its-captain-sir:

Goodbye to Yesterday

Finally finished the fics for the 200 follower giveaway! This one is for @sl-walker, who won the 500 word fic and asked for someone rescuing Maul when he’s young and recognizing him as an abuse victim. I imagined him as being maybe 7 years old while writing this? Something like that?? Anyways, hope you like it!

******

Maul brought a spoonful of hot broth to his lips and sipped at it.

“It’s not too hot, is it?”

Maul shook his head at the man.

The man leaned forward a bit in his seat. “You know, it’s okay to say that it is. I won’t be mad or anything.”

“…Maybe a little bit,” he mumbled, dropping the spoon back into the bowl.

“Here.” The man reached for his arm, pausing just before touching him. “Can I show you something?” Maul nodded and the man guided his hand back to the spoon.

“Hold it like this…” He moved the hand holding the spoon in front of his face. “Now blow on it.”

Maul took a deep breath and blew on the spoon, the soup splattering all over the table.

The man laughed. “Guess I should have told you not to blow that hard.”

Maul smiled sheepishly up at him and the man laughed some more. It was strange, he didn’t get any punishment for creating the mess. In fact, the man hadn’t so much as yelled at him once since they met. He was so unlike his master.

The Force practically sang whenever he was near the man. His presence was warm and bright, so different from anything he’d ever felt on Mustafar. And it was much better than the cold, dark coils that always seemed to follow his master. He’d been glad to get a respite from those when his master had left him in that alley in the underworld of Coruscant.

He only told Maul one thing then. Survive.

He didn’t think he did a very good job at that. The man felt angry when Maul told him that. He said children shouldn’t need to know how to survive on their own. Maul didn’t know if he agreed with him on that, but the man seemed like he knew what he was talking about. And Maul trusted him. The Force told him he could.

He was glad he met the man, all things considered. He was definitely a lot less hungry for it.

The man wiped up the mess with a cloth and tossed it off to the side, walking further into his ship. Maul got up and followed him.

He stepped into the small cockpit, watching the man hit buttons and flip switches. “What are you doing?” The question slipped out before he could stop it. That was another thing he found he could get away with, asking questions. He planned to make the best of that.

“Getting the ship ready,” the man answered.

“Why?”

The man reached into his pocket and pulled out his comm. It flashed in his hand. “They need me back at home. I’ll have to leave soon.”

Something in Maul tensed at those words. He tried to ignore the feeling, whatever it was. “How soon?” he asked.

“The sooner, the better,” the man replied, sitting down in the pilot’s seat and flicking a few more switches overhead. He turned back to Maul. “But let’s worry about what you’re going to do first.”

He patted the copilot’s spot next to him. Maul walked over and pulled himself up into the seat. “I don’t want to let you go back out on the streets alone,” he began. “And I don’t want to let you go back to… your master.” Maul was okay with that. He really didn’t want to see his master again, not when he had failed the test he gave him.

“Do you remember if you had any other family?” the man asked.

He had few memories of his life before his master came and took him to be trained. Vague images of black and yellow, whispers of the sound of laughter, a ghost of the feeling of horns beneath his fingertips. Nothing else.

“No. I don’t remember anything,” he mumbled, looking down at his feet.

“Hey, kid– is it alright if I touch you again?” Maul nodded. The man let his hand rest on his shoulder. The weight of it was… comforting. That was the word.

“Look kid, it’s okay if you don’t remember. It was just one option you have. I can take you some place where you can find a new family, if that’s what you want.” The man squeezed his shoulder gently and smiled.

Maul looked back up at him. A new family sounded nice, but… “Can I stay with you?”

He could feel the shock rolling off the man’s presence. “Me?” he said, removing his hand from Maul’s shoulder and sitting up straight.

The Force swirled around him, encouraging. “Yeah. I like you. You’re nice.”

The man huffed a laugh. “Well… I don’t know about that. I know more than a few people who would not use ‘nice’ to describe me.”

“But you are nice!” Maul protested. “Even the Force agrees with me!”

“The Force, huh?” the man said, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t know much about the Force, but,” The man’s gaze softened as he looked at Maul. “if that’s what you really want to do, then you can stay with me.”

Maul smiled at him and the man grinned back. “We better get going then.” He flipped another switch and the ship hummed to life. “You ready?”

Maul looked out at Coruscant one last time. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

The man grabbed the steering yoke and soon they were flying through the few clouds in the sky and up into space. Maul couldn’t tear his eyes away from the viewport the entire time.

“You know,” the man said, in between inputting hyperspace coordinates into the computer next to him. “I never got your name. You do have one, right?”

He nodded. “It’s Maul.”

“Nice to meet you, Maul,” the man said, holding out a hand. “I’m Jango Fett.”

“Nice to meet you, Jango,” he said, copying the man’s earlier words. He looked at Jango’s offered hand, confused.

“You’re supposed to shake it, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Jango said.

Maul thought about it, then took his hand. Jango grinned again when he did.

“Alright,” Jango said, pulling his hand back and entering the last of the coordinates. “Entering hyperspace in three… two…”

The Force curled around Maul in anticipation.

“One.”

He watched as the stars stretched into the blue tunnel of hyperspace, leaving Coruscant far behind.