Izan's skin was still numb from the sonic shower when he felt the ship lift off. Barely after putting on fresh clothes, he felt the rumble of atmospheric departure. They were certainly taking off in a hurry.

"Jayden, we good? Dana? Maarani?" After hastily shaping his hair into something vaguely decent, he made his way out into the corridor at last. "Cecile? You all at the cockpit again?"

The ship rumbled again, this time to mark the jump to hyperspace. Still no answer.

As he drew closer to the cockpit, he heard sniffling. Maarani's unique style, where she had to gasp after every rasping inhale through her nose.

Through the hatch, he saw her at the pilot's seat. No Dana, no Jayden, and no Cecile.

"Maarani? Where are the others? Are they hurt?"

He nearly jumped in fright when Maarani whipped her head around. Immediately he was met with a gaze that didn't look right at all. Even though her eyes were bleary, he could see her otherwise blue irises were a mix of red and what looked to be light purple.

"What the hell…"

Maarani's face went right into her hands as she broke down into tears altogether, hiding those eyes from him.

"They betrayed me! They lied! Dana said she wanted us to become close, but she already forced that on me by tricking my father!"

Izan reached up to his head, where a great pain from his greater confusion was forming. "What? Is Dana your actual mother or something? You don't look half human, especially the freakish kind I've seen."

The only answer he got was a lot of mumbling and whimpering through her hands as they clenched harder onto her face.

In response, Izan put a hand up to his own face, if only to hold back the increasingly sillier possibilities coming to mind. "Who am I kidding, you're tangled up in so much contrived bullshit, surprise parentage would just be routine, wouldn't it?"

The mumbling went on for some time before Maarani finally pulled her head back up. The abnormal colouring in her eyes was gone, replaced by the pretty blue irises, and a lot of deeper blue around her eyelids from how hard she had been rubbing into them.

"Izan?"

By then, he had found a bulkhead to lean against, and only then managed to pull his hand from his face over the sorry display.

"Yes Maarani?"

Maarani rose from her seat, and very nearly stumbled into his arms, burying her face against his chest and starting up with the sobbing again, while simultaneously beginning to mangle his jacket.

With great hesitation, he very cautiously put an arm around to hold her behind her shoulders, underneath her lekku, in what he hoped would comfort her enough. Racial inclination was driving him to make her feel better, as so often was the case with Zeltrons and those in suffering, but every inkling of experience with her had put him on edge. And not just because they had long ago agreed on keeping a respectable distance from each other.

"Maarani, I hate to bring this up now, I really do. But, the ship is flying blind at hyperspeed, I have no idea where Cecile is, and I think you really need to lie down and let things settle. Putting all that out there."

He could feel her clenching harder, digging her nails into his jacket with a force that made him worry about punctures in the material. That worry didn't fade when she looked back up at him at last. Still blue eyed, but with a real fierceness behind them. Distressed and very much angered still. Very bad.

"Don't go back for them. You hear me?"

"Yes, I hear you. I won't go back for them."

However painful it was to say with complete honesty, as he didn't have any real plan on how else to proceed, it did make her release the hold on his jacket and finally back down.

"Go lie down, let me handle things for a while."

As soon as she broke eye contact, he moved past to the pilot's chair and dropped them back into normal space immediately. Thankfully they were in deep space again, far from any immediate concern he would have to deal with.

"Tell you what. Once I've checked on Cecile, I'll find us a nice planet to set down on, and get you sorted out. Alright?"

Again, the only answer was incoherent mumbling before her sobbing picked up again.

He waited until she was heading down the corridor to her room before making his way through the ship. The last he remembered before the blackout that he assumed was the mind control was playing cards with Cecile in the common room. If Carudan had simply used him to give a shutdown command as soon as he was able, she would still be there.

To his greater concern, she wasn't.

"Cecile? On the odd chance you've just been hiding out for no particular reason, you there?"

No reply, though he didn't really expect one.

With a shrug that involved flailing his arms about, he continued in the direction of the engine room. The hatch there was closed, unusual as all the hatches in the centre section of the ship were generally left open.

"Cecile?"

He undid the locking mechanism, allowing the hatch to slide away and reveal the droid herself behind it, all four arms crossed in what he guessed was meant to be a disapproving posture.

"Took you long enough. You could have simply asked me to remain in here for further work on the engines."

Izan couldn't help reaching up behind his head in a moment of awkwardness. "Wasn't really my choice, not in control of myself at the time. Don't suppose a sorry will do?"

Cecile's eyes flickered in that way that always unnerved him.

"Also, do you know how we went from playing cards to 'me' locking you in here? That part I'm not recalling."

After unfolding her arms, the droid moved past in about as cold a way as she could manage. "You developed the sudden impression that there was something wrong with the engines. I went to investigate, and before the hatch was closed I saw a bald purple woman in your presence."

"Bald purple…?" He scratched at his head a little harder. "Nevermind. Just don't bother Maarani for a while, she's in a really bad mood."

"And the others?"

There he had to stop for breath, a disparaged look taking over. "She marooned them. I'm sure they've got ways to contact the Jedi for rescue, right now we have to worry about Maarani. And I don't mean how we're going to help her." He cautiously moved to either corridor, peering down each on the odd chance she was listening in. With no sign of her, he looked back to Cecile. "I don't need a psych degree to know she's really unstable right now. Keep her appeased. Oh, and maybe change both airlock codes to something only you know for the time being."

It was a great deal for Cecile to process, but she too had learned enough to know when it was required of her to do exactly what was asked without questions when the problem revolved around her mistress.

"You believe she may try to throw herself out?"

Izan sighed with a disparaging tone behind it. "No. I'm afraid she'll throw either one of us out. At least you don't need air to breathe."

"Quite, I understand the concern. Should we also disarm her?"

"As much as I'd like to, I'd rather not set her off by trying. Without Jayden or Dana, we need to play it carefully. Just act natural, whatever that is for droids, and don't take her weapons unless she actually decides to use them."

"If you insist."

Again he sighed, this time in annoyance, but left the matter at that and made his way back to the cockpit.

In that time, Maarani had sneaked into his own room to steal one of the bottles he kept hidden, and was back in her own by the time he was done, guzzling the whole lot down quickly in a desperate attempt to drown out her woes.

Of course, it only exemplified the problem.


"Move decimal X7 to location Peth. Exchange decimal X7 for quotient 11. Evaluate and proceed to next move."

Izan nearly felt his brain melting out through his ears. "Cecile, what in the everliving hell made droids come up with their own games?"

"I have not the faintest clue."

He groaned and reclined into the chair more. The quiet hum of the ship hurtling through hyperspace had become increasingly uncomfortable for the fact that it reminded him of how alone he now was. Even if he was the only man on board, most of the time he got along well enough with Jayden, and occasionally Dana if she was in a more pleasant mood. And Maarani was still very far from making him feel comfortable.

Without them, it was a monotony that he couldn't stand for much longer.

"Cecile, how's the hyperdrive doing? Might drop us out for a while, let it cool down or whatever."

There was the expected delay of Cecile going over diagnostics.

"It is stable, but a temporary stop would hardly go to waste."

"Good enough."

A few cursory checks with the sensors, and a moment to remind himself of the routine followed. With a note of confidence, he went through all the steps and brought them back out of hyperspace entirely on his own.

The fact that he was alone anyway rather diminished the satisfaction to be had from it.

"Alright, we're in the middle of nowhere, again, I think. Do your thing Cecile."

"Very well."

Izan set the ship on auto, with the proximity sensors on ship wide alert just for the sake of his own distant paranoia on the odd chance he fell asleep.

He was about to go check on Maarani when he spotted her in the corridor just to his left. She had taken of her jacket and shirt, leaving her in a dark grey tank top that had several stains across the top. The smell of alcohol was strong about her, and in that tense moment he could see lines of the drink running down her chin onto those same stains.

The look in her eyes was cold, but what made him truly uncomfortable was the glint of lust behind them. She was definitely past the point of simple intoxication.

"What? You gonna keep staring at me? Judging me? Or are you gonna man up and do something."

Izan suddenly found himself wishing he had asked for Cecile to come to the cockpit instead.

"Maarani, I'm worried. Alright? I'm worried because I'm your friend. And because you've got this really weird look that says 'I'm about to do something really stupid please stop me'."

She stepped forward, her hand fumbling against the bulkhead until it fell away when she crossed the empty gap between the four corridors, coming very close to Izan.

"Why? Why stop me? It's something you've wanted since we first met."

Izan's attempt to get a word in resulted in their lips locking, her hands snaking up to grasp his head in a grip that was strong enough to terrify him. Worse was the way her expression changed, how her body began pressing against his. It was no drunken lapse in judgement driving her to seduce him. The intent was real, and she wasn't about to take no for an answer.

When he finally managed to get his hands on her shoulders and shove her away, with more force than he had wanted as she slammed into the opposing wall, he felt numb throughout his body, even a little disgusted with himself.

"Maarani, you've kicked up such a huge fuss about only ever wanting to fuck women, I know this is not you, okay? I know this isn't you! If you're being mind controlled or something-"

"Mind controlled? What? I'm not allowed to decide if I want to go straight all of a sudden?"

She tried advancing again, only to find her wrists in his hands, holding her back more aggressively. When she tried pushing again, the grip tightened, and she became angry.

"You don't know what I've been through, what happened there! You don't know anything! All you have to do is get at it and we can be happy together! Why the fuck wouldn't you want to be happy for once in your stupid empty life!?"

He weighed up all the possible answers in his mind, including the ones he hated himself for even considering. Giving in, taking advantage of her clear lack of judgement was something his mother would do. It was what he outright refused to let himself become.

"You're not thinking right. If we went and did that, if we stayed together like that, you'd spend the rest of your life hating yourself for it." He cautiously let go of her wrists, making to retreat down one of the corridors. As far as he knew, there was no logical reason of any kind for the sudden change. He knew nothing about what she had learned about Azera Vass. "I don't care why you're doing this, I won't become another reason why you cry yourself to sleep. You need to sort things out yourself, and wait until we find that Azera of yours."

And that was his last stupid choice of words.

She went from a look of childish, almost bratty desire right to fury. Her fist swung up and struck him right in the nose.

"Don't say that name! You hear me! Don't-"

Izan returned the gesture, wincing loudly as his knuckles impacted her face. His nose was already bleeding, and while the distance between his head and the corridor wall was small, it was still enough to allow for a nasty bruise on the back of his head. His punch provided enough of an opportunity to try and slip away to get help from Cecile.

Maarani had other ideas, hooking her foot around his shin and yanking back. It wasn't enough to make him fall, but the stumble kept him within arm's reach. When he went up against the bulkhead for balance recovery, she wrapped an arm around his throat and yanked him back.

His elbow drove right into her stomach for that, which loosened her grip for a few seconds. She felt him twisting around while she recoiled, meeting desperate eyes right before she felt his knee slam up into her groin.

She took her turn at returning the gesture to much greater effect, grabbing at his head directly again and screaming at him in her mindless rage.

Despite being hunched over from the low blow, Izan had enough control to sneak his arm around and grab one of her lekku, violently twisting it around until she wailed in pain and released his head. His shoulder turned, and with what force he could muster, he charged her into the opposing bulkhead.

His clothes had blood stains all over by that point from his nose and other wounds to his face. Pain was pulsing throughout most of his body from the ordeal. Cecile still hadn't come to his rescue, and he developed the sudden concern that she had been locked away by Maarani that time. He needed to get away from her.

"You fucking maniac!"

She spat at him, and reached around her back. Shoved down behind her spine was her lightsaber, which she drew out in a threatening posture.

Izan's face, previously flushed a deep pink from the ordeal, nearly drained away to a colour close to that of some baseline humans.

"Don't do it. Maarani, don't do it!" He raised his arms in a futile gesture as she activated the blade, stepping back into the corridor leading towards his quarters. "You'll breach the fucking hull! You hear me!? Don't do it!"

"Shut up!"

She raised her hand to swing the blade down on him.

Four metal arms grabbed her from behind. One wrapped around her neck into a headlock, a second twisting her left arm up behind her back. The third slipped around her waist and heaved the air out of her lungs, the fourth grasping for the lightsaber.

As soon as Cecile had it in hand, sie deactivated it and tossed it at Izan.

"Take it! Go!"

Izan nearly fumbled the lightsaber from the pain wracking his hands, eventually pinning it against his body with his wrist instead and limping for his room. The door was slammed shut and bolted behind him.

The restraint only infuriated Maarani more. After several attempts to kick back at Cecile's legs, she pried her arms open and spun around. Her fist connected with the droid's head, creating one dent, and then another, and another.

There was no further attempt from Cecile to fight back. Her eyes merely flickered as the assault continued, watching Maarani's knuckles bleed from every impact on her metal head.

After the ninth strike, she finally stopped, her whole body quivering in pain. Her blood had coated over Cecile's eyes, making her look positively nightmarish when they flickered on and off. In fact, with the scraps of synthflesh still on her form, her entire appearance now looked truly grotesque.

"Cecile? Cecile…"

Maarani faltered back, eventually bumping against the bulkhead and sliding down until she was huddled on the floor. The rage passed, finally enlightening her to the extent of her injuries, including a sharp throbbing in the end of one of her lekku.

She sat there for a long while, staring past her mangled hand, lost in thought.

"I can't keep going on like this. I've got nothing left. Nothing."

"Like the Mistress, then?"

She lifted her head a little. Cecile was still standing there, looking worse still now that the damage done to her head was easier to make out. All for trying to stop her from murdering yet again.

"Cecile, I'm so sorry."

The droid remained silent as she finally walked off to clean herself off.

Maarani didn't move much after that, sinking further into the depths of her psyche, trying to find any way out of the situation she had put herself in. So many promises dashed, so much trust betrayed.

The Lady of Balance was at the centre of it all.

Her exhausted musing reached a point where she began crawling over to Izan's door through the corridors, not feeling as if she had even the will left to stand up and walk over. She slumped against the cold metal and lay there, cheek pressed against it, some of the dried blood on her face scraping away.

"Izan."

"I'm not giving it back! You can fly us into the nearest star for all I care!"

She rolled her eyes with such little determination she couldn't even see such a simple action through properly.

"Izan I'm sorry. I'm just… really fucked in the head. I don't know what reality is anymore."

"It's going to take a lot more than a simple fucking sorry! There's angry, and there's insane enough to murder friends and blow out your own ship! You've crossed the line Maarani!"

Her head thumped against the door when she sighed. He was right in that there was virtually nothing she could say to make things better. She didn't know what possibly could herself, or what she even expected to gain from making things right.

"Yeah, well… I'm the soulmate of a mass murderer, might as well get used to it."

The prolonged silence from behind the door was eventually broken by a sigh from Izan instead.

"That's just typical of you, isn't it Maarani? You go on at us about daring the universe to send us bad luck, but you've already taken the cake for horrible turns of fate, haven't you? Maybe you really do deserve Kiarna."

"Some encouraging talk this is. We're both bleeding and depressed, and you're making it worse."

"Counselling is not my job! In fact, it's the job of one of the two people you stranded! You incompetent, psychopathic bitch!"

"Yeah, keep the insults coming. You've got four -ism's and xenophobia to get through yet."

"It's not an insult when I'm stating facts! I thought leaving them behind was just another moody phase, but you sure proved me wrong!"

Maarani rolled her eyes again. It wasn't the first time she had heard that justification for insulting her, but coming from Izan made it hurt a lot more. Whatever she did in madness, he still mattered to her, deep down somewhere in her shrivelled heart.

"Dana… She's been lying about some pretty huge things. Like the fact that I've got her blood in me. That's what she tricked my father into doing. She used to be part of some dark side cult, and now I've got that taint in my body! And she thinks she can make it all better by pretending to be my mother!"

She heard Izan twisting around to get closer to the door.

"Are you fucking serious? You had a pair of loving parents and brothers who cared about you, and when you lost them someone else actually had the gall to try and fill that void in your life, and you abandoned her for that!? I was wrong Maarani! You are just outright selfish!"

A tense silence settled after that. After some time, she could hear him breathing heavily, but wasn't entirely sure why.

"It would be incredible if someone actually gave enough of a shit about me to throw their whole life away for my sake. I'm the son of a failure so bad he won't even be worth cremating into space, and a woman who was ready to sell out the literal last Jedi in the galaxy for a few fucking credits! But do you hear me complaining about that? Do you see me slapping away hands trying to make me feel less shit about myself?"

Tears began to well in her eyes again. There wasn't a nerve left in her body to answer him.

"And quite frankly, I think you're taking this soulmate crap way too far. Either the big mystical being calling herself the Lady of Balance actually has a plan in mind to make everything better between you two, or you're just wallowing in misery over being 'picked' for a mass murderer because it's easier than actually trying to make things work on your own with someone else who isn't the daughter of a cult leader! Get over it!"

For whatever reason, she didn't actually break down at that. She was too preoccupied coming to terms with how it sounded coming from another, someone who clearly didn't understand the significance it held to Twi'lek.

"I can't get over it Izan. I can never get over it. My soul is linked to hers, it has been since we met on Sarka. I can never bond with anyone else now because of that." Her hand clenched a little. "Wouldn't expect a Zeltron slut to understand anyway. All you do is drink up, fuck each other, and let the rest of the galaxy burn. You don't care about living a meaningful life."

The silence from behind the door drew on and on, to a point where she eventually stood up, bracing herself for when he eventually spoke again.

"You're right. I was raised not to care because my parents don't, because my race doesn't. And for a while after meeting you, I thought I could care about bigger things. But you're so full of yourself I don't see the point in trying anymore. At least Chaser had the guts to go and join the army and make something of herself."

Maarani sniffed a little, then tilted her head a little. "Chaser?"

"Yeah, what about her?"

She thought about that for a while longer, then inhaled sharply. "I think I had a crush on her at one point."

"Well that's not weird at all."

"One of the mechanics doing Red Squadron maintenance before Sarka was a Zeltron called Chaser. I told Koor nothing was ever gonna come of it because she wasn't interested…" Her hand rested against her face while she leaned against the bulkhead behind her. "Small galaxy huh?"

The door slid open to reveal a battered Izan, looking down and defeated. In one had was her lightsaber, his blaster the other. He didn't look ready to use either of them, but certainly wasn't going to hand them over either.

"One more chance, Maarani. We go back, we get Dana and Jayden, and they sort you out. When I'm risking my life on your behalf, I am not going to have the risk be coming from you. Got it?"

She nodded slowly, biting on her lip to try and keep calm. Now wasn't the time for more of her wayward comments.

"Yeah, yeah I got it. Maybe we get patched up first though."

"No apologies here. You threw the first punch, and I only know to fight dirty."

Maarani sighed, about to rebuke just how painful the twisting of her lekku was when an alarm from the cockpit drew her attention.

"Wait, that's the proximity alert…"

Before she could say any more, the two of them passed out, slumping to the floor with a mild groan.

"Mistress? Pinksin?"