Admiral Opelle scrolled down the readout of the datapad on his desk with perfunctory flicks of an index finger. "…described you, and Miss Kaevee, as reckless, unprofessional, foolhardy, fit for the brig…," he trailed off, his good eye looking up to meet Atton's. "I don't need to go on, do I?"

"Is 'daring and heroic' anywhere in the report?"

Opelle shook his head, deaf to the joke. "The major would say there's no place for heroics in the Republic Army. He may have a point, but it's just all the more reason to remember I didn't recruit you into the army. Your team was there to do what the rank-and-file soldiers would not and could not do. What matters to me is that you did."

Atton sat back a little, saying nothing. It wasn't much of a surprise, but it was a relief to know that "his team" had such latitude. It did not escape him, however, that this was the same sort of carte blanche that the Jedi had once been decorated with. Maybe he really does think that's what we are.

The admiral shut the datapad off and continued. "However, I don't plan on making Malachor—I mean, the front lines—a habit for you. I don't want to push your luck too far. Your next assignments will involve work that's lower-profile, but no less important."

By this point, Atton was more or less convinced that pushing luck was basically his profession, but he wouldn't argue the point. "Yeah? Like what?"

Admiral Opelle's good eye wandered, and a thin smile crept across his face. "I have several things in mind… but right now my full attention is needed elsewhere. We've been in talks with the Office of the Chancellor, the Ministry of Defense, other admirals and their staff, certain key senators. They've all seen the data you provided, and word's spreading. Things are happening, and soon they will start happening quickly. But before they do, you and your team should rest. I think you've earned it."

Atton stood up. "I think I have too."

A moment later he was strolling back up the long corridor from the admiral's office and out into the greater labyrinth of the ship. Uniformed crewmembers and guards gave him restrained nods, having seen him enough times to recognize him by now. He was starting to remember their faces as well, and occasionally felt a reflexive twinge of disappointment. For some reason he kept expecting, more like wishing, that sooner or later he'd see someone he had fought with on Malachor just days earlier.

Well, it wasn't all bad. He wouldn't have enjoyed seeing Hawkins again.

He stepped alone into a turbolift which had a little viewport in the back wall. The Valiant's fleet was between jumps on its way back to the shipyards of Arkania. Past the formations of cruisers and corvettes, the long, twisted ribbon of a star-white nebula cut a groove across the endless void. As he rode the turbolift down to the hangar bays, Atton's gaze hopped from one ship to the next. Each one had been uniquely mutilated by turbolaser fire.

Now that he officially had nothing to do for a little while, his thoughts were freer to wander than they had been in some time, and he considered the strange position he had gotten himself into. Phrases that the admiral had used hung heavy on his mind: your team, next assignments, important work. He had cut himself loose from Meetra, only to land himself at someone else's beck and call. Not that he was surprised. He just hadn't thought this far ahead. In some ways, it was good to be given things to do—goals, reasons to go on. Making it all up for himself as he went along was more stressful. But he hadn't been a soldier in a long time and never would be again.

The guard stationed outside the Ebon Hawk's bay told him, "Your Jedi friend's aboard. Went in about an hour ago."

Atton had a hunch who he meant, but still asked, "Which one, was it the kid?"

"Yeah. Kaevee. Said she had to practice something."

The man shrugged and Atton headed into the bay, where he found the Hawk's loading ramp extended. Keeping his thoughts quiet, he tiptoed aboard. At the top of the ramp, he was treated to the perhaps disturbingly-not-disturbing sight of a plasteel drum hovering around the garage in lazy, meandering arcs like it was looking for someplace to land. Kaevee stood a few paces inside with her back to the entrance, one hand outstretched.

Atton edged into the doorway and watched her for a moment. A quick peek through the Force showed him a glimpse of her frame of mind, which was characteristically mixed—determination flavored with chagrin and mental distractions. The guard had said she mentioned practice, but it seemed plain to Atton that she was just killing time. The real activity, if anything, was what was going on in her head.

He had only really spoken to the girl once since Malachor, partly to piece together everything that had happened on her side of things. He'd had to coax some out it of her. She'd seemed particularly embarrassed to admit that she'd used a blaster to kill a Sith Marauder in one of the control rooms.

Her story's conclusion had left Atton suspecting that some details were left out. Rather than pursue them, however, he'd dutifully harangued her for bucking orders and charging stupidly into danger alone. She hadn't argued—she was in her distinctive collapse-into-myself mood—but she stank of a tension that belied her meek, apologetic exterior, and Atton felt certain that she wasn't really buying it. He thought he knew why. From Kaevee's perspective, her reckless antics must have seemed no different from Atton's own last-ditch gambit.

The girl cast an incidental glance to her left, catching Atton out the corner of her eye, and started. The plasteel drum plummeted toward the floor, but she recovered and caught it a few inches before impact and set it down. She turned to him, her words first fiery, then timid. "Atton, what do you— Don't do that, please."

Since Malachor, he hadn't seen her in her Jedi getup—only the plain grays she'd been given when they had first come aboard the Valiant. Her hair was shorter now, shoulder-length, and her bangs were no longer blinding her half the time—but the locks and twines were still frazzled, and uneven to boot, which told Atton that she had done the job herself. Still, it was an anomalous sign of something like hygienic awareness, and Atton understood people well enough to be able to guess that it meant something. Malachor had left her shaken, much more than even Daluuj had. For better or worse, it was too early to say.

"Sorry, didn't mean to," he said. "I just need something from the cargo hold."

"Oh." The girl brought her hands together and rubbed at her wrists idly. A beat passed, and she nodded to port, adding, "Well, it's over there…"

It's just riveting to talk to you, Atton almost replied. He started to head down the corridor, but paused. She was tracking him with this ridiculous, pitiful look like she was dying of embarrassment, or of wanting to ask something but being too sullen and morose to try. Atton thought he had a good guess of what it was.

"Okay, fine," he sighed. "You saved my ass, so yes, thank you, I appreciate it. I'm grateful." Somehow it was a little hard to say, though it wasn't a lie. "But don't be getting cocky. I've still got you two to one."

The tension on Kaevee's face began to ease. "Yeah, I guess you do."

"And if it really matters to you that much, I'd be even more grateful if you'd just listen to me when I tell you things. Who knows, you might land easier next time." Remembering he hadn't come aboard to lecture her, he added, "Something to think about," and went on his way. She didn't follow him.

As he passed through the main hold, he noticed Ecksee. Finally repaired but not yet reactivated, the probe droid lay on the dining table, his limbs folded up like the ribs of a closed umbrella. The Remote hung suspended in standby mode close by, as though keeping a vigil over him.

Still far from pristine, the Ebon Hawk wordlessly nagged Atton even as he neared his singular objective. He recalled that he'd never quite finished his work on the power coupling. Missing panels in the ceiling and walls testified to other components and sections still needing attention. And he hadn't checked on the turbolasers since the skirmish near Ord Lonesome…

Tomorrow, he told himself as he entered the cargo hold. He opened one of the containers, dug down to the bottom of the medpacks, and found the last bottle of Corellian ale smiling up at him. He smiled back.

A minute or two away from the guest quarters, he ran into Cole at a cross intersection. The spacer was walking along with his eyes on the floor, apparently lost in thought, but looked up when they were a few paces from each other. "Mister Death Wish," he said, his face brightening. Eying the bottle in the pilot's hand, he asked, "Spoils of victory?"

Atton nodded. "Got a favor to ask you."

Cole waited.

"Can you meet me at the Hawk tomorrow at, say, fifteen-hundred? Help me and the droids fix up some things?"

"Sure, I can be awake by then."

"Good."

Cole bit his lower lip, then asked, "How's Kaevee? You seen her?"

"She'll be fine. Needs R&R, like the rest of us." Atton wasn't sure what to make of the other man's concern—if that's what it was—but in any case the question reminded him of something. "She told me about when you wouldn't follow her farther into the base."

"Good times," Cole remarked, suppressing a grimace.

"Look, I need to tell you. Not helping her charge into certain death, that's well and good. You made the right call there. But the way she made it sound, for you it was just as much about staying away from the Sith as it was about sticking to the plan." Atton paused, waiting for Cole to correct him.

The guy's face went blank. "Uh-huh…"

"The first part of that, it's not gonna fly in the future. If we're on some mission, and we do need you to help deal with Sith… Well, I don't think we're gonna set you up for any lightsaber duels, but when we need you to do something, you won't get to sit it out."

"Fine and dandy an attitude for you to have," Cole retorted. "But you've got the Force, so you can afford to be crazy. Not me. Shoot a blaster, fly a ship, pull off a con, that I can do. But Jedi and Sith, they're outta my league. You don't know what you're doing when you try and tell an ordinary guy like me—"

"Don't be too sure what I know," Atton broke in. "I didn't always have the Force."

"Well, good for you, but I'm not cut out for this. I run cargo."

"Not anymore. You're a professional galaxy-saver now. And nobody in this business is allowed to be a normal person."

"But I am a normal person!" Cole whined helplessly.

"You won't be when we're through with you."

Admitting defeat, the spacer shrugged his shoulders, and Atton's mind drifted back to his own early days aboard the Ebon Hawk. His first thought was that this routine of Cole's was a little too familiar to take at face value. On the other hand, there were a lot of normal people in the galaxy, and whether or not this guy was one of them, there was something to be said for normalcy when it could be found. Or made.

After a moment, Cole's face relaxed, and he looked again at the bottle of ale. "Is that the last one?"

Atton shifted it to his other hand. "Yeah… Hey, you play pazaak?"

After the pilot had left, Kaevee continued her nominal exercise in telekinesis. But she soon found herself unable to keep the drum from wobbling and bobbing as she moved it around the garage, and finally she slammed it to the floor in frustration. Sighing, she sat down on the container and brooded.

She hung her head, letting her eyes drift shut for a moment. Since Malachor, sleep had been more elusive than usual. Even when she found it, it was sullied by nightmares, most of them replays or variations of what she had gone through in that evil place; wading across seas of bodies or being chased through endless control rooms by the Nautolan. Waking allowed her to comfort herself that Malachor was gone—forever—and that she had survived, but the victory was a bitter one. She felt hollowed out, like she had on Belsavis after her argument with Atton and Atris.

So much had gone wrong. Before Malachor, she may have hoped that the challenge of a real battle with the Sith would bolster her connection to the Force. But if anything, it felt weaker, frayed, and she couldn't find it in herself to be particularly proud of anything she'd done there.

Atton's clumsy and reluctant way of thanking her for saving his life wasn't what she had hoped for, but it didn't add much to her unease either. The accusations he had made, and for that matter Cole's before him, now cut to the bone. She had thoughtlessly thrown herself into danger, just assuming she would find a way through it. Were it not for an entire host of external factors and coincidences, such as the extraordinary tenacity of her laigrek, or Atris augmenting her strength in the Force, or Atton carrying her out of MSG Control, Kaevee would certainly have died.

Feeling the absence of her pet more acutely than she had ever felt its presence, she got up and shuffled to the starboard dormitory. Leaning her head against the doorframe, she eyed the compartment under her cot, where Master Vrook's lightsaber lay—still broken.

She had tried to tell herself that it just was the will of the Force, that she had been meant to survive Malachor, just as she had for the past eleven years. But nothing put the lie to that idea more than the memory of what she had seen after blacking out in the facility—Emon being somehow pulled out of his… stasis? Sleep? Afterlife?... only to look at his own Padawan with terror. Dreadful though it was to revisit this image, Kaevee had spent long hours trying to make sense of it. A vision, some sign from the Force, her dead Master's spirit, a dream, a hallucination? She didn't know what it was, but in time she had begun, perhaps, to understand what it meant.

You're not even a Jedi yourself, Atton had told her on Belsavis, just some half-trained Padawan.

And later, after Cole got stuck to the Ebon Hawk, Atris had asked Kaevee if she could recite the Jedi Code—and she couldn't. She remembered some of it now; on Malachor, when the Nautolan Sith had been raking through her mind, one of the shards of memory that had resurfaced came from when she had been a girl, probably ten or eleven, repeating the code for Emon. There is no passion; there is serenity. But even that was incomplete, and though Kaevee did not doubt there was truth in that cryptic axiom, she could not imagine what it had to do with herself as she had been since the Enclave's destruction.

She knew the meaning of her vision, or whatever it had been. Emon had reacted to her with dismay because he did not recognize her as a Jedi. Because she wasn't one. Long ago she had known the code, known the other precepts, and had trusted in the Force. And without realizing it she had lost those things—as surely as she had lost her lightsaber, lost her Master, and lost the Order.

She went to the main hold, where she spent a few minutes fiddling with the holotable controls before figuring out how to turn on the galaxy map. Without her meaning to, her eyes alighted first on the Malachor system, on the border of the dark expanse where a hidden Sith Empire reigned. Purposefully she looked away, and soon picked out Dantooine's star from the field of pinpoint lights.

The Jedi Enclave she knew had not been the only one of its kind. Aside from the Great Temple on Coruscant, the Order had other academies, havens, and libraries dispersed across known space. Its legacy covered a wide area, and there had to be many places in the galaxy where Jedi could be hiding—where they had to be hiding, Kaevee told herself. And if the Force did have a will, if it was her destiny to complete her training, then surely she would find her way to them, sooner or later. But until she did…

With the click of a button, she shut down the holotable and headed for the loading ramp.

Until she did, she would have to be patient and actually let other people guide her in the meantime. They may not have been Jedi, but there were still some things that Kaevee needed to learn with their help. And, more importantly, there were perhaps things that she needed to unlearn as well.

A vague anxiety nipped at Kaevee's heels as she left the Ebon Hawk and headed back toward the guest quarters, and gradually she quickened her pace. Upon reaching her destination, she was so intent on not losing her nerve that she actually rapped on the door instead of pressing the chimer.

"Come in." The voice from within was distant, almost a murmur.

Kaevee opened the door, expecting for some reason that the lights would be off. They weren't. On the right side of the room was a pristinely-made bed. On the opposite side was Atris, sitting at a table which was bare except for a datapad whose screen gave off a soft blue glow. Though the old woman's eyes were veiled as usual by the hood of her smoke-gray robe, she nevertheless turned her head toward her visitor and offered a smile. "Kaevee. Welcome back… Please sit down; I've had hardly any visitors of late."

Somewhat reassured by her hostess' pleasant demeanor, Kaevee went in and sat across from her. "Oh, uh… I'm sorry. I've needed time to think."

"No need to apologize," Atris replied. She tipped her head toward the datapad. "I've needed time to read. I always preferred holocrons, but this is… simpler."

"What've you been reading?"

"History. What else is there?"

Kaevee shrugged, folded her arms in front of herself, and a long moment passed filled only by the sterile, endless-breathing sound of the gargantuan starship that carried them. There was no shortage of things she wanted to say to Atris, but she couldn't seem to decide which of them to say first; she wasn't quite sure which of them she could make herself say at all.

The old woman broke the silence. "What happened to you, Kaevee?"

Kaevee wasn't startled by the directness of the question. If anything, it was a relief—but still her eyes sank to the table. "I didn't listen to you," she managed to say. "I almost died. More than once."

"Yet here you are."

"Yeah… but only thanks to you. And Atton. And my laigrek. I can't keep going on the way I have. I'm not—" She stopped herself, realizing the sentence would have ended, not a Jedi, and even though it was true, admitting it out loud was a bridge too far. But she could come close. "I need help. I need you to teach me about the Force. And teach me how to… move on."

There was another long, still moment, during which Atris slowly inclined her head as though contemplating what her guest had said to her. Finally she nodded, gingerly pushed her chair back, and stood up. "Very well. We will speak of these things. But first…" She took up her cane and pointed with it at the center of the room. "Sit there. We will meditate."

Kaevee eyed the indicated spot on the floor as though a pit had opened up in it. "I can't remember—"

"I will teach you how."

Telling herself that this was what she knew she needed, Kaevee went over and sat down cross-legged. As she closed her eyes, the old words drifted up out of her heart like a column of smoke. I am a Jedi, the Force is with me, I am a Jedi, the Force is with me… The mantra was warm. It was comfortable.

And it was a lie. Her throat tightened a little as she stopped it up. I'm sorry, Master. I'm sorry I forgot so much.

She did not notice that Atris had sat down across from her until she heard the old woman's voice again. "Still yourself. Breathe. Let the Force flow into you."

Kaevee felt the Force, fundamentally as she always had, but she was still only floating on its surface. She made herself breathe slower, deeper, but already she was out of her element—or what she had long believed was her element. Without opening her eyes she asked, "How?"

"Listen to the silence."

As bizarre as the command was, Kaevee tried to carry it out. But the seconds ticked by and she still floundered on the surface of peace, or unity, or whatever the goal of meditation was, and she heard only the vexing sound of space travel—the hiss of air through the Valiant's ventilation system, the steady hum of electricity through its conduits, the droning of its engines. Straining against it, she murmured, "I can't. There's so much noise…"

"Quiet." Though Atris' voice was low, it had the force of a poke from her cane. "Imagine yourself in a room…" For some reason she hesitated. "…of a thousand fountains. They flow endlessly, effortlessly, clear as crystal. Listen to them…"

Kaevee felt a tickle of distraction; if it was up to her, she'd have put the fountains outside and not in a room. She wasn't giving the lesson, though, so she painted the scene in her mind and tried to hold it between herself and the noise, tried to turn the sterile ambiance of the Valiant into the rumble of the waters. She thought of herself slowly approaching one of the fountains, walking into its mist and letting it settle on herself. She thought of Daluuj, of the subtle little ecstasy of emerging from the Ebon Hawk and feeling the rain.

"Now imagine yourself in the sanctuary on Belsavis. Imagine the cistern, its water still and shining… and listen to it."

That was a less pleasant image, but Kaevee dutifully drew it up. She remembered looking down into the cistern, her world in pieces, as in a way it still was, and did so again in her mind's eye. There was still noise, but there was also the image and silence of the cistern, and beyond those things the Force. It was not a Force power such as those Kaevee knew about, but the Force itself, which in a way she had lost track of over the years, and which in all its incomprehensible purity orbited outside her reach.

She accepted that it would remain that way—for now—and for a long time she sat with Atris, wrestling with the noise and resting in the silence.