Chapter Eight:

Where Daegen Tries to Fit a Course on Law and Society into One Conversation

Xesh opened his eyes just as he sensed Daegen Lok stop in front of the door. He watched it open from the floor and then counted the openings the older man gave him to strike since he had entered. There had been four obvious ones and five less glaring ones until he sat down on Xesh's bed.

Maybe he should tell him about those? Or would that mean he'd have to deny plotting murder again? It didn't count as plotting, if you did it half-consciously, because you might need to defend yourself at any moment, did it?

"Do I have something on my knee?" Daegen Lok asked. He wasn't exactly irritated—more like exasperated.

"No," Xesh answered. He wondered what would happen if he'd told the man to leave—he doubted he'd just leave. It would probably prove something, and whatever it would be, it wouldn't be worth not having to deal with him, he suspected.

"Then perhaps you'd like to share what you were thinking so hard about? Or is something about my leg offensive to you?" Daegen Lok continued. He leaned forward, chin against his fist, elbow on his knee.

His posture was a challenge—all 'you won't dare to attack me'—and his words were definitely meant to get under his skin, make him snap. Surely, he had to have figured out that Xesh was not going to react to that. Although... He didn't know if he could talk back to Daegen Lok like Shae had suggested, but he could at least try asking some of the questions he had. If he was supposed to teach him, then that involved answering those, didn't it?

"Why are you doing this?" he asked. "Why are you trying to teach me how you use the Force, and not learn how to neutralize someone like me?"

"Do you want that?" Daegen Lok asked. And now the tone changed. He sounded softer, and the exasperation was replaced with something else. Pity? He wasn't sure. "It could mean that you would die or be crippled."

Xesh shook his head. He did not want to be hurt, and he didn't want to die, but- "Why would it matter to you what I want? If gives you a greater chance of survival for you, why bother with me?"

The answer didn't come right away. The older man shifted and resettled to a more comfortable position. At least, Xesh assumed an elbow poking into his leg like that would grow uncomfortable quickly. "I could tell you that there's no guarantee that what we'd learn from experimenting on you would help us stop your former masters, but that's not very convincing, is it? Even if there's no guarantee, there's still a chance."

Xesh nodded. This was making sense so far.

"Let's try this—you were wounded in the crash. You would have died. So, whatever way you use the Force, you will still bleed when cut and you will die, if you lose enough blood."

Daegen Lok watched him then, as if expecting him to say something.

"And so do the Rakata," Xesh finished. This answered one part of his question—they knew enough already. But that still left them with an unproductive prisoner just sitting there, eating three meals a day which could feed someone more useful, and occupying a room others could have used.

"What we could learn from you, is how exactly you use the Force—but it will work much better if you explain it to us," Daegen Lok said. "And to do that, you'd need the right tools, which you don't have. We might eventually get somewhere, but it will be easier, if you know our frame of reference."

Xesh nodded again. That was still reasonable—they weren't ignoring how the universe worked. They just... seemed to approach it from a different direction? If he understood how they learned, how they thought, he could explain better how the Rakata worked.

"That's still not the only reason," the older man continued. "Hm... Let's see—tell me, if I broke my arm, what would I feel?"

Xesh looked up, wondering if that was some sort of a trick question. But he couldn't see or sense any signs that it was, so he hazarded an answer. "Pain?"

"Would it be any different from how you'd feel?"

That was definitely a trick question. But... So far, the worst that Daegen Lok had done was make fun of him—it was annoying, yes, but if that was all, did he really have to worry that he'd get it wrong?

"No," he said, eventually. Then, after a moment, he added, "Well, maybe you don't have to worry that if your arm heals badly you'll be useless and you'll need to be replaced..."

"Hm, no, can't say I ever had to worry about that," Daegen Lok answered. "But we can both agree that being in pain is unpleasant, correct?"

Xesh nodded. He sort of doubted anyone would disagree on that.

"So, why would I want you to be in pain?" Daegen Lok asked.

"Because I'm annoying?" Xesh hazarded after a moment. The man was far too good at asking things which looked like trick questions. Besides, telling another person why they ought to hurt him seemed like a monumentally dumb idea, the kind that ended up with them using that as an excuse to do something to him.

But, since so far nothing of that sort had happened, Xesh decided to take the risk—it looked like it might be worth it.

"That is clearly not a good enough reason for you, so why should it be for me?" Daegen Lok replied.

"Yes, but you-" Xesh stopped. That couldn't be that simple, could it? "You're... sort of nice to me, so I'm going to be like that too, and you don't have to worry about me hitting you for being annoying, because that's over-reacting."

"You're doing so well, I'm going to pretend not to have heard you damning me with faint praise," Daegen Lok said, and gave him a lopsided smile. "So, happy now?"

"No," Xesh said. And glared, just in case. "I did well, so you owe me food."

There had to be some rules.

The conversation bought three days of less grudging cooperation from Xesh. Apparently, Shae's advice had merit. He probably ought to complement her on her skills in handling dangerous creatures and human beings. And then, Xesh had either gathered his courage again, or perhaps he'd simply reached the end of whatever mental journey their discussion had taken him to.

"You're taking a risk," he said, after deciding that sitting on a balcony rail was the most logical and comfortable thing for him to do. On the bright side, he was actually making eye-contact now on his own, so perhaps it was simply because that brought him on Daegen's eye-level? "When you decide to trust someone else not to attack you because you're being... nice to them."

So they had progressed from "sort of nice" to "significant pause nice". Perhaps, the boy was not an entirely lost cause. Daegen didn't think he would be able to interact with someone whose main setting was 'doormat' for an extended period of time before turning to drastic measures.

And he wasn't even sure what the drastic measures in this case could be.

"But I also gain more," he countered, as he leaned against the wall. "And so does the person I trust. Starting with the fact that we can both focus fully on whatever we are doing, instead of diverting part of our attention towards a possible betrayal."

Xesh fell silent then, his attention mostly on whatever it was that was going on in his head. His mind felt so much less of a frozen sea with something horrible hidden beneath the ice, nowadays. Oh, there was still fear—Daegen suspected it would never entirely go away—and hostility, but it was not the whole of his being anymore.

He let him think. Sometimes, it paid to prod, and sometimes, it paid to step back and wait.

"You could win because of this," Xesh eventually said, proving that in this case waiting had been the right choice. "The Rakata cannot conceive of people like you. That someone could decide that their benefit means less than the benefit of the whole."

"All of them?" Daegen asked, standing straight again. He was having trouble imagining a society like that, to tell the truth. Wouldn't they have backstabbed each other into extinction long ago?

Xesh shrugged. "Those I met were all like this."

"Well, you're the expert," Daegen replied. Still, the question sat under his skin like a rusty nail. How? How can you build a society so monstrously evil, so completely devoted to a cult of self, where nothing but the interest of oneself matters? How did it not crumble, how did it not break?

"I think they eat the ones that could grow up to be not completely horrible as children," Xesh continued, peering over his shoulder at the Chasm. One day, they would have to touch on the subject of topics you did not carelessly drop like that. Then, he turned his head back to look at Daegen and asked, "What do you do with people who are completely horrible here?"

"You will have to define completely horrible," Daegen said. Somehow, he doubted it would be anything simple like 'people who nag too much'.

"Those who kill without any reason," Xesh said after a moment. Daegen wasn't sure if he liked the fact that he had been thinking about the answer that long. Or that the category was so narrow.

"Isolate them, so that they don't cause any more harm," Daegen said, having decided to assume this category included truly hopeless cases, as rare as they were. "That usually is about the only thing that is not needless cruelty, when there is no hope someone will understand their mistakes or failings."

For a moment, he thought about keeping Hadiya secret, but no—the boy would learn about her eventually. "There was only one case during my lifetime that the Council sanctioned death for someone. She was… a charismatic and brilliant leader, but was also trying to lead Shikaakwa—her homeworld—to war with Tython. If we had isolated her, her followers would have freed her, and she refused to listen to any arguments.

"She died in her sleep."

Xesh frowned and Daegen silently congratulated himself, because by now he could tell when the boy was only thinking hard and when he was angry just by expressions alone, without any hints from the Force. This was clearly the first case.

"Why would you care if you're cruel towards them or not?" Xesh eventually asked. "It's not like they're going to do the same for you."

"Because I am not them," Daegen replied. "Because if they do not understand what they did wrong, and will never grasp it, than harming them will not change it. They will only want to harm me back. Because if I can excuse being cruel towards them, then I will be able to excuse further cruelty."

"What about fear?" Xesh asked. "If they're afraid you will hurt them, won't that keep them in line?" Then, before Daegen could answer he shook his head. "It's resources, right? You have to keep making them fear you, because when they decide you're no longer a threat, they'd just kill you."

Daegen nodded. He found himself wondering just how much potential got wasted by making Xesh a slave. He still could be more than just an attack dog, but...

"I think I understand," Xesh continued. "I didn't want to kill you, even though I don't like you, and don't like how you act. I didn't want to kill your Council either, even though they decided to lock me up. I did want to kill the rakata a lot."

"I am eternally relieved to hear that," Daegen answered. He actually was quite satisfied with where they ended up, but really there was no reason to overwhelm the boy with too much positive attention. The greedy monster would likely only see it as a reason to demand more chocolate.

Xesh glared at him, but he was decidedly getting less venomous about that lately.

Vev had been making adjustments to her plan. Crashing a ship was dangerous, and although she was pretty certain that death was preferable to being a slave, living free was probably even better. And she was also reasonably certain that even if the crash was controlled, she still could die, which would end her plan of freeing herself pretty permanently. So, she would not crash her ship. She'd land it, tell the natives to blow it up—unless they killed her before she got that far.

But then it wouldn't matter, because she'd be dead. Which, again, would mean a permanent end to any plans she had.

Then there was another thing. She couldn't be sure, because there were so many Force-sensitive people on the world she was heading to, but she thought there was a presence among them that should not be there.

There had been a boy once. He had been small, and hungry, and tired. Those were reasons why people died. Vev couldn't quite remember why she had stabbed the older slave, when he had decided that the boy was a likely target, but she had.

Neither she nor the boy had been hungry that night.

What she did remember was that neither she, nor the boy would have survived, had they remained apart. There had been so many dangers a lone child could fall victim to, but the two of them could watch each other's backs or stay awake while the other rested. But that had been years ago, and the boy had stopped being small and helpless long ago. She did not need him, he did not need her.

He belonged to a predor now, the same one that had trained her before deciding she'd make a fine gift to Dictator Skal'nas. The same predor who was the reason—well, one of the reasons—she had her chance to escape.

Still, she had been... sad, when she found out that Predor Tul'kar's ship was lost. She hadn't wanted Xesh to die.

And now, she thought, sometimes, that she could still sense him. Or someone who felt a lot like him, at least. It didn't feel exactly like him. There was something that was—not wrong—but different. Fundamentally so.

She did not trust her senses there. It was likely wishful thinking—she wanted something familiar, something that made her feel safe when faced with danger. Xesh was probably just as dead as his master. After all, she could not sense Tul'kar, and Force Hounds rarely outlived their masters. If the natives had killed the predor, then Xesh would be also dead.

There would be no one to speak for Vev when she came. She'd be on her own, just like she had been for years.

Or maybe she was afraid that he was alive and she would bring only news that the natives already knew? If Xesh was alive, and Tul'kar was dead... then maybe, maybe her idea wasn't as new as she had thought.

But if that was the case, maybe she could convince Xesh that they were more useful together—her master had been of higher rank. She had heard him discuss things Xesh would not know about. And she knew him—had known him. That might count for something, however little it would be.

Well, she had gambled already. What was one variable more?

In the end, she would either die or be free. Neither had stopped being preferable to her present situation.

AN:

Changes so far:

The Despot War with Hadiya was much smaller, for various reason, but mainly because I saw no reason for other planets to side with her, given the political situation in the Tythos system in this AU. There's no Je'daii order for her to raly against, and Tython's primacy over the other planets is felt much less. Daegen's and Hadiya's relationship was also slightly different, but this will be covered later in story.