Hoth: Blood and Ice

[Luth Khalan]

Luth bounced in the saddle of the Tauntaun as they ran out over the ice and snow. Ostensibly she was helping out with the patrolling, but in truth, it was more out of a hope for privacy than anything. Any place in the base could be watched, and that wasn't something she could afford at the moment. Not when everyone needed to work together as much as possible.

She looked over to the person with her. "How you holding up with the smell?"

[Tethys Carrack]

Tethys glances at Luth and chuckles. "It's better on the outside of the base. There's a wind out here, and it's too cold for me to smell much anyway. Not like inside the pens..."

She leans forward a bit in the saddle and pats the thick fur of her tauntaun's neck apologetically. "Sorry, my hairy friend. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Best to be honest about them, isn't it? You are very strong in other ways." Tethys, for example, definitely couldn't carry a fully equipped adult human for kilometers on end through the snow.

The Jedi is bundled up in thermal-regulated armor and a thick scarf under her robes, though in fact it's rather warm today--for Hoth. She's keeping one eye on the horizon, but for her, as for Luth, the perimeter patrol is more pretextual than real. Her mind is mainly occupied with staying clear for whatever Luth wants to talk about.

[Luth Khalan]

"Fair," she agreed with a small chuckle of her own before lapsing into silence for a few minutes. Snowfields rolled by as she tried to get her thoughts in order.

"Tethys..." She began, looking out into the horizon. "I... I'm sorry. I don't know how to express how deeply. I made a selfish, short-sighted decision, and the entire galaxy could have suffered for it."

[Tethys Carrack]

Tethys listens carefully. And then more quiet reigns for a bit, except for the sounds of wind across the snowfields, and the tauntauns' footsteps and heavy breathing.

"Yes," Tethys says after a while, in a calm conversational tone that carries just far enough. "You did. But you know that, which is better than not knowing it, so I'm glad." A few tauntaun-foot-thumps later, she adds, "I am also glad you're alive."

Thump, thump, thump.

"I... didn't truly expect better from a Sith. Valkorion offered an easy answer, a fast answer. But there was," Tethys frowns at the horizon briefly before turning back to Luth. "There was a moment, I think, when I expected better from you. Perhaps that's Jedi weakness speaking." One corner of her mouth twitches up wryly.

"I'm glad it turned out so much better than it could have. It was you who found his holocron, wasn't it?"

[Luth Khalan]

"I saw it in his mind," she replied with a nod. "Felt his fear of it. And it was a dream, so... there was no reason it couldn't just be there."

"But you're right about that. Our biggest weakness will always be fear, and the tendency to try and find an easy solution. He played on it, and was destroyed by it in turn," she said, staring forward. There wasn't much emotion in her voice... or it was the tone of emotion being held back rather. "And you know... the thing about being immersed in this mind was... I had to ask myself how different I really am from him. I had to ask, if I were to lose everything and just have myself, would I be different? I'd like to think I'm not that arrogant now, but it's hard to tell, and who knows with the passing of years?"

"I stared into the abyss and the only thing staring back was my own reflection."

[Tethys Carrack]

"So you think that is the difference between you and him? There are still a few things, a few people perhaps, that you yet value too much to sacrifice for greater power?" For now. Tethys reins her tauntaun to a slower pace as they approach the top of an icy rise.

[Luth Khalan]

"I don't want power for its own sake," she replied, slowingher tauntaun to amble along the ridge. "But from a self-centered perspective, things seem to demand more and more, because the whole thing makes you isolate yourself. Maybe someday I would be pursuing it for its own sake and being utterly callous about anyone or anything else."

"I'm not saying that I'm where he was, I'm saying that I can see how the Dark path leads from where I am to where he was, eventually."

"I don't want to go down it. I know it won't be easy, and I'm going to lose a lot in whatever it takes to do it. I also... I'm asking for the help that I should have asked for twelve years ago. I've wronged you, too, with the half-truths that I always talk in, hurt everyone back at Bankor, hurt a lot of people in the intervening years, so... I won't give up on trying to change, regardless of the answer. I'm trying not to be manipulative or create a sense of obligation."

Was that manipulative? It was hard to tell anymore. She hoped not.

"If you need answers... real, complete ones... before you make a decision, I'm an open book."

[Tethys Carrack]

"Perhaps Valkorion didn't think he wanted power just for its own sake, either," Tethys reflects, half to herself. "Senya described an Empire that wants to remake the whole galaxy in its image. He may have had some ideal once, or still. Only... it was an ideal whose pursuit was worth infinite suffering, as long as it was anyone else's suffering but his own." She shakes her head, clearing the dark fog that thought brings.

She turns in the saddle, the better to face Luth. "A decision. Hm." Then, after a moment, she reins her tauntaun fully to a stop. Her dark eyes seem wide between the wooly masses of her scarf and warm hood. "Luth. Are you asking for my help to... leave the Sith? Walk free of the Dark Side? What, exactly?"

[Luth Khalan]

"Point. You're right."

"I think that the latter is more important than the former, but I don't know if it's possible without leaving the Sith," she said quietly. "If I find a way to walk free of the Dark Side, Baras will sense the change right away. Besides... that constantly having to put up a front of strength wears on anyone. Everyone, I think. A lot of people are suffering in the Empire."

[Tethys Carrack]

Tethys nods, slowly and deliberately, her eyes still a bit big under the shadow of the cold-weather gear. She slips out of her saddle, to land with a crisp crunch of fresh snow, feet steady on the icy earth. It feels like a more stable way to assess her position, grounded on her own two feet.

She looks up at the other woman. "I think you already know the way back, Luth. It's just that it isn't quick, or easy. But if you're willing, if you really want to do this, despite the cost... of course I will help you. I can't do anything less."

Tethys couldn't let Layne talk herself into walking away down the dark path without doing everything in her power to stop it, and by the same token, she can't turn Luth down if Luth is asking for help climbing back up. It just isn't in her. Even if this could, in theory, still be part of another one of Darth Baras's gambits, that doesn't change the right answer.

"You don't have to bargain with me or buy my trust, for that. Whether I trust you isn't really the point." She looks down at her hands for a moment, fingers flexing on the tauntaun's reins. "Layne's example--you've seen how hard it is. We trusted her more than I think she knows, but she didn't trust herself... or trust us to hold her when she couldn't trust herself. But if she'd been alone, who knows if she would have managed to come back at all?"

[Luth Khalan]

Luth stayed back for now, but slipped off the tauntaun. Talking at two different physical levels didn't feel quite... right in this situation.

"This is the only way I've ever lived, so... it's more like navigating a path I just found, for me. Lying and manipulation saved you from torture and kept the people around you safe when I was growing up, so it seemed like the right thing to do, and became a habit. It... warps your sense of right and wrong, even though some part of you knows something is going terribly wrong."

She looked out across Hoth's landscape. "I need to learn a new mindset. I'll have to face Darth Baras. I think, eventually, I need to return to the Republic and face what I did. The people I hurt deserve justice."

[Tethys Carrack]

"Yes." Tethys sighs. "They do deserve that. Like Layne, again."

She pats her tauntaun's flank, but her attention is really on Luth. "It isn't fair. The galaxy isn't, I mean. I think we sentient beings are to blame for that, more than anything." Tethys shakes her head a little, banishing that tangent. "Anyway... it's not fair. Terrible things happened to you. Perhaps some of them came before you were even old enough to know what a real choice was. You did what others showed you to do, I suppose. Survived. But." Tensely, her gloved hand curls into a loose fist over her heart. "There's power inside you. You were born into it. Not everyone is. And that strength, it doesn't...doesn't..."

Tethys's lips twist in a wry, almost sad smile as she finds the words she's looking for. "As my first lightsaber master used to say, the Force doesn't grade on a curve."

[Luth Khalan]

She smiled a little to herself. "I know. I was explaining where I'm starting from to try and get a better feel for how to proceed forward. I'm going to have the learn from someone because I don't have as much context for the right mindset as someone else. That kind of thing."

"What's done is done. Trying to excuse it wouldn't be fair of me to others who had to deal with the consequences. I'll leave dramatic declarations about my past to... What was that guy's name, Jerri?" She sighed into her helmet, a little grumpily. "That guy..."

[Tethys Carrack]

Tethys emits a sound somewhere between an exhale and a pained sigh.

"I met him on Alderaan once, you know. Where he has been making a living as a very successful popular novelist for many years, I understand. I had no idea he was... was..." She shrugs one shoulder, rather helplessly. "I'm not easily deceived like that, usually. There may be more to him than is, ah, immediately apparent." Or not.

"You really didn't know your Master had a brother?" It's rather tangential to their main concern at the moment, but... now that Luth has brought it up, she can't help but ask.

[Luth Khalan]

"It's uh... entirely possible," she admitted. She glanced to Tethys and shook her head. "Not at all. I just thought he was some idiot that had managed to get weirdly far. The whole brother thing came as a serious shock. For more than one reason." She shifted her footing, like she was considering how to bring something up.

[Tethys Carrack]

"I will admit that I don't grasp how Sith apprenticeship works, not really." Tethys opens a hand palm-up, circling around and in toward the subject. "My first apprentice was," she tilts her head a little sideways. "Hm. Something like the younger brother I never had. He could be impetuous, made--makes--choices I never would, at times, but I would trust him with my life. As my master once trusted me."

She scritches her tauntaun under one of its its stubby forearms, eliciting a contented snort from the beast. "My new apprentice is younger. Well, and also," she reflects wryly, "I am older. I find I want to protect her more than I did him. Not forever, of course, but for a time. Eventually, she won't need my protection, but I'll still stand behind her as long as the Force sustains me."

Tethys shifts a boot in the crisp snow, uneasily. "If I knew either of them ever felt, for one moment, afraid of me, I..." She can't quite find a way to finish this thought.

[Luth Khalan]

She took a deep breath and let it out. "Fear is always an element in Sith apprenticeships. Believe it or not, my apprenticeship to Baras is probably somewhat less fraught in that particular way than most. A true Sith is always looking for opportunities to advance, and their master is always watching their back for when their apprentice decides they are powerful enough to challenge them."

"Apprentices often rise by killing their master. Lord Draahg was trying to encourage me to turn on Baras, for instance, and take over his resources. Probably so he could turn on me when I'm injured from it. Or maybe he would bide his time? Who knows. That paranoia is a constant fact of life."

She says it very matter of factly, but Luth did have a tendency to fall back on that when she was holding in her emotions.

[Tethys Carrack]

"That is what I mean when I say I don't grasp how it works." Tethys shakes her head slightly, reaching up to tuck back the end of a loc that was beginning to escape from her hood. "How can you teach an apprentice whose entire ambition is to betray you? Why even attempt it? What future does that build?"

She sighs.

"But Baras doesn't expect you to betray him." This is a neutral statement, in a very neutral tone.

[Luth Khalan]

"Apprentices are an extension of a Master's grasp and power," she explained. "It's not only a demonstration of power to your rivals, but apprentices are often their masters' most powerful agents, so they get a lot done. So it does pay to have an apprentice and develop their abilities. If they start getting too powerful on their own and is a threat or you no longer need them, you remove the problem."

She sighed. "I'm just giving you the theory as I have learned it."

"Baras... sees be as something of a vanity project, I think. He seems to think I have the potential to become among his most powerful apprentices, but I don't know if that's true or just what he told me. I think he believes I will betray him eventually, because that's the nature of apprenticeships, but we do have a mutual interest that will stay his hand to a point, and I suspect he believes will stay mine to a point."

[Tethys Carrack]

"What a... poisonous system." That's probably a harsher choice of words than is quite wise at the moment, but Tethys is still thinking about Glade and Byron, her own apprentices, and her tongue rebels against her self-control a little. She sighs in turn.

"So even the fearful Darth Baras makes some compromises with his own humanity. Hm." Tethys cocks her head, brows drawing together a bit. Treading delicately. "Should I ask what sort of mutual interest?"

[Luth Khalan]

"Horrifically poisonous," she responded.

At the question, she paused, trying to figure out how to answer. Whether to answer. She had to, though, didn't she? To fall back into lies and half truths would be to compromise who she wanted to become - who she needed to become.

Finally, she said, "I'll illustrate just how terrible this system is by laying out the future I am staring down if nothing changes. And... please don't underestimate the trust I'm placing in you to safekeep this information. Only one person knows about this beyond you, I, and Baras. Eventually... No, probably soon, perhaps even before we leave Hoth, either Baras or I will have to come for the other. We will fight. One of us will die. Whoever lives will eventually take our children as apprentices. Eventually, one of them will kill whichever one of us survived the initial confrontation, and likely have to kill their brother to protect themselves and their claim to whatever we had."

"That's the kind of monstrous system the Sith is. So Baras is securing his legacy just like the Emperor, not making a compromise on his humanity. I don't know how much he has left, anyway."

[Tethys Carrack]

"...'Our children,'" Tethys murmurs, and then falls quiet for a bit.

"I see." Those long moments quietly scanning the snowy horizon for nonexistent threats have enabled Tethys to examine, flush out, and pack away the disgust that might otherwise have come through in her voice if she'd spoken more right away. Now she sounds cool, collected, and thoughtful, although the connections made in her mind remain. An Empire of cannibals, eating their own families. Now that she's come to know something of the Emperor who created it, and his daughter, it all has a sick sort of predictability. Fish really do rot from the head. Valkorion, the galaxy is well rid of you.

"I haven't betrayed your first confidence to me over these past weeks. I can keep this one just as well." She nods solemnly to Luth. "But now I think I better understand the complexity of your... logistical problem."

[Luth Khalan]

"I know. You've been nothing but trustworthy. I know that, logically. It's just hard to get through that fear. Please don't take it as an insult to you." She asked. She leaned against the tauntaun. "But yes. I followed your suggestion, by the way. I made arrangements with Zeno."

[Tethys Carrack]

“I am not insulted.” Tethys brushes that away with a light, open-hand gesture. “I’m simply communicating fully. Usually a better idea than not, in my experience.”

She turns the matter over in her mind for a few beats. “It’s good that you’ve spoken to Thul already. If he agrees, that makes a landing place for your children. But if you think confrontation with your Master can’t be avoided before we leave here… that may change the conditions for getting them out of the Empire.”

Another thought strikes her, and a smile—still somewhat tense—softens the intensity of her eyes. “Would you trust me with their names? Actually, I don’t even know how many you have.” She might guess two boys, from context, but Luth hasn’t specifically said.

[Luth Khalan]

"Fair."

"I don't know if a confrontation is guaranteed before we leave. I don't want to jump straight to a fight to the death, in general; that's just the Sith way with some internal reassurance about necessity as wrapping paper. That said... He's been doing this long before I was around. I doubt he'll listen to me. It may be inevitable. He'll come for them, otherwise."

The request about their names shakes her out of her swirling thoughts a little. "Ah... Van and Aral Khalan." She let out a single breath rueful laugh. "Arali would probably take a dim view of that."