Categories > Movies > Star Wars > Vengeance
DISCLAIMER: I don't own /Star Wars/, etc.; George Lucas does. I don't own the novel /Shadows of the Empire/, either; its author is Steve Perry, and some passages from this fanfic may come directly from that.
SPECIAL DISCLAIMER: The "Reborn" cycle is an amazing collection of AU stories by Kenya Starflight; if you read that first, then this should make more sense.
/IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:/ Due to concerns, I am now emulating Kenya Starflight's writing strategy of glossing over parts of canon that go unaffected by the AU circumstances of the story and thus stay the same. I am not directly copying passages of things that stay the same in the Shadows of the Empire novel. Hopefully now I've struck a balance in how much in the fic comes from the book itself, so that those who haven't read SotE have a good idea of what's going on, and those who have read it won't be bored by it. If anyone wants to read for themselves exactly what happens in canon, I recommend that they hunt down their own copies of SotE, both of which are far from being rare or expensive. So, from now on, I will put in notes saying which passages may come directly from the book.
SUMMARY: After reading Kenya Starflight's "Reborn" cycle, I got the idea in my head for an AU version of the Star Wars cult classic novel, Shadows of the Empire/, which takes place between Episodes V and VI. So, hopefully this answers the question I posed: /How would the mighty Prince Xizor fit into all of this?
RATING: PG-13 (T) for violence and some sensuality, but that's much later on. (I'd have rated this PG, but I just wanted to play it safe.)
WARNING: Spoilers for "Recompense" by Kenya Starflight! Read her entire "Reborn" cycle first BEFORE moving onto this story!
NOTE: The prologue essentially splices together an important scene from Chapter 7 of "Experience" along with some of Xizor's thoughts, feelings and ideas from the prologue of SotE. (PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN EDITED SINCE THE FIRST TIME IT WAS POSTED.)
/Vengeance/
By Quillian
Co-written with Kenya Starflight
Dedicated to Kenya Starflight.
"Face it, if crime did not pay, there would be very few criminals." -Laughton Lewis Burdock
"Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." -Carrie Fisher
Prologue
This had better be good, Xizor thought to himself. I can think of more than a dozen different things I could be doing right about now.
Xizor was sitting at his desk in his office, waiting as a holo recording started up. Normally, he would be holding appointments with clients right about now, but since this "urgent" thing had just come in from one of his spies, he had to do with this first.
The holo expanded to show an image of a murky swamp environment, in a clearing where four figures were, next to a pair of starfighters - one was a human, a young adult male, from the looks of it, and with a boyish face.
The second figure was a blue and silver Astromech droid, its domed head turning left and right as it looked around.
The third figure was a diminutive little being, dressed in worn tan robes; this small being which would have barely come level with the human's knees, had the said human been standing; his skin was a wrinkled pale grin, there wisps of white hair on the top of his head flanked by enormous triangular ears, and with one of his clawed, four-fingered hands holding a gimer-stick cane which he rested on.
But the fourth and final figure was what really got Xizor's attention. A humanoid biped dressed in gray robes, but with his face hidden under a jet-black full helmet and breathing mask.
Darth Vader.
A former Sith warlord, right hand to the Emperor himself... now a Rebel pilot suffering from amnesia, fighting those he had previously served and commanded.
Now here he was, drinking something, possibly tea, with a Rebel and a galaxy-knows-what kind of alien.
Pitiful, really.
If Xizor could have hurled a power bolt through space and time, he would have done it without blinking. Wishful thinking: Vader was too powerful to attack directly. Even though he was now a Rebel, lots of people claimed that he had just been hard to kill as a Rebel as when he was an Imperial.
Xizor had sent one of his spies to observe the short-lived Rebel base on Hoth, and to follow Vader's movements. Apparently, Vader had come here, to this planet.
"It's been a long day, hasn't it?" the young man asked rhetorically.
"No longer than usual," the small alien replied. Xizor checked the notes which came with the report - if he was correct, this was Jedi Master Yoda, who had escaped the Jedi's downfall decades ago, had lived for centuries and just still wasn't dead yet. Interesting...
The young man - a boy, really - grinned. "I guess I should rephrase that. It's been an eventful day."
"Indeed. Come far you two have. Learned much you have. But Jedi you are not yet."
Xizor ignored Yoda's odd, inverted way of talking and focused more on the conversation, waiting for what was so "urgent" about this.
The boy drained his cup and tossed it back on the tray, looking tired. The alien then asked, "Why wish you to become Jedi?"
Vader chuckled. "Now he asks - ow!"
"Respect your master, you should," Yoda chided, lifting his cane as if to rap Vader's hand again. But he put it away and waited an answer.
"I know I was once a Jedi," Vader replied. His electronic bass voice no longer carried the sort of malice which countless people had heard it with before, but now sounded almost... casual. "And I know I betrayed the Order. It is my hope that I can do penance of a sort by helping resurrect the Order."
Xizor already knew that long ago, Vader's name had been Skywalker. Xizor would have also rolled his eyes at the last statement - but he didn't. Even here, in private and with no one to watch him, he practiced not allowing any sign of exasperation or disbelief on his imperturbable features. The Falleen did not allow their emotions to arise and be obvious to others as so many inferior species allowed themselves to do. The Falleen were a scaled, coolly calculating reptilian species, not a wild, furred mammalian species. This was a better, safer advantage the Falleen had.
Yoda nodded in response to Vader. "And you, Luke?"
The young man - Luke - settled back into a sitting position. "I suppose because of my father. I never knew him. He's always been... I don't know... an enigma. A mystery. But I still feel a kind of bond with him, as if he's never actually left my side. And I'd like to follow in his footsteps."
Yoda glanced up sharply. "And what footsteps would those be?" he demanded just as sharply.
"My father was a Jedi," he replied, wondering why his remark had stunned their master so. "I want to be a Jedi, like he was. I want to follow a noble cause like his - a cause he died for."
Things were clicking and coming together in Xizor's mind as he watched this, remembering odd facts here and there...
There was a dead-serious look in the Jedi Master's eyes now. "And what know you of your father's fate?"
"What are you getting at, Master?" asked Luke.
"I betrayed and murdered his father," Vader answered for him. "But he has forgiven me. And though I do not remember committing the deed, I hope to repent of it by serving the Order."
"Hmph," Yoda snorted. "Told you this who did?"
"Obi-wan," Luke replied. "Why?"
Obi-wan? That was a name which Xizor knew. He was along the last of the Jedi Knights, a general... but he had been dead for decades, hadn't he?
Apparently, Xizor's information was wrong if Obi-wan was still around to talk to this young man. His agents were going to be sorry.
Even as Xizor took in the image of this strange little alien get-together, inside the luxury of his own palace on Coruscant, he also made a mental note to himself: Somebody's head would roll for the failure to make him aware of all this. After all, knowledge was power, and thus, lack of knowledge was weakness. This was something he would not permit.
"Told you the truth from a certain point of view he did," the alien replied, glowering upward as if addressing the cosmic ethers. "Always telling things from a certain point of view he was. Knew he did that his responsibility it was to tell you the truth..."
Here, there was a pause as though some voice were speaking to them, not verbally, but mentally, and so Xizor couldn't hear a thing. This annoyed him, not knowing what was going on.
"The burden?" asked Vader, as if responding to some unheard voice. "What burden?"
Yoda lowered his head, his expression gravely sympathetic. "Time it is to tell you what Obi-wan should have revealed three years ago. Time it is to tell you of your father, Luke."
Luke leaned forward intently, and Xizor did his best to interpret the young man's emotions. Excited? Worried? Nervous? Apprehensive?
"Should I leave the two of you alone?" asked Vader.
"Stay," Yoda ordered. "Concerns you too this does."
There was another such pause, and the midget-like alien began to talk again.
"Your father Anakin Skywalker was," began Yoda. "Taken as an apprentice by Obi-wan he was."
"I know all this," Luke protested.
Xizor nearly jolted out of his seat at this, despite himself. Luke Skywalker, son of Anakin Skywalker? Vader's son! Amazing!
"Silence," Yoda instructed, then resumed. "A slave he had been to a junk dealer on Tatooine. An excellent pilot and mechanic he was, but full of fear and anger. Approved of his training I did not. He was too old, exposed he had been to dark emotions... But promised to train him Obi-wan had, and relented the Jedi Council did. Taken as Obi-wan's Padawan learner Anakin was.
"Ten years Anakin studied, growing stronger every day. But disagreed on many counts he did with the Jedi Code."
Luke nodded. Xizor was half-interested, half-bored at this story of Anakin Skywalker's young life.
"Taught you the first part of the Order I did," the alien said, almost as if reading Luke's thoughts. "But other precepts the Code includes. 'A Jedi shall not take more than one apprentice at a time' is one, though good reason there was to disregard it in your case. Another is 'a Jedi shall not know...'"
"'Shall not know discouragement... nor despair... nor love,'" Vader finished. When Luke glanced over at his fellow trainee, he was staring off into space, oddly contemplative.
"Remembered it you have, then," Yoda noted.
"Yes," he murmured, still lost in his own thoughts. "I never did like that part of the Code."
Yoda nodded and continued. "Fell in love Anakin did with a senator from Naboo. Padme Amidala her name was, and first resisted his affections she did. But succumbed to her emotions she did, and married they did. A forbidden bond... one that destroyed them both.
"Arise the fear and anger did in Anakin - the dark side. Fear that discovered their marriage might be. Anger when died in his arms his mother did. Planted in his heart hatred was - hatred toward the Jedi, toward all life, toward all that was good. Consumed by his passions he was, and in the end, destroyed his soul was by the dark side."
Another pause, this one much longer. Luke's legs looked like they were cramping from staying in one position for so long, but he hardly seemed to notice the pain. This small alien's story had commanded his entire attention.
"Hide your mother had to. And hidden you were for your own safety, Luke. For the bane of the galaxy and the Jedi your father had become."
The truth was hanging right in his face, but Luke refused to accept it, to acknowledge it, until the alien's next sentence confirmed it. Xizor just knew what would happen next, thinking to himself: Here it comes...
"Darth Vader your father became."
Those five words seemed to hit Luke like a blow in the stomach. His world was spiraling rapidly out of control. Vader... he wasn't Luke's father's murderer... he was his father...
Xizor almost laughed at that moment, at that priceless look on Luke Skywalker's face. Even then, he watched the rest of this unfolding drama, which was, in his honest opinion, much better than any sleazy soap opera which anyone could find on the Holonet.
Even in this holographic recording, the entire planet seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation of his reaction. Yoda watched him carefully, gauging his response. Vader was staring at him too - no, gaping. Even with his face sheathed in steel, his shock was completely evident, mainly through his body language.
Xizor was good at this: Controlling his own visible emotions while reading those of others. He had not gotten to be the Dark Prince, Underlord of Black Sun, the largest criminal organization in the galaxy, merely on his formidable good looks. Xizor didn't truly understand the Force that sustained the Emperor and made him and his new right-hand man - Darth Kain - so powerful, except to know that it certainly worked somehow. But he did know that it was something the extinct Jedi had supposedly mastered. And now, apparently, this new player had tapped into it.
Xizor also knew that the Emperor wanted Kain to capture Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, an order which Kain had no choice but to obey. To have the former Sith and Jedi-in-training - father and son respectively - delivered to the Emperor alive, to be converted.
"No," Vader finally managed in a desperate whisper. "It's not true. It's impossible!"
"Both of you your feelings search," Yoda replied. "Know it to be true you do."
Luke looked as if he wanted to scream or destroy something - or someone.
Then he stood abruptly. "I'm going for a walk."
"Luke..." Yoda began.
He didn't wait for the rest of it but simply walked away. Vader shouted something at his back, but he ignored it.
...And as Luke exited the clearing, the recording ended.
This was most interesting. Most interesting indeed.
The Dark Prince smiled. He called in his next client with whom he had an appointment, to conduct the business at hand... but he would not forget the name Luke Skywalker.
A/N: Well, I kind of had to splice together and then tweak certain parts of Shadows of the Empire and "Experience" to pull this off, but overall I think it went well.
Originally, I had the idea of making an AU of an AU, where Xizor becomes the next Sith instead of Boba Fett (maybe with a name like "Darth Sinist"?), but both Kenya Starflight and I agreed that a simple AU twist of SotE to suit the "Reborn" cycle would have been enough. Besides, the interactions between Xizor and Kain should work to our advantage in writing this...
As for the quote by Carrie Fisher... it's one I found not too long ago in this book I have, "Words of Wisdom," by Mick Farren. I also thought this was kind of fitting, not to mention downright /ironic/, considering it's resentment towards Vader which is what makes Leia act the way she does towards him in "Innocence." Come to think of it, it can also be made to suit Xizor in this story, given his desire for vengeance (hence this story's title).
So, obviously, up next is the official first chapter of "Vengeance"... -Quillian
SPECIAL DISCLAIMER: The "Reborn" cycle is an amazing collection of AU stories by Kenya Starflight; if you read that first, then this should make more sense.
/IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:/ Due to concerns, I am now emulating Kenya Starflight's writing strategy of glossing over parts of canon that go unaffected by the AU circumstances of the story and thus stay the same. I am not directly copying passages of things that stay the same in the Shadows of the Empire novel. Hopefully now I've struck a balance in how much in the fic comes from the book itself, so that those who haven't read SotE have a good idea of what's going on, and those who have read it won't be bored by it. If anyone wants to read for themselves exactly what happens in canon, I recommend that they hunt down their own copies of SotE, both of which are far from being rare or expensive. So, from now on, I will put in notes saying which passages may come directly from the book.
SUMMARY: After reading Kenya Starflight's "Reborn" cycle, I got the idea in my head for an AU version of the Star Wars cult classic novel, Shadows of the Empire/, which takes place between Episodes V and VI. So, hopefully this answers the question I posed: /How would the mighty Prince Xizor fit into all of this?
RATING: PG-13 (T) for violence and some sensuality, but that's much later on. (I'd have rated this PG, but I just wanted to play it safe.)
WARNING: Spoilers for "Recompense" by Kenya Starflight! Read her entire "Reborn" cycle first BEFORE moving onto this story!
NOTE: The prologue essentially splices together an important scene from Chapter 7 of "Experience" along with some of Xizor's thoughts, feelings and ideas from the prologue of SotE. (PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN EDITED SINCE THE FIRST TIME IT WAS POSTED.)
/Vengeance/
By Quillian
Co-written with Kenya Starflight
Dedicated to Kenya Starflight.
"Face it, if crime did not pay, there would be very few criminals." -Laughton Lewis Burdock
"Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." -Carrie Fisher
Prologue
This had better be good, Xizor thought to himself. I can think of more than a dozen different things I could be doing right about now.
Xizor was sitting at his desk in his office, waiting as a holo recording started up. Normally, he would be holding appointments with clients right about now, but since this "urgent" thing had just come in from one of his spies, he had to do with this first.
The holo expanded to show an image of a murky swamp environment, in a clearing where four figures were, next to a pair of starfighters - one was a human, a young adult male, from the looks of it, and with a boyish face.
The second figure was a blue and silver Astromech droid, its domed head turning left and right as it looked around.
The third figure was a diminutive little being, dressed in worn tan robes; this small being which would have barely come level with the human's knees, had the said human been standing; his skin was a wrinkled pale grin, there wisps of white hair on the top of his head flanked by enormous triangular ears, and with one of his clawed, four-fingered hands holding a gimer-stick cane which he rested on.
But the fourth and final figure was what really got Xizor's attention. A humanoid biped dressed in gray robes, but with his face hidden under a jet-black full helmet and breathing mask.
Darth Vader.
A former Sith warlord, right hand to the Emperor himself... now a Rebel pilot suffering from amnesia, fighting those he had previously served and commanded.
Now here he was, drinking something, possibly tea, with a Rebel and a galaxy-knows-what kind of alien.
Pitiful, really.
If Xizor could have hurled a power bolt through space and time, he would have done it without blinking. Wishful thinking: Vader was too powerful to attack directly. Even though he was now a Rebel, lots of people claimed that he had just been hard to kill as a Rebel as when he was an Imperial.
Xizor had sent one of his spies to observe the short-lived Rebel base on Hoth, and to follow Vader's movements. Apparently, Vader had come here, to this planet.
"It's been a long day, hasn't it?" the young man asked rhetorically.
"No longer than usual," the small alien replied. Xizor checked the notes which came with the report - if he was correct, this was Jedi Master Yoda, who had escaped the Jedi's downfall decades ago, had lived for centuries and just still wasn't dead yet. Interesting...
The young man - a boy, really - grinned. "I guess I should rephrase that. It's been an eventful day."
"Indeed. Come far you two have. Learned much you have. But Jedi you are not yet."
Xizor ignored Yoda's odd, inverted way of talking and focused more on the conversation, waiting for what was so "urgent" about this.
The boy drained his cup and tossed it back on the tray, looking tired. The alien then asked, "Why wish you to become Jedi?"
Vader chuckled. "Now he asks - ow!"
"Respect your master, you should," Yoda chided, lifting his cane as if to rap Vader's hand again. But he put it away and waited an answer.
"I know I was once a Jedi," Vader replied. His electronic bass voice no longer carried the sort of malice which countless people had heard it with before, but now sounded almost... casual. "And I know I betrayed the Order. It is my hope that I can do penance of a sort by helping resurrect the Order."
Xizor already knew that long ago, Vader's name had been Skywalker. Xizor would have also rolled his eyes at the last statement - but he didn't. Even here, in private and with no one to watch him, he practiced not allowing any sign of exasperation or disbelief on his imperturbable features. The Falleen did not allow their emotions to arise and be obvious to others as so many inferior species allowed themselves to do. The Falleen were a scaled, coolly calculating reptilian species, not a wild, furred mammalian species. This was a better, safer advantage the Falleen had.
Yoda nodded in response to Vader. "And you, Luke?"
The young man - Luke - settled back into a sitting position. "I suppose because of my father. I never knew him. He's always been... I don't know... an enigma. A mystery. But I still feel a kind of bond with him, as if he's never actually left my side. And I'd like to follow in his footsteps."
Yoda glanced up sharply. "And what footsteps would those be?" he demanded just as sharply.
"My father was a Jedi," he replied, wondering why his remark had stunned their master so. "I want to be a Jedi, like he was. I want to follow a noble cause like his - a cause he died for."
Things were clicking and coming together in Xizor's mind as he watched this, remembering odd facts here and there...
There was a dead-serious look in the Jedi Master's eyes now. "And what know you of your father's fate?"
"What are you getting at, Master?" asked Luke.
"I betrayed and murdered his father," Vader answered for him. "But he has forgiven me. And though I do not remember committing the deed, I hope to repent of it by serving the Order."
"Hmph," Yoda snorted. "Told you this who did?"
"Obi-wan," Luke replied. "Why?"
Obi-wan? That was a name which Xizor knew. He was along the last of the Jedi Knights, a general... but he had been dead for decades, hadn't he?
Apparently, Xizor's information was wrong if Obi-wan was still around to talk to this young man. His agents were going to be sorry.
Even as Xizor took in the image of this strange little alien get-together, inside the luxury of his own palace on Coruscant, he also made a mental note to himself: Somebody's head would roll for the failure to make him aware of all this. After all, knowledge was power, and thus, lack of knowledge was weakness. This was something he would not permit.
"Told you the truth from a certain point of view he did," the alien replied, glowering upward as if addressing the cosmic ethers. "Always telling things from a certain point of view he was. Knew he did that his responsibility it was to tell you the truth..."
Here, there was a pause as though some voice were speaking to them, not verbally, but mentally, and so Xizor couldn't hear a thing. This annoyed him, not knowing what was going on.
"The burden?" asked Vader, as if responding to some unheard voice. "What burden?"
Yoda lowered his head, his expression gravely sympathetic. "Time it is to tell you what Obi-wan should have revealed three years ago. Time it is to tell you of your father, Luke."
Luke leaned forward intently, and Xizor did his best to interpret the young man's emotions. Excited? Worried? Nervous? Apprehensive?
"Should I leave the two of you alone?" asked Vader.
"Stay," Yoda ordered. "Concerns you too this does."
There was another such pause, and the midget-like alien began to talk again.
"Your father Anakin Skywalker was," began Yoda. "Taken as an apprentice by Obi-wan he was."
"I know all this," Luke protested.
Xizor nearly jolted out of his seat at this, despite himself. Luke Skywalker, son of Anakin Skywalker? Vader's son! Amazing!
"Silence," Yoda instructed, then resumed. "A slave he had been to a junk dealer on Tatooine. An excellent pilot and mechanic he was, but full of fear and anger. Approved of his training I did not. He was too old, exposed he had been to dark emotions... But promised to train him Obi-wan had, and relented the Jedi Council did. Taken as Obi-wan's Padawan learner Anakin was.
"Ten years Anakin studied, growing stronger every day. But disagreed on many counts he did with the Jedi Code."
Luke nodded. Xizor was half-interested, half-bored at this story of Anakin Skywalker's young life.
"Taught you the first part of the Order I did," the alien said, almost as if reading Luke's thoughts. "But other precepts the Code includes. 'A Jedi shall not take more than one apprentice at a time' is one, though good reason there was to disregard it in your case. Another is 'a Jedi shall not know...'"
"'Shall not know discouragement... nor despair... nor love,'" Vader finished. When Luke glanced over at his fellow trainee, he was staring off into space, oddly contemplative.
"Remembered it you have, then," Yoda noted.
"Yes," he murmured, still lost in his own thoughts. "I never did like that part of the Code."
Yoda nodded and continued. "Fell in love Anakin did with a senator from Naboo. Padme Amidala her name was, and first resisted his affections she did. But succumbed to her emotions she did, and married they did. A forbidden bond... one that destroyed them both.
"Arise the fear and anger did in Anakin - the dark side. Fear that discovered their marriage might be. Anger when died in his arms his mother did. Planted in his heart hatred was - hatred toward the Jedi, toward all life, toward all that was good. Consumed by his passions he was, and in the end, destroyed his soul was by the dark side."
Another pause, this one much longer. Luke's legs looked like they were cramping from staying in one position for so long, but he hardly seemed to notice the pain. This small alien's story had commanded his entire attention.
"Hide your mother had to. And hidden you were for your own safety, Luke. For the bane of the galaxy and the Jedi your father had become."
The truth was hanging right in his face, but Luke refused to accept it, to acknowledge it, until the alien's next sentence confirmed it. Xizor just knew what would happen next, thinking to himself: Here it comes...
"Darth Vader your father became."
Those five words seemed to hit Luke like a blow in the stomach. His world was spiraling rapidly out of control. Vader... he wasn't Luke's father's murderer... he was his father...
Xizor almost laughed at that moment, at that priceless look on Luke Skywalker's face. Even then, he watched the rest of this unfolding drama, which was, in his honest opinion, much better than any sleazy soap opera which anyone could find on the Holonet.
Even in this holographic recording, the entire planet seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation of his reaction. Yoda watched him carefully, gauging his response. Vader was staring at him too - no, gaping. Even with his face sheathed in steel, his shock was completely evident, mainly through his body language.
Xizor was good at this: Controlling his own visible emotions while reading those of others. He had not gotten to be the Dark Prince, Underlord of Black Sun, the largest criminal organization in the galaxy, merely on his formidable good looks. Xizor didn't truly understand the Force that sustained the Emperor and made him and his new right-hand man - Darth Kain - so powerful, except to know that it certainly worked somehow. But he did know that it was something the extinct Jedi had supposedly mastered. And now, apparently, this new player had tapped into it.
Xizor also knew that the Emperor wanted Kain to capture Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, an order which Kain had no choice but to obey. To have the former Sith and Jedi-in-training - father and son respectively - delivered to the Emperor alive, to be converted.
"No," Vader finally managed in a desperate whisper. "It's not true. It's impossible!"
"Both of you your feelings search," Yoda replied. "Know it to be true you do."
Luke looked as if he wanted to scream or destroy something - or someone.
Then he stood abruptly. "I'm going for a walk."
"Luke..." Yoda began.
He didn't wait for the rest of it but simply walked away. Vader shouted something at his back, but he ignored it.
...And as Luke exited the clearing, the recording ended.
This was most interesting. Most interesting indeed.
The Dark Prince smiled. He called in his next client with whom he had an appointment, to conduct the business at hand... but he would not forget the name Luke Skywalker.
A/N: Well, I kind of had to splice together and then tweak certain parts of Shadows of the Empire and "Experience" to pull this off, but overall I think it went well.
Originally, I had the idea of making an AU of an AU, where Xizor becomes the next Sith instead of Boba Fett (maybe with a name like "Darth Sinist"?), but both Kenya Starflight and I agreed that a simple AU twist of SotE to suit the "Reborn" cycle would have been enough. Besides, the interactions between Xizor and Kain should work to our advantage in writing this...
As for the quote by Carrie Fisher... it's one I found not too long ago in this book I have, "Words of Wisdom," by Mick Farren. I also thought this was kind of fitting, not to mention downright /ironic/, considering it's resentment towards Vader which is what makes Leia act the way she does towards him in "Innocence." Come to think of it, it can also be made to suit Xizor in this story, given his desire for vengeance (hence this story's title).
So, obviously, up next is the official first chapter of "Vengeance"... -Quillian
Sign up to rate and review this story