Her lightsaber lay resting upon a mat, and the training hall was filled with muffled cries as she ran through a kata.

Talia had changed her clothes since the old days. When she'd been an assassin for her brother – days that were barely as far behind her as Cameron was old, but they felt so much further away, and so much closer, than that – she'd favored black leather of the skintight variety. It allowed an acceptable range of motion, and given that the majority of her targets had been men, the ability to show off a curve here and there had certain tactical benefits as well. It was all she knew: trained as a Mistryl by her mother, made to forget Emberlene by her father, and living only to serve the Empire through the will of her brother.

Until the one night she pinned a man with a crimson double-bladed lightsaber to the wall... and he told her that she could be more than her brother's personal zinji needle. And proved it, days later, when he walked into a trap on her behalf.

A lot changed that day, though it took a hard, painful while for those changes to sink in. But sink in they did, and after Kartuiin...

Well. A wedding, a son, and then twins... and Talia Variner, now Talia DeLong, didn't know of a time when she'd been happier.

She traded in the leather for 'simple' cloth: still black, waterproofed, stainproofed, and not at all skintight. Though Robert claimed the flowing effect it had when she moved was very becoming.

It also offered a much improved range of movement over the leathers, which proved helpful when she received her ring and learned how to use a lightsaber. Her blade was the polar opposite of her husband's: it was a short blade, which issued from a smaller hilt, like the one Rachel had once used in her off-hand. It was a blade made for finesse work, the lightsaber variant of an assassin's knife.

To judge by Master Skywalker's encounter on Belkadan, such finesse would be required in the days to come.

To that end the training hall was often filled with the sound of her blade humming through the air; often cutting through nothing save air, but just as clashing against her husband's blade, his lightsaber making a passable stand-in for a Yuuzhan Vong's amphistaff.

The last move in the kata brought her into a crouch next to her lightsaber. She plucked it up in the space of an eyeblink, and, eyes closed, turned towards an unseen enemy, igniting the lightsaber as she swung in a trick she'd learned from Carlos.

The distinctive sound of clashed blades greeted her. She opened her eyes and saw Robert standing there, grinning, his saber blocking hers.

"Nice swing."

She glared at him.

"I thought you had a meeting."

They stepped away from each other and deactived their lightsabers.

"I did. It was rescheduled."

"Why?"

He tossed her a datapad.

"Seems Kerensky's daughter just dropped in out of hyperspace, and brought what reads like word of something fairly interesting. So the meeting's now in three hours, for all Jedi, command staff, and anyone who's curious. Want to come?"

"What about the kids?"

"Actually, I was, um, thinking about bringing them along."

"You did hear what happened to Asya Wyler, right?"

"That... that's why I want to bring them along, Tal. If these Yuuzhan Vong will pluck a kid off a ship just because they can..."

Happier than she'd ever been? Oh, yes. But because of the source of her happiness – Robert smiling and looking at her that way, Cam taking over the kitchen, Matt being a rascal, Sarah being girly – she was also more afraid – Robert staring at a wall and lost in a resurgent ghost, Cam with a really bad allergic reaction and oh please oh please get him to the hospital he's swelling, Sarah with something stuck in her throat and oh God it won't come out, Matt falling off the piano and breaking his arm and she'd never heard anyone cry like that before – than she'd ever been in her life.

And now fracking scar-faced aliens who came in a grabbed little girls off of starships.

But maybe it was better this way; at least with the Yuuzhan Vong, when compared to allergies or choking or broken arms, she had a target. Something she could hunt and kill if they hurt her babies.

Abruptly she dropped down cross legged onto the mat.

Robert knelted in front of her and touched her cheek. She took his hand and pressed it against her face. They said nothing, and didn't have to; he was her angel, and she was his, precisely because they knew – intimately – each other's joy, and each other's demons.

Idly, she wondered which of those – the joy, or the demon – the Vong would try to kill... and which they would bring out to the fore.

An image came to mind, of one of those scared 'warriors' dragging away Matt and Sarah, and she feared she knew the answer.

---

"You didn't answer my question."

"I thought I answered it when I kicked your butt, Cam."

"Wrong question, Jaq, and this bout doesn't count. You cheated. Again."

"Since when do you believe in fighting fair?" Jaq responded, his indigo eyes flashing in mock annoyance.

"Fighting, no," Cam answered, waving his lightsaber hilt at Jaq. "Heck, when fighting, I don't care if you fight dirty or just throw dirt. But in practice..."

"I thought the whole point of practice was to practice how we fight."

"Shut up. And you still haven't answered my first question."

"I already told you: the Intel guys wanted to know how I got us into the PDB, so I pointed them towards a few security holes I found when we were running the place. Made more sense than trying to explain something I don't understand."

"Okay. Correction. You didn't answer my second question, which before you misremember it, was about what your intentions are towards my sister."

Jaq paused as they stepped out of the woods; they prefered to practice lightsaber combat out of doors, rather than in one of the training halls.

He noted, idly, that they were close to the wrecked crater that had been PDB 0427.

"I don't have any intentions towards Sarah, Cam. That's what I keep trying to tell you."

They looked out towards the crater.

"Yeah, but I think she's got intentions towards you, buddy. She's got that look again."

"Well, if she's running around in a daze, maybe you should put padding up in your house just in case she runs into things."

"That's another thing: don't say anything like that around her. Remember the guy from last year?"

"Oh. The one who tossed her note on the ground in front of her and everybody? Didn't Matt beat him up?"

"Yep," Cam said with a grin. "I tried to stop him, but golly, I was just a bit too late, you know? And I'd hate to repeat that-"

"I have no designs on your sister, Cam. I promise. I won't do anything but let it die, alright?"

"Alright."

They stared at the ruins for awhile.

"She is cute, though."

"Oh, hell."

---

"Whut in the ruddy-" one the rough looking smugglers said when the cloaked man sat down at their table. "Oy, this here's a private table, so git."

"Do you know what separates man from animals?" the cloaked figure asked. "Both hunt, and feed, to satiate their hungers. The stronger devours the weaker.

"The difference is that man domesticates the lower predator for his own use. The stronger rules over the weaker."

"We thought you was dead-"

"When meat is made an offer by higher meat, it does not refuse," Damien Korssetti replied. "The hour of Man, and Bothan, and Twi'lek, and Hutt, and all the other native meat is at an end. We will become food for Yuuzhan Vong, or their dogs.

"I am a hunting dog of Deimos. In time, we will chose the game for his table."