The Jedi Temple, Atton's Coruscant, Saturday

[suitably_heroic]

A week had come and gone. The Jedi and their allies had made good headway, clearing the Iridonic Horn out of the shipyards at Gyndine. And yet after that first sighting - both hopeful and troubling - there had been no sign of Atton. Having the man's friend here clearly wasn't doing much to convince Atton to come home, either, and Mical was beginning to wonder if asking Sparkle to come at all hadn't been a deeply futile act.

So it was that, exactly a week after Sparkle's arrival, that he was going to tell Sparkle to go back home. The rooms they'd provided Sparkle were rather spacious, for Jedi standards, but they were not far from Mical's office.

He had made his way over there, and now he was knocking.

[[ for sparkle. ]]

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[suitably_heroic]

"Sparkle?"

That was, of course, the moment where Mical, freed from his assailant, made his way back to the room. "Are you all..."

Right.

"No," he said slowly, raising his lightsaber. "Clearly not."

"Lower your weapon," the woman hissed, as her companion got a tighter grip on poor, sobbing Sparkle. "Or we'll kill him. Jedi."

[myownface]

Braver people might have had something stupid to say, here. Some sort of 'don't let them win, fight back' bullshit that would end poorly for themselves, but at least it would look all noble and romantic in print, if anybody ever cared to write about it later. Probably in a eulogy.

Sparkle was not braver people. Sparkle was a shivering mess. He wanted his bed and a stiff drink and his cat and his sister, wanted that person who was holding him to be somebody else entirely, who would soothe him and tell him that he'd be okay. He wanted to be a little boy, like the little boys he saw on television and in books and movies, who had somebody there who would console him and wipe his tears and care. Hell, he'd take Lewis right now. Lewis was a rainy day that he could live to walk away from, compared to this.

Weapons and bravery were the last thing from his mind.

[suitably_heroic]

And Mical was... had been a soldier, yes, after he had been a Padawan, but he had been a spy. It had not been until Meetra found him in the bowels of the Jedi Enclave that he'd truly became someone who served on the front lines. It hadn't mattered: there had always been other people on their team whose reflexes were perfect, whose instincts were deadly and true.

Like Atton.

But Mical was not Atton. So he wavered, for just a second.

It was long enough. The woman threw something at the floor, and it explode into a plume of smoke right at Mical's feet. Before he had time to sink into Jedi breath control, she fired at him. He had to make a choice, and the choice was the one to preserve his life: catching that blaster bolt straight on his lightsaber.

Just in time to suck in a deep breath of poisonous smoke, and suddenly he was light-headed, sinking to his feet.

"That's what I thought," said the woman.

[myownface]

"Oh," said Sparkle again, vision blurring as he watched the scene unfolding. There was Mical. And there went Mical. And he wasn't sure if it was the smoke or the pain, but the world seemed to be blurring to white again, and staying awake was getting harder to do. "Okay."

This... this was probably somewhere in his top ten for 'worst days ever.'

[suitably_heroic]

There was a third, and final, sizzle. A third figure appeared in the doorway, his mask covering the lower half of his face, but not the rest of it. "Good, you got him," he said.

Theemin's eyes slid from the boy (Sparkle.) to the crumpled heap of Jedi on the floor. "Let's take the Jedi," he said. "That'll send a signal."

The woman shook her head. "No," she said. "Too much trouble."

[myownface]

There was a familiar voice on the edge of his consciousness, something about Jedi and signals. Sparkle licked his lips and opened his mouth a little, though he trailed off before he could say Atton's name. Something was wrong. He was talking to them. That wasn't how this was supposed to go. That voice was rescue, it had always been rescue. It wasn't pain and sparks in his eyes and smoke burning at his lungs and fogging his mind and making consciousness itself into a battle.

"... Oh."

Broken record.

[suitably_heroic]

Damn it.

There was no way At-- Theemin could get away with showing more concern, and arguing back wouldn't be in character. "Fine," he said. "But let the small one go before you choke him to death."

The man holding Sparkle let go of him. Abruptly.

[myownface]

And Sparkle... Sparkle tumbled to the ground, legs like butter underneath him, bonelessly.

He didn't try to get up. Whimpering on the floor seemed like a much better plan. Or maybe sleeping.

Sleeping was a better plan. He was just going... to.. go... to...

[suitably_heroic]

Theemin scooped him up off the floor. Okay, if he wasn't being watched, he might've been more careful with Sparkle instead of draping him over his shoulder, but there was only so much he could do.

At least he was the one handling Sparks, now. Best he could do.

"Let's leave," he said coolly, fixing his eyes on Nina's masked face. "There's usually at least one other Jedi in the building, and the rest of them aren't bleeding hearts. Come on."

"Fine," Nina said. "I think we've made our statement." She reached for her belt and switched her stealth field back on.