Part I: March Under the Suns
The suns were already high when the march began.
They didn't wait for mercy.
They never had.
The twin blazes of Tatooine hung like gods with no mouths, pouring white fire onto the dunes and bleaching the horizon to bone. The light didn't feel like sunlight—it felt like punishment. The kind that didn't come from above, but from something older, something that had always lived in the sand.
The air shimmered. The wind was dry enough to crack skin.
And Luke walked, bare from the waist up, his muscles slick with sweat, his skin already turning copper under the glare. His boots sank with every step, dragging sand that clung like chains. His fingers flexed and unflexed at his sides—not from nerves, but to keep circulation flowing. The heat bit into him, but it didn't break him.
It never had, and behind him, the droids struggled.
R2-D2 let out a low, disgruntled whirr as he tilted sideways over a dune crest, servos groaning in protest. C-3PO stumbled after him, gold plating already losing its shine under layers of sand and solar scorch.
> "Oh dear, oh dear, at this rate I do believe I'm loosing my shine," 3PO whined. "Master Luke, if I may ask. Just how far away is this farm of yours? I fear my circuitry cannot take much more of this, sand."
Luke didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on the west. Where the light curved low and heat shimmered hardest. Toward the wastes. Toward home.
R2 beeped something sarcastic.
> "No, R2, I'm not impressed by your rolling," 3PO huffed. "Legs are in fact much superior to rolling. In fact I'm—oh! My foot's been caught by sand, and I do believe I'm falling!"
Then he tripped and landed face-first into the sand. Followed by him letting out a long, mechanical moan.
Finally Luke stopped and turned to look, and with a heavy sigh he walked to the droid, without a word.
He knelt before it and lifted the droid with ease, one arm hooked under C-3PO's shoulders, the other supporting his legs. The motion made his biceps flex, sweat tracing down the lines of his body.
3PO blinked.
> "Oh… I see you have kept your body well maintained master Luke. Most impressive."
Once more Luke was silent. He merely set the droid upright, and then finally he said just two words.
> "Keep moving."
Like so hours passed, but the sun didn't ever seem to shift, and time melted into a blur.
And once more Luke stopped at the crest of some nameless sand dune, scanning the endless ocean of sand below. His breath was shallow but steady. Each inhale carried dust. The air baked his lungs. His chest rose and fell with the rhythm of a man used to this kind of pain.
And yet his in this place, this place with so much rough sand, sand that he really didn't like at all. His mind quickly began wandering. Not forward to the future and his mission, but backward to his past and how he got here in the first place.
He still remembered running over dunes like this as a boy, chasing small Womp rats, building sand castles. Then later finding the cliffs where he liked to go jumping from rock to rock, until he scraped his knees raw.
He remembered when his adoptive mother Beru would scold him for losing power packs. And way back when Owen was just "sir" and his days were measured by how long he spent working under the twin suns before being told to come inside. And back when he was still pretending to be a normal boy.
And indeed he had never been a normal boy. Honestly he wasn't even sure if he knew what such a thing meant, to just be normal.
His childhood memories were so much different to anyone else. He still could remember watching his mother slice open a Tusken with a vibrodagger while shielding him behind her, when he was but four. He remembered his father blasting raiders through a canyon choke without breaking stride. He remembered the droid drills. The underground simulations. The sound of metal men training him to kill.
Separatist battle droids they called them, although some apparently liked to call them clankers. There were all types of them, and more always being produced in the factory underground, that in fact was a once fallen Lucrehulk-class battleship, something his adoptive parents had apparently once commanded.
And so that had been his childhood, not normal at all, just a playground of fire, and lots of training plus dreams to one day become the rulers of Tatooine.
Honestly it was all a bit much for him, not that he couldn't do it, no, it was just that he wanted something more. Well now he was back, older, harder, still alone sort of but a lot more experienced.
Then his eyes once more drifted to the horizon. And there he saw it, the rocky ridges that marked the outer reach of the Jundland Wastes. Where ghosts lived. Where bones baked in the sun, but there was also his way home.
And with that a small smile came to his face, he took a breath, and then started walking again, but this time the march grew quieter as the sun fell lower.
The droids had stopped complaining. Now there was just the crunch of boots in sand, the low whine of servo-motors straining in the heat, and the constant, oppressive nothingness of the desert.
It wasn't sort of peaceful, and like gravity. The kind that didn't pull down, it pulled inward. Into the chest. Into the spine. Into the mind.
And soon his memories became even more clear and so the ghosts came, the regrets, the adventures, the passion, all of it.
Then it started again from his childhood, clearer this time, but not innocence, just lots of training, blood sweat and tiers.
He remembered spending many nights curled up under the so called moister farm, that held seemingly endless and secret bunkers underground. The ceiling was quite low there, he couldn't touch it at first but later he did.
And he remembered the constant humming of machines further below. The constant clang of servos, the grind of drill teeth carving through mineral, the low warble of droid combat algorithms repeating in endless loop.
He was a child learning to sleep to the rhythm of a factory breeding war. And there, underground the air always smelled like oil and metal. No breeze. No sky. Just the static buzz of power cores and the whine of servomotors rebooting.
And the constant nods of acknowledgement from the droids, and those same lines again and again saying.
"Roger roger, roger roger."
Then his thoughts changed again, and he remembered back to when he was ten. That's when his punches stopped being drills, just training, and they started being weapons to kill.
By then, he was almost stronger than the underground droid workers, and he was way stronger than any normal grown man. His hands were calloused, wrists thicker than a normal boy's, bones denser from the nutrient-dense meals and underground gravity toning.
He never had toys, just targets to hit, to shoot, to kill.
Daily he was taught to kill without emotion. Not to just defend, but to conquer, and to end.
> "You strike where the soul lives," Owen once told him, pressing two fingers into his sternum hard enough to bruise.
"And you stop when it's gone and cold."
But even then it wasn't enough training. And so the real change that would make him what he now was began, down beneath the factory, in the pit.
It was a martial arena carved into volcanic stone beneath the lowest sub-level. That's where they tested him.
Not with blasters or knives, but with ancient forms of martial arts. They were taught by droids mimicking lost Jedi duelists and Sith brawlers whose styles hadn't been seen in centuries. His instructors wore masks. Moved with perfection. Struck with inhuman clarity.
And still, he kept up, apparently too well. And so then the old blind master came. He didn't remember the man's name.
Only his presence, his muscular frame. Bare feet. Wrinkled hands. Eyes filmed over with fog, but still sharp in some other way.
He didn't shout, he didn't hit, he just showed, and he broke Luke down to his marrow.
> "Muscle is meat," he once said, gripping Luke's shoulder until it throbbed. "Power is bone. But your will, now that's your weapon. And remember boy, be like water. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it like water. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. So empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. You see If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a canteen, it becomes the canteen. Now, water can flow or it can crash. So be water, boy."
And then he taught him.
How to shatter bone with a single knuckle.
How to rupture lungs with a palm to the chest.
How to rip open a man's nervous system with twelve strikes in four seconds.
He taught him his style of fighting, Hokuto-style of death or something like that. He only said the name once and said it wasn't important. He never thought him with pride like that, just precision, just techniques to kill and win.
Then the memory changed again, and he could remember his first real kill. He was only twelve then.
A Tusken raider had gotten past the perimeter. Laughed at him. Called him soft. Weak.
Luke said nothing.
He waited for the right step.
Then he struck.
One blow to the solar plexus.
The raider wheezed. Dropped to a knee. He showed the savage no pity, and just gave him one more hit, to the throat.
And within that instant a loud crack came, and the savages neck bent the wrong way. Then there was silence.
His fingers trembled. Not in guilt, but in clarity.
Because in that moment, he understood, the body wasn't sacred. It was a puzzle. And he was born to take it apart.
Then he remembered Obi-Wan, the old man.
He came like a ghost dressed in warmth, once a month, never announced.
There was something ancient in his posture, like time had given up trying to change him. His robe was always the same shade of sun-worn brown, dust clinging to the folds. His beard trimmed neatly, his hair like weathered snow. He smelled like herbs and old paper. And when he smiled, it always looked like it hurt.
He didn't belong underground in the bunkers or the farm, but he came anyway. Always carrying baskets. Bread. Sweets. Sometimes a worn datapad of old poetry. Sometimes just silence.
He would sit at the crude metal table in the training hall, just above the pit where the drill droids ran their cycles, and he'd bake things. Cookies, sometimes. Flatbread. Sweet rolls.
> "Even soldiers deserve softness," he once said, dusting flour off his fingers.
But Luke didn't want softness, not then, not now except if it was a woman's softness.
And the old man, Obi-Wan never trained him to fight, not once.
Instead, he taught him how to pour tea. How to bow. How to hold his temper during arguments.
How to listen without reacting. How to smile with his mouth, not his eyes.
He called it "manners."
But Luke knew what it really was. It was his way of control. It was the old Jedi Code, disguised and spoken in parables. Painted in discipline.
Every story Obi-Wan told ended with a lesson.
> "A Jedi doesn't speak unless words are needed."
"Control is the gift. Passion is the test."
"Compassion is strength. Attachment is weight."
"Peace through self."
Luke remembered that last one most, because he hated it.
He didn't want to be a monk.
He wanted to feel everything.
To leap into fire, not tiptoe around it.
He didn't want to meditate on the meaning of silence while Tusken Raiders tore through outer settlements. He didn't want to bake biscuits while the Empire raised fleets.
He wanted to move.
To scream. To fight. To burn.
So when the time came, he left.
No farewell. No ritual.
He forged ID chips. Reprogrammed a transport beacon. Snuck into the next freighter off-world under the name Kael Vren.
He left behind the fake farm with the factory beneath it, the cave, the droids, the drills. And then he finally found cities, large ones. The ones with neon windows and rooftop clubs that spun all night. With women who laughed with teeth and men who drank like it was their last day. He slept in alleys and on women's warm bodies. He got drunk. Got laid, a lot. Got into fights just to feel something.
He watched blood spill under strip-club lights, and it felt good.
But none of it was enough. And so that's when he joined the Empire. Not because he believed, but because he wanted to experience war and real danger like some hero of legend.
And he was good, the best in the academy. Immediately assigned to hunting down the remnants of what remained of the Jedi. And that's where he met her, Ahsoka Tano. She wasn't any normal woman. She was a ghost with eyes like knives. Even now he could remember it like it was yesterday.
It began with silence high above the atmosphere of the rocky, rain-lashed world of Dremund IX. There an Imperial Star Destroyer called the Crucible was hanging stationary in low orbit.
But then it had suddenly started falling. You could see it from the ground.
The way the engine thrusters flared once, then died.
The way the bow sagged like the ship itself was breathing its last.
From the command bridge, a final, corrupted transmission crackled through the emergency line.
> "She's here—she's on the ship—oh gods—Togruta—she's in the vent—"
And after that just static, followed by the starboard wing exploding. And that's when he and his squad was called, to Dremund IX. A planet that was once a fuel-extraction outpost, now turned graveyard.
Rain hammered down like gunfire there constantly, onto the planet's jagged black stone that littered the plains. Then there, just a hundred kilometers from the crash site, the Destroyer he was on had come into high atmosphere.
Aboard it, in the black-armored staging bay of an assault drop frigate, he, Kael stood in silence, helmet in his hand.
The rest of the unit buzzed with anxious motion, checking rifles, calibrating thermal sights, muttering prayers. They were some of the best the Empire had. Hardened commandos. Elite shadow units. They'd taken down rogue Jedi before. Inquisitors. Even former clone generals.
But despite this none of them looked confident, and Kael didn't speak.
He just watched the screen on the side wall, a pulsing, flickering hologram showing the wreck of the Crucible.
Smoke vented from its midsection. Turbolaser coils still cracked with dead electricity. Escape pods hung limp in their racks.
And inside?
She was somewhere in there, Ahsoka Tano.
She had gotten on the ship alone. Slipped through port security using tech they still hadn't figured out, slicing through corridors like a saboteur. The Crucible's command staff never stood a chance. By the time someone realized the truth, it was already crashing.
> "Who the hell does that?" one of the troopers muttered, voice sharp in Kael's comms. "Crash an entire ship just to take out one target or something?"
> "No, I don't think that was the mission," another said. "I bet she just wanted to go down with it, like all those typical Jedi fanatics usually like to do when cornered."
> "So why's she still in there, killing the survivors? Does she want to die?"
No one had an answer, and Kael didn't offer one.
He locked his helmet into place.
The bay ramp hissed open.
The sound of rain came slapping down on black steel.
The gunship lifted, exited the hanger and then came the drop down from the Destroyer's hold, and so the descent began. It was his first time going after a Jedi, but not his first time taking out a high profile target.
Inside the troop cabin, Kael checked his gear silently. The others watched him.
He was the youngest, but not the loudest.
But when he moved, he moved fast, his shots were precise and so none complained.
Because Sable One didn't need to speak, he just needed to kill better than the rest.
Then soon the landing site came into view, a crater of fire and twisted metal.
The Crucible lay torn open like a wounded beast, its insides exposed. Plasma fires danced in the storm. Corpses littered the rock in Imperial black-and-gray—some still twitching. Others too charred to recognize.
> "Wasn't this supposed to be a rescue op," someone whispered. "Looks more like a slaughter to me."
The men said nothing more, and the moment the ramp dropped, rain hit them like a wall. They moved fast out the dropship, and down the ramp securing every angle as they did.
He followed and also stepped into the downpour, boots splashing in blood-rain and mud. Lightning cracked above, lighting the sky blue-white for half a heartbeat.
And instantly in that flash, he saw a shadow dart through the wreckage.
Too fast.
Too low.
Too silent.
And then came the scream from inside the wreckage.
Short, wet, final.
No-one said anything, Kael merely raised a hand. And the squad fanned out. So the hunt began.
All around rain pounded the wreckage like the world was trying to bury the dead faster.
And before them the downed Star Destroyer Crucible lay in pieces, its dorsal spine split in half, internal lights flickering weakly beneath the black smoke rising into the clouds. The wreck sprawled across a jagged plateau of wet stone and broken durasteel, like the carcass of a god shattered by a fall from heaven.
Kael's boots sloshed through a corridor half-flooded with rain and coolant. It stank of ozone and cooked flesh.
"Thermal's useless," one of the commandos muttered over the comm.
"Nothing but static. Can't get a trace."
"She's in the vents again."
The team advanced slowly, rifles raised, shoulder-lamps sweeping across twisted steel walls where blood ran in vertical smears. Night vision was active, and it only made things worse. The green-tinted display showed the edges of everything, but never what mattered, never her.
> "Sector four clear."
> "We found a survivor."
Kael froze.
He opened his comm line.
> "Put them through."
The holofeed flickered. A trooper's helmet cam came online.
Static.
Then, he saw someone.
Half-slumped against a wall. Blood pouring down from a gash over their brow.
> "She's… she's not a Jedi. She's not... she's not right in the head. She's gone. Don't—don't look for her, just—"
Behind him, the air moved.
White blades flashed.
Then nothing.
> "Squad Three just went dark," Kael said over the comm.
"Mother of—she's watching us," someone whispered.
> "She's hunting us."
Two men tried to split off.
They didn't make it ten meters.
A figure dropped from the ceiling, landed silently between them.
No scream. No roar.
Just blades.
One man's head rolled. The other's knees gave out before he realized his chest had been opened.
Kael caught a glimpse as the glow flashed through the smoke.
It was indeed a Togruta, small, agile and extremely fast. She was soaked, covered in mud and blood. And her face, her eyes, burned like a sun that had nothing left to lose.
"Contact!" one of the troopers shouted. "She's moving left, hallway gamma-five!"
Instantly they all turned, and fired, but she vanished. And again there was nothing. No blood, only a trail of footprints in the mud.
> "She's playing with us."
Kael pressed two fingers to his neck.
"Shut up."
The team went silent.
He stepped forward alone, through the main generator corridor, dark, wet, humming with energy.
She would be here.
She'd made this a ritual.
He saw it in the pattern.
She wasn't running.
She was purging.
Every kill had intention. Every body a message.
Not for them, but for him, the squad lead.
Then came the whisper, directly into his helmet, his own private channel.
> "Are you not afraid of me, trooper?"
Kael didn't flinch, he merely asked.
> "What, are you angry that I'm not?"
She said nothing for a moment, but then whispered.
> "No, that's good, I always love a little challenge."
And the line went dead.
Then he heard it again, behind him another scream came.
And another life was gone, but Kael hardly cared. He merely kept walking.
For him this wasn't a hunt anymore. This was his challenge, his trial, and he intended to survive it.
Outside lightning split the sky.
For one perfect second, the broken hangar was cast in a blue-white brilliance, a skeletal frame of twisted durasteel, flaming debris, and shattered gunships embedded in the floor like tombstones. The rain was relentless, hammering down in sheets, drowning the fires one drop at a time.
And there he saw her, she was waiting for him, Ahsoka Tano.
Her back was lit by the fires behind her. Her hood was down. Lekku dripping with rain. Her body was still, but her breath trembled with restraint. Her lightsabers hung from her sides, unignited.
Kael stepped into the hangar slowly, soaked to the bone, helmet hanging from one hand.
His armor was cracked. His knuckles bled. And yet… his eyes burned brighter than hers. She had tried to kill him within the ship already several times, and he was still here standing.
Now they didn't speak anymore, not yet.
Because this wasn't about dialogue. This was ones ending, and anothers beginning.
Then in a flash, she moved first, silent and swift.
Twin sabers flaring to life as she leapt.
Kael ducked under the first strike, rolled forward, and came up swinging with a precision hook that slammed into her shoulder. She staggered, but recovered, pivoting on one foot to lash out with a spinning kick.
He caught her leg.
Threw her across the deck.
She landed hard, bounced, and sprang again.
He didn't hesitate.
He moved with her.
Their fight was fluid. Like memory. Like muscle. Like two forces who already knew each other but hadn't yet met.
She fought like a storm.
He fought like a wall.
She blurred in and out of his guard, jabbing at pressure points, slashing wide. But Kael, Luke, moved like he'd been built to counter her. The old mans teachings echoed in his body, twist, flow like water, strike, and kill.
She slashed high.
He ducked. Pressed his palm to her sternum.
A breath.
Then a shockwave of impact.
She flew backward, crashed into a wrecked LAAT gunship frame, and crumpled to her knees.
But when she looked up, she was actually smiling.
> "You're not him," she said, voice low, eyes locked on his.
"But you're close enough."
Kael didn't answer, he didn't even know what she was talking about. And he wasn't the type of person to pry into a woman's complicated mind. Instead he walked toward her, slow and steady.
And she for whatever reason didn't move.
She didn't reach for her sabers.
Didn't even blink.
Her sizable chest merely rose, fell, and her lips trembled, not in fear, but in recognition.
Rain poured between them.
She stood.
Walked to him.
Put her hands on his chest.
Felt his heart, fast, wild, human.
> "You're my end," she whispered. "Or maybe my chance."
Kael didn't know what was going on really, but he didn't resist her touch. He just stood there looking down at her Petite hourglass figure, as she rose to her tiptoes and then she kissed him.
It wasn't tender.
It wasn't soft.
It was need, masquerading as hunger.
She pushed against him, breath ragged. Her mouth opened. His hands gripped her waist, pulled her tight. She gasped when their bodies met, armor to skin, power to power.
> "You feel like him," she breathed against his throat. "But you're not. You're better."
Kael didn't answer.
He kissed her harder.
And the storm above roared.
Soon after they found themselves in a forward maintenance bay, buried in the storm-wrecked remains of the Crucible.
And the hangar burned, but not with fire, but with breath and body heat.
With something older than words.
Rain hammered the wreckage above like a war drum, its rhythm echoing down the fractured corridors. Sparks crackled along the walls. The smell of metal, ozone, and blood still hung in the air.
But Kael didn't smell it anymore.
He only smelled her, Ahsoka. Her sweat, her skin, her passionate fire.
She clung to him like gravity, her fingers sliding over the muscles of his back, her body pressing against his in rhythm with the storm.
> "I shouldn't, it's wrong, you look so much like him, I I…" she breathed against his lips, as he looked at her seriously and challenged her by saying.
> "Then stop me."
And she didn't, so he pushed her backward into the half-buried maintenance room, where the walls were flickering with dying power cells, half-lit by lightning flashes that poured through broken plating.
And there Kael pinned her against the wall.
She wrapped her legs around his waist.
Their mouths didn't break.
It wasn't slow.
It wasn't careful.
It was collision.
She bit his bottom lip until it bled.
He growled against her tongue, hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise.
She moaned. Not soft.
Like she was letting go of something.
Not passion, not desire, but memory.
> "You know, you're my first, so be gentle with me ok." She said as he lifted her off the wall, laid her down onto the cold metal floor.
"I never kissed, or let anyone before, you know, do that. I I, I just couldn't."
> "So why now?" he asked, voice raw.
> "Because I see him in you… and I hate him. And I want to love what he could have been. And maybe you could be that something?"
Her voice cracked, as he suddenly kissed her slender neck.
Then her firm breasts, and lower, and her body arched in pleasure as she grabbed his hair.
And then there were no more words.
Just movement, and heat, and letting go.
They didn't speak afterward.
Not for a long time.
She lay curled against him, his coat over her body, breath steadying.
Her eyes were open, just watching him with thought and hope.
She never told him her name and he never told her his. Neither of them ever asked.
But as she fell asleep that night, one hand resting on the swell of her belly… a thought flickered through her mind.
> "This time… I'll raise him right."
After sometime they returned outside, to the drop ship that now was soaked in blood.
Kael took the pilot seat, hands slick, rain still dripping from his shoulders. The leather creaked as he moved, fingers flying across the console. Sparks hissed from a panel behind them. The stabilizers were barely functional, the drive core cracked.
But it would fly.
And as for Ahsoka, well she didn't speak. She just sat curled in the co-pilot seat, wearing nothing but Kael's jacket, her eyes blank, her lekku heavy with water. Her lips were still swollen from their kisses. Her legs bore his handprints, her belly was still full with his seed.
And though she was silent, there was a spark of life within her again, a spark of hope and purpose. She now looked like someone coming back to life after having fallen far into the dark.
He didn't know where they were going to go now. And she didn't tell him any suggestions, so they just left.
They drifted in low orbit for two days, power on silent mode, bouncing through dead comm channels and fractured sectors. No signal. No Empire, just silence, and them.
They made love again in the crew quarters, many times, but slower this time. Though not gentle, but reverent.
Ahsoka kissed every scar on his body. Kael held her like she was something he wasn't sure he deserved. She never spoke his name. He never asked hers.
But they knew eachother well now, and they trained together, they sparred in the hallway with stolen blades and bruised knuckles. She showed him Force movement, not theory, just feeling.
He showed her his martial arts, the broken styles taught to him by the blind master in the mines. How to kill without anger. How to fight with bone, not hate.
And sometimes… they just sat, on the floor, back to back, breathing in silence.
One night, he woke to her humming.
She stood at the viewport, wearing only his belt and the stars.
> "He was never mine," she whispered. "But I loved him anyway."
He didn't speak.
> "I didn't want a replacement."
She turned, touched her stomach.
> "I wanted a second chance."
He looked at her for a long time.
She didn't ask him to stay.
And he didn't promise that he would.
On the fifth day, she handed him a holoprojector.
Leia's face appeared.
Sharp. Proud. Fierce.
Beautiful.
She didn't say a word.
But Luke looked at her, at Ahsoka, and saw the fire dim behind her eyes.
> "Join them," she said.
> "You're not done yet."
And so he kissed her one last time.
Felt her nails dig into his chest.
Felt her belly swell against his waist.
> "You'll be back," she whispered.
He nodded.
Not because he knew.
Because he wanted to believe.
And then he was gone.
And so was she.
Two fires.
Two ghosts.
Two names that would shake the stars in time.
Back in the sands of Tatooine, Luke stumbled slightly. Sand crunched beneath his heel.
The memory faded.
He looked forward again.
Eyes dry. Jaw set.
> "I came back, and I will find you again. Somehow, I'll make it right and I will make you proud of me." He whispered to no one in particularly and just kept walking.