Paneau: remote Naeron Mountain range
Rys'tihn Retreat
5 APC

As they continued to wait outside the small room for Koril as he had an extended discussion with his uncle, Rech couldn't stand to watch Mand pace the hallway any longer. He stepped in front of her path and gently gripped her shoulders, inclining his head to silently meet her gaze. She looked at him with pained concern for a moment, unable to hide a minute tremble in her voice.

"Something's not right with him."

Rech nodded. "I know," he returned softly, releasing her. "He did the same thing to me a few days ago."

Alarmed, Mand's eyes grew wide. "He attacked you, too?"

"No, I meant that sudden...change, that complete switch. You saw it, didn't you?"

Still worried, she shrugged after a moment. "I don't know what I saw. I have never known Koril to be so...so violent."

Again Rech nodded understandingly; he had seen Koril express the same kind of righteous anger before, but it had been resolved before anything drastic had the chance to play out. Grief-stricken by the thought that Mand had been killed on Demmar during a struggle with a then-unknown enemy, Koril had become nearly inconsolable, as most of them had, but his sorrow easily translated into anger and intense frustration, and Rech wouldn't have been surprised if it had eventually escalated to a physical release of some kind.

Mand still looked upset, though. "...what can we do?"

"I'm not sure. He said we already helped him, but I don't know what he meant by that."

"I just wanted to calm him," she admitted softly as she looked to the floor. Rech was beginning to put it together, though, as he recalled their tense interaction just moments before.

"When you grabbed his arm? You were calming him?"

Somewhat surprised by his question as she met his gaze, she nodded.

"That's what I did the other day, too," Rech continued, releasing a slow breath in thought. "This has to be Force-related...but I didn't know that Elena had taught him anything yet."

"She hasn't."

As Koril stepped into the hallway beside them, he seemed a bit more...at peace than he was earlier, and a new look of determination kept his eyes sharp and undeterred by walking in on his friends talking about him. He shook his head after a moment to dismiss their regret, looking slightly repentant himself.

"I'm sorry you both had to see that. I...hadn't realized what I had done at the Manor, either."

Though she had quickly recovered from his unexpected entrance, Mand frowned at him. "Koril, there has to be something we can do for you... Will you please talk to us about it?"

As she finished her question, she brought her hand up to grip his arm like she had earlier, but surprising both Rech and Mand, Koril stepped back out of her reach before she could touch him again. His expression didn't change, though, as he shook his head once more, denying their offer to help him.

"I'll be fine."

Rech was far from convinced. "Look, if you're having some kind of trouble with a portion of your Force-sens-"

"I said, I'll be fine."

Though his tone was a bit more forceful, Koril's expression still remained the same, and it seemed to Rech that Koril wasn't grasping just how worried his friends were for him. Unsure how unstable Koril still was, Rech refrained from pushing the issue further, as did Mand. After looking about the hall for a moment, Koril returned to them with his brows furrowed.

"How did you get in here? The Retreat's security is only to grant access to Rys'tihns, unless I say otherwise."

Despite being reluctant to speak, Mand answered him quietly. "Derek and Cordira are with Major Jax in the front atrium."

Koril hardly paused. "Did you bring the Celestia?"

"No, we came in the Novalis," Rech returned after a moment, his own wariness evident in his tone. The Natiyrs' craft was smaller and nimbler than the bulky luxury yacht, and they knew they needed to locate their friend quickly. When Koril remained silent, though, Rech lightened his voice to continue. "It's late. We all should get back to the Manor."

Without any acknowledgment, Koril walked away wordlessly, headed toward the turbolift that would take him down to the lower level to meet the others. Rech only watched him for a moment before he turned to Mand, sighing sadly.

"I want to make sure Cade's alright," he told her quietly, but the weary look in his wife's eyes focused his concern on her instead. "Are you okay?"

Mand nodded after a pause, closing her eyes briefly to settle her own anxiety. "Just tired." With a light sigh, she gave a small smile. "Ri seems to think that she's the only one who's working that hard when we're training."

Worried that she might be more fatigued than she was letting on, he gently brushed back her long brown hair from over her ear and rested his hand against the side of her neck, furtively assessing her condition with the Force. "Mand, you're still recovering... You probably shouldn't have done so much this week."

She nodded. "Probably, but...I needed to. Kept my mind off it."

Softly running his thumb along her jaw, he tilted her face up to him with his palm and leaned in to kiss her sweetly. Though he knew she might notice anyway, he attempted to discreetly share some energy with her while she was distracted, but he could feel a growing smile tightening her lips against his.

"You're losing your touch," she whispered with a faintly teasing air as she leaned back from him. "But thank you."

Rech smiled a bit, too, as he kissed her at her temple. "Go back to the Manor, get some rest. I'll join you soon."

Her smile faded as she looked down the hallway where Koril had gone, and though he remained concerned for her health, he had another injury to tend to and had to watch her leave without him.

Bakura: remote Telaan Mountains

Though she was very sure she was still breathing, Deilia Rys'tihn felt like she was suffocating. Her lungs were on fire, possibly literally, and she wouldn't have been surprised if she coughed and watched thick smoke billow out of her mouth. Her throat seared anew with each choking breath, but it was the left side of her neck that burned even more fiercely, forcing her to assess the rest of herself quickly. She was laying back against something...lumpy, but somewhat soft, and it kept her head rolled onto her right shoulder awkwardly. She didn't dare move, though, until she could open her eyes against her pounding headache -

- but sudden pressure on the left side of her neck caused her even more excruciating pain. Her reflex opened her right eye, but her left remained swollen shut as her breath solidified in her chest in shock -

"It's bacta, Dee! It'll help, but you have to stay still!"

Finally able to gasp and breathe through clenched teeth, she waited for the bacta to soothe the burn on her neck before she looked back up again at her rescuer, glad to see the young man knelt at her side.

He looked over her wounds worriedly, but as their gazes met, she could see the transparent remorse in his eyes. "I'm sorry I couldn't get you out any sooner... I had a hard time finding you. The smoke was so heavy..."

Just thankful to be alive, Deilia reached up and gripped his arm just below his palm that was holding a bacta-soaked rag against her neck, giving him a weak yet appreciative smile. "I'll be okay, Garran, thank you." Her rough, hoarse voice sounded terrible, but she expected as much considering how irritated her entire throat was. "You're not hurt, are you?"

Garran shook his head. "No. You told me to run, so I ran. I don't think they saw me."

She had begun to nod in response when a twinge of sharp pain burned down her neck again, freezing her in place with a grimace on her face. Garran looked even more guilty, thinking that he had worsened her pain. "The bacta was all I had up here, but maybe I can get you something else from home -"

"Garran," she interrupted gently, reassuring him with a soft tone and another wan smile. "It's okay. I've survived a lot worse, believe me." She slowly lifted his hand from her neck and held the rag in place herself, gingerly distributing the healing salve to more of her burned skin. Her smile faded, though, as Garran turned and looked longingly out the mouth of the small cave they were taking refuge inside. In the diminishing light of the evening, the raging fire still consuming a humble home located further down the mountainside washed warm oranges and yellows across Garran's disheartened face, turning his golden brown hair into a shimmering fiery red. But even as the flames were reflected in his light brown eyes and made them look more amber, they couldn't mask the pain of loss he made no effort to hide.

"...you can't go back in there."

Garran didn't respond for a long moment, remaining quiet and somberly watching the blaze as it destroyed everything he had known in his sheltered, seventeen-year life. "There won't be anything left to go back to. It's all burning..."

Despite already knowing how empty her words sounded, she at least had to say something. "...I'm so sorry, Garran."

For the past week, Deilia had been staying with Garran at his home, helping him to sort through his late mother's belongings. Deilia had arrived on Bakura in search of a woman named Solienne Bolc, a recluse whom she had finally been able to track down after more than a year of hunting. Upon reaching Bolc's home, Deilia met Garran, and he informed her that his mother had died just a week earlier from a long, arduous battle with an illness she had refused to treat. Frustrated that she was too late but recognizing that the young man was in need of a friend, she stayed, getting to know him well as she listened to his stories about his quiet life with his mother Solienne.

They had just begun to tackle a room that was small but full of various tools and supplies that Solienne had used for projects over the years when the home became the target of a violent break in. Before Deilia could sufficiently assess their situation, she had encountered two powerful burglars who fought her hand to hand. Thanks to her warning, Garran had been able to slip away unnoticed and unharmed. During her fight, she took a few hits to the face, which explained her swollen eye, but at some point, she had been knocked out; she couldn't remember how the scuffle ended. The smell of smoke brought her around briefly sometime later, but she had no idea how she had gotten the burn on her neck, nor did she know how Garran had been able to pull her out of the blazing inferno in his home and all the way up the mountainside to their current shelter. He wasn't the most able-bodied seventeen-year-old she had seen, but apparently he could be when necessary.

Feeling the weight of the tense silence between them as Garran continued to watch the fire, Deilia tried to say something more, but nothing else appropriate came to her mind. He had lost his mother, his entire world just two weeks ago, and now he could only watch as everything else that would remind him of her ascended to the sky in unsightly, merciless smoke. What else could she say to a young man she had only known for a few days? His heartbreak was almost unbearable for her to see, but unsure what more she could do for him, she simply remained with him, waiting out his grief.

With a heavy, sad sigh, Garran finally tore his gaze away, looking down at his hand as he pulled it from his jacket pocket. He held something concealed tightly in his palm, but he kept his grip on it, as if he were afraid he would lose it, too, if he let go.

"At least I was able to grab this... It would've survived the fire, but...I couldn't leave it."

As she looked at his fist, his fingers slowly released, allowing her to see a small, oval, smooth green marbled stone with breathtakingly intricate carvings and...very familiar detailed symbols...

"Mom never went anywhere without it. Even when we just went down to the market in the valley...she kept it in her pocket. It meant a lot to her. She never told me why, though." His brows creased together in thought for a moment, and luckily Deilia corrected her expression before he looked up at her. "Is it a good luck stone or something?"

She had to stifle a larger smile. "Maybe it is. Seemed to do you well enough, getting me all the way up here by yourself."

Surprisingly, Garran smiled a bit himself at her praise, turning the stone over in his palm to inspect its opposite side. But again his expression fell after a few moments as he continued to suffer the weight of grief, and even though she knew he was still reeling from his loss, she had to know...

"Garran...was there something of...value in your home that they wanted? Something they wanted desperately enough that they destroyed any evidence that they took it?"

He considered her question silently for several minutes, running his fingers absentmindedly over the stone's carved grooves as he thought. Eventually he shook his head, returning his gaze to the fire below. "Mom made a decent amount of credits off her paintings when she sold them, but I never would've thought that they were popular enough to steal." His eyes saddened even more as he continued. "They were so nice, so detailed... The forested landscapes she painted so many times really appealed to a lot of the Bakurans who live in this valley. Even though the mountain ranges looked like they could have been anywhere around here, she always included a small...building hidden in the trees, or a ship in the sky that obviously wasn't Bakuran, and I had never seen anything like them before. Whenever I asked her about them, she just shrugged and kept on painting..."

Though tears began to form in his eyes, he blinked repeatedly to thwart them, refusing to cry in front of her. "I wish I could have saved one," he confessed quietly, his voice shaking. "Something else of hers...to remind me of her..."

Becoming emotional herself, Deilia had to close her eyes to keep from tearing up, as well. Garran had greatly risked his life going back into the burning home to rescue her, a stranger who had only become his friend just days before, and it cost him the chance to salvage his mother's works before the fire consumed everything. To him, they were precious memories he could no longer retrieve, and unable to connect to anything of hers except for the stone in his hand, Deilia could easily sense how lost he felt. She owed the young man her life, and she could, no, she should grant him his wish...

Her voice still sounded so raspy. "What would you say if I told you...that I could get one of her paintings for you?"

He didn't even look up. "I'd say, the fire has already burned them all, and you shouldn't go back in there, either, with all that smoke you've already breathed in."

"No, not here... Somewhere else."

As he looked down at her again, his eyes were reluctantly curious. "...where?"

It was dangerous enough for her to go to the city-planet so soon after her exile, let alone actually get to one of the paintings...but she had to. "Coruscant."

He nodded after a long moment, but Deilia wasn't finished with her terms.

"If we leave, Garran, we can't come back. I will take care of you until you no longer need me, but...you can never come back here."

With another long look down the mountainside, Garran seemed to have made up his mind fairly quickly. "There's nothing left for me here. I'll stay with you, Dee. Now wherever you go, I'll go."

Though she wasn't expecting such a rapid turnaround, she smiled tiredly and nodded to accept his pledge, glad to see a slight glint of hope in his eyes. "We should wait until morning, though," she added after a moment. His response was almost instantaneous.

"I'll get you a blanket."

Confused, Deilia watched as he disappeared further into the back of the small cave, but she could only turn her head so far before her neck burn began to protest her movement. She heard what sounded like Garran rustling through a large cargo box for something, but within a few minutes, he returned with a blanket like he said he would, but also with other supplies she hadn't expected. He set down a small glowlamp beside her, as well as a bag of what looked like food rations before he draped the heavy blanket across her, even making a careful effort to avoid grazing it over her neck where she was still holding the bacta rag. Caring for her was obviously second nature to him, but where had the supplies come from?

"I played up and down this mountainside a lot when I was a kid," he answered her unasked question as she sat back down at her side. "I found this cave when I was six and made it my secret hideout. I knew Mom found out about it, but I've kept it stocked with survival supplies ever since just as a joke." He gave a short, bitter laugh. "Never thought I'd use it to actually hide in."

Sensing his returning anxiety, she reached over with her free hand and gripped his shoulder, making her voice as reassuring as possible despite its roughness.

"We'll be okay, Garran."

Appreciating her gesture, he nodded and laid down on his side facing her, tucking a light jacket under his head as a makeshift pillow for the night.