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Chapter 3

You Are My World, You're Every Breath I Take…

28 ABY
Eclipse Station, Deep Core

Anakin felt, for the third time in as many days, a sense of otherness; of unreality, as though he were not truly himself, but another being, observing the gathering before him from an alien body. What was happening before him was absurd, and he simply couldn't believe they were getting away with it. He was watching Tahiri, his Tahiri, not the time travelling, Flow Walking, former Sith version of her who had been manipulated by his psychotic brother, but his actual Tahiri, lie like a champ to a room full of Jedi.

And they were eating up every last word.

He had to hand it to her, as disturbing as this was; she was good. But then, she had to be. And she had spent hours going over this stuff.

The Tahiris weren't messing around when it came to the prospect of keeping him alive; they had become very methodical and businesslike. Younger Tahiri had been taking copious notes while Older Tahiri continued her narrative of the 'last time' and all that had gone wrong.

This particular idea, the one Younger Tahiri was currently selling like fresh shuura fruit on a hot day, was Older Tahiri's, and though painfully obvious once she'd thought of it, had only come to her during her rest period the day before. She had reasoned that since none of the other Jedi had ever asked, or seemed to really care about her shaping, and she had never volunteered anything beyond a very basic debriefing, that Younger Tahiri and Anakin had a free pass to use all of Older Tahiri's knowledge of the 'past' and act like they knew some of what was in store for the Strike Team based on Younger Tahiri's implanted 'creche' training. The reality was that Younger Tahiri would have had no idea what she was talking about, but at this stage of the game, none of the three of them were inclined to let 'reality' stand in the way of getting stuff done.

There was no specific protocol for 'breaking' that any of the castes used, so Tahiri, or Riina, wouldn't have learned anything about that while she was 'growing up' on a world ship, as she now claimed. No problem there. The Tahiris just made that part up and went with it figuring the more information they could impart, the better prepared the team would be.

In horrid detail, Younger Tahiri explained that in group settings it wasn't the person being hurt that the inflictor was really trying to get information from; it was the ones sitting around listening to the screams that they were hoping to make talk, in an effort to protect their companions. Also, just for fun, they'd likely be pinned down, with Borlash jelly or something, facing away from the action, left to wonder what was being done to the person being abused, relying on the imagination of the listener to conjure up far worse abuse than even the Yuuzhan Vong could think of. Just to get the point across, and because Younger Tahiri was beginning to develop a real dislike for Jacen, she asked him to imagine what would go through his mind if he were bound to the floor, with Tenel Ka behind him, out of eyesight, screaming in pain, being taunted by the enemy.

Raynar broke the tension by commenting that it seemed odd that the Yuuzhan Vong would be so methodical and slavish to their interrogation methods, and doubted the accuracy of Tahiri's claims. She simply acted put out, not hard for her, and told him that she didn't think to ask the shapers why they implanted the information they did while they were torturing her, and that if he didn't believe her, he certainly didn't have to listen. No one else was stupid enough to question her and Anakin assumed that it had less to do with doubts about Tahiri's information than the futility of debating her claims.

The Voxyn was an easier matter to address, and certainly for the team members to hear. Though the Jedi present didn't know it, the beasts hadn't existed yet during Tahiri's captivity, nor had Mezhan Kwaad or Nen Yim been involved in their shaping. In fact, most of the information the team would ever know had been gathered by Cilghal at Eclipse. And while it had been Tenel Ka who had initially posed the theory that the Voxyn were clones of a single specimen, Tahiri was offering a sudden wealth of knowledge that backed up all that the Jedi had learned, reinforcing their suspicions, only adding a few new pieces of information. When asked why she was just now coming forth with all this, she explained that she had repressed memories of her time in the damutek due to the pain of the whole experience and it was during her and Ankin's recent 'meditation' sessions that she was able to recover the information that she was sharing.

A moment after the words 'meditation sessions' were out of Tahiri's mouth, Anakin caught the gist of a conversation between Ganner and Raynar about needing to pay up, and Raynar's response that 'meditating' didn't necessarily mean they were meditating and besides, it depended on whether or not Anakin and Tahiri had started meditating before or after they left the Errant Venture that determined whether Raynar owed Ganner or Zekk. The out of body feeling vanished in an instant, replaced by rage, and an animal protectiveness for Tahiri. Anakin felt a sudden stiffening in the two seats behind him; clearly Ganner and Raynar sensed that they had been overheard and both were waiting for the eruption from him. But the eruption didn't come, instead Anakin took a breath, calmed himself and looked back up at Tahiri, who had stopped talking and was looking at him, eyes squinted. She had felt the emotional surge and was waiting to see what was going on.

Anakin nodded his head, saying, "Sorry, I just had a thought, we can discuss it later. But in the meantime, we've probably gone over all this enough. Why don't we go on to the religious stuff; the shamed ones and the twin thing; I'm sure Jaina and Jacen in particular will be interested in that."

He knew Tahiri didn't believe him, he hadn't even attempted to cover his lie in their bond, and that in and of itself would tell her that whatever it was that had set him off he would let her in on later.

Nodding slightly, Tahiri turned back to the group and, addressing Luke specifically, who was sitting three seats over from her, began reciting tales of Gods that had dismembered themselves, rumors of a heretical movement among the shamed ones and the possibility that Anakin and Tahiri could be at the center of it, and finally, twins, and why Jaina and Jacen, Jedi twins of a Jedi twin, might be of extra special significance to their soon to be captors.

The assembled team had heard about the Shamed Ones story when Anakin, Tahiri and Corran had returned from Yag' Dhul, so that wasn't new, but the claim that it may be of importance during the mission was, and completely fabricated by Older Tahiri. There was no reason to believe that the Shamed Ones on the world ship they were headed for, which Anakin and Tahiri were careful not to refer to by name, would have heard the story of the Jedi Who Was Shaped and The Jedi Who Stood With Rua Vuuang, but the team didn't know that, and what they didn't know could come in handy later on. Older Tahiri had thought that if Anakin did wind up hurt, or if for any other reason the team needed to hide, as they had last time, then their belief that they could trust Shamed Ones would save time. It was flimsy, but they'd take flimsy over nothing any day.

Anakin phased in and out of listening to Tahiri recite information and answer questions, all of which he'd heard before, and thought more about what he had just overheard and what that meant to the team.

He and Older Tahiri, on the night she had first appeared, had pondered whether anyone had known about their sex life. They had ultimately decided that it didn't matter, but Anakin realized now that it did.

Respect. That was the issue here, and Anakin knew exactly why it was important.

According to Older Tahiri, there was considerable discord in the meld and the group had broken down three ways; those who followed Anakin, those who followed Jacen, and those who made their own decisions based on their own feelings regarding a given order. If the Jedi were so lacking in respect for him that they would make base comments and entertain themselves by placing bets about his sex life, what did that say about their willingness to follow his command? Did they think he was behaving irresponsibly with Tahiri? Did they feel he was making inappropriate choices? Were they more likely to follow his holier than thou brother based on their own prejudices of how they thought Anakin and Tahiri should be conducting themselves privately? It was possible that none of these things had anything to do with each other, but it was also possible that it was all tied together. It was possible that this was an example of a situation where Anakin was making a choice that the others would not make themselves and would therefore have an effect on their willingness to follow his lead.

And why would the team members lack respect for his relationship with Tahiri? Because they saw him as a 'little brother', didn't really know Tahiri, and they didn't understand the magnitude of what they were looking at.

It had struck Anakin a couple of days earlier, whilst listening to the Tahiris plot out the next few weeks of his life, that they were engaging in a very intricate, and carefully strategic, game of psychological warfare; them against anyone who wasn't Anakin; winner take all. They were effectively manipulating the team members by supplying the right information to keep Anakin alive. They certainly didn't want to cause harm to any of the others, but no one else was as important as he was.

At one point their seemingly obsessive devotion to him frightened him a bit, but then he sat back and tried to put himself in their shoes and felt like his chest would cave in.

He was all Younger Tahiri had in the galaxy. No one loved her but him. There were people who cared somewhat, there were even people who would mourn her if she died he supposed, but there was no one else who truly and deeply loved her, and she certainly wasn't the center of anyone else's existence. No one but him would have a hard time facing a day without her in it and it was losing that love that had driven Older Tahiri to what she was now; a convicted felon who had dabbled in Sithdom and murdered people so she could see glimpses of him in back flashes.

He had eventually realized that Tahiri's devotion, his Tahiri's, was not so frightening after all, because it was exactly what he felt for her; there was nothing that he wouldn't do to keep her safe, nothing he wouldn't sacrifice. If told he had to choose between Tahiri and his family, as much as he would wish he didn't have to make the choice, he'd choose Tahiri. If faced with saving her or any member of the team, he'd choose her, without thinking twice.

So why had the other Anakin taken the amphistaff wound for Jaina? Because he didn't realize what he was doing; what he was ultimately giving up. And when that mistake was compounded by his youthful brashness and the team's sabotage by Lomi Plo and Welk, he ended up sacrificing the one thing he wanted never to sacrifice; his and Tahiri's future.

And again, how did this all tie together? It all tied together because not a single member of the team felt about anyone else the way Anakin and Tahiri felt about each other. They would not see the intimacy that they shared as anything other than two horny teenagers engaging in raucous physical activity while the grownups weren't looking. They wouldn't see Anakin's and Tahiri's private life as an expression of deep love and commitment, or a precursor to a formal bond, which they had already planned. They did not understand the significance of their commitment to each other and therefore didn't take it seriously. And if the team didn't take their actions within their relationship seriously, would they take their actions regarding this mission seriously?

Did any of them take any of this seriously? How could they? They likely all saw this mission the way they saw Anakin's and Tahiri's relationship; they didn't understand. They were all naïve, unprepared, and idealistic, and Anakin was beginning to think that his father was right and Luke was an idiot for letting them go. It was no wonder that the last mission had been such a klusterkriff from the start. Anakin had to wonder if it was better that he had Older Tahiri to guide him through it this time, or if ignorance again would have been bliss.

Rubbing his hands down his face, Anakin realized that he had his topic for tonight's team meeting, the last one before they boarded the Lady Luck in the morning. They were going to go over the meld again. They were going to talk about respect and authority, and about making hard choices and following orders. They were going to discuss the fact that sometimes you had to do things that didn't feel right in order to accomplish something that was right. They were going to revisit the fact that on this mission Anakin's word was law and that if anyone thought for one second that he or she might not be able to do exactly what he said when he said it without thinking twice then they were staying behind, and then Anakin was going to drop the big bomb that Older Tahiri had made him promise to save for last: they were going to discuss what they would do if they felt or found any other Force sensitives on the World Ship once they got there.