NOTE: This may be taken down unless I get an OK from the admin. Almost all characters included in this story are property of other authors and/or directors and screenwriters. I am only having a little fun and filling in some might-have-beens. No copyright infringement is intended.
Prologue
My life has been manipulated, bartered and infested by every manner of unusual creature in Creation before I was even born. Hex, name any kind of alien or vampire or knight of the bloody Round Table you can think of and chances are I’ve met them—probably at the business end of a weapon. All kinds of weapons! There are perhaps three people I know that actually prefer a gun over a broadsword. Jedi Knights’ lightsabers that thing can cut through five feet of solid steel before you can say jumping Jawas, a book of trick matches, enchanted daggers… My pals may be Goliaths, but most of them know that David was the smart cookie. Hey, there’s an idea for a weapon—cookies! Especially if it’s Anakin’s night to fix dessert.
Drat. That was not how I meant to start. It’s official, I’m no good at telling stories. But this just my way of starting one, okay? And besides, what fun is it to get set down in the middle of a story with people you don’t know? So yeah, there’s something you probably didn’t about Anakin: he can’t cook. Neither can I, and I’m a girl for the love of Luthien.
I’ve rubbed shoulders with just about every creature in the universe. And those I haven’t, I’m probably related to, thanks to the Spirit Lords getting panicky when the war they planned ended in near genocide for nearly ten races. Good job, well done, you guys are geniuses. Jerks. Except Rayden, lord of fire and thunder, who I owe my life to. And then of course there’s Calypso, my godmother, my aunt, my eternal tormentor. But that’s another story.
Anyway, these guys used a helpless unborn baby for their schemes just because they couldn’t handle the consequences of their actions. To even out the “cosmic balance,” they gave me the genetics of Elves, vampires, spirits, Jedi, and some creatures yet to be named. What that bunch of jerks seemed to conveniently forget was that in making me analogous with all those races, they were also obligating me to commit to animosity with those races’ enemies. How’s that for an earful, O masters of gi-normous confusing riddle talk?
Not a year later, somebody with a grudge against my father decided to kidnap one of his children. I was the youngest of eight daughters, and the easiest to grab. He sent me not only to another dimension, but back in time! We still haven’t found out who this creep was.
Now, this lousy little slime-sucker dumped me in a random ditch to die. But a woman named Felicity Rosenberg drove by and saw me. She adopted me. She was, in all honesty, an awesome mom. Every Saturday she took me out for a sundae and taught me right from wrong. Thank God for people like Felicity.
The only thing she did that made me truly angry was naming me. She called me Bethany Emma Rosenberg. Bethany Emma. What the hex?! Not like it stuck. I started telling people my name was Roxanne. I didn’t know it then, but Roxanne is a Persian name meaning ‘dawn.’ Somehow I knew even with my childish mind that the dawn was something constant and lovely.
But it was, of course, too good to last. Because guess what? A bloody Sith Lord just happened to stumble on my nearly-dormant Force signature from five galaxies away and decided that I had the perfect potential to be his next victim… er, apprentice. So he sends this pyscho former Jedi bounty hunter called Aurra Sing after me! Starting to see a pattern here?
The only reason I wasn’t on my way to becoming Lady Exar Kun then and there was because Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi had been tracking her and set me free. I was six at this time, maybe a year or so over the Jedi exception limit. Maybe the Force wanted Qui-Gon to get in some cajoling practice so Anakin would be sure to get in later.
So I got some Jedi training in. I was immediately marked as a trouble-maker, since I was fond of painting graffiti on the walls and “borrowing” training lightsabers for whenever I went out of the Temple. It’s a wonder they didn’t kick me out. Six years passed. Between missions Qui-Gon passed on his knowledge of people and taught me to be conscious of the living Force, not worried about what the future might bring. Yoda and several others looked down on his unorthodox methods and tried to make him do things by the book. Many tried to undo his influence on me, but I think they only made us both stronger. Because of these incidents I made no friends other than Qui-Gon— and was sure I never would.
Then came a fateful day.
Naboo was under siege and since Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan had been hired by the Supreme Chancellor to force a settlement with the Trade Federation, Qui-Gon invited me along. He knew how much I hated politics even back then. Now I loathe them so much I can’t even hang with Leia without wanting to bite her head off.
The Trade Federation had invaded Naboo and Qui-Gon thought it best that we take the Queen to Coruscant to push things along in the Senate. On the way to the capitol we were forced to make a detour to Tatooine while we made repairs. Well. There we met this amazing kid named Anakin. He and I connected instantly. He became my brother. We knew each other better than we knew ourselves.
We couldn’t have met at a more oppurtune time, for mere days afterwards Qui-Gon Jinn met his end at the hands of a Sith Lord. That day I swore that I would never, never let death take my friends if it was in my power to save them. I could not endure that pain again.
One day, after Anakin had been admitted to the Temple and I was starting to truly run amok, we were down at his favorite scrap heap when suddenly we stumbled on a dimensional portal. We tumbled through space and time, into a land populated by tall, beautiful people with pointed ears, short folk with ridiculously hairy feet, and a handful of gifted beings with long beards and walking sticks. Give ya three guesses, and the first two don’t count. After that encounter the portals would open to both of us at inoppurtune moments—in the middle of a battle, conference, or even baths. Those were the worst.
By this time I was nearly thirteen, and I should have been chosen by a Master to continue my training. But Middle-earth had a hold on me, and my attachment to Anakin made the Council worry. They might have given me a second chance, but I didn’t let them. I wandered off to see Estel, my friend from Rivendell, on the day I should have been chosen, and continued to wander off from then on. They never exactly kicked me out, but from that day on I was the Temple pariah, even though I fought on their side.
The rest is pretty much history.
One last thing: my life is bizarre and screwy and insane…and utterly beautiful. Yes, it can be painful. But I’m not fooling myself. I love what I am. Because embodying everything, not just the dawn, is a real constant.
On with the story…
Chapter One
From what he had once described as “the next place,” Death watched the Battle of Naboo rage in the starry vacuum and lush meadow planet below it. At least in this battle most of the screaming came from grating metal and exploding wreckage rather than mortal throats.
Had he been in physical form at the moment, Death would have sighed.
Another Naboo fighter crashed to the ground as the rest of the fleet headed for the Trade Federation control ship. The pilot, a young human male, didn’t waste his last breath on useless cries. His whisper of “Good luck” to his comrades was cut short by the combustion of the engine, and sequentially his corporeal form.
Then there was the boy, a small sandy-haired, blue-eyed Podracer of nine standard years. He wasn’t frightened. It wasn’t his time, and somehow he knew it. As he looked closer Death knew that the boy feared him, and rebelled against him. But Skywalker’s lack of fear in the midst of battle intrigued the being he never knew was watching.
Unlike many others the Reaper knew…
No, he told himself sternly.
Susan Parrish, still alive, married to the “guy from the coffee shop”—later Death had learned his name was Peter Smith—had moved on.
But oh, how Death wanted it all back, every little mortal detail. The softness of a bed, the sounds of car engines, the feeling of air entering and leaving his lungs, the soft scuff of shoes on hard ground, the roughness of stone and the smoothness of silk, the smell of food, the taste of peanut butter. And the sound of his mortal name.
Joe Black.
In the palace, the queen and a handful of soldiers fought their way towards the throne room. With them was a girl, a stick of a Jedi trainee with untamable dirty-blond hair and startling sea-green eyes. She had just enough fear to keep herself from running blind.
Death could not read the future, per say. But he saw in these people a potential for greatness…or the greatest fall since the Crusades. How strange. He had lived among mortals for nearly a week, and they stilled managed to surprise him.
But what if he existed as one of them until they no longer surprised them?
The idea came unbidden, which was in itself an impulse left from his last encounter. And it gave possibility to an insane idea. The girl, the boy, the Jedi Knight who’s Master lay at his door— Death could walk with them. Stars, he could fight beside them if he so chose.
Why not?
The body of the young pilot was horribly burned, but Death’s “spirit” would handle that easily. Claiming the body of a mortal was not so much complicated as it was odd-feeling. First there was finding the empty space where the soul had been, putting himself in that place, and forcing himself to consciousness. Rather than the sensation of waking was the sense of jumping off a cliff into something solid, warm, and pulsing.
Death slipped into the soul’s void, and jumped.
* * *
Roxanne had purposely blocked her sense of the unifying Force, because she was certain that if she opened herself to it she would be overcome by the disturbances of souls being ripped from their corporeal forms. In the fields far beyond the palace, Gungans were being trampled by droids. In space above, fighters were shot down. In the Trade Federation camps, people died of starvation.
She knew it could be worse. That didn’t change the sick feeling in her stomach.
Amidala darted around the corner of the Naboo Palace, blasting a Federation droid in the head without stopping. Captain Panaka, a perpetual look of disapproval etched into his features, kept to the Queen’s side.
Suddenly the small party was surrounded by battle droids, hateful spidery stacks of metal. The guards aimed their weapons, but there were at least ten to their six.
“Throw down your weapons,” said Amidala. “They win this round.”
Panaka scowled. “But we can’t—”
Amidala glared. “Captain, I said throw down your weapons.”
Roxanne ground her teeth and threw down her training lightsaber. The guards did the same with blasters, grappling hooks and liquid cable lauchers. This was not good. She needed to get to Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan!
The droids herded the Queen and her party towards the throne room, and the Viceroy looked smugly at the young monarch.
“Your little insurrection is at an end, Your Highness. Time for you to sign the treaty and end this pointless debate in the Senate.”
Amidala prepared a snide reply, when Sabe ran past the doorway, dressed in a uniform identical to her own.
“Viceroy! Your occupation here has ended!”
Nute Gunray’s buggy eyes widened until it looked as though they would pop out of his head. “Get her! This one’s a decoy,” he shouted. His voice was strange, nasal like he had a cold, the accents on the wrong syllables.
Amidala ran to the throne at the back of the room and opened the secret compartment in the arm. She hastily grabbed the two blasters out and threw one to Panaka, holding one on Gunray.
“Now Viceroy, we will discuss a new treaty.”
“Hey,” said on of the guards, “Where’s the Jedi girl?”
Amidala looked around. Roxanne had vanished.
* * *
Obi-Wan had never known true anger until now.
The Sith Lord’s red and black tattooed face leered at him from behind a blazing sheet of scarlet made by his whirling double-bladed lightsaber. Obi-Wan had never gone up against this kind of weapon, or this kind of foe. But it didn’t matter. He would kill him.
His shimmering blue lightsaber cut against the red, stopping the confusing whirl. He exchanged blow for blow with no thought, only a strangely comforting heat that kept him from having to put words to anything. He could have been fighting for a minute or an hour, he had no clue. But suddenly words broke the raging silence.
“Obi-Wan!”
It was Roxanne. She ran onto the walkway, snapping him out of his raging stupor. He had been fighting in anger.
His concentration dropped. And so did he.
The Sith took advantage of Obi-Wan’s lapse and Force shoved him off the walkway into a shaft. Obi-Wan clung to an outlet cap on the side and flailed his legs uselessly as the Sith Lord kicked his lightsaber down as well. It tumbled down the shaft, never hitting the sides, until Obi-Wan couldn’t see it anymore.
It couldn’t end like this. Obi-Wan’s anger had faded, but it left a resolution of durasteel. Qui-Gon’s death would not be in vain. He sent out a tendril of the Force, feeling his fallen Master’s lightsaber still lying at its owner’s feet. With a burst of willpower, he called the weapon to his hand, Force-jumped up onto the walkway behind the Sith and with one clean slice, cut the tattooed Zabrak in two at the waist.
As the two halves of the black-clad body went tumbling down the shaft, Obi-Wan felt no joy. Only a cool satisfaction that justice had been dealt.
He deactivated his Master’s lightsaber and turned. Roxanne knelt with Qui-Gon’s head in her lap, tears running down her face as the old Jedi struggled for breath. Obi-Wan ran over and knelt next to him.
“I…it’s too late,” Qui-Gon rasped.
Roxanne shook her head. “Don’t talk like that,” she sobbed.
“No,” Obi-Wan whispered.
Qui-Gon reached out a hand to him. “Promise…promise me you’ll train the boy.”
Obi-Wan nodded hard, fighting his own tears. “Yes Master!”
Qui-Gon’s voice was lower than a whisper. “He…is the chosen one. He will…bring balance. Train him.”
There was a small sound, like the rustle of sheets in the middle of the night, in the universal power that a select group of beings knew as the Force. But to two Padawans, it was as loud as any explosion. It was the sound of the soul of a great Jedi joining that power, out of touch forevermore.
“Qui-Gon!”
His name was an almost silent whisper on small lips, but Roxy felt as though the whole galaxy should have screamed. Qui-Gon Jinn was dead.
Obi-Wan and Roxanne sat together over his body and wept.