Last Second Savior

by plums

While leading the final charge against a retreating Dark Lord, Harry is thrown through a destabilized Demon Portal, landing on a strange world in a galaxy far far away. Eventual Harry / Multi

4. Friendship and Hiding

Summary:

Harry Potter / Star Wars-over. While leading the final charge against a retreating Dark Lord, Harry is thrown through a Demon Portal, landing on a strange world in a galaxy far away.

Disclaimer

I don't own Harry Potter in any way. JKR has those rights... Also, Star Wars is owned by Lucasfilm/George Lucas, etc etc.

*Author's Note *

Inspirations: Sword and Magic by bluminous8

Chapter First Published: 2013-03-31

Chapter Last Update:

Chapter 4 – Friendship and Hiding

The exhausted duo appeared in a large clearing, surrounded on one side by massive spiked plants that towered into the sky, and on the other by the forest of tree flowers.

"Those are Mature Spore Plants," Aayla tiredly said as she nodded towards the massive spiked monstrosities. "If you touch them, they attack. They've wiped out whole armored divisions of clone troopers when one clone was careless enough to brush against one."

"Perfect," said Harry while he looked them over. "We can set up a temporary camp for a few hours here underneath some of the larger ones that extend over the forest. We won't be visible from the sky and no one in their right mind will go near them."

"Harry, they aren't safe to be around," she persisted. She personally didn't want to be anywhere by these things. She had seen the damage they can inflict first-hand and had no desire to witness such carnage again.

"Don't worry, it's not like we'll be close enough to touch them," said a very satisfied wizard as they walked underneath a large spore plant branch that extended above them by at least ten meters.

"We have two options. We can build ourselves a small shelter. We'll end up exposed to the elements, but if we have to leave quickly it'll buy us a bit more time. The other option is to use a Wizard's Tent. It looks like a small cloth structure on the outside, but there is a full-fledged apartment on the inside. Drawback is that it takes a few minutes for me to set up and tear down. And whatever option we choose, I can place a charmed wall around the shelter in case the plant attacks."

Aayla could see the benefits of both. She really wanted to shower and sleep in a genuine bed. The barracks bunks were just as uncomfortable as the beds in the Jedi Temple. Undercover work was always a favorite of hers because they were one of the few times she could sleep in beds the rest of society found normal. However, she saw how a low-key presence would be undermined by the utilization of things not native to the planet.

Harry spoke up and interrupted her thoughts, which only made her choice easier when he said, "Let's just build a temporary shelter for now. I'll get some wards thrown up, and then I'll put the tent up long enough for you to do… whatever it is you need to do." Harry waved his hands wildly around and gestured towards her lower body while he looked away. She found his embarrassment at her need to utilize the fresher quite endearing.

"I'll stay on watch while you're in there. Then we'll tear down the tent until we can get back to the cave. I think staying there will be a good place to wait things out a few days."

"Ok, sounds like a plan," agreed Aayla wholeheartedly.

A very quick and dirty shelter was built with leaves and pieces of a downed flower tree. Harry had the temporary ward stones set and keyed to Aayla and himself within minutes, followed by the tent construction right next to their temporary home.

However, when Harry finally pitched the tent, Aayla could not help but feel like she was about to be set up as the victim of some sort of prank. All Harry would say was, "Have fun," before he turned to add what he said were additional protections to the small enclosed bubble of the Force he said would prevent anything of hostile intent from approaching them.

She turned to the entrance to this tent. It was rather primitive, made of some type of synthetic cloth. Most outdoor temporary structures she was familiar with were expandable and made of a very light version of plasteel. They were quite durable, yet flexible and light. She was far too tired to avoid a joke at her expense at the moment, so she simply walked inside to get this over with.

She felt her mouth fall open as she stepped through the threshold. She could feel the Force tingle upon her as she passed the entrance and 'shifted' somewhere. That was the best way she could describe the curious feeling she felt when she walked inside. Her Force Perception abilities could sense nothing outside of wherever she was now, which included Harry. And then she finally looked around at where she was.

It was a small one bedroom apartment with kitchen, fresher, and sitting room. Simplicity was the word, and it had a quiet coziness to it. She wondered if this is what a typical home was like on Harry's world.

In the end, she decided to delay any further thoughts she devoted to the tent until after she visited the fresher. When she entered the room, she found it was as simple as the rest of the apartment. She was amused by the very flowery soaps that came out of the dispenser on a wall, and some other odd liquids in containers in the shower. The one luxury in the place seemed to be a very large soaking tub which could probably seat four quite comfortably.

Even though she sorely wanted to soak in hot water for a good hour or so, a shower was all she needed at the moment until they relocated later that night. The idea of Harry alone on watch was another matter that pressed urgently upon her mind. He had done everything today except convince Shaak Ti to listen to her, and even then the opportunity to do so wouldn't have occurred without his help. He had supposedly fought a major battle to end a war which he still hadn't fully explained, had his whole life taken from him, killed twelve ARC's, saved and healed her, and then took her back in time and possibly saved a good number of her fellow members of the Jedi Order. And now, while she was inside a tent in a fresher, he stayed outside to build protections in the Force she had never heard of before.

Forget what the Jedi Order may owe him for being able to get word out before the mutiny hit. She personally owed Harry Potter her life. If she had to take a five-minute shower now to prevent him from falling asleep from exhaustion, she would do so to make sure the courageous man out there didn't succumb to fatigue while alone.

As she slipped out of her clothes, she caught a glimpse of something over her shoulder in the reflected profile from the mirror. She turned around and gasped as she saw, for the first time, the scars from her healed injuries.

There they were. Seven circular blotches of shiny whitish-blue scar tissue stood out prominently against the normally dull blue of her back. She had felt them as she had moved around today, but this was the first time she was completely aware of the extent of her injuries.

She realized immediately there would've been no way for her to survive if not for Harry. From what Harry said, only seven of the twelve clones had managed to fire. She doubted each would have fired once, so she would have easily received over twenty to thirty blaster shots in the back. In all honesty, a normal sentient being would be lucky to survive three or more direct blaster impacts at close range. With Harry's help, she had lived through an unprecedented seven.

The true surprise was the state of the scarred tissue. There was far less damage than the results of a Bacta submersion would have provided if she had she been healed in that manner. The next amazing thing she became consciously aware of was that her muscles seemed just fine. There was the odd twitch in them, like something wasn't quite healed right. However, she experienced nowhere near the muscle loss and control issues that would normally be associated with the extreme Bacta treatment regimen needed for close range blaster fire.

She sighed as she turned to look at her bare front and then turned again to look at her back. She was not normally a vane creature, but she was well aware of how men viewed her. She had an amazing chest, toned abs, a great looking ass that extended down to very full legs. The number of times she had been hit on by random strangers was far too innumerable to count. The same could be said as to the number of times while on undercover assignments she was subjected to sleazy criminals that attempted to claim her as a slave since she was a free Twi'lek female. Her lightsaber, hand to hand fighting abilities, and subtle Force manipulations often discouraged the continuation of such thoughts, but these scars might discourage them as well.

The Jedi beliefs she had sworn as a child to uphold would say that physical disabilities or scarring were not burdens to feel concern. Physical beauty was only for the attraction of a mate, and a taboo upon relationships existed under the Jedi Code.

However, as a woman, she could not help but think this attack inflicted some deeper psychological damage upon her. She was grateful to be alive, but she felt as if this had affected her in some other manner that had not yet fully registered. She tried to justify the train of thought when she told herself she merely had examined how this might hinder her attractiveness in undercover situations. After all, her looks were a valuable resource against criminals to gain information. But, she somehow knew she felt the impact of her injuries in a much more personal manner.

As Aayla banished these negative thoughts and slipped into the shower, she was surprised when it offered hot water. The Jedi, for some odd reason, had long made all occupants of the Temple take cold showers. It had ingrained the notion that hot showers were a luxury just slightly behind a hot bath.

Her shower finished after ten minutes, and afterwards she redressed and joined Harry back outside. The moment she stepped outside of the tent, the feel of the Force in the air felt as if it had slapped her in the face. She barely registered the change in humidity from the cool air conditioning inside the tent to the stifling heat outside.

Harry still had not finished the completion of the protections for the area. Sweat dripped down his face as he used his wand to carve symbols and lines into a large flat piece of stone that was not present when she had gone into the tent.

She watched as he continued on for another ten minutes before he finally finished. The intricate writings bordered upon artwork to her eyes. With his task completed, he finally acknowledged her presence when he beckoned her over. He conjured a small knife from nowhere in his hand with a sudden flash of the Force.

"I need a few drops of your blood to key yourself to a few of the protections. Just stand over here. I'll cut your palm with this and heal it right afterwards." He gestured and pointed at two specific symbols on the block. "You'll need to place blood here and here."

Aayla nodded, curious to see not only him heal her palm, but how this blood would be used. There was a quick flash of pain as the knife sliced open her palm, but an instant later, the heat was suddenly gone. She opened her now bloodied hand, to find there was now no wound there. After the momentary shock passed, she dripped some of the pooled blood from her palm upon the two symbols Harry pointed out. He followed suit with his own hand and did the same before she felt him fire a quick burst of the Force into the stone. She immediately shivered due to the aftereffects of so much living Force suddenly concentrated in the air.

"Those are wards," said Harry simply as he pointed to the air around them. "If anyone means either of us ill-intent and crosses within the outer boundaries of the wards, they'll feel a strong urge to leave. If they force the issue, and proceed further in, they'll experience pain like they've never experienced before in their lives. If they make it even further in after that… well..." He shrugged as he said the last, the implications quite clear as to the fatal consequences of such actions.

Aayla had no clue how to respond to that. It seemed an over-the-top level of security to put up, but then again, it was wise to overestimate those who mean you harm. She had never heard of the Force used in such a violent preventative manner. But in the end, it was a defensive mechanism. It warned and diverted people away first before it went on the offensive.

'Jedi use the Force for knowledge and defense,' she repeated the old mantra in her head. So, slowly, she nodded both her understanding and agreement.

"So, we're protected for now. This should hold us over till we get back to that cave tonight. I'd personally rather be in the cave because it was enclosed and rain won't get to us. We have roughly six and half hours to go before it's safe to go back there."

He walked back over to the make-shift hut they had built together. She almost laughed at him as he conjured a big squashy chair, which he fell almost bonelessly into it and breathed a deep sigh of relief. With an inattentive motion of his arm, he somehow conjured a second one for Aayla to sit in.

With a gesture for her to sit, he tiredly said, "I suppose you probably want some answers to questions now."

She sat down as he asked her, and nodded, "Yes, however, you look dead on your feet and I don't think we're in any rush. I have a feeling we'll be stuck here for a while."

She paused and tried to think about exactly what they needed to wait upon and what tasks they would have to perform. "We need to make sure the clones not only leave the planet but leave the system before we attempt to bring those ships out from cover. Then we'll need to move them together so we can dismantle and rebuild them. All of it is military hardware. We have to change them enough so they won't be recognized by scanners, because people will think we've stolen them if they're being flown by civvies. We'll have plenty of time to 'talk' during all that. For now, you should lie down and rest. Six and a half hours is just the minimum we need to wait to move. I'd personally rather not remake our camp in the middle of the night, so let's wait till morning to leave."

She watched him absorb her words, before he slowly nodded in agreement and stood up. He pointed his wand at the ground in front of him and a large ball of blue flame appeared. "That blue ball flame should last about four to five hours. For now I'm going to go take a shower and change clothes into something a bit more comfortable. I just get the feeling I don't need full-fledged combat robes and everything associated to them at the moment. I guess we may as well leave the tent up if we'll be here for the night. I'll probably crash on the couch in there eventually."

Aayla watched as he walked towards the tent and stopped. He looked like something bothered him, and weighed heavily on his mind. Then he shook his head and went on inside to shower, which left Aayla alone outside.

It was a quiet night that began to descend the fungal world. Temperatures during Felucian nights often plummeted to very cold temperatures due to the storm systems that often moved in overnight. It was weather cycle that depressed and slowed down even the hardiest of warriors. Cold rain at night, stifling heat and humidity in the day. She slowly acclimated to the brutal combination just as everyone else did, but she could not wait to leave the planet behind.

Thus far on this particular tour of duty on the planet there had been no need for her to spend many nights exposed to the elements. So tonight was a new experience for her. The opportunity to rest while outdoors was an event that did not occurr often for a Jedi Knight, though she secretly wish it could have occurred on some resort world rather than the deathtrap of Felucia. The native predators were quiet fearsome on their own, and then some moron over the course of the eons had the gall to import Acklays and Rancors to Felucia.

The Acklays were the most numerous predators on the planet. They were large bug-like creatures with massive claws that hunted in packs. They would swarm over battlefields looking for carrion to devour, sometimes with the fighting still going on. She hoped the protections would keep them away like Harry said, but she still planned on staying somewhat awake tonight just in case they didn't.

Her thoughts on the vicious wildlife of the planet was interrupted by Harry's return from the tent He was showered, as indicated by his wet hair. He donned a well-worn uniform that spoke of having seen much use in the past. It wasn't nearly as heavily armored as the previous outfit he had worn, and it looked like it was far more comfortable to her eyes.

"I don't think I'm going to be able to stay awake much longer without resorting to potions to stay conscious, so I'm going to turn in a few. I was wondering if you could do me one favor beforehand." She nodded at this and motioned for him to continue.

"This is going to sound a bit odd. I'm not sure if you noticed or not, but I don't speak the same language as you. I'm using magic to understand what you say and for you to understand what I say."

The internal workings of her mind ground to a halt and locked. Harry saw her confusion and waved his hand, which created an almost cleansing wash of Force that passed over her gently. He began to speak again, only… she could suddenly not understand a word he said.

He spoke on for about a minute, all the while the smirk on his face grew more pronounced. Finally, he raised his arm and waved his hand again, a cool breeze of force passed over her like a soft wind. It felt like a Jedi mind trick, but not quite as invasive.

"Understand me now?" he said softly.

She slowly nodded and looked at him, quite puzzled. She voiced her thoughts out loud, "So you can use the Force to make me understand you, and I assume you understand me. What's the point of mentioning this?"

The self-satisfied smirk returned. "There's a way on my world, to teach someone a foreign language and the associated writing. I cast a spell and then I give you roughly twenty specific words to repeat back to me and then ask you to write out about thirty specific sentences along with all the letters and numbers of your alphabet. While you do this, I'll be slowly extracting a memory of this from you. I can absorb it, and learn the language you were thinking of. It'll knock me on my butt for about six to twelve hours while my mind tries to figure out up from down with all the information. That should be plenty of time for us to then move on to the cave."

She sat there stunned by the possibilities of this ability. A type of direct knowledge transfer that only required up to twelve hours downtime. The minds' of the clones had been imprinted with knowledge at a young age, because absorption of large amounts of information and knowledge was not feasible with older minds when inserted via optical imprint. If Harry was saying he could teach her and others simply via the Force….

"I can't pass general knowledge this way. The spell seems to only work with spoken languages, writing, and some things and locations. Like, I would get the word 'Felucia' from you and I would vaguely know that it was a planet, but I wouldn't get any of the general information about it. Likewise, I would get knowledge of some person named 'Aayla Secura', but I wouldn't know anything other than she is some sentient being you have some passing knowledge of or have encountered."

She watched Harry pause and then tentatively ask, "Is this something you would be willing to do for me?"

"Yes, if you let me learn your language this way? It would be perfect for undercover missions. You and I would be the only people in the whole galaxy who know both your system of writing and your language. It's the perfect setup."

"I can definitely do that, but you'll need to learn Occlumency first. It a mental discipline that was usually overlooked by my people, but it's incredibly valuable. Helps you organize your mind, protect it from intrusion, and slowly gain a much higher appreciation for your own magic and how it feels. Once you know that, I can teach you English."

"Great!" Aayla beamed. She actually looked forward to this. She had been at war for three years, and investigations into the Trade Federation, Separatist intrigues, and crime lords had occupied the entirety of the decade before that. To actually learn something new, especially about a topic no Jedi had ever been taught held a lot of appeal to her.

"I could teach you Huttese as well later," Aayla thought out loud. "The Hutts are gangsters, and control quite a bit of the criminal underworld in the galaxy. I do a lot of undercover work because it's easy for my race to just blend in amongst criminals. Huttese is good to know for that. Plus, Humans never learn Huttese unless they're life-long criminals raised by other criminals or they grew up as slaves. Any adult Human who attempts to learn Huttese almost never does it properly and they stick out like a sore thumb. They're never trusted because of this. Teaching you like this would be a gift from the Force if we're trying to stay hidden in Hutt-controlled territories."

Harry nodded in acknowledgement. "Shall we?"

What followed was one of the oddest experiences of Aayla's life. She spoke twenty seemingly random words in Galactic Basic while Harry held his wand to her temple. When she began, he slowly pulled a metallic blue strand of gelatinous liquid from her head. He placed the strand in a vial which he conjured from thin air. He then provided her writing utensils, and had her write her numbers and alphabet, along with thirty very specific sentences. While she did this, he repeated the strand extraction and produced another filled vial.

She was surprised when he said they should both go to sleep in the tent without a guard left on watch outside. Harry argued that the wards he had erected would be more than adequate to protect them, and they should be safe to use the tent because of them. He was very adamant that no predator would come near their shelter due to the wards as well. His arguments eventually won her over due to how thoroughly he believed in their strength, and she felt it would definitely be nice to have a bit of rest after the long day.

"I'll take the couch, you can take the bedroom," said Harry.

"No, you take the bed," she insisted. She could quite plainly see that Harry was already exhausted and would be out of commission even longer due to the language transfer he wanted to undergo. There was no need for him to wake up with stiff sore muscles since he slept on an uncomfortable piece of furniture.

"Look, you were injured very badly today, and haven't had a proper rest either. Plus I'm not sure everything's hit you quite yet with what's happened. It'll be better for you to be in a bed."

"Ok, that settles it," said Aayla, with a mischievous smile. She felt Harry's sense of humor was contagious, and it was time for a joke at his expense. "We'll both share the bed."

"What?" stammered Harry, definitely taken back by her response. "I'm not sure that's really appropriate for the two of us."

"Oh come off it. Jedi do not get involved romantically. We don't form attachments or have intimate relationships with others. It's not like anything would happen."

Harry just looked at her half-exasperated and said, "Well Wizards do form attachments, and quite frankly it makes me a bit uncomfortable." She saw him involuntarily glance at her cleavage before he blushed and turned away.

She decided it would do no good to push further. It was definitely time to let him off the hook and soothe his fragile male ego, so she said "Harry, I'm going to be a wreck after what happened today. It'll be nice to be close to someone. You'll be unconscious the whole time anyways, right? It'll be good for me to be near someone and just feel safe. Please?"

She knew the moment she pouted with her eyes that she had him. She saw his shoulders deflate and he said, "Fine. But no funny business. I'm trusting you to not like, draw on me or turn my clothes pink or something."

She beamed at him, "Knew you would agree. I need my clothes from your trunk by the way."

He pulled out his trunk and left it open at the compartment with her things. He pulled out another trunk from somewhere and pulled out some clothes for himself and walked into the bedroom. She normally did not sleep with anything on, but she figured Harry would not react well to seeing her naked just quite yet. So, she had donned a simple loose fitting Jedi robe when she walked into the bedroom to see Harry dead still as he stood and stared blankly at the walls.

He looked troubled, that was quite easy for her to see. Aayla walked over and placed a tentative hand on his arm and was shocked to feel the depth of his despair and loss through her empathy.

"Harry what's wrong?" she asked immediately. She had no clue how his mood could change so rapidly.

"It's gone. That window there and the ceiling. They can be charmed to show specific scenes and locations, just as if the tent was pitched there." She actually saw a tear fall down his cheek as he was unable to continue. Comprehension dawned as she understand what had stopped the man so completely and drowned him in his emotions.

"None of them work now, do they?" she asked quietly.

He only acknowledged her by almost imperceptibly shake of his head. She reached and pulled him into an embrace and began to gently rub the back of his head and his back. She couldn't remember the last time she had done something like this for another being. The idea of embracing and comforting another Jedi like this seemed absolutely absurd to her. Maybe her former Master Quinlan Vos, or even Master Fisto while they had skirted their mutual attraction to each other, but for some reason this seemed right and no one would ever be allowed to tell her otherwise.

Suddenly though, she felt his emotions change from slowly settling sadness to surprise and embarrassment. He tried and failed to pull away, and she looked at him quizzically. "What's wrong, Harry?"

"Nothing."

Aayla could not help but laugh at how defensive it sounded. "I don't think so. I felt your embarrassment, what's wrong."

She watched with amusement as he looked like a frightened child who wanted nothing more than to run away at that very instant. "Please Harry, you're my friend. You might just be my only friend to survive today. You can trust me."

He looked suddenly sheepish and said, "I just noticed something smelled very good and I didn't recognize it, and then I realized it was you."

The response was nothing close to what she had expected, and Aayla felt herself nearly fall over in laughter. "Harry, I know I took a shower but I spent over an hour outside in the heat afterwards. I'm sure I already sweat through the clothes I changed into. I stink like bantha poodoo."

She saw him shake his head before he took off and threw his shirt in the corner. After he sat down on the bed, he purposefully looked at the vials and his wand still in his hands. "I stand by what I said, you smelled amazing." He sighed and again looked up at the ceiling.

"I guess there's nothing for it then. Might as well make some new memories and places to save," he said quietly.

A quick wave of his wand replaced the ceiling with the nighttime sky of Felucia. There was not a cloud in the sky and the stars shone brightly down upon them.

'Even the peaceful nighttime sounds come in,' thought Aayla, as she marveled at the clever use of the Force that no Jedi would have ever dreamed to use in such a manner.

"I'm going to go ahead and start absorbing your language. I figure at the most it should take twelve hours. Will you be ok on your own during that time?"

"I'll be fine Harry, you do your mind thing and I'll get some sleep."

Aayla watched with avid fascination as he laid back and uncorked a vial. He pulled the strand out with his wand, and dangled it to his forehead. His face took on a look of great concentration and she could see him grit his teeth in discomfort. The first strand finished after about a minute. Afterwards, he immediately he picked up the second vial with a shaking hand and repeated the process. He only just finished the process before his eyes rolled back and he dropped his wand to the floor.

She rushed forward and felt for a pulse. The touch immediately exposed her to the oddest emotion she had ever felt. The only words she could use to describe it were steely perseverance. There didn't seem to be anything else present at all. Hopefully this was a normal reaction to what he had done. He hadn't, after all, told her what would happen.

'Well, if he's going to be unconscious anyways…' thought Aayla. She removed her robe to expose her naked body underneath. 'It would not have been comfortable to sleep in that itchy Jedi robe anyways,' Aayla inwardly justified to herself.

As she lay down next to Harry, she suddenly realized with dread it was very likely her sleep tonight would be plagued by nightmares of her recent experiences. She looked up at that moment and let the beauty of the sky above calm her. As long as she could see the sky, she was free and alive. At least that is what she always secretly thought to herself.

As she sat there, the twin moons of the planet rose to an even higher prominence in the faux sky above her. They provided a low level of light to the room that was hardly uncomfortable. She could not help but feel that it was nice to stargaze without the uncomfortable humidity or bugs of this world.

For some reason, this particular night reminded her of home. She abruptly snorted to herself. It was, of course, a home that had sold her into slavery before Master Vos had miraculously saved her. That home was not what she specifically thought of, but a knowingly idealistic memory of a place she could've belonged in a different time and place. She watched the stars for ten more minutes before, with a last glance at the furrowed forehead of her savior next to her, turned over and fell asleep.

-o0o0o-

Harry had no idea how long he had been unconscious. It had taken a while to sort through the incredible amount of information Aayla's memories had given him. One time, as an experiment, Hermione had given him her knowledge of the English language. It took an obscene amount of time to absorb what felt like dictionaries worth of words he had never heard of before. His absorption of Aayla's knowledge of Galactic Basic felt comparable to his experience with Hermione. If nothing else, it was quite obvious Aayla was incredibly intelligent.

As he slowly came out of the depths of slumber, Harry became more aware of his current situation. His arms were wrapped around Aayla, and she in turn had one arm underneath his head with her head nuzzled up into his neck. He found that he had been subconsciously rubbing one of her brain tails. He immediately stopped and moved his hand away, only to realize that underneath her brain tail was her completely bare back. The next realization that came to him was that the two firm mounds pressing into his chest and side were definitely not pillows of the variety his head currently lay upon.

"Oh, why did you stop?" he heard her moan into a spot in his neck just below his ear.

In spite of his embarrassment at the situation, he laughed softly at the knowledge that she had been awake the whole time. Harry lightly caressed and rubbed her right brain tail again.

"Sorry, I wasn't aware I was actually doing this. I just woke up and thought you might take offense so I stopped."

"You're forgiven, so long as you keep doing that."

Harry focused his mind solely upon the incredibly firm appendage that lay flat against Aayla's back. Every so often, he would hit a spot between two muscles, which caused her to moan further into his neck. He purposefully avoided rubbing these spots too often, because the primal sounds of pleasure Aayla would voice weren't conducive to Harry keeping his own thoughts under control.

They lay in silence for a few minutes before Harry realized something. "You know, the translation spells have worn off. Did you realize we just spoke to each other in the same language?"

Aayla's head shot straight up and she looked him straight in the face, "We did didn't we? This is so amazing. I can't wait till I'm able to learn your language." She lay her head back down again within the comfy space between his shoulder and neck and squeezed him a bit more tightly. "I started learning languages later than many of the other padawans, so I've always had to work harder to keep pace with them."

A few more minutes passed, before she voiced a question that apparently bothered her, "I know we've been laying here longer than the night is on this planet. So why is the sky still dark?" she asked, her voice slightly muffled by his neck.

"I set the scene so that it would be night until specified otherwise. I'll need to grab another image for daytime. You can set them to rotate to follow a proper schedule of day and night, or you can set it to be on one or the other until the setting is changed again."

He felt her nod her understanding before she somehow settled in even closer to his body.

"Personally, I'm in no hurry to move, are you? I think we earned the right to be lazy after everything we both did yesterday. So I see no need to make it bright in here with daylight." said Harry.

She snorted, "No. After yesterday, I think we deserve to just lay around for a bit." She groaned again as his hands, which had not stopped their movements, apparently hit another sensitive area. "People normally need to be taught how to do what you're doing. How are you managing it already?"

"I honestly don't know. I have a fair bit of medical knowledge, and I did scans of these while you were under the stasis spells so I could make sure they weren't injured. I got a good mental picture of how the muscles in them are laid out from doing that. From there I'm just trying to hit each individual muscle the best I can."

"Speaking of which, what are these called? I feel like I'm insulting you by somehow calling them brain tails or tentacles in my own head."

He heard her giggle a bit, and he had no idea what she found funny. "Brain tails isn't that bad a description for their names in Basic. We call them Lekku if you were speaking Ryl. The one you're on now, the right one, is called Tchin. The left one is called Tchun."

"Lekku, Tchin, Tchun, the Twi'lek's language is called Ryl, and you're from the planet… Ry'loth?. Got it. Is Ryl something I can learn as well?"

She looked up at him strangely, "You would want to learn my language?"

"Sure, why not? I'm sure it would be more comfortable for you to speak in the language of your own people, right?"

Aayla smiled a genuine smile at him, and placed her head down. He felt her Lekku move slightly afterwards, and he wondered if that subconsciously meant something.

"They look a lot different without the wrappings on them," he commented out loud as he watched the lekku move slightly.

"We wrap them the same way you Humans style your hair. There are fashions that go in and out. Some are protective in nature, others are decorative, and some are ceremonial. Usually you will see Twi'leks with some sort of protection covering them entirely. You have to remember that the part of my brain that extends into them contains both long-term memory and part of my subconscious. If they're damaged, it's a good chance I could die."

Harry felt his breath hitch at how close Aayla really had been to death yesterday. If any of those blasters had hit one of her Lekku, there would have been no way for him to repair the damage. For all of magic's wonders, brain damage was an area where there was no cure.

"It's alright," he heard her say. "I'm okay and you healed the injuries I received. It's no use dwelling on the past or what could have been for something like that. Keep your thoughts within the Living Force."

"What's the Living Force? Heck, what's the Force?" asked Harry.

She lifted her head again at his question, and this time it gave Harry a startlingly clear view at her large chest smashed into his. She was about to speak when she noticed his eyes flicker downwards and she chuckled. "If you can tear your eyes away from my breasts long enough, I might just tell you."

"Well either put your head back down or go get dressed. You are the naked one mashing her chest into mine after all, 'Miss No-Relationships-Allowed'."

Aayla seemed to seriously ponder her choices and settled upon laying her head back down. 'She may not be able to have relationships, but she certainly knew how to be a tease,' thought Harry.

"Well, the Force is an energy field, created by all living things in the galaxy. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds us and the galaxy together."

Harry noticed she seemed to stop, as if that explained the concept thoroughly. "Ok, that sounded really good as some sort of public relations speech, but what is it really? All that stuff you just said really means nothing in the grand scheme of things. What does the Force mean to you?"

She paused a few seconds before saying, "I don't know. It's… energy that simultaneously responds to and obeys a Jedi's needs, and we Jedi do the same for the Force's desires. Being able to interact with it allows you to develop quicker reflexes, superior strength, and a bit of precognitive ability during conflicts. It also allows us to see possibilities in the future, past, and the present during meditation. Jedi try to use the Force to help maintain peace in the galaxy. Sith, who are our enemies, try to dominate the Force so that it can be used as a tool to enslave others…"

Aayla gave a great shuddering sigh, "…and they've succeeded. Chancellor Palpatine has revealed himself through his actions yesterday to be a Sith. He now rules the galaxy with an army of tens of millions at his beck and call."

Harry slowly absorbed what she said. He knew she had barely skimmed the surface of what the Force truly was, just as he could not possibly describe magic accurately in under a minute.

"So what is a Jedi?" Harry asked in an attempt to keep the conversation going.

"We are the guardians of peace and justice in the Republic. For twenty-five thousand years, the Republic has stood in one form or another. While it has stood, the Jedi Order has been its guardians, negotiators, and arbiters. Usually we work on behalf of the Republic Senate. In times of war, we serve as soldiers and sometimes generals like myself. We follow a code, which is, essentially, the basis for our religion and way of life. We actively avoid emotions or and all aspects of materialism. We avoid anger, fear, and hatred because they are the way to the Dark Side of the Force. Giving into those base emotions takes a person down a dark path from which most do not return. I myself have strayed once down that road… and turning away from the whispers of the dark side was one of the hardest things I've ever done."

As she spoke and he pondered her words, Harry could not help but notice the contradictions between Aayla's actions both yesterday and this morning and the Code she was supposed to live by as she described it. "So you train yourselves to be like those droids we picked up yesterday. Unfeeling, cold, and emotionless? You seem to laugh, cry, and be happy. It seems a contradiction to me."

"I'm... considered quite liberal with my interpretations of things. It's why I likely don't have an apprentice. We call them Padawan Learners. A Master is only allowed one apprentice at a time. Even though I'm well past the stage where I should have been granted the title of Master and taken one, I've never been assigned someone to teach. The Council often feels I'm too reckless, or I don't pay enough heed to the traditions of the Order."

Harry quickly realized that, whatever the indiscretions were in Aayla's past, they were not likely a safe subject to bring up if they had prevented her from a promotion within the Order. Instead, he changed the subject and asked, "So what about the Sith?"

"To be honest, I don't know much about the Sith, other than really general things. Knowledge of them has been suppressed for centuries by the Council. The Sith philosophy relies upon anger and hatred to fuel their use of the Force. They also tend to use fear and treachery to corrupt others to their beliefs. There are only ever two official Sith at a time. One Master and their Apprentice. The Apprentice eventually surpasses the Master's skill and knowledge… and then will kill the Master to take his place. That's the Rule of Two with them. One to possess the power, and one who craves it. An Apprentice who doesn't have the potential to kill the Master will be eliminated and another will be trained in their place."

"Wow, you're kidding? What moron would sign up for that? If there's only two Sith, than how many Jedi are there in the Galaxy?"

"Before the battle that started the Clone War, there were a little less than ten thousand Jedi. Yesterday, I think that number was around five or six thousand."

"Only ten thousand total Jedi in your entire Order which spanned a galaxy? So the whole galaxy was just taken over by only two bad guys?"

He could feel her wince at the statement, "They had allies. He had corporations and corrupt politicians. And, the more I think about wider events in the galaxy, a plan to destroy the Jedi that has been active at least the last fifteen years. And that plan seems to have been executed perfectly. But yes, in the end, it always falls back to two Sith. We killed the Apprentice twice. First there was Darth Maul who Master Kenobi killed over a decade ago, and then Master Skywalker killed Count Dooku a few weeks ago. Dooku had changed his name to Darth Tyranus."

Harry could feel this all was a sore subject for her, so decided to let it drop. He had plenty of time to figure out the political and historical landscape of the mess he now found himself immersed in.

He gave her a quick squeeze with both arms and tried to change the subject again, "Ok, enough depressing talk. Can you tell me about you?"

"My life is kind of depressing in some places too, Harry," said Aayla with a much more subdued voice after a few moments silence.

"Come on. We're friends, aren't we? I promise I won't judge. We're going to be stuck here together for a while. I just want to get to know you better."

A deep sigh wracked her body, one that he knew he had done countless times when he had discussed his own life in the past. He briefly wondered how wise it really was to ask her to open up this quickly, but the damage had already been done.

She began to speak hesitantly. "Well, I guess it starts with my childhood on Ry'loth. I'm a female Twi'lek, which means, unless I was promised to be a mistress to a clan or family chief, I would be sold into slavery off-world when I became a teenager. As a young girl we're taught to dance and I had just begun those lessons. Not artful dancing, but the dances of whores, strippers and seductresses. As we get older, the training is even more directly… sexual in nature. It's what my race has been born and bred for over the eons: Warrior men and sex-slave women. As it was, I had just been sold by my clan to a Hutt to start my training, when, the Hutt was attacked minutes later. I was fortunate to manifest some Force potential during the fight."

After he bit back the automatic anger at the knowledge of her species' practices, Harry was lost for words. He had no clue how to respond to what he had just heard. Not counting the knowledge of being a sex-slave, it seemed very similar to his own childhood. Harry had for all intents and purposes been raised as a slave by his Aunt and Uncle before he was rescued from that terrible life by Hagrid. All he could do was continue to rub Aayla's back, while he did his best to ignore the rough scar tissue under fingers. He absent-mindedly thought he would need to start the scar removal treatments tonight.

"I was lucky. A visiting Jedi Master and his Padawan, Quinlan Vos found me. I was saved from that life. I vividly remember standing on the auction block and being sold as a slave to a Hutt who would've begun my full training. I remember being so meek and having no hope."

"The day I arrived at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant was one of the scariest days of my life. I kept thinking I wouldn't be good enough to be a Jedi, and that they would send me back to be a slave. Sometimes those feelings still come back to me. All the behaviors of a proper slave that were trained into me as a child. When that happens, I try to remember something Master Vos told me once. That 'it's good to question yourself, but not to doubt'. Sometimes it's hard not to slip back into that way of thinking, but I've slowly gotten better."

At Aayla's words, Harry recalled even more of his old childhood and how frighteningly similar it was to hers. For years, his relatives had beaten into him that he was useless and that his only value was to provide service to others. He knew exactly what Aayla meant when she talked about slipping into old behaviors.

"I was trained first by Master Vos' teacher, Master Tholme," Aayla continued, apparently too lost in her own memories to notice the effects her words had upon the wizard she clutched beneath her.

"Eventually, because we were so close, Master Vos took me on as a Padawan after he became a Jedi Knight. He is basically the father I never had. The two of us were both poisoned at one point years later, wiping our memories and allowing someone to tempt us to the Dark Side of the Force. We recovered eventually, though my road and retraining were quite long."

"Since then, I guess you could say I've seen many things in this galaxy; both good and bad. I was part of the 212 Jedi who fought on Geonosis at the battle that started this war. A little over thirty of us walked out of that mission alive."

"After the war started, we were deployed as Generals in charge of the clone army battlegroups. Usually there would be two to five of us in a battlegroup. I've had various missions around the galaxy, eventually leading to the current one here on Felucia. The Separatists poisoned the planetary water supply. Our job was to stop them and undo the damage. Until yesterday that is. If they've pulled out after the attack, it means they've left the natives on their own. The poison will eventually kill or alter most life on the planet."

Harry could see exactly where that would lead and finished her sentence for her, "… and it'll be considered Jedi sabotage, with you and Barriss being blamed for this particular incident."

She lifted her head again. Her golden eyes stared in shock into his as implications of statement registered to her mind, before she flinched as she realized he was right.

"We know the truth, Aayla. If everything truly did go bad out there, and there's no other Jedi left… I can protect you." Harry laughed at the how easy it would be to hide someone with an entire galaxy of planets at their disposal. "I can hide you so well no one would be able to find you ever again. I can change your appearance so no one would ever recognize you, even machines and cameras. Don't worry, ok?"

Lost in her own thoughts, Harry saw her barely nod in acquiescence. He thought back to her statement about being poisoned and remembered something from yesterday.

"You know the stuff you said you were poisoned with? I think it still showed up in the scans I did. There's a potion my people have, it's called a purging potion. It's rather nasty, but I think it'll help in your case. I still have a few of them in stasis in my trunk. After drinking it, you basically throw up every twenty minutes for an hour. First few are obviously stomach contents. But the rest are any long-term foreign chemicals that your body can't remove on its own. You're welcome to try it if you want. May have some long-term health benefits for you to get any remnants of that stuff out of you."

"Yeah, we could try that I guess. Doesn't sound very pleasant though."

"Oh it's definitely not, but I think it would be worth it in the long-run. Come on, enough depressing talk. Let's go get some food and take inventory of exactly what we have," said Harry. "Just let me get up first, so I don't feel bad ogling you. Because I just know there's not a chance in hell I won't."

Aayla seemed to be brought out of her funk with that and laughed, "You're too sweet, Harry. I bet all the girls were falling over you on your planet."

Laughing mirthlessly, Harry shook his head. "Now there's something where the truth depends greatly upon your point of view. I'll tell you later. You told me your story, only fair that I tell you mine."

Harry got up and picked her discarded robe from the floor. He threw it over his shoulder onto the bed without a glance and walked into kitchen. A hot breakfast seemed like an attempt by his mind to impose some sense of normality upon the absolute insanity of the previous day. He found the preparation of a breakfast of eggs, bacon, and toast on a different planet to be quiet surreal. There was also the ever-present worry Aayla wouldn't like any of the food or wouldn't be able to eat it. He would just have to wait and see.

The door to the bedroom opened and he laughed when he saw Aayla wander out in one of his muggle button up shirts and a pair of his boxers. Her overall body was small enough that the size of her chest didn't seem to make that big a difference to the fitted shirt. "Raiding my closet, eh?"

"I didn't feel like sorting through any of my own clothes. Yours were right there after all," she said cheekily. "Not sure what you're making to eat, but it certainly smells good."

"It's not the healthiest breakfast I could probably make. It's kind of a standard breakfast on my world in a bunch of countries if you take the time to cook for yourself. Cooked eggs of a bird that's raised for food, some thin salted meat that's fried and rather fatty in content, and some toasted bread."

After a nod of acknowledgement she said, "I've had similar, though I've personally never had much use for learning to cook in a proper kitchen. Normally we find and kill our food while we're out training or on a mission and cook it over an open fire," responded Aayla as she looked over the plate of food Harry passed to her.

"Well you won't have to worry about that for a bit. There's a decent amount of food in storage here. Unfortunately, I doubt the instant inventory restocking features will work across universes. Eventually it'll run out, but for now we easily have at least a few months of food."

They ate mostly in silence for a few minutes, where the only comments made were Aayla's compliments on his cooking. Eventually they finished and Aayla's eyes took on a mischievous glint, "I can't wait till we get off-world. Then I can show you the kind of food that I like."

"As long as it still isn't alive and moving at the time I'm supposed to eat it. I tend to prefer my food cooked as well," said Harry, not at all liking the sense of dread that moved up from his stomach at Aayla's words. "Anyways, I'll clean up, you go take your shower or bath or whatever you feel like. I'll check the wards outside in the meantime. Probably should start figuring out how we're going to inventory everything we have here as well."

She nodded her agreement, and Harry had to slam down on his Occlumency shields to suppress his thoughts after he saw her unknowingly swing her hips as she slowly left the kitchen.

-o0o0o-

Household chores never took long with the aid of magic. There were many cleaning charms he knew the spells for, but he had long gave up on using them as he became more and more comfortable with simple 'intent' behind his spells. There was surely a spell to pick a pan off a stove, another to place it in the sink, another to turn water on, another to dispense soap, etc. Harry's magic had progressed to the point where a few general spells with intent were fired in specific places of the kitchen and the work simply performed itself without the need to babysit them.

With the dishes taken care of, Harry headed outside. He recast the ultraviolet-light, bug-repelling, and cooling charms that had long since expired. The wards looked fine after he gave them a cursory glance. He felt they had taken a few hits from larger predators as they wandered near, but none had so much as touched the outer boundaries before they were compelled to leave. The protections looked solid and were at full-strength.

The flimsy shelter they had built together the night before still stood despite an apparently large storm that had passed through, so Harry felt he could at least get some use from it when he sat and leaned against one of its walls. He ran through some Occlumency exercises to calm him mind and organize his thoughts on what Aayla had told him this morning. The Jedi definitely had their faults, just like wizards did. The main thing that surprised him was, at their height right before the Clone War, there were only just ten-thousand Jedi in an entire galaxy. There were more than ten thousand wizards in just England!

Questions surged through Harry's mind. Were magical capabilities that rare in this universe or did something prevent its manifestation here? Were there more stringent requirements that prevented someone who had magic to become a Jedi? These people certainly didn't raise children of Jedi since relationships seemed to be banned. That meant that not only did the very small population of Jedi not pass their gift on to another generation of direct offspring, new Jedi had to be identified from the thousands of worlds in the Republic by non-Jedi in what was probably a very inefficient manner.

A distant rumble of thunder suddenly broke his thoughts. The sky was perfectly clear, so there was no approaching thunderstorm. Confused as to what disturbed him, his eyes settled upon a ship in the distant horizon. Harry quickly cast an illusion over the tent and ran inside. Aayla had just emerged from the bathroom and wore a similar rugged brown leather outfit to the one he had seen her in while on patrol the previous day.

"We've got incoming. There's a ship on the horizon. Not sure if they're coming here or not. I don't think it's worth hanging around to find out."

Aayla's eyes widened, "How quickly can we pack up the tent?"

"Two minutes to tear it down, another two minutes to tear down the wards. We can leave everything inside as it is. Nothing that happens outside the tent will affect things inside."

She nodded and ran outside with him. They only stopped to grab the duffel bag where the tent was normally stored. He was wrong about his original estimate. The tent was dismantled and packed in under thirty seconds. The ward stones were dismantled and stuffed into the tent bag a minute later.

Aayla had stared at the distant ship nervously, since she was unable to help him collapse the tent or dismantle the wards. Harry handed her the duffel bag as he approached and fired a quick reducto at the custom ward stone he had made the previous night. After he vanished the cloud of dust from the explosion along with temporary shelter they had made but not used, he quickly grabbed Aayla and side-along-apparated her the cave where he had originally healed her.

He heard Aayla grumble, "At least you get used to it the more you do it," but he paid her no mind.

The ward stones were instantly out of the bag and repositioned within the cave. Harry quickly recharged them after they were anchored to the same stone he had used previously. Harry then decided now was an excellent time for a Fidelius.

"Aayla, can you stand outside the cave for just about five minutes?"

She nodded and walked outside, despite clear signs that showed how curious she was. He quickly devoted a few minutes to the careful reassembly of the tent, then placed two additional small cubes at both the back and front of the cave. He then traced the perimeter of the shape the four cubes formed.

At each cube he reached, he stopped to whisper an enchantment to prepare the Fidelius to encompass the space between. Bit by bit, he poured magic into each stone as he set up the wards and protections, until finally he stopped at the entrance to the cave where Aayla was waited for him. A complicated wand movement followed, and he distantly heard Aayla's gasp as the cave slowly disappeared from her view.

Another minute worth of chanting later, he pointed his wand at his own chest and shouted, "Fidelio!"

Harry was enveloped in a white light that seemed to shrink before it finally disappeared. He hated the requirements of the Fidelius. It always wiped him out for a few hours and made him want to sleep. As he caught his breath, he looked over at Aayla, he chuckled at her open-mouth sense of awe at what he had done.

"I take it the Jedi don't have anything like that?" asked Harry.

She blinked, and then slowly shook her head. "I don't even know what that was, but it felt powerful. Why are we here anyways?" She had started to look around wildly as her arm inched towards her lightsaber.

Harry smiled at the comment. Though he may hate the setup, he always enjoyed the aftermath of the Fidelius Charm performed in front of someone. The sudden confusion and loss of memory were always a sight to see when they were restored. He held up his arms in a gesture of peace and to ask for her patience. A conjured piece of paper and a pen suddenly appeared in his hands and he wrote a sentence upon it in Galactic Basic.

"The sanctuary of a Jedi and a lost Wizard is found inside a cave in a mountain range on the planet Felucia."

The piece of paper that contained the secret was handed to Aayla while he said, "Read what it says and memorize it. Then think about what it means."

She tentatively reached out her hand and grasped the slip of paper. After she read the sentence, she lowered it and he could see her mind work through the secret. Suddenly she gasped as the secret was revealed to her.

"How? What?" spluttered Aayla, looking back and for the between Harry and the cave.

He took the piece of paper from her grip and quickly burned it with a wandless Incendio, Harry said "It's called the Fidelius Charm. It hides a secret inside a living soul. The secret can be a bit of information, a person, or a location. The only way you can know the secret is if the secret keeper tells you. Afterwards, anyone told the secret cannot pass the information on to others. Try it. Try to say out loud what that piece of paper had written on it."

Her mouth began to move but no sound came out. She tried for a few moments before she gave up and stared incredulously at Harry.

"We're now protected with some of the best protections I can put up. They could march a thousand troops up to the front of this cave, and so long as we're within the ward, they couldn't see us or the cave itself."

She nodded dumbly as she fathomed the implications. It took Aayla took a few moments to collect her thoughts. "I've never felt anything like that," she eventually whispered. "When the secret 'clicked', I felt this rush of the Force into my body. It was like it was restoring something to me."

"The Fidelius erases something from existence as long as the Charm is active. When it's placed upon a location, the ward will actually hide the target within a pocket dimension not too dissimilar to the interior of the tent. Even digital photography is affected. But it takes more power to hide something that's well-known and documented. Like, this Jedi Temple you keep speaking of. I bet billions of sentient people know about it and have seen it, probably more?"

Aayla nodded, "The number is easily in the trillions."

"Then there's no way a Fidelius could ever be cast upon it. Too much magic would be required to cast it. If I tried casting it on the Jedi Temple, it would probably kill me in the attempt."

Harry let a few moments of silence pass.

"Come on, let's go inside. We may have just woken up a few hours ago, but I'm already ready to go back to bed after casting that charm."

A pleasant, musical laugh met his ears, after which Aayla smiled and said, "You just want to go back to bed to see if I'll get naked again on top of you."

Harry raised an eyebrow at overt flirtation and inwardly felt some conflict. Aayla may comment all she wanted about no-attachments, but her actions often did not reflect the beliefs of her religion. He decided to hedge his bets and said "I won't deny that I found waking up with you in my arms to be quite the relaxing experience this morning."

Another mischievous look grew upon Aayla's face. He was saw this particular visage more and more as they talked. "Good answer," she said simply and walked into the tent.

'Heaven help me if George and Angelina ever find a way here and team up with her,' thought Harry as he followed her inside.

-o0o0o-

After his shower, Aayla watched with amusement as Harry unceremoniously fell onto one of the couches in the tent's sitting room. He had left both of his trunks open and unlocked so she could continue to go through the contents. What really surprised her was the trust he placed in her when he keyed her in to the trunks' security via her blood so she could access them whenever she wanted.

They had taken care of most of the inventory that belonged to Harry and had now moved on to the shrunken objects collected the previous day. The miniature stolen loot had been spread out around the room by Aayla while Harry was in the shower. There were distinct piles for food, medical supplies, armor, weapons, spare clothing and uniforms, data pads, and power cells. It was actually quite a lot when you looked at it all at once like this. It surprised even Aayla, who had not realized until now just how much stuff they had managed to pilfer from the clone army.

"We'll need credits as well," Aayla said as she turned her inventory list towards things that they did not possess. "Normally I would rely upon Jedi Order accounts, but I doubt those exist anymore. Trying to access them now would probably bring clone troopers right down on our heads. What you see here is all the resources we'll have."

Harry interjected with, "Plus what we find back at the base, plus what we may find inside ships. Also, I can do some permanent conjuration for a few precious metals. I can't do gold or platinum, but I can do any metal that's on the previous rows of the periodic table, which includes silver if it's valuable anywhere. I can conjure straight bars, or we can transfigure the metal into artwork, sculptures, or jewelry we can sell."

That caught her attention. This would be an excellent way to acquire money, one that was almost too good to be true. "That just might work. We'll need to be careful not to attract attention to ourselves though."

"You're forgetting I can apparate us around a planet quickly. We can sell five individual pieces in five different cities on the same planet within minutes of each other."

"That'll work," she said as she continued to revise her notes on the datapad. She was putting as wide a variety of information down as she could. Inventories, possible plans, escape routes, and places to hide.

"What about ship fuel? How expensive is it, and how long does it last?" asked Harry.

"Not that expensive. And it won't be that bad a hit on our finances if we're selling silver and other metals in quantities like you're talking about."

She saw him out of the corner of his eye suddenly look away. Harry quietly began thinking out loud, "I wonder…"

Random statements such as that usually grab people's attention whether the speaker intended to or not, and Aayla was no exception. "Wonder what?"

He looked at her without really seeing her. His eyes were unfocused and he slowly said, "There are runes that will produce water on demand, like from a faucet or a shower in this tent. Water has a very specific component to the runic array that says 'produce this molecule at this specific temperature in this quantity.' I was wondering if I could create a runic array which would magically create the fuel for the ship reactors. We would never need to refuel this way. And because its fuel, it doesn't need to last long. Many conjured materials vanish after a short while, but it won't matter with the fuel because it'll be burned quickly."

Aayla again felt her mouth drop at the possibilities. Harry looked clearly at her, smiled, and continued, "It might take a while. I'd have to do some research, and I'm not sure everything I would need to start is within books I have with me. I may need some help figuring out the molecular composition of it, but I think it's doable in the end. So long as there aren't any really heavy elements present in the fuel when it's done. That's about the only thing I can see throwing a wrench in the works."

The pair continued to empty and log the original contents of his trunks into the datapad. The sheer randomness of things Harry had struck Aayla as very odd. He had weapons, books, clothes, stored food, joke items, broomsticks, and other sports-specific items from his home world. He also had a trunk space full of very personal items. Pictures of family and friends, almost all of whom he said were now dead. It was varied and random, and spoke volumes that Harry wasn't just a mere warrior.

These two trunks had contained more new and strange objects than she would normally have seen in a year. She started to understand what the past day must have been like for Harry, and admired how well he handled his encounters with so many new things.

Three hours after they began to inventory their possessions, Aayla rubbed her bleary eyes and shut off her data pad. She really wanted to take a walk outside after their limited movements the entire day.

"Care for a walk outside?"

"Sure, let me put some gear on. I don't feel like taking any chances."

Harry seemed overly paranoid to her, but she couldn't really fault his logic. Portkeys were made for her in case they got in trouble that would take her back to the tent, and left another set in the tent that would lead to the airfield where they had hidden the ships. Their stolen ships were far enough away from the cave it wasn't worth taking the chance in case something happened to him. He also showed her how to shrink the trunks and pointed out the extra slots she could safely hide them in on her arm if she wore the holster.

The two then began their walk into the forest of lights. Night had already fallen since they had apparently slept very late into the day after their escapades the previous day. Aayla herself breathed in the cool fresh air of the planet with her eyes closed as they walked.

They continued in silence together for quite some time. Aayla's thoughts were upon what they could accomplish in the next few days before they began to tear down the ships. She knew she could cobble together something quite space-worthy if given the chance. Her only worry was whether Harry would feel useful or not. She had no problem doing the work herself, especially after Harry had done most of the work thus far, but she thought that Harry was one not to simply sit back and let another do everything.

She glanced at him, his eyes quite visible in the bright light of the two moons. There was still no glimmer of emotion from him, which slightly hurt her. She had subtly inquired about why he would sometimes exude emotions and sometimes he was like a blank durasteel wall to her. He said it was that mind-art, Occlumency, and the lack of emotion from him was mental shields that protected him from mind attacks.

She was hurt at first, thinking that he thought she would attack him. Then she realized it was just his natural paranoia. He probably kept those barriers up constantly. It was only in retrospect that she realized the emotions that she had become so accustomed to from him this morning were because she physically touched him to bypass the shields. It definitely made her feel safe the way he didn't openly lust after her, even when she admittedly flirted with him without shame. She would get flashes from him of those baser emotions, but they always were immediately squashed down. He respected her for her talents which he said he observed the previous day while on the march.

"What's wrong?" Harry asked.

"Just working out a puzzle," she said cryptically back. Now wasn't the time to ask him to lower his shields. She would just have to get used to the emptiness for now.

"Ok," he said, in a manner that did not hide how dubious he thought her answer. He returned his gaze to one of the flower trees. "Tomorrow I want to cut down a flower tree or two. Probably should get a few of the other kinds of plants, as well to see if we can find and render down any of the other native species. I believe I could probably make you a wand of your own using the materials. Would you be interested?"

"Definitely," she responded truthfully. She held no delusions she would get as accomplished as he was without years of practice. Harry said he started learning magic nearly eighteen years earlier. But even a few of the basic spells he described sounded quite useful, such as body-binds and silencing spells. She definitely wouldn't mind learning his transportation magic either.

"I have a few things I want to do as well tomorrow. Since we're stuck here, I want to start up my training again. It would be for a few hours a day. Would you like me to teach you?" she asked. Harry couldn't be considered a Padawan in her mind, and she didn't believe for a second he could possibly go Dark on her, but she wanted to pass on what she had learned. It bothered her that the Council never saw her as a suitable teacher. Granted, Harry could teach her just as much as she could teach him.

"Would I have to call you Master?" he said, quite cheekily. Then his smile widened even further, the mischievous glint in his eyes positively twinkled with reflected light, "Or maybe you would want me to call you Mistress."

'Ok, maybe the boy does have some flirting skills,' she thought as simultaneously pondered her response to the verbal challenge. With a retort already on her lips, she stopped. She decided discretion was the better part of valor in this situation, and changed the subject. "You know I told you my life story this morning, when are you going to tell me yours?"

The smile faded on his face, and for a brief moment, his green eyes that shown so brightly in the moonlight just seconds before had suddenly dimmed. He nodded slowly and said "Yeah, we can talk about that. Just depends on how much detail you want. Can we head back first though? I'd rather take another shower and then tell you while I do your treatment for tonight."

"Treatment?" she said in confusion. Were there additional medical problems he hadn't told her about?

"Your back," he said simply. "It'll take two to three weeks probably, every day for about an hour. I'll be able to remove all the scarring on it so by the end it'll look like nothing had ever happened."

She vaguely remembered his statements about that yesterday when she first woke up after the attack.

"Oh," was all she could eloquently manage. "Okay."

"By the way, how's your knee? I noticed you had a lot of damage and I think I may have helped it heal. I forgot to ask before now."

'Eh?' She shifted her attention specifically to her bad knee for the first time in a day. She put pressure on it and stretched it a bit in the manner she knew always caused her pain. But she found none now. It was as flexible as if she had never blown it out and had all those surgeries that never seemed to fix anything.

"It's fine. Better than fine actually. It hasn't felt this good in years. I hadn't noticed at all in fact."

"Good. That's what I was hoping for. It showed up when I did your full body scans, along with that compound that was still in your body. If you have any other old injuries, I have some rather unique medicine to heal it. In fact I need to do my own daily routine to acquire it in sufficient quantities."

Aayla saw him look at her abruptly. It was an odd look, quite calculating in nature. She eventually heard him mutter, "In for a knut…" and had no clue what that meant.

Finally he stopped. "I have a secret. One I've told almost no one. I've told my friends Fred, Angelina, and Hermione. A few others knew, but they died years ago." He sighed and closed his eyes. Aayla couldn't help but grab his hand, and she immediately felt his fear.

"You can tell me Harry. I won't betray you. Not after everything you've done for me. I take these kind of debts seriously. I will repay you someday."

He smiled a half-smile at this and she could feel his sudden sadness at her words. "Life-debts are brought up a lot with my people. Magic often demands their payment in strange, sometimes cruel ways. Please be careful what you say or vow in regards to that debt."

"Anyway, wizards on my planet can obviously learn many special abilities. Some take years to master. One is the ability to turn into an animal. A person who has learned to do this is called an Animagus. Normally, the forms are non-magical animals, however I never seem to do anything the normal way. There's a very rare bird on my world called a phoenix. They're creatures of fire, immortal. If it is killed, it bursts into flames and is reborn as a new hatchling from the ashes. My form is a white phoenix."

And to Aayla's shock, Harry immediately transformed into one of the most beautiful avian creatures she had ever seen. The bird was two feet tall with bright white plumage with blue tips on the ends of the feathers. Soft flames seemed to roll of the wings, yet did not give off any heat as Harry took flight and landed softly upon her shoulder.

Then, Harry trilled a greeting. It was easily the purest sound she had ever heard. The sound spoke to her very soul. It inspired hope in her heart that her future would be bright and comforted her at the same time. Suddenly, flames from the bird engulfed her and she suddenly found herself in front of the tent in the cave.

Harry leapt off of her shoulder and transformed back into his normal human form. "What did you think?" he tentatively asked.

She didn't even try to resist the sudden urge to hug him. "That was completely amazing. Can I learn something like that? How long did it take? Did we just travel by fire? It didn't feel anything like Apparition. Does your singing always sound so wonderful?"

Harry's smile grew as she asked her questions, and he simply held up his hands to hold off her questions. "Yes you can learn it, hopefully. But it took me years to learn. So it's not something you take on without patience. Yes we just travelled by fire. And the singing is one of the famous things Phoenix's are known for. Anyone who is good and is pure of heart will feel uplifted by the cry of a phoenix. People shrouded in darkness and evil will feel pain and despair at the sound."

"There's one other thing, the part that should interest you. The tears of a phoenix have healing powers. Each day, I try and force myself to cry as much as I can in vials. That's what helped my healing of you go so smoothly, and what healed your knee. I gave you quite a few injections of tears yesterday. So if you see a random bird sitting around crying into a glass vial, don't try cooking me for dinner."

She couldn't help but snort, but nodded nonetheless. Afterwards, she asked, "So not every wizard where you're from could do what you did for me? I take it from the phoenix form that you're special even for a wizard?"

"Yeah, you could say that. I was rather famous in my world. Something like this was just more attention I didn't need so I kept it secret. Let's go in and sit down. This will be a long story."

The two took a seat next to each other in the still train-wrecked sitting room. She saw his eyes take on a vacant, distant look as he pondered where to begin his tale. "I guess it kind of starts with the politics of my world. For the last three hundred years or so, Wizards purposely separated the magical and non-magical societies. The non-magical societies kept on advancing, developing better and better technology while the magical cultures stagnated in their isolation. The magical humans began to value their bloodlines more than they valued abilities. People with generations of magical blood began looking down upon the first generations. The government slowly became more and more corrupt, finding ways to keep the first-gens underfoot and denying them opportunities to truly become part of the society."

"Then there were the real extreme blood-purists. They would support the latest Dark Lord of the moment who would almost always spout how true wizards should enslave the first-generations and wipe out all the non-magicals. About thirty years ago, my parents were murdered by a rather powerful Dark Lord who was targeting me because of a prophecy saying I could vanquish him."

"Prophecy?"

"Yeah, the drunken ramblings of an old fraud. I'm still not convinced what she said was real and not made up to help her on a job interview."

"How old were you when you lost your parents?" asked Aayla quietly.

"I was just over a year old. Voldemort, was his name. He tried to kill me after he killed my parents. I somehow survived his attack, which rebounded and ripped his soul from his body. This made me famous throughout the entire magical world. They called me 'The-Boy-Who-Lived'." Harry spat the nickname, and she could feel the loathing he had for being called that name.

"An old man who had no right to do so, stuck his nose in my business and had me kidnapped from the ruins of my parents cottage and the arms of my rightful guardian. I was placed with my mother's non-magical sister. My aunt Petunia hated my sister, hated magic, and thus, hated me. It was 'ten dark years' that I was purposefully subjected to, as I once heard it described. It wasn't pleasant, that's all I'll say." Aayla could feel the barriers he kept around his mind slowly fall as he told the story. The echoes of his resurfaced old pain slowly became such a palpable thing in the room that her focus suffered because of its influence.

"Eventually, I found out I was a wizard just after I turned eleven years old. I was introduced to a world where everyone knew my name and had their expectations of how I should act and behave. That's about when the Dark Lord I defeated started to begin almost yearly efforts to re-embody himself. Each year I had a fight for my life, leading up to my fourth year when I was kidnapped and used in a ritual to give a body back to him. What followed was three years of hell before I eventually defeated him permanently."

"We had two years of relative peace and rebuilding, before the next Dark Lord hit. Achenar had a fascination with Demons. He destroyed the separation of societies in our world by summoning Demons publicly all around the world. There was no way to hide our society after that. The backlash all magical feared from the non-magicals at least got held back by everyone's universal need to stay alive."

"With the war over, who knows what will happen to the remaining Magicals now back on Earth. I hope they're not all hunted down and killed."

"Why would your people be hunted down?" asked Aayla incredulously.

"I'm not sure how it is with Humans here, but on my world, people fear what they don't understand. They are jealous of others who have abilities they'll never have. I can see that being an underlying problem the Jedi will face here. Do you think the normal people in the galaxy will understand a 'Sith' has taken over? Or will they just assume a rogue Jedi has caused all this death and destruction and blame all of you collectively?"

"Hopefully something like that would never happen here," Aayla said aloud. That would be horrible, to be hunted down by a galaxy they had all voluntarily sworn to protect. She doubted anyone on the council had ever conceived something like that could occur. If it happened, it would blindside the Jedi just as badly as the clones' traitorous actions.

"Hope for the best, plan for the worst. It's a good motto to live by," said Harry quietly.

"That's a very cynical way of viewing things. I see the value of it, but the council would definitely not approve of it."

"Then they're hypocrites, or have lost intelligence somehow over the eons of their 25,000 years of existence. Somewhere along the way, the Jedi made the back-up plan to evacuate all the kids, right? That back-up plan Shaak Ti mentioned, remember? Somewhere along the way, someone planned for the worst, and that planning hopefully just saved the butts of all your kids."

She couldn't help but laugh. The Council was comprised of stodgy old men and woman. Her two close friends, Masters Shaak Ti and Luminara Unduli, offered what she considered the few voices of reason. She never particularly cared for the Council, and avoided them whenever possible.

"Anyways, with war starting again on my world, I became a good little soldier. I started studying battle and siege magic. It takes a bit of skill to cast, but more importantly, it takes raw power. There hasn't been a fully recognized Battle Mage on my world for centuries. It was my job to clear and disrupt battlefields so others had an easier time accomplishing their missions. That was the primary role I was assigned. But I found I really liked being a healer instead. I started spending more and more of my time after battles in hospitals, helping people I knew who weren't being treated as quickly as I would have liked. Eventually I got enough attention because of the results I was getting that I got orders from High Command to spend my off-hours in hospitals learning directly from doctors."

"A warrior with the hands of a healer. A true hero." She couldn't resist the gentle joke that praised him at the same time. His depression seemed to be lift the further he got away from his childhood. And he responded to her comment with an eye-roll and slight blush at the back-handed compliment.

"The Demon War had been going for ten years and hopefully it ended yesterday. We had a major intelligence coup a few weeks ago led to the destruction of almost all of his followers. He fled to a crater with the last remaining demons he had in our realm. We thought he was trying to escape to a Demon Universe, probably to regroup and return with reinforcements, but he ended up including a little trap at the end. He cut off my method of retreat after I defeated him at the foot of the portal. I'm not sure if you were paying attention yesterday, but he offered me a choice as he died. I could burn to death in Fiendfyre, or I could take my chances and jump through open portal he made, probably dying at the hands of demons on the other end."

"So, I made my own choice. I changed where the portal was pointed by de-stabilizing it. Just as I was trying to think if there was any other way out of the situation, an explosion occurred, and I got blown right into the portal. Next thing I know, I'm here."

"You skipped over a lot, didn't you?" asked Aayla.

"So did you this morning?" Harry taunted with a half-smile.

"True, but I looked better while doing it," she smirked.

"You were naked at the time," Harry said in exasperation while he blushed nonetheless..

"I win," Aayla said in triumph. She winked at him and then ran into the bathroom to take another shower. Then with a very satisfied grin, she stuck her head back outside the door, to see that he still sat there with his mouth open, "In honor of my victory, I'll expect you to prepare dinner promptly."

She could clearly hear his muffled exclamation of "What?" through the now shut door as she chuckled to herself.

-o0o0o-

"That wasn't funny," a deep blue, almost purple faced Aayla said after she left the bathroom in only a towel almost ten minutes later.

"I'm sorry, I had to use some hot water to clean something," he responded, somehow keeping a grin and his laughter down through the use of Occlumency. "I simply forgot you were in the bathroom."

"Well, remember that tomorrow morning then. We're going running in the morning," the glint in her eye was definitely not friendly as she walked away.

'At least I kept my eyes forward,' thought Harry to himself as he watched her close the door. 'Well, watched her ass walk through the door,' Harry corrected himself. 'Definitely was worth it though.'

She returned five minutes late. She still half-glared at him while she ate, though he could tell there was no true heat behind it. Dinner was a quiet affair, and Aayla again offered subdued compliments that were probably not as exuberant as they would have been had he not managed to turn her shower water to a degree above freezing.

They both reveled in the normalcy of what they were doing. For these few moments, they could pretend he wasn't an inter-dimensional traveler who was likely to never return home. She could pretend she wasn't a presumed-dead fugitive, betrayed by a government she had protected and defended nearly her entire life. They were two friends who did their best to enjoy a meal together while the lives they both knew burned to ashes.

After dinner they sat talked more. After the abbreviated summaries of their lives, the subtle hints at darker events and experiences that both of them caught reference left them both with the need for some humor to brighten things. Harry brought out his pensieve, and showed her some of the funnier moments of his life. She laughed as the Weasley twins escaped from Hogwarts in his fifth year and then toured their joke shop the following summer. He also showed her some of his fondest moments, such as the first time he saw Hogwarts from his vantage point on the boat in the Black Lake.

She herself had him extract a few memories as well. She showed him the day Master Vos rescued her from a Wampa right after she had been sold as a slave, and then she had Harry watch as Master Tholme made his decision to have her tested to be trained as a Jedi. He later watched as a stoic looking black man proclaimed that Vos had earned the rank of Master while she earned the rank of Knight in Order. While this happened, Master Tholme sat behind them during the ceremony and proudly watched both his former Padawans.

They reminisced about friends long-gone, and where they had eventually hoped their lives would have led had war not intruded upon them. Aayla spoke of her desire to return to her home-world, and offer more Force-sensitive females a chance at a life other than as a slave. Harry spoke of his long-desired dreams to advance his society through the reintroduction of excluded first-gens back into the fold via new industries, which would help bust the old pureblood monopolies on goods and services.

Eventually, they retired to the bedroom to do her first scar removal treatment. He left the room briefly to allow her to disrobe. When he returned, he found her naked on the bed on her stomach. Harry could see how nervous she was about this. It was one thing to know she had been treated magically while unconscious, while it was another to actually be awake for the process. The scar removal treatment mainly involved going over each affected area continuously with a silent spell that encouraged scarred tissue to mimic the healthy skin adjacent to it. Slowly the original scars would shrink as time passed and eventually would disappear forever.

"I can feel you directing the Force, but this feels nothing like Force Healing I've seen others like Barriss do. She was a healer, and I know she directed the Force through those crystals, but that felt much broader than this. This feels more… controlled and directed for lack of better words. I doubt I could guide the Force as precisely as you're doing," commented Aayla quietly at one point.

"I'm sure the crystals, while they were a powerful focus, weren't actually attuned to her. Wands are used to focus magic so that it's easier to perform tasks that don't require a lot of power, or are extremely delicate in nature. It's really situational. Some things require no wand and just a ton of power. Some things take it a step further and require a ton of power and precision. It's for those situations I really had to practice hours and hours a day for years without a wand to get achieve the really fine control necessary to add large amounts of power to the spells.."

"The really unfortunate thing is that I can count on one hand how many wizards in modern times have put forth the effort to achieve what I have. Wandless magic is a dying art form. Once upon a time, maybe 1,500 years ago, every magic user on my planet did everything without a wand. Now you disarm someone, and they feel helpless and don't know what to do without their little stick. My people are a declining civilization, just like your Republic sounds like more and more."

She had no comment for that, simply lost in her own thoughts. Eventually, an hour passed, and Aayla repeated the previous night and produced two more two more memory vials for Harry, this time for Huttesse. He surprised her once again with the reaffirmation of his request to learn a third language, her native tongue of Ryl. She also told him she would gladly give him lessons on how to interpret lekku movements, a rather secretive part of the language few outsiders ever learned or were exposed to.

Harry thanked her profusely and then proceeded to give her first Occlumency lesson, which mainly focused upon recognition of her own internal magic. The first step of Occlumency was not to stand there and be Mind-Raped like Snape did to Harry back in his fifth year of school. It was meditation while a very easy to cast spell was continuously used. He had her follow the flow of magic all the way back to the core of her body, where she eventually lost track of the source of the current. Her goal for now was to try to find that place of origin where her magic came from. The next step to protect her mind would proceed from there once she found her magical core.

-o0o0o-

Eventually Harry retired to bed for the night while Aayla continued her meditation on the floor of the bedroom. After numerous attempts to locate her core, all of them which failed just before the point where she knew she close to something, she stopped to find herself utterly exhausted. Confusion began to set in. She had never felt exhausted before after a meditation, but then again, she had never wielded the Force in such a manner either. Once again, she knew Harry probably had answers for her numerous questions, yet he hadn't told her anything.

She glanced at the intense look of concentration on Harry's face as he lay shirtless in bed in very short undergarments that he referred to as boxers. She took off her clothes, and carefully slid next to him, then stared at the ceiling above. The ability of this tent to show such a scene was beyond her belief. She was well aware that it currently rained outside of the cave at that very moment, but inside the sky was clear. She tried to clear her mind, but instead was focused firmly upon her life-long friends; the stars. She hoped to one day be able to look at the Ry'loth sky from another world in just the same manner. The idea of a small piece of home that travelled with her had great appeal for her.

Her thoughts eventually led her to the conclusion she needed sleep. It would be a long day tomorrow, especially if she was going to drag Harry out on one of her workouts. She draped herself over Harry in almost the same position that he had found her in when they had woken up that morning before she fell asleep.