"Torin... Jake... Darnius.. Nayva... Raene..."

[i]Raene.[/i]

She knew all of these names but that last one... The girl was like a beacon of happiness. The kind of person you just liked, who asked the most innocent questions.

[i]"What happened to your fingers?"[/i]

[i]"Does it feel weird when you move them?"[/i]

Lyla had been hearing the sounds of fighting all along the way and she had seen a few bodies but hearing this, [i]knowing[/i] that this little girl who would just sit down next to her and talk to her was gone... She could feel her throat closing up and more tears rising to her eyes. 

But here Enrik was, staring at her, asking exactly what she had been trying to figure out since she left the dormitory:
"What... what are we going to do?"

He looked as shaken as she felt. He was like Raene, really - always trying to make people happy, even if he didn't have the girl's intuition. A week ago, he was just another face to her, friendly but distant. Now, he gave her a reason to at least pretend to be confident. She brushed the tears away and swallowed two, three times to keep her voice from breaking.

"We... need to find one of the masters. I left Mara, Eeth and a few younglings in one of the dorms."
A shiver ran down her spine at the thought of what might have happened in the meantime, but she tightened her grip once again and shook the thought out of her head. 

"Let's check the quarters. We'll be fine. The clones aren't... invincible."
She lifted the lightsaber.
"It's mine. It's real. And they don't stand a chance against us."
She tried to sound convincing, brave, but... she couldn't help but notice a hint of anger on her voice.

"Come on."

[b]-----[/b]

"There's nobody here", she murmured.

It had only been a few minutes but she could already feel the confidence she pretended to have drain from her body. The quarters were deserted, most had been for weeks, their inhabitants off to fight in the war, side-by-side with the humanoids that were butchering them today. Others showed signs of combat; thankfully, almost all bodies were those of clones and, through miracle or the will of the Force, Enrik and Lyla hadn't run into any stragglers.

But it led them back to where they started, back to that silent question she could read in Enrik's eyes: [i]"Now what?"[/i]

"Think...", she whispered to herself, closing her eyes, trying to focus. "Think, think, think... Where would they go? Where would the masters go, meet, regroup, fight back? Think, damn it!" 
She ran her hands through her hair like the answer might fall out of them if she just-

"The Archives", she heard Enrik say. Lyla opened her eyes and looked at him. Did he feel their presence? Did he just guess? But... he was right.

"Yes. The Archives." [i]Heavy doors. A labyrinth. The safest halls in the Temple.[/i] "Let's- wait."
She stopped dead in her tracks.
"No... No, I have... I have to go back. I left the others in that room and we don't have time to run back and forth."

She looked back down the hall they had come from.
"We'll go back, we get them and then go to the Archives."
Lyla didn't wait for a reply. Was this stupid and dangerous? Yes, both. But she couldn't leave them. 
[i]"We're all going to be fine."[/i]

[b]-----[/b]

How they avoided running into clones was beyond her. Once or twice, they heard footsteps in the distance, thanks to the relative quiet in this part of the Temple, and took a longer way around. Another time, an LAAT passed one of the large windows and, through pure chance, they were just out of sight. Whether it was the will of the Force or the clones' inattentiveness, it helped them make their way back in only a few minutes. 

Lyla recognized the hallway: Vomit on the floor, a pile of half-molten guns... and one body. Only one.

"They're gone", she whispered and felt her heart pounding in her chest. She had been so sure that they would be unconscious for much longer. Had another patrol come by? But if it did, then-

She broke into a sprint, not paying any attention to Enrik who was no doubt confused by her but doing his best to keep up. She turned a corner, then another, then saw the door - it was wide open.
[i]No.[/i]

Lyla ran to it, slid and crashed into the metal frame and saw it, smelled it, felt something break inside her. Her lightsaber slid right out of her suddenly powerless fingers and fell to the floor with an audible [i]clank[/i]. She managed one, two, three steps into the room before her knees gave away and she crumbled to the floor, right next to the lifeless, blaster-riddled bodies of her friends.

Her lips formed "no, no, no" over and over but no sound escaped her. She couldn't breathe, couldn't [i]process[/i] what she was seeing. Her hands were moving in incoherent gestures between her hair and her mouth. And then, finally, she heard it - Her own strained sob. It broke out of her with a violence that shook her. The tears blinded her and she slumped over, hugging the corpses in desperation, willing them back to the life but only covering herself in blood in the process.

Somewhere behind her, she could hear a voice, felt a hand on her shoulder, thought that she could her a sniffle but it was all drowned by the thunderstorm of emotion that was rocking her. [i]I need to go[/i], a tiny voice said, somewhere in the depths of her, clear even against the overwhelming noise of sorrow. [i]If we stay, we will die. They wouldn't have wanted us to die.[/i]

She heard Enrik's voice again, more urgent than before. There was no time, they could be found at any moment. It was hard, oh so hard to force herself away from them. Couldn't she just lie here and weep?
Something caught her eye, even through the haze of tears. A glint on Mara's finger.

[i]"Jealous? It's just a silver ring, a gift from home. How about this: The first of us to make Padawan gets one for both of you!" Mara had beamed at them, excited over her own idea.

Eeth seemed so aloof, so detached. He was so much friendlier below the surface: 
"A stupid, cliche symbol of friendship? Sure, why not."[/i]

With shaky fingers, Lyla took the ring and put it on her thumb.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
She clawed her hands into her friends' robes one last time before she forced herself on her feet. Without a word, she took her lightsaber from Enrik and turned her back on the death in this room.

"The Archives", was all she managed to say before stepping through the door. She left something behind in that room, something broken beyond repair.