Last time: The trio was attacked by Cien as they escaped Vestora.

Now: What is wrong with Sasha?

Part 2- Chapter 1: In Her Head

As soon as Oppie felt the ship lift off the surface and start maneuvering away, he let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. Viran was a naturally gifted pilot and his skills behind the controls of a ship could almost be matched to some of the best in the galaxy. So Oppie had no concern that Viran wouldn't get them out of there without being seen by the Star Destroyer in orbit. What he was concerned about was Sasha. She is a strong, compassionate, and kind person. She could easily take care of herself, that was part of the reason why Oppie left her in charge of the bar. The number of times a week she would throw someone out of there for brawling or causing a scene was proof enough that she didn't need anyone there to help her. However, in this case, she tried helping him and now was lying on one of the bunks in the ship's passenger compartment, unconscious.

Oppie ran a hand through his hair as he slumped down into a chair he had dragged over to her bedside. He retrieved their medical scanner and ran it over her. No injuries, nothing he could discern. She hadn't moved or made a sound, which worried him, but she was still breathing and it appeared to be regular.

As he sat there carefully watching her, he went through the run in with the Sith over and over again in his head. The one question that plagued them though as he thought about it was how did she even find them? It had to have been because she was a Force user and probably sensed them, but didn't seem that simple otherwise they would have been easier to catch from the start of the Empire. As he mulled over it all, he heard footsteps coming from the cockpit of the ship.

"Alright, I've set course and we're cruising through hyperspace," Viran said as he approached them. Oppie glanced up at him. He came to halt beside the bunk and folded his arms. Oppie could tell how concerned Viran was for Sasha. If he couldn't see it written all over Viran's face, he could sense it in the Force. "How is she doing?'

Oppie turned his attention back to Sasha's resting form. He leaned back in the chair, folding his arms too. "I don't know. She's just unconscious," he said while silently cursing the fact that he only had basic battlefield medic knowledge, and neither he nor Viran were really the healer type to know how she really was doing. And even though she wasn't a healer either, Sasha had a better understanding of medicine and first aid then they did. Which helped when they would get caught doing something stupid and end up hurting themselves or each other. But the one thing he was certain of was that the Sith was definitely to blame. "That Sith did something to her."

Viran's eyebrows shot up as he looked at Oppie in shock. "Wait, that… that was a Sith? You mean like what Vader is? Is she one of his Inquisitors?"

"I don't know," Oppie said with a shrug. "She said that she wasn't a part of the Empire under Palpatine."

That dreaded name. It might as well be a slur, because it always left a vile taste in Oppie's mouth. Curse that man and what he did to the Republic.

"So who are they with?" Viran asked as he leaned against the head of the bunk.

"I don't know," Oppie responded again. He truly did not know where she even came from or who she worked with.

Viran let a low growl escape as he shoved off the wall, closed his shaking hands into fists, and turned to Oppie with a seriously pissed look. "Well what do you know?"

Oppie straightened in his seat. Of the three of them, Viran and Oppie were always most likely to butt heads from time to time, even though it almost never happened. Sasha would always be the one to tell them to knock it off. His argument with Sasha before the Sith arrived was an almost unique moment for them. Rarely were they ever not on the same page. She would disagree with him, from time to time, but hardly ever did she fully explode at him. However, Oppie sensed that Viran and him were going to be clashing once again, but this time without Sasha to stop them. He couldn't let it get that far this time.

"I know it's not safe, we need to find someplace to lie low," Oppie started with a calm, but stern tone.

Viran shook his head. "What we should do is find someplace to get her help." He suggested in a similar tone.

He was not wrong. Oppie completely agreed that they should find Sasha some form of medical attention. It was just the question of where. Oppie hadn't been thinking about it too much yet, but he thought back to his research at work earlier that day. And then it clicked. He thought of someplace, someone. However, the mere thought of going there made his stomach queasy.

"There is one place where we might find help, but…" He trailed off, thinking of unpleasant memories. Before he could finish, Viran cut him off.

That made Viran smile. "Great! Where is it? I'll change the course now."

Oppie bit his lip before saying this next sentence. "It's Artemis."

Viran's smile fell away and his eyes widened. "Seriously?"

Oppie nodded.

Viran groaned and paced around in a circle. "I thought that planet was nothing but trees and wildlife! No one lives there. How is that going to help Sasha?" Viran's voice had become louder as his temper flared with each word he said. He was practically yelling by the time he said Sasha's name.

"Well that's where… he works from," Oppie said, keeping it vague. "It's all I have, but I trust him to be able to help us."

"You trust him?" Viran asked with his hands on his hips. "Who is "him" anyway? Is he against the Empire? Is he another Jedi? Is a smuggler for the Hutts? Is he a tap dancing Loth Cat?" He knew Viran was being sarcastic about the last one, but his irritation still shined through.

Oppie groaned. "It's complicated alright! He knows about us, he has kept our secret for the last five years - I promise I will explain everything once we find him. Right now, though he is the only other person we can trust."

Viran moved closer to Oppie, practically closing the gap till they were almost toe to toe with each other. The look in his eyes was one Oppie had never seen before from him. Viran really did care for her that deeply, didn't he?

"You've promised a lot of things, Oppie," Viran said evenly. "And since we have known each other, you have kept every single one of them. But today, you broke one of them and that was to protect me and Sasha from harm. Does she look okay to you? And if you trust this mystery person so much, do you promise they will help her? Help us?"

Oppie didn't break his stare. "Yes. He will."

Viran sighed and backed off. "Alright."

Suddenly, they heard a noise from Sasha's bunk.

Someone was yelling… loudly. Sasha really wished they would stop as her head was in so much pain. That's when she realized that she was slowly waking up. It seemed like it took an eternity for her to fully come to, but when she did she very carefully peeled her eyes open and winced at the light. She blinked her eyes rapidly a couple of times to clear her fogged over vision. Once she could see a little clearer, she turned her head to see Oppie and Viran staring each other down. However, what they were saying, she could barely make out. Slowly, she pushed herself up into a sitting position and instantly regretted it. Her head swam as her vision dotted and blurred. The next thing Sasha knew was she was falling.

"Sasha!" she heard Oppie and Viran say at the same time. Suddenly, the falling stopped and she was resting against someone. She opened her eyes again, clearing her vision and looked up to see that it was Viran.

"Viran?" Sasha asked in a groggy voice then placed her fingers to her forehead. "Ah man, my head feels like it's been stabbed with needles."

"Are you okay?" Oppie's concerned voice filled her ears. She looked up at Oppie as Viran helped her lay back down.

"I'm okay," Sasha said with wince. "It's my head. I just… I don't remember what happened." She then looked past them. "Are we… on the ship?"

Oppie nodded. "What was the last thing you do remember?" He asked.

"Umm… I was at the bar and Viran showed up like normal then…" Slowly everything started to come back to her. The Jedi who gave her the data card. Him getting arrested by the Empire. The three of them running away. The Sith. "It's all coming back now. I remember the Jedi and the Sith that showed up. But I can't remember what happened after that. What did she do?"

Oppie settled himself into the chair beside the bed. He frowned as he leaned forward, hands clasped before him. "I fought her with my blaster and the Force. She managed to pin me and was probably going to deal a killing blow to me when you returned with my saber and fought her. She stopped you with the Force and then did something to your mind, I think. I managed to get her away from you and Viran shot at her with the ship. I then grabbed you and we left. You've been unconscious since then."

Sasha laid there, putting all of the pieces back together in her mind. That's right. That is what happened. She then remembered his saber. She started to sit up and search frantically for it in her bunk.

"Where's your lightsaber?" Sasha asked in a panic.

Oppie frowned before he reached over and placed a hand on her shoulder, trying to get her to lie back down. "I left it behind on Vestora. Viran was distracting her and you were injured. It wasn't my top priority at the time. Now you need to lie back down. If your head really does hurt then you need to rest."

"But you've had that lightsaber since... I can't believe you just left it behind. I thought the lightsaber was our life and we were to protect it," Sasha asked stunned by what he said.

"As important as the lightsaber is, your life is more important. I would do the same thing all over again if it meant you both were safe," Oppie said looking between Viran and Sasha.

Sighing, Sasha laid back down on the bunk, sort of satisfied with that answer. But she still felt guilty that he left it behind to save her. As she laid back down, Viran stood from his crouch next to her bunk on the floor.

"Here, I'll grab you some pain killers and some water," Viran offered.

She watched as he made his way to the cabinet to grab those items. Sasha then looked back at Oppie.

"So are we safely away?' she asked.

"From the Star Destroyer and that Sith, yeah. For now at least," Oppie said.

Viran returned a moment later. He handed her a bottle of water and a couple of painkillers. Sasha propped herself up on her elbow to take them and have the water. While she did that, Oppie stood from his seat.

"Now that she's awake, let's change course," Oppie told Viran.

"Okay, I'll go do that now," Viran said with a nod. He then looked down at her and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I'm glad you're okay."

"Thanks, Viran," Sasha said after she swallowed the gulp of water she just drank.

Viran let his hand linger for a moment longer before he turned and headed back to the cockpit. Viran then paused and asked "I don't know about you both, but did you feel something familiar about that Jedi back there, something felt very strange and he reached out to me somehow, I can't explain how or why, but..."

Oppie and Sasha nodded in agreement that the Jedi had felt familiar.

"When you are better, we can discuss it, also don't forget about the data card." Viran said as he turned toward the cockpit

Sasha then turned her attention to Oppie, who was still standing.

"I'm going to go make sure he puts in the right coordinates," Oppie said. "Call us if you need anything. In the meantime, rest up. It will be a couple hours before we arrive."

"Arrive where exactly?' She asked, confused.

"Artemis." He replied.

"Really? I didn't know anything aside from the wildlife that lived there," Sasha said with a raised eyebrow.

"Well like I told Viran, there is someone I know, someone I trust who does live there," Oppie said.

"Oh, alright," Sasha said with a very small nod.

"Now rest," Oppie ordered as he made his way toward the cockpit.

"Wait, Oppie," Sasha called back.

Oppie stopped in his tracks. He turned back to face her. Sasha pushed herself up and off the bunk. She then reached into her belt pouch and pulled out the data card. She held it out for him. He walked back over and looked at it in her hand. His eyebrows raised as he grabbed it from her palm and held it between his fingers.

"A data card? Sasha, where did you get this?" Oppie asked.

"The Jedi gave it to me in the bar before the Empire showed up at the cantina," Sasha said. "I was meaning to give it to you once we got home, but then everything else happened so I forgot about it until now. He said that it has something really important on it and that I should protect it. I didn't have the chance to look, but I thought I should show you first."

"Thank you," Oppie said. "I'll take a look. For now, you should lie back down and…"

"And rest," she finished.

He smirked. "Now do it." Oppie then walked away into the cockpit.

Sasha sat back down on the edge of her bunk, rubbing her throbbing temple. She was preparing to rest when she heard footsteps coming back into the compartment. She raised her gaze to see… No… That wasn't possible. The Sith from before stood before her in the compartment. Sasha pulled herself to her feet and moved into a defensive position. The Sith stood there with that same menacing glare and smile she had before.

She had to be seeing things. How was the Sith aboard their ship? Sasha rubbed her eyes with her left hand and then looked back to see the Sith was gone. Sasha didn't lower her defense stance until she was sure the coast was clear. She looked around the compartment and saw no sight of her. Sasha sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"I've gone crazy," she mumbled to herself. "I really do need to rest."

Sasha turned back to the bunk and suddenly met the Sith face to face. Yelping, Sasha staggered back. The Sith laughed.

"Your connection to the Force is strong, child. And I will use it to get the fragment," she said.

What fragment was she talking about? Or was she just trying to mess with her head? Either way, the Sith being there was a problem. Even though she had the Force to help her, Sasha was still unarmed against the Sith assailant.

"Oppie! Viran!" Sasha called for help.

"They can't hear you," she chuckled. "Not while I have control of your mind."

"No, no… Get out of my head! Now!" Sasha screamed hoping the others would hear while holding her pounding head as it throbbed more. "OPPIE! VIRAN!"

"It won't work. Your trying is pointless. You can't escape my control."

"I said OUT!" Sasha cried as she seemed to release an energy wave in the Force at the Sith.

When Sasha looked again, the Sith was gone. Sasha looked around again, frantically trying to make sure the Sith was truly gone from the room. Once she was sure it was clear, she had to find the others. She started toward the hatchway to the cockpit.

However, her vision started spinning and her head was pounding harder now. She could see two figures rushing toward her. The figures were blurry and she could barely make them out. Her legs then gave out and she collapsed toward the floor. She lost all sense of reality as her world turned black before she impacted with the ground.

Oppie was in the middle compartment of the ship at the data terminal in the small living space, the cockpit ahead and the small bunk room and erstwhile medbay towards the back. The datacard - what could that possibly be about? He gingerly slid it into the slot on the console and ran it through what few software checks he knew to make sure there wasn't some sort of virus or tracker on it, and then… the data scrolled up. Oppie thoughtlessly pulled his masters crystal out of his pouch and started tumbling it in his fingers as he thought. A set of coordinates that were somewhere in that fuzzy border between The Outer Rim and Wildspace. But what could it mean? The Jedi had it, and he had given it to Sasha to protect while he sacrificed himself to the Empire. All so he could keep this out of their hands?

As he mulled it over he suddenly flashed back to the moment of his master's death, a moment that was burned into his psyche. Covered in grievous blaster wounds and surrounded by a squad of dead GAR Rangers, his last act as his body failed him was to hand the blue crystal to Oppie, to keep it safe at all costs.

Could they be related? The Force often moved in mysterious ways, but the coincidence of these two objects was… interesting to say the least. An unknown artifact from his master, and a data card with a set of coordinates, both given over by dying Jedi...

"What is that, anyway?" Viran said from the doorway. Oppie froze and pulled the crystal into his palm out of reflex as he turned back. Before Oppie could say anything, Viran continued "Oh come on, I've seen you playing with that thing for years now when you thought no one was looking."

Oppie hesitated, but really had no reason to not explain. "It's... something Master Redika gave me." He said with a little difficulty. "He gave it to me to protect when he… after he fell."

Viran was silent for a moment. "So what's it do?"

Oppie grimaced a little. "No idea, it's just a crystal. It kind of looks like the corner of a Holocron, but they don't usually come apart."

"That Sith chick wanted you to hand over a fragment of something." Viran said, his voice taking an edge. "Is that what she was looking for? How she found us on Vestora? Why she hurt Sasha?" He said with a hint of anger seeping into his voice.

"I honestly don't know." Oppie said somewhat exasperatedly.

"There's a lot you don't seem to know, and stuff you're keeping from us. That has to stop. We need to trust each other. We need to be able to trust each other." Viran said. "We're not younglings anymore, we don't need you to protect us, what we do need is to stop being treated like children and more like your partners in this."

"Viran, I -"

"I said OUT!" Sasha screamed from the other room through the closed door. Instantly Oppie jumped from his seat as Viran slammed the hatch open, only to see Sasha's limp form falling to the floor.

"Sasha!" Viran said, wrapping his arm around her back and pulling her up to put her back on the bed before Oppie had a chance to help. "This isn't good, what did that Sith do to her?"

"She did something at the end of the fight, something to Sasha's mind." Oppie said, his voice heavy with worry. "You know how her Force powers developed differently, how she has more empathic ability than us? I wonder if that Sith is using that somehow?"

"This isn't good." Viran said worriedly.

They stood vigil around Sasha for a few quiet moments before Oppie spoke. "How far out are we from Artemis?"

"Six and a half hours." Viran replied worriedly. Both of them shared the unspoken thought that that was too long.

No...no...leave me alone… get out...Oppie… Viran….

"GUYS!" Sasha screamed out.

Sasha shot straight up in the bunk, panting. Her head was still throbbing and sitting up so fast wasn't the best idea. She brought a hand to her head as she squeezed her eyes shut to calm down the pain.

"Easy," Oppie said as Viran placed a steadying hand on her back.

Slowly opening her eyes, Sasha turned her head to see Oppie and Viran staring at her. They were looking at her like she might faint again at any moment. Sasha sighed as she gathered her knees to her chest. If this was going to keep happening, she was already annoyed by it. Plus having Oppie and Viran watching over her like this reminded her of when she was younger. It was a foreign feeling.

"Are you alright?" Viran asked with a frown. "You really scared us. What happened?"

"I… I'm not sure," Sasha said resting her chin on her knees. "All I know is that I saw the Sith again. She was here on the ship. Or at least I thought she was. She said that she was looking for a fragment. She also said that… that… she was going to use my mind to get it." Sasha groaned as she hid her face. "I don't understand… Why is this happening to me? What is this fragment?"

"Op, tell her." Viran commanded.

Oppie reluctantly brought the crystal out and held it before the two of them "It was something Master Redika gave me to safeguard when Order 66 happened. When he was... dying he gave it to me, and told me to keep it safe no matter what. It might be what she's after."

"It has to be what she's after, and Sasha is paying the price for you keeping secrets." Viran said angrily.

"I never meant to keep it secret, I just never had a reason to bring it up, it just seemed so… insignificant beside everything else."

"Well now it is significant."

"Guys, stop." Sasha interjected. "My head hurts enough without you two going at it." Both Viran and Oppie let out a breath and let the matter lie. "What do we do about this?"

"My contact on Artemis might be able to help us lie low." He paused for a second. "And may know someone who can help us with this... Sith problem. You've always had a gift in the Force I never understood Sasha, and that's probably how she is affecting you. I'm sorry I don't know how to help."

Sasha moved into a criss cross position, facing them. She then reached out and placed a hand on Oppie's shoulder.

"You are doing everything you can," Sasha with a soft smile. "Please don't beat yourself up because of what is happening to me. You're right. I have always felt so close with the Force. And even right now while a Sith is trying to break down my walls, I still feel a strong connection with the Force that I will not let her break. However…" She then had this determined look. "If Sith wants to use my head as a vessel then… then so be it. I can take her."

"Are you crazy?!" Viran gasped. "Who knows what she could do to you? You could die!" Viran gripped her by the shoulders as if to shake some sense into her.

Sasha looked Viran in the eyes and gently placed a hand on his arm.

"I'm not going to give her that satisfaction," Sasha said, determined.

"I won't… can't let anything happen to you," Viran's voice shook as he spoke.

Sasha felt herself blush slightly. Oppie cleared his throat and Viran dropped his arms.

"Sash, we can't ask you to do that," Oppie said with a shake of his head. "We will get you to someone who can help you."

Sasha shook her still pounding head. "I get the feeling that she won't leave me alone until she gets what she wants. I have to distract her until we can get rid of her from my head. And maybe I can get information on her and her 'Empire'."

"I really do not like this plan," Viran argued.

"Same," Oppie agreed.

Groaning as a wave of pain washed over her, Sasha rubbed her temples. "You two have to trust me on this, okay?"

The two men exchanged a nervous glance and then looked back at her. Even despite the pain she was feeling, she looked onto them with a confidence they had come to expect from her.

"Besides, I will still need your help," she continued. "We have seen the state that I am in when or after she tries to use my mind. If I can count on you two to be there while I recover from the encounters, then I will get through this. Okay?"

Oppie chuckled. "How is it you still manage to give us all the confidence we need when you are unwell?"

"It's something I learned from you guys," Sasha said with a pained smile.

Viran didn't return the smile, but sighed in defeat.

"Fine. But just know I will do everything I can to protect you," Viran added.

"I know you will," Sasha said, grabbing his hand.

"For now, we have hours before we arrive at Artemis," Oppie said. "We should all get rest while we can."

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