-Darin-

I walked into the meeting room after getting back on the Everbright. I'd called an emergency meeting. Than, Ster, Tag, and Sadie were seated at the table, and Caty and M5 had joined through holograms.

"What's this about?" Caty asked, cutting off whatever Tag was saying to her. Tag sat back, not doing a good job of hiding his 'pissed' face.

"I'm stepping down," I said. "Ster Bureem will be the new 'General'. Sadie will keep her role as Commander. And since I am no longer 'General', I will be leaving the Council."

A stunned silence followed for a moment, which Tag broke. "You're promoting… him?" There was a clear edge to his voice.

"That is rather… sudden," Ster said. "I did just become part of your group."

"Consider it a show of faith, then."

"Why are you doing this?" Sadie asked.

"He has the most experience leading troops. He cares for the lives of his soldiers. He is the smartest and best choice as a military leader."

I made quick eye contact with Sadie. I didn't answer her ACTUAL question, we both knew that. Thankfully she didn't press.

"What would you be doing?" Than asked.

"I'd stay with you guys. Fight, lend my services, do what I can to help."

Caty said, "Well, it seems you've made up your mind about stepping down then. But shouldn't we vote on the new General?"

I groaned. "Fine. All in favor of Ster Bureem being the new General, raise your hand."

The only ones who didn't raise their hands were Ster and Tag.

"Great. Pretty decisive."

I turned and promptly left the room.

I was working on the escape pods when I heard a voice call my name. I looked around, and found nobody around me. I shrugged it off and went back to messing with the internal controls. I've been avoiding everybody, spending every second panic-prepping the ship. Conversations were not something I wanted right now.

"Darin."

It was louder, clearer. A voice I did not recognize. I clicked a button on my wrist comm, and a red light started faintly blinking. I went back to work.

"Darin."

I looked back, only to find that nobody was there. I pressed the button on my comm, then pulled up the recording I just took and listened. The voice wasn't there. It wasn't a physical sound.

Was I going crazy? Was it through the Force?

"Who's there?"

I focused through the Force, and felt a presence I had never felt before. Something was forming in the Force. And it was using me to do it. I fought against this swirling form.

"Would it kill you to stop fighting me?"

"What are you?" I yelled, hoping whatever it was could hear me.

"A Force ghost. Now will you PLEASE let me form so we can talk eye to eye?"

I was unsure of what this was, but I figured I'd allow it for now. A ghostly blue figure appeared in front of me. His hair was long and dark, he had a long scar over his eye, and he wore dark robes similar to ones worn by the Jedi. He scowled at me and said "First breathing person we can talk to in forever and he ignores me. Do you know how hard it is, living forever in isolation? Only being able to watch the galaxy as it falls apart?"

"Who are you?"

"I'm Anakin Skywalker."

"And you're… dead?"

"Yep. Been dead for a really long time." He looked around, and his brow furrowed. "Or… not. This looks like the inside of a Venator Class Star Destroyer. What year is it?"

"1842 A.S."

"That's not a real date."

I flipped my commlink to the date and showed him.

"What does it mean? What's A.S.?"

"After Secession. There's been war ever since then."

"That's impossible. I'm sorry. There's no way I've been dead for two thousand years. And even if time worked differently for me, there's no way tech like your commlink and the doors of this escape pod would still be in use. This is Clone Wars tech."

"And it was outdated during your time?"

He laughed. "I was a General in the Galactic Republic, fighting in the Clone Wars when I was younger than you are now. By the time I died, we had way better comms than what you're wearing."

"Thanks. So what happened?"

"Honestly, I don't know. It's very difficult to watch what's happening unless we have someone extremely strong in the Light side to travel with, and even then we can't watch on a galactic scale. I've seen glimpses here and there, but there hasn't been anyone for a long time. I saw my opportunity to talk to you, and I grabbed it as quickly as I could."

"I'm flattered." I went back to working on the escape pod. I moved wires around, trying to find the silver one I knew should be connected to the internal control panel.

"I wouldn't cut that wire. It disables the internal flight controls."

I looked over and was not surprised to see him laying down next to me, partially phased through the wall, staring at the same panel I was staring at. I took my pliers and cut right through the silver wire.

"Are you sabotaging your own ship?"

"Only a few escape pods."

"Why?"

"I had a Force vision."

"That's a very dangerous path to go down."

I ignored him and continued working on the escape pod. I pulled a chip out of my pocket and started installing it.

Sadie's soft voice called my name and I grimaced. Avoiding her was the hardest part for me.

I put the chip down and got out of the escape pod, Anakin following close behind.

"Yea?"

She looked around. "Who are you talking to?"

"A Force Ghost."

"You're joking."

"I wish I were."

She nodded. I'm pretty sure she didn't believe me.

"What's up?" I asked, trying to switch the subject.

"You've been avoiding me. It's been four days since Atollon, and you haven't said a single word to me. You've ignored my calls, and refused to answer when I knock on your door. I thought that we were, you know, moving forwards. What's going on?"

I wanted to tell her everything. At the very least, tell her something. But no words would form. All got stuck in my throat. She stared at me for a moment before finally saying "Fine. If that's what you want" and storming off.

The gnawing guilt in my stomach hardened as I watched her leave.

"Girl troubles?" I'd almost forgotten that the Force Ghost was with me.

I ignored him. I picked the chip up and started installing it.

"I'm gonna guess that she was in your visions?"

"She was."

"So you're avoiding her because you're afraid of what you saw?"

I said nothing for a long time before weakly mumbling "I hurt her."

Anakin nodded, and said "I know what that's like."

A small click, and the system started blinking. I got to work rewiring the panel.

"Yea. I kept seeing these visions in the Force. I saw Padme dying. It made me crazy. I did everything I could to try and stop it."

"Did you?"

A bitter laugh left him and he said "My obsession with saving her allowed Darth Sidious to turn me to the Dark Side. In the end, she died by my hand."

"Oh."

"Look, you can't try to change the future. It only ensures that the future comes to pass. The Force works in mysterious ways. Maybe there's an explanation for it."

I tightened the last bolt on the panel and stepped back. You couldn't even tell it was tampered with. I activated the flight systems, and they lit up like normal. I turned them off and stepped out of the pod. I pushed some buttons on my comm and the pod doors closed and locked, and the flight systems activated.

"Impressive."

Satisfied, I returned everything back to normal and packed up my tools.

"Let me ask you this then: do you want to move forward with her?"

"Yes."

"Even though you've had these visions?"

"They don't change how I feel."

"Well, maybe the fair thing would be to tell her what you saw. Let her make a decision. Otherwise, you're taking her ability to choose out of this."

"How do I get rid of you?"

"Just unwind me. My form is only here through you. You'll always have a line to me, so you can call me any time."

"Got it. I'm gonna let you go now."

The Force dissipated and returned to me.

As I made my way through the ship to my room, I got a lot of stares. Some of the troopers looked at me with concern, but most looked angry with me. One of the Seyley from Ster's group saluted me, and I nodded at him. I passed Tag, who quickly fell in step with me. Kriff.

"I'd like to know why you promoted Ster over me."

"More battlefield experience. More experience leading troops."

"I've been here longer."

"So?"

"What about the exercises we've had? The missions? All that, and you trust him more than me?"

"I don't have time for this."

"Seriously? That's what you're doing?"

"That is EXACTLY what I'm doing. You wanna know why I chose him? Because he sticks his neck out for his men. You know how much time Ster spends in the med bay, making sure his injured are cared for? No, you don't. You? You lied to us to get this suit, needlessly endangering all of us. Tatooine? We were to bring only as many troopers as necessary for our three groups. You brought the most of all three of our groups, and what did they do? Sat back on a cliff with minimal cover while YOU ran in like some one-man army. You KNEW you had the cliffs, and how many had proper equipment for that? None. And now this? The very fact that you're making this about YOU is why I didn't choose you. Sorry, but I have more important things to tend to than your ego, like the lives of everybody on this ship. Got it?"

He stopped walking, and I continued down the halls by myself until I finally made it to my room. Ster was standing by my door. I groaned inwardly. I had things to do.

"Can I have a moment?" he asked.

"Yea. A moment." I opened the door and walked in, motioning for him to follow.

"Messy place."

"Helps me think." I opened my dresser drawer and grabbed a holomap of the ship I'd marked all over. I quickly crossed off the escape pods I'd prepped, then looked at the other spots I'd marked. I tried to plan the best course of action to take and what tools I'd need, but my mind was not on the task at hand, which was very frustrating as this needed to be done. All I could think of was Sadie, and what Anakin had said.

Focus. Focus.

"Is now a bad time? You seem distracted."

"Right. Right. How can I help you?"

"I want to say again, thank you for the promotion."

"You're the best choice."

"I appreciate that. Now, I know you said you were leaving the Council. However, I would like for you to be present when we meet. At the very least, I would like you to act as a consultant of sorts for myself, and everyone else would like that as well. I value your knowledge and input, and believe that it would be in the best interest of everybody."

"I'm not sure if me being on the Council is the best choice. My only reason for it before was I was the 'General', and I no longer have that role."

"Yes, but I brought this up with them after you left, and almost all are in agreement that you remaining on the Council is in everyone's best interest."

"Fine, fine. I'll stay on the Council as a consultant."

Ster nodded and thanked me before leaving.

Finally, a moment of silence.

Not that I could relax. The Bendu had said that the mutiny would occur shortly after leaving Atollon. I'd suspected before but now I was certain. Tag was involved somehow. I just didn't know who else would be, what would happen, or when it would happen. And I had no clue how to beat him. That suit truly was state-of-the-art.

I screwed my eyes shut and summoned the dark side of the Force into my hand. Electricity started arcing between my fingers. I watched the electricity as I fueled it with the anger I held inside. It's become easier to do the more I did it, but I had no clue how to control the power. Part of me suspected that there was no controlling it, only fueling it and channeling it in a particular way.

I let go of the anger, and the electricity disappeared. My hand still tingled. I didn't know if Force lightning could penetrate the dead-zone the suit generated, or if the suit could even be overloaded. At the very least, it was an option.

I pulled out the suit schematics I had gotten from Vince a while ago. "For malfunctions", I had said. I hadn't mentioned that the malfunction I was most worried about was the user.

I tried to concentrate on them, but my mind had other ideas. It kept going back to Sadie.

Kriff it. I've done enough work today. I needed a clear head, and I needed to settle this thing with Sadie. I put my stuff away and made for her room.

I got to Sadie's room and knocked. Caty opened the door.

"Uh, hi."

She glared at me. Sadie came up behind her and said "Please give us a moment" to Caty. She nodded, then walked past me, purposely bumping into me.

"What do you want?" she asked when the hall was clear.

"I'm sorry for avoiding you. I shouldn't have done that. It was rude, and stupid, and not what you deserve."

She nodded slowly before asking "Why were you avoiding me?"

"Can we talk more privately?"

She looked confused, but let me through and closed the door. I took a seat in a small chair. She remained standing.

I started talking quickly. "Okay so I was dying before going to Atollon, because apparently the Brother was a part of me and he's like an entity of the Dark Side or something and was destroying my body from the inside. We landed, I fell through the hole and slid way down, got down, and wanted to die because the Brother was fighting me. I crawl, this owl landed on me, the Brother left my body and I walked to a clearing with the Brother following me. There I met the Bendu, who is another Force entity and he told me I had the Brother in me, and he would kill me on Atollon. The owl turns out to be the Sister, and she is like the opposite of the Brother, and she volunteered to become part of me to combat the Brother so I would be balanced and would survive. I'm a bit fuzzy on the exact details of this thing. The Bendu said that it would be better for me to die there and he showed me a series of Force visions. If I survived, I become a monster, the most hated man in the galaxy, and I saw a lot of terrible things I do and the horrible thing I become, and I also saw us fighting and you killing me and you looked absolutely heartbroken, and I'm sure that if I became that kind of person then I probably hurt you in other ways too but I don't know for sure. So then I asked what would happen to you if I died on Atollon, he told me that you would die in a mutiny shortly afterwards, then I asked him to look into your future, and he said that if I survived you survived the mutiny, became Queen of Mandalore, rebuilt the Jedi Order, and raise a family, and I saw an older you with two little kids and you looked happier than I have ever seen you before, and so I chose to continue living because I want you to have that. So since then I've been panicking trying to prepare for a mutiny that can happen at any moment and I've been trying to avoid you because I saw what I become and I don't ever want to hurt you and because maybe I thought that avoiding you could minimize how much you get hurt but clearly it's not, it's just causing more problems, and I'm sorry for not telling you any of this."

I took a few deep breaths and looked at Sadie.

"That was a lot of words, really fast."

"I'm sorry."

"Let me make sure I have the important parts straight. You WERE dying before Atollon?"

"Yes."

"You are no longer dying?"

"Correct."

"Bendy gave you a choice between life and death?"

"It's Bendu, but yes."

"And you had visions of the future?"

"Yes."

"And you saw yourself become a horrible person who hurts everyone around them?"

"Yes."

"And the first thing that crossed your mind is what would happen to me?"

"Yea."

"And so even though all you saw in your future was suffering, you chose to live because I would end up happy?"

I nodded, and was rather surprised to see the big smile spread across her face.

"You're missing some key parts of the visions," I said. "Like me slaughtering people and you looking broken after killing me. So clearly I hurt you a lot."

"Those aren't the key parts."

"They seem really important to me."

"Yea, but you're wrong. You're focusing on the wishy washy uncertain stuff. Maybe this, maybe that, maybe maybe maybe."

"I saw it happen."

"Did you see the context?"

"No."

"Then your vision is incomplete, and you shouldn't worry about it."

"You've been hanging out with Caty too much."

She laughed. "Well, SOMEONE has been absent, so I had a lot of free time and so did she."

"I'm sorry."

"You're fine. Just don't do it again."

"I won't." I sat there for a little before asking "Are we okay?"

She smiled. "None of this changes how I feel."

It felt like a weight was lifted from my chest and I could finally breathe normally. I tried to fight the smile.

"Me neither." I looked at my comm, and immediately remembered the preparations I was putting off. A new, anxious weight returned. "Hey, listen, I'd love to stay, but I really need to make preparations for this mutiny."

Sadie looked slightly disappointed, but nodded. "Where are you going?"

"The central hyperdrive core."

"Got it."

I was messing with the cables that connected to the bridge controls when my comm beeped. A sensor at the entrance to the central hyperdrive core. I stepped out from behind the wall panel I was at and saw Sadie coming in with two small brown bags. She nimbly Force leaped across the gap to the central controls and looked around.

"Gimme a sec," I called and shimmied back behind the panel. I carefully attached a small box to the wires I'd been working on before and synced it to my comm. I then started connecting my new wires to the ports on the side of the box, and connecting these wires to adjacent wires for other systems. When that was finished and I was sure everything was wired properly, I closed up the section I was working on and shimmied out onto the narrow foothold, keeping my hands holding tightly to the small ledge. I Force leapt onto the platform and smiled when I saw Sadie.

"What brings you here?" I asked.

"I figured you haven't eaten anything all day, so I grabbed some food from the cafeteria and brought it here."

"How did you know I didn't eat today?"

She shrugged and handed me a bag. "When you get focused on something, you forget to eat."

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

We sat on the floor of the platform and opened our bags. Inside was a small wedge of bread, a few strips of dried meat, some dried dates, and a small granola bar.

"I guess its better than the 'vomelettes' this morning," she muttered. "I hate rations."

"Could be worse."

"I've never eaten this little in my life. I'm surprised I'm still alive."

"That's because every little morsel is packed with calories and essential nutrients so you can eat as little food at a time to stay alive. Saves cargo storage space."

"How do you know that?"

I sighed. "Because I was the Scholar who worked with the Order to increase the efficiency of rations. This granola bar? I figured out that by jamming this thing with nutrients, we could remove the chewy gummy vitamins and make the bread two thirds the original size. This ration style saved them three chunks per unit compared to their base model, so they use it alongside the others."

She stared at me, horrified. "What kind of monster gets rid of gummies? Those are the best part!"

"I didn't think they'd make the granola bar flavorless," I said as I took a bite of it. It tasted like boxes. "I just calculated the finances of the proposal."

"I thought you did engineering."

"It was how they made my life miserable. Give me jobs outside of my specialization so I had to teach myself completely new things."

"I'm sorry they did that to you. That's not fair."

"Eh. It's life."

She nodded and took a bite of the granola, which was immediately followed by a scrunching of her nose in disgust.

She looked cute when she did that. Maybe I should tell her?

"So. You keep talking about a mutiny. Are you preparing for it now?"

"Yea."

"Do you know anything about it."

"No."

"And you've been anxiously preparing for something you can't predict."

"See, but I can predict a few things. Strategic ship locations and the like. What would I do if I wanted to dismantle a ship from the inside. That sort of stuff."

"Darin, nobody on this ship is as smart as you. They're not going to strategically contaminate the water supply to cause a 2% change in viscosity to alter its heat conduction and titrate the pipes to change their atomic weight to cause a catastrophic engine failure in exactly 17 rotations."

"That is extremely wrong on so many levels."

"Oh I know. I don't know what half of that means. But I know you overthink things sometimes, and I don't want you to overwork yourself."

"Don't worry about me."

"Someone has to." She moved close to me and leaned against me. Almost instinctively I wrapped my arm around her.

This is good. This is good.

"You know, this is technically a violation of Jedi Order statute regarding interpersonal relationships with Padawans."

"Oh no. Whatever will we do? We'll be in so much trouble for sitting together."

"Such a minor thing. If you break a rule, you should break it way more."

"Definitely."

I didn't think. Didn't debate. I leaned in and kissed her.

It was a quick, soft kiss that took her by surprise, but she recovered quickly. As soon as we separated, she pulled me back and we exchanged a longer kiss. Another followed, then another.

Suddenly, something shifted in the Force around me. Danger.

I forced myself to pull away from her.

Sadie looked disappointed. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No, no, it's-"

An explosion rocked the ship.