"So, hey, what was your name again?" I asked, trotting after the Jedi. "If we're going to be working together, I figure I should know."
"Bastila Shan," she replied. "And you are Melar Serav, correct?"
I nodded. So my last name was Serav. It fit smoothly into my new persona, another piece of the puzzle. Melar Surav. No, Serav. Serav. Remember it. E then A. Same as Revan, part of me whispered, but I pushed it away. Melar. Serav.
"What brings a lovely Jedi like yourself out here to this reputedly-important back end of space?" I asked.
She glanced at me, and I grinned before remembering that I was supposed to be married and with a family. I guess hitting on a Jedi wasn't ever really a good idea. And it might seem out of character, now I thought about it, with my reputed misunderstanding of the difference between Jedi and their Darker counterparts.
Oops. Such are the risks of switching personae too quickly without forethought.
Still. She couldn't call me on it or risk revealing more than the Jedi would want me to know, and thus I had a perfect cover for anything that may seem out of place or just off. I could always just look confused and pretend not to be able to remember what was real.
My grin became more genuine. I could get used to this.
No, focus. Melar. Build that identity, lock anything else away. Single-minded focus.
She wasn't suspicious, just irritated. I hated that I could read her so clearly, hated that she was connected to me, hated that I couldn't reveal that hatred or risk. . . who knew what repercussions at the hands of the Jedi Council.
I had to get to Dantooine, yes, but not as a prisoner. Not as an experiment dragged back for who knew what.
Bastila was beginning to feel uncomfortable, though her face didn't show it, and I realized I'd been staring with an increasingly blank grin at her full-body but suggestively concealing outfit.
"Sorry," I said, turning away. "I shouldn't stare. You're not what I expected from a Jedi."
"We just met," she said, still feeling uncomfortable. I couldn't help wondering if her discomfort was at least partly caused by the fact that she knew full well that I wasn't married and never had been, or if she was just playing it naturally.
No, this isn't what Melar would think!
Analysis: Identity proving more difficult than usual. I assumed personae that weren't myself all the time. Why couldn't I do so now?
Answer: lack of preparation.
Normally I would spend days researching or at least spending idle hours considering the identity I wanted to use. This time, not only had it been thrust upon me unasked-for less than an hour before, but it was accompanied by a live test of fairly staggering proportions.
"You seem unsettled," Bastila said. Curse her Jedi perceptiveness!
"I feel disoriented," I said, sticking as close to truth as could be allowed. After all, for all she knew, I was the ignorant one. "I think I need to rest. The. . . Sith, I barely escaped alive, and now. . . I just don't know what to think about anything."
She nodded, muted empathy radiating through this accursed bond. "I understand."
"And I have to get off this planet," I added.
"I'll find a place where you can rest, and then see about arranging transportation off-world," Bastila said, taking charge. As I'd known she would. Jedi weren't trained to be mute followers. And if I let her lead for a while, it would give me time to integrate Melar as a primary facet of my persona.
Calculation: getting my emotions under control must be a high priority. Since that's what she can sense most clearly, everything else depends on feeling what I should be to accompany the 'thoughts' and actions Melar would have to take.
What do I know about Melar?
Hyperspace scout. Loner, has his own ship. No debt. Has a family somewhere in Mandalore space. Doesn't really like or trust Jedi because of their reluctance to help during the first invasion, before I - before Revan, saved them.
I smirked at the idea of having subconscious loyalties to my own cause. That would be interesting to play out.
I followed Bastila in silence as we walked through the lower streets of Taris. I wasn't paying attention to where we went; I'd thrown in my fate with her, and for better or worse that's where I would stay. For the moment.
Question: What do Bastila and the Jedi want from me? There's no reason for them to go to such lengths if they don't want something pretty drastic.
And, consider as I may, I couldn't reach a satisfactory conclusion. It was unsettling, that inability to see my opponents' moves. So far, with the Republic, I'd been so far ahead of them I could have predicted the new Chancellor's name to within a list of twenty beings a full year before nominations began.
Now, I was helpless. The Force wouldn't listen to my pleas.
And I didn't know what the Jedi wanted from me.
They obviously wanted me separated from Malak, but killing me would do the job just as well as imprinting a multi-layer false memory identity, and without as much effort.
Then again, the Dantooine enclave may have just been doing it for the practice. To see if it could be done, see if it would hold, see how long it lasted.
If that were the case, though, they would have wanted me to stay on Dantooine where they could monitor me.
No, there wasn't any answer I could think of that would explain all the different confusing things about my life now.
Time to stop. Time to really, actually stop. Melar wouldn't worry about that, Melar wouldn't have any reason to think about any of it. And I was Melar now. Or, would be as soon as I could stop and settle my mind.
"Melar," I said aloud. The word tasted unfamiliar, unused. "MELar. MEElar. MelAIR. MelAR."
"What are you doing?" Bastila asked, mild confusion slipping through the bond.
"Trying to remember how to pronounce my name," I said, smirking at her. "I think MELar, don't you?"
"Yes," she said.
Melar. Hyperspace scout.
"So, what's been happening in this little corner of the galaxy?" I asked. "I've been away a while. Is all this sith-jedi stuff normal now?"
"The Dark Lord Malak is trying to complete what his master started, the ruthless conquest of the galaxy by force."
I snorted. "One little Sith lord? Isn't stopping people like that the whole point of your Jedi Order? What about Revan, he saved us last time."
I said it fluidly, instinctively. Following the pattern of Melar's thoughts, and only barely managed not to choke with laughter when I registered what I'd said.
Bastila scowled, not amused. "Revan was Malak's Sith master. He started this whole mess."
"Really?" I asked. "Huh. I guess it's true what they say, scouts may find the first route, but never get the first news. I always thought he was a pretty great guy."
Bastila coughed uncomfortably. "We all believed in him, until he fell to the Dark Side and betrayed everyone."
There was a silence.
"Maybe MelAR," I said at last. "MelAR SERav."
"Sshh!" Bastila suddenly pulled me to the side, Force energy lurching me sideways. She held out a hand, concentrating Force energy into a fuzzy barrier between us and the street. It extended much farther than I'd have expected, filling half the street and much of the corner we stood in.
We were plainly visible, the entirety of Taris's upper streets were well-lit and left nowhere to hide, but I closed my eyes and probed more deeply into her use of the Force and found it to be an extraordinarily skillfully-woven mental web, much like what you create when waving a hand in front of a weak-minded fool and instructing them not to pay you and your strange companions any heed.
But spread across an entire section of the street.
Nice job, Jedi girl. Guess I can't underestimate you, however young and naive you may seem.
Sith patrol soldiers, three of them, crossed the section of street in front of us. They looked in every direction as they moved carefully, searching.
They glanced right past us as though we weren't there, continued by without a moment's hesitation.
Bastila let out a breath.
"So, why are Sith after us?" I asked once they were out of earshot. "I guess I understand you, being a Jedi, but why do they want to kill me?"
"You are an important Republic resource," she says evasively.
"Really? Resource, me? Aren't I just another soldier?"
"Not many 'just a soldier' could have escaped as you did. You were personally selected as one of my bodyguards, do you not remember?"
"Nope. So I'm supposed to be protecting you, and the Sith want to kill me so they can kill you?"
She nodded.
"I certainly hope I'm getting some serious credits for this job," I muttered. "So, where are we supposed to be going now?"
"Dantooine," she said after only a brief hesitation. "The Endar Spire's mission is over, one way or another. We'll return to the Jedi Council and see what they require us to do next."
Dantooine. The seat of strength for the most creative and dangerous group of Jedi Masters.
And the one place I had to go anyway.
"The Sith will have control of the planet, by now. How are we going to escape?" I asked.
"That is something we shall discover," Bastila replied, hurrying us toward an elevator. "I have some contacts here who are allied with the Republic. We should see if they can offer assistance."
"Listen," I told her, scooting around so I was blocking her way. "I'm a hyperspace scout, not a soldier. If I'm supposed to be protecting you, it isn't in combat. And I think we should lay low, avoid anyplace they'd expect us to go, and get as far away from these patrols as possible."
"I can deal with the patrols," she said confidently. "They'll never even see us."
That may be the case, but we wouldn't outsmart any proper Sith with mind tricks. And I was quite sure that there would be proper Sith coming after us.
I cast about for a way to say that without sounding foolish, predicting things I had no way of knowing for certain.
"Besides," she continued, "my contacts are in deep cover in the far lower city, halfway across the world. We'll be far, far away from the site of our crash by the time the Sith realize we've escaped their net."
"Can't argue with that plan," I said, nodding. "Lead on."
