Private New Crossroads | Tithe and Lowe

[Madelyn Lowe]

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Kway Teow, during the battle for Felucia
With: Aerarii Tithe

Madelyn rattled the hatch to the auxiliary control room, cursing in frustration as it failed to swing open. Tithe’s voice filtered down, muffled, and she heard the blood rushing through her ears, her heart thumping hard all the way up in her throat. She shook the hatch again, but paused to listen.

"Madelyn, come with me,"

Laughable. After all he’d done to the Sith. After she had put her faith in him, after she had pinned the hopes of her home and empire on him. After he had left.

"The Sith are crumbling around us.."

Was he not right? This, Felucia, fighting out here in this miserable planet, what was it for? They had been on the backfoot since Borosk, an age ago. Even there, they had suffered in their victory there. Slowly, surely, the enemy took pieces of the titan, dug into the cracks in the Empire’s armour, and made them bleed.

She was so sick of the wounding.

"If you covet a new life, a new future, I can help."

Was it possible to leave it all behind? She recalled her conversation with Tyrell Paxxus , during the fall of Bastion. She had told him then that she had seen an empire collapse before, and that she had been forced to watch it all come down around her. Surely she couldn’t allow that to happen again. Maybe, just maybe, she could take a chance and run, find a life for herself in the Alliance.

She could move in secret, get a job somewhere in the bureaucracy, and live the quiet life. Tithe could arrange the paperwork. There would be people crying vengeance, sure enough, but she's dealt with that before. Perhaps then, it was possible. All she had to do was say-

“No.” She’d lose everything. Her status, her wealth, her power to make change, her freedom and discretion. She had the Sith-Imperials under her thumb, she was in charge. Madelyn could not simply throw that away. The beast inside her gut, forgotten for years, writhed and thrashed. She would not yield her control. She would not yield that for which she had worked so hard.

Madelyn fumbled in her pants pocket, producing a silver, unmarked wristband she slipped on with a smooth and practiced motion and swept it over the hatch, which opened with a placated beep. Madelyn grunted and shoved it, pushing it open with a crash. She pulled herself up and out, panting and scrabbling gracelessly to her feet, levelling the chunky blaster pistol at the stupid, pathetic traitor.
“You have nothing to give me.” Madelyn lied, her words dripping with venom. “What could I possibly want from you?” She stalked towards him, her blood fizzing in her veins. The worm was right in front of her now. No longer was he content with simply abandoning what she had built, he had decided to actively dismantle it.

“Step away from the controls.” She said quietly.

 

[Aerarii Tithe]

LOCATION: Sith-Imperial Relay Station, Kway Teow, Felucia
OBJECTIVE: Hostile Merger
INTERACTING: Madelyn Lowe

Tithe stepped back from the console and raised his hands in a sign of surrender as the Grand Vizier came through the blastdoor with her weapon raised. Given the untold hours the two had spent meeting and discussing the inner workings of the Sith Empire, Madelyn uncharacteristically did not seem interested in talking. Had he gotten to her with his offer of a new life, or was she intent on taking vengeance for his abandonment of the Sith?

Either way, he needed to keep her talking - the progress bar on the slicing program he had injected into the comm relay’s mainframe was not yet complete. The hack would bring down the Sith-Imperial comms in the area and give the encroaching Galactic Alliance forces a major advantage. Of course, Tithe wasn’t an ideologue, and a victory on Felucia was only meaningful is he survived to see it. Not only did he need to get the job done, but he also had to get out of here in one piece.

Then again, he hadn’t gotten where he was today by being unable to close a deal.

He offered his former superior a nod of acknowledgement. “Madelyn.” He stepped back slowing, keeping his hands raised, as she advanced toward him. “Now, ah, let’s not do or say anything rash.”

He slowly began to circle around the room, looking unsuccessfully for a better position or a way out. In classic Sith-Imperial design approach, the small ancillary control room only had one way in and out, making his avenues for escapes extremely limited. All the more reason to talk his way out of this.

“You can have a new start, a fresh beginning,” he explained. “The Corporate Authorities of Denon, the Galactic Alliance, the First Order - the possibilities are endless.”

“But, what isn’t endless are the resources of the Sith. Not a single bounty hunter or assassin ever has come for me. Their reach beyond their borders is non-existence.” Before his departure he had suspected, and had subsequently all but confirmed, that the Sith Empire had enough internal strife and border conflicts to contend with without going after those who turned their backs on them.

 

[Madelyn Lowe]

Kway Teow, during the battle for Felucia
With: Aerarii Tithe

Rash? Rash? There wouldn’t be a soul amongst the Sith who would think it rash to dispatch Tithe now, to simply squeeze the trigger and eliminate the spineless man once and for all. No, instead she’d be lauded, admired. Imperial commanders would rejoice, she could make a speech, and SINN would sing her praises and wax poetic about how those who cross the Empire get their comeuppance. All it would take was a shot.

Her heart was beating hard in her throat. She adjusted her grip on her blaster, her hand slick with sweat. Eyes narrowed, she kept the weapon levelled at the man. She half-squeezed the trigger, an action that sent her stomach plummeting. It should have been so easy considering what Tithe had done, considering her anger. Yet, she could not bring herself to kill him.

“Do not move a muscle.” She said, the words spilling out between gritted teeth. “If you try to flee you’re dead.”

“You can have a new start, a fresh beginning,”

Madelyn shook her head aggressively. No more, she would not be swayed by the likes of Tithe. He was right in many ways, perhaps more right than he knew, but he was still the enemy, still a traitor.

“But, what isn’t endless are the resources of the Sith. Their reach beyond their borders is non-existent.”

Would it mean anything to punish him? If he was right about the Sith, about her and her future, did it matter if he suffered? Certainly he betrayed her trust, certainly looking up at him, her blood boiled with malice, but ultimately it would be meaningless to hurt him, to make him suffer. Madelyn squirmed again. These thoughts were… Unsafe. How had she managed to stray so far from her Imperial education? Perhaps it had been watching Prefsbelt burn around her, or the dogged fighting retreat over months from New Imperial advances. If she looked deep within, she knew she had no faith.

Still, this was all wrong. She could not walk over to the other side, could not excuse Tithe and could not abandon her place, not on Felucia. There was still work to be done. There was a process, and Madelyn needed control. The pieces were not yet arranged to her liking.

Her eyes refocused on Tithe and she stepped forward.

“The possibilities are endless.”

A slight smirk crossed her lips as she lowered the barrel of the blaster. Her eyes flickered to a device behind Tithe, anchored to the control panel and widened slightly, but she shrugged inwardly and looked back at the man, the pistol still levelled at somewhere around his sternum.

“When you leave here, I want you to understand how close you came to being killed today. Things have worked out in your favour, but had it been any other way, you would be dead.” Her voice was even, matter-of-fact. She was unblinking.

“Do not cross me again Tithe, I rather dislike it.”

She stepped back, giving the man room to breathe again, or to move if he so chose.