We made our way back to Mos Ila in silence then. In reality, it was likely only a day's speeder trip, but it felt like eternity. My head was in terrible pain from crying and the ingestion of far too much alcohol in too short of a time. When we arrived, our ship had been moved to ensure that others were given a chance to arrive. There were only so many berths, and this meant that we had to wait for a day for the ship to arrive.

There were no rooms available to us, and I, in tune with Quinn's desire to maintain a low profile, ventured into the slummy parts of town to bars and cantinas to find rooms to stay in.

Eventually, we found one in which almost all of the clientele were Jawas, and a female took my hand and led me eagerly inside. Quinn made a noise of discomfort, but otherwise remained silent and followed me in.

The Jawa led me down a hall and into a room made entirely of sand, like the old buildings, and she motioned for the two of us to go inside together.

"Married people go into place together," she said before disappearing, and the door slid closed with a soft snap.

She thought that we were married. I cringed and couldn't turn to face him. He'd ventured inside already, and I heard him stiffen at the suggestion. Somehow, this thought struck me as very humiliating, but not because it was unappealing but because I assumed he would think it was so.

The Jawa woman knew nothing of what she spoke.

We stood in silence for a long time, both lost in thought.

"Forgive me," he whispered into the silence. When I did not reply, he amended, "My lord."

"For what?" my mouth finally asked.

I sounded cold.

"For my conduct," he said.

I heard by the sound of his voice that he'd turned to face me.

"What about it?" I asked him.

"I…am afraid that I have hurt you, my lord," he said very slowly, like every word was a labor. "And that displeases me."

"You didn't," I replied immediately.

But I cringed. We both heard that I was lying.

"Would you like me to leave you, my lord?" he asked after a while. "I can…find someplace elsewhere and rendezvous with you at the ship."

I cleared my throat.

"No, that will not be necessary, Captain," I said icily. "It would be suspicious, and I cannot be trusted not to fraternize with my own kind." I sneered into the silence. "Besides, you might fraternize too, and then where would we be?"

Finally, I turned to face the bed, but I didn't look at him. It was hard to hide my face, so I sat, my back to him. He sat on the other side.

"I would like…" He began, but he stopped before starting again. "I grew up on…Korriz. In the Esstran sector. It wasn't a busy place."

I turned my head towards him silently to show that I listened.

"There were non-humans there too, my lord," he said quietly. "Non-humans and humans living together."

I stiffened now.

"I…I swear to you that I…didn't grow up thinking that non-humans were less than I was."

"But you think that now," I said bluntly. "I hear it in the way you talk."

"I…didn't realize how…how the military has affected my perception of things, my lord," he said to me. "I am…so sorry. I really am. When you're surrounded by it, it's…hard to break the habit, however bad."

I mulled it over, sensing him in the Force like I always did. For the past few days, his constant presence had been a gaping wound at these thoughts. Now, they seemed a little bit to ebb back to the way they had been, but I was reluctant to forgive.

"Quinn, I don't need your apologies," I began, but he seemed passionate.

"No, my lord, you need change," he said vehemently. "And I can – I can do that, my lord." He hesitated when I said nothing, until he finally whispered, a little desperate, "Please, allow me to do that."

"Why would you want to?" I snapped. "If the rest of the galaxy is this way, it would be foolish for you to unlearn this."

"But it's wrong," he said quietly.

"Yes, well, I know that, Quinn, I'm an alien. But that…" I sighed. "That isn't going to be the popular opinion. You won't gain any favors from changing."

He swallowed audibly.

"I know."

"Why do you even want to be here?" I asked him, suddenly feeling viciously out of place. "I thought we were friends before, but now I see that I'm just some authority figure and nothing more."

He was silent for a long time.

"My lord, I didn't know that you felt this way. I…" He breathed heavily, as if it labored him. "I have behaved like a complete idiot. I deserve to be punished."

He sounded strangely eager, and that struck me as even worse than his negativity and his attitude. Something about his insides seemed to twist up in a disturbingly familiar way at this suggestion, and I decided to address it outright.

"Quinn…" I whispered tiredly. "Why do you do that?"

"Do what, my lord?" he asked, leaning back to blink.

"Yonlach said…" I cleared my throat. "I can sense the conflict in you when Baras is around. I can sense that you are unhappy. I can sense that you are bitter, maybe because you've reached this point in your career at the grace of someone else's charity. Maybe because your career has taken a hit."

He made a noise, a strangled kind of sound, that might have been a little angry.

"Do you want me to punish you?" I asked him finally, our backs to one another.

This, surprisingly, made it easier not to lose my temper. And I sensed all of his desires come tumbling out, aching for me to punish him, for revilement.

"Why?" I asked him.

"My lord, I have…" He cleared his throat. "May I speak freely, my lord?"

"Of course," I said, a little frustrated. I'd told him so countless times. He didn't need to ask for permission.

"I have given everything for the Empire and for my career and for the military, only for it to have been smashed because of something that I did. I have to fix what I started because…otherwise, my life will have been wasted."

"Wasted?" This stunned me. "But Quinn, you're one of the most exemplary soldiers I know."

He made a dismissive sort of noise.

"My lord, you do not need to take pity on me. You are far too kind."

I shifted a little, wanting now to take his hand and comfort him. I wanted to do this so much that I almost wanted to swallow my anger and forget about it in favor of making him feel better.

This jarred me. I didn't know when or how I cared so much that he was in pain, but I did.

"It's not kindness, Quinn," I said firmly. "It's the truth."

The thought of him feeling this way made me feel squished.

Quinn was silent for a long time. Then,

"My lord, I am honored that you feel that way, but I cannot shake a suspicion that your feelings stem from pity rather than respect."

"They don't, Quinn!" I said indignantly, moving around finally to stand and face him. "You've saved my life a dozen times! You pilot my ship. You help me fight and plan my battles."

Something dawned on me, something very sad.

"Does that mean so little to you?"

Finally, he looked up at me, a pained look on his normally placid face.

"No, my lord! I did not mean to sound so ungrateful!"

"Then how do you explain your feelings?"

"I'm…" He struggled, and his voice wavered. "From a young age, I have been dedicated to the Empire's continued existence not because I chose to, at first, but because I was influenced to do so by my surroundings."

"What do you mean?"

"My father was an officer, and my mother was a politician. We were…I was…taught from the very beginning that your place in the Empire is everything to you. I lived and I breathed the Empire because that was how I was raised."

"Doesn't sound like a very fun childhood."

"It often wasn't," he conceded, maybe a little sadly. "I had to work with my mother on her campaigning. The business was cutthroat, and I learned valuable lessons. Your career is not just your career. It is who you are. It is your life. Feelings…relationships…they don't matter. Your career does."

I pursed my lips uncomfortably.

"But why?"

"Because loose ends get cut, and anybody who does not fall in line is cut down, often brutally."

I winced.

"It was necessary to do your job well and make sure others did their jobs and to…listen when you were told by someone more important to help them do their job because…that was life. Anything that threatens that must be eliminated in the interest of self-preservation. That's all I knew for a long time."

"Comply or die," I said, understanding, but wishing I didn't.

He nodded forlornly.

"Yes, and to have it…torn from me so haphazardly by the ramblings of one senile old man is…" He finally met eyes with me. "It is difficult. I wish it wasn't, but I cannot help but to feel fundamentally…wrong. Ashamed. And I know that this is my upbringing coloring my perspective of these events, but I still cannot help it. For so long, my entire being has existed exclusively for the Empire. Now what do I have? What do I do? Who do I belong to?"

Suddenly, I understood, and I felt so sad that this was his reality. He was trapped in his dysfunctional upbringing.

I'd finally met somebody who'd had a childhood as screwed up as mine was.

It didn't make me feel happy.

"Quinn…" I began, but I didn't know what to say. "You belong to you," I finally whispered.

Quinn scowled into his hands, unable to look at me now.

"I belong to Baras," he corrected.

"Do you feel wrong belonging to Baras?"

He thought before he spoke, as he always did.

"It was not the path I would have chosen when I entered the military," he admitted cautiously, squirming under my gaze. "I think, in a way, my application to attend the Academy was my way of self-expression. I could better the Empire and do it my own way. I could still…comply, but I could…find my own way of doing it."

I made an "ah" kind of noise.

"And now you don't get to do that anymore. You have to do it Baras' way."

"His intervention was inherently necessary," he said dejectedly. "Without him, I would not have my life. I owe him everything."

This made me feel pinched. I knew that feeling. It wasn't loyalty. Not really. It was something so deeply ingrained in you that you had to do what the person demanded simply because you had no volition to do the alternative. Their encompassing power was everything.

It was what I hated about the man.

"But Baras is a cruel master," I whispered automatically.

He glanced up at me now, uncertain.

He'd never asked about my opinion of the man, but I'd always felt his aching to do so.

"Your life must have been very hard for these past few years," I noted. "I cannot imagine any of this has been…easy. You fall in line so easily."

"I concede, it has been difficult at times, my lord, especially when my career has been at the expense of others."

I blinked, still knowing that sacrifice.

"Who have you lost?" I asked him.

He hesitated now, eyes closed, forehead furrowed together with the stress of this conversation. Finally, he whispered,

"Everybody, my lord."

"For your career?"

"If you can call it that," he said, sounding bitter.

I bent down on one knee in front of him, all anger over racial slurs gone out the window. After a few seconds, I finally reached forward and took his hand in mine. I felt so bold doing that, even if I shook a little bit doing so. I hoped he didn't feel it, and I deliberately infused power into my eyes so that he would doubt it if he did feel this weakness.

"So what if some Moff damned your career to some backwater planet?" I asked, smiling gently. "So what if he blew it all out of the water? Don't you feel like you still have merits to be proud of? That fulfills your purpose of bettering the Empire?"

"Yes, but -,"

"It wasn't your choice, but you're still doing great things every day. You get to make a choice here. You are free to make the choices you feel are necessary to make our lives better."

He held his breath and took me in. The look in his eyes was full to the brim with undisguised…something, but, again, I didn't understand his intentions, so I didn't dare think that it was attraction or yearning.

"Thank you…" he finally muttered to me, squeezing my hand. "I mean it. Thank you, I…no one has…Baras would never afford me the same freedom."

"Baras and I are not the same," I said to him a little harder, looking him evenly in the eye. "I know you felt trapped there, but you are my second in command now, and you can do as you wish. You and I are equals."

His heart swelled at this, I felt, and I felt the feelings in him balloon pleasantly outwards towards me. Despite his cool exterior, his insides were jumping for joy, and it made me smile a sad smile.

"However…" I sighed heavily. "I want you to want to be here. If this is what you want, then I'd like you to get out of this…whatever this is. Because I need an officer who values the successes of his missions and the lives of his people over the loss of rank or his career. That dichotomy is unacceptable to me, and I'd like you to try to unlearn it."

He eyed me from what felt like very far away. This concept seemed foreign to him.

"It will be…a difficult lesson to learn, my lord, but I will…endeavor to learn it. For you. I only humbly request that you forgive me when I fail. This has been my habit for so long, obsessing like this, that it might take some doing to think the way you demand me to."

"No, not demand," I said, squeezing his hand again. "I'm just telling you like it is. If you want to be here, then be here. Don't worry about Baras or your career or any of that. I'm not going to lord it over you like everybody else. You've got your freedom here, and you don't need to worry about self-preservation." I smiled, a little ruefully. "I know it must seem very strange hearing it from a Sith, but you can trust me not to throw you to the dogs."

He laughed softly now, and it made his handsome face almost unbearably attractive.

"Now, all I need to do is treat you a little better," he finally said.

I removed my hand from him and retracted now, remembering our last conversation painfully. I laughed uncomfortably.

"I think I might understand now how you're used to being told to do things and just doing them. I think I -,"

"Please, don't say that," he whispered, eyes closed now.

I noted that he didn't call me "his lord." In fact, as the conversation began to rush through my head at top speeds, I realized he hadn't for nearly the duration of our conversation.

"You deserve a better officer than me, my lord," he whispered. "Someone far more loyal and far less set in his ways. Someone who has the power and influence to protect you."

Again, the uncomfortable laughter.

"I don't need protection," I suggested, but we both knew what he meant.

He wanted to protect me in other ways, in more intimate ways. I heard it in his voice as much as I sensed it in his thoughts.

"You're right, my lord, I doubt that I could best even your weakest enemy. But what I meant was that you deserve someone who…won't cave into pressure when pressure is put on him. I am afraid, my lord, that this person is not me. I have learned and learned again to sustain myself with sacrifice of others."

It was my turn to squirm under his gaze.

"Well, I guess as long as you're willing to learn," I said distantly.

"I'm going to try," he said adamantly. "I didn't always allow these prejudices to permeate my outlook so fully. I wasn't always so pliant. Perhaps, with time, some of your resoluteness will rub off on me."

"Oh, with any luck that won't be the only thing of mine rubbing on you," I said before I could stop it.

I stiffened and flipped around, flinging my arms around my waist.

"I'm sorry," I apologized quickly. "Force of habit. I know you don't find me attractive. I'm sorry."

I felt humiliated by my own slip of the tongue and closed my eyes, willing myself not to show how upset this made me.

"Anyway," I said, unable to hide some of my laughter, "you just have to get used to having free thought. I know it's scary, but I have faith that you can do it!"

I pretended like this conversation hadn't upset me, which was a lie. It had. It scared me to hear how frank he was about betrayal, how it almost seemed second nature. Self-preservation was key. I hoped to change it, but that wouldn't happen right away.

"My lord, you are toying with me," he said good-naturedly.

"Oh, no, I could never do that to you," I said back, glad to be away from these thoughts. "I know that you take yourself far too seriously to be laughed at."

He didn't laugh.

"I do not, my lord!" he finally said.

"You do so!" I said to him, feeling my smile widen to a thing with teeth.

His face didn't move, and it only made my smile grow.

"I would bet money on the fact that you aren't even ticklish! You don't laugh! You don't smile! Do you know any jokes?"

He reluctantly smiled now, but I could feel him holding in other things.

"I know some, my lord, but they are hardly appropriate to tell -,"

"Oh, what? In the inn's bedroom? Come on!" I sat on the bed next to him, nudging him with my arm. "Tell me a joke!"

"My lord, I…"

He seemed to be struggling now, and I felt bad, suddenly.

The smile on my face faded.

"What's going to happen when I'm gone?" I asked, leaning back on my hands to look out at the window. "You'll just go back to the old ways and that'll be that? Jokes and all will be flushed away?"

He wasn't sure how to answer.

"I…don't know, my lord. Truthfully, it is a situation I try not to think about regularly."

I snorted.

"What? Your transfer?"

"Your death, my lord," he said gravely. "It would be my hope that this is the only thing that would result in my transfer."

"My death?" I repeated, smirking. "Come on! Wouldn't be so bad!"

He looked to the ground, head low, but he looked pained.

"I would be back to Baras and chains again, my lord. It would be like a form of death."

"Who knows?" I said, smiling out at the setting suns. "Maybe you'd land with a pretty little blonde haired woman from Dromuund Kass, and she could sweep you off your feet."

There was an enduring silence at this, one which he broke first.

"I am afraid to speak so frankly with you, my lord," he said breathlessly. "I cannot often communicate…effectively…when you are around me."

"Don't tell me my good looks are taking your breath away, Quinn," I quipped sardonically, scooting further away from him into the bed. "Or has my suggestion of a beautiful blonde haired Sith lord inundated your senses?"

I looked at him exaggeratedly with a wicked smile, and I was satisfied that only a tiny part of me felt dissatisfaction or jealousy at the suggestion.

"Please, my lord…" he said, as if to reprimand me.

I hesitated now.

"What?" I asked, scooting further away.

"My lord, how can you not see that I admire you?" he asked softly.

Every muscle in my body tensed now. All of a sudden, I felt beneath the beams of an ion engine, too hot to even function.

"I…what?" I asked him, just blinking.

He interpreted this as discomfort.

"But, my lord, I…I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, I just meant that…"

He looked up at me, but his eyes looked to be in pain, almost like he was a lost boy who didn't know where to go.

"Never mind it, my lord. Forgive me."

"No, what were you going to say?"

He looked directly into my eyes, clenching his jaw, hesitating.

Then, he let out a breath, as if a great battle in him was won somewhere.

"I was going to say, my lord, if I may," he whispered, "that I find you to be one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen."

"But I'm an alien," I protested, leaning forward now. "What about those women on Dromuund Kass?"

The edges of his eyes tightened.

"Which?"

"Blonde haired, blue eyes, no scars, no tattoos…" I put a hand to my face. "Human. Don't you find them to be beautiful? They're small and little and petite and -,"

"Do you find them beautiful?" he asked me.

"I do," I said, nodding. "I wish every day that I'm there that I looked like them."

He made a quiet noise.

"My lord," he whispered, "You may not notice, but I do. I have seen the way men and women look at you."

"Yeah? So?"

"It is not a bad look, my lord," he continued. "They see you as a beautiful woman...like...so many do."

A fluttering feeling erupted in my stomach, rolled over onto my side, and bit my lip to keep from giddy laughter from slipping through.

"Well, thanks," was all I let myself say. "We should probably rest now. Vette's going to call early in the morning."

I couldn't wait to tell her all that had occurred.