Author's note: another re-upload, thanks to ffn's format-stripping. As far as I can tell, 24 and 25 were the only chapters affected, so ... we now return to our original programming. :)

Disclaimer: Star Wars belongs to George Lucas. This is a work of fanfiction, which is not making any money.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Ferus fell into step behind Ryn and Anakin as they headed off down the corridor. Anakin tried not to let himself be bothered, but the older boy's presence felt somehow like surveillance, maybe because he had so often been disapproving in the past.

He wasn't sure whether Ryn had sensed his anxiety, or was just being friendly, but suddenly she dropped back a pace and half-turned to make a group of three, instead of two plus one.

"Are you coming with us?" Ryn asked him, her tone polite but no more.

"After what just happened in the infirmary, I thought perhaps neither of you should walk alone."

"That's very kind of you, Ferus," Ryn said, ignoring Anakin's look of scorn. "And I welcome your company." Anakin noticed she didn't say we. "But I think we'll be safe enough. Anakin and I can watch each other's backs."

Ferus raised one eyebrow. "Because that worked so well before?"

"Hey," Anakin said. "I had that Togruta cornered, until she threw herself on my lightsaber. I would never let anything happen to Ryn."

"Unless someone decides to poison her right under your nose."

Anakin felt his face reddening. Even the Masters hadn't known the Togruta was a spy. how could he? It just wasn't fair. He opened his mouth to set Ferus straight, but Ryn got there ahead of him.

"Stop it, both of you," she said sharply. "Is this how Jedi are supposed to behave? Sniping at one another and finding fault? I'd say you're acting like children, but I don't want to insult the children." She turned snapping green eyes on Ferus. "No one knew about the spy, all right? We were all duped. The entire Temple was caught out. No one person can take the blame."

"Placing blame is not the Jedi way," Ferus said, reaching for the high ground.

"Then stop doing it," Ryn snapped back, her temper clearly fraying. She turned and smacked Anakin on the arm. Hard. "And you. My safety is not something you can brag about, nerfherder. Especially when I am not safe. There's real danger here, but you're worried about showing up Padawan Olin? I could have been killed while you were arguing about how well you could protect me! I feel so safe."

The bite in her tone surprised Anakin. They'd disagreed before, of course, but he didn't think Ryn had ever been really angry at him until now.

She grabbed a fistful of his tunic with her right hand. "So you," she said, giving the tunic a shake, "are going to walk me back to your quarters, where we will practice. And you --" she raised her left hand and pointed at Ferus "-- are going to go brief your Master. And it may be a stretch, but both of you are going to try not to make assess of yourselves for the rest of the day. Are we clear?"

"Crystal," Ferus bit out. he executed a sharp bow of farewell and stalked off, leaving Anakin alone in the hall with Ryn.

She eyed him expectantly, her hand still twisted in the front of his tunic. "Well?"

Oh. "Clear," Anakin muttered, his face flaming.

"Good." Ryn released his tunic and stepped back slightly. "Come on, then." Anakin fell into step beside her. He made it all the way to their turn at the end of the corridor before he couldn't stand it any more and said, "It's all Ferus' fault, anyway. He shouldn't have tried to blame me for that attack in the infirmary. It's not fair."

"Uh-huh." Ryn cut him a look from under her extravagant lashes. "And how old are you, again?"

The bite of betrayal cut into Anakin's soul, even as he told himself he was being unreasonable. "You're my friend. You're supposed to be on my side."

"And I would be, if you had a leg to stand on. You don't, and neither does Ferus. You were both behaving like spoiled brats. And I haven't had a lot of friends, but I'm pretty sure the good ones tell you things like that." Ryn stopped in the middle of the corridor and turned to face him, brushing back black hair still damp from her shower. "Listen, Anakin ... good friends aren't blind to your faults. They see them and love you anyway. They help you to grow, because they care." She took a deep breath, and expelled it in a rush. "Look, all I'm trying to say is: I love you too much not to tell you when you're being an ass. I tell you because I love you." She smiled slightly. "And I let you do the same, because I trust you." She looked up at him, all her feelings shimmering in her bright green eyes, and just a trace of humor emerged there, turning her sad little smile into wry amusement. "Got it?"

He wasn't sure he understood everything she'd said. But he could sense Ryn's honesty and compassion, and the depth of her feelings for him, and he knew that somehow all these things combined to make what Ryn said true. They made up the fabric of friendship between them.

Which meant it was time he contributed something.

Ryn was still watching him, her eyes warm and kind.

"Um," Anakin said. "I guess so." He hesitated. "I've never known anyone like you before."

The edges of Ryn's smile softened. "The feeling is mutual," she told him. "I guess that just means we'll have to figure it out together."

I guess so, Anakin thought; but he knew Ryn felt it because of the way her eyes crinkled at the corners.

She leaned into him in an unfamiliar gesture, a full-body nudge that brought them into contact, briefly from shoulder to boot-heel. Something in his sense of her -- a faint twinge -- suggested that this was a move she'd used before, back home, with someone -- or maybe ones -- she was close to. He nudged back, and Ryn grinned. "So," she said, with an exaggerated wink. "Are you ready to take this back to your place?"

For answer, he caught her hands and started to run.

Inside the Kenobi-Skywalker quarters, Ryn tripped back from him a couple of paces as he turned to secure the door. "You," she gasped, breathless from laughter and exertion, "have too much energy, Padawan Skywalker."

"So I've heard," he told her, grinning. "But you like it, Mistress Orun."

"Hasn't Master Kenobi warned you at all about the dangers of rash assumptions?"

"He has taught me to follow my instincts." Anakin advanced on her, fake-menacing, and something suspiciously like a giggle bubbled from Ryn's throat as she backed away from him, rounding the corner of the couch.

"Your instincts tell you to menace helpless young women?" Ryn asked, clearly doing her best to look frightened instead of amused.

Anakin snorted, enjoying a couple of flashbacks to Ryn's performance in hand-to-hand practice. "You're about as helpless as a gundark."

Ryn gave him a wounded look, somewhat damaged by the fact that one comes of her mouth was twitching. "Are you saying I don't look delicate and ladylike?"

"Looks can be deceiving," Anakin said, ending to corner her between the sofa and caf table. "My feelings tell me not to underestimate your powers."

Another bubble of laughter. "Ah, but I'm no Jedi."

"And yet you have exceptional skills." Ryn was backing away along the couch. Anakin jumped easily over the caf table to block her escape.

Ryn began backing the other way. "And what skills are there?"

Anakin edged around her, forcing her to put the sofa, rather than the opening at her back. "I hear you told Madame Nu a dirty joke and get away with it."

Ryn's eyes widened. "No! Who told you that?"

Anakin grinned at her and eased a half step closer. "I have my sources."

He took the next half-step, forcing Ryn to back into the sofa, catching the edge of the seat along the backs of her legs and tripping her onto the cushions.

Except that she had anticipated his move, and on her way down she snagged a foot behind his right knee, buckling his balance and bringing him down on top of her in a sprawl.

"I win!" she announced smugly.

Anakin's face was pressed into Ryn's throat, though he was trying to hold his weight off her sore stomach. He inhaled the sweet, faintly citrus smell of her skin and tried to think of a comeback.

"I don't know," he said finally. "I ended up on top."

Ryn laughed in his ear, her breath soft in his hair. "I win twice."

"Wha -- oh. Oh." Anakin felt something stir down low, an unexpected hot ache, and squelched the feeling ruthlessly, pretty sure that it didn't bear examination. He pinched Ryn on the arm as a cover. "You have a dirty mind."

He felt Ryn's slow grin. "Nonsense. I just know how to appreciate a good thing when it lands on top of me."

Anakin gaped into her hair, torn between embarrassment and amusement. "You do have a dirty mind!"

Ryn's laughter trailed warmth through his consciousness. "And I'm not afraid to use it."

Amusement won out over embarrassment and Anakin laughed as he rolled away to his feet. "All right, you win. Superior firepower." He extended a hand and pulled Ryn up after him.

"Great," she said, heading for his bedroom. "Come on. I had an ulterior motive in coming back here."

"You mean ravishing me on the couch wasn't it?"

"That was just fun," Ryn answered. "The plan was to exploit your skills."

Anakin reached over her shoulder and hit the door release to his room. "Excuse me? I think you just tried that."

Ryn rolled her eyes at him. "Now who has the dirty mind? Anyway, I meant skills you actually have." She stepped to one side to let Anakin enter first, and he shot her a mock-wounded look as he passed.

"Are you maligning my talents as a lover?"

"You can prove yourself later," Ryn said, following him in. "I want to make use of your mechanical genius first."

Anakin sat down on one end of the bed. "You need something fixed?"

"Maybe," Ryn said. "You have that transmitter from my room?"

"It's under the bed," Anakin said. "But don't ask me to fix it. I already did."

Ryn shut her mouth and blinked at him. "Oh. Well ... thanks."

"No problem. Just some fused circuitry."

Ryn nodded, but she had her Thinking Face on. "Now that it's repaired, could it be linked to the comm system in my room, to piggyback a signal?"

Anakin frowned. "I guess so. What are you thinking?"

Ryn sighed and rubbed her eyes, and for an instant Anakin could feel how tired and sore and worried she still was, despite their play a few moments ago. "I'm thinking I'd like to improve the security around here."

Anakin took a moment to consider that. "So you're going to call someone from back home."

Ryn looked worried. "I'd like to," she said. "Kit is MIA, or he'd be here already. You said he'd promised to come when he could, so Force knows what's happened there." She shook her head, clearly trying to shoulder her worries for Kit aside, and said, "There's a group out of Nevast -- one of the larger islands in the north -- that specializes in this. They are mercenary, of course, but they owe Clan Orun a favor. We sheltered them, two years ago, after a job that went very badly. The Jedi Temple will make them nervous, but I think they'd be willing to take the job."

"The Council would never agree to it," Anakin said.

Ryn winced. "I hadn't planned on telling them."

"Oh." Anakin thought about it. "So when you asked about piggybacking a signal, you meant 'in order to hide it from the Council'."

Ryn actually cringed a little. "Maybe?"

"Ryn, that's -- I can't do that. There's no need to do that."

Ryn bit her lip. "Don't worry about it. I shouldn't have asked."

You can ask me for anything, Anakin thought, and it was only partly his relief at not losing her. "Yes, you should," he replied carefully. "But it's not a good idea, Ryn. This is a Jedi problem; the Jedi should handle it."

Ryn gave up standing around looking worried and came to sit next to him on the bed, her shoulders hunching a little in the rough brown tunic he'd found for her. "I know," she said, and her voice was miserable. "But I don't have any better ones. And I'm scared."

Anakin blinked. "You had the idea about getting yourself kidnapped," he reminded her. "That was better." Sort of.

"Well, yes," Ryn admitted, looking up at him, and Anakin was distressed to see tears in her eyes, "but only if you live long enough to carry it out. I want a plan that makes you safe now. Or at least safer, sooner."

Anakin tried to put his wounded pride at that remark on ice. Ryn needed comfort. She didn't need to deal with his uneven feelings. He shifted closer to her, so their arms were almost touching, and said, "Well, I might be safer than you think. Jedi are pretty hard to kill."

"Hard but not impossible," Ryn said, dropping her eyes to the worn carpet. She sounded forlorn.

"I'm more worried about where your brother is right now," Anakin said, to distract her.

Ryn tensed, her shoulders going rigid for just a second before she got herself together enough to expel a shaky breath. "I don't know. Nowhere good. He's still alive. I think." She closed her eyes briefly, and Anakin felt the pain and fear and helplessness wash over her.

"Here." Anakin leaned into her a little, not quite like the gentle nudge she'd given him in the hallway a couple of mood-swings ago, but something close and said, "We'll get him back, Ryn. We'll find him."

"How?" Ryn asked, desolated, and Anakin put his arm around her. I have no idea.

"We'll think of something," Anakin said. "I promise, Ryn."

Ryn relaxed for about a tenth of a second, then tensed again and shook her head. "No. Kit is not your responsibility, Anakin. He's tough; he can handle himself. And I have to focus on wrenching something like a spirit of cooperation out of the Jedi Council. And you have to focus of becoming a Jedi yourself. We have other duties that have to come first."

She sounded shaky, but determined, so Anakin didn't say anything else. Privately, however, he vowed to bring Ryn's brother back. Somehow.

Ryn stirred inside his arm, pulling away a little, and Anakin let her go.

"So," she said, clearly ready to change the topic, "we should practice."

Ryn wasn't very clear in her instructions -- Anakin got the feeling that maybe she hadn't done this a lot -- but it sounded as though they were going to do more of what they'd done in the hallway the day before: touch each other's minds, get used to the feel.

"You're felt my mind before," Ryn said, "so it shouldn't be that difficult. Usually I'm trying to keep people out of my head. Letting you in should be easy. Just ... try to go easy at first, all right? I can feel you very strongly without trying. You could do a lot of damage fast."

That didn't sound good.

"Damage like what?" Anakin asked, feeling a little nervous now.

"Well, you could destroy my mind and render me permanently catatonic," Ryn said, toeing her way out of her boots so she could sit cross-legged on the bed. "That would be bad."

No kidding. "I agree," Anakin said, a little shaken. "So how should I do this?"

"Well," Ryn said, thoughtful now, "remember how you touched me when I first got out of the infirmary? Very gentle, no sudden moves?"

No, Anakin thought, because he couldn't remember anything out of the ordinary, just an overwhelming desire to see his friend well again. But he said, "Sure."

"I think it's the same. Slow and easy."

So Anakin closed his eyes and looked at Ryn, a brilliant white light in the Force, stunning in her purity. The Force flowed through her undisturbed, hardly a ripple; but Ryn's fierce brilliance was refracted into it in dazzling, dancing prisms, like sunshine through clear water.

So beautiful, Anakin thought, and reached for that light.

If Ryn had really been a white light, of course, he would just have passed right through her. But the light was just a metaphor, as the river was just a metaphor for the Force. So when he brushed the light, it had something like a surface, permeable right now, to him. He pushed, ever so lightly, and suddenly everything Ryn came into sharper focus, and he realized that he hadn't needed to do it this way, that he could have just focused on the awareness he already had of her to enter this new level of intimacy -- much as he'd done yesterday without knowing what he was doing.

He sank a little deeper, trying to get used to the feel, trying to pick out some feature that would make her mind recognizable at a distance.

The dull aches of old losses. Worry for her brother, a nagging prickle that never really stopped. A bright-hot, searing tear of pain that Anakin shied away from because he sensed himself inside that wound.

I always hurt her.

There were other wounds inside her: some healing, others scarred, none except the one he'd made that were still bleeding. And in the middle of all that pain, flashes of joy: scenes of a clear bright sky, a sea viewed from cliff-tops. He could feel the cold wind whipping wild through her hair, taste the spray on her lips. Other memories rose, tinged with love and sweetness: a dark-haired boy who had to be a younger Kit, other things he didn't recognize. Himself, laughing, at several different times and places. One memory caught at him, because he couldn't place it from the other side.

She'd come down to the Archives late because she couldn't sleep; and then, sensing his presence nearby, she'd detoured to see what he was up to. In Ryn's mind, he remembered the nighttime stillness, the soft noise of her boot heels on the stone floor.

She found his study booth and peeked in.

"Anakin?"

But he was asleep with his head beside a datapad, and Ryn entered quietly and picked it up.

"Galactic History. Well, that's a broad topic." Perspective shifted a little as Ryn shook her head. "Was that Master Kenobi's idea?"

She sighed as she looked down at him, drooling on the desk. "You're never going to make a diplomat," she said softly. "You're too honest."

She moved to put her hand on his shoulder and wake him, and Anakin remembered with her the moment when she changed her mind and reached out, tremulously, to stroke her fingers through his hair instead, seeing and feeling with her perceptions. He remembered the silky warmth of the strands in her fingers, glowing like aurodium in the artificial lights.

He remembered the shaking, deep inside, as she stepped back, swallowing hard to push her feelings down, and leaned over to grip his shoulder.

"Anakin, wake up."

Anakin pulled back, certain he hadn't been meant to see that intensely private place, and released the Force to look at Ryn for a moment on a purely physical plane.

Tears were bright on her cheeks, leaking from beneath closed eyelids.

Suddenly worried, Anakin reached out and touched her hand. "Did I hurt you?"

"No." Ryn shook her head, blinking her way back. "I mean, you weren't too rough."

So that's a yes, Anakin thought. He swallowed. "Do you want to try again?"

"I think we'd better."

So he plunged back into the Force and into Ryn, and tried to concentrate on feelings this time.

The old aches were still there, the gaping agony of the one fresh wound, the effervescent joy. The choking fear that gripped her throat: a terror of what the Blades of Light might do.

The tough resilience of her determination, the will that held all these things together and made them work.

But none of these things were really what made her Ryn, although Anakin thought maybe the determination came closest. It was what he associated with her, anyway.

Anakin sighed in frustration and in the bedroom Ryn reached out and took his hand, sharpening his sense of her.

Relax, Anakin. You don't need the essence, only the flavor.

But he sensed something, the hollow feeling of disappointment, and eased his way after it to find a discouraged feeling.

He pressed her there, and heard her reluctant voice in his mind: Maybe there is no real me. Just a collection of pain and joy.

No, Anakin told her, that's not true.

He turned inward and searched for the things that meant Ryn to him.

Safe. Ryn was a safe place for him, always.

Steady. Ryn was hard to shake up, harder still to force off-course. When Anakin was in danger of letting his emotions run away with him, Ryn was there to even him out.

Like Obi-Wan?

No, not like Obi-Wan, who accepted his feelings, and then released them into the Force. Ryn lived in the face of her feelings: the pain of unrequited love, the brief flashes of joy in an otherwise dark sky of a life. Obi-Wan was ... remote. Ryn was so present it almost hurt.

Sometimes it did hurt.

And this, suddenly, was how the pieces fell into place for him. Ryn rejected detachment as the easy way out. She felt everything and kept going anyway, indomitable.

She chose to love, knowing it would hurt.

After the short life of loss she'd led, detachment would have been an easy retreat: the urge to withdraw, to protect herself.

Faced with loss, Ryn chose to love.

Anakin remembered her standing on a balcony overlooking fountains, smiling up at him, reckless in the artificial sunlight.

You do what you have to do, and I'll feel what I feel.

Except now he knew she was really saying, I choose to love you anyway.

This is you, he told her urgently. This is who you choose to be.

What am I supposed to be seeing?

You. You love so much, unconditionally. Not because you have to. You choose it.

I'm not as sweet or courageous as you're making met out.

Yes, you are. You're beautiful inside. This is how I see you, how I'll know you anywhere.

Oh. Well, if it helps you remember ... Anakin?

What?

You're beautiful inside, too.