Chapter Text
Beq is hanging out on his ship.
“Hanging out” is generous. He’s folded in half inside his beautiful ship. A Kuou-made X-wing that’s been modded to hell, back, and then sideways just to make sure. It technically qualifies as a fighter, but only because the Republic hasn’t looked at it too closely. It barely fits a bed. It does fit a fresher, which Beq considers a personal victory over the laws of aviation. U.F.O. Forty two is his certified best friend.
And yes he did get a Kuou made fighter because their vehicle registration code is UFO. It was the will of the force.
He blacked out the windows just a minute ago because he needs a mirror.
Right now, he’s shirtless. Sitting on the dismantled co-pilot's chair that he usually uses as a closet. Or a laundry bag. Same thing. He’s getting a kink in his neck as tries to look at the mirror to patch up the wound on his back he got at his last mission.
Mission is generous.
Side adventure sounds more accurate.
The wound cuts trough his shoulder blade, caresses his spine and ends right before it reaches his butt.
He got hit by an actual whip. Not an electro-whip. Not a vibro-thing. He’s talking braided leather a’la Indiana Jones or Jacques Ze Whipper or, you know, Jesus. Old-school. Biblical.
Fucking hurt.
Who in this day and age fights with a whip anyway.
He’s mildly regretting the entire adventure. He made a stop on Kpotye just to fill up on some fuel. Maybe get some fresh water that hasn't been pee anytime soon. And some snacks. Also some oxygen because he has a rancid smoking habit, and his oxygenators hate it.
He had gone into a Cantina, talked to the least crusty looking supplier and got everything he needed and then some with a discount (because he’s a pretty little thing, eww, gross, get a life) in under an hour. He had bought some local food, some kind of stew that had been stuffed in some fruit and it was supposed to be eaten like a chilli dog.
It did taste like what a wet dog smells like. Hell there was even mud and shampoo in that he’s certain.
And he was just chilling when a teenage girl comes in, starts begging some guy in there to give her baby boy one more chance please.
And Force gives a nudge saying check this out.
So apparently her baby boy isn't a baby but a nerra. So space horse. It looks like a horse. In shape. It’s colored like a coloring book that's done its rotation in kindergarten, has scales to boot and lays eggs because regular horses weren't stupid enough.
Whatever.
He genuinely thought it was going to be horse-girl movie vibes. Like feelings. Found family. Riding into the sunset with matching hats.
Instead, it turned into a full cowboy revenge arc.
But he was successful.
Space ranchers? Unionized. Revenge? Taken. Space horse girls? Bonded to their space horses in a bond no one else can name. Space horse race? Won and gave just enough money to save the ranch. Shitty capitalist that wanted to send space horses to space glue factory? Imprisoned. Jedi involvement? Plausibly deniable.
All in a days work for a Jedi.
It literally took a day.
So now he’s back on the road. He figured he’d patch himself up, maybe nap, then catch up to his Master, who was almost certainly following the Will of the Force toward some other mess.
After they had to split up they agreed to meet back up in the Yomlumtu sector. Hopefully with more info on the evil evil guys they were chasing. No such luck. Beq can only offer a new cowboy hat and not much more.
Beq sits with his back to the window, using the Force to float a needle in the air trying to give himself stitches. He doesn’t have thread, so he’s using some of that dissolving sugar floss. Sugary yes, it's a good snack, but it’s not sugar. It’s something that tastes like sugar but it’s made to be a sturdy fishing line. It also happens to be just a little more sterile than regular floss.
Not that he has regular floss. Actually he should really floss sometime soon. His gums are going to bleed if he doesn't.
Sure sugar floss’ not ideal, but neither is getting whipped on a space ranch.
He’s doing fine. Mostly. His mission before his Nerra-ranch adventure had been way worse and just a little more serious.
He needed light heartedness.
Thank you Force.
Could have done without the whip.
Fuck you Force.
He keeps focusing on his stitches and getting the not-so-sluggish bleeding to stop. Then his super-secret communicator aka the Jedi comm, aka discount kimunicator aka the galaxy’s least dramatic piece of tech, aka the weirdest add on to a lightsaber ever, aka seriously he could have installed a gun instead, goes beep beep be-beep.
Call me beep me if you wanna reach me
He picks it up. Emergency priority.
Oh. Cute.
The message loads.
JEDI EMERGENCY DISPATCH
Immediate mobilization requested.
Coordinates: 7894,6548-35412,7895-9981,1256
In between 17:17:58 CGT - 04:28:56 CGT
If able, proceed to Coordinates.
If unable, proceed to the Temple.
— May the Force Be With You
That’s… new. Last time this thing beeped was right after he offed the Chancellor of the Republic. Other times most Jedi use their regular comms. Like regular people. Lol. regular people.
So one day time limit?
He’s a little confused to be honest.
His needle stabs him.
Great.
Should he go? Call his master and ask if they should go? Should he head to the temple? Beq rereads the message. And stops.
Beq stares at it. He knows those coordinates. He memorized those coordinates. He hates those coordinates.
Geonosis.
Absolutely fucking not.
He plugs the emergency coordinates into his NavCom anyway. It chirps and tells him the trip will take two days, which is both diabolical and objectively incorrect. He reloads the NavCom. Eight days. Lol he really should get that thing checked out. He reloads it again. Eleven days. At this point it’s mocking him. What’s criminal is that it confirms the destination. Every. Single. Time.
Geonosis.
Balls.
He takes exactly three full minutes to scream into the abyss. Which is cathartic, because no one can hear you screaming in space. Love that feature. Five stars. No notes.
But boy does he have some notes for the Force.
Like, come on babe, is this really happening? This is what he was trying to avoid. Universe? Force? Bestie? What was the point of killing Palpatine early if we’re still doing this? Help him out a little.
Force doesn’t give an answer.
Fuck.
Okay.
Look he decided it was worth the shot, pun definitely intended, and sniped Palpatine when he was thirteen.
When Beq was thirteen that is. Palpatine was probably a hundred or something idk. And yeah, it was a whole thing but he went through that so he wouldn't be going through this.
It’s just…
Look. He tried to find the clones. He really did. After he pulled off the whole Assassination of the Century thing, he spent weeks meditating, digging through memories more or less having a Star Wars marathon in his mind.
The problem isn't even the tangled web of lies that’s the timeline. Or Disney vs Legends. At that point it’s not even what can be the truth of possibly creative interpretation of visions if Georgie boy had the Force or if he’s God actually or whatever wack theory Beq can come up with.
Galactic Basic is not English.
And nouns just don’t come out of his mental translator properly.
Every planet name, every system, every important noun in Star Wars sounds like someone smashed their keyboard and called it a day. Kamino? Rishi Maze? Sure he can say those out loud. That could be a pasta dish. That could be a guy. That could be an art movement.
Means absolutely nothing to him.
So chasing names was a bit of a let down.
After that he tried chasing water planets. He’s ended up helping a lot of water communities.
Very hydrated. Very grateful. Zero clones.
He tried chasing anything that felt even remotely clone-shaped. Found a lot of unrelated mad scientists. Fucked over their day because of ethic code violations. Still no.
Eventually, he gave up on those and started following suffering instead. Big, loud pain echoes louder in the Force than rumors could ever be. He Jedi-ed those all up. Still no ‘one million identical human men’.
So yeah. Future is always in motion, my ass Yoda.
Darth Sidious is probably dead, if Palpatine doesn't somehow return.
Still, Beq didn't get to help the clones.
And now there’s a war.
Bummer.
On the bright side he has the chance to help them now.
On the not so bright side it's because they’re going to need the help.
He lets himself feel the anxiety of the upcoming war, the shitty feeling of failing to stop it, the guilt of dooming the clones to the shitty upcoming destiny they have coming, and of course the fear that comes from the destiny of the Jedi as he continues to stick a needle into himself.
He's a Jedi. He's gonna die.
He keeps stitching.
Ironically, the needle barely hurts anymore.
Once he’s no longer actively bleeding, he slaps on a cheap bacta patch he bought half-off and dangerously close to expiration. It covers like half the open wound. Good enough.
Puts his clothes back on. Queues up some aggressively emo music.
He wants to feel the drumbeat in his bones, please and thank you. So he turns the volume up to the max and then some.
Then he takes every feeling he’s having the anxiety, guilt, fear, frustration and he puts them into a neat little box.
Then he locks that box in a vault, drops the vault into shark-infested water, lets a shark eat it, kills the shark, puts the dead shark in a coffin, and buries it deep, deep down.
Meditation takes many forms.
He lights a cigarette. Lavender-flavored. He picked up a new mystery brand at Kpoyte cause he likes weird smoke flavors but this one feels more like inhaling an incense stick than smoking, but it helps.
He plops on the pilots chair, puts his lightsaber into the cup holder. And opens himself to the feel of the universe.
He locks onto Yoda’s Force signature. Bright. Ancient. Wrinkly. Green. Unmistakable. If nothing else, Yoda will know what’s going on. Or tell him what to do. Or tell him to fuck off and go wherever his Master is.
Hopefully that one.
He presses a button. Pulls a lever, the right lever, thank you very much, and just like Kronk and Yzma, space folds into a sick rollercoaster ride.
Actually, bumper cars might be more accurate.
Without the Force, he’d absolutely be crashing into other ships right now. Or meteors. Or moons. Or suns.
A fairly small X-Wing like this would have needed a space donut to be able to enter hyperspace if Beq hadn't decided to pick a fight with the laws of physics. He installed a hyperspace drive into his baby the second he got it. He generally hangs out in the Outer Rim, and hyperdrive rings never last long when anyone with an astromech can just sail into the donut hole and literally disappear.
This does make things like interstellar travel way easier, but it does eat more fuel than a ring would, and UFO Forty Two now has an overheating problem, especially in anywhere with an atmosphere. Beq’s of the opinion that it’s worth it even if his NavCom is mostly useless whenever he decides to gets little off course. And goes off course all the time.
He’s also pretty sure that if his NavCom gets its own time-travel fix-it, it’s going to shoot Beq point-blank the second he decides to install the hyperspace drive.
Stars stretch. Space screams a little.
The NavCom immediately starts lying to him.
Which. Fair. The farther he gets from the Core, the more it struggles, trying its absolute best to make intergalactic navigation work with a ship that technically should not have hyperspace capabilities. To its credit, it will tell him if something is outright impossible.
After that, he can just… eh. Jedi it.
For now it just gets to scream at him. Saying that he’s going the wrong way or begging him to do a U-turn or a D-turn or some kind of turn.
Surprisingly what he's doing, Jedi-ing it, does have a name.
Wayfaring is a technique that was used by a bunch of ancient Jedi when they were fucking around doing whatever. It’s not a dead art or anything. A bunch of nerds in the Exporacorps know how to do it too. It’s just fallen out of fashion. Like back on good old planet Earth, he would never learn how to read star maps or a compass or a regular map when google maps got his back.
It helps that he naturally doesn't register distance the same way anyone else in the galaxy far far away does.
He’s just a bit of a boy scout this time around. Survival skills for days. He even has a special little compass fused to the handle of his lightsaber. And! He carries bear spray.
He actually was a boy scout in Coruscant. Sold cookies and everything.
Wayfaring isn’t this super special unique ability or anything. It’s just difficult enough that most people don’t bother to learn. He learned the basics down back at the creche when SPACE was still a new scary wonderful thing. Then Beq had to follow his Master through different solar systems so many times that he got good at it by accident.
It doesn't help that the autopilot can't do it. So no nap time for Beq, not today. Wayfaring is still a Force technique after all. His NavCom just doesn’t have the function: go towards friend.
Then again he’s pretty sure his NavCom is constantly so stressed it's going to develop Force abilities just so it can become a Sith and kill him. So cheers for that. Maybe he can take a nap as his NavCom drives them to the nearest sun in its glorious murder suicide.
He cuts across lanes he’s absolutely not supposed to merge into and spots a massive ship tearing through the void like it owns the place. It takes him what, an hour? Maybe two? To get where he’s trying to go. Eleven days what a joke. Then again there are no planets on sight and his NavCom is desperately trying to recalculate. So maybe he’s in the wrong place? He should have taken that H-turn?
He knows that ship. It’s a Venator class Star Destroyer.
It’s big, it's beautiful, and it's filled with thousands of people.
So war it is.
He can feel Yoda aboard.
So either he’s a prisoner.
Or he’s just chilling.
Honestly? Could be either.