Author Notes:

Bastila starts learning what it means to be master to an apprentice, with a dash of Vrook salt, which I think everyone needs in their diet.

I really enjoyed writing this chapter, and I even enjoyed coming back to it years later to edit and post.

I'll be amazed if this doesn't end with a trip to the medical wing.

Bastila watched with apprehension as her apprentice's form, silhouetted against the sky, leaped from one rocky promontory to the next, dozens of meters above. Dark Naboo stone shone with a glistening skin of water that was constantly renewed by the thundering falls whose tumultuous descent began nearly a hundred meters over her head.

Despite the gusting winds created by thick torrents of water crashing beside her, despite the slickness of her path, despite the disorienting effects of perpetual mist curtains interacting with bright sunshine, Varia moved with confidence from boulder to boulder. She was about a third of the way from the bottom of the falls, pursuing the narrow and broken 200-meter route that crossed them. Well, it was more a series of rough stepping stones than a route, and it was something that Padawans practiced on. Not a neophyte apprentice, even if she was extremely gifted.

Bastila stood on a large boulder that emerged from the waves near the center of the falls' plunge pool. It was less than thirty meters from the violent line of collision between the waters from above and the waters roiling below. Fine mist blasted her body; her tightly braided hair had worked loose in the moisture and was now plastered to her face.

Three weeks. It had only been three weeks that she'd been training Varia, and yet here they were at the falls several klicks north of the academy, doing an activity that was usually reserved for young adults with years already spent in training. Varia was of the right age, but not of the right experience.

The Force was strong with her, and she was physically gifted from her childhood of rigorous outdoor training, but still…

Bastila shook herself free of the doubts, lest they sour their master-apprentice relationship again.

Since the Grandmaster had taken the oldest rescued captive as her apprentice, they had butted heads frequently. Almost immediately, in fact. The first day had started with a lengthy argument after Bastila had laid out the goals and pace of the training. Varia couldn't believe it would take her years to become a Jedi. She was incredulous at the amount of time that would be spent on mundane tasks, like meditating. She wanted to be out there saving the galaxy now.

Revan must have been just like this. Had been, in fact, during his second training.

Bastila had let her cool for an entire day, left her alone, and asked Atton and Mira to make sure that she came to meals. When they had spoken the following morning, Bastila managed to partially convince the girl that the training would all be less boring than she had made it sound. That idea had strengthened Varia's patience to prevail for another few days until they had clashed again, this time over her master's authority, of all things.

"Can't I have another master? I'm sure Master Vandar or Mical would speed this up for me." Though outwardly calm, inwardly Bastila rolled her eyes. Varia had failed to carry the least bit of diplomatic ease in her tone. Probably on purpose.

"You are slowing yourself down, Varia," Bastila had replied as they descended through a hectare of soft short grass on the west slope of the hill into which the academy was built. "Your lack of patience proves that you need more time – to learn patience. You're caught in a cycle that will never end until you break it by accepting that Jedi training will take longer than you want it to."

"That doesn't make any sense!" the Togrutan teenager replied, though they both knew she understood perfectly. She had continued to pester Bastila about being assigned a different master until they had reached their destination, a rocky promontory rising out of the grassland; it was an ideal place to practice using the Force for balance and agility, and she intended to work her pupil to exhaustion climbing and jumping.

"I'm already good at climbing and stuff," Varia had whined when Bastila explained their activity. "Didn't I tell you what my family does?"

They were adventure guides for tourists – they moved from one exotic locale to another as recreation seasons waxed and waned. It was a wonderfully fantastical life for a child to grow up in, and it only sharpened the tragedy of her abduction; it also was making it extremely difficult for the Order to find her parents.

"Yes, you are very skilled for someone your age, but I need you to be even better than that. Your skills are inadequate for a Jedi." As soon as the words left her mouth, Bastila had realized they were poorly chosen, even if it was a plainly true statement.

Sure enough, Varia pounced.

"Kark it! Even what I'm good at isn't good enough for you! I've only been training for a few days and you're saying I'm poodoo!"

Bastila wanted to grab the girl and shake her. What is your problem with me? Is it teenage hormones pumping you full of nerf-brained snottiness, or were you born with a core slug up your ass?

Her apprentice's face contorted into an expression of utter rage, and for less than a second Bastila wondered why.

Oh Force, I said that out loud.

"You weren't this much of a mynock in the holofilms," Varia sneered caustically.

"Then they obviously didn't get it right, did they?" Bastila snapped back, incredulous that she was being compared to her fictional doppelganger by this bratty teenager, even if she partly deserved it. She felt ready to rip her hair out in frustration. I am never having children, she vowed, even though it had never been a possibility. What would it take to make this girl respect her?

An absurd idea started to take shape in her mind as they stared each other down; the notion was ridiculous, full of the braggadocio that she had found so infuriating in Revan, and uncharacteristically she decided to act on it.

"Observe this," she commanded, then without warning leaped straight into the air, high enough that Varia was made to crane her head back to follow. She hurtled back down like a missile, landed forcefully in a crouch with her palm against the ground; a wave of energy was unleashed from her hand, radiating violently outward and knocking Varia from her feet into the grass. When it reached the rock outcropping it shattered stone in an unnatural spray of fragments; dozens of the shards came hurtling towards them, only for each one to be intercepted by the blurring amber shield of her twin blades.

The Jedi Grandmaster deactivated her weapon and turned to face her pupil, who lay supine on the grass, her eyes wide but still angry. She locked Varia's gaze with a fierce glare; violet eyes stared back at her.

"Do you want to be able to do that?"

Varia nodded mutely.

"You have the power within you to do such things. But you will not be taught how to use that power without learning humility and servitude. And patience." Bastila paused to let her words sink in. "If you believe I am inadequate to be your master, I'm sorry, but you will not receive a different one."

Bastila thanked the Force that the girl had not questioned her authority after that day, though she had still argued many things. Her choice of exercises was no longer hotly debated (though frequently met with groaning), but the pace of the training had continued to be a sore issue with Varia. She hadn't even invested a month's worth of patience in her new life of regimen, to give it a reasonable chance. The girl craved power. Yes, she wanted it for all the best reasons, to protect the weak and prevent her own tragedy from recurring, but nevertheless it deeply worried Bastila.

She expressed those worries to Vandar. Regardless of her position as the nominal leader of the Order, his experience with training Jedi (or with anything else, for that matter) was unmatched. At the next group training session, his wise eyes had watched Varia closely. Afterward, he had – in his typically humble and gentle way – found exactly the right thing to say that would kick her mind into critical self-examination.

"She reminds me of you, Bastila. Incredibly gifted, incredibly determined… she strives to excel, even though it pushes well past the constraints we lay down to protect her. I wonder, did you crave power when you were causing Vrook to lose his few remaining hairs?"

"No," Bastila had replied. "I just wanted to be knighted so I could get out from under his thumb. I wanted the independence. I suppose eventually I wanted the prestige because I had been held back for so long."

Vandar had merely smiled at her response and ambled off, leaving Bastila feeling perplexed – but only for a moment. Comprehension quickly descended upon her. Varia is just like me. She doesn't desire power – at least not yet – she desires excellence. Maybe she even wants my approval, which I haven't really given her.

Bastila groaned.

I've become just like Vrook.

After that painful realization, she had changed the nature of their training. Varia was now allowed to proceed on to the next, more challenging assignment as soon as she had completed the current one at a satisfactory level. Through this, Bastila discovered that if Varia received an evaluation that was satisfactory but less than excellent, the girl oftentimes opted to return to the first task and repeat it over and over again until she had truly mastered it.

It was a quality Bastila admired; the thought that this could be exploited to slow her training to a more traditional pace had barely registered when she batted it aside. She was coming to respect the girl too much to slow Varia's training merely for her own comfort, let alone do something so manipulative. The training wasn't about her own comfort, but what was best for her pupil.

And besides, that was something Vrook would have done.

She pushed wet hair out of steel blue eyes and breathed a sigh of relief as Varia finally made it to the other side of the falls. Now on solid and dry footing, the girl turned to find her master through the moving drapes of mist suspended in the air. Varia spotted her and waved; Bastila smiled broadly and waved back, before taking a giant leap to return to the riverbank. They rendezvoused on the steep slope that connected the upper and lower river basins.

"I think you got wetter than I did, Master," Varia commented cheerfully, her face flushed with success.

"I think you're right," Bastila agreed as she held out a sopping wet sleeve for inspection. "That was excellent, Varia. Most Padawans fall several times before making it all the way across."

"I think I can do better, Master. I went very slowly."

"Please give my nerves a chance to regrow before we do this again."

"I thought Jedi weren't supposed to worry," Varia answered. She peeled off her shirt to wring it out and Bastila winced as she noticed the scars across her back and torso.

"We are supposed to control our worry and not let it affect our actions or judgment," she corrected. "And I kept my fears in check, as evidenced by the fact that I let you nearly fall."

Varia's face contorted as she wormed back into her shirt. "That was… terrifying. I really thought I was going to lose it."

"But you didn't."

"No, Master. I kept my fear in check."

"That's good," Bastila nodded approvingly. "The scariest moments in my life have also been the ones where I needed to think the most clearly."

Varia nodded but said nothing more. It was difficult to engage her in a discussion of the more philosophical aspects of Jedi life. This girl was a doer through and through, and was mostly uninterested in anything that involved inaction. And everything, it seemed, merited action with her. Varia saw everything in black and white and had a flat-out answer for every ambiguous scenario that Bastila had posed to her.

Revan would like her.

On a whim, Bastila scrapped her plans for the rest of the day's lessons and brought Varia to one of the academy's dueling rooms. She knew how to force the girl to think a bit more critically.

Bastila selected wooden mock swords from a rack and tossed one to Varia. "Master Marr tells me you are a quick study with these weapons."

"Thank you, Master."

"And she says you are constantly trying to turn the forms into something more aggressive." The girl looked down, and Bastila wasn't sure if she felt chided or was trying to hide how she bristled at the comment. She twirled her sword experimentally and, after a few seconds, her hand and arm remembered how to handle a single-bladed weapon.

The apprentice assumed an opening stance, a defensive posture with her sword held across her chest, except that the point was positioned higher than it should have been, placed ready to strike. It was an approach that would serve neither to defend nor aggress, and it was certainly not something Visas had taught. In fact, Visas would have sternly rebuked the amateurish attempt at combining methods.

Bastila pretended not to notice. "Remember, a Jedi never attacks – we only act in defense," she reminded, but the oblique warning was lost on the girl.

Their duel began with easy thrusts and parries that were meant to loosen muscles and build confidence. They worked as master and apprentice should – as a team, fighting with precise measures meant only to teach and hone skills. Bastila did not try anything that Varia hadn't already seen in lessons, which meant that the girl did well – and was also growing bored.

After fifteen minutes of nearly continuous swordplay, Varia suddenly shifted posture and instead of blocking Bastila's next swing, she ducked out of the way and took a step back to set up for a thrust. Of course, the change was anything but sudden or surprising to Bastila; rather, she had been waiting for it. Varia had just finished the maneuver when her master charged suddenly, knocking her student's sword aside and sweeping her legs out from under her.

"Ow!" Varia cried out as she dropped heavily onto her back. She wasted only a moment to rub the rapidly forming welts on her calves before scrambling back to her feet. "What was that for?" she snapped angrily.

"You were about to attack me, so I acted first to prevent your attack," Bastila replied neutrally.

"I thought a Jedi never attacks and only acts in defense!"

Bastila had expected those words to be thrown back at her, but the immediacy of the response made her wonder if the girl hadn't already seen – or experienced – the difficulties in that simplistic statement. Nevertheless, she was pleased that her apprentice had taken the bait.

"I've learned that sometimes defense and offense are the same thing," Bastila rebutted calmly. Varia seemed about to retort when she caught herself and paused, before forming a new thought.

"Did Revan teach you that?"

The apprentice's question was so shockingly astute that it knocked her into a momentary loss of words. When she replied, she was still so startled that guileless honesty slipped out.

"Yes, he did. Well," she mused, pursing her lips, "he introduced the idea to me. It was heresy to the Council at the time, but life eventually taught me that it was true."

"What convinced you, Master?"

"Hm. Many things, I suppose. Revan's offensives during the Mandalorian Wars. Our mission to capture him during the Civil War. And the Dark Wars…" Bastila's throat constricted the tiniest bit as she remembered all her fellow Jedi that had been lost. "More and more of us were killed until Aeryn Venachi hunted down the Sith Triumvirate. Our attempts at defense had been mainly useless. But there were little things, too." Memories from the streets of Taris, Kashyyk, Manaan, and Tatooine flashed through her mind. "While we were traveling, Revan was always ready to go on the offensive to protect those who couldn't protect themselves. And he helped many lives that way."

There was a long moment of silence while she lost herself in memory. Then Varia spoke up.

"Atton and Mira saved us by attacking the slavers."

"Yes, they did," Bastila agreed. Their report had been decidedly vague on exactly how the fighting had started, and the Grandmaster suspected she would be extremely displeased if she ever found out. She couldn't fault the outcome, however.

"That's what I want to do when I become a Jedi," Varia continued with fire in her voice and eyes. "I'll hunt down slavers and free their prisoners. I'll attack those who prey on the weak."

"Attack is a Jedi's last resort, and you shall do that only as the Force guides you to," Bastila reprimanded the girl sternly. "The Force seeks to preserve life, even the lives of those we consider evil. You may one day be feared by slavers across the galaxy, but if you attack and kill unnecessarily then you will become dark and twisted, and you will forget all about the ones you wanted to protect in the first place."

"Yes, Master," she nodded. Bastila could see that she was properly chastened, but she could also see the desire for revenge still smoldering behind those violet eyes.

"When you are feeling angry about what you've been through, you can talk to me. I know what it's like to feel angry, to feel like I'm being held back. I have fallen to the dark side, remember?" She bored her gaze into Varia's, praying to the Force that she w]as connecting. "We can help you turn those feelings into positives, into things that drive you to do good."

The girl simply bit her lip and nodded, but Bastila felt some of the tension leave her nonetheless.

"Ask Vandar sometime what I was like with my master. He can tell you all about me being an obstinate brat," Bastila said with a smile. "Now, resume your position."

She was continually amazed by the girl's ability to draw her into tangential discussions and generally distract her from the matters at hand. She obviously wants to be a warrior, but maybe her greatest talents lay elsewhere. Shemade a mental note to speak with Vandar about it.

For the rest of the dueling session, Bastila made Varia answer questions as they fought. She made her list every scenario she could imagine where attacking first would be a necessary form of defense. Then every scenario where it couldn't be justified. Then the times in Varia's own life where she'd seen or acted out examples of both.

The last led to one of Bastila's fullest glimpses into her pupil's past. Despite being fascinated with Bastila's past and skilled at extracting stories from her master, she was remarkably reticent to share her own.

Being forcibly torn from your family and sold into slavery would have that effect.

Nevertheless, things started to slip out. Her family traveled frequently, following the tourist seasons across the various planets of the Trax sector, leading adventure tours of the most impressive landscapes – jungles, mountains, oceans, deserts; they had all been a part of Varia's idyllic sounding childhood. She'd been instructed in all the skills of survivalism, along with her sister and brother. But she had also missed out on regular schooling and hadn't integrated well when she had attended a normal institution. There had been fighting and bullying, and she freely admitted to being both the victim and the aggressor.

One thing above all was clear to Bastila – routine had not been a part of Varia's life so far. It was no wonder she chafed so badly under the training regimen. A knight's life was unpredictable, to put it mildly, but an apprentice's days were a far cry from system hopping and outdoor adventuring.

Bastila ended the dueling practice just before dinner time and dismissed Varia for the evening. The girl left exhausted and with several bruises but she seemed satisfied and that, to Bastila, felt like success. She was considering leaving for dinner herself when her comlink beeped.

"Master Shan?"

It was Atton. Anytime he addressed her (or anyone else in the Order) by their rank, it came glazed with overtones of mild insubordination. The word "Master" just couldn't leave his mouth sincerely. It had really bothered her for the first couple of years, but gradually it became obvious that he respected her leadership and really couldn't seem to help it. The man just didn't do authority.

"Yes?"

"Could you come to bay four? Mira and I have a lead, finally."

Finally, indeed. They'd been working on the captured freighter for days with no results; it hurt that Bao-dur was gone, borrowed by Carth for some pet project of his.

"I'll be right down."

"Kark!"

Atton wasn't sure if this was the hundredth or thousandth time he had painfully punched the cockpit bulkhead next to the navigation computer. Both sets of knuckles had begun to bruise. He was sure, however, that this was exactly the forty-seventh time the computer had crashed while attempting to load the navigation logs.

It was amazing, really – an incredible feat of programmatic genius. The encryption on the logs wasn't terribly strong, but then the computer hosting them wasn't terribly functional either. It could be that the encryption algorithms were designed to force a fault in the system whenever they were manipulated, but Atton was beginning to suspect that it was simply a providential alignment of weak hardware and incompetent programming.

Either way: genius.

And why wasn't an astromech droid doing this? Oh right, because the academy only had one right now and it didn't have an interface that was compatible with trash, and getting the parts to install an appropriate interface on the freighter's navicomp would require a trip nearly a sector over, because Naboo was in the middle of absolutely kriffing nowhere.

I might actually miss that little tin heap, he thought, remembering Aeryn's astromech droid. He definitely missed Bao-dur. The two of them had always worked well together, bonding easily over technology and a shared appreciation of sparse verbalization.

As Atton booted the navicomp for the forty-eighth time, his traitorous mind slipped back to the letter he had received two days ago. On a whim he had checked his old personal holonet account; it was a quiet evening when a good Jedi would have been meditating and a good smuggler would've been scamming somebody. Since he was neither of those, currently…

Against all odds, the mailbox that had sat ignored for years now had a single message in it, one that had been waiting only a few days to be opened. He had pounced on it. His eyes had devoured it – only nine words, but he had scoured each one until they were burned into his retinas.

Atton,

Coming home. Be with you soon.

Love, Aeryn

The words were so much like her – direct but gentle, promising little yet leaving a longing for everything. Above all, they were trustworthy. She would be home soon. They would be together. She loved him.

She loves me. Still.

He was certain Aeryn had meant it in exactly that way. She didn't bandy about those sorts of words; neither did he. They had never been loquacious with each other, saying only things that absolutely mattered or things that didn't matter at all. In five years a lot could have changed, but everything he felt about her resisted the idea that she would have changed that much.

Have I? Atton wondered suddenly. Had he become the Jedi that she wanted him to be, that he had wanted to be? Had he redeemed himself? Had he done enough to help rebuild the Order?

The onslaught of doubts irritated him like nothing else could so he buried them, as he always did. Aeryn had once told him that still waters ran deep and that loud-mouth smartass waters ran even deeper. Atton didn't think his time with the Jedi had brought to the surface any of the personal tumults that she had so effortlessly pulled from him; he didn't think he was any less damaged than the day she'd left.

Force, he hoped that wasn't true. He wanted to be worthy of being with her.

Plus Aeryn could be bringing back her big brother, who was more than capable of kicking the ass of her nerf-herding boyfriend, if that's how Revan decided to rate him. And Revan knew his dark side better than anyone since he had a personal role in exploiting it and growing it.

That thought sent a chill down his spine. He hadn't seen his former master since the height of the Jedi Civil War. Since well before Revan's transformation. He of all people wasn't one to judge for past crimes, but the thought of coming face to face with someone who he had revered and feared so intensely, even a full decade later…

Of course, he could be dead. For Aeryn's sake, though, he hoped that wasn't true.

The console chirped loudly, indicating that the navicomp had crashed yet again. This time instead of punching something, Atton flopped back on the hard deck in defeat. Minutes passed while he struggled half-heartedly to refocus on the work at hand.

"Does it make more sense from down there?" Mira asked as she climbed the short ladder into the cockpit.

He hadn't told Mira yet; for some reason, he felt like he was protecting her by keeping the knowledge to himself.

"Yes, from here it's obvious now that you should be the one doing this," he retorted acerbically.

"Nah, we both know you're better with this stuff," she replied cheerfully. He rolled his eyes, but it was an unfortunate truth.

That's weird.

On his back, looking upward at the underside of the navigation console, he noticed for the first time that the connector between the navicomp and the ship's general systems intranet had an extra cable wrapped around it, with an identical plug hanging unused on the end. He scooted closer on his back and took the cable in his hand, for some reason needing to confirm its physical existence.

Atton yanked the in-place connector out and replaced it with its duplicate. "Restart the navicomp," he ordered Mira. She complied and he waited, not moving from under the console, watching for smoke, sparks, anything that might jeopardize the only source of navigation history that they would ever have.

"It's up," Mira announced. He waited for a count of ten before climbing out and back into a chair in front of the screen. He started punching in the backdoor commands that could give potentially him limited access; he wasn't Bao-dur, but even limited access would be enough for him to crack their logs wide open.

After a few minutes of furiously hammering keystrokes, Mira grew impatient. "Is this supposed to be an improvement?"

"Yes," Atton replied evenly, not the least bit perturbed by her attitude. The thing wasn't crashing, and that was a tremendous improvement.

Suddenly the screen flickered and he was looking at a new window showing a file tree of various data logs. "Pure pazaak," he announced smugly while whipping out his comlink. "Master Shan?"

"Yes?" came the voice through a tiny speaker.

"Could you come to bay four? Mira and I have a lead, finally."

"I'll be right down." The comlink clicked off.

Mira snorted. "You should just order her down here. You sound so weird when you try to act all respectful."

"At least I'm trying. Rule number one of surviving life: know who can kick your ass."

In the ten minutes it took the Grandmaster to arrive on the bridge of the captured freighter, Atton had cracked all their navigation logs. Unfortunately, each log was brief and no log was older than a few weeks.

"I don't see any connections here, honestly," Atton said as the three of them pored over the list of planetary navigation beacons and hyperbuoys that the ship's computer had communicated with recently. "This doesn't look like anything other than a series of pickups."

"Or raids," Mira added grimly.

"Sure," he agreed. "They certainly had the firepower, and their employer is obviously big on secrecy. Deals with local slavers would've made that harder."

"Trandosha," Bastila noted the port of call about halfway down the list. "There weren't any Trandoshan children in this group."

"No…" Atton confirmed, his mind starting to work on that bit. Curious.

"They didn't stop there to steal children," Mira posited.

"Or their raid failed," Bastila said. "They'd be pretty brave to try raiding that planet, though."

"They'd be stupid." Atton pursed his lips in thought. "They weren't stupid. Stupid doesn't operate in secrecy this well."

"Then let's pray that we find the reason that brought them there," Bastila said; it sounded like an order.

"Hang on," Atton threw his palms up. "You wanna go to Trandosha? Jedi aren't exactly popular there. Maybe as a side dish only."

Bastila nodded. "That's why you and Mira are coming with me. And we can retreat to Kashyyk if needed."

"Do we have friends there?" Mira asked cautiously. Atton suspected images of Hanharr were flashing before her eyes.

"Yeah, right after the Wookiees revolted they hung a big 'off-worlders will be shot' sign."

"We'll be welcome there," Bastila assured them, though no further explanation was forthcoming. "We'll leave tomorrow."

"Fine," Mira agreed, "but let's not visit Kashyyk if we can avoid it." Bastila smiled at her kindly and nodded; Atton wondered if Mira had shared that particular bit of personal history with the Grandmaster.

Atton found himself following Bastila to the freighter's boarding ramp as incomplete sentences bounced around chaotically within his skull. It wasn't until Bastila was descending the ramp that he overcame the need to jealously guard the knowledge he held. He cleared his throat; she stopped and turned to look back up at him, an inquisitive expression on her face.

"Master – uh, Bastila," he began as he closed the distance between them. What he was sharing felt like his own private thing, like he could only share it in a whisper. He supposed it was private, but maybe she ought to be included as well. After all, they had both been left behind.

"I received a personal message a couple of days ago. I think you should know about it." His mouth suddenly dried up and he was forced to swallow before continuing. "It was from Aeryn. She's coming back."

The Grandmaster's youthful face belied the age in her eyes as they widened slightly, not with surprise but with understanding, as if a mental puzzle had just been completed. When she said nothing, however, Atton felt the need to press on.

"I don't think she'd be coming back if she hadn't, you know… found Revan." One way or another, he added silently; he wasn't going to say that to the Dark Lord's former lover, though.

Bastila looked away for a long moment; the action implied uncertainty in her reaction to his news, but Atton wasn't surprised that her Force aura betrayed nothing.

"Aeryn is the one who found him, then," Bastila said, meeting his gaze. "They're returning together."

"Revan is definitely alive, huh?" It seemed both foolish and insulting to doubt her.

Bastila nodded confidently. "Yes, he's alive."

Atton didn't know whether to feel relief or dread, so he settled on apathy for the moment. "Well then, we should go on a double date." Bastila rolled her eyes, a very un-Grandmaster-like action, and resumed her course down the ramp. She stopped short at the bottom, though, and turned to face him again.

"Have you told Mira?"

"Not yet," he replied, pretending to wonder why she had singled her out among all the others who would care.

"You should. I'll let you spread the news to everyone from the Hawk." With that she left.

Mira, Bao-dur, Mical, Visas – they would all want to know. For a moment he wondered what Mandalore and that bastard Goto were up to these days. Not that either of them would have cared about her fate.

"Varia?" Bastila called for her apprentice as she entered the girl's quarters. They were small, but having one's own private room was still considered a treat. The academy wasn't lacking on space, but apprentices and younglings shared rooms in order to promote their interpersonal skills. Varia, Goran, and most of the older slave children had been given their own private spaces, though.

Dinner time had ended a while ago, so she was surprised that Varia was not here. Closing her eyes, she reached outward with her senses and quickly her mental eyes lighted upon the girl's familiar signature. Confusion wrinkled her face momentarily before she spun and left.

She found Varia in one of the gymnasiums along with a multitude of her fellow captives and several of the regular apprentices as well. That in and of itself wasn't surprising – the girl was fairly outgoing for someone who had been so traumatized, and she Shad little difficulty making new friendships. Neither was their activity surprising – smashball, a game that involved scoring by sending balls through various vertical rings, and also involved smashing those same balls into your opponents. Bastila was grateful the academy didn't have a zero-g arena, which was the normal venue for the event, or the pointless game would've been even more of a distraction.

What was surprising, though, was the children's single opponent.

"Vandar?" Bastila asked with astonishment as she stepped through the automatic transparent doors and narrowly avoided taking a ball to the shoulder. The diminutive Jedi Master was moving as quickly as she had ever seen him move, leaping through the air to block and return ball after ball. He was scoring frequently, but so were the twenty or so children and young adults that he faced.

She watched, slack-jawed, as the scoreboard ticked upward for both teams (if Vandar could be considered a team). The scores remained within mere points of each other until Goran sank a goal that caused a loud buzzer to sound off. His teammates erupted in cheers and buried him in a fury of back-slapping and high fives. Varia gave him a tight hug and a kiss on the cheek that sent her master's eyebrows upward.

When did that develop? Bastila wondered. Maybe it was platonic. Inwardly she acknowledged that she would probably miss any outward clues one way or another.

She wished Mission were around to consult. How she missed that girl.

Vandar was approaching her now, and there was little Bastila could do to reign in her obvious shock.

"I lost a bet," was all he said. The smile on his wizened face belied the seriousness of his tone.

"You loved it!"

"Exercise is an important part of the Jedi life," Vandar responded calmly. "I did fairly well, did I not, against such odds?"

"I-" Bastila began, but was cut short by a crowd of apprentices that descended upon them.

"Master, that was amazing!"

"You were unstoppable!"

"I didn't think we could beat you!"

Bastila stepped back so Vandar's awestruck fans could idolize their newest sports star. His popularity with the pupils had suddenly skyrocketed, and he had already been well-liked. She happily waited for the crowd to start dispersing; eventually, she caught Varia's eye and motioned her over.

"Walk with me?"

"Yes Master," Varia nodded and promptly fell into step beside her. A final glance over her shoulder at the crowd, and perhaps one individual in particular, did not go unnoticed.

They walked in silence for a minute; Bastila's mind was still processing what she had witnessed. One question kept circling to the forefront of her mind, a silly, immature question, but it felt as if it would burn an exit in her forehead if she didn't let it out.

"What was it like?" she asked her apprentice suddenly while fighting to keep her features devoid of the embarrassment she felt.

"What do you mean, Master?"

"What was it like to beat Vandar? I've never beat him at anything."

Varia frowned. "Not even dueling? Everyone says you're one of the best."

"No, not even dueling. You saw how fast he is."

"It was…" a wide grin split Varia's face. "It was awesome." Bastila felt a grin slipping onto her own features as well.

"It was pretty awesome to watch," she added.

"Master, why isn't Vandar the Grandmaster?" Varia's abrupt topic shift startled her, and the girl must have interpreted her expression as taking offense. "I'm sorry," she rattled off hurriedly, "I think you're the best Grandmaster we could have, I just-"

Bastila held up a hand to stop her. "Varia, it's okay," she said gently. "I have often wondered about it myself."

"Then… you don't know?" she asked with a perplexed expression.

"No, I do know, I just didn't agree with the decision." Her pupil looked utterly baffled at this point. She stopped walking and turned to face her. "I did not want to be made GrandMaster. I thought it should be Vandar as well."

"So why did they pick you?" Varia pressed.

Bastila's brow furrowed as she wondered what her younger Padawan self would've thought about being in such a position. Probably would have relished it. I was such an idiot.

"They picked me because the Order badly needed support from the Republic to rebuild ourselves, and they felt that I was in the best position for making that happen, for political reasons. A lot of the Republic's leaders still thought of me as a 'hero of the Star Forge,'" she explained, her tone turning sardonic on that last bit.

Varia nodded. "That makes sense. They like you so you can do better at getting them to give the Order money and stuff."

"Exactly."

"And they all knew who you were already, and you're really pretty."

Bastila flushed. "I do not think that factored into things." She racked her brain for a way to change the conversation. "What made you ask about me being GrandMaster?"

Varia shrugged nonchalantly as they resumed walking. "Some of the other apprentices were telling me that it didn't make sense, since Master Vandar is more experienced and so powerful and all. I told them where they could stuff it."

"You shouldn't speak to others disrespectfully," Bastila rebuked firmly while working furiously to suppress a smile. It was an inappropriate response, but part of her was thrilled to know that Varia regarded her highly enough to stand up for her, even in such a trivial way. "However, I won't let that keep me from bringing you with us on a mission."

Varia stopped in her tracks and spun to face her master with fiercely excited eyes. "A mission? When? Where? What are we going to do?"

Bastila laughed. "It's nothing that exciting. We're going to investigate one of the ports that the slavers stopped at and see if we can find any clues about who they work for."

"Awesome!" the girl cried. "Then we can track them down and stop them from ever doing it again." There was a glimmer in her eyes, a determination and furious courage that Bastila resolved to help her capture and use in becoming a remarkable Jedi.

"We are a long way from that," the older woman cautioned, "but that is the goal, yes."

"Can Goran come?" The words tumbled from her lips so quickly that Bastila suspected even she was surprised by them. She studied her apprentice for clues before replying, but that naturally colorful Togrutan skin made it nearly impossible to tell if there was a blush.

"I will speak with Master Natal and let you know." She promised nothing; it seemed that he perhaps had a right to participate, and it could be a valuable experience for him, but she wasn't sure it would be wise to keep the two of them together in close quarters for a week. Her apprentice wasn't ready to balance service to the Force with emotional attachment, even something as trivial as a teenage crush.

Varia nodded and hurried off in the direction of her room, at the last minute remembering to send her master a quick bow and goodnight. Bastila smiled and admitted to herself that this girl's exuberance was good for her. It reminded her of Mission, and even of Revan, and she supposed that was not a bad thing.

Author Notes:

That's right, Atton, Mira, Bastila AND the kids are all heading out on an adventure together! It'll be a fun dynamic. By which I mean fun to read and write, but possibly not fun to exist in. I like plopping Atton and Bastila together because she's a leader type and he's not, but he also has such a mouth on him...

Not much that I found on smashball. I stand by my rendition of it, which is suspiciously identical to dodgeball.