Author's Note: Thanks to everyone for all the support! You've been great with inspiring me, and I am highly appreciative of your input. If you have any tips writing tips, please feel free to comment.

As always, I continue to hope that I am doing justice to the spirit of Star Wars as well the respective authors and characters from which I borrow. Again, I gratefully accept constructive criticism as a means to help me develop my skills further as a writer.

Mandalorian (Mando'a) words

Buy'ce (BOO-chay, BOO-shay): helmet; Colloquially: pint, bucket    

Ika (EE-kah): diminutive suffix written as 'ika - also added to a name as a very familiar or childhood form, e.g, Ord'ika - Little Ordo

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Chapter 28

I needed to be free, to be able to live and explore. Bringing you into the galaxy was the greatest accomplishment I had done to date, but you didn't deserve a mother who would never be able to provide you with the attention a child requires. It would be unfair and cruel to stay with you, and we would only be miserable in our expected duties.

Excerpt from Queen Darian Psach's farewell letter to Princess Arlesse

Tochin Moon III, 786 Days ABG

As Jas returned his hand to the blaster, he felt Les'ika become less tense, her trust taking over and pushing aside her fear. He continued to instruct her gently, refusing to have her lose the opportunity to understand a moment in his world. "Remember to watch your target and don't close your eyes."

Raising her arms a fraction higher, Jas lined up the shot he had planned for her. His thumb clicked off the safety, and he felt her hands tremble slightly. "Fire."

Arlesse pulled her finger on the trigger, surprised at the minimal pressure it needed and recoiled gently into Jas, aware of how she curled slightly into his chest and arms. She realized that the weapon didn't draw enough power to push her against him, but she recoiled away from the tiny explosion that created a blue bolt releasing from the barrel. The azure bolt was deadly and entrancing, and she could never imagine having to fight through an endless sea of them, like Jas and so many of his soldier brothers were forced to do.

Forcing her thoughts back to the moment, Arlesse realized that the blaster bolt she had fired managed to land near the top of the large rock as a stain of black carbon scoring indicated the hit.

By now, Jas had set the safety back in place and began to loosen her fingers from the blaster. He clicked on the button inside his helmet once more and brought his arms from around her. "Test complete."

Again it was Mouse. "Confirmed."

"You've done that since you were a child?" Arlesse asked in awe, hoping for another moment to be wrapped in his arms again.

Jas nodded as he put the blaster back into the holster. "You either mastered it or you didn't return from the training exercises."

"Why were they so brutal to you, to all of you?" she asked, the thought of children being injured and killed sickening her.

"It was training," Jas explained. "We had to be the best. Someone in the Republic had paid for the best soldiers the Kaminoans could create. That's what the GAR became: cloned soldiers who survived training session after training session."

"I'll never understand it," she admitted. "It's cruel and inhumane."

"So is being kidnapped by a mercenary like Hazar," Jas countered.

Arlesse brought her eyes to Jas, her fingers brushing across the star on her collarbone as she remembered how Hazar tried to open the locket. It was sealed so that only she could open it, compliments of a minuscule chip had been embedded to read only her fingerprint.

Jas watched her small fingers as they grazed over the shiny metal adornment, the only piece of jewelry that she wore. He remembered that it was one of the first things he noticed about her after Hazar had been killed, and he thought it was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, its simplicity making it alluring. He had been curious about the pendant, aware of how she touched it occasionally, and he knew he had no right to what she carried in it. However, he could see that there were times she was protective of the piece of jewelry, and it was obviously not because of monetary value.

Unable to hold back the question any longer, his voice betrayed his nagging curiosity. "Why is that star so important to you?"

Arlesse intently studied his dark irises with hers. There were others who had asked about her pendant, but she never had the desire to talk about it with them. They usually were just looking for something to have a conversation about to pass time while they were stuck in her presence. Jas, though, was honestly concerned about her, wanting to know more, and he thought nothing of sharing his blaster with her to have her experience what it was like to use one. She could see in his eyes that he wasn't just having a conversation to pass time with her. He truly wanted to learn who she was and find ways to remember her, much as she had been trying to do for him.

"My mother gave it to me before she left," Arlesse finally admitted as she loosened the clasp in the back of her neck.

"I thought you said your mother died," Jas remembered quickly, thinking back to a conversation they had shared only a couple days ago.

"It's easier to think of her as dead than just gone," she told him sadly. "Saying she is dead usually helps to end an unwanted conversation a lot quicker."

Arlesse then opened the pendant, and a holo of a brown-haired woman emerged, seeming to stand before them in miniature. Her curls mirrored the ones around Arlesse's face, and she wore a highly detailed and embroidered gown that made Arlesse's seem like a peasant's dress in comparison. Opposite of this holographic young woman who shared a similar facial structure with Arlesse was another holo showing a number of lengthy paragraphs in a hand-written script, the wording in Basic.

Jas quickly glanced at the text and realized it was a farewell letter. He looked to Les'ika and saw the sadness in her eyes.

"Death isn't always about the end of breathing and living. It can be the end of anything, including marriage or motherhood."

Jas knew he was confused and didn't try to hide it while he gazed between the holos and Les'ika.

Arlesse studied the holographic portrait of her mother and explained, "My parents were part of an arranged marriage. Papa was the prince at the time, and my mother was an archduchess. It was a marriage designed to bring peace between one of the mining provinces and the governmental monarchy."

Looking solely at Les'ika now, Jas merely watched her face as it remained in some long-buried sadness while she continued her accounts of her parents' lives. "Papa had told me once that he always loved her, trying to earn her affections since the time they were adolescents. I know that he still loves her, even to this day, but my mother was the kind of person who needed her freedom. Prior to her marriage, she was in the midst of leaving Tochin because a monarchy wasn't where she belonged. My father knew that, but she had no sisters for him to unite with instead. Laws and traditions required my mother to stay and handle her royal responsibilities, and she had made a pact with my father. They would unite the people through their marriage, and she would give him an heir to the throne. However, she made a condition in their marriage contract that she would be free to leave when the time for her was right.

"Before I was old enough to really connect with her, she annulled the marriage and left. For years, I always had memories of a woman's voice calling me 'Lessa,' even though I could never figure out who that person was. I had begun to think the voice was just part of some dream I had in my infancy, but when I was about ten years old my father gave me this necklace. He told me it would give me the answers I sought for who my mother was and why I could never forget the sound of her voice."

Arlesse then closed down the pendant and returned it to her neck. "My father protects me so closely because he's afraid I'll leave him, too. I'm all he has left from the woman he loved. Papa never treated me as an heir to his throne and never forced me to become a princess with political worth. He always gave me the respect I deserved as his daughter, not as a royal pawn, and he only expected me to treat him as my father, not as a king."

Smiling sadly, Arlesse touched the star one last time. "Mama chose a star shape because she wanted me to know that even though she was free amongst the stars, she wanted to be connected with me in some way."

Jas sat for a long moment, trying to decide what to say. Her childhood loss was complicated and messy, and it seemed there was nothing to tell her that would console the constant ache she experienced for being rejected at such an early age. It made sense now why Les'ika always feared being turned away and why she could build such barriers to block out those who would attempt to discard her.

Silently, Jas brought his hand to her and allowed her fingers to wrap around his.

"Daylight is wasting!" Gath called.

Jas glanced behind him to see that his three brothers had their helmets in place and their kits set on their backs. Jas released Les'ika's hand to set his buy'ce on his head while Les'ika got to her feet as she picked up her bottle of water. Jas then took her hand again and stood up, allowing her fingers to lace into his. Moving slightly ahead of her as though to lead her through the day's journey, Jas decided that he would hold onto her in whatever way he could for as long as possible, and he could feel in her grasp that her feelings for him echoed the same.

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