Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sitting in the Outer Rim, at the galactic north end of the Slice, Daiyu was known as a corrupt, hedonistic world where sansanna spice and glitterstim flowed openly on the streets, and bounty hunters gambled away their fresh earnings under the moonlight. Gleefully, the syndicates operated in plain sight, and the planet’s proximity to Hutt Space meant that business was always flourishing.

After spending years based primarily in the Nightsisters’ dark, empty fortress on Dathomir, Maul found the blinding, neon-lit streets of the capital city grating, and the constant cacophony was even worse. Thankfully, his final meeting of the day would be a short one—all he needed was a simple status update from the bounty hunter he had sent to follow the rumors of a Sith holocron and kill anyone who got in the way.

Embo, a tall Kyuzo with a stoic bearing and a wide-brimmed hat that doubled as a shield, was quiet, laconic, and to the point, qualities Maul greatly appreciated in a mercenary. To that point, the case of credits that was his second deposit was accepted with merely a curt nod and a rumble of appreciation in his native tongue.

“Keep me apprised,” Maul replied, dismissing him with an absent wave.

As Embo turned to leave, his comm began pinging, and he shifted the case to his other hand so he could activate the holo on his arm. Out of the corner of his eye, Maul saw that the notification had been an alert for a new local bounty that had just been posted.

At the sight of the holophoto included with the message, Maul whipped around fully, stricken.

He would know that face anywhere.

Kenobi!

The doors to the backroom he had commandeered closed behind Embo, and Maul slammed the control panel, forcing them to immediately spring open again. He rushed through, reaching out with his senses to probe the Force for the detested presence of his nemesis.

His hearts were thundering. He had believed that Kenobi had met his demise during the Purge, hunted down like all the other pathetic Jedi; had assumed he’d been robbed of his chance at revenge by the only being he hated more than Kenobi.

The cantina was abuzz; everyone knew the bounty on a Jedi’s head was monumental, and the locals were all chortling at the idea that one had believed they could blend in on Daiyu, of all the places. On a nearby wall, Maul spied a holobulletin flashing Kenobi’s name and his offense of high treason, with the reward to be provided by the Empire upon capture. The holophoto appeared to be from at least ten years ago; in it, Kenobi wore Jedi robes and that loathsome, arrogant stare.

Maul doubted he had donned either of those recently, but he didn’t need such pittances to unmask Kenobi. He would recognize him by the pompous way he walked, the haughty way he held his head, the ugly curve of his mouth. He would recognize him even as a rotting corpse, though the thought filled him with indignation. He should be the only one to kill Kenobi. It was what he deserved.

But if he didn’t move quickly, one of the many bounty hunters on the planet might just move in and steal his kill.

A growl rumbled from deep within him. He refused to let that happen.

Pulling the hood of his cloak over his head, Maul stalked back onto the streets, sneaking through the shadows as he pursued the traces Kenobi left in the Force. He followed the trail through dark alleyways and crowded thoroughfares, shoving past the throng of vendors and spice dealers soliciting their wares, all the way up to the city’s cargo port, a dark space at the city’s zenith that was blessedly absent of the blaring neon that littered the rest of it. Here, the sounds of the city faded to nearly nothing, and the only movements he saw at first were of loader droids silently moving orderly piles of crates.

Then, as he approached, he could hear a high-pitched voice nattering, followed by Kenobi’s sedate response. Maul noted with surprise that he sounded weary, as if he’d aged thirty years in a decade.

“Kenobi!” he shouted with vigor when he arrived at the threshold.

With a flourish, he drew his disguised lightsaber from his cane, and relished the look of fear that was already present in Kenobi’s eyes when he turned around and urgently shoved a young Human behind himself. He had known Maul by voice alone, just as Maul would have known him.

“Stooping to bounty hunting, Maul?” Kenobi said, and Maul was dismayed to see that despite the characteristic barb, his hands quivered as he withdrew the disassembled parts of his lightsaber from the folds of his ill-fitting robes and formed its hilt.

Kenobi looked grizzled, more like a scavenger than a Jedi Master, the sandy hair on both his head and chin grown long and unruly. The grooves on his face had deepened noticeably, the skin seeming more weathered than the average Human that Maul dealt with, almost like tanned animal hide.

“Hardly,” Maul replied. “I simply heard the news and had to see it for myself: a Jedi Master reduced to the level of vermin, running from that which he cannot evade.”

Noticing that Kenobi had yet to ignite his newly assembled weapon, Maul stalked closer, annoyed. Would he not fight? Did he not fear Maul after all?

“Well, now you’ve seen,” Kenobi said, flippant in that infuriating way that made Maul’s lip curl. “And I really must be going.”

Maul growled, “Fleeing like a coward? How the mighty Jedi have fallen.”

Glaring, Kenobi opened his mouth, no doubt to make some other arrogant remark, but he was interrupted by the sound of another lightsaber igniting behind Maul, who backed up immediately, keeping both Kenobi and the newcomer in sight. He wasn’t usually so unobservant as to miss the arrival of a new enemy, but his hate for Kenobi was intoxicating, all-consuming, and he had allowed it to distract him.

The slender Human stood proud in the thick, black garb of the Inquisitors, her hair twined in intricate cornrows and braids, and in the Force, she carried with her a foreboding wreath of anger. Her lightsaber was raised before her, the red light reflecting off her armor and her dark, menacing eyes. The crystal within it sang with righteousness, with vengeance.

“Friend of yours?” Kenobi hissed at Maul. He had closed his companion’s fist around something small and was urging her toward the labyrinth of cargo crates.

“No,” Maul said, baring his teeth and brandishing his weapon. “Prey.”

The Inquisitor swept closer. “Obi-Wan,” she snarled, each syllable dripping with hatred. Oddly, Maul was reminded of himself, years ago, and wondered, had he lost his passion, his strength? Had he exchanged his rage for desperation?

When Kenobi didn’t respond, the Inquisitor’s fierce gaze swung to Maul. “And this is unexpected—the Shadow. Your taste in friends is strange, Obi-Wan. Lord Vader will be pleased when I bring you both to him.”

“I think not,” Maul scoffed, offended at the mere notion that he and Kenobi were anything but enemies, and rushed her with a deep growl.

She blocked his strike, their lightsabers sizzling together, and when their gazes met, illuminated by red, he was fueled by the hatred and determination in her eyes. He forced her back, and when she lunged back toward him with a series of aggressive slashes, he led her on with precise, complicated footwork, building up the momentum to execute a backflip away from her, then a horizontal spin that distracted her for the second he needed to gain the upper hand and get her to back up.

The dark side surging within him, Maul pressed on, drawing on that dependable wellspring of rage, of his hatred of his former master, of his disdain toward these Inquisitors. The Sith had risen, and they had left him behind—him who had been bathed in the dark side since his birth, who had been raised in it—inviting instead these dismal pretenders, who would never reach the zenith he could have.

As he pushed her back, both ends of their lightsabers colliding, Maul kept an eye on Kenobi, who was watching the duel, seeming to waver between running away and joining them. Kenobi’s companion was nowhere to be seen; she must have managed to make her escape amid the chaos. How like a Jedi it was to sacrifice oneself to get a youngling to safety—how very noble, Maul sneered to himself. He cursed when he paid for his distraction with nearly getting his arm sliced. Snarling, he doubled back, their lightsaber movements growing faster and less precise.

The Inquisitor was one of the better fighters of Vader’s little coterie, but ultimately she was still a mere child, her training meager and incomplete—undoubtedly by design—and she couldn’t hold up against Maul’s experience in a duel. The Inquisitors hunted in groups, relying on one another and their soldiers to overpower the Jedi survivors. Their strategies were crass, their subterfuge thin, and it left them all sorts of openings. In contrast, Maul had been alone for almost all his life. He knew how to outlast an opponent, to wear them down until the moment he could overwhelm them.

“Admit you are the weaker warrior and surrender to me,” Maul commanded. “I have slayed countless Inquisitors just as feeble as you! You disgrace the dark side with your pathetic showing.”

The Inquisitor’s lip curled as she attempted to gain back her lost ground. “Silence, traitor!” she spat. “You are nothing; you are nobody. Get out of my way!”

Unexpectedly, that was when Kenobi stopped hesitating and leaped into the fight, surprising the Inquisitor enough to briefly take her attention off Maul and leave herself vulnerable to his flurry of slashes. She cried out as his lightsaber seared her leg, burning away the armor. With the wound, she only grew angrier, hammering at them both as rage and vengeance rolled off her in waves.

“Lord Vader has been looking for you for a very long time,” the Inquisitor taunted Kenobi, whose expression contorted into consternation. A burst of misery radiated from him in the Force.

“You didn’t know,” the Inquisitor said gleefully. “I can feel your shock. He’s alive, Obi-Wan! Anakin Skywalker is alive.”

Maul was unimpressed. In the duel, he could easily spot that Kenobi was already less effective than he once had been, his strength lacking and his reflexes slow; and at the Inquisitor’s pronouncement, everything about him seemed to slow—to crumble. The statement appeared to completely deteriorate his already pitiful stamina, which made Maul incredulous. How could Kenobi not have known about his own Padawan? Had he been living under a rock since the clones had executed their Jedi generals?

As Maul’s mind raced, the Inquisitor declared, “I will be the one to deliver you to Lord Vader, Obi-Wan!”

Already, Kenobi was somewhere else entirely, hardly seeming to have even heard her. His eyes were wide and fearful, his lightsaber wobbling uncertainly in his hands. He seemed to have lost all conviction.

Seeing his great nemesis humbled, feeling him sink into his despair—neither gave Maul as much pleasure as he might have expected. A surge of bitter jealousy, of frenzied possessiveness, reenergized him. That fear was rightfully his to induce, and Kenobi was his to break—and this upstart meant to rob him of his righteous revenge!

When the Inquisitor tried to deal the killing blow, swinging her saber in an arc that would behead Kenobi, Maul darted forth to block it, red and red crackling wildly on contact.

The Inquisitor growled, and Maul gave her no more room to think as he attacked her relentlessly, awash in the dark side, and pursued her across the cargo port.

Just as Maul had disarmed the Inquisitor and used the Force to slam her into the wall of crates, keeping his blade at her throat—they were interrupted by an arrogant voice.

“Third Sister! I can stand the reek of your ambition no longer!”

Maul did know this one. The Grand Inquisitor, the appointed leader of Vader’s little team of supplicants. He was the only one of them who seemed to have true skill, and in the Force he felt different from the other mad children, the dark side weaving a steel resolve within him, a finely tuned, expertly controlled rage.

“I found him, we have him!” Third Sister shouted, indignant. She slipped out from underneath Maul’s blade and rolled to create distance between them, calling her lightsaber back to her hand.

“And I cannot risk you losing him again!” the Grand Inquisitor said. “Move aside. Watch and learn.”

Snarling, Third Sister rushed him, her double-ended saber spinning. As they began exchanging heated blows, the Grand Inquisitor’s calm and precise in contrast to the Third Sister’s passion, she hissed, “You really think I’d let you take all the credit?”

Kenobi was already running, and Maul dashed after him, uninterested in being caught up in the Inquisitors’ infighting and certainly not about to let Kenobi slip out of his grasp after finally discovering he was alive.

A cargo shuttle sat at the port’s dock, and Kenobi’s companion was beckoning him to it. Kenobi rushed onto the ship, and Maul followed him, leaping past the doorway just as the vessel began to take off. Below, Third Sister screamed at them, her rage incandescent in the Force.

Kenobi barely seemed to notice it, nor Maul’s presence on the shuttle with him. He was evidently winded from the fight, though he seemed to be trying—fruitlessly—to hide it. To be so worn down from that weakling confirmed that Kenobi was out of shape.

Maul scoffed, disgusted. To see that his greatest rival had been reduced to this weak shell of a man. There would be no honor, no triumph from winning a duel against this phantasm of the great Jedi Master. This Obi-Wan Kenobi was a disgrace.

Maul extinguished his blade. Kenobi didn’t seem to register it, but his companion did.

“Who are you?” she asked. The Human had pale skin and a crown of dark braids atop her head. Oddly, her boots looked more expensive than the rest of her clothes. She held her head high, puzzled but unafraid despite her young age and small size. “What do you want?”

“I am Maul of Dathomir,” he answered, glancing again at Kenobi. “And I want to get back to my ship. Where is this shuttle headed?”

“We don’t know,” the Human said. “It’s automated.”

“When someone tells you your name, it is customary to respond with your own,” Maul sniffed.

The Human raised her eyebrows. “I’m Luma,” she said sweetly, laying it on thick. “It’s such a pleasure to meet you, oh great Maul of Dathomir.”

Maul huffed. This Luma certainly had spirit. She turned to Kenobi. “Maybe Ben will know how to change the ship’s course.” When Kenobi seemed not to hear her, she raised her voice. “What is it?”

As he continued not to answer, gaze still frozen and far away, she continued pestering him: “Ben? Are you okay? What’s happened to you?”

Maul scrutinized Kenobi—his wide, startled eyes; the clench of his fists; the way his breathing was still shallow. “You truly did not know, did you?” Maul said to him. He could still scarcely believe it. “Did you not wonder how the Emperor could have found such a powerful attack dog so quickly?”

That finally seemed to break Kenobi from his reverie. “I had other things on my mind at the time,” he snapped. “And news is slow to get to where I live. Besides, I believed I had defeated him. I had no reason to think otherwise.”

Maul snarled, “You made that mistake once before. You were a fool not to finish the job.”

Kenobi looked right at him for the first time since their disgraceful reunion, desolation crumpling his ragged face. “I regret to admit you may be right.”

Maul reared back, surprised at the confession. He sat heavily on one of the crates and sheathed his saberstaff into its cane exterior, setting it against his leg. The weight of the gnarled wood from his homeworld was a comfort in the uneasy situation. He watched as Kenobi sat across from him and hooked his own lightsaber onto his belt, though he kept his hand on it.

“So you do know each other,” Luma said thoughtfully. She turned to Maul. “And you had one of those swords, too. Are you a Jedi? Or an inquisiting being?”

“I am neither,” Maul hissed. “I was once a Dark Lord of the Sith, the great enemies of the Jedi Order. But I was replaced and thus discarded.”

“Maul!” Kenobi scolded. “She’s a mere child.”

Maul frowned at him. “You Jedi may hide behind your lies, but I will not. What is to be gained by keeping this information from your companion?”

Luma was nodding along to what he was saying. “See, I told you!” she said to Kenobi. “If you stopped hiding things, people might be more willing to trust you. The less you say, the more you give away.”

“The youngling is wise,” Maul said with a smirk, just to see Kenobi glare at him. “You should listen to her.”

“He’s dangerous,” Kenobi told her.

“He seems perfectly nice to me,” Luma retorted. Pointedly, she took a seat next to Maul, pretending not to notice the hand Kenobi had reached out to stop her from doing so. “If you were replaced and discarded, then what are you now?” she asked.

Maul considered it. “I am a leader in the underworld. It controls everything, so I control everything.”

Luma’s brow furrowed. “You mean like working with criminals?” she asked bluntly.

“I don’t just work with criminals, young one,” Maul said, baring his teeth. “I rule them. Are you afraid?”

“Not really,” Luma answered, and when Maul looked into the Force, he was impressed to discover she was telling the truth.

“I believe you,” he said, and Luma grinned toothily at him. Kenobi was watching him closely, surprise etched in his irritating face.

“What?” Maul growled.

“I never expected you to be good with children,” Kenobi said, and Maul narrowed his eyes.

“I’m hardly surprised you aren’t,” he retorted, and Kenobi flinched at some memory Maul couldn’t see.

Quietly, he confessed, “The boy I raised became a Sith Lord, so I suppose you’re on to something.” He looked down at his hands, and Maul wrinkled his face, disgusted.

“If you seek a confidant to protest your self-loathing, you will not find them here,” Maul sneered. “You and your Order were willfully blind to every step of Sidious’s plan. You have no one to blame but yourselves.”

Kenobi sighed, but he didn’t defend the Jedi like Maul had expected, leaving him uneasy. This being truly was little more than a specter of Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. He had none of his fire, his wit, his confidence. He hadn’t recited the tenets of the Jedi Order at Maul like all the other times they had faced down.

For so long, Maul had wanted nothing more than to be the one to break Kenobi. But Sidious and Skywalker had achieved what he could not, shattering that glowing beacon and leaving behind only this disconsolate shell.

Seeing Kenobi reduced thus should have been jubilating, but the victory felt empty. Perhaps it would have been different had Maul had a hand in the decimation.

Perhaps not.

“I sought your assistance that day,” Maul admitted bitterly. “I foresaw what Skywalker would become, and I attempted to lure you and him both to Mandalore so we could kill him together.”

Kenobi looked unmoored yet again. “The Force showed you a vision?”

“It did,” Maul confirmed.

“None on the Council saw it coming,” Kenobi said. He exhaled and said softly, almost to himself, “I do not know if I would’ve had the strength to do it.” With a deep sigh, he closed his eyes and arranged himself into a meditating position upon the crate, legs folded and hands on his knees. Maul looked on disdainfully and felt the odd, unpracticed sensation of pity.

The cargo shuttle was antiquated and slow, and over the course of the long journey, Maul pondered his next move. Calling his Crimson Dawn subordinates to retrieve him would be easy enough, but whenever he considered leaving the unlikely pair, the Force tugged at him, as if rooting him in place. He had the nagging feeling that he was missing something—some key to understanding this new, disorienting version of Kenobi.

Because despite his pathetic, downtrodden exterior, despite the hollowed-out look in his eyes—Maul sensed there was still something keeping Kenobi going: some purpose that prevented him from giving up completely. Still a protector of the helpless, he hadn’t yet lost his penchant for noble charity cases; Luma’s presence was surely an indication of such. Maybe Kenobi worked undercover, shuttling Force-sensitive younglings to safety; maybe he participated in one of the resistance cells brewing all over the galaxy. But then how could he not have known about Vader?

Maul propped his elbows on his knees, the stirrings of a ludicrous idea beginning to coalesce in his mind. With Dryden Vos gone, Crimson Dawn’s daily operations had been entrusted to Vos’s top lieutenant, Qi’ra, who had so far seemed doubly as competent as her predecessor and thrice as cunning. When Maul had judged her character worthy, he had told her of the web in which the Sith had ensnared the galaxy, of the Emperor’s and Vader’s true roles in it, and of his own former title and how it had been stripped from him, as had his brother, his mother, and his people.

Additionally, he had confided in her his intentions to use Crimson Dawn to destroy the Sith and the Empire, and had been impressed with how briskly she had taken to the idea. Then again, given his suspicions that she had lied about the circumstances of Vos’s death, it was of little surprise that she was attracted to power, and to usurping those who held it. That was a quality Maul could utilize.

Working together, he and Qi’ra had already made some progress on hunting down Sith artifacts that might assist their cause. But Maul had been feeling for some time that his goal was taking too long to achieve, and he had endured too many failures. And every year, the Empire expanded its reach, and the suffering throughout the galaxy increased the Sith Lords’ power.

With Kenobi’s appearance, though, another option suddenly presented itself. Despite the current depreciation of his skills, he had once been an extraordinary swordsman. If not for its dishonorable end, their duel in the reactor room in Theed would have been the most thrilling and most satisfying fight Maul had ever waged. Having that kind of power on his side could make a significant difference, even if it would take a massive amount of training to get Kenobi to regain his strength.

If only that well of power didn’t belong to Maul’s least favorite person in the galaxy.

But if he could manage to suppress his thirst for vengeance and turn Kenobi’s lethality toward Sidious, could they defeat him together? Would the destruction of his former master be worth the appalling price of having to work with his hated enemy?

At length, Maul tired of the circles his mind was going in as he alternated between sitting and pacing, and watching Kenobi meditate—the blatant desperation he was radiating in the Force almost embarrassing to witness—and he decided he needed to find something to occupy his idle hands. Once, he could have sat in the same spot for hours, even days, on end during a hunt, still as a stone in a rushing river as he awaited his target. Since Lotho Minor, however, he found himself more often restless, itching with the need to move, to take some action, to occupy his frenzied mind.

When he noticed Luma turning over the broken L0 droid she had been cradling in her hands since they’d boarded the vessel, an indignant pout on her face, Maul stalked off to find a droid repair kit.

“Give it here,” he said when he returned and sat on the ground beside her, splaying out the necessary tools. He held his hand out.

Luma clutched the droid closer, giving him a suspicious look.

“Do you want your droid to function or not?” Maul added.

Luma hesitated, chewing her lip. Then she cautiously placed the droid in Maul’s palm. “Don’t hurt her,” she warned, and Maul rolled his eyes. Just because he had the strength to crush the droid into shards with a single stamp of his metal foot didn’t mean he would.

It took little work to repair the simple inner workings of a L0 droid, and before long, Maul was able to put his minispanner down. He presented the beeping droid to Luma, who hugged it to her chest with a delighted smile.

“You fixed her!” she exclaimed. “Thank you!”

“If you have a droid in your possession, you should know how to repair it,” Maul said, and he spent the next twenty minutes going over what he had done to fix the droid, as well as what other repairs might be necessary in the future. He was pleased to find that Luma was a fast learner, so there was little he needed to repeat, yet many thoughtful questions for him to occupy them with.

Eventually, the lesson was interrupted by Kenobi getting to his feet and announcing, “We’d better get ready. We’re on approach.” He met Maul’s gaze evenly as he rose as well. “Regretfully, this is where we must bid you farewell, Maul.”

Tucking his arms behind his back, Maul stood tall and said, “And what is your plan once you land?”

“A friend provided us with coordinates where his alleged allies will meet us.”

Maul raised an eye ridge. “So a trap obviously awaits you.”

“Indeed, it is very likely a trap,” Kenobi agreed. “But we have few other options at the moment.”

Maul considered the matter and said, “I could send for someone to pick us up, though we’d need to lie low on the approaching planet until they arrive.”

Narrowing his eyes, Kenobi said, “Someone as in one of your syndicate lackeys? I think I’ll take the possible trap over the obvious one, thank you very much.”

“I saved your life on Daiyu!” Maul snarled. “If I wanted to kill you, I would have done so by now.”

“Yes, and why is that?” Kenobi demanded. “Why are you playing mild and docile? What is your game here, Maul?”

Maul crossed his arms, glaring back at him. Through gritted teeth, he said, “At last, our goals have aligned, Kenobi. From the shadows, I have used Crimson Dawn to foment chaos for the Empire, but it is not enough.” He curled one hand into a fist. “With your help, we can take down Vader and the Emperor both! And get the revenge we are owed.”

“Revenge is not the Jedi way,” Kenobi replied sedately, and a thrill raced through Maul. There! There was the pretentious, dogmatic Jedi Master he loathed. Then he was not yet gone but merely buried, drowned, deep beneath the surface. And Maul was very confident that of all the people in the galaxy, he was likely the most apt at provoking it.

“But it’s an attractive prospect nonetheless, is it not?” he urged, his voice taking on a shimmersilk quality. “Skywalker took everything and everyone from you. He led your allies to rebel against the Jedi, murdered all the younglings in the Order, burned the Jedi Temple down. He has done naught but destroy since he was crowned by Sidious! He betrayed everything you and the Jedi Order stood for—and traded you for a ghoul as a master!”

“Enough!” Kenobi shouted. At once, the fight drained out of him, leaving him looking even more disturbingly worn and ragged. Quieter, he repeated, “Enough,” and his trembling hand rose to cover his face. “I simply wish to get the girl home.”

“And then what? You’ll allow the Sith to continue their rampage across the galaxy?”

Kenobi’s expression pinched as he sidestepped the question: “You may accompany us to the meeting place,” he said, resigned. “But we will not be leaving as captives of your cartel.”

It was not a rejection. Maul was buoyed by the prospect. Kenobi might not yet be convinced, but there would yet be time for further persuasion.

“Fine,” Maul replied. “But mark my words—you will succumb to this offer, before we part ways.”

Kenobi snorted. “You’re certainly welcome to keep telling yourself that.”

Maul glared at him, fists clenching at his sides. He could already sense that the greatest battle he would need to wage wouldn’t be the fight against Sidious but actually the suppression of his constant urge to simply reach over and strangle Kenobi, potential alliance be damned.

Chapter Text

Sneaking off the ship before the loader droids at the dock noticed required hardly any effort at all. The short, dry grasses and barren landscape of the region robbed them of any means of disguise, but Kenobi and Maul both pulled up the hoods of their cloaks regardless.

The sun beat down on them as they traversed the valleys of the largely undeveloped world. The roads were crude, and coarse, prickly grains of sand embedded themselves in the grooves of Maul’s feet, making him irritable. In the distance, he could hear the rumbling of an enormous blast and then the sound of rocks crumbling in what must be a quarry.

Luma bubbled with endless questions as they walked, and Kenobi and Maul took turns answering her. Kenobi remained gruff and distracted, as he had since their reunion, and there was little sign of the wit he had exhibited during their previous meetings.

Then, in the middle of the road, Kenobi abruptly stopped, staring off into the distance and growing pale. Maul followed his gaze. Though his sight was superior to that of a Human, he could see nothing in Kenobi’s eye line but desert brush and the slopes of a distant mountain.

“Kenobi,” Maul hissed, “get a hold of yourself.”

At the sound of his voice, Kenobi immediately snapped back to himself, clearly shaken. His eyes darted around himself anxiously.

It still disoriented Maul to see him so overtly frightened. “What did you see?” he demanded.

“A ghost,” Kenobi answered, his voice quivering. He placed a trembling hand on Luma’s shoulder and said, “Stay close.”

For the rest of the journey, Luma was quiet, holding her droid close. Unnerved, Maul glanced around them with greater suspicion—even more so when they arrived at the so-called meeting point, which looked no different from any other square of land in the region. There was neither any marker to indicate the spot, nor anyone to greet them. Maul leveled Kenobi with a cuttingly skeptical look.

“This is where he told us to come to,” Kenobi protested before Maul even opened his mouth.

“Maybe they’re just late?” Luma tried.

“Or maybe it was a trap,” Maul said, rolling his eyes. “Obviously.”

Scowling, Kenobi muttered, “I knew it! I never should’ve trusted him.”

Luma tried to soothe him. “We don’t know if maybe…”

“No one is coming here!” Kenobi snapped at her. Maul felt a brief flare of irritation in the Force that was not his own but didn’t feel like Kenobi’s either.

“Well, if we’re on our own, we’re gonna need some help,” Luma said before he could consider it any further. She pointed out a repulsorcraft transport barreling through the dirt road they had left earlier, then took off at a run toward it, darting through the sere grasses.

“What are you doing?” Kenobi exclaimed.

Luma shouted back, “Maybe they can give us a ride to the spaceport!”

“Quite resourceful of the young one,” Maul noted. “Tell me, who is your companion?”

Kenobi gave him a baleful glare. “She’s the daughter of an old friend.” Watching Luma run along the dirt road as the transport approached, Kenobi called out urgently, “Keep your head down! Don’t engage with—oh, dear.” He ran after her, and Maul followed, amused at how flustered he was.

“Hi! I’m Luma!” she was saying to the transport’s Condluran driver as they joined her. “This is my frie—my father, Orden.” She glanced back at Maul. “And my…stepfather, Makarr.”

Maul had to suppress a hysterical laugh at the notion. The young one was certainly creative.

Going along with the tale she had concocted, he leaned heavily on his cane, making himself small and hiding his face further beneath the hood of his cloak. Glad to have tucked away his Crimson Dawn necklace before they’d debarked from the cargo shuttle, he said in a light voice, higher than his usual register, “Pleased to make your acquaintance…?”

“I’m Freck,” the driver said.

“Freck, we brought our daughter here to visit her mother’s final resting place, and of course she immediately ran off. You know how children this age can be.”

Freck laughed. “I sure do. My little one has been a complete headache for the past two years. When does it get better?”

“Let me know when you find out,” Maul said dryly, and Freck let out a full belly laugh.

“Now that we’ve finally retrieved her, we’re all turned around,” Maul continued with a mawkish sigh. “It’s been an exceptionally long day.”

“Sorry, Pa,” Luma said with an impressively authentic pout and shuffle of her feet.

“We’re looking for the nearest port,” Kenobi, the useless fool, finally pitched in. “We need to get home.”

“Well, I’m going that way!” Freck replied. “Jump on in.”

“Oh, no, that’s all right,” Kenobi said hastily. “Thank you. We just need directions.”

“Come on, Father,” Luma wheedled, “we’ve walked far enough!”

“Listen to your daughter, Orden,” Maul said in the gentlest tone he could manage without becoming ill. “You wouldn’t want to strain your back, would you?”

Kenobi’s jaw clenched ever so slightly. “Of course not, dear,” he retorted; to his credit, the irritated nature of his response further sold their story.

“Then it’s settled,” Maul said. “You have our thanks, Freck.”

“My pleasure—hop in!” Freck said cheerfully as they went around to the aft of the repulsorcraft. “And don’t worry, I’ll get to the port in no time.”

The back of the transport was decorated with a hand-painted Imperial flag. Warily, Kenobi caught Maul’s eye as they climbed into the flatbed, and he settled between Maul and Luma, pulling his cloak a little lower and radiating anxiety in the Force.

“Now, where’d you say you’re from again?” Freck asked as he began driving.

Maul glanced at Kenobi, but he didn’t look up. He supposed it was hardly a surprise that he wasn’t going to be much help. With an internal sigh, Maul thought quickly of an answer to Freck’s prying question.

“We live on Fondor, working in the shipyards,” he said.

“Oh, Imperial planet, huh?” Freck said. His driving was steady, taking them through sand and rock with little difficulty, though the dust did billow into Maul’s eyes at times. He blinked it away, wishing he could do the same for his sand-encrusted feet. “That’s good, honest work, building starships for the Empire.”

“Absolutely,” Luma said, catching on fast. “My fathers have even worked on Star Destroyers!”

Maul hummed in agreement. “It’s hard work, but we are proud to serve the Empire whatever way we can.”

“Nice to meet like-minded folk,” Freck said as he pulled to a stop on the side of the empty road. Maul peered through the viewport to see a few stormtroopers gathering near the transport, their stark white armor standing out in the desiccated terrain.

They seemed to know Freck, cheerfully exchanging pleasantries with him. This time, it was Kenobi who sought eye contact with Maul, appearing alarmed. Maul arched a calm, withering eye ridge back at him.

“This is Orden, Makarr, and Luma,” Freck was saying as he beckoned the three stormtroopers on board the repulsorcraft. The stormtroopers’ boots clopped inelegantly as they clambered onto the flatbed, and the vessel shifted under the added weight. “They’re hitching a ride to the port,” Freck added as he started back down the road. “Where are you all coming from?”

“They’re moving us around, looking for a Jedi,” one of the stormtroopers said.

“A Jedi?” Freck exclaimed. “Out here? I hope we’re not in any danger.” Only a lifetime of discipline had Maul resisting the urge to snicker.

“Ah, no,” another one of the stormtroopers said. “We’ll find him. We always do.”

The first stormtrooper was scrutinizing them. “You all miners?” he asked. The question was friendly on the surface, but Maul sensed an edge in his voice.

“We are ship builders,” he answered.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Orden’s wife died here, many years ago,” Maul said, expanding the tale as he went. “We thought Luma was finally old enough to visit her mother’s final resting place.”

“It’s been a very difficult time,” Kenobi said, thankfully going along with the story. “We miss her very much.”

The last stormtrooper, who hadn’t yet spoken, was looking at him. In the Force, Maul could feel his doubt. His mind raced as he considered how to quickly deter their suspicion.

Willing himself not to be sick, he laid his hand on Kenobi’s knee and said lightly, “At least you have me, right, pet?”

“I don’t know what I would do without you, darling,” Kenobi said, and Maul suppressed an instinctive scowl, instead squeezing his knee and smiling at him with probably too many teeth.

“Aww, that’s sweet,” the first stormtrooper said, elbowing the stormtrooper next to him.

“So sweet I’m going to be sick,” the second one said, and they chortled.

“This is us!” the first stormtrooper said cheerfully, and the transport screeched to a halt. “Thanks, Freck! And good day to you all.” When they jumped off the flatbed, Maul could feel Kenobi incrementally relax.

They rode with Freck for ten more kilometers, making idle conversation. When he dropped them off in a dusty mining village, Maul thanked him with a handful of credits while Kenobi helped Luma disembark from the transport.

Along the main thoroughfare of the camp sat temporary residences that could be easily disassembled and moved, as well as humble shops that sold basic necessities and mining equipment, the signs on their facades crusted in dust. It was second nature for Maul to stealthily observe the town’s residents, taking note of which might pose a danger to them, and to register the possible choke points, exit routes, and hiding places. Beside him, Kenobi pulled his cloak closer.

Every Imperial town across the galaxy had a few similar traits: quiet main streets, nervous citizens, and the ubiquitous white plastoid armor of stormtroopers. Some meters away, two such troopers were interrogating someone coming out of a general store. Farther out, probe droids hovered, keeping watchful eyes on the citizens. Maul yanked Kenobi and Luma into the nearest alleyway.

“We won’t be able to get out of here without alerting them,” Kenobi hissed.

“Do you believe we should have called my contacts now?” Maul growled under his breath.

“What are we going to do?” Luma whispered.

“We need to find a pilot,” Kenobi said.

“Your face is plastered on every holo in the galaxy,” Maul retorted. “No pilot in their right mind is going to risk taking you.”

“They might, for the right amount of credits,” Kenobi replied, giving him a significant look.

Maul shot him a glare. “Do you mean to rob me?” he growled. “You still haven’t agreed to join me. I’m hardly going to pave your way without it.”

“Oh, for kriff’s sake,” Kenobi snapped. “Now is not the time, Maul.”

“No agreement, no credits,” Maul hissed. “If you want—mmph!” Kenobi grabbed him by the collar and dragged him close, their hoods creating a shared shroud, their faces a breath’s distance from each other underneath them. His other hand clenched the back of Maul’s neck, urging him downward.

“Someone there?” a voice nearby said through a vocoder, their comm crackling as they spoke.

Seconds later, stormtrooper boots were at the opening of the alleyway. “Who’s that?” another trooper said. “What are you doing in this alley?”

Kenobi pulled Maul closer and—bafflingly—pressed his forehead to the crook of Maul’s neck, making a low humming noise. This close, his odor was oddly pleasant despite being that of a Human—characterized by layers of sweat and unwashed filth, yes, but beneath them, Maul detected the crisp scent of a forest brook, with the underlying warmth of wild grass.

Disturbed by this revelation and bewildered by Kenobi’s actions, Maul grabbed his shoulders roughly, intent on shoving him away. Just then, he heard one of the other stormtroopers say, “Ah, It’s just a couple lovebirds and their kid. Leave ’em be.”

They strolled away, chattering, and Maul had just opened his mouth to express his disgust when someone else spoke:

“Am I interrupting something?”

Maul and Kenobi both looked up at the new voice, which was characterized by a clipped Inner Core accent. Its owner was wearing the green-gray uniform of an Imperial officer, the checks on the rank badge denoting she was captain. She had the sharp features of a warbird, and her dark hair was knotted at the back of her head and tucked partway under a matching cap.

As one, they jumped apart and took fighting stances, Maul at the fore and Kenobi guarding Luma.

“It’s all right,” the officer said, holding her hands up and away from the blaster at her hip. “I’m a friend. I was on my way to the coordinates when probes arrived, but you’d already gone.”

Relaxing, Kenobi stepped forward. “I hadn’t expected anyone to come,” he said, pitiful.

“The Empire’s gone into high alert,” she replied. “They’ve locked everything down.”

“Will we be able to leave the planet?” Kenobi asked.

“There’s a pilot who’s agreed to take you, in about half an hour. We need to lay low till then.” She glanced between them. “I accounted for two of you—who’s your sweetheart?”

Kenobi opened his mouth to protest the title, but Maul spoke over him. “I am Maul.”

Kenobi leveled a befuddled glare at him as the officer placed her hand on her chest and said, “I’m Tala. I’ll bring you to a safehouse where you can wait for the pilot.”

The safehouse was a droid maintenance bay run by a loader droid like the ones at the dock, who wordlessly shifted the heavy shelving on the back wall to reveal a door that led to a hidden room. The space was empty of anything but threadbare sleeping mats, scattered crates, and a few old lamps that cast shadows upon their faces. Its walls were thick and covered in carvings of the Jedi symbol, trite Jedi axioms, and chilling pleas for help. Luma stepped closer to them, tilting her head to read the jagged messages.

“What is this place?” Kenobi asked, looking around in puzzlement.

“We have safehouses like this throughout the galaxy,” Tala said. “Trying to link the systems.”

“You are part of the Path,” Maul deduced. While he’d been putting together his grand plot, he had heard whispers of the organization—if the haphazard coalition could even be called that—composed of beings who smuggled surviving Jedi to safety and provided them with new identities so they could live out in the open. Only the Hidden Path would be willing to harbor a Jedi as high-profile as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Tala’s sharp eyes darted toward him, wary. Good. Maul couldn’t trust someone who wasn’t distrusting themselves. “I am,” she said shortly.

Kenobi, who was staring at the words and symbols carved into the nearest wall, interrupted them with a gasp. “Quinlan was here!”

“Yeah,” Tala replied, more warmly. “He helps now and again, smuggling younglings.”

“Who’s Quinlan?” Luma asked, looking up at the engraving.

“We grew up together,” Kenobi said, running his fingers over carefully etched letters. “I should’ve known he was too stubborn to die.”

Luma replied, “Did my father know him?”

Kenobi paused. “I can’t say,” he said carefully. “It’s possible that they might’ve encountered each other, once or twice. But Quinlan’s work often took him away from Coruscant.”

Luma considered that, then quietly wondered, “Did my father really send you, Ben?”

Frowning, Kenobi said, “He did.”

Luma’s expression grew sharper, but her voice came out pleading: “The whole time I’ve known you, you’ve been hiding something—lying to me. But in the transport, you were telling the truth about my birth mother. I could tell. Are you my real father?”

Kenobi looked stricken. He knelt down to look her in the eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I am not.”

“Sometimes I try to imagine what he was like,” Luma confessed.

“I know that feeling,” Kenobi replied, his voice still gentle. “As Jedi, we’re taken from our families when we’re very young. I still have glimpses—flashes, really. My mother’s shawl, my father’s hands.”

Maul trained his eyes on the ground. He, too, had few memories of the life he’d lived on Dathomir before he was taken by Sidious. But every once in a while, especially since he had begun living in the Nightsister fortress, he would recall a glimmer of a memory, usually inconsequential and fleeting: the smell of meat being smoked in the kitchens, the sight of the pools in the courtyard glistening beneath the moonlight, the feeling of spongy Dathomirian soil beneath his feet, the sticky sweat beading upon his forehead after he completed his trials.

“I remember a baby,” Kenobi was saying.

“A baby?” Luma repeated, sounding delighted, and through Maul’s mind flitted a glimpse of an unmarked infant with green-gold skin swaddled in a thin blanket. He recalled the newborn Nightbrother being on the smaller side for their kind and having gentle, inquisitive eyes, but nothing beyond that.

“Yes, I think I had a brother,” Kenobi answered Luma, and Maul’s heart clenched, remembering the startled, almost innocent look on Savage’s face when he had been stabbed through the abdomen. For a brief, treasured time, Maul had believed that, at last, he was no longer alone—only to be robbed of that familial warmth by the same man who had robbed him of everything and everyone else.

“I really don’t remember him,” Kenobi was saying. “I wish I did.”

Savage had spoken of Feral often and with such fondness. The tales he told had painted a disconcertingly clear picture of how it might have been to grow up with them, to have experienced the alien concepts of freely offered affection and loyalty. It was nearly inconceivable to Maul as he was, but a tiny, carefully buried part of him had long wondered about the life he had never been allowed to live.

After all, if he had never been stolen away by Sidious, perhaps both his brothers would still be alive. Savage had refused to tell Maul what had ultimately happened to Feral, but after Savage’s own death, Maul had finally understood: Savage had inadvertently gotten Feral killed sometime before he had found Maul—just as Maul had eventually gotten Savage killed.

If only he had not been so arrogant, or had greater strength, or had fought better. If only he’d had the willpower to stand up when Sidious’s Force lightning had brought him to his knees. His profound shame and self-loathing about the memory drew the dark side into a cloak around him, pressing in on him, suffocating him.

Even through it, he could feel Kenobi’s alarmed gaze turning to him. “Maul?”

“It’s nothing,” Maul growled at him, exhaling and dispelling the shadows that clutched at him—at least until he needed them next. He eyed Luma and her inquisitive, still completely unafraid expression. To her, he said, “Only that I too was taken from my family when I was young, and had two brothers I grew up without.”

“Did you ever meet them again?” Luma asked.

“One found me eventually,” Maul said, keenly aware of Kenobi's complicated gaze on him. “When I was lost and left for dead, he saved me. But in the end, he was only taken from me yet again.”

Luma wondered, “Do you miss him?”

“Of course I do.” Maul added, “I will not rest until I avenge his death.”

“Revenge won’t bring you peace, Maul,” Kenobi said.

“What choice do I have?” Maul snarled. “Shall I bury my head in the sand and pretend the past never happened? Shall I sit by idly while the demons of my nightmares come for me, helpless and unable to protect a mere child? You may find peace in hiding away, doing nothing. But as long as Sidious and his dog still live, I will have no peace.”

Kenobi was quiet for a long moment, head bowed and eyes closed. Then, he spoke, “Not long ago, a Jedi came to find me. He pleaded for my help, and he spoke of ‘the fight’ he believed we were still responsible for waging. I turned him away, and they hung his body in the town square.” Luma’s eyes had grown huge and horrified. From where she stood near them, Tala’s expression was grim but unsurprised.

Kenobi continued hollowly, “That’s what happens when one stands up against the Empire, against these Inquisitors. We’re not ready for the fight. Nobody is.”

“How the noble Jedi have fallen,” Maul sneered. “You have fundamentally misunderstood the lesson, you fool! That was your call to stand up, lest more of your kind suffer the same fate.”

“He’s right, Obi-Wan,” Tala interjected.

“I go by Ben now,” Kenobi responded curtly.

“Ben,” Tala repeated. “You know, you’re not the first Jedi to come through here. There are a lot of good people risking their lives out there to protect those whom the Empire is hunting. These days, they hunt even children.”

“What happens to them?” Luma asked.

“We’re not sure. But no one ever sees them again.”

“Why do you do this? Risk everything?” Kenobi asked Tala, who was changing out of the Imperial officer’s uniform and into civilian garb with a practiced, no-nonsense efficiency.

“I joined up when the Empire stood for something. By the time I realized what they really were, it was too late. I made some mistakes.”

Kenobi’s mouth flattened into a line. “We all did.”

“Some of us are more to blame than others,” Maul muttered pointedly, and Kenobi rolled his eyes.

Tala turned her holster toward them. Inside, little notches had been etched into the leatheris. “One for every youngling I’ve saved,” she explained. “I do this for them.”

“Is it scary?” Luma asked her. “Having to pretend?”

“Yes,” Tala replied frankly. “Sometimes. Of course it is. But it’s worth it if I can help people. In times of strife, we must be brave and do what’s right, no matter how hard it might be. Understand?”

“She’s only a child,” Kenobi interjected.

“Weren’t you a child when the Jedi trained you to fight?” Tala pointed out.

Just as Maul was about to jump back into the debate, a sudden disturbance rang out in the Force, carrying a torrent of foreboding and anguish. Maul’s head swiveled toward the door in alarm.

“Maul?” Tala asked. “What is it?”

“Vader’s here,” he said. His frigid presence was so oppressive in the Force that he could be sensed even as he descended through the planet’s atmosphere.

“We have to go,” Kenobi said, the panic back in his voice.

On the other side of the room, Tala was whispering urgently into a comlink. She slung a satchel over her shoulders and unlocked the blastproof door across from the one that opened into the workshop, revealing what appeared to be an extensive network of tunnels, the rings built into the rock lit with thin strips of light to guide the refugees’ way.

“Come on, this will take us out,” Tala said, venturing through the doorway. Urgently, they left the safehouse behind, Tala and Maul striding swiftly while Kenobi, with Luma, stumbled after them. As they trudged through the labyrinth of tunnels, plans regarding how to best utilize Kenobi and the Hidden Path began to coalesce in Maul’s mind. He had not planned for this, but to have such tools practically fall into his lap was an undeniable gift, and he was hardly going to waste the opportunity.

Then, suddenly, Maul was pulled out of his careful plotting by the sound of Kenobi crying out in fear.

Maul stopped, whirling around. Kenobi had braced his arm on the wall, as if he couldn’t hold his own weight up, his eyes wide and unseeing. Luma made a noise of concern, staring up at him in consternation.

Maul looked back toward the safehouse. He could feel it too.

“He’s close,” he said lowly. “If Sidious has trained him well, he will begin by killing innocents, to draw you out.”

Sweating and shaking, as if besieged by fever, Kenobi barely seemed to hear him. “I have to go,” he mumbled. “I have to…”

“What are you talking about?” Maul snapped. Kenobi’s face was devoid of color, and it disturbed him more than he wanted to admit to himself. “Don’t be an idiot!”

“He’s after me,” Kenobi replied. “I have to lead him away.” Heaving a quivering breath to gather himself, he crouched down and spoke quietly to Luma, “Go with Tala and Maul. I’ll be right behind you.”

“You’re a fool if you think I will run from a fight,” Maul growled.

Kenobi stood back up, and ignoring his protests, said to Tala, “Get her to Alderaan. Promise me, promise me.” Tala nodded her agreement and began nudging Luma down the corridor, but Maul would comply with none of it.

“I saw how you were fighting the Inquisitor,” Maul argued. “You’ve grown weak, Kenobi! You won’t last a minute in a duel against a Sith Lord. You need me.”

“What I need is for you to protect Luma!” Kenobi retorted, fingers fumbling for his deconstructed lightsaber. “If you wish to take down Sidious, then you must go with her and ensure her safety. At all costs.”

“Why?” Maul demanded. “Why is she so important? What role does she have to play?”

Kenobi lowered his voice. “I cannot reveal it. All I can tell you is that Vader and Sidious must not discover her existence. Not yet.”

Maul stared at him, the galaxy suddenly dropping away.

He thought of the surges he’d been feeling in the Force since he met Luma—wild and unrestrained, lacking control and finesse, but an undeniable well of power nonetheless. He thought of her sharp sense of perception, her complete lack of fear of him, and her indomitable will, and how those might serve her in battle. He pictured the unstoppable fighter she had the potential to become with proper training.

“Is she…the Chosen One?” he whispered.

Kenobi opened his mouth to say something, to probably deny the obvious, but then he seemed to think better of it. Maul thought of Kenobi, so desperate to protect this child despite his lack of current strength and willpower that he would accept Maul’s presence—for it offered an added level of protection for her. In fact, perhaps Maul’s declaration of war against Sidious had been what had made Kenobi so certain that Maul would not harm Luma.

“It’s very likely that she is,” Kenobi admitted at last.

Maul exhaled, mind racing. He had given up on the prophecy long ago, but Kenobi was right: to know there still existed such a fated key to Sidious’s defeat; to know that the young Human could be the weapon Maul needed to fulfill his quest—and perhaps put Kenobi, if he did survive, in Maul’s debt…

“Very well,” Maul conceded. “I will accompany the young one. But so should you.”

“No, I must face Vader alone,” Kenobi replied, stubborn to the end. “I must face what he has become.”

“What good will penance do you at this point?” Maul retorted.

“I have to know,” Kenobi answered, his features set in grim determination. “And he’ll be distracted by my presence. It will allow you all to escape.”

“It seems that noble Jedi was still inside you somewhere, Kenobi,” Maul snarked, hoping it stung. “Fine. Have it your way. But you’d better not let Vader steal my kill.”

With that, he turned and strode after Tala and Luma, who had rushed farther ahead.

“Maul!”

Maul pivoted, expectant. Kenobi had assembled and drawn his lightsaber at last, the blade of familiar blue blazing at his side. The vivid color had haunted Maul for years and years and years, but in this moment, he was glad that the weapon might keep Kenobi standing for a moment more.

“May the Force be with you,” Kenobi said, and Maul growled in disgust. Kenobi’s mouth quirked upward, a flash of that version of him Maul had hated so virulently—and then he was gone.

When Maul caught up with Luma and Tala, Luma was far from relieved. “No!” she demanded. “You have to help him!”

Maul frowned at her. “He has tasked me with your protection,” he said.

“Ben will be fine,” Tala reassured her.

“No, he won’t be,” Luma retorted, and there was something so unshakably certain in her voice that made Maul want to believe her. “You have to go back! I can make it on my own.”

Maul remembered again how poorly Kenobi had fought the Inquisitor. It didn’t take a Seer to foresee that he would be useless against a Sith Lord with a presence so powerful and wide-reaching that even now, a chill continued to run down Maul’s spine and claw at his bones. Maul hadn’t felt that uneasy aura since his master had come to Mandalore, looking to eliminate him. And if Vader killed Kenobi knowing who else the Third Sister had faced, the risk of Vader coming to hunt Maul down would be high. The Inquisitors that Sidious sent after Maul every time he surfaced were evidence enough that he still sought to eliminate him.

And if Vader sensed the burgeoning power in Luma, then all would be lost.

“We will get you on that transport,” Maul decided. “Then I will assist him.”

But when they reached the port at the end of their path, they were greeted with the corpse of the pilot they had been promised—and the fierce, unyielding glare of the Third Sister herself.

“You again,” Third Sister snarled at Maul, drawing her lightsaber. “Where is he?”

“Having a touching reunion with your minder, I’m sure,” Maul said, drawing his own weapon with a flourish. He darted forward in an offensive move, moving so fast that she was barely able to lift her saber in time to block him.

The Third Sister seemed more on edge than she’d been back in the cargo port. Her eagerness to win the battle and get to her true target, Kenobi, made it easy for Maul to distract and overpower her.

He held his lightsaber aloft, over her neck. The Third Sister scowled up at him, chest heaving with exertion, and he could almost respect the searing anger rolling off of her in waves. He brought it down for a swing, and then—

She slumped over.

Maul looked over to see Tala’s blaster smoking with a stun bolt. Then, without a moment of hesitation, she turned it on him, frost and anger in her eyes.

Maul stared calmly back at her, bemused.

Tala demanded, “You wield a red blade. Are you an Inquisitor?”

“Absolutely not,” Maul sniffed, insulted by the mere notion. “The Inquisitors have hunted me for years, and I have killed every one that has come after me.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Well, until now. Not killing her would be foolish.”

“Not in front of the youngling,” Tala insisted, not moving the blaster.

Maul glanced at Luma, who was watching them with wide eyes from behind the corner. Smirking, he said, “If you will not kill the Inquisitor in front of Luma, then how am I to believe that you would kill me?”

Eyes flashing, Tala scowled at him, but she put the blaster down. Maul’s smirk widened.

“Help me carry her to the ship,” Tala said, ignoring it. “She may have intel that will be useful to my team.”

“I am not your servant,” Maul retorted. “Give me one reason I should obey you.”

“You want Ben to join you on your quest, don’t you?” Tala replied evenly. “I don’t suppose he’d be very happy if you left me and Luma here.”

Maul growled. He picked up the Inquisitor.

Inside the ship, they bound her to a seat in the cockpit, and Maul pressed two fingers to her forehead, using the Force to induce a deeper sleep. The suggestion would fade eventually, but it would have to do for now—at least until he sliced her throat while Tala wasn’t looking.

But first, Kenobi. Maul doubted he would be able to stand against Vader for long, given the years that had weakened him. He flew the ship with great urgency, allowing the Force to guide him to the target he had most frequently sought.

He located Kenobi and Vader in a quarry, glimpsing blue and red lightsabers clashing in the dark, throwing their visages in stark relief. The ship skittered to a shuddering stop, and Maul leaped out of the pilot seat and rushed down the gangway, igniting his saberstaff as he went.

Ahead, Kenobi was panting with exhaustion as he tried to fend off Vader, his trembling terror apparent through even the hair falling over his eyes and his shoddy layers of rags. In contrast, Vader glided after him as if toying with his prey, the storm of rage surrounding him intense enough to make even Maul wince in discomfort.

Vader raised a hand and lifted Kenobi off his feet by the neck, clearly relishing the sight of him clawing desperately at his throat, voice reduced to a weak rasp.

Jealousy surged within Maul. He flung his hand out, using the Force to pry Kenobi from Vader’s grasp. Battered, Kenobi slumped to the ground like a rag doll, panting hard.

Vader whipped around, his cape swirling in an overly dramatic fashion behind him. “Who dares—Maul?" he said, and Maul smirked at his overt confusion. “I thought you would be glad to see Obi-Wan brought to his knees at last.”

“Your idea of revenge is rather inelegant for my taste,” Maul retorted. “I will instead find my satisfaction in dealing with you!”

He rushed Vader, and their two red sabers clashed with a sizzle, the bled kyber crystals screaming out in a malevolent song.

“You will try,” Vader intoned, and pushed him back.

As Maul dodged his fierce volley of strikes, jumping and spinning to avoid the strong, precise slashes, Kenobi dragged himself to his feet. He jumped into the fray, his swordsmanship still a mere impression of his former mastery, but in a fight with a Sith Lord, Maul would take what allyship he could get.

Vader seemed to sense it, and with the flick of a single hand, he separated them, flinging Maul a distance away, as if he were a mere pest.

Maul bristled at the insult as he landed on his feet. He crept back to the fringes of the duel, remaining in the shadows to observe his two adversaries.

Vader appeared to have set the sand ablaze, as Kenobi lay on the ground before him, writhing amid a torrent of flame.

Maul felt strangely unsettled by his screaming. Once, he had wanted nothing more than to draw such pain and suffering from him, but this was only further proof that Kenobi was changed. He was weak.

“Your pain has just begun,” Vader intoned with relish. Kenobi responded with only an agonized cry.

“I could say the same for you,” Maul said as he darted forth to execute a series of offensive strikes, his saberstaff whirling as he forced Vader to dodge quicker with every strike. At Kenobi, he shouted, “Get up, you fool!”

In his peripheral vision, he saw Kenobi drag his body through the flames, whimpering pitifully. Maul couldn’t risk breaking his concentration to assist him, but part of him hoped Kenobi would not die in this pathetic show of weakness.

Maul had agility on his side, but Vader had an unending supply of stamina, and before long, he gained the upper hand. Maul barely evaded Vader’s attempt to slice his neck off, moving just quickly enough for the blade to stab into his shoulder instead.

Hissing in pain, he fell to his knees, cursing his own weakness.

Then, from behind the cover of rock, he spotted Tala’s silhouette motioning him to clear the area. He didn’t hesitate, amassing the agony of his injured body and channeling it to give himself the strength to roll away from Vader and toward Kenobi.

A second later, a series of blaster shots struck the barrels of vintrium lying around the quarry, and a blaze of flame roared to life, separating Maul and Kenobi from Vader.

With a grunt, Maul dragged himself to his feet, stumbling over to where Kenobi lay prone. He was motionless, but Maul could sense in the Force that he still lived. “Kenobi,” he hissed, nudging him with the tip of his boot. “Wake up!”

Tala joined him and leaned down to take Kenobi’s pulse. “I don’t think he can hear you,” she said, face pinched. “We need to get him to the ship.”

Maul sheathed his saberstaff and reattached it to his belt. “I have him,” he said, crouching down to heave Kenobi into his arms. The fire had torn and singed his robes in places, revealing ugly burns all over his body, and there was no way for Maul to carry him without aggravating them—not that he really cared about damaging Kenobi. But Maul sought to use him as a tool, and he needed said tool to be operational.

“You’re injured too,” Tala protested as she followed him back to the ship.

“It’s nothing,” Maul said, which was the truth. Kenobi weighed significantly less than he had expected. The muscles he had built up from decades of combat were emaciated. He had likely been starved for a long time—long enough that Maul had to wonder how he had not managed to find a dependable source of nutrition. Had all sense deserted him?

Luma rushed over as they made their way up the ship’s gangway. “Is he going to be okay?” she demanded.

“With medical attention, he will heal,” Maul replied. Tala handed him the ship’s medkit and pointed him to the captain’s quarters, then took the helm.

Her concern seemingly not yet eased, Luma followed Maul to the small room where he deposited Kenobi onto the narrow berth and began tearing the outer layers of his rags off. The ship rocked beneath his feet as it shot up into the sky, and he stabilized his joints to avoid toppling over.

“What is the status of the Inquisitor?” Maul asked Luma as the ship coasted into atmo. He frowned at the meager contents of the medkit; there was an old sewing kit, a compress, and painkillers, but the tube of bacta gel was almost entirely depleted, and the bacta bandages were practically dried out.

“I guarded her, like you asked,” Luma said. “She’s still asleep.”

“Good work,” Maul said, and Luma beamed at him. He handed her the compress pouch from the medkit and added, “Go wet this in the refresher. It should be cool but not cold.”

Once she left to follow his instructions, he perched on the edge of the berth and pulled down the fabric of his tunic sleeve. Scowling, he examined his shoulder wound, annoyed that Vader had managed to injure him to this extent. Quickly, he applied a thin layer of the scant bacta gel remaining, hissing at the sharp, itchy flare of sensation that indicated the healing process had begun.

By the time Luma returned, holding up the wetted compress in triumph, he had redressed and was standing again. He nodded at her and said, “Your next assignment is to watch over Kenobi. Allow the compress to sit for a few minutes on each of the worst-looking burns. Re-wet it as necessary. Alert me if he awakens.”

“You can count on me!” Luma said, immediately getting to work.

Maul found Tala readying the ship to leave the atmosphere. “We can reach Jabiim in two hours,” she said as he stepped into the cockpit. True to Luma’s word, the Third Sister was still slumped over where she had been bound to one of the passenger seats—perhaps a bit zealously, if Maul were to comment on Tala’s use of paracord.

“My people have bacta tanks there,” she was saying.

“No,” Maul replied as he sat in the copilot’s seat. “Do you really wish for the Third Sister to awaken and expose the location of your base?”

“True, my team won’t like it,” Tala agreed. “But what’s the alternative?”

Maul considered several options, but only one solution made real sense.

“We shall go to Dathomir,” he declared. If Tala learned too much, he would eliminate her. The wilds of his homeworld were extraordinarily hostile to outsiders, after all. “There are bacta tanks there as well, in addition to copious other medical supplies,” he said, “and I can safely immobilize and contain the Third Sister there.” That, and with the boost of power the ichor beneath the planet’s surface gave him, he would be able to overpower Kenobi and then some if it came down to it.

“I suppose it would be better if Ben awoke somewhere familiar, where he’ll feel safe,” Tala said thoughtfully.

Maul blinked, then remembered himself and the story he had manufactured. He hadn’t expected to need to maintain the myth, but Tala seemed keen. Given her dramatic reaction to the color of his lightsaber, she was likely still suspicious of his loyalties and on the lookout for any inconsistencies in what he said, especially with Kenobi unconscious.

“Precisely,” Maul replied, trying not to show his revulsion at the absurd idea of Kenobi finding Dathomir anything remotely close to familiar or safe.

“He’s going to be all right, you know,” Tala said, appearing unaware of his struggle, as he keyed in the coordinates to the Outer Rim’s Quelli sector.

“What?”

“Ben,” Tala explained as the navicomputer began calculating the jump. “We both know he’s been through worse. He’s going to make it through just fine, so don’t worry.”

Irritation rippled up Maul’s spine at the implication that he cared whatsoever about what happened to Kenobi. The thought was absurd, but he supposed so was the fact that he’d just given Kenobi’s ward instructions on how to speed along his recovery and was about to willingly bring him to his homeworld.

“I’m not worried,” Maul snapped, the joints in his right metal heel squealing as he stood up too quickly.

Tala’s eyebrows rose at his antagonistic tone, but she seemed to know better than to say anything else. Curling his lip, Maul raised a hand, undoing the intricate bindings on the Third Sister and lifting her unconscious body into the air. Without another word, he strode out of the cockpit, dragging her behind him.

The hyperdrive rumbled to life, and with a jerk, the ship made the jump.

With little care, Maul dropped the Third Sister onto the floor between the bunks in the tight crew barracks, the ropes following her down.

He raised his cane, in which his lightsaber was sheathed, and murmured a sibilant chant. The gnarled wood, carved from the trunk of a Dathomirian grave thorn tree, began to glow, a wreath of green fire winding around the cane. From this distance, and with his humiliatingly small amount of aptitude, he could summon only a flimsy ward, the kind that would have been taught to young Nightsister children and would fade after a few hours—if he were lucky—but it would drain the Third Sister’s strength while she was suspended in sleep, at least for a little while.

Sitting against the door, his legs folded and the cane sitting upon his lap, Maul watched her, contemplating how her fixation on killing Kenobi reminded him uncomfortably of his brash younger self, fresh out of Lotho Minor and mad with his lust for revenge against the being who had put him there. He thought of the similarly unconscious Kenobi next door, and how witnessing his helplessness and terror when faced with his former apprentice had been like looking into a cracked mirror. He thought of the fearless Chosen One tending to Kenobi with such dedication, her loyalty and earnestness making her ripe for the picking; of the Path agent who didn’t trust him but was piloting them to his sanctuary because she believed he was Kenobi’s lover.

Grimly, Maul considered the jagged puzzle pieces at his disposal, weighing his fledgling ideas with the possibility that this might all blow up in his face. After all, he sighed to himself, whenever Kenobi was involved, his plans always went awry. Why should this time be any different?

Chapter Text

“This place feels weird,” Luma said, as she peered out the viewport of the ship, watching as they plunged through Dathomir’s atmosphere.

Maul didn’t respond immediately, focused on soaking up the now familiar and replenishing aura of his homeworld—the blood-red sky, the whispering shadows, the thrum of ichor pulsing beneath the planet’s surface. The dark side felt richer here, purer and older than that which Sidious had bequeathed upon him, and he let its song fill the spaces between his bones.

“Dathomir is incredibly strong with the Force,” he said when Luma looked back at him, as if awaiting his explanation. “Long ago, my mother and her sisters conquered it and built upon it a great coven of witches.”

“Witches?” she repeated, expression brightening in overt delight. “We’re going to meet witches?”

“Unfortunately not,” Maul answered. “The clan was wiped out.”

“Oh,” Luma said, chastened, a furrow forming upon her brow. “All of them?”

“Yes,” he confirmed.

She held her repaired droid closer to her chest and said, radiating a sincerity that made Maul wince to receive, “I’m sorry.”

He waved a hand in dismissal. “Many years have passed.”

“That doesn’t make it any less sad,” Luma pointed out rather sensibly, and Maul wondered what this youngling had experienced that had bestowed upon her this kind of wisdom. Or did it simply come with the territory of being the Chosen One?

After a moment of silence, Luma asked, “Is that how your brothers died too?”

“Yes and no. In a way, the perpetrators of their deaths were the same. But the brother I spoke of yesterday fell in battle while fighting my former master.”

“Oh,” Luma said softly. “That must’ve been very hard to accept.”

Maul gripped his cane. “It was,” he answered, thinking of Savage’s cry as Sidious had stabbed fatally through his middle. Those months spent with Savage had given Maul such hope, and in that moment it had deserted him entirely, replaced only with burning despair. He had been an unworthy master.

Something soft touched his arm, and Maul looked down to see Luma’s hand on his elbow.

When he frowned at her, she simply tilted her chin up. There was compassion in her eyes, and in the Force, he could feel her troubled desire to provide him with comfort—but to his surprise, pity was entirely absent.

Maul didn’t respond, but he didn’t push her hand away, either.

By the time they arrived, Dathomir’s day cycle was drawing to a close, the dying sun bathing the swamps in murky red-orange light. Cutting through the warm, smothering air was the relief of a languid breeze that chased away the oppressive mugginess of day and made the branches of the scraggled trees appear to beckon them forth. Prey darted through the forest as insects buzzed around their predecessors’ rotting corpses, and carrion circled overhead, on the eternal hunt.

Maul led the way to the Nightsister fortress, Kenobi slung over his shoulder and Reva floating in the air beside him. Both of their lightsabers were clipped to his belt, and his own unsheathed, in case they awoke. Luma walked a little closer to Maul as they made their way through the skeletal forest, though she looked around eagerly, expression lighting up with fascination and curiosity as she took the unfamiliar landscape in.

“Charming place,” Tala said from where she trailed behind them, blaster drawn. Maul didn’t bother telling her that its rounds would be virtually useless against anything that lived on Dathomir—himself included.

“Watch your tongue,” he hissed as they approached the towering mountainside into which the fortress was built. The lair had been established in ancient times, and now, thousands of years later, the stone facade, carved into the likeness of the First Mother, had outlived her descendants. “It was once home to my mother’s kind.”

Past the stone gate at the entrance of the complex, each building within the fortress was situated on a small mass of land that branched out from the central courtyard, which was lined with towering stone pillars topped by spheres containing ever-shifting ichor. The shallow waters of the cave river formed shimmering, blue moats around the islands.

They moved quickly into the northwestern building, which contained what had once been the adult Nightsisters’ rooms, their shared kitchen, and their medbay. In the latter, they submerged Kenobi in the only bacta tank Maul kept filled for emergencies; pain was to be relished, to be harnessed into rage—but he too had his limits, especially at the place where his prostheses were joined to his flesh and persistently tore at his skin.

Tala and Luma peered with interest at the tools scattered upon every surface in the room, and feeling suddenly prickly about the reality of having strangers in his home, Maul said urgently, “Now to deal with the Inquisitor.”

“Will…whatever you did to her…hold?” Tala asked as she and Luma followed him back out into the courtyard.

“Not for much longer,” Maul admitted. “But now that we are on Dathomirian soil, there’s another ritual that may render the Third Sister powerless.”

Tala’s eyebrows rose to her hairline. “What kind of ritual?” Luma wondered.

“One that will dampen her connection to the Force,” Maul said, dropping the Inquisitor unceremoniously onto the ground. “I must prepare.” To Tala he said, “Watch her closely, and do not hesitate a second time to kill her.”

He hurried to his shrine room in the central building, where he stored the most useful of the ancient tomes on magick, in addition to the flimsi notes he had taken as he studied the texts and experimented with his hard-won abilities. Muttering to himself, he sifted through the books, looking for the spell of containment. As he flipped through the scraps of flimsi, the vandalized portrait of the Duchess frowned down at him, austere and arrogant. As the Empire had risen from the Republic’s ashes and all Force adepts, Jedi or not, had been hunted down, Maul had come back here to lie low, and in his isolation, the madness he had experienced down in the tunnels of Lotho Minor had resurged. After returning to the galaxy at large, he hadn’t bothered to remove that souvenir from his time as Mandalore’s ruler, nor scrubbed off the scrawl of Kenobi’s name on the wall, written in his blood. Now he suppressed a wince at the evidence of his madness.

Eventually, he found the instructions for the temporary Force severance ritual he was seeking in one of the books at the bottom of a teetering stack. When he returned to the courtyard with it, Tala was standing over the Third Sister, her blaster aimed at the center of her forehead, and Luma was leaning over one of the silvery pools of water, a finger extended to poke at its still surface.

“Don’t touch that!” Maul snapped, and Luma reared back, looking askance at him.

“Sorry,” she said meekly, folding her arms before her and ducking her chin.

“It is of no consequence,” Maul replied. “Only that you do not know what dangers lie in those waters.” He caught Tala’s eye. “Come along now. The Nightsisters’ dungeons should do nicely for our purposes.”

Drawing the runes for the spell took some time, and in service of perfection, Maul blocked out all other senses as he crouched on the cell’s stone floor. He did not wish for the Inquisitor who lay in the circle's center to wake and usher Vader to his home. Luckily, this particular ritual required only a few drops of his blood and a paste made from the bulbous seeds of the grave thorn trees, plus a clipping of the root of a redbark plant he had harvested from Mother Talzin’s old chambers.

“How does magick work, anyway?” Luma asked from where she was watching him with open curiosity a few meters away. Standing one step closer, as if she intended to protect Luma should something go wrong—as if such a thing were even possible against Nightsister magick and Maul’s own font of power—Tala looked much more uneasy.

Luma continued, “Is it the same thing as the Force?”

“The Force flows through every living creature," Maul said as he stood back and admired his work. With a looping sweep of his hand, the sigils lit up one by one. "Magick users and Force adepts alike are able to sense it and grasp it for their own use—the approach is what differs,” he explained. “My mother's people were able to use the magical ichor that flows through this planet's mantle as a tool to channel and wield the Force. They primarily harnessed its power through incantations and elixirs. As such." Holding the tome open, Maul read the incantation, growing more confident each time he repeated the syllables he’d had to learn on his own.

Waves of green mist began to rise from the floor. They swirled around the Third Sister's unconscious body, then gathered around her wrists in the form of shackles, before disappearing from sight.

Maul hit the button that switched on the force field for the cell, and it activated with a harsh swell of sound. “There,” he said. “Until I cast the counter spell, she will not be able to draw on the Force.”

Tala’s shoulders eased. “Good,” she said with spite.

“Can you teach me how to do that?” Luma exclaimed. “With magick, I bet you could beat anyone in a fight!”

“I can teach you,” Maul said, internally gleeful—he hadn’t even needed to lure her into accepting his instruction!—“although I am still learning myself.”

Luma frowned. “Why? I thought you said you were from this planet.”

“Technically, yes,” Maul replied, “But I was raised many light-years away from my people, and they were very secretive. Deciphering their texts is not easy, and my being a man means their very altar seems to fight me when I attempt to draw on its power.”

“Men aren’t allowed to use magick?” Luma wondered, the furrow of her brow deepening. “Why not?”

Maul waved a dismissive hand. “It is simply the way of the Nightsisters.”

“But…you just used it! I saw you! How come you can?”

“Because I do not prescribe to binaries that do not serve me,” Maul said, even as he felt the toll of such strain, of fighting against the very limits of nature. Nevertheless, he grinned with all his teeth. “And I am known to be very persistent.”

Maul selected two Nightsister rooms on the same floor as his own for Tala and Luma, and left them be with an admonishment not to wander the premises, though they seemed so weary from the events of the day that he doubted they would be able to muster the energy to even step outside the room till morning.

He himself returned to the medbay. Floating inside the bacta tank, completely still and with his eyes closed, Kenobi looked even older and wearier than he had awake. He was not the fierce, angry boy Maul had faced in the reactor room in Theed, nor the calm, powerful man he had fought on Raydonia. He had been broken. Shattered.

Maul reached a hand out to the thick glass, fingertips pressing where Kenobi’s neck would be if he were not contained in the tank. Bringing his enemy here not to slaughter him, but to heal him should feel wrong, and yet…

A moment later, Maul yanked his hand back swiftly, as if the glass had begun to burn his skin. He was an old fool, too, and despite how long it had been since the trash fields of Lotho Minor, the madness was never far from him.

Though this unforeseen turn of events had diverted him from the path he had so carefully plotted over the years, he would not allow himself to be distracted. His goals had not changed. He was simply restoring Kenobi so that he could use him to accomplish his revenge against Vader and Sidious.

Whatever the history between them, Kenobi was naught but a means to an end.

Because there was nothing more important than his revenge against the Sith. Nothing.

Luma found him there the next morning. Maul snapped awake at the sound of her footsteps approaching and her bright voice bidding him a cheerful good morning. Instinctively, he reached for the saberstaff hooked to his belt, but he let his hand drop when he saw whom his visitor was.

“Young one,” Maul said, his voice gravel thick with sleep. He rubbed irritatedly at the horns on his right side, which were sore from hours spent pressed against the bacta tank. He hadn’t intended to slumber here.

“Good morning,” she repeated, her hands cupped around her droid, its appendages fluttering. “How is Ben doing?”

Maul stood and looked into the tank—at the new, shiny skin growing in place of the singed flesh, at the oddly neutral expression on Kenobi’s face. “He should recover soon enough,” he said, glancing at the monitor tracking Kenobi’s vitals.

Luma crept farther into the room, gliding over to the bacta tank and pressing her palm to the glass. With no small amount of embarrassment, Maul remembered doing much the same yesterday.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Luma said quietly. “I didn’t mean to run away. I used to do it all the time. I just… It was just for fun.”

Maul tucked his arms behind his back and told her, “You need not apologize to him. Kenobi knew what he was getting into when he ran off to face Vader.”

Luma’s grave expression didn’t ease. “I miss home,” she whispered.

Maul frowned, weighing the possibilities. He couldn’t allow the alleged Chosen One to slip through his fingers. Gentling his voice, he offered, “Tala may be willing to take you back to your homeworld. But you wished to learn from me, did you not?”

Luma glanced at him, something wary in her gaze, and clutched her droid tighter. She looked back at Kenobi for a moment before declaring, “I can’t leave until Ben’s better. We have to protect him from Darth Vader.”

Maul snorted at the idea of this youngling facing off with the Sith Apprentice. “As you wish,” he said wryly.

Then again, if Kenobi had spoken truthfully and she really was the Chosen One… And it was certainly plausible—now that he knew to look for it, Maul could sense the raw power within her, locked away and unharnessed, but strong nonetheless, like a dammed river that only needed to be set free. He considered that potential for a moment. Perhaps Kenobi’s unconscious state was an unexpected gift, because it meant he would not be able to do anything to stop Maul from influencing his ward.

Decision made, Maul gestured toward the door. “Come,” he commanded. “If you truly wish to know more about fighting and magick, then I will demonstrate for your edification.”

“Really?” Luma asked, growing earnest again.

“Lesson one: Don’t keep your master waiting,” he replied, and strolled out of the room.

Maul’s ploy was successful—the sound of Luma’s footsteps followed him through the corridors. His mouth curved into a gleeful smirk.

As they approached the central courtyard, he swiped at the sticky sweat already beginning to bead upon his brow. Dathomir was always hot, but fortunately, the brunt of the humidity wouldn’t roll in until later in the day. The oppressive heat always reminded him of the rumbling lava rivers of Mustafar, and of how the volcanoes' regular eruptions would desiccate the air, making his skin crack. Still, although temperatures on Mustafar had been higher, Dathomir’s sticky air was another beast entirely. Despite being born in this place, Maul didn’t think he would ever grow accustomed to it.

The paradox annoyed him. His biology indicated he was a son of Dathomir, and yet he couldn’t seem to adapt to his homeworld, even after all the years he’d spent here since the Empire’s formation. Perhaps all those later years spent training under Coruscant’s weather-control system and breathing the filtered air of the upper levels had permanently spoiled his lungs.

“Sit,” Maul said, and Luma cautiously crouched down to echo the way Maul’s metal legs were folded, setting her droid in her lap. “We shall meditate together, and you shall feel the Force for yourself.”

“Can everyone feel the Force?”

“No,” Maul said. “Most beings will never be able to sense it, though it is all around them. Let us discover whether you are singularly capable. Close your eyes and focus your mind.”

“Okay…” Luma said, sounding skeptical, though she did as she was told.

Maul continued, keeping his voice quiet enough that it wouldn’t disrupt her concentration: “Control your breathing; maintain a steady rhythm. This will be your anchor.”

He let his breath even out, waiting for hers to follow. “Now, summon the emotions that make you who you are—your passion, your defiance, your confidence, your antipathy—and imagine crafting a blade with those emotions. This is how you will gain control over those feelings. You must never allow them to control you.”

Luma was quiet for a moment. Then she complained, “I thought the Force was for fighting. How is this supposed to help me fight?”

“Meditation centers oneself,” Maul answered. “It sharpens your mind and allows your body to regain your strength. If your mind and your body are not in the perfect shape going into battle, then you will already have lost.

“Once you have harnessed your emotions, they will become your tools, and you can then use them to burnish your strength. They will serve as a limitless spring of your power, one you can repeatedly replenish through meditation. Understand?”

Luma nodded, and if she had any further misgivings, she kept them to herself.

“Good. Slowly, that weapon will come into focus. Now, hold that blade in your mind, and…”

When the sun reached its zenith in the sky, Maul concluded their impromptu lesson and shooed Luma back into the residence tower. Meanwhile, he headed for the building in the southwestern corner of the fortress. Descending into the cooler underground air of the dungeons was a relief.

He found the Third Sister awake and sullen, pacing the length of the stone cell that held her, her cape billowing out behind her with every step.

“Darth Maul,” she hissed when she spotted him. Wearing a mighty scowl, she stalked over to the force field that kept her contained, the yellow of her irises alight.

“Formerly Darth,” Maul drawled. “Now just Maul.”

“You cannot keep me here,” the Third Sister said. “I demand that you release me.”

Maul rolled his eyes. “You are in no position to make demands.”

The Third Sister scoffed, glaring venomously up at him. “Why can’t I use the Force? What have you done to me?” Despite her questions, she flung her arm out toward the force field mechanism, eyes flaring. When ribbons of green mist encircled her wrists, just as Maul had expected, she cried out in frustration. “What is this?”

“Your connection to the Force is too elementary to stand a chance against the magick of my forebears,” Maul taunted, and smirked when it made the Third Sister growl wordlessly at him. “You have been cut off from it, and will remain so until I undo the spell.”

“We shall see about that,” she retorted, crossing her arms. “Why are you keeping me here? We both know you could have killed me back on Mapuzo. Why didn’t you?”

“Mere curiosity, perhaps,” Maul said. She narrowed her eyes.

“I don’t believe that for a second,” she retorted. “You mean to somehow use my capture to your advantage. Well, if you think you Lord Vader will bargain for me, you’re wrong.”

“Obviously,” Maul replied. “It is the Sith way, after all.” Then he smirked, savoring his next words: “Not that you and your brethren are true Sith, of course.”

It had the intended effect, as the Third Sister loomed closer, yellow eyes flashing as she snarled, “Better than being a traitor and palling around with Jedi! Are you protecting Kenobi?”

At that ludicrous statement, Maul laughed long and hard, the sonorous echoes bouncing around the empty stone halls. “Protecting? No.”

“Then what?” she demanded. “Why were you with him?”

“How do you know I wasn’t hunting him too?”

“He’s not down here in a cell, is he?” she retorted, looking pointedly around the corridor. “I would know if he were. Don’t lie to me.”

Narrowing his eyes, Maul raised his hand, and it took little effort to press the Force against her windpipe. His grip tightened until she began gasping, clawing at the invisible hold.

As she struggled, he leaned in close to the barrier and snarled, “I warned you. Still, you dare command me?” He bared his teeth. “Need I remind you, Inquisitor—one of us is caged, and the other is not. You’d do well to watch your tongue.”

He slammed her to the ground, where she landed with a stifled grunt, wheezing and attempting foolishly to hide it.

Maul smirked. It appeared that he’d successfully taught two lessons in a single day.

With that, he said, “Good day,” and strode out of the corridor, chin held high and hands tucked behind his back.

As the grizzled sun was setting later that day, Maul received an alert from the medbay. He set down his datapad and, without any further thought, dashed out the door of his study, unsheathing his lightsaber as he went. If Kenobi had escaped… For the first time, he wished he had thought to acquire a medical droid.

When he burst through the medbay door, he was indeed met with the absurd sight of Kenobi sputtering as he attempted to climb out of the bacta tank, despite the harness holding him in place. The alarms on the medical machinery were going off, filling the air with syncopated noise, as bacta splashed down the glass walls of the cylindrical tank.

“Kenobi!” Maul shouted as he darted over, cursing him, this entire situation, and his own sensitive ears. “Calm down, you fool!”

“Leia!” Kenobi yanked off his rebreather, gasping for breath as he attempted to remain afloat. His eyes were wild and the new skin on his hands shiny and raw as he clung to the rim of the tank. “Where’s Leia?”

So that was the girl’s true name. Maul filed it away for later examination. “She’s resting,” he said, flicking off the alarms. “So stop trying to escape, you idiot, lest you wake her.”

Kenobi blinked owlishly at him. “She’s safe?” he asked, pushing back his bacta-drenched hair. His chest was still heaving. “You’re watching over her? Tala too?”

“Yes,” Maul said shortly. “Now will you stop trying to encumber your own recovery? You’re wasting my bacta.”

Kenobi glanced down at the liquid saturating the floor and sagged. For an intense moment, he held Maul’s gaze, seeming to be attempting to decipher the truth. Being peered at by those eyes made Maul feel incredibly itchy. But Kenobi apparently found what he was looking for, because he concluded, “All right,” and then closed his eyes and dropped back into the tank with a splash.

Maul shook his head, exasperated, and turned around. He had sensed someone observing them, though he could feel that they meant neither of them harm.

Tala was leaning against the door frame, holding a thermajug in each hand. Her dark hair, taken down from its regulation knot, fell in loose curls down to her chin.

“Ben is fortunate to have you,” she said as she made her way over to where he stood before the bacta tank.

Maul just barely suppressed a hysterical laugh at the concept. She had no idea how thoroughly untrue that was.

Tala held out one of the thermajugs, and he accepted it, bemused. “I admit, when I first saw the color of your lightsaber, I was skeptical that you were truly on our side,” she continued, watching him closely. She raised an amused eyebrow at his untouched drink. “It’s not poisoned, you know.”

Rolling his eyes, Maul slotted his fingers together around his thermajug and took a sip. He wrinkled his nose at the thick, intense bitterness that flooded his taste buds. “Are you certain?” he retorted, once he managed to swallow the sludge down.

Tala chuckled. “Sorry, poor habit. In the Empire, we only had access to instant caf. I suppose I still brew even the proper stuff that way.”

“Mm. So what made you think otherwise?” Maul asked.

“Hmm?”

“You claimed to doubt my allegiance.”

“Well, you’ve taken such good care of Ben while he’s been recovering,” Tala said, and Maul nearly spat out his next mouthful of the terrible caf. “Caring for him on our way here, watching over him, even sleeping here at night to be beside him…I can tell how much you care for him.”

“Indeed?” Maul practically squeaked at the ridiculous concept, suppressing the scowl that threatened to give him away.

“Yes,” Tala said. She stepped closer to the bacta tank, watching Kenobi through the glass. Maul glanced at her hip, where, for all her infuriating observations, her blaster still sat in its holster, despite that they were in his home—or, perhaps because they were in his home. Her seemingly kind words had a knife’s edge to them, after all, conveying that she was keeping an eye on him and declaring that she would protect Kenobi from him if necessary.

Even as he knew that her keenness could make things more complicated for him, Maul was glad to know he hadn’t invited a complete fool into his lair.

“You must savor your time with him,” Tala continued. “In this line of work, you never know when that will come to an end.”

Maul studied the proud tilt of her chin, the hardness of her eyes, the knot of sorrow that lingered in the Force around her. “You lost someone, then?” he asked, allowing the conversation to continue despite being confident of the answer. Although he didn’t yet have a need to manipulate Tala, aside from letting her believe he and Kenobi were attached, he was accustomed to reading people and understanding their greatest desires and vulnerabilities, and an exchange like this could lead to valuable intel in that regard.

“I did,” Tala confirmed. “It was my wife who made me see the Empire for what it was. She introduced me to the Path, and we worked together for four years before she was executed by an Inquisitor.”

“That must have been very painful,” Maul said, thinking once again of Savage, and Tala inclined her head.

“I’ve known none greater,” she replied.

“What of the Inquisitor who killed her?” Maul asked, and was impressed by how Tala did not flinch at the blunt words.

”I killed him, of course,” she responded, voice like steel, “with the assistance of the younglings we were there to rescue. But it wasn’t easy.” She shuddered at the memory. “For a long time, they didn’t know if I would ever walk again. The Path didn’t have sufficient medical supplies, and the Empire refused to spare the resources. But I don’t go down easy.”

Maul couldn’t help his curiosity, given that he could certainly relate to such a thing. But usually he could recognize the subtle difference in gait of someone who used cybernetic legs. He looked her up and down, attempting to glean what supplies and resources might have been needed, though he was certain it wasn’t going to be an arachnoid harness like he’d used down in the tunnels of Lotho Minor.

Understanding what he wasn’t asking, she tapped a spot on her upper back, between her shoulder blades. “They found me a doctor who replaced part of my spine with a mechno prosthetic. It’s crude, and it took every credit my wife and I had saved up for the procedure, plus extra to ensure his silence, but, well… She was dead, and I figured the most important thing was to keep fighting.”

“I see,” Maul said, considering her in a new light. He debated his next move with himself for a moment, but it was undeniable: gaining Tala’s sympathy would be advantageous, especially before Kenobi awoke again. Matter-of-factly, Maul tapped his belt. “From this point down, my body is constructed entirely of metal.”

Tala’s eyes widened. “Kark,” she breathed, looking down at his legs. “You…survived that?”

Maul smiled humorlessly, relishing her surprise. “I’m not one to ‘go down easy,’ either.”

“I believe it,” Tala said, something akin to admiration in her voice. “And neither is he, huh?” she added, glancing back at Kenobi.

Maul’s gaze shifted to him, too. “No,” he answered. “He never has been.”

He was surprised at how little anger surged within him at the thought. Years ago, he would have been frothing with fury at Kenobi’s inability to stay down.

Now, all these years later, he found himself almost…glad, that this great Jedi, his indefatigable enemy, still lived. Because once Kenobi awoke, he would owe Maul, for rescuing him from Vader, for ferrying him to safety, for providing him with medical care. Thus, he would have no choice but to accept his part in Maul’s plans. And with the help of the Chosen One, the two of them would take down Sidious, once and for all.

Of course Maul was glad. His long-owed revenge against the Sith was finally close at hand.

The next morning, Maul found himself drawn back to Kenobi’s bacta tank. This time, he brought his datapad, and spent the time answering missives regarding Crimson Dawn business and becoming lost in thought. As yesterday, Luma—no, Leia, she was called—came to check on Kenobi when she woke up, and when she found Maul there once again, she made him pause his correspondence and bring her out to the courtyard. There, he spent over an hour trying to soothe Leia’s impatient fidgeting and convey to her the importance of the seemingly mundane ritual of meditation. She seemed much more cooperative and eager to learn when Maul began to teach her some basic katas.

“You must move with intention, Apprentice,” he reprimanded, correcting the tilt of her shoulders as she twisted her torso to the right and flung her left arm out, her small hand curled into a too-tight fist. “Your body is an invaluable weapon, and you must gain control of it. Each movement will expend a certain amount of energy, so you must develop an instinct to portion it out, that you may outlast your opponent in a fight.”

“Like this?” Leia repeated the motion less urgently this time, then looked back at Maul with hopeful eyes.

“Again,” he ordered.

Weary of subsisting on ration bars, Maul left the fortress to go fishing and foraging that afternoon. Being out in the swampy woods both soothed him and strengthened his connection to the Living Force. On his return journey, he hefted a sack full of burra fish from a nearby saltwater stream back to the fortress, stopping to pick hwotha berries from a proliferating patch on the way, swatting away the sparkflies that hovered around him in interest.

At the sight of the bounty, Tala voiced her appreciation and assisted him with preparing the meal. Soon, the open-air kitchen in the fortress was filled with the warm, sumptuous scent of berries being smashed into a rich puree and fish being grilled over coals. Leia followed them around, exclaiming in surprise at the unfamiliar tastes and smells. She seemed fascinated by the concept of being able to actually watch the food being cooked, which Maul deduced likely meant she had grown up in an environment with a dedicated cooking staff and was restricted from entering the kitchens—which would imply she came from some sort of privileged background. He stashed the observation in the back of his mind, where he was attempting to work out her identity and relation to Kenobi.

The latemeal conversation was steered by Leia’s curiosity, and Tala was patient with her, answering her endless stream of questions. She told them about growing up on Mapuzo, about the Republic stripping the resources of her homeworld and then neglecting it when the Separatists came to take what remained in the quarries. Though she didn’t volunteer much information about the years she had spent in the Imperial Academy and then serving the Empire, she spoke of her wife and their time working for the Hidden Path together with a fondness that made even a hardened being like Maul sense the grievous loss she had suffered.

Leia seemed particularly affected by the thought of losing the beings in one’s life, and Maul remembered how hopefully she had asked if Kenobi was her birth father. That was another piece of the mystery he was slowly examining in his head.

“Where was she from?” Leia asked.

“Petrusia,” Tala said. “When it was conquered by the Empire, her parents were enslaved and sent to an Imperial outpost.”

“That’s horrible!” Leia said.

“It is,” Tala replied. “Brytis fought till the very end to resist their rule and rescue others.”

“Did she end up freeing her parents?”

Tala shook her head. “She spent a lot of time looking, but she never found them again. It wasn’t her fault, but it weighed on her as if it had been. I think, for a long time, vengeance was the only thing that kept her going.”

“It can get you extraordinarily far,” Maul spoke up, thinking of Savage and his mother, and of his time on Lotho Minor, abandoned—all part of the well of hatred he still drew on for power.

“Indeed.” Tala laid a hand on her holster. “Though, in the grand scheme of things, my own vengeance accomplished little,” she mused. “Once I killed the Eighth Sister, the Ninth Brother simply got promoted to the empty slot. There seems to be an endless supply of them.”

“Which is why they must be cut off at the head,” Maul replied.

“Is that your goal?” Tala asked. “To kill Vader?”

“To kill the emperor,” Maul corrected loftily, and Tala’s eyes widened in genuine surprise.

“You are an ambitious man,” she said.

Maul replied simply, “My upbringing taught me no other way.”

Tala glanced around pointedly. “This does seem like a rough planet to grow up on.”

Maul shook his head. “No, I wasn’t raised here. If I had been… Well. The galaxy might look like a different place.”

Tala’s brow furrowed, clearly attempting to understand his insinuation. But whatever she was about to say was interrupted by Leia asking, “Where did you grow up then?”

“Mustafar,” Maul answered honestly. “Then Coruscant.” He did not mention Orsis.

“Coruscant?” Tala scoffed. “What, with its glittering towers and modulated climate and the limitless wealth and fortune gained from pillaging the Mid and Outer Rim? Couldn’t have been all that bad.”

“It was not fortune that led me there,” Maul snapped. “I was stolen from this planet—taken from my people, or sold, I’m not certain. And my master did live in a glittering tower, but I was seldom allowed to step outside of it, unless I was given a task that required me to travel somewhere else on the planet. For me, Coruscant was a prison, as were many of the other places I’ve dwelled.”

Silently, he admitted to himself that all too often, despite his ability to move freely, even his chosen home of Dathomir felt like a prison. But perhaps that had more to do with it perpetually feeling like a tomb.

“But what was Coruscant like?” Leia asked, leaning forward eagerly. “I’ve never been there, but my father’s told me so many stories.”

If tales of the ecumenopolis were what would endear Maul to her, and help gain her trust, then perhaps digging into the old, hated memories would be worth it. He steepled his fingers, considering what he wanted to say.

“On Coruscant, I lived in a tower called the LiMerge Building, which was located in the Works, near the Senate District on the equator…”

Chapter Text

When Ben awoke, he found himself tucked in a firm bed beneath a generous pile of blankets. It was warm and exceedingly comfortable, though the pillow didn’t fit quite right around his head, clearly made for a non-Human species. Despite that, it was much cozier than the sleeping pallet he used in his cave on Tatooine.

The light, coming from a few real wax candles around the room, was dim, and cast long shadows upon the tall stone walls. His head felt fuzzy as he peered around the room, which smelled of some kind of dark, woody incense, and bacta—which was explained by the emptied tank that stood on the other side of the room.

He had no idea where he was, beside some kind of medbay. With a grunt, he shucked off the blankets and was startled to discover he had nothing on, another jarring change from the many protective layers he was accustomed to wearing on Tatooine. His skin was shiny and raw and new, and the sight of it brought back the memory of the duel: Anakin under that hideous mask, saying terrible things, the flames excruciating against Ben’s skin, and the far-worse guilt and regret that seared him as he screamed. Part of him had expected to die there, in that quarry, alone but for the ghoul his apprentice had become, and despite his concern about leaving Luke unguarded, he had, in that moment, felt a sense of relief at the prospect.

He found his clothes hanging from a hook beside the bed and dressed himself, wrinkling his nose at the stickiness of the bacta that lingered on his skin. Still, it was far superior to being unwashed, as he was now accustomed to being for months at a time, the water from his vaporator too precious to waste on such frivolities and his credits too meager to purchase more than the occasional five minutes under the public sonics in Anchorhead.

As he was running a hand through his tangled, matted hair and beard, the door to the room slid open, and Ben instinctively reached for a blaster that wasn’t there. But it was only Leia standing on the other side, her hair secured in not the traditional, intricate Alderaanian braids he would have expected but a single long, slipshod plait that trailed down her back.

“Ben!” she cried. “You’re awake!” She rushed over to him and hugged his legs. “What a relief!”

Ben lay a gentle hand on her head. He was the one who was relieved. “Thank you for your concern, Leia,” he said. “Can you tell me where we are?”

“Dathomir!” she said. “This place is amazing! The sky is red, and instead of lights, they use candles, and there are all these magick ponds I’m not allowed to touch, and I’ve never had fruit that tastes so good—”

Ben reeled back, looking around the room with new eyes. Maul. He lowered his voice. “How long was I asleep?” he asked urgently. “What happened to you while I was out?”

“Over two days,” Leia said. “And lots of things have happened! Tala told me stories about her wife and about pretending to be other people. And Maul talked about Coruscant and taught me how to do cool poses and breathing exercises.”

Ben blinked at her, befuddled. That…was not what he’d expected her to say.

He was still processing it when Maul strode through the open door after her. “As I have informed you before, the proper terms for what you have begun to learn are katas and meditation,” he said to Leia, his voice taking on an authoritative, oddly instructor-like tone. He’d changed out of the extravagant, bulky robes he’d been wearing on Daiyu in favor of simple black trousers and a sleeveless, low-cut tunic. His left shoulder was wrapped in bacta bandages.

Ben instinctively moved between the two of them, pushing Leia behind himself. “Why have you brought us here, Maul? Why are you keeping us here?”

“Keeping you here?” Maul repeated, scowling. “Lest I remind you, you would still be in agony from your injuries if not for my bacta tank.”

“You healed me?” Ben said. The signs had been there, but it didn’t add up. “Why?”

“Because,” Maul replied heatedly, “if I hadn’t, Tala would have brought you to the Path’s base, where Vader would have found you, this youngling, and the rebels all. I told you I refuse to have my vengeance stolen from me.”

Leia looked between them shrewdly, then took Ben’s hand. “You must be hungry,” she said, diffusing the building tension, and Ben was reminded with a sudden pang of Padmé. “Let’s go find you something to eat.” She led Ben out of the room and down the corridor, and Maul trailed behind them.

“Where is Tala, then?” Ben asked, not sure which of them he was asking.

“Probably interrogating the Third Sister again,” Leia answered.

Ben whipped around to stare in horror at Maul. “She’s here?”

“We captured her on Mapuzo,” Maul said. “She intended to take the youngling.”

“I’m surprised you left her alive,” Ben replied.

“I did not see a point, initially,” Maul said, striding past them into the kitchen. “But she may yet be of use to us in the fight.”

“There is no us, Maul,” Ben said. “Nor any fight. I will bring the girl back to Alderaan and return to where I live, and this strange chapter of our lives will be over.”

“In exile,” Maul sneered. “Broken and useless. Forsaking all that once made you powerful. Why, Kenobi? Why have you given up everything?”

“Because I lost everything,” Ben snapped. “Everyone I ever cared about is gone, and I am but a phantom, whiling away the hours until I am one with the Force. What do I have to fight for? Let those who yet have the constitution fight, let the young with their optimism and their wits fight.” His voice was growing increasingly loud, despair sinking its talons into his very self. “All I’ve ever done is fight, and all it’s ever brought is ruin!”

“Good, good!” Maul exclaimed, yellow eyes gleaming. “That’s it—use your anger, use your pain. Let it fill you, fuel you!”

And Ben truly could feel it filling him, a creeping, wispy vine of green mist seeping into his bones. He shuddered at the darkness it emanated. Ever the contrarian, he let the anger drain from him.

“No,” he said, sagging. “I won’t.” He passed his hand over his face, releasing the rest of his misery into the Force.

“Then you will never know true power,” Maul scoffed.

Instead of falling for the bait, Ben met Leia’s startled gaze and said, “I apologize for my outburst, Leia.”

“That’s okay,” Leia said, and turned back to where she was ladling what appeared to be some kind of speckled soup into a stone bowl. “I get mad sometimes, too. You should come to my lessons tomorrow. Maul’s teaching me how to control my temper.”

Ben stared at her. “He’s…what?” He turned his disbelieving gaze to Maul. “He’s hardly a role model for such thing.”

“Shut up, Kenobi,” Maul snapped, baring his teeth at him. “As if you can talk. I’m not the one who trained the Sith Apprentice.” Muttering under his breath, he stormed back out of the room.

Ben heaved a weary sigh as Leia set the bowl of chilled soup on the stone table in the kitchen and pulled out the chair for him. It smelled scrumptious, like river fish and tangy fruit.

“Maybe you’ll be more pleasant after you eat up,” she said disdainfully, climbing up onto the chair across from him.

“Leia,” Ben said, glancing around and lowering his voice, “has Maul hurt you?”

Leia shook her head. “What do you mean? He’s been perfectly nice,” she said. “He’s honest. I like that.”

The thought of anyone thinking Maul was nice was absurd, and the idea that it was Bail’s child—this child who had been so skeptical of his own intentions—was something Ben could barely comprehend.

Leia seemed equally as confounded. “You’re mean to him,” she pointed out. “Why don’t you like him?

Ben blinked at her. No one had ever asked him such a ludicrous thing. But he supposed from the perspective of a ten-year-old who wasn’t aware of their history, that would appear to be the crux of the issue. He grimaced, searching for the words.

“I don’t trust him,” he answered eventually.

“You don’t seem to trust anyone,” Leia replied. “You’re very paranoid, you know that?”

Ben sighed. “I am wary,” he corrected. “The galaxy is not a safe place, and letting your guard down can be very dangerous.”

“Yeah, but in this case, it’s personal, isn’t it?”

Frowning at her uncanny perception, Ben admitted, “It might be.”

“Well, I don’t think you have anything to be afraid of,” she replied. “He saved your life.”

Ben stroked his beard, not bothering to correct her and insist that it was hardly fear he felt toward Maul. “Still don’t understand why.”

“Why not? It was the right thing to do.”

Making a face, Ben picked up the utensil. “Exactly my point.”

Leia rolled her eyes at him, and the simple, irreverent gesture was so like Anakin that Ben’s breath caught in his chest. Sorrow lashed through him at the reminder of who this precocious youngling truly was.

He couldn’t muster up any other words for the remainder of the meal, and with a heavy sigh beyond her years, Leia let him brood.

To take his mind off the painful memories, Ben spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the premises. The last time he’d been here, he’d been quickly escorted into Mother Talzin’s throne room by a cavalcade of guards without the chance to take in the sights.

Although he had spent many years traveling the galaxy with Qui-Gon, and later with his own fleet during the Clone Wars, Dathomir was unlike any other place he had ever been. It felt extraordinarily old, like some of the ancient Jedi temples he’d visited—but those had all been sanctuaries of light.

Despite being blanketed in the dark side, the fortress was beautiful, too. What appeared to be a garrison on the exterior was actually more of a village, made up of five pyramidal buildings made of towering stone slabs. No two were identical, whether it was in the pattern of the parapets or the carved archway entrances. Moats of bright blue water sat between the bridges that connected the buildings to a vast central courtyard, where the altar sat in the place of honor in the middle. The exterior of every structure in the complex, from the pillars to the staircases, appeared to be made of natural materials. There wasn’t a durasteel sheet or transparisteel pane in sight.

The northwestern building had been the one in which Ben had awoken and eaten with Leia. It seemed to contain mostly living quarters, the enormous kitchen and its associated storerooms, and the infirmary.

In the southwestern building, he found empty stables and what appeared to be workshops, filled with abandoned looms, carpentry tools, starship and speeder parts, and partially completed metalworking projects. The uppermost floors were dedicated to what appeared to be an expansive apothecary, the walls lined with neat rows of shelves that held hundreds of glass jars and bottles of varying sizes. The liquids and the objects contained inside were of a multitude of dizzying colors, and when Ben got closer, he found that some of them smelled deeply off-putting to a Human’s senses. Shuddering, he tried not to look too hard at the ones that resembled shriveled parts of something a little too recognizably humanoid for his comfort.

The northeastern building reminded him of a university. It contained classrooms, what appeared to be a research lab, and a vast library. Overtaken by memories of afternoons spent in the Jedi Archives—the arched, vaulted ceilings that had stood for hundreds of years; the glow of thousands of holobooks; the comfort of being surrounded by students and scholars studying and quietly discussing their findings—Ben had to hurriedly sit down on one of the nearby wooden stools, suddenly lightheaded, his throat grown tight.

Maul found him hurrying back out into the courtyard in a faltering attempt to outrun the haunting memories. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Exploring,” Ben managed to get out between accelerating gasps, clutching his chest with trembling hands and feeling as if his heart were about to fly right out of it. “I’m not a prisoner here, am I?”

Maul sniffed. “No,” he said. He peered at Ben as he tried to catch his breath. “What’s wrong with you? Do you require medical attention?”

Ben shook his head. He knew by now that all he could do during these fits was wait them out. “It’ll pass,” he muttered, trying to calm himself.

Maul looked skeptical, but he didn’t push any further. “While you’re not a prisoner,” he said, continuing his earlier thread, “you have been consuming my food and medical supplies, so I expect you to heed me when I forbid you to venture into the main tower.”

Ben welcomed the distraction. “Why is that?”

“It was once the sanctuary of the Clan Mother, and now it is mine,” Maul said, and added ominously, “and believe me, you wouldn’t like what you found there.”

Ben’s eyebrows rose. “Well, now you’ve gone and piqued my interest.”

Maul rolled his eyes. “I preferred when you were unconscious,” he said tartly. He turned to leave, then glanced over his shoulder when Ben didn’t follow. “If you aren’t ill, then come be of use.”

“Of use how?” Ben asked, hurrying after him.

“You shall help me hunt,” Maul answered simply, smiling with all his teeth.

The forest Maul led them through was vast and eerie, a tangle of gnarled trees and thorny bushes, all the more striking underneath the crimson skies. As in the fortress, the dark side was an oppressive shroud out here. But so was the thrumming heartbeat of life, which threaded through not just the creatures and the sentient being beside him but even the forest floor and the very trees themselves.

The air was humid, and Ben’s hair quickly became plastered to his forehead as he hobbled alongside Maul, his raw skin stinging every time the fabric of his robes shifted. But his mind was feeling clearer, though his heart rate was still elevated, and the shaking of his hands had yet to cease.

“What are those pods hanging from the trees?” he asked, hoping Maul would be generous enough to give him something else to focus on.

“Burial sacs,” Maul replied. “The Nightsisters honored their dead by returning them to nature. One with the proper knowledge can call upon them in battle.”

“Fascinating,” Ben murmured.

“Once, they also served as a security system. The clan elders could reanimate them and use them to both spy on and attack intruders.”

“Sounds quite useful,” Ben said. “Maul, if you don’t mind me asking, what happened to the Nightsisters? Why are you the only one left in their fortress?”

“I mind,” Maul snapped. “But if you must know, they were massacred by Grievous.” He glanced at Ben, as if evaluating whether to say any more. Ben didn’t push him, struck by the revelation that they had both lost their people. After a few minutes of silence as they wove through the forest, he continued, “Mother Talzin planned to kill Darth Tyrannus as revenge for casting off the Nightsister Asajj Ventress.”

“Tyrannus,” Ben breathed. “You mean Dooku.”

Maul nodded. “She sent Nightsisters after him, but they were defeated. Then she mutilated Savage and gifted him to Ventress, putting him under her thrall. Together, they took on Tyrannus yet again, and failed. Weaklings!”

“Dooku was no easy opponent,” Ben offered. “I should know.”

“Even so,” Maul snapped. “Tyrannus deduced who was behind the treachery, and sent Grievous to wipe the Nightsisters out.”

“I’m sorry,” Ben said, and Maul didn’t respond. “I remember the Nightbrothers lived apart from them. Did they survive?” he asked.

“They, too, were killed by Tyrannus, when I attempted to capture him on Ord Mantell. The few who survived have fallen since.”

Ben frowned, thinking back. He had been there with Mace, Tiplee, and Aayla, investigating the aftermath of the explosive battle between the Separatists and the syndicates. Tiplee, who had become concerningly reckless after Tiplar’s death, had fallen to Dooku’s saber in a duel.

“I seem to recall you fighting alongside Dooku on Ord Mantell,” Ben pointed out.

“It was all part of the plan,” Maul dismissed. “But when we brought him back here to face our vengeance, we were ambushed by Sidious. He and Grievous killed Mother Talzin.” His hands clenched into fists, and his voice rose. “He has taken everything from me! I will have my revenge.”

“And what will happen once you have vanquished Darth Sidious?” Ben wondered. “Will you take his place? Rule the galaxy in his stead?”

Maul began to laugh, the echoes of lingering madness surfacing in the yellow of his eyes. “Once, I aspired to such a thing, but no longer. I am too old and worn now, and the folly of youth has abandoned me. The destruction of the Sith will have to do. I do not care much what comes afterward.”

Ben was surprised that in the Force, he could sense that Maul was telling the truth, could sense a bitter resignation that felt all too familiar. It appeared that the rise of the Empire and the triumph of the Sith had changed even one who had once been in their service. None of them had been left unscathed.

“I believe you,” Ben offered, and Maul glanced at him quickly, seeming surprised. The fury seemed to bleed out of him, and he was silent the rest of the way.

Eventually, they ended up in a thicket, through which Ben could see a cave several meters away. Though there didn’t appear to be any animals outside of it, he spotted hoofprints in the mud outside the cave mouth.

“If you believe you have recovered sufficiently, we may be able to hunt boar today,” Maul said in a low voice, unsheathing his lightsaber.

“What have you been hunting otherwise?” Ben whispered back.

“Fish, scissorfists, birds. With my shoulder injury, carrying a Dathomiri boar on my own would be too cumbersome.”

Any of that game was a bounty compared to the morsels Ben usually ate on Tatooine, and he couldn’t deny that his stomach grumbled at the thought of food that didn’t come in tins and hadn’t been sand cured.

Maul detached Ben’s lightsaber from his belt and his blaster from his holster and gruffly held the items out. Ben’s eyes widened at the unexpected sight.

“Stop gawking,” Maul muttered. “Don’t pretend you could put up a fight even with your saber. And killing you while you are weakened would be deeply unsatisfying.”

“Of course it would,” Ben said dryly. He hadn’t expected honor to be something that would trip Maul up. He accepted both weapons, the hilt of his saber buzzing warmly in his hands. Recalling his duel with Anakin, he shuddered, and quickly attached it to his own belt, taking the time to carefully check the charges on his blaster instead of dwelling on his other weapon.

“This way,” Maul said. “I am familiar with their wandering patterns.” They crept closer to the cave but took a left before they got to its mouth. A distance away, there was a large pond surrounded by bowing trees, and a single giant boar lapped at the water. Ben stared at it, aghast. He had assumed the boar Maul intended to hunt would be around the size of a Marrovian pig, not something nearly the size of a bantha.

“Do not let it get its claws on you,” Maul warned. “A single scratch will infect you with its lethal bacteria, and you will be dead within minutes.”

“Wonderful,” Ben muttered, though that was the least of his concerns at the moment. The boar stamping on them would likely be just as deadly, he surmised. “What’s the plan?”

“Just follow my lead,” Maul said.

They crept steadily closer, trying to make as little noise as possible in the swamp grass. Maul gestured for Ben to hide, then strode into the clearing and ignited one end of his saberstaff. Ben glared at him. This was not his idea of a plan.

At the sound, the boar looked up. When it spotted Maul, it stomped its feet, then with a roar, charged at him, the ground seeming to shake with its ferocity.

Maul stood his ground, then at the last possible moment, grabbed hold of the boar’s tusks and swung up onto its back in a show of swift athleticism that had Ben blinking fast. The boar tried to shake him off, but Maul clung on tightly, swinging his saber, though he only managed to make superficial cuts and singe the fur on its back.

The boar bucked, and Maul was thrown off, his lightsaber sailing into the shallow water. He rolled and came to a stop in the mud, grimacing. Without missing a beat, the boar took advantage of his position, looming over him with its reared hind legs, ready to stomp him, just as Ben had expected.

Ben fired three shots at the boar’s head. It shrieked at the impact of the blaster bolts, and Maul took advantage of its distraction to slip away and leap to his feet. The creature was hardy, though, and it shook off the pain to look around, searching for the source of the attack. When it spotted Ben hiding behind the tree, it got back onto its feet and changed directions, charging at him instead.

Ben backed away slowly, blood rushing to his head as he continued to shoot his blaster. Though the bolts did successfully slow the creature down, it only seemed to be getting angrier with each impact, and Ben glanced around himself, strategizing. Behind the boar, Maul had called his lightsaber back to his hand and was racing toward the skirmish.

When the boar caught up with Ben, it knocked him down with a strength that had his head spinning. His blaster flew out of his hands. Blearily, Ben eyed the boar’s brandished claws from where he had collapsed on the ground. Recalling Maul’s warning, he summoned the Force to push the boar’s forelegs away when it tried to swipe at his face.

“Kenobi!” Maul shouted, leaping into a somersault and using the boar itself to propel himself over to the other side of it.

The next thing Ben knew, Maul was standing over him, his saber slicing through the front of the boar’s neck, killing it immediately. Using the Force, he shoved it away so Ben could clamber to his feet.

Maul was frowning severely at him. “You imbecile! Why didn’t you use your lightsaber to defend yourself?”

“Ah, well, I’m not used to it anymore, I suppose,” Ben said, pushing his hair out of his face before realizing his hands were covered in mud.

Looking bewildered, Maul shook his head. He knelt and withdrew three vials from his belt. As he collected the draining blood from the animal, he growled, “After all the work I put in to heal you, you were willing to just stand by and let yourself be killed by a wild animal, you utter disgrace of a Jedi.”

Ben ignored him, occupying himself with picking up his blaster and holstering it. That was getting easier with extended exposure to Maul’s particular brand of pointed jabs, which he was learning often had more bark than bite. After all, Maul had once again saved his life, he realized with dismay.

They carried the boar back the way they came, using the Force to alleviate the burden. Maul frequently glanced upward, seeming wary. When Ben glimpsed carrion swooping above the canopy of trees, he realized why.

“Here, this will do,” Maul said, as they entered the threshold of the fortress. They lowered the boar to the ground, and Ben stood back as Maul expertly and efficiently butchered it. It appeared that not a single part of the animal would be wasted, which Ben, during his impoverished life on Tatooine, had learned to appreciate. As Maul worked, he murmured under his breath in a language Ben didn’t recognize.

“What were you saying to it?” Ben asked as he helped Maul wrap the meat up in wide, yellow fern fronds, copying the methodical way he folded the leaves. He was reminded of the last job he had taken as a day laborer, carving up the remains of a sand whale. Only this time, he wouldn’t be forced to steal only a meager portion for himself and his eopie.

“A Nightsister blessing,” Maul answered. “Dathomir favors those who honor the lives they take.”

“The planet itself does?” Ben asked, mystified. Then again, he recalled his blurry and vague memories of his time on Mortis, which had seemed to have its own sentience.

“Indeed,” Maul said. “I suffered the consequences when I first returned here and did not know better. I think it still resents my presence sometimes.”

Ben huffed in amusement. “Only you could incite the ire of an entire planet.”

Maul narrowed his eyes, but that only made Ben’s smirk widen. Needling Maul back was much more entertaining than quietly weathering his barbs.

As they sorted the neatly packed meat, Maul cleared his throat and said, “Before we go in…” Then he trailed off uncharacteristically, seeming uncomfortable, and Ben tilted his head in interest. Maul gathered himself and continued, “I wished to inform you that Tala may still be under the impression that we are…together, and that you have frequently spent your time here. I would appreciate it if, for the moment, you did not dissuade her of that notion.”

Ben stared at him. He couldn’t have heard correctly. “What?” he said dumbly.

Maul didn’t dignify him with a response, his face settling into a scowl.

Ben struggled to find his voice. “Why in the stars would you want her to think that?”

“She holds a grudge against dark side users,” Maul explained. “She has been pacified by the idea that you’ve endorsed me, however.”

Raising a skeptical eyebrow, Ben said, “And you care what she thinks, do you?”

Maul narrowed his eyes in warning. “What do you know?” he growled. “We established a delicate balance while you were unconscious, and Leia cares for her wellbeing. If Tala knew who I was, she might sway Leia away.”

Ben cast a scrutinizing gaze upon him, hand rising to stroke his beard. This indeed wasn’t the Maul he had known ten years prior. Then he paused. “You called her Leia,” he said sharply.

“That is the child’s name, is it not? Relax, Kenobi. I heard you shout her name while you were in the bacta tank, and when I asked her, she confirmed it.”

Ben crossed his arms, feeling unnerved. He was discomfited by how close Maul and Leia seemed to have grown while he had been unconscious, and how much Leia seemed to trust him. Maul didn’t appear to have harmed her so far, but one never knew what was going through his head, and what kind of twisted scheme he might be concocting.

“Tell me, what do you wish to accomplish with Leia’s companionship?” Ben asked sternly.

“I am training her to be my apprentice, of course,” Maul answered.

Ben’s frown deepened. He’d been worried it would be something like that. He touched his lightsaber, and Maul tracked his movements with his unsettling gaze.

“For what purpose?” Ben asked carefully.

“To pass on my knowledge,” Maul answered, “and so the Chosen One isn’t left both clueless and defenseless. If Vader had not been focused on you, he would undoubtedly have noticed her presence on Mapuzo. If he had taken her to be trained by himself or Sidious, do you think she could have done anything to escape? Did you know, she didn’t have the faintest idea what the Force is before I explained it?”

“Of course she doesn’t,” Ben said, though Maul’s admonishment did make him feel guilty. Ben himself had said much of the same to Owen, over and over again. If Luke needed to be trained, then didn’t his sister also? If the two of them could stand against Vader…

Then again, even Ben hadn't been able to stand against his old Padawan. Did untrained younglings truly have a chance at defeating the Sith? And was that a burden he had the right to put on them?

“Her parents have insisted that she grow up living a normal life,” he added with a frown.

The words made Maul’s eyes flash with anger. “They may wish to coddle her, but by ignoring her great fountain of power, they will leave her a target—and worse, helpless!” Maul snarled. “I will not allow it. She has talent, and a willingness to learn. And once she is fully trained, she will help us take down Sidious. Enough of her life has been wasted already.”

Ben sighed, considering Maul’s point. This too, he had told Owen about Luke. And Maul wasn’t wrong—if the Chosen One was the key to defeating Darth Sidious, then could Ben really afford to wait until the twins had reached adulthood? Could the galaxy? For each year they grew older was another year that beings across countless worlds suffered, that billions of lives were oppressed and extinguished under the Sith’s sadistic rule. That the few remaining beings who had a connection to the Force were systematically hunted down and murdered.

Ben exhaled. “I will agree to it,” he said at last, “on two conditions.”

“Proceed.”

“You will not instruct her to use the dark side of the Force,” Ben said. “I suspect with you as her teacher, and with her innate temperament, she will undoubtedly walk the line. But you must ensure she does not surrender to the dark side.”

Maul glared at him. “How can I possibly teach her anything else?”

“That is my first condition,” Ben replied. “If you do not accept it, then I’ll bring her back home, and we’ll let her parents choose her fate after all.”

“You ask the impossible,” Maul growled, but he looked off into the distance and began pacing, seeming to actually be pondering the deal.

Ben waited patiently, curious despite himself.

Then, Maul said, “What is the second condition?”

“You have two weeks.”

Maul growled, “That’s absurd!”

He wasn’t wrong. But Ben was going behind Bail and Breha’s backs, and he knew they would not be happy about this. Not to mention he couldn’t afford to be away from Tatooine for much longer than that. His only solace was knowing that his reappearance meant Vader would be concentrating all his might on searching for him and likely consider every other Force-sensitive being in the galaxy beneath his notice until he had successfully drawn Ben out again. At the moment, Ben being far from Tatooine was probably actually the best possible thing for Luke’s safety.

“Fine,” Maul said eventually. “I will accept your shoddy deal.”

“Good,” Ben said, both surprised and pleased. “Then, in return, I will keep up the charade with Tala.” He lightened his voice deliberately and said, “What does this farce entail? Shall we feed each other Dathomiri delicacies? Kiss each other good night?”

To his amusement, his idle teasing made Maul sputter in outrage, “N-no! Just be…normal, or you’ll drive me mad.”

“Such sweet words, my love,” Ben teased, his eyes crinkling, and for the first time in his life, he delighted in the lethal glare Maul leveled at him.

“Stop that nonsense,” Maul chided. “All we need to do is not kill each other.”

“Well, I suppose we’ve had plenty of practice with that,” Ben mused.

When they brought the meat to the kitchen, Tala was already there, sitting at the table and arguing with a bearded, broad-shouldered Human over the holoprojector.

“You cannot deny that it would be a great boon to our cause,” Tala was saying.

“Of course not,” the soft but waspish voice on the other end replied. “I just don’t think you’re going to get anywhere, and you’re wasting time that could be spent running other operations.”

Tala glanced up at Ben and Maul, who were piling their bounty into the walk-in conservator. They put away all but one of the packages, which Maul set on the countertop. “I have to go now,” Tala said. “We’ll talk later.”

“Fine. Be careful out there.”

“You too.” Tala shut off the holoprojector, and exclaimed, “Ben! It’s so good to see you up and about. How are you feeling?”

“Not terrible,” Ben said at the same time Maul demanded, “Who was that?”

“My colleague in the Hidden Path,” Tala said without missing a beat, setting the datapad aside and standing up. “He wants me back at my station, but I told him it’s too dangerous at the moment. With Vader’s rampage through town, recruiting local pilots will be a challenge for some time anyway, regardless of our bribes. NED-B can handle things there for now.”

Ben had a thought. “Now that you’re here, has your cover been blown? I’m so sorry. I never meant to drag you into this.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tala said. “I gave you my true name, but I have used many others. Creating new identities is a Path specialty.”

Maul was still irritated. “You have not disclosed our location, have you?”

“Of course not—what do you take me for?” Tala scoffed. “By the way, you were wrong. I did finally manage to get some information out of the Third Sister today. Turns out riling her up is the key to making her sing.”

“You surprise me,” Maul said. “What have you learned?”

“Not too much yet, but she has revealed her goal of supplanting the Second Brother and Grand Inquisitor, and how thrilled she was to kill the latter after he had been warning the other Inquisitors about her recklessness. It’s clear that pitting his Inquisitors against each other this way is how Vader keeps a rein on them.”

“A longtime strategy of the Sith,” Maul noted. “Though these weaklings are not true Sith—they are mere attack dogs.”

“They’re still dangerous,” Tala pointed out. “She also confirmed that she had Leia kidnapped to draw you out, Ben, because she knew you were friends with her father. Who is this father, anyway?”

Maul looked over, too, clearly curious about the answer, and Ben said quickly, “That’s need-to-know knowledge.”

Tala shrugged. “Fair enough.”

But Ben was unnerved that the Third Sister had known about his friendship with Bail. How deep had she had to dig into his past to figure that out? And why Bail in particular? Obi-Wan Kenobi had been friends with plenty of high-profile government officials. Had it just been bad luck that she had chosen Leia?

“What else?” Maul asked impatiently.

Tala continued, “I pushed her for an answer regarding why she had decided to target Ben specifically, and she let slip that she had gone against orders to do so. She believes the other Inquisitors are fools for being content with hunting Padawans and Force-sensitives, rather than going after the higher-ranking Jedi who still live.

“Which raises an interesting question about the Empire: Why has it been unwilling to go after Ben and the other Masters and Knights remaining? Do they fear going toe-to-toe with fully trained Jedi?”

“Indeed an interesting question,” Maul said, thoughtful. “Kenobi is one thing, but a Sith Apprentice would not be intimidated by mere Knights.”

“Then here’s another mystery for you: The Path realized long ago that the Inquisitorius kills older Jedi but captures the younger ones, especially those who have yet to reach adulthood. They do the same with non-Jedi Force-sensitives. We still don’t know why that is and what they do with them, but it can’t be good, because they’re never seen again.”

“Or are they?” Maul murmured, seemingly to himself. To Tala, he said, “Continue your interrogation efforts, and we may be able to formulate an answer.”

Nodding, she said, “I plan on it.” She peered into the window of the conservator. “What did you bring back?”

“Dathomiri boar,” Maul said. “There will be enough to last for some time.”

“Excellent,” Tala said. “Ben, why don’t you go wash up and fetch Leia on your way back? Maul and I will get started on latemeal, and then you can trade off.” She picked up the package on the countertop and began to unfurl the leaves.

Maul snatched it out of her hands. “I will get started on latemeal, and allow you to assist me,” he corrected.

Tala arched a dubious eyebrow. “What’s the difference?”

“Better not provoke him, Tala,” Ben warned.

“Don’t worry, Ben,” she replied. “I can handle your bullheaded partner.”

At the reminder of their clandestine agreement, Ben clasped a hand on Maul’s uninjured shoulder. Maul jumped at the contact, whirling around instinctively. Ben winced and tried to cover up Maul’s suspicious reaction by leaning in and saying, “I’ll be right back, my dear.”

As he strode out of the room, he glanced over his shoulders a few times to make sure Maul wouldn’t be coming after him with his knife. But he was thankfully able to find a suitable refresher without being stabbed.

The refresher was lavish by Ben’s standards, and the water shower was heavenly. The soap, which came in the form of milky clay rounds that smelled like koja nut and made his rough, sun-damaged skin feel shockingly soft, was plentiful. Despite what Ben had told Maul, he remained under the stream for over half an hour, unable to summon the willpower to leave until both the mud from earlier and the phantom sense of sand still being stuck on his skin had washed down the drain.

Afterward, he felt like a completely different person. As he removed his clothes from the washing machine and dressed himself, he peered into the mirror. It had been many long years since he’d had the opportunity to study his reflection, and it was rather disturbing to see how different he looked from how he remembered himself looking. No wonder Leia had been afraid of him and Maul thought he was too weak to be a threat. There was something hollow in his eyes that he knew no amount of free water or soap would ever be able to wash away.

He glanced away quickly, concentrating instead on hooking on his boots, and then went to find Leia.

He found her playing with her droid on the stone steps of the southwestern tower, and sat beside her. “Does your droid have a name?” he asked.

“Her name is Lola,” Leia said, holding her out.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lola,” Ben said, and Lola chirped, her wings fluttering. “Leia, I need to speak with you about something.”

Leia set Lola in her lap and looked up at him. “What is it?”

“Maul told me about what he’s been teaching you. Have you been enjoying his lessons? It must be very different from what you’re used to.”

“They’re way more interesting than my lessons at home,” Leia declared. “My teachers are all old and slow, and I’m always getting in trouble for talking back to them.”

Ben huffed in amusement, imagining how Breha would respond to such an attitude.

Leia frowned. “Wait, you’re not going to make Master Maul stop teaching me, are you, Ben? Please!”

“Don’t worry,” Ben assured her. “I’ve agreed to allow his instruction to continue. But I want you to know that you can stop at any time. And if Maul ever makes you uncomfortable, or scares you, or hurts you, you can always come to me. All right?”

Leia relaxed. “I don’t think that’s going to be necessary,” she said.

“You don’t know who he is, Leia,” Ben chided.

“I don’t know who you are either,” she pointed out.

“I told you before—your father and I were good friends, once,” he said, which was doubly true, he realized wryly. He pushed the heartwrenching thought away.

“Then why haven’t I ever heard him talk about you?”

“Because he’s protecting me,” Ben answered. “You saw those Inquisitors. They know I’m a Jedi, so they’re hunting me, and I have to live in secret.”

“If I become a Jedi, will they hunt me too?”

Ben’s brow furrowed as he tried to figure out how to respond to that loaded question. In the end, he could only answer with the truth: “Regretfully, yes. But Maul and I will make sure they can’t get to you. Okay?”

“Okay,” Leia said, then she brightened. “Then Maul and I will make sure they don’t get to you either, Ben.”

Ben returned her smile. “I appreciate that. Now, come on, Maul and Tala are hard at work in the kitchen. Let’s go help them.”

Perhaps it was the abundance of rich, flavorful food they had all helped make, or the lingering relief he had gained from his soothing shower, or even just the fact of having company, odd as it was—but despite being physically vulnerable in the house of an old enemy, Ben found himself feeling lighter than he had in years as they ate. The fact that every time Ben patted Maul’s knee, set a hand on his arm, or leaned into him, Maul gave him a scandalized and nonplussed look, made the meal particularly entertaining. It had been many long years since Ben had had reason to laugh, even if it was only internally.

“So how did you two meet?” Tala asked him at one point. “Maul wouldn’t tell me.”

Ben glanced at Maul, who lifted a mocking eye ridge at him, clearly not planning on being any help. “We met when we were young,” Ben said, thinking fast. “We didn’t get off to the best start, to be honest.” Maul snorted at the severe understatement.

“And though I felt strongly about him,” Ben said vaguely, “I had to live by the Jedi Code. But eventually, after the war, our circumstances changed, and we came to realize that the things we fought about back then were insignificant.” Ben turned back to Maul and added, referring to recent events, “Maul has saved my life, and helped me when I’ve been unable to help myself. I am immensely grateful.”

Maul seemed to understand his meaning, his eyes widening in surprise at the profference.

Tala smiled. “I’m sure you’ve saved Maul, too, though he will likely never admit it.”

“In a way, he did once,” Maul murmured, though he did not elaborate. Ben wondered what he was referring to.

Despite his high spirits, the day took its toll on him, and his eyes began to drift shut while the others continued to converse. He had no idea how much time passed, but when he snapped awake again, Tala and Leia were gone, and Maul was looking between two datapads, his forehead furrowed.

“How long was I asleep?” Ben asked blearily.

Maul looked up. “Not long,” he said. He clicked off both datapads and tucked them under his arm before rising and heading for the door. “Come, there are more dignified places to rest.”

“Oh, believe me, I could spend the whole night in that chair,” Ben said as he joined him. “It’s far superior to sleeping on the ground—though I suppose I’m used to it now.”

Maul looked back at him, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“Hmm?” Ben said as they made their way up a staircase. His impromptu nap had left him feeling sluggish. “Oh, only that it took some time to adjust to living in a cave. The first month, I could barely get to sleep at all. Seems I’ve finally grown accustomed to it.”

Maul’s frown only grew deeper. “You reside…in a cave?” he asked, sounding flabbergasted.

“What of it?” Ben replied, following Maul down the torch-lit corridor.

Maul shook his head disdainfully. “So that’s why you smelled so terrible when I found you,” he sneered. “A Jedi Master reduced to the pathetic life of a rat.”

“It’s not so bad, you know—it’s certainly more affordable than any other option,” Ben said wryly. Maul shot him a disgruntled look as they reached a door that he flicked open with a wrist.

“For how long have you dwelled in such squalor?” he demanded as he led the way into the room.

“Ah—well, since the Purge, of course,” Ben replied with a shrug, looking around the large space.

It was unadulterated chaos. There were datapads strewn upon every surface and teetering stacks of books in the corner, and what appeared to be half-finished machine parts and tools on the floor. The walls were covered with pinned flimsi notes, upon which a surprisingly neat hand scribbled notes and complicated diagrams. But the bed looked large and comfortable, and sitting atop it was a soft-looking quilt with intricate red-and-green embroidery that appeared to shimmer in the candlelight. Ben’s aching back gave a pitiful, yearning whinge.

“And you wish to continue that miserable existence?” Maul demanded as he undid his belt and removed the simple tunic he wore, revealing his finely muscled back.

For a moment, Ben didn’t answer, distracted by the sight of Maul stretching, cautious of his shoulder, his muscles gathering and loosening. All that stalking around taunting Ben and killing innocents had done a good job of obscuring how very fit he was.

“What choice do I have?” he said belatedly, heat rushing to his face. It had been too long since he had last had the luxury of being able to admire the physique of another being, as he had often found himself doing when he was younger. But no one on Tatooine was stupid enough to leave any part of their body uncovered and vulnerable to the suns, and it had apparently left him too easily tantalized by the mere sight of bare skin. Ben turned away hurriedly to remove his outer robes and his boots.

“Join me in my quest to take down Sidious,” Maul said, none the wiser, “and I will provide you with a life far superior to one spent in squalor. My great nemesis, living in a cave! How utterly shameful.”

Ben prickled. “And what, be your kept man? You’ve gotten lost in the lies you’ve been telling Tala, Maul. I will not accept a Sith’s charity.”

Maul growled at him. “A former Sith!” he insisted. “One who wishes for nothing more than their eradication.”

“I’ve already given you my answer,” Ben said firmly. “I have agreed, despite my better instincts, to allow you to train the girl while we lie low. But when your two weeks are up, that is when this strange alliance will come to an end as well.”

Maul’s gaze fixed on Ben, sizing him up. “You are Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he said. “Though you may insist otherwise, I do not believe a meddling Jedi such as yourself will be content to sit back while the galaxy burns.”

Ben scoffed, “Have I not proven so over the past ten years?”

“Yet you are here,” Maul said, his eyes gleaming. “A child was in danger, and you answered the call.”

Ben’s mouth flattened. Maul might believe otherwise, but he had turned down Bail and Breha initially. He’d had no intention of answering the call, and when he had seen Nari’s corpse hanging in Anchorhead, he had been even more certain of the choice he’d made. It hadn’t been until Bail had ambushed him and practically forced his hand, shaming him about his doubts, that he had gone to the middle of the Jundland Wastes and dug up his lightsaber. He still wasn’t convinced that it had been the right thing to do. The shame of running away was great, but his fear was greater.

“If you join me, I will restore your strength and return you to your former glory,” Maul insisted. “No one will stand in our way.”

“I do not require glory,” Ben replied, scrubbing a hand down his face. Why had he expected Maul of all people to be willing to let this fanciful idea of his go? “I will consider your offer in good faith, Maul,” he said placatingly, “but I’d advise you not to get your hopes up.”

“You need not worry about me, Kenobi,” Maul retorted. “In my life, hope has long been a scarce resource, and I have survived to this point despite it.”

With that, he undid the sealing strip on his trousers and stepped out of them. To Ben’s exasperation, their heated conversation had done nothing to make the act feel less intimate. Although there wasn’t anything untoward to see, only the sleek metal of Maul’s cybernetic legs and the belt he wore to cover the seam where they were joined to his body, there was still something illicit about him being unclothed—or maybe it was guilt that had begun to swirl in Ben’s stomach. He exhaled and released his uneasiness into the Force.

Maul climbed into the bed and immediately turned away from Ben, shifting to the other edge of the sleeper, as far as he could manage. Ben didn’t miss Maul setting his lightsaber under his pillow.

“Well?” Maul said. “Are you going to get in or not?”

Ben sighed. “Is this really necessary?”

“Afraid I’ll smother you in your sleep, Kenobi?”

“You have to admit, it’s not a particularly outlandish idea,” Ben pointed out.

“I am no coward,” Maul retorted. “When I defeat you, it will be in the field of battle, not where you lie defenseless.”

“How very reassuring,” Ben said. There was still something unnerving about the idea of being so vulnerable beside someone who had had it out for him for so long. But Maul had insisted on the story for Tala, and explaining that he’d killed his alleged partner to her would likely result in Tala taking Leia away, just as Mail feared. And Ben really was looking forward to a night spent in a plush, comfortable bed. Who knew where an incensed Maul might relegate him to if he turned it down?

With that settled, he placed his lightsaber and blaster underneath the pillow and slipped beneath the quilt.

“Good night, Maul,” Ben said, his eyes already heavy again.

Sleep took him in no time.

The nightmares came just as quickly: Flashes of lava rivers and the agony of the vitriolic scream Anakin was uttering on the shore. The assault of betrayal and resentment and hatred that burned through Obi-Wan. Anakin in the High Council Chamber, his lightsaber stabbing mercilessly into the hearts of members of the Council as Obi-Wan lay on the floor, bleeding out, utterly useless. Darth Vader and expressionless mask standing amid the younglings’ bodies, and Obi-Wan—or was it Ben?—running and running, trying to reach him, only to find that his feet kept sinking into the sands of Tatooine.

He dreamed of the quarry on Mapuzo, only it was Anakin, hale and whole, whom he faced, but his eyes were a sickening yellow as he choked Ben with his bare hands. He felt like a void in the Force, empty and all consuming, and it was all Ben’s fault that he hadn’t seen it. In defending his Padawan in the face of the Council’s warnings, he had failed the child he had promised to guide and the Order he had sworn to protect in one fell swoop, and he could hear his fellow Jedi Masters shouting their recriminations. But when Ben covered his ears to block them out, the volume of their voices only increased, and—

Someone was hissing his name. They shook him urgently, unceasing, and Obi-Wan flailed at them. When his arm was captured in a firm grip, he snapped awake.

Maul was leaning over him in the darkness, gripping Obi-Wan’s shoulder with one hand and his wrist in the other. Ben was panting, sweat dripping down his forehead and mingling with the tears that had become encrusted on his face.

Ben drew back his arm. “I apologize if I disturbed your sleep,” he said, staring unseeing up at the ceiling of the room.

“No matter,” Maul dismissed. “I am no stranger to such things.”

Ben allowed that to soak in. He wondered what horrors Maul dreamt of; the thought of that kinship was oddly comforting. Usually when he awoke from his nightmares on Tatooine, shivering and crying, he was alone, and that dread of existing in isolation had made the nightmares feel even more excruciating.

“Thank you for waking me up,” Ben said. He hesitated, then said tentatively, “I-If I notice you having a nightmare, would you like me to wake you up?”

Maul was silent for a heavy moment, and Ben could sense his resistance to admitting such a weakness to his enemy. “I would not protest it,” he said at last. “But do not touch me, or I might try to kill you before I awaken.”

“Understood,” Ben said, feeling keenly aware of the pillow under which Maul’s lightsaber lay.

Despite his trepidation, his back was already starting to feel better from a few hours’ sleep in a real, comfortable bed, and his body and his clothes still felt wonderfully clean despite his tossing and turning. And for the first time in ten years, his belly was full and he’d taken meals with other beings—ones that didn’t involve instant, synthetic slop or stolen scraps. Not to mention, he’d gotten to feast his eyes on the disrobed body of a physically appealing being, however briefly, and now he was sharing that being’s bed. Even if there was at least half a meter between them and Maul both hated him and had seemed so scandalized by the simple act of someone putting a hand on his elbow, it was still more action than he had gotten in a decade, Ben thought wryly.

He supposed he might as well enjoy this unexpected respite from his hardscrabble life on Tatooine while he could. After all, even though his guilt and regret and nightmares had followed him here, and he was all but stranded in enemy territory—the day had still felt oddly like a holiday, all things considered.

It had been many, many years since the last time Ben had drifted back to sleep wondering what tomorrow would bring. Strangely, he found himself looking forward to finding out.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Ben snapped awake to an insistent beeping. War-honed instincts had him immediately scanning his unfamiliar surroundings as the previous day came back to him. The numerous candles in the room were still lit, the door was shut, and Maul was nowhere in sight.

Sitting up, Ben fumbled through the folds of his robes and withdrew the comlink Bail had given him. Its lights indicated an unread message. He played it, and a holorecording of Bail and Breha appeared.

“I know we said no communication, but your silence worries me,” Bail said. “If he’s found you, if he’s learned of the ones we guard... If I don’t hear from you soon, I’ll send people to your guard post to watch over your charge.”

As soon as Ben reached out to one of Bail’s secret, high-priority frequencies, the other end connected and lit up with Bail’s holo.

“It’s a relief to hear from you, old friend,” Bail said.

“I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch,” Ben replied. “I was badly injured and only released from the bacta tank yesterday.”

“Injured. By him?”

“Yes,” Ben said, his voice wavering as he attempted to force down the memory of searing fire; of the pressure of the Force keeping him prone on the enflamed ground; of the disturbing way Vader had watched him burn through the opaque, emotionless eyes of his helmet, standing completely still even as hatred swirled all around him. “But we managed to get away. We’re lying low at the moment. I fear it’s not yet safe to travel.”

“Where are you now?”

“A…an acquaintance has agreed to harbor us for the time being.”

“And you trust them?”

Ben searched for a truthful response that wouldn’t alarm Bail. “I trust his hatred of the Empire,” he said. “He…saved my life when we fought the Inquisitors, and again when we faced Vader. He cared for the girl while I was unconscious. One of the many friends in your, er, social calendar is here as well, watching over her.” Best not to mention their other guest.

“Then that will have to be good enough,” Bail said. “When do you think you’ll be able to come?”

“I’m not sure,” Ben replied. “As soon as possible, I hope. But we did discover that the girl was abducted as part of a ploy to lure me out. And now that he knows I’m alive, he will be coming for me. I will not risk losing her again.” He remembered what he’d promised Maul. “It may not be safe for another week or two.”

“Very well,” Bail said. “I trust your judgment. I will have my people keep an eye on his movements and alert you if there appears to be an opening.”

“What of the boy?”

“I will make the necessary arrangements in your absence, for someone in your social calendar. Rest easy. He will be safe.”

Some of the tension drained from Ben at the prospect of a Jedi watching over Luke. The thought of entrusting Luke’s safety to anyone made him nervous, but if Bail trusted them, it would have to be good enough.

Bail looked him over again. “I must say, old friend. You seem…improved…from when we spoke last.”

“Ah, well, you saw my living conditions,” Ben said. “Days in bacta and a night in a proper bed have done wonders.”

Bail chuckled. “I’m glad to hear it. You deserve the rest. Allow your acquaintance to take care of you, and you take care of her, all right?”

“I will,” Ben promised.

When the connection ended, he slid the comlink back into his pocket and heaved a sigh. Warding off the stray memories of Mapuzo, he crossed his legs and closed his eyes, sinking into a morning meditation session.

Not being able to reach Qui-Gon was no longer surprising, but it never ceased to be disappointing. No matter how hard Ben tried to draw on Yoda’s instructions, his mind still felt blocked. It certainly didn’t help that he no longer seemed capable of achieving the serenity he had in days long past.

To stave off the well-worn path of self-recrimination, he settled for stretching his senses out in the Force and filtering through the haze of the dark side that hung heavy in the lair.

Immediately, he could feel the tangle of passion and tenacity and righteous fury that was Maul, and beside him a glowing presence brimming with mettle and willpower. Leia felt distressingly similar to how Ben remembered Anakin, and the thought made him skitter away from the duo, roving instead to Tala. She felt much fainter in the Force than either of the former, but still he could sense her steel resolve and her drive for atonement and retribution both. Near her was the dark cluster of anger and obsessive obstinacy that belonged to Reva, though she felt almost as faint as Tala, as if her power had been muted.

Ben drew back into himself and sat up. Perhaps it was time he paid a visit to the Inquisitor.

As he made his way down the stone steps, he spotted Maul and Leia in the courtyard at the center of the Nightsisters’ lair, working on basic katas together. Curious, he paused to observe them.

To his shock, Maul appeared to actually be a decent teacher, his instructions precise and his patience seemingly boundless as he led Leia through the sets of basic movements, corrected her form, and repeated them with her. He seemed to understand his pupil’s weaknesses and way of thinking, adjusting his directions accordingly.

Ben thought back to what Leia had told him about her usual instructors in the royal palace and wondered if she responded to Maul’s sharp intellect and firmness better than the far more delicate touch that her royal tutors likely used with her. Perhaps she also found this sort of physical activity preferable to studying history, literature, and arithmetic. Anakin had been like that, too, much more interested in working in the field than scouring texts in the Archives. When he hadn’t yet reached his petulant teenage years, he had often pleaded for Ben to excuse him from his assignments so they could spar instead. Ben had given in all too often, indulgent as he had always been when it came to his Padawan.

He grit his teeth against the tide of grief and hurried on.

The Force led Ben to the fortress’s southeastern tower. Tala was emerging from the building just as he approached the stairs, a datapad tucked under her arm.

“Morning, Ben,” she greeted, jogging down the steps to join him. “Come to pay our friend a visit?”

“Good morning,” Ben replied. “Yes, I have a few unanswered questions myself.”

“Best of luck,” Tala said. “My prying may have left her in a bit of a mood.”

"I suspect that may be less your doing and more of the Inquisitor’s natural state,” Ben replied, and Tala chuckled.

She gave him directions to where Reva was imprisoned. Located below ground level, the dungeon was less expansive than Ben had expected—but then again, he suspected it would have been rare for the Nightsisters to imprison someone rather than outright kill them. Still, the sight of skeletons in a few of the empty cells made him shiver.

He found Reva lying on the stone floor of her own containment cell, staring up at the ceiling, her gloved fingers tapping an agitated rhythm. Her uniform was immaculate and her cape splayed out elegantly beneath her, but without her lightsaber and her fierce glare, she seemed suddenly young and small to Ben. Adding to the effect was a fresh bacta patch plastered to her temple—a peace offering from Tala, Ben suspected.

“Back so soon, Agent?” Reva said before she glanced down and spotted him.

With feline grace and a vicious snarl, she leaped to her feet: “Obi-Wan! So he did rescue you.” She slammed her palms upon the green mist that formed the outer boundary of the cell and hissed in pain when they made contact.

“Our host, you mean?” Ben said guilelessly. “In a manner of speaking, yes. Have you been treated well?”

“Treated well?” she echoed, lip curling. “That traitor somehow cut me off from the Force!”

“You did try to kill us,” Ben replied sensibly. “Multiple times, apparently.” He glanced pointedly at the tray of food sitting uneaten by the green mist that contained her. “And it is still a kinder prison than the Empire’s, I imagine.”

“Then it is weak,” she retorted.

“Don’t let Maul hear you say that,” Ben said dryly. “Reva—”

“No!” she growled, jabbing a finger at him. Ben stared placidly back at her. “You don’t get to use that name.”

“Why did you really kidnap the girl?” he asked. “What do you want with me?”

“I serve Lord Vader,” Reva replied, crossing her arms. “His will is my own.”

“No,” Ben said, recalling what Tala had told them about Reva going against orders. He had also witnessed himself the strife between her and the other Inquisitors on both Tatooine and Daiyu. “You were not motivated by loyalty. You wished to capture me for yourself.” He frowned, stroking his beard. “But why go through all this trouble—orchestrate this plot—simply to get to me? And why me in particular?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I want you to pay.”

“For what? I don’t know you. Do I?”

Reva scoffed. “Of course you don’t remember me.”

Frowning, Ben considered it. He was no stranger to beings who had vendettas against him for one reason or another, a fact of life that had not ceased even on Tatooine, but he was certain he would remember a darksider who sought vengeance against him, even if she was one of many.

“What did I do?”

Reva’s yellow glare intensified, her hands dropping into fists at her sides. “Your actions led to my family’s deaths,” she hissed. “Isn’t that reason enough?”

Ben frowned. “During the war, you mean?” he wondered. “Are you from a Separatist world?”

She clicked her tongue, shaking her head. “So many failures that the great Obi-Wan Kenobi can’t even keep them straight,” she said in a singsong voice. “It stings, doesn’t it, your own Padawan turning to the dark side? Did you sense it and do nothing? Or were you too naive to realize the truth of what Anakin Skywalker was?”

Ben flinched. A memory flickered in his mind—volcanic rock burning through the sole of his boots, the wind whipping at his robes. The sound of agonized screaming.

Triumph flashed in Reva’s eyes at his reaction. “It must haunt you as you lay your head down at night: If only you had been a better master, the galaxy might be a different place. All those Jedi, gone. All those lives, extinguished. And the blame lies squarely on your shoulders.”

“No,” Ben whispered, each pronouncement like the lash of a ferocious whip, too accurately echoing the thoughts that had haunted him ever since he had watched that horrible holorecording of the massacre at the Jedi Temple. He felt heat pressing in on his skin, felt the weight of a lightsaber in each of his hands, felt dread and despair like a fist crushing his heart.

He shook his head, trying to dislodge the old ghosts. But they had long made a home in the hollow within him.

“Why didn’t you save them, Obi-Wan? Why did you let your people die?”

Eyes trained on the ground, Ben stuck his trembling hands into his robes and summoned his voice with great effort. “I’ll leave you to your earlymeal.”

With that, Ben hurried away, but he couldn’t outrun the sound of bubbling lava. Legs shaking, he stumbled up the steps, practically tripping over his own robes. When he reached the top of the staircase, he saw Anakin’s scorched body prostrated on volcanic rock, his limbs shorn by Ben’s own lightsaber. His eyes glowed a piercing yellow, and the dazzling beacon he had always been in the Force had been warped into a dark cloud of fury and hatred.

Ben gasped and grasped blindly for the wall. He sank against it as a loop of Anakin’s screaming reverberated through the room.

“I hate you!”

Curling into himself, Ben buried his face in his arms, misery and guilt an ugly knot in his stomach. He had done that. He had killed his Padawan. It was what had needed to be done—what a Jedi was meant to do when faced with a Sith, what Master Yoda had ordered him to do—but couldn’t he have found a better way? Couldn’t he have found some way to return Anakin to the light?

Instead, he had failed him—as a master, as a brother, as a friend. And in doing so, he had failed his own master, too. No wonder Ben couldn’t sense Qui-Gon in the Force despite his constant efforts.

Only—now he knew he hadn’t killed Anakin. But was that not worse in so many ways? By failing to put Anakin out of his misery, Ben had allowed him to wreak havoc on the galaxy, to kill so many innocents, just as he’d casually killed those beings on Mapuzo to lure Ben himself out. Reva was right. How many had suffered because of his failure?

Anguish tore at him even as adrenaline made his head buzz.

Ben didn’t know how long he sat there, racked with anachronistic terror and shame, yet entirely numb at the same time. He’d feared this would happen—that leaving Tatooine and the simple routine of his life, dreary as it was, would dredge up all the memories and emotions he had worked so hard to suppress.

When he had first arrived on the desert planet, he had quickly realized that these traumatic episodes were going to make remaining employed a problem. It didn’t help that he lacked any skills that wouldn’t immediately endanger his identity.

Working as a day laborer had been his last remaining option. The credits were meager, and sometimes by the time he arrived at the pickup zone in Anchorhead, all the spots in the transports had been filled, but at least it meant he wouldn’t be fired for the days when he found himself unable to leave his bedroll, much less his cave. And at those jobs, all of which were brutal and grueling and accepted by only the most desperate and downtrodden, he didn’t need to speak to anyone—didn’t need to do anything other than watch himself exist from outside of his own body.

“Kenobi. Kenobi, breathe.”

Ben flinched at the intrusive voice, then relaxed slightly when he realized it was drowning out the persistent sound of Anakin’s screaming. He was startled to suddenly find himself gasping for breath, his lungs heaving.

“Whatever you are sensing is not real,” the voice continued, strangely soothing. “Reach out to the Force. You know it to be true.”

Ben grasped on to the words like a lifeline. The Force was all around him, swirling and dancing as it always was, and he grabbed for a desperate hold.

It caught him.

Awareness rushed into him, the wall of volcanic heat fading. Ben’s face was wet, his legs numb, his chest heaving. When he blinked away the vivid sights and sounds, he found Maul crouched before him, his expression pinched.

“Are you with me?” he asked. When Ben couldn’t find the words, Maul said with a certainty, a steadiness, that made Ben’s muscles ease: “It’s already over, Kenobi. You survived.”

The sentiment was surprisingly grounding. Ben had survived. For better or worse.

He exhaled, pressing a hand to his sternum and feeling the unnervingly graphic memories release their grip on him. “Ah, I—thank you,” he said, nodding up at Maul, when he found his voice again. “I apologize for alarming you.”

Maul rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t alarmed. Can you stand?”

Ben attempted to, then shook his head. He felt like a newborn gelding, or perhaps just a man far beyond his own years. With an exasperated sigh, Maul held a hand out to him.

Ben looked up at him in surprise. The unexpected gesture, one Ben had not been offered in a very long time, seemed to make the rest of the darkness bleed away.

He accepted it. Maul heaved him up, and suddenly their faces were close together. Maul quickly stepped away, but not before Ben caught sight of the silver bead that glinted in his left ear, standing out against his inked skin. Curious. Had he always worn that? Maul didn’t seem the type to wear jewelry. He didn’t even seem to like wearing clothes.

“Thank you,” Ben said belatedly as they made their way out of the building, his limbs still unsteady. Maul didn’t offer him any more assistance, but he didn’t simply brush past him, either.

The thought warmed Ben, strangely. After the Battle of Naboo, he had considered Maul a kind of monster, the silent predator with the red lightsaber straight out of ancient legend who had killed his master. Encountering him during the war had told a different story, of a relentless, scheming man, which had elicited a more ordinary sort of terror. At that point, he had been only one of many cunning, power-hungry beings the Jedi regularly encountered.

The Maul he was met with now—was he a product of time? Of the ten years between then and now? Or was it all part of the effort to court him to his so-called cause and to ensure he would be allowed to continue training Leia?

Or could it be that this was whom Maul was when he put aside his grudge against Ben?

Whatever the root of the change, Ben was grateful. He was grateful for anything that shook him out of the episodes. Even when it had been Teeka sneaking into the cave and rummaging through his sparse belongings for anything of value while Ben trembled in a corner.

Wryly, he wondered if the difference was himself and that the time he’d spent in the cesspit that was Hutt Space had given him some sort of complex when it came to scoundrels and criminals, his disdain circling around to become some bizarre sense of kinship. After all, in this current galaxy, the Jedi and other Force sensitives ranked even lower than the worst of that villainous lot.

Maul led them out into the courtyard, where Leia was doing stretches at its center. She darted over when she spotted them approaching.

“Is everything okay, Master? You just…ran off.”

Ben’s eyebrows rose. Had Maul sensed his suffering in the Force? Perhaps his aid hadn’t merely been a way to court Ben’s favor, then.

“I did not run off,” Maul sniffed. “Focus more on your breathing and less on my comings and goings, Apprentice.”

Leia sagged. “Yes, Master.”

“Let us continue where we left off. Care to join us, Kenobi?”

Ben blinked at him. “Really?”

“You are weak,” Maul said bluntly, and after the morning Ben had had—how much time had he lost this time?—he could hardly deny it. “A mere specter of the Jedi I fought all those years ago,” Maul added, digging the knife in further, and Ben grit his teeth. “If you are to be of any use to me, you will need to regain your strength.”

“I haven’t agreed to help you,” Ben pointed out.

“You will,” Maul insisted.

Ben sighed. Was there a more stubborn being in the galaxy? “Well, since I apparently haven’t got a choice, I suppose I could do with a workout. Go on, then.” Perhaps it would be a good distraction.

Ben fell into step with Leia. Regulating his breathing, he performed the basic katas as Maul demonstrated. The last time he had bothered to practice these fundamentals had been before the war. Privately, he could admit to himself that it felt good, helping to clear his mind in a way his frustrated attempts at meditation often fell short of. Fluid and clear, and slower than he was accustomed to, the movements made him feel aware of every part of his body, which helped him ground himself in it and in the present day. His circuitous thoughts and the tension in his shoulders gradually ebbed away.

In addition, observing this unexpected side of Maul was a welcome distraction. Watching him train felt entirely different from meeting him in battle. The dark side still rolled off him in waves, but with far less intensity. And for once it wasn’t directed at Ben, so he was able to be a spectator, to study the way Maul deftly controlled and channeled the power coiled within him, and honed it for his use.

Of course Ben had long been aware that Maul was one of the best duelists he had ever faced, but seeing him perform the most basic of movements made Ben realize how much of a foundation he must have built to be able to achieve that level of mastery with a lightsaber. It was a kind of dutiful perfection that took dedication and constant drilling to establish. Ben had never been able to instill it in Anakin, who had always relied too heavily on his strength in the Force to overwhelm his opponents. He wondered what kind of instruction Maul had received to have been able to form that stalwart foundation.

“You’re making remarkable progress, Leia,” Ben noted as the lesson proceeded. She seemed to have some trouble loosening up, but she was clearly invested, paying close attention to Maul’s demonstration and doing her best to imitate the moves. Though he could be brusque as he corrected her, she seemed to respond to his bluntness, hastening to fix her mistakes.

Leia grinned proudly at Ben. “It’s fun!”

“She has great potential,” Maul said, pride evident in his voice. “And more importantly, she has a drive to succeed. She has been practicing even when I must leave to deal with business. Haven’t you, Apprentice?”

“Yes, Master!”

“Very impressive,” Ben told her.

Once they had finished several series, he asked, “How would you feel about joining me for a meditation session after your lesson?”

Leia pouted. “But meditation is boring,” she protested, making Ben huff in amusement.

“As I have told you, Apprentice,” Maul scolded, “meditation is an important tool for maintaining our abilities.” He lowered himself onto his knees. “Come, sit.”

Ben startled—he hadn’t expected Maul would want to join him.

Maul seemed to sense his surprise. “What?” he scoffed. “I enjoy meditation.”

They settled on the ground, sitting in a small circle. Ben closed his eyes and began to focus on his breathing.

“Well?” Leia said.

Ben cracked his eyes open. “What is it?”

“I thought you were going to teach me.”

“Oh,” Ben said. “I only meant that we could meditate in each other’s company.”

Leia frowned up at him, her keenness both impressive and vexing. “You don’t want to teach me?”

“Yes, why not, Kenobi?” Maul added. Ben shot him a peevish look. “If you wish so desperately for her to avoid Falling, then should you not instruct her as well?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Ben said quickly. “Having a single teacher will be much less confusing for her.”

Maul scrutinized him. “You fear failure,” he concluded, his lip curling. “You fear repeating your mistakes.”

“Of course I do,” Ben snapped. “Do you think I would allow you to teach Leia if there were another option? But I failed as a master, and my failure brought ruin to the galaxy. At this point, you have a better track record than I do.”

Maul’s expression darkened. “Spare me your pitiful self-flagellation,” he spat. “What do you know? My last apprentice died before my eyes. I could only watch, utterly helpless. Pathetic! But I intend to make up for my mistake and gain the retribution I deserve. This is your chance to do the same. Do not let it pass you by.”

Leia placed her hand on his arm. “I won’t fail you, Ben,” she said solemnly.

“Of course you wouldn’t, Leia,” Ben assured her, patting her hand. “But it’s not you I’m worried about.”

“You won’t fail me either,” she said, obstinate. She sounded so certain, so undaunted. Was that the natural stubbornness of a child or Leia’s innate adamancy? Either way, Ben was weak to it.

He sighed. “Very well,” he conceded. “But we will stick to meditation only. Deal?”

“Deal,” Leia said. Ben glanced at Maul, who inclined his head.

“All right. Then close your eyes…”

Ben batted away smoke as he flipped the cutlets over on the griddle, the bubbling grease making them sizzle and pop. Beside him, Maul was grinding some kind of root vegetable with a stone mortar and pestle, and on his other side, Tala was rehydrating portion bread from her ship’s stores. It felt ordinary in a way that was a relief after Ben’s tumultuous morning.

“That’s enough,” Maul said, shoving a plate in Ben’s face. “You’re going to cook them into oblivion.”

Ben loaded the plate up with the cutlets and handed it back to Maul, making sure to let their fingers brush. “There you go, darling,” he said loudly.

After checking that Tala had turned away briefly, Maul bared his teeth at him. It cheered Ben up immensely.

The two of them washed up after the meal. Once Tala and Leia had left the kitchen, Ben ventured to ask the question that he’d been turning over while he let the sound of the others’ chatter wash over him: “The apprentice you mentioned earlier—was that Savage Opress?”

Maul, who had been adjusting a dial on the sonic cleaner, stilled. “Yes,” he answered simply.

“What happened to him? Was he the brother you spoke of on Mapuzo?”

Maul’s fists curled. He kept his back to Ben, who assumed he wouldn’t receive a response and felt contrite for pushing the subject.

But eventually, Maul said, “Sidious killed him. To punish me for gathering power.” He glared down at the kitchen counter. “I was too weak to stop him. That is not a mistake I will make again.”

Ben reeled at the implication. “You were in contact with him back then?”

“I was not,” Maul answered. “But I should have known he would be watching. He had not interfered as I took over the syndicates, and I thought myself clever for eluding his gaze. But the moment I became a legitimate threat to him, he took punitive action.”

“You believe he was monitoring you?”

“There is no doubt about it. Sidious is always watching.” Maul said it in such a matter-of-fact tone that Ben had to suppress a shiver. He wondered if it was true, and if so, how long Maul had been under surveillance to treat it so nonchalantly.

“Do you believe he watches you even now?”

“I know better now than to think he doesn’t,” Maul said.

Ben watched curiously as he retrieved an iron kettle and a small crate from one of the shelves running across the kitchen walls. Both items were engraved with intricate, abstract shapes.

“What this means, however,” Maul continued, “is that he once again does not believe me to be a threat. We can use this against him and attack when he least expects it.”

Maul’s insistence had started becoming almost amusing. Ben shook his head, feeling nearly fond. “There is nothing I can say to dissuade you of the notion of teaming up, is there?”

“Unlikely,” Maul said, and Ben thought he saw the slightest quirk of his lips as he filled the kettle with water from the sink faucet.

The sight of an endless supply of water, fresh and clear, made Ben’s mouth salivate. It had taken him years to save up for a single vaporator, and even then the one he’d been able to afford had been owned by generations of farmers prior. The water it collected—when it was actually working properly—always tasted of rust and sand. Though even that was better than when he’d had to barter for his water stores.

While the water boiled, Maul finally looked at him again. “As I have answered your prying questions, you shall answer mine,” he said. “Earlier, when I found you—what did you see?”

Ben winced. It was his turn to look away. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He could feel the weight of Maul’s glare even without looking back at him. “I am no fool, Kenobi,” Maul said. “Your memories haunt you. I, too, have experienced such things.”

Ben’s eyes widened at the unexpectedly volunteered information. “You have?”

Instead of answering him, Maul entered the conservator. He returned holding a clay canister. Ben moved to his side, curious, and watched as he opened the small crate he had previously acquired. To his amazement, it unfolded into a tray, on which sat a teapot and five teacups, all made from a dark stone debossed with faint swirls of green.

From the clay canister, Maul retrieved a sphere the diameter of his palm. Upon a closer look, Ben discovered it was made of tea leaves woven together in an intricate pattern.

“I’ve never seen tea leaves bound together like this,” he said. “Fascinating.”

“The stormbud plant is indigenous to this region of Dathomir,” Maul said. “Its leaves have calming properties.” He broke the sphere in half and deposited the halves into the teapot. “The Nightsisters jealously guarded it from not just the rest of the galaxy but the other clans as well. Once their old stores run out, that will be the end of this varietal.”

“You mean you don’t know where to find it?”

Maul shook his head. He poured the hot water from the kettle over the leaves, and a rich, earthy aroma filled the kitchen. “Perhaps it is recorded in a book I have yet to encounter,” he said, then dumped the first wash into the sink before filling the teapot again. Ben watched him, impressed by how familiar Maul seemed with the tea ritual. “But it is just as possible that it was passed down via oral transmission, and became extinct when my people did.”

“That would be a terrible shame,” Ben said. “I hope you’re able to find a record of it.” He breathed in the steam rising from the teapot. “Oh my, that smells heavenly,” he murmured. “I haven’t had tea in a decade. And that’s after I used to drink at least four cups a day during the war.”

“Come, then. Sit.” Maul set the lid on the teapot and brought the tray over to the table, then carried the kettle over as well. Ben sat across from him, feeling truly excited for the first time in ages.

Of course, then Maul had to go and ruin it. “Now, cease your attempts to distract me,” he said sternly. “Tell me what you saw.”

Ben heaved a sigh. He supposed for the price of getting to taste such rare tea, he could try to briefly face his anguish head on.

“It was Anakin,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the tea tray. “On the day that…”

He fell silent.

“The day the Sith won,” Maul guessed. Ben nodded bleakly, and Maul’s eyes narrowed. “Where were you that day? I had the perfect plan. If only you would have come to Mandalore, then perhaps—”

“I told you already,” Ben interjected, sharp. “I do not know if I would have had the strength to do it.”

Maul’s glare deepened. “I would have.”

“We cannot go back,” Ben said, remembering Bail’s harsh words, the ones that had forcibly shaken him out of his stupor on Tatooine. “You claim to have intended to kill him, but could we really have accomplished that, even together?”

“You doubt my strength?” Maul snarled.

“He defeated us on Mapuzo,” Ben pointed out.

“On the cusp of the Empire’s establishment, we were in our prime! United, we could have killed Skywalker, and Sidious, too!”

“Even Master Yoda couldn’t defeat Sidious,” Ben pointed out, pushing down the surge of pain at the memory of discussing the fate of the twins with Yoda, the last time he would ever see him. All these years, all the idle time he’d had on his hands, had given him ample time to think about the last words he had shared with each member of the Council, each of his friends and mentors. To think about what he could’ve done differently—how he might have been able to change the outcome. Maul wasn’t alone in that. Yoda likely pondered the same things, wherever in the galaxy he had ended up.

That such ruminations were futile was easier to tell Maul than to truly believe for himself: “Perhaps things could have happened differently. But perhaps there was nothing we could have changed.”

Maul continued to glare at him but didn’t contradict him further, instead reaching for the teapot. He filled a cup and passed it to Ben, then poured one for himself.

“Thank you,” Ben said, accepting it. He bought himself some time to search for the words by sampling the tea. The flavor was dark and complex, evoking stone and moss with the slightest hint of a bright, floral tang. The taste lingered pleasantly on his tongue afterward, spurring him to immediately take another sip.

“Oh, it’s marvelous,” he said.

“It is,” Maul agreed, sounding more collected, to Ben’s relief. It made him feel more open to reaching for the memories that had tormented him for so long.

“Two days prior, the Council sent me to Utapau to defeat Grievous once and for all,” he said, gaze fixed on a nick in the surface of the table. “It was a long, arduous battle, but my men were in fine form. Exhilarated, I think, as we all were, at the thought of the war finally drawing to an end. Some of us had seldom believed there would ever be a victory.” He drew a deep breath, then exhaled heavily. “I defeated Grievous—”

“How?” Maul interrupted.

Ben lifted his head. “Hm?”

“How exactly did you defeat him?” Maul asked, leaning in. “He was the one who vanquished the Nightsisters. So you could say I have a personal interest.” He smirked. “In fact, it seems rather poetic that it was my great archenemy who killed one of my other great enemies.”

“Well, I apologize for the disappointment, but the fight did not have much literary value,” Ben answered. “Grievous separated me from my troops, and after a long chase in the underbelly of the planet, we ended up in a vicious brawl. Eventually, I had the opportunity to shoot him in the heart.”

Maul frowned. “Shoot him? With what?”

“His own blaster, if I remember correctly,” Ben said. “I was not particularly restrained about it either, if I’m being honest. It had been a trying week. I kept shooting at him until his head blew up.”

Maul’s frown deepened.

Ben smirked. “Not what you expected? I too thought the whole affair was rather uncivilized. But I had dropped my lightsaber trying to ride a varactyl by that point, if you must know.”

“Of course you did,” Maul sneered. “Why in blazes were you getting on a varactyl in the middle of a fight?!”

Ben couldn’t suppress a chuckle at Maul’s indignation. “Well, Grievous got on his wheel bike, and I had to gain ground somehow.”

Maul shook his head. “Utterly appalling,” he muttered. “What happened then?”

“Well, after the battle, I returned to greet my troops with the good news, and—”

He could still hear the cheering of the men as they did cleanup in high spirits; could still see Cody’s fond, affectionate smile as he handed him back his lightsaber. What had happened still didn’t make any sense.

“They shot me down while my back was turned. I don’t know what happened. One minute we were joking around, and the next…” His mouth flattened. “I fell off the mountainside and would have perished if I hadn’t fallen into one of the underground lakes.” He could still remember the iciness of the water, of sinking into its abyss, mind racing as he tried to piece together what had happened.

Ben was suddenly struck by the realization of precisely who he was telling this tale to. “Are you aware of how he did it? We knew Dooku had commissioned the troopers, but I still don’t understand how they made the entire army turn on us, just like that. Some of those men I’d fought the entire war alongside. I don’t believe they would have all turned on us of their own will. They were loyal, and if not for them, we Jedi couldn’t have been the generals we tried to be.”

Maul froze. “Dooku commissioned them? When?” he asked urgently. “Do you know?”

Ben frowned, uncertain of the significance. “Ten years before the war broke out. That was when Dooku hired the Pykes to kill Master Sifo-Dyas, then went to the Kaminoans, pretending to be him. By the time the Council discovered his treachery, it was far too late.”

Ben jumped when Maul slammed his fists on the table, then leaped out of his seat to begin pacing the kitchen. “Ten years?!” he roared. “He already had that Jedi imposter taking the lead on such a key part of the Sith Plan by then?” He held his head and made a horrible, agonized sound. “He didn’t even tell me! Was I nothing to him?”

The pieces fell into place. Ten years before the war had broken out—that had been the year Ben and Maul had faced off on Theed. Maul had still been Sidious’s apprentice, and he’d had no idea about what was to come.

Maul continued muttering furiously to himself, the dark side rippling all around him as he paced. Ben felt badly for bringing up something that had shaken him so thoroughly.

“Come on, sit with me,” he coaxed, refilling their cups. “This tea is too precious to waste.”

Maul glared at him, grumbling sullenly, incomprehensibly, before he eventually crept over. He seemed lost in thought now, his hands balled into fists, his face pinched in calculation.

Feeling compelled to change the subject, Ben said, “Would you like to know what happened next?”

At his voice, Maul seemed to gradually surface. After a moment, he nodded, taking a long, bracing sip from his teacup. “Tell me.”

As Ben thought back, his relief at calming Maul down was overtaken by the ache in his heart. “I stole one of the Separatist shuttles and returned to Coruscant. I tried contacting the Temple along the way, but no one answered. And none of the other Jedi I tried to contact responded either.” He shuddered. “It wasn’t until after I had gotten a hold of Master Yoda that I learned that no one had replied because they were all dead.”

Maul didn’t say anything, but his gaze remained fixed on Ben, who realized with a start that he had never told anyone besides Yoda about what had happened on that day, and they hadn’t exactly had the time for a thorough debrief. He’d spent ten years without a single confidant; most days, he hadn’t even spoken a single word, unless he was asked a question at work or a Jawa had come to fence stolen goods.

As strange as it was to find comfort in talking to Maul of all beings, Ben was also immensely grateful to have his ear in this moment—grateful, in a way, too, to be forced to dig back into this buried history, the way he had dug for his lightsaber at the start of this journey.

“There was holocam security feed,” he continued. “I watched the recording of Anakin pledging his allegiance to Sidious in the Chancellor’s office, and of him rampaging through the Temple halls, slaughtering scholars and younglings alongside troopers I’d fought beside for years.”

Ben’s vision blurred, and he fisted his hands in the folds of his robes, attempting to steady himself. “Among the slain were Jedi I’d known since I was brought to the Temple, Jedi I’d watched grow up, Jedi I’d trained with, fought on the battlefield with.” Despite his efforts, a tear slid down his cheek. He swiped it away hurriedly. “They were Jedi who had helped me raise Anakin, who had guided him when I fell short. He killed them all, and so easily.

“And now Sidious and Vader hunt down the few who remain, and apparently even those who were never trained at the Temple, now.” He stared down at the table and admitted quietly, perhaps not only to Maul but also himself, “Some days, it’s all I can do to keep putting one foot before the other.”

“Spare me your self-pity,” Maul scoffed, and Ben’s head jerked up in consternation. “Is that it? You were on Coruscant when Sidious and Vader rose to power, and you simply ran away?”

Ben huffed. “Hardly. I followed Anakin all the way to Mustafar. I tried to make him see reason. But it was too late.”

Maul’s pupils dilated, the thin yellow slivers of his irises flashing. “Mustafar, you say. You fool! You fell right into their trap.”

Ben frowned. “Pardon my ignorance, but what is the significance of Mustafar?”

“The planet contains a dark side vergence,” Maul explained. “There was a facility Sidious inherited from his master there.” His gaze flickered down to his teacup. “That was where he kept me, after he had me as his prize.”

Ben perked up with interest at the seldom-offered morsel of Maul’s early history, grim as it was. “You…lived there? As a child? I was only there for a short time, but it appeared to be a place few species could survive.”

“Indeed,” Maul replied. “All by design, of course. Beings had been disposing of enemies and evidence there for decades. There, nobody would go looking for Sidious—or the child he had stolen.”

“How old were you when you were taken from here?”

“I know not my precise age,” Maul said. “Three at most, I would estimate.”

Ben inhaled sharply. “So young.”

Maul’s gaze grew sharp, and he snapped, “Did the Jedi not do the same?”

”Well, yes, I suppose, but…” Ben fumbled. “It’s different. Isn’t it?”

Maul’s gaze grew distant. “Perhaps. He kept me in a room I eventually realized was a prison cell and left all the training and caretaking to droid handlers, if what they did could be called that. He seldom visited.” Maul’s face pinched. “I remember hating him, yet knowing I had nobody else in the galaxy. The Nightsisters didn’t come looking for me then, as I had initially believed was inevitable. And neither did the Jedi. I hated them all for that. I blamed them.”

“As you had every right to!” Ben insisted, anger simmering within him at the thought of Maul—merely a toddler when he had begun training as a Sith—trapped on the hellish Mustafar, kept as a pet for Sidious, waiting for someone in the galaxy to come to his aid.

He had always imagined Maul’s childhood as pampered, that he had lived in the lavish golden palace of some faceless Sith. But Maul had been abducted and enslaved by Sidious. A child from the Mid Rim strong with the Force—he could have been a Jedi! He should have been a Jedi.

Ben’s heart clenched at the concept of the future that had never been. He thought back to the first time he’d met Maul and how during the duel he’d been shocked that the Sith appeared to be younger than him yet seemingly more powerful.

If Obi-Wan Kenobi had known the circumstances of Darth Maul’s childhood then, would he still have raised his saber against him? Would he still have struck him down?

He did not think Maul would appreciate his sympathy now.

They were silent for a long, tense moment. Ben poured them both more tea and wondered if their conversation had ended preemptively—an unexpectedly mournful thought.

But at last Maul spoke again, sounding weary. “Tell me what happened on Mustafar.”

Ben’s shoulders eased despite the subject matter. “Where do I start?” he mused. “Well, when we arrived, Padmé tried to make Anakin see reason, only for him to attack her—”

“Qu—Senator Amidala?” Maul interjected. “Why was she there?”

“Ah,” Ben said, sighing. “I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. But apparently Anakin and Padmé were…married.”

If Ben had believed Maul to be shocked earlier, it was nothing compared to this: Maul’s mouth actually dropped open. The fact that Ben had actually stunned him into having nothing to say for once was a little amusing.

Then, Maul seemed to marshal himself and asked, aghast, “And the Jedi Council allowed this?!”

“Er…no,” Ben answered. “It absolutely did not.”

Maul peered at him with keen eyes. “But you knew about it,” he said slowly, sounding astonished. “Your Padawan broke one of the core tenets of the Jedi Code, and you allowed him to do it? You protected him from the Council on which you yourself sat?” Ben winced, and felt even worse when Maul exclaimed, “Oh, this is too good!” and jumped to his feet.

“Now hold on a minute,” Ben interjected weakly. Maul waved a dismissive hand to silence him.

“No, no, allow me to savor this,” he said, laughing under his breath. “The Jedi’s hypocrisy ran even deeper than I ever imagined! Their fearless hero, married! To a Republic senator, no less. Next you’ll tell me they had a clandestine brood.”

Ben covered his face with his hand. “No,” Maul said, a hysterical giggle escaping him. “Truly?”

“Are you quite finished?” Ben huffed, peeking through his fingers at Maul, who was radiating glee.

“Not in the slightest,” Maul replied. “Skywalker did this all under the Council’s nose, and the Jedi were all so far up on their lofty perch that none but you knew. And despite knowing about such a transgression, you did nothing. I haven’t heard anything more comical in years.”

“I wasn’t aware of it!” Ben protested. “Nor that they had been married, or were even in a romantic relationship! I only thought Anakin was in love with her, and that she returned his feelings. But I believed she had too much sense to act on them, and that he would grow out of it eventually.”

Maul sat back down, his eyes still glittering with mirth. “Yet you still protected him.”

“Of course I did,” Ben said. “He was my Padawan. I was arrogant—I thought I could give him the push to fix those shortcomings. And the Council didn’t understand that he was different—that the childhood he’d spent outside the Temple, with his mother, enslaved, meant he had to be taught differently. He was so angry, and he had suffered so greatly already. His needs were unlike those of us who had grown up in the Temple.”

“But you failed,” Maul said.

“Go on, then, gloat,” Ben responded sourly.

“Your failure ultimately spelled the Sith’s victory. I suppose when it comes down to it, I have little cause to celebrate.” Maul smirked. “Not that it is not profoundly amusing, though.”

Ben rolled his eyes, and Maul said, “Continue, then. Skywalker attempted to kill his wife, the mother of his children, but did not succeed?”

“His efforts ultimately succeeded, but she didn't die until later, after she had given birth. In the meantime, I distracted him and fought him across the lava fields.”

Maul leaned forward with interest. “And you won?”

“I did,” Ben said. “But that hardly matters now, does it?”

“It matters,” Maul said smugly. Ben snorted. He was starting to understand that Maul’s pride was, in some indefinable way, tied to Ben’s strength, for he believed it reflected his own. No wonder he’d been so irritated that Ben had been out of shape and out of practice when they’d fought the Inquisitors on Daiyu and Vader on Mapuzo. “How precisely did you win?”

Ben sighed, amused despite himself. “Would you like me to recount every strike of the saber in the duel for you?”

“If you can recall them, yes,” Maul said, and Ben chuckled. There was something innocent and earnest about his curiosity that almost reminded Ben of Padawans and younglings at the Temple asking the Jedi Knights and Masters to tell them stories of their missions.

“In all honesty, when I think back, it is difficult to remember any of it,” Ben admitted. “It’s as if the file is corrupted in my memory. But I do recall that we fought through what must have been the facility you spoke of, for it was where the Separatist Council lay dead. We ended up on a bridge, and then we traversed the lava river and fought on a mining raft upon it.”

“Ah,” Maul said. “I know the one.”

“The duel was long and arduous,” Ben continued. “When I leaped to shore, he attempted to follow. I cut off his legs, then his arm.”

Maul stilled, and the almost warm atmosphere between them vanished. “And you believed him dead because of it,” he said coldly. “You should have learned your lesson, Kenobi. Next time I suggest you aim for the neck and be done with it.”

Ben wondered if that was what Maul wished he had done. Pushing away the disquieting thought, he said, “I watched him catch fire on the shore and burn. I did not believe anyone could survive that.”

“You were at a vergence site,” Maul replied, imperious. “And the dark side is powerful—more powerful than you will ever know.”

“Evidently,” Ben sighed.

“This is a weakness we can exploit, however. I have long wondered why Vader wears that suit when it so obviously hinders him. Sidious likely benefited from you maiming his precious apprentice.”

“How so? Wouldn’t he be more useful to him at full strength?”

“In the Sith tradition, the apprentice kills the master. But if Vader is hampered by his broken body, then he will never be able to grow more powerful than Sidious. That is what Sidious has always truly wanted. Not to follow the doctrine of Darth Bane but to have a loyal attack dog to do his bidding. I should know—I was the first of them.”

Ben frowned, trying to imagine the life of a three-year-old Dathomirian Zabrak child on Mustafar; thinking about his own master’s master betraying the Jedi Order to serve under the very man who had imprisoned Maul there.

“I do not want your pity,” Maul snarled before Ben could say anything.

“It is not pity, but empathy,” Ben corrected. “I wish you had not suffered under his thumb. You should have been allowed to grow up here, on your homeworld. Or in the Jedi Order. Imagine if our first meeting had taken place there instead.”

Maul laughed, disdainful. “Me, a Jedi! How very fanciful. Though, if we had crossed paths in the Jedi Temple instead, I’m certain I would have defeated you in combat there.”

Ben chuckled. “We did duel one another plenty, back in the creche.”

“Mm. It is difficult to imagine, but… Perhaps I would have liked that,” Maul said, sounding thoughtful. “Perhaps it would have suited me.”

“What, beating me? I’m sure it would.”

“No, I mean…” Maul exhaled. Quieter, almost wondering, he murmured, “Not a different end, but a different beginning.”

Ben looked down at his empty teacup. The rich taste of the tea remained on his tongue, its endurance grounding.

His head did feel calmer. Clearer. It had been unexpectedly kind of Maul to prod him to talk. To allow him to tell him these things he had never told anyone else, not even Yoda. And even if Maul was hardly the most empathetic of beings, he had listened with a patient ear.

Ben didn’t particularly want pity, either. Pity, or even sympathy, would likely have chafed.

But in this moment, Ben felt less alone than he had in a decade. Maul had accomplished that. What else did he have the potential to do? To be? What else had Sidious stolen from him?

What else had Sidious not been able to take?

Who would the man sitting across from him have been had fate taken him down a different path?

The Sith had robbed them both of so much.

Softly, Ben said, “I would have liked to see that, I think.”