Nix awoke in Ayli’s arms. 

Which was a rather nice change of pace from the last however long it had been.

The splitting headache however suggested that things hadn’t gone quite how she’d hoped they would on their reunion.

“We’re being held captive, aren’t we?” she asked without opening her eyes.

Ayli ran her fingers through Nix’s hair.

“Yep.”

“And they stunned us.”

“Yep.”

“Even though we went along willingly.”

“Yep.”

Nix sighed.

“I remember seeing it coming and thinking ‘oh well, this’ll be less hassle than the alternative’. That wasn’t a good thought was it?” Nix also remembered angling to take a bit more of the stun blast than Ayli, which explained why Ayli had woken up before her.

Or Ayli was simply used to getting stunned. Some of the stories of her childhood that Ayli had shared with her had rather horrific elements to them and building up resistance to stun blasts, either voluntarily or involuntarily seemed like it would fit right in.

“It was the right play,” Ayli said. “Trying to shield me was kind of silly, though I do appreciate it.”

“Where are we now?” Nix asked, opening her eyes to take in their surroundings.

Or that had been the plan.

Tearing her eyes off of Ayli after they’d been apart was more challenging than Nix had anticipated.

“We’re in ‘the Brig’, or in other words an unused storeroom on the rust bucket transport they picked us up in.” Ayli continued to stroke her fingers through Nix’s hair, the gentle smile on her face almost enough to make Nix miss the silver hue Ayli’s eyes had taken on.

“How are you feeling?” Nix asked, both in terms of the residual effect from the stun blast as well as her new ocular condition.

“Like I’m right where I want to be most of all in all the galaxy,” Ayli said.

Her touch had washed away the pain from the stun-induced headache without Nix even noticing it.

“Think they’re monitoring us?” Nix asked, sneaking a kiss onto Ayli’s forearm.

“Not with cameras or sound recorders,” Ayli said. “I don’t think they need to though. They are very skilled in using the Force.”

“They call it ‘the Xah’,” Nix said. “And they’re very specialized in how they interact with it.”

She filled Ayli in on what she’d learned about the Silent Enclave from Rassi and Solna, bringing Ayli up to speed on the two new additions to their life and how things had gone so far with the two girls.

“I spoke with Solna,” Ayli said. “Briefly. She seems to have formed a bond with you pretty quickly.”

“They’re alone in the galaxy now,” Nix said.

“My, I wonder how that feels,” Ayli said with more than a trace of self-deprecation.

She and Nix had both been left to fend for themselves at too young of an age, and they were of one mind about not allowing that to happen to anyone else on their watch.

“Also I sort of danced them into accepting that they’re worthy of being cared for,” Nix said, and explained the trial that Rassi and Solna had attempted and how she’d felt it was necessary to step in.

“I’m surprised you beat them at their own game. That sounds incredibly dangerous,” Ayli said. There wasn’t accusation in her tone. She understood why Nix had done what she had, she was simply impressed it had worked.

“I wanted the win more than they did,” Nix said. “Plus I figured Goldie would get me on med-gurney and bring me back if I went too far.”

“And then you left them with Monfi to go invade a Lich’s tomb?” Ayli asked, moving on to the teasing portion of their reunion.

“That was definitely not the plan,” Nix said. “My thought process was…”

“Pretty plain to see,” Ayli said. “You wanted Goldie, Rassi, and Solna as far from Praxis Mar as possible. In case you’re wondering that was absolutely the right decision to make.”

“It seems like it paid off in the end too,” Nix said. “I could feel the moment Paralus’s phylactery was destroyed and it felt a whole lot like Rassi and Solna were the ones who did it.”

“I’m only surprised it wasn’t Ravas who got there first,” Ayli said.

“She had to have been blocked away from it. Kelda too,” Nix said. “There’s no chance they would have let the girls get anywhere near the planet, much less the tomb if they hadn’t been out of other options.”

“I’m hoping they’re not still trapped,” Ayli said. “I’ve been expecting them to drop in and check on us any time now.”

“They probably can’t find us,” Nix said, noticing the unnatural serenity in the Force around them.

“This is what happened to you when you were in the Enclave’s encampment then, isn’t it?” Ayli asked. “I was wondering about that, but it feels so benign.”

“It largely is,” Nix said. “Apart from their leadership, I think the Enclave is largely non-hostile.”

“That doesn’t seem to be the experience our two new girls had,” Ayli said.

“Social violence and neglect can be inflicted very peacefully,” Nix said. “Some of that is due to the leadership of the Enclave, and some of it is just people being horrible like people will. Rassi didn’t fit in there and her parents had ‘caused trouble’ in the past so she was forever going to be the one they dumped their frustrations and anger onto. The effects meant to be shared by all of them though? Those wouldn’t be outlets for their darker emotions.”

“I seem to be missing mine, as a note,” Ayli said.

“Your darker emotions?” Nix asked.

“My Dark Side in general,” Ayli said. “She fought Paralus for us. Let Monfi and Bopo escape.  But she lost.”

“What does that mean for you, do you think?” Nix asked. “You still feel like you’re fully you, from what I can sense.”

“Oh, I am,” Ayli said. “And I don’t think you can kill a Dark Side like that. I don’t even know what would happen if you did? I’m guessing you’d just die? In this case though it feels more like my anger, and fear, and despair, are just taking a bit of a nap. When I think about what happened to Rassi and Solna for example, I know there should be anger there, but all I feel is a bit tired and distant.”

“How about when you think about the girls themselves?” Nix asked.

“That’s much easier, and its mostly delight and anticipation,” Ayli said. “They sound so brave. I can’t wait to meet them properly.”

“Once we get this wrapped up, that’ll be our first order of business,” Nix said, imagining a dozen different scenarios for how that might play out, all with the same lingering question behind them.

“So does this mean we’re starting a family then?” Ayli asked, thinking along similar tracks to Nix.

“I…we’ve never talked about that have we?” Nix asked, self-conscious that she’d never thought about it enough to even know what her desires were up until then.

“We haven’t, largely because I don’t think it occurred to either of us that it might be something that would ever come up.”

“And, so of course, it has,” Nix said, shaking her head at how the Force seemed to be extremely adept at placing her in situations where she did not know the right answer.

Mechanics joked about wanting to have the Parts Manual for life, and Nix’s answer had always been that you wrote your own Life Parts Manual, but that answer was not exactly comforting when faced with the truly serious decisions life threw at her.

“And so it has,” Ayli said. “So are you going to ask me about it?”

“I’m trying to figure out how to phrase things so that you’re free to answer how you truly feel,” Nix said.

“I suggest using words, any of them will probably do, and then trusting that I will be honest about my feelings with you,” Ayli said, planting a quick kiss on the tip of Nix’s nose.

“You’ve already thought about this, haven’t you?” Nix asked, suspicion over how much longer Ayli had been awake forming in her mind.

“I have,” Ayli said. “But that’s not asking me about it.”

“No, no it’s not,” Nix said, a slow smile spreading across her face as an opportunity she’d been almost too slow to grasp occurred to her.

Reluctantly, she shifted out of Ayli’s arms. 

“Let’s do this properly then,” she said, rising enough to be kneeling across from where Ayli was sitting.

“Captain Ayli’wensha, would you like to make a family with me,” Nix asked.

A bright spark of joy lit up in Ayli’s eyes but before she could answer the storeroom door was thrown open and Tovos, backed by four other members of the Silent Enclave, stared at them from behind raised blasters.

Nix groaned, but Ayli just rolled her eyes.

“The time has come,” Tovos said. “We will be landing in five minutes. You will be taken to face judgment as soon as have joined the others.”

“Good, good,” Nix said, with a distinct lack of patience or kindness in her voice. “I think I’m in the mood for a bit of judgment at the moment.”

“Don’t make us stun you again,” Tovos said, shifting his grip on his blaster rifle.

“We didn’t make you stun us before,” Nix said.

“You were attempting to corrupt the Xah,” one of the other guards, Felgo, said.

“Oh? Is that the argument we’re going to have?” Nix asked.

“These probably aren’t the people we need to speak with about that,” Ayli said, laying a restraining hand on Nix’s arm.

Nix didn’t have a lightsaber. And she wasn’t going to use the Force to attack any of the people before her. Not with Force Lightning, or even with the milder Force Push. It was still good however that Ayli had reminded Nix to hold back. One does not work as a ship’s mechanic without learning how to brawl a bit after all and the sprocket heads in front of her seemed to be dearly in need of some ‘percussive maintenance’.

“You’re going to come with us,” Tovos said.

“That does seem to be the general plan,” Nix said, feeling a trifle bad for the boy.

By age, Tovos was theoretically an adult, but from a life lived inside the confines of a recluse cult, he hadn’t yet managed to develop any of the maturity that was supposed to come with adulthood. That he was in over his head was clear and Nix guessed it wasn’t a question of ‘was’ that going to drive him to bad decisions but rather ‘how many’ bad decisions he would make and ‘would Nix be able to mitigate the fallout well enough’.

That thought helped her relax a bit.

She’d been in stressful situations, and been over her head drowning in unfamiliar responsibilities before and the last thing she, or Tovos, needed was someone goading them into worse mistakes than the ones they’d make naturally.

Nix held to that thought as the junker freighter descended through an unfamiliar sky, rumbling with the thirty seven different critical repairs it needed (Nix counted) but landing safely nonetheless.

Unfortunately that was where their safety ended.

“This isn’t good,” Felgo said. “I’m not getting a beacon reading.”

“Is the new encampment set up?” Tovos asked.

“No…wait, yes, partially,” Felgo said.

“And the ships? Where are they?” Tovos asked.

“I’m not seeing anything on telemetry,” Felgo said.

“That’s because they’re not here,” another Enclave member, Bortos, said. “They cleared a landing area, but it’s empty.”

Nix looked out the viewport and saw exactly what Bortos was talking about.

It wasn’t the encampment she’d visited, but she recognized a few of the tents which had been erected. The rest of the encampment was simply missing though, and the large open area where ships could land was devoid of machinery entirely.

What lay before them weren’t ruins.

And they weren’t empty.