She shifts when she moves, waking up quickly, heart racing a bit -

She doesn't make any noise, holding still. (For now.)

He carries her out of the creche. 

He carries her to the temple hangar. 

"Where are we going?" she whispers.

"Away. Forever." 

" - You're kidnapping me?"

"Yes." 

"Sounds exciting."

"How do you feel about renegade Sith and slave revolutions?" 

"Really exciting, then."

He finds a small shuttle in a mostly-ignored corner and opens it almost silently, setting her down on one of the chairs once they're inside. 

Nobody interrupts them during takeoff. 

Once they're far enough away from the temple that nobody could possibly sense either of them, his aura changes. 

He stops oozing serenityserenity into the Force, replaced by a combination of nervousness, relief, and excitement. 

She's stopped squishing herself and responds with unbridled glee.

"Are you doing alright? I noticed--that you shouldn't be there--but I wasn't sure how badly it was hurting you." 

"Dunno."

"I think I'm - smaller - than I should be. Want to be."

Nod. 

"We'll try to help with that." 

"Who's 'we'?"

"My renegade Sith and I." 

"What's your renegade Sith like?"

"They're--very passionate. Very self-assured. They were born the child of an escaped slave in Hutt space, before a Sith Lord passed by, noticed a strong untrained Force sensitivity, killed their mother and abducted them as an apprentice. They escaped and began gathering resources to kill him--that's when we met. I helped them bring down their old Master, and since then they've been playing the role of the traditional Sith while secretly gathering resources to overthrow the Hutts and free the slaves on their home planet." 

"They sound nice."

"They are." Deep affection threads its way through his Force signature, the kind that would have the other Masters tsking about attachment. 

"You like them a lot." Being around someone feeling so deeply is nice.

"I love them very much. They're incredibly important to me." Sooooooo much attachment. He must be about a bajillion times better than her at faking, for everyone to have thought he was a good Jedi this long. 

She doesn't know if she wants to learn to be that good or not.

"Then I bet I'll like them too."

"I hope so. --I couldn't get into the records to find your parents before we had to leave. I don't have anyone else for you to go to, right now, if you don't like it with us." 

"My parents let the Jedi take me in the first place."

"They didn't have a choice." Sadness, regret, bitterness. 

"Why not?"

"When the Jedi find a Force-sensitive infant, they take it. The parents aren't consulted in a more than perfunctory way; the creches aren't set up for literal newborns so there's often a grace period in which escaping with the infant is possible, but...escaping and staying escaped is very difficult, at least within the Republic, and most people would rather their children grow up safe in the Temple than in Hutt space or the Sith Empire."

"That's mean of them."

"It was the first thing I had to acknowledge was truly wrong with the Jedi." 

"It's good you did."

"Ekkreth helped." 

She pauses, thinking. "Am I gonna help free other people?"

"Do you want to?"

"Maybe. It feels right."

"Then I think it's very likely. What do you know about the Hutts?" 

"They're slavers. They cheat people. People think they're bad."

Nod. "No species is all bad, but the Hutt culture is set up in a way that encourages it. Anything you can afford, you can get away with, in Hutt space. The slavery is the worst part, but plenty of people in Hutt space get hurt in other ways." 

"I don't think people should be places they don't wanna be," she says, slowly, like this is a new idea she's testing out.

Nod. "They shouldn't. Unfortunately, there are only so many places to be--if you don't want to be in Hutt space and you don't want to be in the Republic and you don't want to be in the Empire, then your options are limited. That's--something valuable about the Tatooine project, if we can pull it off."

"Yeah. Seems like it."

"I'm optimistic. Ekkreth has had decades with all the resources of a Darth at their disposal to assemble secret weapons." 

"Secret weapons sound cool."

"I certainly think so! You can ask them about them when we get to the rendezvous."

She nods, humming, then yawns.

"There are cots in the back when you want to go back to sleep." 

"I'm kinda tired..." She yawns again. "But this is exciting."

"It's hours still to the rendezvous." 

"And I wanna be awake then..."

"If you sleep now, I can wake you when we get there and you'll be more alert than if you had stayed up the whole time." 

"Okay..." She gets up to go to bed.

Karzel pilots the shuttle, and a few hours later gently shakes her awake. 

"We're here." 

She yawns, stretching languidly, and grumbles under her breath.

But she rolls out of bed nonetheless.

A set of non-sleeping robes has been laid out. 

When she comes back up to the front, she can see that Karzel didn't wait for them to be quite done docking before he woke her. 

She bounces up next to him, watching the docking process. It's new enough to be interesting.

Their shuttle is entering the docking bay of a much larger, old, decrepit-looking freighter. 

"This where we're going?" she asks.

"Yes. It's easier this way; everything Ekkreth salvaged from their time with the Sith has to be disguised, if they don't want it traced back to them and having it come out that Darth Magnus isn't dead after all."

"That's smart I guess. Though having to lie isn't fun."

"Sometimes it's worth it."

The shuttle finishes pulling in; the outer hatch closes. Karzel opens the shuttle.

"Yeah."

She looks outside, curiously.

There's a figure standing outside.

Their Force presence hums with delighted anticipation and the kind of deep-attachment love that Karzel displayed when talking about Ekkreth. They are dressed in a loose black robe which nonetheless fails to conceal the gentle swelling of their abdomen. When the door opens, they grin and stride forwards.

Karzel grins, also, and steps out to meet them.

The two meet, and they take him in their arms. Some previously-imperceptible tension drains out of both.

For a moment, there is nothing there but love, love, love, the two Force presences nearly indistinguishable in oneness of purpose.

And then they part. Arm still around the other's shoulder, Karzel calls, "Ebele! This is my renegade Sith, Ekkreth."

"Hi!" she calls, waving, cheered by the clear happiness.

"Hello! It's lovely to meet you! We don't have anywhere near the resources to rescue all the Jedi children but I'm glad Karzel got you out."

"I'm glad I got out too. I don't think the others were as unhappy as I was, at least..."

"It wouldn't have been safe to take anyone who wasn't."

"And people should be where they want to be. Though the Jedi also shouldn't be telling people they can't go other places."

"Hmm?"

"I wasn't allowed to just leave and say I wanted to be raised elsewhere. But that's - not a problem with just the way the Jedi do things, that's a problem with saying kids can't decide what happens to them."

--Nod.

"In my culture, your family is the people you choose. Nobody can claim you who you refuse to claim. Well, not as parents. The slavers don't care."

"Yeah, that sounds like a good way to do it. Minus the slavers."

"Well, that's what we're going to fix."

"Good. I wanna help."

"Excellent. What are you good at?"

"Lotsa stuff. I like ships and mechanics and fighting and I really really like the Force."

"Want to help me with the jammer net?"

"Sure!"

She leads the way out of the docking bay. "What do you know about slavery in Hutt space?"

"It's bad."

"Well, yes. But I meant how it's enforced. Every slave has an explosive planted on them somewhere, so that the masters can detonate it if they escape or rebel. The jammer net blocks the signals to the bombs."

"That's mean of them. I wanna help with jammer nets."

"Slavers never shy away from meanness."

"Yeah. Even just being a slaver's mean."

"Very much so. One of our holidays translates to 'the Reckoning of the Masters.'"

Nod. "That sounds like a good holiday."

"It's very good. Do you want to hear some stories?" 

"Sure!"