Over The Hills And Far Away - A Star Wars Fanfiction - Chapter 8
Chapter 8: This Loneliness I Need To Be Who I Am
Chapter Text
The same moment got out the atmosphere of the planet, I jumped in the hyperspace then inserted the autopilot and sagged on the pilot chair exhausted. I was in desperate need for sleep and fortunately I had at least twelve hours before getting to Naboo.
I dragged myself in the crew quarter and literally crumbled on the bunk bed and as soon as I touched the mattress I was sleeping. I was totally and unmistakeably worn out, it had been a lot since the last time my energies had been completely drained from me. Outside the prison at least.
It was a dreamless sleep, fortunately. It was like a long void, my brain had shut off completely and when I woke up, except for the usual numbness due to such a deep and long sleep, I felt really better. I had my energy back, most of all mental energy, and I had enough to get on Naboo and find the Naberries. Still I had to try and remember where they lived. I knew they lived in the southern part of Theed, a nice residential neighborhood, in one of those wonderful houses with huge gardens. The problem was getting there!
I stood up from the bunk and stretched. My neck was still hurting and stiff. As I stretched it, hoping it would get better because it was hurting bad, I walked to the cockpit.
"Come on Anakin! Stop whining!" I said to myself as I checked the navicomputer. Everything was just fine. No messages, estimated time of arrival said three hours and twenty five minutes, which meant I had slept almost nine hours straight.
In the crew cabin I found something to eat (military rations, nothing more) and had a sort of breakfast even if I didn't even know what time it was. Probably it was two in the afternoon on Coruscant and if I remembered correctly, Naboo was about three hours ahead. Doing the maths, I would get on Naboo in late afternoon and I would have to move quickly to get to the Naberries before night fell. You never know what kind of encounters you can make on a planet that's openly pro-Empire.
I tried to relax a bit, I managed to meditate for about an hour but the results weren't that good. My mind was elsewhere and even if my concentration had gotten better while I was in prison in that occasion I couldn't help but being distracted by everything. I was too agitated, I couldn't help it.
I had to do something though, and I decided I could check on the engine of the ship. I had two hours before I got on Naboo and I had to keep my mind occupied with something! That ship was brand new, coming straight from Incom, and still it needed some settings done. The hyperdrive needed some tuning, but that's normal. It's that kind of engine that needs some tuning after every long trip.
Anyway, I was checking the computer when it signaled we were less and a parsec away from Naboo. I let it calculate the best trajectory then jumped out of hyperspace. Perfect exist. I was straight in front of the planet, perfect alinement too.
I hadn't lost the magic touch in the end.
Right before I entered in the atmosphere and started the landing procedure I receive a message from the port authority. They informed me that due to some work in progress in the main spaceport of Theed I had to land in one of the minor ones. They signaled there was one in the southern part of the city that was well serviced by public transports and from there I could get anywhere I needed.
Just perfect, since while I was meddling with the engine I had recalled the way to the Naberries residence and if my memory didn't fail me, that spaceport wasn't too far from there. Probably ten miles.
I filled the forms for the permission to land with names and data I made up in that very moment (the only important thing was the ID number of the ship, who cares if the name of the pilot is the name of a Jedi deceased ten years before!).
At the moment of landing, I let the autopilot do its job and just enjoyed the show in front of me. I admit it, sometimes it's just good letting the navigating systems do the job. Most of all because I was taking advantage of Imperial stuff. And I loved it!
The show was simply incredible. I had been rather often on Naboo, but I had been in Theed just a couple of times and once I was barely a kid and I was a bit too occupied to notice the beauty of the city. Not to mention that when I had been there ten years before as Padmè's bodyguard I had more than a motive not to look outside of the windshield. As for the other times, I headed straight to the southern hemisphere of the planet, to the Lake Region. After that day, I had never set foot in Theed again.
It was a magnificent city. The exact contrary of Coruscant, worlds apart from Mos Espa. Just being able for once to look out of the window and enjoy it was incredible. We flew over the southern side of the city and a couple of miles from the royal palace, built on the top of a small hill. It looked like the last time I had seen it. But this time there wasn't Queen Jamilla waiting for us, ready to help Padmè every way she could. There weren't battles raging a couple of parsecs away, I wasn't tormented by nightmares about my mother and my wife wasn't with me.
I sighed and waited for the landing. As soon as the ship touched the ground, I opened the ramp and jumped off the ship. The spaceport was incredibly crowded, probably due to the deviations of traffic. All those people coming and going gave me a certain advantage. There were a lot of weird characters in there, more visible than me and I don't really think that a thirty years old dressed in black is more visible than a Zabrak beating the guts out of a Rhodian for money matters.
And considering the small crowd that had formed around the two fighters, I was right.
A worker asked me to declare the cargo and how long I would stay there. Obviously I lied, telling him that I would set off again the next day. He told me that an hour of delay was enough to have the vehicle confiscated. I didn't care much, it was better that way. They would have gone looking for the owner and they would find a very dead Jedi and a disappeared Jedi leaving another fake name as ID.
Sometimes bureaucracy helped.
Once out of the spaceport, I started walking around the streets. I was closer than what I had expected to be. I started finding my horizons quite quickly, I recognized some names of the streets, some alleys...stuff like that. If my memory was right, it would have taken no more than an hour to get there. Just in time before night fell. The sun was already setting and I didn't like going around at night too much. There was still a high risk they didn't recognize me (after all, I had met them only once and it was ten years before) and I feared I had to argue with them to prove I was who I said I was.
Not to mention that the city was full of guards and imperial agents, at least the zone outside the spaceport, checking the huge crowd of refugees. In the end, the largest part of travelers that weren't professionals or traders did it for one reason: trying to find a better place to live. I had heard about humanitarian disasters, riots on planets that had been overtaxed and the huge flux of immigrants that these taxes caused. People moved to the Outer Rim trying to find work as a miner, people devoted themselves to piracy and there were people who, in order to survive, decided to turn to crime lords. I didn't know what was worst: being a pirate or a smuggler for the Hutts. I didn't eve wanted to think about it. Shit, seven years of Empire had been worse than 10.000 years of Republic.
It was summer but it wasn't that hot. There was a northern wind that was rather strong and it was bringing rain. On the horizon I could see dark clouds gathering and preparing to pour down. I really needed to be quick.
I put my hands in my pockets and kept going on my way, trying to avoid any check point, just in case there were some, and walking as fast as I could. I was sure the Clones weren't the examples of a strong mind and will but there was still the chance they had made them better during the years and mind tricks could not work on them. I couldn't afford a single mistake in that moment. On Coruscant, yes I could. I knew the city, I knew how to mix with the population and disappear in a moment but in Theed? No way. In case they found me, I was busted and I didn't know any other way to get out a nasty situation than slicing some clones up.
And I wanted to avoid that too. What could gather more attention than a squad of troopers sliced up with a lightsaber?
I was worried, I had to admit it to myself. I was very worried and not only for me but for the Naberries. They had a certain influence but the Empire doesn't count stuff like that. Once I got out, if something strange happened on Naboo, Vader wouldn't wait a second more and would go straight to them.
Still I held the hilt of my weapon tight in my pocket. You never know what to expect from life.
And as precise as Obi-Wan's scold when I did something stupid, bad luck struck again! I was less than half an hour from my destination when I turned and saw in a small square ahead of me a squad of troops that checked on the pedestrians.
"Holy crap..." I muttered in Hutt as I walked, hoping they didn't chose me.
That was a big problem in that case. If they picked and checked me, I was busted. I didn't have any ID! Better, I had the ID of a pilot I found on the ship, one of those documents without photos that I had put in my pocket as a precaution but if they checked the code, I was dead. And if they searched me, it was even worse. A lightsaber, even when turned off, is more than a weapon, it's a symbol. And it's impossible for a civilian to have one, even if he found it during the war and kept it as a souvenir. It's that kind of object you keep at home, once you have made them unharmed. You don't carry them as a lucky charm!
Obviously, since I was the only one in the square, they chose me! The higher officer raised his and and waved at me to come closer. I did as ordered and tried to look as calm as I could.
"Can you show us your ID please?" he asked, his voice filtered through the helmet sounded metallic and unfeeling. It wasn't a Fett clone, his voice was a bit too acute, even through the microphone. They had got some new material for their tin soldiers. Damn it!
"Sure." I took the ID card from my pocked and handed it to him.
The clone looked at it carefully, then he looked at me again. "Can you tell us why you are here?"
I shrugged my shoulders trying to look at ease. "Family. My brother broke his leg and he needs some help in his workshop." it was a huge lie but it was everything I could create in that moment.
"In a neighborhood like this?" asked a clone behind the chief. That was a Fett clone, his voice was very recognizable.
"It's the fastest way from the spaceport." I tried to adjust it but I had the bad feeling.
"Any problem?" asked the officer. "His ID is regular!"
"Captain, do you mind if I check a little better?"
"Oh come on! He's harmless!" I held my breath as the two of them bickered about me. I prayed he didn't pass the magnetic card in the reader or I was dead.
"It's just that I feel like I've already seen him, somewhere..." he said.
Fantastic, he was a war veteran.
"I just have a common face. People tell me I look like someone else, it happens all the time."
The clone didn't look convinced, I could feel it through the Force. He still had doubts but he didn't have any authority to do anything. He lowered his gun and they gave my card back and let me go with the best wishes for a good night. I really wanted to kill them all!
I went back to my long walk, sure I was safe now.
Wrong!
Only five minutes later I was walking deeply submerged in my thoughts that I didn't notice that about two hundred yards ahead there was another check-point. When I saw it, it was too late to change path and make it look like I really needed to turn. It was all a matter of luck. Or Force, I'd prefer to say.
With my hands tucked in the pockets of the jacket I had found on the ship, I kept walking, trying looking at ease as with the other check point. I needed all the self control I could muster or at that point I just could start shaking. I was walking slow enough to hear part of their chatting while I got closer. I hoped they would let me go without stopping me. In total, they were four soldiers, three forming the actual check point crew and one in the driver seat of the recognition vehicle behind them.
"Seems like he vanished."
"A prisoner can't just disappear into thin air, come on! He must have found a way to get out of there!"
"He faked a suicide then he got out wearing the uniform of the soldier that brought him his meal. That's how he escaped!"
Finally the news of my escape had reached other planets outside Blenjeel.
"Where do you think he went?"
The others shrugged their shoulders. "Who knows. Probably he's looking for his friends, those we haven't found. There are still quite a few of them out there, you know. But the orders are clear: kill him on sight! End of the discussion." replied the one who seemed to be the chief.
"Damn...with him out, our workload will quadruplicate!" finally they noticed me. "Sir, your entering a weapon-free zone. Stop there."
I can't repeat the sequence of insults, swearing and curses I threw at them in my head. I obeyed and waited for them.
"Can you show us your ID?"
Again I obeyed. They didn't run it through the computer but I wasn't safe yet. "In this zone there's absolute prohibition for civilians to bear weapons. Before we proceed with the search, do you have any weapon to declare?"
I must admit I was scared to death at that point. I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat. "No Sir." I lied.
The clone nodded. "Take your hands out of your pockets and raise your arms over your head."
I obeyed and held my hands high while they ran a scan on me, probably a couple of inches away. I hoped it wasn't the kind of scanner sensitive enough to catch the small amount of energy radiation emitted by the battery of a lightsaber. It wasn't a powerful cell, it didn't need too much energy to work, but it was still an energy cell and if I was right, it was that kind of thing that scanner looked for. Obviously, it started shrieking then they passed it over my right pocked. It was the sensitive kind. Another sequence of unrepeatable curses.
"Sir, can you show me the contents of your pocket?" he asked as calm as a stone.
Busted. I had hoped I didn't have to hurt anyone but in that point it was inevitable. Still I could make it look like a shootout.
Slowly, very slowly, I lowered my right hand and put it in my pocket. I gripped the hilt of my weapon and then counted up to three before acting. Faster than anything they had ever seen, I took out the weapon and ignited it. Its plasma blade came to life with a low hiss in front of their masked faces, but I knew they couldn't believe their eyes. Before they could react, I leaped forward and landed behind them, trying to put as much distance between us that I could. I might have had to fight, but I still could control the damages.
They armed their blasters and a shower of red lasers poured on me, some hit the stone wall behind me, some others, more precise, I had to deflect them. Those were aimed straight to my chest!
I managed to deflect all of them, some of them without too much care, others, well, ended up on my assailants. Two in a row finished on the chief, sending him on the ground, I don't know if dead or just unconscious. At that point it didn't matter, I just had to stop them.
I tried to end it as fast as I could but I didn't have enough time to make the blasts bounce where I wanted. They were too many and too fast, even for me. The majority of them hit the armored vehicle behind them, and that's the beginning of my troubles.
One of them changed fire mode. A more powerful blast flew straight towards me, it hit the blade and ended its course on the vehicle, piercing the armor. I don't know what it hit, probably a box of back up weapons or high end explosives, because a moment later the vehicle blew up.
The explosion was deafening. In a split second, the shootout was over, I was sent flying backwards against the wall by the blast wave, my head spinning like mad and a slight buzz in my ears, not to mention the blurred sight typical of head traumas.
Slowly I opened my eyes and saw dust and debris everywhere, the four clones laid on the ground lifeless. Fortunately they were still in once piece or the situation would have been really bad. I was half sitting against the wall, trying to shake away the daze, when I heard someone screaming. Someone living the in the zone was calling the police. I had to run away.
I stiffly stood up, tried to take a step forward but I fell on the ground again, my right side felt like it was on fire.
I turned on my back and looked down. I was bleeding. Badly. The explosion had sent a metallic shrapnel flying around and it hit me like a jagged bullet. It probably broke a couple of ribs. And it hurt. Shit, it hurt like hell! Breathing hurt most of all, and if I didn't move, I was a dead man.
Groaning in pain, I managed to stand up and holding the wound tightly with my hand I started walking as fast as I could. Every step was an agony but I had to move, there was too much traffic around there.
As soon as I was far enough from the crime scene I stopped for a second and tried to catch my breath. My clothes were drenched with blood, that meant I wasn't leaving tracks behind me but it wouldn't work for too long. I could already feel blood slipping down my pants. I pressed a little tighter and kept going. I had to gather every ounce of energy I had left, use the Force to keep me up and standing...I used every trick I knew and it was in that moment that I realized that the Force wasn't healing me anymore. Not to mention that the shrapnel was gritting against my ribs and it was even worse. It wasn't a good sign. At all.
Finally I found the right street. I was almost there. I recognized the porch in front of the house and those two or three steps that led to the front door. A decorated plate confirmed it was the right house. Walking up those three steps was a torture but I managed to drag myself up and rang the doorbell, then leaned on the doorstep. I couldn't breath properly and I saw my sight field getting narrow and narrow by the moment. I was about to lose consciousness.
On the other side of the door I heard fast, light steps approaching and a female voice announce she was going to open up. It was Sola, I could recognize her voice even if we hadn't spoken much.
Suddenly I felt the coppery taste of blood in the back of my throat. That wasn't good.
"Who's there?" she asked before opening.
I took a deep, painful breath before I could speak. "Sola, please don't get mad. Can we talk inside? I need to get in!" I was in such a haste I totally forgot manners.
"Who are you?" her voice betrayed fear. Well, it was comprehensible after all, I hadn't even introduced myself!
"Please..." my voice was broken. "Please, let me in, I can explain everything. We met ten years ago, I was with your sister. That's why I'm here I need to find her!"
"My sister died seven years ago."
"You know it's not true!" I replied. "Sola, I'm begging you, I can't talk from out here. Please, I have to find her! It's about her children and..." I couldn't complete the sentence. The jagged piece of metal in my wound moved and stole my breath.
The door suddenly opened. She had grown older, not too much but it was now clear that she was a lot older than Padmè. By the look on her face, she seemed terrified.
"How do you know about them?"
I turned towards her. I knew I wasn't such a great sight to bear but at that point I had to confess or she would have never opened up.
"Because I'm their father!"