Again, the anger came, and – again – it wasn't directed at the one person it should have been. Instead, relative to her, there were other emotions brewing, emotions I wished I could suppress simply because they were inconvenient. I worried for her. She'd been shot. That Exchange thug let her out, and he beat her in front of me after drawing a gun and firing. Something about that caused muscles in my entire body to tighten and then recoil, like a spring, ready to explode in a fit of anger at the man.

Batu Rem, the man said he was at one point. When? During the fight? Or was Batu the man he was impersonating? It didn't matter. She'd been beaten and nearly dragged out of the room.

I was reminded of how small and young she was. Despite who she may have been once, she struck me as so utterly helpless and little now. Almost as if she was a child who needed to be constantly cared for. Men were bigger and stronger, and without a buddy to rely on, I was shocked that she'd survived as much as she obviously had. She just looked so small, and her grunts of pain (she wasn't one to scream, I saw it in her eyes) only intensified as the man grappled with her resolve. He wanted her to scream and beg. He shoved his fingers into her wounds, and the noises she made ignited a fire inside of me that only came because I was a man and she was a woman.

But she wouldn't scream, and I almost wanted to think, that's my girl. But I didn't. Not quite.

He finally grabbed her by the hair and began to simply drag her out of the room by it, like it was scruff…

Until it happened.

She lost it.

The Force, something, it exploded out of her. It was as if the pain had released this leash that had been around her neck, and without it she was an eager dog, waiting to thrash anybody who dared try to take advantage of her.

The man blew across the room with a crunch, and she was on her feet in what seemed like no time. She'd taken the man and lifted him from the ground from across the room, reaching for him as if her fingers controlled invisible hands that followed her bidding. She threw him behind her at the far wall, and the man had landed there with another crunch.

Bleeding, limping, she made her way over to the controls on the opposite wall, pressed a button, and the controls for our force cages evaporated just in time for me to scramble to the place that she was to catch her.

The security forces came in then. They had the nerve to open the door, blasters blazing, ready to attack her at a moment's notice, as if they knew she'd have exploded like this. As if she was a criminal to be kicked around and spat on.

This made me angry. Even more, it made me angry that they wouldn't listen to me when I explained what happened. It made me angry when they didn't listen to her as she tried to tell them that she didn't mean it, that it was an accident, it wasn't her fault. It made me angry that they brushed her to the side to investigate the murderer's corpse instead of helping her, bleeding and obviously quite shaken. It made me so angry that they threw us a bunch of medical supplies, supplied us with one supply droid, and shoved us away into a little apartment that locked from the outside. Trapped in a room. Again.

At least this room had beds and a large window and a refresher. This room had space and room to walk around.

I fumed as I paced back and forth, shaking my head a little every now and then, just steaming in my rage. How had I gotten mixed up with a crazy Jedi? She'd utterly destroyed that man. It was clear by the look on her face afterwards that it really had been an accident. She'd appealed to me, bleeding, eyes wide and full of guilt, trying with a desperation to explain the unexplainable.

"I didn't mean it," she'd said to me. "I didn't know I could do that! I'm sorry!"

I'd looked away, feeling angrier with the people around her than really at her.

But now, in the quiet and the still, with the old woman sitting cross legged "meditating" and Nune taking her sweet old time in the shower of the one refresher they'd given us, things began to fester for the worse.

"It was an accident," she'd told them. "I really am sorry. I didn't want to hurt him. I didn't mean to hurt him."

This made me snort, shaking my head with my furious pacing on the floor.

Sure, she hadn't meant to hurt him. She'd only thrown him across the room into a wall with enough force to shatter bones. Of course, that had just been she and him playing. She might as well have been tickling him. It obviously wasn't an effort to assault him or incapacitate him. What an idiot.

What did she think was going to happen? That if she used the Force, everything would be fine? It would all be alright? It never happened that way. I'd meant what I'd said the first time I met her. When there's one Jedi, the Republic will be crawling up your ion engine in no time. They would be all over us. And, worse, so would the people who were following us.

Then, she emerged from the refresher, and I found my neck snapping to attention almost like she was a general and I was her soldier. I noted this with a scowl and made a deliberate effort to slouch again when I saw the way she was dressed. Or not dressed, as it were. She was wrapped in a giant towel, giant enough to cover her naked body underneath, but when she saw me, she made a chirping noise I'd never heard out of her (that was painfully endearing and cute) and retreated back behind the door, manually sliding it partially closed.

"Don't look at me!" she cried, muffled through the door.

My insides suddenly burned at the thought of how close she was, how naked she was. If it wasn't for the old woman, I'd have gone in there right then and made her want it, even if she didn't know that she did yet. Nobody could resist me. I was sure of it. I saw the yearning in her eyes as much as I was sure she noticed that some of my flirtation was new territory for me.

We could break, cave, meet in the middle. It was doable.

Maybe, if I went into the refresher, I could make myself forget what she was. After all, it had taken a significant amount of duress for the Force to explode out of her. Something inside of me made me want to make sure she was recovered from this. She deserved to be…taken care of, after all. I could do that. I could do that for her, no sweat.

And maybe I could forget who I was too in the process, drowning in her so much that I lost myself.

"Are you looking?" she asked with an almost childlike tone.

"Well, I'll certainly try to when you come back out!" I called back, smirking.

Her head reemerged again now, this time indignant, and she scowled at me.

"Then hand me the clothes there," she snapped. "I forgot them."

"I don't know, gorgeous," I said back, feeling the warmth explode out of me at the mere thought of seeing her again like that. "You might have to ask a little nicer."

"Atton, I…"

She made an indignant sort of noise, and, despite myself, a real laugh came out. A real laugh. The warmth spread as a reluctant smile burst onto those wide lips, and her bare arm extended out around her dripping hair.

"Atton, please, come on!"

Her shoulder was exposed, along with her collarbone and a thin sliver of her hip, covered by the towel, and whatever I might have said after this faded into this choked feeling that settled desperately in my throat. Wordlessly now, struggling to keep from forcing my way into the refresher and taking her sweet lips that could cause laughter to bubble out of me, I handed her the mass of clothes that had been on the bed, feeling terribly…out of place. Something unfamiliar and warm and itchy made my hand wince away when her fingers brushed it, and I was grateful to be alone in the silence once more.

I felt suddenly breathless and terrified, like if her hands touched me they'd somehow have the power to read all that those hands had done. I found myself looking at them, feeling that warmth drain away into bitterness.

She was sweet, all things considered. She was sweet and kind – to a fault, it would seem. She put up with me still, despite all I'd done, and, even at my expressed desire to ditch her, she bantered with me and put up with it, stowing it away like it didn't hurt her. When I knew it did. Why did I do that? Did I want her to be unhappy?

She reemerged before I could address this question, and I found that the choked feeling hadn't receded.

"Thank you, Mr. Rand," she said, yawning weakly.

She didn't meet my eyes now, and I saw that the brief respite of the tension we'd had was gone once more, obliterated with the memories of what we'd both seen her do.

"How did you do that?" I finally asked her.

She stood stock still before going over to a bed. She shook, and dark bags under her eyes made her young, now-clean face look a little dead – like the woman from the holo who'd looked so lost and broken.

"I don't know," she finally whispered, looking up at me honestly.

Her palms were upwards, and tears brimmed into her eyes.

"I really didn't mean to hurt him," she said, bringing her palms to wrap around her torso, as if to protect herself. "I'm…sorry."

This floored me.

"Why are you apologizing to me?"

"You didn't ask for this," she whispered to me, more tears falling in shiny lines down her face.

"Wait…neither did you."

She shrugged, obviously trying to stop the tears from falling. The sight of it hurt that budding warmth that had receded at the vision of her bare flesh, and the sweetness I'd seen in her made me want to be sweet back. But I didn't know how to be. That made me angry with myself.

"This is what happens when the Force comes back," she said, suddenly sounding viciously defensive. "They must have taken it from me for a reason. I – this is wrong! This is so wrong!"

I took a step forward and then stopped myself. What had I wanted? To grab her, cover her mouth and body with small kisses, covet her skin with hands that shouldn't touch any other woman, to hold her with an aching desperation that was dwarfed only by her need to be held. I yearned for her and found myself envious of any man who'd had the luxury.

If there was any other man.

No, I found myself thinking. Not my business.

Besides, I couldn't be with her. Then, thinking this, I rebuked my own desires. I couldn't do that. Why would I want to? She was just a stranger I'd met under mysterious circumstances. We were kind of almost friends, yeah, and that made her so totally off limits that I shouldn't even notice how beautiful she was.

"I've fracked this up so bad," she said, looking to the ceiling and lying back on the bed. "I shouldn't be here. I'm not special."

An unstoppable noise of disbelief emerged from my mouth, and she just closed her eyes, flinging her arms over her head tiredly.

It revealed every perfect curve in her body, enunciated by the way she laid up against the pillow, and it seemed almost as if an angel had come to where she'd been laying and posed just for me to swallow her up with my eyes. I was struck by the sensation that I had never seen anything as beautiful as she was right in those moments, despite the tears, the bitterness, the messy hair, the strange-hand-me-down clothing. There was nothing more beautiful than she was.

The sensation drowned me a little bit, and I tried to look away, but I was so mesmerized with the feeling that I wanted to give in to it. How was it possible for somebody like me to feel so good again? How could she possibly be making me feel this way?

Then, she shifted, curled into a ball, and whispered, "I'm really sorry for meeting you, Atton."

This struck me as kind of insulting.

"Gee, thanks," I snapped.

Weakly, she made a noise similar to a whimper.

"Not like that," she said. "I'm glad I met you."

"Then what did you mean, princess?" I asked, but the words weren't as petulant as they could have been.

"I mean, I'm just sorry you had to meet me."

She rolled over now, leaving me standing there, unsure of what to say or how to say it, what I was feeling or why I was feeling it. I just stood still, feeling strange empathy that had never taken hold of me. Again, the feeling drowned me, and I didn't know what to do. It hurt, I realized, and that made me angry. So furious. Who was she to try to make me feel that way? Who was she to put me in that place? Who was she to make all these things come bubbling out of me in a torrent of anguish?

I was a smuggler, a thief, and a liar. She was pure. The more I spent time with her, the more I saw it. She was something that was so unfiltered and rare and good that even bad things could not taint it. She had no right to try to worm her way into me the way she was.

Scowling, I stomped into the refresher, waited for the door to the close, and thoughts of her perfect image, splayed lazily at perfect angles, took me. Even when I closed my eyes, she was there, and the scowl deepened. I pressed my palms to my eyes, wondering what would make it go away, feeling so irrationally angry with her that I wanted to scream out.

What were my options?

Get in bed with her. Go back outside and climb on top of her, give her what she deserved, what she ached for. What I ached for.

Intimacy.

No, couldn't do that. The hag was there.

Kiss her?

Maybe, but it would be hard to stop. And she'd throw me off of her, just like Batu Rem. And suddenly, that rejection mattered to me more than even I could have anticipated.

No, couldn't risk that. I'd stick to harmless advances and flirtations for now. Safer this way.

So what was there to do?

Hurt her?

Something evil and small inside of me rose up to laugh at this, satisfied that this was even an option on my agenda.

Yes, it said, you want to cut her. Make her beg.

No! I thought to myself, suddenly feeling breathless.

I took my palms from my eyes and shook my head, as if it would rid me of that evil voice that I knew would be there.

"Stop it…" I whispered to myself.

But, again, pure and intoxicating, her small body came crawling back into my mind like the worm I'd come to know her for. Worm her way in. Slowly but surely.

How did she do that?

I turned the nozzle to the shower as the aching grew inside of me for some kind of release of this mounting pressure inside for me to kiss her, brush past her, squeeze her, do something. Her figure, lying so helplessly in that bed, was burned in my mind. Groaning, and with the knowledge that despite my exhaustion I'd likely not be sleeping, I forced myself to make myself clean.