Thanks for reviews LordAries and 17 as always - you keep me going!

17: I've made Trilla Korkie's age - she doesn't appear to have a canonical official age. Two emotionally adrift approximately-18-year-olds. I agree that they'd get along in another galaxy. Part of her is a bit sweet on him. In this galaxy, though, I'm afraid things are taking a turn for the worse.

This chapter is also inspired by the very beautiful song Thinking of a Place. Have a cup of tea ready perhaps.

Chapter 32: Sufferer of Love

Trilla had come to Yaga Minor in the hopes of finding Cere Junda. Truly, she had. The Prince of Mandalore had bruised her and taunted her and wasted her kriffing time but her battle was not with him. Kriff, she'd felt sorry for him, a little. She'd been truthful on Dantooine when she'd told him she would do him the mercy of killing him.

But that had been a long time ago. Before her second Master had betrayed her just as coldly as the first.

When she sensed him in Yaga Minor's tenth district, unguarded, asleep… who was she to ignore the Force's great gift? For he was not her true enemy but he was a golden prize. His capture would win back the Emperor's favour and his turn to the Dark Side would, more importantly, drive another stake into Cere Junda's heart.

Another Padawan failed. Another soul on her conscience.

It would almost be enjoyable, Trilla thought, to fight beside the acerbic young Kenobi as they hunted Cere Junda together.

"Mahdi, get up!"

The light was the yellow-grey of early dawn. Mahdi groaned, bringing his hands to shield his eyes. His muscles were stiff and sore from a night's sleep upon the riverbank.

"Now, Mahdi! Right now! Get up!"

"What…"

He was pulled into a seated position before his own muscles could find the strength. Through bleary eyes, he saw Ben – no, Korkie – kneeling before him. His face was terribly white.

"I sense danger, Mahdi. You need to go home right away. I'll go the other direction. Can't get you caught up. I'm so sorry."

Mahdi had never seen Korkie afraid. The strangeness of it was terrifying. He was suddenly wide awake himself, pulling on his boots.

Danger.

Korkie had warned him, hadn't he? Last night. Last night he'd said he was trouble and Mahdi hadn't given a shit. He'd finally felt brave. And now his heart raced so fast it hurt. Already, Korkie was leaving him, jogging across the beach, drawing his weapons from his belt.

Mahdi had done nothing but laugh last night, as Korkie had rolled onto those 'saber hilts and yelped with the pain of the ridged metal jutting into his thigh. They'd cast the weapons aside and fallen back into each other's arms. Mahdi hadn't stopped for a kriffing moment to think about the fact that he was undressing some rebel-Jedi-Mando wanted fugitive.

He scrambled to his feet and ran, kicking up ash-speckled river sand as he raced for the relative protection of the maze of broken buildings. But as he reached them he could not help but look back. He'd left Korkie's cloak on the sand. It had made somehow the most sacred bed he'd ever known. He watched Korkie weaving through the rubble in the other direction. Watched him raise a blue blade – the weapon of a karking Jedi – against blaster fire. He could faintly make out the black armour of his assailant amidst the debris.

An Inquisitor.

Mahdi turned and ran again. He ran and he leapt over low-lying debris and his shins were battered by collisions and his lungs starved for air. He ran for his life. He ran until he'd made it to the entrance of the shelter where he'd once mixed a virgin Sunriser for a golden-haired flirt without an ID.

And then he stopped, panting, hands on his knees, and tried to make sense of what he'd just done.

Korkie had a strange lightness to him as he fought the Second Sister for what felt as though it could have been the hundredth time. Mahdi had escaped. He had sensed her just in time and Mahdi had escaped. He could die today and he didn't kriffing care. Mahdi had escaped over the rubble just as he'd asked him to and everything was going to be okay.

"Thought we'd finally adjusted you to a normal sleep cycle," Colles grumbled, woken by his workmate sometime definitely too early for breakfast. "Quieten down, Mahdi, you're going to wake everyone up."

There were nearly a hundred people sleeping on the perpetually drink-stained floor of what had once been The Yagai Hive.

"You got any detonators left?" Mahdi asked. "The ones you were using to break up those half-standing walls?"

"Yeah. In my bag. What the kriff do you want with-"

"And a blaster? Do you own a blaster?"

Colles rubbed at his eyes, bewildered.

"What in the hells has got into you, Mahdi?"

"Do you kriffing have one or not?"

There was something crazed in Mahdi's dark eyes.

"Look, I'm no criminal or anything, I just-"

"Yes or no?"

"Yes!" Colles hissed. "But only because I figured-"

But Colles never had the chance to justify himself. Mahdi, who had already filled his pockets with detonators, unzipped the bag's second compartment and pulled out the blaster, then without a word, turned to clamber back over the sleeping bodies.

"Mahdi, watch out, you're stepping on everyone!"

But before any of the rudely awakened could take retribution, Mahdi had raced back up the stairs and left the shelter.

"No armour today."

They were entangled in the now-familiar sparring patterns of her double-edged 'saber against his asymmetric Jar'kai. Korkie rolled his eyes and leapt onto a pile of crushed stone to gain advantage over her reaching blade.

"Your powers of observation are staggering, Trilla. I still can't believe the Emperor fired you."

She used the Force to shatter his haphazard platform and he somersaulted easily to the ground to meet her new jab.

"Last night's clothes?" she pressed. "Forgive me, I hadn't planned to interrupt your blissful morning."

There was a pleasing spike of fear in his Force-signature. He had hoped, foolishly, that she had not sensed the presence beside him this morning and now she had unnerved him. The lover upon the beach was, then, no fleeting passion. It was a shame she'd not managed to catch him.

"Don't mistake me for a romantic," Korkie protested, off-handed.

Trilla sneered.

"I don't think I'm at all mistaken."

And Korkie Kryze knew it. Trilla leered.

"I might have to go find him, after I'm done with you."

The fear was wild about him. Intoxicating. They had been at a stalemate in so many battles but Trilla knew that today she would win. Today, the Force was on her side. She had unbalanced him and soon he would fall.

"And to think," Trilla drawled, as she pushed him back, watched him stumble over a loose stone, "that you never learned from your father's mistakes. All this pathetic love with no anger, no strength behind it-"

He cast the stone at her with a desperate jerk of his head. But his fear made her strong. Too strong. She stopped it in its arc and sliced it with her blade as it fell.

"You're a failed Jedi and Darksider both!" she laughed.

She harnessed her power around her own piece of debris; the projectile rocketed into his elbow and with a gasp, he dropped the Darksaber from his hand. There was pain now, white-hot pain, amidst his fear.

And she might have finished him in that precise moment had a blaster bolt not struck her in the back.

Korkie felt his heart seize and then shatter, just as the bones in his arm had only moments before. His voice ripped raw from his chest.

"No!"

And he shouldn't have been thinking of Mahdi; he shouldn't even have been looking at Mahdi. He should have been taking advantage of the Second Sister's momentary distraction but he was a failure just as she had said of him, for by the time he had swung his lightsaber with his still-functioning arm, Trilla had recovered from the stinging pain and was ready to block him again.

"Get out of here!" he yelled.

"No kriffing way, Korkie."

Mahdi was poised, chest heaving, blaster in one hand and detonator in the other, waiting for the moment of separation to safely cast his explosive at the Second Sister.

"I'm not leaving you."

Blessed Mahdi. Stupid, stupid Mahdi. For Korkie had a feeling that all the detonators in the galaxy couldn't hurt the Second Sister right now. Her Force-signature was roaring with darkness in a way Korkie had never felt it. Stronger, even, that when she had brought to life the wall of fire upon Arkanis.

Korkie yelled so hard it ached deep in his belly. Burned in his throat.

"Mahdi, please, go!"

But it was too late.

With a futile swing of Siri Tachi's lightsaber – too slow, too weak, a blasted failure – the Second Sister weaved out of his attack and extended her left hand. Mahdi was pulled, as easily as she had cast the pieces of rubble, into her embrace.

Korkie couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. The whole galaxy seemed to freeze as she tilted the point of her red blade over Mahdi's heart.

"Don't do this," he pleaded. "He's not a rebel. He's not Force-sensitive. He's just a kriffing bartender, okay?"

His voice broke over the words. His knees were shaking.

"That's all. I swear."

The Second Sister laughed. In her iron grip, Mahdi's chest was heaving with panting breaths, silver tears spilling onto his cheeks.

"He's more than that to you."

"You can have me," Korkie vowed, deactivating his lightsaber. "That's fine. I'll come with you. Take me to your Emperor, I don't kriffing care. Just leave him. Please."

And Korkie knew as he said it that it was no use.

"I don't want you as a noble martyr, Kenobi," Trilla sneered. "I want you broken."

That horrible, knifing laughter again. She lifted her helmet from her face as though to behold him more clearly, to savour the moment.

"And I know that this will break you."

Korkie called desperately on the Force, pulled at Mahdi with everything he had. Charged forward, reignited his blade, reached for him-

Too slow. Too weak. A failure.

He had pulled Mahdi from the Second Sister's grip. But his body fell limp into Korkie's reaching arms. There was a clean, smoking hole in Mahdi's chest.

And Korkie could have collapsed upon the wounded soil and held him to his chest and cried every last tear from his body and never moved again. But he did not. He heard the Second Sister's laughter and felt burning anger rising within him. He hated her. He had vowed to never hate but he hated her.

With a roar of fury Korkie clenched the fist of his broken arm and pulled. Reached deep into the Force with all his anger. The Second Sister's armour burst at its joints and the panels of black plastoid ripped from her body. In one swift movement, in barely one breath, Korkie's lightsaber stabbed deep in her gut. And where there had been gale-wind anger there was in the Force a sudden, horrible silence.

She staggered back, clutching her wound, low near her hip.

"Very good, Kenobi."

Her voice was low and ragged.

"I don't suppose you have any intention of finishing the job?" she asked.

Korkie extinguished the lightsaber in his shaking hand and said nothing.

"Then walk away, Kenobi," she hissed. "Walk away and think about what you have done."

She managed a sneer and reached a hand to grasp him, trembling, by his shirt.

"Think about what you have done," she whispered. "And how good it felt to do it."

Korkie shook his head and she released him. He staggered backwards, away from her, and summoned the Darksaber to his belt.

He should have finished her. He'd already failed. Already given into anger. Why not finish her now?

But he could not bring himself to do it. He collapsed to his knees beside Mahdi's body and he did not watch her as she limped away.

The silver lining in the whole tenth sector being flattened – and Lana's mother had always taught her to look for silver linings – was that she had been gifted an unexpected holiday from her final year of school study at precisely the time of year that everyone needed a few extra sleep-ins. But today seemed to be a rather poor morning for sleeping. She had woken briefly perhaps an hour ago – a disrespectfully loud conversation, and some idiot stumbling over her leg – and was woken again now a by a pair of long-fingered Yaga hands shaking her shoulder.

"Lana, shit, you've got to wake up, someone's outside and-"

She glimpsed one of Mahdi's bartender friends through her bleary eyes. The one who was good with detonators, helping with the clean-up. She couldn't even remember his name. She was eighteen-standard and it was too damn early.

"What are you-"

The Yaga was pale and clammy like he was going to vomit.

"Shit, look, sorry, I don't know what to do. I was up early, I went to see if I could find some food, and I- I'm sorry for waking you, I-"

He was blabbering like he'd gone completely crazy.

"Maybe I shouldn't have woken you. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I-"

Lana pushed herself upright.

"Colles," she said, as the name finally came to her. "What are you talking about?"

He took a steadying breath.

"Something terrible has happened," he told her. "Outside."

She scrambled to her feet and followed him up the narrow stairs. Her heart rate was picking up but she couldn't quite understand Colles' anxiety yet. Something terrible had happened? It didn't make any sense. Something terrible had already happened and their whole family had survived. There weren't any other buildings left to be felled. There wasn't a soldier in the whole damned city.

"I'm so sorry," Colles said again, as they arrived at the door at the top of the stairs. "It's terrible. I can't-"

Lana shouldered open the door and looked out into the street – what was left of the street, after all the buildings had collapsed in upon it. A debris-littered footpath, of sorts.

"There," Colles indicated, pointing a wavering finger. "It's Mahdi."

"Mahdi?"

Lana looked to the Yaga, who was wiping his sleeve against his long nose as he sniffled back tears, and then out in the direction of his point. She couldn't see Mahdi. She could see another human, a blonde human, on his knees, head bowed over a piece of rubble.

"That's not Mahdi," she told Colles.

Colles shook his head.

"He has Mahdi."

Lana started towards him, walking at first, and then beginning to run. The young man was not bent over a piece of rubble. He was bent over another person.

"Hey!" she called. "What are you-"

And her voice strangled and died. The man looked up at her and she knew that face. Blotchy and tear-stained today. But once, beaming and glitter-dusted over breakfast in her apartment.

She looked at him and gaped. She looked at him for a long moment. For what felt like an age. She looked at him because she could not look at the body he held in his arms. Because some part of her brain knew that person and she couldn't look at him. Not like this.

Instead, she looked at the golden-haired young man she'd quietly thought so beautiful – her heart had skipped a beat, childishly, when Mahdi had introduced them, and had made some ludicrous joke about arranged marriage – with some strange mingling of confusion and rage.

"I'm so sorry," he sobbed. "Lana, I'm so sorry."

She could not say anything sensible. So she looked at him and asked the only question that she could bring to her lips.

"What are you doing here?"

She did not know that he had ever loved her brother. She did not know that he had ever even touched him. Been anything more than a breakfast guest.

What are you doing here?

Korkie let out a deep moan and bowed his head over Mahdi's body once more. It was a guttural, animal sound. It seeped from his core like blood from a wound. For he had lost Mahdi but he had lost more than that; he had lost the man he had been in Mahdi's arms. Whatever they had shared – that which they had never had the chance to name – would simply become another uncorroborated memory that Korkie could never make real.

It would be warped and fragmented by his stupid, useless mind and sooner or later it would be lost. It would never exist again. It would be lost with the sounds of his Jedi father singing in the shower, with the image of his mother the Duchess on her knees planting seedlings in the dirt of the palace gardens. It would be lost like the fearless Anakin who had braved a roaring river to pluck Korkie from its current, like the last words that Padme had spoken to him. I'm glad you were with me, Korkie. Maybe. Thank you for being with me, Korkie. What had she said? He couldn't remember anymore.

Tears were streaming from his eyes and he could barely breathe. He had lost so much, too much, and now Mahdi too. Mahdi sitting on the fallen tree above the silver river, the moonlight glinting in his eyes. The warmth of Mahdi's hand upon his chest. These memories, too, would take on that feeling of distant fantasy as the planets cycled around their dying sun. Lost to cold, empty, endless space, which took the heat of the suns and gave nothing in return. Which would take and take and take until there was nothing left, nothing in the whole universe, when nothing Korkie had ever done and no one that he had ever loved would matter anymore.

There was the clatter of shifting rubble as Lana, too, dropped to her knees. She reached out a shaking hand and lifted Korkie's chin. Caught his watery gaze with her own.

"I didn't know," she told him. "I'm sorry. But I see it now."

And Korkie sobbed anew, in gratitude and in grief. They embraced each other over the body and cried a very long time.

"Who did this?"

"An Inquisitor."

"Why?"

"Because he tried to save my life."

Lana looked at her brother with a hole in his chest. He was so perfect, if she took her eyes from the wound. Not a scratch on his face.

"Where do we even take him?"

"I don't know."

"We never got Mum's body. Like we'd use it to sue them, or something. So I don't really know…"

"I'm sorry."

"There's a mass grave at the big crater site. For the people who died in the explosion. But that feels…"

Lana wiped the freshly streaming tears from her eyes.

"Maybe if we take him home," she decided. "To the place where the apartment used to be. Just for now."

"Okay."

A deep breath. Touching him. The body that was not her brother but had once been her brother. She held his legs. She wasn't brave enough to be near that wound. To be near his face.

"You alright?"

"Yeah. I broke this arm, I think."

"Sorry. Maybe we can readjust-"

"It's fine. I can barely feel it."

And they began their slow, crunching journey along the gravel.

"I'm going to have to tell Riyan."

Lana could hardly see for the tears in her eyes. She was going to fall over something and drop Mahdi's kriffing legs.

"He's probably…" she managed, voice quavering. "He's probably still asleep."

The Emperor had stripped her of her allocated entourage of officers and stormtroopers but had allowed her to keep her sleek ship and all of its resident droids. The technology was far more useful to Trilla Suduri than any of the bucketheads ever had been. She engaged the automatic pilot and collapsed onto her bunk as her medical droid descended upon her with needles and hissing gas.

She'd survived this kriffing far. He couldn't have cut through anything too important.

Trilla closed her eyes and surrendered herself to the inevitable loss of consciousness. She wasn't sure if it was the medicine of the droid or she was going into shock. But she vowed to herself, a final flitting thought, that she was still too angry to die.

They brought Mahdi to the hollowed-out rubble where his home had been and wrapped him in a blanket from Korkie's ship. And Korkie waited beside him as Lana, the bravest between them, returned to The Yagai Hive to tell Riyan that his older brother was dead.

Korkie cradled his broken arm against his chest and used his good hand to sweep the dust from Mahdi's hair. It seemed impossible to him that he knew this body so intimately and yet the body no longer knew him. That he could be sitting here with Mahdi but Mahdi was gone. It wasn't the first blasted dead body he'd sat beside. But it was the body he had loved most tenderly. The body to which he had given his own. He wanted to talk to him but couldn't muster his voice. He felt the warmth leaving Mahdi's skin and tucked the blanket more tightly around him. Laid his own jacket upon his chest. Gently pressed the warmth of his hands into his beautiful face.

Riyan appeared, his sister's hands upon his shoulders, when the winter sun was high in the sky. His round face was flushed with spent tears. He walked tentatively to the body under his sister's murmured instruction.

"It's alright if you don't want to be close or touch him. He's gone now. But if you want…"

Riyan regarded his brother's lifeless form a few moments with clamped jaw, then turned his gaze to Korkie and spoke, voice flat.

"I thought you were a spice runner but Lana says the Inquisitor wanted to kill you so you must be a Jedi."

It was not the time nor place for technicalities. Korkie nodded. Riyan gave a heavy sigh.

"Mahdi liked you," he said. "He was always looking forward to you coming back."

Korkie gave a watery attempt at a smile.

"Thank you."

Riyan dropped to his knees and hugged his brother, laying his head against his chest.

"I'll go to school every day," he pledged. "And cook dinner for Lana every night. I'll cook soup and vegetables and…"

Lana, too, dropped to her knees and rubbed Riyan's back. Korkie wiped at his freshly welling tears and eased himself to his feet.

"I'd better go. Before I cause any more trouble."

Lana looked up at him briefly. Gave a curt nod. There was nothing left to say. She could not absolve him of his guilt.

"May the Force be with you," Riyan said.

He was perhaps quoting a HoloNet piece from the war of his early childhood. He had likely known glimpses of Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. The Hero With No Fear. Riyan thought Korkie some sort of hero but Korkie knew himself to be nothing but a failure and a cheat.

"And with you," he acquiesced.

He picked his way over the rubble on the long journey back to his ship. He did not think of his father's cloak, strewn upon the river sand. He would never return to Yaga Minor again.

This was in my planned narrative from the very early days of writing this story. But man, I didn't want to write it. I never meant to get so attached to my beautiful OC.

If it's any sort of consolation, we're officially at rock bottom. Next chapter, Korkie finally gets the help he needs. Two of my very favourite characters are coming back into this story.

xx - S.