Chapter 40: A Lightsabre for Devin

13 BBY – 11 months – 24 days

~ on the planet Nechako ~

Varda shaded her eyes with one hand and watched Ahsoka's converted shuttle touch down in the mid-morning sun, the young spring grass flattening slightly under the rush of displaced air as the ship came down. As the shuttle settled to the ground and the thrusters went out with a gasp and a sigh, Varda pulled her coat closer around her and waited.

It was two days since her return to Nechako, and in those two days, debriefing with Devin about all that had happened for him and for her in the time she was away, reading and rereading the files Bail Organa and Dr. Gunma had given her for the soil decontamination project, no matter what she did, part of her mind was always back on Yemer, back with Ahsoka, back where Ry Kyver lay in the Siluan hospital of all places. Part of her mind was always striving, as if by sheer force of will, to empower Ahsoka and constrain Ry to some good end that would see the Dark Jedi brought into custody, if not brought to justice.

She knew full well she had no such power, but she remained anxious to hear the news her new associate would bring. The terse message Varda had received on her comm the day before, Situation under control, details to come, certainly eased her fears but she couldn't quite shake the jittery feeling that haunted her, wondering what was to be done about Ry's presence on Yemer.

The hatch opened and Ahsoka, with a heavy grey coat thrown over her para-military gear and the hood pulled up over her montrals, walked out into the midmorning sun, looking around at the flat green landscape and noting the simple pre-fab domed house behind Varda.

Ahsoka waved a quick hello and smiled. "So this is your place!" she said.

"Yes, well, it belongs to Devin, but I'm staying here for the time being. Devin is the former AgriCorps member I told you about."

Ahsoka gave a quick nod. "Yeah, I'm looking forward to meeting him," she said, then scanned the landscape again. "It seems pretty remote here. What can you tell me about this place?"

Varda shrugged and gestured for Ahsoka to follow her into the house and the two walked side by side. "I've only been here less than a ten-day myself. It's mostly flat prairie, as far as I can tell, but there are mountains in some parts near the capital. Most people seem to be farmers or ranchers or work in mining of some sort. It's under Imperial administration, though I don't know yet how that will affect us here in particular."

"Everywhere is under Imperial administration," Ahsoka gruffed, stopping for Varda to catch up when the older woman fell behind. "But it seems pretty low-key here. We should talk about security at some point, though, just in case."

"Yes," Varda said, boots swishing though grass as she pushed herself a little faster to catch up so that they could walk on together. "How is the situation on Yemer?"

"They have, like, no security at that hospital. I didn't even have to try to break in. I just waited til it was dark and then I snuck in and had a look."

Varda scowled down at her feet. Having Ahsoka break into the monastery hospital felt uncomfortably like betraying her friends there, but under the circumstances there wasn't much else to be done. "So you saw her?"

"She wasleep, but yes, I saw her."

They arrived at entrance to the house. Varda pushed a button to open the sliding door and a gust of warm air greeted them. She gestured for Ahsoka to follow her inside.

The two pulled off boots and coats and scarves and Ahsoka accepted the pair of slippers Varda handed her. "So what do you think?" Varda asked.

"She's in pretty bad shape. I don't think she'll be causing too much trouble for a while."

Varda bit back the rebuff that first sprang to mind and decided to take care of hospitality first. She motioned for Ahsoka to take a seat on the living room's shabby sofa. "Have you had lunch?" she asked. "I can heat something from the cold-box if you'd like."

Ahsoka shook her head. "Thanks, but I ate in hyperspace."

"Would you like tea maybe? Or hot milk, perhaps?"

"Milk would be great, thanks."

Varda returned with two mugs of steaming inu milk and handed one to Ahsoka before taking her seat on the other end of the sofa. Ahsoka looked a bit surprised at the orange colour of the beverage, but took a sip. "Nice, it's pretty rich," she said, cupping the mug in both hands.

Varda took a sip of the thick orange milk and set her cup down on the little table nearby. "So, do you have any thoughts on how we might get her out of there?"

Ahsoka made a face. "She's got a pretty bad bacterial infection and they're planning to have her in there for treatment for at least another ten-day - it wasn't that hard to hack into the computer, so I pulled up her medical file and everything. But I planted a micro-cam to keep an eye on her. Don't worry, no one will find it. I can monitor the situation from my starship, and I left a drone in the area that can follow her if she leaves the building for any reason. I have some other business I need to attend to, but I can come back when it's time to get her."

Varda twitched slightly. "I see," she said slowly, uncertainly, shifting in her seat and considering this.

"Don't worry, if she leaves her hospital room, the micro-cam will ping my comm, and it will activate the drone outside to watch the exits in case she tries to leave the hospital."

Something about Ahsoka's words gave Varda a sideways feeling; this world of micro-cams and hidden drones was so far removed from the world she had known on Hokto, just as the sharp and serious young Togruta woman was no longer the snippy preteen she'd taught back in the Temple. But the plan seemed to make as much sense as could be made in this situation. "And so, basically, you'll know if she tries to go anywhere," Varda summarized.

"Yes, I'm going to need to go out of the sector for a few days, but by the time she's well enough to do much I'll be back in the area, so I can monitor things more closely. I'm hoping that as soon as she's out, I can be on it and take her into custody before she can do much."

Varda scowled down at the worn carpet. There was a great deal of harm Ry could do without leaving the hospital, but at least Ahsoka's plan allowed them to keep an eye on the Dark Jedi – and offered a way to capture her even though the Siluans weren't willing to hand her over to anyone.

"I know you're worried," Ahsoka said, laying a hand on the sofa cushion nearest Varda. "Realistically, I can't totally prevent anything bad from happening to your friends while she's there, but I don't think she's as much of a threat as you might think. For one, I don't think she's in any physical shape to do much right now. And think about it: Imperial authorities have a million-credit bounty out for her. I have a pretty good network, and from what I can gather, she didn't just go missing, she ran away. And like, if she's still trying to play the Imperial game, why did she help break a prisoner out of an Imperial work camp?"

"Whether she is allied with the Empire or not, there is much evil she may do for her own ends, whatever those may be." Varda folded her arms tight across her chest, the vision of Ry in the dark of Iwaki flashing through her mind. Ahsoka looked a bit surprised at the venom in Varda's words, and Varda sighed, letting her arms fall into her lap. "Forgive me...I should be saying thank you. You've done far more than I could have to get the situation under control. I greatly appreciate it."

Ahsoka smiled and shrugged. "That's what I do," she said. "This could actually be a really good opportunity. Even if you didn't care what happened on Yemer, I'd still want to keep an eye on her. I mean, she's either a danger to be prevented or a massive source of information we could gather, or maybe both. I still need to confirm some details with Bail, but I've got a pretty good idea now for where we could contain her if we're able to take her into custody."

"Thank you, I will leave it in your capable hands," Varda said with a slight bow. She took another sip of her milk, while Ahsoka downed the last of hers.

For a moment they were both silent. Varda looked down, her thoughts complicated. She was thankful. As much as she felt bad about going behind the backs of her Siluan friends, doing nothing about Ry Kyver was not an option, and Ahsoka was far more suited to this type of work than she was. But Varda could not forget what the owl showed her on Iwaki; she had seen Ry kill for mere spite, using the Force alone. Her mind filled with images of the same happening to Dr. Gunma and Dr. Unayat and anger quickly boiled up inside her. She quelched it, only to find tears welling to the surface. With a guest on hand, that would not do.

"May I get you something more to drink?" Varda said, reaching for Ahsoka's mug. Her voice was dangerously husky.

"No, it's..." Ahsoka began, before concern, then recognition flashed across her face. "Well, yes, I'd love some more, thanks."

Varda disappeared into the kitchen, grateful for a reprieve.

When she came back to the sitting area, Ahsoka was twisted around in her seat, looking out the window behind her.

"Here you go," Varda said, setting the warm mug down on the low table by the sofa before taking her seat.

Ahsoka turned around, a strange look on her face. "Thanks," she said absently, scanning the room before turning to Varda. "So...this might sound weird, but have you noticed anything, like, unusual about this place?"

Varda's eyes drifted out the window to green grass, a lone communication tower, flat horizon and white clouds in a blue sky. "It's certainly the closest I've ever come to living on a horizontal plane," she said drily.

That made Ahsoka snicker. "True enough," she said. "But I mean, do you feel it? The Force here. It's like..." she made a face again, closing her eyes and moving one hand in the air. "It's like your Force-presence is fuzzy when it should be totally sharp. It's like..." she looked over her shoulder out the window again. "The plants are way too strong here. Doesn't it...kind of give you the creeps?"

Varda laughed. "Oh, I see what you mean now. That's the shield Devin and I put up. Sorry, I forgot to tell you."

"The shield you put up?" Ahsoka sat forward. "Tell me about this."

"I don't know if I mentioned to you that there was a visitor here not long ago, a darksider, not unlike the ones we met on Takodana. An Inquisitor, I think you called them."

Ahsoka's eyes went wide. "An Inquisitor was here? So what happened?"

"I wasn't here at the time. Devin could explain to you in more detail, but it seems he was able to deflect the Inquisitor's attention by hiding within the Force-energies of the grassland. Perhaps you could take a look; one of his agricultural drones caught some footage of her, at least what can be made out of her in infrared."

"I definitely want to see that. But about this shield..."

"Oh, yes. I theorized that if the Force-energies of the plants are strong enough, it might become difficult to read the Force signature of anyone inside their realm. And so we've been working on modifying the amplitude, so to speak, of the grassland's Force presence."

Ahsoka looked at once puzzled and intrigued and concerned. "Are you sure you want to rely on that?"

Varda pressed her hands together between her knees. After meeting a few Inquisitors herself back on Takodana, the threat felt far more real than it had when she first proposed the idea of the plant shield to Devin.

"You know these Inquisitors better than I do," she said softly at last. "Do you think they can see through it?"

Ahsoka made a face again, confused and troubled this time. "The ones I've encountered aren't the strongest Force users out there, but it's not just about whether they can sense you. It's about whether you can sense them before they're right on top of you."

It was Varda's turn to take an uncomfortable glance around the room and out the window. She could certainly feel Ahsoka's Force presence, indistinct but obvious. Yet beyond that it took great concentration to bring Devin's Force signature into the realm of conscious perception.

"I don't know," Varda said, hunching her shoulders. "It will depend how strongly they project themselves, I suppose."

"Don't get me wrong, the shield could be a valid part of your defence strategy, but if you're going to have a shield that makes it harder to sense who's coming and going, I'd like you to have some kind of surveillance system in place. You mentioned agricultural drones. Do you know what kind of system is in place right now?"

"Not really. But you could ask Devin."

"I will. And speaking of Devin, how is he with a lightsabre?"

"He was in the AgriCorps, so he never learned how to use one."

"Oh, that's right, you were saying he was a Corps member. But what's your take on him? Do you think he could learn?"

"I've suggested it to him." Varda shifted in her seat, the grinding pain in her hip reminding her pointedly of her limitations. "But I'm not sure how much I'm up to teaching at the moment. Force technique, perhaps, but not the more...athletic aspects. He does have a lightsabre, though, one that had belonged to his former master."

"OK, that's a start at least. Do you want me to do a bit with him while I'm here? I think it's pretty important that we get him going with this, just in case."

"If you could, that would be excellent," Varda said.

"Where is he now?"

"Busy, until his wife gets home. But he'll join us in another hour or so, I expect."

While the two waited for Devin, talk turned to Varda's questions of how Imperial rule had affected the safety of interplanetary travel. She had a research trip in mind for next time she had access to a starship.

"It really depends exactly where you want to go," Ahsoka said. "As far as I can tell, the Inquisitors could be anywhere but there aren't many of them. Your best bet is just to try to keep your Force-presence small. Beyond that, give me a list of where you want to go. As long as it's places where people won't be surprised to see a human of your phenotype, it's just about having an alias that gives you a good reason to be there. That, and some fake credentials in case you need them."

They were deep in discussing Varda's alias and travel plans when the buzzer sounded and a rather rushed and breathless Devin tumbled in, pulling off boots and peeling off coat and scarf.

He met Ahsoka with wide-eyed awe and a solemn bow. "My name is Devin Strong. It's an honour to meet you," he said.

Ahsoka, raised in the school of Anakin Skywalker, did not quite manage to suppress a quirky smile, but did stand up to greet him, and approximated a bow in return. "Ahsoka Tano to you, Ashli Tanner to everyone else," she said. "Nice to meet you. I don't think we've run into each other before."

"No, I joined the AgriCorps about...I don't know, five or six years before the War," Devin said as he pulled up a chair.

Ahsoka sat back down on the couch, leaning forward with her elbows propped on her knees. "OK, so we were probably both in the creche at some point, but with the age gap I'm not surprised we never met."

"I heard from Varda that you'll be in on the decontamination project with us."

"Well, logistical support only. But I guess we'll be sitting down at some point to talk about what you guys need and how to get it to you."

"If you are able," Varda interjected, facing Devin, "Ahsoka suggested that she might be able to help you with your lightsabre training."

"Oh!" Devin looked down and coughed into his fist. "Wow, well, sure," he said, not sounding sure. "I'm free all afternoon, but..."

"I'll be glad to, if you're up for it," Ahsoka put in. "And I was also hearing from Varda that you caught something on holovid when a darksider was here some time ago. Can I see that?"

"Sure, do you want to have our meeting first and do that later, or the other way around?"

Ahsoka looked to Varda.

"I imagine talk of Inquisitors will go better by daylight," Varda said drily. "And I would be glad for a little time to touch up on my notes before our meeting."

"OK, I'll grab what I need from the house, but I'll be back to pick you up and we can head to the barn," Devin told Ahsoka. "It's on the computer there."

As the recording of the darksider played on the barn's bulky computer, Devin stood with his arms crossed, watching Ahsoka watch the whirling red blade and its shadowy wielder. Like Varda, she narrowed her eyes and studied the images with unreadable dispassion, playing the recording several times and stopping to zoom in when the image offered the chance to get a better view of the darksider's face.

"I haven't seen this one before," Ahsoka said, "but she fits the bill: the double-bladed red lightsabre with that circular handle design; a lot of raw energy without much precision."

Devin shifted uncomfortably on his booted feet. He couldn't decide whether putting the title 'Inquisitor' to the unnamed darksider made him feel better or worse. His stomach crawled, though, at the thought that there were more of them. The oblong bundle in the inside pocket of her work jacket pressed against his side. He looked down at his dirty work boots and wondered whether he could ever be any good at wielding it against a darkside menace with a blade that could fly. He scuffed his toe on the barn floor. "Do you think they'll come back?" he asked.

Ahsoka shrugged. "That was an interesting piece of work you did, driving this one off like that," she gestured to the figure slashing its way across the screen. "But we have no idea what brought her here. I mean, she could have been looking for you personally, or she could have just been following a vague hunch. I guess it's going to depend in part on how well that shield you guys put up does or doesn't work."

"Yeah, I guess we don't know yet," Devin said, his spirit sinking even further.

"I hate to tell you this, but with, what...how many Force-sensitives in the area?" she started counting on her fingers, "You, Varda and she was telling me your son and about that kid you're mentoring. That's four of you not so far from each other. That's a whole lot easier for them to sense than just one of you at a time."

Devin ducked his head. "Yeah, I know. But we were hoping...it sounds like Varda told you about the shield. Don't you think that will throw them off?"

Ahsoka sighed and turned off the recording. "I won't lie: I'm not familiar with using the Force to do stuff like that. So it could work, but..." she lifted both hands in a who-knows gesture. "But anyways, I have some ideas that might help. This video, you said it came from a drone of some kind?"

"Yeah, they're just agricultural surveillance drones. They send the computer data on pasture growth and herd health and stuff like that."

"Can I see one?"

"Yeah, probably...most of them are out in the field, but I might have a spare one in the workshop." He gestured for Ahsoka to follow him into another room adjacent the office, where he hit the button to turn on the lights.

Ahsoka looked around appreciatively at the rows of wrenches hanging from tool-boards and the workbenches strewn with spare parts.

"Sorry for the mess in here," Devin said sheepishly. "Every winter I tell myself I'll clean up in here but that hasn't happened yet." He walked over to the workbench on the far side of the workshop and rummaged in a dusty duraplast tote for a minute before pulling out a metallic grey box with multiple rotary propellers. "Here's one! It's missing one of its propellers and the power cell port is shot but this'll give you an idea."

Ahsoka took the little cubic unit in both hands, turning it over and checking the model and serial number plate on the underside. "Pretty standard," she said. "I've seen these used in military surveillance as well. I can port some new programming into these and add a dorsal camera. Then they can report on any air vessel or starship traffic in your area. That might give you early warning if anyone unfamiliar is coming. I could probably outfit them with some simple weapon systems too. Not much good against Inquisitors, but it would give you some degree of defence if other random intruders come to spy on you."

"You think they'd do that?"

Ahsoka shrugged. "If one of your neighbours calls in a suspicion about you, they might send some skulker to check things out if the Inquisitors can't get here," she said, fingers still flying over the twenty-centimetre-cube device and its little black propellers as she mapped out the modifications she planned to make. "Can I take this one with me?"

"Sure!" Devin said.

"I'll try to have the new system ready to install next time I'm back." She slipped the drone into the black shoulder bag she carried with her, then checked the chrono on her wrist. "So, do you want to do some lightsabre stuff while we've got time?"

"Yeah, sure," Devin said, feeling a bit nervous. "Let's head out to where there's more space."

Devin led the way through the barn. The indoor paddock, empty now that the mother inu and her two newborns were out in the field, offered a straw-padded floor with plenty of room to spare.

"So, do you have a lightsabre?" Ahsoka asked.

Devin creaked the paddock gate open to let them both in. "It's here," he said, touching the side of his jacket, "but I've never used it. It belonged to my teacher, Master Lu, but..." He reached inside his coat, pulled out the oblong bundle, and fumbled to open the old red bandana wrapped around it. Inside lay a slim wooden handle with polished stone controls. For a moment, he just looked at it.

All these years since Garth first brought it to him, Master Lu's lightsabre hadn't seen the light of day, stowed in a drawer of Devin's bedside table. Even that night when he sensed the Inquisitor's menacing presence, it didn't occur to him to try to use it. A lightsabre wasn't something you just picked up without proper training. He knew that.

"May I take a look at it?" Ahsoka's eyes were alight with interest.

"Sure," Devin said, almost glad to pass it off to her.

She took it in her right hand, then ran her left along the smooth wooden handle. "Were you close to your master?"

Devin made a face. "Yeah, we were close. We worked together for almost ten years."

"You must miss him."

"Yeah."

"But he's still here," she tapped the lightsabre handle. "Every Jedi puts something of themselves into their lightsabre. It's great that you get to have this."

Devin just nodded.

"Well, let's see how this thing handles." In one smooth motion, Ahsoka dropped into an Ataru pose and switched on the blade. It flared verdant green, the colour of the grass outside, and hummed like a thousand bumblebees. She took a few swipes, parrying the strikes of an imagined opponent, then disengaged the blade and handed the hilt back to Devin.

"Nice weapon," she said. "I haven't used a blade with that type of crystal before, but it should handle nicely. So, let's start with what you know. You were in the AgriCorps, but you must have done some basics back in the Temple, right?"

"The basics..." Devin mumbled.

"K, see if you can follow me. I usually use two blades but I'll just go with one for now, so we'll be the same."

Devin ignited Master Lu's blade, his hand tingling with the energy of it. Mimicking Ahsoka's moves, he followed her through the series of katas: Form I, Form II, Form III...it felt stiff and awkward at first, but his body soon remembered the motions he had practiced throughout his childhood back in the Temple, albeit with a wooden sword.

Yet even as his body found its way back into the basic motions of beginner lightsabre training, something felt not quite right: a disconnect with the lightsabre itself. He had truly loved Master Lu, and he could deeply feel some thing of the old Yemerian Jedi in the blade. He had thought it would hurt to remember his friend and teacher, but that was not the problem. The memory of Master Lu was strength to him, yet on some very physical level it still felt like his sword hand was moving against some great resistance.

Ahsoka stopped at the end of the Form III set and turned to Devin. "How's the blade?" she asked.

"Not great," Devin admitted. "I don't know if it's just 'cause I'm new to using an actual lightsabre, but I feel like I have to fight it the whole way."

"Can I see it again?"

Devin handed her the hilt and she took a few more swipes with the green blade before handing it back again. "Some lightsabres are like that," she said with a shrug. "Don't take it personally, but this one might just not be meant for you. How about we do this," she unclipped her shoto from her belt, ignited the white blade and played with the settings.

"Here, try this one," she said, and handed it to him.

Devin was an AgriCorps Jedi, better skilled at reading plants than people as far as the Force was concerned, but as he held her weapon, he could still get a feel for what sort of person his new acquaintance might be: there was the will to do good coupled with a capacity for sudden aggression, both interwoven with deep sadness and new purpose. He could relate to that.

"OK, so let's try again. No, wait, let's try something different this time. I'll go slow – I promise – but I want to try a simple spar. I've got both blades on training intensity," she touched hers to the palm of her hand to prove it, "so no one's going to get hurt. Let's give this a try and see how much you remember."

They got into position and Ahsoka led off, Devin blocking her stroke, caught in a blade-lock. He tried to break out of it only to find the heat of her blade against his sword arm.

"Restart," Ahsoka said.

They tried again, then again and again, Devin sometimes taking the offensive and sometimes the defensive. It wasn't Ahsoka's frequent victories that bothered him; he knew he was the one who needed teaching. What bothered him was realizing just how long this was going to take.

The more they sparred, the more frustrated Devin felt. If the Inquisitor came back, if any of the several Inquisitors found their way to Nechako again, how far along would he be with his training? It wasn't as if he could just drop everything and focus on his lightsabre technique. Even if he spent all his precious little spare time on this, there was more hope in a black hole than he had of being ready to actually defend himself, much less anyone else.

"K, break." Ahsoka said. "You look distracted. What's up?"

Devin wiped sweat from his brow on the sleeve of his workjacket and made a face. "Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate you teaching me. It's just...it takes years for padawans to learn proper lightsabre combat, even when they have a Jedi Master there all the time to train them and huge amounts of time to practice every day. I've got work and a family and I just don't see how I've got chance against an Inquisitor with the amount of training I can actually do."

"I see your point," Ahsoka said, one hand palm up. "But it's not like they have a lot of training either." Other hand palm up like the first, she motioned as if the two somehow balanced each other. "Most of them are like you. AgriCorps, or ExplorCorps maybe. Somehow the Sith Lord got ahold of them and twisted them and fixed them up with funky lightsabres and sent them out to terrorize whatever's left of the Jedi. But their fighting style is all brute force and almost no technique. Hey, I'll show you...do you have a long pole or something?"

"Um..." Devin looked around the barn. "Hey, how about this?" He let himself out of their makeshift arena and grabbed a big push-broom. He unscrewed the head and passed the handle to Ahsoka.

"That'll work. Only you're going to use this. I need another one, something about half this length."

Devin popped the head off a long-handled dust pan and passed the stick to Ahsoka. She handed him the long broom handle.

"Now, let's make this the last exercise for today. I just want you to see how I use a single blade against a double. I won't do anything special with the Force for now, just basic technique. So, just for a minute, I need you to be the Inquisitor. Just for now, don't worry about which Form you're using, just give me your raw energy. Give me your anger. Give me your hate." With her makeshift sword in hand, she dropped into position: ready to defend, ready to strike at need.

Devin twirled the broomstick in one hand. It was just a stick of wood. It felt good. It felt familiar. He didn't think this would help him fight Inquisitors, but it might help him get their headspace, which could help in drawing up other lines of defence. And if Ahsoka was kind enough to teach him, he was open to give this a try.

He circled his opponent, still twirling the broomstick, feeling out how he would strike. Give me your anger. Usually Devin was a go-by-the-code kind of guy: anger was not the way of the Jedi. But he was also a disciple of Master Lu. 'There is no emotion,' the code says now, but the code used to say, 'Emotion, yet peace.' Be at peace with your feelings, even the ones you fear most. No emotion is to be feared in itself, only what you do with it.

Devin wasn't proud of his capacity for anger. He didn't used to be that way, back on Deema, back before Garth brought him the awful news. He didn't like the times he'd lost his temper at his kid or beat up his friend; he just had this tension simmering beneath the surface, waiting for the chance to erupt. Usually, he did his best to keep it down. But this moment was different: contained, controlled, a space where it was OK to let loose. It might even feel good. He had the feeling by now that Ahsoka could handle it.

Suddenly planting his feet, Devin whipped the staff around, two-handing it now as he lashed out at Ahsoka's head. She ducked and yelped as he caught the tip of her montral, but she didn't stop and he didn't stop either. The broomstick and the dustbin handle crashed and clashed against each other, each opponent blocking strike after strike, each fighter first pushing forward, then being pushed back by the other.

At last Ahsoka found an opening, the dustpan handle drawing a line across Devin's middle. But by that time, Ahsoka herself was panting for breath.

"You're pretty good at that!" she said.

Devin smiled and wiped his sleeve across his face. "Thanks, I used to do staff fighting. It was pretty popular in the AgriCorps."

"Oh, wow, I didn't know that. I thought you guys were all about making plants grow and stuff like that."

"Well," Devin grimaced, "we still had to know some martial arts. All those times when you hear about Jedi getting kidnapped, it's usually an AgriCorps member working in some remote location alone. So in our spare time, we trained: shooting blasters, wrestling, open-hand combat, staff fighting...the kind of stuff you can do when the only weapon you've got is what's on hand."

Ahsoka's eyes lit up. "Hey, wait, I've got an idea. I'll be right back." Ahsoka set off at a loping run back the way they'd come in. Devin followed her more slowly to the barn door and watched her disappear into her starship. She re-emerged a few minutes later and met him at the barn door with something clenched in her hand.

"Here, look!" she said, slightly out of breath, and opened her hand.

There lay two shards of crystal, both a cloudy blood-scarlet. They did not glint in the sunlight, seeming rather to suck in the light around them without either reflecting or refracting it. Devin felt an unexpected sense of dread pool in his stomach.

"We can make you a light-staff. Then you can fight in a style that you're already good at."

"Using those?"

"Yes!"

Devin looked at the darkside artifacts in disbelief. "Where...how did you get them?"

"Same way I got the crystals in my blades. I defeated an Inquisitor and took them. Don't worry," she added quickly, when Devin's eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead, "we're not going to use them like this. We're going to bleed them back. It's OK, I'll show you." Ahsoka gestured for them to head back inside the barn. Devin followed with no small uncertainty.

"These crystals probably came from Jedi lightsabres, probably Jedi who got shot down at the end of the war. The Sith Lord or the Inquisitors must have bled the crystals to make them more responsive to the Dark side of the Force than to the Light. But we're going to reverse that. I'll help you."

They paused in the passageway outside the doors to the office and the workshop. "Here, take them," Ahsoka said.

Devin held out his hands and Ahsoka carefully tipped the two crystals onto his open palms. Devin immediately sucked in a sharp breath. The crystals were eerily freezing cold yet burning hot. The initial pain quickly faded, but something about them still gave him the creeps. He half wanted to throw them on the permaplast floor and stomp them with his boots.

"Do you want your own light-staff?" Ahsoka asked, seeing his discomfort with the crystals.

Devin made a face. Of course he wanted his own light-staff. Of course he wanted to be armed and ready if, when the Inquisitors came back. It was just hard to get excited with a sense of dread pooling in his stomach at the thought of ever actually having to use it. It was hard to believe he'd be good enough to beat them if, when they showed up.

"Trust me, you can do this. You're already pretty good at staff-fighting. You just need a weapon that can stand up to an Inquisitor."

"I know," Devin said, trying to sound more sure than he felt. He hated to admit it, but trying and failing to bleed the crystals back would be a real kick in the gut that he didn't need right now. He wondered suddenly what he would do if Dominik was in his shoes and he was the one teaching.

This is its own practice. The words crystallized in his mind the moment he asked the question. Whether or he got on this shot or not, he needed to practice neutralizing the dark power the Inquisitors would bring with them.

"OK," Devin said, more sure this time. "So how do I do this?"

"You know the connection you have to the Force. You know how to seek Light within you. So just hold on to the crystals and draw on that power. I'll back you up and follow your lead."

"Right," Devin said, and closed his eyes. As he clenched his fists around the crystals, he could begin to sense what Jedi Knights were talking about when they said they could hear Kyber crystals singing. Only these didn't sing. They screamed, screamed for him to rage and scream with them, not the kind of pent-up anger he let loose when he was staff-fighting with Ahsoka, but something both more powerful and more dangerous. There was derision, too, in their cries, the kind of derision that made Devin feel stupid for not taking up their kind of power, and that too brought a sudden twist of yet-deeper anger.

"Don't let them suck you in," Ahsoka said gently, and laid her hands one on top of each of Devin's fists. "I'm here to back you up. Just find your centre."

Immediately Devin found his grounding. He took a deep breath. The crystals bit his hands again with that freezing burn, but physical pain was something he knew how to deal with. He kept on breathing his way through it, reaching beyond it for the power he'd found the night the Inquisitor came.

The strength Devin knew best was not his alone. It was the strength of a million beings all around him: Ahsoka here in the barn, his family back at the house, the flies buzzing past his head, the inu out in the field, grass reaching for the sun, blackhawks soaring in the sky above. Yet this moment was not like the night the Inquisitor came. The power was there all around him, but Devin had no sense of drawing it to himself as a protecting veil.

Instead the power he felt most drawn to was a small warmth deep in his chest, deep in his core. As he breathed his way past feeling the bite and hearing the scream of those burning cold crystals, that small warmth grew and spread through him, down through his hands to the crystals, and up into his head and into his mind so that he knew it clearly for what it was.

It was a small power, in and of itself, and not one he always exercised: the power to choose good over evil, right over wrong, Light over Dark. But whenever he was able to keep on making that choice for any stretch of time, it was like the power of roots to crack stone.

And so with each breath, buoyed up by Ahsoka's steady presence, Devin kept on choosing to resist both the call of the crystals to rage with them and the painful urge to cast them away and let them go.

There was no passage of time, just one single now in Devin's awareness, but even without any sense of time, there was still a sense of change. He felt his awareness opening up beyond the biting crystals, beyond the dusty barn to the bright prairie. Despite the smells of manure and machine oil indoors, his Force-sense could begin to catch the sweet scent of the fast-growing grass and even the fragrance of the sticky sap on the swelling buds on the big yellowbark and honeybough trees far away by the river, all breathing with him, their exhale his inhale, their will to seek the light above them calling him to seek the Light within.

It felt like an instant and it felt like forever, and then Devin sensed another shift: the pain in his hands was gone. His fists, clenched tight, began to relax and open. Ahsoka lifted her hands and Devin opened his eyes, half expecting to see ugly burn-marks but his pink-white hands were still whole. In his palms lay two crystals, clear as the fresh air of a new spring day.

For a minute, they both just stared at the crystals, silent.

Ahsoka was the first to speak. "Wow, not bad!" she said.

Devin picked up one of the crystals and held it between his fingers. It caught the light from the window and sent little rainbows dancing across the floor and walls as he turned it.

"It's beautiful," he breathed. "Now what?"

"Now we build you a hilt. We'll need a couple of power cells and some circuit-board and a casing of some kind."

"In the workshop," Devin said, and led the way.

They had to take apart a headlamp to get the power cells, and robbed bits of circuit-board from Devin's spare soil probe. Tubing and other hardware from an old tractor toolbar gave the casing to hold it all together. Devin quietly promised himself that he would cover it with inu leather later.

Ahsoka grinned, seeing the pride in Devin's face. "All that's left is to give it a try," she said, and gestured for him to follow her back to their make-shift sparring ring.

They went back to the empty paddock and faced off again. When Devin ignited his new light-staff, the blades flared out a clear yellow-white, barely visible in the daylight the way flame is barely visible under the sun, but they caught and held every stroke of Ahsoka's blades they met.

In the end, Ahsoka still won all three rounds, but Devin didn't care. He already had one victory: he'd brought those crystals back to the power of the Light. As far as fighting was concerned, he still needed practice, yes, but he was in his own element now. The light-staff's twin blades were his own, and so was the skill and the power to wield them.

Endnote: many thanks to Sensey for catching a number of typos in the initial posting of this chapter.