N A R - S H A D D A A
My body was tired. It was tired to the very marrow of my bones. My feet dragged across the cracked concrete pavement with reckless abandon, uncaring that puddles of mysterious liquid and highly questionable stains assailed the well-worn leather of my shoes. It was late enough now that my walk was illuminated by the soft glow of neon lights and the harsher flicker of fluorescent ones. Nar Shaddaa never slept, so seeing the streets littered with shady-looking folk skulking in shadows and dark alleys wasn't surprising. Danger lurked around every corner here. It was practically part of the furniture on Nar Shaddaa.
I knew I should have cared. Or at least bothered to keep my gaze up, my eyes wary, as I trailed across the street heading towards the rundown dock where I’d left my ship. But I was tired. Too tired.
Perhaps that was my first mistake.
I had no doubts that if I could have heard the chaos going on around me I would have been far more alert. The shattering of an empty bottle somewhere. The angry shouts and grunts of a bar room fight. The hissing and sneering that were spewed whenever I passed someone. But I couldn’t. There was silence in my head. Silence so deafening it was a wonder I didn’t drift off mid-step. My eyelids were heavy. So heavy that I could feel the darkness between each blink growing larger and lingering longer that for a moment I was worried I
was going to drift off. I didn’t know the entirety of Nar Shaddaa very well, but I knew this part well enough. I was fairly certain I could rely on my feet to steer me and keep me on the right path.
Perhaps that was my second mistake.
I was lost in a stream of thoughts. Wondering how in the name of anyone’s gods I’d ended up here. In the dead of night. Surrounded by criminals and scum and mobs and drunks and countless other lost souls. I knew I’d chased the credits here. The trail of cash the bosses had lined the journey with certainly sweetened the deal, but I was wondering when my life had boiled down to something so base. Something so crass. But not even the most pure-hearted Jedi could survive in this Galaxy without cold hard cash. Even if you didn’t speak the same language, it was a universally understood concept. My brows knitted together in the centre as my mind whirred, so fast and so brutally that I was oblivious to my surroundings.
Perhaps that was my third mistake.
I probably would have carried on like that the entire way back to the shipping dock, but I wasn’t that fortunate. I never had been, so I couldn’t grasp why I was assuming I would be today. Luckily or unluckily, depending on your perspective, I wasn’t given much time to consider that little fact. Something cold, slimy, and a little bit damp encircled the circumference of my wrist. Pulling me short so suddenly and sharply that an exhaled breath of surprise tumbled from my slightly ajar mouth. I turned. My gaze landed on the fingers wrapped tightly around my skin, my flesh bare where the coat I’d been wearing had ridden up. I followed the grip. From the skeletal and filth-crusted hand, up an arm that had been donned in a shirt that was more hole than material, to a face. A face that I most definitely could have done without seeing.
I watched his lips move, and though I couldn’t hear him I could see how the booze had made his words slur. There was a glassy, lifeless glaze to his eyes that told me he didn’t have all his wits about him. In a blind panic, I pulled at my wrist, attempting to take a few steps back to escape him. But his grip was firmer than it seemed, and it only tightened when he realised I was trying to escape it. I was trapped. He mumbled something, I watched the shapes his mouth made as he spoke, but I wasn’t concentrating on what he was saying. Panic was beginning to take over my common sense, and it reigned supreme as his filthy nails sunk into my skin.
“Let go,” I demanded as loud as I could, though it wasn’t loud enough. I could feel a scream beginning to prepare itself in the back of my throat but I found myself hesitating before I could let it loose.
Did I want to scream? Did I want to bring on the kind of creature that would follow the sound of a woman in danger? Ordinarily, my answer would have been yes. Ordinarily, in any other part of the galaxy, the person who answered my scream likely would have been coming to help. But not here. Not on Nar Shaddaa. I shuddered to think that a single scream could end me up in far worse trouble than a drunken letch latched onto my hand. I tugged again. The drunkard wobbled as if I had pulled him off balance. I watched his face crumple in dismay and anger, which quickly melted into shock and fury as I pulled again. Far firmer this time which seemed to do the trick. My hand slipped free of his grasp.
Suddenly, I was running. Perhaps that was my fourth mistake.
I was running so quickly that the world blurred at my sides. Buildings and their signs turned to smudges of grey with streaks of pink and blue and yellow. Faces turned into twisted portraits that looked as though they had been smudged into something macabre made for nightmares. Even the floor beneath my feet seemed to disappear the quicker I ran. I caught the corner of a building and used the momentum to swing me around it and into the nearest alleyway. It was probably far more dangerous than the busy street I had just left behind, but the darkness wrapped around me. Enveloping me in a familiar hug that seemed both comfort and encourage. Don’t stop, it seemed to say. It’s not safe here. I listened to it with every fibre of my being. Taking stairs up the narrow ginnel three at a time. I didn’t bother to look behind to see if I was being pursued. I just ran.
At some point, my mind caught up with my body. Though it refused to slow me down, it hunted for somewhere safe. Somewhere with four walls and a door that could be locked. Anything that I could hide behind to catch my breath and figure out where the hell I’d even managed to run to. I scanned the walls beside me, flicking my head left then right, trying to catch sight of anywhere I could hide.
I almost missed it.
The careless crack in a door left just an inch ajar. I only managed to spot it thanks to the rectangle of light that pooled over the shadow in the alleyway. Such a stark and surprising difference that my gaze had been automatically drawn to it. I whispered a silent thanks to whoever and whatever gods were listening to and threw myself against it. It wasn’t locked, fortunately. Or, rather, unfortunately. At my speed and the strength with which I threw myself at it, I fell right through it. Stumbling to the point where I almost landed flat on my face. I had never been the most graceful of creatures, even with my half-Sephi blood, but just for this moment in time, I didn’t care.
I threw myself against the door, slamming it closed behind me with a satisfying click that I felt through the tips of my fingers. There was a lock. I murmured another breath of thanks as I turned it. Sealing my safety with one half twist. I pressed my head against the door. Taking one huge gulp after the other of the stale, sour air of Nar Shaddaa’s manufacturing zone. The breath in my lungs was burning. Aching when I inhaled. I could taste something coppery coating my tongue. Heaving and glistening with the weight of my efforts, I finally turned to gaze at the room I’d so rudely barged into.
That was my fifth mistake, and by the looks on the faces I beheld in front of me, it was most likely going to be my last.
“Oh,” I stepped back, and back, and back until the cool metal of the door pressed against me. It pushed all the air from my chest in one large, obvious sigh. Sweat-covered strands of ginger and red clung to my pale skin as I followed it with a slow shake of my head. As if I couldn’t believe the audacity of my own bad luck.
“Kriff.”
Naya
