Part One
"Nahala! Tazer! Come quickly!" Ami hollered as she charged into their living quarters. Her heart was pounding so fast it was making her dizzy, so she collapsed onto a settee in the living room, trying to calm herself down.
Rik was sitting at the dining table, working on the cantina's accounting books. Ilyaa came bounding out of the bedroom, her new, hooded green cloak flapping out behind her.
"What is it, my child?" Tazer lulled, hovering sleepily out of his room. "It is barely morning and yet here I am, awake."
"I'm sure that whatever Hero has to tell us is more important than sleep, my friend," Rik drawled, eyes remaining glued to the parchment before him.
Ami wanted to spit, but there was no saliva in the desert her mouth had become. It had been almost a month since the Mirialan had come to live with them, and she still hadn't been able to shake her loathing of him. He always appeared in places you didn't want him to be, and at the most inappropriate times. His eyes lingered too long, his ears heard too much, and his fingers touched things that didn't belong to him. An unwholesome character if ever she knew one.
"Come on, Hero," Ilyaa said, hopping up next to her on the settee, "Spit it out."
Ami opened her mouth, but no words came out. Her heart began to speed up, so she closed her eyes and focused her mind on becoming one with the Force. After a few seconds of shallow meditation, she felt like she could speak again.
"Has anyone in here been down to the market lately?" she rasped, mouth still dry. "Because something huge has happened. Huge."
Ilyaa scoffed. "If it's that huge then now is not the time for dramatics. Just tell us!"
"Nahala Dor," Tazer wheezed, resting a three-fingered hand on her head, "Give your sister time to recover. She is still processing whatever it is she just heard."
Ami lifted herself into a sitting position and covered her eyes. There was no doubt now that everyone in the room knew how upset she was.
"Uh…" she grunted, trying to begin, "So there's this purge going on…"
She paused, attempting to find sufficient words to express the enormity of what she was about to say. She was too scared to think, and that in itself terrified her even more.
"Um… different people have different stories about who's doing it. Some say it's the Sith returning, some say it's bounty hunters, some say it's an old group of acolytes that call themselves knights or something. They're hunting down all the Jedi - from younglings to masters - and they're even going so far as to kill anyone who shows any kind of leaning toward the Force.
"You know those old X-Wings we saw arriving last month, Nahala?"
Ilyaa nodded, her mouth hanging open and her eyes wide with shock.
"Someone told me those were actually Jedi seeking refuge. All of them were killed trying to slip off-world two nights ago."
"Oh my gods," Ilyaa cried, "You don't think it was y-… You don't think it was anyone we knew, do you?"
Ami shook her head and glanced at Rik through the corner of her eyes. He was still staring quite intensely at the books in front of him, but hadn't written anything in them for several minutes.
"No, I would've known about it if so," she responded, turning back to Tazer and Ilyaa. "Their bodies were tossed just outside the borders of Yvwatzë. I'm going to go see them and pay my respects, if anyone wants to join me."
"I do not think it wise for you to do that, Hero Chisum," Tazer said, gliding nearer, "It would be quite too gruesome a sight for such young eyes."
Now, it was Ami's turn to scoff. "Excuse me, Mr. Bartender, which of us in this building have seen people killed in horrendously large numbers, and afterward been forced to mingle with their lifeless bodies? By a show of hands!"
Ilyaa's hand slowly pushed itself into the air, hovering around her eyes in embarrassment. Ami swung hers up, extending her arm to its full length above her head. She glared between Tazer and Rik defiantly, daring them to compete with her tragedy.
"Yeah, didn't think so," she said, dropping her hand, "Pretty sure I'll be a-okay."
"My child," Tazer sighed, flapping closer, "In no way am I attempting to contest the tragedies you have been through in your short lifetime, but I must warn you that, if you decide to visit the Jedi remains at Yvwatzë, the memories you create will not be easily erased. What you find there can be only more tragedy."
"I don't care. I'm going." Ami started walking toward the elevator, when she was hit with a sudden realization. "How do you know what I'll find there?"
Tazer sighed and turned his back to them, head drooping toward his chest. He started gliding toward his bedroom, but Ami shot across the room and planted herself between the elderly Toydarian and his door.
"I see how it is," she spat, trying to catch his eye, "One of your drunk patrons told you about this a while ago, didn't they? You knew the entire time and didn't tell us! What kind of an uncle are you, huh? Did they visit the cantina?"
Tazer's eyes flicked up to briefly meet Ami's.
"So they did. A ticket out, and you never said a word." Her face felt like the skin was boiling, and her fists clenched so hard they began to ache. "What did they tell you about him?"
"Hero," Ilyaa warned.
"What? What did they tell you?" Ami muttered through clenched teeth, her entire body beginning to shake. Ilyaa's warning fell on deaf ears, ears that had forgotten their outside name.
Ami reached out and forcibly grabbed hold of the front of Tazer's vest in an attempt to intimidate him. Still, Tazer said nothing.
"Well," Ami said, voice shaking with rage, "I guess you just can't trust people, now, can you?" She pried her fingers off of his vest and, with great personal effort, stomped away from the Toydarian and into the elevator.
"You coming, Nahala?" she called over her shoulder as she grabbed the crank. A soft swish of robes told her that her young companion had entered the lift, and down they went, Rik's yellow eyes following them through the lattice of the elevator door.
Part Two
The floor of their bedroom shook as the music from the cantina below boomed and vibrated. Ami and Ilyaa had never gotten used to the noise level, and even now slept with noise-canceling earwear.
Tonight, though, despite her earwear and constant meditation, Ami couldn't sleep. Images kept flashing in front of her eyes: the tortured, burned, and limbless bodies of the three Jedi murdered on the outskirts of Labellë were haunting her memories. It had been a mistake to go to them, but what else could she do? To leave them hanging there in ignominy, without identity and without someone to grieve them, would have been akin to abandoning her beliefs in the Force and the heritage of her family.
She stood up from the bottom bunk and yanked the earwear off her head. If she couldn't sleep, she may as well be productive.
Sitting down at the desk propped against the back wall of the room, she reached into the bottom drawer and pulled out a hide-bound book of paper, an inkwell, and a writing quill. Tazer insisted they keep journals using this ancient method of communication, as that was the way he kept all his records. He believed that people were far more hesitant to steal information from you if it wasn't easily accessed from a computer databank.
Ami turned to make sure Ilyaa was asleep facing the opposite direction, then switched on a small light attached to the wall above the desk. She looked over the last entry she'd made, dated over a month ago:
3rd Day of the Month of Ralö, Year 5 of Separation
Today marks my 17th birthday. Or at least I think it does - I'm pretty sure the Galactic Calendar I have is a bootleg copy somebody drew out of memory after a long night at Tazer's bar. Besides, it's so confusing to have to go by both the Galactic Calendar AND the Dorulian Calendar! Heck, this month isn't even necessarily the Month of Ralö…
But that's beside the point. It's my 17th birthday. It's been almost 5 years since Ithor. Why hasn't anyone come for me? I keep asking myself this question, over and over, in my head, all-day-every-day. My memory of what happened after I woke up from the fighter crash is very spotty - there's lots of dead people and a vague, blurry memory of Uncle Luke helping me drink water and telling me I was dead, and then nothing until several days after he dumped us here. At least, I'm pretty sure he's the one who dumped us here… Tazer says that's what happened, so I guess I believe him, even if I can't remember it.
It's funny how I can "see the future" and yet remembering the past is so difficult.
But anyway… He might have told me about what happened at Ithor, why I was "dead." I feel like he would've done that. Except for that part where I can't remember anything.
What is even KEEPING YOU HERE?!
Take Ilyaa, get on one of the transports out, and LEAVE! Go join the Resistance! Where the Resistance is, your family is. If mom was killed you'd've heard about it and felt it by now, which means that she's still alive. You know for a fact that Ben's still alive. Daddy's got to be alive, because the only thing that could kill him is his own damn self. What are you still DOING here?!
Ami smacked herself on the forehead. If only she had done just that, before the Jedi purge, there may still have been hope for the two of them to get away safely. But, she couldn't change the past, so she continued reading:
I'll tell you why you're still here. You're afraid. You're too damn pale. You don't want to have to go through the danger and uncertainty that would accompany a journey to your family. What if the First Order got hold of you? What if mom and daddy don't recognize you, or reject you as an imposter because their daughter has been dead for five years? What if something happens to Ilyaa on the way? You could never forgive yourself for taking her from safety just for your own selfishness.
You know what else you are? You're an entitled, privileged, proud little Bantha turd. If they wanted to find you, they'd come find you, right? You're that important! Oh ho, look at you, little miss -
Ami quickly turned to a blank page. She knew what came next, and it was just more self-bashing. Because deep down inside, she was disgusted with herself. She was too afraid to attempt finding her family, and too uncertain of their reception of her if she did. The First Order was no longer actively hunting down Force-users, but they also weren't going to let someone with her skills and family history just slip through the galaxy unstopped. Their spies were everywhere.
"Coward," the word slipped out, low and angry, hanging in the air like a painful welt. She felt herself slip further into the deep, dark water of the spiritual well she had fallen into five years ago. She woke up in the morning hating herself, went to bed at night hating herself, and spent every waking minute with herself trying to pretend like she was okay. It was utterly exhausting.
Her parents wouldn't have stayed in this place, cowering and slinking around under false pretenses and with false names. They would have escaped, would have conquered their personal darkness and inner chaos. They were heroes, as she pretended to be. Amidala Solo was no Hero, no matter what kind of inspired name she gave herself.
But she couldn't keep wallowing in her failings, so she picked up the quill, dipped it in the ink, and began writing.
21st day of the Month of Xyllällillië, Year 5 of Separation
What a month. I avoid this month. I mean, what kind of a name is Xyllällillië? According to the natives it's the name of a spiritual leader from the beginning of time, but what mother would name their child that? Unless they were mourning its birth. Then it's feasible. Probably the name means "Bed of Sorrow" or something else equally sad and pathetic. Names like that always do.
Ami paused. Her writings couldn't all be the snide musings of her bitter mind. She hated the idea of writing only to document things, but the more she thought about it, the more appropriate it seemed. There was a new, creepy resident in their household, all the Jedi were dead, and there was a possibility that a time would come when she'd regret not having written things down. She picked the pen back up…
So Tazer hired a merc a few weeks ago. He's Mirialan, and you know they do that whole tattoo thing when they complete something meaningful, like a task or a mission. He has strange, symmetric tattoos covering almost his entire face. Pretty sure they're for all the people he's killed.
If my mother was here she'd berate me for assuming something based on a person's appearance. Thanks, mom. You instilled a conscience in me.
But hey, there's still daddy, telling me to trust my gut and that people look the way they do for a reason. There's a vibe they want to give off. This guy's vibe is "killer-maniac," so I'm betting that's what he is. Bet HE hasn't completed the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs. Maybe the Killer Run in over 12 bodies.
"That's not funny," Ilyaa interjected over the cantina music, jarring Ami enough for her to make a large ink blot on the paper.
Ami turned slowly to face Ilyaa on the top bunk. If looks could kill, Ami's would probably cause serious injury.
"Well excuse me for inheriting part of my father's personality," she yelled sardonically, "You, however, won't be excused for reading over my shoulder into my personal musings. Do I open your book and read it?"
"Well do you?" Ilyaa rejoined, eyes glowing in the light of the desk lamp.
"Nope, sure don't," Ami responded, her baby blues unwaveringly meeting the shining yellow ones above her.
Ilyaa held the gaze; then, after several tense seconds, rolled over and covered her head with blankets.
"Put your earwear back on, chump," Ami called up to her.
As soon as she saw the covers stop moving again, she let out an exasperated sigh and returned to her writing.
He calls himself Rik, and insists that we call him the same thing. Riktorr Tolbey is his full name - at least, that's what he tells us. So far as I've seen, he does a good job managing the bar and taking care of my uncle's accounts, but he always has this look in his eyes that makes me think he's plotting something demented. Uncle Tazer's cantina is a booming business, and it makes him a lot of money. Maybe this guy saw an opportunity for a quick & easy credit, and decided to take it… I guess we'll see as the weeks go on.
The Jedi are all dead. That's what they're telling me. Those bastards in the First Order hunted them down and killed them, killed them all. Sometimes I wonder if Master Skywalker made it - I like to think I would've felt it if he'd been killed, but I don't know what that even feels like.
Ami paused, leaning back in her chair. Did she really want to reveal this much information about herself? If that merc saw it, he could use it to manipulate them, or do something new and more twisted than she could imagine. Who knew what went through that man's mind?
Suddenly, the music down below stopped. She slipped outside the bedroom door and approached the living room windows, the top of the glowing blue Tazer's sign making it seem almost as bright as daylight inside. She enjoyed watching the patrons leave, most of them falling into waiting Sky Cars, some of them staggering down the street and around the corner toward Rue Stiika. It would be several hours before Tazer and Rik returned upstairs, so she decided to use the quiet time to try and meditate again. Ami's already anxious nature had been amplified after the events surrounding her arrival on Dorullë - and now this purge of the Jedi - and she would rather not try to claim the record of being the youngest human girl to die of a heart attack.
She pattered back into her room, locked their door behind her, and laid down on her bunk. Closing her eyes, she began to focus on steadying her heartbeat.
Thumpity… Thumpity… Thumpity…
Gradually, her mind emptied of all the worries of the day, leaving only the thought of light and warmth and the feeling of peace, interrupted only by the light tug of a premonition. Ami remained in that place for an immeasurable amount of time, mind floating through the cosmos, tethered to her body by the growing strand of dread; slowly, she began to re-open her mind to the world around her. Ilyaa's steady breath above her, the faint bloops and whooshes of the Sky Cars outside, a dark cloud of feeling on the floor below her, the pulsing of the tide in the Labellë City Lake…
A sudden realization struck her: the dark cloud of feeling she connected with wasn't from the merc, which was what she'd assumed at first. Ami probed deeper into the feeling, picking out separate emotions: fear, pain, anger, hopelessness, and panic. At this point of the night, there should only be two people downstairs, which led to one conclusion.
Ami shot out of bed, smacking her head against the top bunk. Tazer must be in some kind of danger for such strong, negative emotions to be flowing from him.
"Ilyaa!" she hissed, pounding on the bunk above her. "Wake up! Tazer's in trouble!"
A flurry of motion, then Ilyaa was swinging down from the bunk in her blue night-tunic and breeches.
"Let's go," the young Twi'lek firmly demanded, unlocking their bedroom door.
Ami slipped into her spiked, black boots and followed Ilyaa out into the living quarters, moving as silently as possible. They crossed through the living area and into the kitchen; Ilyaa grabbed a long, metal rolling pin and Ami tucked a heavy knife into the back of her belt.
"Give me Tazer's icon," Ami whispered to Ilyaa, gesturing toward a carved, wooden statue the size of her head.
"Use the Force, why dontcha," Ilyaa scoffed, flinging the icon at Ami.
Their feet made no sound as they glided across the polished marble floor and down the service stairs next to the elevator. When they arrived at the cantina door, they heard loud, angry voices emanating from the other side.
"I told you, old man!" Rik screamed, "Either hand over the business, or I will sell them to the highest bidder!"
"I heard you the first time," Tazer rasped, "And my answer remains the same: I will not hand over my business or my wards. Say what you will, but I would rather die than bow to your hideous demands."
Ami used the Force to pull the hydraulic door open several inches in an attempt to see what was going on. At first, neither girl could see anything except the empty stage and a few toppled tables, but the Mirialan soon stormed into view, picked up a glass chair and heaved it against the opposite wall. They heard the chair shatter upon impact, and Rik again disappeared from sight.
"You don't seem to understand the implications of what I'm saying," Rik snarled. "Your precious little 'wards,' as you call them, are Jedi spawn."
Ami's heart almost jumped out through her throat. Trembling, she frantically waved Ilyaa back up the service stairs. The young one turned and ran, her face contorted with fear.
"Do you know what the bounty is for anything even closely resembling a Jedi?" Rik continued, "Over 70,000 credits! And that's just from the First Order - the Hutts are willing to pay triple that."
Ami, brain spinning with fear, Force-pushed the door all the way open and cautiously stuck her head through. The cantina, now empty, looked exactly how she thought it would: the polished mahogany floors were covered in trampled food, used Death Stix, and spilled drinks with the odd bodily fluid mixed in. The gilded walls and glass furniture were smudged by smoke and thousands of greasy hand-prints. If someone unfamiliar with Tazer's had walked in at that moment, they would have had a hard time believing that it was an up-scale bar serving only the most well-connected and monied individuals in the galaxy.
Rik and Tazer stood facing each other across the marble bar, shards of glass covering the countertop and the floor around it. She knew how she would down the merc, but first she had to get him away from Tazer.
Ami took the kitchen knife out of her belt, stepped into the cantina, and threw the wooden icon at Rik. It struck him square in the temple, causing him to stagger away from the bar area and fall to the floor.
Ami flew across the room, kitchen knife aloft, and flung herself onto the merc's prone body. As the breath left his lungs, she brought the knife down to run through his chest, screaming with all her might. All the glass shards scattered across the ground rose up to join the knife, shooting toward the merc so fast they appeared invisible. In the blink of an eye - even before the knife - they had all embedded themselves into Rik's arms and chest.
Through the corner of her eye, Ami saw a blurry, blue wall hurtle toward her. Mere centimeters before her hand dealt the killing blow, she found herself flat on the ground, ears ringing from the unexpected impact.
"No, Amidala!" Tazer cried, knocking the knife out of her hand. "There is no need for killing here. We must summon the Enforcers!"
Ami struggled to her feet, gasping for breath. She hazily watched the knife slide into the opposite wall and staggered toward it, hand outstretched, jumbled mind trying desperately to pull it back to herself. She made it only a few steps before she felt a searing pain in her right shoulder, the force of which threw her back to the floor.
"Noooo!"
The sound of blaster fire and Tazer's wails of agony came to Ami as if from a great distance. With extraordinary effort, she managed to turn back toward the scuffle. The squeal of a blaster, the orange flash of its laser, and a rippling thump that caused the floor to shake told her something her unfocused eyes could not: her uncle had been murdered.
Suddenly, her head was being heaved from the floor - it was time to get up. She staggered to her feet and was steadied by a blurry, purple blob that weakly pulled her toward the elevator.
"Mimi!" the blob screamed, "We have to leave!"
Ami's vision began to refocus. Ilyaa, face full of terror, ran around to her back and began pushing. The merc lay moaning on the floor, blaster in hand, torso filled with glass and oozing pale, blue blood. Tazer lay unmoving on top of Rik's legs, pinning them to the ground; even in death, he was trying to protect the children in his care.
Finally, the girls were inside the elevator. Ilyaa slammed the doors shut, grabbed the crank, and frantically shunted them to the first floor. As the cart slammed to the ground, she threw open the doors and tried to make a run for the street, but Ami caught her.
"We can't just go running," Ami gasped. An intense, searing pain was beginning to emanate from her left shoulder. "It's past curfew, and any minors caught past curfew are taken to The Enforcement. We have to be careful."
"Better to be in The Enforcement than killed by that maniac upstairs!" Ilyaa cried, jerking away and into the empty foyer. "Who knows how long it'll take him to recover? And when he does, he's going to come for us. He's going to find us, and kill us! We have to get away NOW!"
"You don't think I KNOW that?" Ami yelled, cradling her injured arm, "I understand our situation! I understand ALL of it, not just this one part."
She stepped closer to Ilyaa and bent at the waist, towering over her like a wampa atop its prey.
"When the Enforcers catch us," she continued in a low, menacing voice, "They'll take our identification chips. When they take our identification chips, they'll scan them into their security database. When they scan them into their security database, they'll find that Hero Chisum and Nahala Dor don't exist, and therefore we have illegal fake identities. When they find that out, they'll throw us in the lock up and interrogate us. When they interrogate us, you will cave because you're just a child, and they will find out everything about us. When they get this information, we will be surrendered to the First Order to be imprisoned, enslaved, executed, or twisted into weapons meant to destroy the Resistance."
Ami paused, letting her words hang in the air between them. She could see tears shining in Ilyaa's eyes, her body trembling with fear. She was so small, so helpless.
"I don't want you to have that hanging over your head," Ami said, kneeling to eye-level. "I can't even begin to imagine the level of guilt that would accompany something like that, even if it wasn't your fault."
Ilyaa nodded, tears spilling silently down her cheeks. Ami hated herself.
"Now, we're going to the nearest Tube Transport Station. The only safe place for us right now is Yvwatzë, so that's where we have to go. Can you -"
Behind them, the door to the service stairs swung open. Ami twirled around to face it, pushing Ilyaa behind her back.
A slow, scuffling sound echoed from the dark stairwell, heralding the appearance of the wounded Rik, blood oozing from dozens of holes in his arms and chest, most of which still had shards of glass embedded in them. A blaster, which had previously been hanging limp in his hand, shakily rose in the girls' direction.
"Get out!" Ami yelled, grabbing Ilyaa and rushing toward the door. Orange blaster fire pinged off the metal walls, blasting holes in the mahogany floor and bouncing out into the street. The girls skidded into the open and sprinted to the nearest Tube Transport Station, an infuriated scream following them all the way.