The Stowaway

[Michael Cline]

Michael felt the weight of those eyes on his soul. The gravity of her words, of this confession. There was no lie here, there was nothing but raw emotion, bared openly and shared with another. It threatened to overwhelm him, and then the question. Her question to him. Had he ever done that? He had to go back so far to remember a time when it was about more than the pain he'd learned to enjoy inflicting on others, about more than the grasping, jealous clutching of the life he'd managed to pull together since. He had to go all the way back.

He deflated a bit, felt a bitter sting to his eyes that he fought to push back, to keep himself in the moment, with her. To the story, not yet finished, she was sharing. He had his own story to tell, and it was clear now she deserved to hear it, but it wasn't the right time to interject his own. Not yet.

"A long time ago, yes." He said meekly, somberly. The voice barely sounded like his own, and for a moment he heard the soft tone of a younger man in his words. A teenager who had everything, once. Before it'd been stripped from him.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

She nodded in understanding, taking note of the tone he spoke with. It was much less confrontational, now. Or at least, there was far less edge than there had been previously.

"In those moments, everything seems so clear, that what you're doing, you are doing for the right reasons, and your ends justify your means."

There was a pause, as she finally leaned back in her seat, letting out a ponderous sigh.

"Except, for me, they did not. I clung doggedly to a lie, hoping for my Master to grace me with soft hands and affection that was true. Unfortunately the love that he professed was as much of a mask as the face he wore for everyone else, including me."

Her hands moved apart then, shifting so that she could tap a single fingernail on the tabletop, almost idly.

"And then, my first love returned. He had spent so many years alone, wandering and staying as far from the Jedi as he could. But when he came back, he was like a man renewed, and while he has made his home now on Ossus, he never gave me up to the Dark. I suppose that I never stopped loving him, and when my Master betrayed me, I was able to see for the first time how I had been used."

She made a pained face then.

"I have heard stories about scorned women and the havoc that they can create, and I can tell you that there is nothing both so crushing and liberating as seeing how your love can be manipulated."

Silence fell then, between the two, but it wasn't long before she went on.

"And that is why I am here, now. I am paying for my crimes by doing what I now know is best. I have never believed in Fate or Destiny, as the Jedi and Sith do; I hold myself to my own will, and what the strength of it can accomplish. Whether it is large or small, it is mine, and belongs to no one else. There are too many shades of the Force to be constrained by a simple black and white view, so I refuse to let myself be taken by either extreme."

[Michael Cline]

Michael listened, and when she was done telling him her story he felt his breath hitch in his chest, biting back a laugh that tried to fall from his lips. He immediately raised a hand in apology, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, that's not funny. It's not." The rest of the breath he'd been holding slowly released and he felt himself leaning over the table, staring down at what was left of his meal - the food now the least important thing on his mind. "It's just... to hear someone else say something like that. To hear a story like that." He felt his shoulders relax and the tension in his frame slip, even if it was only for a moment it felt like heaven. How long had it been since he had actually just... breathed. Not the technical act of air in, air out that kept the body functioning. The long drawn out release of air that came in those rare moments when you just felt at home. It only lasted a second but he'd relish it for some time to come, he knew that much.

He found himself now at an odd crossroads. She had opened up, told her story and he should share his - but a voice deep inside told him to hide it, to silence it, to keep it secret. He warred with himself for a few moments, the air between them growing still and uncomfortable as he felt his frame tighten back up, his own story rolling around in his head as he tried to piece together how to share it, if he even should. He opened his mouth and nothing came out, closing his lips back as he knit his brow, and felt his pulse quicken. Anxiety threatened to overwhelm him and he knew if he didn't start saying something, he was going to say nothing.

"I was 16." He finally started, grasping the table with open palms as if it were a harness to tether him to the conversation, to keep him from blowing away. He wasn't sure he'd ever shared this story with anyone who wasn't involved in it. Not all of the story, not from beginning to end.

"I was 16, I think, when I came home to find my family..." He hesitated, feeling angry heat fill his eyes, quickly wiping it away to regain his composure, clearing his throat as he decided to leave the details to the imagination. "When I came home to find my family." He said simply, "This was... my first experience with the Force, and I knew, absolutely knew I had to run. That whatever had done that was going to finish the job if I did anything other than flee. I have never experienced such overwhelming terror in my life." He could feel his hands shaking at the memory and gripped one with the other to steady it, "I spent weeks hiding and wallowing in my fear, anger and hatred. Terrified of what I had discovered, of what could still happen to me, what would happen to me - and full of hate and rage toward the thing that had taken my parents... and myself for running from it."

His breath steadied again as the story moved forward. "That's when I met him, he was... only a year or two older than me, his name was Kyashi Hatake, but he introduced himself as Darth Sudoku. He swore to me that he was going to help me, teach me, train me, show me how to get the justice my family deserved, the revenge I wanted. Together we were going to find my family's killer, and all I had to do... was follow his lead." Mike shook his head slightly, "Darth Jirettai was the name he gave me, and we began to find others like us. Wil... Skye, Ky's own sister Leiko. We thought we were untouchable."

His hands went to his hair and he ran them through the red locks nervously, "Until Corellia. Until the Sith Order. They looked at us and they didn't see untouchable kids running free across the galaxy - they saw recruits, didn't matter if that's what we wanted or not." Mike closed his eyes and held a breath, he could still see Leiko's dead body clutched in his arms. "I never saw all my friends again, not together. Those of us who did get out only managed it when the Inquisitors interrupted... Leiko's funeral." Mike felt his temper flare as the timeline progressed and he knew what memory came next. "It took me a few months to find Sudoku after that, to learn he'd just started over. He didn't care about finding any of us, we were failures."

Cline's tone got lower, more dangerous, "He said he was so ashamed I hadn't become the Sith he expected me to be... the Sith he thought he'd set me on the path of being when he killed my family." the revelation, the memory, the betrayal hung on his lips like an angry insect's bite. "The Sith are just... monsters." He said quietly under his breath. "I'm not a great person." He admitted, "I'm pretty terrible, honestly - but that? That feels like giving myself up entirely, I can't do it."

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

She listened in silence, letting him tell his story with the freedom that he needed. It was not often that he could open up in such a way, she guessed, and s'Il allowed him the space to do just that. He spoke like a man that had so much to say, yet only when he felt safe enough to lower those defensive grids. She knew that feeling intimately. Each step he had taken, each progression down the road that could only be his... it was familiar all the same, and she found herself in perfect understanding.

And at the revelation of Sudoku's true motivations and actions... it was something that she found herself unsurprised by. The Sith were masters of deception, and she had been a party to that trait so closely.

"Lies are what the Sith know best; at least, those that are the 'True Believers'," she finally sighed out.

But, there was something else that he had opened up about, and straightening in her seat, she extended a single hand to him.

"It is an honor to meet you, Darth Jirettai."

He had given her a name from another life, and he deserved to know hers, from her other life.

"... I am Darth Acera."

[Michael Cline]

There was more he could say, his attempted murder of Sudoku. That it hadn't taken, and the angry Sith had returned nearly a year later for revenge. That it had been successful enough to see him frozen in carbonite, half a decade stripped away from him as a method to try and shatter Mike's life again. He'd never known what the intention was. If Sudoku had done it simply for his own sick enjoyment, and when he bored of the joke had left a suffering, sick Mike in that Coruscant back alley. Maybe it'd been meant to take everything away from him again, to leave him broken and alone enough to return to his former master.

For all he knew he'd been stuck in a storage facility that Sudoku had simply stopped paying for and had been dumped to 'thaw' like trash.

What he did know is that in the years since he'd seen no sign of Kyashi, no evidence the young Sith was even still alive. It had been a footnote compared to the rest of his story, but he'd gladly share it with his new... friend? Was that what they'd become. She still sent his hackles on edge, and that wasn't likely to change. Even if they were somewhere in the middle, a more morally grey shade, they were far apart enough that like opposing polarities of a magnet there was a force pressing back against each other.

He considered the extended hand with that knowledge - before shrugging it off and clasping it to shake. He'd get use to it, and Captain s'Ilancy was already proving to be a better friend than he'd had in a long time.

"Just... Mike is fine." He said with a small touch of discomfort, "I don't much feel like a Jirettai these days."

It was a statement made more as a wish than as a fact. The truth was he was feeling more and more like his old self all the time, the darkside trying to pull him down to a calling he had shirked for years. He had to hope that meeting someone else like himself, someone else to talk and share with might help unbottle some of the emotion that he felt like he was drowning in.

"But I am glad to meet you."

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

"And I, you."

She gripped his hand, holding it probably a bit longer than was proper. But, it was not the sort of lingering hold that those like Michael and herself would attribute to anything tentatively romantic. No, for them, it was something more of an understanding.

"Do not forget Jirettai, just as I have not forgotten Acera. They are a part of us, but they do not control us."

And then she did release him.

"They are us, after all. Not the best of ourselves, but they are still a part of us, and if we refuse them, they only get angrier and more forceful."

[Michael Cline]

It felt like an impossible task. Jirettai always felt like a shadow looming over him, ready to take control, ready to strip him of what he had. Run back to Korriban and declare your readiness to Ezra, complete his training and stand atop a pile of the worthless as the universe became his...

he gave himself a moment to shake free of the chain of thoughts that raced through his head threatening to become the only thing he could see - and rubbed the corners of his eyes, nodding slowly. "I'll try." was the most he could manage, and he would try, even if it terrified him. Nothing else had worked, and the nightmares only got worse. If his slipping control really was because he'd been trying to force himself to deny a part of who he was, then he was at wit's end enough to try something radical.

He glanced down at the remains of his lunch and realized the conversation had sated him in a way that the meal hadn't, his hunger gone for now.

"So... you know who I am, and I guess I know who you are now."

He considered the next words carefully, up until this point he was more of an accidental house guest than anything - Captain s'Ilancy had been kind enough to set up a cot for him if the analogy held, and it was only right to repay the favor. "What can I do to help around here, Captain?"

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

He had opened up in such a personal way, and she was loath to cast him aside. Rather, she smiled a genuine smile as she picked her fork back up, stabbing it into the small mound of creamy blue noodles still on her plate and beginning to twist.

"Oh, I can probably think of a few things," she smirked.

6 HouRS LATER...

On the bridge, she sat in her chair like a plumped nuna hen, confident in her position.

Scarif was a desolate planet now, scorched raw by the Empire; by Tarkin's petty squabbles with one Director Krennic. It was the sort of aftermath that made a person wonder if men with weapons was truly a good idea. Regardless of that notion, they were here now, in orbit over a once-lush world of long-gone beaches and tropical surroundings. Now it was simply sand; a dry, arid tomb that hid the crimes of Wilhuff Tarkin.

The tan orb that hovered before them was going nowhere anytime soon, and with a groan, s'Il pushed herself up to her feet.

"Come," she beckoned to the redhead that had been escorted to the bridge ten minutes beforehand.

"Let's have a look, shall we?"

Again she was leading the way, past the pilot's nest and up the shallow stairway that put them on the viewing platform of the wrapping viewscreen. It was a wondrous view, despite it all.

"What do you know about Scarif, Michael?"

[Tes Vilraider]

When the kid had been taken out of the brig by the Captain, that had been one thing. She presumed his story checked out, that he wasn't a danger and it was going to be easier to just shunt him off into some crew quarters for the duration. He'd be handed over to the Empire, or dropped off somewhere, if Cap was feeling especially generous, when this was all over anyway.

When she'd been asked to escort him to the Bridge? Now she had questions.

"So who are you, really?"

The kid couldn't just be some nobody Imperial from Bespin - some kind of double agent? Hell of a cover if it was, not a bad one, either. Or maybe he was some kind of expert that the Captain realized would be invaluable for the op. Could have been. Still just looked like a kid to her. I mean sure, in his 20s - but that boyish face all she could see was her oldest, Javen.

"Just Mike." He'd said simply with a shrug, "I asked if I could help, and... here we are."

Well that was boring - did kind of feel like the sort of play Captain s'Ilancy would make though. Serving on this crew had been anything but typical - and it made for great yarns to spin to the little ones.

Cap had taken personal custody and responsibility for the red-head when she'd arrived with him and after a sharp salute Tes found herself responding to a call in the galley. Someone had tried to sneak extras from Idiri again and gotten a good whack from the serving spoon. It wouldn't take much to break up the argument, but she had to chuckle. Sometimes the ship felt just like being back home taking care of her boys.

[Michael Cline]

Mike moved to stand besides s'Ilancy - just a step behind as well. She was still this ship's captain and he a civilian after all. He scratched his cheek with a thumb, the rest of his hand curled up beneath his chin and tried to think what he did know about the desert world in front of them.

Even with Mike going out of his way to avoid anything political, and even with what information the Empire clamped down on it's citizen hearing and seeing - he'd have to have been actively avoiding the news to not at least have heard of the planet. Some people claimed it had been a testing ground for the Death Star or a world on the verge of being lost to the Rebel forces. No matter what the truth was it was a ruin now. A hollow skeleton, which would have made it an ideal place to store and transfer any less than legal goods that needed to move through Alliance space.

He remembered there had been some talk of it's strategic use for the Black Sun, but that had been before he'd ended up on Cloud City and under Mr. Prent's employ, back when he stood at Ms. Sasseeri's side. He did wonder if anything had ever come of those talks.

He'd never been himself, and wasn't particularly keen on the direction the conversation with Captain s'Ilancy was going if it involved the sandy world. Mike had, had enough of digging through old ruins.

"Not a lot, honestly. The Empire burned it and you'd have to be crazy to want to go to it." he gave the Captain a sidelong glance as he said it.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

'Be crazy to want to go to Scarif'.

It was an apt assessment, she had to admit. There had never been a time in her life that she found cause to be on such a devastated planet, but here they were, now.

"Normally I would say the same. I heard enough stories about what happened here, and I have been to so many worlds destroyed by the Empire that I could never bring myself to add another to the list."

She shifted her stance, pivoting slightly sk that she could look back to Mr. Raghus, sitting in the pilot's nest.

"Bring us into a stable orbit please."

The Farghul nodded as he sent his attentions to the task she'd given him.

Another turn, and she was looking at the planet below once more.

There was no mistaking the inner feelings that surrounded this planet, and she spoke to Michael once more, her voice dropping slightly, so that only he could hear.

"One can feel the desperation here. The souls of so many lost to tragedy. You sense it, yes?"

[Michael Cline]

Even with Michael's limited skill in the Force, his lack of any proper training he could, in fact, sense it. He could almost guarantee what he felt was little more than a whisper compared to what Captain s'Ilancy was experiencing, but it was there none the less. The weight of the loss here felt crushing. Few experiences had resonated with him to this degree from a location.

The Sith Temple of Korriban when he had confronted the Alchemist Ezra Na'chtion. Fey'dann and that cursed urn. It felt like death.

"I do." he said simply enough, his words so low they barely felt like they'd actually left his lips. He blew out a puff of air through his nose and felt his cheeks tighten up as he looked at her a bit more solemnly.

"We have to go down there, don't we?" He'd already resigned himself to being pulled along on this little site-seeing trip. He had just had to play the part of an altruistic guest.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

"Well, I have to go down there, but whether you go, I'll leave that to your discretion."

She wouldn't force him to go down to the surface with her, but she wouldn't tell him to stay aboard if he didn't want to. Despite his brusque interactions, he had proven to be helpful in the past, during their first meeting and the subsequent 'adventure' that followed.

"Ma'am, orbit achieved," Raghus gruffly spoke up as he leaned back in his cushioned seat, "Mr Varin is prepping your shuttle."

"Thank you, Mr. Raghus."

A moment longer she stared down at the planet, in all of its bleak, beige glory. It hung in a sea of dark velvet, almost wallowing in the cruel fate it had been forced to accept. Letting out a long breath as she blinked, the Lupine disengaged her senses from the whisperings of so many lives lost, and sent a sideways look to Michael.

"Do not take too long to make your decision, however."

Stepping back, she moved past him, back toward the stairs that would take her from the viewing walkway.

"My shuttle leaves in thirty minutes."

[Michael Cline]

Just like that Michael had control of his choices. For a moment he didn't understand what she was saying, that he didn't have to go. He'd become so accustomed to following orders in his line of work he wasn't sure, in the moment, what to do with himself.

"Uh, yeah... got it." He finally managed to mumble out, still staring at the graveyard that lay on the viewing screen ahead of him. Lost in the echoes of those who died here. He didn't have to go with the Captain, he could have just as easily said no. He wasn't a soldier, or a 'good guy,' he wasn't even from Alliance space for this to be something that would ever concern him. He was an Imperial citizen, born and brought up on Coruscant, working on Bespin. What would the Empire do to him ever they ever found out he was complicit in whatever this whole thing was?

His own reaction to the thought, the slightest curl of a scowl as he knew there were no teeth to that threat made him wince. If the Empire ever got their hands on him it was over no matter what actions he'd engaged in. He was an unregistered Force Adept and had associated with organizations what could probably be classified as insurgent cells, if not worse. This would just be a bullet point on an entire spreadsheet of charges to be read against him.

But did he want to go down there? It would be just as simple to retreat to his quarters and wait this entire trip out on his own. Forget about the surprisingly nice Captain. Forget about the odd pull the planet seemed to have on your senses. Just throw on some audio files and forget any of this had ever happened. Cline had finally turned from the screen and started down the shallow stairway to follow the Captain's path considering his options when he thought of a justifica reason to travel with the Captain. Was he really willing to sit up here and hope that things would work out well enough to guarantee he made it home with only a moderate delay to his original timetable?

After all if something did happen to Captain s'Ilancy he'd be transferred over to Alliance Command, surely. Yes, going with her was in his own best interests, it was just looking out for number 1 again. Like he always had.

He hurried his step to catch up to her.

[Jeremy Varin]

* * *

The pre-flights were all completed, and Jeremy found himself almost happily in the small hold of his beloved nu-class shuttle, taking stock of the provisions held within the crew lockers.

A datapad in one hand and a stylus in the other, he worked his way down the line until he was finished, and continued on down the boarding ramp. The hydraulics were quickly inspected, the vents checked, and he found himself idly making sure that the scuffed paint wasn't too terrible - it was never fun when he had to fill out those outer hull maintenance forms for a spruced-up paint job, after all.

In the distance, he heard the cavernous doors of the hangar open, then close once more, and with one last look at his 'pad, he turned to the approaching...threesome?

The captain of course, and that infernal avatar KHER, and... the stowaway they'd taken on?

It wasn't exactly what he was expecting, and he turned fully to face the small group.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

KHER had insisted on joining them, and for once she welcomed the ship's ever-dogged determination. The spindly droid was like some constant guardian, and the Lupine took a small bit of comfort in his presence.

Spotting Mr. Varin easily, she set the pace at an even gait. Even from this distance she could see the curiosity in his gaze, and as she walked, s'Il idly brought her right arm up. She had made a brief stop at her quarters to retrieve her saber gauntlet, and now wore it with the cautious knowledge that to have it would be better than to not. The fingers of her left hand passed over the metal of the emitters, moving to the latches to make sure that it was snug.

"No matter what happens down there, Michael, stay close to either myself or KHER."

[KHER]

Tromping along behind the two, KHER kept his obsidian-black 'eyes' forward. At least, until the Captain spoke of him. At that point, his gaze went to the red-haired man that had been taken on.

I will only safeguard you because I have been told to do so, he felt the need to add.

[Michael Cline]

He cast a side-long glance at the wiry droid before turning his attention back to the shuttle before them.

"Noted." He grumbled in joint answer to the Captain's statement and the machine's surprisingly brunt addition. "I'll do my best not to require your services then." He huffed from between his lips to his metallic babysitter.

He very briefly considered letting the tinker-toy know he had no use for it's protection, and only bit his tongue to show consideration for Captain s'Ilancy. Mike would have preferred not to even travel with the scrapheap. He hadn't fully trusted droids since Corellia, and wasn't about to amend those feelings for this one.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

"Don't worry too much over his attitude," she gave a shake of her head.

"Old processors have a way of gathering peculiar behaviors, which makes for sometimes infuriating discussions."

She could still remember how KHER had harassed Zem constantly (though, at least one time had been through her machinations, to be honest), and it was not uncommon for the ship's avatar to take less-than-kindly to newcomers.

"Sometimes... it's just best to ignore him."

[Jeremy Varin]

Despite what he saw as a change of plans, Jeremy put on a genial smile as the trio approached.

Still holding on to his datapad, he put out his free hand to the redhead. Never let it be said that Jeremy Varin was of the impersonal sort.

"New guy, eh? Jeremy Varin, at your service; I'll be your driver for today," he grinned.