“Don't go.”

He moved a couple of steps into the room as if it were booby-trapped. She had been here before; she had been utterly dependent on his military skills when her life was at stake. He had been so focused, so reassuring, so competent. Where she had doubts, he had certainties.

“So you still don't find it any easier, then,” said Darman.

“What?”

“Giving in to anger. You know. Violence.”

“Oh, any Jedi Master would have been proud of me. I did it all without anger. Anger makes it the dark side. Being serene makes it okay.”

“I know it must have been hard. I know how Sergeant Kal reacted when he had to—”

“No. I was harming a stranger. No personal dilemma at all.”

“It doesn't make you a bad person. It has to be done. Is that what's upsetting you?”

“That, maybe. And having doubts.”

She didn't want to be alone with all that in her head. She could have meditated. She had the strength of will and the ancient skills to pass through this turmoil and do what Jedi had done for millennia—detach from the moment. But she didn't want to.

She wanted to risk living with those terrible feelings. The danger suddenly seemed to lie in denying them, just as she tried unsuccessfully to deny what she felt for Darman.

“Dar, do you ever have doubts? You always said you were certain of your role. I always felt you were.”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“I have doubts all the time.”

“What kind?”

“Before we left Kamino, I was so sure what I had to do. Now … well, the more I see of the galaxy … the more I see of other people, the more I wonder, why me? How did I end up here, and not like the people I see around me in Coruscant? When we win the war, what will happen to me and my brothers?”

They weren't stupid. They were highly intelligent: bred for it, in fact, and if you bred people to be intelligent and resourceful and resilient and aggressive, then sooner or later they would notice that their world wasn't fair, and begin to resent it.

“I ask that, too,” Etain said.

“It makes me feel disloyal.”

“It's not disloyal to question things.”

“It's dangerous, though,” Darman said.

“For the status quo?”

“Sometimes you can't argue with everything. Like orders. You don't have the full picture of the battle, and the order you ignore might just be the one that should have saved your life.”

“Well, I'm glad you have doubts. And I'm glad I do, too.”

Darman leaned against the wall, all concern. “Do you want something to eat? We're going to risk Qibbu's nerf in glockaw sauce. Scorch reckons it's probably armored rat.”

“I'm not sure I can face crowds right now.”

“You might be overestimating the popularity of Qibbu's cuisine.” He shrugged. “I could probably get the cook to stun the thing with my Deece and send it up by room service.”

That was Darman all over: he had a relentlessly positive nature. It was her job to inspire him, but he'd been the one on Qiilura who had made her get up and fight time after time. He'd changed her forever. She wondered if he had any idea how much he was still changing her life now.

“Okay,” she said. “But only if you keep me company.”

“Yeah, eating armored rat alone is probably asking for trouble.” He grinned suddenly, and she felt illuminated by it. “You might need first aid.”

Niner's voice interrupted from down the passage. “Dar, you coming with us or what? Fi and Sev are supposed to be on watch.”

“No, I'll get something sent up. They can head on down with you. We'll do the duty.” Darman cocked his head as if to listen for some rebuke. “That okay?”

This time it was Skirata's voice. “Two steaks?”

“Please.”

“Not something safe, like eggs?”

“Steaks. We fear nothing.”

Suddenly Etain felt an urge to laugh. Fi might have been the comedian, but Dar was genuinely uplifting. He wasn't trying to suppress pain.

She also found him distractingly handsome, even though he looked identical to his brothers. She adored them as friends, but they were not Darman, and somehow they didn't even look like him. Nobody else ever would be that precious to her, she knew that.

“Well, what shall we do now?” he asked.

“Not lightsaber training, for a start.”

“You really whacked me with that branch.”

“You told me I had to.”

“So you take orders from clones, do you, General?”

“You kept me alive.”

“Ah, you'd have done fine without me.”

“Actually, no,” said Etain. “Actually, I wouldn't have done fine at all.”

She looked him in the eye for a few moments, hoping that Darman the man would react to her, but he simply stared back, a bewildered boy again. “I'd never been that close to a human female before. Did you know that?”

“I guessed as much?”

“I wasn't even sure if Jedi were … real flesh and blood.”

“I wonder sometimes, too.”

“I wasn't scared of dying.” He put his hands to his head for a moment and then raked his fingers through his hair, that gesture she'd seen in Skirata. “I was afraid because I didn't know what I was feeling and—”

The service droid buzzed to be let in.

“Fierfek.” Darman's shoulders sagged a little. He got up and took the tray from the droid, looking pink-faced and annoyed. He peeled back the lids and inspected the contents as if they were unstable explosives, and she felt the moment was now lost.

“Is it dead?” Etain asked.

“If it isn't, it's not getting up again anytime soon.”

She chewed a test-mouthful thoughtfully. “Could be worse.”

“Ration cubes …”

“Oh, that brings back memories.”

“Now you know why we'll eat anything.”

“I remember the bread, too. Ugh.”

He prodded something in the container with his fork, looking concerned. “You did reach out to me in the Force, didn't you? I wasn't imagining that.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

“Isn't it obvious?”

“How would I know? I'm not sure if I know that much about you.”

“I think you do, Dar.”

Darman suddenly took exceptional interest in the remains of the steak, which might have been nerf after all. “I don't think anyone believed females would matter to us, given our life expectancy. And it wasn't relevant to combat.”

That was freshly agonizing. Of all the injustices piled on these clones who had never been given choices, that was the worst: the denial of any individual future, of hope itself. If they beat the odds of battle, they were still doomed to lose the war against time. Darman would probably be dead in thirty years, and she wouldn't even be halfway through her life by then.

“I bet Kal thought it was important.”

Darman chewed his lip and averted his gaze. She wasn't sure if he was embarrassed or if he simply didn't know what she was really asking.

“He never mentioned what to do about generals,” he said quietly.

“My Master never specifically mentioned soldiers, either.”

“I hear you ignore orders anyway.”

“I was afraid I'd never see you again, Dar. But you're here now, and that's all that matters.”

She held her hand out to him. He hesitated for a moment and then reached across the table and took it.

“We could be dead tomorrow, both of us,” she said. “Or the next day, or next week. That's war.” She thought of the other Fi, whose life had ebbed away in her arms. “And I don't want to die without telling you that I missed you every day since you left, and that I love you, and that I don't believe what I was taught about attachment any more than you should believe that you were bred only to die for the Republic.”

This was breaking all the rules.

But the war had broken all the rules of peacekeeping Jedi and a civilized Republic anyway. The Force wouldn't be thrown into turmoil if a mediocre Jedi and a cloned soldier who had no rights broke just one more.