CHAPTER FIVE:
Blood and Bone and Breath
Obi-Wan Kenobi's P.O.V
From what Obi-Wan Kenobi could see through the glass partition leading out to the balcony, Leilani was doing nothing but standing there leaning against the railing. He thought, however, deeper than vision could see, she might have been trying to hold her own universe together by the severity of her back, the hunch of her shoulders, and the brace of her feet.
She looked sturdy, he thought, but wilting like a flower planted in the desert.
It was only as he slipped out the door and onto the stone and steel terrace that he saw what truly kept the girl stiff and stationary.
Cradled in her hands, upon her index finger, was a small, airborne creature of some kind. Hairy bellied, long with wiggling feelers, its wings stretched out from its back, paper thin, resplendent in red and gold, the colours merging and swirling as spry as sunset on golden sands.
"Leilani?"
The creature vanished with a tiny puff of pale light, the same light, almost too white, Obi-wan had walked in on Anakin holding just a few hours prior, as the young woman in question glanced his way.
She must have made the creature herself, guided Force into a new life to hold in a quivering hand.
Remarkable.
Then why when she smiled, Obi-wan thought, with such enchantment quite literally at her fingertips, did it not quite reach her eye?
"Force…"
Lifting the hand that had held the creature so carefully, she facetiously brandished at the air around them.
"Everywhere… Here. Make Lelu… Betvonmere?"
Betvonmere-
A pulse in the air, a beat that started weak but grew sharper, faster.
Ah.
"Better? Being here makes you stronger?"
She tasted the word with a roll of her tongue.
"Stronger?"
A stilted nod, and she echoed herself across the breeze.
"Stronger."
Regarding the horizon splayed out before them, the smile fell from her face, and Obi-wan crossed the small distance between to rest beside her by the balcony railing.
From so high up, Coruscant looked almost peaceful. Looks could be deceiving, he thought.
In more ways than one.
"Is that what happened with Anakin?"
Her eyes darted his way, though she did not turn to face him, the heated glare was enough of a response he supposed with a rocky chuckle.
"Anakin rude."
Her hand raised anew, fingers flexing, pausing, before she tapped at her temple.
"Rude. Push… Far. See what shouldn't see."
Now it was Obi-Wan's turn to nod, an easy, anticipated passage of movement when it came to Anakin Skywalker doing what he should not be doing.
"Yes, Anakin does have a habit of crossing boundaries more often than not."
Sighing, however, he spun her way, resting on the crux of his elbow perched on the upmost fence bar.
"But he means well. He's terribly upset with himself, sulking in his room as he is. He believes he's made you mad."
It was hard to know exactly how much was getting through that terrible thick language barrier, but something must have crossed by the way her jaw rolled, a jumping muscle chewing words that tasted sour by the wince of her green eye.
"No mad… Scared."
Obi-wan snickered.
"Anakin scared? I think not-"
The realisation came swift and hard.
Not mad… Scared.
Her.
"You. You mean you, don't you?"
She shuffled at the edge of the balcony, a tense sort of scuffle where the soles of her shoes scraped against the light stone, and purposefully turned to face the skyline. Even with only half her face visible through the stance and fall of shockingly red hair, Obi-Wan could see the drawn line of her mouth.
Of course, Anakin had told him what had transpired after Obi-Wan had entered the room, Leilani shouldering her way passed and storming off onto the balcony with one more pointed 'Rude!' thrown over her shoulder.
The two had been trying to talk, in any conductive way possible, and somewhere along the way something had gone wrong. Anakin had seen something, a crying child in a damp dark place and-
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
See what shouldn't see.
"That vision he saw of the closet and the child… That was your memory, wasn't it?"
There was no need for crossover words, no need to wonder what got through the language barrier or not.
Her silence said enough.
Obi-wan slid his hand across the railing, body following, not quite touching, but as close as he dared to be without being blinded and winded by the spark in her skin, hoping that proximity might offer some faint sort of comfort to the clearly disgruntled Progenitor.
"There's no reason to be scared here. We will not harm you."
Her cheeks puffed and-
She huffed at him.
She whirled then, gracefully, like water flowing in a ravine, spinning to face him head on, hip propped against the railing, leaning in closer still, voice a murmured wisp.
"Force everywhere here. Not way back home. Force only… Inside. Around Friends. Family. In us. No outside. Only within. Here… Everywhere."
Anew, Obi-Wan nodded.
"Yes. It flows through all things, moving us in mysterious-"
She cut him off with a harsh slap of a hand upon her own chest, fingers curling into the cloth of her tunic almost cruelly.
"Here. Force here. Me Force. Blood… Bone… Breath. Me."
Sluggishly, tenderly, she reached out that same hand that had been so cruel upon herself, and placed it upon his own chest, smooth and gentle and filled with kindling star-fire.
His chest ignited, swallowing, pulling, and he could feel the heat lace down his stomach, into his legs and hands and hair and-
"Derman… Uh… Hollow."
The hand dropped away, and the insult stung before Obi-Wan realized what she was truly trying to say.
"We are not created of the Force quite like you are."
"Me… Tuvmar… Tuvmar…"
Her eyes glanced up, as if she were trying to search her own mind for the word that would link it all together.
"Beep-beep. Beep-beep…. Tuvmar…"
Gesturing before her, something small, compact-
The humming in the air.
The flood of star-fire in veins.
It clicked suddenly, unbelievably, irrevocably.
"Battery."
Obi-Wan said, and she smiled at his answer, toothy, untamed, as bright as the feeling her touch brought.
"Battery. Me battery. Anakin touch… Absorb… push… Me… Charge?"
The dots connect like a star map plotting a route home from unknown space.
Anakin must have used the Force around him when trying to communicate, and in turn, took it within himself, mixed the two, and the Force around him at the time had been Leilani.
It was possibly why he had been able to do what he did, despite the Jedi never having heard of this means of communication.
The hands cradling the ball of white-bright light.
They had been touching, had they not?
Touch that had amplified Anakin's own abilities into something that matched the Progenitors.
Touch that had taken, and matched, and bled back out for Leilani to soak up back into herself.
"That's why you're speaking clearer, is it not? Why you are understanding us better? Every time you touch something-… Someone, they're accidently feeding off you and looping it back into you. You absorb the Force we use right back and-"
Leilani nodded urgently, but then lifted one shoulder in a half-formed shrug.
"Learn. Small… Slither. Not… Enough."
Obi-Wan pulled away from the railing entirely.
"This is brilliant news. If we try again-… You do not seem very happy with this happenstance."
Nevertheless, there was nothing half formed about her flinch.
"Battery. Touch… Anakin-… Me Battery. If Sith…"
The Lightsaber drops, and with it, so does Obi-Wan's stomach.
"If the Sith get a hold of you, they can do the same and… Well, that would be terrible indeed."
If this were the case, and Leilani was a… Conduit or Avatar, so to speak, of the Force, a battery that could soak in Force and magnify a Force wielders abilities by mere presence or touch alone, then this was…
More perilous and grave than originally understood.
If she were made of the Force, a shard of it within, a sea of it, a supernova star as Obi-Wan had felt himself, then, surely, it was a two-way street. What she was around, the Force that lingered outside of herself, could, perhaps, infect her and bend her and influence her.
Her absorbing snippets of language from Obi-wan and Anakin had proven this thus far.
The Force was connected with all things, a connection, it would seem, even Leilani was not exempt from. If she were around a Sith, not only would she amplify their powers, but they could also, by exposure, transfer that fear, that hatred, that anger-
The darkness to her.
Into her.
And a Dark Side Progenitor was a chilling and sobering thought.
Reaching up, mind circling with thoughts that came too fast to grasp completely, Obi-Wan softly stroked at the beard of his chin.
"This changes things."
Leilani, in response, trundled back to the edge of the balcony, back to Coruscant, leaning heavily on the railing. The sigh, Obi-Wan heard, cut off, held in her chest stiffly.
"Scared… No hurt. Me no hurt no one."
Obi-Wan followed, side by side, and this time he did reach out, this time he did place a hand upon the small shoulder, and this time, as the embers and spurs of white-bright light ignited like meteor showers behind his eye lids, he held on tightly, and he smiled.
"And it is exactly because your first thought is not hurting anyone that you will not."
He too faced Coruscant.
The sun was sinking behind the Hyperion tower, setting low into the belly of steal and glass and flashing lights.
Night was coming, and, Obi-Wan thought, it would be a dark, heavy, long one.
In more ways than one.
His hand did not draw away from the shoulder, instead, it gripped tighter.
Even in the darkest of nights, Qui-Gon used to tell him so long ago, there were stars to light one's path if one only remembered to look up.
Now there was another right below his fingers.
"We'll deal with the Sith when the time comes."
She glanced over, looking up, smiling, doing a strange movement he had never seen with her hands, two fingers forward, straight and locked ahead, three and thumb curling back into a fist, aimed at him.
"Peshew, peshew?"
A blaster pistol.
He laughs then, boisterously, perhaps the most loudly he had in years, the kind of laughter that flooded warmth between one's ribs and lungs and made the places between places warm, making them ache in that pleasant way.
"Yes, peshew, peshew if we must."
She almost jumped on her feet, fleeing the balcony, grinning, momentary annoyance at Anakin seemingly long forgotten by her shout into the rooms behind.
"Anakin! We Sith peshew, peshew!"
Anakin Skywalker's P.O.V
It was dark that night, mist and cloud heavy over the Jedi Temple. No stars, no moon, barely a passing speeder breaking the heavy silence pressing down upon the planet. Tossing for the hundredth time between his sheets, young Skywalker gave up the hope of sleeping that night and instead threw the tangled blankets off, slipped into his robes, and made way to the congregation chamber linking the three sleeping quarters together.
Obi-Wan would be asleep by now, and Leilani too, locked away safe in their own spaces.
A cup of tea to calm Anakin's whirling thoughts would, perhaps, help him meet them there. Hopefully before he only managed to get two hours sleep before dawn came and with it, the day ahead.
Nevertheless, any and all ideas of sleep and dreams and cups of tea were dashed when he entered the larger chamber, as Anakin was hit by the blue light of a drawn Lightsaber, and a pair of brilliant blinking green eyes.
Anakin sputtered, stumbling to a stop just inside the room.
"What by the Force are you doing with Master Kenobi's Lightsaber?"
The blade withdrew with a click of a button, and Leilani, now dressed in what appeared to be a mimicked version of his own robes, unalike only by their shocking red and gold hues, put a finger to her lips, just one, and hissed wind between her pressed lips.
"Shhhhh!"
Glancing right, to the only closed door left, Leilani waited with bated breath. When no bedraggled Jedi Master came out of Obi-Wan's room, she turned to him in the dark and grinned.
"We Sith Peshew, peshew!"
Anakin rolled his eyes, but could not fight the smile from breaking across his face.
"I very much doubt you're going to fight a Sith before dawn."
She very nearly looked petulant.
"You no know."
Instead of returning the Lightsaber from where she had clearly stolen it, and how she had done so without awaking Anakin's Master was beyond him, back on the nightstand beside the bed where Obi-Wan kept his weapon close at hand, she strapped it to the belt of her robes with a snap of a loop.
That was around when Anakin noticed she had boots on.
"And where exactly do you think you are going with that?"
Leilani ignored him partially, an action that… Chaffed at something unnameable in his rib cage, and made her way for the door exiting their chambers, barking one lone word out into the darkness.
"Roof."
The door swished open as she pressed the button, and Anakin Jostled the straps of his robes closed, toeing on his boots at the entrance of their chambers, rushing to follow Leilani's quickly disappearing form, huffing and puffing along the way.
Out in the empty hall, Anakin hissed.
"You're not going to get far without an access chip for the doors along the way. That's to some extent why the droids shot at you before. You had no identification."
She span on her heel elegantly, still strolling backwards down the shadowed hall with quick, sure steps, hand dipping between the folds of her robes and producing-
An access chip.
His access chip.
His access chip that he kept safe on his persons at all time.
His own hand snapped to the pocket of his breeches.
It met flat fabric.
Robes and breeches he had only just put on, but had been braced across his sleeping chamber's chair only minutes before.
A chair she would have had to sneak to, while he had been awake, and rummage through to get that chip.
"How did you get that?"
Anakin caught up to the imp, reaching out to snatch at the chip she teasingly held out, but, inevitably, she was faster, clasping it in a tight, safe fist and-
Winking.
She winked at him, once again placing a finger to her lips.
"Shhhh. Secret."
Anakin glared.
"You can't just steal things."
Leilani span back around, marching down the corridor, chuckling huskily into the night, cocking her head at him playfully.
"No steal. Borrow. Give back… Eventually."
Anakin snorted indignantly, and fought to keep up with her swift strides, surprising how fast she could move given how short she was, murmuring underneath his breath.
"I almost liked you better when I couldn't understand you at all."
A hand shot out, grabbed his Padawan braid by the beads, and tugged mischievously before relinquishing the lock of interwoven hair.
"Rude, Force-boy."
She carried on down the hall, and this was when Anakin should really have doubled back and awoken his Master, Obi-Wan. Dragged him out of bed so he could drag Leilani into hers.
Leilani, at least somewhat, listened to the older Jedi.
And yet, Anakin made no such move, rather following, voice rolling low, hoping against all they did not run into any Master's making rounds.
"Why are you going to the roof?"
She came to the end of the corridor, skirted to the side, and poked her head around the corner, checking left and right before her body followed through.
So she did understand that she should not be creeping around in the dead of night then?
Anakin wasn't sure whether that was comforting or not, and what it truly said about him that he was not putting a stop to this right then and there.
"Roof Sith."
She drummed at the scar cutting her copper brow in two with a knuckle.
"Sense. Touch? Stood? Sense."
Leilani wanted to go see if she could sense the Sith that had been on the roof, then?
Surely that wasn't too dangerous?
The Sith would be long gone by now, and-
Anakin reached out, snagged the fold of her robe by her arm, and pulled her close to the wall with a muted thud of their backs meeting brick.
Through the dark she glared at him heatedly, but, mercifully for them both, before she could, likely, yell at him, call him 'Rude!' all over again, Master Plo Koon came down the adjacent hall and into the neighbouring exit towards the Council meeting halls.
One breath, one step, two breath, two steps-
Gone.
Anakin sagged, sighing raggedly. He could hear thrumming, a pounding below his flesh that was nearly unbearably warm, a whipping surge of something white and light and powerful sinking down into his guts and-
"Go now?"
"We should head back and talk to Master-"
However, Leilani wasn't gesturing towards the path forward, nor backwards to their rooms, dreadfully, she was nodding down to his hand still on her shoulder, fastened snugly.
Anakin's hand snatched back from the limb, and the thrumming sensation ceased, leaving cold, lonely silence.
The heat, however, ostensibly fled right up to his cheeks.
It wasn't a blush, of course.
Anakin Skywalker did not blush.
"Sorry."
She beamed at him, all teeth and dimple and a touch more or less feral, and pounced away from the wall, heading the way Plo Koon had come.
"Quick look. No fear, Force-boy."
By the looks of things, Anakin had two options.
Run back like the wind and awaken Master Kenobi so they could both find Leilani and bring her back.
Or…
"I'm not scared. Fine… A quick look, and then we must head back."
Stealing at his sleeve, Leilani and Anakin made their way sneaking through the dark.
"Knew you Gryffindor!"
He did not know what a Gryffindor was, but it appeared to be high praise by the way she grinned at him even, somehow, someway, impossibly, brighter.
No, Anakin Skywalker did not blush.
Never.
Anakin Skywalker's P.O.V
Standing upon the Jedi Temple roof at night, side by side with a Progenitor, was a altogether distinct experience. Dark was the night, calm was the wind, and peaceful was the ground.
Peaceful and destroyed.
Most of the rubble from the Shroud exploding, as it had, was still there in shambled pieces and debris mounds, the broken chairs from the conference littering the walkway, the unusual scorch mark from the blast a scar across the stone.
Leilani stood at his flank, staring at what was left of the Shroud standing upright on the cracked and crumbled plinth, a small, jarring slag of carven rock.
"Way home gone."
There was no way home, not for her, and not now, according to Master Yoda earlier that day. Not for anyone or anything that came from the Shrouds. Nevertheless, she possibly hadn't understood that at the time, too caught up in painting on the walls.
There was a little voice in the back of Anakin's mind that whispers good at the prospect of her way away being destroyed, gone, out of her reach.
Anakin steadfastly pretended that little voice did not exist.
Leilani herself bent down deep, balancing on her heels, and dusted off a stone slab by her foot.
The Jedi symbol etched across the face in blue and white greeted her.
Her hand loitered over the emblem, fingers tracing, a loving caress across the azure.
"You know Jedi mean?"
Anakin frowned down at her back.
"It's an Order, my Order, duty bound to uphold peace within our galaxy."
Her hand pulled away from the stone, a swift wipe on her thigh before she stood anew.
"No. Jedi my tongue?"
Oh, what Jedi meant in Protobesh?
Evidently, Anakin could not answer that, but his head did cock curiously.
"It has a direct translation?"
She regarded the slate before her solemnly, miserably some might say.
"Phoenix. Jedi mean Phoenix. Old order… My Order. Order of the Phoenix. Sirius too."
She pointed down to the symbol, keen eyes sharp in the dim night.
"See? Wings… Phoenix rising. Same symbol we use… Used."
Use-d.
Past tense.
Fleetingly, Anakin questioned what he would do, what he would feel, standing in Leilani's boots. Eons into the future, staring at the faces of his people that he could no longer recognize, could not speak the same language as fluently, so far apart now they were virtually different species.
What would the primordial soup say to the mammal?
What would the big bang say to the asteroid?
How far did the bridge between their lives go?
It must be bizarre.
It must be hard.
"You were a part of the proto-Jedi. You were there when all this first began."
Leilani bite at the tender flesh of her lip.
"Order young my time. Mother, father, first members. Meant to end. Meant to go when Voldemort go… Tom came back. Sith Wizards came back. Order come back too… Fight now-… Fight then. Order Phoenix… Survived. Here now, standing but… Different. Not same."
She peered at him, unwavering, unyielding, holding him in place with something heavier than the Force.
"Lost much."
Anakin took a step closer.
"You can rebuild and-"
Leilani shook her head, fire-flame curls bouncing, melancholy slope pulling taut at the corners of her eyes.
"Not me. Jedi lost much. Hollow now… Lost much. Lost self."
If the Jedi Masters heard her say that-
But the Masters were not there, Anakin was, and, Anakin thought with a grin, even if they were Leilani would say exactly the same to them.
Lost self.
Was that not the point of their training? To rid themselves of their attachments, to become one with balance in neutral equilibrium? To bring peace, one must feel it for themselves first. That is the first lesson a Youngling is taught.
Anakin had never found peace.
"Is that why you trusted me back in that Senator's room? You saw the symbol and thought I was one of your own?"
He doesn't know why that idea… Aggravates him as much as it does, the idea that she had only taken his hand because of a badge at his breast, but it does, and Anakin ignores that has much as he ignored that little voice from before.
"No."
She laughed at him, sunny, strong, but not a ring of it mean.
"Anakin good heart. I see. Kind… Loud."
Anakin had no idea how, or why, a heart could be loud, and what that could possibly mean. Neither did he have time to question it further, as she ambled around him, towards the rubble, searching with her hand out, palm open and flat, passing over stone and brick and twisted chair leg-
Sensing.
Dutifully, more than a bit curious, Anakin followed, waiting and watching, and after a while, when they find themselves by the Chancellors podium, he breached the silence.
"See or sense anything?"
Before her hand could pass over the knocked over podium, Leilani heaved back, mouth sketched closed, shaking her head disappointedly.
"Sense Sith… Hiding. Good hiding… Insidious."
So she can sense him then.
Just not much else.
Visibly frustrated, Leilani stalked to the closest heap of wreckage and plonked down with a puff, and Anakin found himself being hauled along to her side, tumbling to a seat beside her, almost mindless to his own movements.
Their knees knocked, a flare and a dip in the shine.
It was… Nice here, comfortable and gentle, just the two of them, in the ruins of the old and new, lost and found, gone and here. Maybe not peace, maybe Anakin would never know peace, but it was… Pleasant, or some facsimile of that word he could not place.
All they were missing was Obi-Wan, he thought, or that little voice thought, or perhaps it was Leilani who thought it and somehow it had ended up in his own mind.
Did it really matter where it came from?
"Feel… Floating. Adrift. So… Different. Leilani Float away in the missing."
Her voice was tuned to a minor key, raw in its sincerity, harsh in its breaking.
Anakin had felt that way when he had been a child, when he had first come to this Temple on the death of Qui-Gon with a Master still in mourning with a Padawan now under his protection. In truth, of which a Jedi was always meant to be, no matter how uneasy that truth was to bare, he still sometimes felt that way, as if the ceiling was collapsing down upon him, burying him in dirt and dust and death, a weight pushing down, and down, and down until he would be devoured by the ground.
Anakin does not have an answer to Leilani's concern, as he did not have an answer to his own.
Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone's hand was the beginning of a journey, as it had been for them in the Senator's rooms.
And sometimes, having someone take your own was when journeys became something more.
Perhaps Leilani sensed something, possibly she could read his thoughts, it could be that he had accidently spoken it all in one pouring flood, but one moment his hand was empty and the next her own glided down his arm, closing over his hand, fingers lacing, palms kissing.
Anakin could feel the steady thump of her heart through the soft, lean skin and-
There was no star-fire blaze that time, nothing so harsh and blinding and impossible to describe.
Only gentleness, a tender lapping, the barest of burns that did not warm but enfolded and embraced.
Home.
It felt like home.
When he peeked over, he found her smile as delicately beautiful as the feeling was.
"Help Skydancer fly."
Anakin held onto that feeling, and he took it deep, and he held it close, and he did not let it go.
"And I'll keep your feet on the ground."
Names and Orders, symbols and peace, Jedi and Sith seemed unimportant in that moment, that effortless reticence, that offer and promise.
I'll help you fly.
I'll keep you grounded.
They sit there, him and she, she and him, perhaps just one, with the soft-burn beneath their bones, watching the sunrise over-
Sunrise.
Obi-Wan would be waking by now.
Leilani seemingly came to the same conclusion he had, and the two leapt up, fleeing the rooftop hand in hand, laughing in the daybreak.
Obi-Wan Kenobi's P.O.V
By the time Obi-Wan awakened, lugged himself from his bed, sonic showered and dressed for the day, and made it to the congregation chamber of their suite at daybreak, Leilani and Anakin were already there, wide-eyed and alert and far too innocent looking.
That was the first sign.
Anakin was sitting in the chair, feet perched on the tables edge, carefully careless. Leilani was spread across the long seat, underneath a blanket from neck to shoe-
Shoe.
Second sign.
Both were a little tousled, flushed in the cheek, slightly out of breath.
Third sign.
Obi-Wan eyed the pair tiredly.
"Has either of you seen where I placed my Lightsaber?"
The two shared a not so inconspicuous glance at each other, and Anakin smiled charmingly his way.
"Have you checked the nightstand? That is normally where you leave it, Master."
Obi-Wan veered towards his doorway, speaking.
"I've already searched-"
He heard the clink of metal hitting glass, and when he turned back around, his Lightsaber was on the table between the chair and long seat, rolling in movement.
And Leilani's blanket corner was flipping back into exactly the same position it had been when Kenobi had peered towards his door.
Obi-Wan exhaled slow and hard, rubbed at the bridge of his nose, and moved towards their small pantry.
"Tea first, explanations after."
Obi-Wan Kenobi's P.O.V
"Well, next time Leilani wants to go rushing off into the night, at best wake me up and inform me, Anakin. Our duty now is to protect her, and I cannot fulfil that duty if I do not know where she is."
Anakin Skywalker, standing next to the runway of a small cargo freighter, appeared properly chastened.
Obi-Wan knew his Padawan better than that, however.
"Yes, Master."
Given the chance, given the tone, Anakin would do all this again.
Leilani herself was coming up on the rear, staring up at the ship as she strolled-
A fault in her step, a flinch at her eye, a slight misstep.
Her hand flew to the scar on her forehead, and Obi-Wan edged closer.
"Are you alright, Leilani?"
A transitory worry before Leilani brushed it off.
"Nothing… Think. Small burn… Far away. No fear."
She levelled out and dashed up the runway, into the mouth of the ship.
"Find Sirius!"
Obi-Wan and Anakin followed, and soon, the runway receded, and the door closed, and the engines fired to life.
A second later, the ship took off, heading for the stars.
No One's P.O.V
The forgotten eighth Shroud on Moraband stood tall against the blood drenched sky. A waver, a flicker, the voices of the damned.
A flash of screams and-
Silence.
Calm.
A cloaked figure stepped out from the Veil, pale, eyes as red as ruby moons, hissing in Parseltongue to the cackling woman at his side and the beast of grey, matted hair snarling at their right.
Death answered back, and it made the Dark Lord smile.
A.N: So the hunt for Sirius is on! Because everyone was so lovely last chapter, despite the horrible wait I put you all through, I decided to post this one sooner rather than later, especially seen as we have some major plot points happening in this one that push the story ahead. I am also convinced that, if Shrouds/Veils existed in the Star Wars universe, the Sith would have squirrelled one away a long, long time ago. So... Surprise Dark Lord lmao.
I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. I am extremely busy over the next month or so, but I am working on this, and other, fics during that time as much as possible. I can't promise too many updates, but I'm hoping to get one or two out. As always, Thank you all so much for the favourites, follows, and reviews, and if you are willing to feed this little trash goblin of a fic, don't forget to drop a few words in that box over there and hit send. Hopefully, I will see you all soon with another chapter.