Disclaimer: Anything you recognize belongs to George Lucas/Disney. Anything you don't recognize probably also belongs to them.

Treachery

Leia looked at the familiar, if static-ridden, visage of Han's wookie co-pilot, and couldn't help but smile, "Hello there, Chewbacca."

He roared in response, and she read the translation off of the screen silently, "Hello Princess."

Her smile widened, "How have you been?"

"As well as can be expected," he replied.

"Wonderful," she nodded. "How was your trip?" she asked, avoiding direct mention of where he had been or what he had been doing. While the transmission was being bounced around enough that their locations were well obscured, in the event that it was intercepted and decrypted, she didn't want anything useful being gained. Live transmissions were notoriously easier to intercept than a recorded message after all, due to the continuous stream of data required for the connection.

"Good," he wuffed in answer. "I met an old friend. She's decided to join us for our next trip."

"That's even better news," she replied, relieved at the added assistance. "While I've got you here, I just wanted to let you know we've gotten news about the Captain."

"Took that vain bastard long enough to send us anything," Chewbacca said irritably.

"He's doing what he can Chewie," she chastised, though she agreed with the sentiment. The wookie whined in frustration, and Leia frowned, "I know, Chewbacca. It will work out somehow."

He huffed reluctantly in agreement, "I know."

"I will be sending you the message soon at the usual address in two days, if that works for you?" she questioned.

He nodded, "I should be there."

"Be safe Chewbacca," she said, worry seeping into her voice.

"As always. You be safe as well, Princess," he replied.

Leia smiled one last time as she reached forward to turn off the encrypted console, before she turned to Mon Mothma. "Thank you for allowing me to use the terminal, Ma'am."

"It's no trouble, dear. I can certainly understand the need," the middle-aged woman said warmly.

"It is hardly true Alliance business, though; you did not have to let me do this," she replied gratefully.

Mon sniffed lightly, "Don't worry about it. If we had more resources available, I would offer more help."

Some of the tension released from Leia's shoulders, "You are too kind. If there is anything I can do to repay you, let me know."

"Leia," the woman spoke sternly. "If I have to tell you not to worry about it one more time, I'll be forced to put you on bed-rest for an entire day." The woman looked her over, noting the somewhat heavier than normal makeup Leia was using to mask her exhaustion, "Stars know you need it. I may have to do it anyway."

Leia laughed lightly, giving the older woman a similar once over, "I could say the same for you, Ma'am."

The woman chuckled, "There's that fiery spirit." She gestured toward the door, "Shall we go?"

Leia nodded, and joined the woman as they headed in the direction of yet another meeting. Apparently their Supreme Commander had sent them an update on the mission Luke was on.

Leia felt a sinking sensation at the pit of her stomach. She had been distracted by being able to speak to Chewbacca, but now that she considered the situation, it was abnormal for the ex-imperial to send updates during a mission, because of the risk of compromising the situation.

He only sent updates when something unanticipated came up.

Luke walked beside their current guide, in the centre of a tactical formation, with his senses spread away from himself as he searched for anything that was out of place. So far he hadn't found anything, but he still felt antsy in a way he couldn't explain. "How much further?" he asked, his voice slightly muffled behind his scarf, as he glanced over at the soft-spoken female that had lead them safely thus far.

"A quarter mile, maybe a little less," she replied with a warm smile. She, like the rest of his group, was apparently better at dealing with the nearly frigid temperature than he was, as she appeared far more comfortable than he did. "There should be a stairwell coming up on the right in a couple minutes. From there we'll go down a level, and make a left down the hallway, which will take us straight to the hangar."

Luke nodded and refocused his attention away from the group, as well as his cold body, again. Now that he knew what he was looking for, Luke could vaguely sense the stairwell if he focused - sensing anything inorganic was more difficult than it was sensing anything alive - and further ahead he could feel the impression of a large open underground space.

He nodded, "Okay. That checks out."

She had ceased asking how he was verifying her information shortly after the group had started on their way, and now she simply nodded in response.

"We've been lucky so far, but stay on your guard everyone. We don't know what we're going into here," he reminded the group as they carefully made their way down the third staircase of the expedition.

The others nodded in response, and after they had cleared the stairs, they smoothly continued forward into the corridor with well-practiced motions. Luke stepped into the hall, and indicated to the blonde woman to follow as soon as the front group had cleared it.

She pointed to the left, and Luke nodded, gesturing for the group to continue.

They flowed forward as one without speaking, and Luke took a closer look at their new surroundings in the low beams of the group's various portable lights. The corridor they were using had clearly been well travelled at some point in the past; probably a vehicle path, he figured as they moved across thick rusted durasteel plates that had been evenly spread from wall to wall.. The walls themselves this far down in the massive complex were roughly hewn stone that echoed with each of their steps, causing them to make much more noise than they would have otherwise, but there was little that they could do about it.

"We should be coming up on it now," the pale woman spoke, interrupting his observations.

Luke nodded, having already sensed the large space directly ahead of them, "Everyone be ready."

They reached the massive entry-way, and Luke stood guard by their guide while the rest of the group spread out into the space, their lights' beams sweeping around the large space.

Moments passed in silence, then the overhead lights in the room burst to life, blinding the entire group thoroughly after their mostly dark trip. A stream of curses echoed around the room, and Luke blinked his now watering eyes, as he tried to see what was going on.

With no warning from the Force, a sun-deprived hand shot forward into the edge of his vision, and he was seeing stars as pain shot through his temple.

"Sorry kid," a female voice trickled through his dazed thoughts. As if from under-water, he felt himself shoved into the large room that was empty except for his people, before he heard the familiar sound of blast-doors sliding shut behind him.

With a pained groan, he tried to force himself off of the ground, fighting through the haze, before the woman - the one that had lead them there, his sluggish mind processed slowly - knelt down beside him, and pushed him back down to the ground.

"Commander," she spoke as he continued to struggle, despite being disoriented. "You are strong," she smiled, and a distant part of Luke thought that it might have even been a kind expression. "Stronger than we realized," she gripped his shoulders tightly as he bucked again. "Focus child," she snapped, her expression sharply twisting in sudden anger that looked out of place on her features.

Luke bared his teeth at her, but she was stronger than she looked, and his body wasn't cooperating. He settled for glaring at her, and after a struggle to speak, he finally spat, "Traitor."

The woman laughed wildly at the label, and released one of his shoulders only to run a finger down his cheek, "I suppose I can give you that." She tilted her head as if listening to something, then returned her focus to him, her expression shifting unsettlingly until it settled on a serious look. She removed her wandering finger from his face, and flexed her hand, as if she had just realized what she had been doing, and her accent shifted drastically to something he didn't recognize, "I don't have much time. You must stay strong Commander." She laughed bitterly, "Try not to forget yourself." She looked at him pleadingly, and her pale grey eyes bore into him, "Also, I know it's a lot to ask, but please, end this farce."

She tapped his forehead and stood, as he felt unconsciousness rising to swallow him. In his final moments of consciousness he thought he saw her form flicker.

Then she was gone, and he was lost to oblivion.

Crix had watched silent as a massive sand-storm swept over his people's landing-area more than an hour ago. Now he stood, waiting impatiently through the planet's night-cycle for a response to the message he had sent Haven Base. The process of sending a message securely was slow, and involved using several ships as improvised switch-boards along an ever-changing route, but he was feeling particularly impatient today.

Clones. He still had a hard time wrapping his mind around the concept. It should have been impossible. The genetic information used in the creation of the clones from the war had long-since decayed beyond use. And yet...

He mentally shook himself. It wouldn't do to get worked up until he had more information, which meant waiting for his people on the ground, or Haven to contact him.

"Sir, we've got an incoming transmission coming in from Quarry Base," an officer advised him.

"Do they have the clearance codes?" he asked curtly.

"Yes, Sir. They appear to be having signal problems though," the officer explained.

Crix nodded, "Put them through, and see if you can stabilize the signal from our end."

The officer nodded, and turned to press several buttons until a crackling noise filled the room.

"Can you hear me?" Crix demanded.

"Y-, Sir," a garbled voice made its way across the channel.

"Good. What's going on down there?" Crix questioned impatiently.

"- base's off-planet com-tions have be- tamper- -. Probably - -lones," the male at the other end replied.

Crix held in the urge to curse, "Is there anything you can do?"

"- - -icers and mech- working - -. - wanted to gi- -atus update," crackled across the line.

"Go ahead," Crix directed, still able to pick up the general meaning easily enough, though the signal was steadily worsening.

"We haven't - - -ore clones. The one we capt- -, - -ome of the people from - base-" the channel broke up entirely for several moments, before it returned. "We have a - base - up. Lieut- -mander Skywal-" the man managed to say before the channel went completely to static again.

"Can we get them back?" Crix snapped crisply, forcing professionalism over his frustration.

"No, Sir," the officer spoke with a frown. "The signal is completely gone. Something must have happened to completely disrupt it."

Crix breathed in slowly, then nodded, "Alert me if the signal comes back."

"Yes, Sir," the officer replied, as he went back to monitoring his console.

Crix returned to his quiet waiting as he turned the situation around in his head. At least it appeared that their wayward comrades had been located, and they had set up a base once they had been found. He glanced at his chrono and suppressed a sigh. It looked like this would be yet another all-nighter out of many in his life, and his prospects for taking a nap later weren't looking very good either given the situation.

"Sir, Haven has sent us a holomessage," the officer spoke again, interrupting Crix's brooding.

"Play it," Crix said, and stepped closer to the console in anticipation.

The male started the message, and several small blue figures appeared in mid-air, apparently standing around a table.

"Supreme Commander," Admiral Ackbar spoke first, the Mon Calamari looking grave. "The information that you have given us is highly disturbing. You know as well as I do the amount of damage that clone troops are capable of causing. We have consulted with our intelligence contacts, and have discovered no feasible reason for there to be any living clones, aside from the bounty hunter Boba Fett. That they would be at Quarry Base is even less likely. We have unconfirmed information that a small group may have been stationed there during the war for a short period of time, but that was over two decades ago now. Even if they were, given the clones' rate of aging, they should not have survived this long. If the information our people on the ground have given you is indeed correct, then you have encountered some sort of unknown anomaly." The male stepped back, and Crix observed the group, as Mon Mothma stepped forward.

Each face was grim, meaning nothing good for the mission he had always disagreed with. His gaze came to a rest on Leia Organa, and he was unsurprised to see carefully contained distress behind her royal mask (he had been around too many people that were trained to hide their emotions, to not notice it).

Somehow, he mused thoughtfully, the young woman had become the spirit of the older, more idealistic Alliance. The Republic even – and the reason he had left the Empire had not been because he disagreed with the type of government in place; just how it was implemented). Suffice it to say, he wasn't a fan of the slow-moving indecisive government system that had been in place previously. Honestly, with the sheer amount of sentient-populated space, a condensed central form of power was necessary if you asked him. It was too bad that the current one had no interest in ruling fairly over its people, and killed them senselessly.

There was no way anyone could convince him that blowing up an entire planet was for the good of the people.

His opinion on political systems aside, Princess Leia Organa of the massacred planet of Alderaan had managed to cling to her overly optimistic ideals despite everything that had happened to her. Nothing made it more obvious than her statement to him on the day this mission was initially discussed.

"We cannot just simply abandon them because it makes good tactical sense."

It annoyed him no end. Resistance was never easy, and attaining freedom took sacrifice. As the recording of Mothma began to speak, he wondered if today would be the day the princess of a dead world would finally learn that.

"Given that you are dealing with a potentially volatile situation, we are putting a time limit on the mission, and are prohibiting any further excursions onto the planet," stated Mothma, her expression stony. "If the people that are already planetside can't deal with the situation within the next twenty-four hours, you have officially been cleared to bombard the surface. Take out any exits to the facility, and all of our crafts that are there. The same holds true if any enemies appear to be commandeering our crafts. This was clearly some sort of trap, and we cannot have clones escaping that planet."

Crix frowned to himself as he listened. This meant there would be no way to gather information about the clones if his planetside people didn't escape within the time limit. He wasn't entirely sure he agreed with the course of action, but he could understand the reasoning behind the decision.

Having said everything she needed to, the woman stepped back, only to be replaced by the young Organa, who was radiating her particular brand of stubbornness. "If an opportunity to evacuate the group safely presents itself, then do it as quickly as possible. I won't see our people lost if it can be avoided." She paused, and after a moment she continued, with her words more carefully chosen, "You hold their lives in your hands. We trust you to understand the gravity of this."

Crix mentally rolled his eyes at her dramatics as the recording shut off. He was the Supreme Commander; he was well aware of the consequences of his actions. Crix turned away from the console and nodded to the officer, before he made his way back to the main view-port. The entire situation didn't sit well with him, but there was nothing he could do about it until the base's communications cleared, or the sandstorm dissipated so that his people could access their own communication in their ships.

He looked down over the ominously swirling sands far below them on the planet that were only barely visible in the nearby nebula's iridescent light.

All of this technology, and still nature trumped humanity. It truly was awe inspiring.

Lando wasn't sure his poor heart could handle this much stress in such a short period of time. Somehow while waiting in one of the many recesses hidden around Jabba's main room, as he had been told to do whenever there wasn't anything (or one) to clean up, he had found himself watching some idiot threaten the entire room with a grenade. Unfortunately, through a well thought out plan, or sheer dumb luck, the being wasn't standing on Jabba's trusty trap-door.

Being marginally smart (if he did say so himself), Lando had come up with quite possibly his Worst Plan Ever (after the... incident that had led to him working undercover on Tatooine in the first place, anyway). While the being (a bounty hunter, he guessed) was distracted by everything going on in front of him, Lando had (idiotically, because apparently idiocy was catching) taken advantage of being the completely ignored clean-up guy. He snuck up on the apparently male being (honestly it was hard to tell), making use of his...her...its mask's blind spots. With a shocking amount of ease (and really, didn't that just prove his point about the creature's intellect?), he had simply snatched the grenade out of its hand. It had turned to stare at him, and he had stared back at it for a precious moment, before he dove toward the button on Jabba's throne that opened the large trap door. By that point, sentients were running around the room wildly, expecting the grenade to go off at any moment, and frankly he had been close to joining them (what had he been thinking?!).

Okay, so maybe he was a little hysterical.

But really, how could he not be? Because after what was surely the galaxy's most barely adequate underhanded toss, the grenade had bounced once before falling into the massive hole in the ground in front of the hutt's throne, just as he had hoped. And he had closed the trap-door, just as he had planned. And it had exploded, just as they had all expected.

And now, somehow, he was kneeling, face-to-floor in front of a furious crime lord (next to the corpse of said idiotic bounty hunter), because he had had the audacity to save all of their lives by killing off the large being's favourite pet.

Just his bloody luck.

Solo had damn well better be grateful for everything that he was going through to save him, (disregarding the fact that he was the reason the man was a human ornament, of course).

His nose tickled due to the dirt he was forced to breathe due to proximity, and he tried his hardest not to sneeze. Or scream like a prepubescent boy.

How he had gotten here from his comparatively comfortable job as a delivery boy in a little over a day and a half...

He just hoped he didn't die.

Luke awoke, shivering painfully, and instinctively tried to curl in further on himself for any source of warmth. The motion sent further pain racking through his body, as his already tense muscles protested the action.

"Ack, don' move too fast lad," a familiar male voice spoke, and Luke's eyes snapped open.

Pain shot through his skull, and he hissed, as the well lit room made his head pound due to his earlier head-injury.

"Oi vey," the voice continued to talk in a friendly tone. "Yeh really should know better than that. Ye got a good-sized knot on the side o' yer head."

Luke slowly connected the dots as his muddled mind caught up with the situation. The dead comrades. The betrayal by one of the Captain's people. The lies that the Captain had fed them. He forced his eyes open in order to snarl at the man, "You!"

The Captain chuckled jovially, "Got a wonderful temper on yeh, don'tcha?" He smiled, and scratched his scruffy face as he settled back to sit on his heels, "Ye don' trust yer instincts 'nough though, lad." He slapped Luke on the shoulder playfully, causing Luke to cringe as the jostling. "Tah be honest ye shouldn'a sensed nothin' anyhow, but ye sure 'nuff did, didn'tcha? Guess tha's sumthin' tah be proud of, yeah?"

Luke opened his mouth to curse the brown-haired man to the depths of the nearest saarlac pit, but the surprisingly agile male reached forward and tapped him on the mouth with a tisk, and a suddenly dangerous gleam in his matching dark brown eyes, "Nah lad, none o' that now. I ain't done talkin' yet."

Luke opened his mouth again defiantly, but to his quickly rising horror, he realized that he couldn't speak. His eyes widened, and against his pained body's wishes, he forced himself up enough to scramble backward until he hit a wall that was still much closer than he wanted to be to that man. Without Luke noticing, his breaths shortened into panicked gasps.

"Oi, oi. Calm down lad," the rather plain looking male snorted derisively. "Ain't no use fer fear no-how," he added with a scowl.

At the man's comment, Luke grew frustrated with himself. The "Captain," or whoever he really was, was correct unfortunately.

With an immense amount of willpower, he forced himself to breathe more slowly.

"There's a good lad," the supposed captain said with a lopsided smile, his tone clearly condescending, and Luke bristled in response. Instinctively he fought against his rising anger, and schooled his features into a blank expression instead of the contorted sneer that it wanted to form into. He wasn't quite able to cool the fiery emotion that had begun to simmer in him at man's goading, but even appearing calm could give him an advantage.

The man's smile only widened at Luke's expression, "Such adamant insistence on restraint. It would be remarkable if you haven't lost control yet."

Luke immediately became even more wary as the man's voice smoothed out, and his accent changed with no warning. He opened his mouth to respond instinctively, but was caught yet again by the reminder that his voice was gone.

The man laughed again, before his expression also abruptly shifted, and became serious. His cold russet eyes bore into Luke with the acuteness of a predator, "You would like to know who I am." He tilted his head, seemingly dissecting Luke with a glance, "That is something you will have to earn, young Force user." He leaned in closer and shifted back to his earlier train of thought with disturbing enthusiasm, "Have you hurt anyone yet, boy? Did you want to?"

Momentarily startled by the line of questioning, the memory of injuring Wedge and the guilt that accompanied it drifted to the front of his mind, before Luke stubbornly shuffled the thought to the side and shook his head. He wouldn't let the man get to him.

The older man chuckled anyway, the sound taking on an unbalanced tone, "Oh, I know that expression. There's no use in feeling guilt, boy. It doesn't serve you."

Luke's suspicion shifted as his mind began to make connections: the way this male and the woman spoke about him, the change in accents, and the way they had been able to affect him with little more than a touch. The two were Force-users, and apparently dark ones at that, if the man's rhetoric was anything to go by.

The male, who was obviously not the Captain Killian Scott he had claimed to be, seemed to see or sense Luke's growing understanding, because his responding smile was reminiscent of a feral nexu. "Ah, now you're starting to get it, aren't you?" he commented, then his entire countenance shifted yet again, and for some reason he looked completely furious, "Good." The male sneered, "First thing we'll be working on is eliminating the obviously Jedi influenced beliefs you've got stuck in your head." The man spit out the term for the users of the Light Side of the Force as if it were something truly vile.

Witt that statement the male stood, and towered over Luke's hunched form with a critical look in his eyes. If Luke was honest with himself, he was hard-pressed not to shrink in even further on himself as the male continued to speak, "Shouldn't be too hard. You've already got plenty of anger to work with." He reached forward, and this time Luke couldn't stop himself from trying to get further away. The male laughed harshly, knowingly almost, then spoke a final time, "Something tells me your temper is genetic."

If Luke had been cold before, now it felt like the entire planet of Hoth had dropped into his stomach. Somehow this man knew something.

Before he could fully process anything, the imposter's finger had come into contact with his head, and he felt darkness trying to drag him back into nothingness for the second time. This time he fought against it desperately with the knowledge of what was happening to him, but all it gained him was a few short seconds.

Seconds in which he saw the fake captain's form shift and become visibly larger.

Lando decided he must be in some kind of shock, as he calmly started putting on various pieces of mismatched bounty hunter gear. Apparently once the hutt had gotten over the "horrific loss" of his pet, he had realized that methods aside, Lando had saved his vile hide.

Who knew that saving the boss in an attempt to keep his own sorry ass alive was the fastest way to a good promotion, and his own room with the first sonic shower he had seen since he had gone undercover?

After putting on some (thankfully matching) armoured boots that fit him, he perused the rest of his options, wondering how many bounty hunters had died to make up the numerous racks of gear that made up one of the hutt's armouries.

(And wasn't that a morbid thought that should probably horrify him? Either he really was in shock, or Tatooine's specific brand of apathy was truly starting to get to him.)

Once he had tried on and discarded several other pieces of armour until he found pieces that worked, he began to rifle through the even larger racks of weaponry. Truly, this must be a weapon-nut's wet-dream, because there was a bit of everything to choose from. He ended up deciding on two basic pistol style blasters, and a rifle, to go with the built in retractable vibro-blades in the bracers he had picked.

Endless possibilities or not, he knew his limits, and they included excessive hand-to-hand combat and unwieldy weaponry in general.

After checking everything over to make sure it worked, he finally turned toward the shelving units of helmets with a grimace. He absolutely did not want to wear one; Tatooine was already hot enough as it was, and he just knew it would ruin his skin, but it would greatly help to hide his identity. Of course, there were also the added gadgets in the visors to think of, not to mention the protective function that came from simply wearing it in the first place, but still… Lando absolutely despised discomfort.

With a long sigh, he rubbed his hands over his newly shaven face and head (a decision he tried very hard not to regret), then started picking through the shelves, looking for something light, but sturdy; something that would hopefully breathe enough so that he wouldn't feel like he was suffocating preferably.

He ended up picking a light grey helmet, with a vaguely Mandalorian design, because he was pretty sure that looking menacing was half of the job anyway.

Lando fingered the helmet a moment, then popped it over his head, and stepped in front of the oddly convenient mirror (really the room was designed more like a locker room than what he had expected from an arsenal), as he fiddled with the buttons that controlled the helmet's settings.

After flipping through a targeting scope, and a macrobinocular option, he muttered to himself, "Easy enough I guess." Halfway through the statement he bumped a button that was obviously a voice-changer and nearly gave himself a heart-attack, because the last half of what he said sounded like it had come from a particularly demented droid.

Once his heart stopped trying to escape from his chest, he decided that the function was actually pretty useful. It certainly added to the menace factor anyway. After a few other useful settings, he hit the button that turned on the helmet's infrared scanner. The black tinted visor glowed red in his reflection.

Okay, now he looked positively demonic.

'That. Is. Awesome!' was his inner child's unsurprising, instinctive reaction.

He snorted at himself and slid the helmet off, before turning it in his hands to look at it directly.

After several moments' perusal, he had to agree with his initial juvenile response. The helmet did look pretty cool.

(Not that he would ever tell anyone that; after all, he had his image as a suave lady's man to keep up.)

Whenever this was over with, he promised himself that he was swearing off wearing anything less comfortable than silk. It was the only way he could fully salvage his reputation by this point.

That and he was so tired of constantly being itchy.

With that final optimistic thought, he pressed a few buttons on the helmet to turn off the infrared, and turn the voice-changer back on, before he forced the helmet back over his head. After a now-stifled breath, he turned toward the reinforced door and stepped outside.

It was time to go pretend to be a badass personal body-guard to one of the galaxy's biggest (and short-tempered) criminals.

No pressure. Again.

After all, one of his favourite mottos was, "Fake it, 'til you make it."

Wedge Antilles considered himself to be pretty level-headed most of the time. Sure, he liked to tell jokes with the best of them (and pilots in the Alliance loved their jokes), but when he need to be serious he was, and when it came down to it he was usually able to make rational decisions, even while under pressure. It was that exact combination that made him so good at controlling the chaos that was the Rogue Squadron; something that he and Luke had in common, until the blonde had started getting pulled further and further into a nearly extinct belief system, with actual powers that went with it.

Watching the changes in the younger male after he returned from wherever it was that he went after Hoth was more than slightly disquieting at first, and now it had reached the point of being downright alarming. Sure, the teen-turned-young-adult, had his moments of easy control, and he had never seen anyone move like Luke did effortlessly, but Wedge knew his wing-man was barely keeping himself together sometimes. The young Lieutenant Commander was able to keep a cool enough head when he was busy (he did well enough for the most-part when he had people to talk to, plans to make, or he knew other people were counting on him), but it was obvious to Wedge that he was putting on a brave face some of the time to cover his own distress. Unfortunately, that was half of what it took to lead people in times of conflict, so until recently he had thought Luke's increasingly troubled state was a side-effect from the stress of the war.

Now he knew it was something far more concerning, and Wedge felt like he was watching his squadron leader visibly collapse in on himself, as little bits of him eroded and wore away.

That it had taken a full-on breakdown in the Corellia's Luck's hangar, which had ended with Luke in the infirmary, before he had finally begun to realize just how bad the situation had gotten, honestly still horrified him.

A conflicted look, before the younger male abruptly looked away, appearing stressed.

Wedge had reached forward out of concern, only to have his hand tossed to the side. The unexpected action was accompanied by PAIN, and some primal part of him had only seen someone that had hurt him.

It had made him defensive, which had not gotten a good reaction from the already stressed blonde.

(Almost feral, yet somehow shrewd pale blue eyes that looked frigid without their usual warmth, glowered blankly ahead.)

Somehow Wedge just knew the owner of those eyes was calculating if it would be worth the effort to massacre everyone on board the ship to achieve whatever goal he (and Wedge still hesitated to call the person with those eyes Luke even now) had in that moment.

A sudden shift in Luke's countenance had come from seemingly nowhere, and then whatever energy had shocked Wedge turned against Luke, and the shorter male was arching in pain.

Unable to touch Luke out of fear, Wedge had cleared the hangar instead.

"All of you; get out," Wedge demanded with a commanding glare, and the five or so sentients that were lurking nearby began leading a mass exodus out of the hangar.

It was funny how acting like you knew what you were doing got results so easily, because he had no idea what to do at the time. He had watched helplessly as his friend's body had eventually bowed so harshly it would have been agonizing, had he not been under the effects of the cruel energy that had managed to numb Wedge's hand after less than a second's worth of contact.

After a watching for what felt like eternity, the energy seemed to release Luke, but something was still clearly wrong.

Animosity twisted his wing-man's expression into something terrible as those cruel empty eyes glared at nothing, and "Shut up you kriffing farm-bitch!" echoed in the now-empty hangar.

Then, with a suddenness that was unnerving those eyes were twisted with conflict again, before he was met with the horror filled eyes of the Luke he knew.

In the aftermath, Luke had almost seemed like a young child, and watching his friend's obvious stress and self-loathing had been painful in its own way. Wedge had never felt as incapable of comfort as he had that day.

Or so useless.

How was he supposed to help with something he could barely wrap his mind around? The Force? Jedi? Sith? Light and Dark? Oh, Luke had explained more after the encounter with the Clones, but to be honest, he was still just as much at a loss as he had been on that day in the hangar.

Now he sat surrounded by his squadron, as they waited in limbo for the two groups that had left to return from their missions. He looked at his chrono and frowned. Luke's group had been due for a status update almost three minutes ago, and yet no one had said anything.

This wasn't right.

He looked over at the Lieutenant and his frown deepened. The man had been very punctual with the radio checks up until that point, yet he was sitting calmly, and quietly conversing with a few others. With little more than a glance at the Rogues, Wedge stood and made his way over to their current leader, "Sir?" he said uncertainly.

"Yes, Antilles?"

"I thought you might have lost track of time," Wedge started, but the Lieutenant gave him a blank look. Worry spiked in him, and trickled down his spine like ice, "The Commander's group hasn't checked in."

The Lieutenant shrugged, and fear began to gnaw at Wedge's gut.

This was wrong.

"I'm sure they're fine, Antilles. Nothing to worry about," the Lieutenant said knowingly.

Wedge looked at the Lieutenant incredulously for a brief moment, before his expression turned thoughtful, and then accepting. After beat he nodded in agreement, "Of course, Sir."

He turned around and returned to his squadron.

"Did he say anything, Wedge? It's been a bit since the last status check," Hobbie asked, with a hint of worry audible in his voice that was visible in the others' eyes.

Wedge quickly moved to assuage their fears as he settled down onto one of the bunks, "There's nothing to worry about, everything is fine."

His blanket statement to the group quickly calmed them and their focus shifted to other topics.

More time passed, but surely it couldn't be that big of a deal.

If there was anything to worry about, they would know.

AN: Well… here I had been worried this chapter was going to be too short. Ha. I sure showed myself!

Anyway, hello again everyone! We're finally really closing in on the truth of the Allyuen Arc, hooray! Hopefully you're enjoying yourselves as much as I am. Also, I've never actually gotten far enough into anything I've written to warrant the idea of story arcs, so… I'm kinda proud of myself? Seriously guys, it's kind of amazing how motivated I've been with this story (and hopefully saying that won't jinx my enthusiasm).