Last Stop, All Change

[John Glayde]

Terminus (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Terminus): about as close as you could get to the galaxy's spinning edge without falling off. It was the edge of the Empire, too: the point at which Imperial attention and dogma started getting threadbare, fading off into the Unknown Regions and Wild Space. A thriving ecumenopolis wove it's way through the planet's towering trees and twisted mountains, peppered with domes and spires of styles and materials that weren't just unusual or foreign: they were outright alien. John Glayde had been to many worlds, both human and not, but he'd never experienced something quite like this; never walked down the street and found himself struggling to pick out a species that he could even recognise, let alone name.

This place was chaos; cultural anarchy; half way between a melting pot and a storm in a tea cup. This was not the kind of place you came to live a life; this was the kind of place you came to leave one behind.

John lay, hoping the mattress would swallow him alive. It wasn't the heat or the humidity, though those certainly didn't help; the lazily spinning ceiling fan was keeping the worst of the temperature at bay, and with the amount of alcohol pumping through his bloodstream his body was grateful for the extra moisture hanging in the air. The bottle of Whyren's Reserve that was responsible rested mostly empty against his leg, the fingers of a hand still wrapped around it's neck. The lid was gone, but that didn't seem to matter; the rate that swigs were being clumsily taken, the last couple of inches wouldn't make it past dawn anyway.

He sniffed, swollen sinuses protesting the notion that air was even supposed to pass through that route. The idle hand not tasked with securing the alcohol supply scratched at his shoulder, skin left exposed by the grubby and faded white tank top that clung with peppered sweat to the contours of his body. His entire ensemble was a disarray, but that should not have come as much of a surprise: take away uniform regulations from a man that couldn't even remember what it had felt like to not be a soldier, and this was what you got.

It was a metaphor, a microcosm, a simple summation of everything that was wrong with this picture. John Glayde was one of thousands who'd found their calling with Rebel Alliance. Their campaign, their crusade against the Empire had given him, and them, purpose. For some it was simple revenge, for loved ones lost, for horrors inflicted, for worlds destroyed. For John Glayde it was more subtle: he fought for forgiveness, for redemption, for the chance to make amends for the things that he had done while wearing the Empire's colours. He'd lost count of the lives he'd taken, lost track of the actions that should have kept him up at night. His morals, such as they were, had taken far too long to establish that uncrossable line; the Rebel Alliance had been his first steps on the never-ending journey to repairing the wrongs he'd wrought.

And then the war was over. The Treaty was drawn up and signed, and a few words and agreements had nullify everything that had transpired, everything the Empire was done. A document to fix Alderaan. A document to fix tens of thousands of murders. A document to fix unfair sacrifices, ruined lives, ruined homes. Apparently, the cheapest, easiest peace possible was enough to bribe the Alliance into looking the other way.

Alliance to Restore the Republic; a misnomer if there ever was one.

There was anger across the galaxy. Alderaan; unavenged. Corellia, Ithor, and a hundred other oppressed worlds; abandoned. Crimes not answered for. Vengeance unsatisfied. The Alliance military had broiled under the surface, a snarling beast muzzled by politics. Some were content to endure their frustration, bound by a duty to protect the Alliance despite their feelings. Some had left, resigning their commissions and posts in disgust. There were rumours that some had even taken more desperate steps, as mercenaries, as pirates, as terrorists, looking for any opportunity to hurt the Galactic Empire even the tiniest bit.

For John Glayde, it had been the last straw; the last nudge he'd needed to tender his resignation and leave the Novgorod behind. But it had not been the first.

The unoccupied hand fumbled across the bedsheets, fingers stumbling across a faded and worn document file. He flipped it open, rifling blindly through the contents; he'd read it a thousand times, knew it from memory, cover to cover. It wasn't the words that he needed.

Gently, he tugged the image free from the clip; brought it close enough for his eyes to focus, balanced atop his chest. Charlotte Tur'enne, Lieutenant. Dishonourably discharged: not for being the perpetrator of some heinous crime, but rather for being the victim of one. John still didn't know the specifics of what had happened, but he knew enough: some secret event on some secret Jedi fleet, some manipulation that forced her to act, unwillingly and unstoppably, according to someone else's design. Her court marshal had been a sham; rushed to such an extent that John, her former Commanding Officer, hadn't even known about it until afterwards, let alone been given the chance to testify. Charlotte's own brother had even been kept in the dark. A rushed declaration of Charlotte as a scapegoat; politicians more interested in covering their asses than doing the right thing.

It wasn't just a single injustice, either. Charlotte wasn't just some former subordinate that he felt an obligation to: she was his Alderaan. She, what she had endured at the hands of the Empire, was the Imperial crime that he could not bear to see go unanswered for. She was every victim his orders and his actions had created. She was every undeserving, innocent soul that had been twisted by people like him. She would hate him for who he'd been if she knew, with every fibre of her being; and he would deserve every ounce of that disdain. But, more than anything, she was his last lingering hope for the future: because if she, someone he respected and cared for more than he'd ever been able to find the words to express, could find it in her heart to forgive him? Perhaps then he wouldn't be beyond saving after all.

It had taken every last favour he had, every scrap of pull with Alliance Intelligence to trace her here: to the place where the galaxy stopped. But she was good; skilled; an expert at what she did. The Alliance had trained her to be able to disappear, and she had. From here she could go anywhere, scattered into the wind and lost completely. Finding her was an impossible task. Redemption was an impossible goal.

Perhaps it was better this way.

His comlink buzzed, vibrating against the faux wooden surface of the cabinet beside his bed. He ignored it at first; it took minutes for him to finally respond, but whoever was responsible was patient, or persistent. Perhaps both. He blinked bleary eyes, struggled until he found himself sat on the bed's edge, fingertips pinching at the bridge of his nose. Another half-inch of Whyren's disappeared in a single swig. He thumbed the device.

"Yeah?"

"I found her."

Patient and persistent had been correct after all. Even if the process of elimination hadn't been on his side, he would have known the voice of Charlotte's brother anywhere, though there was much less optimism and much more determination in his voice than there used to be.

"I'll keep her under surveillance. Get your ass sober, and comm me for coordinates."

Glayde eyed the bottle in his hands; brought the rim to his lips and opened his throat, the last of the Whyren's gone in a few bubbling seconds. It burned as it tore it's way through his body; he almost enjoyed the discomfort. Nice to have a feeling strong enough to tear through the numbness, one way or another.

The bottle settled noisily on the cabinet; the back of a hand wiped the residuals from his lips. He glanced back at the photograph, discarded on the bed behind him. Sober. Coordinates. He could do that. For her, at least, he could try.

"You still there, John?"

Honestly, Glayde wasn't convinced of what the answer to that question was any more. He faked it anyway.

"Yeah, I hear you."

He hesitated; could feel the dragging silence as the elder Tur'enne waited, expecting more.

"Good job, Xander. I'm on my way."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

A bar. It was always a bar nowadays. The dives of the galaxy had been more home than anywhere else it seemed lately. One might have thought that when an associate, maybe even a friend had finally caught up with her that things might have changed. But that? That was just one of those weird pipe dreams that come along that Charles just couldn't bring herself to care about anymore. Somewhere along the line there'd been a hungover battered discussion about how she felt about the Treaty, about how she felt best to just ignore the damn thing and keep to their damn jobs but that was an even bigger delusion than thinking she could somehow return to a normal life. Sad truth of it was, her run-in with Starborn had caused more bad memories to surface than any real feelings of comradeship and she'd realized her personal war against he Empire was just that - personal. A one-woman show and one-woman army. There was no way the former Intel operative could understand. So when Charlotte had heard rumors of the fact Corellia - home - was still fighting the good fight, she'd nudged Blue Sauce in the direction of those rumors under the guise of seeing if there was any truth to it - Frak all knew there wasn't any real information. Just a bunch of hearsay lack of real action. Bunch of fucking sissies.

Not that she was any better but at least she'd find out if someone there actually got the balls to finally do something.

Oh, she had ideas, loads of them. Half formed and ill advised and more often than not stashed away in a binder she'd been keeping with random cryptic plans scribbled on napkins stained with beer and blood. But those ideas were often ignored in favor of a continued downward spiral of self destruction that seemed more often than not a far better option than actually facing the day and her own failures.

Ugh. That word. It encompassed everything that she felt. Failure to save Corellia, failure as an officer in a Rebellion that had lost its cause, failure even just as a human being to keep control over her own mind and body.

That last one hadn't changed much but at least when it was alcohol and misery induced it made far more sense than what had actually happened to her.

That moment had replayed over and over and over again when she hadn't quite managed to drink enough to pass out rather than fall asleep. She could still see herself standing there, completely out of place aboard the Jedi ship. And then he had been there and suddenly she was forced back, pushed inside of herself so that all she could do was watch as she suddenly lashed out at those that should have been considered allies. The image that stuck was always the same though: her hand outstretched into vacant space as a young black furred Orryxian suddenly had been lifted from the ground, clutching at her throat as if to pry away an invisible noose.

Charles felt a shudder run through her as the image flashed into the forefront of her mind, giving just enough inspiration for her fist to connect with the jaw of the man in front of her once more.

This too was the normal.

It had been the same routine almost every night. Find a bar, drink whatever was cheapest and got you drunk the fastest, find the biggest loud mouth in the joint, start some shit, enjoy the beating she gave almost as much as the one she received. You know, when they actually manged to get the best of her. It was never really a fair fight. Years of training had turned into keen instinct that was really no match for your average burly patron. You think word would get around to avoid the short statured human female but there always seemed to be a sucker.

Or four.

Tonight's contestants were putting up a decent enough fight. One of them had managed to get a good hit on her that had drove the wind right out of her and blossomed a fountain a pain across older bruises. She'd retaliated by breaking the man's eye socket. The effort she'd taken into putting enough strength behind that had been enough of a distraction that his buddy had managed to pull out a vibroblade and had gotten a shallow slice across her side that did little more than sting and stain her shirt. That guy had paid for it with a broken wrist and his own blade shoved into his thigh. Ugly grunt number three taken an elbow to the sternum followed with a misgauged hit to the nose that didn't quite break it but had stunned him enough for her to buy enough time to sweep the legs out from under guy number four.

The rest? Well, that was a blur of blows and an earful of cursing from all five brawlers and a ton of egging on from drunken onlookers. If Charles had noticed that little factoid she might almost have thought about turning towards professional shockboxing.

The end was predictable enough. Four guys on the grimy floor of the bar, one very angry barkeep, an even angrier bouncer and one girl grinning with a split lip and a bruise forming across her cheek, blood still streaming from the gash in her side. The drinks she had pumped into her system had been paid for and just like always, she realized she had overstayed her welcome. A mock solute was given to the groaning pieces of skrag before she took her leave.

But droyk it, the night was still young and Charles didn't nearly feel like she was ready to drift off for the night, she was still too aware for one thing.

Which let her know right when shit was intending on hitting the fan. Only a block away from the bar and she could hear them coming up behind her like they were some sort of damn heard of bantha. Four sets of footsteps converging on her location. Frinking hells, didn't these guys know when to quit? Charles could only shake her head slightly before she turned around, a soft but very colorful curse leaving her lips as she noticed broken-face-guy aiming a blaster right at her. She wasn't really concerned that he'd use the damn thing but why not let him think it was threatening? Would be more fun later when she'd be cramming the thing down the guys' throat. They said some things that Charles didn't really care to pay enough attention to hear properly but the general gist was in regards to all manner of horrible things they were going to do to her whether she fought back or not. Whatever, nothing the Empire hadn't done first.

A scoff of a laugh left her as she raised her arms in the intergalactic symbol of bring it. "Wouldn't your mommies just be the proudest ever? All right then, let's get this over with. I aint got all night."

[Alexander Tur'enne]

"You'd know all about making mommy proud, wouldn't you?"

The voice came from the shadows, but it didn't stay there long. The face that had uttered it was drawn into a tentative smirk, reined back from full intensity by the trepidatious glances in Charlotte's direction. It should all have been painfully familiar, fake confidence pasted seamlessly over the top of a total lack of the real thing. But there was something different this time around, bumps and deviations behind the usual layer of smoothness. His hands were dug into his pockets, but the tendons in his wrist stretched as his fingers repeatedly flexed into fists. The muscles along his jawline quivered, teeth clamped against each other. His eyes, nervous towards his sister, burned with something completely different when he looked at them.

"That's a nice gun," he offered, mustering a tight smile.

Confusion crossed the brawler's features for a split second; a flash of red tore the blaster pistol from his hand, sending it spiralling across the alley, a smoking hole melted clean through the centre. The slightest deviation in aim and it would have been the charred stubs of the brawler's fingers where the smell of ozone was coming from, and from the way his expression shifted seamlessly to horror, he was all too aware of that.

Xander's smile fell away, arms escaping his pockets to fold defiantly across his chest. His eyes swept the alley with apparent disinterest, avoiding the faces of every one, his sister most of all.

"That guy up there," he explained, a subtle twitch of his head indicating the rooftops, but no vantage point specifically, "Is pissed, in every sense of the word. Honestly, I don't know how he managed to pull of that trick shot; I wouldn't count on his aim being non-lethal the next time."

His emotions fluttered, the tip of his tongue darting back and forth along the base of his front teeth. He could feel the adrenaline surging in his system, mixing with the anger that these four didn't entirely deserve, but were sure as hell going to bear the brunt of. Another spasm of his fingers; another urge to reach out and demonstrate just how much he'd taken onboard from SpecForce's close quarters combat lessons. The barely healed cuts across his knuckles tingled in memory of the oh-so-satisfying closed fist punch he'd delivered to the last asshole sons of bitches who'd come between him and finding Charlotte. Now that he was here, standing beside her? Anything that tried to stop the two of them from walking out of that alley wouldn't be walking out themselves.

His eyes narrowed, picking out the most vocal of the group.

"I heard what you said."

There was no need to clarify; you didn't threaten that kind of inhuman act of debauched violence and then forget about it a minute or two later. He took a step forward; the brawler didn't flinch. Wasn't threatened. That was fine. That would change.

"The last person who tried that? Did that?" He grimaced out a half-breath of pained laughter. "A squad of soldiers turned them into paste."

His eyes glanced upwards, indicating the rooftops once again.

"That man up there is her old CO. He doesn't need a squad of soldiers. He doesn't need a reason to kill you, either."

Menace curled around Xander's words.

"Please. Give me a reason to let him."

The brute contemplated his options; his eyes darted from roof to Xander; narrowed as they peered through the mask, searching for tells of a bluff. The moment dragged; Xander found himself too close for comfort, the unpleasant odour of beer, blood, and vomit escaping from the brawler with every heavy breath. A wince of disbelief finally settled in place.

"You wouldn't kill me for threatening to fuck some dumb bitch blonde -"

He didn't get a chance to finish. He didn't hear the single uttered word, the uttered name, that tumbled beneath Xander's breath. He didn't need to; John Glayde heard his name, and was all too ready to react to what it meant.

The brawler crumpled to the floor, a darkened crater where his throat had been.

Xander's eyes regarded the fresh corpse for a moment longer; the smile he mustered this time was sickeningly genuine, but of predatory dominance rather than sadistic mirth. It was an important disguise; an important smokescreen to maintain the illusion. From the back of his mind he dredged the silent, subconscious count; the calculations based on response times and how long it would take to triangulate a location based on two shots fired. They had ten minutes maybe, to make it back to their speeder and complete the get-away; five if Glayde was forced to fire again. Xander took his worries, and wrapped them around a brick of smug and swagger.

His eyes flicked to the remainder of the brawler's entourage.

"Anyone else?"

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

The mixture of shock and anger she felt was, above all else, awkward. Charles had grown so accustomed to being encased in a cocoon of numbness with the occasional stab of pain to let herself know she was still alive that emotions suddenly seemed foreign. More to the point her brother seemed foreign, like some sort of creature was wearing his face yet somehow he still knew right where to push buttons to make her temper instantly flare. The bar fights she got into were never about releasing anger or even feeling it. There had never been hatred towards anyone involved except maybe herself. It was a strange feeling to suddenly find it being kicked off by someone who wasn't trying to hurt her.

Of course all that had to be pushed aside as blaster bolts impacted with pistol and then flesh. Somewhere she was aware of the words that were being spoken, of the fact that Xander had mentioned the impossible in that Glayde was lurking about and had been the responsible party for the sudden dead body. Of course, Xander himself was an impossibility that was a little hard to ignore given his proximity.

The entire scene felt muted somehow, covered in the barely contained rage that had suddenly been sparked within her. She could feel it scraping at her, scrambling its way up from the depths she had tucked it all away into, claws digging in, shredding as it hauled itself ever upwards towards the surface. Her right hand, the same that always was the guilty party in her memories, echoed the sensation, fingers bunching and collapsing towards her palm to form a fist and then releasing again. It wanted out. Wanted to call upon the combat blade she always kept on her, wanted to drive every centimeter of that blade into the nearest guy's chest and rip upwards and leave a crimson chasm in it's path.

The men were talking again, their tones torn between nervousness and false superiority over the situation.

Charles felt her fingers flex again, her eyes having never left the fresh corpse. She could do it, just a flick of a wrist would be all it would take. Temptation whispered at her, tugged soothingly at things she knew the beast had unlocked.

And then it was over.

The remaining three individuals didn't quite run away, but they certainly knew better than to test the patience of the unseen gunman. Her head raised slowly to watch them leave, felt the shadow within writhe and rail against the opportunity that was lost, felt it reluctantly lower itself back to its resting place leaving jagged scores within her mind that would need ample alcohol to scrub clean.

The sudden silence was overwhelming.

Broken lips were tested, opened slightly as Charles let the taste of blood mingle with lingering cheap whiskey. A sudden harsh laugh left her as her gaze, still somehow disinterested, slowly turned on Xander.

"...about time you showed up."

[Alexander Tur'enne]

Xander didn't even realise his hand was moving; didn't register until the fist connected with her jaw.

Surprise was the first reaction, sprayed up in his face to forestall anything else as he half-marvelled at the fact that she hadn't even tried to block. The anger pushed through, and conspired with the adrenaline dispersing from his system to turn every twitching tensed muscle into a shudder.

"Don't -"

He could barely force the words out; barely had the strength left in his diaphragm to squeeze out the air needed to let them be heard.

"Don't you ever -"

Anger, adrenaline, everything else got the better of him; a hammer blow landed upon his voice and it cracked, the rage that had crumpled his face into a scowl slipping enough to expose a little of the emotions that he was trying to hard to hide underneath.

"- leave me behind like that again."

Those last words took all the breath he had; his chest struggled to muster more, his eyes torn between looking at her and looking at everything but her. More emotions than he could name warred over control of his expression, trying to determine what would fit best with the hundred different things he wanted to say. He wanted to scream at her, yell at her for leaving, for not saying goodbye, for being so stupid, for trying to face everything alone like she always thought she had to. He wanted to give up on holding back the tears; wanted to beg forgiveness, make amends for the fact that he was such a terrible brother for letting any of this happen. He wanted to rage, curse the names of everyone responsible; wanted to know everything he could about the son of a bitch who'd been inside her head so that he could hunt him down and strangle him with his own innards -

"I didn't know."

The words sounded so feeble when he finally settled upon which ones to say; and really, those were the only ones that mattered. They were the words that he'd chased Charlotte half way across the galaxy to say. They were the only words that were important, because they were the truth; and he wanted her, needed her to know.

"We didn't know. They didn't tell us until it was too late." The faintest whisper of a laugh crept from his lips, at the irony more than anything else. "You should have heard the earful that John gave the General when he found out. I've never seen him lose his cool before."

He hesitated.

"Never wanted him to follow through on a threat and pull the trigger before, either."

His eyes strayed to the body, left abandoned in the alley by it's so-called friends. Something shifted in Xander's expression; not quite sadness and regret, but more resignation. When it relaxed away, the same steely resolve that he'd fought to fake earlier remained behind, sticking a little more convincingly this time.

"Didn't think that was a feeling I'd get used to so quickly."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

Of all the hits she'd taken it was the one delivered by Xander that seemed to linger, the only one that caused a dull throb to continue along her jawline. Charles half wanted him to just keep going, part of her fully convinced she'd deserved his ire and the other just reveling in the fact it actually connected with her on some level. Eyes glassed over from lack of any decent sleep and far too much alcohol focused, just barely, on him as he spoke and she tried her hardest to hear him through the residual haze of apathy that was settling back into place now that her anger had subsided.

She even manged to force the barest of smiles as she heard what she had suspected but rejected all along - The Alliance really had screwed her over and none of the people she really considered allies had been given a shot at defending her. Oh, the higher up Jedi had explained she hadn't been in her right mind. That there had been some outside influence at work. That the real perpetrator had escaped, if just barely. But there had been unease between the Jedi and the Rebellion that had been sparked and ignited. Someone had to take the fall to at least begin to ease tensions. Wrong place wrong time, it was the story of her life it seemed. At least they had the decency to not get into specifics regarding exactly how she had assaulted the Jedi Padawan. Someone had been kind enough to omit those lovely details.

A laugh even managed to leave her again, halfhearted and cut short as she could just picture Glayde going off on General Oruo'rel. That was almost as hard to believe as the fact that what was occurring wasn't just some punch-drunk dream.

Emotions that were being displayed and covered on Xander's face were hard to process and she kept finding her eyes lowering to the body on the ground. As attention was actually purposely rounded on the downed man she nudged the corpse with her foot before letting a sigh finally pass. A hand was brought up into her hair, tugging through dirty strands of blonde unkindly as adrenaline finally hit the kill switch and she became aware at how the movement pulled on the fresh cut in her side. She bit back the gasp that tried to leave, addled or not there was no way she was going to let on about any sort of hurts she was experiencing.

That was the thing of it really. Ever since her run in with the boy from Intel she'd redoubled her efforts on becoming invisible. Oh, she knew eventually she'd get sloppy enough that someone would come for her and somewhere in the back of her mind she knew it would eventually be Alexander.

It didn't stop her from hating it though. She didn't want him there. She didn't want anyone to still care.

How could they?

"I never wanted this for you, Xan." Charles felt her shoulders slump as the words left her. "It wasn't supposed to be like this."

One last glance was cast to the dead body before her head suddenly snapped up and her eyes locked towards the rooftops across from where they stood. She couldn't see John, but Charles knew damn well she was staring right at his location. It was unnerving how she just knew.

"We all should probably continue this elsewhere. The jails on this planet are shit."

[Alexander Tur'enne]

Of course. This was how things worked for them. These were the criteria that Charlotte's nature insisted upon. They had their sibling moments, fleeting instances where genuine emotions than anger were actually allowed to exist; but they could only be moments, and those emotions could only be hinted at, teased by laboured looks, and by vague words that still left unspoken what really needed to be said. Far be it from anyone to expect Charlotte Tur'enne to ever actually be open about anything without you needing to beat the honesty out of her.

Xander wrestled his frustration and anger into a cage, burying it deep behind the wall that held back everything he didn't want to remember. In the past he hadn't needed it; in the past it had been the back of a sofa where stray thoughts and loose change slipped to be forgotten. Now the wall was bulging, cracking beneath the weight of everything piled up behind. His eyes settled on the body once again; his mind grabbed it by the ankles, and curled it over the crenelations and razor wire that fortified his mental defenses.

"We have a speeder, two streets over."

Everything had faded from Xander's voice, cold and calculated like the soldier that he was never supposed to be. His eyes settled on the chrono wrapped around his wrist. When his eyes returned to Charlotte, they looked at her as if she was barely even there; like she was some stranger, rather than the loved one he had traversed half a galaxy to try and save.

"Six minutes until local authorities respond to the gunshots. We'd better move."

[John Glayde]

* * *

Glayde struggled to feel the thin metal rungs as he descended fire escape ladder, bolted precariously to the duracrete wall. He wasn't sure if it was the moist body temperature steel, the alcohol in his bloodstream, the conflicted thoughts and feelings rattling around in his head, or some combination of the whole set. All he could do was stare dead ahead, counting the rungs as they passed by; the ground still caught him by surprise, striking the soles of his boots a few feet before he'd expected.

He hesitated, a set of fingers still hooked onto the ladder, eyes aimed at the wall but closed as he heard the footsteps emerge from the alley behind. The lack of voices didn't stop him from identifying who was there: Charlotte's on the left, short strides from her stature but light steps from her training and instincts; Xander on the right, slumped and slow footfalls so his sister could keep pace.

A breath slowly escaped him; he carefully unslung the sniper rifle from across his shoulders to give him something to occupy his mind. His mind had been a hurricane of determination, flurries of storm force determination towards every action that would bring them closer to finding her; the eerie stillness as the eye of that frantic storm swept over and left him powerless to do anything but wait and wallow. He'd never thought about what he'd say; never spared a single thought for how he'd excuse breaking the promise of protection that he'd made to her and himself. He'd never thought about how he'd feel when the face his eyes settled upon was flesh and not photograph.

He turned; braced himself; and the instant his vision focused, he knew.

The distance between them was gone in a few short strides, the sniper rifle pressed into Xander's arms with enough force to shove him backwards. At the moment, John didn't care: he needed his arms. Charlotte looked as if she was about to speak, some quip caught on the tip of her tongue as she wrestled with her own action quandary. John didn't give her the chance for her hesitation to end. He didn't allow himself to look at her eyes, nor be distracted by the conflicted expression tugging at her features.

He stopped, barely, but his momentum carried on, arms flung around Charlotte in a vice grip that he had no plans to release.

"Shut up," he muttered into her shoulder, pre-empting anything she may have had plans to say. "Don't you dare say a thing."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

Charles knew she was supposed to feel something. Some sort of upwelling up emotion caused by seeing Glayde express any sort of emotion, of the change from his usual always professional self, something conflicting of her own by being hugged by her former commanding officer.

But there was nothing. Blank expression matched blank reaction. She couldn't even bother to wince as he pressed on and agitated numerous bruises. Even her arms couldn't process enough to move from her sides to complete the gesture that was supposed to be something other than just pressure. She just felt... disconnected. Numb. Soulless.

Whatever beginnings of feeling Charles had managed to capture when it had just been Xander and her had slipped away some time between when she had last spoken and Xander had replied. Something resembling herself, who she used to be, had come up for a gasp of air but had lost its will to remain afloat in the clouded sea that was her thoughts. It wasn't a tangled mess up there, just a never ending barely moving world that only rippled on occasion when it was hit hard enough. That was who she has become. That was who she was now.

Strange thing was It didn't even bother her. Like the hug she knew that there should have been some type of reaction to the situation but it was too hard to grasp, set adrift on the thick soup along with everything else.

Empathy included.

"You're drunk." The words left without thought, sounding hollow and lacking in consideration as to how they could effect the person they were targeted at, or how very hypocritical the accusation was.

[John Glayde]

There it was then: the sledgehammer words caving in his rib cage.

He wasn't sure what he had expected. He wasn't even sure what he was doing. The number of times John had witnessed Charlotte's complete opposite of sentiment and affection with her brother, he should have known not to expect some outpouring of emotion or gratitude. Yet, the absence of anything - not surprise, not anger, not even a token reciprocation for her former CO - felt like he'd fallen on his sword and turned his chest into an open wound. Deep down, he'd hoped that Charlotte would at least be pleased to see them; at the very least, relieved to know that she hadn't been abandoned by everyone in the Alliance after all. Charlotte couldn't even muster the desire or willpower to pretend that she was. Hell, John would have settled for shouting, for sarcasm, for cutting remarks; anything but this black, indifferent surrender that wasn't Charlotte Tur'enne.

Charlotte was anger and fire. That they'd burned it away and left behind such cold and frozen remains made John despise the people responsible even more.

His arms fell away, slower and less expediently than he would have liked or was appropriate; the step backwards he forced himself to take was like tearing off a limb. "That I am," he replied with a tight smile. He hesitated, searching his mind for any desperate last ditch words he could muster; he found nothing, his hand instead digging into the pocket of his jacket.

The ignition fob for the speeder dangled from his fingers as he held it out to Xander. "Get your sister out of here; I'm in no state to drive anyway."

His gaze flitted to the rooftops. "I'll keep an eye on law enforcement. RV back at the hotel."

That was all there was to say; all that he could say, at least. His gaze lingered as his first few steps were taken backwards and then, with another force of will that he didn't even realise he possessed, he turned on his heel, shoved his hands back in his pockets, and let reality slump his shoulders as he disappeared back into the network of alleys.

[Alexander Tur'enne]

If Xander's jaw had clenched any tighter, he would have shattered every single one of his teeth.

"I should punch you again," he grunted, dismantling Glayde's rifle into smaller modules and stashing them in the speeder's rear storage compartment. It took all his self control to stop every action being performed with wrenching, smashing force; to stop his fist from pounding into the underside of the trunk lid to vent at least a little of his anger.

Except, it wasn't quite anger; it wasn't the hot impulsive flash of rage that sprang up every time Charlotte tap danced on his nerves. It wasn't the same righteous fury, the same passionate hate that had been pumping through him ever since John had revealed what the Alliance had done. It was a kind of frustration, more intense than he'd ever felt, that made his every muscle want to shudder, made his lungs want to scream out plumes of surplus pressure that his body was struggling to keep contained.

He gestured with his eyes towards the alley where John had disappeared. "That guy threw away his entire career for you," he explained, sharpening the edge of his words into a razor as he closed the storage compartment with enough force to make the speeder bounce on it's repulsorlifts. "The instant he heard, he called in every favour, worked every angle; and when he found out you'd gone, he closed every door, burned every bridge, and left behind every single other person in his life just to come and find you." A laugh at the stupid irony of it all. "Force sakes, the man busted into Oruo'rel's house, and had him at gunpoint to get the intel and SpyNet contacts that led us here. He threw away everything, just to save his wayward Lieutenant who went and got herself in trouble way over her head again."

His voice gave up, mind well beyond the limit of what it was prepared to say and process. "I'm done," he muttered, shaking his head as he climbed into the driver's seat. Every other motivation melted away, leaving only a brother's sense of obligation to rescue his ungrateful bitch of a sister. He jammed the ignition fob into the appropriate socket, and the speeder's engine rumbled into life. His eyes turned to Charlotte, filled with something they'd never contained when he'd looked at her before: not anger or frustration, but disappointment. His voice fell quiet.

"Just... get the fuck in, okay?"

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

The single word reply lingered on her tongue and with it came a mountain of accusations. She hadn't asked anyone to come get her, never the less give up their entire life to do so. She hadn't wanted them to. Why the hell did they all think she should be grateful for them coming in and making her stumble on her solo path to the nine hells? Her biggest goal was to find some conference of former Imperial Generals and walk in with a thermal detonator and send them all there in tiny chunks. Charles doubted she'd ever get that far and to be honest, really honest with herself, she just didn't care. There really was only one thing on her mind. Make it stop. Even that was a pointless plea - she wasn't that lucky. There's just be trading one type of existence for another and with all that she had done, maybe it was best if she waited a bit longer before diving headlong into the pit.

Peace is a lie; something only idiots ever hoped for and Charles had long since given up for finding any kind.

The only thing waiting for her if she went with Xander would be a pointless attempt at a guilt trip that she knew would only make him angry and be a further waste of time. He could be done with her all he wanted. Maybe, just maybe if she stood her ground this time he'd actually mean it and let her rot.

"No."

It escaped as lifeless as she felt. No punch, no force, just blank refusal that spoke of an utter disregard for whatever the consequences may be. She wanted to run, wanted to suddenly sprint down the alleyway and climb up a fire escape and be done with the both of them before Xander even had a chance to react. Some part of her knew she could do it. It was the same part that was nagging at her from within its confines that she could also just reach out, a simple nudge, and the speeder would be enveloped in an explosion so big it'd rip out half the building it was parked next to.

Charlotte had hated how very loud it could be at times. Now though? She'd just learned to casually ignore that internal voice that had taken root. Accept it with the same blind indifference as everything else.

[Alexander Tur'enne]

He almost did it. He almost goosed the throttle and tore off down the dank, potholed street. He almost abandoned his sister to the authorities who were just minutes away; almost signed the death warrants and injury claims on a good half dozen police officers before they actually managed to take her down, more than likely. He knew that look, that stubborn surrender: he knew that Charlotte would rather go down in a blaze of pointless glory than let them drag her back to some grubby cell. A split second was all it would take to leave the one last thing he had behind.

The stun blast caught Charlotte square in the chest. Xander would be lying if he said he didn't find the idea of shooting her satisfying; though the agonising weight on his chest as he watched her crumple to the floor made him regret that sentiment.

"I'm sorry sis," he muttered. "You don't get to be stubborn this time."


* * *

Xander was no medical expert, but the fact that the stun blast had fried enough neurons to help Charlotte slip into unconsciousness - rather than the waking paralysis that most stun victims endured - probably meant she'd been drinking too much. That was more of a blessing than you might have expected; far easier to carry an unconscious woman reeking of booze into a seedy motel than it was to carry one in with open, horror-filled eyes. That said, from the skeevy look of the Rattataki behind the front desk, he doubted the latter would have earned more than a second glance.

It was a sad truth of his existence now that he had secure zip bindings close at hand; not for fun purposes either, though he was sure he could improvise of the situation ever presented. He was glad, because he knew damn well that if his words didn't sink in and Charlotte decided to come after him, the head start he'd gain while she liberated herself would probably mean the difference between life and death; or at least, the difference between death here, and death in Glayde's room when he found the guy too drunk to be of any use defending him.

Satisfied that she was secure, he braced himself, and pressed the stim injector to the side of her neck. The dose was small; not enough to resuscitate her nervous system back into action, but at least enough to get her brain awake and her senses perceiving; a little sluggish movement and some struggled words sure, but none of the thrilling heroics her service record professed that she was capable of.

Her service record. That was a sombre read; one of the many pieces of intel that Glayde had managed to threaten out of the General before they'd cut and run. From the way he reacted, even Glayde hadn't been privy to the full extent of it before. Xander still wasn't sure which emotion to choose: sympathy that would drive Charlotte mad, or anger at her insistence that she carry all of this alone. There was more than a little anger towards himself as well, and his shortcomings as a brother. How had he been so inept in his responsibilities to have let her run off with that kriffing asshole from Intelligence? How had he been such a failure at protecting her that he'd let her run off to the Alliance in the first place? More than mom, more than dad, she would have listened to him; if only he'd been paying enough attention to try.

Mom and dad. That was a dark chasm of sorrow all of it's own.

He turned away, walked a few paces as Charlotte made the expected sounds of a groggy awakening. Instinct urged him to offer some assurance, but he had no idea if it was sincere, or just reflex. He held his tongue; calmed himself as best he could; waited until the best words he could muster came to mind.

"For once in your life, Charlotte Tur'enne, you are going to listen."

It was even harder than he'd expected, talking past the way that anger clenched his diaphragm and threatened to cut off the end of every word. He forced past, wrestling control of it and his trembling jaw; flexed his hands in a vain attempt to burn off enough rage to keep his voice at least vaguely steady.

"But I know you won't listen to me. You go through the motions, but you gave up on thinking of me as your brother a long time ago. And you won't listen to him -" he gestured towards the ceiling, an arbitrary guess as to where Glayde's room was. "- the one actual friend you had left in the Alliance; hell, in the whole galaxy. You won't listen to us, because doing that would force you to admit that you're actually worth something; that you'd have to be, for there to be anyone out there who cares about you. You've invested too much effort in trying to push the both of us away to give up on that now. You're a soldier, Charlotte, through and through: you're not going to abandon this mission of self destruction you've assigned yourself."

He stopped his pacing; still couldn't bring himself to look at her for more than a moment at a time. He shook his head, gaze falling away; paced to the holoprojector on the low cabinet he'd aimed Charlotte towards.

"You won't listen to me," he echoed, voice tired, shoulders slumped. "Maybe you'll listen to this."

The second the projector began to play, Xander fled for the nearest wall. He didn't need to watch again; he'd seen the visuals time and time again, watched over and over in soul-shattering horror. He stared at the ceiling; closed his eyes; could still see the sickening slow-motion descent of that Star Destroyer, carving it's way through Coronet; through home. He'd watched it so many times, his lips fluttered involuntarily with the words of the newsreader's commentary.

He felt himself brace; knew the words that were coming; felt the overpowering urge to dive across the room, smash the device, and spare Charlotte from it.

"- among the dead are Coronet district attorney Jacob Tur'enne and his wife, who moved from their family home to the suburb less than a year ago, after their two missing children were both legally declared dead by CorSec investigators."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

Xander had been right. She didn't listen to him. Not really, anyway. Oh, the words were heard but far from processed. The stun blast had created one giant headache that she could only begin feeling the ragged edges of through a haze of red that was forming as she struggled against the makeshift restraints. It was only curiosity that brought a halt to her movements and silenced the incessant whispers that were pushing her to wretch herself free no matter the cost.

At first came questioning, confusion over what she was watching happen. There was no reconciling the image of a city she knew so well being completely devastated by something of Imperial design. She could feel her pulse quickening as her eyes refused to find a place to settle. She could tell, somehow, that Xander was becoming increasingly agitated, that it wasn't anger that he was feeling, that something else was taking hold. Tension in the room was being wound tighter and tighter...

And then then her father's name was spoken and she felt everything snap.

The zip ties bit eagerly into her wrists as she suddenly pulled her hands forward. One set of bindings gave way but not before tasting blood and an unseen wave followed the motion, sending the holoprojector smashing against the opposite wall.

It wasn't enough. She'd fought so hard to keep herself numbed, done everything she could to keep that which she feared from breaking lose. But there was no taming it.

Freed, her right arm shot forward, flinging blood from the new wounds, fingers outstretching towards the broken pieces of the device and the same red that always lurked at the corners of her vision took over. The blue arc that suddenly appeared wound it's way down her arm and shot from her hand, tearing through the air with a crackle that ended in an impact where the broken shards of holoprojector remained. It was a pointless endeavor as the bits of singed electronics barely responded.

The outburst ended as quickly as it had started as Charlotte looked to her brother, her normal blue eyes for an instant marred with irises the color of flame before returning to their usual hue as her shoulders slumped and her knees were drawn close as her freed arm rested atop them, proving a perfect place for her to bury her head and stare mutely at the floor.

She couldn't cry no matter how much she wanted to, lack of tears however didn't stop the sudden uncontrolled trembling that took hold of her as grief and horror overtook rage.

[Alexander Tur'enne]

Whatever he'd expected, it wasn't that. Maybe a tear. Maybe just blankness. Maybe the grief would have slammed her deeper into herself. But not this. Not that.

He'd read it in the report; the one Glayde had managed to grab along with everything else. It had been the death knell at her tribunal, apparently: dangerous undisclosed Force potential. It played right into the Alliance's paranoia: some ranking officer had turned out to be some evil Dark Jedi, and the merest hint of Charlotte being along similar lines had got the High Command soiling themselves. Burn the witch. Get rid of her before she can hurt us. Because alienating and angering something powered by rage was an absolutely genius plan.

Still, there was reading it, and there was believing it. Charlotte had always been angry, always been fierce; but a rage that could defy the laws of physics, hurl things across the room, summon lightning from her fingers and fire in her eyes? If he hadn't seen, he would have called bullshit. But he had seen, every second of it.

Especially the last.

Whatever grim blackness had been enshrouding his soul, it cracked: not enough to fall away completely, but enough for a few stray strands of inner Xander to creep out. He crossed the room silently, easing Charlotte's chair around to face him instead of what she'd just destroyed. He produced a knife from his belt, sliced through the ties, and dropped to his knees, carefully easing her damaged wrists free and into her lap. A ghost of a smile flickered across his lips, the same effort that fought back tears holding it at bay. His hand brushed a strand of her hair aside, tucking it behind her ear.

"There she is," he said softly, staring into the eyes that finally looked like they belonged to his sister again.

Gently he eased her forward, resting her head against his shoulder and letting his body bear the fractional extra weight of hers. "I'm sorry," he whispered, arms wrapping around her, a hand cradling the back of her head. "I just -"

He sighed; gave up on his efforts to maintain his composure; gave up on blinking the tears away. "You're all I've got left, Lottie. I don't want to lose you too."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

Her head nodded just a fraction, just barely against where it rested against his shoulder in silent acceptance despite the you are already lost that came from the back of her mind. She could fight a war against herself and the Empire, that was simple. Coming to face the fact her parents were gone, that was something else entirely. Charles had always relied on the concept of "Home" lingering in the back of her thoughts. That no matter what had happened, no matter what she went through, somewhere on Corellia was Mom and Dad. Even if they thought she was dead, they were still there. It was like a mental safety net that she had never expected to rely on but somehow found comforting to know that it existed. Now it was gone.

Xander was still there though. Still here.

Even after what he'd seen she could do. Seen what she was.

She may not have cared much for herself, but Charles couldn't deny that the thought of taking away the last thing that Xander had was unbearable. There had always been an expectation that he could return home when the inevitable happened to her... but now?

Charlotte tried to say something but all that came out was a half choked dry sob that sent a shudder running through her. Already lost, the words repeated and she could feel herself put more weight against her brother as she leaned on him in some pitiful attempt to defy them, to shake them off.

[Alexander Tur'enne]

He grabbed another stimpak from his pocket; another dose of chemicals to lessen the hazy disconnect between Charlotte's brain and her body. Minute or two more, and she'd have enough functionality to shove him off, push him away with some scathing remark, probably beat the crap out of him if she set her mind to it. Normal person wouldn't have been able to, but then Charlotte had always been so much more than normal. Most big brothers got to look out for their baby sister; Xander got to unleash her like some caged attack animal on everyone who crossed him. Every crisis, every insecurity, she'd been there guarding his back; and not because of some obligation, not because she was his sibling and it was her job. He'd seen it every time that fiery little blonde kid had looked at him, the way she reacted every time her brother was there, even when she got old enough to try and hide it. He'd found it annoying at times back then, the way she'd find excuses to follow him around; he wished he could go back and hit himself upside the head for being so ungrateful. It didn't matter to little Lottie that he was adopted: he was her brother, and she loved him more than anything.

He knew exactly when it had changed, too. Knew exactly what he'd done to transform his most loyal admirer into this: he'd left. It wasn't on purpose. It wasn't even leaving, really. Just college. Just a girl. He'd been the one who'd pulled away, though. He'd been the one who'd started building a life for himself that didn't necessarily factor her in. He'd been the one who'd gambled the only person he'd ever been able to rely on, all for some girl who wasn't even worth the ice cream he'd cried over when she'd left.

It was too late by then, though; Charlotte had already changed by then. She was already the soldier, just waiting for her war to show up; and so now their roles were reversed. Xander was the one who followed her to the Rebellion, to Terminus, to anywhere. If he needed to be, Xander would be the attack dog who went after the people who hurt her; the people who even tried. He'd go after that Dark Jedi son of a bitch solo if necessary. Not because he had to; not because it was what brothers were supposed to do; but because she was Charlotte, he was Xander, and that was the way it was supposed to be. He may have forgotten it for a little while; but never again.

"Seriously though," he said quietly, his arms gripped her a little tighter, extracting as much comfort from their embrace before she chose to break it. "I was pretty cool in that alley, right? Tell me you're not even a tiny bit impressed."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

A quick breath of air was let out in place of a laugh, "I'm not even a tiny bit impressed."

Though muffled against a shirt and more deadpan than she could have ever faked, the exchange helped in returning to at least something resembling normal. This is how it was supposed to be after something bad happened, Xander making jokes that she would reply to with some level of snide reply. More feeling was slowly returning to the rest of her body as the stimulant he had injected her with worked its way through. This too helped things feel more like they should. If nothing else it was nice to know that she was in control over her body again.

There was no small amount of reluctance as she slowly eased herself back into the chair, gently pulling herself away from Xander as she looked down at her wrists. Like the cut in her side, it wasn't bad, but probably would need some sort of actual amateur medical attention eventually. The dull throbbing ache seemed to spread over the entirety of her - no doubt the morning would be even worse, it always was. Physical pain was easy to push aside, though. It was the discomfort caused by the avalanche of questions that wracked her brain that needed treatment first and foremost.

"Wh-when did that happen? Do they know who was responsible?" The first two were fired off in rapid succession though still lacked the passion she knew would have been typical. For the first time she found the emptiness in her voice frustrating.

[Alexander Tur'enne]

Xander followed her gaze to her injuries; pounced on the opportunity to do something productive with himself. Anything, to avoid being still and stationary long enough for the blackness to reform it's duracrete grip around his mind. He made for the bathroom, and the first aid kit mounted on the wall; you couldn't rely on a dive like this for much, but fresh sheets and some approximation of bandages were usually a safe bet. Xander wondered how many people had tried to make do with the resources of this room, rather than risk the equally dubious facilities of the clinic down the street.

He grabbed his wash bag on the way out of the door; rifled through for a tube of kolto gel before discarding the rest on the bed. He wasn't avoiding her questions, not really; he just knew that the clenched fists that would result when he spoke would be a hindrance. One challenge at a time.

"They're calling them 'terrorists'," he said slowly, gel applied to gauze; gauze to wounds; and the ensemble encased in a liberal winding of some kind of fibrous antiseptic tape with a name in a language Xander couldn't even read, let alone pronounce. "They have to, I suppose. If they said it was the Corellian Resistance responsible -"

He winced, tearing through the tape and checking his handywork before swapping wrists.

"- they'd risk making it an open accusation towards the Alliance. Who," he grunted, with a roll of his eyes, "Have of course publicly condemned the attack and distanced themselves from it. Which means there's a bunch of sithspit amateurs and half-wits running around on Corellia, getting all kriffing tangled and forgetting who the gods-damned enemy actually is -"

A swell of emotion crawled up the back of Xander's throat and strangled his voice, threatening tears again.

"John's worried." It took effort to force the words out, but somehow speaking helped; relying on momentum to keep on going. "Says there are a lot of people in the Alliance who are gonna see this as a rallying cry. A lot of people who are pissed that the Alliance gave up, and are gonna jump on any opportunity to have another crack at the Empire, morality be damned. Seemed to think you might even be one of them."

He stopped, eyes flicking to meet the gaze of his sister.

"I told him that if you didn't kill every single person responsible for Mom and Dad on sight, I damn well will."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

Nausea took hold as Xander explained and for several moments she could only feel complete confusion. The Corellian Resistance... not a new name. Not a new enemy. Old allies. It was where Charlotte had began.

When Alderaan had been destroyed, Charlotte had wanted to do something. That something had eventually resulted in her signing up with the local resistance movement. Guerrilla warfare dedicated only to Corellian soil, it had been with them that she had learned how to begin taking her talents and putting them to use against an enemy she had only begun to find reasons for loathing. It didn't bother her to hear them being called terrorists - it was a term she had gotten used to hearing over Imperial propaganda, hells it was almost a badge of honor to know that the Empire considered you capable of actually promoting terror among it's populace. But to hear that they were the ones responsible for her parents' deaths?

The Resistance had given her a chance to become a weapon, the Empire had smashed that weapon into jagged shards, the Rebel Alliance had taken those shards had turned it into something more, something far more lethal that perhaps intended. Charles had only ever considered one of those entities the enemy and she would have done anything to hurt them with no regard for innocent bystanders. Someone had beat her to the punch though, someone had struck out and while hurting the Empire had taken out what she held dear.

A cringe flashed across her features as she struggled to comprehend the sudden flare in anger. It wasn't the same wraith as before, it was something else. Hatred that had been only reserved for an Empire she had seen as monstrous was warring with this new information. Empire. Resistance. Both were guilty of harming innocents in an attempt to shock their enemy and both had caused great personal loss.

"I only wanted to hit military targets..." She whispered the admission of guilt, that yes, John had been right in a way. Morality had little to do with her personal vendetta against the Empire.

"How could they..." It was another betrayal, stacked atop the one delivered by the Alliance. People, causes that she would have given her life for. And how had she been repayed?

Her mind ticked back to something that had barely registered in the report when she had first heard it. Training had learned to pick up on any information heard, storing it away until it was determined that it was truly useless. No amount of alcohol ever really seemed to stop what had been drilled into her. Children were both legally declared dead...

"We don't belong anywhere anymore. Do we, Xan?"

[Alexander Tur'enne]

There were few times when Charlotte truly needed Xander; few times when he was useful as anything other than a punching bag, verbal or otherwise. He'd already missed too many for his liking, and if there was even the slightest opportunity to make her world even the tiniest bit better, he would do everything that he could.

His hand settled on his shoulder, and with all the willpower he could muster he beat back his own sadness, clearing a perimeter that left his eyes and his voice safe and unmarred. His gaze met hers with as much reassurance as he could muster, and he forced the same into his voice.

"I know exactly where I belong," he said, a frown twitching at his brow as if his words were so obvious they barely even needed saying. "With my sister."

His hand offered a gentle squeeze, the faintest of smiles ghosting across his lips.

"We don't need a planet. We don't need an Alliance, or a Resistance, or anything else. All we need is you, me -" He hesitated for a moment, a thought narrowing his eyes. "- and maybe John to bail us out when we inevitably get ourselves into more trouble than we can handle. But this war? This rebellion of yours? This crusade against the Empire?"

He faltered, memory once again straying to the files they'd obtained from the General; files that contained far more detail than Xander ever wanted to know, let alone what Charlotte would ever have been willing to tell him. That was the real source of his anger, the super-dense neutron star in the heart of his chest that powered resolve and determination he'd never had access to before. Killing Mom and Dad was tragic; but what he'd let the Empire do to his baby sister was worse.

"It's always been personal." His voice was unwavering. "But now it's us personal."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

The moment of hesitation in Xander's words had given more insight than she expected. Since they had been reunited during the Rebellion he had always talked about how he couldn't quite understand why she seemed not just content on simply loathing the Empire but had wanted to personally obliterate every last person who had ever donned their uniform, how he didn't know where, as he had put it, the extra blackness in her heart had come from... But now as he spoke of her crusade, how it was personal, there was an understanding there that she hadn't expected. Seconds ticked by as her somewhat still intoxicated brain put everything together. He wasn't referring to what had happened with the Dark Jedi, but rather the awareness was geared towards an event long since past. Of course they'd have dug it up if they had gone deep enough while trying to find her, anything that could have given clues, after all... Frankly Charlotte was glad for the fact she wouldn't ever have to explain what had started it all, never have to revisit those memories willingly and instead remained secluded to long sleepless nights when her mind would turn on her and bludgeon her with instant replays.

"Us." She repeated softly. "Yeah..."

Home was a word that Charlotte had always reserved for that place back on Corellia where her parents had lived. But it had just been that, a word, the real meaning lost in the exact moment she had slammed the door behind her and ran off to the Resistance. She had been kidding herself, of course, and whereas she couldn't quite place where it had been during her time with the Rebellion, home had been most certainly staring her down for the better part of the evening. It came in the form of a brother she never really figured she would rely on. It had only been a few short years since she had shouted at Xander that he wasn't her brother anymore. The words still haunted her sometimes, still were regretted in moments when she allowed herself to admit their falsehood.

Now was one of those times.

A small, somewhat bleak smile slowly formed and she nodded her head.

"Yeah. Okay. Just us."

No sooner had she spoken than her eyes widened slightly as realization once again decided to smack her upside the head as she found herself repeating what her brother had said earlier. "...and John."

"Oh gods." One of her hands quickly covered her mouth as if it alone could hold back the sudden tirade of thoughts and self loathing accusations that were entirely well placed. No, she hadn't ever asked for Glayde and Xander to come find her, and no, she hadn't wanted them to. But they came anyway, knowing damn well how she would feel about it. The numb detachment she couldn't entirely shake would no doubt come back full force in the morning, and Charles was certain that more of the unthinking comments like what she had unleashed in the alleyway would come out, but for the moment she felt nothing short of contemptible for the only words she had spoken to Glayde in months.

"I - I should go talk to him... shouldn't I?" There was reluctance in her voice. A mixture of not wanting to exactly end a moment where she was genuinely glad to have Xander around for, and dread over actually having to face a Glayde, that she had to admit, she had hardly recognized.

[John Glayde]

* * *

John idly flexed the flexed the bloodied knuckles of his right hand. He'd barely even registered the injury, let alone registered the pain, the altercation responsible almost entirely gone from his memory. It hadn't been serious; hadn't been significant; some shopkeep had just picked the wrong day to start making morality judgements on who he should and shouldn't be selling alcohol to.

The tips of his ignored injured fingers drummed against the neck of the bottle he'd successfully obtained. He wasn't even sure what planet it was from, let alone what it was supposed to be; but it was clear, cheap, and while he couldn't comprehend the alien script scrawled across the label enough to discern too much useful information, the percentage numbers seemed high, and that was all that mattered.

The bed had been abandoned this time, a corner chosen instead for two very important reasons: it was defensible, aimed towards the door and out of sight of the windows, which might come in handy given how impaired his capabilities currently were; and tucked into that niche it took no effort to remain upright, a vital criteria for anyone wanting to keep drinking even when their body decided it wasn't the best idea.

His left hand rested in his lap, the familiar weight of a familiar blaster (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Scout_trooper_blaster_pistol) weighing it down. It was another strategic choice, another decision of drunken tactics: for while other blasters in his arsenal might be more comfortable for his ungloved hands, the Scout blaster had no trigger to confuse his fingers; just a simple pressure sensor that even a drunken wreck could cope with.

Besides, there was a certain sad irony to the choice, given what he had in mind.

His gaze focused on the wall opposite, watching the occasional sweep of shadows as an airspeeder raced by, interrupting the slatted beams of light that stabbed into his otherwise unlit room. To be honest, he wasn't entirely sure what time of day it was, or if he was watching sunlight or streetlight; didn't seem to matter, all things considered.

All things considered.

That was the crux of it; that was the cold, mechanical, unnatural heart of it all. It wasn't the guilt, the sorrow, the hate that kept him awake at night: it was the regimented precession of every decision, every choice, every action, every event that had led up to this point, marching relentless back and forth across his mind. Each thought could be rationalised; each action justified; but they never stopped, never halted. Like an army foolishly keeping formation as it marched across a bridge, the resonance of John's thoughts was precariously close to causing total collapse.

Minutes and hours blurred into one; the only thing that marked the passage of time was the level of liquid in his bottle inching it's way down one slug at a time. His throat felt blistered, burned raw by the booze; he enjoyed it, that was the strange thing; enjoyed feeling something that was simple and easy to understand, something with a simple cause, and a simple solution.

Stop drinking.

John let out a grunt as the idiotic thought floated across his mind. "Nope."

It might have been minutes later; might have been days; it didn't really matter which. The sound of knuckles wrapping against the durasteel of his door - the classy joint they'd settled on couldn't even muster the creds for chimes - would have been equally unwelcome no matter what the time.

Bottle still in hand, John's forearm scrubbed at his brow, trying to muster enough sobriety and focus to comprehend what was going on. His voice was a raw growl by the time he actually managed to squeeze a response out of his cracked and burned throat.

"Yeah?"

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

It wasn't morning. Morning had come and gone and been cursed and had a pillow shoved over her head that Charlotte had wished a little too hard would smother her and snuff out all feeling. But Xander had caught on and tugged the thing away from her but had been kind over to throw the blanket over her head so help block out the sunlight that tried to leak through the pathetic excuses for curtains. She was pretty sure that had been hours ago as it didn't look like morning anymore when she had begrudgingly dragged herself off with her brother to collect what little belongings she had kept at a different low budget hotel. A shower upon returning to their current hideout had helped, though probably more with appearances than actual feeling. The hangover was just about as bad as she had expected, but sobriety brought on far worse things than nausea and a headache... such as a return of feeling the myriad of deep bruises and cuts that she was pretty sure covered everywhere. Though physical aches were marginally preferable to complete numbness, she also found that, just as predicted, everything passed with an impartial feeling of just going through the motions. The news from the night prior didn't suddenly change, didn't go away, and all she could feel was a lurking frustration over the fact she still didn't actually feel anything. She should have been a sobbing mess all things considered. Instead she simply had slowed down, forcing herself to think through words before she spoke so as to not be a complete bitch at Xander for a change.

Once the more severe wounds were tended to and some relatively clean clothing was put on, she'd decided it was finally time to do the one thing she'd been putting off more than anything else. It might have been concerning under different circumstances, that Charles had stood uncomfortably staring at the door of the room that Glayde was supposedly staying in for what felt like an endless amount of time. She had never been timid when it came to the Major, he'd been the target of more than one explosive outburst during their time in Dorn. But now? Things were different... hell, she wasn't even sure what to call him anymore.

So when she had finally gathered enough nerve to knock and the growl of a reply came from the other side she honestly hadn't been sure how to respond. A small moment of quiet had been taken as she'd almost protectively tugged her somewhat tattered canvas jacket around herself, fingertips idly running along the edge of the green colored starbird on a patch that belonged to a bunch of dead men and apparently one deadened woman. Glayde had been the one to give it back to her, a little chunk of something that somehow still meant something to her. It seemed like fitting armor to wear when facing him.

"It's me." She breathed, knowing it would only just carry. The panel on the side of the door was tested and somehow surprisingly responded entry. A normal quip about locking doors went unsaid, hell...it didn't even enter her thoughts as she peered into the darkened room and caught the rather discouraging sight of Glayde.

All the reluctance in the galaxy had to be pushed through for her to actually step inside and hit the interior panel, letting the door shut behind her. With the light from the hallway gone she finally let her gaze lower to the floor. "You can shoot me if you want. I won't blame you."

[John Glayde]

John's body tried to laugh; the effort emptied his lungs before he even managed to muster a sound, a silent huff all he managed to achieve.

I wont blame you.

That was the lie of it; and it was the worst kind of lie, because it was one that Charlotte sincerely believed. She had cast herself as the villain of her story, and had insisted all blame upon herself. It was no surprise; a woman like her would never willingly consider herself to be the victim, and in this scenario there were no alternatives, no heroes or heroines to save the day; just terrible deeds and those they affected.

For all her misbeliefs however, for all her insistence that blame belonged on her shoulders, her burden paled into insignificance next to the one that Charlotte didn't even realise that John carried. He knew far more about her past and her experiences than she would want him to; and yet by design she knew almost nothing about him. She knew snippets, but as had always been the way of things in the Rebellion, the past was left behind: evil deeds were all but forgotten the moment you adopted a righteous cause. It was a giant game of don't ask, don't tell: if the people you serve with don't want to tell you their past, you sure as hell don't ask. Charlotte never had, and John was glad for that: he didn't know what lie he would have told if she had.

It would have been a lie too; it would have had to have been. All that Charlotte had needed to know was that John and she had a common enemy; that made them allies, comrades, and friends. Any more than that, and everything would have come unravelled. Each new strand of knowledge, each new fact, would have worn away the fabric of whatever it was that was between them; and when all was laid bare, when Charlotte saw what John truly was and what he once had been, there would be no way to repair that damage.

How could anyone ever forgive you for being the kind of monster that plagues their nightmares?

He couldn't bring himself to look at her; just kept staring at the shadows on the wall.

"Maybe you should," he muttered, no effort in his voice. "Maybe you should blame me for a lot of things."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

Her shoulders slumped as she listened to him, weighed down by yet another round of confusion. She was fairly sure this wasn't how this conversation was supposed to go. Charles had seen glimpses of Glayde with misdirected guilt before, but this was something entirely different and she didn't have the slightest idea of where to begin trying to make it go away.

"Why would I do that?" Sincerity somehow came through as she forced herself to look back up at him.

A few small steps were taken until she was at least somewhat closer. Each step felt like she was walking through a thick fog, it wasn't hard to do, but the further you went the more disoriented you somehow seemed to become. The real problem was it left her standing in the middle of the room, shifting uncomfortably before settling on letting her hands fidget with the bandages around her right wrist.

"Only thing I can try and blame you for I've already reasoned that I can't. You weren't there because they didn't let you be there. I wasn't even mad before I knew that..." Her voice trailed off as she realized she was basically speaking in circles.

Her hand wandered away from the wrappings, back up her arm and once again to the Cresh patch on her jacket. "I couldn't be mad at you. Not after everything you've done for me."

For some reason Charles couldn't begin to guess at there was defeat in her tone. Eyes wandered the room, trying to look at just about anything but the vision of her former commanding officer that clashed horribly with everything she thought she knew about him. "You only ever tried to protect me. It's not your fault the galaxy doesn't seem to agree with that plan."

[John Glayde]

She said it like it was a fact; but was that really what he had always been doing? Was it actually her he was protecting, or was she just some stand in for all the people he hadn't been able to save in the past? Was it even her he saw when he looked at her, or was he just remembering someone else? Worse, was he just using her, taking advantage of her situation so that in saving her he could find some sense of salvation for himself?

The shadows didn't have an answer; he forced his gaze in her direction, head rolling against the wall as his neck stubbornly refused to support it's weight. No surprise really, what with all the extra things rattling around in there.

As his eyes fell on her, at least some of his questions were answered. Whatever he was doing, whatever his intentions, they were definitely all about her. Human cultures obsessed over the idea that emotions stemmed from the heart, but John was living proof that one of those wasn't necessary: the same chest-crushing anxiety and excitement that normal people felt squeezed it's way around the artificial pump in his chest. The alcohol kept most of that feeling's usual entourage at bay: the anger at himself for the juvenile sensation; the guilt at feeling anything beyond loyalty, camaraderie, and friendship towards someone under his command; that flutter in his diaphragm, that stolen breath as his mind dredged up a montage of the handful of times he'd seen her smile.

Only one emotion managed to pierce the alcoholic veil, succeeding by sheer brute force: fear. It was what it all came down to in the end; apprehension, terror, at the prospect that one word, one action could expose him. She couldn't know, not ever; because as much as the prospect of hiding that secret from her coiled his gut in knots, if there was even the faintest shred of reciprocation, it would make keeping his other secrets from her all the more agonising.

That thought lingered, tightening it's grip around his lungs.

"You have no idea what I've done," he protested, his gaze unable to remain on her even a second longer.

Suddenly, the solution to everything became clear: one final effort to save her from him. If knowing his past would make her hate him, then he would make her hate him. In helping Xander to track her down, in giving Charlotte back the one thing she kept running from most of all - family - he had done all he needed to. She didn't need him watching over her; she'd proven time and again that she could take care of herself. There was no hierarchy of command, no backstabbing bureaucrats for him to shield her from. With Xander there to pull her back from the edge, he was utterly surplus to requirements: the last thing he could do for her was cut the rope, and free her from the weight that he and his past represented. One last act to reinforce her against the rest of the galaxy; teach her that her brother was the only person she should ever trust again.

"I know everything I need to know about you," he said quietly, "But you know almost nothing about me; my life, my past, anything. You must have had questions, but you never asked; and I never told. Now though, there's -"

He struggled over the words.

"- there's no reason for you not to know any more."

His mouth turned dry as parts of his brain awoken from their alcohol coma, drunkenly slurring in regretful protest at what he was doing.

"So ask."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

"Major..." There was pleading there, barely. A request made through the use of his name to not make her do this.

Everyone had secrets for a reason, buried deep so they couldn't hurt the person carrying them or those around them. Charles knew no one really just joined the Rebellion. There were always reasons and some of them could be downright awful at times. Her own reasons landed squarely in that realm and it was for those reasons she knew better than to pry. She couldn't even begin to guess at what lurked within Glayde's past and as she looked at him, eyed the blaster that was held limply in his hand, she had to admit she was actually somewhat afraid to find out.

At the same time, however, Charles was forced to admit that she owed him and if repayment would begin with giving Glayde the means to possibly get some things off his chest that he had been meaning to, then so be it.

A deep breath was taken, not ending entirely in a sigh but close enough. "Okay."

Another glance was given around the room in an attempt to find somewhere to sit, to try and make it seem like she wasn't standing there, firing questions at him as she sat lifelessly in the corner. The bed was the first thing her eyes settled on as was rejected instantly. No - better to stand, even if it did make her feel like she was going to claw her way out of her own skin for some reason.

"Let's start with the big one, I guess... Why are you even here? Xander I can understand, but you? I've been nothing but a pain in your ass since the day I was assigned to you. Last I heard you were off on a pretty grand assignment and now Xan's told me what you did to find me and..." Another breath was taken, her eyes drifting towards the ceiling as her shoulders fell with the exhale. "You aren't responsible for me anymore, John. So why?"

[John Glayde]

That was the only question that mattered, he supposed; the biggest one at least.

But there was no simple answer; no one explanation that provided the whole truth. It wasn't love, or loyalty, obligation, charity, the greater good; and yet it was all of them, and more besides. The why was because he had to; because his mind and his soul left him with no other choice. It wasn't even a choice at all: it just was, some absolute certainty that he couldn't possibly shake from his mind, and couldn't bear the thought of not satisfying.

That wasn't an answer though; it barely provided clarity within the confines of his own mind. What to say? How to make her understand?

"My sister."

The words tumbled from his lips, launched by some unacknowledged corner of his mind without consultation or approval from his conscious thoughts. It confused him, the way that the admission unfurled itself in his mind, forcing it's way into the open.

"I was supposed to join CorSec. That's what my dad groomed me for. I was supposed to follow in the footsteps of my father, and his father before him, ad nauseum. I never even thought about it, never even cared one way or another at the time. I just knew that what what I was going to be."

"Then Sora was killed. She died bad. CorSec never caught the people responsible, and I just couldn't bear the thought of being part of something so ineffective; being part of something that couldn't stop people like her from dying over and over again. So I promised her, and myself, that I would do everything I could to stop people like her getting hurt again; to stop families having to suffer that same loss."

His eyes climbed to hers, reluctantly.

"I'm here, Charlotte, so that Xander doesn't have to lose a sister the way I did, and -" His voice stumbled. "- so that I don't have to fail to save someone I care about again."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

As he spoke Charles was struggling. Struggling to relate, struggling to find some sort of compassion, empathy, humanity. All she heard were facts and she hated herself for it. That was, until the last bit left him.

It was something Charles had always known, well maybe not always, but at least for the better chunk of time just before Dorn was disbanded. The Major had always seemed like the head of their little dysfunctional family, he was the one that kept them all together, kept them functioning, and even when things had begun to fall apart Charles had always felt that he would look out for each and every one of them. Not out of some sense of duty or obligation, but because the man genuinely cared. And if that had been the simple truth of it all, then there wasn't anything to deny. It was the rest that was always hard to process. She'd watched Glayde go out of his way to do things for her, things that sometimes didn't make a whole lot of sense when you tried to look at them purely from a standpoint of black and white. Moving her to back to Cresh only to keep the name alive and give her some sense of peace over losing her other family...and then there had been that dinner, and the way he always managed to look when she felt out of sorts - like he wanted to find out whoever was responsible and do whatever needed to be done to undo the damage, the fact she'd caught him go from grumpy to actually smiling if she somehow managed to actually be in a good mood, as if just the fact her heart was a bit lighter could make things better somehow...

The door was slammed shut on the line of thought. No Charles. Just. No. You aren't that egotistical to even begin thinking that way.

"So that's why you joined the Rebellion...?" The unhelpful question came out sounding sterile and it forced all focus back on to the task at hand and the hollow sensation that was sweeping in to take over where her thoughts had been racing.

[John Glayde]

That's why you joined the Rebellion.

John wanted to say yes. Not just wanted to, either; needed to. He was desperate to accept the escape route that Charlotte had provided; a simple lie, a comforting deception to make this easier for her, and less agonising for him. He'd done enough, hadn't he? One small confession was enough for now; one piece of himself revealed? He could let the illusion fall back into place; adapt the falsehood that Charlotte saw, wait for the acceptance to shift before the next tiny reveal. That seemed shrewd. Strategic. Admission in stages. Truth by attrition. They'd both be old and grey before she knew enough to hate him. Perhaps it would be better that way.

But as much as his brain tried the rational approach, as much as his mind screamed at him to retreat from honesty, those words and sentiments were lost, captured in the accretion disc of the swirling black hole in the centre of his chest. No more lies. No more hidden truths. Or at least, no more hiding this truth.

"It was the Rebellion who killed her, Charlotte."

The words were faint; he wasn't even sure she'd heard, and so much of him hoped she hadn't. Every lesson, every experience, every grim moment, every misspent year fell away, and he was a teenager again: a sad, lonely, barely more than a child, following in his father's footsteps; but into a bottle as a way to cope, not into CorSec like the family had always hoped. He wasn't Commander Glayde any more; not Major Glayde; not even John. He was Johnny again, and despite all the healing his emotions were supposed to have happened since, Sora was gone and he couldn't bear it.

The words tumbled out as a meek confession.

"She was just a kid, working some stupid summer job in a tapcaf store, just for the credits. She had this big plan: this vision of leaving Corellia behind, going off to study medicine on Thyferra or Manaan or somewhere; the planet changed pretty much every time a new research paper was published. Dad hated the idea, and so did I; we couldn't bare the thought of her spending a romantic weekend on Selonia with her boyfriend, let alone being sectors away from being able to help her."

A stuttering exhale sighed from his lungs; the legs that had been sprawled haphazard across the floor tucked up closer to him, shielding him from the memories he couldn't get away from.

"She wasn't supposed to be working that day; she was supposed to clock off before the shift changed at the Imperial recruitment centre two blocks over. She'd never seen any of those guys before; didn't know which ones were the plain clothes Imps, and which ones were the regular folk. Probably wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference anyhow; she got me to help her swear that do no harm doctor's oath when she was six. Everyone was just people to her."

His fingers closed tighter around the neck of the booze bottle, mind willing the glass to shatter, slice into his hand, and provide some distraction from this train of thought. The investigators had made him watch; made him help ID the faces he recognised from hanging around being an overprotective big brother. Not protective enough, though.

"Corellian Resistance was still pretty new back then, and the guys they sent were new. Sloppy. Probably just some kids looking to prove themselves; used a damn dot sight through the open shop front into a shaded tapcaf on pretty much the brightest day of summer. After a double shift in dimness like that, you'd have to be blind not to spot a red dot dancing on the guy's shoulder. Sora wasn't blind; and damn it, she always had too much instinct and not enough sense. Tackled the guy to the ground. First shots missed -"

His voice snagged in his throat; he blinked and rubbed at his tired eyes with the back of his wrist, surprised to find it come away damp. He almost laughed at himself. From respected CO to drunk and crying; if there was a better way to destroy Charlotte's opinion of him, he couldn't think of it.

"They were determined, I'll give them that. If at first you don't succeed, try and try again. Three shots she took for that guy; two to the chest, one lucky one to the head. Never knew who he was. Never knew what he did. Never cared. Never even know his name. But I did."

He shifted slowly, head falling to his chest, hand raising to rest the flat side of the blaster against the side of his skull.

"Commander Ethan Tahmores. Met the guy when he came to our house to offer his condolences -"

His eyes closed, shoulders sagging in surrender.

"- and six weeks later, when he processed my enlistment for the Stormtrooper Corps."

He still remembered the meeting; the awkward conversation, so much of it silent, sitting across the desk from the total stranger that Sora had saved. Back then, Johnny had wondered if it was worth it; wondered if he was worth it; and had hated himself instantly, knowing exactly what Sora would say to him for thinking like that. To his credit, Tahmores had tried to talk him out of it. There was never a question of skill or qualifications - he'd already taken and passed most of what he needed to waltz into CorSec straight after college, and the Stormtrooper Corps wasn't nearly so picky - but Tahmores had questioned his motives. He'd questioned whether six weeks was enough time to clear his head before making a decision that would affect the rest of his life. Johnny had made it simple: I don't care, I just want to be here.

That was when Tahmores had done it; a favour out of sympathy, or maybe a repayment out of obligation. The Commander was heading home: rotating off Corellia and back to Naboo, to some quiet little assignment with the local garrison. He'd explained how the incident had unnerved him; how someone giving their life to save him instead of the other way around had chewed at his soul, mocked the very reason he'd joined the military in the first place. He called it a white job, not a black job; a deployment in armour, not in uniform. Not front line, but not behind a desk. It wouldn't be glamorous, but he offered Johnny the same; offered to pull some strings, call in some favours, and get him skipped straight to Scout Trooper. Johnny couldn't have been more grateful if he'd tried.

Now though, it was different. He wondered how he'd feel if he ever met Tahmores again; and wondered what the man would think knowing everything that those favours had done. At that moment, John couldn't be sure if he'd try to stab the man or shake his hand. Maybe both.

His eyes opened, gaze returning to Charlotte. His features look tired, pale; and aside from the shimmering that was already drying on his cheeks, all signs of any other emotion had faded.

"I was an Imperial, Charlotte. That's why you should hate me."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

Externally, if someone had observed her, Charlotte would have simply appeared to let out a long slow breath. The more careful would have observed as how every muscle in her body seemed to tense. And those who really knew what to look for would have noticed the way she had almost flinched.

"You're just one of them." Lips barely moved as the accusation was breathed, barely carrying to her own ears.

A sudden sharp inhale that was cut halfway and redoubled marked the first motion as it suddenly went erratic. Not just breathing, or pulse, or small ticks, everything. No single thought could be grasped and held on to, no simple image her mind chose to unleash would remain long enough to be processed. His confession was just another weight on scales that hadn't righted themselves after learning of what the Resistance, her resistance had done. Of the scar they had mangled across her home world. And now this.

There was somewhere in her mind that was rational. Casually pointing out that John hadn't exactly been an Imperial when she met him....
It was overridden. Knowledge that he had been one winning over reason.

And there was the truth of it. Her people had killed his sister.
His people...
Her stomach suddenly tightened as she pushed a hand into her hair, fingertips closing into a fist that pulled, just barely, before letting go. She felt like she'd been hit again, slammed into the edge of a table, only then the hand hadn't let go. Not for a while. Neither had the next. Or... Stop it.

"Life for a life..." The lament was the only real hinting at emotion that managed to make it out before her eyes briefly glanced back at Glayde. Already envisioning doing to him what had been done to the harmless holoprojector the night before.

"When we were on Corellia last... and you were injured, I got you out. You could have died. I didn't let that happen." Monotone, cold, just words that could barely begin to describe the tone she was using. It was as if her very lifeforce had been sapped and all that was speaking was a lifeless husk. "Last night, I suppose you saved me. I also could have died and you didn't let that happen."We're even. All debts settled." A deep breath was slowly taken as the residual panic attack finally let go of its last clinging grip.

Her back was turned to him and her hands hovered over the door panel before Charles had even fully realized she had finally moved from where she had been standing. She paused there, just before the door, and half turned to look over her shoulder at him. "And John..."

A hard swallow was taken before her eyes narrowed. "Don't ever touch me again."

The door slid open and Charles allowed for one final moment of their eyes meeting, knowing full well the amber tint her gaze had taken on again.

All too briefly the instant was over and she stepped into the hallway, letting the door shut behind her.

[John Glayde]

It could have been worse.

Those words lingered as he watched Charlotte leave. He didn't need to be a Jedi to sense the waves of hate rolling off her as conflict had wrestled for control of her features; the look in her eyes would have broken his heart if he still had one. It wasn't the anger that he'd feared. There was no rage or violence. There was no outburst of the Jedi powers Alliance Intelligence said she was unexpectedly capable of. There were no tears. No accusations of betrayal. It was all just a switch, flipped to convert him from friend to foe in her mind.

We're even. All debts settled.

John wished it were true. He wished that she'd make it impossible to care; that she'd explode and show that her hate for him was as intense as his own. He'd hoped that she would loathe his very existence, and that her disdain would be the last micro-ounce of pressure on the trigger that would bring it all to an end. He'd wanted her to strengthen the black hole inside him, so that he could collapse in on himself into blissful nothingness. But this was different; this was better, and yet somehow worse. Hatred and betrayal; if she'd felt those things, it was proof that he mattered, proof that she cared. This dismissal, this simple re-evaluation? This was a soldier coming to terms with facts. This was a rebel realising that her CO had once been the enemy, the same as so many other members of the Alliance. She was angry to not have known, and yet, none of the other emotions that John had dreaded causing were there. She was hurt less than he feared, because she cared less than he hoped.

He wasn't sure if that was better or not.

His gaze settled on the bottle still gripped in his hand: the alcohol that had numbed his mind, trying to dull his emotions, quiet his thoughts. He didn't need that now. Charlotte's reaction had brought clarity, and he needed, wanted more. He shifted his grip, flinging the bottle across the room, propelling it towards the opposite wall; responses dulled by insobriety, his arm couldn't manage the necessary force to ensure enough of an impact, and so the bottle tumbled, still intact, to the floor.

John's hand held out his pistol, aim swaying as he struggled to focus. The shaking of his hand made it worse; he steadied it with the other, sighting as best as he could manage. One squeeze; a glancing blow, but enough to shatter a decent chunk of the bottle. The alcohol he'd never learned the name of seeped through the breach, soaking irrevocably into the motel carpet.

His arm slumped, pistol deposited unceremoniously on the ground. His blurred vision contemplated the bed. Too far. Too much climbing. His slump deepened, eyes enthusiastically closing as his head lolled against the wall.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hoped he would have to wake up.

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

The sound of the shot muffled by closed door and walls sent a wave of ice crashing through her. It made her footsteps falter, just slightly. Just enough to cause her to pause, to give Charles a moment of absolute stillness. An instant where time seemed to stop, where all she could hear was the dull pounding of her heartbeat that seemed to hasten. In that moment she considered turning around, could envision herself looking over her shoulder back at the door, smashing the panel until it opened and she could face what they both had caused. Her mind warred for what seemed like eternity over hoping it had been a misfire, an accident, some sort of self inflicted wound... or the alternative. None of the options sat well with her.

And so Charles stood there in the motel hallway, staring forward, eyes slightly glassed over until a deep breath finally escaped as the burning in her lungs from holding it was realized. Several painful breaths followed as she forced herself to walk forward, mutely taking the steps that would return her to the room her brother had explained would be theirs until they were ready to move on. She knew it was because he didn't trust her to be alone.

At that exact moment she couldn't blame him.

[Alexander Tur'enne]

* * *

Xander slowly rolled the brown glass bottle back and forth between his fingertips. When you sat down at a bar and your booze showed up in the bottle it was shipped in, you knew you were in a classy establishment, same as when the soles of your shoes stuck to the floor with every step, and when you could see the airflow from everyone moving about because of the haze of 'stick smoke and kriff knows what else.

He hated places like this; but sadly, the current incarnation of his sister did not. She was still spoiling for a fight, and this was the place she would come. It was a subtle pattern, one that Charlotte probably wasn't even aware of herself. It wasn't even one that you could reasonably expect one of the Intelligence bureaus to pick up on, though they didn't quite have the same duration of experience to fall back on, of trying to work out how the hell Charlotte Tur'enne's mind worked.

She'd gone to see John; and had assured him she'd head straight back. The second she'd rounded the corner, he'd left to come here: he saw through her lies before she even said them half the time, and unless her talk with the former Major didn't end in a catastrophic and explosive mess - which it almost certainly would, given their fundamental disagreement over whether or not Charlotte's life was actually worth something - she'd be here, spoiling for a brawl, just like every other night she'd been on this rock.

A woman slid into the seat next to him; some sort of animal print with a decidedly unpleasant looking sheen clinging a little too tight to curves it wasn't quite designed for. Make-up was applied a little too liberally to her face, boasting a colour palette that clashed uncomfortably with a skin tone that hovered the sickly border between yellow and green. Xander wasn't entirely sure what the symptoms of spice addiction in a Mirialan were, but he guessed that was what was responsible for the unpleasant dark rings that arced between her eyes and the criss-cross tattoos across her cheek bones.

"Hey handsome," She cooed, with as much allure as she could muster.

Xander replied with a grunt. "Not interested," he followed up; he'd seen her working her way through the bar, targeting anyone who looked rich enough, new enough, and drunk enough to be looking for a good time, and who favoured proximity and convenience over the far broader and higher end selection that this planet no doubt had to offer to anyone motivated enough to look for it.

The woman instantly took offence. "What's the matter?" she bit back, her voice going from honey to vinegar in an instant. Apparently, when her questionable charms failed to ensnare a client, the threat of public shame was next on her presumably short list of marketing strategies. "You some kinda Imperial? Gonna brush me off 'cause I ain't got the right skin colour to match yo' pasty white ass?"

An eyebrow climbed as Xander shot her a sidelong glance. "You've got the wrong genitals for my pasty white ass, actually," he countered with matter-of-fact calmness, before his eyes returned to his beer.

The Mirialan flustered in silence, mouth working as she struggled to concoct some sort of response. Left abandoned by her wits, she mustered a scowl before slinking off back into the smoky haze.

A thunk caught Xander's attention as the barman appeared in front of him, popping the cap off another bottle of ale and sliding it towards the Corellian, with no credits offered or asked for. A faint smile broke out beneath the other human's bushy white moustache, amusement shining from the eyes beneath a set of dark brows that disagreed with the rest of his body about what colour their hair was supposed to be.

"It's about time someone shut her up," he chuckled.

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

Everyone in the verse had their little routines. Some more than others, some out of necessity and others because they knew no gods damn different. Charles had always been a victim to them; when young it was the weekdays of schooling and the weekend spent in every tree close enough to climb around their parents' estate or decking some sorry bastard that had decided to pick on her brother. Military life had been another set of routines that only varied if they had been on a mission or not. Hew new life? That was routine as well. Wake up with a headache about midday, wish you were dead, drink a little hair of the bothan to get yourself up and running, patch yourself up if you had a mind to and the night's activities had warranted it, wander off to the nearest place that served alcohol cheap enough you could keep it running through your bloodstream for the next few hours until someone who looked about right walked in, start a fight, take a beating, give a beating, start up another fight if time allowed and you weren't hurting too bad to keep going, drink more in between until everything became a haze of numb and then wander on back to her hotel room and get ready to start it all over again.

The meeting with Glayde and Xander popping into her life had caused that routine to stumble, to get messed up, and if there was one thing Charles had slowly learned about herself it was that she hated change, loathed anything that mucked up her routines. She had to figure that not letting herself know if the Major was dead or not was some form of mental assault as opposed to a physical one; just another part of the day, just another thing she deserved, just another thing she wouldn't feel tomorrow.

Charles' brother could fight her all he wanted on the subject, and maybe, just maybe one day he'd get through to her like he almost had the night before. But for the meantime Xander was going to have to deal with the fact that the girl who had once been his baby sister was long gone, left for dead in some warehouse back on Corellia years back. The remains of that person had struggled on, half knitting themselves together at the hands of those that had tried to turn her into something else and hadn't quite realized just how well they succeeded. If the Rebellion had learned of just how far she could go, just what she was capable of... well, maybe their damn war would have ended a lot differently. Maybe not. History was full of stories of entities making weapons far more deadly than they had any right to be and then leaving them to collect dust rather than ever getting used.

So she'd been left to rot, left to have her edges dulled and rust away into nothingness. Problem was, she refused to go out like that. Other problem was she didn't much care who it was she was unleashed on, herself included among the victims. The passion behind the sentiment had long since worn out though, leaving only routine and endless apathy.

That was all it was when she finally trudged to the bar. This bar in particular. It was next on her circuit, after all. A pattern that had only been half worked out to give the owners and bouncers enough time to forget she'd been there before she wound up back in their door. Some trashy Mirialan bumped into her almost as soon as she stepped through the doors, glaring the shorter blonde human down before a string of comments that Charles found only mildly amusing in their obvious hypocrisy regarding her nightly activities and escapades left her. For a half second Charles thought to tell her off, see if she could goad the other female into striking first.

Frak that.

The movement was swift, one loud crack as fist connected with jaw followed by a much louder squishy thud as the woman's ample curves found the bar's floor. The expression on Charles' face hadn't changed the entire time, a look torn between boredom and utter loathing. Her hand flexed, actually perturbed the hit hadn't so much as bruised her when she'd been hoping it would at least split the skin across her knuckles. Hardly worth the effort. That itch in the back of her mind gnawed at her again, calling the blade strapped to her leg to mind, begging her to unleash it, daring her to hack the unsuspecting bitch on the floor into pieces. Maybe then she'd feel something, feel the hinting of the passion that would bring strength.

A stabbing pain erupted in the front of her head as she could feel herself fighting against the urges. She looked up past the haze and tunneled vision to catch the fact that eyes had turned on her. Another flinch as she had to shrug off the want to rip into all of them, gouge them out, shove them down their owner's throats...

Charles stepped over the unconscious body on the floor and up to the bar, no hint of forgiveness in her monotone voice as she finally spoke to the barkeep. "I'll have two of what he's having." A nod was given towards where Xander sat, his presence haven't gone unnoticed in the slightest. "And then a double of whatever type of skrag you've got that's got the highest percentage, yeah?"

[Alexander Tur'enne]

Xander wondered how it had all come to this; how his life had fallen apart so badly that he could sit in an inhospitable dive like this and feel like it was absolutely normal. This wasn't the way his life was supposed to be. He was supposed to be one of the normal people, one of the blissfully ignorant, living their normal lives bundled up in enough delusion to feel as if the universe was an okay place. He'd been the good student, the good son; good grades that came almost too effortlessly, that made him complacent and lazy and comfortable. He had the prestigious university. He had the perfect woman; the one he was prepared to spend the rest of his life with, to build a deluded little ignorant future, raise deluded little ignorant children, and live blissfully unaware that their perfectly normal house and their perfectly normal life was anything but perfect, anything but normal, if you looked close enough to read the fine print and realise all of the terrors and horrors it was built upon.

He tried to place where it had gone wrong. The first time he'd noticed that his life was crumbling was when Laura had left; that painful catastrophe that had vaporised all hope for the future he'd wanted and expected, torn the still-beating heart from his chest, and had broken him so much that he couldn't so much as look at another woman again; not the way that he was supposed to look at them, at least. The job he'd taken for the Empire - the opportunity they'd offered, the new life they promised amidst all the chaos of his old one falling apart - had been a tragic misstep; and while at the time, contacting the Rebellion, striving for defection, being rescued from that place by Lottie and John had seemed like the only course of action his soul could bear, he couldn't help wondering in hindsight if that had been a mistake too. Would things have been different for Charlotte if he hadn't come back into her life? Better? Worse? Would his life have been any better if he hadn't left Corellia?

Would mom and dad still be alive if he hadn't abandoned them?

He shifted a little in his seat, slightly disappointed that his espionage skills weren't enough to have avoided his sister's notice for even a few seconds. "The highest percentage water, right?" he grunted, as sternly as he could muster. One of the things he'd hated most about this whole hunting Charlotte, spying on her business was the look he'd taken at her financials; the amount of credits he'd seen her spending on alcohol. What point was there in saving his sister if she was going to end up dying of alcohol poisoning a few weeks later?

"Judging by the fact that you're here, instead of -" He struggled for some sort of diplomatic, delicate, anything that didn't involve even a passing reference to his baby sister's sex life way of phrasing kiss and make up, but came up empty "- with John..." A disappointed sigh escaped from him. "I guess it didn't go so well."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

"Does it ever?" Charlotte retorted, but where they normally would have been some sort of snide undertone, it was simply a comment. A read from a script she'd practiced over and over.

A sidelong glance was cast at Xander, her mind more caught up in his blatant attempt at righting her wrongs than why or why not it was she was standing over the possibly still alive or maybe dead body of the Major. Barkeep knew better though, at least, mostly. A single beer was placed in front of her rather than the asked for amount. Vision blurred as she could feel the small twinge under her right eye form. It decided to let things be as a second bottle was placed near the first. All hopes that he was just being slow about her order were abolished as she caught the guy giving a knowing look to her brother. Great. Someone else to play mom.

An echo of memory of the night before, of the fact that no one would be mom now because mom was dead, crept up on her. It threatening to dredge up guilt and a whole host of other emotions she didn't want to tackle let alone realize she could still feel. Something else barred the way though, stepping up to play defense against her better judgement once more. Some sort of creature that lurked within that saw weakness as prey pounced, claws digging in and scouring along the insides of her as teeth clamped down on what remained of her compassion, shaking it until it stopped fighting back within it's maw before running off with it's kill back to it's den where it could lurk and wait for it's next victim, all before Charlotte could even process something was happening. It left her feeling raw, an exposed nerve that the first drink of second rate beer only thinly coated.

"So is this how it's going to be now? You pretend to look the other way while slowly filling the pit I've been dragging myself into so I can't bury myself as deep anymore?" The stirring in her mind seemed to agree with the assessment. "Should warn you, Xan. You may not like what rises to the top of that heap when it's not busy trying not to drown."

The bottle in her hand was tipped back, half contents drained in an effort to inject alcohol back into her system as fast as possible, even if it was only a meager amount.

[Alexander Tur'enne]

"You're terrible at metaphors, you know that?"

Xander pulled another swig from his bottle, now engaged in an unofficial race with Charlotte, to finish his and swipe away her extra bottle before she had a chance to. It might not have seemed like all that much of a selfless act, but it sure as hell was with the way this swill tasted. With any luck, the alcohol would dull his senses and make the effort a little more tolerable; but the way his luck was going lately, it'd probably make him blind instead, and amp up his taste buds to compensate.

"For starters," he said, shifting in his stool a little, to face his sister more directly, "If stuff was drowning in this pit I'm hypothetically filling in, by the time I filled it all the way to the surface, all that fluid would spread out and soak away of evaporate, leaving you nothing to drown in. I would be kind of okay with that."

Another swig; another fight against a grimace; another effort to force his body to drink more in one go than it wanted to, without it seeming like that was what he was trying to do. Gods damned gag reflex; screwing with his family relationships now, as well as the other ones. "Second, whatever dark thing is down in this pit of yours, I'm not going to pussy around with the fill job; I mean to bury whatever it is alive."

"And third?" The bottle settled back down on the bar top with a thunk. A frown formed on Xander's face his eyes focused on Charlotte's shoulder; not that she was even paying enough attention to notice whether he made eye contact or not. "Do you remember, back home on Corellia; you came into my room one night, scared out of your mind? You must have been five or six, maybe. Mom and dad out of the house, we'd that scary holo, and you'd insisted you were brave enough; but sure enough, middle of the night, there you were sneaking into my room, because you were convinced there was some sort of blood-sucking mynock monster under your bed, and you didn't wanna go wake dad because you'd promised you wouldn't watch it. So I grabbed my smashball stick, and we charged in there... and there was nothing. But you were still scared. You made me stay there all night, just in case it came back."

His frown deepened. "That was the last time my baby sister asked me to protect her from anything. And pretty soon after, she stopped needing it. Started protecting me instead, even." His hand reached out for her arm, resting gently below her elbow, just enough pressure to stop the beer bottle from being lifted to her lips again. "But she needs me to now, whether she's willing to admit it or not. And just like last time, the thing she needs protecting from is all in her head... and that's the one place she's never been any good at fighting anything."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

Charlotte flinched, a jolt of her head as she sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. Memories were like echoes now, distant thoughts that rolled in from the recesses of her mind through a haze that at times had left her wondering if at some point they weren't actually hers. Maybe she'd been cloned and these were just the memories of the real Charlotte Tur'enne. But no, she had never been that lucky and while some things, such as the time Xander spoke of, were blurry and hard to grasp others were as clear and sharp as a razor's edge. No matter how you tried to push them down, no matter how many walls you built up around yourself they still managed to seep in through the cracks, slithering along fracture points until they could reform and strike when least expected.


Her voice was hauntingly calm and soft as she slowly turned to face him. "You don't get it, do you? Your baby sister is dead. The Empire, John's people, killed her."

Vision blurred, not in a haze of rage but from an upwelling of moisture that she was forced to blink to clear, letting streaks that felt strangely cold slice down her cheeks. The sensation couldn't be right, there was no tightening in her chest, no throat feeling too swollen to properly swallow, none of the usual stuffy-headedness or shortness of breath. Her body was betraying her, the screaming child of a corpse inside trying to rise up and proclaim it still had life in it.

"Do you want to know how many men it took?" The question was asked, just loud enough that Xander would hear her over the din of the bar. It should have been spoken in a conspiratorial manner; instead it was a strange sneer that accompanied it, followed by a short abrupt exhale that wasn't quite a laugh but certainly hinted towards some bitter humor. "Nine. And I remember every last one of them. I know every detail of their faces. I know exactly which ones preferred their fists to blades. I even know some of their names. You want to know the real sick thing, though? The thing I can't seem to get out of my head right now?"

Slowly her gaze returned to the mostly empty bottle at the bar. The arm that Xander wasn't holding onto moved up to claim it and she knocked back the rest of the contents. "John. Who's to say he wouldn't have been right there along with them if it'd been his squad instead? Following orders like a good little stormy." Another sick smile formed as a small shake of her head. "Just like the rest of them."

This time the laugh did leave her, but it felt more like a strangled scream that was ripped from herself somewhere. "The kicker of that, though? I remember exactly how it felt when he kissed me when we were doing recon for your rescue. Just the same as I remember the way all nine of them felt. Every. Single. Time."

Charles sat back in the bar stool, her head shaking. "I can't remember what was the last thing you said to me before you went to college. I can't remember the last thing John said to be before I went to that damn Jedi convoy."

Charles' vision settled on the second bottle, waiting for her attention. "But I can remember the way each and every one of them looked when they were dead."

Another flinch and a sudden crack ran up the glass in front of her, letting it's contents slowly begin to seep out. "And I like it," she admitted. "I'm not afraid of the monster under my bed anymore. Because now I'm the monster."

[Alexander Tur'enne]

Xander let out a hollow laugh. "You're not a monster, Charlotte Tur'enne. What you are is an idiot."

He shook his head, a sigh forming, taking another swig of his drink as the barman came over to mop up his sister's leak. "You know who is an Imperial?" he asked, an indignant edge in his voice. "Pretty much everybody. Most of the Alliance heroes. Most of the Alliance politicians. Most of Rogue Squadron. Most of SpecForce. Most of Dorn Force. Hell, where do you think most of your beloved Cresh got their training? I was an Imperial, for a while there. Sure, the Alliance trains some, alien militias trained a few; but the Rebellion would not, and could not exist if it weren't for an influx of people with existing skills, and newsflash: the Imperials paid to train most of them. You have been serving with, and trusting former Imperials, the entire time you've been fighting the Empire."

He reached for the second beer bottle, hoisting it out of Charlotte's reach and scooting it a few feet down the bar before she had the opportunity to dive in. "Former Imperials. That's the thing they have in common. But did you ever stop to think about why? About what it was that made them stop? Did they retire? Did they get kicked out? Are they defectors like me? Conscientious objectors? Did they only joined the Empire to get training, before deserting to join the Alliance? Were they conscripted into it, had no choice but to serve?"

His jaw clenched. "Yes, John Glayde was an Imperial. Yes, he was a Stormtrooper. Hell, he was a Storm Commando. That's only a rung or two worse than being Darth Vader in your eyes, right? But so was Crix Madine, one of the Alliance's heroic Corellians. Hell, he founded the Storm Commandos, and yet he's responsible for some of the greatest victories, and greatest acts of heroism against the Empire. And John?"

Xander shook his head, his voice tumbling out of his voice as if he were berating a teenager. "You know John. Maybe you don't know what he did back then, but you know what he's done since. You know who he is. This the man who kept Cresh alive, purely because it meant something to you. This is the man who threw away everything, used up every favour, burned every bridge, salted the earth, all to come find you. You really need to ask what he would have done if he'd known about what happened to you?"

He pulled on Charlotte's arm, forcing his sister to look him in the eye. "Yeah, he would have been there. Filling all nine of their skulls full of laser. Not just because it was you, either: he would have done it for anyone, because despite everything, John Glayde knows the difference between right and wrong. You know that. You know him."

Xander released her arm; leaned back in his stool; retrieved his beer. "And you know what else you just told me, Miss Monster? You just told me that despite the fact that you can't remember your childhood, or us, or anything like that? Alongside your absolute worst memory, you remember John kissing you. You know what I think, sis?" His eyebrows arched as he took another swig of detestable beer. "I don't think you hate him because he was an Imperial. I think you're angry because the man you're in love with has secrets from you. I think you're scared that if he ever learns yours, he won't like what what he finds; and so you're hating him to protect yourself from him ever finding out."

Xander reached for her again, hand settling upon her shoulder this time. "He already knows, Charlotte, and yet here he is, on the outer edge of the galaxy, throwing everything away, all for you. There's only one thing John feels about you, and no amount of anything is gonna make that change."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

Charlotte wanted to be irate at the way Xander sidestepped her arguments, at the vulgar lashing out and details casually aired in an effort to see something in his expression change. But it didn't happen, it never happened. He'd learned how to avoid her poisonous words long ago and somewhere within her found that thought - not comforting; that would have been to give it too much credit to pierce through the numbness - but it was something - Something familiar at the very least.

Her eyes had locked on to him, the festering thing inside of her practically demanding that she lash out at him in some way. The bottle, break it, plunge the shards into the side of his throat and pull. It would silence him, it would stop all of this it would...

It would take Xander away from her. Whatever shreds of herself that remained focused on that, recoiled away from the violence that had played out in her head and loathed herself all the more for it. This was her brother, someone she could somehow, although buried and dulled, admit that she still cared for. It wasn't some faint memory to pull on, it was as recent as a few hours prior and all it took was once glance down to the bandages around each of her wrists that Xander had put there to emphasize the point.

Even the comments about the Major didn't exactly irk her like she wanted.

"I'm not in love with him," she half mumbled and found herself utterly annoyed by the lack of conviction that came with it.

Charlotte took the opportunity of Xander's hand on her shoulder to allow herself to lean in, just a bit... a ploy as an excuse to snatch the beer out of his hand and take a quick drink herself. Such a damn sibling thing to do - or, at least their version of it.

"I can't control what he feels. I'm not going to be responsible for it."

[Alexander Tur'enne]

"When have you ever felt responsible for anything?"

The words came out harsh, almost scolding. Xander recognised Dad's voice in them, though he doubted Charlotte had ever been on the receiving end of them. She had always been the favourite: daddy's little girl, no matter what trouble she went and wound up in. Xander couldn't really blame his father for that, though: she'd always been his favourite as well.

A subtle sigh escaped him as he surrendered to her efforts to drink her problems and her consciousness away. That moment of mental weakness was exploited by other, darker things. It might have seemed like Xander had ignored her words, and in a way he had. There was no part of him who wanted to hear what the Empire had done to her, no desire to know just how beaten and broken his sister had been while Xander had been gone from her life, comfortable in the ivory towers of the same Imperials responsible for abusing her. There had been a file, part of the documentation that John's called-in favours had made available to them, a more extensive account of Charlotte's condition when Cresh had found her than official records provided. Xander hadn't read it. John had refused to allow him to; he'd seen enough in the Major's eyes to understand why.

Leaning into his arm had been a ploy, but Xander exploited it, relished it, appreciated the opportunity to feel a little closer to the sister who had tried so desperately and gone to such lengths to convince him that she was gone. Her words - your baby sister is dead - attached themselves to memories of their last encounter before Charlotte had left the Alliance behind and come here: the goodbye that she had offered, the bridges she had burned, the efforts she had made to demolish what had once existed between them.

In his efforts to be objective, to be an unwavering force of resistance against Charlotte's bitterness, to hide his vulnerabilities from himself and from Charlotte's claws, he had buried his emotions deep, pushed them all aside. That moment of surrender was enough of a lull in his defenses to allow them to bleed through, to leak into his expression, into his eyes, into his voice.

"What about my feelings?" he asked. "Are you not going to be responsible for those, either?"

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

Charlotte flinched at the accusation, at the way Xander had allowed more emotion than intended into it. But more than that, the recoil was away from herself in a way, of the feelings that bubbled to the surface in a desperate need to be acknowledged. No matter how damned she felt, no matter how much the galaxy tried to crush her and obliterate all feelings within, there was always a permanence there, something that couldn't be lost between them no matter how she had tried to shove it away or tell Xander otherwise. He was her big brother, and no monsters outside or within could change that.

"No, those I have no choice but to be..." It was there, that hinting of sadness that added at least some emotion to her voice.

Charlotte made every effort to make sure she caught Xander's gaze, if for nothing else than to hope by some means he could see beyond the walls she had built up around herself and know she wasn't lying to him.

"Your feelings are the only ones that matter to me, the only ones that ever have mattered. Xan, I - "

She never got a chance to finish whatever pitiful excuse for an apology was working it's way up from the depths of her.

Charlotte's head snapped to look over her shoulder, eyes searching for the sudden feeling, for the responsibility to to the overwhelming malice she could feel approaching. Dulled as her senses were, she clocked in to everything int he bar, the lack of threats, the way everyone casually ignored one another's pain and suffering. It wasn't from within then, that meant...

"No..." The former solider whispered, a refusal to allow what she could almost picture was coming for them. The men from the alleyway... they were...

The bottle in her hand was abandoned as Charlotte reached towards her brother, but not to pull him to safety but to make slight contact with him before she pushed. As loathing as she was to learn and use whatever it was these powers she had been cursed with were, she had to. Had to use them to shove Xander across the bar, even if he sustained bruises in doing so it would get him behind something safer, to avoid the onslaught that was only seconds away.

She turned to face the bar's windows, to the doorway, to the fate that she had earned. John and Xander had come to prevent this, but it was inevitable, and if her last act upon this galaxy was to make sure that Xander lived through it, then it was done. The speeder containing the men and their weaponry approached and Charlotte closed her eyes as the first few high powered blaster bolts ripped through glass and duracrete. No effort was made to dive for her own cover. This was it, a life forfeited... One regret being that she hadn't had time to finish what she was trying to say to her brother. The other lingering that she shouldn't have been so cold towards John, after all, she cared about him too.

[Alexander Tur'enne]

It was all a blur. First that glimmer of humanity in Charlotte's eyes; then the shift as something distracted her, drew her attention elsewhere. It turned to concern, and then determination in a single blink; then Xander was flying, hurled by invisible energy from his bar stool into the difference, shoulder slamming in and then through an unfortunate table as he crashed like a comet into an unsuspecting booth. He didn't have the opportunity to register the pain, didn't have the opportunity to react or contemplate why before a meteor storm cascaded through the front wall of the bar. Blaster bolts, or bullets maybe - who the kriff could even tell with things moving at that speed - splintered through windows and flimsy walls as a speeder truck of gunmen cruised slowly by. Xander scrambled backwards, cowering into the wreckage of the table he had obliterated, dust and debris showering down on him, ozone cloying at his nostrils as plasma energy seared through the haze of stale smoke and sweat that formed the bar's atmosphere.

It lasted mere seconds before a sickening silence descended, broken only by the whine of repulsorlifts and thrusters as whatever conveyance had carried the gunmen screamed away, fleeing on the off-chance that retaliation somehow managed to survive their onslaught. It certainly wouldn't have been coming from Xander, that was for damned sure: for the next few dozen thunderous racing heartbeats, Xander didn't dare move, fighting against ragged breaths, desperately trying to squeeze himself out of existence with firmly-closed eyelids. Damn right you'd better run, he managed to think, When Charlotte finds you -

His eyes snapped open.

Charlotte.

Ignoring the pain, not even paying it enough mind to be conscious of where it came from, Xander scrambled free of the wreckage, racing back across the few meters he had just travelled, back to where Charlotte had been, only to find... her. Safe. Unscathed. Somehow poised at the centre of a pristine cone of dive bar that had somehow survived the blaster barrage unscathed. For a blissful moment, Xander felt elation and relief, not caring what miracle or act of Force had somehow saved her. Yet, something was wrong. He watched as Charlotte scrambled frantically across the ground, his senses too dazed and confused to comprehend the sounds escaping her. Were those tears? Why was -

And then he saw it: saw him. The apex of Charlotte's cone of safety. Crumpled. Bloody. Shot to hell. He felt the blood drain from his body, the colour drain from the world, as Charlotte finished crawling over and placed her hands upon the seeping gunshot wounds of Major John Glayde.

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

One single word kept repeating, tumbling from her mouth as she dropped to the broken form on the floor next to her. No.

What had he done? One moment she was surrendering to the end and the next there was nothing and her eyes opened and John was there and... Training kicked in, desperate actions taken before she could start shouting for the medic to get to them. But there was no medic, and the orders never left the lieutenant; they weren't at war anymore, this wasn't a battlefield, and there was no one else there to help them.

"Please, John, no." She begged even as her hands ripped at the remains of his shirt, fabric pressed tightly against the wounds but there were so many. More than she could take in, more that left the Major looking nothing like himself and more like the wreckage of enemies long gone. Gods, no!

Kriff, was she crying? She had to be with the way her vision was blurring, the feeble sobs and gasps for air that came between the never ending stream of arguing against what had happened.

Desperately the Nos turned into other things, words of reassurance, desperate pleas to the void to not take John away from her. Whatever crimes she had committed, whatever wrongs he had perpetuated, whether they both were broken or not, she couldn't let this happen. His wounds were beyond her but she had to try, had to stop thinking about the fact the blood coating her hands and seeping into the fabric of her clothing wasn't her own, wasn't that of an enemy but rather belonging to someone she needed, someone she couldn't begin to think of trying to survive without.

"Why? Why did you..." Charlotte begged for answers before he even thought about fully leaving this galaxy, from giving in to a fate that was meant for her. "I'm not worth this, John. Please, don't leave me."

[John Glayde]

John managed a small smile. It didn't hurt. That was usually a bad sign.

"Always -"

The words snagged in his throat, as if the air just wasn't there in his lungs to back it up. He tried to force a breath; felt part of his chest inflate, and part of it not. Collapsed lung. Another bad sign. His vision fading was another; the chill, too, that fell across his body as his blood went elsewhere - seeping into the floorboards, probably. It was starting to become a list. Not the sort of thing you wanted in some shit-stain district of the galactic capital of can't be arsed response times. Keep it short then. Save your breath. Spend it on the words that mattered. He managed to swallow, barely.

"Always liked when you called me John."

His brow furrowed, though the expression was weak and vague. He tried to move enough to look Charlotte over, check her for injuries, make sure that she was unscathed, that he'd succeeded. His body refused to cooperate, parts of it almost feeling like they weren't even there. It didn't matter. It had served its purpose, breathed its last doing something worthwhile.

"Honestly thought -" A feeble cough interrupted the words, dissolving into a breathless ghost of a chuckle. "- the power cell would last a second or two longer."

He tried to shift his hand to pat the personal forcefield generator clipped to his belt. A dull ache cascaded through that entire side of his body; he stopped as soon as his eyes caught a glimpse of the bloodied mess where part of his hand was supposed to be. He'd known that the device wouldn't protect him indefinitely. He'd known that when he threw himself in front of Charlotte, into the path of those blasters and bullets, his shield would only bear the brunt, not the entirety. He'd known that at some point, shots would start getting through. He'd known that at some point, his body would become the shield. That was fine. Had been fine, and still was. Charlotte was okay. That was what mattered.

"I'm sorry," he managed to breathe out, each passing sentence more faint and more difficult than the last, "That I wasn't a better man. But you are worth saving. Me for you is a good trade."

His eyes blinked; it was only then that he understood only half his vision was working, the other half completely void and dark with the remainder rapidly seeking to catch up. He felt his lungs seize and slow, each breath diminished from the one before. He forced every last scrap of energy he could into them, one final breath for one last set of words.

"Goodbye, Charlotte. I -"

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

"Don't you dare... Don't go!"

It was too late, though. She felt him slipping away from her and no amount of tears, regret, shouting, screaming, begging the universe itself would stop it. There was one thing she could count on though, one tiny thing that she knew that even the very Force of the galaxy had no power against. The stubbornness of Lieutenant Charlotte Tur'enne.

Blood soaked hands tied knots as best she could and she clung desperately to the feeling, the knowledge that John wasn't gone. Not yet, but gods if they didn't act soon...

He was going to hate her for this. A denial of the selfless act, repaid for in selfishness.

Charlotte's eyes looked up, a new fierce determination and calmness within as they focused on Xander.

"I'm not letting him go." A comm, rarely used, was pulled from her pocket and fumbled between bloody fingers. "Xan, I need your help... I need..."

The sudden twinge, the horrible tearing sensation within her cut off her request and caused a stumble in her breath. She was losing him. She was too late.

"No, John! John! Stay with me!"

[John Glayde]

* * *


When you die, you are supposed to see a light. Religion tells you it is the path to the afterlife, or the welcoming embrace of the Force. Science is more pragmatic, blaming a flood of chemicals in your brain. You were meant to feel uplifted from your body, as your soul departed to the beyond. You were supposed to watch your life play out before your eyes.

For John, there was only darkness, and silence.

A black void surrounded him, an infinite cold expanse that stretched in every direction. And yet, not a void. Through the silence, through the blackness, he felt things. Something beneath him, a surface perhaps? An infinite void, and yet somehow he had found his way to the bottom: a fitting summation of his life if there ever was one. He had tried to move, but couldn't. Parts of him felt numb. Other parts felt heavy. There was more as well, perturbations in the void around him, the sense of motion, the sensation of heat, the scent of burning and of ozone. The perceptions were faint, fleeting, blurred, as if consciousness came to him in waves; and yet it was impossible to tell, impossible to know one moment from the next. It could have been moments, or centuries, or an eternity.

Slowly, things began to change. The numbness in parts of him began to fade, replaced with aches, and impulses. Strange sensations. He tried to move, and felt as if he had, yet the sensation was wrong somehow, changed, distorted. He began to hear, distant muffled sounds as if he was submerged beneath water, and yet his lungs breathed something that tasted just like air. The sounds grew louder. Words formed.

The illusion subsided.

From there, time was slower, each second weighed down by the sombre reality of circumstance. The voice of God whispered in his ears, Doctor Parrus Dal explaining the details, words twisted and deformed, hearing unfamiliar voices through someone else's ears. He would adapt, the voice of God assured. They would calibrate. He would grow accustomed.

The voice talked him through movement, demonstrations that his limbs still functioned. The Doctor assured him through crooning praise that he was doing well, that he had completed each task, but John could not tell, at least at first. In time he came to understand the impulses, the pressures against his nervous system, like a comlink set to vibrate pulsing in his extremities.

Then came vision, brightness that could have been the tunnel. It changed, twisted, his vision bending through light spectra that his mind was not equipped to process. Through slow, fumbling and abstract efforts, they urged him to test his limitations. To want, to imagine, to will his new implants to address their full functionality. He had failed, until he realised the deeper truth of it all, the fatal flaw on which their guidance was based. They urged him to continue thinking as if he were a human, but the realisation slowly dawned that he no longer was. Once he embraced that, once he closed his eyes, and imagined himself accessing the directory of his mind, it became easy. The vision application. Range submenu. 400% zoom. Infrared wavelengths.

No defaults, though. Whatever calibrations had been made, they were incorrect. The Doctor told him that he was seeing the world as he was meant to, his vision now perfect - beyond perfect - for a human being. That faulty thinking again. John was no longer human, and he had never been perfect. He missed his flawed vision, the hearing that didn't catch conversations from the wrong side of the room. His spacial awareness felt cracked and mismatched, sounds never quite emerging from where his perceptions thought they should, eyes never quite resetting to the same magnification so that his depth perception seemed off.

Sitting was the hardest part. Laying required no effort, but sitting? So many limbs, so many deliberate instructions. In time, he would learn, they told him. John understood their words. In time he would learn to calibrate, learn to construct subroutines, learn how to program himself to perform what his body once had. For now, he felt unsteady, and unstable. His arms rested against the metallic surface on which he had lain for so long, but while his right offered the resistance and feedback he was accustomed to, the left felt like a dead weight, like leaning against a statue. It looked the same, even down to the synthetic fibres growing from falsified hair follicles. But feeling? Sensation? He knew the table was there. He knew the table was cold. But he accessed that information as facts in his mind, not as feelings. He would adapt, they said.

That was not all they said. You have a visitor. Those were the most recent words. They tried to keep it as a surprise, but it hadn't worked. He'd heard her voice from all the way out in the corridor, could see the outline of her short stature in thermal through the doorway. He squeezed his eyes closed and tried to focus, trying to enforce the limitations that a human was supposed to have; tried to pretend - tried to be - if only for a few minutes.

He swallowed against a dry throat. It felt strange, part of his larynx synthetic now. The Doctor had been gleeful, excited by the possibilities for adaptation and enhancement that it offered. John would have settled for not feeling like there was a stone lodged in his neck. Still, even now, for her, he managed to muster a smile.

"Hey there, Charlotte."

His words sounded wrong to his ears. Perhaps it was the implants being miscalibrated. Perhaps it was the fact that for the first time he heard himself through his own ears, rather than the vibrations in his jaw jostling the bones in his skull. Maybe it was the fact he called her Charlotte. All things considered, it had felt like the right thing to do.

"Sorry, I -"

He glanced down at himself, at the tangle of hair that covered his chest. Somewhere beneath it was a separation, a point at which real skin seamlessly transitioned into synthetic. He couldn't see it. The surgeons had disguised it well.

"I seem to have misplaced my shirt."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

Charlotte hadn't known what to expect to find or see or feel when she had made the necessary sojourn to the hospital she had entrusted John's life with. She hadn't seen him since they had left Terminus, since the frantic journey to Polis Massa, to the promise that his life would be saved.

No expense had been spared, not a single credit withheld, so she should have known on some level that he would look, well, like he always had. But it bothered her, to find that she couldn't see where they had fixed, where her efforts to keep the Major from leaving on the most permanent of bases had come into play. It left her to wonder just how aware of it all was he, no doubt far too much and far too little.

It had been crossing a line, a decision that she should not have made but felt necessary all the same. John reentering her life hadn't been something she had wanted, she wanted him and her brother both as far away as possible on her downward spiral towards self-destruction. The Empire had been the victims she wanted to drag down with her. Maybe that was why she had done this, then. Not so much wanting to preserve as make sure the Major would hate her. Or maybe part of her couldn't ever stop remembering the fact that both of her supposed saviors were once-members of that which she hated possible more than her own self.

She wished she had brought one of the lingering bottles of rotgut with her, it would have made it easier and she sure as hell wanted a swig right now. Instead she wrapped an arm across herself, fingertips pressing against her skin through her fabric, hard enough she hoped bruises would appear later.

"Heh, hope you never liked that shirt in the first place. Had to rip it off you and use it as a tourniquet..."

Her eyes refused to linger on him, continually they tried to dart away, to look at the floor, at the ceiling, past him. But no, she had caused this. If her punishment was to be to give John her full attention, then she would take it like she should.

Charlotte sighed and gave her arm one last final harsh squeeze before she lifted her hand to run through her hair and then let it drop limply to her side.

"How is it?"

[John Glayde]

He watched her every motion. He couldn't help it. Were he himself, the prospect of seeing Charlotte after such an ordeal would have brought him joy, and relief, and he would have savoured each and every wonderful detail, knowing that a memorized image of her was all he would ever have, and seeking to layer that recollection with as much detail as possible. John was no longer himself, but that sense of joy and relief was still there, but behind it lurked something new: the alien parts of himself, spying upon his notions and intentions. He didn't merely watch her, he saw every subtle detail, the subtle tightening of her hand, the way her eyes shifted, the strands of hair subtly dislodged as her fingers ran through it. He didn't merely hear her, his voice analysed the harmonics, picking up on the wavering reluctance, the emotional cues that hinted at subtext. All of it was wrong, all of it filtered through implants that had different notions, different ranges, different thresholds.

John squeezed his eyes closed, trying to access his memories of her from before, trying to shift her voice so that it matched, trying to will his vision into showing him the Charlotte that he knew, the Charlotte that he loved. When his eyes opened, things were different - not right, but closer. Relief washed over him, escaping him as a small sigh.

"I'll live."

It was a John Glayde response if there ever was one. No matter the situation, no matter the severity, he would never offer an honest response. Honesty from John was rare, and if recent events were anything to go by, they were unwise and unwelcome as well. Yet, the words felt too glib, too insufficient, too ungrateful. The Doctor had described Charlotte as his benefactor, the one responsible for authorising and financing the changes that had been made for him. It left him conflicted: Charlotte had done this to him, paid the people who had carved away pieces of his humanity, leaving him a fragment of a person disguised with the semblance of wholeness, an external nature that finally conformed with who he had been beneath for far longer. She had made this choice for him, inflicted this nature upon him. Yet, had he not invited as much? His memory was blurred, the specifics hazy, but what he remembered with clarity was that he had given his life for her, placed himself between her and harm, thrown his life away for a cause he thought worthy because he no longer desired it. What right had he to judge, to blame, for Charlotte choosing to salvage that which he had discarded?

His eyes glanced away, and then back again, offering the faintest glimmer of a subtle enforced smile.

"Thank you for that."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

"You don't mean that," Charles shot back... And instantly regretted it.

If nothing else, it was a perfect mirror for every second that had passed since Xander and John had found her in that alleyway, had saved her from letting herself be brutalized, possibly killed. She should have embraced the notion that they had come for her, should have seen it all for the gesture it was, allowed herself to actually appreciate it instead of trying to throw it away. They had reached out for her, spoken painful truths to her, and she had responded with more cruelty than ever thought possible.

But that was her now, wasn't it? The kindness, the last remaining dredges of humanity had been scraped from her, dug out and left her feeling like a husk. It wasn't numbness she had, but an utter and very - what should have been terrifying - lack of anything. She hated it. Hated herself for becoming it. It made no sense, not on paper or in scrutiny. If it was about a lack of feeling of self, of recoiling away from the horror inflicted on her, it should have happened years ago. But no. It didn't take a squadron. It took one damned creature getting into her head, a place that should have been secure, her own. But no. Nothing was her own anymore and the only people who could help her reclaim it... She hated them for the effort before they had even been allowed to try.

Her hand tightened on itself, nails digging into the palm of her fist until the pain finally registered.

"I'm sorry."

The sincerity that she spoke with was surprising, but it didn't rouse comfort. It was fear that colored Charlotte's voice, a miserable sensation that had her realizing just how fully she meant it. Sorry for what she had just said, sorry for other things she had uttered since they had reunited. Sorry that she had been the reason John had ended his career, sorry that she was here now and still could only spit venom at him.

"Major..." No, that wasn't right anymore. "John,"

Charlotte sighed and glanced towards the door, towards locations that she knew cameras would be located. No, she couldn't be honest with him here. Not that honest, at least.

"I had to. You once told me that you trusted your life to me, that you knew it was safe in my hands. I just... I didn't want to let you down. Not again."https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif

[John Glayde]

He wanted to reach out in comfort, but the distance was too far, too much an obstacle for his broken form to overcome. He would have to sit there, powerless to act, powerless to intervene, powerless to stop her from turning her oh so effective weapons of wounding and scathing against herself, powerless to -

No.

The few inches it took to depart the hospital gurney were the hardest, forcing himself to trust in his phantom arm to propel him forward, unfamiliar with the feedback sensations that tried to tell him if he was succeeding or not. He hit the ground with a thud, legs heavier than they should have been, filled with lead and yet effortless to move. That first standing moment became the hardest yet, gaps in sensation where parts of him had been replaced with synthetic alternatives producing the uncomfortable experience of trying to balance on legs that were riddled with holes. In his mind, he had expected to feel unstable, expected to feel as if stunted legs were balanced upon false replacements, but it was different: a little precarious and unsteady at first, but as he adjusted himself, letting his joints find and remember a natural sense of balance, stability soon set in.

His hand raised, and then stopped. Not that one. Since his childhood, John had favoured his left, something that set him apart from most of his Imperial compatriots; something he had been forced to overlook, lest he disrupt the Empire's strange desire for all things to appear as close to identical as possible. He shot with his right, but wrote with his left; and for moments such as these, it was the left that he favoured. That was no longer possible. He could see it, hanging from his shoulder, and yet he knew that it was gone, could feel its absence. The hesitation was abandoned after only a fraction of a second, John reaching out with his right instead, resting it gently against the outside of Charlotte's forearm.

"You didn't," he insisted, gentle but firm. "You earned that trust. You saved my life, even when I was willing to throw it away. But please, don't -"

His voice faltered. He tried to swallow, but his repaired throat felt strange.

"Don't put me in the same position. Don't keep trying to throw yourself away. I see the sadness. I see the blame, and the guilt. It doesn't -"

He felt her struggling, felt her already beginning to disagree with his words even as he uttered them. His hand moved, a gentle brush against her cheek before it settled in place to cradle her jaw.

"It doesn't belong to you, Charlotte. I gave my life for yours. Tried to, at least. The guilt and blame are mine alone. I chose to save you, and I stand by that choice. You did the same, so please, stand by yours."

The hand fell away, though only tumbled as far as her shoulder.

"Don't regret that I am still here. I'm not really sure what these guys put in me, but even with whatever upgrades I have, I... I don't think I could survive that."

The smallest of smiles tugged at his lips. It was for her, rather than something genuine, but the smallest flicker of it fed back into himself. He glanced at his absent arm, holding it up for idle consideration.

"A fist fight with a tank on the other hand? That I could maybe survive, which is a definite upgrade."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

She tried to laugh, but it only came out a clipped breath, one that was followed by a heavy sigh. Charlotte glanced towards his hand on her shoulder, found herself mildly amused at how John refused to comply with the last words she had said to him before he had tried to trade his life for hers. It was so like him, always trying to push her buttons but for her own benefit. It worked too, damn him, the weight on her shoulder a comfort she didn't want, the way he'd held her in his hand only an instant before.

Charlotte wanted to pull away, to side step, to refuse the contact but couldn't make it happen. Chalk it up to it taking more effort to remove herself from the situation, to urge her body to move, than stay right where she was. At least that made sense to her.

"Now that, I'd like to see."

It let her avoid what else he'd said. He said he saw things... but John didn't truly get it. Official reports could only reveal so much, rumors and accounts only provide the basic info. They didn't know the weight she had been carrying, even before that last mission that Dorn had taken that resulted in General Oruo'rel disbanding them, they didn't know... Because she hadn't told them. And then she had been on her own... And everything had gone to hell.

It lingered on her lips, a confession, a want to tell him, to explain, to try and make John see why she wasn't worth this. He asked her to stop trying to throw herself away, but she already had. Someone else had helped, but she was already binned. Why couldn't he see that? Maybe it was simple Corellian stubbornness. Maybe it was just the Major's way of things.

"John... I..."

A glance was given to the cameras again. God damn it.

"You know I can't stop what I've begun, right?"

Purposely vague, but she knew he would at least understand that.

"But... I..."

Why was it so hard to admit something so simple?

"I can't keep doing this alone. Alone I'm..."

Charlotte looked away finally, the same twisting and clawing sensation in her chest writhing as if it wanted to argue against her.

"I don't like what I am."

[John Glayde]

"I do."

It was such a sudden response, but delivered with such gentle sincerity. There was subtext, but nothing childish, nothing so simplistic as liking the girl when you couldn't bring yourself to use stronger words. Yet it wasn't platonic, either. It was not an expression of fondness, but of the kind of affection that drove someone to drop everything, abandon their life, and traverse half the galaxy just to make a lie out of the sentiment that Charlotte was alone.

His brow furrowed, not a full frown, but an expression of contemplation, a moment of consideration afforded for his next words.

"I may not understand what you have done. I may not understand what happened to you. But those actions? Those events? Those are things that you were part of, but they don't define you. Who you are? That is something way more complicated, and speaking as someone who -"

He wavered, his eyes trying to look away, his hand on her shoulder suddenly feeling like it weighed a thousand pounds, longing to fall away from her. He refused to allow either.

"They say it takes one to know one, right? Well I know you, and you are no monster. The ones who did this to you? That's what a monster looks like, not what is waiting for you in the mirror. Monsters don't lament their actions. Monsters don't sacrifice themselves willingly to the torches and pitchforks of the mob that's there to lynch them. Monster's don't -"

There was no use holding it back, not anymore. Not when both of them were so cavalier about their lives, willing to go to the grave with things left unsaid.

"You never needed to do this alone, Charlotte. Just ask, just let me in, and I'll never let you be alone again."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

"How can you be so certain? You don't even..."

Charlotte glanced towards his hand again and forced her eyes closed, to take a long stuttered breath. Why now. Why was she feeling anything now? And why was it pain, but not the usual, this felt more real, more raw than any number of fractured ribs and bruising had ever caused in recent days.

She wanted to hold it all in, to keep it for a better venue but it couldn't be helped. It hadn't been learning of John's time as a Storm Commando that had cracked her enough to allow any form of feeling back in. It had been those frantic instants that had followed the attack on the bar, of her hands covered in blood that should have been her own or that of an enemy. It had been in the realization that her crusade wasn't going to cost Charlotte her own life but rather the lives of those she cared about. They were determined to follow her, apparently. Her own life easy to be reckless with. Theirs? His?

"I don't even know who I am anymore. How can you?"

Her voice lowered, a frantic hush drawn out of awareness of where they were, who else could potentially hear.

"The things I can do... This thing inside me? This darkness? I can't make it go away. And if you see it? If you knew..."

Charlotte looked away again, this time to the floor another long drawn out breath leaving her lips.

"I know you wouldn't leave. You're too stubborn for that. Always have been... But you'd know. And you'd hate me. And I'd deserve it. But I don't want that... I never really wanted that."

[John Glayde]

His unsteady legs took a small step closer, a subtle protest to her sentiment, and agreement with the idea that he would never leave.

"It's always been there, right?"

Finding the right tone was hard: something gentle, something understanding, and yet something insistent, something that tried to imply that perhaps there was some small amount of wisdom in his words. It wasn't as if he knew, and he didn't want it to seem as if that's the way he viewed things, no matter how much the way Charlotte spoke echoed the thoughts that John harboured about himself and his own darkness. Charlotte's situation was unimaginable, metaphysical in a way he couldn't conceive, and a violation of a sort that he could not relate to. His attention drifted, slightly, glancing at his no longer favoured hand. Not yet, at least. But there was something fundamental, something important, something that he needed Charlotte to understand.

"The Force, I mean. I'm not gonna pretend I know how it all works, and I can't... I can't even begin to imagine what having that -" He couldn't even bring himself to qualify Vega Van-Derveld as a person. "- thing puppeteer you like that was like. But after those actions that weren't even yours, after those experiences... what is left? What you are, and what you can do? You've always been that. For as long as I've known you, you've been a fighter, struggling with what has been inflicted upon you, and fighting on through it. And if there's a fight to be fought?"

The smallest of smiles flickered, for a fleeting fraction of a second.

"Damn right I'm not going to leave you to fight it alone, Lieutenant. That isn't stubbornness, that's loyalty, and that is what you deserve. Not hate."

His words and his breath caught in his chest. He struggled past it.

"I could never hate you, El Tee. You know that isn't what I feel."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

It took far too much effort to look up again, to allow herself to meet his gaze, but it was necessary. It felt like a black hole lived in the center of her chest, pulling her every inward into nothingness, and yet with proximity to John? It felt like the pull slackened, eased enough that somehow she could escape it. The trouble was, Charlotte didn't want to. It was a void she had surrendered to and yet...

It didn't take much thought to realize the lengths that the Major had gone for her. All that he'd given up, all that he'd gone through to track her down. Xander had explained it, told her off for her initial reaction to their appearance. The thought stuck with her, despite wanting to shove it aside, to refuse it. Her career was stolen from her, John on the other hand, had abandoned it for her.

The Major had often tiptoed a line of should and did. Her reinstatement to Cresh Company - an effort that had meant so much that the Alliance surely had undone; his fight and struggle to make the pain in the ass officer rise from 2nd to full Lieutenant because he believed in her. The dinner that they had shared, the way he had refused her request to leave Dorn...

She wanted to hear him say it. Why he had gone through all this trouble for her, a soul that she considered trash long before the Darksider and the Alliance had proved she was.

"Tell me," Charlotte whispered, the desperation easily heard in the hushed tones.

A deliberate step was taken, her back to the camera she had spied, placing herself between to try and offer some semblance that this was just between them.

Nothing else had gotten through to her. Xander's attempt was good, had broken a wax seal she'd sought to coat herself in to keep the Rebel contained with her demons. But John? John had the power to do better. The hug he had first delivered upon their reunion flickered through her thoughts. She'd been so cold then. Did she really deserve the answer she was begging him for? The truth that she had known all along but longed to hear him admit?

"Please, John. Tell me..."

[John Glayde]

Perhaps he had been too quick to dismiss the notion. Perhaps it really was as elegantly simple a notion as liking the girl. It was certainly the easiest explanation for everything that had transpired, everything he had thrown away just for the sake of - what? Why was he here? Was he here to save her, some altruistic outreach? Was he here to be the one who saved her, a selfish permutation to offset the nascent guilt towards all the acts and events his past contained? Was it an obligation? Was it just loyalty?

John knew in his very core - or what was still left of it, at least - that it was none of those things. He remembered the words he had transmitted to Captain Quez as he tendered his resignation from the Novgorod, and the Alliance. He didn't regret his decision. There was no thought, there was no motive. Charlotte needed him, even if she wasn't willing to admit it, even to herself: and nothing else had mattered. Only her. Only finding her. Only protecting her. Not because of obligation. Not because of his loyalty to his team. Not even because she was his friend.

"You know what my biggest regret is?"

The hand shifted from her shoulder, once again finding its way to her cheek, more deliberately this time; more overt in its meaning and intent.

"Back on Bothawui, when you came by for dinner? That was meant to be the start of something. I wanted to take it slow, I wanted to see what would happen. I was your commanding officer. I was your -" A faint breath of amused nostalgia accompanied his subtle smile; it was a term she still used even now. "- Major. I didn't want to push. I didn't want you to think that I was trying to leverage you, or sway you, but deep down?"

He swallowed against the half-absent lump in his throat again.

"What I wanted -"

Time slowed, or at least his perception of it. Each second was an eternity. Each breath was a slow breeze. Adrenaline spiked, and his artificial heart responded; even without its pounding rhythm, he still felt his pulse thunder in his ears. Every inch of his skin - real and otherwise - became warm, suddenly aware of the weight of atmosphere pressing down upon it. His hand crooked itself beneath her jaw, tilting her chin towards him as his head lowered towards hers, his lips meeting hers for the softest of kisses, both a tentative exploration and a declaration of intent.

"I wanted you to know that I loved you, Charlotte Tur'enne. That is all I feel, and that is everything."

His expression softened into a ghost of a smile, as tentative and experimental as his kiss had been.

"That's why I couldn't hate you, Charlie. There isn't room in my heart for anything else."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

It wasn't the first time he had kissed her, and she couldn't help but think on her reaction then. The panic, the anger... This time? It was the exact opposite. The void reversed, and all the suppressed and absent feeling came crashing into her. Charlotte didn't quite smile, but her lip trembled, her breath caught in her throat and when her eyes met his again she felt like a wall gave way and what it held back was far too overwhelming to even process.

"At least you have one..." She couldn't even make it through the full statement before the first tear escaped and ran down her cheek.

Her hand raised to try and brush it away, but it only got so far before it changed course, the other joining as she suddenly flung both arms around his shoulders.

"I'm so sorry," the words were breathed into his shoulder, her breath stuttered and catching with every effort to keep herself from utterly breaking.

[John Glayde]

The first arm that wrapped around her was easy, drawing her into an embrace that on some level he had been aching for. The second was far more difficult, tentative and reluctant, not sure if he could offer comfort with an arm that did not entirely feel like part of himself. He forced himself to set those thoughts aside, for her sake if not for his, letting his arms pull her tightly against him.

"It's okay."

His voice was a soft whisper as he clung to her tightly. He'd seen the tear escape down her cheek, and it took more effort than he would have expected to prevent himself from doing the same. Good to know that he was still capable of that. Good to know that some parts of him still counted as human, to some degree. For a fleeting moment, he thought the worst: wondered how things would have been different if he had confessed his feelings sooner. Could he have found a way to make her stay, to avoid that fateful mission? Was there more he could have done as her commanding officer to prevent Intelligence from dragging her away on the operations that had led to all this? Might he have found a way to bring her with him to the Novgorod, and if so, would they have been there now, vying with the Captain and his wife for the status of the ship's premiere couple? Would they have remained on Bothawui, or elsewhere in the Alliance, an unspoken agreement to serve together no matter what? Or would they be on Corellia now, part of the efforts to wrestle their homeworld free from the Empire, now that the Alliance had given up the good fight? He didn't know. That was almost the tragic beauty of it: an infinite unknown of possibilities, defined only by the fact that they included her, and the fact that they had never come to pass.

He blamed himself for everything that had happened to her, foolish as it was. To have failed part of his team, part of his unit, was one thing: a disgrace to his responsibilities as a commanding officer. But to have failed her? To have failed Charlotte Tur'enne, of all people? No matter the leaps of logic it took to settle accountability on his own shoulders, he did so anyway. That he hadn't been able to prevent it; that he hadn't been able to alleviate the Alliance's efforts to deepen her existing suffering by making her the scapegoat for their failures at security, that it had; that it had been Xander, and not him, whose words had made a difference while he simply wallowed? That was already reason enough for guilt.

"I'm sorry too."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

The weight of his arms around her was more comfort than Charlotte deserved, she believed that with every bit of her shattered heart and tattered soul; but she had initiated it and gods, it felt good. On some level she knew she needed this, had needed to hear him say those simple and yet earth shaking words. It didn't change anything, not really, if only because she had already on some level known. Known but was far too stubborn to acknowledge.

"Thank you," More hushed words, muffled against the skin of his shoulder. "For never giving up on me."

Charlotte didn't trust herself to speak at a normal volume, each word already having to be fought for and forced to be said without surrendering to the wall of emotions that had come to bear down on her.

"I lied," Charlotte mumbled and then lifted her head, pulled away from John just long enough to make sure she could look him in the eye as she spoke, as quiet and timid as her words were.

"I didn't save you because you trusted me to. I did it-I did it because I needed you. I'm just an idiot and didn't admit it to myself until I saw you bleeding on the ground. It was stupid... Selfish, even. But I should have realized it earlier, in the damn alleyway at least... I needed you, John. I still do."

[John Glayde]

"Then I'm yours."

It was uttered with absolute certainty, with a flicker of a smile and a tug of a frown as more tears were denied existence. It felt so good to hear Charlotte say that, to know that he mattered to her in a genuine, meaningful way. It was one thing to be told, laying there deprived of vision and sensation, that Charlotte was the reason he was in this state. For a guilty moment, he recalled how conflicted that had left him feeling, and how he had at one time come to the only logical conclusion: she had done it so that he would suffer. In that senseless void, it had been an easy path to connect; the answer that portrayed him in the most negative light possible. He had confronted her with his nature, forced her to truly consider everything that he was, and had been. Storm Commando. Murderer. Monster. She had been repulsed by that, as he knew she would be. Perhaps that was the real reason for his past hesitations, a safeguard against her inevitable discovery of who he really was, enough freedom for her to recoil without it tearing out John's soul completely.

In this moment, he didn't allow himself to hope that such a reckoning was beyond possibility: he still remained an embodiment of everything Charlotte hated, an Imperial weapon forged by some of its darker aspects, guilty of so much and yet for the most part still able to function as if so much of that guilt was not there. Yet, as he held Charlotte in his embrace, felt the sincere something that her emotions conveyed to him, at least he knew that hate wasn't all she felt. Perhaps there was a chance she could love this monster after all: she'd certainly gone to significant lengths to ensure she still had the opportunity to try.

"But I need you to keep fighting, okay? Don't give up on yourself. Don't give up on us."

His arms held her the slightest bit tighter.

"That's an order, Lieutenant."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

"You know I don't have to listen to your orders anymore."

There it was. The tease that had been lost to her voice. The thing denied that had made Charlotte feel all the more like someone else was speaking through her. It something that never would return to her.

As much as she loathed to admit it, it was only now that she was in John's embrace that she could really understand just how wrong she'd been to strike out on her own. There hadn't been a want to return from whatever brink she'd been taken to, there'd been nothing but a desire to jump into the void and be rid of whatever remained of her. After all, what had been left hadn't been anything that Charlotte recognized as herself.

It'd taken John and Xander to remind her of who she was, to prove that she still existed somewhere in the shattered remains of her life. If for no other reason, than they kept that part of her alive and safe within themselves until it could be returned to her. Charlotte may have been lost to herself, but that was a far cry from completely lost.

"But, please..." She offered a small smile, genuine in how it barely registered. "Don't stop giving them? Apparently I still need it."

[John Glayde]

"I'll make you a deal."

John shifted, not wanting to end their embrace, but also not wanting to continue speaking without her being able to see his eyes. It occurred to him that he wasn't sure how they currently looked, if they even matched how they used to appear, if they still showed emotions the way that those of a normal human did. He hoped so; hoped that, as he gazed down into Charlotte's eyes, she felt at least a little of what he was feeling.

"I'll stop giving you orders, when you stop calling me Major."

Even thinking about it made his gut twist in a knot. It was just a rank, just a benign descriptor that the Rebellion had assigned to him, one that they had taken away and swapped for Commander when he had been assigned to the Novgorod. Yet Charlotte transformed it into something different. She said it as if it meant something; and perhaps it did. He had watched and listened while Charlotte and her brother referred to each other by a hundred different names. They were all different descriptors for the same individual, and yet each and every one of them carried a meaning, a connection back to the memory that had spawned it, and a reminder of everything that came along with it. When Charlotte called him Major, it was a memory of happier times. It was a reminder of how they'd first met, of all the moments that they had shared, and all the experiences that affected them both.

"So hopefully never."

His head lowered, as if to kiss her again, but he stopped himself, mind dancing back through those past experiences. For an instant, he considered their first kiss, stolen as part of a mission, a decoy and distraction to help preserve their cover. That had been all it was, and yet hindsight framed it differently. And just now, too, their first proper kiss, had been stolen as well, an exploit of an opportunity, not something freely and equally committed to. His chest tightened, voice dropping to almost a whisper.

"I'd like to kiss you again, if that's okay with you, Charlie."

[Charlotte Tur'enne]

It was the fact he asked that meant everything. Not that she had resisted or opposed the kiss they'd just shared, but it had just happened. It was like far too much else in her life that had happened, without her having a say or voicing an opinion positive or negative. An entire life of decisions and choices that Charlotte hadn't been free to make, aside from the one that started it all. She had chosen to rebel.

Now John was asking her a question that almost felt as important. She could tell him no if she wanted, she could say yes... He had to know what it meant to her. Maybe not on the surface of his thoughts, but deep down John Glayde had learned more about her than Charlotte had ever been comfortable with, probably more now if those fleeting moments of what Xander had told her about how they had found her were true.

Charlotte's head nodded before the word could fully form in her mind and make it past her lip, and even then it only came in the form of a soft, "yes."

But before John could act upon her permission, Charlotte used her arms around his shoulders as just a bit of leverage to bring her to her toes and brought her lips to his, one hand moving from around his shoulder to gently place at the back of his head even as she stopped for a slight gasp of air and kissed him once more.

Whether it would change anything or not remained to be seen, but Charlotte knew how he felt, and John knew at least the beginnings of why she had saved his life. Though in that moment, she honestly couldn't decide who had saved who.