Disclaimer: George Lucas owns Star Wars. I am not making any profit from this work of fanfiction.

Author's note: *sigh* Another chapter I'm not sure I'm happy with. It still feels like Gratuitous Talking to me. I warn you up front, it doesn't really advance the plot. But I hated to take it out, because ... well, the basic premise here is important later. But the good news is: it's short! Send me some feedback if you're not too discouraged by reading this, and let me know what you think.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Anakin kept stealing sidelong glances at his silent companion as they made their way, on foot this time, to the compound where they had met the Prime Minister and his son the day before.

Ryn's shields were tight, but Anakin knew her. She was deeply troubled. Most of it, Anakin felt sure, stemmed from her distaste for the job they were doing. As important as it was to throw a hydrospanner in the works before the revolutionaries lost control of the fight and the Banking Clan took over, Ryn hated that they were, essentially, backing Borsana Terce's corrupt and oppressive regime. The planet's political structure bothered her on levels Anakin didn't pretend to understand; she'd been jumpy about this mission since before they left Coruscant, back when their chief fear had been that the government itself might be illegally hoarding weapons and the Jedi might be too late to stop it, a fear Madam Nu had been able to partially allay.

So the mission itself explained most of Ryn's distress, and that should have been enough for anybody. But Anakin knew there was something else. He could feel it: in the way she hunched her shoulders, just a little. In the way she stared straight ahead and didn't speak to him as they walked.

The way she had retreated behind her shields, so removed she was practically Vanishing.

"Something's bothering you," Anakin said finally, exhibiting a flair for the obvious.

Ryn didn't look at him. "Many things."

Good going, Skywalker. "I mean besides the obvious." He risked a light probe along the edges of her mind; was rebuffed, but not rebuked. "Something personal."

She did look at him then, her gaze clear and distant, unreadable. But she only turned away with a shrug.

Sudden fear slapped Anakin in the chest. "Is it ... did I ... was last night bad for you?" The way it came out made him sound like an anxious lover, not a meditation partner, and Anakin flinched, realizing the association wouldn't exactly endear him to Ryn.

But if the echo of unrequited love - and the more complicated situation of mostly shared lust - flicked on the raw, she didn't let the pain distract her. She cast him a sharp look: not angry, exactly, but impatient. "Sometimes it's not about you, Anakin."

There was something sharp and hard in her voice that he'd never heard before; for a minute he didn't know how to respond. Then the impact went everywhere, jerking at his reflexes. Struck, his heart hammering against his ribs, Anakin glared at her. "I never said it was."

"No, you just assumed," Ryn snapped, and that was anger, hard in her voice, bright in her eyes.

Throttling the impulse to snarl back - something was really wrong here, yelling at Ryn wouldn't fix anything - cost him so much effort that for a moment Anakin couldn't breathe. Ryn walked on for three paces before she realized he wasn't with her and turned around, her green eyes sparking with impatience in a carefully blank face.

A part of Anakin wanted to shove past her and walk on. He was only trying to help, and she was bitching at him.

But this was Ryn. If she was hurting, he couldn't just look away. Anakin shoved his temper down. "So what's it about?"

Ryn stared at him. "You said it's not about me," Anakin reminded him. "Okay. So what is it about?" Because that had sounded more like a challenge than he'd meant, he added, more gently, "Talk to me, Ryn."

His friend looked lost for a long minute, standing in the middle of the sidewalk while people jostled past. Then she pulled herself together and said, "I don't know." She sounded miserable, helpless, not like herself at all, and Anakin's throat closed with worry. "It's just ... everything." She pulled in a deep breath, trying to steady herself. "I feel like I'm back in the landing area, with that fool sniper. Only this time, I can see how it's all going to go wrong. And I'm doing it anyway, and for what? The Republic? it's not my Republic. I can't ... I can't care about the big picture here. I can't throw these people to the rencor for the sake of stability and trade routes and the balance of power. I don't know how. I can't see a single choice here that doesn't make me feel dirty." She looked away from him, at the passersby: military officers in fatigues, carrying blasters, and ragged members of the populace, dressed in drab trouser-and-tunic outfits so much alike they might as well be uniforms. "I know that what Obi-Wan is asking me to do today should be small, compared to all the rest, but I hate it."

Jedi don't hate, Anakin thought reflexively, but since Ryn wasn't a Jedi, the observation didn't seem likely to be welcomed.

Instead, he said, "I don't understand. You did it yesterday."

Ryn frowned at him, as though wondering how he could have reached such a conclusion. "No, I didn't," she said. "Yesterday I wasn't trying to get anything from anybody."

Anakin frowned back. "I don't understand," he said again.

The look Ryn gave him said she was sure he didn't. "I'm pretty, right?"

Not this again. It was strange, how a girl as devastatingly lovely as Ryn could need so much reassurance about her attractiveness. But Anakin squelched his exasperation and said loyally, "Of course you are. You are one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. Ever seen. Even on the HoloNet."

That earned him a wry smile and a roll of Ryn's green eyes. "Let's not get carried away," she told him. "But I'm pretty, by human standards, so people are more likely to assume I'm harmless. And Obi-Wan is hoping I can use that to distract people from their jobs and dissuade them from suspicion. It's manipulative. It's not a straight fight." The anger was still flickering in her eyes, but the feelings Anakin could sense in her - now that she was no longer focusing on her shields - were more complicated than just anger. Her presence in the Force reeked of fear and guilt and desperation.

Anakin couldn't stand her pain. "You don't have to do it," he told her, not really having a better plan, knowing Obi-Wan was going to have fits, but unwilling to push Ryn into more misery. "We'll find another way."

Ryn shook her head, eyes closing briefly against whatever she saw in his face. "How can I not do it?" she demanded, helplessly. There was something raw and awful in her voice. "If it improves our chances of figuring out this mess and saving these people before it's too late? How can I say no?" She clamped her lips together, eyes bright with tears.

So you don't want to do it and you don't want to not do it, Anakin thought. Great. He had a feeling that all this angst might not even really be about chivvying her way through the compound on her looks; it had everything to do with the tangled ethics of their situation, and the fact that no matter what they did, they were going to end up helping at least some of the bad guys. But there was nothing Anakin could do about that. He stepped forward and touched Ryn's arm, feeling her tremble against his fingers. "We'll figure out something," he promised, trying to sound more confident than he felt, willing it to be true.

Ryn pulled away from his touch and rubbed her face with her hands. "No," she said resignedly. "This has a reasonable chance of success. Probably not on Farr, but if I can get Imram to introduce us around, we won't really need him. It's stupid to go back to the drawing board now." She dropped her hands and met his eyes bleakly. "Sometimes there are no good choices."

That did seem to be true, but it didn't meant they had to like it.

Anakin didn't try to touch her again, unsure why she had shied away from him before. "I don't know how to help you," he admitted, lost.

"I don't think you can," Ryn said. But something inside her had softened, just a little. Anakin could hear it in her voice; she spoke more gently now. "Haven't you ever been angry about something when you knew it was stupid and being angry about it wasn't going to change anything anyway?"

Anakin thought about it. "You mean like I find out a friend was in some really hot holos before we even met, and I ream her for it, even though it's none of my business? No, I'd never do anything like that."

Ryn's eyes were still shadowed, but she managed a faint smile. "Yeah. Okay."

"Look, I know you want to help," Anakin said. "But I'm sure Master Obi-Wan wouldn't want you to do anything you felt so wrong about. We can still -"

"No," Ryn said firmly. "Pretty women have been making fools of everyone around them for, you know, millenia. It's a time-honored strategy with a high success rate. It also has an unfortunate association with manipulative bitches, and I would frankly rather break some heads, but in this case it will probably work better and cause far less permanent damage." She grimaced. "Except to my pride."

"Then you have too much of it anyway," Anakin said, trying to tease a smile out of her. "If you're sure, then let's go, and you can take pride in a job well done."

"Lovely," Ryn said, with pronounced sarcasm; but she fell back into step beside him.

Next up: actual plot stuff happens. Yep, I promise. :)