OLD WOUNDS
Adapted from the comic by Aaron McBride
He knew something was wrong when he had opened his eyes.
He should not have been able to do that. He should have been dead.
Why wasn’t he dead?
He couldn’t feel anything. The pain was so agonizing that his mind could not register it as being real. Whatever fluid he was floating in was not bacta; or, if it was, then it was not doing anything to heal whatever wounds he had suffered. It certainly wasn’t going to regenerate his legs.
His legs. What had happened to his legs?
He tried to reach back in his mind. He remembered a man. A young man, human, with brown hair tied up in a braid. He had surprised him, jumping up and drawing the green blade from the weapon of his fallen comrade. He had sliced at his waist and then… there. That was where the pain had started.
He had fallen into the pit. His legs separated from the rest of his body as he tumbled into the abyss. Then… nothing.
That had been it. That had been the end.
Then why was he still here? Why was he still alive?
Through the bubbling red water, through the glass of the cylinder he was floating in, he could see movement. A giant stood in front of him, at least two meters tall, the crest of their helmet nearly scraping the ceiling. In the titan’s hand was an equally massive axe, nearly the length of its owner. All he could make out of their visage was a pair of red glowing eyes.
But the giant was not alone. Another figure stood between the colossus and the vat. They were cloaked in a simple black robe, a hood raised to conceal most of their face. But even the little glimpse he had of the old man’s pale face was enough for him to identify who they were.
His master. Darth Sidious.
And just like that, Darth Maul finally remembered his name.
His arm jolted up as if it had a mind of its own and his red palm pressed against the glass. The man on the other side did not so much as flinch, regarding his apprentice with an expression impossible to decipher.
The Dark Lord withdrew a crooked hand from the sleeves of his robes and made a single gesture.
The next thing Maul knew, he was out of the vat, out of the water, and laying on some sort of table, screaming in pain. Machines surrounded him as they opened him up, cut him open, sewed him back up.
He had no idea what they were doing, nor did he care. He wanted to destroy them. But he couldn’t. Something was preventing him from using his powers. It was as if the dark side refused to answer his call.
Eventually, the pain subsided, almost abruptly. It did not completely go away, of course, but enough so that he was able to take in his surroundings and feel his body. He could feel his legs again, albeit barely. He looked down and saw a pair of unfamiliar metal appendages in the spot where his legs had once been. They terminated in a set of clawed feet, which curled and uncurled at his mind’s command.
He then lifted his head up to see his master standing over him. It took him a moment to realize that the Dark Lord was, in fact, not physically there, but instead transmitting from a mobile holoprojector droid, his blue-tinted figure shimmering with every movement.
“Master,” Darth Maul croaked, his voice weak from disuse. “Where… where am I?”
Darth Sidious stared down at him in silence, his lips pressed into a thin line. When he spoke, his words were not directed to Maul but to the giant looming in the background. “I must admit that I am impressed by your handiwork. I did not expect the results to be so successful.”
“You may express your gratitude in the form of the agreed upon payment, my lord,” the giant growled in response.
“The funds have already been transferred to the appropriate accounts,” Sidious said. “Have you disposed of the other specimen like I asked?”
“It has, Lord Sidious.”
“Good.” Sidious looked back down at Maul. “I still have use for you, my friend. Although you may have failed me on Naboo, your continued existence has proved to me that the immortality the Sith have sought for so long is indeed possible… to a certain extent, of course.”
“Master.” Maul grimaced as he struggled to sit up but could not muster the energy to do so. “Please, give me another chance.”
“You have already been given another chance,” Sidious said coldly. “Otherwise, you would not be speaking to me now. However….” The Dark Lord paused and Maul dreaded to hear the words that came next. “You shall no longer be my apprentice. I have already found another to serve as my Shadow Hand.”
“Master, please!” The fear and anger now running through him jolted Maul up and he swung his mechanical legs over the operating table. “I can still serve you!”
“And you will. There is still much work to be done; work that I and Lord Tyranus alone cannot handle. You will serve as my secret assassin, eliminating targets that are too public for myself to eliminate through my usual methods. You have already proven yourself capable of that, given how you have eliminated the leadership of Black Sun. In fact, they have been seeing a resurgence of late, so perhaps it would be worth checking in on them….”
Maul bared his teeth, glowering at the hologram in front of him. “Is that all I am to you? Just some tool for you to use as you please?”
“That is all you have ever been to me,” Sidious said icily.
“I am your apprentice! You named me a Lord of the Sith!”
“That was before Naboo. I have since found better alternatives.”
Maul got down from the table and stood up to his full height. Rage coursed through his veins and he could feel the dark side finally answering to his summons. “I will no longer be your slave.”
Even from across the galaxy, he could sense the Dark Lord’s building ire through the Force. “If you wish to prolong your existence, you will do my bidding.”
“No.” Raising a clawed foot, Maul brought it down on the holoprojector and smashed it into pieces. The Dark Lord’s image dissolved into oblivion and Maul was left standing there in the darkness, illuminated only by the glow of the giant’s red eyes.
For a long time, the two of them simply stood there, staring at each other in silence. A silence that was broken by the grating voice of the giant.
“If you wish to leave here,” the titan said, “I can arrange for transportation. I will even provide you with the means to defend yourself. I ask for only two things in return.”
Maul narrowed his eyes, wondering if he should simply crush the giant’s throat with the Force. Instead, he said, “Name your price.”
The giant did. After taking a moment to get over his stupor from the strange request, Maul agreed.
A double-necked eight-string quetarra and an alias were an odd payment for a starship and a reconstructed lightsaber, but it was a deal worth making nonetheless.
* * *
Years passed. A decade, even. And throughout all those ten years, Maul had only one thing on his mind.
Revenge.
In his dreams, it was the Jedi’s face that he saw, the last thing he had seen before he had tumbled to what should have been his demise. It was a face that haunted him, and the only way to be rid of it was to find the Jedi and kill him. Only then would he finally be free.
It took him many years to finally put a name to the face: Obi-Wan Kenobi. It took him even longer to even find so much of a trace of him.
It was a big galaxy, and the Jedi Order was spread from its quaint temple on Coruscant all the way to the furthest fringes of the Outer Rim. It did not help that he had to keep a low profile, lest Sidious and his new apprentice catch wind of his activities and bring them and his second lease on life to a premature end.
Ten years after his rebirth, he had finally found a trace. An anonymous source had tipped him off to the remote world of Kamino, a planet located on the edge of the galaxy which Kenobi had gone to for reasons Maul did not know or care for. But when he got to the missing planet, the long-necked natives told him that Kenobi had already left two days prior. He would have killed them then and there had one of them not offered up the name of a planet where Kenobi could have possibly gone to: Geonosis.
He had wasted no time in making his way to Geonosis. But when he made it there, not only did he learn that Kenobi had already left the planet… but that the galaxy was now at war.
This was it, he realized. The culmination of the Grand Plan that the Sith had been working towards for nearly a millennium. Sidious and his agents would now be more alert than ever, and he would need to work even harder to keep a low profile to evade the Dark Lord’s omniscient gaze.
He did not have to hide for long however, as the Clone War ended up producing a useful distraction: Himself.
He wasn’t sure how it was possible, but another Zabrak identical to him in both appearance and name had came from out of nowhere, building an alliance between the criminal syndicates of the galaxy—including Black Sun—and using it to take over the planet of Mandalore. Sidious would no doubt believe this Maul to be the same one that had defied him a decade ago, giving the other the opportunity he needed in order to make his own preparations.
He would not be able to face the Dark Lord alone. He needed others to answer him and carry out deeds that he himself could not perform without rousing the attention of either Sidious or his clone. Fortunately, it did not take him long to find them.
Their names were Fomadu and Mei. Both survivors of dark side cults that had lost its members at the hands of the Jedi during the war. Like him, they sought revenge against the Jedi. And, like him, the girl Mei carried a burning hatred for one Jedi in particular—the same Jedi who continued to elude him as the war saw the Jedi Order scattered across the galaxy even more so now than they had been a decade prior.
It was the promise of revenge that Maul had been able to bring Fomadu and Mei, and others, to his cause. That, and the philosophy he had developed over the past decade, after he had made the decision to turn his back on the Sith once and for all.
There was no dark or light. There was no Force. There was only the Great Void. The all-consuming Darkness that bore them and would one day end them. No living being ever chose to be born in this life, and they only ever suffered before returning to the welcoming Void from whence they had came. There was no point to any of it; nothing, that is, but their own personal desires. If there was no Force to serve, then they could only serve themselves until they perished as all living things did.
Maul supposed it was ironic that he had reached this conclusion only after being pulled back from the Void to live once more. But such was the way of the Dark.
The war came and went. Then, the Jedi Order fell. He picked up the trace again, traveling to Utapau, then Mustafar, then Polis Massa, then Nar Shaddaa. He lost Fomadu and Mei, then the others shortly after. It was just him now, just as it had been in the beginning.
The Sith had finally won. The galaxy was in the hands of the Dark Lord. There would be no escaping his former master now. But he didn’t care anymore. All he wanted was Kenobi. Then, he could finally be free.
It only took another three years. But finally, he had found him.
* * *
The sand crunched beneath his clawed feet as he ran. The simple homestead laid dead ahead. There, he would find his quarry.
There were three of them. A man, a woman, and a child. The man had a blaster rifle in his hands, pointed in the intruder’s direction as he delivered a series of futile warnings. Maul could sense the man’s fear, which only further fueled his mechanical legs as he hastened his pace. The man pulled the trigger and Maul deftly avoided the blast before summoning the rifle to his hands and swinging it at the man’s skull. There was a sickening crack and the man fell into the sands.
The woman let out a cry and held the boy close to her chest as Maul turned to face them. He gazed at the child, peering into his scared blue eyes as he reached out with the Force.
And there it was. Just as the logs from the medical center on Polis Massa had indicated.
“So it’s true,” he murmured. “There is a son.”
And just like that, he felt it. He turned away from the weeping woman and crying child, scanning the Dune Sea for what he had sensed. Or rather, whom.
“A heart just quickened. I know you’re here.”
Silence. The only sounds he could hear were the pained coughs of the man and the sounds of despair coming from the woman and child. He ignored them all as he focused on the presence he had sensed.
“I missed you on Kamino by two days,” he continued. “I was a day behind you on Geonosis. I came across a corpse on Mustafar I thought might’ve been you. Imagine my relief.”
Still the silence stood, although he detected another prick in the other’s heartbeat. He must have touched another nerve. A satisfied smirk twitched onto his face, knowing that his next words would only further draw the Jedi’s ire.
“Those mute runts on Polis Massa were the least satisfying lives I’ve ever taken. But their medical log was worthwhile. An old junk dealer in Mos Espa choked up a name before I separated him from his greed. I knew if I found the boy… you’d come.”
This, finally, got a response from the Jedi. His voice seemed to carry through the wind, coming from all directions. “Does Palpatine know?”
“No,” Maul snarled. “There is no Palpatine. No Empire. No Jedi. There is no light. No dark. Just you and I, here, now!”
“We can do this for old time’s sake,” the voice continued. “But I was a Padawan then. Now…”
Beneath Maul’s feet, the ground trembled and a hand erupted from the sand, followed by the hunched form of a man. The same man Maul had seen in his dreams for sixteen years now. His once youthful face was now tired and old, covered by a brown bear tinged with gray. But his blue-gray eyes had the same hardness in them that Maul remembered from all those years ago.
Those eyes met Maul’s as Obi-Wan Kenobi stared at him with the fiery defiance of a Jedi. “You won’t heal clean.”
Maul snarled as he doffed his black cloak, at the same time drawing his lightsaber and igniting its twin red blades. In response, Kenobi ignited the blue beam of his own lightsaber and raised it in a defensive stance as Maul lunged, the setting twin suns blazing behind him.
Kenobi had expected Maul to attack with his blade first, but instead the Zabrak seized his neck with a clawed foot, using it as leverage to bring the Jedi closer to him.
“That day in Theed, I fell so far from what I was,” Maul growled into the other’s face. “When I came to rest, all I could see was you.”
He brought his scarlet blade close to Kenobi’s face, although the Jedi was able to bring his own between them. Sparks flew as the two beams of energy collided.
“But I rose from my ruin,” Maul pressed on, “to find myself greater… and all the days since have been to your end!”
With a grunt, Kenobi was able to wrest himself from out of Maul’s grasp. The Zabrak allowed him to do so; he wanted this moment to last. He wanted to savor the sweet taste of revenge. The past sixteen years of his life—ever waking hour of his renewed lease on life—had been leading to this moment.
After this, there would be nothing to await but the Great Void.
Kenobi swung his lightsaber and Maul blocked it with the lower blade of his double-edged weapon. This left the rest of him vulnerable however and Kenobi swung his leg up to kick him in the head, shattering large chunks from his elongated horns. As Maul staggered back to recover himself, Kenobi twirled his blade as he moved in to attack again, leaping up in the air with his blade raised high. Maul raised his double-edged sword, ready for him… and too late realized his mistake.
The blue saber cut through the hilt of his weapon… and through his left arm. The bisected weapon and severed limb fell to the ground.
So blinded had he been by his hatred that he had let his guard down and made the same mistake he had made sixteen years ago, that had seen his old weapon broken and himself sliced in half.
He would not repeat that moment. Not here. Not after so many years of waiting for this moment.
Crying out in rage, he thrust out his mechanical leg and kicked Kenobi in the abdomen. The Jedi went flying and crashed into the hood of a nearby landspeeder, weighing the repulsor-powered vehicle down. Maul then summoned one of the two pieces of his shattered weapon to his remaining hand, igniting its still-working blade as he stormed over to Kenobi.
But the Jedi was already back on his feet. And had the emitter of his lightsaber pressed against Maul’s skull.
Seconds crawled like hours. Maul could feel the emotions boiling within Kenobi as the Jedi’s thumb rested on the activation switch. And for the briefest of moments, Maul witnessed a flash of white-hot anger flare within the Jedi. He remembered that anger; it was the same anger that Kenobi had unleashed when Maul had killed his Jedi Master.
Just as Maul had clung onto his desire for revenge for sixteen years, Kenobi had clung onto the memory of him killing his master. The desire for revenge was mutual in that respect, even if the Jedi tried to hide it. In that sense, they were almost kindred spirits, sharing the same old wounds.
At that realization, Maul’s golden eyes went wide. He stared into Kenobi’s steely blue gaze, saw the restrained anger burning within them. Then, he closed his eyes, resigning himself to his fate.
So focused was he on his opponent that Maul did not see the man he had threatened earlier get back to his feet, pick up his discarded blaster, point it at the Zabrak’s head. He did not even hear the blaster go off before the Darkness enveloped him and he fell once more into the welcoming embrace of the Great Void.
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