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It was a long way down.
Long enough to survive the fall? Probably, for him, but was he really going to risk that? A fate splattered on the grimy streets in the bowels of the city for some bleeder to ransack whatever remained of his body?
His best friend?
Suguru swung around the corner fast, wincing at the blare of horns as he cut into a lane of late night traffic going the opposite way. The repulsorcraft was poorly made and difficult to handle — some mass produced passenger airspeeder manufactured on Corellia; Suguru could have built better at the age of ten using only scavenged parts of a Star Destroyer — but he would have to make do.
He’d never really struggled with the sensory nightmare that was Coruscant, but as he sped through streaks of neon colours and whirring engines and shrieked curses in foreign tongues and binary alike, Suguru understood why Satoru spent half his time looking like a Miraluka whenever they were held up in the Core for longer than a day.
That was mostly his anxiety talking though.
Everything seemed too bright, too loud, too much. Aside from the skyscrapers covered in an array of sparkling lights, stretching as far as the eye could see in every single direction, there were the people. Thousands of them. Millions of them, each and every one of them a shimmering presence in the Force — like a chaff burst around the one and only target that Suguru could always find.
Almost always.
Between racing thoughts and racing heartbeats and racing vehicles, Suguru’s radar was completely scrambled. It was practically impossible to lose Satoru — should have been impossible to lose Satoru — which only made everything worse. His best friend was always a beacon in the Force, always burning brighter than everything around him. Blame it on his upbringing (or lack thereof), but Suguru had never been able to brush off the darkness like Satoru, who cut through shadow like a hot knife through Bantha butter. He was always ablaze with light, so radiant that the dark couldn’t even get close to him.
So why the kriff couldn’t Suguru find him?
Their first mission as newly knighted Jedi — the youngest in history to take on the mantle of the Jedi Order — and it was already going horribly wrong. At first, Suguru had thought it bizarre that the pair of them had been assigned together; the mission was so simple that he’d almost taken offence. A basic personnel protection job didn’t seem like anything that required the joint efforts of the two most promising Force users the Order had ever known, at least until there was a second attempt on the young monarch’s life.
It had been an uncomfortably close call with a modified courier droid that concluded with Satoru launching himself out of a window and into the cloud cover beyond. That was how Suguru found himself weaving through late night traffic in search of his partner, milking the piece of junk speeder for every last drop in hopes of reaching Satoru before he met a grisly end. After all, the assassin was still out there somewhere — and the droid Satoru had grabbed onto without a second thought was heading straight for them.
He was such a little Sithspit.
Satoru thought himself invincible on the basis that he was Gojō Satoru, kindly delegating all of his worrying that one day it wouldn’t be enough to Suguru. It wasn’t that he didn’t have faith in Satoru, but that Satoru was sheltered. Powerful, yes, but the pampered little prince had grown up in a palace, never mind a protective bubble of his own making. Satoru didn’t know what it was like to dice with death, knowing that no one was coming to help. He’d never even had to think about it. An attempt on his life meant nothing to a boy who’d known how to float on the currents of the Force before he could even speak.
No matter how many times Suguru had beaten him in close combat — no matter how many times Suguru warned him that anyone else would slice him in two before staying their hand — Satoru had a bad habit of letting his guard down.
But I’d never let anyone else win, he said.
Cocky brat. It worried Suguru terribly.
They’d always been together. They’d been together before they’d been together, though they hadn’t realised it at the time. Soon, the Council would send them on individual missions, dispatching them to planets on opposite sides of the galaxy, putting more lightyears between them than ever before.
It didn’t make a difference in practice — not for them — but even if Satoru was always with him, he wasn’t really with him. Not enough for Suguru to cover his six, deflecting a blaster bolt to save Satoru’s skin when he neglected to watch his back. If this was a taste of things to come? Tearing himself to pieces worrying about Satoru because he refused to worry about himself?
Stars help him. And stars help Satoru, too.
Where the kriff was he?
As if Satoru felt his panic through the Force (and maybe he did), a memory came to Suguru unbidden. It was a memory of fear and suffering and hatred and darkness, until it was a memory of calm and comfort and peace and light. A memory of the first time Satoru had shown him how to reach outside of himself — how to put his faith in the energy that flowed around him and through him and within him, letting it guide him to safety.
To Satoru.
Breathe. Just breathe. Now, reach out.
Suguru reached out and he reached in and—
—there he was. His guiding light in the Force. His lucky charm.
Discovering a manoeuvrability that had previously been lacking, Suguru banked the speeder hard to the right and started racing towards his target. Up in the atmosphere above Level 5127, where the air was thin and the skyscrapers touched the clouds, the dizziest heights no longer seemed dizzying at all. Even carving a path through the heaving skylanes after dark was as effortless as breathing now. Everything that had seemed difficult only a moment ago was easy, and not for the first time, Suguru wondered if the truth that meditation actually worked would ever stop surprising him.
Unless it was all Satoru, who burned brighter and brighter until Suguru was close enough to find him without the Force. He didn’t need to know that distinctive energy signature as surely as he knew his own face in the mirror to identify Satoru’s leggy form, swooping through the city skies hundreds of feet overhead. Cursing, Suguru pushed harder, as though he wasn’t already eking everything he could out of the subpar antigrav engine. There was no way he’d gain enough elevation to meet Satoru before—
He knew it.
As if in slow motion, Suguru watched as a blaster bolt hurtled through the air, fired from a swoop bike somewhere off to his left. It struck the droid true, blowing a clean hole straight through the centre of its repulsorlift unit.
And Satoru started to fall.
The assassin — a bounty hunter, Suguru was quite certain — was streaking away in the opposite direction. Perhaps Suguru should have chased them down, trusted that Satoru could take care of himself.
But it was a long way down.
There was no choice about it in the end. Suguru angled the speeder into a nose dive, letting gravity assist his descent as Satoru reached terminal velocity, hastily doing the mental maths to meet him in free fall without breaking all of his bones. He craned his neck skywards as he frantically lined them up, shaking his head at the sight of the idiot with his arms and legs spread as wide as his lips, gliding through the air with all the contentment of a creature that belonged to it.
Judging by the way the engine screamed and strained under the deadweight of his body hitting the hull, fighting the immense impact to keep them airborne, Satoru had either put on some serious weight or he’d overcompensated with the Force.
Or he was dead.
But that was never really a serious consideration.
‘What if I hadn’t caught you?’ Suguru hissed as Satoru clambered into the seat next to him, wild white hair swept off his forehead after his impromptu flight.
‘You always catch me.’
He turned to look at Suguru, and his grin was as bright and as brilliant as his presence in the Force. The company of that dazzling smile never failed to make Suguru feel lighter. He was quite certain the speeder was gaining height he hadn’t been able to find only a few moments ago, lifted on the currents of the Force — until Satoru spoke again.
‘Now, get a move on. You lost him, laserbrain.’
Scoffing, Suguru pulled down hard on the joysticks, veering off in the direction he thought the bounty hunter had disappeared in. There was no sight of the swoop nor its armour clad rider, but he pressed forward anyway, trying not to feel self conscious under Satoru’s watchful gaze.
‘Did you get a look at him?’
At the mildly accusatory undertone to the question, Suguru resisted rolling his eyes, barely. They always ended up arguing when Suguru was in the pilot seat.
‘You don’t know it’s a him,’ he chided. ‘I couldn’t see his face.’
‘Find him in the Force?’
‘Don’t you think I’m trying?’
‘Take that corner.’
‘What? Why?’
‘It’s a shortcut!’
‘But we don’t even know where he—’
‘Just take it!’
Growling, Suguru made a hard left at the last possible second. Satoru had always been able to sense things that even he couldn’t, but that didn’t mean Suguru wasn’t gritting his teeth as he followed his barked directions down into the lower levels.
He could tell Satoru was getting antsy at his side. Even if Suguru hadn’t been able to feel his frustration building in the Force, tugging at his consciousness like it was his own emotion, he would have sensed it in the way Satoru fidgeted in his seat. His fingers twitched against the leather whenever Suguru made a turn, gaze darting between the route ahead and where Suguru’s hands clamped down around the joysticks. It made Suguru tense which only made his turns sharper which only made Satoru’s wriggling worse until finally—
‘For kriff’s sake, let me pilot!’
‘I’m going as fast as this piece of junk will carry us!’
‘Yeah, but I can go faster, you know I can!’
‘We don’t have time to waste. Put those eyes of yours to use by looking for the target instead of—Satoru!’
In his most brainless move yet, Satoru reached over the console in an attempt to commandeer the joysticks. Suguru jammed his elbow into the idiot’s solar plexus, trying to fend him off while safely squeezing the speeder through the tightest of gaps between structures.
‘If you just let me pilot the damn thing—’
‘Let go, Satoru, we’re going to crash!’
It was a narrow miss in the end. Weaving from left to right in the cramped space, Suguru just about managed to keep the vehicle in check until the bumper clipped the corner at the end of the passageway, sending them spinning out of control into open airspace.
They came to a slow and somewhat anticlimactic stop above one of the massive ventilation shafts that served as a portal to lower levels still. Suguru craned his neck over the side of the speeder, already knowing it was pointless.
‘Now we’ve really lost him,’ he hissed, scanning the streams of traffic travelling into the underworld. ‘Nice shortcut, Satoru. If you’d just kept your hands to yourself and…’
Suguru trailed off because, frustratingly, despite all the odds stacked against him, Satoru’s instincts were apparently on the mark. As usual.
The smugness emanating from the seat next to him was enough for Suguru to consider taking out his lightsaber. He probably wanted praise — he probably wanted to hear you were right and I was wrong, like the insufferable little Sithspit he was — but Satoru’s overinflated ego didn’t need any more massaging. Instead, Suguru offered him a smile, injecting it with all the artificial sweetness he could muster.
‘Since you’re that desperate to drive—’ He pulled his knees up to his chest, lifting his body out of the low seat. ‘—it’s all yours, laserbrain.’
With that, he flung himself over the side of the speeder, relishing in the squawk of surprise he heard in the moment before it was carried away on whistling wind. Eyes locked on his target, Suguru let the Force guide his fall through the racing vehicles below, trusting that it would carry him to safety.
It did — even if the impact saw tears spring to his eyes.
Suguru landed with his legs astride the seat of the swoop and his arms hooked around the pilot’s neck. At once, the repulsorcraft went plummeting downwards, both from the rough touch down and from the bounty hunter scrabbling to escape his chokehold. As they made their descent into the gaping maw that was the portal to the underworld, they were flying almost handsfree — and not even the Force could help them navigate the chaos of that intersection unscathed.
Cringing at the blaring horn of an oncoming airbus, Suguru threw his entire weight to the right, turning the swoop just enough to save them from a nasty collision. Skipping his foot along the side of the vehicle, he glimpsed his own panicked expression in the transparisteel window, framed by the shocked faces of the passengers disappearing under his boot.
Far too close for comfort.
‘Land the swoop!’
The bounty hunter winced at the bellowed command, wincing again as they squeezed past a luxury pleasure craft with a sickening scrape to the paintwork. He reached out for the handlebars, but instead of taking the sensible course of action, the son of a Hutt banked hard to the left in an ill-informed attempt to throw Suguru from the back of the bike.
Cursing, Suguru drew on the Force just a little, squeezing the bounty hunter’s airways in the crook of his arm. Unorthodox, perhaps, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Better that Suguru get the swoop down to street level safely than risk a crash with multiple casualties — because that’s where the situation was headed if he didn’t get things under control fast.
‘Land the swoop immediately!’ His hair must have come loose in free fall. It whipped into his eyes as they spiralled ever downwards, as uncomfortable as the rapidly changing pressure in his ears. ‘If you do not comply, I am permitted by law to use lethal force!’
A gamble, but most people of his ilk were frightened enough of the Jedi to forget that they weren’t actually law enforcement, never mind the fact that the Code strictly forbade them from using lethal force unless they’d explored every other option.
Not this guy, apparently.
He thrashed in Suguru’s hold anew, sending the swoop careening into a lane of traffic emerging from the fluorescent glow of the city some 200 levels beneath the surface. After a frighteningly narrow miss with a speeder as they peeled off from the ventilation shaft, Suguru decided he’d had enough. Reaching down with one hand, he drew the bounty hunter’s blaster from the holster on his thigh.
A single well aimed shot to the turbofan was all it took for the bike to start rapidly losing altitude, smoke spewing out the back as they travelled deeper into whatever godforsaken level the portal had spat them out.
Below, the busy streets loomed ever closer, lit up in a seductive red.
Even as flames licked at his legs, Suguru couldn’t help groaning — because, of all the places they might have ended up on a planet entirely covered in city, of course they were about to crash land in the Uscru ‘Entertainment’ District. If Satoru was still tracking them, which he almost certainly was, he was probably rubbing his hands together in glee. He was probably cackling like a teenager — the way he had when he’d snuck into Suguru’s quarters after dark, brandishing a holovid that definitely wasn’t allowed in a Jedi Temple.
Then again, Suguru supposed he was a teenager. And the holovid incident had only taken place a matter of weeks ago.
(And, if he was being honest, Suguru had rather enjoyed it, too.)
But he really shouldn’t have been thinking about that when he was hanging off the back of a swoop bike, approaching street level far faster than he’d have liked. There were gasps from the crowds below as the sputtering repulsorcraft skimmed over the tops of their heads, coming dangerously close. When his boot caught on the montral of an unfortunately tall Togruta, Suguru urgently called on the Force to buoy them, gasping against the enormous strain of it.
It worked as a temporary measure, but Suguru wouldn’t hold out for long. Eyeing the support for the maglev rails jutting up from the street ahead, he made some quick calculations. Pushing and pushing and pushing, Suguru waited for the opportune moment. Pushing and pushing and finally leaping, he put his faith in the Force.
Suguru hit the ground with a grunt, praying that the failing engine had enough power to lift the swoop up and away from the civilians without his extra weight. He rolled until his momentum ran out, leaving him blinking up at artificially lit structures that stretched further than the eye could see — at least until his field of view was filled by the concerned faces of the pedestrians who’d dived out of the way for his landing.
Staggering to his feet with some effort, Suguru clutched at his spasming diaphragm, gulping down lungfuls of toxic air. With all the wind knocked out of him (apparently they both needed to work on their Force-falls), it took a moment for his eyes to find the swoop bike crashed into the tower up ahead, the damage thankfully contained.
But the rider nowhere to be found.
Dazed and dizzy, he scanned the crowd in search of anyone on the run, immediately setting off at a sprint when he spotted bodies dispersing as though shoved up ahead.
Suguru hated the underworld. The lowest levels of the ancient city planet were devoid of natural light and practically devoid of oxygen, too. Even on the bottommost level of Uscru District, comparatively close to the Galactic City, it reeked of suffering. There was a miasma of despair in the Force down there, same as the miasma of toxic fumes suspended in the air. For thousands of years, the streets nearest the core of Coruscant had been illuminated only by artificial light, forgotten by the wealthiest on level 5000 and beyond, breathing their clean air without a care for the wretched lives rotting in the belly of the beast.
It didn’t help that the metal wilderness of a world beyond memory reminded him of sitting in the gutted cavity space of a Star Destroyer, durasteel closing in on all sides.
Suguru shook his head free of such thoughts, lungs snatching at the scarce oxygen molecules in the air as his legs sped him forward, powering through the dense crowds in pursuit of the assassin. It was one of the sleazier sectors, but not so sleazy that Suguru was at risk. It wasn’t as infamous as level 1313 where Suguru would feel compelled to don a disguise to move safely through the streets. Still, he kept his wits about him as he barrelled through throngs of people, remembering that every body he shoved out of his way was as likely to be a crime lord as an impoverished refugee displaced to the capital by a war on the other side of the galaxy
He had a good read on the energy signature of the guy now; he was finally closing in. The Force helped his feet to fly, but still not fast enough. He skittered round the corner, only to see the bounty hunter swallowed up by the shadowy entrance to an establishment Suguru hesitated to follow him into.
Skidding to a stop outside the main doorway, he lifted his gaze to the garish sign affixed to the building above, swallowing as he read the words lit up in luminous red. A hand clapped down on his shoulder hard.
‘Congratulations, Suguru.’ As expected, Satoru sounded positively delighted. ‘Today, you become a man.’
With that, he strode forwards, projecting the casual confidence of a person who frequented these places all the time. Suguru let out a squawk, laws and policies and codes racing around his head.
‘Satoru! We’re not allowed to…’
His squeaked protests died away to nothing, because Satoru was already waving his hand in the face of the mean-looking Zabrak on the door.
‘You will allow both of us entrance and forget you’ve ever seen us.’
‘I will allow both of you entrance and forget I’ve ever seen you.’
Well, that solved that problem.
Clapping the Zabrak on the shoulder too, Satoru offered him a thumbs up, disappearing into the darkness beyond. Frantically, Suguru called after him, his voice high-pitched and panic-stricken even to his own ears. At once, Satoru’s mop of white hair materialised from the gloom again — accompanied by a grin that made Suguru’s heart sink.
‘You scared?’
He was certainly something.
‘This is against protocol,’ Suguru said weakly. ‘We’ve already violated about a hundred different laws in the last twenty minutes and, aside from that, this is…’ Gulping, he glanced up once more, observing the curvaceous neon figure sitting atop the sign with some trepidation. There is no passion, there is serenity. ‘This is passion, Satoru.’
For a moment, Satoru simply stared at him, the humour fading from his expression in place of a slow frown. A serious one. The one that always made Suguru feel too seen.
‘How many times have we been over this?’ There was a sigh in his voice. ‘I know you want to separate black from white and wrong from right, but that’s not how the Force works,’ Satoru said, shrugging as though it was simple. ‘Thinking like that will doom you to darkness, Suguru.’
The words hung heavy in the space between them, suspended in the Force like a warning. It trickled down Suguru’s spine; it made him want to lash out.
Fear leads to anger.
‘And yes, this is passion—’ Satoru’s bright voice rang out like a bell in the Force, shattering the tension of the moment with its resonance. ‘—but it’s also knowledge.’ At the sight of those waggling eyebrows, Suguru let out a sigh. ‘What?’ Satoru cried, never serious for long. ‘This is an important part of our education as young Jedi Knights!’
He turned on his heel with a flourish, tunic fanning out around him. Suguru thought it was over, but then, as Satoru was swallowed up by the shadows:
‘And if they didn’t want us seeing this stuff, maybe they shouldn’t have assigned a couple of 16 year olds on a mission like this.’
Despite himself, Suguru found he couldn’t argue.
It wasn’t because the pair of them were young. It was because the Queen of Naboo was even younger. Too young to need a security detail in the form of Jedi Knights. Far too young to serve as the elected monarch of her home planet, where she’d been groomed since birth to become the perfect vessel for the people, a conduit for their voice in the Galactic Senate.
The bounty hunter waited within and, if they didn’t follow, they’d lose their lead. Not only on the person responsible for the attempt on Amanai Riko’s life, but on valuable information about who had paid for it. Valuable information that could prevent a third attempt. Perhaps even a successful one.
Riko deserved to enjoy her youth. She deserved to live.
Taking a breath for courage, Suguru stepped into the darkness.
—
Almost as soon as he set foot in the place, Suguru’s senses were assaulted.
But it wasn’t the thumping beats and flashing lights that bothered him, nor the stench of sweat on the air. No, it was the dark energy pushing down on him from every direction. The flow of the Force here was slow and sticky, heavy with debauchery and — ah, yes — passion.
If not for his height, Suguru thought his age would have been obvious. Subconsciously, he found himself pressing closer to Satoru, barely resisting reaching out for the hem of his tunic as they journeyed deeper into the den of iniquity, brushing up against scantily clad bodies as they went. It was overwhelming in every sense of the word, especially when Satoru suddenly came to an abrupt stop, hardly even registering Suguru’s cry of complaint as he crashed into the back of him.
Following Satoru’s gaze, Suguru’s eyes landed on a raised podium under a bright spotlight. Rather, they landed on the performer at the centre of it.
Suguru had only seen this much skin on corpses — unfortunate victims of the desert, stripped of their clothing by desperate scavengers in need of protection from sand and sun alike — but the Twi’lek before him definitely wasn’t a corpse.
The Twi’lek before him was very much alive, writhing and rolling her body in time with the pounding beat of the music, every inch of her smooth blue skin shimmering with a sheen of fresh sweat. She was beautiful, obviously — there was a reason Twi’lek were overrepresented in slave markets across the galaxy — but as his eyes travelled down her naked form, cataloguing each of her soft curves, Suguru discovered that he wanted to look no longer.
Satoru, meanwhile, showed no such disinterest. He gazed up at the dancer with stars in his eyes and a grin to match, and she rewarded his attentions, too. Suguru could only watch with horror as the Twi’lek sank into a crouch before Satoru, dropping onto her palms and crawling towards him with a seductive smile on her lips.
When one of her lekku came up to stroke Satoru’s jawline, reeling him in close, Suguru audibly gasped. He’d always been told that touching a Twi’lek’s lekku without permission was an offence of the very highest order. They were part of the central nervous system, and erogenous zones, too. If caressing of the lekku was an act beyond mere sensuality, then what Suguru was witnessing was… It was…
He almost wanted to cry. He wanted to shout — and he would have, if not for the fingers that curled around his biceps then.
Jumping, he turned to find a pretty face peering up at him, long lashes fluttering over rosy red cheeks. Rosy red everything. It was a Zeltron, every bit as beautiful as the Twi’lek whispering in Satoru’s ear, and every bit as unappealing, too.
‘Little young for a Jedi, aren’t you?’ she purred, smoothing her hand across his chest, slipping her fingers beneath his overtunic. ‘But if you’re into role play, I’m your girl. How big’s your lightsaber, pretty boy?’
The way Suguru’s eyes widened must have been comical to witness.
‘No, I’m not—’ Swallowing, he tried to extract his arm from the Zeltron’s vice grip, eyes flickering to Satoru in desperation. ‘My friend and I are…’ Suguru trailed off, because his friend looked perfectly happy where he was actually. ‘I’m not looking for—’
‘Oh, you’re tense!’ Her voice was soft with contrived sympathy. ‘The pain is just rolling off you, baby.’ Of course. As a Zeltron, she could sense every single emotion coursing through him — his hurt, his shame, his fear. ‘Don’t worry, I can make you feel good.’
If he’d only been role playing as a Jedi, perhaps Suguru would have been vulnerable to the potent pheromones pouring from her rosy red skin. Perhaps her attempts to influence his emotions using the limited telepathy available to her species would have taken effect, but as things stood, they only made Suguru feel more panicked.
‘Sorry, but I don’t want to.’ At the slightly wounded look it earned him, Suguru rushed to backtrack. ‘What I mean is,’ he garbled, as keen to right his wrong as he was to get away from her. ‘It isn’t allowed, I’m—’ He yanked on the arm in her hold to no avail. Frantic, he looked to his lucky charm. ‘Satoru!’
But his cry for help was swallowed up by the music. Satoru seemed to have forgotten the reason they were there, forgotten the galaxy beyond eyes like the forests of Endor, forgotten Suguru even existed.
‘Just relax.’ But the Zeltron was frowning a little now; her feeble attempts at suggestion bouncing off the fortress of his mind with a little more tenacity. ‘I can take the pain away.’
‘Seriously—’ She winced, and Suguru couldn’t blame her. Even he was surprised by the sound of his own voice. By the venom behind his snarled word. ‘I don’t need you to do anything,’ he said, a little kinder but every bit as firm. ‘Let me go, please.’
Suguru knew it wasn’t her fault; it was only her nature. Experiencing the emotions of everyone in the immediate vicinity in a place like this? Amplified tenfold by her species’ unique biology? It sounded like hell. It was with good reason that the Jedi Order had never counted a Zeltron among their ranks. After all, susceptibility to emotion went against the core tenets of the Code.
That didn’t stop anger from rising in Suguru’s chest as he once again attempted to pull his arm free.
Suguru wasn’t like Satoru. He didn’t like using his strength against the weak unless it was absolutely necessary. He knew the Zeltron tugging on his arm and his mind in tandem probably didn’t want to be there any more than he did. Suguru didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want to force her to act against her own will, even if she neglected to offer him the same courtesy.
Still, rage bled red like a wound in the Force.
This was why Suguru hated the underworld. All around him, the dark side flourished, feeding on the energy of the wretched lives rotting in the belly of the beast.
Greed where a Besalisk pulled a woman into his lap, leering up at her with a wolfish grin. Disgust where his four hands roved across her skin, despite the sweet smile plastered onto her face. Fear where a rare Theelin danced for a bored looking Anzati, famous for their predatory natures. Desperation where the Zeltron tugged on his arm once more. And his own awful misery, clinging to him like a second skin as he stared at where the Twi’lek lifted Satoru’s chin on her fingers, his eyes falling to her lips as she leaned in close.
It all made him feel sick. It filled his mind with screaming. All around him, the Force heaved with the strength of raw emotion, churning horror upon horror into a revolting blend that tasted like vomit on his tongue.
It would be so easy.
It would be so easy to bring an end to the hardships that infected this place. It would be so easy to silence the suffering once and for all. Wipe the slate clean and start anew. Between the two of them, they could probably clear out the entire club in a matter of minutes.
And if Satoru stood against him?
Blue.
All at once, the world turned blue. Not blue like the smooth skin of the prettiest Twi’lek Suguru had ever seen, but blue like Satoru’s lightsaber.
The same intense blue as Satoru’s eyes, boring into Suguru’s.
‘Remind me which of us has a problem letting their guard down?’
The seductive whispers in Suguru’s ears ebbed away, enough for him to hear the groan at his feet. Looking away from Satoru’s grave expression, his gaze fell to the sticky floor of the club — to the bounty hunter, clutching his forearm where his hand had been severed from the wrist. Then, it fell to the severed hand itself.
And the stolen blaster that had tumbled from its grasp, the safety disengaged.
‘Nothing to see here!’
Satoru’s voice was overly loud and overly cheerful. It was the only reason Suguru realised the revellers around them had fallen silent, standing stock still at the centre of the club, even as the beat continued relentlessly around them. Upon realising that the Zeltron had released him, Suguru flexed his fingers to encourage the blood back into his arm, eyes flickering to where the Twi’lek had fallen back against her dancing pole in fright.
‘We’re into role play.’
Even wearing that bright and brilliant grin of his, the weight of Satoru’s gaze was too heavy to ignore when it fell on Suguru then. Had he been listening the entire time? Had he heard everything?
Worse, had he felt everything?
‘And we take it super seriously—’ He waved his plasma blade in the groaning bounty hunter’s face, as though it was a toy rather than a lethal weapon. ‘—don’t we, pal?’ Finally, Satoru extinguished his lightsaber, re-holstering it at his hip before throwing his arms out wide. ‘Please, go back to enjoying your, uh…’
Satoru’s lips quirked strangely as he searched for the word — the first lapse in his mask since they’d set foot in this place. The first sign that he was as out of his depth here as Suguru.
The first reminder that he was just a kid in a strip club, too.
‘Uh, your activities!’
Tentatively, the people around them eased back into the beat, but they kept their distance as Satoru gathered the bounty hunter under his arm.
‘Help me get him out of here?’
He stared at Suguru and Suguru stared back. It was hard to tell if the raw emotion in his voice was real. If the feelings flickering across his face were simply a trick of the flashing lights, painting his pale skin blue then red then blue again in the dark of the club.
Suguru had never been able to brush off the darkness like Satoru, who cut through shadow like a hot knife through Bantha butter. He was always ablaze with light, so radiant that the dark couldn’t even get close to him.
There is no emotion; there is peace.
Probably just the lights then.
—
The bounty hunter wheezed as Satoru gently lowered him to the ground at the back of the club, thoughtfully picking the only spot that wasn’t littered with shit. It was a kindness that the man (because it was a man in the end, a human one) arguably didn’t deserve after setting a pair of kouhuns on a child under their protection.
‘Do you know who you were trying to kill?’
Satoru was never needlessly cruel. He was a Jedi through and through.
The bounty hunter looked between them with resentment in his dark gaze, but it quickly fizzled away to resignation when he realised he was entirely at their mercy. ‘A noble from Naboo,’ he grit out, slumping into the support of the arm looped around his back.
‘And who hired you?’
Satoru was never needlessly cruel, but he was always ruthlessly efficient. Whimpering in his arms, the bounty hunter shook his head, desperation leaking from the corners of his eyes.
‘It’s just a job.’
His hopeless sniffling tugged at Suguru’s heartstrings, but the memory of the young queen’s oblivious surprise in the glow of his lightsaber tugged harder.
‘Who hired you?’ he growled. ‘Tell us.’
Because although he sympathised with the circumstances that would drive someone to such desperate measures, Riko would have died earlier that evening if Suguru had been even a second slower. Until they discovered who was behind the attack, she wasn’t safe. She was running out of time — and Suguru was running out of patience.
‘Tell us now!’
The durasteel lent the barked command a harsh, metallic quality as it ricocheted off the walls of the alleyway. In his peripheral vision, Suguru saw Satoru’s gaze flicker to him, but he didn’t falter. The bounty hunter had put up a good fight; he’d given even the most powerful of Force users the run around — but now, sagging in Satoru’s arms, the man seemed small. Weak.
Finally, he heaved out a wet sigh.
‘It was a bounty hunter called—’
He never finished his sentence. Materialising seemingly from nowhere, a poison dart shot out of the darkness, finding its target in the tiny patch of skin visible above the trim of the man’s collar. At once, Satoru and Suguru whirled around in synchronisation, peering into the gloom beyond the artificial street lights in time to see a figure clad in plated armour disappear into the upper levels, powered by the jetpack affixed to his back.
Suguru could only stare after him in a state of shock — because had the Mandalorian desired it, the dart could have killed him instead. It could have killed Satoru.
‘The poison acted too fast.’ A quiet voice brought him back to the present. ‘They didn’t even have time to say any last words.’
Because, indeed, when Suguru looked back at the bounty hunter in Satoru’s arms, it wasn’t a man but a Clawdite, reverted to their natural state in death. Satoru’s expression was solemn as he stared down at them; he’d always been sentimental at the strangest times.
‘Never mind that,’ Suguru said, his voice trembling. ‘Did you see that? Did you feel it?’
Satoru said nothing in response. His gaze was still fixed on the gruesome death mask of the Clawdite, reptilian face emaciated by the toxin that had exsiccated the water in their cells — but Suguru needed to know. After all, Satoru had always been able to sense things that even he couldn’t. Had he seen it? Had he felt it, too?
Frowning, Suguru cast his mind back to the shape of the Mandalorian in the Force — or rather, the absence of a shape.
‘Either he had some kind of suppressant technology—’
‘That doesn’t exist.’
‘—or he didn’t have a single midi-chlorian in his body—’
‘That’s physically impossible.’
‘—but that bounty hunter was a living void in the Force.’
‘That’s a paradox.’
‘I know,’ Suguru snapped. He heaved in a great shuddering breath before speaking again. ‘But he was. I couldn’t sense him at all.’ Glancing over at Satoru, he reached out, calling on the connection they shared. He reached into himself and into Satoru in turn, torn in two by what he found. ‘And you couldn’t either.’
There was no need for Satoru to confirm it when they were breathing as one — one mind, one heart, one soul in the Force.
‘It’s like he wasn’t even there,’ Suguru murmured, wrapping his arms around himself against a non-existent chill. ‘Like he was a ghost.’
At once, the cold was chased away by the soothing balm of Satoru’s light, as warm and as wonderful as the very first time he’d felt it. It washed over him like the sun’s first rays after a long and bitter night in the desert. Quiet salvation at dawn.
Satoru had always been his guiding light in the Force. His lucky charm.
‘You know ghosts have a presence in the Force, Suguru.’
As Satoru peered across at him then, all twinkling eyes and mischievous smile playing on his lips, Suguru wondered why he’d ever worried about some Twi’lek in a club. Even as he laid the Clawdite to rest on the filthy floor of the alleyway — for the police to do nothing about if the trash haulers didn’t find the body first — Satoru’s voice was impossibly fond.
‘You scared?’
Satoru had always balanced him out, warding away the darkness that plagued him, chasing away the chill that nipped at his fingers before frostbite could set in.
But the opposite was also true.
Suguru had always balanced him out, delivering a cold dose of reality when he needed it, bringing him back down to earth when he drifted too long among the stars.
‘I have a bad feeling about this.’
It earned him a scoff, albeit an amiable one.
Clambering to his feet, Satoru dusted himself off and planted his hands on his hips. When he looked down at Suguru then, his grin was as bright and as brilliant as his presence in the Force.
Suguru huffed out a sigh, albeit an amiable one.
Because the company of that dazzling smile never failed to make him feel lighter. Satoru was off again, rapidly gaining altitude and dragging Suguru along for the ride.
He supposed they balanced each other in the end. They always had.
‘Don’t worry,’ Satoru said. ‘We’re the strongest.’