"...you could read mine first and then decide?"

"Okay."

Scale model of her surroundings, pop. "Hi." And he tosses her a line to his private thoughts. 

It is really stressful being around all of these ambiguous dangerous people with agendas, Boots' be being much more conservative than him and she has proper subtle arts and could probably block out the Force thing. He thinks he's right that Darth Occlus is helping him and this person seems to agree but it sounds like Darth Occlus could just get murdered and he can't make her invincible and it's stressful. He'll feel really sad if someone gets murdered over him. He wonders if this person really wants him to trust her badly enough to let him check.

Huh. It seems like just stream of consciousness.

If she just- puts the parts of herself that want to destroy the galaxy away she might be okay. Like she does with the killing intent while fighting. She takes a fraction of a second to do that.

"All right. I'll let you read my mind."

He listens.

She's really very uncomfortable with this, the privacy of her thoughts was the one thing she has always been able to count on, even while under the effects of the keyword. But this boy is too much of a shortcut to pass up. She wants him to trust her. If he does she won't have to kill so many people to destroy the Sith and Jedi. She would have been sad about doing that. He doesn't have to worry about Occlus, she thinks. She has proven very hard to kill in the past, and seems to be doing an admirable job of navigating the treacherous currents of Council politics. She thinks she might even have made an exception for her before he showed up, she thinks Occlus is remarkably unobjectionable, for a Sith.

"Okay, stopping. Keyword? Also, why do you want to kill them all, do you object if instead I just put them millions of lightyears away?"

"One of the early highlights of my career was fighting to a standstill a rogue member of the Dark Council, disabling him long enough to blow up his ship and him with it. After that, through a combination of drugs and hypnotic programming, I was implanted with a series of coded responses to certain commands. So that I would not pose a threat to the remaining Councilors. At the time, I was still loyal to the Empire."

"Do you want a hug."

"That would be nice."

His wings wrap around her very thoroughly. "My mom's a therapist, she could undo all that once she finds us."

"I- handled it. It's not an ongoing problem. But thanks."

The hug is surprisingly nice.

"It's kind of important I make sure they can't do that to me. They can't drug me, but I don't know what all the Force can do."

"It's- it's scary. But there's ways you can protect yourself. If you can think straight enough. A lot of it is keeping good mental discipline. Being very aware of your thoughts and noticing distortions."

"...okay. LIke with magic songs in my world. I could practice at that."

"I have some of the old Intelligence training manuals, if you want."

"I just need titles. But yeah."

She names a couple titles.

"Uh, stick to the defense section with the psy-ops stuff. The offense can get... unpleasant, even to read about."

"Okay. But - I mean, I know I look like I'm seven and I want to put my enemies far away instead of killing them and I probably seem like I haven't heard of very many upsetting things but I have, I can cope."

"You shouldn't have to. Some nights I wish I hadn't."

Tighter wing-hug. "Boots can help with that. Really. Luster's Maitimo was tortured for fifty years-subjective centuries - and he thought everything was a malicious hallucination and he hated being touched and he wanted to die and Boots helped him and now he's happy and doesn't have any nightmares."

"That sounds almost miraculous. Maybe I'll talk to her, if I ever get the chance."

"It's called subtle arts. It's really scary if a bad person has it but Boots is a good person and she can bounce you everything she's doing so you can see it and it's not scary."

'But Boots isn't here right now' is what she does not say.

She smiles gently instead.

"I bet."

"I write her letters every day but then I get all dizzy thinking what she'd say if she was here. I could make myself a Rúmil but not a Boots."