Oops! Big chapter. I couldn't resist exploring what all our other friends might be up to as a few months pass with Korkie and Kawlan working on the Hidden Path.

17 and LordAries - at risk of spoiling my own story, I love both of these concepts. This story will be a whopper though, so you might have to be patient.

Enjoy xx

Chapter 10: The Unofficial Free Everywhere Movement

"You're late, Second Sister."

Trilla Suduri said nothing and continued down the hallway towards her dormitory. She avoided speaking to any of her Brothers and Sisters beyond bare necessity and most of them were sensible enough to do the same. But the Tenth Brother was particularly insensible and Trilla particularly did not want to speak to him.

"Three days late."

He sneered at her in her failure. Trilla reached her dormitory and activated the door.

"I asked you a question!"

His hand was on her elbow, yanking her back out into the open. Trilla sighed.

"You didn't, Tenth, actually."

He shoved her irritably into the wall.

"Why are you back so late?"

Trilla watched him and wondered why he cared. There was a wild anger in his eyes and it could have been anything. They were all mad with anger in this stupid adoptive family.

"You think I've been having fun out there?" she asked.

Her aloofness inflamed his rage. He jammed his forearm against her chest, pinning her.

"I think," he uttered, "you've been sneaking around, looking for a way out."

Well, they were all mad with anger but the Tenth Brother was perhaps the maddest of them all. Trilla laughed in his face.

"Where the kriff would I go, Brother?"

For neither of them could return to the home they had once known. The Temple had been razed to the ground and the Light lost irretrievably from their hearts. There was nothing and nobody left in this galaxy for either of them and the Tenth Brother knew it. Trilla pushed his arm from her chest and stood tall.

"If I want out, Tenth, I'll kill myself," she informed him blithely. "I'm late back because I had a second target to chase."

The Tenth Brother folded his arms, surly at her apparent candour.

"Another gold star for the Master's favourite, then?"

Trilla would have liked to lie to him. To have let the jealousy consume him. But Sidious would be certain to humble her in turn.

"I lost him, actually."

The Tenth Brother smirked.

"Our Master won't be pleased."

"He wasn't."

It brought Trilla great solace to know that she had shielded that encounter from the man who loomed over her. That he had grabbed her and pushed her and pinned her but had no idea that she had already seen Sidious upon her return. Already, she had collapsed to her knees before him. Already, she had been slapped by the searing jolt of lightning. And already, she had reconstructed her shields – an invisible mask as strong as quadanium steel that would be a part of her forever.

"He is wrong to have put such faith in someone so young and weak-hearted," the Tenth Brother hissed. "A foolish Padawan who-"

"Do not call me Padawan."

Trilla ignited her 'saber, holding it low at her hip.

"You are no Master anymore, Prosset," she warned. "And the Emperor would not be pleased to hear of you lording over me as though you were."

The Tenth Brother's face twisted, stung perhaps by the sound of his dead name upon her lips. He lifted a hand to her chin and brought his face close to hers, glaring at her with grey Miralukan eyes.

"You fall within the Emperor's favour for now, Second Sister. But he will soon see that you are unworthy of his tutelage."

He smirked at her.

"To be frank, I do not believe you were even worthy of Cere Junda's ap-"

But the Tenth Brother's words were lost in a sharp intake of breath as Trilla twisted her blade. His hand fell from her chin and hit the floor with a quiet thud.

"The next time you say that name to me, I'll kill you."

Trilla extinguished her 'saber and activated her dormitory door once more.

"Don't look so aghast, Tenth," she added, in his shocked silence. "The droids here make good prosthetics."

Mace Windu and his batch of unchipped clone trooper comrades were the closest thing that the galaxy had to superheroes in the early days of the Empire. The Coming Dawn, the most widely-circulated anti-Imperial magazine of the period, reported regularly on the escapades of the troops as they destroyed Imperial armouries, intercepted weapon-laden transports and liberated brain-chipped clones. Korkie thought of the old Jedi Master as he read the latest update, a sensationalist piece celebrating their sabotage of a munitions factory.

Mace Windu and the Faulties Shatter Imperial Plans on Cyrillia!

Korkie had no doubt that Mace disapproved of the collective title. He searched his memory for the deep voice that had inspired first fear, then awe, in his childhood years of covertly watching the heroes his father called his "other family".

Mace Windu and the Faulties? Sounds like an Outer Rim rock band.

Nor would Mace likely approve of the glowing tone of the article on the whole. In an era when the Empire had comprehensively snuffed out the light of the Republic, Korkie could not blame The Coming Dawn for trying to paint some optimism. But in truth the munitions factory destroyed on Cyrillia was one of hundreds of thousands galaxy-wide and it would be rebuilt without great difficulty. The Empire would not run out of money so long as there were planets to mine, oceans to exploit, workers to tax and fallen monarchies to plunder. There was nothing, truly, to celebrate. The great hero Mace Windu, in Korkie's imaginings, was as grim-faced as ever.

Finding them would not be a simple matter; the Empire would be investing extensive resources to the same endeavour and had not yet come close. To read the reports in The Coming Dawn was to look uselessly into the recent past. Korkie had to get ahead. Had to figure out a way meet them before they blew something up.

"You sure he's your friend?" Kawlan would tease, as Korkie fiddled through unregistered radio stations in the hopes of picking up something useful. "Because you don't seem to know much about his whereabouts."

"It's not easy to find each other when we're both on the run," Korkie grumbled. "Besides, you need me here. It's not like I can trot off and go find him."

The early days of establishing The Hidden Path were unglamorous. Korkie spent his days running logistical errands, covertly obtaining the cloaking devices, blaster shields and ration packs for their developing fleet of refugee freighters, while Kawlan, an ex-merchant, recruited sympathisers from planet to planet across familiar trade routes. Weeks dragged into months and before Korkie knew it the officials of Yaga Minor were preparing for Empire Day parades and propaganda all over again. Another year of homelessness. Another year - until Kawlan - spent alone.

"This is slow work," Korkie sighed.

On this particular evening the men shared mouthfuls of dinner while hammering a false hull – Rossan-inspired – into the newest ship of their fleet.

"Of course it is," Kawlan reasoned. "We're building the galaxy's largest network of hidden refugee routes and safehouses."

Despite his optimism, Kawlan swore as he cut himself on the sharp edge of the freshly cut metal.

"I'll get all this mechanic work outsourced soon, I swear."

Korkie grumbled that the time couldn't come soon enough, but didn't entirely mean it. The work with the ships was time in which to breathe, to take a break from his usual daily tasks of lying and persuading and eluding suspicion. Time in which he thought of Anakin. The brother he had abandoned, or who perhaps, in his rejection of the rebellion, had abandoned him. Anakin would have liked this work.

"I missed my niece and nephew's first lifeday," Korkie voiced, startled as the thought came to him. "It's just after Empire Day. I forgot all about it. Didn't send them anything. And now it's nearly their second!"

Kawlan looked across at him in the dim light of the ship's hold.

"They nearby?"

"No. Mon Gazza."

"You gonna visit them?"

"Not until I know the Second Sister's off my back."

She'd come to Yaga Minor a few days after they had landed. They'd managed to stay hidden through a combination of Kawlan's local knowledge, Korkie's Force sensitivity, and a heavy dose of dumb luck.

"I worry that day might be a few more lifedays ahead," Kawlan sighed.

"I fear you might be right."

They continued to work in grim silence, until Korkie spoke again.

"My brother loves this sort of work," he muttered. "Ships and droids and stuff."

It was stupid to bring him up at all, to risk even the faintest indiscretion. But Korkie missed Anakin so much, in that moment, with spanner in hand. He missed him so much it was like a fist squeezing his heart.

Kawlan gave a wistful smile.

"Relya couldn't stand it," he murmured. "Said ships made too much noise and belched too much smoke."

His eyes shone with emotion.

"She was looking forward to life on Dantooine. The quiet life, she called it."

The dream flickered hazily in the Force above them. Sunset on the golden fields.

Korkie couldn't help the useless words that escaped his lips.

"I'm sorry."

Kawlan turned to look at him with liquid gaze. He'd heard it enough.

"Yeah. Me too."

"Do you think you're pushing the kids a bit hard, Bo?"

Bo-Katan wrinkled her nose at the scent of the potent alcohol Sewlen was using to clean her hands.

"She wasn't hurt, Sewlen. When you give two ten-standards training staffs it's inevitable that-"

"I'll rephrase," the doctor interrupted. "Bo, I think you're pushing the kids a bit hard."

Bo-Katan folded her arms.

"Sewlen, think about this, we need to-"

"And they're not ten, Bo. Meri is eight-standard and Joda is seven."

"Really?"

Sewlen could apparently not put her contempt into words and instead gave an aggrieved sigh.

"They're really good," Bo mused, "for eight and seven."

"Of course they are," Sewlen grumbled, snapping shut her doctor's case. "You've been flogging them ever since they came to us."

"Flogging them?" Bo-Katan repeated. "Sewlen, this is basic training that any Mando'ad should have and it's no more than I did in my childhood. I'm alright, aren't I?"

Sewlen gave her a pointedly doubtful look.

"I am alright," Bo-Katan emphasised. "I survived the purge of Mandalore. And these kids have to survive too. Whatever comes at us. Don't you understand how important it is that all these kids survive?"

Lips pressed tight together, Sewlen said nothing.

"It was a tiny cut, anyway," Bo-Katan pressed, perhaps a little petulantly. "I never would have thought I'd see you so worked up over a split eyebrow. You've saved patients who've bled kriffing litres, Sewlen, you're the best surgeon I-"

"And there are plenty I haven't saved."

Sewlen's voice was firm and reproving but she looked a little pale.

"I'm sorry, Bo. Maybe it's a me problem. But I just don't…"

Her knuckles were white as she clasped her battered case, her gaze deflected down to the floor.

"I've seen enough blood, really. More than enough. And I suppose I don't really want to see all that much more of it. That's all."

"Oh."

Bo-Katan's irritation evaporated and in its place crept a sense of shame.

"I'm sorry, Sewlen. I didn't think-"

"Don't worry about it."

"Well, I mean, I'm a little worr-"

Bo-Katan's hand caught Sewlen by the shoulder as she tried to walk past her down the ship's narrow hallway. She realised, as the doctor's eyes flicked up to look at her, that she didn't know what to say or what to do next.

"Sewlen, I-"

"Oops!"

Ruma opened the door into the hallway and nearly toppled Sewlen.

"Sorry to interrupt you two. I can see you're…"

Bo-Katan glared down Ruma's inane grin and her words faded.

"My bad. Sorry. Are you both okay?"

Bo-Katan would have liked to tell Ruma to piss off but it wouldn't exactly have helped her case.

"Fighting about something?"

And it was Sewlen who found the words and overcame the strange inertia that had somehow frozen Bo-Katan where she stood. She turned to face their younger companion, shaking Bo-Katan's hand from her shoulder.

"Meri's alright?"

"Yes, thank you. The glue's stopped stinging now. She's already reminded me that I promised her five bilaberries if she didn't cry."

"Glad to hear it. I'll come check on her in a few hours. Anytime if you're worried."

Sewlen gave a tight smile and strode away, leaving Bo-Katan to deal with Ruma's inquisitive gaze.

"What did I interrupt?" Ruma pressed.

Bo-Katan fixed her with a glare that she had previously reserved only for her sister.

"Nothing. Go get your foundling some bilaberries."

"Five bilaberries!" came Meri's voice from the bunk-room.

Ruma gave a reluctant smile.

"Coming right up, ad'ik!"

She pointed a menacing finger at Bo-Katan.

"Is Sewlen okay?"

"Sewlen's fine."

But Bo-Katan felt a heavy guilt settle in her chest as she said it. She'd presumed Sewlen was fine. But she'd not once asked her. She was supposed to be Sewlen's friend, blast it. She'd never really learned how to be that for someone.

"Don't look so sad," Ruma advised. "She'll forgive you."

"We weren't fighting, Vod'ika."

"It looked like you were fighting."

"You adopt seven foundlings and all of a sudden believe you are endowed with superhuman empathy-"

"I am endowed with superhuman empathy!"

An impatient Meri marched into the hallway to tug on Ruma's sweater. The sterile glue gleamed purple on her forehead.

"Five bilaberries, please!"

The depression should have killed her. But Ursa, who had wielded so many weapons and meted out so many blows had never been able to turn her violence upon herself. She was a coward, she supposed. Her cowardice saved her life.

This is not to say she emerged easily from the foggy darkness that had enshrouded her in the months after Tristan's birth. When Tristan spoke his first words – Vod before Buir – in the weeks approaching his first lifeday, she could not find the life within her to speak back to him in the singing way that mothers do. It took all of her energy to rise from her bed and follow him around the house as he crawled then cruised, toppled then toddled. Her older daughter quickly learned of her mother's many failings and became a child who without fuss blotted the blood from her grazes with the hem of her tunic and would not cry for help unless failing haemostasis, in which case she would find her father.

Alrich suffered too, of course. Ursa simply knew little of it because from the depths of her own sadness she could barely see him. She supposed he was alright. He, at least, ate all of his meals and sang old folk songs to the baby. And he still had his passion. He could retreat to his art, while Ursa could not wage any war.

"I think you should come see what our daughter has been occupying herself with this afternoon," Alrich announced.

He found Ursa in bed well before dinnertime. He was holding a contented Tristan in his arms, who reclined lazily, sucking on a bottle, watching his mother with vague curiosity.

"I…"

Her voice rasped. But Alrich reached out a hand and Ursa still had the pride not to take it, although her limbs were heavy as lead. It was difficult to believe, certainly, that she was still made from flesh and blood. Perhaps it was mercury, toxic and sluggish, filling her veins.

"It really is worth seeing," Alrich stressed.

They padded out to the main entranceway of the fortress to find Sabine, dwarfed by the enormous glass wall overlooking the lake, beholding her first mural with complete disregard for her watching parents.

"By the stars," Ursa managed.

The child had broken into her father's art supplies and created an enormous mess of black and blue paint as high as her almost-four-year-old arms could reach. Ursa could not quite make out the scene but there was a sense of purpose to Sabine's brushstrokes. Angular and jagged in parts, languid and swirling in others.

"She's going to be an artist like you," Ursa murmured, trying for a smile to cast at her husband.

She did not manage the smile, but Alrich squeezed her hand at the effort.

"And she is already a soldier like you," Alrich pointed out. "Let me show you."

They left the child at her work and plodded next towards Alrich's studio.

"See?"

He had not forgotten to lock the door. The glass window at the top of the door had been smashed open. Amongst the shattered glass was a stool dragged from the kitchen, a heavy stone gathered from the snowy fields outside, and a blood-flecked towel.

"Who are you missing today?"

Barriss had an uncanny way of reading the feelings that Ahsoka tried so effortfully to mask from her own consciousness. Ahsoka opened her eyes and quit at her sunrise meditation.

"Everyone and no one. As usual."

The Mirilian acknowledged this with a solemn nod and busied herself with her breakfast.

"It's impressive, you know," she added. "That you still try to follow the old teachings."

Ahsoka snorted without real humour.

"I'm just trying not to be sad all the time."

Barriss gave a hum of understanding. She was making tea, Ahsoka realised, for two.

"Does it have anything to do with the ship we saw for sale on our way out of Thabeska?"

Ahsoka couldn't help it; she barked out a laugh of disbelief.

"There's Force-aided empathy and then there's you, Barriss. How did you-"

"We weren't looking for a new ship," Barriss pointed out. "There was no reason for you to ask the seller those questions. Where it had been. Who he'd bought it from."

Ahsoka gave a rueful half-smile.

"I forgot how good your hearing was."

"Mirialan ears."

"Yeah, well. I think it was my old ship. The one I was using when I came to find you on Mirial."

She uncrossed her legs and stretched her limbs.

"Bo-Katan Kryze's spare fighter, originally. Then mine. And then…"

Her voice trailed off. She did not see Darkness in Barriss anymore. But she couldn't speak of Anakin to her. His survival, and that of his children, was a truth so improbable, so precious, she would not tell anyone of it. Not for anything.

"Then I gave it away," she mumbled. "But I think that…"

She and Anakin had left Dagobah in that ship together. They had travelled together for a short while in their search for the twins before choosing to split up. Anakin had insisted that she deserved the better ship; she was going all the way to Shili, whereas he was only limping to Tatooine, where an old Mandalorian fighter would get him into less trouble. He had taken Bo-Katan's old ship and they had spent their meagre shared credits on a new ship for her.

Anakin had sold the ship, perhaps. Sold it to some trader who had taken it off Tatooine and sold it on Thabeska. That was the most likely story.

And yet she could not help but think of Korkie Kryze.

What had Anakin said, exactly? In their last precious conversation – brief, anxious, using comms they had afterwards immediately destroyed – all those lunar cycles ago? I pissed him off. By not wanting to fight, you know? He went off to be a rebel. I don't know. I let him down, probably. I hope he's okay.

And Ahsoka hadn't said what she'd wanted to say, which was that yes, Anakin had let Korkie down and she was rather angry at him about it. He had allowed a fourteen-standard-year-old to fly out into the very nastiest version of the galaxy as far back as anyone could remember. Couldn't he have convinced him to stay? Made some sort of promise that could have kept him in line just a little longer? Or at the very least given him her contact? But Ahsoka saw in her mind's eye instead Anakin returning Bo-Katan's old fighter into her nephew's grateful care. And Korkie Kryze flying out into a galaxy with no contacts and no one looking after him. A fourteen-standard prince flying out into a galaxy that was too cruel to deserve him.

He could have ditched the ship for a thousand reasons. It was sensible when on the run to change vehicles often; it was the most readily traceable part of one's identity. That he'd sold the ship didn't mean he'd got into any trouble. It had been in fair condition, after all it had been through. Minimal blaster damage on the hull. He was probably doing just fine.

But she didn't know that. And it was equally possible that the ship had changed hands when he had been apprehended, forcibly boarded, arrested. Killed. Korkie could have been killed, for all she knew. And of course that had always been true, she'd always known that, but seeing the ship had made her think of it and-

"You okay, Ahsoka?"

Barriss pressed a mug of tea into her hands.

"Actually, don't answer that. You're not."

Ahsoka placed the tea down on the ground beside her. She could barely hold it, let alone drink it, right now.

"Sorry, Barriss," she mumbled. "Just… spiralling a little…"

"Happens to all of us."

Ahsoka made a noise of assent.

She'd breathe through this. They had work to do today. Ahsoka was a mechanic now, making the credits that kept them fed. Barriss would continue pressing for a weak link in the local Imperial chain of command. They were building towards the liberation of Mon Cala's imprisoned monarchy. Taking turns between the mundane and the life-threatening.

They had work to do. Every day, work to do.

There was no time to think of Korkie Kryze, or of exactly how angry she was at Anakin for ever having let him go.

Work did not remain quiet for long on Yaga Minor. Preparations for the galaxy's second Empire Day heightened tensions amongst Imperial officials and would-be-rebels alike. Korkie became aware of the brewing disturbance in the shipyards when he rose from their stacked bunks in a makeshift shoebox apartment to filter the morning caff.

"Imperial freighter here today," he remarked, looking through the wooden slats that served as their paneless window.

"I heard talk about that one coming," Kawlan contributed, voice husky with sleep. "It's a weapons carrier. Stopping here to upgrade its shields."

Korkie nodded vaguely, eyes darting across the narrow field of view.

"You've got a look on your face," Kawlan accused, rising to sit. "Are you thinking something stupid?"

Korkie did not reply.

"Are you thinking of blowing it up?"

At Kawlan's rising anxiety, Korkie sighed and turned from the window, presenting his companion with a cup of steaming caff.

"No, I'm not," he acquiesced. "But someone out there has already made plans."

"Who? What sort of plans?"

Korkie shrugged as he pulled his boots onto his feet. The space they inhabited together was so small that Korkie thudded into Kawlan's thigh as he struggled, one-legged, with a bootstrap.

"I'm going to go find out," he announced, donning his jacket. "I have a feeling they'll be a useful contact."

Kawlan raised his brows, concerned.

"You're sure they're not the sort of contact who'll tie us up in something messy? We've got a job to do, remember?"

"We've got a job to do and we need help to do it," Korkie affirmed. "I get the sense that this might be the chance we've been waiting for."

Kawlan pressed the second cup of caff into Korkie's hands in an attempt to slow him down.

"You know you freak me out when you talk mystical like this."

"You know I can sense things you can't," Korkie reminded him, voice quiet but firm. "I won't jeopardise The Path, Kawlan. I promise. I have a good feeling about this."

He sculled down the caff in two generous gulps.

"I'm going to make the network stronger, okay? Get us the allies we need. I might be off-planet a little while."

Kawlan caught him by the collar and pulled him back over the threshold. He wrapped his arm around Korkie's shoulders.

"Just don't get yourself hurt, okay, young hero?"

Korkie gave a crooked grin.

"I'll stay safe if you do, okay?"

Kawlan gave a ginger smile in return and clapped him on the back.

"Alright. Deal."

Korkie found the broad-shouldered Twi'lek pretending to be busy stacking crates at the loading bay that did not employ him.

"Free Ryloth Movement?"

The blue-skinned Twi'lek whipped around, his eyes widening.

"Don't stress. I'm Ben, of the unofficial Free Everywhere Movement."

Korkie offered a hand. The Twi'lek warily shook.

"Pok," he grunted. "What do you want?"

"I want to help," Korkie offered. "You know they'll be on your back right from take-off. It'll be a miracle if you lose them and get those weapons back to Ryloth."

Pok grimaced.

"Sometimes you've got to take the slim chances you get."

Korkie shrugged.

"Sometimes. When you've not got any better options."

They watched the Imperial soldiers make their way from the docked freighter, leaving a handful of stormtroopers on guard. The grey uniformed officers followed a local technician who intended, presumably, to provide an information session on the proposed shield technology.

"I can disable those two companion ships for you," Korkie offered. "Make those chances a little less slim."

Pok folded his arms.

"And why might you do that, kid?"

"Any hit to the Empire's a win for me," Korkie reasoned. "Besides, I'd like to make acquaintances with the most successful guerrilla movement in the galaxy today. No one's fighting back like Ryloth is."

Pok narrowed his gaze.

"My leader, Cham Syndulla, is not a fan of the Free Everywhere Movement. We fight for Ryloth. We can't afford to fight the galaxy over. We don't lend out favours."

"Then I won't ask for any," Korkie acquiesced. "I'll fight your battle in exchange for an education in freedom fighting. How's that?"

The Imperial officers had disappeared now from view. It was the moment that Pok had no doubt been waiting for.

"Can you actually disable those two companion ships for me?" he asked, grudgingly.

Korkie nodded vigorously.

"Of course. It'll take me less than five minutes."

"Fine," Pok sighed.

He readied his blaster at his belt.

"And when Cham puts me on probation for the unauthorised pick-up of an outsider," he added, "You're to turn some of that persuasive charm onto him, you hear?"

Korkie saluted and grinned. The son of two great negotiators. He'd lost so much – but not the golden tongue.

We're going to Ryloth! There might be a chance to meet a few friends, 17. The next chapter is an exciting one as Korkie and Pok run into some trouble.

I hope my jumping around the galaxy isn't too disorientating. I have a lot of love for all of our peripheral characters and I hope you're enjoying them too. I couldn't believe I hadn't written any Ahsoka yet! I've been missing her.

Get excited for some more fabulous cameos next chapter.

xx - S.