At the height of the influence and fame, there was a belief that it was impossible to surprise a Jedi. The speed with which they reacted to events around them was supposedly due to their ability to foresee the future, which meant ambushes were simply impossible to pull off.

Then the Emperor had the entire Order executed at the same time by the clone troops who’d been dying in the millions to the basic droids fielded by the Separatists. 

What little reputation the Jedi had left in the Imperial era was therefor rather tarnished, and any belief in their infallibility or impossible capabilities was thoroughly shattered. 

Nix suspected that was part of the reason why, despite the Emperor being long dead, and the New Republic firmly established in its governance the core world, no one seemed to be suggesting that the Jedi Order the Old Republic had relied upon be re-established as well.

Despite that, right in front of her stood a girl who believed Nix to be a Jedi, or at least the next best thing to one. Believed her to be a Jedi and was hoping with all her heart that a Jedi would be able to save her.

Nix’s first impulse was to correct the young woman, but she held that thought at bay. Far more important than correcting the girl was learning what it was she needed to be saved from.

“How did I know you were there? If I wanted to arrange a meeting with me that other people wouldn’t notice, this is exactly when and where I would do it,” Nix said, plopping down into one of the chairs in her prison cell / temporary housing. She glanced at the chair opposite her own, invite the young woman to rest too.

“But you couldn’t have sensed me.” The girl was worried about the implications of that, and the lingering effect of the Covos juice let Nix feel the shape of the fear which lay beyond those fears.

“I didn’t. You were very quiet. Much quieter than I could be. Much quieter than the Force, or the Xah as you call it, is, even in a place like this.”

“Is that a Jedi technique? Warping the Xah so you can hear even those who are maintaining proper posture?” the young woman asked.

Nix pointed to the earring’s she’d been given.

“I can’t warp anything now,” Nix said. “I just know how to listen, its a mechanic thing. When I hear something that’s too quiet, that can be as worrisome as something loud.”

“Oh no!,” the young woman said. “They already put the baby chains on you?”

Nix was pretty sure she knew what that meant, but she touched her left earring and shot the young woman a questioning look, which was answered by a crestfallen nod.

“And if I take them off?” Nix asked, curious if she hadn’t sensed a betrayal there because her captors were simply that good at hiding their agenda or if they’d been on the up and up.

“They’ll know. They’ll know and they’ll expunge you immediately,” the young woman said.

“That would be a mistake,” Nix said and allowed the young woman to imagine that the mistake would be on Nix’s part, rather than the storm of hellfire that Goldie would reign down on the encampment if Nix’s captors tried to do something unpleasant.

“I’m sorry. I thought you could help me,” the girl said and turned to leave.

Via the access panel in the restroom’s floor? Nix saw a flash of the young woman’s arrival and wondered if her captors knew that her cell was quite a bit less than secure.

“Why don’t you tell me what you need help with, Miss…?” Nix let both questions hang there, hoping that the easier to answer one might lead to an explanation of the more difficult question.

“Rassi.”

“Of the two of us, I’m going to guess that you’re the one who’s more trapped here?” Nix didn’t need Force-powered intuition to arrive at that conclusion. 

“How?” Rassi asked, looking flabbergasted to have been discovered.

“I’m not sure what else you might think I could offer you except escape,” Nix said. “If you think I’m a Jedi, I doubt you’re planning to ask me to assassinate someone, and anything to do with your people, I kind of lack the social clout to do much about.”

Rassi dropped her face into her palms and shook a bit, her laughter not especially happy, but more a mix of relief and despair warring against one another.

“You’re not wrong,” she said, without lifting her face up. “But its too late for that.”

“Why? Not why is it too late, though I am curious about that, but why do you want to leave?”

“I don’t belong here.”

Nix turned to the Force, hoping that her enhanced sensitivity to it might spare Rassi from explaining what was clearly a painful subject. Peering into the past however only showed Nix flashes of the times she’d been shunned or rejected for being too weird for the people around her.

There were more than she recalled. A lot more. 

Wincing at the residual shame, she felt a tingle of numbness around her ears.

Her earrings were objecting to looking into the past? 

That was interesting. 

Nix could understand why, in a community of Force sensitive people, helping children retain control of their ability to manipulate the world around them with the Force could be a good thing. The exact method the community was using seemed barbaric to Nix, especially when applied to children, but she knew keeping an open mind was critical. 

To a certain point.

“What did they do to you?” she asked, dark suspicions roiling in her mind.

“No. Nothing. I’m just…I’m too loud,” Rassi said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Except she wasn’t speaking of audible volume.

“You use the Force. Actually use it,” Nix said, thinking back to the many years she’d done the same without any conscious awareness of what she was doing.

“No! I mean, I don’t do it. It just happens.”

Because Rassi was the same as Nix had been.

“And what do they do to you when that happens?” Nix asked, acknowledging the anger that was burning surprisingly hot inside her. 

The last thing she needed was to lash out with the Force, and that made it all the more tempting to her darker impulses.

“Nothing! They…no one knows that its me,” Rassi said.

That seemed unlikely but Nix reflected on how incredibly quiet Rassi was compared even to people like Barso who Nix could still hear despite the growing physical distance between them. 

“I gotcha,” she said. “And I’ve got you. When I leave, you’re coming with me. If you still want to.”

“You won’t be leaving though,” Rassi said.

“You mentioned they would try to ‘expunge me’. Who are ‘they’ and what does ‘expunging’ involve?” Nix asked.

“Primus Dolon, and the Honored if he needs them,” Rassi said. “They can erase people from the Xah. They only do it for the worst crimes though.”

“When you say erase, you mean kill with the Xah don’t you?” Nix asked, acutely aware of exactly how evil, and difficult, it was to snuff out a life directly with the Force.

“It’s worse than that,” Rassi said. “They unweave the Xah inside the person. It’s like the person they expunge never existed. They’re just gone.”

“And they perform this rite against only the worst criminals?” Nix asked, a bone deep suspicion of what might constitute a capital offense stoking the flames of anger within her.

“That’s what they say,” Rassi said. “I’ve never seen them do it. It’s just something people talk about.”

“And would one of these crimes be discovering the existence of this enclave?” Nix asked.

“Only if you take off the earrings,” Rassi said.

Which fit with the unspoken threat Jolu had made.

Nix took a long, slow breath, cooling her rising temper.

Rassi was telling the truth. But it was her truth.

Would Donol and Jolu really try to kill Nix? Maybe. It was certainly something Rassi had heard they would do, but that was only a rumor. 

Had Rassi’s people mistreated her? In Nix’s view, absolutely. But would her parents have a different perspective? Definitely. Far more importantly, would her parent’s perspective have any validity to it? Did they love her and were trying as best they knew how, failing as people inevitably will but still trying?

Nix’s inclination was to doubt that. It didn’t take a social genius to see that the encampment held fairly extreme views and enforced those views as the harshest of religious dogma.

“Even with the earrings, I’ll be able to get out of here,” Nix said.

“But you can’t use your Jedi arts,” Rassi said.

“I’m more than the Force tricks I’ve picked up,” Nix said. “The same’s true for you too. The Force isn’t something that controls everything. It can help guide us, but my Engine Top Griddle Cakes require precisely zero skill with the Force and have won me three whole jobs so far. Which, yeah, three isn’t a lot, but ship mechanic jobs can be surprisingly hard to come by in some ports. Especially if you don’t have a local license. Griddle Cakes though? Everyone loves griddle cakes. Well, not Hutts. Or not Mabbu the Hutt. Made her spectacularly sick. Ever see a Hutt projectile vomit? It is not a pretty sight, and the clean up? Had to leave that the droids and it took them days.”

Nix blinked, reeling herself back from a happy little trip down memory lane.

“Uh, what was I saying?” she asked, mostly to buy herself time.

“Griddle cakes?”

“Oh, no, sorry, that was just an example. What’s important is that the Force, or the Xah, it’s only a part of us. We exist, I think, because there’s so much more that we can do than the Force can. It’s like if all the Force wanted was life, there’s plenty of planets that are covered from pole to pole with mono-cellular life. Plenty that are covered in vegetation too. Those places, from what I’ve read, and the few I’ve visited, can feel like boundless oasis of potential in the Force. So why bother with us complicated, sapient animal types?”

“Because we can do more.”

“Exactly. We’re all constantly expressing ourselves and our lives. We don’t need ‘meaning’. We’re the ones who create it. And the Force is a part of that, but what we can do goes well beyond the limits of ourselves.”

“And all that will let you escape?” Rassi asked, not sounding entirely convinced, but Nix was willing to take even partial belief at this stage of their discussion.

“All of that will let both of us escape. If you want to.” It was a dangerous promise to make. It would absolutely leave Nix set against a small army of Force sensitives, some of whom were clearly willing and empowered to violate their societal taboo against manipulating the Force.

“Of course I do!” Rassi said.

“I believe you. It took cleverness and bravery to get in here and the only reason to use either of those is because you’re serious about what you say. There is a price here though.”

“I’ll pay it. Whatever you want!” Rassi said and Nix pictured all the myriad paths where that declaration could have gone terribly, terribly wrong.

“It’s not what I want. Never trust someone who asks you for things that seem wrong or uncomfortable. No, the price I’m talking about is that if I spirit you away from her, you’ll be leaving behind family, friends, and the world you’ve known. The galaxy is not a particularly safe place, and you may find you like it a lot less out there, than here.”

“I won’t,” Rassi said, fierce conviction surging through her. “My Mom and Dad, they were trying to get us out. They’d seen other places, and they knew this wasn’t where we were supposed to be.”

Nix didn’t like the past tense Rassi was using for her family.

“What happened to them?” she asked, a new frost entering her heart.

“He said it was an accident. Primus Donol did. One of the ones that’s meant to be by the Xah, so its hidden from us as an act of mercy.”

The Covos juice had been a mistake. They never should have given it to Nix. Not if there was the possibility that she might meet Rassi.

Not if she might be able to peer back into the past of the girl before her.

It was only a flash, a brief few seconds played out from a perspective Rassi hadn’t seen, couldn’t see in fact because someone had shrouded the moment in the Dark Side, but a moment Nix’s Covos enhanced vision penetrated with ease.

A moment where Kodo and Lipa Savos had perished.

A moment which had decidedly not been an accident.