[A/N: This is the 2nd chapter posted today, just an f.y.i. in case you missed it.]

-x-x-x-x-x-

I've long prided myself on my talent of reading people, but you're the only one who has ever managed to elude me this long.

If I cared enough to try, I'm sure I could read practically everyone else on this ship, [not counting the vicious old scow], but I've never been able to figure out exactly what goes through your mind for the life of me.

Aside from a small smile here, there, or the few times I've actually managed to make you laugh, I mean. Sometimes, I start to understand when you bite your lip or I drag out a light blush across your cheeks. Other than that, the only emotions I seem to inspire in you are anger and frustration.

When I say something, I don't know if you think I'm a fool or if I'm anything at all.

I suspect it's an after-effect from your Jedi [or maybe exile] days.

So when I finally tell you the truth, [the actual truth, not one of my usual half-truths] about me being a deserter, about me learning I'm Force-sensitive, the reality is that I wait in agony for your reaction. But your expression doesn't change when I recount the nightmare that leaves me awake some nights. Those dreams where I'm Him again.

I leave out the fact that sometimes, in my dreams, you turn into Her. I leave out how terrified I get thinking that the witch can make me want to hurt you, and worse, make me enjoy it. That she can make Jaq do what He does to you in my dreams. I don't say how in the dreams, His fingers around Her throat change into my fingers around yours.

I expect you to finally show some sort of emotion: anger, fear, disappointment. I want you to flinch away in disgust, slap me, maybe finally ask me to leave. After all I've done, it's what I deserve.

It's almost worse that you don't do any of these things.

So we sit in silence for an incredible amount of time, to the point where you just chew on your lip and I fidget uncomfortably.

I study you with a hollow gaze.

If you're surprised, even your big angel eyes don't show it. Your eyes my go-to when I can't tell what you're thinking, that or the annoying way you chew on your lip sometimes, but this time, they remain perfectly neutral. Instead, you study me for a few more silent moments.

"You're telling an ex-Jedi you've killed Jedi. Why?" you ask, with that perfectly even tone of yours.

"You asked," I point out, shrugging stiffly, and knowing that answer doesn't satisfy you. "And because you've killed people too. I know it's not under the same circumstances, but your body count is higher than mine ever was. We haven't known each other long, but I know you've got history, and anyone who signs on with you doesn't. Maybe I need someone to know mine, in case a story needs to be set straight. In case I haven't got much time left. Do you understand?"

"I'm not sure," you admit, peering at me with those wide, honey-hazel eyes of yours. "Why are you trying to protect me?"

"I'm not sure," I reply, with an ironic grimace, wishing I didn't thrive on my own lies so much.

And that's the other truth of lying, angel. You start to live for half-truths, for the withheld wisps of honesty that might not even exist if you look too close or pay too much attention. Most of the time, what you're looking for doesn't even exist.

"Atton, I…need time to think," is all you say, standing up slowly. I watch you walk away. I don't stop you. I'm not delusional enough to think I can save myself with my mouth this time.

"Take all the time you need. I still am," I mutter, half to myself as I pull out my pazaak deck.

-x-x-x-x-x-

It's days later, after we've left Nar Shaddaa for a pit stop on Dantooine, when you approach me again. I've been restless, and I'm unsure if it's because I've finally told you the truth or because you haven't asked me to accompany you off the ship since then.

"You up for a game?" you ask as you calmly approach me in the cockpit, and I'm so surprised that I'd do almost anything you asked.

"Sure, sweethe- ah...Ari."

"Not here, though. Let's find some privacy. It's so nice outside," you add, nodding towards the doorway. I follow, as always.

"I've thought about what you've said," you say, after a long, silent walk past Khoonda. You decide on a spot shaded by a tree, close enough to the water that we can hear the small waves lapping against the rocks. Your tone doesn't make you sound angry. It doesn't sound as if you're anything. My nerves start to crawl underneath my skin as a result. "I was wondering...what happened after?"

I don't answer until you start to shuffle your deck and I pull mine out of my pocket.

"I wandered for a while, pretending to be a refugee. I just wanted to be left alone, honestly. And yeah, I smuggled for awhile. Not many other options, when you're a half-trained ex-Republic pilot and a fully-trained killer," I inform you. "And then I met you, and now...everything is different. I didn't want to tell you, before." I rub the back of my neck. "But you should know why. In case something happens to me... I can't let you think I was doing it for any other reasons than what I've said. But now, I…it's not just that anymore. If I can use what She showed me to help protect you, then maybe... I mean-" I fumble clumsily for words.

Fumbling like an ignorant fool and not the suave scoundrel I know I can be.

"Atton, I…" you trail off and I don't know what you're thinking. "I can train you to use the Force, if that's what you're asking."

It is what I'm getting at, but at the same time, it's the last thing I expect to hear from your mouth. I give you a twisted smile.

"You're serious, aren't you?" I ask, hoping there's a punchline. "I'd make an awful Jedi, Ari, and you know it."

"You don't give yourself enough credit," you reply stubbornly, staring me down with those eyes as golden as a sunrise.

"I told you what I've done. This would be a disaster. You don't even know who I am. I don't even know who I am anymore. How are you so sure I've changed?"

You abruptly reach over to take my broad hands in your smaller, calloused ones.

If you were anybody else, I'd pull away on instinct.

But it's you, your hands are warm, and I don't deserve the way you put up with all the bantha shit I put you through. With me.

You don't answer and I watch you while you study our clasped hands. I observe the glint in your eyes as you blink. You're quiet for so long, I wonder if you've forgotten I'm here.

"Meetra," you abruptly say.

"What?" I frown, confused. You look up at me, your head tilted at a thoughtful angle.

"Meetra. Who I used to be. Jedi Knight Meetra Surik," you inform me with a harsh grimace. "Not anymore. Meetra was the General, and that was a lifetime ago. I'm...just me. Ari Endac, the Force-crippled exile," you laugh bitterly.

"I..." I start, the words sticking in my throat. I look down at our intertwined hands. "I used to be Jaq," I admit quickly, before a lie or half-truth leaves my mouth instead. Jaq the Murderer. Jaq the Torturer. Breaker of Jedi. That name leaves an unpleasant taste in my mouth and the thought of being Him again- the thought of the witch making me like that again makes my heart twist with shame.

"Jaq," you repeat, trying it on your palate. I feel your heavy gaze on me and look back at you, as much as I'd like to stare at the sky or study our hands. I don't like how my old name sounds on your tongue. I hate the way that syllable shapes your mouth, pulls at your lips. "You're not Jaq anymore, as much as I'm not Meetra."

"How do you know?" I ask, finally meeting your eyes. Your smile is small, helpless.

"I don't. I just know you're more than whoever that person was. You have so much potential, even if you like to pretend you don't. You...you're good, Atton." The way you say my name makes my heart clench.

"I didn't know you thought of me like that," I reply, taking back one of my hands from your grasp to rub at the beck of my neck awkwardly. You smile. "There's a lot of things you don't know about me." Some maybe you never will.

"I don't know a lot about Jaq," you correct, waving him away with your words. "But I'd like to know more about Atton."

I guess I never differentiated between the two so drastically, but in one sense, you're right. I haven't truly been Jaq since Her, and that part of my life ended almost a decade ago. Not to say some of the old impulses don't flicker into my mind every so often or that the old habits are gone, but the thought of being Him again makes me sick to my stomach, and that has to count for something, doesn't it?

"I felt the Force once, I...heard it, when she showed it to me," I remind you. "I was afraid of it, because I knew it would change me into something else. But I see you and it makes me...I'm not scared anymore. And...I want you to teach me how to use the Force so I can protect you."

"Then I will train you," you say, simply. I blink, confused. That's it?

"Is there some ritual? Or-"

"Just close your eyes," you command, releasing my hands. "And open your mind."

Your gaze challenges me with how intense it is, and I just want to kiss you. I want your hands in my hair, I want my arms crushing you to me, I just want you all to myself.

But most of all, I want to hear you say my name in every single different inflection there is. I don't care if it's a gasp of pleasure or a snap of anger; I just want the reassurance that I'm me and not Him anymore. I want a reassurance that Jaq is gone. I don't want Him to haunt me anymore.

I don't want to close my eyes. I want to remember the fire in your coppery hazel eyes, I want to commit the breeze-blown loose strands of your dark hair and your pink, partially open lips to memory.

Instead, I do as you say and shut my eyes, thinking of the way you bite your lip when you're uncertain or when I say something to upset you.

"And no counting cards, or picturing me in my underwear," you sternly add. I allow myself to smirk guiltily.

"Can I picture you in... other things?" I quip.

"No," you retort firmly, but I hear the way you can't keep the smile out of your voice for once.

You say things, and I listen, if only to hear the sound of your voice.

"Feel it around you, embrace it."

I start to feel your presence in a hypersensitive way, as if your being is all around me, folding over my consciousness.

And not only yours, but others, mingling in the background, all connecting back to me through you.

"Remember how you felt when you said you wanted to protect me, and think of all the times you already have: Peragus, Telos..."

I feel as if I should be concentrating on all the life ebbing and flowing around me, but I'm only interested in yours right in front of me.

I become startlingly aware of the bond between us, threading us together and feeling more powerful than I've ever felt it before.

At last, Atton... Awaken.

The sound of your voice in my head startles me and almost jolts me into a blind panic. I feel my limbs tense, the urge to throw all my mental walls back up, but your hands close around mine again and I try to relax. My heart starts to beat twice as fast, but I don't let myself regress, despite how much this is for me to take in all at once.

I feel the way I felt when She showed me what I was capable of - why I was worth saving, only with you, it's ten times as overwhelming. I feel an abrupt surge of love- the kind where my lungs constrict and my chest hurts, full of the knowledge that I'd do anything for you.

And I mean anything, Ari.

I hold on to that feeling for a few more seconds before you recede out of my mind as if on tiptoes.

When I open my eyes, the atmosphere seems different somehow. Maybe a hint brighter, but maybe that's just your smile reaching your eyes as you gaze at me. My heart is pounding in my ears, and I find myself out of breath.

Admittedly, I don't feel much different on the inside. I'm still just me. Sarcastic, suspicious, lying, crack-pilot Atton Rand.

But at the very least, I'm not Jaq. I know I don't need Him in the back of my mind anymore. Not if you're there to replace Him.

Acceptance. It's not something I'm used to. It'll take me awhile to greet it with familiarity.

For the first time, I start believing that you're the one She saved me for, and that's the truth.

Part of me has known it since you walked into my life on Peragus, but I didn't really believe it until now.

And now you know it, too.