Private A New Face in an Old Place

[Jack Sandrow]

Location: Some dive bar halfway up a glass-covered Coruscant skyrise.
Objective: Attempt to provide a semblance of a history update to a new friend
Equipment: Casual wear | Breather | Pistol

---

You didn't come to Coruscant for good whiskey. Jack rotated the almost-empty tumbler under his fingers, musing over glasses shared with friends long gone. No, the whiskey here was shit. You came to Coruscant for consistently shitty whiskey. At least here (on this planet anyway), Jack knew he could get the same paint stripper the same way, every single time. Even if the bar changed hands a dozen times over, moved half a continent away, or was entirely supplanted by the 'next best thing', he could be assured that this stuff - he tipped the mask up, downed the last dregs - that this stuff, as acrid as it could sometimes be, was consistent.

A steady rock in the Chaos of the galaxy was undervalued, he figured. And yes, he was coming around to accepting the Chaos as part of natural living. But that didn't mean he had to be purely reactive to the world. He could be proactive! Like actually engaging in conversation with the person next to him.

"My word, I am so sorry, I completely zoned out there. Normally I do this sort of thing solo, and I end up lost in thought staring at the traffic, like I just did." He gestured out the transparisteel window to the thin zippers of blinking lights crisscrossing the never-sleeping city skyline. "Is your drink good? Did you get enough? ...are you wanting solid food as well?" Great job, Jack, this is the best way to introduce someone to civilization. Keep it up and you just may get to see them live long enough to smuggle themselves onboard a freighter bound for Tatooine. Moron.

"Again, I'm sorry. Are you good, genuinely?" he asked his newfound travel buddy.

---

Antecedent

 

[Boe]

Boe had been staring off the whole time, Jack rambled in embarrassment at the thought of being a bad host. She was entirely too distracted by the stark contrast between this place and the derelict, let alone the life she lived before then and now.

She blinked out of her dissociation and looked at him with puzzled eyes; clearly, she was out of it, too. Her whole posture was rather stiff, too, as she finally looked at the drink and gave it a swig. Boe blinked again, her upper lip twitched in one corner. "It tastes awful," she muttered before taking an even larger sip.

"The burn is nice, I guess." She added.

There was little delay between her sips now, as the drink quickly disappeared, all the while she glanced around the room. The people, the music, the social atmosphere, the drinks, the customs... It was all very, very different from the life she had been accustomed to.

"I never actually set foot on Coruscant before," she revealed. "At the time, this world was host to the One Sith, and I don't imagine they condoned such a sinful place."

"Everything I am seeing encourages dissidence and discord," she looked back at Jack with an almost disappointed expression, only betrayed by the fact that she held out her empty glass. "More."

Jack Sandrow

 

[Jack Sandrow]

Equipment: Casual wear | Breather | Pistol

---

He let out a low whistle at her comment about Coruscant. "The One Sith in charge of Coruscant," he said appreciatively. "That's a throwback..."

His eyebrows rose a bit at her comment, and he actually laughed a bit at that. " 'Dissidence and discord'," he repeated. "In so many words, you have described the majority of the modern Galaxy and the people within it. Ah, present company excluded, of course." She pushed the glass towards him and he grinned. "Sure thing, Boe." He grabbed her glass and his own, and nodded as he got up to the bar. "I'll be right over there."

Ordering two more, he took the moment to think through it for a moment. Barely one day ago she was stuck in a tree, in a shipwreck, in the middle of nowhere, and now she was just calmly sitting there and taking everything in. Could he really blame her, though? A level head was probably the best way to transition from past to present... he just hoped he could smooth that interface as best as possible.

"Don't feel obligated to drink what I'm drinking, by the way," he added as he slid back onto his seat. "I drink this stuff cause it's familiar, not cause it's good."

---

Boe

 

[Boe]

She nodded as Jack went to grab the two more drinks and then went back to watching patrons.

Most appeared to be like them, a pair sitting alone and minding their own company, but in other corners, there were groups, some playing cards, others getting rowdy over sports bets, and then last were the majority: loners and barflies who came for the drink and stayed for the peace. She was able to read these things and pick up on details quite quickly, even if there was a foreign logic at play.

Yet she had that experience, even if it wasn't hers, it lived inside of her. This is why she existed, what she was trained to do. To read and to control.

Boe snapped back into reality when Jack sat back down in his chair. There was a quizzical look, a raised brow at his comment.

"One should drink what is given to them," she said with a sip. Already, she had the slightest buzz from her first drink. "We had a similar beverage, brewed from a plant native to Dantooine." Another sip. "It was rationed out to laborers and warriors."

"The thought that you can just... Go out and acquire these things seems a bit wasteful. What prevents excess?"

Jack Sandrow

 

[Jack Sandrow]

Equipment: Casual wear | Breather | Pistol

---

"Money. Money, time, and general desire. Why bother taking in everything all at once when you can take your time with what you know you like?" He gave her a warm smile. "I'm privileged enough that I can choose what I want to do, where I want to go. I try to share where I can, though, it's no fun to just keep it all to oneself."

He watched as she sipped again from the glass. "I'd go easy on that stuff, it is.... Well, it's whiskey. It's potent stuff if you're biologically compatible for it." A grin, before he tossed back a good mouthful from his glass. "I'll say, though, I'd love to have a sip of that Dantooinian spirit, if you know where I could rustle up a case."

He eyed her over his glass, before asking, "So, are you from Dantooine, then? Might I ask what you did once upon a time?"

---

Boe

 

[Boe]

"I may be unfamiliar with the custom of this drink, but I can taste my alcohol," Boe retorted.

The question of where she was from caught her off guard, all while she was mid-sip. The glass hung there in her hand, the rim just a touch on her bottom lip, all the while she considered with a contemplative gaze at nothing in particular. "No, not Dantooine." She sipped.

"Wayland," she elaborated, "I am from Wayland in Mandalorian space. It is where I was born, and it was where I was remade." Boe considered her past in the answer and realized it was a trickier question to elaborate on than one might expect. Though she did, in fact, promise Jack some answers.

Though, how was she to describe the reality of it? The product of a dark ritual using sorcery--Sith magicks at that. Boe downed her second round a little too quickly and finished it with a grimace as she swallowed hard, as it burned the back of her throat.

"I was a girl back then... 15, maybe? A slave in the service to the Warlord of Wayland, who himself owed his allegiance to the Primeval Host. After that..."

She didn't say, and instead changed the subject, sort of. "I did live on Dantooine for a time, though. I liked it there. Especially the kath hounds," she said with a smile.

A hint of annoyance now. "I don't understand talk without a purpose. I should train, or do... something. Anything!" She crushed the glass in her hand, which suggested a greater outburst than her tone allowed.

The bartender glanced over to them both with a rather stern look, a non-verbal warning to knock it off or get kicked out.

Jack Sandrow

 

[Jack Sandrow]

Equipment: Casual wear | Breather | Pistol

---

Remade? Primeval Host? Lots of strange and interesting conversation threads, but he brushed those aside the second she smashed the glass. "I would argue that this is talking with a purpose. I want to know more about you, you want to learn more about the galaxy at large.... You deserve to be caught up to speed."

But she was getting antsy, and he wasn't about to stop her. "Alright, alright. We don't have to stay here and trade sad stories. What would you like to do? Anything, anything at all, I'll do my best to facilitate."

---

Boe

 

[Boe]

She looked at her hand, where the little cuts from the broken glass had already begun to heal.

When she thought of getting caught up to speed, Boe's brow furrowed. "I wouldn't even know what to ask at this point... I lack purpose." She stood up as soon as she said that, only to turn her head over her shoulder and catch Jack's next line of thought.

"We'll walk," she said matter-of-factly.

Some patrons proved to be onlookers as they ogled the stranger and perhaps judged her outburst. Or maybe it was her unkempt hair and generally unpleasant odor that lingered from the sap. The door slid open, and she left. Outside--well, Coruscant's idea for 'outside' anyway--was much louder, with the intelligible banter and bustle of denizens, soaring cloud cars, roaring speeders, holographic ads, and the hum of complex automation that made the massive ecumenopolis turn.

It wasn't the plains of Dantooine, but it would have to do, and Boe already began to wander off.

She spoke without turning around, assuming that Jack would still be there. "It feels strange to admit how lost I am. My whole life... At least the life that I remember was centered around command, control, and a means to achieve the necessary end. I had a lot of time to think about it."

All that time in the tree, where time had been slowed quite a lot in proximity to the Bubble of the Lost, gave her much to consider. Ironically, she was a madwoman before all that. Perhaps still is, but never in the past would she have gone to Coruscant for a drink. More likely, she would've done to it what the One Sith had done before.

"I feel... positively stupid without even the Fleet to my name. What you witnessed was among the last of it, destroyed."

Jack Sandrow

 

[Jack Sandrow]

Equipment: Casual wear | Breather | Pistol

---

Jack quickly paid for the drinks (adding a bit extra for the glass) and followed Boe out the door at a brisk walk to catch up. "Walking is fine with me!"

The recycled air of outdoors Coruscant was only slightly more palatable to his lungs than the rank of indoors Coruscant. He kept his breather on. Staying close by Boe, he listened as she lamented a life lived and lost. He had no shared experience to that, so he stayed quiet throughout, providing an ear to hear.

"Starting from a blank slate," he murmured. "Yeah, that's tough. I... I don't really have anything pithy to say. I'm just sorry that it's happened to you." No one deserved to be abandoned by history.

He drew in a slow breath, giving her a brief glance as they walked together. "Were you a major part of the Fleet? You mentioned being part of a... of the Primeval Fleet... I'm assuming that's what I was flying through to reach the wreck, the tree, and you."

Just who exactly was she? he mused. Command, control, a slave in a Fleet of some kind... Trapped in Force-damping cuffs, but not killed... He needed a straight answer, these questions were piling up way too quickly.

---

Boe

 

[Boe]

"Sorry?" She chuckled in anything but amusement.

She led them down an alley, and then into an alley of that alley. Coruscant had a way of being liminal despite the massive scale of its cityscapes.

Were you a major part of the Primeval Fleet?

"Your assumption is correct, yes. That was at least part of the fleet, anyway." She clarified, then answered. "When the Host Lord died, there was chaos... Her warlords did not fall in line, and only the priest caste and the most fanatical components of the fleet stayed loyal to her chosen successor, the High Priest... One of my fathers."

The sudden crowd of people disappeared as they stumbled into what looked like some kind of maintenance path. There was even a gate with some sort of official signage that amounted to 'keep out,' though Boe ignored the warning anyway.

The witch reached out through the Force and broke the locking mechanism, then kicked the door inward.

She continued to elaborate further as they trespassed in this quiet, somewhat claustrophobic zone. "He arrived on Wayland to punish the Warlord there, and that is when I was found, and he chose me to be her heir... or at least a vessel for her resurrection, in time."

Jack Sandrow

 

[Jack Sandrow]

Equipment: Casual wear | Breather | Pistol

---

" 'One of' your fathers. Is that spiritual fathers, or... biological fathers?" If it was spiritual, then that was that (probably), but if they were her biological fathers, then perhaps there was a way to track them down, maybe help bring her some kind of closure on that front. Or maybe she didn't want closure, maybe she wanted to just bury that and start fresh.

"So... I interrupted a resurrection, of a kind; at the very least, interrupted a form of succession." He ducked through the gate, keeping close behind. "And... you want to pick up where it left off? Or are you done with that completely?" He was bad at reading people at the best of times, and she was playing it fairly close to the chest as it were.

"Look... Boe, whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go, I'll give you a hand. I'm still confused as hell as to the world you've come from, but that doesn't mean I can't help you. Just... what do you want to do?"

---

Boe

 

[Boe]

"I suppose you could say adoptive," she answered. "The High Priest was one, and a rogue Jedi the other... That Jedi also happened to be the biological father of my brother."

Boe stopped and shook her head. "You interrupted nothing of the sort," she insisted. "This resurrection already happened, in a way... There was a ritual on Wayland after they killed the Warlord. The Host Lord's Force essence, or at least part of it, was placed inside of me along with the essence of another." It was weird to explain this to him, and that much became apparent in her expression.

They approached an edge with a very, very steep drop. A cloud car soared on by, and Boe looked in every direction before she turned to face Jack.

"Now my turn to ask questions," she began. "Why are you so interested? Why were you even there to begin with? Are you a treasure hunter, a lucky explorer, what?" Her tone became more accusatory as she kept talking. There was also a sudden change in the way she talked. How she carried herself, more confident, self-righteous.

She took one step, then two. If it weren't for his height, she would've been towering by posture alone, though she did have to be the one looking up.

"I want..." She paused. "No, I need purpose. I need a reason for this power, and I need to feel the weight of lives and worlds in my hand again."

Boe's tone took on a softer impression again, and she herself seemed every bit nervous, lost, confused, and just... tired.

"I feel like I've lost my periphery. I need to remind the galaxy that I am still here."

Jack Sandrow

 

[Jack Sandrow]

Equipment: Casual wear | Breather | Pistol

---

Jack saw her. Saw a facet of her, at least. She was a sacrificial lamb, the cornerstone of a great power, and now everything that had defined her was ripped away, with history passing by and sweeping her under the rug. These were her first few naked steps in a brave new world.

His eyes matched her intensity as she bore down on him. Matched her energy as she sought answers herself. Watched her as she deflated slightly.

"....I was in the right place at the right time. I heard your scream for help, and turned to see. That great tree drew me in, and you guided me the rest of the way." He brought his hand up a bit, looking at the lush green that could almost pass for actual skin but for a few oh so minute details. He turned the hand back, forth, flexing the fingers slowly. "As for my interest... well. To put it briefly, I also understand being remade for someone else's benefit, to be used as a stepping stone for something unfathomably great and left behind as a result."

The skeleton in his closet leered at him a moment, and he shook his head to clear his thoughts.

"Now, as for needing purpose and direction," he murmured with a bit more levity, "I can absolutely empathize. Being one of one is a tough break in a galaxy filled with one-of-ones, and even tougher when people want to find someone like them." To be one part of an immense Fleet, versus being made a founding lynchpin.... well, he could certainly imagine such a fate, even without shared experience.

"If I may provide some advice?" He was allowed to dispense an opinion here, surely. "If you want to make an impression on the galaxy again, you first need to make an impression of yourself. You're going to need to take time and rediscover exactly who you are. We are more than our experiences, we're a reflection of the context of the galaxy we live in.

"So, Boe... who are you?" He crossed his arms, leaning up against the alley wall, a soft smile reaching his eyes. "And no, you don't have to answer right now."

---

Boe

 

[Boe]

Boe blinked and took a step back for once, all the while Jack shared not only his intentions, but his thoughts on her situation as well.

While he continued to talk, she turned and sat with her legs hanging over the ledge. She stared as speeders and cloud cars passed by, listening to Jack speak his mind.

We are more than our experiences, we're a reflection of the context of the galaxy we live in.

Those words stuck. No--they struck. Even though not much time had passed in the grand scheme of things, it was a far different galaxy than the one she left. Even if her name, or the name of those she served, still echoed in the minds of its trillions of denizens, it wouldn't be enough. People couldn't remember her back into position, where things all made sense again.

She laughed to herself. Oh... They would hate to know she lived. The Mirialans? She was at least partly responsible when Zambrano the Hutt glassed their homeworld. Or the Mandalorians? It was the Primeval Fleet that took Wayland from them in the first place. Thousands of their warriors were slaughtered on that green jewel. The Silver Sanctum? She liberated the Sith Worlds from them, and again, many of their own died to stop...

No... These are her memories. Not mine.

Boe held her hands to her head. "I don't even know who I am anymore... She wants to continue what was started. She made a promise, a pact, and her life... Her very spirit in the Force is intertwined with that pact. She cannot rest until I carry on; it is why I was allowed to live, why I was given purpose again." The words were muttered more for herself than Jack, but he would undoubtedly be able to hear them.

Finally, she looked at him again. "I need my sword."

Jack Sandrow

 

[Jack Sandrow]

Equipment: Casual wear | Breather | Pistol

---

He watched quietly as she sat down on the ledge. Living through history being writ was tough... being sequestered away from history as it was being writ was worse. Processing that would take time. How much time exactly was up to her, and her alone.

"Never a better time than the present to figure out who you are or what you want to be. If you want to succeed in place of... that Host Lord you mentioned... then that's a start."

He inhaled softly as she mentioned a sword, and his mind flicked back to the dreadnought's hulk and the ruins within. "...I don't remember seeing a sword on the ship, beyond perhaps the..." The one on the armor. Her sister's armor. "No, never mind, sorry." He took a moment to think. "Are you talking about a sword sword? Blade, fuller, crossguard, pommel, hilt, et cetera? Or are you referring to a lightsaber sword?"

Purpose! An objective! He could help with that. And acquiring slightly less-than-legal weapons on Coruscant was almost too easy, if it came down to that.

---

Boe

 

[Boe]

"More or less," she answered regarding the sword's physical properties. "I do not use the weapon of Jedi or Sith... It is unfitting, unholy." She nearly spat when she said so.

"This sword was not on the ship, I know that much," she explained.

As for where it was, she did not know, and that made her quite angry. Her furrowed brow, tight jaw, and clenched hands shared the sentiment of her heart. Her tone changed again, but this time so did her voice... almost. "I made that sword. I forged it with the masters. My own self resides in the crystal at its hilt. It is both my weapon and a conduit of my power."

She drew from her own sorcery, the Force emanated from her and wrapped around Jack's mind to present him a vision. An Umbaran woman with a cloaked stranger, the two worked day and night to forge a blade of Phrik, and at its hilt they inserted a crystal. A crystal much like the one Jack found on the ship, but this one had been twisted as the witch woman poured her own essence, a portion of her own life, into it.

Then, the vision stopped. Boe's expression shifted from that stern, serious, and commanding look back to one of confusion and insecurity. She had a sense of what had just happened, but was too afraid to say anything.

"I feel naked without it..." She whispered.

Jack Sandrow

 

[Jack Sandrow]

Equipment: Casual wear | Breather | Pistol

---

Jack let out a soft sigh of relief that he hadn't missed the sword in some side room that he hadn't explored. Though he had left that crystal and square cube thing behind... perhaps he should have swiped them for Boe's sake.

And then Boe's voice changed. It was a subtle alteration, but potent enough to be noticed. Perhaps the Host Lord wasn't as gone as either of them thought. She spoke of her sword, how it was more than a weapon, it was an extension of her very self. Her images flashed in his mind, and while he wasn't expecting it at first he recognized the signature mental communication from back in the shipwreck. He was being shown what once was.

When he came back to himself, he steadied himself on the wall before addressing her softly. "...I can understand that feeling. You're missing a fragment of your self..." Sure he could help get her a sword to replace what she once had, but getting her the sword she needed? That would be a tricky thing indeed. He had no idea where to start...

....Maybe on Umbara?

---

Boe

 

[Boe]

"I still don't understand," Boe said without much clarity at first.

She was now pacing back and forth near the edge, before finally she turned to Jack and continued. "You know you can just... Leave me here, right?"

Boe had little inclination to mistrust people, particularly in the past when she was a subject of worship and amassed loyalty from frankly the most unhinged fanatics the galaxy had to offer. Few truly understood Primeval theology, and it was never a subject the Host Lord was particularly keen to instill in the people she conquered. As long as they were useful, as long as their labor was in the pursuit of her goals, or at the very least they weren't a threat to those goals... That was all that had ever mattered.

So for this girl, much older but still a young woman in appearance, the world she was reborn into was one prepared for her arrival. Yet Jack was not the world she had been reborn into; no, he was someone who stumbled into the ghost of her world. He hadn't the slightest idea of who she was and barely an inkling of what the Primeval was responsible for, if at all.

So why?

Then, a thought occurred... A question she should've asked much sooner. "What is the current galactic standard year?" She asked.

Thank goodness for bureaucracy in this case, at least.

Jack Sandrow

 

[Jack Sandrow]

Equipment: Casual wear | Breather | Pistol

---

"I could leave you here, sure. I could do a lot of things." He snorted softly. "You're not getting rid of me that easily," he said with a soft smile. "You need the help, and I can provide help. Simple as that."

He remembered a time when he was a foundling in the Galaxy. He had been thankful for the help he had gotten at the time, and had asked how to repay it. It was enough, they had said, to pay it forward.

"It's currently 902 ABY; there are rumors that some sort of 'convergence' event is occurring, though I haven't yet encountered something along those lines...." He eyed her curiously. "Though... perhaps meeting you was convergence for me?"

---

Boe

 

[Boe]

902?

Boe's expression was rather subtle, though her silence for a near minute or two said more than her face ever could. Chronologically, this would have made her almost seventy years old, and half a century since the Primeval fell. No wonder, she thought.

The idea of a 'convergence' escaped her thoughts, however. She heard him, but it was a detail that meant nothing to her--at least for now. The silver lining is that his answer alone did something. Her thoughts became clear, as the world around her had shrunk considerably in her mind. There were no loose ends, no missing pieces. She could retrace steps however she pleased, and few would likely recognize her or what she represented.

"I need somewhere to live," she said with determined eyes. "This world is as good a place as any. Lots of people, lots of places to hide. All of which will be useful for my work."

"Let us walk, Jack. You can go ahead and tell me about yourself as we do. The notes of your life sound fair enough, as I've given you mine."

Her idea of 'house hunting' was perhaps not what Jack had in mind, but Boe was already on the move again.

Jack Sandrow