Disclaimer: George Lucas owns Star Wars. This story is purely a work of fan fiction, and I am not making any profit from it.

Author's notes:

1) So, I'm aware that this chapter is ridiculously short. There was another version, that was longer with battles and stuff, but ultimately it didn't work out that well or make much sense, plot-wise. So I wrote this instead, and I think it is qualitatively better, even though there is less of it. Hopefully I'll be able to update again in the next week or so. I'm aiming for weekly or bi-weekly updates on this fic.

2) Also, this chapter is dedicated to the two wonderful people who reviewed last time: the always-insightful pronker and the darkly encouraging What-Ansketil-Did-Next. Thanks, you guys, you gave me a boost when I needed it!

CHAPTER FIVE

It was still early in the day when they left, mounting the majestic sleipniri of Clan Ardel's rolling hills and riding North and East, letting the wind buffet their left shoulders. The storm that had threatened during the night had broken over the plains, and they rode through the rain, lashed by its wet, stinging whips. Yet the air remained heavy with portent, charged as if the storm had not given it release.

The treeless hills offered little in the way of shelter. No one wanted to stop for rest in the downpour, so they charged on, surging over the hills like a force of nature themselves, stopping only to water their mounts in the many streams that flooded down between the shoulders of the land.

Anakin could see Ryn only intermittently, riding at the front of the war-band, half-hidden by the rain and the larger shapes around her. But he could feel her, all the time, and it was ... worrying. She felt like a lightsaber in his mind, bright and hard and dangerous.

She's always been like that, he told himself, but it wasn't very convincing. Probably this had always been inside Ryn - she had been a war hero before she ever came to the Jedi - but he had always known her in safety mode. For all her intensity, she had been safe to him. Not a warlord, just Ryn.

This was Ryn with the safety off, and Anakin wasn't sure he liked it.

It was worse, knowing that it was at least partly his fault. If the Ryn he'd known was gone - all her lightness and sweetness and wry humor - it was because he'd failed her, with his thoughtless, callous words.

He kept trying to pry through her defenses and catch a sense of her, some hint that the Ryn he knew was still inside somewhere, biding her time. But he couldn't even find her shields: just a blinding energy that had to be the will she was training on all of them to make this motley group a single force. From what little he understood of Lorethan war-making, that was what their leaders did: they bent their will on the war-band so the group functioned as a whole. A pack mentality, Evinne has said. We are stronger together. And Ryn had been good at it, in her time here. A master of the 'hero-halo,' whatever that was.

"She's a hero," the boy to his right whispered, gazing at Ryn in fervent adoration as he echoed Anakin's own musings.

Ryn, Anakin thought, what are you doing?

[]

She came to check on him after they finally stopped for the night, under the lee of a gentle hill that at least broke the wind of the fading storm.

The air still felt charged around them.

"Are you all right?" she asked him, unwinding the scarf from around her face to look at him directly.

"I'm fine," Anakin muttered, hearing the sullenness in his own voice and not knowing how to stop it.

Ryn's expression did not change, her eyes intent on his face. "You are not well."

If she was worrying about him, was that a good sign? He couldn't tell by her demeanor. "No," Anakin began, "I'm fi -"

"I wasn't asking." She dropped to one knee in front of him, ignoring the soaked ground, and took his face in her hands. "Look at me."

He met her eyes.

Ryn stared into him for a long minute, searching. Then she closed her eyes and drew in a breath.

The exhale released something inside him, a tightness he hadn't known was aching, and she opened her eyes again. "Better?" she asked, not quite hiding a tremor.

He couldn't lie to Ryn. "What was that?"

Ryn grimaced, letting him go. "I'm not sure. You were out of tune, but I don't know why."

"Out of tune?" Anakin said.

"Metaphor." Ryn stood, a little more slowly than usual - Anakin could the echoes of her fatigue, dragging at her - and tried to ineffectually to brush the mud from her knee. "The Jedi train their students to imagine the Force and individual essences as light. We speak of them as ... music. Harmony." She straightened, stretching, and frowned into the gray distance. "Everyone's song changes over time, but a discordance within usually means something's wrong." She shifted, returning her attention to him, her mind still closed to his touch. "Could be your worry for Obi-Wan, maybe. Let me know if it gets worse again."

Anakin watched her go without protest, not sure what he could say that would make anything better. He kept watching her anyway, following her with his eyes as she moved through the camp with strength, taking care of others. Yeah, Obi-Wan's not the only one I'm worried about.

In the West, another storm was building.