"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a foreign tongue."

— Rainer Maria Rilke

He noted that she looked a bit lost when she wandered back into the living room half an hour later, as if she had gone somewhere else entirely during this period of time, and didn't quite have the capacity to remember where she was. Her feet were bare and transparent drops of water snaked down the side of her face and the column of her neck, darkening the places where they came to a halt around the collar of that grungy beige tank-top she'd worn since Telos. Somewhat glazed eyes took in the room around her before finally resting on himself and becoming alert once more.

She looked a damn sight better, though she still looked a bit on the tattered side: Her hair was lank and shiny with water, and her face, although no longer smeared with blood, was still a bit swollen and he thought even for all of that, the pale blue eyes that he felt watching him from behind curtains of hair and bruised sockets, were some of the most inviting he'd ever seen.

"I'm sorry." She said. "I didn't mean to stare."

"Impolite Jedi." He said, shaking his head from side to side and crossing the room only to put a drink in her hand: Some sort of really pricey whiskey he'd bought along with the place to celebrate: He'd had a glass of it before resigning himself to self-loathing at retreating to bed: He hated this place from the moment he signed the credits over to that shifty Twi'lek. It was a structural reminder of his sad and short-lived attempt to make himself believe he could put everything in his sordid past behind him and be normal, happy human being.

The physical emptiness of the place spoke volumes alone; everything was either in boxes or covered in dust. There was an unmistakable absence of that lived-in feeling that anywhere called "home" should have, in fact, that feeling was replaced here with a sad sort of time-warp: This apartment was a period of time, frozen and subsequently abandoned. He'd never cared to come back to it and wallow in the emptiness on his own, fully intending instead to just leave it be with the hope that someone would eventually break in and steal all the things he "owned" and set fire to the rest of the place. He made no mention of his disappointment upon opening the door today and finding the dwelling to be as intact and untouched as it was when he had left it.

But for all of that, there was a fullness in the eggshell coloured room now and it was coming from the Jedi standing in the middle of the room, dripping wet and glancing around her surroundings with quiet curiousity.

"Weren't kidding when you said you never spent much time here, huh?" She asked, sipping the fine whiskey.

"Not even a little." He admitted. "Honestly, this place was one of the worst decisions I've ever made."

"Why don't you just sell it then?"

Because I'd like to have it here, just in case I ever feel like giving normalcy another shot.

"Re-sale on apartments isn't good right now. I'd be losing money if I tried selling it these days." He lied again without even thinking; it came so naturally to him at this point that there wasn't a moment of hesitation before he found himself trying to deceive her once more. Honesty was something that he hadn't put much stock in for years, and despite the warm, familiar feeling he got whenever he was around Meetra, he couldn't bring himself to let that particular wall of lies and self preservation down.

He snaked an arm under her arm and around her waist, pulling her against him in a way that still felt so untested and new. A month ago, if he had thought to try something like this, he would have thought twice for fear of Meetra boxing his ears for his forwardness, but he was slowly realizing that although she seemed just as hesitant and uncertain, she didn't mind and that if he wasn't the one to do it, eventually it would be Mical: The kid had only been with them for a couple of weeks, and already Atton could pick out the stars wavering in his eyes whenever Meetra was nearby.

I saw her first. It wasn't the right sentiment, but it was the first one that came to mind.

He tilted his glass and gently tapped the brim of it against Meetra's.

"To not getting brutally raped and murdered by a Mandalorian with droid-hands."

"To that." Meetra responded, and they drank. She swallowed hard before looking up at him. "You promised me music, you know."

"And you promised you'd make it up to me on Dantooine when I played sniper for you." He shot back. "What's in it for me?"

He did it: He issued the challenge just to see what she would do with it, and from the vixen-eyed look she was giving him, she knew it too.

He liked that about her; she wasn't one to balk at a phrase so full of suggestive innuendo. Most would call him deranged, or a pig, or have their legs in the air before he could say another word… she on the other hand, was somehow able to deflect his own lurid sexual ideals back on him in such a dignified and deliberate way that it made him wonder; who was seducing who? Who was in control of this situation? He was starting to think it wasn't him anymore.

He supposed it made sense; being a tight-bodied Jedi in her early twenties likely earned her a fair bit of male attention from those around her during the war: She didn't get to be a respected general by coming across all mortified and open-palmed slapping every poor bastard who made a move on her: She had probably just learned to play the game. That in and of itself explained her nonchalant dispatch of that Wils tool and the idiot at the nightclub on Telos.

"If you stop staring off into nothingness, thinking about Force knows what and put some music on like you said you would…" She did that thing she'd done in the lift earlier, where she leaned a bit closer and put her mouth right next to his ear, her hot, gentle breath seeping into his head like a miasma. "I will give you my word that you'll never have to clean a single toilet the entire time you pilot the Hawk."

"I really hate the idea of cleaning toilets…" He agreed.

"Mhmmm…" She acknowledged, drawing her lips across his cheek, stopping when they landed on the corner of his mouth. "Thought so. So how 'bout that music, Atton?"

He realized then, just how few times she actually used his name on a day to day basis, and he, hers. Really the only time it came up in conversation was when she was annoyed with him or when she needed something. Conversationally speaking, the pair of them seemed to get by with "Rand"'s, "Surik"'s, "Jedi"'s, and "Fly-boy"'s. He felt his ears grow hot.

"You're a minx, you know that, don't you?" He said, pulling away from her and kneeling on the floor under the Led Zeppelin poster, shoving aside the pile of blankets that was covering the holorecord player. "I was always under the impression that Jedi are chaste and all that other garbage."

"Well for one, I'm not a Jedi and I haven't been one for over a decade. Secondly, you're the one who started it, pal. What am I supposed to do? Ignore you? Thirdly, chastity is boring, especially after experiencing promiscuity." She ticked the items off on her fingers. "Imagine, if you will, how much more friendly the Order would be if they all got laid every once and awhile."

"Oh I get it." He laughed from his place on the floor as he sorted through holorecords. "You get to just hang around all night and be a tease, is that it? Give a hopeless bastard like me the unfounded hope that I've got a chance?"

"Don't be daft, butthead. You've got a chance alright, I just can't help but wonder what I'm getting myself into."

She said it so easily: So casually and openly. There it was: He was a durasteel trap and she was an open book. She did this… thing, that other women he had been attracted to for hours at a time seemed incapable of: Confidence it was daunting, in your face, undiluted, and loud. She just did it. She was standing in his living room with black eyes and bruised cheeks, clothes that hadn't been washed in days, wearing a smile that could have set a thousand ships to unknown regions of space for the certainty that lived within it.

And she was just giving it to him: Handing it all over like a pool of credits lost in a game of pazaak.

He didn't deserve that: Less than a week ago, he'd likened her to a spice-whore, tore her apart as a knee-jerk reaction to compensate for his own stupidity and inadequacy. But further than that, she knew Jil: He'd known it from the moment she had mentioned her Jedi companion during their argument in the cockpit, and he liked to think that he had so far managed to make a play of his ignorance fairly convincingly, although he nearly dropped his charade when Meetra had mentioned her by name earlier. What was he supposed to do now that she suspected they were brother and sister? Come clean? Admit that he'd killed his twin by his own hand, and expect that to go over well? Maybe she wouldn't care that much, but something about the way she had just vaguely trailed off after mentioning Jil abandoning her for a pilot made him think that perhaps Meetra wasn't just chapped because Jil left her high and dry at the end of the war.

He'd barely known his sister. The academy took her when they were both so young that all he remembered of Jil were the fleeting and piece-y memories of childhood, and of course their tragic reunion on Telos years ago: How the hell was he supposed to know that Jil had the same tells as he did? That was a comparison he never would have thought to pick out in a thousand years, and yet Meetra had pounced on it in an instant.

Taking advantage of a woman's kindness was something he had no qualms with: He'd lost count of the times he'd found a single woman at a cantina, spent the night flirting with her, seducing her, flattering her, only to end the night feigning utter horror and embarrassment at the fact that his wallet had mysteriously vanished right after the drinks stopped being poured.

So why the inclination to spill his guts to Meetra of all people?

He started the holorecord and tugged Meetra down to the carpet next to him.

"Sit and listen." He ordered, getting to his feet.

"Where are you going?" She asked and he held out his arms.

"In case you forgot, I'm still covered in blood. I'll be back. Seriously, just listen. This one is best enjoyed for the first time if you're alone." He smiled encouragingly and wandered into the bathroom, stopping to pour himself a fresh whiskey along the way.

The light in the bathroom flickered on and he was pleased, but unsurprised to see that it was clean. Hot, humid air from Meetra's shower still hung in the air, and although the mirror was no longer fogged, beads of condensation still hung from the shower door and the sink. He pulled his jacket off and hung it on the back of the door before yanking off his bloodied shirt and gloves, leaving them in a heap in the corner.

He was glad for the excuse to get away for a minute; the moment he had realized where things had started between Meetra Surik and himself, and where they were at the present moment, he panicked.

He planted his palms on the corner of the sink and stared at his face in the mirror.

Care about her?

Yeah, actually.

Wanna keep her safe?

All the time.

Like her?

More than I'd ever admit to anyone else. Or her.

If I had the option to leave her and everything else right now, would I?

No.

That. That sentiment alone is messed up, Jaq, and you know it.

His hand flew of its own accord and contacted only briefly with the glass of whiskey before it sailed off the shelf above the sink and shattered to pieces against the back of the toilet.

You know more than enough about Jedi to have the knowledge that involving yourself with one would be a poor choice. She may be different, she may not be one of them, but those slick and perforating tentacles are still trying to wrap themselves around your mind: It can't be anything other than a trick. A game.

He silenced his thoughts by dousing his face with cold water over and over again until all he could feel was the sting of the nerves in his face, and the freezing sensation running down his back while music floated in the doorway from the hall, muffled by the door, but the notes ever etched in his head carried him away in his stupor.

"Really makes me wonder…" he muttered, yanking a hand towel off the shelf and setting about drying his face. When he was done, he flung it into the corner by the toilet over the shattered glass and pooled liquor, resolving to deal with it later. He switched out the lights and ventured back into the kitchen, finding a new glass and filling it with four fingers of whiskey that would have fed and clothed an average family for at least a year.

" – is humming, and it won't go in case you don't know. The piper's calling you to join him."

He turned silently to the living room for reasons he wasn't sure of. It didn't matter: She hadn't noticed him as far as he could tell. She was sitting cross legged where he'd left her, her hands resting on her ankles, holding her drink with her spine tipped forward, intently staring at the player, completely still and silent. Her head turned sharply when she sensed him watching her, and he was utterly taken aback to see that her eyes were red and tears dwelled on her cheeks.

"Don't be alarmed," she said. "I'm just a person who weeps at beautiful things." She laughed a little; that sort of self-deprecating and manic giggle he'd heard a hundred times but never really thought much about before. Her laugh in most situations was a confident, haughty exclamation. He never noticed till now that this bizarre and self-conscious titter was reserved solely for him, and it gave light to exactly how unsure of herself he made her. Her. Meetra Surik. The General.

When he'd joined the war, he'd been too young, too inexperienced and untested to be assigned duties that required any sort of contact or service under Surik, but he'd certainly known of her. Everyone did. You couldn't turn on the holovision or read the news without seeing her charismatic and bright smile beaming back at you. In those days, her eyes were wider and brighter, and her face was fuller and more youthful, framed by that dark, dreadlocked hair that made her famous. For years, the trend among young women became locked hair, or at the very least, finding as many odd, naturally occurring things as possible to tie in it. You couldn't walk down the street on any civilized planet and not see at least ten girls and women with feathers and crystals woven into their hair.

She represented freedom and bravery for many, but to young girls and older women, she represented something else as well: Capability and strength. There had been one occasion of note in particular, when facing the media at a live press-conference, the man who would eventually become Darth Malak, found himself stumbling and tripping over his words in an effort to explain a particularly controversial decision that had been made in a recent effort. The recording had gone viral because Meetra, sitting to his left at the press desk, watching him calmly while he butchered his explanation, finally reached over and swung the microphone her way before launching into what at the time was said to go down in history as one of the most inspirational war-time speeches in recorded memory.

She was the inspiring face of the war, while Alek and Revan had been the gears and brute force behind it.

Jaded and well into his thirties now, Atton knew that Meetra's enlivening and captivating image was nothing more than well-placed propaganda: A young, pretty woman endorsing the cause was far more appealing to most than two men. One had to reflect on the successful formula for most liquor advertisements.

But all that aside, her strength of character in the war was not limited to being exceptionally talented at the front-line media aspects. When he'd enlisted, it had been one of his biggest goals to be in the same room with this woman at least once in his time of service. The way other soldiers spoke of her made it easy to lose the line between rumour and fact, but he had always secretly craved the opportunity to meet her and see if what was said was so true. He thought it impossible for someone trained as a Jedi to be as friendly, forthcoming, and daring as Surik had been made out to be. Soldiers spoke of interactions with her as if she was a friend, and battles with her as nothing short of a spiritually invigorating experience. They clung to the idea of her, not because they wanted to bang her, but because she had somehow given them reason to live, carefully tailored to each of their individual needs.

And now she was sitting on his living room carpet, listening to his favourite album of all time, with tears on her cheeks and a smile on her face, only because she thought the music was beautiful.

Something fell away from his very being at that moment, not unlike a loose part falling off of a ship during the jump to hyperspace, and he realized that regardless of who she was, or what she'd done, or who he was, or what he'd done, he would follow this woman to the ends of the universe without a second thought if she only asked him to.

He felt his lips lift at one side and he took the bottle of whiskey with him, claiming his place beside her on the carpet.

"You're not who I thought you'd be." He said.

She looked at him sideways, dragging her teeth over her split lips. "What do you mean?"

"Seems like during the war, everyone in the galaxy knew you in some way or another, or thought they did. Honestly, you're not at all what I expected."

"Ten years of exile will do that to a person." She submitted. "Some things may remain the same, but by no stretch am I the same person everyone thought they knew in the war. We grow, but only because we choose to: I chose to do all of my growing after the war. Force knows I had more than enough experiences to learn from." She raked a hair through her damp hair. "Beautiful people don't just happen. No one comes into life being entirely wise and graceful and all-knowing, and they also don't just become that way because one day they felt like it. Beauty becomes such through adversity: Defeat, suffering, struggle and loss. The Order chooses to subvert pathways to all of these things, and for that, they never experience them, by doing this, they choke off the only true way to experience beautiful things. I didn't figure that out until after I lost everything." She pointed at the holorecord player. "You could have put this on for me ten years ago, and I wouldn't have batted an eyelash. To me at the time, it would have been exactly what it is: Music."

"What is it now?"

"Music." She shrugged, taking a drink. "But there's so much more to it than just that. This is a creation. It's something that was once just an idea in someone's mind, and brought to fruition by a like-minded group of people. It's a memory of something powerful."

Atton filled her glass and took time to appreciate the scent of her hair as he did so.

"So how about that Jedi that left you in the war?" He waited for a reaction; surprise, shock, curiousity, but none came.

"What about her?" She asked flatly, turning her eyes down and fussing with the frayed hem of her pants.

"You said she abandoned you for a pilot."

"She did."

Who's deflecting now, kitty cat?

"And?" He prompted: Might have been the whiskey, might have been the way he could see the modest curve of her breasts from the angle he was at, but he was feeling daring. "Call me crazy, but the way you say it makes it sound like you took it a lot more personally than just another defection."

She bit her lip some more and he thought that if she didn't stop, she might very well chew it right off. She was thinking hard about her answer so he gave her time to answer, taking the opportunity to put a new holorecord on.

No amount of whiskey could have prepared him for how damning her answer actually was.

"She was special," Meetra began, getting to her feet. "Sorry. Before I go on, where's your jacket? I need a smoke."

"Bathroom."

She returned moments later with a cigarra held between her lips and the rest of the pack in her hand. She sat neatly once more on the floor and leaned her bare shoulder against his and he shivered; he'd forgotten that he never bothered finding a clean shirt.

"Alright." She said, heaving a huge sigh and lighting the cigarra. "I uh- I dunno… she was talented and strong in the Force. She always knew what was happening inside of a person… it was like when she looked at you, she looked right through you. But it wasn't threatening or intimidating." She laughed quietly. "She just knew when you weren't being yourself, and she was the most useful companion I've ever had the pleasure of calling 'friend' for that reason: Always there with an encouraging word, ready to sit down and unravel the puzzle with a sort of patience I never possessed during the war. Don't get me wrong… she wasn't stodgy and uptight by any means… in fact I think one of her most endearing qualities was her ever-present enthusiasm. She was always moving, always talking, always coming up with some interesting question or another. Jil was the reason I could keep some sort of lightness in my life towards the final days of the war… her leaving was entirely brought about by my own ignorance."

He listened raptly, if anything for the masochistic waves of nostalgia that crashed over him for the sister that this woman had clearly known better than he ever had.

"She found out about Malachor. I told her of my plans and of my goal to make that place the place where the war was won. She was furious… appalled. I remember her looking at me like she didn't even know who I was anymore. I remember her telling me how far from the realm of morality this was, and that she wouldn't have any part of it. She told me she was leaving with that pilot of hers, and I bade her an affable and understanding goodbye. Days later, after much consideration, I decided she was too dangerous to be kept alive: She knew the finer points of the battle plan for Malachor five, and if she went to the Council with that information, all would be for naught."

Her eyes were still focused forward, staring blankly at the poster on the wall as a muscle in her jaw twitched.

"I wanted to win the war. I wanted to be the one to do it. I wanted to see gilded statues of myself in major cities across the galaxy and have songs sung about my cunning and skill. Master Vrook was not wrong on Dantooine when he mentioned my lust for blood and victory at any cost: I was willing to destroy whatever got in my way to get where I wanted to be – to fulfill my fleeting ambitions, and it seemed that the final obstacle that was in my way was someone I had come to love."

"Love?" He said, hardly hearing his own voice for the culmination of puzzle pieces he was currently placing together in his mind.

"A Jedi must not know love." She quoted. "But I was no longer a Jedi and at that time, all I knew of love was Jil. When someone just… hands you that part of them, by doing something stupid one day like smiling at you, or saying your name, or kissing you, you realize your heart is no longer yours."

That's because love takes hostages. He found himself observing vaguely as she continued to vomit out revelation after revelation without mercy, and it occurred to him then that she knew exactly what she was doing.

"And by my own hand, I had doomed us both: She was dangerous now, so I thought, so I assembled a special squad of soldiers, uniquely trained for my purposes alone, and I sent them after her and her soon-to-be groom."

He took particular pause at these words and shifted uncomfortably on his palms when she said them. He was beginning to regret even breaching the topic to begin with: All he was hearing were things he could have died happily oblivious to.

"It was a game of cat and mouse that went on for the entirety of the months leading up to the end of the war. When it ended and I returned to Coruscant, my chain of command dissolved and so did my elite squadron. Imagine my surprise upon leaving when I stole as much documentation from Revan as I could, and found his plans to… to expand on my particularly focused experiment: See, by the end of the war, Revan and Alek were not the childhood friends I once held so dear. They were different; dark – lost and to my eyes, increasingly mad, as I'm sure I appeared to many. Their goals after Malachor were the stuff nightmares were made of though, and I knew that I had made a heinous mistake. I faced the Council, I accepted my charges, I took my sentence of exile, but after leaving republic space for a time, I made a very deliberate point of hunting Jil down myself: If what I had read in the files I had stolen was true, she would never find peace: Only death and pain… or things that I'm sure were much worse than what was implied with words… she deserved the chance to save herself. I searched for weeks, and found myself on Telos. I managed to find an address… an apartment, and I found her husband. She wasn't there at the time, but I told him to warn her, to take her and their child and leave for a planet so far off the map they would never be found…" She slammed the rest of the costly whiskey in one swig. And Atton wanted nothing more than for her to just shut up. "I don't know if that warning ever reached her… Telos was destroyed by Saul Karath less than a week later." She finished with a noncommittal jerk of her shoulders that Atton knew was entirely a feint. She had wound him up, but good. She knew it too. She'd been waiting for him to ask about Jil, and now the ball was in his court.

He didn't know what to do anymore.

Breathing? What the hell was that?

Blinking? His eyes were wide and dry but he couldn't force his lids down.

Say something? What the frack was he supposed to say?

She loved her? She loved Jil? She was in love with Jil? She had presumably kissed Jil, possibly even slept with her? No matter what way he posed the question to himself, it just failed to register properly in his utterly gobsmacked mind.

I murdered my own sister the very day that Meetra Surik showed up to try and save her. I took her away from her forever.

But she tried to kill her first… a uniquely trained squad… a concept that Revan picked up and ran with: Training soldiers to hunt Jedi.

Training soldiers like me.

Me.

"Atton?" Her voice cut through the static dominating his mind and he looked into those wide blue eyes for only a moment before standing, grabbing his jacket and bloodstained shirt from the bathroom and vanishing out the door without a word.