***THIS VERSION IS OUTDATED. SEE THE ADAPTED AND IMPROVED VERSION ON MY PROFILE***
There are few stories that are told among the Jedi Order long enough to become myth. Legend. It takes importance to stand the test of time that way. A lesson has to b...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Dantooine is a few days journey from Coruscant. Anakin and Circe make up late on the first night, when Anakin yells out in his sleep. Circe peaks her head into his cabin at the sound, and finds him twisted in his blankets, beads of sweat rolling down his temple and neck. She sits on the edge of his bed, shakes him gently, grabs him when he throws himself forwards, waking from whatever terror haunts him in his dreams. She watches anxiously as his head hangs down in his palms, and falls asleep on the edge of his bed, keeping his damp hair out of his face as he drifts back off.
They pass time playing Dejarik and doing training exercises. Anakin ties a blindfold around his eyes and Circe throws pieces of her space-safe lunch at him, cheering every time he catches it on the edge of his saber. At night they lay on the floor of the hall leading to the cockpit and stare out the window into the kaleidoscope of stars around them. Anakin can feel the burn of her fingers by her side, nearly touching his.
Eventually, the green-blue planet appears before them as they check their location first thing in the morning. Anakin slides into his seat and takes manual control of the ship, drifting down towards Dantooine's atmosphere.
"Where is she, Circe?" He asks, looking back at her, "Where do I go?"
She takes a slow breath as she sits to his left. They're going to have to move slow and steady over the plains, even slower when they get to the forests. But Circe doesn't need an exact location, she needs an area. Just a hint of the bounty hunter's sickness, the death that hangs around her, the carelessness she bleeds.
"Let's start away from the city centers," She says. "Head East. It'll be easier to save the populated areas for last."
"I don't know how you can tell. I can barely distinguish people from plants at this range," He says, eyes trained forward, his eyelashes casting spider leg shadows down his cheeks in the light of the sun peeking from behind the planet.
"Some Chosen One you are," She jokes, "You preferred physical combat anyways. I just chose to spend training time on other skills."
The ship passes the atmosphere level, a heat current passing over their wings. Anakin flies just low enough to get below the clouds, and Circe keeps her eyes trained on the ground below them. Every time he looks over at her she shakes her head, and they move another hundred miles East. An hour passes. And then two. It isn't until the sun is beginning to settle in the West side of the sky that she sits up in her seat, calling for him to slow down.
They land at the edge of a patch of forest, their thrusters burning a patch in the sandy-colored grass. Anakin grabs his lightsaber and a travel pack from the supply closet, following Circe out into the wild field. He tries to get a feel for what she sensed, but he can't get ahold of it. There is something there, a short distance into the thickest area of the woods, but there's no telling what it is, animal, person, or strange plant. If it were anyone else, he'd demand more proof before landing the ship, but Circe pushes on with that sense of instinct that he's grown to trust more than his own.
The two Jedi make their way into the forest, the white-haired one leading the way like a star among the branches. It's hard to make their way without a trail, but they don't use their lightsabers to clear a path. Circe walks with light, trotting steps that barely change the ground beneath her. Anakin follows closely, his eyes behind them for any unwelcome movement. After about fifteen minutes, the greenery begins to thin out into a sparsely covered meadow. There is the tinkling of a stream somewhere ahead of them, where the tree roots begin to thicken—older than most anything else they'll find on the planet.
A sinking feelings creeps across Circe's skin as they press onwards towards the sound of water. A pit forms in her stomach, a warning gnaws at her insides, and she holds her hand out to slow Anakin down.
"What is it?" He asks, scanning the tree line around them.
"You can't feel it?" She whispers, her eyes stuck on the dip in the land down to where the creek is bouncing through the land. "Something died there."
Anakin's looks ahead, and he moves past her to see down the slope. She follows, ignoring the flare of sick that washes over her. She comes to stand beside him as the ground begins to steep downwards when she sees her.
The bounty hunter. She lies with her face down in the mud, a pool of old blood soaking into the wet, soft ground. Circe's stomach twists violently at the sight. The woman's back slashed open, exposed to the heat of the sun and the other living things that live in these woods. Her hair is stuck to the back of her head in a tangled knot, as though someone had grabbed it and forced her to the ground.
Circe turns away from the body quickly, facing back towards the way they came where the woods are still clean and untouched by this evil. Somewhere in her body, a faint memory of the poison in her aches. She feels weak, suddenly, and has to crouch down and lean against the base of a tree. Her veins buzz, remembering the last time she encountered something as wicked as this.
A breeze carries in from the west, blowing fresh air against her hot face. Violent images come surging back through her: the first body she'd seen as a Padawan, tangled and broken from a fall into a ravine, a battlefield of fallen Jedi still burning from the fires, blaster holes in temples, her own arm twisted gruesomely towards herself after waking up in a crashed ship. Images she wished long ago to forget, but that return to her every time she sees another.
"Look here," Anakin calls, and she braces herself to turn back around.
He kneels in front of the hunter's body, pointing to something in the mud. Something has been stamped into the ground beside her head, an engraving of an animal.
"Look, there's the head, and the rest of the body curls downwards." He points.
"It's a snake," Circe guesses, bending down to look at it more closely.
"But what the other parts of it are, I can't tell. It looks like another animal, maybe two."
"This is a signature," She says, "Left by the person who did this."
"Do you recognize it?"
She hesitates. "I could've sworn..." Circe trails off, the hint of a memory resting on her tongue. It fades just as quickly as it came. "No... I don't think I do. We need to report this."
Anakin looks pale. She stands, waiting for him to lead the way but his eyes are still trained on the bounty hunter, with her limbs strewn out around her and blood dried around her body.
"Stop it," She says sternly, pulling him to look at her. "Don't freak out on me."
"I'm not freaking out!" He insists.
"Yes, you are. We need to go back to the Temple, so please lead the way because I am not walking back through this forest in front," She pushes him in the direction of the ship.
"Oh great, make me go first. That's very brave of you," He says snarkily, rolling his eyes and setting back down the path.
"I'm not the Chosen One here, now, am I?" She hisses, following his footsteps through the brush.
The body behind her looms threateningly like a shadow. The fact that the bounty hunter was rushed off the planet and then discovered dead, only days later, worries her. Anakin's fear worries her. She presses close to him as they leave, trying to ignore how the Force trembles in the trees. Like the whole of the forest is shuddering away from her remains.
