Five tightened his lips and forced his eyes to stay fixed dead ahead, steeling himself with every step he took. She didn’t deserve to see his weakness, not now, and it was grating enough to know she’d already done so much to keep his infection at bay without giving himself any more reason to be in her debt. Their goal was the only thing that mattered.

But her intense blue gaze remained on him, and he found himself hating the fact that she still managed to navigate the terrain so elegantly while laying that constant, silent judgement on him.

“Why weren’t you watching him?” Five finally spat, bitterness sharp on his tongue.

The wolf’s eyes narrowed. Excuse me?

“What’s the good of it? What’s the good of your showy little Force magic if you can’t even tell when someone you supposedly care about gets stolen away…”

Ahuska snarled as she shoulder-checked him, rounded on him as he stumbled and was brought to his knees. Are you blaming me for this??

Five bit back the pain as another tremor wracked his bad leg and channeled it into the savage stare he shot her way. “You get inside people’s heads, don’t you? You certainly haven’t stopped inviting yourself into mine. Couldn’t you see? Couldn’t you read his thoughts and know when they started going wrong? Why didn’t you know-”

Ahuska drew herself tall and flared her wings, utterly dwarfing the former Watcher on his knees in front of her. How dare you. How dare you blame me for what you failed to see yourself. You think conversation is the same as mind-reading?

“You’re a Jedi-”

You’re his HUSBAND.

Five hesitated at that, feeling his cheeks flush with simmering fury.

Ahuska gripped tight onto that pause. I don’t go inserting myself where I’m not welcome.

“You did exactly that back when-*

Don’t- Her voice thundered into Five’s mind as she set her teeth against his shoulder and shook him once, sharply, back and forth in a painfully physical warning. Don’t you dare. Ulfran was manipulating me and Thirteen every step of the way and I never, never would have done something so compromising to him if I’d understood anything about what was happening.

Five was shaking, whether from pain or from rage. “And yet you did. You connected with him in a way I never could, didn’t you? Just like you pulled us all together against Valkorion, you can feel what he feels and you never noticed, or you noticed and didn’t care…”

I will rip your revolting tongue out of your mouth if you don’t stop that, you absolute sha’bla chakaar.

Five’s nostrils flared as he seethed, but held his tongue while her fangs still hovered so close to his skin.

You ass. You complete pair of shebs. The Force doesn’t just press a buzzer in my head to let me know something’s not quite right. I would have to be looking, actively looking. Watching. Listening, every day, to notice the changes Ulfran makes. I’d have to be spying. I’d have to be violating Thirteen’s privacy. I do not do that to anybody, let alone someone who matters so much to me. I love him, you stupid, spineless blister of a man, I love him and respect him even if you and he both hate to hear it. You are the one whose ring he wears and you are the one who should have been paying closer attention. You’ve been so afraid of conflict with him that you haven’t even had enough basic conversations to realise what was happening. You let him visit Ulfran, not me. You gave that wretched Sith free reign with the love of your life. You’re the one who’s made a life out of Watching… Even without using vocal speech, the word felt like acid on her tongue, and she took bitter satisfaction in seeing the way it made Five flinch. You’re the one with the shock collars and the mental restraints and the control words and listening devices and tracking chips. Why weren’t you using all your little tricks and tools to keep an eye on him, keep him safe?

With those words, something in Five finally stalled. He kneeled silently on the ground for a drawn out moment, his body wracked with tiny tremors, his knuckles white across his balled-up fists. Finally, with a great mustering of effort and resolve, he pulled himself back onto his feet. He adjusted the collar of his long coat, dusted off his hands, and lifted his gaze to meet the wolf’s eyes. His rage was tempered; to her, now, there was just a hint of understanding. His voice was soft.

“I don’t do that any more.”

---

Aleksi’s heart thundered in his chest, each beat like a sledgehammer threatening to break him apart from the inside. Hands that belonged to familiar faces now twisted into unfamiliar snarls grabbed at him, pulled at him, bent his arm behind his back and gripped so tight he could already feel the bruising beneath his uniform. “No, no for goodness sake, you don’t, you don’t have to…” Glenda fell from Aleksi’s hold into the arms of one of the guardsmen, his usual blissful confidence shattered. Gentle blond sweeps of hair fell across his wide eyes, and even shocked and dishevelled the man was breathtakingly handsome.

Aleksi could hardly bear to look upon him, let alone listen to the way Glenda, Glenda the Good, his dear Glen cried out and pleaded for the guards to show some mercy. Mercy! When mere moments before Aleksi had held him fast, the point of his sword under his chin. A hostage. Aleksi had taken him hostage and still, still dear, sweet Glen struggled against the guard who only tried to support him.

“Let him go! He never meant to harm me, he would never…”

For a terrible, painful moment, their eyes met.

The lowering sun lit up Glen’s hair like golden flames and brought out brilliant amber highlights in his bright brown eyes. Aleksi’s green eyes were shadowed, resigned, one of them bloodshot and blackened already by the rough way he’d been handled. Strands of silver hair, stuck to the sweat on his brow and the trickle of blood from his lip, cut stark asymmetry across his face. Where Glen struggled to conceive of a world where his word wasn’t capable of making things right, Aleksi hung in the guardsmen’s grasp knowing full well what it meant for them to have seen him show his true colours.

And in that frozen moment, Aleksi saw something in Glen change. He saw the slow recognition, he saw the pain that came with it. For a moment, just a breath, Glen appeared more raw, more real than Aleksi had never known him to be. It wrenched at him, stole his breath more abruptly than the butt of the spear that was driven hard into his stomach. “Stop!” Glen lifted his chin, but the effect was undermined as his voice pitched high with panic. “You can’t! You mustn’t hurt him, Aleksi tell them. Tell them you weren’t going to…”

“We heard the words out of his own lips, Your Goodness,” spoke the man who held Aleksi’s wrist in a painfully tight grip, his own voice just as tight. Rollo. A friend. They’d swapped stories over a shared meal in the soldier’s mess countless hundreds of times.

They’d marched together, ridden together.

Helped their horses flee Oz together.

The memory of his dear old equine companion, ears sharp and eyes fixed firmly forward, mane catching glints of moonlight as he galloped headlong into the night, was snapped short by the flat of a blade rapping Aleksi hard against the cheek.

“Well?” The guard who snapped at him had been a colleague, but never a friend. Titus, two years younger but with far more years in service to the Wizard under his belt, he was not at all shy about voicing his opinion that Aleksi had never truly deserved the promotion to Captain. Nepotism, he called it, always with a sneer. The Dashing Prince, the consort of the Good Witch. Of course Aleksi’s image was chosen over true loyalty or skill, and now Titus’ blue-green eyes were alight as he witnessed the proof of Aleksi’s unsuitability. “What have you got to say for yourself now, Winkie?” Aleksi’s lips twisted, but another guard’s spear jabbed him in the side and his retort was smothered by the way he bucked in Rollo’s grasp.

“Don’t you dare use that word!” Glen shouted out on Aleksi’s behalf, wrestling himself free and pushing through, trusting that no blade would dare be used against him.

He was right, of course.

Nobody dared leave a mark on Glenda the Good.

“Aleksi please, please just talk to them. Tell them…” he took Aleksi’s face in hands as soft as silk, leaning in to press their foreheads together.

Aleksi hadn’t thought it possible to have his heart broken twice in one day. But Ahuska was safe, she was safe, she’d flown free and would find her haven to hide away. She would continue speaking out for those who had their voices stolen, striking where she could to break down the lies upon which all of Oz now stood. It would be worth it, Aleksi told himself, as he breathed in the sweet scent that Glen wore, as he felt the tremble in that tender hand on his cheek. It would be worth it, so long as he didn’t break now and give her up.

“Tell them you were bewitched.” Glen’s voice was an impossibly low hush, strained with the bewildered terror he felt. His lips were close enough to kiss. His fingers curled, tightening desperately against Aleksi’s skin. “Tell them she cast a spell. That she forced your hands, put words in your mouth. I can make sure you’re treated fairly, please my darling…”

But Aleksi’s insides turned cold, even as the setting sun dropped low enough to cast them all in a vibrant orange-gold glow. Glen had never understood.

And Aleksi was done with pretending.

He was done playing along with Glen’s ‘long game’. He no longer trusted that the Good Witch would bring about any genuine, lasting good.

He found himself laughing, an ugly sound as he once again thrashed in resistance of the hands that held him.

But it was only Glen’s that surrendered their grip.

“You’re wasting your time with him, Your Goodness,” Titus uttered as he stepped forward and slid his blade between them. His cold eyes swept over Aleksi and his waning struggles, and a cruel smirk tugged at his lips as he addressed the other guardsmen. “Take him to the fields. Such pure and perfect eyes as Glenda’s don’t deserve to see what we’ll be forced to do.”

Aleksi felt a chill at the menace in Titus’ tone. When Glen spoke up, Aleksi winced at the blithe innocence he still somehow managed to convey.

“What? What are you going to do to him?”

But already Aleksi was being hauled away, his feet dragging as the guardsmen turned toward the towering rows of corn.

“Titus?” Glen pressed again, mustering as much command into his tone as his stricken self could find. “Lieutenant, come back! I… I order you to turn back around and explain to me what you intend to do…!”

“My orders come from higher than your station, I’m afraid,” Titus had the good grace to spare Glen one glance over his shoulder, but his savage grin held no apology.

Cornstalks were hacked and slashed with little regard for those who tended the crops, and one by one the guards vanished amid the swaying green and gold.

Glen fell to his knees. “Aleksi?”

His first cry was a pitiful whimper, but it grew with every iteration.

“Aleksi!? Aleksi!!”

The Good Witch’s voice, feverishly high, carried to Aleksi’s ears, but the former Captain struggled to focus on the sound of his name as the guards became rougher by the second.

His feet slipped and scrabbled to find purchase on the ground, every moment of blessed stability broken by a hard wrench to the side and another unkind jab with a sword or spear point. One caught him just below the ribs and he doubled over with a grunt, yet again losing his footing.

“Rollo,” he coughed, unable to turn about to see him but sure it was still his old friend behind him. “You know this isn’t right. You never really believed- ungh-“

A harsh blow to the side of his head made stars blossom in front of Aleksi’s eyes.,

“Enough of that! Every word you waste not telling us about where the Wolf has gone will earn you another,” and the glee in Titus’ tone suggested he very much hoped former Captain Aleksi would continue wasting his words. “So you’d better start finding something useful to say.”

“Tell us,” echoed another guard, her voice harsh, accompanied by a bold jab of her spear. Aleksi felt his skin pierced through his uniform and steeled himself with a grunt.

“Glenda was right,” Rollo’s voice wobbled, a whisper too close to Aleksi’s ears. “You can still fix this if you just…”

“So can you,” Aleksi didn’t bother with a whisper, as he threw his head back and felt the satisfying crack of the top of his head against Rollo’s chin.

He heard his old friend’s abrupt cry of pain, but didn’t stop to dwell as he dropped out of Rollo’s loosened grip and rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the swing of someone’s leg and the violent thrust of someone else’s spear.

And then a bizarre sensation churned in his stomach, and for a moment Aleksi felt faint and flushed as sudden heat rose in his cheeks. He swayed as he fought back the strange vertigo, pleading with himself to find his feet before someone could take advantage of it-

Cruel fingers twisted into his collar and hauled him up.

“No…” Aleksi choked, and the word felt odd leaving his lips.

“What’s wrong, pretty little Winkie?” Titus sneered, turning his hand and increasing the pressure on Aleksi’s throat. “A bit choked up there, precious little Prince?”

“Tell us where we can find the Wolf!”

“Where have you hidden her, traitor?”

Aleksi caught a flash of movement in the corner of his eye, saw a gauntleted fist come flying toward his stomach with barely enough time to brace himself for the impact.

But what he thought would be a terrible, winding blow only came as a dull sort of bump, accompanied by a sharp cry of pain and surprise by the guard who threw the punch. “Oz almighty! He’s armoured under the shirt!”

Aleksi saw the way Titus’ eyes narrowed, saw his other arm draw back, and as Aleksi’s heart leapt into his throat he swung his own arm upward to block the blow while making a single, valiant kick off the ground to try and press his knee into the other man’s stomach. But his leg jostled uselessly as more hands seized him from behind and hauled him back, and a sudden white hot flare of pain lashed across his cheek as someone’s sword neatly scored his flesh.

“Hurt him!” Titus’ voice was shrill as he gave the order. “I want this traitor writhing, I want him begging us to hear him spill his secrets! I want him- I..”

The guardsman’s voice faltered into silence.

He stared for a moment, then shoved Aleksi forcefully away with a sound of disgust, forcing the fellow guards who held him from behind to stumble and stagger as Aleksi fought for his footing.

But something was wrong. Aleksi tossed his head with his teeth clenched, struggling to make sense of the crawling, itching, smothering sensation he felt across what had initially seemed a clean cut. “What did you do,” he seethed, wrenching one arm free, and then the next. “What was on that blade?”

A nervous murmur rippled between the guards.

“What…” a creeping note of horror worked its way into Titus’ voice.

“Aleksi,” breathless, uncertain, Rollo took a faltering step toward him. “What’s… wrong with your uniform…”

But Titus would tolerate no sympathy and swiftly mustered himself to begin braying orders to his cohort. “GET HIM. BIND HIM. BLEED HIM UNTIL HE TALKS.”

A spear was hefted into Aleksi’s side, only to skate off to the side as though deflected by plate metal.

And Aleksi whirled, then buckled onto one knee with a cry. He listed to the side, feeling a frightening heaviness, then brought up one arm with a shout to shield his face from the slash of a sword. The shining edge of the blade made little more than a dull slap against him as Aleksi’s arm felt suddenly tight. Constrained. Wrong.

Two of the guards gasped, one covered his face as he took a nervous step back.

But another roared and launched forward, making to drive his spear into what must surely be a gap in Aleksi’s hidden armour, angling it to jab straight up into his armpit.

And Aleksi roared in kind as he twisted and blocked the nasty steel spearhead with… his hand.

His hand, though it was scarcely recognisable as such. The shape was distorted, uncannily bent, with his ring and little fingers elongated and the skin between them stretched like webbing. “What have you done to me?” Aleksi snarled, with a rough edge to his voice and a wildness in his eyes as he stared at the guards, gripping at the wrist of his malformed hand.

It felt wrong, it felt horrifically wrong, though he tried to ignore it, tried to tell himself it was going to be fine, it was just… just stress, or his uniform all caught up and his vision blurred from one of his earlier blows, his mind a little overworked and harried, surely, surely…

Aleksi whined a thin note of despair as he flexed his fingers and knew they were still growing, still changing. His uniform felt strange beneath his hand. More to the point, he could not feel his uniform at all, he could not discern the fold of the cuff or the bunch of the fabric, even though he could see the vibrant purple and gold fitted perfectly to his arm. No, not quite perfect. The sleeve ran a little too long, the colour stretched up over his hand…

Not over. It was on his hand, in his hand.

With a choking cry he raked his nails across the spread of purple, but met only skin, his skin.

“It’s swallowing him,” one of the guards cried, inching further back but unable to tear her gaze away. “His uniform is… eating him.”

“It’s not that, look at his hand, look at his hair.”

“Look at his cheek! It’s gone all up the side…”

“His ear…”

Slumped onto both his knees, clutching and pawing at his arm, Aleksi gave voice to his growing horror with a faltering, wordless cry. He couldn’t grip into the fabric. He couldn’t find the edge of his shirt. He felt tight, all over, and with every moment that passed his hands grew increasingly awkward. Every moment he grew more desperate to tear away the uniform that seemed to be… binding itself to him, warping him somehow. “Get it off,” he cried, his voice cracking. “Get it off me, please get this off!”

“Tell us where the Wolf is hiding!” Titus leapt at the opportunity, masking his horror well as he lunged forward and reached for the back of Aleksi’s neck.

Emboldened by their leader’s act, three of the guards joined Titus, circling Aleksi and grasping for any part of him they could reach.

Gnarled, furious hands curled against Aleksi’s body, now fully shrouded in rich gold and royal purple. But they found no fabric, no metal plates, no buttons or embroidery or silk epaulettes. Their searching fingers slipped against sleek scales, their angry fists pressed against hide as thick as heavy leather and tougher by far. The futility of their actions only made them more furious, and soon it was not just hands that dug against Aleksi but swords and knives and speartips, as Titus’ shrill voice rang out in encouragement.

And Aleksi gasped for breath, curled in a ball against the earth, his malformed hands wrapped about his head. Dimly, he could tell that his hair had changed also, no longer the long, silky silver locks in which he took such pride, but something ruffled, soft, strangely segmented.

Feathers.

He began to sob quietly, shuddering as he tried to understand what he was feeling.

Like he was being pulled, reshaped, kneaded like dough. His fingers were reaching obscene lengths, he could tell, he could tell and the skin that stretched between them was vast and heavy and hideously unfamiliar, a blanket embedded into him that pulled uncomfortably against his side if he tried to move too much. His back felt desperately tight, like his spine was compressed, like the whole length of it was being clamped, pressed, aching for release.

He was being beaten. Guards swarmed around him with violent zeal, but their efforts meant almost nothing to Aleksi. Every blow they dealt, every attempt to tear at his skin was deflected, and instead of pain he felt jarring discomfort as parts of him thickened, toughened to ward off the attacks and all the pieces of him in between fought to keep up.

One of his legs spasmed. There was a shout as one of the guards was thrust back by his sudden explosive movement, but Aleksi felt a moment of relief, like his leg had been desperate to move that way. Desperate to… stretch.

Grow.

His toes splayed, pressing the shape of his boot into something else entirely. His foot and his boot were one and the same. His toes were dark and leathery and butterflies filled his stomach as he felt his nails reshape into ebony claws, sliding slowly into fiercely curved points. It felt terrible. It felt incredible. He hated it. His body wanted it, screamed for it. His breath was rough, quickening as he collapsed onto his side and kicked out his other leg. As he squirmed against the ground he felt another shock of relief as his spine arched and popped, and one of the guards shrieked as he was knocked off his feet.

An arrow was loosed that glanced off Aleksi’s hip and into the arm of a fellow guardsman. His scream of pain was swallowed by the shouts of shock and revulsion around him.

Aleksi felt an impossible, swelling sensation in his chest and found himself gasping, desperate for air. He drew in huge, heaving gulps that felt raw and empty, bringing tears to his eyes from sheer exertion and growing panic. Sweat dripped from his face that was now as gold as his uniform had been and every attempt to pull in breath came with a grating, rattling rasp.

He groaned and twisted against the ground, and the guards scattered as he lifted his arm and beat it as though convulsing. Gold and purple skin stretched from his side, across the length of his arm and between his fingertips that elongated further still before their very eyes. Longer, longer again, the skin caught the air like the sail of a ship, and only Aleki’s thumb, now shaped like a wicked little talon, was free. His arm was a wing and it was massive, growing broader and reaching wider with every pulsing beat as he kicked and thrashed in wild, choking terror.

On the downward sweep, Aleksi was hidden from view. At the upward pull, his twisted body was revealed, displaying his writhing despair in fragments.

He hacked and coughed and struggled for oxygen to fill his chest, now swollen like a barrel.

His lips were pulled back into a hideous grimace that spread too far across his cheeks.

His face was stretched, everything distorted. His ears were too long. His nose was too long. His chin jutted out as he thrashed his head from side to side.

His neck stretched. Grew thicker, cords of powerful muscle pressing firm against pearly purple skin. It arched, a swanlike curve as his face split with a shriek. There was nothing human left. The terrible stretch of his jaws hardened into something more like a beak, his eyes were huge and savage looking, rimmed with delicate, pebbled scales. The angles of his face were sharp and reptilian, the crest of plumes that his hair had become now spread like a mane down his serpentine neck, while huge, batlike ears were pinned back to accommodate the wild movements as he still gasped for enough breath to fill his growing lungs.

“He’s a monster,” one of the guards uttered under his breath.

But they all kept their distance, nervous of his erratic motion, the reach of his wings and the sweep of his tail.

Aleksi had a tail, he finally realised with a startled, coughing sort of snarl, and the pressure and eventual glorious release in his spine suddenly made sense. Dizzying, horrifying sense. He scrambled as he tried to right himself, the sensations of being pulled in every direction slowly fading and replaced instead with feeling thoroughly unfamiliar with himself. Instinct had him roll to his belly and plant what might have been his knuckles against the earth, pushing upward until he was able to straighten his legs and rest on them comfortably.

There he paused on all fours, wings splayed, chest heaving, breath rasping as his tongue traced the strange new shape of his mouth.

The terrible crawling of his flesh faded. The pulling, the stretching, the uncanny sense of distortion eased away. His body was done, and Aleksi was left panting, terrified, but unhurt.

The guards were silent, shifting restlessly. Some stared openly, others turned their heads, one was doubled over in the mess of tattered cornstalks behind them.

A soft moan from the guardsman stuck with an arrow seemed to prompt a hush of horrified exchanges between the rest of them.

“He’s been bewitched.”

“She did it. The Wolf.”

“She changed him, it’s what she does.”

“He’s a beast.”

“An Animal.”

“And still a traitor!” Feverishly zealous, Titus snatched a sword from one of his fellows and launched forward.

And the dragon that was Aleksi turned toward him with a bellowing shriek, seized him around the middle and with a neat twist of his powerful neck sent him flying in a wide arc out into the endless fields.

Aleksi rounded on the guards, snarling and snorting, his movements no less intimidating for the awkwardness he felt with his new body. Ahuska gave him this body. She made him powerful, invincible. She made sure he would survive, and his growing certainty in her purpose filled him, in turn, with the desire to go on.

Aleksi charged forward and felt a dark satisfaction as the guards scattered, many of them dropping their weapons as they sought more nimble escapes through the corn. He beat his wings and felt the power they held to lift his body. The power in them was electrifying, and he dared to feel some hope. He roared again, he heard every footstep, every heavy boot against the earth with his acute new ears. He heard a tiny sob to his left and whirled, jaws agape.

“Aleksi,” Rollo whimpered, balled up on the ground, cradling a bleeding arm.

The dragon stared, his pupils narrowing to slits.

“I… I won’t tell him,” Rollo swallowed. He was shaking terribly. “I won’t tell Glenda. I won’t tell him what happened here.”

Aleksi watched him, turning the words over slowly in his mind. Glen had called Ahuska his friend, but chose not to fight for her. Glen had called Aleksi his love, but did not have it in him to fight for him.

The dragon huffed, bared his teeth, and then arched his neck high to lift his head above the swaying rows of corn, gold and green as the road and the shameful city to which it led.

Aleksi looked out to the setting sun. The Western sky.

“Ahuska,” he repeated, pulling her in tight. “You know I’m their best chance. You know if anyone’s going to fly in and out in one piece, it’s me.” “You don’t even know if they’re actually in there.” Her voice was muffled against his chest, and it only grew moreso as she pressed against it as though hoping to simply vanish into him. “We don’t even know if they’re still alive.”

She felt the tiny shudder in his fingertips as they dug into her hair. “They are.”

The question had plagued them for the last five years, since Marr’s ship had rammed into Zakuul’s fleet with both Five and Thirteen aboard. Crow had sensed them both lingering for a time; Ahuska, worlds away, only knew when Thirteen’s presence vanished, startling her with a sharp pain and sense of loss. It was not the same as the severance of a bond, the likes of which had more than once in her life left her reeling and disoriented, scarcely able to breathe. Nor did it feel the same as a death; there was none of the peace and finality of feeling a soul rejoin the living Force.

They were simply… absent, somehow.

Out of reach.

But not for lack of trying. Ahuska had scoured the Force, flung herself far and wide in sleep, in dreams and meditations, running, soaring, howling wildly into the boiling black abyss in hope of an echoing call. There were times when she’d glimpsed a grey-brown wasteland, glassy mountains, a shadowed version of Kaas City, and thought she’d felt something flicker that passed as swiftly as a scent on the breeze.

She’d dreamed of Thirteen a few times, standing, staring out into nowhere, but he never saw her, never reached for her, never turned to her cries.

Pining after dreams had torn her apart before. She’d never told Crow about them.

“You’re up against impossible odds,” she said softly, her ears low. “You know that. You know as well  as I do what’s out there. There’s too many of them.”

“I like impossible,” he said, with a soft laugh, the sincerity of which was tainted by the hollow doubt he truly felt. The enemy fleet was unlike anything they’d faced before. The skytroopers were easy enough to put down, but they were endless. Wave after wave, and it would only take a single stray blaster bolt…

“Don’t go,” she whispered, pulling back so that she could meet his eyes. Yellow and green light flickered across his face with the movement of the brilliant little luminescent beetles that called the woods of Odessen home. For a moment his hair seemed to glow, framed in a flare of gold. The planet had become her sanctuary, a beautiful place hidden from the raging war and known only to a trusted few.

She would welcome Thirteen here with open arms, if Crow’s intelligence was correct, if the mission to retrieve him was successful.

But Five…

Crow kissed her forehead as though to soothe the tension in her before it could take proper form, and again her eyes fluttered shut. The galaxy had taken so much from her, and her tone became pleading at the thought of still more being stolen away. “I’m not ready to lose you yet.”

He wanted to promise her that she wasn’t going to. He wanted to promise her that he would defy the odds. But even the best damn pilot in the whole damn galaxy wasn’t invincible, even with the Force at his side. All he knew was that there was nobody he trusted more with Five and Thirteen’s lives than himself. That if the mission failed, and he hadn’t been there, he couldn’t live with himself anyway.

“Keep me here, then,” he offered gently, pressing a hand over her heart, knowing full well that she already did.

“Crow…”

Pexu’s fur was thinner than ever before, her quills patchy and blunt. Her breath was shallow, but she wasn’t struggling, not when she was able to lie with Ahuska and feel the warmth of her hands against her. Fifteen was a good age for a nexu.

And Ahuska had come a long way in her training, her skills, and once properly honed and backed up by some solid scientific education, her natural affinity for healing through the Force had allowed her to give many more years to Pexu’s life. She soothed the aches and strains, she dissolved the stone in her kidney that caused her abrupt, acute pain. She took care of her teeth, her heart, her joints.

“You remember that time you took a blaster bolt for Crow?” Ahuska murmured, her fingers feeling the edge of Pexu’s jaw, rubbing firmly up and down the edge the way she liked it. “We sure won’t, not ever. Stars, once in a lifetime is enough…” she shook her head slowly, and found the little scar on Pexu’s shoulder, all that remained from the burn she’d prevented from leaving its mark on Crow. “I bet you never wasted time remembering silly stuff like that, not when you could be thinking about stealing my damn donuts again.”

Ahuska still didn’t know how Pexu had managed to pilfer all six luxury creme artisanal donuts from the gift box sitting at her bedside while leaving the box itself closed and entirely intact, especially considering Crow had been out with her the whole time and, for once, couldn’t be blamed for the nexu’s bad snacking habits.

She huffed fondly, and stroked across Pexu’s quills. “That, or about basking under the Tatooine suns. You really liked that last visit, didn’t you? Syd was sweet with you, but I guess she always has been, I mean nexus have always been her specialty. But you’re prettier than any of hers ever were,” Ahuska grinned down at her, and knew that no nexu would every be quite so beautiful in her eyes as Pexu.

She knew she’d never be happy living without an animal or two of some sort at her side, but she wasn’t sure she could ever bring another nexu into her life. “Wouldn’t be right,” she murmured, as though Pexu was able to follow her thoughts. “They’d spend their life being compared to you, and none could ever live up to that.” As if to reply, the old nexu offered a quiet, rumbling pur, and lifted her head to bump against Ahuska’s hand. “That’s right, pretty girl,” she said, biting back tears as Pexu’s next breath was a little strained, and she caught up the great cat’s head in her arms and cradled it close. “Shh, hey, take it easy. Take it easy. You’re okay.” Ahuska wasn’t paying attention to the time. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting there, when the thrum of Crow’s heartbeat against her own let her know he was approaching. And not just him; Nela, too, just collected from the spaceport, who dashed over to kneel beside Ahuska without a word, throwing an arm around her shoulders and squeezing tight. “Hey, how’s she going?” Crow’s approach was a little more sedate.

He came in gently, settling down by Pexu’s rump and gently rubbing her favourite spot right at the base of her tail. The forked tip twitched, and her purr grew a little louder. “Hanging in there,” Ahuska whispered, still holding Pexu’s head, close against her chest. It was growing slowly heavier, her breaths ever shallower and less frequent. “But only just. I’m glad you made it. She’s… happy that you’re here.” And Pexu was. Ahuska felt it, that soft sense of peace that her beautiful old nexu felt, to have all her favourite, familiar hands resting on her. “She’s family,” Nela affirmed, and she couldn’t even say that much without a wobble in her voice, turning her head to press her face against Ahuska’s shoulder. Ahuska smiled, but her cheeks were wet. “She waited for you,” she whispered, before all her attention turned to Pexu, who now relied entirely on Ahuska’s arms to support the weight of her head.

“Sorry, sorry-” she winced and pulled back her hands from around his waist, folding them self consciously against her chest only to have one of his strong, long-fingered hands wrap around hers and tug it gently back to his side.

She shivered, then sighed, and tucked her face under his chin. “It’s not fair,” she whispered, as she had countless times before.

He knew what she meant. He felt what she meant. And he softly sighed in kind, knowing he could no more lie to her than cut out his own tongue. “It isn’t,” he agreed, moving his hand to rub slow, comforting circles between her shoulderblades.

“I don’t want a life without you in it,” she murmured, her muzzle sleek and soft against his jawline.

And it hurt him, as it hurt her, and he was silent for a while as he tried to find the words that would help her understand why she yearned for the impossible. “Ahuska. I love you, but you’re not mine,” he whispered, but as sweet and earnest as his tone was, he couldn’t guard against the way her heart twisted to hear it.

“Why not, why not? Your heart is big enough for me as well, I know it, I know it…”

“Big enough for your love, maybe,” he said, his hand sliding to the back of her head, fingers weaving through her hair, hoping to soothe her before speaking further. Their hearts shared their melancholy, their wistfulness, their frustration at a galaxy that had pressed them together when they could not be. He tilted his head and kissed the bridge of her muzzle. “Your love, but not your hate.”

“What- what?” She gave her head a fierce little shake against his face. “I don’t hate you. I never hated you, you know I don’t blame you for the way anything happened…”

“Five,” Thirteen said, and the way she twisted against him, her response so deep and visceral that the revulsion echoed in his own heart, only made him more certain.

She hid her grimace by tucking her face between his neck and the cushion, but she could do nothing to keep her own feelings from him. “So what?  You’re not him.”

“But I love him,” Thirteen answered simply. “You have every right to hate him, and I would never ask you to change that, to forgive him for my sake.”

“So what’s…”

“I don’t blame you for your feelings. But I can’t stand to feel them for myself, and I’m sure you don’t appreciate sharing mine.”

She didn’t.

Opening her heart to him had been… oh, it had been everything, to know one another so perfectly, man and bothan and wolf and hawkbat, but she knew how carefully they skirted around the subject of Five. She didn’t want their bond tainted with an awareness of Thirteen’s love and loyalty for him…

And how could Thirteen go to him, with Ahuska’s seething aversion simmering in the back of his mind?

How could she do that to him?

“Don’t,” he whispered, feeling her on the verge of spiralling. “You’re bigger than the mess life made of you. You’ll be unstoppable one day, and you won’t need me.”

She shuddered, and closed her eyes as she tucked herself more closely against him. “But I want you.”

“Five…” Should the tone have moved him?

Should the expression that the Cipher wore, torn between worry and fury, shadowed with stress, have given him pause?

Maybe once, but those days had served their time, and there was no place for such things in a galaxy turned on its head. Five didn’t know how much time he had left, but Thirteen still had a chance to walk away on the other side of all this. Only if they won. Only if they burned every last memory of Zakuul to ash and dust. And Thirteen had the miserable, short-sighted gall to try and stop him putting an end to the traitor Senya?

Five adjusted his gaze to somewhere beyond Thirteen’s shoulder, and sucked in a breath as he masked the pain shooting up his leg. With stiff legged steps, he made his way past the Cipher and back into the ruined temple. “Come,” he uttered, ignoring the shocked eyes that followed his passage. He didn’t need to see that glimmer of pity. “And pull yourself together. If you were any other agent you’d be cold on the ground alongside her already.”

Thirteen made a sound, then, and something about that utterly helpless, raw expression managed to drive an edge into Five’s heart.

The feeling was not welcome, and Five wrestled with himself, with the void that grew within him and the responsibility that crushed him from above, with the love that he had all but cast aside and the bitterness that it should end this way. He looked to Thirteen, and he shuddered.

“Five, I don’t…” Thirteen was searching him, his eyes wide and bright with pain, desperate for something to connect with, for something that Five refused to give. “She was… you didn’t have to-”

“She was the enemy,” Five snapped. “What’s wrong with you, Cipher?” “She was his mother,” Thirteen’s breath was ragged, his voice thick with everything he was trying to swallow down, and it made Five ill to witness. How much of his own energy had Thirteen wasted pining after a family that he’d walked away from a lifetime ago? How could something so meaningless as bloodline hold any sway?

“What of it? No, don’t answer. You’ve stalled us enough already, and frankly I do not care.” He stepped off, only to have his movement stalled by a hand gripping his jacket from behind, which caused a fresh jolt of agony to shoot up his leg and through his hip that turned his face white. He bit it all back as he rounded on Thirteen so savagely that the lanky Cipher buckled, finally succumbing to injuries he himself fought to hide.

Thirteen stared up at Five, his Watcher, his Commander, his husband. And Five found himself frozen again, for a half dozen heartbeats that seemed to last a lifetime. Thirteen. His Thirteen. The man who knew him as none else in the galaxy did, who knew the man he had been, the man he might have been. Thirteen, his beautiful face now so rough and sunken, his hair dark with ash and his skin peppered with bruises and blood. His eyes, gods, his eyes, so wide and lost and glittering with tears; Five saw the fresh wet tracks through the grime on Thirteen’s cheeks and almost doubled over at the way his heart tightened and violent pain flooded his leg.

Away, away, he desperately, urgently wanted to sweep Thirteen away from all of this. Shield him and protect him and preserve him. But such sentiment wouldn’t win the war. Sentiment would kill them both and if Five were to truly protect and preserve the love of his life, then he couldn’t afford to see him as the love of his life. Not when there was still work to do. There was too much yet to be done, and if Thirteen insisted on being a part of it then he would have to serve as he was trained to serve, loyal and unflinching. Five wrenched himself out of Thirteen’s grasp and eyed him coolly.

His wound was weeping again, and he’d be damned if he’d get any of the medics to poke and squeeze at it any more, for all the good they’d done him so far. The mystics were no better, and all of Lana’s pacing and fretting hadn’t done a blessed thing. He was fairly sure even Valkorion’s invasive ghost, with all the power he whispered about, couldn’t do a damn thing for him, though with that thought Five allowed himself a brief smirk. Carefully, Five pulled down his trousers and winced at the gash on his thigh, and the dark, spidering discolouration of his skin that spread from it in every direction.

The wound itself was not painful. If anything, it was numb, a disconcerting sort of nothing where his leg had been gored by that beastly monolith among the ashes of Ziost so… so long ago. Ulfran had babbled some nonsense about a void, but… it had been healing. It had been getting better, slowly but measurably, before five years in carbonite had robbed him of his life and quite plainly compromised his body’s ability to heal. Now the wound oozed and stretched as though it had been made mere days ago, and the infection across his skin…

Five twisted and pulled up his shirt, then uttered a soft sound of dismay.

Further, ever further it crawled, rivers of purple and black that reached up his side and across his chest, and it was the edges of the infection, the areas where clean flesh was slowly overcome, that it burned and shot him through with intermittent blazes of pain. He traced his cybernetic fingertips along one of the paths of infection, lines of charred black and gleaming violet along his skin, wincing at the sensation and then snorting with the horrid irony that soon, his false arm might be the only recognisable part of himself.

How had he ever let himself dare to hope for something different? Why had it felt possible to dream of a quiet, comfortable retirement, for himself and his Thirteen and even Crow? After Ziost, he’d found himself increasingly disinterested in his desires for greater power, greater control and influence, wanting instead the time and space to…

To simply enjoy being alive.

Five twisted about the other way, peering over his shoulder to try and examine the extent of the infection along his spine. He felt cold more often than not, now. Cold, and an unfamiliar sort of melancholy, nothing at all like the comfortable rage he’d nursed since he’d been a boy. No, he didn’t have room for that sort of strength of feeling any more. He’d been dragged and pressed into the position of Commander, he had beings from every side of the old wars under his thumb, staring at him, coming to him for advice and direction. He had more power now than ever before in his wildly ambitious life, and he cared for none of it, except for the one tiny thread of hope that it might mean, perhaps, he could attempt to shape a future where at least his precious Thirteen might continue to live. Maybe even live well.

Five no longer saw himself in that future.

He was dying, of that he was quite certain.

Perhaps Thirteen knew it, despite his best efforts to hide it. Thirteen knew how often he reached for his cane, once the adrenaline of a mission wore off, before he had the chance to reach for another stim or hit of kolto. And nothing could disguise the change in his eyes, the luminescent violet that now sometimes burned so bright it smothered his pupils. Perhaps Thirteen recognised that something in Five was turned beyond repair, perhaps it was self preservation that led the Cipher to push away from him, to rebel, to lose trust and faith and seek companionship… elsewhere.

Five closed his eyes, shutting out the world with a soft sigh. If it was self preservation guiding Thirteen’s actions, he couldn’t blame him. He might even be proud, if only he could find it in himself to feel anything.

But it was all fading, and the further Five pushed away the anger, the passionate fury, even the disgust in his own failing body, the easier it became to ignore the cold and the hurt and the desire for something better. Even the quiet yearning for the simple touch of Thirteen’s hand at his cheek was barely a whisper in some shadowed recess of his heart.

And it was better this way. The command he’d never asked for was now all he had, to try and carve out a future for Thirteen out from under Zakuul’s tyranny and Valkorion’s insidious influence, and his decisions would be more clear, his directions more effective, if he didn’t have distractions like fear and fury and vengeance muddying up his thoughts. Thirteen could cry for Kaliyo all he wanted, but the alien had been a loose cannon, a liability, and her death had been a long time coming.

Slowly, Five rolled his shoulders and straightened his spine, trying to find some part of himself that still felt real.

When he opened his eyes, he nearly startled to see Thirteen staring at him from the doorway. Five did not care for anything he saw in his Cipher’s eyes, but the shame and rage that might once have felt inevitable never came. He did not need help dressing his wound, and the sickness crawling across his skin was no longer Thirteen’s business to concern himself with. “Get out,” Five found himself saying, his voice quiet, his tone as deathly flat as the end he knew was coming for him.

x - [Before he was Five] 

The night before, they’d stayed up late, conspiring in the fort in whispers that were too loud, overstimulated and giddy for the day to come. Excited in the way that only children ever could be, knowing each other’s hearts the way that twins often would. That morning, they’d been sitting beside one another, halfway through the excruciating torment of being primped and polished to meet their parents’ expectations, her hair full of ribbons (she actually didn’t mind the ribbons), his cheeks dusted unnecessarily into a permanent rosy blush (he wished he didn’t have to), but going through the process together always made it a little easier. Two hours ago, they’d bowed and curtsied their way through an endless parade of polite greetings and welcomes and displays of thanks; one hour ago, they’d snuck away with their arms full of food to share and feast on away from prying eyes, using their fingers and wiping dusted sugar off on their knees without their mother’s judgement or father’s disdain to spoil their simple joy.

Half an hour ago they’d been explorers, climbing trees and pressing their way through hedges, because even if the event was supposed to be for them there was no hiding the fact that it was really for the adults, to smile with too many teeth and compliment one another in ways that left each other feeling terrible. They weren’t missed, and they made the day theirs anyway.

Ten minutes ago, they’d found a way into their neighbours’ menagerie, and were enthralled by the beasts they’d never been allowed to see up close before.

Five minutes ago, she’d strayed too close.

Five.

Four minutes ago, the sounds must have been his, because his sister could no longer make them.

It would take another ten minutes for anyone to find him, but it wouldn’t have mattered if it was ten or ten thousand. No matter how forcefully he pushed those wretched minutes from his mind, he would never be the same.

x - [Wolf, trained by the Spheres]

“Don’t settle! DON’T.”

Her blunt claws scrabbled against the duracrete floor as she tried to put some distance between herself and the source of pain, but there was no escaping it, there was never escaping it, even though it was hard, it was so hard hard hard hard to stop her body from shifting completely, it was so hard hard hard hard to force herself back in the other direction. The pain only made it worse, that vile pulse that knocked the breath out of her and left her head throbbing. It made it so hard to concentrate so hard to know what to do, so hard to listen and press herself out of synchrony with the song of the moon but she had to, she had to or he’d make it happen again–

“What did I SAY?”

She yelped as her body felt as though it was pummelled from the inside and she stumbled and smacked her chin against the ground, biting her tongue as stars blossomed in her field of view. She wanted to she wanted to he was mad, she could smell it he was mad and she didn’t want to make him mad, it was just so hard so hard so hard to learn what she was supposed to but she’d never be a good girl if she couldn’t do what she was supposed to.

On her feet again, she scrambled to the far wall and flattened against it, ears pinned right back, eyes screwed shut, and she tried, she tried, she tried.

x - [Wolf under the Spheres]

She’d perfected it, so much so that the faint tickle of discord in her veins was something of a comfort, so much so that she no longer had to think about it. Her body naturally fell into an unfinished state, it recoiled against the idea of being in harmony with the moon.

It didn’t matter what exactly was left unfinished, certainly her Man didn’t mind if her ears were a little too long or her tail a little too short, he didn’t care about the exact width of her muzzle so long as her teeth were still good and long and sharp. But she enjoyed having a little more grasp to her paws, strong dew claws that she could flex and grip, digits that she could curl into the earth as she ran, paws shaped all the better to hold her prey. And so that was the state her body came to know as correct, that was the point to which she shifted when the moon rose and the crisp night welcomed her. To settle in full would be the greater effort now, to be a pure wolf was unthinkable, it made her flinch to even consider it. She huffed, her breath forming a cloud in the cool air, and padded out into the street.

When a fresh new pain bloomed in her mind, it was the type she knew how to silence, the type her long sessions with her Man had taught her how to focus on and deal with.

Eyes ablaze, she ran, and the alien in soft beige robes carrying a glittering blue light didn’t have time to comprehend what was coming her way.

The alien pushed defensively toward her, and she flashed her teeth with a wolf’s silent laughter as she rebuked, turning the push back upon its caster. There was just a moment of shock in the alien’s eyes as she started to piece together what she was dealing with, but that realisation wasn’t enough to prevent everything ending in blood.

x - [Wolf under Nines]

She liked the way she was just allowed to run now, sometimes. It wasn’t always killing, it wasn’t always the pain and the noise and the hunt hunt hunt until the pain was gone.

Sometimes, like tonight, she was just allowed to bask in the glow of the moon and feel the wind ruffle her fur, to watch the little clouds form in front of her face as she panted, warm with joyous exertion.

Never before, though, had she picked up that scent on the breeze, in the grass, and her heart leapt inexplicably when she detected it, when she recognised it.

It’s like me, like me. Smells like me.

She tilted her muzzle upward, little huffs and snuffs as she worked out the direction, stepping in slow circles. It wasn’t wolf that she smelled, not exactly, though she wasn’t sure how she knew. A little more musky, but that spice was undeniable, that unique little peculiarity that she knew belonged to herself, and to some of her earliest days of training.

The smell meant friend.

It didn’t occur to her that now that she had escaped from that life, that what was once a friend may well now be an enemy. Her thoughts and cares were all far too immediate to consider anything like that.

The smell meant friend, the smell was someone never ever ever to bare her teeth at.

Where was he? Who was he?

The grass rippled, and she spun, and dropped into a play-bow, splaying her front legs across the grass.

Where are you, where are you? Will you run? Will you play?

x - [Wolf under Five]

Death, again.

It had come back to this. It would always come back to this.

The body she dragged, clamped in her jaws, had been somebody. Dimly, she was aware that this was a whole life she had ended, but the concern over whether or not the death was warranted was no longer hers.

She’d given up her words, and with them, her soul.

A new face to whisper those words, to grin his loth-cat grin as she became still and calm and perfectly obedient. Bound to those words, and so, to his command.

She’d given up her words freely, because she’d proven that she couldn’t be trusted, could never be trusted, not even with those she held most dear. Not even with those who filled her heart, who’d made her believe, for a small while at least, that freedom was worth pursuing.

She was a monster, fit only to be bound and caged.

The body was heavy in her jaws, but it did not weigh on her nearly so much as the grief she carried on her shoulders. There was no joy to be found, when he told her how well she’d done. She could smell his savage delight, his excitement, but she shared none of it. She could see the triumph in his eyes, a man risen victorious over his own personal lifelong challenge, even if she could not know the cause for his all consuming desire for control. His desperate desire to never know the pain of his youth again.

Oh, how she hated him.

She laid the kill at his feet, and turned her back on him to clean her muzzle and her paws. She hoped he would speak the words again soon, and spare her the pain of a mind clear enough to know regret.

x - [Ahuska under Tython’s masters]

Day by day, she came to know the temple grounds and their surrounds better, in the time she was given to herself. To relax, to study, to explore… sometimes she wished for more direction, sometimes she wished for more teaching, because surely the faster she learned, the sooner she could actually make some useful headway toward…

She paused, twisting to look over her shoulder and watch the way he nosed through the long grass, his elegant little body always so silent as he slipped his way across the landscape.

Sometimes it was hard to imagine he’d ever been anything else.

She had to help him.

She gritted her teeth and moved on, wanting to find somewhere peaceful and private, somewhere away from the temple that seemed to grow noisier by the day, though now she knew it was because her ability to sense life through the Force was developing at a faster rate than her ability to do anything useful about focusing or walling herself off.

It seemed like the more acutely aware of the Force and its endless possibilities she became, the more overwhelming it all was. She’d been warned endlessly that her own impatience, her desperate need to see progress, was actually hampering her ability to achieve any of what she chased, but setting those fierce desires aside was a task unto itself.

Her feet picked out a trail, a thinning of the grasses that grew tall between the conifers, and-

Creatures made this trail, in the earliest hours of the morning. I’d been good, up until this point, letting the Masters know that I wanted to get up in the dark to see them pass through the courtyard. A family of slinky little beasts with fur that looked almost silvery in the moonlight, with webbed feet and huge bushes of whiskers at the ends of their blunt snouts. The little ones bit and snorted at each other as they followed their parents, but when one of them noticed me watching, where I sat at the edge of the fountain, it squeaked and darted to the adults, moving along with its whole body pressed along one of the grown beast’s flanks.

When they started to vanish from view, I decided to be a little less good, because I wanted to watch them just a little longer. I wanted to see where they travelled from, maybe even where they denned. I wanted to reach out gently through the Force, and see if there was anything they wanted to offer back. My bare feet followed their trail, where their nightly passage thinned the grass, weaving through the woods and down a muddy little slide into a gently flowing river.

She gasped, and froze, not knowing where the memory came from or why such a thing would feel so real. She’d never been to Tython before. Perhaps, if the memory had come from the wolf, she’d have a whole slew of questions that at least made sense to ask. As it was, she turned to make her own trail through the grasses, not wanting to see the river that she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, would be there waiting if she carried on.

Ridiculous. I’ve never been to Tython before. Certainly not to watch wildlife when I was a little girl. I’m from Ruweln.