Author's Note: Another Interlude! It's out quite soon after my warning, I know, but it's also quite a bit shorter than the last few chapters have been. However, it does contain the answers to several questions that have been hanging over the last few chapters, so please review and tell me what you think of them!
Also, I've changed my homepage, having finally put together a personal website. It's not much, but if you ever have a spare minute, please take the time to check it out!
Interlude: Arrangements
I sat in my hyperbaric chamber, the helmet and mask detached from the suit. Jix sat in a portable chair at my knee, elbows on his thighs, hands clasped in front of him, head hanging in boredom. I wasn't entirely comfortable with him being there, even after three years, but he insisted, and for some strange reason I gave in to him, as I always have.
He glanced up at me, completely without fear. Hurry up, his eyes seemed to tell me. We need something to do.
Jix had never shown fear around me, even in the beginning. Maybe because he had found me three-quarters dead and had to nurse me back to health, had practically forced himself into my service, had never failed me once in the three years of our acquaintance . . . I would never admit it, but I found it refreshing. It was almost like having a friend, except that I don't have friends.
I had been especially grateful for his trust during the Rebel gala, when he had allowed me to use the Force to take over his vision and watch the Rebels through his eyes. It was only after he returned that we discovered that his eye colour had actually changed to mine when I activated the Force-vision. With any luck, no one noticed, and if they did, they didn't understand what the change meant. But still, notice of it would raise suspicions, and I hoped it was the former.
I took a breath and reached into the Force, pulling it around myself and shaping it over my features. It was harder than it had been – ever since the Princess recognized my face as that of Anakin Skywalker, I had been using a different one to appease her, and therefore actually had to hold an unfamiliar shape on as well as the glamour that gave me the appearance of wholeness. As if glamours aren't hard enough to hold onto . . .
When it felt finish, the last few strands smoothing over my vocal chords to bring my voice back up to par, I look at Jix, who grinned in delight at me. "Well, aren't you a heartbreaker," he teased.
I frowned at him, but he waved me off. "Seriously, Uncle D, it looks fine. Stop worrying."
"What if it slips?" I wondered aloud, my voice once again an easy baritone that I hadn't bothered to change with the image – adding another complication was just asking for trouble, and she hadn't complained about the voice, only the image. "It's so much harder to hold . . ."
"Stop fretting," Jix replied easily. "You've done it before."
I frowned again. "I know," I sighed in resignation, and activated the comm station in front of me, entering Leia's number into the system. Then I rechecked my grip on the Force, and waited for the call to go through.
"Hello," she answered uneasily, her voice low. She was feeling the subtle shift in our relationship just as I was – not subtle at all, but one of the giant waves of Kamino, washing over us, soaking us to the skin and chilling us to the bone. Ever since she had rushed in after my surgery . . . the one that I shouldn't have needed . . .
My liver had failed. It had been an utterly ridiculous catalyst – I had been dueling with one of my specialty droids, and it had managed to get under my guard and land a blow directly on my gut with its durasteel elbow. Designed not to pull their blows and set on the most advanced level, it had sent me sprawling to the floor with a ruptured liver and had nearly killed me before I managed to turn it off and contact Polor, my personal physician. I had been rushed into emergency surgery, and Polor managed to patch up my liver, though he warned me (as he had been doing for years now) that with such inferior prosthetics, one day all my synthetic organs and limbs would go into failure and there would be nothing he could do for me. Luckily, livers could regenerate given time, and eventually the patches he used would dissolve harmlessly in my bloodstream.
"Leia," I greeted her, enjoying the feel of her name on my tongue, as sweet and smooth as caramel. She had such a lovely name. If I had a daughter –
But I didn't. I had a son. A wonderful son . . . who was more than I thought I'd ever have, at any point in my life.
"Where are you?" I asked.
"On our way to Bespin, for rest and repairs," she replied instantly, and I vaguely noted at how far our relationship had progressed since we had first made our deal. She was a lot more trusting of me, and I . . .
I wasn't quite sure what I was.
"What did you do to the hyperdrive, anyway?" she queried. "Han hasn't been able to make anything of it . . ."
I gave a small, enigmatic smile, but mentally my smirk was a mile wide. Jix had been the one to disable the Millennium Falcon, and the trick I had taught him was a rather obscure way of crippling a ship that I had discovered back when I was a Padawan, and I had kept it a closely guarded secret. In fact, without Jix or me there to guide them, the only way anyone could fix it would be if they had my old astromech at their disposal . . . and the Force only knew where he was now.
"An old trick from the Clone Wars," I said, not quite lying.
"Oh," she replied, a small frown forming on her face. I could nearly see her mind working, as she tried to figure out how to tell the smuggler about this bit of information.
Before she could ask for more details about what I had done to the hyperdrive, I changed the subject. "Perhaps we could meet on Bespin," I suggested cautiously.
Her expression froze. "I don't think that's a good idea," she said slowly. "We're really just looking for a chance to relax, get our feet back under us. That sort of thing. So if you don't mind . . ."
"I understand," I assured her.
"Thank you," she replied.
"Goodbye, Leia. I'll call again when there is something else we need to discuss."
"Alright. Goodbye, Vader."
We turned our comms off simultaneously, and I let the Force illusion I'd created around myself melt away.
"You lied," Jix accused me flatly, but his eyes danced. I often suspected he rather enjoyed drama and intrigue.
"I didn't lie, I merely . . . omitted certain things."
Jix snorted. "Yeah, like the fact that you've already got a bounty hunter on their tail who has already told us their destination and that we're already en route to Bespin? Oh, and what about your plan to have a chat with your little boy, who, while still rather little, is no longer a boy? And just how did you plan to get her boyfriend out of Fett's mitts?"
"Her boyfriend?" I replied, genuinely confused.
"Solo, Uncle D. That is, assuming they've jumped each other's bones yet. I'm thinking they have, since they're both still alive. They were practically homicidal with sexual tension when I went to that sorry excuse for a party a while back."
"I . . . see." This was a complication I had not anticipated nor foreseen.
Jix smirked. "She's gonna rip your throat out. Metaphorically speaking, of course. I think."
I cut him a look. "Do you have anything useful to say, Jixton?"
"Sure do." He straightened from his slouch. "Remember when you were in the infirmary, and Missy burst in?"
"I'm not likely to forget, Jixton," I told him dryly.
"Right. Well, did you notice, every time you were in pain, she doubled over, too?"
I frowned. Most of that day was a haze. "Vaguely," I murmured, managing to find a memory that matched his description.
"Well, could you perhaps explain to me why she would do that?"
My brow furrowed as I frowned at him. "Sympathy pains?"
Jix shook his head confidently. "I don't think so. She was having those pains before she knew you were in surgery."
"What exactly are you getting at, Jix?" I asked, impatient to see his point.
He shrugged. "Not a thing. Just curious, is all." He stood up. "I take it I'm to skulk around Cloud City, stalking Missy and her posse?"
"Just don't let her see you," I reminded him.
He snorted. "Please. Give me some credit, Uncle D."
He hopped out of the hyperbaric chamber and loped out of the room with an easy grace I had once had. Now, I could only envy it as I braced myself for the betrayal I knew I'd see in Leia's eyes the next time we met, all the while wondering at Jix's assertion that she had felt my pain as her own.
