Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine. Any lines from the books are hers too. It's all hers. I also don't own Star Wars or anything from it. None of it. Nada.

Force of Things, pt 2

AN: I've been toying around with my very old Star Wars fic and it made me remember someone had asked for a follow up to the Star Wars au ages ago. Not great, but maybe someday I'll get my act together and write the story actually floating around in my head. Maybe. Also, again, if I got any SW facts wrong I'm sorry.

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Gale glares at the barren landscape stretching out around him.

Florrum, what a dump.

His dislike must be clear on his face, because Madge gives him a warning look.

Mind your mouth, it seems to say, and he huffs in disgust.

They shouldn't even be on Florrum, but the crew that normally covers the cesspool is out of commission. The group of doctors from Stewjon that had been making deals with the damned pirates since the Clone Wars, had been captured by the Empire weeks earlier. There was no rescue mission planned for them, because, as Haymitch had pointed out to the many furious voices, they were probably already dead.

The battle against the Empire doesn't stop though, just for a handful of dead rebel fighters.

All their fellow rebels can do is take up their missions and hope their friends hadn't suffered before their deaths.

"He isn't so bad," Madge assures Gale as the ship sets down with a gentle thud.

She should know. Madge, along with Katniss, Birdy, and Katy-Jo Lewes, has been making deals with Hondo Ohnaka for the past few years, bartering for non-medical necessities. Tibanna, droid parts, even gapangas, on the occasion they needed something he was one of their best suppliers. Now, to Gale's annoyance, they'd be seeing the sleemo twice as often.

Normally, Katniss went with them, for support, though all the other girls claimed not to need any kind of assistance. A nasty case of nerf pox after a trip to an Alderaanian refugee ship had put both she and Katy-Jo Lewes in quarantine, at least until the fevers past.

"It's a youngling illness," Katniss had grumbled. "I'm stuck here for something that someone a standard five years old can handle."

"It's just nerf pox, Katniss," Mellark had tried to comfort her. "They only last a few weeks…"

Getting the pox older, though, apparently made them worse. Neither Katniss nor Katy-Jo Lewes were going to be taking on any missions any time soon.

"I've still got scars from when I had them," Haymitch had told them. "Nearly scratched my choobies off. Got a scar shaped like the Orange District on my lef-"

"Please don't finish that sentence," Madge had implored him, covering her ears.

Gale had agreed wholeheartedly.

Scars or not, he hopes Katniss' Force abilities help her to heal faster than average. He isn't sure he can handle covering too many more of her trips if Birdy is the pilot.

Truth be told, if Madge weren't going, Gale would tell Birdy she was on her own, but the prospect of spending time with Madge not under Haymitch's watchful eye was too tempting. Even if he had to listen to Bird's annoying voice giving him orders, the opportunity was too good.

"Just keep that lightsaber of yours tucked between your legs," Birdy shouts, emerging from the cockpit. "Hondo is a steady source. We don't want to upset one of our only suppliers of bacta just because you've got to prove you've got the bigger blaster."

Gale starts to snap back that it shouldn't be so easy to upset a pirate, and that he definitely has the bigger blaster, but stops when Madge shakes her head at him.

The platform lowers and a warm wind blows into the ship, bringing dust and foreign smells with it. Gale scowls at the odd mixture of alcohol and filth that is already filling his senses. The place didn't just look like a junk heap, it smelled like one too. Great.

"Remind me to never let you get pulled into a card game," Birdy mutters to him. "You're sabacc face is poodoo."

"Birdy! Madge! My lovely ladies!" A weequay, Gale can only assume is Hondo, smiles broadly at them, his arms open and waiting, presumably for a punch in the gut. If Gale were in charge that's what he'd get anyway.

Despite the noise Gale makes, Madge follows after Birdy and lets the filthy pirate pull her into a hug.

"And where is the lovely Katniss? And my charming friend Miss Lewes?"

"Nerf pox," Madge tells him.

He laughs. "Nerf pox? A little old for that, aren't they?"

Birdy starts to explains the situation to him, but Hondo has already moved on, grinning over Madge's head at Gale.

"And who is this?" He narrows his eyes, his smile widening as he nudges Madge with his elbow and winks at Birdy. "Two lovely ladies are certainly worth more than one scruffy looking nerf herder like this. I'd complain if I were the two of you."

"Who you calling scruffy looking?" Gale snaps without thinking.

Madge grimaces and he instantly regrets opening his mouth.

Hondo stares at him for a moment, his expression calculating, before he lets out a boom of laughter.

"Not you, of course, my friend," he chuckles reaching past the girls and pulling Gale to his side, a friendly arm around his shoulder. "Come, we'll discuss this bacta inside."

He pulls Gale along, toward what Gale assumes is the base of operations for his illegal enterprise.

It's seen better days. Clearly Hondo's hideout had been attacked, more than once it seemed, and he either didn't have the resources to fix it or didn't care. Gale assumed the former.

The base smells heavily of alcohol and the body odor of various species. It's nauseating and he can't imagine how Madge hadn't come back ill on the various times she'd been forced to come make deals in the haze of smoke and filth.

There are crates along the wall that Gale would bet every inch of Haymitch's hobbled together piece of space junk are filled with various spices and he spots the pelts of at least half a dozen endangered creatures pinned to the wall beside an impressive collection of ancient armor. Clearly, Hondo was smart enough to deal in goods rather than credits, and Gale wonders if the fall of the Republic and the sudden change of currency had prompted this or if he'd always done it.

"I was very sorry to hear about Doc Jane." He looks genuinely upset about the loss of his longtime buyers. "Such a tragedy."

When Madge gets misty eyed, Gale starts to reach out to take her hand, but Hondo beats him to it, long fingers twisting around Madge's pale hands. It takes every ounce of self control he possesses for Gale not to pull her out of the pirate's grip.

A few moments pass with only the sounds of increasingly drunk and spiced up scumbags banging around, shouting and singing bawdy songs, while the table mulls over the loss of life that brought them together.

Gale feels something come in contact with his knee, and he nearly jumps up before he realizes it's Madge's hand.

She doesn't look at him, mostly because she's still sharing a disgustingly sappy look with Hondo, but her cool fingers give Gale's knee a reassuring squeeze.

Hondo is getting an act, and she just wants Gale to know that, probably sensing his hostility even through the din of drunks.

For a non-Force sensitive, Madge is surprisingly attuned to other beings emotions. More than Gale and Katniss have ever been anyway. He half wonders sometimes if there are different elements to the Force, and if maybe Madge had inherited a much more understated, but invaluable, connection to it.

Finally, Hondo pulls his claw back and snatches up a goblet, sloshing something pungent onto the table.

"To our friends," he says, raising the goblet, "may the next life be better to them than this one."

While Gale isn't sure if he believes in a next life, he likes the idea. Better than losing his consciousness to the Force like the old Jedi had told him was his fate when he'd come to train Gale and the others.

"When we die," the graying man had said, "our consciousness, our being...dissolves. We become one with the Force. All these worldly concerns, attachments and desires, they cease to exist. We are at peace."

Gale had listened stoically, his insides churning at the thought that his dad was nothing more than a memory, his spirit gone. The thought that there is something more past the pain and suffering of the here and now is a comfort.

Raising their glasses, they bid a final farewell to their departed friends.

Hondo downs the entire contents of his drink in one gulp before grinning around at the table.

"And now, business."

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It takes a little over a standard hour for them to come to a deal on the price for the bacta, during which Hondo and Birdy down an entire bottle of Alderaanian wine.

"Come on now, Gale," the weequay had prodded him, half drunk glass in his hand. "Try some, before it goes the way of the mantabog."

Instead, Gale had simply sipped on his questionable cup of water. He wanted as clear a head as possible during these negotiations. Even if it was possible the weequay had one of the last bottles of Alderaanian wine in existence.

As it turned out, he didn't really need a clear head, he barely needed a functioning brain cell.

Hondo, on top of being incredibly drunk, was also feeling maudlin. He'd given them a bargain on the bacta, all in the name of their fallen friends.

"You didn't mind trick him, did you?" Madge had quietly asked when Gale pulled her on to the dance floor, after their host passed out, face down on the filthy table.

Gale had simply shaken his head. He hadn't improved his skill with the mind trick, and in all honesty he didn't really want to. Messing around with another person's mind, no matter who they were, sat poorly with him.

"Next trip we take," he tells her, whispering in her ear, "I say we pick somewhere with less...sand."

Madge laughs. "Sand or pirates?"

"Both," he clarifies, making a face as he sniffs the air. "And maybe somewhere that smells nicer."

"Life isn't all blumfruit and cream," she reminds him. When her shoe sticks on something on the floor though, she grimaces. "Although I wouldn't be opposed to somewhere a little cleaner."

"Nal Hutta was cleaner than this place," Gale grumbles.

"That's a bit of a stretch," Madge mumbles.

Gale isn't so sure. For all their slovenliness, the Hutts had some standards of cleanliness, or at least employed people with some degree of it. They were businessmen, well, businessslugs, and businesses needed good word of mouth, something Hondo and his crew didn't need. That's the only way Gale can explain the vast difference between the two criminals' places of business.

"Maybe we can convince Haymitch to let us go somewhere not miserable." Gale gives her half a glance before continuing. "You know, like Naboo or Dantooine."

Nodding, Madge rests her head against his chest. "Maybe."

Sighing, he tries to imagine taking her for a swim on Naboo. He isn't even sure she knows how to swim, but he'd happily teach her. First he'd have to barter for a swimsuit, or not, really clothing was optional when swimming, at least as far as he's concerned.

They still hold festivals there, honoring their history, beings and events so distant no one really remembers them except in fables. Madge would enjoy that. She loves history, plus he's heard they have dances. She'd have a chance to wear some of the shimmersilk dresses he's been bartering to get her, fix her hair, be more be beautiful than the angels of Iego. Only Madge wouldn't be a myth.

As the band plays on and night settles over the dusty planet, phosphor bugs litter the dark horizon and geysers hiss in the distance.

It isn't perfect, not even close, but Haymitch isn't breathing down their necks and for that he supposes he'll accept suffering through annoying pilots, sand getting in every crevice he has, and sticky floors.

Florrum is still a dump though.