Connor followed, not really worried about someone pinching their speeders. They WERE in the middle of a vast plain and nobody could sneak up without detection. Pulling his scarf down as he looked up at the large mesa, always a fan of natural wonders like this, Connor placed his hand on it, turned and leant against the natural curve of it from the ground upwards.
He still couldn’t read Setzi. Regardless of her want to be a Padawan learner with the Silvers, she had been a Lord of the Sith. A Master herself in the Force and all it holds. It was impossible to really know someone completely, especially after such a dramatic transformation. Was she saying the right things he wanted to hear? Was it him being too closed off and not being rational?
”What was it like?” He repeated, looking up for a second to gather the words. ”It was isolated, cold and down-right degrading.”
He looked at her with those three words that best summed up a failed portion of his flirtation with the Dark Side. Nobody had ever asked him about this – because not many people knew. It would be a brave offering of information to Setzi, but part of him wondered that maybe it could help her in some way.
”It’s rather embarrassing actually,” he chuckled, as if chatting to an old friend over tea, ”but it was after I lost Chastity to the slavers, and then to the Sith. Couple that with everything that had been building up – seeing a former Padawan blinded by Sage Bane, and then he poisons Chast, and my wounds, and my heart being torn left right and centre, and it just…came out. The fear. The rage. You know how it is; the sort of things that can turn a person cruel.”
He could tell she was listening intently by her expression; did she know it was her sister that tipped him over?
”I won’t lie about wanting to control Light and Dark, I never will, but I know I never can fully do that. However, when everything was lost, all I had was that fantasy to hold onto and so I did. I didn’t want anyone near to me, I didn’t want to listen. I thought I knew it all. I was so self-assured. I used violence, anger and strength to cut down enemies and talk back to those who questioned me. Yes, maybe now I do but it’s all I’ve known, however it’s not fuelled from the Dark Side as that was. As I was. That was when I look back and see regardless how I felt; I was never more isolated, cold or degrading to myself and others.”
A second to think over the next part, in which he rubbed his eye gently.
”I spent more time as a Dark Jedi alone than I did before, but I felt invincible. But then it was only after Grandmaster Corvus Raaf, I’m sure you know her, when she proclaimed her love for the Sith Goddess Braith, or whatever she was, that I lost it. I mean, I always held a candle for Corvus, but Chastity took that when she came into my life, but I always cared for Corvus. When she then seemed to become someone else, I felt she had lied to me and betrayed my trust in her. Our friendship dissolved and I returned to Voss ready to do what I should have done a long time before – take my life.”
He shifted.
”Why were people hurt around me? Why were they afraid? Because I had become a monster, and that was what I finally saw. Power? Strength? No. A Dark Jedi is a label for the confused, the misguided and the deluded. I couldn’t even take my life when it came to it, but I lost a lost that day anyway. That was when I self-exiled myself and travelled the Outer Rim, and in the process probably lost more ties to the Silvers, or Sanctum, whatever they are now. That was where I was when you and your crew came to Toola. I returned to protect the people that did not deserve the brunt of my failing as both a Master and…well. Anything else.”
Connor inhaled and let out a breath, acknowledging a little longer than usual rant. He smiled again, wondering how it must sound.
”That was what it was like. I highly advise you don’t go down that path. Take it from me.” He looked at her, and saw a real Lunelle there. His heart ached a little. ”Why did you come to Voss, Setzi? What do you want? Are you doing this for Chastity, or for yourself.”
[member="Setzi Lunelle"]