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Out of the trees - there! It’s…

It’s not a droid.

“Uh…” Needles’ field partner, Huck, hesitates next to him. “Commander Besh?”

“What? What have you gotten…” Besh stops, sees the figure stepping out of the treeline. He snaps into action, drawing his blaster and aiming. “Stop right there!”

It’s a human. Dressed in a gray-purple robe, a gray-black jumpsuit, and huge, black boots. Long, dark hair tied back. A purple visor of some sort. 

“You folks look like you could use some help.” They speak, voice ringing through the clearing. “Permission to approach?”

“Denied.” Besh’s shoulders tense. “Who are you?”

The person sighs, puts their hands up in a passive gesture. With one, they remove the visor and drop it to the ground. Needles studies their every move, until his eye catches on a glimpse of metal under the open robe.

Besh must see it, too, but he does not lower his weapon.

“The Jedi were ordered to stay on Coruscant until the all clear. What battalion do you lead?” He’s no less suspicious of them. Anyone can get their hands on a lightsaber if they’re crafty enough. 

They laugh, tilting their head to the side. A thin braid falls over their right shoulder.

“A kriffing padawan?!” Huck exclaims, holstering his blaster. Great. The whole 770th just got saddled with getting a padawan back to Coruscant in the middle of an invasion.

“I don’t lead a battalion.” They drop their hands.

“Who are you?” Besh lowers his blaster to his side, walking toward the padawan. 

“Xeva.” She puts her hand out for Besh to shake. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” She gives a toothy, goofy grin as Besh shakes her hand in disbelief. “And your names?”

“I’m Commander Besh, sir.” He stands at attention. “That’s our bomb specialist, Needles, and our comms tech, Huckleberry. The rest of the 770th Battalion is off-planet.” 

“Nice to meet you, sir.” Huck and Needles salute her, to which she visibly recoils.

“At ease, soldiers. Please.” Now that she’s standing closer, Needles is able to get a better look at her. She seems on the older side for a padawan, and he’s never seen any Jedi wear such technical equipment like the visor she had on earlier. “I heard the distress call y’all sent out. Figured I’d come to help.”

“With all due respect, sir…” Needles crosses his arms and levels her with a look. “You’re not supposed to be off Coruscant, much less in the Outer Rim.”

“He’s right. We’ll have to take you back to the Temple.” Besh types something out on his wrist comm. Needles doesn’t know why—it’s not like they have any long-range transmitters out here.

“Ah, you misunderstand.” Xeva picks her visor up and slips it back over her eyes. A transparent duraplast purple, with an antenna sticking out from behind her right ear. Definitely not anything he’s seen a Jedi wear. “I’m not part of the Order.”

Needles exchanges a look with Huck. Is this lady serious?

“You’re not part of the Order, but you’re a padawan?” Besh asks, incredulously.

“Yep.” She says it simply, like it answers every question.

Besh balks, clearly trying to come up with the words to explain his confusion. Huck steps in. “How does that make any damn sense?”

“Who’s your master, then?” Needles ignores Huck’s question, trying to get down to the actual details of the situation.

“The Force.” Xeva is unexpectedly patient. Or maybe not unexpectedly, she is a Jedi. Right? Needles groans in frustration. 

“Okay, clearly, we’re not getting anywhere.” Besh drags a hand down his face. “Xeva, sir, could you tell us where you came from, if not the Order?”

Xeva smiles, catlike and playful. “I follow an ancient version of the Jedi Code. Not part of any Order but my own. The will of the Force guides me where it wants me.” She raises an eyebrow. “That answer your questions?”

“Not really…” Huck grumbles. Needles shoves him in the shoulder.

“How do we know you’re not a Sith?” Needles says, still wholly skeptical of her motives.

“How do I know you’re not going to shoot me in the head?” She quips. Her expression suddenly shifts, no longer open and honest. Something concerned and fierce.

“That’s not really fair–” Besh starts, but he’s cut off by Xeva pushing past him, looking in the direction of the Separatist base. 

“Shh!” She hisses, pulling her lightsaber into her hand. Needles instinctively tenses up behind her. “Something’s coming. Put your helmets back on.”

The three clones exchange glances, but they’ve all been around enough Jedi to know they should probably listen. Needles pulls his bucket over his head, scratching absently at the minor amount of hair poking out the back of his. Out of regulation, for sure. Not like General Sonstarr cares about regulations. Or the 770th in general. Or anything at all, actually.

Needles is pulled out of his thoughts by the ground shaking beneath his feet. This moon isn’t geologically active, which means–

“Droids inbound, a lot of ‘em.” Huck is frantically tapping away on a wrist-mounted datapad. He snaps his head to Commander Besh. “We’re outnumbered, sir. There’s hundreds of them.”

“Let’s move! Huck, find out where they’re going and if they’re after us.” Besh, blaster in hand, jumps over a fallen log and breaks out in a sprint. Huck is already moving, but Needles hesitates. Xeva isn’t making any move to run.

“Are you coming with us, or not?” Needles motions for her to move with his blaster, unintentionally threatening her. Xeva blinks, eyes focused on something displayed on her visor. “Lady! Those droids will mow you down, Jedi or not.”

The trees rumble with the thousands of droid-feet thundering forward. Xeva’s still not responding. It’s like she’s frozen in shock, but nothing has even entered their line of sight. Needles glances back to Commander Besh and Huck, already almost-invisible in the depths of the forest. He shouldn’t really care about this random “Jedi” who—for all he knows—could be a Sith in a very convincing disguise. Unfortunately, and completely irrationally, Needles lunges forward and yanks Xeva back by the wrist, dragging her with him as he runs after his brothers.

“Wait!” Xeva yelps, but Needles doesn’t turn to look at her. “They’re not after us!”

“Doesn’t matter,” Needles grits his teeth and keeps the iron grip on her wrist. “Rather not be scraped off the bottom of a droid boot, if that’s fine with you!”

Xeva grunts. “Let go of me!”

“Not happening.” He doesn’t know exactly why he won’t let her go. The realization hits him as he trips and stumbles over a snarled root. He manages to regain his footing, but Xeva ends up getting dragged into the side of a tree in the process. Mumbling an apology, he drags them both forward. They’ve nearly caught up to Huck and Besh.

“Ow!” She yells, but she isn’t tugging his arm off anymore, so she must have accepted it. “You son of a bitch!”

“What are you two yelling about?” Huck looks over his shoulder, him and Besh slow to a brisk walk. “Wake up the whole forest, why don’t you…”

“Why are you holding her like that?” Besh turns to look, a disapproving tone in his voice. “We’re not responsible for her.” Abruptly, Needles drops her hand, and Xeva yanks it backward. Maybe he shouldn’t have dragged her with him. 

“Your brother seems to have an issue with listening.” Xeva pulls forward in the pack, speaking mostly to Commander Besh. “I was telling him that the droids weren’t looking for us. I doubt they knew we were there at all.”

“That’s what I found, too.” Huck detaches the datapad from his wrist and hands it to her. Needles can see a faint red cone laid over a map of the area. “There’s some signal coming from further south, near the mountains. You thinking what I’m thinking, Needs?” Huck bumps his shoulder, and he can hear the smile in his voice.

“Command droids?” He remembers the bomb materials in his pack and smiles. “Yeah, I got some ideas.”

“Hold on. We’re here to look for survivors in the Separatist prison, not blow up half of a moon. Not our problem if the droids are converging somewhere else.” Besh shakes his head, and his voice lowers. “We’re short on hands as it is.”

“Well, we do have a Jedi with us now…” Huck counters. Needles gets the distinct feeling that he’s waggling his eyebrows at their commander. He rolls his eyes, regardless of whether or not they can see it. Huck is too trusting, always has been. They have no way of knowing if Xeva would even come with them, much less protect them while they’re blowing up a mountain.

“We have a padawan with us. And this isn’t her business. No offense, sir, but we can’t be taking civilians on our missions.” His use of the word “sir” contradicts the whole civilian idea, but Needles has learned not to argue with him. Besh comes to a stop at a small break in the trees.

“None taken, sir.” Xeva responds with a grin that feels sinister. Her demeanor is uncomfortable to be around. Besides other clones, the most Needles interacts with other people are the scant natborns in 79’s and General Sonstarr. And none of them have put off such a mischievous aura like her. “I understand operational security.”

Do you? Needles sighs in exasperation. This day has been so long already, he just wants to get back to the Revolver and hide in his bunk for a week. Or two. “So, what’s the plan? We go find out why hundreds of clankers are gathering in a mountain, or do we try to raid the prison?”

“Risky to raid a prison when so many droids are mobile.” Xeva puts her hands on her hips, that smile still going strong. Needles wants to punch her in the teeth. 

“Don’t think we asked you.” He turns to face her. She’s nearly a foot shorter than him, if he had to guess. Vaguely, he recalls his de-escalation training: try to keep open body language. Deliberately, he crosses his arms over his chest and straightens his spine. 

“Needles…” Huck whines next to him. “Maybe you should leave it alone.”

“Commander? Should I ‘leave it alone’?” Needles challenges, not taking his eyes off Xeva. She isn’t backing down. 

“Xeva, I think you should go.” Besh goes to put a hand on her shoulder, but she moves out of the way before he makes contact. He gives out a surprised noise through his helmet’s speakers.

“I think I should stay.” Xeva waves her hand, delicately. Needles almost flinches at it, feeling something nip at the back of his mind and then leave. 

“She should stay.” Huck says with a flat tone. Jedi mind trick , Needles scoffs. At least she’s a verifiable Force user.

“You know,” he starts, stepping forward into her space. She doesn’t move. “Using mind tricks on a GAR officer is a criminal offense.” He surveys her stance. Lightsaber clipped to the front of her belt, purple visor clear and inactive. 

“Hmm. Guess you’ll have to take me into custody.” Her tone is infuriatingly even; it’s like she doesn’t even care. Like she thinks she’s a million steps ahead, like she’s got some grand plan. He can’t figure it out, why some ancient-Jedi-wannabe would find his half dead squadron and immediately jump into their mission with no preamble. He doesn’t understand it, can’t follow the logic, and that leads him to believe she is more untrustworthy than not.

“What is your fucking game!?” He plants both hands on her shoulders and shoves . She absorbs the momentum, gracefully stepping backward with practiced ease. Great. “You show up out of nowhere, claim to be a Jedi, and now you want us to take you with us?”

“Somethin’ like that. I can leave, but…” She cocks her head to the side, and she stares at Needles. Her gaze is piercing, staring straight through his helmet, through his eyes, into the back of his brain. “I get the feeling that y’all don’t know the hornet’s nest you’ve walked into.”

“Yeah? You know something we don’t, padawan ?” He steps closer, craning his neck down to maintain eye contact with her. His hands curl into fists.

“Needles.” Besh’s tone is clipped, harsh. “Watch yourself.”

“She knows something, Commander. She knows, and she’s not telling us. We cannot trust her.”

“We aren’t. She’s leaving.” Besh, ever the cool head, steps between them, facing her. “Xeva, in the name of the Grand Army of the Republic, I am asking you to vacate this area and not return. Please, sir.”

The forest around them is silent save for the thundering droid march hundreds of feet away. Needles glares down at Xeva over Besh’s shoulder. She returns his stare, a smile still playing over her face. He hates that look. His hand twitches toward his blaster.

Her eyes are orange, he realizes. Orange like a setting sun, orange like the blazing fire of a Venator crashing down, orange like a swirling disc of material orbiting a black hole.

…What?

Needles blinks, and he’s flat on his back on the forest floor. His blaster is drawn, aimed upward, to where Xeva was standing. Aimed where Commander Besh is now collapsed against a tree. 

“Commander!” Huck yells and rushes to Besh’s side. Needles tries to stand, but he’s stopped by a boot on his chest.

“Don’t move.” Xeva, even as ever, is holding her lightsaber to Needles’ chest. His breath catches in his throat, and he can’t look away from the blinding pink light coming from her saber. He drops the blaster in the dirt beside him to put his hands where she can see them. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Besh gets to his feet behind her, blaster drawn. Without looking, Xeva stretches a hand back and holds both Besh and Huck in the Force. She’s keeping them in place.

“You think killing us is going to get you anything? Like hell!” Needles barks out. Xeva’s grin has been wiped off her face, replaced with blank indifference. “The Republic doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the 770th. We are literally the last battalion to be called, the worst squad in the whole army!”

“Stop talking, mate.” Huck sounds resigned. 

“I don’t want to kill you.” Xeva shakes her head. “I don’t even want to hurt you.”

“You’re a terrible liar.” Needles spits at her. In response, she lets the tip of her lightsaber barely touch his chestplate. The plastoid melts around it, giving off an acrid smoke. He turns his face away.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen. You three are going to arrest me. You’re going to take me with you to the mountain, or the prison, or whatever the hell you’re doing. Then, you’ll take me back to your ship, what was it called?”

“The Revolver .” Huck answers.

“Huck…” Commander Besh sounds exasperated.

“ The Revolver. Thank you. You’ll take me back to the Revolver , and then you can do whatever you want. Throw me out the airlock, keep me in a cell, whatever. I don’t really care.” Xeva turns her head to Huck and Besh. “That sound good to y’all?”

“What do you get out of that?” Besh says.

“Look, you have your business, I have mine. Maybe if you don’t kill me later, I’ll tell you.” Xeva shrugs. “We got a deal?”

“...Fine.” Besh is released from the Force hold with a gasp. Clearly, he thinks this is the best way to de-escalate the situation without any of them getting hurt. “Huck, cuffs. The sonic ones, if we have them.”

“Good.” Xeva steps off Needles’ chest and retracts her lightsaber. She turns it in her hand so the emitter is facing herself, and hands it off to Commander Besh. “Thanks.”

“Commander, is this really a good idea?” Needles gets to his feet, wipes a smear of dirt off his visor. “We don’t know why she wants to come with us.”

“And you won’t know until you get me back to your ship!” Xeva supplies, cheerfully. The blank, dangerous demeanor from earlier is gone. She holds her wrists out, and Huck clips the cuffs around her wrists. Sonic pulses through the metal prevent the wearer from reaching out to the Force. Not as effective or total as a ray shielded wheeled coffin.

“So, are we blowing up that mountain?” 

-

They are not, in fact, blowing up that mountain. 

The Separatist prison is a brutal concrete building in the opposite direction of the droids’ march. Six stories tall, with three more floors underground, the prison had been hit with several missile strikes less than a standard week ago. In fact, the last strike was the day all Jedi were called back to Coruscant. The aboveground floors collapsed, trapping all prisoners in the underground section. Really, the clones are only looking for political prisoners.

Xeva is just glad she can tag along. The Force calls her to this squad, though she thought there would be more of them. And… the Force didn’t exactly specify why she should be with these men, but it’s never led her astray before… Now, padding along behind the commander with Force-limiting cuffs, she’s reconsidering her course of action. Maybe getting arrested and cut off from the light of the Force was not the best idea. The cuffs buzz in her ears, keeping her unfocused. It’s uncomfortable, the way an opponent twisting your elbow behind your back is uncomfortable—it’s hard to keep her eyes from glazing over through the sonic fog.

The one with the temper, Needles, is gripping her bicep hard enough to bruise. He has a circular tattoo covering his entire face, reminiscent of a star chart. Both sides of his head are shaved, with a strip of shaggy black hair running from forehead to neck. Serious Commander Besh has a crisp crew cut, fitting for a high-ranking officer, and the Aurebesh letter ‘Besh’ is tattooed across his cheekbone. That’d be where the name came from. The last one, Huck, has longer hair and two braids running along the crown of his head. He has some kind of artsy tattoo of a berry bush creeping along his jawline, and it likely continues down his neck. She likes him the most so far.

Coming out of the forest, the remains of the prison rise above a grassy plain. Without the Force, she’s sure to keep her head on a swivel for the droids from earlier. So much droid movement can’t be a good sign.

“Intel told us the Seps were holding six Republic political prisoners.” Besh says, looking through a pair of hand-held binoculars. “Two of them were on the upper floors, the remaining ones underground. Should be a maintenance tunnel entrance a klick north.”

“Any chance they all escaped that way?” Huck groans. 

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” she chuckles. She’d run through her own intel before coming here. “The tunnel collapsed soon after the assault ended. We could blast a way through, but there weren’t any droids armed with anything heavier than a pistol down there.”

Needles scoffs and shakes his head next to her. “How the hell do you know?” It sounds like he meant to say that more to himself than out loud. 

Xeva smiles in response. “A lone Jedi learns a lot of tricks to survive.”

“Xeva, sir, are you aware that makes you sound extremely suspicious?” Commander Besh, whether through force of habit or something else, refuses to drop the respectful honorifics. It bothers her, more than it should. She’s not a general or officer or soldier. She is just Xeva.

“She’s aware,” comes Needles’ gruff response. 

“Someone’s in a bad mood…” Xeva leans over to stage whisper to Huck. She expects a laugh, and she gets it. Along with a glare from Needles. 

“Uh oh, he didn’t like that one!” Huck snickers, covering his smile with his hand.

“Commander,” Needles grinds out to obviously change the subject. “If we’re planning on blowing up that tunnel, I’ll need some time to set up the charges when we go down. Is that the plan?”

“I wasn’t aware the tunnel collapsed—thank you, Xeva—but explosive charges will probably be the wisest option.” He fiddles with his helmet in his hand, tapping his fingers against the plastoid. “We don’t know who’s down there, though… I’d hate to blow a path through only to find we killed some of the prisoners in the process.”

“Found the hatch!” Huck calls, and Xeva watches him kick a metal plate in the ground. Needles lets go of her arm but continues to glare at her as he leans down to lift the plate. Thankful, Xeva rolls her shoulders. Instinctively, she reaches out to the Force and hisses when she can’t focus long enough to feel it.

“Come on. You’re going down there first.” Needles grabs the front of her robe and yanks forward. Xeva finds it very amusing that Needles is so hissy about this.

“Needles, you’re with her.” Besh gestures to the hole in the ground. A metal ladder is welded into the wall of the hole. She can’t see the bottom. “I’ll stay up here with Huck. Scan for life signs and give us a report when you get down there.”

“Yes, sir.” He’s very unenthusiastic. Xeva can’t hide a gleeful smile as she starts down the ladder. Needles isn’t far behind.

The maintenance tunnel is dark and cramped. Maybe 500 meters long until the rubble blocks the path. And the ceiling doesn’t look too stable, either. Xeva walks forward to the rubble pile, wishing that she could look for the prisoners in the Force.

“You think you could blast this?” Xeva jerks her head to the pile. Needles scoffs.

“Obviously. Move.” Needles shoves her into the wall and presses a hand to the side of his helmet. “There’s some kind of infrared block around the facility. I can’t scan for life signs.”

Over Needles’ helmet speakers, Besh’s voice crackles through. “Copy that. I’ll have Huck try to disable it from up here. Stand by.”

“Yes, sir.” He takes his helmet off. “Kriff. Hot down here.”

“Didn’t notice.” Without the banter of the clones to distract her, the sonic cuffs are becoming grating on her ears. Disorienting, mostly, but also nauseating. With a weaker-than-normal smile, she lifts her wrists. “Cuffs.”

“You held your laser sword to my chest.” Needles leans against the wall. “And used mind tricks on Huck. And attempted them on me.”

Xeva shrugs. “Sorry.”

“No, you aren’t.” He scoffs.

“No, I’m not.” She manages a laugh. “I wasn’t gonna hurt any of you. If I wanted to, I would.”

“Not very reassuring.”

“Ah, I wasn’t trying to be.”

That gets a little, cynical smile out of Needles. “Shut the hell up.”

“Needles, come in!” Huck’s voice cracks through the speaker on his wrist comm, sounding decidedly panicked. “Listen, we got clankers incoming, we need–!”

“On my way!” Needles jumps into action, already headed for the ladder.

“No, stay there.” Commander Besh says. “We’re coming down there. Prep your charges.”

“Sir?” He unholsters his blaster.

“We’ll be there shortly, just–”

A resounding crack echoes across his comm, and a matching thunderclap shakes the tunnel. Rubble shakes free from the ceiling, and somewhere, Xeva hears rocks sliding. Needles is running for the exit, but it’s too far, he’s going too slow.

“Needles, don’t!”

An avalanche of rocks pours from the entrance of the tunnel, eliminating all light. Eliminating their only way out.

Needles leaps backward, out of the way. 

“No,” he says in disbelief. Xeva turns away because she knows what’s coming. “No. No!” He digs his hands into the rocks, tossing the smallest out of the way. He doesn’t make much progress. “Huck, come in!”

Static.

“Huck!”

No response.

“Commander Besh, come in! Besh!”

Nothing.

Needles sinks to his knees.

“Needles…” Xeva approaches cautiously.

“We’re stuck down here. They’re stuck up there.” He says, simply.

“Yeah.” She looks down and away. “I’m sorry.”

“Shut up. I don’t want to hear it.” He turns and sits on the ground, leaning against the rocks. Xeva follows his actions, taking a seat a few meters away. The sonic buzz is clouding all of her senses, and she takes a few deep breaths to attempt to regain control of herself. Next to her, Needles shakes his head. “You suck.”

She snorts. “I know.”

“Some Jedi. Got stuck in a kriffing hole in the ground.” He scrubs a hand across his face, clearly dealing with some internal dialogue before he speaks again. “You got any bright ideas?”

“You could take these damn things off me.” 

“Yeah, right.” He seems to think about it a little longer, then leans over and aims his blaster at her.

“That something you really want to do?” Xeva looks up at him through the haze with a pained expression.

“Hold your hands out.” He gestures with the blaster. Oh. That makes sense. She gingerly holds her wrists out, and Needles neatly blasts through the connector pin. 

The relief is instant . The Force washes over her, calm and cool like a river. Needles’ presence feels like an emergency exit sign, always there in the corner of her vision. Unaware of herself, she giggles a little.

“Thanks, Needles.” She tears the broken cuffs away. They clatter on the ground.

“Whatever. Get me out of here.”

Xeva stands and brushes the dirt off her robe. She starts on the rocks, moving the little stones out of the way first before focusing on the large boulders. She can move them, sure, but…

“There’s about 400 meters of rocks between here and the ladder up,” she says, softly. “I can’t get you out that way.”

“Whatever.” Needles looks like he’s trying to be apathetic, but it is really not working. His knees are drawn to his chest, and he’s burying his face in them.

“We’ll have to go the other way and exit through the ruins of the prison. Blowing a charge in this tunnel could bring the rest of it down, but…” It’s the only way out , she doesn’t have to say. He knows.

“Can you… see people? In the Force?” Needles starts, a complete non-sequitur. He sounds nervous. “General Sonstarr could, but she’s a Jedi Master. I’m not exactly versed on what padawans are trained to do.”

Xeva ignores the last part—she’s not trained at all—and responds quietly. “Yeah, I can sense people. I could probably find out if there’s any prisoners close to the blockage.”

“I was wondering if you could sense Besh and Huck up there.” He’s curled into himself. Xeva feels his desperation, even if it’s not coming through in his voice.

“I can try,” she whispers. “This far down, I might need a little help.”

He scoffs. “Of course.”

“Come here. You know how Commander Besh and Huck feel in the Force, even if you don’t realize it.” She extends a hand, which Needles uses to pull himself to his feet.

“None of us are Force-sensitive.” It really doesn’t matter. Xeva takes her gloves off.

“Take yours off, too. Then hold onto my hands, and think about them.” Xeva closes her eyes and tilts her head back. The Force fills her blood, her heart, and she swims through it. She’s not sure what she’s looking for until Needles’ bare hands clasp hers.

If Needles is an emergency exit sign, Commander Besh is a blaring alarm light. Red and loud and impossible to miss. He’s up there, he cuts through the background noise of the Force like a beacon. Xeva understands why he’s a commander, why Needles and Huck have followed him so loyally. He is a lighthouse on a rocky shore.

Lighter, softer, like the pulsing light of a sleeping autopilot, is Huck. He is constant and steady, reliable. Needles’ hands tighten on hers. Huck is there, and Xeva is drowning in the love Needles has for him. They’re batch brothers, they’ve been side-by-side for years. Through four different generals, two commanders, and what feels like a million squadrons. The pair of them are ever-present lights in the darkness, quiet reminders of safety.

Xeva opens her eyes with a gasp, and Needles is staring at her, face somber.

“They’re up there. They’re alive.” It’s barely a whisper, but it doesn’t need to be any louder.

“Fuck, thank the stars.” Needles collapses on her in a hug. Xeva tenses, not sure how to react. People don’t generally hug her. Her mind drifts, suddenly, unfortunately, to her old home. To the person she hopes the Force will eventually lead her to. Needles is about his height, and she recoils at the thought.

“Your comms must have just gone down. They feel like they’re safe.” Awkwardly, she pats the back of Needles’ plastoid armor. Needles pulls back, and in the night vision from her visor she can see his face is wet with tears. 

“Um…” He refuses to meet her eye. “Thank you for checking.” A genuine smile crosses her face. 

“It’s what I do.” He steps backward, drops her hands. She thinks about the best way to get through this situation. Blowing up the tunnel really doesn’t feel smart, and now that she knows Besh and Huck are safe…

“If only we could comm them, they could try to get through the ruined structure. Besh said there wasn’t a way through that, but if we blow the blockage from this side, they’d be on the other side to pull us out.” Needles fiddles with his wrist comm. Jammed, most likely. Droids know the frequencies the clone troopers transmit on.

But they don’t know the frequencies Xeva transmits on. 

“Turn your helmet light on.” Xeva commands, a flurry running through her head. She pulls her visor off, turning it so she can access the panel on the side with the antenna. Needles does as he’s told, holding the lamp over her hands.

“What are you doing?”

“Making my comm transmit on several frequencies at once.” She feels the question on his tongue before he says it. “Blast frequencies can knock out droid jammers. Used it one time on Jalthorp-4.”

“Where the hell is that?”

“It’s in the Chaos. Outer Reaches, sorry.” Lesser Space inhabitants call her part of the galaxy a lot of names. Unknown Regions, Wild Space, whatever. Nobody calls it the Chaos but those in it. “There were a bunch of rogue battery droids that wouldn’t stop discharging on a landing platform. Very thrilling,” she deadpans, snapping a few wire closures back into place, then sliding the panel closed. “Here.”

“Oh, I’m the one using it.” Needles says it more as an aside to himself. He seems to do that a lot.

“Call for Besh and Huck. Hopefully you’ll knock the jammer out and reach them at the same time.” Needles doesn’t move. He just stares down at the visor in his hand, jaw tight. “Is there a problem?”

“How do I know you aren’t lying to me?” He looks up to meet her eyes. His eyebrows are furrowed and his eyes fierce. “How do I know you’re not working with the Separatists?”

“Uh, well…” Xeva looks away, uncomfortable with the eye contact. “I’m stuck down here with you, you know.”

“So? For all I know, you could have some kind of suicide mission from them, or, or,” He stutters. It’s not like him to get so… nervous? Is that what he is? Xeva can’t quite put a finger on his tone. “Or, you could be calling Huck and Commander Besh out so the droids can get to them. I still don’t trust you.”

“Okay, do you want to go over your other options?” Xeva challenges, arms akimbo. “You either do what I say, the lady you ‘don’t trust’,” she gestures grandly with her hands. She’s probably overdoing it on the snark, but she’s never been the greatest at controlling herself. “And maybe we all die, who knows. On the other hand, you could just sit down here with me as we run out of oxygen, and your brothers will spend hours digging through the ruins trying to find us. In which case, we all definitely die.” Xeva finishes with an exaggerated spin that puts her back to Needles.

He doesn’t respond verbally, just grunts in frustration. Xeva lets a little triumphant smile cover her face. 

“Needles to Commander Besh, please respond.”

-

Xeva is possibly the most grating Jedi Needles has ever met. She’s so blatantly untrustworthy, with her whole mysterious backstory. She’s been to the Outer Reaches, apparently, because why the hell not? It’s not enough to be resurrecting an ancient form of the Jedi Order and go bounding across the galaxy calling herself a padawan, no, she has to be from the most dangerous and uncharted part of the galaxy. Whatever.

She wasn’t lying about the transmitter. She’s not a Separatist spy or a Sith. When she took his hands and searched for his brothers, he felt the Force channel itself through her and run through his body. He’s never felt that before—the security of the Force, wrapping itself around them like a shield—and it is scaring the shit out of him. If she was evil, if she wanted him and his brothers dead, if she was working with the Seps, it would be easy . Slap some handcuffs on her, throw her in a cell on the Revolver , and be done with it. He doesn’t trust her, he has no reason to trust her, and yet… he does. It’s like she’s pulling another mind trick on him, but as far as he knows, no Jedi or Sith can pull off such an extended manipulation. They’ve been down in this tunnel for hours.

Commander Besh and Huck ran into a squad of clankers while circling the ruins of the building. It hadn’t been too much to deal with, maybe ten of them at the most, but they were jamming comms. Xeva was right. Which she promptly rubbed in his face when Huck found the now-broken jammer wedged in a droid’s hand. Now he’s stuck down here with her for stars know how long while Huck and Besh forge a path through the ruined structure up top. She is, annoyingly, cheerful as she sits on a rock against the wall. It feels hot as hells down here—calling the amount of airflow “low” would be generous.

“My turn to ask!” Xeva grins. They’ve been playing 20 Questions for so long it’s turned into Million Questions. “What’s your favorite card game?”

“Don’t play cards.” Needles grunts. The only way he’s been enduring her lame-ass questions is by offering as little information as possible. It’s such an effective strategy that Xeva has been using it against him on her turns answering.

“Do you play anything else?”

“It’s my turn. Where’d you get the visor?”

“Old woman on Dathomir. Who was your first kiss?” She wiggles her eyebrows suggestively, and he fights back a scoff.

“Some natborn in 79’s, almost two years ago. Why were you on Dathomir?”

“I was helping someone out of some trouble. What did he look like?”

“Twi’lek, I think.” Needles grimaces at the memory. Him and Huck got absolutely shitfaced the first time the 770th was granted leave on Coruscant, and the night ended with a visit to Commander Besh’s office and a month-long conscription to toilet duty. Honestly, he doesn’t even recall if he really wanted to kiss the guy. “How old are you?”

Xeva snorts. “Really?”

“Seriously.”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs with a smile. There’s not a hint of sadness in it. Needles narrows his eyes.

“You don’t care?”

“Should I?” She counters. An eyebrow flies up, easy and smooth. “Do you care about your age?”

“Well, for clones, it’s different. We don’t age like you do.” Needles tries not to think about how his lifespan was drastically shortened by the Kaminoans.

“Not exactly an answer to my question. How old are you?”

“I’m nine.” It sounds so stupid when he says it out loud. 

“Hmm.” Xeva’s eyes shine in the headlamp’s glow. She looks like she wants to say something else, but she moves on. “Your turn.”

“What’s your home planet like?”

“Well, small, to start.” She leans back on her palms, glancing upward thoughtfully. “It was always night time. Rainy. Deserted, too. Hardly anyone lived there.”

“Was, as in, past tense?”

“Ain’t there anymore.” It’s a simple statement. Her expression is anything but. “Our king made our moon into a nuclear superweapon, and a group of vigilantes went after him for it. They took down the whole castle.”

“If it was just the castle, what happened to the planet?”

“Our world was tenuously orbiting a black hole. The blast shook us enough that it destabilized our orbit, and there we went.” She mumbles the next part. “Now it’s only there in memories…”

“How did you get out?” He says, carefully. 

“I didn’t.”

“Nobody survives a kriffing black hole.” Needles scoffs and rolls his eyes.

“I didn’t.” Xeva says it again, this time focusing her laser-focused eyes on Needles.

“What are you trying to say?”

“I died that night. I woke up somewhere else. And now I’m here.” 

Needles wants to call bullshit, but there’s something about the way she said it. He stares in those orange eyes, darkened to black pits in the low light. The image of a black hole returns as he struggles to parse the impossible nature of her lie with the earnest determination of her expression. It has to be true. Or, at the very least, this lie has to have more behind it.

“You’re pulling a mind trick on me,” he says, knowing that the tell-tale intrusion of someone else in his mind is missing. Xeva just stares at him.

“Do you want to know more?” She holds a bare hand out to him.

“... Yes.”

-

Needles is sitting on a lab table in a pure-white room. Next to him, Xeva is kicking her feet in the air. The details of her face are fuzzy, dream-like.

“Where are we?”

“My first memory.” She points to the corner of the room, where a dark-haired teenager is asleep on a different table. A blond-haired man, dressed in a long, black coat, opens the door and turns to it.

“Wake.” He says. His voice is icy and irritated. The child stirs and sits up. “What is your name?”

Xeva. A voice booms throughout the room, like loudspeakers announcing the arrival of a train. The voice is young, yes, but…

“That’s you?” Needles asks, horrified. He’s too far away to see the kid’s face, but he notices a streak of gray in the dark hair. The jumpsuit she’s wearing is a cleaner version of the one Xeva’s wearing right now.

“That’s me.”

“You don’t speak?”

“I didn’t know how.”

Needles blinks, and they’re in a new white room. Young Xeva is standing in the middle, with a blaster rifle that barely fits in her arms. There’s another man in front of her, in the same black coat. He has an eyepatch and the same dark and gray hair. Needles flicks his gaze to Xeva. She’s watching, stoically, silently.

H-Naught . Young Xeva’s voice echoes through the room as she brings it up to her face to look down the sight. The man is staring at the rifle like a starved animal.

“H-Naught?” Needles says.

H-Naught. Young Xeva repeats. That’s the name. Needles gawks at Young Xeva, knowing this is just a memory but feeling like he’s actually interacting with her.

The man laughs, loud, like a dog barking. “You’re one special kid, you know that?”

Needles turns to Xeva, questioning.

“H-Naught is the name of the constant for the expansion rate of the universe.” A little smirk colors her face. Needles has no clue what half those words mean. “I thought I was so smart for thinking that up.”

The man summons targets out of thin air, arranging them around the room. Is he a Jedi, too? Can Jedi summon things? This has to be some kind of weird offshoot from the Order, but it’s not like he has much of a reference point.

“There you go. Knock yourself out, kiddo.”

Young Xeva shoots each target in succession, not missing a single one. Needles stares at the rifle. It doesn’t look like any blaster he’d ever seen before—hold on, did she just bullseye all of those? She jumps up and down with a wide smile, and Needles catches a glimpse of a strange symbol printed on the thigh of her jumpsuit.

Was that good?

Another plain white room, and another new man in a black coat. They’ve all been rather tall men, but this one has to be at least two feet taller than Young Xeva. They must be a near-human species. That same symbol is emblazoned on the wall behind them.

“What did Vexen tell you your purpose was?” The man is dark-skinned with long, silver hair that flays out around his ears like a halo. He speaks slowly, with a deep voice that commands respect.

Vexen told me I should be assisting Xigbar. Young Xeva’s voice is shy. She’s avoiding eye contact. Needles suppresses a smile. She never lost that trait.

“And why are you not assisting Xigbar?” The man’s face is stoic except for a single raised eyebrow.

I can’t reach my powers. Nervously, she reaches up and tugs at the ends of her shoulder-length hair. I can’t go on missions unprotected.

“The Organization has no use for a nobody who cannot fulfill its purpose in assisting us. I am allowing you–”

The door bursts open, and the eyepatch man from earlier strolls in. He gives a wide grin to the other man.

“Aw, come on, Xemnas! Cut the kid some slack.” He throws an arm around Xemnas’ shoulder.

“Xigbar. Your presence is unexpected.” Xemnas’ harsh stare softens and the corners of his mouth tilt upward. Immediately, Xeva’s relationship to these men becomes clear.

“These are your fathers?” He asks. Xeva turns to him with a fond smile.

“What do you think?”

The white walls of the room fall away into a dark, rainy cityscape. Young Xeva is running down the street, rifle in her arms. Xigbar is running after her. Needles sneaks a look at Xeva, only to see that her smile has disappeared. A streak of lightning lights up the sky, drawing his attention to a massive, floating white castle. That’d be where they just were.

“Xeva! Stop!” Xigbar yells after her.

“Leave me alone!” Young Xeva screams—the first time Needles has heard her speak, and it’s fraught with fear and anger.

“Just listen to me!” Xigbar’s hands fly out in front of him. Young Xeva jerks forward, tumbles to the asphalt. 

“No!” She twists on the ground, aiming the rifle at Xigbar. Needles notices that it’s a sniper rifle, and it’s got nicks and scratches all along the barrel now. “You and Xemnas want me dead!”

“That’s not how it is! If you leave, it’s just going to get worse. Please!” Xigbar holds a hand out for Xeva to take. She shakes her head furiously. “Vexen has a plan to fix this, just come back with me.”

“Vexen?!” She screeches, and her eyes widen in terror. “You don’t know what he’s going to do to me!” Young Xeva scrambles to her feet. The world shakes with a thunderclap. 

“It doesn’t matter!” Xigbar grabs her by the wrist. “You’re part of me , I’m not letting you leave!”

“Enough!” Young Xeva yanks her hand away. H-Naught clatters to the ground by Needles’ feet. Her face contorts in pain, or frustration, or anger, and her shoulders are shaking with heaving breaths. 

Needles feels the air crackle, feels the energy surging before he sees it.

I am not you!

A blinding light obscures the whole world, and Needles is thrown backward with an unknown force. He’s shielding his eyes with a forearm. When he lowers it, they’re back in the white castle. This room is tall and massive, like a cathedral. A large, strange-looking bacta tank is shoved inside a wall. Tubes and wires connect it to the glowing blue screens up above. 

There’s a droid, thirty feet tall with a woman’s face, standing in the corner. She looks like the relative of Xemnas, with platinum hair and dark skin. Inlaid in her breastplate is the same symbol emblazoned on Xeva’s jumpsuit. Young Xeva is turned away from the droid with her arms crossed.

“Aorta. This isn’t something you need to be involved in. Ignore Xemnas’ orders. He wouldn’t hurt you, anyway.”

“I came to protect the Organization. We cannot have a member in our ranks that is so dangerous. I cannot allow you to remain with us, not when you try to destroy our brethren. This was not an order from Xemnas.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“You greatly injured each of our number. I will not let you escape punishment.”

“If that’s what you want to do…” Young Xeva materializes her rifle out of thin air. 

“I do not want to hurt you, Xeva. I will make this painless if you let me.”

“Not that it matters, but I never did the things you accuse me of.”

“Do not lie to me, Xeva!” The droid pulls an equally large sword from her back. Her movements are elegant, smooth. Needles stares at her face, at the blue glowing line running through her face. It’s the same blue as the computer systems running through the walls. The droid’s metal plating is exposed on the side of her head.

The droid charges Young Xeva.

In a flash, the room is darkened, lit only by the screens above the tank. Xeva floats in the bacta, looking much older than the Xeva in the rain.  The droid is on a charging pad, still as the grave. There is dried blood on the floor. Outside, explosions and blasterfire are heard.

Needles’ stomach drops.

“This is… the day you died.” He turns to her. “You were unconscious.”

“Yes. Aorta shared some of her memories with me while I was captive. This is not my memory, but hers.” Xeva mournfully looks over to Aorta’s still body. 

The building shudders.

“Why did she keep you here so long?”

Xeva laughs humorlessly.

“The Organization was gonna kill me. She told them that she took the initiative to get rid of me, but she kept me down here.” She shakes her head in time with an explosion. “I’m sure she planned on letting me out eventually.”

An uncomfortable silence settles over them. Dust floats through the room.

“Xeva, I…” Needles searches for something to say, something to console her. “Stars. I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault.” She replies instantly. There’s no change to her tone. “It’s coming down soon.”

“Where did you go after? You said you woke up somewhere else?”

“Some Outer Reaches moon I vaguely remember from my childhood. It had an urban center I could disappear in.” Xeva takes off her visor and starts levitating it a few inches above her hand. “The people I met called me Force sensitive.”

“You weren’t a Jedi before?”

“None of us were. The Organization didn’t use the Force in the way anyone else does.”

“You call yourself a padawan.”

“Not in the way your jetii are. When I woke up on Intix-Yue minor, the Force opened up to me. It was like the Universe itself wanted to mentor me. Who am I to refuse?”

 “You’re different from the other Jedi I know.”

“I know.” She chuckles to herself. “Good observation.”

“No, I mean… You talk about the Force like you’d never felt it before you died. Every other Jedi says they’ve felt it their whole lives.”

“I didn’t feel it before I died. I felt the gravitational forces from every atom. There was nothing alive about that force.” She turns her face to his with a toothy smile. She waves her hand, and the hair hanging down on Needles’ forehead moves along with it. “Now, it’s like all those atoms came alive, and they all want to talk to me.”

“My atoms talk to you?”

“Nah, there’s a difference. You talk to me. You’re all your atoms, and you’re also you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look. This is me talking to your atoms.” Xeva holds her hand out. Needles finds his arm slowly raising, like she was picking it up by his wrist. She drops it after a moment.

“I hated that, actually.”

“Most people do. But this is me talking to you .” She waves her hand, and that pin-prick at the back of his mind returns. This time, though, it’s less of an intrusion and more the whisper of the waves at the beach.

Hello, Needles.

He smiles at her voice in her mind, so similar to Young Xeva’s telepathy. He accidentally looks at her in the bacta tank again, and the smile disappears. They’re still in the memory of the day she died. The castle is still coming down.

“The droid—she’s not going to get out.” 

“No, she isn’t.” Xeva walks over to Aorta, and she is miniscule next to her. She hops a few feet in the air and is suspended there, floating like it’s nothing. He’s never seen a Jedi float with the Force before. Slowly, Xeva rises in the air until she’s eye-to-eye with the sleeping droid. “She dies here with me.”

Xeva closes her eyes as the building violently shudders. A large chunk of the ceiling falls down, smashing a computer into dust. Xeva’s hands plant on the sides of Aorta’s face, and she gently touches their foreheads together in a gentle keldabe kiss. It’s not the first time Needles wonders if Xeva has ties to Mandalore.

A great, splintering crack shakes the room, and the floor shifts under Needles’ feet. The castle is falling. He’s sliding now, scrambling for purchase as the monitors on the wall separate from their brackets and smash into the floor. Xeva is still asleep in the bacta, still touching her forehead to Aorta’s. The sound of the castle breaking apart under his feet is deafening.

“Xeva!” He yells. A metal panel in the ceiling swings down, on a trajectory that would flatten Xeva into the wall if she doesn’t—

Needles snaps his eyes open. They’re in the tunnel. Xeva is staring at him with a worn, fond expression.

“You’re– that was–” He stutters. His heart thunders in his chest—too real to be a lie.

“I think it’s my turn to ask a question.” That catlike smile is back.

“Um, yeah. Sure.”

“If you were forced to marry any of the Jedi you know, who would it be and why?”

Needles stares back at her, baffled by the shift in tone.

“You are a weird individual. I don’t know.”

“You have to answer the question. Them’s the rules.”

“I don’t know! I don’t exactly look at General Sonstarr with lust in my heart.” Needles openly grimaces. He hasn’t been around many other Jedi for very long, and why is he entertaining this stupid hypothetical?! “Ugh! None of them!”

“Oh, come on. Pretend you had to marry one of them, or someone would kill you or something.” 

“Fine!” Needles rolls his eyes, runs through the list of all the Jedi he’s seen before. General Ki-Adi-Mundi is a no , definitely not that one Kaminoan Jedi he saw on Coruscant… who else is there? “I guess… General Kenobi?”

“Pshh. I have no clue who that is.” Xeva is incredulous—but this was her question?!

“Okay, who would you have picked?”

“To be honest, I don’t know any of the Jedi.” Her grin breaks into goofy territory, and Needles just shakes his head.

“You are the worst at this game.”

-

The rocks tumble out into the floor of the tunnel, leaving a sunbeam in their wake. 

“Thank the stars, Huck–”

“Stop.” Commander Besh steps through the cleared path. Needles’ eyes flick down to where Besh’s fingers twitch on his holster. “Don’t come any closer.”

“Can we get out of here before you start whatever you’re about to do?” Xeva takes a few steps toward the exit, pulling her purple visor down over her eyes with a smile. 

Huck aims his blaster at her chest.

“He told you to stay there.”

With a sharp eye, Xeva puts her hands up defensively. Needles gets to his feet, cautiously setting his blaster to stun. If his brothers are treating her like she’s dangerous, then…

“Xeva. By order of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant–”

“I don’t listen to those guys.” Her voice lilts, almost sing-song. Something about the way she hasn’t changed her demeanor is setting off all the warning bells in his head. “Thought y’all knew that.”

“By the order of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant,” Commander Besh starts again with a forceful tone. “You are under arrest for the crimes of impersonating a Jedi padawan, unlawful use of the Force, and escaping the custody of a Jedi officer.”

“Wasn’t I already under arrest?” Xeva indiscreetly taps something on her visor. Needles can see the display light up in a geometric pattern. He sneaks a glance to Huck, who’s jaw is clenched tight. “Or did you not mean it the first time?”

Besh ignores her comments. “You will be taken to the Temple and tried for your crimes by the Council. If you attempt to escape, we are authorized to incapacitate you.” He raises his glare to meet Needles’ eyes, and he throws a second pair of Force-disturbing cuffs over Xeva’s head. Needles catches them with one hand. “Needles, if you would.”

Xeva looks over her shoulder at him. There’s a glint in her eye, a near-imperceptible sharpening of her features. It’s the blank look from before, when she was holding her weapon to his chest, but the quickening of her breath is obvious. She glances down at the cuffs in his hands, and suddenly she looks very much like a cornered animal.

Slowly, she holds her hands out. Needles takes one wrist in his hand. She’s shaking.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

“No, you’re not.”

Her other hand flies up to her visor; not a second later, Huck and Besh double over. She yanks her other hand away and jumps backward.

“What the fuck?” Needles draws his blaster.

“You’re not taking me to Coruscant.” Xeva tries to mind-trick him, though he can’t understand why. She knows it’s not going to work. Huck and Besh fall to the ground like ragdolls.

“What the hell did you do to them?” Needles yells.

“You want to find out?” She spits at him, fists up and ready to fight.

“What is wrong with you?!” He thrusts his blaster forward in emphasis.

“That thing isn’t going to do anything to me.” His blaster flies out of his hands and shatters against the rocks. She raises an eyebrow at him, challenging. “Why don’t you show me all that kaminii training?”

“You wanted to be arrested—what changed?!” Needles puts his hands up defensively.

“Coruscant is a hell of a lot different than what I wanted.” Xeva lunges at him, a punch prepared to go straight into his face, but he parries her easily with a forearm. She growls in response, throws another right hook. Needles eats it in the shoulder but quickly counters with a sweep of his leg. His boot clips her ankle hard enough to send her careening to the floor.

She stumbles forward, Needles stepping out of the way to avoid her. On the way down, however, she twists and elbows him in the stomach. He’s doubled over now, watching as Xeva lands on her back on the ground and quickly recovers. Clumsily, he makes a move to grab her, but he instead gets an armful of air when she rolls out of the way. He spins, looking for her, disoriented. Unfortunately, he finds her as she wraps an arm around his neck from behind and yanks , putting enough pressure on his throat to induce panic. Needles flails, grasping at her forearm with one hand and swinging wildly behind him with the other. His feet stagger, his balance disturbed. With one strong push, he throws himself, and Xeva, backward into the rocks, and thankfully, she lets go.

A gasping breath later, and Needles decides he’s had enough of this. He whirls to face her, ignoring the wild look on her face that is uncomfortably close to a smile. One hand out to prepare himself for whatever she might throw, mind razor-focused on all of her minute movements. 

Xeva jerks into action, and so does he. He catches her elbow on the swing of her fist and pins it behind her back, shoving her against the wall.

“Fuck’s sake, why don’t you just say what you want?! ” He ducks out of the way of an elbow thrown backward. Remembering the cuffs, he grabs her other wrist and snaps it into the empty cuff. He can hear the crunch of Xeva’s visor cracking against the rocks as he pushes her forward.

“You’re not going to take me to Coruscant!” She hisses over her shoulder, looking a lot less intimidating with her cheek squished against the wall.

“Yes, you’ve said that.” Needles says, irritated. “Tell me what you did to them!”

“Oh, grow up.” Xeva rolls her eyes. He wrenches her wrists further up her back, leading to a sharp intake of breath from her.

“Tell me!”

“I– fuck– They’re both alive. Just knocked them out with a high frequency sonic.” Her breathing is quick, and he can see from this distance that her eyes are unfocused. He feels a sting of guilt at keeping her from the Force, given the way she describes it. Not too guilty, though, as he glances over at Huck and Besh’s limp forms on the ground. They are breathing, so she wasn’t lying. “Let me go.”

“Why don’t you tell me your plan—your actual plan—and I’ll think about convincing Commander Besh to leave you on this shithole of a planet instead.”

He can see the gears turning in her head as she thinks the offer over. Really, he doesn’t think he can keep Besh from immediately turning her over to the Jedi Council, but he can’t help himself from taking the opportunity to find out what her deal is.

“Fine. Get me off this wall first.”

“If they wake up before you finish, we’re taking you to Coruscant.”

“Whatever.”

Reluctantly, he lets go of her and steps back. She turns around, and he can see a shard of her visor has embedded itself into the side of her nose. A thin trail of blood beads down her skin.

“The Force guides me.”

“Guides you where? That’s what I want to know.” Needles crosses his arms firmly.

“It guides me back to Xigbar.”

“... Your father?”

“Not exactly my father. I’m not a natborn.”

“You’re a clone.”

“I guess you could say that. Xigbar is the reason I exist, but I’m not his copy. I want to see him again.”

“He left you to die in that castle.”

“I’m not the only one he’s hurt.”

“So you’re avenging others? The droid?”

“No.” Xeva takes in a shaky breath, swallows hard. “ Skira. ” Revenge, not vengeance. Needles shakes his head in disbelief.

“Tch. Not very Jedi-like.”

“Not like your Jedi.” She bites, raising her head to glare at him. “Is that good enough reason for you?”

“No. Why does Coruscant scare you, but we don’t?”

“The Council has caught me before.”

“So?”

“What’s the worst thing you think they can do to punish a Jedi?”

“They’d cut you off from the Force.” Needles realizes with a start. “They’d keep you from it forever.”

“You’ve kept me from it for a few hours, at most. A permanent sever would destroy me, like if you lost a sibling you’d spent your life with.” Her eyes glaze over. “They tried to do it before.” Needles blanches at her expression, unfocused and scared. He’d felt that connection with the Force when Xeva took his hands. Huck and Commander Besh are still unconscious, their breaths wheezing through their vocoders. A sick feeling rises in his stomach.

She is dangerous. She pointed her lightsaber at his chest. She mind-tricked Huck. She is a liar. She is a criminal.

She is earnest. She found Huck and Besh in the Force. She died and came back to life in a new world and did not turn to the dark side of the Force. She is a clone, like him, confused and lost in a world not made for her.

“Okay. Okay, um, here’s what we’re going to do.” Needles drags a hand across his face. He can’t believe he’s about to help someone who just dropped his brothers, yet, here he is. “When they wake up, we’re going to get out of here. Go back to the Revolver and I’m going to talk to them. I can’t guarantee anything, but I’m going to do my best to get Commander Besh to drop you off somewhere else.”

Xeva’s eyes light up.

“And, uh, I’m going to disable the Force suppression on your handcuffs.” Her eyebrows fly upward. “You trust me to try my best to get you out of this, and I trust you to not use the Force against us again. Okay? Even if that means I can’t get you away from Coruscant?”

“Okay.” Xeva’s voice is soft, light, like she doesn’t believe him.

“Turn around, hold your hands out.” 

Xeva does, awkwardly holding her wrists behind her back. Needles takes hold of the central metal piece and finds the electronic component he’s looking for. He takes his pocketknife out, and he jams it in the hinge of the cuffs until he hears a spark. Xeva gasps, then slumps forward.

“Thank you.” She sounds like she’s run a marathon. Needles catches Huck stirring on the ground and nudges her shoulder. She turns around and looks up at him.

“I didn’t do anything to help you. We fought and I subdued you.” Quietly, he puts his knife away and turns to Huck. “Got it?”

Xeva doesn’t respond, just leans against the wall of the tunnel. Huck sits up with a groan, and Needles rushes to his side.

Huck tears his helmet off, rubbing his eye with the palm of his hand. 

“Huck, you with me?”

“Ugh, vod, not so loud.” He jolts suddenly. “When did I lay down?”

“You and the commander were knocked out by Xeva.”

He gasps dramatically and grabs Needles’ wrist with his freakish strength. “Needles! I need to tell you something about her!”

“No, I know she’s under arrest.” He jerks his head in her direction. Huck turns to look at her with a scowl. “Relax. I put the cuffs on her.”

“She’s a criminal! ” He continues in a stage whisper. Needles rolls his eyes and helps him to his feet. “The Jedi Council has a warrant out for her arrest already–”

“I know, mate. Let’s just get her back to the ship.” Needles avoids looking at her, afraid his expression would betray him if he made eye contact with her. Instead, he focuses on Besh’s unconscious body at his feet. “Help me wake him up.”

-

The siege is not over, the droid thinks. It has barely even begun.

“Forward march!” Their droid commander shouts in its tin voice, instructing all troops to converge on the target: an abandoned prison with important political prisoners. The droid marches forward, blaster in its hands, ready to fire.

“They said there were some clones over this way earlier,” the droid next to it says. “But I don’t see anyone!” 

They march on, through the forest and through a clearing, until the ruins of a prison come into view. They step over the fallen metal bodies of the last attacking forces. The droid stares down at them for a moment, before moving forward.

“I guess the clones were here.” It says. 

“Yeah, but… where are they now?” Its neighbor replies, swiveling to observe its surroundings. There are hundreds of them, in formation, sweeping across the clearing. It spies an open metal hatch peeking out of the grass near the treeline. “Look, over here!” It shouts, calling its neighbor over. They peer down the hatch, at a ladder leading into what appears to be a maintenance tunnel. 

“Aw, nobody’s down there!” The droid says, disappointed. “Would be nice if we saw some action for once.” 

“Maybe they’ll come back. We should stand guard,” says the neighbor. 

“Good idea.” The droid replies, and they both turn their backs to the hatch. Their battalion marches past, looking for the clones spotted earlier. If the clones come back, the droid will be the first to see it.

A clang rings through the air, and the droid turns to its neighbor.

“Was that you?”

“No,” it replies, suspiciously. “Was that you?”

“Hey! Don’t blame that on me!”

The tell-tale flash of light from blaster fire lights up its ocular sensors, and the neighbor droid crumples to the ground. The droid jumps back, looking for the source.

“Commander? We’ve got–” A blur of white and purple streaks across its vision, and it decides to run. “The clones are here!” It shrieks, whipping around to find the clone.

Out of the hatch climb three clones, one without a helmet, and it looks like one of the prisoners. They’re dressed in rags, with handcuffs, slung over the shoulder of a clone. One clone levels a blaster at it.

“ What is your location? Over. ” The commander’s voice cracks through its receiver.

“The hatch!” It screams in fear, staring down the barrel of a Republic blaster. “They’re coming out of the–”

It registers a blinding, blue light, and then, nothing.

-

“Shit!” Besh shouts over his shoulder, the one not currently occupied by a subdued padawan-impersonator. “Clankers, lots of ‘em!” He pulls his blaster close to his chest and racks his brain for options. The Revolver pickup team is three klicks north—north through the hundreds of droids swarming the clearing. Going back through the forest and circling around isn’t an option, either. If the droids got this far, they’ve surely set up a perimeter throughout the forest.

“Uh, Commander?” Huck nervously says at his side as a sea of metal faces turns to stare at them. “What’s the plan?”

Fuck. What’s the plan? They’ve got to haul a criminal through a battlefield with only two blasters and no fire support.

“There they are! Blast ‘em!” A droid screams at the top of its voice box, and hellfire rains down upon them quickly. Besh drops to cover behind the hatch door. The blasts will make quick work of the metal. They’re running out of time. 

“If I may,” Needles starts, interrupted by Huck blindly shooting his blaster out of cover. “We should just run!”

He’s right, they’re out of options. Xeva squirms on his shoulder, and he pushes her off onto the ground. She avoids eye contact with any of them, unusually quiet and unprovocative, unlike her original arrest. Good. He’d had no idea how dangerous she was when they first picked her up—well, that’s not entirely true, he knew she was bad news when she pulled her saber on Needles, but he had the feeling it was just a power play to her, that she didn’t really want to hurt any of them. Clearly, the Jedi Council are better at intuition than he is. Besh stares down at her and the cuffs around her wrists. She’d escaped Jedi custody before—that cannot happen again.

“Needles, Huck, you two have the weapons. Run in front, we’ll be close behind.” Besh jerks his head at Xeva to tell her to stand. “I’m not carrying you out there, sir. You’re on your own. Don’t get any stupid ideas.” She gets to her knees without a word, and Besh gives the signal to exit cover and run. His brothers run forward, into the fire, blasting wildly into the crowd of droids. “Your turn.”

Xeva doesn’t need to be told twice. She takes off, arms awkwardly twisted behind her back, nonetheless, she’s flying through the fight with incredible speed. Besh follows as close behind her as he can, and he swoops down to pick up a blaster from a fallen droid. Huck and Needles are doing a good job of clearing a path, though there’s no guarantee they can keep it up on their own. He can barely see the other side of the clearing with all the droids in the way; he’s going as fast as his legs will allow him to move. A voice crackles through his helmet’s speaker.

“Commander, they’ve got laser cannons!” Huck reports with a palpable panic in his voice. Besh elbows a droid in the optics as he swivels to survey the new threat. 

Out of the trees rolls a massive, semi-mobile turret laser cannon. The barrel is monstrous, easily meant for long range battles. At short range, they’ll be nothing more than a crater. His blood sings in his veins, his head is on a swivel, taking out droid after droid on his flank.

“They’re aiming for the prison, sir!” Needles grunts over the comms. “We need to get out of this clearing, or we’re going to be dead!”

Xeva’s running has stopped, and horrifically, Besh realizes they’ve caught up to his men. They can’t break through this line of droids, every downed droid is replaced by three more. He turns to find a way back the way they came, only to be greeted by the horde closing in on him. 

“Get your backs to me!” Besh yells, not letting fear set in. The situation is dire, and he definitely doesn’t see a way out, but dammit, he is a commander . He will keep fighting, and they will either live or they won’t. Giving up is not an option. They form a circle, facing outwards, and Xeva is in the middle of them. He wishes she wasn’t, wishes they’d called transport to pick her up back in the forest. Gritting his teeth, he thinks that they wouldn’t be in this situation at all if they’d just shot her when she held her lightsaber to Needles’ throat.

“Sir?” Huck breaks him out of his murderous thoughts. He looks up, looking down the barrel of the cannon. A whine splits the air—the cannon is charging. He can’t see a way out, there isn’t one. The 770th Attack Battalion’s elite squad dies on some shitty moon in the Outer Rim. He stares down the weapon that will murder him and realizes, somewhat beside himself and gleeful, that it will kill Xeva too. She won’t make it out of here, either. He shoots a droid in the head and watches it fall to pieces on the grass. 

“Besh to Revolver . Requesting fire support.” He speaks calmly into his comm device. The Revolver ’s fire squad won’t make it here in time. He knows that. They’ll go down fighting.

“ Heard. Fire support en route to your coordinates. ETA three minutes, over. ” 

He doesn’t respond to them.

“It was an honor, sir,” Needles says over the chaos. The laser cannon’s whine grows louder; it’ll be any second now. Besh smiles under his helmet.

“The pleasure was all mine, vod.” He replies. He tightens his grip on his blaster, determined to see how many more he can take down before he turns to ash.

It is immensely bright, brighter than anything he thinks he’s ever seen. The beam of the cannon is all-encompassing, and his vision is gone before he can bring his arm up to shield his eyes. Not a moment later, his body is shaken by the immense sonic blast from the cannon. Involuntarily, he cringes and draws into himself. The last thing he registers is Xeva planting a hand on his pauldron before everything whites out.

-

“Huck?”

Someone shakes his shoulder.

“Huck!” 

He cracks his eyes open to see a big, purple sky. Cool. There is an afterlife, after all.

“He’s alive!” A voice shouts. Wait a second, he knows that voice.

Huck bolts up, and immediately regrets his decision when all of the muscles in his back seize.

“Aw, shit.” He cringes, then takes a look around. His brother, Needles, is standing in front of him. His armor looks rough to say the least, the purple paint faded to gray and the white duraplast scratched beyond repair. Needles is alive , though, and crossing his arms over his chest with a wry smile. Looking beyond him, though, Huck can see dead droids littering every inch of the ground. A fire support ship is behind him, painted in 770th purple. It matches the sky. A medic comes running from it, medbag in hand, which makes Huck groan.

“We need to check you out.” The medic, some shiny that doesn’t have a name yet, is shining his penlight in Huck’s eyes. He bats it out of the way.

“Needles, what the hell is happening?” The medic tries again, but Huck shoves him with both hands. “Mate, give me a minute!”

“Honestly, I’m not so sure myself.” Needles scratches the side of his face. “The fire support guys woke me up when they got here. That laser cannon went off, but we survived.” He jerks a thumb to the side. Huck follows it, and gapes at what he sees. The Separatist prison, already in ruins when they were there this morning, has been reduced to a pile of dust.

“How did we live through that?!” Huck stares at the dead droids around him. They had to have been killed in the blast, too—in fact, now that he’s staring at them, some of their heads are kriffing melted into the dirt. His eyes bug out of his head. “We should not be alive right now.”

Needles gives him a sideways grin and helps him to his feet, then leads him across the field of former-droids to the support ship. The medic trails behind and looks a little too enthusiastic to be performing a concussion exam when Huck sits down in the doorway.

“You look to be fine,” the medic says, meekly. “But if you start feeling weird, or dizzy, or anything, you let me know right away!” 

“Yeah, alright. Thanks.” Huck watches him retreat further into the ship, uninterested. That is, until he sees Commander Besh sitting on a cot, typing on a datapad. 

And Xeva is unconscious on the cot across from him.

“Xeva!” Huck shouts, scrambling over himself to get a good look at her. She survived too, but her jumpsuit has been torn to shreds. She’s hooked up to a monitor, and, notably, is no longer in handcuffs. Huck turns and grabs the medic by the shoulder and nearly shouts directly into his ear. “She’s a criminal, she needs to be contained! Don’t they tell you guys anything?!”

“Huck.” Commander Besh says in a disapproving tone. Immediately, he snaps to attention and turns to face him. Besh barely looks up from his datapad. “It’s fine.”

“All due respect, sir, but she’s a wanted criminal in our custody.” Huck shakes his head. “Even if she is injured, we have to make sure she can’t escape. We were charged with getting her back to Coruscant.”

Needles comes up next to him and lays a hand on his shoulder. “We aren’t taking her to Coruscant.”

“What?” Huck narrows his eyes, feeling like he’s getting played.

“The support squadron was close enough that they got footage of the blast. Look.” Besh holds his datapad out, where a holovid populates the space between them. It’s an aerial view of the clearing. He zooms in on their forms, and Huck cringes internally. Is his armor paint really that lopsided? Just as the blast from the cannon goes over their heads, he watches Xeva’s holovid form push Besh to the ground. She explodes up into the air and… gets hit by the blast ?!

Huck makes some kind of sputtering, surprised noise, but Besh just motions for him to keep watching. Xeva gets hit by the beam, her face contorts in pain. She sort of hovers in the air for a second, like she’s suspended there by a wire. Huck notices her cuffs are gone, so this has to be a Force trick, but there’s no way someone, even a Jedi, survives that. The beam doesn’t go through her, rather, it almost absorbs into her skin. She pulls her arms in, and through the grain of the vid, Huck can see her shaking. All at once, she throws her arms out and every droid in the clearing falls dead to the ground, the trees light themselves on fire, and the turret collapses. Besh zooms out to show the prison ruins disintegrating. Xeva hangs in the air for a little longer, until she goes limp and falls several meters to the ground. The vid ends. Huck is just staring at the empty space where it was.

“I spoke to General Sonstarr.” Besh starts, tone cool as ever. Huck feels like this isn’t real. There’s no way that video was real. “I told her that Xeva is gravely injured because she put herself in between us and death.”

Gravely injured. Huck turns to look at her unconscious body, swallowing hard. His mixed feelings about her turn quickly to sympathy and remorse. She can’t be the kind of criminal the Council says she is if she was willing to die to protect them. Up this close, he can see a bloody scab running down the side of her nose, amongst other streaks of blood coming from her hairline.

“The General consulted the Council. They agreed to drop the charges.” Besh finishes, looking over at Xeva with a rare sympathetic look. 

“Something about a statute of limitations, and not convicting the dead.” Needles says grimly. “They don’t know if she’s going to make it.”

Huck forgot there was a medic standing next to him until he spoke up. “None of us have experience working with Jedi. She’s near-human, too, but we aren’t able to determine the species.” 

It’s quiet in the transport as they take flight back to the Revolver . Besh seems very occupied with his datapad, and Needles won’t take his eyes off Xeva. Huck feels like he’s going to throw up.

-

There’s—

It’s—

Xeva.

Who’s there?

Xeva. Wake up. I’m here.

She opens her eyes, sees nothing but a black void. She’s floating.

“Who’s there?!” She yells into the nothingness.

You know who’s here. Nice to see you again.

“... Xigbar?”

She blinks, and she’s standing on a rooftop. Back home, the home from before . Before the castle, before the Organization, before she was a Nobody. She’s wearing a lab coat with a little ID card.

Vea Pleiades - Student Laboratory Tech - Mand’alor Chemical Company

Her old name. Her old face. It makes her stomach churn.

It’s nighttime. She remembers this night very well. 

A figure in a hooded black coat approaches her. She knows what’s coming, but the panic still grips her like a vice. 

“Nice night, isn’t it?” The figure says, voice deceivingly playful.

“I guess so.” She says, unable to stop herself. “You’re not supposed to be up here, you know.” 

“No, I’m not.” The figure produces a long, menacing weapon. Huge and gray, with sharp points that make it look like an oversized key. A blazing blue eye is set into the end, watchful. He laughs and points it at her. “Sorry for this.”

The figure lunges forward and drives the blade into her chest, and she can’t move, frozen in fear. He’s taller than her, so he curls over her as pain splits her sternum. She knows how this goes. Looking down, she watches her own blood soak through her white coat. A bright light bursts from the connection between metal and flesh. It’s searing hot, and it flies upward, out of her chest. She thinks she’s going to throw up from the pain, eyes rolling back in her head and breath stopping in her throat. The figure laughs, again, again, again, like he always does.

“Doesn’t get any easier,” he says. The light from her heart illuminates his face, and she winces at his features. An eyepatch and a scar. Like it always is. He presses his forehead to hers, and she can feel him invade every corner of her mind. Violent shakes wrack her body as she tries to force him back out, but he’s too strong. She never stood a chance. 

She goes limp, starts falling to the rooftop, but she never hits the ground. She’s falling through the air, now. Her coat becomes a purple robe, and her hair grows longer with every second she’s airborne. 

It’s a new rooftop this time. No, wait.

It’s a rooftop in the empty city surrounding the castle. Rain pours down. She doesn’t remember this night at all. Her rifle is in her hand, her lightsaber hangs from her belt. This dream is fuzzy, incoherent, events happening in flashes.

Xigbar is in front of her, aiming his guns at her. She shoots him, knocks him to the ground. He fires back and catches her in the shoulder and suddenly, horribly, she’s got her rifle jammed up under his chin. 

“Xeva, please…” he says, trying to get away from the barrel. She’s furious, ready to rip him to pieces, ready to watch the life drain from his eyes.

“ Ne’johaa !” She yells, so loud it sounds like thunder. He’s so scared, she can see him shaking in her grip. Vividly, she imagines burying her lightsaber into his chest, staining his coat like he did to her. Images of her first nights in the castle come to her, force hot tears out of her eyes. Xigbar laughs and slaps her on the back as she hits a target in the center. He fights alongside her in the training room, and he smiles when they’re finished. He’s holding out a case in front of her, filled with telescope lenses, and his smile is wide and crooked. It’s her smile, too.

Xeva doesn’t realize she’s squeezed her eyes shut until she opens them.

Her lightsaber is buried to the hilt in Xigbar’s chest. His eye is open but blank. She is holding her father’s dead body, but it doesn’t scare her. A smile splits her face, a manic laugh breaks its way from her throat. 

It’s Xigbar’s laugh, too. 

-

Xeva wakes with a jolt. There’s a mask over her face and she’s floating—for a moment, she thinks she’s still dreaming.

She realizes, in a mild panic, that she’s in a bacta tank. Peering out of the blurry tank, she sees that she’s in a medbay or sick ward that she doesn’t recognize. There’s nobody else in the medbay, just empty beds everywhere. The lack of information is making her heart rate rocket upward, so she tries to reach out in the Force to see if anyone’s there.

The amount of response she gets is overwhelming. Hundreds, maybe thousands of prescenses in the Force crowd their way into her head. She winces, then puts her shields back up. Where is she? She tries to think about the last thing she remembers. Needles, Huck, and the commander were there, there were a lot of droids… and after that, she can’t remember.

A door at the end of the room opens with a whoosh, and someone runs in. A clone, clearly, but she can’t tell who it is until they get up close to the tank. The circular tattoo comes into focus, and she sighs in relief.

“Kriff, Xeva. Hold on, I’ll get you out.” Needles’ voice is muffled through the tank. He punches some buttons on the console, and the bacta slowly drains. Her feet touch the bottom, and she figures out that her muscles are clearly not ready to be in use again. She slumps against the glass to hold herself up. Stars, how long was she out?

The tank finishes draining, and Needles opens the door, ready to catch her. She essentially falls into his arms. A wave of relief knocks into her. She is exhausted. “We thought you were dead.”

“Can’t get rid of me that easily,” she replies breathlessly, complete with a toothy grin. She pushes away from his chest, looking down at her clothes. “Are the GAR blacks standard for all the 770th’s patients, or is it just me?”

“Your jumpsuit was ruined from the blast. You’re wearing my blacks.”

“Oh.” Solves that mystery. Next question. “I’m not in handcuffs… that mean what I think it means?”

“Yeah.” Needles laughs, suddenly wraps her in a hug, and Xeva is shocked at the earnest display. “Yes. We’re not taking you to Coruscant.” Like he touched a hot pan, he pulls back, just as suddenly. Xeva wobbles a little bit without his support, but she gets her bearings quickly.  And maybe she uses a little bit of the Force to steady herself. “Sorry. Just. I didn’t think you’d wake up.”

“It’s okay.” She returns his laugh, endeared by the emotion he’s displaying. “How long was I gone?”

“Fifteen days.” A smile cracks his face. “You sacrificed yourself for Huck, Besh, and me, you bastard. None of the medics knew what to do with you.”

“I did?” She thinks back to the last thing she remembers. Vaguely, she remembers there being a laser cannon aimed right at her face. 

“You and your… Jedi tricks. You absorbed a laser cannon blast and shot it back out. Everyone in the GAR wants to know how you did it.” He mumbles the next part. “Maybe even some of the Jedi, too.”

“I don’t remember.” She says, simply. She really doesn’t, but that does sound like something she would do. She’d just have to absorb all the photons and re-emit them at a wavelength that would fry the droids. “Actually, was there UV radiation damage on those droids?”

“What?” Needles frowns. “I don’t know, maybe. Why?”

“Just thinking. If I was going to do that, I’d probably use a wavelength of light that your armor was built to withstand. UV is the easiest.” She thinks a moment more. “Actually, gamma is the easiest, but if I did that, I don’t think you’d be standing here.”

He laughs incredulously. “You are so ridiculous!” She giggles too, but his face suddenly turns serious. “There’s something I want to ask you. The Jedi Council isn’t out looking for you anymore, so there’s nothing you need to run from. I was wondering if you’d like to be part of the 770th Attack Battalion, as one of the vode .”

“You… want me as part of your squad?” She furrows her brow. 

“Well, I know that you’re looking to find your old man, and the Force is guiding you to do that, but, uh,” he clears his throat. “I hope that the Force is still telling you to come with us.”

“Hmm.” Xeva closes her eyes, meditating to see if the Force is pulling her in a certain direction. It seems like it’s just pulling her in the same way it was when she met the 770th on that moon, but she doesn’t want to say anything definitively. She can’t say that she wants it to pull her in Xigbar’s direction, not after the nightmare (vision?) she’d just had. Living alongside Needles doesn’t sound objectionable, regardless.

“And, if it helps you make a decision,” he continues. “Your… powers, or whatever you call it, are kriffing awesome, and I’d be making a poor tactical decision if I didn’t at least try to get you to fight with us.” 

“Don’t go givin’ me a big head, man.” She chuckles. “I’ll consider your offer.”

“Really?” He seems genuinely shocked.

“But I’m gonna need some food to think.” Her stomach growls pointedly. “Tell me you have a mess hall on this ship.” Needles’ grin grows wider.

“Come on.” He starts walking, jerking his head for her to follow. “I have brothers I’d like you to meet.”