As soon as Kaevee was no longer needed, she retreated to the Ebon Hawk. With some help from Remote, she redundantly cleaned her blaster pistol. She glanced over the mission data yet again. She ate. By accident, she crossed paths with Cole a few times. She tried to meditate.

The whole time, though, she was really just waiting to speak with Atris, who had remained aboard the Crystal Shore with Atton to, as he put it, Go over our lines together.

Dinnertime was long past when the Ebon Hawk's ramp opened with a clank, signaling their return. Kaevee emerged from the starboard dorm to greet them, only to be driven back by a withering draft that reminded her of the monastery on Belsavis. "Good thing we're not camping out," Atton muttered as he and Atris ascended from the murky night that had fallen over Krylon.

While the pilot meandered into the main hold and eventually to the synthesizer, Atris went straight for the port dorm, her motions jerky and frenetic from the cold. Sighing, Kaevee went back to her meditation—but not an hour later she felt a touch in the Force like a gentle hand on her shoulder, and went to Atris's chamber.

She sat on the cot where she usually did. Folded up beside her was Atris's Sith disguise: a roughly-worn, faded black cloak. Atton had produced it from a plasteel container in the cargo hold—one of the few which had been there since before Kaevee first came aboard—with no explanation.

"I hope you will forgive my seclusion," said Atris delicately. "I've had need to gather strength for what lies ahead."

"It's all right, I understand. I'm just..." Kaevee blew out a breath and brought a hand up to rake at her hair. "...worried about you."

"I'm not going into danger alone. You can trust Atton and I not to risk ourselves foolishly." The old woman tilted her head, her mouth crooking in a slight smile. "At any rate, you can trust me not to."

Kaevee tried to laugh. "Yeah, I guess so."

"What else troubles you, then?"

Of course she knows there's something else, thought Kaevee, and then she told her. Told her about the madness in Telthek Nest, most of all what had happened in the cantina, her hesitancy in acting when Atton and the others had been threatened by the barkeep. Told how she had hesitated because she had wanted ignorantly, instinctively, to do "the Jedi thing" and to spare his life.

"The past does not easily let us go," Atris remarked.

"I know that. But what was I supposed to do? Just blast him?"

"I cannot tell you. I wasn't there."

Kaevee rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand.

"I am here to teach you how to think, not what to think," Atris explained. "These will be difficult times for you; you will face trials that you never did in your years on Dantooine. It will take time. But you must learn to be centered in who you are, not who you wish you were."

"But I don't know what I am."

Atris cast a pointed look at the folded-up cloak. "That makes two of us."


With one foot on the Crystal Shore's ramp, Atton stopped and half-turned. "You never saw us, all right?"

Troycule chittered. "What difference would it make, whether I saw you? You Humans all look the same."