Hello! It's me again--Nyc, the manic fanfic author that lives in a little corner of the LMS
site. Just finishing up this little tale I began a year ago with the very first part of Mosaic.
Before I begin, I must offer a warning. This is
a LOOOONG story. I mean, long. Stunningly long. So my advice would be to download it
and read it at your leisure. I hope it's captivating enough to get you through it, but it is still
long.

I'd like to thank the Academy...oh wait, wrong fantasy. Okay, here it is. I want to thank
LMS's webmistress (oh, doesn't THAT title sound kinky?) for all her friendship, support,
and most of all, her patience with me, and all the trouble she's gone through to make sure I
always have a spot to put my stuff on the Star Wars Internet. THANK YOU!!! I couldn't
have done all of this without you, LMS! Even though I know you haven't read the first
story yet. <grin> Teasing, teasing! If I didn't tease you, you'd think I didn't like you
anymore.

All the usual disclaimers apply. And forgive me for a moment if I totally violate one of my
own rules (never put a modern song in a Star Wars story) and quote a lyric I felt describes
my beloved little Vaiya Jade Skywalker and her relationship with Khameir Sarin to a
perfect "T."

"You know, if I leave you now,
It doesn't mean that I love you any less.
It's just the state I'm in.
I can't be good to anyone else like this."
~~~"Wait," by Sarah MacLaughlin
      from "Fumbling Through Extacy."

And now, the story.....
MASKS--THE CONCLUSION (I PROMISE!)
Vaiya travels to Iridonia to "find herself" again. What she does find is more than she
expected, but just what she needs. However, others disagree, including herself. As a result,
lots of bad things happen. But good things happen, too! I promise I didn't bring you all this
way for nothing. :)

PART FIVE: REDEMPTION OF A JEDI

1--Iridonia

      There was only one good thing about spending five days in the hull of a Bakurian
cruiser. It gave you time to think. Unless, of course, thinking was the last thing you wanted
to do.
     Vaiya uncurled herself from where she slept against the low, white-washed metal
hull of the ship. It was clean enough. The Bakurans weren't exactly the highest class,
considering that Bakura itself had become a bit of a cess pool in the galaxy over the last
decade. But ever since the death of the ruling class, the poor government hadn't been able
to hold things together. Vaiya vaguely remembering her Aunt Leia babbling to her once
about how Jacen was heavy in negotiations to help the Bakurans out. It was the least they
could do, considering the long history the planet shared with the New Republic.
     And the memory of Gaeriel on her father's heart.
     Vaiya had to smile. Why she would think about that after all this time was beyond
her, but in a strange way it made sense. She absolutely refused to let her mind wander back
to the events of the past month--more specifically, the week before the month she had
spent as the Jedi Council's "guest" in a low level security penn.
     This ship wasn't too much nicer than her facilities had been. But, she reminded
herself, the Bakurans had been very generous to let her ride with them, and for free.
     Her and her new friend.
     Vaiya sighed and shifted her position. She felt something hard in her cloak and
pulled it out. It was the small book that Ben had given to her while she'd been on trial with
the Council. It was a book of the First Order, something they called their Truescript. It was
writing that had been handed down through the ages, the history of their religion and its
many principles. She'd seen the book several times, had read it once completely during her
initial year and a half living in the First Temple. That had been a long time ago. Why Ben
suddenly felt it was important now, she just didn't know.
     She flipped through it. She had dog-eared several pages. The passages in them had
rung through her, vibrating in the very core of her being. It seemed that the First Order of
Yejion was waiting for something. A redeemer of sorts. But according to the Truescript,
whoever the redeemer was wasn't just another person. He, she, it, was supposed to be
Yejion Himself, becoming flesh.
     She'd heard stories from other planets over the many years she'd spent traveling
with her parents. She'd never really given it any thought before.
     The idea of redemption, though, was not at all unappealing. And this person, this
messiah, as they called him (or her, for all she knew) was supposed to be THE redeemer.
The savior of all sentient life. At least, on that planet.
     Vaiya flipped through the passages again. She had gotten about a third of the way
through it during this trip, but the print was kind of small and hurt her eyes. And it was a
bit much for her, considering her current state.
     She looked around. Well, maybe Ben had had some kind of vision or something.
Because redemption was really the name of this whole game.
     Good thing it wasn't really a game.
     She put the book back and stretched, hard, letting the kinks out of her clenched
muscles. It took several minutes to get to her feet and manage to stay there without feeling
like she was going to fall over. After she was sure her body had returned to its normal
state, she made her way across the room--all ten feet of it--and shook the other figure.
     Instantly, a head of black-red hair slid out from under the grey cloak, identical to
Vaiya's, and a pair of brown eyes stared up at her.
     "We're almost there," Vaiya said in a low voice. The echo off these closed walls
was just too much for her ears. She was looking forward to a wide open space. At least she
could put some distance between her---
     --and Iyala.
     "We're out of hyperspace?" Iyala asked, keeping her voice low, almost respectful.
She averted her eyes slightly from Vaiya's gaze and glanced out the small window.
     "Yeah," Vaiya said, offhandedly, and turned away to use the small refresher they
and the rest of the lower crew had to share.
     The first day she would have spent the entire errand muttering to herself about why
she didn't understand why Wyntrina had allowed Iyala to come with her--no, more like
forced Vaiya to let Iyala come with her--and part of the second, too. The third day, her
muttering became wider spaced, only coming up when Iyala's presence became annoying.
Which wasn't as often as Vaiya might have feared. And then, on the fourth day, she
stopped muttering altogether.
     Right now, she felt almost warm toward the woman. Maybe it was the fact that
they were headed toward a half-unknown, potentially dangerous planet to join a colony of
complete strangers who probably weren't feeling all that warm toward anyone from the
New Republic right now.
     She headed back to their small, bare room, but not before she caught a glimpse out
the large viewing window to see Iridonia looming underneath them.
     She paused, caught up in the sight of it. It was an odd planet, she had to admit. Not
at all like she would have pictured. Like most Class One planets, it had a blue, white and
brown look to it, but there was something else there. Something green. Very green.
     Jungle.
     Khamier had told her stories about the jungles of Iridonia. He'd told her about the
acid rains and how only Zabrak were immune to the fevers it brought on in outworlders,
fevers that were usually fatal. He'd told her how the Emperor had ravaged the world, as if
running it through his fingers topped with razor-sharp claws. The blood of the Zabrak
people had run for days, filling the deep wells of the jungles and polluting the rivers and
oceans. The death of the people had thrown the ecological balance off whack, sending the
animals into a population overload. Once a technology class world, now it was hardly
recognized as civil. Hunters went there to kill the lyander, a species of animal that had
bodies like Naboo horses, but their faces were shorter, prettier, and they had horns
growing out of their foreheads, and a heavy mane around their necks like Durranian lions.
They had once been domesticated animals, ridden by the Zabrak. They didn't survive off
world, so they were no good to anyone except as hunting game.
     No wonder the Nagai were mad.
     Wyntrina had done more checking into Iridonia before sending Vaiya there,
though, and she had discovered that it had become a bit of a patchwork planet. The Nagai
were sent there to colonize a part of it, but they weren't alone. On other parts of the planet
other races had set up small bases. There was even talk of building an intergalactic prison
there. Hopefully on a continent away from the colonies, Vaiya hoped, but unlikely.
     The New Republic was getting rather clumsy.
     It wasn't Jacen's fault, not really. He didn't have as much influence as his mother
had had. After all, she was a living legend and had inspired respect in all who knew of her.
Jacen inspired respect, but that was about it. More bureaucrats had stepped in, taking more
power. Jacen was a voice among many now. And not all those voices spoke wise words.
     But the poor Nagai...they were being terrorized by some outside source--Vaiya
wondered if it was another colony, deciding to wage war on the beings from another
galaxy. But from some of the details she'd heard, she was more inclined to think that it was
some kind of wild creature.
     Perhaps a monster, if such a thing existed.
     She was very much inclined to believe that they did.
     "Not much longer," Vaiya told Iyala as she came back into the room. "We're going
to be in the atmosphere within a few minutes."
     Iyala let out a small chuckle. "Perhaps we should get ready to jump. Are we sure
they're even going to land for us?"
     Vaiya had to smile. "Oh, I don't know. I think they've been pretty nice. I'm sure they
wouldn't serve that dewback stew to just anyone, would they?"
     Iyala raised her volume one notch to a simple, short laugh. "Oh, yes, I forgot, we're
honored guests."
     "Yes," Vaiya murmured. "This week, girls formerly possessed by sith lords."
     "On the next Orna Ginfrey show!" Iyala finished.
     The two looked at each other, exchanged a brief smile, and fell into a soft silence.
A few weeks ago, a joke like that would have been deadly. Even now, if anyone else but
one of them had made it, they would have cut the unfortunate down in a heartbeat. But the
fact that one of them, one who understood, one who had suffered, could make it--it was a
good sign. And a funny moment.
     "I think they are going to land," Vaiya announced, turning and heading for the door.
     "Good," Iyala said, gathering herself up and following. "I'd hate to think that this
was a part of the penance."

     The first thing that hit Vaiya was the smell.
     It was heavy, thick, and wet. Half way between sweet and tart. It was a rich smell,
one that washed over them, becoming a part of them, embracing them as if it were the
welcoming wagon of this forsaken planet. It was possibly the most beautiful smell Vaiya
had ever inhaled in her life.
     It made her think of when she was a child, and the rains had just passed from the
jungles of Yavin IV. Those were happy days...she had had a good childhood with her
parents, just the three of them. Her parents had been happy and in love, and the warm of
the Force had seemed to hold them together.
     Then Vaiya grew up. Of course, her parents were still very much in love...probably
very happy, too, considering Mara was expecting a child.
     A boy.
     Vaiya stepped onto the lush green floor, taking the heavy leap off the end of the
landing ramp. Iyala followed, landing beside her. The morning dew splashed up into their
faces and Vaiya was stunned to realize how warm it was.
     "Thanks for everything!" Iyala hollered into the empty cargo bay behind them right
before the doors closed; the ship pulled up and headed out into the atmosphere, and if
plasma could have made marks on air it would have left skid tracks behind it.
     "No sense in being rude," Iyala said, shrugging slightly as Vaiya gave her a slight
look.
     "True enough." She put her hands on her hips. "You know, it just occurred to me."
     "We have no idea where the Nagai colony is?"
     "Yeah."
     "No problem." Iyala produced something from her satchel. "Ordinarily, I'd be really
angry with them for leaving us here like this, considering the settlement could very well
have been on the other side of the planet. However, Wyntrina promised me that they
wouldn't do that, and that we could easily track the Nagai by this little device she gave
me." Iyala handed it to Vaiya. It was smooth and cool to the touch, made of dark grey
metal that looked almost like stone. It wasn't round like a comlink, but rectangular in
shape and it came open like a locket. Inside, one panel was covered with what looked like
a speaker, and the other side had a dozen tiny buttons all arranged very neatly, all in silver,
blue and white. "It's a Nagai commlink," Iyala said. "It's been programmed to lock in on
any Nagai physiology in the area."
     "How convenient," Vaiya said, and took a step out into the jungle.

     It was humid in the jungle. Much more so than Vaiya would have realized. After a
mile, she had to take the grey cloak off her shoulders and sling it over one arm. It wasn't
heavy material. Wyntrina had shown her before they left of the cloak's unique properties. It
was a special material that was completely impenetrable to any moisture, which would
ensure that she and Iyala could be out in the middle of the heavy acid rains of the planet
and not catch the fever. There was even a thin, transparent piece of material sewn into the
lining of the hood that could be pulled down over the face, and there were arms that could
be pushed out from the sides, complete with gloves sewn right onto the cuffs.
     "I hope it doesn't rain," Iyala muttered from behind her, looking up into the trees.
The sun was beginning to rise, the heavy golden beams penetrating the entwining limbs of
the jungle's roof, but even so Vaiya could see the heavy tint of grey on the distant horizon.
     "Me too." And so the conversation between them stayed like that, short and brief
and only vital. It surprised Vaiya that she didn't feel more hostile toward Iyala--maybe it
was the fact that the two of them had experienced the same hell.
     Still, she should feel a bit angrier toward the woman primarily responsible for her
husband's death.
     Vaiya sighed, yanking the collar of her tunic away from her neck and trying to let
the fresh air against her skin. It seemed that all her emotions had gone into slumber mode.
She didn't even feel particularly nervous about this mission, as little as she knew about it.
It seemed that the only thing that made her feel any real emotions at all was thinking about
home.
     More specifically, thinking about Khameir.
     She didn't know why she thought about him so much. It was almost as if he were
right beside her, walking with her, his silent yet continuously striking presence--
demanding by his very existence--shadowing her every step of the way. Maybe it was some
sort of coping mechanism. The fact that he had cared for her for the last four years of her
life made his absence particularly salient. It left a rather putrid taste in her mouth,
continuously looking over her shoulder as if expecting to find him there. She had to get
over this.
     It was hard.
     She found herself trying to remember the last time she'd seen him.
     Her memories of the last month or so were not particular to any set of events, not
even her trial, really. The only thing that stood out in her mind was the memory of
realizing that her children were afraid of her. They wouldn't come to her, no matter how
hard Khameir tried to make them. She made him stop. There was little point in his
attempt, as much as his heart was in the right place. Feeling the disordered emotions of her
children so close to her--and knowing she was the cause--was the last thing she needed.
     Perhaps, she thought, her feet slowing with a horrid and sudden pang of regret, she
should have let him make them come. At least she would have been given a chance to
change their minds, banish their fears and assure them she was their mother and that she
loved them very much.
     *A fine time to think of it now,* she thought bitterly. And just then, she took a step
down. A very steep step down.
     "Vaiya!" Iyala shrieked from behind her as lost her balance on the unstable ground.
The world came up as she bent over, her arms in front of her to break her fall. Her face
landed in the thick pile of mud that her legs had sunk into. She got her hands under her and
pushed, lifting her face from the thick soil that threatened to block out her life's breath.
She rolled over and looked up, wondering at how warm the mud underneath her was. It
wasn't mud, really, but it had the thickness of mud and seemed as soft. When she wiped it
from her face, however, she realized that it was not clingy like mud. In fact, the soil itself
seemed to be powder soft and thin, having the resiliency of mud but not its stickiness.
However, it was extremely hard to stand in, no matter how hard she tried. She kept
slipping back onto her knees.
     The hole seemed only about three feet deep, and it was sunk into a small pit, two,
almost three feet high. The bank threatened to block her vision of the rest of the jungle. All
she could really see was Iyala as she stood at the lip and waited for Vaiya to haul her butt
out. When Iyala saw that the dirt was just too soft, she stretched out a hand and offered it
to her.
     Vaiya sighed--again--and took the hand. What had she been thinking about before
this happened? Oh, yes, about Khameir.
     It just figured.
     Iyala gripped her tightly, but no matter how hard she pulled Vaiya's knees could get
no traction and she just would up slipping in deeper.
     And deeper.
     Vaiya looked down to realize that she could no longer see her knees. Or part of her
thighs, for that matter.
     "Uh, Iyala--" Vaiya began, and abruptly Iyala let go. "Hey!" Vaiya shouted, and
wondered with a cold sense of dread if Iyala didn't plan to leave her here. Maybe she had
only come to finish up the job that Maul and Sidious had tried to begin. She heard Iyala
stomp through the brush a good ten feet away, and then silence for another minute.
     The soil had gathered around her chest.
     Abruptly, a thick coil of sytherope caught her across the back of the head, and
Vaiya raised her hand to realize that someone had thrown it over a heavy branch that
projected over the low pit. The branch acted like a pulley, and Vaiya gripped the rope
hard. The person on the other end--Vaiya was assuming Iyala--pulled with all her might.
But it wasn't enough.
     Vaiya's hips pulled free from the silt pit, and then she wound up sinking back in
again.
     Iyala groaned and tried again, and this time Vaiya's thighs cleared the silt. But she
hung there for a long minute, wondering if Iyala had the strength to get her the rest of the
way. She considered trying to pull her own legs out, but was afraid that the silt was too
heavy, and the shift of weight might be too much and Iyala wouldn't be able to hold her up.
     It was then that she saw two dark figures approached Iyala from behind.
     Iyala turned her head, doing her best not to lose her grip on the rope. But the two
figures were very fast. They had the rope from her hands and were pulling Vaiya clear of
the pit within seconds, and Iyala ran forward to get Vaiya's ankle and pull her toward the
shore. Iyala had just enough strength to drag Vaiya to where she could safely collapse
before the two figures revealed themselves.
     They were wearing the same grey cloaks that Vaiya and Iyala had arrived in,
although their hoods were pulled up and their face shields were in place. They took them
off, and Vaiya didn't know whether to be embarrassed or relieved.
     They were Nagai.

2--Den Siva

     "Uh....hi!"
     Vaiya resisted the urge to slap Iyala for her simplistic greeting, but was impressed
to find that the stone-colored faces of the Nagai did not change. Of course, there wasn't
much on their faces to begin with. Aside from being the color of stone, they were as still.
     Trying to maintain her dignity, she got to her feet. The slick silt of the pit was
clinging hard to her lower half, and she was sure she was anything but dignified. However,
she found her own inner calm and attempted a greeting.
     "Hello. My name is Vaiya. We've been sent here by the Jedi Council."
     She waited for them to reply. But instead, they looked at each other, and Vaiya
sensed their confusion through the Force.
     One of them spoke. She was embarrassed not to have realized earlier that the
Nagai, of course, had their own language. And not being natives of this galaxy, they would
hardly be familiar with Basic. Still, from their tone, she knew that both she and Iyala were
the subject of their mild debate.
     Iyala touched her arm. "Vaiya," she whispered, "weren't you used to be able to
discern languages? When I first met you, you were able to speak Durranian even though
you'd never heard it before."
     Of course, Vaiya thought to herself. "That was a long time ago," she thought out
loud.
     "It's worth a shot."
     She was right. So Vaiya focused, hard, on the words, and she was almost tempted
to shut her eyes, so intense was her concentration into the mental nuances of the odd
words that were flying through the air between their two rescuers. *Come on Vaiya, this
used to be your thing!* she chastised herself, and finally, finally, their words became
coherent to her ears.
     "{....Siva spoke of a Nagai Jedi,}" one of them was saying.
     "{Still doesn't make them Jedi. That's a big conclusion to jump to.}" The second
one's skeptical eyes turned on her, and he stepped closer. "{If they were sent here, they
were obviously ill prepared. They can't speak anything but their own crude basic language,
anyway, I'm willing to bet.}"
     Vaiya opened her mouth. The words were rough--it had been too long since she had
tried this, she realized with a certain wave of shame. "{We are Jedi,}" she managed.
     The second one stopped short, and the first one grinned.
     "{I told you,}" he said. He stepped closer. "{I am Yorl Harva,}" he said. He pointed
at himself and said the name again. Then he pointed at them. "{You?}"
     "Vaiya," she said, patting her chest. Then turning to Iyala, she touched her
shoulder. "Iyala."
     It was rather obvious at this point that the first Nagai was much younger than the
second. He tried the two names silently on his tongue, but the vowel blends were
obviously new to him. Vaiya's name came out as a straight "Vai," and that one sounded
rather natural to him, and Iyala's was just plain "Ya."
     "It'll do," Iyala said with a small smile.
     Yorl smiled. "{This is Orm Harva, my brother,}" he explained.
     Vaiya gave the older Nagai a smile. "{Forgive,}" she said, adopting the most
humble of tones. "{We know not your tongue. Only through the Force can I understand
and speak to you.}"
     Yorl nodded. "{Have you been sent by the Jedi Council?}" he asked.
     "{Yes,}" Vaiya replied quickly. "{There is a Jedi we know named Wyntrina
Caspian.}"
     Orm let out a small gasp at the use of the name. "{Caspian?}" he replied, his tone
hushed. "{The House of Caspian still lives?}"
     Puzzled, Vaiya could only reply, "{Yes, she sent me and my friend here to help
you.}"
     The two Nagai looked at each other, and even Orm seemed to soften a bit.
"{Forgive,}" the older one said. "{Please, come with us. We are in great need of your
help.}"

     Den Siva stood watching over the camp, his black clad-form unprotected against
the late morning humidity. It saddened him, seeing how little progress they had actually
made in the month they had been here. But it was not their fault. Not their fault at all.
     It was hard for him to fight his anger. Even after all the softening influences in his
life, he still had a harsh edge to his temper, a Nagai trait that he should have been proud
of. But the many months of being with Dani had sapped from him any pride he would have
felt. Instead, all he knew now was the dull need to push forward, to keep going, and to
protect those under his care.
     There had always been so many under his care. There were less now. Less by a
quarter. He sighed, wishing that he had never learned this horrible softness that the Zeltron
people had shown him. This softness that ached when affected by loss. Knife would never
have approved. Knife probably would have killed half these people himself if he had seem
them do the things they had to do in order to survive.
     It was no good thinking about it, he reminded himself. He had long since given up
trying to come to grips with his tumultuous insides. The conflict between his Nagai blood
and the soul he had gained from his contact with the many people from this galaxy. Even
Luke Skywalker and his wife, Mara, had rubbed off on him, showing him tenderness---
even the woman, who had never met him before, was showing him compassion!
     He had sensed from her from the first moment of their meeting that she had once
been a lot like him. Hard, cold, compassionless. He learned about her very quickly from
the public records on the holonet. These people from this galaxy were so careless with
their information. Once known as Mara Jade, she had served evil. Den was positive it was
Skywalker's influence that had softened her as well. As it had been Skywalker's influence
that had brought Dani and her water-breather lover together, and again his influence when
Dani had wanted nothing more than to see him dead. Perhaps--and Den would never
know--Luke had said a few words to her the last time they had all been together, so many
years ago. It didn't feel so long ago.
     To him, it had not been. A mere five years, if that. To everyone else, almost half a
century. Maybe more.
     And he wondered again if Dani was still alive.
     Of course she would be. Zeltrons lived incredibly long lives if allowed to die of old
age. Usually, their adventurous spirit and incredible courage got them into situations they
didn't live through, but ordinarily a Zeltron had an incredible amount of youth and vigor,
lasting into nearly a quarter of a millennium. Dani had been very young when he'd known
her. Too young to have lived her kind of life, as a criminal and then as a wounded soul
who could only drift from place to place, never at home anywhere.
     Just like him.
     The last time he'd seen her, she was going back to her people, determined to regain
what she had lost. He let her go, quietly slipping out of her life, taking her decision as to
mean that it was finally time for them to part. She could not find her answers with him---it
was time to try without him. And he wondered, even as he left, if he should have tried to
go with her, if he should have opened up to her and risked everything, telling her he
wanted to know not just her own personal self, but her people and their way. He wanted to
lose himself in that Zeltron spirit. They made war and they made love with equal passion.
They loved beauty and prided themselves on their lusty ways, and then when their
hormones raced too hard and they were antagonized a mere handful of them became a
virtual force of nature.
     He missed them all. Not just Dani. All of them. Maybe they would have accepted
him, he had wondered to himself more than once. They were a very open people. They
were always willing to accept something new.
     All of them except for Dani. And he was to blame for that.
     *Let it go, Den,* he told himself, and he shut his eyes, forcing the thoughts away
from his mind. There was too much here. Too much to concentrate on, too much to worry
about, too much to do in order to make it through the next day without losing another
member of their already depleted numbers.
     He began his climb down from the rock. There was still no sign of the Jedi that
Wyntrina had promised to send after them. And while there was also no sign of their
attackers, it meant very little. Whoever these mysterious creatures were, they were very
good at staying hidden until it was too late.
     As he reached the base of the camp, he noticed the familiar shapes of Yorl and
Orm Harva as they plodded through the jungle where it thinned to the North of the camp.
And there were two figures behind them, both of them distinctly female, non-Nagai, and
wearing the same survival cloaks each of them had been given when they'd been sent here.
     Den shifted his course. This warranted his attention and delayed the inevitable
inspection of the bodies that had been discovered early that morning.
     Yorl was the first one to reach him, picking up his pace to meet Den half way. Den
found himself smiling. He liked the young Nagai, possibly because he felt responsible for
the death of his father, Tai, during their war with the New Republic--or the Alliance of
Free Planets, as they had called themselves then. Of course, he hadn't killed Tai. Knife had
killed Tai. But Den hadn't done anything to stop it. And he should have, for Tai had done
nothing wrong except accept treatment and shelter by the enemy in order to survive. Tai's
only crime was returning back to his base and telling Commander Knife the truth.
     "{Lieutenant Den Siva, Sir,}" Yorl said, mildly out of breath, "{we have great
news. The Jedi we've been promised have finally arrived.}"
     Den looked up at the two women. One of them--the fairer one--was half covered in
silt from a sinkpit, and the other one--extraordinarily dark complected compared to anyone
he had met yet during his time in this galaxy--looked like she had taken a good heavy
pelting with the same stuff, possibly in the effort to get the first one out.
     "{Jedi?}" Den repeated, incredulously. "{They look like they both almost sank into
a sinkpit."}
     "{Yes, sir,}" Orm said, a heavy note of skepticism in his voice. "{We found them
trying to get out. We had to rescue them."}
     Den's eyes widened, and his gaze particularly rested on the fair one, who seemed to
shrink slightly. As if she could understand them. "{Rescue them?}" he echoed. "{You had
to rescue two Jedi from a sinkpit? You had to save the lives of two Jedi, who didn't have
the sense not to step in a sinkpit?}" His voice was rising slowly, along with his disbelief.
"{And you're sure they're Jedi?}"
     Orm seemed to squirm. "{Well...}"
     "{They said Master Caspian sent them,}" Yorl finally chimed in. "{Anyone from
the House of Caspian, sir, I was sure you would approve.}"
     Den put his hands on his hips. Wyntrina Caspian had sent two Jedi to help him and
the first thing they had done was almost get themselves killed in a sinkpit. He shook his
head, wondering if he should laugh or scream. Dani would probably have done both.
     "{I can't believe this,}" he muttered.
     The lighter one stepped forward. "Den Siva?" she said in a respectful tone.
"{Please forgive, we were dropped off under rather chaotic circumstances and didn't know
our way.}"
     So she spoke Nagai. "Never mind that, I speak Basic," he stopped her. "I've been
among your kind for quite some time. What is your name?"
     "Vaiya," she said, not offering more than that. "This is my friend Iyala."
     "And you're Jedi."
     "I'm not," Iyala said.
     Den's jaw dropped slightly and he looked at Vaiya. "And you?"
     "I am." She was hiding something. Den could feel it.
     "But--" he pressed.
     Her eyes widened slightly, as if amazed that he saw through her. "I was a Jedi
Master," she said.
     "Was? You aren't anymore?"
     "No sir. I was stripped of my title." Her tone became very quiet.
     "Why?"
     "For good reasons."
     He sighed. "Wonderful!" he snapped. "My people are dying, the New Republic has
continuously ignored me, and now my only inside chance with the Jedi Council sends me
an incompetent Jedi!" He threw his hands in the air and spun around. "Go home, both of
you!" he snapped. "I'd rather deal with this alone than have the two of you getting in the
way! I have enough to do without having to protect you as well!"
     "We can't!" Iyala said, more to Vaiya than to Den. Den stopped and glared at them
over his shoulder.
     "Can't?" he echoed.
     "Our transport is gone," Vaiya said, "and we have no way to contact another. No
one is coming for us."
     "Well that's just beautiful," Den snarled. "And how were you planning on getting
home when you were done 'helping' us?"
     Vaiya did not answer. "It looks like you're stuck with us."
     Den turned on them, closing the distance like an angry cat. "My dear Jedi," he said.
"Perhaps you weren't made aware of my situation. Something in that jungle seems to be
determined to kill each and every last one of us. Almost all of our women have already
been kidnapped, with the exception of a precious few--we know they're not dead because
whatever this is that is attacking us likes to leave the bodies for us to find. We've become
totally dependant on the jungle for a food supply, but every time one of us goes hunting
we're lucky to come back alive, let alone with dinner. I've sent eight distress calls to the
New Republic only to be told that they cannot spare anyone to come to help us, and since
we are not natives of this planet and we are not natives of this galaxy, we come last on a
very long and slow moving list. Wyntrina Caspian sent you here because I begged her for
help. But if you're the best she can do, it would have been better for her to send no help at
all."
     Vaiya paled. "If you please, Lieutenant Siva," she said, very softly, "I promise you
that I will watch out for the safely of myself and my companion. But we are not leaving
your camp. We were sent here to help and that is what we are going to do."
     Den grunted. "Not bloody likely," he said. "Come on, I'll show you the best reason I
know for you to turn tail and run while you can."

     After Vaiya was done throwing up in the bushes, they covered up the bodies. As
they carted them away, she stood very still, looking so white she could have passed for a
Nagai, if not for the honey color of her hair. There were no blond Nagai, not as far as she
had seen in their camp. Some of them had pale violet colored hair, but not many. And
there were one or two with white hair...of course, those were dead, mangled beyond
recognition at her feet.
     "Do you understand now?" Den said, his voice very low. He looked at Iyala, who
had not moved from where she stood, her eyes downcast, her face covered by the veil of
her hair. She had not lost her stomach contents like Vaiya had, and it made Vaiya begin to
wonder.
     Well, not really begin. She had been wondering several things about Iyala for the
last couple of days, but somehow hadn't found the guts to speak.
     "Who..." Her voice wouldn't cooperate, her throat still burning from the vomit.
"Who were they?"
     "It doesn't matter," one of the other Nagai said, a female. Her face was hard like
flint, with a dark grayish blemish above one eye and her hair a pale violet. She glared at
Den, and it became obvious to Vaiya that there was some sort of power struggle going on
here.
     "Vaiya, this is Dal Siva, my cousin." He gave the woman a look. "Distant cousins,"
he added. "And one of the exceptions." He gave Vaiya a humorless grin. "She disagrees
with my qualifications for leadership. I keep trying to explain to her that I haven't asserted
any control over these people. They looked to me to protect them, and this I have done--"
     "Hardly," Dal said. "We were thirty seven when we came here. Now we're less than
thirty. Twenty-eight, to be exact. And we're getting smaller. These last two hurt us the
most. That was our trapper and his apprentice that they killed this time. Who next? Our
communications expert?"
     "Maybe our cook," Den replied smartly. "Perhaps they'd be doing us a favor, then."
     "Who are they?" Vaiya asked. "Does anyone have a clue?"
     "All they leave are marks," Den explained. "But it depends on where they kill. If
they come into a hut they leave scratch marks on the floor, but if it's in the woods then they
tear the tree bark---"
     "Into a hut?" Vaiya said, her voice rising a few octaves. "You mean they come up
into your own camp and kill you off?"
     "Yes, that was how the first one of us died," Dal explained, her tone cold. "But his
hut was on the edge of the camp. We thought we just had to pull in, so we restructured
ourselves. Then the next night, the next man was killed in the very center of the camp,
right in the dead of night."
     "We can't send anyone out to hunt," Den continued for her. "The last party was
found in the middle of camp. They had been dragged back onto the grounds and tied to a
stake in plain view. That was when we knew it wasn't a pack of wild animals."
     "Yes, before when they killed them they just left them out in the woods." Dal
sneered. "Of course, we can't really complain, can we, Den?" Her teeth barred in an
expression of fury. "Compared to what they've done to our neighbors."
     "Neighbors?" Vaiya looked over at Iyala, wondering why the girl didn't seem to be
reacting to any of this. "There are more of you?"
     "Not us," Den explained, glaring at Dal. "There was a colony of Malastarians about
a three day's hike into the woods. They were on a hunting expedition that was becoming
rather profitable so they decided to set up a permanent base."
     "All dead," Dal stated. "Three days. Not even all of them were left. Half the bodies
were missing, and what bodies were there weren't all together."
     Vaiya's stomach rolled. "I don't understand. Why are they doing this?"
     "Who knows?" Dal snapped. "They don't have to have a reason. The Toffs never
had a reason to do what they did but they did it anyway. And now it's the same story here
again." Vaiya sensed a keen wave of pain from Dal, and wondered if the woman might be
Force-sensitive and not even know it. And then, after a moment's pause as Dal took a
ragged breath, it became too clear to Vaiya.
     She was afraid. Dal was afraid. More than afraid, terrified. Because all the women
had been taken, their bodies never found. She knew she was next. She was at higher risk
than any of them and it was inevitable. Whatever it was that was destroying them, one at a
time, was closing in, and she could feel it behind her, watching her every single second of
her day.
     And she had nowhere to run.
     Dal looked at Vaiya, and Vaiya saw the cold silver coloring of her eyes. She had
never seen eyes like that before.
     Den grunted and turned away. Vaiya forced her feet to move from where they had
rooted themselves into the ground and follow him. "Are there any others besides you?" she
asked quietly. "I mean, other than the Malastarians."
     Den grunted. "There are some who come and go. I think they're Corellians. They
have to be, they're too gutsy to be anything else. They come and they go, and I thought I
picked up some signals from their camp a few days ago. It's about a quarter of a day's ride
to the west, away from where They come out of the woods."
     "They?" Vaiya echoed. "You haven't even named them."
     "We don't even know what they are."
     Suddenly, Iyala was with them, her hands clasping each of them on the shoulder.
"Take us to the Corellian camp," she said. Her voice had taken on a strong tone to it.
"Please."
     Den scowled at her, his pale blue eyes darkening slightly. "Are you insane? The
less I have to do with those Corellians the better."
     "No, trust me, please." Now she sounded mildly panicked. "Take us to the
Corellian camp. I think I may know what has a grudge against you."
     At this, Den paused. Then he turned and changed his direction. "Follow me, we'll
take a couple of zwoots. It won't take us too long to reach them."
     Vaiya looked at Iyala. "That was sweet. How did you manage that?"
     And then she got a good look at Iyala's face. The haunted expression there was too
compelling to resist. "Okay," Vaiya said. "Let's get going."

3--The Zabrak

     Vaiya was grateful she had lost all of her previous meal before. What she saw now
was almost enough to make her pass out.
     There were no words to describe the camp. It had been ravaged. And not by wild
beasts. Whatever had come here had attacked systematically, knowing the weaknesses of
its prey and showing no mercy. One man in the heart of the camp lay with his insides
hanging out of his opened midsection. But thankfully, there were no children. They were
lucky enough to have been a camp of adults who could defend themselves.
     Or would have defended themselves if they had been caught aware. But no, this
enemy had attacked in the dead of night. There were people still in their beds--many of
them, actually--or rather, what was left of the bodies.
     "This happened several days ago," Den declared after a good twenty minute
exploration of the camp, which had taken place in stunned, horrified silence. It was like a
graveyard where all of the bodies had been pulled up out of the ground and their remains
strewn about. "The animals have been heavily at work. Personally, I'm surprised that there
is still this much left of them."
     "You'd think Corellians would be faster," Vaiya whispered to herself as she saw the
scattered bones floating in the nearby water basin. From the position of the leg bones,
apparently someone had been taking a bath.
     Den and Vaiya stood in the dwelling huts, slowly making their way down the
wooden plank walkway that had been built over the curving jungle floor for easier access.
Vaiya felt a terrible chill as they walked. These hopeful enterprisers had set up dwellings
much like the Nagai had. Small thatched huts made of materials from the jungle. In one
room, there were stacks of fresh hides, some of them still drying.
     Den looked around. "Where did Iyala go?" he whispered.
     Vaiya managed to pull her head out from her shock long enough to realize that the
woman wasn't with them. Then she berated herself for not keeping her wits about her
better. She did not reply to Den with an explanatory comment. Instead, she took three
heavy strides away from him and found an exit out into the heart of the camp, where she
soon found Iyala.
     The dark haired woman was wandering about, looking more like a ghost of a
victim of this place rather than a spectator of the remaining gore. She was shaking--her
hands were folded tightly against her midsection but still her arms shook as if she were
caught by a terrible fever.
     "Iyala?" Vaiya said, coming up to her and gently touching her shoulder. "I know it's
bad, but--"
     "No," Iyala whispered, her voice hoarse. "It's not bad. It's catastrophic."
     Den came up behind them, and for the first time Vaiya saw the cold Nagai show a
real touch of compassion. "Perhaps now you understand why you should leave."
     Iyala's head snapped about and her dark eyes rested on Den's face, glaring angrily.
She almost stopped shaking, and one hand came out from where it was nestled against her
ribcage. Vaiya noticed it was clenching something tightly, so tightly she couldn't see it.
     "On the contrary, Nagai," she spat, "I'm not going anywhere. Not until I've stopped
them."
     "But we don't know who they are," Vaiya said, her voice level, factual.
     "I know." Iyala opened her fist and in it lay a small white object. Pointed. The tip
of it stained with blood.
     Den scowled. "What is that?" he asked.
     And then Vaiya recognized it. "But they're dead," she whispered, reaching out and
touching the horn with her fingertip. Iyala did not snatch it away. Instead, she thrust it at
Vaiya, as if she meant to throw it at her.
     Quite suddenly, Iyala's angry face fell into one of shame and despair. "The Zabrak,"
she said. "They're not dead. They're alive. They hid from Palpatine in underground caves
for decades."
     It was Vaiya's turn to scowl. "How do you know that?" she whispered.
     "Because I was here," Iyala said, her voice taking on a heavy quality, as if she
would burst into tears. "Because Maul and I were here. When I was...when Sidious..." she
shook her head, unable to find an accurate description for what she had experienced. She
gave Den a hesitant glance and managed, "when Maul and I were here, we found them.
They were afraid at first but they didn't know that Sidious and Palpatine had been...that
they were..."
     "I know what you mean," Vaiya said quietly. "Continue."
     "They became all excited over the fact that I was from Durran and he was a
Zabrak. They didn't even care that he had that horrible mask on his face. They accepted us,
took us in, and over time we took them over. We brought them back to the surface and
began them rebuilding their cities. We were here for the entire four years...and then when
Maul and I left, I never knew what became of them."
     Vaiya stared at Iyala for a long, long moment. "And when did you remember all of
this?" she asked, with just a mere suggestion of a threat.
     "I've been...I don't know. Since we landed there's been something about this place.
But when we saw those bodies..." she shuddered. "Zabrak kill that way. We had to kill
some group of explorers who got too close--"
     "What are you talking about?" Den hissed, glaring at Iyala. "Are you saying that
you're responsible for this? That you were with these creatures? Are they killing because
you told them to?"
     Vaiya was quick to step in front of Iyala, as if guarding her. "I will explain
everything, Den, I promise. But my friend here was once under the influence of the dark
side. She was manipulated by a very powerful sith lord."
     Iyala muttered something unintelligible, and Vaiya decided to ignore it. It didn't
sound happy, at any rate.
     "And these are the results?" Den was getting angrier, and Vaiya wondered if the
man lost his temper often. Her father had described him as being very cool and well
spoken, having the sort of deadly charm that feline predators normally possess in spades.
As well as the occasional wolf and reptile. She knew he'd changed, but this was drastic.
     "No--" Vaiya began.
     "Yes," Iyala said, giving Vaiya a mild push to the side to face Den. "When we left
here we had given orders to the Zabrak to hide until we returned, but if anyone came too
close to the camp they were to exterminate them. We only had them kill in defense
because we didn't want to attract attention." She gave Vaiya a self-mocking sneer. "Not out
of any goodwill, I can promise you that. But we had to keep the utmost secrecy. We
couldn't risk being discovered. And too much death--like what they're doing now--is
exactly the way they could get that attention."
     "But why now?" Vaiya asked.
     Iyala looked at her. Looked at her so hard Vaiya almost felt embarrassed by the
searing gaze. "Don't you know why?" she whispered. "The Zabrak worshipped us like
gods. And since I'm with you, that means only one other person could be making them do
this."
     Vaiya paled. "He's here."
     "He has to be. They would never do this on their own."
     "Are you sure?"
     Iyala looked away. "I know the Zabrak, Vaiya," she whispered. "Maybe even better
than you do."
     "So he is here. But why do this? What's the point? Doesn't he know it'll get
attention?"
     "Maybe wants attention," Iyala said, her voice getting distant. "Maybe he knew we
were coming."
     "Who?" Den finally demanded. "Who is this 'he' you keep talking about?"
     "A sith lord," Vaiya said, "who goes by the name of Darth Maul."

     "Why didn't you say something sooner?"
     Vaiya knew she had no real right to be angry. Not after everything that had
happened to her. But knowing what she did about Iyala's experience with Maul--and there
was very little she actually did know, which only made it worse--the mere idea that Iyala
knew something that she wasn't sharing was making Vaiya a nervous wreck.
     So as they stood in the hut that Den had given them to share, and the sun set
through the thick jungle trees, casting strips of orange and yellow and red through the
small window, Vaiya with her hands on her hips and Iyala trying to be nonchalant as she
unrolled her sleep mat, it made for a very tense situation indeed.
     "What good would it have done for me to say anything?" Iyala tried, her tone
attempting to be passive, almost submissive. "You would have been looking for anything
to prove that my suspicion was right and you would never have been objective--"
     "Objective?" It came out harder than she meant it to, bouncing off the thatched
walls of the hut and coming back to her, sounding nasty. "Iyala, what the sith does it
matter if I'm objective or not? What matters is that Maul is out there and--"
     "Maul," Iyala cut her off, rising to her feet, "is always going to be out there, Vaiya.
He's always going to be lurking somewhere, if not in our lives then in the back of our
minds. But we can take comfort in one small thing--he can't do any worse than he's already
done."
     Vaiya felt herself shudder. "He can always be worse," she said.
     Iyala snorted, her head lowering. "No he can't. Trust me. I know."
     "So do I." Harsh again. She wanted to bite her tongue but now that the dam had
cracked it was threatening to burst and she felt powerless to stop it. All they need to do
now was bring up--
     "Larin," Iyala whispered. "You're talking about Larin."
     The sound of his name on Iyala's lips was almost like a knife in the heart. Vaiya
didn't know why it stung so much to hear Iyala say it. Or rather, maybe it was because it
was her, of all people, that made it sting.
     It was at that moment that Iyala chose to look up again, her brown eyes heavy with
tears. Vaiya felt her throat close, and her chest began to tighten as the emotions tumbled
over each other, each one reaching for first place.
     "There's something---" Iyala took a heavy, ragged breath. "There's something you
need to know. Something I don't know if you're going to be able to take, what with
everything that we're going to go through here over the next couple of weeks. But I can't go
on with it any longer. You have to know the truth. Maul didn't kill Larin. He didn't set off
the bomb."
     Vaiya wanted to clamp her hands over her ears. "Maybe it isn't the time," she tried,
taking a step back.
     "No, Vaiya, it is. Because if I tell you any later you may never forgive me. Sidious
set off the bomb. It was the first thing he did after he possessed me."
     Iyala paused, the emotions ravaging her face, her mouth twisting as if it were a
volcano threatening to explode and tear her entire body in half.
     "I killed Larin," she whispered.
     Vaiya shut her eyes. The next thing she felt was the rough wood of the doorframe
as she found herself leaning against it, sliding downward to end up in a sitting position on
the ground. She was lucky the doorframe had caught her, or else she would have fallen out
of the hut onto the rough catwalks the Nagai had constructed about the camp to keep the
valleys and knolls of the jungle floor smooth and their campsite on an even plane. There
was a good five feet of space between their hut and the jungle floor.
     Vaguely, she could feel herself, in her mind's eye, falling out onto the floor,
crashing with her head against a heavy tree trunk and cracking her skull open. She almost
wished it to happen. Almost.
     "It wasn't you," she said. "It was Sidious. You...you would never have hurt Larin. I
know you--"
     Iyala groaned. "Don't say that."
     Vaiya blinked, feeling the tears finally begin to rise.
     Iyala sank on one knee, swaying back and forth on the one foot she still had
supported against the floor. She seemed to be curling over in an upright fetal position, her
long braid swinging and swishing against the floor's wooden planks. "Every night before I
go to bed I pray I don't wake up...and if I do, that when I wake I'll be able to forget for one
moment the hatred I had in my heart, and how glad I felt when I realized how much
damage I'd really done. It was what gave Sidious the chance to latch himself onto me as
long as he did. I let him, because I didn't want to face it. And now, every morning when I
wake up, I remember it as clearly as if I were still living it. I don't understand what
happened to me, to be honest." She took a breath, her air all having left her during her
speech. "I would have gone that way forever, I think, if my body hadn't been so weak in the
Force and Sidious hadn't decided he wanted to jump into you. Or maybe I would have just
died that way, or maybe I did die and this is my hell." She gave a small, bitter laugh. "I
can't even think straight about it, not even now. All I remember is being so angry. It gave
me such pleasure to hold onto that anger. It made me feel strong, even though I was being
swallowed alive by darkness. I didn't want to let it go. I still don't understand now why I
feel as badly as I do. I don't know where any of this repentance is even coming from."
     "A gift, maybe," Vaiya managed in just barely over a whisper.
     Iyala nodded. "It has to be. I know it wasn't in me."
     Vaiya let the silence last for a long, long moment before she finally found it in her
to ask, "So you wanted Larin to die."
     Iyala didn't look at her. Instead, her eyes drifted off into the distance, growing
almost vacant as they became lost deep inside herself. "I hated him," she whispered. "I
know that love isn't the opposite of hate. I could never have hated someone I loved that
much. I hated him because I felt that he used me."
     Vaiya turned stone white. "Larin wasn't an unkind man, Iyala," she said, but knew it
was a very lame attempt to sooth the other woman's pain. "He would never have
deliberately used you."
     Iyala gave a small shrug, which seemed oddly nonchalant in the face of the heavy
emotions running through them both. "Deliberate or not, I still believed he did it. He loved
you, but for some reason he..." Iyala shut her eyes, the tears threatening again. "Oh God,
Vaiya...it's like all my feelings for him were pressed down and distorted for so long and I'm
feeling everything again like it just happened."
     "And what did happen?" Vaiya whispered.
     Iyala abruptly looked at her, her expression slackening with surprise. "He didn't tell
you?"
     "I didn't let him," Vaiya said, her voice very dry. "Please, tell me."
     The other frowned slightly, then seemed to shrug it off for the moment and
continued. "He and I were friends at first. Then a few months into his stay, it turned rather
intimate. We talked, we shared. I came to care about him. He showed me attention, even
played jealous if I didn't give him all of mine. I came to like it very much. We spent a lot
of time together, and then it turned very private. It felt to me like we were courting. But a
few months before he came back here, it was like something in him suddenly snapped. I
tried to tell myself that he had only been using me as a replacement for you. But I couldn't
believe that, not after how much he had shown that he cared about me."
     Vaiya flinched. Hard. "He did care about you, then," she whispered.
     "Yes. But he didn't love me. Not like he loved you." Iyala look at her again, this
time very calm. "When I first tried to convince myself that he had just been lonely for you,
I tried to shrug it off as just me being helpful. After all, it wouldn't have been the first time
in history that a woman had played surrogate girlfriend, fiancee, mother, whatever have
you. But a month before he left, he completely shut me out. He turned away from our
friendship and pretended that none of it had happened. I didn't know what to think. I felt so
childish. I tried so hard to blame myself and let it go, but I couldn't. I cared about him too
much."
     Finally, she stopped. "Oh Vaiya. I'm so sorry about all of this. I know you won't
believe me when I say I'm not trying to hurt you with this."
     Vaiya managed to get to her feet. "Iyala," she said, her voice very soft, "it doesn't
hurt me that he cared about you. If you two had fallen in love and he had never come back,
I would have moved on, eventually. If he had told me, I would have been hurt, but I could
have let him go."
     "But we didn't fall in love," Iyala protested. "Larin loved you."
     Vaiya was silent.
     Iyala scowled. "He loved you, Vaiya. As much as it kills me to say that every time,
it was you and always you."
     Vaiya shut her eyes and shook her head. "But not only me. The Larin I know would
never have done something he didn't mean."
     "Wouldn't he?" Iyala shot back. "You know, it may sound strange to say it, but
Larin is not this perfect god you've turned him into now that he's...now that he's gone." She
took a breath. "He did terrible things before either of us knew him, Vaiya. He killed
people, he spent time addicted to personality altering drugs. Larin didn't even know who
Larin was. That's why he latched onto me as hard as he did, because you weren't there, and
because he was afraid of hurting you like he did me. It was something that the man he
became would never have done, but the man he was at the time didn't have a choice. I
know that now, even though I'm still trying to let my wounds heal. The month you spent
being persecuted by the Jedi Council I've spent in mental rehab--that's why Wyntrina asked
for all the blame to be dumped on you, so I could heal." She softened. "And I'll never
forget that for as long as I live, Vaiya. You had every right to let them tear me apart."
     Vaiya shrugged. "Don't change the subject."
     "Vaiya," Iyala said, standing up, "I hope you're not thinking what I'm afraid you're
thinking."
     "Larin cared about you, Iyala, that's what I'm saying," Vaiya protested, but her tone
was too flat.
     "No, you're not. Yes, maybe in a way Larin did care about me, when he wasn't
smothered by guilt over what he'd done. But it was you that he loved. You were his wife,
the mother of his children! How can you doubt that he loved you?" Iyala's voice began to
rise in anger. "I can see it on your face, you don't believe that!"
     "Don't be ridiculous," Vaiya muttered. "You don't have to convince me that Larin
loved me. I know he loved me. No one else would have forgive me for what I did to get
back at him when I found out about you---" She stopped, as if suddenly realizing she'd said
too much.
     "No," Iyala said. "Go on. I've spilled my guts. Go ahead and spill yours, it might
make you feel better."
     Vaiya paused before launching into the story. "After Larin told me that you and he
had had an...indecent relationship while he was on Durran, I told him I need time. I went
to Valeris' desert keep to retreat."
     "Retreat from what? Didn't Larin tell you that we never did anything?"
     "Yes, he told me, but that wasn't the point." Vaiya felt the old irritation that had
been dead for years suddenly resurrect. "I was furious at him because I believed that he
had spent the last seven years of his life married to a woman he felt bound to. I was afraid
that he had really loved you and had only returned to me out of some sense of
commitment. He had promised he'd come back, and Larin kept his promises, for good or
ill. I didn't want that. I got angry at him because I was afraid that the reason he was telling
me was because he wanted to leave me. He said he didn't, that he loved me and that he
knew he'd wronged you and how badly he felt about it. I wouldn't let him finish. I was so
upset."
     "Why?" Iyala whispered.
     "Why?" Vaiya shot back. "I just told you! I didn't want a man spending his life with
me when he hadn't wanted to!"
     "No, I mean, why would you think that? He spent seven years with you. How could
you doubt him?" Iyala looked at her, hard. "What really bothered you, Vaiya?"
     Vaiya suddenly found herself short of breath. "Do you know who I am?" she
whispered.
     "No, tell me."
     She scowled. "I'm Vaiya Jade Skywalker. Former Jedi Master, daughter of Luke
Skywalker and Mara Jade, two monumental figures in history. I was created to be some
tool of destiny, I was born to carry on their name and their tradition of being heroes, being
Jedi. So much of what I am is what I was made to be. When I was a child, I loved the
attention, but when I became a teenager I realized that I didn't know who I was."
     She paused. "When I was sixteen, I had friends who were only interested in me for
my parents. I told you about Derrin? Perfect example. And Cal Saphringer himself posed
as a young man almost my age and befriended me in order to set my parents up. He failed,
but not before he managed to show me something. On my sixteenth birthday, I had a vision
of my parents, what they would have been like if the Emperor had succeeded in converting
my father. My mother, being the Emperor's Hand, came to avenge her master's death.
Instead, my father killed her, and then he was killed himself by Saphringer."
     "Ridiculous," Iyala interrupted. "Just a silly dream meant to scare you."
     Vaiya shook her head. "No, it wasn't silly, but it did scare me. It showed me how
events can totally change people's destiny, turn them from angels into demons. One choice
can affect all the rest. I knew that it was the same thing for me. I knew I had to be careful
about the choices I made, and had to be perfect in every one of them or else the same thing
could happen to me. Well, being only sixteen, this kind of overload made me snap and I
ran away. Fortunately, I wound up on Durran, which is when I found Valeris and met
Larin. And that changed my whole life."
     "Then there's your proof!" Iyala declared.
     Vaiya frowned. "What?"
     "You just said you had to be careful about your decisions," Iyala repeated. "That
one wrong choice will change everything. But don't you see? You didn't exactly use careful
judgement when you ran away to Durran. But look how it turned out!"
     "Chance," Vaiya muttered.
     "I know you don't believe that."
     Vaiya was silent.
     "And what have you been doing with the last four years, since Larin died? Trying to
be careful about your choices? Where did it get you, Vaiya? It just took you right down the
path of the dark side."
     "But not because of my choices," Vaiya snapped. "That was because of my anger."
     "No, but you let your self pity and grief hem you in, so you chose to hide and do
that mindless meditation I know quite a bit about. The only peace for a darksider is not
thinking at all. Amazing how blissful oblivion can be, isn't it?" Iyala began to close the
distance between them. "And when Khameir tried to bring you out of that, you became so
scared to leave it that you wound up falling into the same trap I did."
     "So you're saying I shouldn't think so much about my choices and just go with my
feelings?" Vaiya snarled. "What kind of garbage is that?"
     "Maybe," Iyala said, very calmly, "you should learn to do what a Jedi does.
Particularly, a Durranian Jedi."
     "And that is?"
     "To listen. And let the Force guide you. Questioning is good, but too much will
only confuse you."
     Vaiya gave a small laugh. "You sound like Wyntrina. That's why she sent me here."
     Iyala nodded. "And to heal. Like me." She frowned. "Vaiya, I have to ask, because
you started to say before, but didn't get a chance to finish. What did you do that Larin had
to love you in order to forgive you for?"
     The other woman sighed. "I...well, when I went to Valeris', it turned out that
Khameir was there...he was still Seth, then, really. And I was so upset and worried, and he
was still there, and so much in love with me." She sighed again, this time leaning heavily
against the wall. "I felt so horrible."
     Iyala's eyes darkened. "You cheated on Larin with Khameir," she stated.
     "You make it sound so cheap." Vaiya swiped the hair out of her face. "Sometimes,
I worry that Khameir is still waiting for that to happen again, even though it never will."
     Iyala cocked an eyebrow. "It won't?"
     "No. Because I'm afraid of the same thing with Khameir that I was with Larin. I
mean, Khameir has been carrying around this dream of me for almost his entire life. He
believes, even today, that our destinies are entwined, that eventually we will come
together. And he's going to wait until that happens, even if it takes forever."
     "Obviously he's in love with you." But there was a strange quality to Iyala's tone
that Vaiya began to detect.
     "Yes, but is he in love with me, or this vision he's been carrying around? Where
does his dream of me end and the real me begin?"
     "Back to loving the real you again, are we?" Iyala's voice had gotten very, very low.
     "I'm just so scared...I want to tell him to go away, but I can't."
     "Because you love him."
     "Yes."
     "Because you've always loved him, even from the first moment you met, even
before you and Larin found each other again."
     Vaiya looked at her, her danger sense flaring. "Yes," she whispered.
     Iyala had her hands on her hips. "You know something, Vaiya...you are so selfish."
     Her eyes flew wide. "What?"
     "It's always about you, isn't it? You've had the two most wonderful men in this
universe pining over you, and it's not good enough for you. They have to love you in
exactly the way you want them to or else you don't want it at all. It's either all your way or
nothing, isn't it?"
     Vaiya felt her anger rise. "Why don't you say what you really want to say, Iyala?"
she shot back.
     "All right,  I will!" Iyala howled. "How could you cheat on Larin like that? If you
were in love with Khameir the whole time, why didn't YOU let HIM go!? Why did you
marry him if the whole time it was really Khameir that you wanted to be with?"
     "Because--!" and Vaiya found herself feeling the true need to defend herself,
"because I didn't know I felt that way about Khameir--"
     "Yes you did!" Iyala shouted. "Come on, I can see it in your face! I can hear it in
your voice! And I know you, Vaiya. You're also not the kind of person to use someone.
You would never have made love to Khameir if you hadn't loved him and you know it."
     "Khameir and I didn't---"
     "No, maybe not legitimately, but that's certainly what you were going for, wasn't
it?" Iyala paced the hut, the anger radiating from her. "I can't believe this. All this time I've
been beating myself up and you're worse than me!"
     "Oh, now you can just stop right there!" Vaiya howled. "You of all people have no
right to judge me!"
     "Oh, I have every right!" Iyala screamed. "I know exactly where you've been, I've
been faced with exactly the same choices you have, and while I know I was terrible, you
were twice as bad as I ever was! With or without Sidious, Vaiya, you made the worst
choice every single time. So many people have done so much to help you--I don't have half
the family to care about me that you do. No one came to chase Sidious out of my body!
And you still question! Nothing they do is good enough for you! Because you're Vaiya Jade
Skywalker and you're so sithing special!"
     Iyala slammed her fist against the wall in anger at the word "special," and the force
splintered one of the planks.
     Vaiya just stared at her, feeling that Iyala had just ripped her from stem to stern
with a lightsaber. Every part of her body burned with indignation...and something else.
     The wound in her pride throbbed.
     Iyala was right.
     Iyala continued to glare at her. "Grow up, Vaiya," she spat. "You're flawed, like the
rest of us. And you should count yourself very lucky to have as many wonderful people
love you as have in your lifetime. Because no matter who you are, they were there for you,
no matter what. And no one else ever had it as good as you did. Especially not me."
     With that, Iyala walked out of the hut.

4--Shame

     "What are you doing out here?"
     Iyala tried not to jump too hard at the sound of the voice. She looked over her
shoulder to see Dal standing there, one hand on her hip, her pale purple hair hanging over
one shoulder in a thick braid.
     "I kind of had a fight with my roommate," she explained, unfolding her legs and
letting them dangle over the side of the catwalk.
     "Well, you can't sleep out here," Dal said. "It's too dangerous."
     Iyala snorted. "I'd rather take my chances out here with the Zabrak than go in there
and face Vaiya again."
     "That bad?" Iyala was stunned to detect a note of genuine concern in Dal's voice.
     "Yeah."
     "Then maybe you'd better come stay with me." She picked up Iyala's cloak, which
she had laid out like a bedmat behind her, and draped it over her arm. "Come on."
     Iyala stood up and followed Dal into her hut. It was just like any of the others,
although a bit smaller as Dal was the only one living there. And, Iyala noted, it seemed to
be very, very close to the center of the camp. There were several huts surrounding it
closely, almost too closely.
     "I know it's snug," Dal said, "but trust me, you'll appreciate the extra protection.
They had guards in here, but they all snore."
     "They're protecting you from the Zabrak," Iyala stated.
     "Yes. The fact that you and your friend--Vaiya?--are female didn't exactly make
Den too happy. Not with the way the Zabrak have been taking us." Dal gave her a pointed
look. "You wouldn't happen to know why that is, would you?"
     Iyala sat down on the only other bedmat in the hut. "How would I know that?" she
asked, her voice very low, trying to keep from sounding defensive.
     Dal shrugged. "The fact that you were sent here would mean that you would have
some information as to our plight."
     "Not really. I didn't even know exactly what was happening until we arrived."
     "And that about the other, the Jedi Vaiya. What does she know?"
     "As much as I do."
     The Nagai frowned. "I somehow doubt that."
     Iyala glanced up at her, feeling a distinct flicker. "You're Force sensitive," she said.
It was a statement, not a question.
     "And so are you," Dal said, sitting down. "But yet you're not a Jedi."
     Iyala shook her head, and it fell like a veil, shielding her face. "No," she whispered.
"I'm not."
     Dal grunted. "I can't understand why. You seem a bit wiser than you friend."
     The other snorted. "After the fight we just had I have my doubts."
     "Ah, so the fight was your fault." A mere hint of a grin crossed Dal's angled white
features. "So what was it over?"
     Iyala frowned. "Is this a Nagai custom, interrogation of a guest?"
     "Oh, please," Dal said with a grin. "I've been so isolated from any real company for
so long on this husk of a planet, even before all the other women were kidnapped. Before
this happened to us, before, when we were Nagai soldiers fighting a noble war to save our
people--" she sighed. "I had a whole other life then."
     "I take it that's when you learned to speak Basic," Iyala commented. "You speak it
very well."
     "So do you. Although I have to admit that I expected you to have more of an
accent. You learned Basic later in your life, as I did."
     Iyala's face darkened. Perhaps a sideaffect of being possessed by Sidious for so
long, she had lost her own sense of her native land. "Yes, I did, but I've been living away
from my people for a long, long time."
     "Yes, so have I." Dal's eyes grew distant. "I was a very high ranking official on
Den's ship, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he's my cousin. We Nagai had very
little time for socializing or frivolities like the little party they threw for us before sending
us off to our deaths," and she paused for dramatic effect, "but the one thing we know how
to do is gossip. Our networks of informants were so widespread we even taught the
Alliance--or should I call it the New Republic--a few things once we joined up with them
to stop the Toffs. It was only because of our ways to get information that we managed to
survive the Toffs' attack on our homeworld and escape with so many lives. Here," she
snorted, looking around the small hut, "here we have no contact with anyone. We had a
commsystem in our ship, but whoever's been attacking us caused severe damage to our
ship and ravaged the parts, even took major pieces of equipment. We have people trying to
rebuild what's left into something that will get us more than just Coruscant's emergency
network."
     "I take it this kind of silence is rather irritating," Iyala commented.
     "Indeed. So you'll have to forgive me if I am a little pushy. It has been a long time
for me."
     Iyala nodded. "I understand. But I'm afraid that if I tell you about myself, it may
destroy whatever good I may do here."
     "From one Force-user to another," Dal assured her, "whatever dark road you've
been down I can see that you're trying to get off of it. Somehow, it led you here. I'd just
like to know what we're dealing with."
     So Iyala told her. She held nothing back.

     "I didn't think leaders did night watches," Vaiya said, recognizing Den's lithe form
in spite of his dark clothing and equally dark hair. He turned, the light catching briefly in
his ice blue eyes before he turned away.
     "I thought you would be asleep," he said, but there was something in his tone...
     "No you didn't. I'm sure the whole camp heard our screaming match." She leaned
on the rail of the lookout post beside him, her eyes scanning the clearing that wasn't too far
away. "Hard place to keep an eye out for enemies that want to sneak up on you, isn't it?"
she commented.
     Den shrugged. "It's the best we can do. There are four other lookouts all around the
camp. We take turns, four hour shifts."
     "Ah." She shifted uncomfortably, then said, "Have you ever considered a forcefield
or something like that?"
     "And what would we make it out of?" Den replied, his face turned away from her
but his tone clearly mocking. "Your lightsaber?"
     She flinched. "If I had my old lightsaber I'd hand it over to you in a minute," she
muttered.
     This got his attention. He turned and looked at her, curious. "What makes your new
one so special?" he asked.
     "It was my husband's," she said softly.
     She swore she saw him flinch. He looked away, down at his hands which were
covered by slender black gloves. He folded his fingers together, weaving them artfully the
way some men would have twiddled their thumbs nervously. "And where is he?" he asked,
his voice tense.
     "He died." She sighed, finding that she was rather enjoying the cool night air of the
jungle, the smells it brought up with it--thick and musky, like a rich cologne. "Actually, to
be more specific, he was killed."
     "Oh." There was a pause. "I'm sorry."
     She gave him a small smile. "Don't be. He isn't." She almost laughed. "I'm sorry, I
don't mean to be flip. But he died in order to save a lot of lives, including mine, as well as
our children's. He would have done it a hundred times over." She reached down and played
with the golden hilt. The weapon was rather unique for its time, but she knew that it had
been a gift to Larin. "Before my husband had it, it was my great grandfather's."
     Den's eyebrow arched. "I'll be that's an interesting story."
     She gave him another smile. "Not really, at least not in my opinion, but maybe you
might think so." Her smile widened. "Keep up this compassion and friendliness and I may
actually tell it to you sometime."
     He just stared at her a moment, and then chuckled. "Yes, I suppose I'll have to
watch that."
     "Not too much I hope." She frowned, staring into his face. The more she looked at
him, the more familiar he felt. Like they had some kind of connection and she just couldn't
find what over yet.
     "You said you had children?" he interrupted her.
     "Yes, two of them. Twins. A boy and a girl." She looked away again, almost losing
her breath. In all of this, she had not let herself think about the children.
     She couldn't think about them. If she did, the longing to go back to them would
outweigh everything else.
     "Where are they?" he asked, his tone very low.
     "With their grandparents." Her voice had gotten tight. She shut her eyes, trying to
dam up the tears. Swallowing hard, she struggled to keep herself contained.
     He noticed. "I'm...I'm sorry. I didn't mean--"
     "No, I know you didn't." Her breath wouldn't even out. She felt like she had been
running for a dozen miles at top speed.
     He shook his head. "It must have taken a lot for you to leave them and come here."
There was a new respect in his eyes, and Vaiya felt that strange kinship again.
     "Well," she managed, trying to laugh it away. "I had some motivation."
     "I'm sure." He frowned. "Does it have anything to do with you being stripped of the
title of Jedi Master?"
     She wanted to laugh now. Laugh hard and in his face. How could he see through
her so clearly? "A bit, yes," she said, her breath finally starting to even out. "You could say
I took a walk on the dark side. The results were almost disastrous, but fortunately I had a
good friend who helped save me. I got off lucky, really. I could have been sent to prison or
worse, but Wyntrina intervened for me. Instead, I was sent here."
     "For how long?"
     "As long as it takes."
     Den's ice colored eyes met her blue green ones, and for a long time they just stared
at each other. She had struck a nerve, she knew that. His own memories were starting to
churn.
     "And this friend of yours...forgive me, I'm usually not so inquisitive into other's
private business," he stopped himself, almost turning away from her.
     "No, it's okay," she said. She took a deep breath. "I mean, we can think of this like
ripping off a stickyband. Sooner or later it's all going to come out, may as well get it over
with."
     "He was more than a friend, I take it," Den said, but his eyes wouldn't meet hers.
     "Yes." She looked off into the distance. The trees swayed in a late breeze. "It gets
worse, though. He was more than a friend before my husband died. But at least my
children were my husband's. Although I don't expect that to save your spoiled image of
me."
     She could feel Den's surprise turn into something a little more sardonic. "I'm quite
familiar with the odd ways of the feminine nature," he said, his voice a little rough. "I don't
quite know, however, if I should be angry at you or if I should be relieved that you're all
like that."
     She turned to face him, stunned. "I take it you've got a story yourself," she
muttered.
     He gave a small shrug. "Not half as exciting as yours, I'm afraid. At least, not in the
good sense." He sighed. "Although I don't want to bore you with it."
     "Oh, fair is fair," she coaxed. "Come on, Den," she added, turning around and
leaning against the rail. "I've told you my dirt, now it's your turn."
     The corner of his mouth turned upward and Vaiya got the feeling that his stone-like
face was not used to such kinds of expressions, that they had become recent additions to
his character. "The truth is, I don't know why these people follow me," he said, more to
himself than to her. "I used to be a true Nagai leader. I was cold, ruthless, always calm and
in control of everyone, even myself."
     "And all that changed when you met her," Vaiya said softly.
     He gave a sharp, humorless chuckle. "You have no idea now right you are, Vaiya,"
he said hoarsely. "Are you familiar at all with Zeltrons?"
     Vaiya's eyebrows arched. "A Zeltron?" she said, her voice rising a few octaves.
"Yejion's Spirit, Den, you were doomed from the beginning."
     "I wish it had been that way." The remorse in his voice was so overwhelming she
wondered if he was going to start to cry.
     "All Zeltrons are like that, though," she added hastily. "I mean, my father had a few
encounters with Zeltrons and they were always trying to...well, you know."
     He seemed to not hear her. "Not this woman. Not Dani."
     Vaiya paused. "Dani?" she whispered.
     "She was once like that. She even thought she loved the great Luke Skywalker. I
know that she worked with him for a long time as part of the Alliance of Free Planets."
     Vaiya paled. Den didn't know that Luke was her father. She didn't recall ever
saying her last name. In fact, her father was the last presence she wanted around at the
moment. But instead of saying anything, she just let Den spill his guts.
     Poor guy sounded like he needed to, badly.
     "She stared off as a thief and a smuggler. She had the death sentence in six
systems." He gave a small laugh. "She was a tenacious creature, strong willed and pure
Zeltron in every way. But my people were at war, and we had no time for diplomacy. So
when we came across her and the Iskalonian that she was in love with--" he glanced at her,
"they're water breathers, you know that? It makes them very vulnerable to land attack. I
found that out."
     His eyes grew distant, as if he were walking through those memories as surely as if
they were happening all over again.
     "We captured Dani and Kiro. That was his name, Kiro. I didn't pay any attention to
him because I didn't realize his significance. Some days I wish I had killed him right away,
then Dani would never have known. But no, I was only interested in her. You see, we had
had no contact with the Zeltrons and we didn't know what kind of enemy they would be.
We had to--I had to--do what we did."
     "And what did you do?" Vaiya whispered.
     "We had to know the Zeltrons inside and out. And that meant rigorous testing,
cataloging, and...and..."
     "Torture."
     "Yes." His eyes grew wide, even as they were so far away from the small colony on
Iridonia. "That was the Nagai way, Vaiya. It was all we knew."
     Vaiya huddled her knees against her chest. She had a sudden, horrible image in her
head. As Darth Seth, Khameir had been her enemy in spite of his belief that she was his
destiny. But he had protected her against the cult, even at their destruction. What if he
hadn't? What if he had been willing to torture her into submission?
     Even kill Larin to break her?
     Den continued. "As insane as it sounds, I was in love with her. Possibly from the
first moment. At first I thought it was just some fascination I had with a new species, or
more specifically, the incredible strength and beauty that they possessed. Such things are
unheard of on Naga among my people. But the more time passed, the more I knew that it
was her. Unfortunately, I did not come to this realization until Kiro came and helped her
escape. I had to follow them. I had to kill Kiro." He flinched. "It was the Nagai way."
     "But you wanted to kill him," Vaiya said. "Because he took Dani away from you."
     "Yes," Den hissed. "Because she loved him, I wanted him dead. I thought she
belonged to me. I spent months waiting to see her again. Luke Skywalker came at the last
moment and I was unable to claim her after I killed Kiro. So I had to retreat and bide my
time. And it came." A terrible gleam came into his eyes, and Vaiya caught a glimpse of the
predator he had once been, maybe still was on this terrible, harsh world. "When it did, I
planned her capture down to the last detail. As an added bonus, we also captured the
Princess, your former prized Chief-of-State, Leia Organa Solo. Now she's a Jedi Knight. I
find that rather amusing." He paused, then continued, his voice rising with excitement. "I
was never going to let Dani leave me again though, and I can't tell you how it excited me
that she thought of me too, regularly. I was the man who had killed her lover. The hate she
bore me was the next best thing to love." He finally looked at Vaiya, grinning. "Hate is
better than love, you know. With enemies, you always know where you stand."
     "You don't believe that," she whispered.
     "I did then." He looked away. "Well, as fate would have it the Toffs interfered. And
they threatened to kill Dani unless I betrayed my people. So I did. And as a result, I wound
up becoming a part of the enemy. I was forced to join the Alliance in order to keep from
being killed or imprisoned or maybe something worse. I didn't know the way your New
Republic did things. I did what I thought was right. Or rather, was in my best interests. As
a result," and he chuckled, "I wound up becoming a major part of the peace between the
Alliance and the Nagai. How is that for irony?"
     "And Dani?" Vaiya whispered.
     "Dani..." he sighed. "She had changed so much, but I still loved her. I knew it was
my fault, those changes. But she had changed me, too. I could no longer return to my
people, and she no longer felt fit to dwell among hers. So we formed some kind
of...partnership." He paused. "To this day, I don't know what it was. We stayed together. I
don't know why she accepted me being so close to her. I was sure that every day was a
reminder of her anger, her pain, the things that had stolen her Zeltron spirit. But we
finished the war and defeated the Toffs. And the Alliance, who were beginning to call
themselves the New Republic by then, offered us sanctuary in this galaxy."
     "And you and Dani stayed together?"
     "As I said, by trade Dani was a thief and a smuggler. She even had old connections
with
Han Solo at one point. She decided the best way to run away was to get back into her old
business, and she let me tag along. We made a good go of it for a long time, maybe as long
as ten years...I don't know, I've lost track of time. It's part of being in the stasis block for so
long, I think."
     "Yes," Vaiya muttered. "However did that happen?"
     He shrugged. "After all the time I spent with Dani, it became clear to me that no
matter how much progress I made, I would never have what I wanted from her. And soon,
I came to realize that it was my own fault. I was no good to her, I felt I never would be. I
couldn't stand the thought of being in love with her forever, being so close to her and yet
never having her love me in return. This group here, these people...my cousin Dal invited
me to join them and become a part of their colony on this planet, which as you know was
where we were headed to begin with before we were attacked and captured by Jabba's Fist.
These Nagai were impressed to have such a famous individual among them, even one with
such a sullied reputation as mine. But these people are a mixed breed---half old world
Nagai, and half have been amalgamated into this galaxy. They have so much of the New
Republic attitude. I didn't think they'd last, but for some reason I was the perfect leader.
We lasted a year before we were captured."
     "And spent some thirty-odd years underground," Vaiya muttered.
     "Yes," Den murmured. "A long time has passed."
     "Have you ever thought about going to find Dani?" Vaiya asked. "Zeltrons live
extraordinarily long lives. Something to do with their hormones."
     "Yes, Dani was very young when I knew her, only 20 some years. Now she would
be over sixty."
     "That's still Zeltron prime," Vaiya commented. "Most Zeltron females don't start
aging drastically for another fifteen years or so. Maybe longer."
     Den looked away from her again, stretching his arms out to lean back against the
rail. He was silent.
     "Den?" Vaiya murmured. "Den?"
     He grunted.
     She looked away, too, down at her hands. Actually, she understood. "I'm sorry, I
spoke out of turn."
     Den slowly, silently pushed himself away from the rail. He turned away from her
completely, slinking down the catwalk a bit.
     "Hey, I said I was sorry," she began, but Den pointed one black-clad finger into the
air, a gesture to be silent.
     Vaiya rolled onto her knees and crawled toward where he stood, straining her eyes
to see.
     "Where?" she whispered.
     "In the trees," Den whispered back. "See him? The light is reflecting off his horns."
     Vaiya squinted. She couldn't see anything. "Nagai must have really good eyesight,"
she commented below a whisper.
     There was a tingling in the back of her mind. Tentatively, she called upon the
Force, and reached out, her vision suddenly enhancing a hundred fold.
     She saw him.
     A Zabrak male, big and dark, blending in perfectly with the trees and the shadows.
     "He's alone," she whispered.
     "Exactly," Den muttered. "We could take him."
     "What?" Vaiya looked up, and Den had already began to slide out his titanium
metal rod, about the size and almost the shape of her lightsaber.
     "Come on, if we stay quiet we can get him by surprise."
     "And how do we do that?" Vaiya snapped, still keeping her voice low. "If we leave
this spot we'll lose sight of him."
     Den looked at the heavy tree trunk that was only ten feet away. "We could climb
down."
     "Maybe we should swing down on vines," Vaiya snarled, sounding too much like
her mother for her own taste.
     To her horror, Den smiled. "Brilliant idea, Vaiya. I never did believe that you Jedi
were completely brainless." He moved to the tree trunk and pulled a heavy vine loose,
tugging at it lightly to test its weight without making too much noise.
     Vaiya tried to scramble after him, being equally silent. "We can't kill him, Den,"
she tried. "It wouldn't be fair, it's two against one!"
     "I don't want to kill him," Den said, glancing at her over his shoulder. "I want to
capture him."
     "With what?" She looked at the metal stick he had tucked under one arm. "Not with
that, that's for sure."
     "Well, you have a lightsaber," he pointed out.
     "Which if I use it I will more than likely have to sever at least a limb from his
body, and a lot of good he'll be to us in a state of physical shock."
     "Then use something else."
     "What, my teeth?"
     "I was thinking that sharp hissing whisper of yours, but I supposed at this point it is
all the same thing." He yanked another vine loose, testing it. "This one is yours," he said,
thrusting it against her chest. She grappled for it.
     "You're crazy," she said.
     "I know," he said, and with one movement of his slender body he jumped up onto
the rail and swung downward, right onto the Zabrak's back.
     Vaiya jumped up and followed the second she heard the Zabrak's outraged howl.

5--Power

     The man was insane. That was all she could think of as she watched him pounce.
His legs wound around the Zabrak's neck and Vaiya saw Den wince as his thighs met up
with sharp horns. But to his credit, the Nagai was incredibly strong, in spite of his slender
appearance.
     Then, out of nowhere, two flashing blades were in Den's hands. Vaiya had rarely
seen blades made of metal. He wielded these as if they were mere extensions of his hand.
He brought them down, hard, into the Zabrak's neck, and the creature howled.
     Vaiya blinked. Yes, this Zabrak was beyond rational thought. It was almost like he
was beyond the sentient stage and had been reduced to an animal frenzy. There was foam
coming form his mouth, and as Vaiya landed on the jungle floor not ten feet from them, a
heavy, husky smell filled her nostrils.
     She'd smelled it before. Once. The night she and Khameir had made love.
     She struggled for her balance. The smell was so overwhelming it threatened to
make her swoon. Her body began to react in ways she would never have imagined before.
It was hard to think. She tried to push past the haze that suddenly descended upon her
brain but even her vision was starting to fog.
     The Zabrak's blood flowed from his wounds, but his hide was very thick and Den's
blades didn't go in for more than a few inches. Besides, the Zabrak physiology was not the
same as the standard humanoid. They could survive terrible punishment and still walk
away from it as if nothing had happened. She knew from her long time with Khameir that
Zabrak could survive even being cut in half--at least, their brains could, forcing the
lifeforce to go dormant until somehow the body could be revived. The soul clung to a
Zabrak corpse for weeks, months, in some cases, years. Maul himself had been sliced in
half during his first life, by none other than Obi-Wan Kenobi, and yet he'd survived long
enough for his master to find him and grow him another lower half.
     It didn't surprise her when the Zabrak threw Den from his shoulders, although not
without several puncture wounds on his arms.
     Then he turned on her.
     Vaiya realized she hadn't gotten far from where she'd landed, but to see the hulking
beast of a male turn on her, his eyes glowing fierce yellow and red like Maul's, was enough
to inspire her to move her feet. She grappled at her belt for her lightsaber and pulled it
free, igniting the white blade. It stood between them, and for a moment the Zabrak paused.
     His face almost became rational.
     Her thoughts turned in a split second. She knew she had to communicate with him.
But if the Zabrak had a language of their own she had never heard it spoken by either
Khameir or Maul. So she reached out with the Force, her mind connecting to his language
centers and seeing their tongue. It was a beautiful language, dark and husky, filled with
low grunts and groans but strung together in an artful way that made it seem hardly savage
but seductive.
     And then there was that damn smell.
     <Stop.>
     He paused, cocking his head to one side. The rational look was fading fast. She had
to try something else.
     Abandoning his language center, she moved up into his frontal lobe. And realized
that something was terribly, horribly wrong.
     This Zabrak was not under his own control. Something was pulling his strings like
an old Naboo puppet.
     She pushed harder. She nearly dropped her lightsaber in shock.
     Maul was in control. And not just Maul...he was only the pilot, using the controls
already set in place by another.
     Iyala's face...but not her mind. Sidious.
     Vaiya reached into his mind. She seized the reins and pulled. He stopped short,
taking a step back. The war inside his head was hardly pleasant, and Vaiya felt a terrible
sense of guilt. But there was no way to help him. She couldn't chase Sidious out of his
mind, not unless she could get to Maul and defeat him. And she couldn't get to Maul
unless---
     She saw the camp. It was a brief flash in her mind but from the patterns on the
Zabrak's brain she knew she would find it, even if she couldn't draw herself a map. And as
she saw the camp, she felt a tremor in the Zabrak's mind, as if he were turning internal
eyes upon her and seeing her for the first time.
     The look on his face became almost adoring. For a moment, Vaiya wondered if she
had freed him, but then she realized with horror that the Zabrak was seeing her as Sidious.
For a moment, she had taken the glove from Maul's hand and thrust her own inside it.
     Disgusted, more with herself or Sidious or the Zabrak she didn't know, she pushed
harder for one last, final command.
     <Go.>
     He stood there for a moment, staring at her, his eyes taking on a glazed over look.
Vaiya remained hopeful for a moment that he would suddenly blink and the real person
that he was would suddenly return, but it didn't happen. Instead, he turned and lumbered
off into the woods, not even looking back once.
     Den was standing up in a thornbush, pulling the long needles from his legs. "Nice
job," he said. "But in case you haven't noticed, he's walking away."
     "That's fine," Vaiya said. "Let him walk." She grit her teeth so hard they hurt.
     "What did he want?" Den asked.
     Vaiya sighed. "Me," she whispered.
     Den blinked. "Is it this Darth Maul again? You must be awfully important for him
to--"
     "No, it's not Maul. It's Sidious." She sighed again. The brief look she'd had into his
brain was starting to crystalize in her mind as it began to process the information. "He set
them up. He used them, taking advantage of their vulnerability to use them to build
himself a new base from here. Start up his brand new empire." She shook her head,
snorting in disgust. "Problem was, the Zabrak band he picked was fresh out of females."
     "Huh." It was Den's turn to frown. "I wonder why?"
     "I'll tell you why," came a voice from up in the trees, and Vaiya and Den looked up
to see Iyala standing there, holding onto a vine. "Why don't you guys come back on up
before the party starts again?" she suggested. "I think I can enlighten you."

     "I take it you felt the disturbance," Vaiya muttered as she lay on a bedmat,
exhausted, in Den's private hut. She didn't feel like crawling back to her own, and the
mental battle she'd had had taken a lot out of her, more than she'd thought. She wondered
if she wouldn't have rather been ravished by the Zabrak.
     "Yes," Iyala muttered as she put some fresh tape over Den's bandages. "Only it
wasn't through the Force."
     Den finished cleaning his knives and put them back into their sheaths on his wrists.
Vaiya noted with surprise that the method reminded her too much of her mother's wrist
blaster, the one she used to carry. Still did, on certain occasions. The blades, however, had
black hilts that blended in perfectly with his clothing, rendering the weapons almost
invisible.
     "Then what was it," he asked, but his tone suggested the kind of disgusted lack of
interest that usually came when someone felt completely left out of a conversation.
     "It was Sidious." Vaiya felt Iyala tremble. "I was a puppet too at one point. I sensed
it when you shoved him aside to send the Zabrak away. It brought back some more
memories."
     "Lovely," Vaiya murmured, almost half asleep. "Do share."
     "When we came here," she began, sitting down and pulling her knees up to her
chest, wrapping her arms around them, "we knew we needed a way to get the Zabraks'
attention. And since Maul and Sidious fed on the dark side, they knew they had to stir up
anger in order to make the Zabrak vulnerable. So Maul found a small band of them and
killed all of their women."
     The dispassionate way that Iyala explained it, the simple, matter-of-fact way it just
hung there in the air, was enough to stun Vaiya back into wide-awakeness. "He killed
them?" she echoed.
     "Yes," Iyala stated, a bit more gravely. "It wasn't something I want to remember, I
can tell you that. I have no details and I'm not going to try. But it worked. It was something
Sidious used to get the Zabrak to kill for him. He used their vulnerable mating instincts,
running rather rampant with no females to satisfy them, to make them lethally fierce. They
defend their territory like animals in heat."
     "Which is what they've become," Vaiya said, remembering how the pheromones
had affected her. "That's horrible."
     "But effective," Den pointed out, his hand sliding over the long gash that Iyala had
just bound up. "And that's why they've taken our women."
     "Yes, because you're close and Maul doesn't have the same control over them that
Sidious did." Iyala looked at Vaiya. "That's why he wanted you. And now that you've gone
and done what you did, he'll probably be back, looking specifically for you." She
swallowed hard before she said her next line. "You know, Zabrak mate for life. They don't
have a sense of divorce like we do. When the mate dies, they rarely mate again."
     "So what are you saying, this Zabrak has somehow mated with me?" Vaiya
demanded, raising her head.
     "No, but he's going to want to very badly. I suggest you stay close to the camp."
     "Uh uh," Vaiya declared, propping herself up on her elbows. "I saw their little
settlement. I want to go there."
     "Not a good idea," Iyala argued.
     "No, actually it's a great idea," Den said, "if we had about a half dozen squads of
Nagai troopers." Then, with a very pointed look at Vaiya, he added in a flat, final voice,
"But we don't."
     "Maul is the key," Vaiya declared. "If we can sneak in and get to him we can set
the Zabrak free from his control."
     "But that doesn't mean they won't become less territorial. Not without females to
round out their numbers."
     "They've got females," Vaiya said. "They've been taking the Nagai females."
     "But there weren't many," Den pointed out. "We have no idea how many are in this
camp to be paired off."
     "And," Iyala added softly, "we can't be sure the Nagai women are still alive. Pure
Zabrak mating customs can be extremely...fierce." Vaiya was sure she was blushing.
     "Then we have to scout it and find out," Vaiya argued.
     "Fine. But without you," Den stated.
     "No way. I'm the one who knows! You can't leave me behind!"
     There was a pause as the others looked at each other. "Fine," Den finally said, "but
only the three of us go. No one else."
     "That way if something terrible happens," Iyala said with more than a touch
sardonically, "it's no big loss."
     "Exactly," Den said, "and we have plenty of people to come chasing after us."
     "If we're careful," Vaiya said, "it'll be okay."
     "Famous last words," Iyala muttered.

**************
6--Home

     Durran didn't feel like home so much anymore, but at least it was better than
Coruscant. And Yavin IV. And especially Tattooine or Endor. At least Durran had more
than one kind of climate, Khameir decided as he watched the children play in the garden.
The flowers were starting to bloom with the late warm breezes of the spring air, and
Valeris in particular seemed to be fascinated with the worms that slithered through the
soil, freshly wetted by a heavy rain.   Laurel was picking the thick purple-black berries on
the wineberry bushes that he and Ben had planted a few years back. She kept popping
them into her mouth when she thought no one was looking. A few times he had tried to ask
her to wash them first, but instead she just smiled at him, the thick dark purple ring around
her mouth and staining her fingertips.
     Neither one, he realized, looked much like their mother.
     Laurel was, in coloring, the spitting image of her father, with his soft brownish-
blond hair that gently curled, and eyes that changed colors very quickly, from soft brown
to bright blue to sharp green. But in temperament, he wasn't sure. He known Larin a bit in
his youth, but not well. He'd known about his vulnerabilities, about his internal angers and
the things that made him susceptible to people taking advantage of him, especially Cal
Saphringer. Larin had not been such a saint before he'd purged himself of his inner
demons. Seeing Laurel's sudden fits of temper, brought on more and more lately by a
growing, emotional cloud that seemed to hover above both twins, Khameir began to
wonder if perhaps she wasn't completely like her father, through and through. Although he
did see Mara in her, on many different occasions. Like in her quick wit and her ability to
think faster than most people, including her own grandparents.
     Now Valeris, on the other hand, was a very peaceful child. At first Khameir had
thought he was like his mother, but since Vaiya had lost her own peace he just didn't
know. She had always claimed that he reminded her of Larin, with his calm and his
serenity and ability to bring that stillness to anyone in need of it. But still, Khameir knew
that something lurked just beneath the surface. Nothing evil or malicious, but something
mischievous, the feeling that Valeris knew more about anything and anyone than he would
ever let on, and that he was laughing at them with the kind of mature wisdom that only a
very old man gets to watch young people make stupid mistakes.
     Kind of like his namesake, Khameir thought ruefully. He sighed. Why he missed
the old man now, of all times, made no sense to him. He'd been dead for over five years.
     It was very clear that he would grow up to be a great Jedi. But Khameir didn't even
attempt to try and teach them. They had enough teachers. What they needed was a parent.
     He leaned back against the marble rail, the smell of the flowers on the vines
twining around him thick in his nostrils. Being in this spot somehow made him feel closer
to Vaiya--maybe because it was her favorite spot to sit and watch the children play. She
had picked up the scent--the first time he'd come here and smelled it he had turned around,
expecting to find her behind him, the smell was so vivid.
     He wasn't sure if that feeling was a good thing. During the long seven day journey
back to Durran, he had tried very hard to take up Wyntrina's advice, and the only
conclusion he'd come to was that it was going to take him a lot more time than the trip
would offer. He could push anything. But at least he had discovered one very important
thing.
     He looked down at his hands. The hands that had reached into Vaiya's chest and
pulled from her the dark spirit of Sidious, who wasn't even human. What he had done had
been beyond anything anyone had ever heard of. Luke and Mara even admonished him to
keep quiet about it. But they didn't understand. It hadn't been him. He didn't have the
power. It had been given to him.
     So many years of his life he had spent serving the dark side and not believing in it.
But at the same time, he had not believed in the light, either. The only thing he had
believed in was finding Vaiya. But when he found her he'd immediately lost her. Only to
find Valeris living out in the middle of the desert. Valeris, who taught him the truth.
Who'd given him a Faith--or at least, made it possible for that Faith to find him.
     He knew he had always believed, even if just a little, somewhere deep inside. But
until that moment before he'd reached into Vaiya, he'd had no real concept of the power of
Faith. Not just faith in himself or in the ability to do what he did, but most importantly, the
Faith in a God--not a god, but the God. Vaiya's God. Valeris' God. And now, his God.
     He had not let himself contemplate the moments before Vaiya's exorcism until
many, many days later. But as he had approached the room in which she stood, brimming
with the hate and poison of the dark side, he had known that he wasn't alone. That he had a
shield stronger than all the titanium alloy and deflector generators in the galaxy. He knew
as he approached her, barely held in the grip of those who loved her best, that it was not
his own hands that reached into her.
     He'd felt a Touch. Something beyond power, beyond light, beyond the Force itself.
And he knew, in the core of his being, that he had only beheld a tiny fraction of It.
     It humbled him.
     After Vaiya left, he let himself think about it. He was far from done. And he knew
he would never be close, not if his life were extended to another hundred years. But worse
than that, he knew why he hadn't thought about it until she was gone.
     Wyntrina was right. She was in the way.
     He loved her too much. He knew it was not a bad thing to love her, but his love for
her was still not right. He had been presumptuous, thinking that with the lifting of the
mask all his inward workings had suddenly been put into order. He was far from perfect,
and his feelings for her were far from perfect. While he would die for her in a heartbeat
and not regret it, he knew that he could not continue to live for her and for her alone.
     That was what had been wrong all along.
     He stepped away from the thick smell, and felt the disturbing emotions abate. He
strode across the wide, cement tiled path of the garden and approached where the children
played. They had stopped playing their individual games and were now standing together,
close to the thickest part of the wineberry bushes. Khameir had to squint to see what they
were looking at.
     It was an insect with wings wider than the length of his forearm. It was a deep
green with a scaly pattern, and there were eyes on the back of the wings, bright purple
ringed with blue. It was a magnificent creature, so large Khameir couldn't begin to wonder
how it didn't classify as an animal and not a bug.
     "Look, Uncle Kham!" Laurel shouted when she saw him approach. She began to
hop very