STAR WARS REBELS || Her Wings Of Fire

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Hatred And Love

She was still so beautiful.

Despite the fact that Lux was utilizing a blank expression and a mental block to partially disguise his current state of mind, underneath it all, every second Sorena stared at him with her alien yellow eyes was chipping a piece of his heart away.

It was a few moments before she spoke. "You're not like the others," she said, cocking her head as if something confused her ever so slightly. But her unsettling little smile never wavered. "The Jedi and his Padawan, they don't know the Force like the Order did during the Republic. They're weak. But you... You're a mystery, Teri. Who are you, really? And don't lie to me. I can see through it."

He sighed, trying not to show any of the pain he was feeling. "Don't you know?" he asked, his voice hardly above a whisper.

"Look at me."

Lux managed to lift his head, meeting her eyes once more.

"I have lived long enough to see the same eyes in different people. I know your eyes – they are those of a soldier, of someone who will fight for the weaker side even if he knows the situation is beyond hopeless. Someone who should by all rights be weak but somehow finds reserves of strength to call upon by ways of passion for their cause." Her eyes narrowed to catlike slits. "The eyes of a rebel."

"All of those are true," he said, calming his thoughts to the best of his abilities, "but you're also missing the point. Look closer."

Taking his invitation, Sorena exhaled softly, deep in thought. "But there's something else. You question orders. You're not just a fighter – your first instinct is to negotiate. Actually, you're quite like someone I knew back on–"

Suddenly, she went completely still, her entire body poised as if preparing to strike. Lux knew she had connected the dots between his appearance that he guessed had seemed familiar to her when they had fought a few hours before, and everything that could be determined about him through his eyes. "You," she hissed.

"You know who I am," he told her, looking upon her coolly. He knew he was treading on dangerous ground, but he had to be sure she knew. "I want to hear you say it. My name."

She bristled at that, her yellow eyes burning a spot into the floor in front of her. But she refused to speak.

"Say it."

"Aluxso Prowyn Bonteri," she said in a tone that wasn't far short of a snarl, drawing every syllable out to its full length. She looked up at him from the confines of the force field poisonously.

"Miss me?" Lux smirked mockingly at her, but he knew the time for games was over. A light directly over her force field prison began to flicker, and he could feel as well as see Sorena's whirlwind of powerful rage manifesting around her as a breeze pulled at the folds of the blanket beside her.

With a yell of fury, she extended her hand to wrap the power she had generated around his neck with enough power to break it in less than a second. But, try as she did, nothing happened.

"How is this possible?" she asked, darkly amazed. Despite the fact that all the effort she was putting into trying to choke him was making her tired, she doubled her efforts.

Lux stood up calmly, entirely unaffected by the energy that should have killed him, crossing his arms behind his back. "Are you acquainted with the ysalamiri of the planet Myrkr?" he asked. "Their sole predators are creatures with the ability to use the Force. To survive, they developed an ability to create bubbles empty of the Force around them."

It was then that Sorena broke off her attack. She scrambled to the far edge of the force field, as if under the impression that she was surrounded by ysalamiri.