Private Truly Awful

[Arris Windrun]

Efret Farr

CORUSCANT
SITH TEMPLE
​

It didn't take Arris long to figure that Mercy had a new pet. Efret Farr... A Mandalorian name? She wondered if it was that or a coincidence. She decided the best place to look was the one place to go when you needed info on a person without their permission: their vast collection of captured ISB records.

What she learned surprised her. A Jedi Master, a sitting member of the council at that... Arris couldn't help but recall Kattada, where the Covenant began, ragtag raiders of a Jedi temple. It was the first time she ever killed a Jedi... but in another life, if she had made just one different choice, she might have arrived at Kattada as a student.

"As for mechu-deru...that's Sith art with a lot of risks for everyone involved and everyone around, but there's some Jedi tech specialists who know it, and I know some of them - worked the repair bays with them at that enclave on Kattada, matter of fact. They're more the kind to use it to get a good sense of how broken a ship is, whether it's fixable, but far as I've heard it's all the same kind of skill."

It was an offer from a friend - a chance for Arris to hone her control of mechu-deru and be at peace with her cybernetic psychosis. Instead, she turned around and sold that information to Mercy, and together they began a journey to stand where they are now: Conquerors of the Core.

Arris recollected. She terrorized and murdered on Kattada. Sunk Edic Bar for a paycheck. Massacred Tapani. Executed a masterstroke ruse that destroyed the Galactic Empire in one move, and caused the deaths and suffering of trillions. Those sins weighed heavily, and yet... they were so easy to dismiss. That was the funny thing about scale - how it could be so impersonal; dismissed as an act greater than the individual, even if all it took was an individual. But was it her fault? Could she really be blamed for unraveling the cult of Solipsis? It was their violence, their contingency. All she did was snap her fingers and say a few magic words.

The cyborg tapped her fingers on the glass of the viewscreen.

"They'd die either way, darling, this way we conquered the Core with substantially fewer losses than anyone expected. Bravo to us."

No remorse from the Titan.

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.

Arris Windrun and Mercy Star-Arm. Friends at first blood; friends until the last drop.

So why, then, would Mercy collect a Jedi Master? She must've been truly awful if Mercy liked her.

She set the datapad aside and left for the temple. If this Efret Farr was there, then she would be found, and she would be measured.

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret was back in the Archives, trying to teach herself ur-Kittât.

Well, trying to develop fluency. She had learned the runic alphabet and a few key phrases and names of ancient figures a long time ago: for a series of classes at the Academy of Jedi Archaeology as well as during a couple of excursions towards the beginning of her career. She had chosen, with the exception of that handful of opportunities, to focus her Force research on Light side history, so it was sensical that her understanding of the language was so limited.

Or, had been sensical. It wasn't so anymore.

Efret had been not done ethnography field work in ages now. Consequently, she had had little opportunity to teach herself any new written languages. Comprehend Speech was no help with reading, but that wasn't a new development—it never had been. Given its large limitation, Efret always had preferred to learn languages in all of their aspects—writing system if present; mouthshapes; periodically spoken sounds either through a Force listening technique she had learned on one of her trips, or via feeling a speaker's voice box as they talked, mimicking the movements, and trying to recreate the sounds. Developing linguistic understandings that were both holistic and didn't rely on the Force was her own academic ideal.

It still was: a tile in the intellectual foundation that she had build herself during her time in academia, one of the only ones that the pressure of her disillusionment with the Light hadn't cracked or pulverized.

The corner of the Archives she had occupied for the last hour had been still. Efret could only assume the room had been silent as well aside from the periodic rustle of the tome's papyrus pages as she turned them. But she noticed that had changed when she felt the distant vibrations of footsteps through the floor. Someone was coming. Something about their walk implied that they were searching for more than a book or two tucked this far back in the wing.

No, they sought a conversation.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Efret Farr
​

Arris arrived at the Temple not long after her departure. After all, The Empty wasn't exactly far. And it wasn't difficult for the Triumvir to find where this woman was, as the Covenant kept a fairly close watch on the comings and goings at the Temple after a pair of Jedi showed up looking for a tree.

She marched with confident steps, an authority figure closing in on her mark. When she turned the corner, she saw this Efret studying an old, paper tome.

"You," she called. "Put that away and follow me. We need to have a little chat."

Whether the Jedi Master knew who Arris Windrun was hadn't crossed her mind. Arris leaned against the shelf, arms crossed, and waited for the woman to comply.

The only other detail that was remarkable about Arris, besides her extensive cybernetics and the darkness lodged in her skull, was the revolver-laden holsters at her hips. No lightsaber. Not her. Never Windrun.

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret did not know who Arris' face but was aware of two things: that there was a triumvir by her name and that, whoever this cyborg woman was, carried herself with an undeniable air of some authority. The former Jedi master knew when to submit to that, even and especially when she didn't understand it. In some ways, the Sith hierarchy similar to the Jedi's, though, in other ways they were obviously quite distinct.

Or were they?

Efret eased the book shut, not the stall for time but to preserve the ancient binding.

After sliding the tome over the table and towards the wall, her hands returned to chest level. They made two distinct signs, perhaps familiar to Arris. "Very well," a tinny voice flowed from her choker's pendant to fill the otherwise silent air. She stood up. "I shall follow."

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Efret Farr
​

Arris watched as the other woman carefully put the book away. She didn't say anything, if she thought much about it at all.

When Efret signed, her co-processor's auto-targeting algorithm immediately tracked the movement. Efret may've noticed the sudden shift in Windrun's attention and expression, as if disarmed by an impactful revelation. Cybernetic muscle relaxed, and her crossed arms slumped.

She nodded once, then slipped back around the shelf to lead Efret deeper throughout the Temple. They walked the halls, and most of the instructors and students gave the cyborg a wide berth.

A few acolytes muttered something about how she had killed Vestra Tane, still a strong piece of gossip in the student rumor mill.

She looked over her shoulder at Efret, voice a little low, eyes focused on her hands. "I'm Arris Windrun. Does Mercy's new pet have a name?"

Eventually, they arrived at a parked airspeeder.

Arris gestured to the open door. "Get in. We're going for a little ride."

 

[Efret Farr]

The cyborg's sudden discomfort was obvious to the Blind Lorrdian, even in the slightly amorphous tanscape of Force Sight. Arris' Dark confidence shattered like glass, giving way to the flash of rawer hostility. Organic muscles and synthetic fibers and actuators tensed below skin and synthflesh in the exact same ways, making body language a universal language between organics and cyborgs.

It didn't matter whether lymph fluid or hydrogel made the movements possible.

As they walked down the hall, Efret noticed the wide berth that Arris, and thus she, was being given. She hadn't heard the news, actually—hadn't read it, hadn't been told, hadn't visually eavesdropped. Still, through her deeply engrained Empathy, she felt the emotional concoction swirling in those students and instructors who moved away from them:

Fear. Hatred. Respect. Jealousy.

Feeling the triumvir's eyes turn back to her, Efret looked back. She didn't need to; Force Sight wasn't bound by the geometry of eyes and orbital sockets in the way normal sight was. She could see everything around her and beyond all at once. It was simply a matter of what she was focused on at any given moment, but the turning of her head was an instinctual physical response from the years she had physical sight.

She watched the dull form leading her speak, her meaning washing over her through Comprehend Speech.

"Yes," Efret replied. "I have a name."

Silence and stillness stretched just a beat, the former Jedi's hands floating at signing height. "I assume you want to know it," her fingers added, their deft, synchronous movements given voice by the vocoder hidden in the pendant of her choker.

Her face didn't show any defiance. Instead, her pedantry wasn't meant to annoy but to hold to a bit of autonomy.

She continued immediately, "Efret Farr."

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Efret Farr
​

Efret Farr. So Arris had the right one.

She climbed into the driver's seat of the airspeeder; both doors shut, locking them inside the quiet solitude of the cabin.

"So," Arris broke that quiet, "how does a Jedi Master end up with the Cov?"

The airpseeder jerked as Arris slammed the throttle, climbing quickly and away from the Temple. The view from Coruscant's surface was something else. Deceptively bare, given how much of the ecumenopolis was buried beneath a durasteel sky.

Arris drew a cigarette from the pack in her pocket, setting it between her lips before snapping two metal fingers together. The scratch created a spark; she inhaled, drawing then releasing a cloud of psychedelic smoke. She offered it, idly, expecting the Jedi to refuse. Maybe she wasn't a smoker. Or maybe she just knew better than to accept drugs from a stranger.

The cyborg's eyes scanned the skyline beyond the glass as the speeder descended between rows of buildings, then below a skywalk, then down into a dark, empty tunnel. It opened up into a larger pit, one that cut down through thousands of levels, from surface to the - if you believed in myths - the core of Coruscant itself.

"No more stuffy temple," she drawled dryly.

​

It wasn't long until they arrived at their destination - a claustrophobic community packed between the roots of towers, once home to tens of thousands of people. A microcosm within a microcosm. It had its own culture and dialect. Many (if not most) of the people who lived there hadn't been anywhere else in their entire lives. And it was all wiped out when the Covenant took Coruscant. All because a blackout knocked the ventilation out long enough to suffocate those who didn't make it out.

Now, it was a ghost town. Save for scavengers and the like.

Arris set the speeder down, but didn't get out right away. She took another drag - she felt responsible for what happened. Even if she didn't say it.

 

[Efret Farr]

"Are you alright, my dear?" The question came through the air of the enclosed cabin, mingling with Arris' cigarette smoke. As always, the sentiment, delivered in the monotone voice of her vocoder, could be interpreted in a plethora of ways: most some iteration of sarcasm.

But the deep Empathy radiating off of the cyborg's passenger like a second, more intense body heat suggested that the former Jedi master's true intent was sincerity. She was truly curious and, more than that, she wanted to offer comfort if it was needed. Her Empathy, the only thing about her still tinged with the selfless concern and care of the Light, even just so, held at the fringes of Arris' own aura, waiting.

If it was welcomed in, it would loosely wrap the other woman in a velvety emotional warmth.

If it was rejected, it'd pull back into Efret's bleeding, broken, blackening heart.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Efret Farr
​

The Jedi--Ex-Jedi's question snapped her out of the recollection. Arris quickly took another drag, this one so sharp that it burned halfway past the middle. She could go through smokes rather quickly when stressed.

"I'm fine," Arris lied.

The cyborg quickly noticed something, as if soothing care waited just at the periphery of her mind. She lacked trained senses in the Force... which is maybe why she didn't think enough to reject it, unaware that Efret could notice and feel these things, or that the gentle warmth came from her.

It left her feeling vulnerable. Deeply vulnerable. Because the Sith lacked such comforts on her own, the last time would've been when she still had Rox, but that was so long ago that Arris couldn't actually remember what it felt like. Only that she once felt something good.

For a moment, it seemed as if Arris was going to melt in her chair, maybe lean forward with her head resting against the wheel; but instead, the cyborg threw open the door and stumbled out into the dank, underworld air. She threw the burning cigarette off to the side and began to cough. Not because of the smoke - it couldn't harm her cybernetic lungs - but because of a rot that ran deeper. She spat little black specks into her hand, and spat blood beside the faded stains of an old oil spill.

After taking a deep breath, Arris threw her back against a wall and looked at Efret - arms crossed. "So," she began. "What can you tell me about this place?"

Empty and without people. But not without memory. The Force was still very much alive in the duracrete labyrinth.

 

[Efret Farr]

"Very well." Efret didn't pry, but also didn't take Arris' words for truth. It was easy to tell that the other woman was lying, first through her unintentional body language and then her choice of question. Both were steeped in guilt.

Self-assured Sith didn't act this way when revisiting the site of a conquest—or so Efret assumed.

"I've never been here," Efret commented as she walked a handful of meters away from the airspeeder. She knelt down to place her hand on the ruined street. An Echo drew immediately up into her arm, her chest, her mind like an artesian well. Like this very place was begging to tell the stories of the people who had once lived here.

She had braced for something unpleasant: a mental image, a feeling, perhaps both. The guarding tension left her as the street came to life through Force Sight in her mind.

A crowded market stretched from sidewalk to sidewalk. A woman preparing some unknown street food. Children chasing each other in some kind of game.

"It was once so lively," she mused. It occurred to her that it was such a shame she had never done any cultural emersions on Coruscant. The many communities here could have taught her so much. She could have spent her whole career here, but now many of them were lost and so were their knowledges and perspectives to the galaxy.

Arris' shame bled into Efret, passively feeding hers.

The golden, glowing images of the Echo flickered. Her brow furrowed. "But now the Force feels stuck."

As she finished signing, light tingles spread from her chin down the front of her throat. Then they constricted, causing her to yelp, the sound entirely her own. The sensation smoothed into pulsing heat. Reaching behind her neck, she unclasped her choker with shaking fingers.

As soon as she drew back, the Echoed images dropped from her mind, but the sensation lingered.

One hand grasped the necklace, falling into her lap, as the other smoothed over where the phantom pain seized below the surface. The deep tissue desperately burned for air even as it flowed in and back out mostly as normal, if not a bit uneven with panic and confusion.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Efret Farr
​

Arris took a deep breath and ran a hand through her dark hair. She sighed gently and looked back over her shoulder at Efret. She didn't have to sense it, too, to suspect what the Fallen Master felt in the Force.

"I wasn't here before it happened," Arris clarified.

She started a slow walk down the empty street, waving Efret along as they ventured further amongst the ghosts.

"Planets like Coruscant rely almost entirely on automation to function. So much of it is ancient - no one really knows how it all works. Quick fixes, reroutes, and a bit of luck are how they keep going."

Arris placed her hand against a wall. She closed her eyes, reaching out along the wires that connected along the electrical grid.

"In some places, like here, the infrastructure was long neglected."

Her eyes opened again, and she turned around to face Efret. There was guilt in her eyes as much as it spread outward in the Force. She was thinking back to the invasion and what had happened; it took her time to find the courage before she spoke of it.

"It was my strategy... To hit the points in Coruscant's infrastructure that couldn't handle too much disruption, let alone recover quickly. The rolling blackouts caused chaos, dividing the attention of the garrison. Cover of darkness, in some cases, from where our soldiers attacked. Blind spots in their surveillance systems."

She took a slow, deep breath, looking back to the empty path ahead.

"The systems here overloaded. The ventilation never rebooted like it was designed to. Too old, too worn. Because of course, how long had it been since a capable technician wandered through here and did a little work?"

Despite her guilt, Arris wanted to make one thing clear.

"It was the right strategy."

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret was still for at least a minute, maybe more.

Or maybe less; maybe it only felt unbearably long.

Regardless, she owed it to herself as well as Arris to think through her response. The right thing—or at least a right thing—to say typically came to her intuitively, even recently, in the Covenant's Core. Though the Light might have left her a month or so ago, the deep imprints of Jedi training still went with her wherever she went.

But this felt like a trap. Her vocabulary failed her. Appropriate signs seemed to drift further away from her the more desperately she grasped. Once she had them in her mind, stringing together a sentence seemed like the most daunting task she had ever attempted.

She didn't want to anger any Sith, least of all a Triumvir, but she also didn't want to just offer her a platitude. The Empath sensed that Arris needed much more than empty flattery; she needed real comfort, real connection, and in this case those two things almost had to sting before they could salve. Finding a balance, something to say that gave Arris what she needed while preserving Efret's safety, would be a feat indeed.

"That's a matter of perspective," she finally said, settling for words that she hadn't exactly wanted.

How to follow that up?

Curiosity was often the best option.

"Tell me, what's yours?"

As she waited for the answer, she searched for more words to offer that she was happier with.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Efret Farr​

"My perspective?"

She chewed on the question.

"I think it's all pointless. Sooner or later these systems are gonna blow. If anything, the war probably gave them the best shot at escape - since folks were already on edge. Prolly packed and ready to go, even." Arris slipped into her Talusian drawl a bit there.

She gave Efret an inquisitive look.

"Starting to make me believe that there ain't a right or wrong, but it sure as hell opens your eyes to what you've done when you can actually face the consequences of your own actions."

Arris walked further down the empty street, past abandoned storefronts and tenement entrances. She eyed an abandoned speeder. There were still tools left behind.

"Some locals from another area came by to dispose of the bodies."

She stopped, turned, and looked at Efret.

"You know - it's better to just speak your mind. Even if you don't have the right thing to say."