Sand Glass Shadows

Another challenge from a friend, the summary was hers, and all she gave me to work with. This is demi-semi-AU

I don't own the characters, those belong to the god that is Mr. Lucas, I'm just borrowing them to play with for a while.

I came back, back here to where it all began.
At first I came simply to deliver Padmè’s boy to his family, the only real family he has now except for his sister, but she is now far and away and he can never learn the truth of her.
Nor can she ever learn the truth of him.
They do know of each other I am sure, they are twins after all, and children of the Chosen One, the one who has yet to bring balance.
They are aware of each other’s presence, this I know. Though I hope and pray that they will never truly learn of each other, for their own safety if nothing else.
After I had given the infant to Owen and Beru –whom he will know as aunt and uncle- I started out towards the great Dune Sea, and here I have stayed.
One would think that in such desolation, a lone Force-user, a single Jedi, would stick out like a Hutt among Jawas
But I don’t. Or, perhaps, I am simply not perceived as a threat. The desert teems with life, especially now, after the suns have set and the sand begins to radiate all the heat it’s absorbed during the day. It is times like these when I come out here to the bluff to watch the stars.
I don’t know that I ever really paid them much mind before, not the few tenaciously bright ones that I could see from the Temple on Coruscant, and not the myriads of them I ever passed among while flying.
But out here, away from any city lights, away from even the smallest homestead, the night sky seems that it should be as bright as day, given the number of stars scattered across it.
Some systems I know I can see from here on Tattooine. Kamino is one of the dimmer ones, further away… Strange, it seems to be flickering more than usual, a meteor storm between here and there perhaps.
I'm not sure why I’ve grown so fond of watching the stars as of late. Perhaps because there are so many of them visible from here than from amidst the bright lights of Coruscant.
Maybe I like stargazing so much because… it is a meteor storm. And it isn’t between here and there, it’s here. I have to take cover.


I do not know who I am.
I know what they called me, and I know what I remember, though my memories feel like someone else’s, they’re dim and incomplete.
I know that they called me Maul, and I know where they sent me. Tattooine.
That place I remember well.
I remember the suns and the oppressive, suffocating heat.
I consider it luck –and at least some planning on the part of the cloners- that my pod will be landing on the night-side of the planet.
I hope to find some answers there, some clue as to who I once was, something to help clarify my muddled memories, to make them my own once more.
I'm coming in too fast, I can feel it, the rush of so many nocturnal minds coming on too quickly
This won’t be a landing so much as a thruster-controlled crash.
There. The silently deafening thump, and the hiss of sand against the hull as I slide.
Finally I come to rest with a jarring crash. Moments later the hatch comes open of its own accord, with a hiss of hydraulics.
Shouldering my bag I start out along the glassy trail of fused sand left by the heat of the pod’s hull.
I’ll follow it to the point of impact, and see what I can see from there, since that is where the cloners sent me, they must have done so for a reason.
Already the small desert night-creatures that were scared away by my landing have begun to go about their business once more, some even inspecting the edges of the fused-sand path carefully, sniffing and testing it with claws or feelers, more cautious of it than of me.


Most times meteors are small enough that they burn up before getting anywhere close to the upper atmosphere, let alone the surface. But this one was huge, and I can’t have been the only one who saw it’s fiery trajectory, I just hope there’s something left of it when I arrive.
I remember once when I was younger, Qui-Gon gave me a small shard of sand-glass, sand fused by the heat of a falling star.
I remember it was almost perfectly star shaped, and he said it would bring me luck, and help me to concentrate on my lessons.
I kept it in a small, soft Ronto-leather pouch around my neck for years.
I wonder now what happened to it.
I don’t remember losing it, or giving it away, but I don’t have it now. Though I wish I did. I feel that it would help me remember a simpler time, one when I was more innocent and the universe seemed to hold only good surprises.
I often find myself wishing that I could return to that time, before I could only see deception and malice in people, all but a few of them at least.
It’s amazing really, how someone’s views can change. I don’t remember them changing any more than I remember when I lost my lucky star. But I know that the way I see people now is much different than the way I saw them then.
Either the walk to the impact point was shorter than I first suspected, or my thoughts have kept me more occupied than I assumed and I lost track of time.
The crater is too large to be any mere meteor, it must’ve been a craft of some sort, jettisoned escape pod most likely, judging by the trail of fused sand where it slid.
There’s a person down there, he looks familiar, I recognize his build and his face but it seems that there should be … tattoos.
It can’t be… but it is…
The Sith apprentice that killed Qui-Gon. But that’s impossible, he couldn’t have survived…


It was not as long a walk along the slide-trail as I thought it was going to be, and thanks to the hardened path, it was not a difficult one. I walked for perhaps half an hour, slow and easy really, considering that I'm walking across sand, crunching and crackling with every step.
The impact crater is smaller than I expected, for the size of the craft, but perhaps I didn’t hit as hard as I thought I did at first. The walls of the crater are speckled with fused-sand glass shards, sticking out at odd angles, making the climb up treacherous.
I pause a moment before attempting to start, a silhouette catching my attention.
There’s a man watching from the crest of the hill, I feel that I should know him, but just as quickly the feeling fades and I'm left with wondering who he is out here at such a time, he’s not one of the Raiders, and certainly not a Jawa. I can only assume he’s some homsteader, a moisture farmer out here checking one of his arrays. Though I didn’t think any of them lived so far into the Dune Sea.


Obi-Wan slid down the side of the dune, using one hand and a slight push with the Force to keep himself steady and avoid injury by the shards of sand-glass all around.
He realized dimly that his emotions were getting the better of him, considering that the first thing he did was punch the other man in the face, “Why?” He screamed, “Why are you still alive? Why you and not him? What makes you so special? I killed you! Ten years ago I killed you! Because you killed Qui-Gon, and you’re here and he’s not! I killed you! Explain that to me! Why?”

Throughout his tirade, Obi-Wan continued attempting to land another blow as solid as the first, though any of his punches that weren’t blocked were glancing at best.
The other man finally managed to catch both of his wrists, shaking the Jedi firmly once. It took Obi-Wan a long moment to be able to hear the other’s voice over the rushing in his ears, “I don’t know who you are. I may have killed this man who obviously meant so much to you, but if I did, I do not remember it. You seem to know more about me than I do. Perhaps you can help me remember?”

Obi-Wan was dumbfounded. This revelation knocked him completely off balance and left him reeling. He blinked twice, “What? You’re Darth Maul, the Sith apprentice. You’re the one who was apprentice before my own fell to the Dark Side.”
The cloned Sith warrior fell silent, blinking himself, apparently this knowledge was as much a shock to him as his amnesia was to Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan did the only thing he could think of. He surged forward, pressing his mouth firmly to the other man’s. It was a little-known technique for memory sharing that Qui-Gon had taught him when he was mid-way through his teens.

As soon as the connection was made, memories floated to the surface of his mind. His first impression of Qui-Gon when Obi-Wan had been a learner of eight, the young Jedi Master –only twenty years his senior- had been nothing short of legend among the learners at that time, and when Obi-Wan first saw him, he could only think of was the dashing heroes of the stories.

After that scene and that impression had faded, another rose, flickering moments of Obi-Wan’s early years training as Qui-Gon’s Padawan. Revealing the older man to be a steady and gentle teacher, only reprimanding when it truly needed to be done. Often it was his disappointment more than any punishment he decided that caused his Padawan’s behavior to change.

Then, when Obi-Wan was all of seventeen, and so sure of who and what he wanted, Qui-Gon proved to be just as steady and gentle a lover, never going further at one time than Obi-Wan was ready for, whether the younger man knew it or not.
Their first such encounter was likely the shortest, as Obi-Wan simply launched a sneak attack. Though it must not have been quite as sneaky as he’d planned, considering that his Master was ready for it, returning the clumsy kiss firmly, teaching through example as was his way with all things.

Their encounters became more numerous, each one with some knew knowledge for Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon always there as a guide, steady hands, firm kisses. The first time they went further than kissing, he’d hardly even had to touch the redhead before Obi-Wan was writhing, shuddering, and moments later releasing, blushing almost incandescently. Though his embarrassment hardly mattered, because Qui-Gon was there to clean up the mess, smiling faintly, trying his hardest not to laugh aloud, only to save his Padawan further embarrassment really. He at least had known that it wasn’t going to be an extended run the first time through.

Such encounters became more and more common, each one lasting longer than the one before. The day that Obi-Wan was finally confident enough to reciprocate his Master’s actions stood out brightly in his mind, as did the dozen times following when Qui-Gon had prevented his reciprocation, even –and perhaps especially- though they both wanted it. Even going so far as to tie his Padawan’s wrists once to keep him from returning the touches.
That one as well stood out in Obi-Wan’s mind, it was the first time his Master had truly denied him anything. That, and it was all a game of trust.

The images that followed were too numerous to name, hundreds upon hundreds of miniscule gestures and contacts, words that meant so much more than the surface of what they seemed. There were thousands of millions of them over the years, though for memories, time had no meaning, they came by matter of importance, or easiest to recall, some when Obi-Wan was still young, others when he was nearly an adult and everywhere between. Flickering faster and more than ever, emotions to go along with the images, occasionally sounds.

The night before they’d left for their mission to Naboo all those years ago, where their coupling had been so intense that it had left them both shaking, clinging to each other in the night-dark Temple, for those few moments they weren’t Master and Padawan, they were simply two people who needed the comfort of each other

This was almost instantly replaced by the shocking wave of despair and fury that Obi-Wan felt when he saw his Master fall, the riot of emotions that followed during his fight with the Sith Apprentice, though these memories were overlaid with his recent duel with his own Padawan, Anakin’s fury, his rage and Obi-Wan’s resolution, knowing what he had to do.

Both men standing there in the desert on that moonlight night gasped, and the kiss ended, and Obi-Wan, as well as the cloned Maul, realized that it had only lasted a few moments, such was the way of the Force, re-altering time as it saw fit.
Maul shook his head, “I do not know these things.” He hesitated a moment then before continuing, “But, you believe if you’d been able to love your own Padawan the way that your Master loved you, things would not have turned out as they did.”
He shook his head, “This is not so. Destiny is what it is and there’s no changing it no matter how much we may wish to.” Obi-Wan knew it was the truth.
He shook his head in turn, “Go. Leave now and seek no more knowledge of the Force than you have now, or they will kill you. Go, far away from here, for if I see you again, I will kill you. This night and all the shadows of the past change nothing between us.”

They parted ways then, in silence, Obi-Wan climbing the dune back towards his home, and Maul setting out across the desert.

At the crest of the dune the lone Jedi’s eye was caught by a shard of sand-glass, he bent to pick it up and found that it was almost perfectly star shaped. He blinked twice, then twice again, tears welling in his eyes as he felt suddenly lighter, as if some great burden had been lifted from him. He tucked the shard away carefully and continued home.