Private Traitors

[Arris Windrun]

CORUSCANT // FEDERAL DISTRICT
UNDERGROUND PRISON COMPLEX
Acier Moonbound

ISB agents, navy officers, and bureau administrators in the dozens were on the chopping block today.

The Covenant had been systematically interrogating and then executing them. All under the orders of Arris Windrun. The cyborg herself leaned against a thick wall, just outside an interrogation room, where muffled, tortured cries could be heard. She lit and dragged a cigarette, staring up at the flickering light on the ceiling. It didn't flicker because of faulty wiring; it responded to the technopath's instability. All her doubts and fears.

Footsteps echoed down the hallway, growing louder on their approach to her. She turned her head and saw a familiar face.

"What took you so long?"

Her question was delivered a little too casually for their current environment. Another scream leaked into the hallway with them, then fell silent. A few moments later, the door slid open, with the interrogator and a guard dragging the corpse out and down the hallway.

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant - Federal District

Equipment:
Apprentice Attire | Lightsaber | Shoto | Cybernetic Arm

The scream cut off just as Ace turned the corner, he saw as two figures dragged a body from the interrogation room as the door slid open, the corpse leaving a thin smear across the polished floor before the guard hauled it away down the corridor. Ace stepped aside without looking directly at it, letting them pass.

His attention settled on Arris. Leaning against the wall with her cigarette lit, like this was nothing more than a break between errands. The light above her flickered and he stopped a few feet away. His brown eyes moved once to the interrogation room door as it slid shut again, muffling the sounds inside, then back to her.

"Does it matter? I'm here now." His tone was level, almost quiet against the hum of the corridor.

He glanced up briefly to the flickering ceiling light, then back to her face.

"What'd they tell you?"

Ace shifted slightly and leaned one shoulder against the opposite wall, relaxed but attentive. His prosthetic fingers flexed once at his side, the soft servo whisper barely audible. He wasn't concerned about the body, or the screams. He merely watched her, waiting for her answer.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Acier Moonbound

She suppressed a snicker. One born of stress, not amusement.

Her eyes dipped low again, staring just past her feet. She dragged her cigarette - a habit she didn't quit.

"Him?" She gestured with a nod at the corpse before it disappeared around a corner. "Something useful, I'm sure."

It was routine at this point. Prisoner in, information extracted, body out. Rinse and repeat. Sometimes they had nothing to say at all. Other times, they begged or tried to deal. Usually, they told the Covenant what they wanted, whether they knew their fate was sealed or not. For her, it wasn't about the results anymore. The things she had learned in the past month? She was just glad they were gone. The thought that any of them might find a place among them disgusted her.

The cyborg heard something in the servos. "Middle finger - slightly out of alignment. What, you've been flipping people off a lot?" She joked.

Arris pulled a long drag, then pushed herself off the wall. She walked down the hall and waved him along with her cigarette in hand.

"So, you fucking took her to Thrantin?"

There was a hint of frustration in her tone. Not just the strong language. Arris didn't usually let tone highlight her mood unless she wanted it to. As they walked, a pair of inquisitors passed by. Sith zealots who believed in this. They evaluated their own as much as they interrogated their enemies. In a way, they lived and answered to a code more than any of the Triumvirs. Evident enough in how hesitant their deference towards Arris was as they crossed paths.

She tossed one a glance over her shoulder. Almost tempted to chew her out. Instead, she smoked what was left of her vice until it turned to ash between her fingertips.

"C'mon, I think there's someone you'll wanna meet."

They stopped at a door. It led into an isolated unit, reserved for special prisoners. The door opened, and trapped inside a ray shield was a Dark Jedi. One from the former Emperor's vaunted Elite.

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant - Federal District

Equipment:
Apprentice Attire | Lightsaber | Shoto | Cybernetic Arm

Ace turned slightly, glancing back down the corridor where the body had disappeared around the corner.

"Hmm."

For the past weeks he'd barely been anywhere near the Covenant's clean up operations anyway. His time had been consumed elsewhere. The duel with Remowa. The slow process of constructing the shoto. Endless hours learning Jar'Kai. Training Kirie. Navigating the careful balance of power and suspicion within the Covenant's ranks. The interrogations had become someone else's routine.

His attention shifted when Arris mentioned the misalignment in his servos. Ace lowered his gaze, lifting his left hand slightly. Beneath the glove the metal fingers moved as he flexed them, the joints responding with a faint mechanical whisper.

"Been behind on maintenance."

He lowered the hand again just as Arris pushed off the wall and started down the corridor. Ace fell in beside her, then she mentioned Thrantin. His dark eyes settled on her for a moment, studying the tension beneath her voice. The irritation wasn't subtle. Interesting.

As they walked, a pair of Inquisitors passed them in the hallway. Their hesitant deference toward Arris didn't go unnoticed. Ace's gaze lingered on them for half a second before returning to her.

"You wanted me to show her how to survive." His tone remained even. "What, you thought I'd go easy?"

They continued down the corridor until Arris stopped at the secured door. Ace raised an eyebrow slightly when she said there was someone he'd want to meet. Inside the ray shield stood a former member of the Emperor's Elite.

For a brief instant the hallway seemed to fall away. Memory surged forward: Rattatak. Remowa pressing him to the edge of defeat before Lysander intervened. Then, the catalyst to it all, Sibylla's scarred face on Naboo.

By the time the moment passed, his expression had settled back into something controlled, he cast Arris a sidelong glance.

"An Elite?"

His words came quiet, but the anger beneath them wasn't difficult to hear.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Acier Moonbound

"No, Just--"

There wasn't any reason for him to go easy. He hadn't just taken her orders; he saw the other side of where she wanted Kirie to go, and took the most effective route of getting her there. Arris realized that. Her trouble was accepting the skirmish between rationality and personal fear.

Arris shook her head. The Dark Side Elite altered the balance. He paced within the limited confines, an idle sway one way, then the other. Lazy, in contrast to the hateful gaze cast upon them, eyes yellow with the Dark Side's corruption. A near-human of unknown provenance, clad only in the robes he'd wear beneath armor now locked up in a chest near the back.

"Yeah. An Elite." She nodded at Ace, then glanced back at their prisoner.

Reaching through the Force, Arris activated the floor beneath him, creating a field of electricity strong enough to kill a normal person. She sustained it for a few seconds and only deactivated the ray shield as he fell. No sense in killing him that way.

He landed on one hand and knee, worn from a week's worth of pain and torture. What defiance he had was a shell. At this point, the Force was all that kept him alive.

Arris turned to the monitor and brought up his record. He was a killer. Jedi, soldiers. Civilians. This Elite was a butcher with a title, committed to the Dark Side for no purpose other than to have power over others.

She looked at Ace.

"You were right - about everything. We should be tearing down old institutions. Destroying those who deserve it."

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant - Federal District

Equipment:
Apprentice Attire | Lightsaber | Shoto | Cybernetic Arm

Ace caught the beginning of what Arris was going to say. Then the words stalled before they could finish. His eyes didn't move from the Dark Side Elite pacing inside the ray shield, but the moment lodged itself in his mind all the same. Another piece of a puzzle that had been forming for weeks now. Arris. Kirie. Whatever sat between them that neither of them had quite said out loud yet.

Ace's gaze never left the prisoner. If looks could kill, the ray shield wouldn't have mattered. He watched without blinking as Arris reached through the Force and activated the floor beneath him. Electricity surged up through the man's body, the Elite collapsed hard when the current finally cut off, catching himself on one hand and knee.

There was a flicker of satisfaction in the light of his eyes. The ray shield dropped and Arris moved to the terminal, pulling up the prisoner's record. Ace stepped closer, dark eyes scanning the scrolling list of charges and reports.

Jedi. Soldiers. Then one word... Civilian. His fists tightened. The anger rose fast and for a moment the temptation surged through him, a simple twist of the Force and the man's neck would snap before he ever got back to his feet. His gaze snapped back toward the prisoner on the floor.

Then Arris spoke again. What she'd said was enough to break his focus, he turned fully toward her.

"What?"

He studied her for a moment, weighing it. Was this truth... or bait. If he leaned into it… did she try to put another slug through him like last time?

"What happened?" The question was direct.

His eyes flicked back to the record on the screen, the long list of bodies attached to the man kneeling behind them. Another Imperial butcher pulled out of the wreckage of the old order. Maybe that was it. Weeks of interrogations. Endless bodies dragged out of rooms just like the one they'd passed.

And underneath it all… Coruscant. The purge order she'd sent and the guilt that had never really left her. Ace's eyes drifted once more toward the prisoner.

"I remember you shooting me the last time I said we should do something about it."

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Acier Moonbound

He asked her what had happened. Arris paused.

This was no longer about having fun, even if Mercy found fun in the reward. This was terror pure and simple, and if they - The Covenant - were 'us' then the whole galaxy was 'them.' It defeated the scale at which Arris could view everything through the lens of gangland. A street rat's logic, rationale, and worldview no longer prospected a future worth living in.

Then she answered. "You had the right instinct. You just read it all wrong. It's not about restraint... Not, how did you put it? Something about tempering the worst excesses."

Arris drew her gun in one hand. Barrel pointed at the man on the floor. Her cybernetic eyes, however, were fixed solely on Ace's.

"That ain't it - what we need is to be pointed in the right direction."

She nodded at her gun, enough room for a second hand.

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant - Federal District

Equipment:
Apprentice Attire | Lightsaber | Shoto | Cybernetic Arm

Ace simply listened as she spoke, unmoving. The shift in her reasoning, the way she dismantled the idea of restraint and replaced it with direction. The galaxy was already burning, the question wasn't how to smother the flames, but where they should spread.

For a moment, he said nothing, his dark eyes stayed locked with hers. Then the Elite made a sound behind them. A weak breath and a shift of weight as the man tried to push himself upright again.

Ace held Arris's gaze and the Force tightened around the prisoner's throat. A quiet crack echoed through the chamber as the man's neck twisted sharply to the side. The body collapsed back to the floor in a loose heap, whatever life the torture had left in him snuffed out in an instant.

"And if Mercy doesn't agree?"

His question was calm, arithmetic.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Acier Moonbound

She looked down at her gun, then the body, then back to Ace.

Hesitantly, Arris reholstered it. "Fuck her if she doesn't agree." There was a bitterness to it.

"Our power exists. Sith exist. Sith will continue to exist. The Dark Side, whatever the fuck it really is, is not something that goes until we all do."

She really wasn't a philosopher, but she's picked up on a thing or two.

Arris gestured widely. "It can fall into the hands of lunatic nihilists, or cruel-for-the-sake-of-cruelty Dark Lords. Or an emotionally unstable princess chasing power for the sake of worship.

"Or..." She was calmer now and took a step closer. "Or we can guide it. Against the tyrants and the butchers."

She thought of Empires and Republics. "They run this galaxy like it's a fishbowl. Gaslighting us into believing we've got limited space, and that our only choice is to fight over flakes. It's so easy to be angry and to justify it all as hopeless, necessary, or unavoidable. But it's all bantha shit."

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant - Federal District

Equipment:
Apprentice Attire | Lightsaber | Shoto | Cybernetic Arm

Ace watched her while she spoke. Arris talked about tyrants. About the fishbowl. About the way the galaxy kept pretending there were only two choices while the same people stayed in power no matter which banner was flying overhead.

The worst part about all this? None of what she said sounded even remotely crazy. Ace had seen the same thing from the inside. Republics. Alliances. Syndicates. Empires. Sith. Every one of them convinced they were the ones who deserved to shape the galaxy.

Ace had come here to destroy them, that had been the plan for months now. Get close, learn how the machine worked, break it when the time came. But the longer he lived inside it, the more complicated the equation became, because the machine worked. The Covenant didn't debate policy. They didn't hold votes. They didn't hesitate. They burned problems out of existence.

Worlds. Governments. Armies. yrants. The thought crept in quietly... if that kind of fire was going to exist in the galaxy anyway… what mattered more Putting it out, or deciding where it burned.

Ace didn't like the direction that logic went, but he understood it. His eyes flicked toward the doorway, toward the galaxy beyond this world. Toward other worlds full of people who had nothing to do with any of this. Toward people who would be caught in the crossfire if the Covenant ever turned their attention the wrong way.

That was the line. Not institutions, he'd never believed in those.. or cared. Empires rose and fell. Republics rotted and rebranded themselves. Jedi and Sith replaced each other every few decades. None of that meant anything to him.

People did. His people - Aether, Sibylla, Lorn... Fatine. Enough that he'd walked straight into the heart of a monster to keep them safe. Ace watched Arris for a moment, considering her words again.

Guiding the fire. Using it. Then, when he was done, he'd burn the Covenant to the ground.

Ace spoke at last, voice quiet. "You're right. If that kind of power's going to exist, someone's pointing it somewhere."

A small pause followed and his eyes drifted once toward the body on the floor before returning to hers.

"But once you start deciding who deserves it." He added evenly. "We'd better be damn sure we're not just replacing one tyrant with another."

Ace leaned one shoulder lightly against the console, arms folding across his chest. His gaze stayed steady on her.

"If we start pulling that trigger…" The faintest edge crept into his voice. "…we pick the targets carefully."

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Acier Moonbound

Arris felt an impossible relief at his answer. Her posture relaxed, even if subtly, and her expression softened. It could be felt as a ripple in the Force. It didn't extinguish the anger or the fear that drove her, but it did hint at her humanity beneath all of it. That somewhere inside the monster was a woman driven by honest goals. Didn't mean there wasn't a whole lotta misguided intention behind it. But it was there.

She nodded. "Carefully, yeah."

But she sensed something, too, in his previous question. He was right -- there had to be a system of accountability. The Talusian thought back to her youth, growing up under the foot of syndicates; a child soldier in all but name.

"We spill our guts. Details that could destroy either one of us." Literally, figuratively? Didn't matter.

But the nature of the Sith meant it wasn't just about trust. Mutually assured destruction was a more effective tool than any. In the past, Sith used this as a means to overcome each other. Constant rivalry for the rise to the top. Fragile as the idea may be, what if that were instead used to keep each other in line? A Covenant that existed to change this galaxy for the better, to raise the meek and remove the undeserving powerful. And if any of them broke it? It would mean their end.

As a leap of faith, or something like it, Arris tapped two fingers to the right side of her dome.

"I have an implant. I don't know its exact nature, but I know somehow, someway, it was corrupted on Ruusan. The way I heard someone describe it, I'm something called a technobeast." She hated the name, and even the way she said it was sour. "Only it didn't end up eating my insides or removing me from the equation."

The cyborg didn't say it outright, but the implication was there. It was the only way to truly kill Arris Windrun. There was even a distinct possibility that severing her head wouldn't actually be enough to do her in.

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant - Federal District

Equipment:
Apprentice Attire | Lightsaber | Shoto | Cybernetic Arm

His eyes drifted briefly toward the side of Arris's head where she'd tapped the implant. The room was quiet now, the only sound the faint hum of the chamber systems and the cooling body behind them.

Technobeast. The word sat strangely in his mind, but the explanation itself… that fit. Ace's gaze narrowed slightly as something clicked into place. During their fight he had felt it, that sudden shift in the current of the Force. Not the usual spike of anger or desperation that Sith fed on. Something unnatural. Like a wound opening in the current itself and bleeding pure Dark Side through it.

His attention returned to her.

"That thing in your head..." He said quietly. "That's what happened back there. When we fought."

Ace's expression didn't change much, but there was a faint tension behind his eyes as he remembered the moment... the way the Force had twisted around her, the raw violence of it.

Then he gave a small nod.

"Explains a lot."

The silence stretched for another moment as he studied her. Arris had just handed him the mechanism that could kill her, she'd given him leverage.

His eyes dropped briefly to the floor. If he gave her nothing back, she'd know. But the truth he was actually hiding, the real reason he was here, could never come out. Ace's jaw shifted slightly as he weighed it, he needed something concrete. Something real. Something that would satisfy the exchange without giving away the game he was playing.

His mind turned over the locked compartments of his past before settling on one. Dathomir. A truth only a handful of people in the galaxy actually knew. Only a handful he'd willingly told.

Ace lifted his eyes back to her.

"I was born into a clan once. Tried to kill me the second I was born... but that's another story." The words were simple, almost detached. "I went back to Dathomir trying to save my mother."

He paused for a moment, gathering himself as he lived through the memory again.

"They executed her in front of me. I lost control." He paused again, it was still so fresh. Like it had happened yesterday. "When it was over… most of the clan was dead."

The words sat there between them.

"The rage burned out eventually. The guilt didn't."

Ace pushed himself lightly off the console again, folding his arms as his gaze settled back on her.

"I'd tasted the Dark side long before I came here. It's... something that's been tied to me since before I was even born."

His expression hardened, something in between resolve and boundary setting.

"So when you start talking about deciding who deserves to burn." He said evenly. "I know exactly how easy that choice gets when you're angry enough."

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

"That's what happened back there. When we fought."

She nodded. "Something like that."

The contemplation was easy enough to read. So, the silence stretched between them until Acier spoke again.

At first, Arris was a little confused. What exactly was he getting at? A dark past? But for him, it was heavier than that. A grim reminder of his guilt. He carried that moment with him as a responsibility he could never answer.

But he didn't get it. When Arris Windrun suggested they spill their guts, she didn't just mean a single kernel.

Perhaps it was a little dismissive of his question-that-wasn't-a-question, but she decided to follow his 'confession' with one of her own.

"Rox."

The name cut him off before he could finish that final thought.

"That girl in the frame - back at my hideout on Narsh, yeah? I abandoned her."

Arris paused. She was surprised... not at the confession; she expected to have felt something. Relief? A weight off her shoulders? Anything. She had been carrying that guilt for so long that it was a numb thing. Apparently, it remained numb even when spoken.

"I don't know if she's dead, or gone, or what. But when I knew shit was about to hit... I just fucking ran."

This was the first time she talked about Rox in a decade.

"But there's more to what you were saying, Ace. You said it was tied to you before you were born. What the hell does that mean?"

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant - Federal District

Equipment:
Apprentice Attire | Lightsaber | Shoto | Cybernetic Arm

The name Rox landed first and, for a moment, his eyes flicked toward Arris. He studied her, remembering the photograph in her hideout on Nar Shaddaa. The two girls leaning into each other like the galaxy hadn't touched them yet. So that was her name.

Ace didn't comment on it right away. The confession hung there between them, raw in a way he knew that Arris herself didn't feel anymore.

"Running when shit goes wrong." He said after a moment, voice almost thoughtful. "Folks like us don't usually get another option."

It wasn't judgment. Just recognition. His gaze held hers for another second before her question caught up with him. Ace exhaled quietly through his nose, this was something he hated talking about. Both because of its sheer volume and complication, but also because of how personal it was to him.

"I'm a mistake." He said bluntly. "Not in the way where two idiots accidentally make a kid."

His eyes drifted briefly toward the floor, not really seeing the chamber anymore.

"Clan I was born into believed in this ancient prophecy. That a daughter would be born, she'd unite the clans on Dathomir, and then, basically, take over the galaxy."

Ace shrugged, then turned his head away fully.

"They spent hundreds of years carefully trying to produce this... daughter. My mom, she was meant to be the one who'd birth her. 'Cept she met my father, someone she definitely wasn't supposed to fall in love with. Then..."

His mouth twitched slightly, humorless.

"She had me. A boy. The clan called me wrong, a failure. So, they tried to kill me. Mom took me and ran."

The statement came without drama, the same way someone might mention the weather. Ace lifted his eyes back to her, his expression didn't change much, but there was something harder sitting behind it now.

"Dathomir and the Dark side are tethered. I'm a son of Dathomir, so..."

Ace let the words settle before continuing. Shifting the the topic.

"What was Rox to you?"

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Acier Moonbound

Arris listened.

Whenever someone referred to themselves as a mistake, Arris had assumed she knew where the conversation was headed. Though Ace already tried to lead her off the usual notion. He mentioned prophecy -- which wasn't usually how it went. Hell, she'd never heard anyone mention prophecy in such a personal context before.

But what he described threw her off balance and completely disarmed her. A look of disbelief rested upon her face.

Then, she broke out in laughter. "What? Sorry, I just..." Arris snickered to contain it; one of the few involuntary joys she's had in recent times.

"I... Look," a final snicker. "Shit, Ace. Y'know that hits close to home in a weird way, but--"

Arris realized he asked her a question. "Oh. Rox?" Her amusement fled, but a bittersweet smile lingered.

She looked down at the ground for a second. "She and I met when I was about your age. Fast friends. Then, something more. We never actually got around to calling it anything. Just wasn't how shit worked back then, especially in her situation..."

Distracted by her own memory as she might be, she didn't want to dismiss what he said outright, either.

"I'm sorry... I didn't exactly know my parents as more than uh, I don't know? Whatever you call people you just know. But that's messed up; what happened to you and your mom. But you survived, yeah?"

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Coruscant - Federal District

Equipment:
Apprentice Attire | Lightsaber | Shoto | Cybernetic Arm

Ace didn't react to the laughter the way most people might have. Instead of bristling or looking offended, he simply watched her. For a second his brow pulled together slightly in quiet contemplation, like he was trying to decide whether the galaxy had finally become crazy enough to laugh at.

"Yeah." He muttered under his breath. "Sounds stupid when you say it out loud."

When she answered his question about Rox, the room shifted back to something quieter. Ace noticed the way her eyes dropped to the ground, how her amusement drained away without completely vanishing. While she spoke, he didn't interrupt her.

By the time she finished, his gaze had drifted slightly past her shoulder, as if he were looking through the wall rather than at it.

"'Bout my age..." He repeated quietly.

A small nod followed, almost to himself, and for a moment he said nothing else. When Arris apologized for what had happened to him, Ace's expression didn't change much, he simply shrugged in response. This was the hand he'd been dealt with, he'd learned to accept it.

Then came the question.

But you survived, yeah?

Ace let out a slow breath through his nose. "Yeah."

The answer came simple and flat. His eyes dropped to the floor again, but this time he actually seemed to be looking at something in his memory.

"Mom dropped me off at an orphanage on Bonadan. Didn't see her again until--"

The words caught for a second. He scratched lightly at his jaw before continuing.

"'Till they killed her."

His voice carried a hint of pain behind it, before his demeanor hardened once more. It was hard to believe that this was only 6 months ago now. He lifted his gaze back to Arris.

"But yeah." Ace shrugged again. "Still here."

The silence settled again for a second before Ace's eyes studied her again, more carefully than before.

"Spilling our guts. I've told you things I'd rather keep to myself. So, you got everything you need?"

Arris Windrun​