Star Wars 1. Sins and Follies

_Why is it that shady dealings always seem to take place in poorly lit places?_ Hawke couldn't help but wonder as he stepped out onto the flight deck.

The bay was dark, and the landing lights gave it an eerie glow. The few, flickering low-output lights didn't do much to brighten up the atmosphere, but they did at least provide enough light to make out Vaelin Kosh's face as the man approached.

When it came down to it, Kosh was a lackey; an errand boy for another man named Narrus, who cut the checks. But Kosh had been the one to contact him, so Hawke had resigned himself to tolerating the man, despite his gut instinct to put a blaster bolt in the man's head/chest and call it a day. That was the nature of the business, though. Good, honest people did not put out the high paying jobs. Pity.

Kosh, of course, didn't come alone. Behind him trailed a small entourage of stern faced individuals. Even from a distance, it wasn't hard to tell they were just hired hands who happened to be handed guns. No doubt their set jaws and clenched teeth were meant to seem gritty and hardened, but Hawke sensed how frayed their nerves really were. Nobody much cared for bounty hunters.

The party sauntered up to Hawke; Kosh wielding a smile that seemed to slither across his face and the band of thugs resting their hands near their blasters and side arms. Hawke ignored Kosh's greeting and stared at him, then each of the hired guns in turn, unblinkingly. The action had no merit in itself: he wasn't sizing up the guns or reading their fears, just feeling the level of discomfort rise. Hawke had learned that intimidation was an easy card to play. Setting everyone else off balance was an advantage that cost nearly nothing to gain. Often enough, Hawke's reputation for being a deadly killer did his work for him, and if that didn't work, his reputation for being a little crazy would suffice.

After the group seemed sufficiently unsettled, Hawke turned to Kosh with a single word.

"Mark?"

"Yes, you see," Kosh drew a deep breath as if to launch into a formal speech. "It is of a rather delicate nature; there are more detailed instructions to be conveyed when we meet formally tomorrow - "

That was all Hawke needed to get the point so he walked past Kosh. "Well, welcome to Nar Shaddaa." Kosh grumbled. "I'll have my man contact you about arrangements."

Hawke had to smother a smile as he walked away. He always enjoyed this part of the game. It was a mind game, a series of bluffs and imaginary bets, wagering on who would actually be willing to play when the uglier game began. He wondered who the other potential candidates were this time. For what they were offering to pay, there was certain to be plenty of competition.

Nar Shaddaa was a typical cesspool of a city-planet. Hawke had always loathed the idea of so many people occupying such a small place. A giant city covering a whole moon was bad enough, but then building another on top of that one, then another, and another? On this level of Nar Shaddaa, you could walk for days and never even see the sky. How many layers of steel and concrete could one little moon take?

This particular landing bay was only five levels down, and it already showed the signs of neglect and deterioration that the older levels inevitably wore over time. It could have been far worse though, there were still levels below them that made this one look like a thriving oasis. Still, those floors might have been safer. Folks down there could hardly afford to eat, let alone get their hands on a blaster. Here, it was just slummy enough to attract the dangerous kind. It had cantinas, clubs, dealers of this sort and that, brothels, and even a miniature slave market all just a short ride from where he stood. A poor lure for a legitimate businessman or trader certainly, but for those who had a knack for profiting off of others' misfortune, it was a gold mine. _A natural hive for all sorts of scum and villainy,_ he mused.

Hawke parked himself in a nearby cantina, figuring it was as good a place to start as any. There really wasn't any better place to get up to speed on the local happenings, especially if you were willing to part with a few credits. He was curious to know anything about what Kosh or his employer might have lost that they were willing to pay so much to get back, but more importantly, he needed to know who else was in town that might also be looking to take the job.

Bounty hunter had an inspiring ring to it, but few people really understood how true to the point the term was. It was always a hunt. A hunt for information, for a trail, for the mark, but none of that was typically ever hard or dangerous. The dangerous part was the other hunters.

Hawke ordered a drink and asked around a bit. He thought about ordering something to eat, but changed his mind when he couldn't identify the last thing he saw served to a patron. For the most part, he got the answers he was expecting.

"I don't pay much mind."

"A lot of new faces, couldn't tell you any names."

"It's a big city, everyone is a new face to me."

A few people just shook their heads and declined speaking altogether, especially when he used the name Narrus. Not all too shocking, but unfortunate.

Eventually, a man approached his table and stood, waiting for Hawke to look up from his drink. When he didn't, the man sat down at the table and began removing his gloves.

"I overheard you asking questions," the man said assuming that the statement was more likely to warrant a reply. The one he got was Hawke's eyes flicking up from his cup.

The man was at ease, confident and sturdy in how he carried himself, so Hawke didn't bother with the intense stare that he normally wore to put people off. Instead he casually looked the man over. He was ex-military from his grooming and posture, dressed in similar garb to Kosh's, though more reserved and cut for ease of movement, and wearing a side arm openly for anyone to see.

"And I take it you have answers?" Hawke asked flatly.

"Of a sort, but only those I have been instructed to give." The man set his gloves on the table and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a small key card. "You would, of course, have received this earlier, had you not walked off to skulk in a bar as soon as you arrived."

Hawke mentally smacked his forehead. That would have been a useful thing to get from Kosh. He covered his annoyance with typical hunter arrogance.

"It was a boring speech. And I was planning on finding my own accommodations. Besides, I couldn't wait to get out into the city. Nar Shaddaa's bar scene has quite a reputation at this end of the galaxy."

"I see." said the man, after a pause just long enough to convey his skepticism. "No, you have lodging for the night at the Vaelin Spire..."

"Of course he would name the building after himself," Hawke snorted. The man ignored him.

"...where you will be accommodated until you meet with Vaelin Kosh in the mourning. The details of your markare to be conveyed to you then_._"

"Hmm, tell me..." Hawke paused for the man's name.

"Carsul."

"Tell me, Carsul, how many bounty hunters will Kosh be keeping in his fine home for the night?"

Carsul tensed as if it were a sore point with him. Hawke suspected the man had some sort of security duty related to Kosh. The theory seemed sound.

"Vaelin Kosh plays host to any number of guests on any given night. The numbers vary."

"I hope he didn't invite too many emissaries and officials for the bounty hunter sleepover. I think our interests may clash."

"I'm certain they would," Carsul said as he stood. He set the key card on the table and began pulling his gloves back on. "Vaelin Kosh very much enjoys playing host, I wouldn't keep him waiting long." And with that, he left Hawke alone at his table.

A tower full of bounty hunters all about to go after the same mark. Seemed like a rather terrible idea...or a very clever one. Most likely some of them would kill each other off before they went after the mark. But what did Kosh gain from that? He only had to pay one person no matter how many went after it, so why would he want to limit the number of bounty hunters pursuing it?

He mulled over the question for a few moments when a woman approached his table. Again he didn't bother to look up, he could tell more about a person typically from just below their knees than they could looking at his face. Her shoes, which put comfort first and style second, were well worn, and she fidgeted slightly. Had Hawke actually looked up, he would have also noticed quite plainly that it was a serving girl of the cantina and she was in a bit of a hurry to get him to take his drink.

When he realized this, he apologized reflexively and gestured for her to set it on the table before belatedly remembering...

"Wait, I didn't order a drink," he said eyeing her suspiciously.

"No, it's from the man over by the bar. The Sullustan."

The woman walked away hurriedly after that, either to avoid any more questions or just to get on with work.

Hawke took his new drink and made his way over to the bar where he sat down on the empty stool next to the Sullustan. He almost laughed aloud when he finally recognized him. Most Sullustans looked very much alike to him, but the port behind his ear for attaching mods was a pretty solid giveaway.

"Well if it isn't Gunshy Geneb! I wouldn't think you'd be throwing in your lot on this bantha ride."

"Fellow has to make a living," Geneb said as he took a swallow from his cup.

Hawke couldn't argue that point, especially when it was Hawke himself that made away with one of the marks Geneb had been about to claim for himself almost a year ago.

Geneb Marhuun was a fair sort for a person, but he was a downright saint compared to most of their peers. Frankly, it was hard to think of him in the same category as the rest of the disreputable characters that made up the bulk of bounty hunters. Geneb was more of a...forceful retriever. His skills as a pilot and a marksmen were second to nearly none, and for that he was respected, but it was also well known that he didn't like killing and resorted to it only if there was no other choice. Some people assumed he just didn't have the gall for it. But Hawke knew better.

The last time they met, Hawke made off with the mark that the Sullustan was after. Geneb chased him for nearly two days. It was an intense flight, but in the end, it was rather plain that Geneb was the better pilot. Gunshy Geneb could have shot him down half a dozen times. Yet all Hawke's ship suffered were a few char marks. In the end, Geneb let him go.

Hawke was so baffled by this that he did a good deal of digging to unearth his story. What he found was quite contrary to what most people believed: Gunshy Geneb wasn't gun shy at all. On the contrary, he had been a soldier for most of his adult life, and held a record for single man fighter kills. Gunshy Geneb had pulled the trigger that ended more lives than most people would ever be able to claim.

Apparently, he took something from that. Whether it just made him lose the taste for killing, or gave him some kind of criteria to justify it, Hawke had no idea. But he did conclude that Geneb Marhuun's skills were not to be underestimated, even if his motives remained a mystery.

Hawke nodded in agreement as he raised his glass toward the Sullustan, acknowledging his gift.

"Yeah, I don't want to try and put you off of this mark or anything, since that wouldn't be very sporting. But five-hundred grand creds? This one is going to be bloody, one way or another."

"Most likely." was all Geneb said, then held up a small key card, identical to the one he had been given.

"How many of those do you figure got given out?" Hawke asked, trying to seem more amused than concerned.

"Your guess is as good as mine. How many bounty hunters can you think of that would go for a five hundred thousand credit mark?"

Hawke laughed and shook his head.

"Literally everyone I know, except perhaps the waitress over there, but then again, we just met. Five hundred thousand credits would make up for a lot of lousy tippers."

Geneb leaned over the bar and looked at the young woman.

"Nope, she seems like she would have the good sense to stay away from that kind of money...and the kind of people that would go chasing it."

"Yeah," Hawke mused aloud as his gaze followed Geneb's. "It's a shame more people don't have her good sense."

The Sullustan drained his cup and rose from his stool.

"See you at the Spire." was the last he said as he walked away toward the cantina exit.


	2. One Man's Castle

Kosh's "Vaelin Spire" started on level five and rose nearly to the outside sky, making it quite huge. It was baffling to think that a lackey like Vaelin Kosh could own all this - whatever he dealt in specifically, it must be paying off well.

Hawke hired an airspeeder to drop him off at the spire. Upon arriving, he was not entirely surprised by the large number of attendees that had gathered to receive him. They were all uniformly dressed and radiated eagerness to serve. Kosh was doing well for himself indeed.

At the head of the group was a familiar face that Hawke wasted no time greeting.

"Carsul, my old friend, you really didn't have to wait up."

Carsul was obviously not amused. He fell into step next to Hawke as they made their way through the front entrance and through a grand receiving room to the lifts.

Carsul gestured for Hawke to follow him as he boarded one. The lift shot upward, its clear walls allowing Hawke glimpse many of the buildings, halls, and great rooms on the way up, until it finally came to a halt.

"This room is yours for the time being. I will leave you to your preparations and see you tomorrow." Carsul stated as he stepped out of the lift.

The room was hardly a room by most people's standards, more like an entire floor. There were no dividers or walls, but it still managed to convey the impression of multiple rooms - a gathering room, a dining room, a bedroom, a bath, and a viewing room; each partitioned only by a change in flooring, style, and decor.

The decor itself was especially noteworthy. In each section was an elaborately decorated female attendant, five of them in all. When Hawke realized they were meant to come with the room he looked back at Carsul, but the man was paying him no mind and waiting to ride the lift back down.

"Well...this is...spacious."

All five women were looking at him, though the room was large enough that he couldn't quite see the Twi'lek in his bed. He made straight for the eating area and started rummaging through the wall cabinets, slightly disappointed to find mostly beverages and snack foods.

"May I help you find something, sir?" a sunny yellow Twi'lek asked. She was beautifully if rather scantily adorned in swirling orange and reds that looked like fire against her skin.

Hawke looked over at her when she spoke. She didn't raise her eyes to meet his, just awaited an answer. He had a hard time reading her face. She wasn't sad, or afraid, nor was she eager or happy. She was just there.

"I was just looking for something to eat, actually," he finally replied, giving up on trying to decipher her expression.

"If you can wait just a moment, I would be glad to arrange a meal for you, sir," the Twi'lek said, still basically talking to the ground.

"Well, that would be great. Don't go to too much trouble though. Don't need anything elaborate."

"Certainly," she said and she finally began to move, using a small holoscreen to call up a menu and place an order, before setting the low table with cloth and dishes. Her outfit covered little enough as it was, and when she moved, it didn't even cover what it originally intended. Hawke turned abruptly and made for one of the other rooms.

The room adjacent was decorated in blues and whites and had a very comfortable looking lounge that Hawk decided he would occupy until it was time to eat. He didn't occupy it long however when a blue Twi'lek came to kneel before where he sat.

"Do you wish to be entertained while you wait?"

Hawke swallowed hard. This woman was even less covered than the last one and her physique spoke more of being an athlete than a servant. A dancer would be an obvious guess, but being that there was a white Twi'lek blatantly stationed in his bed, he had a sinking feeling about what "entertain" usually meant to the guests she served. With her cool cerulean skin, she was a dramatic contrast to the yellow Twi'lek, but her expression was the same. It was unsettling, like they didn't care about...anything, really.

"Listen, no, you don't have to entertain me. Ugh, what's your name?"

The Twi'lek looked up for the first time. Her eyes were a stunning green, but they just shone dully.

"Whyn," was all she said before looking down again.

"Pleasure to meet you Whyn. You can call me Hawke, everyone else does," he said and tried to smile as reassuringly as possible.

She met his eyes briefly and returned the smallest glimmer of a smile.

"Tell you what, why don't you go get your friends and bring them over here and we'll all have something to eat. I've got some time to kill and I haven't had a fresh meal in a while. We'll have us a dinner party."

Whyn raised an eyebrow and that glimmer of a smile escaped again. But then she rose and did as he asked, briefly stopping by the yellow Twi'lek girl to notify her to order more food.

"Order your favorite dishes!" Hawke encouraged them. "Kosh will think I have a healthy appetite." He grinned at the Twi'lek playing hostess. She hesitated for a moment, but evidently the other women weren't going to turn down a hand picked meal, and soon they were all crowded around her holopad, looking for their preferred foods. Eventually there were three Twi'lek women and two human women sitting around a low table in the dining area, more listening to Hawke talk than actually making conversation. The yellow Twi'lek, Feira, got up and down from her seat as dishes began arriving, and at one point Hawke decided to go get one of the sheets from the bed for the white twi'lek, Ranleou, as she wasn't really wearing anything at all.

He couldn't help thinking about all the other bounty hunters that had rooms here for the night. Were all their rooms filled with slave women as well? The thought made him rather angry. Slavery was commonplace here, as it was on several other spaceports and planets he had stopped at. It never seemed to get any easier to tolerate though. It was hard to believe sometimes that civilized systems could let slavery continue. Still, while Nar Shaadaa was certainly a modernized planet, it was hard to think of it as civilized.

"So… a lot of new faces here lately I'm guessing? Any idea as to what all the commotion is about?" he asked when there was a lull in the conversation. They all tensed. Feira and Leslin, one of the humans, both shot glances at Whyn, who had stopped eating and was staring at her plate.

"We don't really know much about what goes on," one of the human women said. Chealin, if he recalled her name correctly.

"Well surely there's some kind of household gossip," he said. Ranleou shook her head sharply, nearly smacking Whyn with her lekku.

"No. They're very strict about who we speak to and where we go." she said. "Anyone who seems too curious ends up sold or...terminated." Something about the way she said the last word made Hawke suspect she didn't mean fired from the job.

The topic was clearly making them uncomfortable, so he waved a dismissive hand. "I'm sure Kosh will fill me in on all the important details tomorrow. Now… who's ready for dessert?"

The dessert sampler was impressive, but the mood of the room had sobered noticeably since he brought up the bounty. He looked around the table watching the five women eating quietly, each one of them a different kind of beauty: Feira was fine boned and dainty, Whyn tall and well built, Ranleou was stunning with her perfectly white skin, dark eyes and dramatic curvature. And the human women were no less beautiful - Chealin was deeply tanned with short red hair, and Leslin reminded him of the women on the last planet he called home. Her ebony hair fell around her pale body like a curtain. It had to be almost as long as she was tall.

They were a sight to make any man's mouth water, but every time Hawke looked at them, another image came unbidden to his mind instead… a young Zabrak girl with no horns and an expression of pure hopelessness on her face every time he left her. Looking around the table at the women in front of him, he realized they wore the same expression, an expression born of the knowledge that their only freedom lay in death. However nice he was tonight, the very next night they could be ordered to serve someone far crueler than he was kind. His dinner party seemed a very small and meager comfort in comparison.

His seething was interrupted by the sound of blaster fire. Hawke leapt up from the table and lunged for the lift with his blaster in hand, but by the time he had gotten there, the firing had stopped. The lift tube was clear, and through it, he could see the lazy swirl of smoke inside one of the other rooms a few floors below. He had no idea who occupied the room, but whoever it was, they had either been taken out of the running for tomorrow or had reduced the competition themselves.

Hawke looked back into his own room for a moment, thinking to assess its defensible positions when his eyes fell back on the women at the table. All of their eyes were on him, yet they hadn't moved from the table. They just sat there, perfectly poised. Hawke wondered if they would have even ducked had the fire fight happened in this very room. They really did not care.

The night turned out to be a very long one. Hawke eventually ushered the women into the area meant for the bedroom as it was in an outcropping of the room least likely to get hit by stray shots if there was a fight. The bed was massive and easily fit all five. Even so, they huddled against one another as they slept, undisturbed by the abrupt bouts of random blaster fire on the floors surrounding them. Hawke assumed that when part of you was waiting for death, the fear of it was not such a substantial force.

The night brought Hawke no sleep as he sat behind some overturned tables looking out at the lift. The damn thing ran so smoothly and quietly, it could stop at his very room and let someone off here without barely a sound. So he sat there, watching it all night long, and as his eyelids began to feel weighted, he even shot a stim to make sure that he didn't get sluggish later into the night.

Several times the lift came past his room. He prepared for it to open onto his floor but it never did. He listened to each bout of blaster fire carefully. Sometimes it was the same blaster, sometimes it was an entirely new one. A few times he wasn't entirely sure how many gunmen were involved as there were several different guns fired and it seemed to go on and on.

Finally, the sun did rise. Or rather the simulated sun lighting slowly illuminated the building's interior. They were, after all, still a good distance below the rest of the city. No natural sunlight had gleamed here for hundreds of years.

The lift showed that it was on its way down again from above and Hawke prepared himself again for whatever might emerge if it stopped. This time it began to slow near his floor and then it stopped. The doors opened noiselessly and Hawke readied himself to fire if he didn't like what he saw, but the first thing that emerged were a pair of familiar dress boots and gloved hands.

It was exactly who the items indicated. Carsul emerged, looking rather put off and tired himself. He was only slightly startled by walking into a barricaded room and having a gun trained on him.

"I take it you had a restful night," Carsul said barely masking his annoyance as he walked past the barricade to look around the room and assess the damage.

"It had its pleasant moments, but I wouldn't exactly call it restful."

By this point Carsul had taken notice of the five women in the bed, two of whom had sat up, showing that their skimpy outfits were not well suited to staying in place even when they were resting.

"I see," he said turning abruptly. "Vaelin Kosh will see you in the grand viewing room now to give you instructions for retrieving your bounty. Come promptly if you would." He took one final disapproving look at the bedroom before he made his way back to the lift and took it back upward.

Hawke turned his eyes to where Carsul had been staring and almost laughed.

_I like having an impressive reputation_, he thought looking at the women curled up under his sheets. _But I never really planned on it going in that direction._


	3. Handle With Care

The viewing room was a fancy name for the top floor. But it did have one feature worth mentioning besides its elevation: through the glass ceiling above them you could see the sky. City structures loomed overhead off to the sides, but besides a few skywalks and rail lines nothing was built directly overhead. Still, it wasn't much of a view for anyone who had ever been on a less compacted planet. Only a smothered haze of sunlight broke through the heavy cloud cover, and even that only served to shine on the numerous sky speeders and vessels going about their business.

Hawke spared a moment to take in the view, though it was only a brief one as the view wasn't all that inspiring and he needed to get to work anyway. He made his way to the edge of the circular room where he could comfortably put his back against the wall and see everyone who was attending.

Kosh looked quite smug behind a podium at the far end of the room. Doubtless, he must have thought himself a grand sight with his back to the glass and lit at least partially by the natural light. It made Hawke wonder if anyone else was actually impressed: this audience wasn't the sort to stand on ceremony.

Kosh may have set himself up to be the center of attention, but the bounty hunters in attendance were focused on anything but their host. They were too busy evaluating one another.

Some of them did it subtly, looking at their competition when their attention was elsewhere or out of the corner of their eyes. Others did it blatantly and made the act as aggressive and threatening as possible. One way or another, when it came down to it, they all were trying to get an edge, and knowing your opponent was the only advantage up for grabs at the moment.

Hawke scanned the crowd, doing all he could not to blink or avert his eyes when he made eye contact with someone. He set his expression in a mocking grin. It was a face he defaulted to, and since it meant nothing, it was impossible to read. Nervous, angry, afraid, pleased, his expression never changed when he was in work mode.

He saw more familiar faces than he was entirely happy about. There was Bak and Ragnar, the Trandoshan pair that he seemed to keep running into lately. Hawke had beaten them to the punch more than once in the past few years, and judging by how they seemed to bristle when he waved, they hadn't forgotten.

A band of ex-military looking fellows all stood together at the far end of the room. They must have been the guns for hire out of Corellia that he kept hearing about. Defectors, out plying the only trade they were taught.

The Rodian was a new face, at least new to Hawke. The guy looked like he had seen a good deal of action from the well-worn gear to his well-worn skin. He didn't give Hawke the impression of someone who was new to the business. If nothing else, the blood on his shirt and pants leg was enough to make Hawke wary of him. It looked fresh, and if it was, it would explain some of the blaster firing from the night before. Thinking of all that had transpired over the night made Hawke wonder how many others were planning on attending this meeting that just didn't make it.

He was at least glad to see that Geneb Marhuun had made it through the night in one piece. Not that he was really surprised. Anyone who had taken even a little time to read up on the old soldier would most likely think twice about getting in a blaster fight with him.

It was almost like a convention for killers and lowlifes. It was a shame they couldn't just open a bar and swap old stories of theft, murder, and slaving. Alas, bounty hunters weren't exactly the social sort and the only thing that brought them together like this was the possibility of being paid.

Just as Hawke had finished sizing up the competition, a latecomer joined the gathering. It was a face Hawke could have gone a Croke's lifetime without seeing again.

Tarjas Kleyn walked into the room as if the whole place had been waiting for his arrival. He came to a halt about midway into the viewing room and folded his arms as if to say "I'm here now, you may begin." He set his jaw and waited, looking for the most part, bored above anything else.

From just looking at him, anyone else in the room would think he was disinterested in the rest of the attendees, but Hawke knew better. Tarjas may have seemed to pay no mind to anyone, but he was a Sakiyan, and their senses were unlike any other species he had encountered.

There was an old joke that the eyes on the back of a Sakiyan's head were bigger than the one's on the front. Hawke didn't find it an especially funny joke, but the basis for it was solid enough. The species' peripheral vision went well around to partially reveal their backsides and it was a clear vision at that, not the out of focus version most species had.

Sakiyans were tremendously perceptive in most ways, namely sight, smell, hearing. Most people seemed to attribute it all to them having such large brains. Apparently the part of the brain that was used for sensory functions was over twice the size of a human's. Just because Tarjas didn't bother to look at Hawke or anyone else didn't at all mean that the malicious bounty hunter didn't see them.

Hawke's last run in with the Sakiyan had proved that, on many physical levels, Tarjas outmatched him. But bounty hunting had a strange way of changing the game on you. You could be stronger, faster, have a better shot and be more savvy on the yoke, and still end up a smoking crater if you didn't bend when the rules change. And then of course, who caught the luck was always a wildcard.

It took a few moments, but eventually Kosh cleared his throat a few times and began to speak. Everyone quieted down to hear him, giving them the illusion of being orderly when they really were just hungry to find out what was worth so much money.

"I'm sure everyone is quite curious as to the odd circumstances surrounding this particular task." Kosh raised his hands in a warding fashion. He had obviously rehearsed this more than a few times. "Let me assure you that the delicate nature of the assignment more than warrants its secrecy." Hawke leisurely pressed a small button on his wrist link that started a 360 degree recording of the room. He didn't want to miss anything from Kosh's speech or the reactions that his competition might have to it.

"Up until a few days ago individuals from our organization have been working with some of the greatest minds from the Gaelfree Institute. What they were trying to achieve is not relevant to your task, except that their success resides within a test subject that has subsequently gone missing." Kosh touched a control on his podium and a very large holographic image appeared at its side. There were murmurs and a few smothered gasps among the crowd as she was displayed.

It was difficult to tell whether she was tall or short being that the hologram was a good twelve feet tall so everyone could see easily. But what was unmistakable was that she was beautiful. Enough that Hawke forgot the questions he was forming in his mind to answer about this "test subject" and what exactly was being tested. For a moment, he was just happy to be looking at the lovely Twi'lek.

She was a soft purple color, lavender really, with long and well defined legs that ended in pointed toes where she stood as if she were ready to spring weightlessly into the air. Her hips were curved but banded slightly with the muscle that spoke of a fine tuned physical capability. From there her waist dropped in sharply to the groove of taut muscle that spanned her stomach. Compared to the other Twi'leks he had seen in the tower, she wore quite modest trappings: matching black shorts and midriff top that looked as if they were designed with athletics and not sensuality in mind.

Hawke scanned the hologram from foot to face once, and as pleasing as the whole image was, it was her face that captivated him. It was angular, and beautiful, a perfect complement to her stunning physique. But her eyes stood out to him. They were wide and bewildered and tinged with fear. The expression stood out in sharp contrast to the rest of the image.

It took a few moments, but eventually Hawke realized he wasn't exactly focusing on the key elements of what he had come to accomplish. He silently laughed at himself for being terrible at sitting through lectures and presentations and was quite happy with himself for recording the whole thing.

"If she has been indeed stolen, the fate of her abductors is of no concern. Deal with them however you wish. It is of the utmost importance," Kosh continued. "That she be brought back in a timely manner and is not injured or befouled in any way." He looked pointedly at the hunters. "For the CS-11 strand, nineteen years of labor and research is contained not on her, but within her person."

At that, Hawke was sure he had missed something, but everyone was starting to stir and Kosh was getting down from his podium so the briefing was apparently over.

_Stolen, hah. She's a slave. What reason would she have to NOT try and run away._

Hawke looked up at the image of the girl one last time. He had never taken a job that had him running down slaves. The only time he had tracked a slave was when he was being paid to hunt a thieving slaver. Subsequently, the particular slave involved managed to get away. The whole concept of this job suddenly sat ill with him.

_What does it matter? With eleven billion slaves in this galaxy, what's one more? Besides, with a 500,000 credit bounty out there, she'll be back in less than a week. It may as well be me that collects._

Hawke was just about to make his way to the exit when he saw Carsul approaching him with something in his hand.

"Quite the exciting presentation," Hawke said as Carsul came to stand before him.

Carsul scowled, though it seemed like a comfortable and normal expression for him more than a display of any kind of disapproval.

"I'm certain you were riveted," he replied extending the item in his hand. It seemed to be some sort of data disc. Hawke took it and raised an eyebrow.

"It contains all the specifics you would need to know. The target's height, weight, biometrics if you wish to attempt to scan for her."

"Ahh," Hawke waved his hand dismissively. "Scanning for her will only turn up a few thousand prospects I'd have to run down. I prefer the old fashioned way myself." There was a pause indicating that Carsul wasn't exactly sure what the old fashioned way was.

"I look," Hawke filled in after the brief silence.

"Well best of luck," Carsul concluded then turned to leave.

"Is there anything about what's inside the woman that we are being exposed to?"

Carsul halted mid stride. "Everything that you will be needing to know is on the disc, yes."

"Huh, seems Kosh, or Narrus rather, is poking his fingers into all sorts of new things these days. He had better be careful... oh what's that saying? Reach exceeding your grasp, or something like that?"

Carsul's jaw tightened. "I find it generally wiser not to ask questions."

"That works until you find yourself playing the delivery boy of a walking airborne plague container that kills whoever she breathes on or something."

The statement was a random probe for information, one he didn't think would get much of a reaction, especially from someone as controlled as Carsul. But at the mention of the target carrying the plague the man glanced around and took a step closer to Hawke so he could speak quietly.

"She has lived here in this tower for seventeen years and I have personally interacted with her countless times. If such minimal contact was enough to kill a person we would know all too well of it by now."

"All right, all right captain, cool your engines there. No need to jump to attention and defend the target's honor or anything."

Were Carsul's buttons really this easy? He was nearly blushing and looked quite agitated.

"Just go over the disk. If you have any questions beyond the information there you may contact me, though I cannot promise to be able to answer all of your questions. Again, good luck." He gave a nod and a rigid about face before leaving. He was apparently more invested in this mission than Hawke would have guessed. As head of security, it probably didn't reflect well on him that a slave - _test subject_, Hawke mentally corrected himself - had likely escaped.

"Luck?" Hawke called after him. "She's a runaway, she probably hasn't even made it out of this quarter of the city yet."

Hawke made his way from the viewing room giving a wave to Geneb on the way out. The tower certainly seemed bigger when traveling from the very top floor all the way to the exit. The lift ride went on especially long. But when the lift door opened on the ground floor he saw another familiar face. It was Whyn, the blue twi'lek from the night before.

"Hello Whyn," Hawke said as he was passing. She looked surprised to hear her name and looked up at him. She immediately looked back down but smiled a little when she did.

"Hello," she said softly. For a moment it seemed like she might say something else, but then she just gave him a nod.

Hawke looked back as he reached the exit to watch her disappear around a corner, still wearing her little smile.

_Sometimes it's the little things_, he thought as he stepped back out onto the harsh streets of Nar Shaddaa.

Author's note: All right, so this is my first time (ever!) posting something. If people seem to like it, I'll keep posting. (It's about twelve chapters long so far and only getting longer, so I really hope someone else wants to read this, haha) Comments and feedback encouraged!


	4. Let The Hunt Begin

As eager as Hawke was to go over the details on the data disc, he knew that every moment of the early game was precious. He had to focus on finding her first, and figure out just exactly what he was getting into later.

He made it back to his ship with less interruption than he anticipated. He genuinely expected to be ambushed by the opposition or hired guns meant to slow him down, but as he boarded, an explanation occurred to him: they could likely be watching him, hoping that he would lead them to the target faster than they could find her, and then take her from him by force.

Come to think of it, that was probably the exact thing Kosh was trying to avoid by having all the bounty hunters stay under one roof. He got the bitter rivals to kill each other off ahead of time, making the actual hunt for the Twi'lek less risky, at least for the target. Perhaps Kosh wasn't as witless as he had assumed.

"Kylsa, are you online?" Hawke asked as the loading ramp closed behind him. The lights in the cargo bay flickered to life and the sound of generators sinning up filled the large, empty hold.

"All systems operating nominally, power levels charged and sustained at 94 percent," an automated female voice reported over the coms.

"Warms up the engines, we'll be leaving soon."

"Destination?" Kylsa queried.

"I'll let you know when I figure it out."

Hawke made his way in a few short strides from the cargo hold, through the interior shaft, and into a room he thought of as the staging room. It was where he did most of his research and planning. He had a digitized reference program that he had updated on almost every planet he had ever visited, giving him a vast source of information on species, planets, histories, and cultures, as well as links to several on-world data storage cells. He even had a tap into a Omwati research facility on Coruscant that kept him up to speed on some pretty cutting edge tidbits. In this case, he needed very little of his fancy gadgetry to find what he needed.

Hunting people was no harder than hunting anything else: To be successful, you had to understand what you were hunting. In this case, Hawke might not have known this Twi'lek personally, but knowing where she came from and how she lived was really enough. Mix that with a little human nature, which really wasn't much different than Twi'lek nature, and she was a rather predictable prey.

"She would go to a nearby spaceport for time's sake. The threat of her being recognized and captured would seem more imminent having just fled." The first thing he pulled up were the departure schedules for every spacedock within ten miles of the Vaelin Tower.

"If she knew she was important to Kosh, she would try to flee offworld," he said. The holotable displayed a grid of the nearby systems with all the departure times from the last few days up until tomorrow. Hawke was quite grateful to the Internal Shaddarian Import Agency for keeping such thorough and up-to-date records. "We'll assume she did know, or more likely, just found out, as something spurred her to run now."

Hawke eyed the systems displayed, sorting them in his mind into different probabilities.

"Narrus has influence in these three systems and might as well own these two planets." Hawke swiped away at the hologram and the flight information for those systems vanished.

"Let's assume she knows that much and narrow it down some."

More labels fell off the hologram with the wave of his hand.

"The question of means, though...that is a tough one." Hawke rubbed the stubble on his face and took noted that he needed to shave as he pondered. "How does a penniless slave make ship fare?"

The question had a few obvious immoral answers, but you would have to be a fool on Nar Shadaah to help a creditless Twi'lek off world. This culture didn't look very kindly on those who would aid fugitive slaves, and made examples of enough people that there were likely not many more people willing to risk it.

"She either stowed away, which would mean that it a low budget, independent freightship," he tapped three labels on the screen. Each displayed more information causing Hawle to frown. They were all going to nearby planets, each closely affiliated with Narrus. "Well, it was unlikely anyway."

He stared through the hologram and contemplated her options. Honestly, it was more of a surprise that she hadn't been caught already. Slave escapes were notoriously unsuccessful - they had too few connections, too little street savvy, and nowhere near enough money. Generally the only times bounty hunters got called in were when slaves went missing because they'd been stolen. And yet this girl, who had lived almost her entire life as a lab specimen in a tower, had eluded Kosh's forces and baffled Kosh to the point where he was willing to organize this massive manhunt for her. Which meant...

"...she had help." A grin crept across Hawke's face. He thought back to how the head of security had spoken of her, almost like he was defending her. "Carsul, you sneaky old grunt."

It was a long shot, but Hawke started to bring up the larger offworld vessels. A passenger vessel wouldn't do, they were too formal and kept records and had ID checks. A freightliner was more likely, but it would have to be a crew willing to be a bit shady, and one that was either ignorant of the risks or just plain not planning on ever coming back here. Of course there was always the possibility that someone was just plain stupid, but that was hard to plan for.

Hawke was just about to start over where a ship name seemed to jump out to him: The Glimmer. He almost laughed to himself as he looked at their arrival and departure details. They apparently came, dropped three unspecified containers designated only as "personal effects" on the registry, and then departed with a load of workers and industrial and agricultural equipment to the planet Tol Amn.

The Glimmer was a freightliner first and foremost, but Hawke had seen her crew on Denon once running like hell to get her unloaded before the authorities had time to inspect her. As he recalled, the Glimmer made it away, but with a few blaster burns to show for it.

Tol Amn was an ideal planet, small, unimportant, and generally uninformed. Not to mention it was as near to the Inner Rim as you could get and still be in Hutt Space, and The Glimmer's crew were just shady enough to take on an extra Twi'lek runaway for a quick payout. Hawke scanned over the rest of the departure details.

"Seems she has about a three day head start. I think we can make up most of that in travel time."

Hawke made his way to the bridge, feeling rather smug.

"Kylsa, get us under way to Tol Amn."

He sat down at the helm, though he was more than happy to let the automated pilot do the flying. Still, he liked to watch the scenery go by as they departed. He settled in and divided his attention between the view and the information he was scanning on the data disk that Carsul had given him. The hunting part didn't seem like it was going to be much of a challenge, so naturally he began to grow more wary about the other aspects of his task.

All he knew was that she was carrying something in her blood that they wanted back. That alone had a multitude of possibilities. It could be anything from cloned immuno-toughening organisms to full out planet killing blood born pathogens. He doubted the information provided would be too specific on the point. Either way, he had a while before they would catch up to her, plenty of time for some light reading.

The Smuggler's moon steadily became smaller as Hawke's ship moved further from it and finally out of it's orbit. The sound of the hyperspace drive started winding up, and suddenly, they only view beyond the cockpit was a spacial haze. Hawke looked up to admire the swirl of colors and light for a moment before he dragged his eyes back down to the data disc.

"Hmm," Hawke mused out loud to his AI.

"A wealth of information here, and most of it is pretty useless." He leaned back in his chair and the screen expanded for him to read at the greater distance.

"Height: five foot six, weight: 123lbs, skin color: light purple/lavender..." he rattled off one fact after the next, half committing them to memory and half conversing with the only companion he had, an AI system.

"Eye color: violet, diet, activities she excels in, color garb she prefers... wait, languages: none. How do you have "none" for a language? Even slaves and test subjects have to communicate, right?"

"The need for a slave, of any variety, to communicate at some point over the course of their lifespan seems most probable." Kylsa responded.

"Exactly."

Hawke looked over the material a second time before putting it away. Nothing included seem particularly threatening except the part where it described the contact with any of the Twi'lek's bodily fluids as "ill advised" and "producing unpredictable results". It all seemed rather cut and dry. Catch girl, bring her back before other bounty hunters figure out where she is, and don't let her spit on anyone.

He was more or less satisfied with this plan. Sure, he felt like he didn't have all the answers, but sometimes the easy solution for that nagging feeling was to just not ask the questions.

Then it dawned on him, what the the report was missing. He had her respiratory and cardiac ratings at different stress levels, the different forms of dance she was instructed in, her daily cardiac exercise routines, he even knew that Garsian Cream covered Jyir Fruit was her favorite food. (Though he had no idea what a Jyir fruit even looked like.) All of this, and the report didn't even include the girl's name.


	5. Two Steps Forward, One Stumble Back

Tol Amn was a rather dreary place. It was constantly cloudy and generally rained several times a day making "wet" the theme for anything and everything that occupied the planet.

Hawke's ship touched down lightly, even with the bad visibility and downpour that was taking place. For being as underdeveloped as it was, Tol Amn still had a relatively large population scattered across the planet, and quite a few ship docks to boot. They were spread out, as most of the surrounding areas were agricultural, but a decent number of cities had sprung up around trade and export.

Jaelmoore was one such city, a large center for on world trading and off world exporting, and home to the governing bodies of the planet. Most of the offworld traffic that came through Tol Amn used Jaelmoore as a dock, if for no other reason than it had a respectable amount of tech and resource that the common freightliner would need for anything related to maintaining a ship. After all, no one in their right mind would want to touch down at a place where you might not even be able to buy fuel. If the Glimmer was dropping off cargo on Tol Amn, it was a good bet that Jaelmoore would be their destination.

Hawke had only taken a few steps out on to the flight deck when he adopted Tol Amn's theme and was soaked to the core. He ran to the nearby service station where the overhang blocked the rain and was greeted by a man behind a wire mesh screen.

"Hello, and welcome to Jaelmoore. Standard holding fee to dock your ship then pay by the day."

"That's fine," Hawke replied as he entered in his credit key. He always liked stopping at smaller planets like this. You could dock a ship and live for a month on what it would cost you to live for a day on some of the overgrown city planets.

"I won't be staying long, I don't imagine." Hawke nodded thanks to the man and began to walk away when he turned back as if he had an afterthought.

"Oh, hey. You wouldn't know if the Glimmer has arrived yet would you? I'm supposed to be swapping some cargo with them before I head back out."

The man behind the screen slid forward with a "hmm" and pulled up some kind of chart in front of him.

"Looks like they just beat you here, arrived this morning. They took a spot at C deck where the larger freighters dock." He leaned forward and pointed to his right. "Elevator up one floor, then take the north corridor. You should start seeing signs for it after a few hundred yards."

"Thanks, have a good one," Hawke said, and made his way to the elevator. It seemed he wasn't far off the trail, that is, if it was even the right trail. As he grew closer he began having doubts. What were the chances it would actually be this easy?

Hawke took the elevator and made his way over to C deck, which didn't really look all that different than where he had docked, a bit more spacious perhaps. It was mostly a series of platforms connected by steel grated catwalks, with just a few concrete storage areas here and there. Traversing it made Hawke notice the increased gravity on the planet, of course it didn't help that off the catwalk he could look several stories down to other landing platforms and more crisscross catwalks. He had never thought of himself as afraid of heights, but this would take anyone a bit to get used to entirely. At least the rain had stopped.

The Glimmer was easy to spot from the catwalk just below him. C deck looked to have eight or ten landing platforms, but really, how many Perlemian heavy freight cruisers were you going to find on an unimportant little planet like this one?

The catwalk came to a set of grated stairs that he followed down to the landing platform. He watched the ship and its surroundings intently as he descended. No one made themselves seen. The ship was obviously powered down, and from the smell in the air, had recently been refueled. He walked one cautious, yet hopefully inconspicuous lap around the Glimmer until he came to the tail hatch. He tried the controls but they were locked. He thought about slicing it, but decided to wait until he had ruled out all other options.

Besides the stairway from where he had come, there were only two other ways off the platform. One was a large freight elevator right behind the tail hatch, and the other was a door on the far end of the platform. The elevator, no doubt, lead to the ground level. If they had gone that way they had most likely gone out into the city and would be difficult to track down. But with the size crew a ship like the Glimmer would require, someone was bound to be left behind with the ship.

Hawke decided to check the door first, but he had only crossed about half the distance to it when the door opened and a man's back was revealed. A lucky break really. Hawke didn't have to decide whether to shoot the man, wave at him, or run for his life. Instead he just slowed to a quiet walk and let the man back toward him.

The man was greasy and oil stained from hair to britches, or at least from what Hawke could see. He backpedaled wheeling a dolly cart stacked high with metal crates, most likely supplies or maintenance materials. Hawke began to get the impression that the man was some kind of mechanic.

"Quite a ship you have here, and far from home judging by it's make."

Hawke didn't speak up till the man was a mere six or eight feet from him causing him to start and whirl around to face him. His eyes darted from Hawke's face to the blaster on his hip to the second blaster on his opposite thigh.

"Great Grendel! You about gave me a heart attack," he said as he reached back to steady his shifting load. "What can I do for you, stranger?"

"I'm not sure if you are aware, but your ship apparently picked up some illegal merchandise on Nar Shaddaa. I was simply dispatched to retrieve it."

The man's eyes widened and they flicked quickly back down to Hawke's hands, perhaps to assure himself that they weren't any closer to one of his weapons.

"I assure you, I know nothing of any illegal merchandise. Heck I don't even really know what half the stuff we delivered was. I just do repair work and upkeep. I don't know anything."

"Calm down buddy," Hawke said reassuringly. "I'm not here to start a ruckus if I can help it. Where's the rest of the crew?"

The mechanic hesitated for a moment, but then must have decided he could divulge more without turning traitor.

"I couldn't say exactly. They headed down to the city. Going about their own business while we have down time ya know?"

And there was an easy angle to work.

"So they left you alone with the ship huh?"

The mechanic's face fell.

"Listen I'll help you any way that I can. I'm not trying to be difficult. I don't know much but if you tell me what you are looking for I could at least tell you if I've seen anything like it."

Hawke unfolded his arms and let a hand rest on the blaster grip in his hip holster. The man watched his hand nervously.

"You took on a passenger." Hawke paused until the man looked back up at him.

"Ye, yes. We took on several. Ugh... there was a family of four I think and... a Rhodian... ugh.

"A Twi'lek girl. About this tall." Hawke raised his hand to about his neck. The man's eye's widened in what seemed like excitement. "Light purple skin," Hawke continued but was interrupted before he could add more.

"Yes! Yes, I'm sure we did. She was the last one on. I remember her because she kept pulling a grey shawl of some sort over her face. But she was definitely purple and was about that tall I believe."

The man's face looked quite pleased and relieved, though he waited expectantly, most likely to be told he could go about his business.

"And did you see where she went?"

The mechanic's look of relief fell away as he apparently was lacking of any more usefulness.

"I... I didn't see. I wasn't with the passengers."

Hawke drummed his fingers on the holster and thought he actually heard the poor man swallow.

"Alright. Thanks for the help. Now let me help you."

Hawke took his hand off his holster and took a few steps toward the mechanic. The man shied away as far as he could but his back was against the dolley that he had been wheeling so he couldn't go far.

"There are at least half a dozen bounty hunters looking for this girl and while I don't feel the need to be covering my tracks as of yet. If anyone else comes asking, and finds out you know something, they will most likely kill all of you to keep you from telling anyone else who might be following behind them. Understand?"

The mechanic nodded vigorously.

"Good." Hawke turned and began his way toward the elevator. "I suggest you get ahold of your buddies and get the hell off this planet before anyone else tracks you here," he called over his shoulder as he left.

She was here. She had to be. The trail was as warm as it could get. He called the elevator from the terminal and its hydraulics whirled to life. He would have to start searching the city. Whoever set this up seemed to have it all planned out pretty well. She might have a contact or a meeting somewhere. If she were a normal runaway, he would just expect her to randomly jump from one ship to the next. But she was something special, worth a good deal of money to someone. And that someone was going to a lot of trouble to make her disappear. She would have to have a destination, somewhere safe. Or someone safe. A contact of some kind.

"Oh, come on." The elevator was designed to move a massive amount of weight, but wasn't designed to do it quickly.

"You lose something fella?" A light voice called down to him.

Hawke whipped his head up to see a kid leaning against the catwalk rail at the top of the stairs where he had originally come from. It was quite a relief to let go of his blaster. So far luck was with him and he hadn't needed to use it, and he didn't feel that this kid was going to disrupt that trend.

After a moment he realised the kid had asked him a question.

"No, I don't think so."

"Oh come on now. You were just asking about her. About this tall, purple skin, violet blue eyes."

That got Hawke's attention. He hadn't mentioned anything about the girl's eye color.

"And you saw her?" Hawke instantly realised that was a stupid question. After taking another look at the kid he took better note of his apparel. He was dressed in a pretty raggedy ensemble, the most notable of his trappings being the scarf wrapped around his head. Not like a bandana or anything decorative, but around his eyes. The kid seemed to be trying to portray that he was blind. But if that were the case, how would he know her eyes were violet-blue? Obviously the kid was trying to play him.

"Well I can't so honestly say I saw her now can I?" he said with a wide grin. But with the right motivation, I believe I could help you find your way."

The elevator finally arrived, but it's doors opened and closed again without it's intended passanger. Hawke made his way up the stairs to stand next to the boy. He might have been ten or twelve, but he seemed pretty street smart for such an age.

"And what's to say I don't just beat what I need to know out of you kid?"

"Well, for one beaten information is like anything else beaten. It's damaged, not worth much. And secondly, you seem like a reasonable man. I have a reasonable amount of information, and I only want a reasonable amount of creds. Seems like we should be able to make some kind of exchange that makes us both reasonably happy, yes?"

The kid was smug, cocky, and sarcastic. Hawke instantly took a liking to him. He handed him a credit chip, fifty credits, not a bad sum for a day's work.

"Hmm," the kid almost sighed as he turned the chip over in his hand and made it disappear into a inner pocket.

"The ship you see there got here a bit more than four hours ago. Your Twi'lek friend disembarked with several other people and seemed a little lost at first, looking around a lot. She was looking for something or someone but obviously didn't find it. She eventually came up these very stairs and headed off that away."

It was thin, but if the kid was telling the truth, that meant she was still at the docking tower, or at least didn't leave it on this side. Certainly thin, but as good a place to start as any.

"Thanks kid," Hawke said as he reached down and tousled his hair some. The kid didn't look very amused. Hawke began down the direction the boy had pointed when he stopped with an afterthought.

"Oh, and for your own good, don't..."

"I know, I know. Don't tell the other half dozen bounty hunters cuz they will kill me to cover up the trail, I heard you tell the other fella."

Hawke was a little surprised. The stairs were a good fifty yards from where he was talking to the mechanic. How could he have heard?

"You know," the boy continued. "I bet if I could remember anything else about where the girl went it would be a big help to you." A grin went creeping across half the kid's face.

Hawke glared at him, but pulled out another fifty and began to walk back to hand it to him when he stopped and flashed his own grin. Instead of handing it to him, he flicked it end over end to him him. The boy reached out and snached the chip in his hand without turning his head to look at it. Hawke almost laughed. The boy was a Miraluka.

The boy's smile only widened.

"She went down that way, like I said. She was checking the different landing pads. Still must not have found what she was looking for though, cuz she went up another flight, checked all those, then went up another."

She was looking for a ship! A specific one. Hawke turned to pursue but stopped as an afterthought.

"Is there anything else I should know?"

"Hmm..." the kid mumbled to himself and smiled. Then he began scratching his head with the credit chip that had previously disappeared into a pocket.

Hawke couldn't even really be annoyed. The kid was working him pretty well. He was about to toss him another fifty when the kid stopped him.

"Ah, ah, ah... I feel this information may be a bit more... weighty."

Hawke growled slightly under his breath.

"Even I run out of patience kid."

"I'll do my best to be quick and thorough."

Hawke flipped him a hundred this time which seemed to disappear even faster than the others.

"She looked like she was getting desperate after a while and stopped to ask a few different people for directions or something. They didn't seem to understand her and she would eventually run off each time after trying. This got the attention of the security after a while, and as you can imagine. Running from the security personnel is a sure way to get yourself chased."

Hawke's eyes widened. If she was in custody this was going to get a good deal more complicated.

"Did they catch her?"

"I couldn't say, and that's not the money talking. She gave them a good run from what I saw, and they have extra security personnel on E deck covering the exits and lifts. I think I would start there if I were you."

Hawke left at a trot making his way across the catwalks to the next set of steel grated steps going up. He didn't want to take the time waiting on the absurdly slow lift, though for the distance he had to run it might have been quicker. He climbed the steps three at a time, which finally left him on D deck, and was about to climb the next set to E deck when he looked up to see the security gaurds that the Miraluka boy had mentioned.

There were three of them, though Hawke obviously had the element of surprise. But he didn't have much other option than to kill them all in cold blood to get past them. It was one of those moral impasses that he struggled with. If a person was fool enough to get into this kind of business then, in Hawke's mind, they owned the risks and the repercussions. He'd made peace with that concept a long time ago, but he hated when people who weren't even involved got hurt.

Just as he was weighing his options, he noticed something moving in the distance. It was moving at an impressive speed and as it got closer, Hawke found himself stunned in sheer disbelief. A grey cloak whipped out behind the the Twi'lek girl, who was running like a mynok out of a space slug's maw, while a good way behind her were her pursuers, a band of security personnel like the ones waiting at the top of the stairs.

Hawke watched the scene, stunned, not able to think of a course of action. During his hesitation, however, the guards above him heard her coming and left the stairway to trap her on the catwalk. The girl pulled up short upon seeing them and whipped her head back and forth, sizing up one group, then the other. Three men from one direction, four from the other. She had nowhere to go.

It was at that moment that she proved herself to be no ordinary slave girl. She barely hesitated before swinging herself over the rail and lowering herself down from the grating. She dangled there for a moment, gauging the distance. Then began to swing herself back and forth to gain momentum.

Hawke, however, didn't wait a single moment before breaking into a run down the catwalk. Was she crazy? It was at least two stories between the catwalks, and if she missed, she would find nothing but air until she hit something even further down.

Everyone sped up to try and reach her. The security guards were just doing their job, they didn't want her to fall to her death, and from Hawke's angle of vision he could see her swing from 'going to break her legs on the catwalk' angle to 'going to be paste on the planet surface' angle. They all ran as hard as they could, but the security force couldn't reach her before she let go. She swung herself from the grating and tucked her knees under her arms rolling backwards as she fell. By the time she neared the catwalk, her feet were directly under her again but Hawke couldn't get to her before she hit the catwalk with a thud.

He knew she had aimed herself right by the time she had descended half way down, but the relief he felt was smothered as he heard her cry out between gritted teeth upon landing.

She landed on her feet, which was unbelievably impressive in itself, but her momentum (and the added gravity couldn't have helped) drove her to her knees, which then dug her skin deeply into the steel grating. She staggered to get up but couldn't even rise completely without collapsing with a yelp. She groaned and dragged herself forward a few feet before she realized Hawke was approaching her.

At the sound of his boots on the grating she looked up and caught his eyes. Hawke was close enough to see the fear and the pain in her face before she tried to claw herself up again to run away from him. To her credit, she did make it to her feet and take a few steps while holding on to the railing before Hawke reached her. He grabbed ahold of her shoulder and she tried to swing an arm around to hit him. However, she couldn't without letting go of the rail causing her to buckle at the knees again.

Hawke caught the arm meant to strike him in his hand and used it to hold her up and help her support her weight. She looked at him with surprise and as it seemed she wouldn't try to hit him again, Hawke quickly scanned the catwalks for the quickest way out of this skitter chase.

The guards were stunned for a moment after the girl had leapt, but now they were making their way to the stairs on either side. They would block them in again on this catwalk just like they had done to the girl on the catwalk above.

"Plee-ahs...halp." A soft voice tore his eyes away from the catwalks above to the tear streaked face in front of him. The poor girl was frightened out of her mind, and obviously in a lot of pain. Hawke chastised himself for forgetting the big picture. She was also worth a lot of money, but only if he could get her out of here.

Hawke took another look at the advancing security personnel above and then a quick glance below. They were on D deck, which was right above C deck, which was where he left the elevator if it hadn't been called off somewhere else yet. Here was hoping.

Hawke pulled open the case of tension cable on his belt. He wasn't entirely sure if it was long enough to get all the way down, but it would be close. He tied it off on the grating at his feet and swung himself under the rail to the outside.

"Hurry, hold on to me."

The girl gave him a blank look.

"C'mon, you just have to hang on to me, the cable will hold us both. I towed a speeder with this once."

The Twi'lek just shook her head slightly and looked confused.

"You jumped last time, what's the deal? All you have to do is hang on!"

Hawke motioned with his hands to come and her eyes lit up. She swung herself under the railing gingerly, obviously trying not to bend her legs and stood next to him, waiting expectantly.

"Can you understand me?" He finally asked after waiting for her to grab ahold of him again.

She looked at him again, obviously thinking hard, trying to decipher what he wanted her to do.

"For the love of - you seriously don't speak Basic?"

He reached down, grabbed her hand and put it firmly on his shoulder, then slid closer to her and pulled her other arm around his upper chest. She must have understood because she held on tight once she was attached. He dropped down to the grating and let himself dangle off the side, then released his grip and let them fall to the grate below.

The retraction cable let them fall with far more grace as it was only designed to let out at a few inches per second. The cable turned out to be a few feet too short, however, which wasn't a big deal for Hawke. He was just going to cut it and absorb the weight of the fall himself. But when the Twi'lek realised they were stuck, she let go of him and fell the last few feet. She wasn't about to land on her feet again and further injure her knees. She landed squarely on her butt and left arm.

Hawke cut the cable and landed on his feet next to her.

"That wasn't very smart. C'mon, let's hurry."

The girl was struggling to move, let alone stand, and her every effort came through gritted teeth, but she was certainly determined.

Hawke bent down and scooped her up as she was struggling to stand. They would make better time with him doing the running for both of them. He cradled her under her legs and her lower back and made as much of a run as he could for where he had been talking earlier to the Miraluka boy. It wasn't far off and the guards were two stairways behind them.

When he got to the landing platform, it seemed to be just as he had left it. The boy was gone, and the back hatch of the Glimmer was lowered, but other than that nothing stood out that would hinder him.

He went down the short flight of stairs to the landing pad and ran for the elevator.

"Please be there, please be there."

He mashed the button for down and the hydraulics whirled into life, but nothing happened. Then, as if it were waiting for dramatic timing, the doors shuttered and parted. Hawke nearly leapt aboard and mashed the down button repeatedly. It was just one level down, but the elevator opened closer to his flight deck than the stairs would have brought him. And hopefully the security personnel wouldn't know which level he was headed to initially anyway.

The lift doors opened and there was his ship, waiting for him.

"Kylsa, fire it up," he said into the com on his wrist. "And lower aft ramp."

The ship roared to life and the aft ramp dropped. All he had to do was make it across the deck.

"Stop! Hold it right there."

It was the security guard that checked him in. There must have been a general alert or something of the sort. The guard had a blaster trained on him. If he didn't actually mean business, he at least wanted to look like it.

Hawke hoped for the best, but knew he didn't have another option.

"Kylsa, suppressive warning fire, all targets."

Hawke could only imagine the man's face when the top, belly, and port cannons turned on him and each fired a burst.

"Kylsa, cease fire," he called out after the one volley. Those cannons were designed to destroy other ships or heavily armored vehicles. The man was at least running for his life, if not deaf and dumb at the moment. It only took a few more strides for Hawke to make it up the ramp and into the belly of the ship.

"Kylsa, get us out of here."

The ramp closed and the ship was off before Hawke had time to even set the Twi'lek girl down, which made navigating the corridors a bit difficult. He finally made it to the cockpit and buckled her into a seat before doing the same.

"Is anything following us?"

"Only one ship is airborne within atmospheric scanning range. A class one light gunship."

Hawke turned his chair to the terminal to his left where it's location was shown, it was near enough he could see it out the window. But it was docking, not pursuing. Hawke watched it for a moment and then began to laugh softly to himself before he leaned back into his seat. The vessel was the Valorscar, Geneb Marhuun's ship.


	6. Just Ahead of the Past

Hawke looked over the automated pilot's plotted ascent trajectory and a few other system specs before turning to check on his new passenger. He was somewhat caught off guard to find her staring intently at him. So that's what that feels like, he thought, amused at the irony.

"You all right?" he asked. There was a short silence. "You fell pretty far, are you okay?" She turned her head slightly and shifted in her seat.

"Mor'am faer lembara?" she said, looking up at him hopefully. When that failed to get a response out of him, she tried again with a different and equally incomprehensible phrase. Hawke considered himself decently well-versed in enough languages to at least recognize what was being spoken, but this was like nothing he had ever come across in his travels. It sounded as if it had borrowed from a couple dozen languages and thrown their vocabularies into a blender - but with a little more finesse than Bocce. The Twi'lek launched into a longer speech, this time with animated hand gestures, looking increasingly frustrated as their language barrier was made apparent. Finally she gave up and let out a heavy sigh.

"I… I can't understand you." She really couldn't speak Basic. How could anyone live this long without being exposed to the universal language? Hawke decided to switch tactics. He got her to respond before with gestures, perhaps they could at least communicate what was absolutely necessary.

He got out of his chair and took to a knee in front of her. She tensed and drew away slightly as he came closer, so he held up his hands so she could see he wasn't going to do anything abrupt. He tapped the knee he wasn't kneeling on, then pointed to her. She looked down at where her knees were covered by the draping gray cloak, then back up at him before pulling the fabric back to just above her knees.

Hawke watched as the fabric moved up. He half expected her ankles to be a wreck as well, but if they were injured, he couldn't tell through the tall boots that rose a good deal of the way up her shins. Her knees were as he suspected, both already bruised and swollen, and the grating had dug into her skin making rather gruesome gashes.

He looked up at her after his assessment and found her eyes still locked on him. She didn't seem as concerned with her injuries as she was with watching him. Not that it was particularly surprising, he wasn't sure what he would do in her situation either.

"All right, I've got to get something to slow down the swelling," he said as he stood back up and began to make for his med bay. The Twi'lek girl, of course, didn't understand and misinterpreted his resigned tone. The farther away he got, the more she fidgeted, and as the door exiting the cockpit opened, she leaned over the seat's edge and called after him.

"Pleee...plays… halp?"

Hawke stopped and turned to look over his shoulder. Despite her injured legs, she was gripping the chair, about to try to stand up and follow him. She was a pitiful sight and he couldn't even explain to her that he would be right back. He walked back over to where she was seated and knelt once more to be at her eye level. She blinked a few times hurriedly and took a deep breath, as if she had been holding it before.

Hawke held up a finger and her eyes went to it immediately, then he pointed to himself at chest level. "Caesyn."

She only stared blankly at him. He patted his chest instead of pointing and said it again.

"Caesyn."

She looked down at his chest, then back at his face before her eyes narrowed. She then lifted her own finger and pointed to him, then swirled her finger around as if she were circling his image.

"Cay-sin," she said as if she were answering a prompt.

Hawke nodded. Then he pointed to the girl. Her eyes lit up as if she had an epiphany. She performed the same motion and followed with patting herself on the chest.

"Tynia'kina," she said and a glimmer of a smile formed on her lips.

At least she seemed to understand they were exchanging names, but her accent was thick and her name itself seemed hard to pronounce.

"Tiny-ah...Keenah?" he said. She made a face and repeated it more slowly. Hawke made another stab at it. "Tiny-aki-nah?"

Apparently his second attempt was much better, because she nodded so vigorously her entire body practically bobbed up and down. It was very little progress, but the grin on her face made Hawke feel as if she considered it a great victory. At least now they knew each other's names, and there was another word he knew she was familiar with as well.

"Caesyn… help… Tiny-ahki-nah," he said slowly while watching her eyes for any sign of understanding.

Her smile faded, and she closed her eyes slowly for just a moment before looking back up at him. Her eyes were damp, and her lips pursed together as if she wasn't sure if she should smile or cry, but he got the impression that it was more due to relief rather than sorrow. She finally nodded and gave him a wobbly smile and at that, Hawke rose and made for the med bay again.

The ship had an upper and lower deck which made it seem roomy, but was in truth, only twenty two meters long, so it took him all of a few minutes to get what he needed and return to the cockpit, but with the way the Twi'lek's face lit up upon his return, someone might have thought he had been gone for hours.

She scooted to the edge of the chair again when she saw him and said "Caesyn!" with a grin.

He realized suddenly that he had given her his real name. He hadn't used it in a long time, how odd that it slipped out now. He pushed the thought away.

Hawke knelt down again in front of her and started opening packets and laying out everything. She watched him with interest though she didn't look overly concerned anymore. He was just about to put some bacta gel on her cuts when he thought better of it.

He looked up at her and pointed to the container. "Help."

She nodded, again seemingly unconcerned. This seemed easier than he had expected. All she knew was his name, and she acted as if he already had her trust. She was either awfully sheltered, or figured she had no other real options.

He put the gel on her knees and watched as her eyes squinted shut and her brow furrowed. Bacta gel did wonders for killing off contaminants and stopping bleeding, but it certainly burned in an open wound.

Tynia'kina gripped the arms of her seat tightly until the burning subsided, at which time, Hawke cracked two zero pads and wrapped one around each of her knees. Her whole body stiffened at their touch. Not a surprising reaction, fabric lined gel pads maintained a constant low temperature once activated.

Her injuries didn't seem all that major considering how she had gotten them. She would most likely be nursing them for the next several months, but beyond a bit of limping and maybe some slight scarring, there at least wouldn't be any long term damage.

Hawke stood after he was satisfied with his task. Again her eyes followed him closely. Her face was calmer, though strained from the pain and cold, but still showed traces of worry.

She must have so many questions, and it's pointless to ask any of them. Hawke thought as he searched his mind for a way to reassure her. But then, what was the point? Any reassurance was, at its core, just a lie. Here she was, an escaped slave, not so different than the ones he had pitied at the Spire, and he was taking her right back to where she had fled from.

She's a test subject, he reminded himself. Not a slave. She's obviously healthy and taken care of. What would she even do if I let her go, besides get caught again? She'd wind up in a ditch somewhere. At least she was calm, and surprisingly trusting, which meant she was less likely to try and escape. He glanced at her swollen, bandaged knees. Well, not that she really could, anyway.

On an impulse, he reached down and patted her hand. She gave a startled little twitch at the touch and pulled her arms closer to her body. She looked down with a curious expression as she folded her hands together in her lap and began to slightly rub the place on her hand that he had touched. Hawke might have thought he touched another area that she had hurt if he hadn't caught her smiling slightly. He sighed inwardly as he went to sit back down at the helm.

The ship reached orbit and began to lazily circle the planet so Hawke leaned over the helm and altered their course to reach the hyperspace bearing. The trip back wouldn't be more than half a typical day. A quick and easy pay day.

If I don't turn her over, someone else will, and more than likely her trip won't be near as pleasant. No one is just going to forget about five hundred thousand credits. Best just to get this over with.

With the course laid in, he turned back to Tynia'kina and extended his hand palm up to her. She hesitated for a moment, most likely unsure of what he had in mind. Hawke then pointed to himself, then to her, then pointed to the doorway. The Twi'lek placed her hand in his and scooted to the edge of the chair.

Hawke quickly realized she was going to need more help than that and took her other arm in his opposite hand as she struggled to stand. A smothered cry escaped her clenched teeth, but she stood nonetheless. She didn't move at first, just steadied herself on her aching legs.

Hawke moved to her side and put one arm around her back, the other holding her hand over his shoulder. He nodded to her, and she nodded back before they took a small step, and Hawke went from supporting some of her weight to nearly all of it.

The Twi'lek girl cried out as her weight shifted and her whole body shuddered.

Come on now, that was just one step.

"All right, this obviously isn't going to work."

The girl's look of pain and confusion was quickly replaced with shock as Hawke steadied her and then instead of supporting her with his arm around her back, scooped her up and slid his other arm underneath her legs.

She gasped suddenly, partly from being startled and partly because the movement bent her knees again. But then the concern fell from her face as the pain subsided. Obviously having the weight removed from her injuries agreed with her.

Here they were again, the same way he had carried her on to the ship. She hesitantly wrapped her arms around his shoulders to help support some of her own weight as he dipped low to fit her through the doorway. He carried her down the corridor and to one of the few rooms meant to be quarters. He had to hit the door panel with his elbow since he couldn't very well tell her to press the button, but he did so without jostling his passenger too badly, and stooped slightly to fit through the doorway without bonking her lekku on the doorframe. He had never known any Twi'leks personally, but he had been told that that part of their bodies was quite sensitive.

If I can get the translator to figure out what language you are speaking, maybe I can ask you why you put such a tender part of your body in such an inconvenient place, he mused to himself.

Hawke set her down on the bed that was more like a permanent cot and gently lowered her feet to the floor. He began to rise, but she hadn't let go of his neck causing him to look up at her. She smiled wide, not the glimmers of a smile like he had seen before, but full and beautiful.

"What?" was all Hawke could think to say even though he knew she couldn't understand him. He returned the smile out of reflex and instantly felt off balance somehow, like he had missed something.

What is she ginning at?

Her hands slid away from his shoulders and he stood to stretch his back, but then knelt again to remove the zero packs from her knees making her shiver involuntarily at the temperature change. The bruising was darkening, which was expected, but at least the swelling didn't seem to be any packs would have to go back on soon, but they couldn't stay on. He set the packs on one of the tables next to the bed and unfolded the blanket that was at the foot and draped it over her.

He gestured for her to lay back, and when she did, carefully lifted her legs to lay them along the bed.

She winched slightly at the motion, but once she was situated, she seemed to relax. After the mad dash out of Tol Amn, it wasn't surprising that laying down would seem like a good idea to her.

He took another blanket from underneath the bed and rolled it up, then carefully lifted her legs by her bootstraps and tucked it under them to keep them elevated. She watched very intently every time her legs were moved, but seemed to grasp what he was trying to accomplish.

Once he had her looking comfortable he turned to leave and patted her on the shoulder reassuringly as he passed, but he didn't get far before she caught his attention as she tried to rise without moving her legs. He looked down curiously and she beamed up at him.

"Caesyn… he-alp Tynia'kina," she said before lowering herself back down.

How can she do that? It's like her whole face glows.

Hawke began to feel awkward as he realized he was staring, so he smiled back and left her to rest. The door slid closed behind him as he exited and he stood outside for a moment.

She is so young, and despite all of this, so full of hope. Hawke shook his head and sighed heavily as he looked over to the door control.

Hope can hurt so badly in the end.

And with that final thought, he engaged the lock on the Twi'lek girl's cell.


	7. One Man's Mark is Another Man's Bounty

Hawke returned to the cockpit to check on their progress. They were still a few minutes away from where they would make their jump so Hawke decided to pull up a translator program for his datapad. Ideally, the user would select which language was being spoken and then which language it should translate it to, but it did have an application for identifying unknown languages. (He noted with some amusement that it was, apparently, primarily intended for adoption agencies) Which meant he was going to have to find a way to get her to sit there and talk to this program for a while. He wasn't quite sure yet how to explain that one to her in hand gestures. The program took some time loading the different languages and all the while, Hawke grew more uneasy.

_Perhaps it would be easier just not to speak to her,_ he mused. _Do I really want to know why she ran or what I am returning her to?_

When it came down to it, those things weren't even really questions. Of course he knew why she ran. Well-looked after or not, she was still a slave, so who could blame her for running. And as for what she was being returned to, Hawke pictured the looks on the women's faces in his room at the Vaelin Spire. It was a look he had become intimately familiar with a long time ago when he was still just some automated systems programmer on a backwater planet. At least this girl has it better than some.

His misgivings weren't enough to suppress his curiosity. Sad or painful, he still wanted to talk to her. Besides, he was interested to know anything more about why she was worth so much money. In this business, it never hurt to be informed.

He transferred the program's functions to a handheld data pad and was on his way back to Tynia'kina's cell when a loud crash echoed through the hull and the ship lurched suddenly to one side. An alarm started going off as the ship lurched a second, then a third time.

Hawke stumbled but hurried back to the cockpit where a modified freighter was pulled up on a display.

"Kylsa, WHAT is shooting at us?" he shouted as he leapt over the back of the seat before taking it. He grabbed the flight yoke and threw his weight against it, sending the ship into a sharp dive.

"The ships hull matches that of a class two Sakiyan freighter," Kylsa said, calm as ever.

_Thaaat would be Tarjas. He found me awfully quick._

"However, the engines, weapons, and energy signatures do not match any standard designs for the craft. The ship seems to have undergone several upgrades."

Hawke tried to brace himself as the ship lurched again.

"Yeah, I'd say that's no ordinary cargo ship."

Hawke brought up the weapons panel and set the top, aft, and belly guns to auto track and fire.

"Let's see what this thing is made of."

The cannons fired their barrage against the pursuing ship. The top and aft cannons making rapid, almost mechanical sounding pulses and the belly cannon charging and releasing with a deep hum that made the whole ship vibrate.

Hawke watched the sensors as he tried to maneuver the ship away from his pursuer's field of fire, all the while trying to get a good angle for the belly gun. It was, after all, designed to destroy heavily armored targets.

Tarjas seemed to know this, however, as he avoided the turret's targeting quite deftly, choosing to endure the barrage from the smaller cannons instead of taking a single hit from the belly gun.

With each hit to Hawke's ship, a new light flared up warning him of compromised systems or weakening shields. And all the while, it didn't seem like his returning fire was having near the same effect. Tarjas just had too much ship.

"How in the worlds did he get that behemoth so close before we detected him?" Hawke yelled over the alarms as if it really mattered at this point. Kylsa made some kind of response, but Hawke was too busy trying to keep from being obliterated to notice.

Hawke had just come out of a roll when Tol' Amn came back in to view. The view was upside down from where he had seen it last but it gave him an idea. He shut off the weapons systems and diverted their power to the engine then prioritized his rear deflector shield before making a mad dash for the planet.

He pulled away from the Sakiyan at first, placing himself out of weapons range for a time, but it wasn't long before the ship began to shake once more with the impact of cannon fire. The hits were few and grazing at first as targeting at this speed and distance would prove difficult for anyone, but as Tarjas' ship closed the distance, even the prioritized rear shielding began to fail.

Hawke began to have second thoughts about his plan as he felt the hull temperature of the ship rise. They were passing through the atmosphere of the planet once more, not something a pilot ever wanted to do without shielding and his was wearing thin. But at least Tarjas stopped firing. He probably realized that if he disabled Hawke's ship now, then they would just crash to the planetside, and while Tarjas would certainly not mourn for Hawke, he would be out a hefty bounty.

Hawke's ship made it into the planet's atmosphere only slightly charred and sped forward full throttle through yet another rain storm on Tol' Amn.

Tarjas' freighter tried to make pursuit, but it wasn't designed for extended flights through atmosphere. Its bulk and lack of aerodynamics forced it to slip farther and farther behind as Hawke's ship disappeared into the distance. The Broadbelly hull was originally designed to do planetside drops so it handled the atmospheric travel with as much ease as it did space travel.

Still, Hawke didn't want to take any chances. He resumed his straight course until well after his sensors could no longer pick up Tarjas' ship before ascending back into orbit where another lightspeed jump could be plotted. This time however, he just took the hyperspace bearing that was closest to him regardless of where it was taking him. There would be no way for Tarjas to track him with such a choice. Hawke had to laugh at the name when the destination for the jump came up on his display. Grid Coordinates R-11: Runaway Prince System.

* * *

Hawke's ship came out of lightspeed after just a short while as the hyperdrive seemed to decide it wasn't going to go any farther. They hadn't traveled far, but it had been a random jump so there wasn't much of a chance that Tarjas could track them down. As it was, space was quiet. The only sounds he heard were the various alarms ringing out, complaining of overheating this and ruptured that. The ship would need a good deal of repair work, but that was only a minor detail now that it seemed they wouldn't be destroyed entirely.

Hawke followed the sounds of a leak as he walked through the various rooms. It was most likely just a hole in the pressurized environmental control ducting, but it was making an awful noise, so it was getting fixed first.

He tried to wrap his hands as he went. In all the excitement, he couldn't even remember when he had cut them. The cuts in the joints of his fingers weren't going to kill him, or even keep him from using his hands, but they were deep enough to leave a trail of blood droplets wherever he walked. And each time he went to grab something or turn a knob, the cuts separated painfully and began to bleed worse. He tied them up tightly with a rag, not exactly standard first aid, but it would do until he had time to mend them properly.

The leak was quite obvious, and at least in a spot that was easy to reach. A power distributer had overloaded when the shields took to much of a beating and simply exploded, taking a chunk of the ducting with it. The rupture was small enough, though, that a coupling bracket covered it up entirely. When he re-engaged the seal, he felt the air shudder, as if it were relieved to get back to normal. Pressure systems were delicate things after all.

He continued his ship check now that the hissing sound and at least one of the alarms had shut off. The quarters were just across the hall, so he figured he would check in on his prisoner next. Make sure she hadn't gotten too terribly jostled about.

He came to the makeshift holding cell and reached down to punch in the code to open the door. He noticed straight away that something was odd and quickly realized that there was no power running to the panel. He tried to force the door, but like most, no power meant the lock mechanism stayed engaged so it didn't budge.

"Kylsa, why is the power shut off to the aft quarters?"

"Fluctuations in the hyperdrive containment field have caused the power relays in the aft portion of the ship to become unstable. Shutdown protocol was initiated to prevent further damage."

"Great, of everything that could have wrecked, it had to be the hyperdrive."

"The hyperdrive is ranked fourth on the priority systems, behind hull integrity, life support..."

"I know, I know, what do we need to get the power back up?"

"A manual check of the relays will be required to assure that none of them are volatile before resuming the power feed."

Hawked groaned slightly as he turned to go about checking the grid for the aft portion of the ship. It just required a quick visual check and the determination was obvious. If a relay box had its switches in the shut off position, it was good; if it was charred, melted, or only remained as a large hole in the wall...it wasn't.

He went through each of the relays he could get to and related the list of good and bad relays to Kylsa. Some of the ship's power would have to remain down, including the hyperdrive. But the power at least came back to the aft quarters where there were two more relays he needed to check. They were backup relays, but at the moment, it seemed like a good time for backups.

The door that he had previously had no luck opening slid open at the receipt of the code, only to let out a billow of heavy black smoke and the smell of burnt plastic and silicoids. Hawke coughed reflexively after a startled gasp. The lights tried to flicker to life, but the dim hue they created through the soot that covered them helped very little.

"Tynia'kina!" Hawke called out through the haze. There was no flickering light of a fire, but it was obvious that there had been one, or at least close enough to one to melt the power relay.

"Answer me, are you alright?" No response came, so he covered his nose and mouth as best he could with his shirt and trudged into the smoke.

The room was small so he covered it all in a few strides, but within a few seconds his vision was blurred with stinging tears and he could barely keep his eyes open. He dragged his feet on the floor and ran his hands along the walls until his shin hit the frame of the bed pallet attached to the wall. Not only was she not on the bed, the padded surface was covered in debris, some imbedded rather forcibly. His stomach sank into his boots.

There was one last place to look. He bent down and groped wildly under the pallet and almost immediately came into contact with soft, warm skin. He felt his heart climb back down out of his throat. He wouldn't have said that an exploding power relay could wholly incinerate a person, but he wouldn't have said it could do this much damage either.

He dropped to his knees and found a hold on an arm and a leg and hauled her out from under the bed and out into the ship's hull. He laid her down and closed the door, still fumbling blindly as he tried to blink the smoke filled tears from his eyes. He tore the shirt from his face and took a ragged deep breath that left him coughing, but at least rewarded him with comparatively fresh air. The smoke had poured out into this part of the ship, so Hawke picked the girl back up and made his way for the lower level, for the infirmary.

The infirmary was only big enough for a table, a cot, and some storage compartments, but it had everything a bounty hunter might need. Frankly Hawke was just relieved to have some decent light and clean air for the moment. He laid the Twi'lek girl down on the table and finally got a good look at her as his vision cleared. The garment she had been wearing was in ruins, her skin was darkened with soot from head to toe, and she was riddled with small burns and cuts. He couldn't see immediately how severe her wounds were, but he had little time to worry about such superficial things. The first concern was obvious: the girl wasn't breathing.

There was no telling how long ago the power relay had blown. It could have been ten, twenty minutes. It could have been an hour ago if Hawke had been willing to be honest with himself, but he wasn't ready to admit that yet.

He leaned over the table and exhaled a breath in the girl's mouth, her chest rose and fell by no force of its own. He checked for her pulse, there was none. He bore down on her chest forcibly again and again, all the while thinking of the time that had transpired. He had fixed a coupling before checking on her, she might die because he thought about his ship before he had a thought about who was on it.

He breathed into her mouth once more, before lunging over to a container and ripping through it. He needed an oxygen mask for her, but he couldn't remember where he kept them. He broke off his search long enough to breath into her mouth once more and was just about to tear into another container when the sound of coughing and gagging filled the infirmary. Hawke slid to a stop so sharply that he almost fell as he leapt back over to the bedside.

The Twi'lek girl gasped and gagged, wracked by a fit of coughing.

"It's ok," Hawke tried to reassure her. "You'll be alright now, just breathe." Hawke helped her roll over onto her side on the table as she seemed to be struggling to turn herself.

She seemed to get in a fuller breath with every attempt, and as soon as she managed to take a full breath without a cough, she looked up at him with red rimmed eyes.

"Plee-ahs," she gasped. "Halp."

It was always the same phrase with her. It seemed to be all she knew how to say, and it seemed as if she was constantly finding herself in a position to need it. This time, it was his fault.

"I'm going to help you, you'll be all right," Hawke tried to reassure her.

The Twi'lek's face showed no signs of understanding, only conveyed her pain as she flinched with the own coughing spasms.

"Plee-ahs, halp." She repeated it as if she hadn't heard him respond the first time and as her voice grew stronger, her groans and whimpers began to replace the coughing.

Hawke realized she could still be severely wounded. Just because her heart and lungs were working didn't mean she was okay. He quickly remembered where the oxygen mask was now that he wasn't panicking and while the girl was not very keen on letting him put something over her face, when the gust of cool air hit her mouth and nose her eyes almost rolled back in her head with relief. Hawke wondered bleakly if perhaps her lungs were burnt and fervently hoped this wasn't the case, as he had no way to treat them. As if the poor girl hadn't endured enough in her life.

Hawke didn't really know how to go about this next part. He had to get her cleaned off and make sure nothing else was seriously injured. She might end up hating him for it, but it had to be done.

He opened up a pack of a handy substance called Kilz. It was for the greater part saline, but it was also part bacta, part antiseptic, and caused a rather quick numbing sensation. He poured out a healthy amount onto a handful of gauze and started smearing off the soot. She flinched whenever a cut was revealed, but she neither opened her eyes nor tried to fight him.

After a few times rinsing the gauze out or replacing it, Hawke began to grow irritated at how long it was taking and opened several more packages. He resorted to pouring the substance on her and sponging away anything stubborn, carefully removing the charred and blood soaked cloth that was stuck to her skin.

He lifted what was left of the garment that was covering her chest and the girl's eyes flicked open weakly. She looked down at him and while she said nothing, Hawke imagined her eyes said the one thing he could recognize from her voice. "Please, help."

Hawke knew she couldn't really understand him, so he resorted to old tactics.

"Caesyn," he said, pointing to himself. "Help"

Whether she understood he was helping, he had to clean her up and make sure she was okay, but if a little effort could prevent him from scaring the girl further... it was certainly worth a try.

He poured the contents of another container over her chest and wiped away the black soot off her lavender skin. He tried to be quick and businesslike so that she would see he was really trying to help and not take advantage of her in her weakened state. He liked to think that he gained her trust at least a little, because as he soaked up the last of the soot, the girl closed her eyes again and her body seemed to relax.

The floor became awash with blackened liquid as Hawke continued to clean the girl to the soft sounds of her rhythmic assisted breathing, carefully uncovering small burns and cuts. In a strange way, it was almost peaceful, at least for him. But it was soon violently disturbed when she cried out suddenly.

Hawke considered himself pretty steady, after all, he had seen and survived a lot. But her yelp and instinctive recoil made him jump inside his skin. She didn't try to flee, just weakly put her hands over her side where it pained her and looked up at him.

Hawke had just pulled off a piece of (what he assumed was) fabric from that spot, so he assumed she must have a bad burn there. He took her hands from the spot and squeezed them slightly in his as he guided them back down. He folded her hands together and laid them on her chest and motioned for her to stay still.

She breathed heavily and watched him with wide eyes as he moved back down to her side to take another look at the wound. He poured a healthy amount of the Kilz there to try and soften the fabric, dissolve what was holding it on, or if nothing else, just numb the area more thoroughly. He was just about to try and pull off another piece but he hesitated. He looked up and found her to be still staring at him, wide eyed and afraid.

"Caesyn, help," he said slowly. He was fairly certain she got his meaning. She closed her eyes and turned her head back to center, almost as if she were bracing herself.

Hawke knelt by the table and began to remove the cloth. The girl whimpered a little from time to time and clenched the muscles on her sides and legs trying to remain still, but all in all, the fabric came off easy enough.

There was no way around removing the filthy thing, but had Hawke known the severity of the damage underneath the cloth, he may have prepared a little better before removing it. The cloth was part of a conglomeration of fabric, debris, soot, and thickened blood that had, at this point, kept her from bleeding with any seriousness. But as it was dissolved and removed, the Twi'lek's blood began to seep out onto the table.

Hawke worked hurriedly to wash away everything and get the wound ready to patch, but it seemed the girl felt his sense of urgency and looked down to see what was wrong with her. When she saw the amount of blood on the table she began to cry quietly. It was an eerie sound - not the shocked, frightened sobs of someone with an alarming injury, but a choked, almost resigned weeping. It unnerved Hawke more than if she had just started bawling.

If it were anyone else, he could have explained what he was doing, and tell her why she was going to be okay, that it looked bad, but he could patch her up, that he'd seen and survived worse in his time as a bounty hunter. But he couldn't tell her anything, even as her expression pleaded with him for reassurance. This language barrier was infuriating.

Then he saw exactly what he was expecting. She was burned, but this was a cut first and foremost, and with the debris cleared away, he could plainly make out the edge of something buried within the wound. He was going to have to hurt her to get it out.

He reached up and took her little hands in one of his. It startled her at first and she recoiled a little. But he simply squeezed them gently and she seemed to understand. She squeezed his back.

Hawke took his hand back and braced her side with it then gripped the end of the object with a pair of clamps. Then he pulled, slowly and steadily, to the sound of the girl's strangled cries. Thankfully it only took a moment, as the object was half the size Hawke was envisioning. The imagination could be a cruel thing.

If she hadn't had such a good amount of abdominal and oblique muscle, this little thing could have caused some serious organ damage.

He held the bloody shard up to show her. And her panting and whimpering became somewhat tinged with laughter, in that funny way one can laugh and cry with relief all at once. She shut her eyes again as her breathing slowed and the fear and tension seemed to leave her face. She almost looked peaceful. After a time, Hawke wondered if she was still awake.

Even with all the soot smears, she was very lovely.

Hawke finished cleaning the rest of her but hesitated when it came to areas he didn't feel proper exposing. He tapped her until her eyes fluttered open, pointed to the dirty scraps of cloth clinging to her chest and between her legs, then pantomimed removing them and cleaning her.

She shrugged as much as she could and made a face like he'd either asked a stupid question or she had no idea what he was getting at. Hawke sighed, averted his eyes, and worked as quickly as possible to see it done, though it seemed as if it were more awkward for him than it was for her. During the whole process, she simply turned her head to the side to nestle against one of her lekku as a pillow while she drifted off again. He then dried her off which roused her somewhat, just enough for her eyes to flicked open, recognize him, then lazily close back.

He saw to it that her side was patched with an epidermal adhesive, though he felt somewhat bad about it. That method of mending lacerations without infection or any type of negative after effects had an amazing track record for success. The one downside to it was that it tended to leave pretty excessive scarring. It was certainly for the best, but the wound was right above her hip bone on her right side. With what the slaves are generally made to wear, it was bound to show.

Hawke scoffed at the notion that it mattered.

_What? Because her worth would be lessened as a slave? Am I really starting to think of the slaves as just objects too? Or is she just 500,000 credits?_

He thought for a moment, then laughed a little at himself. No, it wasn't because she was a slave. It wasn't because her appearance was her worth. It was because she was beautiful, and young, and spirited. And he wished for her to keep all those things. Which made it all that much more difficult to return her to a life of slavery.

Hawke walked over to the small sink in the corner to wash the girl's blood from his hands, reminding himself all the while that if he didn't return her, someone else would. The effect would be the same and then he would just be out a pay day. He kept telling himself that, but in truth he was getting tired of reminding himself.

He scrubbed the filth from his hands rigorously, then flinched for doing so. He had forgotten, during the chaos that ended in saving the Twi'lek, that much of the blood on his hands was his own.


	8. Trust, Faith, and a Lack of Options

The room was frigid, making the sweat on the small of her bare back seem ice cold. She panted slightly and reminded herself to control her breathing while she waited for the next square to light up.

The entire room was white walled and brightly lit, all except for the floor, which was a dull grey with a checkered pattern on it. Everything was still, for now.

Then, suddenly, there was a soft "beep" noise and one of the squares in the checkered pattern light up yellow.

She took off at a sprint and slid to a halt on top of the tile, dragging her hand across the floor's surface. No sooner did she touch the square than another square lit up all the way on the other side of the room. She pivoted and dashed in its direction, performing the same maneuver as before. Again, as her hand touched the lit square, another produced itself in as much of an inconvenient location as possible.

This took place over and over as she darted back and forth for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, there was a series of beeps, and a door at the far end of the chamber opened.

"Excellent work Tynia, you beat your last week's time by almost an entire second." A man stepped through the doorway, and while his voice was kind and familiar, she could see nothing of his face as it was covered with some kind of breathing mask.

Everyone who ever interacted with her wore something similar, along with skin tight suits that didn't expose any of their flesh. It had always been this way, for as long as she could remember.

"Does that mean…?" Tynia'kina asked hopefully.

The man chuckled softly.

"It does indeed."

She squealed with joy and leapt into the air with a little twirl.

The man laughed again at her sudden burst of energy.

"You earned it kid. Come on, go get cleaned up and then I'll take you up."

Tynia'kina left the chamber at a run, totally forgetting that she had been running for hours. The few people she passed hugged the walls as she sped by, she wasn't sure if they were people she knew or not, after all, she only knew them by their voices, but she waved all the same just in case.

She hung a sharp left as the doors to the shower room opened and she barely broke stride as she wriggled her way out of her clothes.

She stood, awaiting the water to come from the spout above her head. It was motion activated, but was always a little slow for her taste. She tapped her hands on her hips and rocked back and forth on her heels.

It would only take a moment, but she was impatient and rightly so. The rest of her day was going to be wonderful. Her two favorite things back to back, and lasting all the way till she would be put away for bed.

She loved the shower, the cool water washing away the heat and sweat of her daily exercise regimen, then the warm water melting away her aches and woes. She looked forward to it every day. But today, she would get to have even more to look forward to. She would get to go spend time in the sky nook.

She didn't know what the place was really called, but that was how she remembered it. It was a place off to one side of the tower she lived under, where the ceiling was glass and you could see the sky. She had been told it was an old turbolift tube that wasn't used anymore, but that meant very little to her and didn't diminish how magical the place was. From there she could watch the sky speeders whizzing back and forth and her friend Carsul even set up some sort of tube she could look through that let her see for miles. So she would sit up there, and watch people, and try to guess what they were doing, what they were saying. She tried to imagine what life was like outside.

Finally the motion detector picked her up and water spilled from the spigot above her

My, it's certainly cold today.

Tynia'kina opened her eyes with a start and drew a ragged breath. She tried to sit up, but only managed to prop herself up on one arm. She was shivering, and she quickly realized she was also naked and on a very cold and wet table.

It only took her a moment to piece what had happened back together. She must have fallen asleep, or passed out. Was she dreaming before? Where was Caesyn?

As if in response to her question, Caesyn appeared in the doorway holding that container of stuff he had put on her knees earlier. He must have left it in the other room where he first tended her.

His eyes widened upon seeing her and he rushed over abandoning the little container on a shelf, all the while saying something that she couldn't understand in the least. He put his hands on her shoulders and seemed to be applying pressure. She eventually understood that he was trying to lay her back down.

Now the table seemed even colder as her skin met it again. But he didn't seem to realized her plight. Maybe his species didn't get nearly as cold? He did have some sort of head fur...

"Bara," she said hopefully, but he just looked at her curiously. She folded her arms over her chest and rubbed her shoulders with her hands.

"Bara," she said again and shivered with some exaggeration.

His eyes lit up and he practically dove for a nearby cabinet, which turned out not to be the one he was looking for, as he opened a few more before grabbing a handful of things from one and slamming it back. She wasn't sure what all of the things in his arms were, but she could recognize a warm looking blanket when she saw one.

He unrolled the blanket and draped it over her until only her head and lekku poked out from under it. Then he produced another one of those pads that he had put on her before which she didn't understand. Was he going to chill her knees again? Couldn't she just be warm for a little bit?

She decided he probably knew what was best and if she needed it to recover she would have to just endure as he activated it and slid it under the blanket. But then, she was pleasantly surprised to feel an opposite effect. The little pack was getting warmer this time instead of colder. He slid the soft pad under her thighs and pulled the blanket back down.

Tynia'kina felt her eyes roll back in her head. She was still in a good deal of pain, but after being in pain and freezing, the warmth felt wonderful.

He laughed softly so she opened her eyes to look at him. But neither of them could say anything helpful so he just patted her leg through the blanket. She smiled back as best she could. She was so tired and aching, but she so wished she could thank him for saving her. More importantly, she wished she could warn him. Tell him that people were chasing her and that there would be more of them.

Carsul had told her that the outside world was hard and that she would be chased and hunted and no one would be there to help her if she lost her way. If he had been right, then those men at the dock would have caught her for sure.

But then, there was Caesyn, coming out of nowhere to help a girl he didn't even know and against all the odds. Someone who wasn't even his own species. And now, because of her, his ship was a wreck and he was going to be chased to all corners of the galaxy. She wondered if he knew how much danger he was putting himself in to help her.

She watched her rescuer retrieve the container from the other side of the room and come back to stand at her side. He pointed to the container and then to herself. This time she knew what was coming. She assumed this was some kind of medicine like what they would put on her when she skinned her elbows or that time she fell off a platform and cut her head. And it certainly stopped her bleeding when he had used it on her knees.

She couldn't understand anything this man said, but she felt like she knew his heart. Everything he was doing he was doing to help her. She just hoped that he would stay with her long enough to see Carsul again so that he could see that not everyone in the outside world was as bad as he thought.


	9. The Longer, Long Way Around

Tynia'kina awoke to the sound of the ship's engines firing back up. The rise in power stuttered a few times, but became constant, and she got the feeling that they must be moving again.

She sat up, slowly. She must have nodded back off again because the room wasn't at all how she remembered. Everything was clean and orderly, and all of her wounds, not just the severe one on her side, had been tended.

She swung her legs off the side of the table so she could hop down and was sharply reminded of her injuries. She looked down at her side instinctively, but as the blanket slid back, all she could see was a white bandage wrapped around her waist. She didn't even remember having the wound dressed.

_I wonder how long I was out._

She stood up slowly and carefully, putting her bare feet on the cold floor.

_Where did my boots get off to?_ She didn't remember taking them off either. But then she remembered what happened to the rest of her clothing. She pulled the blanket tightly around herself. She trusted Caesyn, for as little as she really knew him, but she still felt nervous and vulnerable.

She walked gingerly around the examination table and over to the door and was just about to open it when she saw her boots sitting on a seat next to it. With them, was some kind of bundle, that upon inspection, looked to be a garment of a sort. She picked one up and let it unroll from her grip. They looked like they would be too small, but when she pulled on the fabric, it stretched quite easily, then returned to its original shape.

She sat down on the seat and began to pull the pants over her legs. She expected it to sting against all of her burns and cuts, but the material was soft and gave slack so easily that it caused very little friction. Once she had them on, she could barely feel them. She buttoned the front and laced them closed on the sides where they separated from upper thigh to hip, then slid the shirt over her head. It was just a simple tank top that hugged tightly around the bust for support. It also had some sort of symbol on its center imprinted on the fabric that she didn't recognize.

She pulled her boots on last, connected all the clasps up the side, and stood before the door to leave. She had it in her mind to find Caesyn, but as much as she wanted to see him, she was reminded that she was just going to be confronted by the same problem again. She couldn't thank him, couldn't ask him who he was or why he had helped her. She took a deep breath to ease her frustration and decided that she would just go smile at him again. It was a little thing, but it made him smile, and she liked that. His was one of the first real smiles she had ever seen up close and she had decided they were quite nice. Carsul smiled at her when they were alone sometimes, but at best, all she could see was where his eyes crinkled under his mask. More often than not, she had to rely on hearing it in his voice.

She pushed the little button on the door, assuming that was what controlled it, and was rewarded by it sliding open. She took a few steps at her natural stride and was quickly reminded of her knee injuries. She braced herself against a wall as she stumbled slightly, which made her contract the muscles around her stomach to balance her. Then the wound on her side began to hurt as well.

_A fine mess I've become,_ she thought morosely. _And all this trouble for a smile? Really?_

She continued down the short corridor by holding on to a railing that ran along its wall. She found that as long as she went slowly and didn't extend her legs very far, she could get around without too much discomfort. She didn't have to go too far anyway - by the time she rounded the first corner she had found him, though not in a state she had expected.

From where she stood, all she could see was the man's legs and part of his lower back as his torso was dangling through a floor panel. She watched him for a moment as he seemed to be writhing around down there with something. He only stopped to reach up and grab some kind of tool from the floor, then back under he went.

Whatever was down there, it seemed to be putting up a bit of a fight as he began to make a strained kind of sound. The muscles on his back stood out each time he groaned, until there was a sharp "clang" noise and the man shouted something loud and abrupt.

"Caesyn?" she said softly, not entirely sure if she should be disturbing him.

He froze for just a moment before sliding quickly out of the hole. His face was bright red at first but regained its color once he was right side up. He stood up and walked over to her saying something that she couldn't comprehend.

_His species must be very social. He keeps talking to me even though he knows I can't understand him._

He seemed to be guiding her away from the wall, so she followed him slowly. They only went a few feet over to a seat made to fit along the chamber's corner. He sat her down and took a step back.

Tynia'kina watched his eyes travel from her feet to her head. At first she thought he was inspecting her physical state as he had been doctoring her for so long now. But there was some kind of pain buried inside his expression and his mind seemed to go somewhere else, even though he smiled when he made eye contact with her. For whatever reason, she got the impression that he was smiling for her sake, not because he felt like smiling. Expressions were harder to understand than she'd anticipated - she'd hoped that once she could fully see people's faces, it would become so much easier to

_Now what do I do? Something is wrong and he can't tell me what. This is infuriating._

But wherever his mind was, it seemed to return in just a few moments. He held up his hand, like he wanted her to wait or stay. Being that moving caused quite a bit of discomfort, staying seemed like a great idea.

He walked off for just a moment and returned with a rectangle that emitted a projection of a flat screen. He tapped at it a few times in different places and said a few things, but all she could do was watch curiously.

While he was focused on the screen, she thought of another word she had heard her keepers use whenever one of them came with food. It came to mind as soon as her stomach began to churn. When was the last time she had eaten?

"Mineengo?" she said hoping she had pronounced it right.

He looked up at her and his eyes narrowed.

"Mineengo," she said again and made a biting motion at her hand as if she were eating. She wasn't sure if she was saying eat, or food, or something only tenuously related. But she had heard it often enough to know that it had something to do with the subject.

Caesyn looked excited all of a sudden and seemed to be thinking rather hard.

"Ugh, gwedahd perun nargona Rodese?" he asked, looking at her expectantly.

It meant nothing to her so she made the eating motion again and rubbed her stomach.

Caesyn seemed to be disappointed, but he made the "wait" gesture again and walked off.

He wasn't gone long, but it was long enough for her to lean over and see what was on that screen. It had a lot of scribbling that she didn't recognize and then, oddly enough, a large picture of a hand.

_Yet another thing I don't understand._ She leaned back in her seat with a huff._ How does anyone talk to one another out here?_

Caesyn rounded the corner with some kind of grey canister in his hand and sat down next to her. She couldn't identify what the substance inside was, but as soon as she smelled it she knew it was edible.

He handed her the canister, it was warm and the steam from it rose to her face. She leaned into it happily and breathed in the aroma deeply. He then handed her a tool. It looked a lot like a spoon, but had points cut on to its end.

She was just about to try the brown substance in the canister when she stopped and looked up at Caesyn. She had no idea about his customs, or if she needed to share, or if it was even really for her to eat.

But he smiled at her when she looked up and made a scooping motion with his hand, much like what she was doing to symbolize eating. Then he took the tool from her and repositioned it in her hand and pointed to the canister. She couldn't help but laugh a little.

_I must really come across as helpless if he thinks I don't even know how to use a spoon._

She scooped up some of the liquid and raised it to her mouth. She braced herself for it to be some kind of noxious otherworldly food but resigned herself to politely swallowing it even if it tasted horrible.

To her relief, it was actually quite good. It was no banquet surely, but it was warm and savory, and she was so hungry and physically drained. She took a second spoonful eagerly and looked up at him again just as he smiled down at her. He stood up and patted her on the shoulder again before beginning to walk off, but then turned as if he had remembered something.

He sat back down next to her and brought over the little screen he had been poking at earlier. It still had the picture of the hand on it. He pointed to the picture and said a short word, then made a sliding motion on the screen. A picture of a star came up and he said a different word. Then he pointed to her mouth. So she lowered her spoon back to the canister and paused her diligent eating.

_Does he want me to say it?_

Tynia'kina repeated the word as he had said it but he waved his hand and shook his head disapprovingly.

She stared back, confused and slightly disappointed. _I thought I pronounced it right…_

He waved the screen over again and it was a new image, this time of a ship. He pointed to her mouth again and then to the picture.

_What does he want? My word for it?_

"Dael," she finally said after a few prompts.

The little screen made a soft "bleep" noise and he smiled and nodded, then scrolled the screen back to the star again.

She hesitated a moment and thought to give him the word he had just taught her, but decided he wanted her to use her language.

"Fera," she said and looked up to see his reaction. The screen bleeped again and he nodded once more.

Then he took her hand and slid it across the screen to make the image change, but in that instant, she lost her attention for the screen entirely. His hand was warm and firm, and hers seemed so small in it. She suddenly thought of all the times he had touched her since they met, most of them were not especially pleasant circumstances, but no one at the tower ever came in contact with her. She didn't even really know what skin felt like besides her own. But it was over in an instant, and after the screen had changed he released her hand once again.

He seemed to be waiting so she tried to refocus her thoughts on what he was trying to get her to do. It was a picture of a hand so she said "Prella."

The screen beeped and then he made the sliding motion with his hand. He was telling her to change the picture again, though she had the thought that if she played dumb, maybe he would take her hand again. But she didn't want to be difficult, so she slid the screen and continued the process. He seemed satisfied and got up to go back to whatever he was doing in the hole in the floor.

_Is this some kind of game they play? Is he trying to find me something to do? If this is their version of fun, I can't imagine what they do when they are bored._

Tynia'kina went back to focusing more on eating than the little screen, while Caesyn continued to wrestle with things under the floor. Every once in a while he would crawl back out and look at her and if she wasn't listing off the images on the screen, he would point at it.

She began to get the feeling that it was more important than a game of some sort, but it was hard to imagine what it could possibly be for. Quite a few times, the image that popped up on the screen was something she'd never seen before. At first she tried to swipe past them, but the machine startled her by making scolding beeps, so she ended up just trying to describe what the image looked like.

Then, just as she had finished one image and was about to go on to another, the screen made a series of beeps and then went dark. It filled up with swirling lines and columns instead.

Caesyn dragged himself out of the hole again and came to sit back down next to her. He looked rather excited as he took the screen back from her. But then his expression changed to confusion. He looked up at her, and then back down at the screen, then said something that she couldn't understand.

_There he goes again, talking to the walls._

But then, something unexpected happened. The little screen spoke and she understood.

"Who actually learns Lingaticum as a first language?"

Tynia'kina was startled to hear something she understood, especially from his weird little game pad.

"I…" she pointed to the screen as she looked up at Caesyn. He just smiled at her and said something else in his tongue.

"You can understand the holopad right?" the screen said.

She just nodded, still not sure what was going on.

"It's okay, say something."

"Is this... what you are saying in my language?"

The screen then said something she didn't understand at all, but Caesyn smiled after he heard it and nodded.

"Yes, the holopad is translating for us. That's why I had you talking to it, so it could search out your language."

Tynia'kina didn't know what to say. After all this time wishing she could speak to him, now that she could, she couldn't find any words.

"Are you all right? You look like you are going to cry."

Tynia'kina laughed and a tear or two did escape to slide down her cheeks.

"I'm just… really happy."


	10. Time Heals All Wounds

"Well, how do I look?"

Caesyn looked up from the sensor he was tuning to see Kylsa twirl around.

"I thought you were going to try and make a good impression," he said with a laugh.

"What? This doesn't say 'witty, fun, and if you don't keep your paws to yourself, I will break them off'?"

"I guess I can kinda see that."

She was wearing a pair of fitted charcoal black pants that laced from thigh to hip and that same old tank top with the logo of whatever that band was she liked. The only major difference about her appearance was her hair. Usually she just let it fall around her head wherever it decided to go, and with her horns in the way it generally decided to go everywhere. But today it was carefully parted around each one of her little horns and she had put something in it to make it stay where it was supposed to. It was actually quite flattering and it made her seem much more grown up.

"Weren't you wearing that yesterday?" he asked.

"Yes, but I washed it and everything. I even put on nice underwear."

Caesyn waved his hand at her without looking up as if to say, "too much information!" She continued unabated.

"Which actually got me thinking. If I am putting on nice underwear, then a part of my brain is considering the possibility that he might see me in them. Which means I might possibly be considering sleeping with him. Then I realized, that is a rather repulsive idea, which, in turn, made me realize I am only going out with this guy because you encouraged it and I don't want you thinking that I'm going to be a lonely undateable squatter my entire life."

At that, Caesyn looked up and set down the tuner with a "thunk!".

"Hey now, I most *definitely* did not suggest you sleep with the guy. I just thought you should go out and do normal teenager things. You know? Get guys to stumble all over themselves and act foolish to get near you. That kind of thing. You've lived here for three years and I don't think I've ever seen you go out on a date."

Kylsa flipped a piece of her newly styled hair and scoffed. "I'm nineteen, Caesyn, I'm hardly a teenager anymore."

Caesyn just shook his head and smiled. There wasn't much point in arguing that one with the teenager in question. Besides, she would figure it out when she got older.

"Look, if you really don't want to go out with the guy, then don't. But you did get all cleaned up and everything…"

"Yup," she said as she jumped down onto the lower level where Caesyn was working. She slid her arm underneath his and hugged his shoulder.

"You know, I really am good with the way things are now. Better than good, honestly. I know we don't talk much about... certain things, but I just want you to know that I'm happy here. And I have been for some time. Most of my life I wasn't able to say that."

Caesyn was a little taken back. She wasn't usually the kind of person to talk about her feelings or the past. But it felt good to know that he had a part in making her life better.

"So I really don't need to find some guy to complicate things right now. Even if he did happen to look like that guy at the traders' this morning..."

"That guy was a self obsessed jerk."

"Awww, but he was so pretty." She caught him rolling his eyes and stuck her tongue out at him. So much for her seeming all grown up.

"This is why you can't be trusted to find your own dates. Your priorities are all screwed up."

"Hey, you can fake being a hard ass jerk, you can't fake being that good looking."

"Why would anyone fake being a jerk?"

"I dunno, Caesyn, why would you?" she drawled. She squeezed his arm one more time and looked up at him playfully.

"What are you implying exactly?" he asked indignantly.

"Not... a... thing. Come on, I'm as dressed up as I get. Let's go out."

Hawke started awake as the ship shook slightly. The autopilot must have driven them through some debris or something. He hated traveling at sub-light speed, but with his engines in the state they were, he didn't want to risk another incident.

He sat up and stretched his back. He had fallen asleep bent over the table in the room he called the observatory. The holopad laid in the center of the table, and just on the other side, was the Twi'lek girl, asleep in a similar fashion.

They didn't get to talk for very long, both so tired from their respective ordeals that the conversation drifted off once Tynia'kina finished peppering him with questions about where they were and what had happened. She was especially interested in hearing how he had patched her up, since her memory appeared to be a bit shaky around that time. Hawke had filled her in on the details of their pursuit, leaving out a few key points. Namely, the fact that he, too, was a bounty hunter.

Tynia'kina yawned. "Maybe...tomorrow...you can tell me more about yourself?" she had asked hopefully.

"Sure thing, Tynia'kina." Hawke said, fighting the urge to yawn himself.

She laughed softly, "It's Tynia'kina," she corrected him.

"Tynia'kina," he said again, trying to add the proper inflection.

She laughed again and shook her head sleepily, then repeated her name with exaggerated emphasis. He tried again, earning another laugh, but she didn't try to correct him this time. It was a foreign maneuver he was asking of his mouth and he wasn't sure it was up for the task.

"How bout I just call you Tiny?" he asked finally, smiling wide at the notion. He could pronounce that part of her name, at least. Besides, she was head and shoulders shorter than him and dramatically little at her waist, the name only seemed appropriate.

She looked up at him with her eyebrows raised. She didn't seem so sure about the idea.

"It's called a nickname." he explained. "People from many species sometimes give their friends nicknames."

"Neek-nyaame?" she repeated. The translator obviously didn't have a word for that one.

"Yeah, it's usually a shorter name or something from an experience or characteristic…" Her facial expression told him that he wasn't really explaining this very well. "It's something we do to show we are… familiar, or comfortable with one another."

Her mouth stretched open in a yawn before she put her head back on the table.

"I am... comfortable…"

Her head sank lower on into her folded arms while mumbling something about the nature of food in a can and drifted off.

"Well...Tiny it is then," he said with a soft laugh.

After that, Hawke had just sat there for a while and watched her. He thought back to her flipping herself from one catwalk to another with the ease of an acrobat, and then contrasted that with him having to show her how to use a spork. He couldn't help but chuckle, though he muffled it as best he could. He didn't want to wake her.

He picked up the holopad and changed it to handheld mode. All of the ship specs were already being sent to it, so he checked their positioning and arrival time. It was going to take forever to reach Toydaria at this pace. Hopefully he could get the hyperdrive patched up enough to get them at least that far, but at any rate, it was the nearest planet that would have what he needed to make the repairs on his ship and get back under way. Besides, it would be a good stop to throw anyone off his trail.

His eyes drifted back over to watching the Twi'lek sleep. Her face was peaceful. He remembered the first image he had seen of her, the contrast between her flawless physique and her terrified face. Now her body was cut, burnt, bruised and bandaged, but her face was relaxed and lovely.

She smiled while she slept. What would happen to that smile when they arrived back at Nar Shaddaa and she came to stand before the Vaelin Spire once again? Hawke hated to think of it but, then again, what would happen if she were just allowed to run free?

He looked down at his hands where they were each wrapped around the fingers with bandages. Some of them had even bled through once again, making him think that perhaps he should start buying bacta gel in bulk.

There was nothing he could do about it now anyway, hopefully, whatever he may have caught from the girl, it wouldn't be permanent or life threatening. But however he sliced it, he couldn't do anything about his plight until he got the girl back to Nar Shaddaa. Perhaps they'd have some sort of treatment for him if he did indeed contract something - it shouldn't be too hard to negotiate a little extra medical attention from Kosh's people in exchange for the Twi'lek's safe return.

Tiny stirred and let out a noise that almost sounded like a squeak. She grimaced a little as she rolled her head over on the table.

Hawke stood up and stretched again.

That can not be comfortable, he thought as he looked down at the strange position she had adopted for sleeping.

He picked up the holopad, changed it back to translate and slid the frame together to reduce its size so it would fit in his front pocket before he rose from his seat. Then he gently leaned the Twi'lek girl back and began to gather her up in his arms. The less time she spent moving on her own, the better, as far as he was concerned. Perhaps he was being overly careful, but he still couldn't quite shake the memories of the burnt and bloody mess lying on his examination table. Once she was in the air, she awoke with a start, but Hawke held her firmly in place so she couldn't fall.

Her facial expression went from startled back to a sleepy smile in mere moments.

"Are we going somewhere?" she asked as the translator converted her words to Basic.

"You fell asleep," he said, walking back toward the quarters. "I thought you might be better off sleeping in a bed instead of slouched over a table."

"Hmm," was all she replied and then laid her head against his shoulder. She seemed to nuzzle closer to his chest as they went, until he could feel her skin against his neck. By then they had reached what was going to be her room (now that the other one had caught on fire). He set her down on the bed.

"I'll be just across the hall if you need me, all right? Try and get some sleep." With that he stood to rise but, he hadn't made it very far before she called after him.

"Caesyn?"

He stopped and turned around.

"Can you leave the door open? I… I don't want to be locked in." She looked down at the ground as if embarrassed. "They always locked me in."

Maybe it was because he pitied her so for her past, or maybe it was because he felt guilty about locking her up when she first came aboard, or maybe it was just the way she asked, but it hit him like a vibrosword to the ribs. In any case, pity overruled his common sense. He went back and knelt at her bed so that he was at her eye level.

"We'll leave your door open… and mine. See?" He pointed to the door across the hall. "You'll be able to see my room from yours. It'll almost be like we're in the same room."

He'd be able to hear her if she tried to leave the room.

She nodded and smiled at him sheepishly, but Hawke couldn't even begin to think of it as a foolish request. She had more than enough reasons to have strange needs.

How can she even still seem somewhat normal after everything she has been through?

He began to stand once more, but she reached out and grabbed his hand before he completely rose. He knelt back down and looked at her curiously.

"Caesyn?" she said, but then there was a long silence that followed.

"Is there something else, Tiny?"

She seemed to be gathering her thoughts, or her courage.

"Do… do your kind, I mean your species-"

"Humans," Hawke interjected helpfully as there seemed to be a growing silence. The data pad decided not to translate the word, or apparently it was the exact same in Lingaticum.

"Hyuumans," she sounded out thoughtfully, before returning to her odd-sounding language. "Do they touch?"

He looked down at his hand. She was holding it rather tightly, but once she realized that he had taken note of it she quickly withdrew her grasp.

Hawke chuckled a little and reached back out to her with his palm up.

"My species, and most species, touch very often. Kind of for... reassurance I guess."

She looked down at his hand and then back up at his eyes. She seemed nervous for some reason, but didn't hesitate long to place her hand in his. He closed his fingers over her little hand and folded his thumb around it with a gentle squeeze.

"Your species touches quite often too. It comes naturally."

He wasn't sure she was listening at this point. She was just staring at her hand in his, but he could feel her fingers moving slightly as if they were trying to feel with every little inch.

"Everyone I've ever known has lived on the other side of a full body suit and a mask. No one really…" she paused, apparently distracted by his fingers again. "I don't think I've ever touched someone."

Hawke had no idea what to say. "I'm sorry" didn't seem like it'd quite cut it. Offers to let her touch him as often as she wanted would only come across as wildly inappropriate. They sat silently for a moment before Tiny gave a little laugh and abruptly thrust his hand back in his lap.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to...I should let you get some sleep." She pulled the blankets back from where they were tucked and seemed to pay him no more mind. Hawke took his cue and stood up, flicking the lights off as he left the room. But he hated leaving on such a sad note. He had hardly stepped halfway across the hall before he turned and poked his head back through the doorway.

"Tiny Ah Keena?" he said softly and her head turned up on her pillow. She blinked through the light that came in through the hall until he moved to block it with his shadow. "Sleep well, and we'll talk some more when you wake up, okay?"

She nodded and snuggled her face deeper into the pillow.

Hawke couldn't begin to imagine the kind of damage growing up like she had could do to a person. No physical contact over an entire life? He may have not had the nicest childhood, but how many times did his mother hold his hand while they walked or carry him before he could even remember? Weren't these things essential for a child's brain to even develop correctly?

If someone had told him that there was a person who had grown up like she had, he would have just assumed that the person must have grown into some kind of hateful animal. But that wasn't at all what he had seen. Even before they could talk to one another he could tell that she was warm hearted and gentle, and as he watched her now, she seemed content just to have a fluffy pillow and a warm blanket on his ship.

He was being too indulgent with her, allowing her freedoms no prisoner should have, but he couldn't think of her like a normal bounty. She was too naive, too lost in the universe, more like a wayward child than an escaped fugitive.

Hawke shook his head and made back for his room.

_I'm going to think myself into a bout of depression at this rate. I need some sleep._

He went about cleaning himself up as briefly as possible as his bed was calling out to him. He had just finished properly cleaning and re-bandaging his hands at his bathroom sink when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He seemed to look older every time he saw himself, but this time, his reflection had more to say than the usual "you're looking rough". It spoke of the fears that he was putting out of his mind.

They were afraid to touch her. They wore full coverage body suits and breathing masks to even be in a room with her.

He looked down at his hands, freshly bandaged, but envisioned the blood and grime that covered them after he had pulled that piece of metal from the girl's side.

His reflection spoke a truth that he was trying to avoid.

"That girl is carrying something, Hawke...and so are you."


	11. Run As You May

"Please no, not again," she sobbed as the men escorted her to the examination room. She didn't struggle - she didn't dare struggle. But she wasn't above begging.

"Please, it hasn't been that long. You don't need to do all of this again yet, do you?"

The men in suits closed the manacles around her wrists and ankles once they placed her in the chair. The first time they had done this, they explained that it was so she didn't hurt herself if she jerked reflexively. After the third or fourth time, it stopped feeling like this was for her own good.

The first of the pricks came, then the second, then the third. They numbed the different regions of her body that they would be taking their samples from. The first draw was blood. That one wasn't so bad; she gave a blood sample weekly and couldn't have cared less about that part of the ordeal. But it just got worse from there.

They went up between her ribs and into the lowest portion of her lung to take a small piece of tissue to test. The skin there was numb so it didn't hurt going in, but the feeling of something foreign inside her made her want to writhe. Then, there was the fluid they removed from her back. She didn't quite understand why there was fluid in her spine, but its removal had never stopped being frightening to her. But the worst of it was when they took the sample from inside her bone. They couldn't very well numb a bone.

_Why do they need to do this? What's wrong with me?_

One of the men tightened a strap down just below her knee to further immobilize her leg, then said something to the other man in a language she couldn't understand.

"Please," she said as she began to break into tears. "I don't want to… I'm scared. Please, DON'T…."

Tiny sat up abruptly and smothered the yelp that threatened to escape her lips. Her heart was racing and she was panting as if she had been performing calisthenics. The dull ache in her side was replaced by sharp throbbing as the burst of adrenaline wore off.

_Another bad dream,_ she realized. Her keepers at the tower had always given her something at night to help her sleep deeply; she hadn't remembered a dream in years. Now, she had only been away a few days and she had already had two of them. _Is this going to keep happening?_

She thought back to the last one, about Carsul and the the shower at the tower. That one wasn't so bad. Maybe more of them would be like that. Of course she never remembered them being anything but horrible when she was younger, and she wasn't entirely sure that passing out was the same as sleeping.

She wiped her eyes and laid back down. Her pillow was soaked. She turned it over with some irritation. Carsul had said that she was going to have to be strong. Crying herself to sleep was surely not what he had in mind. She lay there, angry, hurting, and disappointed with herself, until it became obvious she wasn't going to get back to sleep.

She decided to get up and move around some and try again later. She pulled the blanket around herself and stood up from the bed. The flooring was cold, just like her room at the tower, but there was one difference - perhaps it would have been a little thing to anyone else, but to Tiny it meant so much. A few feet in front of her, the door stood open letting in a soft glow from the hallway.

She stepped out of her room and smiled with some amusement. When she couldn't sleep in her room before, all she could do was pace the floor, hugging the wall. Around and around in the perfectly square empty room, with nowhere to go until someone came to fetch her in the morning. Alone throughout the night.

She took a few more steps to stand before Caesyn's room and found that the flooring here was surprisingly warmer and seemed to vibrate softly. The entire hallway felt warmer really and it made her think of Caesyn dangling beneath the floor. She briefly wondered what was down there, but her attention was more focused on the glow that was coming from Caesyn's room.

She poked her head through the entryway, but made sure to remain in the hall. The glow partially lit up Caesyn, laying in his bed with one arm under his pillow and the other draped across his eyes. It was coming from the little screen that had been doing all the translating between them. Just seeing the little thing made her feel happier.

"We'll talk some more when you wake up, all right?" he had said, but she assumed he didn't mean just yet.

Tiny watched him sleep for a time, thinking of all the things she could ask him in the morning. There was so much she wanted to know, about the galaxy and about him. Where did he come from, what was his home like, were all of his people kind like him, and what was that brown stuff on his head?

The way he slept wasn't exactly the most dignified, but he certainly looked peaceful. She envied that. Maybe she would just try and go back to sleep. Caesyn rolled his head to the side and his arm fell away.

Did he just smirk?

Tiny couldn't help but smile. He didn't even have to do anything to make her feel like everything was going to be all right.

She decided she would go back to bed and even if she did have more bad dreams, Caesyn was just in the other room, through the open doors.

Hawke woke up to the ship shaking slightly. It startled him at first but it only lasted a moment before it returned to its normal smooth course.

The clock on the wall startled him even more.

_How did I sleep for twelve hours?_

His first thought was of the Twi'lek girl. What had she been up to while he overslept?

He grabbed the holopad off the bedside table, then pulled another shirt on and made for her room, but he came up short after just a few strides. There she was, asleep in the hall right outside his door in a bundle of sheets, blankets, and pillows that seemed to form something more akin to a nest than a bed.

He might have been concerned if not for the languid way she stretched and let out a smile that turned into a yawn. From where Hawke was standing, she hadn't opened her eyes, but she must have peered through her long eyelashes enough to see him standing over her.

"Caesyn," she said and blinked some of the sleepiness from her eyes.

Hawke supposed he shouldn't be surprised that either of them had slept so late. He had to recover from the effects of the stims he had taken at Vaelin Spire, and she had to recover from being chased, injured, then blown up. But what was she doing in the hall?

He pulled the holopad out of his pocket and set it back to translating.

"Tiny, what...what are you doing in the hall? Did you not like the bed?"

"The bed was fine," she said wearing a hopeful expression." Hawke was suddenly afraid that she might think she had done something wrong. "It was just... I couldn't see around the doorway and the floor here is so warm it just seemed like a good idea. It makes my body feel better."

"The floor is warm?" Hawke asked as he suddenly forgot the oddities of a Twi'lek girl sleeping on the floor outside his room. He knelt down and put his hand underneath the blanket to touch the floor panel.

_What the galaxy...?_

He looked up at Tiny, who just snuggled back into her nest with a satisfied grin.

Hawke ran a mental checklist of where all of the power relays and junctions were. There was definitely something creating resistance in the current down there, and if it got bad enough, he would have a repeat of the what happened in the aft quarters.

_She might not forgive me if I blow her up twice._

"Come on Tiny, time to get up." He left her nest and started down down the corridor when an afterthought struck him. He turned back around to see the girl stretching and gathering up her bedding.

_Wait... Couldn't see what?_

Hawke looked from Tiny's doorway to his own. They were directly across from each other, but the rooms were offset so that not much of the opposing room could be seen from the doorways.

_She moved so she could see into my room?_ Hawke shook his head. _Well, that's...only a little creepy._

Still, how could he really judge or predict the behaviors of a girl with such an unusual history? He could only assume that it was going to be a long and strange trip back to Nar Shaddaa.

"Kylsa, reroute the power away from the conduit running under the captain's quarters."

The lights dimmed for a moment and the soft hum of the engine faded away slightly before everything surged back to life. Not using the main line would mean less power, but if he didn't get everything back in order, and eventually patch up the hyperdrive, they were going to have a long trip ahead of them. Sublight speed was no way to travel.

He made his way down to the cargo hold to gather a few things he would need from the toolbox there. He wasn't exactly looking forward to spending another day upside down, but he was glad to have found the problem before it got any worse. Besides, fixing this might go a long way to actually getting the hyperdrive back online. At least it didn't hurt to hope so.

He had just strapped everything he thought he might need on to a tool belt and was heading back up when he ran into Tiny again in the corridor. It was almost comical to watch her expression go from lost and confused to giddy every time she saw him coming.

"Caesyn!" she exclaimed, but then halted as she seemed to be working out what else was on her mind.

_Here I haven't gone by that name in years and she is trying to wear it out in just a few days._

She seemed to be fidgeting quite a bit, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

"Umn… I need to…" she paused and started over. "I have to… bathroom?"

Hawke had just assumed she would find it in her room, but apparently that was not the case.

"Come on," he said, and slowly led her back down the corridor. She was still walking gingerly, but she was much less hindered by her injuries than he expected.

Both of the quarters at the head of the ship had their own refresher rooms. They were small and in all ways modest, but they were equipped enough so that a pilot and copilot could have all the necessary modern conveniences and privacy.

They passed back through the room Hawke had given Tiny to the door on the far side. He touched the panel and the door slid open with a soft "whoosh".

"There you are, toilet, shower, and sink." He pointed to each device in turn as the holopad translated. He was guessing she knew how all of these things worked, but he glanced at her to make sure she understood, and was startled to see her face lit up with glee. She looked like she was on the verge of squealing.

_Ooookay… never thought someone could be so excited about a restroom._

"Can I shower too?" she asked with wide hopeful eyes.

"I don't see why not. The water recycler is working fine."

"Eee!" Now she did squeal and began shedding clothing at a vigorous pace.

"Wow," Hawke exclaimed as he did an abrupt about face and exited the little room. Apparently modesty was another social construct that she was missing.

"I'll leave you to it then," he called before tapping the panel to close the door behind him. He lingered outside the door for just long enough to hear the water begin to run. She yelped in response to its sudden (and most likely very cold) appearance from the spigot, but Hawke assumed she must have figured out how to adjust the temperature setting as she began giggling and sighing soon after.

_What a silly girl_, Hawke thought, as he smothered a laugh.

Deciding that all was well, he got down to the business at hand. He began pulling up the flooring where Tiny had noticed it conducting heat. Sure enough, there was a power junction right under that panel. It had been a long time since he had poked around in this section of the ship, but he wouldn't have said it had been long enough for it to need maintenance already. Of course most ships weren't really designed to be operating under the conditions that he often put his through.

"Kylsa, what operating efficiency are we running under with the power diverted from the central line?"

"The re-routed power is creating a drain of 34% between the power core and general systems," the AI responded in typical matter-of-fact manner.

Hawke winced. "Well, that won't do." He reached down and laid his hand over top of the junction but felt enough heat just above it to know not to touch it directly.

"Man, that thing is cooking. There must be a bad connection in there making resistance. Any guess as to why it didn't trip a maintenance code?"

"The electrical load sensor is programed to produce a maintenance code after a multitude of negative conditions, one of them being: junction reaches temperature over 162 degrees. If the junction in question is above specified tolerance then a functional sensor would have displayed a code."

"Then it seems like we have a resistance problem and an internal sensor problem."

Hawke pulled on a pair of leather gloves and began trying to remove the shell from the junction. It was hot enough that it could easily burn him through the gloves, but he could get just a few seconds at a time working on it before the heat made it through to hurt him. He eventually got the shell off and lifted it, with a pair of pliers in each hand, to set it on the grating behind him.

The junction's contents didn't look nearly as bad as he was expecting. After seeing power relays fried and having one explode, this looked like a small matter, but in truth, this junction was one from which the power from the core was split and routed to many of the other systems on the ship. Even if they had all been lesser systems, the resistance in the junction not only created heat and threatened to damage those systems, but it caused the core itself to work under a greater load.

He decided that repairing the junction was worth doing right, so he laid out a coupler for each connection and virtually redid all of the wiring. He was determined that once he was finished with this, he wouldn't have to work on it again for a long while. He did, after all, hate working upside down.

He had been at it for almost an hour and a half when his stomach began to complain about being neglected. He stopped working for a moment and listened, the water was still running in Tiny's shower.

_She is going to be all shriveled when she gets out of there._ Hawke was momentarily concerned about her injuries soaking so long, but he decided that as long as they could dry back out she would be fine. If she was able to relax in a long shower she should indulge herself.

He had planned on waiting for her to come out before eating breakfast, but he decided to grab something small while he waited. He needed to head down to the cargo bay and get another sensor anyway. He could most likely fix the damaged one, but that would be a task for another day.

He retrieved the new sensor and stopped by the mess hall on the way back. He still wanted to wait for Tiny to eat, after all, he didn't really trust her to figure out the kitchen on her own, so he just picked up a piece of ration that the spacers called wasn't very pleasant to eat. It was kind of a hybrid between a biscuit and a cracker but was far harder to break and chew than either. It was a small thing, but was dense and expanded quite a bit in the stomach. It would be enough to hold him over for a little while longer.

He was just about to kneel back down in front of the open floor grate and get back to work when he almost choked on the last part of his tac biscuit.

Tiny had apparently just gotten out of the shower and was standing in the middle of the room with a towel wrapped snugly around her lekku, holding them in place while she did some sort of weird stretching exercise. It looked almost martial in nature. Hawke had a moment to be simultaneously impressed by and envious of her flexibility before his brain registered that she was, in fact, stark naked.

"Tiny?" he called while averting his eyes a bit slower than he meant to. She hurried over to meet him at the door.

"Caesyn!" she said cheerfully.

"Why aren't you wearing your clothes?" he asked with some amusement.

"I was bathing," she said, confusion evident in her voice.

"Shouldn't you have the door closed then?"

There was a long pause.

"But I do not like the door closed," she said softly, clutching the ends of her towel-wrapped lekku in front of her with both hands. "Besides, I will put on my clothes when I leave my room," she said more matter of factly, as if that were the way that things were supposed to be done.

"Most...okay, maybe not most, but some species, including mine, prefer to have privacy when they are naked." It seemed a decent counter-argument. Better than "it is just too weird to have you running around naked on my ship". Not that he particularly minded, but it just seemed a tad exploitative not to fill her in on that tidbit of social etiquette.

She cocked her head to one side. "Is it because you are vulnerable without your skin covered?"

"Not really," he laughed slightly as he searched for a sensible way to put this all in perspective. "It's just considered very intimate."

The translator apparently fumbled the word, because she gave him a blank stare.

"It's not appropriate to see someone naked that you aren't… close with." he tried again.

"But we are close..." she gestured to the distance between them. Hawke glowered at the holopad.

"No, close as in...we don't know each other well enough."

"You have helped me and taken care of me. That is not close?"

"Not that close," Hawke said firmly. "Look, just keep your towel on before you get dressed, okay?"

Tiny sighed, clearly not seeing what the big deal was, but she pulled the towel off her lekku and wrapped it around herself.

"Anyway, put on some clothes, I found us a proper breakfast." he said. She cheered up visibly and darted back into the room to dress.

It took some force of will, but Hawke managed to keep his eyes focused on the sensor he was replacing rather than satisfying his curiosity as to whether or not she actually kept her towel on as she dressed. The fact that his head was stuffed beneath a floor panel may have also helped in that endeavor.

Replacing the sensor was a simple matter of unplug and plug for the most part so it wasn't long before he was pulling himself back out of the floor. Once his head was at ground level again he saw two little purple feet rocking back and forth behind him. She had put the same clothes on as before, as he didn't have much else for her to wear. But she had apparently decided to forgo putting her boots back on.

Hawke stood back up and slid the grate back over to cover the junction again before facing the Twi'lek girl. She looked up at him expectantly as if to say "where's the food?"

He laughed slightly at her excitement.

"Come on, let's go find you something to eat."

The theme of the mess hall was more utilitarian than appetizing, but there were a few things that did more than just fill the was some kind of dried fruit he'd picked up on a refueling station, as well as a breakfast hash, he even had a few cans of Glaedae, a sweet, fruity drink that fizzed when it came in contact with the common bacteria in saliva. He usually just went with the most nutritious slop he could find in a can, but she seemed to enjoy food (at least at the rate she wolfed it down) so he thought she might enjoy some new experiences in the culinary department.

Hawke showed her how the rehydrator worked, and the radiator unit so if she got hungry later she could make herself something. She seemed very excited, if not a little nervous about the prospect. She repeated his instructions to herself multiple times as the holopad translated the same sentence in tandem.

"Black package in low cabinet, ree-hi-drate-or, push square button… Shiny can in high cabinet, rade-ee-ae-tor, push circle button."

Hawke wondered if she was going to say it a fourth time, but she seemed content with the level of memorization she had achieved so she just went back to staring through the window of the radiator.

Both devices dinged in succession, startling the girl. She looked over at Hawke who was pulling out some trays and utensils.

"That's the sound they make when they are finished," he said in response her curious expression. "Come on, sit down over here." He pulled a stool out from under the counter and slid it over to where he had laid out the tray and utensils.

She moved away from the cooking devices and walked around the central counter to take the seat. Hawke took note of how she was holding on to the counter as she walked. Her excitement and overall cheery nature kept causing him to forget she was injured, but all the bouncing and fidgeting she wasn't doing most likely didn't help with her aches.

Tiny carefully slid herself onto the stool and tucked her hands between her knees. Hawke noticed her eyes following him as he opened the doors of the cookers and pulled out their contents. Her eyes then became focused on the containers.

He sat the black package and the can on the table and opened them both carefully, allowing the steam to finally escape. Tiny bounced slightly in her seat as she breathed deeply through her nose.

Hawke scooped out some of the hash on to her tray and then did the same with the fruit.

"Go ahead," he told her as she seemed to be waiting. That was all the prompting she needed. She dove in eagerly and smiled with delight though her cheeks were full of hash.

Well, at least someone taught her to chew with her mouth closed.

Hawke stepped over to the other counter and retrieved the Glaedae, twisting its cap off and setting it in front of her. She eyed it curiously and made a drinking motion with her hand, not willing to stop chewing long enough to ask what it was.

Hawke nodded, "It's a fruit drink."

Hawke sat down across from her and started on his own meal at a more relaxed pace. He had to remind himself more than once not to stare at her while she ate. It was really just a peculiar sight to behold - she was practically inhaling the food, but still trying to savor each bite. He had never seen anyone so excited about eating relatively uninteresting food.

She caught him looking at her more than once, but apparently didn't have the normal aversion to being stared at that most people had. He wondered if maybe the discomfort that one felt while being scrutinized was a learned behavior from common society, because she seemed to have none of it. She would just smile at him and go back to eating.

She finally slowed her chewing and picked up her drink. She looked at it for a moment, then sniffed it, before taking a sip. Hawke was a little startled when she gagged at first and lost some of the liquid out one side of her mouth, but she was still in good spirits as she laughed and pulled the canister from her lips. She wiped her nose and mouth continuing to giggle slightly.

"It tickles," she said with a good deal of amusement before taking another sip. She was more prepared the second time and succeeded in swallowing it without getting any more on her face.

She finished off the rest of her hash and continued with no less zeal on the small pile of fruit. Hawke wasn't entirely sure he could identify each variety included, but it made for a very colorful display and was no less pleasing to the tastebuds.

He watched her again to see if she liked the fruit as much as the rest and after taking her first bite she looked up at him again doing the best she could to smile and keep her mouth closed at the same time.

She must have realized she was out pacing him because she began to eat the little fruit bits one at a time and stop entirely to take little sips of her drink. It was then that Hawke realized that while she felt no awkwardness at being stared at, she likewise hadn't the slightest idea that staring could make other people uncomfortable. Hawke looked up multiple times from his food to find her watching him eat.

_Turnabout's fair play I suppose._

As Hawke neared cleaning his plate, Tiny scarfed down what was left on hers in just a few bites so that they finished about the same time. He propped himself on the table for a minute before straightening and sliding himself off of his stool.

"Was that anything like what you're used to eating?" he asked as he took the two trays over to the cleaning compartment.

"No, but it was wonderful. And fun! The drink was…" she made a gesture, tapping her fingers against her thumb. She looked puzzled. "You know I can't even think of a good word for it."

"I think we would say it was fizzy, or bubbly," Hawke filled in after a time.

The translator just said the word "fizzy" as it must not have had a comparable word for it, but it said something for bubbly that made Tiny raise her eyebrows.

"I think the translator doesn't work sometimes," she said with some concern.

Hawke laughed. "Yeahhhh, I get that impression."

"Does it not know all of the words?"

"Not exactly," Hawke finished putting the kitchen back in order and came back to sit at the table. "The language you speak is not very thorough and...a little odd." Tiny cocked her head looking quizzical.

"This might be a little hard to explain." Hawke gathered his thoughts for a moment before making the attempt. "All right, so a long time ago there was a group of scientists that got together to work on a project, except, all of these scientists were from different planets and a lot of them were different species. This was while translator software like we are using was still pretty primitive and even if it had been more advanced, any time one person spoke, several different translators would have had to translate it. So what they did was take the most simplistic and universal sounding rules and vocal tones and made a single language that everyone had to learn. Which is why some words may seem to be missing. The scientists probably didn't have a need for a word like 'fizzy' in their work field."

"My...my language is made up? I don't speak a real language?" Now she just looked sad.

"Well all languages are made up at some point. They have to start somewhere." Hawke reassured her. "A lot of pilots use a common language, Bocce, that's pretty cobbled together."

"But...does anyone else speak my language?"

Hawke suddenly understood why she was sad.

"Probably very few people. But, you have a translator, and people in the galaxy are used to not understanding one another a lot of the time. There are thousands of languages and no one can possibly know them all.

She seemed to perk up a little.

"Come on, I've got a lot of stuff I need to get done but we need to get one thing out of the way first." She stood from her stool as he did and followed him as he made his way to the infirmary once more. He forgot that she wasn't going to be going anywhere in a hurry and he soon had to walk more slowly allowing her time to make her way along the hand rail.

"How are your knees feeling?"

"Very sore, especially when I stop moving for a long time."

"It's probably good to move them from time to time so they don't seize up, just don't overdo it." She was, as usual, in very high spirits for one so banged up.

They reached the infirmary and he patted the table indicating that she should have a seat. She had no trouble using her arms to lift herself up and plop down on the hard surface, but she avoided using her legs to assist her entirely.

"I just want to take a look at your side again to make sure you are healing well, is that okay?"

She nodded and lifted the bottom of her shirt, looking down at the large gash as if she was curious to see how it was faring herself.

She was wearing her pants rather low so that they were no where near touching the wound, which the laces on the side made easy. Hawke noted that this made a lot of hip show and reminded himself to be a professional, but her toned and shapely form was impressively distracting.

She must have unbandaged herself before her shower, which made sense, but now the epidermal adhesive had been dissolved and the wound was just standing open starting to try and dry out. It was still quite a way from healing over. The decision to make was whether to let it dry out and try to scab over as it was or to apply more bacta gel and cover it again. The wound was obviously deep and the exposed meat was far beneath the level of her skin.

He decided to cover it once more. The bacta gel encouraged a rapid rate of cellular regrowth, so hopefully the wound would decrease in depth after another application.

"Do you remember that gel that stings when it gets in a cut?" he asked. Tiny sighed and nodded.

"I know you don't like it, but we should probably put some more on you and cover your side again."

She nodded in response. "If that's what is best, it's okay."

He went about the process just as he had before: bacta gel, epidermal adhesive, and then wrapped a roll of gauze around her little waist. By the time he had finished the whole process the stinging sensation must have eased off as her brow un-furrowed and she stopped wrinkling her nose.

"All right, all done. But you probably shouldn't do any more of that stretching like you were doing this morning. You're liable to tear something."

Tiny nodded, sending her head tails bouncing up and down behind her.

"Okay, so…" Hawke said, not really knowing where to go from here. He needed to get some work done, but what was he going to do with her in the mean time?

"Listen, I have a lot of things on this ship I have to tend to today, I'm going to leave you with this," he lifted the pad that was translating up to her and she took it and held it close to her chest. "It's displaying in your language, so you can look through it and read up on whatever you like."

She parted her mouth like she was going to say something, but then just looked down at the pad. She looked disappointed about something.

"You...can read your language, right?"

She nodded without looking up or changing her expression.

"Then what's wrong?"

She looked up, busted. _Does she really think she is hiding her feelings?_

"I… you have things to do. I will be fine."

Hawke was a bit perplexed, there was obviously something she needed, why was she so reluctant to say something?

"Tiny, if there's something wrong, you really should just tell me. I always prefer to know what's going on, makes it easier to plan and to take care of problems before they get more difficult to handle."

She shook her head as if to dismiss his concern.

"No, it's not a problem, it's just… you said 'we'll talk some more when you wake up'. But I know you're busy and I don't want to be any more of a burden."

Hawke smiled with some relief. He'd had his fill of obstacles lately, a talkative Twi'lek was one he figured he could handle.

"I'm sorry Tiny, I had forgotten." Her expression fell a little further but she nodded in understanding.

"Tell you what, you hang on to the translator and we can talk while I work, okay?"

Tiny's face brightened instantly as she finally looked up at him. She nodded vigorously, sending her lekku bouncing agian.

_If those things on her head are so sensitive, shouldn't that hurt?_

"Just try not to get under foot where I'm working."

"Under your foot? Why would I be on the floor?"

"Err… well… it's an expression, it just means to keep someone from getting things done."

"Oh," she said, clearly not really understanding. "I will try not to be a hindrance."

They made their way to the core chamber in the aft section of the ship diverting only to pick up his tool belt and a few diagnostic tools on the way.

The chamber was empty upon entering it, but when Hawke hit a button on the wall four sections of a circular hatch opened on the ceiling and a cylindrical column slid down almost all the way to the floor. Tiny watched in awe and her eyes seemed to widen at everything she saw inside it that glowed or blinked.

"What's that?" She pointed to the first thing she saw that glowed.

"That's a power cell."

"What's it for?"

"It holds energy that the ship uses to do things."

"What's that?" Next it was something blinking.

"That," Hawke leaned around the core to see what she was pointing at. "is a power converter. The blinking light indicates the rate at which it is modifying one kind of energy into a more useable kind for other more fragile systems."

Hawke went about checking connections and reading up on the systems monitor data from the last several hours. He wanted to make sure none of the surges in power had made it back this far. Theoretically, there were several fail safes and dampeners to prevent such a thing, but Hawke liked to be thorough.

"Do you really know how all of this stuff works?"

Hawke laughed and took the tuner back out from between his teeth.

"Most of it, more than a lot of people who fly around in these things I imagine."

He wondered if that might not be the most reassuring thing for her to hear. She was silent for a moment so he reached up to check another power converter.

"What was your mother like?"

Hawke almost swallowed the tuner. He turned around to look at the Twi'lek girl, but her expression didn't hold anything but curiosity. It was just another question to her.

_Talk about your conversational segues..._

"Umn, well… she was… soft spoken. Caring, at least about me." He was struggling to find ways to put her in a flattering light, not so much for his sake, but he didn't want to say anything to make Tiny feel sad. "I guess you could say she was the kind of person who couldn't bear to hurt anyone."

Tiny looked contemplative, but didn't say anything.

"How about you?" Hawke asked while focusing on a fused circuit. It took a few moments to dawn on him, but as it did, he cringed. The girl had been taken into slavery as a child, memory lane was bound to not be a very pleasant journey for her. He momentarily forgot about his work as he braced himself for the girl's response.

She was nonplussed.

"I'm not sure actually. I think I had one. For the longest time I assumed everyone in the suits at the tower had blue skin. I didn't know why at first, but then it dawned on me one day that I had known a blue skinned woman, so maybe my mother was blue." She shrugged as if it was of little importance.

There was a short silence before she broke it with an afterthought.

"Did you know that Twi'leks of one color can have babies of different colors?"

Hawke smiled at her and raised his eyebrows as if he were surprised. It was, however, fairly common knowledge even for someone like him who knew little about the species.

"Yes, so my mother could have been blue and have me…" her eyes widened with a sudden idea. Then she looked down at the panel and poked at it a few times.

"Per pel Twi'lek," she sounded out and looked up with a smile.

Hawke laughed and reached back up to the top of the power core to continue his work.

"You are indeed," he called down to her. "A very pretty color."

At least I know she won't be asking me where babies come from.

Everything seemed to be in order so he stepped back and hit a button on the wall. The core raised itself back to its chamber in the ceiling leaving the room seemingly empty again.

"Is that why you look at me so much?"

Hawke was just about to check on the hyperdrive motivator, but in that instant he completely forgot that he was supposed to be fixing things.

"Do… do I look at you a lot?" he said, scratching his head and trying to seem innocent. She looked down at the floor and nodded.

"I thought maybe it was because I looked strange to you, being another species."

Hawke decided that was better than thinking he was a creep or something. He went over to the opposing wall and took a seat. The core chamber was only a few feet across so Hawke couldn't sit directly across from her if he wanted to stretch his legs out.

"Not...strange. I've seen many Twi'leks, though I haven't known any very well. I think, if it seems like I stare at you a lot it's because a lot of your mannerisms are different from most people."

She looked up and cocked her head to the side curiously.

"People adopt certain behaviors because we are exposed to them over and over again through our interactions with each other. We communicate just as much with body language - gestures and the like. But you haven't interacted with many people, so you haven't picked up this language, so I'm trying to make sure I understand what you're thinking." There, that was a reasonable explanation and at least partially true.

Tiny nodded thoughtfully. "You could just ask me."

Hawke laughed slightly. "I suppose that might be easier."

"So…" she began to form another question but seemed hesitant to ask it. There was a moment's pause while she pondered how to asked her question, and then blurted out, "What's your favorite color?"

Hawke had never really considered himself having a favorite color, but he knew what the best answer was, and what she might have been looking for. Besides, in this moment, it was true anyway.

"Honestly," he said with an innocent smile. "Purple."


End file.
