Over The Hills And Far Away - A Star Wars Fanfiction - Chapter 4
Summary: AU. Anakin discovers Sidious' plans and decides to twart him any way he can. That means being his prisoner. He asks Obi-Wan to take care of Padmè then swears he will find them. This is his journey through the galaxy and his soul to find his family.
Rating: Teen+ for some mild curising and some very mild references to sex.
Charachters: Anakin Skywalker. Padmè Amidala, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, Darth Sidious (mentioned), Luke Skywalker, Leia Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano, Many OCs.
Timeline: Empire Era. Starts in the middle of Episode III, goes AU from there on, jumps seven years ahead.
Chapter 4 - Away
It took me almost two months to prepare my escape plan. Two months spent in an almost continuous deep meditation, trying to figure out a mental map of the base following each day a different clone through the Force, following his echo like a tracking signal. It wasn't an easy job because I kept loosing attention and sometimes I had to start all over again but in the end I had a very clear map of the prison in my mind and notched on the wall in the darkest corner of my cell. I used a sharp stone I found on the terrain just outside the window of my cell. Studying that map I had planned a swift way out without being detected by security cameras. Not bad, considering that I was locked in those four walls all day.
I just needed some luck.
If the Force can be called luck.
Still, I had a strange feeling, I felt the pressure raising every moment as the chosen day approached. I wasn't calm. To avoid any annoyance, I spent the last week studying my plan and the scheme and keeping a close eye on the schedule of the prison and its activities going on during the day, such as the free hour the other prisoners were given, changes of shifts, when the meals were served... all things I had never noticed before, considering that my mind was elsewhere all those years, as I tried not to go crazy in there. I was regaining some normal rhythms too, I slept during the night and was awake during the day. It wasn't a bad plan after all.
Blocked inside that cell like an animal, I wasn't that hungry but I was trying to eat more than the usual in order to gain enough strength just in case I had to fight my way out. Of course food wasn't that great, but it was energy nonetheless. It was hard, I have to admit that, and I've never been the kind of man that's picky around food...
The main problem was the fact that I was always agitated. Sleep didn't come easily and when I managed to sleep it was haunted by nightmares and stuff like that. I used to wake up screaming. I wasn't really resting much. I found myself clinging to everything in order to calm down, from old meditation exercises I used to do when I was a kid to memories of my mother and Padmè (though I have to admit that those memories did everything but calm me down, they had a totally different effect I don't want to talk about), I thought about the battles I had participated with my Master and about the child I had never got to know...in a way or another, in the end I managed to fall asleep but I was too agitated to rest properly.
I had to gain my freedom. I had a physical need for it. My last meeting with Vader had really upset me, I had to get out of there or I would have gone crazy. No turning to the Dark Side or whatever, just plain madness caused by claustrophobia, nothing else. I just couldn't allow them to tamper with my life again or they would win again. It couldn't end like that, not me, not Anakin Skywalker.
Finally in the late afternoon of the chosen day, I decided to act. My last torture session was a week behind and I was almost as healthy as ever. I could do it. After all, I had planned everything in the details, the action, the moment...everything!
Obi-Wan would have been proud of me.
And I owe him pretty much everything in the end. The idea, the meanings...everything! One day I was laying on my bed, thinking and re-thinking about an idea to get out of there when suddenly I found myself wandering in my memories when Obi-Wan was teaching me the basics of the lightsaber fighting. I recalled his own style, his form, so passive but so deadly at the same time. It took advantage the physical strength of the adversary to deviate his blows and find a hole in his defense. It was a passive form of fighting, so different from my aggressive and fast form...and that gave me the idea.
It wasn't like I was a genius, after all it was a trick as old as the Galaxy but it still worked somehow. I just needed to lay down for a moment, be calm and don't attract too much attention. They would be my very liberators, those who would set me free. I would slip through their fingers like the sands of Tatooine. I had managed to escape the grip of the Dark Side once, I could do it again.
This time it was a bit different. It was a real place, not a mental state.
The chosen hour was approaching. Slowly, I was checking my plan again and I was ready. Better, I was hanged.
Because that was my plan! Playing the suicide card! I had plenty of cloth to make the rope, the plumbing had held me for seven years while I tried to make some exercise...it would hold me even in that occasion, I was sure. Most of all I was sure because I would let me hang totally, I would hold myself up using the Force. It was all a trick.
When the soldier in charge to bring me my dinner entered in my cell and saw me hanging there, I saw him jumping in his tracks for the surprise. I have to say I didn't think I was such a good actor but I was doing good playing dead. So good that before he called for help, he came closer to check if I was really dead. Too close.
He was scared to death, I could feel it. He was as scared as I was. If he discovered I was alive, I was dead, this time for real. My plan would happily go out of the window and I would have to start all over again with a totally different strategy. Or die in the span of half a second.
That was the critical moment. That moment signed the difference between freedom and prison, between life and death. My life and my death, to be precise.
But my will to live and get out of there was stronger than the soldier's training. When he was close enough to me I acted. I pulled my legs up to my chest and hit him squarely in his chest with both my feet, causing him a shock strong enough to cut his breath out and sending him crashing against the other wall behind him.
Before he could call for help I jumped down the rig and before he could grab his weapon I was over him. He wasn't wearing his helmet so my job was easier. With a quick move, I hit him at his throat with my elbow so he wasn't able to talk anymore. Just to be sure, I broke both his arm twisting them hard then I placed one hand behind his neck and one under his chin and twisted his neck until it snapped in two.
I stared straight into his eyes for a moment as he died. I could literally see his life abandon his body. He was a rookie, probably the other soldiers thought he was barely a kid. It felt like killing a brother, I had shared so many victories with his fellow clones, most of all those of 501° Legion, the one I had fought with for so long. It just felt wrong. In his eyes I could see the terror as he stared straight at his killer while life slipped from him like water. I felt the chilling breath of death as he went rigid for a moment then felt limply on the floor like an empty sack. It was the same feeling I had every day, the feeling of imminent danger that hanged on me like a ton of durasteel. It gave me the creeps.
I shoved the thought aside and went back to my plan. Stripping his armor and wear it.
The armor was a bit tight, but it worked. He had left the helmet just outside the cell, so I fetched it before finishing the job. I had to make him unrecognizable. And that was the most gruesome think I had ever done. I had to beat him until not even Jango Fett could recognize him. That way, I could at least have a couple of hours of advantage on them, to put some distance between us. It wasn't a great feeling.
Almost effortless, I slipped the slipknot around his neck and hoisted him up where minutes before I was standing. This time though, there was really a corpse.
With that done, I wore the helmet and exited, then closed the door behind me. Half of the plan was done. Now, let's get the other half done: discover where the heck I was and retrieving my things.
I walked down the hallway and turned right. The first door on the left the sentry box and the access to the storage room with the personal effects of the prisoners. In the box there was a computer with all the information I needed.
The operative system hadn't changed since the days of the Republic, they had just changed the symbol with the one of the Empire and some names. I typed the ID code of the clone I had killed and entered. After that, I typed my ID code and got all the results I needed.
Name: Anakin
Surname: Skywalker
ID Name: 100389
Planet of birth: Tatooine; Birth place: Unknown
Date Of Birth: Unknown
Age: 29
Date of Death: -
Current Civil Status: Unmarried
Occupation: Jedi Master
Crimes: Attempted Homicide.
Sentence: Life Sentence.
There was everything I needed, I just had to change the date of death and I was ready to go. I checked the clock of the computer to get the current date.
If I hadn't completely gone crazy, that was my son's birthday. I had picked the perfect day, hadn't I?
Once I had the death confirmed, a pop up window opened with the order to take the personal effects of the deceased and destroy them and there was the location of the box in the corner of the window. I typed the order to open the storage room. My box was in the corner of a rusty shelf. I checked the numbers on the box, the numbers were correct. I opened the box and and checked the contents. There was everything. My clothes, my lightsaber...everything I had arrived with except the wedding ring that I wore around my neck.
I returned for a second at the computer and looked for any clue about where the heck that prison was. Easier said than done actually. I had to dig through huge amounts of meaningless files and information, not to mention that place seemed to be unknown even to the Empire itself. Then, finally, while I was looking for a star map or something I found the map of the sector. I was on Blenjeel! The maximum security Republican prison for war criminals, that's where they had sent me! Practically, in the midst of nothing, on a planet with few human settlements and endless deserts populated by some of the most hideous creatures of the Galaxy. The closest city was about nine miles north of the prison and probably a spaceport with a doubtful reputation. Well, I couldn't afford anything else in the end. At least I knew where I was and how to get away from that hellish planet!
Excuse me for my language but in that very moment I only wanted to yell a huge fuck you to everything. Nine miles in open desert, a desert populated by carnivore reptiles that crawled underneath the sand and could eat a large human being in one mouthful? Either I found a speeder or I was dead. Things weren't too good in that moment.
But in the end I was wearing an Imperial uniform, I could always borrow one of their speeders...
I could go. No, better, I had to go! That corpse in my cell wouldn't fool them for too long, it wouldn't have taken long before they found out the trick and give the alarm. And what an alarm!
I wore the helmet again and walked towards the exit with my box. Fortunately I didn't encounter anyone until the entrance. There the guard in the sentry box asked what I was doing with that box at that hour.
I tried to mask my voice. "One of the prisoners deceased some hours ago. He's been declared dead and I have been ordered to destroy his personal effects. Just bureaucracy." I said.
The soldier checked on the computer, then nodded. "Oh, yes...389. I just received the notification. Perfect, you can go. Have you finished your shift?" he asked amicably.
I nodded. "Just now. This is my last assignment for the night. I was hoping I could catch a speeder and go to the city and have something to drink." I lied badly, but I tried to sound as convincing as I could.
"Sure. Catch the one you want, the keys are in the hangar. Half of the squadron is out there. Try to avoid bar brawls and have fun!"
I took a deep, relieved breath.
"Sure I will! Thank you again!"
He opened the door. The sun was setting and it cast an orange light on the rocky desert. I had to move because the desert is a rather cold place during night.
"See ya tomorrow!" I head him call from his place.
Tomorrow my ass...I thought to myself as I set foot out of there for the first time.
I was free. I was really free, for real! I was out!
I just needed to get that speeder and change clothes, then I would really have been free. I was out! I was free!
As I practically ran towards the hangar that was situated on the right side of the prison, that was my only thought. I couldn't get those words out of my mind, it was like a broken record that kept repeating the same words. I was out, I was free, the plan had worked perfectly!
I grabbed the keys if the first speeder I could find and jumped in, then stormed out of the hangar pushing it as fast as it could go. The first thing I did, when I was far enough, was getting rid of the helmet, then, a couple of miles ahead, I stopped and abandoned the rest of the armor and wore my old clothes. It felt so good! Finally something that wasn't as rigid as the armor or so rough and raw like the prison uniform. Finally I was in my element again. Once I hanged my lightsaber to my battle belt and donned my cloak, I re-started the engine and ran through the desert to the spaceport.
Now I had to find a transport to Coruscant.
Rating: Teen+ for some mild curising and some very mild references to sex.
Charachters: Anakin Skywalker. Padmè Amidala, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, Darth Sidious (mentioned), Luke Skywalker, Leia Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano, Many OCs.
Timeline: Empire Era. Starts in the middle of Episode III, goes AU from there on, jumps seven years ahead.
Chapter 4 - Away
It took me almost two months to prepare my escape plan. Two months spent in an almost continuous deep meditation, trying to figure out a mental map of the base following each day a different clone through the Force, following his echo like a tracking signal. It wasn't an easy job because I kept loosing attention and sometimes I had to start all over again but in the end I had a very clear map of the prison in my mind and notched on the wall in the darkest corner of my cell. I used a sharp stone I found on the terrain just outside the window of my cell. Studying that map I had planned a swift way out without being detected by security cameras. Not bad, considering that I was locked in those four walls all day.
I just needed some luck.
If the Force can be called luck.
Still, I had a strange feeling, I felt the pressure raising every moment as the chosen day approached. I wasn't calm. To avoid any annoyance, I spent the last week studying my plan and the scheme and keeping a close eye on the schedule of the prison and its activities going on during the day, such as the free hour the other prisoners were given, changes of shifts, when the meals were served... all things I had never noticed before, considering that my mind was elsewhere all those years, as I tried not to go crazy in there. I was regaining some normal rhythms too, I slept during the night and was awake during the day. It wasn't a bad plan after all.
Blocked inside that cell like an animal, I wasn't that hungry but I was trying to eat more than the usual in order to gain enough strength just in case I had to fight my way out. Of course food wasn't that great, but it was energy nonetheless. It was hard, I have to admit that, and I've never been the kind of man that's picky around food...
The main problem was the fact that I was always agitated. Sleep didn't come easily and when I managed to sleep it was haunted by nightmares and stuff like that. I used to wake up screaming. I wasn't really resting much. I found myself clinging to everything in order to calm down, from old meditation exercises I used to do when I was a kid to memories of my mother and Padmè (though I have to admit that those memories did everything but calm me down, they had a totally different effect I don't want to talk about), I thought about the battles I had participated with my Master and about the child I had never got to know...in a way or another, in the end I managed to fall asleep but I was too agitated to rest properly.
I had to gain my freedom. I had a physical need for it. My last meeting with Vader had really upset me, I had to get out of there or I would have gone crazy. No turning to the Dark Side or whatever, just plain madness caused by claustrophobia, nothing else. I just couldn't allow them to tamper with my life again or they would win again. It couldn't end like that, not me, not Anakin Skywalker.
Finally in the late afternoon of the chosen day, I decided to act. My last torture session was a week behind and I was almost as healthy as ever. I could do it. After all, I had planned everything in the details, the action, the moment...everything!
Obi-Wan would have been proud of me.
And I owe him pretty much everything in the end. The idea, the meanings...everything! One day I was laying on my bed, thinking and re-thinking about an idea to get out of there when suddenly I found myself wandering in my memories when Obi-Wan was teaching me the basics of the lightsaber fighting. I recalled his own style, his form, so passive but so deadly at the same time. It took advantage the physical strength of the adversary to deviate his blows and find a hole in his defense. It was a passive form of fighting, so different from my aggressive and fast form...and that gave me the idea.
It wasn't like I was a genius, after all it was a trick as old as the Galaxy but it still worked somehow. I just needed to lay down for a moment, be calm and don't attract too much attention. They would be my very liberators, those who would set me free. I would slip through their fingers like the sands of Tatooine. I had managed to escape the grip of the Dark Side once, I could do it again.
This time it was a bit different. It was a real place, not a mental state.
The chosen hour was approaching. Slowly, I was checking my plan again and I was ready. Better, I was hanged.
Because that was my plan! Playing the suicide card! I had plenty of cloth to make the rope, the plumbing had held me for seven years while I tried to make some exercise...it would hold me even in that occasion, I was sure. Most of all I was sure because I would let me hang totally, I would hold myself up using the Force. It was all a trick.
When the soldier in charge to bring me my dinner entered in my cell and saw me hanging there, I saw him jumping in his tracks for the surprise. I have to say I didn't think I was such a good actor but I was doing good playing dead. So good that before he called for help, he came closer to check if I was really dead. Too close.
He was scared to death, I could feel it. He was as scared as I was. If he discovered I was alive, I was dead, this time for real. My plan would happily go out of the window and I would have to start all over again with a totally different strategy. Or die in the span of half a second.
That was the critical moment. That moment signed the difference between freedom and prison, between life and death. My life and my death, to be precise.
But my will to live and get out of there was stronger than the soldier's training. When he was close enough to me I acted. I pulled my legs up to my chest and hit him squarely in his chest with both my feet, causing him a shock strong enough to cut his breath out and sending him crashing against the other wall behind him.
Before he could call for help I jumped down the rig and before he could grab his weapon I was over him. He wasn't wearing his helmet so my job was easier. With a quick move, I hit him at his throat with my elbow so he wasn't able to talk anymore. Just to be sure, I broke both his arm twisting them hard then I placed one hand behind his neck and one under his chin and twisted his neck until it snapped in two.
I stared straight into his eyes for a moment as he died. I could literally see his life abandon his body. He was a rookie, probably the other soldiers thought he was barely a kid. It felt like killing a brother, I had shared so many victories with his fellow clones, most of all those of 501° Legion, the one I had fought with for so long. It just felt wrong. In his eyes I could see the terror as he stared straight at his killer while life slipped from him like water. I felt the chilling breath of death as he went rigid for a moment then felt limply on the floor like an empty sack. It was the same feeling I had every day, the feeling of imminent danger that hanged on me like a ton of durasteel. It gave me the creeps.
I shoved the thought aside and went back to my plan. Stripping his armor and wear it.
The armor was a bit tight, but it worked. He had left the helmet just outside the cell, so I fetched it before finishing the job. I had to make him unrecognizable. And that was the most gruesome think I had ever done. I had to beat him until not even Jango Fett could recognize him. That way, I could at least have a couple of hours of advantage on them, to put some distance between us. It wasn't a great feeling.
Almost effortless, I slipped the slipknot around his neck and hoisted him up where minutes before I was standing. This time though, there was really a corpse.
With that done, I wore the helmet and exited, then closed the door behind me. Half of the plan was done. Now, let's get the other half done: discover where the heck I was and retrieving my things.
I walked down the hallway and turned right. The first door on the left the sentry box and the access to the storage room with the personal effects of the prisoners. In the box there was a computer with all the information I needed.
The operative system hadn't changed since the days of the Republic, they had just changed the symbol with the one of the Empire and some names. I typed the ID code of the clone I had killed and entered. After that, I typed my ID code and got all the results I needed.
Name: Anakin
Surname: Skywalker
ID Name: 100389
Planet of birth: Tatooine; Birth place: Unknown
Date Of Birth: Unknown
Age: 29
Date of Death: -
Current Civil Status: Unmarried
Occupation: Jedi Master
Crimes: Attempted Homicide.
Sentence: Life Sentence.
There was everything I needed, I just had to change the date of death and I was ready to go. I checked the clock of the computer to get the current date.
If I hadn't completely gone crazy, that was my son's birthday. I had picked the perfect day, hadn't I?
Once I had the death confirmed, a pop up window opened with the order to take the personal effects of the deceased and destroy them and there was the location of the box in the corner of the window. I typed the order to open the storage room. My box was in the corner of a rusty shelf. I checked the numbers on the box, the numbers were correct. I opened the box and and checked the contents. There was everything. My clothes, my lightsaber...everything I had arrived with except the wedding ring that I wore around my neck.
I returned for a second at the computer and looked for any clue about where the heck that prison was. Easier said than done actually. I had to dig through huge amounts of meaningless files and information, not to mention that place seemed to be unknown even to the Empire itself. Then, finally, while I was looking for a star map or something I found the map of the sector. I was on Blenjeel! The maximum security Republican prison for war criminals, that's where they had sent me! Practically, in the midst of nothing, on a planet with few human settlements and endless deserts populated by some of the most hideous creatures of the Galaxy. The closest city was about nine miles north of the prison and probably a spaceport with a doubtful reputation. Well, I couldn't afford anything else in the end. At least I knew where I was and how to get away from that hellish planet!
Excuse me for my language but in that very moment I only wanted to yell a huge fuck you to everything. Nine miles in open desert, a desert populated by carnivore reptiles that crawled underneath the sand and could eat a large human being in one mouthful? Either I found a speeder or I was dead. Things weren't too good in that moment.
But in the end I was wearing an Imperial uniform, I could always borrow one of their speeders...
I could go. No, better, I had to go! That corpse in my cell wouldn't fool them for too long, it wouldn't have taken long before they found out the trick and give the alarm. And what an alarm!
I wore the helmet again and walked towards the exit with my box. Fortunately I didn't encounter anyone until the entrance. There the guard in the sentry box asked what I was doing with that box at that hour.
I tried to mask my voice. "One of the prisoners deceased some hours ago. He's been declared dead and I have been ordered to destroy his personal effects. Just bureaucracy." I said.
The soldier checked on the computer, then nodded. "Oh, yes...389. I just received the notification. Perfect, you can go. Have you finished your shift?" he asked amicably.
I nodded. "Just now. This is my last assignment for the night. I was hoping I could catch a speeder and go to the city and have something to drink." I lied badly, but I tried to sound as convincing as I could.
"Sure. Catch the one you want, the keys are in the hangar. Half of the squadron is out there. Try to avoid bar brawls and have fun!"
I took a deep, relieved breath.
"Sure I will! Thank you again!"
He opened the door. The sun was setting and it cast an orange light on the rocky desert. I had to move because the desert is a rather cold place during night.
"See ya tomorrow!" I head him call from his place.
Tomorrow my ass...I thought to myself as I set foot out of there for the first time.
I was free. I was really free, for real! I was out!
I just needed to get that speeder and change clothes, then I would really have been free. I was out! I was free!
As I practically ran towards the hangar that was situated on the right side of the prison, that was my only thought. I couldn't get those words out of my mind, it was like a broken record that kept repeating the same words. I was out, I was free, the plan had worked perfectly!
I grabbed the keys if the first speeder I could find and jumped in, then stormed out of the hangar pushing it as fast as it could go. The first thing I did, when I was far enough, was getting rid of the helmet, then, a couple of miles ahead, I stopped and abandoned the rest of the armor and wore my old clothes. It felt so good! Finally something that wasn't as rigid as the armor or so rough and raw like the prison uniform. Finally I was in my element again. Once I hanged my lightsaber to my battle belt and donned my cloak, I re-started the engine and ran through the desert to the spaceport.
Now I had to find a transport to Coruscant.