Ayli watched Nix’s eyes finally flicker open and a vise that happen been cranked around her heart finally let go.

Then she noticed the startled look in Nix’s eyes.

Which was followed immediately by a scowl.

Nix was angry?

“Ravas,” Nix said. “You will get your hand off my wife, or I will find a way to feed you to a hyperdrive, ghost or no.”

It wasn’t the most confusing thing Nix could have said after waking from the bizarre coma she’d been in, but it was in the running for the Top Three.

“Nix are you…” Ayli started to ask as Nix propped herself up on her right arm and extended her left hand towards Ayli.

Or, not exactly towards Ayli. Just a little to the side of Ayli.

“Like this,” Nix said, as though she was replying to a conversation Ayli wasn’t a part of.

There was a crash from behind Ayli and, whirling to see what had happened, Ayli saw the metal wall had gained a new dent in it. The dent was an inch or so deep and in the rough outline of a humanoid form.

“Uh, what just…?” Ayli started to ask before Nix cut her off by wrapping her in a fierce hug.

“You’re okay!” Nix said.

Again, strange.

“I don’t think you get to be the one to say that,” Ayli said with a laugh. The world had gone mad, but for the first time in days that wasn’t pissing her off.

It was probably the hug.

Nix gave really nice hugs.

The door to Nix’s recovery room slid open to admit the understandably concerned pair of Sali and Zindiana.

“The assassins get here already?” Sali asked, looking for either a foe or the body of one.

“Assassins?” Nix asked.

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Ayli said, reluctantly parting from Nix who had pulled back to see who was coming into the room.

“Not too sure about that,” Zindiana said. “They’ve got pretty good scans of each of us up now.”

“I feel like I missed something,” Nix said.

“That’s what happens when you let someone stab you in the vital organs,” Sali said.

“This is not her fault,” Ayli said, a bit of the familiar rage creeping back in.

“No, it’s not,” Zindiana said with a reproving look cast towards Sali, “but it is going to be her problem, just like it’s ours. Oh and welcome back to the land of the living there sleepy head? Feeling better?”

Ayli watched Nix pat herself down. A tiny wince passed over Nix’s face when she poked the spots where the puncture wounds had been. But it was only a wince. Not a gasp of agony. Which was definitely better than Nix’s reaction would have been a few days ago. Ayli knew what the wounds looked like after the three days spent Nix had spent floating in a full immersion Bacta tank and was deeply glad Nix hadn’t been poking them earlier. Thanks to the wonders of galactic medical science, the wounds had closed up completely and most of the damage done had been repaired.

That Nix had spent another full day in a coma had perplexed the medical droids, but the droids had assured Ayli that Nix would make a full recovery, and Ayli had held tight to that belief.

No one else needed to die for her. Not ever.

“I feel like I’ve been drinking Bacta packets for days. I think I could do with some real food,” Nix said, chasing away the shadows of the past from Ayli’s mind.

“Good. We’ve got meal packets on the ship. Let’s get her out of here!” Sali said.

“She needs more than meal packets,” Ayli said, understanding why Sali was so eager to leave, but terrified at the thought of taking Nix away from medical care before she was really ready to go.

“There’s also the question of whether she should be moved yet or not,” Zindiana said, gesturing to the fact that Nix was still laying down on the recovery room’s bed.

“I feel fine,” Nix said. “A lot better than I expected to in fact. Probably because I’m in a hospital? Where did you bring me?”

“Galvus Station,” Sali said. “I have some friends here who are good at patching people up.”

“And a lot of enemies who are good at making people dead,” Ayli said, thinking of the three assassin’s they’d dealt with already.

“Not that good,” Zindiana said.

“Good enough that we don’t want to stay here longer than we need to,” Sali said. “Especially not you two.”

“Why?” Nix asked. “What did we do?”

“We killed Ulno Klex,” Ayli said. “Blew up his whole shuttle. I think we took out a few of the other Klex’s too but nobody cares about them. The bounty is for killing Ulno.”

“Was I sleep assassinating people again?” Nix asked, clearly trying to inject some humor into the moment despite being perplexed.

“It wasn’t you,” Sali said. “You might remember that I hired a few gals to get the job done who looked like you though? Turns out they were worth the money I paid them. Ulno Klex is a note in history now, the galaxy is a better place, and my criminal empire can now expand easily.”

“That would be the criminal empire you’ve left behind and have no interest in returning to?” Zindiana wasn’t exactly asking, more reminding and teasing Sali for the foolishness of the situation. Ayli could appreciate the stupidity of it as well, but was less pleased that she and Nix had been caught in the backwash of it all.

“Those were the assassins you paid to pretend to be us?” Nix asked. “Because that would distance you from the plot? Because everyone would know you have nothing to do with us? Us who you’re now traveling with.”

“Yes. Exactly that,” Sali said.

“And you all have been stuck here at a hospital, while I recovered from…I did get stabbed didn’t I?”

“Yeah. Three times, all at once,” Ayli said. “Don’t do that again.”

“No problem,” Nix said. “I will not get stabbed three times all at once again, for sure.”

“That was an overly specific promise,” Zindiana observed.

“I like ones I’m more likely to be able to live up to,” Nix said.

A dull thump of sound passed through the room a split second before the lights failed.

“I think we’re checking out now whether we like it or not,” Sali said.

She had a blaster in her hand. Ayli didn’t need light to know that. It’s what she would have done too. Except she had a different option now.

With the flick of a switch, the crimson blade of her lightsaber sprang to life, matching the emergency lighting which kicked in a moment later.

“You don’t need that,” Nix said, eyes locked on the lightsaber.

“It’s handier than you might think,” Ayli said and got up to peer out the door.

No assassins were in sight yet, but with the bounty the Klex Cartel had put on their heads there was no doubt that there were some in the building, and likely more waiting at all the obvious exits.

“Where’s my stuff?” Nix asked, on her feet and scanning the small room for its meager contents.

“All back on the ship,” Ayli said.

“Let’s get there then,” Nix said, exiting the room and marching deeper into the medical complex.

“The doors are that direction,” Sali said, pointing towards the opposite end of the hallway.

“So are the assassins,” Nix said. “We don’t want to run into them if we don’t have to.”

Ayli reflected that, based on their recent history, it would be substantially worse for the assassins if there was a run in, but then Nix was the one unarmed member of their little crew.

Probably.

Ayli wasn’t sure what had happened with the dented metal wall in their room, but she did remember the gaping hole in the spire’s wall on Lednon Three all too clearly. Thinking back on it, her memories tumbled together into a picture she’d been missing.

Nix had done that.

It hadn’t been the result of the fight they were in. The Smoke Wraiths hadn’t been responsible. 

It had been Nix.

Who’d been trying to protect her.

Like a Jedi would.

Ayli wasn’t sure where that last thought came from, but it filled her with a simmering anger.

She shook her head.

Why would she be angry about that?

She wasn’t.

She was surprised. Delighted to think Nix could defend herself. Sorta gooey inside at the thought of Nix erupting like that on her account.

But angry?

No. Why?

Betrayal.

Abandonment.

That was what the Jedi did. That was what their code required.

The presence Ayli had felt since Lednon Three was whispering in her ear. 

But it wasn’t lying to her.

It couldn’t. Not without Ayli sensing it. They were too close. Joined too tightly for deceptions to last between them.

But Nix wasn’t a Jedi.

And Nix was not going to betray her.

Ayli knew that. She didn’t think she knew Nix well at all yet, but Ayli knew that about her already. Nix didn’t use deception, not like Ayli knew how to.

And yet, consider the pirate queen’s fate.

Which was true. Nix had tricked Sali. Not through clever lies, or through playing an unexpected role. She’d done it just by being herself. Just like she was with Ayli.

Ayli shoved the thought aside.

She remembered the Rebellion. She remembered not being able to trust anyone. She remembered the cost of betrayal and how even with all that, you still had to be able to work with people or everything would come falling down.

She felt the presence that had been lingering in the background draw in close and wrap itself around her. It was cold, but it still burned.

Ayli stuttered just one step and Nix spun around, her eyes glaring past Ayli and her arm rising.

And the presence was gone.

No more cold.

No more burning.

No more anger or doubt.

Ayli reeled at the change and Nix flashed her a smile. Sali then caught her and marched Ayli forward as Nix resumed leading them deeper into a building she had no possible means of knowing the layout of.

“Trying to talk to the Klex to tell them it wasn’t us would be a complete waste of time, wouldn’t it?” Nix asked.

“Yeah, even if we could convince them it was someone else, they kind of have to kill us to save face at this point,” Ayli said.

The piled into an elevator which opened just as they arrived. The droid that was exiting it had other tasks to perform and didn’t even pause to look at them.

“You all seem to have been busy, how long was I out for?” Nix asked.

“About a week,” Zindiana said.

“We took a few hits getting out of the Lednon system, which slowed us down a little,” Sali added.

“Oh no! Is Goldie ok?” Nix jammed the “Door Override” button and forced them out on a dimly lit sublevel of the medical complex.

“Hah! Told you that would be her first question,” Sali said.

“She asked a lot of questions before that,” Zindiana said.

“Goldie’s fine. She wanted me to tell you that the repair manuals you loaded were great and she patched up all the damage all on her own. She was very proud of that,” Ayli said.

“Aww, what a good girl she is,” Nix said, beaming at the thought. “Give me just a sec here.”

She paused by a comm panel on the wall, ripping the facing off and reconnecting the wires within seemingly at random. 

“Goldie?” Nix said as the comms chirped back to life.

“Mom?” Goldie’s voice called back instantly. “You’re okay? They promised you’d be okay!”

“I’m fine. I need you to make a light speed jump to the other side of the system and then skip back here, I’ll send you the coordinates of the ship we’ll be on.”

“Why are you flying on a different ship? Just come to me,” Goldie said.

“You’re being watched kiddo,” Sali said.

“How do you know?”

“Because you’re the only ally we have here that’s not in this hallway,” Zindiana said.

“So we need you to be sneaky,” Nix said.

“Okay. When should I be back?” Goldie asked.

“As quick as you can. The ship we’ll be in won’t have much air supply in it,” Nix said.

“What are we doing?” Ayli asked.

“Do you trust me?” Nix asked.

It was a dangerous question, and one the presence seemed ready to jump all over. Before it could though Ayli took Nix’s hand in her own.

“I do,” she said.

“Then let’s go get fitted for our coffins!”