xi.
LIGHT ON ALL SIDES

✶

"I'm thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it's hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow."
— Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things

Fallon imagined a war.

Well, more accurately—Fallon imagined another war. This fight did not lay waste to the galaxy, however; it was a smaller fight, a softer one, and its claim was staked over her dress, the borders of fabric its battleground. The golden thread that stitched each segment together became the line, the frontier, that divided each warring nation; a river perhaps, weaving and wending, or a great canyon split open like a skull.

Fallon traced battle plans with a lazy finger, imagining trenches and encampments, unmarked graves and rushed memorials. Her current campaign was staged on her left thigh, where her dress faded from the colour of dawn to the dark that came just before it. Far from the sounds of a real war—of shouting, first, then screaming, then silence, sudden and stilling—it was instead fought to the symphony of Satine and her confidants. A song, Fallon only needed to hear a single verse before she knew the melody. It was simple, really, artless: a sentence here. Then a silence, wherein, if Fallon cared to lift her head, she would see Padmé and Mina bowing their heads in agreement. Then, a laugh, and some idle chatter, and a question directed at Fallon to keep her interest. Mhm, she would say, and then she would return to her imaginary war and its imaginary glory.

The Order would be proud. At least, Kil would be; every plan Fallon executed, every order, proceeded without fault nor failure. Not a single casualty had been suffered, and even though Fallon, fantasies aside, knew this to be practically unachievable, and laughably childish, she was satisfied with her work. No soldiers lost, no, not a single one—no civilians, either. No men, or women, or children.

No sons, no fathers. No daughters.

No mothers.

Fallon thought to give her troops a rest, and so she did, allowing her attention to be drawn back to reality. The convention was held just below the throne room dais, in tall chairs set around a table laden with fruits, nuts and cheeses. As she tuned back into the sound of Satine's voice, Fallon reached for some fruit. She didn't eat it, but rather inspected it, looking it over with as much interest as she could muster; turning it over in her hands, warming it against her skin. Like she had the lily from Satine's bouquet, Fallon pressed her nail into the fruit—a fig, she thought, imported, for she did not recognise it as native to Mandalore—and sliced open the skin, cajoled its flesh into her palm, pressed its seeds between her fingertips. Its juice, red and sticky like blood, pooled in the lines of her hand, filling them as light did the iron hearts on the palace floor.

Fallon split the fig in half and brought it to her lips, sucking out the seeds first and then the flesh; she was wholly dedicated to this task, though her mind did wander. How would she confront Satine? She had quelled her anger earlier, forced it back from her lips and down her throat into the place in her heart where it had made a home. Now, she found it returned. Returned, and ravenous, it would not be sated—not by fruit, and not by Fallon.

Only the world could satisfy its hunger. Only Mandalore.

But Mandalore was not hers to give—nor was it hers to take.

It was Satine's. Fallon shifted up to watch her aunt, locking her jaw. It took a moment for the girl to properly register what the older woman was saying, and when she finally did, she wished she hadn't. Satine's words only served to stoke the fire further, only fanning the flames that licked at Fallon's chest.

          "...and the war, in itself, is futile."

Fallon's fingers tightened around one of the few figs she hadn't yet slaughtered; its predecessors lay in a line on the arm of her chair. It must be so easy for you to call this war futile, she thought to herself, as she clenched her hand into a fist, feeling juice ooze into her palm. To think it unnecessary, to think it needless. You sit here with your friends and your fruit—but let us visit Felucia, or Saleucami.

          Or Christophsis, perhaps, where my friends fight Separatist forces as we speak. As we sit. Let us visit one of those war-ravaged planets, and let us see how futile your words become. How unnecessary. How needless.

          How pathetic. Fallon looked down to her hand, eyes catching on the juice that dripped steadily from the ends of her fingertips, following the lines of her hand like the channels of a river to the sea. In the sun, it glistened blood-red.

The fruit, at least, would feed the men who were fighting for such futility. Give them something sweet to suck on, to savour, before they returned to battle. At this thought, Fallon's anger flared again. She tuned out, letting it simmer, and continued to pick through the figs, laying each carcass down after she had ripped out their flesh with her teeth. It was only when the Duchess spoke of Mandalore specifically that Fallon began to pay attention again, lifting her gaze from her graveyard of fruit; Mina had said something of her home—the dense, jungle-swamped Onderon—that had prompted Satine to speak, with glowing, sunlit pride, of hers.

          "Mandalore has come a long way since the Civil War," she said, a smile growing on her lips. Fallon's eyes narrowed, her stomach somersaulting. She felt sick at the sight of that smile, knowing her own was almost exactly the same. (Almost. She wore the face of a woman she had never met, a woman she would not have been able to recognise in a crowd if it weren't for Kil. Whose fault was that? She no longer had to wonder.) "We've made sacrifices, but look around you." Satine gestured vaguely with a dainty hand, her skin soft and smooth and free of the roughness that came with training, with war. Another difference between them—Fallon counted them and kept them close to her heart, like talismans and charms to ward off some bad omen. "It was worth it."

Fallon clenched her jaw, her teeth a string of pearls, strung to break. We've made sacrifices.

          It was worth it.

Was it?

Fallon looked pointedly away, setting her eyes upon the mural on the far wall. Rendered in rich colour and abstract shape, Fallon had seen it a thousand times. Her aunt, Satine Kryze, the Duchess of Mandalore, the beautiful, the lawful, the graceful, always watching, always waiting.

The photograph had been taken right in front of the mural. Fallon knew the room so well she was sure she could determine exactly where the image had been taken from, where the photographer had stood to capture her aunt, and her mother.

Her aunt, pale, beautiful, breakable. Her mother, with her piercing green eyes, and her hair, red as the seeds in Fallon's hand. Her hair, as red as blood in the sun.

          We've made sacrifices. It was worth it. Satine's voice. So soft, so smooth.

          Her name is Bo-Katan Kryze. Kil's now. Kind, and comforting. The Duchess exiled her to Concordia.

          You really are a Kryze. And Hiro. Her words still had teeth, and Fallon's flesh was still caught between them. Are you afraid of what you'll find under all that talk?

Anger rose once more in Fallon's throat, flowing towards it like it had been slit, flowing towards it like blood.

          Are you afraid?

Fallon closed her eyes. The photograph is gone, and so is the mural, and so is the throne room, and so is the world—it all disappears, and Hiro is here, instead. She laughs with Fallon, and their hands are sticky with the sweet-spiced syrup of uj cake, the taste of it lingering on their tongues. They sit on the steps leading up to a building—perhaps it is the palace, perhaps it is the temple. Fallon doesn't know, and she doesn't care: all she knows is that the sun is setting, and that the light that loiters turns everything good, and golden, and unknowable. All she knows is that she is home.

          Are you afraid? Hiro asks again.

          No, Hiro. I am not.

Fallon opened her eyes.

          "Onderon, of course, has been part of the Confederacy since the outset of the war," Mina was saying. Fallon listened to the woman speak as she reached for a napkin to wipe her hands with—but her stare didn't leave Satine, not for a second. "Lux and I have spent days on end conjuring up ideas, thinking of ways to restructure our home. Make it better. Stronger." A pause. "It must remain between us, you understand, but I do not hold our king in high regard. He is a usurper."

Fallon lifted a brow. "A usurper?" Her words felt odd and rusty from disuse, serrating the inside of her cheek as they left her lips.

Mina looked to Fallon, surprised to hear her speak. "Yes, dear. He took the throne from his predecessor and forced him into exile."

          "How?"

          "Our old king, Dendup, chose to remain neutral when the war began. His choice gave rise to militant sympathisers, and to the Confederacy. Onderon was claimed by Separatist forces not long after that, and the throne was next. King Rash rules Onderon now."

          "Interesting."

Padmé smiled softly. "It must seem black and white to you, Fallon, due to your—" She paused, then continued smoothly, "upbringing—the idea of planets being claimed by either side of a war, so definitively. But sometimes, most of the time, actually, it's so much more complicated than that. It might be better for Mandalore to stay neutral in this war, but for a place like Onderon, with a different ruling system, a different culture, it could be safer to choose a side. To make allies with whomever you can, even if they aren't—pardon me here, Mina—the most savoury of characters. You do what you can to keep your people alive."

          "I suppose you're right." Fallon scrunched her nose. "But I cannot quite comprehend an entire planet deposing their ruler. And I can't begin to imagine the type of person who would lead that charge."

It was Mina's turn to smile now. There were faint lines on either side of her mouth where previous smiles had once been. "There are still many who disagree with what Rash did, and what he continues to do—you will find that my son is one of these people, and considering certain aspects of Rash's rule, I am inclined to agree. But you must do what is better for your people, your fellow man—that would be why there has been little uprising. Onderon would rather be united under an unfair rule, than divide themselves and draw the attention of a greater, crueller authority."

Fallon frowned slightly. Mina cleared her throat. "Let me put it a different way. Imagine you are one of two siblings. Your mother is harsh, and her punishments are harsher still. Do you follow?"

Fallon gave a plaintive mhm. Mina smiled, continuing: "Your mother keeps a tidy house. One day, you and your sibling are running through the halls—chasing each other—when one of you knocks over a vase."

          "It was the work, however accidental, of only one of you. But both of you will suffer your mother's wrath. So you help hide the pieces, so no one has to be hurt. Do you understand?"

          "I think so." Perhaps the act of covering it up was noble, one that helped a fellow citizen to avoid suffering at the hands of a cruel ruler. But to Fallon, it seemed less a kindness, and more a kind of complicity. A conspiracy.

(With war, it always came back to children. Didn't it?)

          "Look at it this way, Fal," Satine began. Fallon's eyes narrowed. "As a ruler, you must do what you can to help your people. Mandalore is lucky in that we have been allowed by the Senate to remain a pacifist nation. But not all planets had this opportunity—so they must make compromises."

          Are you afraid? "Oh?"

          "Yes. Compromises, sacrifices. They must do what is necessary."

No, Satine did not need to be violent to wound. She did not need to be violent at all.

          "Was exiling my mother necessary?"

Everything was silent. Everything was still.

Satine did not speak; she simply stared. So Fallon spoke for her, her heart her shield, and her sword her tongue. "Was exiling your sister necessary, Satine? Was Bo-Katan Kryze the compromise you had to make?" A pause, and then Fallon added, her voice full of venom, "The one you wanted to make?"

          "Fal, I—"

Fallon stood so quickly she startled the three women before her. The figs fell, and so did her imaginary soldiers, toppling off the battlefield of Fallon's dress and disappearing into the unknown. "'Fal, what', exactly? Can you deny it?"

          "It is far more complicated than how you've made it sound—"

          "That isn't a no," Fallon snapped. "But it's all I needed to hear."

She began to walk, limbs moving as if disembodied, as if they belonged to someone else and desperately needed to return to them; they carried her away from the throne room, away from Satine's cries of Fallon, come back! Fallon, you have to understand!, and down one of the glass-walled corridors.

Sundari's palace, a glass heart. Just like the one in Fallon's chest, though not nearly as fragile.

          "Fallon, stop."

Fallon did not. She kept walking, shaking her head as she went. "What are you going to do if I don't? Exile me?"

          "Fallon, that is not fair."

          "Isn't it?" Fallon could catch glimpses of Satine's reflection in the windows, crystalline and over-exposed. False and distorted. "You couldn't even pretend it wasn't true."

          "Would you have wanted me to pretend?" Satine stopped following—Fallon saw her reflection cease in its movement, turning as still as a statue. "Fal, it isn't what you think."

          "How isn't it? She was here, and then she was gone, and then you shipped me off to the Order!"

          "Fallon, there's clearly something else that's upsetting you—"

          "Did you have them take me away because I was force-sensitive? Or because I was hers?"

          "Fal—"

          "Before you exiled her, or after? Did they pry me from her arms, Satine?"

          "Fallon—" Satine's voice broke, then. Perpetually fragile, Fallon had finally found a way to make it crack. "Fallon, stop."

Her chest was a boneyard, each rib something to trip over, to injure herself upon—and her heart, it was useless, as it always was, a soft and stupid thing. She ignored it, and its ache, and continued. "Do you think she will ever forgive you, Satine?"

          "Please, stop. Let us just discuss this calmly—"

          "Do you think I will?"

The words drew all air from the corridor, leeched all blood from the artery. Still, there was blood in the wound Fallon had opened, and blood on the knife she had used to do it. "Do you, Satine?" A smile came onto her lips then, as she too stopped, and turned; it was a small cruelty, but a sharp one. Hiro would have been proud.

          "Who told you?"

          "Kil."

          "He does not—" A pause, and Satine swallowed, a soft ripple down the flesh of her throat. "He does not understand."

          "He doesn't hide the truth from me, though." Fallon crossed her arms. "Not how you have."

          "Give me a chance to explain."

Fallon stared her aunt down, her jaw locked.

          Are you afraid of what you'll find under all that talk?

No. She was sick of talking. Tired of it. From here on out, there would be no more of it—no more of her heart, either, no more of its yearning. Only her hands, and the things she could do with them. The deeds.

          "You had fifteen years to explain, Auntie. Fifteen years you let me wallow in ignorance—let me wait, naïve and unknowing, in the dark." Fallon began to walk again, and Satine faded to periphery first, then light. "I will wait no longer."

✶

Fallon found Lux in a chamber that bloomed from the end of the corridor she had stormed down. She had not sought him out—what good would the company of a Separatist do her right now, however beautiful that Separatist might be?—but there he was, sitting upon the mezzanine that was cut halfway up the high wall of the chamber. Hunched over, with the small of his back pressed against the glass panelling and his legs crossed and draped over the railing, he seemed in a state of focus. From what Fallon could tell from where she stood, at the chamber entrance, he was reading something. A datapad, most likely.

She watched him for just a few seconds, really, but they felt like an eternity, spun long and thin by stirrings of both jealousy and admiration. Chrysaor had complimented her before, called her pretty, and beautiful, and alluring, all those common Core World tricks—already-syrupy words made sweeter by the way he spoke, the way his voice, honeyed, smothered things and made them easier to swallow. But the flush that rose in her cheeks, the heat that seared through her chest, a white-hot knife, seemed lukewarm in retrospect. She supposed however she had looked back then paled to what she was now, what Dinesa's careful work had made her: glossed and graceful and delicate as glass. Lux did not need such tricks.

His beauty was easy, effortless—from the crease between his brows as he drew them together to the slight swell of his lip as he bit it, apparently in focus. Again, she was not his only admirer: the light favoured him, touching his face, his features, as a lover might, tracing the softest and most delicate parts.

          Utreekov. Stupid girl—stupid boy! Contempt was a seed sown in Fallon's chest, mothered and well-tended to. In her study of Lux Bonteri it sprouted, shooting a green stalk of envy through her heart.

Fallon considered turning around and leaving him be. Leaving him to luxuriate in the light that loved him so dearly, leaving him to whatever it was on his datapad. But an artery can be opened at both ends, and at this one's opposite was Satine. Satine, and all she had taken. Satine, and all Fallon had lost.

So she stepped through—away from Satine, and towards Lux. Away from Satine, and into the sun.

The boy looked enthralled in what he was reading so Fallon, understanding the feeling, stood at the mouth of the chamber, still, silent. A minute passed. Two. She took a step forward, opened her mouth to call his name—and then he was looking up, and he was seeing her, and he was smiling.

          "Fallon! I mean," Lux corrected himself, "your Ladyship!" He swung his legs back over the mezzanine-side of the railing and began down the staircase. With legs as long as his, he closed the distance swiftly; in an instant he was standing before her, still smiling.

A silence.

Then: "What's wrong?"

Fallon answered too quickly—"Nothing's wrong." She looked him up and down, searching for something to pass judgement on. Her eyes settled on his hands, idle at his sides; he was holding something, hiding it, half out of sight. She shifted her weight to one side, ducking her head to peer at whatever it was.

A book. Not a datapad, but a book. A real book, made of paper and, presumably, ink: it was leather-bound, and just under the height of her lightsabre. Fallon had never seen one before, not up close—when he craned his neck to see what her gaze lingered upon, he cleared his throat, smile sobering, and stowed the artefact away inside his coat. So, she supposed she never would. Clearing her throat too, she forced what she hoped was a diplomatic smile. "Enjoying the palace?"

          "You seem upset." Lux was already smiling again. "I am—it's beautiful. I can't believe you get to live here."

Fallon brushed off both his comment and his concern: what did he, a Separatist first and stranger second, know of her or her emotions? And what did he care? She began to walk, and gestured to him to follow, through an archway beneath the mezzanine. Each step sent shadows rippling across the floor. "You get used to it after a while." The lie was easy, if not bitter. Mere days ago, she had wanted nothing more than to stay here, be here, forever. Now, she was sure that that was the last thing she wanted—to be stuck here, stranded. "What about you?" Fallon coaxed interest into her voice, inquiry. "What's Onderon like?"

          "Onderon?" Lux paused, then, and shook his head. "I don't live on Onderon."

          "No?"

          "No." He cleared his throat again, as if the words he wanted to say were caught in it. "I live on Raxus. Where the Separatist Senate is."

          "Oh, right." That made sense. Raxus Secundus, commonly known as simply Raxus, was the capital planet of the Confederacy, and acted as Coruscant did to the Republic. "What's Raxus like, then?"

          "Beautiful. It's very..." Lux searched for the word, his eyes flicking from left to right, as if his entire vocabulary was laid out before him, all his syllables and sounds threaded through the empty air, waiting to be selected and then spoken. "Lush. There's lots of trees."

Wow. Trees. "So, nothing like Mandalore."

          "No, not at all." Lux stifled a laugh as he turned his head to watch her, perhaps hoping to catch her eye. He did—briefly, barely—but then Fallon was staring straight ahead, intent on ignoring him.

It was difficult. His eyes were very nice. Very calming.

          This shade of blue, then this, and this, and this.

She wrenched herself from her thoughts. Would she ever face Lux Bonteri on the battlefield? No, most likely not. And on the off-chance that she ever would—unless those skinny, sapling-arms of his concealed some sort of secret, superhuman strength, she would no doubt annihilate him if she did.

But there was still the integrity, the principle of the thing. As her opponent, as her enemy, it wasn't fair that he had such an advantage over her: his beauty. Well, she thought to herself, let us fight. A careful, calculated strike with my lightsabre and just like that your beauty will be gone, a scar left in its place. Silver, like a smile, though not quite the type of smile you are used to.

(But maybe he would look even nicer with a scar. He might have the face for it...)

(She supposed she would have to wait and see.)

          "...wisp trees, native to your moon. Concordia, right?"

Fallon blinked back into focus. "Sorry, what?"

          "The torrent wisp trees."

She had no idea what he was talking about. "Yes? What of them?"

          "They're native to Concordia—your moon—aren't they? You know the ones?" Lux slowed to a stop, body slanting to face hers. His brows furrowed together, before he attempted to draw an image in the air. It looked vaguely cloud-shaped. Maybe she was bad at guessing. Or maybe he was bad at drawing. One of them was coming up short. "Windswept leaves, green-ish, all leaning to one side? With the trunk growing the same way?"

Light cut into the side of his face, a scalpel. Fallon could feel the burn. "Could you show me again? I didn't quite catch it."

          "Yes, of course." He motioned again, offering a lopsided sort of smile. All lips, no teeth, it pressed soft dimples into his cheeks. "You know what I'm talking about?"

Fallon shook her head innocently, somehow managing to stifle her laugh. Though every move he made was imbued with natural grace, reminding Fallon something of a tree bent to the breeze, there was something distinctly comical about his ministrations. Something comical, and something binding; his hands were knives, carving the light as he drew them through the air, and Fallon could not look away. "No. Again, please."

          "Once more, then." His smile grew, then stopped. So did his hands. "You're making fun of me, aren't you."

          "Yes. Very much so."

          "You have no clue what I'm talking about."

           "Nope. Not even the slightest idea."

A silence. Lux let his hands fall back to his sides. "I feel embarrassed."

          "You should." Fallon smiled small as she tucked her hair behind her ears. Yes, she smiled. At a Separatist. Surely one smile—one, singular—wouldn't hurt.

And it did not. At the sight of it, Lux brightened. "I'm glad I entertain you."

          "I never said I was entertained."

          "What else should I do, then? Sing? Dance?"

          "Depends. Are you any good?"

          "I sing to plants."

A gentle scoff, but she could feel a smile, a real one, working its way across her lips—slow, like poison. No blood, no wound, no antidote. "Probably because they don't have eardrums you can burst."

He laughed. "Amongst other reasons, yes."

          "I pity your unwilling audience."

          "And your pity is appreciated." Lux smiled, tilting his head to the side. "So you don't know about the trees?"

          "No." Fallon paused. "I've never been to Concordia."

          "Really?"

          "Like I told you—I study off-world."

Lux nodded, and all was silent between them for a few moments. Then: "Are you hungry?"

          "No." Suddenly, Fallon was acutely aware of the juice dried in the palms of her hands, sticky like blood but lacking the metallic bite of its scent. "I slaughtered an orchard's worth of figs while they were talking—I'm full. Maybe forever. But I could have something to wash it down, if you're hungry." Another pause. "We could find the kitchens."

          "I've never wanted to hear five words more."

          "You must live a sad life."

Lux flashed her another smile. Fallon returned it. "I do—lead the way, your Ladyship, and let's see what we can do about it."

✶

They found the kitchens easily enough, and with them, a plethora of foods and beverages that was more than enough to brighten the sad, sad life of a Separatist. Though there was a separate dining hall in an adjoining room—meant for Satine and any guests of similar social standing—the kitchens had a small eating area, an island counter topped with smoothed-over stone. Pulling up stools, the two sat on opposite sides of each other; Fallon, in the shadow cast by a particularly tall dinnerware cabinet, and Lux, with his back to the sun.

Despite the vicious hunger Lux claimed was slowly killing him while they wandered through the corridors—his words, growing more dramatic in their delivery the further they walked, were along the lines of "Oh, to die so far away from my home! Tell my mother I love her, your Ladyship! Promise me you'll tell her!", and Fallon had never pitied plants more—he hadn't taken much from the kitchens' stores. Aside from the steaming cups of cardamom tea he had made them, sweetened with spoonfuls of honey, there were only a few plates set upon the table they sat at: one shallow dish supported a carefully-constructed pile of figs, the same ones Fallon had at the convention, snatched from a crate of imported fruits and vegetables; another, at Fallon's recommendation, held a small stack of uj cakes, each dessert a gleaming gold ingot in the light.

Fallon washed her hands at the sink, scrubbing out the sap, first, and then the anger. Then, she dried off and, finding the singular sip of tea she'd had not quite sweet enough for her taste, returned to the table accompanied by a pot of honey. Two spoons wasn't enough. Nor was three. It when she was at her fourth dollop of honey that Fallon looked up to see Lux staring at her. A smile, gentle but amused, grew on his lips, pressed soft dimples into his cheeks.

           "Don't judge." Fallon dropped her gaze back to her cup, eyes tracing the swirling trails of unmixed honey, twisting and threading gold through the tea.

          "I'm not judging."

           "You are. So sorry that I prefer my beverages sweet." She took another sip and smiled to herself, finally satisfied. "Even sorrier that Separatists are so bitter, in tea and temperament alike."

          "Who said I was bitter?"

          "Your single spoonful of honey. It speaks volumes."

He laughed, as if what Fallon had said intended solely to elicit from him the sound. "For a pacifist, you seem gleefully bent on antagonising me."

          "Gleefully?" Fallon shook her head innocently, hiding her smile with her cup, "No, I take my 'antagonising' very seriously. My work is discrete, professional—in this line of business, there's no room for emotion."

This time, she meant to make him laugh. And he did. "So, that's your plan? To undermine me and, by extension, the Confederacy?"

          "Yes. It's a soft war, but a noble one." Fallon nodded solemnly. "I believe that you, Lux Bonteri, are the Separatists' heart."

He smiled. "Then you must be Mandalore's."

Fallon frozen. A silence settled over her, smothering her, suffocating.

          You are the Separatists' heart.

          Then you must be Mandalore's.

She cleared her throat and forced what she hoped was a nonchalant smile. "I wasn't finished, thanks. If you are the Separatists' heart, you must also be their downfall."

          "That's a lot of responsibility."

          "If that back of yours can turn on the Republic, surely it can bear the weight of the Confederacy."

          "Again—for a pacifist, you're awfully anti-Separatist."

          "You should try the uj cake." A swift subject change, and a sloppy one. "It's my favourite."

Lux looked at her like she was a bruise upon his skin. When he spoke, it was gently, as if he were testing its ache. Hers. "That's for dessert. The figs are first."

          "Is that how you got to be so tall? Fruits and vegetables?"

          "Something like that." Lux opened his coat and from it, procured a knife, small, foldable and from what she could tell, handmade. The blade glinted in the light, piquing her interest: in her war, of lightsabres and blasters and battle droids, it had been a long time since she had seen a weapon like that—though in his hands it didn't seem like one. Fallon's eyes remained locked on the blade as Lux slid the blade from its sheath, took a fig, and began to cut it into thin, paper-like slices. They fell like leaves, and Fallon was mesmerised, stuck in her own stare. At some point, her attention shifted from the knife, to the figs, and then finally, to his hands.

She had expected them to be dainty, delicate; soft as if they hadn't seen a day of work nor war in their entire life. But instead, Fallon found a landscape of scars, silver over his knuckles, his fingers, his palms, varying in width and whiteness. They were a far cry from the crescent moons that could have been found upon Chrysaor's skin this time last cycle; these scars didn't seem self-inflicted. Not intentionally, at least: the knife was old, well-worn and well-loved, and for a moment Fallon could see him, a younger Lux, whipping out his knife with boyish excitement—it was a gift, perhaps—and, in his haste, slicing open the skin of his palm.

Fallon's thoughts aside, he seemed to have gotten the hang of it by now. He split the fruit into a dozen or so discs, each slivered thin and translucent. Embarrassment twisted in Fallon's chest, a knife not unlike the one grasped between Lux's forefinger and thumb; of course he, ever beautiful, ever better, ate his figs with a civility to which she could not compare. Of course he was more careful. Of course he looked before he cut. Of course he thought for a moment more than she ever had on those violent urges, that desire to tear flesh with his teeth and not care for the juice or sap or blood he spilled.

His beauty and light and heart aside, Fallon still hated Lux. But when he offered her a slice of fig, she accepted it, her lips parting the tender fruit and her teeth pulling it from the rind. In this way, they ate the entire plate of figs, Fallon taking as Lux gave and gave and gave. By the time he was done, he could barely stomach half a uj cake, let alone a dishful. So the boy wiped his knife clean and divided one of the desserts into two equal parts, and again he offered some to Fallon.

And again Fallon accepted. She took her half between her fingers, inspecting it for a moment. It must have been purchased from one of Sundari's many bakeries; it had that distinctive stamp pressed into its surface, now separated into halves by Lux's careful hand. An iron heart split in two.

They eat in silence. And then, Lux is swallowing his last bite, and then he's smiling, and then he's telling a joke, easy and effortless and with a punchline that's just too predictable. And Fallon resists it at first—the laughter that gluts in her throat, as thick and sweet as the syrup glazing her lips, as divine as the sunlight that pours through the windows like a wound bleeding ichor. But like the growing flood at the walls of a dam, it's patient, and if nature is patient then so is Lux: when it comes, her laughter, it doesn't stop. And neither does he. If Fallon Kryze could fight a war, Lux Bonteri could end one. Of this, she was sure.

And the world as Fallon knew it could end right here, right now—while her mouth is full of laughter or food and there are secret things to soften her blows, like smiles, like Lux, like the sun—or, it could start. Either way, she is at peace: there will always be more cardamom tea to drink, and more honey to sweeten it, and, as Lux promises her, his voice like a prophet's, more jokes to tell.

They found the greenhouse, eventually; after cleaning up any traces of their presence in the kitchen, Fallon and Lux returned to the hallways, moving like blood through the very arteries they resembled, entering the heart deoxygenated and leaving it full of life.

As Lux had said, it was beautiful.

If the throne room was the heart of the palace, the greenhouse was its lungs; entrapped by a ribcage of columns and support beams, the chamber was almost completely constructed from glass. Light fell in layers, thick and thin and twirling, twisting, through damp corners and dewy leaves. The front half of the greenhouse was dedicated to smaller plants, flowers and shrubs and succulents, each family housed in stone-walled beds full of soil; while behind the beds rose an orderly line of trees, or at least saplings desperately trying to be. They all seemed the same to Fallon, but Lux's eyes flickered to each specimen with a palpable familiarity, like he was recognising old friends, ones he'd almost forgotten.

He certainly greeted them like old friends; in an instant he was by the trees, those blue eyes of his glued to trunks, branches, leaves.

          "Should I leave you two to yourselves?" Fallon asked, lifting a brow.

Lux took a moment to respond. "No, come over here."

          "I'm serious. You need to get a room."

          "Respectfully, your Ladyship, you aren't funny." The smile he gave her when he tore his gaze away from the trunk suggested otherwise. "Now, come over here."

          "Coming, coming." His voice held her attention like his hand might hold hers. In her head, his knife was a better fit. Still, she met him at the tree he was examining, her brow only rising higher. "What's so fascinating?"

          "I think this sapling has root rot."

          "Oh, right. Of course." Fallon had no idea what he was talking about.

          "Root rot. Rot, but it's in roots."

          "You're just saying the same words in a different order, Bonteri."

          "That, Kryze, is how language works." Lux looked up at her, barely suppressing a smile. She punched him gently in the shoulder. In reply, he contorted his expression into one of greatly-exaggerated betrayal. (Remember, Fallon—he is the Separatist. He is the traitor.)

(Not you.)

           "Just say it again, but for the common folk. My teachers and I don't have time for trees."

           "There's always time for trees." Lux beckoned her closer, and she stepped up to stand beside him. Her eyes narrowed in focus, though she was unable to locate what exactly incited the 'root rot' issue.

          "What am I looking at?"

Wordlessly, Lux's fingers curled beneath her chin, tilting her head up and guiding her gaze to a higher place on the tree's trunk. Completely separately of this—truly, it was wholly unrelated—Fallon felt her heartbeat in her throat. "It's just a tree," she said distantly, intent on keeping her eyes trained on the bark.

          "Not quite." With his free hand, he pointed to a band of bark, darker than the rest of the trunk. "Here," he said, then pointed to a depression in the smooth surface of the tree, "here," and finally, to a blackened, sap-bleeding growth at the intersection of a few young branches. "and here."

          "I don't understand."

          "They're all symptoms. The dark bands on the trunk, the depressed lines. The cankers up here—" Lux gestured to the growth, tumour-like, "are all characteristic of root rot."

          "I don't like that word. Cankers."

          "I don't like the word cankers either, nor the concept. They leave trees like these open to infection."

          "You lost me at cankers."

A small smile. "That was only the fifth word I said."

          "Sixth. And yes, exactly." She turned her head, conscious of his fingertips still against her skin, brushing against the flesh of her throat. He left no wound, but for some reason, the touch made her think of Chrysaor. And for some reason, the thought of Chrysaor and Lux coexisting in her head made her uneasy.

So she forced them both out.

He is the traitor. Not you.

Lux shook his head, laughing gently, and dropped his hand back to his sides. Internally, Fallon sighed with relief. "Well, if I have your permission to, your Ladyship, I'd like to try to fix the tree."

Fallon was pretty sure that it wasn't in her jurisdiction (if anything on Mandalore even was) but still, she nodded. And stepped away from him, for both her sake and Chrysaor's. "Please, be my guest."

Lux gave her a grateful smile, then began his process—yes, there was a process. Later, she would memorise it. First, he tucked the longer strands of his hair behind his ears, a sort of preface to the work he would be doing, of dirt and worms and digging. Then, he took out that book from before, and placed it carefully upon a stack of crates in the corner of the greenhouse, right beside a neat row of small, unused pots. Finally, he pushed up his sleeves. Fallon watched as the gold-stitched leaves on his cuffs disappeared into the folds of fabric, drowning in the cool blue waves of his coat.

Fallon intended to examine the book, but Lux proved, in that moment, to be much more interesting. Gently—no, tenderly—he ran his fingers across the surface of the sapling, as if to comfort it. Fallon wondered why, until her eyes caught the flash of his blade. She cleared her throat, confused, "What exactly are you going to do?"

Lux looked back at her. "I'm ridding it of the rot."

          "With the knife?"

          "Shears would be better. But I see none. And besides, my father gardened in his spare time—this was one of his many knives. It's made for this sort of thing."

          "Cutting trees and also fruit?"

          "Well," he smiled, "I like to think outside the box."

           "I don't really understand."

          "No?" Lux paused, drawing his brows together as he thought of how to explain this to her. "Think of this tree like a body."

          "Dead or alive?"

          "What a morbid question! Alive, obviously."

          "Clearly it wasn't obvious if I felt the need to ask."

He laughed. "You strike me as the type who asks anyway."

          "Well—"

          "Back to what I was saying," Lux continued, smiling sweetly when Fallon shot him a look, "think of this as a body. Just like a human one, it's capable of contracting infections, illnesses, disease. Say you get an infection on the hand. It spreads, its sickness seeping into your veins. You don't want it to reach the heart, so you have to amputate." He drew his knife down the canker he had shown Fallon before, revealing the pale inner flesh of the tree. A few more strokes and the attached branches, each barely the diameter of Fallon's thumb, came apart from the trunk. With them went the wound. "See?"

          "I think so."

          "You would think that removing parts of the tree would make things weaker, or maybe make things worse. But it doesn't." He shook his head. "It's the act of removal that allows things to grow. This part of the tree will recover, eventually, and it will heal, and it will grow stronger than before."

It didn't make much sense to Fallon. "So you've fixed it, just like that?"

          "No, not quite yet." He put down the knife for a moment, eyes scanning his surrounded for something. He procured a trowel from seemingly nowhere, and began to excavate the soil around the base of the sapling, turning over the earth expertly, a beast on its belly. "The canker is just a symptom—the disease is in the roots."

          "You can't just cut off its roots."

          "You can." A shrug, "Sort of. Sometimes. It might be necessary. Remember, your Ladyship, it's the act of removal—"

          "—that allows things to grow."

          "Mhm. It's true to life, too. Actual life, I mean. Not just plant life."

          "I gathered. Is that what the Separatists thought of the Republic? That it was some cancer it had to separate itself from?"

Lux laughed. "I didn't mean on that scale, but if you want to see it that way, then sure, I suppose. I actually meant situations. Or people."

          "People?"

          "Yes." Satisfied with his digging, the boy put down the trowel and stood straight. "Can you come help me for a moment?"

          "What do you need me to do?"

          "Put your hands around the base of the sapling here, the stem—" He guided her hands with his, closing her fingers around the plant. "And lift, carefully."

Fallon did as told, lifting. Up came the sapling, roots and all; Lux stood idle for a moment, simply observing, before leaning closer to carefully brush away the clumps of dirt attached to the root system. "Anyway," Fallon said, that secret strength coming in handy, "continue."

          "Continue? Oh, right." An apologetic smile, as his eyes strayed from his task to find hers. "As I was saying. People, situations, expectations, so on and so forth. Sometimes they need to be cut out."

          "Expectations can't just be cut out."

          "They can. And they should be, in some cases."

          "If you say so. But people? What about your friends? Family? Why would you ever want to cut them out?"

          "Look at these roots with me for a second."

Fallon bent her head to look at the roots. Fanned out in the open air, they resembled veins; thin, thread-like, the colour of bone, Fallon could imagine such a sight inside her chest, pumping blood in and out of her heart. Lux took up his knife again, tracing a length of lateral root. The point of the blade slowed to a stop at a lesion upon the root, blackish-brown as if burned. "These have supported the plant ever since it began to grow. But you see this lesion here? This rot?"

Fallon nodded.

          "It's what's killing the plant. Slowly eating it away."

She didn't know what to say. Perhaps Lux did, but he remained silent—he spoke in actions instead, holding the root taut against the edge of the blade. Holding her attention, too.

A flick of his wrist and the root—and its rot—was gone. "See?" Lux's voice was gentle. "It's not as easy as taking a knife to a literal plant—"

          "—Really? I wouldn't have guessed."

          "—but the lesson is there, somewhere."

          "Somewhere." An eyeroll. "Sure it is."

          "I'm serious, your Ladyship. There's an art to letting go."

          "And that art involves hacking off diseased roots with a pocketknife?" A feeble attempt to mock him, but it was too late; his words, however gentle, had already left a mark. She could imagine it—her, the rot, the disease, the decay. Satine, with her kindness that was more than capable of killing.

But then there was Fallon, who was more than capable of killing, too. Fallon, who had been there all along, eating away at the family tree, poisoning it, corrupting it. Fallon, who was equal parts wound and weapon, who could not be so easily discouraged, and not by a knife.

Perhaps Lux was right. Perhaps she wasn't the rot.

Perhaps she was the one who had to cut it out.

          "It's not a pocketknife."

Fallon blinked back into focus. "Can I see it?"

          "Can you?"

          "May I see it?"

He flashed her a smile. "Of course. Just give me a moment." Lux worked in silence for a few minutes, cutting off the rest of the lesions, before exchanging his knife for the sapling. As Fallon took the tool into her hands, he took the plant, and coaxed it back down into the soil, humming all the way.

Fallon turned the knife over in her palm. As she had suspected earlier, it was handmade, but expertly so. At the very edge of its handle were the letters A.B., carved neatly. "You said this was your father's?"

          "Yes. We have a large estate back on Raxus. When he wasn't working, he was working on the gardens. I used to help him." A pause, as Lux began to fill in the divot he had made in the soil. He didn't bother with the trowel, having discarded it in favour of his hands. "You should come visit us. If not for me, then the plants."

          "Maybe I will." Fallon forced a smile. The Republic Senate would never allow her to step foot on Separatist soil. "What happened to your father? If you don't mind me asking—I don't mean to overstep."

          "He was killed on Aargonar—he was setting up a Separatist base there, when Republic troops attacked. He was an officer, in the Confederacy military," Lux added, his eyes not leaving the soil. "And yours?"

          "Mine? My what?"

          "Your father. Is he a duke? Or just Satine's consort?"

It took Fallon a few moments to register what Lux was saying. When the realisation dawned on her, it cleaved through her chest, carved a hole clean through. "Satine isn't my mother."

Lux flushed. "Sorry, I just—I just assumed. You look so much alike."

          "So I've been told." I am the daughter of no duchess.

          By looks alone, you might as well be.

The silence between them grew awkward again, and the sun above them weak. The day had worn thin, and night drew closer by the minute. Fallon cleared her throat. "My mother is Satine's sister. She left me when I was little, and my father with her."

          "Oh." Lux flushed a deeper shade of red. "I'm sorry."

          "Don't be." A pause. "You said you want to follow in your mother's footsteps. But have you—" Deep breaths, Kryze, "Have you ever wanted something else? Something more?"

          "What do you mean?"

          "I've..." How to say this? "I've lived my life one way as long as I can remember. But I don't know if I want that anymore. If I can even want it, morally."

Lux seemed glad for the subject change. His blush subsided slightly, though his face remained a light shade of pink. "What you do with your life is your choice, Fallon."

          "What if it isn't? What if it's been decided for me since practically the day I was born?"

He looked confused for a moment. Then, he smiled. "Then run away. I'll come with you."

Fallon rolled her eyes. "Funny. I think that counts as desertion."

          "My definition of it is flexible." Lux bit his lip in thought. "In seriousness—you deserve to have a life that belongs to you. So if you aren't happy, do something about it. You can talk as much as you'd like about wanting change, but if you actually want it...you might have to do it yourself."

A sigh. "Running away sounds like a better idea by the minute." Her tone was sarcastic, but she couldn't say she wasn't thinking about it, now that Lux had pointed it out. But whom would she take with her—if anyone? Hiro, maybe, if she could be convinced. Chrysaor...

They would be away from the Order at last. And that meant—

          "Raxus is in the Outer Rim Territories, just so you know." Lux cut her thoughts of Chrysaor off at the head. "Do remember to pick me up on your way out."

          "I thought you wanted to be like your mother."

          "I do. But I can do that in exile." A shrug, and then a smile that swept over the darkness of her thoughts, burning away the shadows and leaving her organs scorched, her insides immolated. "Probably." He stared at her for a few seconds, then turned back to his task.

And that was that. There was silence again, save for the sound of soil shifting. "I've been meaning to ask," Lux began, after a while, wiping away bead of sweat from his brow with his forearm, careful to avoid smearing his face with dirt, "what's with the diamonds?"

          "The diamonds?"

          "The diamonds," he repeated, those disarming eyes of his searching the greenhouse for an example. He found one, in the windows—he pointed to it, and in an instant, Fallon understood. "They were on the uj cake, too."

          "That's the iron heart."

          "The iron heart," he repeated. It sounded so soft from his mouth, even if what it was in principle was as sharp as they came. "Tell me about it. Why is it everywhere?"

          "It's—" Fallon cut him a glance, trying to divine insincerity from his expression. But she found none. "It's a Mandalorian thing, a symbol of our..." How had she explained it to Hiro? "Will. Our will, our ability to survive. It's like iron—Mandalorian iron. Beskar."

Lux nodded for her to go on, angling his body to face hers fully. His eyes were bright with interest—genuine interest.

It was getting harder and harder to hate him.

Fallon placed his knife on the edge of the garden bed, then stepped forward, closing the distance between them, extending her hand. "On our traditional armour, the iron heart is here—" With her finger, she drew the shape on his chest, as if drawing a rune, a protective incantation. "It symbolises us. Our planet, our people, our challenge."

When he spoke, his voice was quiet. "Your challenge?"

          "More." Fallon met his gaze; a knife of its own, it sliced her open. Good. Let the light in. Let it stay. "More hardship. More pain. More—"

Lux leaned into her touch. "More what?"

          "More glory," Fallon said swiftly. Then, her hand was back at her side, and she had stepped past Lux, and she had moved on from whatever that was. Her attention now was on the book he had placed upon the stack of crates, and on the book alone. "What's this?"

Lux was by her side in an instant, as if nothing had happened. He wiped his hands on the front of his trousers, brushing off the dirt. "That's my journal."

          "Oh?"

He took the journal in his hands, hesitating a moment before offering it to the other. "You can read it, if you'd like. But be careful. It has... things in it."

          "How specific of you. 'Things' like what?" Though it was the book she had been drawn to first, it was his hands she now stared at: the hands that had cut the fig without drawing a drop of blood; the hands that knew a wound and how to heal it; the hands that cured a plant of its illness and the hands that returned it to its home in the earth.

          "Pressed leaves, flowers. Little scraps of paper."

Fallon arched a brow, but made no audible judgement as she opened the book. The first page, written in messy Aurebesh: Artan Bonteri. Lux's father, she assumed.

Then, beneath it, in much neater handwriting: Lux Bonteri.

Fallon turned the page, conscious of Lux in periphery. His eyes remained on hers.

          "This is beautiful, Lux." And it was—the book began with illustrations, first of individual plants and then whole gardens, sprawling across the pages in gentle colour. Artan's writing accompanied these depictions, listing the names of plants, the thoughts he had about them, their scents and the seasons they thrived in.

A dozen or so pages in, his son made a reappearance: foraying into what Fallon imagined was considered Artan's territory before Lux gathered his courage to infringe upon it, he left his own notes in fresher, darker ink. A beautiful flower, but Mother is allergic; This tree is elegant, but it attracts that invasive species of birds; Avoid this grass—it's a weed! The writing then became Lux's, fully, and soon, the illustrations followed. He didn't have the confidence at first—the earliest ones were drawn in charcoal pencil, palimpsest upon the page, erased once and then again and again and again in an attempt to get it just right, the veins on this leaf and the thickness of this stem.

But eventually, he began to work in colour, creating for himself a world that was held together by roots instead of gravity. Lux's drawings had a definitive style to them, one that Fallon noticed and appreciated immediately—instead of composing designs for a complete garden, he drew individual species of plants, rendering them in meticulous, photo-realistic detail. Half of the plants Fallon had no name for, but Lux did, as well as their proper scientific titles. Included too were the planets he knew the varieties to grow on. Sometimes, the drawings were accompanied by a pressed leaf or flower; Fallon was careful not to touch these, anxious she would make a casualty of their beauty as she had the lily, the fig.

          "It belonged to my father first," he said quietly.

          "You think just like him. I can see it in the way you both write."

          "He had such a way with things—you should have seen him. It was like sorcery. In his hands I swear something dead and decayed could come back to life."

Fallon looked up at Lux, a smile curling at the corners of her lips. "And here you are, a charlatan with smiles and sagacity to distract from your devastating lack of skill."

          "Here I am." There was a glint in his eye.

          "So do you just collect leaves and flowers?"

          "Mhm. I press them in this very book—just slip them between the pages with waxed paper and apply a weight. It preserves them." He pointed to a particular pressed flower, something that he had denoted as a candlewick. "When I can, I take a cutting, so I can try to grow the plant myself back at home."

          "What's a cutting?"

          "Little pieces of a plant you can take to grow, or graft it. Like a seed, but it's mature. Have you ever gardened before?"

Fallon shook her head.

          "You've never taken care of a plant?"

          "No. I've never had the time."

          "Well," Lux scooped up one of the unused pots before sidestepping her, snatching up the trowel and striding down the aisles of smaller plants. He returned a few minutes later, smiling, with the pot full of dark, damp soil. All brown, the only change of a colour was a single succulent leaf, half-buried in the dirt.

          "That's a leaf, Bonteri."

          "It'll grow into a fully-fledged plant before you know it."

Was that how it worked? "I'm not good at taking care of things." Fallon frowned—she could count those things on her fingers. Hiro, Chrysaor, herself. All of them broken in some way, or pushed to the point of breaking. Hiro and her masks, her words, her teeth, her claws. Chrysaor and the scars on his skin like crescent moons, like the smiles they shared in secret. The smiles they shared that would always have to be secret.

She forced herself back into focus before she could consider herself.

          "It just needs a little water every so often. And singing too, if you feel so inclined." He smiled more somehow, his dimples deeper than ever. "Take care of it for me, and by the time I visit next—if there is a next time—you'll have a plant. And also my respect."

Fallon scoffed. "Do I not already have that?"

          "Eh."

She punched his arm again. He pretended to look hurt, but the smile didn't leave his lips. "Fine. I suppose this plant shall be my ward. Should it have a name?"

          "That feels appropriate."

          "Lux, maybe," Fallon suggested, eyeing the plant, "The Superior Lux. Lux 2.0. Lux Junior."

          "You're incredibly original."

She and Hiro could think of a much better name upon the latter's return. "And incredibly humble, too. Don't ever forget that."

That laugh again, golden and winged and gliding through the air. "Oh, the wits on you. So sharp. I could cut myself—"

Whatever the rest of his sentence was, Fallon never got to know. At that exact moment, Satine stepped through the greenhouse entryway, flanked by Merrik, Padmé, and Mina. Caught off guard, Lux dropped the plant.

Fallon caught it easily, Force-practiced reflexes kicking in. She straightened up, his journal in one hand, the plant in the other. "Nice catch," Lux managed to whisper before the adults slowed to a stop before them.

Mina spoke first: "Lux, we're leaving."

          "We weren't meant to leave until after dark, were we?" Lux cast a sideways look to Fallon, who ignored it to stare straight ahead, straight at Satine. "I read the itinerary, mother."

          "No, we have to go." Mina's features, built and bred for kindness, were hardened, uncompromising. It looked wrong. Something was wrong.

          "What happened?" Fallon asked, but she received no answer, unless one counted Merrik—who shot her his signature smug smirk—and one rarely did. Instead, Mina reached for her son, taking him gently by the arm and pulling him away.

          "It was a pleasure to meet you, Fallon—truly." Mina forced a smile, "Lux?"

          "Yes, it was a pleasure." Lux turned back to look at Fallon over his shoulder, frowning. The sunset leaked through the greenhouse windows, staining him in shades of autumn, amber, orange, red. "I'll see you, I suppose?"

Fallon was cut off before she could even speak; they were already walking away, with Padmé and her bodyguard close behind. "Wait—your journal!"

          "Lux! Wait!" Fallon took off after them, shouldering past Merrik and Satine and overtaking Padmé to reach the Bonteris just as they stepped back through the greenhouse entryway. "Lux!"

The next few moments were a blur. Fallon, reaching for his hand to pull him back to her. Fallon, pressing the journal into his palms. Fallon, hesitating a moment before she pulled the calla lily from her hair. She examined it for a fleeting second and, finding it still fresh, still intact, offered it to Lux, too. "For your book. You don't have a calla lily."

Lux blinked, then smiled. Mina tugged on his sleeve, her expression urgent, but he ignored her. "Thank you." A pause, and he opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, unable to find the words; instead, he slipped the flower into his coat pocket, stowed away the journal, and took her hand in his. "I hope we meet again."

          "So do I." Fallon nodded earnestly. Lux lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a gentle kiss to her knuckles before finally giving in to his mother, and leaving Fallon in the half-dark, stranded in those few uneven seconds between the close of day and the gaping wound of night.

Fallon stood there, still, silent, as something writhed in her chest, took roots in her heart. She didn't stir at Padmé's departure, nor Merrik's—only when Satine passed her did she come back to life.

          "What happened? Why did they have to leave?" Fallon asked again, her words iron. There was nothing in her anymore, nor her words, that had any blood Satine could spill.

Satine seemed to sense this. She didn't even try to argue, to dismiss or reduce. "The Republic are sending a Jedi representative to investigate New Mandalore."

Fallon blinked. "What? What did we do?"

          "Us? Nothing. But there was an attack on a Jedi cruiser today. Perpetrated by Death Watch."

Silence. The absence of her lightsabre on her hip was like a limb amputated.

          "They sent a warrior dressed in Mandalorian armour. He was highly-trained."

          "And? What did he do?"

          "Fal—"

          "Satine?" Panic rose in her throat. Which cruiser? What sector? "What did he do?"

          "He killed a Jedi." Satine said, defeated. She turned away. "Get some rest, Fallon. The representative will be here in the morning."

And then she was gone, too, and it was just Fallon, alone in the dark.