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Isamar was well past being annoyed at blacking out by the time she roused from the depths of her mind. She absolutely wanted to flip off the universe for the constant exhaustion and strain on her body, despite knowing that it was her fault for most of it.

Out of experience, she was expecting Obi-wan or Anakin to be waiting beside her, maybe that soldier, Rex, too. But there was no one. Just a pale blue curtain and glass of a hospital bed rest.

What was once a steady beeping, quickened to something foreign as Isamar forgot how to breathe. Her chest was tight, and she threw a hand up against the glass surrounding her, freshly healed wounds stinging with the force behind the blow. When the glass did not break, Isamar threw her other hand up against it, screaming without sound for someone to get her out. It was much too similar to her concrete tomb, only she could see the outside and was unable to reach it.

Tubes in her arms were no more than a nuisance, and she felt cold and vulnerable in the slim gown that covered her. Her hair was undone, falling loosely down her face as she cried for help.

The curtain was drawn back by an unfamiliar woman in a mask, only her eyes visible as she typed something into the nearby computer. She lay a gloved hand over the glass where Isamar's own hands threatened to shatter the barrier. Then the glass slid away, and Isamar shot upright, clawing at her throat as she tried to breathe.

"It's alright! It's alright, you're okay," the woman told her, taking her hands in her own. "I need you to breathe. In and out. That's it, just in and out."

Slowly, Isamar mimicked her, taking a deep breath of air before gradually letting it all out. She still felt trapped, like she was drowning in a locked cage. Her dinui was restless, even as she carefully extended it to sense the world, and she felt a great loss. It was unlike the grief for her family, more like a hole had been dug in her soul and emptied of something, yet Isamar found herself unable to place it.

"Are the others here?" she found herself asking. "Are they safe?"

The nurse looked confused, her brows creased slightly as she spoke, "There were no others. You're the only one that was brought to us alone. Anyone else came in their own groups after the bombing."

"But they had injured! Soldiers in white!"

"Child, there was no one else with you," the nurse insisted. "The only soldiers any of us saw were in blue uniform when they carried you here on a stretcher."

Isamar fought the rising panic in her chest, tightening her mental reins on her dinui to keep from projecting her emotions through it. Blue was the colour of Keppar's military, and that she had been carried to the medical institute provided her with two possibilities. Either Obi-wan and Anakin had opted to abandon her while she was unconscious and the military found her, or something happened between Keppar's military and Obi-wan's group of soldiers that resulted in her being brought here without the others. Isamar forced herself to believe that it couldn't have been the former.

Swallowing thickly, Isamar allowed the nurse to lay her back down on the bed. "What about residential block 4 Kora?"

"The spiralled glass building with the beautiful red conifer gardens on top?" The nurse used such a delicate tone that Isamar almost believed that all was well in the world. Reality shattered the hope when she continued, "It was one of the first buildings to be hit."

Isamar chose not to respond to that, her hands curling into fists so tight that her nails hurt her palms. Her dinui swirled within her chest, throwing itself against her willpower as she fought to keep control of it this time. It hurt so much more to hear the words than to be told through gestures.

"Any survivors?" Isamar fought to keep her voice steady. "Any at all?"

"I'm sorry," the nurse laid a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. "None of the systems have located any life signs. The droids have scouted the site, but I'm afraid that they haven't found any survivors."

She fell silent, mourning once more as she absorbed the words. Had she known that Stalaid was dead? In her heart, Isamar was aware that she had truly known. Nothing else could have blocked her bond with him, and because of that, she knew the truth long before now.

The nurse left not long after that, not before giving Isamar an apologetic look, leaving the girl alone behind curtains.

With one slow breath, Isamar expelled the tension in her body. She wished that her grief and pain left with it too.

It was cold without the torn remains of her jacket, cold without the presence of others with the dinui. It was silly, really, how accustomed she had grown to the way their auras brushed against each other. Isamar hated how much she missed it. She hated how much she craved that warmth.

But that silent reminder rang in her mind, telling her that there was more than this pitiful chill. Anakin's voice sang within her ears, those foreign words given meaning with his silent statement. 'Come with us.'

Isamar couldn't be sure how to reason against it. All of her life, she had stayed rooted to this planet's surface, and with her family now stolen from her, there was nothing left for her here. She couldn't deny the appealing allure of space travel.

Perhaps it was then, while she dreamt of stars and galaxies, that she decided the path of her future. When she realised that she would do anything to escape from the suffocating atmosphere.

Hardship was different from devastation, and Isamar would gladly take the former with both hands over the crushing weight of the other. So she knew that remaining tucked in a hospital bed was out of the question if she wanted out. Cultural and language differences would be exceedingly stressful, but she figured it probably wouldn't crush her if she learnt to adapt.

Isamar returned to the thought of Obi-wan and his group leaving, encouraged by what was probably the persistence of Keppar's military. The military was by no means demanding, but it was common knowledge that they controlled what the public knew, and with aliens on Keppar, they would be eager to brush the incident under the rug. It was certainly better than allowing enthusiastic individuals to seek out the strangers, and far better for both parties to hide it from trigger happy people. Following that logic presented the likelihood of a time scrunch — or a limited time frame — for the group to leave the atmosphere.

Isamar, may her ancestors curse her spirit, wanted on that ship. She would get on that ship whether or not fate was in her favour.

If she wanted to do this, however, she needed to plan. Getting out of the hospital would be no problem — they couldn't hold her here unless she was in critical condition — it would be figuring out where Obi-wan and his group would be located. Military files were the most secure encrypted data in the system, and reprogramming the hospital computer to show them was entirely out of the question if Isamar didn't want to attract attention. She could remember one of her friends attempting to hack into the system, and by the time he had reached the first firewall, they had traced the signal and were knocking on his door. That wasn't what Isamar wanted to do, so she ignored that possibility.

She could, however, just ask. Medical droids were never designed to withhold information unless it was related to a client — in which case, many would just tell you 'information unavailable', while the sanitary droids were more likely to ask that you 'back off' in more vulgar terms. And she wouldn't even need to ask for any specific information if she was careful about it.

Blinking away the dryness in her eyes from staring too long, Isamar pulled herself up to lean against the back of the bed. It took more effort than it might have on a normal day, as she found her arms feeling slightly numb from the painkillers and there was a nice big metal frame encasing her right leg. She frowned at the splint, frustrated by the clunkiness of it and annoyed to realise that whatever break or fracture she had acquired was likely a lot worse than she initially thought.

Three fingers on her left hand were in a similar state, now that she took the time to examine herself, although they were joined together in a slimmer case. She could still feel the tenderness in her skin where stitches were replaced by almost unnoticeable scars where the injuries had been seared together and quickly healed. Bruises were scattered across her body, and they ached with dull pain — excluding what appeared to be a massive black bruise across her ribs, which hurt only slightly more than the rest due to the painkillers. Counting herself lucky that she didn't receive worse was not what she found herself doing, instead she grimaced and silently wished she had received the combined fates of her family members so that they could have lived.

Feeling sick to the stomach at the thought, however brief, Isamar shuffled uncomfortably and glanced at her surroundings. The nurse had shut the curtains shut when she left, but there were still things she could see. Like the tall stained glass window with the sharp orange sunset dancing through the room, and the medical droids hovering nearer to the roof so they were out of the way of the doctors and nurses. Inside her miniscule square of privacy, there was a screen displaying her vitals and wires running from behind it to her forearms. Beside her, there was a single chair, with a fresh pair of pale blue clothes folded neatly on top of it, jacket and shoes included.

She smiled weakly to herself as she considered the convenience that all hospitals in the capital supplied a full set of clothes if a patient's own attire was beyond saving. At least her belt was left alone and was wrapped around the clothes with her sabre sticking out of one of the shoes. Family history was practically sacred in their culture, and removing something so ancient from a person was completely taboo.

Isamar sighed as she settled on the bed. A medical droid would be along in just a moment to check on her now that she was awake. But the time before then gave her a chance to reflect on her choice. Was she really willing to drop everything to hitch a ride with some people she couldn't even understand? Could she abandon her family's history and influence just to run away from her own guilt? Isamar felt disgusted with herself for how easily she was ready to abandon everything, because she really was going to leave.

Over and over, Isamar told herself that she wasn't a coward, that she was running toward new things for a fresh start. Except guilt rattled deep in her bones, chilling her soul. She wasn't a coward, as she looked toward the future and away from Keppar, she was an opportunist, and she would never get a chance like this again.

"May I assist you today?" A softly spoken mechanical voice intervenes between her train of thought, pulling her attention to the small white droid that had parted the privacy curtain.

"I- well, y-yes," Isamar smiled weakly to it. She never doubted that she would have a soft side for harmless droids. "My splint seems to have a hinge, but I'm not too sure how to unlock it. Could you help me?"

"Of course, Miss Poisatt." It hovered over, panels sliding open from its main spherical body so that servos could extend. It helped slide away the rest of the glass and examined the frame of her splint. "The locking mechanism is located here, Miss. Snap it this way, and you may bend your knee to an extent."

"Thank you, Unit..." she drew off before reading the ID tag, "420."

"It is my primary function to assist patients at this facility, there is no need for any thanks to be given," the unit chirped in its gentle voice.

"Very well," Isamar placed a hand on her heart, wincing, "then extend my thanks to the medical staff."

"It shall be done," it tells her, before going about checking her vitals.

As she watches it bustle about, Isamar chews on her lip with growing anticipation. She starts with a basic tone of curiosity that one might expect from a shell shocked teen. "Do you know who found me? I was told that I was brought in but I was unconscious."

The unit continues its work, taking a brief moment to check her blood pressure. "A team of G-4 Corps carried you into the main foyer on a makeshift stretcher. From there, our facility staff removed the splints that had been applied to the area of the breaks and monitored you after a brief surgery."

"Surgery?" Now Isamar had not expected that. But seeing as she had definitely broken several bones, it really shouldn't have caught her off guard. "Oh. Did they pull me from the rubble?"

"No. You had been found at the site of a military incursion with the battle droids that set the bombing." Unit 420 paused as her heartbeat blipped before proceeding to scan her injuries one at a time for accuracy. "You had collapsed of mental exhaustion, Miss."

"I panicked," Isamar told the droid helpfully. "Dinui overextension, I expect."

"Yes, that was one diagnosis," Unit 420 supplied blandly.

"One?"

"Physical excursion and trauma was another."

Isamar did not justify that with an answer, falling quiet as her gaze dropped to her hands on her lap. She was glad when the droid left the subject die away while it performed its duties. It still hurt, even after repeatedly telling herself everything would be fine, and it would probably hurt for a great deal longer before it began to heal properly.

"Did they find out why the droids were sent out?"

"To win more land for their masters," 420 rumbled with no hesitation. "They were wildly unsuccessful."

"How so?"

Now 420 paused, scanning through its protocol programming to judge an appropriate response. When it appeared to have pieced together the words, Isamar was listening, trying not to lean forward in her eagerness. "G-4 Corps and a number of unidentified people wiped out the ground forces and A-2 Fighters destroyed the air support. While unprepared this time, Keppar's defenses will be ready if they return."

"Unidentified people?" Isamar forced herself not to hold her breath in anticipation, and instead prompted the droid to continue. "What do you mean by 'unidentified'?"

Mechanical arms pulled away sharply from the site of the IV in her arm. Unit 420 stared at her, its single optic cold and calculating. Isamar bit the inside of her cheek to keep from shuddering at the chill that ran through her body.

"Individuals that do not have profiles in Keppar's database," the droid said after a long stretch, but does not return to its work. "What purpose do your questions serve you?"

Isamar grew quiet, forcing the silence upon her rising panic. It ate away at her insides, clawing at the knots in her stomach with black nails. Then, in a voice much stronger than she felt, Isamar told a half truth, "To satisfy my curiosity and desire to know if justice was served to those that caused so much death and suffering."

To her luck, Unit 420 seemed satisfied with her answer. It slowly returned to its work, though more cautious than it had been previously.

This isn't what she had wanted. Isamar now had no idea how to get the answer to her final question. The droid wouldn't undertake another round of questions without becoming highly suspicious, and which was far too risky. All she wanted was to find her rescuers, and follow them to the stars.

Unawares to her, the droid's circuitry sparked, activating memory drives and inhibiting censors.

"The group can be found at the far outskirts of Sraval, towards the decommissioned droid factories."

Isamar balked. She didn't understand why or how, in all eight dimensional realms, Unit 420 had told her exactly what she needed. The droid hadn't even seemed to notice, either, that it had shared sensitive information and that one of its vents was smoking slightly.

Not willing to push her good fortune, Isamar remained quiet as the droid finished its work. Even when it started to explain when and where she should unlock the knee of her brace, she stayed silent despite her eagerness. She was being released from their care with instructions to not strain herself and return if something felt weird. Every few weeks, she was to return to check the progress of her healing breaks. Isamar thought she had no intentions of ever returning to this place.

"Thank you," she said, once the IV had been removed. The droid would never know exactly what she was thanking it for.

Unit 420 left quietly for her to change from the sterile gown into her clothes. Isamar didn't bother to wait until the curtain closed before she climbed from the berth.

She had to admit the clothes were warm, if a bit bland, and for that she was thankful. The sun was vanishing from the horizon by the time she buckled her belt and slid the sabre into the sheath. The summer air would have a chill once it disappeared completely, and she wasn't going to get very far if she couldn't feel her fingers.

However, when she bent down to pull on the socks, she was reminded of the nasty bruise across her chest. It tingled, tender and sore as she moved. Noting it carefully in the back of her mind, Isamar finished dressing and stood up.

The splint was a nuisance, she decided immediately. It made an awful clank-clank sound every time she took a step, and caught on the fabric of her pants at the most inconvenient time. But she would rather have the splint than a broken leg.

Nobody even glanced at her twice as she walked down the halls, and Isamar nearly laughed at the simplicity of it. But then that would definitely earn her some stares and she didn't want to be randomly recognised if she got caught sneaking where she shouldn't.

Isamar might have smiled as signed her name on the digital release forms if the atmosphere wasn't so heavy. It was suffocating with loss and pain, and Isamar felt the world darken in the anger and hate people felt towards the battle droids. She felt so strong and so weak, yet in the end she was just vulnerable. So she finished signing and scurried out the door as quickly as possible, eager for the pressure on her chest to be released.

The streets were bustling with people, some injured and others mourning. Military vehicles hovered above the crowds, patrolling to keep the public crowds in check. Chattering and screaming echoed throughout the buildings, all of the ones in this sector still standing after the bombing.

There could have been more people. They could have been crying for justice and vengeance with their blasters raised and helmets donned. Yet for now there were only enough to fill a few blocks. Isamar thought that was lucky.

Keppar could not withstand a civil dispute in a city as large as Sraval; a quarter of the world's population lived here, and with control of droid factories, it could easily turn for the worst. The only hope was that the public would settle, and come to understand that vengeance and justice had both been served. It could take years but they would eventually calm and everyone continued with their lives. Isamar nearly snorted at the speculation; by then people may have started to notice her absence, and she would be far from their reach.

The darkness in her chest did not ease as she walked the street, tightening with coils of hate. Gradually, it became hard to navigate the city, as Isamar wandered closer to the site of destruction, the hate and anger blossoming in the pit of her stomach. She shivered despite the warmth of her jacket, feeling chilled to the bone with dark emotions. Her own eyes shadowed, twisting her expression from one of desperation to one of hunger. Yet she merely felt cornered.

So many people were mourning, and she could feel it in the air, thick and suffocating like smoke. With tears pooling in her eyes, she slowly released a breath, easing out all the sickening emotions into the air. It was cleansing, and she needed to do it more often, but her senses were almost immediately blocked up by negativity again.

Repeating the motion only caught the breath in her throat when an engine rumbled overhead. Swiftly, Isamar ducked into a side street and pressed herself against a cracked stairway that led up to a residential block. She hissed in pain as she settled, her splint catching on the pavement and jerking her entire body. It wouldn't get her caught, but it hurt like a kick to the gut anyway.

The patrol passed by with no issue, and Isamar pulled herself back to her feet. It was travelling the same route as her, however, and after watching it take a turn up ahead, Isamar knew that it was going to the empty factories over the river. While she wanted to curse her luck, she feared it would turn her remaining good fortune.

It was long past dark by the time Isamar reached the bridge that connected the two shores, and the air was cold. The blockade at the other end was huge, and yet the only reason she could actually see it at all was due to the pale light of the three moons. Otherwise, it appeared as though the bridge was void of life. The air shimmered lightly around the factories in the shape of a massive dome, a sure sign of a force field — something Isamar could recognise from the Poisatt holiday home.

The electromagnetic field, Isamar could handle, as she knew from experience that the field was weakest around the generator that created it. Oftentimes as a child, she would sneak out of the Poisatt House with Davaid to play in the nearby orchards, where they would eat their weight in fruit. They had always squeezed between the generator and the field, which worked until the inevitable happened and she had tripped on a root, propelling her into the field and alerting the entire House staff to her attempted escape. Isamar only had to pray that the universe truly was on her side today and would keep her upright throughout her very much illegal trespassing.

Regarding the river and bridge, however, she was not so certain about. The only option she appeared to have was to swim across the river. That provided her with an incredibly high possibility of drowning, with her metal splint and massive bruising. She could climb beneath the bridge but that would leave her liable to fall, which would gain unwanted attention and get her arrested — if she didn't drown first.

The water was cold for the time of year, Isamar discovered as she waded in. It was chilling and soaked through to her bones in seconds once her clothes wet. She shivered, feeling sick, but pressed herself on despite the cold. There was no time to dawdle unnecessarily — either she did this now or lost the chance forever.

Once the water reached her waist, Isamar admitted to herself something: she was terrified. The fear was practically overwhelming even with the warmth of her confidence. Her hands shook so hard it reminded her of the first time she shot a blaster. Only this time, it wasn't a gun in her hands but her own life. Wherever she opened her palms to was where her future would sink its roots.

Isamar wanted to hesitate, to pause and stop what she was doing before she could go any farther. Yet, that constant part of her, the one made of heat and beskar, told her to do otherwise; to hold her nerve and jump into the dark water. It wasn't courage — it was something else — but she listened to it nonetheless, allowing it to guide her safely through the darkness to the other side.

Metal tugged at her leg, taunting her terror with the threat of death as it dragged in the water. Isamar fought to keep her head above the gentle waves, barely able to keep her mouth over the lapping water. She gasped, desperately gulping lungfuls of air as she silently thrashed. The midway point was so far from her sight, and it terrified her, but she kept fighting, reaching out without hands to grasp the bridge structure.

Warmth pooled in her fingertips as she released dinui, and on another day she probably would have cried with relief. She could use the dinui to keep her buoyant enough to not worry about drowning. Without it, she was startlingly aware of how easily her life could have flickered out.

Isamar followed the bold feeling in her soul to the first pillar, her mind lighter without the close shadow of death. Then she followed it to the second, and then again to the third. By the time she was beginning to wade out from the river, the feeling had faded away, hidden away in the depths of her soul. She didn't realise until she stumbled on a jagged rock, how far she had come.

The deepest pieces of her all wanted to laugh, to dance and cry and cheer at the accomplishment, only her tongue held its place. A slim smile danced across her lips, fleeting but present as she made her way up the shore as quietly as she possibly could.

For a guarded area, there were few personnel within the perimeter. At most, for what Isamar could see, there were six G-4 soldiers. Two of them were busy trying to light rolled smokes while the other four looked particularly stiff in their armour. Davaid had told her stories of how miserable one could become while standing stiff on duty, especially in beskar'gam. She believed him now. Unfortunately, she would never get to tell him that.

Her heart was pounding as she limped across the cracked tarmac, settling in her throat even as she hid behind a storage crate. When no-one came to investigate, Isamar checked her shoulder and found that none of them had even turned around. The generator was beside her, forgotten by the G-4 group while they processed the day's events in their own ways. That was fortunate for her, she thought, as she climbed through the tiny gap in the EM field.

Inside the field, between two factories, sat a ship unlike anything Isamar had ever seen — that was saying a lot considering that her uncle had built an entire range of ships himself. Three soldiers in white, like before, lingered outside the cargo door, clearly talking among themselves while four in polished armour carried a crate inside the ship. Beyond that, however, the area was empty. Isamar assumed that whatever agreements that had been made had likely finished hours ago.

At this point, Isamar threw away any idea of subtly, hobbling out towards the ship with no attempt to conceal herself. Warmth still filled her chest, however, and she could not understand why, after she had stopped using her dinui to keep herself afloat. It confused her even more when none of the soldiers noticed her presence.

Despite it all, however, she remained silent, passing by the three soldiers with only a puzzled expression. Perhaps she was being stupid, but it felt as though they could not see her. If that were the case, then maybe she should hide, and not suddenly present herself to a group of people likely to chuck her out again.

The thought made her reality crack. They had left her, had they not? Obi-wan didn't want her, only Anakin did. That's what Anakin had made it sound like. Isamar stilled as the idea struck her like lightning from the heavens. Why would they want her? All she had done was cause them problem after problem.

Suddenly choking on a wave of tears, Isamar scrambled into a tight corner between supply crates, curling in on herself. She clamped her hands on either side of her temples, pressing hard to ease the building pressure of anxiety and doubt in her mind. It did nothing and the world blurred despite her best efforts. Tears poured down her cheeks, adding to the wet of her clothes. Short gasps echoed as her breath caught in her throat, near silent in the ruckus of boarding and engines.

Time was vague, but she was shivering, numb, and lightheaded when a presence sat down next to her. She didn't even think. Isamar just leaned into the warmth of their body. Silence was peaceful, and numbness was calming. The warmth was soothing. It wasn't hard to forget why she was hiding.

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