Gosh, that's sure a thing. The small teenage human emerging from the Infirmary over there pauses and blinks at her.

He is wearing unremarkable clothes with a low-tech aesthetic, and around his neck there is a simple chain necklace with a large glowing pendant shaped like a stylized bird with wings outstretched in flight. It's mostly a sunny golden colour, with hints of blue and silver shifting under its surface. And it has things to say.

It says that this is a person with an incredible drive to bring happiness and fulfillment to everyone around him. He wants good things for people - all people, if he can manage it, and if he can't then at least as many as possible. It says that he is a person around whom the definition of 'possible' tends to be broader than you'd think. It says that he is charming and clever and eloquent and insightful and friendly and forgiving and making inroads on wise. It says that he will not maliciously deceive, will keep his word if at all possible, will never misrepresent himself as on your side when he's not; it says he loves to solve problems and to leave everyone in a situation better off than they would have been without him, and he is very very good at both those things.

She looks up, when he comes out, stares, just a little, and goes back to her book. Mutter mutter.

...

He approaches.

She seems to be ignoring him, and then when he gets too close, growls, low in her throat, without any change of body language - it's merely a thing that's happening, until she catches herself, stops, closes her book and looks at him. "Yes?"

"- hi," he says. "You look like you might need some help."

More staring, at his face and then at his pendant. "...not the wisest of choices."

"What do you mean?"

It takes her a while to respond. "...might, be better for everyone if I lose. And I might kill you if I get a chance." She reaches up absently to pet the powder-blue puff of fur perched on her shoulder, which goes whmmmmm.

"I have a city-sized healing aura, I'm kind of difficult to kill. What's that?"

Huh.

"...poof, from the - security room. Localized anti-injury."

"Well, that's useful. Why might it be better if you lose? Lose what?"

"I'm going to kill my master." A statement of fact, delivered promptly, and then she stops to think. " - I'm going to try to kill him. Because he's trying to make me into a monster, and mostly succeeding, so I'm going to kill him. - or he'll kill me, but." (Whummmmmm.)

"...okay, and what's better about losing?"

"- killing him doesn't make it stop, it just means I can try to."

"What's he doing...?"

"...I have magic. And if you... use it wrong, it - wrecks your impulse control, first, and then other things. Emotion-based, makes it harder to do anything else. Not - too dangerous, usually, but he started assigning me things, and I didn't notice - dumb, stupid to trust a Sith."

"...mm," he says. "Yeah, that's a problem all right. And it doesn't sound like you trying and failing to kill him would stop him from doing that kind of thing to somebody else."

"...mm. ...hasn't before, think. Wasn't - " she pauses, and then hisses, frustrated. "Don't know."

"Do you have - somewhere to go after you kill him?"

Woggly hand motion: enh. "Plan but not that part. 'F I kill him I get his stuff. Others'll try to kill me but if I get out quick, should be fine, ship and plenty of money and nobody says no to a Sith."

"Do you need help with it?"

Consider, consider, consider, huff. "Maybe? And - Bar thinks the droid is a person; safer for her if it's faster."

"I don't know what a droid is."

She gestures at a table a little ways away where a person made of metal is talking to a blue-skinned person with moth wings and antennae.

He follows the gesture, looks, sees.

"Huh. All right."

A moment's thought, and -

"Do you need to kill him or do you just need him dead?"

"...depends how it happens."

"Well, I could kill him. For example."

Her hand twitches toward her hip; her body language suggests that this is a threat. "Then you get his stuff; includes me and the other apprentices."

He does not react as though threatened. "That sounds like it'd be a mess."

Shrug. "Less messy than my plan."

"What mess does your plan result in?"

" - assume I get away clean, ship and droid and creds and all. Others'll fight, who gets seen as inheriting. Might try'n schism, might try for other masters - little war, worst case. Couple deaths, probably best. Might not get away clean, either."

"...I'm not totally sure I could improve on that by killing him myself. Or, well. I probably could but it, uh, might end in me ruling a small country or something. And you didn't seem like you preferred it."

"- pinned a lot've my sanity on, goona be my own soon."

"Okay," he says. "Hmm. If you were picking somewhere to go afterward, what would you want it to be like?"

" - alone. Quiet. Not - nowhere; close enough I can get books and things, but - no people, just the droid. And mine."

"I could probably arrange that."

"...not sure what happens if I leave. ...... not sure I care."

"Would it solve your problem if you could just walk out the door and go someplace in my world that fit your criteria?"

"...language. And the droid, but - " she stands, suddenly, goes over to talk briefly to the droid in question, and then approaches the bar. She comes back a minute later, napkin in hand. "Works, yeah. Need sun or something for a generator."

"Sun can be arranged. How much of it?"

Vague hand gesture. "Enough? - like to grow plants with. I can -" another gesture, with a meaning in the vicinity of 'it doesn't matter much'. "Still have my bank account, I can get lots of solar panels."

"Sure, easy."

" - not goona be a problem I might kill anyone bothers me?"

"Well, leaves me with the job of making sure nobody bothers you, but I'm pretty sure I can manage that."

Nod.

"...what's it like?"

"What's what like?"

Handwave. "The place. Should, actually - " she goes and interrupts the droid again, bringing her back this time.

"Hello, sir."

"Hi. My name's Taliar."

"I am unit DZ-12Q, sir."

"Nice to meet you, I guess."

"They get personey-er, longer they go without a wipe. Only just over the recommendation, this one."

He nods.

The pause is different this time, like she's weighing, rather than just thinking.

"- I knew, even before the bar said. Or, guessed, but. Our magic doesn't - see, droids, because they're not alive. But - dumb to trust it."

Thoughtful nod.

"Might've, if - " headshake, shrug, and then she turns to the droid. "We might be able to go to Taliar's world, instead of going home. I want you to help me figure out if this is a good idea. You will come with me, and I will get solar panels from the bar to charge you, and we can bring my tools from home."

"Yes, Ma'am. Sir, do you understand what it means that she's a Sith?"

"I've picked up an idea. Not sure I have the whole story."

She thinks for a bit, cocking her head illustratively. "They're powerful, and they're about being powerful - most of them; Deskyl is a bit unusual. But all Sith have an element of that; the way to get things, for Sith, is to be powerful enough to take them, and if one wants something and is powerful enough, it's - against their nature not to. Deskyl is unusual in what she wants, not in how she goes about getting it."

"Okay."

"I'll be fine if I'm left alone."

"I expect that's true, yes."

"So - what's it like?"

"There's one inhabited planet with one inhabited continent with one country on it, so I just named the world after the empire - Nuime. I'm family friends with the Emperor. He's - the sort of person who has one thing that is the thing he does, and Emperor Esarkan's one thing is running his empire really well so that everybody has as much - happiness and safety and fulfillment and opportunity to thrive - as he can give them. And our magic system is soul artifacts," he gestures at his necklace by way of example.

She tenses at the first mention of the emperor, but keeps listening, squinting and then nodding at the rest of the description.

"- tech level?"

"Not high. Yet. You're going to be the first electronic device on the planet," he nods at the droid, "but Esarkan's got me figuring out how to get the infrastructure set up so we can have neat things like computers and an Internet and airplanes."

"- might want to help with that. I do - design; weapons -" she gestures to her hip, this time without the threatening body language "- but other things, too."

He grins. "Cool!"

"Yeah."

"I love tech stuff, it's so much fun. And it's - scalable - I've got this city-sized healing aura and people basically don't die of illness or old age anymore but if we had a hundred more planets there'd be too much for me to cover, tech stuff isn't like that, you can just teach people how to make it and then it works -"

"- bet we can get a book on bacta, figure out how to make it."

"Ooh, what's that?"

"- healing. Technically alive, I think? But it's - patches, or you drink it, and, healing. Vats, for big stuff."

"Oooooooh."

Nod nod.

"Yeah, let's definitely look that up."

To the droid: "Remind me." "Yes ma'am."

"Anything else you're working on?"

"'Technology: what's up with that' is the only thing I'm up to right now besides the regular healing tours. Well, and I work in the Infirmary," he gestures vaguely back in its direction, "whenever I get Milliways, seemed like the thing to do."

Nod. "My world is - spaceships and droids and holonet; pretty good, techwise. I do - mostly personal tech, lightsabers and speeders and holoprojectors, not industrial stuff or - hyperdrives, anything like that, but, not hard to learn. - don't program, though, that's its own thing. Droid bodies, sure, minds - not so much."

"Spaceships are cool."

"Mmhmm."

He grins.

She does, too.

"- magic?"

"As in, 'an explanation of the magic system that is more than two words long' -?"

Nod nod.

"So, anyone in my world - I've brought people in to check, it works in the world, you don't have to be from it - can manifest their soul. Once you manifest your soul there's no undoing that, it stays manifested until you die and a little while afterward - my world has resurrection but only of soulbearers and only if you can get the soul to somebody with a resurrection power in time, once it dissipates they're as dead as anybody else. If anybody other than the soulbearer themselves touches their soul, it's - really incredibly unpleasant for the soulbearer, nobody it's happened to can even explain what's so bad about it, but it's like hasn't-happened-in-fifty-years rare because everybody knows you just don't do that. And soul artifacts have magic. They all do the personality broadcast thing - just usually much quieter than mine, some of them you can stare at for hours and hardly learn a thing - and then they do other stuff on top of that, whatever suits the soulbearer and fits in the amount of power they have. You get more power by being - more the person you aspire to be. No permanent ongoing magic effects except as directly sustained by the soul - I could have my healing aura on all the time if I wanted and that'd be quote-unquote permanent, but I couldn't make a bunch of healing auras and leave them lying around, if I did anything like that it'd all be drawing on my soul the whole time and I've got plenty of power but not that much."

"Huh."

"And the personality broadcast thing's always right but you probably don't want to take my word for that."

Nod.

"'n my world, there's - the Force, and some people can sense it - rarely, one in some millions. We can learn to use it - see it, make it do things. Some people have innate talents and some people specialize but anybody can learn anything, within - type, more 're less; Sith can't heal and Jedi can't do lightning, things like that. I design that, too; sensory specialty but all kinds."

"Huh. Cool. Why's it do the - emotions thing?"

" - more powerful that way; more entangled means you can use more at once. And - Sith, if I'm less powerful I'm more likely dead. But it does a - feedback loop, worse for some techniques." Sigh. "And entrains."

Thoughtful nod. "Wonder if being a soulbearer would help - one of the things souls always do is tell you when you're debasing them - when you're doing things that make them less powerful because you're acting less like your best self. Seems like it'd be harder to get into bad habits without noticing, that way."

"Wasn't quite the problem. - probably help anyway, though."

"Mm?"

"Knew what I was doing; expected time to recover."

"Ah."

"Lucky I noticed at all, before -" Sigh.

Nod.

"Anyway. Expect it'd help, for me. Curious if DZ can do it, too."

"I don't see why not."

Thin smile. "Find out, I guess."

"Yeah."

Nod.

"Politics? Culture?"

"Politics is mostly the heritable kind - the Emperor has his empire, my family's got some mountains - except some people are immortal and Esarkan is super extra immortal, his soul is self-resurrecting, he considers assassinating him a form of peaceful protest, so there isn't always much inheriting going on - there's a bunch of different cultures, a lot of stuff varies by region. Dunno where you'd end up exactly - I'd be asking Esarkan for some land nobody's using or just waiting three days to see if I get the power to pull a whole island out of the ocean for you. I'd probably put it off the southwestern coast, for the sun and because the south coast has got a couple of big islands already."

Nod.

"- how're people goona take the droid."

"...not sure. It's sort of - not a concept we have - I think people will vary in how weirded out they are by 'that's a person made of metal from another world'..."

Nod. "Better than home, anyway."

"It sure sounds like it."

Nod.

"Your world kind of sounds like it has a lot of problems."

"- yeah."

"I might want to do something about that eventually, but it can wait until you're all settled."

"...not very tractable, most of it."

"We'll see."

Amused snort. "Get you some books on the politics, too."

"Sounds like a plan!"

Heh.

Hmm. "Anything else, questions?"

"Can't think of anything."

Nod. "DZ?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"- missing anything?"

"...basic accommodations, ma'am?"

"- expect we'll be fine. I c'n build something if need be."

"...all right." She sounds dubious.

"If I set you up with a place to live it'll have, like, a house and stuff."

"Thank you, sir."

"- you're welcome."

Deskyl sighs and pats the droid's hand reassuringly. "She's a person but like - a baby, with droid instincts. Grow out of it, I hope."

"All right."

Small smile, nod. "Droids're - more alien than most aliens, really. Human-based, roughly, but not very much like humans."

"Huh."

"Idea is they can work right away; all of their - everything - is for that. Learn, same's humans, but - idea is they're rolled back twice a year, can't need to learn much."

"That is a weird way to do things."

Shrug. "Idea is to replace human slaves. 'D be fine if they weren't, y'know, also people."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

"DZ's eight months - developmentally, human, mm, six year old? But smarter, more - reliable, independent that way."

Thoughtful nod.

"Curious to see what she grows into," she grins. "Not - unheard of, to let droids grow up, but rare enough and they vary enough that it's hard to guess."

"I don't think you'll regret it, ma'am."

She's visibly startled at the comment. "...'ve you been worried about that?"

"...yes, ma'am?"

"Because of the -" pause, handwave, "or just - general?"

"The rogue, yes ma'am."

"Not even slightly worried about it, Love."

"...yes ma'am."

"Because it's not goona happen, not because I could stop you if it did."

"...all right, ma'am."

That sure is a face the kid is making. "Battle droids are the worst idea. Of course letting one slip the wipes and not socializing him at all is going to cause problems. DZ's not a risk."

"All right."

She nods sharply. "Not a risk," she asserts again.

"It's all right, ma'am," the droid says, just a little more firmly. "You won't let anything happen."

She scowls, and then shakes her head, just briefly, as if to clear it. "Yeah, I won't." She takes the droid's hand, and calms further.

"We have traveled through the darkness," she recites, slowly at first, with an air of feeling out the situation, but getting more confident as she goes -
"   She and I, for many days;
Till we wondered at the sunshine,
   When at length we felt its rays.

Chill and lonely is the pathway,
   Only lighted by the snow,
With the cutting east wind only
   To declare how we should go.

On our right, the frozen river,
   Where the drowned lay asleep;
On our left, the rocky mountain,
   So precipitously steep;

All around the gloomy shadows
   Of the failures gone before;
While the leafless branches whispered,
   We should do no less, no more.

We should falter and should stumble,
   And should fail to reach the end;
And should die in the beginning—
   Die together, O my friend!

Die together?—'twas a jewel
   Which they threw us, for a stone:
Come what might, we could remember
   That we should not be alone;

So, with hands entwined the closer,
   We pressed on against the blast;
And we bided for the daylight,
   And the daylight came at last.

First, the darkness grew to blackness,
   And we shivered in the cold;
And we trembled, lest our fingers
   Should not keep their faithful hold;

Then a strange grey veil fell on us,—
   Was it darkness? was it light?
And we questioned each, "What is it?
   Coming day, or coming night?"

Then upon the far horizon
   Came the faintest tint of gold;
Then the cloud became a glory,
   And the mystery was told;

Richer, deeper, grew the radiance,
   Till our eyes could hold no more.
We had traveled to the eastward,
   And our journeying was o'er.

Now the light is round about us,
   And the sun to guide our feet;
And along the mountain pathway
   Shine the flowers, pale and sweet;

And we pluck us each a blossom
   To remind us as we go,
How we went, we two together,
   Through the darkness and the snow;

And, whate'er may be the friendships
   We may gain in after years,
None can come between the compact
   Which has been annealed by tears."

[source]

"- yeah."

Nod, droidhand squeeze. "Yeah."

"You two remind me a little of me and my best friend. We got to know each other... kind of in the middle of a war."

Nod. "Sure is a thing, huh."

"Yeah."

"Yours - ended all right?"

"Yeah. I won."

"Good."

He smiles slightly.

"Think I would, too, but - better not to need to, this kinda bullshit."

Nod. "If I could've just convinced everybody to stop being terrible, I would've."

"...never does work."

"Not nearly as often as I'd like, anyway."

Shrug. "Sith."

Nod.

She considers for a moment, and then picks her book back up.

"Sorry, sir."

"I can go take another Infirmary shift if you don't need me for anything and don't want to go to my world right away."

"...Master Deskyl will want to bring her tools and things, I think. We'll need some time to pack."

(She glances up from her book and nods, almost imperceptibly.)

"All right. I'll be in the Infirmary."

And back to the Infirmary he goes.

When he returns, the Sith and her droid friend are sitting at the table nearest the door discussing something from a book, with a dozen or so large crates and two machines on dollies arranged neatly nearby.

"Hi again!"

"Hi! Got - " she waves at the crates. "Stuff, tools and materials and books."

"And I got the appropriate magic powers to make you an island. It was a long Infirmary shift."

"Cool."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome! Time to go?"

"Sounds like." She closes the book and floats it into the open crate at the top of one of the stacks.