Private Chasing Stars & Stellar Winds

[Asmus Janes]

“A lot of soul searching, a lot of work, a few pointers,” he summarized. He swallowed and let his hands fall back to his sides. He turned to try and follow the sound of her voice. If Jay hadn't been lighting the path his night vision might have spotted her outline. She wouldn't see the faint hint of a smile in the shadows, but he dipped his head in just the same way he always did when he was feeling apprehensive about a smile.

It really was Kaile. In hindsight he could perhaps claim that raising the past had been a method of ensuring it really was her calling to him through the darkness. It hadn't been. Not at all. Even if she had a firm voice of command he could never be too intimidated by Kaile, only shocked. But suddenly she felt more real, more tangible.

He desperately longed to see her.

It had been far too long. Vo was right, he should have fully dedicated himself to this. At the same time he couldn't dismiss the work they had done. The lives that had been saved by the little operation that he had built. Kaile had always believed in him. If he finally got to see Amadgenar again his imperfect side might just try and rub it in his face.

“How have you been?” he asked. It wasn't the light, casual way the question was usually asked. It was normally asked more out of routine and politeness. Right now, the answer was the most important thing to him.

As he let it sink in, he realised the parallels between the Subversion incident and Surabi. He had forced her hand again. When he was weak, typically around the two glass mark on whiskey days, he would let his mind imagine a world where he had done or said something different that had led to them staying together. They had lost five years, now they had lost another five months.

He didn't want to lose the rest of their lives. He planted his hands on his hips. His own fingers trembled lightly.

 

[Kaile Vera]

“So the fault lies on me.” the former agent replied thoughtfully. Concerned. Aware of that hint that she was slightly upset. Not at Asmus, but at herself. I wasn’t careful enough.

What if it hadn’t been Asmus that found her? What if it had been someone else? What if it had been the First Order or the Sith Empire and they managed to come for her here? What would have happened to Bujark and the nest? With the community? With our baby?

Kaile’s throat gave a bob as she swallowed hard.

“Not as careful as I ought of been,” she replied to his inquiry on her status. Lowering her gaze, she could barely make out the tight wads of fabric within her grip. In more ways than one. Anxiety let her release the fabric with her hands and instead lightly rub her belly.

“It’s been hard.” it was a strange scene, to say the least. Asmus wouldn’t be able to see her but Kaile could still make out his silhouette under the starlight. She was hidden away at the top of the ramp, so narrowing down where she sat would require adjusting to the dark and locating her.

“Harder than most. Not as bad as the last,” she admitted, although not quite referencing what last time meant.

“D’you find what you were lookin’ for? Pavin’ your own path? Reckon going back to Ess Eye Ess did that.” she still couldn’t understand why he went back, likely wouldn’t ever. Their worldviews differed in that. Kaile was seven years his elder and her entire life had been one intel mission to the next. At first it had been fun, amusing. Exciting. To be able to slip in and out of so many identities. It was only after meeting Kurt that Kaile realized it was also an extremely lonely position. No home. No real friends. No real family. Even deeply embedded meant that she couldn’t contact other intel agents or fell Resistance fighters. Kaile, was ultimately alone. It was no wonder she latched onto Bobo like she did.

 

[Asmus Janes]

“Meeting them didn't last long,” he admitted. “There's nothing left now.” In his mind there was a clear demarcation between finding the SIS frigate and the small band he had formed afterwards. He had not asked anyone to follow him away from there. His little starfighter and the Quintessence pulling away, only to be followed be several more and a shuttle.

“I'm sorry, I didn't have time to really explain in a five word message through Jay.” Time changed everything. The emotions he had felt that day a ghost of their former selves. It was the now that mattered.

“Had to make a scene didn't I? Well...I can explain every step I took so you can understand why no one else can follow my path.”

Fault. It made it seem like something untoward had happened on account of a perceived mistake. He could understand her being disappointed at her plans not working as intended, but it was still difficult. Then again, he told himself, she hadn't been exactly pleased to see him on the Subversion shuttle. Not at first anyway.

“Where are you Cara? Under that freighter?”

 

[Kaile Vera]

Cara. Hearing it, despite it being the identity Kaile had taken up for more than five months now caused the former agent to flinch. It was a reminder that even though Asmus stood in front of her and was having as typical of a conversation under the circumstances, he was merely addressing another mask.

"Where I'm at ain't important right now," Kaile responded, taking a deep breath, so her shoulders rose. The anxious massage over her abdomen slowed. She swallowed. She didn't want him coming over to her. Not before she was ready.

"And I know - got the notice some hours past." that drawl was returning to her speech.

"Whatever path you took means I made a mistake somewhere. Left a trail. That was careless." a mistake. Kaile knew that shouldn't make mistakes. Not after all this time. Asmus was a distraction. It wasn't his fault. This was her own. They told her time and again not to get attached, to focus on the mission. She'd been warned that getting deeply embedded meant that it was possible to believe one was living their own life, but they were always tied to the organization. They were to drop everything and move forward with precision when given an activation call.

"You did," Kaile admitted in regards to Asmus making a scene. She couldn't hide the half melancholic chuckle.

"Nor did you listen to my orders. " she'd remind him, but it wasn't said with ill will or resentment. To a degree, Kaile had to admire his ability to push back on authority. It was something she'd never been able to do. Foolish, but perhaps that was a reflection of his youth.

"I did everythin' I could to give you a new start, Liam. To step out of this mess." now it was Asmus on the receiving end of being addressed under a different name. How would that feel?

"I don't understand why you went back."

 

[Asmus Janes]

“Knew they would be afloat, had to know the score with my wing.” It seemed simple to say it out loud, but there was another piece of the picture.. “Vo helped find you, eventually. I did everything as carefully as I could, but I can lay it all out for you.” If she understood how he had come to be here then she could understand any risk. There might have been something he had missed, but he didn't understand the situation that would make her even more risk averse than usual.

“I know you did and I'm grateful. Needed to become Liam more than once. It is time now. No one is fighting any more. Neither side. Everyone is walking away and I even helped some of them do it.” Asmus was well aware of how hypocritical that now sounded.

“But…” his voice finally broke. He had managed to keep a confident, even tone most of the way. Now it came crashing down.

“But I'm not ready to walk away from you. Can we go somewhere else?” he asked. Somewhere else was somewhere he could use her real name. Where he could actually set his eyes upon her again.

 

[Kaile Vera]

That Vo, her SIS handler had assisted Asmus in tracking her down surprised her. She was taken aback by it. It wasn't that Kaile had been unable to read the Sullustan, there more times more often than naught that the former agent could tell that he meant well, but he was bound by protocols and the needs of the many. Everything that they did, every bit of intel could very well save the lives of billions. The job came with sacrifices. Kaile knew that all the more this time around.

However, that quickly dispersed from Kaile's mind at Asmus' plea to take this conversation elsewhere. She heard the emotion thicken in his tone, a crack in his voice. Hearing him say that he wasn't ready to walk away from her equally broke her heart as it filled her joy.

Please don't say that now. Please, Kaile wanted to say, eyes falling shut as that familiar tension grew behind her eyes. Her arms would encircle herself further, starting to rock gently.

"No, we c-can't," she replied her own voice breaking. The sounds of the woman struggling to control her breathing came drifting along with the sea breeze. "It ain’t so simple."

"Just what were you expectin'? " this time it was her turn to try and make sense of the nonsense that was going through her mind.

 

[Asmus Janes]

“That you'd hear me out,” he said quietly. “And that maybe, just maybe you'd leave here with me. Or I would stay.”

It was the rocking motion that drew his gradually adjusting eyes to her. She was in a recess of the ship. The landing ramp perhaps, it was hard to tell from here.

Asmus couldn't force her to see his way. He knew there was still a gulf between how they viewed the world. He just hoped that it wasn't so large between how they saw each other.

Here they were, at the tipping point. He wouldn't get another chance.

“Sometimes,” he said and this time there was a boldness in his voice. For the last few months he had been in command of everything he saw. Even if that had been a small collective. He wasn't an Amadgenar. He didn't demand obedience, he respected and requested the ideas of those around him. He thought they had done some good. A few thousand safe refugees of good.

“Sometimes it takes is simple. The complicated stuff falls underneath. The details. Do you want to be with me? That is simple. Nothing else but you an’ me matters for that. I don't care which stars I wake up to any more Kaile, I just want them to be the ones you're underneath.”

Asmus didn't take a step towards her. He just drew himself up and changed his stance to face her.

 

[Kaile Vera]

At that point, the sound of Kaile's almost manic laughter would cut the growing tension. It was mounting, gestating, much like the life growing in her womb. At this point, Kaile was almost of the same mind as Vo had been weeks earlier. Asmus was naive.

"No, it ain't," she replied with equal emotion, eyes flashing open to catch the shift in his silhouette. He'd managed to glean just where she'd been sitting at. Well, that was bound to happen sooner or later, same as the words that came bubbling out.

"I ain't who you think I am. " there was distress in her voice as if using the very words to be the nails to hammer down what he wasn't considering.

"Half the time it is hard enough to make sense of it myself. I play pretend to be other people; I always have. I'm always someone else." as if to drive it home, "Just like I was five years ago and no different than when you found me on that extraction."

"You don't know me nor e-everythin' I'd done. " she shook her head, the length of pink hair swaying back and forth along her cheeks. The pinpricks were stinging her eyes now, and she held herself tighter. Funny how in the dark, when he couldn’t see her, she was finally able to say it. Or maybe it was because in actuality, she wouldn’t be able to see the judgment in his eyes. It wasn’t for a lack of faith in Asmus, just what the Lorrdian had long since convinced herself.

"Who've I've hurt." Kurt. Quin. Asmus, as well.

"And if'n you did, you'd be thinkin' a different tune." Kurt had proven that when she'd told him before, back on Tatooine. He'd been furious, felt betrayed. And he'd been her sole other connection in the 'verse at that time other than Bobo. The first real human interaction she'd let herself take.

It was back then when Kaile first realized what it really meant to be an agent then, how that affected others. What costs it came? Asmus and Quin only reinforced that.

For Asmus, it was so easy. But for Kaile, it was far more than just the desperate and longing need to be able to be with him.

 

[Asmus Janes]

“Is the answer yes or no? I'm not saying everything else isn't important. Who you are, what you think that will mean to me, we're not going to find that out unless we try.

“So we start with what we do know. What we know we don't know we work out next.” It was almost phrased like any mission plan. The same as any Rogue Squadron or the SIS would do.

“I've thrown so much at finding you again. Please, be honest with me, be honest to yourself. Do you want to be with me?”

That confidence was wavering. Everything was at stake here. She had control and he was stood here, open to her. Asmus fell silent. He waited.

 

[Kaile Vera]

Tears were already carving a trail of silver down her cheeks. Nothing is black and white. Vo knew this. Kaile knew this. There were several shades of gray in between.

"You don't understand." she shook her head. Kaile wanted to answer his question; desperately so. The words were there, caught at her throat, but fear and everything she'd convinced herself over the past six years had hammered her down into a specific view of the 'verse.

"I c-can't answer that. Not now. " swallowing hard, "it isn't easy A.." her voice broke, choking on his name. Kaile took a deep shuddering breath.

"It ain't black and white. Yes or no. " the frustration and her anxiety were bubbling through, the rocking continued, the former agent forcing herself to sit still.

Because if I tell you, yes and then I tell you everything... only to have you hate me would just tear me apart.

 

[Asmus Janes]

“I'm sorry, I've put you on the spot,” he murmured. “I think you know the answer. I think you're afraid to say it out loud. Like when I tell you I love you. Can't hide from that when it's out there. A real thing. Even if everyone already knew.”

He breathed in and let out a long sigh. He took half a step forwards and then stopped where he was. All he wanted to do was to hold her and tell her that everything would be okay until she could believe it.

“What can you answer? What can you tell us both?” it was a demand. It was a soft request. A man who had come a long way searching for a glimmer of hope at the end of the journey.

 

[Kaile Vera]

What could I tell him? Ah, that answer made Kaile shudder. It made her drag a breath of cold air deep into her lungs, breathing in the salt of the ocean, the acrid scent of hydraulic oil, and coconuts.

The Lorrdian visibly struggled to come to terms on what she could tell him. Part of her knew the answer, another warned her to ignore it. To not reveal it to him. Either way, should she tell him about Quin and if he'd be angry, then should she avoid telling him about the child she carried right now? Was that even fair to him? It wasn't in the past. Kaile made the decision then. She'd been perfectly willing to make it once more before he arrived; had in fact done so when she committed to not returning to the SIS and going AWOL.

Now Asmus sudden appearance and plea for an answer, to admit that she loved him and to say that she wanted to be with him, to stay with him, just threw everything into disarray.

It was a long while before Kaile made her decision. Longer still before she managed to say it, heart, guilt, and melancholy choking at her throat.

"Those four days meant everything to me," she began, her voice a hoarse whisper, "But the girl you meet wasn't me." the context became clearer, "No matter how much I wanted to stay in contact. I'm everyone and no one. That means it can't be safe. I learned that from Kurt. People could get hurt, and it would be my fault."

"... I knew you had plans. " another breath, "You had all these brilliant plans to go to the academy. I knew you could do it. I knew you would do well and find your place among those stars." A pause, "And I knew that wasn't with me."

"So I told myself you would be better off." She swallowed hard. Stars, it was hard to say it. To admit it. It was as if Kaile were ripping the scab off a wound that had refused to heal for years. Festering and poisoning her from within with guilt. "So I left you well aware of that."

This time, her voice cracked. A fresh wave of silent tears came.

"I just wasn't expectin' that I wouldn't leave alone..." Her voice fell an octave then, the sorrow that coated it almost tangible.

 

[Asmus Janes]

“Kaile…” the alias had been truly abandoned. His heart ached for the girl who had decided he would be better off alone. “...I would have made you…” Asmus stopped. Most of my plans. It had taken a little longer for his emotionally wrought brain to untangle that last admission.

Not alone.

Never in his life had he been so conscious of forcing a single breath of air into his lungs. His mouth became dry. The implication of that sentence struck him like a speeder. His heart was pounding, he felt a little unsteady.

“Okay,” he murmured quietly. It was the pain in her voice that tugged at him. Was she hiding up there because there was a five year old child behind her?

No, he realised suddenly. He refused to believe that Kaile could have spent almost an entire month with him and not tell him that. If that was true, then just maybe she wasn't who he thought she was. Despite all her protests, he always felt he knew Kaile. Not the identities and the history, something deeper.

“What happened?” he asked. Now it was his voice that was broken. Asmus had stood before her, vulnerable to her words. He had never expected that this was what she would admit to them both. He took a firm step forwards this time. It wasn't right talking to shadows.

 

[Kaile Vera]

Kaile's red-rimmed eyes managed to catch the motion, and she immediately brought her hand up, a telekinetic block that would make Asmus feel as if his feet were rooted to the ground. It would bring to mind just what the former agent had been capable of when Asmus first found out about her Force abilities.

"Don't." the woman choked out. "Just... please... don't come any closer."

"This is already hard enough as it is." came her hoarse plea. In close to six years, Kaile never thought that she'd be revealing the most agonizing time of her life to Asmus with only the stars as witnesses. That she'd confess it all in the dark. But it was easier this way. No spotlight on her and she couldn't see the look of horror he likely had in his eyes.

"I didn't know what to do then. I was an agent in the SIS." Kaile would continue. "And... and I wasn't able to confirm she was yours until after. " Asmus should very well remember the state Kaile been back then. She had wanted to forget, and she hadn't been a saint. However, after those first few days with Asmus, she had tried so hard to keep herself in check. To not take advantage of him like she knew she could.

"By then, you were doin' good with your life. Got accepted to Sullust Academy... " The words alone indicated that the former agent had still kept tabs on Asmus. She hadn't just forgotten.

"By then, I couldn't just let her go and had already decided to keep her." There was far more to the story, but Kaile was already struggling with revealing what she had thus far.

"Named her Quin. " Kaile's voice cracked," Thought it was proper." her voice became muffled; she had hidden her face in the palms of her hands.

"But I was stupid. I wasn't careful. I should have been careful." a sob carried the anguish that Kaile still felt.

"And I l-lost her..."

 

[Asmus Janes]

No barrier was needed to keep him rooted to the spot then. Even if he hadn't realised that she needed some distance and the darkness as a shield, he couldn't think about walking and still process what she told him. He could barely stand.

As if an artist had dropped his pallette every emotion was splashed across his soul. There was shock as those words coalesced into meaning.

He couldn't help but imagine. Imagine a place where Kaile was stepping aside to reveal a five year old girl who was scared at the thought of meeting her father for the first time. That brought the pain. Raw, undiluted pain. It felt as if a clawed beast had ripped through his back, into his torso and started rending everything apart.

Even though she couldn't see him, he looked at her with desperation, looking for some answers which could shield him from the hurting. Then came incredulity as he canted his head to one side questioningly. How could that have even happened? He'd been taking the pills! It couldn't be…

His chest felt tight, breathing became difficult. He gently swayed on the spot. The anger followed. How could she have not considered him? She had all means available to contact him. She had been bearing his child. She had...

How could she possibly have not told me?

She was thinking of you when she kept this from you at first, he thought.

With each breath his anger abated. His mind was racing, but finally it found something it couldn't pass by quickly. He took the Kaile before him and placed her in a devastating mental image. No family, no father of the child. Maybe not even any friends. Curled up in a cold Alliance facility. Silently sobbing to herself in that way she did. He placed himself in her position and had to close his eyes to force back the wave of anguish.

How could she have possibly told me?

“Quin,” he murmured the name. Letting it sink in. Letting the full impact of the name's origin strike him.

He'd been galavanting off chasing his stars. She'd been left with a grim reality there was no way to change. If she'd picked up the comm and called she would have had to explain that she had been pregnant and that she had lost the child in the same breath. To relive it all. His toes curled up in his boots. All alone with that pain. Realisation struck that he was forcing her to relive it now. He looked up angry at himself for being so focussed on himself.

“Kaile?”

He swayed where he stood, feeling lost. Feeling wretched for thinking about himself instead of her at first. She had been through that all. Not him. Suddenly the pain he had seen since they had been reunited made more sense. She must have wanted to forget him, such a painful reminder of what she had been through.

“I'm so sorry,” he whispered as one hand came up to stroke her hair. “I'm so sorry… I wasn't there for you…”

He leaned into the barrier slightly, but it held him there. He wasn't certain that if he tried to walk closer he wouldn't stumble anyway.

“Thank you for telling me.” More than anything else he just wanted to comfort her now. Suddenly the future didn't seem as important as being right next to her now. He couldn't make this right. He couldn't have made it right back then either. But there was a desperate, instinctive need to be with her, to hold her close.

 

[Kaile Vera]

Hearing Asmus say thank you for telling him almost made Kaile laugh. Out of despair, out of disbelief, out of the ridiculousness of the situation. Her emotions were a pendulum swinging from one extreme to the next.

"Don't say that." Kaile rushed out, shaking her head.

"Don't apologize for somethin' which you had no control over. That was mine and mine alone." My choices, my decisions, my own stupidity at what resulted in the miscarriage.

"We were worlds apart then...and you were so young." and there was so much more that Asmus didn't know. To have been faced with that kind of responsibility? Just when he'd entered the Academy, full of dreams and a desire for adventure. To chart his own stars.

It was much the same as today. Telling Asmus about her pregnancy now would only be forcing him into a decision. And how would she even segway into explaining that?

Kaile drew in a shuddered breath, sniffling and using the back of her hand to wipe at her nose and then her palms on her wet cheeks.

"So it ain't a matter of yes and no. It ain’t a matter of if’n I want to be with you or not." stars, hearing him say her name had only tugged on the frayed chords of her heart. Of her wretched soul.

"I have to consider everythin' -- even now. I can't afford makin' more mistakes. I've other lives to consider. I can't take risks. " I can't risk our other child as I did before. Another shuddered breath, "And I can't in good faith let you stand there sayin' you want me when there is so much you don't know. "

A pause, then a weary, muffled sigh.

“You already lost the life you had. Your home. Your family. Your identity… everythin’. That hit you. That hit you hard. I ain’t ruinin’ that again.”

 

[Asmus Janes]

“I was young.” He took a breath as he tried to find his footing. A sigh mirrored her own. “Don't know what I would have done. Would have tried though, but you're right. Was your decision.”

“I'm never, ever, going to judge you for that,” he said emphatically. He hated this barrier between them. When he could hear her trying to keep control all he wanted to was to come closer. She probably wanted that too, which was why the barrier was here. There was no thinking his way around it either. This wasn't the time for drastic action.

He had been young. There had been worlds between them. Then.

“It did hit me,” he admitted. “Didn't expect everything to go down the like that. But I found my way.”

His voice was quiet now. He had found his way and eventually it had led him here. To her. “Please, I'm not who I was. Not five months ago, not five years. I'm standing here, asking please, in good faith, you tell me what you think would change my mind. See if it does.”

If she hadn't delivered that news it might have sounded like a firm demand. Instead it was a softly spoken request. He didn't understand quite what it was the Kaile had yet to tell him about the situation right now, let alone her past. He couldn't understand that she felt telling him that would make him feel obliged to choose a certain course.

 

[Kaile Vera]

Kaile gave that strained chuckle again. It wasn't to mock him, but an expression of the absurdity of how quickly he could say that without realizing that regardless, she'd be forcing him into a situation.

"It is easy to say now that you'd have tried back then, but that would have not only placed you at risk but also thrown a monkey wrench at all your plans. " she insisted as if to drive it home all the more what she held back now would be just the same.

"And for what? Some stranger you picked up off a quarantined cantina who was just lookin' to forget the shit decisions and circumstances that made someone I cared about feel betrayed and angry that I placed him and his family at risk because of what I am?"

"I'm an undercover intel agent, Asmus -- I can't tell folk what I do. Who I am. What my real name is." she cried out into the night. It was a good thing that Sky Ridge Island was so isolated, for the heated conversation was bleeding out truths like a sliced vein, “To do so is to put them at risk, and to become attached, that risk grows even more.”

"Four days. We had four... wonderful days when I thought I wasn't gonna survive that emotional hellhole I done put myself in. But it was just four days compared to a lifetime of responsibility when you already had plenty to look forward to and none with an SIS agent you'd still never be able to know the complete truth of. Who could never offer a normal life. Look how much that one interrogation with that Dark Jedi affected you on a cargo inspection — do you think I’d ever want you to go through that or worse back then just cause if me if I’m found out?” She called back to what he had confided in her in the cockpit of the Quinessence,”You wouldn’t have been able to explain it to your family. Or more to the point, yous told me back on the Quin that you wanted to leave that which you felt weighed you with a life you didn’t plan for yourself to begin with.”

Kaile took a sharp breath, throat raw at having said aloud what she'd told herself dozens of time before.

"Even now.... Even when alls I wanted was to give you a new chance at life, you still went back— your path that you wanted to take on and chart on your own. Not what I planned for you. It’s that sense of duty. That's a part of you that I admire as much as it frustrates me.” Her right hand came out in the darkness to gesulate in emphasis.

“What was the plan if'n you hadn't found me? What then? What if I do say yes I want to be with you, then what? Where does that leave us? " it was clear she was growing even more frustrated at his perceived naivety.

“And what’s worse… is that I know full well it ain’t fair of me to answer you without givin’ you what you don’t know. But I ain’t seein’ a path where I tell you everythin’ and bein’ sure it’s really what you want to sign up for…”

"I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't," Kaile murmured quietly, worn, wary, and spent. Her head hurt, her soul felt as if it were torn asunder and left bare fully knowing there was another maelstrom just waiting to hit. Kaile knew that Asmus wore his heart on his sleeve and he could just as easily be swept into feeling a sense of responsibility. Even more so after telling him about Quin.

How could she ever know if his desire to stay with her was because he wanted to and not just because of a sense of duty he’d feel again?

 

[Asmus Janes]

There it was. The reason she had been in such a dark place on the Quintessence. Kurt. The reason she didn’t want to keep him now. She blamed herself for what had befallen him too. All the little pieces were falling into place.

He almost smiled at how his actions were both admirable and frustrating. Kaile wasn’t alone there. Certainly it seemed as if he was always going to have that effect on people. She was upset. She was falling back into that speech pattern that tended to come through when she was tired or emotional. Same as him forgetting to call her Cara out in the open.

Neither of them was going to be in a good mindset to make decisions, he realised. Asmus looked down at the floor. He breathed slowly until he could feel his hands stop trembling. Like taking a run at a destroyer with the computer counting down to the perfect firing solution. He had to steady himself.

Asmus looked back up at her. At the vest least he could answer her questions.

“I have contacts on Carida, Naboo and Rendili. The others have all got orders to go there if I don’t come back. Everyone is moving on with their lives. Or stay here, if you still think it’s safe after I explain how I got here. First Order isn’t very active, Sith are staying in their corner of space. The war just...petered out. I’d like to think...that I did some good over the last few months. Not for duty, but because I wanted to. But it’s over now.

“Don’t...don’t plan for me. Just...be you. If I don’t know who you are then show me. Do you want to take that path where you decide what’s right for me? Where you don’t even give me a chance. I’m not judging you for what happened last time Kaile. I want you, now.”

 

[Kaile Vera]

The time that Asmus spent gathering his bearings was also used by Kaile to get a hold of herself. Exhausted physically and emotionally, the Lorrdian could only stare out into the darkness where Asmus stood. He was still held in place by a mental check of the Force, but even now, Kaile was struggling to concentrate.

After a few moments, she finally would ask, "What do you mean it is over now?" that was regarding the pilot stating that while his actions the past five months resulted in a lot of good, it was now over. What did that mean?

Her mind was already mulling over his last, that plea to please give him a chance to, at the very least be able to decide on his own what path to make. To have an informed decision. To have a little faith in him with just that.

She certainly did want to know how he'd been able to track her down. Regardless of the answer, Kaile wasn't about to place the baby at risk.

Hearing Asmus tell her that he wanted her now tugged at a string of hope. However, he was battling against the years of mental reinforcements that her approach of pushing people away was the best outcome for everyone. Kaile had a kind heart, and her previous experiences taught her that stepping away was often the best solution.

However, now they were in different circumstances. The war wasn't much of a war, to begin with. Kaile had no desire to go back after the ash call. She didn't want to place herself or the baby at risk. Did Asmus wish to go to Carida, Naboo, or Rendii just to jump back and provide support in any manner he could? Was he still searching to make a difference with a resistance? The former agent couldn't fault him for that.

But she couldn't risk it either.