"I'm afraid of what it might lead to, I guess."
Peejiʻ's head rotated to the side, in a gesture that Cina would probably strain something imitating, but had learned to interpret as questioning. "I must admit I am surprised. I would think you would consider reclaiming the person you once were as a victory, of sorts."
"I thought so for a little bit, yeah." It hadn't even been that long ago. Only a few weeks back, sparring with Rhysam and abruptly pulling ridiculous lightsaber and Force magic skills out of her arse, she distinctly recalled feeling a bit of vindicated glee at the realisation that the mind-wipe wasn't nearly as permanent as the Masters seemed to think, that her memory would inevitably return — more than that, that their failure meant they had little power over her at all, they could disapprove all they liked but there was nothing else they could do. It had been liberating, in a way.
But now? Now she wasn't so sure.
Not that she knew how to go about explaining that, really. "It's complicated."
"I'm not going anywhere," Peejiʻ said, alien lips parting in a human-style smile, blocky greyish teeth glinting dull.
"It's just, I don't—" Cutting herself off with a sigh, Cina stared up at the ceiling of Peejiʻ's office, half-shrouded with leaves yellow and purple and green, futilely attempting to order her thoughts. "I know I must have had a life, before. You know, friends and whatnot. A job of some kind I left unfinished, and probably an important one — judging by the sort of things I have an inexplicable intuitive understanding of, maybe...I don't know, something high up in the military hierarchy somewhere, or maybe a diplomat or something. If I remember what I was doing, I'll probably remember why I was doing it, and...
"Well," she said, shrugging, "I don't know what I'll do from there, which is the problem. I can sort of guess where I must have been coming from — there's great risk in trying to change someone's personality too much, I'm told, so my issues with the Republic and my sympathies for the Sith are probably inherited from the old me. But, from where I'm sitting right now, escalating my critiques to full-out war is a bit much...but I also would have been in a position to know more than I do right now, having been a Jedi for who knows how long and fighting with the Revanchists and... I don't know."
Peejiʻ let out a long, low hum, his head nodding — another gesture he'd copied from humans, didn't seem quite natural, awkward and stilted. "You worry that, if you come to know what the old you knew, you will be motivated to find your way back into the Sith."
"Yeah, and that's not likely to go anywhere good. I mean, from what I understand, the Jedi only captured me because some other Sith nearly killed me first. It wouldn't do me much good to go back and get myself murdered straight away, would it?"
The weird tentacle things on his head shifting a bit, he grumbled, "No, I suppose not. But you do have choices in this matter, Cina. Your half-death can be an opportunity of a sort — you have been pulled away from your previous life, even if you come to remember it you have no obligation to return to it, if you do not wish to."
"If only it were that simple. I don't think it is."
"Oh? Why not?"
Cina felt a wry smile twitching at her lips. "You might not have noticed this about me, Peejiʻ, but I'm simply incapable of leaving things well enough alone. I mean, if I weren't, do you think I'd be going along with this crazy shite? It has practically nothing to do with me — not that I remember at the moment, anyway — but here I am, working with the Jedi in their effort to take out the bloody Emperor of the Sith. Sticking my nose in, like a fucking idiot."
She hadn't told Peejiʻ about the Star Forge or anything, of course. She did have some respect for operational security, and even knowing the thing existed might well endanger him. She'd given him the impression she was training up to join a Jedi plot to assassinate Alek — in an intelligence support role, not participating in the hit directly, she wasn't crazy enough to bring kids along on a suicide mission — which was more than bad enough without bringing top-secret precursor nonsense into the equation.
"Mm, you're not being straightforward with me, I don't think."
She cocked her eyebrows. "Calling me a liar. That's some high-class shrink skill right there."
Peejiʻ had another hum for that, somewhat different in tone this time — Cina was operating on the assumption the minor distinctions in his humming had some kind of meaning behind them, but she didn't know enough about HoʻDin to interpret what it was. "You know what I mean. Your concern is more than that you might be drawn back, that you might get in over your head. It is not that you might get yourself killed. That is not the true reason you want to hold on to who you are now."
Cina rolled her eyes, letting out a long sigh. "Okay, yeah, you're right. I like where I'm at now, for the most part. Dealing with the Jedi is bloody tedious, and if they didn't have me pinned I wouldn't bother, but... I don't have a lot of options, I guess."
"If circumstances were such that you were free to choose, what would you do?"
That actually stumped her for a second — she hadn't honestly given it much thought. "I don't know. Part of me thinks, take the kids and go back to Alderaan, or maybe Shelkonwa...but I suspect there isn't anything waiting for me there. I'm all but positive my family doesn't even exist." That was still surreal, sometimes, she tried to avoid thinking about them at all if she could help it...which was surprisingly easy, she assumed the old her hadn't been on nearly as good of terms with her family as Cianen. "So, that's not an option. If I had to...
"I think, I'd stay on the Hawk, and partner with Kandosa to, I don't know, start up a smuggling operation, or a mercenary company, or something. There's always work to do on the rim, for people willing to do it, and I do know far more about how things on the other side of the law operate than I have any reasonable justification for knowing. And, well, if someone is going to be doing that kind of work, I'd rather it be people like Kandosa and me — we're hardly good people, but we're certainly better than most of the trash in the business already. Mission and Zaalbar would be completely on board for that, they have the experience and skills for it, and I can at least keep an eye on them, make sure they don't get into too much trouble.
"But Sasha..." Cina let out a harsh, humourless chuckle, a dark smirk twisting at her lips. "That'd be a shite environment to raise a little girl in, but what else am I supposed to do with her? She is Mandoade, it wouldn't even be that strange by their standards, and I hardly see how I could fuck her up more than she's been already." Shaking her head to herself, she muttered, "What the fuck am I even doing, I'm going to be such a shite mum..."
Peejiʻ let out another hum, mouth opening in a loose, alien smile.
"Yes, yes, you think I'm too hard on myself, I know. I still have no fucking clue what I'm doing — which, I should be good at that by now, you would think, it seems I hardly ever do."
"That is not nearly so uncommon of an experience as you might assume. It is an ordinary part of life, I think, to stumble and flail our way through existence. The curse of sentience, if you will." With another long, low hum, Peejiʻ slowly nodded his head. "You do have a choice, you know. As I understand how these things operate, the Jedi Order has no authority over you if you do not permit it. And, as you have told me before, the slow failure of what has been done to your mind proves any direct exercise of control is, ultimately, doomed to failure. If you wished to, you could simply leave."
Forcing out a sigh, Cina's eyes tipped up to the leaf-shrouded ceiling for a moment. "No, I can't really. It's complicated — I can't explain exactly, for secrecy reasons — but I am in a unique position to do something important, due in part to repressed memories I have from my time with the Sith. If I just walk away, Alek will... Well, he'll win. Absolutely." Cina didn't even want to think what Alek, seemingly sinking further into madness with each passing month, might do with complete dominance of the galaxy and the fucking Star Forge in his pocket...
"And why is that your business, Cina? This is the Emperor of the Sith we're talking about. Involving yourself in these affairs clearly isn't what you want. Why force yourself to be pulled back in?"
"I wouldn't be forcing myself, really. I'd have to force myself to not do something."
Cina was more than convinced by now that she had a history with Alek. Of course, she'd already known that — she had been told, explicitly, that she'd been among the first batch of Revanchists, the ones that had all been recruited directly by Lesami and Alek from among their peers on Coruscant. At the very least, they would have known each other from the beginning of the war, and probably much earlier, since they'd been children. But it was more than just knowing it because she'd been told, no, she felt it.
It reminded her, in a way, of being confronted with the active slave trade on Taris. Going into it, she wouldn't have expected to approve of it, to be comfortable with it, of course not. Her Cianen memories even included lambasting the Senate for not doing more to police slavers further out in the rim, explicitly calling them hypocrites and perhaps even collaborators. But she certainly wouldn't have expected she would take it so, so personally. That's what it'd felt like, even thinking about it now, that slavery had been alive on Taris had made her absolutely, murderously furious, in a way that had felt closer, more intimate than pure ideology.
Which, now that she knew a little bit about her own history, she thought she knew why: when the Revanchists had liberated Taris from the Mandoade, they'd taken the time to dismantle the slave trade while they were at it. There was video on the holonet about it and everything, Jedi walking into markets and warehouses and walking out with thousands of people, the more graphic images showing slavers being summarily executed in the streets before cheering bystanders — usually by Republic soldiers, but even a few of the Revanchists had participated in the bloody work — a particularly amusing one where Lesami (in her Revan persona) had broken into the local parliament hall and dictated terms to the planetary government, the whole thing caught on a live broadcast.
Cina had, presumably, had a direct hand in the elimination of the slave trade on Taris. It only made sense that she might take its resurgence personally.
It was much the same with Alek. She knew, intellectually, that the galaxy was worse off with Alek at the head of the Empire. If the position had gone to Nisotsa in the wake of Lesami's assassination, that would be one thing, and perhaps even represent an improvement. Lesami had been quite ruthless and, while indisputably an effective wartime leader, how she would fare in peace was more open to debate — now that the Sith victory appeared inevitable, that was an important consideration, and Nisotsa seemed to have more the proper temperament. But Alek, though, Alek was something else. It was quite clear he was unstable — perhaps the long wars had broken him, perhaps he'd simply been predisposed to mental disturbance, who could say — and there was no telling what damage he might do in the years to come. Cina knew that, intellectually.
But it was more than that. It was hard to put words to what she felt, when she thought about Alek. It was complicated, surely. If she let herself linger on it too long, it was almost enough to get swept away in something hot and tight and lurching, intense enough it was almost sickening, she just...
It wasn't like the hatred she had for the slavers of Taris, or her disdain for the leaders of the Republic, or anything else really. It was, she thought, betrayal. And something quite different than that she felt for the Republic, or the Jedi — her issues with both institutions were, she suspected now, far less purely ideological than she'd thought, at least partially motivated by lived experiences with them now forgotten. No, much like the distinction between slavery in general and slavery on Taris, it was something quite different, something personal.
They'd been quite close, before he'd stabbed her in the back.
In fact, as surreal as it might be to think about, she suspected they'd been lovers, once. She wasn't certain about this, but it was a vague feeling she got, flicking through images of Alek she'd found from back during the war, and she... She didn't know how to explain it, exactly. She suspected they'd been very, very close, once upon a time. Which, clearly, had made whatever he'd done to her burn all the worse. Obviously, she couldn't remember exactly what this betrayal had been, but...
(Though, that suspicion brought her down another line of thinking that she really didn't like to contemplate. It had never been confirmed, of course, but there had been much speculation that... And, well, what little she knew of her original background would match what was publicly known, and it would sort of explain a lot if... But no, that couldn't be, it was completely absurd. The Masters had gone far off the deep end with this mind-wipe brainwashing plot that they'd attempted, even if it were just some random, relatively unimportant Sith they were doing it with. But, no, they couldn't possibly, to do something like this with the fucking Empress herself...
(She couldn't be Lesami, she just couldn't. Even the Jedi weren't that crazy.
(Which was a thoroughly unconvincing argument even to her own ears, because the Jedi were bloody madmen, but really, they couldn't have... There were a few months between Lesami's death and her time on Coruscant that she couldn't explain, but, ignoring the practical considerations, there would have been political imperatives, if the Senate finds out the Jedi— They couldn't have, okay, nobody was that stupid.)
As well as she could, Cina tried to explain all that — skipping that last bit, of course, no reason to get Peejiʻ in on the niggling suspicion the Jedi could have been so unbelievably stupid as to attempt to brainwash Revan (honestly, that was, just, madness). The stuff about it feeling too personal, that she couldn't ignore it, even if the Jedi weren't trying to pressure her into doing something about it she'd feel compelled to anyway, all that. With the added bonus that, since she suspected they'd been involved, it was very possible that, if Alek learned she was still alive, he would come after her eventually anyway. Fuck, it was very likely he already knew she was around, she'd be shocked if nobody in their intelligence service had spotted her during those weeks on Taris. (Facial recognition was a crapshoot, but Mission had claimed the Sith had had eyes on the race, seeing them together would have sparked their suspicions in any case.) Her past would catch up to her one way or the other, whether she wanted it to or not. She might as well get out in head of it.
Even if it could very likely take her in directions she wasn't sure she wanted to go.
A significant part of her kind of wished she'd never caved to Rhysam's nagging and started seeing Peejiʻ in the first place. Thanks in part to the psych meds he'd formulated for her — she continued to maintain that the talking part didn't do her any good — she didn't feel inexplicably miserable anymore...so when everything went right back to shite again she actually had further to fall. Thanks for that, Doc.
Eventually, they started winding down — Peejiʻ did have other appointments, and Cina could only take so long talking about this shite at once anyway. "I understand this may well be our last meeting," he said, something Cina couldn't quite read on the slow groan of his alien voice.
Cina nodded. "I expect Mission is nearly done with her analysis, the Masters will probably be sending us out right away."
"Yes. I had this prepared ahead of time." Awkwardly turning in his swivel chair — HoʻDin were quite large, there was barely enough room to comfortably fit in his own office — he plucked a thin grey case off his desk. Setting it in his legs, he clicked it open, turned to face her. Packed in glossy black foam was a multi-dose hypo, empty and seemingly brand new, three little vials filled with clear liquid, and a slim datacard. "Each of these vials should last you about a month. The device needn't be sterilised regularly, it works through a no-contact process that doesn't risk contamination, but you should recalibrate the vacuum pressure every week or so — you will find instructions on how to do that on the datacard.
"I'm sure you remember our conversation about side-effects and adaptation," he said, gently closing the case again. "However, if you're who knows where out there, it may not be practical to come back to me. You will also find on this datacard all the information another professional might need to produce more of your treatment, or make an attempt at a reformulation if necessary. I would confirm whoever you are seeing has the proper certifications and is in good standing and, if you need a new mix for whatever reason, they have the proper equipment to do the necessary scans and tests and so forth. All that is not particularly rare, any Republic-certified operative clinic should do fine.
"Do you have any last questions for me?"
Cina almost had to smile at that — as though she'd ever really had much to ask him in the first place...
"Right, okay." Mission set her holoprojector on the floor at the centre of the circle before the Masters of the Dantooine enclave. She took a few steps back, poking at the datapad still strapped to her wrist — seemingly unconcerned by the attention of the powerful Jedi on her, as easy and casual as she'd been giving the same summary back on the ship.
Cina couldn't help the smile twitching at her lips.
"So, inside those ruins Cina and Shan went to they found a map. This map." With a flicker of blue and white static, an image of the galaxy appeared in the air between Mission and the Masters, tipped on one end to stand twice as high as Mission's head. The quality wasn't particularly great, the yellow-blue light of stars smearing together a little, but it didn't need to be. "Now, it's weird, because, we assume this must have been used by these Rakata people for astrogation, but there aren't actually any hyperlanes marked, none of the metadata anywhere matches what we'd expect. Maybe their tech worked differently somehow, they didn't need to worry about mass shadows? or their computers mapped a route before each jump? Who knows.
"But anyway," she said, physically shaking off that tangent, "there is plenty of metadata to work with. All the names are useless — can't even read the writing it's in, these weird swirly things — but the file I was given does include usable information about the composition of each system. The class of the star, the number of planets and their orbital mechanics, that sort of thing. A hell of a lot of data, far too much to go through manually. So, I wrote a few crawlers instead, they cross-referenced the data in this map with the Hawk's navcomputer, and I was able to chart it out pretty well."
Mission poked some more at her datapad, and a few little shapes of gas and dust were highlighted, labels appearing next to them. "The big nebulas and stuff are obvious, of course, don't need anything special to I.D. those. When it comes to individual systems, things got a little more complicated — turns out, these things aren't nearly as stable as they look, twenty thousand years makes enough of a difference to trip up my crawlers. After a bit of fiddling around with uncertainties, I started having more luck.
"Corellia was practically a gimme," she said, a star near the core highlighted with a green dot. "I started specifically searching for more exotic systems, since those are the ones least likely to get false positives — like Yag'Dhul here, Japrael here, Adega here, Osarian here, and Sullust here." As Mission spoke, more green dots appeared on the map, all on the upper half of the galaxy. The half closer to the floor, presumably representing the largely unexplored West, was left blank.
Those were reasonable choices, Cina thought. Corellia was famous for its densely-packed habitable zone, five life-bearing planets crammed into such a narrow ring — most experts insisted it couldn't possibly be a natural occurrence, assumed to be a construction of the Builders — and the other systems were almost as anomalous. Yag'Dhul was surrounded with three dangerously large moons, their interacting masses wracking the planet with devastating tidal forces; Japrael had Onderon, its moon Dxun displaying an unlikely, highly eccentric orbit; Ossus alternated between the twin stars of Adega in a stable but extremely improbable figure-eight; Osarian featured a pair of habitable worlds in a peculiar resonance; and the two hot giants of Sullust must have originally formed far further out into the system to have the moons they did, drifted nearer the star by a spectacularly unlikely example of orbital inversion. In all the billions of systems in the galaxy, these were all practically unique, and scattered at random across the known galaxy, very good picks to get her bearings.
Cina wasn't exactly surprised, of course — she'd known bringing it to Mission would have gotten results, and this was the second time she was getting this explanation. But she was still impressed.
Especially since the girl was hardly done. "Now, with these few systems identified, I had my crawlers work from these points, matching neighboring systems and slowly spreading out." Drastically limiting potential options, of course. Lines started stitching across the image of the galaxy, the shape growing more and more familiar as it went — hyperlanes, Mission had charted out the major modern hyperlanes. "I didn't bother getting everything, but you can see the general idea. We have the Corellian Run—" One of the lines thickened, not extending as far into the rim as Cina knew the actual hyperlane did, but it was also pointed the wrong direction, so that was fine. Same with, "—and the Perlemian and the Hydian and the Spine." The last was somewhat more thoroughly sketched out, which made sense, it did curve westerly. "So, we have a good framework to pinpoint things, enough to be getting on with.
"Now, where we want to get to, this Star Forge thing, is here." A red dot appeared in the largely unannotated portion of the galaxy, deep in the uncharted wilderness. "Now, I could try using the metadata we have to plot hyperlanes from an identified system — Yag'Dhul, maybe, it's not so far from there — just keep going all the way through the Unknown Regions, but that's a stupid idea. This is all twenty thousand years old, trying that will get you very dead. But, it's possible a different Rakata thing has more modern data.
"Now, when Cina brought this to me, she suggested identifying planets that might have intact stuff, like the one here on Dantooine. These are the settlements identified on the map." A slew of yellow dots appeared, dozens of them, scattered seemingly at random across the entire galaxy. "I cut any outside my guess of known space." A full half of the dots vanished. "I then cut the ones people'd built too much shit on — Eriadu, Sullust, Denon, that sort of thing — and any full members of the Republic."
For the first time since Cina had convinced them to let Mission give her presentation, one of the Masters spoke. With a questioning (though not quite critical) frown, Dorak asked, "Why exclude members of the Republic?"
Mission apparently couldn't quite muster the same benefit of the doubt for Dorak he clearly had for her — she shot him an almost disdainful glance, her voice clearly exasperated. "All Republic systems are fully surveyed."
"She's right," Cina added, "it's part of the admission process. It was added millennia ago," so major corporations would know whether the system had any resources they might like to exploit. "If there are any intact Laqʈakś installations on Republic worlds, we'd already have heard of them."
"Exactly," Mission said, shooting Cina a bright grin. "So, cut those out." More yellow dots vanished, now leaving a bare handful, scattered in a band heavily weighted toward the rim. "Also, we should probably leave out any Sith-controlled worlds, just 'cause going there would be a pain." There went most of the remaining possibilities, leaving only about a dozen. "I went through all of these one by one, getting rid of the ones that probably had all their Rakata stuff destroyed, or that just seemed impractical to find anything on." All of the remaining dots vanished, except for five, which immediately turned a bloody red. "So, these are the systems I was left with: Tatoo, Pyrshak, Edean, Yavin, and Horuset."
This time, Lamar interrupted, with his usual irritated (and irritating) scowl. "The Yavin and Horuset systems are quarantined, and have been removed from all official star charts. How do you even know where they are?"
Mission glowered right back. "From unofficial star charts, obviously. We stole the Hawk from the Exchange — you think black market smugglers care if the Jedi say they can't go somewhere?"
"Perhaps leave those two out anyway," Cina said, before Lamar could get going. "Yavin is a jungle littered with Force-active architecture, it'll be impossible to find what we're looking for in all the mess. Also, Korriban might not be a full member of the Empire, but there is a Sith academy there."
"Oh. Not those, then, okay," Mission agreed, sounding rather sheepish. "Right, so, the other three. Let's look at Pyrshak. The Rakata had a settlement on Manaan there — however, it might be kind of difficult to find. See, the Manaan the Rakata knew looked like this." The map of the galaxy vanished, replaced with a single planet. It was a perfectly ordinary-looking terrestrial world, green lands and blue oceans; the ice caps were perhaps larger than was typical, but otherwise not unusual. "But, well, the Manaan we know looks like this." Another planet appeared next to it, this one an ocean world, endless water dotted with sparse island chains. "The natives actually have stories about this, apparently, that the oceans rose a long long time ago, it's a whole thing. The oceans are charted, so it won't be hard to find the Rakata stuff — they even have a bunch of ruins and things marked already on the shit I could find on the 'net. The problem would be getting to it, the locals don't like offworlders sticking their noses in.
"And then there's Edean. The Rakata had settlements on both the inhabited planets here, Kashyyyk and Trandosha. Trandosha is more thoroughly built up, and Trandoshans are a bunch of blood-thirsty xenophobic assholes—"
Cina held in a smirk at the faint sense of disapproval wafting off all the Jedi in the room.
"—I wouldn't go there if we can help it. But Kashyyyk has other problems." The projections of Manaan were replaced with one of Kashyyyk, another perfectly ordinary terrestrial world. "See, this one isn't much like it was for the Rakata either. Their information on the system says there are forests, yeah, but they're pretty normal forests, not that different than the bits here on Dantooine. Though, more of it, obviously.
"But the forests on Kashyyyk now are insane. Like, the trees are literally kilometres tall. Zaalbar, he's from Kashyyyk, and he says things get really dangerous toward the surface. It's always night down there, and there are poisonous plants and super-scary predators and... It's just not a good place to be. But, he says Cina should probably be able to handle it and, unlike Manaan, the locals won't try to stop you from you going down there. So, it's possible, just a pain. And would have the benefit of, you know, not being any cities or anything down there that might have ruined Rakata stuff. So there's that.
"Now, I think the last one is actually the best option, and that's Tatooine. As the Rakata knew it, it looked like this." The image of Kashyyyk was replaced with that of another, but it didn't actually look that different — there weren't any ice caps at all, and the seas looked rather greener, perhaps suggesting they were a little shallower, but just a terrestrial world like any other. Which was odd, because, "Now it looks like this," a planet-wide desert, white and yellow searing bright, broken only occasionally with patches of darker stone, the shadows of mountains. "There was some kind of climate shift here too, obviously, and a big one.
"But, that's actually a good thing for us, since it should have been left mostly alone all this time. It might be buried in sand now, I guess, but other than that, it's probably just fine, sitting waiting somewhere. Kashyyyk and Manaan are doable, with a bit of work, but the one on Tatooine we can probably spot from orbit and walk right in."
Cina took a step forward, drawing the attention of the Masters back to herself. "As I see it, the mission is relatively straightforward. We go up the list of potential Laqʈaɦ sites Mission has identified until we find the data we need to chart a safe path to the Star Forge — based on Mission's evaluation of the accessibility of these sites, Tatooine, Kashyyyk, and then Manaan." Hopefully, they wouldn't actually need to go to Manaan, the situation on the ground there was politically sensitive enough it could get very bad very quickly, with catastrophic consequences for the entire bloody galaxy. But it would certainly be easier than Yavin or Korriban, if it came to it. "Perhaps one of these sites will have modern data, perhaps not.
"If they do not, and we end up with four obselete maps from different time periods, my hope is that Mission will be able to use all the data on hand to project something good enough to be getting on with."
That possibility Cina actually hadn't run by her, and Mission paled a little at the thought. Well, she actually blushed, her skin darkening noticeably purplish, but similar physical responses in aliens didn't always mean the same thing they did in humans — blushing in Twi'leks was usually a fear response, so, it was equivalent to paling, though it looked like the exact opposite. (It was far too easy to make bad assumptions when dealing with alien species, sometimes.) Her voice slightly shaky, Mission said, "Um, sure, I could do that, but I'm not sure I'd want to rely on..."
"There are methods Jedi can use to aid in navigation," Bastila said. Her voice was its usual blank, hard monotone, but she was seemingly jumping in to reassure Mission...which was odd, but okay. "I wouldn't want to rely on that alone to get us all the way to Lehon, but if you can compose a modern star chart with relative certainty, it is very likely I can make up the difference."
"Oh. Okay." Mission bit her lip for a second. "Ah...sure? Yeah, with four different maps, I could run a simulation up to the modern day with pretty good accuracy to pull your magic stuff off of — I wouldn't trust it, but, Jedi, I guess. Might tie up all the spare processing power we have on the ship for, like, a couple days, but yeah, I can probably do that. Assuming they're from far enough apart, anyway, if they're all from the same time they're useless."
Cina shook her head. "According to the Laqʈaɦ computer we spoke with, other installations continued to operate long after the surface equipment here was all destroyed. We can't know how long these three in particular stuck around, but their data will all be newer than this map, and likely by margins of thousands of years."
"Sure, yeah, I'll start working on a program ahead of time, then."
"Once we do locate Lèɦjon," Cina continued, "we'll need to confirm the Star Forge is present and under Sith control. I'd advise jumping in out-system, using the shadow of one of the gas giants to shield our wake from anyone further in, then park in orbit to minimise our sensor profile as much as possible — when we come around, we'll scan the inner system, passive sensors only. Once we have confirmation, we slip back into the planet's shadow, and jump out again.
"I realise this is above my pay-grade, but I recommend we bring this to the Republic at that point. We'll need enough forces to deny the Sith use of the station, and the Order simply can't field enough to conduct this sort of operation on your own."
The Masters seemed less than pleased with that suggestion. Tokare spoke first, staring up at Cina, his huge pointy ears tipped downward in what she'd learned to recognise as a frown. "You intend to capture the system for the Republic. Do you trust their leadership with the sort of power this Star Forge grants them?"
Honestly, Cina doubted she could trust anyone with that kind of power, but it hardly mattered. "I don't see any other option. With how critical the Forge is to their war effort, their security will simply be too tight for infiltration to be an option — even a jump out-system is more risky than I'd like. We didn't even know this place existed, I find the suggestion SecInt could slip in to sabotage it completely ridiculous. A direct assault is the only option, but the Forge is simply too large to destroy with conventional methods. Perhaps, we could sabotage certain critical systems on the Forge itself to render it inoperative, which would at best put the Republic in a position to negotiate a peace with the Empire, but..."
Cina paused a moment, considering what to say next. She'd been thinking a lot, lately, about the current state of the galaxy — she couldn't spend all her time these last couple months studying Jedi shite, if she didn't do something else every once in a while she'd go completely insane. And she'd come to conclusions she was certain the Masters wouldn't like. They had to be aware, of course, but she doubted even the supposedly detached Jedi could admit the serious shite they were in out loud.
It was a common assumption among most who even cared to consider the question that the Unknown Regions of the Galactic West, comprising a good quarter of the galaxy, was civilised. It would fit the general pattern of the expansion of the Republic — their predecessors had often 'discovered' new regions of space only to find developed civilisations already existed there, sometimes even older and more advanced than the Republic itself — and there had long been some fragmentary evidence to suggest as much. Hints of trade conducted on the frontier, an unfamiliar ship or species here or there just passing through. The further known space spread out the rim and westward, the more it became clear people were already there, expansion simply following trade routes that already existed. That there might be a large, advanced civilisation out there wasn't at all an unreasonable assumption to make.
Critically, she was convinced the bulk of the Empire existed somewhere in the unknown West.
This should be obvious to anyone who looked at this mess for more than a few seconds. Many spoke of this debacle as though it were merely a rebellion of a portion of the Republic fleet, but this ignored the presence of a multitude of ships in that fleet that had clearly not been put together by Republic shipbuilders, some Imperial soldiers and diplomats of unknown species hailing from unknown worlds speaking unknown languages bearing the trappings of unknown cultures. Cina wasn't in a position to get her hands on the information Republic intelligence probably had, but she still felt certain Lesami and Alek had used their defector fleet to unify the civilised portions of the West, or simply usurp control of a unified state that had already existed.
Lesami had certainly usurped the throne of the Sith Empire — they didn't even try to hide that one, they taught it in primary schools on Sith-controlled worlds, for fuck's sake. From what Cina could tell from the sources she had available, after their defeat over a thousand years ago remnants of the Sith had relocated from their home in the Stygian Caldera to a world called Dromund Kaas, which was supposedly somewhere in the Unknown Regions north and west of Coruscant (the Empire carefully controlled their own astrogation data), from which they'd reorganised and started rebuilding their Empire from scratch. Not long after the end of the war against the Mandoade, Lesami and Alek had shown up with the defector fleet over this unknown world. Lesami had challenged the sitting Emperor to a duel, and kicked his arse — because of course she had. Something called the Dark Council (the old Emperor's immediate subordinates, presumably, it didn't exist anymore), rather than submit to a foreigner, had assaulted her all at once, twelve versus one. (Or perhaps twelve versus two, Alek may or may not have been there, the children's story version she'd found wasn't clear on that.)
Lesami had proceeded to kill them all, in an absolutely ridiculous over-the-top battle that had left much of the Imperial Palace in ruins — because of course she had, this was bloody Revan they were talking about.
The information Cina could find was thin — the Empire was clearly aware the Republic's ignorance of their holdings was their strongest advantage — so she couldn't say for sure exactly how large the Empire was. But it didn't look good. The Empire had come in from the west, taken huge swaths of the northern rim, Dantooine itself practically on the border these days. (Lesami assumed this particular region had only escaped being captured due to its relative unimportance.) And it stood to reason Imperial territory was mostly continuous, to maintain supply chains if nothing else.
So, starting from the current front near Daalang at the southwestern fringes of Hutt Space, the Empire controlled a significant chunk of the midrim to the east, spreading north up through the Perlemian and the Hydian — they held both major hyperlanes from the inner rim outward, hundreds of critical Republic worlds either occupied or admitted as full members of the Empire, the few holdouts far out on the rim cut off from any assistance — fanning out across the rim westward, before trailing off into unexplored space. Then, out in the West, whatever the Empire had managed to take over before Lesami's arrival, any acquisitions they might have made in unexplored space since, tight alliances with the Republic of Ak-Tosh, the Chiss Ascendency, and the Mjatha Cooperative. (Whatever the hell those were, they knew the names from Sith documents but that was pretty much it.) According to the map they'd found, Lèɦjon wasn't at the centre of the Unknown Regions, but significantly south — if whatever territory the Empire held extended from wild space north of Coruscant through the West all the way down to Lèɦjon...
At this point, it was very possible the Empire was already larger than the Republic. They were mostly out on the rim, so the space they occupied was much less dense, but in terms of simple volume...
In terms of resources...
Frowning to herself, Cina recalled that image of the galaxy Mission had had up a few minutes ago. In particular, she considered that distance between Lèɦjon and Yag'Dhul — some thousands of light-years, of course, yet not so very far on a galactic scale, and most of it space unexplored by the Republic, and thus unmonitored. Who knows what might be waiting, just a couple short jumps from Yag'Dhul?
Yag'Dhul happened to be where the Trade Spine and the Rimma, two primary hyperlanes, intersected, the system acting as a gate to much of the southern rim.
It was not so very far from the current border at Daalang to Gamor, and not so very far from Gamor to Denon. Worse, reading between the lines of publicly-available news reports, the Run was almost entirely undefended — it looked like the Navy was preparing for an assault coreward toward the Arrowhead, the very heart of the Republic, or south toward Bothan space, the home of one of their most useful allies. Many of the worlds between Daalang and Denon were only loosely tied to the Republic, or independent states swearing neutrality, or peripheral concerns with only token defences. Certainly nothing that would hold up to a concerted push from the Sith fleet.
Denon happened to be where the Run and the southern Hydian met, providing access to the rest of the southern half of the Republic.
The leadership clearly worried the Sith meant to conquer them, to drive a knife into their heart, the ancient worlds nestled against the core. But Cina couldn't help the thought that they had it wrong. The Sith needn't fight them directly at all.
The Navy was already struggling to resupply itself — certain light metals and chemical components used in modern electronics were largely sourced from mining concerns on the rim, controlled directly or bought from the Hutts. The Hutts already had trade embargoes against the Republic on those particular goods, not quite openly aligning themselves with the Sith, severely wounding the Republic without firing a single shot. The Sith had spread down the northern Hydian and Perlemian all the way to Corsin and Tanaab, further cutting the Republic off from critical resources — Tanaab was a particularly major blow, the source of a staggering proportion of the Republic's chemical wealth. They were already balanced on the edge of the knife, as far as their physical resources went.
If Cina were in charge of the Sith war effort, she'd pick off systems trailing down from Daalang to Gamor. Once she'd secured a foothold on the Run, she'd jump coreward to Denon in a surprise assault, destroy all resistance, and blockade the system; at the same moment, she'd strike at Yag'Dhul with forces hidden in the south of the Unknown Regions, destroy all resistance, and blockade the system. In a single fell swoop, the core would be isolated from the critical mining, manufacturing, and agriculture of the vast majority of the rim, and even cut off from some of their most effective allies — the Bothans, the Tionese...
The Empire didn't have to crush them directly. They could simply strangle the Republic to death, and swallow the remains piece by fucking piece.
She was certain the Republic leadership knew this — hell, she was an untrained civilian who hadn't access to the intelligence they did, and she could figure it out. But she wasn't certain there was anything they could do about it. What were they supposed to do, not resist assaults from Corsin and Tanaab? Before they knew it, the Sith could burn down the Perlemian and Hydian to where they met at Brentaal in the core itself, and then they'd be completely fucked. What were they supposed to do, not resist encroachments into the Slice from the east? It was only a few short hops from Umbara to Commenor, and if Commenor fell the Admiralty might as well all blow their own brains out, because there was simply no coming back from that. (To be fair, the Mandoade had taken Commenor, but even if they still had Lesami to take it back for them this wasn't the same war — the Mandoade hadn't reinforced their acquisitions much at all, aiming for a decapitation shot and not prepared for a long slog, a mistake the Sith weren't making.) The Republic hardly had the guns as it stood to stop the Sith from driving into the core from the north or the east. They simply hadn't the resources to prevent being flanked to the south.
Cina wasn't certain this war could be won. The Jedi had successfully assassinated Lesami, yes, but the Sith didn't need her anymore. At this point, it was simply inertia.
She let her breath out with a long sigh. "I have to be honest with you, Masters, its possible this intelligence will do us no good at all. Assuming we successfully find Lèɦjon, assuming we successfully survey the system's defences, assuming we successfully deliver this intelligence to the Fleet — and are actually taken seriously — it's all too likely they won't be able to do anything about it. The Fleet is already stretched perilously thin as it is, and I'm certain the Forge will be defended commensurately to its importance — the Republic might not be able to field the forces necessary to capture the system, even just long enough to sabotage the Forge. And even if they do, it's all too likely the losses taken in the effort, and the advance the Sith will make while the Fleet is distracted, will see the Republic collapse in short order in the aftermath.
"This is a desperate gamble we're talking about here. If we'd known about this from the beginning it might have made a difference but, given the current strategic situation, I'm sorry to say it might already be too late. The goal isn't to save the Republic — I don't think it can be saved, at this point. The goal is to deny Alek use of the Star Forge, and take him out while we're at it, if at all possible. The best we can hope for is to force a peace with the Empire, however temporary, the most likely long-term result seeing the Republic reduced to a rump state, mostly limited to the core. To believe we can achieve anything more than that is simple fantasy."
In the brief silence that followed, there was a heavy tension in the air. For a few seconds, nobody said anything, Mission standing before the lingering hologram of Tatooine looking somewhat downcast — but accepting, either having already realised that herself or simply taking Cina's word for it — the gathered Masters staring at her blank-faced. Finally, his voice uncharacteristically empty of vitriol, low and almost soft, Lamar said, "It serves none but the Sith to give in to despair."
Cina managed to not roll her eyes. "I'm simply being realistic, Master."
Judging by the chill settling over the Masters' ubiquitous presence in the Force, they couldn't bring themselves to disagree.
The rest of the meeting was largely tedious, none of it coming as much of a surprise. Cina and Bastila were assigned to track down the Star Forge — they had had that vision, and were supposedly tied together by some...weird bond thing, the Jedi put a lot of stock in such things, the will of the Force and all that. They were to do it alone, with no direct assistance from the Republic or the rest of the Order — which Cina had fully expected, they didn't really have the resources available to give them much, even if they could afford to spend it on a crazy gamble like this. (They didn't have to worry about funding the trip, the Order covered their members' expenses, but there were even limits to that, she'd probably be tapping her surprisingly deep personal accounts again.) There was a little bit of whining, about who else Cina planned to bring along — also as expected, the Masters had made no secret of their disapproval of the team she'd recruited on Taris. But Kandosa and the kids were bloody useful, and Cina really didn't care about the Order's opinion of her enough to change her behaviour to suit them.
It was clear that, now that she'd been accepted as one of them, that the Masters had expected she would start...well, acting like a Jedi, that she'd respect their prescriptions about what Jedi were and were not supposed to do. Things about her speech and her dress, yes, the company she kept and just what her relationships with them looked like, all the way to big, lifestyle things. Jedi weren't even supposed to own property, see, she'd been explicitly ordered to divest of any assets she had, either donating or selling them to outside parties or handing them over to the Order.
Cina had, of course, explicitly refused. Even if she wanted to give them everything she owned, she legally couldn't — her flat back on Alderaan (assuming it actually existed) was part of the University trust, and could only be held by people with a stake in the institution, staff or student, and her accounts with the public bank (which she was certain actually existed, she'd used them back on Coruscant) could only be held by individuals with Alderaanian citizenship. The Order couldn't take possession of either.
(And, of course, her mysterious line of credit was a personal account tied to a larger group holding, which she didn't have executive control over, so what she could do with that was limited too. Whoever did must know by now she'd pulled tens of millions of credits, she was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.)
Theoretically, both would be repossessed by the University and the state, if she simply renounced her tenure and her citizenship respectively. Technically, Jedi were supposed to renounce citizenship of any nation they might hold or membership of any outside organisation...but, silly her, she'd never submitted the paperwork, must have slipped her mind. Whoops?
They also wanted her to leave Sasha in the Order's custody. They did know Sasha actually existed now, but only because Cina had finally convinced Bastila she was real, none of the Jedi here ever noticed her if she didn't want them to — she was in the room right now, in fact, lingering invisible in Cina's shadow, and none of the Masters had given any indication they knew. But anyway, that was fucking hilarious, Cina would like to see them try to keep her here against her will, the unsettling little girl was a fucking ghost. Observing Cina's lessons, Sasha had come away with a terrible impression of the Jedi, and the very, very few actual conversations she'd had with any of them in the weeks since they'd realised she existed hadn't improved matters at all; not to mention, Cina still wasn't convinced the Order's treatment of their younger members didn't amount to child abuse on a frankly horrifying scale. She wouldn't leave Sasha with them even if she thought the girl would stay, and she didn't even have to ask to know she wouldn't.
She hardly even listened to the lecture, honestly. By this point they'd gone over the same points so many times it wasn't even entertaining to argue about it anymore.
Finally, they were released, with a few last moralistic bits about the Dark Side, some fatalistic nonsense about destiny and whatnot, typical Jedi garbage. Cina managed to get out at least a marginally respectful farewell — though, honestly, much more directed to Zhar and Dorak than the other two. It was very clear Lamar hated her guts — it was rather un-Jedi-like, actually, but what did she know — and Tokare was thinking in high-level strategic terms, distant and impersonal. Tokare, at least, would be far less offensive than Lamar, if she weren't convinced the whole mind-wipe gambit had been his idea from the beginning. As far as she could tell, Tokare himself didn't have the particular skillset necessary to pull it off — in fact, nobody on Dantooine did, they'd probably had to bring in someone based out of one of the other temples or enclaves around the galaxy — but his opinion on the matter, his interactions with the other Masters, spelled out his involvement clearly enough.
Lamar might be an arse, but Tokare was a monster, and didn't even have the honesty to admit it.
Dorak seemed to think she was amusing, if nothing else — it helped that, in their endless discussions on philosophy and history, she'd gotten the feeling he didn't approve of what had been done to her. And Zhar was...complicated. He'd known her before, he'd admitted as much. They'd clearly been close, once upon a time, which clearly just made things difficult for him. Understandably — the person she'd been before had ended up betraying the Order, after all, and she couldn't imagine it was easy dealing with someone who both was and wasn't quite the person he'd known before. So, talking to him could be bloody awkward at times, but he wasn't nearly as terrible as the rest of the Masters.
Which, yes, that was a low fucking bar, but at least it was enough that Zhar and Dorak had earned her not being an arse back at them. For whatever little that counted for.
Cina was still very happy to turn her back on the Masters and walk out, the knowledge that it would probably be months before she had to see any of them again putting a smile on her face, a bounce in her step. Once they were out of sight, she threw an arm over Mission's shoulders, careful to not put too much pressure on her lekku. "Good work in there, kebin'ika. You even got all the way through without cursing at them, I'm impressed."
For a brief moment, Mission shot an odd, uncertain look up at her — couldn't quite read what that was, but Cina got the distinct impression she was missing something. It vanished quickly, the girl letting out a huff, rolling her eyes. "You don't even know how close I was. That Lamar geezer is such a jerk!"
She snorted. "Well, you're not wrong."
Bastila's disapproval was more than obvious, dark and simmering on the air around them, but at least she'd learned by now saying something about it would achieve less than nothing. "I have a few things I need to pick up before we go. I'll be at the ship in less than an hour." The Jedi turned into a side hall, disappearing without waiting for a response.
Her face twisting into something halfway between a vicious scowl and a childish pout, Mission said, "Do we really have to bring the wall-slag with us?"
Cina couldn't quite hold in a shocked guffaw. Bastila had still been close enough to hear that, but thankfully her Huttese was awful — she'd probably object to being referred to by a very crass slang term for a private sex slave. She realised Mission had literally been raised by gangbangers, but she had such a filthy mouth sometimes. Not that Cina could judge, really, but still... "Ah, yes, unfortunately. The Masters insisted. Need to keep an eye on me, you see."
"Self-righteous, meddling shit-heads," Mission muttered — in Ryl, obscure enough of a language the few Jedi in the halls wouldn't catch it.
"Pretty much."
All told, it took closer to two hours for them to get going. Cina had told Kandosa to be ready to leave today, so he'd already stocked up on supplies, but they'd been on the ground long enough Zaalbar had insisted on doing a last test of all the Hawk's systems — he'd started before they'd left for the Enclave this morning, but wasn't quite done by the time they got back. It didn't take too long, though, Cina was just finalising the last details of their bill with the town's primitive excuse for a port when the last of their people arrived.
Bastila had arrived over an hour before, of course — the last to show up turned out to be Rhysam. She had expected him, he'd volunteered his assistance on this insane mission of theirs the second she'd told him what it was, and she'd accepted without even really thinking. Rhysam was a very talented Jedi, nearly as good as she was — he did still have on edge on her at the moment, but she suspected that would change as she remembered more — and he had more experience than the rest of them (with the possible exception of Kandosa) when it came to making their way around on frontier planets like Tatooine. He was just nice to have around, but she was certain he'd make himself useful in any case.
However, she'd expect him to come alone. Picking across the landing field behind his shoulder, dressed in loose canvas trousers and tunic (typical Jedi dress but missing the expected overrobe), a small knapsack flung over one shoulder, was a Cathar girl. Young, maybe about Mission's age — both relatively and absolutely, Twi'lek and Cathar life cycles were very similar — pale white fur accented gold, yellow-orange eyes narrowed with nervous determination...she seemed oddly familiar...
It wasn't until the pair were practically in the ship's shadow that Cina placed her. "Juhani? What are you doing here?" Cina hadn't seen the poor girl since they'd gotten back to the Enclave — she'd assumed Juhani wanted nothing more to do with her, for whatever reason, hadn't given it much thought.
Curiously, Juhani didn't answer for herself, her eyes flicking toward Rhysam, who grinned all the wider. "I seem to have picked myself up an adorable little apprentice. Isn't she precious?" The adorable little apprentice in question huffed, but held her tongue.
Cina blinked. "...Okay, didn't see that one coming." She turned back to Juhani, frowned at the girl for a moment. It didn't seem like she was quite entirely confident about this decision, shoulders hunched, barely noticeable sparks of unease flying from her. (And a hint of fear, but Cina couldn't blame her for that — Cina had nearly incinerated her, the one other time they'd met.) But her gaze was steady, her back straight, filled with such iron resolve she was hardly recognisable as the lost, broken girl Cina had met a week go. "Are you certain about this, Juhani? This isn't an easy assignment the Masters gave us, we'll likely get into some serious shite."
If anything, that only seemed to harden her, the traces of uncertainty falling away, glaring up at Cina with fierce determination. "Yes, I am certain. There is nothing more for me, here."
Well, Cina didn't disagree with that, exactly — she hadn't even bothered holding back her disapproval of how Juhani had been dealt with by the supposedly responsible adults around her. (She'd told them off to their faces, and gotten another tedious lecture for her trouble, still worth it.) But just because Juhani shouldn't stay here didn't mean she should be coming with them. This could very quickly turn into a suicide mission, children had no business tagging along for this kind of shite, Sasha and Mission were already more than bad enough...
Though, when she thought about it, Juhani hardly had any more options than Sasha and Mission did. Less than Mission did, actually, she and Zaalbar had the money and the skills to fend for themselves no problem, but they'd chosen to stick around — Zaalbar because of the lingering life-debt, Mission because she just wanted to. Those two were, at least arguably, responsible enough to make decisions for themselves. Juhani, though, she'd never been taught to make decisions for herself, she likely didn't know how to get by on her own. Realistically, her options were to either stay here, under the authority of people who treated her like a soulless droid, and an expendable one, or attach herself to someone willing to help her out from under the Masters. Which was never easy, deprogramming and reeducating a child out of the domineering cult that had raised them — the Order would hate that sort of comparison, but Cina's time on Dantooine had only further convinced her that's exactly what they were — so the people she had access to with both the ability and the willingness to help were very few.
As difficult and irritating and quirky as he was, Rhysam was probably the best option she had — and if that wasn't fucking sad. She could attempt to convince Rhysam to be reasonable and go off with Juhani on their own...but Cina doubted he would listen. Rhysam could hardly be expected to be reasonable, after all.
Cina forced out a long sigh. "Fine. Come on, then." She plodded up the ramp, waited a moment for the unlikely pair to follow behind her before slapping the controls. Flicking the intercom, "We're up, ni burcha. Fly for Tatooine."
By the time they got to the main room of the ship, there was already a jolt under her feet, silly boy must have been sitting at the controls waiting to go. Cina quick introduced Juhani to Mission, suffered a brief complaint from Bastila about Rhysam and his unexpected companion being here — she didn't even bother responding, Rhysam had that one covered for her — before leading her along to the port bunkroom.
"Go ahead and pick a bed, I guess," Cina said, flopping a hand in no particular direction. She pulled open the drawers under her bunk, gathering her and Sasha's things in a pile over her arm. If she didn't have the Force to cheat a bit, she'd probably drop something, it was rather precarious. "It'll probably be just you and Bastila in here. I keep telling Mission she's allowed to sleep in an actual bed, silly girl's still camping with Zaalbar in the bloody comm station, ridiculous." Cina pushed up to her feet, a shirt and a couple knickers toppling onto the floor, but Sasha appeared out of nowhere, snatching them up.
Peeking around the bundle of her things, Cina saw Juhani was giving her an odd look. At least, Cina assumed it was an odd look — she hadn't much experience with Cathar, not at all confident of her ability to read their expressions very well, and whatever it was wasn't intense enough for Jedi sixth-sense weirdness to be much help. "What?"
The girl blinked, glanced around the room, eyes flicking between their surroundings and the pile of clothes in her arms. "Is something wrong?"
"Oh, no," Cina said, shrugging a little. (She dropped a couple more things, Sasha picked them up.) "I'm just moving to the boys' room, on the other side." Or, Kandosa's room, really — he and Onasi had split it, for the couple days he'd been around, and they'd arranged ahead of time Rhysam would be moving in with him. Because, that was the natural thing to do to everyone else...apparently. She still didn't quite understand the impulse normal people had to split certain spaces by sex. Maybe a consequence of not really having a sexual preference, it made no difference to her which sex (or even which species) other people were for mostly any purpose, and it honestly baffled her that other people did care...
...which must be something that had carried over from who she'd been before, because Cianen Hayal distinctly recalled kicking boy cousins out so she and the other girls could change into bathing suits when they were kids, and that wasn't something she could imagine actually caring about.
...
Now that she was thinking about it, the thought of wearing anything to go swimming was honestly kind of strange just by itself... Huh. Wild guess, cultural difference here — she'd bet whoever had actually done her fake memories had never been to Shawken, probably hadn't grown up in the core. Humans from the rim, especially in the Corellian sphere of influence (and Alderaanian, somewhat less so), tended to be bloody prudes.
Cina walked back into the hall, Sasha and Juhani trailing behind her, the latter feeling a bit confused...and increasingly irritated, which was weird. Was Cina missing something here? "You would rather sleep with the men than with me?"
"Don't feel too bad, sweetie, you are a little young for her."
"Shush, you," Cina said, shooting Rhysam, sprawled out on one of the chairs by the holotable, a weak glare. "It's nothing personal, you're just Cathar, is all."
That tingle of annoyance suddenly flared into hot rage — not just from Juhani, either, she was picking up on unpleasant feelings of slightly different shapes from Bastila and even Mission too. Which continued to be baffling, she was definitely missing something now.
Something they apparently needed to have a confrontation about immediately, because the whole bloody ship had seemingly followed her into the other room. She dropped her shite on one of the beds and turned to find Juhani, Bastila, Mission, and Rhysam all standing by the doorway glaring at her. Well, Rhysam wasn't in on the glaring, he just seemed to think something was funny. "What?"
The three girls started talking at once, Juhani with something very confrontational-sounding — didn't quite catch the words, came out half-snarled and didn't quite carry over the other two — Bastila and Mission something more disappointed. Along the lines of I expected better from you.
Which was finally enough for Cina to figure out what was going on. Restraining the urge to burst into laughter, because that probably wouldn't be taken so well at the moment, she slapped her own forehead, groaning out a curse in Alderash. "No, it's not that. You really think I— You've both heard me shagging Asyr, and she was a bloody Bothan, honestly..." It only took her so long to realise they thought she was being racist because it was just so absurd, the possibility wasn't even on her radar.
Mission, at least, had the decency to look embarrassed. "Oh, right. Asyr was great. Scary lady, but..."
(Ironically, Asyr was actually a bit racist herself, didn't think much of Twi'leks in particular — Bothans tended not to think much of other species in general, actually it was a cultural thing. Asyr was at least polite about it, so Mission probably had no idea.)
Clearly not satisfied yet, Juhani hissed, "Then what is the issue with—"
"I'm allergic to Cathar. These bunkrooms aren't ventilated very well, I'd probably be woken up in the middle of the night barely able to breathe. That's all." It'd be fine most of the time, as long as Juhani wasn't up in her face or anything. Though she'd probably end up taking showers and washing her clothes more often than normal, maybe take an allergy shot now and then — she'd needed to do both after their little confrontation in the forest. (It really hadn't helped that they'd only had the one speeder, she'd been completely miserable by the time she'd gotten back to the ship.) But it shouldn't be too much of a problem, this wasn't the first time she'd been in relatively close quarters for an extended period with a member of a species she was sensitive to.
Anyway, that seemed to blindside Juhani and Bastila completely, the two blinking at her in blank shock; Rhysam and Mission had, of course, both burst into breathless giggles. (He was proving to be a terrible influence on that poor girl.) Bafflingly, after a brief silence, Bastila started laughing too, but it came out odd, sharp and bleak, humourless and dumbfounded. "You... You're allergic to Cathar. You. Cathar."
"...Yes?"
Bastila covered her face with both hands, shaking her head, darkly chuckling under her breath.
...Okay? That was weird...
"So... Who wants hot chocolate?"
Her nose nearly pressed against the window, Vesa stared out at the glittering chaos of Republic City.
Vesa had heard of the idea of city-planets before. It had always seemed very strange to her, that such a thing would exist, and she'd never actually been in one herself. She'd caught glimpses of the city on...whatever planet the ship had been on when Cina had stolen it. Taris? She thought it was Taris. (Not that the name meant anything to her, she'd never heard it before and never stepped foot off the ship.) Anyway, she'd seen it out of windows, a couple times, from hundreds of feet in the air, but that wasn't really the same as seeing it.
They were taking a little shuttle from the spaceport, just the three of them and the pilot. (Vesa had given him a long, suspicious look, but he seemed harmless, she was trying to ignore him.) And the shuttle had big windows, and the city was right there! All white and silver and black, shining in the light of the sun (too bright and pale, it hurt her eyes a little), towers poking out into the sky like endless blades of grass, thousands of aircars and speeders thread between them, crossing tightly-wound like cloth, a few zipping around in random directions, buzzing around the buildings, dipping and swooping, their shuttle went in a valley between two rows, and they were all around them, whipping by so fast they were a blur, the sun flicking on and off and on and off as towers got in the way, and...
It was so big! How many people lived here? With how big the towers were — the tips went way above her head, and she couldn't see the bottoms, they just kept going — and how many, the city went on forever, disappearing past the horizon... 'Millions' was too small a word, Sasha didn't think she knew a number big enough.
And this wasn't even the only city-planet in the Republic. And they had farm planets, and factory planets, and...
And the Mandalor had gotten into a war with the Republic on purpose? Did... Did he really think they could win? The Republic was just so big, bigger than she could even understand, really, and... That just seemed kind of stupid...
"You okay there, Sasha?"
Vesa glanced at Cina's face, reflected in the window over her head. She was talking in Basic, which was stupid, but it wasn't that hard, Vesa was picking it up. Enough she could try to use it, anyway. "It's big."
Sitting in one of the seats tapping away at her datapad, Mission snorted out a laugh; Cina smirked a little. "Yes, it is that."
"Which of them live here?"
"How many people live here," Cina corrected, in that casual way of hers. (Also, that was stupid, what did how have to do with anything...) "No one knows for certain, but the whole planet? About seven-hundred billion or so."
"What is billion?"
Cina explained in Mandoa. "A billion is ten millions, ten-myriad myriads. Seven-hundred billion would be seven-thousand millions."
"... That's more than all clans in one."
"By about fifteen times, yes."
...
Vesa silently stared out the window for a few seconds, the capital city of the Republic still whipping by, endless, wealthy and impossibly powerful.
"Mandalor was stupid."
Cina laughed.
After a few minutes more flying, the city just going and going and going, they got to what Cina called Galactic City. The towers were especially shiny here, not sharp spiky shapes, but more curving and pretty. While the shuttle slowed a bit, crawling along one of the long lines of aircars, Cina pointed out the Senate Rotunda — rather short compared to the towers, but very wide, an enormous ball sitting in the middle of an open space, gardens green and tile gold and red, the six-times life-size statues of the Core Founders, tiny glinting ants — a bit further away the Jedi Temple — a big blocky thing, glass and metal shining in the sun, five towers stretching up skinny enough she could cover them with a finger — the glittering towers of Calocour Heights, a long row of plain blocky buildings Cina said housed the offices for a few Senatorial departments (whatever that meant), coasting over Glitanni Avenue, which Cina said held law enforcement agencies and courts and stuff and what was probably the biggest hospital and medical school in the entire galaxy...
And then the buildings around them were spreading out a bit, the outsides more colorful and made in more complicated shapes, more gardens popping up, big banners flapping in the wind. Cina pointed out a couple spots that were apparently the embassies of core worlds — she said so, anyway, Vesa didn't know the names — but it wasn't very long here before walls swept over the windows, blocking out the city. They must be at the Alderaanian Consulate.
Not that Vesa knew what a consulate was — couldn't even pronounce it, really — or even what Alderaan was. She'd heard the name before, one of those really old, really important Republic worlds, but she knew very little about it. Cina was from there, that was about it.
Except, she wasn't really from there, Vesa knew. The Jedi had put fake memories in her head, and the fake person was from Alderaan. Or, somewhere else, she thought — Sheko... Shelowa... Shel-something — but she'd been on Alderaan forever, so she was Alderaan'ade. Except she wasn't really, but the Jedi would have had to make it seem like it, for their fake person thing to work, so she counted as though she was. For legal stuff.
Vesa thought that's what was going on, anyway. It was all very complicated and confusing.
(Cina thought she was actually from Shawken, another fancy old Republic world; Kandosa thought she was Vorpayyade...which would make sense? Cina was probably the most Mandosii outsider ever, too much to not be Mandoade. She claimed she wasn't, though, it was very confusing.)
They walked through a couple halls and up a lift, everything very blue and very silver and very clean, coming into a waiting room of some kind. There were a couple people around, but it was mostly empty, chairs and couches black and blue, light music under the thin chatter, quiet and clean and very fancy. Cina walked up to a lady at a desk, took a little bit to confirm who she was, and then explaining she was here to adopt one orphan kid, and claim guardianship over an other.
Vesa was still somewhat confused about this whole thing. She meant, she didn't really get why Alderaan's leaders should...be involved in this at all? Okay, Mandoade did adoption too, but there wasn't this whole...big process, with paperwork and stuff. You just say someone's your family and that's that. Well, in public, and you needed permission from clan elders, but it wasn't a big thing. She guessed outsiders just had to make everything stupid complicated, they seemed to prefer it when nothing made sense and everything was confusing.
She didn't understand the difference between what Cina was doing with her and with Mission, either. She was told there was a difference, but, when Cina had explained it, yeah, they sounded like the same thing. Because outsiders had to make everything confusing. Cina was very Mandosii for an outsider, but that didn't mean she wasn't still just as confusing as the rest sometimes.
(She didn't understand Cina and Kandosa either. At first, she'd assumed Kandosa was her father or uncle or something, but that wasn't right, and then that they were married, but then Rhysam happened, no. She'd learned more recently that he was working for her, that Cina was his commander, kind of — which was weird to think about, because Kandosa said he was the Kandosa of Ordo, the general from the War — but that didn't feel right either. Blood brothers, maybe? That seemed closer, she guessed, but...)
Vesa jumped at her name (the one in Basic, she was getting used to hearing it). Cina was looking in her direction — not quite right at her face, but very close, closer than anyone else got (which had been really scary at first, but it was Cina, it was fine) — with that smile of hers that was supposed to be gentle but just seemed kind of nervous. "Could you let them see you, please?"
Oh, right. Vesa had forgotten these other people would kind of have to know she was here. It didn't take any effort to come back, she just decided people could see her and they could. It'd been hard to remember to stay visible at first, honestly.
The lady behind the desk jumped, her hand going over her heart, muttering something that Vesa thought might have been a curse of some kind. And then there was an argument with Cina for a bit. It was in Basic, the other lady using a new accent she'd never heard before, so Vesa didn't understand every word, but she thought she caught enough to understand what was going on. More or less, because Vesa could do Jedi things, the lady said she was supposed to go to the Jedi — that wasn't happening, Vesa wasn't going and they couldn't make her — and Cina was telling her to go to hell. Then there was more, about Cina being Jedi now, which meant she couldn't do things like have kids...
...apparently? That seemed...weird. And also obviously false — there had been kids at the place back on Dantooine, and the lady was saying she should be sent to the Temple here, so... Maybe those were different things, but it didn't really seem to make sense. Sure, maybe the Jedi would have to give their approval before Cina could bring people into the clan...assuming the Jedi could even be thought of as one, which she wasn't sure they could. (But then what was with the kids, though...) She would think that was it if Cina were one of them, but she wasn't, the Jedi hadn't claimed her as such that Vesa had seen and Cina was claiming the two of them in her own name, so...
Outsiders were very confusing.
The argument took a while, but eventually the lady gave up. They waited a little bit — Vesa could feel people's eyes on her, she itched, she had to remind herself she had to stay visible multiple times — before a door opened, they were ushered into a back hall, narrower and plainer, without all the shiny things and pretty pictures of places back on Alderaan. (Not that Vesa had been paying much attention to those in the first place.) After a bit of walking, they met a small collection of people, all human, one of which stepped close to Vesa and crouched down a bit — she jumped, had to bite her lip and focus to not disappear — and was saying...something. It was in Basic in that new accent and too high and weird, she missed too much of it. Introducing herself, maybe, said they were going to do something...
Cina was talking at them, she only caught parts of it. Something about Vesa being Mandoade, that her Basic wasn't very good, they should get...a something, Vesa missed too many words. Whatever it was, one of the people wandered off, while a couple more led Mission through one of the doors, closing it behind them.
Mission being gone, now only her and Cina with these strange people, only made Vesa more uncomfortable. "What's going on?"
"They have to give both of you a medical exam quick. To make sure you're not sick, or that I'm not hurting you or something."
"Oh." That was... Why would someone adopt someone, only to hurt them? That didn't make any sense. "Okay, I guess."
"I'm not supposed to be in the room, so they're getting a droid quick to translate for them." Cina frowned a little. "Try to cooperate with what they ask of you if you can, but if you're too uncomfortable, that's fine. Just go ahead and disappear if you really need to, I've already explained that to them."
"Okay, I'll try." Not promising anything, though. Vesa had been to a doctor once in her entire life, hadn't liked it, not at all. And that doctor had been Mandoade...and it'd been before all the bad had happened... No, didn't expect this to go very well.
The one who'd wandered off returned with a little ball-shaped droid, floating near her shoulder, and the two remaining women in plain white and green introduced themselves again — this time, the little droid repeated what they said in a cold, inflectionless voice, but in perfectly clear Mandoa. Laina and Hanish, apparently, which were simple enough to pronounce, but Vesa expected to forget which was which pretty quickly.
(Some outsiders had weird names. Cina could be Mandoa, Mission's was easy enough, Zaalbar was fine. Juhani wasn't — Vesa tried, but it kept coming out wrong, even if she couldn't quite say how. Rhysam was impossible, she avoided saying his name at all.)
Vesa was led into one of the side rooms, which was very blue and white, pictures of flowers and mountains, posters of what she assumed were medical things. There was text on them, but it was Basic written in aurebesh, she couldn't read it. (She was learning, but aurebesh was stupid.) Vesa was directed to a thing that couldn't decide if it wanted to be a chair or a bed — she assumed it could be both, but it was bent up right now, much of its length acting as a back rest — she climbed up to perch at the foot. And they started in on the thing.
They started with questions first, which was mostly fine. Did she have any infirmities that she knew about, was anything bothering her, blah blah. The questions went on for a while, some of which she didn't even know what they were talking about — just because the little droid was repeating it in Mandoa didn't mean she knew what it was saying either — but she assumed if she didn't know what the health thing was she didn't have it. If she did have a thing, it probably would have killed her at some point, so. Then there were questions about her diet — whatever Zaalbar made, didn't know what most of it was, and lots of chocolate — and what she did with her time — following Cina or Kandosa around, mostly. And then there were the tests and stuff.
Most of those were fine. They took her height and weight first, which involved standing in a spot while they poked at a thing. The height part involved one of them (Hanish?) touching her head at one point, Vesa twitched, fought to stay visible — if she screwed it up, they'd just have to do it again. Her hand went to grip her knife at the small of her back, just by itself, and she knew Laina(?) was staring, but she couldn't help it.
She still wasn't used to being touched again. Cina was really the only one she was comfortable with, and her not even that much, really. It was getting easier, but...
Some of the other tests were...less good. They wheeled over an odd-looking machine, arms with little bits here and there that sort of looked like projectors, asked her to get rid of anything metal before lying down (lowering the back of the chair-bed as the droid translated). Vesa shot the women and the machine suspicious glares, but it was probably fine, she could just... Cina was right outside, it was fine.
It was still almost physically painful to set her knife down on the counter, to walk away from it.
Lying there wasn't pleasant either. Just, lying on her back, the women standing over her, the arms of the machine thingie sweeping up and around her, and... Nope, not good, she was itching with the urge to get away, but she bit her lip, tried to hold as absolutely still as possible. (She didn't want to have to redo it.) Thankfully, it didn't take very long, a few quick flashes and the arms were pulling away again.
Vesa pushed up to sitting, and her knife was in her hand, jumping back across the room to her in a blink. The women both gasped in surprise, but Vesa didn't care if she was doing anything scary, the uneasy tingling had gone away the instant she touched it. Much better.
Then one of the ladies (Vesa had lost track of their names) was explaining the next one, pulling a pair of thin metal thingies out of the side of the machine. The droid was a few seconds behind, saying they were doing a nerve test now, that she'd be being poked with the little needles and there'd be jolts of electricity, it'd be uncomfortable but not painful, it was fine.
It was not fine. They wanted her to, just, lie down on this thing, and let them stab and shock her, and she was just supposed to lie there and not do anything? To borrow some of Mission's favorite words, fuck these slags, she was not doing that one.
Before the droid was even done translating, Vesa sprung up to her feet, the air folding around her, and she was hiding.
The ladies tried to talk her out for less than a minute before giving up, going for the door. Before Vesa could sneak out, Cina was stepping through, and the door was closed behind her again. She glanced right at Vesa — she jumped at being caught, her heart thudding — but she turned to the women, asking them what was wrong. The droid was translating their conversation, but it was slower, it was sort of confusing listening to them both at the same time. They were explaining the test they wanted to do, and Cina was asking if they couldn't skip it, or if there was another option they could use, sounded like.
After arguing for a little bit, Cina sighed, glaring at the ceiling. Then she looked down, eyes instantly turning right to her. (Vesa didn't jump this time, she was expecting it.) "I'm afraid we have to do this one, Sasha." She glanced at the droid as it translated what she was saying into Basic, looking a little annoyed. "They aren't willing to skip it, and the other options are even more unpleasant."
It was hard to imagine something being more unpleasant. Vesa suffered through the thing — it wasn't painful, but it wasn't fun either, being poked at, jumping as the things did whatever they were supposed to do — her chest tight and her neck itching. At a particularly bad jump, her breath caught, she barely held herself back from driving her knife into the lady's eye.
If Cina didn't stay in the room, she really might have killed the women. (Not because she wanted to, it was just hard to...take it, and not hit back.) But Cina was standing there the whole time, right next to her, doing that thing where she glowed, the same weight that Vesa could use to hide, to make people look away or forget she existed, so much pulled into her until it was so thick the air around her burned. It was fine, Cina could probably take apart this whole building and kill everyone inside it if she wanted to, if they hurt her, it was fine.
(It wasn't, really, but she got through it anyway.)
Having some of her blood taken was awful too, but it was dead easy after that.
Then they were putting stuff away and talking about the next test. Talking to Cina, not Vesa, but the droid translated it anyway — not that Vesa understood, too much of it was adult words she didn't get. Cina cut them off right away, saying they wouldn't be doing that. The ladies argued for a little bit, saying something about it being the rules. Sounding slightly suspicious, actually.
Suspicious that Cina was hiding something, that she was doing something bad to Vesa that this test would reveal, so she didn't want them to do it. Which was silly, but outsiders were silly.
Shooting an uncomfortable look at Vesa, Cina leaned in toward the women a little, clearly intending to leave Vesa out. "I think she overheard her sister being raped." Cina glared at the droid as it translated that too.
Was that what that was? Vesa had heard the word before, but she hadn't actually known what it meant. And she didn't know what it meant now, only that it was bad. She hadn't watched, she'd been in the cargo hold pretending to not exist at the time (and doing a damn good job of it, nobody found her until Cina). She'd just heard the screaming and the crying — and that was scary, she hadn't ever seen Mili afraid of anything ever. She'd been told to hide, so she hid, and she didn't look, she didn't want to look. Anything that could make Mili sound like that had to be very bad.
Cina let out another sigh, apparently gave up on Vesa not overhearing. "You might have noticed Sasha is hardly comfortable with being touched at all, and with whatever happened that day her family... I think it's best we skip that one."
"It wasn't a day."
All three of them turned to stare at her, a variety of unpleasant-looking expressions on their faces. "What do you mean?"
Oh, damn, now she had to say something else. Vesa hadn't meant to say anything in the first place, it'd just...slipped out. She didn't want to think about this, at all, but she'd trapped herself. "Ah, they didn't kill Milesa right away. It was ten or eleven days, I think, before I stopped hearing her."
She didn't want to think about that, but at least saying what she did did some good — Cina and the women looked horrified, they decided to skip whatever test they were talking about and Vesa was shuffled back out of the room within a minute or two.
(Not that she could blame them, it had been horrible, she tried not to remember.)
They met with Mission back outside, one of the ladies started leading them through the hall — not the same way they'd come, Vesa didn't think, it was hard to tell. While they went, Vesa cut a few glances at Mission, frowning to herself. She looked...off. Her arms were folded over her chest, her shoulders hitched up a little, her face looking a darker blue than usual, almost purple, even. She noticed Cina noticing too, it must be obvious something was wrong.
Oh, now that Vesa thought about it, if Cina was looking after her she wouldn't have been there to make sure they weren't doing anything stupid to Mission. Hmm.
"Are you okay?"
Mission jumped, staring down at Vesa with wide eyes for a second. "Yeah, I'm fine."
"You're sure?"
She rolled her eyes. "Yes, kid, I'm sure." A frown creased her oddly purplish face, she switched to Basic to ask Cina, "Did they do a pelvic exam with her?"
Vesa didn't know what that was.
"They wanted to, but I didn't think it was—" Cina froze, not just her words but all of her, stopping in the middle of the hallway. While the lady leading them glanced back to see what was wrong, Cina muttered, "Is that— You could have refused, you know."
Mission made a weird, shifty shrug. "It's fine." She glanced at Vesa, before switching languages again — it wasn't Basic or Mandoa, couldn't guess what. (Mission and Cina both knew too many, it wasn't fair.)
Whatever it was, Cina suddenly looked very angry. Not at Mission, too unfocused, someone else who wasn't here at the moment, Vesa didn't know who over what. They went back and forth a couple times in whatever language that was, before Cina cut herself off with a harsh sigh. "Say no, next time. Both of you, if someone, a doctor or anyone at all, is asking you to do something you're not comfortable with, say no, pass it off to me to deal with if you have to." She repeated it in Mandoa, just to make sure they both had it — which was helpful, Vesa hadn't understood all of that. "Okay?"
They both nodded, Mission looking a little sheepish. Her face was starting to fade back to the normal color, though, so she was probably fine.
Eventually, they got to a different place in these back halls, and Vesa was led into another little room alone — a rather squishier room this time, with fuzzy carpet and padded chairs and such. There was a new lady in this one, with another foreign name she forgot almost instantly, this one a bit older than the other ladies, thin lines and a soft smile on her face. After a little introduction, including what her job was — the droid said "talk-medic", which didn't make any sense, probably just didn't translate into Mandoa well — and saying she should sit in one of the chairs if she wanted (she didn't), she asked what her home was like.
Vesa was confused for a second, before deciding this was probably just a translation mistake. Obviously, she didn't have a home, since her family were all... Well, no, the Sulem surely still had a home somewhere, but she didn't know where it was or how to get there, and the rest of the clan might not even know she existed. But, the lady and the droid probably meant it in the Basic sense of the word, a place where you lived — Mission made that same mistake, calling the ship "home", but Cina didn't, because she was the most Mandosii outsider ever.
But anyway, Vesa didn't know how to answer that, really. So she just talked about the ship, which was nice — especially since she could use the beds and the bath now. And then the lady asked about the people on it, so she said a little bit about them too. Mostly Cina and Mission and Kandosa, she didn't know the others very well. Didn't really know what this woman was looking for, just babbled on for a little bit...
Vesa was somewhat relieved the woman didn't ask how she'd gotten onto the ship in the first place.
"Do you feel very close to Cina?"
She frowned — that didn't make any sense at all. "I don't think that translated right."
The lady's lips twitched, like she felt like smiling but didn't want Vesa to see it. "Do you get along, do you feel you can trust her?"
"Oh. I guess."
"That didn't sound very certain."
"I don't..." Vesa bit her lip, trying to think of how to say it. She'd been told not to lie for this thing, despite how very difficult that could be sometimes. She wouldn't say she trusted Cina, not completely, but she didn't trust anyone, really. (The only people she'd ever really trusted were all dead.) So, it wasn't a bad thing, but just saying it would sound bad. "She's never broken her word to me so far, and I don't think she will, if she can help it." There, that sounded nicer and was actually something she could say without lying.
The lady nodded, wrote something down again. (Vesa couldn't spot what she was writing from here, and besides, it was in aurebesh.) "Does Cina ever tell you to do anything you're not comfortable with?"
"Cina never tells me to do anything."
"Really?" the lady said, her eyes widening in surprise. "Never?"
Vesa shook her head. "She'll ask me to do things, or make suggestions, but she never tells me to do anything." Well, that wasn't entirely true, now that she thought about it — Cina had told her to go back to the ship before, to not follow her to the Jedi place. But she'd only done it that one time. "She doesn't want to scare me, or make me feel trapped, I think." The lady seemed to accept that, moved on.
After getting through more questions about trusting other people on the ship, the lady then got around to some questions about hurting people, when it was okay to do it, and when not, and how she felt about it. These were very confusing, Vesa thought they might be having translation issues again. Mostly because Vesa kept giving what she thought was the obvious correct answer — obviously it was okay to hurt someone if they tried to hurt you or someone you cared about first, obviously it was okay to steal things if you really need them (she didn't understand why questions about stealing or breaking things were in with questions about hurting people) — but they just made the lady look a little worried.
And then she moved to really uncomfortable questions.
The lady hesitated for a long moment, tapping at her knee. "Sasha... You don't have to tell me what it was, if you don't want to. But...have you ever been in a very bad situation, something so bad anybody, no matter who it was, would have found it upsetting?"
Without even thinking about it, Vesa let the air fold back round her, and she disappeared. She didn't want to talk about that. She didn't want to talk about that at all.
The lady jumped, but she didn't move, still sitting in her chair, clearly trying to stay calm. "Sasha? Are you still there?"
But...she thought she had to. This was important, for silly outsider reasons. It'd probably be fine, if she just...stayed gone... "I'm still here. When my family was killed, it was bad. I was told to hide, and I did. I just watched, and listened, and stayed hidden. Until Cina found me."
"It's okay, Sasha. You don't have to tell me about it. That's not what I want to ask you." The lady poked at her datapad for a second, then went on, not even trying to look in Vesa's direction. (Which was fine, Vesa would rather her not be staring at her right now.) "Did you have to go away because being reminded of it made you upset?"
"Thinking about talking about it."
"It's okay, Sasha, I don't need to know about it." But she was still asking about it, wasn't she? That was silly.
But, in the end, the lady didn't make her talk about it, at least not directly. She asked around it, not what had actually happened, but what she felt about it now, how she remembered it, how she dealt with remembering it now. Which was sort of...silly and confusing. But better than actually talking about it, so Vesa was fine with that.
Though, even more confusingly, the lady was getting... She didn't like the answers Vesa was giving her. Not because she thought she was lying, she didn't think — she felt all...spiky and...whatever, she thought they were bad answers, not wrong answers. For reasons, Vesa didn't get it. She moved on eventually, though, so it probably didn't matter too much. There were other questions, but the rest weren't so bad, enough she let herself be visible again eventually. Still weird, and she didn't really get what was going on, but it wasn't scary, not like getting poked with electric needles, so.
After so many confusing questions, Vesa really didn't know what the point of this was, the lady said they were done for now, stood up and lead her back into the hall. She was a bit nervous when she noticed the hall was empty, Cina was gone.
Except she wasn't though — Vesa could still feel her, burning bright and heavy, not far away. And the lady was leading her the right direction, so, it was probably fine.
Before long, they were walking into a familiar room, the one with all the chairs and couches. Cina was in there, sitting in one of the couches with Mission, talking to a man in a chair across from her. Vesa slipped ahead of the lady leading her, clambered over the back of the couch, slipped in between Cina and Mission. She was invisible at the moment, so the man wouldn't know she was there, but the couch still shifted under her feet, Mission glanced in her direction, shifted to the side a little, making room. And of course Cina would know she was there, she managed to meet Vesa's eyes despite her eyes not properly existing right now, her arm snaking around Vesa's there-but-not-there shoulders.
She did tense for an instant, but only an instant. It was just Cina, Cina was fine.
Question-asking lady was saying something to Cina — Vesa didn't catch it, she was whispering and she'd switched the little droid off. Whatever it was, Cina's arm clenched a little tighter around her, so...it was probably bad? Like, not angry bad, concern bad. Which was kind of silly, because Vesa was fine, but okay.
Shrugging to herself, Vesa just leaned into her a little. It was cold in here, she hadn't realised how cold it would be, and Cina was warm...
Vesa didn't really pay attention to what was going on for a while. Cina and Mission were talking to the man over there, but most of it went over her head, all in quick Basic and with big words, and if it were important for her to know someone would talk directly at her at some point, and nobody was. Eventually, some other person came over, and Mission was handed a datapad, and there was a lot of talking, with more big Basic words, most of it went right over her head, and...
She was kind of sleepy. She might be tempted to take a quick nap, if there weren't a bunch of weird outsiders all over the place.
She didn't actually fall asleep, but she must have been a little bit out of it, because she jumped when Cina moved, hand twitching for her knife before reminding herself it was fine, she was fine. (And even if it weren't, Cina was right there, she would kill anyone trying to hurt her first, Vesa didn't have to worry about that.) Cina was standing, her arm twisting out from around Vesa, beckoning her up with a hand. "Stand up for a second, Sasha."
Blinking in sleepy confusion, she did. Cina held out both hands, palm-up so, still confused, Vesa took them. As these things happened, touching someone who wasn't being invisible dragged her back into sight — the man in the chair twitched, she heard a few titters around them. Really what was more confusing was when Cina sank to her knees in front of her, sitting back a little, putting her eye-level right around Vesa's, slightly lower. That was weird, she had no idea what was going on.
In her oddly slurred, drawling farmer accent, Cina said, "Child, you were not of me or mine, but family is more than blood. Until you would part from me, I would keep you and teach you, protect you and honor you, one with me and mine, before ancestor and outsider of me. Vesaisa ti-Hayal be-Sulem, I would hold your name in my heart as my child."
Oh. Okay. Vesa knew what she was doing now. She'd never seen this done before, but she'd heard about it in stories — that was how people knew to say things like this, what the words for special things were supposed to be, from stories they were told as little kids. Cina had changed it slightly, but it was still recognizable.
Or maybe that was just her silly accent? It was actually kind of funny, Cina saying she would hold her name in her heart, when she didn't even say it correctly — when she said it, it sounded more like Besaysha t'Ayal be-Sulem, which was close enough she could tell what she meant to say, like most of the time when she talked, but still noticeably off. (Mission's Mandoa was turning out to be a weird mix of Kandosa and Vesa's more precise warrior clan speech and Cina's slurring farmer accent, it sounded kind of funny.) That was probably where the "Sasha" nickname had come from, shortened from how she slurred Vesaisa...and Mission would have made something up anyway, so Cina had just gotten ahead of her, and picked something that was at least close to her real name.
Except, it kind of wasn't her real name anymore. That was the point of this whole thing.
"Sasha be-Hayyal." Cina's brow dipped in a confused frown, Vesa shrugged. "I'm not really a Sulem anymore. They..." She trailed off, searching for words to say what she was thinking. Honestly, she didn't know if she had any blood relatives she'd ever met before who were still alive. The clan couldn't be entirely dead, there would still be plenty out there, but she didn't know where they were. She didn't even know their names. "They are far from me."
There was an odd expression on Cina's face, something about her feeling cold and heavy, but she nodded.
But anyway, there were words she was supposed to say. Vesa wasn't entirely sure what they were. The stories about these things usually went, they were brought together, some dramatic thing happened, one person said the words, and then it was so. She'd never actually seen this done before, so she didn't know what she was supposed to be doing right now. She could just...keep it simple, then. "Cina be-Hayyal, I hold your name in my heart as my parent."
That must have been good enough, because Cina gave her a little smile, before letting go of her hands. She leaned a bit further back on her heels, reached up for a datapad sitting on the arm of the couch. She fiddled around with it for a little bit, tapping at it with a little stick, pressing her fingers to it for a second, then scribbling at it with the stick. Then she leaned back again, handing the pad to the man in the chair.
She turned back to Ve– Sasha (it was Sasha now), a crooked little smile on her face. "That's that, then."
Yes. That's that.
It took some more long minutes after that, people talking in Basic some more, and running around and whatever, before one of the ladies came back, handed some papers and datacards to Cina and Mission, some handshakes went around, and then they finally turned to leave. Good, Sasha was getting hungry.
They were barely out of the room with all the chairs and couches and stuff when Cina slowed, turned to Sasha. (Spotted her immediately, despite her being invisible again.) With an un-Cina-like hesitation, "Sasha...do you know what a blood-flash is?"
She blinked. "No? Wait, you mean like, those times when warriors think they're back in an old battle, but it's just in their head?" That sort of thing did turn up in stories sometimes, and she had met people who got them before.
"Yes, exactly that. The talk-medic you spoke to, she said you told her you got them sometimes."
"...Oh." Was that what that was? She hadn't thought... "I've never fought though. I didn't even get hurt."
Cina's weight in the air seemed somehow heavier, didn't know what that was. "It's very common for people who've been to war to get blood-flashes, yes, but war isn't the only thing that causes them. The mind can scar as easily as the body, and the body doesn't need to be hurt for the mind to be."
...That did make sense, she guessed. She'd just never really thought of it that way before.
"If they... If you're not doing well, if it's troubling you more than usual, I want you to tell me. There's no shame in these things, it's proof you survived when someone else might not have, like any other deep scar." She was a bit confused why Cina felt the need to say that — she meant, that was just obvious, wasn't it? Didn't get it. "I won't make you talk to me about what happened, but there are things doctors can do to help, if you need it. Just, don't hesitate to tell me, if it's bothering you I want to know. Okay?"
She nodded. "Okay..." She trailed off, somehow losing track of what she wanted to say in the middle of a very, very short sentence. "Am I supposed to call you mom now?"
Mission let out a little giggle as Cina came to a sudden stop, giving Sasha a blank, very strange sort of look. "Ah... I'm not going to... I mean, I'm not gonna demand you do, but if you want to, you can. I'm, um... I don't mind, either way, so much."
Okay, Sasha got why Mission was laughing at her now. That was almost the most uncomfortable Sasha thought she'd ever seen Cina ever. She could barely even finish a sentence, it was kind of funny.
But she didn't want to make it worse, so Sasha just nodded.
...Cina was her mother now. Like, officially, she'd done the outsiders' weird legal stuff, and they'd said the words, and everything. That was a...weird thought.
Not bad, really. Just weird.
She wasn't gonna call her mom though, at least not until they both got used to the idea.
"Right," Cina said, shrugging off her obvious discomfort. "Who wants ice cream?"
[You're allergic to Cathar. You. Cathar.] — While it's not something people talk about very much, the thing that convinced Lesami that something must be done about the Mandalorians immediately was their genocide of the Cathar. Her fact-finding mission into Mandalorian space had been the ones to uncover it in the first place, her famous mask originally belonged to a Mandalorian who'd tried to stop the slaughter, it was a whole thing. (The Revan thing was a psychological campaign directly related to the genocide, in fact, referencing old Mandalorian mythology, long story.) The original Revanchists were, in a way, seeking revenge for the Cathar, and weren't even subtle about it, that motivation a large part of why the Council was so leery of the whole thing. Bastila, naturally, finds the revelation that Revan is allergic to Cathar obscenely amusing, and doesn't quite know how to react.
The Cathar genocide and the origin of the mask is actually canon, by the way. I decided to make Lesami allergic to Cathar entirely because the idea of Revan being allergic to Cathar amused me. Because I'm silly sometimes.
[Rhysam was impossible, she's been avoiding saying his name at all] — Poor Sasha, those sounds aren't in Mandoa. Those first three letters are supposed to be a devoiced trill and a front round vowel (IPA: /r̥y.sã(m̥)/). Not easy.
[hold your name in my heart] — I used the canon adoption vow on the Star Wars wiki page, though I've altered the underlying Mandoa slightly, and also translated into English more literally.
Mandoa doesn't have gendered language for the most part, by which I mean there aren't really distinct words for "son" and "daughter", or "father" and "mother", just "child" or "parent". (The literal translation of the "blood brothers" term Sasha uses would be something more lik "oath siblings".) However, to native speakers of English, actually using gender-neutral terms for these things in ordinary speech sounds very stilted and strange. For that reason, I'm using gender-neutral terms in formal, ritual speech, like Cina and Sasha's adoption vows, but gendered terms when appropriate elsewhere. There is actually a slight difference in the underlying Mandoa. For example, the "untranslated" Mandoa, where Sasha says "my parent", she's saying ni buir (ner buir would be grammatical, but the genitive pronouns are used inconsistently, especially in this case when the next word begins with a consonant, and double especially by children); when she says "mother" or "mom", she's saying buir or buika, without the pronoun. Minor difference, yes, but it is aesthetically important.
Yes, I realise I think about these things too hard.
Wow, what is this, a chapter? No way.
For the record, Mission is a bit shaken over the pelvic exam due to bad experiences with lower-city grey-market doctors in the past, it's not rape trauma.
Right, next update is going to be another Revanche chapter, involving...arguably the leader of and the most influential among the loyalists. And then Tatooine. So, that should be out sometime in 2022.