I swore I wouldn't do it. I'd spent enough of my life writing LOTCK and ATITF, I told myself. I have a real job now, I told myself. But here we are.
At the end of the day, I love our beautiful prince Korkie too much. I couldn't leave him alone. I wanted to grow him up. (And I missed my dear readers too.)
I don't expect there to be too many of you loyalists still hanging around, but for those who are reading: welcome to To Mend a Tear. My story A Tear in the Force is probably required pre-reading, as this story is essentially a big expansion of the very rushed final chapter. We begin the story nearly one year after the fall of the Republic. Korkie has run to Mon Gazza, to Kalarba, and now, to the smog of Corellia, where you might recall he gets into quite a lot of trouble...
Chapter 1: In the Smog of Corellia
When Korkie was four years standard, he had broken his mother's favourite vase after using the Force to fly his model starfighter through a re-enactment of his brother's first and final pod-racing victory. Satine had reassured him that she was not upset but had left the room quickly; she had been upset, of course, against her better judgement, and in her kindness had tried to hide it from him. The vase had belonged to her grandmother, to that precious time when the Clan Kryze had been complete and Mandalore at peace, and Satine, a lifelong aristocrat, had never been able to spurn finery in the way that the Jedi did. Korkie's lips had quavered as he watched his father solemnly sweep the pieces into a pile atop the desk and motion for him to sit.
It is easy to break something, Korkaran. It is always much harder to fix it.
The tears had spilled then. His father had taken his hand.
Fear not, Korkie'ad. We'll mend it together.
Korkie glimpsed the distant memory as he crouched in the engine room of the ship he had won in a gamble on Mon Gazza, grimacing at the smell of his fried hyperdrive. He screwed his eyes shut and tried to picture his father's face across the desk from him, tried to truly hear his voice. Was he getting the inflection right? It had been nearly a year now since his father had died. Korkie did not know when the mistakes would start creeping in. He worried that there must be some infidelity in his repetitions already.
Not that there was time, exactly, to be pondering this. Corellia, the planet he'd been trying to escape, blast it, loomed outside. The crew upon the pursuing Imperial craft would not take long to realise that the hasty second jump to hyperspace he had made, without allowing any time for calculations, could only possibly take him back to where he had started.
Korkie extended a wary finger towards the hyperdrive. The mess of colourful insulated wires melted under his touch.
Kriff.
I'm not usually one to preach patience, Korkie, but this is a rule to remember.
It wasn't as though he'd forgotten Anakin's golden rule; Korkie had not been ignorant but desperate. The hyperdrive of his unassuming ship, of the same era as the infamously scavenged hyperdrive from Tatooine, was years behind the advanced power cell technology that revolutionised the hyperdrive market two decades ago.
This hyperdrive's older than you are, Korkie. Older than me too, probably.
The mischievous smirk that had captured the HoloNet by storm.
Not as old as Padme, though.
The memory was exquisitely painful – the bright flush of life that had lighted Padme's cheeks, the sound of her laughter as she elbowed her husband in the ribs. Korkie forced out a breath and focused his gaze upon the device in front of him. This wasn't Padme's ship and this wasn't Padme's hyperdrive. There wasn't time to think of Padme nor of their perilous journey together. Nor of how the colour had drained from her face, when he had failed so miserably in his quest to protect her.
All that Anakin had meant was that stupid hunks of metal like this got hot when they worked. One was supposed to allow their old-generation hyperdrive to cool down for at least two hours before using it again. Not a problem in a diplomatic shuttle, of course, nor in the commercial freighter he had won. But a problem with stormtroopers on one's tail.
The hyperdrive's more valuable than the rest of the ship put together – got it, Vod? It's the one part you've really got to be gentle with.
Gentle. A word that had sounded so strange then, in those years of almost-shared adolescence, from his kamikaze brother's mouth. It was utterly absurd now, outside Corellia. This galaxy turned upside-down and inside-out, this democracy turned tyranny, was no place for gentleness. Being gentle got you killed out here. Korkie had seen enough in his recent travels to know that. Anakin, meanwhile, would be on the homestead on Tatooine, mixing bottles of warm infant formula, or checking the vaporators for oil leaks. Something mundane. Gentle. Anakin didn't know anything about surviving in this new world.
But Korkie wasn't supposedto be angry about that.
He rose from his crouch and swore as his head hit the low ceiling of the engine room. Stupid ship was made for astromechs. Tenderly feeling out the contour of the already swelling bruise under his tangled hair, Korkie strode back into the main hold and flung himself before the controls. He couldn't jump to hyperspace but he could still fly.
And he'd have to.
There was a familiar chill in the Force as the Imperial craft emerged from hyperspace into Corellian orbit. Korkie took a steadying breath and engaged the controls. Back to Corellia. Back to the gangs and the smugglers and the stormtroopers who already had a warrant for the blonde human kid who'd hacked into the displays of over a hundred major billboards and replaced Mace Windu's face beneath the WANTED – TRAITOR TO THE EMPIRE banner with Sheev Palpatine's. Korkie hadn't quite got the hang of keeping his head down yet. But he'd have to give it another go.
The Empire didn't seem to have attached any automated warning to his ship yet; there were no additional troops awaiting him as he hastily touched down in the most chaotic commercial district of Coronet City.
"You have landed in a permit zone. Vehicles that fail to display permit will be towed at the owner's expense."
Korkie cast a withering look at the croaking droid. It was painted in the purple and white of the city council, chipped almost beyond recognition. Korkie was likely not the first traveller to object to the district's landing restrictions.
"Go ahead and tow it," Korkie muttered. "It's a useless piece of junk."
He paced away before the droid could reply. His heart was thundering in his ears. Where had his calm gone? His father wouldn't have simply bailed on his ship like this; he'd have found a way to convince the droid, he'd have replaced the hyperdrive without undue cost. But Korkie was unsettled. Nothing had gone to plan, not since Mon Gazza. The thought of the arrests on Kalarba and his cowardly escape still made him feel sick to his stomach. And if he were caught here, on Corellia, then it would all have been for nothing.
Use the Force, Korkie.
It was a particularly poor imitation of his father's voice – edged with his own distress – but Korkie pressed himself to obey. He would not walk blindly through this mess. He reached out and heard the stormtroopers responding to the alert of the council droid. The ship wasn't registered under his name; it might buy him a little time. But the craft that had pursued him in his original flight from Corellia would be landing only minutes behind him and soon everyone would be brought up to speed. He needed a place to hide. He had no time to travel far. He reached outwards, further and further still. Through all the panic, all the anger and frustration, all the exhaustion of these travellers, he found a cool alertness. He latched on tight and let the Force lead the way.
It brought him to a Barbadelan, who was calmly presenting another council droid with what Korkie suspected was a fraudulent landing permit.
"Permission granted. Permit valid for seven days."
"Thank you kindly."
The Barbadelan tacked the permit onto the hull of his ship and paused in his stride, noticing Korkie from the corner of his eye.
"Whatcha looking at, kid?"
Korkie projected all the confidence he could muster.
"How much can I pay to be hidden from the stormtroopers coming to inspect your ship in about two minutes?"
The Barbadelan snorted.
"What makes you think I've got some place to hide you?"
Korkie smirked.
"It wouldn't be worth the fuel to ship that load of whiptree bark from Ryloth to Corellia," he observed, nodding at the crates of stock conspicuously arranged at the Barbadelan's feet, offered up for Imperial inspection. "Where's the demand for timber in Coronet City? You'd get a much better asking price travelling outbound."
The Barbadelan's face darkened.
"I'm not criticising, Sir," Korkie assured him. "You're an astute businessman. Freighting something else a little more valuable. Did you pop through Mumble's Turnaround on your way past Ryloth? Pay a visit to the Spice Triangle? It doesn't bother me. Won't dob you in if you can lend a hiding spot."
The merchant showed decaying teeth as he snarled.
"Don't try to threaten me, kid."
"I'm not threatening you," Korkie insisted, letting his voice fall back into the cadence of his childhood. "How much? I'll pay you. A bonus job."
The Barbadelan gave a grudging smile and shook his head.
"It might be a job, kid, but it's not a convenient job for me. It'll cost you a thousand."
Korkie's stomach sunk.
"A thousand?"
The Barbadelan flicked his eyes upwards, watching as the stormtroopers began their routine inspection upon the adjacent ship.
"We're next in line, kid."
Korkie groaned.
"Could you do-"
His heart clenched as he saw an additional group of troopers jog towards the inspectors, barking urgent orders. Korkie's mouth went dry and he found himself saying something that he should not have said.
"Kriff's sakes, I've only got eight hundred."
A wide grin cracked the Barbadelan's face.
"Eight hundred it is, then. In my hand, please."
Korkie reached into his combat boots and unclipped his precious savings.
"Fine. But for eight hundred I expect a hot dinner, okay?"
Korkie sat jammed with his knees digging into his chin, suffocating amongst and possibly getting high on the surrounding bags of sansanna spice, and seethed. He was a disgrace. The son of the Duchess of Mandalore and Jedi Negotiator, getting scammed for every last credit he had. The first rule of bargaining was you never told them how much you had to spend. He'd escaped for now but at what blasted cost? What was he supposed to do, exactly, when he was set loose on Corellia without a credit to his name? He was starving and thirsty and needed to piss but doubted the dealer would take very kindly to his spice being tainted. He wondered whether he had forgotten about him. He listened to the boots of the stormtroopers come and go, come and go.
When the light finally came in it was dazzling; Korkie screwed up his eyes.
"You okay, kid?"
Korkie collapsed forward, out from the hiding place in the wall, and onto his hands and knees on the floor. He coughed his lungs out with such frightful force he felt he might vomit.
"Yep," he managed, between coughs. "Fine."
The Barbadelan frowned.
"That's good spice, you know. Pure sansanna. Shouldn't make you cough. You got asthma or something?"
Korkie groaned. His prematurity haunted him still.
"Yeah. Sorry. From when I was a kid."
"You're still a kid, by the looks of things."
The Barbadelan considered him with a frown.
"They checked my ship three kriffing times. What is it you've done, exactly?"
Still on his knees, Korkie managed a wry smile.
"It'll cost you a thousand for the story."
"No chance, kid."
With a shadow of a smile upon his heavily lined face, the Barbadelan hauled him to his feet and pressed something into his hand.
"Dinner money. Can't cook you a hot dinner, I'm afraid. No kitchen on board."
It was fifty meagre credits. Korkie didn't know whether to be grateful or furious.
"Thanks, I guess."
"Good luck."
"Can I use your 'fresher?"
The Barbadelan gave an aggrieved sigh.
"Fine. No extra cost."
Korkie knew better than to spend his precious fifty credits on dinner, or on a place to sleep, for that matter. These would be emergency funds, not that fifty credits got you much in an emergency – entry onto the light-rail when needing to lose a pursuer, perhaps, or a drink to placate an angry pubgoer. He walked the streets of Corellia as the sun went down and three moons were illuminated in the hazy sky. He walked until his feet ached. He walked until the Force felt right. And then he scaled the disused fire escape of a building that felt gentle in its loneliness. Half-built ship engines lay abandoned inside, casualties of the most dramatic economic depression in intergalactic history, which had begun with the war and looked like maybe it would never end. Korkie rolled up his jacket beneath his head and watched the clouds roll over the moons. There was a strange orange tinge to everything. The vapour from the electrolysis reactions, if Korkie remembered correctly. Anakin had taught him something about that once.
He let his mind ramble; he'd become useless at meditation since his parents died. He'd stopped wrestling with the menories and allowed them instead to parade before him. They would become less painful in time. Sleep would find him somewhere along the way.
Anakin's lessons on the shipyards of Corellia. The tiny infants Luke and Leia, having their prescribed tummy-time on a dirty bit of canvas at their father's feet while he tinkered with old farm equipment. The soft, precious quilt that Shmi had cut cleanly in two and used to swaddle her grandchildren. That indescribable feeling in the Force as the twins rambled through each other's dreams. The days in which Korkie had a bed and a mother of his own. The high ceiling of his mother's bedroom. The towering bookcases. Sitting atop them, nestled in his duvet, with his father smiling at him from below. The ve'vut'galaar and his nest in the clouds.
Homeless Korkie Kryze and his blanket-less nest in the smog.
He allowed himself a beat of empty laughter and curled up tighter on his side as he drifted finally to sleep.
Getting to sleep wasn't so bad. It was staying asleep that was the problem. In Korkie's drifting mind, the smog of Corellia became the smoke on the giant moon of Kalarba in the wake of a detonator blast. He dreamed of that horrible night it had all gone wrong. The heavy footfalls of the stormtroopers and the blaring of the alarms and that unmoveable door clunking into place. They'd been too bold. They'd ventured too deep into the fledgling space station and tried to do too much. Their home-made detonators didn't blow the reinforced roof open as they had blown apart so many layers of scaffolding on the outskirts. They had trapped themselves and been surrounded.
This time, Korkie tried to do it right. He swallowed down his fear and reached for the weapons at his belt. The lightsaber of the Jedi he had never truly trained to be. The Darksaber of the Mand'alor so far from his obliterated home. He was desperate in his determination – it didn't matter, his failures didn't matter, he would use these weapons to save his friends and then he might take a step towards earning them. Let them know his Jedi blood; let them know that he was the rightful leader of the race the Empire had tried to exterminate. But his sweating palms slipped and scrabbled at the hilts. He tried, time and time again, as the stormtroopers closed in. He held a lightsaber and Darksaber at his belt, but he could not lift them. The weapons were too heavy for his pathetic hands.
And so our journey begins (again).
I'd love to hear from you, if there's anyone out there as mad as I am ready to continue with this story.
Next chapter (published weekly), we meet a familiar scumrat.
xx - S.