I’m quite sad that all of Maul’s allies are gone…it is very clear that he was not very open about his approval of them but I was nice to see that he trusted Scorn and Icarus enough to tend to his wounds and fix him up.
And I quite enjoyed his interactions with Rook. She was fiercely loyal and I dare even say she tried to remind him that his plans might be going too far. Not that Maul is too good at listening in such cases. That man is set on his plans.
And ah spy bot you precious precious droid. That droid got the most affection! A PAT ON THE HEAD!
I like to imagine Maul working on the droid. Carefully programming and customizing the droid to his liking. And maybe even ensuring it liked him alone? It was funny to see.
And again like before Maul is alone…yes he was able to acquire Devon…but it’s not the same…
I wonder if he will regret this path? Or as always try it again and again….
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“Elowen, come with us!” One of the officers beckoned to me. I followed the rest of the officers closely as we made our way away from Lawson and went right, our guns at the ready. I could feel my pulse quickening. I had never been in this type of situation before. I had never been around anyone force sensitive, much less fought them, but I hoped I would just be fighting the mandalorians that worked for Maul.
We stood, waiting for something to happen, and then watched as Vario came out of the darkness and placed a hologram onto the ground. Maul appeared in blue lines on the hologram, and offered for them to work together, and when Lawson declined his offer they all came out of the darkness and began shooting. It was hard to see where anyone was because of the darkness, but I could shoot in the direction from which the shots were being fired.
I managed to shoot down five before a red bullet from one of them hit me directly in the shin. I hit the ground from the impact. The rest of my squad didn’t notice, they just kept fighting. It didn’t hurt at first, so I decided to walk out to where it was safe. After walking a few paces, the wound started to ache, and after a few moments the pain was unbearable and blood was dripping down my leg.
When I started to feel light-headed I sat down on the floor and rested my head in my hands. I could pass out, not now. I concentrated on breathing calmly, but my vision was already starting to leave me, and the last thing I saw was a man, a Zabrak, it wasn’t Maul, because his skin was orange and his tattoos were different.
***
When I regained consciousness, the first thing I noticed was the terrible pain in my leg. I sat up, still feeling a bit ill. My injured leg had been cleaned and bandaged, and sitting next to me was the same Zabrak as before. He sharpened a knife, running a stone from the top to the bottom of the blade. He wasn’t the slightest bit alarmed at my awakening.
“Who are you, and where am I?” I demanded. I hoped to sound not as afraid as I was.
“That’s none of your business,” he said, not bothering to look at me.
“It’s my business because I was unwillingly taken here.”
“Don’t worry, you’re still on Janix, and we’ll let you go… if you tell me a few things first.”
“I’m not going to tell you anything.”
He got up, “Then you’re staying here. This will be your room, but since you’re here you might as well join us to eat.”
There was no harm in it, unless they poisoned me, but if they wanted answers they needed me alive. If they wanted me dead they would have killed me.
It was probably safe to go with him… probably.
I limped behind him as he led me into a dimly lit room with a table where another, slightly bigger Zabrak was sitting.
I sat down on the opposite side of the table from both of them, and took a small portion of meat from the plate on the center of the table.
Neither of them said anything, but if they weren’t going to let me go until I answered the questions I wasn’t going to be leaving for a long time, I might as well know their names.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Icarus,” he said, “he is my brother, Scorn.”
“I’m Elowen. How did you guys start working for Maul?” I wanted them to do the talking, but they didn’t seem like the type of people to do that.
“We’re the last of our tribe. We will stay together.”
“Oh, I have a brother too. He lives on the opposite side of Janix, so I don’t see him that often, but y’know…”
“Were you and your brother close?” Icarus asked.
“Yeah, he was my only sibling, so we spent most of our childhood together. He’s a year older than me, so he went and became the owner of a big speeder company. His work keeps him busy, but we still talk when we get the chance. Did you two have any other siblings, or is it just you two?”
Both Icarus and Scorn looked away. It was obviously still a sore topic. I shifted uncomfortably, and winced when my injured leg bumped the leg of the table.
“Are you in pain because of your injuries?” Icarus asked, “I can get you a pain reliever if you need it.”
He had already stood up so I said, “I would appreciate that.”
He nodded, and came back a few moments later with a needle.
“This might hurt,” he said, and I clenched my jaw as the needle slid into my sore skin.
When he took the needle out and stood up his orange eyes met mine for half a second.
“Are you the medic for Maul’s… crew?” I asked.
“One of them.”
“Who trained you?”
“I learned it by myself.”
“I could never do anything like that. I don’t think that I ever really considered being a medic.”
“Maul needed a medic, and I was not contributing much, so I taught myself.”
“Oh, that’s–.”
“Brother,” Scorn interrupted, “Come on. Lord Maul needs us.”
Both Icarus and Scorn left, and I hesitated for a moment. I could just go back to my room, but I needed to escape. I needed to find where they put my gear.”
I stood up, and found that whatever Icarus gave me worked fast. The pain was much less intense than it had been just a minute ago. Maybe I would be able to walk normally so I wouldn’t draw as much attention, afterall, I was never told that I had to stay in the small room all day. I would look around for my gear and maybe a way to escape.
I exited the dark room and looked both ways. I had already been in the hallway on the right. It was the side my room was on, but the left was where Icarus and Scorn went, so Maul was that way. If my gear was anywhere, it would probably be near where everyone else was. It would be hard to get it, especially with Maul and his force sensitiveness.
Maybe it would be best to earn their trust first, but with my gear they would be able to monitor police activity. If they were monitoring it, there was no way that Lawson would be able to stop them. They would have to do what they were putting off. They would have to call in the Empire. The Empire hopefully would be more able to stop Maul more easily.
They had heard about the inquisitors on other planets. Force sensitive individuals that were merciless killers and were sent to hunt down the remaining jedi.
The general public didn’t get very much information about what was happening. All we were told was that the Jedi committed treason and that the Empire wanted to fix the galaxy’s problem.
But they didn’t seem to be accomplishing that. They seemed to be causing more problems than they fixed. All I knew was that Janix was doing just fine without the Empire until Maul decided to cause problems.
Now Janix would suffer under the Empire just like so many of the other planets. Maybe once I got my gear back and escaped I would go somewhere else. Somewhere away from the Empire.
I decided that I would go back to my room and earn their trust first. The Empire was probably already on their way so they probably wouldn’t be able to track police activity with my equipment for much longer.
I sat on the bed in my room. Icarus never told me what the questions were. Maybe they weren’t as detrimental as I thought they were. If the Empire was coming in, as it most likely was, I could tell them a little bit of information. I could just give a very slim bit of truth and not tell any information that could hurt anyone. Then I wouldn’t have to stay here for any longer.
I left my room to find him, but looking through the dark metallic halls, I could only find Scorn. The bigger, slightly more intimidating brother. He was already watching me, so I decided to swallow my nervousness.
“Where did Icarus go?” I asked, “I am willing to hear his questions now.”
“He’s in his room. Two doors down from yours.”
“Oh, thank you,” I said, and he said nothing.
I turned back to my room, and went two doors left. I took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
I slowly opened the door. When I saw him I immediately blushed and looked away. He was sitting on the bed, not wearing a shirt. His orange skin and black tattoos in plain sight.
I looked around the room as I spoke, and not at him. The room was just as small as mine, but it was filled with a few of his personal belongings: some clothes folded in a stack, a few stray knives and guns, a map of a system of planets, a box full of medical supplies, and papers with notes.
“I’m ready to answer the questions you said you needed me to answer,” I told him.
“Already? You must hate it here.”
“I have a job and a life that I need to go back to.”
“They’re already looking for you,” he said, “They noticed when you didn’t report back after the mission.”
“Really?” I asked. I hadn’t expected them to notice that quickly, especially in all the chaos that was going on. Maybe they liked me more than I thought they did. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t leave until I answered all their questions. “Whatever, what are the questions?”
“Are you planning on calling in the Empire?”
This wasn’t anything like what I thought they were going to ask. “We hope we don’t have to. That’s why we went after you ourselves. Obviously that didn’t work. So, they might be on their way right now. I don’t know.”
He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his chin resting in his hand. “So you don’t like the Empire just as much as the rest of us?”
“No one actually likes the Empire. Except maybe the power hungry jerks running it,” I told him.
“So many people volunteer to be their stormtroopers. They must like it.”
I scoffed, “They were probably forced or just brainwashed.”
“Or maybe they were doing it to have something new in their life. But they obviously picked the wrong thing.”
“I wonder if they can ever leave once they join, or if they’re stuck forever. I don’t really want to find out though, because there’s only one way to really find out.”
“In a little while if there’s someone who quit then we’ll know.”
“How would you tell if they used to be one. I typically don’t walk up to people and say ‘sir, did you used to be a stormtrooper?’”
He chuckled. I just then realized that I was just having a conversation with someone who was supposed to be my enemy. I hesitated.
“Can I leave now?” I asked.
“You’re going to have to convince Lord Maul to let you go. I’m not actually in charge of the prisoners, although you’re not really a prisoner. You’re more like a forced guest.”
“So I just gave you information for no reason?”
“No, he tasked me with asking you that question. I needed a way to make you answer. It seemed simple enough.”
I turned and went back to my sad, empty room. Maybe I had gotten wrapped up in his good looks and forgotten that all of these people were bad people and were not to be trusted.
Maul had found the term in a psychology book once, sandwiched between two other entries he had already forgotten.
Complex PTSD.
Two words that sat clinical on the paper. It never told him the depth of waking at three in the morning with a blanket soaked through, and his teeth locked together while every muscle pulled tight.
Nothing about how long it took, lying there in the dark, to remember that the electricity wasn’t real anymore. It hadn’t been real for years.
It didn’t tell him of the years of sleep robbed from him, dragging him further down into his insanity. How he would dread the moment his eyes would fall shut, knowing what would be on the other side.
The nightmares never ceased.
They clawed at his mind, making him confused on what was reality anymore. Some mornings he would find himself with his bed in shreds, with no memory of tearing it apart.
Other mornings, he found himself curled inwards, unable to stop the quiet sobs that came.
The bar is a jagged vein of neon and bile, suffocating the room with the hum of cheap repulsorlifts and even cheaper liquor. But it’s a place where information is currency, and it’s the reason Maul is here.
Maul sits in the darkest corner of the establishment, a shadow carved from the rest. The rest of the room was a chaotic tableau of twisted deals and hooch laced whispers. Maul isn't here for the drink.The glass of amber liquid remains untouched; he’s here for coordinates, nothing more.
Maul scans the room, cataloging exits and threats, any variables that would cause him an unwanted headache. But someone catches his eye.
She is sitting at the bar counter, her posture a stark contrast to the slouching, nervous energy of the spice runners and bounty hunters. She takes the space around her, even as she blends into the rest of the noise. When she lifts a glass to her lips, the light from the overhead flickering glow-tube catches the glint of silver at the fold of her ear—a piercing.
Maul’s eyes narrow. He isn't looking at her as a man looks at a woman; he is assessing the piercing as if it were a tactical vulnerability or a strange, exquisite piece of tech. It is elegant. It is unnecessary. And yet, it makes him pause.
He feels a strange, sudden tension coil behind his ribs—a tightening that has nothing to do with his mission and everything to do with the fact that she is looking back. She doesn't avert her gaze. She simply holds his stare, the silver in her ear catching the harsh light again. A crack runs through the foundation of his discipline.
His thoughts are broken by the creaking of broken, fake leather across from him.
A nervous-looking Twi’lek slips into the seat opposite Maul. He doesn't look at Maul's face and instead he keeps his eyes fixed on the condensation dripping down the side of the untouched glass. His nervousness slips out as his fingers tap a frantic, irregular rhythm on the tabletop.
"The coordinates," the informant mutters, his voice tinny, only a slight raise above the bars thumping music.
He slides a small, encrypted data chip across the table, his movements hurried, desperate to get out of Maul’s presence.
"The Syndicate is moving the shipment to the upper sectors tonight. You'll need a pass to get through the security blockade, but the routing is all there."
Maul doesn't reach for the chip. His attention is back to the bar, to the flash of that silver piercing catching the light, to the woman who hasn't looked away from him either.
The irritation that flares in him is sharp, a sudden surge of heat that has nothing to do with the Dark Side and everything to do with the intrusion of reality.
The informant’s presence is a clunky, mundane anchor dragging him back from a curiosity he doesn't understand. Maul’s hand shifts toward the hilt of his lightsaber, fingers closing around it with a slow, deliberate pressure. The Twi’lek flinches, sensing the shift in the air, the way the atmosphere in the corner has curdled into something more lethal.
"Is there... is there a problem?" the informant stammers.
Maul’s gaze finally snaps back to the informant. It is an icy look that makes the Twi’lek freeze.
"No." He reaches across the table, takes the chip between two fingers, and slides it into the dark folds of his robes.
The Twi'lek unfolded himself from the booth in a single, graceless motion. He didn't look back as he all but ran for the exit.
Maul is left alone in the hollow quiet of the corner. His irritation remains, a lasting hum beneath his skin. She is still watching him, now swirling her drink in a patient figure-eight motion. There’s something deliberate about the way she holds herself that Maul recognizes. Curiosity.
The pull to her is not a calculation, but a raw impulse.
Maul rises. He crosses the bar without urgency, sliding through the pressing sea of bodies until he reaches the bar. There is a cluster of empty stools to her left, and he takes the nearest to her.
He doesn't look at her immediately. He stares into the polished, grime-streaked mirror behind the bar, his golden eyes burning against the neon reflection. The silver in her ear is inches away now, a tiny, clinical detail that feels louder than the thumping bass of the music.
"You are not afraid of me," he says, voice a low, abrasive rasp. It’s a statement, but there is an underlying question in it. Why.
He turns his head then, the sharp lines of his face—the ink-black tattoos and the carmine skin—turning slowly to face her.
She sipped her drink before responding, the tip of her tongue darting to collect the last trace of bitter hooch from her lip. Her gaze flicks over his face, cataloguing his features without the nervousness he expected.
“Should I be?”
She turned her body slightly, closing the distance between them a bit more. Her arm rested on the bar between them, her fingers splaying out with invitation.
“You know what I am,” Maul said, the words clipped short. He was testing her, waiting for the flicker of fear he saw in everyone else.
“Mm,” She hums. “I know what you are. But I have a policy to not fear things unless they are holding a blaster to my head.”
He doesn't reply. Instead, he reaches for the cuff of his glove, pulling the material back with a sharp, leather-on-leather rasp. The fabric falls away to reveal his hand.
Without warning, he reaches out. His ungloved hand comes up to her ear without hesitation and a finger finds the silver stud. He presses it into the soft skin beneath until the flesh around it deepens to a bruise-pink. Then a single unhurried drag downward, tracing the curve of her ear.
His eyes are fixed on the point of contact, ignoring the rest of her entirely.
“What is this?”
She doesn't flinch, even as his nail pricks the edge of her ear. She leans into the pressure of his hand, her gaze locking with his, unbothered.
“A piercing,” she says, the words steady despite the way he’s dwarfing her with his presence.
She holds his gaze, challenging him to find the weakness he thinks she has.
He doesn’t pull back, though. His touch ghosts over the silver stud once more, lingering.
She doesn't pull away, either. She just watches him, her breath hitching only slightly as his thumb brushes against the sensitive cartilage.
“If you’re so fascinated by the placement, I have a shop just down the road. I could do it for you, if you’d like.”
Maul’s hand drops from her ear, his eyes flicking from her piercing now to her eyes. The offer hangs between them, a transgression against everything he has been trained to avoid. Autonomy. A freedom Sidious would carve out of him for daring to even consider it.
And yet…
“A shop,” he repeats. He watches as she swirls her glass once more and swallows the rest of her hooch in one go.
“C’mon, handsome,” she says, her fingers trailing along the back of Maul’s hand. His hand flexes beneath the touch. “It’s on the house.”
He follows her out, through the hot stench of bodies, this time more careful to not allow any of the parasites to touch him. The street outside bleeds orange, its glowing light reflecting off the puddles on the streets.
She stepped through one, sending it off in ripples. Maul stalked behind her, the respectable distance collapsing under the weight of a hunger he hadn’t felt in years. Each step was a thrill. Sidious would flagellate him for his loss of control over him.
Her shop was tucked between a holo-karaoke parlor and a place that offered ‘reflexology’ for an hourly rate that Maul didn’t catch.
She used her thumb on the reader and the door hissed open. Inside, the air smelled faintly of incense, with an undercurrent of anesthetic. There were three ancient pseudo-leather chairs bolted to the floor, all held together with clear tape.
She gestured for him to sit.
He took the first chair as she wheeled a tray beside him and turned to a drawer, setting out the instruments one at a time: a needle, a wipe, a small silver ball.
She didn’t speak as she snapped on a pair of light blue sterile gloves, but the corner of her mouth tugged up as she wiped the crook of his ear with anesthetic.
Maul’s nerves flare. On his thighs, his hands curl into fists. He forces his jaw to unclench, letting the air out through his nose. Her movements don’t falter, but her eyes flick down to his hands for just a second.
“You sure, handsome?” she asked, voice a soft burr.
No, he wasn’t sure. But the question was rhetoerical. She knew he would say yes because he followed her here instead of leaving her at that bar. It annoyed him, the way she could read him so cleanly.
“Left or Right?” She asked, swirling the jewelry in astringent.
“Left,” he said, eyes closing. He tried to focus inwards, to the quiet of the Force. He finally placed the emotion that he was trying to ignore. It was excitment.
Her fingers slid along his jaw and his eyes snapped open, finding hers as his hand shot up to grip her wrist.
“Easy there,” She hushed him like a mother would to a frightened child. “I just needed you to steady.”
He stared at her. He hadn’t been touched in a way that didn’t cause pain in such a long time. And here, her touch was gentle. Her thumb stroked along his cheekbone and his grip loosened just a bit. Feather light and warm. She turned his head so she could see his ear better.
“Good,” she said, and the word moved through him like a current finding a gap in old armor. Something he had no name for, some starved and worthless thing, lifted its head.
Her grip on his jaw eased, and her fingers found his ear.
The needle plunged through cartilage with a clean, efficient pop. It sang up through his bones and into the base of his skull, white-hot. Maul let the feeling bloom, savoring it. The world focused to a point: there was only the precision of the pain and the brilliance of this small, foreign ritual.
She seated the stud, wiped away the fine line of blood with the same care she’d used to prep the skin, and then leaned back, surveying her work.
She offered him a mirror and Maul ducked his chin to examine the new stud, a harsh steel dot against the black of his skin. He had anticipated an oddity, a foreignness, but it was neither.
This isn’t vanity. He sees it for what it is. A flaw deliberately introduced into the weapon Sidious forged. A tiny, perfect act of dissent.
The woman took a step back and peeled off her gloves, rolling the sticky latex into a ball and dropped it into a cracked trashbin.
She didn’t congratulate him or offer any other validation. She simply wiped down her tray and put away her supplies. The dying blue fluorescent lights casted her in an unearthly glow.
His skin tingled oddly at the side of his head, a gentle pulse of sensation. He traced a finger over the spot where her hand gripped his jaw, and was startled at the residue of comfort she left. A childish thing, he told himself. The Dark Side had no appetite for comfort.
She spun her stool so she was back to face him.
“Does it hurt?” She asked, a mocking tone in her voice.
He wanted to say it did. But the sting of the needle was already gone, replaced by a live wire beneath the skin. He refused to dull it.
“Not enough.”
Her face changed so quickly that he almost missed it. Understanding.
She flicked her own earring, a matching surgical steel, as if she meant to goad him with their new bond. He briefly thought of Sidious and their bond forged in pain and devotion. This new connection, sealed in a stranger’s shop, felt like the sweetest kind of betrayal.
“It’ll take a few weeks to properly heal,” the piercer says as she turns to get him some bacta spray. “Don’t touch it if you want it to heal well.”
When she turns to hand him the small kit, she finds the space empty.
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