Co-authored by Dinah Lance who wondered what would happen if her version of Carth met my version of Revan, which makes this is all her fault. Also, the following chapters were originally released as one shots and have now been consolidated into one story.

Playing with Matches

Bathed in the soft glow of the computer consoles, Minuet Avery sat in the Ebon Hawk's computer bay and stared at the map on the screen, as though by sheer force of will she could change the fact that in less than twenty-eight hours she was going to have to find a way to sneak into the heart of the Sith Academy on Korriban, find the hidden star map, and somehow get away without getting caught and killed.

No immediate plan sprang to mind, just obstacle after obstacle, and there didn't seem to be a way into the heavily guarded valley of the tombs other than through the Academy's front door. Min sat back with a sigh, rubbed the bridge of her nose, and tried to cheer herself up with the thought that at least this time she wouldn't have to hike through bug-infested jungles or scorching deserts. No, this time it would be actual civilization, or at least as much civilization as a ball of rock inhabited by power-mad, homicidal teenagers and their demented teachers could be. Still, she figured that it couldn't possibly be worse than camping.

Min was in the middle of wondering how the hell her thirty-year-old self was going to scam her way into a prep school for acne-riddled Malak wannabes when she sensed Carth's approach. When the doors hissed open, she didn't even need to turn to tell that it was him; he was utterly distinctive in the Force, his purposeful, steady, and solid presence blanketing the room.

"What's up, flyboy?"

"I need your help with something." The pilot crossed the room and turned to lean against the console in front of Min, crossing his arms over his chest. "When we get to Korriban, tell Bastila to stay on the ship."

Min leaned back in her chair and frowned up at him, surprised by his out-of-the-blue request. She knew Bastila's social awkwardness sometimes rubbed people the wrong way, but despite that, or maybe even because of it, Min had found herself growing quite attached to her bondmate.

She thought that Carth got along with her as well, at least she had hoped he did considering how much time they seemed to spend in the cockpit piloting the ship.

"Why? What happened? Did she do something to tick you off?"

The furrows in his forehead deepened as he blinked at her. "What? No." He shook his head. "No. We just... we can't let her be recognized." Looking out into the corridor, he scowled. "I'd rather not run another Sith blockade, thanks."

Min recognized the stubborn set of his jaw and the tense line of his shoulders as the same look he would get on Taris, right before he'd begin his paranoid interrogations. It was disappointing; she'd thought the two of them were well past shouting matches and trust issues. Min wondered what the hell had crawled up his ass this time and decided that the only way to find out was to deny his entirely reasonable request.

"I realize that you've been out on the battlefield for a while, but there are these newfangled things, some call them 'disguises' even." Min punctuated the word with a twitch of her long brown fingers. "If we dress her up in one of those, she should be fine."

Onasi snorted. "You're kidding, right? I may not know much about the Jedi or the Sith, but even I've noticed you people don't need to use your eyes to recognize someone." He gestured to the doorway and smirked. "Like the way you like to show off that you know who's there without turning around."

"I wouldn't be able to recognize you through the Force if we hadn't been stuck on this tin can together for the last four months. I'd just know that someone was standing out there." She propped her long legs up on the computer panel in front of her, crossing them at her ankles and settled in. "It'll be the same thing at the Academy. They might recognize her from a holoprint but that's an easy fix. We'll just cut her hair really short and dress her up in something that's not that damn jumpsuit."

This time the scowl was directed at her. "You'd gamble our mission on a haircut?" He shook his head again, stubbornly. "It's a moot point anyway. There's no way Bastila will let you cut her hair."

Min blinked at Carth in surprise, boggling over how he'd suddenly become an expert on her bondmate's ornate hairstyle. There was only one reason that she could think of for Onasi's stubborn insistence, and now that she knew what had riled the pilot up, her irritation evaporated into amusement.

"Of course she will. She knows it's her duty as a Jedi to do whatever to it takes save the Republic. Force knows she's lectured me about that often enough." Min considered for a moment before tossing more fuel on the fire. "Plus if she wears that leather outfit the Black Vulkars put her in, no man's going to be looking at her face, anyway."

"That's not... you can't just..." Onasi's mouth hung open for a second as his face slowly reddened. "That's the stupidest thing I ever heard!" he finally burst out. The index finger on his right hand snapped up and started wagging. "Making her stand out like that? That's... what the hell is the matter with you? It's not enough you'd get her killed, you'd have to humiliate her too?"

Amazed by this protective side of the pilot she'd never witnessed before, only the evil desire to see how far she could push his adorable outrage on Bastila's behalf kept her face straight. "Whatever. She's going to look awesome when I'm finished with her. She might be self-conscious about it at first, but she'll loosen up. It'll be good for her."

Her composure nearly cracked when he crossed his arms again and fixed her with a stony stare. "Not gonna happen. You're not jeopardizing the mission so you can play dress-up at Bastila's expense."

She figured there was probably a reserved spot in the nine Corellian hells for bitches just like her, but it was going to be worth it. "Is that so?"

He threw his hands up in exasperation. "Did you fall out of a wroshyr tree? What the hell's wrong with you?"

"Oh, I don't think I'm the one who's fallen here." She cocked her head to the side, laughing. "You know, you're downright adorable when you're protecting a woman you have a thing for."

The moment of silence before Carth laughed was extremely telling. "Now I know you fell out of a tree. Maybe you should go to the medbay."

"And maybe you should cut the banthashit. I'm on to you now, so there's no point in pretending." She let her feet drop to the floor, opened the drawer next to her, and pulled out a bottle of cheap firewhiskey and two glasses. It wasn't the fine wine she preferred, but at least the whiskey would get him drunk faster. "Sit down and have a drink. I think you're going to need it."

He stared down at her a second longer, then dropped into a chair, sprawling his boots out toward the console and covering his face with his hands. "Maybe I fell out of a tree." He sighed and pushed his hands back through his hair, then snagged one of the glasses. "Or the crash on Taris. Clearly we both suffered head trauma."

Min's brows lifted. "You've been carrying this around since Taris and you haven't done anything about it yet?"

The glass paused halfway to his lips. "I'm not doing anything about it. Not yet. Not ever." He drained the drink in one swallow, grimacing at the burn. His finger pointed at her again from around the glass. "And you're not doing anything about it either."

"Why the hell not? The two of you would be good for each other. Someone needs to put a boot up your ass if you can't see that." She punctuated that point with a shot of her own; the foul liquid sliding down her throat made her eyes water, and she barely managed not to cough. She wondered if Onasi was appreciating the sacrifice she was making by drinking this cheap swill on his behalf. Probably not.

"It's just... it's not anything to do anything about," Carth said. He held his glass up to the harsh ship lighting before sighing and setting it on the console. "It's four years is what it is," he muttered. Then he sat back and twitched his shoulders in an irritable shrug. "Can we talk about something else now?"

"No," she said as she poured them both another drink. Min's empathic Force abilities were abysmal at best, but even she could feel the pain and loneliness radiating from him. "Look, I've never been in love, so I probably don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but I do know you, and I know this wouldn't be eating you up if it were just lust. Which means despite all the crazy, fracked-up shit you've been through, and despite the fact that the galaxy is going to hell, you've actually managed to find someone to give a damn about. I don't understand why you won't give it a shot."

Carth just looked at her for a long moment. "You're right," he finally said. He reached for his drink and took a sip. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about," he finished with a smirk.

Min was proud of the way her hands spread apart in a conciliatory gesture instead of smacking the back of his head the way they itched to.

"Enlighten me then. Please tell me why you're sitting here having a drink with a nosy bitch like me, instead of down the hallway making out with a beautiful, nubile, and, might I add, flexible young Jedi who thinks you have a cute ass."

Somewhere between "flexible" and "cute," Carth spluttered into his drink and started coughing. Min watched, fascinated by the way his embarrassed flush crept up his neck and face, even turning the tips of his ears pink.

It was a full minute before he managed to get himself under control, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Can we please talk about something else now?" he choked.

"If you think I'm going to let you off the hook before you spill your guts to me, then you're either amazingly optimistic or extremely dense."

"I think we both know it's not the first one." He shook his head. "Look, you said it yourself. Young Jedi. Hell, she's probably not much older than my..." He trailed off awkwardly for a second, then took a sip of his drink. "I'm practically old enough to be her father. And that's ignoring the Jedi part of it."

Min knew that she shouldn't laugh at him now that he was actually being honest, but with the whiskey warming her belly and loosening her tongue, she really couldn't stop herself. "With all the hangups the two of you have, what you're worried about is being a dirty old man? That's really, really-" adorable, idiotic, hilarious "-wholesome of you."

Carth glared at her. "You're a big help, you know that?"

"I like to think so." Min shifted in the chair, pulling her long legs underneath her. "She's twenty-four, Onasi. She's not jailbait. Her problem isn't her age; it's the way the Jedi have kept her cloistered her entire life."

"Well, I'm not looking to un-cloister anybody," Carth replied stubbornly.

"What do you think is happening when you spend all those hours in the cockpit with her? You're doing it already by being her friend, not her master or another Jedi or even someone she's supposed to watch and keep out of trouble like me. That's why you're good for her."

"Friend is one thing," Carth said, tapping his fingers against his glass. "Jedi can have friends."

"Jedi can have lovers too." Min knew that for a fact because she'd specifically asked Master Zhar about it before she'd agreed to sign on. Watching the normally calm Twi'lek stutter out an answer was almost as much fun as making Onasi squirm. "They're just not supposed to get attached to them. Which is probably one of the reasons why that whole damn Order is so fracked up."

Carth sighed. "Look, fracked up or not, the Order is what she knows. And I'm not ready to go messing around with that, all right? Especially not with someone who's not far past half my age."

Min arched an eyebrow. "It's not your job to protect her from making tough choices. She's a grown woman and it's up to her to decide whether or not she wants to obey the rules of the Order."

"Right," Carth drawled. "Like the way you made a copy of the holocron on Tatooine and gave it to Bastila's mom before she'd decided what to do."

Min's mouth dropped open before snapping shut with an audible click. She didn't think he knew about that. "That's different."

He sat back in his chair, looking irritatingly smug. "Is that right?"

"Yeah, that's right. She was tearing herself up over it and I knew that if she didn't give it to her mother she was going to wake up one day and hate herself for it. I couldn't let her do that!"

"The point is," Carth said, leaning toward her again, "you wanted to protect her. Which is where this whole conversation started, if you remember."

"Call me crazy," she shot back, "but I don't think Bastila needs protection from handsome pilots who want to make out with her."

"We can't all be as quick on the draw as some Mandalorians," he muttered into his glass.

Min fumbled the whiskey bottle she'd just reached for. Only quick reflexes and her Force powers kept it from falling off the console and shattering on the metal floor. She didn't meet his eyes as she carefully placed the bottle back on the table. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Uh-huh." Carth set his glass on the console and leaned back again, lacing his fingers behind his head. "Who's shoveling the banthashit now?"

"How did you -" She glared over at him, as though the fact that she'd been necking with Ordo was somehow Carth's fault. "Bastila told you, didn't she? Dammit, I told her to keep her mouth shut."

"It wasn't Bastila," he said, smirking. He was enjoying himself way too much.

Groaning, she leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. She supposed that it didn't really matter. He knew and now she was going to have to deal with it. Better to just get it over with. "Okay, lay it on me. Give me the lecture about how stupid and reckless I'm being."

"You are being stupid and reckless." He shook his head. "But mostly I'm just surprised."

"You and me both." Irritation with herself and the situation as a whole made her grip her empty glass hard enough that her knuckles went white. "Part of me wishes that I'd just slept with him right away and left him on Dantooine before it got too weird. Now I have this big fracking mess and I haven't even gotten laid yet."

Carth brought his arms down from behind his head and snorted. "And you're chewing me out for not getting involved in another big fracking mess?"

"Oh please, you and Bastila would be good for each other. Canderous and I..." She paused and set her empty glass on the console before she broke it. "Well, I don't know what the hell we would be."

"Me neither," Carth mused. "I know they say opposites attract, but you and a merc? Let alone a Mandalorian. Let alone one as old as Ordo."

Despite everything, Min couldn't help but laugh at the way Carth stubbornly clung to his age hangup. "He's not old. You're not old. You've been listening to Mission's geezer talk way too much."

Carth reached for the bottle again, and Min nudged her glass in his direction. She let the silence stretch as she watched his steady hands pour out the amber liquid. It was oddly reassuring, like she could hand anything to him: a blaster, a plasma grenade, the controls of the Ebon Hawk, and trust him to do the right thing with it. She wondered how he'd handle a dark admission about herself.

"I should know better, I know. He's not the kind of man it's smart to feel anything but lust for, but he gets under my skin in ways I never knew were even possible."

After pouring his own drink, Carth swirled the bottle of whiskey. "I may need more booze for this." He drained the glass, hiccuped slightly, then began to pour another. "Okay. Go ahead."

Min made the confession over her the rim of her glass. "Have you ever met someone that can see right though you? Right past the banthashit and the posturing and the sarcasm and the jokes, to see what you're really like? Someone who can see things in you that you didn't even know existed?"

He stopped pouring for a second and glanced at her with uplifted eyebrows. "Ordo? Really?"

Black curls bobbed as she shook her head ruefully. "Trust me, I'm as surprised as you are. But that's not the problem. The problem is why he wants me."

The other chair creaked as Carth leaned back. "I'm not following."

"I'm a warrior, like him, Carth." She met the pilot's eyes, wondering if someone so fundamentally decent would be able to understand, to not hate or despise her for what she was about to say. "When I'm in a battle, the way it makes me feel..." She took a long, hard swallow, not even feeling the burn of the whiskey anymore. "I feel alive in a way that I don't even understand. I'm not proud of it, but as much as I bitch and moan about how much I hate this mission, I know that deep down, this is what I was born to do. Canderous knows it too. It's draws us together and it scares the hell out of me."

The ensuing silence was broken only by another creak as Carth shifted in his seat again. His gaze dropped to the glass in his hand as he rocked it back and forth. "Anyone with eyes could see you're born to do it," he said finally. "And you've only been a Jedi for a few months?" He shook his head and took a sip, then finally met her eyes again. "I'm not gonna lie. The way you all talk about the Dark Side... Sometimes it scares me too. And not just for your sake."

"It scares Bastila too." It was hard to tell through the bond, but sometimes Min thought Bastila wasn't just scared for her, but scared of her. It hurt more than she'd thought possible. "But I want you to know that I'd never hurt her, and I'm not going to let her hurt herself either."

"I know," he said. "If I thought you would hurt her, you wouldn't be on this ship."

Min pointed at him. "And that, right there, is why I want you together. Because you'll protect her." She waved her hand irritably. "This isn't the Dark Side though. I could understand and fight it if it were. It's more like there's two of me. The person I'm supposed to be: archaeologist turned reluctant Jedi who does her duty for the good of the Republic, and this person underneath who revels in battle, lives for the challenge of this mission, and thinks a Mandalorian general is the most attractive man she's ever met."

She sighed and stared into her glass. "I sound crazy, don't I?"

Carth rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand and rested the hand with the glass on his knee. "Attraction doesn't always make sense. As for the rest of it..." He shrugged. "In a few weeks you went from cataloging some artifacts for the Jedi to being their last hope to save the galaxy. That kind of shift would mess with anyone's head."

Though his expression didn't change, she suddenly felt another stab of loss in the Force surrounding him. "Something like that happens in your life and it changes who you are. Makes you into something you never thought you'd be."

His words seemed to hang in the air between them until she asked softly, "What did it make you?"

"Someone who cares only about killing." His smile was grim and rueful. "I may not have been born to do it, but I sure as hell am going to revel in it."

"You don't care only about killing. If you did, you wouldn't be in here trying to protect Bastila." Her dark eyes narrowed as she studied him. "Maybe that's the problem. You've found someone else to care about and it's getting in the way of your revenge."

He glared at her, angrier than she could remember seeing him, and Min knew she'd hit the mark. "I told you it's not... it's not anything. Nothing's getting in the way. I'm going to kill him."

"Son of a schutta," she breathed. Her own anger and frustration with her friend bubbled up, tightening her voice as she fired the words off like blaster shots. "That's it, isn't it? You don't want something else to live for. You want to wallow in your loneliness and grief and plot revenge against a man that you'll probably never get close enough to actually kill because it's a hell of a lot easier than actually living."

"A few months as a Jedi and you think you have the galaxy pegged," Carth snapped. He drained his glass and slammed it on the console. "I lost everything. Don't think you can know what that means."

Min would have stood and glared down at him, but she was pretty sure that she'd had too much whiskey to do that effectively, so she just leaned forward and snarled, "Do you honestly think you have some kind of monopoly on grief and fear and pain? Almost everybody on this ship has lost just as much, if not more than you. And if you're not careful you're going to end up like Jolee-a lonely old man hiding on shithole of a world as the galaxy passes you by. Or worse, you're going to end up dead because you've done something reckless and stupid to get to Saul.

"Well, frack that. You're my friend and I owe you way too much to just sit and watch you piss your life away without saying something. And if that ticks you off, well then that's too damn bad."

Carth shot to his feet to tower over her. "Listen, sister, you..." He wavered slightly for a second, then dropped heavily back into his chair with an explosive sigh. "You're right, all right? I know I'm not the only one who's lost something. And if I was going to do something stupid to get myself killed, I would have done it by now." He fixed her with a slightly bleary glare. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to jump into bed with a beautiful woman just to make you happy, got it?"

"Got it. You're an idiot." She tipped her head back and let the rest of her drink slide down her throat. "Just think about what I've said, all right?"

He snorted. "Can I forget the parts about Ordo?"

"Hey, that's your own damn fault. You brought it up, not me."

He rested his elbows on his knees. "What about Bastila? Are you going to talk to her about Korriban or not?"

"Of course I am." She shrugged. "I already decided she should stay on the ship before you even came in here."

Brown eyes gazed back at her unblinking for a long moment before he shook his head with a wry grin. "Maybe you and Ordo deserve each other. You're both huge pains in the ass." Standing, he finished his drink as well and set it on the console.

Min rose too, her manicured hands resting on the console to keep her from wobbling. Her smirk was downright feline. "By the way, you'll be staying on the ship too."

One eyebrow raised. "Oh, I will, will I?"

"You're practically the poster boy for the Republic. And all Republic war heroes and famous Jedi Knights need to say on board because, like you said, we don't want you to be recognized and risk running into a Sith blockade."

Carth shook his head, but the slight smile remained. "Careful. You keep interfering in other people's lives and they're going to put you on the Council."

Min clasped him on the shoulder. "If you weren't such a bonehead, I wouldn't have to meddle." She dropped her hand and nodded toward the door. "She's alone in the swoop hangar, by the way, all sweaty and flush and limber from working out. Just in case you change your mind."

As she'd hoped, his face reddened one more time. "Thanks," he muttered sarcastically. Then he managed to match her evil grin. "And you might like to know there are security cameras in the cargo bay."

Min swore under her breath at her own careless stupidity; she should have known that was how he knew about her and Canderous. "You should disable them; otherwise you're probably going to see more Ordo than you ever wanted."

He grimaced as he left. "Consider it done."

She watched him leave with a chuckle, hoping that he was going to go see Bastila, but figuring he'd end up at the security camera controls instead. By the time she'd sat down and turned back to the console, she was already plotting her next move.