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Lost and Found: Chapters 10-14

Submitted by Rose07 on June 17, 2005 - 11:01pm.

'Are you certain of this, Padawan Marr?'

Visas listened carefully to the voice echoing against the marble pillars and wall-length windows of the Council chambers and determined that it belonged to Master Korr. Usually she could tell from whatever direction a sound came from, or from whatever bright light she saw through the Force pulsing or moving as it spoke.

This time, however, the voice sounded as thought it were all around her, and the bright lights sat in identical chairs surrounding where she stood in the middle of the room. Clearly every Master had thought the same seven words.

'There can be no doubt, Master Korr. The visions were detailed and complete. The child is receiving images of Jedi Revan from the Unknown Regions.'

The child was receiving images, at least, Visas added to herself. In truth she had no way of knowing if the vision was an isolated incident or if they occurred with any kind of regularity. She had not seen Celyn Onasi since the little girl had broken out of the meditation in a cold sweat the night before and refused to leave, citing a fear of the long, dark walk back towards the other end of the Jedi Temple.

Visas had finally given up trying to get the child to continue seeking the vision (or at the very least return to the apprentice dormitories) and simply gone to sleep. When she had awoken, the little girl had disappeared.

'Bastila Shan has received no such visions,' Korr continued. 'She sent word from the Ilum enclave that neither she nor her Padawan have seen anything of Revan through the Force.'

'That may be, Master Korr,' Visas answered. 'But I believe the bond between genetically similar sentients; indeed, one that has given life to another, is far stronger than even the most powerful of links between Master and Padawan.'

The members of the Council nodded in agreement.

'And this vision...you say it included Revan disguising herself as a Sith?' Master Ahniuk, glowing with a pale pink light, murmured.

'Even as far as ocular drops and stimulant injections, Master Ahniuk.'

'What's that kid gone off and done now?' She heard Jolee Bindo mutter to himself from the corner.

'But no images of whatever threat Jedi Revan may be facing? No information as to her whereabouts?'

Visas shook her head, and watched the bright glow of the Council fade into a muted green as each member contemplated a course of action, mentally debated it amongst their fellow Jedi, and then finally agreed. They turned back to her, slowly growing back to their usual shine of whites and bright blues.

'You must continue to interpret these visions, Padawan Marr,' Korr said. 'You must watch with the child and help her to catch the images Jedi Revan is consciously or unconsciously sending her.'

'Tread lightly, Padawan,' Bindo added quickly. 'Don't push her too far. If Celyn's scared or uncomfortable, or the visions become graphic-'

'You cannot spare the child from the truth of her mother's past, Master Bindo,' Ahniuk interrupted sharply.

'Some of this may be too intense for Celyn, Ahniuk,' Bindo said, exasperated. 'The girl's only five or six- she's never had any training; she barely even knows she has the Force. Are we going to torment a child just to collect the tears?'

'Finding out what Revan has learned is key, Master Bindo. Especially if--'

The Council grew silent, but Visas could hear them no matter how quietly they whispered it in their minds:

If Revan is consumed by it. If Revan does not return. If Revan dies fighting this Sith threat.

'You are dismissed, Padawan Marr. May the Force be with you.'

Visas exited the Council chambers and continued towards the large marble staircases of the Temple, the ones that led to the lower level balconies, training rooms, and dormitories. The dormitories for the youngest apprentices; the ones recently separated from their families and just beginning their training, was located down a hall populated with quarters for residing Masters. It was as if they wanted to be close by to protect the Order's most precious resource since the assassinations had begun and ended.

Visas concentrated on that bright white glow she had seen underneath her workbench, trying to find Celyn Onasi. Her efforts made a long white line curl out from one of the larger training rooms and fall at her feet; the Force showing her a path to the daughter of Revan and Admiral Onasi.

The child sat in the sunlight that pored through the windows of the room. The outline of her figure came to Visas first in shapes and then in defined edges. Her head looked particularly lumpy and the Miraluka surmised that it was the child's hair, mussed and matted up against her head. Visas wondered if she had brushed it at all since rolling out of whatever bed she had been given in the apprentice dormitories.

Next to her sat another child apprentice, a girl with her legs crossed and her eyes squinted shut. A datapad wobbled a few centimeters off the ground in front of the pair, and Celyn leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and her hands on her chin.

'You have to have the Force,' the apprentice said.

'I do have the Force,' Celyn Onasi replied defensively. Visas watched the child bite her lip and poke the datapad with one finger. It shook a little but righted itself.

'Dustil does stuff like that sometimes,' Revan's daughter offered, smiling to herself. 'He holds things above my head so I can't reach them, or makes them chase me--'

The child stopped, noticing Visas standing in the doorway.

'Go away,' Celyn muttered, snatching the datapad out of the air and inspecting it as if to try and discover the secret of making it float. The young apprentice sitting next to her looked uncomfortable hearing the little girl's hostility towards the Miraluka.

Visas walked down the few steps into the room, her robes sliding across the marble floor until she was standing over the two children. The apprentice sat up straighter in an effort to impress her. Visas gave the child a reassuring smile.

'The Force has chosen to work through you, Celyn,' the Miraluka said firmly. 'The Jedi Council needs your help-'

'No. I don't want to do it anymore.'

'Don't you want to see your mother?' Visas appealed. Celyn Onasi looked up and gave her a withering stare.

'I don't want to see Mommy like that,' she said, beginning loudly and trailing off into a whisper. 'It's scary.'

'There's no need to be afraid. I'll help you-'

'Father doesn't think you should believe Jedi,' the little girl interrupted, turning the datapad over in her hands. 'Father thinks they lie to get people to do what they want. Father wishes he didn't have to leave me here because he doesn't like Jedi.'

The child apprentice looked mortified, and she sat perfectly still with her legs crossed, staring at Celyn Onasi as if she had sprouted a second head.

Visas frowned, gazing at the little girl. Celyn gave no reaction as to whether she felt the Miraluka's stare or not. She continued to poke at the corners and lines of the datapad, tilting her head from side to side.

When she started to hum an off-key tune to herself, Visas turned and left the room. It wasn't five seconds after she had rounded the corner that she heard the clapping of quick footsteps racing to catch up to her; the glow of a white light in the back of her vision coming closer. She turned around.

Celyn Onasi stopped in front of her. Her brown eyes were hesitant and she stared up at the Miraluka.

'Father thinks that in his head, but Mommy's a Jedi and Dustil's a Jedi and he loves them,' she said softly, and Visas could feel the child's conflict between wanting to emulate her father and the illogical nature of his feelings.

'I miss Mommy,' the little girl finally said in a big sigh. 'Why is she doing that? Why does she look scary?'

'I do not know, Celyn,' Visas murmured. 'But if we look, we may discover the answer together.'

Celyn bit her lip, still doubtful.

'You'll be with me the whole time?'

'The whole time,' Visas repeated. The child straightened up. She heaved her shoulders in one deep breath and nodded her head.

Visas led the little girl down the hallway towards one of the empty meditation rooms; small and sparse, usually used for Master and Padawan exercises.

'Tova came to see me today,' Celyn murmured. 'To make sure I was okay. She's Dustil's girlfriend.'

'Revan has apparently passed down her interpretation of the Jedi Code to her Padawan,' Visas commented. The little girl wrinkled up her nose.

'What's the Jedi Code?'

For a moment, Visas considered explaining to the child but decided it would take too long. And she would probably not welcome the knowledge that her mere existence defies the Order's most basic tenets.

'I like Tova,' Celyn continued, apparently unconcerned with whether Visas wanted to hear or not. 'She's really smart. She's on holovids a lot. She figured out Mommy's real name all by herself.'

'And this...companion of Dustil's...she is not displeased that his Master is Revan?' Visas said, surprised.

'She doesn't tell Dustil she knows,' the child added. 'Tova's afraid he'll only be nice to her because she knows and not because he loves her. She's mad at him sometimes because he didn't tell her.'

The Miraluka seated herself on one of the flat cushions that sat in the center of the room. Celyn followed, her eyes roaming around the room's dim lighting and muted colors.

'What you taught me helped,' she informed Visas. 'I could choose if I wanted them to see what I was thinking or not. I let one of the other kids see Father and he said that before he wanted to be a Jedi he wanted to be Carth Onasi. At school on Telos, a lot of the boys wanted to be him too.'

The little girl smirked, obviously proud of herself that she had such a famous father.

'Enough now,' Visas instructed. 'Close your eyes.'

Celyn did so, falling silent.

'Think of your mother.'

Visas saw nothing but the Admiral for a moment, and then Revan finally began to wander into the child's thoughts.

She felt the child grasping for what pictures of Revan came to her, as though squeezing the life out of them might give her what she sought. Despite her earlier reluctance, the little girl obviously longed very badly to see new images besides the ones that replayed over and over in her memories. She reached hungrily, desperately-

Visas pleaded with words she could not remember to the man standing over her on the dead surface of Katarr. To connect with her, to let her see him.

The man laughed. No- that was not the word. She heard no laughter, she heard nothing but her own breathing. But that was what she felt through the Force, his mockery and his derision. She felt her face growing red and hot.

Suddenly the image came easily, as if it had always been there for her to pick up at her leisure. Visas grabbed at it violently.

He was all in black; towering over her wasted and beaten body, his boots standing in between the other bodies around her. His toes barely touched the hand of one of the corpses.

She felt as though he never ended, as though he was taller than the highest spires on Katarr, higher than the mountains off in the distance. She wondered for a moment if they too were flattened and diminished, like the wilted flowers or the toppled trees or the crushed bodies of her people. A part of the dry cracked earth, the infertile soil, even as their bodies were still intact.

And his face...his face was two gaping sores which were surrounded by a smooth mask of pure white. It blinded her, the painful whiteness of that mask; covering the dark, shapeless forms of the bodies, the black void of Katarr-

'It's different now,' Celyn Onasi whispered. 'She looks scary again.'

Visas could hear every tremor in the girl's breathing, every miniscule shift in her position. Her aura was timid and dim, flickering before Visas as she reached out to touch the child's hand.

She waded through images of Revan smiling, Revan laughing, and found Revan with a droid.

Katrina turned to the droid, who showed no reaction to her changed appearance.

'Ready for your memory wipe, HK?'

'Assurance: Intending no offense, Master, but anything that will get the insipid sweet nothings of your husband and offspring out of my main memory core.'

Katrina smirked, taking the fresh memory unit from T3 at her side.

'It's good to have you back, HK.'

'Reciprocation: It is, in all honesty, good to be back, Master.'

The droid twitched for a moment after she installed the core, closing up his access panel.

'Ready for another day?' she murmured.

'Answer: Indeed, Lord Revan.'

This, too, was done every morning. HK's memories from the previous day were transferred to his secondary memory core, along with all his other non-essential memories. Then the core was taken out and given to T3 for safekeeping while the assault droid was refitted with a fresh one.

He was left only with the instructions from his master to independently gather information. The transfer of memory sometimes made this order hard to carry out, as the droid had no way of knowing what he had already seen and recorded for her, and sometimes entire days were wasted when he would bring her nothing of value or almost get her in trouble because of his wanderings.

She headed towards the gangplank of the ship that she refused to name. There was no reason to name it- she never wanted to see it again after this. Besides, she hadn't picked it out, he-

No. Not yet.

She frowned. She had begun early today. It was not a good sign.

T3 rolled up against the back of her knee.

'Dammit, T3, do I have to shut you down again?' she snapped.

The little droid had been trying to follow her every day since she landed here. He did not respond to direct orders from her; so far, the closest he had gotten was the main entrance before she had caught him and hurried him back onto the ship. Finally she had fitted him with a restraining bolt; she didn't have time to sit around and figure out just how his independent nature was overriding basic commands from master to droid.

Even this didn't stop the utility droid from rolling after her every morning, even if the restraining bolt kicked in and left him locked up and shut down on the middle of the gangplank.

T3 jumped back, letting out a startled series of beeps before retreating back onto the ship. Katrina continued off of the ship, HK at her side-

'I don't understand,' the little girl forced through gritted teeth. 'That can't be what Mommy's doing. She's dressed like the Sith-'

'We cannot understand unless we watch more,' Visas tried to keep her voice calm, despite being frustrated and anxious to understand too.

'She did bad things when she looked like that,' Celyn muttered, but closed her eyes again obediently.

The sky was dark brown, as if the planet was somehow flipped and the earth was up. Underneath her feet was the glossy black rock, smooth as glass that made up the walls, ceilings, and floors of the building.

You are early this morning, Lord Revan.

I tire of sleep, Lord Sila.

Everyone talked through the Force here. She could recall speaking maybe ten words total out loud since she had arrived. T3 and HK always paid the price when she returned at the end of the day- she talked their auditory units off.

To her surprise, most of them were human. Only a few were a couple generations removed from true Sith.

Like Sila, the only one waiting for her this morning. His dark red skin caught the low lighting in the sanctuary, reflecting off his protruding cheekbones and long, sharply tapered chin.

Perhaps you are also eager, as I am, to see a month's work come to fruition today.

She glanced over at the center of the room, where the Force-sensitive man stood wavering under the cool breath of the ventilation system.

She and Sila stepped towards him. The man made no attempt to run or fight them. Katrina had learned quickly that the easiest form of control was physical; if true Sith wanted you to run, you ran whether your brain sent commands to your legs or not. And if they did not, you stood frozen in whatever moment of fear you had been caught in.

The man had once been a red-head with a short beard. Now his hair was steel gray, his skin clammy. Much as the dark side tried, however, it could not put wrinkles into his fairly youthful skin. He was around the same age as her former-

No, she clamped down on her thoughts firmly. Not yet.

Sila watched her, the hard tiny lumps on the top of his bald head shiny and lined with cracks and imperfections. They were the last signs of cranial horns that evolution had filed away.

Katrina didn't bother to lift her hand. She closed her eyes behind the cool, slick surface of her mask and concentrated. She only opened them again to watch the lightning, zig-zagging down from the air above the Force-sensitive man to stab him at all sides, winding like vines around his arms and legs-

Celyn Onasi jumped. Visas watched the little girl's white glow suddenly flare up into yellow and green before gently fading back into that guarded flicker.

The child closed her eyes and said nothing. Apparently she had seen Revan using Force lightning before.

You may attempt further inspection, apprentice, Sila informed her.

They called her Lord out of respect for what she had done for them, but officially she was only an apprentice.

Ironic, eh Malak?

Thoughts of Malak were allowed. He was part of her old life, her life as a Sith, and thinking of him or the Star Forge or her days as Jedi Revan during the Mandalorian Wars were allowed.

You seem to have a connection, Sila added conversationally. He reacts well to your stimuli.

That was because of his life, his memories. In them was a child, a-

No. Not yet.

Thoughts like that, of anything beyond those last moments on the bridge of her command ship, beyond Malak firing on her, were not allowed. The true Sith saw everything; the normal methods of Jedi mind blocks and control were like tissue paper against a charging desert wraid.

Katrina stepped forward, closing her eyes and slightly tilting her head.

The first things they had taught her were, of course, offensive. Ways of manipulating, of changing things, breaking down walls and barriers, seeing what she wasn't meant to see.

She easily moved past the Force sensitive's tattered mind blocks- they had been unpredictable but now they were weak. The non-Jedi were always harder because of their lack of control, which was why he had held on for an entire month.

Feeling his pain and his rage wash over her though, Katrina knew that he had run out of days.

She was glad for a moment that she wore a mask so he could not see her eyes. She suspected the way she looked might have terrified him more. Most Sith walked around with their sunken eyes and peeling skin hanging out for everyone to see. Her mask was something of a tolerated oddity.

But there was no way she could do this if she had to look someone in the eye, if they could see her face, no matter how disguised.

Good, Sila commented. She had an idea of what his voice would sound like if she ever got to hear him speak; it would be slightly accented like he was nobility, but rough like it rolled over gravel every time the words passed through his throat.

But when she succeeded in the tasks they set before her, they taught her defensive lessons as well. Ways to resist their controls, methods of crawling out of the mental quick sands they could put people in.

And the more she learned about how to defend against their methods, the quicker she could figure out how to stop them. The quicker she figured that out, the sooner she could go home-

No. Almost, but not yet.

The man shrieked in tones she didn't know men had. He fell to his knees in the middle of the room, pounding his fists into the flooring until his knuckles bled-

Visas's concentration broke as Celyn Onasi scrambled up from where she had been sitting on the floor, so startled that she stumbled backwards into the wall.

'Why is she doing that?' The child demanded, her chin trembling.

The Council would have to be notified immediately. Revan's methods were more dangerous than she realized-

'Why is she doing that?' Celyn shouted when Visas gave no answer.

Visas suddenly felt overwhelmed by one blinding need: Father. Or Dustil. Or both.

'She's hurting people-'

'Your mother is only pretending to be a Sith-' the Miraluka tried to explain.

'That's rich,' Celyn shot back, obviously another imitation.

'Enough,' Visas replied sharply. 'You're only noticing her changed appearance, her different clothes. You're only seeing how she looks and assuming that because she looks terrible to your eyes, she is terrible.'

She sighed heavily.

'Things are not always as they appear.'

The man wrenched her up by her chin. The man with no eyes, like her, blind to the galaxy. Visas clung desperately to him, her young face trembling as she stayed on her knees.

Somehow she knew that it would be wrong to rise to his level, to stand above the bodies of her people with him. Somehow she knew that she should bow before him.

'My life is yours,' she answered, the ancient pledge when one lost their sight and was reconnected with it.

Her life was of little value to him. Somehow she knew this.

But somehow she knew she would call him Master anyways.

'Call it what you will, Sarii, but his method did allow you to leave the bounty hunters' ship, as well as escape the planet without a terentatek on board,' Master Kavar noted. He stood in the doorway of the Ebon Hawk's communication room, his hands clasped behind him.

Sarii breathed deeply and watched him from where she sat cross-legged on the floor, her wrists resting against her knees. She was sorely in need of meditation. Especially following Atton's 'handling' of the situation.

Her former Master gestured with his head towards the cockpit. Sarii pushed herself up from the floor and obediently followed.

It wasn't so much the method that bothered Sarii. It was something she couldn't put her finger on, something that wasn't quite right and wasn't quite wrong about how Atton Rand had fixed everything. Something small, some detail that she was missing that she was sure to figure out later when it didn't matter anymore--

Rounding the corner from the Hawk's communication room didn't lead her to the cockpit as she had expected, but rather into the expansive, sunlit Jedi Temple. Sarii followed Kavar down the hall, towards the Council chambers. She could remember entering this room a hundred times over; meekly following her Master, proudly participating in her Knighthood ceremony and then standing before the Council's grim faces as it was taken away.

'Many of the emotions the Jedi guard against have been at their strongest here, in the heart of our order,' Kavar murmured, glancing over his shoulder at her as he manipulated the door controls that were not really there with hands that he didn't really have.

You're right about that, Sarii thought to herself, nodding. On the day she was cast out, her own anger, outrage, and self-loathing hadn't been enough to block the feelings of the Council from her. Kavar's disappointment had left scars that would never go away. And Atris; with her icy cool stare and the perfect fold of her white robes acting like she was almost happy to exile her. Atris, the Padawan-less Master, finally able to instruct someone on where and how they had failed.

'You understand why she never had a Padawan, Sarii. You were her intended choice just as you were also mine. But the Council felt I would be able to instruct you better.'

Master Kavar smirked for a moment, folding his arms in the sleeves of his brown robes, his short light brown hair turning lighter in the Coruscanti sunlight that shone through the windows.

'Force, but that woman could argue.'

Sarii politely looked away. She remembered Atris as a part of her Master's thoughts and feelings that she had been blocked from many times as a young Padawan. She wouldn't intrude on them now when he was dead either.

That hadn't stopped her speculation, however, based on the way she remembered seeing them together often as an apprentice, the smiles they had exchanged then as if remembering things that would never happen again. Not to mention the disagreements she sometimes interrupted as a Padawan; which usually ended in Atris storming off and Kavar shaking his head. Discussing the personal lives of the Masters was a traditional pastime among students at the Jedi Temple, but to ask a Master about what had happened before you became their Padawan earned you a response like you were asking a fish what had happened before it learned to swim.

'But come, Padawan,' Kavar continued, stepping across the threshold into what should have been the Council chambers but what was instead the receiving docks of the Danok port on Teren. 'Let us see exactly what bothers you about your escape.'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She could still see the legs of the two guards at the bottom of the Screamer's gangplank, wavering as the men shifted their weight.

'I hope Rand meant within the next ten minutes,' Dustil Onasi commented behind her.

Sarii considered her options--she couldn't distract them as she had before; the only place she could throw a sound while trapped on the ship was, well, somewhere else on the ship.

The familiar shrieking roar of a terentatek echoed up the Screamer's opened gangplank. It died down into the low murmur of men, and Sarii leaned her head down to listen.

'...that thing smells like it's been around this place too long,' one of the guards chuckled.

You haven't got much room to be commenting on bad smells, Sarii thought, breathing carefully through her mouth to avoid the locker room scent of the Screamer.

'Look, I don't care for your off-worlder, exporter smart mouth quips--'

Sarii recognized the voice of the gruff tatek handler that had met them when they'd first landed. The terentatek sounded louder now, letting out a harsh, high snort that almost sounded like a whinny.

'And we don't care for your beast breathing on our ship,' one of the guards said sharply. 'Get that mutated rancor-spawn out of our faces--'

The terentatek roared louder as though it were offended. Sarii felt the ship vibrate slightly.

'It seems as though the guards might have provided their own means for your escape had your pilot allowed them to simply continue talking,' Kavar commented, leaning over her shoulder to stare down the gangplank of the Screamer.

'Stop waving that blaster rifle around. You're upsetting it. How am I supposed to load it onto your ship if you keep--'

'For the last time, old man, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. We never heard of a ship called the Ebon Hawk, we never agreed for a transfer of cargo--'

The ship rocked violently, and Sarii saw the legs of the guards get a lot shorter as the two either moved out of the way of the angered terentatek or were knocked off their feet.

The muffled yells of dock workers and handlers were almost as loud as the enraged snorting and growling of the terentatek.

'If you're going to go--' Atton's voice broke in on Mical's comlink. Her Padawan was so startled he almost dropped it. '--you'd better go now.'

Sarii quickly scurried down the gangplank, followed closely by Mical and the two Onasi men.

The dock was quickly turning into pandemonium. The two guards who had been guarding the Screamer were backed into a corner by the angered terentatek; their blaster rifles raised and pointed towards the beast. It made large swings with its claws into piles of cargo, flinging them around four or five frantic handlers trying to surround the out-of-control beast.

'Hmm. Clumsy, yet effective. Inelegant, perhaps. Is that your objection, Sarii?' Kavar said, his arms still folded in front of him as he watched the dock grow louder and more hectic.

Sarii, Mical, and the two Onasis hurried across the dock towards the Ebon Hawk. Atton Rand glanced up casually as they entered the cockpit.

'What did you do?' Sarii said, breathless.

She watched him chuckle to himself, folding his arms and shaking his head as he watched the terentatek through the cockpit windows. It had moved on to the bounty hunters' ship, tearing whole panels apart, ripping one of its landing posts off and hurling it across the dock.

'The Screamer took on a little unexpected cargo, courtesy of an imaginary transfer between myself and her captain. There you go. They won't be doing anymore Jedi hunting. That's what you wanted, isn't it?'

'Ah, but this was not your desire, Sarii,' Kavar said, seating himself in the co-pilot's chair. 'It was your Padawan's.'

Is there perhaps a way to render them unable to continue their hunt for Jedi? Mical had murmured to Sarii. Now his words replayed in her head as if her deceased Jedi Master had made a recording for posterity. It is unjust to know what kind of threat they pose to the Order and to just let them continue-

'Preferably with minimal carnage, but hey, whatever works,' Dustil murmured dryly.

Sarii couldn't manage to stop her laughter quickly enough and it came out as a garbled snort. Atton glared over his shoulder at her and she averted her eyes to the younger Onasi, who didn't seem to mind her laughter as much.

He had a grin like his father, who exhaled loudly before replacing his blaster into its holster.

'We should probably get out of here fast before they start asking questions. Give them those coordinates, Dustil.'

The Admiral turned to leave, presumably to hurry back to his ship and make his repairs.

'And try not to get yourself into another fight or thrown in jail on your way back either,' Onasi called over his shoulder to his son, who rolled his eyes.

'Next thing you know he'll start giving me a curfew,' Dustil muttered, handing the datapad over to Atton, who eyed it suspiciously before beginning to punch the coordinates into the navicomputer.

'Dustil...' Mical began, straightening his clothing. 'Does it concern you in the least that this 'Tova', the woman who was the source of contention between yourself and the crew of the Screamer; does it not trouble you that your romantic attachment to her is against the rules of the Order?'

The Telosian cocked an eyebrow at Mical.

'No.'

'Familial attachment is discouraged among the Jedi, Dustil. That is why apprentices are taken from their families at an early age. I can certainly understand that you cannot help but be in close contact with your father, given his position in the Fleet, but romantic attachments are even more dangerous. They court anger, hostility, and jealousy- much as you exhibited today--'

'Believe me, I've had enough lectures on the dangers of the dark side to last me a lifetime, Mical. My Master's a walking case study.'

'I'm glad somebody else thinks so,' Sarii said.

Dustil glanced up at her, meeting her gaze. 'You don't know the half of it,' he added quietly.

The loud smack of the datapad against Dustil's side broke their stare. Atton's mouth was a thin line across his clenched jaw, like his tongue was fighting a duel against whatever words he wanted to say. He jabbed the datapad up towards the Jedi, hitting his lightsaber in the process.

Sarii cleared her throat and turned away, heading back towards the crew quarters. Mical followed.

The ideals of the Order don't seem to mean as much as they used to, her Padawan thought resignedly.

Don't take Revan and her Padawan as examples, Mical, Sarii answered. Revan was reckless and headstrong even as a Jedi. They're the exception, not the norm.

I sometimes wonder if we are the norm, Sarii, Mical continued. We fight to protect ideals that we are forbidden to enjoy, such as peace, family...love.

His face got a little red as he realized what impression the use of her first name and the inflection on 'love' had made.

Sarii tried to remain calmly oblivious to his flustered demeanor.

'Difficult, isn't it?' Kavar said, smiling. He had by no means been the only one to ever have a Padawan crushing on him. It was a normal occurrence with the younger Masters. Sarii wondered momentarily if any poor, desperate Padawan had ever had a crush on Master Vrook in his younger days. The thought made her laugh out loud.

She grasped for her lightsaber to unhook it from her belt and realized she had never put it back on-- she had left it lying in the cockpit. Sarii waved Mical on towards the crew quarters and turned back to go get it.

The racket of the terentatek and the dock outside could still be faintly heard even in the confines of the ship. The sharp echo of a man's voice rang off the Hawk's dented metal walls, too clear to have come from outside.

'...what are you trying to say?'

'I'm not trying. I'm saying. Back off.'

Sarii slowed her pace, peering around the corner to where Dustil and Atton stood in the cockpit across from each other. Through the windows behind them she could see the terentatek calming down, the handlers pushing it towards a cage; the Screamer half slumped on its side, immobile and useless.

'You must be joking,' she heard Dustil sputter. 'I mean...come on, I was watching kid holovids when she was fighting in a war!'

'Age difference doesn't seem to be stopping your old man.'

'I'm not my father.'

The young Jedi Knight shuddered.

'Not like that, anyways.'

Not again...first Mical, then Master Kavar...is he going to threaten every male Jedi we meet? Sarii glanced over her shoulder for a minute towards the Ebon Hawk's crew quarters, making sure no one else would notice her eavesdropping.

Parts of her hated the tone in Atton's voice. He sounded like a bully or some ignorant cantina bum with too much juma in him.

Other parts of her were vaguely flattered, and guiltily wanted to know how far he would go. Those parts kept her crouched around the corner, concentrating on keeping her presence hidden from Dustil Onasi, a Jedi; and Atton Rand, who was usually suspiciously perceptive.

Kavar walked in a slow circle around the two men, nodding to himself.

'These two have more in common than you let yourself see, Padawan,' he informed her.

'They're both angry,' Sarii answered readily. 'They've both followed Revan--'

'Exploring their histories is commendable, Padawan, but I was speaking more generally. For one example, they both have brown hair,' he added, looking pointedly at her like that was supposed to explain it.

The younger Onasi's obvious discomfort didn't seem to deter Atton. Sarii could sense his hostility a kilometer away. Most of it wasn't directed at Dustil, though he seemed to be the unfortunate punching bag Atton had found today.

'Look, didn't you hear Mical's little lecture? I've got a girlfr--' the Jedi Knight trailed off.

Atton's irritation focused and shifted, swirling before her eyes. The pilot was unguarded for the briefest of moments. Struggling to seize the advantage, Sarii tried to paw through his normally concealed thoughts. But all she could sense was that he was trying to get hold of something out of Dustil-

'I don't have time for this. I'm going back to the Chaser,' Dustil snapped, turning around to leave. Sarii tensed, ready to duck inside the communications room and make it look like she hadn't been listening.

'You killed her cause you loved her too, huh?'

The Telosian stopped dead in his tracks.

'What?'

Atton glared at the young Jedi Knight.

'You heard me. What was her name? Celyn? Nope, that's someone else. Sel...Selene.'

'I didn't kill her-' Dustil began, catching himself and gritting his teeth.

He wasn't as open as a good Jedi would be with their feelings, but Sarii could still read him a hell of a lot easier than she had ever been able to read Atton. Dustil's anger was tight and focused. He wasn't allowing it to control him, but he wasn't stifling it either.

Sarii hesitated, wondering if she should interfere.

But those same parts that had been flattered at Atton's jealousy and overprotective-ness flared up like sentient parasites and kept her standing exactly where she was, waiting with bated breath to see what the two men would do next.

'Right. Keep telling yourself that. You know what, kid?' the pilot sneered, folding his arms. 'I know when someone's got something to hide, and you and your old man have so many secrets you're dripping with 'em. I don't care if your father's one of the top Admirals in the Fleet. You can't hide behind Daddy around me, kid-'

Sarii jumped when Dustil Onasi lifted a hand and effortlessly clenched his fist. Atton's face grew pale but he stubbornly held his position.

He's a Jedi, what is he doing-

I'm a Jedi, I should be stopping this-

'I had a feeling you'd understand this language better.'

Dustil's voice changed. It was icy enough to make Sarii shiver where she hid behind the bulkhead; foreboding enough to make her still hold herself, waiting to hear more.

'Pazaak cards...hyperspace routes...,' the younger Onasi continued softly. 'Basic methods. We learned those in the Academy real early if we hadn't already figured them out ourselves.'

Sarii put a hand up to her mouth even though she was controlled enough not to visibly react.

The Admiral's son is a former Sith? What the hell else aren't they telling us?

Atton let out a choked breath, but still didn't unfold his arms.

'Try that again, and I'll show you how Sith deal with people who try and get into their heads. Real Sith, not wannabe Hutt-spawn like you.'

The young Jedi Knight's hand dropped, and Atton bent over, hacking and putting a hand to his throat, glaring up at the Jedi.

'Your father know about this?' he wheezed.

Dustil glanced over his shoulder.

'My father got me out of it. Try anything on him and falling back to the dark side would be worth it for what I'd do to you.'

The Telosian turned his back on the pilot, heading down the corridor. Sarii ducked around the corner of the communications room, holding her breath and staying perfectly still until the familiar clanking of footsteps on the gangplank faded away into the hum of the ship.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'You practically answer your question yourself, Sarii,' Kavar finished, watching the younger Onasi leave. 'Your pilot's efforts, however destructive, still allowed for your escape. Perhaps the better question to ask is this: how did your pilot know your Padawan's desire to stop the crew of the Screamer from continuing their Jedi hunt?'

'What you're implying...isn't probable, Master,' Sarii replied. She watched Atton cough for a moment or so, trying to shake off the after-effects of the Force choke. He began powering up the ship, making the necessary announcement to the port authority, backing the Ebon Hawk out of the Danok port and breaking out of Teren's atmosphere back into the darkness of space.

'He spent a good part of his life torturing Force sensitives,' Sarii finally explained. 'He despises Jedi. If it looks like he's using the Force, it's probably just because he understands how to manipulate it better than people who do have it--'

Kavar clasped his hands behind his back, meandering from the cockpit to the communications room where Sarii sat meditating.

'All he does is shut people out, Master. Force sensitives with no training can't do that,' she replied. Her back was beginning to ache, a sign that the actual time that she had been sitting here meditating was a lot longer than her visions made it seem.

'How is he aware that there is anything that needs to be shut out in the first place? Occasionally, Sarii, a cigarra is just a cigarra. Evidence that the Force is at work is usually just the Force at--'

The sound of the Ebon Hawk's alert system distracted Sarii, and she pushed herself up from the floor of the communications room. Kavar had vanished from where he had last been standing in the doorway, and the Hawk hummed around her steadily, lost in the throes of hyperspace.

Admiral Onasi's figure shimmered to life before her eyes, and Sarii straightened up in front of the holographic projector, trying not to look like she had just been jostled out of a conversation with a dead Jedi Master.

'Admiral,' she murmured in greeting. 'Was there something you needed?'

'No. We're en route to Remli Prime and the ship's running smoothly. Made the hyperspace jump without any problems.'

His voice was slightly static-y over the parsec or so that separated the Hawk and the Chaser.

'Master Jedi, I think it's fair that I tell you something,' Onasi began calmly. 'In fact, I probably should have told you before you even left Telos, but I guess it just hadn't struck me as a top priority until now.'

Maybe that your son knows how to do a Force choke unusually well?

Sarii nodded, watching his wavering form expectantly.

'It concerns a member of your crew- your pilot, Atton Rand.'

Immediately Sarii glanced around, making sure Atton wasn't in earshot. Her mind searched for him.

Seven to ten, plus minus two--

Pazaak, Sarii thought irritably. Can't he shut me out with something else? At least for variety's sake--

'The records the Republic provided on your crew were pretty spotty, but I suppose that's understandable considering--'

'You were giving us background checks?' Sarii interrupted, raising an eyebrow at him.

Onasi didn't look at all apologetic.

'I've got...certain liabilities, Sarii,' he said in a low voice. Sarii wondered why; if it was just out of habit or if his son was around and the Admiral didn't want him hearing. 'I can't exactly tell just anyone about her.'

'Course not. You're afraid the Republic will find out, haul Revan off to answer for her crimes, you'll lose your precious Beautiful, your Sith Lord of a wife--

Sarii's hand moved to her throat, making it appear like she was massaging it. In reality she put a small amount of pressure on her windpipe, enough to kill her train of thought.

'You've got an exemplary service record in the Mandalorian Wars, and of course I know Mical pretty well,' Onasi continued, clearing his throat. His holographic form tilted its head downwards, as if he were consulting a datapad. 'He served the Republic during the assassinations, helped us kind of keep an eye on the Jedi and do what we could from the sidelines. Nothing came up about Mira, but a couple contacts I have say she's an unusually good-hearted bounty hunter.'

The Admiral's voice grew sharper. 'But your pilot's got-' his tone was almost accusatory. '-a definite history.'

Sarii sat up, already feeling uncomfortable, as if she was talking about Atton behind his back. She had a distinct feeling that the pilot wouldn't react very well to that if it ever happened.

'I know, Admiral,' she said carefully, quietly. Onasi reached forward, adjusting the audio like he couldn't hear her. 'He started out in the Republic Fleet, like you--'

'Ensign Jaq Rand, crack pilot of Green squadron, registered as a Leviathan crew member.'

Onasi's voice went through wavering degrees of tightness; loose and condescending as he said 'ensign', soft and rueful when 'crack pilot' followed, harsh and rough when he reached 'Leviathan'.

Explains where he learned to fly, I guess, Sarii thought to herself. Or kind of learned to fly, considering the number of times we've crashed.

'Of course that may not be accurate. When the numbers of deserters started piling up and official record keepers couldn't keep count during the war, they just kind of started assigning officers to the major commanders who defected to follow the Sith.'

Revan, Sarii corrected silently. Not the Sith, Revan.

'You know, I take it, that he was a deserter?' Onasi added, as if prodding her for some kind of negative response.

'Yes, I knew. He told me,' Sarii replied evenly, trying not to put as much emphasis as she wanted to on 'told'.

'Official duty reports on him say he was just a kid with a smart mouth who wouldn't go any further than maybe Lieutenant-- and only that if he got his act together. Apparently he got it together for the Sith, because Republic files on him indicate that he commanded at least a squadron-sized group of specially trained soldiers. The record is pretty much speculation, but the evidence suggests that these soldiers were responsible for a number of Jedi deaths.'

'People say killing Jedi is hard,' Atton continued casually, resting one arm against the side of the alley and the other on his hip. 'It's not; you just have to be smart about it.'

Sarii stared back at him, unable to make her mouth move even if she wanted to, even if she could have thought of something to say to that. When she gave no verbal reaction, he went on to elaborate.

'I know, Admiral,' Sarii replied testily. 'He told me that too.'

Onasi frowned at her tone, narrowing eyes that she knew were brown at her, though they appeared light teal through the holographic projector just like the rest of him.

'I am not trying to provoke you, Master Jedi. I'm just trying to warn you about what you might have on your hands--'

'What I have on my hands, Admiral Onasi, is a good pilot and a handy man in a fight. Atton has never posed a threat to me or any member of my crew. What you're accusing him of is part of a path paved by your wife, Revan the Sith Lord. Anything you find disgusting about him started with her--'

Stop it, stop it now before you say what you actually think--

Sarii slammed her hand down on the communication controls. Onasi's frowning face disintegrated into nothingness, and she leaned back in the chair, raising a hand to her mouth in shock.

Master? Mical called questioningly from wherever he was on the ship.

Sarii ignored him, letting her hand drop into her lap.

Was this hate the same as the kind that drove you to war in the first place, Padawan?

Master Kavar's voice was sharp, and Sarii almost cringed, staring up at the ceiling like he was speaking to her from on high.

Hate comes in all forms, Padawan, even when hidden behind noble goals. As does love.

'You know, you'd think on maybe the fifth time you might answer me or make some sign you're not dead.'

Sarii twisted around in her chair. Atton leaned up against the doorway. He rolled his eyes at her, smirking.

'About time. I've been standing here saying your name for half a parsec.'

Guilt socked her in the stomach from all sides, and she felt torn between playing back the Admiral's transmission for him so she would be telling the truth and keeping it hidden from him so he wouldn't get angry.

'Hey, you all right?' the pilot said, coming over to crouch next to her.

'Fine,' Sarii lied. 'We're just getting closer and I don't like it.'

'I heard you talking to the Admiral.'

Sarii watched him for a moment, waiting for a reaction. Finally she sighed brokenly.

'Talking? Spitting and hissing are more like it.'

'Don't worry. It's nothing I haven't heard before. Nothing that isn't true.'

Atton scoffed, glaring at the holographic projector like his gaze might send the Admiral an adequate punishment.

'Thanks though, for what it's worth. There aren't exactly people lining up around the galaxy to defend me like that.'

'That's what Jedi do,' Sarii replied without thinking.

'Jedi lie. And they manipulate. And every act of charity or kindness they do, you can drag it out squirming into the light and see it for what it is.'

The silence between them teemed with nervous energy and the hum of the communications consoles. Sarii pushed herself up from the chair, moving in front of Atton. She reached up with both hands to rub her neck and shoulders.

'So tell me, do Jedi in exile pick up lots of handsome devils like me around the Outer Rim?' Atton finally said, giving her a smirk and standing up.

'Not really,' Sarii answered wryly. 'You might leave the Order but the Order never really leaves you, you know?'

'Yeah. Yeah, I kinda do.'

He was slowly coming towards her, all soft smirks and casual steps. Sarii bumped into the back of the communications room, up against the bulkhead. Thoughts that weren't in the realm of Jedi Council assignments overwhelmed her usual reflexes.

'Maybe we should find out what we've been missing,' Atton murmured, in a voice she imagined must have melted Twi'lek dancers and cantina barmaids across the galaxy.

Sarii twirled a piece of her ginger colored hair around her finger, holding her other hand close to her side. She hoped she wasn't blushing enough that it brought out the patches of freckles on her face; hoped that they wouldn't light up her cheeks and nose with little orange stars.

'Atton, we can't do this...'

She was involuntarily closer to him, the result of an icy draft that blew through the corridors of the Ebon Hawk.

'I'm a Jedi,' Sarii said firmly.

'I don't care,' he said in a low voice. 'I don't care if you're a Jedi. You're not like the rest of them.'

And then Atton Rand was kissing her.

She hadn't been kissed since her exile; since wandering around on the Outer Rim with only her shame for company had convinced her to break her Jedi vows of chastity.

But they're right...this is dangerous...no attachment, you could hurt someone, you could hurt yourself-

Atton's hands were inching up her arms, brushing her sleeves up so that his fingers and his cracked leather gloves were touching her skin. Sarii tried to remember how this worked- if her hands were supposed to go around his neck, or if she was supposed to lean into the kiss--

He'll kill me if he loves me.

'No, we can't. I can't,' Sarii stammered, trying to push away from him. His hands stubbornly clung to her elbows.

'What are you so afraid of?' She glanced up at him.

You.

Atton's face fell, his jaw hanging slightly open.

Sarii used the opportunity to slip under his arm and retreat from the cockpit, leaving him stuck in that position with one hand against the bulkhead and a scowl creeping into his face.

'How did your pilot know your Padawan's desire to stop the crew of the Screamer from continuing their Jedi hunt?'

She felt Kavar's hand on her shoulder like a protective blanket.

How did he know Dustil Onasi's past? How does he now know exactly what you're thinking? He is not all he appears to be, Padawan. He is both more and less.

They both have brown hair, Sarii admitted. They're both Force-sensitive.

'Katrina--"

He broke off. His heart pounded like firing torpedoes against his chest.

She touched his beard, running her fingers over it, turning the back of her hand against his cheek.

'What's wrong?'

He understood why she was asking- he only ever made the name slip nowadays when he was agitated or nervous or angry. He wondered for a second why he was so nervous-- he'd done this before, after all, and it had gone perfectly even though he had been nervous then too.

Carth pushed himself up on his elbow, reaching over her, over the headboard to grab something off the window ledge.

He placed it on her bare stomach, and watched as her hands moved lazily to inspect the small metallic box.

'Carth-' Katrina began, stopping.

He tried to gauge her reaction even though she didn't give him much to work with beyond the way she turned the box in the low light, trying to catch the reflections of the ring it had taken him a week to find.

'Marry me, gorgeous,' Carth murmured, his chin grazing her forehead.

She smiled, inspecting the ring between her fingers, running the fine cut lines of the silvery stone against her palm.

'You don't have to marry me, flyboy.'

'I want to marry you,' he added pointedly.

'It's been almost seven years now. How old is Celyn? Practically three?' Katrina said, glancing up at him as he leaned over her, tracing her neck with his fingers.

'It wouldn't hurt her any if her parents were married,' he replied, even though that hadn't struck him as a reason until now. Katrina rolled her eyes.

'You didn't 'knock me up', Carth. I don't have a father who's going to come after you with a blaster rifle.'

Carth laughed for a moment, secretly relieved that there were no in-laws for him to deal with. He couldn't imagine what the mother-in-law of a former Sith Lord would be like.

'I'm not doing a very good job at this, am I?'

'No. No, you're not,' she agreed. He sighed, kissing her forehead.

'All right. Let me start over. I love you-'

'I love you too. You don't have to marry me to prove it-'

'Damn it, woman, would you at least let me begin?' He narrowed his eyes in irritation but there was still a smile playing at his lips.

'I love you. More than I've ever loved anything since...since my wife died, and I didn't even think that was possible.'

She touched his chest, still warm and lined with drying sweat.

'I know it's been seven years already. I want there to be another seven years. And seven more after that until I'm blown up in space somewhere.'

He traced up and down her arm with his fingers, hoping he'd been romantic enough.

'Marry me, Revan,' he repeated softly.

Katrina slipped the ring onto her finger. He grasped her hand, liking the weight of it and how the ring settled nicely against one of her lightsaber calluses.

She giggled.

'What's so funny?'

'This. It's just so...normal.'

Carth smirked, kissing her ear and moving to her neck.

'Yeah, well, I thought you deserved something normal for a change. You still haven't answered me, gorgeous.'

'Mmph,' she tried to answer at the same time he moved to her lips.

'Yes,' Katrina breathed, reaching up to brush a strand of hair out of his eyes. 'You could have asked me as the Star Forge was burning and I would have said yes.'

'Oh? So you really did think I was the most handsome pilot in the galaxy?'

'Sure. Considering you were the only pilot I knew at the time.' She laughed as he sighed melodramatically, rolling onto his back and putting his hands behind his head.

'And you want to marry me,' Katrina murmured, leaning over him and smiling.

Carth felt himself almost slipping out of the pilot's chair. He bristled, grasping the sides of the chair and pushing himself back up.

He folded his arms and closed his eyes, trying to chase down the dream so he could have it again. He had almost managed to fall back asleep when Dustil's footsteps started echoing down the corridor and came tapping into the cockpit.

'Don't you hear that?' his son said irritably, his voice still slightly hoarse and his hair sticking straight up on one side of his head.

'Hear what?' Carth yawned, just as he noticed the harsh blinking of the proximity alarm on the console in front of him and the intermittent beeping that had somehow blended into the background of his sleep.

Dustil reached forward to shut it off. He paused, rubbing an eye and leaning over the console.

'Father, the ship it's indicating isn't the Hawk.'

Carth forced himself awake as Dustil slid into the co-pilot's chair next to him. The tiny green dots that indicated their position and the Hawk's glowed happily on the screen, flanked by a few blinking red dots that did not look as happy.

'Are they fighters or what?' Carth murmured, reaching above his head to charge the shields and turret gun.

'Three of them are. The other's just a standard freighter. None of them have their weapons charged either,' his son answered, furrowing his brow. 'Wait, there's two more-- they're both freighters. I don't get it.'

'Ebon Hawk,' Carth said into the comm system, clearing his throat. 'Are you picking up any other ships in close proximity?'

'We've got a full welcoming crew, Chaser,' one of the women replied. Carth hadn't spent enough time with them to be able to tell if it was the Exile or the bounty hunter. 'I hope we're not planning on sitting around and waiting for the fireworks.'

Definitely the bounty hunter, Carth thought.

Remli Prime began to stand out from the rest of the stars surrounding them and grew larger in the window. Two fighters passed over his head in the direction of the mottled dirt-colored atmosphere.

'Looks like it's just your average space traffic,' Dustil murmured next to him.

Even from a distance, Carth could make out the neat patterns of regulated space lanes, the kind you saw outside of every civilized planet. Freighters were lined up waiting for their turn to land. Exiting ships slowly floated by in pre-planned routes until they were far enough away from the planet to vanish in a flash of hyperspace.

'There's definitely something here,' he heard Mical murmur over the still-open comm channel.

'Now by something, do you mean Sith with bad intentions or just, you know, a populated planet with a hell of a lot of somethings trying to land on it?' the bounty hunter replied acidly.

'No, there's something different about this place,' the Exile broke in. 'It feels different.'

Carth exchanged a glance with Dustil, reaching to cut off the channel.

'It doesn't feel that different to me,' his son said quietly, shrugging. 'It feels familiar, almost--'

'Transmit vessel ID and coordinates. Complete landing code 047.3.'

Carth's hand froze above the communication controls as the command that had been transmitted to the Ebon Hawk (still a parsec or so ahead of them) echoed sharply in the confined cockpit of the Chaser.

There was silence over the comm for a moment, accented with various nervous sighs or exhales from the Hawk's crew.

'Vessel ID registered Ebon Hawk, landing code 047.356.'

The voice that repeated the code calmly and effortlessly was that of the Hawk's pilot, Atton Rand.

'Transmit vessel ID and coordinates,' the sharp command now demanded of the Chaser. 'Complete landing code 124.0.'

There was silence on the still open channel from the Hawk.

'Want to help us out over here, Ebon Hawk?' Dustil called, his hand poised over the respond switch.

'124.033,' Rand answered smoothly.

'Vessel ID registered Jedi Chaser, landing code 124.033,' his son recited like he was trying to read an official document in Twi'leki.

The gentle hiss of static from the Hawk's channel cut off abruptly with only the beginning of a 'What--' from one of the women.

'Speaking of feelings,' Dustil finally breathed. 'I've got a couple of bad ones right now.'

Old instincts and new ones made Carth frown down at the metallic lines covering the audio units of the console.

He didn't like having a deserter of the Fleet in complete control of the Ebon Hawk. He didn't like having a former Sith traveling with a still somewhat naïve Jedi and her Padawan. He didn't like having a former Jedi hunter with him on, well, a hunt for a Jedi.

More specifically, he didn't like the fact that the pilot knew specific landing procedures and codes for a planet where they suspected captured Jedi were taken for unknown purposes.

He dropped into the atmosphere of Remli Prime, carefully following a trail of beacons that directed him underneath the thick brown clouds that covered the entirety of the planet's lower atmosphere. It took him a moment of hearing a few random scrapes against the Chaser's hull to realize that the dense fog wasn't clouds- it was a planet-wide thicket of sharp brown thorns and vines.

Long entry and exit tunnels for freighters and other ships had been carved out of the dense brush, and Carth followed his until it ended in a wall of tan-colored rock and the thin blue slit of a docking station.

He noticed the Hawk settling down next to him. Its scorched metal and that of the other beat up ships around them stood out like a sore thumb in the pale slate coloring of the dome-shaped port.

'Admiral, come straight over to the Hawk. Don't go any further into the dock,' the Exile instructed. He recognized her voice from the wavering she did on 'Admiral'; the halting and flatness of her words that meant she had probably been told to say that.

Carth got up from the chair, stretching out the kinks in his back. Dustil brushed his fingers through his hair, trying to get it to lay flat on his head.

'We'll have to keep an eye on him,' he murmured, following his son through the corridor, waiting patiently as he retrieved his lightsaber and slipped on his boots.

'Who? Rand?' Dustil said, glancing up at him and losing his balance. He hopped unsteadily on one foot before mashing it into the boot.

'Yeah. Especially here. You said you had some bad feelings about this place--'

'Everything here feels blocked, Father. It's like I'm getting one big cold shoulder from the Force. But it's still familiar--'

'Familiar? Like...like maybe someone you know?' Carth offered. He felt woefully inadequate trying to make sense out of something he knew next to nothing about. 'Maybe was Katrina here?'

Dustil looked away, fingering the edges of his lightsaber hilt before letting it dangle against his belt. He squeezed past Carth in the corridor, walking briskly towards the gangplank. His words were tossed over his shoulder, clipped and short.

'Familiar like Korriban.'

Carth thought he could make out the distant echo of squeaking, someone trying to grind metal together, maybe the sputtering choke of a hyperdrive trying to start.

Juhani burrowed even further into the golden fur that was standing up around her neck. She glanced at him and then turned away, as if she knew something he didn't.

It took a moment or so for Carth to discern the wavering pitches of sentient screaming from what he had thought were sounds too high to be anything living.

My son is somewhere in here...is my son the one screaming?

'My son' felt strange to think of and not immediately classify the noun to a dead body, file away the possessive to something he no longer had.

Katrina kept her pace casual, her lightsaber and Juhani's dangling from either side of the black belt that had come with the standard issue Sith uniform. It looked like a sack on her, the way it stuck out around her elbows and knees in stiff angles and bunched in loose grey folds on her hips.

She watched shadows turn around corners and followed the steps of the occasional student or Master they passed with an intense look in her eyes, almost as though she was on her own and he and Juhani weren't following her. The look didn't surprise him- she was always focused. Bastila told her to find the Star Maps; she'd found three. He wanted to find Dustil; she was finding Dustil.

'Dustil' felt strange on his skin, like fingers prodding on the left side of his chest.

Katrina wandered down a hallway, pausing to figure out where they were. The Academy was a dozen identical stone rows, and they didn't exactly have an orientation program complete with a campus map for newcomers.

'Perhaps we should ask,' Juhani suggested quietly.

'Why would I be asking?' Katrina murmured, shaking her head.

'It's worth a shot,' Carth said, almost too eagerly and definitely too loudly. His voice echoed in the short hall, off the crudely carved squares used as dormitories.

A computer near them, maybe around the corner, beeped indignantly as if their talking had disturbed it. Katrina held up a few fingers indicating for them to wait there and rounded the corner.

'You take a wrong turn somewhere?' a voice echoed sharply around the stone. Carth couldn't see past the end of it. He instead watched Katrina exhale, her lips parting ever so slightly.

'I need some questions answered,' she began in that tone she had adopted since entering this place, the one that made the simple request sound more like an irrefutable command.

'As if I'm not busy enough with my own work? Go pester someone else with your stupid questions.'

It was a young man's, and he was doing something with his vowels that seemed very, very odd to Carth if only he could remember why it was odd.

Katrina's eyes narrowed, studying whatever Sith student was standing behind the stone pillar out of Carth's view.

'There's no need to act like that--'

'Oh, I'm sorry, did I hurt your feelings?' the voice interrupted mockingly. 'Why don't you run to Master Uthar and tell him all about it? I'm sure he'll be very sympathetic.'

'I might, unless you'd like to make an issue out of it,' Katrina replied, raising an eyebrow.

'You know what I want? I want for you to run along and do whatever it is you're supposed to be doing. I'm too busy to deal with morons.'

The Sith student's voice cracked almost imperceptively on 'want', the 'a' rising to a slightly higher pitch for the briefest of moments.

Dustil wanted a Hapan Puzzle Box for his birthday. That was the last thing he said he wanted--

'Off to Uthar then,' Katrina said, folding her arms in front of her in that calm, unruffled way he had watched her infuriate port authority officers with. 'Who should I tell him sent me?'

'The name's Dustil. That satisfy your curiosity enough?'

'Dustil' felt like something had leapt up into his throat and ballooned against his skin, and he swallowed hard.

Carth didn't hesitate. He dashed around the corner.

Dustil stood-- he couldn't think of a happier phrase than 'Dustil stood'. Dustil stood there between his bed, the computer and the wall. Dustil glared at Katrina. Dustil turned his head to look at the new person who had interrupted him.

He couldn't see the differences at first; he could only see Dustil, his son, alive. No longer 'had been', no longer 'once was', but alive.

He was taller, maybe three or four centimeters, almost as tall as him now. Brown eyes, tapered chin that was part Morgana and part some old Onasi relative, thick brown hair-- the sideburns were new.

And so was the look he was giving Carth; the drawn paleness of his cheeks, even under the low lighting in the Academy. The way his shoulders were stiff and his body cowed inward, like he was a pup that had been hit too many times. A flash, a flash of something in his eyes and then that new gaze, hard and impenetrable like Katrina's folded arms.

'Dustil,' Carth finally managed, clearing his throat. 'Is that you?'

Dustil just stared at him for a moment, like a droid who had temporarily forgotten its programming. And then he spoke.

'Oh, great. It figures that you'd show up after all this time. Couldn't you have gotten yourself blown up on some ship and saved us the reunion?'

'Reunion' felt like something slowly deflating.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was utter silence in the cockpit of the Hawk, the last three digits of the code Atton had calmly provided echoing off its battered hull.

Finally Mira reached forward and flicked the comm switch to cut off the open channel between themselves and the Jedi Chaser.

'What the hell was that little display? Start talking fast, Rand.'

'I didn't think it existed. I thought it was just a rumor,' the pilot said softly under his breath. The bounty hunter physically leaned over to try and hear him better.

'Thought what was just a rumor, Atton?' Mical said, folding his hands in front of him and tilting his head.

Atton ignored both of them, carefully maneuvering the Ebon Hawk into the atmosphere of Remli Prime.

'How did you know those codes, Atton?' Sarii pressed.

'They're standard Sith military entry numbers,' he said flatly, down into the control console. 'Code completion is normal procedure.'

'And you remember them?' Mira said, her mouth twisted into something either confused or disgusted or both.

Atton glared at her.

'I used them a lot.'

An ominous screeching noise slid across the roof of the cockpit. Atton adjusted the controls slightly, and Sarii watched a few crooked brown branches dotted with a million tiny thorns slide down the windows in front of them and fall.

We should tread lightly here, Master, Mical said, in a tone so serious that Sarii thought he was Kavar for a moment.

If not treading here at all isn't an option, yes, Padawan, she replied, glancing at him.

The planet was like being in a Force cage; Sarii could feel nothing. She was blocked in every direction, not only by the tunnel of thick brown thorns surrounding the ship, forcing them towards the thin blue lines and smooth tan rocks of the dock ahead; but by a variety of inane numbers and specifications and statistics that beat dully against her head.

Sort of like chanting Pazaak numbers.

'What do you mean you didn't think it existed?' she murmured, keeping her gaze fixed on the back of Atton's head. 'What was just a rumor?'

'This place. If they're using old Sith codes, there's old Sith here. And the codes they're using are specific ones; ones I used a lot.'

He glanced over his shoulder at her meaningfully.

Ones he used a lot...for what he did for the Sith.

'When we couldn't turn the Jedi, rumor was they were sent somewhere else, somewhere within the Unknown Regions, a place designed to break them.'

'Did Revan plan this too?' Sarii said hoarsely, beyond shock by now.

'They said she found something out there in the middle of the war. Something she was incorporating into her plans for the galaxy before Malak ended all that. I heard talk in the ranks, troops vanishing. I didn't believe it - or want to believe it.'

The dock was populated with a few freighters that looked at least as battered as the Hawk, if not ready to be dismantled into space garbage. The ceiling curved up in a large circle to form a dome over their heads. Sarii spotted a couple of empty Force cages lining the perimeter of the dock's smooth grey walls.

Atton landed the ship and it bounced roughly on its landing posts before settling. The loose wires above their heads in the cockpit continued to swing against each other and the rattling of loose panels echoed through the ship as it settled.

'Okay,' the pilot breathed, turning around in his chair. 'First of all, tell Admiral Paranoia and his son to get over here, and not to go any further into the dock.'

'Not to go any further into the dock--' Sarii began to repeat.

'Will you just say it already?' Atton snapped. 'I'm not going to be held responsible for anything that happens here if it happens as a result of people not listening to me.'

Sarii obediently rose and walked over to the console, leaning over Mira to flick on the comm switch.

'Admiral, come straight over to the Hawk. Don't go any further into the dock,' she recited.

She leaned back against the part of the Hawk's control console that jutted out and formed a wall between the pilot's seat and the co-pilot's seat.

'All right,' Atton breathed, running a hand through his hair and gripping the back of his neck. 'Mira, you're coming with me.'

'And what of us?' Mical said, rising from his seat and resting an elbow on top of it.

'You?' the pilot snorted derisively. 'You aren't going anywhere. You, Sarii, and the Onasi kid are staying here. Jedi can't just--'

'We cannot hide on our ships, Atton. The Republic and the Jedi Order require information about this threat. Remli Prime appears to be a more substantial example than anything we have encountered thus far--'

'We don't need the Force to gather information, Mical,' Atton said witheringly. 'Mira and I can do just fine on our own--'

'What's this 'Mira and I' business?' the bounty hunter broke in. 'I don't feel particularly comfortable walking around on a planet run by former Sith assassins and not having any Jedi at my back--'

'So, what's the big important hold-up?'

Sarii blew hair up against her forehead at the sound of Dustil Onasi's voice, frustrated that they had been so prompt in following her instructions. The young Jedi Knight strolled into the cockpit, nodding briefly in greeting. The Admiral trailed behind him, glancing over the Ebon Hawk with a critical eye.

'The planet, or this port, at the very least, appears to be populated with a number of former Sith soldiers,' Mical explained.

'So?'

'So Sith are dangerous,' Atton sneered at Dustil. 'Especially the kind that might have been the market for buying Jedi off of an outfit like the Screamer.'

'Maybe you can explain how you knew their landing codes then.' Onasi's glare was practically identical to his son's.

The two men stared hard at each other. Sarii shifted her weight uncomfortably and tried to look at Mical or Mira instead.

'You know all about me, Admiral,' Atton said, his gaze never wavering, not even a flicker of an eyelash as he stared Onasi down. 'Yeah, I used to use those codes. This place is probably a conversion center for Jedi bought off the Exchange or rounded up by bounty hunters, though why it would still be operating after the Sith lost the war I don't know. It's too dangerous for the Jedi to wander around looking for information. There's too many methods and tricks they have for finding a Force sensitive.'

'But Atton, you're--'

'And then, right when I thought she couldn't take anymore - she showed me the Force. In my head. And I felt everything she felt, and how what I was doing...'

Atton wasn't even looking at her anymore. His gaze was somewhere that didn't include her, their mission, or the dingy alley on Nar Shaddaa.

'I killed her for crawling in my head, for showing me that.'

He's Force sensitive. But he doesn't want to be. He hates that he is.

'You're ...taking a big risk here.' Sarii said, stopping herself.

'If you want information out of this place, this is the only way to do it,' Atton murmured, eying her strangely for a moment. He pushed himself out of the chair and tightened his belt.

The Admiral nodded.

'Let's go, then.'

'Didn't you hear me? I said the Jedi have to stay on the ship--'

'I'm not a Jedi, am I?' Onasi said sharply, raising an eyebrow.

'I'm going too,' Sarii said quickly.

'No,' the pilot snapped, exasperated, 'You're not.'

'She knows how to take care of herself, Rand,' Mira reassured him. 'You don't have to babysit her. Besides, there's three of us. And I don't know about Admiral War Hero, but I'm pretty sure at least you and I are good with a blaster.'

Atton scowled, glancing at Mical, Dustil, and finally the Admiral before deciding that he wasn't going to get any support from them. He fixed his gaze back on Sarii.

'Atton, I'm going,' Sarii repeated firmly.

The pilot frowned but kept his mouth shut. He moved to exit the crowded cockpit, squeezing his way roughly past Onasi. The Admiral turned and went after him down the corridor. Sarii and Mira followed.

'Oh, great. And just what the hell are we supposed to do?' Dustil called after them, throwing his hands up in the air.

'Meditate,' Mira called back wryly over her shoulder.

Kosiah owns the 'hessi'. If I had one, I would name him Mr. Ed ;)

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For a moment, Sarii desperately wished Kavar would say something. She felt like a nervous, inexperienced Padawan. But her late Master was nowhere to be found, which was probably for the best. A presence as strong as his would likely be detected easily.

Atton Rand was not a Jedi Master, but somehow not following his advice in this place felt like an incredibly unwise move on her part.

'Do you remember what I told you?'

The pilot jabbed her in the ribs with his elbow, and Sarii batted him away, trying to get her bearings.

The cleanliness of the dock unnerved her. Sterile, almost; silent except for the quiet hiss of air from either depressurizing ships or the climate controls. Even those ominously empty Force cages were lined up in perfect parallel rows against the walls.

'Told me about what?' Sarii murmured distractedly.

'Pazaak.'

'Don't you ever talk about anything else?' Mira muttered behind them.

'Pazaak? I--'

Atton was staring her down.

'What are you thinking about right now?'

Not you, not you--

'How you're evading the question. Are you going to answer me?' Sarii replied. Atton shook his head gravely.

'No. I can only teach you to play pazaak,' he said, his words a dull, monotone drum beat. 'Do you understand what I'm saying?'

Sarii suddenly blushed.

'I remember,' she murmured quietly.

'Good. Play a lot of Pazaak.' Sarii nodded obediently.

'And no matter what you see or hear, do not react to it, understand? Just keep your mouth and your mind shut.'

'And hide that damn thing,' he said hurriedly, trying to shove her lightsaber inside a pocket that didn't exist. Sarii caught it before it fell to the ground and slipped it into her bag.

The foyer they entered was also immaculate. Skylights that had probably at one time looked up into the sky were now completely covered with the brown thorns. The lighting was artificial and overly bright, casting blindingly white reflections on the slate-colored walls.

The Admiral was a few steps ahead of Mira and Sarii, neck and neck with Atton. The two men seemed to be unconsciously vying for the position of leader.

'It looks like a whole lot of nothing,' Mira said quietly in her ear.

Sarii spotted a cantina and two trading posts. Aside from that, there was nothing in the foyer or the dock that gave Remli Prime away as a Sith conversion center. The few people milling around the facility looked like either mercs and bounty hunters, on their way to and from the docks; or everyday civilian-clothed humans-- if everyday included getting their hands dirty and living on an all-male planet. The cuffs of the humans they passed were lined with something dark brown and dried. There were no women, anywhere; and all of the non-humanoids appeared to be just passing through.

Sarii watched one of the humans approach a heavily armed door hidden in the corner. There were two others like it set in between the trading posts and cantina. Each looked somewhat out of place, with their thick black durasteel frames and series of locking mechanisms. Two guards stood watch outside of each one.

'Hey,' someone called out gruffly behind them. A hand clapped down on her shoulder.

Pazaak, pazaak, I'm playing pazaak...I'm no good at pazaak, I don't know how to play, I lose every time...

'Whoa, hey, sorry there. Didn't mean to make you jump,' the voice laughed in her ear. Sarii dared to glance up at him; one of the plain-clothed humans, with an angular face and a closely shaved head of what used to be black hair. 'I was just trying to get that old bishwag Rand's attention.'

The sound of all three of her companions' blasters sliding back into their holsters made a loud click. Atton pushed his way in front of the Admiral.

'Atton Rand,' the man repeated with a grin, reaching forward to shake his hand, giving him a slap on the arm along with it. 'I was wondering when the hell you were going to get out here. Took your good sweet time, didn't you?'

'I had a couple things to do,' her pilot replied off-handedly.

The man eyed up Sarii and then Mira.

'Yeah, looks like it,' he murmured with a lecherous chuckle. 'Couple of guys in our squad said you disappeared. No one knew what happened to you.'

'Captured for a while. Once the war ended it took some time to find a ship and a crew.'

Atton's lies were smooth and effortless. Sarii almost found herself believing them.

'One idiot thought you'd deserted,' the man added, laughing harder and shaking his head. 'Right. Lieutenant One-Hundred-Percent Conversion Rate was going to have an attack of conscience.'

'Did you ever manage to pull out of the seventies, Janko?' Atton ribbed. Janko shook a finger at him, rolling his eyes.

'Eighty-two percent as of right now, thank you very much. So what are you here for anyways? You bringing someone in?'

Sarii twirled a piece of hair around her finger nervously.

'Nah, just checking things out for now. Always thought this place was a rumor.'

'So did I, until I got a call-up to come out here and start construction. Might be in the middle of nowhere, but at least it's not too far from the Rim, right? No HoloNet this far into space, but we still manage shipments from the Exchange now and then...'

'How is it still operating with the war over and everything?'

'It's kind of a long story,' Janko said, shrugging. 'Come on. I'll buy you a drink and we can catch up.'

'Do the rest of us get drinks?' Mira said, grasping in the Sith's arm.

Janko gave her another once over and smirked.

'You can have as many as you want, babe.'

He gestured towards the cantina. Sarii struggled to keep her pace light and even, and not trip over her own two feet. The weight of her lightsaber in her bag felt like it was dragging her down.

Even the cantina was clean. Bright neon-colored lights ran around the ceiling and illuminated even the darkest corners of the room. Janko led them to a table near the back, gesturing for them to sit down and nodding to the droid bartender, who rolled around behind the bar in a flurry of mechanical noises.

'Do I know you from somewhere?' Janko murmured to the Admiral.

'Uh...I don't think so,' Onasi answered, looking away as he sat down between Atton and Sarii.

'I swear I've seen you somewhere before--'

'Probably in the target files,' Atton interrupted casually. 'Used to be Republic.'

'You've still got the walk. Finally figured out which side fit your ideals, huh?' Janko said, nodding in approval.

It seemed to take a great deal of effort for Onasi to nod back. Sarii exchanged a glance with Mira, who sat next to her.

Her head was spinning. She wanted to start sorting out the information but was terrified to think about anything beyond how the metal chair was cold against her skin, or how the music in the cantina was a bit too quiet.

'Don't know what possessed Revan to start anything out here,' the Sith conversion artist murmured, taking the drinks off of the droid's tray and placing them on the table. 'I've never been off-planet myself, but the bounty hunters that bring in strays from the Rim tell me there's not much else to see.'

'The Republic doesn't exist out here at all, then,' Onasi said.

Janko chuckled like he was amused, shaking his head at the Admiral.

'You've got nothing to worry about, old man. No one around here's going to call you a deserter or a traitor. I'd be surprised if the Republic's even taken one step inside the Unknown Regions. They haven't got the time and the resources considering how we ripped them apart.'

She didn't dare to intrude on anyone else's thoughts, least of all Atton's or Janko's, but Sarii couldn't help but feel Admiral Onasi's anger. He was already outraged, and Sarii had a feeling that Atton's old squadmate had a lot more to reveal to them.

'It was a good run while it lasted,' Janko said resignedly, raising a glass briefly towards Atton, who raised his as well and drank it down.

'When we heard news of what Malak did to Revan, we figured this whole place was going to be decommissioned. We started packing everything up, erasing data files, destroying computers-- you know, the usual cover-and-run procedures.'

Mira took an experimental sip of her drink and quietly spit it back out.

'Then we got a visit from the locals. Turned out they were very interested in our work.'

'What kind of locals?' Atton asked, leaning back in his chair and slinging an arm over the back of it.

'Deep space. Planet called Verte,' Janko replied, taking swigs of his drink between phrases. 'They send us materials and keep the facility running, and every now and then we send them special cases.'

'Special cases?' Mira said, leaning towards Janko. Sarii couldn't help but notice that she was deliberately displaying a good amount of cleavage.

Not surprisingly, the Sith conversion artist grinned.

'Sure. Only the ones we don't manage to turn and we still think there's a shot. Usually that doesn't happen, either because we can spot the ones who won't be of much use or because we're very, very good at what we do.'

He was trying to play footsie under the table with Mira but his foot was sliding up Sarii's leg instead. She didn't need to use the Force to know that he was probably not thinking about his skill at converting Jedi.

'Why would they want them?' Atton continued.

'They never came right out and said it or anything, but we're pretty sure they're dark Jedi. By now we can tell a Force user from a kilometer away, so no big surprise.'

You're doing a wonderful job with the one right in front of you--

The thought slipped out and Atton shot her a look. Sarii picked up her drink, trying to make it look like she was actually interested in consuming it.

If he knows what you're thinking and he was one of them, then there's probably more of them who can--

Pazaak, pazaak, I'm playing Pazaak.

'Where do you get all the Jedi you...convert?' Onasi said, sounding a little queasy.

'Bounty hunters and mercs, rounding up the Jedi still in hiding; and the odd Master and Padawan sets on missions. Usually the Masters send their Padawans out on their trials-- they're easy to catch,' Janko explained. 'Any ones that wander into these regions of space are pretty much up for grabs. Bounty hunters say the opinion of the Jedi is pretty low around these parts, which makes my job easier.'

'Business slow lately?' Atton murmured, gesturing with his glass to the relative calm around them. Janko sighed dramatically.

'Pretty much. I haven't seen any action for a while. And there aren't even any girls around to waste some time with.'

He eyed Mira with a calculating smirk. The bounty hunter returned it, one flirt shy of batting her eyes at him.

'We did get a real live one in here a couple months ago,' he added, chuckling ruefully.

Atton smirked, leaning forward over the table.

'Oh yeah?'

'At first we thought she was going to be easy. Practically dripping with pent-up emotion, guilt...'

Sarii wasn't entirely sure but she almost thought she saw saliva glistening on the edges of the Sith's lips.

'A Jedi?'

'Yeah. She was glowing with the Force too, real pretty, slick little number. Little older than I like 'em. But then...ooh boy, was that one cracked.'

'How?'

'Well,' Janko said, sitting up. 'We caught her right from the beginning. Tried to land and didn't know the codes. When that happens we let the ship land anyways. It's the easiest way to get 'em if the bounty hunters don't bring them in. Jedi are too dumb to know when to turn around and run-- if they sense something's wrong, well hell, it's their Force-given responsibility to land and fix it, right?'

The Sith rolled his eyes, scoffing.

'And even if it's not some dumb Force user it's just people passing through-- interplanetary traders, the occasional lost spacer from the Rim, which always brings in credits.'

'Anyways, so she lands...we knew something was up from her ship. The thing was brand spanking new-- nobody who isn't out here for a reason has an outfit that nice. She comes off the ship with this assault droid--'

Onasi's brow furrowed and he sat up.

Assault droid...the droids were hers, and she took them back. Did she take them with her? He can't mean--

Atton kicked her under the table.

'Round-up crew tries to surround her, but this one must have been in the wars or something,' Janko continued, making gestures to illustrate his story with his glass. 'Took out two dozen, but sheer numbers'll get 'em every time. No Jedi can fight off forty or more guards, no matter how bright she's glowing. So we brought her down, disabled her droid, threw it back onto her ship to wait for the salvage teams.'

'Did you handle her?' Atton asked. Janko shook his head.

'We gave her to Evzen. You remember him? That punk kid, couldn't even keep his codes straight?'

Atton nodded.

'Kid really made a turn-around once he got out here. He's got one of the highest conversion rates in the facility.'

The Admiral's eyes were narrow, and he was watching the Sith conversion artist in rapt attention.

'So he's got her strung up, stripped, ready to go. A lot of good men died in that fight, so half the place couldn't wait to hear her start squealing like a stuck mynock. And she starts off asking him questions. Not the usual Jedi bantha crap about why we aren't seeing the error of our ways or anything, but stuff like our monthly intake, and how we came to be out here. Evzen figures he can use her questions against her, so he tells her about how this place was Revan's idea, tries to get her angry.'

'Now you remember how scrawny Evzen was...well, he's been building himself up. Figures that the look is half the conversion, so now he's this huge brawny guy- could probably fit my head in his hands,' Janko said, holding out his hands to clarify. 'Half of his cases get the fits just from seeing him. So he finishes up with his explanations and waits for her to start in with the ranting and the raving against the past and what Revan and Malak did to the Jedi-- you know, the usual. Get this: she laughs at him. Starts telling him he has no idea what he's doing, how he's going to regret it and all this crap. Little schutta insisted she was Revan.'

Sarii felt like a shyrack against a hurricane trying to read Onasi's thoughts. Gorgeous, she heard him think as the information seeped in, you were here?

'And at first it was damn hilarious. Picture it; green-eyed brunette, average height, tied up in one of our conversion rooms covered in filth and proclaiming that she's Lord Revan. I tell you, man, funniest thing I've seen in a while. We've got the session on vid if you want to watch--'

'Maybe later,' Atton said quickly. Janko nodded.

'But then he injects the truth serum, and between the sweating and the shaking she's still going on about how she's Revan. Never seen anyone resist it so well.'

Underneath the table Sarii saw Onasi's hands balling into tight fists. His knuckles turned white and his wrists shook slightly.

'Got pretty annoying after a while, so he starts going harder on her--'

'What did you do to her?' Onasi interrupted, his voice tight and strangled.

The Sith glanced up at the Admiral, exchanging a suspicious glance with Atton.

'It's all standard procedure. Slap a neural band on 'em, strip them down, strap them up in an interrogation room. Inject truth serum and get what you can, and then the real fun begins. Why so concerned, Republic?'

Janko was careful in his pronunciation of 'Republic; separating the syllables and making it sound like a racial slur. Under the table, Onasi's hand was already clenched around his blaster.

'He's just not used to our kind of fun,' Mira purred. Sarii didn't think the bounty hunter could jam any more allusions into 'fun' if she tried.

Revan was here, they caught her, tortured her--

'Shut him up,' Mira added through her clenched teeth, tossing another flirtatious grin towards Janko.

Sarii slapped a hand down over Onasi's where it was ready to shoot Janko underneath the table. She gave a quick, nervous cough to cover the audible smack of her fingers over his fist.

'He did a real number on her,' the Sith continued, oblivious to the danger his vital organs were in. 'Some of his best work, but this one just wouldn't buy anything beyond being Revan.'

'So what'd you do with her?' Atton finally said.

'I'll tell you, damndest thing-- Evzen leaves her, scratching his head. A cracked Jedi that thinks she's the dead leader of our side's really no good to us. We were going to send her to Verte. Someone that strong in the Force, even if she is crazy, would probably be of interest to them. If she wasn't, we probably would have just tossed her--'

'Tossed her?' Sarii repeated slowly.

Janko turned towards her- the first offering she'd made to the conversation --and stared hard.

Pazaak...why the hell don't I know how to play Pazaak? List something else, list anything else...every list I know is a Jedi code or tenet of the Order--

'Put her in with the other rejects and let them kill each other,' the Sith replied calmly.

In the moment of silence that followed, Sarii made out three separate sounds; Onasi's heavy inhale and exhale through his nostrils, as though trying to control himself; Atton's casual slurping of his drink as if nothing was amiss; and the smooth slide of a few chairs moving back from their tables around the cantina.

Sarii exploded out of her seat, her double violet blade ignited and in her hands before any of the dozen or so men that had surrounded the table could take it away from her.

Don't start anything fancy, don't be the first to attack, Sarii thought. Getting injured would definitely not help her against what the Sith trying to bring her down had in mind.

Breaking out into complicated footwork and advanced lightsaber forms would start a struggle and endanger any innocent bystanders--

There's probably not one innocent bystander in this place.

Onasi was up with his blaster out, his reflexes only seconds slower than a Jedi's.

'They don't need your help, but thanks for the offer,' Janko called to the Admiral.

Sit down, Sarii willed, nodding at him. Sit down, don't get yourself captured too. I can get us information, you can only give it away--

'Nice one, Rand,' Janko said, laughing. 'Thought you could sneak one by me, eh?'

'I'm always up for testing my officers. Even the eighty-two percent success rate ones,' Atton replied with a shameless grin, clinking his glass against the Sith's.

Most of the cantina patrons were either watching with idle looks or hadn't noticed the commotion. She felt like trying to attack anyone would ruin the surreally quiet atmosphere.

Most surreal of all was Atton Rand, sipping his drink and watching her like she was a Twi'lek dancing show. Mira was twisted around in her chair, biting her lip. She lifted a leg and kicked the Admiral's chair towards him so it hit his thigh, raising her eyebrows pointedly at him.

'The view's better from down here,' the bounty hunter murmured, tossing a heavy-lidded gaze over her shoulder at Janko. The Sith smirked and winked at her.

Onasi looked from the bounty hunter to Sarii to Janko, who was leaning back in his chair with his feet folded on top of the table and watching the Admiral with that same suspicious gaze. He finally sat back down.

Sarii resignedly extinguished her blade.

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Tell me I am not just sitting here and watching a bunch of Sith drag a Jedi off to be tortured.

And yet Carth still found himself sitting at the table, staring after the Exile as the Sith that had been embedded in the cantina descended on her like a feeding hive and roughly ushered her out the door and out of his sight.

We used to just blast our way through space slime like this. On Taris, Kashyyyk--

But that had been years ago. And that had been with Katrina--

'So what'd you do with the cracked Jedi?' Atton Rand prompted, gesturing towards Janko.

'Mmm,' the Sith nodded. 'Well, like I said, we were planning on sending her to Verte. But she was a slippery little schutta...Evzen went back to overdose her on the truth serum and stick her in a coma, but she somehow willed her way out of the neural band. Knocked the kid clean out. I don't know if his ego will ever recover--'

Carth sighed in relief, uncaring as to whether Janko saw it or not. He struggled to remember every word of the messages Katrina had sent, searching for some clue that she might have recently been tortured by Sith.

Dammit, beautiful, if you had told me what was going on out here I would have left months ago, and Dodonna could have just gone to hell--

And that's probably why she didn't tell you, he thought bitterly to himself.

'What, you just let her go?' Rand objected, frowning at the Sith officer.

'No, wait, it gets better,' Janko said, holding up his hand. 'So of course she's headed for her ship when we get a great idea. She's obviously been cleaning out her ears with her lightsaber, thinking she's Revan and everything, and she landed here to investigate or try and take us over or some kind of delusional fantasy-- so we figured just let her continue landing uninvited. On Verte, specifically. Tossed the coordinates to her ship along with some phony message about the planet.'

'Slick. Think it'll work?'

Janko shrugged, pushing himself back from the table and standing up.

'Either way, she's not our problem anymore.'

The pilot and the Sith were walking out together. Carth grabbed Mira's arm, pulling her back.

'Great. Just great,' Mira muttered under her breath.

'We'll go back to the ship, get Dustil and--'

'Shh,' the bounty hunter hissed, glancing around warily. 'This may come as a shock, but you aren't going to win an Atori for your acting performance today. Keep your mouth shut until we get back to the Hawk.'

Carth felt sick to his stomach, and he hadn't even gotten a glimpse of what might lie behind those armored black doors.

Dustil had been dead-on. This felt like Korriban, all right; trailing after someone who knew what they were doing, pretending to be something he wasn't, knowing there was injustice and suffering all around him and being unable to do anything about it because it would give them away.

Searching desperately for someone you love who might be way in over her head. Exactly like Korriban.

'Hey, you want the one you brought in?' Janko asked Rand as they neared the exit of the cantina.

'I thought you guys were hard up for jobs.'

The Sith shrugged.

'For old times' sake.'

'All right, I'll be around,' Rand murmured, grinning. 'Should keep in practice. It's been a while.'

'Yeah, well, don't take too long,' Janko said, slapping him on the shoulder. 'That was a pretty little thing you found...somebody might beat you to it.'

At a loss for words as he watched the Sith disappear through one of the heavily armored black doors, Carth followed his orders and kept his mouth shut until all three of them were clanking their way back up the gangplank of the Ebon Hawk.

'That was wonderful, Rand,' Mira snarled at the pilot, who kicked a box of tools out of his way savagely. A hydrospanner flew across the center of the ship and hit the doorframe leading to the cockpit.

'She wouldn't listen. I told the Jedi to stay on the ships, but no, she had to come along--'

'This is not the Exile's fault, Rand,' Carth added sharply. 'It's yours. And it's our responsibility to go get her out of it.'

'The one time being a part of this might have actually been useful and everyone decides to ignore me!' the pilot ranted to himself, as though Carth hadn't said anything at all.

There was a collection of dirt and grime on the corner of the panel in front of him. Carth resisted the urge to start scraping it off, just like he had resisted the urge to secure the loose wires and tighten the rattling bolts all over the Ebon Hawk. The ship chugged around them with the effort of maintaining power. There were a few more creaks and groans from her used metal, far more than he remembered.

This couldn't be what Katrina had come all this way to fight. For one, she'd left it behind and still running. For another, the Sith had mentioned a different place-- Verte.

Is that where your messages stopped? Is that where the homing signal's leading us? Did you fall for what they set up for you?

He couldn't picture Katrina falling for anything a piece of Hutt-spawn like Janko and the other Sith here would throw at her. Then again, Carth couldn't picture her being defeated and tortured either.

Strung up, stripped, ready to go--

Mical came striding into the room.

'Where's Master Zhen?' he said, his features already set in a stately look of disapproval.

'Our brilliant leader got herself a backstage pass to Jedi Conversion 101,' Mira replied, voice acid.

Dustil ambled in after the Exile's Padawan, taking in all of them with the raised eyebrow and critical gaze that he must have unconsciously picked up from his former Master.

'Well, good we were left behind, eh Mical?' his son murmured. 'Looks like we didn't miss anything other than more infighting--'

'Shut up,' Rand snapped at Dustil.

'All right,' Carth breathed. 'Everybody calm down. There's two Jedi and the three of us. We're going to fight our way in and get the Exile back--'

'No, I'm going to go get her back,' Rand interrupted, straightening up and cracking his knuckles.

'Because you did so well keeping her out of there the first time,' the bounty hunter taunted.

'I'm under serious doubts as to whether you should even be allowed outside of a locked cargo hold, kid,' Carth said flatly.

'You didn't help at all back there, old man. If you hadn't started bouncing off the fracking walls over Revan, Sarii wouldn't have been distracted and she might have been able to hide herself better--'

'That doesn't change the fact that you just sat there and let them drag her off--'

'Yeah, and going all hero and waving my blaster around like you were about to do would have made the situation all better, wouldn't it?'

'Whoa, why are we bouncing off the fracking walls over Revan?' Dustil broke in.

'She stopped here and got a taste of Remli Prime hospitality towards Jedi,' Mira explained.

Dustil stood silent for a minute, glancing up at Carth like he was waiting for him to actually start bouncing off of the Ebon Hawk's dented and beat-up corridors.

'I'm sure she's fine--'

'I'm sure she's fine too,' Carth said, waving him off.

'Don't try to move too quickly. You may not be fully recovered yet.'

Bastila's voice was haggard, a strange combination with her correct and aristocratic speech.

Katrina nodded but still pushed herself up from the floor of the Force cage anyways. Her arms shook slightly with the effort and her knees wavered like a newborn hessi's before righting themselves.

You'll try, Saul, but you won't take anything more away from me. Not Dustil, not her.

He had wanted to tell them all about Dustil. About Korriban and everything they had done there. He had wanted Katrina to start giving them a detailed report on the Star Forge, just to make the pain stop.

But she hadn't. And she now glanced over at him through the three glowing blue cages, her own face pale and drawn from the surging of the torture fields that he had watched pound into her even after she was unconscious.

'They tortured all of us, though you got the worst of it by far,' he murmured, somehow thinking that might make the look on her face go away. 'Saul wanted them to make us suffer. He's become some sort of sadistic monster.'

'The dark side has perverted him, Carth,' Bastila said. 'Once you start down the tainted path it leads you ever further into the depths of evil. I fear he is forever lost.'

'Don't you ever get tired of being so preachy?' Katrina snapped, either from the still-lingering pain or the guilt in her eyes that said Saul's perversion wasn't about to make her feel any better for letting Carth be tortured.

'This is not a matter to joke about!' Bastila shot back. 'If there is one thing we can learn from Saul it is how the power of the dark side can corrupt even the bravest of heroes!'

The Jedi sighed heavily. Carth almost thought he saw something that could have passed for guilt in her eyes too as she glanced at Katrina, though for what reason he didn't know.

'I'm sorry. Forgive me. Snapping at you like that won't help our situation.'

They fell silent, standing on their stiff, worn limbs for what seemed like hours.

'First Taris, now the Academy... is there no end to the killing?' Bastila said quietly.

'Maybe Admiral Karath was lying,' Katrina offered, but even she didn't sound like she believed it.

He doesn't have to lie. He's done enough--

'I'd like to believe that Saul was lying to us, but even as he said the words I knew they were true,' the Jedi replied, shaking her head. 'The Academy is gone. We should have felt a disturbance in the Force when the attack came. The fact that we did not is a bad sign. I fear the dark side is growing stronger, casting shadows our vision cannot pierce.'

'None of this will matter if we don't get out of this prison before Saul gets back--' Carth added.

The door hissed open. For a second there was no one outside of it. He exchanged glances with Katrina on the other side of the room.

Juhani finally crept around the corner, extinguishing her lightsaber and crossing to the control panel.

'Well done, Juhani,' Bastila sighed in relief.

The thin blue haze that had tinted his vision for hours finally dissolved into nothing. Carth half stumbled out of it, trying to get feeling back into his legs.

I'll need it, I'll need every ounce of strength I have to--

'I'm sorry.'

Katrina was almost whispering, quiet so Bastila and Juhani, who were trying open the equipment room, couldn't hear.

'There was nothing else I could do. I even tried lying to him--'

'You had no other choice here, Katrina. You couldn't betray our cause.'

He glanced over at the two Jedi, too engaged with slicing the computer to notice them. He moved a little closer to her.

'I... I don't honestly know if I could have been as strong in your position. To watch you suffer like that...I might have cracked.'

'I know you would never do anything intentionally to cause me pain,' he continued. 'But it wouldn't have mattered. I've known the Admiral a long time. I could see that he already knew the answers to the questions he was asking.'

Smug, arrogant, throwing Telos back in my face, daring to say the words 'innocents' and 'Republic'--

Katrina's brow furrowed.

'Was he just talking air with all that allusion to a history between me and Malak?'

'I don't know, beautiful,' Carth murmured, moving towards the now-open equipment room that Bastila and Juhani were already in. 'Maybe we can beat some answers out of him.'

Before I kill him.

'You've already done enough by not listening to me,' Atton Rand said severely, pointing an accusatory finger at Carth. 'If you've learned your lesson, Admiral, stay here and get both of the ships ready for a quick takeoff.'

The pilot turned and disappeared through the corridor in the direction of the gangplank. Carth stormed after him, leaving the others standing in the center of the ship. He could hear their agitated whispers echoing behind him.

Rand grunted as Carth gripped the back of his jacket and slammed him up against the wall.

'What the--'

'I'm all for redemption, and I believe people can be given a second chance,' Carth said in a low voice. 'But if you make one move against Katrina, Dustil, or any other Jedi on this trip, you won't even have a chance to regret it.'

'Touch me again, old man, and I'll kill you.'

The pilot's gaze was awfully familiar. Familiar like Korriban.

Katrina wasn't here. Katrina was or had been on Verte. Wherever that was. Wherever that was, they needed to know.

Reluctantly, Carth released him. Rand scowled, adjusting his rumpled jacket and running a hand through his hair before jogging down the gangplank. His footsteps slammed unmercifully against the metal and it rattled for a few moments before falling silent again.

If they were going for terrifying, they had fallen short at dirty.

Sarii gave another experimental tug at the binders holding her wrists above her head and her ankles slightly apart. The Sith who had secured them had hung her a little too high so that she was up on her toes rather than standing.

The room was not what was making her antsy. Mold grew on the walls from the mixture of rusting metal and unwashed liquids that she didn't want to guess the identities of. She recognized supplies on the battered and bent shelves that could have, in any other situation, been innocuous: adrenal and cardio stimulants, sensory enhancers, some external regenerator implants.

An idle interest in whether this might have been the room Revan had been in made her involuntarily try and sense the former Sith Lord. A sharp, blinding pain hit her in the middle of her eye.

The neural disruptor around her head prickled against her temples. It felt like an itch that wouldn't go away. Not having the Force wasn't frightening either- she had spent years as an ordinary civilian trying to forget she had it anyways.

For the few moments she had still had access to the Force as she was shoved towards one of the black doors that separated this world from the lily grey of the Remli docks, Kavar had finally come out of hiding to give her some last minute advice:

Control, Padawan, he had said, bowing his head and shaking it back and forth mournfully. The motion was familiar- he had performed it each and every single time she made a mistake, whether they were meditating in the Jedi Temple or under a cloud of sweat and dust during a battle.

Maybe you should go teach Admiral Onasi a lesson about that, Master Kavar, she shot back. One of the Sith cuffed her roughly between the shoulderblades as if he was disciplining her for talking back.

The hallway behind the door was long and dim, like the bowels of Peragus rather than what was supposed to lead to a terribly efficient Sith conversion center. The sudden shift to darkness from the bright, almost sanitary lighting of the docks made her eyes burn.

He would not have killed the man, Sarii. You give your companions too little credit, her former Master continued.

Sarii was pushed into what looked like a standard processing room. Only the stains on the floor and scorch marks on the ceilings marked what kind of processing. A number of storage bins surrounded them, filled with various confiscated items. Sarii shuddered at the familiar brown lumps of Jedi robes spilling over the rim of one of the containers.

She could feel the emotions she had been bracing herself against growing louder and stronger like the unrelenting wail of a banshee. Fear, pain, anger; all of them surrounded her, groping and pawing as real and rough as the Sith who were processing her.

Loving Revan has not corrupted him. You served with her too-- by your logic you should be irrevocably damaged as well.

If Kavar was going to talk, couldn't he have made himself useful?

I am not...damaged, Sarii replied, grunting as the Sith guards removed her possessions and half her clothing. One of them wrenched her chin up towards him, chuckling to himself.

'Quiet little thing, aren't you?'

Sarii said nothing. She still had the Force; if she wanted to, she could shove all of them off of her, make a mad dash for the exit.

She refused to let herself acknowledge how desperately she wanted to, how much she was starting to resent Atton and the Admiral and everyone who had possibly played a part in getting her into this predicament.

'They all are at first,' another remarked, removing the crystals from her lightsaber and tossing the now-useless weapon into a storage bin with the empty shells of hundreds more. 'Least she's not spitting in our eyes like that one a couple months ago.'

But fighting back now would mean missing their only opportunity for information; not only what was valuable to the Admiral and his son, but what was valuable to the Republic and the Jedi Order.

The metallic flooring beneath their feet rumbled slightly. The grating shivered and shook from the anguished cry of a Force sensitive many meters away.

Sarii felt her wrists go limp where they were squeezed between her two handlers' fists. She tried not to think of how much she didn't want to be the next one to shake the flooring and tried to concentrate on how she was going to save the Force sensitive that didn't have a Republic agenda to worry about.

No, you are not damaged, Kavar had agreed as the neural disruptor was fitted around her head. Not by Revan herself, at least.

And then her Master had disappeared, along with Atton, Mical, both Onasis and Mira arguing with each other back on the Hawk, along with all the sentient life on this planet. No one existed now beyond herself, tied up in this room, waiting for whatever was coming her way.

It was the waiting that was scaring her. Every time she heard the tapping rhythm of footsteps outside of the room, she tensed against the binders, sure that it was her turn.

Every time she had been wrong, and the false alarms only made her more nervous.

Calm down, Sarii repeated to herself. Without the gentle murmur of Kavar, the stately conclusions of Mical, or even the furtive recitation of code from Atton, she had only her own voice to help her now.

As soon as whatever Sith shows up, you'll make it through his interrogation and then escape. Easy as that.

Never mind that she had no idea how she was going to escape with a neural disruptor on her head. She'd never tried to will herself out of one befo