The sky was vast, glittering, and bright. The horizon was barely tinted a soft orange glow, though it dissipated into the cool greens and blues as it fell over the city of Karinu. Sakajin stood, staring out the glass of her home's eastern wing, watching the stars twinkle faintly behind the haze of the half-set sun. She'd been standing there for quite some time, long enough that it drew the attention of another.

"Sakajin?" She heard a familiar voice say. The young girl, who had only turned 7, turned around to see the owner. Her expression fell slightly when she realized who it was, because she knew it meant that her alibi of studying in her room didn't work at all. "You're up here rather late, aren't you?"

"I got tired of reading," She said lightly, as innocent as a child could; but the excuse would hardly work on her father.

Dartri looked down at her for a few moments before sighing. He looked tired, owning the face of a man who had seen far too much stress in far too few years.

"You know you don't have to lie to me, honey," The man said gently, kneeling down beside his daughter. "If you wanted to be in the observatory, you only had to ask."

She didn't reply directly to his comment, half-sure that he meant it honestly. But she was too bothered otherwise. This didn't go unnoticed by her father, who peered at her carefully, sensing the fall in her emotions despite being, against what others might think, merely a human. He had gotten far too used to what others thought of him after his wife left.

"...What are you thinking right now, Saka?" He finally asked, slowly moving so he could sit down at one of the chairs in the observatory. It was a room made solely for looking at the sky, and it was a common structure built upon most middle-class family homes, the Tarael being a species whom enjoyed astronomy.

Dartri never much shared the sentiment, but it seemed to have passed onto his daughter, and that alone was more important to him than his own preferences. He pat a hand on the chair beside him, urging Sakajin to sit. She obliged him carefully, looking still ever so deep in thought despite being still such a young child by any species' standards.

Sakajin glanced at her father for a moment before she spoke. It was still rather amazing, her ability for such open vocal speech. Dartri had always assumed she would be more like her mother, whom was an oddly private species, never revealing their face or mouths in public and opting instead for masks and veils of cloth. Sakajin, it seemed at least, was more human in that regard-and was too stubborn to wear anything more than raw childlike curiosity over her face.

"I've been hearing some of the family talk about mommy," The young girl said lightly. The mere reference to his late wife was enough to perk his attention.

"...What...have they said?" He asked, calm and careful. He wasn't alien to hearing rumors about her since she left; many of them weren't very kind to her image, nor to his own. Even the woman's family had been ruthless after her disappearance-they likely blamed it on him, as her marriage to a human had not been looked at as respectful for a woman of her class in Taralian society.

Dartri prepared to hear something vicious echo from Sakajin's lips, something a father would never want his daughter to hear, but the words that came instead were far he expected.

"They said that she was a Jedi," Sakajin said, sounding and looking far too calm for a child saying those sorts of things about her mother. "...They said she left to go back. To be a knight again."

The man's breath caught in his throat. Sakajin didn't seem to notice.

"Was mommy a Jedi?" She asked, ever so innocent for a child. "Is that why she's gone?"

"Oh," Dartri looked as though someone had stabbed him in the heart, his eyes wide, his blood running cold-but he recovered quickly enough. "Oh heavens no. I mean, if she were a Jedi, how could we have had you? Jedi don't fall in love." It was a hasty response, one without thought or logic. But to a child, reassurance from a parent was more than enough to calm her worries.

"Oh," Sakajin said, letting the accusation drop as easily as a leaf from a tree on a windy evening. "...I kinda hoped it was true."

Dartri gently reached a hand over to start combing gentle fingers through his daughter's hair, and slowly let out a sigh. The girl knew so little of the world, the galaxy and how it worked.

But he didn't push off Sakajin's thoughts.

"Why did you hope that?" Dartri asked carefully, so as to not accidentally make the young girl feel chided for feeling the way she did.

Sakajin was silent for a few moments, merely twiddling her fingers as she tried to think of how to word it without sounding silly-other kids had done enough to make her hesitate in being honest.

"...Because if she's a Jedi, then it means mommy is a hero, and she's off doing good things for the galaxy. That's why she would have left us right?" She turned to her father, and he could see it; her eyes were bright...but watery. Thin streaks of tears fell from her lower set of eyes, the most human part of her that someone could spot at a glance. "Because she's a Jedi, she had to go back to…being a hero. Somewhere else."

Dartri felt his heart break a little. He cursed a million things and more that he had to see something like that in his daughter's eyes.

"No, honey," he whispered, wiping away the tears with the pad of his thumb. "She is a hero, but she's not a Jedi. They...aren't heroes." His voice sounded pained and tense, but all Sakajin focused on was his words alone.

"They're...not?" She asked, looking confused and unsure of how to take his answer. Dartri tried to force a smile, tried to make something so big and philosophical so much easier for a child to understand.

"The Jedi have a lot of rules, honey. And they make people do things they don't want to do. They…do a lot of things they shouldn't do. They're not the good guys, okay?"

Sakajin nodded her head slowly. "Okay."

It was a painful, tense silence. Dartri wondered if she hardly understood half of what she was peering into. He just didn't want her to make the same mistake.

"Promise daddy one thing though, okay?"

Sakajin looked up at him, her eyes a little less tear-filled eyes. Dartri took in a breath and forced another smile.

"Promise daddy that you'll always keep yourself safe. Don't worry about good guys and bad guys-just make sure you are safe and happy."

The man wished desperately that he could offer his daughter more than words to warn her, to describe his thoughts in a way that a young girl might even understand at her age. The mistakes that Annamarie never wanted her daughter to repeat.

Dartri swallows down a stone forming in the back of his throat.

"Never let anyone but yourself tell you what kind of person to be, okay?"

Confusion was a strong emotion for a child, but the trust of a parent, who seemed to know the secrets of the entire universe, was stronger still.

"I promise," Sakajin whispered, the words taken to heart, as if an oath. She stared at him for a few moments before finally looking away. "...I wish I knew more about her."

"I know you do, honey," Dartri murmured, still combing his fingers through her hair. "I promise to tell you more about her when you're older."

They had been at the base for a week. Seven long days that could have been far, far worse if it wasn't for the constant interruptions of a particular clone who seemed plenty interested in more than just hard, difficult questions.

Sakajin was grateful for it, and that might have been the point. It was a week that Scorch hadn't brought up the question again to her, instead coming across as more and more casual. He was bright, lively, and entirely different from what she might have ever considered a soldier of the Republic army. She figured that, when the rumors said they were bred for battle, that was all they ever had on their minds. That certainly wasn't the case.

The sergeant made horrible jokes. He encouraged her to talk about stupid, little details that wouldn't matter to anyone at all (So you can reroute a thermal conductor with only a wire and minitool?). For a man who looked as battle-hardened as what her original stereotype had been (scarred, hard-eyed and tough), Scorch turned out to be an almost surprisingly gentle man.

It was the closest experience the woman had to talking to a friend since she was living in the orphanage on Coruscant.

At first, she assumed that the lack of pressure was due to him trying to persuade her, influence her perspective through kindness and warmth. Certainly that made enough sense, and for the first day after the initial ...conflict, she near-refused to speak to him.

Scorch assured her he wasn't even the man to make the final say, regardless of what her personal desire might have been.

They were sitting on the bed again, Sakajin mostly trying to ignore him, and Scorch, for lack of being able to say anything else that might assure her, explained, "It's up to our commander. I just gave you the option since I knew you had a good chance of getting it from him."

The logic, or the seeming lack of it, didn't make sense to her. Sakajin had turned to Scorch with a look of mildly annoyed confusion.

"Then why in the world would you ask me at all?"

The clone shrugged, looking almost sheepish, before replying, "I didn't want you to feel like a prisoner. Our commander isn't….gentle. He's, well. He would have sooner considered you a Seppie sympathizer and tossed you for a court date on Coruscant. But I…."

Sakajin stared at him, waiting for an answer.

It was obvious he had a hard time trying to find the right words. "You're….not the face of a Seppie sympathizer, honestly."

"Oh?" She said, perked to know what he meant by that. It could mean a whole lot of things, honestly.

"I mean you're not a...droid? You're not some cold-hearted ambassador or this greedy profiteer from the war. You're just a…."

"A girl?" Sakajin offered, only half-teasing.

"No, not not that, you're very…."

"...gentle?"

"Yes! Very gentle-like, you're delicate, you're-"

"Oh, oh no," Sakajin interrupted, her expression of shock, taken aback by that one-word description that he applied to her. "I'm gentle, I'll say I'm gentle, but I'm not delicate."

Delicate wasn't what got through General Grievous' many hours of sparring. Delicate wasn't what endured 24 standard months of loneliness when her father died-

-and Sakajin wasn't delicate.

Scorch quickly caught on that he had hit something sensitive, so he merely held his hands up in defense, apologizing quickly enough so that the woman's face fell back to a neutral look.

The silence sat between them for just a few seconds before Scorch tried to explain himself a little better.

"Droids are what I normally deal with," he said. "They're ...well, they're not a person. You program them one way and they'll do what they're programmed to do. Tell them to fight a war and...that's what they do."

Sakajin winced a little bit from that. True, she hadn't been a manufacturer of the droids themselves, but she couldn't help but feel a little more connected to his attempted analogy than the clone probably meant for.

She merely hummed and nodded her head; she still understood the concept.

Scorch sighed. "...A person is different. I...haven't had to deal with many people, personally. You're the first and well-"

He looked at her, and Sakajin met his gaze.

"You're not...evil? It's hard to sympathize with someone who's evil."

"That's true," the woman agreed, the admission feeling too mutual in the moment.

More silence. It was hard to figure out what to fill it with, especially when the only lingering topic of conversation wasn't all that comfortable to talk about (Sakajin's particular alignment). But Scorch seemed ready for that.

He pushed himself off the edge of the bed, back onto his feet. Instead of putting his helmet back onto his head and stepping back out of the room as he had finished their last few conversations, Scorch clipped his helmet to his waist and held out a hand for Sakajin to take.

"How about we take a walk?" He suggested gently. There didn't feel to be anything ulterior about the offer, at least from what Sakajin herself could tell (and she wasn't all that good when it came to ulterior motive). Nevertheless, she glanced her green eyes to his hand for a moment, considered it, then cautiously held out and took his hand.

The clone helped her out of the bed and onto her feet. But before he let go, she felt something else wrap around her wrist. With a click and within a few mere moments, she had a metal cuff locked on her arm. Sakajin's eyes flew to it instinctively in surprise, her blood chilling for a split-second in fear that she had done something wrong. But the clone let go of her arm as soon as it was on.

"It's just for safety purposes," Scorch explained, giving the smaller woman time to look it over and mentally process it. Despite her initial surprise, it made enough sense that he would do that if they were actually going to leave the room (and god, was she happy for a chance to stretch her legs).

"Honestly," Sakajin said, side-eyeing the clone. "I'd be surprised if you didn't put some sort of tracker on me." It wasn't anything overly complicated, from what she could tell from an initial look-over. Plain, thin, it had an internal lock that might have been magnetic, or maybe connected to a switch. Nevertheless, it wasn't something she felt all that compelled to bother with. She had no tools to pick it, and no desire to get it off since she wasn't in any sort of danger.

The two of them stepped out of the room and into the hallway. Initially, they came across one other clone who looked as though he was patrolling through. When he glanced at Sakajin and then looked to Scorch in confusion, the sergeant merely waved it off.

"Just letting her have some fresh air, don't worry," He assured his subordinate, who nodded and continued on making his way down the hall and out of view.

Sakajin felt odd seeing the base again, only as a prisoner of sorts instead of a visitor with her once-master. It looked relatively untouched, honestly, as though the clones had merely hopped inside the base and called it their own. But it felt odd that the halls looked so empty. She would have figured to see dozens of clones, having always assumed they were so numerous everywhere else in the war.

Her confusion must have been obvious enough.

"Expecting something more?" Scorch asked gently as they stepped down one of the outer hallways; one of the same that Sakajin herself had been pacing through mere days before when she was trying to figure out how to get outside.

"Yes," She said. "Literally, actually. I figured if you all were going to storm the base, there'd be more of you in here."

"You think the Republic has that many people, clones included, to send a whole platoon for the capture of one listening post?" The countering question made Sakajin think just a few levels more, and answered her question quite well in some respects. Once he gave it some time to process, Scorch said, "Two part system. First is the alpha teams. Send 'em in, clean it out, secure it-"

"So like, what you've already done now?" Sakajin inquired, carefully glancing at the clone as he lead, and they both turned down a corner in the hall.

She had long since lost direction of where they were.

"Yup," Scorch agreed, smiling almost charmingly at her seeming to catch on. "Beta teams come in, finish anything, and see if we can take full control over the facility. We don't need anymore bodies then that, and I like to think my boys are more than capable."

He stopped rather suddenly, and it took Sakajin an extra moment to realize to stop walking herself. He stood at a small lift, punching in some buttons. She didn't understand what he was doing or where the lift went.

"Can I assume you don't normally find random little stowaways in the bases you try taking over?" She teased, watching as the lift doors opened. The two of them stepped inside, the doors shut, and it was immediately humming up a couple floors.

Scorch chuckled sheepishly. "No," He said through the laughter. "No, we don't. You're the first we've ever encountered. Which is-" He finally caught himself, sounding semi-serious once again as the two of them stepped out of the lift when it reached what seemed to be the top floor. "-Which is why...well, I have to wait for my commander for any kind of confirmation of what we're allowed to do for you."

"But you're allowed to let me roam around the base when you already know I was working for the Separatists?" Sakajin felt almost like a parent, maybe even an older, rather annoying sibling who simply wasn't feeling a sense of logic in something he was saying.

"I have jurisdiction enough to allow that much," Scorch defended, his brows lifting for a moment. "And I have enough authority to decide if you're too much of a danger to take for a walk. Besides, knowing you can be trusted so far will make things look better when I bring them to my commander."

They hall they stepped into looked much like the one from before, though she distinctly noticed at the very end, there were large, almost arch-like windows. There was quite a bit of bright sunlight shining in from them.

"So," The woman whispered, feeling a bit curious as much as she did cautious. "If I were to...say, change sides...what would happen to me?"

Scorch hummed as he thought, his expression neutral. "Well, they'd probably take you back to Coruscant. Have you on watch for however long they deem necessary to make sure you don't try to contact anyone affiliated with the Seppies. I'd doubt you'd be tried for war crimes at this point, depending on your involvement with them. ….Servant?"

Sakajin's silence was enough to make Scorch stop walking, somewhere near the end of the hall, right before it spilled into the next room.

She stopped as well, staring at the ground for a few moments to contemplate her own thoughts; the temptation to lie all the way up to her final moments in front of whomever that commander was felt like a great one, but not something that was wise. Whether she chose to switch allegiance or not, she figured that it would only hurt her in the end.

"You could say ...something like a servant," She whispered, not bothering to wait for Scorch to start walking again. The adjacent room was bigger than any she had seen on the base before. It looked very much like the command room, and was more than likely just as big. The only difference between the two was that instead of huge, glossy computer screens filling up the walls of the room, there were windows.

The windows themselves were huge and clear, nearly invisible if it wasn't for the ever so slight sheen that came from the angle of the sunlight somewhere high above. The forest outside seemed just as massive as it had when Sakajin stood at the forest floor, but with the given height of a few extra floors, she could see more of the sky through the blanket of leaves on the treetops.

She stepped across the room so she could stand near a window, feeling equal parts awed and humbled by the size of the forest for the second time in the last few days.

The steps of the clone Scorch were faint, and hardly important enough for her to pay attention to when there was something much more amazing just in front of her eyes. He took a place beside her.

The two of them looked on in silence, merely taking in the vastness of the forest itself which seemed to go on forever. Sakajin could still remember the smell of the trees, the taste of the air, the sound of the mysterious wildlife rushing about the underbrush.

"...On my mother's homeworld, Ev'ren, it is almost always twilight outside," Sakajin started to say in a slow, gentle tone. She didn't bother to look to see if Scorch was listening to her. "The sun only rises once every couple of years, and only then for a few hours. When it finally sets again, it causes the most beautiful spectacles of colors in the sky."

She let the words settle for the clone, let him take it in and try to imagine something that, to her at least, was one of the most beautiful things in the entire galaxy. She had seen it once as a toddler, and once as a child. Both had been completely spectacular to watch, like the stuff of dreams; one of the reasons she was happy to be partially Taralian, to have some level of their intricate, complex eyesight.

Scorch didn't interrupt or ask any questions, so the woman figured it was alright to continue rambling.

"The Tarael love astronomy. If a family has enough money, sometimes they'll have their own observatory built on the top level of their home, with this huge glass dome so you can look out and see the stars shining through the soft haze of the twilight sun." Sakajin remembered it all so clearly. It was one of the places she felt safest as a child. The darkness of the sky above her, the quiet of the observatory itself. "...I probably spent too much time in my family's observatory when I was little. Probably why I get nervous sometimes about long-distance space travel."

She couldn't help but laugh as another memory surfaced in her mind. Sakajin finally turned to look at Scorch-only to find him looking at her as well. "You should have seen me when I was a kid. Twelve years old and I hitched a ride on a cargo ship bound for Coruscant. Didn't know where I was going on that planet, and didn't really care."

"Why did you leave your home planet?" Scorch asked, sounding, if anything, perhaps a slight judgemental. "What did your parents think about you doing something like-"

"I didn't have parents anymore."

The air felt a little heavy all of a sudden. Sakajin didn't give Scorch any time to apologize before explaining what she meant.

"My father died from some chronic condition when I was a kid. Don't know what it was, nobody bothered to tell me anyway. My mother...left. A long, long time ago. I only remember a little of what she was like."

She returned her gaze to the forest just beyond the window. Was it still cold outside? It certainly didn't look very windy, and the sun was mighty bright, even trickling through the trees. Sakajin could still remember the chill against her skin, the feeling of grass, leaves, earth beneath her feet.

"Still," Scorch murmured, finally finding a verbal foot to stand on when it felt appropriate to edge a little deeper into his curiosity. "Didn't you have more family than your parents?"

Ah, now that was a tricky subject. It wasn't one that Sakajin had to think about, much less talk about often at all. It was hard enough for her to accept even as an adult, let alone try to explain the complexities to someone else who hardly understood her mother's culture.

"I'm a hybrid," She stated, as if it wasn't already so plainly obvious. Her facial features, her mix of human parts on someone that certainly didn't look human at all. "I don't know if it's a culture-wide thing or not but... After...after my mom, my dad had a hard time getting along with her family, and of course by extension, they didn't like me much either. I... was never personally all that close with them even before she left, from what I was told."

"So you just...?" Scorch asked, sounding almost surprised.

"Yup," Sakjin said with a nod, her tone solid and firm. "I left...the moment I realized he wasn't coming back. Cargo ship came in one of the trading centers. I bribed one of the workers with the only money I could find that my parents kept, and...then I was on Coruscant."

"That sounds ...hard."

Sakajin wouldn't have felt hurt if the clone didn't feel any sympathy for her, but for some reason, hearing that very basic, simple emotion in another person's voice was comforting. It was as if it was worth talking about her past, like someone was actually listening and cared for once in her life. Orphans never cared about someone's sob story when they had their own.

And maker, she figured that Grievous might laugh at her if she tried to vent out the same thing to him as she was to Scorch.

For being a prisoner, she was feeling a lot more comfortable in expressing her feelings than she ever was in the Black Halo, or even on Coruscant.

hr

The rest of the week ensued with much the same happenings. Scorch often took Sakajin out to walk around the base, and every day they'd make more ground, exploring more than what little she'd discovered already.

Sakajin was never allowed by herself outside of the room (which she later learned was repurposed for housing her, as that had been one minor curiosity), but Scorch visited more than often enough that was never much of a concern.

Sakajin liked talking to him. More than once, she found herself talking to him like he was a friend she never actually had; he listened to her. It was more than anyone else had ever done, emotionally speaking. And maker, the man was a stranger to her; for all she knew, none of what she said might ever matter. He could simply not care at all about her past, her feelings, any of it at all, and yet Sakajin still felt genuinely good about being able to communicate things to someone else without fear of being demeaned or degraded.

The week felt like a weight off her shoulders. But, in much of the same way, it was a new mountain of stress to deal with.

Scorch did keep his promise to her. He never asked again what she wanted to decide on, but that didn't mean that he got damn well close enough to the topic for Sakajin's skin to feel like it was crawling.

It didn't help at all when he started, inevitably, learning more about her.

That was Sakajin's own fault. She got complacent, she got grounded on someone, trusted him too much when she knew he would use the information against her in some way. Through bits and pieces of information, he soon pieced together one thing after another until the inevitable truth reared its grotesque head-and Sakajin didn't have the sense or backbone enough to try and keep up a lie.

Hilariously, Scorch didn't believe it at first when he found out she was General Grievous' apprentice.

"I didn't even realize that the clanker king himself even wanted an apprentice."

The two of them were in the windowed room again on the top floor of the compound, and the sun was nearing the horizon, though one really couldn't tell through the thick layers of the treetops. It was starting to darken outside.

"He didn't actually," Sakajin said, letting out a sigh as she fell into one of the chairs near the windows. "Neither of us didn't really have a choice in the matter."

They looked severely out of place, the chairs of course (though a clone and a Human/Tarael hybrid would also be true), as it seemed that the clone teams on the base had pulled them from various other rooms to have something to sit on. Nobody knew what the room's original purpose was for, but it was serving as a pretty damn good view.

"Did you like being his apprentice?" Scorch asked slowly; Sakajin noted the use of past tense, but said nothing on it. It was a waste to hang on to it, regardless of if she wanted to be free of his teachings or not. "I can't imagine a guy like that ain't all that easy."

"Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't die. Broken bones, suffocation, stabbing, blood loss, head trauma," Sakajin counted off each item as it came to the top of her head. "So many ways that I could have died and yet I didn't. And that was just in sparring. He doesn't pull any punches."

"He's a monster."

Sakajin was actually surprised to hear Scorch growl the words. She glanced to him for clarification, having sense enough but still being surprised by the empathy in such a simple response.

"Beatin' up someone like you," Scorch explained after a moment. "I mean, no offense, but you're not exactly on the same level as him. What are you, five-foot-something?"

"Roughly."

It wasn't long before the harder questions started to come up from that information. Scorch asked if she had killed anyone; luckily and truthfully for Sakajin's heart and sanity, she had never harmed a clone or member of the Republic.

Well, not directly at least-Sakajin didn't want to think about the people killed or harmed by the very droids she once inspected and repaired, her mind clouded with naive ignorance to the consequences of her work.

When Sakajin explained that she had only been sparring and training with only Grievous himself, the look of relief on the clone's face could have been humorous in any other situation.

"That'll really help you," He explained. "You're right in a situation where you shouldn't have any issue pleading your case. You were put there by circumstance, and you don't show any moral desire to hurt anyone. If….you offer some of your knowledge-"

"What are you talking about?" Sakajin asked suddenly, unsure if her reaction was out of defense or fear.

He was starting to tread on ground that she just didn't want to think about. But where Scorch might have backed down in the days before, he all but marched forward, forceful and harsh with an energy that overwhelmed the moment.

"You said you were a mechanic before you were Grievous' apprentice?" Scorch asked, as if trying to jog the woman's memory. "You have vital information about their droids that would give us an immeasurable help. I can't imagine how happy my commander would be if he heard you decided to join the fight on our side. And then your fighting skills-"

"Scorch, I don't-"

"-You said you were force sensitive right? I don't know the rules on how it works-"

"I don't want to talk about-"

"-but you might even prove yourself to be a valuable asset to the Jedi, because I'm sure that they'd at least-"

"STOP!"

Scorch stopped dead mid-sentence. The air suddenly felt cold, like ice, but the echo of Sakajin's own voice seemed all too painful to her own fronds. For a moment, she felt as though she was burning up inside.

Jedi. The word made her feel angry, and she didn't even know why.

It was worse than thinking about turning to the Republic; turning anywhere near the Jedi just felt...absolutely wrong. It made her almost feel sick to her stomach thinking about it.

She wasn't joining, helping, or getting anywhere near them. While Sakakin may have stumbled over the thought of her loyalty, she felt firm in that stance above all else.

She could trust the shaded morals of the Separatists. She could trust the enigmatic mentorship of Count Dooku as the man who had saved her from a life of poverty.

Above all else, she could even trust the cold cruelty of General Grievous.

For some reason, the Jedi were a wildcard. A force yet understood and organized among the others, an enemy for as long as she could recall in more ways than one.

It was a long, few minutes before either of them felt as though they could speak, Sakajin for lack of emotional ability, and Scorch because ...well, Sakajin figured that he finally realized how hard he was stabbing with his forced questions and opinions on something that was already hard for her to think about.

It made her remember again, painfully, that he wasn't really a friend. He was still, technically, the enemy. The enemy she'd been pouring her heart to simply because she was never able to anyone else before.

The trip back to her room was silent. Scorch opened up the door for her, she stepped inside, and waited for the door to close. It didn't. She turned and looked at the clone, who stood in the doorway, dark eyes meeting hers with an expression that looked firm and serious; the expression she honestly expected of a battle-bred soldier.

"Nobody can force your loyalty, Sakajin," He said in a careful, measured tone. Her soft, emerald eyes fell to the floor, but his tone didn't shift. "But you can still choose to be a good person."

Choose to be a good person.

For some reason, the way he said it, the way his tone hung over the words-it made the woman's stomach churn. It reminded her too much of her father.

The door closed barely a moment later, leaving Sakajin alone with her thoughts, and feeling more empty and isolated than she had in the last week of confinement.

She didn't sleep at all that night. Between her stress, the flicker of nightmares just as she was about to fall asleep, and a constant scraping sound of metal somewhere above her head, Sakajin wasn't about to get a moment of calm. It seemed only fitting, considering all that had to start thinking about.

Nobody was coming to save her. It was something she had been trying to stave off every night, that constant, undying certainty that only made her feel hollow and terrified for her future. The life she was used to, the life she had found some emotional balance in, was entirely gone. Now it was up to the powers that be for whatever would happen to her next-and that was damn well terrifying. She actually felt even more helpless for her own life in the hold of the Republic than she ever did while she was with the Separatists.

Maker help her sanity before she even came face-to-face with Scorch's commander.

Also, what was that hellish sound? Sakajin had thought at first that it was just something with the system; maybe it was even someone messing with the innards of the base, the ventilation system or something in an effort to further gut the base for anything of worth, or anything they didn't need it.

But it just. Wouldn't. Stop. It had started quite a ways away at first, but it had...gotten progressively closer with time. Sakajin thought she might have been a little crazy when she finally realized it but…

She slipped out of bed. The lights of the room were off, and she didn't bother to turn them on, since she could see somewhat well without them anyway. The noise was unbearable. It wasn't that it was loud, it was just….grating. Literally. It was a grating, sharp, metallic noise that was painful, downright painful for her.

It made her head feel dizzy, the vibrations far too harsh for her sensitive equivalent of hearing. And it was coming from right above her room.

Sakajin looked up in confusion, trying to figure out why it was happening, and what the hell could be causing it. She doubted that it had anything to do with the clones who had overtaken the base.

THUNK!

Not even a second after that thought, her question was answered, and she was entirely correct. Before she could react, Sakajin saw and felt a section of the ceiling fall right in front of her and the bed, not more than a few feet, in fact.

It caught her completely off guard, so sudden and so completely absurd that she froze.

Sakajin didn't know what to do at first, merely staring at the piece, which was a sizable several feet wide by several feet long. Quite literally, a piece of the metal ceiling had just fallen down, as if it had been clean-cut. Not apparently smart enough to glance upwards first, she was about ready to kneel down and examine it when something else dropped from the ceiling.

It wasn't another piece of metal.

The woman would have screamed, catching enough of the shape to realize that it was huge, a good foot or two taller than her, and bipedal. Gold eyes almost glowed in the near-complete darkness of the room, staring down at her while a deep, guttural growl quickly accompanied the figure's appearance in her room.

But she didn't scream. Whether she instinctively knew who it was, or that she was simply too terrified to scream at all, Sakajin didn't know. What she did eventually figure out a few moments after rapidly backing away however, was that the figure wasn't at all a monster in her nightmares.

Well. Not from her actual nightmares, at least. The monster part could have still applied.

"Don't make a sound," came a growl, low and angry from the figure. The voice was harsh, masculine, and oh-so familiar. Despite herself and all she had described him to Scorch as, Sakajin was overjoyed to realize that the figure was indeed General Grievous.

She didn't care if Grievous returned because he was worried about her survival. She always figured that he hated her. But the joy and happiness from not having to make that dreaded decision, now that was relieving.

At least, not having to make it in front of someone who genuinely cared about her answer. Someone who, for the first time, almost made her feel guilty that she never cared about what side she was on.

It didn't matter. Sakajin wasn't staying anyway, not that Grievous would give her the option.

She didn't get a chance to ask anything about how he got into the base in the first place, among plenty of other questions. Grievous merely glared at her, then made some vague gesture to follow him. Follow him?

When he jumped back up into the hole in the ceiling, that's when the woman understood what he meant. Ah. She didn't even bother pausing to wonder if this was a dream or not, because the mere suggestion of freedom was plenty to get her moving.

It took a bit longer for her, considering she was so much shorter, and she eventually resorted to using the table to climb up into the hole. Sakajin was eventually just behind her master, crawling a bit more noisily than she would have preferred through the metal shaft, mindlessly following wherever the cyborg led.

Somehow, Grievous managed to make almost no sound, despite being much heavier and made almost entirely of more durasteel than flesh. She still didn't ask any questions. She figured that was for later, when they were free of the base's confines and without risk of being heard. Did that mean there were clones patrolling about?

Did that mean that Grievous killed some?

...What if Scorch was one of them?

For some reason, for some hypocritical reason, the thought made Sakajin's stomach turn. So she forced the curiosity down into the back of her head, a numbing of concern that she had done before when she first became a mechanic.

Just don't think about how you're contributing to a war. It doesn't matter, it doesn't affect you as long as you're safe, paid, and fed. People die, and people live. You're not part of it, you're just working.

It was a mindset that was quickly degrading beneath her feet, and Sakajin hardly had the time to think about it while she was trying to escape a Republic-taken base. She forced it down, and trudged on through what she assumed was a ventilation shaft.

A turn here, there, and eventually the woman completely lost track of where they were. But Grievous seemed to know exactly where he was going, so she felt confident in that alone.

Barely ten minutes later and she was out in the fresh air of the forest. And it was beautiful. If she wasn't under the gaze of her master, nor under the threat of being detected by enemy clones, she was sure that screaming in joy would have been at the top of her present list of things to do.

Grievous directed her harshly from one place to another, carefully leading them around the outside of the complex. For a while she didn't understand where he was taking her. Because if he was on the planet, it meant he had a ship. And of course, if the general had a ship, he needed a place to land that ship.

As far as she knew, the entire complex was being watched by the new clone tenants.

"Sir?" Sakajin whispered as they crept around towards the back, western end of the base. If she recalled correctly, that's where the landing platform was for most of the ships, but it seemed insane that he'd land anything there. "Where did you land the ship you came o-"

"Be quiet!" The general hissed, turning to glare at her sharply and shutting up any question she might have started thinking about asking. "Do you want me to leave you here and see what the clones do with you instead?" Obviously, Sakajin didn't answer.

They got to the landing platform soon enough, and to Sakajin's great surprise, there were still at least half a dozen Separatist ships still on the line, completely untouched.

But what was more was that she didn't see a ship among them that looked as if it had just landed. This was because of enough concern, because it meant that Grievous had completely relied on having ships still on the base, but since there were still plenty around, that seemed to be a worry for another time.

Her expression of relief was mostly on her face, since Sakajin didn't dare to make another noise, lest she be throttled by her master (she certainly didn't miss that).

Grievous picked the nearest ship. It was nothing fancy, but it looked small and fast. They started to approach it and begin to boarding sequences when Sakajin heard the unthinkable. The horrible. The absolute, downright, dreadful.

She heard a voice calling out to them to stop, to halt, to get away from the ship.

And if her memory served her well enough, she knew the voice was that clone sergeant, Scorch.

He wasn't alone either, there was an entire group of them, at least five that came running out onto the landing platform with guns pointed and commands harsh. It was almost as if they had tracked the duo for a while, waiting to ambush them trying to get a ship. It didn't make sense, considering how quiet they had been the entire time or the fact that they hadn't even been in the base for most of the sneaking.

But that's when Sakajin remembered the cuff on her wrist.

Fuck.

It didn't matter to get it off right there after they'd been ambushed. Grievous let out an angry hiss as the blaster fires started coming their way; he deflected several while the boarding platform came down from the belly of the ship, Sakajin merely feeling like a fool as she jumped to avoid the blaster shots, which were mostly directed at her master anyway.

She wondered if that was on purpose.

Nevertheless, she retreated into the ship as soon as she could get inside, vaguely aware of a voice calling her name, a familiar voice that might have just been a figment of her imagination.

She would later tell herself that's all it was, imagination and guilt playing tricks.

Grievous bounded in shortly after she did, taking to the controls on the front of the ship faster than Sakajin could start pulling a breath into her lungs. Before she could even get a sense of what was going on, the ship was starting and already off the ground. It jostled with the hits from the blasters the clones held, but it wasn't nearly enough damage to stop it from taking off, hurdling through the air and out of the planet's atmosphere before the woman could even find herself in the co-pilot's seat.

It took her awhile to realize what had happened, her mind letting the last half hour or less simmer in her thoughts. But Grievous didn't give her much time for that simmering. He put the ship on autopilot, the destination obviously that of the Black Halo, wherever it was (because it was certainly not orbiting the moon).

Grievous turned the chair to face her.

"Did you tell them anything?" He asked harshly, making Sakajin flinch from the ruthless, cold nature of the question.

"N-No I-"

"Did they find out who you were?"

"...I…." Sakajin felt her stomach churn. Through her fear of what he'd do if she told the entire truth, the woman decided to lie. "They found that I was a mechanic."

Thank the maker Grievous didn't seem more than mildly pissed at that information. Because he always seemed rather pissed.

"...You're lucky," He hissed. "If it wasn't for Dooku's interest in you, little girl, you would have been left on that planet for whatever fate the Republic had for you."

Sakajin didn't doubt that at all. She really did feel pretty lucky, along with feeling like shit, though that was mostly from the guilt. She didn't want to think about what Scorch thought of her now. She shouldn't think about that, because he was the enemy, and who cared what your enemy thought of you?

For some reason, Sakajin felt like that wasn't going to help her much.

"Thank you," She whispered numbly, at least hoping Grievous would respect her show of gratitude. "I...think they were hoping I would help them."

"Help them?" He mocked. "How were they thinking someone like you could help?"

"My mechanical knowledge. They thought I would offer it to them in exchange for mercy."

Grievous was silent for a few moments. Sakajin wondered if what she said would make him angry or not, when she finally heard him speak.

"...I'll admit one thing," He growled, softer than before. "I'm surprised you didn't start sniveling to the enemy at the first opportunity. If you continue to surprise me yet, you might even make out for a decent apprentice."

He started to stand, obviously to leave for something or another, but Sakajin stopped him.

"What?" He demanded lowly. The apprentice held out her wrist, showing the cuff that she couldn't get off herself.

"I think they used this to track us, that's how they ambushed us on the landing platform," She quickly explained, almost afraid if it was still tracking her. "I haven't been able to get it off since they put it on me."

Sakajin hoped that Grievous might have a tool or something to get it off, but all he did was reach out with both of his hands, grip the cuff, and rip it apart with one solid movement.

It hurt, the metal scraped against her skin, and the rough motion did plenty to yank at her arm and shoulder, but Sakajin was at least freed of the cuff.

She rubbed at her wrist while Grievous left the room, possibly to make communications with Count Dooku. It could take a while to get back to the Black Halo. And maybe that was a good thing.

Sakajin needed to be alone with her thoughts,

relief,

and guilt.