Lies
Running. Rapid steps sinking into the damp ground, meter by meter, splashing swampwater behind her in wet flicks. Her fatigues were dripping with sweat, rolling down her chest and between her breasts. Her legs felt heavy, sloshing through the murky water in rhythmic slogs, held down by the pressure against her boots. Her heart beat a rapid drum-like cadence, and she tried to focus on her breathing, a two-count inhale and then two shorter exhales.
Back on Alderaan, she had only run in conjunction with some other activity, some other training, never for sport. But the Alliance had taught her how to run for her life. Running for running's sake had been a new revelation after the destruction of her homeworld. She didn't love it for its physicality. She loved it for the way it took her trauma in stride, made her see beyond the phantoms of her past and into a clearer future.
So when she found herself awake and anxious on the Falcon, heart in her throat and her parents' names on her lips, she had quietly extricated herself from Han's heavy limbs and gone for a run.
Dagobah was a new trial, though she felt none of the familiar nerves she experienced when she went on missions. Missing was the quirk of energy that lived on the razor-edge line between fighting and dying. Alliance missions always went wrong; there were always complications and roadblocks, and the hair-trigger instincts she had developed had a kind of addictive, soothing quality to them. Using those instincts brought her the kind of satisfaction that was only recently superseded by the addition of Han's partnership in her life.
But this planet, with its perpetual disquiet and lone inhabitant, brought none of that thrilling, titillating rush.
And because of that general viscous feeling of deception, she had needed the release of an early-morning run. A natural way to soothe her nerves, relieving the ache of her consuming loss, clearing her head. The only other reprieve was when she was physically intimate with Han, but that had a nasty habit of opening her emotional floodgates instead of shoring them up.
She didn't need vulnerability. She needed clarity.
Breathless, she ran through trees that reached to the dark-gray skies, her limbs, her heart, her breathing, all carefully controlled. Fortifying the barriers. Battening down the hatches.
"Away, are you running?"
The question hit her like a blaster bolt. It seized her muscles into rigid non-compliance, and she stopped on a quick exhale, turning to her right with a sense of impending doom, knowing exactly what she would find.
"No," she answered him, her arms hanging to her sides like lead weights. "I'm clearing my head."
"Hrrrmm. From yourself, you run."
She gestured to the land around them, the darkness, the mist, the heavy feeling of pain and despair that hovered over everything. It clung to her skin like rain. It lived in the air she breathed.
Darkness. Darkness everywhere.
"And you haven't done the same?"
"Often, you run," he continued without answering her. "Afraid are you?"
"No."
"A lie, this is."
Looking at him, Leia tried to find a way through his puzzles, his games. His speech patterns notwithstanding, Yoda had a way of being direct without actually saying anything at all. She wasn't sure if it was true insight or if it was like the follies of a charlatan, a fortune-teller like the street vendors on Barkaam, spelling out vague destinies that could fit any number of people's lives. You will meet a tall, dark man who will guide you to the light, except the man she meets will be short and blonde and what is the light, anyway?
"Everyone lies," she said, repeating Han's comment from the night before. "At least I'm not hiding."
"Did I hide?"
He cocked his head to the side and leaned on his walking stick, expectant. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do, how he wanted her to react.
"You are a Jedi master choosing to live here, in solitude, while a war for truth and justice wages in the galaxy. That is hiding."
"Biding my time, perhaps I am."
She snorted indelicately, too wound up for her ingrained politeness. "A coward, perhaps you are."
The darkness seemed to deepen tenfold, tentacles wrapping around her ankles as if the sludge itself had a target. When she looked down, though, her shoes were still wet but visible in the muddy mess that was the ground. The light of the early sun still made everything slightly brighter than the night before. The trees still did not encroach on her space, and the fauna still did not pounce on her. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had.
"Hurt me, you must?"
Her eyes cut back to Yoda, to his careful, placid stance. She opened her mouth to answer but he continued, soft and yet as sharp as a hundred Dolvian knives lancing her stomach.
"Peace, will it bring?" he asked. "Resolution? Loved ones long gone?"
Shutting her mouth, her teeth coming together with a sharp click, she felt helpless against the searing strike he had made against her defenses.
"Consider your anger, you must. The effect it has," he finished, then turned resolutely away and ambled into the forests of Dagobah, as silent in his retreat as in his approach. She stood still a moment, breathing heavily, before she turned and continued her run in the opposite direction. Faster now. Fast enough to evade the darkness that seemed to linger in the very air she breathed.
—0—
The group returned to Yoda's homestead late in the morning per galactic standard time, though Luke couldn't find a discernable difference between early morning, midday or evening. It was always wet and warm and miserable on this planet. And the wildlife was odd to him, too. He had enough experience with the Alliance now to be familiar with amphibians and aquatic life, so different from the enormous, awe-inspiring krayt dragons and banthas of his homeworld. But the way everything slithered around them was… well, creepy. Han had pegged it correctly within minutes of landfall.
"Hate this place."
Speaking of.
Luke turned his head to check in on the grumbling, stubborn man on his left. Han's hair was damp and hanging in his eyes, his shirt plastered to his body like a second skin, and he didn't have his blaster in hand, although Luke could tell he desperately wished it had been. The glowering twist to his lips sealed the unhappy image, like a man slated for execution.
Han had been obstinate, particularly after their first meeting with the master the night before, and he had insisted he tag along, much to their chagrin. Luke had tried to dissuade him until Leia had intervened, assuring him that Han would eventually get bored of his own antics and return to the Falcon on his own.
Leia had been subdued, too, which was now par for the course but still bothered him anyway. Where was his passionate, virtuous, rebellious twin? She seemed wary and uninvested, had been so this entire trip with the exception of her angry blooming of the night before, and Luke didn't know how to extract the why from her.
Shaking his head in mild confusion, they broke through the larger treeline into the small clearing and found Yoda sitting on the same log as before. He looked as if he hadn't moved in the past twelve hours, although a campfire rumbled happily in front of him.
"We're here," he announced too loudly and then winced at his overenthusiasm.
Leia's eyes cut to him like a gamma ray, like a bolt shot from her blaster: direct and piercing, sharp in its aim, deadly upon impact. He admired that ability in his sister, the way she could so easily disarm a perceived adversary, even though he didn't like being the one in her sights at all.
The master seemed to take notice of it, too, tilting his head as he watched her, eyes glued on her form as she stepped closer to Han. Luke wasn't certain if it was for moral support or to restrain him should he try something… unfortunate.
"And another, it seems," he replied, after glancing at the Corellian by her side. "Go, you may."
The master's little flick of a wrist seemed to strengthen Han's resolve even more; Luke could see it in his squaring stance, his narrowed eyes, his lips curved into dark amusement.
"Think I'll stay, since you asked so nice."
"You wanted to see us?" Leia asked, and that, Luke knew, was to prevent any escalating tension between Han and Yoda.
The pull he had felt upon waking this morning had been hard to identify. It had not felt like a command, per se, but more of an inquiry. A subtle nudge towards the homestead.
When he'd told his companions, Chewie had nodded sagely, Leia had frowned, and Han had tried to convince them all that it was a trap. Because of course he would have. The thought almost made Luke smile, but the scene in front of him was too solemn and so he tamped down the instinct.
"Sit," Yoda commanded. "Around the fire."
While Luke hurried to comply, Han and Leia took their time. When all were ready, Yoda began speaking in a voice that seemed quiet, but held so much power in it that it seemed to Luke that he could feel it in his chest. The avians stopped squawking, the heavy air around them settled, and time halted in its tracks.
"A great darkness has befallen the galaxy," he said. "Strangled, the light is."
Uncomfortable, Luke shifted on his perch, side-eying Leia as she focused on Yoda.
"It was not always so. Tossed the universe into chaos, the Emperor and Darth Vader have."
Luke shivered. The name alone tugged him back into dreams of falling, the voice that had spoken so clearly to him, the palpable nothing that seemed to dog him at every turn until he felt thrown into the sea, too.
"The Dark Side, they embraced."
"The dark side of what?" Han asked.
When Luke turned to glare at the former-smuggler, he found him leaning back against a large rock, his legs splayed out in front of him, looking completely unconcerned about the weight of what Yoda was saying. It was a good reminder that these lessons in morality and power were useless to most beings in the galaxy. Han was here to protect his family, not for destiny.
Suddenly, Luke appreciated his friend's tight-fisted approach to this entire trip.
Yoda was not as enchanted. When Luke turned back to peer through the flames of the campfire, he saw stern eyes in a disapproving face. He felt a twitch of amusement, but stifled it before anyone could tell.
Or so he thought, Leia sending him a confused look before she refocused on the master.
"A Jedi's strength flows from the Force," he said. "But beware of the Dark Side. Anger… fear... aggression. The Dark Side of the Force, are they."
"Anger," Leia repeated softly.
"Much anger you have, yes," Yoda said. "Difficult, your journey will be."
Luke pondered that for a moment, struggling to understand such vague ideas. "She's got a right to be angry, though," Han said.
Yes, that was it, exactly. Obi-Wan had never warned him against such human emotions. How could anyone avoid all expression? It just didn't seem possible.
And then, what about Leia, with the heavy burden of loss that she carried around like a weight on her shoulders? Maybe that wasn't the right imagery: a burden could be shrugged off, if needed, but her pain was more like a growth, a part of who she was on a very fundamental level. She couldn't just lay her trauma down any more than Luke could abandon his earnestness. She was who she was, now. Asking her to be any different would be like asking Tatooine's sky to cloud over.
"Abomination of the Force, anger is," Yoda replied. "A right to it, no one has."
Bristling, Luke leaned in. "She lost her planet, Master Yoda."
"And none of you stopped it," Han agreed. "And now you want to say she doesn't have a right to her pain?"
"It just doesn't work like that," Luke concluded.
"Angry now, are you?" Yoda asked, peering at Leia over his walking stick and through the flames.
All eyes focused on her. Leia sat cross-legged, her back ramrod-straight, her hands clasped in her lap, wearing an icy mask of control that seemed to radiate a sense of tightness. Like they could all feel their chests getting squeezed by virtue of her control alone.
"Yes," she answered.
"With me?"
Yoda's question was directed at Leia but seemed to reverberate around the campfire in waves. Luke shifted uncomfortably, feeling like an intruder. Feeling like he should not be here.
"Yes," she said again. "I just want to know about my parents. My father. Our history. And you are holding that history hostage with your talk of training."
"Want to be a Jedi, do you not?"
Incredulously, Han laughed. "Why would she want to be a Jedi if all your Jedi friends were killed off?"
The chill returned like a hammer to the head. The fire flickered and then exhausted itself, growing smaller and smaller until it was mostly embers and ash. The cold air whipped through the homestead like a living entity, ghostly, otherworldly.
And Yoda...
Yoda had not moved, frozen, still looking at them like he was watching a group of disobedient children.
"Yes, die they did. Seduced by the Dark Side, Obi-Wan's apprentice was. Your anger could lead to further destruction. Decide, you must, if you are ready."
"I don't want to be ready," she said.
"Middle ground in the Force, there is not. Commit yourself fully, you must, or return to your useless war."
And with that the group tumbled into hushed silence, the crackling fire their only companion.
Luke was left with the uncomfortable sense that he and Leia were at diametrically opposing viewpoints about their mission here. Unsettled, he tried to embrace the nuance of the scene, why he felt so defensive about Leia's enormous loss but also felt so clearly that they were destined to be here, destined to learn from Yoda, destined to play a key role in the destruction of the Emperor and Vader.
If there was one thing Leia had taught him, it was that two opposing things could be true at the same time.
And so he spoke up now, in solidarity with her.
"Did you know her father? Bail Organa?"
The embers smoldered, the air felt damp and heavy, and everyone waited on Yoda's answer: a fateful response to a question Leia had every right to ask.
"I did not."
Luke caught a flicker in Yoda's answer, not unlike the embers between them all. It was like a shifting of color, from gold to silver, from brushes of silk to a maze of particulates. He sucked in a quiet breath, tried not to think about the obvious repercussions of what he just felt.
So he sat frozen and mute as the conversation continued around him, as the world left him stranded on his own plot of shaky ground, reeling and confused.
"But you knew who we were?" Leia was saying, even as he struggled to cling to the physical world around him.
Who we were sounded like an inane way of describing her family, but he couldn't straighten his thoughts enough for any more insight than that.
"Yes."
"Then why?" Leia asked, the first vestiges of her fierceness lighting the homestead, brighter than the embers of the fire. "Why all the secrecy? Why us?"
"Twin Force-sensitive infants were you," Yoda answered. "Obi-Wan knew the risk you posed to the Emperor. Hidden, you were. For protection."
Han shared a tense look with Leia, questions unanswered in the space between them.
"Why were we separated?"
"Wanting them to do your dirty work for you—?"
"Where were our parents when all this was happening?" Luke asked, filing away his observation for later study.
Questions were fired at Yoda like blaster bolts, and yet Luke had all the confidence in the galaxy that the master could parry them as skillfully as Obi-Wan had once tried to teach Luke to do with his father's lightsaber. That silver flicker of untruth when he had denied knowing Bail Organa… it had been a lie.
"Important questions, you have. With time, answers you shall find."
Leia shook her head. "We don't have time. We need to leave in three days."
At that, Yoda looked up at her with a soft, enigmatic smile.
"Then start quickly, we must."
—0—
Han watched from atop the Falcon, keeping an eye on them like some kind of swamp-vulture, ready to swoop in at a moment's notice. Ostensibly, he was tinkering with a piece of the reactor core that had been making a weird sound of late.
In reality, his eyes were glued to Leia.
They were running through the brush, flitting in and out of his line of sight as they went, Leia in her gray fatigues clinging to her body and Luke doing the same with a Jedi master on his back.
Part of Han thought it was hilarious to bear witness to this insanity, but mostly he just wanted to make sure Luke and Leia were okay.
Activity grounded her, he could see that clearly from his vantage point, even if he hadn't already known from months of a close relationship and years following her every move before that. When she exerted herself, she found clarity. Her fists would unclench.
He understood, because he was the same way in many respects. Not with running, per se, since he preferred other types of movement, but the feeling of being clear-eyed and steady while sweating, when his limbs shook and his heart raced, was something he knew very well.
And so she shined right now: her steps steady, her focus intent on the path in front of her, her breathing controlled, and the movements of her arms quick and tight. She was efficiency and drive in one teeny Alderaanian package, like a fully-powered ion cannon, capable of destruction and ready to go.
Luke, on the other hand, looked very different. His body had none of his sister's trigger-tight sense; his stride halting, unsure, he led with his heels and leaned his weight backwards where Leia led with her toes and leaned forward. He was in good shape—better now than ever thanks to the combat drills with Leia—but his movement looked like how putting on an EVA suit felt: clunky, heavy, and bogged down.
Han couldn't hear what Yoda was saying, but he could see Luke nod periodically. He could see Leia's mouth open in response and the glances between brother and sister as they ran.
As he watched, they came to a stop in a clearing forty meters to his right, the distance such that he could make out very few details, other than that all involved were covered in mud. Luke deposited Yoda onto a fallen log and then turned toward the small master, crouching down on his haunches to be eye-level with him.
Chuckling, Han admired how Leia didn't follow suit and instead remained fully upright, arms crossed over her chest.
It felt like a small eternity, sitting on the Falcon and messing with the tractor apparatus. He stopped for a moment to send a communique to Salla, letting her know they hadn't been ambushed or killed, and then resumed his not-so-covert watch.
Short Stuff was perched on his log with an arm raised. As Han watched, Leia found his eyes with a smirk, then refocused on Yoda.
Busted, he thought, but the word tumbled to the ground when he caught sight of three small rocks hovering between Luke and Leia. They were just… hanging in the air, defying the laws of gravity, physics, and the order of the natural world, too, and Han felt a twinge of nervousness run down his spine.
He'd seen Luke's incredible shot at Yavin. He'd seen Leia raise her hand and deflect stun bolts. But he'd never seen them do this: a practiced, incomprehensible and flagrant shift in what he thought was possible in the universe.
Even meters away Han could see that Yoda's manipulation of the stones was rehearsed over a lifetime. Not an explosion of power. Not an accident.
Scanning the faces in the group, he took in Yoda's fierce concentration, Luke's bewilderment, and Leia's understated surprise.
He felt the tractor wiring slip between his fingers, heard it hit the hull and then bounce to the mire beneath the Falcon with a plopping sound, but couldn't find it in himself to care. He'd seen evidence of both Luke and Leia's powers, of course, but it had never been intentional, never been called upon whenever they wanted. Never as a reaction to something, a kind of advanced fight-or-flight response.
Now the rocks appeared suspended in the air. Han almost smiled when he saw Leia reach out to touch one.
And so Han sat and watched. He watched as the rocks drifted slowly to the ground, one in front of Luke, one in front of Leia. He watched as she mirrored Luke's pose, giving in, apparently impressed with Yoda's display. He watched as...
… as nothing...
... happened.
Minutes passed. Han swiped at the sweat on his brow, reached for another part to tinker with, tried to focus on the burnt wires but failed miserably. At some point he went down to fish the tractor apparatus from the bog below the Falcon's struts and then came back up to his prime vantage point to still observe the nothing that was happening in the clearing.
Movement, all of a sudden. One stone rose haltingly, like it didn't know where it was going. Han's eyes were as fast as the Falcon's sublight drives, rushing to look at Leia's face, assuming she had been the one to figure out the secret. Because she always did. It was his instinct to assume she would be the first to prevail, born out of years of experience watching her do exactly that.
But Leia's face was a study in opposition. One moment her eyes were wide, the next they had narrowed down to slits. One moment her lips were quirked in happy surprise, the next they'd fallen into a frown.
And Han realized that it hadn't been Leia who'd managed to make the rock fly.
It had been Luke.
Interesting, he thought, and resumed his careful observation.
—0—
When she returned to the Falcon that night, Leia was muddy, hungry and frustrated. The day had been guaranteed to be a quagmire of feelings, complicated and unsettling, but the sheer enormity of her failures had also left her feeling tired and angry. She wasn't conditioned to be slow at anything; Leia Organa was competent and competitive, always had been, and being outshined by another was not something she was accustomed to.
The another in question had decided to remain outside and continue levitating stones long after their master had ended the lesson and returned to his homestead. Leia, however, hadn't felt like staying with him, so she had elected for a 'fresher and a good meal with Han and Chewie instead.
They were in the galley when she arrived, trailing muddy footprints all over their floor and grimacing as she went.
"Give me ten minutes in the fresher, and I'll clean the decks afterwards," she said as she passed, hoping to forestall the grumbling she would hear from them both.
"Need a hand in there?"
Leia glowered at Han but all he did was laugh in response. She could hear him even as she entered their cabin, loud and overcompensating for her awful mood as he often did. A good partner, Han Solo was, and she vowed to wash the strange disappointment off herself at the same time as the mud slithered down the drain.
She wasn't sure why it bothered her so much that Luke had been successful where she hadn't. It could be petty competitiveness; she wasn't above that particular fault, and she knew it. But somehow it felt deeper than that, a little closer to a personal revelation than a simple character flaw.
Was this how Luke had felt during their training sessions? Like he was missing a limb? Like he was below standards in some way?
She sighed as the water began its magic, warmth suffusing her body and draining some of the impending soreness from her muscles. Yoda had been a hard taskmaster; their reprieves from physical exertion had all been mental exercises, and those had been somehow even more draining.
She had excelled at one, utterly failed at the other.
This part had already been pieced together; she had better command of the physical than he did, and he had an emotional sensitivity that she didn't have. Still, knowing it and being ruthlessly bashed over the head with it were two completely different things. Luke's successes today had made her feel like she was locked up tight in her own little box, and she wasn't sure which key it would take to set her free.
There is no middle ground.
Yoda's words from earlier in the day floated into her mind. She wasn't oblivious to the connotations here, that her focus was not strictly on her training. She had a rebellion to run, after all, and that wasn't something she could just push to the side. She was here for answers, not for training. Of course Luke would supersede her abilities! He was fully invested. This was his destiny.
She shut off the water, finished her ablutions, and then rejoined the crew of the Falcon with a slightly less annoyed air.
"Managed without me," Han said to her, as she re-entered the galley. "Can't say I'm not disappointed."
"There's always later," she murmured, and then began the work of cleaning up her parade of mud from corridor to cabin. She had been somewhat concerned that Han would endeavor to clean it up without her; he had a tendency to do things like that. And so she was pleased when he had listened and left it to her, focusing instead on helping Chewie prepare dinner.
Are you hungry, Little Princess?
"Famished, thank you," she answered. "It smells delicious."
"That's because none of it came from out there," Han said, pulling a container from the recondenser and walking it to the powered-down dejarik table.
Cub would not let me prepare the sea-snake I found this morning.
She laughed, more for the sheer normalcy of the conversation than for the actual comment, and felt such relief to be in their presence after the day she'd had, untouched as they were by the mysterious Force controlling destinies and people who manipulated and lied in service to a fight no one else could understand. The stark contrast was important in this moment. It made her feel grounded. Anchored.
Finishing her wipe-down of the corridor, she returned to the galey feeling so much better than she had coming in. The warm cabin lights threw everything into clear, hard edges: the appliances, the mires of secret smuggling compartments, the Wookiee and the human male who traded insults as easily as they traded tasks in preparing a meal.
She had needed some space from Yoda, from Luke, tonight. She had needed to feel more herself.
"I saw some of the show today," Han said after they had all begun eating. "Did Luke… make some rocks...?"
"Levitate? Yes."
She worked hard to keep her voice even, though she knew both Han and Chewie could hear the defensiveness in her tone.
"It was quite the accomplishment," she added, trying to reconcile her brighter mood with her words. To summon praise for Luke's breakthrough.
It is quite amazing to see, is it not? Chewie rumbled. The laws of the universe are not the same laws for everyone.
Han's brow furrowed and he gestured to the Wookiee with his fork. "You're not allowed to be all-knowing about the Jedi now, furball."
I merely meant that I have experienced that awe—
"—in a past life you didn't bother to share with the rest of us," Han finished. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it."
Chewie grinned and the effect was still somewhat frightening, even though she well knew Chewie meant no harm by it. I did not know you were so interested in the Force, Cub.
"I'm not, but they are. You should have—"
"No, it's alright," Leia soothed, her curiosity piqued. "What else did you see him do? When you knew him on Kashyyyk, I mean."
Chewie eyed her for a moment, blue eyes keen and discerning, and then spoke in a lower, kinder growl than he had used with Han.
He was very fast, very acrobatic. The walking stick was not truly needed in the past.
"It has been twenty years," she said.
He was nearly eight hundred years old when I knew him, Chewie rumbled. He would have surpassed that in the intervening decades.
Han and Leia shared a look. "And his talk of a dark side? Did he talk about that in the past?" she asked.
His eyes seemed to turn inward, looking back through the years to what would be a distant past for a human. When he next spoke, the words were quiet, reverent.
I do not think so, but the Jedi were… different then. Lauded. Highly-regarded. We did not know much about the order aside from their willingness to help us when we needed them most.
"So you trust him," Han said, cutting to the heart of the matter as only he could do. "None of this stuff makes you doubt him? The stuff I told you he said to her?"
That would be Han's first concern, of course, but Leia's was less personal. For her, Yoda's withholding of critical information—information she desperately needed in order to move forward on any grand plan to defeat his so-called Dark Side—was so much more troubling. Even if he hadn't known her parents, he had known Obi-Wan. Enough puzzle pieces had been unearthed; there wasn't enough for a full picture yet, but maybe…
I trust that whatever he's done, he's done for the good of the galaxy, Chewie rumbled, pulling Leia's focus back to the warmth of the Falcon's interior.
"Sounds like a half-answer to me," Han replied.
Leia nudged him with her shoulder. "You don't know everything, Commander Solo."
He turned to her and it was as if he was moving in slow-motion. So incredibly slow that she smiled before his eyes alighted on hers. So slow that she caught his hand under the table before he could even open his mouth.
"I don't trust Short Stuff," Han groused.
She had just opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by the sounds of heavy boots hitting the Falcon's deck indecorously. Assuming that they weren't about to be shot by a surprise Imperial raid, there was only one other human who would enter the ship, and Leia shifted to greet her brother and offer him some dinner.
But when Luke entered the hold, his expression turned her blood to ice. Muddy, wet, and visibly shivering, his eyes told her that he had something important to say.
"He's lying," he whispered.
"He's lying about knowing your father, Leia."
Author's Note: Happy New Year and thank god for that. Thanks also go to each and every reader and those of you who let us know how you like these chapters. We believe in the story for its own sake, not as a function of getting reviews, but we really do truly appreciate the feedback. It's a wonderful feeling to see them in the inbox!
Special thanks as always to the talented and scholarly AmongstEmeraldClouds for her incredible editing of this chapter. Her work shines in Specter and I am lucky to have her eyes on it before it hits the first of the month.
Speaking of, the next chapter will be posted Monday, February 1st. Until then, stay safe! -KR
