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Self-care days were few and far between when Maul was under the suffocating control of his former Master Sidious—which took up the substantial majority of his life. It was a challenge to recall a moment in which Maul felt truly at peace, comfortable in his existence when Sidious haunted his mind and body.
A craving for lost comfort coaxed the Dathomirian into parking his speeder bike before a local spa.
Maul felt a sense of shame in approaching the front door. An appointment dedicated solely to luring him off-guard into a state of relaxation seemed highly foolish and frankly quite futile, but despite himself, his soul seemed to yearn for it. Perhaps he needed the tranquility more than his reluctant mind wanted to accept.
Casting a defensive glance over his shoulder instinctively, he submitted, gripping the door at last and hastily pulling on the handle.
The door did not open.
Maul instantly drew his hand away as if the handle had burned him, his foot catching him as he bounded from the spa’s front. Yellow eyes darted helplessly around the building’s exterior, searching for some form of indication that the workers were off-duty.
He was met with a sign not far away, though it did not list the work hours as expected. Instead, it displayed the printed words, “PUSH DOOR.”
His mouth dropped into a frown at once.
It was one mistake.
This was only the second shameful act he had partook in today, next to stopping at this cursed spa to begin with. Now he at least needed to follow through, so as to not be deemed a coward.
He drew in a quaking breath and pushed the door open.
Upon entering the spa, he was quickly drowned in a sea of workers congregating around him at once, caressing his horns and poking at his tattoos.
“The ink is immaculate,” one ogled.
“His muscles are very tight,” another observed.
An older Twi’lek among them pulled a measuring tool from her bag and began to examine the circumference of his ears.
“Shall we give him another piercing?”
He hardly resisted wiggling uncomfortably under their smothering, but they shared astonished grins all the same.
He suspected they saw profit potential from him as they scoped out the surplus of beauty work that could be done on a Zabrak. A part of him was charmed, despite feeling overwhelmed by their scrutiny.
One of the workers circled around to his front, a hand planted firmly on Maul’s tense shoulder. “Would you like a pedicure today?”
A surge of heat rushed to his face.
Maul’s throat was knotted, preventing him from granting any kind of answer or explanation to the request, but he could see the worker glance down to his cybernetics. They were instantly apologetic, as it usually went when somebody ignorant referenced the legs he didn’t have.
It didn’t matter, though, as the amendments were all but drowned in the buzzing of his ears.
Kenobi did this to him.
As if to rectify the situation and preserve his peacefulness, the older Twi-lek led a worn Maul to his spa chair where he would sit for the treatment.
“Make yourself comfortable, sir, while I gather the tools for your nails.”
Maul sank into the chair with ease, the interactions at the spa front leaving him unexpectedly weary. He reached toned arms over his head, stretching with a stifled yawn.
“Stuff. We love stuff.”
A dreaded voice instantly broke through the fog of Maul’s tired mind. He flashed bloodshot eyes open wide, meeting face to face with a commercial on the screen before him.
“And there’s some really great stuff out there.”
Maul couldn’t react at first. He felt nothing. His eyes slowly lost focus until he wasn’t even looking at the screen anymore.
“But I doubt that any of us will look back on our lives and think… ‘I wish I had gotten a slightly sportier Starship.’”
In an overwhelming torrent of dread, Maul was suddenly consumed by the voice, Kenobi’s voice, as it seemed to asphyxiate him.
The Twi’lek returned with a tray of beauty supplies in hand, placing it on the table by Maul’s chair before regarding him. Once the lady looked back at him, her expression shifted to one of distress at Maul’s condition as she exclaimed, “Oh dear, are you okay, sir?”
The commercial continued to play on the screen before them.
“I wish I had discovered a crunchier chip…”
Maul inhaled a quaking breath, struggling to speak. “I’d like to— to request a new seat,” he tried breathlessly.
“Do you think any of us will look back on our lives and regret the things we didn’t buy? Or the places we didn’t go?”
”Of course, right away Sir, let me—“ Just as the Twi’lek moved to usher Maul from his chair to a new one, a new client was sat next to Maul on the spa chair adjacent to him.
This advancement seemed enough to draw the lady’s attention from Maul’s predicament to the newcomer instead.
“Look at these glorious Montrals!”
Maul dared a glance to the lekku in question—a grateful distraction from the abhorrent man, his nemesis, on the commercial before him.
Upon looking at what stole his beauty tech’s attention, he met eyes with the very Togruta in the chair.
Ahsoka Tano?
In precise unison that confirmed his suspicions, both Maul and Ahsoka promptly swiveled their heads in opposite directions to break the eye contact that never should have been made.
Maul looked fixedly at the spa door, pleading with the Force in a shameful display of desperation to somehow get him out of this spa.
Why did Ahsoka Tano have to attend the spa on the very same day Maul had? How had he judged so poorly? Surely this was not the will of the Force for him to be stuck beside her at a beauty salon on his rare day of relaxation.
As Maul gazed longingly at the exit of the spa—pointedly away from Ahsoka beside him—he felt as the Twi’lek nail tech began to work on his hands.
”How are your children, Entara?” Ahsoka began to converse with her own nail tech, and he was left astounded at how she spoke to the lady so fluently and free of struggle.
”You’re always kind to ask, Ahsoka—they’re actually off on Coruscant for the night.”
“I bet they’re having a blast there. That’s quite the night out, if I do say so myself,” Ahsoka mused, her smile audible through her tone.
If Ahsoka was as humiliated as Maul at having met him here, she didn’t allow its visibility.
The Twi’lek that abrasively filed Maul’s nails worked swiftly, and she didn’t bother conversing with him.
He continued to tune into the adjacent conversation, however. The detested commercial on the screen in front of them had since been replaced with an advertisement for droid repair services, and Maul felt Ahsoka’s exchange the superior background noise.
“I hesitated to let them go on their own, but I feel they are old enough now. Did you get into much trouble over on Coruscant, Ahsoka?”
Ahsoka chuckled. “I tried not to be difficult to everybody living there, but there’s too much fun to be had. Coruscant is full of opportunity.”
As he listened to them chat, Maul also mentally counted along with the rhythm of the nail file against his hand. He dipped deeper into serenity.
Despite the awkwardness of his whereabouts, Maul had begun to slip into an odd—and rare—state of relaxation. Between the care on his hands and the impromptu distraction of Ahsoka’s dialogue, Maul began to relish in tranquility. He released a deep sigh, long since contained.
However, the breath was then sharply drawn back in as Maul felt the Twi’lek worker’s nail file tear through the skin of his finger.
Maul ducked his head to his chest and bit back a string of curses that threatened to escape his clenched jaw.
Truly remarkable, Maul thought, a reminder, cruelly, that even spa days are not destined by the Force to remain peaceful for long.
The file was merciless as it continued to dig deeper into his flesh with each stroke. The bastard Twi’lek must have been blind to the wound she was digging as she did not even falter.
His finger throbbed with each heartbeat, but he attempted to swallow any giveaway or reaction, painfully aware of how Ahsoka remained beside him.
As he considered her, he also realized that the conversation she was having had halted. For the second time, he risked a glance at her. This time, she was not looking back at him, but rather at his nail tech instead. This was curious to him; he tilted his head in spite of himself.
”Excuse me, Miss Anirtae?”
The Twi’lek placed the file down on the tray, turning to Ahsoka.
“Hello, Ahsoka, how can I help you?”
Maul was consumed with relief as the wound that had formed on his hand was granted a break thanks to Ahsoka’s diversion. He curled his fingers in and out of a fist, refreshing sore joints.
As the Twi’lek—now known to be Anirtae—was caught up with Ahsoka, Maul subtly exchanged his injured hand on the table for the other that hadn’t been cared for yet. This way, the worker in her distraction would assume she had finished working on the other hand, and carry on with the next one.
He sourly noted that she had more than finished caring for that hand anyway to the point of bloodshed, yet she couldn’t notice it. Nevertheless, he digressed.
The worker soon turned back to Maul, picking up her tool again to return to nail-filing.
As she began on his thumb, he instantly became aware of not only the vastly different color of the file, but the lack of roughness on this one. Unlike the jagged iron tool that sliced through his finger, this orange file was gentle and forgiving to his skin.
Just as Maul had switched his hands in the diversion, Ahsoka had switched the file.
He knew at once that she was responsible for this, without question or doubt. Maul hadn’t seen her hands reach to the tray, so unless it was due to similar subtlety that he had practiced, she must have utilized the Force in the switch.
Maul leaned back in his chair, torn on how (or if) to react to this act of good faith—might he even say kindness. Such deeds were few and far between in his life, and though he was usually quick to question the legitimacy of any that he received, he knew this to only be attributed to Ahsoka’s tooth-rotting, stomach-churning benevolence.
Thus, with the improved file being stroked against his fingers, Maul was at last able to breathe a little deeper and let his eyelids sink a little lower. He wasn’t certain if the day he had already had would allow for even such a sensation to be considered “peace,” but he appreciated the calm repose that his body slipped into.
Once his appointment was concluded, Maul approached the front desk.
”How much do I owe?”
The spa worker at the front calculated the amount of credits he owed for his treatment, then relayed the cost back to him.
Maul gestured to Ahsoka, still at her seat. “How much does the Togruta owe?”
The worker looked at him puzzled. “The same as you.”
Maul, in turn, handed them credits for double the price of his own appointment.
”Just tell her to help her friend find a new hobby besides public advertisements. The commercials were utterly loathsome.”