Author's note: Well, I'm back, and while this isn't a sequel to A Match for the Mandalore, it will feature our favorite characters from time to time. How often, and to what degree, I'm not sure yet. It takes place six months from the end of the afore mentioned story, and is primarily from Ladria's point of view. I must stress that this is a love story, for the most part; much of its focus is on Carth and Revan coming to terms with five year's separation, and Ladria and Atton finding their place in a new Jedi Order, together. I hope there will be enough adventure to keep it from being a contiuous couple's counseling session :0) There's also a healthy amount of back story thrown in. Enjoy, and please read and review!

Always, LJ

The woman with no name sat in her cell, legs crossed, hands on knees, palms upwards. She was filthy; her captors allowed her only enough water to stay alive and bathing was an extra bucketful once a week. They wanted her alive; clean, healthy, or sane was not necessary.

She couldn't remember how long she had been here. She couldn't remember why they needed her. She didn't know why sitting like this, silent and still and simply listening was such a comfort. She didn't know why she felt that she should be able to escape, and actually did keep alert for opportunity. But the bars and walls were thick, she had no weapon, and while her guards were curiously open to suggestion when she spoke to them, she had been tortured often enough after doing so that she had given up asking them to let her go.

Anyone can be broken if you're willing to hurt them enough.

The prisoner didn't know her name, why she was here, or anything now except boredom, pain, and the pleasure of meditation. The last was tainted, however, as she couldn't remember enough of the universe to contemplate anything useful. She sensed her own memories and identity locked deep inside her own mind and usually pondered on that. Many times, in deep concentration, she had touched that room in her psyche, examining the lock, gently testing the mechanism to the mental door. It was firmly barred; no chink, no crack, no secret passage in.

She was puzzled about that. Strong emotion was not something she had anymore; puzzlement was about all she could muster. Her days were spent in a faint anxiety about who she was, where she was, and when they would strap her down and hurt her again. Even when they did that, she never screamed or begged for her life, or even moved much at all. Her meditation worked; she never felt agony or disgust at their actions. Most of all, she had no fear whatsoever. She had robbed them of their pleasure in her pain, and they had finally stopped the regular sessions in the white room. That was a triumph of sorts, but her broken mind had taken even that emotion away, and locked it in that secret room with no entry.

There were two images she saw in her dreams that had managed to break through the protective cocoon she had spun around her soul; or possibly had never really been put in there; she wasn't sure. One was a man, tall, brown hair lightly sprinkled with silver, with gentle hazel blue eyes. The other was a woman, small and lightly built, dark red hair smoothed back from her face, her green eyes bright but haunted.

There was a second man too, lurking behind that door in her head, but he was firmly trapped there, unable to come into the light as these two could. When she meditated, she saw this couple, and spoke to them, but they never answered, only looked at her with love. She didn't really know who they were but the comfort of their presence in her waking dreams was deep. She hid that pleasure as well. So much had been taken from her; she wasn't going to let these people disappear into that impenetrable fortress of her own mind. She did wonder about them, and suspected they were only companions that she'd invented; symptoms of her own insanity. But they had names, and she clung to them.

Carth. And Dree.

The woman with no name carefully did not smile, but gazed at these two, wishing they were real.