Chapter Thirty-Four
BASTILA
Bastila felt the draining, pulsing ache in Aithne's left arm as if it were an echo in her own body. Sometime in the last two days, Aithne had finally learnt to utilize her shields correctly—a response to the mental anguish she had felt immediately after experiencing a great deal of physical pain, along with an onslaught of hatred, love, and conflict. Her mind was more inaccessible to Bastila now than it had been since the day they first met again on Taris, but behind the shields, underneath, their bond still held fast.
As of yesterday, Aithne had not fallen. It had been close, very close at times. Bastila had spent the greater part of the past four days on tenterhooks, nearly certain that at any moment, Aithne would give up the fight, embrace the Darkness, and return to them a grasping, selfish, and ruthless Sith. She had sensed wave after wave of helpless rage break over Aithne, felt the call of Korriban upon her spirit. She had felt Aithne's sense of inevitability, her despair and resignation. She had felt the moments when Aithne had detached, released herself into the rush of the currents upon this world. And Bastila had felt it when Aithne was drawn back—by Carth, by a Sith, by her own resolution. And—she hoped—in some small measure, by Bastila's presence at the other end of their bond, willing her to stay strong in days of near-constant meditation, ever since Juhani had urged her to release her worries and actively intervene to be of help.
Bastila could not sense Aithne's aura now. She could not sense the timbre of her thoughts. She sensed only Aithne's pain, her weakness. She could only hope for the best.
Through the eyes of her Battle Meditation, she could sense Aithne's position, the obstacles that faced her. She was very near the Star Map now. Bastila had willed the beasts in the caverns Aithne delved not to detect her. With her mind, Bastila had held a blind over their senses until Aithne was ready, and it had taken nearly all her strength. The beasts were formidable; even Bastila's Battle Meditation could not protect Aithne completely, and Bastila had felt the blow from a distance as one of the cunning monsters had struck at her charge. She had sensed Aithne triumph and had moved her mind afield, to where two deadly near-human Sith waited with less than peaceful intentions.
She had lent Aithne and her ally strength against the master, done all she could to slow the master's reaction and beat against his morale. Later, she had exerted her will against the second Sith, willed her to listen to Aithne's words, her resolve to bend to Aithne's. It was not as difficult as Bastila might have anticipated. Aithne had made inroads into the woman's heart already. She had been half wanting to surrender before the battle began, waiting for Aithne to give her an excuse to lay down her blade and the Dark Side, and Bastila felt a rush of joy and pride for her companion.
But she was worried about Aithne's wound. She could feel its heat across the distance between them. She could feel the sick pulsing of the injury, the dead, resigned way Aithne's body was accepting the injury, giving into weakness. She was not just wounded; she was poisoned. Every moment, Aithne was losing strength. And Battle Meditation would not heal her.
On the other side of the ship, Bastila heard the access port of Ebon Hawk slide open. She heard voices—Mission's and Juhani's, and a human male she didn't know, speaking in the same register as Carth, in a similar accent, but with a harsher edge to the voice. Mission and Juhani had returned with Dustil Onasi.
Bastila's aura stretched out to sense the newcomer and recoiled. Carth's son was a Force Adept, it seemed, and he carried the unmistakable taint of the Dark Side. Emotion emanated from him like radiation from a star. Anger, jealousy, confusion, loss—and above it all, the pain. Pain so thick and sharp, Bastila could only relate it to Mission's after Taris. She did not know how Dustil Onasi could stand it. As she explored the feel of him through the Force, she sensed Dustil's resistance to the Dark Side's foothold in him, but curiously offset with a nearly equal resistance to the Light. The boy did not know what he wanted. He had turned his back upon the Sith, but he had not come to join the Jedi.
Steps sounded down the corridor, and Bastila looked up to see a tall, dark young man peering down at her in her position on the floor of the women's dormitory. It was as though someone had taken Carth's features and twisted them slightly—lengthened the nose and narrowed the lips. Carth kept his hair military regulation with the aid of certain products; Dustil had cut his ruthlessly short. That, together with his expression, gave his face a more brutal cast than his father's.
"Hey. Try asking next time, would you?" His voice was curt and irritated. "I didn't come here to have the Jedi pawing all over my intentions just like the Sith. Leave it, will you?"
"Forgive me. I did not mean to intrude, but you are . . . rather difficult to ignore. Dustil, I presume."
"Shan."
"Indeed—I—" just as Bastila started to think what else to say, she sensed something else on the perimeter. Dustil tensed at the same moment. Bastila rose to her feet.
"We're under attack!" she called. "Canderous, Zaalbar, to the gun turrets! T3-M4, reinforce the airlock! We've got to hold here until the others return from the academy!"
Dustil swore behind her, and across the ship, she felt Juhani's despair, heard Mission yelling something at the Cathar about a Sith in the cantina.
"We'll talk later, Dustil," she told Carth's son shortly. "Right now, you need to evacuate the dormitory. I must meditate—do my best to keep us all safe until we can escape."
"Awesome. Droid—hold off on the double lock on the exit," Dustil shouted, drawing a Sith lightsaber from his sleeve. "Cathar, you're with me. I'm not just going to sit here like a rat in a trap. You were our exit detail, you brought this on us, you can damn well help me hold off Vesser and his little friends!"
CARTH
"We've got a report of an intruder at the door to the valley! A Jedi spy has infiltrated the academy! Masters Uthar and Yuthura are gone—presume murdered! To arms!"
Carth and Jolee had been waiting for the shit to hit the fan all morning. They'd known when Aithne went in to Naga Sadow that Master Uthar, Master Yuthura, or both would be dead before Aithne came back out. They were ready when the alarm went through the academy. Carth had equipped the double vibrosword Aithne had used as Addison Bettler. It had cortosis weave and gave him more of a shot against attackers with a lightsaber than his blasters, where any Sith half-capable with the Force could just reflect his fire right back at him. He was hopped up on stims, and when the alert started to spread, he activated a high-end energy shield that would protect against a certain level of energy around him. He had to hope the boosts they gave him would be enough.
"Stay behind me, sonny," Jolee warned him. "You wait for me to make the first attack, get the Sith on the defensive. Then you move in."
"You got it," Carth promised. "I'm not out to get killed here, Jolee."
"We need to get to Aithne and then make our way to the door. Brute force our way straight through to Dreshdae and get off planet as soon as possible."
They left the training room they'd been holed up in since Aithne's departure—it was closer to the exit to the valley than the dormitories. Jolee let loose a wave of the Force, and the emerging Sith in the corridor went flying. Lightning crackled out of Jolee's fingers, and his own lightsaber, changed back like Aithne's to its own proper crystal and color, blazed ahead of him in the guard position.
Carth ran cleanup. He stabbed right and left, going for the weak spots in the armored Sith, thanking the Force for the substandard suit design Aithne was always criticizing in their enemies. On the uniformed ones, it was easier. He didn't bother trying to go for the kills every time; precision like that took time they didn't have. But he made sure the Sith didn't get up.
Out in the broader instruction room featuring the door out to the valley, it was harder. The Sith instructors were here, and they were already on guard. One caught a bolt of Bindo's Lightning upon his blade, deflecting it off to blast a carbon mark into the stone floor. Another Sith held a fist beside her head, marshaling the soldiers behind her into formation.
Carth and Jolee took up positions back to back as the door to the valley opened, and Aithne—pale, sweating, and with her left sleeve black with blood—staggered into the room. Her eyes were wild, only half focused, but even as she entered, she cut down one of the Sith guards by the door and held a second in stasis.
Carth moved to her on instinct. Somehow, he knew where to step, how fast to move. He dodged one lightsaber stroke, cut a blow at the legs of the Sith who'd dealt it and felt it connect. Somehow, he knew Jolee had the gunmen, the Sith in formation behind the lady Sith. He knew everyone else in the room would be distracted by Aithne's entrance, the realization that she was the infiltrator the alarm had warned against.
He attacked the guard Aithne had in stasis, and he felt her snap into rhythm. Her rhythm, though—it was off. Usually, Aithne was at the forefront of a battle. She took on the toughest opponents while the rest of them picked off outliers and kept a watch on the perimeter. Now, though—now, she seemed to be focusing hard on him, on defending him, like she didn't have the energy to do more. Her movements, far from the fluid power and decisive energy they usually possessed, were hard and jerky. She was panting.
"Are you okay?" Carth shouted at her, moving in under a Sith teacher's guard as Aithne held off his offense, moving almost entirely one-sided, heavily favoring her left arm.
"No!" Aithne shouted back. "My arm—"
Carth killed the Sith. Jolee was closing with them, taking point on their avenue toward the exit, bringing them into formation. The two gunmen were down. So was their Sith commander. Three more Sith were closing in on them, and Carth could hear the crash of moving armor down the hall.
He moved Aithne back to his right flank, so he was on her left. "Fight with the Force if you can," he told her. He felt her nod wearily.
Jolee parried the strokes of two incoming Sith. He was everywhere. He moved like an acrobat, like a warrior, and Carth wondered how he'd ever thought of Bindo as old or out of touch. His mouth was a grim slash, and his eyes were dark, like he'd been right where they were before. Carth tried his best to back him up, using everything he'd been drilling with Ordo in their journey from Dantooine and more. He tried to move like Aithne, to move the way he'd seen her move with a lightsaber. He took the path of least resistance, struck wherever he saw an opening. He did his best to trust her to guard his flank because he had to, but part of him was always aware of her behind him. The way she was gasping, turning whiter and whiter every minute, even edging on green.
They fought their way through the training room, through the rotunda. They faced down four Sith riot troopers by the exit—Sith soldiers in higher quality armor than the others, better equipped, with belts of grenades and plasma staves. Groaning, Aithne extended her fist, and two of them froze in place. A grenade flipped toward them from a third, and with impossible dexterity, Jolee switched his grasp upon his lightsaber so it faced hilt out and batted the incoming explosive back at the troopers with the grip.
A plasma grenade exploded over the riot troopers, melting their armor in places, leaving them wounded and screaming. Carth and Aithne struck out at them on the way past, and Jolee led them out the door. Carth slung his vibrosword into its holster on his back and drew his right-hand blaster as they left, moving to Aithne's other side as he did. He swung his right arm around Aithne's waist just as her knees began to buckle.
"Nuh-uh, keep going!" he urged her. "Just a little farther."
He fired three warning shots at a Sith loading cargo on a nearby platform. Jolee brandished his lightsaber, moving ahead of them.
They had made it into Dreshdae by the time Aithne completely collapsed. Carth went with her, going to his knees so she didn't hit the ground. He could feel the fever burning through her. When he put his fingers to her pulse, it was too faint, too rapid. She was dying.
"Jolee," he said.
"Yes, I feel it," Bindo said, kneeling beside them in the street.
"Beautiful, you gotta talk to us. What's the problem?" Carth asked her. He'd seen the wound on her—a long gash on her forearm, it looked like, but not enough that she should be bleeding out. There wasn't enough blood on her for that, either.
"Terentatek," Aithne rasped. "In the tomb. For—forgot the blame venom sacs on the tail." Her eyes were going in and out of focus again.
Jolee rolled up his sleeves. "Get her out of the street," he ordered. Carth nodded. He carried Aithne a few more steps into an alley.
"P—put me down, flyboy," she whispered "I—I can walk."
"The hell you can," Carth told her, voice far harsher than he wanted. The same fear he'd felt yesterday in the Tomb of Tulak Hord clawed at his chest again. He'd realized then like he hadn't before—just how much Aithne Moran had come to mean to him. That he didn't care what her name had been, who the Sith thought she was, or what game the Jedi were playing with her. She'd risked her life for him, put the whole damn Republic and her soul on the line for him and for his family. Whoever and whatever she was, she was on his side. She was on his side like no one had been since Morgana. After he'd rejected her, hounded and supsected her across four separate star systems, still she was on his side. And he could not lose her.
He lowered her to the ground, situated her so Bindo had room and access. Took off his helmet to see better. "You help her," he told Bindo.
"I intend to," Bindo answered. "Sit still a moment, lass." He tore the rip in her sleeve wider, pushing it away from the messy, clumsy bandage over the wound. He untied the bandage, exposing a long, deep slash in the muscle of Aithne's forearm. It was scabbed over and wasn't bleeding anymore, but that was the absolute best he could say for it.
The flesh around the wound was angry and enflamed. It was swollen. The edges of the scab cap leaked an ugly, stinking white pus, and dark red streaks raced away from the wound, up toward her armpit.
"G—gorgeous, isn't it?" Aithne said, a smile playing around her lips. "But there were . . . there were two of them . . ." Her eyes rolled up into her head, and she collapsed into a dead weight in Carth's arms.
Somehow, Carth felt the power gathering to Bindo beside him. He placed his right hand right over the stinking, swollen wreck of Aithne's arm. His left hand gripped Carth's shoulder. "Call her," he ordered. "You keep her here, sonny." Releasing Carth, he placed his left hand over Aithne's heart. He bent over her and closed his eyes, beginning to mutter to himself.
With two fingers, Carth brushed the tip of Aithne's chin. Panic squeezed his heart. He could . . . he could feel her slipping away over the connection she'd revealed to him the day before. That sense of her he hadn't even known he had but which, in retrospect, seemed so evident, so much a part of how they were together. "Aithne," he murmured, reaching for her with everything inside him. "Beautiful. Look at me. Jolee—Jolee's gonna try and get the poison out, but you've got to work too. Work with me, beautiful."
At the pressure from his fingers, Aithne's head lolled to one side. Carth turned it back. "No," he said. "No way. Aithne, you don't get to die on me. Don't you dare."
At the word dare, Aithne's eyelashes fluttered. Carth could swear he felt the surge in Jolee's energy. "Yes, keep going!"
Looking down, Carth saw fresh blood welling up around Jolee's right hand, along with a hideous, yellow-green venom.
"Come on, beautiful," he said. "You're not going to let a little thing like this beat you."
"Carth?" Aithne's voice was slurred. Her eyelashes fluttered again, and then her eyelids opened. Her eyes came into focus, and color started coming back to her cheeks. Immediately, it flooded back out. "Oh, I don't feel so hot—" she muttered. She convulsed and rolled away from him. Bent over on her knee, she held her head in her hands and heaved, staring at the ground, but she didn't vomit.
Carth and Jolee waited until Aithne's nausea had dissipated.
"The poison?" Carth asked Jolee.
Jolee shook her head. "More likely the reaction to passing out. The body's response to a loss of consciousness isn't nearly as romantic as it looks in holovids. She'll be fine."
"How did you—I tried," Aithne was gasping. "I couldn't get past the Dark-Side sorcery nature of the injury!"
"Mm. It was probably worse because that monster aimed to hurt you when it swung. All the Dark Side power in it was trained on resisting you," Jolee reasoned. "Add that to a few decades' more practice—"
"You're the best healer I've ever seen or heard of," Aithne told him, lifting her head, beginning to rise to her feet. She looked down at her wound, scabbed over once again, the swelling and inflammation gone. She flexed her arm. "Jolee—you saved my life."
"Let's not make a big deal out of it, shall we? I'm your medic. It's what I'm here for. I'm just glad you got to us in time."
Aithne rose and hugged him. Jolee looked surprised, then touched, and he squeezed her back. "There now. Stop that. You're safe now. Be tangling with terentateks again in no time."
Aithne let go of him. She turned to Carth and glared. "Now. What was that, Onasi? You didn't think Bindo could handle it?"
Looking at her, with her sleeve a wreck, standing there tall and proud like she hadn't just been dying on the ground, Carth was suddenly furious. "Damn it, Aithne, if you'd just taken a couple toxin antidotes with you, he wouldn't have had to! I told you not to do this!"
"I'm not a bantha," Aithne replied, repeating his own words back to him with maddening calm and rationality. "I can't carry everything. Turned out I needed the mines I had in my pack. Alright, we might need to diversify them just a little, especially when one of us go out on our own—"
"Oh, you think?"
Aithne stepped up to him and took him by both shoulders. He felt the pressure of her mind on his, knew what it was now, that it was her, wrapping the Force around to reassure him. "Carth, I'm fine," she told him. "I'm going to be fine. It's alright. Breathe."
With his heart still pounding, the tension of the last ten minutes coursing through him, desperate for release, Carth leaned forward, grabbed her hips, pulled her to him, and kissed her.
Her body went rigid with shock, and for a split second, Carth was sure he'd made a terrible mistake. Then she went warm and soft in his hands as she relaxed and leaned into him. Her arms climbed to twine around his neck, and her lips moved against his.
A wave of excitement—of rightness—flowed right through him. He wasn't sure if it was from him or her. Her thumbs ran over his cheeks and her fingers carded through his hair. In response, he could only squeeze her hips and pull her tighter against him. She was softer than he'd dared to imagine, tasted better than he'd dreamed.
He'd come so close to losing her.
Jolee clearing his throat behind them reminded Carth they weren't alone, and reluctantly, he drew back from Aithne, smiling. He felt like laughing. Her brown eyes were wide and dazed—her expression somehow charmingly poleaxed. For all the flirting she'd done ever since they met, he'd completely caught her by surprise here.
Her cheeks flamed then. She turned red as a Corellian kavasa, and the hands that had stroked his face just seconds ago came up to cover her face instead. She ducked her head, and Carth could sense a sudden wave of overwhelming embarrassment and confusion. How had he missed it before? It was as if now he'd located her along the Force bond she had described, he could feel her emotions like an astral tide.
He moved forward again, catching her hands, drawing them away from her face, making her look at him. "Hey," he said. "Don't do that. Don't hide. It's okay. It's fine."
Suddenly, he wasn't worried about it anymore. Her complicated place among the Jedi, their increasingly complicated life. They could work it out. He wanted to. He tried to show her, stepping in quickly for another, quicker kiss. She let him, face turned up toward him, eyes still confused, but something like happiness in the back of them. He squeezed her around the shoulders once and let go. "We should meet up with the others."
"If you two feel you've finished here," Jolee said mildly. Carth looked sideways at him. The old man didn't look the slightest bit surprised. A smile twitched underneath his goatee, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. Carth nodded, respecting the old man's pain, recognizing a man who missed his wife. Jolee hadn't said much about her, just that at one point she had existed, but he'd got the impression things hadn't ended well.
Aithne cleared her throat. She straightened her robes, grimacing at the ruin of the left-hand sleeve. "Damn," she remarked. "I just fixed these."
BASTILA
In the end, the battle back at Ebon Hawk had been a simple thing. A small surprise attack by a former Jedi named Dak Vesser and a handful of Sith he had rounded up from within the city. He had been a previous acquaintance of Juhani, and she, Mission, and Zaalbar had had a run-in with him earlier in the week. Initially, Vesser had been uninterested in furthering their acquaintance, had indeed wanted to steer entirely clear of whatever mission Juhani had been assigned by the Council, but when he had seen Mission meeting with Dustil Onasi, he had connected Dustil's surname to Carth's, listed on the wide-release bounty from Lord Malak. He had realized who Juhani had to be accompanying.
More than slightly drunk, and wishing to hurt Juhani, he had gathered as many Sith as he could convince together for a try upon the bounty. In fact, there had been only seven of the enemy, and between the Ebon Hawk's guns and the lightsabers of Dustil and Juhani, Vesser's attack had been entirely neutralized within two minutes.
Juhani mourned the loss of a man who had been a fellow padawan with her—a friend. She grieved some small role it seemed she felt she had played in Vesser's downfall. But she understood too that he had made his own choices, and Bastila sensed she would eventually find her peace. She had not cut down Vesser, in the end. Either Canderous or Zaalbar had done that—a blast from the guns had taken him down in a single shot. He had died quickly and without pain.
Bastila was far more worried for Dustil Onasi. He had cut down no fewer than three of the attacking Sith, including one man he claimed was one of his old instructors. The taste of his anger still filled the air around the ship, acrid and metallic. He had fed upon it during the brief skirmish, as the Sith did, and the hate was stronger in his heart now than it had been before the fighting began.
She watched him anxiously as Mission paid off the dock workers, bribing them with a few hundred of her hard-earned credits to forget the entire incident. Still, when the docking bay door opened and their missing companions entered, she immediately went to them.
The sleeve of Aithne's robe was a tattered mess. She herself felt fine to Bastila's senses—healthy, even—but for a while there, she had not been. And Bastila had sensed other things in her near vicinity in the last few minutes.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
Aithne nodded. Dipping her hand into her pack, she pulled out a datapad. She tossed it to Bastila. Bastila caught it midair and examined it. The Star Map. A handful of reference points that had not been there before filled out its center. They were still a long way from their goal. "Jolee took care of it. He saved my life."
Zaalbar, who had been standing near Mission and the dock workers, now crossed the hangar to the old man. He roared something softly, with his hand over his heart, clearly expressing thanks to the old Jedi.
"Yeah," Mission added, coming up as well and taking the old man's hand. "Thanks. From both of us."
"Oh, less of it," Jolee growled. "It wasn't all me. The lass did a great deal of coming back herself, though I think Carth here helped some."
Carth showed no reaction to the old man's words. His face was carefully blank. Aithne, tellingly, blushed deep crimson. The move, Bastila saw with disgust, had probably been Carth's.
Dustil's eyes narrowed. "Did he? Father. Moran. Welcome back."
"Looks like you had some trouble," Aithne observed, sweeping her eyes around the dock workers, dragging Sith corpses out of the hangar.
"Just a bit. Nothing we couldn't handle," Dustil answered.
"We should all get off planet as soon as possible," Bastila said. "The Sith will not remain in confusion for long. How much did they learn about you?"
Aithne shook her head. "Nothing," she answered. "By the end, they knew I was a Jedi and a spy. None of the survivors had any idea of my true identity or Carth's. Or, no one who's gonna talk. No one but Dustil ever saw his face."
"You are certain no one will speak of your presence here?" Juhani asked. "Trust, I have learned, is difficult to sustain."
Aithne glanced at Juhani, taking in her posture, the swollen undersides of her eyes. "Do we need to talk, Juhani?"
"No," Juhani told her. "It is nothing to do with you. I—perhaps I may want to talk, in time. But today—no."
"Fair enough. We'll leave it be," Aithne said.
"Will you speak with me, Padawan?" Bastila asked her. "You've been busy, in your excursions upon Korriban."
Aithne's eyes cut to her, and though her shields remained rock solid, Bastila saw the annoyance cross her face. "Sensed that, did you?" she muttered. "Let's go," she said, more loudly. "Carth, get with Teethree. Set a course for Tatooine."
Mission squealed and flung herself at Aithne. Aithne caught the teenager with a grin.
"Well, we're overdue," she reasoned.
Carth smiled too. "Roger that," he agreed. He turned his bland, professional mask toward Bastila. "Of course, I'll need my copilot to take off." Blast the man, he knew Bastila needed to speak with her. As if he really ever actually needed Bastila in the cockpit! "Dustil. You all set up in the dorms?"
"We kinda got sidetracked," Dustil said.
"Come with me, then," Canderous said. "We'll get you squared away. You're in luck: we've got just the one bunk left. Women's barracks is full up. I'm Canderous."
"Dustil," replied the same.
"No. I never would've guessed," Ordo said provocatively.
"We'll get you on the duty rotation by tonight," Aithne added as the two men walked away.
"Oh, sure, don't spare the new kid, even the first day on the team," Dustil shot back.
"Seems to me you've already joined the team," Aithne said, gesturing at the bloodied hangar. "Might as well join all the way."
Dustil scoffed, but as he went off with Canderous, Bastila felt a certain easing in his spirit.
The rest of them filed into Ebon Hawk behind them. Teethree beeped a greeting, and Carth began relaying him instructions. Reluctantly, Bastila made her way up to the cockpit, fuming.
The trouble was, she liked Carth. He was rational, intelligent, and loyal to the Republic. He was a talented warrior and a talented pilot, and his natural rapport with Aithne in many respects had been an asset. It was this connection that had allowed them to establish a collaboration when Bastila was still reeling after her capture by the Vulkars. It was his support that had grounded Aithne against her feelings of obligation to Mission, to Zaalbar. Bastila did not discount the possibility that it was Carth's example which had given Aithne the final push to throw in with the Jedi. She had sensed Carth served as a moderating influence upon Aithne, an anchor against her angrier, brasher tendencies.
The Republic could end up owing Carth Onasi quite a debt, in fact, yet she could not approve of his becoming romantically involved with Aithne, and not merely because all the teachings of the Jedi said the feelings between them were as likely or more to prove a dangerous distraction to Aithne than they were to help her. Carth had no idea what he was doing. He believed he was falling in love with someone, but without full knowledge of who and what Aithne was, he could have no true agency or choice in their alliance. And he could not have full knowledge of who and what she was.
Bastila had no idea if Carth could accept her, knowing her full story. He had not been trained in the ways of the Jedi. His military discipline enabled him to focus on an objective. It had not taught him to let go of all he felt and exercise compassion, compassion in the face of every reason there was to hate and fear a person. There were moments when Bastila herself nearly cowered before Aithne, hurt Aithne with her flinching, and she knew that Aithne was not the woman she had been. Could Carth love her if he knew? Whether he did or not, could he keep the knowledge of what he was from her if he knew? Bastila did not believe he could.
She did her part readying Ebon Hawk to fly in silence, contemplating how to express herself without making plain the nature of her concerns. Carth was too clever. He and Aithne both already knew too much, suspected too much. If she gave anything else away, it could give the game entire away.
"This is unwise, Carth," she started finally, as Carth lifted them off of Korriban. "Whatever has grown between you and Aithne, it must end. You must see it. It is too dangerous—to her and to your son."
"To Dustil?" Carth repeated, glancing at her. He frowned. "I don't—it's been a long time since Telos, Bastila. I just—I'm just happy to have him with us."
"He is in danger," Bastila repeated. "He stands upon the very brink, Carth. I can feel the Dark gulf before him, waiting to consume him. For years, he has been taught to embrace it, to fall into it and give into his basest instincts. The Sith did not convince him—not entirely. But he is vulnerable. You do not know one another. Not now. You do not know what you each have been through. Effectively, Dustil has left everything he has known for a stranger—one who has let him down once before. He's afraid, and that fear only feeds into his anger. He needs your support right now. He does not need you distant from him, focused upon Aithne."
Over the months she had been doing this, Bastila had learned the best lie was a truth, offered up as a completely plausible alternate explanation. Nothing she said now was untrue: she could feel how Dustil needed his father, his desperation for Carth to catch him now he had leaped. She could feel the insecurity that burned inside him every time he looked at Aithne beside his father, every time Mission spoke, the sense of displacement, abandonment.
But after a moment's consideration, Carth shook his head, though his hands had tightened on the controls. "The Dustil I knew never liked to be babied," he said. "When we showed him the truth about the Sith, he faced it like a man. He did the right thing. The son I knew is still in there. It's been four years since Telos. We'll—we'll deal with them. We'll find a way to get to know each other again. But we'll do it as we are now, as things are now. We—we can be strong and brave enough for that. I'm not going to freeze everything for Dustil. No one else will. If I love him, my job as his father is to help him face the world around him . . . not keep him wrapped up in a blanket till he feels better."
As he spoke, Carth's face grew more and more convinced, and more at peace with his decision. His hands relaxed. "He likes Aithne," Carth said, mostly to himself. "I can tell he does. And she understood him, the second we ran into him. Understood him better than I did, than I can." He looked over at Bastila then. "Like you and Jolee and Juhani will be able to understand him. I—I think you all can really help him."
"We'll do what we can, Carth," Bastila promised. "But you have to understand—Jolee Bindo is the most experienced among us, and he is next door to an exile and never rose to be a master. Juhani has only just become a knight. None of us has ever trained a pupil. We are not equipped to deal with the training Dustil will require. The Jedi—"
"Not yet," Carth said definitively. "He's not ready to be a Jedi yet, and I don't want him to be. Not until and unless Dustil makes that choice. I want him trained—but just to resist the Dark Side. Just to fight it. Not to be a Jedi."
Bastila was lost. Theoretically, she knew there were other ways to resist the Dark Side than to be a Jedi. She knew of other Force Sensitive cultures in the galaxy, Force wielders who did not practice the Jedi arts. But she didn't have the background information, and they didn't have the time to seek it for Dustil Onasi. Dustil was not their mission. Dustil was not her mission. She wished to help him, of course, but . . .
"Tell me about Aithne," Carth said, flipping a dial as he pushed them into orbit around Korriban, heading for their exit into hyperspace. "You think I'm a danger to her."
"I do," Bastila agreed, happy to be back on the subject. "She stepped off onto this world distracted and distraught, and it left her open to the power of the Dark Side. She was distracted and distraught because of her feelings for you. She pushed herself to the limits—for you. I know you witnessed her struggles groundside, more closely than I could, even despite our bond. It must have occurred to you that without her feelings for you, her fight might not have been so desperate!"
"I can't help what she feels for me," Carth said. His tone was edged. It was a warning.
"No, but you do not have to encourage her, Carth," Bastila urged. "I know you care for Aithne. Care enough to let her go. Let her focus on what must be done. Since we met you, you have maintained your professionalism with Aithne. Do not abandon it now."
"Look. Bastila," Carth said at last. "Aithne told me a bit about Force bonds while we were down there, and it seems to me you may have been abusing yours a bit. Listening in where you shouldn't. I know the Jedi put you on this mission together, but Aithne's her own person. She makes her own decisions. I don't know what you want with her, but you can't just keep . . . keep spying on her and manipulating her and just expect her to fall in line."
"I only want what's best—"
Carth cut her off. "You've been using her since Endar Spire, and maybe even before that. I keep wondering why the Republic decided to freeze her assets and press-gang her into service to begin with. It happens on active fronts when we need common soldiers, but not way out on Deralia. Not with a scout. No. The Jedi wanted Aithne from the beginning. And we're pretty sure you guys are messing with her head. That's even aside from all the eavesdropping I'm just now realizing is going on."
"You don't know what you're talking about, Carth. This is more important than you could possibly realize—"
"Try me." Carth's voice was calm, but Bastila could hear the quiet anger beneath it. "I've picked up enough. I know you Jedi think Aithne is the key to defeating Malak and the Sith—Aithne, and not you. And I know somehow, Malak knows it. Oh, he'd like to get his hands on you, alright. He knows if he can capture and turn you, he can win. But he also knows that Aithne can beat him. I haven't figured out just how yet," he admitted. "And I don't think Aithne really knows either, though I think she has a couple really nasty ideas. But we both have a feeling you know the plan, and you're very deliberately not telling her."
Bastila was frozen. Trapped. "I—you're right," she whispered. "It's true. She is the key to all this. But the situation is more delicate than you can imagine. Believe me when I tell you: her very soul hangs in the balance, and my every action has been as much for Aithne as it has been for the galaxy. She cannot know the truth. And because she cannot, I cannot tell you either. I'm begging you, Carth. Please trust me. Step back from her. For both your sakes."
Carth stared at her. "You really believe that, don't you? You're telling the truth."
"As much of it as I can," Bastila promised. "Because I care for her. Please, Carth."
Carth searched her face. "Damn. She's been right. All this time. You—you're terrified of her, aren't you? You care for her, maybe, but you don't trust her for a second, do you?"
Bastila felt a flash of anger. "You saw how close it was on Korriban!"
"Yeah, and I saw her turn away," Carth retorted, eyebrows furrowing, angrier himself now. "You want to know what I saw on Korriban? I saw a woman push herself to the very brink for me, for my son, and for the sake of the galaxy. I saw her sick with the evil we saw down on that planet, with the fact she had to participate." They hit their coordinates, and Carth punched the hyperdrive. Bastila sat back as Ebon Hawk jumped to hyperspace and the motion of the ship seemed to cease, but for the hum of the hyperdrive engine.
"I saw her make mistakes, yeah. A lot of them. I saw her struggle. I saw her slip. But I also saw her withstand torture before she allowed a murderer to die. I saw her risk her life and cover to persuade people away from the Sith, to save refugees and take the dangers they faced onto herself. She's brave, Bastila. She's strong and good. And she deserves better than you and the Jedi Council. You think worrying about me and Dustil brought her closer to a fall on Korriban? I think her biggest issue right now is all of you looking over her shoulder, waiting for her to fall. Feeling you all creeping around inside her head, when she hasn't trained enough to understand anything you're doing."
Bastila was silent. Doubt and anger gnawed at her. She should be above such things. She knew she should. Bas, if we're gonna play tug-of-war, you think you're gonna win? Aithne's gentle question from Dantooine haunted her. How much had Aithne's spirit crept into hers over the months? Perhaps Carth was right. Perhaps Aithne's greatest weakness now was the weakness the Jedi saw in her. Could that very doubt prove Bastila's own undoing?
"You will continue to pursue her?" she asked. She knew her words were abrupt.
"I haven't been," Carth told her. "Aithne's always been very open about the doubts she has about me, about us, and I haven't wanted to get her in trouble with the Jedi. Till now, all the moves have been on her side, and she's expressed some very definite boundaries. She—she hasn't always followed through, though, and I've been more okay with it than I expected. But now—" he paused. "I care about her, Bastila. She's been there for me, for Dustil. And I want to be there for her as well. I'm still not out to get her in any trouble, and I'm not out to mess around either, but if the two of us find—find some area we can navigate, in between there, I think you ought to mind your own business. And trust her."
He shut his mouth. His eyes stared straight ahead, and Bastila sensed no hesitation from him, no indecision. Just hard resolve and peace with his choices. Bastila felt a wave of confusion sweep over her once again. She remembered what Aithne had said when Carth had first turned down her proposition, that she hadn't made the offer she had made out of any Jedi detachment but rather in a spirit of fear and selfishness, that Carth's approach that day had been the one of generosity and compassion. She recalled Juhani's question, mere days ago, whether the feelings between Carth and Aithne actually constituted an attachment. On Carth's side now, she felt they did, yet Bastila was still uncertain of Aithne's feelings. Would she cling to him selfishly, unable to let him go, putting his needs before the whole of the galaxy? Had she done so on Korriban? Or was her pursuit of Dustil's safety something noble and right?
She was unsure. She felt drawn into a quagmire where there were no easy exits, no simple solutions. One thing she did know: this Carth was a healthier and a happier man than the one she had met on Endar Spire. "You've changed, Carth," she said at last. "There was a time when you'd have died before trusting Aithne. Or anyone."
Carth didn't answer.