#SOMEHOW THIS ENDED UP GETTING LONG ENOUGH TO MAYBE BE MULTIPART GEEZ

[sl-walker]

Wanta try something in my sandbox? Dani or Croft and Ahsoka? Draq’

When they found her, she was laying unconscious, her two-toned hair soaking up the rainwater beating down against her red skin; laying two meters away was a blaster, and in her hand was a knife, but there was no blood, no open wounds.

Rayva was a new CorSec cop; like most new cops, she had a serious crush on Inspector Dani Faygan which went well beyond the fact that the Zeltron could heat up a room without so much as batting an eyelash.  There was something about the woman, with her quickfire intelligence and her genuine kindness that seemed to have half or more of the people who met her falling in love with her within a day, and those who failed to fall on day one usually started to by day two.

Finding her laying so still on the ground was a particularly awful jolt.

“We need a medic and transport at 81st and 12th, the side alley,” Rayva said into her comm, trying to keep her voice from quivering as she knelt in the puddles of water to check for a pulse, not even feeling the rain soaking into her BDUs.

If Dani felt it, she never stirred.

Draq’ was wearing a path into his carpet, a glass of whiskey untouched on a side table.  At any other time, he probably would have called that a crime, but tonight, he had poured it and then promptly forgot it, only to go to pour himself a second and realize he’d already poured a first, only to forget that it was still there as his pacing resumed.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been in situations like this before, but rarely had he felt so deeply helpless to change it.  Or, at least, avenge it.

“I’ve had every doctor I could get my hands on check her over, and nothing,” he had said, a handful of hours ago. “No poisons.  No wounds.  Nothing physically wrong with her, except bumps and bruises from these damned seizures, and no one can figure out what’s causing them.”

Bail Organa had been on one of his too-rare visits to Alderaan when Draq’ had called; everyone within their patchwork quilt of a group was invested in Dani, not only for her position in said quilt, but for who she was. “And you think that it might help for someone – or someones – with certain skills to come and investigate?”

“I think that every option needs to be looked at.”  Draq’ paused yet again, staring at the blue holo form of his friend and co-conspirator. “Have you got a handle on anyone like that?”

Bail nodded. “I might have.”

Draq’ had already tried to get ahold of his nephew, but Bryne had been on an assignment that had him radio silent.  That left the only other certainty he had, in terms of the ability to possibly see things that went beyond the physical, which meant hoping that she was actually on speaking terms with her employer and available.

At word that she was, even coded, Draq’ felt the tension fade just a fraction in his shoulders. “Make it quick, Viceroy,” he said, but his rumble wasn’t a command so much as a plea.

“You know it.  I’ll send word once I have confirmation.”

That was good, that helped, but Draq’ still ended up pacing even after word came back that Bail’s Fulcrum was on the way.

Dani’s hurt.  We need you.

It was a simple message, but it had sent Ahsoka’s heart barreling for her boots.

The tendency of their little, slowly growing rebellion to get into tangled, complicated shit probably should have made a record book somewhere, if not for the fact that it had to be conducted in secret for obvious reasons.  Ahsoka didn’t have much concept of a future where the Empire had fallen, despite that being exactly what she was putting life, limb, blood and hope on the line for, but she still fought anyway.

She wanted to be able to imagine a return to a republic, a less corrupted version of the democracy she had mostly grown up in; wanted to be able to envision some future where she could freely travel to any world without worry about a lightsaber on her belt or covering her face.  But no matter how hard she tried to envision such a world, it vanished out of her mind; melted away into plans for their next move.

Whatever galaxy it was she was trying to help happen, though, needed people like Dani.

Ahsoka had been tracking down a little gremlin of a man with loose connections to both organized crime and supposedly with the Imps; he was low priority, someone who might squeal with the right pressure in one of a few different jails she could drop him in, but she was the one in the sector and the one available to find him, so she had gone.

She also dropped his trail like a hot rock when that message came and one she had verified its origins and identifiers.

There was an almost inconvenience to loving people.  To sharing their lives, even if only in flashes and moments too fleeting; to being invested in their joys and sorrows.  For a long time, she had done her best to hold them all at bay; caring, yes, compassion, yes.  But letting herself love them as fully as they deserved to be had been a risk she couldn’t afford.  Her whole world had crumbled around her; the Order she grew up in, the brothers she grew connections with on the battlefield.  She had survived all of that, somehow, but becoming a part of something new, opening herself up to feeling with acute intensity the loss–

They say that the heart is the only organ that can break and still work, she thought ruefully, as she slipped into the tiny, private hangar where her ship had been docked, checking in with Arseven before rushing through pre-flight.  I wonder how many times it can take being broken before it stops.

Morbid thoughts.  Dani was hurt, not dead.  Part of losing and losing and losing meant flinching internally before the final blow even fell.

No.  Not this one, and not today, she decided, and turned her nose into the black skies.

There wasn’t much to do in hyperspace.

Ahsoka meditated.

With her eyes closed and the familiar comfort of her cockpit surrounding her, she sunk herself into the Force and let herself drift into the currents of energy that bound all life together.  She remembered how good Master Obi-Wan had been at this; he could seemingly sense Jedi half a galaxy away, if he went deep enough and managed to stay there long enough.  Ahsoka’s abilities weren’t quite the same, but she still sought out the dancing green and purple, knowing that there was a chance he wouldn’t be there; that they were too far apart to see one another, even in a galaxy so diminished of their kind of Force sensitive.

Meditation proved to be harder than she wanted, though; her thoughts kept intruding, quiet but persistent.  The braided lives they all lived.  Her hunt-brother, and his connection with Dani.  Her own, still new one.  The friends who were all bound together, in different and complicated weavings.

She was about to give up entirely when she felt him across the distance, just a ping, and something in her heart warmed, settled.

She shifted from attempting meditation to dozing instead, a smile on the corners of her mouth.

Draq’ looked, in a word, terrible.

Ahsoka had been shown in by a CorSec officer, a young woman with heartache in her eyes and when she told Ahsoka she had been the one to find Dani, Ahsoka had reached out and caught her shaking hands for a squeeze before letting her lead the way to where Draq’ was waiting.

He was dressed right, presented right, but there was something devastating in his eyes, and when he wrapped his arms around Ahsoka, she could feel the faint tremble through his frame.  She doubted he had slept in quite awhile; something about him felt both on-edge and weary at once.

When he let her go and stepped back, his gaze slid away; that, too, was worrying.

“Come on,” he said, resting his hand on the back of her shoulder, guiding her as he filled her in. “The doctors have run so many tests that I’m surprised she still has blood left in her.  Scans, labs, the works.  We’ve scoured every damned database in existence in case it’s some obscure poison, but nothing’s come back.”

Ahsoka nodded, listening intently to both his words and the tone of his voice; the frustration and the fear and the disgust.  Her own senses were picking up something that was making her uneasy, but it wasn’t coming off of Draq’.  It felt a little like the raw prickle of thistles against her skin and she was already starting to realize that it was–

Dani.

One moment, Ahsoka was stepping into the infirmary.  The next, she was all but pinned to the wall by the pain; twisted into the Zeltron’s Force signature, her presence as a living thing, were hot currents of suffering and desperation and fear.  Somewhere in Ahsoka’s mind, she noted that Dani wasn’t projecting it, that her empathic resonance wasn’t the cause, but then she had to catch herself on Draq’s shoulder for a moment before reeling back out of the room and to the nearest ‘fresher so she wouldn’t end up puking on the floor.

tbc…???