I do not own Star Wars.

Edi lay spread eagled on her bunk, staring at the ceiling with defocused eyes. She wasn't aware of any of her physical surroundings, not her bunk, not the desk bolted to the floor, not her over-robe lying in a heap by the door. She was sunk deep in the Force, swimming amongst its currents. She could feel the base and her men within it in various states of boredom, alertness, and hunger; more distantly, she could feel the inhabitants of Mareeb, wary and resentful, and more clearly, because she knew them so well, Captain Thorn and the strike team, as intense and focused as aak dogs with a scent. But most clearly of all, she could sense Fib.

Behind her unfocused eyes, his presence was a soft green light, pulsating gently. She could sense no more of that creeping darkness. It was gone. Edi smiled to herself and gently touched Fib's Force presence with her own. He was too deep in the healing trance to consciously respond, but his green light did shine a little more brightly for an instant.

It had been quite a while since Edi had interacted on this level with another Force-sensitive being. Her career as a Knight had been a rather solitary one and when the war started, she and every other able bodied Jedi had been sent out to fight. She loved her men, but sometimes she felt as though she were the only being with sight living within a community of the blind. She could say "Oh, look how blue the sky is," and they would not understand. And there was something special, almost intimate, about being able to touch someone so deeply without even being in the same room. Edi relished it.

She was jerked out of her reverie by a jarring sensation.

Fib was waking up.

No, it's too early. He needs to stay in that trance for two more days. What woke him up?

Edi squeezed her eyes shut to help herself concentrate. It turned out she didn't need to. The sudden spike of anguish she felt from his was so piercing, so heart-renching, that she cried out. Edi was out of her room before she'd even registered that her eyes were open, almost Force sprinting down the halls to the medbay. She was about to use the Force to force the doors open when they opened of their own volition and Shades strode out. Edi jumped back, just barely in time to keep from being plowed down. The clone sergeant didn't even see her. Accusation and resentment rolled off him like a poisoned cloud. It smacked Edi in the face and chest, and she coughed reflexively as Shades disappeared quickly down the hall. She hesitated for an instant, unsure of whether she should go after him, but the Force, pulsating with urgency, made up her mind for her. She entered medbay.

Edi walked quickly past a startled Vern, dodged around a clone hobbling by on crotches, and pushed her way through the curtains surrounding Fib's bed.

The medic's head was turned toward her on the pillow. His left arm was stretched out at his side, palm up, fingers extended, as though reaching for a saving hand that wasn't there. His eyes had been closed when Edi entered, but as she approached the bed, they fluttered partially opened and fixed on her. They had a distinctly glassy sheen, and as she watched, a single tear rolled down his pale cheek. A barely audible whimper slipped from Fib's parted lips.

Shades's anger, Fib's distress; Edi could easily put two and two together.

She walked over to the bed and settled on the edge. She whipped away the tear with a thumb while gently combing her fingers through his hair. "You had to wake up at the most painful moment, didn't you?" she whispered.

Keeping her left hand in his hair, Edi entwined her other hand with the one he'd reached out to Shades. She caressed him with the Force, bringing calm and easing him back into the healing trance. Fib's eyes slid closed and the hand she was holding gave hers a weak squeeze before relaxing. Edi smoothed his bangs back and pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead.

The sound of her comlink going off startled Edi badly. She slid off the bed and moved to the side, raising her communication device to her mouth. "Nyine here."

"General, it's Thorn. We've found the hostiles. What are your orders? Do we neutralize them?"

Something cold twisted in Edi's gut. These were the beings that were responsible for the attack on her base. An unprovoked attack that had left many of her men wounded, and not just physically. They were cowards that didn't even have the courage to face their opponents in battle, so they hid and attacked from far away where they were in no danger themselves while her men were slaughtered. They didn't deserve a quick death.

"No, Captain," she said, an edge to her voice. "Bring them back here. I want to see them myself."

There was the briefest of hesitations, then Thorn answered, "Yes, sir. We'll be there in ten minutes. Thorn out."

Captain Thorn had a bad feeling about this.

The strike team pulled up in front of the base's ruined front section. Thorn hopped out of the patrol vehicle, watching where he put his feet so as not to slip on loose ruble, and gestured for his men to bring out the prisoners. General Nyine was waiting for them. Her face was hard and she stood with her arms folded tight across her chest. Every inch of her body language conveyed how angry she was. This wasn't the Edi that Thorn knew; there was no welcoming smile, no hand on his shoulder, only grim silence and tightly compressed lips.

The troopers lined the prisoners up in front of the general. There were four of them, two men and two women. They were all thin and dirty, obviously malnourished. The man who was the leader looked grim and resolute, but the others were plainly scared.

Edi stalked forward, arms now tight at her sides. She walked slowly down the line, stopping in front of each and staring into their eyes for several seconds before moving on. White gravel crunched under her boots. There was no other sound. Edi reached the end of the line, executed an about-face with military precision, and retraced her steps. She kept looking into the prisoners' eyes and never said a word.

Thorn was very aware of the heat of two of the suns beating down on him. He could feel sweat sliding down his back and prickling behind his ears. The climate controls in his armor didn't seem to be working, even though he had the AC in his helmet on at full blast. The captain felt dazzled by the bright light, almost hypnotized by the way it reflected off his brothers' white armor.

Choked sobs brought him back to the here and now. One of the women, who had long dark hair that hid part of her face, hung weakly in Ion's grip, her shoulders trembling. A moment later, a stifled shriek issued from the lighter-haired woman. She writhed in her guard's hold. He was struggling to keep his grip on her, twisting her arms up behind her back.

Thorn watched in growing unease. What's going on?

Edi paused in front of one of the men and held his eyes. His own grew slowly wide with terror, his mouth forming incoherent words. She moved on, but his eyes remained fixed on the place where she'd been. He didn't blink.

General Nyine finally stopped before the leader, tilting her chin slightly to meet his eyes. He seemed to be faring better than his partners, but his face was unnaturally pale. Thorn could see his legs trembling. Edi completely ignored the others, staring only at the leader. He wouldn't meet her eyes, but as Thorn watched, they seemed drawn to the Jedi's against their will. A low moan came from his lips and he fell heavily to his knees, his guard unable to hold him up. His body started shaking, then convulsing as though in a seizure. His eyes never left Edi's the whole time.

Realization suddenly coursed through Thorn, sending a shudder down his spine.

She's in their minds.

This was wrong. Oh, Thorn didn't have any particular love toward Separatist sympathizers, especially those that didn't have the guts to confront him face-to-face in combat. And he had a real hatred for these people in particular, for attacking a GAR base without any provocation and killing his brothers. He would have gladly put his own gun to each of their heads and pulled the trigger. But this was wrong.

He remembered the terms of military engagement that he'd learned on Kamino. Republic soldiers did not cause unnecessary harm to prisoners. To do so would make them no better than the Seps. Prisoners were given a swift execution, a single blaster shot to the head.

What he was seeing wasn't a clean death. This was torture.

In the end, though, what pushed Thorn to speak wasn't horror over what he was witnessing, but worry for Edi. How would she ever be able to forgive herself if she carried this through to whatever horrible end that lay in wait?

"General Nyine. That's enough."

He hadn't shouted—he'd barely raised his voice—but Edi started as though he'd bellowed right in her ear. She finally seemed to register what she was doing. The leader collapsed completely to the ground, dragging his guard with him. A low, piteous moan issued from his lips. Edi flinched at the sound and took several hasty steps away before turning and walking quickly back toward the base.

Thorn watched her go, then raised his DC and stepped toward the prisoners. Time to finish this.

I hate this place.

Shades pulled his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and resting his chin on his armored knees. Two blistering suns beat down on where he sat on the base roof, his helmet sitting discarded next to his hunched body. A hot breeze ruffled his hair. The stretch of gravelly plain that he could see over the low wall around the edge of the roof blazed with white reflected light, a mirage shimmering in the air above it, hiding the horizon behind curtains of heat.

I really hate this place.

His thoughts turned to Fib, lying in some magical healing trance in the medbay below. Healing his own wounds with some sort of Force voodoo while other men were forced to rely on slower, less certain methods. Resentment settled heavily on the clone's shoulders.

And yet, a small part of him rejected these feelings. That small part of him—his conscience, he suspected—squirmed in unease at the way he'd treated the injured medic. Guilt trickled down his spine.

You shouldn't have done that, a tiny voice whispered in the back of his mind. You shouldn't have walked out on him.

Shades clenched his jaw. "He deserved it," he growled.

No, he didn't.

"Yes, he did. He's had this Force healing thing since he was decanted and he's never used it to help any of his brothers. He gets a major shrapnel wound and he's better in two days, but us mortals die from those kinds of injuries. He doesn't care about his brothers."

He's always done everything he could for them. He's worked himself to exhaustion to fix them and he blames himself when he fails. Don't be fooled by his I-don't-care attitude. He does care.

Shades pressed his forehead into his knees. "If he really cared, he'd have saved them. He could've healed them. He didn't."

He's your brother.

"He's not my brother anymore."

The sound of hinges squeaking caught Shades's attention, and he raised his head to see Edi clambering through the maintenance hatch that led to the roof. She walked over and stood in front of him, blocking the suns and casting a cool shadow over his heated skin. Shades squinted up at her. She looked tired and angry and scared. Everyone was a mess lately.

"I know what happened," she said simply. Her hands were folded inside her sleeves, making her look more like a Jedi than the sergeant had seen her look in a while. There was something oddly contained in the way she was speaking, as though she were struggling to hold some emotion in. "How could you do that to him?"

Shades lowered his gaze. He didn't answer.

"I know you're hurting," Edi said quietly. "I know you feel cheated and angry and helpless. But believe me when I say that whatever you're feeling right now is nothing compared to how Fib is feeling. He didn't know he was Force-sensitive. He found out only a little before you did. He's devastated, to say the least."

Shades didn't raise his eyes from her knees when he said, "He never used it to help his brothers. He could have saved so many of them, but he didn't."

Above him, Edi's eyes flared with a sudden fury. "You think he didn't try? What about Grayson?"

The sergeant's head snapped up in surprise at what he'd suspected was the name of Fib's dead brother, but he'd never been certain. How did Edi know? He'd been pretty sure that Fib had never told anyone else about that.

"I was in his mind, Shades. I saw what happened, and I felt it. I think that was the first time his gift actually woke up. He nearly killed himself trying to heal his brother. But the Force doesn't work like that." Now the anger faded from her eyes. She suddenly looked very old and very tired. "We're not born with a how-to manual built into our brains. There are some things we can do on instinct, but much of the Force has to be taught."

Edi looked up at Shades. "I'm going to teach him," she said quietly. "As much as I can. I don't know much about healing, but if I give him the basics, I think he's capable of figuring out the rest on his own."

Shades stared at her in silence. In his mind, he tried to come to terms with a clone that could use the Force like a Jedi. The very idea seemed contradictory and wrong; but since when had Fib ever fit any definition of normal? If anyone could pull it off, he could. But that didn't mean Shades liked it.

Edi seemed to read his mind in that way of hers. She tilted her head down to meet his gaze. Her eyes had gone cold and sad. "I won't let you hurt him again. I love you, Shades, but if your prejudice gets in the way, I'll have you transferred to another company. I need to put Fib first now, even over you. I'm sorry."

Shades stared at her in disbelief. Angry tears pricked at the corners of his eyes.

Edi lowered her chin to her chest. "Please don't make me do that. He needs you right now, more than ever. Don't let this push you apart."

Edi suddenly seemed to deflate. Shades stared at her. He could read signs of a deep regret in the down-turned corner of her mouth and the pinch of her eyebrows. She'd done something, and she bitterly wished that she hadn't.

"Trust me, Shades," she murmured as she turned to go. "Don't let your emotions force you into doing something you'll regret. There's no such thing as a second chance."

This is looking like it's going to be the second-to-last chapter. Don't worry, everything will be wrapped up in the next one. Please review.

mad'ika