"So, let me get this straight," Nari said, ticking points off on his fingers with the enthusiasm of a teenager listing chores he had no intention of doing properly. "I fly to a backwater sector, find an uninhabited rock, bury my lightsaber in the dirt, and pretend to be a vagrant until the Empire collapses from old age. Did I miss anything?"
I stared at him through my helmet visor. The guy was standing next to his newly repaired ship, radiating a mix of gratitude and restless energy that made my skin itch.
"You missed the part about keeping your head down," I said, crossing my arms. "And the part where you don't ignite your laser sword every time someone looks at you funny. And the part where staying alive is actually the most annoying form of rebellion there is. The Resistance is brewing, sure, but it needs years to gain momentum. We aren't waiting for the Empire to die of old age; we are waiting for the Rebellion to organize."
If my plans went right, those years would be expedited, but I didn't say that part right now.
Nari scoffed, leaning against the hull of his starfighter. "It feels like running away, Fulcrum. Who knows when the thing you mentioned would happen. We should stick together. Three Force users are stronger than one. We could actually do some damage ourselves. Master Ben here can be the face of the Resistance."
I looked over at Obi-Wan—or "Ben," as he was currently insisting on being called. He stood a few meters away, wrapped in his desert robes, the lower half of his face obscured by a rebreather mask. Even with the disguise, his posture screamed 'Keep the fuck out of this.'
Internally, I sighed. This was exactly why Nari had to go.
The guy had good intentions, but his survival instincts were nonexistent. He was the type of Jedi who thought justice was a blunt instrument you smashed over the head of the nearest stormtrooper. If he stayed on Tatooine, he'd eventually trip over a sandcrawler and accidentally reveal Luke Skywalker to the entire galaxy. He was a variable I couldn't account for, a loose cannon in a timeline that was already held together by duct tape and my own declining sanity.
I turned my head toward Obi-Wan, putting as much pleading energy into my body language as possible.
"Ben," I said. "Maybe you can explain the concept of 'tactical patience' to our friend here? He seems to think martyrdom is a valid career path."
Obi-Wan stepped forward, the sand crunching softly under his boots. He carried himself with a weary gravity that instantly silenced Nari's restless fidgeting.
"Nari" Obi-Wan said, his voice roughened by the modulator in his mask. "I understand your desire to fight. To right the wrongs you see around you. It is the nature of a Jedi to want to protect."
He paused, letting the wind whistle between them for a moment.
"But the galaxy has changed. The Order we knew is gone. Igniting your saber now does not bring justice; it brings death. To you, and to anyone standing near you." He placed a hand on Nari's shoulder. "Sometimes, the hardest battle is simply enduring. Hiding your light so that it may burn brighter when the true darkness comes. You must survive today to fight for the future."
Nari looked down, the rebellious spark in his eyes dimming slightly. "It just... it feels wrong to do nothing."
"You aren't doing nothing," I interjected, stepping in to seal the deal. "You're waiting for the signal. Remember the message Master Obi-Wan Kenobi sent out after the Purge?"
Obi-Wan stiffened imperceptibly next to me.
"The warning,? Yeah...I did." Nari murmured.
"I have heard about it too." I said, warming up to the bullshit. "He told all surviving Jedi to trust in the Force and wait for a new hope. A wise man, that Kenobi is. Probably incredibly handsome too, based on the holograms. If the great Master Kenobi says we need to wait for the right time, who are we to argue? He definitely has a grand plan."
I glanced at Obi-Wan. Through the mask, I couldn't see his face, but I could practically feel the exasperated sigh vibrating through the Force.
"Indeed," Obi-Wan managed to say, his voice tight. "A... very wise perspective."
Nari looked between us, then sighed, defeated. He pushed himself off the hull of his ship.
"Fine. You win. I'll head to the Outer Rim. Find a rock. Sit on it." He offered a crooked grin. "But if I hear about you two blowing up a Star Destroyer without me, I'm going to be pissed."
"Deal," I said. "Now get out of here before I change my mind and charge you for the repairs."
Nari clasped my forearm, then turned and bowed respectfully to Obi-Wan. Without another word, he climbed into the cockpit. The canopy hissed shut, the engines whined to life, and a moment later, the starfighter blasted off into the darkening sky, leaving a trail of ion exhaust in its wake.
We watched until the ship was just a speck among the stars.
"You think he'll listen?" I asked, kicking a loose rock.
"I hope so," Obi-Wan said, pulling down his rebreather mask to reveal a face that looked five years older than it had yesterday. "Though I fear your influence may have given him some... unique ideas about what constitutes 'lying low'."
"Hey, my influence kept him alive. That's more than the canon timeline did for him."
"Canon timeline?"
"Figure of speech."
With Nari gone and the refugees dispersed into Anchorhead, Tatooine finally felt like something I could put behind me. Lyra and Herana had a place, a little credit buffer, and their memories left untouched, because something in my gut said taking that choice away from them would be crossing a line I couldn't walk back from.
The others were free to scatter however they wanted, their worst memories of lightsabers and the Scythe smoothed over enough that the Empire wouldn't come knocking later.
As for the ship, I eyed the former Inquisitor transport and already felt a headache forming, because un-breaking something that angry was going to take time I didn't have. I also needed a long talk with Obi-Wan about that half-promised technique of his, since my outbursts were getting harder to cage. One problem at a time, I told myself, even though my life had stopped respecting that rule a while ago.
__
[Timeskip]
__
Tatooine looked smaller than it had any right to from up here, shrinking into a desolate marble of ochre and rust as we broke orbit.
I sat in the co-pilot seat of what used to be the Scythe, watching the planet rotate slowly beneath us through the forward viewport. The twin suns cast long shadows across the dune seas, painting the desert in shades of amber that almost looked peaceful if you ignored the Hutts, the sand people, and the crushing poverty. Somewhere down there, a farmboy was probably whining about power converters while his aunt and uncle tried to keep him grounded, completely unaware that his primary bodyguard was currently fleeing the planet in a stolen stealth transport disguised as a garbage scow.
The disguise work had been exhausting. I'd spent most of yesterday welding scavenged hull plating over the Scythe's distinctive Imperial lines until it looked like every other piece of flying junk in the Outer Rim. The aesthetic screamed "budget bounty hunter who drinks too much and makes poor financial decisions," which was exactly the vibe we needed. The interior was still Imperial sleek, but from the outside, even a customs officer with a grudge would write us off as not worth the paperwork.
Obi-Wan sat in the pilot seat beside me, his hands resting lightly on the controls. His attention remained fixed on the receding planet. His expression was hidden behind a rebreather mask, but I didn't need Hyper Perception to read the tension in his shoulders. The battered armor I'd cobbled together for him made him look like something a Mandalorian might wear after losing a bet and his entire wardrobe in the same game of sabacc.
I flexed my fingers, feeling the cold weight of the rings on each digit. Ten of them total, one on each finger, making me look like some cheap-ass pimp trying to compensate for a lack of personality. They were simple bands of conductive alloy to the naked eye, but they were currently the only thing keeping me from exploding like a thermal detonator.
External anchoring, Obi-Wan had called it.
We had spent hours trying to find a way to deal with the pressure building inside my soul. The black substance—whatever it was—acted like a blockage in the plumbing, causing the Force to back up until the dam broke. The rings served as grounding rods, allowing the Force energy to bleed out of me in a controlled, randomized trickle rather than building up to critical mass. As my emissions were without intent or direction, they mixed in with the ambient cosmic noise, effectively invisible unless someone was standing right next to me.
It worked, barely. At least I didn't have to hide in a ditch hoping that no one noticed my outbursts. But it was as effective a treatment as using a bucket to bail out a sinking Titanic. I was treating the symptoms while the disease was still very much festering in the boiler room of my soul.
I felt Obi-Wan's chest expand as he prepared to speak. My Hyper Perception was fuzzy, dimmed by the rings and the internal pressure, but I knew his patterns well enough by now.
"Master," I said without looking away from the viewport, "we've already discussed this at least three times."
Obi-Wan finally turned his head toward me. "Even if we had discussed it half a dozen times, I would still be hesitant."
"I know."
"You are barely twelve years old," he continued, his voice filtered through the modulator. "You have trained in the Force for less than one-tenth of that. If that was not sufficient cause for worry, your current condition requires healing, not confrontations with Jedi hunters or bounty hunters."
"And you need to stay on Tatooine to watch over our mutual friend," I replied, keeping my voice level. "Yet here we are, doing things we clearly shouldn't be doing. Besides, the anchoring method you taught me is working. I haven't had a random outburst in five hours. That's a new record."
Obi-Wan made a sound that might have been a sigh behind his mask. "What you are doing is not a cure, Ezra. It is barely holding the symptoms at bay. If those rings fail, or if the pressure exceeds their capacity, you will be defenseless."
He paused, glancing back at the console where the nav-computer was calculating our jump.
"I find myself weighing the cost of our subtlety," he admitted, his voice low but steady. "Had I confronted the Inquisitors when they first arrived, or warned Bail immediately... perhaps Leia would be safe on Alderaan."
"That would have been catastrophically stupid and you know it" I shook my head slightly. "Taking out the Grand Inquisitor draws Vader's eye faster than a flare in the dark. You made the right call holding back, Master."
I paused, tapping the armrest. "Even if you had warned Bail, Reva isn't the type to give up because of a few extra guards. She's obsessed. She would have taken Leia eventually. At least this way, we're the ones holding the cards, and the Empire doesn't suspect a link between you and the Senator."
I didn't mention the other reason. If Bail had been warned and Leia wasn't kidnapped, how would I get the chance to curry favor with a big shot like Bail Organa? I needed resources, and a debt from a future leader of the Rebellion was worth its weight in coaxium. Well, what I told him wasn't exactly false to be honest. Reva was unpredictable enough that standard security measures wouldn't have stopped her.
I glanced at him, sensing the lingering tether of worry pulling him back toward the Lars homestead.
"You don't need to worry about him. He is the safest he's been in years with the Tuskens gone licking their wounds," I said, anticipating the concern.
"Had the situation not been so urgent—" Obi-Wan started, then stopped himself. He shook his head. "We will be back by tomorrow evening, assuming everything goes according to plan. Dwelling on the 'what-ifs' serves no purpose.
"Sure. Easy in, easy out."
The console between us suddenly chirped, a flashing blue light cutting through the dim cockpit. An encrypted transmission request.
"That'll be the client," I said, tapping the acceptance key.
A hologram flickered to life above the dash. Bail Organa looked tired, the lines around his eyes deeper than they appeared on the HoloNet, but his posture was immaculate. He stood in what looked like a private office, the background blurred for security.
"General," Bail said, nodding respectfully to Obi-Wan, before turning his gaze to me. "And young Ezra. I trust your departure was smooth?"
"Smoother than a politician's promise," I said. "We're in open space. The ship's transponder is spoofing a registered freighter ID. We're clear."
"Good," Bail said, visibly relaxing. "I have transferred the coordinates for the rendezvous on Daiyu. The funds for the 'bounty' have been deposited into the account we established. Everything is in place on my end."
He paused, looking between the two of us.
"I must admit, Obi-Wan," Bail added, a faint smile touching his lips. "When you said you had taken a Padawan, I didn't expect someone so... proactive. The plan he drafted is remarkably thorough for someone his age."
Obi-Wan glanced at me, the eyes behind the mask narrowing slightly. "He is certainly resourceful, old friend. Though if he applied the same level of intellect to his meditation and patience as he does to illegal modifications and complex schemes, my hair might not be turning gray quite so quickly."
"Hey, I apply my intellect where it's needed," I shot back, grinning. "Meditation doesn't fix hyperdrives or pay the bills. That's why your days are so stressful, Master. You're too focused on the spiritual, not enough on the logistical."
Bail actually chuckled. "Well, in this case, logistics are exactly what we need. The narrative is set. I am a desperate father who has lost faith in the slow-moving Imperial bureaucracy. I have hired two independent contractors—you—to retrieve my daughter by any means necessary."
"Who would question an Imperial Senator for hiring bounty hunters and supplying them resources to rescue their kidnapped daughter?" I said, reciting the logic I'd hammered into them earlier. "It's the perfect cover. It explains why you're involved, why we have credits, and why we're shooting people, all without mentioning the word 'Jedi'."
The plan really was elegant in its simplicity, which was the only reason I thought it had a chance of working. The canon series of events that happened after Leia's kidnapping was atrocious plot writing at worst, and a clusterfuck of stupidity at best. Reva kidnapping Leia just to lure Obi-Wan was a stretch, but Bail actually calling the most wanted fugitive in the galaxy to do the job? That was insane.
This way, the story tracked. Senators hired private security and bounty hunters all the time. Bail's willingness to spend lavishly on his daughter's safety would surprise exactly no one. And the Empire, despite its many faults, rarely questioned the internal affairs of its more prominent political figures unless given explicit reason to do so.
"The logic holds," Bail agreed. "Though it remains a significant risk. If you are discovered..."
"We won't be," Obi-Wan said, his voice firm. "We will retrieve Leia and return her to you. You have my word."
"I know," Bail said softly. "May the Force be with you both."
The hologram fizzled out, leaving us alone in the silence of the cockpit again.
"Well," I said, checking the nav-computer one last time. "Coordinates are locked. Daiyu, here we come."
I reached for the hyperdrive lever.
"Prepare for lightspeed, Master," I said. "Try not to throw up in the mask."
Obi-Wan just shook his head as the stars stretched into lines, and we vanished into the blue tunnel of hyperspace.
--
A/N: Next update on Sunday hopefully. Donate stones if you can, otherwise comments are also a nice motivation!
And thanks a lot for understanding my problems regarding slow updates. I have taken some suggestions reader gave to my mind and will try to work with them.