It was obvious why their would-be assassin wore a hood as soon as they'd removed it to treat her wounds. Where her eyes should have been were two large and unnatural-looking gouges, far beyond the Hawk's capacity to heal if they'd wanted to. That, and the extent of the scars written across the woman's body - scars too deliberate to have been done in battle - made Anark want to trust her when the assassin pledged allegiance.
She'd woken after a few hours of sleep to an empty cockpit, dizzy from the galaxy streaking past at lightspeed, but the sleep had been dreamless. In medbay, finding the woman - Visas - awake, she'd demanded as many answers as she could, furious with both Visas and herself for apparently having overlooked ship security so greatly. What little she'd gotten out of that questioning had shaken her enough.
It was like a sound, at the edge of hearing. And when I heard it, I found I could not ignore it.
She dug nails deep into her palm, hoping to break that slow, dull pain in some form of release. Regret for the pain meant erosion of the self, to yearn for a comfortable non-existence. No matter how much hurt it caused her to return- here she was, fulfilling whatever purpose was set out for her.
She let her steps quicken. She lurched into a run, clumsy over the first few seconds but feeling her body fall back into the proper posture; the hilt of her lightsaber thumped the tender flesh at her hip and she winced, trying to avoid it. Only enough to get her blood pumping and to shake off the grip of sleep. Twenty laps of the ship should do. Her footsteps rang heavy on the Hawk's metal gangways and she felt vaguely embarrassed at the thought of someone being up early enough to see her doing this - running in circles, like a cannus solix on its wheel.
She wondered when the necessity borne on Telos and Peragus had become inescapable fate. She knew it was part of what she'd been running from in exile proper, with all that had meant. Now she couldn't push it aside any more; nor did she want to.
Her breath sang in her ears: still controlled, still easy. She found herself counting the dim shapes of emergency lights set into the walls. Pointless. Awareness back into the body. Concentrate on the movement of arms, the thin taste of reclaimed air. She lost focus again, too quickly.
She wasn't the kind of person the galaxy seemed to need right now - not even back at the Academy had she been that Jedi, the calm and collected sort who'd spend five years in exile meditating and snap right back into peacekeeper mode when called. All Anark Miercur wanted was to be left alone, to live or die on her own terms.
A feeling of violence descended upon her. She pushed herself faster, trying to keep her pace low enough that it was still a warmup for what was to come. She had believed utterly that she must never again care, had spent those years wandering from planet to planet under a black mood. That agency was drifting away from her very quickly, as fast as it had been thrust upon her.
Faster!
She denied her body and slowed to a trot, then a brisk walk. Twenty laps. It was starting to make her feel vital again. The cargo bay door stood open already and she strode through it, unhooking her lightsaber from her belt. They had two more day-night cycles until Dantooine.
If she had known, back then, that any of this was going to happen, Anark never would have taken up the staff to replace her Jedi weapon. As it stood now, she'd spent at least half of the fight at the Mandalorian camp in Dxun trying not to do what was second nature by now and change leverage along the length of the double blade, which would simply have cut her fingers off. Kreia had had a few choice words to say about that. She'd improved since then, but she still wasn't completely comfortable again with the unique properties of the saberstaff.
Her double blade glowed an almost painful yellow in the dim light of the cargo hold, burning dust. She thought about an opponent in front of her. (It was taller than her - as always.) Thought about each zone of its body, about which strike would hit where. Then she dropped easily into Jedi Guard stance and carefully executed each of those strikes.
The saberstaff's lack of mobility, and her relative lack of control, almost made her yearn again for her old weapon. But she was nothing if not persistent, and she had an image in her head of herself at Dxun the first time.
She repeated each strike, so slowly she had time to feel each movement fully in her body, over and over, seeking a focus and precision she hadn't thought about years. It brought her down into herself and felt good, like something to take pride in. The lightsaber's weight in her hands was alien to her, but similar enough that her memories, the memories of doing this every single morning, were sinking into her, electrifying her. She let the stretch in her muscles bring her into total concentration.
Then she reached out to the Force instinctively and found nothing but a yearning. The memory of an echo.
Anark struck out wildly in front of herself - convulsively - scorching a groove deep into one wall and singing the loose hem of her undershirt before she realised.
"The Force is not something to be relied on," said Kreia, from behind her. "Not at this time, exile. Perhaps you will grow into your former abilities, given time, but-"
"But perhaps not," Anark said vehemently. "I know that."
"I am not so convinced that you do."
"I'm not in the mood to talk about this, Kreia."
"You let your would-be assassin live," said Kreia pointedly, as Anark finally turned to face her, her extinguished lightsaber dropping to her side. "Why?"
"Because I don't know what's going on and you're not telling me. At least she has some use."
"And you would trust such a one to speak truthfully?"
Anark sighed. "I don't know yet. She has to prove herself, but if she's who she says she is… I can't afford to throw that possibility away."
"I am gratified, at least, to see that you've given the matter some thought," said Kreia. "But it is a treacherous path you walk. Be certain you do not stray from it."
"Yes," Anark said, clipping her lightsaber slowly back to her belt as she picked her jacket up. "I understand that."
"Later today, I will instruct you in your meditation practice. You must be prepared for Dantooine mentally as well as physically, exile."
"I understand that too." At least there would be no talking through things. Kreia wouldn't care about that.
"Then I await your lesson… with high hopes."
Later, redressing in the small closet that passed for a 'fresher, her scar itching from the sonics, Anark realised that this must be the first time Kreia had ever seemed pleased with her. It was a strange feeling.
Atton didn't need to be sitting in the Hawk's cockpit this time, but he wanted to see if their resident not-a-kriffing-Jedi would show up again. Call it unprofessional curiosity. So he was playing pazaak again on his own, making himself look approachable.
He'd just about convinced himself that it'd been a one-off (more pleased than regretful about that, honestly) when, sure enough, there she was, the dark circles under her eyes far from gone. She stood, drawn up as tall and as rigid as she could evidently manage, even though she had to know it wasn't fooling him at all. And at that thought, she grinned briefly, apologetically, and spun round to leave.
"Hey, wait," called Atton, without thinking. Pfassk. "I, uh, was wondering if you wanted- well, I mean, you were saying you wanted me to get my pazaak edge back-"
"I'm not in the mood for it, Atton," said the exile, pulling her jacket closer together. "Don't really feel like talking. Sorry."
"Look, I'm only here because this chair is a damn sight more comfortable than my bunk. I can go back. Seriously. Don't go just because of me."
She sighed quietly, shifting her weight, leaning a little on the doorframe. Atton stood up.
"Probably time for me to get some sleep anyway-"
"I didn't mean it like that," Anark said. "I just- it's been a long day. I wanted to be somewhere quiet."
"I can be quiet. You saw me with that stealth field generator back on Telos, right? Well- you didn't see me, I was using the generator, but I'm pretty good at being silent-"
Her eyes widened; she let out a short bark of a laugh, apparently despite herself. "Just sit down and shut up, Atton."
"Yeah. Good plan."
Watching the ship manoeuvre through hyperspace must be calming, somehow, to her - that was it. Curiosity sated. He studiously avoided taking his gaze from the solo game in front of him, even when he drew, improbably, the only +4 card in the deck and summarily went bust. At least she wasn't watching.
He wondered what she thought of him playing pazaak by himself. It was second nature to Atton by now, although he usually just did it in his head. Anark probably saw it as another of those foolish things he'd indulge himself in. The thought repulsed him. He threw the cards away from him, whipcracking them across the console before he caught himself.
She was asleep again. This time she'd not been as prepared for it, head hanging down sideways off the chair, her hair just obscuring her face at this angle. She was going to have one hell of a neck ache when she woke up; even Jedi weren't immune to things like that.
She trusts me, Atton thought. It felt like a punch in the gut. I need to stop doing this. He looked at the bare skin of her throat, the line of her legs thrown out in front of her. He wrenched the pilot's chair round violently.
That cold familiar rage stalked with him through the corridors of the Ebon Hawk, dizzying him, gripping him at the wrists to keep him going. Knowing his captor could almost certainly sense it only inflamed him even more. Now he found himself in the 'fresher cubicle, glimpsing his reflection in peripheral vision as he went to seal the door, and the look on his face caught him with unexpected intensity. He bent his head against the mirror as if he were trying to break through. His hands clenched just to feel flesh, shaking to the beat of his pulse, and he felt just as helpless as before.
He had to get off this ship.