"I hate this." Luke paced back and forth across the floor in agitation. "I really hate this. Not being able to do anything." He threw his hands into the air angrily. "We're practically useless!"
You and me both, bud.
Poe lay flat on his back, arms beneath his head as he stared up into the ceiling. What am I even doing here? he thought bitterly. I've contributed exactly nothing to this mission.
He'd never been one to sit still. A triggerhappy flyboy. 'One hell of a pilot'. The Resistance's shining star.
And now where was he? Stuck on the ground with a Wookiee, two annoying holograms, and an unconscious smuggler for company.
What I would give to be in the cockpit of an X-Wing right now.
Chewie tilted his head to one side and continued to eye the young pilot warily, but Poe had stopped acknowledging the Wookiee's pointed glances.
"We can only hope the others do their job and don't screw everything up again," Leia muttered. She fingered the pale blue lightsaber in her hand, flipping it over in her fingers absently.
"Onaaaaarrrgrrrr," Chewie shrugged and settled further into the seat cushion.
"So... Is anyone going to bother telling us how the smuggler guy ended up like this?" Luke eyed Han's limp body and folded his arms across his chest with a frown. "Or are we just supposed to guess?"
All I can say is that you should always try to keep on Rey's good side. Poe shook his head, still not entirely over the shock of the alarming turn of events that had taken place only minutes before. He was quite aware of the fact that he had been fully prepared to pull the trigger on Chewbacca if necessary. To protect Rey. He could only repeatedly mentally thank Padmé for keeping her head and in doing so preventing the Wookiee from losing his. He rubbed his upper arm musingly. I really gotta stop doing that, doing things without thinking.
"Don't expect any kind of answer," Leia toyed with her lightsaber carelessly. "He can't talk, remember?"
"Oh, right."
Poe's lip twitched in irritation, but he didn't say anything. He knew better than to bother to. Instead, he got up, pushing between the twins to slump into the booth behind the dejarik board with a frustrated sigh.
Stupid head injuries. Just my luck, too. This is so humiliating. Why can't I talk?
I'm Poe. Not 'poor guy had an accident' Poe- Resistance star Poe. X-Wing ace Poe. 'One hell of a pilot' Poe. I'm still Poe, in all of the ways that really matter.
Damn, I miss flying.
He closed his eyes and bit back a groan. I gotta get back in the cockpit. If I could just get my hands on an X-Wing, Y-Wing, TIE-fighter, anything! I could prove I've still got it. I think I'm going crazy just sitting here doing nothing. Useless indeed. His fingers tapped out an irate pattern on top of the dejarik board.
I hate this.
He slammed a clenched fist onto the table, making Chewbacca beside him jump at the unexpected noise. The shock of the blow switched on the game board beneath his hand, and the small holographic characters leapt up between his fingers. He watched as the twins stared at the wavering figures, dark expressions of a whirlpool of emotions mirrored on each others' faces. He sighed, and glanced down at his clenched hands before lifting them to rub his face wearily.
Don't worry. They'll fix this. We just have to trust them.
He was brought out of his thoughts by a furry paw bumping against his shoulder. Chewbacca gestured towards the dejarik board with a questioning tilt of his head. A clear message: No hard feelings?
Poe considered the gesture for a moment, but he couldn't help the quirk of a smile that lifted the very corner of his mouth. With a halfhearted groan, he bent over to make the first move. Yeah. Sorry for, you know, nearly blowing your brains out and all that, buddy.
He shot one last glance up at the twins before turning back to the game, willing the two to read the message he was sending. Don't worry. They won't let us down.
He shook his head once again in slow disbelief. Rey will make sure of that.
The trudge through the desert felt twice as slow and tedious as the first time. Rey, however, struggled through the shifting sand with an iron determinedness, every step purposeful and resolved. The others dragged themselves along behind her, far less energetic but grudgingly encouraged onward by her evident excitement.
Her enthusiasm only seemed to increase when the wind began to pick up and swirling sand began to envelop their surroundings.
"There's the sandstorm," she called back over her shoulder cheerfully, shielding her eyes from the grit as it bombarded her face mercilessly. "We should be nearby."
"Be careful," Obi-Wan called, and coughed as sand hit the back of his throat before he lifted his collar to cover the lower half of his face. "I'm no expert on time travel, but I'm pretty sure we don't want our past selves somehow managing to see us."
Rey nodded impatiently before glancing up and immediately hitting the sand. "Get down!" The others crawled their way up the dune beside her to peer over the edge as well.
The metallic glint of something large loom over them, the purr of engines blasting their faces in a wave of sand. "There's the ship," Padmé said in relief. "Just as we encountered it the first time, just on the opposite side. That means we should be seeing Qui-Gon and Darth Maul right about… there?" She gestured into the storm with a frown, as there was nothing there to be seen.
"It's hard to get a bearing in this wind," Obi-Wan muttered, shielding his eyes to little avail. "I can't see a thing."
"You… you do have an actual plan for how to fix all this, right?" Finn leaned over to speak to Rey privately in a low voice.
"Of course," Rey looked offended. "You didn't think I'd come all the way out here without a conceivable plan, did you?"
"Well... I've just sort of been thinking." Finn admitted, almost sheepishly. "Won't this interference with the past cause some sort of paradox? And make the entire universe explode or something? Because what happens when there's no longer any need to go back in time to stop ourselves from killing Darth Maul? Then we'd never actually go back and do it in the first place, and in turn never actually stop ourselves from doing it, and it all becomes one big circle of nausea-inducing time-travel messiness."
"And you're asking all these questions now?" Rey rolled her eyes, but her laugh was goodnatured. "Not if we successfully make a clean loop, it won't. By using time travel, you and I are essentially from a completely alternate universe than our past selves. As long as we make the transition between this universe and the next conceivably smooth, we shouldn't have anything to worry about. All we really need to do is tweak the sequence of events just enough to make a logical pairing of the two timelines. The universe with fill in the rest of the gaps, as long as they're not too large."
"Uh." Finn scratched his cheek with a frown.
"Think about it this way. Remember all those gross tendril things from the time planet?" Rey wriggled her fingers helpfully. "Let's say each one of them represents an entire universe. When we time travel, we're simply traveling to that specific universe. When we 'change' a universe, whether on purpose or by accident, a completely new one splits off from the first, containing those changes we made. What we're trying to do right now is simply get transferred from this universe back to our original one. So we just need to make a clean loop in order to successfully connect the two."
"Um… Okay…"
"Let's just say I didn't get any sleep last night," Rey said flatly.
"Yeah, but how do you—"
"Alright, and maybe spent the better portion of it talking to Lando." She admitted with a modest shrug. "He's way better at explaining these things than I am. Trust me, I understand all this about as much as you do."
"Oh. That makes more sense." Finn rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. "So that's why the Jedi Masters never told anyone about the place before now. It's super complicated."
"Which is why, in the hands of Kylo Ren, things could become a complete disaster," Rey's face darkened. "I don't think he really has any clue what all he's getting into."
Finn groaned. "Hoo boy. It would have been so much easier if everyone had just left it all alone."
The stillness that followed was undercut only by the noise of spiraling sand.
"Why is it so quiet?" Padmé spoke up from beside them worriedly. "I hope nothing's wrong."
"We should be able to see their lightsabers from here," Obi-Wan squinted into the storm with a frown.
"I don't see any… wait! There's something crouched down in the sand. Over there, in front of us. Ow!" Finn rubbed at his eyes irritably. "Blasted sandstorm. I can hardly see a thing."
"That's us, isn't it?" Rey poked him in the shoulder. "Watching the battle."
"You're right," Finn craned his head around to get a better view of the figures lying in the sand in front of them. "All I can see is you and Padmé… Oh! There's me. My backpack's crushing me. Phew, even from here I can feel how heavy that thing was."
"Anakin and I must be further ahead then," Obi-Wan mused, tapping his chin. "Good, so we have an approximate location down."
"But still no Qui-Gon or Darth Maul," Rey chewed her bottom lip anxiously.
As though on cue, two lightsaber blades materialized out of the buzzing sand, cutting violent red and blue arcs of light through the haze.
"There they are," Padmé exclaimed. "Let's go. We'll need a better vantage point if we want to see just what's going on."
"Oh no. That's Darth Maul and me, not Qui-Gon!" Rey suddenly realized, clapping her hands over her mouth in dismay. "The blue lightsaber is mine!"
"So the ship wasn't just taking off, it was actually... leaving?" Finn's eyes widened in alarm.
"We've lost more time than I thought with that fiasco inside the Falcon," Obi-Wan jumped to his feet. The others scrambled after him as he half-ran, half-crawled towards the crossing blades.
Blaster fire ripped over their heads as Finn and Padme's past selves opened fire, and they ducked down hurriedly. Rey winced as they came close enough to witness the fight for the second time, and could only think about how weird it was to be watching it, now as a complete observer. She couldn't help but notice how slow her past self seemed now, against the fearsome warrior that was Darth Maul, and she found herself willing the girl to step up, fight back, attack him head on. It was only now that she realized she had mostly been on the defensive for the entire battle, and from her vantage point, the look of ill-disguised fear plastered across her past self's face was painfully clear.
"This is terrifying," Finn breathed, voicing her exact thoughts out loud. "What do we do? It's not like we can just jump in there and tackle Obi-Wan before he leaps on Darth Maul. Who knows what kind of damage that will do." He pressed his palm against his forehead in agitation. "How are we supposed to do anything without psychologically scarring ourselves for life?!"
"I have an idea," Rey turned to the others sharply. "Stun Obi-Wan before he gets to Maul. Past Finn and Padme's blaster fire should cover for us. Padmé— your blaster has a stun setting, right?"
"Of course," Padmé answered, and pulled the sleek weapon out of its holster quickly. "But I'll need to get at a better angle in order to make it conceivable."
"That won't work," Obi-Wan cut in. "Maul will still be in commission, and he'll still be attacking Rey. Who's going to stop him from killing her?" He grimaced. "Because like it or not, that's exactly what he's going to do."
The color drained away from Rey's face as she processed the exact implications of this revelation, and she swallowed.
"If… if it's going to be a necessary sacrifice…"
"What are you talking about?" Finn cut across her fiercely. "Don't be stupid. You have a blaster too— use it to stun Darth Maul!"
"I can't," Rey whispered. "It's just an NN-14, too simple to have a stun setting."
"We're running out of options," Padmé spoke up urgently. "What about your blaster, Finn?"
"Rey took it during the showdown with Han and Chewie, remember?" Finn groaned and rubbed his face with his hands. "And she left it on the floor of the cargo bay."
"This is all my fault," Rey said weakly. "It's okay. Just stun Obi-Wan."
"And let Maul murder you?" Finn burst out. "Not a chance."
"While we sit here and discuss things, we lose precious time," Obi-Wan cut in once again, drawing their attention to the two new figures getting to their feet just beyond Rey and Maul. "Here come Anakin and I. Rey, give me you blaster." Without waiting for a reply, the Jedi reached over and snatched the weapon out of her holster. "Padmé, take Darth Maul. Don't shoot until I tell you to."
Rey gaped at the man. "Wait— what are you doing?"
"I promised the twins I wouldn't allow us to fail, and I intend to keep my word," Kenobi swiftly flicking off the safety switch on the little NN-14 as he propped it up carefully against his arm, closing one eye as he steadied his aim. There was scarcely time to do much else. Rey bit her lip so hard that the bitter tang of blood burst across her tongue, and squeezed her eyes shut as Obi-Wan's order burst forth through clenched teeth.
"NOW, Padmé!"
Two sharp reports echoed across the desert, one directly after the other, shattering the paralyzing darkness into a thousand pieces. They were almost immediately followed by the dull thud of something heavy hitting the sand. Rey hardly dared to move. To breathe. She was terrified to open her eyes again.
But she did anyway.
The red, double-bladed lightsaber lay where it had fallen just in front of her, halfway buried in the burning sand. A crumpled heap of dark robes lay just behind it— Darth Maul, stone-cold unconscious. She took in a shaky breath and fell back, breathing heavily and feeling a bit dizzy as well.
"Rey!" Finn tripped over the shifting sand to reach her side, hurriedly shoving his blaster back into its holster as he ran. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine," Rey panted, halfheartedly brushing away his frantic attempt to check for injuries. Suddenly she pulled him into a crushing hug.
"That was way too close," Finn breathed in her ear. "I thought you were a goner."
"Me too," Rey admitted faintly. "But we did it. That's all that matters. We did it, Finn."
"How is this even happening?" Finn whispered back. "How am I still able to remember everything?"
"I don't know," Rey breathed. "But this happened last time too. It should have affected us, but it didn't. Our memories stayed the same. I still remember everything. Even though the others won't."
"Yeah." Finn pulled back quickly as Padmé ran up.
"Are you alright?" the Senator demanded, thrusting out a hand to help Rey to her feet.
"Yes," Rey inhaled deeply. "Thanks."
A low moan cut through the sandy haze, and the three glanced up in the direction of its origin in surprise.
"Obi-Wan?" Padmé's eyes widened in horror as she ran quickly to the man's side.
Rey staggered to her feet as well, the dismay that punched her gut -unlike the shock plastered across her face- far from feigned. The Jedi was curled into a tight, defensive ball, his face twisted in pain.
"What happened?" She dropped down beside the Jedi, a bit breathless.
"He's been shot," Padmé pulled the Jedi over onto his back, revealing the charred patch that blackened the tawny brown of the man's tunic just to the inside of his left shoulder. "Finn or I must have hit him when we were firing earlier. Oh Obi-Wan, I'm so sorry."
"It was probably me," Finn spoke up miserably. "I was totally panicking back there." The look Rey shot him was one of immense gratitude, and she felt a warm surge of affection for her valiant friend.
"Doesn't matter… who it was..." Obi-Wan forced through the tight barrier of his teeth, and opened his sea-green eyes to the torrid sky. He paused a moment to catch his breath, before attempting to pull himself up.
"No, don't move."Padmé ordered, easing him back down. "We've got to get this bound up tightly before you bleed to death."
The Jedi groaned and closed his eyes tightly again. "It was… it was probably a good thing it happened. I lost control of any sort of rationality. I could have killed Maul." He sucked in a sharp breath as Padmé carefully began to pull his tunic away from the wound.
"You're incredibly fortunate the blast missed any vital organs," Padmé murmured, and shook her head as she bent to pull out a roll of sterile bandages from her belt. "That was some lucky random shot."
"It could have been a lot worse," Kenobi pointed out stubbornly. "If I'd killed Darth Maul I could have destroyed everything as we know it. I'd even go as far as to say whomever pulled the trigger did me a favor. Just enough to take me out, but not full-on kill me." He was clearly trying to make Finn feel better by blowing it off as nothing. Even so, his chuckle was mirthless as he settled into a more contemplative silence. "How ironic. For years I've always wished that I'd somehow been able to get to the fellow before he got to my master."
After a moment he opened one eye to address Rey directly. "I suppose we really dodged a bullet there, hm?"
Rey groaned aloud, but only because she was relieved he was well enough at least to make a dumb joke. She suddenly felt an overwhelming rush of immense respect for the man, and resisted the urge to throw her arms around him in a big hug. His alternate self had known exactly what he had been getting into the moment he had pulled that trigger. It was really only because of him that they stood here now, victorious in their quest.
"We need to get back to the ship, where we can get you properly treated." Padmé straightened up and dusted off her hands. "This sandstorm, of course, isn't helping in the slightest."
"What about Darth Maul?" Rey questioned. "What do we do with him? We can't exactly wait here to make sure he wakes up properly."
"We'll have to leave him here," Padmé put her hands on her hips with a frown, "He should regain consciousness soon. We'll need to be far away from here by then, with all of our tracks completely wiped away."
"Well, there's something this sandstorm will actually be good for," Finn pointed out, feeling the need for a bit of optimism.
Rey approached the unconscious Sith cautiously, and nudged the body with her toe before shuddering a bit. She bent down to pick up the red-bladed saber at his side and paused for a moment, before powering it on, testing its weight in her hand. Though it was twice the length of her ordinary one-bladed saber, she could scarcely feel a weight difference. Curiosity getting the better of her, she almost sheepishly began to rotate the weapon in a double figure-8. There was something immensely satisfying in hearing the rhythmic hum of blades on opposite sides of her at the same time. It was with a slight twinge of reluctance that she powered the weapon off again and replaced it on its owner's belt.
"I don't ever remember setting my pistol to stun," Padmé was inspecting her own weapon closely. "But I suppose the setting could have flicked on accidentally while I was firing." She bent to slip the blaster back into its holster with a thoughtful frown.
"That's why you never can trust blasters," Obi-Wan groaned as Finn helped him to his feet, hefting the Jedi's good arm over his shoulders. "They're so... unpredictable. Clumsy. Unciv—argh—" he cut off with a pained wince as Finn accidentally slipped in the shifting sand, bumping into him with an apologetic grimace.
Rey and Padmé took Darth Maul's limp body by either arm, straining to drag the Sith over to his speeder as they hefted him into a sitting position and settled him propped up against its metal side.
Radio static crackled from the Jedi's belt, and Han's voice cut through the noise. "You'd better get the hell over here."
Finn squirmed a bit before he was able to maneuver around enough to unhook the comlink from Obi-Wan's belt. "What's wrong?"
"Everything," the smuggler shot back vaguely. "Hurry up and get back here. It'll be easier to show rather than tell you."
Luke Skywalker had dealt with plenty of frightening things in his life.
As a small child, he'd managed to survive sand people, bounty hunters, and wild animals alike in the untamed deserts of his home planet of Tatooine. As a teenager, he'd raced (and wrecked) skyhoppers through Beggar's Canyon in death-defying stunts, resulting in several close shaves over the years. As a young adult, he'd found the final destruction of his childhood in the brutal murder of his aunt and uncle. Within those same twenty-four hours, he'd both infiltrated the most powerful and lethal superweapon the galaxy had ever seen, then single-handedly blown the entire thing up.
But this… this was far worse than any of that. There was something about the knowledge that all of that— everything that made Luke Skywalker, well, Luke Skywalker— was nothing, didn't matter, didn't exist, that was far more terrifying than anything the Empire could ever throw at him.
Luke glanced over to catch Leia's eye, and saw that her expression was grim. She too was a mere illusion of herself, a ghost of what might have been.
"How… how is this possible?" he heard Rey whisper. "I thought we fixed this!"
"'Fixed it'? Fixed what? There's nothing left of them to fix! What the hell is happening to them?" Han stabbed a finger back at him and Leia. "Did you guys screw something up while you were out?"
"I thought… I thought we'd fixed it." Rey's voice was hollow. Deflated.
"We did," Finn said firmly, and folded his arms across his chest with a frown. "This has got to be something else."
Something was wrong. Luke could feel it in his gut. There was a piece of the puzzle that was missing. Something they had all overlooked. Only— where and what was it?
Or rather— who was it? And just like that, it clicked.
"Where's Anakin?"
The others turned to look at him, expressions of shock and confusion on their faces.
Rey looked stupefied. "I don't… he's not… he's not here?"
"You're right," Obi-Wan spoke up slowly, and tapped his chin as his brow furrowed. "I haven't seen him since… well, I don't know the last time I saw him." His face was a smooth, deadly calm, but Luke observed a muscle twitch ever so slightly in the man's jawline.
"You mean no one's seen him?" Finn asked in disbelief. "How could he just… disappear?" Suddenly his eyes widened. "You don't think he's… gone?"
"That's impossible," Rey spluttered. "What could we have possibly done to erase him from history? Everything else returned to normal!"
"You don't think he has anything to do with… this?" Leia held up a ghostly hand. The others went quiet as this was carefully digested.
"I… I think I know where he is." Padmé spoke up in soft voice, and everyone turned to her expectantly. She dropped her face into her hands with a moan. "Oh, Anakin… I was afraid this might happen, but I didn't think..." Obi-Wan reached forward to place a gentle hand on her shoulder, and she grabbed it and held on tightly as she lifted her head to look him directly in the eye.
"Obi-Wan… he's gone after his mother."
Whew. Told you it'd be a big one. If this were a book, I might call this the end of Part One. Luke, Anakin, and the crew's real problems have really only just begun. *evil Palpatine cackle* HEHehehehehhh... (I swear I will RUIN Disney if they bring him back in Episode 9.)
On that note, I hope to see you next update! As always, have a great day, and of course- May the Force be with you.
-Alaskan Appaloosa :)