Title: Welcome to Reality, part 1
Author: Per’agana (peragana@yahoo.com)
ARCHIVE NOTE: This is a spinoff to Ziggy’s “Delusions
and Reality.” Please link to her
story. Thanks! :)
Category: Drama, romance
Characters: Maul and I
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Ziggy offed Maul in her story and forgot
about the tender feelings of us Sith
Chicks, so she’s kindly giving me an opportunity to
save His Horniness in this fic. :)
Disclaimer: Meesa no own Maul or the universe in which
he lives. Don’t sue me, I only
write for love and lust– I’m not making any money off
this gig!

Feedback: please!
*******************************

I am a pessimist. It’s true, I freely admit it. It’s
done little but get me into trouble in life. It
has made it perfectly certain that I will always be
the lone realist in any given bunch of
dreamers. The optimists around me drift ever higher
off the ground. Until I pull them
back to Earth, of course, with a hard *bump* and a big
*thud*. So perhaps this is why I
found myself more than a little astonished that for
once in my life, my pessimism could
actually do me some good. At least, I reasoned, it was
probably the only way I could
save Darth Maul’s life.

Which is basically the only goal that’s mattered to me
since the day I ended up in the
Star Wars universe. I fantasized about it, I wrote
about it, I joined groups of other
people who fantasized about it and wrote about it.
Little did I suspect I’d actually get to
*live* it. But sometimes dreams do come true, even to
pessimists.

My world dissolved while I was driving home from work.
Typically stultifying suburban
NoVA commute, which meant that I sat in an endless
stream of traffic watching my Sith
Infiltrator dangler bob up and down while trying to
explain to myself why it takes over
half an hour to drive the ten miles to my house. I
finally broke free of the worst of the
traffic sludge just north of Rt. 50, and managed to
work the speedometer up to about 40
when it happened. Suddenly, I was no longer sitting in
my J30, and more to the point,
there was suddenly traffic not only to either side,
but also ABOVE and BELOW me. And
it was moving really, really fast.

Panic would have been the first thing on my mind, but
my fellow drivers had other
ideas. I found my hand wrapped around a steering
stick, and I used it as best I could to
get around the cherry-red vehicle whose ass loomed
rather large in front of my
bubbledome windshield. I finally spotted what I was
looking for– a hole in traffic.
Thankfully, the accelerator on whatever the hell I was
driving was fairly easy to find. I
punched it and went straight for the open space.

And ran straight into a tractor beam. Which, in
retrospect, I am *very* glad for because
it likely saved my life. Driving in DC might be pretty
good preparation, but I’m hardly
deluded enough to think I could drive an aircar on
Coruscant without training! The
tractor beam belonged to the Jedi Temple, and it was
manned by a grim, unsmiling
man who helped me out of the vehicle before wondering
aloud what in the desolate
wastes of Tatooine I was doing breaking out of
autopilot in my aircar, and furthermore,
what I was doing driving an aircar that belonged to,
of all things, the Jedi Temple.

I looked at him for a long moment as I strived to put
together a coherent answer, then I
saved us all the trouble. I passed out cold in front
of him.

When I came to, I found out that not only had I
somehow been transported from Earth
into a world that I had heretofore considered pure
fiction, so had a group of my fellow
listsibs from Sith Chicks. And it all, Mr. Grim told
me, seemed to revolve around a
woman named “Selah.”

When I heard this, I burst into hysterical laughter.
Which the beleagured Mr. Grim
seemed to think was much, much worse than fainting
into his burly arms. He called for
reinforcements. I was still sitting on the floor
convulsed in a helpless, crying giggle fit
when I looked up (and up, and *up*) into the bearded
face of Qui-Gon Jinn. “Oh, shit!” I
squeaked out between frenzied gasps for air.

Qui-Gon assessed the situation and closed his eyes
softly. What the hell? Here I am
sucking on air like a beached salmon, and he chooses
now to fucking *meditate*?
Which is about when I realized that if I really *were*
desperately gasping for air, I
wouldn’t be able to think as coherently as this. In
other words, his Force-healing was
working. Duh. I suddenly felt like utter pond sludge.
And that made me angry again–
after all, I’d barely been 10 minutes around the Jedi
and I already felt guilty and
ashamed. These people are worse than the Catholic
Church and my mother combined!

And then it hit me with a dull, sinking thud. The
Catholic Church was a pretty damn
good metaphor, because I was a heretic Sith who just
realized she was sitting in the
headquarters of Inquisition Central. This was *not*
good. That thought led me to an
even more undesirable one. Clearly Ziggy was the nexus
that pulled her fellow Sith
Chicks here, which meant that her fantasy was driving
things, not mine. The fact that
we were here at all probably made this an “alternate
universe,” so seeing Qui-Gon alive
was no guarantee that the one that mattered most to me
was also still alive.

I had to know. I had no clue how I was going to face
*anything* if it turned out that I’d
entered my ultimate fantasy world just a little too
late. I pondered for a second how to
ask this without giving any information away. “So,
have you been to Naboo lately?” I
asked in a very bad attempt to sound nonchalant.

His brows knitted together in confusion. “No, why?”

I did my best not to show it, but I almost passed out
again from relief. The events in
TPM hadn’t happened yet. “No matter... So, I hear
you’re suddenly stuck with a whole
passel of Earth girls!” I said brightly.

He bypassed my question. Too bad, I could almost hear
him echoing Captain Kirk that
however many Sith Chicks were here “does not
constitute a swarm,” or in our case, a
passel. “You are also one of these “Sith” chicks?” he
asked, the emphasis on the first
word leaving little doubt what he thought of *that.*

I decided not to touch it, that it would be safer that
way. “Yes, I’m on the list with Selah.
She thinks very highly of you, you know.” I said
carefully.

“I gathered that,” he said wryly. Uh-oh, he’d probably
read her fic. Which reminded
me... I looked around for my briefcase. Thankfully, it
was still sitting in the aircar. I
groped through my mind trying to remember what I had
in there at the moment, whether
there was anything (other than some fic) that I had to
worry about the Jedi seeing. Oh,
*shit*, I thought. The Darth Maul journal. There was
no *way* I would let the Jedi get
their paws on *that!* Unless, of course, they had
already looked through my things, but
even my pessimism only goes so far. Besides, if they
had, I would have expected Qui-
Gon to cut right to the chase about it.

I thought for a moment, and figured out a possible way
to finesse it. If Jedi guys were
like Earth men, that is. I feigned tiredness and
looked back up at Qui-Gon. “The ...um...
*transition* took a lot out of me. Is there somewhere
I can rest?”

He glanced back at me, distracted. I guess there were
just too many of us for him to
keep track of. “Hamar, would you show her to guest
quarters?” he asked, gesturing to
Mr. Grim. Perfect, I thought.

I followed the humorless Knight down into the temple,
and through a maze of hallways
and doors. He stopped in front of one, and keyed open
the door. The room was small,
as I’d expected, but far more airy, bright, and
comfortable than I’d pictured. Perhaps, I
mused, the Church analogy only went *so* far.

Hamar the Jedi accompanied me into the room, then
stared at my briefcase. “I need to
look through that,” he said gruffly.

“Why?” I asked, trying to sound merely curious instead
of suspicious and incriminating.

From the look he shot me, I figured I hadn’t done so
well. “We believe you and your
fellow women have important information that we need
to see,” he said vaguely, while
rummaging through the center compartment. He looked
quizzically at a paystub,
passed over my HTML tutorials without comment, and
then held up my fic disk with
something that *almost* looked like a grin. He’d hit
the mother lode, obviously. Damn
him!
     
I saw him reaching for the zipper to the back pocket,
and I stopped him. “Oh, I wouldn’t
look in there if I were you...” I tried to sound
worried, and succeeded easily, because I
truly was scared out of my wits.

“Why?”

“Weeellll....” I drawled, sounding embarassed, “that’s
where I keep my supplies for my...
well, you know, *monthly*?”

“Your *what*?”

“My menses. I have a packet of...”

He cut me off, looking red in the face. “That’s okay.
We have what we need.”

He turned and quickly scampered out of the room. I
couldn’t believe it. I had scarcely
dared to hope something like that would work on a
Jedi, but if it would, it would be on
this guy. He didn’t look like he got out much, and he
certainly didn’t seem like a hit with
the women!

I hit the button to close the door behind him, and
sagged against the wall with relief. I
grabbed my briefcase, and made sure it was still
there. I looked around again, then sat
down on the bed. I’d try to feign sleepiness with
Qui-Gon, but I was realizing quickly that
it wasn’t an act. I was exhausted. I would puzzle out
this new world tomorrow. For now,
I needed some rest.

***tbc***