A/N: So, ok, this chapter is fairly pointless plotwise. Almost. But, since I'm not a fan of being all "And poof, they were on Dantooine" I've decided this is one of those transition chapters. Kind of boring, and in my opinion, a litter funnier at parts instead of sad all the time…a break in the action, tying some ends while creating others. There is this chapter planned, though the next ones have been changing in dimension. There may be more interlude chapters. We'll see.

But bear with me! And hopefully, together (you and I, writer and reader) shall both come through this better than how we once were. Now, forget my speeches. Onto the chapter!

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the KOTOR universe. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch.


He is sitting on a stone, waiting for her to emerge, wondering slightly if she has somehow gotten herself into trouble in the three minutes that she has been in the Khoonda Building, and very, intensely bored. Which is never, ever good.

For when Atton is bored, he often becomes thoughtful. And when he is thoughtful, his brain automatically tends toward the thing that should be thought upon most – which was, quite often, a thing he did not want to think about.

Ember Tythael, Jedi Extraordinaire.

But he thought he knew what Jedi were like. All…peace-loving and selfless and fake.

She isn't like that, though. Yeah, she tends to want to help people for no reason, and yeah, he has to wonder if she is a touch suicidal sometimes, but there is something completely genuine to her that makes her…other. Only an 'almost Jedi'. A not-quite Jedi.

This is because, when she finally emerges from the mahogany door, she is very angry. As far as he knows, Jedi never, ever become angry. Not unless they are forced to, something of which he knows too well and decides not to think about.

No. This is real, human anger. She is not happy about something. The downward glint in her eye and the heaviness to her steps (not to mention the fact that he observes her quite often and feels he knows the difference between her emotions) raises a red flag before his eyes.

He is not quite sure what to say. She looks coiled up as if to spring.

He waits until she stands before him. She stands there for quite a long time, fists clenched, eyes downward. But slowly, ever so slowly, her muscles begin to chink out of place.

"Atton?" she asks him, and he is surprised by it. He stares at her, wondering just what kind of advice he could give a woman such as she. He is almost flustered by it.

"Yeah?"

"Am I wrong?" she asks him earnestly, and again, he is thrown off. People didn't ask him for advice. People didn't ask him the difference between wrong and right. People didn't even care that he existed, apparently, until...recently.

He hates this. He hates being a coward from his own memory.

But he hides it and tilts his head and looks confused, for her benefit.

"Why?"

She sighs deeply and looks away, as if just as flustered as he.

"Am I wrong for trying to find the Masters? For, somehow, trying to save people?"

He stares at her again, unable to help himself, and he knows that he cannot answer that question without answering one of his own.

Was it wrong for her to save me? Back then, when everything broke?

Why she would even care about his opinion still shocks him, at least slightly, and he ponders upon this to try and get his own question to disappear. Still, he doesn't have an answer for her. And she looks to be expecting one, the way she is looking at him with those eyes clouded in self-doubt.

He didn't know a Jedi could feel self-doubt. He didn't know a Jedi could be genuinely human without any provocation. How the hell did she call herself a Jedi? Of course, he probably should have been listening when she said, time and time again, that the Order pretty much kicked her out. But he still has to wonder if being a Jedi every really disappears. If being a Jedi only goes away once you die.

"I don't know," he answers truthfully. He does this, he notes, for her sake entirely.

And then she sighs angrily and begins to walk away.

"Damn Vrook," he hears her mutter. And he cannot help but smile, despite the fact that she is practically stomping away from him.

He didn't know Jedi cussed either.


Chapter 6 - There is no Shame

Atton

"Move," I muttered. The little pipsqueak, conveniently sitting exactly where I needed to put the box, just looked at me with those huge eyes of hers and then tilted her head to the side before realizing that I was carrying a box of supplies. A box of supplies that never should have left the ship, might I add.

"Little…person," I continued, forgetting her name. Or, probably not caring enough to remember -- this option was a bit more likely. "Move or you'll be smashed by medpacs and stims."

She decided that it would be in her best interest to move, and did so. I put the box down where it was supposed to go within the Hawk, and turned back around to find her still staring at me.

"What?" I asked. I didn't care if I sounded sharp or rude -- I 'won' the job of packing up by losing a bet with Mira I didn't even know I was a part of, and I was still particularly bitter about this fact. Namiri cracked a smile at me, not unlike the ones Ember shoots me when I say something I think is clever and turns out to be really stupid.

"Not in a very good mood often, are you not?" she asked in a strange syntax. "I'm Namiri, remember?"

"No," I shot back, not caring to elaborate and not caring about her name. This girl was following me around for some reason, and I didn't really know why except for a feeling that it was somehow Ember's doing.

"Namiri, will you go and straighten up the starboard dormitories?" said someone in the other hallway.

Speak of the devil…

Instantly, Namiri agreed and skipped away to do Ember's bidding like a good little Jedi pet. Ember appeared, standing exactly where Namiri had been, as if replacing her.

"You got everything?" she asked, quiet as usual. I shrugged, trying to ignore the fact that she sounded a bit strained.

"I guess."

She watched me for a moment with those dull brown eyes and I shifted where I stood, uncomfortable under her watchful stare. She placed a hand on her hip. Finally, she sighed.

"Try to be nice to Namiri, will you?" Despite the words themselves being directory and annoyed, there was a smile lurking on her face. I tried to stare her down.

"I will when she stops following me around," I said. "I wonder who told her to do that."

I gave her the eye. She just laughed at me, and my face flushed.

"Just go and prime the ship, you flyboy," she said. And if I hadn't known her, I would have thought that she sounded cheerful.

But there was something else there…dread, I decided. She didn't want to leave, even though this Bastila woman was pressing it on her. I had to wonder at that, still.

I wondered about a lot of things as I sat in the pilot's chair and pressed the buttons that would prime for take-off. I wondered about Dantooine. I wondered about ships and their making. But most of all, I wondered about the nickname Ember had given me and her laugh and her smile when she said it.

Flyboy.

And I found I couldn't stop grinning until after we were all on board and taking off.


I was sitting in my chair. The blue of hyperspace was flying past in striking whirls, and as it was, Pazaak had become extremely boring.

So I sat back and listened to the voices sliding in from the main hold. I caught snatches of stories, one after the other. Handmaiden discussing something with the small girl before the voices faded away. The fresher running loudly in the background. Mical eating in the main hold before disappearing to re-stock or whatever it was he did.

Mostly boring. Except for one. And even that one was only marginally interesting because of who was involved.

"So the Navi computer is still locked," said a sharply-accented voice. Bastila, no doubt about it. I figured she was speaking to Ember. She hadn't tried too hard to talk to any of the rest of us, and I couldn't help but be thankful.

"Yes. Even after the strange interference we faced, it remains as locked as ever."

I had to give Ember some credit. She was astoundingly calm considering how impatient Bastila could be at times.

"Interference?"

"Yes. But Bao-dur figures it was nova ray interference, and nothing to worry about," Ember said. I thought about what she said for a moment and shrugged off my smuggler's instinct. It didn't matter if she was lying or not. I would have lied to Bastila too.

It probably had something to do with the Force, anyway. And no matter what Ember said, I didn't (wouldn't!) understand.

"Where's Namiri?" Bastila asked curiously.

"She in the dormitory with Visas," Ember said softly, a bit of tension in her voice. It was clear even to me that Bastila thought of Namiri as more of a tool than a person, and naturally, it would be even more evident to Ember.

No matter how I felt about Bastila, though, I couldn't blame her. I mean, if Revan was her friend or whatever, then she probably wanted to get to him pretty fast. And apparently, the pipsqueak was important in this undertaking.

There was nothing more said.

I heard fading footsteps. And again, I had a feeling that I was alone. I closed my eyes and laid my head back, whistling a base tune that I had heard somewhere but long forgotten the importance of.

Then, another voice. A willowy voice annoyingly close to my ear. I winced after I jumped half a foot in the air, swinging full around to face the girl leaning out of the co-pilot's chair. I'm sure I did not look happy to see her.

"Hello," said Namiri, a smile on her round little face despite it. A single bang of hair fell into my eyes, which I found strange. I hadn't needed a haircut in a long time.

"What do you want now?" I asked, facing the computer intently, as if I was working on something. Although really, the only thing I had to do was to pick up my fallen Pazaak cards.

In the corner of my eye, I saw she looked a little hurt by this. I sighed, trying to soften my tone. Stupid kids. Stupid, stupid kids and their damn…sympathetic ways.

"No, seriously. What are you doing in here?" She tilted her head for a moment, as if listening to something else. "Bastila was looking for you."

She grimaced. I held back a laugh at the sheer…strangeness of it on her face. She looked as though she was deeply affronted by such a thing as Bastila.

"I know," she said quietly. "I know it isn't very nice." I was slightly absorbed by her lilting accent, trying to place it as she continued to speak. "But I don't like how all the time she stares at me."

I nodded, actually agreeing after I sorted through her fading and recurring syntax. I continued to surprise even myself.

"She does that, apparently."

She just nodded and looked straight ahead toward the blue of hyperspace, her silver-white eyes dancing with azure lights. I watched her for a moment before turning back to my Pazaak cards. We both sat there in the cockpit, bathed in blue and utterly silent, she entranced by the color of hyperspace and me distracted by my fading cards. Somehow – I'm not sure how – this arrangement worked.

"How old are you, anyway?" I eventually asked and immediately regretted it. I began stumbling around for words since it was probably really awkward for a man such as me to be asking such a question. "You look short," I added lamely.

She just turned to me. The blue remained in her eyes, icy and chilling even while a naive smile crossed her face.

"Ember says I'm 15 by…standard dating, or something the like. How old are you?"

I smirked. "Old enough."

"Really?" she asked curiously. "Did Ember tell you that?"

I noted again how strangely devoted to Ember this girl was already. And again, I couldn't blame her. People were, for lack of a better word, attracted to Ember. People would follow her to the ends of the galaxy. People would die for her for no reason at all.

I would die for her.

And not a single part of my mind denied it. It was almost terrifying, in a way. The sheer power of it was overwhelming. Tremendous. Something that could change a person, completely and utterly, and transform them into something they didn't recognize. Or something they were secretly grateful for.

"I just know," I said quietly, a bit late.

"Oh. Ok."

Silence again. I could feel her staring at me like a person would stare at a holo-projector – so intently one could lose their eyesight. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

"What's wrong with Ember?" she asked in a small voice, as if she sensed some kind of importance behind it. I stared at her for a second, taken-aback.

"What do you mean by that?"

Namiri shook her head. Her deep brown hair swayed back and forth across her pale face.

She sighed again. "She looks this way at you, and she watches, but she never enters, even though she laughs when she's around you. She just…smiles at the nice blond man. And she tries to be nice to the snow woman. And the woman with red-hair? They talk a lot too, and she's funny. So why is she still miserable?"

I blinked. Other than that, I wasn't quite sure what to do, much less say. The girl, despite her appearance, saw more than she maybe realized. The very fact that Ember was…watching me was oddly moving. My heart was prodded with spears, and I didn't mind the jolt of it.

"I watch her a lot," she admitted, almost a bit shamefully, probably taking my silence as a bad sign. "There's a part of her missing somewhere. Something in the…in the air around her is missing."

"We know," I said quietly. Understanding it more than the girl knew.

She continued on with distant eyes. "It's...sad."

And I nodded because there could be no other words for it.

It was then that something in the back of my mind pricked. I turned around, and there stood Ember in the doorway with a strange expression. Like she was almost angry or sad, but mostly just weary. As if she couldn't feel anything else beyond it.

"Namiri," she said, her voice strained. "Visas wants you."

With that, the girl stood. She placed a hand on my shoulder, and the importance of it reverberated within me even though I didn't understand why. And then she walked away, the pretty pet of the Ebon Hawk.

I turned to face Ember. She stared at me with indecipherable eyes before she cracked a half-crazed smile.

I spun my chair around to face her full on.

"Ember," I probed intently, even with a tinge of worry.

She titled her head slightly but there was…nothing else. Blank. I knew I was worried about her, not even trying to hide it anymore – and I had no doubt she felt my worry rumbling wherever the Force collected emotions.

"Get some rest," I pleaded, despite the protests of my pride. Despite the worries that said she would laugh in my face.

She just shook her head. "Later," she said.

I watched her go, not sure what else to say, until she turned directly to face me. She took back what she did. She entered the cockpit again, standing directly in front of me, mere inches between her body and my knees. Her small hand nudged the strand of hair dangling before my eyes.

"I promise."


I was fidgety in the cockpit after that, not quite sure what to think, especially when Bastila sauntered into the room, settling directly into the co-pilot's chair. I didn't even look at her. I stared at the blinking ship controls and watched how the cobalt outside the glass glimmered off of every surface like a cold mirror.

She didn't say anything to me at first. I flashed a glance at her. She was staring at the controls as intently as I was, but doing nothing more than that.

Sheesh. Was there ever a collection of Jedi with bigger emotional baggage?

Nope, I thought. You're just lucky like that.

Eventually, the awkwardness built until I cleared my throat. Her eyes shot up to stare at me. I shrugged it off.

"You, uh…ok?" I asked.

She sighed. "It's nothing."

I just nodded, lifting my eyebrows. I didn't particularly want to sit in the same room as her with such a heavy, weighted silence dangling dangerously over my head, so I slowly stood and made a gesture with my arms towards the door.

"I'll, uh, be going now."

"What have you been taught of the Force?" she asked, almost in the same moment. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and fidgeted on my feet. Not particularly a question I wanted to answer at the moment.

"It exists," I answered blithely. She didn't even twitch.

"I feel like...I feel as though I have seen you before, but I am not sure where," she said. Again, I raised my brow and shrugged.

"I've been around," I said. I didn't feel like getting into it, not with this woman who couldn't seem to choose between being impatient and hot-headed or calm and wistful. Who would one moment speak to me and next just blow me off.

She just nodded.

"I see," she said. "I'm just…remembering things, I suppose."

I made a motion for the door, but couldn't help but be curious. This must have been one powerful woman to have helped Revan (a good Revan, as far as I knew) to defeat the Darth Malak. I lingered by the door, trying to phrase my question in the however small amount of time that she was choosing to actually speak to me.

"So this was your ship," I said, more matter-of-factly than I expected.

"Yes," she said. "Well, Revan's really. And we had to steal it in order to obtain it…so it never really was his either. It's a mysterious thing, simply appearing out of the dark. The Masters would call it the will of the Force."

"The Masters are dead," I couldn't help but add, mostly before I thought about it. She just looked down upon the computers and I could not see her expression. I hadn't meant it to be cruel or rude. It was just…truth. Blunt truth.

"Yes, well." She finally turned around to face me, an unreadable expression on her pretty face. "Things haven't exactly turned out the way we've expected recently. They don't usually, I find."

I shrugged.

"If I know anything about the Force," I said. "It's that it has a nasty sense of humor."

Finally, a minute smile spread across her red lips.

"Sometimes," she said.


The trip to Dantooine was both long and short. Much shorter than the trip back to Telos. Longer as the moments stretched endlessly into snippets of conversation, snapshots of dreams, and thoughts of deep things that lied just below the surface I couldn't break.

On one of the last days, Ember returned to the cockpit, standing hesitantly in the doorway. I turned and stared at her defiantly, staring her down until she dragged herself into the co-pilot's chair. I frowned at her, but she spoke first.

"I promised I would come back."

"No," I gently reminded her. "You promised to rest."

She said nothing to that. It hurt me to see her this way and not understand what it was that was eating away at her.

"You've not been sleeping?"

She shook her head. "Not well."

A thought appeared in my head, and I went with it. I took off my soft leather jacket and stood to tuck it behind her head. A smile was on her face as she closed her eyes.

"This moment should be recorded. You never remove that thing."

I smirked, but was too oddly flustered to say anything more intelligent than, "Yeah."

It was moments like these, moments where she smiled and cracked jokes and called me a 'flyboy', that reminded me that she was still fighting whatever it was that was eating away at her. That a human being existed there and not a tortured soul. That she would end up being ok.

"Just be nice to it. I only got one."

"Really?" she asked, opening her eyes to face me with skepticism. I looked down on her and smiled.

"Yeah. Really."

Silence lulled into being, soft compared to the silence that was forced upon me like a lockdown when Bastila had sat in that same chair before. There were so many things Ember and I could have talked about. I could have asked her about Bastila, or even Namiri. I could have asked anything. I could have asked for answers.

But I looked at her and saw her tired frame, and my brain fried. Everything scrambled. I didn't know what to do or what to say, like I was caught under some strange spell.

"We'll be landing within two hours," I told her as I sat back in my chair. She smiled and nodded.

"What else?" she asked me, facing me with a knowing expression. The blue of hyperspace clashed in an ugly way with her leather-brown eyes, and that made them all the more real.

I fidgeted some more, not sure what else to do.

"What's wrong with you?" I finally asked.

She looked at me. She smiled in a funny way.

"That's quite a question."

"Ember," I said tightly. "I'm not an idiot."

She sighed and nodded and sighed again, as if trying to expel all of the air from her system. "I know that."

I stared at her, trying to prod her to go on. She sat up a little bit and crammed a fist into her leg.

"I've just been…Force, I don't know. I don't feel like myself. I feel all screwed up inside ever since we left. Ever since…I don't know. I don't know anything." She sounded frustrated by this fact, the fact that she didn't know anything. I tilted my head at her, egging her on.

"You seem to have a plan in mind," I replied.

She faced me with stricken eyes for a moment, but she closed them and I could no longer get a read on her expression. She turned away from me and faced the viewport, fidgeting like I had been only a few moments ago. She didn't turn back to me.

"If I for some reason disappeared mysteriously," she said, jokingly in the way that was jarring because it wasn't really joking. "what would you do?"

I shrugged to cover up the empty feeling that enveloped my gut.

"Go…somewhere."

She nodded slowly, probably expecting this answer. "Would you ever consider becoming a Jedi? For me?"

For you, I would jump off of a cliff.

The words were so close to falling out of my mouth that I had to pretend to wipe my face to cover my mouth. Being a Jedi was serious business. Being a Jedi wasn't just a job, it was a total and complete lifestyle. A lifestyle I probably didn't fit in any way, shape, or form.

"I don't think I would fit being a Jedi," I said to her. She shook her head.

"You are always debasing yourself."

"For good reason."

She sighed again, this time in exasperation. I was oddly gladdened by this.

"You have potential, Atton. I'm not going to lie to you. You could be an extremely effective Jedi knight if you wanted to be," she said, examining a piece of her hair in her fingers. It looked so dark in this light, almost black. "Do you want to be?"

I shrugged.

"I don't know."

She just nodded. "Well, indecision is a step up, I suppose. It means you're thinking about it."

"Whatever floats your boat."

She sighed and then yawned, funnily enough. "You asked to be a Jedi. To help me, or whatever it was you said."

I didn't say anything to that, and strangely, I felt as though she understood. We sat there for a long time in the dim glow, seeming to grow a little dimmer by the moments as we came closer to our destination. The cockpit inched closer and closer to being enveloped in the dark of outer space, and neither of us minded.

"Yeah, well, there are enough Jedi on this ship to last you a while," I said after a while. And she smiled at that.

"I've noticed."

I sat there, suddenly very tired. I yawned too. She leaned into her chair and shifted a bit, leaning her head on the side panel, her cheek against my jacket that was dangling over the back of the seat.

"Hey Atton," she asked, actually sounding kind of cheerful. "Do you know any stories?"

I snorted at that. "Why? You want me to put you to sleep?"

She laughed. "It's just to pass the time," she said. I raised my eyebrow at her and she grinned lethargically. "And sleep wouldn't hurt."

"Well ok," I said, "You asked for it."

I launched into a rollicking story about a Jedi Princess and her crew of misfits from across the galaxy, each having their own story and each having their own problems that the poor Jedi Princess had to fix while not thinking she was a Jedi Princess at all.

She laughed often, most likely because of my lackluster story-telling ability. It wasn't like I had anything else to do. But I found I was in a better mood than I had been in a long time, sitting there, laughing with her and feeling like the fool without the shame.

And finally, while facing the viewport, I ended it. She had been silent for some time.

"And the Jedi Princess sat in her ship and asked for a story from her roguishly handsome smuggler. And it was good and it made her happy again. Finally, the whole group of Misfits blasted into the beyond, found a nice planet, and lived there until they grew old and died. Even the whiny blond historian."

And when I turned to look at Ember, grinning like the fool I was, her head was tilted to the side, resting against the side-cushion of the seat.

She was asleep. And there was still a smile on her face.


We then had a very uneventful landing. Although, the almost offended look Ember gave me when she woke up was still pretty funny. Her eyes had bugged out and everything, as if she had no idea where she was and why she was sleeping there with my jacket over her shoulder.

I had snickered at that. To which she threw my jacket at my face and erupted into a similar spasm of snickers herself.

Unpacking began in a similarly uneventful way. Mical was in charge of moving the medical equipment, and the Handmaiden had volunteered herself to assist him. Mira and Bao-dur handled some of the weaponry equipment, while Namiri was doing odd-jobs and Visas was somehow inspecting the outside of the ship.

"Statement: You meatbags are as boring creatures as ever. I think I shall resort to shutting myself down in order to escape the mediocrity of it all."

No one said anything to HK. We were all more than used to his occasional rants by now. T3 booped at him as if annoyed. Namiri giggled at that.

We were greeted by settlers and the Administrator before being offered the rooms we would presumably stay in for a long while. We walked as a large group, followed by the settler's who had agreed to assist us, toward the simple building that sat against the horizon.

It was then that Ember tried to speak to the Handmaiden.

"What's your name?" she asked the pale woman. Her icy eyes locked upon Ember, who walked calmly, collected. The Handmaiden looked almost…disturbed by her question, as if having a name was some taboo, otherworldly thing.

"I'm…a Handmaiden of Atris."

"Is that what you want to be called?" Ember asked quietly.

The woman looked shocked, offended even. "I'm not called by any other name."

Ember silently appraised her. "Ok," she said, and decided to drop the conversation at once. The Handmaiden looked conflicted, as if she wasn't quite sure about her own answers anymore.

Eventually we were in our rooms within a newer compound close to the Khoonda building. The moments passed so quickly it was as if the rest of us were trapped in slow-motion.

And then, after getting everything arranged, I suddenly stood alone in a room with a bed and a dresser, a room that was supposed to be mine. I stared blankly upon the walls and felt no attachment to it whatsoever. To me, it was just another room, this fact made even more prominent by the fact that Ember wanted to ultimately return to the rebuilt Jedi Enclave.

I sighed as I dropped my bag of armor and weapons on the floor. I didn't care if this room was mine somehow. Everything had happened so fast. It was too weird for words.

I sat on the bed (my bed?) and rubbed my face with my hands. I sat there for a long time, thinking upon things, like rooms and their importance, the sun that was setting in the sky, and why Ember had even brought us here in the first place. I lied down and almost fell asleep, strangely exhausted by the fast-moving pace of everything that had been going on, annoyed by the fact that Dantooine was not as restful as I expected. But maybe, just maybe, I would be allowed a moment to recuperate.

And then, my door slid open. I sat up so fast my head spun.

"Did I scare you?" asked Ember with a smile. She stood in the doorway, wearing a new set of pale work robe in her usual baggy style.

I rolled my eyes as I pushed myself off of the bed. "No."

"Good," she said. "Come and train with us."

I stared at her. She was getting things started already? She wanted to move that quickly? She watched me with careful eyes, as if she was treading on a subject made of glass. I smirked at the irony of the whole situation…the moment I settle down for a nap would be the moment she would choose to bother me about my training. She probably knew it too.

"You mean I don't even get to settle in?"

She observed me confusedly. "But it isn't like you have anything to unpack."

I laughed lightly under my breath, struck by her strange innocence about the whole thing. "I wonder whose fault that is."

"Please. Come and train with us."

"No," I said finally. "I don't want to. I'm tired."

She stood there for a couple more moments, completely silent. She pursed her lips and stared at me, a strange kind of desperation burning in her leather-brown eyes.

Then, a tiny, mischievous smile spread across her face.

"I understand if you're too scared to fight Mical," she said solemnly. "I hear he has quite the choke-hold."

I sighed exasperatedly. "I am not too scared to fight Mical," I said slowly.

"And I've heard Namiri has quite the sucker punch."

I rolled my eyes again as I stood before her, staring down at her petite frame with distanced annoyance.

"Fine," I mumbled. "You have got to be the most ridiculous, stubborn woman I have ever met."

She grinned at that. "I'm glad."

Relief became clear upon her face once I agreed. I cocked my head at that, but she was already beginning to walk out, unwilling to give me any sort of answer for her strange behavior.

"Why do you want me out there so badly?" I asked with a smirk, just before she disappeared into the shadowy hallway. She whirled around to look at me, and stood there with an indecipherable expression before she answered me. I expected it to have something to do with fighting or improving my technique, but as always, Ember managed to surprise me.

"Because I just do. Because I like to have you around."

My smirk disappeared. She watched me with that same strange desperation in her eyes, her words ringing with utter and complete truth.

"Oh, really?"

She smiled slightly, turning away from me as she spoke softly, openly. "Why would I lie about something like that?"

I stepped toward her and stared firmly down upon her dark head, my smirk returning as I warily placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Good question."

She snorted and began to drag me away by my wrist, about which I did not complain except to make her laugh.


A/N: Ha! You can tell I'm not the biggest fan of writing HK-47…I just never know where to put him, really. And Bastila is a little…nutzo in my story. Heh. And you will probably tell that I wrote this late and night and published it the next morning. I was tired of looking at it. It's done to me...and probably not as good as it should be, but whatever. :) I've been pressed to write, but with school starting up again, its harder to get into the groove. I'll do my best to get an update out every week or so.

Standard Dating, I think I made up. I mean, year cycles are going to be different on each planet, right? So…there has to be some sort of standard age system that computers can figure by blood sample or whatever.

And Atton and Ember get to have their fun moments together. I picture them as teasing like that, when times are better, but what about you? Tell me if you thought it was too childish or something. Ember is a playful child at heart, which will be further revealed later in the story, you see.

And even if you mysteriously think nothing's wrong, review anyway! Come one, come all! If you really like a person's writing, tell them. In the immortal words of Alpha Cucumber, reviews are even better than chocolate to a writer. *pleads pathetically*

At any rate, thanks for reading! :D

Next Time: Training, thinking, and the meeting of others. Something is revealed…can it get any more strange?