Chapter 7: Scattered Bones
Greg's ex-wife Saati lived on planet Blah in the Meh system.[1] Ahsoka went with him for moral support. Some internet searching revealed interesting facts about Saati's life. She was married to a woman named Andrea Fushard, who had just recently been captured by the Empire because they suspected she supported the rebellion. Saati and Beck had been left behind, probably to use as blackmail to get Andrea to confess. Ahsoka recognized Andrea as an actual rebel, though she had used a different name. It looked as though Ahsoka and Greg had arrived at just the right time.
"You were such a crap husband your wife decided to switch to women?" Asked Ashoka.
"I don't think that's how it works," said Greg.
They were in a small town on planet Blah. Everybody knew about Saati's plight. Nobody really felt like helping because the Empire might decide to pay them a visit. The Empire had vast plantations on this planet. The town was surrounded by fields of tubers. Saati and Andrea had run a newspaper. Saati took care of the business while Andrea wrote articles that usually had codes for the rebels. Beck wrote the filler material. The Empire had confiscated the entire newspaper building and exiled Saati and Beck into a shack in a swamp three weeks ago.
Greg read one of the newspapers in a shop while Ahsoka kept an eye on things. They had been told that Saati came to this shop every day to buy groceries and try to learn some news. Ahsoka elbowed Greg when Saati came in. She was heavily cloaked. Her skin was gray and she was bald, but that's just how Greg's people always looked. They were big fans of hats. Saati exchanged a few whispered words with the shopkeeper and bought some bread and cheese. The shopkeeper asked something.
"I wish they would get it over with already," said Saati more loudly. "She'll never give up on her cause and they can kill us already."
People looked around worriedly, then went back to their activities. Greg snorted. Andrea was risking life, limb, and family for this lot? They deserved tyranny. Saati left. Greg and Ahsoka followed from a long distance. Greg did not need to even see Saati to follow her; he could follow her scent trail. They crossed a large field. One of the planet's moons caused a partial eclipse for a moment, making it feel like the end of the day. The light, golden and old, fell on an abandoned stone structure that looked like a building at the end of the world. Greg slowed his pace, suddenly feeling watched. He looked back, but there was no pursuit and Ahsoka, more alert to such things, did not seem bothered. Perhaps it was just nerves, the nerves of a guilty conscience. Greg had killed many people but none had come back to life the way Saati had. Greg felt that he was being judged by a regiment of the dead and he knew what the verdict would be.[2]
"I think she's not well," said Ahsoka.
Saati had fallen on the road ahead of them. They rushed ahead and examined her. Greg did not smell blood. There did not appear to be any breaks or internal bleeding. She just seemed to be exhausted. Ahsoka picked her up and put her in Greg's arms after kicking him to get up. The shack was not far away. It stood on damp ground next to a swamp with lots of green clumps and reeds. Beck ran out and took his mother inside. They put her on a cot. Greg stared at Beck so Ahsoka did the talking. She said they were friends of Andrea's and had come to take Beck and Saati away so they couldn't be used as blackmail.
"Has your mother been sick recently?" Ahsoka asked.
"She won't eat much since Andrea was taken but insists on going to the village every day by herself," said Beck. "She just feels hopeless and weak."
Saati woke up. Ahsoka introduced them again and repeated that she would take them away.
"That is very kind of you," said Saati. "I thought you would be blind to our time of need."
"Why are you so certain Andrea will not confess at the cost of your lives?" Asked Ahsoka.
"If she revealed the names of everybody involved in the rebellion on this planet, they would be killed. I know her. She will always put the greater good ahead of her family. I don't suppose you could rescue her as well?"
"I'll bust them up myself," said Greg.
"You will do as I tell you," said Ahsoka. "You can't reveal yourself to the Empire. We can try to rescue Andrea if it doesn't seem like a very dangerous mission."
Saati sat up, feeling better than she had in weeks. She offered them some sandwiches. Beck stared at Greg. He'd never seen a real dragon before. Saati looked at Greg kindly and he flipped out. He yelped, "I'm your…," couldn't finish the sentence, and dashed outside. Ahsoka sighed and excused herself. She went out and found Greg behind a large clump of swamp grass.
"You don't have to tell them the truth," she said. "We're going to help them and I think that's enough. You can't undo the past but you can try to make up for it now."
"I have to, I really do, but when I look at them and think of how I left them for dead something just shrivels up inside me and I want to stick my head in the ground."
"You are sticking your head in the ground. It's weird. Look, they won't hurt you."
"That's the worst part. They should."
Ahsoka patted him on the shoulder until he manned up and went back into the shack. Saati looked at them questioningly but did not speak. Greg started to say something a few times, fumbled, cursed himself, and finally asked, "Did you ever find out what happened to your ex-husband?"
Saati narrowed her eyes, suspecting something foul. Nobody except Andrea (and obviously Beck) knew who her ex-husband had been. It had seemed like a thing to hide, irrelevant now but just in case.
"What ex-husband are you talking about?" She asked.
"General Grievous," said Greg, then spoke his old name in their language.
"How do you know this? I pretended to be a peasant woman after the Separatists captured us. Lord knows I lived like a peasant with that man."
"Oh…I knew him during the war. He wanted me to find out what happened to you."
Saati laughed. "That is the last thing I'd believe."
"Can I please just tell this story, whether you believe it or not?"
Saati told him to go ahead. So Greg started to tell a tale about a heinous, evil military general who met a clever scientist and briefly summarized their adventures. He spoke of how they betrayed the Separatists and were killed, almost, by Count Dooku. He explained about Kevin and Kate's experiment and SCD and finally introduced the idea of brain transplants, at which point he trailed off. Ahsoka spent the time battling a tuber with a dull knife.
"That is just the sort of cockamamie story Grievous would get into," said Saati. "So which organism did they put his brain into? I don't see an ass standing in front of me, which is quite a shame."
"Wait, this is my father?" Asked Beck.
"I'm…I'm sorry…," said Greg, but Beck ran outside.
"You're sorry?" Said Saati. "After all these years, all you can say is you're sorry?"
"Ten of them weren't his fault," said Ahsoka.
Saati gave her a look that clearly told her to shut up, stay out of it, and get on with carving the tuber.
"So you're sorry?" Continued Saati. "After what you did to me and your son, there is nothing you can do to redeem yourself. You turned your small child's life into hell. You terrorized us. You made me fear for our lives every day you were home. I couldn't run away, unskilled as I was, and end up in the poorhouse with Beck. Besides, up to the last, I hoped and prayed you would become kinder. I believed that until the moment the Separatists attacked and you chose your horse over us. We were shuttled from slave camp to refugee camp and I was happy when I heard that you'd died. I hoped you died painfully."
Greg lowered his head. Ahsoka tried to eat the tuber. It tasted like shoe.
"How can you have the same eyes, though?" Wondered Saati.
"Listen," said Greg, "you probably don't care, but I am sorry. I died painfully two times, or at least came very close to doing so, and each time I lost parts of myself. First I lost my bones, my veins, and my heart, but it's all right, they never did much good to anybody.[3] The second time I lost my eyes and my skull. My organs have been rotting all over the galaxy. I have been taken apart completely and forced to put myself back together, which would have been impossible without Nan. I have to live with myself somehow! Don't I? Some days the guilt tears at me so strongly that I fear I will have to die a third time, but this time I will lose my mind. This is nothing to you. The man you knew is, thankfully, dead, and I am glad of it but I have to live on with his misdoings. He was such a horrible person that I fear he may kill me…if it wasn't for Nan's understanding I don't think I could go on."
Ahsoka let the tuber fall and reached out to pet Greg's neck. Saati continued to look at him with a stern face for a while.
"This Nan," she finally said, "where is she?"
"On a dangerous mission," said Ahsoka, before Greg could reveal more details.
"A dangerous mission," said Saati. "She could easily die forever this time. What will you do? Die? Why did you come here? You have no intention of being a father to Beck, do you?"
"It seems to me that Beck has a pretty good mentor in this Andrea," said Greg. "I came to tell you the truth as I see it and to offer whatever assistance I can provide. Beck is a strong young man. I'm just a broken shadow and can't be a father to him. My life and Nan's have been distilled to a simple equation. We have to fight evil and save lives to remedy our irremediable debt until we die trying."
"But you are his father. Go talk to him, he's been listening in this whole time."
They heard splashing footfalls as Beck ran away from the crack in the wall. Greg followed him out into the swamp. Beck knew the way around it. Greg sank every few feet up to his neck. He could swim in certain places. He dragged himself out onto the remains of a wooden bridge. Beck was on it. There were some nets in the water to catch swamp-dwelling creatures of who knows what species. Beck pulled one up and inside was something like a lobster with very long legs. He dropped it back in the water.
"I don't remember you," he said.
"That's for the better," said Greg.
"I only remember being scared when I was very young, and later mom told me what a monster you were. But I don't remember that and I believe you. I don't hate you and you don't love me."
"I am sad for you."
"I'm all right. You didn't kill me."
"I could perhaps imagine a life where we were all happy together, you, me, Saati, Nan, Ahsoka, and the rest. I can see us in a beam of sunlight, by a duck pond, having a picnic. But…"
"The shadow of the Empire. I get it. We don't live in the happiest time. We have to try and make sure the people that come after us will get to see those times, but they may be lost for us. But hey, we could still see each other sometimes, right? I've heard that you're really good at lightsabers!"
Greg realized to his dismay that he was crying in front of his son. A big dragon like that, crying. But what was he supposed to do, hearing his kid sounding so selfless, innocent, and forgiving? Beck came closer and hugged him, despite the pounds of slime in his mane.
"I think," said Greg, "I actually do love you. For what it's worth."
They escaped in Hamilton's ship that night after Saati packed up all the food. Greg did some checking and hacking and found where the Empire was keeping Andrea. It was on a prison ship.
"We were going to blow something up anyway," said Ahsoka. "We might as well blow up that."
Saati looked meaningfully at Greg and said, "Andrea is not as patient as I am. Let me do the talking. I've told her about you and she may decide to castrate first and ask questions later."
Footnotes
[1] I know, it actually sounds like a real thing and not just that I'm lazy about making up planet names.
[2] Consider these lines from Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin: "He did not believe in an autocratic God. He did believe, dimly, in a democracy of ghosts. The souls of the dead, perhaps, formed committees, and these, in continuous session, attended to the destinies of the quick."
[3] This was influenced by some lines from T. S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday: "Under a juniper tree the bones sang, scattered and shining / We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other."