Thanks thealeksdemon for beta-reading!
I've Seen Dark Before
When the blaster bolt strikes the motor of his speeder, he blames only his own foolishness.
His name is Rob Torwyn. Those close to him know he's an archaeologist, has been his whole life. Those less well-acquainted often call him a scavenger, but though he sells most of the treasures he finds to scrape together a living for his wife and daughter, anyone who takes a moment to get to know him quickly discovers that his keen interest in the history of Taris far outweighs his thirst for credits.
With the ascension of the First Galactic Empire, Taris has come under Imperial occupation. Perhaps, many say, the Empire will succeed where the governments of the past have failed and bring peace to the scarred world once and for all.
Somehow, Rob doubts it.
To anyone who asks, he'll insist he has no quarrel with the Empire, nor the garrisons of white-clad soldiers they sent to occupy the planet shortly after the war.
"They don't even look that different from the Republic troops," he would say, "and they keep the raiders from pillaging settlements, don't they?"
Deep down, however, Rob feels uneasy about the stormtroopers. He has heard rumours of the Empire's oppression in other systems. More than that, he has experienced first-hand the terrible acts they are capable of. And though the Empire's military presence on Taris has changed little in the decade and a half since the Clone Wars, Rob's own sense of trepidation has only grown. The Empire is always watching. He knows it would only take one mistake, one tiny slip-up, for the delicate life he has built for his family to come crashing down.
He doesn't speak to anyone about these worries, of course. He doesn't speak much to anyone at all.
Most of his days are spent kilometers underground, crawling through catacombs that are the only remaining evidence of forgotten civilizations. The work keeps him busy, distracted. He lets his professional obsessions drown out his fear as he tinkers away at the circuitry of machines whose purposes have long since been lost to time. There are nameless monsters in these depths, but they are slow and dim-witted, and he doesn't need to see them to know where they are. In the bowels of the planet, hidden from Imperial eyes and surveillance droids with nothing but the occasional feral feather-dog watching him, he feels a small semblance of safety.
Still, he is careful. He relies only on his hands and his tools, even when the work is painfully difficult. If a piece of gadgetry is just out of his reach, he leaves it behind. If he slips from a precarious perch, he allows the fall to punish him in full. He can't be selfish. He has a wife and child now. One mistake is all it will take.
Above ground is a different story. Despite the entire surface of the planet being covered in cityscape, Taris is only sparsely inhabited. The explorer in him yearns to walk every storied centimeter of every ruin, to press his hand to crumbling walls and listen for echoes of the past, but he knows he cannot. Instead, he flies through the surface jungle of jagged metal and plasteel on his salvaged pre-war speeder bike. It's a rickety old contraption, but it keeps him on the move, which keeps him alive. The vast expanses between settlements crawl with outlaws and raiders, and unlike the monsters of the deep, these monsters wield blasters. Staying anywhere too long invites death for a simple archaeologist with no defenses, especially with his artifact-laden saddlebags painting a target on him brighter than the sun.
Rob is quick. Rob is careful. After fifteen years, surviving in the wastes has become second nature to him. But everyone makes mistakes, and one mistake is all it takes.
He makes the mistake because of the rain.
Uncontaminated water is scarce on Taris, and the clear rains, when they come, are a blessing to all. This isn't that kind of rain. He sees the clouds immediately when he emerges from the fissure he's been exploring for the past week; they flash with angry green lightning, roaring a violent warning of their inevitable approach. He pulls up the hood of stiff synthetic rubber on the heavy brown raincoat draped over his body. The coat used to be blue, but the rains have bleached the colour from it. He'll need a new one soon.
Straddling his speeder, he hastily distributes the day's haul between the saddlebags and coarse netting bolted to its underside. He guns the throttle, reveling in the thrill of acceleration as the bike screams to life. The terrain flies past a meter beneath him as he watches the clouds with a furrowed brow. The natural red of the sky was already blotted out to the horizon. The first droplets plink onto the aged metal of the speeder's hood, carving gleaming trails down its tarnished surface.
He knows the way back to the settlement like the back of his hand. It's a path born from years of experimentation, a winding half-ravine through the ruins that keeps him nearly invisible from the popular vantage points that raiders favour. It's a long detour, but it promises safety. Today, however, his impatience gets the better of him. The acid rain is already biting into the pieces of his cargo exposed in the netting, and the canvas saddlebags won't keep it out for long. He doesn't want to lose this haul – today, he found the millenia-old wreck of a starship from the era of the Jedi Civil War.
He scans the cliffs in the distance with a wary eye. He can barely make out more than a vague outline through the downpour.
Nobody is crazy enough to be out in this.
He turns the handlebars, gently guiding the speeder toward the foot of the cliffs. Forks of lightning cast the rough edges of the wasteland into vivid relief as deafening thunder rumbles above him. He is out in the open now, and he opens the throttle wide. He can see the soft lights of the settlement skyscrapers rising above the blurry horizon. He's almost in the clear.
The shot comes from somewhere above and to the left, punching through the hood of the speeder and drilling a path of molten slag halfway through the motor. The whine of the anti-gravity generator sputters for an instant before going silent. He feels weightless during the split-second it takes for his crippled vehicle to reach the ground. Then the world explodes in pain.
He opens his eyes to find the speeder bent into a ragged half-circle around a metallic outcropping fifty meters behind him. His cargo is scattered around the wreckage like confetti. Searing pain has him clenching his teeth to bite back screams. Slowly, grudgingly, he looks down to find an arm-length fragment of the speeder's hood embedded in his right thigh. Deep crimson already seeps out of the slashed edges of the synthetic fabric.
He tries to pull himself to his feet, but the blinding agony in his leg is too much. Instead, he crawls, dragging himself along the acid-slicked ground toward what remains of his bike. There are stims in his saddlebag; he has to reach it before-
The hum of a landspeeder's engine registers in his ears, echoing off the twisted black walls protruding from the ground around him. He crawls faster, his breath coming raggedly in his panic. Rain drips down his face and into his mouth, burning hot and sour where it touches his tongue.
He's just made it to the outcropping when the engine changes abruptly to a lower pitch. They're close, he can feel them. Pulling his bag from the rubble beneath the bike, he paws through it with fervent haste. A small, needle-tipped vial rolls out, its contents glowing a dim green. Picking up the canister with a gloved hand, he directs the needle toward his leg, gripping the shard impaled in his thigh with his other.
He pulls the shard out and sticks the needle into his flesh in a single swift motion. The combined agony of the wound and the stim fluid hit him simultaneously and his vision blurs with tears. The medication immediately sets in and he fights the bile rising in his throat as he watches glistening muscle and sinew pull back together under the tear in his skin.
In less than a minute, the open wound is reduced to a long scar. Five seconds later, the raiders find him.
There are four of them, clad in mismatched plate armour underneath ragged ponchos that hang to their boots. They are humanoid, about the same height as him but much burlier. Their faces are hidden behind formless metal helmets, tiny round eyepieces flickering a dull red as they stare down at him. He can't even tell what species they are – not a sliver of skin shows through their outfits.
Not that that detail is of particular concern when staring down the barrels of four blasters.
The long shape of an anti-materiel rifle gleams from over the shoulder of one of the raiders. That must be the one who shot him down. It shouts at him, the words deep and guttural through the mask's filter. Rob doesn't know the language, but the meaning is clear enough. He rises on unsteady feet with his hands in the air, stepping to the side with careful strides.
"Please, take what you want," he yells over the sound of the rain. "Just don't hurt me!"
The one with the rifle barks something to the others, and they set upon his scattered cargo like rats to a carcass. He tries not to watch as they handle the pieces of priceless circuitry with ignorant callousness, focusing instead on the leader, who still levels a blaster pistol squarely at his chest.
"Please," he repeats, "I'm just an archaeologist."
Behind the one with the rifle, the others are rising, having wrapped up most of Rob's cargo in a large plastic sheet. The leader keeps staring at him. Suddenly, Rob knows they aren't going to let him live. His right hand slips instinctively toward his waist.
Rob Torwyn is an archaeologist, has been his whole life. He stands no chance against a gang of raiders. After all, archaeologists do not have combat training. Archaeologists cannot dodge blaster bolts.
Archaeologists do not wield lightsabers.
But Dylan Cephi is not ready to die.
He sees the path of the shot before his adversary even pulls the trigger. The flash of red from the blaster is drowned out by an even brighter burst of blue as the lightsaber ignites in Dylan's hand. There is a hum and a shower of sparks. The leader of the raiders falls dead at his feet, a burning hole carved through its eye by the plasma of its own blaster. The others freeze in their movements.
"Jedi," one rasps.
They stare at each other for a long moment. The lightsaber drones in his ears, bathing the ground in front of him in its neon glow. His hand trembles.
Killing is not the Jedi way. But Dylan is no Jedi. Not anymore.
He stalks forward with his blade held vertically in front of him. The first raider fires twice. The lightsaber arcs down with perfect accuracy, catching the plasma bullets and deflecting them into the sky. The raider does not get the chance to fire again. Dylan lashes out, carving his opponent cleanly in half from shoulder to hip with the hiss of melting flesh.
There can be no witnesses. The lives of his family depend on it.
The second raider stumbles backward, watching the charred pieces of its companion's body fall to the ground. He can sense its fear, radiating from it like a rancid odour. He leaps forward with the handle of his weapon gripped in both hands. The raider turns to run, but it's far too late. He plunges the blade through the middle of its back, driving his adversary into the ground. The acrid scent of melted plasteel assaults his nose as he rises, pulling the lightsaber from the raider's limp body.
He takes a moment to calm his emotions. Only then does he notice the last raider is gone. When he hears the whine of the landspeeder's engine, he knows it's far too late. He runs anyway, blinking acid water from his eyes as he scours the ruins.
He makes it back around the outcropping in time to see the thrusters of the speeder glowing mockingly in the distance through the curtain of rain. Fumbling for the switch on his lightsaber, he finally makes the blade retract with a quiet hiss, casting the world back into darkness.
He can feel his exposed skin peeling from the rain. With his speeder far beyond repair, his only option is to find somewhere to wait out the storm.
There's a small dry alcove under the crumbling husk of a building's standing wall. He strips the soggy clothing from his body, taking care to wipe off as much of the moisture as he can. Everywhere the acid touched, the natural dark-olive tone of his skin has been bleached pale. Now that his nerves have settled, he feels the bite of the rain like a thousand sharp needles. Rivulets of blood seep from the cracks in his face.
He watches the twinkling lights of home through the haze of deadly precipitation. He waits. It's almost five hours before the storm subsides.
When the rain finally stops, he squints upward, watching the opaque clouds clear enough to let a few slivers of the night sky show through. The arc of the third moon shines bright. Uncurling from the ground, he puts his clothes back on with stiff motions. The acid-damaged fabric tears as he pulls it over his limbs. The gloves and coat are completely ruined, so he leaves them behind.
The tarp where the raiders were piling his cargo is still there, but the rain has thoroughly destroyed his day's haul. Stepping over the corpses of the raiders, he retrieves his surviving saddlebag, sifting through the contents with a delicate hand. Miraculously, some of it is still intact. He discards every mangled piece of cargo and stuffs his lightsaber to the bottom of the pack – a necessary precaution, now that he can no longer cover it at his hip. Digging around for his remaining stim canister, he closes his fingers over the vial and unceremoniously jams the needle into his neck. He winces as he feels tiny cuts fuse together all over his body. Even with the stim's help, he knows it will take days for the burnt skin to grow back.
He takes one last baleful look at his ruined speeder bike before slinging his pack over his shoulder and beginning the long trek toward the distant towers. The pace is agonizingly slow on foot. Pieces of metal and abandoned machinery jut from the ground, forcing him to take great care with his steps. Even with the cover of night to conceal him, he keeps to the shadows, darting tensely from cover to cover. There could be more gangs prowling the area.
He's been walking for two hours when the sky screams. The sound roots him to the spot, chilling the blood in his veins. He's only heard that sound once before, but he can recognize it anywhere.
It's the scream of an Imperial TIE fighter. The Empire never sends TIE fighters down to the surface.
Something is terribly wrong.
He can't be more than a few kilometers from the settlement, so he bursts into a sprint. Rob Torwyn should have impaled himself on a hundred obstacles on the way, but Dylan's panic doesn't allow him to care as he leaps across the jagged terrain with inhuman speed, boosted by a power he once vowed to forsake forever.
It doesn't matter now.
He goes over the possibilities as he runs. He knows little about the Imperial chain of command, but the only other time he's seen a TIE fighter planetside, it was piloted by an officer of obviously high rank. Perhaps it was time for the local garrison's inspection. Perhaps there was a change in command.
He grits his teeth at his own lies. His feelings tell him the TIE is here for one reason – him. His ruse is up. He must disappear again if he is to survive.
But first he must get his wife and daughter to safety.
When he arrives at the first buildings of the settlement he's called home for fifteen years, he slows to a walk. The buildings deeper into the city pierce the clouds, but only the lower floors are settled. The population of Taris is a tiny fraction of what it was in its heyday, and the citizens conduct most of their business at ground level for convenience. Even so, the night is unnaturally quiet. Lightless window-slits peer down at him from the sides of the street like squinted eyes. The soft rattle of the contents of his backpack is deafening in the eerie calm.
A mote of white dust drifts down in front of his eyes. Another lands on his arm, disintegrating into a droplet of water as it touches his skin. Not dust. Snow. He glances briefly at the sky in confusion.
It never snows on Taris.
He makes it to within a block of his home before he hears the stormtroopers. He darts into a thin alleyway between two buildings as the stiff, regular footfalls of boots on hard metal ground grow louder in his ears. A squad of four white-clad soldiers marches past on the street. They ignore the alley, and he breathes a small sigh of relief.
Only after the footsteps subside does he hear the screams.
He dashes down the alley in the direction of the sound, almost tripping his own feet in his haste. Hidden in the shadows pitch-dark shadows between the towering high-rises, he looks toward the raised courtyard square. He lays his bag on the ground, opening the drawstring with his eyes still riveted to the scene before him.
The square is cast in sharp white light from the lamp-posts at its corners. There is a line of ten-odd townspeople kneeled in the middle of the street. Troopers in gleaming black armour frog-march more civilians into the square, their narrow red visors betraying no emotion as they force the people roughly to the ground with the butts of their rifles. His heart sinks to the pit of his stomach. He's never seen troopers like these before.
The TIE sits landed in the center of the courtyard, its angled solar arrays tapering off to wicked points in front of its bulbous cockpit. As he watches, another pair of black troopers emerge from behind it, dragging along a Twi'lek woman with turquoise skin dressed in simple bedclothes.
Mara. His love.
He fights the urge to cry out as she's forced to the ground with a savage blow behind the knees. Another trooper steps into view with the bundled form of his baby daughter, Terese, held in the crook of its arm. His hands fumble around the sharp edges of the contents of his bag before closing around the cold metal of his lightsaber.
The hatch on top of the TIE's cockpit pops open with a hiss of pressurized air. A dark form climbs out of the hole: a woman clad in an Imperial uniform of smooth fabric that covers every centimeter of her lithe figure in matte black. Her face is concealed behind an angular mask of dark, mirror-polished metal, reflecting the harsh white glow of the floodlights as she turns her head to survey the hostages assembled below her. Blonde hair, so pale that it's practically white, flows out from behind the edge of the mask, hanging halfway down her back in a single thick braid.
His eyes widen in horror. A Sith Inquisitor. A Jedi hunter, like the one that killed his padawan.
The split halves of the Inquisitor's cape flutter around her legs as she drops lightly to the ground.
"Is this all of them?" The words come distorted through the mask, granular and commanding.
"Yes, Twelfth Sister," the trooper who abducted Mara answers. "We could not find the archaeologist. This one claims he was supposed to have returned from his expedition before nightfall."
The Inquisitor strides forward until she is directly in front of the kneeling Twi'lek. She stares down at her with the mask's narrow visor.
"Unfortunate."
Dylan finds himself pulling the lightsaber out of the backpack. He sneaks to the mouth of the alleyway, his thumb hovering over the switch. Mara is barely ten meters away. He can make the distance in a single leap.
The Inquisitor turns and begins pacing along the street, raising her voice to address the rest of the civilians.
"We come seeking a dangerous fugitive. A traitor in exile. A Jedi Knight." The Inquisitor pauses, reversing the direction of her steps. The snow is falling thicker now. "The identity of this treasonist may surprise you. He has been hiding under a false name in an effort to escape punishment for his heinous crimes." Her feet stop once more in front of Mara. "But fear not, citizens. He is found."
There is a screeching blast as the Inquisitor is abruptly bathed in red. An angry buzz rips through the air, once, twice. Mara topples soundlessly to the ground, two smoldering slashes crossed over her chest.
Dylan scream, a ragged sound of pure sorrow. He ignites his lightsaber and dashes from the alley, leaping two meters into the air as he drives the hot blue blade down toward the woman who murdered his wife with all his might. At the last moment, the Inquisitor steps slightly to the side. His swing meets only the dense metal of the ground, crackling and spewing molten sparks. Around him, the hostages gasp and scramble back in fear.
"Rob?"
"No, that's impossible!"
"Traitor!"
The Inquisitor stares at him impassively, the blazing red of her own lightsaber lighting the contours of her mask from below.
"An archaeologist dedicating his life to the study of the past," she intones. "How fitting. Tell me, Rob Torwyn, where did you get that relic?"
He strikes with lightning speed, but she is faster. Crossed blades of blue and red screech and spit with crackling energy.
"What is your real name, Jedi?" The Inquisitor's tone is almost conversational. "The Grand Inquisitor likes to keep track."
Instead of answering, he opens his hand and pushes. The Inquisitor is tossed backward into the glass of the TIE's cockpit, her lightsaber extinguishing as she slips back to the floor on her hands and knees. Dylan runs at her with his saber held high. He feels the pull of the Dark, and for a moment he relishes in the feeling of delivering the killing blow.
The Inquisitor throws a gloved hand toward him, palm open. A force takes hold of his body, ripping him off his feet and sending him sliding across the metal pavement. His lightsaber sputters out as it clatters from his grasp.
He raises his head to see the Inquisitor has risen. Sharp snowflakes blow into his eyes, blurring his view as he watches her walk toward him with slow, confident steps.
He scrambles to his feet, pulling his weapon back to him. He ignites the blade, holding it in front of him with both hands. The Inquisitor flicks her left wrist and the hilt of her lightsaber unfolds into a full circular guard. Twin beams of red appear from the ends.
Then she's upon him. He is already on his back foot, barely having time to parry one blow before the next comes. The Inquisitor advances as if performing a graceful dance, her slashes relentless and swift, her blades a whirlwind of humming red. Their sabers cross once more and she holds them there, the flickering metal of her mask showing no trace of emotion.
"You limit yourself, Jedi. That is why you lose."
He breaks the lock, feinting backward before the Inquisitor can strike again. He knows he is outmatched. From the way she tilts her head, she does, too. As the Inquisitor continues to advance, she steps over a body on the street.
Mara.
"You've taken everything from me!" he cries out in agony, spittle flying from his lips. The Inquisitor says nothing. He charges, thrusting toward her with a wild roar.
There is a loud pop as the Inquisitor's blade arcs upward, slicing through Dylan's lightsaber in a shower of sparks. He stares dumbfounded at the ruined stump of his weapon.
"Good," the Inquisitor says softly. "Then I've returned the favour."
He expects the end to come with the searing agony of a lightsaber blade piercing his body. Instead, the woman raises her empty hand in a clawing motion. He feels something pierce his chest with enough force to lift him from the ground. He can no longer breathe. He looks down with fading vision to find himself impaled on three meter-long spears of ice, each already stained black with streams of his blood.
"Kill the child."
The square flashes red. Through fading vision, he sees the blackened bundle of his baby daughter tossed to the snow, still burning.
The last thought that registers in Dylan Cephi's mind is how terribly cold he is.
This one-shot occurs in the universe of my multichapter fic The Last Arendellian (chronologically between "Step Into Your Power" and "The Stowaway"). Initially, this was meant to be the prologue/first chapter of The Last Arendellian, but Dylan Cephi's character kind of ran away from me and this chapter quickly became much too unrelated to the main plot to stay in the fic.
For those of you wondering, the Inquisitor is Elsa from Frozen plopped into a Star Wars AU as an orphan hellbent on retribution. If you're interested in seeing more of her, hop on over to The Last Arendellian ;)