Cross Purposes

Dustil

He clasped the hands of the two Sith escapees and wished them well, then made his way a little west of their position, as if to journey to the coordinates Xartha gave him. Then he stopped and gathered his concentration. I'm not here, I'm not here, he chanted in his mind over and over. Xartha's comment about his becoming an apprentice bothered him. She might be an acolyte of the dark sorceries of the Sith, but she sure didn't know her hierarchies. Dark Jedi took apprentices, and those apprentices needed to be Force-sensitive, and nobody had ever told him he had enough of the Force in him to be worth anything.

Once again, the bothersome feeling he got around the Jedi on the Ebon Hawk returned to him. I will be like them. The thought felt different. Alien. He dismissed it as his guilt talking. Someday, I won't have to lie anymore, that's all.

When he felt calm enough, he began tracking the two Sith through the jungle overgrowth. They seemed to be following a faint track, nearly overgrown, and only recognizable by the occasional crumbling marker easily mistaken for a rotted, vine-choked stump.

Not a natural tracker, he followed them by instinct, extending his combat senses as far as they would go. He could almost feel their presences, dark forms with darker intent and--

Something was behind him. He whirled, but the jungle remained a green wall. Fat, jewel-carapaced dragonflies flitted from the foliage, small birds and lizards flitted or scuttled from branch to vine and back. The feeling persisted. The life around him was busy, leaves waving, animals twitching, of course he was being watched, he was being watched by everything in this jungle with avid, predatory interest.

He turned back around and looked without seeing. Jungle life seethed around him, all except for right...there.

His hand shot out and he lunged. The thick air around him suddenly provided more resistance than even the jungle humidity ought to. And it said "oof!"

The stealth emitter flickered and his stomach dropped out the bottom of his feet.

Mission Vao doubled over and looked at him with accusing eyes. "How could you?" she said. "You're betraying everything your father believes in and fights for!"

"Mission, you don't understand," he said, keeping his voice low, mindful of the Sith up ahead.

"I understand enough," she said harshly. "Peace is a lie, there is only passion, and ambition," she quoted the Sith code.

"Shh," he said. "They'll hear us and we'll both be dead."

"They'd turn on you in a heartbeat and you still choose them over us," she said incredulously. She stepped closer to him and pushed her hands into his chest. "You traitorous little punk!"

"I--you don't understand," he repeated, grabbing her wrists to keep her from pummeling him any more. This wasn't going well and she was getting loud.

"I understand you're a traitor," she said.

"Will you shut up," he hissed.

"Why, so your 'friends' can--"

He had no free hands, and no other way to shut her up. So he did what whatever it took. He always did whatever it took to meet the objective. It was his nature.

He kissed her.

She broke away, her jaw working soundlessly. She fumbled a little hold-out blaster from a thigh holster and aimed it at him. Tears welled in her bright eyes. "I--you--" She closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.

Dustil reached out with everything in his being. No! he thought. I can't let her do this, she doesn't understand, and I don't have time for an explanation.

He opened his eyes to find nothing had happened. Mission was frozen, her fingers on the trigger of the blaster, but the blaster was frozen, too. His eyes widened. I did that. Oh, crap, I did that. What did I just do?

He moved up cautiously and took the blaster from her hand. He set it gingerly down on a flat-topped stump nearby, the barrel pointing away from her. He took her unresisting body in his arms and laid her down gently, covering her with his cloak. Please understand, he thought miserably. She looked just like a sad, blue princess, lying there wrapped in his cloak. The tracks of tears were still wet on her cheeks.

Fate and circumstance had decreed that he would never be free of the Sith. And explanations only made things worse. I'm sorry, Mission, he thought, before moving off into the jungle depths.