Author's Note: I missed my last update due to the insidious plotting of Darth Real Life. But I won't be defeated and to spite that old tyrant, here are two chapters in one go. Enjoy!

The Second Month Trial - Part II

Odd Ends, Ansion, Mid Rim

"We can't leave it like this." Shiv followed his mate back out into the courtyard.

"Of course we can."

If Shiv was upset by the apparent disintegration of his adoptive daughter's partnership, Eda was downright gratified. Having retrieved her clippers from the woodwork, she returned to contemplating the pruning of the miniature Mii tree with far more enthusiasm than she'd ever displayed for the chore in the past eight years.

There were many things about his mate that Shiv loved, completely and unconditionally, but he was not so moonstruck that he couldn't acknowledge her faults as well. Her contentment over the result of the fight between Ro and Wren was, he admitted, one of her unlovelier sides. Eda could be as vindictive as a balked nexu and she wasn't above sabotaging what she disapproved of. The last ten minutes were a perfect example.

Shiv knew Eda was a pyrocracker; it was one of the things he loved and admired the most about her. But he also knew that she was quite capable of controlling that temper. She'd deliberately pushed Wren over the edge back there, instead of using her formidable presence to break things up and restore order.

Shiv sighed, leaning against the veranda's wooden frame and blinking out into the bright afternoon sun. The day had started so pleasantly, too.

"The pups have to talk this out. Leaving things with bared teeth and snapping jaws isn't the way to end a partnership."

"It is. This time." She walked around the table, cocking her head coquettishly to the side as she regarded the miniature Mii, contemplatively fingering its tiny leaves. "These will have to go," she informed the empty air and began the delicate task of pruning.

Shiv growled to himself. Resolutely, he straightened his shoulders and marched over to his mate, taking the clippers from her hand.

"Shiv!" Eda turned a fierce scowl on him, all of her good humor gone. "What is..."

"No." His firm tone cut across her protests. It was so rare for him to be stern with her, that Eda was left staring up at him in astonishment. "If they can't work it out," Shiv informed her, "then that's fine. But they will at least try and we will make certain that it happens."

His vehemence might have startled her, but his Eda was never down for long.

Propping her fists on her shapely hips, she glared at him haughtily. "You," she said, thrusting an imperious finger into the fur poking out of the neckline of his shirt, "said we shouldn't interfere. You said Ro was a grown woman. You said this was her business. Not ours."

Undaunted, Shiv captured the finger with his own hand and held it, firmly, but gently. "Even grown wolves need to be shown the scent, once every red moon."

"I don't want to show him. Anything. I want him. Gone." In her growing agitation, Eda's speech became even more clipped, the faintest of Huttese accents underlying the words.

But Shiv wasn't going to give in on this. Amiable to a fault he might be, but the durasteel will of a hunter still stiffened his spine. "Ro wants him here."

"Not according to what I heard."

"You," and he pointed one clawed finger at her, "know better than anyone that what's said in anger is meant to hurt, not necessarily tell the truth."

Her lips thinned, but she wouldn't quite meet his gaze.

That's one battle won, he thought. Quickly, he gave her finger still in his possession an affectionate lick, then put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close against his tall frame and away from the courtyard. "Now, I think the best place for you to start looking for the lad would be the city wall..."

"Me?" She stared up at him, dumbfounded.

"Yes," Shiv said gently, "you."

"Why should I..."

"You know why, Eda."

"I don't..."

"Eda." It wasn't often that he interrupted his mate and now he'd done so twice. He stared down at her, meeting her lovely hazel eyes squarely and letting just a hint of censure creep into his voice. "You know why."

There were a lot of places to go and sulk in the big house.

When Shiv reentered, after seeing Eda off on her errand, Ro was no longer on the stairwell and he assumed she'd retreated to her room to either cry or throw something in privacy - Ro's nature may tend towards the cheerful, but when a darker mood was upon her, it was entirely unpredictable. On the second-floor landing, however, he made out the distinctive sounds of the piano coming from the library.

Carefully stepping over the broken glass-shade of the lamp Eda had brought back from Theed - it had survived the invasion of Naboo, but had stood no chance in the crossfire between clone and Jedi - Shiv did indeed find his adoptive daughter in the library.

Half slumped over the piano, one cheek resting against her propped hand, Ro's other hand moved morosely over the keys, not playing any particular tune, as far as Shiv's untrained ears could tell. Surprisingly, the little astromech she'd salvaged from their trip to Lotho Minor had taken up a post next to the piano, adding the occasional muted whooo sound in descant to Ro's playing. Generally, R3-T3 hid out in Shiv's workshop whenever Ro was at Odd Ends, in order to avoid Eda and any radical plans on her part of modifying him into a flower pot for her sunblossoms. The little droid's audacity brought a smile to Shiv's face and acted as a bulwark against the frustration and gloom that permeated the library and filled his lungs and blood with every breath.

The untold hazards of having an empath in the house.

Artee watched him approach, but Ro didn't seem to take note of his presence until he settled down next to her on the bench. She gave him a fleeting smile as he playfully bumped her in an effort to settle his larger frame and she willingly scooched over to make room, but quickly returned her attention to the instrument.

Shiv didn't try to break the silence. Instead, he studied the keys himself, watching Ro's long, delicate fingers flit over them.

He was a lover of music, but had himself little talent - or rather, had little interest in cultivating one. He enjoyed listening; learning an instrument and playing it himself was entirely too much like work. But he'd watched Eda for decades as she'd tried to overcome her own lack of musical talent and had picked up a few things through sheer proximity. Settling his great hairy fingers over the keys, he found the right ones to match Ro's meandering little tune. His ears perked - they were his one true advantage in this game.

Ro cast him a quick look, but didn't interrupt her playing. Indeed, her fingers struck up a more purposeful tune and Shiv struggled - but managed - to follow her lead. They kept at the game for a while, Ro growing more animated with each added complexity to the music until Shiv's admittedly small fountain of musical cunning ran dry.

He winced as his fingers, too big and clumsy, missed the necessary change-over and caused the tentative harmony they'd created to fall apart.

Shiv glanced at Ro sheepishly, finally breaking the silence. "Guess I'd have to practice that one a bit more." At his station next to the big piano, Artee whistled in agreement.

Ro's answering grin was fleeting, but there. "You don't practice. That's the whole trouble-to." Reminded of trouble, her expression turned serious. Sighing, she said: "Guess you wanna chatter about other troublesome?"

He stretched his legs out, wiggling the toes of his prosthetic leg. "I think we'd better. That was quite the, ehm, display back there." He'd never had this kind of talk with his biological pups - each of their dams, bless their hearts, had been gifted with wiser heads than his and he'd left them to raise the pups as each saw fit and with good results. But Shiv did know something about addressing discord within a squad - Chee, his second during his Highlander days, and their tech specialist, Viyal, had made a sport out of pulling each others tails - and he felt marginally qualified to have this discussion with Ro. At least, he thought wryly, Ro was by nature disinclined to holding grudges and tempers. He wasn't sure Eda would find Wren nearly as open to suggestion. Hopefully, she'd be able to get the point across without too much blood-spilling in the process.

"It wasn't my fault." Even as the words left her, Ro grimaced. "'Kay, so it kinda was. But it was his pitch in the blame-court, too."

"I have no doubt." He scratched at the base of his tattered ear. "A wise old wolf once told me it takes two to fight. Otherwise, all you've got is a lone hunter taking down an unresisting Tarchalian gazelle. You, little bit," he said, affectionately patting the top of her head, "are anything but unresisting." There was pride in his voice, which he didn't try to hide. Ro had fire in her; the same quality he so admired in his mate.

"He's just such a stoopa." She scowled fiercely down at the black and white keys. "So he's an ARC. So what-now? I don't even know what's so triffy special about ARCs, so what's the big humdrum about keeping it a lock-away secret from me?"

"Did you ask?"

She gave him a look that was classic Eda. "Didn't exactly have the tick-tocks in-between the shouting."

"Perhaps that's the crux of the matter." He fiddled with the keys, trying to work his fingers through the sequence he'd bodged earlier. "Maybe it's not so much the secret itself, but the consequences of telling."

"Huh?"

Shiv sighed, struggling to express himself more clearly. He wasn't made for debating the finer, philosophical points of morality and secrets. He was a soldier and could best articulate his thoughts in a soldier's straight-forward language. "It's all about the Intel; not just what's in it, but who has it. If Wren is an ARC," and he'd have to look that term up later, though he could make a pretty good guess at what the acronym stood for, "then that might not change your approach to this partnership. But if he's going through these lengths to keep it a secret, then that means there are unfriendlies out there who could use that Intel to outflank him. Secrets in wartime," he added darkly, "have the power to kill."

"Then he should tell me," she insisted. "So I can watch his back. Or his flank."

Shiv drummed his clawed fingers against the wood of the piano. Ro was being purposefully dense. "Privacy is a luxury in the army, Ro. I've told you that before." He gestured at the large library, kept in an even larger house that could have accommodated four families, instead of his small one. "That's why Eda and I bought this house. We wanted space. Now think about what you know about the clones. You've told me how crammed in they were on Gaftikar. Seems to me keeping secrets is just about the only way a man can have some privacy under those conditions."

"But he's not on Gaftikar anymore. Wren has his own room and all around space." She turned her large teal eyes to him, confused and frustrated. "Things changed."

"Change doesn't happen overnight."

"It's been two months."

"Or two months."

"You and Eda don't have secrets."

"Me and..." He stopped abruptly to peer more closely at his daughter's face with his one good eye.

With her large eyes, long and flamboyant hair and rosy cheeks, Ro was often mistaken as far younger than she actually was. At the moment, with her hair colored a strange ochre shade and her lips pursed, she was the very picture of a pouting three-year-old.

"Ro, what you and Wren have is very different." He quirked his tattered ear at her. "Unless there's something you want to tell me?"

"What? No." She scrunched up her face in disgust, crinkling her nose in the process and reminding Shiv inevitably of Shavra, his biological daughter, when she'd just been a tiny pup and of the firm belief that all males - with the exception of her sire - were possessed of cootie-infested pelts. It was adorable, though entirely incongruous on the face of a commander. "Cookie and I aren't like that. Not that he ain't scrumptious, but little more sugar and little less bite, if you please. No, what I meant is, we're partners. Skadooching through the stars; saving lives and virtues, while hunting down rats and putting baddies at bay. Like you and Eda did. And you and Eda trusted each other."

"That," Shiv pointed out, "takes time."

"But how much time?" The thrust of her round little chin was downright petulant and he didn't care for the whine in her voice either.

Shiv sighed, leaning back a ways to regard the Jedi in full. Looking at her, he was torn between pity and impatience.

It was easy to forget that Ro was still very young; at nineteen, she was at that awkward stage of shaking off the last remnants of childhood and finding her place as an adult. She'd also been alone for most of her life; isolated from her peers by her wandering life and often taxing nature. Long-term relationships, aside from the rather tenuous one she kept with her brother, hadn't exactly been a feature in her life before. She'd not even been attached to a single Master for that long; Ro'd left the Order after only two years of being a Padawan and Master Djinn Altis had left her with Eda and Shiv after barely a year.

On the other hand, she'd insisted on taking on the responsibilities of an adult - as a Jedi investigator and as a commander in the Grand Army. As such, resorting to childish petulance when things weren't going the way you wanted them to wasn't just unbecoming - it was downright dangerous.

No doubt sensing his misgivings, Ro shot Shiv an uncertain look from beneath the cover of her unruly bangs. "I'm guessing that was a bit much?"

"It was."

She sighed and leaned her head against the piano's wooden frame. Artee trundled up to her, patting her knee reassuringly with one grappling arm. Ro smiled at her droid, patting him on the domed head in turn, before meeting Shiv's gaze shamefacedly.

"Guess I've been the stoopa," she said in a near-whisper, before groaning and putting her hands over her eyes. "What was I thinking? I know Cookie don't like sniffs and peeks into his private privates. Why couldn't I have just kept my neb out of his shinies?" She turned her large eyes on him, full of confusion and entreaty. "What's the matter with us, Shiv? Everything was going less or more okeeday and now we're at each others throats like zombie tumble bunnies."

He hugged her close. "You've been partners for two months now, Ro. That's long enough for the novelty to wear off and quirks to ruffle your furs. It's the end of the honeymoon. As to the thinking bit," he smiled reassuringly down at her, "we sometimes do stupid things. All part of finding your way." He dropped his jaw in a wider grin, winking his good eye at her. "How many times do you think Eda used to threaten to chop my tail off, you think?"

She giggled. "Hate to break the newsflash, Shiv, but she bodily threatened that just yesterday."

"Well, there you have it." He gave her another one-armed hug, just to see her smile again. "It's a work in progress. All good partnerships take time and patience."

"And what do I do in the meantime?" she asked plaintively. "If he doesn't trust me..."

"If you want Wren to trust you, then start by trusting that he'll eventually get there."

"That's a lot of trust in one sentence."

"If that's what it takes."

She hummed to herself, idly going back to playing the keys, while the droid continued to watch.

It wasn't quite an answer, but at least she was thinking about it.