Last time: Cien recovered on Polis Massa.

Now: Cien and Kyr visit a place from her past.

Chapter 14- Visiting the Past

The boulders rose around them like a forest. They were at the edge of an ocean of sand, and it was only interrupted by the rocky mountains that jutted up like jagged teeth reaching for the stars in the sky to their left. Night had fallen and it was a bit chill. Kyr did not notice the cold since his armor kept him comfortable, and Cien was deep within her robes, she did not seem to notice either. He was carrying a large, empty duffel bag on his shoulder. It had been a week since they had left Polis Massa.

"This is weird." Kyr said. "You usually don't see boulders like this except maybe in glacial areas."

"It's not natural." Cien said at his side. "All of these are tombs." She said.

"What?" Kyr asked.

"The people here, they would mummify their dead, dig a tomb for them, and then put these boulders over the entrance." Cien answered matter of factly, trying to remember which of these was the right one.

"How'd you find that out?" He asked, looking over the scene. There was no evidence of whoever had built these. No recent tracks, nothing. And he was shocked that people might live here, considering it looked like water hadn't touched this place in centuries.

She stopped, and Kyr stopped next to her. She looked around, trying to find a sign that would have survived three thousand years. She looked over at him with a grimace on her face. "I trained here, it was a quiet place. My master brought me here so I didn't suffocate from the minds of those around me."

"Oh." Kyr said in understanding. "Yeah, it's definitely quiet." He observed. "I'd have been curious to meet him." Kyr said idly as he looked around.

She gave him a wry look. "You wouldn't have liked him." She observed, still surveying the scene. She saw something familiar and started walking.

"Oh?" He asked, as he followed her, walking over the parched landscape.

"He wasn't cruel like so many of the other masters were. I was lucky to have him." She answered. "But he wasn't a kind man either. You wouldn't have liked him." She stated.

He thought back to the scars she hid under her long sleeves. "Makes me want to meet him a little more actually." He said as he gripped his carbine a little tighter.

She looked around, a grim smile on her face. "One of these is where I built my lightsaber. I had the components, and he set me in one of the tombs, sealing it off with a boulder over the top of me." She said, quietly. "It took me two days, but I completed it, and I cut my way out." She said proudly.

Kyr looked at her with a sense of respect and pride, but also with sadness that she had to contend with such things over her life. He agreed he probably wouldn't have liked her master.

"He was killed several years later." She stopped and turned back to him, and he was a little taken aback by the troubled way she looked at him. "He…" She looked away, and looked back at him with a grim look. "Mandalorians killed him. Some bounty the Republic had." She said, looking away. "He was not kind, but he wasn't cruel. He deserved more. I tracked them down and killed them here, luring them in with me as another bounty."

Suddenly the pieces fell into place why she had been so disdainful of Mandalorians when she had first interacted with him. And why she probably knew a little Mando'a, since she was the kind of person to study her enemy. He stepped closer to her, taking off his helmet, and she looked up at him. "It sounds like you did what was right by you, and that's all that matters." He said, placing a hand on her right shoulder and giving her an affectionate squeeze. "Whoever these Mandos were, they knew what they were getting into when they tried messing with Sith. They just didn't know they'd have to deal with you cyar'ika."

She relaxed, she wasn't sure how he would react to that revelation. She stepped closer and leaned against him, closing her eyes briefly. "Thank you." She said quietly, before pulling away. Kyr smiled, and put his buy'ce back on.

She looked around, trying to use the Force to sense the echoes of events past. There. She trudged ahead, Kyr's behind her, the jangling of various pieces from his armor ringing between the boulders as she moved silently.

They approached another boulder, but this one was very different from all the others. It still bore the dark marks of incredible heat from when it had been cut in half. But the two halves were resting against each other. She approached it with some trepidation, and Kyr stayed at her side. Then she stretched out her hand, and the two halves lifted into the air, shifted away from the entrance to the tomb, and fell to the ground with a deep and heavy impact. For all the times Kyr saw people around him using the Force, it still seemed so weird to him. He wasn't sure he would have been able to even budge the boulder if he had put all his strength into it. And she had moved it with barely any effort. He looked over at her with affection.

They walked over to the hole in the desert floor that was revealed. Kyr was a little surprised to see the tomb. He had expected a grave, maybe a small chamber since she had had to construct a lightsaber in it, but what he saw was a bowl shaped space ten meters in diameter and just as deep. With little hesitation she lithely jumped down into the cavern, landing with a shudder as the impact shocked her still healing shoulder. Kyr used his rocket pack to slow his descent and landed next to her. She was standing in the dead center of the space, looking around and he knew she was being visited with memories from long ago, and Kyr stood by her side. Around them there was evidence of a nasty fight a long time ago. Blaster pockmarks surrounded them, lightsaber gashes in the walls and floor, impacts from where bodies had been smashed against the walls, and carbon scoring from Mandalorian flame projectors. Kyr looked around, impressed all the more for the evidence of the vicious fight she had had in here. The Mandalorian armor was at their feet. Two sets, ancient styles, but distinctly Mandalorian nonetheless. And bones were still there, under the ruins of the flight suit.

And their buy'ces were distinctly separate from where the armored bodies lay, she had beheaded both of them.

She looked at the two sets of armor, and she remembered the anger, from finding out her Master had been killed for some bounty. The pleasure she had taken in tracking them down, and then luring them to this place, supposedly to seal them away forever after their vicious fight.

As she looked at the bones, though, the question of disturbing these graves echoed in her mind, especially as she had been wrestling with the meaning of having her own armor over the last few days since Kyr had suggested it, and was surprised she had tentatively accepted the idea after his idle comment. All of her anger burned out, now, she couldn't help but feel the guilt of this. If she had truly fallen to the light, this didn't seem like it was proper. It didn't seem like something Sasha would do.

"Is this right?" She asked, hollowly. Asking Kyr for guidance on if this was something she should be doing as she asked herself the same question.

Kyr was a little taken aback she would ask the question, and felt bad that he was. It seemed so out of character, and in that moment he fell more deeply for her. "Well it's not like they need it anymore." He responded.

"Kyr." She said in playful annoyance as she looked over at him, giving him another wry look.

"It's yours by right." He responded more seriously. "You beat them in battle. You gave them a good death." He said as he looked around the three thousand year old battlescars. "You're giving the armor new life, it is yours to take and do with as you please. If you want to show respect, then leave their buy'ces and their heart pieces, those are the only pieces that matter anyway." He finished quietly.

She nodded silently.

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