Shades of Gray
Chapter 8
By noon the following day, withdrawal symptoms had set in with a vengeance. Even two more doses of Shree Uun's "hair-o-the-akk" interim solution did little to quell the nauseating ache of need, the insistent throb of longing for a lost paradise, the false nirvana of spice. Lenn mercifully decided to spend the day closeted in his own quarters, pursuing idle pleasures and preparing to sign his military protection agreement with the Republic the next day - though he had announced that a celebratory gathering at the Outlander was in order that evening.
Obi Wan waited the endless hours out, mind fortified behind painstakingly erected Force barriers, body mutinously demanding – begging- for relief in the form of another taste of Lenn's poison. He knelt in one of the suite's smaller alcoves, eyes closed, remaining willfully adrift in the fragmented currents of the Light while his limbs trembled violently and his nerves raised a strident and false alarm, sending thrills of anxiety and desperation cascading down his spine. If Force-born premonition sometimes evoked bad feelings, this experience upstaged them all. He felt as though the galaxy were about to implode, the stars themselves fall from orbit and crash down around him in an infinite apocalyptic ruin.
"Where's Ben?" he heard Lenn demand, at some point in the afternoon. There was a murmured reply from Uun, and then the heavy curtain separating the alcove from the main room was thrust aside.
A knowing chuckle. "You're not fit for duty tonight, are you?" the drug lord remarked. "Well, we can't have that. The Club could be crawling with assassins. Shall we fix you up, hm?"
"No," he responded, instantly, without bothering to open his eyes. His every cell screamed a defiant yes, yes,yes, please. But there is no desire, only the Force.
"I can handle security tonight," Uun put in. " Leave him alone."
Lenn's dismissive snort was barely audible. "You haven't made much of a showing lately," he purred, dangerously. "And need I remind you that Ben is mine now. Not yours."
Obi Wan squinted up at Lenn's silhouetee, its edges strangely distorted, blurred into vibrant smears of light and shadow. "I'll be fine tonight," he promised, shivering. The words were empty, but he would do what he must – however great the physical challenge.
"Of course you will," Lenn assured him. "Uun."
A moment later, Uun's wiry arms had wrapped around his elbows and pinned his arms in a painful hold. "I'm sorry, chubassi," the Clawdite whispered in his ear. He resisted momentarily, but his trembling limbs betrayed him. The shapeshifter tightened her precautionary grip. "Just relax," she sighed. "You don't have a choice anymore."
A glass was tipped against his mouth; Uun wrapped her fingers in his hair and pulled his head back; and burning, foul liquid drizzled hot down his throat, pooling in a burning lake below his ribs. Lenn's voice drifted away…Uun's hold on him loosened until he was falling apart, coming undone and dissipating into a dark, scarlet-smeared mist…
He was better prepared this time. The Force. He must not let go; he must hold to the still eye of the storm while reality splintered and melted around him. Already the world had reformed into alluring clouds, thunderheads heavy with the promise of false joy, a deluge of raw pleasure. He sheltered in the sure haven of the Light, feeling the storm draw nigh, quaking with desire for it…with dread at its inevitable advent.
The dark clouds descended, drew nigh, surrounded him. He resisted, throwing up barrier after barrier to keep them at bay, shimmering walls of light, diaphanous, fragile armor against the looming assault. Somewhere far outside, in the swirling veils of the clouds, Shree Uun's voice was murmuring, soothing; but the words bled into the amorphous storm, into the tattered veils of smoke that swelled against his stronghold, black as night, roiling with forbidden lightning.
The Force warped, twisted, crumbled like dust and spilled through his grasp. His defenses fell, dissolving into nebulous mist, into emptiness. And the lightning struck home, piercing him through, setting every nerve alight with exquisite unbidden pleasure. He arched, groaned, tried to fight free, called on the Force, cried out for it –
Joy erupted into pain as he resisted the illusion, bliss splintered into agony. A sniper's shot hammered into his chest, just above his heart, knocking him backward over the building's edge. He fell, far far down, through the shower of excruciating bliss, and hit bottom with a jolting thrill of ecstatic pain... He was cold, numb and deaf and mute, his own heart frozen mid-beat, his breath squeezed shut, the vitals blocker coursing poisonous and strong through every vein. Ahsoka was weeping over him, and then Anakin, and then other voices, a chorus of lamentation.
He could not move. The Force itself was suspended, crystallized within him, hardened into stasis. The weeping continued, softened, grew closer, became one voice. Hands were touching his dead skin, trailing stricken over his face, his closed eyes. The voice became breath, warm and scented like haffa blossoms, like sweet spices, like the thawing snow on Ilum's peaks. Breath became a touch; the Force quickened within him, his heart leapt back into reluctant rhythm. He gasped in a deep, shuddering breath, welcoming back life and sensation, greedily devouring the warmth pressed against his mouth, reaching for the Force and light and the thread of real, true and cherished memory, real pain and real joy…
Shree Uun abruptly drew back as he blinked and groaned, following that golden thread back to consciousness. Here, now: Coruscant, the war. Hojo Lenn's apartment, the mission. He was shaking like a victim of palsy, peering up at Shree Uun's borrowed face, the one surrounded by a halo of silver-gold not her own, not the one sanctified by still-smoldering memory.
"Well," the Clawdite remarked archly. "I'd sure like to be the person that was intended for." She jabbed a finger into his chest. "You've been holding out on me, Ben."
He was far too miserable to offer any rebuttal.
"We're leaving in an hour or two," she informed him. "Better pull yourself all the way together. I'd say Lenn's got some serious enemies out there."
And he had no argument to make with that, either.
Anakin knew the Underlevels well. They had been his own favorite, forbidden haunt as an initiate, the place where he fled to rummage in scrap piles and pursue illegal racing thrills; the place where more than one useful contact dwelt and made his shady version of a living. He had no idea where to find Hojo Lenn; but he knew where to find someone who would. All he needed was a sleazy slythmonger. The dirty pushers who sold deathsticks and other narcotics had to have a supplier, and a boss.
The Outlander was a familiar enough venue. Obi Wan and he had chased Padme's would-be assassin here some years ago. Before. Before the war and the deceptions and the lies had begun pouring down into his life, a relentless and corrosive acid rain. Then the Club had seemed somehow alluring, a gaudy and whimsical place full of people who walked paths far outside the rigid confines of his duty. Now it was just another dismal gutter in the galaxy's extensive sewer system, a place where sentient trash eddied and piled in sodden heaps. Its glanor had fled, with the last remnants of his childhood, with his innocence.
He made for the bar, lounged against it, brooded. The place was relatively empty at this hour – after sunset it would be teeming with every variety of scum imaginable, with raucous music and writhing bacci smoke, with lewd laughter and drunken shouting. The bartender spared him a grunt of welcome and tipped his head forward inquisitively.
"Dustball," he ordered.
The man leaned closer over the bar. "You of age?" he asked, laconically.
Anakin shoved the hem of his cloak aside, revealing the saber hilt.
"Chiiiiizzzsk," the bartender hissed. "Don't kriffing make a mess in my bar." He slammed the Dustball down and shuffled away, vexation and disgust smeared behind him in the Force like an energy-slug's glimmering trail.
The Dustball tasted sweet going down, but the meersha spice rimming the glass made his sinuses burn with unexpected fire.
Soon enough a slythmonger in the customary drab attire accosted him, sidling up to him as he brooded over the empty glass. "Hey. Wanna but a deathstick?" He displayed his wares in an alluring fan of oranges and yellows.
"You don't want to sell me deathsticks," the young Jedi growled, his mechno-hand closing in a tight fist around the colorful cluster of plastoid tubes. "You wanna tell me where you got these."
The unfortunate pusher struggled to free his precious merchandise from the belligerent customer's grip. Anakin's hand tightened into a fist; vibrantly hued liquid spattered over the polished bartop.
"Hey! Hey!" the slythmonger shrieked. The bartender cast an aggravated scowl in Anakin's direction.
"Tell me," the latter person continued in a dangerously silken tone, "Or your throat is next." The look of terror on the shabby deathstick vendor's face fanned the kindling Dark into invisible flames. Give him an excuse, and Anakin would crush the skull of every being who sold or supplied such filth. He would purge Coruscant of its resident evil.
"I – I - Lenn. This is Lenn's stuff. You just wrecked a kriffing fortune's worth of it! You gotta pay for that or Lenn'll have me skinned!"
"I'll pay him, all right," Anakin promised. "Where is he?"
"I don't know," the quaking slythmonger sobbed.
"That's enough," growled the barkeep, jerking his head at the doors. "Cut out of here. Take it outside."
"Tell me," Anakin commanded, snapping his victim's will in a Force-vise as easily as he had crushed the deathsticks a moment earlier.
"He lives in Belshuu Towers, top floor, the penthouse, I never been there but that's his pad please don't kill me I'm just a pusher I don't know anything!"
He released his hold on the pathetic informant and stormed out the doors. The deep street-level chasm was already cloaked in darkness as the sun set far overhead, dipping behind the artificial canyons of the cityscape. Red stained the evening sky, soaked into the horizon's ragged hem.
And pedestrians fled before him as he strode down the center of the walkway, grim purpose carved into his features as surely as the scar which slashed, knife-like, furious, across his right eye. Lenn would sign no agreement tomorrow. He swore it by the Force, by the cacophony of warring Dark and Light that howled in his heart. He would see to it himself.
Shree Uun had no respect for his need to meditate. Of course, she was completely oblivious to its existence, so there was no rational grounds for blaming her; and yet, Obi Wan could not completely suppress a surge of raw annoyance at the pair of hands that slipped, uninvited, around his neck and slid down between the too-thin shirt and his skin.
The Clawdite's breath was hot on his neck. "So…." She suggested. "What do I have to do for a repeat performance, hm? Slip you another deathstick?"
Stars forbid. "Answer a few questions," he offered. It was a generous compromise, in his estimation, but she seemed miffed.
"You know, you're good to look at but a real pain in the ass to talk to."
"That's the price." The Negotiator had managed more… intractable… personalities. Without resorting to aggressive diplomacy.
Uun nibbled on his ear lobe. Her teeth were uncommonly sharp. "Fine."
"You aren't addicted to Lenn's spice. Why not?"
"Clawdite," she said. "I'm immune. And that makes me valuable. My eyes can be open even when everyone else is stoned or high as a starcruiser."
Of course. He should have remembered that. His wits were wool-gathering. "Then why do you stay? Someone with your unique talents could surely find a better employer."
She hissed and bit hard enough to elicit an answering hiss from him. Blast it, Uun was a nuisance to rival the most persistent assassin droid ever programmed. "It's called blackmail. Lenn's got the goods on me. I might have left a mess here and there when I was younger."
He had a bad feeling she was wearing the face and body of one of these so-called "messes" but didn't inquire any further. "But how did you end up here in the first place?" he insisted. "By chance? You aren't a user, so what drew you in?"
"That's enough," she warned, slipping round until she had planted herself in his lap again. Long fingers twined idly in his hair. "You got your answers. Now pay up."
"All or nothing," he countered. "Answer my question."
The Clawdite's illusory form shifted as her mood plunged into resentment. The lizard's rumpled face appeared beneath the smooth visage of the blonde woman, as then disappeared back into the depths, like a whaladon surfacing and retreating beneath the waves. "I was with someone. He got the job for us both, got hooked in, and died." Her fingers twisted hard, pulling at delicate nape hairs. "You kriffing idiots are all the same. I hate Lenn for it."
"I'm sorry." What else could he say? Hired assassin or not, Uun's loss echoed like a dull bruise in the Force, one which would never fully heal.
"You owe me now, chooba. No more procrastinating." She grasped either side of his face, exacted payment in a leisurely and expert manner, and then released him with a huff of disgust. "Slet," she cursed at him. " You didn't mean that at all. You gorgeous piece of chisszk."
It took some effort to resist the urge to wipe his mouth, but he managed it. Uun stood and stamped away across the lush carpeting, leaving him alone with the still-simmering headache, the niggling roots of a new craving for more, for something better, and with the clotted, turgid Force, bright with warning of danger to come. Lenn was due to sign the accursed protection agreement with the Senate tomorrow; two attempts on his life had already failed. Surely his foes would stop at nothing tonight, their last chance before the fateful event in the morning.
He could feel the danger on its way, a dark shadow winging toward them even as they waited here in Lenn's private fortress . He needed to stop it, to maintain his focus now, at the last and most crucial moment…if only he could banish the aggravating, perpetual tension droning deep at the base of his every thought, every breath. Driving physical, psychic need… messy and cloying, invading his tranquility, leaching his vitality. Spice slowly choked out the Force, insidious, inevitable, vying for supremacy at the center of his being.
He hated it.
But Jedi do not hate. Hate is from the Dark Side, and leads quickly back to it. He exhaled, released anger, released anxiety. But he still needed – wanted – the spice. It suffused him, surrounded him, bound all things together…no! He drew two hands across his face, through his hair. No. He would not give such satisfaction, such twisted obeisance.
"Here, ma buki," Uun muttered thrusting the now-customary glass of mixed alcohol and deathstick dregs at him. "You need it."
He tossed it back angrily, disgusted at himself, at the whole situation – and then froze, cold realization flooding him with a clarity that dispelled the veils of frustration. "That was different," he growled. "What did you do?"
Uun smiled, knelt down before him, her shimmering mane of silver-gold already smelted in the forge of illusion, spreading in a liquid pool of ambience, molten star-stuff and frenetic light. "Two whole ones, lover," she told him sadly. "We call it a Deathstar… you're going on a long, long journey."
What? He clawed futilely at the fugitive scraps of reality, at the tormented Force, its very light refracted into a blurry mockery, like a carnival mirror. The dark shadow loomed closer, its hot breath felt like an ethereal wind. Danger. "Uun!" he managed to gasp out, "What are you doing!"
"I'm going with Lenn tonight," she informed him, her voice fading into the chiming diaspora of sound and color, "Alone. You just really get in the way of a girl trying to do her job."
Danger! Danger! Danger! The Force surged, roared, spattered blurred sensation into a brilliant supernova of particles, into a spattering of bright dust. And the looming shadow burst through the thin veil between thought and reality, scattering sparkling shards of Light as it descended, wrathful, through the broken skylight above.
It was cloaked in ebony, and wielded a sword of blue fire.