Lux had had his nose broken twice in his life before this. The first had been in his fourth year of schooling in a fight against a boy twice his size that his friends had pushed him into – something about teaching him to stand up for himself. (He still resented them for it, even if they no longer spoke.) The second had been when, of no fault of his own, he'd discovered that Saw's aim was no less precise and his punches no weaker when he was drunk and reminiscent.

But Recognition and familiarity did little to dull the pain, and Lux had no bandages to staunch the bleeding or bacta casts to set the ruined cartilage back into place. What he did have was a pounding head that was quite possibly concussed, a weapon in his hands, and just enough presence of mind to raise it before his commando droid sparring partner used the same opening he'd given it earlier and bashed his skull in.

Lux shifted his weight as much as he dared and kicked beneath their crossed metal quarterstaffs. As he'd expected, the impact of striking a solid metal chest plate made his whole body quake, but despite the worsening pain in his head and blood rapidly streaking down his chin, he held his ground long enough to get free.

Then, ignoring the angry yowls of his instructor, an ex-military man Lux had a feeling was kicked out of the Onderonian Army for starting too many fights with his comrades, he broke into a dead sprint away from the droid to the tall platforms here and there that would offer him higher ground.

He stumbled and pitched to one side, and the split-second flash of adrenaline and fear that rose to stop him from falling was enough to clear his head. He was quick to stamp them back down after that, even when two more commando droids hummed to life in their charging stations. Just as it was at the negotiating table, in the training arena Lux's anger and panic could only be allowed to exist while they served him, gave him focus.

He'd never fought alone at this level before. His father knew as well as he did that this module was meant as a paired exercise. Lux could already sense he was going to need half a day in the bacta tank when all was said and done, but what choice did he have but to do as he was bid? What choice had he ever had these past two years, trapped as he was like a convor in a golden cage?

Good. Anger brought drive, and drive sometimes gave his brain enough of a boost to scrape past failure into the lower reaches of mediocrity. Gods knew he had too little strength or skill at fighting to get there on his own.

Lux wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve, ignoring the hot spark of pain when the back of his hand nudged the dislodged cartilage even further out of place. The platform was just ahead. If he could just get on top of it–

A metal grabber closed around his shirt and yanked him backward; his staff flew from his hand. Too late, Lux remembered that despite their bulky metal exoskeletons, commando droids were much faster than he was even with a lead.

The commando droid tripped him on a well-placed limb before he could touch the solid carpet-over-duracrete platform before him. Lux fell gracelessly onto his back with a groan, but this time, he was sharp enough to see through the pain. Rolling the side in time to avoid the droid's downward jab, he braced himself on the floor and swung his legs sharply into the droid's.

His opponent dropped like a bag of rocks, and that was when Lux snapped onto the offensive. He snatched the droid's staff away and brought it down against its spindly metal neck, grinning despite himself when the all-too-rare chime sang out of the droid's voice modulator to mark his hit. It would be a full two minutes before it got to its feet again.

His instructor was yelling something about finishing it off, that he had to stand and fight when it was down to the final blow, but Lux was more concerned with the whir-clank of the other two droids approaching at a run. If he stayed in place to make the kill, he'd lose any chance he had at escaping the other two.

"Don't be a fool like last time!" came that growl that must've scared cadets out of their wits but barely phased him anymore. The man wanted Lux to make a good show about how much he was learning for his watching father; his continued employ at the palace would be all the more secure for it. But no matter what his father said nowadays about following orders, Lux had learned long ago that the only real way to impress was to stand out.

Perhaps, with a lot of strategy and a pinch of luck thrown in, he could do just that. The beginnings of a plan were forming in his mind.

Taking his stolen quarterstaff in hand – his was too far away now – Lux rose to his feet and prepared to break into a run. The mixed martial arts and weapons program covers everything from stun grenades to vibroblades. If I can get to the weapons locker before they catch me, well... I'll make Saw proud.

But he leapt back into the shadow of the platform when two golden training blasts hit the floor before him and scattered into photons.

"Right," he whispered to no one in particular, and the taste of blood from his nose grew sharper on his tongue. "New plan."

A spare cable dangled close enough to the top of the platform to grab and swing on. If he got just the right angle on the jump, he could reach the weapons locker with minimal confrontation. Quickly, he tossed his staff to the top and clambered up after it.

Another training bolt missed its mark for Lux's chest as he heaved himself up onto the platform, but he hissed when it grazed his hand instead. Compared to the angry throbbing of his nose, the pain was negligible, but it wouldn't be long before the soft pins-and-needles tingling faded into numbness that turned his normally quick fingers to lead.

He was running out of time.

Snatching up his quarterstaff with his good hand, he gave himself one last second to measure the speed and direction he would need to get to the weapons locker. Then, he made a flying leap for the cable, grabbed hold of it and swung down towards it.

Which, of course, was right when one of the approaching commando droids made a flying leap at him, and the second began firing. Kicking the first incoming threat aside only served to put him right in the path of the next: four training blasts struck his chest, and a fifth, critically, took out the arm holding him to the rope.

The last thing he remembered was an explosion of pain in his shoulders, and a second in his nose as his head struck the floor after it. Then, there was nothing.

As Rex would've said, it was like watching a group of ill-prepared clone cadets attempting a high-level training course out of pride: a dumpster fire, but one you couldn't help but feel emotionally invested in.

That wasn't to say Lux didn't have some skill – with the way he'd taken down the first droid, it was clear to Ahsoka that he was able to fall back on a mix of street fighting and formal combat training. But even Rex might've had some trouble whipping him into shape to the point of being able to confront commando droids and win.

Too many things didn't add up for him in the way they would've needed to assure victory: the terrible odds, Lux's fluctuating moods as he fought, the ebb and flow of his resolve, the injuries he'd sustained. Ahsoka could see where many of the corrections would have to be made, but from the looks of it, what Lux needed most was training that took him from the ground up.

Motion from the walkway above caught her attention. Zakhan Noreino's heavy blue cloak billowed as he turned and left soundlessly through a small door beside him. Ahsoka winced in sympathy despite herself. Something told her Lux's combat training hadn't been structured around the patient, from-the-ground-up sort of model. From the looks of it, this was something he'd been thrown into without much warning – much like how she'd been thrown into her command in the GAR, in retrospect, long before she was ready.

At least she'd had supportive troops under her command to forgive her missteps in a heartbeat, a kind captain to show her the ropes, and two warm Jedi Knights to keep her grounded when things got rough. Lux, for his part, seemed largely without friends and allies beyond the quiet old manservant who kept him company – and, obviously, his demeaning father the Imperator.

Perhaps, if what those gossiping kitchen staff had said was true, Lux had had that same camaraderie once. Perhaps, like her, he was flailing against the current rather than able to ride it, as lost without the support he needed as she was...

Reason returned a second before she could start to feel empathetic, and she got off that train of thought right then and there. It was foolish of her to go looking for things in common with the enemy – it would do nothing but get her hurt. Lux's uses were to give her cover while she integrated herself into life at the palace, and then provide a means of getting the information she wanted. There was nothing more he could offer her – nothing she could let him offer her.

His purpose in her fledgling plan was as clear as her own. But, as Ahsoka told herself as he fell from some absurd maneuver swinging on a spare cable and with a flash of pain in the Force was knocked unconscious, that didn't mean she could just sit back and leave him to his fate. She'd attached herself to him, which meant that until she got what she needed and left, they had to be as one.

The commando droids were moving in for the kill. A half-conscious snapping out of her senses to check his wounds – an old habit bred out of necessity during the Clone Wars – brought back a broken nose, a uselessly numbed hand, two fractured ribs and heavy bruising.

The coldness that had nearly led her to forsake Ashalla whispered that she didn't have to save him. She owed him nothing, despite what he wrongly believed about her need to please. But she also knew from years of personal experience that until they'd been reduced to scrap, those droids weren't programmed to stop.

Smashing her protective mental barriers and summoning the Force with one liberatingly swift stroke, she broke into a run. The second she was close enough, praying her legs still held a fraction of the strength they once had, Ahsoka bunched her muscles and sprang forward.

She caught the nearest droid in a hard kick that sent it sprawling. The back of its metal head slammed into the corner of the duracrete platform behind it and crumpled inward. She landed in a crouch, catlike, but she was up again before her gauzy slitted skirt could settle around her legs. Then, she smacked the next droid's blaster out of its grabber and snapping its neck to the side to sever its auditory and visual processors from the main computer. With a shower of sparks, it shut down.

The beast of a trainer hollered something in Onde'er that sounded quite like a curse and started toward her, and abruptly Ahsoka realized how this would look. She reached out with her senses again, mapping the room with accuracy her eyes alone couldn't match. Two cams on the ceiling, another three on the walls. None were positioned to catch her face, thankfully, but that simply meant the rest of her body had to do the talking.

Ahsoka put on a startled expression as the man drew closer, and resisted the urge to shut her eyes for what she knew was coming until one of his big palms rose to slap her sharply on the cheek. As she stumbled to the floor beside Lux, she lifted her arms in a gesture of surrender that covered the way one hand had curled ever so slightly to the side, drawing on the Force and guiding it into the man's mind.

"The Imperator needs his son alive," she cried, the words pleading.

His eyes glazed over, and he nodded. "Yeah... yeah, the Imperator needs his son alive."

"Please, stop this exercise! The pain will hammer the rest of the lesson home. He needs a medic, now, and a bacta tank."

"Yeah. Pain'll teach the whelp the rest of it." He sniffed and pushed a few buttons on his comm, and the flailing commando droid shut down; a similar noise from beyond the riser told Ahsoka the one Lux had taken down before was now doing the same. "I'm gonna get a drink. You clean his sorry ass up."

Relinquishing her hold on him, Ahsoka put up her barriers once more and smiled blandly. "The honor is to serve. I must thank you, sir – you have done Master Aluxsidrian a great service today."

The trainer lumbered off, moving past her old hiding place into the shadowy hallway beyond. Once all sight and sound of him had faded, she turned back to Lux...

... and found those warm grey-green eyes staring incredulously up at her. That was a problem.

"I've never seen anybody talk any sense into that man before." His voice was pinched and tight with discomfort, but the awe beneath was plain.

Remembering Anakin and many of the clones' antics before the end of the war, she spun a reply that wasn't too far from the truth: "It used to be as good as my job. Not everyone you meet is levelheaded by nature."

"I know that only too well," Lux said with the beginnings of a snorted laugh that quickly faded into a grunt of pain. His left hand flew up to shield his nose, his eyes screwing shut; the right hung limply in his lap. Ahsoka grabbed it and began massaging it to get the feeling back before she could think about it.

"We need to get you to a medbay. Where's the closest one?"

"Two floors up." He gestured vaguely to the door with his free hand and then off in the direction opposite to the one Ahsoka had come from. "Turbolift, that way."

Ahsoka held out her arm for him without another word. He took it, and after some awkward stumbling and murmured halves of apologies, they got him to his feet. Once he was settled with his arm over her shoulders and hers around his middle, they left the training arena.

The occasional dizzy spell would nearly send him careening into the wall, but surprisingly he was able to walk almost without help; he barely put any weight on her. Granted, from what she'd seen and sensed he hadn't hurt his legs all that badly, but curiosity got the better of her. "This isn't your first time getting beat up like this, is it? Master," she added after a heartbeat.

Lux smiled faintly, volunteering nothing until they reached the turbolift a few paces later. "Saying this isn't my first time would be a very serious understatement," he then informed her breezily, and gently shrugged her off to enter the access code. He lurched forward again when the door slid open, staggering to the far corner to prop himself up and meet her gaze properly. "I have a terrible teacher. And not to mention that I have such a knack for screwing up I'd probably still get myself into scrapes even if I had a good one."

Suggestions for how all that could be avoided burgeoned, weighing heavily on her tongue, but she held her peace. Not knowing what else to say, she offered him a nod and a coolly sympathetic smile.

Carefully, Lux flexed and curled the fingers on his injured hand to stiffly tap the icon for the second floor above ground. As the turbolift purred to a start, he looked her slowly up and down not with desire, but as a fighter does when sizing up an opponent. Then, with softness she wasn't expecting, he asked, "Where did you learn to fight like that, Alynna? I've never seen anything like it."

Can I get away with a lie? If I didn't sense him waking, he must've been out for at least part of my little display. Hopefully all of the part with the flying kick. "I didn't," she tried. "It was just luck – the droids were focused on you, not me."

"I saw you."

Ahsoka's heart sank. This was it. The game was up. This was the moment she'd have to summon the deepest reaches of her power and bend him utterly to her will, even if she had to break his mind to do it. It was that or fleeing, but then her already remote chance at learning Anakin's fate would be lost.

"I don't mean to put any kind of pressure on you," Lux added quickly, with a reassuring smile. "I won't tell anyone. Your business is your business. I just wanted to know if you had any pointers for me, is all. Ways for me to get better."

Ahsoka thought for a moment, pushing her flash of alarm and relief aside. She hadn't handled the situation properly, rushing in with too many unpredictable variables and loose ends to tie up neatly. Giving him the tips he was after would foster trust between them, but she had to be careful not to give too much away.

A scrap of counsel her Jedi teachers had once given her that applied to Lux soon came to mind. "From the looks of it, you rely a lot on things as you first saw them to build your plan of attack. It's important to be in the moment, not running on autopilot with a fixed point thirty seconds ago as your guide. Nothing is ever static in a fight; you always have to be watching so you can act rather than be acted upon."

"Thank you. I'll remember that. Anything else?"

The turbolift door slid open, and she avoided his bright, hopeful gaze as she held out her arms to help him again. "No, not really. I don't know what you think you saw, but like I said before, it was just luck. I'm really not that much of a fighter."

Though Lux is well-meaning and optimistic, it's safe to say he was lucky Ahsoka was there to rescue him this time. But just how far will her 'attachment' to him go? She protected him this once, but even now that he knows she has some skill she won't go so far as to train him to protect himself. Will she ever trust him enough to share her skills, or will fate intervene before any kind of kinship has a chance to really grow? Only time will tell...

All right, that marks the last of what I'm gonna post for now! In a week or two I'll upload the rest of what I have ready. While the original SOTE had more chapters, because I'm going a lot more in depth the second time around, the prologue and the first 12 chapters of the new one are actually the same amount of pages as the original 25 + prologue. *happy Shan sounds*

And, coincidentally, it also perfectly matches the point I'd reached with the original take, so I'm not depriving anyone of any content on two fronts. Or just depriving you for a bit, while I fine-tune the next six chapters and finish a paper for a summer class. I hope the seven I've posted is enough to last the wait – it's a chapter for every day or two days :D

I'll talk to you guys in the next few chapters!