Anakin waited in the atrium near the elevator doors for Mara to be ready to depart. Padmé, Senator Amidala, had told him that he was perfectly welcome to wait in the sitting room or even in her office. Threepio could bring him a refreshment. They could discuss the matters that were unfolding a little further. But he had declined. He had never meant to intrude here, an intention he had held and succeeded with since he had returned from Ahch-To years ago. Even his recent tête-à-tête with Padmé on Corellia had felt like and overstep. If Mara had not been here, had not needed him, he never would have come, so he waited close to the door, as good as gone again already.

But then, had appointing his apprentice the guardian of this house made this inevitable? Had that been why Obi-Wan had insisted on it? Had he wanted to force this conclusion, bringing Anakin back to this house as surely as gravity brings a fall? When he was younger, Anakin would have thought this was his old Master rubbing his nose in his mistakes, but he knew better now. As frustrated as he could make him at times, the old man always meant well toward Anakin. He had accepted that, bitterly at first and more easily later on. So perhaps, really, Obi-Wan had meant it to be an opportunity, an excuse that he might take someday to see Padmé and her children again. If not that, then there was the comfort of knowing that, from time to time, all the people who loved him, now or once, Mara and Padmé and Obi-Wan, were together somewhere looking out for… them.

He found himself wondering, at that thought, where Ahsoka was now and if they would ever meet again. While musing over whether she and Mara would get along, Pip and Snips, he saw the boy poke his head through the doorway that led to the residence upstairs.

"Is there something I can help you with, young man?" Anakin asked after they had stared at each other for a few seconds too long. Luke slinked fully into view and over to him until they were only a few feet apart.

"Will Mara be alright?" he asked in a hushed voice. His whole manner was strangely of a thief. Anakin knelt down to be on his level.

"She will be," he answered. "She lost someone very close to her today. Recovering from that takes a long time, but the Jedi will look after her."

"What happened to mister—to Master Vos?"

"We don't know yet," Anakin told him, which was technically true and as much as he was going to tell a ten-year-old.

"Did the marauder get him? The one who stole a lightsaber?"

"Maybe. We will find out soon, I think. But you and your mother and your sister are all safe from him. You don't need to worry about that, Luke." Anakin suddenly had to suppress a cringe. He had never called the boy by name before. It was his first unforced error in their first-ever conversation. He should not become too familiar.

Luke bit his lip and fidgeted. "I thought… that the Jedi didn't get sad."

Anakin smiled ruefully. "Everyone gets sad."

"But you don't… what are you supposed to do when you're sad?"

"We are supposed to let go." Supposed to . "I try to remember that whenever someone dies they are rejoining the living Force. We miss them, but they are still with us in that way."

Luke scrunched his face. "You said that 'he's gone.' Leia says you were talking about Master Vos. How is he still with us? I don't understand."

Anakin took a deep breath. "The man that was Quinlan Vos is gone. When he was born, when all of us are born, our spirits rise out of the Force, this energy that flows between all things, living beings and planets and stars, even the void of space. While we live, we are these little idiosyncrasies that spin out of that energy, like eddies in a stream, my master used to say. And when we are done, the… movement that was us rejoins the greater whole."

Luke was enraptured, his eyes great pools of blue. There was something else the boy was itching to say. Anakin could sense it.

"So you see," Anakin concluded, "death is not the end. Quinlan Vos is one with the Force. Every time we feel it, he'll be with us. No one's ever really gone."

Luke startled him as one of his hands shot out and took a hold of Anakin's cybernetic one. Anakin felt the phantom sensation of an electric shock run up his arm. He wanted to pull his hand away but could not.

"I can feel it," Luke whispered. When the Jedi before him said nothing, he added, "the Force."

Still, Anakin only knelt there, mouth agape but no words forthcoming.

He has been waiting a long time to tell someone. Why, in the end, was it me?

A terrifying answer to that question gripped him. Does he sense the truth, deep down somewhere?

"I need someone to teach me," Luke whispered. "Teach both of us. Please."

At last, Anakin found his voice. "I can't. I'm sorry."

The disappointment in the boy's face drowned him in the bitter taste of his own cruelty. Anakin would have rather lost his arm again. But the damage was done. A word once spoken could not be taken back nor a word once given. Anakin could not revoke the promise he had made to Padmé years ago.

As they stood there, hands still clasped, reeling in mutual misery, Anakin for several seconds failed to notice that they were being watched.

By the time Anakin looked up, he could tell it was too late. The young woman, standing in the doorway whence Luke had come, was watching them with the distinct expression of someone who was seeing something she knew she was not meant to. But she did not look away. It was one of the girls from the pool, now dry and dressed though her hair remained a little frizzy. He had seen her somewhere else before, he thought. There was nothing odd about that. He had seen all of the handmaidens before, incidentally whenever Senator Amidala made an appearance in some Holonews broadcast. This was different, however; there was something about her presence and not just her face that he recognized, and he had stayed too far away from the house to know any of the handmaidens like that.

It's her , he realized, Mara's little enemy. I met her on Corellia. Qi'ra , that's her name. And now she knows.

"Is everything alright?" Anakin asked her in his sternest voice. Qi'ra displayed no abashment but addressed Luke instead when the boy turned around to notice her.

"Your sister was wondering where you went," she told him, "that's all."

Luke had turned rather pink in the face and said not one more word to Anakin or Qi'ra before hurriedly walking from the room, past Qi'ra back up the stairs. Qi'ra pressed herself against the doorway to make way for him, small though he was, but did not follow. Anakin rose back to his feet. She looked at him and he looked at her. For several moments, Anakin felt as though the two of them were engaged in a mental battle of wills—and that he was losing very badly. Some Jedi Master. They were waiting to see who would acknowledge it first or if somehow they would come to a psychic agreement to never speak of this again. They did not.

"You've been with the house for several months now?" Anakin asked.

"I have," Qi'ra confirmed.

"So… did you wonder about it, all that time?"

Qi'ra looked for half a second as though she might pretend not to know what he meant, but decided against it. "It's hard not to," she said, "when there's that one detail every v

Anakin nodded along. "So what will you do?"

Qi'ra frowned. "Do? You mean, who will I tell? No one."

He could not quite believe her. Not just because of the acrimonious accounts of her that he had heard from Mara. Being face-to-face with her now, he felt some of what had caused his apprentice such consternation. The young woman's words echoed with sincerity, and yet there were depths beneath her surface that he could sense and not see. Looking at her was like looking at an alibi.

"Well," Anakin stumbled on, "I suppose… I thank you."

"There's no need," said Qi'ra. "I would be obliged to tell my mistress, but I suspect she already knows." She leaned against the door frame, hand clasped, taking him in. "Anyway, it's hard to care about that right now."

Was it? A man was dead—several men, and yet Anakin was not so disturbed by that as he was by the memory of the look on Luke's face.

"So, you're Mara's master?" Qi'ra asked. "Do you know what she meant when she said 'it wasn't him?'"

"When she said what?"

"Just before you arrived, I think, when Lane and I pulled her from the water, she said that—oh."

Qi'ra stopped in her tracks. Mara had joined them at last. Her vestment and her self had been dried and her hair had been neatly braided. Someone, one or two of the other handmaidens, must have seen to her, Anakin deduced. The girl herself still appeared thoroughly benumbed to the world, as if even continuing to exist was for her only a perfunctory act. She looked around the atrium as though she had never seen it before. Only when she noticed Qi'ra lurking in the opposite doorway did some of her old fire return to her eyes.

"Well," Mara huffed out in a low voice, "well… so long then," and she strode toward Anakin and the elevator.

"Wait a minute!" Qi'ra called after and Anakin could tell just from her voice that she felt herself to be taking a risk. "Don't you think you ought to explain?"

"Explain what?" Mara retorted blankly.

"You still haven't said what you were doing showing up here like that."

"Why should I tell you?"

"Oh, no reason. I only saved your life."

"I would have been fine. In a trance, I could have stayed down there for an hour."

"You frightened the children."

"I… am sorry for that," Mara was forced to admit, suffering another sting that breached her numbness.

"And when you fell from the speeder? Would you have survived that? I want to know: what was so worth the risk?"

"Nothing that you could wring any value from," said Mara, and now it was Qi'ra's turn to be stung. A sharp intake of breath hissed past her lips.

Anakin was starting to recognize that his apprentice and this girl were no longer enemies, though nor were they friends. Some new configuration had been entered, one neither woman was easy in and from which they could not find a sure way to extricate themselves. What was sure was that Anakin's feelings of being an intruder in the house had doubled in the past minute. While there was, on the one hand, no one more proper than himself to hear what indeed Mara had been aiming at with her recent recklessness, he knew better than most how intimate strife could be and felt strongly that this scene was not for him to witness. But there was no escape short of slinking into the elevator or otherwise dissolving into the nearest wall.

"Am I so bad as all that?" Qi'ra was managing to say. "Do you really think that low of me? That I would try to sell off every little bit of information I can scrape from you?"

"Oh please," Mara scoffed, "spare me the serpent tears. I don't mean you'd literally sell it. I know you're more sophisticated than that. Just that you'd make it another card in your deck. Information is the most valuable currency, right?"

To this, Qi'ra had no response but to stand there, mouth slightly agape. Mara did not take her silence as an opportunity to relent.

"You didn't think that I've been wise to your little attempt at a charm offensive from the start? You just, you—" for an instant, Mara's eyes squeezed shut and her hand, fingers curled, flew to her temple as though she had suffered a sudden migraine pang, but she forged on, "you think you're a mirror, some polished surface that if you just reflect back how other beings live—not just the way they move and dress, but even what they want—then they'll never look to see who's behind the glass. But I've already seen you, Qi'ra, how you really are, what you are. Even without my power, I'd know. I'll never buy your illusion. I'll never be fooled or forget and, so long as I'm around, neither will you. So, go and glamour someone else's eyes. Best of luck with it all."

With that, Mara's indictment was finally ended. The three of them stood there, two Jedi and a girl, two girls and one unwilling spectator, until Qi'ra found her voice again.

"Alright then," she said. "Leave."

They left. Anakin even took a hold of Mara's elbow as they entered the elevator, lest one final accident draw her and him together back into the house. But they made it out. The doors shut behind them and they started to descend. It was a long ride down the tower to the speeder bay and Anakin found himself at a loss for words to fill the air. He was too deflated to come up with words of comfort and all of the questions he had for his young friend felt uncomfortably close to those voiced by Qi'ra. Why, specifically, had Mara come to the Amidala's pool to meditate? That she thought of the house as a sanctuary was not so strange, but why the water? It sounded as though she had been trying to contact Quinlan's spirit and, again, he understood the impulse but not the tactic. How had she thought she could do it? And furthermore, she had seen something, but what? That had been another of Qi'ra's questions and a good one. Wherever Mara had been sending her mind could be more dangerous than even perils to which she had exposed her body. He would need to confront her about it and soon. Just… not now.

There was, it seemed, a great and ever-mounting deal that they needed to confess to one another. The more he thought about it, the more Anakin was determined that his earlier impulse had been correct: they should leave the planet. There were hundreds of ancient Jedi sanctuaries scattered across the galaxy, any one quieter than here. Even some un-spiritual backwater would serve. What they really needed was space and time. It suddenly occurred to him to go back to Tatooine and his mother's grave. It had all started there, in a sense. Everything that he needed to tell her had begun with his mother's death. Would it not be fitting to return?

He would have to acquire the Council's permission to take Mara from the temple, but Obi-Wan could likely arrange that. How soon was less certain, what with Grandmaster Mundi fully diverted by the marauder's escalating attacks. And there was Vos's funeral, if it was to be held which Anakin still considered likely. They could not leave before that. He might have to beg yet a little more patience from his Padawan, but only a little more. He had meant it when he promised to explain everything.

As he was making such plans, Anakin was surprised when Mara spoke. He had not expected her to try that again unless pressed. Every word uttered to her seemed to drain her spirit and every word uttered by her appeared a great exertion.

"You told me once," she said, "that grieving is the first step to letting go of grief. Was that true?"

Anakin shifted his weight. He thought of his mother. And Luke and Leia and Padmé. "No," he said.

"Will I always feel like this?"

"No. You learn to bear it more naturally. And you stop noticing the pain so much."

Silence for a few more floors.

"So what was the point?"

"Of what?"

" Mastering my emotions ?"

Anakin thought once more. "The point was power. A way of having it but not wanting it. So we could use it for the right reasons." When she did not answer this, he looked at her to find a reaction. He quickly looked away. There were tears falling down her cheeks. In seeing them, he knew, he had robbed her of their purity and poisoned her grief with shame.

And then all at once the pool made sense to him. For who could see a drowned girl cry?

The sun was setting and the Temple felt eerily empty when they arrived. They could both sense it. So many of the souls who usually haunted these halls had been dispersed to hunt the marauder. However, the life that remained was green and youthful, mostly Padawans and initiates, all bright and eager for tomorrow with a few old Masters beside. Their radiant energy ran freer than usual absent the normal bustle of those Jedi who had been fully trained and Anakin, despite himself, almost wanted to laugh at the new lightness of atmosphere. None of this untimely cheer, though, had reached Mara's heart he reckoned.

He took her to his own quarters. He could not stomach the idea of leaving her alone. They shared no conversation, but that seemed to suit them both. Mara sat on a cushion and stared at the wall. Her breaths came deeply, in and out, which Anakin took for a positive sign. Let her have some time to calm herself and then they would talk. They would. When she was ready.

He hailed Obi-Wan on his communicator and after a minute received a message back that his old master was still at the Senate building, waiting to talk to Chancellor Organa. Grandmaster Mundi, apparently, had deigned to speak with CorSec's panel of Commissioners and obtained approval, perhaps grudging, to continue with his operation as was "in the best interest of the safety of CorSec's officers and Coruscanti citizens." It would likely not be long now, then, before the Knights hunted this killer down. Feathers would be ruffled, but Coruscant had a short memory.

At least, Anakin wanted to think that. The tensions of the past few weeks and especially the past few days had given the planet the aura of a worldwide stomach ache with all the expected, contingent ill-mood. Would this be so easily forgotten? Or, for that matter, would the killer be so easily subdued? Vos had failed at that, a man no longer in his prime, certainly, but a deadly warrior nonetheless. Quinlan had been determined, cautious, and clever, in other words: a survivor. And yet.

There was a buzzing at the door.

"It's open," Anakin called, and Qui-Gon Jinn admitted himself.

"Obi-Wan signaled me that you two had returned," he said. He looked to Mara, though without any mote of pity. Qui-Gon was too wise to patronize her like that and, moreover, too kind. "I have something for Mara."

For a moment, Anakin thought Qui-Gon might mean her lightsaber, but instead the old librarian pulled a datastick from his belt.

Mara stood from her cushion and approached. "What is it?"

"It is traditional for Jedi to have letters prepared, written to their friends to be delivered in the case of their death. Quinlan Vos left this one for you."

Mara took the stick somberly from his hand, beheld it, and frowned. She looked to Anakin.

"You can use my datapad," he told her, anticipating her question, "if you'd rather not wait."

Mara strode to his desk at the far side of the room, sat sideways in the chair, and scraped his datapad from the desktop.

"Would you like to sit with us for a while?" Anakin asked Qui-Gon as Mara plugged in the stick.

"Of course," said Qui-Gon, eyeing Mara for a reaction more openly now that her attention was diverted.

They sat and did not pretend to be interested in chatting while Mara read, but watched in polite silence for her reactions. For a few minutes, her face was blank. Then her eyes widened. She read for several more minutes then threw the datapad aside onto the desk, crossed her arms, and stared pensively at the wall again. One of her feet began tapping agitatedly.

Anakin scowled and shared a look with Qui-Gon. If he could accurately read the signs, and he thought he could, then he knew what was in that letter. For as long as Anakin had known him, Quinlan Vos had been an insubordinate enabler of mischief, a habit which he had mysteriously reformed in the last months of his life, as demonstrated by his treatment of Mara.

In death, however, it seemed he had suffered a relapse into his old ways; Vos had given Mara the notes on his investigation in his final letter.