The landing gears creaked as they touched the dusty surface of the spaceport in the western part of the planet Ord Mantell. In the cockpit, gloved fingers pressed against the transparisteel, curling slightly as they watched the parched landscape of the city of Ord Mantell shimmer through the transparent material. The respirator hiss filled the silence—until Mara Jade leaned in close, her warm breath caressing the back of the pilot's helmet.
"You're pouting again," she whispered. "Or is the whole 'mysterious silence' act the latest addition to your arsenal?"
Behind them, Shaak Ti stretched languidly, and the flowing fabric of her loose tunic shifted enough to reveal the scars etched across her collarbone—a reminder of the life she had led before him. "He's stalling," Shaak Ti said, amusement dancing in her voice. "Weighing whether or not this planet is suitable to conceal his little harem."
"Harem" drew a sharp breath through his vocoder—not quite a chuckle, but definitely close. "It's not a harem," he said in a low, warped voice.
"Keep telling yourself that," Mara snorted.
He couldn't rise to it. He moved around both women and made straight for the entrance ramp. The landscape of Ord Mantell stretched out before them—fading neon signs, dirt roads, and smugglers, bounty hunters, and colonists who had long since stopped giving any hint of care about the politics of the Empire. It was the perfect place. Emperor-level spys didn't bother with this quadrant much, or when they did, they sucked at it. But he stopped at the edge of the entrance ramp.
Shaak Ti stepped closer to stand alongside him, and her presence eased the tension around them. "You don't have to wear the mask here," Shaak Ti said quietly.
He didn't reply. Not yet.
The streets reeked of perspiration, engine oil, and far-off cantina music. In the distance, a speeder kicked back. This was the sort of place where people could get lost—or hide something they didn't want found.
Mara brushed past him, already halfway down the ramp. "Come on," she said, smiling back at him. "Let's find somewhere you can finally take that helmet off."
But his fingers trembled towards the release catch—tinges of hesitation like a ghost limb. Shu'ulk'Tarath thrummed ever so gently at the periphery of his brain, something dark and mirthful weaving through the voice. *Fear not the gaze of strangers,* the voice whispered. *They see but what you permit.* The helmet creaked open with a hiss of release, and the breeze rushed against his face—no stinging, no ache, merely the strange sensation of taking deep breaths without support. The helmet clattered onto the ramp in metal echoes, causing Shaak Ti to raise an eyebrow in reaction.
"Dramatic," was her assessment, stepping around it
The robes were waiting in the locker on the ship—so soft and dark against his skin, without the heavy burden of armor. It was strange how something so simple could feel like shedding skin. Mara let out a low whistle of approval when she caught sight of him, and he caught his reflection in a shiny bulkhead. Not Vader. Not Anakin, exactly. Somewhere in between—something new.
They discovered a cantina first. Dim lighting, damp floors—a place where answers incurred a charge, and no one paid the fee. Mara slid into a booth, already ordering droids to bring drinks. Shaak Ti lingered at the edge of the cantina, her eyes surveying the assembly with the smooth, predatory ease of a huntress. Anakin—Anakin, here—situated himself beside Mara, the robes' fabric whispering against the plastoid bench.
"You're staring," he whispered.
"Just taking in the sights," she said, smiling, tracing the edge of her glass with her index finger. Her other boot hooked around the back of his leg under the table, pulling him closer. "Didn't know I'd ever get to see you breathe without assistance from machinery," she said.
Shaak Ti joined them, placing a datapad between their drinks. "The safehouse is secure," she said. "Top floor of an old mercenary guildhall. Discreet, armed, and—" she touched the screen to display a holographic image of the inside, "—soundproof." The corner of her mouth hitched up. "In case you decide to test that."
Anakin leaned back, taking a breath. It tasted of bad booze and ionized dust, but under that was freedom. No Emperor. No mask. Just him and the other two, and the thrum of Shu'ulk'Tarath in his veins.
Mara touched his wrist with her fingers, her thumb pressing gently against his pulse. "Still getting used to it?" she whispered.
He turned his hand, catching hers. "Yes." Softer than he meant.
"Good," Shaak Ti said, her claws scraping gently against his skin—her other wrist, always careful.
So when Anakin saw there there were no holonet announcements. No watching eyes. Only the chatter of sabacc dice at the next table, the struggling whine of the overhead ceiling fan, and a Twi'lekk waitress moving drinks towards them without so much as a second notice—already caught up in the flashing credit display of a Rodian.
Anakin's stance eased; "Vader" or "Skywalker" was irrelevant in this context. "He" was merely a man in robes, with two women whose loveliness attracted notice far beyond what "he" could command. And Anakin found the anonymity intoxicating, beyond the stimulating influence of drink or the maneuver of Mara's knee under the table.
Her nails dug lightly into the palm of his hand, stinging him. "Stop thinking. You are free. Act accordingly" was her order, delivered in a controlled voice.
The challenge in her green eyes was unmistakable—same sparkle as when he first came to her, during her time as Emperor's Hand when he was little more than a relic in a suit. However, the sparkle in her eyes was far more controlled, hungrier.
Shaak Ti turned her gaze to the schematics of the safehouse. "'The guildhall's former owners had included... amenities,'" she said in a carefully controlled voice, but there was amusement in her lekku. "Hydraulic bed mounts. A sonic shower large enough to accommodate three."
"It seems they expected it to work," Mara said with a sharp, pleased laugh.
Anakin breathed out through his nostrils—a habitual gesture, but there was no mask to fog up. It was filled with Mara's fragrance and the sterilized, metallic smell of Shaak Ti. In his mind, Shu'ulk'Tarath—being—celebrated.
Inwardly, there was the voice that urged, "Go. Take what is yours"
He stood up suddenly, scraping the floor with the chair. Mara smiled wider. Shaak Ti didn't look up, but her hand grazed the edge of his robes as he passed by her.
"Finally!" Mara purred, and followed.
Customers in the cantina remained unaware of the departure of the trio. The darkness of Ord Mantell enveloped them, as would happen in any other day or night. For the first time in many generations, there was no external observation.
***
The following juxtaposition addresses the postlude in the room. The bed linens wore the aromas of perspiration and sharper smells—Mara's nails, Shaak Ti's trail of ozone from her lightsaber, coupled with the musk of their entwined skin in the dim lighting from the moons of Ord Mantell shining through the blinds. Anakin was caught in the space between them, his chest rising and falling without the hindrance of a respirator, his skin buzzing from pleasure aftereffects. Mara's leg was thrown possessively across his hip, with bite marks spreading across his shoulder as if carving out territory. Shaak Ti's claws etched idle circles around Anakin's abdomen, her skin giving off a reaction less painful than eagerly anticipatory in nature.
However, the Entity whispered—a tendril of dark mirth weaving through his thinking. Playtime is ending, said Shu'ulk'Tarath. The puppet master, so to speak, makes his presence felt.
Anakin let out a breath, looking at the chronometer sitting on the bedside table. The hours of relaxation had turned into days, though Emperor Palpatine's espionage in this world had proved somewhat complacent—Palpatine's own patience was anything but. It was easy to see the master's bony fingers clasped in steeple fingers in the twisted throne, yellowed eyes pinching at the slightest disappointment. The Dark Side snaked around the master like a viper, eager for any signs of rebellion.
Mara shifted in her sleep, her nails digging into his side because of her perception of the change in his mood. "You're thinking about him again," she said in half-asleep irritation.
Shaak Ti's hand stopped, her crimson eyes snapping open. "The Empire will not collapse in a week without you," she said, though there was no conviction in the statement. All parties understood the dynamic at work in the situation.
Anakin leapt up from the bed, swinging his legs off the edge. The cold air was in sharp contrast to the warmth of their skin. "It's not about the Empire falling apart," Anakin whispered. "It's about him recognizing that it hasn't."
Mara pushed herself up onto one elbow, her green gaze sharpening. "You could kill him!" Mara said bluntly.
Anakin looked at her, then at Shaak Ti, who simply raised an eyebrow. Laughter from Shu'ulk'Tarath resonated in his head, sounding like cracking bones. "Oh, little godling," it purred, "she isn't wrong."
"Not yet," he said, standing up to grab robes placed on a chair. These words resonated like an oath.
Mara's smirk showed all her teeth. "Liar,"
Anakin turned away, adjusting his robes with smooth precision—a sign that, despite the absence of the armor, some habits remained. Shaak Ti stood up from the bed, her lekku swaying as she moved towards the window, her back turned towards the rest. The two moons cast sharp shadows across her figure, showing the scars etched into her skin. "You should go with him," Shaak Ti said in measured speech.
Mara snorted. "That is not an argument; that is an order."
Shaak Ti did not turn. "No. Merely an observation." Her fingers moved in taps along the windowsill—one, two—a pattern that might translate to Jedi meditation rhythm, in the unlikely event that Jedi remained. "If you stay here, sooner or later you'll come to hate the walls. And when you hate the walls, you'll want to burn them down. And I would rather not have to rebuild."
Mara opened her mouth and then closed it again, jaw clenching. Anakin understood the moment of realization—Shaak Ti chose to stay out of lack of interest; rather, there was someone who needed to maintain the line because of the role that Ord Mantell was playing—not simply as a haunt but as an oath.
Anakin raised a hand to reach for his helmet, but his fingers lingered above the chilling durasteel surface. Shu'ulk'Tarath was purring in satisfaction. It knows. The hunter knows when to track and when to let prey go. Mara took a sharp breath, sliding off the bed in one smooth motion. "Fine. But if I'm to play nurse to your Imperial duties, you'll carry my things."
Shaak Ti laughed in soft rustling sounds, like wind through dry leaves. "Good luck with that."
Anakin lowered the helmet over his head, and the rest of the world seeped away into that familiar crimson fog. The respirator hissed in the silence. Anakin faced Shaak Ti, and there was a moment when neither of them moved. Then Shaak Ti stepped closer and pressed her forehead against Anakin's mask—a Togruta goodbye. No need to say anything; no words were exchanged.
Mara was already at the door, her boots tapping impatiently. "Coming or do I have to drag you?"
Shaak Ti took a step back, face impassive. "Go. Before she shoots something."
Anakin hesitated, no more than a split second, and then followed Mara out into the hallway. The door slid shut behind them, locking Shaak Ti away with the spirits of all they had constructed.
Mara touched his armor-plated elbow. "She'll be all right," she mumbled.
It was something he was aware of. It was not Shaak Ti whom he was afraid of. It was the emptiness—not the silence where Shaak Ti in the Force was.
**
Quinlan Vos tasted blood moments before he spotted the blade—not from the cut itself, but from where his own teeth had sunk into the back of his throat. Alleyways reeked of rotting garbage and engine fluid, dark corners writhing like arthritic hands between crates stacked high. Quin had specifically picked this alley—corners too sharp, visibility too low, no space to swing. Perfect for someone who fought dirty.
The hum of the lightsaber at his back was the only warning.
Twisted, violet blade rising in time to deflect the crimson swing from Starkiller. Sparks flared through the damp asphalt as the two sabers crossed, and the warm glow of power suffused the space around him. Starkiller glowed like a lantern in the half-light, a line of perspiration etching through the scar along the jaw. "Slower than I recall," the younger man snarled.
Quinlan bared his teeth, shifting weight to counter the pressure. "And you're louder." Quinlan kicked out at Starkiller's knee—only to have him turn, using the motion to fuel a vicious arc. Quinlan ducked, and the heat from the blow kissed the top of his dreadlocks.
They parted, circling. The muggy humid climate that was so prevalent in Nar Shaddaa clung to all things, and the tension between them was so thick it readily rivaled the fog. Every breath was pure agony to Quinlan, whose chest was aflame. Starkiller wielded the power of the storm itself—fury and lightning speed bound up in flesh.
"You don't have to do this," Quinlan sneered, wiping the back of his hand against his mouth. "Vader's using you."
"Funny," Starkiller sneered, his smirk twisting feral. "I was about to say the same to you."
Starkiller charged, knife flashing crimson. Quinlan barely turned in time to deflect the blade, but the strength of the blow knocked him against the dented cargo box. Skinning cuts scored at his shoulder, where jagged metal bit in. The reek of scorched durasteel stung in the back of Quinlan's throat.
Quinlan rolled left as Starkiller's boot smashed where Quinlan's head had been. Quinlan pushed with the Force—not at Starkiller, but at the crates lined up behind him. They fell like a house of cards, knocking Starkiller back in order to leap clear. For the briefest moment, Quinlan glimpsed it: the vulnerability of Starkiller's left side, where the footing was treacherous on the wet asphalt. Quinlan pushed forward, blade angled for the ribs—only to have Starkiller turn in mid-leap, deflecting the blade with the snapping hiss of crossed plasma.
Their sabers crossed again, noses pressed inches apart. Starkiller's breath was like sandpaper, the ache in his eyes burning with something far darker than fatigue. "You're restraining yourself," Starkiller growled. Quinlan smiled through the blood trickling from his split lip—much too wide, much too wild—and because the kid was right. The Force swirled around them like a living entity, thick with the smell of moist metal and the electricity of crossing steel. Quinlan savored Starkiller's desperation, the feel of it closing around him like a noose. Quinlan had seen that expression in mirrors, in cells, in the gaze of men who had sold out pieces of their soul to get what they wanted.
Quinlan ducked and weaved under another vibroblade swipe—Starkiller's sloppy but useful trick, learned in the Maw pits from other pirates. It struck a damaged coolant line behind him, spewing out vapor under pressure. Fog rolled in, blanketing the alley in white and reducing the sabering match to a spectral battle, as glowing arcs cut through the mist. Quinlan faked left, turned right, kicked at Starkiller in the stomach. Starkiller stumbled back under the blast, but repaid him in kind—by PUSHING him back with the Force. Quinlan slid backwards across the permacrete.
Starkiller pushed in, saber shining crimson in the fog. Quinlan parried, but a moment too late—scythe edge whispered against his thigh, snagging fabric and skin. Blinding agony ignited as the Dark Side shrieked in counterpoint. Quinlan hissed and ducked behind the wreck of a speeder.
He slid shaking hands against the gash to blot the blood. "You fight like him," Quinlan yelled back. "All fury, no finesse!"
The speeder blew up—not from the slash of the saber, but from the raw power of Starkiller's will, the Force tearing metal like flimsioplast. Quinlan scarcely raised a shield in time, scrap hurled at the surface like shrieking mynocks. Amidst the swirling smoke, Starkiller moved forward, a dark figure silhouetted against blazing debris. "And you fight like a Jedi!" he sneered. "All mouth, no bite!"
Quinlan wiped blood from his mouth and grinned at the smear. "Funny," he was panting, "considering it comes from the man Vader trained to bark on command."
Starkiller roared, shaking the walls of the alley.
Finally, Quinlan didn't dodge.
Starkiller's scarlet sword sliced through him with damp, crunching flesh—left of center, at an angle to avoid the back. A reasonable kill, not disabling. Vos took a sharp breath in, violet blade wavering, his hand locking convulsively around the hilt. The moist rain-saturated air reeked of seared meat and electricity. After an interminable moment, the cold blue glare of their skin was close enough to kiss—Starkiller witnessing glints of gold in Quinlan's engorged iris, Quinlan experiencing the salty shock of blood trickling around his incisors. But Starkiller was already wrenching the sword with clinical care, and Vos dropped like a puppet whose strings had snapped through, thudding onto the rain-slick surface.
The alleyway was silent in a weird way, as if the city itself was holding its breath. Starkiller stared at the thrashing figure, chest rising and falling with alarming rapidity. Fully half of Quinlan's dreadlocks had come loose, spilling across the permacrete like ink. But he was breathing—ragged, sucking gasps, but breaths nonetheless. Starkiller let out a sharp exhalation through his nose. There was supposed to be some kind of release. Satisfaction. But in fact, his own hands trembled with something like regret.
And that was when the truth smashed into him like a repulsorlift to the ribs: Vader knew.
The battle had pushed him harder than any swordfight since Malachor. Quinlan fought like a man who had fought his way out of a hundred Sith hells and still had the temerity to sneer through the agony. Every dirty trick, every Force-bent feint—Vos held pace, blow by blow, up to the very end. Starkiller crouched, pressing two fingers against Quinlan's throat out of habit as much as anything else. There was the barest, trembling pulse against the skin of his fingers. Alive. Barely.
"I'm done here." The voice trailed away into the alley (into his comm wrist) engulfed by the lubricant mist seeping from a leaking coolant line. Quinlan Vos was lying at his feet like cast-off clothing, breathing so shallowly that Starkiller found himself counting out three seconds to verify the rhythm of chest rise and fall. It was an understanding that burrowed back into Starkiller's chest like grenade fragments: Vader had wanted him to feel all of it—not merely the rush of triumph, but the emptiness that trailed in its wake—the cold comprehension that every bout led him ever so slightly closer to betraying another slice of himself.
The smell of scorched meat clung to the humid air, weighing heavier than the mist of neon that swirled above the underbelly of Nar Shaddaa. Starkiller rolled his shoulders, joints creaking in irritation. His left knee was throbbing from Quinlan's final, desperate blow—proof that even at the last minute, the Kiffar fought like a rancor in a corner. Blood seeped from a cut above Starkiller's eyebrow, intermingling with the drying sweat trickling through his tangled, dark-brown hair. Starkiller took a shallow breath through gritted teeth. Costs.
Juno waited at the meeting point, tapping out an irregular rhythm against the panels of the Rogue Shadow. When the ramp slid out, she didn't bother to turn around; instead, she tilted her head ever so slightly, the blue glow of the holodisplay etching sharp planes under her eyes. "You're late." PROXY stood behind her, photoreceptors turned low, so that they glowed gently yellow. It was worse when he was quiet.
Starkiller dumped Quinlan's lightsaber onto the console. It slid to rest alongside Juno's half-drunk cup of caf. It glowed warmly inside, like the beat of a dying heart. Juno gasped. "Is... is he—"
"Alive." Starkiller slid into the copilot's seat, the leather creaking in complaint. "Barely." The flavor was bitter ash. He said nothing about Quinlan's twitching fingers, reaching towards his boot, towards the vibroblade there. Or about how long it had taken him to draw his own saber.
Juno's jaw clenched. She entered the course without saying a word, her fists tightening around the yoke. Rogue Shadow rattled as it broke out of Nar Shaddaa's gravity well, dropping the smog-lit skylines and Quinlan Vos's dying form in its wake. Starkiller watched the hyperspace trails spilling across the display surface in the viewport, caught up in reflections warped through the transparisteel. In the glass, the face looking back belonged to someone else—empty-eyed, smeared with soot and another man's blood.