What was lost.

[Alkor Centaris]

"...may feel some discomfort, some heat, and pain is remotely possible. Speak up if it becomes unbearable." His distant gaze swept across the floor as the last of several diodes was pressed into place. The entire length of his left arm was riddled with them, strapped to a console and surveilled by a heartrate monitor. An IV dripped Kolto into a vein in the opposite arm, a constant and nagging reminder that his body had been ravaged. Alkor barely grunted a response. "Alright, then we'll begin the first tests. Starting the current... now."

The Dark Jedi had always been a stranger to medical care. These tests and operations confused him, and the sensation of pain leaving his body felt odd and foreign. When the electricity became relevant enough that he felt it, Alkor exhaled through his nostrils.

"I'll increase the output," the nurse stated as she turned a dial and watched the numbers rise nominally. "Can you feel any sensation at all? I'm looking for an idea of how severe the nerve damage is."

He raised his arm and attempted to curl his fingers into a fist. They responded, but only with a twitch. His eyes narrowed. "Can you move just your index finger for me?" she asked with a smile. He tried, failed.

"My hand is not responding," he commented. "I cannot fight like this."

"You won't be doing any fighting for some time," the woman chided. "You'd better start focusing on recovering and work with me, or chances are that you never will again." Alkor looked up at her with a bleak expression.

"This is a waste of resources," he told her.

"What?" she looked astonished. "You're recovering from an insane level of poisoning, mister Centaris. The nerve damage is understandable. It will take time-"

"Time you could be spending on saving a life," he spat. "When a sword breaks, you get another sword. Reforging metal is inefficient in an age where replacements are plentiful."

"While it's disturbing that you would liken yourself to a weapon and testify to your exhausted usefulness, I'd like to remind you that you're here because someone expressly asked me to rebuild your body from the ground up. As long as it takes. I'm a specialist, Alkor, this is what I do."

"Rebuild?" he asked, skeptical.

"After flushing out the residual toxins and ridding your body of the most immediate threats, I determined several of your organs had been severely- almost irreparably damaged by something else entirely. The toxin that afflicted you was lethal, but your body was creating an antitoxin at an alarming rate- something human bodies do not naturally do. That antitoxin was a foreign substance, and it acted like cancerous cells, breaking down and causing failures throughout your body."

He looked at his hand again. "I did this to myself," he muttered.

"Specifically, your endocrine system. The adrenal glands and thyroid were overworked and pumping tainted hormones into your bloodstream. In a sense, you were creating a false rage and empowering your body-"

"Get to the point," he cut in. Alkor was gritting his teeth.

"I've had to replace several of your organs with synthetically grown transplants. After some bloodwork and donations from several people happy to offer up the necessary cells and plasma, I was able to recreate working replacements that your body would accept."

His hand trailed to his stomach, where old wounds had closed and flesh had fused together. Only scars remained. "The Kolto cleaned those out and knitted you back together. I was astonished at the extent of the damage. I can't even imagine how much pain you must have been in, or how you were able to go so long without treatment."

"It burns," he said at last. She glanced over to the monitor, where she noted that the intensity was nearly at its maximum output. With a frown, she sighed.

"This is going to take much longer than I hoped," she told him. "The damage in that area is extreme. You may never move it properly again without cybernetics."

"I will die before I accept that," he said flatly.

"Don't make me call [member="Keira Ticon"] in here," she told him. "You're not dying on my watch, even if I have to rebuild every damn one of your limbs. Just work with me, Alkor. I only want you to have your life back."

Alkor looked up at her, his jaw set.

"You can feel, which means the nerves are not shot, just severely damaged. Those can be regrown or healed with the proper instruments." She dialed back the electricity and took him by the wrist. Her hand closed around his, and he felt his fingers follow her lead. "Does it bother you, people trying to help?"

Alkor glanced away. "It makes no sense." He jerked his arm away and tried to break her grip, but without power he succeeded only in pulling her closer. She was young, younger than he expected a trained healer to be. Her hair was messy, upon closer inspection, as though she had not slept in some time. "Why bother helping me?"

The woman reached with her other hand and held his in both of hers. "Because there are people who care about you, Alkor," she whispered. "Your sister told me that you might resist like this. You need to listen to what she has to say, even if you don't like it."

Alkor grunted. "I want to move my hand," he said.

"So move it," the woman smirked.

"Let go."

"No."

"Let go." Alkor pulled again, harder this time. "I will kill you the moment my strength returns," he threatened, "if you do not let me go."

"Good," she said sweetly. "Now, keep that in mind, and use that determination to get better."

 

[Keira Priest]

It had been a long time since Keira had felt the burn of a lightsaber against her skin, and an even longer time since she had come close to losing yet another limb. The planet of Dathomir had left her with both of those as a parting gift, though it marked one of the least devastating injuries received during her long, arduous tenure as a soldier. There had been numerous times where she hadn't been capable of walking into the medbay herself, and those among the Crusaders had learned to grow used to her returning from assignments in less than pristine condition, oftentimes with a new scar or broken bone, once in need of new limbs, but always managing the same sarcastic optimism through it all.

Her own wounds didn't require her to spend any time in a bacta tank, but it had taken the doctor in attendance quite some time to review the extent of the nerve damage. Her only wish was that it wouldn't require cybernetics, the capability of physical touch even with just a single hand the only thing that kept her grounded in some scenarios. It would take some time to heal, she'd been told, and it was unlikely she would ever recover full sensation, but she would be able to keep her shoulder intact without having to augment it with cybernetics. There was always the risk of the nerve damage causing her shoulder to seize up, she'd been warned, but the potential danger that posed on the battlefield was far outweighed by the simple ability to keep her limb fully intact.

A bacta soaked bandage had been placed over the wound before her shoulder was wrapped, and she was instructed not to lift her arm above her head or too far in either direction, lest she risk more extensive permanent damage that would limit her range of mobility. For once she supposed she would actually listen to the advice medical staff gave her, and so she ceded, finally exiting the medbay wearing nothing more than her usual worn jeans and combat boots, coupled with a white tanktop and the new wrappings about her shoulder that served to help keep it immobilized while it began the healing process that hopefully wouldn't hinder her activity in the field as much as she had a feeling it would.

Upon exiting the examination room she had almost immediately been informed by another member of staff that her brother was in the same wing, and was supposedly giving the doctors a fair share of trouble. Of course. Whether related by blood or not, it was always her family that tended to be the troublemakers, and he was no exception. He was more Corellian than he would ever give himself credit for, but she had learned long ago not to press that. It was best to live and let live when it came to her younger brother, however terrible she was at it.

Upon reaching the room in which he'd been situated she only rapped the phrik-plated knuckles of her left hand lightly on the doorway as a courtesy before entering, taking in the scene before her, seemingly unfazed by his actions, "Udesii, vod'ika. These people are only trying to help. Maybe if you'd get that through your thick skull it wouldn't take you so long to get back out in the field. Let them do their job, and then we can worry about getting you combat ready again. But I won't have you so much as setting a foot outside of this medbay until you're healed. I don't give a damn what Mand'alor or anybody else says." That was her ultimatum, whether he liked the sound of it or not, and she was just as ready to back down as he was, which was not at all.

[member="Alkor Centaris"]

 

[Alkor Centaris]

"Listen to the lady," the doctor laughed. "She gives good advice. You need to be healed, Alkor." She held his hand and traced the veins softly with a finger. He barely felt the touch. "If you couldn't tell, your arm has been robbed of a majority of its feeling, and with it, the ability to perform basic functions. You'll never be able to fight with it again."

His gaze turned cold and fell on her. "Unacceptable," he replied. "There must be something-"

"Let me do my job," she pressed him. Alkor grit his teeth and stared at the pristine metal floor. "I can undo most of the damage, but you need to be willing to cooperate with me."

"Most of the damage?" Alkor asked skeptically. "So you're saying-"

"That it's not something I can just erase. Yes. You did this to yourself, hammering away at something much harder and more durable than your arm. It might have taken some damage, but your body isn't built the way other Mandalorians are. It's like taking a stick and wailing against rock. You might leave marks, but the stick will give and inevitably break."

"Strength training?" he asked.

"Eventually," she confirmed. "But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, we need to redevelop basic motor functions. You can't even close your hand into a fist."

"..." Alkor looked at his fingers, shaking desperately in their attempt to perform the most simple of tasks. "So what should I do?"

"Fortunately, House Verd is footing the bill and providing plenty of technology for the sake of putting you back together." The woman wore a toothy grin as she patted his forearm. "Hold still while I get measurements."

"For what?" Alkor stared at her, confused. He turned his gaze to [member="Keira Ticon"] . "What is she doing?"

"There is a Mandalorian Smith waiting for my call," she told him, "and he's going to forge you a special sleeve gauntlet."

"How is that going to do anything?" he asked. "What's the point of armor if I can't use my arm?"

 

[Keira Priest]

"You might consider yourself a warrior, but you weren't at the caliber you needed to be before, and you're nowhere near it now." As she spoke Keira entered the room, pulling over a chair and straddling it backwards, leaning forward with her left arm resting on the back, injured right hanging by her side. From this new vantage she simply watched her younger brother for a moment, carefully reading every microexpression that flickered across his face for the deeper intent beneath it, able to discern all that he wished to remain hidden from the outside world to a deeper degree than anyone else present. The frustration that radiated outwards was tangible, and she understood it more intuitively than most, because once she had thought like him, and still did some days.

Despite being openly welcomed into House Verd and a family that was willing to accept him regardless of any perceived flaws or weaknesses, he still viewed himself as nothing more than another tool and weapon of war. It was a habit that would take time to grow out of, and she was willing to be patient with him, but sometimes she couldn't help but entertain the thought of knocking him upside the head to better iterate just what she was trying to get across. He mattered more to all of them than he would ever truly understand, and while the larger part of her accepted that he wouldn't ever be able to completely grasp what it meant to have a family that cared about you, she still wanted him to acknowledge somehow that he was worth more than all that he made himself out to be.

"Sometimes it amazes me all that you don't see, vod'ika." He was twice the strategist she would ever manage to be, and he saw things even the most experienced warriors such as herself tended to overlook in the heat of battle, yet he couldn't discern all that was being laid out right in front of him. "Armor does more than just protect and shield from injury. Not that I expect you to know that, given that you rarely don your own." If he'd been wearing proper beskar'gam like she'd been nudging him towards, the furthest extent of the damage done could have very well been avoided. There was a reason their people oftentimes wore armor like a second skin, but apparently he hadn't come to that same conclusion yet.

"I'm going to assume you've not heard of crushgaunts yet. They're gauntlets that augment the strength of the one wearing them. Or, in your case, they create that strength from what little you currently have to work with and shape it into something more. This isn't just armor. It's giving you a new arm without having to resort to cybernetics." It was something he would ultimately learn to be thankful for, she reasoned, as she knew full well his opinions on false limbs such as her own that glinted in the light of the medbay. "This smith is going to be forging you a second chance at life. I would suggest you remain thankful of his efforts, and those of House Verd. This is what family does for each other."

[member="Alkor Centaris"]

 

[Alkor Centaris]

Alkor sat still, staring at Keira as the woman lifted his arm and cuffed his wrist. Suspended from the ceiling, it gave him support where his synapses currently failed to do so. "Our definitions of what makes one a warrior are vastly different," he conceded, "but I think that refusal to acknowledge a different culture's strength is another form of weakness." He felt pain in his fingers when they were pricked, and his eyes drifted toward the doctor. She gave him a look that said pretend I'm not here. ​He nodded curtly, and his gaze returned to the woman who called him "Brother." He could feel the fluids from the IV dripping into his bloodstream, and his head swirled a bit as they flooded him. His eyes seemed distant. "A man told me once, 'it is one thing to see your enemy as beneath you," Alkor explained, "it is another to believe yourself infallible."

He never had. Alkor knew going into that cloud of death that part of him might disappear forever. The pain was inevitable, though he could not have counted on the sheer magnitude of it. It became just another among the many lessons life would teach him.

The Dark Jedi looked as if he were hanging by his wrist as the pulley hefted his weight off the bed. He could feel his arm, though mostly as dead weight. "We're going to try a neural stimulant," the attendant informed the two Verd. "I have hopes that it will help to restore some of the functionality."

"Do it, then," he chewed on his lip. Alkor was hungry to have his body back. His weapon, and the only way of life he had ever truly known. Without it, he felt weak. "Make me useful again."

​"You calm down with that," she chided. "Useful or not, you won't be doing anything ​as far as combat goes for a month or two. I want to see real results before I send you out to get killed."

He did not respond to those words.

She pressed a button, and a warmer liquid coursed through him. Alkor was immediately aware of the pain that blossomed in his nerve receptors. ​It felt like fire.

​"This is the extent of the damage," she explained as his face twitched, almost imperceptibly. "You can hide it, but your heartbeat spikes, and your blood pressure rises. Your body tells me what your words and your face won't. Pain creates tension and anxiety. You can try to be a faceless machine, but you're still stuck with a human body." Alkor turned to look at the woman, and she placed a finger to his skin. He ​felt her touch. ​His fingers tingled as they responded to his commands. "You're more than a weapon. You need to understand that."

His hand shot toward her, and he stopped short of her throat. His eyes moved over her body, feral, and his fingers twitched with excitement as he recognized that the possibility had returned. For that brief instant, he could have killed her. He had power over her, power to end her lie. The dark energies twisted and writhed through his veins-

She slapped his hand away, and took a step back. "You really meant it, huh?" she asked, but she was not afraid. "You meant it when you said you'd kill me."

"I did not do it," he replied pointedly.

"You tried."​

Alkor let out a short chuckle when she said that. He glanced back to Keira. His fingers moved rhythmically in front of the woman's face. "So you give this back to me, and what?" he asked. "What do you want from me? You want my cooperation, as a soldier? You seek to use me as an assassin? I can hardly deny your request now." His arm rose higher, and he looked over at it. The joint needed to be rehabilitated, but everything seemed to be in order. "What do you actually ​want?"

His eyes moved to [member="Keira Ticon"], and they burned deep with distrust. "The last few men who called Brother murdered each other, and tried to murder me too. Forgive me if family isn't my strong suit."

 

[Keira Priest]

It amused her sometimes, the way he spoke. Whether he would admit it or not - which he likely wouldn't - he had the capacity to be just as cryptic as those Jedi he so despised. "I'm well aware that I'm far from infallible. Unlike you, I don't make a point of pushing the limits of that." Long ago Keira had learned just how far she could push herself before death became an immediate danger, and ever since then she had consistently toed that line until eventually it was blurred beyond recognition. The one thing that undoubtedly separated the two of them in that regard was that she still retained a touch more common sense and knew when it was better to back down or call for reinforcements as opposed to continuing to throw oneself at an opponent that refused to budge.

A slight thrum of pain traveled through her injured right arm. Well, sometimes she knew better.

The chair she had seated herself in was halfway across the room as she shot to her feet the second his hand so much as twitched, and she was fully prepared to retaliate with violence if it came to that. Thankfully, however, restraint was for once demonstrated, and she was able to relax just slightly. The fingers of her cybernetic limb curled in on themselves before relaxing, and she met Alkor's icy blue gaze calmly, entirely unafraid of any threat he may have posed in that moment. The tension between them was palpable and she did nothing to diffuse it for a long few minutes, until finally she turned away to retrieve her chair before sitting just as she had been previously.

That didn't, however, mean she was done just yet. "What you had before was not family, Alkor, and I think you know that for yourself even if you won't admit it." He may have been just beginning to understand the bonds that connected people, but there were certain things known intrinsically, even if they weren't seemingly inherent at first. "House Verd - all of the vode - are unlike any so-called family you've ever had. Unlike your supposed brothers previously, we mean what we say, and we will always support you in one way or another, even if it doesn't always look like we do. Family may not be your strong suit, but you'd better learn quickly, because this time it isn't going away."

Despite her harsh words she couldn't help the twitch of a smile that emerged as he continued to move his arm, proving that against all odds it was still functional, no matter how minuscule the amount. He was a fighter just like the rest of them, and more a Mandalorian than he would ever fully realize. "All anyone here wants for you is for you to realize that you're among people who care more for you than anyone has in your life. Everyone here would just as soon sacrifice themselves to give you the opportunity to live, but you insist on tarnishing that by attempting to kill them after they've healed you. You may think you know everything about us, but you're still blind to the bigger picture." They were words he would not take kindly to, but it was what he needed to hear.

[member="Alkor Centaris"]

 

[Alkor Centaris]

"What I know seldom changes what I do." His response was flat and measured, and did not change even as pain seared through his arm. The stretched musculature was alive again as the neural stimulant pulsed through it, and he welcomed the sensation. It meant he had not lost everything. "It is not my way to stop simply because I could die. Death is not an excuse for failure."

He stood fully now, and the tips of his toes dragged along the ground as the pulley tugged him across the floor. Alkor made no motion to resist. The pain blossomed throughout his arm, but he never broke eye contact. "Limits are created for people who want to live. People who value life above the mission. I had only the mission to value. That was why they made me what I am."

His fingers curled into a fist. "I am not infallible," he added. "I'm persistent."

The shared silence returned after those words concluded. She showed no fear of him. That was fine. He had no intention of taking her life.

She began to explain family, and support, and what it meant to be Mandalorian. Alkor listened warily. Keira said he would need to learn, but what did she want him to do? What was it she wanted from him?

He closed his eyes at last. "You're wrong," he said at last, quietly. "I don't know anything about any of you. I don't pretend to know. I can't possibly know." He opened his hand and his shoulder tensed as heat lanced down his arm. "It did not matter if it was not pertinent to my mission."

He looked up at his open hand. "I was told to ensure my own death," he revealed. "I was not to accept healing. The kindness of strangers was tantamount to treachery. Kill them, and then myself."

"And they never bothered healing you themselves?" the skeptic voice from behind Keira drew Alkor's attention. "That was... an unbelievable amount of damage to your body. Catastrophic, even."

"If it had killed me, I would have been seen as weak." He shrugged.

[member="Keira Ticon"]

 

[Keira Priest]

"I don't care what you were told, di'kut." Her eyes followed him as he walked, and Keira could sense the pain he was in even if it didn't show on his face. The wound she was presently nursing was nagging in its own way, and she could only imagine what he must be feeling. At the very least she hoped the present agony was reminding him what it meant to be human, so that it wasn't entirely in vain. "What you were told doesn't matter anymore, because the rules are different here. You're worth more to us than just another body on the battlefield or another sacrifice." There was no doubt that he recognized and accepted his own mortality and what it meant to die, but he didn't seem to grasp much beyond that.

Standing, she crossed the floor to where he stood, watching him evenly just as he did the same. The both of them were apex predators in their own right, each interaction always akin to two hunters testing each other, even when that wasn't the case. For once she was trying genuinely to be a sister to him, but as always he had the tendency to make even the simplest tasks far more difficult than they ought to have been. An uncontested and brilliantly brutal warrior though he may have been, he had the capacity to convince her that was about all he was good for, some days. Stubbornly he refused to acknowledge his own self-worth, and it was about time unstoppable force met immovable object.

"You need to understand something, and I need you to listen very closely when I say this: your mission is meaningless now." Silence hung between them in the seconds after she spoke, allowing him to absorb the words in all their finality. "You don't have a mission anymore, and you need to get that through your thick skull. You aren't just an asset. You never were." Perhaps he'd only been valued as such once upon a time, but those days had long since passed. The moment he accepted the invitation their elder brother had offered everything had changed forever, and it seemed the last one to know was him. That had been a common theme for as long as she had known him, but they would get through it together. Together, as family, whether he liked it or not.

"It's not about valuing your life above the mission. That's not what success is, nor is cowardice the embodiment of failure. You can accomplish what you came to do and walk away just as easily as you can get yourself killed and fail. What you need to get through your unbearably thick skull is that your life is worth more than any mission will ever be. Tayli'bac, shabuir? Your life means something." It was an understanding she had struggled with for some time as well, so she couldn't pretend to be entirely apathetic. But she could damn well beat all of this into him if she had to.

Reaching up with her left arm she put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently and meeting his eyes directly as she next spoke. "You're my brother. That isn't something I say for the sake of it like those in your past, because it's not something to be taken lightly. It's a rare instance to claim someone outside of blood as family, and rarer still for Isley to do so. But you're my brother, and while you might not understand entirely what that means right now, know that I'm willing to fight and die for you - to do anything - in order to keep you safe. I don't expect anything in return, though you finally starting to return the sentiment would be nice."

[member="Alkor Centaris"]

 

[Alkor Centaris]

The times where Alkor had no response in life were few. He was a skeptical man, bred out of dark times with something bitter to say about almost everything. Distrust kept the engine clean and the fluids running through the system, and not bleeding out through crafty cuts administered by enemies who got too close.

Traditionally when someone tried to befriend Alkor, the most they got was an arm's length. That had not always been the way. He had friends, once. Men who called him Brother, though even they were questionable. A fierce lot who kept to themselves and drank heavily, when they weren't at war- the Dark Jedi had a respect for strength. Little else mattered.

When their egos clashed, pride came before kinship. Strength drowned respect, and brother slaughtered brother. Never had they spoken of "family," not the way Keira did now. They had never tried to be brothers to Alkor in the true sense, to know him as more than a murderer.

He had never thought twice about it, either.

For a moment, he understood the one thing that was important above all others. This woman, Corellian and broken as she was, meant every word. She saw him as family. She wanted to treat him the way blood treats blood.

Alkor remembered that same ancient sensation, the warmth of a mother's embrace. Before his time began to count, she was there. Her love was the first memory he had, and subsequently the one thing that felt so foreign to him.

When Keira touched him, Alkor pointedly stared away. He never matched her gaze. What do you say to someone who demands the impossible of you? How do you match the tenacity of someone who truly cares, when you have never truly had anything to care for?

Alkor winced as the pulley went taut, and his arm was stretched to its limit. "Looks like the range of motion hasn't suffered," the woman announced. "With this, we can proceed with confidence into rehabilitation."

"Ten bey prehe mi," he muttered in Olys Corellisi. I will never understand this.

[member="Keira Ticon"]

 

[Keira Priest]

"I was beginning to wonder if you were capable of saying anything that wasn't rehearsed." For once Keira didn't press the issue of Old Corellian, only thankful that he'd finally stopped putting on what she perceived to be nothing more than a show. There was more to him than he would likely ever let on to the outside world, and she was just glad she was able to glimpse at even a fraction of it. Beneath the surface and somewhere under all the trauma he'd suffered, there was a different man. It just took some time to find him, and apparently that equaled out to just shy of two years. It had been a long time since he'd been accepted into her family, and it had only taken loss of function in his arm and yet another near-death experience for him to realize what that meant.

For just a moment longer she rested her hand on his shoulder before stepping back, granting him the personal space she was well aware he preferred. "You have family here. Not just me, but the entirety of House Verd as well. We all care about you more than you'll be able to fathom, and all we ask is that you understand that above all else, even if you'll never be able to truly reciprocate it." She meant every word spoken with a sincerity that was rare, and rarer still when it came to any of their interactions, most of them accompanied by battlefield chatter or a typical back-and-forth banter that never ceased long enough for any of them to get a sincere word in. But it was now they had decided to be siblings.

"Alkor, look at me." Whether he would comply or not was another matter, but regardless she paused for a moment before continuing, "You're safe here. There isn't a reason to keep putting on a front, because whether you'll admit it or not that's what a lot of this amounts to. I know there are some parts of you that will never fully heal from what you've experienced, but I also know you're a different man behind all of this, and you don't have to keep hiding it. You have a home here, and a place where you can be entirely yourself, if you're willing to seize for yourself all that's been laid in front of you."

Turning her head just slightly, she spoke to the doctor in attendance, "Thank you for all that you've done. Even if he won't say it, I know Alkor is grateful as well."

[member="Alkor Centaris"]

 

[Alkor Centaris]

The woman only nodded, aware that she was on the outside of a very serious, personal conversation. Her training required a degree of inherent compassion and understanding. One could not heal a person if they could not connect with them. Vulnerability required trust. She would have to build that with this man, and she knew it.

The knowledge that he had never accepted healing only compounded that truth for her. "Feel free to use the room as much as you like," she said with a slight nod as she backed away from the two. "I'll have to enter this data into the system before we can proceed anyway, so you have some time."

Alkor still stared off into the distance as Keira spoke, but not out of any obstinate refusal to cooperate. "For all I've seen, all I've done, I know better than to think I'm truly safe anywhere, Keira. I don't believe anyone is, not even in their own home."

His fingers barely twitched at his conscious effort to move them, even though the electrical pain lingered in the neurons. At least he could still feel something.

"It is... different to know that there will always be someone to watch my back, and to know that if they do so will spur no reprecussion." The ideas were foreign, and his voice told that tale more than he ever willingly would. He brushed away the sleeve over his left arm and revealed lengths of scar tissue and stretched out flesh that was a shade lighter than the rest. The pain was eons gone, but the memory would live in him forever.

"I don't regret any of it," he added quietly. "I never will, either."

What made him different from the rest of the Mandalorians was his understanding that he had always lacked the soul that they spoke of. His utter acceptance of that fact. Sith, Dark Jedi, practitioners of the darkest arts- they were destroyers. Demons. War made manifest.

It was different from being a man with an occupation. "It is a kindness you offer, this thought that I have humanity somewhere beneath the surface. And perhaps, it is hope in your heart." His eyes moved to her and he offered a half smile.

"You can believe what you want, but I council you to know better."

With that, he turned away again and tediously began attempting to enliven his appendage, even if for a moment. Alkor refused to give in, and he would fight until he had nothing left. "Despite that, I joined this cause," he added. "And I will not simply walk away from it."

[member="Keira Ticon"]