The Way of a Siluan

Chapter 31: A Defense and a Departure

14 BBY 0 Months 2 Days

The first day after Varda got to Nechako with Devin, she spoke little and ate nothing. The next day was much the same.

Devin checked on her as often as he could manage while having a farm and two kids to take care of, pressing her to at least drink some water from time to time, talking if she wanted to talk and being silent if she wanted to be silent. Usually she would simply thank him and then go quiet again, not really meditating, but distant, drawn into herself.

The one time she did ask about something particular, Devin found it a little strange, not that she wanted to talk about something, but that she didn't ask about Eo or about her friend Lu Mang. She asked about the clones that fought the war, what Devin had heard about them during that time and what happened to them afterwards. He didn't really know what to say. He'd met a few clones once and thought they were good guys, but he spent the whole war managing an AgriCorps station on a planet not much touched by battle. He wished she would ask about the people they both knew and so they could talk and remember them together, but she didn't.

But Varda's fasting and her silence didn't, in themselves, worry Devin. He knew that in many cultures, human and otherwise, this was a normal way to face massive grief. He figured he would have done the same five years ago when he got the news that the Jedi were gone, if he didn't have a kid on the way and a wife and a farm to pull him out of himself.

What did worry Devin was what he saw every morning when he looked out the living room window. Every morning, against the pale sky of dawn, a dark cloud circled over the field just beyond his barn: vultures, waiting for their turn to feast on the carnage. He felt cold watching them, knowing that he didn't know what he'd do if that darksider came back, trying not to see in his mind Shie and Jonah and Siri left in the same state of dissection as his dead livestock out in the field.

But what exactly he hoped Varda would do to ward off any future visit of that darksider was no longer clear to Devin. What was she supposed to do? Stand guard day and night? Even for a Jedi in the prime of life that would be impossible, and even without her deep grief Varda seemed in no shape for fighting with her hip the way it was. Sometimes he wanted to push her to at least talk about it. She knew, after all, why he needed her help. He'd told her on the way from Hokto to Nechako. She said then that she would help, but there wasn't much enthusiasm in her voice, and now, whenever he checked on her, it just didn't seem his place to force her out of the space she was in, not yet at least.

On the third day after he'd brought Varda to Nechako, Devin getting more impatient, but he expected to get more of the same from Varda and so he turned his mind to other things. He had a rare day ahead of him to do farm work while Shie looked after the kids and he had spent a solid three hours working in the field before his chronometer beeped 0700h for breakfast.

With his heavy boots swishing through the young spring grass, Devin walked with long strides up to the back door of his little house on the prairie: a grey dome, much like the type favoured by humans in rural areas elsewhere in the galaxy. The back door opened onto a little mudroom just off of the kitchen, and when Devin stepped inside he was surprised to find Varda out of the guest room for the first time in days, sitting at the sunny kitchen table with Shie, who was nursing Siri under a green cotton blanket.

"Thank you," Varda was saying with a deep bow of her head. "I cannot express how much it means to me."

"It's nothing," Shie said with a wave of her hand. "We owe it to you, after all."

They both looked up as Devin came in.

"I think this morning would be a good time for us to look into the trouble you've had here," Varda said. She held her thin shoulders square now and her face had a new resolute look about it even though she still looked sad and haggard.

"Oh," Devin said, surprised and wondering what had changed. "Sure, that would be great. I just need to grab a bite. Do you want anything?"

Varda gave another bow of her head. "Thank you," she said. "Something small at least would be good."

After their quick breakfast, Devin kept a careful eye on Varda as they took a slow walk over to the barn. The way she looked carefully at everything, the lush spring grass, the fluffy white clouds in the sky and the direction they travelled in the wind, all spoke to am outward focus that Devin hadn't seen in her for days. It was like she had flipped a switch to turn on her old Jedi self again. Devin wasn't about to complain about that, but it still seemed a little weird to him. He kind of wanted to say something about it, but Varda seemed to feel no need to talk and so, out of respect for her as a Jedi, he didn't try to talk either.

In the barn, Devin pulled up the holo-recording taken by the field monitor drone before it was destroyed by the intruder. Varda watched the recording twice, once at normal speed and once in slow motion, then shook her head. "I want to see the place where this happened," she told Devin. "You can't feel anything of the Force in a holo-recording."

Varda's uneven gait was a bit slow for Devin's long stride, so he got them into the speeder and took Varda out to the field. As they pulled up a dozen vultures spread their dark wings and flew a safe distance away. The clouds of buzzing flies did not. When Devin stepped out of the speeder, feces on the ground told him that wild dogs had come in the night for their share of the spoils.

With a look of clinical dispassion on her face, Varda walk among the five inu carcasses. The upper side of each was eaten away, showing skulls and spines and ribs in fine detail. Here and there, a yellow wasp scraped flesh from the bones. The exposed bones would turn dry white later, Devin knew, but in the cool spring weather, their moist pinky-red still lingered.

This state of gradual consumption and decay was nothing Devin hadn't seen before, but the light-sabre cuts, laser-straight through bones and skulls, still made him feel sick. He wondered if Varda didn't feel the same.

"All brute force, no skill!" Varda said. "But it is well for you that she didn't find your house." Varda shaded her eyes with her hand and look over to where the grey dome of Devin's house sat less than a kilometre away across the flat prairie. "Was there no moon that night?" she asked.

Devin shook his head. "Two of our moons were both near full."

Varda scowled at the not-so-distant house. "Then it should have been visible. When you sensed her presence, what exactly did you do?"

Devin folded his arms across his chest and looked back over the three hundred metres or so of short, green waving grass that lay between him and his home under the wide blue sky. He looked down and kicked at a tuft of grass, finding himself tongue-tied to try to explain.

"I just...I felt something was here, something evil, so I reached out to the Force for power, and...what I felt was this," he said, gesturing to the flat expanse of the land around him. "The prairie, the grassland. I felt power in that and I drew that to me, and after a while, I sensed that she was gone."

Varda's eyebrows pushed up wrinkles on her forehead in surprise. "I see," she said, and walked with her stump-step gait a little ways away from the inu carcasses and bent down to put her hands on the grass. Devin did the same. It wasn't wet with dew anymore now that the sun was higher in the sky, but still moist and lush from being so fresh.

"Did you notice anything different about the Force when you were on Hokto?" Varda asked, without looking up.

Devin was surprised by the question. "Um...not really. It's very tree-ish there, and those little frogs. You feel them."

"And little else," Varda said. "Did you notice that?"

Devin scrolled back through his memory. The weight of Varda's grief, along with his pressing need to have some viable defence against the likes of that darksider, had written over most of his other impressions, but gradually images from the time on Hokto came to the fore.

"I couldn't sense you at first," he said, "not til I could see you anyways. I was worried that something had happened to you. I figured maybe I was a bit rusty." He shrugged and looked down.

"If it makes you feel any better, I didn't sense you either. I saw Garth's starship and so I hid, but I didn't guess until I heard your voice, and I wasn't sure it was you until I saw you."

Varda folded her arms across her knees as she squatted there and looked out across the prairie, then at Devin. "Have you heard of bio-crypsis?" she asked.

Devin shook his head and shifted back and forth on his feet. His knees were getting tired crouching down to the ground like that, but Varda didn't seem in any hurry to get up. She went on.

"I wonder if that is what happened with you the night that darksider came, and I wonder if that is what happens on Hokto. It is possible, I've heard, for one organism to mask its Force signatures by hiding within that of others, or to cause others to amplify their Force signatures in such a way as to mask its own. It would explain both phenomena, I think."

Devin wrapped his arms around his bent knees. "But it doesn't make sense. That darksider should have been able to physically see the house. And unless she came here just to slaughter a few livestock, why didn't she come to the house?" He wasn't sure where Ava Kirrin got his new from, but from what he'd said it seemed clear enough that the Sith had some sort of minions who were hunting down what was left of the Jedi.

"You were desperate," Varda said, running her hands back and forth across the blades of grass in front of her. "Desperation is powerful. You know the stories about mothers who lift crashed speeders to get their children out from underneath. If someone who isn't even particularly Force-adept can do that, think what is possible for you, with your training."

Devin twisted his head around to look at his house. It was plainly visible there on the flat green prairie.

"But...a form of mind-control powerful enough to keep even a Force-user from seeing what's in front of them?"

"All I know is this: the possibility of masking the Force-signature of one organism with that of another is known to the Jedi," Varda stopped and sighed. "Was known, I should say. But it was not widely used. The dynamics of the Force on Hokto, being so hard to distinguish anything except the Force-signature of the plants and the tree-frogs, would seem to be a form of bio-crypsis, though of whose doing I can't guess. And what you did that night would also make sense if you were using the plants to mask yourself in the Force."

"But...even mind control isn't that strong. Even a Jedi Master can't mind-control another Force-user that much."

"Is it mind control? I don't think you manipulated her mind. You manipulated the nature of the energies that were available for her to perceive."

Devin looked at Varda with disbelief. He felt a flame of ego flare up inside him at the thought of wielding that much power but quickly doused it with a healthy dose of realism. He shook his head. "Whatever happened, I can't bank on doing it again. I need something that will work to keep us safe, something we can rely on."

Varda nodded, considering this. "I want to try something," she said. "I haven't done this before, so it will be an experiment. I want you to try to connect to the grassland again, together with me, and see if we can shift the plant Force-signatures so that they mask ours."

Devin raised an eyebrow, but Varda was obviously dead serious. From her squatting position, she looked behind her to make sure the ground was clean, then sat down. Devin thought she must be cold like that; she was wearing a quilted beige pants-and-tunic set and an old work jacket she'd borrowed from Shie, but it wasn't made for contact with the cold spring ground.

Varda saw his look. "It's better to sit, to be close to the ground. I'll be warm enough," she said, but took her black shawl from around her neck and wrapped it to cover her head.

Devin looked behind him at the carcasses. A brave vulture had come back to continue the feast. Devin sighed and shifted over a metre or so the avoid the wild dog dung near the carcasses, then sat down on the cold, damp ground, facing Varda. His grey work pants were insulated, but he still felt cold. He pulled the sleeves of his thick red plaid work jacket down as far as they would go over his wrists and wished he'd brought gloves.

"Now," Varda said, and placed her bare hands on the grass. Devin did the same, then closed his eyes.

It was nothing like the night that darksider came. Then his senses were all sharpened by terror. Now perception came slowly.

At first, it was all he could do to stop resisting the cold ground under him and just let it be part of the moment. He willed himself focus on his own breathing, to let his thoughts of darksiders and farm chores and housework go, to let everything go and just simply be in that place with the sound and feel of his breath, his weight pressing down on the cold but cushioning grass, the hot sun on his forehead, the cool breath of wind against his cheek, and the sweet smell of the yellowbark and honeybough trees along the river wafting in the breeze.

Slowly, very slowly, he felt the firm ground beneath him and the soft, pliant new growth of the grass against his hands, not only their physical substance, but the Force-feel of it: the urgency, the determination of the grass to seize every moment of Nechako's short spring and to push, push, push to grow, grow, grow. This was not the peaceful sward that most people saw, but a driven and ambitious tribe of beings bent on thrusting green blades upwards and marching white roots downwards as long as there was even a moment of light to fuel their growth.

Even as he could feel the grass grow around him, Devin sensed from afar the river: duckweed and rushes along the banks, then at the border of river and grassland, the honeybough and yellowbark trees, still bare-branched but bearing fat brown buds ready to burst with the green leaves of spring. They were more patient than the grasses, but no less passive. They too had one goal: to seize the light of Nechako's distant star and by photon after photon of light energy to turn the water and even the air itself into leaves and branches, seeds and roots.

Slowly, very slowly, breathing with them, their exhale his inhale, Devin began to draw their energies to himself. The night of that darksider, their presence was like a heavy curtain that he drew around him and his family. Now it felt more like a light veil. Patiently, gradually, lest the thin fabric of his connection with them be ripped, he took hold of their collective Force-presence, drew it close around him, and then got the weirdest feeling in his stomach: in the Force, as far as he could sense it, Varda wasn't there anymore. Nor could he sense Shie or the kids back in the house not so far away.

But when he opened his eyes, Varda was there same as before. He quickly shut his eyes again and found that even his own being was distant and fuzzy, indistinct to his own perception, like a figure seen through a fog or a whisper barely heard over the clamour of other voices. That won't do, he thought to himself. If he couldn't see himself at least, it would be harder than ever to renew his Jedi practice, something he wanted more and more to do.

Devin pushed the Force-field of the grasses and yellowbarks and honeyboughs away from himself ever so slightly, and found that he could sense himself clearly in the Force again, though Varda was still an indistinct blur and his wife and kids back in the house might as well not have been there, for all his Force-perception told him.

Then he let go. It took a few minutes before he realized that the effect wasn't going away. He opened his eyes and looked at Varda sitting there looking small against the wide green prairie all around them. She opened her eyes too and nodded.

"I think this could work," she said.

Devin looked around. It felt almost weird to see the vast ripples of green grassland under a broad blue sky and fluffy white clouds stretched out to the far flat horizon, almost too normal after what he'd just experienced while trying to alter plant energies in the Force.

"Wow," Devin said. That was all he could say.

Varda leaned forward and shifted her weight to her arms, and somewhat stiffly began to get up. Devin quickly got to his feet and gave her a hand. This time, she leaned on his arm for help.

"We should do that in other places as well. Do you still have time right now?" she said, brushing grass off the backside of her tunic.

Devin glanced at his wrist chronometer. "We have another couple hours before lunch," he said, then looked back at the inu carcasses and the horde of vultures now circling low overhead. The relief he felt to have some buffer against the searching travels of that darksider was a welcome change.

Devin and Varda spent the next couple hours visiting different parts of the farm, repeating their experiment in altering the amplitude of the plants' Force-signatures. By the time they headed back to the house, Devin felt pretty pumped. It was good to be a Jedi again.

But when they went back to the house for lunch, standing at the door gave Devin the weirdest feeling: it was like no one was inside. He put his hand on the door. Usually, he had at least a vague sense if Shie and the kids were in the house or not, even if they were being quiet, but now, nothing.

Suddenly the door whisked open. Devin jumped. There at the door was Shie with a bag of garbage in one hand.

She laughed. "You look like you just saw a ghost! I was just heading out to put some trash in the incinerator."

Devin mumbled something about not expecting her to be there and let her pass. "Did you feel her on the other side of the door?" he asked Varda as they stepped inside and started taking off scarves and coats.

"I can't say I did," Varda said.

Devin felt a new glow of awe creep over him. Even back in the AgriCorps, he had never done anything like this before. "Then it's working," he said.

"For now," Varda said as she struggled out of her boots. "We should do that again every so often. I doubt it will hold if we don't. But we'll need to find another way eventually."

Devin glanced into Jonah's room. The five-year-old was glued to a holo-vid of starfighters chasing each other through space in a spray of laser bullets. Devin winced. He didn't really like Shie parking Jonah in front of shows like that, but under the circumstances, he just closed the door so that he could talk to Varda without Jonah hearing.

"Why do we need to find another way?" he asked Varda, motioning for her to sit down at the table. With a sigh, Varda sank into the hard wooden kitchen chair.

"I don't know for sure," Varda said, "but I expect that it takes more than a little of their biological energy for them to project their Force-presence that strongly, even if we are the ones directing them to do it. Over time, that expenditure of energy will slow their growth and alter the ecology here."

"Yikes! That's not good," Devin said. He pulled up a chair across from Varda at the table. In his mind were visions of his already-ailing inu herd doing even worse if the pastures grew more slowly.

Varda shrugged. "That's probably why the Jedi didn't do it very much. I wouldn't have done it myself if I could come up with another way."

Devin looked down at the table and made a face. He wasn't about to turn down a line of defence that might keep that darksider from finding him or his family, but in light of what Varda had said about changing the way the plants allocated their energy, it wasn't sitting as well with him as it did at first. In agriculture, it was normal to have to trade off the wellbeing of one species for that of another, but the way of the AgriCorps Jedi had always been to minimize interference in the biology of other organisms.

Devin almost opened his mouth to say something about this, but then the door slid open and with a gust of cold air, Shie stepped back inside and coughed into her sleeve before proceeding to take off her coat and scarf and boots. Devin thought she looked kind of tired.

"Do you want me to make something for lunch?" he asked.

"There's soup on the stove," she said and went to get Jonah from his room. Then Siri woke up and started crying again and there was lunch to serve and diapers to change and whatever Devin had wanted to say got lost in the bustle.

Calving season that year was bittersweet for Devin. While he and Varda were at work that morning, the field monitor drones picked up images of the three more newborn calves in the far pasture, and so after lunch Devin went out in the speeder to check in person.

He arrived to find three mother inu cows licking their tiny new calves. For all his experience, the newborn calves with their spindly legs and big dewy eyes and fluffy brown fur still brought a smile to Devin's face and gave him that glow of new beginnings.

But this was also the first growing season of his new reality: after he finally admitted defeat in his attempts to farm profitably outside of the Imperial Agriculture Program, Devin was no longer a full-time farmer. He was a stay-at-home dad, spending his days in the frustrating little jobs of changing Siri's diapers and picking up after Jonah while Shie went out to work. He kept what was left of the inu as a side-job, a hobby more than anything. And after that darksider's visit, he was down from twenty breeding cows to only fifteen. Even if all the calves survived, their meat would hardly bring in enough to cover the cost of raising them to slaughter, let alone enough that Shie could cut back on her work hours like she wanted to.

On the way back from his field visit later in the day, Devin stopped by Varda's place. Soon after lunch, Shie had whisked Varda off with a bright idea: to settle her in the other house on the property, where Devin's dad used to live before he met a new woman and moved to the sunny beaches and late-night cantinas of Vaynai. It was the same grey dome-construction as Devin's house, but smaller, only a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom and one bedroom. It hadn't been lived in for a few years and needed a good cleaning, which Shie had offered to do but Varda politely insisted on doing herself. When Devin came up to the door, it was open despite the cool spring breeze that was blowing across the prairie.

"Varda?" he called through the open door. He didn't see her in the kitchen, but the whole place smelled of vinegar.

Varda came out of the bathroom door with a rag in one hand and her hair tied up in a green scarf. Devin looked her over carefully. The energy of the morning's Jedi work was gone. There was once again a dull and distant look in her dark eyes, and the way she carried her shoulders all slumped gave Devin the feeling that she still didn't really have her spirit back. He wondered for a moment if he shouldn't trouble her with what he'd come to talk about, but then told himself, at least half believing it, that it would be good for her to feel needed.

"I just thought I'd give the place a spring cleaning," Varda said when she saw him, and coughed into one fist.

"Do you have a minute?" Devin said, "I wanted to ask you about something."

"Come in," Varda said and coughed again. "Sorry about the vinegar smell. The other detergent in the cupboard was a bit strong for me."

"It's OK," Devin said. The smell was a bit unpleasant but better than the musty odour that had pervaded the empty house before.

Varda motioned for them to sit down at the table, and poured two mugs of something hot and herbal from a thermos. Devin wrapped his hands around the mug when she passed it to him and took a sip. The warmth only just barely took the edge off the cold in the house from having the door open for ventilation.

Devin took another sip from his mug. Jedi protocol meant waiting for the older person to speak first.

Varda sighed, then drew herself up in her chair. "What did you want to talk about?" she asked.

"You remember we were talking before the war about the whole peak phosphate thing?" he asked.

Varda nodded. Back in his days as a Jedi youngling, she was the one who had taught Devin about phosphate, essential to the very molecule of DNA and therefore essential to almost all known life. Yet mineable phosphate reserves were in limited supply, and galactic agriculture was using more than waste recycling programs could recover. It was only a matter of time before wars would be fought over who got access to that essential and limiting nutrient for food production, yet neither the Republic nor most local governments had taken much action to forestall the shortage that was predicted within a few decades. Peak phosphate was, therefore, the sort of thing people like Varda used to talk about before the War, but Devin could remember her getting frustrated sometimes about how few people seemed to care. He hoped that now it would get her going again.

"So pretty much as soon as the new Empire got established they decided to make phosphate an Imperial monopoly. Or shall I say, Ry Kyver decided to make phosphate an Imperial monopoly. The idea was that if it's limited, only the most efficient farmers should get to use it. That's how they sold the idea anyways, that it's about using it efficiently."

Varda took a sip of her tea. A flicker of interest showed in her eyes. "That's how they sold what idea, the monopoly?"

Devin ran his hands through his hair. "No, not just the monopoly, the whole Imperial Agriculture Program. The deal is that you can only buy phosphate fertilizer if you follow this set of farming methods that they want you to use."

"Depending on the methods, that's not necessarily a bad thing," Varda said dryly.

Devin gave a bitter laugh, but felt good to hear that wry tone in her voice; it sounded like the normal Varda. He felt his shoulders relax and let go of any reluctance to burden her.

He made a face and shook his head. "You'll see once you've been here a while. This stuff they want us to spray on the crops, it doesn't go away. I felt like something was wrong with it so I tried to do without. I tried just buying grain from my neighbour instead of growing my own so that I could do without fertilizer, but the stuff they spray on the grain comes through in the manure and now I'm stuck with this herbicide and stuff in the soil. It'll let the grass grow, but not much else, but you need more than just grass to grow a profitable pasture. I've given up trying to make a living off this place."

Varda sipped her tea and scowled. "So there's no other way for you to get phosphate fertilizer?"

Devin wrapped his hands around the warmth of his mug and shook his head. "You can't use manure, because that's got the chemicals they spay on the crops, and then you poison your soil. I guess there might be black-market stuff out there somewhere, but..." he trailed off and shook his head, "how am I supposed to get that? It's not like my neighbours have extra to sell."

Varda wrapped her shawl tight around her and then got up stiffly and closed the open door. Devin immediately noticed the vinegar smell more strongly. He pointed to the hood over the kitchen stove. "There's a ventilation fan you can turn on there, and that button on the wall will give you heat," he said.

"Here?" Varda asked, pointing to a switch. Devin nodded. She turned on the fan and then pressed the button for the heater. Varda almost jumped as the heating element in the radiator on the wall crackled to life. Then she shook her head. "For seven years I lived without these things," she said, and for a moment Devin was lost in staring at her and wondering what must be like to return to normal life after living in a hut in the woods for so long.

"So what exactly do you want me to help you do?" she asked as she stump-stepped back to her chair and sat down.

Devin ran his thumbnail along a scratch in the wooden table. It occurred to him that he was sitting at this exact table when he and Shie decided to change their surname and stay and hide here on Nechako.

"What I want," he said, "is to be able to farm profitably again. For that I'll need some way to decontaminate either the grain to feed my livestock or the manure to fertilize the fields with. And, I'll need a way to get rid of the herbicide that's in the soil now."

Varda took a sip of her tea and tilted her head to one side. "It should break down by itself, shouldn't it?"

Devin made a face. "Not this stuff. It just sticks around and builds up more and more. If I want to cave in an sign up for the Imperial Ag Program they'll sell me special seeds that are resistant to it, but..." he threw up his hands, "that's Ry Kyver for you. Trust a traitor to come up with something like that."

A sad look passed over Varda's face, and Devin wasn't sure whether she was sad to hear him speak like that or sad to be reminded of the woman who killed Eo. But the look passed and Varda sighed and looked down at her half-empty mug of tea.

"I will try to help you," she said but then sighed, looking tired and beaten again. "There is something I should tell you, though. I will be going away for several days."

"You're...going away?"

Varda nodded her head.

"But..." But, he thought, he'd just gone to all the trouble to get her here. He couldn't have her going out and getting herself killed or something.

"There are many things I haven't told you," Varda said quietly. "I am not entirely who you remember me to be. I need some time, and I need help from someone wiser than I am."

It hurt to hear her talk like that, but Devin's feeling soon turned to shock as Varda continued.

"I...would like to talk to an Elder I know. I was thinking of going to Yemer for a while, to the Siluan monastery there."

"No!" Devin said quickly, more forcefully than he meant to. "Yemer is dangerous. The Imperials have taken over there. I don't even think the monastery is still there."

"Many of the monastics live hidden out in the desert. I'm sure they are still there." Varda spoke with calm conviction.

Devin scowled, gripping his empty tea mug. He grasped for some way to talk her out of going there. "Why don't you wait a bit?" he said, forcing his voice to be gentle. "There's some Yemerian refugees here. They'll be out of hibernation in a few weeks, then you can ask them what they know about the situation there."

Varda shook her head. "I have calculated the flight plan and I am going tonight," she said, sounding tired but resolute. "Shie has already agreed that I could take the starship."

"Varda, it's dangerous out there. I can't have you getting yourself killed. And your hip...what if..." Devin trailed off, motioning broadly with both hands, not wanting to say out loud that she'd be no match in a fight in the shape she was in now if she ran into some Sithling out there.

But Varda just shook her head. "Perhaps you are too young to understand this," she said, "but I would rather take that risk than remain as I am now."

In the pilot's seat of the little passenger starship, Varda sat unmoving, unspeaking, unseeing, her hands forgotten on the grey steering console, staring out at the empty blackness between the stars as she glided away from Nechako. She felt like her soul was made of broken glass.

From the first morning she woke up alone on Hokto, she knew that she had been wrong to stay behind. She knew that she should have gone with Eo like Eo asked her to.

At the time, she had no premonition of what would befall Eo, just as now she had no certainty that she could have prevented it. But she knew that she was wrong in reasons why she had stayed behind.

At the time, it seemed so enlightened, so spiritual, as if she had taken the Jedi Barash vow to live alone in the Force, as if staying on Hokto alone were some sort of penitence for having killed those two clones back during the war. But she knew, with all her heart she knew, from the first day that Eo was gone, that it had nothing to do with penitence and everything to do with pride. She was too proud to face the Jedi Council and account for what she had done. But all that while, the Jedi were gone and there was no Jedi Council, and now there was no Eo either.

For two days she had sat, dead in her grief and misgivings, but by the third day she realized: to hide within herself like that was to continue her wrong. She had to take herself in hand and do something to become again the Jedi she should have been.

But it would take time. And in that time, Varda longed to get away from Nechako. Devin's wide-eyed esteem of her clashed too badly with her own knowledge of how far she had fallen as a Jedi. She could not begin to even dream of relating to him what it meant to learn that both Eo and the whole Jedi Order were gone while she had survived only by behaving so selfishly, hiding on Hokto after she killed the clones and staying in hiding yet again rather than go with Eo. On Yemer, among the Siluans, she knew she could find what she longed for: the freedom to speak what had happened, to talk with a wiser person who would hear without judgement and guide her without being disappointed in her.

But instead of calculating the leap to hyperspace, she sat there in the starship, the same starship she had stolen after she killed the clones, the same starship Eo had repaired under her guidance. She sat, her mind trapped in wondering whether she could have saved Eo if had she gone with her, wishing for what could have been if she had been willing to face up to what she did when she killed those clones.

When the blue surface of Nechako's moon Deka loomed up and filled all the viewport before her, Varda snapped back to attention. She pulled the ship up just before it veered dangerously near the surface. She couldn't just let herself slam into Deka and end her life there. She had to take herself in hand, now.

Varda's hand flew to the computer controls. She was about to punch in the coordinates for Yemer when a little voice within her said to pull up the ship's log instead.

In the tight little green letters on the black screen, there it was, from almost two weeks ago. The exact coordinates where Devin had landed when he took Eo to Iwaki to see Ava Kirrin. Ava Kirrin, the last person to speak with her young friend before she died. No, not the last. Ry Kyver was the last, but having done what she had done she didn't count as a person anymore.

More than she longed to go to Yemer, Varda longed to speak with Ava Kirrin. She pushed the motion control lever forward and sped around to the far side of the moon, then calculated the jump to hyperspace, her course set for Iwaki.