11 months before the Battle of Yavin
The man called Starkiller stood in the hold of his ship, still as death, and stared into the face of his maker. Darth Vader stared back. Large, featureless eyes molded from the ebon armor of his mask cast warped reflections of Starkiller's face back at its owner.
They regarded each other in silence. The only noise was the rhythmic, mechanical rasp of Vader's breath. Yet in the Force Starkiller could feel that Vader was awake, watching him, considering him, though the truth of those thoughts- Vader's real feelings toward him, real goals- were always hidden.
The Rogue Shadow soared through hyperspace. They had lifted off Kamino three hours before and were en route to Dantooine, where the Alliance intended to hold Darth Vader prisoner, interrogate him, and finally execute him for his endless crimes.
Starkiller did not believe they could learn anything from Vader, though he supposed they had to try. In all the years he'd known the Sith Lord, all the years Vader had trained him, tortured him, led him on with promises of mastery and power only to betray him every time, Starkiller had failed to uncover the truth behind the Sith Lord. Nor had he been able to uncover the truth behind himself.
He had tried not long ago, after they'd strapped Vader into his cage in what had been his meditation room aboard Rogue Shadow, before they'd lifted off Kamino. Starkiller had not expected any revelation but he'd been unable to help himself. After being under Vader's mercy his whole life, he hadn't been able to resist once the tables turned.
In this very room, standing where he was now, he'd faced Vader and said:
"You tell me I'm a clone- a failed clone. But I chose to spare you. Does this prove you right or wrong?"
He still did not know what he was. He remembered the incredibly agony of the Emperor's Force lightning on the Death Star, a burst of unconquerable power, and then blackness. Following the blackness he'd found himself in a pit on Kamino, deep within its cloning facilities, subject to Vader's cruel training yet again. But he'd escaped, declared himself a free man, and ultimately returned to Kamino to defeat Vader at the site of his resurrection.
If he'd died on the Death Star, it might not have been the first time. He also remembered Vader's lightsaber spearing through his chest after the Sith Lord's first betrayal. He remembered the Emperor's cackle as they cast his body into the void of space. And he remembered waking up from that sure death too, on a medical table aboard the Empirical, without a scar or scratch on his body.
Another death and resurrection, or something else? Though cantankerous and angry, Jedi general Rahm Kota was the closest thing Starkiller had to a positive mentor, and Kota insisted that Starkiller had never died at all. Rather, the Force was so strong with him that he'd survived all those seemingly surefire deaths. Vader was the one who insisted he was a clone, and Vader always lied.
Starkiller had told his captive: "Maybe Kota is right. Maybe everything you've told me is a trick. Maybe you were trying to get me so confused I'd forget who I was and become your slave again."
They said that it was impossible to truly imprint a clone with the consciousness of the original. They also said that all cloned Jedi went mad. When he'd returned to the cloning facility on Kamino, Vader that thrown him into battle with countless clones of himself. Though pressed to the edge of madness, Starkiller had battled and beaten those simulacra of himself. All the while he'd felt a sickness with them in the Force, something incomplete and psychotic. Perhaps they'd been defective clones, and he was the only successful one. Perhaps he was on the edge of breakdown himself and didn't know it.
There was a truth somewhere, but Starkiller would not get it from Vader, which meant he'd likely never get it at all. And that meant he'd simply have to live this life- his first, second, or third- without knowing.
"Either way, I've finally broken your hold over me."
That was what he'd told his maker, while fiercely willing himself to believe it.
Vader had only said one thing in reply: "As long as she lives, I will always control you."
It hurt so much because it was true.
Vader said nothing now, and neither did Starkiller. They merely watched each other. Starkiller saw a warped mirror-image of himself in Vader's eyes. Did Vader see the same in Starkiller's? For all the pain they'd done to each other, their fates were so tightly linked. Once, after Vader's worst betrayal on a snowy Corellian mountaintop, Starkiller had told his maker: "Without me, you will never be free." He still believed that, for without Starkiller's power, Vader would also be slave to the Emperor's lies and cruel whims, just as Starkiller was enslaved to Vader's. Their only hope for liberty lay in each other, but that was a boon each refused to grant. Desire, hatred, distrust most of all kept them locked in a futile, painful embrace.
Being here with Vader was a torture, but Starkiller had been compelled to return to the hold. He felt he could stand here, peering in the mirror-abyss of Vader's eyes, for an eternity.
But he couldn't allow himself to fall fully. After uncounted time Starkiller stepped back, turned, and left the hold without a word.
-{}-
When Starkiller returned to the Rogue Shadow's cockpit, Juno Eclipse had been on the brink of falling asleep in the pilot's chair. She jerked upright, moving her boots from the console to the deck, and spun her chair to face him. PROXY, seated in the co-pilot's chair, did the same, and woman and droid both looked at the sullen, taciturn young man with expectation.
Almost like old times, Juno thought, yet not at all, and not just because of their passenger. For a year she'd mourned Starkiller as dead. She still was not certain how he'd come back to her. Had he survived the battle aboard the Death Star? Was he a clone?
She didn't know, but somehow knowing didn't matter. It was an irrational conviction, totally against her training both as an Imperial agent and an Alliance officer, but it was unshakable. Starkiller had died on the Death Star; she had died on Kamino, or very near it. She'd felt herself fall into all-engulfing blackness and been sure this was the end of her, only for all her memories of Starkiller to come at her in a rush. From the first time she'd seen him, sparring with PROXY in a Jedi holo-disguise, to his coming to rescue her on the platform on rain-soaked Kamino, Vader standing between them.
"Your feelings for her are not real," Vader had said.
And Starkiller had screamed with full conviction: "They are real to me!"
They were real to her too, and some combination of love and the Force had pulled her out of death's black grip. She believed that without a doubt. And if love and the Force could return her to life, it must have done the same for Starkiller.
Love was sure; everything else was uncertain, and when her eyes met Starkiller's she saw a mirror of her own doubts. She understood why Starkiller felt drawn to the hold where they'd imprisoned Vader- his maker, master, teacher, torturer- but she was still uncomfortable. She'd watched them face each other in silence with the Shadow's cameras, just as she'd often sliced into security cams to watch her new partner after being assigned as Starkiller's pilot. Back then she'd uncovered illuminating conversations between Vader and his apprentice. Now they just watched each other in terrifying silence.
Juno leaned forward to reach with her good arm; her other was still supported by a sling as the bacta patch over the blaster wound in her shoulder did its work. She took his hand, squeezed it, and said, "We'll offload him as soon as we get to Dantooine. You'll never have to see him again."
"I'm not sure if I want that."
"I think it would be best for you."
Starkiller looked away, uncertain. "How much longer?"
"As we are taking a circuitous series of hyperspace jumps to avoid detection," PROXY supplied, "Dantooine is still some twenty-six standard hours away." After a tiny pause the droid added, "We can adjust our course to shorten the ride, if you wish. At minimum it is still fifteen hours away."
"Eleven hours won't make that much of a difference," Starkiller said.
"Leave Vader be," Juno told him. "Rest. Meditate. There are other ways to pass the time."
She didn't suggest sleep. Exhausted though they both were by everything that had happened, it would be impossible to sleep soundly with that monster aboard their ship.
"You're right," Starkiller admitted. He squeezed Juno's hand, then withdrew. "PROXY, did you leave that welding equipment in the crew quarters?"
"Yes, I did," the droid said, "along with the partial remains of the eight PROXY-model units you destroyed on Kamino."
"I'm sorry about cutting up your relatives."
"I know you did only as necessary. I have already made progress in salvaging parts of those droids to refit myself. Do you like my new arm?" He held out the limb pridefully.
"It looks great, PROXY."
"Thank you. Lightsabers are very clean weapons. Their damage is local and precise, and much of those droids is still usable." PROXY nodded at Juno. "Master Eclipse did an excellent job repairing me after I was damaged at Corellia, but parts of my core programming were currently lost."
"There's no guarantee those modifications will restore it. In fact, I doubt they will."
"I am… largely reconciled to forever losing my initial programming," said PROXY. "For example, I accept that I no longer feel the compulsion to kill you."
"That's a relief," Starkiller gave a tired smirk.
"I thought you would say so. However, I thought pieces of the other PROXY models might allow me to… expand myself in directions, as though to fill the gap."
"I understand what you're going for. I'll leave that project to you."
PROXY tilted his head. "If you are not going to repair the droids, why do you need the welding equipment?"
Starkiller tapped an oblong pouch hanging from his belt, next to Vader's captured weapon. "Like you said, lightsabers make clean cuts. I'm hoping I can repair the ones Vader cut up on Kamino."
"Ah. Then you expect more violence."
"I want to be prepared. And it's not just that… These sabers are a part of me. Of the person I've become."
"I… do not understand. But I will not get in your way, Master."
"Thanks, PROXY." He glanced at Juno. "You know where to find me." Silently, he added, and stop worrying.
That was hard when Starkiller was clearly worried himself. Juno stayed in the cockpit and watched his back until he'd cut out of view. When he was gone she sighed heavily and sunk into her chair.
PROXY fixed his photoreceptors on her and asked, "Master Eclipse, do you know why Master Starkiller is so intent on repairing his lightsabers? After all, he could wield Vader's if he wishes."
"I doubt he wants to use Vader's weapon. Too much association with its owner. And those other lightsabers… Like he said, they're his. He's not man a who's ever really owned anything. Having those, I think, is special to him."
"I still do not understand. You do not require any talismans to operate, do you Master?"
She thought. "Not in the same way, though you could count the Rogue Shadow."
"Yet you loaned this craft to General Kota for a time, did you not?"
"I did," she admitted. She'd done it in part because the cloakable shuttle was very useful for Kota's commando raids. More than that, however, she'd wanted to be rid of it because it reminded her too much of the man she loved. Now Starkiller was back, and so was the Rogue Shadow. Together again, in perfect complement.
"Organiform compulsions are still beyond me," PROXY said, shaking his head in a so-organic gesture.
"Think of those lightsabers- and this ship- as part of our core programing. We feel empty without them because they're mirrors we can see ourselves in."
"How so, Master?"
She stroked the Shadow's familiar console. "This ship was Vader's creation. It did his bidding in hunting down Jedi. Then it did his bidding in gathering the leaders of the Rebellion together. And then it turned away from its maker and became something else, a weapon used against that maker."
"Ah. I see what you mean now." PROXY's photoreceptors flickered slightly. "You have given me much to consider. Thank you, Master Eclipse."
"Any time," Juno said, and sunk further in the chair, adjusting her body awkwardly for the damaged arm still in its sling. She'd never be able to sleep soundly until they reached Dantooine, but she could rest a little knowing that Starkiller was no longer in the hold with Vader.
She closed her eyes, breathed in and out, and tried not to notice the rhythmic, mechanical rasp sounding in unison, so very faintly, from the sealed meditation chamber.
-{}-
Starkiller knew how to build a lightsaber. The pair sitting before him as he knelt on the deck, each cut cleanly into two pieces, had been gifted to him by Vader on Kamino, but years before a man who might have been him had constructed once piece-by-piece. He remembered the purpose of every small element and did what he could to weld together those which had been severed by Vader's lightsaber. A few elements seemed irrecoverable, which led him to rummage through the pieces of PROXY droids for possible replacement parts.
He worked slowly and deliberately. He needed to do this right, and he needed to pass the time. That these lightsabers had been gifted to him by Vader he really had made them his own, having gone so far as to replace the original Sith-red crystals with blue-white ones. The crystals were thankfully undamaged; Vader's cuts had been precise, mostly cutting apart the weapons' emitter arrays. As he worked Starkiller grew increasingly confident that he would succeed. In that time neither Juno nor PROXY interrupted him, and he could almost remove his thoughts from Vader in the hold.
Finally, after uncounted hours, the work was complete. Still kneeling on the hard deck, though his shins had turned to aching, he placed hands on his thighs, held back straight in a meditative position, and closed his eyes with the two sabers resting on the metal in front of him.
He breathed in and out. He calmed his mind, emptied his thoughts. And then, feeling at one with the Force, he reached out with invisible hands to press the lightsabers' triggers.
They hummed to life in perfect unison. Still without opening his eyes, without removing hands from thighs, he lifted the two sabers into the air in front of him. He twirled them steadily and felt their heat pass just centimeters from his face. Satisfied, he lowered them to the floor, released his handless hold, and let the blades shrink back to nothing.
Starkiller did not budge, did not open his eyes. His task was complete, but he felt himself being drawn even deeper into the Force. He felt tugged along a mighty flow into a place and time far away.
He was not a stranger to visions. Indeed, they seemed the only non-lethal Force talent he had. On Kashyyyk he'd stumbled upon the ruins of his father's village and been transported back to the death of Kento Marek and the capture of his young son Galen, as seen through the eyes of Darth Vader. When the frigate Salvation had exploded over Kamino he'd seen another battle through his father's eyes, and when he'd visited Dagobah that strange dwarf-creature had ushered him into a dark cave, where he'd received premonitions of Juno's capture through her perspective.
For some reason, his visions always seemed to come through the eyes of another. He had no idea why. Perhaps it was because his own self was so flimsy. Perhaps he had no self at all, just memories flash-imprinted on a clone body in Vader's lab.
Another vision came to him, resolving out of the dark first as flashes of laserfire, then as bodies moving against flame and smoke. He did not know whose eyes he was seeing through, but it was impossible to look away.
"Fall back! Fall back!" someone shouted as green laser-bolts fell through the sky. "Somebody get the turrets up!"
"There's too many of them!" came another voice, one he recognized. Rahm Kota's bellow carried across all the chaotic battle-noise. "We have to evacuate!"
His vision spun around, taking in a panorama of devastation. Flame rose from the gouged-apart ruins of bunkers and black smoke furled into the sky. TIE fighters screamed through ashy clouds. He (whoever he was, if it mattered) fell to running, chasing the fluttering tail of Kota's cape as the general ran, lightsaber in hand, through the debris, past a ruined building, and then down some slope of waist-high grass. At the hill's bottom was cleared ferrocrete landing field, and the Rogue Shadow sat in the middle of it.
A TIE swooped from nowhere. He raised his hands. They held a blaster pistol and released bolts at the diving starfighter. (Who was he then? Juno?) Kota ignited his lightsaber, stood in the TIE's path, and hefted his saber in a high two-handed thrust. He intercepted the heavy green bolts and bounced them back at the TIE. Sparks flew, the fighter spun out of control, and a massive explosion shook the hill and threw him (Juno?) to the ground.
Kota was there, offering a hand. "Come on, Captain! We have to go!"
(Juno, then. He was Juno. And this landscape of rolling grass hills, was it Dantooine?)
He and Kota (Juno and Kota) sprinted through smoke toward the Shadow. When they drew close he saw PROXY standing at the base of the lowered landing ramp, waving at them with stiff metal arms, urging them to hurry.
And then a black figure slipped out from behind PROXY. A lightsaber, red as blood, came to life and sheared the droid through the waist. As the body fell in two pieces Darth Vader charged at them. He (Juno) raised the pistol to shoot, but Kota interposed himself and charged at Vader.
"He got loose!" the Jedi called. "I'll hold him off! Get to the ship and run dammit!"
"What about you?" Juno called.
"Just go," Kota called. "Somebody has to make it out of here alive!"
Juno hesitated, then ran. Vader and Kota, clashing on the landing pad, panned out of view and the ramp of the Shadow loomed ahead. Juno leaped over PROXY's broken parts, not even sparing seconds for the poor droid. She sprinted up the ramp, into the familiar hold-
-then froze. A lightsaber blade appeared from below. Blood-red, it speared her through the sternum from behind. The pain was agonizing. Heart and lungs burned. She could not even turn to see the face of her killer, only fall forward onto the hard deck-
"No!" Starkiller shouted.
And suddenly he was back in the Rogue Shadow's hold, the completed lightsabers sitting on the deck in front of him. He scooped them up and rose to his feet on shaky legs, uncertain if he was still in danger.
Juno skidded into the room, eyes wide with worry. "What happened?" she asked. "What's wrong?"
Starkiller dropped the lightsabers, fell into Juno, and wrapped her in a crushing embrace. He kissed her forehead, stroked her hair, did everything to assure himself that she was alive, this was real, and the vision he'd had just a fleeting nightmare.
But it couldn't be only that. The Force dealt in things more substantial than dreams.
When she pushed out of his embrace Juno asked, "What's wrong? Tell me, please."
"A vision. In the Force. I think… I think it was Dantooine."
"What did you see?"
"The Imperials. They attacked us. Vader was there. He killed Kota and you… you died too."
Juno took a deep breath, willing herself to strength. "Where were you?"
"I don't know. I was seeing it... through your eyes."
He hadn't told her about his vision in the Dagobah cave. There was so much they hadn't even begun to share, that they needed to share but never would until they'd fully shaken off the weight of Darth Vader. He'd not been able to defeat that Dagobah vision, despite trying. The Salvation had been boarded, Juno had been shot, and the bounty hunter had kidnapped her anyway.
But that was not always the case. After he'd failed to save her on the Salvation, Starkiller had received another vision. He'd been on Kamino, with Vader at his mercy. Over-powered by spite for all the awful things the Sith Lord had done to him, he'd raised his weapon and brought it down for a killing blow, only to be slain by a clone in his own image. After murdering his twin, the dark apprentice had been tasked with completing the extermination of the Rebel leadership. Starkiller's dying sight had been of this clone stepping carelessly past the corpses of Juno and Rahm Kota.
That vision had been a warning. Starkiller had avoided such a fate, first by killing all those clones of himself on Kamino, and then by withstanding the temptation to slay Vader. The future was in motion. It could be changed, had to be changed.
"We can't go to Dantooine," he said firmly.
Juno frowned. "Do you really think you saw the future?"
"I saw a future, I'm sure of it. We can't let it happen."
"Then what can we do?"
"I don't know. We need to think. Let's go to the cockpit."
Starkiller detached from her, scooped his lightsabers off the floor, and stuck them into the loop of hi belt as he followed Juno back to the cockpit. PROXY was still there, and the droid said, "Ah, Master, I am glad to see you are functioning well. I see your weapons have been repaired."
"They have, and I'm hoping we won't need them."
"Should we, Master?" PROXY asked with a tiny tremble.
"We don't know, PROXY," said Juno as she dropped into the plot's seat. "But we don't think Dantooine is safe anymore."
"Its location has been compromised?"
Juno looked to Starkiller, begging explanation he didn't have. The man shrugged. "I don't know, but it's not safe to bring Vader there. We need to take him someplace else."
"Where?" she asked.
"I have no idea," he sighed. "Who else knows we have Vader aboard our ship?"
"General Kota," Juno said, "And Leia Organa. She's probably told her father… but I didn't tell her about you," she added.
So they were keeping his return-from-the-dead a secret from the Rebel leadership. He'd worry about that later. "We need someplace completely safe, and we shouldn't tell anyone until we have Vader secure there."
"Not even Kota or Princess Leia?"
"It's not that I don't trust them, but someone might be spying on them." He knew he was paranoid, but nothing scared him more than a vision of Juno's death. Even his own would have been easier to take. "Juno, you know more about Rebel bases than I do. What's the most secret, secure place we can take him? Think, please."
She opened her nav computer and her brows furrowed as she looked at star maps and system lists. Starkiller waited as patiently as his fraught nerves would allow, but after a few minutes he pressed, "Do you have anything, Juno?"
"I might," she said at last. "It's very secure… and not too far from here."
"What is it? A planet? Asteroid?"
"A planet, technically." She turned to face him. "It's actually a former hfredium and dolovite mining colony, built into a small planet close to an expanding supergiant. The planet's tidally locked, which means the nightside surface is just bearable for landing and installing equipment. Getting there is the hardest part. There's so much heat and radiation that the original miners- ten, fifteen year ago- built a special shieldship to provide cover and cooling. No vessel can get close without it. Right now the Alliance is using it as a secret storehouse. It has, I don't know, less than fifty beings on-site. Probably closer to thirty."
"That sounds as safe as a safehouse can get. We should go there. Don't tell anyone we're coming, just get us there."
He could tell Juno wasn't comfortable with going against Kota's and Organa's orders, but she nodded. "All right. I'll adjust course for the Shenandor system."
"Do it." Starkiller put a hand on her shoulder. Feeling her flesh and bones and warmth beneath his hands was small solace, but the best he'd get for now. "We'll tell the others, I promise. But first, we're getting Vader some place where he can never hurt anyone again."