"Excuse me; have you seen someone go past here recently? He had dark hair, dark eyes, about eighteen years old. He's a Jedi."

"I haven't seen him. Sorry." And then always that came that look, vaguely suspicious and surprised, as if to say, "Can't you people take care of your own?"

"Thank you anyway." And Anakin would turn to resume his search, cursing the thoughts that always came to his mind when they gave him that look. Couldn't a Jedi find another Jedi? Surely the Force would guide him in that search, but then why did it not help him now? Was it for a Jedi that he searched at all?

Since when he had spoken with Windu, Anakin had had that same conversation at least a hundred times in the space of a single afternoon and into the evening. No one remembered seeing the young Jedi. Perhaps that was the truth, or perhaps Drin had veiled their minds, for if he was running away then he surely did not want to be found.

Anakin had tried to be logical about his search at first. There were no landspeeders missing, nor any ships: therefore, Drin was on foot. A Jedi standing on the steps of the eastern side of the Temple had seen someone fitting Drin's description running that way, so Anakin had gone east. But after that he had no more leads, and all logic had deserted him.

All day he had refused to let himself think upon what he was actually doing. He was a hunter, searching for his quarry, and once that had been found he could let himself think of what to do next. But Anakin was slowly growing desperate, and as he did so his grasp on the thoughts that held him sane began to loosen.

Force, what was he doing here? He had no desire for this, no wish to accomplish his task. Truthfully, he was afraid to find Drin, for what would Anakin do when he found him? Chastise him at the very least, punish him, kill—no. Anakin's head refused to allow it.

Suddenly he felt something brush deliberately against his cloak, a little thrill of warning in the Force. Instinctively Anakin's arm shot out and clutched at the small hand that had been groping for the pouch at his belt.

"Lemme go," snarled the boy he had caught, trying to squirm out of the Jedi's grasp. "I wasn't doing nothing."

"Liar," Anakin said, but with no real menace to his voice. "It's a waste of your time—I don't have any money anyways." He was about to release the child—Force, what was a child doing pick-pocketing on the streets? He hardly looked thirteen—when an idea struck him, and Anakin changed his mind. Kneeling until he was face-to-face with the little thief, Anakin kept a tight hold on the boy's arm and murmured under his breath, "Calm down."

The boy did so almost immediately, his wide eyes staring at Anakin through the dirt on his face. "Now listen," said Anakin, "I'm going to ask you a question, and as soon as you tell me the truth I'll let you go."

A nod.

"Anytime in the past few days, did you see my friend? He was tall, and he had dark brown hair. He was probably running, and he was dressed sort of like I am. Do you think you remember him?"

The boy blinked a few times, his lips pursed, and then—Anakin's heart leapt—he gave another nod. "Not here, though," the boy said. "He was near the part shop over that way." He pointed north, toward an area completely out of Anakin's supposed range. "Now let me go."

Anakin did so, and the child scampered off to separate another innocent victim from their hard-earned credits. This, however, was none of Anakin's immediate concern. At the moment, he had much more pressing problems.

After about half-an-hour's search, he found the part shop that the boy had described, to the north of the Jedi Temple. Here there were people who had actually seen Drin—but these people were few and far between, and the light was beginning to fade. Anakin was beginning to lose hope. Should he wait until tomorrow to continue? But then Drin would have been missing for an entire week…

His senses dulled by weariness, Anakin reached the entrance of a darkened alleyway and nearly walked right by it. There seemed nothing special about it at first, but then he hesitated and slowed as the Force beckoned him vaguely toward it. There was nothing, and then Anakin saw a little shadow curled up against the wall—a shadow that, upon closer inspection, proved to be a Jedi of about eighteen years old, with dark hair and dark eyes.

It was Drin.

He was sleeping on the ground, his back to the wall and his knees tucked under his chin. Anakin's mouth had gone dry. There was no one here but the two of them, and he had no idea how Drin would react to seeing him. For the first time in a very long time indeed, Anakin was at a total loss. He took a step forward; his foot bumped against a piece of debris on the ground, and Drin's eyes fluttered open.

In a second Drin had scrambled to his feet, backed away a step or two the instant that he saw Anakin. His shoulders rose and fell heavily with his breath—his hand gripped the lightsaber at his belt.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded. Anakin couldn't speak. The fact that Drin was reaching for his weapon seemed to say everything.

"Do you want to hurt me?" Anakin asked.

"I still don't know why you're here," Drin said.

"I haven't been sent on a seek-and-destroy mission by the Council," Anakin replied, "if that's what you're wondering." Was that a lie? "I won't hurt you unless I'm forced to, so stop acting like an idiot and talk to me."

For a second he wondered if anything he said was getting through. Then Drin nodded jerkily, swallowing, and let his hand fall to his side. "I thought—I'd save the Council the trouble of expelling me."

Anakin could feel himself treading on thin ice, unsure of each answer he would get to every question. "Then you're leaving the Jedi?" he asked cautiously, trying to sound out the boy. Friend or foe?

"I used the Dark Side," said Drin, almost defiant in his iniquity, but his eyes were unnaturally bright, "and that's the least of it. I didn't mean for anything to happen to her, but it happened so fast—" He took a breath. "They'd have expelled me anyway, after that. They couldn't do anything else."

"If you're willing to come back," Anakin said, "I could talk to Aviva. Maybe she wouldn't—"

Drin's forehead creased. "What are you talking about?"

"She's not badly hurt, I don't think. If I spoke to her—"

"Oh, Force…" A moan escaped Drin's lips; his face turned up to the darkened sky, his eyes shut. "Oh, Force, she's alive. I thought I'd killed her, I thought—" He fell to his knees, apparently overcome by relief. "I didn't know. I thought I had murdered her."

He was trembling and beginning to hyperventilate—it was obvious that Drin had lost control. Swiftly Anakin knelt on one knee, grabbing hold of Drin's arm and leaning him back against the wall. The eighteen-year-old was crying.

"Drin," Anakin ordered in a low voice, "Tell me everything."

Then all spilled out, secrets pent up for so long finally breaking out: how Drin had seen Palpatine's lightsaber in the library one day and found out its inscription's meaning from Jocasta Nu. How he had visited the library often after that, drawn without reason toward the Sith artifact. How the words had stuck in his brain, until he was wondering constantly if it were true that the greatest strength was in Darkness and Light combined, and perhaps the Council was wrong…

Anakin sighed when he heard this, rubbing his face with his hands. "What made you think," he asked, "that you knew better than the Council?"

"I don't know," answered Drin, in a very small voice. "I felt like—like the whole universe was blind, and I was the only one who could see."

"You and the Sith." Anakin's tone was harsher than he'd meant it to be. But he allowed Drin no relief. His disappointment was too great for that. "Go on."

"I know you've touched the Dark Side," said Drin in a muffled voice. "You know what it's like. You think you can see everything so much clearer. All the emotions you're not allowed to have as a Jedi just come out, and you lose all of your detachment. It—it makes sense."

"For a normal human being, yes," Anakin admitted. "But Jedi have a power that lends strength to everything we do. That's why our emotions are so dangerous; if we allow them to grow, then we cannot control them. Jedi must rise above our emotions. That is the price we pay for being the protectors of the galaxy." He looked down at Drin, huddled against the wall. "It was only selfish of you to think you could do anything else."

He saw the Padawan flinch at this; Drin had never been so severely spoken to by his esteemed tutor. Anakin himself did not know where this venom came from. He knew perfectly well that with every barbed word that spat from his mouth, Drin only grew more wretchedly miserable. But something in Anakin made him want to do this to Drin, to force it in his face and make him realize the magnitude of what he had done, no matter how painful the process—not just for the sake of the Order, but for Anakin's sake as well. He was hurt, deeply, and he wanted Drin to know it. Let him see the full effect of what his careless arrogance had done.

"And then what happened?"

"I practiced sometimes, at night. I think you sensed it, though, and when you told me I started leaving the Temple when I practiced, so that I couldn't be found. That was when I started realizing that something was wrong, that I couldn't tap into the Light Side anymore. I thought if I meditated more I could bring it back."

"The mission to Orin 6," Anakin said softly, realizing. "That was when—that was why you lost your healing ability."

A nod.

"And then what happened?"

"Not much," Drin answered, "until now."

"Tell me."

With obvious reluctance, Drin obeyed. "I was talking to her, and—I don't know, it just got out of control. When we started arguing, I could feel myself getting so angry with her. I think she knew what was happening a second before it did. She sensed it; she stopped talking and she just stared at me. She looked—"

"Frightened?" Anakin suggested.

"—surprised. And then I just reached out—I could feel it rushing through my hand toward her. She didn't even struggle. She just went limp. And I thought she was dead."

"What were you arguing about?"

"One of her birth parents was killed a few weeks back in some sort of accident. I—" Drin's voice choked up in a bitter little laugh. "I tried to tell her that she was too upset about it; she wasn't being a good Jedi."

Anakin remembered something else. "What about that disturbance about a month ago?" he asked. "What was that for?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I'm talking about," Anakin insisted. "There was a great disturbance in the Force, on the fourteenth. The Council all felt it."

Drin's face turned toward his, and through the darkness Anakin could see genuine confusion written upon it. "I didn't feel anything," he said. "I didn't do anything, either."

"Don't lie to me."

"Anakin, I'm not lying!" Drin cried. "I told you everything—why would I lie to you about this? I swear, I didn't do anything that day!"

His voice was abject, pleading for belief, his tears still audible in the sound. Anakin had no desire to feel pity for Drin, not yet, but he did all the same. In Drin's voice he could hear every emotion he himself had felt so many times before, and especially once on Tatooine, when he had looked into Obi-Wan's betrayed and astonished gaze and been forced to explain why a whole Tusken village had been wiped out in a night. He had cried then, knowing with the certainty of one who has disappointed a dear friend's trust that he would never be forgiven. Yet somehow Obi-Wan had forgiven him anyway.

"I believe you," Anakin told Drin quietly. "I do."

Drin was still shaking; wordlessly Anakin slipped an arm around his shoulders, and Drin leaned into the embrace, allowing himself to be comforted. Though Anakin was only six years older than his pupil, it was to him that Drin looked for strength, and he found it now. They sat silent in the darkness for a while; then Anakin asked, "So, what do you want to do now?"

"I don't know," answered Drin.

"Do you want to go back to the Temple?"

A pause, then, "Yes. But I'm scared."

"Why?"

"I don't think they'll take me back—and I don't know where else I can go."

Anakin hesitated. "You used the Dark Side," he said finally, "and you purposefully harmed a fellow Jedi. I can't promise that the Council will be forgiving, but I will ask them with you, and I'll help you all that I can. But we should go soon; they'll be wondering where I am."

"They know you're looking for me?" asked Drin. Anakin nodded. "Why didn't my Master try to find me?"

The question required a delicate answer. "The Council has known for a while that Count Dooku has taken an apprentice," he explained. "They've sensed, as I have, traces of darkness hovering near the Temple. When you ran away after using the Dark Side, after long and unexplained absences from the Temple…" Anakin swallowed. "If the Council's suspicions were correct, and you were found to be the Sith apprentice the Jedi have been looking for—" It was harsh, but there were no other words for it. "—you could not have been allowed to live."

A shuddering breath escaped Drin's lips, but he said nothing.

"Master Brun did not have the courage to search for you. She was afraid of what she might find."

Drin was quiet. When push came to shove, Ka'ela Brun, whom he had respected if not loved, had not trusted him; perhaps it was that, most of all, that hurt him and made him realize what he had done.

"What about you?" he asked Anakin. "Would you have killed me?"

"A Jedi can find strength to perform even the most difficult tasks in the Force," Anakin replied vaguely. He looked down at Drin. "But I prayed every hour that I would not need that strength."

Drin nodded slowly. "I'm sorry," he said hoarsely. "I'm so sorry—for all of this."

"I know." For the first time since Anakin had returned to Coruscant, he smiled. Then he stood, and offered his hand to Drin. "Now let's go home."