The Golden Saber - Chapter 5, Part 2

Besk

Obi-Wan

Fifteen hours.

Fifteen hours they spent locked in a meeting room, with barely any breaks and too hard chairs. Aylee had warned him in the dawn hours that she expected gridlock. Things had gone too easily the day before. Anyone could agree to a revote. Accepting the results no matter how they came in...that was the hard sell.

Obi-Wan tried being less like furniture, and offered his opinion when the conversation seemed to warrant. He couldn't tell if it helped, but the kind look in Aylee's eyes--the unspoken thanks--counted for something, he thought. Otherwise, she stood alone wrestling these giants.

Sometimes, he lost the conversation and just watched her, leaning her hands against the table as she eyed a speaker, calculating a response. Delivering off-the-cuff oratories fit for a Chancellor. She held the Loxans transfixed, and he could not look away.

The Tusks had to agree to abide the revote results. There was no other option. Ships and weapons returned to government control. Amnesty for anyone involved in the recent conflict. It came down to sweeteners tacked onto the accord, unrelated laws or tax breaks to give the Tusks some claim to victory, even if they eventually lost. Obi-Wan's eyes had glazed over then, and he only came to when chairs started moving.

It was well into the Besk evening when they returned to their room. Obi-Wan's back and bottom ached, and he rolled his shoulders as they crossed to the nest in the center of the room.

"Hmm." Aylee made a sound and looked around the dim apartment.

Tir-Zen had left at dawn and still wasn't back.

Obi-Wan's stomach growled as he slid his cloak off onto the pile of blankets. "Dinner?" he asked Aylee.

She turned her attention his direction and nodded, a small smile quickly sliding back into a frown. She pulled at one of the pins holding her hair up in a more elaborate fashion than yesterday and winced when it got tangled and wouldn't come free.

Obi-Wan watched her for a moment before stepping closer. "Here," he said. "Let me."

She let her hands drop, too tired to keep struggling, and turned to give him access. His gaze touched the exposed nape of her neck, and a sudden, keen awareness shot through him that they were alone. Her fine hair slid across his hands like water as he worked to untangled strands and ease the pins out one by one. The urge to run his fingers through her hair kicked up unbidden, and he pressed it down, focusing very carefully on his movements. An urge starved of attention would fade. With the last pin gone, she gave a little shake and sighed as everything fell loose.

"Thanks," she said, sounding tired, and took the pins, grazing her fingers against his palm. "I suppose we're having nut paste and mushrooms?"

Obi-Wan closed his hand around the sensation, troubled that his awareness pulled to it. He folded his thoughts and put them away. Dinner. He smirked and started for the table. "What, you don't like the local delicacies?"

She trailed him. "I'd kill for a Gamorrean pork roast about now."

He smiled and bent to pick up the platter that, presumably, Ujjwala had left them.

"Well, I've got good news," he said, turning. Aylee's eyebrows lifted. "We've got nut paste and mushrooms."

She snorted out a soft laugh and moved to get the basin of wine left for them, as well.

They settled in and ate largely in silence. The good silence. After a day of nothing but boomed voices vibrating your bones, Obi-Wan found himself quite taken with the stillness. Aylee seemed loathe to break it as well and resorted to gestures and questioning looks to determine when their unhurried meal was over.

A few times, he caught her looking at the door or the starlit night through the window.

They set up the Chal'tek board in the middle of the nest and started to play.

Obi-Wan was studying the board, his chin in his hand, when a door they'd never used slid suddenly open.

Tir-Zen stood in the servants' entranceway, his white clothes smeared with dirt. Something dark and wet--blood--covered the side of his face. He stared at them for a moment, breathing hard. Every line of his body radiated tension.

Aylee sat up, too stunned to speak, staring.

He turned on his heel and hurried for the washroom.

"Tir-Zen!" Aylee leapt up and ran after him.

The door closed and locked before she got there, and she pounded her hand against it. "Tir-Zen!" She beat on the door, sucking panicked breaths. "Tir-Zen, let me in!"

Obi-Wan approached slowly, watching her spin and attack the door in distress. The boy had been bleeding.

Aylee grabbed her lightsaber, but then stared hard at the locked door and very slowly clipped the hilt back to her hip.

"Would you like me to try?" Obi-Wan asked.

She whirled on him, incensed, and he put up his hands in a placating gesture. In answer to her unspoken question, he nodded toward the door. "He doesn't care as much what I think."

She stared at him for a moment, turning that over, then nodded and backed away, as though Tir-Zen could sense her proximity. "I'm..." She pointed somewhere outside the apartment. "I'll just..." She frowned, a look of hurt crumpling her features before she turned to go.

Obi-Wan waited until she was gone before approaching the door. He pressed his hands flat against it.

"Tir-Zen?" he called. "She's gone." He waited and listened. Nothing. "I'd like to be able to report that her padawan isn't going to die from a concussion!" How thick were these doors? He gazed up at the lock on the door, willing it green. "Look, if someone attacked you, we need to know!"

He hoped his voice carried through the heavy door and pressed his ear against it, searching for any small indication of life. Doubt crept up the back of his neck.

"Tir--!"

The lock clicked, and Obi-Wan snatched himself back as the door slid into the wall.

He couldn't have said what he was expecting.

It wasn't this.

Tir-Zen huddled in the pool of his cloak, folded and hugging his knees. His body wracked with shaking, and he wheezed a terrible creaking sound.

Obi-Wan edged into the room carefully, and after a moment, his chest constricted.

Sobbing. Tir-Zen was sobbing. Hugging himself and rocking and tearing his throat in the process.

It was wrong. And for a moment Obi-Wan looked on in shock at such undisciplined emotion. Surely a padawan of his age should be better trained.

But then the boy sucked in a breath and curled his fingers over his horns and cried like no one watched, like he was simply too small a container for grief. Obi-Wan swallowed a hard lump in his throat and eased down onto the floor next to him. Sympathy yawned open behind his ribs, and the emptiness stung his eyes.

"Tir-Zen," he said, unsure, alarmed by the depth of sorrow.

The boy sniffed and lifted his head. He gasped for breath. "I'm trying..." Between the thickness and his rasping, he was almost indecipherable. "I'm trying. But I can't. I can't. I can't be the river. I'm trying..."

What?

Obi-Wan shook his head, baffled, as Tir-Zen collapsed back down, crying harder. "I'm sorry..." He felt his own tears building. "I don't know what that means..." How do I help you?

Tir-Zen huffed in a few ragged breaths and turned to look at him. "I'm trying to let it go. I am!"

"I believe you," he said quickly, and his hands itched to do something useful.

"But I--I saw..." He caught his breath and frowned, shaking his head. "There were so many," he whispered. "I thought--" His expression cracked again with guilt and horror. "It didn't help." Such small words.

Obi-Wan's heart sank in his chest as he understood, and a chill swept over him. He'd been out all day searching for people--and finding bodies. He put a hand on Tir-Zen's shoulder and squeezed lightly.

"War is always ugly," he said. You're not alone.

Tir-Zen sniffed and blinked at him. "H-have you..."

A solemn nod. "On Naboo. Humans and gungans against battle droids."

Tir-Zen swallowed and nodded and wiped his nose on his sleeve with a sniffle. Obi-Wan let go of his shoulder and watched him pick at his clothes, gray with dust and spotted with rusty blood. His hands were lined with scrapes and shook a little, but the tears had ebbed. He hunched into himself.

The danger seemed to have passed.

Obi-Wan drew his knees up and mirrored the boy's pose. He hooked his chin over his arm.

"Can I ask what happened to your head?" He tried to make it sound conversational instead of worried.

Without shifting his attention from a blood spot, Tir-Zen shrugged. "Clearing a path into an office building. A wall collapsed. Threw chunks everywhere." He shook his head. "Happened too fast for me to see. I didn't"--he fanned open the fingers of one hand--"catch it in time."

Shocked dismay stirred in Obi-Wan's stomach, and he sat up a little, his opinion of the Herglics rapidly dropping. "And they didn't patch you up?"

Tir-Zen glanced out of the corner of his eye and tried to become smaller. "I didn't let them," he admitted in the smallest of voices.

Obi-Wan uncurled and leaned back against the cool stone wall, scowling and silent. This was not his padawan to yell at, but the instinct remained strong.

In the absence of a rebuke, Tir-Zen relaxed and even chanced unwinding enough to peer in Obi-Wan's direction.

He ignored him and concentrated his scowl on the opposite wall.

"I'll... go have it looked at," Tir-Zen said.

Obi-Wan let the scowl melt, trying not to be too proud of himself, and met the boy's eyes. "That would be wise," he told him.

Tir-Zen nodded and slumped back against the wall. His breathing had returned to normal, though his eyes remained bloodshot--a terrifying look against the orange irises. He rubbed a thumb around one palm, staring down at it.

"Are you going to tell her?" he asked eventually, his mouth drawn in a guilty grimace.

Obi-Wan shrugged. "I have to tell her something." Tir-Zen's grimace deepened, and it tugged at him. "You've nothing to be ashamed of," Obi-Wan said, voice easy and earnest. Did he believe that now? He hadn't when he'd opened the door. All he'd seen then was a failure to uphold the Code.

Tir-Zen shot him a look. "You aren't going to tell me to mind my emotions? Not let it affect me?"

He should say it. Yoda would say it. "Wasn't planning on it. Though, we could meditate for a while. If you like."

Tir-Zen shook his head gently and got up. He slouched into his cloak as Obi-Wan go to his feet.

"I think I'll go find the infirmary," Tir-Zen whispered, not quite looking him in the eye. Something of guilt and shame rested there. He hadn't wanted any witnesses, and Obi-Wan could feel the weight of his intrusion and the trust placed in him by allowing it.

He let him go with a nod and not another word.

***

Tir-Zen got a few minutes' head start before Obi-Wan went venturing out in search of Aylee. They hadn't seen too much of the building's interior save what lay between the conference room and the apartment. There weren't many places he thought she might go. Still, he opened his perception and let the Force guide him.

The hallway opened into a vast cavern that housed a pool and fountain--a waterfall really--that burbled and plashed into a constructed basin. Even the low wall around one of their decorative pools was too high, and Obi-Wan found Aylee sitting on top of it, bouncing her heels against the stone.

She perked when she noticed him crossing the room and ceased the bouncing. He fought the urge to run rather than bear those long moments of anxious staring. But there was nothing to worry about.Not really. And a calm approach would prove it.

He reached the wall and vaulted up, skin burning from her focused attention.

"He's fine," he told her, and she sagged in relief, letting her eyes fall shut. "He just had... a rough day." That wasn't too much detail, he hoped.

She nodded thoughtfully and drew a breath, swaying back to examine the ceiling. "And he's getting too old to want to tell me about it," she said. A sad, wistful smile crossed her face, and she shook her head a little.

"He..." Obi-Wan hesitated. He wasn't trying to accuse. And it certainly wasn't his place... Aylee watched him. "He seems very...emotional," he said. "It won't help him in the Trials."

Something shifted behind her eyes, an opening now closed, and he regretted having said it. But it was true. A padawan his age should have more control.

"He'll be fine," she replied. "He just needs time."

Years. To mature enough. That could be true.

The silence stretched too long.

"He told me something I didn't understand."

That got her attention, and she tilted her head in curiosity.

"I can't be the river," he repeated Tir-Zen's words, and the effect was immediate.

Aylee smiled knowingly and nodded. She rocked back, gripping the edge of the wall. Mist from the fountain gathered in the air, cooling it, and left droplets on her hair. She was piecing together a reply. She sat forward again and looked at him.

"It's something my master used to say. Belami the Lesser."

Obi-Wan quirked an eyebrow. "Never heard of him."

She smirked. "I did say 'lesser.'" And gave him a wry looked. "It's...how we talk about the Force," she said. "Being the river means...being in the present moment."

That rang true. But Obi-Wan suspected there was more. She had chosen her words carefully. And maybe the politicians were rubbing off on him, but the very act of care presupposed treacherous ground.

He nodded, accepting it at face value for now, though his curiosity longed to know what had made her pause and pick over her words.

He turned to look at the waterfall, his curiosity nudging him with something else now that he'd acknowledged it. In the periphery, he saw Aylee turn, too, and swing her legs over the side, nearly kicking the water. So far he'd challenged her and then tread heavily where he shouldn't have. Why not go for three?

"Can I ask you something?" he said, glancing over.

She lifted an eyebrow.

"I don't... mean to be rude. But... his voice?"

She smiled like she'd wondered when they'd get around to it. "Birth defect in his vocal cords." She shrugged one shoulder. "Doesn't hurt unless he tries to shout."

Obi-Wan nodded, unreasonably relieved that there hadn't been a trauma.

"Anything else you want to know?" she asked with a hint of amusement.

He watched the waterfall a moment longer and then turned to look at her, perfectly innocent. "Ready to turn in?"

She eyed him and then smirked before turning to hop off the wall.

***

Danger!

Power rushed from Obi-Wan's hands as he snapped awake, flinging his companions across the room. They slammed into the far wall.

Tree-trunk feet thudded on the floor where they had been.

Darkness everywhere. Crushing blindness.

Move!

He rolled, and came to his feet swinging. His lightsaber arced though the air as he spun, clearing the space around him. Too dark to see.

Thumpthump, his heart. Adrenaline rushed through him, expanding, quickening. Trust the Force.

He ducked and charged, forms emerging in the glow of his saber. Somewhere blurring at the edge of his vision, green and gold blades flashed to life, and he focused. On the rush in his blood, on the will of the Force. A tusk struck through the air, and he swung high. It severed, fell with a crack. The tip of his sword had scored flesh, too, and he smelled it burn. He took his saber in both hands and swung it like a bat at his attacker.

The blade met resistance as he cut into a leg, and for the first time he heard a Loxan scream.

It shook his bones. His ears hurt and popped with the pressure change.

Pant.

He channeled Force into his body and and heaved against the blade, burning through skin and bone. The creature bellowed and swung at him.

He cut the power, ducked a fist and lunging trunk, and then jumped. One foot on the Loxan's knee, its half-severed foot dangling while it balanced on the other, and then another leap for its chest. He thrust the hilt against its body and hit the power.

The lightsaber flared into life, slicing through the Loxan's chest. But perhaps not its heart. It roared and reared back. Swung a massive hand at its chest to squash him.

Obi-Wan cut the blade again and dropped to the floor. He dove between its legs, came up, and leaped at it from behind. Loxans were big, which meant slow. Before it could turn, he thrust his lightsaber into its chest from the back. One hand on the hilt and one dug into its clothing, he pulled on the Force for strength, strained to haul himself in, and cut through the creature's body from one side to the other. An impossible angle without the Force to help him.

He dropped to the floor again, watching the giant form.

Aylee and Tir-Zen fought another in the corner.

The body looming above him took a second to realize that it was dead. It flailed, and the motion sent its balance backward. Obi-Wan shoved at it with the Force to send it the other way.

Danger!

He spun toward a third assailant.

Too late.

It hit like a wrecking ball. A fist the size of his torso smashed into him, and he went flying through the darkness, shattering with pain.

He might've blacked out. Couldn't tell. Suddenly he was on the floor, stars flecking his vision.

Had to get up.

He staggered to his feet, trying to breathe.

A curdling scream ploughed through the air and something heavy hit the ground as Aylee's lightsaber whipped around.

Obi-Wan focused and blinked. Blinding white pain radiated through his body. He breathed. It stabbed deeper, but he ignited his blade. He could see the Loxan outlined in the low light and held himself ready. It raised a blaster and fired.

He swung, batting the shot back the way it came. It hit the creature in the chest, and it grunted from the impact. It shot again and got more of the same. Obi-Wan closed on it, keeping his movements small while he kept the blade spinning.

His chest. Ah. He winced at the spreading agony and edged closer, daring the assassin to shoot again.

It lowered its head and cast the weapon aside. He heard it clatter to the ground. Its bulk moved, and he knew it was going to charge. He pulled on the Force, gathering it in. Muscles protested at the strain, but it was move or die.

The Loxan lunged.

It's steps faltered.

Without so much as a cry, it fell forward. Its tusks clattered on the floor. And Tir-Zen slowly stood up, visible by green light as he drew his saber from the back of its neck.

"Aylee!" Obi-Wan called.

Thumpthump. Burning.

"Sleep," he heard her say over the sound of agonized moaning. Struggling sounds. Then, "Sleep." Louder, "Here!"

They gathered together in the middle of the room, breathing heavily, their backs toward one another in a defensive circle.

"Nice instincts," Aylee said.

He shrugged with effort. "I like to be useful."

The door opened suddenly, and the lights came on.

They all spun, sabers drawn.

"What's going--"

A security guard stopped midsentence when he looked at them and the bodies on the floor around them. "I'm-- I'll get the captain."

They stowed their sabers, and Obi-Wan glanced at Aylee. She had a hand pressed to her side and a pained expression.

"Are you..." he gasped for air. "All right?"

She turned and saw him looking, then glanced at her own hand in surprise. "Yeah, I'm--"

Ytan thundered into the room. "Consular!"

Obi-Wan's breath came short. Too short. Each inhale like knives. There was only pain. Only pain.

Aylee said something about leaving one alive and waved in the direction of a Loxan with a severed trunk.

It hurt. Oh...

He bent, shaking, and sucked for air. It came in ropey and wet, and he coughed. The pressure on his chest built, like being crushed. He coughed so hard it staggered him, and then he couldn't stop.

No air. Pain! No air!

Blood splattered on the floor. It coated his mouth.

"Ben!"

Aylee slid under one arm and held him up.

He gasped, pulling in a wet breath. It rattled. And it wasn't enough. Animal terror ripped through him as he scrabbled at her shoulder and let her take his weight. He wracked again with terrible coughing, knives of ice and fire.

"We need--" Aylee started to say.

A Loxan on a levitating gurney whisked into the room, presumably called to deal with the bodies. The humans all cast doubtful gazes up at the bed, high above their heads.

Obi-Wan panted in small gasps, trembling and tasting his own blood.

Ytan moved toward them. "I apologize Master Jedi," he said and reached out. Aylee slipped out from under Obi-Wan's arm, and Ytan's massive hand replaced her.

It might've been embarassing to be lifted like a child, if he hadn't been busy drowning in his own fluids. Ytan set him down gently and the nurse pulled up a screen to start a scan.

Gasp.

Gasp.

"Tir-Zen, stay with him." Aylee's voice. To Ytan, she said darkly, "Get me the Damarque." Both obeyed, and in a moment Tir-Zen's horned head loomed into Obi-Wan's narrowing vision.

He felt the burble of another cough and groaned to turn on his side. More blood splattered onto the gurney, and his throat burned along with everything else. They were in motion, already zipping on autopilot with the doctor worked.

She came at him with a needle, and then stopped. She frowned at the size of the implement. It looked to him like a spear.

"Babies!" Tir-Zen tried to shout at her. "Use what you'd use for babies!"

Her trunk curled in distress. "We don't--"

Obi-Wan moaned at the crushing pressure in his chest.

She hit a communicator on her tusk. "I need a med-evac to Holy Mount. Have NICU meet me with a trauma kit." The dispatcher questioned if they'd heard right. "Yes, a NICU. And hurry!"

She dropped an oxygen mask over half Obi-Wan's body and turned the cart manually, pushing them down a different hall.

Obi-Wan focused on the sensation of blood rattling in his lungs and the sight of Tir-Zen's fingers curling over an air hole in mask as he kept watch.

Aylee

"I promise you, Consular, we'll find those responsible," the Damarque said as Aylee paced in front of the desk in her office.

Still high from the fight and edgy with worry, she couldn't stop moving and waved Khundari's apology away. "I need to question the prisoner."

The Damarque's large eyebrow lifted. "I'm sure Captain Ytan--"

"Is not a Jedi," Aylee cut in and flicked her a dangerous look.

Khundari drew back a little from the lash of her tone. "No..." She conceded the point with a bow of her head, and then pressed a button on the comlink on her desk. Ytan's voice boomed back an acknowledgment. "Captain. When you've secured the prisoner, the Consular would like to speak to him," she said evenly, though her large eyes scanned Aylee with an uneasy wariness. Though not an undo wariness. The reputation of the Order had surely preceded her in this.

Aylee tipped her head at the acquiescence and resumed her pacing. Both of them fell into a strained silence. By the time Ytan appeared to escort Aylee to the detention center, the air had grown thick with foreboding and questions and doubt.

***

The Loxans gave no pretense of comfort to their prisoners. They swept through an underground tunnel of that tan earthen concrete into a structure of dark metal and transplastoid barriers. Any suggestion of warmth and earth and sky had been stripped. The lights all glowed with the heatless chill of a moon.

Aylee strode at Ytan's side quickly enough to keep with his pace. She caught him looking down a few times and wondered what it was he held back. They passed into a corridor of force field cells. The buzz of the single activated cell ricocheted off every polished surface, and it was the only thing Aylee could hear over her own heartbeat. The blue energy crackled across the cell opening and charged the air.

They stopped, and Ytan glanced down.

"He's been restrained for your safety, Consular."

She nodded once slowly and did not look up at him. The river of the Force washed at her back, crisp and cleansing. "You should stay out here," she said, voice a steel sheet.

Ytan's shoulders twitched as he stepped to the side and bowed much the way the Damarque had done. He press a key into the locking mechanism on the door, punched a code, and the force field dropped.

Aylee tossed her hair as she pulled herself up rod straight. Her jaw flexed. And she strode into the cavern of a cell.

Her would-be assassin sagged against the wall, held off the floor by wrist restraints. She wondered that their bodies could take such stress. But... perhaps they really couldn't. Perhaps that was the point.

His mangled face looked nothing like a Loxan any longer. A vast field of blackened red flesh marred where his trunk had been before a slice from her lightsaber had removed it. His tusks bore black ash on their abrupt, flat stumps from the same cut. Every breath heaved from his body moaned with the misery of trees in a storm.

He blinked and roused when the force field went down and came to full life when he saw her beyond the chair and table between them.

"YOU!" He threw himself forward, arching against his wrists. He shook shook and clawed with rage. Lifted his head and bellowed. The sound rattled the chair. He slammed back against the wall and lunged again, stamping great feet in frustration.

Aylee hopped up onto the chair and up onto the table to be at eye level. His fury splashed against a cliffside, leaving him nothing but frothing and panting. Even that more difficult now.

"You... took my trunk!" he screamed and struggled to reach her, whipping his blunted tusks.

His suffering beat against her senses. The physical pain was the least of it. The flesh hurt. But what she'd taken.

She drew a shuddering breath and pushed it away.

"I could have killed you," she told him. The look of hate in his eyes narrowed, and she returned it with cool disinterest. "I still might."

"Maybe you should."

She tipped her head to the side. "When you're done being useful, I'll think about it."

His lips curled back in a sneer and he leaned back against the wall, letting the tension on his arms ease. "Do your worst," he muttered.

Aylee took a step closer and stared unblinking into one of his eyes. "You shouldn't ask me to do that."

After a breath where she did not look away, his forehead creased with worry. He looked away first.

"I want to know who you're working for," she said.

He huffed, unimpressed with her interrogation tactics, apparently, and shook his head. She widened her stance and let her sense of the Force coagulate, the pendulum of her attention swinging lower and lower.

"I want to be perfectly clear with you. I'll find out what I want to know, whether you tell me or not. The hard way just hurts more."

He jerked in some aborted motion and tossed his head.

So be it, then.

The Living Force in every being vibrates with an energy unique to itself. Aylee lifted a hand, fingers splayed, and reached with the Force. When two come into contact, the disharmony manifests as a repulsion--an inherent inability to combine. And this, in the mind, becomes pain.

She focused on the center of his head and let her eyes fall shut. With a swift, precise flick of her fingers she sliced into the Force within him, consciousness to consciousness. He gasped and grunted, falling back against the wall, but the key, _the key _is to maintain the breach. It will try to close, like similar magnets straining to be apart. Force of will maintains the rupture. Will sharpened by years of careful training.

The thoughts a jumble at first. Flashes of pain. The prison. The attack.

She moved her fingers as though to turn a page through his thoughts. Each memory a glass sheet. He resisted. But her fingers moved. The sheet snapped.

Screams.

The Loxan's agonies splashed into the Force's flow and washed away, swept on a tide of time.

Flick. Scream.

Flick. Bellow.

He pulled and panted and snapped his wrist.

Flick.

"The more you struggle, the greater a chance of permanent damage," she told him, cool and distant, distracted by the memories she dug from his skull.

Political rallies. A Plainswalker.

A comlink call late at night while the air smelled of smoke. A job. A hired gun.

He was no activist.

Flick.

"Please!"

She let him rest--remember what relief felt like. "Who was the call from?"

"Wh--"

The hard way, then. With a firm grip on the slippery memory, she drew it close and wore his skin, his eyes, his ears.

"...before negotiations are complete..."

A woman's voice. An off-worlder's voice. Aylee frowned, holding her captive's mind still while he keened. She focused on the conversation, her fingers moving ever so slightly, scrubbing through the memory.

"Peace is unprofitable."

No names. Of course, no names. But who would find peace unprofitable?

Aylee dropped her hold and spun around. Behind her, the Loxan sagged as far as his arms would allow, shuddering at the stab of pain from his broken bones and moaning with each breath. Aylee gave him a glance as some of her detachment faltered, but she pinned it in place with the hasty assertion that she hadn't really pressed hard enough to leave damage.

"Ytan!" Aylee called as she jumped to the floor.

He opened the force field and let her out, backing out of her way.

Fear.

He made space between them out of a newly burnished fear, and Aylee stopped to look up at him. Guilt struck a spike into her chest as he curled his trunk under and edged forward to peer into the room. He pressed the lock again, blue force field flaring to life, and looked down at her without saying anything.

"Ytan?" she asked, letting concern color her voice again. It wasn't always a quick trip back. The Force could flow around you, a stone in the flow of the river. Or you could be the river. Either could be easy. The transition was difficult.

He hesitated. "You..." He glanced in through the cell. "You tortured him."

The word felt heavy in the air, and Aylee grimaced at the ugly feel of it.

"I read his mind," she said, turning away. "It can feel like torture." She started to walk, drawing Ytan with her.

His thrumming voice rumbled at her back. "What's the difference?"

Her steps slowed, and she looked up at him, catching one eye. "Intent," she said. "And they can't lie."

He frowned, but his trunk swung a bit more freely as they walked. She hoped that meant something; still feared she'd changed utterly in his regard. They passed out of the cell corridor and into the main security station.

"Ytan."

"Consular?"

She moved toward a computer console. "You have weapons manufacturers on Besk?"

"For police and security?"

"No, no, I mean, war machines. The fighters who shot at us, the ships that bombed the city..."

He nudged her out of the way with his trunk and tapped on the keyboard. "Two. Oppilan Aerospace and Laabh." He brought up the HoloNet sites for each, alongside internal security files and gestured for her to take a look. "Why?"

"Because whoever hired those assassins is profiting off the war. And they want to keep profiting." She glanced at him. "Who would you suspect?"

His expression darkened. "We should speak to the Damarque."

She nodded, the voice of the off-worlder rolling around in her head.

***

Khundari stood and leaned over to see her better. "You're not...leaving?" She sounded incredulous.

Aylee sighed, duty and care warring beneath her skin. "It's not safe for us here," she said quietly.

The Damarque's ears flared. "Jedi run from danger?"

It was a low blow, but not one she didn't deserve.

"There's more than just politics going on," Aylee told her, and started pacing the floor again. "That assassin..." She shook her head. "He wasn't an ideologue. It was business."

"Oppilan and Laabh." Khundari crossed her arms and gave Ytan a long look. "Do you really think..."

"That money is a great motivator?" he finished her thought and scowled. "I think it bears looking into."

Aylee paused, apprehension itching at her neck. That voice. A sense of ice and darkness crowded at her shoulders.

"There's something else," she said, before she could second-guess it. Her mouth pulled into a grave line. "It's not just Loxan profit. There's an off-worlder involved."

Khundari's arms dropped, and she leaned forward on her desk, bracing herself. "What do you mean?"

"The voice on the com calling in the hit... It wasn't Loxan."

"Then who--"

"I don't know." She shook her head. "But there are more hands in this war, in this election, than just Plainswalkers and Tusks."

A short silence fell while they all tried to imagine the implications of that. A civil war was bad enough. An engineered one...

"Damarque." Ytan's voice rolled across the room like thunder. "We failed the Consular once already. I don't..." It pained him to say it, but he pressed on. "I don't know that I can protect her from a threat capable of plotting on such a scale."

"If it's true," the Damarque replied.

"If it's true."

Khundari bowed her head and gave Aylee a long look. "We can't ask you to stay if we can't guarantee your safety..." She conceded, the words breathy with defeat.

"Damarque." Defeat was no way to end her efforts on Besk. "In the end, I can only help your people so much... I'm just one person. We've made the opportunity for peace. You have to take it, not me." Khundari watched her, slowly straightening. A plan formed, plucked from the annals of history. "Call a vote between you and the Tusks. A vote for a provisional government to oversee everything we talked about putting motion."

"Provisional government..."

"Yes." She gained steam. "Getting changes through Parliament right now would take ages, yes?" The Damarque nodded. "Well you don't have ages. So... agree with the Tusks to suspend the parliament for the length of the election. Extraordinary powers. A secret vote among everyone in that meeting room. If you all agree, then you can announce that to your people. And then you start the real work."

The Damarque gestured uneasily with her trunk. "The accords so far are just vague promises. Principles with no details! We've only gotten so far because you've been here."

"You don't need me..." Aylee shook her head. "Republic bureaucrats can work out the details of implementation far better than I could. It's what they do. The live broadcasts from every polling station, the Republic oversight, the factory set droids, the new wireless voting system. A provisional government can announce those changes to the populace and let bureaucrats work on the how. It will give people hope. A reason to set down their weapons."

Khundari frowned and sat slowly back down in her chair.

The comlink in Aylee's pouch chimed, and she dug it out, her pulse spiking. The light for a holomessage flashed, and Tir-Zen's image appeared above the disc when she answered.

"Tee?"

There'd been no word since the doctor had rushed them out the room.

"He's come out of surgery, master." Surgery? "They had to remove bone from his lungs and seal up a ruptured liver, but they say he'll be fine. They've given him some medicine to speed healing."

Aylee breathed a sigh of relief, and her shoulders unknotted a little.

"Master. They'd like to know if they should bring him back to the Parliament building."

Aylee glanced up from the hologram at the Damarque, who gave her acquiesence with a look. "Bring him to the Vesper."

Tir-Zen gave her an odd look. "We're leaving?"

"Soon." She felt that cold wind up her back. "We just have a few more things to settle tomorrow."

Damarque Khundari drew a deep breath and sighed it out her trunk.

"Yes, Master."

Tee cut the communication, and Aylee slipped the disc back in her pouch. She looked up at Khundari.

"Anything more I can do for you, Damarque, I can do from orbit. The rest will be up to you."