Work Text:
Haja was no-one, really. An insignificant speck in a galaxy full of insignificant specks. It had never sat right with him, being just another forgotten face in the crowd, but Haja had nothing in him to distinguish himself, nothing to be remembered for. He was entirely ordinary.
So he learned how to lie.
Lies were wonderful things. With a convincing lie, anything and anyone could be extraordinary, and it certainly didn’t hurt that there was money to be made from lies, too. He started small, simple scams to get by, but soon that sense of insignificance crept back in, making Haja feel all too small himself.
So he started to borrow from something bigger.
Jedi were mysterious, unforgettable despite the Empire’s best efforts. Haja knew enough about them from the stories that had stuck in his brain, and there were few enough that could correct him if he got some of the details wrong. A little sleight of hand, a few magic tricks, and he was as convincing of a fake as there ever was.
For the first time, he could play at being someone of significance. Not just through a costume and trickery, but in real help given to the desperate people whose money he took. Giving them a passage to safety was something real, something not insignificant.
Still, nothing made him feel as humbled and small as meeting a real Jedi.
It wasn’t as though Haja had ever believed his own scam, of course, but next to a real Jedi, he was all too conscious of his own feeble imitation.
But then Obi-Wan addressed him by name.
He had remembered it. Even though there’d been no reason to, no reason for Obi-Wan to remember Haja at all. He didn’t even like Haja very much, and why would he? Haja had made a mockery of Obi-Wan’s people and used their memory to scam desperate families.
But Obi-Wan remembered his name anyway.
For the first time, Haja did not feel small and insignificant.