Chapter Text
Joohyun woke up with a start, gasping for breath, her eyes wide. Sweat beaded her forehead. She shivered. It had been the same dream - no, nightmare - again. Every night, without fail. Still gulping in the crisp night air, Joohyun flung off her sweat-drenched bedsheets, got up, and stretched. It was still dark. Joohyun must have only been asleep for a few hours. Her heart was still pounding, so she doubted she would get to sleep any time soon.
Joohyun glanced around the single room she called home. A mat on the floor, a blanket, a mini-fridge, a cupboard, and her clothes strewn all over the sparse floor. Apartments on Corellia were expensive. She was only just able to scrounge up the weekly rent for this place on her ship mechanic salary. But there were worse places she could have settled. It had been one of her favourite places to visit when she’d been a Padawan. Every time she had a mission there, her Master Taeyeon had to constantly remind her to focus on what she was doing and forget about all those starships flying to and fro from the spaceports.
That was when the pain started again. An ache in her chest, a clench on her heart, constricting her, suffocating her. She cried out, stumbled and fell, knocked her elbow against the wall. Again, she was sweating, gasping. Joohyun sighed. Her heart was pounding again. She really had to use her Jedi training here and be mindful of her thoughts. If they strayed, there would only be pain. Joohyun closed her eyes, focused in on her breath, and began to count. In, 1, 2, 3, 4, hold, 1, 2, 3, 4, out, 1, 2, 3, 4, hold, 1, 2, 3, 4…
She maintained that rhythm for several minutes before she finally began to feel her racing heart slow down. Okay, that’s good. Her Jedi training still works. Joohyun simply sat there for several moments, maintaining her breath and feeling the nighttime chill run shivers through her as she untensed her muscle groups, one by one. A small smile even began to twitch at the edge of her lips.
That was until Joohyun felt a different kind of cold begin to seep into her apartment. A cold, emptiness in the Force. The dark side. She looked at the door. Quiet. A stillness in the air. Then the bright scarlet of a lightsaber blade pierced her door lock before it was kicked open, revealing the lightsaber’s owner. A masked figure dressed all in black.
An Imperial inquisitor.
“You play too much with the Force, Jedi,” he growled. “A little too bold, I think.”
Joohyun’s jaw clenched. She reached into the Force. She felt its currents. The cold, dark eddies around the inquisitor. The vestiges of its undisturbed flow near the walls of her apartment. With a short breath, she pulled on the currents. Her cupboard sprang open. Her lightsaber sang as it flew and slapped into the palm of her hand.
The inquisitor lunged and stabbed the point of his blade directly at Joohyun’s heart. She ignited her own lightsaber, its sky-blue blade warding off the cold of the night, and parried the attack. But she had no opportunity to control his blade. The inquisitor darted back as quick as he’d come and began to circle around Joohyun.
Joohyun held her blade up in the high guard of Ataru and circled in turn. This wasn’t going to be easy, especially in her cramped apartment.
The inquisitor’s front foot made a minute movement. Joohyun flinched. The inquisitor attacked again, stab after slash after stab. Drawing hard on the Force to reinforce her muscles, she parried blow after blow after blow.
In the corner of her eye, Joohyun noticed that her door was now behind her. Perfect. She blocked, snapped out a riposte at the inquisitor’s head, parried his counter, then snapped a sharp kick at the side of his knee.
It buckled like cardboard. He gasped as his balance wavered momentarily. Without hesitation, Joohyun leapt back out of her apartment into the hallway. Everyone must be awake after all this. There’s no way her landlord would let her keep the lease with this amount of noise.
The inquisitor snarled and lashed out with the Force, shoving Joohyun against the wall and pinning her. Her head smacked against the wall and the air knocked from her lungs. With vision unfocused, she glimpsed the motion of her enemy’s red blade arcing towards her. Joohyun parried. Her arm buckled under the power of his blow. It was like the light of the Force was draining from her, suffocated by the inquisitor’s darkness. Like a candle without any more air to burn, she was fading.
Joohyun lashed out with her bare foot. It connected with the inquisitor’s groin. He groaned and doubled over.
Joohyun got up and ran for her life. When she reached the elevator door, she glanced back over her shoulder. The inquisitor was already up and moving again. She swore and barged open the door to the stairwell - and was greeted by the sight of another red lightsaber.
Panic fuelled Joohyun. Her reflexes flicked her blade to a parry position. The second inquisitor’s blade stabbed through her thigh instead of her heart. She cried out at the searing, burning pain, then slashed out with her own blade - and cut her enemy’s head off.
Immediately, a memory flashed before her eyes. Her best friend, Yeoreum - fellow Padawan, fellow Knight - kneeling helplessly, tears in her eyes. A forlorn smile adorning her face as she gazed at Joohyun and said, “It’s okay,” before her head was removed from her body by Vader’s blade. The sight of her head falling and rolling onto the ground, the sad smile still plastered on it, with eyes now lifeless.
Joohyun screamed.
The first inquisitor charging behind her was thrown away like a ragdoll by the power of Joohyun’s pain, his neck snapping as his head collided with the roof.
For several moments Joohyun couldn’t hear or see anything. Her world was a flare of red and anguish. Eventually, a whisper came back to her. 1, 2, 3, 4. Joohyun blinked, only now noticing the tears streaming down her face. 1, 2, 3, 4. There she stood, chest heaving, barefoot in her pink pyjamas, with blue lightsaber in hand and two corpses of Imperial inquisitors nearby.
Stormtroopers wouldn’t be far behind. There was no time to gather any of her belongings. She had to get out of here. Now.
=== Two galactic standard weeks later ===
Seungwan collapsed back against the wall behind the counter of her bakery. So marked the end of yet another day. The highlight was that old crone who returned to the store fifteen minutes after buying her loaf of bread to ask for an exchange, and was affronted enough to slap Seungwan with it when she refused. Customer service was so…rewarding.
Every bone in Seungwan’s body seemed to ache. From early in the morning, she did all the baking. Then she opened the bakery and tended to all the customers. The best part? She did it all alone. Customers were lured in by her frankly impressive baking, but then left after they lost their patience. Seungwan was only one woman, she couldn’t serve everyone at once. It was just too much. Not for the first time, the thought of hiring help crossed her mind.
Seungwan shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts away, then groaned as she forced her aching body up to stand again. She still had to count the earnings and do the books after all. With a sigh, she meandered her way to the back office, plopped herself down at the desk, and opened up her datapad to begin her work. From the looks of her books, Seungwan did have a little breathing room for an employee.
By the time she was done with today’s accounting, the dark hours of night had taken hold. Here on this asteroid mining colony, temperatures plummeted the instant a sun wasn’t shining on the surface. Icicles stretched down across her bakery’s window. Snow drifted down in the frigid air outside. A little shiver ran through Seungwan’s body, so she put on another jumper and then her overcoat. There, much better.
Seungwan slung her backpack over her shoulder and stepped out of her bakery, the doorbell dingling softly after her. The small town’s streets were mostly empty at this hour, dimly lit by the cool, pale glow of the system’s sunlight reflecting off nearby asteroids. Her bakery was situated in the main shopping street - where traders put up their wares and produce, and where the restaurants and bars were located. During the day, it was busy and bustling, complete with musicians and entertainers as well. It was the street where the miners and their families could take their minds off the harsh cold and grueling work.
The quiet emptiness was a relief for Seungwan. She finally had some moments to herself, without people to see or work to do. But along the way, her pleasant daze was interrupted by the sounds of a scuffle in an alleyway. Seungwan paused to look.
In the shadows of the alley amidst the snow and the trash, there was a small woman with tangled, black hair caught in a headlock by a large, muscular man. Seungwan’s heart leapt to her throat. She had to call someone.
Then, she paused and frowned at the sight.
The woman, with a white-knuckled grip, slowly pried the man’s arm from her neck. Her elbow thumped into the man’s stomach, then up into his nose. A crack resounded and he recoiled, clutching it as it bled. The woman didn’t give him time to recover. Her foot struck his groin. He doubled over. She grabbed his head with both hands and slammed his face down on her knee. His body shuddered. He collapsed onto the ground, groaning, but otherwise motionless. The woman knelt and rifled through his pockets, taking his wallet and comlink before standing again.
Seungwan stared, mouth open. Who was this woman? Said woman then noticed Seungwan staring at her. Seungwan averted her gaze and hurried away.
What she had just seen was…unnatural. No woman of that size should have been able to do what she did against a man like that. Seungwan had heard stories from the galactic core about the generals of the Grand Army of the Republic that fought in the Clone Wars, warrior-monks with mystical powers and swords of light. They had been charged with treason and marked for execution by the Empire.
Seungwan had heard about the Jedi before. She had thought all that talk about magic was a myth. But with what she had seen, she couldn’t be sure anymore. Had one finally made their way to this corner of the galaxy?