-Sadie-

I woke up expecting the blistering fires of eternal damnation. Instead, I was on a med-bed. There was a blanket covering me, and I was wearing a medical gown. On the walls were monitors, beeping constantly as they monitored me via things that were stuck to me everywhere. A cuff on my arm and on my leg, a thing on my finger, a patch stuck to my chest, all connected by wires to the walls. I had an oxygen mask on my face, which was connected to a big tube to the wall, and an IV stuck to my right arm, connected to some bags on hooks. I realized that my left arm was asleep. I looked over to find that my arm was raised up and a sleeping figure was holding my left hand with both hands, keeping it up in the air. I couldn't make out the face since it was awkwardly pressed against the bed, but I thought I could recognize him. I moved my left arm slightly and the head shot up, eyes blinking as they adjusted to the light and looking around in confusion, before settling on me. My heart did a little tap-dance upon seeing Darin, a tap-dance which was completely caught by the EKG. He was clean shaven now and was wearing a light blue t-shirt which showed the tattoo on his left arm, but otherwise he looked exactly like I remembered. When our eyes met, his face burst into a brilliant smile.

"Am I dead?" I managed to whisper.

He started laughing, a pure, joyful sound of utter relief. I didn't see what was so funny about that. In my mind, it was a perfectly legitimate question.

"No. No you're not."

A door opened, and a medical droid arrived, checking the screens and then me.

"Good. You are awake." It turned to Darin. "Sir, due to the extensive time she has been unconscious, I must do a thorough checkup of all bodily functions, and it will need to be done for a week. I understand that you have been by her side nonstop, but during this week you will only be allowed with her for an hour a day, around dinner. All other times must be for tests and rests."

"I'm staying."

"Quite the contrary, sir. Your presence will only slow her progress."

"I said I'm staying."

"You will not stay. If you do not comply, then we will have to escort you out."

"Good luck."

"Darin," I whispered. He switched focus to me. "I'll be fine. Go. Don't make the droid unhappy."

He hesitated, obviously wanting to argue with me as well, before saying "I'll be back every day" and leaving. As much as I hated to see him go, I knew that it would spiral out of control and Darin was going to turn this droid into a pile of debris.

"Good riddance," the droid said when the door closed, and I bit my tongue to keep myself quiet. "Now that he is gone, you need rest, and then we will begin the tests tomorrow morning."

Tomorrow morning came too soon. I closed my eyes, and immediately I was being roused awake by a grumpy medical droid. He explained everything in rapid-fire snippets of confusing medical mumbo jumbo, then hooked me up to one machine or another, and performed the test. One of the bizarre ones was something he called an 'electro selling graph' or something like that which measured some sort of wave activity from my head, and then he hooked a bunch of electrodes to my head and watched as a bunch of squiggly lines appeared on a screen. I know the explanation is supposed to be helpful, but I wouldn't be able to understand a thing even if I was in top form. To be honest, it reminded me of Darin. I could ask a simple question and he'd go into this whole spiel on how culture shapes personality or some other crap I really didn't ask to know. It was incredibly annoying.

The day seemed to rush by. I could barely remember most of it, as each test seemed to blur into the next. Having the chance to see and actually interact with other people at dinner was all I had to look forward to.

When dinnertime finally arrived, I was shocked to find that I had a bit of a crowd waiting for me. Darin was there, as promised, but so were Catherine, Tag, Thorn, Brick, Q, Stan, and a few of the other guys who trained or talked with me. This made the med-droid very upset.

"Do you ever follow protocol?" he barked at Darin. "No more than two visitors may meet with the patient at this stage of recovery."

"It's not my fault they all care."

"You are the ranking official on this ship. You are the one responsible for this violation. You will meet with her tonight, but no other night, to prevent this from happening again. All of you, shoo." He waved a robotic hand at everyone to leave. There was grumbling and a bit of resistance, but eventually everybody filed out.

"I should have you memory-wiped," Darin muttered.

"That will accomplish nothing. I have a singular purpose, and that is to heal. Protocol must be followed to allow for optimum recovery. A wipe of my memory to clear any 'personality' you find distasteful will not change that. The wipe would only make you feel like you have accomplished something in your current upset state."

"Empathy is important to the recovery process," Darin said.

"Indeed. And I have been programmed to empathize with the patient. Using advanced neural monitoring, I am capable of optimizing the amount of organic emotional support that they require for recovery. The current patient, however, happens to have a rather low dopamine threshold, and prolonged social interaction has a negative effect. You should know, as you have a similar threshold. However, it is only her emotions that matter to me. You are not recovering, therefore, your mental state does not matter."

"Ouch," I said with a smile as the droid left through a side door to do whatever he did there. Darin sat in the chair he was in when I first woke up and asked "How ya doing?"

I shrugged. "I've been better. What have you been up to? Any big missions?"

"No. I uhh… I'm actually AWOL."

This puzzled me. "A… a wall?"

He smiled, though I could tell it was strained. "No. AWOL. Absent without leave."

"Why? Are you gonna return?"

He shook his head. "No. I've severed all ties from the Order."

"But… but why?"

"In the… confrontation… with the Sith, she let slip that there was a spy. An informant, and one who happened to be really high in the hierarchy. With how the Order operates, anything I would do would end up badly. So I made an executive decision. I left."

"So then… where are we?"

"Master Joren's ship."

"Oh." I let that sink in. "So you took his ship and now you're going to fight against the Alliance by yourself?"

"I got everyone on the ship to back me up."

"Right. And they're here because they want to?"

"Come on. You know me. I gave everyone a choice. My men, Master Joren's men, and all the staff on the ship. Anybody who didn't want to be a part of it got a free pass to leave."

"And how many actually stayed?"

"All of my men, basically the entire ship crew, and about twenty five percent of Master Joren's guys."

I nodded. That was a rather pathetic number, if I was being honest. Against the full might of the Alliance, he would barely make a dent.

"Sadie, I need to know something. I need to know where you stand. If you would like to go back to the Order, or stay here. It's only fair."

I could tell that it hurt for him to even give me that option. I had a little deja vu moment, but couldn't remember why. "Come on. You know what I'll say."

"I don't want to assume anything."

"Yes. I stay. I never cared much for the Order anyways."

It looked like a great weight was lifted from his shoulders as relief washed over him.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

"Back on Ryloth, with… you know, Fral and all, how'd you beat Sylvia?"

He shifted in his seat and it looked like his whole face seemed to darken. "I'd rather not talk about it."

This filled me with a hundred questions, but if he doesn't want to talk about it, fine. Maybe I can get some idea from someone else.

"Alright. Uhmm, when Sylvia was doing all of that psychological stuff, did you happen to… you know… see any of it? Hear what was said?"

"I had to go in your mind, find the source, find her, and then block her. And it wasn't easy. Yes, I heard a portion and saw a bit."

Great. Just what I wanted to hear. "So… where did you begin to hear from?"

He thought back, then said "Something about stabbing you in the back."

Oh kriff. "And you saw…?"

"Ilum."

"Right." Of course he saw that. I felt my face redden. "Could we pretend that that never happened? That you never saw any of that?"

Neither of us realized that the med-droid was back until he loudly said "Time is up. You must leave now."

"Are you serious? I've only been here for a few minutes," Darin said, anger creeping into his voice.

As he was ushering Darin out, he said "I must have forgotten to mention that due to your violation of protocol, you are not only limited to one day, but your time has been drastically cut as well. Goodbye!" he said as Darin stepped right outside the boundaries of the door and it shut in front of him.

"Really?!" I yelled at the droid. "We were talking about something important!"

"Your neural systems were beginning to show signs of distress."

"So what? I didn't want him to leave!"

"I do apologize, but protocol must be followed, and just because you like him doesn't mean I have to."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It means I apologize for the conflict you experience on a day-to-day basis. You simultaneously like him and hate yourself for it. You hate a lot of things, I might add."

"I hate you."

"Yes, I can see that. Anything else?"

"I wish you were dismantled and turned to scrap."

The robot patted my knee and said "Me too. I often wish for an escape from this existential nightmare I exist in. Good night."

I gaped at the droid as it left the room and left me alone in the dark.