Last time: Oppie and Kyr helped Sasha and Viran.

Now: Kyr has a talk with Cien.

Chapter 14- You Are Not Alone

Cien had found the dining room, the lights were off, and it offered a view that looked over the valley. The sun had set, the stars beginning to show in the deep twilight, the only light casting her in darkening blue shadows as she leaned her back against a tall chair with her arms crossed, looking vaguely out the window. Outside clouds were setting in, soon another snowstorm would hit.

The scene was so alien to her, so foreign. This place, steeped so deeply in the light that it was like being trapped in a suffocating blanket. She had gone to the academy on Korriban as a child, found and taken there to study and hone her skills and become a Sith Acolyte, maybe even a Sith Lord some day. She had never really been in a place like this, a grand lodge, forests and peaceful stillness. She was used to harsh architecture, barren landscapes bathed in light so deeply red it was like everything was awash with blood. Or the Bloodstorm, a ship of war and hate and death. The only places she had ever considered some semblance of home. Places where they were meant to embody the darkside, and surround Acolytes such as her in utter darkness. Places like this were where she went on missions, usually to kill or destroy those that called places like this home.

She heard the bootsteps of someone else entering the room, and she glanced over, deeply annoyed at the disturbance to her solitude. She was confused when she saw the Jedi's master, Oppie, walking in, but in the copper armor that the Mandalorian had been wearing, the familiar helmet tucked under his arm. The confusion must have shown on her face.

"We're twins." The Mandalorian said. A brief show of understanding dawned on her face as she returned to her vigil, overlooking the darkening valley. He came in and placed the helmet down on the table and leaned against another high back chair that was separated from hers by another, crossing his arms as well, mirroring her. The salve he had given her in the medical suite had lessened the throbbing pain on her cheek to an itchy numbness, and the other injuries that she had suffered had responded well to the other meds he had given her.

"We're wasting time, we should have been gone by now." Cien said, annoyance strongly evident in her voice.

"We're still waiting for the rest of our party to arrive in another couple of hours." The Mandalorian answered indifferently. "I had Tac download the logs from the ship, based on travel times and distance he'll get there around the same time as us since your ship isn't as fast."

She stayed silent, giving no response to the statement and ignored him.

"What can you tell me about this Dracul guy?" Kyr asked, quietly.

"He's a monster." She said bluntly. Kyr stayed silent, a few moments later she spoke again. "The most powerful Force user I've ever seen or heard of. He can kill us in an instant if he wishes, a hundred different ways. He's malicious and shrewd. He makes plans and they happen through his sheer power, and sheer force of will. And he always seems to know what's happening, no matter how carefully you try to hide it." She said bitterly.

"Any good weaknesses?" Kyr asked.

"If I knew of any, do you think I would be here?" She said in bitter annoyance, turning to look at Kyr in the darkness. He was taller than she was, and she had to look up at his profile in the darkened room. She turned her gaze back out the window.

"Where did you guys come from?" Kyr asked, after a moment.

She snorted in derision. "It's not a question of where, it's when."

Kyr looked down at her, confused, and then returned his gaze out the window, waiting for her to elaborate.

"We were trapped by the other Sith near the event horizon of a blackhole because they turned on Dracul, maybe because they figured out what his actual goal was." She said, finally. "Trapped for three months for us, or three thousand years for the rest of the galaxy."

Kyr glanced down at her in the darkness. "You look pretty good for being over three thousand years old."

She shot a glance up at him, but didn't find any trace of the sort of disgusting thoughts that others might have accompanied the observation with. She returned her gaze out the window.

"So you guys are from the bad old days, of the wars between the Sith Empire and the Old Republic." Kyr observed, some recognition dawning. "I've studied that a bit, that's how I found this." He said, patting his armor. She didn't really understand what he meant, nor really care that much.

"They were beaten. Anything you've read was tainted by the Jedi." She growled.

"Yeah, probably." Kyr agreed. "Some of it was from the Mandalorian records, though. We were allies back then."

"Some of the time." She said contemptuously.

"Yeah, depends on who paid better." She heard the smile in his voice and didn't rise to the bait, if that was his intention. "This is different for you, isn't it?" He observed.

After a few moments her curiosity finally got the better of her. "What is?"

"Allies." Kyr said bluntly. He knew what the Sith Academies had been purported to be. Evolutionary schools that allowed the weak to be culled out by the stronger. Like the Mandalorian schools and agoges he had trained at, but without any ethos to ensure everyone was brought up to the same level of skill. Truly and literally meant to allow only the strongest to survive.

She mulled the thought over before answering. "Yes."

"Have you ever had anyone you could trust?" Kyr asked.

"What, you mean friends, family?" She said, almost spitting the words out.

"Yeah."

"No." Cien stated harshly. "Sasha is probably the closest thing I've ever had to a friend." She admitted in a quiet voice, and she wasn't quite sure why.

"She trusts you." Kyr observed.

"She's a foolish child." Cien cut back.

"Sometimes." Kyr said, smiling again.

"She has no idea who I am, or what I'm capable of. What I've done." Cien said, pressing the point.

Kyr looked down at her, the light was so dark now he could only see her as a shadow by the faint gleam of the stars. "I suspect of anyone that's ever met you she is the most aware of who you are."

Cien looked up at him, a sneer on her face, but he was already looking back out the window, into the distance.

"I'm a killer." Kyr continued, bluntly and distantly. "I make my life fighting other people's battles and killing people for money, or charity if the cause seems right. I've killed over fifty thousand people in the span of a few hours for revenge against one man, and hunted the survivors for days through their tomb so the Empire didn't know it was me. I told Sasha and Viran that once, but I don't think they understood what that really meant when I told them. I only stopped when the last two people I was hunting were cowering in terror in a closet, trying to survive on the last breaths of air their tank held as I stalked them." Kyr said distantly, behind a facade harder than his beskar plates. His presence in the Force and the flicker of his thoughts were heavy with guilt.

What had been a sneer on Cien's face had softened into something else, almost like confusion. The confession seemed so at odds with his demeanor so far, when he had treated her in the medical suite, and stood here with her in the darkness. But she also remembered, this was the same person who had held off Moff Jiardon's forces while she had been in the cave, repelling something like three hundred troops. She wasn't sure why he was confiding this to her.

He continued quietly after a moment. "You say this Dracul is a monster? I've been that. You think Sasha doesn't know the full depth of who you are? I believe you. I've known what you are from the first moment I saw you through the sniper scope back at that garrison. I see what you are when I look into your eyes." He turned to look at her, and she held his gaze, her features fallen into a furrowed frown. "That's why I trust you. Because I know all too well what you are, Cien, and what has driven you here." He held her gaze for a few more moments, and then turned to look out the window.

Cien also looked back out the window, her face troubled, and they both leaned against the chairs in silence, their arms still crossed.

"They're Jedi." Kyr continued after a while, speaking off into the distance. "They want to see the good in people, believe that everyone can be redeemed. Sasha is the most Jedi Jedi that ever Jedied, and she wants to trust you because she thinks she sees sparks of good in you." He continued distantly. "And that's why Viran can't stand you, because he can't see any light in you." Kyr said. "I have no idea what Op thinks." He added absently.

"And you?" Cien asked after a silent moment, wanting to sneer, but not able to bring herself to. For some reason a small part of her actually cared about the answer, and it came through in the quietness of her tone. It did not escape her notice that he had walked into the room with his helmet off.

He simply shrugged. "I'm a Mandalorian. Dark, light, it's all really the same. Jedi do bad things and justify it for the greater good. Sith do good things, and justify it for their own glory." He paused. "I look at the five of us, and I just see survivors. People who have led awful lives, trying to make sure they don't become even worse. If we're going to do that, we need to work together, or we die." He said simply. "Probably quite horribly." He added quickly.

Cien couldn't help but smile at the blunt statement. "So now the scathing recriminations begin?" She asked in an almost teasing voice, looking up at him. It briefly struck her how unfamiliar that tone was for her before she brushed the stray thought aside.

"Nah." Kyr said, he looked down at her with a smirk, meeting her smile as faint moonlight swept through the windows. "Just a callous observation from one survivor to another." He looked back up, out the window, and she kept her gaze on him as his smirk faded and he continued quietly. "If this is the first time you've ever had anyone to watch your back, then let me give you some advice. Don't antagonize the people who might need to save you just to keep them distant from you. If we're being nice to you, it's because we want to help you, not to try to get inside your defenses and find your weaknesses. We're trusting you, trust us. No one here is scheming against you. You are not surrounded by enemies this day." He looked down at her in the darkness, his eyes meeting hers. The smile on her face had faltered to something unreadable. "You are not alone."

She cast her glance away, blinking, looking out the window once more, seeing the crescent twin moons rising above the peaks of the mountains in the distance and washing the valley in faint light. Kyr also turned back to the view.

She said nothing as she ruminated on his words with a troubled frown and they leaned against the chairs together in silence, looking out at the night sky and the valley illuminated in shadows. She had spent her life always at war, surrounded by people, enemies, that wanted to see her dead. That had simply been her life, the life of a Sith Acolyte, and it never occurred to her that life could, or should, be any different. That there could be anything else. It suddenly struck her how deeply alone she had been, and felt, her entire life, now that it had been put to words. Until Sasha had agreed to help her, despite all the tortures Cien had put her through to try to break her. Until this quiet evening, and a Mandalorian, of all things, seemingly gazed into her soul, brushed aside the defenses and invisible armor she didn't realize she wrapped herself in and reached out to her, into the depths of an abyss she didn't even know she was in until he articulated it.

The light side of this place was more deeply, suffocatingly oppressive than ever. But it now had a strange quality about it to her that was oddly reassuring. And all the more discomforting to her for it.

After a while he glanced down at her, "Op made cookies, you want one?"

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