A/N: I spoil you guys, I really do. I have a whole bunch of people on my author/story alert and none of them ever update. :: grumbles ::
"How did you know they were there?" Carra asked afterward, and Atton wished he'd kept his mouth shut when he was pulling her to safety.
"Stealth fields make a sort of hum, if you know what to listen for," he told her. Which was perfectly true. "Can we get a move on? This place is giving me the creeps—"
"Indeed," Mical said, glancing around nervously. "There are far too many droids here for my liking—"
"As opposed to assassins and bounty hunters?" Atton muttered under his breath.
Carra nudged him with her elbow, but she looked amused. "Let's get going," she said. "We need to shut down the generators for the yacht, or else the tractor beam will never let us leave."
--
It was—finally—their last night on Nar Shadda. Carra wanted to go to Onderon next—though why a Jedi Master would be there, Atton had no idea. It was a boring place. The whole planet was made of law-abiding citizens. Didn't seem like there would be much need for anyone to come along and sort things out.
But hey, he was just the pilot.
At least the bounty hunters were off their tail, now that Carra had practically destroyed Goto's yacht. Atton grinned at the memory. The Exchange was not pleased with them. Fortunately, it was also sufficiently wary of them to leave them alone.
Just the way he liked it.
They would have left earlier if Carra hadn't insisted on everyone getting some sleep and having the ship properly fixed up; Mira, it seemed, was coming along with them. For the moment she was still staying in her room in the Nar Shadda slums. Atton wondered where Carra would find the room for another bunk. She hadn't even looked or anything—
Probably not his problem, though. He was the pilot. The Hawk was getting a last-minute tune-up from Bao-Dur and T3, and Atton wasn't really needed, so he went out drinking instead.
But things never went according to plan.
"Looking for company?"
Atton glanced up. It was Carra, leaning against his table and looking rather out of place amongst the scruffy, battle-scarred patrons and flinty-eyed waitresses of the cantina; he wasn't surprised to note that she didn't seem bothered by this at all. "Not particularly," Atton drawled, "but seeing as it's you—"
She smiled and slid in next to him. "You're hiding again," she remarked.
"Yeah, well, everyone on the Hawk hates me, so I thought I might as well come here and get drunk."
"Nobody hates you," Carra said. She waved away the waitress, who had come to take her order—that's right, Jedi didn't drink, did they? "Well, except for Kreia. But she hates everything."
Atton cast her a glance. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be training with Mical or something?"
She laughed. "I've found a Jedi Master and this is my last night on Nar Shadda. Can't I come out for a drink?"
"Carra," Atton said. "You don't drink."
"True," she admitted. "I suppose I really came here to find you."
Atton frowned. Something was wrong. "Something up?"
"Is there anything you want to tell me?" she asked.
He raised his eyebrows. "If there were, wouldn't I have told you already?"
She bit her lip. "It's just—I ran into this man down in the refugee sector two weeks ago, and he seemed to know you—"
Frack.
"And?" She was blocking his way to the door; dammit, why did he have to pick a corner booth? Too close for blasters, not enough room to maneuver—
"He said you were dangerous," Carra said.
Of course he was dangerous. Did she think all he did was drink and crack jokes?
"—that you aren't who you pretend to be. And I—well, I couldn't even tell the Sith assassins were there, but somehow you could. I was just wondering—"
Atton clenched his jaw. "Maybe I don't want you to know more about me, ever think of that?" he snapped. Too close for lightsabers, too, at least. "You think you're the only one with a past?"
"It has to do with Dantooine, doesn't it?" Carra asked, and she tilted her head up to look at him; he could flip her onto the floor and knock her unconscious, at that angle—
"Maybe," Atton said, and downed the rest of his drink.
Carra sighed. "You could tell me," she said.
Rage and misery welled up in his throat; he slammed down his glass, and snarled, "No, I fracking couldn't, Carra, because you wouldn't understand—"
"Why not?"
"It's complicated," Atton ground out. Why was she here? But no, that was a bloody stupid question to be asking—she was a Jedi, and they went where they pleased and poked their noses where they didn't belong and hey, if it got her killed who was he to care—
"You're Force sensitive," Carra said.
The glass shattered in his hand.
--
He shouldn't have been surprised that she knew. It had to happen sooner or later, didn't it? And Carra was tugging on his arm and there was a faint curve of music in the distance and Atton looked down, a little surprised, at the blood on the table, because he couldn't see where it had come from—
There was that echoing pain again, beating against the hollowness in his chest; his voice was steady, but the room had grown, suddenly, very cold. "Yeah?" he said. "How do you figure that?"
He wondered if he could kill her.
Her fingers closed around his. "Stop," she said. "Don't—don't do that, Atton."
"Do what?"
"Do you know why Revan made me General?" Carra asked softly. "I was always the most sensitive to the Force—she was the leader, and Malak was her warrior, and I—I was the conduit. I knew which battles we had to win and which ones we could afford to lose, and Revan would make sure we won when we had to, because I couldn't, I was too—too attuned. To everything. Don't pretend you don't care; you're miserable and I can feel it and it hurts."
Well, Atton thought savagely, at least he wasn't the only one. He looked down at her and saw the lightsaber across her lap, glittering and deadly against the curve of her hip; perhaps Kreia had been right, and he couldn't run forever. The Jedi believed in the Force, didn't they? And cycles.
He didn't want to hurt her.
Because he couldn't kill her, not again.
"Atton?"
She wanted to know, didn't she? Maybe it was time.
"There was a girl," Atton said, at last. "It didn't work out."
That was all there was to it, really. Everything else was just—detail.
"Show me," Carra said, her presence a whisper of cool silk against his mind; and Atton closed his eyes and let her in.
He had forgotten how much blood there had been.
He'd killed Jedi, a lot of them—on assassinations, or in the torture chamber—and perhaps Carra had even known some of them—but hey, she'd wanted to see, hadn't she? He heard her sharp intake of breath as she rifled through her memories. Jedi were only human, after all—they bled, and they screamed, and they broke if you know how to twist them—
How could you? Carra was asking, her hands tight around his. How could you do that, and not—and not—
"You were Revan's general," Atton said hoarsely. "How did you even live with yourself after Malachor? Is that why you went back to the Jedi Council? Hoping they'd kill you? Wasn't it? Maybe you thought they'd forgive you—sure, you might have thought they'd execute you. But Jedi don't kill, do they? At least not their prisoners."
Well, I'm not a Jedi. You got off easy, didn't you? You were exiled, brushed under the cargo ramp, another dirty little Jedi secret—
You hate us, Carra said, and she sounded sad. Why?
Because Jedi lie. And they manipulate. And every act of charity or kindness they do, you can drag it out squirming into the light and see it for what it is.
She made a sound of protest. "The Jedi are guardians of the peace," she said, and Atton snorted and shook his head.
"The Jedi—the Sith—you don't get it, do you? To the galaxy, they're the same thing; just men and women with too much power, squabbling over religion, while the rest of us burn."
I'm not sorry, he told her, and even to himself he sounded bitter. You think they didn't deserve to die? The galaxy doesn't need Jedi arrogance or Jedi hypocrisy anymore.
They stepped through his memories, gingerly, as though avoiding the blood; a Jedi Knight screamed and broke, and Atton remembered the sharp stab of satisfaction he had felt at making the man face his hypocrisy.
Why did you leave? Carra asked. If they're all the same to you, and they all deserved to die—why did you leave?
There had been a girl, and she had loved him, and he had killed her.
"I didn't know I was Force-sensitive," Atton said; it hurt, to remember, but Carra had wanted to see, and soon it wouldn't matter anyway, would it? "She showed me—I would have died if anyone had found out."
But I didn't die. You know why? Because she wasted her life to save me—
Her eyes had been dark, and they had turned darker as she died, and he hadn't realized he'd loved her until weeks later on a dingy street corner on Nar Shadda; he'd never had much experience with that particular emotion, but still, by then it was too late to tell her anything and perhaps that was what he regretted the most—
"Atton," Carra said, and her presence was suddenly gone from his mind; inexplicably, his arms were around her, and she was burying her face against his neck. "I'm sorry."
"Didn't know you were so sentimental," he murmured into her hair. His heart was pounding, furiously, but his hands were steady. A useful talent for hunting Jedi. "Are you going to kill me, or what?"
"Is that what you want?" she asked. "An execution?"
He didn't know anymore.
"I would miss you," Carra added, and Atton opened his eyes and looked at her.
"Don't waste your sympathy on me," he advised, with a sardonic twist of his lips. "You just found out what happened to—her."
"I'm sentimental," she said. "I can't help it."
And Atton laughed, despite himself.
They were in close quarters; she had a lightsaber. It could be through his head before he even noticed. Of course, he thought critically, eyeing the length of his narrow table, Carra's was double-bladed; the other end might very well go through the Zabrak's head one booth over. Maybe if she turned it—
But then he would definitely see it coming, at that angle, and Atton didn't think he could go down without a fight. The instinct had been in him for too long.
She had been the only thing he'd been sorry for, in his dark, tangled web of a life—
"I'm going back to the Hawk," Carra said, pulling away from him. "I need to—think about this."
It didn't seem like there was anything to think about.
But Atton shrugged and disentangled himself, and Carra stood. "I just—" she said, and stopped. And then, "Doesn't it hurt?"
He laughed, bitterly. "Yeah," he said. "But only when I think about it."
Carra nodded.
And Atton watched as she walked past the thugs and bounty hunters and out the door, and it was only after the cantina doors had slid shut behind her that he realized she was letting him go.
Frack. Just like that.
What did she think she was doing?
Atton slammed a handful of credits down on the table and stalked out the cantina after her.
Nights were cold and bleak on Nar Shadda. He shoved his hands into his pockets and jogged to catch up with her; Carra was only halfway down the street. "Don't be an idiot, Carra," he said, low and dangerous, as she turned to give him a startled glance.
"I'm not," she said.
He grabbed her arm and jerked her to a stop, right there on the street; a passing woman caught sight of them and decided to go another way. "I didn't fight Jedi," he hissed. "I killed them. Or I tortured them and made them fall—and you're just going to let me walk away?"
"What will an execution do for them?" Carra asked. "They're dead. Or fallen; either way they wouldn't care—"
He shook her, and said, savagely, "I told you not to waste your sympathy on me. Do you think I deserve it? Well, I don't—I don't want your sympathy, and I don't want any more fracking sacrifices—"
"You love me," Carra said, wonderingly.
Maybe it was true and maybe it wasn't, but he didn't know and it certainly didn't matter. Atton snorted. "Don't flatter yourself."
She shrugged. "All right, then," she said. "I love you. What is that worth?"
He stared. His hand dropped to his side; "What?"
"Do you know what it means to be Force sensitive?" she asked. "You've never tried it, have you? You always shut yourself off from it, because it hurts to listen, doesn't it? You killed someone you cared for and it made a wound—you wonder why Jedi don't kill their prisoners? Because they care, for everything, and it would hurt too much—"
"You were at Malachor," Atton said. "You killed a planet—"
That shadow, again, dark and endless, and Carra looked at him and said, lightly, "Well, I'd really be an idiot if I added to that, wouldn't I?"
And, all of a sudden, he understood.
It did not make the hollowness go away.
"That's why you didn't ask me earlier," he said. "You're just—letting me go."
The shadow receded. She sighed. "I wasn't lying when I said I would miss you, you know. Jedi—aren't supposed to lie." She shrugged again, and turned, and started walking—and there was nothing for it but to follow her. "Perhaps I'm being selfish," she told him. "But I do not want your death on my hands, and I do not want you dead."
If she is Jedi, she will forgive—
"I thought you would hate me." He thought she would at least try.
"I don't know, Atton," she said, and now she sounded tired. "I told you I had to think about it."
"Mira's a pilot, too," Carra added, and Atton found himself wondering if he really could do it—just pack up and leave, and no one would care, probably; he was on Nar Shadda, after all, and for a price he could buy a new name and a new identity and go on with his life—
"You had it all planned out, didn't you?" he demanded. "You don't ask until you're sure you don't need me anymore—"
"Because Jedi lie," she quoted at him. "And Jedi manipulate, and every act of charity or kindness they do—"
No, that wasn't right, that wasn't her—and all the fury went out of him, and Atton Rand found himself standing on a dark, deserted street corner on a cold night on Nar Shadda listening to a girl tell him what a fool he was—
—and there was blood on his hands; he had never told her he was sorry, either, though Atton liked to think, sometimes, that somehow she'd known—
—but maybe it was time he told her, because she deserved at least that much, and he was a fool, and frack, he'd loved her, hadn't he, and he'd never told her that, either—
Only this time she wasn't a ghost; he'd forgotten.
So when he reached out for her again she stopped and turned and looked at him, his hand on her shoulder, her eyes shadowed and weary, and instead of the billion and one things that could have come out of his mouth Atton found himself saying "Let me come with you."