Masks: An Adaptation of George Lucas's Star Wars

Prologue

A small child, no older than eight years, was curled into the corner, where her bunk met the walls of an old cargo ship. Her steward was somewhere near the cockpit, bartering with the pilot for direct passage to the Jerobina-2 Outpost. He seemed all but collected to the girl. Over these past two weeks she had watched in curious suspicion as he shook from place to place, rubbing the edge of his hood between his thumb and forefingers as he flipped it over his greying hair. His voice was stern, yet calm, and although they'd barely spoken in the time they'd met, his eyes looked at her with an emotion she'd seen swathed across her own mother's face before. Although with mother, she thought, it was as if a flood had washed away the meticulous, smiling, expression she'd built; with this man, it hung in a steady river, running through the blues of his gaze. Here he came now, quietly, briskly, and although she couldn't see his hands, she strangely knew they were clenched into fists.

"Leia," he said, evenly, kneeling down to the opening of the bunk, "we'll be stopping in three units, not two. I'm sorry, just wait a little longer."

"I'm fine," the child said, chastised by his empathetic tone. This adventure had suited her more than tutoring, much more than her subtle training to a life of senatorial garble and diplomatic dinner parties. She had told him that, and yet he was taking her back to the routines she'd grown to dread. She fixated on the dimmest star she could find, knees clutched to her chest, and sighed. He looked at her, gazing out the window into the depths of the galaxy, then quickly straightened his legs, steadying himself on the bunk, before guilt consumed him. He pressed into the floor and began another charged walk back towards the ship's cockpit. Her father's sweltering glare peering through the melted helmet, his smile as he dove into an x wing, the child he outgrew, flying at the speed of light to win a mother's freedom: the memories seared Kenobi's mind into a panic. Breathing in through his nose, closing his eyes, steadying himself on the walls of the hallway, he tried to focus on the hum of the ship pushing through space, but all he could hear were Leia's small exhales against the glass.  This girl was at the whims of diplomats, of him, because of the moment he let his saber fly. And here he was, imposing as a protector, facilitating orders her father would scoff at, the same father who was now dead. His friend had become his enemy; more consuming was the notion this Jedi painfully understood to be true: he was a hypocrite, and the only man who ever knew, he killed.

On transport ships and mining crews he heard every species whispering amongst themselves. Despite the division, the souls around him would reminisce on the relics of the lives they once lead on common threads: nothing but dust in the wind of the new Empire. With every argument, stifled agreement, Kenobi had hid deeper under his scraggly beard, the destruction of his own past petrifying until he found the only piece of it left alive... And she was pensively still, waiting down the grated galley, using the air around her like a shield, fogging the glass with her breath.
The thought stopped him halfway down the ship's galley, swiftly whipping his worn cloak behind him to return to the child's bunk, stepping lightly over the floor grates.

Galactic relations were strained at every point: even the most remote planets were operating within imperial supervision. While Obi Wan sensed an imbalance in hiding, it wasn't until he saw fear on Tala Durith's face that his complacency (so comforted by his grief and guilt) was nearing an ignorance he could no longer stomach. Should the rebellion succeed, he thought, should their presence grow in name and number, where would Anakin's children find themselves once the truth found them? Once the word of Leia's capture trickled away from the watchful tongues of the Organa estate, this secret would not hold for long. Naturally, then, he wondered if they would even survive to see the conflict's end? Despite these anxieties, Leia's mere survival gave him a bitter hope, her close presence only heightened it.

Arriving back to the sleeping quarters, he rested his back against the wall perpendicular to the yellowed window, allowing the artificial gravity to pull him into a crouch next to the bottom bunk. He rested his clasped hands on his knees, letting his head fall against the metal behind him, looking at the crackled poly-plastered wires and switch beams covering the ceiling. Could he survive another war? Victory for the rebellion, the empire, for anyone... some hushed part of him wanted to retreat again. He gently titled his head to his right, hoping to see some movement from the girl, but she was unwaveringly still, eyes piercing into space. Suddenly, Kenobi saw a small, deep crack in the varnished glass, her nose nearly touching it. He placed his hands on the bed's edge, popping his feet underneath him, ready to push her aside when he noticed Leia's face. She had not been staring at any star, but this chink in the window with a furrowed brow and unparalleled concentration. His mouth gaped slightly so his beard brushed the opening of his cloak and neck. The glass gash quivered, trying its' best to grow against Leia's control, yet her expression remained stiff, both their gazes glued to the pane.

There was a soft, bold presence between the two of them, their worries quieted by a new challenge, lightening space between them. The man behind her seemed to understand this shared levity better than she did: Leia had lived with an atmosphere of her own her entire life. It was only until she met Ben that she no longer felt a need to explain to herself why she could sense someone walking through the door before they pressed an entry button, or how she could quiet the movement of a shaking leaf with her focus. She saw him resist the ocean, catch her out of the air, and, what's more, where others' inner-most thoughts revealed themselves with ease, he was one of the few whom, somehow, kept her wandering curiosity at bay. The possibility of such powers kept her determined, containing a breaking window to a little chip in its surface. 'This is training,' she thought, 'if I can do this, perhaps he'll take me with him, perhaps he'll use his mind tricks to turn the ship around, maybe let me try... he can teach me.' The idea brought a small smile through the corner of her mouth, but she was quickly jolted from fantasy by Kenobi's sordid tone.

"Leia, move quickly." Letting his cloak drop to the floor, he gently grabbed her shoulder with his right hand, guiding her out from under the bunk, taking a seat on the bed's edge and reaching his left hand, taught, just before the window. Reluctantly, Leia shifted her legs to stand on the ship's grates, but continued pointing her energy through her forehead, aiming directly at the small crack until the Jedi positioned himself across from the broken pane with legs tucked underneath him. The girls brief sigh of frustration came and went as she noticed Obi Wan holding that strange, familiar invisible weight in his outstretched palm, breathing deeply. With each breath, the glass healed, though still weathered and faded. The young princess's eyes widened as his closed, feeling a surge through their once dead atmosphere. With a final breath and shudder of Kenobi's calloused fingertips, she relished in the chip's disappearance, feeling a clarity return to the stuffy air of the ship as her steward opened his eyes.

"Ben! Could I-"

"These rusty old droid-killers. We'll have to stop at the nearest port and find another way. Stay here, please," he grunted as he shuffled out of the bunk, past Leia's doleful expression, grabbing his cloak and resuming an obstinate path back towards the pilot's quarters. She reluctantly threw herself back onto the bunk's mattress, flopping her legs over the edge and bore her eyes into the bottom of the empty bed above her. Sinking back into her native, mundane loneliness, she felt the torridness of Ben's spirit vanish down a wire-stricken corridor to his right. With his fading steps, she began to scour the world around her once more, hoping to find another crack in its' system.