❝ 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐬, 𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭. 𝐈'𝐦 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐰𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦. ❞
In which a young senator fleeing for her life finds herself out of time, options, and luck.
A certain no-good scoundrel turns ou...
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❪ 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.
