The night was alive with enthused chatter and beautiful music. Plucked tunes from a duet of halliket intertwined with notes of a couple flutes and the voices of small, impromptu choir singing in Nabooian. Rix listened passively as he watched smoke waft up from the open fires that the street food vendors were busy cooking over. The sweet tang of blossom wine marinade reached Rix' nose as well as the woody scent of burning, but it wasn't enticing enough to make him reconsider helping himself to something to eat.
"You've got some nerve, Master."
A familiar voice, albeit one he hadn't heard in some years, rose above the notes of the celebratory song. An equally familiar woman moved through his contemplating gaze looking at nothing in particular. He had come to see her, to perhaps talk with her even, but her sudden presence was still surprising.
She settled against the limestone block wall beside him.
His frayed nerves screamed a sensation akin to freefall, expectant of the rejection crouching like a stalking cat in the tone of his former padawan's voice: serious teetering on the edge of seething. He knew it—he shouldn't have come.
In the next moment, her voice broke with a teasing lilt that couldn't be contained any longer. "Showing up with that long face." The rhythm of his heart eased as she laughed and gently elbowed him. "C'mon. Lighten up. Have a noodle bowl." As if expecting the shake of Rix' head, Miona was quick to offer an alterative. "At least a fried tintolive...or a few dozen. I only asked for so many because I thought that Master Farr might make it."
Rix nodded. "I was hoping to see her too," he admitted before finally looking over at her. "She suggested that I come see you."
The newly minted knight adverted her gaze from Rix, past the fool stalls to the Adnéat Canal. Rori's swollen belly reflected off of water's calm surface. A few more nights and her phase wax to full. "Yeah," she replied, voice more breath than syllable. "Thought so."
Shame washed through him in a chilling wave. He suppressed the urge to shiver, easing warmth through his veins in the wake of cold with Tapas. "If it's worth anything," he began, unsure if the words he planned to say would be meaningful to her but determined to say them nonetheless. Efret may have encouraged him to come, but he wasn't here to please her. Miona had to know that.
"I'm proud of you, Miona." Rix looked away from his former padawan to sweep his gaze over the celebratory scene ahead and around them. "This celebration, it's very nice. Very you."
Cracking a smile, Miona glanced at him, then out towards the gathering. "Thanks. I love a party as much as the next girl. Maybe it's a bit unJedilike, but they've already knighted me. They won't take it back."
Miona's expression emboldened him to chuckle softly. "They could," he said.
"They could," she agreed. "They won't," she added with a little shake of her head, almost not even there. But then it dawned on her that perhaps Rix wasn't joking. She looked at him with wide eyes. "They wouldn't."
Rix laughed again, eyes forward as he confirmed, "They won't." They probably wouldn't at least, not if Grandmaster Quinn had welcomed the likes of him into the fold.
Miona huffed, half annoyed and half amused. "Force leave you!" She swatted at his shoulder.
"Young lady!" he pretended to scold. He sidestepped and uncrossed his arms, raising one to protect himself. His hand caught her wrist in a gentle grasp, which he expected her to pull away, but she hovered it there.
Her gaze had drifted past him, past and up into the clear night.
There was no time for him to say her name before she asked a question instead.
"Is that Nirrah?"
Rix pulled away and turned around, floating his attention to trace the path of Miona's. A convor flew towards the pair, familiar in her aura rather than her form at her present distance.
"Why's she here?" Miona wondered.
That question didn't beg an answer—not now, not really. They both knew that whatever wind Nirrah flew on now was one of misfortune. Seeing Nirrah without Efret was a very bad omen.
Rix extended his arm again, this time offering it as a perch.
"Master, why's—?"
The air rippled under Nirrah's beating wings, caressing through her tan feathers as she came to land on the Researcher's forearm.
Miona moved up to Rix' side. Glancing from Nirrah to his profile, she noticed his pupils constrict, a state of complete ocular relaxation, like that in someone who was sleeping. Or like Efret's whenever she let Nirrah see for her.
"What is it?"
A beat passed. Two. The more time passed, the more the music filling the square grated against her senses. The only sound she wanted to hear was Rix' voice answering her. She grew worried that the quiet meant that he wouldn't, or, worse, would sugarcoat the truth on a night that was supposed to be about her.
"Don't you ruin a perfectly good reunion by lying to me," she demanded at a hushed volume.
"Master Farr's left us."
It was Miona's turn to let the silence stretch. The answer floated between them, amorphous in the void. She grasped for it, trying to understand its meaning, until the euphemism occurred to her: Master Farr had fallen to the Dark side.
"What?" Miona felt like a holofilm stuck on one line of dialogue, but she couldn't stop the questions from coming. "H-how?"
Slowly, Rix' pupils blew back to their baseline size. He drew his arm bent at her elbow closer to his chest, bringing his free hand to cascade over Nirrah's back.
Miona reached out to pet the avian too.
"Nirrah watched her summon a Sith," he said, looking to Miona. Although his own vision had come back and he saw the plaza behind her, he was anything but grounded in this reality. "I don't recognize her." Neither the Sith nor Master Farr. Sure, she was in her same body, and she was the kind of woman who would converse with a Sith given an opportunity, but there was something different about this conversation. Emotions that Rix had never known her to feel hung heavy around her: anger, self-hatred, resentment, petrifying despair.
Feelings that fed the Sith like carrion fed vultures.
The retreat of Miona's hand caught his attention.
"Miona?" In an instant, the Force tingling through his skin, he stopped stoking Nirrah and caught Miona's hand. "Miona."
She shook her head in disbelief. Her eyes remained downcast, looking at her hands beginning to shake. "Force, I knew that she was carrying some heavy regrets, but...I-I thought that..."
When she trailed off and seconds of silence passed again, Rix didn't speak, not because he didn't have anything to say but because he could feel that she wasn't truly finished.
She met his eyes again, her own devoid of herself—her warmth, her love, her playfulness. When she spoke, her breath was short, her tone soft. "If the Sith can take one of the best of us, what hope does anyone else have?"
Rix shook his head. "No less than we did yesterday." He slid his free hand onto her shoulder. Like a prism, it intensified the qualities of the Light. "Ground yourself. Breathe."
Fluttering her eyes closed, Miona focused as she was bid.
When she opened them again, she spoke much more steadily. "What are we going to do?"
"We?"
"Yes, we," she repeated decisively. "She brought us together again, Master. To find closure, I think. I thought I wanted that, needed that, but I don't. What I need is to be a team again. And to bring her back with you."
Rix pressed his lips together thoughtfully. He had half a mind to say no, but not because saving a fellow Jedi from the Darkness was a highly ambitious and dangerous first mission for a knight. Because their last mission had gone so terribly wrong, and because it had been his fault.
"Please."
Fuck your ego, he told himself.
"I'll find you in the cafeteria at dawn," he told Miona. "Try to get some sleep, Knight Anten."
That was a tall order. He knew he wouldn't be able to get a wink.
