A/N: Because I had to write something, even though I am dying. Enjoy.

Life is a dynamical system, completely deterministic but so complex that the slightest changes in the initial variables can nudge it in an entirely different direction; still, like any system that seems chaotic (but isn't, really, if you have a large enough computer to calculate it all), patterns emerge after several hundred thousand iterations—fractals, basins of attraction, limit cycles—

Life is iterated in the stories that people tell—epics and poetry and fairy tales—painting—music—and patterns emerge—

Love.

Death.

Betrayal.

And Juno hugs her arms around herself and wishes, desperately, that she had seen this coming, because she hasn't. Maybe it would hurt if she had—but instead all she feels is emptiness.

"Juno," he breathes, and lets go of PROXY.

She wants to say, Why are you doing this? But she is afraid that she already knows the answer.

She wants to say, Tell me this isn't want it looks like. But she is quite certain it is.

"You're still loyal to Vader," Juno says, numb. "After he branded me a traitor and tried to kill you—"

She should have seen this coming. If the flapping of a butterfly's wings can begin a hurricane half a world away, then what influence would a lifetime in Vader's service have? "After all of that," she whispers, "you're still his—his—"

She cannot say it.

"His slave?" Galen asks, his voice low and quiet.

They stare at each other for a long moment, PROXY peering on anxiously from behind him; it is Galen who finally looks away. "Juno—" he says.

But she doesn't want to hear it. It is cold, cold, cold on the Rogue Shadow and it has nothing to do with the heating; chaos theory, Juno thinks—it is aptly named, because if there are patterns in the chaos she certainly cannot make sense of it. The world is tilting around her. What is he thinking?

He would abandon her for this—and Juno wishes that he had abandoned her earlier, because she had lost her life and he'd returned it to her, and she does not think she can bear to have it torn from her a second time—

"The fate of the rebel alliance is in your hands." Her voice is steady, and beneath it all is the sound of the ship's engines idling; she is cold but perhaps it doesn't matter. Her life isn't hers anyway, is it? From the moment Vader picked her, she should have known. Seven pilots lost; seven. They were certainly not taking Starkiller on pleasure jaunts across the galaxy. "You will shape the future of the galaxy—not Vader, not Palpatine, you. Is this really what you want?"

She likes them. All of them; Kota with his good-natured grumbling and Bail Organa with his determination and cultured charm; Princess Leia, who is kindhearted and clever; and Galen—not the Sith, not the hunter, just the man who smiles at her from across the table at breakfast and offers her his jacket when she is cold—

He would abandon them all.

Some of this must have shown on her face, because he tries again. "Juno—"

But she isn't listening.

"I'll go input the coordinates for Raxus Prime," she tells him quietly. "That's where we're headed next, isn't it?" Where Vader has told them to go—

"Juno—"

But the door is sliding shut behind her as she goes.