#aranar

[wanderingjedihistorian]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 3/3 Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars - All Media Types Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi Characters: CC-2224 | Cody, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Aranar (OC clone child), CT-7567 | Rex, CC-3636 | Wolffe, CC-6454 | Ponds, CC-5052 | Bly, CC-1993 | Jet, Waxer (Star Wars), Boil (Star Wars), Wooley (Star Wars), Alpha-17 (Star Wars), Ghost Company (Star Wars: Clone Wars 2008), Torrent Company (Star Wars) Additional Tags: Fluff, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Background Relationships, Cody wants to be a good buir SO BAD, Obi-Wan is slightly calmer about it, Birthday Party, Birthday Presents, Aranar being The Cutest, Vode celebrations, Self-Indulgent, Inspired by Soft Wars Series - Project0506 Series: Part 85 of Playing in the Soft Wars Sandbox, Part 6 of Ba'jurir Summary: Aranar's first decanting day anniversary after the adoption is approaching. Cody wants everything to be Perfect. Obi-Wan knows perfection isn't necessary, but does his best to be supportive. Aranar deserves a great day after all.

Final chapter is up. Complete with absolutely adorable art by @cobaltbeam​ !

[dashichy]

[themedicwhomeeps]

On Nostalgia

I think there was, somewhere along the line, the thought that possibly being absent from the Marran meant being exempted from some of the more esoteric Dark Side problems. While there is certainly less of it - no eldritch horrors or dark god-princes or anything of that nature - we do still trip across it from time to time. Unfortunately, particularly from the perspective of our large contingent of non-Force-users, it’s enough to cause significant damage, at least on a psychological level.

Trying to get close to Rosfren to hopefully convince him to back off, we played at taking a job to curry some favour. The job was to seek out whatever relics we could find from a site on Darvannis which was once the lair of a Dread Master. ...I honestly should have known. Then again, I suppose I did. I took as many precautions as I could to keep the others out of any direct line of interference. The problem was, I knew they’d never be comfortable with letting me go on my own, even if I am largely immune to that sort of nerfery. I had to bring the others with me at least part of the way. I did at least try to keep them out of the temple proper, once we got there. They weren’t happy about that either so I hate to think what they would have said if I’d suggested just going by myself, even with the guardianship of the Mandalorian clan Aranar and I befriended when we made a supply drop there.

I did not count on the relics in that temple - enhancements for and extensions of the Phobis devices that made the Dread Masters such a threat, in the main; far less powerful but still problematic on a number of levels - being able to affect the others while they were still outside, but they did. That only got worse when ... well, I wasn’t entirely clear on what happened exactly but largely what I got was “spiders with acidic blood and Mandalorians with explosives”. Either way, the others were forced to fall back into the temple ... and that was where all the nonsense really got horrible.

X’antho got it worst, from a psychological perspective. I could feel his sanity start tilting. Aranar ... I’ve never felt such a combination of sadness, resignation and rage before. Kaelira was just angry ... and sick. Very very sick. She apparently got dosed with the ‘acidic blood’. (Side note: I need to remind Rilus of the difference between ‘acidic’ and ‘venomous’. I mean, all right, it was moderately low on the pH scale but all the same...)

Rilus was ... interesting. I mean, he was ... I suppose the best term is ‘creeped out’, but there was more than that. I’m not entirely sure what it was doing to him, but he had probably the least trying time of all of them, one way or another. The worst he got was the isolation, the misdirection ... and, oddly, some sense of other people’s emotional states. I’m not entirely sure why experiencing the world at least in part the way I do would be considered something to ... erm, ‘creep him out’, but I suspect it was something to do with the fact that he’s never been entirely comfortable with ‘that Forcey stuff’, as he puts it. Honestly, while I regret the discomfort that must have caused him ... I can’t help but think it would be interesting to ask, when things have died down, what he makes of my day-to-day input.

I think the worst part for me was not being able to help them. I could sense their emotional states, yes, but I couldn’t pinpoint them to a location. Also, I was busy. I found the artefact storage room easily enough but every time I managed to cleanse and destroy an artefact, another two started to ... well, wake up. They were feeding off the emotional imbalance of the others. It was a bit of a quandary, I have to admit - I wanted to help them, and needed to help them if I was going to actually keep ahead of the artefacts’ nerfery ... but if I left to find them, more would be waking up and increasing the head-nerfing and it would be even harder to actually help them. So I was stuck more or less burning myself out to at least keep a sort of status quo, hoping that someone would get free.

Turned out that Rilus did. I don’t know if I’ve formed some kind of connection to him over the years or if it was just that I was putting out so much cleansing energy that even being in my vicinity broke through the hallucinations and Dark Side influence. It might have been both for all I know. All I know for sure is that Rilus managed to get through on comms, found my medkit and dosed himself with that Flames serum I came up with all those years ago. I keep some handy just in case, as it’s proved to be very multipurpose. Rilus administered it to the others and we finished the job of destroying the artefacts.

...Yes, I know we were tasked to retrieve them for Rosfren. I don’t nerfing care. I didn’t care when we got the assignment beyond being grateful that I’d been pointed to some Dark Side artefacts to take out of working order, and I don’t care now. He’ll just have to learn to deal with disappointment.

In any case, once I finally recovered from the level of burnout that had me not even knowing which end of an injector vial was up, I set to work on an antivenin for Kaelira. Rilus managed to keep her stable with a standard antivenin, but she did need something a little more tailored. It was sort of nice to get back to biochemistry again; it’s been awhile. We have a meeting with Lord Rosfren soon, and we’ll be trying to get him to back off. I’m hoping this can be resolved peacefully and that we can set him and his considerable resources against the Zakuul, rather than against us ... but I’m not counting on it. I am still taking the bahat-mint tea in unreasonable quantities against the headache that comes from quite that level of ... *ahem* ... ‘I WANT HIS FACE’ ... hitting me in the head from all angles.

After that, though ... I intend to try to find something a little more ... sensible than the standard combat stim. Combat stims work to a point, but I think I can do better. I just need to do some significant research and get the right materials together. Yes, the right materials are probably a little scarce and hard to get hold of right now ... but that’s why we have smugglers. That and the fact that they’re lovely people. Which reminds me; I have some snacks to bring over to X’antho.

[themedicwhomeeps]

From the Journal of Edvar Sohl

I don’t know what it is about my little sister. It’s like ... she has that Jedi thing about attachments, but attachments find her anyway and she ends up with the most loyal friends-family in the galaxy and I end up with a smuggler-type who’d take a blaster bolt for her turning up at my metaphorical door saying “Hey, your little sister’s still alive after an impossible situation, so you know, and Things Happened”.

The last time, it was, “Your sister survived the Sacking of Coruscant and now she’s a Jedi Knight and joined some ultra-heroic subsect that keeps its own paramilitary unit” coming from this cyborg PI. This time, this Zabrak guy turns up going, “Your sister survived the assault on Kuat - well, the assault on Rylan III because she wasn’t at Kuat, but same difference - after becoming a Jedi Master and is now running her own little resistance group and refugee settlement and setting up a second settlement and oh yeah she’s married now”.

Y’know, I think everyone expected me to be more surprised than I was. But, see, last time? My brave and gregarious little sister meeping and hiding behind people? That surprised me. But I remember the little girl who lectured someone twice her size for pushing me down in a playground, who hugged a wild kath hound, who could always talk me into her little adventures as a toddler. Her leading a group? My only reaction was ‘about kriffing time’. It’s good to see her closer to whole.

So these people have been good for her, not just good to her. Though they’ve been that too. Her sisters - I don’t know what that makes me to them, but they’ve got that plotting feel about them that makes me think someone’s going to throw adoption papers at me - welcomed me with open arms. Literally. Ever been hugged by three people at once, all of them apparently determined to squeeze your brains out your ears? I actually needed bruise salve and Lira tells me that I’m lucky Al-- Altay-- kriff it; ALTI - didn’t launch herself at me with a jetpack. They all started talking at once after that and it finally came out that they’d split into teams to set me up my own quarters on this desert settlement they call Port Knowhere and the new one they’re looking for new settlers for that doesn’t have a name yet. “So you’ll always have a home to go to with us”, they said. I guess I wouldn’t mind adoption papers if someone flings them at my head. Don’t think there are better sisters, except the one blood-related to me.

One better sibling (except the one blood-related to me), though. Rilus Harridin. No longer a corporal, still a doctor, now my brother-in-law. Lira told me that when she went missing after the Zakuul attacked Rylan III, Rilus never gave up on her. Alti I understand - she’s the type who gets an idea into her head and never lets go. But this guy ... not a smuggler or a bounty hunter or a pirate, but fell in with this excitable lunatic for a whole year, looking for his ‘doll’. Never gave up. Never got disheartened. Put up with the weirdness and helped with conflict resolution and translated ‘excitable Alti’ to Basic. It paid off, obviously, and now I have a brother-in-law. Guess I don’t have to tell him that I have a blaster and have learned how to use it.

...I probably should anyway. Brother’s job, and all.

Then there’s these others. The Zabrak, X’antho ... this guy is made of wonder. Literally. All I get from him is “Wow; how’d I get this lucky?” and this growing sense of wanting to do nice things for people. It’s like my sister threw a switch in him somehow, nudged him into his place in the galaxy, where he’s happy and feeling like he’s doing what he’s been put here to do, and I think he knows it. Plus watching a Zabrak, even if he wasn’t ever the stereotypical Zabrak, leading little kids around on the back of a tauntaun is probably one of the cutest things I’ve ever witnessed.

Kaelira Lakara and Jai-din Sortek are more reserved, but Kaelira, at least, is noticeably happy I’m around for what I mean to Lira rather than my way with plants. Then again, I try to keep clear of Sortek, mostly because he’s one of the former Marran I never really sussed out. Kaelira, though ... the stories I’ve heard. Saved my sister’s sanity. Unleashed assault cannon nightmare retribution on a droid that gut-shot my sister. For that alone, I like her. She reminds me of a younger, less disapproving version of that Jedi Master Lira always talked about - the one with the cybernetic arm who hauled me out of the Rokhans’ burning farmhouse that one time. Not exactly given to obvious gestures of affection, but mess with the people she’s sworn to protect and she will mess with your face.

The weird thing is my sister’s influence on them, in the small things. Almost all of them use ‘nerf’ as a swear word. Even the former Republic military and the smuggler. The only ones who don’t are Rilus, Sortek and the Chiss, that I’ve met so far. Even the Mandalorian. Aranar’aliit. He found out I could grow red gourds out here, given seeds enough, and he went Alti levels of excitable. I can about forgive him for starting a cult with my sister as its deity figure. Plus it’s funny to hear this stream of Mando’a swearing interspersed with ‘nerf’ when he drops a supply crate on his foot.

So I’m going to spend a few weeks here, making some tweaks to their irrigation systems - they’ve been doing pretty well, but there’s room for improvement. After that, I’ll probably spend most of my time on this other settlement, the jungle one. It’s going to be the source of most of their produce, after all. I’ll come back often when I bring and collect supplies, and to visit, but ... my sister has her own life. I'm glad to be a part of it, and I’ll keep being part of it, but ... I don’t have to be right on top of her all the time. She’s got her own life. I can let her live it. But I can be part of it, and I’ve got this bunch of well-meaning lunatics to thank for it.

...Plus I have a couple of weeks to hear all the stories. And tell them. Really looking forward to the reactions to the one about her deciding to tour Dantooine on nerfback when she was four...

[themedicwhomeeps]

On One’s People

PERSONAL LOG - KEEPER FYET-GREYSTORM

BEGIN AUDIO PLAYBACK

I have yet more cause to be grateful for the bahat-mint tea. Which Primatrix Alasha calls ‘the blue tea’ but ... well, colours. At least I know what blue looks like, thanks to her.

...I miss her.

She’s not gone, is the thing. She’s still with the Marran, though granted spending most of her time on the Nova Talon these days. Just ... she’s different. I understand why. I’ve seen why in her blood tests. The Harvest is hitting her hard and the changes are getting to her. I understand. I sympathise. Just ... that does not make her any more approachable. So I miss her. I miss well-meant snark. I miss ... feeling understood. Now I watch every word, every action. I don’t know what will get me snapped at.

Which I suppose is part of the rest of the issues. Apparently Klasisa, the Archon’s padawan, reported to the Jedi Council that she felt that the Archon was in some way compromised by the Garhoon, being influenced by the Queen somehow. It’s possible, but ... I haven’t seen any indication of it. I do think that there’s a ... problematic divide at this point, though. For the Archon and Primatrix Alasha, it’s ... the overall impression seems to be that to them, the Garhoon civil war is ‘their people’ first, and a fight against the darkness second. I ... don’t know how much truth to that there is. In the face of their reaction to the situation on Alpherides versus the situation on the Garhoon prison world... Well, I would like the clarification, but as long as it is a fight against the darkness, I’m hardly about to gainsay the Archon’s orders or question whether his mind is his own. No matter how old the Queen is, and even if there are ways around the Flames kicking off, if the Queen’s intentions aren’t strictly dark. After all, the Flames did not stop the Queen from inducing a state of relaxation in Primatrix Alasha - and yes, I know it was perceived as for her own good.

But therein lies the problem. The Queen may have been right in that instance, but the issue with the Garhoon is that they seem to be of the impression that with age comes wisdom, and therefore they are wiser than all of us, and know best. There’s an expectation that we will follow unquestioning no matter what they ask and how few details they give. There’s an expectation that we will simply trust that their intentions are honourable. Or at least, that’s the impression given by the Queen and by Agthas. I tried to explain that perhaps a little humility might not go amiss, but ... that did not go over well. Perhaps I didn’t explain it properly, but being told that the Garhoon would not try to put themselves in our shoes because to empathise too deeply with individuals who they will long outlive is too ... emotionally trying for them ... it put paid to the conversation a bit. I understand that, but ... only on an intellectual level. If I lived as long as they do ... I’d like to think that I’d embrace every experience, every brief and fragile life, and carry it when they were gone. A person returns to the Force, after all; life is infinite. Its infinite variety of shapes is what makes the galaxy worth living in all that time.

In any case, the summation is that there is tension enough around the Rest that it bludgeons me on a regular basis, thus the headaches, thus the bahat-mint tea. I miss speaking to Alasha over things. I wish I knew what was going to happen when the Archon gets back. Agthas says he might never trust us again after what his padawan did. I hope that’s not true. It’s not him we question. Or at least, I don’t. I don’t know enough about the Queen or Agthas to be sure, though I like him, in a way. If it weren’t for the subject matter, I’d find our philosophical debates quite interesting.

The Jedi have been ordered to cease all work on things involving the Garhoon until the Archon’s return. This includes the Doom, apparently. You can’t just pause a research project, though. Samples degrade. Time skews results. I’m still working on it, but they didn’t know I was working on it anyway. That ... did worry me, the implication that they shouldn’t know, but ... I won’t let a species die this way. Ostensibly this is part and parcel of working on Ly’nai’s fertility or potential lack thereof, but that only goes so far. I’ve been at this for over a week, I have preliminary data coming in, and the only way I will stop is if someone prohibits me entirely. And even then ... I honestly don’t know.

Meantime, Alpherides. It’s all gone entirely to nerf and we’re apparently having to face a being that’s a combination of many powerful Sith presences who is making the planet like unto a Ziost. At least I managed to clear Zhara and Maelana (who is still in the brig and may be looking at the end of her military career) and thus not accept the punishment due them in their stead at the hearing, before it all went to nerf. I don’t imagine it would have gone much differently even if Mae hadn’t got Zhara to drug Tyvis Rist. Either way, all I know for sure is that we go down in less than 48 hours to evacuate the Jedi enclave and hopefully destroy the Sith in question, whatever he is now. I know it’s not a Garhoon prison holding a mad and powerful prince who may lay waste to the galaxy if freed because, among other things, the Six had been using him and his ilk like living batteries for a very long time and left them to feel the passage of time in their prisons instead of providing them the mercy of a return to the Force... But it’s still the Dark Side and it’s still threatening an entire people. 

Aranar called the miraluka ‘my’ people. I ... don’t see it that way. I wasn’t born on Alpherides. I don’t recall being raised by miraluka - for obvious reasons. I was born on Dantooine, not far from Katarr - where I walked, by the way, and it was horrible and empty and dead, for all it gave us a clue to go there. What few childhood memories I have were among a variety of species. Then the Marran, where ... I don’t have ‘people’. I take each person as an individual, equally important, equally unique. I like it that way. It feels ... more fair. Why should any species have weight over any other, even in the mind of a member of that species? Especially then.

[themedicwhomeeps]

Coming Home

APOTHECARY'S PERSONAL LOG BEGIN AUDIO PLAYBACK My time on Nar Shaddaa was ... less fruitful than I would have liked. I think at least some of it was the lab facilities - it wasn't as though there weren't any at the Palace but unfortunately it was far more outfitted for spice production than anything biomedical, and there were only so many modifications I could request to the room I was using. I'll have to keep sharing notes with Xaishen over comms and working from our new residence in the Nexus rift. I haven't had much time to come to terms with the loss of Albrect IV. I mean, I was there when we finally evacuated, and fought to allow the last of the evacuation to take place, but ... there were so many other things on my mind that any consideration of what it meant went by the wayside. Then, of course, I was subsuming it in labwork and cookery and the minutiae of life on Nar Shaddaa. Now I'm here, trying to get used to where everything I can't 'see' is all over again. I suppose now is as good a time as any to take stock. Home never really meant much, in terms of a 'place'. I didn't remember the homestead on Dantooine particularly well. I couldn't consider the lodgings I shared with my master 'home' - I don't recall, but I don't imagine that sort of bonding with my surroundings was particularly encouraged at the time. I don't have a ship to call home the way Ahri and Alti do. The monastery on Albrecht IV was the first place that I was allowed and indeed encouraged to consider home. I resisted that for a very long time, and maybe I should have continued to do so. It being gone wouldn't be such a blow if I didn't think of it as home. Still, I'll get used to the new place. It's not as though it lacks for most of what made the Rest home. Medbay is more or less the same as it was at the Rest. There's been lab space set aside. Aranar tells me that he and Srina'idash and some of the marines arranged for the bistro to be set up on site. Rilus and I have quarters, which he was kind enough to unpack. Muffin is settled well in the menagerie. Most of the circumstances that made the Rest home are there. Perhaps the move just highlights how much things have changed. Aurrin's still missing. So is Mychae - I have a feeling she may have gone after him, but as no direct word has come to anyone about it, I am not about to make that hypothesis a matter of public record. Sedryn is with his family. Sheenah hasn't been seen in quite some time. Caer is sick. Raiyden and Tomuraan are more or less permanently on Nar Shaddaa until she's well. Reiner, Kal-dur, Sylvanne, Yuloru, Katrai, Zai ... so many moved on to other things. Kot is dead. We have new faces and we don't lack for allies, but ... I miss my friends. Even the ones who weren't strictly friendly. It's not ideal, but I suppose the galaxy never is. Change happens, and we adapt to meet its challenges, even - maybe especially - when it's sad. There are other new things. Title - I am no longer 'apothecary', precisely. I am a healer of the Order of the Silver Star now. What I do hasn't changed, but apparently the groupings of the Marran needed to change in response to various shifts in ... I'm not really sure. Either way, by whatever name I'm called, I still work in medbay and the lab. So it's not a change that means a great deal to me. It's just one more illustration of the shift that life has taken. There have been many. I've been with the Marran for such a long time now. Given how much of my memory is gone, it feels like most of my life. The changes this time has wrought ... I never would have foreseen this, I don't think. Friends, family, padawan, foster, lover, home ... life. I wasn't meant to have these things, and yet I do. So while losing the Rest is sad, maybe that's a good thing - not that it's lost, but that I care enough to feel a pang at its loss. That I miss people. I know Caer often says that Jedi are about bottling up their emotions, but that's not quite accurate. We just don't let them rule us. So I won't let the sadness rule me. That's fairly easy; it comes with joys of its own to balance it. I had a home. I will make another in this new place. There will be people with whom I can share it. Now hopefully I can find the bistro and my new lab space without tripping on another staircase. I should summon Muffin. This is why Paetra Greystorm bought Muffin for me, I imagine. Transport is so much easier when one's mode of transport can see in ways one can't.

[themedicwhomeeps]

Team Efforts

Nar Shaddaa hadn't changed, but Jallira had since the last time she'd been on the so-called 'smuggler's moon'. Her first encounter with the Marran as a social group, and the days wandering with Sedryn in part to experience life and in part to see if Proteus' hunters could be lured out of hiding ... they seemed like things that happened a lifetime ago. In a very real way, they were. The last place she'd expected to be working, even short-term, was a Nar Shaddaa brothel. But there she was, mostly by virtue of Estherian stubbornness. No one had received any sufficient answers for what was wrong with Caer or what was going on with Daedalus - not from Raiyden, not from Xaishen, certainly not from Caer and not even from Lyrae'a. So she'd asked Aranar'aliit to take her to Nar Shaddaa and serve as her backup while she prodded answers out of someone. It was the first time she had consciously and deliberately 'called in a favour' from anyone, and she'd chosen Aranar largely because the biggest danger to her was the apparent Cookery Cultists, and that was entirely Aranar's fault. He'd started the 'religion'; he could protect her from the brunt of it. Certain things weren't entirely adding up about what she'd found when she'd finally pried coordinates out of a tired Raiyden (and the fact that she'd had to point-blank tell him she was en route to get a specific location just confirmed she had done the right thing). Why put Caer in carbonite freezing when they could have put her in cryostasis, which was generally safer and easier on the system? Well, perhaps Vaulk hadn't had the technology - but Raiyden knew that cryo-freeze technology was available on Kantherion's ship. Or if he didn't, Jallira did, and if he or anyone had just told her... Then there was the crystal in which Caer's consciousness was suspended. She wasn't sure why Caer's awareness had to be separated from her body; that struck her as hugely dangerous when all that was truly required was a maintenance of brain function and an induced coma. People survived in cryofreeze for generations without having to have their very selves jammed into another vessel. Or perhaps they were hoping that if Caer's body died of the poison, they could put Caer's awareness in another form? But whose? And would shunting someone out of their own body so that she could live be something Caer wanted, or could live with, if it came to that? That was not a conversation Jallira planned to have with Vaulk. He was not Jedi, he was not Marran and he was definitely not interested in any morality beyond keeping his business interests running relatively smoothly and having vengeance on those who tortured 'his girls'. Jallira had tried to talk him into accepting Marran aid at least enough to share information with them, but Vaulk was concerned that he would be denied his revenge. The Archon was not going to be pleased about the situation either, particularly the lengths to which she'd had to go to get full disclosure on the matter - Jallira quite clearly felt another, "Hi, my name's Ihlrath and I happen to run this bitch" coming on. As to Vaulk's attitude of 'stay out of my way while I revenge myself on the man who tortures my people because I am going to do horrible things of which your Marran wouldn't approve' ... she'd let the Arbiters to whom she'd delivered that report take the matter to the Archon. Her priority, as per usual, was saving a life - in this case, Caer's. It wasn't precisely a simple task, either. Jallira had known that Xaishen liked discovering and inventing horrific poisons so that he could find the cures for them ... but the problem was that he hadn't found cures for the batches that Daedalus had apparently found. The notes Xaishen gave her involved several poisons, Xaishen wasn't sure which one and she couldn't do further tests to verify the specific poison without taking Caer out of carbonite, which could kill her. Then again, it didn't matter overmuch; she wasn't planning on approaching a cure for a Sith alchemical poison the same way Xaishen would. Her cures for this sort of thing tended to involve what Alasha had once called 'Marran alchemy'; while biochemistry was largely involved, so were the basic properties of the Flames. It was also difficult to work through in a private room in a brothel, however opulent the place was. Her room was not a lab facility by any stretch, she could ask for the equipment she needed but making it fit anywhere was a trial, and she had to expend a great deal of energy keeping her empathy walls up against the constant roil of lust in the immediate vicinity. On some level that was alright, because focus on work was a good way of blocking out the empathic resonance of the place, but it also meant backsliding in terms of reasonable breaks. She tried, but mostly for Xaishen and Raiyden; she couldn't rest in this place, so she focused on the care and feeding of whoever happened to be handy as a further distraction. When she allowed herself to admit it, she missed the Marran already. Her sisters and Rilus of course, but also Nyomi's stoic pragmatism in the face of ridiculous circumstances, Alasha's not-quite-teasing methods of getting her to take her own advice in terms of rest breaks, the well-meaning (if bewildering) teasing of most of the rest of the Marran. Lieutenant Sortek even managed to include reasonable advice in amongst the innuendo. She very much wanted to request that the Archon turn up and have words with Vaulk so maybe they could work together and see to what was truly important about this in the long term - stopping Daedalus before anyone else got hurt. And Oz ... she would not have her padawan here yet, particularly not with the temptations Vaulk might offer, but she missed him as well. There was something calming about teaching, Jallira found. She missed her team. In her own small arena, Jallira could work well enough without them, but in terms of the big picture ... she needed them. She couldn't afford to think about the big picture, though. She was here to save a life - the life of a friend and sister in all but blood, no matter what problems they were having in their friendship, but Jallira couldn't let that affect her judgement. She was here to save a life. Anything else that got thrown her way, she'd deal with as best she could. And she wouldn't use her backup-calling panic button until she was sure it was needed.