Little Lion Man [Tyrin]

[Caulder Dune]

"Uh!" Tyrin gasped- a noticeably hammed up, exasperated sound in response to the mercenary calling him, of all things, strange. A hand moved over his mouth before finding its place over his heart. His physical, biological heart, that is. In terms of metaphorical nonsense, Tyrin had no heart. Possibly just a chunk of obsidian encased in ice. Regardless, Tyrin reacted dramatically to Ivy's statement, as he was want to do in his frequent boredom.

"You wound me with such words, you really do. Hits me right where I live." Tyrin sighed, lowering himself onto the nearby sofa. Come to think of it, Tyrin didn't recall him or anyone else sitting in here since he moved in. This furniture was essentially pristine.

He really needed to meet some neighbors or something.

Despite Tyrin's visible reaction, he couldn't hold it against her for thinking him a strange sort of Sith. When he had been a Sith, Tyrin had a tendency to behave fairly... Un-Sith like. He hadn't even taken a Darth name during his tenure as Emperor, or even sought out a seasoned Sith Master to give him one. At the time, Tyrin had concerned it gauche. Inappropriate. But that was what Sith were supposed to be all about- inappropriate, reckless behavior. Sith were supposed to crave power for themselves, but all Tyrin had sought as Emperor was a richer, stabilized Empire. Hardly the Sith way, in the end.

"Come now. If you want a drink, you may as well stay." Tyrin eventually stated, dropping the offended act. "The bars around here charge extra to offworlders. And they wonder where our tourism industry went."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

The man's dramatic display seemed to bring some sense back to the woman. Careworn expression hardening, skin regaining color, Ivy nodded to him in response with a quiet thank you.

A short while later she found herself seated with a clean glass of very good whiskey in hand. Ivy hadn't tasted it yet, as she waited for her host to return with his own drink, but she could smell it; she knew whiskey well enough to tell the quality by aroma alone. From the kitchen another scent drifted, that of hot tea steeping in a kettle. She had to wonder what sort of tea Umbara was known form what with such little daylight. Or did they import it?

Ivy hadn't drank tea since leaving her home world. Tea was the taste of her land; bitter and warm, strong, and sharp with memory. It tasted of longing. It tasted of the distance between where she was today and where she came from. As she thought on this her eyes drew distant. Her soul entered a kind of suspended animation.

When Tyrin reentered the room her eyes flickered immediately at the movement. Hunched with her elbows resting on the plated armor covering her legs, she lifted her glass, "Cheers," and took a sip.

It was very good.

She stayed quiet, and it was a quiet that was as steeped in unspoken words as the water in his own cup was with root and spice and seed. Perhaps it was from a lack of knowing what to say, or perhaps it was out of politeness to allow him time to settle into his drink. Tea, after all, was a production, not an event.

"Do you miss it?" she said finally, words far more soft spoken now that she seemed to regain an ounce of comfort, "being Emperor, I mean."

 

[Caulder Dune]

Tyrin raised his little cup and saucer in reciprocation to her cheers, before nursing his drink in the silence that followed. He seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts for a few moments before Ivy posed a question, prompting his eyes to flicker over to her. Oh, he should have seen that one coming. How could anyone in the Galaxy sit in a room with a deposed Sith Emperor and not immediately ask him if he missed being Emperor? Tyrin probably would have refrained out of his own incessant paranoia and restrictive idea of etiquette, but that was just him. Everything was calm enough now, relaxing even. Tea and whiskey had those kinds of effects on people.

"Not in the slightest." Tyrin answered, probably too quickly. "You would think being the head honcho means no one breathing down your neck. It really, truly doesn't. When you're an employee, you only have to worry about your supervisor. When you're the supervisor, you've got to worry about every employee in the building. Now give all of those employees laser swords, magic powers, and a bad attitude. You've got yourself a perpetual nightmare."

"Constant dilemma, honestly. Sith are supposed to be all about consolidation of power; oppressing those under you to secure your seat. I don't care to oppress everyone or control their actions to a letter. It's against my philosophy. If giving citizens the right to freedom of assembly, speech, and enterprise is inherently threatening to your power, you're living in a sand castle and probably aren't fit to rule anyway. But that's weakness, as far as they're concerned. Total lack of vision."

Tyrin paused to take a sip of his tea. Possibly the most frustrated sip of tea anyone had ever taken. He forced himself to lower his temper before it got any worse. "Oh, but listen to me prattle on. I don't mean to fill your ears with this kind of talk."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"No love lost there, I see," was her remark when he finished.

Ivy stared at the glass in her hands, the cogs in her mind turning slowly, laboring through the amount of astonishment she felt at his reply. This man wasn't a Sith - not by any definition she knew. So how did he ever manage to ascend the throne in the first place? She wanted to ask but knew better of it. Clearly it wasn't his niche anyway.

"Sounds like your philosophy would be better suited elsewhere. It's not unlike where I come from. Mine is a warrior people, but we live and die with honor - its in our blood. But, I suppose, our Empire is built upon family and tradition. All our cards fit together. A Sith Empire...it's like putting together a puzzle with pieces that will never fit. I don't envy that."

 

[Caulder Dune]

"I did love my Empire, honestly. Thought I could change it for the better." Tyrin admitted, "But no one else did. The rest of them only saw it as a tool to exploit and nothing more."

Sith weren't selfless, and Tyrin really wasn't either despite the rhetoric he spouted implying otherwise. Not to the extent he would imply, anyway. True, he did have a legitimate interest in seeing the Empire grow, prosper, and maybe make the transition from a psychopathic, rogue nation to a legitimate galactic state. There was also the fact that he would be immortalized if he managed to do as much. That had driven him almost as much as the prospect of a functioning Empire.

Pity that didn't happen, and Lussk probably had him purged from the records. Ungrateful little troglodyte.

"No one likes Sith. Not even other Sith. It's quite bothersome for the more sociable of our ranks... Which probably comprised of just me. What Empire are you hailing from anyway, stranger?"

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"Panatha," she replied pleasantly. The word itself was a key to unlocking all sorts of memories and emotions for her, good and bad. Over the years spent in darkness and chaos and plague she'd learned to think of it fondly because it didn't do to dwell on the horrors, they served her little in these times and her homeworld was one of the very few positive things she could remember.

"Beautiful planet," Ivy remarked, lifting her glass to indulge in a sip, "at least, it was when I left it. Haven't been back since I was a kid."

She wasn't going to admit how long that had been, but it was likely far longer than he would ever wager.

 

[Caulder Dune]

Panatha. Tyrin had never been to such a place, but he did know of its existence. It was the homeworld of the Epicanthix. Tyrin had only known one Epicanthix in his life prior to now, and that had been Zambrano. A reasonable enough Sith Lord, primarily because Tyrin willfully ignored whatever sins of the flesh took place in his gloomy pleasure citadel on Thule. Tyrin didn't trust any creature that couldn't be mentally fractured with the Force. But this was tea time with a courier, not galactic politicking. Trust was not an issue.

"I see. Been wandering for a while, I take it?" Tyrin asked, opting not to hang on her implied racial heritage. There were more interesting things to talk about.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Ivy did not answer immediately. In her short time spent back in the waking realm of the galaxy, these sorts of conversations were typically the ones she steered clear of. The implications of having come from the Gulag era were certainly frightening, and for a time she worried that there had been a chance she might've carried the virus with her. Naturally this wasn't the case which came as a great relief.

Still, that didn't mean people wouldn't fret about it all the same. Or ask questions.

Ivy really wasn't a fan of questions, especially ones relating to that subject.

"Mm," was her reply. On her face there was what appeared to be an attempt at a grim smile, but she accomplished only a grimace, "you could say that."

Silence reined for a stretch of time before she spoke again, "I suppose eventually I should go back."

 

[Caulder Dune]

"I wouldn't rush it." Tyrin replied. "I didn't come back here until I was sure I'd reached the end of my rope."

Tyrin chuckled at the thought. He had been the Sith Emperor for a few years. What could he possibly do after that to top such a thing? Nothing meaningful to the rest of the Galaxy, that was sure. No, he simply needed to accept that there wouldn't be any topping his previous line of work. He'd simply set the bar far too high. Now there was nothing left to do but sit in this dreary little home on Umbara and contemplate his existence... Maybe drop off that Telos holocron with that one apprentice he'd never had time for. Yeah, that would make up for it.

"It's not as if the place is going anywhere. Go home too soon, and you'll get that pang to stay just a little while longer. Next thing you know, you're stuck."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

A sobering smile ghosted the woman's face, ironic considering the drink in her hands. She looked to the man with a faint hint of warmth, of humor, "Are you at the end of your rope?" It wasn't a question meant to be answered, merely to be pondered on.

"Hm, I am in no great hurry to go back. It will have changed so much by now, I don't think I could stand to see it. Not now, anyway." Too much heartbreak was good for no one and she was already scrambling to pick up the pieces.

"There are too many things that need to be done before I can go back," Ivy snorted and took another drink, a larger one this time, "I'll be lucky to finish the list before I'm dead."

 

[Caulder Dune]

"If not, I'm getting fairly close to it." Tyrin replied, sipping his drink again. "Career-wise, at any rate. I'm sure there are plenty who'd like to employ a former Emperor for whatever ilk they desire. More a question of whether that's what I'm looking for out of life at this point."

Simply put, it wasn't. Umbara was peaceful. On the surface, at the very least, but that was as far as Tyrin was willing to embroil himself for the time being. Superficial peace and quiet was better than living on a lawless backwater like Tatooine. Besides, Umbara was home. He could have holed up on Raxus Secundus if he really wanted to, but Sith territory probably wasn't a very good place for him. There was no telling how many upstarts might come to try and kill him just to make a name for themselves. Even worse, they'd probably try to orbitally bombard the planet into oblivion if it meant they got to add Tyrin's name to their list of confirmed kills.

Planets in Republic space seldom had that problem.

"It's good that you have a list. Most people seem to just wander around aimlessly, bumping into things and making messes where there ought not to be any."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"Always had one," Ivy commented offhandedly, "a list, that is. Never put down have a drink with a former Sith Emperor without dying, but maybe I should add it on there just for the satisfaction of crossing it off."

The woman finished her drink, carefully setting the glass down on a coaster like any polite guest would. Hazel eyes stared at it for a moment of silent introspection. What an odd turn of events this had been.

"Thank you for the drink," Ivy reached beneath her traveling cloak and fumbled with a pouch before producing a small datachip, "if you ever have need for a Merc," she said, offering it to him, "I don't kill things but I'm pretty good at everything else." Hell, if all he wanted was a drinking partner she'd never turned down whiskey of that quality.

 

[Caulder Dune]

Tyrin gave a chortle. "Best encode it, lest that list fall into the wrong hands."

Suffice to say, the former Sith Emperor didn't want anyone scribbling down things that identified him as the Sith Emperor... Or even indicated that there was a former Sith Emperor hanging around that mercenaries-gone-courier could potentially have drinks with. She abruptly stood, evidently getting ready to leave. Just as well, having been cooped up in his house for as long, there were only so much small-talk Tyrin could keep up before running out of things to say.

She offered him her Star Wars-equivalent to a business card, which he gladly accepted. Even now, in the twilight of his generally uninteresting existence, Tyrin was still getting women's numbers. With such finesse that he didn't even have to ask, no less. Apparently she didn't kill things. It was the stranger sort of mercenary who made that call in regards to their conduct, but to each their own. If she weren't on her way out, he might've asked about it.

Tyrin accepted the card, pocketing it with a smile.

"You'll be the first I call if anything comes up, I assure you."

Well, her and the Sun Guard. If she wasn't going to kill folks, he was going to need rogue Echani and ex-Death Watch to do so for him. But that was besides the point.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

The woman offered the man a mild chuckle and a shake of her head. She didn't believe she would be the first he'd call, but perhaps one day he might be in a pickle and he might recall that she was a respectable sort. One that didn't like to cause undue trouble where it wasn't warranted. One that didn't make messes where there aught not be any.

"I'll see myself out. It's been..." she blinked, thought on this a moment, and looked back to the man with a nod, "interesting. Until we meet again."

Without any further ado, the Merc tugged her cloak around her armored shoulders and quietly exited the household through the same doorway she entered. Ivy stepped out into the chill of the dark, everlasting night, and sniffed as she remembered her distaste.

Time to leave Umbara behind, hopefully for the last time.

@[member="Gerion Ardik"]