Kiara spotted a random astromech droid as she headed back towards the hanger. It was as good as any. She went over and instructed it to follow her back to her ship. As she walked toward the Shadow Chaser, she caught sight of Kanan and Zeb heading toward the barracks, so she slowed her pace until they were out of sight. She then led the droid to the ship where Tac met her on the loading ramp.

"Mistress Kiara, I'm surprised to see you have returned so quickly. Did the others forget any of Master Kallus's things? Are you here for-"

"Prepare the ship, Tac. We'll be leaving momentarily. And get the cloak ready to be used, as well." Kiara could tell that the droid was confused but he floated back off to do as he was told. She then turned to face the astromech droid and told him to get his recording device ready. She had a message or two to record. It would be difficult but necessary. She can't stay and she had to try to convey to the others why so that they could understand that.

"Alright, let's get this over with."


Kanan and Zeb took the few possessions that Kallus wanted in his temporary room with them and then waited with the others for Kiara to return. Apparently, she'd gone in search of them when they didn't make it to the room with the rest of them. It was funny, Zeb thought, since he hadn't seen the woman on his way here. He supposed that she must have gotten lost, with it being the first time that she'd come to this base.

The crew of the Ghost began to fill Kallus in on the various changes that the cell had made since this base was on a desert planet as well as how they did their best to beat the heat. They also told him about some of the newer members of the cell as well as who had made it here from Suaren. They were even planning a special dinner in his honor after finally returning from the Med-ship. The rebels of the cell wanted to show their respect for what he'd endured at the hands of the Empire.

As for Kallus, he wasn't sure if he wanted to be the center of attention. Especially for just doing what had been his job. Not to mention, he wouldn't feel right since so many hadn't made it back after they were captured. He was lucky. It wasn't like he'd made some heroic escape, either on his own or by leading others away from the clutches of the Empire. He wanted to ask the others to cancel the evening festivities, but he was aware that it wasn't just about him. The rest of the rebel cell needed a reason to break the monotony of the routine and wanted something to celebrate. So, for now, he'd be that something. Even though it was the last thing that he wanted.

After a while, Kallus finally couldn't help it as he sat on the bunk with his back against the wall while the others remained standing around. The crew had allowed Hera to sit in the only chair in the quarters with the baby. He asked, "What is taking Kiara so long? I know that the hanger is a bit far away but-"

"I'll go find her," Sabine said as she went out the door.

She made her way back to the hanger, speaking with various people along the way to see if they had spotted Kiara recently. None of them had so she kept trudging through the heat to where the Shadow Chaser had been left. She passed the fighters, set closer to the barracks for the event that the pilots needed to get into them in a hurry. She then passed by several freighters and transports that belonged to the Rebellion. Finally, she reached where the private ships of those who were members of the rebel cell were at. Sabine spotted the Ghost and walked around to behind it where Kiara's ship had been not more than an hour ago. But when she got there all she saw was sand. The Shadow Chaser was nowhere to be seen.

Sabine lowered her brow in concern. Well, maybe Kiara had wanted to test the cloak for some reason. She kept walking and prepared herself to walk into the hull of an invisible ship, but she never came in contact with it at all. When she stood in the middle of the area where the ship should have been she pulled out her comm device.

"Um, guys?"

"Did you find Kiara, yet? Did she get lost?" Kanan's voice came over the unit and sounded as if he was about to tease either her or Kiara. Or maybe both.

"Did she say anything to any of you?"

"About what? Why?" Kanan's voice suddenly didn't sound as teasing.

"Because the ship, and Kiara, are gone." Sabine cringed when she heard everyone on the other end of the comm start to ask questions in concern and surprise at once. "No one saw Kiara around when I asked about her on my way out here. Why would Kiara leave?"

There was a pause before Zeb was the one to come back over the comm, "I'll go check with Control to see if they can tell us when she left out. Maybe even see if they can give us a trajectory of where she was headed when she left."

"Zeb, she has both a cloaking device and a computer digital scrambler so that no one can track her ship. If she doesn't want anyone to know where she was going, we won't."


Kallus insisted that he'd be alright enough to make it to Control on his own. He couldn't just stay in his quarters in the barracks while everyone was scrambling to try to find Kiara. When he faltered and leaned against the wall to gather his energy, when he became just a bit too exhausted than he wanted the others to know about, he closed his eyes and wondered why she would leave.

Did he miss something? He knew that while on Suaren she'd felt like she had nothing to really do on the base. Still, he didn't think that she was unhappy. Only bored. But perhaps he was wrong. But why hadn't she said anything to him?

"Kallus?" He opened his eyes and saw Zeb had waited for him. "You okay?"

He let out a mix between a sigh and a growl before he answered his friend. "Yes. I'll catch up with you in Control."

The last thing that he wanted was for people to start treating him differently. Nor did he want them to feel obligated to help him. He'll only get stronger by getting around on his own.

Zeb tilted his head to one side as he considered whether or not to stay but could tell that the man needed to be alone. "Alright. Come as quick as you can. But I'll be back if you aren't there in a quarter of an hour."

He gave Kallus the directions to make one more turn another couple of corridors away before Zeb left the man to make his way on his own. The man was striving to regain his pride, so he figured he'd do his best to let him do just that.

After the Lasat left, Kallus did his best to will his legs to take one step then another. Focusing only on the next one rather than his destination or why he was going there. When he reached the door and looked up, he figured that he'd taken longer than this allotted quarter of an hour since Zeb was standing there in silence, but he'd stood back to wait for the man to get to the door under his own power.

Zeb nodded both as encouragement as well as understanding. He then opened the door and waited for Kallus to go through to join the rest of them. When he got in, he saw that there was a brief record of when the Shadow Chaser lifted off. Apparently, Kiara had activated the cloak just as the ship entered into the upper stratosphere. That meant that they had no record of what direction she planned to take the ship once completely off world.

As the crew continued to mull over the strange departure of the woman an astromech droid joined them in the room and beeped that he had messages for both Kallus as well as the Ghost crew.

"Messages from whom?" Kallus asked as he sat in a chair that someone had nonchalantly put behind him without drawing attention to it or his need for the chair.

The astromech responded that it was from Kiara which spurred Kanan to tell him to play the message for the crew since they were all there. A second later the image of Kiara came into view for those who could see the message.

"If you are watching this, it means that I've been gone for about two hours. I didn't want to risk the chance that any of you would find out and try to stop me before I left so I gave this droid implicit instructions to not find you for two hours." Kiara looked apologetically at the camera and took a deep breath.

"And I know you are angry, concerned, hurt, and likely much more but I have my reasons for doing this. I'd much rather that you all be mad at me but stay alive. You see, if I stay at the base then I'll put everyone there at risk. Again. What happened on Suaren, what happened after, was all my fault. Moff Dume wasn't even the Moff over the system. He went to Suaren because I was there. When he didn't get me then he took his anger out on those who were left behind."

Kiara's face took on a determined look before she spoke once more. "I will not allow that to happen again. Too many people have gotten hurt, have been killed, because I happened to be nearby. That means that for right now, the only thing that I can do in good conscious is to stay away. Please, don't worry about me. I know what I'm doing and I'm good at staying under the radar. And I'll be careful. I just ask that the rest of you do the same. Take care of each other. It's what all of you are best at. And now, it's time for me to do what I'm best at. I won't ask for forgiveness. And I don't expect anything from any of you."

Sabine eyed both the woman's brother as well as the man who was closer to Kiara than any of the rest of them and saw where both men's jaws were tightened with their muscles in them twitching. She turned her attention back to the message when Kiara gave one last bid farewell.

"This isn't goodbye. Not forever, I hope. But it will be for as long as needed. Until then, may the force be with all of you."

With that, the droid's projector turned off and the room was filled with silence. Each of the members of the Ghost crew and Kallus exchanged glances with one another as they mulled over what the message had said.

"Doing what she does best? Going off on her own?" Kanan shook his head as he tried to stretch out his senses to find his sister. She wasn't in the system any longer, which he already knew but he had to confirm.

Kallus thought more and remembered the one thing other than training with Kanan that she'd filled her time with when the others were busy with the running of the daily missions of running a rebellion. "Research," he muttered more to himself than anyone else.

"What would she be researching?" Zeb asked with a scratch to his head.

"Purrgil," Sabine said as she recalled finding the datapad in the common room of the Shadow Chaser while Kallus was at the Med-ship. "She was researching the purrgil."

Kallus was sure that she hadn't told anyone else, so he had to ask, "How did you know that?"

Sabine shrugged. "I came across her datapad one day. I didn't ask her about it. But... What about what she said about Suaren?"

Hera didn't know what one subject had to do with another, but she focused on one at a time. "I'll have to see if we can confirm the name of the Moff of the sector that Suaren is in. But if she's right, the question would need to be asked: How did he know she was there? If Moff Dume knew she was there, then we know by what means."

Kanan rested his chin in his thumb and forefinger as he brushed his beard with them as he thought. If what Kiara had said in the message was right, then they needed to investigate the leak of information.

"There are a few possibilities," Kanan said as he set his mind to work on this problem that he could actually see reason in. "One, a tracker was placed on the ship when it was in the hanger of the Star Destroyer."

Zeb shook his head and dismissed that right off hand. "I had the ship outside of the Destroyer until you were all back in the hanger, practically. There wasn't time plus I was right there at the ramp so I would have noticed someone trying to get close to the ship."

Kanan furled his brow before adding, "Then the second way that I could see how the Moff knew of where Kiara was at is that the man has somehow gotten a spy to report back to him."

"A spy?" Zeb asked incredulously.

"The Rebellion has the Fulcrum network. It only stands to reason that the Empire would have their own spies to infiltrate the rebellion," Kallus pointed out.

Hera narrowed her eyes at the idea that there could be a spy among them. "We'll need to review the personnel who were on the base and who were out on missions at the time. See if anything unusual pops out at us."

"But what about Kiara? Shouldn't we try to go find her," Zeb asked since he knew that he wasn't the only one thinking about the woman, as well.

What was it with others developing a martyr complex around him? First Ezra sacrificed himself to rid Lothal of the Imperials. Next, Kallus practically committed suicide by sending the rest of them away from Suaren without him. They were lucky to get to him before he actually did die. And now, Kiara has gone off on her own for fear that she'd bring more Imperial wrath down on them.

Sabine shook her head. "With her cloak activated, there's no way for us to even guess where she was going when she left. So, to answer your question, we don't find her. At least not right now."


That evening, Kallus went back to his quarters with a new understanding of why Kiara had been insistent on his moving into the barracks and to make sure he had his personal belongings. She knew she was leaving him behind. She'd made it all seem so practical but really, she was making her getaway less complicated.

He collapsed onto the bunk in the room when he got back and closed his eyes to fight off the pain that filled his existence while he'd been making his way back to his quarters. He'd been just staring up at the ceiling for several moments when a chime indicated that someone was at his door.

"Come in," he groaned as he sat up to see the astromech droid from before. "What do you want?" The droid beeped out that he had another message that he'd been instructed to deliver in private. Kallus's heart sped up involuntarily when he heard that Kiara had left him a message. "Well, go ahead and play it."

He watched the droid cast a projection just a few feet from him and felt a twinge in his heart when he saw Kiara staring back at him.

"Alex, I know you are upset, but I hope that you can understand that I couldn't risk Elios finding me again. He almost killed you and from what you said about his questions, he's put things together about the two of us. That means that the only way I can protect you is to go away. I won't let him hurt you again. I'll find a way to put an end to him, one way or another. And don't worry, that doesn't mean that you have to go tell Kanan since I don't plan to go dark side acolyte on you. It's just..."

Kiara seemed to flounder for her words. "There has to be a way take him out of the equation. I can't be the cause of anyone else getting hurt because of me. The cause of any more death. And that's exactly what would have happened if I stayed. Leaving you behind is killing me. But if I lost you to Elios," Kiara swallowed visibly at the thought.

"It'd break me. That's why I had to do this. I plan to continue both my research on the purrgil as well as studying the old ways before the Jedi. I figure that would be the best way to continue to train to rein in my force abilities. So maybe I'll stop frying computer systems when I'm angry or emotional. I know of a few places to go that will still allow me to stay off of the radar."

Kiara ran her hand through her hair as she chewed on her lip. "Just know that I left because I do love you. More than I'd be able to ever tell you. And I hope to be able to come back to you. But if you-" Kallus heard her take in a sharp inhale as she stopped herself. "I'll understand if this pushes you away. But at least I won't be the cause of you being hunted down and killed. So, if nothing else, that will have to be enough for me. You have all of my love; now and forever."

With that, the message ended, and the droid waited for Kallus to dismiss it.

The man sat on the bunk just trying to take in what he had heard on the message, and also trying to absorb the sound of Kiara's voice. He had the droid play the message over again and even a third time. He wondered where these places that she could go were and how she knew that they would be safe to go. He hated being left in the position of not having anything to do but just hope and trust that she knew what she was doing.