"Five hundred for the lot."

"Don't insult me. Twenty thousand, no less, and an extra five hundred for delivery."

The other man stared at Methos, his complexion actually turning red and splotchy at the rebuttal.

"Twenty thousand?! I could buy a ship for that! That's bald-faced thievery, you…" he sputtered, half-choking in disbelief.

"These are starlights, my friend, not those pretty little blue things that grow on the palace lawn," Methos explained with exaggerated patience. "Your employer has good taste, but you obviously don't know your flowers very well. It's either that, or you think I'm a complete idiot. Starlights are hard to grow, difficult to transport, and insane to export. Good luck finding another source."

Methos would have felt a little bit of sympathy for the man, but the fellow behaved as if he actually were a member of the noble house he merely worked for, as if that somehow gave him permission to treat vendors like dirt in any event. It wasn't as if Methos were lying about the starlights, anyway - and the florid expression on the other man's face definitely outweighed the loss of a potentially valuable sale. He'd survive.

"See! See!" a child's voice called, her energy and excitement cutting right through the gentle clamor of the market. Glancing away from his irate would-be customer, Methos saw a little girl, absolutely tiny, pointing wildly towards his display and dashing around the legs of the milling crowd to get to it. Starlights, in all their bioluminescent glory - just the sort of thing to catch the eyes of both the nobility and small children. Hopefully, her parents had enough money to afford at least one bloom, because this little girl stared enraptured. "See!"

Then Methos felt something brush against his mind and realized that she wasn't entranced by flowers at all.

"We're all objects. Bright and shiny, dull and battered. But we're all here, inside, outside," said the woman - barely more than a girl, really - as she spun gracefully away from him. "You're good at hiding, but sometimes you forget. Or lie."

"Is that so?" he grinned fiercely. She was good, this one, her footwork absolutely enchanting.

"I see so much. I don't always comprehend." Her dark, childlike eyes grabbed him in their hypnotic spell momentarily until he wrenched himself free. "You're the sea, full of currents and secrets. Life and death and depth and eternity. The calm and the storm."

"Very poetic." He resisted any urge to glare as she pirouetted away from him again. Her footwork really was a thing of beauty. Had she been trained as a dancer before she came to this life they shared? As he raised his weapon once more, he was almost disappointed he would have to kill her. "So, if I'm the sea, what does that make you?"

"The river."

Unlike that mysterious, remarkable woman all those years ago, shattered but still shining, this little toddler twinkled like the stars in the night sky, faint but clear through the Force. Utterly untrained and unskilled, reaching out instinctively to the first person she met with any Force sensitivity to respond to hers. Glimmering starlight she may be - were she to be trained, however, she would be brilliant as the sun shining above them now.

Methos knew innumerable curses in countless languages living and dead, but none of them adequately expressed his feelings at this particular moment. He slammed his shields down, locking them tight.

The girl's rapt expression changed to childish befuddlement as he vanished from her nascent senses.

"Dear heart, what have you found? Starlights?" The owner of a new voice scooped the child up into his arms, and Methos found himself wishing even more curses on his luck this day, for the person in question was none other than Bail Organa, Viceroy and Senator of Alderaan. Organa's eyes passed over Methos without apparent recognition, fortunately. There was no reason for the senator to connect a random floral merchant with a Jedi Master he'd met a few times years before, especially with the Jedi being far more dead than not these days. But the Organas, and Bail particularly, were both perceptive and possessed long memories.

"Could I interest you in purchasing some of these rare and beautiful specimens, sir?" Methos asked diffidently. Distract the man with the pretty flowers, and hopefully he ignores the unremarkable man who sells them. Though the senator seemed far more interested in his little girl than the flower vendor in front of him, anyhow. That the Princess of Alderaan was adopted was no secret, but how had Bail and Breha come to raise a child with such potential in the Force? Coincidence ? Did they even know that she was Force-sensitive? The girl, oblivious to his rapidfire mental assessment, made an adorable, squinty-eyed face at Methos.

Methos doubled down on his shields. Any more and he'd cut himself off from the Force completely, which would be… very unfortunate for him. Organa's daughter had placed them all in terrible danger, and neither of them apparently possessed any inkling.

"Could you deliver them?" Organa asked, his dark eyes sparkling with all the joy of a father looking to please his young daughter.

"Of course, sir. It would be my pleasure. And please, take one for the charming young lady here." Methos held out one of the bioluminescent blossoms.

"Gently now, Leia," the senator coaxed.

The little girl's face bloomed into a smile as she apparently noticed the starlights for the first time. She reached out and grabbed the very expensive flower with what delicacy a young child could manage. At least she was no longer staring at Methos.

In the corner of his eye, Methos could see his former would-be customer gaping. Methos ignored him.

"My assistant here will work out payment and delivery details." Organa smiled with all the pride and joy of any father Methos had known over his very long life. "Tiro?"

Methos's eyes slid from Organa to the man a few feet behind him. This time, Methos could not help but wince internally. 'Tiro.' Short for Ami-Seupai Tirohia. The man formerly known as Sergeant Slick of the Grand Army of the Republic, traitor and murderer of his brothers. Whom Methos had stolen out of a cell and planted to serve as spy and bodyguard to the Organas after Christophsis. And with whom he hadn't communicated since Order 66 brought the death of the Jedi Order and the end of the Republic.

"Of course, sir. I'll take care of everything," Slick said in that smooth, cultured Coruscanti accent Methos had drummed into him. And there was no mistaking that glint in the clone's eye: he knew exactly who Methos was.

This was going to be a fun conversation.

"So."

"So."

Slick might not look or sound like any of his cloned brothers anymore (Methos would deny the sudden pang he felt in his heart for Sever and the others from the Century), but the Immortal didn't need the Force to sense the same disapproval and annoyance as when they thought he was doing something stupid.

"If you're looking for an apology, you're probably going to die of old age first," Methos said archly.

"The last I heard from you was the order to lay low until further notice. Next thing I know, the War's over, the Republic's become the Empire, and all the Jedi are dead. Traitors and dead, I might add."

At no point in their "relationship" had Methos ever identified himself as a Jedi to Slick, though he was hardly surprised that the ex-sergeant made the connection. Discretion being the better part of valour, Methos also declined to point out the irony in Slick's "traitor" remark.

"Your information saved lives. Your last transmission, particularly."

"How many lives?" Slick asked bitterly. The information hadn't come soon enough to save the Republic, or even the Jedi that he despised, and now so many more of his brothers knew the acrid taste of what it meant to betray everything.

"Enough." The Century, at least. Methos refused to dwell on the past, however. And there was something else of more immediate worry to him. "I need to know about Organa's daughter. Leia."

Slick's eyes widened, then narrowed suspiciously. Protectively.

"I don't owe you anything anymore, so don't beat around the bush. Why do you need to know about her? She's just a little girl."

"That little girl is Force-sensitive and I don't want to see her end up dead or twisted into some tool of that creature who calls himself the Emperor."

The former soldier stared blankly at Methos for a moment, clearly not expecting him to give such a straightforward answer so easily. Then his expression hardened.

"You are not taking her away," Slick said flatly.

"Why would I take her away? To teach her the ways of the Force? Train her to be a Jedi?" Methos shook his head in annoyance. "Of course not. I just said that I don't want to see her dead. She does, however, need protection. She reached out to me instinctively, with the Force. What happens if Bail takes her to the Senate one day and she tries that near, say, Palpatine's right-hand monster or pet Jedi-hunters? The Inquisitors?"

Slick looked away. He knew the answer to that question.

"All I can tell you is that Leia was born on Empire Day, and that her birth mother is dead," Slick said in a low voice, despite the fact that they were alone in a back room. That was clearly not all Slick knew , but Methos would have to force him to give up anything more on the subject. Amazing what a few years in service to a good man could do. The Jedi and the Republic may not have earned Slick's loyalty, but the Organas had. "The Senator and the Queen had been looking to adopt a little girl, and she needed a home, a family. I know nothing of her biological father."

Methos studied Slick for a long moment; the clone's expression remained firmly mulish. Yes, the man had changed a lot since Methos had plucked him out of a cell. Or maybe not. Maybe he had simply found the thing worth fighting for, worth protecting, more important than his own life.

"I need to speak to Senator Organa."

"That…" Slick raised a sardonic eyebrow. "...is gonna cost you."