Ultraviolet (An Anakin Skywalker Star Wars Story)

Prologue: The Curse

Every Mandalorian was born with war in their hearts and beskar in their veins. Every Mandalorian was born cursed. Indaria Flare was no exception to that rule.

As a Mandalorian woman, she was cursed twice over.

As a member of a the Flare line, she was cursed so much that when she entered the world, her mother wept in grief.

During the wars, the Flares had been an extensive clan that had demanded dignity and respect. It's members stood tall and proud in their beskar armor with their family's symbol engraved into the plating.

A shooting ball of fire, a burning light, shooting up across a horizon inside a little square.

It was the symbol of the Flare. One they had worn proudly on their armor for hundreds of years. A symbol that had once struck fear into the eyes of those who recognized it.

The Flares had been revered and admired for their strength in battle, their intelligence, and their bounty of children. The whole of Mandalore wished to be their allies. Ultimately they'd been adopted under the highest of Houses: House Vizsla.

Then, it all changed. They had brought the wrath of Vizsla and the other Clans down upon them after one battle. The tale claims that the head of the Flare Clan was greedy and hid the spoils of war from the leaders of House Vizsla. For such a betrayal, they were cast out by Vizsla and their allies.

Thus began the fall of the Flares.

More and more battles they fought, no other Houses willing to ally with them for their traitorous nature and with each battle lost, member after member was struck down. Death and blood followed the family wherever it traveled.

For their purported violation against the tenets of war, the Flare family was cursed to near extinction.

Until only one woman remained.

Cyiana Flare was the last standing after a conflict with the Ector Clan. She fought bravely side by side with her husband and son on the battlefield.

She fought until she could no longer stand, but it wasn't enough to break their curse. She was forced to watch as her own child was gutted beside her. She watched her husband fall after being ambushed by four men when she was too far away to reach him.

She was captured.

She was taken.

She was cursed.

And, to cement her disgrace and remove the last of the Flares from the battlefields, they removed her helmet. And she was beautiful.

Another curse.

Not wishing to bring the curse upon themselves, the Ectors sold Cyiana Flare into a bordello. So, she remained, eventually having a daughter. Who had a daughter. Who had a daughter.

Generation after generation, the Flare women were born into houses of prostitution. There they watched as war ravaged the planet. They were "freed" with the dissolution of slavery on Mandalore, but never would they leave. For they were still cursed with a name that, if spoken, would get doors slammed in their face.

Generation, after generation, the Flare's were cursed. Never again, would they prosper in Mandalore. Never again would their family expand beyond a single daughter. Never, would a Flare escape the curse of their sex, their family name, or their planet.

This was the world Amari Flare had been born into, and eighteen years later it was the world she birthed her daughter into. Of course, like her ancestors, she was beautiful. With long, ebony black hair and violet eyes she was sought by every man who came into the bordello. Her face was the perfect ivory and her body naturally was endowed with generous curves. The Flare women were beautiful in a world run by men, and for that beauty they were traded, bartered, and sold to men for the pleasure of men.

Amari, like all children had wanted more until she was molested, bartered, and sold, destroying that want as effectively as death.

The Red House was a bordello frequented by miners and dock workers was situated inauspiciously in the underbelly of Sundari, the new capital of Mandalore.

It was there Amari lived and it was there she struggled to bring life into the world. A small girl with a swollen belly, she cried alone in a tiny room in the back. The room was no more than a line of cots that the girls would sleep in when they weren't entertaining.

The sheets were filthy, despite how many times Amari had scrubbed them until her hands were bleeding and raw. Fluorescent lights flickered above her head, offering the barest semblance of light. The walls and sheets were all grey, devoid of life. It was a joyless place that reflected the lives of those who dwelled within.

While the other women entertained customers and their children were all out, getting into the mischief of the streets, Amari struggled to give birth in a cot in the middle of the room. There was a small washroom at the end of the hall across the way, and before she couldn't move, Amari had managed to fill a small basin of water that she had precariously perched at the end of her bed. She'd also stolen an extra sheet from one of the entertainment rooms and had ripped it, to make cloths, diapers, and a blanket for the child to be wrapped in.

Above Amari's gasps of pain, sounds of carnal acts echoed from other rooms. Louder, outside the two dirty windows, there were sounds of fighting, music, and blaster shots. Screams of anger and terror, laughs of revenge, and the cries of agony. This was the world Indaria Flare was born into.

Amari had spent twenty hours in labor, curbing her screaming for fear that she'd be put on the streets for interrupting the other girls who had appointments. There was no one there to attend to her delivery, for the owner of the establishment didn't truly care if the women in her care lived or died. After all, there were more than enough women in desperate straits who could take their place.

Sweat caused dark hair to cling to the young girl's face. She was weak from the pain, on the verge of passing out, when she finally felt it, her child coming. She followed through with the delivery as the older women had instructed her to. At times, she yearned for her own mother to be with her, but she'd died years ago. Still, she persevered and eventually, there was another sound.

A baby's cry. Eager, Amari reached down, finding herself like she had been years ago, wanting.

She wanted.

She wanted more for her child.

Always, the Flares wanted, never to receive.

Always, they wanted, but never did they dare to hope.

Amari took her child in hand, wanting so much, that from the moment the child took her first breath, and Amari saw those eyes on a feminine face, she wept in despair for the life her daughter would never have.

But at the same time, she begged the universe for mercy.

She begged it for salvation, not for herself, but for the baby in her arms with violet eyes and dark hair who had no idea how cursed she truly was.

And the universe listened.

Amari felt it when the child in her arms somehow grew stronger. She sucked in a breath as she took another look into her eyes and the girl was already more alert, aware, knowing. The baby gazed upon her, and Amari knew that her pleas had been answered.

"You," she whispered to her daughter, "you will get out. You...you will get out."

Although she'd given birth in a cramped cot at eighteen years old, Amari Flare had broken curse that she hadn't even realized she'd had.

For the first time in many generations, a light of hope sparked in the heart of the Flare Clan.

Her birth shifted the Force, her presence echoing all the way to Coruscant, waking a small, green Jedi Master from the depths of sleep. Its spark shined all the way to another outer rim planet, one of sand and slavery, where a mother with her own newborn son, was startled awake by his unusually loud cries.

Indaria Flare's birth changed everything.