...Oh.

Before he walks out after her, he pats the child's head gently.

Aww.

She drops the things off by the speeder and beckons for Kai-Zi to follow her down the alley next to the store, where there's a bit of privacy.

He follows her.

She deflates, once she's more or less out of sight of people observing from nearby buildings, though she leaves the aura up. She sits against the building and pats the ground next to herself.

He sits down, a little unsteadily.

She puts an arm around his shoulders, pulling him a little closer.

"That was really sweet of you."

“...what was?”

"How you were worried about the baby."

"Who wouldn't be?"

He rubs his forehead. Headache.

"She couldn't worry about herself."

"Yeah." She dispels the headache - not entirely, but down to almost nothing. "I have a lot of sympathy for the mom, too, though."

The lack of headache helps.

"...yeah."

Now that he can think a little more clearly, he can start to see the outlines of what she must have been thinking, how she could have thought that the only way to protect everyone around her was to do that.

There's a question he wishes he didn't need to ask.

"What did you do? When you got here first?"

"Yeah, that's." Sigh.

"I stopped coming, after a while. Unless there was something Daisy couldn't handle, and there aren't many things like that, it's pretty much just the one kind of thing. If we get through this visit without me killing anyone, it'll be the first time that's happened."

“...oh.”

Logically, he expected something like this, but it’s still...a little difficult, to hear it outright.

"Yeah. It is mostly that I've stayed away; I don't want them to get the idea that having a Sith in town isn't life and death. But that doesn't really help when I am here."

“Yeah.”

He takes a deep breath and tries to pop a few dislocated feelings back into place.

”...I guess...let’s make this the first time, then.”

"Yeah." She gives him a squeeze. "There isn't much else to do, anyway."

He nods.

”...Let’s go, then.”

With any luck, nothing will go wrong between now and the time they leave.

With any luck.

She loads up the speeder, then takes them over to the hardware store to pick up the wagons Daisy discarded last night, which have since been emptied apart from the stack of library materials. They go to the library, next; the main section is apparently empty, but one of the librarians is visible in the back office, through a window, and Dusk nods an acknowledgement to her as she leaves the books and discs on the intake desk and retrieves a new stack from behind it.

"I have one more stop to make, is there anything else you need while we're here?"

“I think you’ve got enough library to keep me busy for a while.”

"Mmhmm."

The final stop is the feed-and-seed, where she grabs a bag of goat food and a bag of chicken food, then takes a cage and goes to pick out a trio of chickens.

While she's examining the birds, a man comes out from between some shelves, wielding a length of pipe, and tries to sneak up on her, apparently assuming that Kai-Zi won't give warning.

Oh, dammit.

He doubts that man will actually get close enough to do any damage. If he gets almost that close to her, he will definitely die. If Kai-Zi says something, he will also almost certainly die. Kai-Zi wanted to go home without anybody dying.

That's as far in his calculation as he can get before he has to make a choice.

His hand extends in front of him and, with a twitch of his fingers, he slams the man into the wall behind him.

"Fuck off."

...he really wasn't supposed to do that.

He really wasn't.

The aura of doom falters for a moment as Dusk freezes.

...shit. Shit that was a really bad idea.

Is the guy at least unconscious now like he hoped?

Yup. Not laying at a very healthy-looking angle, either.

"All right, time to go," Dusk says, and then picks the man's limp form up and snaps his neck.