[right][sup]A collab with [@Ruby][/sup][/right]
[hr]

Satele Shan needed time. The schedule didn't allow her that time. Jace had a ship ready, but they had to move for reasons that owed to the greet logistics god of the Republic spaceways. It was a fickle god, but Satele understood Jace having to put it before her Jedi and their uninvited guest. She talked to herself aloud in the small office, talking about this old contact, that old lead, as she binged file after file, sealed record after sealed record, in her search for information. Jace just stared at her. The office was borrowed from another Master, a connection certified as secure so she could look. 

Then, of course, Satele found it. 

"She's the collector." 

The words were sighed as she stood quickly from the desk chair, smoothing her robes out almost subconsciously. They were tight by design, made for not getting in her way just as much as they were some form of repressed expression from the lifelong Jedi. The shiny, velvet, blue of her robes over her midsection wasn't armored. It was just shiny fabric, and it bunched over her tummy if she didn't smooth it down after sitting in certain positions. Usually the product of bad posture. At least Jace knew to follow her, not she he was likely to let her out of his sight as they walked fast through the corridors of the Temple, Jedi getting out of their way as the two moved. 

"We thought maybe they were a former Jedi, maybe even someone like Theron who started out in the Order as a youngling but was then removed. Maybe an Imperial agent, who knows how long they plotted t for fun. If it was for fun. And Je'daii items. Them especially, it would seem now."

She didn't knock on the door when she reached it through the maze of small corridors branching off the wider main ones where people tended to congregate; and people were gathering everywhere trying to gossip, steal what information they could, and report the coming and goings of people like satele. She just entered slowly and repressed the smile when she found San Anin with Brye. "Excuse us? I hear the Supreme Commander could use a guide to the nearest cup of coffee." Her Padawan would understand; so would Jace. This was a Jedi thing, San Anin's face seemed to Satele to sink at the sight of the Grand Master appearing within the door, but inevitably had a way with everyone. 

Satele ensured the door shut after Brye left, the expression upon her face anything but unkind. "What happened?"

At first, San Anin was silent, shifting as her uncomfort grew and grew before she eventually began to speak in a soft, hesitant tone, “W-well, M-master Kyla and E-Elav took me t-to investigate the l-landing. The o-other padawan w-was there t-to.” She paused at the mention of the other padawan, lowering her head as her hand brushed over her breathing mask.  “E-Elav d-died when those t-things came. T-the other padawan had already left, i-in the chaos, I gave into a-anger. I could f-feel the chaos of the planet, I-I could feel the s-sadness of m-my master. W-when we found the s-sith, I let m-my clouded m-mind get the b-better of me. I tried to k-kill her s-so her presence w-would kill anyone else.”

The padawan refused to look at the grandmaster, keeping her gaze firmly on the floor as her fingers interlocked and her thumbs played with each other.

“They aren’t a Sith.”

It was largely irrelevant to the purpose of the discussion at hand, but Satele felt it important to highlight the fact none-the-less. This one woman invader, this Selene, wasn’t Sith. It was important for many reasons, the least of which being acts of war. What would become of the woman? That, however…

“San Anin,” Satele’s voice came out changed, different: it was soft, it was warm, it was vulnerable. It was anything but the neutral tones that were interspaced with flashes of humor and care that made up her usual public tones. “We cannot know what is to become of this Selene. I know she will be put on a ship and sent to a prison made to hold even Force users. With any luck she will rot away in a hole, or come to the Jedi Order for redemption. It is possible that this woman will one day lead to the death of another Jedi.”

The more she spoke the more steel returned to her tone, until there was little left in her voice, and reflected in her eyes, of the seriousness with which she addressed the Padawan, “Make no mistake, San Anin, I cannot see this peace lasting. You will have plenty of time to use your lightsaber against Sith. War will come again, and maybe if you had killed this woman you might save other lives later on--or if you killed her you might deny the Force some useful purpose for her. We do not know. The Jedi way says you spare the woman, find what information you can, then deal with her...precisely what we are doing now.”

Satele made steps towards San Anin earlier, when her expression changed, but had now largely drifted. Eyes touching on various spots of the Padawan’s private quarters as she moved, almost as if she were restless. Maybe she was. Maybe she would be until the woman was off Tython and in a prison. 

At the door Satele turned quickly on her right heel, sudden and smooth as a soldier’s facing movement, though it was accompanied with a rather casual little sigh. “Dust yourself off, Padawan. You can use this event in meditation for years to come. You’ll improve, you’ll get new realizations on why we Jedi err on the side of life whenever possible. They will be needed if war comes again and you find yourself forced to fight with people you never thought you would, or could.”

A live wire of a smile crossed Satele’s red lips in a flash, afterall, she had confidence in San Anin. “I wouldn’t expect any disciplinary action.” There, as Satele’s body leaned back into the door of the Padawan’s quarters, that smile lingered a moment longer so long as Satele kept her eyes on the Padawan. “Good luck, San Anin,” a farewell before Satele twisted her shoulders and slipped out of the door.

Now it was time to speak with the other Padawan that didn’t belong to her involved. 

With Satele now gone, San Anin felt that she could finally breathe again. The padawan had been expecting much worse, finding that Brye had made her master seem far worse than she had led on. San Anin let out a sigh as she went on to clean her robes, she had a funeral to attend and she knew that she would not like it.