Solna was falling apart. Rassi could see it happening, but she didn’t know how to put Solna back together.

Which was typical.

Why would Rassi ever think she could fix anyone else when she was such a broken mess herself?

“You want to abandon the Xah?” Solna asked, horror creeping over her at the thought.

“No, I don’t want to die or anything like that,” Rassi said, seeing only belated how that might have sounded. “I just want to give up the…I don’t know…whatever we have that lets us hear it and corrupt it. I want to be like the people in the markets. They don’t go around messing up the Xah all the time like we do. They just live their lives and it’s fine.”

“Like we do?” Solna asked, and Rassi could head the pain Solna was trying to hide.

“You’ve never corrupted anything,” Rassi said, putting all the steel she could find inside her into the declaration. Solna had to understand that, even if Nix was right about who’d shaped their fate to bring them here.

“But you think this is my fault.” It was a whisper so quiet Rassi wouldn’t have been sure she’d heard it at all, except for the scream in the Force that accompanied it.

“No. Solna, no. Look at me,” she took Solna’s face in her hands and pulled her friends eyes up until they met her own. “You saved me.”

“We’re on the run and being hunted by our own people,” Solna said. “Tovos will come for us, and the others. Assuming they don’t just expunge us both.”

“You. Saved. Me,” Rassi said. “They were going to come for me sooner or later. We both know that. Maybe they wouldn’t have expunged me, but Primus Dolon would not have let someone like me live. People thought I was a danger to the enclave already. He would have made sure there was an “accident” or I would have been sent on a mission where the accidents could create themselves. No one wanted me there.”

“I did,” Solna said. “I do.”

Rassi drew her into a hug.

“I know. Do you know how much it means to me that you came?” she asked.

“What was I supposed to do? Let you leave?”

“Anyone else would have. But you’re not anyone else. You’re the best thing the Silent Enclave ever produced.”

“I hate you,” Solna said over a tearful snuffle.

“I know,” Rassi said. “But I’m still right.”

“Shut up,” Solna hugged Rassi tighter and they stayed like that for a long moment, the warmth of each other cast against the empty cold of the unfathomable distance they’d already fled, and the uncaring chill of the galaxy that awaited them.

“You didn’t corrupt anything,” Rassi said. “But I know why Nix said what she did.”

“Why?” Solna asked, their hug more relaxed by not released at all.

“Let me ask you a question first, okay? Maybe a few of them,” Rassi said.

“No, I don’t like Milgo or his brother Scavto,” Solna said, answering an old, teasing accusation as though she hadn’t already demonstrably proven that.

“Good,” Rassi said, holding her closer. “You’re too good for them.”

“What? Why were you trying to throw me at them then!” Solna tried to shove away from Rassi but Rassi didn’t let her go.

“Because they were the best of a bunch of terrible choices,” Rassi said, “and I didn’t think either of them would care if we stayed friends.”

“You’re an idiot. A complete and total idiot. Let me go, I need to hit you,” Solna said.

“Nope. I mean you’re right, but I’d be a bigger idiot to let you go,” Rassi said. “And that wasn’t my question.”

Solna groaned, but in place of making an attempt to pull away and make good on her threat, nestled in closer and groaned in exasperation.

“Go on then, ask,” she said.

“You learned how to do something from Ravas?” Rassi said, with a certainty that suggested it wasn’t really a question.

“Yes. A Jedi trick. A sin,” Solna said.

“It’s not,” Rassi said. “I mean even by the standards of the Enclave, it’s not.”

“What are you talking about? Of course it is. I’m twisting the Xah into what I want.”

“Nope.”

“What? You can’t just say ‘nope’. I’m doing it right now. I know exactly what I’m doing!” The irritation in Solna’s voice was an oddly welcome sign. Solna rarely cried, but there was a fire in her that Rassi was sure could light the heavens ablaze if that was ever warranted.

“I can, because I can feel it. It’s shielding your thoughts right?” Rassi asked, mostly certain of that but aware that she could be missing a few nuances.

“Yes. She was able to read my mind, and then she showed me how to block it,” Solna said. “I know it’s a sin, but I just…I can’t let someone hear what I’m thinking. I…”

“It would be worse than being naked at a full camp dinner,” Rassi suggested and felt Solna’s nod of agreement. “So, what your doing is a good thing then.”

“No! It’s good for me, but that Xah…” Solna started to say before Rassi cut her off with a squeeze.

“I can feel your Xah, and I can feel the Xah around you,” Rassi said, opening her mind so that if Solna reached out to her, she’d see the truth in Rassi’s next words. “Do you know what you’re doing to the flow of the Xah? Nothing. You are as quiet as you ever are and the Force is flowing through and around you just like it always does. There is literally no difference between how you are now and how you were yesterday, at least not with the shield you made. You’re just a bit more tense today than yesterday, but I can’t imagine why that would be.”

Solna poked her in the ribs, which Rassi squeaked in response to but had to admit was deserved.

“How’s that possible though?” Solna asked. “I am definitely doing something with the Xah, or the Force, or whatever.”

“Next question,” Rassi said. “Nix told us what the Expunging Rite is, and how it’s done. Is there any chance, even the tiniest one, that someone, like say Primus Dolon, who uses it, is not controlling the Xah and manipulating it to get it to do what he wants?”

“No,” Solna admitted. “To kill someone like that. It wouldn’t be possible without corrupting the Xah to an unimaginable degree.”

“Which is the biggest conceivable sin there could be, right?”

“Well may not the biggest, or, no, you’re right. It doesn’t get worse than that. Every other bad thing I can think of it simply just as bad,” Solna.

“So, this questions a big one and I think it answers yours about what you’re doing, and what you did,” Rassi said. “Would the teachings of someone like that be the truth, or would they be something that served their own interest?”

“Yes but our entire society can’t be built on lies. People would see them,” Solna said.

“Let me ask this then, you are incredibly talented, but you still picked the shielding trick up almost instantly. If it’s that easy, and it make no ripples in the Force, then why wouldn’t it have been taught to us from when we were little kids?”

“Maybe it’s something only Force adepts like the Jedi can do?” Solna suggested weakly.

“The Xah and the Force are the same thing,” Rassi said. “We have a different name for it because we have a different relationship to it, but both names refer to the binding between all of us and all things. Anything a Jedi can do, we can do too.”

“Or maybe I’m just defective and should have been a Jedi,” Solna said, audibly pouting.

“I will literally fight you,” Rassi said. “I will have Goldie clear room in the cargo hold and I will fight you in a Silent Dance, and force you to see that you are not defective. At all.”

“You can’t beat me in a Silent Dance,” Solna said with a smirk in her voice.

“Of course not. But I can keep going for a very long time. However long it take to get it into that stubborn head of yours.”

“I would like to see you try,” Solna said, her old familiar competitive spirit coming to the surface at last.

“It’s on then! Goldie!” Rassi called out.

And was met with only silence as a response.

“Huh, I guess they were sincere about giving us privacy?” Solna said, which apparently neither of them had fully believed.

“Right. Gotta hit the button on the wall,” Rassi said and started to get up.

“Nope,” Solna said, clinging to her and holding her in place. “I don’t want to fight you.”

“Good. Then don’t pick up on someone I love,” Rassi said.

They sat together in silence for a while before Solna let out a long breath as a thought unwound from where it had been constricting her heart.

“I put us here, didn’t I?” she asked.

“A lot of things put us here,” Rassi said. “If Primus Dolon wasn’t such a evil scumbag, we’d still be in the Enclave. If Nix hadn’t been questing for information on people like us, we wouldn’t have met her.  If I hadn’t felt the Force pulling me towards her I wouldn’t have risked talking to an outsider.”

“But I was the one who bent it all to happen like it did,” Solna said.

“I think it’s like your shield,” Rassi said. “And I think what the Silent Enclave taught us was wrong.”

“Well, yeah, making sure we couldn’t keep our thoughts secret from the Primus suggests they taught us a lot of wrong things, but how’s it like the shield?”

“We were taught that the Jedi warped and twisted to Xah and that our emotion did that too if we didn’t keep them hidden and inside ourselves. Your shield shows us that’s not true though. I mean, sure the Jedi probably can do things with the Force that are terrible – the mind control stuff isn’t made for example, but when I saw Nix use something like it she wasn’t using it to control or hurt anyone, just to keep her and me safe.”

“So it’s okay to twist the Xah if it’s to keep ourselves safe?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t think it twists the Xah at all. I think how the Jedi use the Force, or at least how I’ve seen Nix use it is more like a conversation. She asks the Force to do something and supports her like a friend would. Like it’s doing with you. You’re not ‘corrupting the Xah’, you’re communing with the Force and it feels like its all in favor of doing what you’re asking it to.”

“What about you then? Why would you want to lose that? If it’s so good, why don’t you just become a Jedi too?” Solna asked.

“I’m…I’m not like you,” Rassi said. “I really have twisted up the Xah before. If I was to try to become a Jedi, I would be definitely screw it up, and I don’t think the galaxy needs another bad Jedi in it.”

Solna’s only reply to that was a moment of silence before she pushed Rassi away and got to her feet.

With a deep breath she walked over to the plate beside the door and pressed the lower button.

“Goldie?” she said.

“Solna! How may I be of service? Are either of you feeling hungry? Or perhaps I can send the clothing waldo in if you’re ready for that?”

“Thank you Goldie. Could you send in a meal for Rassi? Also, we’ll need a space cleared in the cargo hold. And if you happen to have a coffin available, that would be good to have on hand as well.”

“What do you need coffin for?” Goldie asked.

“Someone is bad mouthing my best friend. I’m going to beat them senseless in a Silent Dance and if that doesn’t work I may strangle the life out of her. Or slap her until the stupid comes out. I don’t know. I’ll get creative I guess.”