Shayla Breyis crept out of her apartment on Citadel Station, a pack on her back with all of the essentials—a few changes of clothes, a small collection of kolto packs, all the credits she could scrounge up, and a blaster—just in case. Her only companion was the now ever-present remote. She had convinced her pilot to leave in the middle of the night to avoid any confrontation with Atton—though it had required a little push from the Force to convince him it was a good idea. Atton was the only one of her companions to protest when she said she needed to go alone. Not even Mical had tried to stop her. He and Visas seemed to be of the opinion that it was the "will of the Force" that she seek out Revan, and Shayla let them think it. If they could still believe that the Force was some benevolent being, she wanted them to believe it. She wished she could get that certainty back, but once lost faith is a difficult thing to regain.
It was no matter—the former exile had learned to live without faith a long time ago. All she needed to know was that she wanted desperately to escape known space so she could avoid hurting anyone else. You are a wound in the Force, Vrook had said. Finding Revan was perfect—partially because it probably couldn't be done and partially because even if she found Revan and her little tear in the Force hurt the galaxy's ravager, it would serve the schutta right.
Shayla breathed a sigh of relief when she reached the hanger without incident. She checked to make sure she had everything she needed in her pack before boarding. Everything seemed to be in order. Her lightsaber was fastened in a homemade pocket in her flight jacket, its familiar presence a comfort to her. She could still hear Bao-Dur's voice in her ear. A lightsaber is part of who you are. Without it, you are not complete. Her stomach felt as if it would fall through to her knees, and she fought the feeling. Now was not the time to mourn the death of her friend. She had mourned for the last month when she should have been focusing on saving Atris. That had resulted only in more pain and more death. Now was a time for action.
"You ready to go, woman?" her pilot, Ferkrenn Zhan asked as she boarded the ship, his unshaven face peering back at her from the cockpit. She had found him three days before in Citadel Station's seediest cantina, his polished black boots resting on the table next to a tumbler half full of some kind of intoxicant and a deck of pazaack cards in hopeless disarray, a cloud of smoke from the cigarra in his mouth creating a haze around his person. He had a sharp grin and a shaper tongue—not to mention wandering hands. One of the Bith musicians who was a regular in the cantina pointed him out as a potential pilot, but didn't really recommend it if she wanted to avoid any unwelcome pawing. More sinisterly, he told her, there was an incident with one of the twi'lek dancers that he had tried to take home one night. She turned up dead in one of the station's maintenance shafts three days later, and though the locals widely suspected his guilt, nothing was ever proven. Well, Shay wasn't much concerned with her dignity at that point, and she was pretty sure his wandering hands were no match for her lightsaber.
She approached him the very day she got Revan's hyperspace coordinates off the Hawk's navicomputer. In fact, she still had grease under her fingernails from T3's partial memory wipe. She couldn't bring herself to completely erase the little droid's memories—she only took away enough so that he couldn't come after her. The only thing that was left was to find herself a pilot, preferably one that she wouldn't mind leaving for dead when the time came. And if ever Shayla would want to leave anyone for dead, it would be Ferkrenn Zhan. Better, he was easy to convince. All he needed was a giggle and lean, and suddenly he was as malleable as any of the men Atton had taught her to distract during a game of pazaack.
"Hello," she had said, a coy smile decorating her lips as she rested her hand on the back of the chair next to him. "This seat taken?" He looked her up and down and grinned, tilting his unshaven chin in her direction.
"Nope. Why don't you sit down and I'll buy you a drink?"
"That might be nice." Shayla sat down, biting her lower lip lightly and angling her body towards him. Before he knew it, he was agreeing to fly her to some backwater planet on the outer rim for only 200 credits. It was almost too easy.
The hard part came later, when she was actually on the ship, when she wanted nothing more than to pull her knees into her chest and tug at mousy brown locks until she could no longer hear Atton's mental screaming echo through her skull. Instead, she sat still, her back straight as a board and her face as serene as any Jedi worth her salt. She hoped beyond hope that her new found pilot would not ask about Atton—the crazy man who had rushed into an open docking bay, shouting for the ship to stop. But he couldn't hear him, Shay reminded herself. Only I could hear him. Maybe he'll assume that Atton was just a nut.
"So," the middle aged pilot said, tossing his silver streaked raven hair as the view out the cockpit window turned to the streaky light of hyperspace. "That cantina rat on the platform an ex-lover of yours?" Shay fought the urge to grind her teeth as her new acquaintance grinned devilishly. It's your own fault, Shayla Breyis. You chose him because he was the most unsavory individual that you could find on short notice. She almost winced at the thought. Would she have said the same about Atton only eight months before? Could she forget the lives on her own conscience so easily?
"What's with that blank stare, woman? Was the sex that bad?" A twinge of annoyance itched at Shayla's senses, and for once she clung to the emotion. Ferkrenn Zhan bore the scars of terrible deeds—with none of the remorse that should weigh down his heart. Atton was different from him, and she was different from him, too.
"No. We were never lovers." Except for that one time. And after six rounds of juma juice, it hardly counts.
"Really now? Do you owe him money? Sex and credits are the only things to make a man like that move so fast."
"A man like what?" Shay shot, her gray eyes narrowing at his tone.
"I've known Atton Rand long enough to know that there are two constants in his life: he's always chasing skirts and he's always short on credits." Shayla's mind raced—suddenly all of her defenses were up. She started a count of the ticks in the engine coupling—1, 2, 3, 4... Curse luck, curse the Force, curse Ferkrenn Zhan. Of all of the pilots in the galaxy, she found one that knew Atton Rand?
"How do you know Atton?"
"Met him back on Nar Shadaa a couple of times. He never did have the backbone to chase after what he wanted. Wasn't the type. So it's either a lot of credits or a lot of sex that he's chasing after. So which is it?"
"Perhaps he's changed," Shayla said, thinking of the Atton she left on the station, the one who held her hand for hours in the Ebon Hawk's medical bay on their way back from Malachor V, the one who stood by her even when he didn't have to. The one who flirted and teased and made her smile. The one who told her the truth of himself, even when it would have been easier to lie.
"You're in love with him, aren't you?" Ferkrenn said, his tone amused and his gaze scathing. He laughed, throwing his scarred face back. "Wow, this is more amusing than I expected."
"No, you are mistaken," Shayla insisted, perhaps a little too quickly. Aren't you? She shook her head to banish the thought. Of course she wasn't. And even if she were, he certainly wasn't in love with her. Soon enough he would find himself a pretty girl and a game of pazaack and forget all about the mousy haired Jedi that had interrupted his life in that cell on Peragus. That's not true. You took away any chance he had at going back to his old life the moment you showed him the Force. For better or worse, there is no going back for him any longer.
"Don't lie to me, woman. I know from experience how to spot a woman in love."
"I doubt that," Shayla spat, her tenuous hold on her temper finally snapping.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"No woman would voluntarily touch you without an envirosuit and blaster."
"Now look here—" Ferkrenn said, standing up threateningly and pulling a vibroknife from his pocket. Bao-Dur's remote sputtered angrily at her shoulder, but Shay held up a hand to stop him from firing his small weapons.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"Why? Your little toy is going to shoot me? I'll take my chances."
"If you try to hurt me, you'll regret it." Shay sat perfectly still as Ferkrenn's face tightened into a deeper scowl. He lunged for her, his left hand grabbing her shoulder as his right hand brought the knife towards her neck—but he never got the chance to follow through. Shayla grabbed his right wrist and twisted deftly. Soon, she had the big man on the ground, his dark eyes staring up at her from the floor.
"You shouldn't touch me again," Shayla said, letting go of his arm. He rubbed his jaw as he got off the floor carefully, wincing as he shook out his shoulder. Shayla strode out of the cockpit and towards her bunk, her face a portrait of Jedi serenity that belied the anger that crawled beneath her skin. She wouldn't be sorry if this journey was the end of Ferkrenn Zhan. She wouldn't be sorry at all.