Moments of Truth/Part 4

True to his word, Tirien had not stopped at Ryloth; instead, he pulled the Second Chance out of hyperspace in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere.

"Here," he told Narasi, handing her his datapad, "run these calculations while I get us reoriented."

Sitting in the co-pilot seat, Narasi took the datapad without looking away from the canopy. "Master, where are we?"

"At the moment, we're not really anywhere," he admitted. "The Corellian Run keeps going half a quadrant after it runs out of worlds. The Naos system is…about three hundred parsecs that way?"

He pointed over his shoulder while Narasi turned to stare. "Three hundred parsecs? And how far is Guudria from here?"

"Perhaps, if you run those calculations, someday we'll learn the answer," he hinted.

Rolling her eyes, Narasi plugged the coordinates into the navicomputer. She was unsurprised to find it did not have Guudria stored, and so she sat back while it sifted through astronomical data. "So what happens if we show up and the rumors are a bust?"

"Assuming there are no other problems? We leave." Checking the projected galactic map to correct himself, Tirien got the ship on course, then reclined to wait out the navicomputer too. "A more troubling question is what happens if they're not."

"This guy said there's a Jedi who's queen?"

"Multiple Jedi, including a Jedi queen," he corrected. "And not Sith—at least not obviously so."

"Well, it's not automatically bad, right?" she suggested. "The Tapani have Jedi Lords. Maybe they're just really isolated and wanted Jedi as protectors.  Like, oh, I dunno…the Sujimis sector?"

She tried a smirk, and was relieved when he gave her a dry smile in return. "Point taken. But it's still worth the checking.  The High Council knows about the Lords of Tapani, but I've never even heard of Guudria, let alone a Jedi queen there."

Narasi cocked her head. "Did you tell the Council where we're going?"

"I sent off a beacon message at Arkanis telling the Praxeum Council we have the bomb and we'll be delayed coming back. It seemed best not to dwell on specifics."

Grinning, Narasi said, "Meaning you weren't sure they'd approve of us gallivanting off to investi—"

"Something to that effect, yes," Tirien said, and Narasi laughed. "How's your arm?"

She looked at it. The flesh was blistered and peeling from her collarbone to her wrist. "Uh…is it possible I made it worse?"

"You'd have to be fairly strong in the dark side for that. It's just part of the healing process for a burn."

Narasi reached over her shoulder to rub a spot beside the strap of her tank top—an oasis of soft and strong skin in the burned desert. "It's weird feeling the bacta spot. I figured the rest of my skin would be like that now."

"When you get better at healing meditation, it'll work faster. Candidly, for a first go, this wasn't bad, Narasi.  How are your ribs?"

She poked them and winced. "They still hurt."

"And to breathe?"

She took a deep breath and felt her eyes widen. "Huh. I mean, it still aches, but it's not as sharp."

"Good," Tirien said. "First-degree burns may be annoying, but cracked ribs can be dangerous, especially if anything else happens."

"You know, if you really want me in fighting trim, we've got more bacta…"

"Which we may need for serious injuries if there's anything dangerous on Guudria." This time he smirked. "Nice try. If you want to spend more time in healing meditation, go right ahead; this will be your incentive to practice."

The navicomputer beeped, and Narasi's feigned grumble gave way to the real thing when she studied the readout and its schizophrenic zigzag plot. "Master, this is the most convoluted path I've ever seen."

"We're in Wild Space; the data isn't exactly well-maintained."

"How can it take a whole day to go a quadrant?! You can cross the whole galaxy on the Hydian in—"

"You've been spoiled by the major hyperroutes," he said. "Take it as a victory that we don't have to astrogate with the Force."

Narasi blinked. "Is that a thing?"

He smiled. "Lesson for another day. For now…"

He guided the Second Chance until it was lined up along the navicomputer's preferred route, then laid a hand on the hyperdrive lever. Narasi waited for the flare of stars until she realized he was looking at her expectantly. She took the lever too, and together they pulled it back and sent the ship hurtling into lightspeed.

She was a little touched until Tirien said, "There. Now if we bounce off a supernova it's both our fault."

He laughed at her glower, and after a moment she smirked. Then he said, "I'm going to monitor this for a while; there were a few microjumps on that course, and in case anything has shifted, I want to be able to react. You don't need to stay up here the whole time."

Narasi grunted. "Are you telling me I should go check on the prisoner?"

"I'm certainly not telling you to call her that…"

Sighing, she got up and nodded. "Right, right, the gentle jailers. I'll be back in a while."

Narasi had worn only a light tank top to avoid the tough tunic on her burned skin, but she was dressed as a Jedi from the waist down—including her equipment belt, on which she was still wearing Zaella's lightsaber as well as her own. Part of her felt awkward—she didn't want to tote it around like a trophy, and her recent experience with San Pavac had shown her she wasn't exactly a Jar'Kai master—but neither could she just leave it laying around. Tirien refused to carry a second lightsaber—Narasi gathered it was some sort of Makashi professional pride—and so she kept Zaella's weapon, wondering how the Twi'lek was going to react.

She could tell Zaella noticed, and the answer was 'not great'; Zaella's mouth twisted and her eyes narrowed. But she didn't ask for the lightsaber back, for which Narasi was grateful.

"Well, we're off," Narasi reported. "No stops at Ryloth, no problems."

"Greaaat," Zaella replied; she still had her bundle of things piled against the wall, and she leaned against it like a cushion. "I was looking through the closet—is this everything you brought along?"

"Well, I didn't leave much on the Crescentia," Narasi said. "A couple extra uniforms, maybe."

"This is everything you own?!"

Narasi rolled her eyes and pointed to Zaella’s gear. "Unless you changed your mind about going back to Ryloth, this is everything you own."

Zaella blanched; thinking of the most recent time Narasi had seen the Twi'lek's face that pale, she asked, "How's your head?"

She touched the spot where Ghrond's punch had grazed her, then poked it. "It aches a little, but it's better. It's not bleeding into my eye, anyway."

She opened her mouth, then closed it again and looked away. Sitting down a few meters away beside the galley door, Narasi asked, "What?"

"Nothing. Just…"  Zaella looked like she was undergoing some sort of internal debate before she adopted an expression that said she'd lost. "…how's your shoulder?"

Narasi touched it. It throbbed where the blaster bolt had scorched past, but throbbing was a marked improvement over burning pain. "Better. The bacta helped, but I like to think the meditation nudged it a little further along."

"Mmnnrrawhee!" Gizmo poked his head out of his cupboard, wiggling his ear nubs in a way Narasi had come to associate with a desire for affection.

She patted her leg. "C'mere, buddy."

He hopped over and laid his head on her leg, cooing when she scratched behind his stubby little horns. Zaella had taken the moment to pull her injured head-tail into her hands, but she stared at them from the corner of her eye, looking both baffled and frustrated. "Just…why?"

Narasi smiled down at Gizmo. "He's cute. He makes me laugh."

"Mmnnrrawhee!"

Stretching out with the Force to be sure Tirien was still minding the cockpit, Narasi reached her free hand back into the galley, opening a drawer with the Force and pulling a handful of greens to her grip. Setting her hand on her other thigh, she left the greens on her upturned palm; Gizmo sprang into her lap and ate the vegetable matter from her hand. "Good boy!"

Looking up, she saw Zaella still staring. "Not a pet person?"

"Not a lot of pet species on Ryloth. Besides…"  She stopped with a strange, twisted expression.

"Besides what?" When she thought about it for a moment, though, Narasi felt her own smile fade. "What, they'd hurt it? They'd hurt things you loved to make you darker?"

"Something like that, yeah."

Narasi cuddled Gizmo a little bit; he had demolished the greens in seconds, and he cooed in contentment. The image her mind had conjured disgusted and infuriated her at once. "They're sick people, Zaella—you see that, don't you? I mean, who does something like that?  Hurting a defenseless animal just to hurt somebody else?"

Zaella shifted her weight, her eyes troubled, but she said, "It works, though. Pain and rage can push you to power you could never achieve when you're calm."

"The light can be just as strong as the dark," Narasi insisted, trusting Tirien that it was true and trying to bury her own misgivings.

Zaella narrowed her eyes. "Yeah? Then why'd you use the dark side to defeat San Pavac?"

Narasi jerked, blindsided by the question. Gizmo croaked and butted her with his head for her attention; she patted him in a rote way. "That…that was a mistake."

"But it worked! You won!"

Narasi shook her head. "I could've beaten him without it. I lost control."

Zaella sat forward off her pile of clothes and other supplies. "Why didn't you kill him?"

"I didn't have to; I already beat him."

"So? He killed your parents, right?  Why didn't you want to finish him?"

Narasi's back rose at the blunt, uncaring way Zaella threw it in her face—He killed your parents, right?, like she had asked about the weather. Setting Gizmo down so she didn't jostle him, Narasi snapped, "Of course I wanted to!"

"So why not do it?"

"Because it's wrong!" Narasi snarled, exasperated. "Murder is wrong! How is that a hard concept for you?!"

Zaella shook her head. "I could feel the darkness in you when you were fighting him; you could be really powerful if you let yourself—"

"If I let myself fall to the dark, you'd be dead," Narasi cut her off. "You're still here because Jedi believe in mercy. How far do you think begging for your life would've gotten you with Ghrond or Izkara?"

Zaella's eyes flashed with fury, but Narasi felt her embarrassment too, and it made her ashamed in turn. Covering her eyes with her palms for a few seconds, digging her claws into her scalp and taking as deep a breath as she dared, she blew it out again and said, "Sorry. I didn't mean to throw that in your face."

"No, I get it," Zaella growled; she clearly had not taken the same few seconds to purge her anger. "You're the great Jedi taking pity on the poor little Rim girl who couldn't hack it in the fight. 'Yeah, we'll pity her enough not to kill her, poor thing.  Free her?  Oh no, we'll keep her nice and locked up in our ship where we can save the poor dear—or maybe just gloat'."

"We want to help you, Zaella," Narasi said.

"Who said I wanted your help?! You think you know what's best for me?  You have no idea what I've been through."

"Oh, spare me," Narasi snapped, her tempering rising again. "You think you've had it rough? I'm Zygerrian!  You walk into any place in the galaxy and the worst they'll think is that you're attractive—maybe you're a dancer or something.  I walk into 'decent' places and people talk behind their hands about how the place's gone to hell—and that's if they let me walk in at all!  The only Zygerrian in the history of the Jedi; the one good guy fighting millennia of stereotypes and knowing the stereotypes are mostly right!"

"That's your big burden?" Zaella fired back. "People say mean things about you? Oh, what a tragic life you've led!  How many times has Tirien beaten you, or sent you to get tortured, because you weren't strong or fast or smart enough?  When was the last time somebody sent you out naked into a desert to stagger around until your entire body was burned like that?  When did the Jedi rent you out to a brothel like a piece of meat because you backtalked too many times?"

Narasi recoiled, stunned out of her anger. "Force, Zaella…"

"Yeah, I didn't think so." The other woman's eyes blazed. "And you think you've had a rough life because your mommy and daddy got killed and people call you bad names? You have no idea what rough is, Jedi.  Not a clue."

Even the taunt about her parents only got a flicker of anger going, and the guttering fire was extinguished quickly; Narasi was too rattled to hold onto it. "I'm so sorry, Zaella…"

"Don't." Zaella's voice was hard, but her jaw trembled. "Just…just don't. Can we be done bonding now?"

Narasi struggled for words, but everything she could think of would only make things worse. After a moment of failed attempts, she set Gizmo down, stood, and walked back to the cockpit. Tirien sat watching the hyperspace timer count down; he didn't look up at her arrival, but he flicked a finger and her chair turned out for her.

Narasi fell into it, rubbing her hands together. "Did you hear that?"

"Most of it."

"Did you know?"

"I guessed." He looked up at Narasi, his eyes tight. "The Sith are evil, Narasi; their way of life is built on suffering. They think being miserable is essential to unlocking the Force's strength, because they confuse being destructive with real power."

It wasn't too hard for Narasi to pity Zaella; she had only known the Twi'lek a few days. But… "Do you think Alecto was trained like that?  And Vandak, and General Seldec…?"

Tirien leaned back in his seat, frowning in thought. "Seldec was different; he went to Aresh already a fully-trained Jedi Knight. Who knows what Vandak experienced in learning the ways of the Force.  Alecto, and people like her?  I don't know whether they experienced the same things Zaella did, but I'm sure their upbringings had just as much misery."

He blinked and focused on Narasi. "But whatever shapes them, Sith Lords who commit to the dark side still have to be stopped. Their lives may influence their actions, but not excuse them.  Some of them might be redeemable…"

He trailed off, a strange look on his face. Narasi asked, "What about Zaella?"

Tirien looked down the corridor. "We'll have to wait and see."