Private A Future Threatened

[Paila Dalle]

The first instinct had been to dismiss the conversation as little more than another encounter with someone convinced they possessed the answer to the galaxy's oldest questions. But the thought refused to leave her.

It lingered while she tended the garden behind her cottage. It lingered while she repaired a neighbor's moisture pump. It lingered while she sat alone one evening watching the last light disappear beyond the fields. The armored Imperial had spoken with a certainty she had encountered before. Jedi possessed it. Sith possessed it. Politicians possessed it. Yet his certainty had been different. It had not been born of conquest, nor vengeance.

It had been born of grief. That disturbed her far more. Paila had met enough people to know that conviction forged through suffering often proved far more resilient than conviction inherited through doctrine.

He did not merely hate the Sith. He believed that the galaxy itself could never know lasting peace while Force traditions continued to shape it.

She found herself wondering whether anyone else had heard him speak. Not the Jedi Order. She had left that life long ago. If she sought them now, the conversation would likely become about strategy, alliances, and ancient obligations. Those things had their place. They simply were not what she needed. She needed another person who had chosen to walk away. Someone who still listened to the Force without allowing an institution to speak over it.

The inquiry she left was deliberately modest. It contained no mention of holocrons, no mention of Imperials, nor of threats. Only a simple request. If there are others who walk apart from the Order....I would value a conversation.

Sometimes an understanding began not with agreement, but with finding someone willing to ask the same questions.

Tag: Prosen Dibs

 

[Prosen Dibs]

The message had found Prosen several days after it was left.

He listened to it twice.

The first time, he considered the words themselves. The second, he listened for everything beneath them—the caution, the isolation, and the faint hope that whoever answered would understand what she had not written.

He did not respond immediately. Not because he doubted the sincerity of the request, but because one phrase troubled him.

Those who walk apart from the Order.

Prosen was not certain that described him.

He had disagreed with the Council often enough. He had ignored recommendations, questioned conclusions, and chosen paths that had earned him more than one patient lecture from older Masters. Yet disagreement was not abandonment. The Order remained his home, even when its halls felt too narrow for the questions he carried.

Still, he understood what she was seeking.

So he answered.

The meeting place was quiet and deliberately unremarkable, a small clearing beyond the edge of the settled fields where an old stone marker stood half-swallowed by grass. Prosen arrived shortly before the appointed time, traveling without escort and wearing little that announced his station beyond the lightsaber resting at his side.

There he rested, back against the marker, and waited.

Paila Dalle

 

[Paila Dalle]

The clearing greeted Paila with the quiet sounds of a late afternoon. Wind moved gently through the tall grass surrounding the weathered stone marker, carrying the scent of earth warmed by the day's fading sun. Birds called somewhere beyond the trees before falling silent once more. She spotted the man before he noticed her.

He waited with the unhurried patience of someone accustomed to stillness. The lightsaber at his side did not escape her attention, though neither did it define him. She had learned long ago that what a person carried rarely revealed as much as why they carried it.

Paila approached at an easy pace, her beskar staff tapping softly against the ground with each measured step. She stopped several paces away, leaving him space before offering a small, courteous inclination of her head. "I hope that I haven't kept you waiting." She smiled gently. "My name is Paila." There was no expectation that he should recognize her name. No expectation that he had heard of her, nor any disappointment if he had not. In truth, she preferred it that way. Reputation often arrived before understanding, and she had found that conversations were easier when neither person believed they already knew the other.

For a brief moment her gaze wandered across the quiet clearing before returning to him. "Thank you for answering my message," she said. "I wasn't entirely certain that anyone would." The words were spoken simply, without hidden meaning or careful testing. Whatever conversation had brought him here could wait another moment. For now, it was enough that two strangers had both decided the meeting was worth making.

Tag: Prosen Dibs

 

[Prosen Dibs]

Prosen heard her approach before she spoke. Saw her in the Force before he heard her.

The measured strike of the staff against the earth announced her presence clearly enough, but he remained where he was until she stopped.

"You haven't," he assured her, pushing himself away from the stone. "I arrived early."

His attention settled upon her, though the cloth covering his eyes made the gesture less obvious than it might have been from another man. The name stirred no immediate recognition, and he made no effort to pretend otherwise.

"Prosen Dibs."

He returned the inclination of her head, his posture easy despite the weapon at her side. It didn't seem reason enough to treat her as anything other than what she had presented herself to be.

Someone seeking a conversation.

"I wasn't entirely certain I should answer," he admitted. "Your message asked for those who walk apart from the Order."

A slight smile touched the corner of his mouth.

"I have been accused of wandering, but I haven't quite left the path."

There was no defensiveness in the clarification. If anything, the words carried a quiet familiarity, as though it were a distinction he had been required to make more than once.

"The Order is still my home. I simply don't believe the Council is incapable of being wrong, and they occasionally seem disappointed that I'm willing to tell them so."

He gestured toward the open space beside the marker, offering her the choice to sit without presuming that she would.

"But I suspected you weren't searching for someone who had merely abandoned it. You were looking for someone willing to listen without deciding what your questions meant before you had the chance to ask them."

Prosen inclined his head slightly.

"I can do that."

Paila Dalle

 

[Paila Dalle]

Paila listened to him without interruption, her attention instead resting on him in a way that suggested neither judgment nor agreement. Only consideration.

When he finished, she let the quiet linger a moment longer than was strictly necessary. The wind moved through the grass between them, soft enough to feel like part of the conversation rather than a backdrop to it. “That is a careful place to stand,” she said at last, with her tone mild. “Between belonging and disagreement.”

Her gaze shifted briefly toward the stone marker beside them, as though weighing the idea against something older than the present conversation. “I imagine that it requires discipline,” she added. “To remain within a structure that you believe can be wrong, and still choose to stay.” A faint, thoughtful pause followed. “Or perhaps it requires hope.”

She looked back to him then, her expression unchanged, but more focused now. “You said that I was looking for someone willing to listen without deciding the meaning of my questions in advance.” A small inclination of her head acknowledged the accuracy of that. “That is correct.” Her hand tightened lightly around the beskar staff, not in tension, but in habit. “I have found that the answers are often less dangerous than the certainty. And yet certainty seems to be what many are pursuing at the moment.” Her words were gentle, but they carried a subtle weight now. “There are those who believe that the Galaxy would be improved if the Jedi and Sith were no longer part of it at all.” Her eyes remained on him, steady but not probing for reaction. “Not through debate. But through removal.” She let that sit without pressing it further.

“I have been approached by someone who believes that very outcome is necessary.” A beat. “He is looking for something I possess.” Her tone remained even, almost clinical in it's restraint. “A holocron.” She gave the word a bit of space to land properly. “He believes that it should be destroyed.”

Paila’s expression did not change, but something in her attention sharpened slightl. Not towards him as an opponent, but towards him as a possible mirror. “I am curious,” she said softly. “When certainty takes the form of action....and when that action involves deciding what knowledge should or should not exist....” Her head tilted just slightly while she studied him. “....at what point does wandering become something else entirely?”

Tag: Prosen Dibs

 

[Prosen Dibs]

Prosen's expression changed before she had finished.

Not dramatically. There was no sudden tension in his posture, no hand drifting toward the lightsaber at his side. But the faint ease with which he had greeted her disappeared, replaced by something quieter and far more attentive.

"The moment the path begins requiring everyone else to disappear."

His answer came without the reflection he had given her earlier words.

Prosen remained still beside the marker, though his head angled slightly toward her. Whatever uncertainty he had felt about answering her message was gone now. In its place was concern.

"There is a considerable distance between believing the Jedi and Sith have caused harm and believing the galaxy would be improved by their removal." His voice remained calm, but there was a firmness beneath it that had not been there before. "One is criticism. The other is a justification waiting for a method."

He allowed the words to settle between them.

"The Sith have committed atrocities. So have Jedi. I would be a fool to deny either simply because one truth is more comfortable than the other." His mouth tightened faintly. "But Orders are not abstractions. They are made of people. Some wise. Some arrogant. Some compassionate. Some dangerous. To speak of removing the Jedi and Sith is to speak of deciding that every person associated with them has forfeited the right to choose another way."

Prosen pushed away from the stone, though he did not approach her.

"That certainty should concern you."

There was no accusation in the statement. Only a plainness that suggested he believed softening it would do neither of them any good.

"As should the holocron."

His attention shifted briefly toward the staff in her hand before returning to her.

"Knowledge can be dangerous. There are things preserved within holocrons that should not be approached carelessly, and some were created with the intention of corrupting whoever opened them. But destruction is a permanent answer. Once knowledge is gone, no one else is permitted to judge it. The decision belongs entirely to the person who burned it."

A quiet breath left him.

"That does not mean every artifact must be protected at any cost. It means the burden of destroying one should require more than conviction."

His covered gaze remained fixed upon her.

"You asked when wandering becomes something else. I think it happens when a person stops questioning where they are going. When every objection becomes proof that others are blind, every compromise becomes weakness, and every life or piece of knowledge standing in the way becomes expendable."

Prosen's voice softened, though the concern within it did not.

"A person can leave the Jedi path without becoming lost. They can oppose the Council without opposing every Jedi. They can even believe the Order should end in its current form." He paused. "But anyone who believes peace requires the elimination of entire traditions is not walking away from certainty. They have simply chosen a new certainty to serve."

For several moments, he said nothing. Then his head inclined slightly.

"Who approached you?"

Paila Dalle

 

[Paila Dalle]

Paila let the wind move between them once again, carrying the scent of wild grass through the quiet clearing. There was something reassuring in his response. Not because he agreed with her, but because he had resisted the temptation to make certainty sound virtuous.

At length, she nodded. "I think that is what troubled me most," she said quietly. "Not that he wished to destroy the holocron." Her eyes drifted briefly toward the old stone marker. "But that his reasoning was sincere." She looked back to Prosen. "He was not angry. Nor cruel. He was...grieving. I have met people driven by hatred before." A faint shake of her head followed. "Hatred is often loud. It announces itself." Her expression grew more thoughtful. "His did not. He spoke as someone who had watched the same tragedy unfold so many times that he no longer believed any lesser remedy could ever succeed."

Silence lingered for a heartbeat. "He called himself Aurelian. He was an Imperial. Very tall." A faint smile touched her lips. "Tall enough that my doorway objected to him." The small moment of humor faded as naturally as it had come. "He wore immaculate armor, carried himself like a soldier, and spoke as though centuries had taught him patience instead of haste." Her fingers shifted lightly upon her staff. "He told me that he had once been both Jedi and Sith. He believes that neither tradition can ever produce lasting peace. That as long as either survives, the galaxy will continue repeating the same wars."

She met Prosen's gaze once more. "He did not speak of conquest. He spoke of ending the cycle. And that," she admitted softly, "is what frightened me." Her eyes wandered briefly toward the horizon before returning to him. "Because history has taught me that some of the most dangerous people are not those who wish to rule. They are those who become convinced that history itself must be corrected."

Her expression settled into thoughtful calm. "If we erase every record that makes us uncomfortable..." she said, "...or every tradition that has ever caused harm..." She gave the smallest shake of her head. "We don't become wiser. We simply leave the next generation with fewer warnings than we had."

Tag: Prosen Dibs

 

[Prosen Dibs]

Prosen listened without interruption, though the name drew a slight tilt of his head.

"Aurelian," he repeated quietly, committing it to memory.

The description offered little comfort. Anger could make a person reckless, but grief was capable of teaching patience. It could wait years for the proper moment and still call itself mercy when it finally acted.

"That he is sincere does not make his conclusion sound," Prosen said. "But it does make him more dangerous than someone merely seeking power."

He folded his arms loosely across his chest, his attention remaining fixed upon her presence within the Force.

"A tyrant knows that others must be forced to accept his will. Someone like Aurelian may believe force is regrettable, but necessary. Every person who resists becomes another victim of the cycle he intends to end. Every atrocity becomes unfortunate evidence that he lacked another choice. This is often the way of the Empire."

A faint breath escaped him. He paused a moment to consider before continuing.

"And because he grieves for those harmed by the Jedi and Sith, he may never see himself as their enemy. He may believe he is saving them from becoming what he once was."

Prosen fell quiet for a moment, his awareness extending beyond the clearing and into the faint currents of life surrounding them.

"He is not wrong that the cycle exists. The Jedi and Sith have defined themselves against one another for so long that each has helped preserve the conditions in which the other returns. The Order does not like admitting that. It prefers to believe the Sith are an infection that can be removed while leaving everything else unchanged."

His jaw tightened slightly.

"But recognizing a cycle does not grant someone the right to decide who must disappear to break it. Nor does having walked both paths mean he understands every person upon them. Perhaps it has only convinced him that his experience is universal."

His hand brushed lightly against the weathered surface of the marker beside him, feeling the roughness of the old stone beneath his fingers.

"You are right about the holocron. Destroying knowledge does not destroy the failures that produced it. It only ensures that those failures must be discovered again by people who no longer possess the record."

He paused before adding, more quietly, "Though I doubt he believes he is erasing history. He likely believes he is removing the tools that allow it to repeat."

That distinction troubled him more than he cared to show.

"What is contained within the holocron?" he asked. "And why does he believe its destruction matters to his cause?"

Paila Dalle

 

[Paila Dalle]

Paila was quiet for a time, her gaze drifting past the old stone marker toward the fields beyond. The wind stirred the grasses in slow waves, as though even it preferred patience to certainty. "I don't know," she admitted at last. "I've never opened it." Her fingers rested lightly against the smooth beskar of her staff. "When it came into my keeping, it was entrusted to me as something to be protected, not to be explored." A faint smile touched her features. "Perhaps that seems an unusual distinction."

She looked back to Prosen. "There are holocrons that exist simply to preserve history. Genealogies. Personal journals. Records of places long forgotten." She paused thoughtfully. "There are others that were created to teach. Some are said to be dangerous enough that opening them is the first mistake a person makes." Her expression grew more contemplative. "I have never been certain of which this one is. And because I do not know..." she continued, "I have never felt entitled to satisfy my own curiosity simply because I happened to become it's keeper." She gave the smallest shake of her head. "Guardianship and ownership are not the same thing."

A bird called somewhere beyond the clearing before the quiet returned.

"Aurelian never asked what was inside." There was a faint note of curiosity in her voice now, as though the realization had only just settled into place. "He only asked that it be destroyed." She met Prosen's gaze again. "I don't think the contents matter to him. Only what it represents. A Sith holocron is, to him, another seed from which the cycle might begin again. Whether it contains a ritual, a lesson, or nothing more than the recollections of someone long dead seems almost irrelevant." She exhaled softly. "That troubles me."

A small silence followed before she added, "Because if we decide the value of knowledge without first understanding what it is... we risk condemning not merely dangerous ideas, but forgotten truths as well."

Tag: Prosen Dibs

 

[Prosen Dibs]

Prosen considered her words in silence.

"Guardianship and ownership are not the same thing," he repeated, the faintest note of approval entering his voice. "No. That does not seem unusual to me. Only rare."

Too many people mistook possession for permission. Jedi were not immune to it. An artifact entered the Archives and, almost immediately, became something to be catalogued, studied, and understood. There was wisdom in that instinct, but arrogance as well. The belief that knowledge existed to be uncovered could become its own kind of entitlement.

"You were entrusted with a duty, not an invitation," he said. "Respecting that distinction may be the reason it remained safe in your keeping."

His fingers moved absently across the rough surface of the stone behind him as he thought.

"But if Aurelian knows what the holocron contains, then his refusal to explain himself is significant."

Prosen's expression tightened.

"He is not condemning it merely because it is Sith. He has judged something within it dangerous enough to erase yet expects you to accept that judgment without being given the knowledge necessary to make your own."

The wind moved through the clearing, carrying the subtle impressions of the life around them through the Force. Prosen remained attentive to Paila's presence, though his thoughts had turned toward the unknown artifact.

"That may mean he fears the contents themselves. A ritual. A weapon. The teachings of someone whose influence might still reach beyond death." He paused. "Or it may mean the holocron contains something that complicates the history he has chosen to believe."

A Sith holocron could preserve horrors. It could also preserve confessions, failures, names, or truths that neither Jedi nor Sith would wish remembered.

"There can be good reason to destroy dangerous knowledge," Prosen continued. "Some teachings are designed only to corrupt and preserving them carelessly can become an act of vanity disguised as scholarship. But such a decision must rest upon more than one man's certainty."

His covered face remained angled toward her.

"If Aurelian knows what is within it, then he possesses an advantage you do not. He is asking you to surrender your guardianship while withholding the very information that might justify his request."

A faint breath left him.

"That does not mean you should open it. Curiosity alone is not reason enough, and caution is not cowardice. But neither should you destroy it simply because he claims to understand what you do not."

Prosen's hand fell away from the stone.

"The question is no longer whether the holocron might contain something dangerous. It very well may."

He paused, choosing the words carefully.

"The question is why Aurelian believes you must remain ignorant of it, and whether he will accept your refusal once he realizes his certainty is not enough."

Paila Dalle

 

[Paila Dalle]

Paila gave a small shake of her head, the movement almost lost beneath the breeze stirring the grasses around them. "I don't believe that he knows," she said quietly. "At least he never claimed to." Her gaze settled briefly upon the weathered stone marker before returning to Prosen. "He spoke as though the contents were irrelevant. Or perhaps more accurately; as though they could only ever be harmful."

She folded her hands loosely around the staff. "He never asked what the holocron contained, nor whether I had opened it. I don't think that it mattered to him at all." A faint crease formed between her brows. "To Aurelian, the danger lies in what a Sith holocron represents. It is another vessel through which Sith knowledge might survive. Whether it holds a ritual, a personal journal, a family lineage, or nothing of consequence at all..." She gave the smallest shrug. "I do not think that he distinguishes between them. Perhaps he cannot afford to."

The thought lingered quietly before she continued. "He asked me to surrender it, and when I refused, he gave me four weeks." Her voice remained calm, though there was an unmistakable gravity to it now. "He told me to bring it to him on Nirauan. If I do..." She hesitated only briefly. "He gave me his word that I would leave unharmed." Her eyes then drifted towards the horizon. "If I do not...He said that his patience would end, and that he would pursue it by force." She held no fear in her expression as she said it. Only the sober acceptance of someone describing the weather before a difficult journey.

"And I believe him." She looked back to Prosen. "Not because he struck me as cruel. Quite the opposite, in fact." A faint sadness entered her voice. "He seemed like a man who would keep both promises with equal sincerity."

The clearing grew quiet again, save for the whisper of the wind through the long grass. "I left our conversation with the impression that he would regret harming me." She lowered her gaze for a moment. "But I simply don't think that that regret would stop him."

Tag: Prosen Dibs