Forcing himself to focus solely on work on a good day took a great deal of concentrated energy out of Kurnok Tor. He enjoyed his job; repairing old ship parts had been one of the few things that brought him a moment’s peace and joy as a child. But as was his nature, his mind tended to wander. And when you held a laser scalpel in your hand, a wandering mind often was brought back to reality by a bleeding palm or dismembered digit. On a bad day, Kurnok simply could not risk his own hands.

This was one of those days.

Raku, bless him, knew when to make himself scarce. He’d left the repair shack for a pub earlier in the evening, leaving Kurnok in relative peace until he decided to break something valuable or find a storm trooper to harass about nothing in particular. Kurnok brooded silently, his latest project abandoned and untouched, the glistening metal cooling in the Kashyykian evening air. The Twi’lek lingered beside the one clear window in his shack and stared out through the glass at the setting suns.

Two years of careful recovery and psychological reconciliation with himself, two years of carefully school apathy towards life in general, two years of bitter hatred towards that four-letter word, love, and all Ulysses Jinks had to do was stroll into his repair shack one more time to flush it all down the drain. Kurnok clenched one fist tightly and set it on the sill of the window, closing his green eyes. How he wanted to hate that good-for-nothing liar, to grab him by his soft brown hair and… and…

To keep himself from shattering the window—his only decent window—Kurnok flung his fist into part of the hull of a ship he was supposed to be repairing with a loud snarl. The metal all but crumpled beneath the force of the blow, but Kurnok did not come back from the assault unscathed. The metal had torn at his knuckles; blood ran freely from the injury, but the Twi’lek had no reason to heal it.

He picked up a piece of cloth from where it lay on one of his work benches and bound the wound tightly. He could always blame the injury on his own clumsiness, if Raku asked, which Kurnok was positive he would not do. Raku never asked questions.

He slumped onto the bench slowly and held his head in his hands. With Jinks, nothing was as it seemed. Up was down, left was right, backward was forward… The blighter could take a perfectly good situation and mold it into a catastrophe waiting to happen. Everything was "part of the bigger picture" with Jinks. He had his plan in mind and was going to follow it through to the bitter end, even if it killed him.

Kurnok made a valiant attempt at pretending not to care. It failed, just as it had for the past two years.

"All I ever wanted," he whispered hoarsely to the ground beneath his booted feet, "was him."

The door to his shack came open slowly, creaking as it swung on its rusted hinges. Kurnok shot to his feet instantly, one hand reaching for the blaster holstered at his hip. The stranger in the doorway paused and watched him warily.

"Did I come at a bad time?" he asked cautiously.

Kurnok sighed and holstered the piece, then lifted one hand to rub his eyes. "You could say that," he replied, his tone unintentionally harsh. The young man in the doorway almost looked scalded.

"If necessary, I could come back later," he offered. Kurnok noted with some curiosity that the young man cast a furtive glance over his shoulder.

"Don’t worry about it," he said dismissively and motioned the young man inside. "What can I do for you?"

The young man jumped at the invitation and hurried inside, closing the door behind him swiftly. He bolted the door, then pushed back a cloak from around his features. Shocks of ebony hair fell across crystal blue eyes, and the beginnings of a slight beard were beginning to color the young man’s face a slight hue of gray. He strode forward swiftly and leaned across the counter, primitive, desperate fear shining in his eyes.

"My name is Anakin Solo," he said. "I’ll pay you anything you want to get my mother and I out of this system."