Ayli didn’t know how Nix was going to find the Silent Enclave, she was fairly certain Nix didn’t know either, but she found that she could trust that Nix would make it happen. That trust hadn’t come easily, a lifetime of experience had taught Ayli that problems only tended to get worse and that the ones you ignored were the ones that shot you in the head with a blaster at point blank range. With Nix though?

Part of Ayli said that love makes you stupid. She’d seen that too. More than once, both within the Rebellion and in her academic career. Opening yourself to someone else, letting them matter more that you did? Those were recipes for disaster.

But Nix had come for her.

Everytime.

Ayli had fallen in love with Nix far too quickly, but it hadn’t been senseless need overwhelming either of them. From their first night together, drunken and poorly remembered as it might have been, they’d fit together, and together they’d done incredible things.

So Ayli was able to sit in quiet serenity as Nix went off to court disaster, knowing that some disasters are the doors to a better future.

Quiet serenity proved to be its own sort of disaster though as Ayli quieted her thoughts like Kelda had taught her.

All around them, throughout the ship, there was a surreal calm in the Force. It was like a blanket muffling the normal perturbations of life. Intellectually she knew how many people were on the ship, but to her senses, natural and otherwise, there seemed to be far fewer crew members than there were. And none of them were important. They were background extras, the cast members of a series who were never credited and weren’t worth paying attention too.

The Silent Enclave cloaking technique wasn’t harmful or predatory, but around the edges Ayli could sense tinges of the Dark Side.

Far from the “we shall not corrupt the Xah” mindset the Enclave espoused, their cloaking skill was very clearly a manipulation of the Force. One driven as much by fear and the desire to remain disconnected from others as a desire to protect those shielded by it.

But there was a protective element to it. And it was a shared skill, one Tovos’ entire team were equal partners in maintaining, which helped it retain a measure of balance too. Disconnected from others, but connected to each other. Avoiding conflict but embracing their duty. The duality of the technique fascinated Ayli and she followed it down into the subtle ebb and flow of the Force which remained.

“Oh, no, sorry, she’s still here,” Osdo said. He’d opened the door to the “prison cell”/storage room Nix and Ayli were sharing, seemingly expecting it to be empty.

“Can I help you with anything?” Ayli asked without opening her eyes. Osdo’s presence in the Force was so muted Ayli would have said it felt like she was speaking to a ghost but she’d spoken to ghosts for the last year and they had far more substantial Force presences.

“What were you doing?” Osdo asked. 

His blaster registered easily enough in Ayli’s senses, but since he wasn’t pointing it at her she tried to put it out of her mind.

“It’s very quiet here,” Ayli said. “I was admiring the work you’ve put into the cloak which is shielding us from detection.”

“You won’t learn our secrets Jedi,” Osdo said.

“Would it be terrible if I did?” Ayli asked. “It might help keep us all safe if I could help with the cloak. Or at least be less of a disruption to it. I have to imagine covering Nix and I with it when we’re so loud naturally isn’t easy.”

“You could never master our techniques. The Jedi are corrupt and all they do is corrupt the Xah,” Osdo said.

“The Jedi are dead,” Nix said. “I don’t know how much you know about galactic politics but they were killed at the end of the Galactic Civil War. Executed by the Emperor to complete his rise to power.”

“Some of them clearly survived. You survived,” Osdo said. He was as silent in the Force as ever but Nix could hear the conflict in his voice. He wanted to leave, he was terrified of “being corrupted by her”, but he had to “win” too, had to have the last word and be “right”.

Underneath it all though, she could hear a call for help.

He’d lost one of his best friends. Brutally lost them.

He was far from a home he was certain he was never going to see again.

He didn’t know what to do or what was going to happen. The grand adventure he’d thought he was on had turned to horror and he wanted more than anything to feel the safety again that he’d known his whole life.

Ayli remembered a little Twi’lek girl who’d thought she was going to save the galaxy. Remembered the rush of being on her first real Rebel mission. All she had to be was clever and quick. Place a thermal detonator in the foot linkage of an unguarded AT-ST. Easy. A minutes work. Anyone small and unnoticeable could do it and get away before the evil Imperials noticed. 

Anyone but her.

The storm trooper wasn’t supposed to be repairing the AT-ST’s controls. He wasn’t supposed to hear the clunk of the detonator being dropped into the gap in the foot armature. And he definitely wasn’t supposed to raise the alarm.

Even with that though, she’d been fast and clever and quick. She’d made it back to her leader. And they’d made it to their sewer escape entrance.

Or she had.

She still didn’t know if he’d meant to distract the troopers by dropping the sewer grate and turning to face them or if he’d just been surprised. The blaster bolts that had burned through his chest and forehead had made sure she’d never get the answer to that question.

His sacrifice had saved her life but had shattered the idea that she was a grand hero of any sort. She’d been alone and terrified and had survived largely because there had been others who understood what she was going through.

They hadn’t asked her to continue believing that she was a great hero, or that she would be safe. They’d simply showed her that even in an unsafe world, you could still carry on.

“I did survive,” Ayli said. “But not as a Jedi. I grew up as a fighter. We were just trying to protect the people we knew and we didn’t have anything like the skills you do.”

“But you are a Jedi,” Osdo said. “We saw what you did.”

“I know some of the Jedi arts,” Ayli said. “Last year I was possessed by the ghost of a Sith. It…I was was marked by that. I’ve been working since then to learn a better way, learning how to deal with my own Dark Side. And it’s been the ghost of a Jedi who’s been teaching me. That’s why you see a Jedi in me.”

“The ghost is an abomination. It had corrupted you,” Osdo said.

“She is a woman who loved so deeply that she safeguarded someone’s soul for a thousand years,” Ayli said. “It’s thanks to her that a planet which was lost to the Dark Side is awakening to a brighter future. And she’s taught me that the rage I’ve felt all my life isn’t something I need to fear, and is something I can move past.”

“But any ghost is a corruption of the Xah,” Osdo said. “They are unnatural.”

“Corruption may not be what you’ve been taught it is,” Ayli said. “If she’d been with us, she would have stood against the Death Shadows. Her and Ravas both would have and Ravas used to be a Sith.”

“The Sith are the Jedi that admit what they are?” Osdo asked, trying not to reveal his ignorance.

“A Sith might say that, but they’d likely be lying. Sith tend to do that, a lot,” Ayli said.

“As do the Jedi,” Osdo said, sounding certain of the assertion.

“I suppose that’s true,” Ayli said. “Though from what Kelda’s said, the Jedi tend to think they’re helping when they lie, whereas the Sith tend to lie to destroy their opponents or for personal gain.”

“Lies are lies.” Osdo made the statement as though it were unassailable fact.

“Good or bad, they do carry similar costs,” Ayli said. “It takes a bravery to speak the truth, and a lot more to listen to it.”

“That is what Silence teaches us,” Osdo said. “We know the truth, because we know how to listen.”

“What have you heard listening to me then?” Ayli asked.

“I…I don’t know,” Osdo said. 

“If it sounds like I’m telling the truth, that would be because I am,” Ayli said. “I could lie. I could tell you know I’ve never met a Jedi and that the techniques I know come from a whole different Force Tradition native to my people.”

“I wouldn’t believe you,” Osdo said.

“I know. That’s why I’m not hiding anything,” Ayli said. “You don’t need that kind of hassle. Not with all that’s happened.”

Osdo was silent in response to that, so Ayli gave him a moment collect his thoughts before she spoke again.

“I’m going to guess that I’m the first Force user outside of the Enclave that you’ve ever met, right?” Ayli asked. Osdo remained silent, offering no confirmation aside from his body language which screamed that her assessment was correct. “You were concerned I was trying to steal the secret of your cloaking technique, or break it right? Hopefully you can sense that wasn’t my intent. I really was just observing the work, it’s incredible when you see it from the inside.”

“Thank you,” Osdo said as though someone was forcing the words from him with a hot poker.

“I know you’ve got to have other questions than that though,” Ayli said. “I certainly do. Asking you to answer my questions though is unfair. I do not want to leave you wondering if I’ve tricked any information out of you. So let me answer your questions. You can listen to my answers and listen to the Force to hear that they’re truthful.”

“We’re not supposed to talk to either of you,” Osdo said.

“You don’t need to be afraid of Nix or me,” Ayli said. “None of you do. Well none of you here. Or in the Enclave in general. Primus Dolon though? Yeah, he’s got plenty of reason to be scared of Nix given that he tried to Expunge her. I don’t think she’s planning to kill him, but depending on how repentant he is, I’m not making any promises there.”

“You’re going to kill the Primus?” Osdo’s hand went to his blaster but he refrained from pulling it on her.

“He tried to kill the woman I love,” Ayli said. “I’m not able to feel much anger at the moment but on a purely intellectual level I am more than willing to defend her in a lethal and permanent fashion if he tries that again.”

Osdo stood conflicted for a moment, before sagging in despair.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re never going to see them again.”

“Let’s say that’s true, I’m not sure that it is, Nix might be able to figure something out, but if you really are ‘Lost’, you’ll need allies,” Ayli said. “It’s how we survived in the Rebellion, and it’s how we won since none of us stood a chance alone.”

“You will betray us though,” Osdo said.

“That’s the scary part,” Ayli said. “It’s never safe to trust someone else. We can always hurt each other, even when we don’t want to. But we’re so much stronger together.”

“So what are we supposed to do that?” Osdo asked.

“Learn about each other,” Ayli said. “Trust doesn’t have to be unfounded. If we talk to each other, and then judge our actions against the claims we’ve made, we can build our trust on something solid.”

“But why would you ever trust us?” Osdo asked.

“Because I know what it’s like to not be able to go home,” Ayli said.