There had been shouting. There had been harsh words. There had even been some violence. Nix had been surprised that none of it had been direct at her or Ayli.

Ayli had apparently been ready for that though and had pulled Nix quietly to the side of the cargo room and sat them near a stack of supply crates which were too heavy to be casually knocked over as Tovos and his crew fell into the sort of screaming that inevitably came when a crew was pushed past their breaking point.

Happily, said screaming was not punctuated by blaster fire despite the fact that everyone on the ship except for her and Ayli were armed.

“You can’t believe them. It can’t be true. There must be some other reason. There must be some lie there. Jedi lies. The Jedi always lie!” Polu, one of the two youngest crew members yelled through tears which Nix was sure he would deny shedding later.

“They’re not Jedi.” That it was Tovos making the assertion was surprising only in that he beat Osdo to it, since Osdo had already backed up Nix and Ayli up on that three time so far in the argument.

“But we are Silent!” Yanni’s statement held enough desperation to border on being a question. “The Elder’s speak with the Xah. The Primus…”

“There have been false Primuses before,” Tovos said. “Buchadi.”

The name meant nothing whatsoever to Nix, nor to Ayli it seemed, who shrugged when Nix glanced at her to check.

“That was different,” Yanni said. “He was corrupt from birth, and he corrupted Elder Miknel and Elder Chini before becoming Primus.”

“They are all corrupt,” Tovos said. “They use the Xah as a weapon, and they use it against us.”

Nix wondered if she should step in. The anger driving Tovos and the fear driving the others was being fed by their failure of their mission and their despair at the lives they thought they’d lost. Though they weren’t that much younger than Nix, they’d been so sheltered and fed so many falsehoods about the galaxy and their place in it that Nix couldn’t help but feeling like she’d become the den mother for a group of particularly Dark Side vulnerable and well-armed toddlers.

She started to rise to inject some sanity into their discussion but Ayli grabbed her arm and silently shook her head, indicating for Nix to watch a bit longer.

“Which of them are corrupt doesn’t really matter, does it?” Felgo said. “We’re never going to see them again, we are alone in our silence.”

“Can we let a corruption in the Xah like that remain though?” Polu asked.

“We let the Jedi exist,” Osdo said.

“The Silent do not seek out conflict. We allow the Xah to bring to us the same conflicts it brings to all,” Tovos said, speaking by rote a maxim Nix could feel he didn’t fully believe in anymore.

It was odd being able to sense his emotional state so easily. He was still little more than a whisper in the Force, but the whisper was clearly there and only as quiet as it was out of a lifetime of habit.

“Maybe we should be seeking conflict,” Felgo said. “I mean, they taught us to close our eyes to what they were doing right? Isn’t that what Nix showed us? That we’ve been trained to be damned sheep? That all of this, everything we’re supposed to be, it’s all so they can can control us better? Why should we be silent about that?”

Nix definitely wanted to join the discussion there. She clearly remembered where that sort of explosive anger had led her and she was not about to let the little band in front of her go down that particular path to the Dark Side.

Once more though, Ayli wordlessly held her back, nodding towards Tovos for Nix to focus on what was really happening.

“We could do that,” Tovos said. “We could throw off our Silence. Take the Xah in our hands and use it to make things how we want them to be. I’m sure it would feel right. Like something we had to do.”

The words he didn’t speak were the ones the rest of his crew heard the most loudly.

“Oh, oh that’s what they did, wasn’t it?” Polu said.

“When they overthrew Primus Buchadi. They Expunged him as the rightful punishment for his crimes.” Yanni had a look of fresh dawning horror on her face as the Force confirmed each word she spoke.

“Which involved Expunging people in the Enclave who spoke against him,” Polu said, sharing the same horror as Yanni.

“Which they then continued to do themselves against everyone who spoke against them,” Osdo said.

“Or who tried to leave,” Felgo added.

“My older brother…” Tovos’s voice cutoff and all of the others nodded as a fresh wave of horror swept over them.

Tovos’s brother hadn’t been trying to leave the Enclave. He’d been used to stop someone from leaving the Enclave. A sacrifice to the Expunging ritual against someone who’d tried, as feebly as they were able to, to fight back.

Ayli ran a calming stroke down Nix’s arm which had gone tense as steel at the fresh evidence of what the Elders of the Enclave felt they were allowed to do.

“We’re not going to become them,” Tovos said, the fire of certainty fully returned to his voice. “We cannot find them to bring them justice, and we will not corrupt the Xah in an attempt to do so.”

“How will we even know what will corrupt the Xah though?” Polu asked. “The Elders were always the ones to guide us. If they were corrupt, then how can we know if anything they told us was or was not a corruption of the Xah?”

“You listen to it,” Nix said, after glancing at Ayli who nodded in agreement.

“We’ve always listened to the Xah though,” Polu said. “And we never heard any of this.”

“You did,” Ayli said. “You just weren’t allowed to notice it or remember it.”

“That’s not possible, is it?” Yanni asked.

“It’s difficult to do on most people, but definitely possible, and I’m sad to say, easier on you because they never taught you how to protect yourselves,” Nix said.

“Can you teach us?” Polu asked.

“Yes, but I don’t know if I should,” Nix said. “Don’t misunderstand me, I want you to be protected. The idea of you wandering the galaxy like you are seems like a horrible punishment for a crime you didn’t commit.”

“Why not teach us then?” Yanni asked.

“A few reasons,” Nix said. “First, how we approach the Xah and the Force is different. I know you can learn how I do things because Solna was able to pick up some simple shielding techniques in and five seconds of Ravas showing her what to do.”

“Solna is a prodigy. You’re concerned what she can do will be beyond us?” Tovos asked.

“Not at all. I mean, yes, she’s exceptional, but in my view, you all are,” Nix said. “No, what I’m concerned about there, is that I don’t want to change your relationship with the Xah to be like mine, since the relationship you have is special and let’s you do amazing things that I either can’t or would have a staggeringly hard time replicating.”

“Okay?” Yanni said, clearly uncertain of whether Nix’s appraisal was correct or not. “And the other reason?”

“The other reason is that you’ve been taught since birth not to trust people like me, other Force users, and I think part of proving I can be trusted, is to respect the boundaries you’ve set. I don’t want you to wake up tomorrow and feel like I tricked you into anything,” Nix said, which also didn’t seem to convince Tovos’ crew, so she added the most important idea she had. “And, I don’t think you need me to teach you how I do it. Your Elders shield themselves just as strongly as I do. I think protecting yourselves is something you can learn to do, your way. All it takes is practice and someone to work with, and that, that I am more than willing to do.”

“So you won’t turn us into Jedi, but you’ll help us turn ourselves into Jedi?” Tovos asked, an odd little quirk at the edges of his lips.

“They’re not Jedi,” Osdo and Felgo said in unison, which brought a much needed laugh to everyone in the cargo room, even Tovos.

“I was thinking more that you could turn yourselves in Elders. Elders as you’ve imagined them to be. Leaders and councilors,” Nix said. “Which, I suppose is what the Jedi made of themselves, but you’d be smarter than them.”

“We would be?” Tovos asked, amused incredulity rising over the fatigued anger and despair.

“Yeah. The Elders can get married right? The Jedi wouldn’t let their members do that. Kinda surprised it took them so long to fall if they believed in that kind of nonsense, but the galaxy is a weird place with plenty of room for weirdness,” Nix said.

“Wait, hey, that’s right, why didn’t we notice that before?” Yanni asked. “These two can’t be Jedi, they’re already married!”

“To be fair,” Ayli said. “We know a Jedi and a former Sith who are basically married too, so that particular Jedi tradition is a little flexible I would say, but yes, we are definitely married.”

“Even if we don’t exactly remember all of it,” Nix said.

“How do you not remember getting married?” Polu asked Nix. “Especially to her?”

Nix had to smile at that. Ayli was indeed an astounding catch.

“Copious amounts of Silur Brandy,” Ayli said. “Or was it Rasdan Schnapps?”

“Both. And, uh, I think we went for a round of Rembral ‘32?” Nix poked at the memories but even with the Force’s aid they were little more than a happy haze.

“It was a good night,” Ayli said.

“It was a good beginning,” Nix said.

“Maybe this is a beginning for us too then,” Osdo said. “Without the intoxicants.”

“It will have to to be,” Tovos said.

“Should we let our Cloak drop?” Polu asked. “We don’t need to keep it up against anyone anymore right?”

Nix felt the silence which surrounded them start to peel away but it was Ayli who stepped forward first.

“No!” she said. “Keep the cloak up! It’s all that’s protecting us at the moment.”

“Protecting us from what?” Felgo asked.

“We’re light years away from where we encountered the Death Shadows in this world, but they can move through the paths outside this world and are so much closer to us in the Force than they should be.”

“But you defeated them, didn’t you?” Yanni asked.

“I…it wasn’t exactly a defeat?” Ayli said. “I gave it to the Force. The Death Shadows are something like voids where a person should be. There are echoes in them, I think of what or who they once were and the echoes in that one called out for rest. Giving it to the Force sort of filled the void in and unmade the Shadow, but I don’t know if I can do that with all of them. The ones who come for us next will be the ones with less loss and more anger remaining in them I think.”

“So we’re going to be hunted by them for the rest of our lives?” Osdo asked.

“Not necessarily,” Nix said. “The Silent Enclave knows other means to keep them away. Means I probably disrupted when I broiled Dolon. If we can find them, I think I can convince them to share those secrets with us and the rest of the Enclave.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in using the Xah to compel people to do your will?” Felgo said.

“I don’t, and I won’t. I don’t like what it does to the Force, or what it does to me,” Nix said. “There’s lots of other methods of persuading people to do things though.”

“We will not find them using the Xah, not unless we truly corrupt it, and we will not do that,” Tovos said.

“What if I told you we didn’t need the Xah at all to find your people,” Nix said. “All we need is a quick stop at one of my favorite pirate havens.”