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Sound always came back first. Or, more like sound was what first started making sense again. TK always knew he was kriffed when the background noise changed from a glorious, undefined tapestry to distinct packets with actual meaning. And the music in this canteen was awful, which didn’t help.
Sight came next, not that he’d had his eyes open. But the beautiful swirling rainbows floating in the darkness behind his closed eyes faded away, leaving nothing but the sad, dim lighting that barely illuminated the mostly-empty tables. The euphoria faded with it, and that was almost the worst part: when he slid out of that soft, safe place where nothing hurt; down and down until reality latched onto him and sunk all its teeth into his heart.
That part was pretty kriffing awful. But the actual worst part was when the Force-sense came back.
TK hated it. He hated it. He hated being aware of other peoples’ emotions. Even the good ones stabbed into his brain like knives, and there weren’t many people with good emotions in a place like this. Sure, there was plenty of euphoria—it wasn’t as if anyone came to this place for the ambiance—but nobody popped death sticks because they were feeling good in the first place. And maybe it was because TK never felt good himself, other than those short, artificial bursts that were getting shorter and harder to replicate all the time. Or maybe it was the Force itself, kriffing him over the way he so richly deserved. But the why didn’t matter when every second he was sober and conscious his mind was flooded with Coruscant’s constant, underlying misery like the poison in a moonglow fruit. He was pretty sure it hadn’t always been like that. He had vague, dreamy memories of sitting with his mother in the field behind their house, laughing in delighted wonder because he could sense all the life around him and it was beautiful. But that had been before the Inquisitors took him—if that moment had ever even happened at all. Most of the time TK’s childhood felt like a lie he’d told himself, back before he’d learned not to hope.
There wasn’t much beauty on Coruscant, and everything TK sensed with the force just drained whatever glimmer of light was left in him like mynocks on a hull. Only the death sticks mitigated it, and never for long. He’d thought occasionally about going to some other planet: some sparsely-populated Outer Rim dirtball where it’d just be him and the local wildlife. Maybe that way he’d be able to sense some kind of beauty in anything again. But then he’d be alone with his thoughts, and his thoughts would destroy him more completely than the death sticks ever could. Force healing could mend physical damage after all, and he’d made plenty use of it considering how he lived. But none of TK’s damage was physical.
All the same, his Force sense had its uses. Like that sudden little warning buzz at the back of his skull.
TK straightened slowly, swaying in his chair like he was still high. He gritted his teeth and expanded his sense a bit, trying to get a clearer idea of what was about to happen. There wasn’t much—the Force was infuriatingly vague like that—but there was enough for TK to know danger was coming, and soon, but he wasn’t in danger. Yet. The question was how soon “yet” would arrive, if it was going to.
TK took a breath and casually slipped his hand under the table to wrap it around his lightsaber hilt, slowly easing it out of the nondescript belt pouch he carried it in. He might have nothing to live for, but that didn’t mean he was ready to make the final jump. He’d go out on his own terms, thanks, and those terms definitely didn’t include this grimy, hole-in-the-wall canteen.
His Force sense fastened on the woman as soon as she strode through the entrance, though he wouldn’t have needed it to know she was the one he needed to worry about. It wasn’t just the black jacket, trimmed in dark red-orange like slashes of blood, or the same-colored helmet that hid everything except her eyes. It was how she kept the helmet on, and how TK would have bet his last stolen credit the arsenal she surrendered at the door was less than half of what she was packing. He watched her surreptitiously scan the place as she ordered a drink she’d probably leave untouched on the bar, and he thought about ducking out the back. He was sure he could get to his crash pad and grab his go-bag before she found him. Go to one of the Outer Rim planets the way he’d been considering. But he was sure as bantha piss she’d just come after him, the same way he was sure he was her target. The idea of running, maybe for years, was more exhausting than he could bear thinking about. And he’d have to give up the death sticks. TK wasn’t quite fond enough of breathing for that to feel worth it.
So, no running. He could probably take her. Maybe. He’d been the Fifteenth Brother after all, albeit briefly, before the Emperor decided the Inquisitorius were no longer required. He might have altered his lightsaber and destroyed his Imperial uniform, but he’d never forgotten his training. But this woman, casually tapping her glass of fire dancer as she glanced in his direction… Well, she was after him; she had to know what he was. And not even a Sith could stop every single blaster shot, and Inquisitors weren’t as powerful as Sith.
TK slowly pushed the table farther away from him with his foot, making sure he could get up fast if—when—it came to a fight. He was already sitting in the farthest corner from the door, so at least no one could ambush him if she had a companion he couldn’t sense, like a droid. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, deliberately straightening as he centered himself in the Force, which always felt like sinking into a pit of black ooze. That was another thing he was almost certain had been different once, but he was so used to the sickly, greasy cold of the Dark Side it was almost soothing. And he always had plenty of anger and hatred to draw on.
He could sense the woman instantly fastening on his movement, the way he’d known she would. He kept his eyes closed, wrapping himself in stillness, while she slowly left the bar and came over to him. She walked with a sleek, deadly grace like she had all the time in the world. He used the opportunity to read her, get a feel for what he’d be up against. She practically reeked of self confidence, with more than enough arrogance to go with it, but he was absolutely certain it was all well-earned. This bounty hunter knew exactly who she was and what she wanted. TK could only wish he had any idea what that was like.
He was surprised to find a blank place in her belly where his sense couldn’t touch. Cybernetic mods, he decided. That offered a bit of reassurance, knowing she’d lost at least one fight.
He only opened his eyes when she pulled the shabby, armless chair away from his table and turned it around as she sat, resting her forearms along the back. That was clever, since it positioned her to get up quickly and gave her an impromptu weapon or shield. “Ty-Lor Kennadi Strand?”
It wasn’t a question, but TK couldn’t have answered anyway, not even to demand how she knew his name. He was having enough trouble breathing.
During the torture that passed for training, they’d called him “Boy”, or “Brother”, or nothing at all. Mostly nothing. He’d whisper his name to himself at night, terrified he’d forget it along with nearly every good memory he had. He hadn’t forgotten it, but he’d never used it again. Not even after he’d escaped. He’d told himself it was in case someone recognized it. “Strand” wasn’t a notable lineage, but you couldn’t be too careful. And if his father or…or his friends were somehow still alive, he owed it to them to stay hidden. It would keep them safe.
But this woman knew it.
“Ty…” He swallowed, breathed in, out, let the freezing anger calm him. The hand he had wrapped around his lightsaber kept shaking anyway. “Ty-Lor’s dead.”
And that was the real reason he didn’t use his name anymore: It had died with the boy the Inquisitors had taken. Monsters didn’t have names, they had designations.
The woman’s helmet showed enough of her face, he could see her blink in surprise, then arch an eyebrow in obviously mocking disbelief. “You seem pretty solid for a ghost.”
“And you’re pretty talkative for a bounty hunter,” he shot back. “Do I at least get to know who put a price on my head before you threaten to shove me in carbonite?”
TK could tell she smirked by how one of her shrewd, dark eyes crinkled at the corner, which only made him angrier. She was sitting beyond the reach of his lightsaber, likely on purpose, but that didn’t make her safe. “I can kill you right now and get out of here before your body hits the floor,” he snarled.
“You might,” she agreed with a casualness implying she doubted it, which did nothing to cool TK’s mounting rage. She must have noticed, because she lifted both her palms and tilted her head in a vague kind of peace offering. “But if you do that, you won’t find out who sent me.”
“I don’t care.” He really didn’t. He’d done his best to keep a low profile, but he’d always figured it was just a matter of time before someone—Empire Remnant or New Republic; it didn’t even matter—caught wind of a Dark Jedi hanging around CoCo Town and decided he needed culling. TK couldn’t blame them. It was what he deserved, he just wasn’t quite ready to let it happen. “And I’m not going with you. Your choices are to leave on your feet or in a bag. That’s all.”
He could tell she smiled again, but not what it meant. “No Jedi mind tricks? Just violence?” She shook her head, clicking her tongue like a disappointed instructor. TK had to shove down an irrational spike of sudden fear. This woman was just a bounty hunter. She could only subdue him or kill him—she couldn’t hurt him. Not like his instructors had when he’d disappointed them, and he’d disappointed them often. “You’d really rather kill me than know who wants to find you,” she finished, in a voice like she’d hoped for better but hadn’t expected it.
“I want you to leave,” TK gritted. “I don’t care how. And I don’t give a Rancor’s a—"
“Owen Strand,” she said, her voice slicing through his words and then right through his throat and his heart. “I’m not here for a bounty,” she went on, speaking more quickly now as if she recognized the fragility of his stunned silence. “I’m here because your father sent me. He’s been trying to find you.”
“My—my father?” TK breathed. “He…he’s alive? Really?”
“He’s alive,” she confirmed. “Here.” She reached for an inner pocket of her coat, but paused and waited until she saw TK’s tiny jerk of a nod. She pulled out a round metal holoprojector, placed it on the table in front of her then slid it to him with a flick of her wrist. “Owen Strand hired me to bring this to you.”
Your parents are gone, boy. You have a master now, the Emperor. And be grateful. It’s by his grace alone you’re still alive, you sniveling wretch. If I had my way you’d be bantha fodder. So stop your pathetic bawling, or I’ll give you a reason to cry you won’t forget.
“Go on.” The woman jutted her chin at the holoprojector TK hadn’t touched, was just staring at with his chest heaving, like the small disk was a detonator that would go off if he moved. “Don’t you want to see your father’s message?”
Stop calling him that! Stop using his name! He imagined snarling it at her; imagined actually igniting the lightsaber in his clenched, aching hand and ending this. He could even pretend he was doing it to protect Owen from TK’s enemies, from TK himself. The Inquisitorius excelled at fabricating excuses to give in to their rage. But TK wasn’t Fifteenth Brother anymore, had promised himself he would wield his anger like his lightsaber: with control and precision, and only when necessary. He might be a Dark Jedi and a monster, but he refused to be what his instructors had tried to make him. And he knew his anger was because he was actually afraid.
He glanced at the woman. She had pretty eyes, he thought. So dark they reflected the pale lighting like pools of water. He couldn’t tell what she might be thinking from what little he could see of her face, but all he could sense from her was an anticipatory calm. He took a breath and turned on the projector.
Immediately the blue-tinged head and shoulders of Owen Strand shimmered into life. He looked so much the same, with his well-hewn, handsome features, for a second TK couldn’t breathe. It was obvious Owen had even taken the same painstaking care with his hair he always had. TK’s mother used to tease him about it, tell him the Force disproved of his vanity. Owen would just laugh and tell her she loved it. And she’d laugh and agree.
They’d been so happy together. And they’d loved their son so much. And then the Inquisitors had killed Gwyn and taken TK. He’d been almost certain they’d killed his father too, certain enough TK hadn’t tried to find him after he escaped the Empire, in case he was right. And also in case he was wrong, and Owen would be as disgusted with what his child had become as TK was himself. Some things were better unknown.
(He’d forced himself to never, ever think about his best friend at all.)
TK had stopped imagining his father would come for him a long time ago. But here he was. And TK had been so deeply ensnared in memories he was missing the message.
He stopped the playback, reset it and started it again. His father’s head and shoulders shimmered into blue light.
“Ty-Lor,” his father said. The name sounded like hope and sorrow. “This is Owen. I…” He broke off, closed his eyes and swallowed like he was in pain. “I don’t know if you recognize me, but, I’m your dad. Your father. You were…” A breath. “The Empire kidnapped—they stole you, when you were ten years old. Your mother…she died trying to protect you. She took a couple of them down, but…There were too many. And I…” Another breath, then Owen made a noise that could have been a laugh except for the infinite anguish in it. “I was as useless as a Mon Calamari on Jakku. Maybe that’s why they left me alive. I don’t know. But…” He stopped again, and the hologram flickered as Owen discreetly knuckled at his eyes. “I never stopped looking for you, Ty. Never. Not even when the Rebellion told me it was hopeless, that you were dead. Or…or… They told me what the Empire wanted with Force sensitive children, Ty. So, so I know what they did to you. And…” This time the breath he took looked like he exhaled his soul, and the smile Owen gave the recorder could have broken TK’s heart if he’d still had one. “And I get it. Why you didn’t come home. I understand it if…if your war hasn’t ended. I was lucky enough to speak to a few Jedis—and they are hard to find, believe me—so I know what you may be fighting against. With the Dark Side, I mean. Even if I could never hope to experience it the way you’ve had to.
“And I understand if you haven’t come home because…because you can’t forgive me for not fighting hard enough. For not doing more to find you. For assuming we were safe in the first place, just because the Empire seemed to forget about your mom after Order 66. Believe me, Son, I don’t blame you.” His smirk was almost as heartbreaking as his smile. “I haven’t forgiven myself either. But, when Karloz—”
TK slapped the holoprojector off and rocketed to his feet, clutching the little disk to his chest like something too precious and far too dangerous to be let go. His lightsaber was in his left hand, still inert and pointed low, but ready.
“Hey,” the bounty hunter said. She was standing too, her chair between them just like he’d predicted. Her voice was even, but the tone cut through the static in his head, born of a formless terror all-too ready to erupt into a cold, killing rage. His eyes jumped to hers. “You’re all right,” she went on in the same even voice. “We’re in a scummy canteen on Coruscant. I just gave you a message from your dad, remember? That’s all it was, just a message.”
“A message,” TK repeated. He turned his hand to look at the holoprojector, a little worried he’d crushed it. It was off, nothing but a lightweight, solid circle caged by his fingers. He swallowed, forced himself to breathe deep and calm. “I-I just…” He stopped, unsure what he was even trying to tell her when he didn’t understand his reaction himself. “I haven’t…”
“You’ve been gone for a long time,” she said surprisingly gently, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did.
He nodded slowly, still breathing, and dropped the projector into an inside pocket of his jacket. He made sure it wouldn’t fall out then forced himself to sit again, though all he wanted to do was run. He watched as the woman sat as well, just as slowly, her eyes on him the whole time. It made him bristle, angry because he was ashamed. He was tired of being angry.
TK sheathed his saber, then put his aching left hand on the table, clasped it with his right. He couldn’t seem to stop trembling. “I thought he was…”
Both the woman’s eyebrows arched. “Dead? Your father?”
“No.” TK shook his head, then hesitated. “Well, yeah. But…I meant…” He took a breath, gritted his teeth like his father had in the holo. He didn’t know why it was so hard just to voice the name. “Karloz. I…” He clenched his jaw until his teeth hurt, but it did nothing for the humiliating ache in his throat. He’d been so sure he couldn’t cry anymore. Tears were for beings with souls and his had been torn out a long time ago. “I thought he was gone,” he managed finally.
He knew the stranger thought he still meant “dead” by her tiny nod. He didn’t, but it was close enough and he didn’t know how else to say he’d been sure everything Karloz represented was as lost to him as the man himself. TK could never go back, and the way forward had offered him nothing beyond meaningless survival.
Until maybe this moment. He didn’t know.
“He’s alive,” the woman said, just as gently as before. “He and your father are alive, and they’re waiting for you.
“You can go home,” she added a moment later, when his answering silence had stretched too long.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. He shook his head, unable to meet her eyes. “I’m not…who they remember.”
She shrugged, then atonished him by lifting her helmet off and putting it between them on the table. She was older than TK had imagined, though still quite beautiful, with black hair and an old scar near one eye. She didn’t look like she smiled often. “They’re not going to be who you remember either,” she said simply. “None of us are who we used to be.”
His laugh was a sharp, painful thing. “Yeah, well. I don’t think they got pulled apart and put back together wrong.” He swallowed, shocked at the weight of grief pulling at him. Nothing he was telling her was new. “I can’t go home. I…” He took another breath, steeling himself. He refused to be so much of a coward he couldn’t even say it. “You know what I was. I hunted Jedi. I stole babies. I killed their parents in front of them. I was a monster. I am a monster. I can barely live with myself, because of what I did. How can I expect them to? People who…who—” His voice cracked before he could say loved and trusted me. “Ty-Lor Kennadi is dead. Just like I told you.” He barely hesitated before he pulled the holoprojector out of his pocket and put it back on the table, sliding it to within her reach. “Go back and tell them that: The man they’re looking for is dead. The Inquisitors destroyed him.”
She didn’t pick it up; barely changed her expression, except to look unimpressed. “I don’t think monsters spend their freedom moping in wastoid canteens sucking death sticks. In my experience, monsters don’t give a rancor’s ass about the people they hurt.”
TK shrugged. “I still hurt them.”
The woman went silent, watching him, tapping her gloved fingers on the table like he was a vaguely intriguing puzzle. TK stared back, too tired to even be annoyed at her scrutiny.
“You know, the only real difference between you and me is, I was forced into my line of work by circumstance, and you were forced into yours by torture and brainwashing. Oh, it’s no secret.” She tossed off TK’s shock with a quick tilt of her head. “The New Republic was more than happy to broadcast every one of the Empire’s atrocities. They think the key to winning hearts and minds is constantly pointing out how things could be worse, instead of making it better.” Her mouth curved a little, like she found the New Republic’s failures mildly entertaining. “But the thing is, maybe I didn’t steal babies, but I hunted my fair share of people for credits. And I’m sure at least a few of the ones I assassinated were parents. I’d like to think they were all scum who deserved it, but I don’t know for sure. I never asked.”
“Didn’t you care?” TK demanded. He’d tried not to, but he always had.
She shrugged. “I couldn’t afford to. Where I grew up, either you were predator or prey. I didn’t want to be prey, so I did what I had to. Kind of like you.”
TK frowned, confused, then shook his head. “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t do what I had to…I did what they told me to. Because—”
“Because the alternative was dying, or being abused so badly you wished you could die. Right?” He was still reeling when she added, “How is that different?”
He tried to answer, find an immediate, obvious reason, but he couldn’t. “I was proud,” he said finally, his voice like metal on duracrete. “I was proud, when…when they finally said I was good enough. That I’d completed my training. So I could…be a predator like them. I was proud of it.”
“So was I,” the woman said. “Nobody’s proud to be a victim, Ty-Lor.” She shoved the holoprojector lightly, making it skid back across the table to bump into his fingers. “There’s no shame in doing what you had to so you could keep breathing. But if you want to be ashamed of something, be ashamed of how you’ve been treating yourself. You’re a survivor. Own it. You were a prisoner of the Inquisitors for ten years and you came out the other side. Be proud of that.”
TK stared at the disk, but he didn’t pick it up again. “It’s not that easy.”
The woman frowned. “Who said it was easy? Look, Ty.” She propped her elbow on the chair back, then leaned her chin on her fist, looking mildly annoyed. “I don’t have any monkey-lizards in this fight. I was sent to find you and give you that projector—” She jutted her chin at the disk. “—Which I did. My job’s done. If you want to spend the rest of your likely very short life scraping your own brain on behalf of the people who kidnapped and tortured you, that’s no doonium off my hull. I get paid either way. All I know is, whatever you think you are, and whatever you might actually be, there are two men out there who really want you to come home. And maybe Ty-Lor’s dead and maybe he isn’t, but if you stay here like this, whoever you are now really will be dead, sooner rather than later. And honestly? That’s a pretty pathetic way to bite it for a Jedi who managed to escape the Empire.”
TK crushed another wearingly familiar surge of rage. He was only angry because the bounty hunter was right. “I don’t…” He swallowed. “What if I don’t deserve it?”
She snorted in derision. “Who cares? Maybe you don’t. But here it is.” She gestured at the holoprojector again, then quirked one edge of her mouth in the closest thing he’d seen to a genuine smile. “Leave on your feet and go home, or stay here and leave in a bag. Up to you.”
“I know.” He did; he always had. He’d been sure that was how he would leave, eventually.
At least, he thought he had been. His future wasn’t quite as certain anymore.
“Good,” she said brusquely. “Glad you’re not as stupid as you look.” She reached into the same breast pocket she’d taken the holoprojector from. He stiffed automatically, but all she did was pull out a communicator and push it towards him. “Here. That will raise your dad and Karloz, if you decide to talk to them.”
TK snatched it up before it could roll off the table and shoved it into the same pocket he’d had the disk in. Partially just so he wouldn’t give in to his instinct to throw it against the opposite wall. But he only hesitated a moment before he repocketed the holoprojector too.
The stranger watched him with distant amusement, then stretched, folding her arms luxuriously behind her head. “Well, this has been fun, but I have places to go.” She got smoothly to her feet, turned the chair the right way around and placed it neatly under the table. “That comm will contact me as well, by the way. I’ll be here for another twelve hours or so. Let me know if you want a ride off this rock.”
He stared at her. “Seriously? You’d give me a ride?”
He meant because he was a former Inquisitor, but she just she smirked outright in response, like he’d said something funny. “Oh, I’m not giving you anything. Passengers pay.”
“Right,” he murmured, then grimaced. “I meant—”
“Oh, I know what you meant,” she said. “But I’m not offering a ride to an Inquisitor, I’m offering one to Ty-Lor Kennadi Strand. For a good price.” She knocked the table a couple of times with a loose fist. “Remember: twelve hours. You know how to contact me.”
And then she picked up her helmet and walked away. He watched her leave on her feet, striding to wherever her business was like she owned every inch of the entire planet. Like she deserved it.
He didn’t even know her name.
TK leaned back in the ill-kept, uncomfortable chair, eyes on the patrons at the other end of the canteen but really focused on nothing. His heart was hammering, but he didn’t know why. He wasn’t actually afraid.
Was that what hope felt like? He couldn’t remember.
He put his hand over the pocket holding the communicator and the projector, as if they might have somehow vanished in the seconds since she’d given them to him. He’d never finished the message, he realized. All he really knew about Karloz was that he was alive. Just like TK’s father.
TK hadn’t seen either of them since he was ten years old. He’d resigned himself to never seeing them again. But he could. They were just a commlink away. He could talk to them whenever he wanted. He could find out what Karloz’s voice sounded like now. If he still ever thought about that warm, perfect evening, just days before the Inquisitors came and destroyed everything. They’d held each other’s hands under the endless indigo sky, and TK had said, One day you’ll be my husband, and Karloz had said, and you’ll be mine, too.
TK had forced himself not to think about it for ten years. Lately he’d been thinking about it all the time.
Karloz probably already had a husband. Maybe that was what Owen was about to say when TK stopped the projector. Maybe that fragile, trembling hope aching in his chest would betray him the way it always did.
Or maybe Karloz thought about that evening as often as TK did. There was one way to find out.
TK took a breath and pulled himself to his feet. He was steady now, sober. His usual dealer was still at the bar, with enough death sticks to sell TK as many as he wanted.
TK walked right past him, out into the night. It was difficult—more difficult than he liked admitting to himself—but he did it.
And then he kept going, back to his lousy little womp-rat burrow of a crash pad, so many levels down the only difference between night and day was the number of people waiting to mug him. Sometimes, TK missed real daylight so much he ached. He missed the light. He’d forfeited any right to it a long time ago, he knew that. But, maybe it wasn’t as completely lost to him as he’d thought.
Stupid, childish fantasy. Except, for the first time in years it didn’t feel entirely impossible.
Whatever he held in his demeanor tonight made the would-be muggers scatter before he needed to use his abilities. He was fine with that. TK just wanted to get back to his miserable little room; he had a holo message to finish. And after that…
He still wasn’t sure what would happen after that. It was… It had been a long time. The bounty hunter might have understood him, but…she didn’t know him. He still didn’t think surviving was something to be proud of. Not for him.
He still didn’t think he deserved it either, but here he was anyway. On his feet, still moving, and the two most important people in the galaxy to him wanted him to come home. He just had to decide if he could.
Well, he had a clear head and twelve hours; He’d figure it out.
He was pretty sure he’d made his choice anyway.
END