A/N:
This chapter is a bit of a transition. To be honest, after what Disney did to Star Wars, I found my Star Wars creativity zapped. Knowing the new "canon" struck me with the blank canvas syndrome. For the longest time — years, now — I couldn't write about the Skywalker twins being examples of good and finding their own happiness.
You readers have been my encouragement.
I've been reading every single one of your comments these past few years, and I'm gradually finding the strength to continue this story that I'm grateful to know you guys love as much as I do. It's slow-going, but as I've said before, I fully intend to write this story to its conclusion. We all know a happy ending is coming. That's why we like Star Wars! As a fic writer, I just want to bring all of you on a meaningful journey there.
"Thank you" and "be patient" are too humble of words to express my warm feelings to you readers. So instead, I published this short chapter. Enjoy!
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The favourite source of entertainment for pirates and gangsters is…political debates.
Wherever Aedile turns his head and spots a monitor, a cluster of ruffians surround it, debating bill amendments over pints and laughter while a Senator Leia before a key mic glows from a screen. The combined presence of the inspiring woman and Tatooine's "everyone is welcomed unless you break the Code" culture has somehow drawn the unlawful into caring about politics, and the sentiment has spilled over to rough places outside of Tatooine. This shift in public opinion is exactly why a self-employed journalist like Aedile is remotely outside of the Core. He follows the wind in the brush that is rumour and energy, and — most ardently — a story. He chases it with a sharp nose and little else.
Common sense be damned.
The humidity of Nar Shadda's summer drenches Aedile's vest with sweat, and he futilely plucks his shirt collar off his body like a second skin while navigating a crowd for his dingy motel room. When he elbows a touch-panel to close the door behind him, Senator Leia's voice muffles into an arrhythmic heartbeat that swallows the din of the crowd outside. Her words are in the walls. She is like a second presence in Aedile's room as he persuades a connection out of his holoprojector. A wet vest is demoted into mere physical discomfort while Aedile snatches his flimsy and stylus off a table, not even shucking the satchel still hanging across his body.
"Marked by the billing…ah, our final addition," the holoprojector remarks in unsurprised blue.
"I'm not late," Aedile begins.
"No need to explain," four voices chorus. They are all of them a few agents of truth, varied simply by their screen time or article views in the Holonet. Chasing facts exhausts all sentients equally.
Aedile merely has the unfortunate consistency of visibly showing it, when caught on holo. He fixes his antiox mask. "As you were saying, Jagax?"
The correspondent's holoform continues. "Politicians might care about soldiers' sacrifices, but they're the same politicians who ignored the Outer Rim in times of peace. What excuse have they for allowing the worst side of the galaxy like the Hutts to find refuge in Republican systems? The Outer Rim has suffered for longer than the Mid Rim and Inner Core have dealt with war."
The journalist to Jagax's left sputters. "No one can make deals with the Hutts that stick."
"Tatooine," someone utters, and Aedile expects a Leia-inspired spiel. What the group receives instead is respectful silence. It is the columnist of the group who breaks it first.
"Jabba the Hutt died," the human carefully trods, as if fishing for support. "That's the only reason Tatooine is free."
"The Hutt's network died around the same time he did," their resident fact-checker corrects. "No gangster, not even a Hutt, has attempted to fill the void. The Tatoo system is apparently a pivotal location for the Outer Rim slave trade, so the system's 'uselessness' is not an explanation for the continued absence of gangster lords. Tatooine has a…government, true, but one that manifested in the political vacuum without resistance."
"Something happened behind the scenes," Jagax voices everyone's thoughts. "Aedile, I recall you writing an article on the Hutt clan's internal conflict."
"Grakkus the Hutt inspired the violent disagreement." Aedile clears his throat. "He wishes for his base moon Nar Shadda to receive the respect he believes is long-deserved now that Jabba the Hutt has passed away. The clan is currently sorting it out in typical Hutt fashion. Following your thoughts, Jagax, do you propose Grakkus didn't come up with the idea alone?"
"I lean towards the possibility that Grakkus alone didn't prompt himself into action."
Funny how a dragon can dance under the surface of conversation.
The columnist's holoform fidgets. "If a righteous sort found Grakkus, I wouldn't think the Hutt would slither away unchallenged by a law or at least a blaster."
"None of you use your heads well enough," the weather forecaster among them suddenly comments. At their blinking eyes, the forecaster adds, "Tatooine's self-defence system had to be founded by a competent negotiator." Not a wild beast. "A mortal righteous sort found Grakkus and made a deal that stuck, and since we've established that deals and Hutts don't agree, it was a skilled negotiator, especially as Tatooine lacks the leverage or resources to persuade a Hutt."
"Mortality doesn't define a negotiator," the fact-checker argues. "Let a righteous sort have found Grakkus, sure, but I question a mortal righteous sort."
"I just said—!"
"I believe our weather forecaster misses the point of this conversation," the columnist wryly comments.
"I believe the contrary," Jagax disagrees.
"We discuss eccentric political events, and a forecaster here is nitpicking the bounds of a 'negotiator'—"
"He cuts away what we refuse to directly address," Jagax corrects, and crosses gazes with a cluster of surprised holoforms. "Speak what we will of skill or action, but who of us here would have breached the topic of immortality first?"
It is foolishness to try to fit a dragon in a box. Speaking of the unseen entity in the political language only highlights what a dragon isn't.
The columnist regards the forecaster with a shift of perception. "You believe Tatooine's negotiator to be mortal."
They are humbly answered with a cleared throat. "I do not 'believe' what you think you hear. I simply propose that following conventional logic, only mortality can inspire such skill in negotiation, and a righteous spirit to motivate this skill into action. Alternatively, if Tatooine's Senator Leia proves to operate on the unconventional, then such skill can also have spontaneously arisen from nothing, and mortality is irrelevant."
"Then we have strings being woven on Tatooine's behalf by," the gears turn in Aedile's head, "a mortal golden heart with a silver tongue, a character allergic to convention, or both with the latter individual influencing the former."
The fact-checker turns to the side. "You need only speak plainly from the start."
The forecaster contributes nothing further. "My faith lies with convention. You and our dear columnist merely refused to put your doubts into words."
"Schooled by a weatherman," the columnist sighs. "Fair enough. Your grounded faith has the two of us ashamed."
Aedile's pulse in the side of his neck quickens. If there is better timing for his interruption, he can't see it.
"We are all frank with each other on the topic of truth," Aedile gauges, earning tinny chuckles, "even as we hail from competitive networks, or are self-employed. I value our meetings. We enrich each other. Which is why I was reasonably late today." He blindly rifles through his satchel and shakily produces a chip that he inserts into his holoprojector. "…What do I do with this? My friends, what do I do?"
A cockpit recording abruptly possesses five holoprojector feeds.
X
"Range one-three-zero metres on the mark, send three rapid, over."
"Rounds complete."
"Copy, rounds complete."
"Wide! Wide! One click zeta, one click theta!"
"Blue Two, standby corrections."
"Copy, standing by."
"Blue One, droid fighter on your twelve—What the Shavit!?"
"Blue Three?" Blue One calls as he navigates his starship through a battlefield, worry dropping on him like a hammer.
"Shavit!" Three's hysteria crackles from helmet speakers. "We're just local militia stretched to the –– Shavit!"
Like a contagion, Blue Three's panic seizes Blue One's lungs in anticipation, just in time for a white flash to swoop past One's viewport like a ghost and vanish with deathly silence. In the blink that it happens, the droid fighters within One's sight are reduced to graceless scraps of metal floating through space.
When his mind catches up in the following nanosecond, One jerks his starship wide, because he doesn't need to try dodging the shredded fighters, but his nerves are frightened, his blood is ice, and his tongue feels like cotton. He's no clone trooper –– none of them are. His entire squadron is many things: small, committed, patriotic. Today, they are also ambushed. The Separatists have been growing bolder, daring to near even their modest homeworld of the Mid Rim.
When One's rabbiting heart drops back in his chest and his helmeted head swivels to glance up and around his cockpit dome, he catches a sweep of fighters combusting like a trail of popping balloons. His hair rises on end. The wreckage is the only way One can track the white blur's movement.
"Are we––" Blue One swallows dryly over the comms, "Are we not alone?"
"Identify," their group captain orders, and Blue Three stammers an eerie picture of crossed wings and four fusial thrust engines that just can't be right, Blue Three, say that again? Because what ship that fast and smaller than a freighter has less than six?
"Hit! Hit!"
"I haven't fired torpedoes!" Blue Two protests.
"Blue One, I have visual on our target!"
"Which one?" Blue One breaks regulation. He banks up to avoid debris and his panicked squadmates, and points his nose in Blue Three's direction one kilometre away. They drift the two seconds it takes for their homeworld to reveal their battlefield to the sun.
The entire droid space unit is gone.
No, not gone –– destroyed.
Every scrapped ship is evidence of narrow, disabling laserfire. The only ship missing is the one that had fired with such precision.
Blue One clears his throat. "A-Any visual on a four-engine corvette?"
An hour ago, Blue One would have mocked the absurd question. Now, his radio is silent. None of the comrades on his frequency laugh at him –– not even the group captain, who hadn't seen the rogue element in action from his place behind navigation monitors. The gravity of what their planet's brave little militia had just experienced was captured in one serious report:
"No visual, sir. Not any more."
X
X
The lives of certain common people, those unnoticed and unheard, become a visual captured in viewports racing by, one blink after another. At most, the people recognise this as a result of a change in their schedule – or rather, the loss of one?
One blink:
X
The first time RT steps onto Tatooine, he divulges The Not-Draw Incident with the local bartender. No one throws labels around or drags RT to the nearest doctor, though RT doubts anyone in an Outer Rim bar would bother. It's a wrinkled, ancient patron that explains what RT witnessed.
"That's Etra, buddy."
Not a few nods go around, and RT's counsel is suddenly the entire bar. Names and words drift up, "Etra" and "Tyun" and "justice" and "vengeance," and RT starts to grasp a significant detail of Tatooine above its host of rogues and brutes. The old sentient — a pirate, judging by the tattoos, though RT wonders how anyone can retire from such an occupation without dying — turns in his stool to look RT in the eye with something the captain is tempted to call wisdom. Or sobriety.
"Justice saved yer brothers and scrapped them battle droids. If it was Tyun," the sentient flicks his wrist, and half the bar chuckles, "she wouldn't have waited for ya to make sense of what happened. Them droids would've all been scrapped before you rolled outta bed."
RT can't tell if the patrons around him are sharing a story or discussing about someone — or something — real. He nods his head anyway. "But the Jedi––"
"You said so yourself that you've seen no Jedi hold blaster bolts in air," another sentient points out, "and even if you saw some space wizard monks, what's to say Etra can't take the form of them? For all you know, the one not holding the bolts could have been Tyun disguised."
A chill runs up RT's spine. One reason, Etra and Tyun are apparently bigger than translations of Basic words. Another reason, he could have been face-to-face with the living incarnation of vengeance.
"But Tyun," he stumbles, the foreign word highlighting his accent, "Tyun is a feminine noun according to your language. Tyun is even described as a person, a 'sister.' This Jedi was a greying man."
"The Suns are neutral plural nouns," another patron chides. "Basic favours the man, so no one says 'There are women and men here,' but 'There are men and women here.' The first sun that rises, we call him the brother. The second sun, we call her the sister. Man and woman, brother and sister, son and daughter. Etra and Tyun can be both these things and Jedi."
The marriage of language and meaning blooms an emotion in RT's chest he's unequipped to express. The chill in his spine becomes hoarfrost on a landing pad as a nearby sun rises – or, as one planet he learned calls it, spring thaw.
Spring.
RT decides to share it.
X
Another blink:
X
Krim knows he is disillusioned when he prefers Coruscant's underbelly over Tatooine's. To the desert planet's credit, it has been outgrowing its status as the Outer Rim's breeding ground for the basest scum. Tatooine used to be a convenient trading port for those dodging republican or banking scrutiny and willing to pay the Hutts' high taxes, which were backed by the gangsters' careless execution of irritations and, due to the nature of their business, limitless supply of illegal manpower.
Nowadays, Tatooine's scum weld themselves to bar seats and gab away tales. With the twin dragons' righteous cleansing, Tatooine has witnessed a shift towards more reasonable port taxes and product bans with the Code's influence enforcing order. It's the reason Krim bothered to visit at all; he like other "merchants" are willing to run their products through Tatooine instead of Republican or Separatist ports, because lower taxes is worth going out of one's way for business.
Still, Krim prefers seedy streets he knows how to squeeze for credits.
Coruscant's crowd can swallow anyone from possible tails, and likewise draws the inattentive into its ebb and flow down other streets, another, sometimes full circle. Krim stumbles out of the crowd for an alley barely fit for the heating units squeezed into it from the surrounding buildings. Thick vapours coloured by Coruscant's nightlife choke up what space should exist in the alley. Hence Krim's surprise when a cloaked figure leaps out of the smoke.
Krim stumbles back into a wall, hand on his chest. He barely halted in time to spare them both a collision.
The stranger lowers his hood to expose a calm face framed by blonde hair, unperturbed and indeed having not flinched one inch from where he stood blocking the alley.
"I thought to ask for help, and you came. Interesting." The man doesn't speak degradingly, but rather curiously yet knowingly like the piercing quality of his gaze. He offers a close-lipped smile, unthreatening, and Krim finds himself too spooked to return it. He wonders if he's dreaming.
"I'm part of Don's crime ring," Krim warns, allowing the stranger the opportunity to determine Krim unfit for whatever "help" the blonde needs, but the man only shakes his head softly and turns away — to lead.
"It is the will of the Force," the stranger states, and Krim can't tell if the words are directed to him or are simply a voiced fact of reality. Either way, Krim relaxes minutely, grasping the sort of company he's in.
"You're a Jedi."
The stranger glances at Krim with an amused expression as they walk out of the alley, the man's eyes twinkling with laughter at an inside joke, but he doesn't deny the label. Those wizard monks always carry an air of weirdness with them. If they didn't have a temple, Krim wouldn't have been surprised to find them in caves or spooky swamps.
"Well I offered you my name," Krim huffs. He'll snatch credits where he can, and the Jedi doesn't care for his profession due to somesuch Force nonsense. Krim might be looking at an opportunity. "It's only proper you give me yours."
"Very true," the stranger agrees. "You can call me––"
"I want your name," Krim pushes, hating to be cheated in any way. The stranger laughs, unoffended.
"It is quite difficult separating first and last names so as to preserve the image of the latter," the monk shares, not answering the question. "I would rather save you from the trouble of either of my names, just in case. If you must know, my sister, in her more teasing moments, calls me Etra."
Krim trips.
Justice incarnated is discussing the pros and cons of the typical first and last name system of the galaxy with Krim. "What's to say Etra can't take on this form?" he remembers a pirate proposing, and wonders if Etra prefers this form when he must walk among sentients. Krim figures that a standard sentient name also helps one with moving about unnoticed — as much as a dragon with the force and will of a star can be, at least — and he knows that no sentient dares to take on the name of Etra or Tyun. Krim's company is either truly the dragon, or truly foolish.
He fears he lacks the means to discern for himself. So he checks with Don.
Krim's boss is part of the thrilling, twisted, and bloody drama that is Coruscant's never-ending crime scene. As an iktotchi, Don should be unwelcome from casinos and any public space in general; the common sentient harbours wariness towards the iktotchi race's nearly precognitive intuition. From gambling to personal relationships, Don's presence makes others uncomfortable.
Don owns fifteen casinos.
Mention of a Jedi ensures Krim a face-to-face with Don in one of the iktotchi's many properties. Don rises from his second favourite lounging chair to observe his guests as his bodyguards vacate the room. The instant his pulse turns erratic, his custom pacer will summon them back.
"Don," Krim greets slowly with a gesture, "this is…Etra."
Ha ha.
What.
When in doubt, exercise manners – and Don does, giving the young Jedi's hand a shake. He picks up the faint whirr of gears. How unusual for "justice" to come in a small size and with a prosthetic limb, no less. If this boy is truly the so-called dragon, is his appearance a work of irony or a reflection of his namesake?
"You are Etra?"
"Well, the name is not my design," the boy teases, "but I am the older twin."
"Justice is the first to rise, last to set," Krim whispers aside. Don recognises the saying, but wishes the gangster wouldn't creep him out and make this meeting more hair-raising than it already is. Justice only appears amused.
"You could have easily been vengeance," Don notes, and he offers everyone a seat which they silently accept.
"I'm very protective," the boy's voice suddenly takes a sharp tone like an apathetic blade to the throat, but it dissipates as quickly as it forms, and Don almost mistakes the brief shiver up his spine for his imagination. "My sister says that my name suits me the most, though. In terms of temper, she…takes more after our father, though I would refrain from telling her this."
Right, because Don has vengeance on speed dial. Don doesn't even want to ruminate on who or what their "father" might be.
"Krim tells me you need help," Don prods, shortening his tone from an outright question.
Justice smiles. "He keeps trusting company, like himself."
No, you're just strange, Don wants to say. The boy lacks hostility, and, for better or worse, Krim shares his boss's strength for perception – and weakness for money.
"I'll pay you appropriately," Justice continues like he can hear Don's thoughts. "I only ask you hear out my request."
Don listens, and doesn't compute, but refrains from asking questions. A dragon wants access into the Jedi temple without being spotted by CCTV. In Justice's words, "the emperor's web." After closing the meeting, Don reaches out to an old — uneasy — acquaintance regarding his latest unusual experience. He still awaits the universe's punchline, and he fears it's him.
"Ah, yes, Etra." Grakkus chuckles. "Met him once, and I would do it again."
You're inciting a borderline civil war with the Hutts, Don wants to point out, but realises the beauty of the full circle. The Hutts' greediness is now biting back at them in the form of internal conflict. Grakkus even thinks it's his own idea.
"The sandy-haired one," Don clarifies, "prefers dark clothing, carries around a different breed of weird than the usual Jedi?"
"If you're not into slavery, you'll be fine," Grakkus responds, as if his Hutt wealth spares him from the self-destruction he unknowingly spins in.
Don needs no further proof; he has become a believer. Justice comes in the absolute promise of black and an expressive gaze that can shine happily one second and churn stormily the next. Justice can barely reach Don's chin yet carries the titan presence of a dragon unlike the mindless reptiles of backwater planets.
And Don has just enabled Justice to enter the Jedi Temple.
X
X
Dooku shakes his head at Luke as they stroll into familiar halls, undisturbed while almost every initiate's class is in session and almost every knighted Jedi is called to fight across planets. The two of them walk with their hoods down, because Luke reasons they don't need to exercise that much stealth for what he plans to be a brief visit to the Jedi library.
They have come to steal datapads.
Apparently, Luke has been harbouring the desire to write Jedi literature ever since Dooku's experimental introduction. The thought is enough to distract the count. Dooku hesitates to think about Sidious's access to his mind, even within the Temple.
Luke can sense it.
He can understand how Dooku can feel safe beneath the arches of a palace that has housed seekers of the Light for millennium, and –– in a fit of uncharacteristic superstition –– detest to somehow give the Sith Lord a mental foot into the fortress by thinking of the old snake.
A pointless concern, but still.
The Temple is beautiful.
Similar to stepping foot in one's house after a long journey, the Temple's long halls and carved crevices pleasantly greet Luke's open heart, not in the arousal of an old memory, but in a spiritual reflection of its wards over millennium. Servants of the Force –– sentients sensitive to its voice, sentients like Luke –– have spent their entire lives here. Compared to an Empire-ruled galaxy or Yoda's twenty-year-old home on Dagobah, the Temple is abundant with thinking, breathing sentients who also share a gift that Luke has. The atmosphere lifts his heart, similar to when Luke had first –– finally –– met Leia, another Force-sensitive and his twin, but this time his heart rises more languidly, as if finding a niche Luke didn't realise he missed until now.
How alone Obi-Wan must have felt. If the old man had had a Leia, it would have been in Luke's father, but complications had made it impossible for a reunion between the two men until after their deaths. Luke takes a mental sigh and accepts things as they are.
Dooku's head jerks his way. "How did you do that?"
"Hm?" Luke perks up.
"Release your feelings to the Force," Dooku elaborates. "Effortlessly. Without hesitation, like breathing."
Luke's face brightens, curiosity burning. "You mean how did I relax? How did you know I relaxed?"
"The Force warps around distressed individuals." Dooku's tone suggests he has trouble accepting his own reasoning. "Jedi with bonds are usually the only ones who can sense this from one another and when the warping disappears. You and I, however, are not master and padawan."
"Padawan?" Luke echoes, and Dooku's face suddenly looks tired.
"How extensive is your knowledge in the Temple ways?" Dooku fusses. Honestly. Without an opponent, Luke's swordplay would look like the wild swinging of a blade hot enough to slice a limb off. If the boy couldn't send Dooku's Temple- and Sith-trained posterior flying to the ground with his sword style, Dooku wouldn't have been so tolerable as to not bother Luke with…fairly useless comments, actually. Dooku's resolution to improve his swordsmanship rises not for the first time. "A Padawan is a student exclusive to one Jedi master."
"Hm." Luke's mouth is stretched wide in a grin.
"This place pleases you?" Dooku sniffs. "I find it hollow."
"Like a heart without a pulse," Luke agrees, but his smile softens. "Even in misguided efforts, however, many have walked these halls seeking Light."
Of course. With how joyously Luke regards the echoing halls, the incarnation of the Force must feel a little less alone in the Temple than in the desert with no one but Dooku for Force-sensitive company. The irony does not escape Dooku, with how the Temple is to Luke only a fraction of what Luke is to Dooku: a breath of fresh air. It seems, to Dooku's discerning eye, that the Force yearns for company as much — or more – as Force-sensitives do for the Force. The thought pleases him.
"You still haven't explained how you calm down so easily," Dooku insists.
A chuckle answers him. "Growing old?" Luke continues with twinkling eyes before Dooku can indignantly open his mouth. "I have to say that my life experiences are why I now know the difference between Light and Dark," Luke replies. "Reasoning myself to calmness is…a product of that. I don't even notice it, to be honest."
Luke suddenly stills.
"…Luke?" Dooku steps forward to see the boy's face, and finds the boy's gaze fixed beyond the physical.
Dooku suddenly feels as if he is intruding. He also does not miss the boy's twitch for his lightsaber and the guarded, seeking demeanour that has slipped over Luke like a second cloak. He wonders if a temple full of Force-sensitives is too much for Luke's open heart to handle, before he revises the thought and wonders if Luke is too much for a temple of Force-sensitives to handle. The hairs on Dooku's neck rise in response to the weight that Luke regards the air around them, even though the entire event passes within a second.
Luke wordlessly pats Dooku on the shoulder and leads them back to their strides, having mentally returned. Or at least adjusted to the Temple's rich atmosphere. "The Force is testing me," he exhales, and Dooku wishes he can differentiate between an honest tease and a tremble of honesty that, for Dooku's mental health, better not be the dominating quality of Luke's tone. "Let me tell you, Dooku, never enter a spooky cave unless you are completely satisfied with who you are, or completely stupid."
When Luke Force-leaps over a bannister for the second floor, and Dooku has to smother a flinch to vainly stop him, because the boy's fractured ribs healed only recently. They must still hurt. The count doesn't know that Luke has been active with his prototype X-Wing and on the field to keep up the appearance of lacking injuries. Leia and the galaxy need it.
Dooku also doesn't need to know that in Luke's outward lapse, Palpatine sensed and briefly searched for Luke's presence, as if to confirm the Sith Lord felt it.
In a timely manner, Dooku catches up with Luke and huffs. "Why must you be rude to me."
Luke contains a grin. "I may not seem like it, but I am usually very polite with the elderly."
"The elderly."
"Oh, yes," Luke insists. "I once met this ancient monarch who looked like a butt, and I only called him, 'Your Highness.'"
Aristocrats do not snort. Dooku repeats this in his head three more times. "He must have been pleased."
Luke scoffs. "With a face that looked like a butt, he never looked pleased. He only seemed happy when he was cackling."
"Old people don't cackle––"
"He he he he…."
"Really?"
"Exactly like that."
;
A/N:
Based on messages in ao3 and ffn, I want to say that if anyone makes a podfic of this, I'll be the happiest person in the world! Just share a link, and I'll put it in the story summary (ao3) or in the A/N of the first chapter (ffn). You guys are precious teapots, I swear. 3
Another thing, here is a friendly reminder that this isn't a chips AU! I'm leaning towards the original Battlefront II canon in regard to the clones. The Orders are numbers that represent military actions for the clones to take, and the clones are trained to memorise the Orders before they enter the field. Say for example, "assault the target in a horseshoe attack" is shortened to "Order 1." It's up to the ARC troopers' judgement to share this abbreviation with Jedi generals for the sake of military efficiency. Naturally, all the orders don't have to be shared with the Jedi, and they aren't. Like Order 66.
Thank you again for reading and supporting me!