Stay

The apartment was silent, and dark. The only source of light streamed in through a checkerboard pattern of squares, the window overlooking the gentle glow of Citadel Station as it lazily orbited the planet below. The apartment was sparse, but fancy-- the kind usually reserved for visiting diplomats or Telosian nobles who had managed to retain some of their credits after the planet was destroyed. Now it contained a lone woman, hardly of either type, sitting on the edge of a mussed-up bed. Clothing and small items were strewn about her, and one by one she placed them in a pack, taking great care to be as quiet as possible.

Valen placed the last of the robes inside the backpack, folding it neatly on top of the others. The clothing she had amounted to very little, her two jedi robes, maybe three shirts, two sets of breeches and a few pairs of underclothes. She didn't need to bring much, the 'Hawk contained everything else she would need -- provisions, maps, her personal set of armor. With a sigh she drew the drawstring shut and placed the pack on the floor, then set about making the bed - taking time to fluff the pillows and smooth the covers to perfection. She knew she was stalling, but there was no sense in leaving someone else to clean up her mess later. Her lightsaber lay on the bedside table. Picking it up, she clipped it to her belt and gave it a pat, almost as if she was reassuring it of the things to come.

Now, for the hardest part.

Across the room, a datapad lay on a simple steel desk along the apartment wall. Valen picked it up, and with her other hand opened the desk's only drawer. A few items sat inside; a pazaak card, a dull opalescent crystal, a beaten-up pair of wrist guards. Taking the contents out, she placed them alongside the datapad on the end of the bed.

There.

A message, and a few meager gifts left to some of her crewmates from the Ebon Hawk. A pitiful , cowardly way to say goodbye, but Valen dared not tell them where she was going, and what she faced if she made it there. She knew they would follow her willingly to their deaths, but she could not ask that of them. At the same time, she couldn't dare order them to stay behind, for she knew she would falter and give into their loyalty and her fear of the unknown, and would bring them with her. No, she had to go alone.

With that done, it was time. Valen grabbed her pack and swung it lightly over one shoulder. For a moment she paused and looked around her, contemplating the nearly empty room as she breathed steadily, allowing the flow of the Force to calm the nervous, empty feeling fluttering inside her. Grounded, she walked to the main room of her shared residence module, the door to her apartment shutting behind her with a gentle whisper of air. Here too it was dark, save for the light filtering in from two small windows. Two more doors were on either side of hers, all of them closed. In the morning, or what passed for morning on the Station, those doors would open. Her crew...her friends....would wake, and find her gone.

A tingle in her mind let her know she wasn't alone in the room. There -- under the eastern window in a chair, the silver-blue glow of his arm pulsated softly in the dark. It was then that Valen realized her efforts to leave Telos unnoticed had been pointless from the very beginning.

Oh frag...this not what I needed...this is really, really not what I needed.

'Can't sleep?' she asked him in a low voice.

' 'Fraid not, General,' Bao-dur replied, rising from his chair. He walked towards her, the crowning horns of his head silhouetted by the light being cast through the window. 'My dreams have been dark since we left,' he said, not needing to say from where. 'I think I'd rather wait for exhaustion to take me, than experience them again.' He stopped in front of her, still in shadow, taking in the backpack and the expression on her face. Valen knew she wouldn't be able to lie to him about what she was doing. Her stomach churned with guilt. Ferverently, she wished that it had been someone - anyone but him, underneath that window.

'You're leaving.' He said. It was an observation, a statement - not a question. Almost as if he had known her intentions, and had waited for her here.

'I have to.' She whispered, gripping the strap of her pack a little tighter, fighting the ebbing turmoil in her mind, 'Revan...I have to find her. I need to know what happened to her. '

'I thought it had to do with Revan,' he replied. 'You've seemed distant since Malachor...like your thoughts were off in the unknown reaches of the galaxy with her. Not even Mical wanted to approach you to question your thoughts.' Valen smiled a little at the thought of her well-intentioned, but nosy student. Another good-bye she could not bring herself to endure. She dropped her gaze to the floor.

'It has to be now, you know?' She said. 'Every day I've woken up with the nagging feeling that I'm running out of time. It could be the Force giving me a premonition, or my own paranoia - either way, I can't stay here any longer.'

I could already be too late.

'I know. You've been pacing like a caged boma. But what I don't understand, General,' he continued, voice taking on a more serious tone as he moved closer and reached to gently touch her upper arm, 'Is why you would choose to leave without myself and the others, and go alone.' The touch jerked her gaze from the floor to him, and in his face she could read his confusion and hurt, clouded behind the mask of impassiveness he usually wore. His movement had brought him close enough that she could see he wasn't in his usual mechanic's outfit, clad only in a pair of pale linen sleeping breeches. 'I mean, that's a lot of space to search in, General, a lot of time to kill. And that poor excuse for a ship isn't going to fix itself.'

'I have no choice, Bao,' Valen said, looking him in the eyes. 'Where Revan went, she went alone. Kreia warned me that where I must go is dangerous...dangerous beyond what either Revan or I could comprehend.' Bao-dur said nothing, cocking his head slightly to one side, waiting for her to continue.

The hand that still rested on her arm made her skin tingle with the Force she could feel running through him, the light played fluidly over the curves and muscles of his arms and torso. A long-ignored sensation deep within her rumbled to life to swirl in with the other emotions flowing through her, but she swiftly pushed it and the rest away with her mind.

Control.... Not now, not the time...never the time...

'I can't take you with me. Not you, or Atton, or Visas or Mira.' she sighed, sensing his resistance. 'The Jedi Order needs to be restored, so we'll have a fighting chance. Getting yourselves killed on my behalf isn't going to accomplish that. You're not strong enough...not for what's out there. For that reason alone I can't take anyone that I...that I care about.'

She paused, waited for a response...but got none, his face and mind rendered unreadable. For a moment neither of them moved or spoke. Valen realized that words weren't enough. There wasn't anything she could say that wouldn't seem like an excuse, a dismissal. She needed him to understand.

She let her mental shields down, letting her thoughts flow outward, allowing him to read the chaotic conflict within her. Her guilt, her sadness, her fearpanicdesirehope...her love. Images - of Revan...of Atton, Mira, and Disciple when she had first woken them to the Force. Images of Bao-dur himself, standing by the ruins of their crashed shuttle on Telos, the first time they had seen each other in years. Images of Kreia -- now Darth Traya, broken and dying as Malachor shattered around them...and her face as she warned Valen, warned her of the war that was yet to come. She ferverently hoped that he would understand how badly she needed him here...and hoped even more that he would not ask her to bring him with her, for of all the people she had fought beside - all the people she had cared for...had loved...he was the one she wanted with her the most.

She cut off the flow. She had nothing more to give, nothing more for her to say.

It was Bao-dur who finally broke the stillness, taking his hand from her arm and tentatively running his fingertips lightly across the length of her shoulder and up the curve of her neck, letting them rest on the outline of her jaw.

General? He spoke to her through the Force, his thoughts forming into clarity in her mind.

But I was just a Tech.

'No", Valen whispered back to him, "Never 'just' anything."

Valen began to feel herself being wrapped in a myriad of emotions and sensations -- his thoughts, responding to her own. She could feel herself being surrounded by a strange sort of warmth , a bittersweet combination of his returned affection...of his sad acceptance over their inevitable parting...of his desire for her, long hidden by a desperate journey and the shadow of a dead planet.

Then...General?

"Yes?"

If you will not take me with you... he thought, his mechanical hand finding the small of her back, pulling her close and bridging the last of the gap between them.

...Then stay, just a little while longer...

Head titled, his lips reached down to meet hers, his other hand pushing the strap of her backpack off her shoulder, letting it fall forgotten to the floor.

...If only for me.

She woke to his face, relaxed and peaceful in a deep sleep that she envied. Careful not to wake him, she tenderly ran the tip of a finger down one of the horns on his head, traced the mark of a tattoo outline from his temple to his jawline, and let her hand linger awhile on the steady heartbeat beneath the muscles of his pecs.

Slowly, she slipped herself from beneath the covers of the bed, and pulled on her clothing. She watched him as he rolled over in his sleep, illuminated by the apartment's lone window. Valen knew he would wait for her, either until she returned to him, or called him to come fight alongside her on the fringes of the galaxy.

Outside her room she picked up the fallen pack, and out the door she strode reluctantly, but confidently, away. An Exile once again, but this time by choice.