The streets of Nar Shadaa were dark, perpetually filthy, permeated with the stench of the unwashed masses. The refugee sector was even worse than the surface of the moon, suffused with the smell of fear, the aura of hopelessness. This was where those with nothing left to lose, those brow beaten and downtrodden, those who had grown to despise themselves came to die. Atton would know. Several years ago, he'd been one of them.
He'd spent three years in this hell hole, three years attempting to mask his presence in the confusing, pulsating, rhythm of Nar Shadaa. He cut his hair, changed his name, frequented the seediest cantinas, lived amidst the squalor of the refugees, all to keep himself hidden from the assassins that he had once worked alongside. For the first time in his life, the hunter had become the hunted. He'd experienced the metallic taste of fear, the sinking feeling of dread. He had grown to understand, over the course of those years, how his victims had before they'd been captured.
Thanks to a certain Jedi, he had already been aware of what they had felt when they finally died. Atton shook his head to clear his thoughts, avoiding memories of the time that he had spent here, pushing back thoughts of an auburn haired woman's gray eyes going flat as she died. He would leave the memories of her to his nightmares.
His gaze was drawn to a different woman, another Jedi, a Jedi he would die to protect rather than kill out of love. She was bending over a gray skinned skeleton of a man who was hacking up a thick, black substance. Atton turned his head from the man in disgust; if it were up to him, they would have ignored his whimpered pleas for help and would have instead kept walking back towards the ship. The exile, however, had turned towards the old man with sympathy on her features, had reached into the force to feel out the nature of his disease and attempt to heal him.
Atton glanced away from where she was healing the old man, and towards the mother and daughter that Allia had reunited. The kid hadn't liked him much, but then he'd never exactly been good with kids anyways. They were too loud, too annoying; thought they knew it all when they only had a meager handful of years of experience. Drove him crazy. The girl was clinging tight to her mother, who was alternating between peppering her daughter's face with kisses and staring at the exile with misty, grateful eyes.
Allia was too good, too kind, too entirely concerned with others. In many ways, she reminded him of the other Jedi, the auburn haired one, the one he dreamt about so often. They both had the same selfless desire to help others, both had generous hearts. But the exile had a darkness to her that the other Jedi hadn't, a darkness that had enabled her to kill Visquis with something akin to pleasure, a passion that eclipsed the Jedi code. It was that kernel of darkness, the streak of passion, buried beneath the layers upon layers of stereotypical Jedi goodness that enabled Atton to care for her as strongly as he did. She was more than a Jedi- she was a strong, brave, fierce, beautiful, woman. A warrior in her own right, even without the force.
As though sensing his thoughts, the exile glanced up to meet his gaze and gave him a little smile before stepping back from the now healthy elderly man. Despite himself, Atton's heart warmed at the look and the smile, and he managed a careless, cocky grin of his own before glancing away from her. Something caught his eye, and the warmth that had filled him suddenly drained away, leaving a cold, sick feeling in his gut.
A twi'lek was standing nearby, a man he had known long ago when he was cultivating his persona as Atton. Back when he had still answered to the name of Jaq. Atton swallowed hard and slunk into the shadows, hoping that he hadn't been seen. He glanced over to where Mical stood, beaming at the exile, graciously helping her accept the old man's thanks. Sickening.
"Hey, kid!" he called, drawing Mical's attention. The kid walked over to him with a frown, and Atton discreetly glanced back towards where the twi'lek was standing. He had to leave now, had to escape the man's notice. Allia could not know what he had been, what he had done. If she found out… surely she would hate him. He could not be seen. "I uh, I dropped something a ways back," he lied. "I'm going to go back and get it; tell Allia I'll meet you do-goods back at the Hawk," he said, and Mical eyed him warily before nodding.
The kid was a simpering idiot, to be sure, but at least he knew not to ask too many questions. There was at least one thing going for Blondie. With another quick glance in the twi'lek's direction to ensure he hadn't been spotted, Atton Rand did what he was best at: he disappeared.
)0(
Hours later, when he returned to the Ebon Hawk, Mical greeted him with a wary stare and the Exile was nowhere in sight. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he retired to the cockpit, where he found the exile waiting for him in his chair. She was fingering the pazaak deck that he had recently purchased for her, and when he entered the room she stood up in a fluid, graceful movement that proclaimed her years spent as a Jedi.
"What's up, Sweets?" he asked, trying to sound nonchalant as he brushed past her and plopped down into the chair she had just vacated.
She merely stared at him in silence for several moments, and with each second that passed Atton's trepidation grew stronger. When she finally spoke, his heart took a swan dive into the pit of his stomach. "I met someone who said he knew you today," she said simply.
Atton swallowed hard, knowing instinctively who she was talking about. The twi'lek must have seen him, must have approached her after he had made his hasty escape. Schutta. "Did he say I owed him credits?" he joked, but the attempt at levity fell flat. She merely stared at him, blue eyes dark with repressed emotion, and Atton licked his suddenly dry lips.
"He said… He said you were a…" she began, but couldn't manage to complete the sentence. For a moment, her unfinished statement lingered in the air between them, and Atton couldn't move, couldn't breathe. He'd admired this woman before him for so long, had begun to feel things for her that he couldn't ever remember feeling before. It couldn't be over now, not yet. He felt his world crashing down around his ears as she continued to stare at him, her face inscrutable. "Is there something you want to tell me?" she asked instead, and Atton felt something inside him snap.
For months now, he'd been hiding this from her, had allowed himself to be blackmailed by the old witch rather than let Allia learn the truth about him. To have the whole charade fall apart because someone from his past had happened to catch a glimpse of him was unbearable. To lose Allia before he'd had a chance to win her was the cruelest twist of fate. "No! If I wanted to tell you, you wouldn't be asking me, now would you?" he retorted sharply, and felt a twinge of shame when she flinched at his outburst
"Atton…" she began, and then she paused and glanced away. "Or is that even your name?" she added softly, and Atton swallowed, breaking eye contact and looking out over the gray, dismal landscape of Nar Shadaa.
He knew Allia, knew her better than she realized, most likely. He knew she would never let this drop, not until she heard the whole story. And if she didn't hear it from him, the old witch would probably tell her. It would be better if he told her. But not here, not where Blondie or the tech or the hag could hear. This conversation was between him and Allia, it involved no one else.
"Let's go get a drink," he said instead of answering her question, and she frowned up at him, her expression perplexed. "I'm going to need something stronger than what we've got in this bucket of bolts if I'm going to tell you everything. You'll probably wind up needing some Juma yourself before the night is over," he explained, and Allia stared at him for a moment before nodding.
Their walk to the entertainment promenade was filled with a tense silence, one that neither of them was sure how to fill. When they reached the cantina, Atton ordered two glasses of Juma from the barkeep before bringing the drinks and the exile to a secluded table in the back, where they were out of sight of the other patrons.
He took a deep, bracing swig of his drink. "My name wasn't always Atton…" he began, and slowly, haltingly, he told her his story. He told her about signing up to fight against the Mandalorians, about how much he had admired Revan and Malak, how he had taken their side in the Jedi Civil War. Once he began talking, it was as though the floodgates opened, and suddenly he couldn't stop himself, couldn't hold anything in. After his first glass of Juma, he told her about his training as an assassin. After his second glass, he told her that he had killed Jedi, that he was good at it, that he had enjoyed it.
When he began his third glass, he glanced up at her and met her eyes for the first time since he had begun to speak. Her face was pale, her eyes guarded. She was trying to contain her expression, he knew, but he could see past the façade, could see the horror hidden behind the Jedi mask. "Then why… why did you leave?" she murmured, her voice sounding distant, disconnected.
So as he nursed his third glass, he told her about the gray eyed, auburn hair Jedi who he had been assigned to break. The woman was noble until the end, refusing to be broken, clinging to the Jedi code. She had represented all that was good and right with the galaxy, had been a better person than he could ever hope to be. He told the exile about how the woman had reached into his mind and had shown him the force, how she had been kind and gentle enough to hold him while he shook and cried as he suddenly experienced the soul-wrenching deaths of all of those that he had killed. She had held him, weak and bloody from days at torture at his hands. She had been remarkable.
And in the end, he had killed her. Killed her to stop someone else from breaking her spirit, from changing her into a twisted broken thing. He had put his hands around her neck and gazed into her gray, gray eyes as she had clawed at his wrists and her lips turned blue. He had watched the life leave her, felt the rend in the force as he murdered her, and then he had stepped over her broken body and left the Sith before they could break him as he had tried to break her.
He drained the rest of his drink and set the empty glass to the side before glancing up at Allia again, waiting for the hatred, the revulsion to burn in her eyes. Waiting for her to leave him. There was shock in those depths, and fear (did she really think that he was going to hurt her?), but the hatred did not come.
"What was your name?" she asked quietly, so quietly he almost did not hear her over the din of the bar. Of all the questions she could ask, after all that he had told her, she chose the one that required the simplest answer.
"That was a long time ago," he replied, but her blue eyes implored him, pleaded with him to answer her. Finally, he sighed and glanced away. "Jaq," he said, the name tasting bitter on his tongue. He saw her lips purse to pronounce it, but he quickly lifted a hand to stop her. He did not want to hear her say it, did not want that foul word to pass her lips. "I'm Atton now," he said.
For her, he wanted to be Atton, wanted to forget the ghosts of his past. He didn't want her to know him as Jaq, the assassin, the murderer, but rather as the man he was now: a pilot and a scoundrel. Her pilot. "It's just… Atton," he added, driving the point home. She stared at him for a moment, an oddly knowing glint to her eyes as she nodded her head in acceptance.
"Atton," she repeated after him, and she lifted her glass to take a deep swig of the liquor, the first sip she'd taken all night. She coughed a little as it went down, and Atton's lips quirked despite the seriousness of the situation. Innocent as a newborn babe, that one.
"I wouldn't blame you, you know… if you want me to leave," he said once she had finished coughing, and she frowned deeply, glancing down to the table, her fingertips tracing the grain of the wood. She looked like she was considering it, weighing the pros and cons to determine whether or not she should let him stay. His stomach dropped, and he swallowed down the wave of emotion that threatened to overwhelm him, startled and frightened at how deeply upset he would be to leave her.
"I could train you," she said, glancing up to meet his eyes again. Atton's eyes widened and he went slack jawed. Misinterpreting his shock for misunderstanding, Allia clarified herself. "In the ways of the force," she added, and Atton blinked.
"I just told you that I killed Jed; that I was a murderer. That I enjoyed it. And you're offering to train me to be one? How?" he demanded incredulously, staring at the woman that sat across from him. Hope welled up inside of him. Hope and admiration and respect for the most singularly amazing woman he had ever met that was sitting across from him.
"Because you regret it," she replied simply, and Atton frowned. She reached forward and took his hand in hers, lightly brushing her thumb across his skin, stirring him, comforting him. "We've all done things that we wish we could undo. We can't change our pasts, can't fix the wrongs that were done. But we can learn from our mistakes, use those lessons to shape our futures." She spoke from experience, he realized. In that moment, he could see that her eyes were haunted from the ghosts of her own past; that at her core she was as troubled by the decisions that she had made as he was.
"You think I'd make a good Jedi?" Atton asked, the sarcasm creeping into his voice, a force of habit.
"Not in the way you define good," she replied, a rueful twist to her lips, the pain beginning to retreat from her eyes as her attention was turned back to the present. "But you would make a talented one," she added, and Atton didn't reply for several moments.
He hated the Jedi order, always had. Hated their ridiculous rules, their hypocrisy, the fact that their ambition and pride was always cloaked by the generous image that they had so carefully crafted for themselves. He didn't want to join the cult, to become a part of the bizarre fold. But there was hope in Allia's blue eyes, a desire to help to redeem him. Perhaps becoming a Jedi would redeem him, maybe becoming a part of the order that he had tried to eradicate would in some way make up for what he had done. Perhaps it would repay the debt he owed the auburn haired Jedi. Even if it didn't atone for his past, however, it would make Allia happy. And he wanted her to be happy, so, so desperately.
"Can I make my lightsaber yellow?" he asked. It was the color that she had favored. Perhaps by wielding a yellow blade as well, he could honor her memory. Could keep her from being forgotten.
Allia grinned at him, clasping his hands more firmly in her own."You can make it any color you want," she replied, and her smile was infectious. He could feel his lips turning upwards at the sight of it, could feel some of her happiness trickle into him.
Regardless of his own personal feelings about the Jedi order, accepting her offer to train him had made her happy. She had accepted his past, had allowed him to continue to be a part of her future, and her bright smile was chasing away some of the darkness that lingered in his soul. She was slowly becoming the sun that he orbited around, and oddly enough, he was okay with that. He would stand by her side, would continue to try to make her smile, until fate forced them apart. But for now, he would simply continue to orbit around the intensity of her inner light.