Private An Order Worth Studying

[Seren Gwyn]

Seren did not answer immediately.

She waited until the food arrived, until the noise of the marketplace softened into something ambient rather than intrusive, until the question had time to settle instead of hanging between them like a challenge. Only then did she lift her gaze from the table to Kallous, her expression composed, thoughtful, and unguarded in a way she rarely allowed.

"Because independence is powerful," she began calmly, her voice even and unhurried, "but it is also isolating, and isolation is where knowledge quietly dies."

She folded her hands together, not defensive, simply deliberate.

"After I left the Jedi, I practiced alone for a long time. I studied alone. I experimented alone. There was freedom in it, yes, but there were limits as well. No protected archives. No shared discoveries. No margin for error. Every failure risked madness or death, and every success vanished with me if I fell. For someone intent on understanding the Force itself rather than merely using it, that was not sustainable."

Her eyes drifted briefly toward the flow of people beyond the table before returning to him.

"The Sith, at least certain factions of them, do not fear dangerous knowledge. They catalogue it. They preserve failures instead of burying them. Where the Jedi teach restraint through denial, the Sith teach restraint through control. That distinction matters to me."

She paused, letting the weight of that settle.

"I never wanted chaos, and I never wanted conquest. I wanted access. Ritual theory. Shadow metaphysics. Historical records that were not rewritten to make them palatable. When I asked questions, they did not recoil. They demanded results."

There was no pride in her tone, only clarity.

"The Dark Court suited me because power there is exercised quietly. Influence matters more than spectacle. Scholars, observers, and manipulators are valued rather than paraded. I did not surrender myself to them, and I have no interest in being defined by their titles. I integrated with their structure when it was useful, and remained myself within it."

Her gaze sharpened slightly, not threatening, but honest.

"Independence also paints a target. An unaffiliated practitioner working in the shadows attracts Jedi hunters, rival Sith, and opportunists looking for artifacts or leverage. Affiliation offers deterrence. On Malachor, under the Dark Court's shadow, I am left alone to work. Alone, I would never be left alone."

She exhaled softly, almost wry.

"I do not believe the Force is moral," Seren continued. "I believe it is revealing. It exposes what already exists, and it reshapes those who engage with it deeply enough. The Sith accept that knowledge has a cost, that power changes the wielder, and that survival belongs to the prepared."

Her eyes met his steadily now.

"I did not want to stand outside the Force and observe it from a safe distance. I wanted to enter it fully and survive."

After a moment, she allowed herself the faintest hint of warmth.

"Independence preserves freedom," she said quietly. "The Sith preserve continuity. And I am thinking in terms of decades, not moments."

She lifted her cup, signaling the end of the explanation without closing the conversation.

"That is why," Seren finished simply.

Kallous

 

[Kallous]

Kallous hadn't intended for this question to be a challenge. He wasn't questioning her decision in the sense that he wanted to make a point. Rather he was simply asking for clarification, that he might understand her better. She seemed to have a power of insight into people that he did not possess. He had tremendous insight into himself, and his understanding of the force was as deep as it was unique. But he was not and had never been very gifted with understanding people, so he was relegated to more direct methods of understanding someone. So he asked questions.

She considered her words for some time before finally giving him her answer, waiting long enough for their food to arrive. And the answer she gave made a lot of sense. He was by no means judging her either, he had been a sith himself once ago. And what she described however, this "Dark Court", didn't seem like a sect of Sith that were as... bloodthirsty as the rest. In fact he couldn't recall ever hearing about this particular group, though he wasn't sure of its importance, if they were more scholarly than the rest then it made sense, those tended not to receive any recognition for anything.

He listened, and learned, and nodded. "It was a tough position to be in. I can hardly blame you for your choice. I likely would have done the same in your place."

Though what she said next was particularly interesting to him. "The force is not moral, it is revealing." That caught his attention immediately, as it was very much the same opinion he had. Though perhaps lacking in nuance, it was a very short statement after all, it would seem her insight and his on the nature of the force were incredibly similar. Something he'd be inclined to discuss with her in more comfortable acommodations. For now though, he would settle for more generic discussions.

"Stand in it and survive you say?" Kallous asked curiously with an amused expression. Then proceeded to ask with more curiosity than before. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

Seren Gwyn

 

[Seren Gwyn]

Seren did not answer him immediately. She let the question settle between them, allowed the clink of utensils and the low murmur of the marketplace to pass through the space before she chose her words. When she did speak, it was not defensive, nor did it carry the tone of justification. It was explanatory, deliberate, as though she were laying a concept out on a table and inviting him to examine it from every angle.

"Most people treat the Force as something you negotiate with," she began calmly. "They bargain with it through doctrine, or attempt to fence it in with morality, as if it were a wild animal that can be trained so long as you never meet its eyes."

She paused long enough to take a sip of her drink, her gaze briefly unfocused, not on him, but somewhere inward where memory and theory overlapped.

"When I say stand in it and survive," Seren continued, "I mean removing the illusion that the Force will meet you halfway. It does not adapt itself to you. It reveals what you already are when you stop pretending you are something else."

Her eyes returned to him then, steady and unflinching.

"The Jedi soften that revelation by narrowing the lens. The Sith often sharpen it by embracing excess. Both are reactions to the same truth. I chose neither response."

She folded her hands loosely on the table, posture composed but intent.

"Standing in it means allowing the Force to apply pressure without flinching," she said. "Letting it expose fear, ambition, cruelty, compassion, restraint, curiosity, all of it, without immediately trying to excise the parts you were taught to be ashamed of."

A faint, thoughtful curve touched her mouth, not quite a smile.

"Survival is not guaranteed," Seren added. "Many break. Some go mad. Others mistake what they uncover for destiny and drown in it. To survive is to remain intact while knowing exactly what you are capable of, and choosing, consciously, what you will become anyway."

She leaned back slightly, giving the idea room to breathe.

"That is why independence alone was insufficient," she said. "Because insight without continuity dies with the person who holds it. The Sith preserve what the Force reveals, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it costs something to record."

Her gaze softened just a fraction, curiosity mirroring his.

"You asked why anyone," Seren concluded. "Because I was not interested in standing apart from the Force and theorizing about it. I wanted to enter it fully, without myth, without apology, and remain myself afterward."

She let the silence return, watching him not for agreement, but to see what the answer had stirred.

Kallous

 

[Kallous]

She would see that her answer seemed to elicit no particular response from him at first. He allowed himself to process what she had told him, and immediately parallels were drawn. His mind was working, but mostly he was simply allowing her words to compute and be filed away. It wasn't because they were difficult for him to understand, but rather because what she described was nearly identical to what he had learned when he had taken his trip into the Maw. How he had plunged into the vast ocean that was the Force, and learned the truth of what it was. Neither benevolent nor malevolent, not even entirely conscious. Rather it simply was, a vast sea of power that was the universe. And whether the force was light or dark was dependent entirely on the user. There was no excuses to be found in the truth of the Force, only choice.

And this understanding she seemed to have of this made him oddly happy, happy to know that he wasn't the only one to reach this conclusion.

Whether she'd had a similar experience as him, or simply learned through observation and logic, he didn't know. But the important fact was that she had arrived at the same conclusion he had. And he honestly felt vindicated.

Over the course of the day he'd abandoned his original skepticism of this woman, and now he had come to deeply respect her. He liked the way she thought, and the way she discussed ideals was likewise something he appreciated. He could definitely get along with her quite well, he thought.

"That is not an easy journey to undertake." He stated, speaking from experience rather than speculation. He knew, personally knew, how hard it was to fully acknowledge all of oneself in the Force. One had to face what they were, what they made themselves into, and all excuses were stripped away. All that was left was the choices that were made and what they had become. And that was something that few had the maturity to survive. "Though you seem to have weathered that storm readily."

Seren Gwyn

 

[Seren Gwyn]

Seren listened without interrupting, giving him the same courtesy he had given her. When he spoke, when she heard recognition rather than rebuttal in his voice, something in her posture eased almost imperceptibly. Not relief, exactly, but alignment. The rare confirmation that two people had arrived at the same truth from different directions.

She did not rush to answer him.

When she finally did, her voice was quiet, steady, and stripped of any need to impress.

"I would not call it readiness," she said after a moment. "Only refusal to turn away."

Her gaze lowered briefly to the table between them, not avoiding him, but grounding the thought.

"The storm does not announce itself," Seren continued. "It does not test you once and then pass. It returns in different forms, at different stages, each time stripping something you thought was essential and asking whether you can still stand without it."

She looked back up at him then, meeting his eyes fully.

"What you describe," she said, "that understanding that the Force is neither benevolent nor cruel, only vast, only present, that realization does not come without cost. Anyone who claims otherwise is still lying to themselves."

There was no accusation in it. Only certainty.

"I did not survive it because I was stronger than others," Seren added. "I survived because I accepted that there would be no absolution waiting on the other side. No authority to blame. No doctrine to hide behind."

Her fingers laced together loosely, thoughtful rather than guarded.

"Once you understand that the Force reflects the wielder," she said, "you lose the comfort of calling your actions inevitable. Every outcome becomes a mirror. Some people cannot bear that."

A faint pause followed, then a softer note entered her voice.

"You have been there," Seren said simply. "I can hear it in the way you speak about it. Not as revelation, but as something endured."

She inclined her head slightly, a gesture of respect rather than concession.

"That is why you did not argue," she continued. "And why skepticism gave way to curiosity. You recognized the terrain."

For the first time, something like warmth touched her expression, restrained but genuine.

"There are very few people who walk into that ocean and return without trying to reshape it into something comforting," Seren finished. "Fewer still who accept that it reshapes them instead."

She let the silence settle again, not as distance, but as shared understanding.

"It is…good," she added quietly, "to know I was not alone in reaching that shore."

Kallous

 

[Kallous]

"My journey to reaching this was a long one. And it took me nigh on a decade to learn it." He said to her, "When I was a young boy I was raised as Sith, and I was taken as an apprentice when I was of the right age. I was taught as all Sith are taught, that strength is all that matters. One of the things my old Master told me constantly was that there was no good and evil, there was only power. There are no guilty nor innocent, only those who have the power and those who are powerless. That was all that mattered. And for the most part I believed it. Looking back I know that I was never totally convinced of this, and that was what pulled me away from the Sith. The part of me that refused to die pulled me from that life, and over the next several years that war with myself continued. Until finally my new Master, Diarch Rellik, asked me to scout the Maw for a safe route to the world Mortis. The months I spent in that veritable Force Maelstrom was what brought me to this revelation. Months of total solitude with nothing but the Force to speak to me. In the end I learned that what the Force was saying wasn't the will of some nameless deity in its furthes reaches, but rather it was simply telling me the truth. So I took the plunge, and I remained in that meditation for perhaps a week, give or take a few days. I don't know by what manner you came to these same conclusions, but in the end what I learned is that all it takes is for one to listen, truly listen, without predisposition, without bias and without any sort of input."

He chuckled to himself as he took a bite of his food. "I learned later that this precise experience was once commonplace and even actively sought after by the Je'Daii, the first of the Jedi. Before they became a political entity, before they became a... cult, if you will, they were scholars. Monks who studied the Force in as pure a sense as one could. They didn't know anything, all they knew is that they had much to learn, and they wanted to learn badly enough that they taught themselves to listen to the Force, truly listen. They even named the practice."

He sat back as he mulled his thought over. He honestly wasn't altogether sure where he was going with this, this was the most he'd spoken about anything to her all at once. He supposed it was because she had shared some of her insights with him, and he wanted to actually contribute to the conversation now. Rather than just ask questions and get answers.

"My point being, we aren't the first to reach this conclusion. We are simply the first in a long while to rediscover the truth that the ancients already knew very well." He concluded.

Seren Gwyn

 

[Seren Gwyn]

Seren listened without interrupting, seated across from him, one hand resting lightly against the edge of the table while the other worked slowly through her meal. She did not rush. She rarely did when someone was speaking from a place that had cost them something. His words were not theory, and she treated them with the respect of lived experience.

When he finished, she took a moment longer than most would have, eyes lowered, considering not just what he said, but how he had arrived there. Only then did she answer.

"I didn't come to it through isolation," Seren said quietly. "Or revelation offered cleanly."

She shifted in her chair, setting her utensil aside, not because she was finished eating, but because the thought required both hands free.

"The shadows were not something I sought because they were powerful or forbidden," she continued. "They found me because I noticed what most people avoided. The places where the Force thins. Where it folds inward. Where presence becomes absence, and absence begins to behave like something aware."

Her gaze lifted to him briefly, then drifted back to the marketplace beyond them.

"Most teachings focus on imposition," Seren said. "On directing will, shaping outcomes, forcing clarity. The shadows don't respond to that. They respond to attention. To restrain. To know when not to act."

She resumed eating for a moment, grounding herself in the mundane before continuing.

"I learned by skirting death often enough that it stopped being abstract," she said evenly. "Not in grand moments. In small ones. Lingering too long. Misjudging a boundary. Listening too late. Every mistake was answered immediately, and without malice."

There was no drama in her voice. No pride. Just a fact.

"That was when it became clear to me," Seren went on. "The Force was not testing me. It was not rewarding me. It was showing consequences without commentary. If I survived, it was because I adapted. If I failed, it was because I misunderstood."

She paused, then added more quietly,

"Power didn't make me right. Survival didn't make me justified. Awareness was the only thing that mattered."

When she looked back at him this time, there was no certainty in her expression. Only recognition.

"So when you say the Force reveals rather than judges," Seren said, "I recognize the shape of that truth. The shadows stripped away every story I told myself about intent and morality. What remained was choice, and the cost of making it."

She hesitated, just slightly, before continuing.

"I suspect the ancients understood something similar," Seren said, more carefully now. "Not because they had answers, but because they were willing to remain present with what the Force showed them, even when it offered no comfort. Somewhere along the way, that patience seems to have been… misplaced."

A faint, thoughtful curve touched her mouth.

"You listened by removing everything but the Force," she concluded. "I listened by learning when to stop speaking over it with my own will. Different paths. Close conclusions."

She returned to her meal then, content to let the shared understanding sit between them without needing to be more precisely named.

Kallous

 

[Kallous]

The next few minutes would pass in comfortable silence. The two of them eating their meals in peace that Kallous hadn’t been able to find when with other people prior to now. Now he was quite pleased with the company he found himself with. Every now and then they would discuss a few small topics, but for the most part their conversations were short and unimportant.

The sky was growing dark and the day was coming to an end. But business continued to boom around them. The people continued their lives and the world kept turning. Kallous couldn’t help but quietly appreciate the strange peace of it all. It wasn’t quiet, it wasn’t without conflict or spiked emotion. But it was ultimately peaceful. And he couldn’t help but watch it with a sense of satisfaction. He wasn’t a part of that world, but he nevertheless was happy to see it.

When finally the meal was over Kallous stood from his seat, placed the payment on the table and came over to Seren to offer a hand and help her stand. “Well then, Miss Gwynn, the day is coming to a close. Is there anything else you would like to see? Or should I escort you back so you can rest?”

Seren Gwyn

 

[Seren Gwyn]

Seren allowed the last of the evening to settle around them before she rose, accepting his offered hand with an easy grace. The city's lights had deepened into something softer now, lantern glow and distant traffic replacing the bright energy of afternoon trade.

"I think I have seen enough for one day," she replied gently, a small smile touching her lips. "You have been a thorough guide."

She adjusted the fall of her sleeve before looking up at him, the quiet contentment of the evening still lingering in her expression.

"If you would be so kind as to escort me back, I would appreciate it."

As they began to walk, her pace naturally matched his, unhurried. The streets had shifted into their evening rhythm, and she took in the subtle change with thoughtful interest.

"Thank you for the tour," she added after a moment, sincerity clear in her tone. "It is different seeing a place through the eyes of someone who cares for it."

When they reached the corridor leading toward her room, she paused, turning to face him fully.

"I look forward to seeing more of it," she said softly. "And to spending more time in your company, if you find that agreeable."

A faint, warm smile followed.

Kallous

 

[Kallous]

"Of course." He told her, agreeing to escort her back as if it were unthinkable that he wouldn't.

She accepted his hand and stood up to walk back with him. They got back into the transport to bring her back to her lodging, and they began their trip back. She thanked him for showing her the planet, and he smiled at her when she said this. "And thank you for coming. I honestly didn't expect this to be as pleasant as it was. I confess that when I heard I was to show a Sith around I expected a spy or an assassin. I'm glad to see I was wrong. You have been exquisite company, and it was a true pleasure to show you my home."

He escorted her back and before long the noisy business of the city outside was muffled and silenced by the walls of the hostel she'd been given to sleep in. It was only a few other steps away from her door when she stopped and turned to look at him and make a proposition. One that made his smile widen a little. He took her hand in his, "My lady," And planted a kiss on the back of her hand, "It would be a pleasure to see you again. And a privilege to spend another day in your company."

Seren Gwyn