Old Soldiers Never Die...

[Mark S]

Here's a little something that's been taking up space in my brain for a while. Thought I'd throw it into the mix and see if any damage was done.

Guess the other movie that I'm paying tribute to and win the silver tuna. It shouldn't be hard.


Old Soldiers Never Die...


By: Mark Shantz


Creak, pop, crack. The aging man wasn't sure whether the noise came from the stairs he now descended or his aching joints. Either way, it was a sign of the age of things around here. Him and the house.

They were greying, him and the house. A little the worse for wear but still in good enough shape to keep standing. Even if it was under protest sometimes.

He reached the bottom of the well worn staircase, his hand still gripping the polished black wood of the railing. It was a strong hand for its age. A hand that had enjoyed an iron grasp from an early age. There were more wrinkles but it was as steady as ever. Well, for the most part.

Just like this home of his. It shook a little when a storm hit hard, when there was a powerful wind, but hadn't fallen yet, no matter what had come at it. The old place may have been built from a plan that had been copied and modified millions of times over, but it was built to last. He liked to think that not even a Sith Lord could knock it down.

"Are you finally up my ‘Little Treasure'?" The voice came from down the hall and back in the simple kitchen. It didn't have all of the fancy gadgets of some places but they didn't need them. He had had his fill of fancy gadgets in his day.

"Well you know these old bones, darlin'," he called back with a slight laugh. "Takes a while longer to get the engines prepped and ready these days."

The laugh that issued from behind the time rounded corner warmed his heart. Ten years ago he wouldn't have thought that possible. Ten years ago his own laugh would have sounded as natural as a moo from a reptile. He thanked her every day for that.

When she came around that corner the man's dark eyes, still as bright and sharp as ever, took her in with a light that not even an infinite amount of years could dim. Like the edge of the corner, she was dulling around the curves but the original shape, the figure, was still there. Her face as well, not nearly as crevassed as his, still showed the youth that once was. His hand absently lifted to scratched at a particularly long scar crossing his cheek.

Her hands, still wet from the sink, cupped his face tenderly and began to smooth the deep frown lines that warred there. He had been working on them for too long to tell but she didn't care. She vowed to see the end of them, even if it meant her own lines, laugh lines, increased ten fold.

"Come on and have some breakfast with me before I have to go," she said as she kissed him. "I have a class in an hour."

"You and your classes," he replied as he followed her to the solid wood table. "What do you need with those classes? It's shaping up to be a beautiful day. Why don't you stay here and spend it with me?"

The woman brushed a stray white hair from her forehead and looked at this man she had taken for her own. How different he was now. She could tell in his voice. It had been so harsh and gruff when they had first met. Everything had been either an order or a challenge. Now he actually spoke. Now he actually spoke about beautiful days.

"I'm the Professor, my Little Treasure," she returned playfully. "There isn't a class without me."

"Who needs to learn about a bunch of dead languages anyway. There are too many live ones in this galaxy to remember as it is."

"Well I thank you for your kind views of my life's work but it is mine. You may want to be retired but I don't." The woman wasn't angry. She knew how he felt about her. He was a man of very few words and words were her entire life. Somewhere in the middle they clicked.

The couple finished their meal in silence, the way he liked it, and headed for the hand-crafted, antique door. They said a final goodbye for the day on the shaded front porch and the old man watched the woman who had changed his life, saved his soul, walk off into the bustle of the rest of the world.

"Goodby, Little Treasure," she called before disappearing all together.

"Damn that woman and her brain," he said to himself for the thousandth time.

The man's day was spent working among the dirt and insects of his garden. It had turned into such a massive undertaking that it now encompassed most of the front and back of the house, the old grey building standing watch over all. Everything was growing, from simple flowers and shrubs, to vegetables and melons. Once he had started with the thing, he just didn't know how to stop. Somehow he needed this garden. Needed to help in the life it harboured.

Near late afternoon, when the knees and elbows were starting to protest their fiercest, the old man lifted himself out of his growth and began half-heartedly brushing the dirt off. Let it stay, he thought. It was good. It was clean. A hell of a lot cleaner than some of the things he had been drenched with in his life.

Pulling down one of the fruits of his labour from a sprawling tree that was claiming one corner of the yard for its own, the old man drew a shining blade from its place on his belt. He regarded the tool as he made his way to the front of the house. How sharp it had stayed through all these years. How the metal had never lost its luster even through all he had put it through.

When he had made it back to the front porch he sat with a grunt and went about slicing into his new life with his old. Each ripe piece of fruit dribbled its juice over his hands, staining them and washing rivulets of dust away and down his arms.

It had been a good day, he thought as he sat and watched the world of his tiny empire. But the peace was broken by the rattle of someone carelessly dragging a stick along the picket fence that bordered the yard just beyond the flowering hedges. That someone presented themselves at his gate in the form of a young human man.

He was nothing special to behold, this young man. Smallish, well kept, fit build and short cropped hair dyed blue to match his eyes. It was something young people were doing to stand out. But safely. They only wanted to be different like everybody else.

The newcomer wore standard, functional boots, dusty black pants, a gun belt strapped on, looked like a nice piece too, and a well worn, light flak vest over a grey short sleeved shirt. It was all the makings of a good little merc. In that business however, clothes did not make the man.

"What can I do for you, Son," the old man asked, tossing the core of his fruit away as the visitor mirrored the action with the stick he had been holding.

A few seconds elapsed before there was any response. The younger man just stood there, taking in the elder as if appraising a piece of jewellery. When he finally spoke it was as if stating a fact he had learned as a child.

"You're him, aren't you." The visitor took a few steps forward, stopped and folded his arms across his chest.

The old man leaned casually back in his chair and went about looking for a relatively clean spot on his clothes with which to clean his knife. "You think so," he asked, bringing one eye up to keep track of the boy.

With a few more steps the answer came. "Yeah, It's you. I've been looking for you for a long time. Do you know that?"

The old man's full attention was now on the younger. He slowly turned the knife in his hand back and forth, unconsciously finding the best angle to catch the light of the sun.

"Are you sure?" The words actually had the sound of a genuine question.

A slight smile crossed the young man's lips. "I've seen enough burned out TKs in my search to recognize the real thing when I see it. It's you."

"Fair enough," the elder replied with a nod. "Though I doubt the gentlemen who you're referring to would take kindly to the way that you're referring to them. But that leads us back to my original question, what can I do for you?"

"My father was a bounty hunter, Sami Lethwich," the kid began.

"Sammy Vice was your dad?"

"Yeah," the young man smiled proudly. "They called him that ‘cause his cybernetic arms had a grip like a vice."

The man on the porch allowed a short, harsh laugh to escape as he shook his head. It sounded as if it hurt to make the noise now. "Who told you that? Did your dad say that? He was called Sammy Vice, Son, because he had every addiction known to sentient beings and even some he made up himself."

He looked at the kid again and let out another chuckle. This time it didn't sound so bad. "Yeah, I guess I can see the resemblance, around the mouth and the ears. I knew your father, Boy. He was a damn good hunter but I hope you learned your business sense from your mom."

The young Lethwich looked slightly taken aback by the recounting of his father and was slower when he began again.

"Anyway," he said, crossing the final distance to the weathered railing of the porch. "I'm a bounty hunter too."

"I see," the old man cut in, nonchalantly rotating his blade to hold it by the edge. "So you're here to make a name for yourself. I'll tell you, Kid, you don't get much of a name from shooting an old man on his deck."

"No, no," the visitor denied. "That's not it. My dad told me that if I wanted to learn from the best that I should find you."

"Is that right."

"Yeah. He said that you were the meanest, roughest, cold blooded, soulless, son of a bitch to ever pick up a blaster and that you weren't a live today for lack of being in a tight spot or two. I've heard others tell the same story. I know all about you. And now I've finally found you."

"So what do you think?"

"I see a little old man with a pot belly and skin like abused leather."

"I never really was very tall," the old man shrugged. "That's the thing about legends, Son. You never want to meat one face to face. One way or another, you always end up worse off."

"That doesn't matter," Lethwich returned. "You're the real deal, you're the man himself. I want you to teach me everything that you know. I was good enough as it is to find you, that should be worth something."

"That it is, Kid, that it is." His chair creaked as the retired legend shifted position and leaned forward. "How old are you anyway?"

"Twenty years."

"Twenty years," he repeated. It was more to himself than anything. "You ever killed anyone?"

"Not yet," Lethwich answered truthfully, somewhat on the defensive. "But I will, make no mistake."

"The best thing I can tell you, Son," the old man sighed, "is to go home and take up farming. Create something with your life."

"That's not going to happen," came the kurt reply.

"Look, Kid," he continued. "I started killing when I was ten years old and I've wasted my entire life with blood on my hands. I'm telling you, it's a shitty life. Whatever hole you're trying to fill being a hunter, whatever revenge you think you need, you're never going to fill it, it's never going to go away. I tried my whole life and didn't get anywhere until I started creating instead of destroying.

"It's real easy killing someone, Son. All you have to do is squeeze a trigger. It's living that's the hard part. It's going on day after day with nothing to show for your life but a pile of money and a pool of blood. And I'll tell you right now, the money doesn't last.

"And then there's the other side of things. Did you thing about that? You've never stared down the barrel of a blaster, have you? Not really. You don't know the feeling of having someone a meter and a half away from you who wants nothing more than to see your lower intestine carpeting the ground, to see you bleeding in pain at his feet. No one ever thinks about what that's like, seeing your partners die, your family die. No one thinks about how it feels to be in the belly of the beast, surrounded by darkness and pain."

The old man seemed to drift into his past for a moment, remembering something. "You will discover a new level of pain and suffering as you are slowly digested over a thousand years..."

"Go home, Kid," he said as he came back to reality. "Find a good woman and make yourself a family. Don't go running around the galaxy trying to prove yourself."

"I take it you're not going to help me than?" Lethwich crossed his arms again and stared annoyed and impatient at the man before him. Something in the older man's dark eyes, a self assurance, prevented him from direct eye contact for long.

"I though I was," the elder answered, still absent-mindedly fingering his blade. "Go home, tell everyone that you found me. That you found my tombstone. That's not my life anymore, Son, and I want no part of it. That man you came looking for doesn't exist."

The young man stood silent for a long time, the increasing wind turning his blue eyes to slits but having no power over his hair. "All right," he finally said. "You seem to be more of a ghost of who I was looking for anyway."

He turned to leave but turned back as he walked. "Can't you give me any tips? Something I can tell people I was taught by a legend?"

The old man smiled at the persistence and answered in a voice that seemed to well up from out of the past. "Three things, Kid. Treat your weapons better than you treat yourself, when you're taking a target in live, never listen to a word it says, and when you're working for a Hutt, always have a backup plan."

Young Lethwich seemed visibly chilled at the transformation that had occurred in the wrinkled old man on the weathered porch. He nodded, not knowing whether to smile or draw his weapon. In the end he could do neither as he held his breath and could only exhale once he was back on the street and away.

The old man watched the boy go before releasing a terrible fit of hacking coughs. When he had regained himself he sheathed his knife and listened peacefully to the wind in the trees. He didn't have to wait long for his wife to come through the gate and meet him where he sat.

"Who was that I saw coming out of the yard," she asked as he stood to kiss her.

"Oh," he replied, opening the door for her, his voice now softer but as gravelly as it would always be. "Just some kid looking for someone who doesn't live here anymore."

"Well," she said as she put down her books and removed her shoes. "Why don't you come in and get out of all that dirt, Little Treasure."

"You know, Rellea," he sighed. "I could have spent the rest of my days quite happy without ever knowing the translation of my name!"

"Oh, Boba," she sighed. "You know you love it."

[Kelly Antilles]

Wow... what description. I love it.

I also find your sig quite entertaining as well.

[Kuja]

Sweet. I got the impression that it was either Dengar or Boba. Cool story.

[willburns84]

Good story. Reminds me a lot of "Unforgiven." The old bounty hunter / outlaw who wants to live in peace and just be left alone.

[Mark S]

Good story. Reminds me a lot of "Unforgiven." The old bounty hunter / outlaw who wants to live in peace and just be left alone.

That's right! Unforgiven was the movie I was tributing in this little Star Wars fanfic. You win the Silver Tuna! To claim your prize simply go down to your local grocery store, head for the fish aisle/department, and ask for some tuna. You will have to pay a slight... uh... handling fee but you'll walk away with the knowledge that your a winner! (And probably a few stray cats as well.)