The Long Road Led Here

A/N: This is the long-awaited (well, for me, anyway) "sequel" to http://hawk.kotorfanmedia.com/node/6479. Yes, it did take six months to write.  Scary.  Enjoy anyway!  And I tried hard to deviate as much as possible from the game dialogue while still getting the ideas in there.

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The Long Road Led Here

      There she was again: that young Jedi woman.  Battle raged around her, and one by one, her companions fell until only she and three others remained.  And that was when they saw her: Revan.  The Dark Lady wheeled around and stretched out her hand, deftly crushing the trachea of one of the Jedi within her invisible iron grip.  The young one with the smooth alabaster face gave a start as she watched her friend choke to death.  Revan flicked her wrist, and the Knight she held fast in her Force choke slammed into a wall and sank to the floor, lifeless.  Revan allowed herself a sneer of contemptuous pride as the three remaining Jedi inched closer to her.  She held the crimson blade of her lightsaber diagonally across her chest, both protecting herself and taunting her enemies.

      “Come to play, Jedi?” she scoffed, her voice sounding strange and dark from behind her mask.

      “Surrender, Revan, and we shall not harm you,” said the young one.

      Revan looked at her with a scornful eye.  She shook her head with a falsely apologetic sigh.

      “Ah, Bastila.  Such talent in one so young.  Such potential . . .”

      She drummed her fingers on the hilt of her lightsaber as if deep in thought.  Bastila stiffened, and her grip on her own ‘saber tightened.

      “You could join me,” Revan said finally. “You could realize the full strength of your power.”

      “I will never join you!” Bastila hissed hotly. “Surrender, Revan!  You will not win, but you need not die!”

      “As if you could strike me down.  I’d enjoy watching you try.”

      She brandished her ‘saber, its blood-red blade making a wide arc of light through the bridge.  Bastila took a step back, and the next second, an enormous explosion rocked the bridge, knocking her to her knees.  When the smoke cleared, she looked up to find Revan lying prone on the floor in a pool of her own blood, writhing feebly in pain.  She scrambled to her side just as Revan slipped into unconsciousness, and curiosity so terribly overwhelmed her than she quickly pulled the mask off to see the face beneath . . .

     Lire awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright and gasping for breath.  Almost instantly, the room began to spin and a pair of strong hands was on her shoulders.  With a moan, she reeled, and whoever was beside her gently pushed her toward the edge of the bed.  She leaned over and had only a split-second to realize there was a bucket there before she vomited quite violently.  Her head was swimming so badly that she barely noticed how those hands were supporting her.  One was gently cradling her forehead, and the other was rubbing her back, trying to soothe her discomfort as every inch of her insides lurched painfully.  She’d never been that ill before . . . It must’ve had something to do with the agonizing throbbing in her forehead that was sending shockwaves of pain to every inch of her body.  The burning, stabbing pains shot down through her arms—especially her right one—the one that had been broken—to her fingers, where they doubled back and shot down her back until they reached her toes.  Frankly, she felt as though she was dying.  But, gradually, her stomach finally stopped churning and the room quit spinning.  A few minutes had passed since her rather painful awakening, and she inhaled shakily before stealing a glance at the person those nice hands were attached to.

     “C—captain!” she stammered, struggling to get up.  She instead tumbled backward onto her bunk with a heavy sigh.

     “Just take it easy,” Carth said, reaching over and patting her hand. “You were banged up pretty bad.”

     “That explains the enormous knot on my forehead,” she sighed, reaching up and gingerly feeling the bump.  It smarted, so she closed her eyes and exhaled deeply.  After a moment, she cracked one eye open at Carth. “How’d you get here?”

     “Don’t you remember?  I was in the escape pod with you when we escaped the Spire.”

     “Oh.”  She sighed again, squeezing her eyes shut.

     “Are you feeling all right?  You were thrashing around like mad . . . I was wondering if you were in a lot of pain.”

     “N—no, no pain,” Lire replied. “I was just dreaming, I think.”

     “And it’s probably explained by that smack on the head,” Carth nodded. “Listen, you just relax and let the kolto do what it’s supposed to.  Not only did you have a gash the size of Coruscant on your forehead, but your arm was broken.  Now, I’ve seen folks come out of pod crashes before, but I’ve never seen any injuries that left them out cold for a week.”

     “A week?”  She cracked her eye open again, and Carth nodded.  “Sweet Force . . .”

     “I was beginning to get a bit worried,” he admitted. “Sometimes you’d be tossing and turning, and other times you’d get so still you looked like you were dead.  For a minute there, I was wondering if you were gonna wake up.”

     “Oh, that’s nice to know.”  She gingerly pushed herself up and glanced around.  “Is this Taris?”

     “Mm-hmm.”  Carth followed her gaze.  “Not much to look at, is it?”

     “What is this place?”

     “Just an apartment in one of the complexes.  It was the first place I found when I got you out of that escape pod.  I mean, let’s face it.  You were hurt pretty bad, the Sith were coming to investigate, and we needed to beat it.  So I came here.”

     Lire smiled faintly at him, motioning to the kolto patch still on her forehead.

     “Then I guess I owe you my life, Captain,” she said. “Thanks.”

     “No thanks necessary,” Carth replied with a shake of his head. “I’m not in the habit of abandoning people on missions, and I don’t intend to get that way.  And you can just call me Carth.  I’m not gonna pull rank on you.”

     Lire chuckled despite the residual throbbing in her head, and she nodded slowly.

     “Okay, will do.”  She paused a moment and tilted her head slightly.  “Wasn’t there some Jedi we were supposed to be protecting?”

     “Bastila?  Oh, right.  That was what I wanted to talk to you about.  You see, there’s a rumor that her pod crashed into the Under City.  It’s my duty to see that she’s kept safe, so I’m going to need your help in finding her.”

     “Great,” Lire thought, fighting down an eye roll. “He saved me just to put me to work finding a Jedi who couldn’t keep the ship in the air!”

     “You think she’s alive?” she said aloud.

     “She’d better be.  We didn’t get stranded on this rock for no reason.  There’s something going on here; something strange.  Trust me when I say I’ve got an intuition about this sort of thing.”

     “They call that paranoia,” Lire replied.

     Carth glared at her as if he knew she was right but he didn’t want to admit it.  His eyes narrowed, and she rolled hers, shrugging in defeat.

     “Okay, fine.  Where do you want to start looking?”  She swung her legs over the side of the bunk and stood.

     “Are you even feeling up to going out?” Carth asked, temporarily ignoring her question.

     “I’d better be,” Lire shrugged. “What good would I be as a soldier if I couldn’t keep going after a smack on the head?”

     She wobbled slightly as she set off across the room to a half-open trunk in which she saw her blaster.  As she stooped to retrieve it, she staggered a bit more and felt Carth’s eyes glued worriedly to her.  Perhaps her head wasn’t as healed as she’d thought or liked to have believed.  With a heavy sigh, she stood and leaned back against the wall, blinking slowly.  Carth was by her side, his hand on her shoulder, ready to offer stabilization.

     “Okay, I think I really hurt my head back there,” she confessed. 

     “That could very well be the understatement of the century,” Carth replied. “You really do need to rest.  I think you should go back to bed.”

     “And if I don’t, what’ll you do?  Pull rank on me?”  Lire crossed her arms and arched an eyebrow.

     “I might,” Carth answered with a smirk as he playfully tilted his head.  His jest quickly turned back to seriousness, however. “You just get yourself some rest.  We’ll go out later.”

     “There might not be a later,” Lire said, slipping her blaster into the holster at her hip and checking her spare cartridges. “We have to go now if we’re going to find Bastila.”

     “But you don’t even know where to start looking.”

     “Oh, and I suspect you do?”  She crossed the room for her knapsack and dug out a handful of medpacs before quickly injecting them.

     She wasn’t expecting him to answer that, but he did.

     “As a matter of fact, I do.  Waiting a week for somebody to wake up leaves time for some exploring.  Word on the street is that a few pods crashed down in the Under City.”

     “And we’re just going down there on the hope that one of them is your Jedi princess’s?  Brilliant,” Lire retorted, then grimaced and put a hand to her forehead. “Oh, ow . . .”

     She exhaled heavily and sank to her knees on the floor, trying to ignore the pounding headache but failing.  The half-open footlocker before her seemed to be filled with her meager belongings, and she pulled out a medpac, quickly jabbing it into her arm.  As the pain subsided somewhat, she turned and looked curiously at Carth as she pulled on her boots.

     “Why’d you do it?”

     “Hmm?  Do what?”

     “Look after me.  I mean, you could’ve just left me to die and gotten off this rock on your own.

     “I already told you.  I don’t—”

     “I know; you don’t leave folks behind.”  She looked at him and stuck out her hand.  He looked at it, almost cautiously, for a moment before gingerly shaking it.  “Well, thanks anyway.  I could be off in a Sith prison cell right about now, undergoing some very painful torture.”

     She just shrugged a bit as Carth helped her to her feet.  She glanced up and tore the kolto patch off her forehead, wincing as the glue pulled at her skin and drawing a concerned glance from Carth.

     “You think you’re in good enough shape to go out?”

     “I thought we’d already had this conversation.”

     “Well . . .”

     “Yes, I’m fine.  Besides, if I’m not, you can always play the role of the dashing hero saving the damsel in distress.”

     She flashed him a playful grin as she shoved her blaster into its holster, and then she was off across the room to the door.  Carth stopped her just before she opened it, however, and shoved a ration bar into her hands.

     “You’re not going out there without getting some of your strength back.”

     Lire eyed the ration bar with such disdain that it seemed as if she were tempted to just hurl it out the window and be finished with it.

     “I was expecting real food, Captain,” she muttered.

     Carth just shrugged, and she sighed as she ripped the packaging away and took a bite out of it.  That one bite was all she could stand because the flavor was so disgustingly similar to sawdust, and the next moment, she pitched the remaining bar into the nearest wastebasket.  Carth lifted an eyebrow but didn’t say anything as Lire dusted her hands off and looked up at him.

     “There.  I ate.”

     “That wasn’t enough to keep a mouse alive, but have it your way.”  He sighed as a triumphant gleam flashed across her dazzling blue eyes.  “So long as you think you’re feeling better . . . Move out, soldier.”

     Lire rolled her eyes as she mashed the door control and the door hissed open.

     “You’re pulling rank on me.”

     Carth just smiled at her so angelically that she nearly slapped it right off of him.  She just sighed and stepped out into the hallway, rubbing her still-sore arm and willing it to hurry up and heal.

~·~

     The morning was relatively uneventful with the exception of running into a trigger-happy Sith officer as soon as they set foot outside the door.  But he was easily dealt with, and they went along their way.  As they wandered around the Upper City, Lire made note of the fact that Carth had been correct in saying that the planet wasn’t much to look at.  The towering skyscrapers that loomed over the paved, highly maintained walkways failed to impress Lire; they instead gave her the feeling that Taris was trying to cling to its former status as the “Coruscant of the Outer Rim.”  But things had changed; that much was obvious, and the giveaway wasn’t just the silver-armored Sith troops roaming the streets.  Lire caught a number of sideways glances from the locals—locals who seemed to turn their noses up at anyone not a native of the Upper City.  Were she not so skilled at ignoring them, she would’ve taken that treatment a little bit more personally than she did. 

     “You’d think these locals don’t like newcomers,” she muttered sarcastically, half-expecting Carth to hear her and reply.  When he didn’t respond with so much as a scoff, she turned to find him walking along behind her, eyes transfixed on the ground as if he were deep in thought.  She fell back to his side and nudged his shoulder. “Out with it.”

     Carth jumped slightly and looked at her in slight confusion.

     “What?”

     “Your mind ain’t on the present, Carth,” she informed him. “What’re you thinking about?”

     “Oh, nothing.”

     “Doesn’t seem like nothing.  C’mon, out with it.”

     “Why?”  Immediately he seemed defensive.  Lire shrugged.

     “Guess I’d just like to know a little about you, is all.”

     Carth stared at her for a moment before shaking his head and sighing.

     “What is there to tell?  Spent my whole life in the fleet—ever since I was . . . oh . . . sixteen and my father decided I needed to have a future.  Uh . . . been a star pilot with the Republic since then and served in the Mandie Wars before this mess.  Not much else beyond that.”

     “Oh, sure there is!” Lire prodded, lightly poking him in the shoulder. “Where do you come from?  No, wait.  Let me guess . . .  Bit of an accent . . . You’re Telosian, am I right?”

     Carth stared at her in disbelief that wavered between mild and extreme.

     “How’d you know that?”

     Lire shrugged.

     “When you live and work on Coruscant for a long time, you get to talk to a lot of people from a lot of places.  Besides, it’s an easily identified accent.  Pretty elegant, if you ask me . . . especially up in the upper echelons where people pay big money to learn to speak Basic ‘perfectly.’”  She sighed a bit.  “Always wanted to live there . . .”

     “In the upper echelons of Telosian society?  Please.”

     “Nah, just cut out the ‘upper echelons of’ and you’ve got it.”

     Lire noticed that, when she said that, Carth went silent.  She knew why.  She sighed and looked over at him.  He was just walking along silently, hands balled into fists at his sides.  His brows were furrowed, making creases in his forehead.  And, for a split second, she felt genuinely sorry for him.

     “Look, I’m sorry,” she said. “Didn’t realize the attack on Telos would still be a sore spot with you.  Guess some folks just take it harder than others.”

     “And it isn’t even that,” he muttered. “It was one of the first worlds to fall to Malak’s fleet, you know.  They just . . . pulled up to the front door and bombed it into submission, and there wasn’t a damned thing the Republic would do to stop it!”

     He pounded a curled fist into his flattened palm, and Lire flinched a bit as she took one good glance at Carth.  His whiskey brown eyes were flashing with an unquenchable fire and lust for . . . revenge?  It was then that Lire had a nagging feeling that the planet’s destruction had meant more than the simple loss of a homeworld.

     “Wanna talk about it?” she asked gently.  He wheeled around to her.

     “No, I don’t,” he answered tightly. “What I want, and I don’t know if it’s even possible, is to save the galaxy.  All right?  You got more to say, then you say it later, please.  I just . . . wanna get under way.”

     Lire came to a complete stop there in the middle of the street as Carth continued on ahead, muttering to himself.  Both of her eyebrows shot skyward as she watched him go, not even really remembering to follow.

     “I only asked to know a little about him . . .”

     After a moment, she just sighed and lifted one shoulder before letting it droop, and when Carth turned to see what was keeping her, she picked up her pace and followed him.  Mentally, she made a note to ask him later about why just the thought of Telos’s destruction sent him into a fit of rage.  Until then, she’d just have to leave him relatively alone.

~·~

     They had lunch at the cantina there in the Upper City despite Carth’s insistence that they should conserve their credits and stay as low-key as possible.  Lire simply told him they’d just have to earn money if ever they needed it and that they were fine as it was.  Thus, she enjoyed her sandwich and caffa (the existence of such in a bar being a bit of a miracle in itself) while Carth just picked at his.  After a little while, Lire turned to him and raised an eyebrow as if in disbelief that he could be moping again.  She took a sip from her caffa before pushing her empty plate away and leaning over to Carth.  She tapped his forearm, and he looked up at her.  Now that she got a clear look at him, he seemed to be doing less moping and more thinking.  She just smiled at him.  Force, he had such gorgeous eyes, all deep brown and such a clear window to his emotions.  She was quiet for a minute before offering another smile and reaching over to pick up her cup.

     “I was wondering if now’d be a good time for some more questions,” she said, gazing at him over the top of her caffa.

     His eyebrows went up ever so slightly as a grin quirked at the side of his mouth.  He folded his arms on the countertop and cocked his head.

     “I’m all ears, beautiful.”

     Lire’s brows shot sky-high as she nearly spewed her caffa all over the bar.  He had not just flirted with her . . . had he?  There was an almost mischievous gleam in his eyes, a smile that just longed to come out, and a faint smile danced across her face as she batted back a few loose strands of jet-black hair.  He turned his head ever so slightly, waiting for an answer, and causing the twin strands of hair that dangled rebelliously into his eye to flop back and forth.  Lire’s smile widened until it was playful.

     “Well, now,” she said, almost in a drawl. “The captain has good taste.  If he doesn’t mind my saying so . . . I like the sound of that.”

     “Which one?  The ‘I’m all ears’ bit or . . . or the ‘beautiful’ part?”

     “Oh, the ‘beautiful’ part.  You keep callin’ me that, and maybe I’ll think up something to call you.”

     His grin widened until it was just as playful—perhaps more so—than hers.  And it was more flirtatious than she’d anticipated.  He stroked his stubbled chin as if in deep contemplation, eyes twinkling.

     “I’ve always been partial to ‘most handsome pilot in the galaxy’. . .”

     Lire smiled faintly as she slid closer to him, gazing up into his eyes.

     “Now that’s a mouthful,” she said slowly. “How about I just shorten it to ‘handsome’ and we’ll call it even?”

     “Oh, well, now, you put a man in a tough situation.  Guess I can’t do much more than agree to that, hmm?”

     Carth chuckled good-naturedly and shook his head a bit as he finally lifted his own cup of caffa to his lips.  Lire laughed softly to herself as she took a sip of her own drink, and they both went silent for a moment before Carth tossed a side glance in her direction.

     “Okay, now, kidding aside, you probably still have your heart set on those questions.  Are they absolutely necessary?”

     Lire almost raised a brow but fought the urge.  What did he mean, "kidding aside"?  Who was kidding?!  Instead, she just turned and looked at him, face expressionless.

     “They are unless you’ve got some deep, dark secret.  I dunno, maybe you’re a vampire.  Or maybe you’re cannibalistic.  Or—”

     “Okay, okay,” Carth sighed, “point made.  Let the interrogations begin.”

     “Excellent,” Lire leered, rubbing her hands together. “Soon all your secrets shall be mine.”

     “Then maybe I oughtta tell you that there’s nothing special to be had in picking apart my past.  No wild secrets to tell, none of that dark, gloomy history stuff.”

     Lire frowned a bit and almost turned away, but he kept going.

     “But lemme ask you something before you get started on those questions.  I’ve been sort of replaying the battle for the Spire in my mind.  The thing I don’t understand is why we couldn’t have fought back any better or faster.  No, wait; I do know.  They came outta nowhere and we didn’t have time to scramble.  And I guess I regret that we couldn’t.”

     “Go on . . .” Lire said, almost warily.  Carth shrugged.

     “We lost a lot of good people, not to mention the ship, but did we really need to?  I don’t think so.  Maybe we were all hoping some Jedi powers would save our skins.  But the thing about that is that Bastila was practically the first one off the ship.  One of the first escape pods that was jettisoned.  She was off, and then the rest of us were left to almost fend for ourselves.”

     “And I was off-duty at the time, meaning I was asleep,” Lire sighed, polishing off her caffa and calling for a refill. “Then everything was rocking . . .  Rude awakening, lemme tell ya.”

     “Even wide awake, it was still such a shock . . .  And now, thinking back on it, I’m finding more and more things that aren’t adding up.  Two plus two doesn’t equal four, if you know what I mean.”  He took another sip from his caffa.  “So I guess I’m hoping you’ll be able to tell me what happened.”

     “As in, from my point of view?” Lire asked, and Carth nodded.  She frowned in thought. “Well, to be truthful, I have no idea.  Like I said, I was off-duty and catching some shut-eye.  Then the next thing I know, some ensign comes running in, telling me the ship’s under Sith attack.  Then we’re off running through the halls shooting whoever shoots at us, and eventually you and I crashed here.  But if you want the short version, I wasn’t in a position to know what happened, if the attack was really as sudden as everyone believes, or anything.”

     “Neither was I.  It just came out of nowhere.  Besides, I doubt they would’ve told me anything, anyway.  Bastila was in charge of our mission; I was just onboard as an advisor to her.  Though try to get her to listen to advice, and it’s like pulling rancor fangs.  But I can’t think of any reason why we’d get a full-fledged assault just flung on us like that one was, unless they simply wanted Bastila dead.  They had to have known that the Spire wasn’t fully prepared for an attack; it was a simple diplomatic mission.  I guess that’s why I’m surprised that I’m even sitting here talking about it.  If anyone else pulled through, I guess then they’re just as lucky as we are.”

     He paused a moment, glancing over at Lire, who nodded thoughtfully.  But after a moment, she noted his gaze and raised a brow.

     “What?”

     “Oh, nothing.  I’m just thinking how it seems strange that you’re here now.  It almost seems . . . set up.  Now I know you’re a scout, and I know you’re a brand-new recruit.  Maybe that’s why it seems strange.”

     “Why?” Lire asked, crossing her arms a bit.  She already seemed to be going on the defensive. “Are you accusing me of crashing the ship?  For Force’s sake!”

     “Nobody’s accusing you of anything,” Carth replied, shifting on the bar stool a bit. “I just think it’s strange that you, the last and newest addition to the roster, are alive to talk about the crash.”

     “Thoughtful of you, captain,” Lire grumbled. “First you play the role of Prince Charming to a T, and now you accuse me of crashing the ship!  Dammit, what is so unusual about my being the newest crewmember?!”

     “Oh, only that you were the only one that Bastila specifically requested as soon as your recruitment papers came through.  Only that you came aboard the Spire not five minutes before we left Coruscant.  Only that Bastila’s last order before she jumped ship was for somebody to go get you.  No one else got all that special treatment.”

     “Please.  Saying ‘Go get so-and-so and tell them to haul their butt outta bed’ is not special treatment!”

     “It is when she asked for you by name.”

     Lire wheeled around, glaring hard.  She looked nearly ready to explode, for her dark blue eyes had narrowed into thin slits and her mouth was drawn into a tight line.  No longer did she seem as though she had enjoyed that moment of light flirting.  Now she just seemed more than a little irritated.

     “You are extremely paranoid.”

      “So what if I am?  That paranoia has saved my butt on more than one occasion.  I just know that there are red flags all over your story and that it seems just a bit too convenient that of all the people that could’ve survived the Spire, you were the one that did and that you’re the one now down here helping me out.” 

     “I’m telling you, captain, I had nothing to do with the Force-damn crash.  What, you think I called in the Sith and said ‘Hey, look, here’s a sitting duck’?  Look, if you don’t trust me, then just go ahead and say so because if there’s one thing I hate, it’s somebody beating around the bush.  And, trust me, the bush you’re beating around is not that big.”

     “All right, then.  I don’t trust you, at least not now.  And I may be wrong; this might be nothing more than a coincidence.  But let me tell you that experience has taught me to never take things at their face value.  And I hate surprises.”

     “Surprises?”  Lire arched a brow, leaning on the counter.  “Surprises as in sudden acts of betrayal?”  She noticed that Carth bristled at that, but she kept going as if she hadn’t even seen it.  “My, aren’t we suspicious?  For a fellow who saved my skin so I could help him find his Jedi princess, you sure are doing a lot of jumping to conclusions.”

     She leaned over to him, almost right in his face, as her expression went from mild to more extreme annoyance.  She prodded him in the chest with her index finger, glaring at him.

     “I am telling you once and for all that I had nothing to do with that crash!  And you quit telling yourself that I did!”

     “I’m doing nothing of the sort!  I just think it’s better to be safe than sorry in matters like this.”

     “Matters like what?  A little coincidence?  Force!  I swear, you are the most suspicious man I ever met.  Funny; I could’ve thought you knew we were on the same side.”

     For the first time, Carth had no real comeback for that; rather, he had no comeback for the angry gleam in Lire’s eyes.  She turned away, scowling, as she finished off her second cup of caffa and paid their tab.  Then she got up and strode for the cantina’s exit, eyebrows furrowed with irritation.  Carth rolled his eyes a bit and slid off his stool, following her.  When they reached the outside city streets, only then did he try to say more.

     “It’s got nothing to do with you personally.”

     “Tell that to someone more naïve than me.”

     “Dammit, you don’t need to go getting up in arms!  This is not about you!”

     “Well, it damn well seems like it is!  For the past ten minutes, all I’ve heard coming out of your mouth, even if you didn’t say it straight, was ‘You crashed the Endar Spire!’”

      She turned and leveled him with a cold glare before stalking off.  Carth growled under his breath and grabbed her by the elbow, spinning her around.  She twisted into his grasp and immediately began struggling.  He just clamped his hands on both her shoulders, staring straight at her.  And as he looked at her, watched that spirited fire dancing in her eyes, he softened, if only a little.  He had called it correctly the first time: she was beautiful.  There was a thin scar on her jaw, but it didn’t detract any from the clear, faintly tanned complexion and the lightning-like azure eyes.  But he couldn’t . . . wouldn’t . . . not with that memory still so fresh . . .  He sighed lightly through his nose. 

     “Look,” he said more gently.  Lire stopped thrashing quite so animatedly. “This really isn’t about you.  It’s more about me.  I don’t trust anyone.  Haven’t in a while.  And those are my reasons, so if you’re expecting me to spill my guts, I’m afraid the answer’s no.”

      Lire didn’t say anything at first, but there was still a frown on her face.  Inwardly, she wanted to press him, to try to get some answers out of him.  Trust issues were no excuse for the accusations he’d made—or she’d thought he’d made.  After all, it had sounded as though he was pinning the blame for the crash on her and on her alone.  She sighed, her shoulders slouching a bit.  Even the words “I don’t trust anyone” didn’t have a calming effect on her.  Instead, they irritated her further, caused her to want to know why. 

     “Fine,” she grumbled. “You can stuff your freaking reasons, then.”

     She looked up at him, expecting him to get angry for that.  He didn’t.  Instead, his expression was one closer to relief.  Hm.  That was surprising.  She hadn’t quite expected that . . .

     “Thank you,” he said. “Let’s just get under way.”

     He released her shoulders and walked off down the street.  Lire watched him go for a minute before she called after him.

     “You haven’t heard the last from me on this!”

     Carth came to a grinding standstill in the middle of the boulevard and turned back to look at Lire.  His hands clenched into white-knuckled fists as his lips vanished into a nearly indistinguishable line between his nose and chin.  Something—anger?—flashed in his deep brown eyes.  He just glared at Lire for a minute before he shook his head and strode back to her, getting within six inches of her face and dropping his voice to a growling whisper.

     “You, Lire Dakaar, are the most damn persistent woman I have ever met!  And at this point, that is not a compliment!  You wanna know why I don’t trust anyone, what my reasons are?  Fine.  We’ll talk about it as soon as I get good and ready.  Though I don’t know why it even matters to you . . .”

     “Because,” Lire replied, ingratiatingly calm, “how will I be able to know that you won’t kill me in my sleep unless I know these reasons behind your mistrust?  This whole time, you’re worried about me, and I have yet to see proof that you’ll guard my back.”

     It was a good enough argument, but it was also armed with icy, piercing shards of brutal truthfulness.  Carth’s eyes flashed once, and he clenched his fists once, before he muttered “Fine” and headed off again.  Once more, Lire watched him go before following momentarily, rolling her eyes.  How anyone could be so suspicious and paranoid, she had no idea.  And she had no idea how in the Force she’d be able to survive him until they escaped Taris.