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It’s in the quiet of a successful job that Quinlan finds her again.
A bounty hunter, armed and dangerous and as beautiful as the day he walked away from her, dourly nursing a drink in a darkened corner of the darkest bar on the planet. She had always thrived in the shadows.
He feels her miniscule reaction in the Force, a momentary ripple through her steel-shorn walls.
Does it flatter him still, that he can shake the unshakeable after all this time?
If this were a holo-drama, the ones he is endlessly fond of, the ones she had rolled her eyes and scoffed at, he would apologise. He would beg on his knees for forgiveness, for her love, for her to know that he regrets with every fibre of his being that they didn’t take that ship from Dathomir and disappear into the wilds of the galaxy, never again to be touched by war or hardship.
But he knows she would not be moved by that, and he’s not the man who could say it. Not anymore, at least.
Instead, he takes the space across from her, sitting down in a way he hopes reads as careful rather than betraying the extent to which his body has been torn apart and put back together since they last saw each other.
Her stare is cool to the touch, but he can’t help but feel the corners of his mouth lift. It was baked into his memory, his very being, to smile at her.
“I’m glad you’re not dead.”
Asajj snorts, downing her drink. She looks at him, eyes roving over him as if to catalogue every change, every scar he has collected in their time apart. He hurt her in a way he can never fix. The galaxy punished him terribly for it.
She sighs, an annoyed pitch she saves for him alone.
“Me too.”
The galaxy has been torn into pieces since that last saw each other, shadows rising to fill the cracks. It’s a dangerous place to be alone.
---
And perhaps this isn’t the place to start. Perhaps there is another story underneath it all. One that starts gently, full of hope for all that the millions of stars in the galaxy promise young dreamers.
Once upon a time, there was a man and woman who loved each other very much.
Once upon a time, they thought they would overcome whatever darkness came to them.
Once upon a time, all the love and hope and goodness in the galaxy wasn’t enough.
---
They make do with what they’re given.
Quinlan maintained his connections across the wide arrays of dingy spaceports and hidden spice routes that had always served him. The shadows care not for the politics at the centre of the galaxy, remain loyal as they ever were by money and favours and dark deeds. He is short on credits, but he has no masters now to tame him.
Asajj helps to pull him from the edge.
Bounty hunting distracts him in his waking hours, sometimes side jobs Asajj sends his way and more often underhanded deals from those who would rather not have their business tracked by the guild or the ever-growing powers of the Empire.
But he can’t stay awake forever.
It never starts with the screams, though he knows will come soon.
It starts with calm. It starts with his last day as a Jedi, before he became whatever he is now.
The Clones are certain of their victory on Kashyyyk. The war has made its final, bloody turn in their favour. He longs for the sanctuary of the Temple. He longs to sink into anonymity and shadow again. To forget what he has done and who he has harmed and every other terrible thing in the galaxy.
The promise of it was so close.
Then the guns turn on him and the screaming starts.
Even now, he is not sure who started first. Was it him, flesh burning in the jungle? Bones reset in the deep Wookie caves, their final stand against the united Clone and Separatist armies? Or was it every other person he had ever known who cried out first?
It probably doesn’t matter, when their symphony of screams dances across his mind and out of his throat and threatens to collapse him like a dying star.
He wakes with the screams still ringing in his mind and his throat.
Asajj has a hand on his chest, doing her best to calm his broken mind. She can’t stop it, not really, but it is easier when she is there. She knows what it is like to be broken and alone, to be the last of one’s kind.
Perhaps that’s the tenuous link that still keeps them connected, even as they are apart more than they are together.
He feels the beat of her heart through the pulse of her hand, focuses his breathing on the steadiness of her.
Though the fleeting moments they steal with each other grow further apart as the Galaxy breaks and seizes before them, she is still his anchor. He doses off again, not quite asleep. He stays that way until what passes for morning on their cramped ship.
Asajj has been up half the night, first to tend to him but then it seems to busy herself with ensuring their survival.
“I have a job for us.”
She pushes a datapad towards him, the numbers jumping out from the hastily decoded message. He doesn’t ask questions; she offers no information.
---
Their quarry is not the daring rescue of their younger years nor a romantic adventure in the shadows.
The job takes them to a non-descript port on a poor planet where credits are as scarce as the inhabitants’ questions. It reeks of trouble from the moment they touch down on the planet, a swirling darkness that settles into their bones and makes old scars ache.
It wasn’t a guild job, just a favour for a favour. Moving people in promise of more reward, another chance to skirt the Empire’s ever-tightening control.
The couple they are moving feel unsettled, their eyes darting from their mountainous luggage to their chauffeurs and back. Asajj takes in their clothes, the ridiculous size of their trunks, and scoffs.
Vos knows this story like the back of his hand. New money, most likely. They had betrayed someone or something, found themselves rich beyond measure and cannot wait to escape the shame that haunts them on this planet. The Empire had made spies of them all.
It’s not his business. It’s not her concern. They ask no questions.
But as the load the heavy trunks around the shifting eyes of their clients, they both feel the weight of what they are loading into the depths of the ship.
Hyperspace is a dangerous place to be when you’re trafficking in children.
The woman breaks immediately, halfway to tears before Asajj even has her blaster trained full on the pair.
The man betrays less, but it is not shame or the knowledge they had been caught that breaks over his face – it’s the face of cold fear. He raises his hands, waving for his wife to do the same. She clutches at his robes, tears now training down her face.
“Please,” the woman begs. “We only wanted to get her away!”
The children in the crate, Quinlan realises now, are a blend of the man and woman in front of him.
A grazing touch of the crate’s lid reveals the full of their story.
You must keep quiet. A mother’s face over the crate, that warm feeling of safety he has not felt in years, long before the first blaster shots of the war. Protect her, this will all be over soon.
The infant is quiet, watching him in a way that shakes an old memory of the temple creche and the timid younglings he once knew.
He can only look to Asajj, her blaster lowering as she watches his new resolve. He moves them quickly into the ship, ushering the thankful parents on board while he explains in hushed tones to his partner the true circumstances of their job.
The next port is trap. Asajj knows it as well as he does as soon as she sees their destination; this promised journey’s end that would lead straight into the jaws of the Empire.
They alter course, charting their way through systems and hyperspace lanes, to the flickering corners of the outer rim that even the Empire cannot truly tame. The stars are many and bright on the planet they settle on.
“You cannot tell her stories,” Quinlan warns the couple. “It will fade with time if you let it.”
He does not put more words to what he describes, the tendril of sense and knowing that should have led this child to the Temple’s doorstep. Only ruin follows that path now.
“Let her dream of nothing, let her tie herself to this place. There is no safe harbour left in this galaxy for her now.” Each word stings at long-healed wounds.
The father understands, makes his silent vow. The mother concedes as well, eyes less certain. “She may never be able to know what you both have done for her, but we will. We will always know that you are the Jedi that saved us.”
---
It is a lonely thing, to be a Jedi.
The little family is not their last.
He is the ferryman, building roads across the stars.
Perhaps through this he can be forgiven.