Chapter Eighteen: Thicker Than Water (Rishi)

16 ATC. Rishi.

This might be, Nine thinks as she holds her blaster steady, finger about to switch off the safety, the stupidest thing I've ever done.

Which really is impressive, given the span of her career so far includes some pretty spectacular feats of idiocy (all the way back to assuming Darth Jadus was ever dead. She knows better now- never believe anyone's dead until you've got your own fingers on their lack of pulse and even then, put a round between their eyes just in case- but she forgave herself for that long ago. She didn't know the game back then, thought she was a back row piece on the chessboard when of course she was just a pawn and they played her like one. But even pawns get to the last rank of the board sometimes, and when they do-

She's not a pawn anymore. She's a fucking queen.)

But holding an armed Sith Lord at blaster-point? She'd thought she could trust Lana, but so had Theron- if she's wrong about this, she's very likely about to lose a hand or worse and he's probably going to die strapped to an interrogation table in some Revanite base and he doesn't deserve that, Republic or not.

No one deserves that.

No matter how many times she's dreamed about burning the entire SIS to the ground, she wouldn't wish torture on her worst enemy. On Corellia she'd known what was going to happen, in abstract if not in detail, and she had a mission to complete and failure wasn't in the game plan; still, when the straps tightened and Hunter's people started their work there were moments when she almost hoped for a cut too deep, a hit too hard or a dose just a little too high, anything to make the pain stop for a moment-

Theron would have never seen it coming.

"With Theron inside their base, he'll be able to do what he does." Lana blinks down the barrel, one eyebrow twitching ever so slightly but her expression unreadable. "Once we retrieve him, we can-"

"Did you plan this?" She cuts in abruptly, well past the point of caring about rudeness. Sith or not, she needs to know.

Another blink. "Did I- what?"

"Did you," she says it again, each word sharp as knives, "plan for Theron's capture? Was that why you wouldn't wait for me?"

Eyes widening, Lana moves slowly, carefully, to clip her saber back to her belt. "You think I- no. No! It went all wrong, but if we move quickly we can still retrieve Theron, preferably alive, and salvage the situation. Do put that away so I can explain, please."

"I think we're just fine like this. Don't you, Jakarro?" As the wookiee roars agreement she curls and uncurls her finger, just so, in line with the trigger. "Explain. Now."

(Would you really have shot me? Still half-buried in her pillow nest, Lana looks up at her, head tilted.

A question like that merits a drink- she reaches for the bottle and drains the last of it. I needed to narrow down the possibilities, and I didn't have much time to work with. The blaster helped.

You may need to explain that one, I'm afraid.

Keeping in mind that I didn't know you then like I do now, and given my previous track record with Sith- Lana nods agreement as she says it- the way I saw it there were three options. One, that you were a Revanite all along. Theron wouldn't turn, so you had him captured and waited to see how I'd react-

When Lana's really, honestly amused she can always tell: if she laughs in public (which she rarely does) it's the clipped, terse chuckle that's a native species to Dromund Kaas in its own right, the sort of laugh that doesn't draw attention because when one grows up in the Empire's heart one learns to conform or suffer the consequences. But in private, like now, it's something else entirely, rising and falling, notes on a musical scale. Did you honestly believe that?

It was by far the least likely scenario- too complicated by half, and if I'd objected you'd have had to deal with me and Jakarro at the same time. In any case, you didn't attack me when I drew on you, so that one was out.

Option two? Lana shifts over onto her stomach, chin resting on her hands and forehead crinkled in thought.

The most likely option, all things considered. You were telling the truth. The mission went bad, Theron was compromised, and you let him get captured in the hope that he'd manage to both survive and learn something useful in the process. She shakes her head. Risky and stupid, but you would have wanted to explain yourself. You would have thought I'd agree with you.

An eyeroll, a grumble, and a pillow tossed in her direction- You don't have to lecture me again, you know. I'm aware-

Did Theron ever talk about what happened? With Revan?

No. Lana shakes her head. Even when he came to Asylum, he never brought it up. So I thought it better to let it lie rather than reopening old wounds. Did he tell you?

A little. Enough. I- she pauses. Have you ever been interrogated? Not as practice, not debriefing- actually interrogated.

A second headshake. I've been fortunate. I've seen more of them than I'd care to, given my particular talent- her lip curls, her tone dry- but before I served Darth Arkous I spent most of my time with the historians, and with your warnings about Darth Zhorrid's proclivities I was able to keep mostly clear of her after my promotion.

Then you wouldn't understand what it's like. Not like we do.

I don't think that's fair, Lana says. I'm sure it was painful and I know it could have gone badly, but Theron-

She holds up one hand. No. I'm sorry, but no. You don't understand, and you don't get to justify it.

Then why don't you explain it to me?

If I could tell you, I... No. There aren't words to put to those feelings, not ones that anyone else would understand (except for Theron- he understands. Maybe even better than she does). You know, it might be easier to show you. Do you remember Valkorion's little mind games from before, on the Gravestone?

Lana nods.

Let's try this, then. An exercise. She stands, reaching back toward her desk for her datapad. Think of that, and keep that pressure in your head, and I want you to read me.

All right. But why the datapad?

I'm going to play something in the background. With reverse interrogations that's often all you get, assuming your captors aren't total incompetents- snippets of conversations, a whisper they think you can't hear. Theron was- she almost said lucky, but no, he wasn't lucky at all- Revan liked to talk, so that helped, but… She sighs. Ten minutes. Ten minutes, then tell me what you heard.

She loads two files. First, her recording of two days ago's logistics meeting, scanning forward to the end, to when they'd started to rehash the Nar Shaddaa shield bunker problem for the hundredth time. Second, to trigger the appropriate memory- this one takes her longer, buried six folders deep and behind three separate passwords- SCORPIO's recording of Corellia.

(She ought to have deleted it a long time ago. It's not healthy, probably, keeping things like that around.)

Hour ten, she thinks. A particularly unpleasant hour.

She presses play on the second file, sound muted, her attention focused on the screen. It takes a moment, even so, to pull the walls down from around the hours of time it took months of deliberate effort to suppress, but then, finally… Ah. She hisses, her head starting to throb. There it is.

Shall we begin? Remember, imagine Valkorion too, if you want an idea of what Theron felt.

Lana reaches out for her arm as she pushes her sleeve up, fingers circling her wrist. I'll try. Show me.

Still watching the recording play, she lets herself fall back into the memory as the connection between them solidifies.

[by hour ten she was hurting bad: the truth serum was useless, of course, but they'd pushed the dose to a point that left her dizzy and feverish; her right eye aches, the lid swollen shut and her nose and three ribs broken (not her fingers yet, though- that was hour fourteen). they've grown bored of hitting her and it hasn't gotten them what they want.

the woman's leaning her forward, pulling up her jacket while her body howls protest, and tapes the electrode array to the base of her spine as her partner does the same along the soles of her bare feet.

i've already told you everything i know, she says. this isn't going to change anything.

the woman looks at her, then to the still-active holocomm where hunter's standing, arms crossed. your call, boss. keep going?]

Shifting, restless and uncomfortable, Lana tightens her grip; she starts the first file, leaving it playing in the background as-

[she's a very good liar, hunter grins. ten minutes, i think, and we'll try again. turning, hunter eyes her up and down. oh, legate. this would be so much easier if you hadn't changed your programming. at this rate you're going to miss the whole party.

she smiles, lips dry. she'd kill for a glass of water; she'd kill for a lot of things, at the moment. think i'll pass. the hors d'oeuvres were terrible.

your loss. stars, she hates that laugh. let's begin.

it builds slowly, a prickle in her toes, crawling slowly up her legs into the muscles of her back, and at first she thinks maybe it won't be so bad and then the man in armor, the leader of the trio holding her captive, reaches for the control box and cranks the dial up and-]

It's hard to watch. She can almost feel it, the electricity coursing in ten-second pulses through her body until she's arching against the restraints, and she remembers the noise she made, a inhuman keening wail she wouldn't have known as her own voice except that recordings do not lie. There was no helping it, of course, no shame in it. But still.

After the first minute Lana curls onto her side, eyes closed, fingernails of her contact hand digging into the underside of her forearm and her other hand clenched into a fist pressed tight against her mouth. After two minutes she tries to pull away.

I said ten minutes. She lowers her arm against the surface of the couch, pinning Lana's hand between her wrist and the cushions. Not yet.

[the stutter-stop irregularity of it's the hardest thing- thirty seconds of rest and then five bursts in a row, then another pause and then three, then six, then two, again and again, so she can't count them, can't know when to fight it and when to stop fighting-]

You never do, Valkorion says, stirring in the back of her mind, brushing the memory aside like a child throwing an unwanted toy as he forces himself forward. With my power at your disposal you could bring my children to heel in the span of a heartbeat and yet still you fight me. It would be so much easier if-

(He did that on purpose. She's certain of it. For a moment he even sounds like Hunter.)

With a gasp and a twitch she throws all her mental walls back up, knocking the datapad off her lap and sending it clattering to the floor. Lana startles, too, hands moving to her temples as her eyes fly open.

Was that-?

She sighs. Unintentional. I'm not sure what he might be able to do through a one-sided connection, but I assume you're not particularly interested in finding out.

You would be correct. When Lana stands she's wobbly on her feet, hanging onto the back of the couch and then the edge of the holotable as she makes her way to the refresher. Excuse me. Door half-shut behind her, barely audible but unmistakable over the sound of running water, she retches- once, twice, then splashing at the basin and the tap shutting off. When she emerges again she wipes her mouth on the back of her hand before returning to sit beside her, face colorless and lips pressed tight together and completely avoiding her questioning gaze.

That was cruel of me, she whispers after a minute into the silence between them. I apologize.

You don't- I really did think you'd agree with me. Her head doesn't move but her eyes dart sideways, briefly, before she focuses back on the far wall. I only had a few seconds to make the decision, and we hadn't heard back from you. It might have been our last real chance to get to the heart of things. But- Lana wipes her face again, the pressure of her fingertips leaving faint pink marks on her forehead and down her cheeks- Force help me. No wonder you were so angry. And no wonder Theron hated me for it, if what you showed me was anything like what happened with Revan.

Reaching down for the fallen datapad, she shuts it off, sets it on the table. Different goals, so it's not an even comparison. Close enough for our purposes, though. And again, I didn't mean for Valkorion to interfere. That part of the exercise was supposed to be theoretical but he-

Is that what it feels like all the time? Lana interjects, finally looking at her again. I don't know how you stand it.

No, thankfully. Only when he's active, which isn't terribly often. Sometimes I almost forget.

(Then I shall have to endeavor, he says, the thought snaking around her consciousness like creeping ivy, to be more memorable.)

But only almost. Going back to the point: do you remember anything you heard of the recording I was playing?

Not a damned thing. I barely knew it was there, let alone being able to focus on it. That- she bares her teeth, an expression halfway between apology and pain. Ah, fuck, that hurt so much, Nine.

That makes her blink; she can count on one hand the number of times she's heard her really properly swear. I know. I'm sorry.

Me, too, Lana says. Me, too.

Suddenly she's tired. As they both lean back, letting the cushions bear them up, they settle against each other, shoulder against shoulder, pressure and weight comforting in their familiarity. (For a moment she thinks of Yavin IV, after the battle, huddled exhausted on a fallen pillar waiting for evac back to base camp, with her body accorded neutral territory between Theron on her right and Lana on her left. Six years on, everything and nothing at all have changed.)

What was the third option? You knew the second was the right one, but-

Oh. Yes. She chuckles faintly. Option three was somewhere between the first two. You weren't a Revanite, but you'd run out of patience. You knew Jakarro's intel on the house was wrong- through the Force, maybe, I don't know how- and you set Theron up deliberately. You sent me to Torch's island to keep me from interfering and you threw him to the wolves. Our last best chance.

You know I didn't.

She runs her hand along the underside of her opposite wrist, along the half-moon indentations left by five neat fingernails. You were a bad liar back then, and I'm about as Force-sensitive as a rock but I know a lie when I hear one. I believed you.

I've had too much practice between then and now, Lana murmurs, but not to you. For the sake of curiosity, what would have happened had you decided it was option three?

If I thought that you were capable of that, after all we'd already done together? Raising her index finger, she brushes the bangs off Lana's forehead then taps sharply, once, exactly in the center. It would have been quick. But I'd have blown your fucking head off.)

They rent a boat at the dock.

"A hunting party," she tells the Rishii at the slip. Anywhere else that would have raised eyebrows, given Kaliyo's hauling a backpack that's half her size and entirely full of explosives- she'd told her, when she called the ship, to come loaded for bear and by the look of it she'd emptied the armory- but today the Rishii just unties the lines and wishes them good hunting.

There's something to be said for pragmatism, though she doubts Theron would agree at the moment.

The little village on the island's surprisingly welcoming, too, considering they've lost half their territory to an armed camp of fanatics; within half an hour they've got a temporary base set up in a stone-and-thatch hut with a good view of the valley beyond. To go by the comm traffic Dee-Four's intercepted so far the Revanites' main stronghold is somewhere on the far side of the island, hidden in the dense jungle, but the native scouts don't seem to know any more than they've managed on their own.

So she and Kaliyo ride out on borrowed speeders, leaving Lana and Jakarro in the village to keep sorting through data.

(She'd left Jakarro a one-line message: instructions, just in case her gut instinct had played them wrong and Lana made another move in her absence.

Lana doesn't need to hear that, though. In retrospect it was paranoia, and she's hurt her enough already for today.)

"Bad intel and no plan. Lucky for you, I hate plans." Kaliyo turns to her at the top of the valley path as they pull a camouflage net over the speeders; engines tuned for endurance, the bikes make far too much noise to reach the camp unnoticed but at least they're close now. "We're cloaking in, yeah?"

"Yes. The closer we get without alarms up, the more likely Theron's still alive when we get there."

She nods, adjusts the stealth device. "Syncing now. How are we playing if we're blown?"

"Hard and fast. We don't have time or personnel for surrenders." Slipping her rifle free of her back harness, she checks it one last time. "Shoot to kill."

"My favorite words. And it's not even my birthday." Kaliyo flashes her a quick grin but she doesn't return it, and after a moment she shrugs and finishes tying down the net. "We'll get there. What's his clock at?"

She looks down at her chrono, at the third timer counting inexorably upward beneath the little dials of local and Standard Time. "Three hours and six minutes. Let's move."

The Imperial commander, a pathetic grasping little Sith of the sort ubiquitous around the Kaas City Sanctum, wants to talk and wants out of the Revanite mess but doesn't know anything at all- utterly typical. Killing him would only waste time, though, so she sends him and his honor guard packing and moves on to the Republic camp; one less leader's still progress, if only a little.

The Republic compound guards, on the other hand, refuse to stand down. They waste a quarter-hour trying to snipe from cover before she lets Kaliyo blow the place to pieces, a block of detonite on the back door and four grenades through the skylight an inelegant but effective solution.

They haven't time for elegance. This is taking far too long.

The captain's dying when they finally get through the door into the main room, his belly full of shrapnel as he drags himself toward a terminal against the far wall. She puts her foot on the back of his neck, tilts her head toward the terminal. Kaliyo moves toward it, pulling out a spike to transfer the data.

"Going somewhere?" To judge by his pallor he'll bleed out soon. "I can make the pain stop, you know. All you have to do is tell me where to find Revan."

The man coughs, looks up at her out of the corner of his eye as he stops resisting, going limp against the floor. "I don't know-" another cough- "I don't know where Revan is. But there's a stronghold to the northeast, in the other valley, where they took Theron Shan. Revan might be-" he gasps, shifting under the pressure of her boot. "Please. It hurts."

"Only for a moment," she says, and fires a round into the back of his head.

Time since capture: four hours, twenty-eight minutes.
Probability of survival: 83 percent.

The captain's data tells them four useful things.

First, that prisoners are held in the largest building in the far valley complex, surrounded by turrets and watchtowers and military-grade door encryptions, and that the codes on the spike are yesterday's.

Second, that Revan's warships wait on a nearby island for a signal that hasn't yet been given, the purpose of which is still unclear.

Third, that the First Imperial Fleet, Darth Marr at its helm, will pass through Rishi space tomorrow morning.

And fourth, that the bulk of the Republic fleet, ostensibly on a patrol mission (but who brings one's entire fleet on a patrol mission?) along the Manda Merchant Route, is due to jump to Rishi-

"Tomorrow." She swears, and pushes back from the terminal with a frustrated huff. "That's Revan's plan. They'll come out of hyperspace right on top of each other. It'll be a slaughter."

Lana shakes her head. "That can't be all of it. Darth Marr wouldn't risk the entire fleet without at least attempting to contact the Republic commander, not this far from reinforcements, and the moment Revan puts himself in play-"

"What's the Republic flagship? Do we know?" She paces back and forth along the inside of the little hut. "If it's Saresh at the helm, or one of her puppets, Marr may not have a choice."

"Unclear." Dee-Four chimes in. "I am still attempting to decrypt the remaining files, but the information is incomplete."

The information is incomplete- it's the chorus to a song she just can't get out of her head.

"Then we continue with the original plan," Lana says, head still bowed over the console. "We attempt to extract Theron from the stronghold and hope he- or we- learned something in the meantime."

(Did I really say that? Lana wrinkles her nose. Extract. Rather like a sliver. Or a parasite.

She laughs; they're still shoulder to shoulder, and she elbows her teasingly. It's the right word for it, technically speaking, though Theron would probably be offended by the comparison. And yes, you did.

I don't- I didn't mean it like that.

I know, she says. Although he does have a knack for getting under one's skin, doesn't he?)

Only four kolto syringes in the bag, and another two in her belt pouch- she loads the extras in with hers, but it won't be nearly enough. "We? You're not going anywhere. I need Kaliyo to talk to the village leader. If they have healing supplies, buy everything you can." She throws a credit chip across the room and Kaliyo palms it, tucks it into a pocket with a nod. "Think Corellia. And call Lokin. I need him standing by."

Kaliyo makes a face and nods again; Lana and Jakarro simply look confused.

"I need you and Jakarro to keep running that data and try to reach the fleets," she continues, "and I'm going to need slicing support when I hit the valley."

"You're not going by yourself." Arms folded across her chest, Lana shakes her head emphatically. "Far too dangerous. If you're captured-"

She fixes her with a flat stare as she fastens the pouch. "If I'm captured, Theron dies. Believe me, I'm well aware of the risk."

"Cipher, please. We can't afford to lose both of you."

"Of course you can't. But you ought to have thought of that before." Turning on her heel, she leaves the hut.

Time since capture: five hours, forty-two minutes.
Probability of survival: 71 percent.

She drags the guard behind the watchpost before she comms Lana. Night's fallen over the island and he won't be getting up again, of course- he never saw her coming and she opened his throat, quick and quiet- but there are other guards and it wouldn't do to have one of them notice the body.

"I need to keep moving," she whispers. "If you can get the perimeter systems offline, it'd make my life a lot easier."

"On it. Jakarro?" There's a rumble of assent somewhere in the background, and after a few seconds the turrets around the watchpost power down; she watches on the monitor as the rest of the system follows suit. "I've got schematics for the main building. Sending the file now."

Two quick buzzes. She pulls up the diagram, flips her eyepiece down to overlay it on her vision. (She hates the eyepiece: too many people become reliant on them, forgetting how to navigate or aim or track without artificial assistance. But she can't afford a wrong turn, not today.) "Any cameras inside? Looks like that building goes deep."

"A few. Just a moment. I'm getting the hang of this slicing business, but- there we- oh." Lana trails off, going quiet. "No live feeds, I'm afraid, but there are logs from the interrogation room."

"Timestamp?"

"Half an hour ago. Should I-"

Ah, Force, if she's already too late- "Load it."

The feed angle's bad, just a surveillance camera rather than a proper interrogation recording; she can barely see Theron around the robed figure standing beside the table. The volume's low, too, nearly impossible to hear when routed through her comm, but that's definitely his voice, shaky and pained, and someone answering from out of frame-

Lana hisses. "Revan."

The image shudders, static cutting across the screen, and Theron screams. She knows that noise. She's made that noise.

(I'd forgotten that recording.

I'm not surprised, she says. It's not something most people would choose to remember.)

Fuck.

"Get the main doors open." She takes off across the walkway toward the main building, still stealthed but practically running, still too slow. "I'm going in."

Time since capture: seven hours, three minutes.
Probability of survival: 58 percent.

It is not for nothing that they call her the Ghost of the Empire, and not only because she no longer has a name.

Blasters, even silenced, make noise. A hand over a mouth, a knife edge darting swiftly over arteries or a point slipping neatly between two ribs- no wasted energy, each movement precise and possessed of a morbid sort of beauty, and there is something intensely satisfying, especially on days like today, about someone else's blood on one's hands.

There were ten guards roaming the quiet hallways between the front door and the main control room; now there are none, the alarms still untriggered, and her exit route is clear for another forty minutes until change of watch. Sneaking past would have been faster and infinitely less messy, but even if she can reach Theron without being detected she doubts it'll stay that way once he's free and he'll be slow enough, probably, without needing to fight the guards as they flee.

An ounce of preparation, as the saying goes.

If the schematics are right the holding cells should be just through this room. As she crosses the threshold, though, the holotable in its center activates and-

pressure sensor? they can't see me maybe it's just a guard checking in don't make a noise don't get caught don't get caught

"Hello, Cipher," Revan says. "Excellent timing. We're just beginning to implement the last stage of the plan. You'll be able to witness it finally come to fruition."

Well. That's that.

I'm sorry, Theron.

She switches off her stealth generator. "Revan. This could have all been avoided if you'd only stayed dead, you know. Where's Theron?"

He laughs at that, the bastard. "That's unimportant. As are you. Do you really think you can stop what's been set in motion?"

"I've heard that before. Why don't you tell me the details and we'll see?"

Revan laughs again, a cold metallic echo behind his mask. He isn't here, then. He'd have come for her by now if he was here. "Bold little thing. Pity. When the Republic and the Empire destroy each other, when we craft a new world out of the ashes of the old, there might have been a place for you in it. But I suspect you'd be less than cooperative."

"Believe it or not, I tend to react badly when people try to kill my friends." Slowly, she starts toward the door, edging little by little along the margin of the table. If she can get to the prison corridor before the alarm sounds, maybe there's still a chance. "Your battle hasn't happened yet. You haven't won."

"So stubborn. Theron couldn't be persuaded either, though I suppose that shouldn't have been a surprise." Arms folded across his chest, the hologram Revan shakes his head. "Tenacity runs in our blood, even if-"

Our?

She's almost to the far door when it slides open abruptly, the concussive edge of an explosion in the hallway beyond knocking her back against the holotable as it flickers and dies and Revan disappears. As she struggles to right herself, a cluster of blaster bolts rockets past the open door- not through; whoever's firing isn't aiming at her.

Alarms in the corridor. Footsteps, too, irregular but fairly quick, moving closer, rounding the doorframe- "Don't listen to him! There's still a chance."

"Theron." How long has she been holding her breath? Suddenly, somehow, she can breathe again. "You're alive."

Blaster clutched in his hand, he slaps the panel beside the door and it hisses closed, the lock engaging. "Mostly. I-" He staggers, clutching at the edge of the table, his wrist ringed with a deep gouge just visible under his jacket cuff, two fingers of his left hand unbending and the angle of his thumb somehow wrong. "We've got to get to their signal jammer. Revan's blocking all communication over Rishi space and he's got saboteurs in both fleets- they'll take down shields, weapons, everything. If we can't warn them before they get here, it'll be a massacre. They-" Out of breath, he trails off.

He learned something after all. Clever boy.

"That's the piece of the puzzle we were missing. We knew about the fleets, but not the sabotage." Force, he looks terrible. "Here. I've got kolto, but we've got to get out of here before someone realizes all the entrance guards are dead. We can update Lana and Jakarro on the move."

Theron finally seems to see her- how he can see anything with both eyes purpled and swollen nearly shut, his nose puffy and oozing blood and his lower lip split is beyond her comprehension. "I didn't think anyone was going to come. I got out of the restraints and grabbed my gear, figured I could make it to the front door, but I forgot about the droids-" he gasps when he tries to straighten. "Then I heard you. I should have known you'd come for me."

That explains his thumb- with no lockpick, there's only one good way to get out of cuffs. Reaching into her pouch for the first two kolto injectors, she crouches next to him, presses one into each of his thighs and hits the buttons. "I had to- sorry," she says as he flinches, "I wasn't going to leave you. Not like this. Not after what Lana did."

"She told you?"

"Yes."

Theron sighs. "Did she mean for this to happen?"

"No."

"And you believe that." He doesn't, clearly, his mouth curling and his tone incredulous.

She chuckles, discarding the empty syringes. "I had a blaster pointed at her face. She might have been lying, but I rather doubt it."

He blinks down at her. "You had a bl- you're kidding."

"Do I look-" she pulls two more syringes and sinks them home, hands him a clean cloth to hold against his bleeding mouth- "like I'm kidding?"

"Not really, no." His color's a little better, but only a little, and something about his posture makes her nervous. "Still, better me than you. Revan would have just killed you. He wanted me to join him, wanted me to- you heard him. Our blood. Our legacy." When she rises he leans on her. "Fuck legacy. He's insane."

"You're related to Revan." It isn't a question.

Theron nods again, then stops, his eyes unfocused from too much movement. "It's… complicated. I don't even know how he knew. He could just tell, somehow- he got inside my head- he-"

(Did you know?

Not then. I knew of the Shan line of Jedi from my research- Theron's grandmother Tasiele had some intriguing ideas about the Force- but it's a common name. Lana shakes her head. I didn't make the connection until I saw him with Satele.)

The entire building shakes and he stumbles again, balanced between her and the table, and a second alarm starts to shriek above the first. Power core cooling offline. Time to detonation: five minutes.

"It can't ever be easy, can it?" She lifts his arm over her shoulders and he gasps again, inhaling, and she can feel the shudder move beneath her through every muscle of his back. "Ready to move?"

"Easy's for amateurs." That might have been a wink, though it's hard to tell with his eyelids still half-closed. "I'm ready. The generator's two rooms over, I think, with a console. I can-" he looks to his left hand, the unmoving fingers. "I can talk you through it."

"I've got you." As they start to move she has to fight to stay upright; he's leaning on her hard and he's at least a hand taller than she is, but she's got him. They don't have a choice. "Let's go."

(Even after all of that, she says, we would have died if not for you.

One corner of Lana's mouth barely moves, the faintest hint of a smile. Theron taught me some slicing, those months that we were running. Without him I wouldn't have had any idea how to disable a power core.

Well, thank the Force for that.)

Somehow they make it to the woods, to the clearing where she'd hidden the speeder, and when Theron slumps over onto the seat she gives him the last two injections.

"If you sit behind me, can you hold on?"

"I think so. How's your driving?" He's still ashen, his color off; Kaliyo'd scrounged up another half-dozen doses of kolto, though, so if they can make it back to the village he should be fine. (Should be. She needs a scanner or better, Doctor Lokin, but they'll have to get back to Raider's Cove for that and the fleets are less than eight hours away and-

They can do this.)

She fires up the speeder, sliding onto the seat in front of him. "Lead foot and no sense of self-preservation?"

"Liar- you keep yourself alive just fine. But in that case you should take up swoop racing." Theron's arms slip around her waist as she takes off down the trail, his chest against her back. "Those are pretty much the only prerequisites."

"'m too heavy, I think. Swoop racers are all built like birds." Looking back over her shoulder, she checks their tail. Clear, finally.

"True. I was a lot lighter," he says into her ear, "back then."

She laughs, though she isn't sure he hears her over the noise of the engine. "What, some kind of SIS cover story?"

"Way before that. Misspent youth." When they hit a tree root he winces, holding onto her tighter. "I'll… I probably shouldn't, but if we survive this, I'll tell you some of the story, alright?"

"You definitely shouldn't, but I'm holding you to that. Just a little further."

Theron's quiet the rest of the way back to the village, another twenty minutes' journey over the rough forest paths, and finally, finally, she can see the narrow way up to the hut and brings the bike to a halt just in front of it.

"We're here-" she kills the engine- "you can let go now."

He doesn't.

"Theron? Are you okay?"

When she turns to look at him the twisting of her body breaks his grip; he lets go and falls, sideways, toward the dirt and his eyes don't open and she can't catch him at this angle and-

"Lana!" Her cry echoes off the cliff faces around them and back into the valley. "Lana, I need your help."

Author's Notes:

1) Another experimental chapter, sorry. I heard you like flashbacks, so I put some flashbacks in your flash- hm. Quite enough of that.

2) Per Annihilation, Theron was, in fact, a swoop bike racer at some point in his teens. I can see it.

Up next: Bright Spot, in which your exasperated author may just build voodoo dolls of these two idiots and scream NOW KISS at them until they decide to cooperate.