𝕮hapter 𝕺ne.
— Shattered Paradise —
· 𖥸 ·

❪ 0 BBY · Jedha City · Jedha ❫

· · ───── ·𖥸· ───── · ·

THE AIR WAS twisted. There was no other way to describe its tang, its sharp pulling as it clawed its wicked way down Elarra's throat and settled like hot coals in the soft pink cavities of her lungs. The air was twisted, and she despised it. She found that she despised more than she used to, these days. There were times when she'd find herself cursing at the sky above her, uttering blackened nothings to the rolling clouds as if they could hear her—as if they could mend the gaping hole she felt beneath the left side of her chest.

Jedha City was brimming with enemies. One might have questioned what a wanted-for-dead senator would be doing on an Imperial-controlled planet, and they would've been right to do so. But Elarra was running out of options...and time. With the bounty on her head only rising with each passing day, Elarra was drawing attention from all corners of the galaxy. Smugglers, bounty hunters, guns-for-hire and even, in some cases, local police forces, were all attempting bitterly to turn her in for the reward. Somewhere, in some seedy cantina in some backwater alleyway, she'd heard whispers that a few senators had been ensnared already; she shuddered.

Elarra Vel was notoriously stubborn. Hard-headed. A nuisance in the Senate chambers, she'd been told on several occasions. Not that she cared—didn't one have to be hard-headed and stubborn when debating motions that would affect the lives of every being in the galaxy? Didn't one have to fight for what was right?

Everything good about the galaxy had been stripped away, she knew. Everything hopeful and green and growing—just torn from the land of the living like a flower being picked in an emerald field. Hope's petals were crushed beneath the blackened fingers of the Empire, its stem broken into uneven, ugly fragments that could do nothing but watch as its lifeblood dripped steadily onto the barren ground. Elarra vowed that her fate would be different. She'd be the flower that stayed standing through the biting winter, petals turned towards the sun in a show of defiance.

Always be defiant. Her mother regularly told her that, and she'd give Elarra a grin that was more than a little cheeky. Elarra had the same twinkle in her hazel eyes, the same quirk of her lips, the same tilt of her head and the same arch of her brow. It was a look that spelled mischief, that told other senators to beware—because she was about to unleash the storm.

She sipped at the drink in her hand and sighed forlornly: no luck today. Her plan of action, as she liked to call it, consisted of sitting idly in a cantina, pretending to look busy, and subtly listening in to the surrounding conversations for any mentions of ships taking passengers off-world. Elarra had already been on Jedha for the last four days—now it was time to cycle the charts and move on. But without a way off the planet, she thought sourly, the plan doesn't quite work.

Some part of her—a fractured, desperate part—yearned to return to Naboo. She longed to see its familiar emerald plains, its azure waterfalls and tumbling cliffs. The air was never twisted on Naboo. The air was never grimy and humid, never settled on your tongue like sandpaper...No, Naboo was a broken piece of paradise. Naboo had all the beauty of a nursery of stars and the serenity of a slumbering moon. Her planet was an elysium, lavished with the songs of angels and the whispers of eternity...

And Elarra was banished from its golden gates.

From the very moment the bounty on the senators' heads was issued, Imperial garrisons had been deployed across all sectors, specifically targeting the planets of those who had been most influential in the Senate. Elarra's stubbornness, all for the sake of the citizens under her care, had landed her a spot on that list; Naboo was heavily guarded by stormtroopers, officers, and even had an Imperial outpost located in the capital city of Theed. It was a notion that made Elarra's lip curl into an animalistic snarl, expression twisting into a mirage of rage and despair and something else utterly unfitting for a senator.

Well, ex-senator.

"You havin' anything else?" The bartender's voice broke Elarra from her reverie, and the young woman blinked, doe eyes fixing themselves on the Weequay in front of her. "You're holdin' up other customers, sweetheart."

Oh, how she hated being called 'sweetheart'.

"No, I'm done," she said shortly, pushing away from her stool at the bar. The legs of the seat scraped in a loud whine against the sand-coloured floor, drawing several pairs of eyes towards her cloaked form, but that familiar flame of heardheaded determination reared its head and gave a low snarl, and Elarra leaned into it. She narrowed her eyes, irises darkening as they spoored the other patrons, and it was enough to drive them off—for now. Whether any of them would recognise her and give chase was another matter entirely, but...

I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Elarra turned on her heel and tracked her way from the cantina, brushing past this sentient or that one, shoulders skimming the rough clay walls of the square building, and finally emerged into direct sunlight after ascending the small steps at the cantina's entrance. Hundreds of beings crowded the streets, blocking out any view Elarra had of the path forwards; dirt-coloured cloaks and robes filled her line of sight, choking up the space around her as they were backlit by the cerulean sky above. Whispers of half-broken conversations hijacked the light breeze in the air, whipping past and over Elarra as she twisted and turned her way through the throng of bodies.

"—aw her yesterday—"

"Well, no..."

"—did what?!"

She tuned out the rabble around her, weaving past a family of Twi'leks to get to her destination: a cheap, dirty motel where she'd spent her time in Jedha City. Getting there was an arduous task; she had to push and shove her way through the dirty streets, murmuring apologies here and there as she narrowly avoided slamming straight into the bodies of the city's other inhabitants. As she passed one particularly well-built Quarren male, grimacing as she was forced to press herself between him and the wall at her back to get past, Elarra finally caught sight of the motel...

There were stormtroopers in front of it.

A whole squad of them.

Throat bobbing as horror dripped down her esophagus like ebon honey, Elarra's jade-topaz eyes widened into perfect circles. Her breathing came fast now, a rhythmic pant that jarred her lungs with each harried inhale. This couldn't be happening. Oh, this can't be happening.

The trooper at the front of the group of eight wore a dusty black pauldon on his right shoulder—the commander, then. One flash of her eyes to his armour had her seeing stars, flashbacks of her escape from Coruscant...and of the deaths of both her loyal bodyguards. They'd sacrificed their lives to get Elarra off-planet, and the young senator—former senator, she had to remind herself regularly—swore to every god above that their deaths would not be in vain. She'd gotten this far, and she could go even further. She had to.

Shaking herself back into the present, Elarra swallowed down her trepidation, dispelling images of blasters firing in the black-gloved hands of faceless troopers, senators screaming for their lives—

No.

No, she couldn't think about Coruscant. She'd only get hurt.

The young woman turned sharply on her heel and drew the hood of her cloak further down over her face, enough so that the edge of her vision was blocked out and the scratchy, coarse weave of the garment itched against her olive skin. She retraced each weighted step she'd taken mere minutes prior, dust-flecked boots painting a mirrored set of footprints that remained behind in Elarra's wake. Her heart was thumping like a drum within the cage of her ribs, and her throat was still tight, bony hands of terror and something like perverse nostalgia squeezing their fingers around the slender cord of her neck.

"You hear about—"

"—you liar."

"Passage—Tatooine—"

Elarra froze. Turned towards the source of the last fractured conversation, let her eyes settle on the woman who was speaking with a boy who looked to be her son. "Smugglers?" the boy asked, dark hair flopping into his emerald eyes.

"Looked like it, sweetheart," his mother replied, nodding soulfully. "Your uncle wasn't on the ship—must have stayed on Lothal to help out Vizago with some more jobs. We'll see him soon enough, don't worry."

The child frowned, kicking at dust with his feet. "Promise?"

"Promise," he was reassured.

Elarra seized her chance as the pair began walking away. If there was a ship heading to Tatooine, she needed to be on it. Without my belongings, she mused, downtrodden, but I have to get out of here. If the Empire was already on Jedha, she'd have no time to wait until the trooper squad left the motel. There would be several other squads stationed nearby, and Elarra decided that losing what was left of her meager belongings was a small price to pay for escaping (once again) with her life.

"Excuse me," she called, raising her voice slightly to be heard over the rabble of the streets. "Ma'am?"

The woman turned abruptly, a strange sort of surprise glittering on her dark-skinned face. "Can I help you?" she responded, clutching the hand of her son as she spoke.

Elarra tried to smile, only achieving a half-grimace. "I'm so sorry to bother you, ma'am," she began, "but I overheard you and your son discussing a ship offering passage to Tatooine."

A nod. "Yes. Three smugglers are getting ready to leave Jedha City soon." The woman paused, sighing lightly. "But they're not offering passage to just anyone," she added. "They demand hefty sums from those who contract their...services."

"I have credits."

"You'll need them, child." Another breath of silence, and the woman narrowed her jade eyes in suspicion. "Do I know you from somewhere? You look familiar."

Elarra's tongue felt leaden in her mouth as she rapidly shook her head. "No, ma'am, I'm sorry—we've never met before." She forced her breathing to even out with agonising lethargy. "Where can I find these smugglers?"

"They're outside the city walls, love. Get to the old Jedi Temple and you'll see them beyond the rock spires. The ship is an old Corellian freighter, by the looks of it." The woman squeezed her son's hand gently. "Be careful."

"I will," Elarra promised, a familiar soothing tone entering the melody of her voice. It was a tone she'd used countless times on other politicians and high-profile visitors to Naboo, and it was always accompanied by a feather-light smile. This time, the smile barely showed itself. "Thank you, ma'am. I appreciate it."

The woman nodded again. "It's no bother," she replied with a dismissive wave. And then she was gone, eaten up by the crowds like the sun in a sky full of kyber stars.

Elarra squared her shoulders and lifted her gaze to the looming amber cliff that overlooked Jedha City. Resting atop it, the forgotten Jedi Temple seemed to sigh in the setting sun, offering a wave of calm that washed over Elarra. Exhaling softly, the ex-senator raised her head and began the walk towards the Temple, burdened with sparkling visions of cascading waterfalls and beryl fields of gem-like flowers; a shattered paradise that she was being forced further and further away from.

A/n:

SHE'S FINALLY WRITTEN THE FIRST CHAPTER HALLELUJAH!!!

okay after an eternity of procrastination, trying to shift the blame of not writing to literally anything but me, and finally sitting down and doing what I've needed to do, I've written chapter one! This book might be a little slow to update, but bear with me and hopefully (hopefully) I'll get a story written! I've got lots of plans for Hyperspace, so stay tuned for more my lovelies, and thank you ever so much for reading! 😁

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