felt like slogging through mud. Each step was over uncertain ground, even the flatness of the plain not enough, her body registering each impact as it happened and not before, struggling to adapt to not knowing the precise plane of the ground, to having to react and not predict.
Her ankles were solid throbs of pain, insistent and uncontrollable, the pressure of running blindly falling mostly on them, twisting when there was unevenness beneath her.
Everyone ran this way. Eyes at the horizon, getting a general layout of the land before through peripheral vision, relying on strength to get through uneven patches of ground hidden by the waves of golden grass. She was breathing hard already, eight kilometers in, her body starting on reserves. Weak.
She kept pushing. She'd known a commander, a man, not a Jedi, who would run sixteen kilometers a day.
He was dead, of course. A good man, a good Republic soldier, but dead. But not because he wasn't physically capable. She could, at least, get that much; just like any other human being. Normal. She threw herself into each stride as her body tired, kept going when she stumbled, once, then twice. The plain was endless before her.
Many people were normal. There was nothing wrong with that. She was just fine as she was. Things were a little more difficult now, of course. She had to watch out for herself now in a way she hadn't before. Watch everything, note everything, with nothing but her own mind to guide her. It was an adjustment, naturally.
It was like being blind.
She stopped so abruptly she nearly fell over, breathing hard, panting, ankle collapsing beneath her. She sat, hard, on the ground. The ends of the grass tickled at her face, waving in the breeze. She was sweating, damp with it, hair plastered to her forehead and getting in her eyes. She ran her hands through her hair, pushing it back, breathing, her hand falling to her side, which had gotten a stitch. The pain was a reminder of her limits.
Normal.
That's what she was now - not special, like when the Jedi had come to her homeworld and told parents how special their child was, how great a destiny it was to be a Jedi. And then taken them away, never to see those who had created them, but to be molded into something else, something their parents couldn't imagine. A perfect weapon, a listening and acting and reacting conduit of the Force.
Jedi would insist they were not weapons, naturally. She knew better.
She looked out at the sky, the horizon, and remembered other worlds, worlds like Dxun. They denied it, she herself had denied it when she was young, so dedicated to the traditional teachings, but she knew otherwise now; Jedi were weapons, at times. Jedi were as much weapons as they were instruments of peace - in fact, the two elements often intermingled. Whenever the Jedi made a choice to save one and not the other, to attack one and not the other, they were acting as weapons - determining, as she had, that the Mandalorians were not to be the rulers of the Republic. The Jedi Council would deny that to the end, had denied it to the end, that they served as anything other than guardians of the peace, violence as a last resort, if it was one at all. They failed, she thought, to recognize all the ways in which Jedi were called. They thought to wait, and wait, for the Mandalorians to come. How far they would have waited, she didn't know. If they had a plan then, she didn't know.
But for certain, in one thing they had definitely failed: leading the Jedi to one way or another. Out of war or into it, they had given little but rhetoric.
When Revan and Malak, two of the most powerful young Jedi Knights, had come and said they were going to act, and offered to take along any who felt the same way - she had said yes. She had joined without hesitation. They offered action, not words, not platitudes. A way to save lives.
The Jedi insisted that they had to know the situation better, that there was more to it. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't, but if those people dying at the hands of the Mandalorians had been right there in front of them, in their presence, would they have not acted to save them? What did distance matter? Yet apparently it did, for them; they could comfortably pass judgments when no one was dying before their eyes.
Whether it happened before her eyes or not, she had felt those deaths. Meaningless deaths, for the so-called honor of the Mandalorians.
It was irony, a necessary irony, that in the process of saving lives she had had to kill so many.
Like at Malachor.
She closed her eyes to the twin suns, feeling sick.
Her breaths were coming easier now, the stitch in her side easing. Her muscles still burned, and twinges of sharp pain made themselves known in her legs. She drew her limbs together, sat folded on the ground, almost like she was going to meditate, though that was useless now. So many things were useless. Including her, it sometimes felt like.
She let herself fall back into the grass, a welcome cushion, eyes staring up at the cloudless sky.
This was her punishment, she supposed. Blind, deaf, crippled. The universe was closed to her, like she was looking at paintings of reality instead of perceiving in three dimensions. Everything was flat and bland and difficult to understand.
But this was her life, now. She sat up, the pain from the stress on her body fading as she had rested. Used her knee as support, stood up. The small landing pad that her ship sat on was about eight kilometers away. The village where she was offloading supplies was small, and on such an isolated world - weeks away from any other habitable planet - the spaceport was basically flattened ground, dirt not duracrete.
But for someone willing to spend weeks alone, in the Outer Rim, places like this were perfect. She was always moving, but never going very far, never meeting many people.
The village was thankful for the supplies, which mostly consisted of medical equipment and chemicals, and they paid partially in credits, partially in food. That was fine with her. She didn't intend to get rich, just get by with as little notice as possible. The villagers of the thirty or so planets she visited - scattered in the outer reaches - occasionally asked if she wanted to stay for dinner, stay the night, go to a harvest celebration, but she always turned them down. Stayed distant.
People were a weight to her, every conversation a burden, attempted connection painful in a way she couldn't describe.
She'd had enough of people.
She started the long walk back, deciding running would not be wise. The pains in her body were constant, distracting, in a way she didn't remember them being before. Immediate. It was like the Force had distanced her to physicality, even though as a Jedi she'd been in excellent physical shape. The Force was like a dream, where logic itself was rearranged. Its absence let cold reality back in, hitting her like a blunt object.
She took a deep breath, wiped the sweat from her forehead, out of her eyes. The stitch returned even with the slow pace, but she ignored the pain as much as possible. She wasn't able to push it away anymore, not precisely, not without the Force.
When she was approaching her ship, a small child no more than ten, outside of a small house, stopped by and watched her walking, curious and unafraid.
He stared unknowing of who she was and what - what she had been. He probably didn't even know what a Jedi was. The people - human on this particular world - in these places were here because they wanted to escape from the rest of the galaxy, for a variety of reasons. Much like her. And their distance, far from the part of the Outer Rim where the Mandalorians came, gave them an odd innocence hand in hand with a rugged practicality.
She gave him a small nod, envying briefly his lack of fear, then passed him by. She hit the control for the cargo bay, the only entrance to the clunker, and hopped on board before it had fully lowered. It was an old ship, squat and slow and steady. Lightly armed, but most of its weight was from armor. She'd been a fair pilot, excellent when she had the Force, but when figuring out what kind of ship she wanted, she had realized this kind would be best - something that be forgiving of her lessened reflexes. Not that she was looking for a warship anyway.
She hit the inner control to shut the small bay, went to the cockpit, sat down and sighed. She had a good view of the village and the land that lay beyond it from there, and it was the only window in the ship - anywhere else was slightly claustrophobic. Especially so because she couldn't sense beyond what her normal senses gave her.
The villagers would load her up with supplies tomorrow when the harvest was complete, some food and the occasional interesting biological item. Most of these Outer Rim places were boring, with little of interest, making them perfect for people that wanted to disappear or wanted a subdued, isolated kind of life, and generally horrible for trading. Their populations were generally very small, with marriages often occurring with other towns, on the other side of the planet or offworld, to keep the gene pool stable. It was part of what made her limited trading possible, but her livelihood was supported without any excess.
She left the cockpit, went to the single-person crew quarters, took a shower in the cramped space. She didn't usually indulge herself, but she stayed in longer that time, the hot water like a massage, watching the water trickle down the duraplastic wall. Strange little details, irrelevant details, that seemed so large now, like she couldn't determine which ones were important and which ones weren't.
The bay, even empty, wasn't large, but it was suitable for her purposes.
Many of the Jedi who had followed Revan were excellent fighters more than they were negotiators. She was no exception. While she didn't use the more aggressive double-bladed lightsaber, she had been more than good enough with her single hilt.
That was gone now, of course. Probably destroyed by the Jedi Council. She couldn't build another, not without the Force, and it would be useless to her anyway. Activating it in the council chamber - a definite wrong, by custom - before pushing it into the center stone was her last act of defiance. Defiance in the face of their so certain superiority.
She'd suspected, before going to the council chamber, that her lightsaber would be taken from her, that she would be exiled. She hadn't needed the Force to know that. She was the only one to return to be judged, and she had found their understanding lacking, as she had supposed it would be. Why she had come to begin with, she wasn't sure - some kind of closure, maybe. So she had taken out the two crystals not necessary to the lightsaber's function, the ones that increased damage but were supplementary. With them, she'd bought this ship, the Reliant.
She had also bought a vibrosword and an Onasi blaster.
She went to her small room, took out the blade from its sheathe. It was easy to practice this while in flight, on board the ship, unlike the blaster.
Even so, it felt clumsy in her hands, heavy and weighted towards the tip, completely unlike a lightsaber.
She took a deep breath, settled in the middle of the bay. Stared at the bulkhead before starting, thinking, I can't do this. This is a waste of time.
She started anyway. First stance, second, each flowing. Many of the forms were the same, but going through the katas she realized that she kept making the minor adjustments she had been trained to do, to allow her to block blaster shots even as she sparred. Totally irrelevant now, it just made her slower. And it reminded her that she needed to wear some kind of light armor, something completely opposite the typical Jedi robes, something that would be forgiving of her inability to block shots. Another thing different. She went faster, trying to speed through the adjustments muscle memory wanted her to make, and in a swipe almost let go of the sword. She stopped with a frustrated growl, sword in hand hanging loosely by her side. She resisted the urge to throw the thing, tears spiking in her eyes, tightened her grip.
Took a breath, a moment.
She collected herself, hefted the blade, went into the first stance, and started over.
She woke up in the middle of the night, ship and planet-time. Her body still ached uncomfortably, but the few hours of rest had otherwise done wonders. For her mood in particular, she admitted to herself wryly.
The floor of the bay was cool beneath her feet as she stepped out, lowered the hatch. She wouldn't be able to go back to sleep - sleeping for any prolonged length of time was weirdly difficult - so there was no reason not to get out for some air. Irvi had only one moon, but it was full, providing plenty of light to see by. She walked across the dirt of the landing pad to the grassy plains, the ground still a little warm from the day. The pad was at the edge of the village, on the opposite side from the growing fields, so there was plenty of room for a solitary walk.
Barefoot, walking, the plains weren't the obstacle they had been the day before. The night breeze was slight - there was only one ocean on the planet, and it was not nearby - but it was cooling. The slight sweat she'd woken up from was fading. She pulled her hair back, out of her way.
There was little local animal life, if she understood correctly. The highest form of life was plant, making it a fairly easy world to cultivate from scratch, as the colonists had done. It also made the night very quiet.
For the first time in a long time, she felt at peace. Worries gnawed at her constantly, about whether she could live this kind of life and defend herself - she felt vulnerable to death in a way she hadn't during the Mandalorian Wars. Before losing the Force. That was a matter she tried not to think about too much - it was too painful. Pathetic, in some respects. She was once a General, a commander, and it wasn't the Force they were listening to, it was her. All that time, and now she grieves over this thing, this thing that most of the galaxy gets by without ever being aware of except in the simplest of terms. She witnessed amazing warriors who had no facility with the Force at all.
Yet she was struck dumb by its absence nevertheless.
It had made everything new, too.
Every sensation, every act. She walked with her palm by her side, hand open, the ends of the grass tickling. She couldn't feel it being alive, but she knew it must be. What she was able to feel, she felt more strongly now than ever, as the pains of the body and mind were excruciating without the techniques within the Force that Jedi used to calm and detach themselves. The flatness of the world was continually jarring, the inability to stretch out beyond herself making her body seem like a prison, staring out, always staring out, but never getting out.
Dwelling on it made it worse. She turned her attention outwards, at the plains, at the night sky, sparsely lit with stars, here so far from the Core Worlds.
It was time, far past time, to relearn all her skills. To do what was necessary.
She could start here. She was far from her ship now, she could see it looking back, small, the village beyond it barely visible.
She started the hand-to-hand katas, sharp arcs of movement that took her whole body.
And to her surprise, she could do them. Her muscles remembered what the mind did not, what her mind didn't want to touch upon - the memories of the Enclave at Dantooine, the memories of the Temple at Coruscant - and she was able to move from one to the other. And these were different, simple, not requiring the Force, unlike a lightsaber. These she could do, not as well, not as effortlessly as with the buoyant Force, but her body obeyed what she commanded.
It was surprisingly liberating.
In a little more than an hour, she'd gone through several whole series before finally slowing, stretching muscles instead of working them, then finally stopping. The physical exercise gave her a feeling of things being well with the galaxy, the endorphins definitely pumping.
It was with a smile that she looked up, and noticed something amiss.
A ship was approaching, a shadow in the sky slowing growing larger. And she knew very well none should be - this world was on her trade route, no one else's. Half because no one wanted to go here for some food, and half because once she had it, others were not likely to challenge her for it. A world like this didn't get visitors just passing by, and had no ships of its own. Either someone was trying to edge in, or they were out for some supplies without paying for them.
Either way, it was something she would need to handle. One way or another, she was here, she would get involved and she would prefer it not as a victim.
She squinted, as the ship was in the direction of the moon's light, making details difficult to make it out as it slowly lowered its way into the atmosphere, heading for the landing pad that barely accommodated her own ship. It wasn't that large - larger than hers by far, but probably no more than a crew of twenty. Maybe a corvette. And at the speed it was approaching, it would land before she could get to her ship or warn anyone.
Damn. In that case, she'd just have to circle around and meet the villagers as they fled. The harvest that was to be completed once the suns rose was partially complete, and the pirates, if that was in fact what they were, would go for that first. They were collected under a roof just outside the town, before the fields. It was likely the villagers would pass that way, grabbing as much as they could and then scattering.
In the distance, she could hear the proximity alarm go off. Confirmation, then. Any supply ship would have announced itself and avoided that.
She set off at a run, knowing that in the pre-dawn dark her form would be practically invisible in the high-grass plains. The cultured fields would be another matter, but by the time she got around, it was likely most of the village would be out beyond that anyway.
As she watched, the ship landed. Almost immediately its bay opened and ten tiny figures came running out, blasters in hand. Behind them, she could see people scattering and running in the other direction. She felt some relief at that - they had blasters and some mines to protect themselves, but this being a world with no natural predators, they were largely unnecessary, and she doubted they had much familiarity with them.
This was all, she realized, going to be on her.
Ten people out, another possible ten inside. Say, fifteen just in case. They were smart to hold forces in reserve, and it told her two things: one, they didn't expect much trouble, and two, that didn't mean they weren't prepared for such trouble. She would need to draw them out without alerting them to a high enough degree that they were cautious in their approach.
She had easily faced as many as thirty opponents in the Mandalorian Wars, wielding her lightsaber and the Ataru style, and had killed many, many more as a commander, through strategy and skill. She could only partially rely on the former, so she would have to rely on the latter more than usual, and rely most of all on some luck.
Any planning would also require the villagers to cooperate with her. More than - it would require their absolute trust. Their desperation, she would have in spades, but unless they understood the full gravity of the situation, that would not be enough to keep them going once those beside them started dying.
But the fact of the matter was, the harvest was not a simple thing to replace. Even with the part of the harvest not yet culled, it would not be enough to survive on much less trade. This victory would have to absolute if they wanted to survive the planet's winter without danger of starvation.
That fact made her uneasy. Part of her was saying it: Not again, not again. The other part saw little choice in the matter. She couldn't stand by and do nothing. Just because she was no longer a Jedi didn't mean she was no longer the same person who couldn't stand by at the start of the Mandalorian Wars. And yet. If she did nothing, people would die. If she acted, people would die.
Running, still running, she shut her eyes for a moment, and saw the broken shell of Malachor V, held together with sickly green lines of light, and in her mind, the still screaming presence of a massive numbers of deaths, each one a different call, each one deafening in its dying pain. That's when she started running, really. Running at the speed of Malachor twisting in on itself, going nowhere but destruction of one sort or another.
She stumbled, eyes snapping open. Caught herself just before she was about to fall to her knees, and barely let herself pause.
She was deep in the plains now, turning to circle to other side of the village. Her bare feet were bruised and stinging from small cuts, but the adrenaline pushed that aside, and she found her stride surer than she would have been with boots on. Small mercies.
She slowed as she got behind the fields that were west of the village, the majority of the fields being to the north, north-west, and the pirates having landed near the landing pad to the east of the village.
It took mere minutes to run into someone, a mother and her son. The boy, she recognized from before. She came apace of them, stopped the mother by taking her arm and dragging down. The mother, a young brunette, let loose half a scream before she managed to get her hand on the mother's mouth, quieting her.
"It's me, calm down. It's me," she whispered to the mother. As she'd expected, the boy had stopped when his mother had, curling into his mother's instinctive half-embrace. The mother seemed to calm slightly at recognizing her - fortunately enough, since not all the villagers had met her.
"They're taking everything," the mother whispered to her, eyes full of fear.
"I know," she whispered back. "I need you to tell everyone you run into to get behind that hill." She pointed west. "You see that? It's slight, but it will keep you out of the line of sight. Do you understand?"
The boy nodded, and the mother followed, jerkily, stumbling along.
"Now go," she told them.
Crouching as she ran, rather than going in the direction of the hill, she went along the line of the fields, catching people as they were crossing over and telling them the same thing: to get to the other side of the hill and wait. Terrified and unsure of what else to do, they all listened with little argument.
Gauging she had a fair amount of villagers warned, she guessed that maybe a hundred and fifty were going to be there, with probably half of that able to fight, and probably half of that again very willing, even under the circumstances. Not at all ideal. Some of them were carrying weapons, but not many.
When she came to the hill, she saw the whole group settled there, uneasily looking around, greeting stragglers. Most of them were middle-aged or younger. Most likely the older relatives were left behind out of necessity - if they made no trouble, they would probably survive. Most pirates were not stupid enough to blindly kill - it just made it certain that next time they came to a planet there would be utterly desperate resistance. Most of them recognized her as she came down the hill, taking stock.
She didn't have much time. It was most likely that the pirates were taking their time getting the supplies into their ship, but most likely wasn't guaranteed. Not to mention they would also take stock of her ship - even if they didn't take it, they'd try to scrap it, and she wasn't really eager to stay here for six months waiting for another vessel to come by. Particularly not if there was going to be food shortages.
She looked around, met gazes with a calm, confident look.
"I know some of you have met me, and your leaders know me," she began. "So I'll keep this short and sweet. They're taking all your food and whatever else they can find. They'll also be stripping my ship. I suggest we let them do neither."
There was a moment of silence, and one of the men spoke up. "And how do you propose to do that?"
"I was a commander in the Mandalorian Wars, and a capable fighter." Doubtless the Mandalorian Wars had little meaning for people out here, but they would at least know of it. She very deliberately did not say she was once a Jedi - they would not understand the distinction of former' and would expect her to solve their problem neatly, which she wasn't capable of any longer.
They stared dumbly, then whispers started.
"I can't do this alone. I'm not armed, and there are too many of them," she continued. She knew as the best trained, she would most likely kill the most, but if nothing else, the others would be distractions so they couldn't heap on her all at once. "I know you understand the situation. It's not going to be easy, but it is a better alternative than all of us starving." She included herself as a reassurance to them - they were all the same side, she was as committed as they.
Voices rose, saying, "You have a plan?" "What do we do?" "Are you crazy?"
"How many of you took blasters with you?" she asked.
Fourteen or so raised their hands.
"Vibroblades?"
Two.
"How many have any skill with either?"
About twenty.
"Good. You all willing to fight?" Twenty was low, but she'd rather have a low number of experienced weapon-handlers than add inexperienced ones, who would die more quickly and likely pointlessly.
"Even those of us that will get no weapon?" one asked.
"You'll be following. You can pick up the weapon if it comes to that," she replied calmly.
An uneasy silence at the implication, but no one objected. Desperation had, as she thought, made them willing allies.
"Put the weapons here, and everyone, take whatever model you're most familiar with." She paused, let them come forward, and then added, "And remember, you're fighting not just for yourselves, but your families."
It was with a sort of reenergized determination that they took the weapons, sifting through them and then taking them with strained grips, white-knuckled.
She looked them all over, considering them.
Then she told them the rest of her plan - straightforward and to the point, because they were too unskilled to try anything complicated, even if she had the time to form such a plan. And they listened.
And then, for their livelihoods and loved ones, and her for - she wasn't sure. Her ship, their lives, what seemed to be her duty no matter where she ran - they started back to the village, ready to fight.
She focused on her own group as she sprinted. The group of three she was leading seemed the calmest and most determined of the lot - two men and a woman, not young but not old. The other group of five was three men and two women, including, oddly enough, the mother she had first run into. They all held standard blasters, but otherwise she didn't know if they, like the mother, had children, or who they were, or even their names.
None of that mattered for the situation at hand.
The sky was lightening, faster than she had thought it would - slower than she feared. The moon being full didn't help either, pleasant before, dangerous now for the light it provided.
Her plan was risky and contingent on a lot of luck, and some of that luck was fading with the rising dawn.
Their enemies would likely be deserted soldiers, ex-cons, people familiar with weapons and combat. The villagers, even if the numbers were comparable, were considerably less skilled in those areas. She could only hope fighting for their lives and families provided more motivation than the pirates had in getting easy credits, and that the run they were forced to make wouldn't tire the villagers too badly in the coming battle.
The village was laid on a simple grid pattern, small houses lining small streets. They would be approaching the side closer to where the pirates had landed, and the other ten from the opposite side.
The others were breathing hard from the run, but slowed and seemed focused as they approached the first house from behind. She looked at the group of five and pointed at the next house over, before carefully opening the door to the first. An old man, bent with age and sitting on a chair in the back room, some kind of living area, looked up at them, very startled.
She raised her finger to her lips, indicating silence. Mouthed 'How many?'
He held up one hand, one finger.
She nodded, gestured for the others to follow her.
As they rounded the small kitchen, they caught one of the pirates going out of a bedroom, holding onto a bag of items. He full-on stopped, seeing them, then started reaching for his blaster - exactly what she had hoped. Before he could raise his hand completely, she was on him, with a downward strike of her blade she cut through his neck and shoulder, hitting arteries, killing him almost instantly while his hand holding the blaster seized and fell open as his body crumpled to the floor.
It happened in near silence. One of the others belatedly fired a shot at his dying body, actually hitting it, to her surprise.
She stepped over the body, glanced back - the three were following her still, but looked shell-shocked at the sudden death, speechless.
No time.
She kept going, through the front door and crossing over to the house in front, opening the front door - nothing was locked - and started methodically searching the rooms. That time, the woman got a shot off before she could attack with her blade, but it wasn't a lethal one - she leaped forward as fast as she could, kicked the commlink out of his hand, and stabbed him.
She could faintly hear from outside a woman screaming epithets and curses, the one she had sent ahead as a distraction. The others followed her to a window, one of them stumbling over the body and letting loose a small curse. The woman was outside, making a racket, hair tousled, face terrified, and unarmed. Three men were approaching her, blasters in hand, but seemingly not concerned, one with his hand to his ear, as if holding a comlink close. They raised their blasters, as if to fire.
She turned to the three with her, and said, "Start shooting as soon as I'm out of the way," and ran out the door, hoping to save her.
Then, like someone suddenly turned the sound on, there was noise.
Blaster shots rang out everywhere, sizzling past her as she ran full-fledged into the three men, who seeing her approach, started blindly grabbing for their melee weapons. She was there and hacking at the three pirates within seconds, one barely parrying her strike with a knife, before she twisted her blade around his knife and disarmed him, then moving forward with a thrust through the heart. Another, dying of a blaster shot, took out a knife and managed to score her arm as he fell.
In the background, there was screaming and crying, and down the street other villagers were already out and fighting. She witnessed the elder members of the village start fighting back as well, using frying pans and kitchen knives.
One of her group was down, but the three pirates were dead. Elsewhere, in the houses and down the street, there was more screaming and blaster fire, and one of the houses suddenly suffered an explosion from a grenade, the windows blowing out.
She ran to the other side of the street, gesturing for the survivors to follow her, and started heading for the pirate ship.
The other group of five emerged from a house as four, and charged blindly at three more men stumbling out of backyards across the street. She used their fire as cover, hopping from house to house up the lane to the landing pad, with the pirate's corvette standing next to her own. She grabbed the sleeves of the two following her, indicating that they were to keep close. They were both injured, stank of blood and charred flesh. Her stomach briefly rebelled, memories flashing, and then she swallowed and stuffed it down. Later. Later.
At the bay of the ship, two men were firing as they were backing up, apparently more than willing to leave their comrades for whatever fate awaited. The fact that there were only two meant that the distraction the girl had made had worked - most of the crew had been led out of the ship. One of the two men threw a grenade as they retreated, but it missed her and her companions as they ran forward.
She kept running, hitting the lowered ramp and nearly falling as the blood from her bare feet made her briefly lose traction, her hands hitting the deck to stop her fall, before she recovered and continued on. The two behind her were firing, almost hitting her, and then the men backing up gave up and started running for the cockpit.
They couldn't be allowed to reach it, even as she was stunned they were even going to attempt a retreat. The villagers and pirates were fighting full out outside, and there was no way to know which side was winning, but the flight of the two men was encouraging - or it was a trap. Either way, the ship couldn't be allowed to leave. They might start firing on houses as they left, might even come back for revenge with a few well-thrown grenades from the literal high ground. It was too risky. They all had to die.
Through the bay to the corridor, she nearly stepped right on a mine, slamming to a halt, the two behind her tripping at the abrupt stop. More blaster shots rang out as she considered whether to try to disarm the mine, but then the choice was taken from her as one of those following her charged forward, not seeing why she'd stopped, hitting the mine full on.
She braced herself and covered her eyes, shrapnel flying from the frag mine. The man who had charged was down but not dead, slumped against the bulkhead, eyes glazed. She glanced him over, saw he would die soon, and could feel no pity. Not right now. She stooped, put his blaster in his hand, and told him, "Shoot them if they come back this way."
He nodded, face caked with blood, hand slowly tightening on the blaster.
She stepped over him, she and the woman the only ones left.
The cockpit would be a straight shot from the back of the ship - it was the standard layout. If the two men were any indication, they shouldn't find too many on board. The girl had indeed done her duty, even if she was killed in the process.
She cautiously approached forks in the corridor, looking down corridors to the side before darting forward. The woman followed her closely, gripping the blaster with both hands.
The two men came from corridors diagonal to the bay, firing. But in the close quarters of the ship, she was on them with her vibroblade before they could even get off any accurate shots. She sliced down the chest of one and stabbed the other, as he was crying from the pain of the one blaster shot the woman behind her had managed.
She kept moving forward.
The corridor ahead made an abrupt turn to the right, and seeing that it was a blind spot she slowed as she approached. She could hear the quick breaths of the woman behind her - her own were slow, steady, taking deep breaths whenever she was still, regaining strength when she could. She briefly, pointlessly, wished she had the Force to tell her what to do, if there was someone ahead.
She moved around the bend, and her breath was slammed out of her by the pilot, wielding a knife and stabbing forward with such force she could only turn the blow away, glancing it off her shoulder, a sharp stab of pain. The moment of stunned reaction was enough - the pilot, with a look of desperation on his face, went after her companion. The woman shot him point-blank, and hit him in the side. Momentum was not on her side - he still moved forward with the knife, and slashed the woman's throat. She fell.
Almost instantly, ignoring the woman's choked breaths, knowing the woman was already dead, she kicked him against the bulkhead, got a better grip on her blade, and ran him through. His breath puffed out red mist, and she yanked the blade from between his ribs as he collapsed.
Sliding into the pilot seat, she called up the ship's functions. The ship had blaster turrets, but they were on the top of the ship, and using them accurately against any of the pirates would be difficult, so she disabled them. The start-up protocols were already on - the pilot had been preparing to lift off. She put the ship back into stand-by mode, turning off the engines completely, then slicing into the computer to put a password over all the ship's systems.
Then she got up, hearing footsteps approaching. Hefted the blade, hugged the bulkhead where it curved, and waited.
They were in single file, fleeing from the villagers and no doubt knowing she was there from the silence of their pilot. They heaped on her as soon as she hacked at the first. She didn't dare stab at them and get the blade stuck in their ribs, and instead used the edge of her blade. They shot at her, shot her, but using her blade, spinning and always moving, they were mostly mere grazes, hits on non-critical areas, and by the end, they were all dead, and she was alive.
She walked out of the bay, one arm dragging, limping, somewhat bloodied and bruised, burned from too-close blaster fire, but otherwise unharmed. Five villagers met her, blasters in hand, injured but steady.
It was over.
It was well past dawn. She sat on the open ramp of her ship, elbows on her knees, hands hanging loose, just watching the activity of the village before her.
The villagers were attending the dead and wounded, as well as looking through the pirate ship and their homes, returning things which had been taken, splitting up the harvest. Several had come forward to thank her, one even said it was the will of the Force she was there. People she had never met had introduced themselves, given their names, names which she ignored, names she didn't want to know. She had plenty enough, memorized and a weight on her soul. Some even asked her if she'd told them her real name, an unexpected if appropriate question. She'd replied that it didn't matter. She was an exile of the Republic, wasn't that enough? And from the Jedi as well, though she didn't say that. Her name was irrelevant, and she'd prefer to remain a stranger to these people.
They were exulted, ready to celebrate, even with the deaths - in a sense because of them, rejoicing because they survived. They had lost people, but gained a ship of their own, with weapons and supplies. None of the pirates had survived and if they had, she had no doubt they would have been sentenced to death one way or another. Maybe they had, in fact. Out here, they couldn't afford prisons. She didn't begrudge them it, because she knew the practicality of it.
And though the killing, and the praise for it, had made her feel sick, there was a sense of security to her now. She could sense the difference in herself. Without the Force, blind and deaf, she had fought - not as well, not as quickly, not with as few losses as before, but it had been enough.
In a sense, anyway. The deaths on both side would haunt her, she knew. She'd had enough of war, of death, of this. But ... maybe she could survive, still blinded to the Force. That she had doubted, unspoken even to herself.
She had said nothing to their thanks, nodded in acknowledgement, and let them tend to her injuries silently.
Her arm and shoulder were the most badly hurt - the other wounds were relatively minor, and would heal on their own. She had to sit and walk carefully because of bruised ribs, and without the Force to help her heal she felt more physically fragile than ever. She touched her face, felt the burn of a blaster shot that had grazed her cheek, poked it at tentatively. Her feet were still a mess, although she'd awkwardly tried to scrub out the dirt in her small shower on board and wrapped them with some bacta afterwards. The pirates hadn't gotten to the point of stripping the Reliant.
"I think you should stay a few days," said one of the elders, an old white-haired man with gentle eyes. He approached her, sat down beside her.
She wanted nothing of gentleness and felt wary, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. "I'm fine. I'll be better on my own," she said quietly but firmly.
"Little lady, you're badly hurt. And we owe you nothing less."
She said nothing for a moment. "I could use some of the supplies from the pirate ship. " She'd seen some fuel and other materials that wouldn't be vital to the villagers.
"The Conservator," he said.
"What?" she said, looking at him.
"We're renaming her. They called her Blood Bones, of all things."
She smiled a bit at that. "That's a good idea."
"I'll go to the others, about the supplies. We'll see what we can spare."
She nodded. That was enough - a place like this, everything was used, everything was useful. The loss of people was the loss of mouths to feed, but it was also the loss of available hands for labor intensive tasks, as farming so often was.
He looked at her a few more moments, then with the slowness and care of the old got up and walked to the others, who were investigating the pirate ship. Spoke to a few, too far way for her to hear the words.
She closed her eyes, shutting them all out. They no doubt wanted her to stay for the night meal, for the celebration, but she had no intention of doing so. She neither deserved nor wanted any more praise for her actions; she found the entire thing distasteful - though it was no fault of hers or the villagers, attacked for no reason, the result of her actions made her feel ill.
She'd told herself that Jedi were at times weapons. Perhaps it was best she was no longer one. She couldn't bear it, not any longer.
She couldn't feel the deaths now, of course. Hadn't, as she had seen them die, their lives passing on before her eyes- it wasn't felt in any other way than with her gut, in the burn of the near-misses, the bruises and the pain that she could still feel, and they couldn't.
That reality, however two-dimensional it seemed to her altered vision, could still tear at her, could still hurt. Her breath came to her painfully, her chest tight.
As well as most of the first group that she had brought - another had taken it upon themselves to arrive as backup, and had been the ones to meet her at the bay of the pirate ship the mother of the boy she had seen first the other day had died in the fight. Even that slight connection that she had formed could sink into her, hurt her. And while she knew, as a former Jedi, that such things were natural, were part of being a Jedi, she wasn't a Jedi any longer - as much as they turned from her, she was turning away from them. She didn't have the Force, it wasn't fair to keep the burdens. She wanted to be as far as possible from this. From fighting and battles and war.
War had been a great cost to her, and she saw no reason to go blindly looking for more of it; however necessary it had once been, it wasn't now. No. She would stay away from this planet, from now on. She no longer wanted nor needed connections like the one she had inadvertently formed here. She would wander, from here to there. Other planets could trade, other planets could use other skills she possessed - slicing, for example. Maybe some work as a mechanic. Out here in the Outer Rim, such jobs were available here and there, it being so far from civilization that people with such skills weren't likely to stay, not for so little pay, so little of cities and that kind of life.
It was time for her to drift out even farther than she had been. Take things as they came. She had plenty of food and fuel, or would, supplemented by the pirate ship; her little hauler mostly lived up to its name. She'd figure out something out.
She opened her eyes, and got to her feet, ignoring the sharp pain from her soles, and walked to the other vessel, which the villagers were stills swarming over, including the old man she'd spoken with. She recognized one or two of the village leaders, who she had dealt with before, middle-aged women and men, and approached them first.
They smiled at her as she slowed, close to them.
"What can we do for you?" one said.
"I'm leaving, soon," she replied, meeting their eyes and then looking away.
"You don't want to stay? We have evening meal soon," another said, looking concerned, as they all did.
"I would appreciate it if you could load my ship," she answered, evenly. "I need to get going. I'm ... sorry. But I only wish to leave this place."
They looked at her for a moment, then among each other, then agreed. "If that's what you need," one said. The word choice struck her as odd, but she nodded.
"It is," she said, with what she could manage of a grateful smile. "Thank you."
She watched them as they loaded her ship with some of their harvest, that which had already been gathered, and some of the pirate supplies; payment for duties rendered. Her exhaustion was settling in her, down to her bones. She felt wearied, her shoulders slumped. Once she was gone, she would rest. She could rest, once she was gone. Here, the deaths remained on her, unsettling and unnerving, as was so much now, blinded as she was.
While she waited, she looked out at the village, at the plains beyond the landing pad, gold waves of grass. It was beautiful - the sun was nearing setting, the light hitting the clouds from below and lighting them into a multitude of colors, pink and orange and red against the still-blue sky.
When she silently entered the ship, smiling her thanks at those gathered about, and went to the cockpit, she watched those same clouds as she rose above, the planet falling away and the blackness of space overcoming what was left of the small globe, and then she turned to space, with only a few unblinking stars as company.
It was how she preferred it.
And not only that, it was better this way. She was no Jedi - she couldn't look through the Force and see the results of her actions, didn't have any guide. She could no longer take lives into her hands and be responsible for them, with the certainty she had once wielded. She could and would survive the loss of the Force, yes, but only in this way that she had chosen - only in forsaking others. She had felt that reality before, and she felt it all the more keenly now.
This was best. For her, for everyone - that she be as she is, now. Normal. Not a leader, not a guide, not a Jedi, because she was now none of those things.
She calculated a hyperspace jump to a planet she had never been, even farther out into the Outer Rim. She'd heard of it, knew it was small, but it had a city, more than what was on most worlds this far out; she had, naturally, avoided the heavily populated ones. Heavily populated areas could also be strategic, more so than the ones with few life at all. Hopefully there would be a need for some trading at this one. If not, she'd keep on her way. Food in the cargo bay, supplies stuffed in her quarters. She had time.
Tension within loosening, she settled back in the pilot seat and lifted one of her legs to the knee of the other, flexing her feet, testing the pain, staring out at the stars.
The navicomputer beeped, ready. She laid her hands over the controls, and space disappeared around her, blurring lines fading into the blue, vague shapes of hyperspace.
Perhaps it would not be so bad, to be normal - to not even recognize within herself the fighting skills she had, unless she was forced to do so. No duties, no risk, no responsibility. No sense of required greatness. She would like that, she thought. It would be a ... relief.
She closed her eyes, and waited for the future to come.
[end]