Lux's cool grey eyes swept over the star-speckled blackness of space, occasionally showing their true greenish-blue color as Chopper, who was making some repairs outside the cockpit, threw up a shower of sparks with his blowtorch. He propped his chin up with his arms, shifting in the copilot's seat where the Ghost crew had left him on his own to reflect on what had transpired in the past few hours.

And there certainly was a lot to think about, but the sudden appearance of Kanan and Ezra's presences in the Force around him pulled Lux from his reflections.

He took that as a gentle reminder from the universe to stop being so 'noisy', as he called it. He didn't want to advertise his uncommon and, with the changing of the times, dangerous ability to use the Force.

Normally it wasn't a problem for him. The Force had never come as easily to him as it most likely did to other Jedi – probably because he had started his training so late and had so little of it. It wasn't his first instinct to use it, but when he did, he was only unaware that his powers were getting out of hand when his surroundings were most at their most stimulating.

"Teri, Hera said you wanted to speak with us?" Ezra said as he and his Master walked inside.

Lux could feel through the Force that Kanan was still unhappy with him, which meant that talking to Hera had been the right choice: she was the only one he really listened to. "Yeah," he replied simply.

Encouraged by his answer, Ezra asked another question: "Are you okay?"

"I am. Well, as much as I can be while the Empire is in power. Thanks." It wasn't a total lie. Despite the fact that the wave of sheer Dark Side energy from the Sith Lord during the confrontation an hour or so before had almost knocked Lux unconscious, the leftover adrenaline from the battle was doing the job of keeping him awake better than three cups of caf would have.

Lux turned around in his seat so that he was facing them. "I wanted to ask about the Sith Lord you encountered on Lothal."

"We've encountered Inquisitors before, but this..." Kanan sighed heavily. "This was nothing like that. The fear, the anger, the hate; you felt it. I haven't sensed a presence like that since..."

Lux nodded knowingly. "The Clone Wars."

"Yeah."

"Teri, do you know who or what he is?"

"So full of questions, aren't we, Ezra?" He chuckled slightly, as the boy sort of reminded Lux of himself at that age. But his face fell a moment later. "No. I don't."

As alien and evil as the presence he had felt had been, Lux knew that he had felt it before. And he had a feeling he knew where it was from, but there was no way to be sure. It had been so long ago, and his senses hadn't been as attuned then as they were now.

"But I know that he will be coming," he continued. "They'll all be coming now. We have the Grand Inquisitors as a hostage, and, now that their plan to capture us has failed, I think they'll go to some pretty serious lengths to get her back."

"Then we've got to be ready to fight." Determination blazed in Ezra's bright blue eyes like fire.

Kanan looked back at his apprentice. "We must find the strength to fight, but the greater courage is knowing when not to fight."

As he spoke, the door slid open, revealing Hera, Sabine and Zeb. "And we'll be beside you either way," the Twi'lek pilot promised, a smile on her face. She placed a hand on Kanan's shoulder, but looked back up at Lux a moment later. "Teri, she's... She's awake. I managed to get a real force field from Commander Sato to hold her without any questions, but he's going to need an explanation at some point."

"I know," he said. "I'll get on it. I just... I need to talk to her."

Zeb growled disapprovingly under his breath. "You sure that's a good idea? I just saw her. Even half-asleep on the sedatives she's... watching you. Calculating. Like she knows things you don't and is using them against you first chance she gets."

As he walked, he found his mind wandering back to the day when Ahsoka Tano had come back into his life, after two years of hearing nothing from her, in the way he least expected...

"Saw, are you sure about this?" a considerably younger Lux asked, his features set into an expression of wariness and distrust.

"'Course I am, Teri. Do I look like someone who makes rash decisions and doesn't think things through?" Upon realizing what he had just said, Saw Gerrera made a face. "Don't answer that."

Lux chuckled, looking back at the others standing with them: an assortment of men and women dressed in military gear and dirt-smeared clothing. It was just like Rebellion of Onderon all over again... Except this time the stakes were far higher.

After the successful reinstatement of King Dendup as ruler of Onderon, the brave souls who had risked their lives to free their homeworld from the Separatists had been rewarded in the customary fashion: they were given beautiful houses, a considerable sum of money and plots of land to do with what they would.

Lux had chosen to use his stroke of good fortune to return the favor to those who had welcomed him as a brother, even after his crazy escapades across the galaxy after his mother's passing as he tried to find himself. Although Onderon opted to join the Council of Neutral Systems and remained impartial in the war, Lux chose to become the representative for Onderon in its relations with the Republic.

When his term was up, although he had been urged to consider going through the elections for the station of Director of Foreign Affairs for the planet, he had gone back to live happily on the land he had been awarded.

But the galaxy hadn't been finished with him yet: a mere three months later, the Republic had reformed itself into an Empire, the Separatists had been defeated and the Council of Neutral Systems abolished. When Imperial agents had come knocking at the doors of the ex-rebels in the attempt to put them under restrictions and take away some of their rights to freedom, there had been but one solution.

And so, nine months to the day, with no regrets whatsoever, Lux Bonteri had found himself in the middle of another rebellion.

"Hey, Teri. Stop dreaming about pretty girls and get ready to help out. My friend's arriving in a few minutes," he said, pointing to a large freighter streaking across the sky towards them.

As the ship flew closer, Lux caught sight of a particular mark in white paint adorning its underside: that of a monkey with its back hunched and fangs bared, ready to spring. "Your friend is a pirate?" he intoned uneasily. "You know I trust you with my life, Saw, but are you really sure about this?"

Saw's signature tough half-smile came to his face as the ship landed in the clearing in front of them, steam hissing from openings as the engines regulated themselves before shutting off. "One hundred percent. Lei is an old friend."

Lux opened his mouth to speak again, but was cut off as the exit ramp was lowered. Flanked by a Human clad in nerf leather and a Zabrak whose absence of a shirt showed off his red and black tattoos, a young woman with brilliant turquoise hair that he assumed was the captain swaggered down the ramp towards them.

Saw walked over to meet her. For a moment, the two stared one another directly in the eye, but then, much to Lux's surprise, the she grabbed the front of Saw's shirt and pulled him in for a big, messy kiss on the lips.

"Well, I was not expecting that," he muttered under his breath, and a couple of his friends nodded in agreement.

"You sure are a sight for sore eyes, Lei," Saw said, finally breaking the kiss. "This is a big thing you're doing for us here. Thank you."

"Yeah, I had to go well outta my way just ta get ahold of your crap," she drawled. "Pirates don't take well to owing favors. You either pay whatever the hell it is back and get it outta your hair as soon as ya can, or you kill the guy. Dead men collect no dues." She smirked. "You'd better thank Saint Murphy I like you, Saw."

Saw chuckled. "Well, it's impossible not to like me."

Leia rolled her eyes, cuffing him over the shoulder. "Shut up."

Then, she turned around to face her two crewmembers again. "Well what're you two just standing around for? Get the cargo unloaded so we can get ourselves to Nar Shaddaa! There're a few shots of kisdi Shaddaa planetside with my name on them! Conni, get your butt out here with those spare parts!"

"Aye, Cap'n!" came a voice.

But not just any voice: it was spoken in the unforgettable tone of a young woman he had known long ago. Lux's head jerked up so fast he felt a couple of the bones in his neck pop, and he was just in time to catch sight of the voice's owner as she walked down the ramp towards them, pushing a crate in front of her.

"Ahsoka!" he called, the name leaving his lips before he could stop himself.

Ahsoka Tano looked up, her beautiful blue eyes widening. "Lux...?" she said softly. "Is that you?"

He shouldered his way to the front of the group of war veterans, rebels and new recruits to their cause. "It's me," he told her.

Abandoning the crate where it was, the orange-skinned Togruta ran towards him, her lekku, slightly longer than he remembered them to be now that she was older. He had been expecting her to stop or at least slow down, but instead she slammed right into him, knocking him to the ground.

But even though the fall with Ahsoka on top of him had winded him somewhat, he still enveloped her in a hug, sitting up. She embraced him just as tightly, burrowing her face in his shoulder.

"Hey, look!" The red Zabrak motioned to a few of the other crewmembers pushing antigrav crates of the supplies the rebels needed out of the ship, then back to Ahsoka. "Conni's got herself a boyfriend!"

Not about to let such a comment pass, Ahsoka yelled back, "Shut your bloody mouth, Maddox, or I swear I'll gut you like a fish and feed you to the purrgils!"

"I believe you!" he called back in a tone that entirely denied his statement, and, laughing to himself, went back into the ship to get another crate.

"It's so good to see you, Lux," Ahsoka said, pulling herself to her feet and offering him a hand to help him up too. He accepted it gratefully.

"You too." Lux rubbed the part of his upper back that had taken the full force of the fall. "Gods, you certainly aren't a featherweight anymore. Warn me next time you're going to try to plow me over, okay?"

She smiled, her lekku reddening slightly, and Lux tried not to think about how pretty she looked. Two years had definitely added to her figure and height, and her face was just as lovely as ever. But something was different about the way she carried herself, too. She seemed more confident now – less reserved and proper than when he had known her when she was with the Jedi.

But the Empire had killed almost all of them, so it had been a stroke of fate that she had left the Order and stayed out of the public eye. And he couldn't have been happier to see her now.

"Captain?" Ahsoka called, her fingers twisting around his comfortingly.

"Hmph?" came the reply. "What is it?"

"I think I'm going to spend my shore leave here on Onderon if that's okay." She looked into his eyes again for a moment, and Lux fought the urge to melt into a puddle on the floor – all of the feelings he'd ever had for her were coming to the surface. "I have some catching up to do with an old friend."

"Yeah, all right. Have fun with your boyfriend." Before Ahsoka could speak, the captain smiled, narrowing her catlike eyes in understanding. "I get the feeling you're gonna want to be staying more than just one month. But hey, you're still a kid. You've got places to see, things to do. Enjoy it while it lasts, Conni."

As the blue-haired woman stomped off to yell at another member of her crew, Lux brought Ahsoka's attention back to him by touching her shoulder. "So, tell me what your life has been like since I last saw you."

"What would you like to know?" she asked.

"I don't know... Tell me what's changed."

She laughed. "Could you be any more vague, Lux? I think it's safe to say that what's changed is just about–"

"Everything."

Back to the present moment once more, Lux whispered the single word aloud, tasting the syllables on his tongue as he put his forehead against the cool metal wall. Behind the door next to him was a woman who had, up until very recently, been dead to the galaxy. And now, despite the fact that he knew the truth, he had a feeling he would probably have been better off if she had stayed that way.

But, like the phoenix that the Rebellion so idolized, she had made herself anew. A dark and twisted sort of newness. And there was nothing he could do but go with it and hope that the woman he loved was still in there somewhere, and not consumed by this new creature with the same face.

And so, he opened the door leading to the cargo bay, in the center of which a force field had been set up to make a small, bubble-shaped prison cell. Immediately the Sith Inquisitor enclosed within it looked up, and Lux flinched when he realized that her eyes were a startling yellow rimmed with red instead of their natural blue.

That was all that was changed. It was still the same woman, but the new color of her eyes was just one sign as to what lay beneath the surface.

"Hello again, handsome," she said, an odd little smile curling the corners of her lips. "I was hoping I'd get to speak to you again. There's a lot I have to ask you."

He sat down on the walkway and looked her right in the eye. "I'm listening."

*DUN DUN DUUUUUUUNNNN!!!! Sorry I left it off like that, I just couldn't resist XD

Yep, today was one of those times when I just said to myself, "Screw the updates system. I've made myself curious about what is going to happen next in HWOF, and that's a good thing as a writer, so I'm going to write another chapter of that."

Anyways, I hope you liked it. The average update length for this fanfic is getting quite a bit higher, which I'm sure you're all happy with (because I know for me more reading material is always awesome). I believe that this is because in my time writing fan fiction, I've settled into a sort of rhythm so that scenes I've been planning to write are the exact right length when I actually write them up. But for this one, I had the bit that was NOT the flashback, and if I posted the two separately they would be too short...

Ah well. These are the struggles that every writer must face.

This didn't include as much Luxsoka as I wanted it to, but it still has enough to keep us going for a while. And Sorena is going to keep flirting with him, even though she doesn't yet know for sure who he is, even if she might be starting to suspect something...

Also, what did you think of the flashback in general? I was using some new stuff (mainly pirates) that I am not used to writing with and I hope it was as good as the works of some people I know *cough cough* Storm-Shadows7 and Soph_theScribe *cough*

Soooooo... I have an important bit of news: I have a concert tomorrow and I won't have time for writing. I'll try to get something posted on Friday, but I'll have literally an hour to myself tomorrow and I'm going to need that time to get ready. But I'll resume the updates on Friday or Saturday if I can.

May the Force be with you,

Sharron