PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE PROCEDING TO THE CHAPTER
First of all, let's get a few things clear. This is a bit of autobiographical chapter because something similar happened to me, to some friends and my boyfriend too. This doesn't mean that I approve drinking till you're smashed for recreational meanings. A beer or two don't kill you. Getting drunk too often will surely will. Alcohol abuse, as drug abuse, is dangerous, for you and for those who live around you. I've seen my grandfather die because he was a smoke addicted. I've seen a friend of mine drinking so much he got intoxicated to the point he was poisoned and we had to rush him to the hospital. To me it happened only once and it wasn't a conscious act. (You're free not to believe me but I swear I wasn't aiming to getting drunk that only night I got drunk in my life.) Never accept strange looking drinks in Czech Republic. That's a good advice. Believe me, don't do it. It might be highly alcoholic handmade absynthe. That's what got me drunk that night!
So, please, take good care of your health. A drink or two won't kill you, but never reduce yourself to the state of a sponge. Stop before you feel nauseated. And don't drive if you don't feel up to it! Damn, I'm 21 and I feel like an old boring parent! So, after the obvious and boring speech about alcohol abuse, let's get down to buisness. Not my best chapter but still I hope you'll like it.
Chapter 21 – Hold Your Breath And Count To Ten
It didn't take long before Kett called and informed us that the meeting with Incom had been incredibly successful and that they had decided not only to produce the X-Wing model and to sell it to the Rebellion for a cheaper price than the esteemed value, but they also bought the patent for the X-Wing combat system, basically refunding much of the money spent for the first operations of the Rebellion, which had, it seemed, cost quite a lot in matter of equipment, structures and of course men. You had to feed those who went into hiding for the cause after all! We on Dxun were pretty much auto-sufficient thanks to the incredibly high count of beasts and the fact that prices of food on Onderon was willingly kept low by local authorities in order to avoid rebellions like twenty years before, when the prices had skyrocketed to unaffordable values and the population had basically tore apart the Governor Palace and claimed him as hostage and menaced to kill him if prices wouldn't have dropped soon. It had worked, but the new governor didn't want it to repeat the experience, so the government kept prices low. Too low I thought, but as far as it worked...
We were having a break while preparing the remaining ships for the cargo that should have arrived three days after that when Kett called informing us about the deal and basically ordering us to have a huge party that night even if he wasn't there with us. An order that the younger guys took quite seriously and almost instantly started thinking about everything we needed. Basically we needed, at least in their opinion, lots of alcoholic stuff. Some of them after lunch took the small ship we used to go back and forth Onderon for supplies and when they returned it took us quite some time to retrieve what they had bought.
One of the younger guys, Matt, was a skilled mechanic but also a very good cook and he had volunteered to prepare something special for that night and as soon as he had the ingredients at his disposition he started cutting, slicing, broiling...damn, you couldn't follow him, he was too fast and making too many things at the same time. He managed even to make a Gihaal, a Mandalorian dish that usually smells like decomposing fish, that actually tasted and most of all smelled good. He said that the smell came from the batter, that he used different ingredients to make it. He used me as a human tester and I must tell you he was really good, so good I wondered why he hadn't cooked before. A bit sheepishly, he told me that he feared that if we got to know how good he was we would have chained him to the stove. I had to admit then that he was right, probably he would have forced to stick to the cookery and that would have taken time from the amount spent in the workshop. And he was the one that basically programmed the computer on the X-Wing. His work had been indispensable for the result!
Well, after a full afternoon spent in the kitchen, Matt managed to make a huge banquet for thirty hungry men. Damn, I don't think I never ate so much in my life, not even after Janu had cleared me for eating solid food months before. The atmosphere was incredibly calm and everything we wanted was some fun and I assure you, when beer started flowing like a river, well, we had fun. A lot of fun. At some point, Dakk was high enough to start mocking Palpatine. The few public apparitions he had made had become history, and I must tell you that Dakk could imitate his voice terribly well. It made me shiver a couple of times as he spoke.
But even if he was damn creepy as he spoke as Palpatine, he was still incredibly funny. I mean, he managed to make me burst into laugh more than a few times, once when I was drinking and it made me inhale some beer. For a moment I was the source of hilarity, and I didn't really mind. It was unpleasant but after I had stopped sneezing beer I was gasping for air for laughing too much.
"Atton you should try to breath between laughs, you'll choke if you don't stop!" said Sijion at some point.
"I'm trying...but Dakk is just the best! I've never seen anyone imitating Palpatine like that! He's just...I mean...perfect!" I took a deep breath then started giggling hysterically. Too much beer, I realized afterward.
"I tried with Vader but the breather is difficult to imitate!"
For a second I shivered hearing Vader's name. He might be on the other side of the Galaxy but still his name was connected to too dreadful memories and it made me shake a bit every time I heard his name.
"Crap, that man is creepy. I saw him once, and I was far enough that I couldn't hear his voice but...it's like he has an evil aura around him. I could feel it in the air." Jon took a sip of beer before going on. "It gives me the creeps every time I think about it."
"Don't tell me." I replied. "I met him some years ago. When he was still human...he was a bit creepy even when he was still out of that suit."
"What the heck happened to him?" asked Sijion.
I shrugged my shoulders. "Don't know. Some years ago I met a Jedi that survived the Purge. He told me who was behind the mask. I met him a couple of times, before he disappeared, three years before the Clone Wars. Aster Landman. A silent guy, the few times he came down to the workshop he never said a word. Practically he shadowed his master."
"You must have met most of the heroes of the wars!"
"Well, yes. Most of all those who piloted. For example I never met Master Yoda, but I met Master Koon quite often."
The evening and first hours of the night went on like that. We watched the evening news on the HoloNet then the party went on. Slowly, most of the other guys went to sleep way before midnight but me, Dakk, Haron, Jagged and Jon remained in the common room, Sijon too, but he seemed more asleep than awake, talking and drinkin. Empty bottles of beer were piling up on the table and we were getting closer and closer to drunkenness. Me above all. I wasn't talking much, mainly I listened so I had more time to drink. And in the middle of a conversation verging on the way the Empire was handling the insurrections of the mining guilds of the Outer Rim, I realized I was drinking to forget. For the first time in my life I was drinking because I was depressed and I didn't want to think anymore. At least for a night. I wanted to forget. It wasn't something a Jedi would do when passing through a hard time of his life but I didn't really know where to turn to find solace. So I kept it coming.
And when Jag found a bottle of Arboite Twister, one of the strongest liquors of the Galaxy well, do you think I stopped drinking? Absolutely no! The bitter liquid went down my throat like molten fire, but that was what I needed. Silently I kept drinking until my head swirled like a bullet and only when I felt all my senses going numb and the pain subside a bit I stopped, at least for some time. And even then, when I couldn't concentrate on nothing else then the white wall in front of me, if one of the guys around me would have filled my glass well, I doubt I'd refused it. Thank the Force no one did or I would have lost the little lucidity I had left, even though it wasn't much. I could have blown my cover in a nanosecond.
But, guess what, I felt a little better. People always told me that the state of drunkenness makes depression worse but not being able to concentrate on nothing else than what was before me made me really feel a little better.
But the feeling didn't last long.
It was when Dakk leaned back against the wall and brought up a rather painful subject that everything changed, and everything went right down to ruins.
"...but the only thing I regret since I joined the Rebel Alliance is not having the chance to see my cousin anymore. I mean, Han is barely sixteen now and when I saw him last time he was just a kid but he's a nice guy. I really miss him."
We were pretty much drunk at that time, some on the verge of falling asleep and some more lucid, like Dakk and Haron. I was in the first group. Since Dakk had brought up our regrets, well, it worked like a stimulus to share our own. You know what happens when you're inebriated by alcohol or other drugs, even a strong painkiller can numb your mind enough to make you tell the wrong things to the wrong person. Well, that's practically what happened to me. After seven months of holding on, of making up stories to justify minor details that slipped me, well, that night the dam broke and I spoke.
Basically, Haron's worst regret was the fact that he didn't stop his father from interjecting into his relationship with a girl he wanted to marry. His father forbid the union and he just left her and never saw her again. After that he broke up with the family and went to university to become an engineer. Jag had always wanted to be a pilot but never gathered the courage to ask his family to let him join the Republic Fleet. Now he built ships but didn't know how to fly them. Apparently though, Jon was at peace with his past, he didn't regret anything except the fact that he never managed to see Coruscant. It was a place that fascinated him, but he never had the chance to see.
When it came to me, well, I just remained silent and kept concentrating on an indefinite spot on the wall in front of me, trying not to faint there and then for the intoxication.
"And you Atton? What's your greatest regret?" asked Haron, a dumb smile on his face.
I mediated on the question for a moment. I had many regrets about my past, and some on my present too, but where to start? I regretted so many things that I couldn't even count them, it would take a whole day to enlist them. From my mother's death to Palpatine's betrayal to the Republic, I had been one of the protagonists of so many important events, events I could have changed, if I had made different chooses, and over the years I had come to regret many of those decisions I had taken since childhood. Most of all, I regretted the fact that I had trusted Palpatine as a father. More than Obi-Wan, who was really a father figure for me, the father I never had. I regretted the fact that I never had the chance to ask my mom about my father, and that probably I would never get to know the mystery of my own life. I regretted going to see the Chancellor that night at the Opera House, when he instilled the doubts on the Jedi Order that nearly led me to the Dark Side in me. I regretted the fact that I let go of Padmè instead of fighting for her. That was one of the few right decision I had taken in my life but it was the most painful to take. Letting go of the woman I love more than I need to breath was the worst thing that could happen to me. But overall, I regretted having trusted in Palpatine. It gave me the creeps to think about I had put my trust in a Sith. My worst enemy. The living version of the enemy of every Jedi. I hated myself for that.
"I allowed too many people to tamper with my life. Since I reclaimed my freedom from slavery, twenty years ago, I let people decide in my place. And they used me."
For some reason, a thick, tensed silence fell around us. Everyone stood motionless, staring at the bottle or the glass in front of them or in their hands as if the world revolved around them. It was true. I had been used. But I wasn't the only one.
"We've all been used Atton." replied Jon. "At least once in our life, everyone of us has been used, for a reason or another."
I shook my head. "No, not like me. I was born a slave, but when I managed to gain my freedom I passed under another and more cruel master." I grabbed another beer and opened the can. "And I mean it." It was amazing how my voice sounded clear as if I had been sober all the time. Some others, like Jon, suffered from slurred speech or stammered sometimes but I spoke as if I was sober.
Sijon, who had been resting his head on his arms crossed on the table for some time, suddenly stood up straight, a drowsy expression showed he was more asleep than awake, but still aware of his surroundings. "But you worked for the Jedi Order! I mean, that's the dream of every good mechanic after getting a job at Incom!"
It was in that moment that I lost control of my thoughts. I couldn't hold on anymore.
"I didn't work for the Jedi, I am a..." suddenly I felt a bout of nausea turning my stomach upside down like a bouncing ball. I stopped mid-sentence and tried to stand up, but my legs betrayed me and I staggered forward for a couple of steps and I managed not to fall on the floor only because I held onto a nearby chair. I felt sick and disoriented, all of sudden, as if that last beer had been poisoned or something. All the clarity that had accompanied me up to that moment, along with the feeling of numbness that wiped away the pain for a short but blissful time, was gone now. Those were the side effects. I was drunk, better, I was smashed, and now everything came back to me like a rebound shoot. With doubled effects. If before I was obviously not very inclined to keep my mouth shut now it was worse.
"Woah what's wrong?" Jag stumbled beside me and tried to hold me up as my legs buckled beneath my weight. Damn, I felt like I weighted like a ton of lead. My neck was bent like a tree in the eye of the storm, I couldn't hold my head up straight. I felt awfully bad.
"I...I don't feel really well." I stammered, slowly sliding down on my knees, my arms still trying to hold on the chair uselessly. I felt like a rag doll. "I think I'm going to..."
"Throw up..." shouted Dakk, immediately stepping beside me and grasping my arm and pulling me up. "Don't you dare...wait until we get you to the restroom!"
The drunk leading the smashed. That was a sight worth a thousand credits. He and Jag pulled me up, one each arm and dragged me towards the nearby restrooms. I tried to walk, leaning on them, but I couldn't follow them. They were moving too fast, at least for me. I had to close my eyes for a moment, when another bout of nausea menaced to make me empty the content of my stomach there and then.
"Here, come on!" Dakk shouted again, kicking the door of the restroom open. Practically they shoved me down and with some luck I managed not to retch out of the toilet. If I was sick before, now it was worse. I hated vomiting. It happened few times in my life, most of all when I was a kid and I got sick, but I just hated it. I was used to have a few drinks, after all, Obi-Wan was rather fond of some liquors and we usually had a toast after an accomplished mission, but I never got drunk. Not like this at least. I never got so drunk to get to the point of retching out like a diseased kid.
"It's a miracle you held on until we got you here!" laughed Haron behind me.
I rested my forehead on the cool stone for a moment. "Thank you for the trust Haron...really...I'm sick for the Forse sake!" I groaned in response.
"Too bad for you! You should have stopped many drinks ago!" he replied, playfully. "I mean, you kept drinking since dinner started. You deserve this Atton!"
I tried to choke another spasm but I only managed to retch again in the toilet, a hand pushing my head down as I kept heaving. "Damn, now I think I know how my wife felt while she was pregnant!"
The sudden thought of Padmè and the twins twisted my stomach in an iron grip. I tried to take a deep breath and the room spun around me again. It was getting harder by the moment, it was like having a stone on my chest that constricted me to take short and ragged breaths. It was almost painful, as much as the feeling on longing that had assaulted me, it was like a needle stuck into my brain. And the pain was amplified to the point it was unbearable.
"I should had never become a Jedi Knight!" I groaned, leaning on the cool stall wall for a moment, taking a deep breath. "None of this would have happened if I had just stuck with what the Force had designed for me!"
"Excuse me?" practically yelled Haron. "You became what? Damn Atton, you're even more drunk that what I thought!" he burst out into a hysterical laugh, but he was the only one that found that situation funny.
"I'm not just a mechanic." I took a deep breath, hoping it would have cleared my mind enough, but no such luck. "I am a Jedi. One of the few that survived the Purge..." I tried to stand up but my legs buckled and I slipped on the floor. I sniffled, trying to hold back the tears, not because the fall hurt me, but because I felt again like the first days in prison. Empty. The shell of myself. It had been a long time since I had felt like that. I mean, I was depressed and everything, but the feeling was now amplified, just like years before. It's a terrible sensation, I would not wish to my worst enemy. That emptiness was...terrifying. So terrifying that I was crying. I realized only then that I had been crying probably since the moment I had to lean on Jag and Dakk to get to the restroom.
"I can't believe it!" said Jag shaking his head. "You can't be a Jedi! We would have noticed!"
"I swear I'm serious guys." I tried not to shout but my voice came out a little louder than what I wanted to. "If there's something I would never lie about is this. I mean, I'm drunk and this is probably alcohol talking but if there's something I would never lie about is this."
"Then why didn't you tell us? Why the hell did you have to hide it?" he asked, his voice changing tone each syllable he pronounced.
I felt another rebound of nausea climbing its way up from my stomach, so I braced myself for another heave. Fortunately it didn't come, so I leaned on the plastic wall again, propping up my head in my hands. I wiped the tears off my face and I sniffled again, too tired to hold on anymore.
"Because the Emperor wants me." I answered. "If everything would have happened as he had planned to, well, I would be the one behind Vader's mask, that's why!" I tried to sound as convincing as I could. "I didn't spent seven years of my life in prison just to be captured again and probably put to death. I can't leave my family alone again, not now that I'm so close to finding them!"
A slightly awkward silence hanged on us for a moment, until Sijon broke it. "I thought Jedi weren't allowed to have a family!" he said. Good point.
I nodded, weakly. "We aren't. But when you fall in love, a simple rule written in a really old book doesn't stop you. Neither the fact that your wife is a Senator."
"That's why you never talk about her!" shouted Dakk. His voice went to a pitch so high that it hurt. A terrible headache was coming up and made me atrociously sensible to sounds and light. Not to mention that I was getting sleepy. If I could have lay down on a flat surface I would have fallen asleep in three seconds.
"Yeah. She was the Senator of the Chommel Sector when we married."
Another thing I regret now. I practically spilled her identity like it was nothing. The Senator of the Chommel Sector. Probably the most famous Senator who opposed the War 'till the last moments. Great Anakin, well done! Now do you think they won't make two and two and discover your identity? Your marriage was on the news for weeks after you were imprisoned! I heard a voice say in my head. I guess it must have sounded like Obi-Wan's style of scolding because instinctively I lowered my eyes and sighed, waiting for a punishment.
But no one said anything. At least not immediately. I had to wait a second or two before they put everything together and come up with the truth.
"The senator from the Chommel Sector?" snapped Jag, another high pitched sound that sent a wave of pain straight to my brain. "What the heck...Anakin Skywalker was her husband...or at least that's what the holonet said!" they all looked down at me, a more than shocked look on their faces. "Does that mean that..."
"That I am Anakin Skywalker?" I finished the phrases for him. "Yes. I am..."
It was over. My cover had been blown up like a bubble. I could almost hear Obi-Wan's voice in my head telling me that I was a foolish boy. Well, I guess I was a foolish boy in that moment. As foolish as anyone can be in that situation.
It was strange. Somehow I felt...better! Suddenly I didn't have to lie anymore. No more deceiving, no more hiding behind a fake name. No more.
"I can't believe it..." whispered Dakk.
"I wouldn't believe it myself if I were you. Damn, I feel like a wreck..."
But there was something even stranger than that. They had believed me even if I didn't show them any evidences of my real identity. No one asked questions, no one said anything. It took me a couple of days to realize that they had actually made two and two, even if they were drunk, and that they preferred asking question when we were all sober and able to speak consciously about
"I miss her..." I moaned. It sounded more like the wail of a sad puppy. I felt anything but a human being. I was sweating like I was back on Tatooine, my head spun around anytime I tried to move it, nausea was gone along with half of what I had ingested that night but still I felt like I was going to throw up again. Not to mention that if for a moment that state of haziness I had experience about half an hour before had numbed for a moment my depression, now it was back at full force. It was like a punishment! "She's the only reason I didn't go crazy while in prison..."
Someone sat down beside me. It was Dakk, who sympathetically smiled at me like he did know what I was talking about. "Don't worry. You'll find them. Just be patient." he stood up then, and pulling me by an arm, he made me stood up myself. The sudden movement made my head spin like a swoop bike out of control. "Come on now, let's get you to bed. It's been a rather hard night for you."
I smiled, or at least I tried. I'm sure the result looked more like a painful expression rather than a smile. "Thank you guys." I managed to say before they dragged me to the dorm room and hoisted me in my bunk.
"For what?" asked one of them.
"For everything."
Dakk put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a gentle squeeze. "Don't worry Anakin, you would have done the same for any of us."
That was true. I would have done anything for them. For any of them. For Dakk most of all. During those months, he had become a sort of a younger brother to me. I knew what he had gone through when his family had died, so I could relate to him more than to the others. Loosing someone you love makes it easier to be empathic to those who have experienced the same tragedy.
I tried to smile again. After that I buried my face in the pillow and pulled the covers over me, snuggling under them like a kid. "'night..." I mumbled.
"Good night..." I heard a distant voice replying.
After that, I blacked out. A seemingly dreamless, drunken sleep. That was what I needed. A full night of deep sleep. And for a moment I thought that would be the night.
I was wrong.
I was damn wrong.
Reviews are always accepted. I have the bad feeling this chapter is probably the crappiest one I have ever written, I hope the next one will be better. Anakin has to explain many things to those poor guys that had to drag him around like a spineless whatever. And believe me, dragging around someone as tall as Hayden Christiansen can be tricky. Not because I had to take care of a drunken Hayden Christiansen in person (though I would really enjoy it [insert random naughty thought here]) but because I have friends that resemble him in stance, height and weight and it wasn't easy to take him to a safe place before he threw up everything he had eaten that day too close to our tents. It happened at Metatl Camp, last year. First night of camping, and he gets drunk enough to throw up. (told ya it was an autobiographic chapter! I have been both in Anakin's and Dakk and the others' roles) Well done, really. We had to deal with his high consume of alcohol for six days! But there I met Nightwish! That's a great compensation!
By the way, somehow I managed to survive to a long and very busy weekend, Lucca Comics (biggest comic convention in Italy), birthday party of a very close friend, Halloween night with connected Tim Burton's Movies Marathon, not to mention that I started again practicing martial arts after three years of doing nothing. It was a great feeling! I love it!
Well, hope you liked it. Reviews are always accepted. If someone gets to guess the title for the next chapter (it's closely connected to this one's title) well, the first one that gets the right title and writes it in the reviews or in a personal message will get the chance to have a particular character of Star Wars written in the story. I reserve the chance to put him or her in the place I find most suitable for the storyline though.
Let the contest begin!