Previously on From the Force, With Love…

Who is this Dex Wesirri guy?

And who in the galaxy doesn't he know?

Season 4
Episode 8
Interlude Part 1

Help! I need somebody
Help! Not just anybody
Help! You know I need someone
Help!

I never needed anybody's help in any way
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured (but now these days are gone)
(And now I find) Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won't you please, please help me?

And now my life has changed in oh so many ways (and now my life has changed)
My independence seems to vanish in the haze
But every now and then I feel so insecure (I know that I)
I know that I just need you like I've never done before

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won't you please, please help me

When I was younger, so much younger than today
I never needed anybody's help in any way
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured (but now these days are gone)
(And now I find) now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down

And I do appreciate you being 'round

Help me get my feet back on the ground

Won't you please, please help me, help me, help me, ooh

Help!/John Lennon, Paul McCartney

New Republic Military Base, Pyria System
27 ABY
New Republic Occupation of Borleias, Day 9
12 Days After The Fall Of Coruscant

Dex Wessiri lay flat on his back, taking in deep breaths as he stared up at the stars.

It wasn't helping.

The deep breaths were not filling him with any sort of oxygen-induced calm. And he sure as kriff wasn't feeling any kind of peace. His heart rate had finally begun to slow, but that probably had more to do with exhaustion than anything.

After another deep breath he realized his hands had stopped shaking… or at least they were more steady than they had been.

He pounded a fist against the ground in frustration. How could he possibly argue with Wedge for denying his request to fly? He was a kriffing wreck. And nowhere near calm enough to go back to their quarters and sleep. He'd already embarrassed himself enough; Iella and the girls had all witnessed the fall of Coruscant too… and none of them were having nightmares that woke everyone within a kilometer with screams.

He'd suggested getting his own quarters, but Iella had tucked his head into her neck as she slowly rocked him, and told him to shut the kriff up. She had then said that it was a miracle that they had found each other on Coruscant as they were running for their lives and dodging Vong; it would be wrong to not appreciate their good fortune by separating now. She'd also told him, through choked sobs, that she'd be forever grateful that she'd had him with her; she could never have carried both Syal and Myri through the chaos as the Vong were landing and made it to the rendezvous with Face without him.

Dex took another deep breath and focused on the sky, focused on locating specific stars; concentrated on the fact that he knew exactly where he was, that he was reasonably safe. There were no Vong attacking him, he wasn't watching a world collapse around him, or desperately searching for the friends and classmates that had surely been crushed in the rubble of the university buildings when the skyhooks began falling. There were no screams of terror coming from the hopeless and helpless millions around him. Millions that he had been powerless to help.

He breathed in again and stroked the leg of the gently warbling astromech that had just rolled closer.

"It's okay, Weller… I'm… okay."

He'd found the abandoned R3 in the hangar as he'd been making his first rounds, assessing what he had to work with in the job Wedge had assigned him. The little droid had followed him for hours that day and Dex had finally decided that if no one else was going to claim him he would. The droid hadn't left his side since, keeping him company and offering crazy responses to the random questions and thoughts Dex had voiced. At one point Dex realized that the astromech's answers reminded him of the teachings of an old Corellian philosopher, Paul Weller, he'd studied during his first year at University of Coruscant, and decided that Weller was as good a name as any for him.

He took another slow breath, thinking that he might be achieving some level of calm, then nearly came out of his skin when a figure suddenly shot up in the air in front of him.

He sat up and had pulled his blaster out and was aiming at the figure, Weller tweeting frantically beside him, before he fully registered that it was a little girl that had suddenly appeared in front of him. And then she was holding his blaster… before her feet had even settled on the roof.

Bare feet… wavy blonde hair, and she was wearing tan Jedi robes.

Well, that explained both how she seemed to have leapt up from the ground 10 meters below, and how she'd disarmed him from 3 meters away.

She cocked her head slightly, then raised her chin toward Weller as she asked, "If I give this back to you will you call off your droid and promise not to shoot me?"

Dex realized instantly that this kid, who he'd seen arriving with the Solos earlier in the day, was, in fact, not a kid. Or… not a child anyway, but still young.

"Don't sneak up on us like that again and you've got a deal."

"I'm sorry I frightened you," the girl said. "It didn't occur to me to probe for a presence on a roof before I jumped."

He let out another breath. "It's ok, I was a little… tense already. And he's protective."

As she came closer he realized it was her petite stature that had caused him to mistake her for a child. And then he really looked at her and saw the pain in her eyes... and felt her heaviness in the Force.

She got within arm's distance and held his blaster out to him, grip first. "Sorry to interrupt your peace."

"It's ok. Truth is, I hadn't actually found any peace yet so all you did was test my heart and age me a decade or so. But have a seat. I assume you came up here for peace too?"

She sat down next to him then lay back as he did. "Peace… solitude… I haven't been farther than 2 meters away from another being in ages."

Dex made a show of sliding away from her, and then mimicking measuring to verify that he was in fact two meters away from her. When he glanced back over she was nodding her head slightly as tears streamed from the corner of her eye into her hair.

"Oh kriff." He scooted back towards her. "I was just teasing. I didn't mean to upset you."

"It's ok. It was funny. Or, it would be…" She sobbed slightly, "sorry. I've had a rough couple of weeks."

"Yeah… I understand."

She sobbed again, then caught her breath and said, "First I nearly cause your heart to stop and your droid to fry circuits, then I have a breakdown. Because every man wants to deal with a weeping teenage girl."

Dex chuckled. "I'll admit, I did not wake up this morning wondering what my chances of encountering a weeping teenage girl would be, but I won't throw you off the roof over a few tears."

"That's incredibly kind of you. You come in with the Coruscanti refugees?"

He nodded. "A few days ago. I was in the hangar earlier, saw you arrive with the Solos."

She nodded as she continued looking up at the stars.

"You a Jedi?" He finally asked.

"Yeah. You a pilot?"

Dex sighed heavily. "No. Not right now anyway. I'm… I was... finishing up my post grad work in mechanical engineering so Uncle Wedge asked me to work with his mech crews."

"General Antilles is your uncle?"

"Well, sort of uncle. Iella's first husband was my father's younger brother, and Iella's my hold-mother. It's always just been easier to refer to them as Aunt Iella and Uncle Wedge. Wedge said he needed me looking after his squadrons instead of flying. I think Aunt Iella is afraid I'm fragile after…" He trailed off and then felt slim fingers lace between his. "I don't think she wants me in a cockpit right now... so Wedge asked me to run the hangar instead of fly."

"It's nice that you still have people who care enough to look out for you."

Dex turned his head and looked at her again, watched more tears fall from her eye and squeezed her fingers.

"I'm sorry. Since you arrived with the Solos and the other Jedi, I assumed you were actually with them."

"It's ok. And I am. Ann..." she inhaled sharply, not finishing what she had been trying to say, and the tears flowed faster. She took another deep breath, then said, "Their son, Anahh… Anakin, was my... He died."

Dex watched her, saw… felt the grief, her devastation, and understood that she had experienced something even more painful than what he had. "Recently?" he whispered.

"Thirteen days."

"The day before Coruscant fell… so you guys were there too?"

"No, we were on a mission. Behind enemy lines..."

"We? You were on the mission? How old are you?"

"Fifteen." In contrast to everything else she had said so far, there was so little emotion in her voice, and he guessed that she agreed with his assessment that that was kriffing crazy. Then she rolled her head to look at him again and squinted while she studied him, finally saying; "you're Force-sensitive."

Dex closed his eyes before nodding slowly and opening them again. "Yeah, but that's not common knowledge. Though I suppose if you Jedi are gonna be hanging around it's going to be hard to keep it a secret."

"Why keep it a secret? Because of the Yuuzhan Vong?"

"Among other things."

"Why didn't you train with us?"

He shrugged and returned his gaze to the stars. "My parents were quite a bit older than Aunt Iella… old enough to have grown up on stories of the Old Jedi being traitors... when I was little the family sort of treated it like a handicap. And since I'm the only person in the family we know of that got it, they tried to ignore it. Wedge and Iella offered numerous times over the years to introduce me to Master Skywalker, but I avoided it. I was too young to train with the older Force adepts when he was first re-building the Order… and not interested by the time he started training kids."

"And now that you've met him, what do you think?"

Dex chuckled. "I haven't actually met him yet. With all the craziness, I've managed to evade him."

She let out a long breath. "You'll have to give me tips on how to do that. I can't seem to evade any of the Skywalkers or Solos these days."

"Back to having people care enough?"

"Yeah." She sat up, then stood. "I should probably get going. You need to finish your search for peace and I should check in with Han and Leia before they start to worry."

He watched her walk to the edge of the roof and began to panic as the insane thought that she was about to jump entered his mind. Weller rolled forward and tweeted frantically at the same time Dex lurched to his feet and grabbed for the girl's arm.

She spun to face him, a sad smile on her face as she said, "You really should have trained with us," and stepped backward off the roof.

Dex let out a sharp breath, then called down, "Thanks for another heart attack, Blondie," and smiled as he heard her gentle laughter.

"You're welcome," she called up as she began to walk away. "And tell your droid to relax. I knew what I was doing. I trained."

New Republic Occupation of Borleias, Day 43

"So… how is flying with Janson?" Tahiri was trying to change the subject, at least for a minute or so, because the man in front of her looked like his head was about to explode.

Dex closed his eyes and sighed heavily, clearly trying to reign in his frustration, then put his hands on his hips and glared at her.

"Nice try, but you aren't going to distract me with small talk."

She gave him a small smile and shrugged. "Points for effort?"

"This is insane. Why are you doing this? You've been a Yuuzhan Vong prisoner. You know better than any of us how dangerous this is. Why are you volunteering to go?"

Tahiri was caught between wanting to tell him to back the kriff down, and so incredibly touched by how much he cared; cared so much in fact that she sometimes thought that what was left of her heart would break because of it. She'd known that he wouldn't be happy about this. In fact she'd waited to tell him. Waited until after Iella had finally relented and accepted Wedge signing off on Dex flying. Though Iella had only relented because Wedge had assigned him to Janson's Yellow Ace's. Which Tahiri had thought was ironic because from what she'd heard, Janson, a former Rogue and former Wraith, was a wild man.

Still, they'd been fighting about her decision for days, and Dex had made no secret of his disdain for some of Master Skywalker's choices, specifically the ones that pertained to or affected her.

Dex took her hands in his and squeezed gently, looking at her pleadingly. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because if I don't go… Jaina will. And the idea of Han and Leia losing the only child they have left is more than I can bear."

"And the talk that Jacen Solo is still alive? Are you seriously going to look me in the eye and tell me you aren't going because you're trying to find him? Which doesn't quite track with you not wanting to see the Solos lose their last child."

"Yes Dexie, I am going to stand here and tell you that. As much as I would love to believe that Jacen's alive… I'm not sure I'm capable of believing in much right now. But Han and Leia have been nothing but kind to me… and for their sake… and for Annnn..."

Tahiri began to cry and Dex sighed as he pulled her into his chest. He rubbed her back as she sobbed, as he had done every time she had broken down in the last month; broken down because the pain hadn't relented at all.

Weller, Fiver, and Finn, the new little astromech Dex had found and taken in, all rolled forward as Tahiri's sobs grew harsher, beeping and tweetling mournfully. She had the insane thought that she needed to pull herself together, for 'the boys' if nothing else. The three little mechs seemed even more disturbed by her frequent breakdowns than the man in front of her. Then she chuckled as she pulled out of Dex's arms.

Using the sleeve of her shirt to wipe at her nose she looked up at Dex, her moment of humor over worrying about the boys' 'feelings' vanishing when she saw the worry in Dex's expression. Pulling herself together, she cupped his face and tried to explain.

"I felt Jacen die… or, I thought I did. I felt him… disappear in the Force. It did feel different than when Ann…." she closed her eyes again, and felt Dex's sympathy as the now familiar waves of agony rolled down her body. "I assumed at the time that it was different because my connections to them were different. But Leia is… was... their mother. And it was different for her too."

"What about Jaina?" Dex whispered. "Was it different for her?"

"Well, Jaina's sort of…"

"A special case?"

Tahiri snorted, and then laughed and snorted again when Dex rolled his eyes.

"Have I told you lately how incredibly lady-like you are?"

"More times than I can count. But back to Jaina…"

Now Dex snorted. "Please, don't. Why the kriff I ever said anything to you about her is beyond me."

"Because you love and trust me?"

"How in the worlds that's happened in so short a time is also beyond me." They gazed at each other for a bit, until Dex finally said, "but it's true; I do love you, which is why I don't want you to do this."

"I need to go Dexie. If we're all wrong - if Leia is right about Jacen being alive - and Jaina goes, and Shimrra finds out both Solo twins are on Coruscant..."

"Yuuzhan'tar, Tahiri. It's not Coruscant anymore, it's Yuuzhan'tar."

"I don't believe Jacen's alive, as much as I'd like to, and whatever Master Skywalker is feeling…"

Dex growled, but Tahiri didn't give him time to keep going.

"I just know that I need to go."

Dex pulled her back into his chest and inhaled sharply. Tahiri recognized this gesture; he was holding her like this because he didn't want her to see him cry. She melted into him, allowed him to hold her because she knew that he needed it as much as she did. When he'd gotten control of himself he pulled back and cupped her face, saying, "Do not get dead Blondie, you hear me? You are not allowed to get dead."

"I'll try."

He shook his head and said, "You say that, but I'm not sure I trust you to not want to get dead."

She tried to control the quivering of her chin and bit her lower lip, again overwhelmed by how much he cared about her, and how much she cared about him. "I don't know why, I can't figure it out, because some days I do want to get dead, but mostly I don't."

"Survival instinct?"

"Maybe. Maybe… because I met this awesome guy who's spent the last few weeks holding my hand, and letting me cry on his shoulder, and I don't want to hurt him anymore than he's already been hurt..."

Dex leaned forward and pressed his lips to Tahiri's forehead, then pulled her tighter as he leaned his head onto hers.

"You're collecting quite the little band of orphans… teenage girls, droids… Do me a favor, Dexie?"

"Anything."

"If you can, work out time with Han and Leia so Fiver can hang out with Weller and Finn? He'll get lonely while I'm gone."

"Yeah… I'll make sure the boys have time to play." He was silent as he swayed, rocking her gently back and forth. Then he squeezed her and whispered, "You have to come back, Blondie. I need you. You're most of what's kept me going these last few weeks."

Tahiri nodded as she squeezed him back. "You're most of what's kept me going too. And if you're not waiting for me here when this is over, I'll come find you. No matter where you are."

Next time on Fear and Love...

More Dex… because he's AWESOME!