This is actually the first in a pair I wrote for boards.theforce.net. There may be a third at some point, but we'll have to see. I hope you enjoy. Also, this is still part of the project for me to learn HTML; please be patient with the edits and the mistakes and whatnot. :)
Usual disclaimers apply: this isn't my world. It belongs to the Flannelled One, whom we thank for the backyard to borrow at our whim.
To Walk Away
The Return
The cantina was filled with noise and music as night fell beyond its walls, shrouding Courscant in an ethereal light that radiated from the buildings all across its surface. The large, transparisteel faces of the buildings that made up the cityscape splashed the reds and oranges across the surface, painting it with festive colors that seemed to reflect the mood of the cantina. It was to be a late night, as it usual was for the regular customers, for the next morning was the end of the working week, a day when the people could rest up and enjoy themselves instead of earning wages.
A young woman moved through the crowd of the cantina, her green eyes dancing from face to face as her full lips curved into a smile. She wore a tight-fitting, red top that swept from her hips up, revealing her navel and toned stomach, draping over her shoulders to form a train. A skirt was wrapped around her waist, made of layer upon layer of matching red fabric, although the multiple layers made it impossible to see through the otherwise translucent cloth.
Her long, dark, almost black hair was pulled back into an intricate design of twists, keeping it from her face. The woman threaded her way through the crowd, her bare feet silent on the decorated tile of the floor. She was headed towards the bar, still carefully watching faces while appearing not to. The young woman ordered a drink, and as she waited for it to arrive, her eyes flickered with interest to a man across the cantina from her, sitting alone in a booth.
He was an older man, gray peppering the goatee that defined his chin in the dim light of the cantina. His eyes were sharp, and he appeared to be watching the crowd carefully. His tunics were common to people of the middle working class, looking to be a man that was simply out enjoying the free night of the week.
Abruptly, the man who was the focus of the young woman stood up, his face taking on a brooding look. He moved away from the table after produced a few credit chips and leaving them there. The woman watched his movement, her green eyes showing interest as he left the building. She waited for her drink, a small shot of some kind of liquor, then downed it upon arrival. After paying the bartender for it, she also made her way to the door, picking up a dark brown cloak that hung on a peg by the door.
Darkness had fallen on the walkway as the young woman followed the older man, throwing her cloak over her shoulders and pulling up the ample hood to conceal her face. She pursued him stealthily, making no sound and attracting minimal notice as she walked along, trying to appear as though she were simply on her own way and not tailing someone.
The man walked swiftly, his boots clattering on the walkway as he ignored the advertisements lining it. Occasionally, he would take stock of his surroundings, glancing swiftly around him. He continued to move, obviously very certain of his destination. Finally, he came to a lift that would take him to a level where he could find a shuttle or a taxi and waited for it to appear. The young woman pulled something from her cloak and focused it on him, the soft click the apparatus made echoing in the relative silence of the area. He disappeared into the lift.
The young woman watched him as he rose in the lift beyond her vision into the darkness. She let out a slow breath and produced a commlink from somewhere beneath her cloak after concealing her other instrument. "He's here, all right," she said quietly. "He's come back to Coruscant."
***
The dark-haired woman wandered back to the entrance of the cantina, although she didn't go back in. A young man with dirty blond hair appeared from one of the adjoining walkways, wearing a cloak similar to hers, his hood pushed back to hang off his shoulders. "Well, it's nice to know the last few weeks of tracing haven't been a complete waste," he commented to her wryly as he approached.
They made their way back the direction he had come from as she responded, "I think the comfort is more in knowing I didn't have to wear this for no reason." She drew her cloak tighter around her. "The night is cold enough without wearing so few layers."
The young man chuckled, his blue eyes showing his amusement. "I don't know, Raven, the clothes are rather fetching on you."
Raven snorted contemptuously. "Fetching, but not quite functional. What if he had realized I was following him? I have no where to put my saber, and my hand-to-hand is a little rusty."
"Rusty?" he replied incredulously. "I wish I were as good as you at hand-to-hand combat! There are few Jedi you couldn't best with your 'rusty' technique. Now, we could qualify some of your Force manipulations as rusty."
"Watch it, Nat," Raven replied in warning. "You may be my partner, but that doesn't mean I won't make you regret impertinence. Here's our lift."
He grinned at her as they waited for the lift to arrive. "It's all in good fun." The lift beeped, and they stepped inside. Nat leaned against the wall of the lift, regarding her for a moment. "Besides, I don't think you could beat me in saber. I'm at least your weight and three-quarters as much again."
"Perhaps," she replied coolly and noncommittally. A faint smile then appeared at her lips. "We shall have to see at some point."
"So do we have an evening of research ahead of us?"
Raven sighed and rolled her eyes. "Force, I hope not. I doubt it. We just check in with Master Roso and tell him we found Iain. Then we head to bed for a night's full rest to track him down in the morning. Easy as dueling with your eyes closed."
"Of course," Nat answered. The door to the lift opened after it had slowed to a stop, and they both walked onto the small path edging a bank of speeders. Raven slid into the passenger's side of a small red one, leaning back and closing her eyes for a moment.
"Can't say I'd object to a full night's sleep," she commented, opening her eyes again as Nat slid into the driver's seat beside here. "We've been haunting cantinas by night and sorting through Roso's briefings and doing our own research by day for three weeks now."
"Three and a half, actually." Nathaniel eased the speeder out of its slot and pointed it towards one of the threads of airborne traffic. "You're a Jedi; I thought you were trained to handle such physical stresses."
Raven chuckled. "Come now, Knight Younam, you must have learned by now that sleep deprivation is only bearable for short durations."
"I agree with you totally, and you've heard me say as much," he countered.
Raven gave Nathaniel a sardonic look. "Let's just hope the lack of sleep has been worth it."
They rode for a long while in companionable silence, and soon the spires of the Jedi Temple appeared before them. Nathaniel steered the speeder leisurely into one of the lower docking bank connected to the grand building. Raven lifted herself from the speeder and gave a look to the building that towered above her. Then, the pair of Jedi disappeared into a tunnel that would take them into the Temple proper.
Raven followed Nathaniel through the hallways of the Temple, still holding her cloak close. Goosebumps had appeared on her arms and exposed stomach, as the Jedi building was usually kept at slightly cooler temperatures due to the number of layers normal Jedi robes consisted of. She was lost in her own thoughts, speculating on what would be the next component of their mission, when they arrived at the Intelligence seat of the Jedi Order.
The pair walked leisurely to the office of their superior of the Jedi Master Forre Roso, and Nat knocked on the door, patiently waiting for it to be opened. "Do you think he'll want us to go back and locate Iain immediately?" he inquired of his partner after a few moments of no response from the door had passed.
Raven pursed her lips in thought and shrugged finally. "I don't know. I'm just a runner for him. I say leave the strategy to him. He's better at it anyway." She stifled a yawn as she let go of her cloak, hiding her arms in the sleeves of it.
"A runner," Nat snorted. "I'd like to think what we do is a little more legal than that."
"Legal or not, we still both do the same job. Besides, I think it's a little easier to say than an 'Intelligence Special Operations Officer.' We do the brunt work necessitated by the information brought in by the eyes and ears. We run a lot."
Nat laughed and shook his head. "You know, I think I liked you better when you were quiet around me because you didn't know me." Raven just grinned and shrugged in reply as the door hissed open, revealing Roso on the other side.
Roso was rather short in stature, a rather rotund human of about forty years. He had short, cropped gray hair that encircled his skull and fierce brown eyes that seemed to take in everything around him. His nose was hooked like a raptor from a greener planet than Coruscant, and in general, he seemed to have the predatory look of the same kind of animal. His face broke into a forceful look of happiness, and he gestured them into his office.
"You two are back rather early. I hope that's a good sign?" Ruso went to stand behind his desk, moving impressively agilely for his bulk. He sat down and shifted through the pile of datacards on his desk until he found the one detailing their particular mission. Raven moved fluidly to sit in one of the two chairs before his desk, drawing her legs up to cross them in the chair, settling the skirt over her knees. Nat moved away from the door to stand slightly off Raven's right side, between the two guest chairs.
"Of course it is," Nat replied, designating himself spokesperson, as he usually was, "otherwise we'd still be there. We found Iain. For whatever reason, he has returned to Coruscant after falling off our Intelligence maps. Perhaps he thinks that the Chancellor wouldn't ask the Jedi to be involved, because it would be doubtful that the Coruscant Security would be able to trace that file alteration to him."
"The CorSec probably has trouble locating the Senate building some days," Ruso replied dryly. He settled in his seat, still looking at the data card. Raven hid a smile behind her hand, exchanging a quick, bemused glance with Nat. "But I digress. Did you get a picture of him to run through the scanners?"
Raven rolled her eyes but handed him the camera she had used to take his picture. "Doesn't this seem a little unreasonable?" she asked quietly. "You've only showed us his picture a hundred times."
Ruso took the camera and gave Raven a hard look. "It's for your protection. I don't want you chasing after someone who's not our man. That's dangerous, even for Jedi. Information needs to be verified before it's acted upon. That's why the Jedi maintain such a high reputation. We don't make the stupid and dangerous mistakes the CorSec does." He connected it to a small holoprojecter and activated it.
The picture Raven had taken bloomed before her on his desk. He looked at the picture, a speculative look on his face. Finally he sighed and switched off the picture, hooking the camera up to the main database terminal outlet in the surface of his desk. "We'll see what the computer says."
Raven frowned slightly but held her piece. Nat shifted his weight, his cloak rustling against his leggings for a moment in the quiet room. "So what's the next move if it is him, Chief?" he asked in the uncomfortable silence that followed.
"You get him. Bring him here to the Temple so the Council can question him and an official trial can be carried out by the Senate. If this is Iain, then we're accusing him of high crimes; breaking into the government files and altering sensitive data there." The computer beeped, and Ruso moved to checked its results. He gave a smile that amplified the predatory look of him and nodded to the pair in the room. "You found Iain. Bring him here."
***
Raven and Nat were walking down the hall for a few moments before he finally spoke to her. "You know, he's only doing his job and protecting us."
"I know," she replied a little morosely. "It just sounds very much like he doesn't trust us. We are perfectly capable of carrying out his missions…"
"And risking our own lives, Raven," Nat interrupted quietly. She glanced at him, and he made a gesture to forgo her next question. "That's the thing. It's not his life to risk, so he must make us as safe as possible out there. We are his responsibility. If he screws up, it could mean our lives, and that's a heavy burden to carry around for the rest of his."
Raven thoughtfully considered this. "I guess I never thought of it that way."
He shrugged, brushing it off. "My master was always a wreck when his teams were at work. He would fret about them having trouble because of some oversight of his. I've seen the other side."
They continued to walk down the hallway until they came to the lift that would give them access to the residential areas of the Temple. "Why don't we both have a warm supper and then meet tomorrow morning at 0700 to track down Iain. It would be good to rest up before the hardest part," Raven said finally. Their rooms were separate directions from one another, Nat's down a number of floors and Raven's up. Nat nodded his agreement, suddenly looking tired. He mumbled some kind of farewell before disappearing into the first lift that appeared heading his direction.
Raven shook her head after he'd left, a smile hinting around the corners of her mouth. Nathaniel was a good friend of hers, a fellow padawan acquaintance before they had been raised in the same ceremony. Then, they had been assigned as partners together in the Intelligence Corps. They were a good match for each other, Nat's exceptional Force abilities complementing her fighting skills. The pair worked and fought well together, even given his occasionally moodiness and even less frequent frustration with Jedi protocol or rules.
Weariness spread over her suddenly as the lift arrived to take her to her rooms, and Raven moved into it thankfully. The ride was swift, and then she found herself on her floor. It was a short walk to her door, and Raven moved within quietly, shedding her cloak and leaving it on a chair that was pushed beneath the table in her small kitchen area.
Raven went to her sleeping quarters, stripping out of her finer garments into the more comfortable undertunic and leggings of the traditional Jedi garb. She checked a chrono and was surprised to find it was only about 2145, although her body seemed to be under the impression it was much later. The Jedi Knight pulled the pins holding her coiled hair in place, combing her fingers through it as she moved back into the kitchen area.
Humming tunelessly to herself, Raven produced some soup from the food preserver and set about warming it on the heat elements set into the counter. She also brewed a cup of tea, sighing in contentment as she breathed in the aromatic steam from it. It wasn't long before she had settled herself on the couch in the small living area, curled up with a fiction datapad she'd borrowed from the Archives, her tea in one hand and her bowl balanced across her knees with a little assistance from the Force.
Usual disclaimers apply: this isn't my world. It belongs to the Flannelled One, whom we thank for the backyard to borrow at our whim.
To Walk Away
The Return
The cantina was filled with noise and music as night fell beyond its walls, shrouding Courscant in an ethereal light that radiated from the buildings all across its surface. The large, transparisteel faces of the buildings that made up the cityscape splashed the reds and oranges across the surface, painting it with festive colors that seemed to reflect the mood of the cantina. It was to be a late night, as it usual was for the regular customers, for the next morning was the end of the working week, a day when the people could rest up and enjoy themselves instead of earning wages.
A young woman moved through the crowd of the cantina, her green eyes dancing from face to face as her full lips curved into a smile. She wore a tight-fitting, red top that swept from her hips up, revealing her navel and toned stomach, draping over her shoulders to form a train. A skirt was wrapped around her waist, made of layer upon layer of matching red fabric, although the multiple layers made it impossible to see through the otherwise translucent cloth.
Her long, dark, almost black hair was pulled back into an intricate design of twists, keeping it from her face. The woman threaded her way through the crowd, her bare feet silent on the decorated tile of the floor. She was headed towards the bar, still carefully watching faces while appearing not to. The young woman ordered a drink, and as she waited for it to arrive, her eyes flickered with interest to a man across the cantina from her, sitting alone in a booth.
He was an older man, gray peppering the goatee that defined his chin in the dim light of the cantina. His eyes were sharp, and he appeared to be watching the crowd carefully. His tunics were common to people of the middle working class, looking to be a man that was simply out enjoying the free night of the week.
Abruptly, the man who was the focus of the young woman stood up, his face taking on a brooding look. He moved away from the table after produced a few credit chips and leaving them there. The woman watched his movement, her green eyes showing interest as he left the building. She waited for her drink, a small shot of some kind of liquor, then downed it upon arrival. After paying the bartender for it, she also made her way to the door, picking up a dark brown cloak that hung on a peg by the door.
Darkness had fallen on the walkway as the young woman followed the older man, throwing her cloak over her shoulders and pulling up the ample hood to conceal her face. She pursued him stealthily, making no sound and attracting minimal notice as she walked along, trying to appear as though she were simply on her own way and not tailing someone.
The man walked swiftly, his boots clattering on the walkway as he ignored the advertisements lining it. Occasionally, he would take stock of his surroundings, glancing swiftly around him. He continued to move, obviously very certain of his destination. Finally, he came to a lift that would take him to a level where he could find a shuttle or a taxi and waited for it to appear. The young woman pulled something from her cloak and focused it on him, the soft click the apparatus made echoing in the relative silence of the area. He disappeared into the lift.
The young woman watched him as he rose in the lift beyond her vision into the darkness. She let out a slow breath and produced a commlink from somewhere beneath her cloak after concealing her other instrument. "He's here, all right," she said quietly. "He's come back to Coruscant."
***
The dark-haired woman wandered back to the entrance of the cantina, although she didn't go back in. A young man with dirty blond hair appeared from one of the adjoining walkways, wearing a cloak similar to hers, his hood pushed back to hang off his shoulders. "Well, it's nice to know the last few weeks of tracing haven't been a complete waste," he commented to her wryly as he approached.
They made their way back the direction he had come from as she responded, "I think the comfort is more in knowing I didn't have to wear this for no reason." She drew her cloak tighter around her. "The night is cold enough without wearing so few layers."
The young man chuckled, his blue eyes showing his amusement. "I don't know, Raven, the clothes are rather fetching on you."
Raven snorted contemptuously. "Fetching, but not quite functional. What if he had realized I was following him? I have no where to put my saber, and my hand-to-hand is a little rusty."
"Rusty?" he replied incredulously. "I wish I were as good as you at hand-to-hand combat! There are few Jedi you couldn't best with your 'rusty' technique. Now, we could qualify some of your Force manipulations as rusty."
"Watch it, Nat," Raven replied in warning. "You may be my partner, but that doesn't mean I won't make you regret impertinence. Here's our lift."
He grinned at her as they waited for the lift to arrive. "It's all in good fun." The lift beeped, and they stepped inside. Nat leaned against the wall of the lift, regarding her for a moment. "Besides, I don't think you could beat me in saber. I'm at least your weight and three-quarters as much again."
"Perhaps," she replied coolly and noncommittally. A faint smile then appeared at her lips. "We shall have to see at some point."
"So do we have an evening of research ahead of us?"
Raven sighed and rolled her eyes. "Force, I hope not. I doubt it. We just check in with Master Roso and tell him we found Iain. Then we head to bed for a night's full rest to track him down in the morning. Easy as dueling with your eyes closed."
"Of course," Nat answered. The door to the lift opened after it had slowed to a stop, and they both walked onto the small path edging a bank of speeders. Raven slid into the passenger's side of a small red one, leaning back and closing her eyes for a moment.
"Can't say I'd object to a full night's sleep," she commented, opening her eyes again as Nat slid into the driver's seat beside here. "We've been haunting cantinas by night and sorting through Roso's briefings and doing our own research by day for three weeks now."
"Three and a half, actually." Nathaniel eased the speeder out of its slot and pointed it towards one of the threads of airborne traffic. "You're a Jedi; I thought you were trained to handle such physical stresses."
Raven chuckled. "Come now, Knight Younam, you must have learned by now that sleep deprivation is only bearable for short durations."
"I agree with you totally, and you've heard me say as much," he countered.
Raven gave Nathaniel a sardonic look. "Let's just hope the lack of sleep has been worth it."
They rode for a long while in companionable silence, and soon the spires of the Jedi Temple appeared before them. Nathaniel steered the speeder leisurely into one of the lower docking bank connected to the grand building. Raven lifted herself from the speeder and gave a look to the building that towered above her. Then, the pair of Jedi disappeared into a tunnel that would take them into the Temple proper.
Raven followed Nathaniel through the hallways of the Temple, still holding her cloak close. Goosebumps had appeared on her arms and exposed stomach, as the Jedi building was usually kept at slightly cooler temperatures due to the number of layers normal Jedi robes consisted of. She was lost in her own thoughts, speculating on what would be the next component of their mission, when they arrived at the Intelligence seat of the Jedi Order.
The pair walked leisurely to the office of their superior of the Jedi Master Forre Roso, and Nat knocked on the door, patiently waiting for it to be opened. "Do you think he'll want us to go back and locate Iain immediately?" he inquired of his partner after a few moments of no response from the door had passed.
Raven pursed her lips in thought and shrugged finally. "I don't know. I'm just a runner for him. I say leave the strategy to him. He's better at it anyway." She stifled a yawn as she let go of her cloak, hiding her arms in the sleeves of it.
"A runner," Nat snorted. "I'd like to think what we do is a little more legal than that."
"Legal or not, we still both do the same job. Besides, I think it's a little easier to say than an 'Intelligence Special Operations Officer.' We do the brunt work necessitated by the information brought in by the eyes and ears. We run a lot."
Nat laughed and shook his head. "You know, I think I liked you better when you were quiet around me because you didn't know me." Raven just grinned and shrugged in reply as the door hissed open, revealing Roso on the other side.
Roso was rather short in stature, a rather rotund human of about forty years. He had short, cropped gray hair that encircled his skull and fierce brown eyes that seemed to take in everything around him. His nose was hooked like a raptor from a greener planet than Coruscant, and in general, he seemed to have the predatory look of the same kind of animal. His face broke into a forceful look of happiness, and he gestured them into his office.
"You two are back rather early. I hope that's a good sign?" Ruso went to stand behind his desk, moving impressively agilely for his bulk. He sat down and shifted through the pile of datacards on his desk until he found the one detailing their particular mission. Raven moved fluidly to sit in one of the two chairs before his desk, drawing her legs up to cross them in the chair, settling the skirt over her knees. Nat moved away from the door to stand slightly off Raven's right side, between the two guest chairs.
"Of course it is," Nat replied, designating himself spokesperson, as he usually was, "otherwise we'd still be there. We found Iain. For whatever reason, he has returned to Coruscant after falling off our Intelligence maps. Perhaps he thinks that the Chancellor wouldn't ask the Jedi to be involved, because it would be doubtful that the Coruscant Security would be able to trace that file alteration to him."
"The CorSec probably has trouble locating the Senate building some days," Ruso replied dryly. He settled in his seat, still looking at the data card. Raven hid a smile behind her hand, exchanging a quick, bemused glance with Nat. "But I digress. Did you get a picture of him to run through the scanners?"
Raven rolled her eyes but handed him the camera she had used to take his picture. "Doesn't this seem a little unreasonable?" she asked quietly. "You've only showed us his picture a hundred times."
Ruso took the camera and gave Raven a hard look. "It's for your protection. I don't want you chasing after someone who's not our man. That's dangerous, even for Jedi. Information needs to be verified before it's acted upon. That's why the Jedi maintain such a high reputation. We don't make the stupid and dangerous mistakes the CorSec does." He connected it to a small holoprojecter and activated it.
The picture Raven had taken bloomed before her on his desk. He looked at the picture, a speculative look on his face. Finally he sighed and switched off the picture, hooking the camera up to the main database terminal outlet in the surface of his desk. "We'll see what the computer says."
Raven frowned slightly but held her piece. Nat shifted his weight, his cloak rustling against his leggings for a moment in the quiet room. "So what's the next move if it is him, Chief?" he asked in the uncomfortable silence that followed.
"You get him. Bring him here to the Temple so the Council can question him and an official trial can be carried out by the Senate. If this is Iain, then we're accusing him of high crimes; breaking into the government files and altering sensitive data there." The computer beeped, and Ruso moved to checked its results. He gave a smile that amplified the predatory look of him and nodded to the pair in the room. "You found Iain. Bring him here."
***
Raven and Nat were walking down the hall for a few moments before he finally spoke to her. "You know, he's only doing his job and protecting us."
"I know," she replied a little morosely. "It just sounds very much like he doesn't trust us. We are perfectly capable of carrying out his missions…"
"And risking our own lives, Raven," Nat interrupted quietly. She glanced at him, and he made a gesture to forgo her next question. "That's the thing. It's not his life to risk, so he must make us as safe as possible out there. We are his responsibility. If he screws up, it could mean our lives, and that's a heavy burden to carry around for the rest of his."
Raven thoughtfully considered this. "I guess I never thought of it that way."
He shrugged, brushing it off. "My master was always a wreck when his teams were at work. He would fret about them having trouble because of some oversight of his. I've seen the other side."
They continued to walk down the hallway until they came to the lift that would give them access to the residential areas of the Temple. "Why don't we both have a warm supper and then meet tomorrow morning at 0700 to track down Iain. It would be good to rest up before the hardest part," Raven said finally. Their rooms were separate directions from one another, Nat's down a number of floors and Raven's up. Nat nodded his agreement, suddenly looking tired. He mumbled some kind of farewell before disappearing into the first lift that appeared heading his direction.
Raven shook her head after he'd left, a smile hinting around the corners of her mouth. Nathaniel was a good friend of hers, a fellow padawan acquaintance before they had been raised in the same ceremony. Then, they had been assigned as partners together in the Intelligence Corps. They were a good match for each other, Nat's exceptional Force abilities complementing her fighting skills. The pair worked and fought well together, even given his occasionally moodiness and even less frequent frustration with Jedi protocol or rules.
Weariness spread over her suddenly as the lift arrived to take her to her rooms, and Raven moved into it thankfully. The ride was swift, and then she found herself on her floor. It was a short walk to her door, and Raven moved within quietly, shedding her cloak and leaving it on a chair that was pushed beneath the table in her small kitchen area.
Raven went to her sleeping quarters, stripping out of her finer garments into the more comfortable undertunic and leggings of the traditional Jedi garb. She checked a chrono and was surprised to find it was only about 2145, although her body seemed to be under the impression it was much later. The Jedi Knight pulled the pins holding her coiled hair in place, combing her fingers through it as she moved back into the kitchen area.
Humming tunelessly to herself, Raven produced some soup from the food preserver and set about warming it on the heat elements set into the counter. She also brewed a cup of tea, sighing in contentment as she breathed in the aromatic steam from it. It wasn't long before she had settled herself on the couch in the small living area, curled up with a fiction datapad she'd borrowed from the Archives, her tea in one hand and her bowl balanced across her knees with a little assistance from the Force.