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The marketplace is crowded. It makes between his shoulder blades itch, but he just rolls them and ignores it.
Bode steps casually, but lightly, just a few meters between his target. They don’t know he’s there – his cloak is that good, and they’re that unaware. Typical. – as they shop sound. A bag of fruits and vegetables dangling from one hand, another bag hooked on the crook of that same arm, and their free hand lifting an expertly crafted class figurine to hold up to the light.
He stops at a vendor selling shawls, body angled to make it easy to watch his target. He’s not interested, of course, but he flashes a smile at the merchant anyway and lets her talk about patterns and stitches and colors, making the appropriate potential-buyer noises. My daughter likes green. Truth. Yeah, like frogs. She really loves ‘em. Lie. Kata likes the grass-green color that used to stain her knees. Back and forth. Truth. Lie. Truth. Lie. Lie. Lie.
Until his target moves on without buying any glass figurines. Bode grimaces, makes something up about having to talk to, to his wife, and steps away. Rubbing a hand over his face, he follows. Always follows. Tracking his target from one stall to another.
He could kill them now, if he wanted. No one would know it was him. Not with his skills.
The Jedi in front of him was young when the Purge happened, just out of their padawan-ship. More of a historian than a fighter, he knows they were never on the front lines. It would be nothing to kill them now.
But Bode refrains. He’s not sure why. It wouldn’t be the first Jedi he’s killed. Won’t be the last. Maybe it’s because it’s so public. There are so many people.
There's a solution to that.
As his target passes an alleyway, Bode reaches out unobtrusively. With his hands by his sides, he curls his fingers and flicks. His target trips. Stumbles. Staggers right into the alleyway. A stuttered confusion pockmarks the Force, their shields giving way to surprise.
Bode quickly follows, and is on his target before they right themselves back up. He catches wide eyes and a young face before the Force buffers against him, trying to shove him off. But Bode is stronger, physically and in the Force, and his knife is flipping in his hands before they register him as unmovable. Before they register that they survived this long, and that survival ends today with his knife in their throat, blood spilling over his hand.
Messy. He wrinkles his nose. Damn. Usually it's cleaner than this, he must be off his game. (He must be tired. Exhausted. Three years of this. When will it end? When will it finally be too much?)
(It's already too much. A shell of his former self. But even that might be too generous.)
Bode shifts through his target's pockets, scatters their purchases on the ground. Is shocked to find a metal hilt wrapped with blue leather in their bag. Carrying it around, so naive. The kyber inside sings softly, mournfully. Bode's hand curls around it without his say-so. He should just leave it here. He's not required to bring back proof, not anymore. But the idea of leaving this lightsaber here for anyone to find, well, maybe he's not so far gone to be okay with that idea. He slips their ‘saber into his own bag.
It looks like a mugging. Bode tugs off his gloves and shoves them deep inside his bag, rolls up his sleeves and cuffs them halfway up his forearm to hide the blood.
Once he's sure none is visible, he steps out into the light, leaving the cooling body of the Jedi behind.
His presence is so small and so unobtrusive he's not even noticed until a little girl bumps into him. She blurts out a quick apology then dashes off, shouting for her friends.
Bode watches her go with a sharp, longing pain puncturing through his chest, shredding his lungs and heart and leaving him feeling hollowed out.
He goes right instead of left, finds himself at the shawl vendor again. The merchant seems genuinely delighted at his return. She presents a shawl she had dug out of her packed crates. It's green. Frog green and grass stain green with gold coiled on the seams and a fringe of it along the edges.
Bode dazedly hands over the credits, plus some, and accepts the bundled package. He holds it instead of putting it in his bag.
He doesn’t want to get blood on it.