"Lord Vader, one of my men also found what we suspect could be some kind of coded message."

The soldier held out a piece of wood, carved with lines and spirals.

Vader snatched it from his hand with the Force. A snippet of japor wood, fashioned into a pendant and strung on a frayed bit of cord. His fingers closed over the trinket. He knew those marks. He—Skywalker had made them, more than a lifetime ago. It was the japor snippet—darkened with the years, scratched and battered, but undoubtedly that which had once been given to her.

In one hand, the kyber crystal. In the other, the japor snippet. Together, the tale they told…. He had choked her. Sidious had told him he killed her. But who else would carry this snippet and this lightsaber, and how else would the kyber carry her signature?

"The human rebel—describe her," he commanded.

"Youngish," replied the trooper. "Middle height, dark hair. Dead shot with a blaster—she dropped two of my men with bolts to the knee."

The world around Vader hazed over, insignificant in the face of this one impossible truth.

Padmé.

The merest whisper of her name was water to parched lips. Something akin to ecstasy sprang forth from a forgotten wellspring, near the locality where his heart once resided. She was alive—he had not killed her— For the first time in never mind how long, he permitted himself to remember freely—her face, her smile, her radiance and fire and gentleness— But poison oozed into the water as he recalled her, motionless on the Mustafar landing dock. Dead, by his Master's account, and by Vader's own hand—and though he now knew that to be false, still he had harmed her.

It was Kenobi's fault, Vader told himself. He turned her against me. If not for that, Vader would never have raised a hand against her. This rationale cleansed away most of the poison, but bitter traces remained to pollute the warmth evoked by her survival.

He determined to ignore the sting of guilt. Padmé was alive, and that was of paramount importance. She was alive, and—quite frankly, he ought to have realised it far sooner. Revenant, the rebel whose impassioned arguments had reminded him of her, who had a son named Luke, who had not served the Queen of Naboo only because she had been said queen. He had truly been blind, to overlook so simple an answer—blinded by the acceptance of his Master's word as law.

But that was a matter for later contemplation. Now, Vader studied the pendant that lay in his palm. The japor wood was worn, scratched in a few places, and here and there, its surface was dotted with small indentations that almost looked like diminutive teeth marks, as if something had gnawed on it. Someone. Luke. He rubbed his thumb back and forth over the tiny divots, wishing he could feel them—these miniscule marks that his son had created.

His Angel was alive, and so was his son! He would find them, and then….

Slowly, Vader became aware of the awkward shifting of the troopers, the ripples of uncertainty and discomfort in the Force. He realised he had unconsciously brought his fist—the one cradling the kyber—up to rest against his chest plate. Clarity returned in a snap. Padmé was alive, she was on the Ring, and he was wasting time! He searched the Force for any sign of her, and was nearly baffled again, but there—somewhere in the distance, there was a glassiness like that he had detected in the kyber. It felt nothing like Padmé, and yet it could be no other.

"Find the human rebel," Vader ordered, "and realise that your lives are forfeit if she is harmed in any way."

Though ordinarily more lenient with the stormtroopers than with officers, today he would tolerate no errors. Padmé! Vader would not lose her again. He could not. And so began the feverish search. His soldiers muttered to one another under their breath, no doubt wondering what strange whim had possessed their commander as he stalked relentlessly through the Ring.

Some time later, Vader's commlink chimed. It was the trooper who had been assigned to guard his TIE Advanced.

"Lord Vader, the Twi'lek rebel has been captured, as I believe you know, and the Sister is taking her to Nur as we speak."

Vader's eyes narrowed suspiciously behind the lenses of his mask.

"What Sister? No Inquisitors were included in this operation."

The trooper shifted nervously. "She was smallish, dark hair, had one of their lightsabers, and she had the brat."

A Huttese curse escaped before Vader could check it, but if the trooper was surprised by his commander's unusual conduct, he gave no sign, merely continuing, "She took your TIE—"

She what.

"And how did this transpire?"

"She said it was on your orders, my lord! Said she was taking the brat to Nur. She threatened to... er... ahem," he gestured to his throat with a fisted hand, "if I didn't let her take it. Flew off quick, so I assumed she had access."

"She could not have harmed you," Vader growled. "She cannot use the Force."

But I can, his emphasis said.

"When did the ship depart?"

"Just a few minutes ago, my lord," said the beleaguered trooper.

Vader unceremoniously ended the call and set off for Krill sector at a furious pace, pausing only to commandeer the first speeder he happened across.

Inside the TIE, Padmé released Ad'ika's arm. She wiped her other hand on the side of the cockpit, as if that would take away the dirty feeling from miming a Force choke. The tactic had proven effective, but she hated that she had resorted to it, and wanted nothing so much as a 'fresher wherein to scrub her hands clean. Sadly, it would just have to wait.

Ad'ika crammed herself into the tight space beside the seat. Padmé sat down, taking a moment to pull off the tight boots and coat and finally tuck her pendant back into her— It wasn't there. She felt at her neck, but the japor was gone, and the cord with it. The old leather must have finally given way at some point during the chase through the Ring. Probably when she had been squeezing through that narrow passageway by the old refinery. She felt strangely lost without the snippet she had worn every day. It and the lightsaber had been her last material reminders of Anakin, and now they were both gone. She sighed, but it was better that way. She had held on long enough, and it was time to leave the dead to the past. Stop clinging to the good memories, for they also brought back all the bad.

Now, it was time to get down to business. The TIE's control system had restricted access, of course, so Padmé craned under the console and found the access panel. It slid aside to reveal a rather creative electrical setup, and she huffed. This was as much of a mess as Threepio's innards. Fortunately, however, it was Anakin who had taught her how to hotwire a ship, and Ahsoka had made her practice on every craft in the base's hangar. Once she managed to locate the right wires (not one of them where it would be on a standard model, she suspected), the appropriate connections were quickly made, and the TIE's engines roared to life a moment later. Success!

As the docks shrank away below the ship, Padmé and Ad'ika burst into elated laughter.

"It worked," Padmé marveled. True, she had believed it could work, or else she wouldn't have attempted the heist, but there was quite a difference between knowing a thing should work and actually seeing it play out. Shiraya, they had done it—not only were they off the Ring, but in the personal TIE fighter of the Emperor's second-in-command. It was going to do wonders for morale when the rebels on the base learned that one of their own had made off with Vader's ship.

Levity soon deflated, however. Ad'ika, leaning forward to peer through the viewport, nudged her leg.

"Hey, Revenant? Do you see—"

Far below, a speeder shot onto the dock with the Lambdas. Its dark rider strode toward the blot of white that was the former TIE guard. Even from this distance, Vader's wrath was evident in his every motion. Uh-oh. Padmé had to look away to watch for other traffic in the air, but Ad'ika narrated the scene on the dock.

"I think he's mad at that stormtrooper that was guarding this ship—yeah—oh—I think he killed him. Revenant! Vader's heading for one of the shuttles!"

Naturally.

"The shuttle's taking off! It's pretty quick, too—does this thing go faster?"

Padmé increased the TIE's acceleration and steered to direct their path toward the nearest hyperspace lane. Instead of making a gentle turn, however, the ship veered sharply. Padmé cursed. It took all her ability to keep the thing on a reasonable trajectory as she corrected course. The controls were impossibly sensitive, such that the slightest motion induced a distinct change in direction.

"Is the shuttle gaining on us?" she asked.

Ad'ika squinted down. "No… uh… maybe? It's hard to tell."

Grimly, Padmé pushed the TIE's speed as far as she could without completely losing control of the steering. This thing was every bit as bad as the Twilight had been, on one occasion when Anakin had let her try the controls.

As the thought crossed her mind, her view of the stars was replaced by a dark, imposing courtroom. Vader's words about Tarkin echoed around her.

He attempted to kill my apprentice.

She saw the sickly smile of the nexu in tooka's fur, the scrap of a padawan, the row of jurors. Heard the prosecutor speaking, cold, calm, and precise. She couldn't hear all the words—didn't remember them—but the most important came through.

Former Padawan Tano… I ask the Court… penalty of death."

The memory was shattered by an alarmed shriek.

"Revenant, watch out!"

She jerked the TIE to the side just in time to avoid collision with a larger ship.

"Are you okay?" Ad'ika asked.

"I'm fine," Padmé replied, a little dazedly. She blinked, in an effort to clear her head, and checked the ship's scanners. To her relief, the Lambda was still far behind. She might not be able to fly fast enough to increase the distance between them, but hanging onto a bit of a lead should be manageable. Still, she wasn't going to take her hands off the steering for even a moment to program the navicomp.

"Ad'ika, enter hyperspace coordinates, please."

While it was tempting to take the TIE all the way to the base, it was also entirely possible that the Empire tracked its own ships, so she bade the girl enter coordinates for a nearby world where they could abandon the TIE and pick up another vessel from an Alliance-sympathizing business. The proprietors didn't want to get deeply involved, but they were willing to supply the occasional rebel in a pinch. Stopping somewhere nearby was a bit risky, but Padmé and her companion were not going to spend Force-only-knew how long in hyperspace with no rations, no room to move about, and no 'fresher.

"Ad'ika, where should I take you after we change ships? I'm terribly sorry, but back to Ryloth isn't an option. You'll be recognised and arrested."

"I know." Ad'ika leaned forward to stare out the viewport again, chin resting in her hand. "They'd probably arrest my uncle, too, if I went back. Maybe they will even if I don't, but if I did, it'd be a sure thing."

"You could come back to the base with me."

"Really?"

"Of course. We'll have to discuss what you'll do—going back into the field as a spy would be a bad idea—but we can work something out."

"Thank you," Ad'ika said quietly. "I'm sorry I was stupid about checking for—"

"For the last time, it wasn't your fault! My Imperial contact must have managed to guess that I was working with someone from Ryloth, and that was an error on my part alone."

If she hadn't allowed her frustration with the Empire to get the better of her—if she had been able to hold her tongue instead of speaking out when confronted by the face of Imperial oppression himself—but, if she had been able to do all that, perhaps she wouldn't have been Padmé Amidala. She had been a poor option to collect information on Vader, at any rate. And what had it even gotten her? All she had discovered was that he might have once been a Jedi, eschewed social interaction, didn't even view himself as a person, had an apprentice, disliked Tarkin…

Dark armor. Jedi robes. Troopers in white. Troopers with blue. The way Vader stood and gestured—complained about lumbering bureaucracy—demanded information on Ahsoka Tano—

Ahsoka. Anakin's padawan. His apprentice. Whom Tarkin—

Padmé's breath came fast and shallow. Her hands began to tremble. The ship weaved drunkenly from side to side, thanks to its absurd steering system. So like the Twilight. And there was that mess of wires behind the access panel—and Vader's piloting, which Artoo had only barely managed to evade.

He attempted to kill my apprentice.

Tarkin. Ahsoka. Anakin. Vader.

He's dead! Padmé told herself fiercely. Anakin is dead. Obi-Wan killed him. He did! I saw the look on his face. I saw the grief in his eyes.

But the image of her friend's face that day, when she had asked about Anakin's survival, brought back a flood of other memories. There was the dark bond Obi-Wan had found leaching away her life, his speculation that Palpatine was using it—not for himself, but for Anakin?—and the day she and Beru had first heard news of Vader, Obi-Wan's ghastly expression when she had told him… and later, his strong reaction when he heard how she had encountered Vader on the return from Kamino. It wasn't just because he had a long and terrible history with Sith. It was because he knew kriffing well who was inside the menacing armor of this particular Sith.

He knew.

And now she knew. She knew the face of her enemy, and she knew it for that of an old friend. [Old love.] The person who, above all others, represented the injustice and the evil of the Empire.

And all she could do was sit here, stuck in in the cockpit of his ship, clutching the steering controls for dear life—the same controls that he held, with the hands that had destroyed battle droids and slain Jedi, caressed her and all but choked the life out of her and her children.

Padmé bit her lip until the blood came. She wasn't even sure what she was feeling. There was anger—oh, plenty of that, at Anakin and also at Obi-Wan for deceiving her—but there was also a great, yawning misery that wanted to swallow her whole. Because, once upon a time, there had been two children, a girl and a boy, who each thought they would grow up to make their world a better place. And then they had grown up, and this was what their lives had become. A rebel and a tyrant—she fighting for her own life, her children's lives, and the lives of the entire galaxy against her own husband, while he directly oversaw the oppression and enslavement of worlds, even as he knelt before his own master, a master a thousand times crueler than Watto or Gardulla had ever been. She remembered bright eyes, I'm a person, and my name is Anakin—remembered a threatening mask, Such considerations do not apply to me.

Padmé lifted a hand from the steering long enough to swipe at a traitorous tear. She felt like a bit of debris on the sea of her emotions, tossed by betrayal and anger, now pulled into a vortex of horror, now lashed by sorrow and disappointment. But all that was preferable to what lay beneath the surface, because somewhere, so deep she knew its presence only because she knew herself, lurked a tiny, glowing shard, sown within a diminutive nebula of hope. She tried to deny its existence, for it was as dangerous as a grenade in its shell. If she wasn't careful, it could bring down everything she had worked for since the start of the rebellion, because Anakin was alive, and while there was life, there was always the chance to choose.

Alive. He was alive, after all her grand thoughts about letting go of the lightsaber and the japor snippet. How fate must have laughed.

Lightsaber. Snippet.

She blanched. Summoned to the scene of the explosion, Vader would have found Anakin's lightsaber. Connect the lightsaber with the fact that she had referred to Bail Organa by his first name, the fact that she had mentioned Luke—he would at least have been able to guess. If the snippet had been found, it would have become a certainty. From the way that speeder had raced to the dock, she knew he must have figured it out. Vader—Anakin—her idiot husband knew she was alive, and so was Luke. The Anakin she had known would have done anything to get them back. Vader? She didn't know. Would he try to find them, or would he see her as merely another traitorous rebel? Would he try to take Luke as his apprentice? Would he find out about Leia and try to take her, as well?

He could try, but that was the extent of it. Padmé would die before she let her kind, bright children be corrupted by the influence of the Sith.

The sides of the ship pressed in, cramping her. The cockpit was too small for both her and the myriad thoughts and raw feelings flying around her. She wanted out of this ship, this instant, to occupy no more the same space that her idiot husband frequented. She didn't want to look at the cannon controls that had fired upon Rebel vessels. (She wanted to rip those controls out of the console and hurl them through the viewport.)

Ad'ika twisted awkwardly to look at her in concern. "Revenant, are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes," Padmé replied automatically. Keep it together, Amidala! "I'm fine. Just—thinking."

Not a lie, technically. If one could grace the jumble of racing ideas in her mind with so elevated a name as thought.

Anakin. Vader. A deranged laugh almost escaped her. She had talked to him. Argued with him. Argued politics just like that time on Naboo. They had spoken with each other several times, and neither had ever guessed just who was on the other end. And all he had had to say for himself was that the Empire's abuse of the galaxy was for its own good. For peace and order. She wanted to scream. But, while most of her mind was creaking its way toward a breakdown, the part that was still solidly the Rebel agent kept on going, evaluating, analyzing, looking for a way to turn the situation to some use.

"There's a datastick in my pocket," she told Ad'ika. "Will you please put it in the navicomp and download all data?"

In the old days, Anakin had rarely wiped drives—Artoo was proof enough of that—and it was a safe bet that such was still his habit. Vader's habit. [Kriff, this name business was going to give her a migraine.] In any case, the TIE's navicomp likely hadn't been cleared since its maiden voyage. It should contain a wealth of data on travel patterns, which should, especially when cross-referenced with shipping manifests the Alliance had accumulated over the years, help to track past Imperial activity, pinpoint current bases, and possibly even predict future movements.

Ad'ika stuck her hand into Padmé's pocket and pulled something out.

"Your comm is flashing," she said. "Someone's calling."

"I'm sure he is," Padmé muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Do you want me to turn it on?"

"No! No, please don't." She wasn't ready for that yet. If she answered the call, she would either break down in tears or end up shouting her head off. Neither of which did she want to subject Ad'ika to.

"But what if it's important?"

"It's been waiting for the better part of a decade. It can keep on."

With a shrug, Ad'ika returned the commlink to Padmé's pocket, pulled out the datastick, and connected it to the navicomp.

The air was so oppressively thick that even the warm jungle pool felt refreshing. Ahsoka was supposed to be giving the twins a lesson in the basics of Soresu. They were a bit young to be learning a more advanced form, but they were fairly good at the basics of Shi Cho, and in this world, it was never too soon to start practicing defensive skills. Today, however, their practice soon devolved into roughhousing, and Ahsoka was in no state of mind to patiently keep them in line. It was like herding tookas. She had thus proposed that they forgo the day's lesson in favor of swimming, to which plan they had readily assented. So it was that she currently found herself serving as a diving platform, while Leia played a deep-sea explorer and Luke a sea monster.

"Commander, a word?"

She looked around to see Rex at the edge of the pool.

"Found something you should see."

Ahsoka waded out, to a chorus of complaints from the twins, who followed reluctantly behind.

"Okay," she told them, "you can stay in, but only if you keep to the shallows. I mean it. If you go anywhere beyond waist-deep, I will fish you out, and there'll be no more swimming today."

She plopped down on the mossy bank and patted the spot next to her. "What's up, Rex? I don't suppose someone finally has news on Cody?"

"No." Rex joined her on the ground and placed a datapad in her lap. "Read that."

She wiped her damp fingers on a dryish patch of his shirt and began to scroll through the document. It was a list of trooper designations, all marked with active status, and some familiar to her.

"Some of these are 501st," she remarked. "What is this? Where did you get it? Hey—that's Appo, isn't it?"

"Seems Kamino was keeping an inventory of all clones still considered to be active. It's recent to the day we stole the memory drive. Take a good look, 'Soka—do you recognise numbers from any divisions other than the 501st?"

Ahsoka scanned the list again.

"No, although there are a lot I don't know at all. They could be from other uni—hey!" she called to the twins. "No splashing in each other's faces!"

Rex shook his head. "I checked with Wolffe, Gregor, Snap, and a few others. No one could pick out a single designation that wasn't one of ours. Some of the numbers I didn't know, Snap did—newer recruits. I didn't have time to memorise their numbers before the split."

"So, they're all 501st."

"We haven't identified all of them, but it looks like a safe bet. Which would explain why we hardly ever find men from the 501st across the galaxy; Snap was an exception. But there's more. This."

He pointed to one of the numbers in the list. CT-6922. It took Ahsoka a moment to remember whose face and name went with the number.

"Dogma?"

The dread that had been growing for weeks now rose like a tidal wave. There was only one reason she could think of that Dogma would be reunited with the rest of the 501st.

"Rex, Anakin is alive." She said it quietly, so the twins wouldn't hear.

"Hold up, there," he said. "Just because the 501st is together, it doesn't meant—"

"No. I knew before. When I was fighting… when I was on Daiyu last. I used our bond, and he responded."

So cold, so dark. She should have known then.

"Rex, who in the Empire might have the power to retain a unit of clones, when all the others were decommissioned?"

"Palpatine, maybe some of the moffs and high-ranking military leaders. Vader," he added.

"What's the designation of Vader's personal division?"

"Don't know. Imp propaganda usually just calls it 'Vader's Fist.' But why would Vader want the 501st?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" Even to her, her voice sounded fragile. Rex watched, worried, as he turned the pieces over in his mind. She saw the moment it clicked. The moment confusion gave way to dread.

"'Soka…."

She wasn't sure whether Rex's shiver was born of horror, or of her icy fingers on his hands.

"No one knows where Vader came from, but Padmé's found some evidence he might have been a Jedi. I looked up old holos, and in the early days, he fought a lot like Anakin. I'm not wrong, am I. It makes too much sense."

"Yeah," he said quietly. "It does. Kriff. You've been afraid of this for weeks, haven't you? That's why you've been looking so tired."

Ahsoka nodded.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know for sure. Sometimes, it seemed like ridiculous paranoia. I know what Obi-Wan told us he did, but I just couldn't... didn't want to believe he could actually keep doing it. It wasn't even a keen observation or anything that started me wondering. Just a stupid nightmare. Apparently, my brain's smarter asleep than awake. The pieces were all there, once I started looking for them."

She felt like she should be crying, but there were no tears. Her breath remained steady. It wasn't new, or shocking. She had known for weeks, really, and now she just felt tired, and empty. Exhausted. She leaned against Rex's sweat-damp shoulder. It was really too warm out here to be touching another being, but she didn't care. Neither, it seemed, did he. At least they always had each other, when the rest of their world fell apart.

Ahsoka looked blankly over the pool, where the twins had gone back to splashing each other, and strengthened her shields so they wouldn't sense her distress.

"What are we going to do?" she asked. How did one go about bringing a Sith back to the light?

"Do? We have to get them back. I know my men—our men," Rex's voice had an angry tightness to it. "They wouldn't be doing this if they had a choice. If Skywalker gave them a choice. Dogma—he pulled Dogma out of whatever prison hole the longnecks or the Senate threw him into, and now…"

He broke off to rake his fingers savagely through the moss. "Finally did the right thing, got sent to prison for it, and now he's being forced to follow the orders of that damned chip and Darth kriffing Traitor!"

At Rex's outburst, the twins splashed out of the pool and came running.

"What's going on?" Leia asked. "Uncle Rex? Why're you mad?"

"Nothing you need to worry about, cadet." Not, at least, until they had the Senator's orders on how to proceed. "But I think we should be getting back. Aunt 'Soka and I have some things to discuss."

Though Padmé was tempted to make a less-than-graceful landing and leave the TIE in a smoldering heap of wreckage, she didn't trust her abilities enough to guarantee that she and her passenger would both make it out alive. They abandoned the fighter in a field and began the several-hour trek to the town which held the Rebel-friendly ship trader. It was a relief to be out of the TIE, and the brisk wind on her face was a welcome distraction from the thoughts buzzing in her mind.

Beside her, Ad'ika shivered. The wind's teeth were no relief to her. Padmé wrapped an arm around her shoulders as they walked, pulling her close to share what warmth she could.

"You did well, back on Kafrene," she said, and Ad'ika smiled a little.

"It was kind of fun. Except for the almost getting captured bit. You know, when I was really little, I used to think it would be fun to be a padawan commander and have all sorts of adventures. It seemed better to be one of the people actually fighting in the war than to be one of the ones who just lived with it and got their lives upended by it. But it's not really, because then you have to leave your home and the people you know, and… I thought I was pretty grown up, but now I feel like when I was little, and got lost. Still… I'm pretty lucky for someone who keeps getting lost, I guess. The first time, some clones and a Jedi helped me, and this time, you're here."

Padmé wondered whether Ad'ika's chatter was habitual, or the product of uncertainty, intended to keep her spirits up. She suspected the latter. After a harrowing escape, the poor girl had left behind her homeworld and her uncle for the foreseeable future, and was now setting out for a future she probably hadn't even imagined until a few hours ago. Speaking of which….

"We should sort out your accommodations," Padmé said, willing herself to focus on the present. "There are barracks on base, but some family groups have apartments. You're welcome to stay in mine. I realise we're barely acquaintances, but if even that little bit of familiarity would help you…."

"It might," Ad'ika said, shyly. "Thank you. My name's Numa, by the way. Numa Sivron."

After a moment's hesitation, Padmé decided to tell Numa her true name. It was inevitable that she would find out, if they occupied the same quarters.

"Padmé Amidala." Her own name sounded strange. It was years since she had introduced herself that way.

"You're dead," Numa said bluntly. Then, realising what she had said, she hurriedly added, "I mean—well, you're obviously alive, but… if you're really you—really her?—anyway, everyone thinks you're dead?"

"Not everyone. A few people know." One more than was supposed to. Anakin. She shoved the thought away. "Well, Numa, when we get to the base, High Command will want to speak with you. I'll be there for a while, but there's some business I need to take care of before you settle into our apartment, okay?"

Namely, she was going to have a conversation with a certain Jedi master who had not seen fit to divulge a certain secret, even though it concerned her husband, who was alive and on the opposite side of a war—not to mention a Sith, and a very real danger to her children! Oh, she wanted to wring his neck, that sneaking, never-quite-lying—

"Rev—Padmé? I'm not going to run away, you know."

"What?"

Numa reached up to tug on her arm. "You can loosen up a little."

At some point, her grip on the girl's shoulders had become crushing. She relaxed it immediately.

"Something happened back there, didn't it?" Numa asked. "You were okay right after we left Kafrene, but then you went off in your head and started almost flying into things, and you keep looking like you don't know whether to cry or hit someone."

And here Padmé thought she had remained (outwardly) more or less calm. It seemed Amidala's mask of composure had fallen into disrepair—or, perhaps today's events had simply been enough to shatter it.

"I've come into a bit of family trouble," she told Numa, and swallowed the lump that kept trying to creep into her throat.

Keep it together, Amidala. Just for a few days. You're not the only one who's had her world turned upside-down, here, remember? Keep it together for Numa's sake. Just until you make it back to base. Keep it together. Keep it together.